#I wish i was half the academic weapon he was

[maraudersidk]

???: i bet weasley only got the job cuz he slept with him ugh

Percy: *slept with him after he got the job* how ridiculous i would never😒

[3d-wifey]

can i get a short lil sumthin sumthin about remus and his girlfriend being academic weapons, sirius and james thinks they're boring bc they've been doing their work in the library for hours but they're actually cockwarming and seeing who'll crack first heheheh 👀👀👀

"Focus, Lupin"

Pairing: Remus Lupin x girlfriend!reader

Synopsis: You and Remus are quite competitive, always going head-to-head in your classes. It’s commonplace to compete for the highest marks. What isn’t commonplace is the sabotage in the form of Remus’s wandering hands.  

Word Count: 2.7k

Warnings: well, smut of course! Exhibitionism, possessive Remus, yall are both freaks tbh, cucking? cock warming, riding

A/N: The other marauders have a big fat stinking crush on you but that's neither here nor there until the end of the fic. Sighhh, I go through my marauders mood swings. Your house isn't clear so feel free to pick any of them.

Tags: @yvy1s @innercreationflower

Remus hooks his chin over your shoulder, looking for all the world as if he's just getting into a better position to read his chicken scratch notes, pressing your back even further against his chest. You inhale, clenching around him at the sudden movement. You scoff at his near-inaudible laughter, elbowing him as he chuckles into your neck.

"Quit it." You grumble, quil moving at the speed of light as you furiously write.

"Quit what?" He moves the textbook you're sharing closer, the big hand he places on the page mirrors the one that's settled on your stomach. He spreads his fingers wide like he's stretching them before he drums them along the parchment. You wish you hadn't left your robes in your dorm, at least then you'd have another layer between your skin and Remus's teasing touch.

"You're cheating." You hiss, but that's the most you do to reprimand him. It's your fault you're in this mess anyhow.

Both of you are always the highest scorers in your class. And with the past few exams, you've been getting the same score or beating each other by a point or two. It's bloody frustrating.

You continuously tried to one-up each other in academics, long after you two started dating. He's your rival first, boyfriend second.

At this very moment, before you both sit two half-done papers for your N.E.W.T-level Alchemy class that isn't due for another week, but you get extra house points if you're the first to turn it in.

Which you plan to be, even if half the blood in your brain has traveled down to where you're swollen and soaked. You both sit completely clothed, other than where you're hitched on Remus's cock, knickers pulled to the side.

Of course, the library is empty. It's nine in the afternoon on a Friday. And it was your idea to see whose dedication would overpower their carnal desires. 

He laughed you off at first. A soft, dismissive chuckle rumbling from his chest, muffled by the book he barely looked up from. Typical, shaking his head as if you'd said something absurd and that was the beginning and end of it. But you knew him well enough by now to know which buttons to push—and exactly how hard. 

"Yeah, right," you sighed, letting your tone drop into exaggerated defeat as you flopped back against his headboard. "Wouldn't be much of a competition anyway."

Remus paused mid-turn of the page. His brows furrowed, eyes flicking to you in sharp suspicion, but you didn't look at him. Not yet. Instead, you stretched out along his bed like a cat, carefully keeping your expression blank as you toyed with the edge of the blanket.

"...And what's that supposed to mean?" His voice was sharp, clipped, but you could hear the curiosity, the irritation. The competitive edge. Exactly what you were counting on.

"Hm? Oh, nothing." You waved a hand vaguely in his direction, settling yourself comfortably against his pillows. You stretched a little more, arching your back like a cat before flopping onto your side. You kept your expression perfectly neutral, but you knew he could feel the smirk simmering beneath the surface. "It's just...well, we both know you'd give in long before me. So there's truthfully no point in even entertaining the idea." You shrugged, all nonchalance, even as you felt your chest flutter at the way his brows drew together. "I'm just agreeing with you, Rem."

His scoff was immediate, sharp and incredulous. You'd earned yourself a full look now, his book lowering just enough to reveal the disbelief etched across his face. “That’s not what I said.”

You shrugged as if it was no concern to you, deliberately looking away like the conversation was already over, knowing full well he wouldn’t let it rest. You flipped onto your stomach, propping your chin on your hands to stare at him with wide, innocent eyes. "Didn’t need to." 

You bit your lip to keep from smiling as his book lowered—not abruptly, but slowly, deliberately. One inch, then two—his sharp amber eyes flicking to yours. The forefinger he slipped between the pages made it look like he might still pretend to be reading, but you knew better.

The scar closest to his eye twitched, irritation flickering faintly across his face. Merlin, you always loved how expressive that scar was when he was annoyed. One of his fingers tapped against the book spine resting on his chest, the motion twitchy.

He exhaled through his nose—sharp, like he was trying to keep it together—and finally set the book aside. His movements were precise, controlled, but there’s no hiding the faint flush creeping over his neck or the way the corner of his mouth twitched.

You knew you got him. He tried, and failed, to mask his irritation and it was almost unfair how easy he was to rile up. Almost

He let a long silence settle, the weight of his gaze pressing into you. Finally: “…You taking the piss?” 

You let the grin spread across your face this time, sitting up slightly so your chin props on your hands. "M'as serious as the plague, Lupin."

The staring match that followed was something out of a duel, the cogs in his mind clearly spinning. The tension stretched taut between you, thick as smoke, neither of you daring to blink.

His book stayed in his hand for a moment longer, though you saw the exact second he gave up pretending to read. Then, to your satisfaction, he closed his book with an audible thud and set it aside. He shifted, sitting up and leaning forward. He crossed his arms over his broad chest, the muscles in his forearms flexing with the movement, and your stomach twisted—just a smidge.

"Go get your books," he said, his voice low and challenging, sending electricity up your spine. "And meet me in the library."

“Oooh, someone's touchy," you said, walking your fingers up his thigh, muscles tensing under your touch. “Formal battlegrounds now, is it? Bold move, Rem. I thought you liked keeping your humiliations private. But if losing in public gets your rocks off, who am I to deny you?"

His lips twitched—an almost-smile that was gone too fast to catch properly. “I’ll be the one handing out the humiliation, thanks.” 

"Stakes?" you asked, cocking your head.

"Loser buys the winner chocolate frogs for a week," he said, already swinging his legs off the bed. Then, after a pause, he glanced over his shoulder, smirking faintly. "Or…whatever else I decide." 

You pushed yourself up with a wicked grin that matched his, already moving toward the door. “Alright, but don’t be mad when you’re the one giving in first. I know you can’t resist me for long.” 

Behind you, you heard him huff a laugh, though it sounded like he was trying to hide it. “Get your books, trouble. Let’s see how well you actually handle restraint.” 

You were confident by the end of this week you'd overdose on chocolate frogs. Remus might be brilliant and disciplined, but he’s not immune to distraction. Especially distraction in the form of his wickedly beautiful girlfriend.

Truthfully, it was daft of you to assume Remus would play fair. You mix two people who are as competitive as they are horny and it leads you here, on your boyfriend's lap, surely dripping onto the wooden bench under you.

He hums as if he's thinking over the definition of cheating and if what he's doing right now counts as it—which it does.

"S'that right?" He mumbles into your neck and you almost reach for your wand, honest, "I don't see any cheating here, love. Just good old fashioned studying, just like you wanted."

He thrusts up, and your hand flies up to cover your mouth. You see his quill moving out of the corner of your eye without the aid of a hand. "Cheater," you pant, but don't move to stop him or even continue writing your essay. You allow yourself to enjoy the slow, steady rock of his hips against yours—only for a moment. Every vein and ridge dragging against your hypersensitive walls.

You go to reach back—for support, for a futile attempt at stopping the way he rocks into you, feeling as inevitable as the ticking of time—with your other hand, but are stopped by the quill in your hand. You're reminded, there and then, that winning over Remus is almost, if not just as satisfactory as a hard won orgasim.

You put quill to ink pot, and then, quill to parchment. Remus curses behind you but doesn't stop. Not with you panting and whining behind gritted teeth. Not with you clenching around him like a Grindylow's spindly fingers, tightening with a merciless grip. He doesn’t stop until the familiar voice of his mates cuts through the fog.

"There you two are. Should've known you'd be held up in here weeks before your assignment is done. On a weekend at that—" Sirius trails off as he and James discover the little nook you and Remus have secluded yourselves too, as well as the...odd position you find yourselves in.

It's not that he's never seen you two be affectionate, especially nearing the full moon as it is, but you in Remus's lap like this, a flustered look on your face, well, he's not a dumbass. Something out of the ordinary is happening here.

James on the other hand is none the wiser, brows furrowing in self righteous disappointment.

"We've been looking for you two everywhere. Party's not that far off, you know the turn out will be lethal even if we lost the match to those snakes." There was a foul that should've been called, but wasn't, a sligh that the refs didn't catch. In traditional Gryffindor fashion, they didn't whine about a rematch or about the unfairness of it, and in typical Slytherin fashion, they didn't either. But they needed you two to help set up certain spells only you two knew because, well, you created them. Definitely not because they liked watching the way their best mate's girl stretched and bent as she set up in the Gryffindor commons.

"We know," Remus says, glancing up at the boys before looking back to one of the open textbooks. "The plan's to party the weekend away, yeah? It's why we're getting the assignment out of the way. Sooner you let us finish this," he's slowly sliding his hands up from your knees to your hips, pushing you down with such strength that your stomach clenches, "sooner we can help."

"It's...it's just an essay, Sirius. We'll be done before the Hufflepuffs start," you almost bite your tongue mid-sentence when Remus ghosts a callused finger over your aching clit, playing it off as a hiccup, "bringing the snacks.

Neither of you say anything more as you have a sneaking suspicion that they're going to catch on, chances of you opening your mouth to speak only for a moan to tumble out are high. Remus is quiet because he hopes they do figure it out, either from the audible wetness of your cunt or your eyes rolling back as he makes you cum. 

Remus knows they're in love with you and have been since third and fourth year. He's tempted to invite them a glimpse under the table so they can see how he has you stretched around his cock, squirming and wanton. What better way of making sure they know you're his?

And from the way Sirius looks the two of you over, glances down at the table, and raises his perfectly sculpted brows as James begins to ramble at you, there’s no mistaking that Sirius knows. Of course he does. Sirius always knows. His stormy eyes flick down again—deliberate, calculating—as if he’s debating whether or not to call you out. He hums, low and thoughtful, as if weighing the satisfaction of saying something versus letting the moment play out. Instead, he smirks faintly and leans against a nearby bookcase, letting James’s oblivious chatter fill the space.

Remus holds his gaze, unflinching, daring him to say a word. For a brief, reckless moment, he considers sliding his chair back just enough to let Sirius catch a glimpse of how thoroughly he has you. The thought makes his cock twitch inside you, and from the way Sirius’s smirk curves a fraction higher, it’s almost like he knows that, too.

Remus doesn’t full-on smirk when they lock eyes, but it’s a close thing.

"…Right.” Sirius tilts his head slightly, his sharp grey eyes dragging over the two of you like he’s piecing together a puzzle he’s already solved. His gaze flicks down to the table again—just briefly—and then back up to meet yours. The corner of his mouth twitches, not quite a smirk, but close enough to make your stomach drop. “You know, you two really are awful at being subtle.”

Your heart skips a beat, heat rushing to your face as you open your mouth to protest—except Sirius doesn’t give you the chance. He hums thoughtfully, his gaze flicking to Remus, and then back to you, like he’s enjoying the power of watching you squirm. “But don’t think being pretty gets you out of work,” he adds smoothly, leaning in to knock his knuckle against the table. “You’ve got until ten on the dot before I come back and drag you out of here myself.”

James, oblivious as ever, snorts and waves Sirius off. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just mad because we need you for the setup,” he says, rolling his eyes. He jabs a thumb at Sirius, then gestures toward the door. “I told him you’re probably in here studying, because what else would you two be doing on a Friday night?”

Sirius hums again, a low, knowing sound, his gaze locking with Remus’s in a silent challenge. The corner of his mouth curves, just enough for you to wonder if he’s going to say something more—something that will make it impossible to deny that he knows exactly what’s happening beneath the table.

But instead, he lets out a soft laugh, straightening from the bookcase. “Sure,” he drawls, his voice dripping with amusement. “Studying.” His eyes grow bigger as he says it to emphasis just how little he believes that rubbage excuse.

He casts one last look over the two of you, smirking faintly, before turning to leave, James already rambling on about the next Quidditch match as they disappear into the corridor. Relief floods your chest for all of three seconds—before Remus tilts his hips just so, dragging another whimper from you as his cock presses deeper.

You bite your cheek, barely able to return James's wave goodbye before you're digging your nails into Remus's thighs. The same thighs that are currently spreading yours apart. Your skirt rides up, exposing you to the air and his sly hands.

"This," your hips twitch against his as he traces feather-light fingers over your puffy lips, swollen with need. You bite back a whine, huffing harshly through your nose as those fingers move down where the base of his cock sits snugly in you, tubbing slick where you and he are connected. "This is how you're cheating."

"If you're so much better than me, you should be able to focus, no problem, right?" He has an arm wrapped around your waist again, the other flipping pages.

"Fine." If that's how he wants to play, then you are more than game. You lean forward, elbows on the table as you grind your hips back and forth, barely raising off of him before coming back down with your fluttering warmth squeezing around him. "Focus, Lupin. Or, mh, at least try."

"Shhhit. D-dearest, that's not—" he cuts himself off with a truly shameless moan, both hands gripping your waist. He doesn't stop you, no, wouldn't dream of it. Instead, he helps you balance as you move faster, busy chasing your high more than you're focused on sabotaging Remus. "You, your—Merlin, you're bloody brilliant."

At this point, you don't know what'll come first: you, Remus, or Sirius's wrath.

[yourlittlegoblin]

{Awkwardly Yours} Cyno x Reader

Yall wish me luck that I don't suck at school. I need to be an academic weapon not an academic victim this year. Best of wishes to all my other fellow students and I will see you all in the next update!!

Cyno is down bad but like in his own awkward way

He tries to impress you with jokes, but half the time they’re so bad you don’t know whether to laugh or groan or crawl into a grave

“You must be a five-star card, because you’re always on my mind.” Cue him staring at you waiting for a reaction

When he realizes he has a crush, he just… stares at you for a solid minute like he’s trying to process a complex strategy

Tighnari and Kaveh notice immediately. Tighnari sighs. Kaveh just watches in secondhand embarrassment.

Oh and Alhaitham talks to you in front of him just to piss him off occasionally-

Anyways-

He accidentally gets way too competitive when playing TCG with you. If he loses, he acts normal on the outside but is internally spiraling. If he wins, he immediately regrets it because he wanted you to have fun

He lowkey starts gatekeeping you from other players. “Oh, you want to duel them? Are you sure? I mean, I could teach you better strategies��”

Oh shit I can see it in my head and it lowkey kinda making me grin like the little shit that I am

His love language is low-effort but endearing. He’ll place a Sumpter Beast plushie next to your usual seat at a card shop, claiming it “reserves” your spot

If you ever laugh at one of his puns, congratulations. You’ve made his entire week- no- year- fuck it you made his entire lifetime

One day, he blurts out, “You’re like my favorite deck.” You ask what he means, and he just mumbles, “Balanced… powerful… impossible to replace…” before practically speed-walking away

He starts "casually" showing up wherever you are. If you're at the Grand Bazaar, he's suddenly “on patrol.” If you’re at the Akademiya, he's "just passing through." Tighnari is this 🤏 close to staging an intervention

He offers to teach you how to play TCG, even if you already know. If you’re a beginner, he goes full mentor mode, explaining every mechanic with laser focus. If you’re experienced, he gets adorably flustered when you counter his moves

He may be a bit turned on if you win a couple times in a row

At some point, Dehya pulls you aside and just straight-up asks if you realize he likes you. When you say you’re not sure, she groans. “He literally lets you win in TCG. Do you know how serious that is?”

The moment he decides to confess, he goes full-on strategist mode

He plans everything meticulously… and then completely goes off the tracks by panicking at the last second

Ends up abandoning ship for the third time this month

His grand confession?

It happens over a TCG match. He carefully selects his cards, makes his move, then—without looking up—blurts out, “Would you like to go on a date with me?”

The silence that follows is so long he starts internally regretting everything. But the moment you say yes, he stiffens, nods very seriously, and then plays his next card like nothing happened

You question yourself after

Later when Tighnari asks how it went Cyno just crosses his arms and says “It was an easy victory.”

But internally? He’s fucking thriving

[geeminz]

ᯓ A CHANGE OF HEART // profiles !

╰┈➤ yang-uchinaga household

-ˋˏ [ yang mihye — 19 ; bs accounting ] ˎˊ

quite popular in their uni due to her having suitors friends in literally every department. disturb her during her study time and you die. basically she’s THE academic weapon. usually the only one who can hold off kazuha’s crazy (borderline illegal) ideas. everyone’s passenger princess. extraverted introvert and the mom of the group. hopelessly in love with giselle.

❝ am i not worth it? ❞

-ˋˏ [ kazuha "zuha" uchinaga — 19 ; bs civil engineering ] ˎˊ

mihye’s other half, and giselle’s younger sister. the ringleader of their friend group when it comes to troublemaking. loves to sneak out of her classes. her black kawasaki vulcan is her number 1 baby. totally not unrequitedly in love with her best friend.

❝ you'll always have me. always. ❞

-ˋˏ [ riki "niki" nishimura — 19 ; bs civil engineering ] ˎˊ

kazuha’s number 1 partner in crime. should be considered a villain at this point because his prank ideas are also borderline illegal.

-ˋˏ [ jisung park — 19 ; bs medical technology ] ˎˊ

an academic weapon like mihye, but a party animal like kazuha. has a reputation in their university as a matchmaking god because he has a 95% success rate in matchmaking. also created the gc AND the gc name. he’s the only one who knows about kazuha’s secret crush.

-ˋˏ [ shotaro "taro" osaki — 19 ; bs computer science ] ˎˊ

you disturb his rest time and you die. has a way of making people either shiver in fear or die laughing with his insults. likes to threaten people of inserting malware into their computers. mihye’s trustworthy confidante. secretly wishing upon giselle's downfall and mihye’s breakup.

-ˋˏ [ ??? — ?? ; to be added soon. ] ˎˊ

go to: mains ; face cards

[engineer-on-ylw]

a poem called "red pen"

"Well, I never knew my parents.

Alright — that right there was a lie,

sorry, but it might happen once more.

I'm not sure I can help it otherwise.

…Tell you what — let's begin again.

Well, I like to think I never knew my parents.

Of course, I did

but it wasn't the best of things to know.

One thing is for certain:

they sure were people. Took pride in their trade,

worked hard on their own lives,

were amicable to their fellow men,

tried their best for me;

but they didn't see the cogs in my head turning,

didn't see the shuffling decks of thoughts or the wine dark sea of —

what did he call it? — developing fluid, I think it was.

Developing fluid,

for the half-fully-formed pictures of faces, memories.

It was alright to know them, from a distance, but —

I'm sure you'll understand — seeing

the people who raised you, seeing them

condemn, slander, deny you even if unknowingly…

It's awful.

It's as if they go with a bright red ballpoint pen

and critique and scribble and cross you out

and give you a big fat F to conclude.

I wouldn't wish it on anybody.

One day, my mother came home,

put her bag on the kitchen counter,

took out the flimsy papers she'd have to mark that night —

saw her little Star had all but gone.

And that she had left a red pen on the counter, capless. At that moment

no longer were those sheets in her hands an academic weapon,

they were missing posters, calls for help

that couldn't be answered —

wouldn't be answered, not for a long while.

The court decreed it seven years later:

her little girl was all but dead.

…

That right there was also a lie.

Sorry.

I'm no poet, no storyteller of any kind, but

I'd like to think that woman figured it out

in the end, without a North Star to guide her way.

It's for the better, after all. 

Sometimes you have to forge your own path,

draw it with your own hand

in red ballpoint pen."

[chaosnojutsu]

What he’s doing is a direct violation of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

[ID in alt text]

If you’ll direct your attention to Article 5 and refer to the headline about Abbott, someone please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think most would agree that requiring employees to perform manual labor in temperatures above 100° F without providing them adequate means of hydration constitutes “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” Furthermore, it might be a stretch but one could say that since water is necessary to life, Abbott’s actions also violate Article 3.

And you can argue that “they should bring their own water” if you want. I’m not out there on the construction sites every day, so I can’t imagine what it’s like or make up what rules/policies are in place concerning the matter. But as someone who also lives in Texas and experiences these temperatures and their effects on a day to day basis, while spending most of my miserable time indoors with the air conditioning on, working around the house but definitely not performing construction, and has chugged more water in the past month than I have in the past five years combined (and I wish that was an exaggeration)… I’d venture to say that these workers already are bringing their own water. But there’s no way to refill or replace water consumed. They’re probably finishing it off in the first half hour of work and then suffering the rest of the day. Or maybe they’re rationing it so they can make it through the day relatively hydrated. I honestly can’t tell you which one sounds more horrifying, but I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt that those things are happening.

(Side anecdote: Texas has a University Interscholastic League of which most, if not all, school districts are a part of. UIL is taken incredibly seriously across the state, including enforcement of rules at any and every academic/athletic practice or contest to the nth degree. The UIL rules concerning groups that practice outdoors (football, marching band, etc.) require frequent water breaks. It’s odd to me that, given Texas’ abysmal education system and its rapidly worsening state under Abbott’s administration, there are strict mandates regarding the health and safety of student competitors— as there should be, but guess what, UIL is not a government entity and they still managed to implement those rules and put the fear of god into anyone who dares disobey— but not for paid laborers. It’s almost as if Greg Abbott is so bigoted that he doesn’t care about the lives of the predominantly POC construction workers and doesn’t care who knows it.)

So weaponize your horror. Call my governor about it. Call YOUR government about it. Call the ACLU and the UN about it. Because even if I’m wrong and this is somehow technically legal and there’s “nothing we can do about it,” at least we tried something to stand up to our oppressors and make life less miserable for each other.

And don’t you dare say a word about Texans “getting what we deserve for living in a red state” when there are so many marginalized groups who simply cannot leave at this point in time, especially when our attorney general was impeached earlier this month and admitted to blocking millions of votes in the last election cycles so that the GOP would win. Had Ken Paxton not done that, Beto O’Rourke would have ousted Ted Cruz, Trump would not have won Texas, and Abbott would not be emboldened to take action this heinous with so many political adversaries in office, if he were even still in office.

Their goal is cruelly and death to minorities, especially with this sadistic ruling.

[boycock-boycunt-boyslut]

oh hey another one of my own ideas *shoves my 12 req to the side*

scara x gn!lreader / cyno x gn!reader warnings: scars, touching said scars, reader's shirtless (nothing described), mentions of past injuries and battles, the boys are so ooc they might as well just be an oc, written before scara n cyno's releases, grammar + spelling mistakes, lowercase writing, tell me if i forgot any description: his touch felt nice against your cheek, running across one of your many scars placed there. you tilted your face into his palm and kissed his hand. you loved him, just as he loved all of you. word count: 1.4k beginning: 185 scara: 603 cyno: 642

(i dont have a cyno banner yet)

his touch feels so nice against you. as one of his arms is wrapped around you with the other reaching up to your face. his touch was gentle as it glided across your skin. he stopped at your collarbone, lightly tracing over a mark that went across it. you couldn't remember how you got it. it wasn't one of the deeper ones, so you just forgot about it.

his hand moved up to one on your neck. it wasn't one of the worst either but you remember the story behind it, you bet he remembers too. you felt his arms get the slightest bit tighter around you. his thumb rubbed against it for a few seconds before finally moving up to your face. there were scratches he ran his fingers over. a scratch that went across your nose that you got from hilichurls. it wouldn't scar at least.

his touch felt nice against your cheek, running across one of your many scars placed there. you tilted your face into his palm and kissed his hand. you loved him, just as he loved all of you.

scaramouche

scaramouche is always unusually quiet in these times. you always wondered why but never bothered to ask him, just in case it was something sensitive to him. you'd wait if he ever wanted to tell you.

scara's hand moved from your cheek, wrapping it around your back as he brought you close to him. he tucked his head into you bare shoulder. he wasn't usually like this, but it was nice.

"do you have a long mission soon?" you asked.

you moved your hand up into his hair as he leaned further into your shoulder.

"...no," he replied. his arms tightened around you as he tried to get you even closer to him.

you nodded as you continued to run your hands through his hair. his hands moved across your back and felt across the scars there too.

"your own soldiers aren't that kind," you joked.

there was a burn that was close to your shoulder, the one scara was laying his head on. you remember the burn it gave, and the anger and concern in scara's voice that day.

"i know," he whispered. his hand ghosted over the burn before he laid his hand on it.

"your skin is so smooth compared to mine… clean in a way."

the harbinger had way less scars compared to you. he had a few across his skin, you always found them nice. you'd compliment them when you could and lightly kiss them. sometimes he'd complain about it, though the smallest bit of red on his cheeks proved you otherwise.

"yet yours has more of a story to tell…" scara said, "how you seem to always make it through the worse. and also a reminder for me scold you more when you come back with blood all over you and your weapon cut in half."

you chuckled at the last part, you even felt a small smile form on scara's face against your shoulder.

"i guess that is true, but i bet yours is nicer to hold though. your skin is soft."

"who said you weren't nice to hug?"

"well i just thought about it -"

"shush, you feel fine."

you let out an amused breath as scara didn't reply any further. you weren't wrong really, scara was nice to hold. his skin felt soft, smooth, you'd be lying if you said you weren't jealous at times when you thought about it. who knew a harbinger, someone who gets orders from the tsaritsa herself, could still look as clean as ever. seemingly untouched by some battles somehow. though you knew that part was completely false.

"you are completely fine," scara said, "i see no problem with how you feel to hold. you're… nice."

well you didn't completely expect that. it was a nice surprise though. you leaned further into scara's touch as the room went silent again. it was a welcomed one though, a silence to bask in each others presence.

he'd hold you like this for a bit longer, running his hands across your skin and tracing your scars. he was amazed you'd let him see you in your bare form. but he was thankful as well, having you trust in him. soon he'd fall asleep against you again, after finally tracing every part of you again as well. you'd wish him goodnight and lay down with him to slowly drift off to sleep next to him.

he was thankful for the amount of trust you had for him, and you were thankful for him to love every piece of you as he did. even the marked and scarred skin of yours. he loved you, truly.

cyno

cyno was a scholar, one that wouldn't travel often. you on the other hand, traveled a lot across teyvat. yet you'd always come back to him. it's no wonder you'd come back with scars on your body and blood on your face. that doesn't mean it didn't worry him though.

"is your nose okay?" cyno whispered.

"mhm, just a small scratch from fighting hilichurls. reported it to the knights when i went to talk to lisa," you said.

"is lisa doing alright?"

"yep, lazy as ever. we had some tea together, it was nice."

cyno nodded as he ran his hand across your face. his touch felt so gentle against you, he could never hurt you then. and he would never hurt you either.

you felt his other hand move downward. down from your stomach and to your thigh. there was another large-ish scar laying there.

"couldn't walk for a while after getting this one, as you probably remember," you laughed dryly. the memories were still present.

the scholar didn't respond, simply running his hands across the scar. he remembered you having to stay in bed for a long time after getting captured by those treasure hoarders. he didn't expect them to be so violent, but at least cyno was able to track you down in time.

his hand moved abruptly from your thigh to your face, cradling your face in both of his hands.

"cyno? is there something wrong?"

"no, not at all," as all he said.

he kissed your forehead. then he kissed the top of your nose, then both of your cheeks, and finally moved to your lips. it was sweet and quick, just like you're used to. but the quick kiss was full of love and adoration of you, something you could tell easily from cyno.

"i hate seeing you get hurt, you know?" he said, pulling away from you slightly. "the times i've seen you come home with bandages across you chest, arms, face, and legs even. it hurts to see."

you leaned into his touch, letting out a deep breath in thought. you did feel bad for worrying him, coming home all of the time battered up with bruises and scratches across your body. you felt bad each time it happened. cyno was a busy man after all.

"i'm sorry cyno… truly. i don't mean to worry you," you whispered against him.

the scholar leaned closer to you, touching his forehead against yours.

"i just don't want to see you get irreversibly injured… to be stuck down to one place, it'd seem like torture to you. so i wish i could join you when you leave, but it is hard with where i am currently."

you moved your hands to remove cyno's hoodie, just so you could run your fingers through his long hair. you always thought it was beautiful.

"i'll try to stay safe for you. so i don't worry you as much."

"i am aware at times it is impossible to avoid injury. but i ask of you, please look out for yourself as well."

you took another deep breath in before replying, "i will, cyno."

he nodded against you, moving to once again kiss you. though this time it was longer than before. cyno once again wrapped his arms around you as he fell back into the bed. laying you on top of him as he waited to fall asleep with you with him once again.

he loved you, every part of you. he loved how you fought, how you never stood down to an opponent. just how you loved him as well. you loved how he always persevered in his academics, how well he did. how he never seemed to get truly mad at you for something. he loved each part of you, and you loved each part of him as well.

[inkykeiji]

What kind of academic disciplines do you think prof keigo, touya and tenko would enjoy the most/be very good at in the DA AU??

awesome question anon!!! they’re all in the humanities in one way or another. professor keigo is a classics professor with a specialization in ancient literature and ancient philosophy, though because he is the youngest faculty member he also gets stuck with the massive intro to classics class, which touches on and covers a broad area of topics—basically an overview of classics as a whole. he is also very interested in the role of food within ancient civilizations and cultures, though he does not do much academic work on that topic.

this anon suggested psychology for touya + history for tenko, which i love, but i have always seen touya as a philosophy major first and foremost. he is extremely intelligent and loves to debate and theorize, and nothing beats that pretty, sharp glint in his eye and that rush of pride that gushes through his chest whenever he talks someone into a defeated, shameful corner with only languid words + intellect as his weapons. so he is majoring or specializing in philosophy and minoring in psychology (purely to help him better understand how to manipulate others. he finds matters of the mind fascinating).

tenko is a history major with a minor in business—the minor in business is a half-assed attempt to pacify his father, who is intent on him inheriting and taking over the family business, even though tenko has no interest in that whatsoever. he desperately wishes he was a computer science major—that’s what he truly enjoys, that’s what he’s truly good at—but his father threatened to not pay for his uni tuition unless tenko chose something more ‘sophisticated’, and threatened to pull his inheritance completely if tenko refused to go to university at all. irregardless of how much he hates his studies, tenko is still in the top five percent of most of his classes.

[animehun7er]

TOP ECCHi ANiME TO WATCH FOR

It’s sexy time now or in anime terms, it’s ‘ecchi’ time now. After doing a list about some of the popular harem anime out there, why not compile another list, this time with popular ecchi anime. The ecchi genre has been a fan favourite for a long time. So much so that there are special fanservice episodes in anime from other genres. Though I am not an avid watcher of ecchi anime sometimes I do tend to dwell in them. If you are looking for some sexy anime the here’s a list compiled just for you. So, let’s see what are some of the top ecchi anime out ever. You can watch some of these best ecchi anime movies on Crunchyroll or YouTube. Most of these anime are erotic and hot

10. No Game No Life (2014)

‘No Game No Life’ is a fantasy, ecchi anime. It has been made bright, colourful, and is filled with fan service. I liked the premise of the movie (though it has been done before). The base theme is that you have to play high-stake games to make critical decisions. Thus, this removes all kind of action, bloodshed, and war. So, if you are into that action anime then I suggest you skip this one. Sora and Shiro are one of the best online gamers. They are siblings who are not currently pursuing any sort of education or doing any jobs. Their online game username is ‘Blank��� which has achieved a sort of legendary status. They don’t go out much and feel that the real world is nothing but a lame game.

One day they receive an e-mail which challenges them to play a match of chess. This starts their adventures in another realm where every rivalry and problem is solved by games. The ruler of this world, Disboard, is Tet, who is the God of Games. This system of settling disputes and discord via high-stake games works pretty well for one particular reason. Both the parties must wager something equal in value to the wager of the opposite party. Now, the gaming genius duo Sora and Shiro has got a reason to play games. They must unite all the races of this world to play against Tet so that they become the new God of Games.

9. Kill la Kill (2013)

‘Kill la Kill’ is an entertaining anime. There are two ways of watching this show. You can watch it as a parody of sorts and enjoy how it satirically criticizes the stereotypical anime paraphernalia. You can also watch it as a common ecchi, action anime with strong female leads and lots of funny scenes. Whichever way you choose you will end up having fun while viewing this show. Though at first, the series might feel a bit confusing and clichéd it matures gradually as the series approaches the end. Ryuuko Matoi is the protagonist of the series. Her father was an inventor. One of his inventions is a scissor-like weapon. It is the missing half of this weapon which serves as the only remaining clue of his murder that Ryuuko has.

With the remaining half of the scissor blade, she ventures out to find the killer of her father and avenge his death. Her investigation takes her to Honnouji Academy. It is a prestigious academy at the top of which is the cold and heartless Satsuki Kiryuuin, the student council president. Four people serve her and are known as the Elite Four. They have been given God Clothes by Satsuki which grants them superhuman powers. Ryuuko tries to fight one of them but looses and retreats to her home. There she finds a rare God Cloth which after coming in contact with her blood latches onto her. This gives her immense superhuman abilities.

Now, armed with power Ryuuko ventures once again to the Honnouji Academy to face Satsuki and her underlings to uncover the culprit behind her father’s murder.

8. Highschool of the Dead (2010)

The only reason I decided to include ‘Highschool of the Dead’ is that I found it quite entertaining. Mind you it is nowhere close to some great ecchi anime like ‘Shokugeki no Soma’ but it is entertaining nonetheless. It is an erotic zombie apocalypse anime with lots of fanservice. There are some steamy hot scenes in this anime. It does not plan to intrigue the viewers with a complex and interesting plot or relatable characters (though at times you can relate with some of them) but rather let them enjoy a sexy little zombie apocalypse anime. So, if you are a fan of the genre then you might enjoy it.

The plot starts with the world suddenly amid a zombie apocalypse. People start turning into the undead. The entire social structure is experiencing a great demise as humans start feeding on each other. Takashi Kimuro is the protagonist of this anime. His friend, unfortunately, turns into a zombie. Takashi takes the harsh decision and kills his friend before he can harm anyone. He promises to protect the girlfriend of his friend. As they navigate through their school campus they meet a bunch of other students and a school nurse. All of them are trying to escape this predicament. They decide to bundle up together and work as a team so that they can survive this apocalypse.

7. Sekirei (2008)

‘Sekirei’ is a popular ecchi genre anime and like lots of other anime in this genre, it too uses the supernatural theme. The series has some funny scenes and some over-the-top action sequences. The female characters, who are the centre of attraction for all ecchi anime fans, in this anime are quite pretty and sexy. They are nicely endowed and have voluptuous figures. Though it is common in these types of anime I felt that ‘Sekirei’ was somewhat misogynistic in its approach. It is one thing to make women wear skimpy and tight clothes (which is quite staple in any ecchi anime) but it is another thing to treat them as objects. This was one of the most obnoxious things about this anime. If you can get over this fact then it will become a fun little anime which you can either binge or watch an episode or two once in a while taking a break from your regular stuff.

Though Minato Sahashi is not an idiot he keeps struggling with academics. He tries hard but ends up failing the college entrance exams a second time. He and people around him lose their hope and think that Minato is a failure. But suddenly his life changes when a beautiful human-like extraterrestrial-being falls into his life (literally). Her name is Musubi. She is a Sekirei, special beings who kiss humans who possess a special gene to unhide their secret powers. Musubi brings out Minato’s hidden powers but now he is paired with her to compete against other similar pairs. What Minato doesn’t know is that there is far more danger regarding this than he thinks.

6. Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san (2018)

Up next is another supernatural ecchi anime. If you fantasize about sexy supernatural or fantastical beings then you will enjoy ‘Yuragi-sou no Yuuna-san’. There are 12 episodes in this series and each episode is around 23 minutes long. If you have ventured into the ecchi genre after watching anime like ‘Shokugeki no Soma’ then I will suggest you not to hang around this genre much, since most anime are not remotely like it. They are filled with lots of fanservice and buxom beauties and that’s mostly about it.

Fuyuzora Kogarashi is a medium and has been troubled by spirits since his childhood. He has been possessed many times but as he grew older he became more resistant towards the spirits and can now even exorcize them with just a punch. But he is poor and in need of a cheap boarding house to stay in. He finds it quite cheap to stay at the Yuragi manor. The main reason that this Manor is cheap is that it is haunted. But having dealt with ghosts most of his life Fuyuzora has no problem with it and starts staying in the house. The other tenants of the house are beautiful and sexy females. There he meets the ghost of the girl who is haunting the house. After Fuyuzora vows to help fulfil her lingering wish, the other members of the house reveal their supernatural nature.

5. Sankarea (2012)

The next anime is an odd one. ‘Sankarea’ had one of the most unusual plots. The main character is Chihiro Furuya a boy obsessed with everything ‘zombie’. He is so into them that he even wants a zombie girlfriend. One day Chihiro’s cat Baabu dies. This makes him determined to create a resurrection potion. He finds one of the main ingredients in Rea Sanka’s, a girl who wishes to die, house. After the potion is complete Rea decides to drink it thinking that the potion will kill her. But the potion was successful and when Rea, dies in an accident she is resurrected from the dead thus, becoming a zombie. Though this situation may seem ideal for Chihiro he faces a lot of trouble to deal with Rea.

4. Mayo Chiki! (2011)

Kinjirou Sakamachi had developed gynophobia, a fear of women, thanks to his mother and sister’s wrestling obsession. One advantage did come out of this though, his body has become very resilient allowing him to even brush off bumps from vehicles. But his fear is quite abnormal so much so that even a touch from a female can make his nose bleed. He ends up discovering that Subaru Konoe, who is the butler to his headmaster’s daughter, is a female. In exchange for secrecy, she promises to cure his phobia.

3. Prison School (2015)

Hachimitsu Private Academy is a popular all-girls academy until very recently when it decided to let boys enrol. After the first enrollment process, only 5 boys are selected. This puts them in a very awkward position as they cannot converse with almost any of their classmates since they are all female and ignore them. They try to find recluse in being peeping toms. But they are caught and thrown in the school prison for one month. Will they be able to survive or will they break?

2. High School DxD (2012)

Issei Hyoudou is your everyday pervert who wants to own a harem someday. He enjoys peeping on women. One day he is asked by a girl. Unfortunately, the girl is a fallen angel who wants to kill Issei and is successful in doing so. End of story, right? Wait! Issei is then resurrected by Rias Gremory, a devil, who makes him her servant. Now, Issei must adjust to this new lifestyle and survive in the vicious world of devils and angels.

1. Shokugeki no Souma (2015)

Souma Yukihira has been working as a sous chef under his father in their family restaurant. He is quite creative in his cooking style and entertains the customers with skilful culinary creations. His dream is to one day become the head chef of the restaurant. His dream is however cut short when his father closes down the business and enrols Souma in Tootsuki Culinary Academy. Now, he needs to work hard since only 10% of the students can graduate. Will he be able to survive the academy and its famous food wars?

[loveisneurotic]

Kaguya-sama Blind Reaction/Analysis: S1E1

Hello everyone, this is my blog which I am currently using to react to and analyze Kaguya-sama: Love Is War much more seriously than I should analyze any romcom.

I have only seen the first episode of the anime, which this post shall explore using far too many words. If I'm feeling particularly motivated, I may read the manga as well.

My analysis will contain spoilers. If you're thinking of watching this show and haven't seen it yet, I recommend you at least go check out the first episode yourself before reading any further. I don't know what the rest of the show is like, but what I've seen so far has been both entertaining and thought-provoking.

I'm going in mostly blind, but not entirely blind. There are a few images of the anime and manga that I have been exposed to, although without the attached context. Due to cultural osmosis and the sheer popularity of this work, perhaps that was almost inevitable.

Figure 1.1.1: Why did this guy write an essay about a single episode of an ongoing romcom?

Kaguya-sama: Love Is War

Season 1 Episode 1

I Will Make You Invite Me to a Movie / Kaguya Wants to Be Stopped / Kaguya Wants It

Power dynamics in relationships

Figure 1.1.2: Immediately, the mangaka's tastes become clear.

I heard a saying once that really stuck with me: "The partner who cares the least has all of the power."

In the world of dating, I often sincerely believed this saying. You may yearn for someone's affection, but the other person need not give it to you until they are willing and ready. No matter how much you want it, you can't make someone more interested in you, unless you resort to being roundabout, such as adding some mystery and intrigue to your courtship. But is that excessive?

I once felt a potential lover slipping through my grasp, and before I knew it, I found myself chasing after them. As I was yearning for their attention, I felt as if I'd lost my dignity. It was humiliating. Painful. Was it just that they weren't the right person for me? Or was I not funny enough? Not charismatic enough? Not interesting enough? Too clingy? Too talkative? Should I have been more distant and given them more space? Did I seem too weak? Too eager? How should I have maximized my desirability? Regardless, I had surely lost. Perhaps they wanted the satisfaction and validation of conquering me. Playing me for a fool and asserting their superiority by being so distant. Isn't that right? Or is that just insecurity speaking? At what point is it ideal to cut one's losses and walk away?

If someone desperately wants the object of their affection to desire them, does that make them pathetic? Does it make them a loser? If you show more vulnerability and desire than the other person, does that truly make you the weak one in a relationship?

These questions plague our two protagonists and seem to be a driving force behind the main conflict. Since I have also grappled with how much to reveal my own feelings of desire, I find Kaguya-sama: Love Is War to be a particularly fascinating show.

Desire without action

Figure 1.1.3: Our protagonists are gifted with impressively high academic intelligence paired with impressively low emotional intelligence.

The show wastes no time in introducing us to our two main protagonists. Kaguya was born into a family of high stature (and says "ara ara" frequently enough to power a small country of weebs), whereas Shirogane is a "commoner" (Kaguya's word, not mine) who worked hard to reach the pinnacle of the student body. Like timid schoolchildren, they're crushing on each other, and yet they refuse to admit it due to their pride. Instead, they focus on getting their "opponent" to confess their love first.

What stuck out to me immediately is how they both have different ideas of what their relationship would be like. Shirogane envisions Kaguya as blushing, shy, and conventionally cute, whereas Kaguya (thankfully) envisions herself taking absolute dominance over Shirogane (which plenty of people should see coming as a character trait after the anime's very first scene). The bad news about this is that their two fantasies are at odds. The good news about this is that the mangaka has fantastic taste -- you can learn a lot about a storyteller based on the characterization of a love interest or lead character of the author's preferred gender.

In the event that the two of them become an actual couple, I wonder how on Earth they'll reach a compromise as to how they'll treat each other. Perhaps they will have to figure that out before they can even get that intimate.

I appreciate that we get to see both of their perspectives. It hammers home how everyone has a different truth in regards to what they desire and what they experience, and the show does not hold back when it comes to showing just how different these truths can be -- such as a certain lunch-themed sequence that I will talk about later. This works to great dramatic and comedic effect.

That said, when you spend your time fantasizing about what could happen instead of actually taking action, time is not so friendly to you.

Half a year passes.

Figure 1.1.4: Two geniuses dedicate their pride to wasting their life and energy.

Immediately, I got the impression that whoever wrote this segment of the story knows what they're doing. This is too real. And by "too real", I mean I very much appreciate the realism. How many of us have waited for ages (or for eternity) to confess our feelings to a specific someone?

This is the curse of having a crush and being incapable of acting on it. It's also why I hate having crushes.

Manufacturing affection in others, AKA the extraction of vulnerability

Figure 1.1.5: A plan is devised to weaponize jealousy in the name of affection.

To express your truest feelings means being vulnerable. That implies taking a risk and feeling responsible for any potential consequences of rejection, as well as putting our dignity on the line. It would be so much easier for the object of our affection to make themselves vulnerable instead. So instead of being direct and honest, we act indirect. We drop hints. We act suggestively, but not explicitly. We may even place them in situations where we think they are more likely to confess. If they don't pick up on it, we can pretend we didn't mean anything by it. That way, we don't have to risk our dignity. We can just wait for them to make the move.

It sucks.

Incidentally, it sucks even more when both you and your love interest are thinking that way.

It sucks infinitely more when both you and your love interest are COMMITTED to thinking that way.

Someone has to break the deadlock, whether that's immediately or eventually.

If this show isn't one of those romcoms where the status quo never changes ever (judging by the quality of writing, I have faith that it isn't), then at some point, either Shirogane or Kaguya is going to have to be explicit about how they really feel. And it's going to feel scarier to them than anything else they've ever done.

It's gonna be great.

If we could all grow up and live in environments where it's safe and encouraged for all of us to be honest about how we feel and what we want, surely love would be much less painful for so many people.

Chaos theory

Figure 1.1.6: If your prospective lover won't protect you, then your friend definitely will.

Chika is the ideal wild card and agent of chaos in this arena of love.

From a writing perspective, Chika is immensely useful. The mangaka probably could have gotten by without a third character in the mix, but she serves as a catalyst and an unknown element, able to create unpredictability and subversion of expectations. For a comedy-oriented story, this is invaluable.

Blissfully unaware of the mental turmoil that plagues our two lovesick dorks, she is able to unintentionally invalidate whatever schemes that Kaguya or Shirogane spent so much mental energy on, which adds extra comedy and tension for the audience. She is also an effective vehicle for Kaguya's jealousy and projection, as seen in the lunchbox scene which I have so graciously foreshadowed.

Figure 1.1.7: We have confirmed visual on an unidentified fourth person. Chekhov would love this. From their posture, I wonder if they'll be a gloomy character?

Misunderstandings and assumptions

I've heard that most interpersonal conflicts in life emerge from misunderstandings. In the absence of communication, assumptions are born and give rise to misunderstandings.

You may know where I'm going with this. Let's talk about the lunchbox sequence.

Figure 1.1.8 (not pictured because tumblr wishes to deny me of my image spam): Kaguya is too prideful to admit she thinks that a couple is doing something cute.

Figure 1.1.9: Pride is considered a sin for a reason.

From a writing perspective, I was impressed by the lack of romantic intentions in Shirogane in this whole sequence. Not once did he try to get Kaguya to show vulnerability to him. Instead, Kaguya is the only one spinning the situation in a romantic way, while Shirogane's driving force is the misunderstanding that Kaguya is looking down on him for what he eats. Because of this misunderstanding, Shirogane doubles down and makes his food even better, making the situation even more complicated and more stressful for Kaguya. This was definitely my favorite comedy sequence from the first episode.

I appreciate that the show has demonstrated the ability to create these scenarios where one of the characters doesn't even have love on their mind, but there are still romantic thoughts coming from the other character which drives the drama. It gives me a lot of faith in the variety this show will have to offer, and makes me excited to watch more.

When it comes to comedy rooted in misunderstandings, it is important to have miscommunication or lack of communication. In order to resolve a misunderstanding, you need to talk about it. For a pairing as dysfunctional as Kaguya and Shirogane, expecting healthy communication sounds highly unreasonable, which makes them prime material for a whole world of misunderstandings.

Misunderstandings are rooted in assumptions about what the other person meant when they said something or made a certain gesture or expression. When Kaguya glared at Shirogane and his food, he didn't even think to ask "What's the matter?" He just made an assumption about how she felt. I wonder if trying to understand Kaguya's feelings would be considered a sign of weakness by Shirogane?

A prerequisite to initiating an emotional conversation is the desire to understand or be understood by the other person -- assuming that your assumptions haven't already built a narrative for you. It is far easier to make assumptions than it is to attempt any sort of understanding.

In the end, Shirogane fled, unwilling to confront or attempt to understand the intense and passive-aggressive Kaguya. Kaguya feels that she cannot directly ask to try his lunch, so perhaps this is the closest she can get to initiating such a conversation with him at this time. Despite their mind games where they imagine the reactions of their opponent, they still have a lot of difficulty understanding each other.

I am curious to see if this prospective couple's communication skills and emotional intelligence will improve over the course of the story.

The burden of potential romance

Figure 1.1.10: Even the infallible genius Kaguya succumbs to superficial jealousy. It's "mind over matter" versus "matter over mind". That's how the saying goes, right?

Chika is a free spirit, able to ask Shirogane for whatever she wants without being neurotic. That is the power of not being bounded by a crush. Kaguya, who lacks that degree of freedom, briefly loathes her for experiencing something that Kaguya cannot ask for. It's amazing how much someone's feelings for a friend can change without a single word being spoken between them. All it takes is an action, unintentional or not, combined with the raw strength of insecurity. Just as quickly, the status quo can return back to normal too, with the act of properly making up.

To Chika, asking for food from someone doesn't mean anything at all, whereas with Kaguya, it is an admission of defeat. In that sense, a relationship that will only ever be platonic brings peace of mind, whereas a relationship that can be potentially romantic brings leagues upon leagues of anxiety if the outcome is of great concern.

Love is neurotic.

Is love worth the pain? For some people, it is not. For others, the reward is immense -- but only if you can make sure your relationship with this person doesn't end up being a nightmare for your emotional health.

Love and self-identity

The final scene of the episode surprised me in a good way. It's a brief departure from the comedy, and reveals a more heartfelt side of the show.

Kaguya's servant asks her an insightful question. It is substantially more insightful than I would expect from any romcom: "If you fell in love some day, would you wait for that person to confess their love, like now? Or would you confess your love?" I found myself immediately curious to hear Kaguya's answer, since I knew it would be highly informative about her character.

"If that time comes, I would consider the risk of someone stealing him first and come to the one rational conclusion." Even in the realm of love, Kaguya seems precise and calculating. It's as if she hesitates to give a straight answer, but then she confirms: "Of course I would go."

Figure 1.1.11: "Please understand."

It is not embarrassment or rejection that Kaguya fears; it is the absolute destruction of her identity and sense of self. Kaguya is the daughter of a family that practically runs the country. In her mind, everyone yearns for her and wishes to serve her. Turning that around and reaching out to another person to express her own desire would be a direct contradiction of that. It is probably a similar situation for Shirogane, where the infallible self-image he has built up is being put at risk during his romantic duels against Kaguya.

Kaguya clearly feels trapped. She and Shirogane see each other as threats to be conquered, but in reality, they both share a mutual enemy that is much more imposing and insidious: their own simultaneous disgust at the idea of vulnerability.

Their freedom is dominated by their insecurities, and so, even despite their impressive stature, they are still very human. Their upbringing that has lead them to become so accomplished may be more of a curse than a blessing, due to the resulting pride and self-image they likely feel pressured to uphold.

It is hard to cast aside a lie that you have bought into for your whole life.

If our two protagonists wish to have a chance of establishing a healthy romantic relationship, they have a lot of their own demons to overcome first. If they cannot set aside their pride and reach mutual understanding, they have no hope.

Until then, they will both remain trapped in a hell of their own design, however tragically comedic it may be.

My hopes for this story's future

I can tell that the mangaka, unlike far too many writers all over the world, actually seems to have a solid understanding of romance and the conflict that arises within. I've watched too many anime that place huge focus on the "will they or won't they" crap which never runs any deeper than one or both of the characters being too embarrassed to just say what they're thinking, without any sort of convincing mental blocker. In that case, it's clearly just manufactured drama which is designed to pad out the story and waste your time rather than pose interesting questions and themes. In the case of Kaguya and Shirogane, the two of them have substantial communication issues which are depicted in a comedic yet mature way, which I have found engaging.

I very much hope that the show will more deeply explore the themes and questions surrounding the ideas of vulnerability, emotional intelligence, and superiority within relationships. Kaguya and Shirogane have been set up to be great vehicles for such exploration, and I hope the mangaka can capitalize on that, especially if our protagonists can confront these issues directly.

My impression is that the ending will make or break this story. If the mangaka can pull it off well, I can already believe the payoff will be hugely satisfying.

Of course, in order to get to that point, we'll have to see a certain something. It has to do with the most sacred word amongst romcom enthusiasts: "progress". Indeed, after spending chapters upon chapters watching two characters bumble around amidst the same exact status quo, those little signs of advancements in a relationship are highly rewarding.

Underneath all of their aggression, if we can see Kaguya and Shirogane slowly open up to each other and realize the benefits of vulnerability, I think we could witness something really beautiful and really emotionally cathartic.

I've still only seen one episode, but I believe the mangaka has laid a fantastic groundwork for a series and can do a great job developing upon what I've seen so far. On that note, I will surpass our prideful protagonists by opening my heart to this story and entrusting it with my vulnerability, believing it can deliver satisfying development and resolution. You can do it!

Closing thoughts

I did not expect to write so much about a single episode of an ANIME of all things, but here we are. If only I could conjure this kind of power back when I actually needed it in high school English class!

The first episode alone is already so rich with characterization and themes that I managed to find quite a lot to talk about. Given how much I found myself relating to the characters and some of their situations, it's clear to me how this show became so popular. Not only are the animation, direction, and writing excellent, but also many people can probably relate to love feeling like a battlefield.

I do not want to believe in the idea of winners and losers in relationships. That idea creeps into my head whenever I'm having trouble keeping the interest of a new date, and I find myself wondering where those thoughts even come from. Lately, I have been reflecting on the way I relate to other people. Perhaps I've started experiencing this show at a time in my life when I most needed it, and that's why I felt driven to write such a large analysis.

This show poses some very interesting questions about romance that I do not actually know the answer to at the time of writing. I do not know yet how much the show is actually going to explore these themes. Regardless, I appreciate how this show is helping me reflect, and I am curious to see if and how the mangaka will answer some of the questions brought about by the story's themes.

This is a show that I'll most likely have to pace myself with. There was so much to process in this first episode alone. If I went any faster, I'm not sure if I'd even catch all of the details and character moments. I'm excited to move onto the second episode soon.

A highly subjective footnote about my cultured tastes

I'm glad that Kaguya is a sadistic dom with a gentle and vulnerable side, solely on the basis of that being my favorite personality type in a love interest. It also helps that it makes Kaguya's fantasies that much funnier with Shirogane acting so out of character. I feel like this show was made for me.

What was I writing about again? Oh yeah, writing a gigantic wall of text about an anime romcom. Somehow, I spent an entire day on this essay. Hopefully someone got a kick out of it.

[rhaenyratargeryn]

Exit Wounds (Cyberpunk 2077)

Pairing: Takemura Goro x (female) V Rating: Mature Summary: When his plans for revenge fail, V and Takemura are left right where they once started. A dying thief and a disgraced soldier, with as much in common as they lack and an improbable bond that holds them to one another. Notes: Post-Canon, Nomad ending. Spoilers for post-game! Read on AO3

They’d picked up a tail somewhere around the border. Whomever it was, they were skillful and cautious, but even still the Aldecaldos were able to lose them in a sandstorm across the Mojave. After a few weeks, it seemed that maybe they had even died out there in the hot sands.

Panam had taken V to a few experts along their trail, people who had done work for the family but so far, there had been little more than additional pills to take. She was swallowing a pharmacy every morning just to keep blood out of her mouth, but the worst of the seizures were under control and well— there was still time. Six months Alt had said, but maybe more. One had already passed and V felt better. 

Well. Physically at least. 

Inside her head things had changed, for better or for worse, was an academic argument that V hadn’t the time to ponder. She had, god forbid it, gotten used to having Silverhand in her head. The lack of Johnny’s familiar presence in her mind had left a strange sort of… loneliness in her. A feeling that wouldn’t leave her, a gnawing sensation that something was missing.

She had Johnny’s memories still and her own of him, though it did little to console her. She sat on the dusty fender of one of the trucks, rubbing a smudge from Johnny’s aviators, one of the handful of tangible mementos she kept of the old rocker. The sun above was already searing hot, the heat like a burn on the back of V’s neck.

“How far out did you spot um?” Mitch’s voice cut through her thoughts and V squinted against the bright daylight up at the two younger nomad drivers, Fiona and Tiger. They’d been sent out on a water run, returning from the nearest town several miles out with gallons full to keep the Aldecaldos going further across the desert.

“Cut us off. Started a fire fight. It was fuckin’ dicey, Mitch. We got lucky. Fiona clipped him and then his hood. Whole ride started smoking and then died under him.”

“Was it Arasaka?” V asked, replacing the aviators over her eyes.

Tiger and Fiona shared looks and then with a tentative nod, Fiona answered in the affirmative.

“We think so. He moved like a damn one man army, even with how fucked up he seemed.”

“Fucked up?”

“The guy was a monster, but it was like… I dunno. Like he was hurt?”

“Never corner a wounded animal…” Panam offered cryptically from where she sat alongside V, shooting her a worried look.

“Wounded animals got nothin’ to lose,” V said in agreement, then got up with a sigh, “You said you shot him? His car broke down too?”

“Yeah, probably right where we left um… you want us to go back, Panam? Make sure he dropped?”

“I’ll tag along. Hitch over with you both.” V said, Panam frowning at the suggestion, “I could jack in, find out what info he has got. I know Arasaka, Panam, I’m the best to check it out.”

“You don’t need my permission, V—”

“But?”

Panam scowled, turning her eyes to the other Aldecaldos and jerking her head to the side in a silent scram. They left, Mitch stayed, crossing his arms.

“The guy is toast. Why not just leave him?” Panam said, a sigh in her throat, “I dunno. I don’t like this, V. Arasaka hasn’t made a peep since we left. Thought we were keeping under the radar…”

“Clearly not.” Mitch said with a shrug, “And he might be toast. Or he mighta had back up. He might be on his way back to the NC to give up our location. We should make sure he is flatlined, if anything.”

Panam was the head of the family now, her word given final weight of law, but more often than not they had worked together as a sort of “council”. Panam was still getting used to Saul’s absence, an empty void that no one attempted to fill, because no one could ever do so. She looked to V and Mitch for guidance and right now it was obvious in the way she worried her bottom lip and flashed a look up and down V that she wished Mitch had agreed with her.

“You’ll keep outta trouble?” Panam said and V couldn’t help but crack a smile.

“I’m already dyin’, what other shenanigans could I get up to?”

Panam scoffed, clearly not liking the answer.

“Ugh, just be safe! Come back in one piece... or this shitty ass trip has been for nothin’.”

This was what having a family was all about though. Caring. Scolding. And now that she had it, V wouldn’t trade it for anything. Not for all the eddies and fame in Night City.

“Be back soon then.” V said, meeting back up with Fiona and Tiger with a short wave behind her.

---

It wasn’t a long drive to the spot where they had tangled with the possible Arasaka soldier and that actually genuinely worried V. They’d gotten close. Too close.

“There it is, can you see?” Fiona said, pointing her cigarette towards the ever larger growing mass of grey smoke.

“Pull off up here… Fiona, you stay with the car and I’ll take Tiger with me. You hear shots or us hollerin’ you peel outta here and go get the others, alright?”

“Yeah, yeah. Got it.” Fiona flicked ash unto the sand as she pulled the car up slowly to the patch of dried red earth, hidden in the shadow of a high rock and threw the gear into park.

Tiger followed V out, his rifle at the ready as he hung back a few steps. V had Johnny’s— no, her pistol. It was strange how well it fit in her hand, a perfectly balanced weapon that she loaded and readied with the familiarity of one who had used it for years, not a few weeks.

The remnants of the enemy jeep were still burning, fire crackling faintly from beneath the blackened and smoke streaked hood. The thing was already doomed before it took a few good shots to the metal, the paint peeling from the sides everywhere from overexposure to sunlight and rough sands. It was a junker, not exactly the kind of thing an Arasaka soldier would drive.

V came up around the drivers side while Tiger kept back, rifle ready for longshots. No one seemed to be in the car. V checked the handle with the back of her hand, feeling only the heat from the sun on it. She opened it quickly, hand going back to hold her pistol ready as she checked the passenger seat and back. 

No one.

Frowning, she noticed blood on the driver’s seat, smeared across the old cracked leather. The trail continued on the ground, darkening the already caked red dirt with splotches. Any rations or water the truck held were taken and whomever was driving had begun to walk, following the tire tracks Fiona and Tiger had originally left behind.

V felt her blood run cold as the depth of her mistake fell on her.

“Tiger! Turn ‘round, get back to Fiona!”

“W-what?” the young man sputtered, gun up and ready as the panic in V’s voice clearly showed through.

“Get back to the damn car!”

V broke out in a run, leaving him behind as she tried not to let her heart surge with panic. Her eyes caught the blood trail on the ground… making its way to the same rock, the only place of shade, where they had parked the car.

By the time V was back in the shadow of the dark rock formation, her fear was confirmed.

Fiona was out of the car, her eyes wide and fearful and her hands behind her head as the man behind her pointed a gun to her temple.

A man whose cold, mechanical grey eyes cut right through V’s chest and threatened to suck the breath from her lungs.

Takemura’s lips twitched into a smile that was more sneer than anything. Surprise registering just for a moment on his features, or maybe it was more like shock.

“The very woman I have been looking for.”

Tiger had been right. Takemora was a mess. Even without the gunshot wound bleeding sluggishly at his side, his usual immaculate bun was loosened, strands falling across his sun-scorched face, darkening his already warm complexion with deep reds.

He was indeed a wounded animal, a wounded wolf, snarling and ready to take its prey with it to the grave.

V brought her hands up, holding her pistol out and quickly ejecting the clip and then the bullet in the chamber. Carefully, she set the pistol on the ground.

“A wise choice.” Takemura said, accepting her silent surrender.

“Let her go, Goro.”

“You insult me.” he spat, Fiona crying out as his grip tightened and jerked at the back of her neck.

“Fine! Fine— Takemura. Let her go. You came out here for me, yeah? Don’t need the kid.”

“What is one more life to you, V? You already have so many to answer for.” Takemura said, but despite his words, his grip relented on Fiona, “I am here only for one. One that mattered most…”

Takemura took the gun from Fiona’s belt, tossing it far off into the dirt before shoving Fiona away from him dispassionately.

“Do not move.” was all he said to Fiona, his eyes never leaving V’s. Takemura staggered forward. He tried not to let the pain show, but it was obvious he had lost too much blood. He wouldn’t survive that wound without help, but something in his eyes made V think… he didn’t intend to.

V didn’t run, didn’t even struggle as he reached out and grabbed her throat with a hand, sticky with dried blood. He dragged her in close, close enough that she could smell the smoke on his clothes and feel the heat of his breath.

A quiet seemed to come over him, an almost peaceful stillness. His eyes were half lidded as he looked down at her, his hand moving to hold the back of her neck more gently, almost in an embrace as the other held the pistol close to her head.

“... you should have left me to die that da-”

Takemura’s words were cut off with a strangled cry of pain as Tiger’s rifle thundered and a shot grazed over his shoulder and tore fabric and flesh from him. The impact was enough to throw Takemura off balance, giving V enough time to force him back onto the ground, scrambling for the pistol in his hand.

It was a dirty fight— more of a scuffle than anything as blood loss and dehydration seemingly had already sapped the former Arasaka bodyguard of much of his strength. V did him the favor of knocking him across the head with the butt of his pistol before he could get up and risk another shot from Tiger. Somehow, V felt the younger man wouldn’t miss the second time around.

Tiger clamored down from the rockface, rifle still up and ready for another shot.

“No! He’s down!” V hovered over Takemura, shielding him from Tiger’s barrel.

“I missed um, V! Fucker still breathing.”

Fiona had scrambled up from the dirt, rubbing away the clean spots where her tears had made trails down her cheeks.

“Yeah and he’s gonna stay that way, alright? Just… just check on Fiona and get the damn car going. We’re taking him back to camp.”

“V, what? No. No, no way. We can’t take some Arasaka spy back with us!”

“He ain’t Arasaka.” V said behind clenched teeth, straining to haul up the dead weight of her former partner in crime, “Eh… hey, help me here will ya?”

Tiger stared, dumbfounded as his rifle went lax in his hands.

“Look, we need to know what he knows. We can do that better somewhere safe and with him not leaking to death so help me get him in the damn car.”

--

If V had thought Tiger and Fiona put up a fuss on the drive back, she had not fully imagined how Panam would react. V wondered to herself if Saul had ever yelled at Panam this way before, because it certainly matched the kind of ferocity she had seen between the pair.

“Are you listening to me, V?!”

How could you miss it?

V’s inner voice, which sometimes still sounded a lot like one Mr. Silverhand, provided in his deadpan voice. It was an imagined voice, but it still brought a smile to her lips as V let herself indulge in the fantasy that he remained with her.

“Jesus… completely ignoring me. V. You brought an Arasaka spy to the camp. We can’t let him go now! Our best bet is to put two in his skull and burying him in a sand drift and hope his friends don’t come looking!”

“No one is gonna come lookin’, Panam. He’s former Arasaka. Outcasted. Exiled— whatever you wanna call it. He doesn’t got any back up. They don’t even know he is here and would kill him as surely they would any of us.” V said, leaning back in one of the camp’s creaky metal folding chairs.

Even in the firelight it was easy to see the lack of faith in Panam’s expression as she paced around the firepit, raking her hands roughly over her face.

“Former Arsaka, current Arasaka. Shit, V, you think that matters? I got a half dead highly trained killer in this camp who wants to off you.”

V shrugged.

“Oh my god, you are impossible!”

“I’m the only one he is a danger to, so I don’t know why—”

“Do not finish that sentence. You know damn well why.”

Still managing to piss off everyone, I see. Fucked off to the furthest outer reaches of the net and Johnny’s words still somehow played in her head. 

“Sorry.” V said with a grumble, resting all four legs of the chair back to the ground, “He might know something. And if he does or doesn’t, we can just patch him up and drop him at the nearest town.”

“Oh, yeah. Real nice, V. So he can come after us again?”

“I’m not gonna kill him.”

Panam sighed— well. It was more like a half assed hoarse yell from the back of her throat, but V thought she meant it as a sigh.

“... they manage to fix him up at all?”

“Yeah… yeah it looks like he had one shot of Bounce Back left. Kept him from flatlining when he took that hit to the side. He was already healin’ up. Bullet was through and through. Tiger only managed to graze him. Kid got nervous or else your old friend wouldn’t have a face right now.”

Panam crossed her arms, still fidgeting from side to side.

“That ain’t even his worst problems. Guy probably hasn’t eaten in days and his water ran out long off too. This… well. I don’t think he was planning on going back to NC.”

After a moment, V stood, rubbing both hands up behind her neck and then back down with a groan.

“I don’t think so either.”

“You… gonna see him?”

“You got him restrained?”

“Yeah, V. He’s in and out. Was delirious for a bit, but they managed to get some water in him. V… he’s in a bad way.”

“...s’my fault.” V said, words a half mumble, “You heard on the radio. Our plan got Hanako Arasaka killed. I… didn’t want that, but Alt had her own plans, ya know? Christ, at the time I didn’t even think to know, I was just trying to keep alive.”

Panam shook her head, “We lost people too. Saul. Teddy. Bob. … fuck, nearly lost more. You didn’t know Alt was going to stage a hostile god damn take over. He can’t blame you.”

“He will.” V said, her voice quiet, “I… I’ll try to talk to him. At least keep him from doing anything stupid thinking we got plans to flatline him.”

“Yeah, just… be careful, V. Like I said. The sun does weird bullshit to your head out in this place.”

V only nodded, gripping Panam’s shoulder just briefly as she passed towards the tent where they were keeping Takemura.

---

Two armed nomads were outside the tent while another two had been inside while Tom, a former ripperdoc and current nomad senior, had worked on Takemura. The three had left to give V some space, but the other guards remained outside nearby.

Takemura was laid out on one of the cots, his ruined shirt cut and stripped from him, leaving him bare from the waist up except where bandages were wrapped tightly around his middle and then up around his shoulder and back. V had always seen the exposed trace of chrome that wrapped around his neck and along his jaw, but now she could see where cyberware traced across his bare arms and lined one side of his ribs. Their purpose, V couldn’t say, and most likely, they didn’t work anymore given Takemura’s burned status with Arasaka.

The rest of his body was, at least by appearances, organic. Smooth olive complected skin over toned muscle. Takemura’s face gave away his age. The lines on his forehead and around his mouth indicated years of deep thinking… or deep scowling, but otherwise he had kept himself at peak condition. A work requirement no doubt of being a top Arasaka bodyguard.

His breathing was sharp, but steady enough. His eyes were closed, but a grimace rested permanently across his features even in sleep.

V pulled up a chair, turning it backwards as she straddled it and leaned her arms against the back frame.

“... you look like shit, man.” she said, not expecting an answer. She didn’t get one either, not a vocal one. Instead she got the faint clatter of metal against metal as Takemura moved and the cuffs holding his arms to the bed rattled against the frame.

She had flinched at the sound, embarrassing herself.

His eyes opened, the pale grey like moonlight slicing through darkened clouds. He looked hazy, drugged up… his eyes looked over at her with only the vaguest recognition.

“... V?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

“I am… not dead. A dissapointment.”

“Sorry— you were hoping we’d put two in your head while you slept?”

Takemura made a gruff sound that V took as an affirmative.

“Would have made it easier.”

“Uh huh, you know they got hotlines for this kinda thing.”

Takemura groaned, “I remember. You said same thing in Night City.”

“I’m sure someone in camp would be happy to help you out if you try shooting me again.”

Takemura went silent at that, turning his eyes upwards towards the top of the tent with a deep frown. Like he was remembering something he had, for a moment, forgotten.

“I will kill you, V. For what has been done.”

“I didn’t have anything to do with Hana-”

“You insult her by speaking her name.” his voice was harsh, pain straining the words as he tried to sit up and found himself unable to bear his wounds.

“...I’m sorry, Takemura. I didn’t— it wasn’t— I didn’t want anyone to get hurt… I was dying. Like literally in that moment fucking flatlining. I did what I had to try and sever that relic from my head and… and that AI did what she wanted.”

“You let it in. It turned systems against Arasaka. Hanako-sama— Hanako-sama was shredded by hacked mech units. Beyond recognition! And you tell me you didn’t know? You knew it would be nothing good.”

“... when I was there, when Alt took over… she was only attacking soldiers who attacked us. I don’t know what happened with Hanako-sama, but—”

“And now I have told you what happened to Hanako-sama.” Takemura said, his words clipped, “Get out— better still, let me die having done my duty.”

V swallowed thickly, rolling her lips together before she said quietly, “I’m not gonna do that.” 

Takemura did not respond. He shut his eyes, as if he refused to even give V the dignity of looking at them. His brow was tight, pained and yet still grimly determined. 

There were things she still needed to ask him— did Arasaka know where he was? Did he still plan to bide his time and kill her? V felt her heart throb at the very idea that this man who she had trusted, had worked with, had saved her… now utterly hated her.

He had sent her one message after she had left Night City, standing among the rubble and ruin of Arasaka Tower.

Rot in hell, クソ野郎.

In all honesty, the way he had spoken, the things he said… well, she hadn’t expected to hear or see him again. V had done with that knowledge what she did with most things… hit delete on the message and then buried it in the back of her thoughts with Jackie and the other countless people she had let down. These things were all just part of the sins she figured she would pay for in six months when her body finally succeeded in killing itself. A part of her had even wondered if the agony of that, the pain of each seizure, the waking exhaustion, nausea and memory loss… if her suffering could tip those scales even the slightest. Make it even. 

Just another fairy-tale dream. Johnny’s voice scoffed in her imagination.

Maybe suicide was still his intention, but it was obvious now to V the means of that demise had changed. Takemura couldn’t get Yorinobu now, but he could get her. The one who had promised to help him gain his revenge and then denied it for him forever.

V stood and quietly left through the tent flap, barely giving an appreciative nod to the guards out front as she staggered off to her own tent, feeling sick from the faint throb that had begun to pulse in the back of her neck… from regret. From guilt.

Her vision cut, lines of static racing across her sight and making shapes turn into nothing more than incomprehensible blurs. V felt the world shift and jerk from side to side, the ground rising up to meet her as she tripped over her own feet and fell with a thud to the dirt.

Even laying there, voices of alarm tuned out and far away, faces blurred and unidentifiable, V could feel the churning turning sensation as the Earth spun slowly through space. Falling, through silent cold space.

Like Jackie, like T-Bug. Like Johnny.

Like all the dead that had come before her. 

Breathing deeply, V curled her fingers into the red sand, and held on.

Not yet, V. Not yet.

[serialreblogger]

Empty Masks

The Phantom of the Opera and Social Dynamics of Exclusivity

(or: an essay I will never have an academic excuse to write, but shall anyway, because I watched The Phantom of the Opera tonight and i need to get this out of my system)

I can’t express just how desperately I want to be the Phantom. The strange, half-human ghost hidden under a mask, with a billowing cape and an opera house to hide his secrets, snow-covered stone gargoyles hiding him from the streets when he ascends to the roof and sings to the cold, bright stars. His would-be bride, the ethereal maiden entranced and led down into those secret places, where dark spires arc overhead and dark water flows away beneath the prow of the boat the Phantom, her would-be lover, steers.

But therein lies the problem: we are not meant to wish we were the Phantom.

The Phantom is meant to be a stranger. He is, after all, inhuman. It’s in his names: angel, demon, monster, ghost. He is not a man. He is more, and less. He is altogether other, and while we may sympathize, we are never meant to see ourselves in him.

And yet.

Because the thing about alterity is that there are far, far more of us than there are “meant” to be, the ones who see ourselves not in the heroes but in the villains of such tales. We, the queer viewers, the POC, disabled and disfigured and neurodivergent watchers and everyone else that lives on the margins of polite society—we do not see ourselves in the heroes. We are not only invisible in the ranks of the righteous: far, far too often, we are (implicitly or overtly) represented as the villains, the monsters, precisely because of who we are. Of what we are.

And that’s why the Shape of Water hit so hard for so many people, and why we’re seeing so many reimaginings of Lovecraftian horrors as something sympathetic, something good. Because so many of us have only ever seen ourselves in the monsters. We aren’t the people fleeing in fear and being reassured by the death of the creature; we are the creatures, watching our counterparts die again and again, in a thousand different ways, with a thousand different justifications. We are the monsters, cast out for things we can’t control.

But, of course, that is unjust. Even the heroes could see that. There must be something else, some justification, a reason we deserve to be slain. And so every dragon-slayer tells tales of the stolen princess. Every story with a monster makes sure to establish that the monster is dangerous and evil, ruined inside and out.

The Phantom is a murderer, and so he deserves to be unmasked. We are meant to understand that the two are inextricable: the face the mask hides is the murder the man commits. Even as Christine sings that it is “no longer” his face she is repulsed by, but his “soul, in which the true distortion lies,” we know that the accusation of “murderer” is always preceded by, caused by, the more heinous accusation: “monster.”

The Phantom’s wickedness is an excuse. His murderous inclinations, his possessiveness, the “evil” characteristics that are narratively traced back to his childhood and the way he was treated—they are used to justify the way he is robbed of his mask before a crowd, the way he’s ripped away from his longtime home in the secret twists and hideaways of the opera house.

I had a visceral reaction to that scene, where Christine unmasks him. It hit too close to home. To have something that was kept so carefully hidden, something that, if revealed, could be so catastrophically dangerous—to have that be revealed, against your will—and by someone so intimately close to you? Someone you trusted, body and soul?

It felt like watching someone getting outed.

And, in a way, it was. The Phantom’s face was revealed, and it was as relevant as gender or orientation to his evil acts, and yet all the narrative repercussions still tied it inexorably, inextricably, into his villainy.

“Keep your hand at the level of your eyes,” Madame Giri says, and it is because his weapon of choice was a noose; it is because his face is a curse to behold. The Phantom’s violence is caused by his face. The Phantom is evil because of his face. The Phantom is a monster because he is evil—because of his face.

And that’s the rub of the Gothic genre, of horror that makes ordinary people monsters (of societies that ostracize its members for being “monstrous”): there is no place for the people that don’t belong.

The Phantom escaped his original prison (a captivity which has its own signifiers of racism and dehumanization—making very human monsters out of another oppressed people, this time the Romani—but that’s a whole essay of its own) and donned a mask, because his face made him a monster. He put on a mask of his own accord, perhaps, but he also didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t look in the mirror without it, not after everything he’d been told. He knew what made him a monster. He couldn’t change his face, so he tried to hide it. He was made to wear a mask.

It was not enough. There does not exist a mask behind which we will not long to look.

“Masquerade” is a masterful scene that shows the different layers of social exclusivity. There is the ballroom full of upper-class mask-wearers. Everyone there is unrecognizable, hiding behind their costumes. It is perfectly choreographed. It is perfectly gilded. It is entirely, divinely, grotesquely perfect. It is false.

A few floors lower, the servants and lower-class players have their own party, carousing and laughing with unbrushed hair and wide grins. They wear no masks, and feast on sour beer and stale pastries. They wear no masks because they can’t afford them. They are not permitted to be seen, but nor are they permitted to hide behind the masks of the rich. They make do. They celebrate together, because none of them have any masks, and that makes them friends, at least for the evening. They are forbidden from having masks, and so—if they stay in their proper place—they need none.

The Phantom has not removed his mask in years.

Even then, it is not enough. The room of the rich falls deathly silent as he appears in their midst. He cannot blend in among them. He cannot dance. He has not the patience, anymore, to try. He wears his mask, and at least they cannot see his face beneath it.

They fear him, not because he’s a monster, but because he is a mask. They want to know what’s behind it. They want there to be nothing at all behind it. The Phantom is a mask, and the person behind it is a blemish. They put up with him when he is invisible except for a shadow, a flash of white plaster and black cloak in the night. They can pretend there is not a person behind the mask. It’s a ghost. They want it to be a ghost.

It isn’t a ghost.

And when the mask is ripped from his face, when the person behind it is revealed to be human, even then perhaps they could go on; but he isn’t the right kind of human. He’s physically disfigured. He isn’t human at all. He’s a monster.

They hunt him like one.

There is no room in their world for a person that looks wrong, even one that hides behind a mask.

There is no room in their world for monsters.

(The monsters listen, and hold our masks a little tighter.)

[anarmel]

i’m on my d&d jatp bullshit and i just wanna write down how i conceptualise characters in one post(sorry)

Julie(starting alignment lawful good)

-is a half aasimar(mother’s side)/half sun-elf(father’s side)

-she is a multiclass of bard(college of benevolence) and paladin of Sun(oath of radiance) (in my world building there is no particular named gods there is just forces of nature, spirit and belief and separate domains of heavens where celestial beings realm. For example Sun is sentient force of life and burning illumination it gives life but only in tandem with other powers of nature, alone it just burns and gradually consumes you in its warmth until you notice you’ve been burned with it. There is no inherently good and bad forces it’s all in blinding shades of neutral morals and ambiguity and it’s people who tip the scales of balance using powers in their reach for their own agendas)

-her preference in weapons is a sturdy versatile sword and a shield. she is a fierce and focused fighter but she will always find time to heal and inspire her allies

-her bard magic comes through her angelic voice that can bring dead back to life. Her magic is sun flavoured bright and enticing.

Flynn (starting alignment chaotic good)

-is an eladrin elf her season changes depending on her mood but most of the time they’re in summer

-they are a wild magic sorcerer(chaos flavour). her magic focus is her own blood, magic flows through them

-was feared for her chaos magic and was not permitted to use it. Flynn kinda didn’t care for that rule and her magic never caused anyone any harm(yet) and was kinda fun. they want excitement in a life of adventure, they want to help in a fight and not be useless. it’s a risk but she isn’t afraid and Julie always by her side so it can’t be that bad

-fights are fun until they’re not. Flynn will support anyone in a tight spot and will not hesitate to throw her chaos bolt at the opponent

Nick (starting alignment neutral good)

-is a firbolg(not a full blood one because his too short but no one knows his lineage)

-he is a multiclass of fighter(arcane archer)and ranger(monster slayer)

-his preferred weapon is a long bow but he always has a long sword on his person. he’s ready for everything. a very tactical and rational fighter. prefers not to fight at all if possible. but if someone he loves is hurt he will put an arrow through a skull with surprising accuracy and precision

Carrie (starting alignment lawful evil)

-believes she is a high elf but something’s off(she is a changeling and doesn’t fully know it because she doesn’t want to know and that will make her not “perfect”)

-she’s an academically trained rogue-assassin

-preferred fighting style quick slash of two poisonous daggers and an instant death of an opponent. in a long fight may shoot darts or to restrain a target will use her whip

Bobby (starting alignment true neutral)

-is half high elf(father’s side)/quarter orc(mother’s side)

-he’s a multiclass of rogue(scout) and barbarian(totem warrior)

-as a child went through the same training as Carrie and when he left home he picked up new skills as he wondered through nature following birds wishing he was as free and independently happy as them and this wish just made him more angry at his situation because he doesn’t know how to achieve what he wants

-dual wields two swords and throws javelins when necessary. will jump into battle to release his pent up anger but his first priority is to protect those around him and feel useful

Luke (starting alignment chaotic good)

-is a satyr

-he’s a multiclass of bard(college of eloquence) and fighter(eldritch knight)

-his parents wanted for him to follow in their footsteps and be a good servant for a forest spirt but he’s an adventurer and a creator at heart and needs to share himself with the world so after an argument with his parents left his home in anger

-in fight he wields his soul bound greataxe-guitar

-loves to fight it’s just another performance where you get to inspire allies and bring good to the world. it’s a competition not just between you and your opponent but also between people on your side to see who does the best Luke always convinced it’s him because he gives a part of himself to his allies through inspiring song and he gets to slash some head off

Reggie (starting alignment neutral good)

-is an asmodeus tiefling which gives him an intimidating look but his a soft marshmallow

-he’s a wizard(school of illusion)

-left his home in search for peace but then he met Luke and got inspired to bring peace to others

-sometimes he feels like he’s underwater and lost and only his friends make him rush to the surface for so much needed air

-an imaginative caster will distract opponents with their fears and desires as his friends deal damage. not an aggressive fighter more of a useful distraction but always has a fireball up his sleeve that he’s timid to use

Alex (starting alignment lawful neutral)

-is a fallen aasimar banished from his home. doesn’t talk about it at all

-he is a cleric(grave domain)

-wields a shield and a quarterstaff. in a fight prefers to deal damage and deal with the problem at hand instead of healing the stupid wounds his friends got in a dumb way.

-his magic is radiant and necrotic flavoured.

Willie (starting alignment chaotic neutral)

-is an air genasi

-they are a multiclass of wild magic sorcerer and warlock(archfey patron)

-never had a stable home or family. always new faces with every new “control” group. it started since their childhood. one of the magic serges caused a tornado that had casualties. Willie didn’t choose this magic but he’s understand what they caused needs control but in “control” groups they are like a lab rat and Willie’s tired and wants to live their life in adrenaline of adventure. they feel like an air in an old hot room where someone desperately needs to open a window and let it out. and after his last magic serge that someone finds him and lifts his curse giving him new power

-doesn’t experience magic surges anymore as a side effect of his pact with Caleb

-in a fight Willie’s unexpected and always has a plan that only they know

-uses magic as well as dynamite sticks(a bit of an arsonist)

-flavour of magic: air, charged air(lighting)

[dancedelion]

A Dangerous Thing

Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending Word Count: 4202 Summary: Just when Geralt thinks he might have a good day for once, he is surprised by drowners and has to fight them off without weapons. Jaskier wants to take care of his wounds and Geralt is sure the only reason for that can be that Jaskier wants to pay him back for letting him come along on his travels. (Jaskier doesn't quite agree.) ao3: A Dangerous Thing

Geralt is humming under his breath, just quiet enough that Jaskier will not hear him over the current. Jaskier, who is leaning back against the rocks on the bank of the river and playing a song on his lute, one of the old favorites. Geralt watches him over the water, only interrupting himself briefly when he drags his shirt over his head and throws it to the side. Glowing, he thinks. Jaskier is glowing in the light of dawn, red illuminating him like visible magic.

He sighs deeply, contently, and runs his hands over his wet arms. This will get Jaskier off his back about the smell for at least three days. Washing is a low-priority activity, fairly useless in the scheme of things, so the fact that Geralt is doing it anyway rightfully earns him a reprieve from Jaskier’s lectures on cleanliness and hygiene, and Melitele, Geralt, is there at least a chance you heard about the existence of soap, even in passing?

Maybe later, Geralt can hunt for deer in the forest. Or even fish right here in the river. He wouldn’t have to go far. They could make a fire in the spot Jaskier is sitting and lay their bed rolls right next to each other under the starry sky. Geralt lets a smile curl in the corner of his mouth like a small secret.

It’s ridiculous, really. All over the continent, men lie and start wars and make foolish mistakes to get what they want, when all anyone really needs is something like this, the sun on your bare back, one of Jaskier’s songs in your ear. There’s nowhere Geralt would rather-

“Geralt!” Air – water in his lungs – no air – hands clasping his hair – where’s the fucking air – claws hooked deeply into his shoulder, there’s no -

Strength always concentrated, but the fingers are everywhere, grasping his legs, around his wrist, precision is impossible, Geralt can only buck upwards, feet lashing out, his whole body shaking. One of them grabs his hands and tugs, and it hurts and he screams only he doesn’t because no sound comes out and more water pours into his mouth.

Fuck.

It’s drowners, bloody drowners, dragging him under. Where is he?

He’s a child, he’s supposed to fight, no, survive, but he’s only a child and the water is everywhere and they won’t let him lift his head. Survive. A body only learns when it has to.

He swallows more water, everything is black, but it must be drowners, musn’t it? Corpse-like, fish-like humanoids. That’s what they’re doing, they are drowning him. Teeth grazing over his calves.

His body is small and he is screaming at his lungs to grow the fuck up, to hold enough air to make it through, because he has to make it through. He is under water for months, he doesn’t try to come up, he stops squeezing his eyes shut. Poison in his blood, yellow-eyed, he came up after minutes and did not drown and was not a boy.

He is -

He has to get a grip. He presses his lips together and starts holding his breath. One elbow hits the drowner’s stomach and it eases its grip. He struggles with his whole body, until the fingers slip from his legs and he can come up – finally, finally come up and breathe again.

With a few quick strides, he’s on land again and he stumbles backward, his movement still not as smooth as he would have liked. He counts three of them and they close in on him.

And he –

doesn’t have a weapon

doesn’t have a plan

doesn’t have the slightest amount of common sense, what moron would leave his weapons at camp, would listen to the birds, would take off his shirt -

He won’t be subdued so easily, not by drowners, he could kill those in his sleep. He casts Aard to knock one of them backwards and Igni on the other two so they go up in flames.

He should have been able to smell the foul stench from miles away, should have heard the water moving around them, should have seen them in the corner of his eye, he should have sensed them some way, any way.

A punch straight over the ugly grimace knocks its head back. It doesn’t matter. He closes his fingers around the thing’s throat and lets his other fist rain down. He will learn from his mistakes. The drowner’s eyes start bulging, its pale skin turning to gray. It doesn’t matter. He won’t let his swords out of his sight again. He will keep a dagger in his boots. (He won’t take off his boots.)

He lets go off the drowner’s lifeless body once he is sure it is lifeless and gets up, still breathing heavily.

“Jaskier,” he says.

Jaskier is still where he was, only now his eyes are wide and his lute is the wrong way around in his hands, like a haphazard weapon. One quick glance tells Geralt all he needs to know – that Jaskier is safe. The drowners didn’t get to him. He is still whole.

The breath leaves Geralt’s body.

He frowns deeply, then, and walks over to one of the rocks by the river to sit down on. He doesn’t spare Jaskier any more glances. It was all his fault anyway, with his dumb lute-playing and his hang-ups on bad smells. With his contagious idiotic optimism and perpetual good mood. A mood so good even Geralt could feel it and isn’t that just hilarious? He shouldn’t have moods, good or otherwise. He should only listen and watch and ignore anything even remotely resembling a feeling. Eyes on the path. That’s all that’s important.

He is aching all over now, which puts a bit of a damper on his plans. None of it seems bad enough to require tending to, but for a while the pain will slow him down. If only Jaskier hadn’t been there, none of this would have happened. Geralt growls silently.

“I’m sorry,” says Jaskier.

Geralt huffs, presses a bit of bitterness through his nose.

“You should be.”

Finally, too curious not to, Geralt turns his head to look at Jaskier, too reachable over the short distance between them. The last rays of sun still make him look other-worldly. It’s just not fair.

“I -” Jaskier puts down the lute, seemingly irritated to be holding it. “I don’t know what was happening, suddenly I was just frozen – and I didn’t now what to do and I couldn’t think and then it was over so quickly. I should have grabbed one of your swords, done something, anything, other than just stand there like an idiot.”

Geralt’s mouth drops open. “What?”

He shuts it with a snap, suddenly, impossibly, angrier.

“Are you insane? Are you honestly telling me you feel bad now that you don’t have a death wish? You get to live another day. How tragic. The whole country is weeping.”

Geralt shakes his head and continues: “For Melitele’s sake, Jaskier. If you came closer and made me protect you as well, we might have both died. You should have just run.”

Run from the drowners or better yet, run from him. That’s what would have saved Jaskier, could save him still. He doesn’t have to die violently, die tragically, die young. No one ever chose this life for Jaskier. He can walk away. But Jaskier is bristling.

“And leave you to the drowners? I think not. I know friendship is a foreign concept to you, but some of us try not to be complete bastards all the time.”

“Listening to common sense is not bastard behavior, it’s smart.”

Jaskier tilts his head at that. “Well, I did turn by back on the academics.”

“Apparently, you turned your back on being alive.” Each word hurts more than the wounds on his body, but Geralt can’t stop spitting poison. “Honestly, if you had tried to participate in the fight and somehow made it through, I’d have killed you myself for being so stupid.”

“And you’re surprised no one ever offers to help you,” Jaskier has turned to him fully, a stoic look on his face. “Is this how all Witchers respond to affection? With scathing insults and threats of violence? No wonder people throw tomatoes at you.”

Affection? Geralt is supposed to be insulted, he’s pretty sure that was Jaskier’s intention, but his mind is stuck on this one word. Affection?

“I’m not surprised,” Geralt says, just to say anything. “I don’t need anyone.”

Jaskier only scoffs and does not dignify him with an answer. Instead, he just scrutinizes him. Geralt almost balks at his measuring glances.

“That’s enough of that,” Jaskier says softly and steps closer, which he shouldn’t, because Geralt is sitting by the water and any minute drowners could leap out of it and drown them both. “It’s over now, I didn’t do anything and you got hurt. Just… Just let me -” Geralt flinches back at Jaskier’s reaching hand. He won’t be coddled. He’s not broken yet, the pieces are still holding together. Jaskier has got the wrong of it – Geralt doesn’t need to be fixed. So what if he can’t even tell where he is bleeding from? So what if he can already feel the bruises forming beneath his skin? Geralt’s skin will mend itself eventually. There’s no use in tending to wounds that will have to do the hard part themselves one way or another, only in carrying on.

“Don’t,” he tells Jaskier and turns to the river, ducks down to the water. He was here to wash, so he will wash again.

This is not pain. Geralt has had half his ribs bruised and the other half broken. A werewolf once took out a whole chunk of his leg. He has been stabbed below his heart and barely survived it. He has held a red-dripping dagger in his hand, could wipe off the blood - but never the guilt. He has seen Jaskier on the brink of death, pale like a corpse. This is not pain.

(The dizziness will pass if he closes his eyes for a moment.)

(So long as a sword is sharp, it does not need to be clean.) And he drips away into the sand. His jawline washes away, not a word to be said. Turning dirt an ugly red.

He drips and loses himself. There goes the price, there goes the pain, there goes the monster that was a boy a long, long time ago. His lips drip away, not a word to be said, in the angry sand.

A little less shape, a little more nobody. Dripping away.

The scratch on his thigh, deeper than he thought, starts to burn. Let it, Geralt thinks. Let it burn. The scratches hurt, but so do the scars. The bruises ache, but he’s had them before. He barely feels them anymore.

He reaches over to rub his side, but a stab of pain shoots through him – the groan is out before he can stop it. And Jaskier heard, of course. He never listens except at the most inconvenient times.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Jaskier says and Geralt can hear him coming closer. Why does he always come closer to things that will only hurt him in the end?

“It’s nothing.”

He’d forgotten about his hand. It hurts, of course, but it is a dull throb among everything else. He chances a downwards glance but quickly looks away again. Surely his hand is not supposed to hang away at that angle.

“Then why the whine of agony?”

Jaskier, unbearably gentle, reaches out toward Geralt’s arm where one long scratch bleeds profusely and Geralt bats his hand away, with the hand that doesn’t feel numb.

“You could barely hear me,” he tries to argue.

“Okay, then why the small, tiny, hardly-audible whine of blasted agony?”

Why is Jaskier so stubborn in his pity?

“Might have broken my wrist,” Geralt admits. “Oh,” Jaskier says dumbstruck, then waves his hands around furiously. “Oh! Did you, now? And that was not in any way worth mentioning?”

“I can handle it.”

Geralt switches to rub at his rib cage with his other hand, but he brushes against his hurt wrist and has to bite down on his lip not to gasp again.

“Clearly,” he can hear Jaskier say.

“I have healing powers.”

“So do us mere humans, it’s called taking care of yourself. And your wounds. And it’s not like you can just snap your fingers and tada – wounds all gone. You’re still in pain.”

Jaskier is in front of him again, thinking he’s weak, thinking he needs something he doesn’t. Jaskier brushes the hair out of his eyes and holds his shoulders steady and each of his touches is inexplicable and foreign.

“How about,” he says gently, as though to a child, “we give your fascinating healing powers some guidance? Hm?”

“You want to set my broken bones?”

“I’d count that as a step of improvement!”

Geralt grunts, but he’s tired now. Letting Jaskier perform his useless healing rituals will be easier. And Geralt has never had the stamina to protest against whatever has gotten into Jaskier’s head.

“Just a minute,” Jaskier says and flurries off, toward their bags.

Geralt sinks down on one of the rocks, exhaling sharply and feeling like he just fought another battle and lost.

Why is Jaskier so insistent on this? Jaskier has always insisted on all kinds of non-sensical ideas, on accompanying him on monster hunts, on following him from town to town. But he has no benefit from this. Or is it about keeping a Witcher happy? Making him more agreeable?

Non-sensical ideas. Geralt never knows how to say no to him. Might that be it? A thanks, a gift? No. A price. Geralt lets him stay and in exchange… This. Touching a Witcher. Caring for him, against his every instinct. Yes, that makes sense, but also – (red-dripping dagger, broken ribs -)

Jaskier returns quickly and holds up a piece of cloth in front of Geralt’s mouth, clearly intending for Geralt to bite down on it.

“Here.”

Geralt can feel the annoyance rise in him again. “I don’t need -” “A tongue? I beg to differ, even if you don’t use it much.”

Geralt rolls his eyes, but he takes the piece of cloth anyway. Jaskier puts a piece of wood against the underside of his arm and Geralt lets out a small hiss when it touches his wrist.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Jaskier says, voice high. “Geralt? Am I doing this right?” “I’m not sure. I know how to fight. Was never too concerned with the aftermath.”

Geralt knows the basics of course, knows how to get hurt and keep fighting anyway, but he isn’t familiar with the details.

“You’ll have to push it back into place.” “That’s what I was afraid of.”

Geralt puts the piece of cloth between his teeth. Jaskier turns white when he looks more closely at Geralt’s limp hand – (white as a corpse, as pain disguised as bravery, as a cursed wish) – but he takes Geralt’s hand, almost as gentle as a lover’s touch, and Geralt can barley feel it but something warm rises up in his chest.

(Jaskier has already paid, hasn’t he? In blood, in headaches, in those small hurt expressions on his face.) “Oh my,” Jaskier mumbles, “I should have just become a – oh wait, I am a bard. Why do I have to deal with this again?”

Geralt would tell him he doesn’t have to, if it weren’t for the dry fabric in his mouth. But then Jaskier pushes and Geralt screams, only that he doesn’t because no sound comes out. In a second, it’s over and his hand looks less like it’s hanging from a string.

(And Jaskier still holds on to his hand, for one moment, two, three, four -)

“Now imagine your crazy Witcher powers had grown your bones together in that position – the water hags would have been very impressed,” Jaskier says with an invisible smile.

“Hm.”

Finally, Jaskier wraps some bandages around Geralt’s arm and a few around his palm, keeping the piece of wood in place. Geralt doesn’t know what to do with this kindness.

Pain is easy. Pain is passive. You only need to endure it. You don’t need to talk to it. You don’t need to be afraid of scaring it off.

Once Jaskier has secured the bandages, Geralt moves to turn away again, glad the whole ordeal is over, glad he doesn’t have to see the horror in Jaskier’s eyes any longer, but Jaskier grabs his elbow to make him pause. (Again, so gently, like Geralt is breakable – no one has ever seen him this way, something must be wrong with Jaskier’s head.)

“No, no, I’m not letting you off so easily,” Jaskier says.

(But he doesn’t want Jaskier to grit his teeth.) (He wants to be paid in laughter and lute melodies.)

Jaskier won’t be subdued by his glares. Instead, he grabs a bottle of alcohol from his bag and brings it to the wide gash on Geralt’s arm. The liquid runs over the wound, burning him.

Pain is the price. And Geralt doesn’t want to owe anything, so he always pays. Sticks and stones in exchange for yellow eyes. Bruises and broken bones in exchange for brute strength. Heart like tender meat in exchange for a bit of magic. Geralt doesn’t accumulate debt, he pays and pays and pays. (If he didn’t, if he let the debt grow, he might not live through paying it off.) Jaskier wraps him in more bandages and each point Jaskier touches with his fingertips burns too. Each brush hurts sweetly.

Ease me, placate the darkness in me, satisfy my pain.

Jaskier moves on to the scratch on his thigh. He moves the fabric of Geralt’s trousers and pours more alcohol. Geralt holds still and holds his breath. He can’t intrude on this moment. It could pop like a bubble if he made any movement that wasn’t careful.

Ease me, calm the storm in my mind, humor my misery.

For a moment, it hurts more, but then it hurts less. It’s not the alcohol or the bandages, it’s those touches, the tender ones that Jaskier bears for him out of a misguided sense of honor.

Ease me. Take me apart slowly and take care in putting me back together.

Once every wound is treated, Jaskier is standing close to Geralt and he looks up at him with wide eyes, like he hasn’t even noticed it.

You, with your soft smiles and your beautiful eyes, I can not touch you. I would absorb you. I would devour you. I will be your predator, just look at your small hand next to mine.

Jaskier has soft looking hair, but here is what Geralt does not touch: clean silk clothes. Porcelain dolls. Dainty flowers. Anything he wants to keep whole.

And then, as if he has to give Geralt anything more, Jaskier takes a rug and one of his expensive soaps and lets them hover above Geralt’s skin, asking for a permission he does not need. Geralt knows he should put a stop to it here, should have put a stop to it right after he set his wrist or before, but nobody has ever touched him like this. He lets the protest rest in his mouth, feels the bitter taste of it on his tongue.

(Don’t feel obligated. I know you want to pay me back, but you don’t owe me a thing.) (I won’t be your currency, don’t let me be your pain.) Jaskier moves behind Geralt and starts washing his back in circular motions. Geralt braves the touches like he braves any fight. One minute the world is kind, the next it could be scratches or even a knife. That’s how it goes. But the movements continue and his skin stays whole.

But then – and this might be too much to bear – Jaskier steps in front of him again – and how could Geralt let Jaskier touch him and have to look at him?

Jaskier seems reluctant too, his hand hovering right above Geralt’s chest, right where -

Please don’t touch my battered heart, please… Is it not enough it keeps beating? Slowly, but beating?

Thrum… Thrum… Thrum…

Barely, but beating.

I will let you touch my calloused hands, I will let you wash my hair, but please don’t reach into my chest, I couldn’t bear it.

When it comes to this, Jaskier is not merciful. He puts the cloth onto Geralt’s chest and lets it rest there. Geralt wants to say he can do it himself, but his mouth won’t open.

Thrum. Thrum. Thrum.

Why must you do this to me? A heart this dark will blacken your hand. Jaskier starts cleaning him slowly. Each time he moves the cloth, his fingers brush against Geralt’s skin. And each time it burns, with warmth and something shaped like love and Geralt should stop and really look to see that it’s not.

thrum thrum thrum

How could you make demands? It was beating, wasn’t it? What more do you want? Geralt wants to catch Jaskier’s wrist, but that would be too much. As if he were in a trance, Jaskier suddenly drops the cloth, but instead of picking it up, he splays his fingers against Geralt’s chest.

thrumthrumthrumthrumthrum Who gave you the right to make my heart human? So quick, so fluttering, so fit for love.

Jaskier keeps his hand there and Geralt is afraid he can feel it, will know a Witcher’s heart is not supposed to beat like this. He can’t stop himself any longer – he places his hand over Jaskier’s, just to hold it, only once. He finds Jaskier’s eyes and they are big from this close.

But he has forgotten what even the children playing in the forest know – when you are looking at something, it can look back.

“Oh,” Jaskier says and looks down at their joined hands in wonder.

Obviously, he didn’t expect this.

(Jaskier will not love the anvil. He will not love the mill that grinds and grinds. He will love the metal and he will love the grain, but he could never love Geralt.)

Geralt swallows, manages to press out: “Sorry.”

(Geralt is not unfinished. He does not have potential. He is all done, all ready, all used up.)

Jaskier draws his hand away and covers his mouth with it, as though to hold the shock in. Geralt does not sigh. He pays his dues.

“Why are you sorry?” Jaskier’s eyes are still wide. “You didn’t ask for this.”

Geralt is almost ashamed, not to feel this way, but to burden Jaskier with it.

“Of course I didn’t ask,” Jaskier says quietly. “You’re… unattainable. But I would have liked to.”

“But you’re just here for the adventure. Are you saying this because -”

Jaskier has done so much already. What if he’s willing to go further? What if he would give even this to Geralt, thinking he owes it to him? It does not sound like something Jaskier would do, but neither does the alternative.

“I’m here for – for this, for -” Jaskier reaches out to Geralt again. “I mean, someone has to take care of you. You certainly can’t manage it yourself, and where would I be, if – I mean, where would everyone be -”

“Better off?” “No. No. Stop being an idiot.”

“You’re the idiot. Are you saying you want this?”

Geralt gestures down on himself, half-naked, bruised and scarred. Age in the wrinkles around his eyes, menace in the yellow of them. Everything about him clunky, misshapen. Him and Jaskier like two parts that don’t fit.

“Want it? I lo-”

Jaskier breaks himself off, but Geralt’s breath still catches. Geralt lifts his uninjured hand to Jaskier’s head and impossibly, Jaskier leans toward him. Jaskier’s hair is soft and Geralt draws a small circle on Jaskier’s cheek.

Geralt can have this, Jaskier seems to be saying, and among all the things he can’t have, this is everything.

“I just want you to live,” Jaskier mutters into the space between their lips. “Not just live. Live well.”

He leans his head closer, until their lips are almost touching. “I want you to take off that gruff uncomfortable armor every once in a while. I want you to let me take care of your wounds, even if I can’t stop you from getting them. And I want you to sit with me. Just that.”

Geralt kisses him and hopes Jaskier knows this is every permission and every demand. I will let you kiss me and I want to kiss you. You can have my palm. You can have my open back. Just give me this.

And Jaskier does, kisses him like it’s a promise and Geralt hopes that it is. He does that now. He hopes for everything and thinks he might even deserve half of it.

Jaskier is holding his heart in gentle hands and Geralt can’t stop it, but he doesn’t want to. After all these years, it’s on the mend.

[inkperch]

Lady Bird and Magpie, C1D1

I’m in a Lady Bird and Magpie mood, so have a sneak preview of chapter 1! It’s only half finished, gotta write the fight-y parts still and then go back and clean everything up, but here you go! (also, finally figured out how to do Line Breaks!)

Winter Schnee woke up, and immediately wished she hadn’t. It couldn’t be later than seven, her alarm had yet to go off, yet already Kay and Robbie were at each other’s throats, Rose hesitantly trying to mediate. In her half-asleep haze, she vaguely tried to follow, catching a few stray words as she tried to drift back to sleep for a few more moments of plausible deniability regarding her team. Of course, even considering it was massively irresponsible- she was the leader, it was her job to break up such disputes, even if they happened with irritating frequency. And besides, now her alarm was ringing, if nothing else she needed to turn that off.

“What are you two arguing about?”

Kay and Robbie both whirled to face her as she sat up in bed with a stretch, with a guilty smile and an annoyed glare respectively.

“Sorry Win, we just had an… uh… academic dispute?” Kay tried, scratching the back of his head nervously.

For once, Robbie didn’t take the chance to rat him out, simply scowling at everyone and throwing herself onto her top bunk, above Winter’s own. Hopefully, she’d be done sulking by the time classes started, Winter didn’t have the energy for another fight this week. She’d already had to start two, and it was only Thursday. Kay dropped onto his bunk, picking up a discarded book and starting to read as though nothing had happened. Rose looked between her two friends, hesitantly trying to speak before awkwardly meeting Winter’s eyes. Taking that as a cue to leave, Winter grabbed her uniform from the closet and headed into the bathroom to change.

When she was done, instead of lingering in her dorm and finding a way to kill and hour, as her team was no doubt doing, she headed out. The library was only a short walk from their dorms, so if she were quick, she may get some light studying done before class. Maybe she’d even treat herself, and pickup a recreational book for study breaks? She was feeling particularly whimsical today, despite the rough start…

So lost in thought, she nearly didn’t notice the old man crossing her path until it was to late, forcing her to rapidly push herself out of the way with her glyphs, sending her over him in a perfectly executed front flip.

“I’m so sorry sir! I didn’t see you there!” Winter said, head bowed, “What are you doing on Atlas Academy’s campus so early, today? Can I assist you in any way?”

“You’re a polite one, aren’t you?” The man said, a small smile gracing his face, “I’m just going for a stroll. My son attended here in his youth, and… well, I heard there’s a memorial to… former students on the grounds.”

“Oh.” The old man was on the wrong end of campus for the memorial. It was the centrepiece of a garden on the opposite end of the dorms, Winter often went there to study in peace. “I can escort you there, if you wish?”

“Oh, I’d hate to be an inconvenience, I’m sure I’ll make my way there eventually,”

“You’d be no inconvenience, really,” Winter lied, “I owe you besides, for nearly running into you before,”

“No harm no foul, really,” The old man insisted, “But, if you insist… I think I’m a little lost?”

“Yes, very- this way sir.”

-#-

Robyn stood up and stretched as her final teacher of the day dismissed the bored Grimm Studies class. Well, Robyn was bored. Fiona had seemed pretty attentive, despite May and Jo arm wrestling right next to her. Speaking of Fiona- Robyn gave a quiet ‘thanks’ as she scooped all of team RGMT’s books into her Semblance. Robyn waved her team on ahead with a smile and headed off to the library. She had an assignment to complete for her Weapon Maintenance class, on the maintenance of the Atlas Military’s regulation weapons. So, utterly useless to her, but she still needed a passing grade in the class, so to the library it was.

At least, that was the plan- as she was walking across the campus a giant thing seemingly made out of paper charged into campus and started smashing buildings.

Okay. So it was that kinda day.

Like most of the students lurking around campus, Robyn pulled out her crossbow and started blasting. Presumably, some idiot had let a Geist get into the library or something for a dumb prank, its shell seemed to be entirely paper, so Fire Dust was the way to go, right? That seemed the general consensus, as an honestly impressive volley of flaming projectiles flew towards the Geist. Still, somehow, the paper didn’t light, and not one student got a lucky hit on its mask. Wait. Where was its mask? It should be visible- if not when they started, it should’ve whirled to face them by now. Where was the mask?

Why did it seem bigger than when they started?

“I am Payback! Turn over the Schnee and the Ladybug and Black Cat Miraculous, or die!”

…the courtyard was silent enough you could hear a pin drop. This- this wasn’t a Grimm. It couldn’t be a Grimm- it was talking! Whatever the giant fire-proof-paper monster was, it wasn’t a Geist. It had to be... something else! A semblance, or a robot, or... or some weird experiment! And, just in case that wasn’t enough to fuck someone up, it threw an arm out and sent a wave of fire back into the stunned crowd. So, the giant fuck-off paper monster wasn’t a Grimm and could deflect their shit. Just perfect.

Luckily for the stunned students in range of the attack, a giant glyph appeared and, through it, a massive, white, Nevermore took the brunt the wall of fire, disappearing in one hit. Winter Schnee stood proudly, sword aloft.

“If you want a Schnee, here I am!”

Ok, so, the Schnee heiress has a death wish, good to know. Robyn was about to run forward to help, because of course she was, when an ominous cracking sound came from behind her. Turning around, she saw a tall old man, with a cane just out of his reach, underneath an ominously leaning statue. It looked like it had been hit by a stray spout of fire, knocking it off balance on its pedestal. She dashed forward as the statue came tumbling down- shit, she wouldn’t have time to grab him and leave, this was gonna hurt. She unfurled her weapon into its shield mode and held it above her head, catching the large statue more on her aura than her arms.

“Run!” She yelled, kicking his cane into his reach. Not the most tactful approach but fuck it she had a massive statue on her back, she could apologise when he was safe. The old man grasped his cane and dragged himself from under the statue. As she shoved it to the side with a pulse of her aura, he stared at the Schnee morosely, before turning back to her.

“Miss Hill, was it?” he asked, blue eyes piercingly sharp.

“…yeah? You ok, sir?”

“I was not. I have you to thank for my saving. A humbling experience to be sure.” His hand hovered over his earrings, two plain black studs. “…this experience has reminded me of something a dear friend has been trying to tell me for a long time.”

“Um. Ok.” Robyn nodded, and accepted that random information. The old man was probably slightly in shock, if she’d been a second slower, he’d be a goo right now. “Where can I take you to be safe?”

“No where, if that Akuma isn’t stopped.” He pulled out his earrings, which… changed colour? They turned from plain black studs to bright red gems. That… didn’t look like Dust? His semblance, maybe? “Your semblance… it shows you whether the other party is speaking truthfully, does it not?”

Robyn couldn’t help but feel like she was making a massive mistake as she nodded, and followed his beckoning gesture into the covered garden, casting anxious glances to where the Schnee was fighting. He turned back to face her, hand outstretched. She took it.

“What is your favourite Fairy tale?”

[stardustryewriting]

A Learning Process (6)

This is the final part

AO3: here

Part 1 2 3 4 5

Combinational Learning

Bakugou hated crying. With a burning passion. His lungs and eyes burned and trying to take a breath seemed impossible. Tears spilling over, out of his eyes and down his cheeks, like a river escaping a dam. It was always, always accompanied by heavy breathing, an inability to draw in breath properly, making it near impossible to talk or even produce sounds resembling words. It always turned into ugly sobbing, him having to clutch something to ground himself.  

Still, he couldn't bring himself to stop. 

Kirishima had walked out on him - thinking Bakugou hated his guts, no less - and there was nothing he could do. He just watched helplessly, frozen in place, unable to do anything. He finally fucked up for good. The worst thing was, he’d seen it coming from the start. He always knew he wouldn’t be able to make it work, eventually he’d destroy even the simplest thing. His friendship with Kirishima. He just wished he could let him know why it was broken now. Not that it mattered anymore.

It shattered easily like glass, and there was a little intrusive thought that had made itself at home in Bakugou’s head, telling him it was always meant that way. As if someone as good as Kirishima really wanted to spend their entire life at Bakugou’s side, friend or otherwise. He knew it was wrong - doomed from the start - the moment he realized what exactly his feelings for Kirishima were. It could have never worked out. 

He wasn’t boyfriend material. He wasn’t even someone you wanted to date, his impulsiveness and general lack at expressing himself more than made sure of that. People usually avoided approaching him unless strictly necessary. Who could possibly want to date him? He wouldn’t have been a boyfriend. He would have been a project. And Kirishima deserved way better than a project. He should have the world. Not a guy with anger issues. 

__________________

The first thing Kirishima had done, after he got safely into his room and locked the door behind him, was block Bakugou on every social media on his device. Which now seemed irrational - surely there were better ways to cope - but back then it was the first thing his mind had provided for him. Create as much distance as possible. Easily said, but they lived next door in the dorms, there was only so much distance to be had. 

The next thing Kirishima did was crawl into his bed, vanish completely under his covers and decide to let his emotions take the reign. He would take whatever his head offered him and then deal with the aftermath later. Unfortunately his head let him have nothing. No crying, no anger, not even the tiny taunting voice telling him that of course, he couldn’t possibly be good enough and he should stop fooling himself. Just emptiness. 

A few stray tears escaped his eyes every now and then and he felt the pressure of more behind his eyes, but for some reason they refused to fall. As if he had been bled empty from all emotions. He just lay there, under his covers staring at his wall - the one he shared with Bakugou, because of course his bed was on that side of the room - and tried to will himself to work through at least something. He came up empty-handed.

He went to Recovery Girl the next day, because despite feeling and thinking nothing, he stayed awake the entire night and he didn’t feel like school. Their resident healer took one look at him and told him to stay ‘home’ and that she would excuse him from school. He took the paper slip to the teacher lounge and handed it to Present Mic, because Aizawa wasn’t there yet, who told him he would hand it over, and wished him a speedy recovery. 

Kirishima felt like scoffing then - as if he had any chance to ever recover from that - but he lacked any and all energy to do more than politely thanking him. Even that sounded toneless and drained to his ears. Judging from Present Mic’s flinch, it sounded even worse for other people. 

He went back to the dorms afterwards, careful to avoid the others, who would start getting ready for their day any minute and collapsed onto his bed again. He stared at his ceiling, distantly wondering, if emptiness was a side-effect of heartbreak. This time he scoffed at his own mind, because naming it heartbreak was a stretch. There was never anything that would warrant this being called a heartbreak. Only his own unjustified hopes, that he should have squashed as soon as they came up for the first time. 

He knew he never stood a chance. 

Because what could Bakugou Katsuki possibly want with him? Bakugou was always in the top three of their class academically and in hero-related exercises. Kirishima was somewhere in the lower half academically and got periodically scolded for rushing into situations without thinking them through. Bakugou had a strong, flashy quirk that would make him the number one eventually. Kirishima would be lucky to not be forgotten, with a quirk as useless as his. Bakugou had the fierce determination to achieve anything he wanted. Kirishima wasn’t even sure he actually belonged in the hero course. 

There was nothing Bakugou could want from him. The realisation should hurt, Kirishima had fully expected it to hurt. He felt nothing instead, like he had the entire day and he wondered if he’d feel nothing forever. 

He wondered if he deserved it, for foolishly getting his hopes up in the first place.

__________________

Bakugou was keenly aware that he hadn’t seen Kirishima all week. When Kaminari had asked - on Monday ten minutes into the homeroom lesson - Aizawa had waved him off, declaring that Kirishima was sick. He left it at that, continuing his lesson on something Bakugou couldn’t remember. Like he couldn’t remember most things that happened that week. 

He did remember Aizawa pulling him out of one of the training exercises, deciding he was too distracted to continue like the others. Despite being wrapped up in his teacher's capture weapon and basically held on display, Bakugou didn’t argue. He could admit when someone was right. He also remembered Jirou giving him the stink eye, and sometimes even the finger, whenever she thought she could get away with it. She got away with it surprisingly often, Iida only lectured her two times the entire week. 

Kaminari, Mina and Sero also kept a careful distance and while normally, being alone didn’t bother him. this time, it made him seriously uneasy. Because it could only mean one thing. They knew what was up. Even worse, he couldn’t be sure how much they knew. Did they talk to Kirishima? Did they figure it out on their own? Was there any way he could get the idiots to spill? Probably not. But while normally, it would make him angry to no end, now he didn’t even have the energy to scream at them. He tried angry glares, but judging from their reactions, they weren’t half as good as he hoped.

This was starting to be a problem. 

It became a real problem on Thursday, when he sat alone on his table, trying to eat his lunch in peace, while avoiding everyone’s stares. He heard more than he saw, the two chairs in front of him being pulled back and someone sitting on them. Usually, he would tell whoever it was to get lost, he wasn’t interested in sharing the table, but he didn’t think he could find the energy for that. So instead, he just gave them a stink eye and hoped that would be enough. It wasn’t. 

In front of him, smiling like he was the embodiment of innocence himself, sat Deku. Next to him, face carefully neutral and his eyes not betraying a single emotion, sat his boyfriend. Bakugou felt like he was in hell already. The two chatted quietly between themselves, throwing glances at him occasionally and Bakugou considered just leaving the table. Or asking where the rest of their bunch was, because surely they would be better company than him. Surprisingly, Todoroki beat him to the punch.

“I told him”, he said, sounding apologetic and Bakugou needed a second to realise what he meant. Their talk. Their fucking talk about fucking feelings that he swore to take to the grave with him and now Deku was in the know. Could his life possibly get any worse than it already was? (The answer was yes, and he wished he never asked the question.)

“Yeah, he did”, Deku confirmed, unnecessarily, because Todoroki may have been a social airhead, but he’d never been a liar. You could trust that much, at least. “You see, Shoto isn’t exactly great with feelings, for reasons”, and Deku managed to say ‘reasons’ in a way that made it clear he would not discuss said ‘reasons’ further, “so I fear he may have accidentally made it worse.”

“No shit, Sherlock. That might have been the most frustrating talk I’ve ever had”, Bakugou spat, familiar anger settling in his chest again. At least that was something. He could deal with anger, he always had. 

“Sorry”, Todoroki said shortly, actually looking a little sheepish.

“Anyways”, Deku interrupted, before either of the two could discuss that any further, “I’m here to offer help. The talk was about Kirishima-kun, wasn’t it?”

That felt like a slap to his face. How did Deku know it was about Kirishima? He never said it, he specifically made sure to never mention a name or even a gender in front of Todoroki. How had Deku figured it out? Was it that obvious? Were the others able to see it as well? Did Kirishima know?

That was a truly frightful thought. What if Kirishima knew, but feigned ignorance as a way of letting him down easy? What if the reason Bakugou hadn’t seen Kirishima in almost a week was not because he hurt Kirishima, but because Kirishima didn’t want to hurt him. Would that be better or worse than their current mess? He honestly didn’t know. He hated it, all the same. 

“How?”, he said, throwing Deku his best angry look, and it really spoke for his current state, that Deku didn’t even flinch. If he couldn’t even intimidate Deku, he must have really lost his stuff. Somehow that didn’t come as a surprise. 

“How do I know?”, Deku asked, but didn’t wait for an answer, “I’ve known you since kindergarten. I know you like to pretend to hate me, but we’ve been friends once. I know you better than you like to admit. And I see the way you act around him. You don’t act like that with just anyone.”

Bakugou wasn’t even upset, he realised, to his surprise. Because Deku was right, Kirishima had been special from the start. Not intimidated by him during the USJ, offering himself as an unwavering horse during the sports festival, coming to his rescue after he was kidnapped. Kirishima was always there, always so reliable, it made Bakugou wonder when he actually fell in love. Because it’s been way before the mall incident, that was for sure. 

It only made the entire thing worse. 

“So what?”, he grumbled, not giving Deku the satisfaction of telling him he was right. He was sure Deku knew anyway. “Even if that were true, how could you possibly help?”

“Like I said”, Deku continued, with the patience of a saint, while also completely skipping over the part where Bakugou attempted to deny his feelings once more, “I know you. And I know Kirishima-kun. Not as good as you do, I’m sure, but good enough.”

“Good enough for what?”, Bakugou inquired, unsure where Deku was going with this, but Todoroki had a self-satisfied smirk on his face that told Bakugou to be cautious. Too bad caution had never been his strong suit. 

“Good enough to know that something went terribly wrong between you two”, Deku answered carefully, gauging Bakugou’s reaction before continuing, “And I wanna help.”

“Bullshit!”, Bakugou yelled, knowing fully well, that he had the attention of the entire cafeteria on him now, “As if I need your damn help!” He stormed off then, not bothering to listen to whatever Deku yelled after him. He wouldn’t even bother with his afternoon classes, he decided, after he made his way halfway over the school grounds. He could deal with missing half a day of classes.

He really needed a break. 

__________________

 Kirishima wasn’t sure how all of them had ended up inside his room. He just knew that Kaminari currently shared his bed with him with half an arm-length of distance between them. While he sat properly with his back to the wall and his legs folded over each other, Kaminari had assumed a position halfway to laying down, seemingly comfortable. Sero sat on the floor, with his back to the bed and his head lying on it, right between Kirishima’s legs and Kaminari’s stomach. Jirou sat on the desk chair, back against one armrest and legs swung over the other. Mina had propped herself up on Kirishima’s desk, arguing with Kaminari over the snacks they brought with them.

It was almost normal. Too normal. It felt like a movie night, like they were just waiting for Bakugou and only the absence of some drama while trying to agree on a movie gave away that it wasn’t actually a movie night and that Bakugou wouldn’t just walk through the door, taking their enthusiasm at being able to start with a disgruntled look and some vague passive-aggressive comment. 

Because Bakugou didn’t want anything to do with him anymore. 

Even after days, it still stung and while Kirishima had avoided any and all talk about their little ‘falling out’ (Kaminari’s words, not his), he got the feeling that his time was up. The gang was there to talk with him and they wouldn’t go until they were satisfied Kirishima was alright. Somehow, he wasn’t happy about that. 

“So...”, Kaminari drawled, after he finally threw the snacks to Mina and everyone else went rigid, when he started talking. Good thing that wasn’t concerning at all. Kirishima was sure he could feel the irony, if he felt anything but numb. “You and Bakugou had a falling out. Care to share?”

Kirishima was sure that Kaminari would look proud of himself, if the situation was any less serious. He thought he saw a bit of pride glimmer through the carefully maintained serious front, but that might have been his imagination. God knows, it played the worst tricks on him, recently.

But, more importantly, did he care to share, as Kaminari phrased it? Or rather, was there anything he had left to lose? He didn’t think so. At least, no one would treat it like some sort of joke on his expense, in this situation. (Kaminari still might, but Kirishima was strangely okay with that.)

So he took a deep breath, tried to straighten his shoulders as much as possible in his sitting position and mentally prepared himself, to say something out loud, that he swore he would only ever say if he actually got over it. He was anything but over it. 

“I have a crush on Bakugou”, he admitted, feeling unexpectedly light like a weight lifting off his chest, “and I think he found out and is disgusted.”

There. That’s it. That’s what has been bothering him all week, even longer than that. And now it was out in the open, all of his friends knew and at the very least it didn’t loom over him in that sense anymore. It still loomed over him in a worse sense, but that was a hurdle for another day. (Or never, if things went Kirishima’s way. But when did things ever go Kirishima’s way?)

“Shit”, Mina declared, which promptly became the general consensus in their little round. Even Kirishima silently agreed, that this entire situation was just shit. 

“What an asshole thing to do!”, Jirou said, looking seriously pissed off and Kaminari agreed with her immediately. Kirishima would have argued that Bakugou had a right not to like him, but he could feel the conversation getting out of control already. So, he resorted to damage control.

“Well, yeah. But I’m fine or I will be. I got though skin, after all”, he joked and at least Kaminari appreciated it, with a little snort and a thumbs up. Sero also chuckled a little, shoulders shaking lightly and Kirishima considered it a win. He would take what he could get. 

“Still! If a girl were into him, I bet it would give him an ego boost”, Jirou argued lamely, trailing off at the end. Kirishima tried not to think too much about the implication of that. He was sure Jirou wasn’t trying to imply anything and it would be unfair to her to have his thoughts run wild with her words. She was trying to help him, not hurt him further.

"Also, seriously, Bakugou? You have the worst taste in men!", Jirou declared, pointing an accusing finger at him. Kirishima would have liked to argue that Jirou didn’t get to judge his taste in men, because she wasn’t even attracted to their gender, but Sero beat him to the punch.

“Can you really judge that? No offense, but you aren’t attracted to men.”

“I’m not attracted to guitars either, but I know a pretty one when I see it”, Jirou argued, effectively shutting down Sero. Kaminari next to him chuckled like he was watching some good show and Kirishima was sure he would enjoy this talk, if he were to enjoy anything. At least they tried cheering him up.

"Well, at least he's nice to look at", Mina shrugged and Kirishima feared the abyss in which this conversation seemed to drift. That was some dangerous territory they were currently trespassing. He didn’t want to go there, not right now. 

“Okay, guys, stay with us!”, Kaminari snapped his fingers for what Kirishima guessed was supposed to be a dramatic effect. If so, it surely wasn’t working. It did get their attention away from considering Bakugou’s general hotness level - off the charts, Kirishima thought and immediately hated himself for it - and to Kaminari, which was a good thing. “What do we do for heartbreak?”

The silence that followed was deafening. So, he wasn’t the only one absolutely out of his depth, which did little to calm him down. Sero looked at Jirou and then at Mina as if he was expecting them to come up with something. Jirou looked around at all of them, clear panic in her eyes. Mina looked way too deep in thought for anything good to come out of this and Kaminari seemed to deeply regret his question. Kirishima honestly didn’t know what to do. 

“Hide stinky cheese in his room”, Sero suggested first, not entirely serious. At least Kirishima hoped he wasn’t.

“Make a new playlist”, Jirou provided reluctantly and Kirishima could see how that would be a comfort for her.

“Scream into a pillow until everything is better”, Kaminari proposed, seeming unsure, but so far it was the only thing Kirishima was willing to try. 

“Movie night and way more snacks than we could reasonably justify in front of Iida!”, Mina put forth brightly. If he were honest, distraction and food coma sounded like actual heaven to Kirishima in that moment. It was quickly agreed upon and three out of the five of them made their way downstairs to horde anything edible they could find. 

“Don’t tell the others”, Jirou whispered, mockingly serious, after the door closed behind them, “but I’m willing to do the cheese thing with you, if you want.” Kirishima smiled, because he didn’t think he could laugh, even if he tried. For the first time in days, he felt something resembling happiness.

Maybe he could be okay.

__________________

Bakugou was absolutely miserable. He mulled over potential ideas, about how he could approach Kirishima, in his head, for hours now. He needed to talk to him again, he knew. Just one last talk, to clarify everything that went wrong the last time - which was everything really - and at least then he’d have some semblance of peace knowing, that that was the only possible outcome. No matter how Kirishima reacted to his feelings, he would take it. Still, he was miserable. 

Because no matter how he looked at it, Deku was right. He would need help. And no matter how often he thought it over in his head, Deku was the best possible help he could get. So, even if every fibre of his being refused to cooperate, Bakugou made his way to Deku’s room, knocking on his door. 

Deku opened, without hesitation, Todoroki in the background looked curiously at him. Great, just great. Taking a deep breath and mentally preparing himself to do something he could never possibly live down. Then, he said the hardest words he ever had to say.

“I need help.”

__________________

Bakugou wasn’t sure what Deku had told Kirishima. Only that Deku promised him he would bring Kirishima outside their dorms, to place out of view for most people. Bakugou knew the place from his morning runs and he was sure Deku knew it from his training with All Might. It was perfect for an undisturbed talk. He didn’t know why he didn’t think of it himself. 

Standing under a tree, next to a bench, Bakugou felt himself shiver. It was fairly cold, as spring nights tended to get, but he knew that wasn’t it. He was actually nervous, because he didn’t know how to talk to Kirishima.

He could hear someone chatter, knew they were coming closer by their voices growing steadily louder and recognized Deku word-vomiting like he tended to do, when he was nervous. He took one last deep breath, before Kirishima and Deku came into view. Kirishima froze up when he saw him, and Deku rushed out an apology, before he quickly stormed off. Bakugou took a few experimenting steps closer, gauging Kirishima’s reaction carefully. Don’t make him feel trapped, Deku advice echoed in his ears. 

“I’m sorry”, Kirishima said tonelessly, awkwardly raising one hand to gesture, “I didn’t realize you’d be here. I’m gonna go.” He was turning, slowly, eyes constantly on Bakugou, without ever making eye-contact, as if he was some wild animal, that would jump him. Bakugou repressed the scoff forming in his throat in favor of actually saying something this time. 

“Don’t be stupid”, came out of his mouth, before he could stop himself, and he was sure he flinched worse than Kirishima did. He cleared his throat and tried once more. “I actually wanted to talk.” No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t look Kirishima in the eyes while saying this, so he looked to the bench he gestured to instead, praying Kirishima would understand him. 

He did. Kirishima always had. And Bakugou almost threw it all away.

Kirishima slowly made his way to the bench, still eyeing Bakugou warily. He sat down carefully, like he expected some sort of prank or maybe a joke at his expense and Bakugou’s chest tightened painfully, reminding Kirishima had never looked at him like that before. Never that distrustful. Bakugou took his own seat on the other end of the bench, feeling like he didn’t deserve being too close to Kirishima. Like he never deserved it. 

“Okay”, Kirishima said, stretching out the little word for all his worth and Bakugou realized that Kirishima had about as much clue about this situation as he had. This was doomed to fail. “You being so weird this past week, that was my fault, wasn’t it?”

Bakugou didn’t know how to answer that. No felt as much like a lie as yes did. 

“I’m an idiot”, Bakugou said instead, because he figured it wouldn’t hurt. And it would help filling the silence until he found a way to say what he actually wanted to say. Kirishima didn’t even crack a smile, he just sighed heavily, like he had an even bigger weight on his shoulder than Bakugou did. 

“You know”, he breathed, like he had no energy to actually say it out loud, “usually I’d disagree and defend you, when someone said something like that. But recently, I don’t feel like disagreeing.” It was accompanied by a heavy sigh that made something in Bakugou’s chest ache. He wanted to reach out, but he knew he didn’t deserve to. 

“You shouldn’t”, Bakugou said, as a way of trying to take something off of Kirishima’s shoulders but the other just shrugged, facial expression unchanged. “Shit, this is hard”, he cursed under his breath, but Kirishima heard anyway. And now, he was facing him, too.

“You don’t have to apologize, if you don’t want to”, he said, steadily holding Bakugou’s gaze and Bakugou knew he couldn’t tear his eyes away if he tried. Had Kirishima’s eyes always been that breathtaking? That was the worst timing for such thoughts. “I don’t care what the others say, you have a right not to be my friend.”

“I liked being your friend”, he answered, dumbly, not knowing what else to say. Why was Kirishima defending him, if he hurt him that badly? He should be furious, Bakugou knew he’d be furious, if their roles were reversed. He’d be screaming at Kirishima if the other had the audacity to talk to him like that, after everything that happened. Kirishima always had an exceptionally high tolerance for Bakugou’s bullshit. (It made him hope they could work.)

“It sure didn’t seem like it.” Nothing, not a single emotion laced Kirishima’s tone, like he never heard before. That was worse. Bakugou would rather take screaming, would love to have Kirishima scream at him right now. At least that would give him something to work with. It would feel less like Kirishima gave up, already.  

“I suck with words”, he offered, as a way of explanation. 

“You do”, Kirishima agreed easily, “but there is really no other way to possibly understand that.” His tone was still utterly devoid of anything, but Bakugou saw some light reflecting from his cheeks. It took him a while to realize that it was a tear reflecting, that Kirishima had started crying. Kirishima was crying. and he was to blame. 

“There is”, he said, voice heavy with something he couldn’t put his finger on. His hand came up to wipe at his face. It came back wet. He was crying, too, he realized, seconds later. 

“Really”, Kirishima questioned, turning towards him. He was taken aback for a second, Bakugou could only suppose it was the tears. They would have startled him, too. Kirishima composed himself quickly and Bakugou mourned the lost empathy for only a second. He hadn’t deserved it. “What other way is there?”

“I’m -”, Bakugou tried to say, caught off guard by the lump in his throat. He tried to swallow around it, but it only seemed to grow bigger. He could feel his breathing growing heavier, felt himself losing the last of his composure. His pride warned him, to end it now, before he completely lost face. He ignored it.

“I’m in love with you. And I had a hard time coming to terms with that.” 

Kirishima didn’t say anything, despite his mouth being opened wide. His eyes were blown wide, too, but he was completely still, like he was frozen. It may have been due to the tears leaking out of Bakugou’s eyes uncontrollably now. Or maybe it was the ragged breathing turning into sobs, that he couldn’t keep in for the life of him. Or the confession was really just that absurd to Kirishima. 

“I’m sorry”, Kirishima answered eventually, and that was so absurd, that Bakugou was sure he stopped crying for a second to process it. Like his body needed it’s full capacity to work through all the implications the simple statement from Kirishima held. He wasn’t sure what implications it held. 

“What?”, he said, like an idiot. 

__________________

“I’m sorry you’re in love with me”, Kirishima said again, trembling under the weight of emotions he desperately tried to hold back, “I’m sorry it’s me. I’m sorry I’m not what you wanted.” He wasn’t even sure what Bakugou had meant, originally, when he said it was hard to come to terms with his feelings. But he was sure it was his fault. It must have been. 

“You’re better”, Bakugou breathed eventually, still crying. Kirishima was sure he misheard. Bakugou couldn’t possibly have referred to Kirishima as something good.

“What?”, he said now, not knowing what else to do.

“You’re better”, Bakugou insisted, something like determination making its way into Bakugou’s eyes. Kirishima knew he would melt at the spot, if the situation were any less dire. 

“You just said you had problems coming to terms with your feelings. Why would you have those, if I were any good?”, he insisted, trying not to look at Bakugou, in case he was right. He couldn't handle a second heartbreak in a single week. He had barely handled the first one. 

“No”, Bakugou yelled, sounding exasperated. Not that Kirishima could blame him. He’d rather not deal with himself either, but unfortunately, he didn’t have much of a choice. Bakugou could walk away. Kirishima wouldn’t blame him. 

“No, they weren’t problems related to you. I’m the problem”, Bakugou argued, but it sounded hollow to Kirishima.

“You almost killed Monoma because he called me your boyfriend jokingly”, he argued, because that was an overreaction, no matter how you looked at it. And it still hurt, somewhere deep inside, that wasn’t actually that deep. Kirishima had tough skin and nothing else. Nothing at all. 

“That bastard”, Bakugou grunted, looking angry for just a second, before he went back to looking … defeated? Sad? Kirishima wasn’t sure. “He taunted me, and I hadn’t even admitted to myself that I had feelings for you then. He just made it worse.”

“Still”, Kirishima said, just feeling heavier, “That is fucked.”

“No shit”, Bakugou answered, sounding resigned and leaning his head back against the headrest of the bench, looking up at the sky. At times like these, Kirishima always regretted living in such a big city, where you never saw stars in the night sky. They wouldn’t help, not at all, but he’d still like them. 

“Even worse. When I first realized I had feelings, I went and consulted the internet. Big mistake. Then, I went to Todoroki, which was even worse.” 

“You went to Todoroki for feelings talk?”, Kirishima asked, angling his head so he could see Bakugou nod, “That sounds horrible.”

“It was”, Bakugou snorted and Kirishima registered faintly that both of them stopped crying like they were bled dry, “He thought he was going to get a shovel talk. I also know more about his feelings for Deku than I ever wanted.” Kirishima couldn’t suppress the little laugh bubbling up at that. He just couldn’t stop imaging Bakugou and Todoroki awkwardly talking about butterflies in their stomachs and warm feelings in their chests. He saw Bakugou looking at him from the side, eyes big and full of something Kirishima didn’t dare name. 

“What gave you the clue?”, he asked instead, avoiding looking at Bakugou for fear that what he saw was just his imagination playing tricks on him. He couldn’t make it through that.  

“Aizawa”, Bakugou shrugged. 

“Aizawa?”, Kirishima echoed, propelling himself forward on the bench out of sheer shock. Bakugou also lifted his head again, looking at him, one corner of his mouth twitching. 

“Yeah. He gave pretty good advice too. I came to the conclusion I liked you. I also came to the conclusion it wouldn’t work out. He said a lot of things about what the right person should be like”, Bakugou confessed, swallowing heavily and Kirishima felt the stone on his heart, heavier than ever before. 

“You don’t think I’m the right one”, he concluded, because that was where Bakugou was headed with his speech. That was where it was ultimately stagnating. Bakugou would rise the ranks, rise to heights unknown to Kirishima and he would only drag him down. He knew it. Bakugou knew. Better to end it, before it became a problem. 

“I don’t think I’m the right one”, Bakugou said immediately, voice heavy like he was actually doubting himself. 

“I appreciate you trying to let me down easy. But you don’t need to”, Kirishima told him, voice as gentle as he could possibly muster. He could deal with being let down. There was no need to sugarcoat something he always expected. 

“I’m a project”, Bakugou said, stressing the word ‘project’ in a way that let Kirishima know it was important. He still had no idea what Bakugou meant. Bakugou must have seen the confusion in his face. 

“I’m no good with feelings. I have no idea what a boyfriend even does. I blow up at every opportunity, sometimes literally. I have barely any patience. We are only friends because you didn’t get lost when I told you to”, he explained, sounding more stressed than Kirishima had ever heard him before. He was serious, Kirishima realized, he really thought he was the problem. He could barely fathom it. Bakugou Katsuki thought he was the problem. Truly a wild concept.

“I’d have you anyways. I’m stupid like that”, he said, lowly, knowing Bakugou would catch it. They always understood each other somehow. 

“Really?”, Bakugou argued, sounding defeated, “You want someone like me? How would you even introduce me to your parents?”

“As my boyfriend”, Kirishima answered easily, “who I’ve been in love with since the sports festival.” That gave Bakugou a pause for whatever reason. Kirishima wrung his hands, trying not to look too insecure about what he had just revealed. 

“The sports festival”, Bakugou mumbled, suddenly close and Kirishima wondered, in the back of his mind, when they had gotten that close to each other. He was sure they had started out on opposite sides. “Yeah, it was the sports festival for me too.”

Kirishima had wanted to say something about that revelation, but suddenly there was a hand in his hair, on the back of his head and all thoughts just seemed to vanish out of his head. Bakugou was way closer than he sounded, Kirishima could count his eyelashes if he had any brainpower left. He saw lightly chapped lips and the light crevices on Bakugou’s forehead. He felt Bakugou’s breath on his face, as he inched closer. He was about to lose his patience. 

“Can I?”, Bakugou breathed in the space between them, like a secret and Kirishima could do nothing but nod, unable to find any words in the mess that was his head. Bakugou surged forward, claiming his lips. It wasn’t perfect. Bakugou had gone too fast, their teeth clashing a little and Kirishima retreated for a second, before coming back slower. He placed their lips together more carefully, hand clutching into Bakugou’s shirt and Bakugou held his head in both of his hands. 

They separated only an inch, when they had to breathe and Kirishima would bet there was the stupidest happy expression on his face. Bakugou smiled too, seemingly content, before he went in for another, more passionate kiss. Kirishima gasped, caught off-guard by Bakugou’s sudden boldness and Bakugou took the opportunity to get his tongue into Kirishima’s mouth. Kirishima felt him smirk and he couldn’t help but laugh. 

Bakugou let him, joined him even. Then he dove in again, kissing both corners of Kirishima’s mouth before claiming his lips again and Kirishima knew he wouldn’t be able to stop smiling for a while. He didn’t think he wanted to. 

“I’m yours”, Bakugou said eventually, after they managed to separate for longer than just a few seconds to gasp for air. “I’m your problem now.” Kirishima giggled, thinking about how dramatic his boyfriend was and then laughed again, when he realized Bakugou really was that now. His boyfriend. He’d never been happier.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way”, he confirmed and then leaned forward again, to steal some more kisses. He’s waited way too long for those.

__________________

Bakugou loved dating Kirishima. He really did. He would have thought cuddling would bother him eventually, but he could never have Kirishima quite close enough. Not even after almost a year. Everyone else complained about their PDA, but Bakugou only gave them a smirk and kissed Kirishima once more, to shut them up. Life was good, most of the time. 

Rarely, there were times when Bakugou wished his boyfriend was just a little different. No drastic changes just being able to tell the idiots - who had renamed the Bakusquad to the Kiribakusquad without anyone’s permission - to get lost and leave them alone. Like when they had date night, and Bakugou had thought about a great plan to get Kirishima out of his sweatpants after the movie was over and then Kaminari stormed in. He’d really love it if they wouldn’t do that.

“I need some advice on my bromance with Shinsou”, Kaminari said, as a way of opening the conversation and Bakugou thought about how much easier his life would have been, if he could speak about things as directly as that.

“How often did you and Shinsou have sex again?”, Kirishima asked, with a smile that told Bakugou he knew the answer already. Kaminari still mulled it over in his head briefly, looking like he was counting. 

“Six times.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that counts as a bromance”, Kirishima concluded, snuggling deeper into Bakugou’s side and Bakugou tightened his arm around his boyfriend instinctively. Kirishima made a low humming sound, like he always did when he was comfortable and Bakugou could admit within the safety of his own mind, that it was his favorite sound. 

“Just man up and confess”, he told Kaminari, while burying his nose in Kirishima’s freshly washed hair, smirking slightly when he heard Kaminari’s gasp. 

“You”, he said, pointing at both of them accusingly, “don’t have any right to say that!”

Kirishima’s laughter was music to Bakugou’s ears, light and happy, the way Kirishima should always be. It made the entire procedure worth it, Bakugou thought, while pressing a kiss to his boyfriends hair. Kirishima raised his head then, to steal another kiss on the lips and Kaminari scoffed in the background. 

“You know what? Forget it. I’ll go ask Jirou.”

Still, life was mostly great these days.