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solxamber · 4 days ago

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Ace of Gates || Ace Trappola

You’re an A-rank Esper. He’s an A-rank Guide with too much mouth and not enough fear.

Together? You accidentally become the most functional duo in the building.

or: Guideverse!

Series Masterlist

The thing about life before the Gates was that it wasn't exactly good, but it had a kind of grimy charm.

You might have stubbed your toe on every available table leg in existence. You might have been ghosted by someone who claimed to be "allergic to commitment." You might've even once set off your smoke detector boiling instant noodles.

But at the end of the day, you could still wake up, brush your teeth, and go about your business without being chased across the freeway by a four-dimensional carnivore with sixteen elbows and the personality of an angry Yelp reviewer.

Then the Gates opened.

No warning or even subtle foreshadowing. One day, the sky said, "You know what this timeline needs? Suffering," and split open like the world's worst piñata.

Out poured creatures that looked like eldritch entities failed out of clown college—too many limbs, not enough skin, occasionally speaking in cursive. Spatial distortions started warping downtown office buildings. Birds flew backward. Somewhere, a tax accountant developed pyrokinesis and accidentally leveled a Subway.

And as the world collectively spiraled, humanity did what it always does in times of crisis: made things weirder.

First came the Espers—humans with the uncanny ability to punch reality back into place.

Blessed (or cursed) with psychically-charged nervous systems, Espers could tear Gates apart, launch energy blasts, and generally break the laws of physics over their knees like bad pencils.

Unfortunately, they also have the emotional regulation of a sleep-deprived toddler mid-sugar crash. Put too much strain on them and they'd short-circuit, cry, explode, or all three at once. You never really know.

Which is where the Guides came in.

Guides were supposed to be the grounding wires in this cosmic fever dream. Cool-headed, calm, attuned to the fluctuating mental states of Espers, and just functional enough to keep society from collapsing further.

But the truth was, most Guides were held together with caffeine, chronic back pain, and the sheer power of bitter determination. You could always spot one by their thousand-yard stare and that faint aura of "if one more Esper screams in my direction, I'm going to throw them into the sun."

Together, Espers and Guides became the last duct-taped hope of civilization. Gate opens? Send an Esper. Esper loses grip on reality after supression? Throw a Guide at them like a weighted blanket.

But somehow, society limped forward, staggering under the weight of Gate horrors and bureaucratic nonsense. Love, rent, public transport delays, emotionally unstable superhumans—it was all just part of life now.

A little messier and a lot louder. But still life.

Being an A-class Esper wasn't the worst gig in the world. You weren't flashy enough to get dragged into high-stakes Gate politics, and you weren't disposable enough to be thrown in like cannon fodder either.

You sat comfortably in the middle tier of survivability and suffering—overqualified for grunt work, underqualified for any high-profile heroic nonsense. Which was fine. You liked your soul intact, thank you very much.

But the thing about sitting in that sweet A-class spot was that you got a front-row seat to all The Horrors without the clout to veto them.

Like watching one of your training peers go nuclear mid-fight because their abilities decided to evolve like a traumatised Pokémon. Or worse—witnessing upper-class Espers go absolutely feral over Guide assignments like it was some messy dating sim with real-world casualties.

So when today's Gate spat you out after several hours of what could only be described as "spiritual hazing," you were ready to demand extra compensation on sheer principle. Not even hazard pay—ugliness pay. The creatures inside that thing were visually offensive. You saw one and instinctively gagged. They were so ugly.

You staggered out of the Gate, adrenaline fading and headache blossoming, reaching out instinctively for someone, anyone, to Guide you before your brain decided to pirouette off the mental cliff.

You were expecting warm hands. Soothing words. And you found a Guide who looked like they'd just crawled out of therapy and wanted to drag you in with them.

Instead, you got manhandled. By SS Esper Leona Kingscholar, no less—who apparently thought you were a misbehaving toddler in a mall food court. He picked you up by the scruff of your uniform like you were about to claw up his curtains and threw you across the recovery field toward some poor, unsuspecting soul with a Guide badge still so new it hadn't even smudged yet.

You landed in someone's arms with all the grace of a disgruntled, wet cat. Someone yelped. You blinked blearily up at them, registering orange hair, too much gel, and a look of pure panic barely hidden behind what was clearly practiced bravado.

Guide badge: present. Facial expression: overwhelmed.

You were too fried to be picky.

"First day?" you croaked.

His eye twitched. "I've totally got this under control."

Uh-huh. Sure.

He was stalling, clearly trying to remember some textbook protocol while you slowly disintegrated like a paper towel under a leaky tap. So you cut the formalities, grabbed his hands, and just pressed them to your cheeks. He made a squeaky noise not unlike a hiccuping kettle.

But damn, if the effect wasn't instant. It wasn't polished or practiced, but it was just enough at that moment. He fumbled his own breathing trying to match yours, probably counting seconds like his training manual told him to. But his guidance was warm and human. Grounded in a kind of sincerity that couldn't be taught.

And for the first time in what felt like hours, the pounding in your head dulled just slightly. The static eased. You exhaled.

"Not bad, rookie," you mumbled, eyes half-closed. "Now don't drop me, or I'm biting your shoulder."

"Wha—why would you—?!" He panicked, fingers twitching like he thought you might actually go feral.

You grinned.

This might be the start of something terrible. Or incredibly entertaining. Maybe both.

Ace—as you eventually learned his name was, after your brain rebooted enough to distinguish "man" from "tree"—has the vibe of a guy who showed up to a war zone thinking it was an unpaid internship.

Not that you were doing much better. You'd just crawled out of a gate that felt like fighting God in a parking lot behind a 7-Eleven, and your only priority had been: find a Guide, latch on, don't die.

You expected the usual from a Guide: firm grounding, minimal judgment, maybe a juice box if they were feeling generous. Instead, you got a panicked yelp and a pair of very nice hands that hovered like they were trying to defuse a bomb.

"Hey, hey, don't just grab—! I—um—this isn't covered in the training modules—are you bleeding internally or do your eyes always do that?!"

You cracked one eye open, squinting up at a face that was trying very hard to pretend it wasn't terrified. Gelled orange hair, vaguely delinquent posture, expression like someone just handed him a baby and said "good luck." You wheezed, "Are you my Guide or a weird hallucination?"

"Depends," he said, trying to puff up with confidence and failing miserably. "Do hallucinations get assigned A-rank badges on their very first day? Huh? No? That's what I thought."

"Oh great," you muttered, still clinging to him like a depressive barnacle. "I got the tutorial mode Guide."

"Hey! I'll have you know I aced my cert exams! All of them. Well. Most of them. I read some of the manual. Okay, look, I skimmed the headers, but still!"

"Guide me more," you said dramatically, like you were gonna drop dead. "Before I go feral and set something on fire."

He looked like he was going to pass out. "Why are you like this?!"

"You're asking that to someone who just spent four hours playing tag with a mutant centipede that screamed in Latin."

Somehow, miraculously, it worked. The haze in your mind lifted. Your pulse slowed. You were no longer vibrating at the speed of trauma. And your new Guide—Ace, looked down at his hands like they'd just sprouted wings.

"I did it," he whispered.

"You didn't drop me," you corrected. "Which is more than I expected. Congratulations."

He looked one part smug, two parts panic. "Is this how it always is?! Just people falling on me?? I thought I was gonna get, like, eased in. Assigned to chill D-rank espers with emotional support houseplants or something."

"Nope. It's just me and my trauma today," you said cheerfully.

Now that you were feeling only mildly like a wet napkin that had been through a blender, you shoved a vending machine coffee into his hands. One of the good ones—if "good" meant "tastes like burnt resentment with notes of despair." "Here. A little treat. You earned it."

"Why is it gray?" he asked, suspicious.

You smiled, patting his shoulder. "Because life is suffering."

And then you left him there, clutching a cup of sadness, looking like a man who had just realized this was his actual job.

The morning had started off pretty boring. You were catching up on the soul-crushingly dull backlog of post-gate paperwork—forms with cheerful names like "Guidance Feedback Report" and "Hazard Clearance: Tier Two and Below"—while sipping your third cup of questionable vending machine coffee.

You'd already filled out a whole page where you had to rate your existential dread on a scale of "chill vibes" to "screaming internally." You checked "Other" and drew a little raccoon with a knife.

Peace. Quiet. Administrative numbness.

And then: noise.

A high-pitched shriek echoed from down the hall, followed by a wet squish and the unmistakable sound of someone yelling, "PUT ME DOWN I'M NOT A STUFFED TOY." You knew exactly what you were about to see and were already emotionally checked out of it.

Sure enough, you rounded the corner and there it was: Floyd Leech, B class Esper, SSS class chaos goblin extraordinaire, had a full-body grip on some poor SS-ranked Guide who looked like they were halfway between having a panic attack and astral projecting out of their job. Floyd, meanwhile, was grinning like he'd just discovered a new chew toy and didn't plan on giving it back.

You made eye contact. With the Guide, not Floyd. The Guide gave you a desperate look.

You promptly turned on your heel. Not your business. Not your problem. Not even your plane of existence.

Just as you were about to flee back to the comfort of bureaucracy and caffeine poisoning, you caught a glimpse of orange in the corner of your eye. You looked again. Ah. There he was.

Ace Trappola, newly minted Guide, dragging in two boxes and a duffel bag, wearing a hoodie and sneakers and a Look that could only be described as "I survived my first week and all I got was this nervous twitch." The hair, formerly gelled within an inch of its life, was now flat and flopping wildly like it had been in a fight with gravity and lost.

You jogged over and took the top box without asking. He blinked at you.

"Wait—seriously? You're helping?"

"I enjoy manual labor when it comes with leverage," you said.

He gave you a look that tried to be offended but mostly just came out tired. "Yeah, well, don't expect gratitude. I'm still recovering from my last gate. One of the espers threw up on me. Not near me. On me."

You nodded solemnly. "A baptism by bile."

"That was not in the handbook."

"Nothing in this job is in the handbook."

You helped him get the stuff into his new office—an aggressively beige space that looked like it had been furnished by a government official with a vendetta against joy.

He started taping up his beloved sports team posters, all the while throwing glances at the hallway like something might bite him if he let his guard down. Which was valid. There were a lot of people here who might.

"So is it always like this here?" he asked, gesturing vaguely toward the corridor where Floyd was presumably still clinging to his victim like an emotionally unbalanced barnacle.

You stared at him. "Dude. Rule number one. Do not make eye contact with other espers. Especially not the twitchy ones. Especially not Floyd. That's how you get conscripted into a hug you'll never escape."

Ace looked genuinely alarmed. "You people are insane."

"We're passionate."

"You say that like it's better."

You flopped down on the couch in his office and pulled out your breakfast—an aggressively stale bagel that had the texture of a rubber sandal and none of the flavor. He watched in horror as you took a bite.

"Is that safe to eat?"

"It builds character," you muttered, chewing with the solemnity of someone at war with both the bagel and their life choices.

Just then, your phone buzzed. You glanced at it. A single, terrible phrase: Level A Gate.

You groaned so deeply it echoed in your ribcage.

Ace raised an eyebrow. "That bad?"

"I had a whole plan today," you moaned. "I was going to sit in my office. And rot. Gracefully. Like an abandoned fruit cup."

"Well, looks like you're the fruit cup on call," he said, with absolutely no sympathy.

You stared at the beige ceiling. "Tell my dust bunnies I love them."

Then you stood up, still chewing, and walked out the door like a martyr going to war—with half a bagel in one hand and resignation in your eyes.

The last few gates had been a breezy little vacation, if your idea of vacation included blood, screaming, and a lot of ugly creatures. But compared to the usual hellscapes, they'd been mercifully tame. You'd barely had to flex your powers.

A brief dramatic pose here, a mild energy burst there, a lazy thumbs-up to the rookies watching you and panicking. Quick stabilizing sessions with whatever Guide hadn't already checked out of reality for the day, and boom—you were back home eating chips with your socks half on and your brain half off.

It was beautiful. Peaceful. And very, very suspicious.

Because nothing good in this godforsaken world ever lasts. You'd forgotten the first rule of living in a society balanced on the emotional regulation of human warheads: if things are going smoothly, you're about to get uppercut by fate wearing brass knuckles.

And it happens, of course, the moment you do something reckless. You'd made the mistake of feeling a little hopeful that day. Thought maybe—maybe—you'd go outside and feel the sun, not because you were being forcibly evacuated, but just to walk. To sniff a flower. To make eye contact with a squirrel and feel alive again.

You cracked open your door and the universe took that personally. Your comm lit up with the kind of emergency alert that usually means something has exploded or is about to.

Massive gate breach. Immediate dispatch. Bring everything.

So you showed up at the scene, and wow. If gates had Yelp reviews, this one would have gotten zero stars and a government shutdown.

The structure had collapsed in on itself like overcooked flan . Monsters were pouring out like rats fleeing a burning house. You watched one particularly unfortunate Esper get launched across the sky like a sack of potatoes. Another C class Esper was holding their shoe like it could ward off demons.

The entire street looked like it was being eaten pixel by pixel. Guides were sprinting around like unpaid interns at a fire festival for demons. The air stank of ozone and regret. The coffee in your thermos curdled in real time.

You took it in with the resignation of someone who's already mentally gone through all five stages of grief and accepted that today was going to end in blood, tears, or possibly being eaten by a bird-faced horror from dimension twelve.

And then—through the blur—you spotted him.

Ace.

Clearly regretting every career decision that led to this moment. It was still his first week as a Guide after all.

He was standing off to the side, looking like someone who'd been told this was a casual office job and was now watching someone get disemboweled by a worm made entirely of teeth.

His hair, which had been styled into "I'm employable" during the last gate you saw him at, was now sticking up like he'd fought a wind tunnel and lost. His hoodie had a suspicious stain. He has was gripping his Guide manual like it was a shield, which it absolutely was not.

And yet—he didn't bolt. You could see it on his face: sheer uncut panic, barely held together by ego and trauma, but he stayed.

You sighed. He really was trying. But the idea of this baby deer of a Guide trying to emotionally stabilize you (or anyone) while you were fried like an overcooked spring roll was… a lawsuit waiting to happen.

So you walked up, grabbed him by the sleeve, and said, "Car. Go sit in it."

"What—"

"My car. Passenger side. Americano in the cupholder. Go."

He blinked at you, somewhere between confused and offended. "I'm literally here to guide—"

"You're literally here to cry if something sneezes too loud. Get in the car."

He hesitated. You didn't. You gestured at the car again, channeling the authority seen only in pissed-off parents at amusement parks. "Ace. If you so much as catch eye contact with one of these things, it's going to sense your new-hire energy and take you out like a starter pack snack. Go. Sit. Drink the coffee."

And—miraculously—he did. He shuffled off in the direction of your beat-up car like a tragic little duckling, muttering something that sounded like "I hate this job," but he still got in and shut the door behind him.

You turned back to the chaos, took a deep breath, and summoned your weapons.

Time to go do the absolute most, again, while the new Guide cowered next to your glovebox and tried not to spill anything on your emergency taser.

By the time the higher-ranked Espers arrived, flanked by whatever fresh hell of support units HQ had managed to scrape together at the last second, you were already halfway to being burnt toast with a personality disorder.

Your limbs had felt like they were being held together by sheer spite for the last hour, and you were pretty sure you'd used a move that wasn't technically legal under Esper Regulation 12.6-B—something about "not summoning energy constructs larger than public transit."

Not that anyone noticed. The moment the S+ ranks dropped in, the remaining monsters were obliterated so easily that it made you wonder if they even knew what effort felt like. You didn't bother sticking around to hear the post-battle gloating.

Instead, you crawled over to the curb and planted yourself down, tucking your head between your knees like you were trying to fold yourself into a nice, compact package of trauma.

You breathed. In. Out. Didn't punch the concrete. Didn't vaporize the mailbox. Did not scream because your head felt like it had been playing host to every radio signal within a fifty-mile radius.

And then—there was a touch. Light and gentle. A hand on your head, cautious like it wasn't sure if you were about to bite. Which, fair.

You lifted your face just enough to look, and there he was.

Ace.

No longer in the car and no longer looking like he wanted to fake his death and live as a farmer. He was kneeling right in front of you, brows furrowed, face uncharacteristically serious. One hand was still on your head; the other came up to cradle your cheek like he actually knew what he was doing now.

He didn't say anything—just closed his eyes and let the Guiding energy pulse out of him in careful, practiced waves. And okay—maybe he had figured it out.

The energy hummed through your system like a warm tide, smoothing over all the sharp edges and static that had built up from overusing your powers. You inhaled shakily, and the scent that hit you was unmistakable: chocolate.

The exact brand you kept stuffed in the side panel of your car for emotional emergencies. You almost laughed, but it caught in your throat, tangled up with exhaustion.

Instead, you just leaned in. Right into his neck, your face pressed against the still-damp collar of his hoodie. He yelped—just a little—but didn't pull back. His hand slipped around to support the back of your head and you melted into him like he was the last unburnt bit of the world.

You didn't know how long he held you like that, only that when you opened your eyes again, the world felt a little less bright and your heart wasn't trying to break out of your ribcage anymore.

Eventually, you managed to stand. Your joints cracked like pop rocks, but hey, you were vertical.

Ace rose with you, a little more confident now, like helping you not implode had somehow restored a piece of his soul. He glanced away as he dusted off his pants. "Thanks, by the way," he said, voice just the tiniest bit shy. "For earlier. Y'know. The car thing."

You snorted. "You mean when I told you to sit there and drink coffee like a sad raccoon?"

"Exactly that." He grinned, then smirked. "Best part of my whole day, honestly."

You leaned in and ruffled his hair—deliberately ruining the way it had finally grown back into some form of chaos management. He squawked in protest, tried to bat your hand away, but he was grinning too hard to be mad.

You turned before you could say anything sappy. There was still work to do. A cluster of lower-ranked Guides were struggling to contain a group of Espers who were shaking like soda cans left in the sun, on the very edge of a full mental detonation. You squared your shoulders, rolled your neck, and headed toward the chaos.

Because sure, you were fried. Sure, your legs felt like overcooked noodles. But if Ace could pull himself together and hold you through your mess?

The least you could do was return the favor.

You had finally completed enough missions, clocked in enough hours, and filled out just enough headache-inducing paperwork to earn the privilege (read: institutional liability) of being assigned your very own Guide. Not just a harried intern with a flashlight and a pamphlet on deep breathing exercises.

And, to be fair, you were excited. Truly. Genuinely. But also deeply concerned for whatever poor soul had been sentenced to the eternal emotional rollercoaster that was… you.

You knew your reputation. You were mostly fine, except when you weren't, which was usually right after crawling out of a gate like some freshly molted nightmare creature with a migraine and an attitude problem.

You didn't mean to be difficult. You were just, as your last temporary Guide had eloquently put it, "a high-strung pressure cooker of unprocessed trauma and volatile energy." But you meant well. That counted for something, right?

The sterile white waiting room didn't help the nerves. Everything was so aggressively clean it felt like a trap. You sat in the uncomfortable plastic chair, bouncing your knee, trying not to explode before anyone even showed up. Across the room, a vending machine blinked ominously, refusing to take your credits. You glared at it. It glared back. The air hummed faintly with fluorescent lighting and barely-contained dread.

That's when you saw him.

A Guide—clearly veteran, clearly so done—dragging a protesting SS-class Esper by the scruff of their collar like a furious mom hauling a toddler mid-tantrum. You didn't know either of them personally, but you gave the man a nod of quiet respect, which he returned with the dead-eyed focus of a man who hadn't known peace in years.

The Esper threw a tantrum about being micromanaged. The Guide looked like he was mentally designing their tombstone.

You shrank slightly in your chair. Yeah. No thanks. You weren't built for that life. Higher-ranked Espers terrified even you. You were A-class and even you thought most of your own were unhinged.

By the time your name was finally called, you had witnessed two more Guides dragging their Espers out like disobedient golden retrievers, and one Esper sobbing dramatically into the corner like they'd been paired with the ghost of their dead ex.

You were thoroughly psyching yourself out. Your brain had already crafted seventeen worst-case scenarios and was midway through number eighteen when the attendant handed you your assignment sheet.

You took it with hands that were definitely not trembling (they were, though), and glanced down at the name.

Ace Trappola.

You sagged so hard in your seat you practically became part of it.

You didn't even try to hide your relief. Out of all the possibilities, this was a win. Ace might not have had the experience, but he had charm, resilience, and—most importantly—not the eyes of someone one bad conversation away from spontaneous combustion.

"Oh thank God," you muttered under your breath, hugging the sheet to your chest like it was a sacred relic. Maybe—just maybe—this was going to be okay.

Ace's office was already a mess, and not the charming kind that said "creative genius at work." No, it was the other kind—the one that screamed "I've lost control of my life and also my filing system."

You knocked anyway, because manners, and cracked the door open to find him pacing in a circle like a disgruntled hamster. He didn't even notice you. He was too deep in what could only be described as a righteous fury spiral.

"—and then they just assign me a new esper, like, boom! Congratulations, here's your emotional landmine, hope you enjoy spontaneous combustion with a side of caffeine withdrawal. Do I get a warning? A dossier? A name?! No. Just a shiny little memo with 'new assignment incoming' like I'm a damn Pokémon center," Ace barked at the air, hands flying. "I swear, if this one screams or bites or starts levitating—!"

You leaned on the doorframe and bit your lip to stifle a laugh. It was always fun watching Ace have a crisis. His hands flailed more when he was stressed, like he was trying to physically throw his emotions into the void.

He finally stopped pacing, glanced up—and froze.

"Oh great," he said flatly, "you're here. Did you come to laugh at my suffering? Again?"

You shrugged. "I mean, maybe. Depends. What if I am your esper?"

He stared.

You smiled.

He stared harder.

Then his eyes widened like you just told him you were secretly three raccoons in a trench coat. "No."

"Yup."

"No way." He pointed an accusing finger at you like you were personally responsible for his current descent into madness. "You're joking. You're messing with me. You—this is hazing. This is some dumb esper hazing thing, right?"

You handed him the assignment form like a receipt for emotional damage. He snatched it and scanned it so fast you were surprised it didn't catch fire. And then he just… stared at it, like the paper had personally betrayed him.

"I can't believe this," he whispered. "Of all the people. Of all the people."

You clapped him on the back. "Hey, at least it's someone you know. We've got rapport. Chemistry. Vibes."

"You ate all my fries the one time I let you drive me to work," he deadpanned.

"They were completely unguarded," you countered.

He sighed and sat down like the weight of responsibility had aged him fifteen years in five minutes. "I'm never getting hazard pay for this, am I."

You beamed at him. "Nope. But you get me."

"Yeah," Ace muttered. "That's what I was afraid of."

The next time a Gate popped up on your radar, you felt something dangerously close to joy.

Not because of the monsters, obviously. No one in their right mind enjoyed getting gnawed on by interdimensional hellbeasts with poor skincare and too many limbs. But because—for once—you wouldn't have to rely on a trembling intern Guide who looked like they'd rather take their chances inside the Gate than be within a five-foot radius of you.

No. This time, you had Ace.

Your own Guide.

And if that wasn't the emotional equivalent of being handed a complimentary emotional support soda after surviving a hurricane, you didn't know what was.

So you fought. You dodged. You possibly kicked something in the jaw that wasn't a monster but in your defense it was slimy and made a horrible noise. You made it out with only mild trauma and one (1) concerning scratch that may or may not be sizzling a bit, but that wasn't important.

What was important was that when you finally stumbled out of the collapsing Gate, there he was—Ace, standing at the edge of the suppression field like someone had personally promised him pizza if he didn't flee. He spotted you, eyes wide, mouth parting like he was about to say something deeply sarcastic—

And then you stumbled straight into his arms.

You didn't even think about it. It just happened. One second you were vertical, the next you were face-first in a hoodie that smelled vaguely like Axe body spray. You sagged into him, finally letting your shoulders drop and letting your head fall to his shoulder like the universe had finally decided to cut you some slack.

Ace, to his credit, didn't immediately drop you like a hot potato. He wobbled under the sudden weight of your whole being and then steadied you, arms wrapping around you without complaint—well, almost without complaint.

"You do know we can just hold hands, right?" he muttered. "Like. Normal people? Normal guiding protocols? This isn't a fainting couch situation."

"Yeah," you sighed, eyes closed. "But you're very comfortable."

There was a pause. You could feel it—the exact second the words reached his brain, ricocheted around his synapses, and triggered a full-body blush.

"Hey!" he squawked, indignation peaking—but he didn't let go.

In fact, his arms tightened around you just a little.

You didn't say anything else. Neither did he. But you did hear him complaining about "guiding being a scam" and "you're the worst" under his breath, which—coming from Ace—was basically an affectionate poem.

The farmers market Gate incident would go down in your personal history books as both a magical catastrophe and the worst advertisement for locally sourced produce since that time you accidentally blew up a vegan co-op.

You were enjoying a rare moment of peace—by which you meant doing exactly nothing and feeling deeply smug about it—when the gate alert buzzed on your phone like an angry bee with a grudge.

You skimmed it. Normal stuff. Minor rupture. Medium-range creatures. Casualties pending. And then you saw it.

Location: Public Farmers Market Guides trapped: Multiple Hostile rating: High

You blinked at the screen. Then texted Ace:

"pls tell me you're not in a gate buying overpriced jam rn."

No reply.

Your soul left your body just a little.

There was no logical reason for a whole flock of Guides to be at the farmers market. It was like a divine joke. Or a badly written fanfic plot twist. You were already halfway into your gear, muttering a prayer to whatever Gods handled idiot emergencies, because let's be honest—if any Guide had decided to go sniff tomatoes and talk about microgreens on gate day, it was going to be Ace Trappola.

When you got there, it was already chaos.

There were monster corpses everywhere—half-eaten leeks, shattered jars of "sun-blessed lemon marmalade," and the unmistakable scent of kombucha violence. Someone's dream of ethical farming had died here today.

You ducked a flying melon. You saw a mid-rank Guide trying to use a literal baguette as a weapon and briefly considered quitting the entire profession. You helped two baby Espers escape from under a collapsed garlic stand.

A Guide was desperately swinging a massive leek at a monster, eyes wild and determined like they were avenging their grandmother's greenhouse. You almost saluted them on the spot out of sheer respect.

And then you saw Ace.

Standing on top of a wobbly fruit stall, hurling seasonal produce with impressive arm strength and zero dignity.

He whipped a honeycrisp apple into the jaws of a slime beast and screamed, "SAY HELLO TO FIBER, YOU UGLY CHIHUAHUA!"

You couldn't look away. You were too stunned. Too amused. Too horrified. He spotted you mid-pitch and practically sagged with relief.

"DUDE," he yelled, mid-ducking a flying zucchini. "A LITTLE HELP?? I'M RUNNING OUT OF PERSIMMONS!"

You helped. Because that was your job. Because despite your desire to let him stew in the compost bin he metaphorically built, you were technically a professional. So you and a bunch of barely-standing Espers wrapped the gate up, sealed it, and survived.

When the dust settled, Ace was sitting on a crate, shirt half torn, tie missing, and what might have been a berry smoothie dripping from his bangs.

You walked over, arms crossed.

"That's what you guys fight?" he asked, voice thin. "Like. Regularly?"

"Mhm," you said, chewing on a granola bar you looted from a nearby tent.

Ace looked haunted. Like he'd just learned about mortality and also taxes in the same ten seconds. He leaned forward, forehead thunking against your shoulder.

"Never. Speak. Of this. Again," he whispered.

You patted his head with the affection one reserved for shell-shocked war heroes and dumbass coworkers. "Sure," you said. "Your secret fruit war is safe with me."

He just shook his head like he'd seen the other side and it was powered by vegetables.

"Forget this ever happened," he muttered, eyes fluttering shut.

You didn't say anything. You just pulled him a little closer, steadying him with one arm while the other waved away a very confused emergency response team.

You'd tease him about it later. But for now, you let him rest.

Ace called you at 3 AM, which was frankly criminal behavior.

You stared at the buzzing phone like it had personally insulted your lineage before you picked up and croaked something unintelligible that may have been your name, or possibly a spell to banish him.

"Heyyy," came his too-cheerful voice, already suspicious. "Wanna go to a magic show?"

You blinked. You looked at the time again. 3:08 AM.

"Ace," you said, voice hoarse, "do you know what time it is?"

"Yeah, that's the whole point," he said, with the sort of maddening logic only a chaos gremlin could wield. "It's a midnight magic show. Come on, when else are we gonna see a dude try to pull a live fish out of his armpit? This is culture."

You almost said no. In fact, your soul did say no. Loudly. But your mouth was overridden by a strange instinct, the same one that told you not to eat discount gas station sushi but still you did it anyway.

"...Fine," you muttered. "But if this is some cult initiation, I'm pushing you into the altar first."

There was no logical reason for this. No rational part of you that wanted to be out of bed. But something in your soul—some ancient, unkillable gremlin instinct—told you this was the right choice. Or at least that it would be entertaining.

You met him outside a theatre that looked like it had once been a pawn shop and was now held together with duct tape and multiple.curses. Ace was leaning against the wall, half-grinning, wearing a hoodie that claimed he ran a marathon in 2013 (he didn't).

His hair was sticking up in defiance of gravity, and he had the manic gleam of someone who'd either discovered enlightenment or downed an energy drink mixed with coffee.

The show, against all odds, was happening. You squeezed into two creaky folding chairs and immediately regretted it. The magician on stage was trying to pull coins out of a bowl of soup. The soup did not cooperate. Ace was already snickering.

The magician's cape had visible ketchup stains. There was a rabbit that looked like it had unionized. The crowd consisted of six other people, one of whom might have been asleep and another who was loudly booing even during the introductions.

It was awful.

You tried to be polite. You really did. But then the magician dropped his wand, apologized to it, and accidentally kicked over a prop bucket labeled "DO NOT KICK," and Ace whispered, "We're witnessing history," and that was it. You broke. You were gone.

Somewhere between the magician's card trick that turned into a live chicken and the very dramatic poetry interlude, you noticed Ace wasn't laughing quite as loudly anymore. He was still grinning, still nudging your knee with his, but his eyes kept drifting to the exits, and he flinched when one of the props fell too hard against the floor.

The gate incident must've rattled him more than he let on. Of course it did. The monsters were nightmare fuel, but you'd been around long enough to swap fear for disgust. He hadn't. He wasn't used to things getting that close, to hearing people scream, to being helpless while chaos chewed its way through the air.

You didn't mention it. He didn't bring it up. But you laughed a little harder, leaned a little closer, and handed him some of your stale popcorn like it was sacred. He took it and commented something about you probably poisoning it. You told him you absolutely had.

This wasn't about the magic show. This was about feeling human again. And if that meant watching someone fail to saw a fake body in half while Ace whispered "That's going to haunt me more than the gate," then so be it.

You'd be there. Even at 3 AM. Even when the magician made eye contact and asked for volunteers and you had to physically hold Ace down in his chair.

Honestly? Best terrible night ever.

You'd started hanging out with Ace more because you were worried. Genuinely, responsibly, adult-level worried. The job was eating him alive. The early signs were all there—the stress-yawning, the sarcastic jokes that sounded a little too real, the thousand-yard stare whenever someone mentioned mandatory overtime.

You'd seen it before: one day they're drinking instant coffee and guiding B-ranks through minor breaches, the next they're staring at the wall and whispering "I'm fine" like it's a lie they've told too many times to believe.

So, you made yourself present. Not pushy or clingy but just there. Like a houseplant, but taller and with worse coping mechanisms. You started dropping by his office after your missions under the noble excuse of stealing his snacks.

You made him leave the building for actual food when he looked pale enough to pass as a ghost. You started showing up at his apartment with takeout when he pretended he didn't have time to cook. (Spoiler: he never did have time to cook. You found out he considered cereal and three leftover fries a dinner once.)

But then the concern turned into something else. Something far less noble and a lot more annoying.

Because now you hang out with Ace not because you're worried about him burning out, but because he's kind of…your person? Despite the fact that he talks like he's the main character of a sitcom and eats chips like they owe him money, you've never had someone so effortlessly sync into your orbit. He makes everything a little funnier, a little lighter.

He gets your jokes. He rolls his eyes when you fake-dramatically pretend to collapse on the couch after missions, but he always tosses you a bottle of water after.

And if your heart fluttered the other day when he leaned in too close just to steal your fries with the kind of grin that should be illegal? No it didn't. Your heart was just startled. Yes. Like when a cat sees a cucumber. Totally physiological.

Because this is fine. You're fine. You're definitely not catching feelings for your Guide, who once tripped over his own shoelace trying to show off and who called you "a disaster in a cool jacket."

Nope.

This is normal. You're just...bonding. Like coworkers. Like comrades. Like people who happen to spend all their time together and sometimes maybe fall asleep shoulder to shoulder watching a bad sports documentary neither of you picked.

Totally normal. Completely not a problem. Everything's fine.

The floor of Ace's office had truly seen things. Blood, sweat, tears, a spilled iced coffee that achieved sapience for twelve minutes before being vanquished with a napkin.

And right now? It was you. You were part of the floor. You were the floor. The couch was unusable—stuffed with enough junk to declare itself a sovereign nation—and frankly, this was fine. Ace had stepped over you four times already and you had no intention of returning to vertical society.

Then the alert came in. It was the kind of blaring screech that implied the God themselves had stubbed their toe.

You didn't even lift your head—you just groaned into the suspiciously warm floor as Ace yelled from the other side of the room.

"Nope! Nope. Nuh-uh. I haven't even finished my boba!"

You tilted your head just enough to peek over at him. He was holding his phone like it had personally insulted his bloodline. "SSS-class gate," he read aloud, voice flat with horror. "This is workplace harassment."

You finally sat up and sighed. "S+ Espers are going in. A ranks are on standby."

Ace narrowed his eyes at you. "You're A rank."

"Congratulations on knowing the alphabet."

"Oh, you think you're funny now. Just wait till we get there and your kneecaps try to vacate the premises."

Despite the dramatics, he was already gathering his gear. You both knew there was no skipping this one. When a gate got rated SSS, it meant things were already bad enough that someone in admin had cried on the official report.

You reached the scene, and it looked like a discount apocalypse sale—everything must go! Reality included! A guide was crying into a clipboard. An Esper had tried to fight a monster with a traffic cone. One guy just laid down on the pavement like he was hoping the ground would adopt him.

You were getting out of the car when Ace suddenly reached over and gripped your wrist like he was trying to keep your soul tethered. His expression was weirdly serious for a guy wearing a hoodie that said "Espers Are Just Goth Pokémon."

"If you die in there," he said, "I'm going to kill you."

You blinked. "That's not… how that works."

"I will find a way."

You tried to smother your grin, but it was already halfway out. "You gonna haunt me?"

"I will invent necromantic litigation. I will sue your ghost."

You tried to reply but you were wheezing too hard to make words. He looked dead serious and also vaguely like he was going to cry. You ruffled his hair—he yelped like a kicked cat—and stepped out of the car.

You gave him a wink and a "Don't die while I'm gone, it's my turn first," before heading off into the swirling chaos of the gate breach.

Ace said something after you, but you didn't catch it.

You gave him a thumbs-up. That meant love. Probably.

The gate was already breathing wrong when you got there. That was never a good sign. Gates weren't supposed to breathe, and definitely not in that horrible stuttered wheeze like a dying fax machine.

You stood at the perimeter with the other A-ranks, all of you collectively pretending not to notice that the S+ Espers inside were fighting like their pensions were on the line. There was screaming. There was fire. At one point, a building developed teeth and bit someone. You weren't sure who, but they definitely didn't have insurance for that.

Usually in situations like this, someone higher up would appear and fix things with grace and devastating power—SS/ SSS Espers were good at that.

Unfortunately, all the top-tier meat shields had been scattered like sprinkles over three other hellmouths that had opened up across the city.

You'd gotten the memo about it twenty minutes ago and had been deeply hoping the gate would just collapse out of pity. Instead, it expanded. And burped. And then let out a sound like a blender full of marbles.

And then they called your name. Specifically. Because apparently someone up in the control center looked at the current death forecast and thought, Yes. Let's throw this poor A-rank into the cosmic garbage disposal. That'll go well.

You stepped in, and instantly regretted not writing a will. Or at least a passive-aggressive goodbye email to the HR department.

Calling it an SSS-rank gate was generous. You'd call it a "Don't ever speak to me or my timeline ever again" gate. It was evil in that weird, administrative way, where the environment itself wanted to make you cry. The gravity was off. The lighting was offensive. The monsters were aggressive, densely packed, and had no regard for personal space.

And there were so many. Every time you thought you'd cleared the last one, five more would spawn like this was a cursed MMORPG with no cooldown settings. At one point, you tripped over your own boot and ended up elbow-dropping a creature with more legs than opinions. Another Esper high-fived you mid-battle and then immediately exploded. You didn't even ask.

Your arms hurt. Your soul hurt. Your favorite jacket was in tatters, and you were reasonably sure your socks were on fire. After hour ten, you stopped checking your communicator and accepted that time was now a lie. You were running on adrenaline, spite, and whatever residual trauma gave you extra DPS.

And still—still—the gate wouldn't collapse. It refused to die. It was the kind of persistent that could ruin marriages and survive nuclear winter. You didn't even know where the monsters were coming from anymore. Were they breeding? Was the gate duplicating them out of salt and collective despair? You had questions, and none of them were getting answered because you were too busy trying not to get dismembered.

Then, around hour eighteen, just as you were beginning to suspect this would be your new full-time job until retirement or death (whichever came first), the air shifted.

The pressure dropped. The temperature dipped. And then an SSS-class Esper appeared at the gate's edge like they'd been summoned from the plane of Being Way Too Tired for This.

They didn't say a word. Just strolled in, wrecked the largest monster in a single move that looked suspiciously like an over-the-shoulder stretch, and then left without making eye contact. You didn't even catch their name.

What you did catch was the sigh of relief from every Esper present, followed by the collective collapse of ten people who had clearly been holding on out of sheer stubbornness.

You sat in the remains of a smashed car—might have been an Audi once—and looked at your busted gloves, cracked weapon, and gelt your internal organs playing musical chairs.

You considered dying. Then you remembered you'd promised Ace you wouldn't, and he'd probably kick your ghost out of spite. So instead, you closed your eyes, let the chaos buzz around you, and thought about how tomorrow, you were going to sleep for sixteen hours.

You woke up to someone shaking you like you were the vending machine that just ate their last coin.

"Hey. Hey. Don't do this. Wake up, right now. I swear, if you die, I'm putting ghost pepper in your electrolyte packets."

Your eyelids creaked open like they were rusted shut, and there was Ace's face hovering above yours, which would've been more comforting if he didn't look two seconds away from ripping the sky open with sheer panic.

"You're awake," he muttered, and for one unguarded moment, his whole expression went soft—terrified and overwhelmed and so stupidly relieved that it punched you harder than any S-rank monster ever had.

But then the emotion vanished like a magician's rabbit, replaced by a scowl so deep it could've been classified as a crater. "What the hell were you doing in there? Hosting a rave with your immune system? Playing tag with the horror squad?"

You blinked again, because your mouth wanted to say I'm fine but your brain was still buffering, and your limbs were attempting to unionize against the concept of "consciousness." You barely had enough strength to keep your eyes open, much less regulate your leaking powers, which was currently sparking.

Ace pressed his hands to your cheeks like he was trying to physically plug the chaos leaking out of your soul, muttering all the while. "Come on. You know how to do this. Sync with me. You've done it a million times. You got this. Don't go all Final Boss right now, I haven't even finished the side quests in my life."

His hands were warm, but your body was still in full static meltdown. Every time he tried to Guide, your energy fizzled, refused to settle, like it didn't trust him—not because he wasn't capable, but because you were too far gone, too brittle and overdrawn and already halfway to self-combustion.

You croaked something that might've been "calm down" or "carbonara," it was hard to tell.

"I am calm," he snapped, clearly lying. "I'm the calmest. Look at me, I'm a zen master. I'm inner peace incarnate. And if you die, I'm going to haunt your ass with passive-aggressive monologues about how you never listen to me."

He was spiraling. You were spiraling. There was an entire mutual disaster spiral happening in surround sound.

And then he did the most absurd thing.

He kissed you.

Just desperation and instinct and a split-second decision that said: if emotional regulation won't work, maybe making out will.

And—God—you kissed him back.

Because of course you did. Because somewhere between the midnight magic shows, the bad vending machine coffee, and the weirdly heartfelt threats about dying on his watch, you'd fallen stupidly, irrevocably in love with him.

The kiss was messy and slightly tilted because your body still thought gravity was a lie, but it worked. Your powers, which had been throwing a tantrum with the intensity of a sugar-high toddler, finally started to settle.

Not because of fancy techniques or textbook hand placements but because it was him. Just Ace, with all his ridiculous jokes and flailing hands and heart thudding loudly right under his hoodie.

When he finally pulled away, breathless and wide-eyed and clearly unsure what dimension he currently existed in, he didn't say anything at first. Just stared at you, jaw clenched, as if debating whether to scream or faint.

Then, in the flattest voice imaginable, he said: "You're banned. From gates. From work."

You laughed, because your soul was still a little frayed at the edges and your emotions had gone full goblin-mode. And Ace, clearly still running on leftover adrenaline and half a caffeine patch, leaned in again, kissed you like it was your punishment and his apology rolled into one, and whispered:

"Next time you do that, I'm requesting a raise and a leash. In that order."

When Ace took the Guiding classifier and got told he had "potential," he practically floated out of the room.

A rank, easy, he'd bragged to himself while spinning a pen between his fingers and imagining all the mildly impressive medals he'd soon be awarded. He hadn't even taken the real test yet, and he was already picturing himself leaned back in a high-backed ergonomic chair, sipping something overpriced while patting a trembling esper on the head and telling them, "It's okay, you're safe now." Preferably with dramatic lighting. Maybe a cape.

In theory, it was going to be glorious. In practice, it was a scam orchestrated by the universe to humble him.

The training program didn't help. Oh, sure, they talked about Gates and Espers and "emotional regulation" and "mental shielding," but no one ever sat him down and said, "Hey, kid, by the way, most of these people come out of Gates looking like they fought a Lovecraftian horror and lost."

No one showed him clips of people sobbing into their hands while leaking so much unstable energy it set off car alarms. And no one mentioned that sometimes the first Esper you ever have to Guide gets thrown at you by Leona Kingscholar himself like you're a damn emergency pillow.

That Esper being you was probably karma. He just didn't know what for.

He hadn't even had time to scream. One second he was adjusting his stupid tie (why had he even worn a tie, what was he trying to prove??), the next second he was catching a battle-scorched Esper like a sack of potatoes. He'd frozen. Completely blanked. Training forgotten. Mental scripts on fire.

You'd been glowing like a Christmas ornament left too close to a microwave, and he was just there, mouth open, hands half-raised, wondering if this was the part where he got fired or vaporized or both.

And then—you guided him.

You grabbed his hands like it was normal and pressed them to your cheeks with the resigned look someone who had absolutely no faith in his skills and wasn't subtle about it. "Just do it like this," you'd mumbled. And you were trembling, clearly on the verge of blowing a hole in the parking lot, and he was supposed to be the one grounding you—but instead you talked him through it. Patient. Steady. Calm.

He was the Guide. You were the one glowing with leaking energy. And you had to help him stabilize you.

And the kicker? It worked.

Somehow, between the tremors in your fingers and the pulse of too-much-power in your veins, the sync clicked. You stabilized. He didn't faint. There was no catastrophic explosion. Just silence, breath, and the faint, nauseating hum of vending machine coffee warming behind him.

Which, speaking of, was what you gave him as a thank-you. Bad vending machine coffee in a paper cup with your fingers still shaking. He took it because it felt too awkward not to. It tasted like burnt toast and regret.

He sat with that coffee for ten full minutes after you left. Staring. Processing.

He might be in trouble.

Ace wasn't built for warzones. He was built for dodging responsibility, making snide comments, and winning card games with smug grins and sleight of hand—not for waiting outside a screaming, crackling Gate that looked like it wanted to swallow the sky.

His first week as a Guide had been a slow descent into madness already. His coworkers were all clinically unhinged in different flavors. And now he was standing thirty feet away from a Gate that radiated the kind of energy that made your bones itch. Great.

And then you, ever the chaos-swathed miracle you were, showed up, took one look at him, and said, "Go sit in my car."

"Wait, what?"

"Car. Americano. Dashboard. Stay put. Don't explode."

He wanted to argue—something about not needing to be babied, something about not wanting your pity—but you shoved your keys into his hands with that A-rank glare that suggested you'd knock him out with one of your boots if he didn't obey.

So he went. He sat in your car like a well-trained pet, sipped your surprisingly good americano, and found the emergency chocolate you kept stashed in the side panel. And he thought, as he gnawed through caramel and panic, that this was probably your weird, overpowered Esper way of saying, I've got this. Don't worry.

When you finally stumbled out of the Gate hours later, looking like you'd been dragged through hell by the ankles, his heart dropped to somewhere around his knees.

He didn't even think. He was on the ground in front of you in seconds, pressing his hands to yours, trying every technique he could remember. His voice shook, but his hands didn't. Not now. You were relying on him. It was the least he could do.

Afterward, you leaned into him, quietly muttering something about how gross those monsters were, and he didn't have the heart to tell you that you'd just bled on his hoodie. He didn't care anyway.

He just held you tighter, tucked your keys back into your pocket, and decided he might start bringing emergency chocolate. Not for you, obviously.

Ace knew he was screwed the moment he moved into his office and met the cast of his new workplace.

The halls were filled with chaos incarnate wearing ID badges. There was the one guy who muttered to himself in five different languages and might've been growing moss. Someone had definitely duct-taped a "don't feed the Esper" sign on a door.

And there was a B-rank Esper with the energy of a caffeinated raccoon doing cartwheels in the training yard. Ace stood there with a box full of supplies, his dignity hanging on by a thread, and genuinely considered walking right back out.

You helping him move in had been unexpected. You were just there, strolling up with a stale bagel in one hand and a half-sincere "Need help, rookie?" on your face. He'd recognized you immediately—how could he not? You were the Esper who'd practically hotwired his Guide training back to life just a few days ago by pressing his hands to your face like it was a universal adapter.

He still had nightmares about it. Slightly fond nightmares. Unfortunately.

Still, you seemed—comparatively—normal. You didn't bite anyone. You didn't hiss at the fire drill siren. You didn't threaten to collapse a hallway with your brain. You were also sharp and a little terrifying, yeah, but you also handed him a coffee without judgment and helped him navigate the vending machine settings that lied about having lemon tea.

So when he was told three days later that he was being assigned an exclusive Esper, he fully assumed it was a mistake. What did they mean, "exclusive"?

That sounded like some VIP bonding situation that required a blood pact and a welcome fruit basket. Why didn't anyone tell him who it was? Was it a typo? Was it a trap? Was it Leona? Would he survive a second throwing?

He spiraled. Openly. Loudly. He was mid-rant, flailing a pen around like it personally betrayed him, muttering about how he was too young and too pretty to be sacrificed this way—when you walked into his office and stood there like you belonged.

He blinked at you.

You grinned and said, "I'm your new Esper."

He died. Briefly.

There was a moment of silence in which he reconsidered every life decision that had brought him here. Then he laughed, a little hysterical, and buried his face in his hands like he could dissolve into the floor tiles. "Of course it's you," he muttered. "Of course it is."

Because fate clearly hated him. And because you had that look in your eye like you already knew this was going to be hilarious. And because the universe had decided that Ace Trappola, rookie Guide and emotionally constipated disaster, was going to have to survive this job with you of all people.

Ace had never cared about ethical produce a day in his life. He didn't care if the tomato had a name, a mortgage, and three kids—it just had to go in his pasta.

But apparently, being a Guide also meant being roped into group outings under the guise of "team bonding" and "supporting local agriculture," which is how he found himself at a farmer's market full of artisanal beets, overpriced mushrooms, and Guides pretending they could taste the difference between moral zucchini and regular ones.

He was already plotting his escape via a strategically-timed "emergency call" (read: pretending to answer his ringtone-less phone and bolting) when the sky cracked open and the unmistakable shimmer of a Gate ripped through the middle of the market.

To say Ace wasn't prepared would be a generous understatement. The most violent thing he'd seen that week was someone cutting in line at the burrito stand.

But now? Now there were monsters with too many eyes and not enough laws about personal space crawling out from the produce section, and he was standing on top of a stall throwing apples at a thing that looked like it ate dreams for breakfast.

He'd never seen a Gate monster up close before, only in training footage. In those, everyone fought like it was choreographed.

What they didn't show was the part where your knees shook and your brain screamed, "This is fine," while you tried to bludgeon a slime demon with a persimmon.

Then you appeared—sprinting in like some post-apocalyptic action hero, and Ace could have cried. No, really. If his tear ducts weren't frozen in pure existential terror, he might have.

You didn't mock him for his current situation, which was a feat in itself. You just helped take down the monster like it was just a regular day in your life and then let him lean into you as the adrenaline crashed and the smell of radishes filled the air.

When you pulled him closer, murmuring something like "Good job, produce warrior," he thought his soul left his body and slapped him on the back of the head.

Ace wasn't dramatic. Really. But he was genuinely unsure if his heart would survive the way yours beat steadily against his chest like nothing could hurt him as long as you were there.

He wasn't touching an organic vegetable ever again, though. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Ace was not okay.

No matter how many times he told himself he was. No matter how confidently he pretended the slime monster at the farmers' market hadn't scarred his soul and permanently altered his relationship with zucchini. No matter how many snide jokes he made about "getting slimed Nickelodeon-style"—he was very much not okay.

He'd wake up sweating, convinced he could still smell radishes and horror. He started carrying a flashlight in his pocket "just in case." He got weirdly jumpy around cucumbers.

And at 3 AM, lying flat on his back in bed, surrounded by crumbs from three different snack brands and trying to decide if the ceiling crack looked like a crying bird or a turnip, he realized something terrifying.

He needed to talk to someone.

Worse—he needed you.

So he called you. At 3:08 AM. Because, in his defense, time was fake and also he was spiraling. He had fully prepared for you to reject him. Or cuss him out. Or maybe teleport into his room just to stab him for waking you up.

Instead, you picked up and just… said, "I'll come. Text me the location."

And he froze. For five whole seconds. Phone still pressed to his ear, staring at it like it had just turned into a very smug banana.

"…Wait, for real?"

"Yes, Ace. For real. I'm already putting on pants."

"Ugh, cringe. Could've shown up pantsless for the drama."

He met you thirty minutes later, wildly underdressed in a hoodie and one croc, the other foot bare because the matching croc had vanished under mysterious circumstances and time was of the essence. You gave him a Look, and said nothing about it.

Just raised an eyebrow at the theater sign blinking "The Mystifying Mustachio & Friends!" and followed him in like this was a completely normal thing for battle-hardened combat Esper-Guide duos to do on a random weeknight.

The magic show was, predictably, a tragedy.

It was less "magic" and more "cheap dollar store props and one dude's misguided dream." A dove escaped during the second act and dive-bombed a toddler. One of the assistants audibly whispered the next card before the magician could "guess" it.

You laughed so hard you nearly slid out of your seat. Ace laughed even harder, maybe because he was delirious or maybe because he needed this. Needed something so dumb and low-stakes and idiotic after nearly getting dismembered at a produce stall.

Halfway through, he looked over and caught your profile in the flickering spotlight. You were still chuckling, leaning on his shoulder like you belonged there. Your fingers tapped absently on his arm in time with the magician's increasingly dramatic music.

And you didn't ask why he looked like he hadn't slept in a week. Or why he flinched when the magician pulled a rabbit out of his hat with a slightly wet squelching sound that, unfortunately, reminded Ace of slime monsters. You just leaned back in your seat, laughed louder than anyone else at the terrible sleight of hand, and nudged him every time a trick went wrong.

And Ace, in turn, said absolutely nothing about how your shoulder kept brushing his.

Did his heart flutter a little? Maybe. Was he going to tell anyone about that? Not unless someone wanted to get roundhouse kicked into another Gate.

You didn't talk about the slime monster. You didn't ask how he was doing. But you came to that dumb magic show at three in the morning, and that was more grounding than anything he'd gotten from mandatory post-trauma Guide therapy.

Maybe he was still a little messed up. Maybe he'd never buy ethically sourced squash again.

He would never say any of that out loud, of course. If you even hinted that he was getting sentimental, he'd chew drywall. But deep down, while watching Mustachio pull a limp bouquet out of his sleeve and dramatically yell "ABRACADABRA!" with enthusiasm, Ace thought—

Yeah, okay. I think I might be in love.

When the emergency alert for a full-blown SSS-ranked gate lit up his phone like it was Christmas and the apocalypse had scheduled a joint party, Ace was very vocally Not Okay™.

He didn't want you to go in. No part of him wanted you to walk into the flaming jaws of death. But how do you say that to someone without also saying "If you die, I will never recover, I will fall apart like a badly made IKEA shelf, and I'm already two screws short as is"? You can't. Not without it sounding like a confession.

So instead, he told you, "If you die in there, I swear to god I'll kill you myself."

You laughed, ruffled his hair into oblivion, and climbed out of the car with the swagger of someone who was entirely too casual about going into monster hell.

He muttered a barely-audible "don't leave me" into the steering wheel the moment the door closed. Which, thankfully, you did not hear. Ego: saved. Mental health: wrecked.

What followed was eighteen hours of what he could only describe as spiritual waterboarding. The kind of dread that nestles under your skin and chews through your ribs like a termite.

Every time another mangled esper came out of the gate looking like they'd aged six years and lost their last two brain cells, Ace had to stop himself from throwing himself into the gate with a sign that said "WHERE'S MY DUMB ESPER" and fists full of prayer.

And then the gate finally stabilized. The air stilled. And you—

You were lying there. In the middle of it all. Motionless.

Ace didn't remember running. One second he was behind the barricades, the next he was on the ground, hands shaking you, voice cracking like a poorly tuned violin.

"Wake up, come on, don't be stupid, this isn't funny, you're not allowed to make jokes about ugly monsters and then become one, wake the hell up—"

And then you blinked. Eyes barely focusing, but looking at him.

And for one heartbeat, Ace thought everything was fine.

Until he realized your energy was so unstable he couldn't even sync with you. He couldn't stabilize you. He couldn't even bring you back to baseline. He tried everything—breathing exercises, grounding, full contact hand-holding—and nothing worked. You were too far gone, and he didn't know what to do.

And you—being you, being you—were still trying to calm him down. Which, frankly, pissed him off even more because this was backwards. He was the Guide, you were the Esper, why were you comforting him while actively dying?

He didn't think. He just kissed you.

It was frantic, and messy, and tasted like ash. He kissed you because he was scared, and because you were still warm, and because if he didn't do it now, he'd never get the chance. He kissed you because he loved you. Had loved you for a while now. Loved you so much that watching you on the floor had made him feel like the whole world had just punched through his chest.

And when he finally pulled back, panting, hands still on your face like he could tether you there—your energy finally clicked into place. The guiding finally worked.

You smiled, loopy and exhausted. And Ace, who didn't even try to hide it anymore, kissed you again. Slower. Steadier.

"You're not allowed to do this again," he whispered into your temple, voice trembling.

Because this time he'd managed to bring you back.

Next time, he wasn't sure if he could survive it.

You were technically supposed to be on medical leave. That meant sleep. Rest. A healthy amount of soup and zero proximity to gates, monsters, or things that try to eat you faster than your anxiety.

But what it actually meant was you lying on the couch, nursing a dull, bone-deep ache, while Ace paced around your apartment like a wind-up toy someone forgot to turn off.

He was jittery in a way that made even you concerned, and you'd once finished a mission with three cracked ribs and a mild concussion and still stopped to buy an energy drink on the way home.

His leg bounced when he sat. He kept sighing like he was auditioning for a tragic play. He reorganized your spice rack. He threatened to reorganize your socks.

Eventually, you were like, enough is enough. You cornered him by physically grabbing the front of his hoodie while he was mid-fidget and pulled him down onto the couch with you.

"What's going on in that Guide brain of yours," you asked, voice soft but very, very serious. "You've been twitchy for three days. Are you dying? Are you going to attempt a second reorganization of my kitchen? Please tell me before I preemptively set something on fire."

He stared at you for a long second. And then he said, quieter than you'd ever heard him, "I can't do it again."

You blinked. "Do what?"

"I can't see you like that again," he muttered. "I thought—when you didn't wake up right away, when you didn't stabilize, I thought I was gonna lose you. And it's not fair. It's not fair for you to keep throwing yourself at death and expect me to sit on the sidelines. It's not fine."

You had no words for that. Your throat clenched. Because he wasn't wrong. This world was a mess and you'd grown used to being one of the few willing to throw yourself in headfirst. Because someone had to. Because if not you, then who?

But Ace had always been in the middle of it too. Not as flashy or as reckless, but there. And maybe you hadn't realized just how deep your scars were starting to show on him too.

"I'm sorry," you said eventually, voice low. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"I know," he said. "But I also know you're not gonna stop, so I'm not asking you to. Just—bond with me."

You blinked again. "What."

"Permanently," he clarified, in the tone of someone very determined and also slightly terrified. "So I always know where you are. So I can reach you faster. So you'll always be tethered to me and I can yank your sorry ass back before you're too far gone."

Your heart did a weird thing. It fluttered. And it ached.

You looked at him, at his furrowed brows and stubborn little frown, and you knew it wasn't just about the utility of it. He didn't want to lose you. Not ever.

"Okay," you said, and the smile you gave him was the softest one you'd managed in months. "Let's do it."

You kissed him. You kissed him the way you'd been wanting to for ages, with no near-death scenario in the background this time. Just the two of you and the smell of burned popcorn and a couch that really should be cleaned.

Later, when the bond was sealed and his energy pressed warm and familiar against yours, you leaned into his shoulder and sighed.

"Life is still garbage," you mumbled.

"Yeah," Ace agreed. "Certified dumpster fire."

"But," you added, pressing a kiss to his cheek, "at least I've got my favorite Guide."

"Ugh," he groaned, hiding his very red ears. "You're so sappy when you're not actively dying."

You laughed.

And maybe life did suck.

But if you had Ace? You could live with that.

Masterlist ; Series Masterlist

#twst x reader #twisted wonderland x reader #twst #twisted wonderland #ace trappola x reader #twst ace #ace x reader #ace trappola #ace #࣪ ִֶָ☾. guideverse

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esotericbluntbaby · 6 months ago

Note

request! i read in your post you wanted angst requests, and i loveee the trope of him being a jealous roommate, and seeing you with another guy, leading to an argument about it. honestly, do whatever you feel right, i believe your writing style is so unique you couldn’t mess it up.

untitled

hamzahthefantastic x reader

description: a night of studying obviously entails stressful situations: not knowing the answers to your problems, sleep deprivation, and cramming, to say the least. however, another problem arises when you decide to hold a small study session with a boy from your class: a roommate who hates your study partner.

mentions: angst, jealousy, argument, she/her pronouns, angsty love confession, happy ending, making out, mostly sfw!

thank u to whoever sent the request. small comments and compliments really keep me going <33

you were sleep deprived, to say the least.

violet bags formed droops underneath your eyes, followed by the weighted heaviness your eyelids held with each blink threatening to be longer and longer each time. your back was almost curled into a "c," slumped onto your desk as your head was held in your left hand, pencil being grazed upon paper in your right. exhaustion devoured the whole point of the study session: to hold as much material in your brain as you could about the material for your final exam in two days.

you started off strong at around 5:00 in the afternoon. the material was able to be grasped and understood as if it was truly a part of you that was forgotten and remembered. however, the longer the you stared at the numbers and symbols on your notebook, the more your brain turned as mushy as a rotten apple. one redbull turned into three cans, in addition to a shot of espresso taken at around 12:00 in the morning, as you delved deeper into the madness of the units you learned in math.

now, you originally were going to do this completely on your own. you've done it before; actually, you've done it so many times that it's almost expected of you to procrastinate until the last minute to study and review, no matter how many times it ends with regret, twenty pages of notes, and sleep deprivation. however, after posting about how much you've been struggling with a certain subset of problems given in the study guide, logan, a boy from the same math class as you, texted.

he told you he could help you if he needed: that he could come over and assist you with your studying, since he understood the material quite well. you believed him, since you sat next to him constantly. each time papers and tests were being handed back to you, your eyes lingered and glanced at his paper, an A+ written in slanted cursive each time at the top of his paper. though you've studied by yourself many times and each time got a knowledgable, thoughtful grade, you began to lose hope in yourself. so, logan showed up at your doorstep at around 1:00 in the morning.

you both crammed and retained as many formulas, problems, and tactics as you could as the sun began to rise slowly and steadily, showing and revealing itself to the residents living in the northern hemisphere. by the time the sun was fully up, around 7:30 in the morning, you told him that you could take it from here and that he was free to leave now.

as you walked him out, your roommate sat on the brown, leather couch of your shared apartment, binge watching some random show he found on the netflix account you both had access to. this wasn't an unusual sight; hamzah streamed quite often, most of the time resulting in all-nighters or a scattered sleep schedule. however, the sight in front of him was the unusual one: who the fuck is that blonde haired boy who was in your room, leaving at 7:42 in the morning? his eyes widened at the thought of another man stayed in the same room as you for the entire night. that was practically his room; hamzah had clothes in there, as well as his monkey plush that the both of you got together. another man was practically in his space and he did not take it lightly.

"bye logan. thanks for all the help last night. i really appreciate it," you thanked, genuinely grateful that he was able to help you with your studies.

he smiled a toothy grin, "yeah, anytime! just call me whenever you need me. i'll be there."

his backpack, full of textbooks and notebooks from the night, was the last thing hamzah saw before the door was shut and his roommate's body was turned towards him. he noticed how rough you looked; eyes half-shut and lidded with an intense look of sleepiness laced into your gaze, as well as a yawn coming from out of your mouth before you began to converse with him.

he smiled at you, momentarily forgetting the fact that you just walked a boy out of your apartment, "morning, pretty."

you and hamzah's relationship was weird; you weren't really dating, yet, you weren't really only friends either. there was an certain unspoken tension between the two of you; a tension that kept you connected with string, yet couldn't be cut even if you had the sharpest pair of scissors available. you enjoyed his presence, he enjoyed yours. however, you both also didn't want to ruin what you already had, so it was a simple understanding of each other that never got to be turned into spoken word.

"morning, hamzah. did you sleep at all?" you asked him.

he turned down the volume of the show in front of him with the remote, "huh? oh, nah. i was streaming 'til like, 6, or something. who's he?"

you looked around the room for another body besides yours and the boy in front of you, "who's who?"

"the guy you just walked out of the apartment," his voice had a slight essence of an attitude in it, "the one that looks like fuckin butters from south park."

you laughed, taking a seat next to him and resting your head on his shoulder , "that's logan. he was just helping me out with something last night."

"how long was he here?"

"he came here around, like, 1 in the morning. why?"

"'nothin," he said, turning the volume back up.

logan became a regular guest at the house, oddly showing up mostly at weird hours of the morning. most of the time, it was you answering the knock on your wooden front door, greeting him and going to your room to study some more. on the contrary, the times where hamzah was conveniently in the living room watching a show or editing a video and the door knocked, he became slightly hostile. each time, no matter where or what you were doing, he wouldn't answer the door. the first couple times, you didn't realize it; you thought that possibly hamzah could've not heard the knock because of how loud he watches his shows. however, you soon realized that he simply just wouldn't get up. you shrugged it off, letting him in after he texted you that he was outside the door.

currently, your exams are on pause for the break that you were given from school. your sleep schedule was in ruins, either sleeping at 6 in the morning or 5 in the afternoon. you noticed that throughout the break, hamzah was distant, only occasionally asking you if you wanted some food that he was cooking or if the wifi was out. you missed him. you didn't know what was wrong, nor what was happening. his short responses and leaving the room whenever you entered was confusing you. a week ago, you two were cuddling on the couch and he was forcing you to watch horror movies with him. now, he leaves the room whenever any part of your body touches the wooden floor of your living room. at 12:00 in the morning, you decided that enough was enough.

you knocked onto his bedroom door, before letting yourself in. his eyes remained locked onto the screen in front of him, not caring to recognize that you were now in his room. he seemed standoffish; he seemed cold. it was like the man that was once radiating a certain warmth from within himself was extinguished and watered down. it worried you, really. you wanted him back, though he wasn't yours.

"are you streaming?" you asked him.

his eyes remained stagnant and his voice spoke to you in the same monotonous tone, "no."

"do you wanna go do something?"

"like?"

you sat on his bed next to him, "i dunno. anything."

"can't. busy."

you were tired, however, not tired in a way that can be fixed with sleep. in fact, you didn't know how this could be fixed. though the connection you two had was never truly spoken about and simply understood through actions and gestures, you finally decided to speak about it.

"hamzah."

"what?"

"what's wrong? did something happen?"

he finally made eye contact with you, "nothing's wrong, nothing happened."

"you've been so distant, something's wrong. y'know you can talk to me about anything, right-"

he swiveled his chair towards you, frustration painted as a mural onto his face, "jesus fucking christ, dude. just because i don't wanna go out- it doesn't mean anything."

you were taken aback, "it's not even just today. it's this whole week. did i do something wrong?"

"if you wanna go out so bad, why don't you go ask logan?"

a switch suddenly flipped into your head; hamzah was jealous. putting yourself in his shoes, you understood why he was; not only was he jealous, but he was rightfully so. you didn't realize that your nights were now always spent studying and memorizing instead of spending time with him.

"why would i go ask logan?"

hamzah scoffs, "why wouldn't you go ask him? he's over almost every fucking time i try to go ask you if you wanna go get food or go watch a movie. you might as well date the kid if you're gonna be sleeping with him every night while dragging me along."

"hamzah-"

his eye contact remained intense, "no, i'm not done. fuck, i thought we had something. i thought those nights on the couch where we'd just sit and talk and watch random shit and make fun of random shit meant something. i liked you. i liked you so fucking much. and then logan comes around and just steals you. what does he have that i don't?"

"hamzah-"

"i'm still not done. i would've loved to be with you and do corny couple shit with you if you weren't with him. shit, i feel fucking stupid because i still would love to be with you and it's so, so obvious you don't feel the same way. do you know how much it hurts to hear you two at night? our rooms are next to each other, do you realize i can hear you guys laughing? then, when it's quiet, i just think about how you guys could be sleeping together and cuddling just like how we did. this kid- he came out of fucking nowhere. and now suddenly, i'm just fucking alone and you just fucking left me. it's like your fingers are intertwined in my brain and just fucking with every single fold. why did you do that? why would you do that-"

impulse struck your brain like lightning on the highest mountain peak. hamzah wouldn't shut up. yet, he's never really shut up a day in his life. so, you did the obvious. you grabbed his cheeks, forcefully making his face directly in front of yours. your lips landed on his, a kiss of desperation and risky acts.

you pulled away, not realizing what you were doing until after it happened. you both looked at each other wide-eyed and shocked, almost as if a total stranger kissed both of you.

"fuck- i'm sorry- i don't know why i did that-"

he grabbed your face with both of his hands, cupping your cheeks in each one. his lips, once again, settled on yours. this kiss was different; the way you kissed him was spontaneous and filled with uncertainty. his, on the other hand, was rough and needed. you never realized how truly needy hamzah was until the moment where he pulled you onto his lap, straddling his lap. his hands made its way up and down your body. his tongue, tasting like the mint gum he was chewing before you came into his room, entered your mouth as if it lived there previously. you both were upset at each other, however, with every moment where your lips were touching, it was like you completely forgot why you both were tense. you attempted to pull away; you remembered that you still needed to explain everything. however, you watched as his lips grew magnetic to yours, attempting to chase after your mouth like he would die from even a split second apart.

"hamzah. i don't like logan."

his eyes turned soft compared to the gaze he gave you beforehand, "did you sleep with him?"

"no, baby, i didn't."

his heart melted at you calling him baby. you could see it in his eyes and the yearning expression he gave you.

"what were you guys doing at, like, 3 in the morning?"

"i've been struggling with math. i don't really know anyone else that's good at it, either. so when he offered to help me study, i took him up on it. it's at weird hours because he has work."

guilt began to eat hamzah up. he realized he had just scolded you for something that his brain made him believe, as well as the fact that he could have simply talked to you about it.

"i'm sorry. i'm actually so sorry- i don't know why i didn't just ask you. i just assumed that he was like, i don't know, a sneaky link or something."

you kissed him on the cheek, lovingly, "it's okay. i should've told you that he was just helping me study. i'm sorry, too."

you stayed there for a solid hour, with you still straddling his waist in his gaming chair with your legs. it wasn't sexual at all; in fact, it was the opposite. your arms wrapped around his neck as his arms wrapped around your back. your face held shelter in the area between his neck and his shoulder, finding solitude within the boy in front of you. it was silent, until hamzah decided to break the quietude filling the room.

"do you still wanna go out?"

you removed your face from his neck to look at him, "hamzah, it's one in the morning."

"so? i thought you wanted to go somewhere- get out of this apartment."

you gave him a peck on the lips, "no. i just wanted an excuse to be with you."

authors note!

okay i dont rly like how this turned out but i'll post it anyways. i might update it n add some more detail into it later on. have a good rest of ur day/night! i will eventually get to all the requests i get, but please be patient since i do have school outside of this <3

#hamzah fic #hamzah imagines #hamzah x reader #hamzahthefantastic #slushy noobz #hamzah fluff #hamzahthefanatasticxreader #hamzah x y/n

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haikyu-mp4 · 9 months ago

Text

Get to know you

Fluffy workplace romance working for the MSBY Black Jackals with your crush Sakusa, for my workplace romance event <3

requested by @act-nat-ural. word count; 1319 – f!reader

“Hi, Sakusa!” you greeted, voice way sweeter than when you greeted any of the other players who arrived that morning. Sakusa nodded his head once in greeting before heading to the wardrobe, leaving you to cover your face with your hands and groan in defeat.

Having a huge, obvious crush on Sakusa Kiyoomi was already hell, but actually acting on it and trying to both gain his attention and act cool about it, that was even worse.

You’re an assistant manager for MSBY, always ready with their water bottles, towels and a thorough review of their game stats. For any events, you were there as well, doing your best to predict their needs.

Atsumu patted your shoulder. “That’s just Omi for ya, don’t mind him.”

You pouted, getting out your notepad to ready it for today’s notes. “I would think less of him if I could,” you mumbled, making the rusty wheels in Atsumu’s head start turning.

Ohh… our manager has a crush!

On the way to the press event, you were squished in the middle seat between Hinata and Sakusa, gnawing at your lips as if that would make you any less nervous.

As you neared the location, you fumbled around in your purse for something while Hinata loudly practised his manuscript. Just as Sakusa was about to turn to you and ask for something, you held your hand out with a small bottle of unscented sanitiser. The kind that was all flat and could fit in his blazer pocket.

He looked up in surprise, silently meeting your eyes with a grateful nod. Instead of holding his hands out, he took the bottle from you and distributed it himself before sneaking it into his pocket.

While he rubbed his hands together, your attention was drawn back to the shorter player who asked you for some details.

It might have been your delusions, but it seemed like Sakusa stuck around you while inside the event building, sighing in relief when you had brought an extra mask for him just in case.

It even earned you a spoken, “You’re a lifesaver.”

After a division game finished in a victory for the Jackals, you ecstatically handed out bottles and towels, doing your best to praise all the players on their individual performance.

You were about to turn to Inunaki when someone stumbled into you, a flurry of awkward limbs and curly hair. Sakusa held your shoulders to steady himself, grumbling an apology and childishly accusing Miya of pushing him.

You smiled nervously before looking to the side so he wouldn’t notice your blush. “Don’t worry. And your spikes were amazing today, Sakusa. Good job.”

Sakusa eyed you for a second before stepping away, throwing a “Thank you, y/n” over his shoulder as he moved along with the rest of the team.

He said your name.

On the last practice of the week, before you would all have a week off for autumn break, you were surprised to find a cup of coffee sitting on the bench where you usually sat. You blinked at it for a second before asking the coach if it was his, holding it up to him and feeling it was still warm.

“It has your name on it,” the coach said, making you turn the cup in surprise only to find he was right. Your name was written on the back in cursive, with a little smiley at the end.

Looking around, you checked to see if anyone was waiting for you to acknowledge them, but no one was. All the players had lined up for warm-ups led by Meian, so you left the mystery for another time.

Unexpectedly, he added, “Someone already filled the first round of bottles as well, so you can just take a rest until they start the drills.”

It made you stutter, unsure if this might be some test to see if you were still motivated enough for the job, but the coach’s smile made you agree and sit down. You silently drank the coffee and watched the players until you finally had to get to work, and the empty cup was tucked away in your bag.

If only you dared look at Sakusa, who was staring from the corner with a small smile on his face, happy you could take a breather before running around to cater for them all day.

He wondered if that one was actually your favourite coffee, or if you just got it because it was cheaper. He wondered if you liked going to cafes and if you had other hobbies. He wondered if you knew how to cook and what season of the year you liked most.

Sakusa found himself to be very… interested in you.

You were dressed in the most gorgeous dress you could find, in a colour you loved and with your most shiny necklace locked around your neck. To say the least, you felt exquisite.

However, your hands were anxiously fiddling with the fabric. It’s a Christmas party, reserved only for the team and their staff. The players were dressed up in suits and you were pretty sure everyone had noticed by now how your eyes trailed after Sakusa.

It should be illegal to look that good.

You jumped as a figure dropped onto the chair beside you. “Is that drool on your chin?” he teased, pointing to the side of his own mouth with a wolfish grin. You punched his shoulder loosely, but your other hand was still raised to check for any drool.

It made the setter laugh heartily, and you shielded your face from everyone as they turned to look. “Atsumu,” you groaned. “Shouldn’t you be embarrassing yourself on the dance floor by now?”

“Ha, ha.” The man settled into the chair, and you eventually turned to look at him properly. He almost forgot what he was supposed to say, not used to seeing you so dolled up. You looked amazing. “I suppose you don’t want to hear my plan to get you and Sakusa together, then.”

“Hardly,” you agreed. “But I bet you’ll tell me anyway.”

An arm rested across the back of your chair and the setter leaned closer. “Right you are. Now, the DJ has been instructed to play a slow song next, and you will ask dear grumpy to dance.”

You looked at him wide-eyed before your gaze automatically moved to the grumpy in question. “I can’t just do that. Have you seen him today?”

Atsumu rolled his eyes. “Him? Look at you.”

You had to give it to Atsumu. He got you dancing with Sakusa, arms resting around his neck while you did your best not to step on his feet. His hands were firm on your waist, but his dancing was stiff.

Make the most of it, you decide. Taking a deep breath, you finally look up at Sakusa to find him staring at you with an unusual flush painted upon his cheeks.

“Are you okay, Sakusa?”

“Kiyoomi.” You raised your eyebrows, making him carefully clear his throat. “You can call me Kiyoomi.”

“Kiyoomi.” Your heart skipped a beat when his face responded by growing even warmer as you repeated his name. “Are you having a good time?”

“A little embarrassed you asked me before I could ask you, but at least we got to dance.”

You let out a small gasp as he twirled you, making you smile even more. “Do you like dancing?” you asked him as he pulled you back to his chest, seeming to loosen up more in his movements.

“Not particularly. But I think I like you.”

And to say the butterflies fluttered in your stomach would be an understatement. “I think I like you too.”

Your eyes spoke a thousand words that night, fluttering lashes and soft looks coming together to tell the other how you felt. I would like to get to know you more.

masterlist

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kk095 · 2 months ago

Text

Shay’s Sudden Arrest

The automatic doors hissed open, letting in a pair of paramedics. Between them rolled a stretcher bearing a young woman with sun-kissed skin, tangled blonde hair matted slightly to one side, and piercing blue eyes that blinked against the bright hospital lighting. She looked more like someone headed to a weigh-in than someone checking into an emergency room.

“Name’s Shay Strong, twenty-six year old female.” one of the medics called out as they proceeded towards Trauma Bay One. “Passed out cold during light sparring- she’s a pro MMA fighter. Trainer said she looked a little off just before she hit the mat. Tachycardic on scene, BP’s a little soft. No trauma. No drugs or alcohol on board as far as we can tell.” The second medic rattled off.

Dr Lindsay approached and glanced up from the chart she’d been reviewing and nodded for them to bring her in. She was already tugging on gloves as she stepped into the bay, with Dr Jen the resident trailing behind her and Nurse Heather circling around.

“Hey Shay, I’m Dr Lindsay. I heard you fainted today?” she said as the stretcher clicked into place beside the trauma room table. Shay nodded, her voice low and a little hoarse as they transferred her over to the table. “Yeah. Just felt… weird, ya know? Like, a little dizzy I guess.”

She didn’t look like the type to go down easy. Even lying flat, she carried herself like someone used to getting hit and getting back up. Her toned arms were a canvas of bold, dark ink- coiled serpents on one bicep, a geometric tiger on the other, the edges of color disappearing under the bands of muscle. A glint caught the light where a nose ring curved through her right nostril, and as Heather snipped her sports bra to attach monitor leads, Lindsay caught the flash of a piercing through her nipples. Some cursive ink framed the sides of her ribs and curved along her right thigh was a floral tattoo, all intricate.

Heather worked quickly, pressing leads to Shay’s chest and murmuring quietly. “HR’s 132. BP’s 92 over 58.”

“Got PVCs on the monitor. Could be nothing. Could be something.” Dr Jen chimed in, already pulling up a blank EKG strip.

Lindsay leaned over to meet Shay’s eyes. “Any chest pain? Shortness of breath? Dizziness before you went down?” the doctor asked. “Not really. Just… I don’t know. I’ve been feeling off the last couple days. Figured it was overtraining or something.” Answered Shay. She didn’t look panicked. Just slightly dazed, maybe a little too quiet for someone her age in that kind of shape. That in itself was a red flag.

Lindsay exchanged a glance with Heather. “Let’s get labs, full cardiac panel. EKG, portable chest X-ray. And let’s call cardiology early- I don’t want to wait on this one.” Ordered Lindsay. Jen scribbled notes while Heather gently guided Shay’s arm to insert an IV. The tattoo of a phoenix flared up from her forearm, its wings half swallowed by gauze and tape. Shay looked up at the ceiling, blinking slowly. “This is probably nothing, right?” Shay asked. Lindsay hesitated before answering. “We’ll know soon. But your heart’s throwing out some signals we don’t want to ignore.” Answered Lindsay, her tone neutral and calm.

By the time the EKG machine spat out its second strip, Dr Jen was already frowning. “Frequent PVCs.” she muttered, holding the paper up toward the overhead light. “This isn’t just stress or dehydration. Something’s messing with her conduction.” Added the resident. Lindsay leaned in, scanning the sharp, jagged rhythms marching across the strip. “It’s diffuse. Not localized. And look- ST depressions in the lateral leads.” Dr Lindsay pointed out. Heather appeared from the hallway with a tray of labeled tubes. “Cardiac panel’s off to the lab. I rushed it- told them we’d owe them coffee.” Nurse Heather informed them.

Jen was already pulling up the portable chest X-ray on the trauma room computer. It took a moment for the image to load, but when it did, Lindsay narrowed her eyes at the screen. “Mild cardiomegaly. You see it?” Dr Lindsay noticed. “Yep.” Jen answered. “Heart’s too big for someone her age, especially with this kind of conditioning.” The resident continued.

Shay, still lying flat on the table with a light sheen of sweat forming on her collarbone, blinked over at them. “I take it this isn’t just a pulled muscle?” Shay chimed in, sensing something was off. Lindsay offered a tight smile. “We’re just being thorough. Something’s irritating your heart- could be an infection, could be something else. We’re running some tests to find out exactly what’s going on.” Explained Lindsay. Shay gave a small nod, unfazed. “Good. I’ve got a fight scheduled in eight weeks.”

Heather shot Lindsay a glance over the top of the monitor. Troponin’s already popped in the system: elevated significantly. “Alright. Let’s get a stat echo. I want to see her heart up close.” Lindsay said, tone shifting. Jen paused. “Should we call cardio back? We haven’t heard anything.” asked the resident. Lindsay nodded. “And book her a CT angio chest just in case. If this is myocarditis or worse, we don’t want to wait. Something’s going on here.” Responded Lindsay.

Heather slipped a BP cuff around Shay’s arm again. “Still tachy. 140s. BP 91/56.” Updated Nurse Heather.

Shay looked at all of them, calm but now visibly more alert. “You guys keep looking at each other like something’s wrong.” Shay chimed in. Lindsay didn’t sugarcoat it. “We’re seeing some strain on your heart. The kind we don’t normally see in healthy twenty-somethings.” Lindsay told Shay, succinct and to the point.

There was a beat of silence. Shay’s eyes dropped to the edge of the table. Her shoulders stayed still, but something in her expression flickered. Heather raised her brows slightly, exchanging a quiet glance with Jen behind her. Lindsay didn’t press it yet. “Let’s get that echo first. We’ll talk more when we’ve got a clearer picture.” Lindsay told the two of them.

Lindsay turned and stepped out towards the hallway just as the cardiologist on call, Dr Weiss, arrived with a rolling echo cart and a resting skepticism in her tone. “You called me for a young athlete with some PVCs?”

Lindsay crossed her arms. “Elevated troponin. PVCs, mild cardiomegaly on X-ray. And a gut feeling.”

“Alright, I need to work with a little more than a gut feeling, Dr Lindsay.” Dr Weiss responded, pushing the echo machine into the trauma bay. Dr Lindsay rolled her eyes “yeah, what do I know.” She thought to herself.

Shay remained still as cold gel was spread across her chest, the ultrasound probe tracing between tattoos and muscle. On the screen, her heart came into view, beating fast. The walls thickened. Movement reduced. Echoes of fibrosis scattered like shadows across the septum. Dr Weiss’s jaw tightened. “That’s not what I hoped to see.” She thought out loud. “Alright, make sure she gets a CT angio of the chest. Call me back when you get the results.” Dr Weiss stated, before getting the echo equipment and leaving the room.

Jen and Heather worked quickly and got Shay over to radiology. The radiology wing was quiet, insulated from the steady buzz of the ER. The fluorescent lights shined faintly overhead, casting a sterile glow across the white floors. A lone CT tech tapped at the console as Dr Jen walked alongside the stretcher, Shay lying supine. Nurse Heather hovered nearby, keeping an eye on the monitor attached to the portable stand.

Shay hadn’t said much on the way over, just muttered something about her chest feeling “weird.” Still calm. Still out of it.

“Alright, Shay, We’re gonna get a scan of your chest. You’ll hear some mechanical noises. Just stay still for us, okay?” the tech explained softly. Shay nodded.

With practiced efficiency, Heather and Jen helped guide Shay off the stretcher and onto the scanner table. She moved like someone weighed down by lead. Her arms were positioned overhead, palms relaxed, fingers curled slightly. Her blonde hair spilled behind her head like a golden halo, the tattoos on her arms displayed on her skin like stories written in ink. Something coiled and dark sat on her ribcage, rising and falling with each slow breath. The tech returned to the control booth. The scanner whirred to life.

Jen folded her arms, watching through the glass of the observation room. The lights within the CT room glowed around Shay’s still form. It was almost peaceful.

Then, without warning, Shay’s body twitched. Her chest rose awkwardly- then fell flat. Her fingers curled into loose fists. Alarms erupted. One sharp, continuous tone. Inside the control booth, the tech’s eyes went wide. “She’s coding!”

Heather was already moving. “She’s in v-tach!” Heather eyed the monitor. Jen burst through the door, grabbing the crash cart parked just outside the suite. Shay’s body was still on the scanner table, her arms still overhead, eyes wide open now, staring at nothing. Her lips parted slightly, unmoving. “Pads on!” Heather shouted. Her hands moved quickly. “Charging to 200!” Jen shouted. Heather climbed halfway onto the CT table, hovering over Shay’s torso. “Ready!” Heather nodded.

“CLEAR!”

Shay’s body jumped. Her shoulders shrugged forward. Her head lolled slightly to the side, eyes wide and unblinking. No change. “Still pulseless.” Jen shook her head, eyes locked on the monitor. “Charging again to 300!”

The second shock caused the young MMA fighter’s body to jolt sharply. And then, the monitor beeped. One beat. Then another. “She’s got a rhythm!” Heather shouted. A carotid pulse returned beneath Jen’s gloved fingers. Weak. Thready. But there. The silence that followed was no longer peaceful. It was hollow.

Shay remained unconscious, still laid out on the CT table, chest rising and falling with ghostlike shallowness. Her nose ring glinted beneath the fluorescent light. A single drop of sweat slid down her temple.

Jen swallowed hard, voice low. “Sinus tach. Let’s get her back to the trauma bay, now. Let’s keep Dr Lindsay in the loop.”

Back in trauma room one, Dr Lindsay was gloving up as Dr Jen and Nurse Heather wheeled the young fighter in, the monitors above her head still blinking erratically. Shay was conscious (barely) but she looked far worse than she had thirty minutes ago. Sweat clung to her skin in a thin sheen, her breathing fast and shallow, chest rising and falling like she’d just run ten miles.

“She coded in the CT scanner- pulseless v-tach. We got her back after two shocks, but she was down for about a minute.” Dr Jen rattled off quickly. “Jeez…” Dr Lindsay muttered under her breath, moving beside the gurney. “Get her back on the table. Full workup. Get cardio back down here just in case.” Ordered Dr Lindsay.

Heather worked fast, placing leads back onto Shay’s bare chest. The pro fight laid there, barefoot, down to just her compression shorts. Patches of electrode adhesive still stuck to her sweat-damp skin. Her ribcage rose and fell quickly, tattoos stretching and shifting, black and gray roses climbing her right side, inked vines curling around her hips. Her arms, marked with fierce script, coiled dragons, and edgy ink, lay still at her sides, fingers curling slightly with each shallow breath.

“Shay? Can you hear me?” Dr Lindsay leaned over her. Shay’s eyes fluttered open, barely focused. “Mm… yeah. What… happened?” she mumbled. “You passed out during your scan, but you’re back. You’re okay.” Lindsay answered gently.

But she wasn’t. The heart monitor beeped rapidly- perhaps too rapidly. Nurse Heather glanced at it, then turned toward the others. “Guys, she’s running hot again. 160 and climbing.” Heather shook her head. “Let’s push some mag and prep for another round of epi if needed.” Dr Lindsay barked. Then the monitor’s tone changed. Heather’s voice cut through the room like a blade. “V-tach. Pulseless.”

Alarms began to blare again. “She’s coding!” Jen shouted. “Start compressions!” Dr Lindsay ordered. Heather jumped onto the stool and began rhythmic chest compressions. Shay’s body jolted with each one, her bare chest rising and falling unnaturally. Her tattoos danced under Heather’s gloved hands- one hand pressing just over the roses coiling across her ribs, where her heart was supposed to be working. Her chest caved in, recoiling hard, her toned belly with abs rippling out.

“Charging to 200 joules, everyone CLEAR!” Lindsay called out, taking charge. Shay’s body flopped hard on the gurney when the shock hit, pierced nipples twitching slightly, her arms limp at her sides.

“Still v-tach. No carotid pulse.” Heather called after a glance at the screen. “Back on compressions, Heather. Push one of epi and one of amio.” Dr Lindsay ordered. Jen moved fast, syringes sliding into the IV line. Shay’s skin was growing cool under their hands. Her breathing had stopped altogether. Her jaw slackened.

“I’ll take over for a cycle or two” Lindsay said, moving in to relieve Heather on compressions. Lindsay’s long arms pumped with sharp, trained force. “Come on, Shay. Come on.” Lindsay said under her breath, pumping away at Shay’s chest. “meds in!” Dr Jen called out.

After a cycle of compressions and a little time for the meds to kick in, the next defib shock was administered. Another shock. Another jolt. Shay’s body twitched sharply in response to the dose of electricity. Still no pulse afterwards. Heather rechecked the monitor. “Now it’s v-fib.”

“Keep going, charge again. Let’s hit her at 300.” Dr. Lindsay said, panting now from compressions. The next shock caused Shay’s feet to kick up above the table and drop back with a thud, showing off the deep, wavy wrinkles in the soles of her size 8 feet. “Still no change.” Jen eyed the monitor, checking the rhythm. Dr Lindsay shook her head. “Keep going.”

The room stayed locked in resuscitation mode. Every move crisp, controlled, coordinated. But behind the monitors and meds, a silent current was beginning to build. 26 year old Shay Strong- healthy, undefeated in the ring, fierce as hell, was slipping further away with each failed shock. Now, she lay sprawled across the trauma bay table, her blonde hair a total mess, her arms limp at her sides. The chaotic beeps of the monitors gave way to chaos in an instant.

“She’s still in v-fib, no pulse!” Jen called out, eyes locked on the EKG rhythm twisting across the screen like a coiled snake.

“Alright, let’s run through a cycle or two of compressions and go from there.” Dr Lindsay barked. “Heather, swap with me and start compressions.” Lindsay directed. Heather launched into CPR, pressing hard and fast into Shay’s chest, her tattooed ribcage rising and falling unnaturally with each deep compression. The motion caused her small perky breasts to jiggle slightly.

“Charging to 200!” Lindsay called after the cycle of compressions were finished, the machine emitting a rising, high pitched whir. Everyone stepped back when the shock was delivered. KA-THUNK! The MMA fighter’s toned, athletic body was tossed around effortlessly on the table by the defib’s electricity. Unfortunately, there was no change.

At the head of the bed, Jen kept an eye on the ambu bag and airway, squeezing rhythmically, watching the monitors like a hawk. Her gloved hands trembled just slightly. “Still no pulse.” the young resident murmured. “Next epi’s in.” Nurse Heather confirmed between cycles of CPR, her arms visibly tiring but steady. The flat, wet thud of her palms against Shay’s bare chest punctuated the room like a grim metronome.

“Let’s go again, charge to 300. Everyone… CLEAR.” Lindsay’s voice was firm, her blue eyes scanning around the room. Shay’s toes scrunched up involuntarily in response to the shock, wrinkling the soles of her feet once more, showing off the black nail polish on her toes. A high pitched tone screamed through the room. “Come on…” Jen whispered under her breath. Still no change.

“Push another 150 of amiodarone. Let’s tube her. 7.0 ET.” Lindsay signaled to Jen, who was already sliding the laryngoscope in. Shay’s mouth hung slack, jaw open, eyes half lidded. Despite everything- the tattoos, the muscle tone, the toughness- her body looked terribly vulnerable now.

The resident quickly slid the tube in place, securing it with some tape. “Tube’s in. Still no rhythm change.” Jen confirmed, voice tight. Heather didn’t stop. Her hands pounded against Shay’s sternum repeatedly, sending ripples through the inked skin of her torso. The nose ring caught a glint of light with each compression. Her chest looked raw and bruised. “Hold compressions. Charge to 360. Everyone CLEAR.” Lindsay ordered. Shay’s body tensed up hard, almost shivering for a second or two. Still v-fib.

The room was quieter than before. The thud of compressions, the hiss of oxygen through the ambu bag, the alarms on the heart monitor silenced. A minute passed. Then another. Dr Lindsay’s hand slowly came up. “That’s twenty-five minutes down.” she informed the team sternly. Her gaze moved across the room, catching Heather’s tired face, Jen’s white knuckled grip on the ambu bag. “She’s not coming back, is she?” Jen thought to herself. Her eyes flicked to the monitor one more time. Still v-fib. Dr Lindsay gave it a moment longer. Then softly, “Heather, hold compressions. Time of death… 13:42.” Announced Lindsay. Nurse Heather stopped compressions. The room seemed to exhale all at once. The monitor, now silent, showed the jagged, erratic waveforms of refractory v-fib.

No one moved right away. Shay lay motionless on the table, her chest rising faintly from the final puffs from the ambu bag, her body glistening under the harsh, bright overhead light. For someone so strong, she looked impossibly fragile now. Lindsay peeled off her latex gloves slowly. “Let’s clean her up.” she said softly, more to the room than to anyone in particular. No one spoke. They just moved. Careful, efficient, and quiet. The fighter had gone down, and not even the best resuscitation could bring her back.

Trauma Room One was quiet now. Shay laid motionless on the trauma bay table, her athletic frame still positioned how they’d left her- flat on her back, arms at her sides, a faint sheen of sweat clinging to her skin. The harsh rhythm of CPR had ended moments ago. What remained was eerie stillness.

Dr Lindsay stood at the foot of the bed, her eyes fixed on Shay’s pale face. Her mouth was slightly parted, her chest unmoving. The bruising from the chest compressions was already starting to show- deep purples and dark reds spreading across the middle of her chest. The endotracheal tube remained in place, protruding from her pale lips. Nurse Heather stepped to Shay’s side and gently detached the ambu bag from the ET tube, setting it on the nearby cart. The heart monitor, still showing v-fib, let out a soft, continuous tone that filled the room with a hollow kind of finality. Dr Jen reached over and silenced it with a tap of her gloved finger.

Heather leaned in again, her hands methodical and respectful as she disconnected the EKG leads from Shay’s chest. One by one, the stickers peeled away, leaving behind faint impressions on her pale, clammy skin. Dr Jen removed the IV lines from her arms and coiled the tubing neatly before tossing it into the biohazard bin.

Lindsay took a toe tag from the tray and filled it out in quiet pen strokes. She looped the string gently around Shay’s left big toe, the tag dangling against the wrinkled soles of her foot. Dr Jen found a clean white sheet at the end of the gurney and pulled it up slowly, covering Shay’s legs, her torso, then finally her face.

Dr Lindsay stepped closer, gently placing her fingertips beneath Shay’s chin and tilting her head just enough to shut her half-lidded eyes. One last glimpse of life, now gone. The faint line of a nose ring caught the light again.

The room was still. The chaos from earlier felt like a distant memory, something that had happened in another place, to another person. Now, there was only the quiet presence of the three clinicians standing beside a body that had, just a little while ago, been fighting to stay alive.

Dr Lindsay gave a single nod, then turned and stepped toward the door. Heather and Jen remained a moment longer, hands at their sides, saying nothing, each taking one last look at Shay’s covered, toe tagged form before exiting the room.

#resus community #resus writing #resus #cpr #cpr female #cpr resus #dark cardiophilia #medfet #defib #defibs #defibrillator

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berlioz-the-kitten · 2 months ago

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Petri Dishes and Plastic Wrap

ACT ONE: CLEAN CUTS

Brian Moser/Reader

Summary: Y/N was brought in for a psychological profile contract after the Ice Truck Killer case starts gaining momentum and the department begins to feel the pressure. She reviews old case files, offers insight, and quietly builds profiles. What no one knows? Y/N used to work at a private sanitarium in Georgia—one that got shut down after multiple patient abuse reports. She even kept a journal on a particular patient who had dissociative tendencies, surgical skill, and a fixation on reconstructing human bodies like art. The file? It got buried. Now in Miami, Y/N starts receiving odd notes—sketches of bodies in glass boxes, neatly preserved. No threats. Just… acknowledgments. And when she meets Rudy Cooper, the charming prosthetics specialist brought in to consult on a limb pattern, she gets the feeling she’s being studied.

TW: Psychological trauma references, Medical institutional abuse (implied), Body horror/gore (clinical context), Blood imagery, Stalking/psychological manipulation (emerging), Power imbalance/grooming dynamics (seeded), Emotional numbness/disassociation, Canon is a sandbox.

The elevator doors slid open with a sterile and pitching ping!, and Dr. Y/N Morrissey stepped out like she’d been summoned by order, not invitation.

Miami Metro was cooler than expected—she’d braced for that signature Florida heat to press in around her like damp gauze, but the precinct’s air conditioning hummed a steady chill through the corridors. Still, the scent of too much coffee, simmering egos and overripe evidence rooms lingered beneath the sterile polish.

She walked with precision, heels soundless against the old tile. A folder rested neatly in the crook of her arm, her ID clipped in perfect alignment to her lapel. Her suit was slate grey, sharply tailored, a color too subdued for Miami. Her eyes were the only thing sharper—narrowed, not in judgment, but calculation. She was already dissecting the layout. Already filing away the badge-to-detective ratio, the postures, the voices, the tension.

She could feel it in the air. The fray at the seams.

The Ice Truck Killer case had everyone taut as piano wire. Hallway laughter died when she passed, and she caught the sidelong glances—the quiet assessments from men who didn’t know how to place her. She didn’t smile. Didn’t offer a handshake unless one was extended first. Dr. Morrissey didn’t believe in unnecessary contact. She believed in patterns. In pathology. In what the blood said when everything else lied.

She was escorted to the small office space they’d carved out for her. Temporary, windowless, unremarkable. Fine. She preferred her space like she preferred her subjects: quiet, clinical, and undisturbed.

Her first file was already waiting on the desk. She set her folder down beside it, unbuttoned her jacket, and sat.

The photo on the top page was a torso.

Just a torso.

Y/N exhaled slowly, her breath steady and unsentimental. Then she pulled a black pen from her breast pocket, flipped open her notebook, and began to write.

She didn’t flinch at the image. She didn’t recoil from the bloodless seams. She respected the work.

The files were a mess—coffee-stained in places, pages smudged with fingerprints that told their own story. Y/N laid them out like specimens across her desk, arranging them by date, by dismemberment pattern, by level of emotional detachment. She wore gloves, not out of squeamishness, but because she didn’t like leaving residue behind.

The photos were clinical—light-drenched and sharp—but the evidence spoke louder than the framing. Skin peeled like fruit. Limbs severed with an almost reverent precision. She took a slow breath, eyes scanning the incision sites, the angles. Not rushed. Not angry. There was care in the butchery.

She wrote in looping cursive—no shorthand, no dictation. She liked the weight of ink, the permanence of handwriting.

Subject demonstrates textbook detachment—no sexual motive, no frenzy. This is surgical. Possibly even aesthetic. The blood loss is almost incidental, more a symptom than a feature. In fact, he seems to hate mess.

A beat. She tilted her head, examining a photo of a hand—fingers spread, the skin pale and scrubbed. The nails were cleaned. Clipped.

This one’s not about death. It’s about presentation.

The blood, when it appeared in the files, was sparse. More like punctuation than language. But she didn’t mind it. She never had.

There’d been a time—before the licenses and the clean coats—when she’d sat in dark rooms and watched surgeries for the rhythm of it. The ritual. She remembered one in particular, a facial reconstruction after a car crash, the way the surgeon spoke softly to no one in particular as he moved the scalpel like a painter.

Y/N hadn't flinched then either. Just watched. Just listened. Just learned.

Now, years later, she traced that same calm into her reports. No reactions. No moral verdicts. Only precision.

If anything, it fascinated her—how someone could be so deeply methodical in their violence. Almost... respectful.

It wasn’t about the blood. It never had been.

She was always there early. That was the first thing Dexter noticed.

Dr. Morrissey arrived before most of the techs, before Batista’s morning café con leche, before Deb started stomping through the halls cursing at bureaucracy. She’d be at her desk already, flipping through crime scene photos with the same quiet concentration he reserved for microscope slides.

No music. No coffee. No wasted motion.

Dexter passed her door once and caught a glimpse of her posture—spine straight, shoulders still, hand steady as she annotated a victim photo. The body had been drained and arranged. Most people flinched. Most people grimaced. She… tilted her head.

He slowed in the hallway without meaning to. Watching her through the corner of his eye, the way you watch another predator circling unfamiliar territory. There was no revulsion in her expression. Not even curiosity. It was more like… reverence. Cold and meticulous. Like she understood that a kill could be clean. That it could mean something.

Dexter had met hundreds of professionals who claimed to “understand pathology.” But Dr. Y/N Morrissey felt it. He could sense it in the way she moved. The exactness of her margins. The way her eyes didn’t dart away from the photos like everyone else’s—they focused.

He made it a point to read one of her reports.

It was sterile, sure. But there were glimpses—lines that hummed with quiet insight, phrases that mirrored things Harry had taught him.

Subject exhibits pride in presentation. Murder, in this case, is not the objective—but rather, a means to an artistic end. The body is not defiled. It’s preserved.

Preserved. Dexter blinked at that. It wasn’t the word most people chose. But it was the word he might have.

From that moment on, he watched her more carefully. Slower movements. Softer steps. He didn’t want her to notice.

Because Dexter wasn’t sure if Y/N Morrissey was just a psychiatrist with a strong stomach—

—or if she was a scalpel herself. Sharp. Quiet. And meant for something specific.

It always came back to the red doors. That was how the memory started.

In her mind, the halls of Briarcliff Sanitarium were always too quiet. Too clean. The scent of industrial antiseptic coated the tongue like plastic wrap, and the lights flickered just enough to make you feel watched. Not haunted—observed. That was worse.

Patient #79 never screamed like the others. He was always polite. Always early to therapy sessions. He folded his hands in his lap like he was praying to some god of bone and sinew, and he smiled when he spoke about cartilage the way children spoke about dinosaurs—endlessly fascinated.

Y/N had been young. Too young. Just out of her residency. Eager. Curious. Controlled.

“Do you know,” Patient #79 said once, voice low and sweet, “that the human hand has 27 bones? But no one ever counts the tiny sesamoids near the thumb. They’re always forgotten.”

“Do you remember all your bones?” Y/N had asked him.

“Only the ones I’ve seen from the inside.”

She should’ve reported that. She did—technically. It got folded into the vague language of her early case notes. Obsessive behavior. Surgical fixation. Morbid fascinations. But as the weeks went on, her language changed. Became sharper. More focused. The lines blurred between analyst and archivist. Between observation and recording.

Her notebooks from that period were… precise. Too precise.

Subject shows increasing clarity in conceptual anatomy. Discussed desire to ‘see the hinge in a living jaw.’ Used the phrase ‘reconstruct the way God should have.’ Voice calm. No effective spikes.

Patient #79 never touched her. Never raised his voice. But he watched her while she wrote. Watched her pen stroke each word like it was being etched into stone. He’d grin softly when she turned pages.

“You write like it matters,” he said once. “Like someone will read it when I’m gone.”

Later—years later—when the reports of patient mistreatment came out, Briarcliff shuttered overnight. Records vanished. Doctor’s were either fired out of talks of misconduct. Nurses were just plain shitcanned without any prior warning. Wards were emptied in silence. Some patients were transferred. Some disappeared entirely.

Y/N packed her bags and didn’t look back.

Except—she kept one thing. One notebook. Labeled only with the number: #79.

Even now, in Miami, it sat buried in a box in her apartment closet. But some nights, when the casework made her fingers itch and the surgical photos mirrored old memories, she opened it.

And every time she did, she found something she didn’t remember writing.

A phrase. A sketch. A line marked in red ink instead of black.

And Patient #79’s voice, echoing low in her skull:

You were always meant to see me.

The first one came folded neatly into the pages of her latest case file.

At first, Y/N thought it was a misprint. The type of thing overworked interns slip in by mistake. But when she unfolded the page fully, the edges were smooth, the paper heavier than the department standard. Archival paper. Deliberate.

It was a sketch. Graphite, fine-lined, almost medical in its precision.

A human form—nude, hairless, arranged inside what appeared to be a glass box. Limbs slightly elevated with metal clasps. The lines were labeled meticulously: radius, clavicle, external oblique, orbicularis oculi.

The heart was still intact, she noted. Anatomically centered, outlined in red pencil.

No message. No name. Just an artist’s mark in the lower corner: a single 7 drawn through a 9.

She kept it. Not out of fear—out of... curiosity. It reminded her of something. Not exactly, but closely enough to make her chest ache in that old, quiet way she’d learned not to name.

Two days later, another one arrived.

This one was tucked beneath her windshield wiper after she finished lunch. Same style. Same paper. A male body this time. The skin had been rendered translucent to show muscle layers beneath. The ribs were numbered. The head was tilted up, mouth open as if mid-breath.

Still, no message. Still, no threat.

The third came by mail, addressed to her old university department. It was forwarded to her by a confused assistant who wrote, “Thought it was something anatomical you were expecting?”

It wasn’t. But it was. In its own way.

Each sketch grew more detailed. More intimate. The poses began to shift. One of them mirrored an old photograph she had of herself, taken during a seminar—head down, elbows resting on a table, fingers tented thoughtfully. The sketched figure’s body was opened from sternum to pelvis, as if that version of her had been dissected mid-thought.

Y/N stopped showing them to anyone. She stopped mentioning them altogether. Not because she was afraid.

But because the sketches were… beautiful.

Grotesque, yes. But deliberate. Thoughtful. Like someone had taken the time to know her—her mind, her observations, her exact lines of interest—and then made art for her to understand.

Every time she unfolded a new one, her breath hitched.

Every time, the same thought followed, unwelcome and slow:

He knows I’m watching. And he’s watching back.

The limb came in around noon.

Just the one—left arm, severed clean below the deltoid, preserved unnaturally well. No bloating, no insect activity. The skin was pale and drained, but the hand was positioned in what almost looked like a gesture. Not a struggle. Something else. Something closer to a pose.

Masuka cracked an inappropriate joke. Deb rolled her eyes and left the room. And then they called him in.

Rudy Cooper, Miami Metro’s favorite prosthetics specialist, stepped into the lab like he owned it—collared shirt rolled at the sleeves, tan from the sun, eyes crinkled at the corners in a way that made people relax before they realized they were doing it. He shook hands easily, joked about how “weird” his job was to people outside the field, and then leaned over the severed limb like it was an old friend.

Y/N had been reviewing preliminary notes from the corner, but the moment he spoke, she looked up.

Something about the cadence. The tone. Too calm. Too comfortable.

Rudy didn't acknowledge her at first. Just knelt beside the table, gloved up, and began a gentle rotation of the wrist with his fingers, noting out loud the unnatural preservation, the almost surgical cut.

“This wasn’t rage,” he said softly. “This was... pride.”

Y/N straightened slightly. That word again. Pride. She’d used it in her own analysis days ago. In private.

He turned his head toward her then, mid-thought, eyes catching hers with startling ease. "You must be Dr. Morrissey."

Her spine didn’t stiffen. She didn’t let it. But her fingers curled just slightly on the folder in her lap.

“I’ve heard about you,” he went on. “You're the one who sees patterns other people miss.”

There was nothing flirtatious in his voice. Nothing overt. Just a friendly interest, wrapped in warmth like a welcome mat. But his gaze lingered a half-second too long.

She held it.

“You work in reconstruction,” she replied, voice even. “It makes sense you’d recognize the effort in deconstruction.”

He smiled.

Not widely. Just enough.

“That’s what I like about dismemberment,” he said, eyes drifting back to the arm. “You learn more about the maker than the victim.”

Her pulse ticked once behind her ribs.

Too familiar.

She didn’t remember his face, not entirely. But something behind his voice dragged old hospital lighting and red doors into her peripheral vision.

He brushed a fingertip over the lifeless knuckle of the ring finger, delicate and careful, like a sculptor admiring the turn of marble.

And when he looked up again, he didn’t blink.

“People forget how much beauty there is in structure,” he said. “But I know you don’t.”

Y/N didn’t reply.

She just watched him work. Noted the way his hands moved. Silent. Precise. Almost… reverent.

She didn’t trust him.

But she couldn’t look away.

It was late—one of those nights where the city hummed under neon sweat and the precinct lights buzzed like insects against glass. Most of the department had cleared out. Y/N remained, as usual. Her desk was a neat kingdom of order: files sorted by victim, her notes stacked in clean columns, and a steaming cup of tea cooling beside a half-finished anatomical sketch.

She didn’t expect company.

The knock on the doorframe was light, too casual to be official. When she looked up, Rudy stood there with a sheepish smile and a takeaway container in hand.

“Thought you might forget to eat,” he said. “Figured I'd bribe you with dumplings.”

Y/N didn’t respond right away. She rarely did. But after a second, she gestured to the empty chair across from her. “One bribe. Then you go.”

He laughed like she was joking.

He didn’t leave.

They talked, loosely—about the latest body, about muscle tension in postmortem joints, about tendon slicing angles. It was easy, unsettlingly so. And just when the conversation began to settle into a lull, Rudy glanced at the sketch in front of her. A study of a dissected knee, incomplete.

“You always drew them like that at Briarcliff,” he said, almost offhand.

The pen in her hand paused mid-stroke.

Silence fell between them—not awkward, but sharp. Surgical.

She didn’t look up. Not right away. “Excuse me?”

Rudy leaned back slightly, his voice still smooth, still warm. “It was the same angle. Three-quarters turned. Ligament spread. Always the same. You sketched during sessions. They said it helped you focus.”

Her heart beat once, loud in her throat. She set the pen down with care.

He met her eyes then—really met them—and there was something behind his gaze that wasn’t there a moment ago. A depth. A knowing.

“They were good drawings,” he said gently. “Accurate. Clinical. But I liked them because they were... quiet. Like you were.”

Y/N's mouth felt dry. Her fingers curled slightly against the edge of the desk, a barely-there tremor tapping through her control.

He remembered.

Patient #79’s voice echoed like a blade pulled from sheath: You write like it matters.

“You were in group?” she asked, softly. Too softly.

“I wasn’t a patient,” Rudy said with a half-smile. “I was just... around.”

But they both knew that wasn’t the truth. Not really.

He rose, slow and graceful, collecting the empty container with a casual ease that felt rehearsed.

“Same eyes,” he murmured before leaving. “You haven’t changed them. That’s rare.”

And then he was gone.

Y/N didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

Her tea had gone cold.

The drawing on her desk—she realized—wasn't of a knee anymore. Not really. Not anatomically.

It was of a man posed like he was about to kneel.

#brian moser #rudy cooper #brian moser x reader #brian moser x you #rudy cooper x reader #ice truck killer #dexter showtime

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risuola · 2 years ago

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DON'T HOLD BACK — F. READER x GETO SUGURU, who'’s as sweet as he's mean to you

If anyone got to know Suguru Geto, they would say that he's really nice guy, very kind and soft spoken, and they wouldn't be exactly wrong, but it seemed like you were the only person in the world that knows that Suguru, your tattoo artist boyfriend, is a meanie.

cw: smut, no-curse au, size difference, spanking, hair pulling, cunningulus, slight description of pain (tattoo related), so many pet names, Geto has tattoos and piercings (yup, that's a warning), there's an appearance od Satoru at the end, reader discretion is advised — 7,9k words

masterlist

If anyone would ask you few days ago what will you be doing on friday at 21:38pm, you’d probably respond with a large dose of confidence, that you’ll be resting in your bed. Maybe catching up on your favorite anime because you had no time to watch the newest episode during the week. You’d be lying comfortably, sipping on your favorite, fruity tea and if you’d feel fancy enough, maybe you’d even order yourself a pizza. That’s what you’d assume you’ll be doing late on friday, it sounded reasonable and reasonable is what you liked to call yourself.

Making spontaneous decisions is not a trait you’d give to your personality. You were always the one to think at least twice, usually more like seven times, before you commit to something, especially when it came to serious things such as body modifications or a choice of college. You were an overthinker, a helpless one to be exact, but that got you through life somewhat safely up until the point of reaching the sophomore year at uni. Your grades were fairly good, you had a little circle of people that were close to your heart, and you couldn’t think of many that you’d actually call your enemies. Being called a bore by your best friend was just a side effect of your usually cold and calculated thought process, but it never bothered you.

That was just who you were – a helpless overthinker – so it’s only natural, that you couldn’t find an answer reasonable enough to explain why on earth, on late friday evening, while the clock was slowly but surely heading towards 10pm, you were standing in front of the deep purple, slightly flickering neon sign that read Curseive.

A clever concoction of something so dark and mysterious as a curse and the intricate art of lines and shapes that the font cursive is all about – it hung up high above the entrance, written in a way that mirrored the conflicting feelings and somehow making it work. It was a tattoo salon, a relatively new one in your area, but it already had many good reviews online – or at least that’s what you assumed while doing the quickest research of your life. If scrolling through the messages left by customers for at most thirty seconds could be even called research. Why were you here? You had no clue, but you pushed the doors open and there was that little version of you sitting on your shoulder that wished you’ll just get asked out, because the salon was closing in about 20 minutes, but you decided to ignore the frail voice in your head and move forward.

When you stepped inside, it was empty in the lobby where the little sofa was situated for those who are waiting and a desk that was probably a reception. Dark walls around you were adorned by paintings that on the first glance looked to you like were handmade. Quickly you found yourself lost in the soft sound of buzzing that mixed with the quiet rock music playing somewhere in the background, as you began examining the artworks around you. One of the walls was made into a gallery of sorts, with the photographs of finished tattoos and printed patterns displayed in an array, supplemented with little descriptive notes and sometimes comments, that you assumed were left by clients. All of them were breathtaking and although you couldn’t see yourself rocking most of those heavy inks on your own skin, you were more than happy to appreciate and analyze. The precision of lines, the shading, the colors and composition – all of those tickled your artistic soul in ways not many things could and maybe it was the aesthete in you who stopped you from decorating your own body until this point, because fact is – you thought about getting a tattoo many times before. You really did and even had a pattern you really wanted, but it just scared the shit out of you to think someone could butcher it up and charge you for the mess. So, you never made an appointment. Until now. Now you were determined to do so.

You took one deeper breath, as if encouraging your own self to speak up and make your presence inside more obvious. The subtle scent of antiseptics and inks filled in your lungs as you inhaled, but instead of giving you more courage, you became more nervous. It’s just an appointment, you thought to yourself, you can always call later and say you have to call it off. Yeah, that sounded like a plan in your head and with that plan, your legs automatically moved towards the exit, despite what you wished to do.

“Running away, princess?”

That voice. You couldn’t mistake it for anyone else, you knew the soft, tender tone that even laced with malice sounded so pleasurable to the ear. You knew the owner, although not that close, but you met him many times – not one of them being all that nice. It was Suguru Geto, one of the biggest heartthrobs in your college. He rocked a disposable, black surgical mask that was pulled down under his chin and a pair of black gloves that he was in the process of taking off. Silver earrings glistened in the dim light of the salon, just as his rings were when he finally dealt with the hand protection. Your eyes glazed over the metallic accessories he had on – that also tickled something inside of you, triggering an unknown fantasy of having those long, ringed fingers of him deep in your… Suguru had nice hands.

“I’m not running away,” you told him, hoping that your voice was as firm as you intended it to be. Spoiler alert, it wasn't.

“No? Looked like it.” He chuckled, throwing the latex to the designated trash. His tone was taunting, you felt so small under the weight of his golden gaze. “Are you lost, little girl? You don’t exactly fit in that place now, do you?”

“You’re working here?” The question slipped through your mouth as if it wasn’t completely obvious from the very fact that he was here, alone, equipped in safety gloves and a mask, so near the closing time.

“Do I work here?” He took a look around himself, taking the mask off his ears and throwing it away before once again looking at you. “It’s kinda my place, so yeah, you could say so.”

That actually made sense the more you thought about it. Suguru was your senior, he was two years older and now finishing college. You had some of the faculties joint with his year and you were always the one to sit beside him – by the orders of the teacher, not by your own choice, although sitting next to him wasn’t that bad usually. You can clearly remember that during every lecture, he was doodling something on the screen of his ipad – something that you never really paid attention to because for your own good, you decided that staying away from the so-called frat boys was the best you could do. All this time, he probably was designing tattoo patterns.

“Right, so-“

“I assume, if you’re here that means you’d like to have something inked, is that correct?”

“Y-yeah, but, uh-“

“Are you 100% about it or did you come here to stutter?” You couldn’t tell if he was genuinely curious about your decisions or just mocking your nervousness, but either way, you felt it in ways you probably shouldn’t. This man had some power in his demeanor, and when he leaned over the counter, propping himself on the elbows and looking at you like a predator would glance at his pray, you felt small.

Suguru wasn’t the typical fuckboy, although he for sure was a magnet for the ladies, thanks to his absolutely stunning visual. That, you couldn’t deny – he was just gorgeous, with his sharp features that somehow still looked soft and inviting, the golden irises of his eyes that never faltered from eye contact, manly jawline and long, luscious locks of black hair that he often tied in a low bun. You never seen him in anything that wasn’t grey or black – white when it really was an odd day – but other than that, he was dressing in monochrome and you truly couldn’t blame him. He was a type to make the most boring sweats set look like the sexiest outfit on earth with just the fact that it was him who wore it. Yeah, he was gorgeous, you had to give him that, or rather blame him for that, because his apparition was for sure going to be the beginning to your end. Speaking dramatically, of course.

“I’m sure.” You forced out, mentally kicking yourself for being caught off guard just because it was him. You were never that taken aback near him, but you were also never alone with him. It was easier to stay indifferent when there were people around, when all of his focus wasn’t targeted at you and when that gorgeous pair of eyes wasn’t gazing straight into your soul. You felt like he could read your thoughts just by looking at you.

“Cool. So, let me close and you’d tell me what’s your vision.”

Suguru found your presence in his studio amusing. He’s seen you at uni, you were quite known in his circle of friends that unofficially were called the frat boys, even though your college didn’t really have this kind of organization. It’s due to your friendship with the cheerleader’s leader, but thing is – although you’re close with most of the fun girls, you were most definitely no fun whatsoever and for some reason, Geto found it interesting. And the fact you never faltered to speak up for yourself… How he’d wish to fuck the attitude out of you. He himself wasn’t exactly the type to party until blackout, drink until sunrise or have a checklist for girls to screw at the college. He had no wish to cross any names off of any list. Aware of his good looks, he used them to their limits to make his way through studies smoother and there were not many things that he couldn’t achieve if he tried hard enough. Even the principal of his faculty had a soft spot for him, so many things he was able to get away with. That being said, if he really wanted to have a girl, unless she was really hooked in someone else, he would probably face no issues of getting her. That’s what he thought, until you came to picture. Considering every charm and trick he had up his sleeve, he was almost certain that getting you wouldn’t be so easy for him, or for any of his friends. And now you were here, in his shrine, trying to sound confident when you most certainly weren’t. Adorable.

You watched him pulling down the shades in the windows and turning keys in the lock, effectively closing you both inside the studio and in a matter of few minutes, you were situated with him on the couch, sitting quite snug as you scrolled through your phone to find the picture of your little drawing. It took everything from you not to melt into his side. The way he smelled was intoxicating, a mixture of cedar wood, pepper and some kind of citrus – a tangerine if you were to guess. And the warmth of his body was so inviting. Before being so close to him, you didn’t even notice how cold you were – apparently your shorts and a sweatshirt weren’t good enough for the October evening, even though during the day it still was way too warm for the fall attire.

Geto waited patiently for you to find the picture you just told him about. The sketch you did that was meant to present him the idea of what you wanted to have tattooed onto your skin and as you were scrolling through your gallery, he took this time to take you in. He noticed that you have a really nice profile. Your lips were pouty, just slightly pushed forward and so kissable right now, as you were focused on the display in front of your face. Your hair looked good also and he couldn’t deny the fact that you looked like you’d perfectly fit into his arms. And on his dick. You were way smaller than him, but that wasn’t unusual – he was a fucking giant, but something in your frame made you appear like you’d slip into his embrace just right and that thought make him go crazy. It’s been quite some time since he found a girl so captivating.

“Here, I found it,” you informed, showing him the screen, and he placed his hand over yours, slightly shifting the device so he can see it better. A hum left his mouth as he analyzed the drawing you did. It showed two betta fishes, one black and one white, positioned in circle, as if they were chasing each other’s tails. The pattern was intricate – the fins were ruffled and detailed, scales bearing a little bit of shading and yet, the whole image was quite a simple one. It also reminded him a little about the yin and yang symbol. He liked the idea, it worked well with his perception of you and what surprised him was the fact that he as well had a little tandem of bettas tattooed on his body and there was no way you’d know that.

“And where would that be?”

“I thought on the sternum maybe?”

“Oh, that’s going to hurt like hell, princess,” Suguru chuckled, already opening the new canvas on his tablet. “How are you with pain?”

“I’m pretty sure I’ll be good,” you accentuated the words with a nod at the end and leaned in a little bit to see what he began to draw. The pencil slid over the grey colored screen with skill that stunned you. Just from memory and the little reference you had in your hand, he quite quickly created the basic sketch of what you just showed him.

That night you spent two hours with him on the couch in his salon, admiring in quiet the process of creating a finished artwork. You enjoyed every second of it, the artistic sequence of lines made something unbelievably good, impressing you to the very core, even though you already looked through the little gallery he had on the wall. Seeing it being put down in real time made it that much more captivating and you didn’t even notice how during the process you glued yourself to him, nearly laying your head over his strong shoulder, but he didn’t seem to mind at all.

When he was about to finish, you understood why he chose grey background to work with. As the last step, he dragged the white color over one of the fishes and that really made the whole piece magical.

“That’s perfect,” you told him when he tilted the screen so you could see it better. Taking his ipad in your hands to closer examine the creation of his hands, you nearly gasped at the incredible detail he put into the scales, shading each and every one individually. And the tails were so beautifully drawn, perfectly reflecting how they would just flow in the water.

Geto would lie if he said that the admiration your eyes were overflowing with wasn’t fueling his pride. Sure, his clients liked his projects – obviously, cause they let themselves be tattooed with them, but somehow the sparkle in your eyes sent a shiver down his spine.

“Is that so?” He purred, wrapping his arm around your back and planting his hand on the curve of your hip. There was no protest from you – quite the contrary, Geto noticed you even scooted a little closer, but the reason made itself apparent sooner than he’d expect. Even through the fabric of his dark washed jeans he could feel how cold was your thigh when it made full contact with the side of his leg. He placed a hand over your naked skin to check if his senses weren’t fooling him. “Gosh, you’re so cold.”

“It’s nothing,” you tried to shrug it off, but the feeling of his palm pressed against your plump flesh sent searing impulses through your nervous system. Slowly, you became almost painfully aware of how pleasant the near proximity of him was. How perfectly warm he felt next to you and your mind couldn’t help but wonder how it would feel to be even closer. You actively tried to suppress those thoughts, but it was damn difficult, when he was just right there, so easy to reach.

“You look great in those shorts, but the summer is over, pretty,” Suguru muttered, his voice just slightly amused as he let his fingers smooth over the supple flesh of your inner thigh. He was so close to where you wanted him to be and yet so far.

“Yea, I know. It was warm during the day though. I was supposed to be home hours ago,” you confessed with a sigh, already thinking about the cold you have to walk through to get to your apartment. It wasn’t far, but if you were freezing inside Curseive, you’d most likely turn into an icicle when you get out, considering it was already midnight.

“Well, let me schedule your appointment and I’ll take you home.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“I’ll set you up for next month, so you’ll have plenty of time to chicken out,” he teased, shooting you a wink and making you roll your eyes.

That night, you did many things you’d call unreasonable. You spent few hours in closed space with a man you probably shouldn’t have anything in common, you leaned into him without giving it a second thought. That night you made an appointment to your first tattoo. That night Suguru carried you home in his arms, wrapped in a blanket he kept in the studio in case someone felt cold during the inking process. And that night, you let him into your bed.

If anyone was to meet Suguru for the first time, they’d probably say he’s absolutely perfect human being. Kind and always keen to help, very soft spoken and caring and mostly, they would be right, because he really was all of those things to the public eye. Before, you considered him a red flag, but it turned out, he didn’t leave you alone after he fucked you. You expected him to be gone as soon as he pulled his dick out of you, you expected him to ignore you after that night, but he stayed with you till morning, not even once letting go of you. You woke up to the soft kisses smeared over your shoulder and a little tickle of his hair brushing against your flesh instead of the cold bed.

You spend day after day at learning things about each other. You got to know how he liked his coffee in the morning, what foods he enjoy and what shampoo he uses to keep his hair so luscious and gorgeous all the time. Suguru noted to himself what sweets bring you the most joy, he discovered that the little scrunch on your nose when you’re laughing is the most adorable thing in the world and he also studied the playlist of your favorite music, finding out you share similar taste when it comes to songs. You spent hours drawing with him, creating designs on his tablet while sitting in between his legs, your back pressed to his broad chest. Sometimes he was suggesting changes to what you created and sometimes you were the one to add some details to what came from underneath his pen.

It’s been a month since you got together with him, or at least, since you started paying more attention to each other. With good dose of confidence, you could call him your boyfriend – even though it wasn’t officially talked through between you two, your actions made it pretty hard to deny. It just happened, after the first night together, you just became closer and there was no need to give it a title, when everyone knew you’re in relationship. You were holding hands in the campus, kissing publicly and spending time together for most of the breaks. You got to know his friends, his brothers and even got the password to unlock his phone. Yeah, it’s been only a month, but your bond with him developed quite quickly. Turned out, Suguru Geto wasn’t anything that you assumed he is. He’s lovely, really. Saccharine sweet if he really wants to be, but what no one seemed to be able to notice was that he really is a meanie sometimes.

Just like now, as you laid on the dark leathery bed in Suguru’s salon, already having enough of this whole idea of getting a tattoo and he only just started. To his credit, he did warn you that it’s going to hurt like hell, even suggested picking another place for your first tattoo with real concern in his voice, but you weren’t anticipating this kind of hell when you insisted you wanted it below your cleavage. It really was something you couldn’t compare to anything else in your life – maybe a kick in the shin, but continuous and in the middle of your chest.

Geto was working in focus, keeping his eyes on the pattern he was permanently imprinting onto your skin and taking little breaks from time to time to check on you. Last thing he wanted was you fainting there, and you felt like you were close. You couldn’t even focus on how the chocolate tasted on your tongue – the one he bought you, so you can have something to snack on during the process. The way his needles were stabbing the delicate, sensitive skin of your chest millions of times made you feel sick. The vibration of the machine reverberated directly into the bone below, enhancing the horrible experience and you could have sworn you were actually hearing the pain, while he was going over and over again through some areas. The choice of white ink made it that much worse, because to even make it properly visible, he had to re-trace the shapes more times and you felt each of them.

“Oh, you’re such a crybaby,” he teased softly, noticing the glistening trace of a tear that just rolled down your cheek. “Told you it’s gonna be a painful process.”

“Oh, shut up, Sugu,” you muttered, wiping the salty mark away and taking another chocolate. “Can we take a little break?”

“Let me finish that one and I’ll give you a minute. Sounds cool?”

“Uh-huh…”

You weren’t looking at what he was doing, and those little moments that he promised will get you that breather you asked for seemed to stretch for hours. The constant, sickening poking of the needles seemed to never end and at some point, you really were that close to just yank him by the hair and throw the tattoo gun out the window, just so he’ll stop for even a moment. But the break never came, Suguru just kept going, telling you he needs to just finish that line until the relief washed over you, when he smeared some kind of gel over the area of your sternum. You felt almost orgasmic, when the cold, soothing fluid covered the burning skin between your breasts.

“You can stop crying now, baby girl, we’re all done,” he all but sneered, making sure to cover the entire pattern with the healing formula that he made sure was enriched with anesthetics. He ordered that specially for your session.

“We’re done?” You repeated after him, wiping away the tears.

“Yes, baby, save those tears for me later.” He teased, helping you get up from the bed and you hopped down on the ground to properly see the artwork in the mirror. The skin around the lines was red, but the pattern itself made you gasp. It was made so beautifully, the lines were crisp and very thin, perfectly mirroring the vision you had, and the white ink? Gorgeous. Suguru put his entire soul into your tattoo, it was a mark he left on you that will stay there forever and sometimes you wished he’ll stay with you just as long.

“You’re so mean,” you grumbled, admiring the shapes that now were stuck to you permanently. Geto laughed quietly and wrapped his already ungloved hands around you, standing right behind and checking his work in the reflection.

“And what’s my crybaby gonna do about it?” He couldn’t help the mock and the glare you shot him only made his laughter bigger.

“I’ll ban you from my bed,” you deadpanned, a soft pout forming on your mouth and you slapped his hand away when he tried to undo the only button that held your tiny cardigan together.

“Then I’ll take you to mine and you’ll have to deal with Satoru sleeping with us. You know he can’t help himself and you know how that will end, right?”

“I know, I know…” you sighed, too focused on the lines that adorned your skin to care about the clinginess of Gojo, although you felt the soft cringe washing over you quickly. The artist in you was screaming, giggling and kicking its legs – the tattoo was everything you wished it to be and more. “It’s so beautiful, Sugu.”

“You like it, huh?” Geto smiled, leaning in to have a taste of you. The kiss he pressed to the side of your neck sent immediate shivers down your spine and you tilted your head as an automatic reaction. Your body knew that giving him more space will result in more pleasure. “I like it too,” he purred against your skin. “No bra for you for at least few days, pretty. I’ll be checking.”

“No cum on my tits either, poor little you.”

“You didn’t just call me little, did you?”

“And if I did?”

“Isn’t my dick pretty much the size of your entire forearm?” He joked, looking you up and down in the mirror. It was comical in a sense, to see what buttons you were eager to push when it was clear as day that you’re just tiny next to him.

"I wouldn't say so."

“Oh, you little brat. And to think I felt guilty for making you cry today,” Suguru shook his head and it was you this time who chuckled.

“You shamelessly tortured me for two hours, where’s the guilt in that?”

“I could have tortured you for three. Am I not the best for making it quick?”

“You’d love to make me suffer for longer, wouldn’t you?”

“Not before, but now I might wanna make you cry a little more.”

You shook your head and followed him, so he could put the protective film over the tattoo and once you sat on the edge of the tattooing bed, Geto pressed not only the second skin to your chest but also his lips to yours. The force with which he leaned against you made you almost loose your balance as the metallic frame underneath you squeaked from the sudden weight change. With ease, the man encaged you between his arms, intimidating your small form with his much larger one. You were no match for Geto when it came to sizes. He is a damn giant next to you – tall and broad, nothing but wall of muscle with limbs long and strong. Sometimes, you found it unfair how easily he was able to overpower you, manhandling you any way he wanted, no matter how much you’d fight.

You grabbed onto his shoulders, feeling his weight overpowering you and you tried to push him away, desperate to catch some air into your lungs but that desperation only made you mewling into his mouth. The cold metal of his lip piercing never failed to send shivers down your spine, whenever he was kissing you like his life depended on it. He made you feel special, even though you were far from it.

“My sweet girl,” Suguru praised, his words being kissed away by you, because as much as you needed oxygen, you also needed him just a little bit closer. “My little crybaby.”

“I think you owe me some kind of apology for the pain you’ve put me through,” you muttered, grabbing his lower lip between your teeth and swiftly taking the elastic from his hair. The pitch-black locks fell down his broad shoulders, keeping the slightest curl to them from the way they were tied up.

“Oh yeah?” A grin stretched his lips and his fingers immediately found their way to the front of your jeans. “I’m not going to apologize for something you signed up for, but I’ll gladly eat that pussy as a form of payment.”

His remark made you roll your eyes, but any comment you wished to throw at him got lost when he pressed his digits to your clothed clit. Suguru smiled in satisfaction, feeling the wet patch spreading over your panties. Desperate to see it all, he pulled back and took those jeans off of you completely, taking your underwear along with it. Cold air hit your soaked folds, making you shiver as you spread out for him.

“Look at you,” Geto smirked, sitting down on his stool and spinning your panties around his pointer finger, “all wet and ready and I barely just touched you. Or is it that pain you’re so whiney about what made your panties so soaked?”

“Don’t focus on that,” you muttered, snatching the cotton from his hands. “Focus on me.”

“So demanding.” Suguru chuckled, but truth was, as much as he wished to tease you a little more, his mouth was already watering at the sight in front of him. You were a meal he’d choose to have as his last supper, the most delicious dessert he could slurp on for hours and never get bored. Every inch of you, he found to be perfect, you raised the bar of his standards to the point he couldn’t even look at other girls around him. You really got him addicted and he wasn’t even mad about it.

The feeling of hot kisses Suguru was planting all over your thighs made you scoot closer to the edge. Usually, you’d let him do his thing – you loved his mouth marking your skin. You loved the bruised spots he liked to suck on here and there only to claim his place beside you, you loved the soft touches and harsh grips. But now, you really wanted him to jump straight to action. Those nips and kisses can wait.

You allowed your fingers to brush through his silky locks, your nails scratched his scalp along the way and he purred softly before a gasp cut the sound short – it surprised him how roughly you grabbed the strands of his hair, right next to his scull and pushed his head nose deep into your pussy. It was new to him, no one ever dared to tug at his hair and when it was you, he was more than keen to get used to it. The stinging feeling of the pull at his hair follicles sent an impulse straight down to his already erected cock, making it now impossibly hard and Suguru was thanking himself that his work attire that day consisted of sweatpants and not jeans.

You couldn’t help yourself, you knew he had the strength to fight you back if he really needed, so his suffocation wasn’t any of your concerns. And Geto took the challenge with pleasure. His pierced tongue danced over your clit as if he was trying to tattoo his own name over the swollen bud between your folds. The mixture of his hot muscle and cold metal made you whine above him, squeezing his hair even harder, pushing his head even deeper. A low, deep purr that left his throat reverberated through your entire nervous system and sipping into the bloodstream, making the pleasure rush inside your veins instead of blood.

“Oh my god, Suguru-“, you breathed out, coming undone just underneath the skill he had in his mouth. He was eating you out like his life depended on it, like he would die if he won’t bring you over the edge just with his tongue, like he was born to pleasure you. A coil quickly began to form in your stomach, a string threatening to snap at any given moment if he’ll continue with the intensity of his actions. Your thighs trembled, squeezing around his head, but he held them apart with force. He wasn’t done with you yet.

You couldn’t control the way his name was leaving your mouth; it came out like a prayer that he’d love to listen on repeat for the rest of his life. A music that filled his ears with pleasure and that pleasure seeped down, creating a river of ecstasy running down straight to his straining cock. You really got him to the point he felt he’s going to cum in his pants, but then the hold on his hair loosened. He used that moment to catch a breath before going back to his work.

“Don’t hold back,” he purred, keeping your hand where it belonged over his head, getting rid of any guilt you felt regarding pulling at his hair. You came not long after and he happily slurped you through the bliss, licking away everything you gave him, devouring your pussy as if nothing better was ever going to happen to him. “So sweet,” he grinned, finally pulling away. His face covered with your slick and hair messed up from where you held it, and he looked so beautiful like that when you looked back at him. Surrounded by haze of your release, he looked nearly angelic when he got up, pushing back the stool and taking his rightful place between your still trembling thighs. Giving you a moment to collect yourself, Suguru used it to take off his t-shirt for no other reason that to feel your hands over his skin and you were quick to press your palms over his tattooed flesh.

Geto’s body was only one of things that were impressive about him, but unarguably one of the most breathtaking. Years of training martial arts made his shape resemble the stone statues of gods. A hard wall of muscles covered with a light layer of soft skin and adorned by black lines of ink. You never failed to trace your fingers along the dragon that curled around his entire arm and spreading onto his chest. He also had a line of letters underneath the side of his ribcage and two betta fishes swimming up along his spine, following a trace of abstract lines and dots. He had told you once about the meanings beside all of images that adorned his body, but you couldn’t recall them now as he was once more kissing you feverishly. You tasted yourself all over his mouth, you took in his purrs and low groans that vibrated in his throat when you pushed down the waistline of his sweatpants, palming him through his boxers.

Geto grabbed your thighs, repositioning you closer the edge.

“Shouldn’t I avoid any physical activities with that tattoo so fresh?” You asked him with the littlest teasing undertone and he grinned, kissing your lips and everywhere around them with fervor.

“I’ll go slow, babygirl,” he promised, but slow is hardly the word he’d use once he pushed his girth into you. If you were a drug, Suguru was addicted to the point of no return, he never had enough of you, always too little, always eager for more and more and more. You were a godsend to him, a gift he was certain he never deserved but he cherished it with all of his might. Just like with all of his might he began thrusting into you.

You wrapped your legs around his waist, hooking them above his pelvis as if you needed to make sure he’s not going anywhere. Soft pants and whimpers were leaving your mouth every time his hips collided with yours and the sounds you were making concocted an erotic symphony with the low grunts he let slip through his throat. The melodic line of mixed voices, quiet praises and heavy breaths accompanied the desperate squeaking of the bed below you and wet reminders of how he was fucking into your dripping pussy.

Every ruthless push and pull of his hips sent surges of pleasure through your body. Lust and heat erupted inside of you like a volcano and the searing lava of endorphins turned your brain into a flurry. The room around was lapsing, nothing else mattered and even the untrusty bed underneath you, that held there just barely underneath the force of Suguru’s relentless slams couldn’t bother you when he was fucking you that good.

Flaming hot waves of white covered your vision as you hid your face in the crook of Geto’s neck. Panting for air, you held onto his shoulders harshly, digging your nails into the flesh there and marking it in red with crescent moons and scratches. The stinging pain made him whine in excitement, the sound low and prolonged enough to make your walls clench and flex around him. The stretch of his cock was setting your mind ablaze along with your body, your heart was beating fast and threatening to jump out of your chest.

“Sugu-ru-ah~”, you were panting, whimpering shamelessly under the force of his pelvis slamming against yours and he grinned above you, his grip over your hips merciless and bruising.

“You’re taking me so well,” he praised, smearing wet kisses along the line that led from underneath your ear to your shoulder. Something incoherent left your mouth and you felt yourself close, the swollen walls of your pussy squeezing him repeatedly and he knew you were close but wasn’t ready to give it to you quite yet.

It��s like you blacked out for a moment because it felt like you barely blinked and then your position changed. You didn’t notice how swiftly Geto slid onto the bed himself, situating you over his lap.

“Hop on baby, work for it a little,” he mocked lovingly, giving your ass cheek an encouraging slap. There was barely enough place for the two of you, but you made it work anyway, sliding back down onto his dripping from your juices cock. A soft moan escaped your lips as his girth once again squeezed into your oversensitive insides, pushing against every sweet spot on the way and making you shiver as the tip kissed your cervix. Desperate to feel more of him, you began rolling your hips, working your way into the palace of pleasure that Suguru Geto was and making the most out of the current position. His exposed chest and neck begged to be devoured and you couldn’t leave them neglected, so your mouth was on his skin in no time.

Suguru kept bucking his hips upwards, gasping and growling underneath you. His hands left burning marks over your ass, each slap sending jolts of pleasure through your entire body and the little whines you were letting out against his skin fueled the intense fire that burned inside of him even more. Sometimes Geto couldn’t believe you really were with him. Sometimes he wondered if maybe he’s high on something, maybe he’s imagining you, but only thing he really was high on, was you. Nothing could compare to the way your tight pussy swallowed his cock, to the way your little hands were grasping his arms and shoulders just to steady yourself when his force was becoming too much and absolutely nothing could stand even close to the intoxicating feeling of your lips on top of his. You really were made just for him, it had to be fate that once you stumbled upon his studio. He still remembers the first time you let him in, spontaneously inviting him over and after that, every day seemed to be somehow better than the previous one. Every minute he spent with you managed to surprise him with how good it felt. Suguru was hooked on you. But how could he not, when you had the ability to strip him of everything that was cool about him, leaving him raw and sensitive just for you?

“Fuck, c’mon, cry for me,” he panted, forcing your hips to move even when you clearly were running low on power. Your entire body was tensing, the velvety walls of your pussy squelching over his length and he felt himself flexing inside the hot embrace of you. The rush of ecstasy sent him overboard, it filled his veins and neurons with blissful daze of desire, and he found himself chasing the high, bracing for the impact of upcoming climax.

You whined and melted into him, lost in the haze and diving head first into the puddle of pleasure. The feeling overtook you, you couldn’t think anymore when he was pulling you underneath the euphoric sea. You felt light from pleasure, the ferocity of his movements burning you inside out, sending seething waves throughout your entire form. With vision blurred, nothing felt real anymore and if not for the rough grip he had on your hip and ass, you’d probably fly away and never get back.

Lost in the stars and haze of orgasm, you pushed yourself up, encouraged by few more harsh slaps and Geto followed you to sit up for no other reason than to be able to still taste you. At this point you were sure he tattooed not only betta fishes onto your chest but also the imprint of his hands to your butt cheeks. Gathering every last bit of strength you had in your muscles, you rolled your hips against him few times more. All of the intensity that was building inside of you snapped suddenly. Your spine arched and head rolled back, exposing your neck and chest to his kisses as he pushed you over the edge of bliss and you fell off that cliff with nothing but acceptance. Tears of pleasure rolled down your face and Geto was quick to kiss them away as they gathered along your lashes and down your jawline.

The weak sound of his name slipping down your tongue was enough for Suguru to let go. White hot ribbons of cum sprayed deep inside you as you rode him through both of your orgasms, the movements of your hips now slower and sloppier, bearing no more strength in them and yet, time after time you pulled them back and forth, desperate to feel him a little longer, to take more from him.

“My little crybaby,” he cooed, when you finally run out of battery, settling down on him and leaning against his broad chest, hiding there to catch your breath. You were sore, still overwhelmed by the avalanche of feelings that just fell over your head but satisfied to the point of delirium – so much so that you let the little honey-covered taunt slip. Suguru smoothed your back softly, relaxing in your proximity, once again stunned how somehow, you managed to make all of it feel better than the last time you slept together. Highs with you were unforgettable. Nonreplaceable. Incomparable to anything else he ever felt with anyone.

“Thanks god you’re strong,” you muttered against his skin, planting there few kisses while you’re at it. “I don’t think my legs will work after that.”

Geto chuckled. Yeah, he was going to marry you one day.

“No worries, sweet thing, your place in my arms is secured for lifetime.”

“Good.”

“But first, let me get you cleaned up.”

Your legs were weak when you got off of him, but surprisingly carried you enough to allow you to slowly pull yourself together. Suguru cleaned the space a little while you got dressed and made sure the protective film over your fresh tattoo was unharmed during the activities before you buttoned up your cardigan.

* * *

“Suguru, you still here?” Gojo stormed in, even though the studio was locked, but truth was, nothing could really be locked when it came to Satoru.

“Don’t tell me you copied the keys to my studio.” Geto chuckled, finishing the final wipe of the bed. There was no force that could stop his friend from invading his spaces, he dropped the effort years ago.

“I won’t tell you, you got this.” Satoru shrugged and looked at you. Then at Suguru and back at you, repeating that at least few times. “Were you two fucking here?”

“And why would you ask that?”

“No, the real question is, did that thing endure it?” White haired man pointed at the leathery bed. “What a champ, I thought it’ll collapse.”

“Fair,” you admitted at the same time as Suguru, and handed your man the hair elastic that you snatched from him earlier.

“So, what were you doing here? Besides contaminating the area of course.”

“I got a tattoo,” you replied to him and Satoru grinned.

“For real? That chest piece he told me month ago that you’ll for sure chicken out for?”

“Yeah, that one.” This time it was you who laughed and Geto just shrugged, tying up his hair.

Satoru wasted no time, it’s like he teleported to you and before you registered what was happening, he was already unbuttoning your blouse and truly, you couldn’t really be bothered. It’s been only a little less than a month since you really got to know Gojo, but it was very quickly presented to you that him and your boyfriend have a thing for sharing. It was as natural for them as breathing and whenever you saw them together, you wondered how it happened that they weren’t brothers by blood.

“It’s so cool, Suguru. Who knows, maybe I’ll let you tattoo something on me too.” Snow white grinned, examining the concoction of lines over your sternum. He had to bend in half almost, to be in line with the pattern on your skin so you brushed through his hair, messing them more than they were already.

“Not that it’s my life mission to do so, Satoru.” Geto stretched his body and glanced over the room once more, making sure he can close the studio for that day without leaving any visible remnants of what happened just moments ago.

“Doesn’t it kinda look like us?” Gojo asked, stopping you before you covered yourself back. “The black and white contrast… am I the only one who think so?”

It wasn’t your intention, but as he said it, you began seeing it. It really made sense, especially considering that Geto mixed the tiniest bit of lavender ink to the white, to prevent it from yellowing over time. That lavender coincidentally being the exact shade as the undertone of Gojo’s hair.

“Well, not anymore,” the black haired one sighed and once you managed to button up your blouse, he swooped you up into his arms. “You’re gonna lock the doors, Satoru. Turn off the lights.”

“Sooo…” Gojo nearly sang, flicking off the switches and turning the keys in the locks, making sure everything is well secured before he joined you two, already walking slowly towards your home. “Are you ours now?”

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