#A bundle of Blonde AU | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thyme-in-a-bubble · 4 months ago

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the butchery of the beloved, the boulder, the bimbo and the brilliant

kinktober, day twenty-five

a/n: ahhh, it's finally time to share the kinktober fic you all helped shape!! it turned out so fucking unhinged and i love it. happy halloween, folks!

polls for this fic: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8

summary: “they–… they were right…” the warnings your now deceased friends had given you since the moment you got involved with the frat boy buzzed in your mind, though when they’d light-heartedly called him a psycho, you never in your wildest dreams thought that they would have been correct in their choice of words, “I can’t believe they were right…”

warnings: dark!rafe cameron x innocent!reader, smut, dark content, noncon/dubcon, slasher au, final girl!reader, 00’s slutty horror movie vibes, found family, nonverbal, murder, violence, blood, gore, crying, alcohol consumption, smoking, possessiveness, jealousy, mask kink, kissing, size kink, belly bulge, manhandling, dirty talk, just the tip, pussyjob, oral, spit kink, impact play, pain kink, choking, bondage, dacryphilia, orgasm denial, overstimulation, squirting, fingering, penetrative sex, unprotected sex, creampie, references to anal/painal

word count: 7400

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masterlist | join my taglist | kinktober 2024

It all started at a lunch table, as so many friendships do.

The first one to sit was Hana, the nurturing soul of the group who had been a genius even back then. The next to join was Brian, the blonde bombshell whose smile brightened any room he entered. Then came Oliver, the guy who at twelve years old had stood up to the bully you couldn’t face yourself and swore from that day on he’d do so for each and every one of you till the end of your days. And lastly, there was you, in many ways the glue of the little pack.

To say that the four of you were thick as thieves didn’t even begin to cover it, as you’d been there for each other in every up and down in each of your lives since adolescence. Even when your mother passed, especially when your mom passed, that’s when you truly knew that they weren’t just your pals, but your family.

“Oh wow,” you breathed as you gazed out the window to the destination you’d finally reached, “is this really your dad’s cabin?” you glanced over your shoulder at the man behind the wheel, a proud smirk ever on his lips.

“Yep,” Rafe nodded and reached down to put the car in park.

You’d met him at the beginning of this semester and it hadn’t taken you very long at all to fall embarrassingly and completely head over heels for the guy.

Though he wasn’t the first boyfriend to grow to be a part of the tight-knit clique, he hadn’t been welcomed with open arms as you remembered Jerome, Brian’s partner, had two years ago. The gentle giant of few words had melted into your dynamic so naturally that none of you remembered any longer a time before him. But it wasn’t like that this time, not with Rafe. For some reason, your friends just couldn’t warm up to the frat guy you loved so dearly.

As you heard the other car roll to a stop behind you, the vehicle where the four remaining resisted, your fingers dipped down into your pocket and fished out your phone to snap a photo of the luxurious lake house and its breathtaking views, though that’s when you noticed the lack of bars up in the upper corner of the screen.

“Oh, damn it…” you squinted down at your phone, “is there seriously no service out here?”

“Yeah, sorry I forgot to tell you,” Rafe snatched out the keys, “this place is pretty off-grid, you have to probably walk half an hour or something to get any signal.”

The dry leaves on the forest floor crunched beneath your shoes as you stepped out of the car and tipped your head back to glance up at how high the surrounding pine trees stretched up towards the cloudy sky.

As Rafe hopped up onto the wide porch and fiddled with a bundle of keys to unlock the place, your gaze kept finding him as you hung back a while and helped your friends unload their car.

“Can you all please promise to play nice this weekend?” you quietly asked them.

“Yeah,” Oliver huffed, yanking out a heavy duffle bag, “I’ll play nice if he does, which I sincerely doubt since I haven’t yet discovered one kind bone in his body.”

“Oh, come on,” you defended your beau, “he’s the one who suggested this trip so that you could all finally discover what a sweet guy he actually is,” before you all ascended the short steps and filtered into the abode.

Not soon after you all crossed the threshold, Rafe’s arms seized your waist and drew you back against him, whispering in your ear that he wanted to give you the grand tour of the house.

However, when you reached the room that was to belong to the two of you for the rest of the weekend, his ulterior motives for the journey around the cabin became crystal clear.

At first, when he wrapped his arms around you from behind as you gazed out the tall windows at the foot of the bed, a giggle bubbled in your belly as you felt his desire poke the small of your back. Though it was already during his palm’s swift voyage under the hem of your shirt and up towards your boobs that he let slip what crucial item he’d neglected to pack.

“You didn’t bring any condoms?” you twisted around to glare at the persistence that still sparkled in his eyes.

“Oh, come on, don’t let that fact spoil our fun,” he pulled you back into his arms, “don’t you want me to dick you down this weekend, huh?” he murmured in your ear.

“Well, I don’t wanna get pregnant,” you slowly pushed him back, “so it’ll just have to be another weekend.”

But then he seized your hand and brought it down to the palpable tent in his jeans, “babe, come on. Just feel how hard I am. You can’t just leave me like this, not when it’s your fault to begin with.”

Your mouth then fell open as a shy scoff rolled off your tongue, “I literally haven’t done a thing, how is it my fault?”

“Come on, don’t act like a prude,” his grip around your wrist shifted and it slid down to rub your palm against his hardness, “be a good girl and at the very least get down on your knees.”

“No,” you chuckled lightly and pushed yourself off of him enough to stumble closer towards the bedroom’s exit, “if you’re so desperate, then take care of it yourself.”

Even though winter was creeping ever nearer, each one of you still dared to go down to the lake’s small pier and soak up the mild rays of autumn sun that peeked out behind the clouds. Both Hana and Oliver even gathered enough courage to take a dip in the cool water, though weren’t successful in any of their attempts at talking the rest of you into the same.

Though when your friends in the water began to splash at one another, Oliver teasingly let some splatter upon Brian as he sat on the edge, eyes closed and face turned up towards the sky as he relaxed back against his boyfriend.

“Oh my god! Don’t!” he tensely straightened up, his tone startling Jerome enough that his palm that rested on Brian’s waist tightened, “stop! You’re giving me flashbacks to summer camp!”

As you heard your grinning friend in the lake apologise, you opened your mouth to note, “that’s right, I forgot you went to camp when we were kids.”

“Yeah, it was honestly revolting,” Brian recoiled slightly at the recollection, “mosquitoes, terrible food, even worse people. Had a big old lake just like this one,” he gestured to the surrounding landscape.

“Actually,” Rafe then spoke up, his voice booming to your ears as he sat directly behind you, his legs slotted on either side of your frame as his chin rested atop your shoulder, “this place used to be a summer camp too back when my dad bought it.”

“Really?” Hana glanced up from the water, their childish game now halted.

“Yeah, I mean,” Rafe cast a glance over his shoulder at the structures on the bank just behind him, “it had been abandoned and completely deserted for a long time, but a lot of the buildings, the main house and the shed and stuff, they’re the original cabins just renovated.”

“Your dad bought an abandoned camp?” Oliver scrunched up his face, “okay, creepy…”

“Oh, hell no, I’m out,” Brain began to unravel, “babe, if we wake up in the middle of the night to a ghost child standing at the foot of our bed, it’s your job to take care of it,” he glanced over his shoulder at Jerome, “I’m too delicate and pretty to deal with the paranormal, especially if it’s kids,” to which his boyfriend simply hummed in agreement and soothingly let his palm run down his partner’s arm.

“Oh, this place isn’t haunted,” Hana said after she’d swam up to clutch against the side of the pier, “calm down.”

“Well, you don’t know that, it might be,” the blonde man behind you shrugged, “especially with what apparently happened here back in the day…”

“What are you talking about?” you looked back at him.

“Well, back like forty years ago or something, when this was still a camp, there was this one counsellor who one day just went nuts, like snapped and murdered every single person there,” Rafe told, purposely making his tone more ominous the further into the story he got, “that’s why the place was shut down and abandoned, why no one ever wanted to return it to its former glory. It’s one of the most gruesome unsolved cases in this entire corner of the country.”

“Wait, unsolved?” Brian clutched his imaginary pearls.

“Yeah, the guy was never caught, supposably never even left these woods…” he then leaned in and attempted to truly spook you all, “at night if you listen closely, you can still hear him sharpening his blade, getting ready to hunt his next prey…”

Hana, assuming that he was only joking, let out a dry laugh to cut the tense silence that had fallen over you all, “okay, very funny, ha-ha.”

“Yeah,” you gently rubbed your boyfriend’s arm as you tried to shake the tale off of you, “let’s maybe not joke about psychopaths running around a rural area when we actually are in a rural area,” though goosebumps still pricked and tingled every inch of your skin.

“Wait, how did it go?” your giggle mingled with Oliver’s as you both leaned against the kitchen counter, nearly bumping your foreheads together from how hard you were laughing, “was it…” and you began to hum a faint melody.

“No because, remember, at the end it went,” your friend cut you off and then made his own attempt, though much more accurate than your own, causing your eyes to promptly light up with recognition before they crinkled together in laughter as he tried to hit the high note at the end.

Once the woods surrounding the cabin had succumbed to darkness, the group of you all decided to wrap the day up in a bit of merriment, going through Rafe’s father’s liquor stash and turning up the music.

During your and Oliver’s secluded moment in the kitchen away from the rest, your laughter caused you to sway even closer to one another, your palm naturally planting itself on his chest as your faces nearly touched.

Though just as the pair of you were doubled over, a figure appeared in the doorway.

“Oh,” your grin continued as you spotted your boyfriend, “hey baby,” though your laughter finally began to fade.

Staring daggers at the man beside you, Rafe then uttered coldly, “hey,” before his feet carried him straight towards you, seized your waist and twisted you away from your friend and towards himself to capture your lips.

“Okay, right,” Oliver exhaled as Rafe kept marking his territory, kissing you way more passionately than he needed to, “I’ll just see you guys back in the living room then…”

You tried to tilt away enough to utter your friend a reply, though your boyfriend didn’t allow you, only let you go once Oliver was long gone and Rafe returned to his original plan of cracking open the fridge to get a cold beer for himself.

Walking back out into the living room while your boyfriend scavenged for a bottle opener, you plopped yourself back down on the couch, on the opposite side to where Brian and Jerome were snuggled up. Next to where the lit fireplace crackled sat Oliver in a chair and not far from his feet on the fuzzy carpet rested Hana, legs crisscrossed as she held up her wine glass to stare through it.

When Rafe rejoined you all, a freshly glowing cigarette trapped between his lips as he sauntered out of the kitchen, he situated himself right beside you, making space for himself where there hadn’t really been previously. In his hand, he didn’t just balance his own drink, but also a stout glass filled with an amber liquid, one he swiftly handed off to you even though you hadn’t asked for it, yet that had still been the routine of the evening, and after the first one was sloshing on your belly, the others became harder to deny and not accidentally sip absentmindedly, especially when he’d playfully help you along by tilting the glass the remaining distance up towards your lips.

“Sweetie,” Hana soon leaned closer to utter for your ears only, “don’t you want a glass of water instead?”

Though your boyfriend beside you unfortunately overheard and grasped his cigarette between two of his longer fingers, a puff of smoke accompanying his words as he answered before you got the chance to, “she’s fine.”

From across the couch, as Hana scooted back to her spot on the carpet, having not caught the quiet interaction, Brian then suggested, “why don’t we play a game or something?”

“What, like truth or dare?” Hana leaned back against an unoccupied armchair.

“No, this isn’t a slumber party. Isn’t there like board games here?”

Brian’s glance then drifted to Rafe as he smothered his cigarette in the nearby ashtray and, without warning, pulled you into his lap and caught Oliver’s eye from across the room as he shamelessly let his hands wander across your frame.

“Uh, yeah. There should be some in the cabinet over there,” Rafe vaguely gestured before his lips began to nip at the side of your neck, making your eyes flutter and only half watched along as Brian then got up to skim through the aforementioned cupboard.

“Okay,” he glanced through the options, “there are cards, so we could play poker or something,”

“No way,” Oliver swiftly shook his head and shot a glance at Jerome’s bulky form, comfortably slumped on the couch, “I’m not repeating that fiasco again.”

“Aw,” Brian glanced back at his friend, “but it was so cute seeing my boyfriend fucking demolish you,” and Jerome, the quiet man he was, just let out a grunt in agreement.

“No, pick something else,” Oliver waved a hand.

“Well, we’ve got monopoly, scrabble, cards against humanity–, uh! There’s clue!” he excitedly picked up the box and spun around, “oh, work! Let’s play that!”

With his kisses still dancing along your skin, they then suddenly ceased as Rafe announced, “you guys go ahead, I think Y/n is ready for bed.”

Shooting a concerned glance at how your intoxicated form wobbled slightly as your boyfriend helped you up on your feet, Hana uttered, “oh, are you sure?”

“She is,” Rafe’s touch clung to you, “aren’t you babe?”

“Oh, uhm…” you hadn’t really noticed it before, but now that he mentioned it, as if he himself planted the thought in your hazy mind, all of the alcohol had in fact made you pretty sleepy, “yeah, I guess so.”

“Alright, well then,” Hana’s voice stayed slightly hesitant, “sleep tight.”

“I love you guys,” you blew the group kisses as Rafe helped you over towards the stairs.

His kisses made you even more dizzy than you already were, so when you stumbled over the threshold into your shared room, you flopped down onto the mattress, though you weren’t quite sure if you’d just fallen or if Rafe had manhandled your intoxicated and pliant frame, giving you a push before his form was atop of yours.

Though now that you were horizontal and with the weight of a frat boy squishing you further down into the bed, that was when you truly noticed just how much you’d had to drink that evening.

The room was spinning as Rafe made out with you, his palms raking across your body like a wild storm, squeezing every soft curve he could get his hands on. As one hand disappeared up your skirt, his kisses wandered down and over your throat to the bit of your chest that was exposed in the neckline of your top. Wasting no time at all, he then yanked down the hem, catching one of the cups of your bra as well as he unwrapped your tit like a present.

As his face was buried in your boobs, surely giving you hickeys from the way that he sucked at your pebbly nipple and the surrounding sensitive skin, a breathless attempt at halting his affections left your lungs, “baby–”

Though he didn’t take the whimper as you’d intended it and simply continued, “shit, you’re so fucking hot,” he yanked down the other sliver of mesh fabric covering your other boob, “god, these tits are just insane.”

Weakly, you ran your fingers through his buzzed hair and gasped as you felt his hardness grind into your covered core, “Rafe, I–”

“Yeah?” his lips began to flutter back up to your own as he let himself rock against you with more intent, “you want this big dick, huh?”

“No, we can’t, we don’t have a–”

“Oh come on, baby,” he shifted, slipping a hand down under the waistband of your skirt and into your underwear, not hesitating to sweep his fingers through your wetness and bully your little button, “I know you want to…”

“Stop, that feels too good,” you tried, but couldn’t yank his strong hand away, “you can’t–, I have to get up and brush my teeth.”

“You know, all my exes let me tap it raw,” he purred in your ear and attempted to guilt you, “why won’t you? Don’t you trust me?” his touch then suddenly disappeared, but only to tug down the zipper on the side of your short skirt.

“Of course I do, I just–”

“Then why won’t you let me make you feel good, huh?” he yanked both your skirt and panties down your legs, so fast it nearly gave you whiplash. Crawling off of your jelly-like form, he stood tall and loomed at the foot of the bed. Wasting no time, he yanked your core closer to the edge before he desperately freed his fat cock. The taps he then offered your glistening cunt, letting you reel in the weight of his length, “doesn’t that feel nice, baby?” he smirked at the way your mouth fell open, “because it sure seems like your little pussy thinks so, just look,” you followed his command and glanced down to spot how his intimidating girth nudged at your weepy petals.

Even after months of dating, you still hadn’t gotten used to the daunting size of him.

“Oh, fuck…” your brows knitted together.

“Just listen to that,” he flicked the bulbous tip through your slick folds with more vigour, causing the melody of your want to echo even louder throughout the bedroom, “you’re so fucking wet. You want it so bad…”

You then felt yourself fade away into the intoxicating sensation, letting him continue to fuck your fold and make your pussy drool even further till your eyes fluttered shut.

However, it didn’t take very long at all, through all of the hazy motions, before the very tip of him caught your entrance and slipped inside.

“Rafe!” you gasped, eyes snapping back open as your spine lurched off the mattress just an inch.

“Fuck,” he let out a loud groan, “sorry, babe. You’re just too soaked, it slipped in,” though didn’t move at all to pull it back out, since it had secretly been completely on purpose, “christ, you’re so tight…”

As he slipped his shirt over his head and tossed it to the side, you pleaded once more, “Rafe…” quietly begging for him to take it out through the conflicting haze as the familiar sensation of him stuffing you full always shut your brain completely off.

“This doesn’t count,” he claimed as he began to move, pumping just the bulbous head of himself in and out of your little hole, “not really. I can fuck you with just the tip, right?” a few of his fingers then lowered to strum your clit and summon a loud moan from deep within your soul, “yeah, that’s what I thought…”

As he removed his fingers from your clit, he then stuffed them in your mouth, muffling your soft whimpers and letting you suck them clean of your juices. As the taste of yourself coated your tongue, your own hands came up to clutch his, holding it near as you soon let your pecks wander across his palm and even down to plant a soft kiss to the gold ring that never left his finger.

“Oh–,” a gasp then left your lungs as he suddenly pushed in a bit more of his length, “Rafe, that’s too deep,” selfishly letting himself feel more of your warmth.

“No, that’s not too deep,” he began to fuck you properly, making you lose your breath, “you wanna know what is too deep?” a purposefully harsh thrust then buried itself so far inside of you that a tingle of pain joined the pleasure, “that’s too deep,” he then retracted just a tad, though still filled you up completely with each long stroke, “this is just right.”

“We can’t–,” you foggily tried to shake your head.

“Yes, we can. Just look how good you’re taking me, baby,” the palm you’d been clutching then escaped your grasp and scooped behind your head to tilt your neck and lock it there, directing your glance down between your bodies and forcing you to spot the faint bulge that appeared at each one of his mind-melting thrusts, “you don’t wanna stop…”

Feeling that all too familiar high begin to fuzz up your periphery, you trembled, “o-oh, fuck…”

“You feel so fucking good…” he grunted as your pussy began to clench around his fat girth, “just let me use you for a bit, yeah?”

“I–, I–,” gasps of air expanded your lungs as his pace then thrust you over the edge, “holy shit…” and your cunt helplessly clambered around him.

In your orgasmic haze, Rafe then abruptly flipped you around for you to lay on your stomach, and you barely managed to process it before you felt the weight of him settle atop of you, smooshing you down into the mattress as he slid back in.

“Ah!” you yelped at the way he didn’t hold back, “Rafe, it’s too much,” not even bothering to grant you a chance to recover, but simply fucked through your soreness, “I can’t–”

“Oh, shut up, you can take it,” he growled in your ear, his feet hooking your ankles and spreading your shaky legs further for him, “take it like the good little slut you are.”

It was strange how he’d taught your body to love the pain he inflicted. Even if the source was just his god-given gift of a girth, or curse, all depending on your point of view, and not the roughness he occasionally let slip out of the dark depths he tried to hide his jagged sides in for you and you alone.

“Fuck,” you soon heard him groan as his heavy sack slapped against your cunt at each one of his furious rocks, “I’m gonna cum!”

“Pull out–,” you managed to mumble into the sheets.

“What?” he kept on pounding your poor pussy.

“Not inside,” you tilted your head a bit to beg, “please!”

“Oh my god, fine,” he then begrudgingly pulled out and with one hand flipped you back onto your stomach as the other wrapped around his cock and he began to fuck his fist. Pushing himself up onto his knees, he crawled further up your body till his thighs caged you in, denting the mattress on either side of your face. He didn’t even wait for your lips to part before he shoved his dick down your throat, making you gag as he groaned loudly above you, “fuck…” and fed you his load.

When he soon flopped down on the bed beside you, the both of you catching your breaths, you instinctively gulped down what he’d given you before you curled your frame into his side.

As he wrapped an arm beneath your head, his glance then flickered down to you as he caught your chin with his thumb and forefinger, tilting you up to him before he asked, “did you swallow it?” digging his digit slightly into your skin and making you open your mouth for him, letting him discover the answer him himself, “fuck… that’s my girl…” he groaned before dipping down to kiss you.

The peck however didn’t carry on for long as his warmth then suddenly disappeared.

“Where are you going?” you watched as he got up, reaching out your arms to him in a silent plea for cuddles.

“I’m thirsty,” he zipped his pants back up, though didn’t bother with his shirt, “you just try and fall asleep, I’ll be right back.”

Flashing him a drowsy smile, “okay,” you then tug the duvet over your form and let your gaze shadow him as he made his way out of the room.

You thought you hadn’t managed to fall asleep, but evidently, you had as when the door to the room suddenly burst open, you were jolted awake, Rafe as well stirring as he was now settled behind you with an arm draped over your frame.

As three of your friends rushed to slam the door behind them, Rafe propped himself up and mumbled, “hey, what the fuck–”

But Hana then cut him off, a downright terrified look plastered not only all over her own face, but the rest as well.

“Oliver’s dead,” she uttered through the tears that thickened up her voice.

Still groggy, you slowly sat up and murmured, “what?”

Snapping her bloodshot eyes to lock with yours, she bellowed, “Oliver is fucking dead!”

As your gaze flickered over the group in search of any sign that what she claimed wasn’t true, you heard Rafe behind you exhale, “okay, this isn’t funny.”

“Oh shut up, you dick!” Brian shot back, doubled over in the corner, hyperventilating as Jerome kneeled before him, trying to calm him down.

“Hey, hey,” you gently raised up a hand, “don’t talk to him like that. What the hell do you mean Oliver is dead?”

“I mean that he’s dead as in dead, dead,” Hana explained, her words causing the world to suddenly crumble all around you, “Jerome went outside to get something from the car and found him on the porch, not moving and with his head stuck under the water in the hot tub.”

With tears now stinging the corners of your eyes, you struggled to suck in a breath of air, “what?”

“It’s that fucking ghost story you told us,” Brian panicked in the corner, “it’s real, isn’t it?”

“Okay,” Rafe uttered as the both of you leapt out of bed and scrambled to get some clothes on, “let’s all just calm down.”

“We gotta call the police,” Hana said, to which Jerome swiftly pulled out his phone, only to then curse quietly as he discovered what Brian too noticed when he glanced over his shoulder.

“Fuck, we can’t, there’s no signal!”

Hana then glanced around at everyone, “well then one of us has gotta drive and find some, right?”

“Hell no,” Brian shuttered, “if there’s some psycho out in these woods, then I’m not staying behind to get murdered. We’re all going.”

So that’s how, after you’d all scurried downstairs and filtered out through the sliding door to the porch, that you saw the truth with your own eyes.

Even though his head was obscured beneath water, the unmoving corpse of your dear friend still caught your eyes and stopped you in your tracks.

“Oh my god…” you sobbed, your blood running cold.

But before you could let your feet carry you closer to the scene of the crime, Rafe seized your arm and uttered, “baby, come on,” before pulling you along the last short distance towards the cars, “I’m sorry, but we gotta go.”

Though when you did reach the vehicles and attempted to start them, neither one of them would as they’d seemingly been tampered with, forcing the panicked lot of you all to run back inside.

“Shit…” Brian clutched onto the back of the couch in the living room for support, “what do we do now?”

“We can’t go on foot, not in the dark through this forest,” Rafe spoke, “so we gotta stay here till morning.”

Glancing around the space, Hana uttered, “then we gotta make this place safe. Lock all the doors and windows, find somewhere to hide.”

“Yeah, good idea,” your boyfriend nodded before suggesting, “let’s split up, it’ll be faster that way. Y/n with me, we’ll take that side of the house, and the rest of you stay over here.”

And before anyone could protest, he’d yanked you down a dark hallway.

You nearly stumbled twice as Rafe dragged your shaking visage through the lake house, only stopping once you’d reached a large closet.

“In here, baby,” he shoved you inside, though began to shut the door before he nuzzled himself in as well.

“No, what are you doing?” tears streaming down your face, you attempted to stop him.

Though he only halted his efforts a second, grasping your face as he uttered, “please, just stay here.”

“No, it’s too dangerous,” you clutched onto his dark t-shirt, “you can’t–”

“Babe, I can’t let anything happen to you. I can’t lose you,” he then collided his lips with your own, a sob escaping your lungs as he briefly kissed you, “please, just stay right here, hide, for me.”

Slowly, you loosened your trembling grip on his shirt and cried, “I love you.”

“I’ll be right back!” he promised before shutting the closet door and bathing you in darkness.

You had no idea how much time passed, if it was only a few seconds or hours that you stayed in the dusty and dim abyss of that closet, but then when a loud crash and a shrill scream suddenly found your ears, your shaky hand pushed the door back open.

You’d never in your life been as terrified as you were when you found yourself tip-toeing down that long, dark hallway. Though, as you sneaked past the ajar door to the study, your entire body suddenly froze up at the massacre that met you within.

Unmoving and slumped over the threshold, there lied Jerome, his face beaten to a pulp, rendering it nearly unrecognisable as blood slowly trickled into the tight curls on the top of his head.

Past where Hana was lying in the middle of the room, battered and coughing, in the corner you saw as a tall figure, masked by a dark motorcycle helmet, crouched over the still form of Brian and landed the last few blows to claim his life.

“Please,” Hana’s words were gurgled by blood as the killer slowly straightened back up. Twisting ever so slightly, the assailant plucked out one of the clubs from the gold bag that leaned against one of the tall bookcases, “just let me go,” your last living friend begged as you watched the murderer wrap his long fingers around the handle and take the few steps to where Hana lied, “just let me–”

As he took a wide swing and hit your friend right in her temple, the loud crack that echoed throughout the cabin made you shutter in terror and let out an uncontrollable scream, causing the killer’s head to snap up to spot you in the dark hallway.

For a second you both just stood there, frozen and staring at one another, like two deer in headlights. But then, as he began to move, taking his time as he stepped over the bodies littering his path, you stumbled back and collided with the wall directly behind you.

You tried to run, but even though you managed to slip out the wide glass doors and escape a good distance into the dark forest surrounding the house, the masked man still caught up to you and flung you against a tree. As he had you cornered, you felt him drag the cold tip of the golf club up your right leg and over your shuttering skin, drawing a crimson line of your beloved’s blood across your goosebump-ridden flesh.

“P-please don’t kill me, please–,” you cried, but just then, the moonlight that streamed through the dense treetops caught in a glint of gold that adorned the hand that clutched the club, a recognizable ring that caused your heart to drop.

As your eyes then flickered up to the dark helmet, that too seemed oddly familiar now that you truly looked at it.

In some sick and twisted way, you hoped that the killer had just stolen the jewellery from your boyfriend as a trophy of the night’s conquest and not the horrifying alternative.

But when you then tried to slip away and the man pushed you back, your hands defensively shot up, though only managed to knock the helmet off his head and let it tumble to the dark forest floor below, unveiling the earth-shattering truth.

“Oh my god…” you gasped, eyes wide as you now stood face to face with your boyfriend.

“Shh,” he took a step closer to you, caging you in even further, “calm down, baby. Don’t do anything stupid now.”

“They–… they were right…” the warnings your now deceased friends had given you since the moment you got involved with the frat boy buzzed in your mind, though when they’d light-heartedly called him a psycho, you never in your wildest dreams thought that they would have been correct in their choice of words, “I can’t believe they were right…”

A low sigh then escaped Rafe’s lungs.

“You really should have just stayed hidden like I told you to… I didn’t want you to find out this way… it would have been so much simpler if you’d just bought into the story I made up…”

“You killed my friends…” your chest ached with every painful gasp of air, “how–… how could you?”

“Oh, honey…” his head tilted slightly as the corners of his lips twitched, “do you really think this is my first time?”

Staring back at him in horror, you sputtered, “w-why?”

“Because of you,” he uttered as if it was obvious, “it was all for you,” his feet shifted him even closer to you, “they were a bad influence, so this was the only way.”

“They were my family!”

“They were like a poison, all of them, trying to control you, trying to take you away from me,” he inched in even closer, making you wish the harsh bark that scratched up your spine would simply open up like a portal and let you escape, “I know Hana was trying to get you to break up with me… Oliver always followed you around like a lost puppy, just hoping you’d one day spread your legs for him… and Jerome and Brian? They were just plain annoying,” his hot breath fanned across your skin as he petted the edges of your features with a knuckle of the hand clutching the golf club, “I did it all for you, for us, because I love you… fuck, you have no idea how much I fucking love you, baby…” he uttered before bringing the bud of the improvised weapon down upon the side of your head and knocking you clean out.

When you came to, the flicking light from a lit fireplace was the only source of light in the dim room you found yourself in. Arms folded up behind your head, a long rope was tangled around them and stretched up to a beam in the ceiling above. Your legs too were tied, keeping your naked frame upright and locked in place in the middle of the room.

“Fucking finally,” a low voice echoed from the chair across the chamber, causing you to wince as the tone pierced your soul and worsened your splitting headache, “you really took your sweet time waking up.”

Blinking back at your boyfriend as he leaned back in the seat, pants undone and his hard length tight in his fist, a murmur escaped your lips, “…you knocked me out…”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that,” he got up and walked towards your suspended form, “but you didn’t give me any other choice.”

As he slowly neared you, your glossy eyes flickered up to meet his.

“Rafe, please,” you heard your voice break as you tried to keep your tone soft, “you don’t have to do this. Just untie me, I promise I won’t be mad at you.”

“Oh yeah?” a small scoff slipped through his smirk.

“Yes. I’ll do whatever you want, just please let me go,” you begged, “please don’t hurt me.”

“Shh, shh,” his palm rose up to stroke your hair before letting it rush down and over the curves of your exposed body, “but you’ve been such a bad girl. I think you deserve a lesson that hurts a little bit,” his palm then slapped your pussy, still soaked and sore from earlier, rendering you to let out a shrill yelp, “it’s okay, you can cry…” he briefly leaned in to kiss your cheek before he shifted, though still staying so close that his nose ghosted along your skin as he made his way around to stand directly behind you, “you look so pretty when you do…”

You then squirmed as he reached down to grasp his cock and nudge at your sensitive entrance, “Rafe, please–, ah!” a cry then left your form as he ruthlessly rammed his way inside, plugging you up so completely that his balls nuzzled against your slick skin.

“Fuck!” his moan tickled the shell of your ear as he tangled his arms around your torso, “you’re so perfect…” he began to move, finding a selfish pace to wreck you with, “so perfect and all mine…”

As his thrusts caused your tits to jiggle, one of his wide hands soared up to grasp one while the other one snaked up to wrap around your throat. He then squeezed it fiercely enough that all your noises eventually faded away and he kept you completely quiet for a good moment before his hold slackened and he once again granted you the privilege of gasping for air.

“This is all you need, just me, only me,” he grunted, “just like this, using your pretty little hole for exactly what it was made for… you were made for me and nobody else… no one…”

His grip then drifted down to dent your hips before he lifted them, raising your bound frame till your tip toes were barely grazing the cold floor. Your back arched slightly as he repeatedly brought your hips back to him, his balls sloppily slapping against your swollen clit each time he manoeuvred your body and treated you like a toy.

When he then hooked an arm around your front to keep moving your body greedily against him, it granted the other one the grace to roam your frame freely.

As his fingers found one of your nipples in a harsh pinch, he let out a groan at the way you began to clamper down around his fat girth, “are you gonna cum, baby? Huh?” his palm then slapped your tit, “because it sure fucking feels like you’re close,” before he suddenly retracted completely, slipping out of your drooling cunt and causing a shy whimper to slip from your lips, one he swiftly cut off when he smacked your cheek, “too bad. You’re not allowed to.”

As you shakily struggled to stay on your unsteady feet, you panted, “Rafe, my legs, I can’t–”

“Oh yeah?” he mockingly pouted at you as he sauntered around to your front, “do they hurt? Are you tired?” and as you offered him a nod, his fingers grasped your chin, “well,” his thumb slowly stretched up to trace your bottom lip, “if you promise that you’ll be a good girl for me, then I’ll give you a little break.”

“Yes, I will,” a tear rolled down your still stinging cheek.

“You will what?” his palm briefly slapped the side of your face once again before returning to the same hold.

“I’ll be your good girl, I’ll do whatever you want,” you begged and as he then sank down to his knees, grabbed a pocketknife resting on a nearby table and held up his end of the bargain, slicing through the ropes at your legs and cutting them loose. A new wave of sobs tumbled out of your form, “thank you! Oh, thank you so much!”

Tossing the blade far away before he rose back up, “you’re fucking welcome, baby,” he then caught you off guard as he suddenly plucked your lower half up into his arms.

“W-wait, I thought you’d give me a break!” your legs trembled in his grasp as he slide you back onto his fat cock.

“Yeah, your legs were tired, so I’m being nice and giving them a break,” the wet claps of your skin roughly colliding once again filled the dark room, “your pussy doesn’t deserve one yet… unless of course, this is you begging me to fuck your ass…” a wicked wish that he’d been begging you for ever since the very first time he banged you.

“No! No, not there, please, I’ve never–”

“Oh, I know you haven’t,” he smirked, “that’s what makes it so much more fun…”

“Please, Rafe,” you blinked back at him, “don’t.”

“You told me I could do whatever I want…” he angled his bucks right against that spot that caused your teeth to dig into your lower lip, “you promised to be a good girl for me and just take whatever I give you…”

“I will,” your eyes couldn’t help but flutter, “just please not that.”

He then let a dollop of his spit splatter directly against your face, “alright, but only because I love you,” before he dipped down to plant a feverish kiss against your lips, “tell me that you love me too.”

“I love you,” you murmured against his mouth.

“Huh?” one of his hands let go of you and he shifted to balance you with only one, letting the other instead drift down between your forms to bully your puffy pearl, “what was that?”

“I lo–, a-ah!” you suddenly whined as he pressed one of his fingers inside your pussy, not caring in the slightest that you were already completely filled up as he forced his digit in alongside his fat cock.

“Come on, baby,” he stared down at you, “tell me you love me,” and kept up his ruthless pace as he hooked the finger inside of you, “tell your soulmate just how much you love and adore him, how you want nothing more than to worship him at his feet.”

“I–, I–, Rafe,” you gasped, feeling as if he was splitting you in half, “it’s too much–”

“No, it’s not too much, it’s exactly right, you can take it, baby.”

“I can’t–”

“I don’t fucking care,” he continued to fuck you without remorse, slamming his intimidating length so deep inside of you that you nearly couldn’t breathe, “I wanna feel you cum, just like this.”

“Rafe–”

“Do it or I’ll get a lot meaner,” he warned you before he finally got what he wanted. Your squirt drizzled down on the floor as the intensity caused a scream to erupt from your form, “there you go, fuck,” he groaned as he watched your pussy gush around his girth, “that’s it,” before the way your cunt clambered down around him caused him to let go as well, “shit,” and pump you full of his cum.

Rafe pressed a peck to your forehead before he pulled out of your warmth and you breathlessly glanced down to watch as his hot load began to leak out of your quivering hole.

“Alright, baby,” he exhaled and then uttered words that caused a shiver to trickle down your spine, “foreplay’s over. I think you’re ready for your punishment now.”

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starmapz · 2 months ago

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what you know - ch4: served || r. sukuna

❦ ryomen sukuna x f!reader [college au] [ongoing series]

❝ you've heard his reputation and you've seen first-hand the way he's late to class if he even bothers to show up. paired with him for the most important project of the year, you choose to give him the benefit of the doubt- but maybe that's more than he deserves when your perfect grades depend on him, or maybe there's more to the aloof and irritable sukuna than meets the eye. ❞

❦ cw ; mdni, 18+ only. contains explicit sexual themes and content. use of alcohol. use of cannabis. use of nicotine/cigarettes. angst. hurt/no comfort. hurt/comfort. implied injury. family trauma. smut. slow burn. anxiety. tags will be updated as series continues.

❦ additional tags ; college parties and themes. sukuna ooc warning as this is a realistic take on modern sukuna. reader is fairly preppy and implied to be smaller than sukuna, but he's 6"11.

❦ words ; 12k.

main masterlist || series masterlist || previous chapter || next chapter

When Sukuna was in the sixth grade, he read A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket for a project. He doesn’t remember the plot, the characters, nor any details of real importance about the series, but he knows one thing for sure.

The title could describe how his day unfolded.

Nothing is particularly out of place throughout his morning. He wakes up to the sound of his alarm, blearily rubbing his eyes as he gets out of bed for an early morning workout. He throws his airpods in and turns on his workout playlist as he lifts weights and hops on his treadmill before taking a cold shower to rouse himself from the clutches of drowsiness.

He wakes up the kids, helping Yuji get ready while he multitasks making oatmeal for breakfast and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their lunches, which he tosses into their Pokemon lunch bags alongside some snacks. Mornings like these are like clockwork for him, simple and predictable, just how he prefers. No surprises.

With the first snow of the season chilling the air, he bundles both kids up in winter gear and grabs his heavy coat before walking them to school. He sets his alarm for their pickup, allowing him just enough time to get to his final class of the day, albeit a little bit late. Nothing new about that, though. As long as he isn’t late for your presentation, that’s all that matters. It’s the one thing he’s keeping at the front of his mind so as not to disappoint you.

He’s not sure why it matters so much, but like an itch he can’t scratch, the thought won’t go away. Ever-present and the only thing at the forefront of his mind since he accepted the presentation on your behalf. He’s not foolish enough to think that there’s any world in which you want to present at all, even though he knows you wouldn’t say no to the extra credit, and he could use it too.

He blinks snow away from his lashes, letting it melt from the warmth of his cheeks as his gaze sticks to the ground before him. His fingers fumble with the metal lighter in his pocket as he walks. He’s had it for a long time, evidence of how worn it is carved into the steel, but he’d sooner pull it apart and put it back together himself than get rid of it if it failed.

As he reaches the campus with time to spare, he spots one of your friends outside the building to his next class. He recognizes the blonde immediately, the one you sit next to at lunch, though he doesn’t recall his name. He knows they share an Accounting class, though him and Sukuna have never interacted beyond brief glances.

Keeping his distance from the blonde, Sukuna pulls out a cigarette as his thoughts are once again back on you, and all he can do is pray the nicotine dulls the feeling of his heart palpitating just at the thought of you like some pathetic teenager. The smoke billows and wisps in the air, more evident than usual in the cold, and he relishes in its brief reprieve from his thoughts.

It’s lust.

It’s nothing more than a reminder that he needs to find an excuse for his neighbour to watch his brothers so he can attend one of Gojo’s shitty frat parties and get laid.

With a glance at his watch, he stubs out his cigarette and trudges past the blonde without a glance. He makes his way to his usual seat isolated from the rest of the students in the corner closest to the door in case he needs to leave. Flipping his laptop open, he waits for the old computer to boot up so he can put together a semblance of an outline to work off of for the presentation at the end of the day.

It’s then that his misfortune begins.

His eyes flicker down to a notification in his email inbox and he sighs at the sight of the contact, his boss at the warehouse looking for him to fill a shift. Right now. He could accept the shift, miss European History, get off in time to pick up his brothers, bring them home, shower, and make it to Art History albeit a few minutes later than he’d intended. That wouldn’t be a big deal, you wouldn’t present at the beginning of class. It would also give him enough money to begin looking at Christmas gifts for the brats, which is an appealing idea…

He accepts the shift, and slips out towards the end of class. The shift isn’t unlike any other, nothing that would make anyone think this day is worse than any other. Sure, he stepped in a deep pile of snow on his way back from his shift and his ankle damn near froze and his socks are wet, but he’ll live. Not the end of the world.

He clocks out and picks up his brothers without a hitch, getting back with enough time to quickly shower the remnants of his shift from his skin and toss on a black hoodie with a Deftones logo across the front, and a pair of black jeans that were strewn over the back of his desk chair. His neighbor would be over any minute and he could head to class, only a few minutes late. An exhausting start to his day, but not bad.

A knock at the door sounds, and Sukuna’s brow furrows. Since when does his neighbor knock? He gave her a key for a reason.

“Choso! Grab that!” He calls as he throws his laptop and textbooks into his backpack, sure the sitter just forgot her keys despite being literally across the hall.

With a sigh, Sukuna casts a glance back at his room to see if he’s forgotten anything, when Choso peeks his head through a crack in the door. “Kuna? Someone’s asking for you.”

The tattooed man’s brow furrows further as he throws his backpack over one shoulder and follows after his little brother, who had shut the door on the person upon realizing it wasn’t their neighbor. The little boy stands a small ways back as Sukuna opens the door.

A man dressed in a long, deep gray peacoat with neatly styled hair stands at the door. Something akin to shock flickers in the man’s gaze at the sight of Sukuna, but it hardens as he addresses him.

“I’m looking for Ryomen Sukuna.”

Sukuna’s eyes narrow, his posture straightening. “What do you want?”

“Can you confirm you’re Ryomen Sukuna?” The man doubles down, keeping his expression indifferent.

With a scowl, Sukuna nods. “Yeah, I’m Sukuna. What do you want?” There’s more bite this time as Sukuna repeats his question.

“Excellent. I am here to serve you with legal documents. Please ensure that you attend your court hearing on March 23rd. By accepting these documents, you have been officially notified. Should you decline them, I am still obligated to make a note of this interaction.”

“The fuck?” Sukuna snatches the manilla envelope from the man’s hands, ripping it open and pulling the documents out. His eyes scan the words on the document, widening in disbelief. “You’re fucking kidding me.”

–

If Sukuna were a better man, he would have put your presentation in his calendar. He would have made an alarm. He would have sent you an email. Anything to let you know he was occupied. If he was a better man, he wouldn’t have torn his court documents in two. The ripped paper is hardly any concern when the handle on his door fell to the ground with a clank with the force he used to shut the door. At least one of those could be fixed with tape.

If Sukuna was a better man, he would have noticed his mistake before it got dark out.

With his head in his hands, he stares out the window by the table at the back of his apartment, brimming with anger when it all comes back to him.

The fucking presentation.

He wants to tell himself that he shouldn’t care, that you’re just a nuisance that wormed your way into his life and his mind. He wants to tell himself that you don’t matter and that he should forget about you like he had tried to last week, and accept that like everyone else in his life, he let you down.

But when he envisions your genuinely nervous expression at the thought of presenting even with him, his blood runs cold at the thought of you presenting without him.

He balls his hand into a fist, trembling from the sheer force of strength he puts into flexing his muscles.

“Fuck!” He hisses, slamming his palm down onto the table as he pushes himself up, sending ripped paper tumbling to the floor. His chair scrapes loudly across the scuffed hardwood of the dining space as he rushes to the door, pausing for only a moment at the sight of the handle he’d barely managed to screw loosely back into place. His jaw tightens as he grabs his keys and coat, tugging the door open a bit too hard as he hears the handle fall to the ground with a metallic thud inside the apartment.

As if he wasn’t already frustrated enough, this only serves to piss him off further. He considers himself lucky (if it can even be called that at this point) that his neighbor is still willing to watch his brothers (with a warning about the door handle) after the irritated dismissal he’d thrown her way earlier, but he’ll fix that bridge later.

There’s a more important one on his mind right now.

He’s not sure why he runs to campus first. Of course you won’t be there. Of course the professor won’t be in class, with the lecture hall closed and locked.

He tries the door again, as though a second tug at the handle might turn back time to three hours ago when he should have been here, but it’s nothing but wishful thinking. With his hand still on the unmoving handle, he slams his head against the door.

“Fuck!” With his brothers no longer around to hear, the curse escapes him in a furious roar. Whatever anger had been simmering at the surface for hours now bubbles over and explodes. In a flurry of frustration and pent up emotions, he reaches into his pocket and tosses the first thing that hits his fingers.

His lighter collides with the wall with a dull thud, falling in two pieces to the ground across the hall as a small dent is left in its wake in the drywall.

Sukuna’s hands rake through his hair, his teeth gritted as he inhales sharply, grappling with the weight of his emotions. He stumbles back until his back collides with the wall behind him, sliding down it with his head in his hands. He’s not sure how long he sits there before the sound of the cold wind whipping at the door outside brings him back to the present.

Running a hand over his face again, he grits his teeth as he stares across the hall at the lighter on the floor and frowns. Pushing himself to his feet, he crouches in front of it as he gathers the lid, hinge, and body, smoothing his thumb over the engraved name of his father on the steel.

Looks like he’ll be learning to fix a lighter sooner than he thought. Shoving it back into his pocket, he pulls his hood up over his head and makes his way back out into the cold. It’s well into the evening now, the cold snowflakes a sharp contrast to his warm skin as the night temperature falls well below that of the early morning.

His gaze rakes the empty Friday night campus. Distant laughter outside one of the bars on campus is all that disrupts the drone of wind and distant cars. You’re gonna be pissed. You have every right to be pissed, and he knows it, but for some god forsaken reason that Sukuna can’t make sense of, he can’t leave this be. He doesn’t want the image of your fearful expression as you present alone to be the only thing that comes to mind when he thinks of you.

Would it be stupid of him to show up at your door? He doesn’t even know. He doesn’t know what the protocol is for shit like this because this doesn’t happen to people like him. Sukuna’s only long-lasting friendship is with Uraume, who knows him well enough to know not to hold his fuck-ups against him. It’s a miracle they’re still friends, if he’s honest with himself. Of course, he has other people he hangs around with here and there, but no one close enough to bother himself with matters like this.

Fiddling with the broken lighter in his pocket, he sets off towards your place, bussing to the nearest stop as he makes his way there from memory. He buzzes your apartment, staring at the ground as the machine rings several times, before it eventually hangs up.

No.

He hits the button for your apartment once more, but you still don’t answer. You’re not home.

“Fuck,” he mutters, the remnants of his anger fizzling out into concern and something that twists in his gut- dread. The day has worn him down so much he has half a mind to wait for you to come home and try to talk to you, but with his mind and body as drained as he is, he doesn’t think he’ll make it home if he doesn’t leave now. That’s not even taking the cold into consideration.

Trudging back to the bus stop, he slides down against the bench and stares up at the sky. The stars are barely visible, but a few still shine brightly enough to be seen over the glow of the city lights. Like everyone else, he took Astronomy as an elective just for the credits, and he remembers that the stars that don’t flicker are planets. He wonders if the one he’s staring at is Jupiter, or maybe Venus.

He wonders if you like looking at the stars.

Sukuna leans forward with his head in his hands. He’s fucked, he’s so fucked. How many ‘unfortunate events’ do those kids go through in that stupid book? How many more can he take?

He swallows hard, reaching into his pocket for a cigarette and balancing it between his lips, reaching in again for his lighter. Although the cap isn’t attached, he hopes it still turns. To his relief, it produces a flame and he sets the broken cap over it to put it out, replacing the pieces into his pocket as he waits for the bus. The nicotine does very little to help dull the edge of his stress.

The ride home is quiet, save for the rumbling of the bus’ engine and the tapping of someone’s foot at the front of the vehicle. It’s not long before Sukuna’s back in his apartment with a screwdriver in-hand as he holds the doorknob back in place while screwing it back in. Its hold on the wooden frame is loose at best given just how badly he’d jostled it earlier and Sukuna has to turn to super glue to keep it in place.

Putting the kids to bed is a mechanical and empty action, one that he tries with every fiber of his being to hide from them. They’re smart kids, he knows they’ve already figured out something is up, but Sukuna needs to keep up appearances and make it seem as though nothing is wrong.

With the kids in bed, he sits at his desk with his laptop, his fingers hovering over your email thread. ‘sorry’, he types out, before hitting backspace. ‘howd the presentation go?’, he then types out, but that’s just about the worst thing he thinks he could send. ‘can we talk?’ he tries next, staring at the screen. He rubs his eyes with his thumb and forefinger before typing and hitting send before he can overthink his words.

[email protected] - Friday, 10:02 PM hey. let me know if you get this. i owe you.

Shutting his laptop, he leans over his desk, his chin propped up on his forearms.

His mind is plagued with thoughts that make it feel as though a dagger is being plunged straight into his chest, each one twisting and dragging it through his body. He wants to fight back, he wants to fight back so violently that he draws blood, but there’s no one on the receiving end of his anger but the world itself.

He grits his teeth, exerting enough strength that he knows his jaw will be sore tomorrow. Every muscle in his body already aches, why not add another one? With a sigh, he finds it in him to sit back up, staring helplessly at the ceiling.

When Sukuna was in second grade, he read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst. He doesn’t remember what that one was about either, but that one could be the title for his day as well.

–

You blink up at the ceiling the Saturday following your shitty presentation, emotionally drained. Though Nanami had proposed to take you for breakfast… or lunch or dinner, he had allowed you to decline this time, unlike on Friday. You’re no less thankful for him being there for you, but all you really want to do is take some time for yourself.

Pushing yourself out of bed to make tea, you stare out at the snowscape outside your window, glad you’re staying inside as you’re able to bundle yourself up in blankets. You pick up your laptop, setting it on your lap in front of you as you browse movies, looking for something that appeals to you.

Your email inbox number rises as you peruse streaming services, though you don’t bother to look at it. You’re not awaiting any emails. That is, until it’s rising steadily as you’re watching it.

You know who’s blowing up your inbox. It’s not the latest deals from the ramen store down the street, or Netflix requesting to change your password.

It’s the one person you don’t want to talk to.

Your mouse hovers over the ‘x’, your finger not even an inch away from clicking. Yet some sort of bitter curiosity gets the better of you as you click on your inbox.

Seven emails, huh?

You sigh as you stare at the emails. He’s replying to the thread of your last exchanges, so you can’t see a preview of what he’s written.

“Is it so wrong of me to be disappointed?” You remember asking Nanami last night, stirring the straw in your milkshake mindlessly.

He sits up in his seat. “He made you a promise, no? You have every right to be upset.”

You glance up at him. His sharp mahogany eyes are unreadable, but you can sense his sympathy for you through his actions.

You’re silent, absorbing his words as you return to mindlessly stirring your milkshake. The chatter around you is dull in comparison to the loud thoughts of inadequacy digging their filthy claws into your mind.

“I made a fool of myself.”

“No one will remember by Monday,” Nanami tries to reassure you, but it falls on deaf ears.

“I think I said that to myself after Prom.”

Nanami’s lips press together in a tight-lipped frown. “We were kids, back then. All of us, all of them. Things will be different this time around.”

“Do you believe that, or are you just saying that to reassure me?” You ask with a dry laugh, a nervous reaction to his sympathy.

Kento frowns, leaning forward. “I believe it with my entire being,” he replies firmly, ending his statement with your name. You glance up at him again, observing the way his jaw tenses when he sees your puffy cheeks and reddened eyes. “Don’t let this keep you from being you.”

You stare back down at the strawberry milkshake. It’s melting so steadily it’s hardly a shake anymore, it’s closer to strawberry milk.

“You know what the worst part of this whole thing is?”

“What��s that?”

“Well-” you laugh bitterly, “- I can't decide what's worse; That I’m actually still worried about him for some reason or that I ever believed him to begin with.”

Nanami’s gaze flickers away from you as he leans forwards over the table. He contemplates his words carefully, mindful of your obvious feelings for the burly man. “You don't deserve to contemplate that over someone.”

“What am I supposed to contemplate, then?” You chuckle wryly, finally taking a sip of your milkshake. It’s definitely just strawberry milk now. At least it’s not lukewarm yet.

“Did you see the latest episode of ‘Love is Blind’?”

You set your milkshake down with a clink. “Did you?”

“Well… No, but I heard Shoko and Haibara speaking about it at lunch.”

You crack a smile. It’s half-hearted and doesn't reach your eyes, but he senses your amusement anyways and returns your smile.

Now, staring at your unopened emails from Sukuna, Nanami’s words continue to echo in your mind.

“You don't deserve to contemplate that over someone.”

So why are you struggling to return to Netflix? You should just watch a movie and forget about him. If his words meant anything, he would have shown up when you needed him. He wouldn’t have made promises he couldn’t keep.

Sighing, you will yourself to click away and keep your mind off of him as you peruse movies on Netflix. Mindlessly scrolling through each category, it’s by the third one that it occurs to you that you haven’t actually been paying attention to your options, your thoughts occupied by the one man you’re trying to avoid.

After showing you his words mean nothing, why are you still so stuck to him like glue? Staring into your mug of tea, you frown when the answers to your problems aren’t swirling within the warm drink.

Against your better judgment, you take a sip of your tea and click on his emails.

[email protected] - Friday, 10:02 PM hey. let me know if you get this. i owe you.

Frustration stirs within you. He knew damn well that you would be upset with him for not showing up and the best he can do is an ‘I owe you’?

[email protected] - Saturday, 7:23 AM cmon just let me know youre seeing this

[email protected] - Saturday, 7:28 AM fuck, i know i

[email protected] - Saturday, 7:29 AM shit. hit send too early. i know i fucked up but give me a chance to explain

[email protected] - Saturday, 7:33 AM please.

The sight of his plea staring back at you feels like a mockery. Burying your face in your hands, you groan loudly to yourself, as though it might help you make sense of your emotions. Sukuna doesn’t plead with people, he’s made that much clear. Everything with him happens on his terms and is purely transactional, so what’s changed to have him suddenly begging for your attention without asking for anything in return?

Some delusional part of you wants to believe that whatever he wants from you is more than just free babysitting services but he’s given you no reason to believe otherwise.

[email protected] - Saturday, 8:41 AM ill make it up to you. idk how but fuck

You know he’s serious when his email ends with your name. Not Prom Queen, not some nickname that borderlines on flirty, but your given name.

Your mouse hovers over the reply button, thoughts racing through your mind. What if there was an emergency? What if he needs help? What if the boys are in trouble?

No, if something was wrong he wouldn’t be rambling over email. Nothing is wrong, Sukuna is just an asshole, and maybe you need to remind yourself of that. Maybe you’re too kind, maybe you give others the benefit of the doubt too often when they don’t deserve it. Maybe the rumors about Sukuna were always true. Maybe Gojo is right about him.

With frustration fueling your movements, you close the emails and shut the tab. He doesn’t deserve your time and you’ll be damned if you let him ruin your weekend with his incessant messages.

Returning to Netflix, you finally settle on a romantic comedy you’ve been meaning to watch and get back to your (somewhat cold) tea.

–

After a relaxing Saturday spent by yourself and a rejuvenating Sunday spent alongside Shoko, who convinced you (again) to forget about Sukuna, you feel miles better than you did on Friday.

Shoko was ready to put up a fight with your former project partner when you told her what had happened. Now that classes had ended for the semester and you only found yourself on campus to make use of the library, the extra free time only fueled her fire. Nanami, usually cool and composed, was no better when the two of you joined him in the library.

“How are you feeling?” He asked, shooting a glance at Shoko who he’s certain had heard about what went down.

“I’m okay. Thanks, Nanamin,” you shoot him a smile. Though you do seem more at ease than Friday, it’s clear that your anxiety and frustration runs deeper than simply being disappointed. You’re heartbroken. Shoko and Kento would have to be fools not to see the heart eyes you’d had for the History major.

“If you need anything from me, please feel free to ask,” he offers.

“Anything at all,” Shoko tacks on to his statement.

A smile pulls at your lips, even as you find yourself sighing. “Can both of you stop trying to fight him? I’m okay now, really.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that I would fight him-” Nanami begins, interrupted by Shoko.

“I was.”

You can’t help a laugh at her confidence and the grimace that Nanami dons at the sound of said confidence. Regardless, you’re thankful for their support, even if Shoko’s just a bit too eager to teach Sukuna a lesson.

You all fall into easy silence as you study individual subjects, simply enjoying being in the presence of your friends. The morning is quiet and still in the library outside of the sounds of pencils and pens scratching over paper and textbook pages turning. Only a few other students made their way to campus on the first official day of break aside from you, Kento, and Shoko.

Your focus wanes quickly as you find your thoughts wandering, something that’s been commonplace when you find yourself stuck in your own head. Your thoughts roam back to Sukuna’s emails, to his mention of wanting to explain what happened. Had something happened?

You shake your head, trying to remind yourself he’s not worth your time of day and you have no reason to trust his words.

The morning drags on as you struggle to focus on your studies and the moment the clock strikes noon, you’re immediately packing up and dragging your friends to the lunch hall, desperate for the reprieve from your hopeless thoughts.

“I think I’m fucked for my Bio exam,” Shoko sighs as you take a seat at your usual table in the empty hall.

“Perhaps if you had spent more time in your lectures and less time smoking outside my Accounting class, you wouldn’t feel that way,” Kento bites back, earning a laugh from you. He may be aloof and calm, but sometimes you forget just how sassy the blonde can be when he wants to be.

“Shit, that was your Accounting class?”

“Mhm.”

“Motherfucker,” Shoko mutters under her breath, looking off to the side when something catches her eye and she sits up straight suddenly. Both you and Kento take notice of her weird behaviour and go to follow her line of sight, turning your gaze over your shoulder until you’re eye to eye with none other than the cause of all your problems.

Sukuna’s chest rises and falls unevenly, as though he ran to the lunch hall in an effort to find you, his usual aloof expression long gone and replaced with something you’ve never seen on him before- regret. He’s in a black winter coat, his hands fiddling with something in his pocket as he stands there as though he’s debating what he wants to do.

Your heart clenches, your chest feeling heavy all of a sudden. All you can do is freeze, staring uncertainly at him as your body flips between a morbid curiosity to know what happened and the sparks of anger that you feel for him putting you through something you made clear you didn’t want to do.

Finally making up his mind, he crosses the lunch hall to you, only to be met with Nanami taking a stand in front of you. Kento is a tall man, though you would never know when he stands between you and Sukuna. Even with the horribly obvious disadvantage between them, there’s something heartwarming about Kento putting himself between you.

Sukuna’s gaze hardens, his jaw tightening at the sight of Kento. He opens his mouth to say something, but Shoko speaks up first.

“Leave, Sukuna.”

Your lips purse as you glance between Shoko and Kento. It’s sweet, really, of them to try to spare your feelings and fend for you, but you can do it yourself.

“Ken, Sho. I can handle this.” Your smile does little to convince either of them, but with a frown, Nanami sits down. With a resounding sigh, you’re able to finally get a good look at Sukuna.

You’re used to him looking tired, you’re more than used to him looking downright exhausted, but the expression he wears now isn’t exhaustion. His muscles are tense, eyes flickering between your friends before they land on you and it’s only then that his distress becomes apparent. He’s doing what he can to hide it, but his facade of indifference is already cracked, falling apart at the seams.

Your heart twists at the sight as you wrestle with your anger and concern, deciding finally to put yourself first for once. Something Sukuna is clearly incapable of.

“I don’t want to see you, Sukuna.” Your voice is firm and even, and you’re grateful you’re able to keep up the hardened shell you’ve built up over the weekend. He doesn’t deserve your tears or your anxiety.

“I know. You can tell me to fuck off and I’ll listen, but first you gotta give me a chance to explain,” his voice is raspy, evidence of some sort of strain, and you wonder whether he’s been crying or yelling, or maybe he’s been smoking more than usual. Conceivably all three.

You grimace, staring at the wall as you contemplate his words. “You promise you’ll leave me alone after?”

“Anything.”

He’s so quick to respond that it tugs at your heart strings. Why is everything about this interaction so unfamiliar? Where’s the Sukuna you know? Even as he had begun to open up over the last month, you’d never seen him like this. His hand is still fidgeting with something in his pocket, the faint sounds of metal scraping ringing out from his pocket, he keeps shooting glances back at your friends, and his usual air of confidence has fizzled out to nothing.

Then there’s his appearance. His hair is disheveled, pushed back and sticking out on all sides as though he’s been running his hand non-stop through it. His face is gaunt from a lack of sleep based on the dark circles under his eyes and his jaw has been clenched since the moment he arrived. In fact, that might be the only part of this encounter that is familiar, he looks about as angry as usual.

“Fine,” you sigh after a moment, observing the way he exhales in relief.

“Come with me?” He asks, nodding his head towards the door.

Kento and Shoko exchange an uncertain glance as you turn back towards the table and grab your coat and pack your backpack again.

“Call us if you need anything,” Kento speaks up, loud enough for Sukuna to hear as the two men throw scowls at one another. Sukuna knows he’s in the wrong, but he still doesn’t care for this protective behaviour Ken, as you called him, is throwing his way. You’re more than capable of taking care of yourself.

“Thanks, Kento,” you whisper with a dry attempt at a smile.

With one final challenging stare at the blonde, Sukuna turns to lead the way as you pull your coat on and follow him out into the cold. The snow has been piling up over the weekend, crunching beneath your feet and allowing the cold to seep into you, chilling you straight to your bones. You zip your jacket up further, wrapping your arms around yourself as you follow after Sukuna.

He glances back at you, at the way you’re obviously cold and struggling to keep in step with him given the height of the snow banks he’s trudging through. He diverts his path until you’re both in a spot that’s been cleared and you’re able to steadily keep pace with him, although you still keep a small distance back.

The air between you is heavy with unspoken words, and Sukuna knows he’ll deserve everything you throw his way, though it doesn’t make him anymore eager to get to his destination and keep his mouth shut.

“Where are we going?” Your voice is meek, and those sharp crimson irises observe you quietly from ahead for a moment before he replies.

“For lunch.”

“Oh, I actually brought my own lun-” Your words die in your throat at the sight of his brow twitching as he stares back at you. “Okay.”

You just need to grin and bear it through the next twenty or so minutes, and then you can ask him never to bother you again.

Keeping your eyes on the snow as it kicks up with each step, you’re silent for the remainder of your walk. You keep yourself a few feet back at all times, only catching up once he finally reaches his destination and holds the door as he waits for you to catch up. You pause at the entrance of the building, finding a cafe sign hung above the door.

With a nearly inaudible ‘thanks’, you slip past Sukuna into the building. You both pull your hoods down as you take a look around the cafe. Although it’s only a few blocks from the college, you’ve never been inside.

The interior is decorated in warm orange hues with deep wooden floors and plants lining the walls. There’s shelves from floor to ceiling filled with loaves of bread and a display at the front filled with pastries. Two menus hang above the back of the counter with sandwiches, soups, and salads, alongside cozy looking drink options. You make your way up to the counter slowly, followed closely by Sukuna.

“Get whatever you want,” he grumbles in a tone that would make anyone else think he’s frustrated with you, but it lacks the usual growl that would give that indication.

“Hm? Are you sure?” You ask uncertainly, knowing his financial situation all too well.

He nods. Luckily for Sukuna, he took an extra shift and he thanks whatever god will listen that he did and he can afford to buy you lunch. He owes you more than just food, but it’s a start and he hopes he can convince you to give him a chance to prove himself.

He brings a hand up to scratch his chin, the first signs of stubble poking through his skin and faintly visible around his jaw. It’s a good look on him although he clearly just hasn’t had time or bothered to shave.

“What’s good here?” You query, doing whatever you can to ease the discomfort between you, even though you want to tear into him for what he did.

“Ya haven’t been here?” He quirks a brow questioningly. You’re so close to the college he assumed you would have been. “I like the chicken and beef barley soups. The deli sandwich is good too,” he shrugs.

After a moment, you settle on a small soup and a grilled cheese, letting your attention wander to the plants as you wait for the food while Sukuna pays. Neither of you dare to interrupt the tense understanding keeping both of you from saying something you may regret, allowing the silence to suffocate you.

Even once your lunch is ready and the two of you find a quiet seat in the back corner of the cafe, it does nothing to ease the growing anger threatening to boil over as this frustrating man can’t even so much as apologize.

“How’s your food?”

You drop your spoon into the bowl. It clatters against the edge with a sound that startles the poor employee behind the counter, but your attention is stuck on the man in front of you. The stupid man who can’t bother to start with the one thing you truly want from him.

“You know I’m not happy with you, right?”

His gaze flickers between the spoon and your eyes, which are filled with a blazing fire he’s never seen from you before. He sighs, setting his own spoon down as he sits up. “Figured as much when you didn’t email me.”

“Oh, not emailing you back was what tipped you off that I might be upset? Not-”

“I know, I know.” He’s strangely somber as he accepts the way you’re tearing into him. “I didn’t mean to miss the presentation.” He hunches forward over the table on his forearms, his shoulders tense. There’s no subtle cocky bravado behind his demeanor as there usually is, he’s simply… here, listening intently.

Shaking your head, you chew on your lip as you do what you can to subdue your anger. “I’m sure you didn’t mean to miss our other meetings too, but you really had me thinking this time was different.”

“C’mon, those other times weren’t a big deal,” he gruffs, his forearms visibly bulging as he flexes the muscles. He’s doing his best to keep his frustration at bay.

“No, they weren’t. But this time, you signed me up for public speaking. I told you I didn’t want to do it. I even trusted you with my insecurities, and I thought because of that, this time would be different.” You swallow hard, shaking your head as you fight back tears. “But your word doesn’t mean anything, does it?”

“That’s-” His hand balls into a fist as he growls out the beginning of a sentence, but the sharp look you give him has him re-thinking his words. His hand relaxes, his fingers tapping on the table as he diverts his attention to a plant on the wall. “That’s not fair,” he manages, strained.

“How is that not fair? You told me you would handle it and you knew how I felt about presenting. How is that fair to me?” Your voice is low, somewhere between a whisper and a yell as you try to keep your voice down and more importantly even despite the tears pricking at your eyes.

Sukuna adjusts the way he’s sitting, his hunger subsiding at the sight of your growing frustration with him. “It’s… not fair to you.” All he can do is agree, because he knows he deserves this.

“So why couldn’t you grow a pair and at least warn me you wouldn’t be there? I could have prepared something at least!” You make a motion in the air with your hand in disbelief as your rage grows.

Sukuna’s jaw tightens as memories of why he missed the presentation flood his mind and god how he wants to walk out right now and not worry about you or your feelings, or hurting you, but that would be too simple for Sukuna’s life. No, whatever force of nature Sukuna had angered wanted him to suffer, wanted him to sit here and listen to your agony, pinned to the seat by his reverence for you.

He drags his hands over his face, shaking his head like a dog in an effort to come to his senses and come up with something to say.

His silence is somehow worse than his usual devil-may-care attitude. At least you know how to handle his arrogance and anger. His silence only serves to further the insult of his behavior. “You really have nothing to say about all of this?”

Sukuna has a million things to say, but his thoughts are so disorganized he doesn’t know how to make sense of what he wants to say. What needs to be said. He should have taken more time to come to terms with the gravity of the situation he’d gotten himself into, but he couldn’t bear the idea that you would be living with the thought that Sukuna had abandoned you. Yet he’s here now, with you, to disprove that and he doesn’t know what he can do to fix things with you. One misstep and he digs a deeper grave than the one he’s sitting in already.

That’s the thing about you. You’re the sun, able to brighten any room you walk into with so much as a smile, and Sukuna isn’t even the moon by comparison. He’s a distant star, flickering on the horizon but always outshone by those brighter. Even knowing this, he so selfishly doesn’t want to let you go. He hardly understands it himself, but he finds himself smiling more around you and that alone is worth the effort on his part.

“I’m sorry.” He blurts out a pathetic excuse for an apology, one that he knows won’t put out the fires he’s started, but it’s the best he can manage in his disheveled state.

You shut your eyes, letting out a long, dragging sigh. When you open them, you’re staring down at your reflection in your soup bowl, distorted by floating noodles. It’s a genuine apology, a rarity when it comes to him, but he’s lost your trust and good will. Of course there’s a part of you that wants to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he’s not giving you any reason to believe his words, let alone a reason to leave you sputtering over words at the front of your class last week.

Kento’s right. You don’t deserve to be constantly guessing, even if it tugs at your already fragile heart. Why did it have to be him that your heart decided to fixate on?

“I don’t know how I expected this to go, but I guess I should have known this would happen,” you mumble, getting to your feet and grabbing your coat. You need to leave now before you second-guess yourself.

“Wait-! Fuck…” Sukuna’s on his feet in an instant, unable to look you in the eye as he reaches for your wrist, staring at the point where your skin connects like it’s burning him.

“Shit, just…” He hesitates, his jaw tightening. “Gimme a moment.” He doesn’t dare let you go out of fear you’ll leave, his other hand dipping into his pocket as he fiddles with his broken lighter again.

It takes him a moment to gather himself but finally he finds his footing.

“Look, I owe you. I know I fuckin’ owe you, okay? It was a piece of shit move.” He finally meets your gaze, his resolve hardening. “I shoulda been there, I- I got caught up with something. I didn’t mean to miss it and I-” he hesitates, “- I’m beggin’ you to trust me.”

“Why should I trust you? You’ve never given me any reason to. This is just a shitty excuse to use me as a free babysitter again,” you shrug, trying to use reason so as not to fall for the excuses he’s sputtering that your heart so desperately wants to cling to.

His face contorts in disbelief. “Why the fuck would I care about that?”

“If that’s not what this is about, then what is it about? Because if you cared about me at all, you would have been there.”

“Fuck- No- That’s not-” He huffs, his anger threatening to boil over. Running his spare hand through his hair, he grumbles another curse under his breath. “Prom Queen-”

“Don’t call me that.” He knows that’s the cause of your humiliation in the first place, to bring it up right now is downright cruel.

“- Somethin’ happened- with the kids. I didn’t forget. I wanted to be there, I swear on my life that something came up.”

You pause, contemplating his words as he finally gives you some semblance of a reason for his absence, and it’s the exact reason you’d expressed to Kento that had you still worried over the man’s dumb ass. An emergency, a reason to be worried about him, even if he didn’t deserve that kindness from you.

“What happened?” You ask cautiously, sitting back down. Sukuna breathes out a sigh of relief and releases your wrist when you sit back down with him.

“It’s nothin’ I can’t handle, but I need you to believe me. I don’t care that you were babysitting the brats. And that wasn’t free anyway.”

It was, but you’ll let that slide.

Your brow furrows. “What is this about then? Since when do you care about anyone other than your brothers or yourself?”

“Christ, I’m not heartless,” he mutters, shutting his mouth when you shoot him a glare. Yeah, he deserves that. “I care. I do care.” He runs his tongue over his lower lip.

“You didn’t seem to care when you didn’t talk to me for a week and a half straight.”

“I thought we already established that I was a dick for that,” he grumbles, frowning.

“That was when this was a one-time thing. Twice, Sukuna? Really? How am I supposed to trust you when you pulled the same stunt again so soon?” You grimace, quietly observing the way his finger is tapping the table in sync with his leg shaking. At the very least, he doesn’t seem to be lying.

“I don’t expect you to, just give me a chance. Gimme a chance to prove I mean it.”

Kento would kill you for even entertaining the thought, yet… you can’t help it.

“Can you at least tell me what happened?”

Sukuna sighs, leaning back and crossing his arms. If ever there was a time to tell you what happened, it should be now. But Sukuna can’t bear the thought of bogging down your life with more issues than what he’s already thrust upon you. “I don’t want you involved in it.”

“You’re not doing yourself any favors by not telling me.”

“I know,” he frowns, “but I don’t want you involved. It’s messy and complicated and I know you and I know you like to stick your nose in my fuckin’ business,” he scowls at the thought.

“You could at least be nice to me since you’re trying to apologize.” You grimace, exasperated with the attitude he’s throwing your way. You’re tired of his bullshit and who can blame you?

“Right. Sorry. I’m an asshole.” He sees the gears turning in your mind. “I’m a dick,” he tries to appeal to you. Had he blinked, he could have missed the way your lips twitched at the corners into the smallest hint of a smile. “Just give me one chance.”

You stare down at your soup, which is surely cold by now, scrutinizing him as you think things through. Your silence is nothing short of miserable for Sukuna, but he’ll give you all the time in the world if he can have your kindness for one more second.

It’s that same kindness that you just know Shoko and Kento are going to absolutely kill you for as you let out a prolonged sigh after weighing your options. “One chance, Sukuna. One.” Maybe you’re naive for it, but you want to believe that whatever reason he had is a good one.

To your surprise, there’s no irritated grumble or begrudging sigh from him. No notes of disapproval. He simply nods.

“And you have to help me study.”

“Deal.”

“Oh! And you have to come eat lunch with me on campus again.”

His lip curls up in distaste. “Your friends don’t like me.”

“They’ll come around,” you shrug. “Oh! And-”

“Alright, alright. Don’t push your luck, woman,” Sukuna grumbles, leaning on his fist. You giggle at him and although he knows things aren’t back to normal, it’s a start. He’s not stupid enough to think he’s fixed everything right away, but even if it doesn’t quite reach your eyes, he’s thrilled to at least see that you’re smiling.

That smile that’s like the sun.

The rest of lunch is quieter than usual, the regular cadence of your conversations never fully returning.

“How are Choso and Yuji? Is everything alright now?”

The burly man’s eyes seem to dull at the question as they stay fixed on the soup he’s eating. “They’ll be fine.”

His reaction is anything but reassuring. He doesn’t seem nearly as sure of himself as usual, choosing instead to push the question aside. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

Fuck, is he ever difficult sometimes.

“You know, if we’re gonna try to be friends, I’d appreciate it if you gave me something to work with here,” you offer a wry smile, your best attempt at lightening the air. He shoots you a glance, spooning more soup into his mouth as he leans on his palm against the table.

“It’s been a shitty weekend,” he answers. Well, that doesn’t really give you anything to work with, but at least he’s being honest with you. You fall silent again, the steady clinking of spoons against porcelain and the buzzing of a lunch rush behind you seeming to fall to the wayside in favor of a quiet understanding that things aren’t quite back to normal.

“Am I allowed to ask how the presentation went or would I be digging my own grave?” Sukuna asks over a spoonful of soup after an extended silence.

“I humiliated myself, what do you want me to say?”

“I’m sure it wasn’t that bad,” he tries to reassure you, though it comes across empty.

You’re reminded of the laughter and judgmental glares, setting your spoon down as the reigns of anxiety stir in your stomach at the thought.

“I’m sorry, Pr-” he hesitates, his jaw tightening as the new meaning of his go-to nickname sinks in. “- Princess. I hope you at least took credit for my bullshit.”

“I did.”

Sukuna offers a proud smile. “Good girl.”

You blink down at your soup as your stomach does a backflip and your cheeks heat up, and all you can do is pray that he hasn’t noticed the effect that his words had on you.

It’s not long before you’ve both finished your meals over relative silence. “Um- thanks for lunch.”

“Yeah. No problem,” Sukuna gruffs.

“I should go.”

“Let me walk you back,” he insists, as though the uneasy silence wasn’t enough for him. With a lopsided smile, you grab both of your trays and dispose of the trash before you find yourself back out in the cold again.

Sukuna mindlessly fiddles with the lighter in his pocket again, a reminder that he needs to figure out how to put it back together, much like his friendship with you, if he can even call it that.

In an effort to mend things, you turn towards him as you wait to cross the street, smiling shyly. “You know, I do appreciate the effort, Sukuna. I honestly didn’t think you’d really bother trying.”

He scowls. “Sometimes you’re too honest.” He sighs, but he can’t be too upset when you’re giggling again, even if it’s at his expense. “But, that’s fai- shit!” He cuts himself off, whipping his hand from his pocket in a flash as he pats his jacket down.

Your lips are pursed as you watch him, puzzled by what he’s doing. That is, until a puff of smoke leaves his pocket. You blink at him.

“Did you just…”

“Shut up.”

“Light yourself on fire?”

“I said shut up,” he hisses, his cheeks reddening. He’ll blame the cold if you ask, but he’s embarrassed beyond belief, his cool exterior crumbling as he somehow managed to spark a flame in his own damn pocket.

You bite down hard on your lip in an effort to stop yourself from laughing.

“Don’t. Don’t fucking laugh.” He snarls, flashing you a glare.

But being told not to do something only makes it that much harder.

“You’re-” A laugh bubbles between your words and you do your best to swallow it. “You’re okay right?” You strain through your barely-contained chortles.

With a peek into his pocket, he pulls out the lighter, lid, and hinge pin, tossing them into the opposite pocket as he pats down his coat once more. “Yeah, seems fine now.”

Well if he’s fine- you absolutely double over in laughter, unable to bear holding it in any longer.

“Oh, laugh it up, short stuff,” he grumbles, dusting whatever ashes had clung to his skin off onto his jeans. He grits his teeth as he watches you double over at his expense, his cheeks no less red than they were a minute ago as the crimson glow spreads to his ears.

At least this time he can blame the cold, or the fire.

Not that you’d believe him.

As your giggles finally subside, Sukuna’s able to relax more than he has since Friday at the sight of your eyes crinkling at the corners in genuine happiness. Maybe embarrassing himself in front of you isn’t so bad, if it brings back a semblance of the connection he’d been chasing since he found you in the lunch hall.

Wiping tears from the corners of your eyes, you tilt your head. Cute. “How did that even happen? Don’t lighters have like a- a-” you wrack your brain, turning your attention to the overcast sky. “Like a safety or something?”

Sukuna digs a hand into his pocket that isn’t singed, holding the base of his lighter out to you. “It might have, but it’s broken.”

Curiously, you run your hand over the broken hinge, flipping the lighter over. The name ‘Itadori’ is carved in cursive across the back.

“Itadori?”

Sukuna hums. “My dad.”

Your face softens. “I think it can be fixed.” You hold it back out to him and he tucks it back in place.

“Maybe.”

Now that Sukuna’s not literally on fire, you’re able to cross the street and head back to the library where you’re sure you’ll find Kento and Shoko.

“Are you gonna join us?”

“Another time. I gotta take care of some shit.”

“Thanks for lunch. See you around, Sukuna.”

Before you can turn away, his fingers brush your wrist, as if he’s hesitant to stop you.

“Thank you,” he breathes quietly.

You smile.

–

“You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

“Sho, please, you weren’t there!” You try to insist.

“Girl. I’m begging you, you’re better than him.”

To nobody’s shock or awe, Shoko and Kento are equally as unimpressed that you’ve given Sukuna another chance. It comes from a place of concern, of course, but they insist you’re letting him walk all over you.

“There was an emergency with-” you cut yourself off with a glance at Nanami. You suppose you can’t go airing out Sukuna’s personal business to him given that he doesn’t know about the kids. “There was a family emergency,” you insist, “it was an accident.”

“You believe that bullshit?” Shoko’s whipping an unlit cigarette through the air like it’s a sword and it’s you she’s aiming to strike.

“I don’t think it’s bullshit,” you mumble.

With a sullen sigh, Kento finally speaks up in an unimpressed tone. “Had we not just discussed that you deserve better?”

You wince, his words searing. “He made a mistake. Accidents happen, Ken.”

“Hell of an accident,” Shoko shakes her head. “You’re actually hopeless.”

Pouting, you look to Kento for backup, but he doesn’t seem to be in agreement either.

“Give him a break,” you whine, “he literally lit himself on fire today.”

There’s a collective hum of confusion from both of your friends.

“He was messing with a lighter in his pocket and he accidentally lit his pocket on fire,” you grin.

Shoko scoffs. “That’s almost impressive, between the safety and the lack of oxygen in his pocket.”

“Well, the safety was broken,” you reason.

“Hah. Dumbass,” she snorts, exchanging a glance with Nanami. “Just… be careful with him, okay? He’s got a short fuse and a whole boatload of baggage that you and your scholarship don’t need to be involved in.”

“Don’t let him step on you,” Kento pleads in a tone unfamiliar to you.

Your brow furrows as you observe him, but his expression is aloof as ever. “I know, I know. I’ll be careful, I promise.”

–

It’s cold as you slip into the lobby of Sukuna’s building the following evening. You’d re-opened your email tab the previous night to find a message from him.

[email protected] - Monday, 8:58 PM busy tomorrow? kids wanna see ya

[email protected] - Monday, 9:39 PM Just the kids want to see me? ;)

[email protected] - Monday, 9:47 PM you coming or not

You could envision his scowl from behind the screen as you teased him, a stupid smile on your face at the thought of it. Things may not be back to normal, but your heart certainly isn’t aware of that as it palpitates at every thought of him.

Now, as you make your way up to his apartment with your GameCube, you don't really know what to expect.

The moment you crack the door to his apartment, you’re bombarded by Yuji in a tight hug as he’s practically leaping into your arms in utter excitement. Caught off-guard, you barely manage to catch him as he excitedly chants your name.

“We missed you!” He grins as you let him up onto your shoulders, ruffling Choso’s hair while he calmly smiles in greeting.

“That’s enough,Yu,” Sukuna mutters from the stove. He’s dressed in a pair of jeans, that same painfully tight black tank top from last week and a red plaid shirt that hangs loosely from his shoulders. A pair of wireless black headphones sits atop his head, but he pulls them down around his neck as you enter the apartment.

Yuji pouts as he begins to clamber down from your shoulders, landing with a thump! back on the floor before hopping over to the TV again.

Bringing you around the kids is likely a part of Sukuna’s scheme to bring things back to normal, now that you’re seeing him again. Kids are smart, too smart at times and they would know if something is wrong.

The apartment is warm in contrast to the cold winter evening, the smell of fried chicken wafting through the air. You bound up to Sukuna, peeking around his side. “I didn’t know you could cook.”

He clicks his tongue. “D’you think I feed them takeout for every meal?” He arches a brow as he looks over his shoulder at you.

“Maybe,” you simper, looking over the ingredients. There’s a rice cooker with a steadily descending clock and he’s frying up some chicken. “Katsu?”

“Mm.”

“It smells great!” You grin, turning back to give Sukuna space to cook as you head back towards Choso and Yuji. “So, I hear you two missed me?” You chide, your heart filled with warmth when Yuji eagerly nods and launches into a story from school that he’d been wanting to tell you since last week. You listen attentively and his eyes shine when you laugh along with him.

“Give her some space, brat. Come grab plates,” Sukuna instructs calmly, once Yuji’s story is over. He’s more at ease than he has been in a while, and even with the weight of everything going on in his life piled on his shoulders, he feels the familiar pull of your gravity keeping him grounded.

Like some sort of drug, you just seem to relieve his tension merely with your presence. You really are like the sun, warming his skin and lulling his worries to a dull buzz.

As Yuji excitedly runs over to Sukuna in the kitchen, Choso gingerly approaches you. “Thanks for coming.” His tone suggests he knows a portion of what happened between you and Sukuna and he’s grateful you’d give his idiot older brother another chance. Smart kid, just like you thought.

You return his smile. “How’ve you been, Cho?”

“I’m good. Um-” his gaze flickers briefly to the back of the apartment where Sukuna has his arms crossed over his chest as he watches Yuji set the table, handing the little boy three four plates. Choso’s voice lowers as he continues. “I think something’s wrong. Um- with Kuna.”

You tilt your head, following the little boy’s gaze. Sukuna doesn’t seem much different from any other time you’ve seen him. His skin is still somewhat gaunt, but he looks better than yesterday, no longer under duress. “What do you mean?” You prod softly.

“I don’t know,” he shrugs, perplexing you. “Someone came to the house on Friday,” he tells you. Your lips purse at the realization that Friday was your presentation. Maybe his reason for missing your presentation is bigger than he’s letting on. “He seemed mad at them and then he was gone most of the night.”

“He seems fine now,” you comment, but you don’t know Sukuna well enough to know who could have angered him at the door. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. I’m sure your brother’s fine. I’ll keep an eye on him.”

Choso nods, sunken eyes following Yuji’s movements as he places napkins around the table. It’s not long before you’re all seated with a plate of chicken katsu curry.

“Thanks, Kuna!” Yuji cheers gleefully, digging in immediately. His mild expression cracks as he picks up his utensils, eyes flickering around the table to his two little brothers before landing on you. He may only hum in response to Yuji, but you see the subtle gleam in his eye, along with something else that you can’t quite identify. Sadness?

Choso’s words echo in your mind, but you can’t find any other sign of anything being wrong. You settle on keeping an eye on him, smiling gratefully at him for making you dinner. The meal is filled with Yuji’s imaginative rambles as he shares stories from school and stories that may only be about forty percent true. Kids, right? Either way, you laugh along and grin at him.

“You know,” you begin once all of your plates are clean, “if you go check my backpack, I brought something for you guys.”

Like cartoon characters, both kids’ eyes widen and they bolt off towards the living room, two bundles of thrilled laughter as their full attention turns towards the GameCube tucked into your bag.

As you join Sukuna with two empty plates where he’s cleaning up in the kitchen, he casts a glance at you. “You’re too good to them.”

Placing your hands on the counter beside him, you shrug. “I just like spoiling them.”

“I see that. They ask about you a lot.” Your heart swells. You’re not a grinch, but you think your heart grew three sizes just now.

“I think they get it from you,” you tease, poking his bicep. He scowls down at you, rolling his shoulder as though it’ll rebuke your teasing.

“They didn’t,” he grumbles, turning towards the sink and flipping on the tap to run water over the plates.

You follow his movement, leaning against the counter beside him. “Is that why you’re being so grumpy about it? Because they don’t get it from you?” You grin, giving him a bright smile.

Sukuna’s lips curl into a devious smirk and before you know it, he lifts his hand from the running water and flicks it at your face. His smile widens to a grin when you jump, squealing in shock.

“Sukunaaa!” You cry, wiping the water from your cheeks and forehead with the back of your hand.

He chuckles, making a point of letting the water run over his hand again as he shoots you a sly smirk.

“Don’t you dare,” you hiss, brow furrowed. But when has Sukuna ever listened?

He subtly flicks more water at you, chuckling when you swat his bicep and go to join his little brothers on the couch with a pout that’s just too cute. Both kids move to the floor as the familiar sounds of Kirby Air Ride fill the room and Sukuna joins you on the couch, sitting just close enough that his knee brushes your leg.

“You’re studying English Lit, yeah?”

You nod, shuffling slightly closer to Sukuna to hear him over the TV. “Yeah, this is my last year. I’m hoping I can line something up in the next couple of months.”

“What do you wanna do?” He queries, leaning towards you just enough to give you the impression he’s seeking your warmth.

“A book editor!” You grin, eyes shining.

He lifts a brow. “You wanna read half-baked books for a livin’?”

You can’t help but laugh. “Sure, something like that.”

Amused, Sukuna smiles, relaxing into the couch.

“Have you thought more about what you want to do?” You ask cautiously, tilting your head as you prod at Sukuna’s reinforced walls.

A muscle in his jaw ticks. “No,” he grumbles, pulling his gaze down to his lap. Before you can push him any further, he glances at his watch and gets to his feet. “Be right back.”

You purse your lips as he hurries out of the room as though he has something to do. Sighing, you grab your bag that’s sitting on the floor by Choso, dragging it to your feet in search of the gum that you know is buried somewhere in its depths. You offer some to both of the boys before tossing your bag aside when something grabs your attention.

A torn piece of paper is on the ground at your feet, it must have slid out from under the couch when you had pulled your bag to your feet. That’s not all that unusual given all three of them are students, but the logo on the paper catches your eye.

Decorated in greens, you recognize the bold logo of a law office on the other side of town. A crease forms in your brow as you stare at the logo, but the paper has been torn in a way that all you can really see is the logo and that it addresses Ryomen Sukuna.

Could that have been Sukuna’s dad? No, that wouldn’t make sense if his lighter belonged to his father and ‘Itadori’ is engraved into its side. It had to be Sukuna himself. You suppose you’ve never actually heard anyone refer to him by another name, but the name is fitting somehow, even if he chooses not to use it.

The sound of footsteps alerts you to Sukuna’s return and you tuck the paper back where it belongs, or at least where you found it. The nosey and concerned part of you wants to prod, especially given the apprehension Choso expressed to you earlier, but you know better than to push Sukuna’s limits.

Sukuna rounds the corner with tense shoulders, tilting his neck to either side as he cracks it.

“Everything alright?”

“Yeah, just didn’t wanna hear you nagging about what I wanna do.” There’s a little more fire behind his words than usual and you sense that this is not the time to be asking why in the hell there’s legal papers torn up under his couch like a rabid mutt got a hold of them.

“A little dramatic, don’t you-”

“Be nice, Kuna!” Yuji yells suddenly, pausing his game.

Sukuna’s jaw slacks in disbelief at his little brother. “Pay attention to your game, brat,” he hisses.

“No! You’re gonna scare her off again! Meanie!”

“That’s it-” With a gleam in his eye, Sukuna lunges forward and tosses Yuji over his shoulder. He’s met with thunderous giggles as the little boy kicks and wriggles in an attempt to escape from his older brother. “You know what happens to kids who get in their older brother’s way?”

“NOOoooO!” Yuji cries out between giggles as he pushes his absolute hardest against the mass of muscles that is Sukuna. Choso is quietly laughing as he watches Sukuna toss his brother onto the couch, albeit gently. “No no no nononono!” Yuji puts his hands up in an attempt to block Sukuna, who pretends to sit on his brother, though you can see he’s not putting his full weight on poor little Yuji.

Putting only an ounce of his weight on his little brother, he slyly grins at you as you laugh along with the siblings, your eyes shining. He may be just about the most hardened and irritated (or maybe irritat-ing) man you’ve ever met, but it’s clear just how much he loves his brothers, even if he could use some time away from them.

“Kunaaaaaa!!” Yuji cries, weakly pushing against him.

“D’ya hear that? Almost sounds like my little brother, except it can’t be because he was a little shit,” Sukuna snorts, only to be met with giggles. You bring a hand up to your mouth as you laugh along with the poor little boy.

“Let me gooooooo!!”

“You done bein’ a brat?”

“Yesss I promise, yesss!!”

Sukuna stands up as Yuji dramatically rolls off the couch, feigning being dead. Sukuna plops back down beside you and runs a hand through his locks, mirth swirling in those striking crimson irises of his.

“You’re still a meanie,” Yuji sticks his tongue out at Sukuna, a mischievous gleam in his eye as he scoots closer to the TV, but Sukuna only rolls his eyes this time. “Don’t scare her.”

“If your brother keeps tutoring me, I’ll be back before you know it,” you reassure the young boy who grins brightly before his attention turns back to the TV. “Speaking of which, I should get going. My final project for Women’s Lit is due tomorrow at midnight.”

You begin gathering your things, pausing as you realize you would have to unplug the GameCube to pack up all of your things, so you settle on pretending to forget it, hoping that Sukuna isn’t paying attention, his eyes locked on the TV.

Checking to make sure you have your phone, wallet, and keys, you cast one last glance at the corner of the piece of paper beneath the couch that’s just barely sticking out, debating doing some snooping later.

To your delight as the boys hug you goodbye and Sukuna follows you to the door, he either forgets about the gaming console or lets it slide this time, leaning against the door frame.

“You make a mean chicken katsu,” you beam, “thanks again for dinner.”

“Mm. Thanks for the second chance.”

Your smile softens.

“I got work at one on Thursday. You up to watch the kids? If you drop by earlier, we can study beforehand.” He leans his head down to your level, the warmth of his breath fanning your face as he can’t resist flustering you at least once each time you visit. “And y’know, you never did get to tell me the third thing I owe ya,” he hums, his voice low and sultry.

Your breath hitches at the implication behind his tone and before you know it, you’re stumbling back away from his close proximity, fumbling for the button for the elevator as the rickety old door slides open with a jarring screech.

“See you on- uh- Thursday.”

“See you then,” he chuckles.

This man will be the absolute death of you.

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❦ a/n ; hiii loves! i hope you all enjoyed <33 very angst heavy chapter, i'm sorry :((( i absolutely adored writing sukuna's horrible day, the poor guy. i also had to consult my friend who's a lawyer on how one gets served documents, what a confusing process and i'm sure she was even more confused why i was asking her LMAO.

anywayyy i just wanted to say that the comments and tags and asks you guys have been sending in seriously make my day and i'm so here for it. thank you all so much for all the love and support <33 as always, it's super appreciated <33

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writing & format © starmapz. art © 3-aem. dividers © adornedwithlight & cafekitsune

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kisshae · 2 months ago

Text

ARE YOU BORED YET? ★ YU JIMIN

PREC𝒾s ｡｡ months have passed, but the memory of karina still lingers—her glance like a thorn you can't pull out. you kissed her, and now she's further away than ever, leaving you to watch from the sidelines.

parings ? ex-best friend!karina x lovesick!fem reader ft mark (nct), intak (p1h) , manon & daniela (katseye) ★ genre , wlw friends to lovers uni au fluff tiny bit of angst!!! wc 2.6k

warning(s) , kissing reader is still badly down BAD for karina.. miscommunication jealousy

read this !! I hate fruits , part 1 , sry if this is confusing I was like rushing to finish this up for my next work...

now playing ? nomad , clario

it's been months since you last saw karina—really saw her, not just passing glances in lecture halls or stolen moments across the quad. each month has left an ache in your chest, sharp and unyielding, like a wound that refuses to heal.

you'd think the ache would dull with time, that her absence might ease the weight pressing against your ribs. but it hasn't.

instead, it's only grown worse, carving out hollow spaces inside you that fill with resentment and longing in equal measure.

and then there's mark. the way you've caught them together—his easy laugh, her blond hair catching the sunlight as she leans into him like it's the most natural thing in the world.

that was supposed to be you.

you were supposed to be the one at her side, sharing inside jokes, brushing her hand with yours when no one was looking.

but you ruined it.

you kissed her.

and now, all you can do is watch from the sidelines, choking on the bitterness of your own making. the snow crunches beneath your boots as you make your way across campus, the cold seeping into your bones.

you shove your hands deeper into your coat pockets, wishing the chill in the air could match the frost biting at your heart. she's everywhere and nowhere all at once—haunting your thoughts, lingering in the periphery of your vision, but never close enough to reach.

and you can't decide what hurts more: the memory of that kiss, or the way she looks at you now, like you're a stranger.

the market is busy for a winter afternoon, the crisp air biting at your cheeks as you push through the crowd with daniela by your side. you're bundled in layers, the thick scarf around your neck almost enough to hide your face.

it's a bit of a cozy escape from the cold, all the hustle and bustle, but still, something feels off, like you're waiting for something to happen.

you and daniela split up to grab some things, and she disappears into the restroom, leaving you to wander the aisles alone. you don't think much of it until you round a corner into the fruit alley, only to stop dead in your tracks.

there she is.

karina.

but somethings different.

her blonde hair is gone—replaced by jet black strands that peek out from under her beanie. it's such a stark contrast to the karina you're used to for a second, you almost convince yourself it's someone else.

but it's her. you'd recognize the way she stands anywhere.

she's standing at the end of the aisle, inspecting a basket of oranges, her hands gloved and delicate as she picked them up one by one. for a second, you almost forget where you are, as if the world has faded away except for her.

but you snap back to reality quickly enough, your heart beating in your throat. you could just turn around, pretend you didn't see her.

you could keep walking. you could avoid this.

but your feet won't move.

karina hasn't noticed you yet. she's lost in the small world of fruit, her brow furrowed slightly as she selects the ripest orange. you could watch her for hours if you wanted, but something inside you twists at the sight. there's that familiar ache again, a tinge of jealousy in the pit of your stomach.

it's stupid, really. she doesn't even know you're here, doesn't even know much you've been struggling to get over her.

but you can't help it.

she's too perfect.

before you can think any more about it, she looks up and catches your gaze. her eyes widen slightly, her lips parting in soft surprise. then she stands up straighter, as if she's suddenly unsure of something, and she blinks—quickly, like she's trying to reset herself.

you both freeze.

the air between you feels thick, and for a moment, it's like nothing has changed.

no time. no distance, no awkward silence between you two since the kiss. it's just her and you, standing there in the midst of winter, in a fruit aisle that feels too small for all the words neither of you have said.

karina doesn't move, her hand still hovering near the oranges.

your throat tightens, and you finally manage to speak.

"hey." it sounds so casual, too flat for how you're feeling. your stomach churns as you wonder if she'll say anything at all.

"hi," karina replies, her voice almost too soft, too polite.

and just like that, you're stuck again—two people who never really knew how to talk to each other anymore.

the silence stretches, hanging between you like the cold outside. karina's eyes flicker down to the fruit in her hand, her fingers turning the orange over slowly—carefully, like it’s something delicate she might accidentally crush.

you're the same. Frozen, watching her, unable to move.

it's just an orange, but for some reason, it feels like she’s holding a part of you, inspecting it with the same quiet intensity that makes your chest tighten.

she used to do this with you. with everything. look at you like you were something worth savoring.

but now?

now she can’t even meet your eyes for more than a few seconds without looking away.

you swallow hard, fingers curling at your sides. the fruit around you—rows of apples, pomegranates, those stupid oranges—feels too sweet, too vibrant for how bitter the pit in your stomach has become.

funny. you used to love this aisle.

now, you hate it.

the memory of her lip gloss—cherry, sugary, intoxicating—lingers like a bruise. you wonder if she still wears it, if the taste of her would still remind you of something you shouldn’t want.

“didn't think I’d see you here,” she adds, fingers still turning the orange like it’s the only thing keeping her hands busy. her eyes flick up, meeting yours briefly. “you don’t usually come to this market.”

your throat feels dry. “I could say the same about you.”

karina's lips twitch, almost like she’s about to smile, but it never fully forms. “guess we’re both full of surprises.”

you shift on your feet, pretending to glance over the fruit as if this conversation isn’t the only thing grounding you right now. “yeah. I guess so.”

another stretch of silence. the kind that says everything neither of you are willing to. karina looks down at the orange again, voice softer this time. “how've you been?”

the question sinks in, slow and heavy. it feels like a trap—like she’s opening a door just enough to see if you’ll step through. “fine,” you lie. “busy, you know. classes and all that.”

she nods, but something in her expression shifts—like she doesn’t quite believe you. “right.” her eyes flicker over you, lingering just long enough to make your heart race. “you look good,” she murmurs, almost like an afterthought.

your breath catches, and for a second, you forget how to respond. “thanks,” you manage, voice tighter than you’d like. “you too.”

karina hums, her gaze softening—but before you can say anything else, daniela's voice cuts through the stillness.

“you ready to go?”

suddenly, daniela's at your side, brushing water off her coat sleeve. she glances between you and Karina with an arched brow, clearly sensing the tension but not addressing it.

karina's expression hardens just enough for you to notice.

that softness—the small, unspoken part of her that seemed like it might reach out to you again—disappears.

her eyes drop to daniela, lips pressing into a thin line as if she’s biting back words she won’t let slip.

it's subtle. barely noticeable if you weren’t so tuned into her. But you are.

and it’s enough.

karina looks back at you, and for the first time since the party, you see it—the same thing that flashed across her face when she saw you with manon.

jealousy.

she doesn’t say anything else, just holds your gaze for a lingering second too long before turning back to the fruit display, her grip on the orange tightening slightly.

you could say something.

you should. but you don’t.

daniela's arm loops through yours, tugging lightly, but you hesitate—just for a second. your eyes drift back to karina, still standing there with that orange cradled in her palm. she's not looking at the fruit anymore.

she's watching you.

for a fleeting moment, her lips part, like she's about to say something. but the words don't come. and maybe they never will.

you force a small smile, even though it doesn't quite reach your eyes. "see you later," you murmur, the words slipping out quieter than intended.

karina's gaze flickers, something unreadable crossing her face. it looks almost like regret—or maybe it's just the lighting playing tricks on you.

"yeah," she replies softly. but the way she's still watching you makes it feel like she wanted to say more. like maybe if daniela wasn't there, she would've.

but it's too late.

the carnival is alive with lights and laughter, even in the biting cold. you adjust your camera strap, exhaling a puff of frosty air as the ferris wheel looms ahead. intak and daniela are somewhere back near the food stalls, probably bickering over churros, and manon is likely laughing at both of them. you needed the space, the quiet, to lose yourself in the view from above.

but as you shuffle forward in the line, you catch sight of a familiar figure.

karina.

your heart stutters. she's standing a few spots ahead, bundled in a black coat, her hair now dark as midnight and curling slightly at the ends. there's no sign of Mark, or anyone else for that matter. she's alone.

your thoughts spiral—did they break up? you shouldn’t care. you don’t care. but the thought nags at you, unwanted and unshakable.

the line moves, and suddenly, it’s your turn. the attendant waves you forward, and as if fate had a cruel sense of humor, karina is ushered into the same car.

she hesitates for a moment before sliding in, leaving just enough room for you to follow. the bar clicks into place, trapping you both in an awkward silence as the ride jolts to life.

the city begins to unfold below, the twinkling lights reflecting in her eyes, but you can’t focus on the view. all you can think about is her. how perfect she looks, even now. how her presence makes it impossible to breathe, impossible to think.

“i'm sorry.”

the words come out of nowhere, breaking the silence like the snap of a branch. You blink, startled, meeting her gaze.

“what?”

she exhales, her breath visible in the chilly air. “i'm sorry for what happened at the party. for... pushing you away like that.” her hands fidget in her lap. “I was scared. I didn’t know how to handle it.”

your chest tightens. the memory of that night feels like a fresh wound, sharp and unhealed.

“scared of what?” you ask, your voice quieter than you intended.

karina hesitates, her eyes darting away to the lights below. “of what people would think. of what it would mean... if they saw me kissing a girl.”

the admission hits you like a punch to the gut. “so you were embarrassed?” the words tumble out before you can stop them, harsher than you meant.

her head snaps up, eyes wide. “No, I—” she bites her lip, searching for the right words. “I wasn’t embarrassed of you. I was embarrassed of myself. I wasn’t ready for people to know.”

you stare at her, the cold seeping through your gloves, but it doesn’t compare to the ache spreading through your chest. “it felt like you were.”

the ferris wheel creaks, the car swaying gently as it reaches the top. karina looks at you, her expression a mix of regret and something else you can’t quite place. “i'm sorry,” she whispers again.

and for a moment, you let yourself wonder if she means it—if she truly understands what she did to you.

the ferris wheel finally comes to a halt at the bottom, and you feel a sudden rush to get off, like if you stay in that small, enclosed space with karina any longer, you might lose control. the ride jerks to a stop, and you’re practically out of the seat before it’s even fully halted, your legs unsteady as you rush toward the exit.

the cold air hits you like a slap in the face, and you don’t stop walking—can’t stop walking. your heart is thundering, pounding against your ribs, and you need distance.

you need space. But then, you feel it. a hand wraps around your wrist, pulling you back, spinning you around. karina stands there, her expression wide, filled with sorrow, her eyes soft like she’s about to break.

you swallow, your throat dry, trying to force out words. “karina…”

she doesn’t let go, pulling you closer as if she can’t bear the distance between you any longer. her other hand comes up to cup your face, her fingers trembling slightly, but it doesn’t stop her.

you blink up at her, breath catching. “please… let go,” you whisper, a warning. “if you don’t, I might do something stupid.”

something stupid. like kiss her again.

karina's gaze flickers, and for a moment, you think she’ll pull away, but instead, she steps closer, her chest brushing yours, closing the distance. she lowers her voice, her words soft but sure.

“nothing you do could ever be stupid,” she says, her breath warm against your skin, sending a shiver down your spine.

her eyes search yours with an intensity that makes your heart race, as if she’s trying to find the right words, the right moment. she takes a breath, steadying herself before she says, "I couldn’t stop thinking about you after that night… about how you kissed me, how you made me feel. and I hate it, because it doesn’t fit into my world, but I can’t help it. I can’t stop wanting you.”

your breath catches in your throat, your pulse thundering in your ears. the confession hangs in the air between you, raw and vulnerable, and for a moment, you think you might explode from the weight of it all.

“I—I didn’t want to hurt you,” karina continues, her voice cracking. “but I was terrified. terrified of what everyone would think, of what it meant. I thought I could just ignore it, just bury it, but I can’t. Not anymore.”

you feel your hands tremble as you reach up, cupping her face, drawing her gaze back to yours. “so you’re not embarrassed of me?” you whisper, almost afraid to hear the answer.

her eyes soften, and she shakes her head. “no, never. I was just scared of myself. scared of what I was feeling for you.”

before you can say anything else, her lips find yours again, urgent and unrestrained, as if she’s trying to prove something to both of you. she kisses you like it’s the only thing that matters, her hand sliding to the back of your neck, pulling you closer.

when she pulls back, her voice is barely above a whisper, but it’s there, raw and open. “i'm sorry it took me so long to get here... but I don’t want to waste any more time pretending.”

the world around you seems to fade, and for the first time in months, you feel a rush of clarity. the ache, the longing, the confusion—it’s all gone, replaced by something even more overwhelming, something real.

“I don’t want to pretend either,” you say, your voice steady for the first time tonight. but even as the words leave your mouth, a thought lingers at the back of your mind—a quiet question that refuses to be ignored.

is this really it? is this the start of something new, or is it just another chapter of chaos in the story you’ve both been trapped in?

you don’t know. but for now, you choose to stay here, in this moment, with karina—hoping that it might be enough.

#aespa x fem reader #aespa #yu jimin #aespa imagines #aespa karina #kisshae #wlw #karina x reader #yoo jimin #aespa x reader #kpop imagines

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gyeomsweetgyeom · 3 months ago

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hii! can you write a dad! jaehyun au of oc and their kids playing with jaehyun and his big ass bobble head of hair before he has to cut it off before he enlists 🙆‍♀️🙆‍♀️🙆‍♀️

"big ass bobble head" 😭😭😭

. ݁₊ ⊹ . ݁ ⟡ ݁ . ⊹ ₊ ݁.

Jaehyun felt his head being tugged in three different directions in all different levels of strength. You were being gentle behind him, soft fingers pulling pieces of hair into small ponytails all over his head.

His daughter was on his right side putting bows and barrettes that snapped against his skull roughly. His daughter had already forced him into one of her dress up, princess dresses, which he had unfortunately heard a multitude of seams rip and pop, but she insisted.

His son was seated on his lap, laughing and babbling while he grabbed at Jaehyun's hair and just pulled as hard as he could. If this were a few weeks ago, he would have stopped the toddler's hands from pulling on his already weak hair, but it wasn't a few weeks ago.

At this point it was just days away from his enlistment and he was soaking up all the family time he could get. If his kids wanted him to dress up as a princess and have fast food for every meal, he'd be happy to do it. Anything to make this transition for them easier, make the transition for him easier.

After a few minutes, his hair had all been gathered up and now he and his family were all in the bathroom. You had a pair hair clippers in your hand, a sad smile on your face as you grabbed one of the small bundled chunks of hair in your free hand.

You turned to your daughter who was excitedly wiggling in her spot on a kitchen chair, "I'll show you how to do it, and then you get your turn, ok?"

She nods, watching intently as the clippers buzz to life and begin to cut at the small ponytail of hair beneath the hair elastic. The small bundle of hair fell into his lap and his son grabbed at it with curiosity. Jaehyun laughed heartily as his son held the hair to his own head like he had just seen on his dad's head.

In an hour, Jaehyun had gone from a head full of bleach blond hair to a choppy blond buzz cut. Tomorrow he had an early appointment to get it fixed and dyed anyway.

His daughter wowed in amazement, "Appa, you look so different!"

You placed your hands on his shoulders and leaned in to press a kiss to his cheek, "you look handsome, honey."

Jaehyun tried to keep the mood light, refusing to focus on the thickness in your voice as he ran his hands over his short hair, "My head has never looked bigger."

The boy on his lap clapped, babbling nonsense until you all clearly heard, "big head!"

You all burst into laughter as his daughter also climbed into his lap and squeezed him in close for a hug, "I like your big head, Appa."

You and Jaehyun laugh as you both inconspicuously wipe and blink away tears respectively, "thank you, princess."

#kpop imagines #kpop au #kpop scenarios #kpop reactions #nct #nct imagines #nct fluff #nct timestamps #nct x reader #jaehyun imagines #jaehyun x reader #jaehyun fluff #jaehyun drabbles #jaehyun blurb

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peachhcs · 1 month ago

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through the years with them

hughes!sister x will smith au (samy + will)

quinn, jack, and grace have always been in charge of luke, samy, and will growing up. whether it's in toronto, michigan, or massachusetts, it was always 3v3.

wc: 3.9k

happy new year everyone!!! wishing you all a beautiful and safe and happy 2025🩷 after writing flashbacks in my christmas fic, i was inspired to write more memories between the hughes-smith siblings growing up all together

au masterlist

WINTER OF 2011

it was the first real snowfall of winter which meant all the kids raced outside to play in the fluffy powder. ellen and colleen worked to bundle up all of their kids to make sure no one got frost bite while also lecturing at quinn to make sure everyone kept their hats and gloves on even if they didn't want to.

"yeah, mom. i know," the twelve year old rolled his eyes watching his little sister struggle to zip her coat before he went over to help her with it. samy grinned. "thanks q," she mumbled and grabbed her hat from ellen.

"you guys are all in charge of the little ones, okay? make sure they behave and if you go on the ice, be careful," it was all stuff the three older ones heard before.

"yeah, mom, don't worry. we'll keep the monsters in line," jack grinned and ruffled up luke's curly blonde hair. the younger boy swatted his hand away. "don't do that."

once everyone was bundled up, the kids were set loose into the hughes' backyard. toronto winters were a lot colder compared to boston winters, so will and grace weren't used to such frigid temperatures when they got outside. luke made a break for the rink as usual, so jack followed after him. will followed after them which meant quinn had to follow them too. grace helped samy through the piles of snow, always wanting to follow her brothers and do what they were doing.

"i wanna shoot," luke said, grabbing his stick from the fence. he just got on with his boots because he slid just as easily as he would on skates.

"let's do a game," jack suggested since that was something all six of them could do.

"no, last time we did it with all six of us someone got hurt," quinn immediately shot down the idea being the older brother he was. he was not about to take the fall again if someone got hurt because last time, moose nearly broke his arm and quinn got blamed for it when it wasn't even his fault, moose was just clumsy.

"come on, q. we'll be careful. we can't even go that hard with six year olds with us," jack looked over at will and samy.

"i heard that!" her little voice said and the middle hughes just shrugged.

"fine but if someone gets hurt, it's not my fault," the oldest hughes finally gave in and grabbed his stick. they split the teams so each of them had a fair advantage which meant quinn and jack were on opposite teams. quinn took his little sister and grace, who actually wasn't half bad considering she didn't even play. jack had luke and will, confident in their abilities to take down quinn's team filled with all girls.

the kids slid across the ice in their boots, occasionally falling down because they couldn't stop as easily, but it was still fun nonetheless. there wasn't a time those kids weren't out on the homemade rink their parents built for them. it was definitely a huge attraction whenever friends came over.

jack tried crowding quinn. the older boy passed over to grace who successfully skated passed luke and put it into the back of the net. she lifted her arms in victory.

"nice! we're up 2," quinn smiled, the two high fiveing as he slid by. jack let out a frustrated groan.

they set back up and went again. luke started getting a bit more aggressive as he tried pushing past the girls this time. he was very determined to score at least one goal.

"moose, eyes up or you're gonna hit someone not looking," quinn called as he watched his little brother run across the ice.

"my eyes are up!" luke yelled back, but as soon as he said that, he lifted his stick to take a swing at the puck that samy had. unfortunately, luke's eyes were not up and his stick flew right into samy's chin.

the girl fell over and tears immediately pooled in her eyes. the others' eyes widened as grace and quinn raced over to her. "oh shoot. shoot. she's bleeding," quinn panicked and cupped her chin where the blood dripped onto his glove.

"we need to get her back inside," grace said and the two helped the girl up.

jack, luke, and will stood there in shock as the blood dripped everywhere from the rink to the snow as grace and quinn rushed her back inside.

"come on," jack mumbled and pulled the other two back up to the house.

"am i gonna get in trouble?" now luke was crying because he didn't wanna get in trouble.

"mom!" quinn yelled as soon as they were inside. the urgency in his voice made ellen come running from the kitchen where her eyes widened seeing so much blood on both of her kids.

"what happened? is she okay?" samy was still crying as ellen grabbed her from quinn's arms.

"moose accidentally hit her with his stick," quinn explained as jack came in with luke and will.

"she's bleeding so much. jim! jim, get in here," ellen called and then colleen, bill, and jim were rushing into the foyer where the kids watched the scene unfold.

"i'll get her a cloth," colleen said.

"we should take her to the emergency room," jim said as he inspected the deep incision.

ellen and jim rushed around to get their coats on while quinn finally went to a still crying luke. "hey, it was an accident. it's not your fault," he tried shushing the younger boy.

"i didn't mean to hit her. is she gonna die?" the second youngest cried.

"no, she's not gonna die, moosey, don't worry. she'll be okay. mom and dad are gonna take her to the emergency room where they'll make her better," quinn reassured.

"we'll be back, kids, colleen and bill are gonna watch you," ellen said to her kids before her and jim hurried out the door with samy.

"it's okay, luke. it's not your fault, okay?" colleen came to comfort the boy too. she swept him into a hug where he cried into her shoulder.

"why don't you guys find something to do in the meantime? i'll let you know what your mom says," she said and the others nodded. quinn led them to the basement where jack immediately turned on the ps3.

"she'll probably just need some stitches and she'll be fine. it's like when i needed stitches in my finger after accidentally cutting it with a knife," jack shrugged, always the calm one in these situations.

"you were really lucky you didn't lose a finger," quinn mumbled.

"it didn't look that deep, so i'm sure she'll be fine. she'll be in high spirits once she gets back," grace said.

"i knew we shouldn't have played," the oldest hughes was still mad because he literally said something like this would happen and they still played anyway.

"are you blaming me now? it's not my fault. i wasn't even going that hard. luke was the one not looking," jack quickly shot back hearing his brother's words.

"you're the one who suggested playing. i didn't even wanna play!" now the brothers were arguing and grace quickly mediated.

"it's no one's fault, okay? no one's mad and no one's blaming anyone. just a freak accident," she said firmly which made the older boys finally ease off one another.

almost two hours passed when ellen and jim returned. they hurried upstairs to greet them where samy now had a large bandaid across her chin, but at least she was smiling.

"tell them how brave you were," ellen smiled as she helped get her coat off.

"i was super brave and i got candy after!" samy exclaimed and proudly showed her brothers the bandage. luke was hiding behind colleen's leg still feeling guilty about the whole thing.

"hey, now you'll have a wicked scar and you can tell people you fought a bear or something!" jack exclaimed making the others laugh. samy saw luke hiding and went over to him where he nervously stepped back afraid he would hurt her again.

"i'm okay, moosey, see?" the brunette showed her brother her bandaid proving she was okay. luke stared at her for a moment before pulling her into a hug.

"i'm sorry i hit you. i'm glad you're okay," he said.

"it's okay. i forgive you," samy said and the parents smiled watching the two make up.

"now remind me that you guys aren't allowed on the rink unless we're out there with you," ellen squeezed quinn's chin who flushed.

"right," the older boy mumbled.

SUMMER OF 2014

"oh, why are you so dressed up?" jack teased as quinn raced by everyone sitting down in the basement trying to stay somewhat cool. the past week had been boiling and after doing all of the outdoor activities that could keep them cool, everyone was now inside in the air conditioning attempting to stop sweating so much. jack watched his older brother run by looking rather nice for the late afternoon.

"none of your business," quinn mumbled as he stopped in the mirror to look himself over, fixing his hair.

"he's got a date!" samy exclaimed after eavesdropping on her brother's phone call the other day. everyone's eyes widened while quinn quickly glared at his sister.

"a date? no way," jack mumbled, sitting up more so he could watch his brother.

"is it with that girl you were flirting with at the bonfire the other night?" grace chirped making the middle hughes quickly snicker. now that they were getting older, the parents were finally letting the older three go out more with the neighborhood kids. there had been a bonfire a few days ago someone was hosting that quinn, jack, and grace attended.

"oooh, i knew you had eyes on her!" jack exclaimed making quinn's blush even worse.

"do you guys ever mind your business? especially you, samy. i thought we talked about eavesdropping on other people," the older boy mumbled in annoyance. the youngest hughes had been having a really big problem with eavesdropping lately and she was entering her tattletale phase that quinn dreaded because he already dealt with it three times.

"you were talking loud. what was i supposed to do? not listen?" samy shrugged.

"yes, not listen," quinn said.

"it's gonna be fine, don't worry. she seemed to really like you," grace hummed as she got up to help the dark-haired boy with the last of his buttons in his haste to fix his hair.

"you think so?" quinn wondered feeling some self doubt in himself. he'd never really been on a date before, but he did know that he had to pay for her things and hold the doors open for her and possibly hold her hand if that's what she wanted.

"i know so because she even asked me about you when you guys were done talking. i said you're a really cool hockey player and one of the best big "brothers" i have," grace's words brought a smile to quinn's lips hearing her say that. a bit of relief flooded his system.

"thanks, gg," the boy smiled down at her as she finished his last buttons.

"looking spiffy. hope you guys kiss tonight!" jack exclaimed making the other littles chuckle.

"shut up," quinn rolled his eyes and looked at himself one more time.

"when are we gonna be old enough to go to bonfires?" luke complained, his face in his hands.

"when you're twelve," jack said with a snicker, always boasting about his privileges that he had that his younger siblings didn't.

"so next year!" luke exclaimed with excitement.

"aw wait, that means you're leaving me with will," samy made the realization and the younger blonde made a face.

"hey, rude," will rolled his eyes.

"maybe that means you guys will finally get along if you spend some time together," jack mumbled and slid back into the couch to continue gaming.

"whatever," samy mumbled and rolled her eyes. she definitely took after jack's sassy attitude.

they all wished quinn goodbye as he rushed out of the house a few minutes later. while we was gone, grace and samy decided to bake cookies while the boys stayed downstairs playing on the wii. the oldest hughes didn't return until a few hours later where a very lovestruck expression sat on his features.

"so? how'd it go?" jack exclaimed when caught sight of his brother.

"did you kiss??" luke added.

"oh they definitely kissed," jack commented when he saw quinn's rosy cheeks.

"it was great. she was really nice and we're gonna try and hang out again before summer ends," the older boy explained briefly.

"ooh, someone's in loveeee. quinn and rachel sitting in a tree. k-i-s-s-i-n-g. first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage," the youngest hughes brother teased making quinn smack his arm.

"shut up," the boy grumbled. the others just laughed as quinn ran upstairs to hide for the rest of the night and text rachel. being a teenager first meant all of the younger ones had a million and one questions for quinn when it came to dating and just being a teenager in general.

SUMMER OF 2020

samy came down the stairs, her phone in hand and ready to walk out the door when quinn, who caught a glimpse of her outfit, immediately stopped her.

"where are you going?" he crossed his arms and the girl rolled her eyes.

"i'm going out," she shrugged and the vagueness nearly pissed the older boy off. the others caught wind of the conversation and poked their heads out from the kitchen.

"out where dressed like that?" quinn asked again. her shirt was cut low and the skirt she had on was way too short for quinn's liking because he was not letting his baby sister leave the house like that.

ellen, jim, colleen, and bill were gone for the weekend up north for a wedding which meant quinn, jack, and grace reverted back to their roles of being in charge with them gone. quinn was the first one to crack down and the younger brunette huffed as she eyed grace watching the exchange happen a few feet away.

"just out. will and i were invited to this bonfire. i don't know what the big deal is," samy began and tried looking at grace to back her up on this one and get quinn off her back.

"will's not the one dressed like he's gonna get laid," quinn shot back.

"okay, that was a bit much, q," grace finally cut in.

"what? look at her outfit! she's not fooling anyone," the older boy stepped aside so everyone else could take in the youngest girl's outfit choice for the night.

"this is literally what you were doing when you were my age, i don't understand why you're being a brat right now," samy argued back and quinn's gaze snapped back to her.

"you're the one being a brat, not me."

"okay, okay. where are you guys even going? who's bonfire is it?" the older blonde stepped in to mediate like always. she glanced between her brother and samy.

"it's literally two doors down from here. it's a five minute walk," samy said and looked at will who nodded.

"is that tommy's house? me and him used to be close," jack chirped up.

"yeah, his sister is hosting a small thing for people in the area. it's not even gonna be big. there won't be alcohol," samy added and quinn scoffed.

"i've heard that one before because i've used that one before," he mumbled.

"you're not even my dad why are you acting like this? i thought siblings were supposed to like..cover for one another and shit. did turning 21 get to your head?" samy turning fifteen had been rough on everyone. it wasn't that quinn didn't trust her, it was that he didn't trust other people because he lived through all of this already. he just wanted to look out for her so she didn't make the same mistakes he did when he was fifteen.

"someone's moody.." luke muttered under his breath making jack laugh and grace hit his arm to shut up before it set either of them off anymore.

"what if luke goes? will that make it any better?" samy pointed at her brother standing off the the side. the second youngest immediately shook his head.

"no, no don't bring me into this. i don't really wanna hang out with fifteen year olds," luke mumbled.

"ouch," will joked.

"you know what i mean," the curly brunette said.

"what will make it better is if you change your outfit. i don't approve of this," quinn eyed his sister's shirt and skirt again, shaking his head.

"why? this is literally what grace was wearing when she was my age three years ago. it's not even that bad. it's hot out," the older siblings exchanged a glance while they figured out what to do.

"what if we compromise? you're wearing a zip up hoodie with that and you and will are not to leave without one another, got it? you have to come back here together, no excuses," grace finally said and looked at quinn for approval. the older boy rolled his eyes but nodded.

"ugh, fine. whatever," she ran back upstairs to find a hoodie. quinn breathed out a sigh while jack and luke just snickered.

"god, i hate it here," the older boy mumbled and grace reached over to rub his arm with a small chuckle.

"teenagers, am i right?" jack snickered, reaching over to nuzzle his brother's head.

"don't talk to me about teenagers right now," quinn said and they heard samy's footsteps on the stairs again. she came back with a black zip up hoodie over her shirt.

"better?" she asked and quinn finally nodded.

"better. thank you. be safe, be good. don't do something stupid. look after each other. call if you need anything," quinn said to the two as he sent them on their way.

"yeah, we know. bye q, bye guys," samy rushed will out the door before they were stopped again and the oldest hughes blew out a sigh. he glanced at the others who laughed.

"do i remember being 15," jack shook his head slightly and wandered back into the living room.

"what a horrible age," quinn mumbled.

FALL OF 2022

thanksgiving was in michigan this year. the smiths flew over a few days before and while samy was out on a date, the other kids were at home catching up. it was still a bit foreign to have the youngest hughes out on a date the night before thanksgiving, but ellen cut the chirping from her brothers and let her go. while they talked about samy's date and mumbled things about how grown up she was now, will stayed silent.

the idea of samy out on a date bugged him way more than he wanted it do and the feelings he'd been having the past month and a half were confusing him still because on one hand, samy was still his best friend and the girl he grew up with. on the other hand, she was starting to become all the blonde could think about.

luke noticed his friend's quietness first. anytime they talked about kevin will would go silent. they didn't know about the jealousy brewing between the two boys over the youngest hughes nor did will really wanna tell them.

"you're being weird and quiet," luke being luke though always pointed it out. quinn, jack, and grace's gazes snapped over to the younger blonde.

"you okay?" grace asked her brother and he shook her pestering hand away. "yeah, i'm fine," he mumbled.

"i've heard that one before," jack teased a bit.

"what's up? do you not like kevin or something?" luke poked some more and the blonde's face burned.

"you could say that," he mumbled embarrassingly and that made the other siblings raise their eyebrow.

"oh?" they all quickly became curious in what will was thinking, but the blonde didn't wanna explain because explaining meant admitting the possible feelings he felt for samy and he was not about to do that in front of her brothers.

"i just don't really like him. simple," will shrugged and hoped that would get them off his back. he walked away before they could interrogate more too. that made the four exchange a glance at the younger boy's strange behavior.

"what was that about?" jack mumbled when will was out of earshot.

"he's been weird lately. i don't know why," luke shrugged but he didn't know anything more and also never poked to ask more.

quinn, being the observer he was of all of his siblings, had a feeling he knew exactly what was on will's mind. he's seen it before because he's felt it before. being 17 and having obvious feelings for someone was pretty easy to see, at least that's what quinn thought.

later, he found will on the back deck on his phone. quinn approached carefully, "hey," the older boy said. will looked up at him, curious, "hey?"

"your little..whatever earlier..i know how you feel," the older boy sat down beside will for a moment and the blonde's cheeks flushed. he avoided his gaze.

"you do?"

"come on, smitty. i was 17 once too," a small laugh left quinn's lips.

"i don't even know if i like her. it's been..weird these past few weeks," the blonde finally admitted like he was embarrassed even though there was nothing to be embarrassed about.

"you know if anyone was gonna catch feelings between all of us i had a feeling it would be you and samy," the dark-haired boy laughed to himself.

"what does that mean?" will pinched his eyebrows together.

"i don't know. you guys have grown pretty close over the past few years. i remember when you hated one another and then suddenly all you did was hang out together. it's not hard to tell, will," the older hughes poked will's arm and he flushed again.

"oh."

"i also don't like kevin. i'd definitely prefer you if anything did happen.." quinn said with a smirk.

"uh..well i don't even know if samy likes me. she probably doesn't so i wouldn't get your hopes up about that," the blonde said.

"i'm just saying. you never know. things happen. things change. either way, i get how you're feeling and if you ever need to talk about it, i'm here," quinn didn't wanna poke will too much about it so he left it at that as he got back up.

the blonde was left to think about the older boy's words until samy got back home an hour later. he joined her brothers in asking her out the date went to which she said it went fine.

"you guys are annoying," the brunette mumbled as she snacked on some chips.

"we're just nosy, actually," jack snickered to himself.

"yeah, really nosy. i'm gonna change," samy rolled her eyes and disappeared upstairs. will met quinn's glance who winked and the younger boy flushed.

if anything, all the older siblings noticed will's longing looks and eventuall samy's as the year went on, they just chose not to say anything because after years of thinking the other had cooties, it was hard to believe there might've been feelings there.

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scary-grace · 4 months ago

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Best Practice - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Taking the night shift at a 24-7 emergency vet hospital isn't for the faint of heart, and you've seen a lot of crazy things. But on one particular shift, it's Tenko Shimura and his service dog who make the biggest impression on you. a silly little fic I wrote while I was at the emergency vet with my dog. No quirks AU, volunteer!reader, pet owner!Shigaraki, Mon-chan lives (and so do any other animals mentioned in this fic). 3.9k words.

The waiting room sounds like hell in a handbasket, but give that this is the only 24/7 emergency vet in the prefecture, that’s not a surprise. You’ve been volunteering here since you got out of school, and there’s never been an overnight shift where things haven’t been completely unhinged. Cats yowling. Dogs barking. Rodents squeaking and birds trilling back and one enormous monitor lizard that’s going berserk inside its crate, scaring every other animal in the same bank of seats. But as bad as the pets are, they’re nowhere near as bad as the owners.

In the five years you’ve been volunteering here, you’ve seen probably thousands of people come in with their sick and injured pets, and none of them come in at their best. Nobody’s at their best when they’re scared or sad, and having to wait and watch as other pets are triaged and brought back from exams. You still have your vet tech certification left over from before you went to school, so you know how to take vitals and do basic assessments, but your real job on every shift is to manage the owners. Some nights it’s easier than others.

Tonight isn’t one of those nights. In addition to half a dozen pets already in the exam rooms, there’s a couple and their two kids with their elderly cat, all four of whom look like they’re hanging by a thread. In the back corner, there are a couple of kids who rescued a tanuki that got hit by a car. They’re also hanging by a thread, and probably in need of a few preemptive vaccinations to boot. The guy with the monitor lizard is making everybody nervous. People keep filtering in and out, getting stat-triaged or sent to the waiting room, and with every person who gets called back, the guy your age with the corgi who’s been here for four hours loses his temper a little bit more.

You feel like you should check in with him, but one thing and another keeps you busy, and nobody points you his way until one of the dads from the cat family catches your attention. “Hey, not to bother you, I know you’re busy –”

“How long have you been waiting?” you ask at once. “Has Snow White’s condition changed at all?”

“No, she’s about the same, but –” The blond man nods towards the bank of chairs across from his family. “Can you get a handle on that guy? He’s scaring my kids, and my husband’s this close to breaking his nose.”

You take a second look at Corner Guy – or Corgi Guy, if you go by the dog. Corner Guy is your age, skinny, with messy blue hair under an oversized hoodie. His clothes are old, but the blanket he’s wrapped the corgi in is new, and clean. With the dog bundled up that way, you can’t see what’s wrong, but it’s resting quietly in its owner’s arms. Every so often, it twists around to lick his face.

The dog is cute, but Corner Guy’s middle-distance death stare isn’t, and the blond man’s husband and kids are right in his eyeline. The least you can do is give him someone else to glare at. You make your way over and park yourself in the seat right across from him. “Hi. Have you been triaged yet?”

Corner Guy’s mouth, scarred at one corner, twists into a sneer. “What do you think?”

“How long has it been since somebody checked in with you?” you ask. You get a death stare all your own in response. “I’m sorry about the wait. If you tell me how long it’s been I might be able to hurry things along.”

“Checked in with me? I checked in. They took my money and told me to wait.” Corner Guy’s voice takes on a note of bitterness. “These people are idiots. I heard them, over there – their dog got hit by a car this morning and they’re just now coming in? Their dog gets to see the vet first because they were stupid and I wasn’t?”

You get this kind of thing a lot. You also get the sense that Corner Guy won’t appreciate being told how triage works. You deliberately turn your attention to the corgi in its blanket. “Who’s this?”

“Her name’s Mon.”

“Can I say hi?” you ask. Corner Guy nods, and you reach out to scratch Mon’s ears. She gives your hand a good sniff with a cold, wet nose before she lets you pet her, and as soon as you touch her, you can tell by the softness of her fur that she’s well cared-for. “What a sweetheart. How old is she?”

“Three.”

“Still a baby, huh?” You can’t help slipping into puppy voice. You got over being embarrassed about that a long time ago. “What brings you two in tonight?”

“At the stupid pet store. Some asshole ran her foot over with his cart, and she’s been crying –” Corner Guy’s eat-shit expression shifts into misery. “The cashier said to come here, so I did. And I’ve just been sitting here, and I know she’s in pain – and everybody and their cat gets to see the vet before Mon does.”

Now you get why the blond guy’s husband wants to break Corner Guy’s nose. “Can I see her paw? Which one is it?”

“Front one. On the right.” Corner Guy unwraps the blanket, careful not to jostle Mon, but she whimpers anyway. “Sorry. Sorry –”

“Okay, sweetie. Can I see your paw?” You forgot how short corgi legs are. There’s a risk that the cart got more than just her paw. “Oof, okay. That looks like it really hurts. How long ago did that happen?”

“Four hours.”

So he really did come straight here. “What happens if she tries to put weight on it?”

“She hasn’t,” Corner Guy says. “I picked her up when it happened, and, uh – I didn’t put her down again.”

“And you wrapped her up. That’s good,” you say. “If she hasn’t moved it around a lot, it’s a lot less likely to get displaced. How long ago did it stop bleeding?”

Corner Guy shrugs. The blanket has a decent-sized stain, but the stain looks like it’s drying. “Okay,” you say. “I’m going to go talk to the doctors and see if I can get one to come out and take a look at her. They might tell you it’s better to be treated by your regular vet, if you can get an appointment –”

“I made one for tomorrow,” Corner Guy says. “I wanted to see if she could get, like – dog Advil or something. I know she’s hurt even if she’s not crying.”

“Oh.” That’s a lot quicker than a cast and x-rays, and the vets on duty will be really happy to hear that Corner Guy has a vet appointment lined up already. “Hang on. I’ll be right back.”

You confirm it with the front desk, then come back with the good news. “I can take her back right now and the vet will do a quick exam. Then they’ll do a splint and some painkillers, and that should get you through to tomorrow. Sound okay?”

Corner Guy hesitates. “You’re going to take her away?”

“It’s kind of busy back in the exam rooms, so we have the owners wait out here.”

“No,” Corner Guy says. “She’s my service dog. I have to come too.”

“Service dog?” You’ve never seen a service corgi before, but when Corner Guy folds back the blanket, you see that Mon’s wearing a vest, with a seal on it that you recognize. That organization trains service dogs specifically for PTSD. “Okay. Right. So maybe it’s best if you carry her.”

Corner Guy follows you through the packed waiting room and past the authorized personnel only doors. It occurs to you that you’ve forgotten something. “I got Mon’s name. What’s yours?”

“Shimura,” Corner Guy says. “Shimura Tenko.”

Shimura Tenko settles down a lot once you get him and Mon into an exam room. People usually calm down when their pet finally gets some medical attention, but Shimura looks like he’s doing more than just calming down – his face is pale and his hands are shaking, and Mon starts squirming in his arms, letting out little whines as she tries to reposition. She’s still at work, even though she’s hurt. You hesitate a second, then step in. “I can help turn her. Where’s she trying to go?”

He doesn’t answer, but you’ve seen service dogs from this organization before, and you know what they usually do to help their handlers. You help Mon rotate from sprawled in Shimura’s lap to a more upright position, and she lays her head on his chest, over his heart. It takes a few moments, but you see Tenko begin to relax.

“Are you two going to be okay in here for a second?” You don’t get a nod, but you also don’t get a no, and you duck out onto the treatment floor in search of one of the vets on call.

The first vet you encounter is Dr. Fukukado, which is what you were hoping for. She’s got the best bedside manner. You wait for her to sign the discharge paperwork on the parakeets she was treating, the make your case. “I have a patient in Exam 10. Her paw got run over by a shopping cart and it looks pretty bad.”

“Poor thing.” Dr. Fukukado’s mouth turns down at the corners. “That would be a stat if we weren’t so busy –”

“She’s a service dog,” you interrupt as politely as possible. “From New Horizons.”

“PTSD. How’s her handler doing?”

“Not great,” you say. You feel confident in that one. “They were waiting for a while. I thought he was just being a jerk, but once I brought them back here he sort of –”

Collapsed is probably too strong, but you’re too tired to come up with the clinical terminology. Sometimes after a night at the emergency vet, you forget that you even have a day job, let alone that it’s as a social worker. “Okay. Here’s what we’ll do,” Dr. Fukukado says. “I’ll add my name to his case and get in there as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you stick with them. Try to keep them both calm. Triage should be thinning out soon.”

Hopefully. It’s two am. You stick around long enough for Dr. Fukukado to add her name to the chart, then head back to Exam 10. Mon and Shimura haven’t moved. “Hi,” you say. “I’ve got some good news. The doctor’s put her name on Mon’s chart, so she’s next in line. Is there anything I can do to help in the meantime?”

Shimura Tenko doesn’t answer. You notice that his lips are really dry. “I can get water if you want it, or something else to drink. We have a coffee machine, so there’s tea, coffee, mochas, cappuccinos, hot chocolate –”

“That.”

Okay. He’s talking. “Gotcha. One hot chocolate, coming right up.”

You pick your way through the waiting room, checking on a few new patients in the mean time. You stop by the family with the cat to make sure they’re all right, cast a wary eye at the guy with the lizard, quickly triage a pair of kittens someone brought it, and grab Tenko’s hot chocolate. You’ve hit first-name terms with him in your head. That’s – not normal.

When you get back to the exam room, Tenko looks like he’s doing a little better. More color in his face, at least. “I thought you weren’t coming back.”

“No, I just got a bit held up.” You hand over the hot chocolate and watch him take a sip. His hands aren’t shaking as badly as before. “How are you two doing?”

“Her foot’s still messed up.” Tenko takes another sip. “It’s my fault.”

“It can feel like that sometimes, but I bet it wasn’t,” you say. “Somebody ran her foot over. That wasn’t you.”

“I shouldn’t have put her down.” Tenko’s voice flattens. “I know I carry her too much. She wants to walk. I thought she might want to walk around in there. If I hadn’t put her down she wouldn’t have gotten hurt, so it’s my fault.”

“Letting your dog walk around is a reasonable thing to do,” you counter. “Not looking where you’re going and hitting somebody else’s dog with your cart isn’t. That person’s the problem, not you.”

“I’ve only had her for two months,” Tenko says. His voice pulls tight. “They’re going to take her away.”

“We see service dogs in here a lot,” you say. “Nobody comes to take them away. Everybody knows accidents happen. This was definitely an accident.”

Tenko doesn’t answer. He takes a few sips of hot chocolate, and Mon picks her head up to snuffle the cup. “Hey. No. That’s bad for you.” Mon gives the bottom of the cup an exploratory lick. “We have treats at home. If I let you have this she’ll think I’m a moron.”

“I’d have a hard time saying no to her,” you say. You sit down one chair away from him. “If you hadn’t told me you got her two months ago, I never would have guessed. You guys seem really bonded already.”

“Yeah.” Tenko adjusts his grip on her. He’s quieter when he speaks again. “I feel like shit right now. She knows to work when I get upset, but I don’t want her to get upset and worry about me when she’s hurt. So then I get upset because I’m making her work, and – yeah.”

“She’ll feel better if you let her help you,” you say. You’re confident in that one. “My dog does, anyway.”

“You have a service dog? Where is it?”

“She’s a therapy dog,” you say. Tenko gives you a suspicious look. “Not an ESA. She and I did a bunch of extra training and I take her on visits to places – hospitals, schools, libraries, that kind of thing. When we’re not on visits, she’s a pet. An incredibly spoiled pet.”

“Do you have a picture?”

People with sick pets don’t usually ask about your pet. Then again, you don’t usually tell people with sick pets that you’ve got one, too. “Yeah. Um, here. That’s her.”

Tenko glances at your phone, and to your shock, he cracks a smile. “People must go crazy for her on visits. There was a golden in team training when I went through. Everybody wanted him but me.”

You should keep Tenko talking anyway – it’s best practice – but you also really want to know. “How does it work, getting matched with a dog? Do they let you pick?”

Tenko shakes his head. “You work with a bunch of different dogs in the first week. They’re all trained like Mon is. The trainers want to see which one you click with. Mon was the third one I worked with.”

“And you got along right away?”

“She kept getting in trouble.” There’s a note of pride in Tenko’s voice, and it only takes you a moment to understand why. “Even when she was working with other people, she kept pulling to get back to me.”

“She picked you out,” you say, and Tenko nods. He’s smiling slightly again. “I can tell you guys have something really special. And that you take really good care of her.”

Mon finally quits trying to get into the hot chocolate and settles back with her head against Tenko’s chest. Tenko glances at you. “What do you do here, anyway? I’ve been watching you run around all night and I still can’t figure it out.”

“I’m a patient support specialist,” you explain. “I can do triage, but mainly I try to help people get through pet emergencies in one piece. It gets kind of hard in here.”

“Whatever they pay you, it’s not enough.”

“I don’t get paid,” you say. “I volunteer.”

Tenko looks surprised. “You do this for free?”

Before you can answer, someone bangs on the door. You jump, but it startles Tenko enough that he spills some hot chocolate on his hand, which Mon promptly slurps up. You open the door, ready to give hell to whoever spooked them both. “Hey, can you keep it down?”

“Sorry. Fukukado said you were in here, and –” Tamaki leans against the doorframe, breathing hard. “You know the monitor lizard? It’s, uh – not.”

“What is it, then?”

“We don’t really know,” Tamaki says. “But it got out.”

Oh. “Anybody who’s not with a patient has to go help,” Tamaki says. “Like now.”

You are with a patient. You glance at Tenko, who looks ever so slightly entertained. “Me and Mon aren’t going anywhere,” he says. “Go get your lizard.”

You get to your feet. “Sit tight. I’ll be back soon.”

You aren’t back soon. You’re back an hour later, bruised and tired, your hand wrapped in an ice pack and an ace bandage. You make the mistake of knocking on the door to Exam 10 with it, and you get a shock when Tenko opens the door rather than just hollering for you to come in. He’s not carrying Mon, and you ask where he is at the same moment as he asks you a question of his own. “What happened to you?”

“Is Mon okay?”

“They brought her a bed and some pain stuff.” Tenko opens the door to show you, and you spot Mon on the exam table in a dog bed, swaddled in a blanket and so doped up on painkillers that she can barely keep her eyes open. “They’re gonna do x-rays later. Did you get the lizard?”

“It got me,” you say. Tenko’s eyes widen as he studies your bandaged hand. “And it wasn’t a lizard.”

“What was it, then – a dragon?”

“A Komodo dragon,” you say. “But close.”

“Aren’t those things supposed to be giant?” Tenko says. “How did that guy fit it in that box?”

“This one was a juvenile. Is a juvenile. We didn’t hurt it or anything.” You don’t think any of you were capable of hurting it. It was running circles around you. “It’s still really big. And fast.’

“And it took you guys an hour to catch it,” Tenko muses. “I was wondering what all the yelling was about.”

You and the others were really trying to keep the yelling to a minimum. You wince. “We had to find it first, and once we did, we had to catch it – but it was really aggressive, so it started biting, and then it got away again. Rinse and repeat about ten times.”

Tenko snickers. “I wish I could have seen it. More of it than I did, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I cracked the door open. Some guy was chasing it down the hall,” Tenko says. “It was pretty funny when it started chasing him back the other way.”

Dr. Sorahiko is the oldest vet in the ER, and he’s gotten kind of mean in his old age. You don’t feel bad for laughing. “You’re probably going to see the rest of it on TikTok or something. Or on the news. They showed up when Animal Control did.”

“Does that kind of thing happen a lot around here?”

“No,” you say. “Usually when we have a wild night, it’s a different kind of wild.”

“So no bites from a giant lizard,” Tenko says. You shake your head. “You and Mon match now. Maybe we can get two x-rays for the price of one.”

You smile at the thought, then remember something the front desk told you to pass along. “They’re discounting services for everybody tonight, because of the – disruption. Even if Mon gets x-rays and a splint and everything, you’ll probably only get charged the exam fee.”

“Good.” Tenko looks relieved. “Mon gets whatever she needs, when she needs it, but I was gonna be eating instant ramen for a month so I could make rent.”

“A lot of people who bring their pets in here say stuff like that.” You prop your bitten hand against your shoulder to elevate it. The bite didn’t break the skin, but it still hurts a lot. “That’s part of why I like being here. People are awful in outpatient.”

“They’re awful here, too. I sucked.”

“You weren’t even close to the worst person I’ve talked to,” you say. You remember a guy whose dog needed a leg amputation telling you he’d break your neck if she died on the operating table. He got kicked out, but the vets still operated on his dog, and as far as you know, she made a full recovery. “But people here — they aren’t being assholes just because they can. They’re really worried about their animals, because they care about them so much, and I’ve never seen somebody handle that well without help. If I ever have to bring my dog in here, I’ll be a wreck just like everyone else.”

“Worse than everybody else,” Tenko says. You glance at him, puzzled. “You’re not going to have a you around to help out.”

“Yeah,” you say. The thought is weirdly dispiriting. Not only will you be in here with no patient outreach specialist, you’re going to be in here all alone. Your family lives in a different prefecture, most of your friends have their own lives to deal with, and it’s not like you have a partner who could come with you. You haven’t gone on a date in a long time. “It’s going to suck.”

“If it ever happens, me and Mon will hang out with you,” Tenko says, and you nearly fall out of your chair. “She helps me. She won’t mind helping you, too.”

Before you can even think about addressing that, there’s a quick knock on the door, and Dr. Fukukado steps in. “Hey, sorry about the wait,” she says earnestly. “Mini-Godzilla was zipping around out here and he was tough to catch. We’ve got it under control, obviously, but — hey, you need to go home. Everybody who got hurt has to clock out.”

“I’m a volunteer. I don’t have to do anything,” you say. “I can stick around as long as I need to.”

You’ve put the ball back in Tenko’s court, which you feel is the patient-centered thing to do, especially when you’re technically still on shift. But patient-centered or not, you don’t want to leave just yet. You’ve gotten a little protective over these two, and by the time you go home and hug your own dog, you want to know that Tenko and his dog are going to be okay.

“Stick around,” Tenko says after a moment, and your heart lifts in a way it really shouldn’t. “Somebody needs to replace Mon when she goes for her x-rays.”

He wants you to be his service dog? “Sure, but I’m not going to lick your face.”

Tenko laughs at that – actually laughs – and the lightness in your chest grows a little harder to ignore. You like making people feel better, and you like it more than you should that he wants you around a little while longer. It’s not often that you have a night like this one at work. The Komodo dragon bite is going to be the better story, the kind you’ll tell your friends about, or your parents the next time you call home. But hanging out with Tenko Shimura and Mon for the rest of your shift is what you’re going to remember.

#shigaraki tomura x reader #tomura shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura x you #tomura shigaraki x you #shimura tenko x reader #tenko shimura x reader #shimura tenko x you #tenko shimura x you #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki x you #reader insert #x reader #man door hand hook car door #a bisquared production

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nataliasquote · 3 months ago

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Double the trouble | Switch Up | n romanoff

Double the trouble AU

Summary: Yelena is back, the twins are older, and her scheming ways do nothing but backfire. a mother always knows…

Age: 8

Warnings: none

wc: 3.3k

note: hello! I’m back with another little oneshot for DTT. I’ve missed writing tbh and although this isn’t the best, I’m pleased to finally write. I’m sorry for keeping you waiting!

-⧗-

Leaving the twins with Yelena was either the best idea or the worst idea Natasha had ever had. But with Wanda away visiting her brother, Natasha didn’t really have much of a choice. Work didn’t allow her to take time off like this, so she turned to the next best thing.

The blonde was as grumpy as anything until she was faced with the two bundles of joy that were her nieces. She hated kids, but Isla and Y/n were an exception. She opened the door with a huge grin as the twins came barreling towards her, crouching barely over the threshold to collect them in a hug.

Natasha hovered back by the stairs with a soft smile tugging at her lips. Despite having a rocky patch, she truly loved Yelena with all her heart. And seeing her girls happy was all that mattered. She wished she could stay, but with new development plans happening at the studio, she had to oversee the final meeting.

“Are you staying all day?” Isla asked, peering round to look at Yelena’s truck parked in the driveway. “Where’s Fanny?”

“I’ll get her out in a minute, and yes I am, lucky duck.” The twins cheered at her response, their chatter tumbling over the top of each other as they bombarded their aunt with questions. Natasha quickly stepped in, taking them by the hand so Yelena could finally enter the house. After sending her girls over to the couch, Natasha pulled Yelena to one side, whispering in hushed voices.

“It shouldn’t take long, but in case I’m held back, there’s boxed mac and cheese in the cupboard and the girls made cookies last night so they’re in the green jar.”

“Mac and cheese, green jar, got it.”

“Please don’t give them too much sugar,” Natasha warned, knowing her sister’s tendencies, “and they have been arguing a lot, so good luck.” She didn’t really need to tell Yelena what to do, she’d babysat since they were really little, but it gave Natasha a piece of mind to know they were well looked after.

“Natasha, they’ll be fine. Don’t you trust me? Yelena asked with a grin.

“Absolutely not.”

Yelena rolled her eyes, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “So who’s the troublemaker this time?”

“Y/n has been in a mood for the past few days, so it’s currently her. Apparently Isla's existence annoys her.” As if on cue, a yell sounded from the living room and Natasha inwardly groaned. A moment of peace was never on the cards.

As she went to sort out whatever argument was occurring with her eight year olds, Yelena let Fanny out of the car and watched the Akita bound up the front steps, her tail wagging frantically. Any normal person would feel bad about the amount of hair she shed, but it only made Yelena laugh. She truly made every place her home.

The scene in the living room was absurd even for Yelena. Natasha was scolding a pouting Y/n whilst Isla cried in her arms, clutching something hidden behind her hair. Yelena hovered awkwardly, unsure how to approach, and Fanny did the same. It was almost like she could read the room.

Natasha, breathing a sigh of relief, gestured for Yelena to approach, to which she did. A sniffly Isla was pushed in her direction and the young girl lunged at her aunt, clinging to her waist with a sob.

“What happened?” Yelena mouthed, her eyebrows shooting up as Natasha held up what looked like a barbie doll. “Where’s the hair?”

“This one got scissor happy,” Natasha said exasperatedly, jabbing her thumb in Y/n’s direction.

“She stole my barbie!” Y/n protested, folding her arms across her chest in a huff.

“No!” Isla burst out,” that’s mine!”

“Well I don’t care, I was playing with it!”

“Get your own!”

Above their heads, Natasha gave Yelena a look. This is what she had been dealing with since Wanda left and although she hated leaving her kids, the bickering was starting to wear her down. It was Yelena’s turn to handle it for once. She just hoped the house would still be standing when she got back.

“Girls, please,” Natasha sighed, standing up with the barbie in her hand. “Mama has to go in a minute, and I’m not having you acting up for Yelena.” She used her stern mom voice and Y/n paled, hating being told off. “Y/n, can you apologise to Isla please.”

“No.”

Natasha may have a soft spot for her youngest but the glare that crossed her features made the little girl’s eyes well up and she hung her head in shame. “Y/n…” Natasha warned, knowing what came next if she didn’t start behaving.

“Sorry,” Y/n mumbled, suddenly very interested in the sleeve of her pink sweater.

“Good,” Natasha stated, brushing off the dog hair from her sleek black suit trousers. “I want you two on your best behaviour, and Yelena will tell me everything that happens. If I find out that you’ve been disrespectful and naughty, I will tell Mama. Okay?”

The girls mumbled in chorus, with Isla still clinging on to Yelena and Y/n standing by herself. It was just a phase, Natasha had to keep reminding herself that, but it certainly felt as though it was going to last forever. She wasn’t the bad mom, but Y/n’s behaviour had been so bad lately that not a day went by where she wasn’t being told off. It hurt her to see her daughter so upset, but Natasha stood strong. It was her own kindred spirit that she saw in Y/n, and now she understood why she was such a difficult child sometimes.

“We’re going to have fun, right guys?” Yelena asked with extravagant enthusiasm, although the responses she got were far from it. “You can go and do your boring adult stuff whilst the cool kids do… cool kid stuff.”

Natasha anxiously glanced at her kids, a wave of doubt washing over her. “Are you sure you’ll be okay? I can cancel-”

“Natasha, go, I’ll be fine. They’re angels with me and I’ve got Fanny with me if it all goes wrong.”

The dog in question gave a small woof and Natasha eyed her warily, far more a cat person than a dog person. She wasn’t totally convinced, but motherhood had made her anxious so she straightened out her jacket and nodded, psyching herself up.

“I’ll be back by 5, 6 at the latest.”

“Have a good day Mama,” Y/n said quietly, trying desperately to get back on her good side. Having Wanda mad at her was bad enough, but having Natasha was the worst thing she could think of. And when her Mama crouched down and opened her arms, Y/n took her chance to get to the hug first, muttering another ‘sorry’ to try and make amends.

“Be good, girls. I’ll be home soon.”

‘Aunty Lena, does Mama hate me?” Y/n asked as the door closed. The blonde frowned and turned to her niece, her large green eyes piercing into the Russian’s soul.

“Of course not, little bug. But you have to start being nice to Isla, okay?”

“I know,” Y/n replied. “She just really makes me mad.”

“That’s what sisters do. Your mama and I used to fight all the time.”

Y/n’s eyes lit up. “You did?”

“It’s totally normal, little bug. When your mama had blue hair, I used to tease her about it all the time.”

Isla’s head perked up at that. “Mama had blue hair?”

“Has she never shown you pictures?” Yelena asked in disbelief. Both girls shook their heads and Yelena grinned. “I’ll make some hot chocolate and I can show you. Your grandma put all our photos as kids in an album.”

The twins cheered loudly and ran to the kitchen, laughing with each other. It was such a stark contrast to earlier that Yelena had to do a double take at what she was witnessing.

“I’m glad you’re not this much work,” she muttered to Fanny, who barked happily at the noise. Kids really were hard work.

~~~

“Lena, kick it!” Isla yelled across the garden, dancing around the goal whilst her aunt really took her time. She was doing it purely to mess with her niece, and it was working perfectly. With another yell, Isla sprinted out of the goal in an attempt to tackle, but Yelena took her chance and sent the ball flying into the goal with a thud.

“That’s not fair!” She cried, running over to retrieve it.

“Another point to Aunt Lena!” Y/n announced from her place at the side before launching into another back walkover. She’d only recently learned the skill at dance and was more than happy to do acro tricks whilst they played. As long as she kept score as promised.

“No! That doesn’t count,” Isla protested, one foot propped up on the ball. “She cheated.”

“I didn’t cheat, you just have no patience,” Yelena said sassily, propping a hand up on her hip. “You’re not going to make a very good goal keeper.”

“I hate soccer anyway,” Isla grumbled, kicking the ball as hard as she could in Yelena’s direction. “It sucks.”

“It’s only because you’re bad at it,” Y/n piped up, now sitting on the porch steps after exhausting herself from cartwheels.

“You’re worse!” Typical comeback but Yelena had had enough. With a roll of her eyes, she marched towards the goal, giving Isla a bump with her elbow as she walked past.

“New game, I’ll be in goal and you have to work together to score. Deal?”

Isla shook her head. “I’m not playing with her, she can’t even kick a ball!”

“I can too!” Y/n protested, sprinting up to her sister. “I’m better than you and I don’t even have lessons.”

“That’s so not true. You-”

“Guys!” Yelena shouted, her Russian accent thickly coating her words. “Do you ever stop this fighting? It’s so annoying!”

The twins went silent, an uncommon phenomenon. Y/n muttered something under her breath but Yelena didn’t have it in her to care anymore. Every time she babysat it made her more and more impressed at how Natasha did it. A true saint.

“New rules. You have to pass it to each other before trying to score. If you don’t, the point goes to me. Okay?”

“Fine!”

Surprisingly, very few fights broke out over the course of the game. Isla did most of the scoring after Y/n well and truly botched her tries. But in her defence, her legs weren’t made for kicking the shit out of a soccer ball.They were made for cartwheels, which Isla soon got fed up with.

After far too long outside, Yelena rounded them up and herded them back inside after teeth started chattering and Y/n’s soaked trouser legs from falling over were turning her lips slightly blue.

After a quick bath she sat them both on Isla’s bed and dug through her closet for some comfier clothes. After a few minutes she sat back on her knees, her mind racing.

“Do you guys match anymore?”

“Ew,” Isla said, her nose scrunching. “Never. All Y/n wears is pink, and I hate pink.”

“You also hate dresses too.”

Yelena was quiet for a moment, the cogs in her head turning. She turned around with a sheepish smile, almost shaking with excitement.

“I have an idea, but you need to cooperate… okay?”

~~~

Natasha sighed as she stepped out of her car, her breath forming a small cloud in front of her. It was far too cold for October and she rushed up the front steps to get inside. The building work was looking amazing and she knew Y/n was itching to get back to the studio just as much as she was (there was only so much kitchen ballet they could do).

It was eerily quiet as the front door opened, only her heels sounding on the wooden floor as she approached the kitchen. She wasn’t met with a pile of bodies throwing themselves at her, which was probably more strange than the silence. Had she trusted Yelena too much and her sister had kidnapped her children and ran off to Russia? Honestly it wasn’t such a surprising theory.

Empty kitchen… empty living room… this was weird. But the sound of giggles couldn’t be hidden and Natasha kicked off her heels at the bottom of the stairs and took the stairs two at a time, her trousers straining around her thigh muscles. Isla’s laugh was the most distinguishable and she pushed the door open slowly, trying not to startle anyone.

The wholesome sight of the three of them sitting on the floor surrounded by stuffed animals was enough to melt Natasha’s heart and she smiled softly, leaning on the doorframe waiting for someone to notice her. And strangely it wasn’t Y/n but Isla who jumped up first, almost stumbling over Fanny to get to her Mama with a shriek.

Natasha caught her daughter in her arms and pressed kisses all over her face, warmth flooding her body. She would never feel complete when she was away from her girls.

Y/n quickly joined in, wanting the same cuddles. Natasha crouched down and stroked their cheeks before pausing slightly, squinting. Something wasn’t right and Yelena’s overly wide grin didn’t help her suspicions either. She stroked Isla’s hair with a chuckle and straightened up, her back aching from bending down so much.

“Did you girls have a good day?” She asked, watching as Y/n settled back on the floor beside Fanny. “You both look happier than when I left.”

“We played soccer and beat Aunt Lena!” Y/n piped up. “I scored all the goals.”

“No, I helped too!”

Natasha didn’t miss the way Yelena nudged her nieces or how their eyes went as wide as saucers. But the redhead just chuckled and took a seat on Isla’s bed, her legs slightly aching from standing all day.

Isla stood in front of her, clearly torn with where to go. Natasha knew she wanted to sit on her knee but watched as she settled beside Yelena again. It was impressive, Natasha gave her that much. Very dedicated to the cause.

“You did? Well done baby. Have you behaved today?”

“They’ve been angels, sestra, as usual. It’s only you they are bad for.” Yelena had a shit eating grin and it took everything in Natasha not to launch a pillow at her head. But she could not condone aggression around her violent children anyway before Y/n got any more ideas.

“Is that right?”

“Mama you had blue hair!”

If looks could kill, Yelena would be well and truly dead. If there was one thing Natasha hated, it was pictures of her younger self. She made far too many questionable decisions and went through one too many boxes of hair dye, so seeing pictures was a no no. Not even Wanda had seen many. And now her daughters had seen the worst ones which she was never going to live down.

“Yelena Belova… what did you do.”

The blonde just shrugged and jumped up, causing Fanny to do the same. The queen of avoiding things. “Who wants Aunt Yelena’s special mac and cheese?”

The twins both cheered and raced out of the room after their aunt, leaving Natasha slightly bewildered in the blue and white room. There were times where Natasha convinced herself that Yelena wasn’t all that bad, and then she pulled stunts like this and put herself back on top of Natasha’s hit list. But that was never going to change.

“What else did you show my kids, Yelena?”

No reply. Typical.

Natasha truly was outnumbered when her sister was around. But then she remembered what was really going on and a small laugh escaped Natasha’s mouth. Adorable, really.

Y/n and Isla helped as much as they could to make dinner, including standing on a chair to stir the boiling noodles and dumping the cheese packets in when instructed. Natasha was banished to setting the table after Isla gave her a lecture about her inability to cook, clearly something else she’d picked up from Yelena. But Natasha yielded, setting the cutlery down with a shake of her head. The longer it went on for, the more she tried not to laugh. And the more slip ups she noticed.

Like how Isla wouldn’t stand on the chair because she was scared of heights, even though yesterday she climbed the largest tree in the backyard. And how Y/n stood still when waiting for her turn, when she’d usually be twirling around with her apron. Natasha could only watch as Yelena heavily emphasised their names and the twins burst into giggles whenever they answered her. It was adorable to see and she couldn’t wait to tell Wanda.

They ate in silence, which was usually the case when mac and cheese was involved. And the girls did very well, Natasha gave them that, until she pulled an admittedly evil move.

“How about cookies?” Yelena asked once plates were cleared and the table was wiped down.

“It sounds good to me,” Natasha agreed, grabbing the tin and sitting back at the table. “One each, you too Yelena. And Y/n, you know the rules. You got in trouble today so you don’t get a cookie.”

She slid the tin to Isla who happily reached in until a protest sounded from the girl next to her.

“That’s not fair! That’s my cookie!”

Isla had already shoved her cookie in her mouth at this point, the crumbs sticking to her cheeks and the front of her shirt. She grinned happily, thankful she agreed to Yelena’s scheming plot.

“Mama! That’s mine!”

Natasha shook her head. “No Y/n, those aren’t the rules, you know that.”

Isla smacked her palm against the tabletop. “I’m not Y/n! She is!” She pointed at her sister harshly, who was licking the crumbs from her fingertips. “We switched!”

“Isla!” Y/n whined, “You weren’t supposed to spoil it!”

“I’m not losing my cookie, give it to me!”

“No,” Y/n said with a grin. ��Mama said you can’t have one, so you can’t.”

“I hate you!”

Natasha watched the scene unfold, with Yelena looking more and more concerned. The blonde turned to her sister for help, but was met with only a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

“Do something!” Yelena hissed, but Natasha shook her head.

“Absolutely not,” Natasha said, leaning back in her chair. “It’s your mess, you fix it.”

“Tell her Aunt Lena!” Isla cried, tears threatening to spill. “Tell her I’m Isla! I’m not Y/n.”

Whilst Isla was nearing a breakdown, Y/n’s mean streak thickened. “These cookies really are good.”

“Mama please!”

Natasha rounded the table and placed a kiss on Isla’s forehead before passing her the biggest cookie from the tin. “Here baby, you’re okay,” she soothed, gently wiping her tears. “But your Aunt is an idiot. I did know it was you all along Isl’s, I’m sorry baby.” She picked her daughter up and set her on her lap, holding her close as she ate her cookie.

Yelena’s mouth fell open. “You knew?”

“From the moment ‘Isla’ ran to me first.” Yelena hit the table, muttering ‘dammit’ under her breath. “A mother always know, Yel. Always.”

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