#INJUDICIOUS
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jeff-davis · 1 year ago
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INJUDICIOUS
INJUDICIOUS (Feed generated with FetchRSS) via Just A Thought June 03, 2024 at 09:03PM
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presidentkamala · 13 days ago
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And im sorry but i can't take all the self-appointed tiktok News Bringers making that stupid face they do and saying "so......THAT just happened" wrt the completely injudicious and disgusting Iran strikes or actually anything else that happens. I would like the news of the world to be communicated with the dignity and the gravity it deserves. And get that fucking spn meme out of my face.
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tricoufamily · 6 months ago
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is there still not a fucking fix for this goddamn dumbass stupid unintelligent ignorant dense brainless mindless foolish dull-witted dull slow-witted witless slow dunce-like simpleminded empty-headed vacuous vapid halfwitted idiotic moronic imbecilic imbecile obtuse doltish gullible naive thick dim dumb dopey dozy crazy cretinous birdbrained peabrained pig-ignorant bovine slow on the uptake soft in the head brain-dead boneheaded lamebrained thickheaded chuckleheaded dunderheaded wooden wooden-headed fat-headed muttonheaded daft barmy not the full shilling thick as two short planks silly scatterbrained crackbrained nonsensical senseless irresponsible unthinking ill-advised ill-considered inept damfool unwise injudicious indiscreet short-sighted inane absurd ludicrous ridiculous laughable risible fatuous asinine pointless meaningless futile fruitless mad insane lunatic cracked half-baked cock-eyed harebrained nutty derpy cuckoo loony loopy zany screwy off one's head off one's trolley fucking bug when you close those fucking full screen 'remember me?' popups besides playing fucking offline.
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Not my fault my palate is advanced enough to detect subtle nuances of flavor.
STATUE I have just had a BRILLIANT idea. We should compile a Terrafell cookbook!
Sure! A bunch of Labyrinthine recipes — modified for early food sources — Gavrel's own recipe cards, a selection of less-magical potions and healing brews. There's potential. Depending on how much people are willing to forage.
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poisonsage808 · 5 months ago
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somethin’ stupid
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john munch coming to terms with being stupidly, hopelessly, painfully in love
Some altruistic, smitten fools doped on endorphins wrote songs and poems and books about the great wonders of love. Every single one of them is not only a thick-skulled, injudicious nutjob, but a lying one at that. See they all failed to mention the little deaths, the fucking agonies that balance out the ecstasy of being in love.
Munch was already burdened with a ceaseless mind.
The only thing that spared himself, and the world, from his stream of consciousness was slumber. You sleep better next to the one you love, they said, yeah well, try not sleeping without them there. Fitfully, John stares at the ceiling, the wall, the phone and debates if he could call despite the unideal time. He didn’t realize sleep would completely evade him unless he was a tangled mess of limbs around you.
At first he compared you to a ghost haunting him. Or the plague. You’re with him even when you’re not, be it your voice or a vivid flash of your smile or your hands (somehow) mercilessly squeezing his heart. He misses you. He saw you twenty minutes ago, and he misses you? That’s unfair, downright inhumane.
Presently, you consume every waking thought. Now he had to go about his day seeing and hearing you everywhere. The color of the sky in the morning? He wonders if you’d like it, if you two could talk all night and see it together. That hotdog stand on 48th street? You don’t like that one, but there’s a good pretzel stand nearby.
Oh, and guess what’s worse than thinking these things? Saying them aloud to his partner who already disparages him.
He sees something that he thinks you’d like and his first instinct is to get it, which is weird for him. Contrary to popular belief he’s not cheap, it just so happens that the scale tips in favor of things not being worth spending money on. He didn’t even put all his money into a bar he actively wanted! Would he drop a tenner on a vinyl of your favorite band in a heartbeat, though? Yeah, he’d also listen to it with you— not silently, mind you, he’s still arguably sane— but it should say a lot more than the money thing.
Love languages are crap, pseudoscience for those in need to label themselves. Munch doesn’t think twice about your hand as it slips into his; doesn’t memorize every callous, every divot, crescent and scar he finds. Sure, he becomes involuntarily vigilant when your leg touches his, he’s a cop! Every reaction your touch gives him is explainable, he’s not going to seek it out because of bogus thaumaturgy. With that on the record, he does seek it out.
Ring, ring.
His eye twitches as he reaches for his phone, assuming it’s work.
“Munch.”
“Hi!” You laughed nervously, “I didn’t think you’d be awake— crap, unless I woke you up.”
He’s sitting up at the sound of your voice, like you were on your ninth cup of coffee, “You didn’t, you didn’t. I was just thinking.”
“Don’t you ever stop?”
“The sun doesn’t stop shining, why should I?” A smile cracks across his face when you huff out some amusement, “What’s goin’ on, sweetheart? You ok?”
He can hear the piano fall on you, the weight of calling a detective in the dead of night.
“Christ, I’m so— Yeah, no, I’m fine, I didn’t think— or, actually, I was thinking and that’s the problem.”
The unspoken travels through the wires of both your phones, an inkling of what was on the other’s mind.
“Why don’t I come over,” he suggests casually, betraying his racing heart, “we could think together.”
“I’d like that a lot.”
Relief and excitement tingles from where the phone’s pressed to John’s ear. He was already grabbing his keys, turning back for spare clothes.
He supposes, if he has to be perturbed and encumbered by proclivities of love, it’s nice to know his agony is shared by the person who causes it.
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bigidiotenergytm · 7 months ago
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Poseidon can you adopt me. I hate my real dad. Please. I'll give you Odysseus for free.
"Usually, I'm not KEEN on you mortals. Your strives, your struggles. Your INJUDICIOUS father is nothing but a speck to me, as he's unable to fill the one, simple role his puny life's been given. A failure. Useless. Enough to make you come to ME."
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"... Your offer's CONSIDERED. — Once, and only once, you bring me that king."
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appendingfic · 1 year ago
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It's Reaper Man, I think, that best explains what wizards are - the wizards spend the absolute majority of the book arguing about complete nonsense to figure out what the problem is, dicking around and poking their noses where they don't belong-
Up until the exact moment they decide that the problem is a problem that can be solved by an injudicious application of fireballs, at which point they transform into a D&D party who has been assured they're at the final fight of the dungeon
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Taking some time off the regularly scheduled (or not) content for some suggestive loguetown au Crocodile/Dragon; His fingers skirt down the length of Dragon's side, each one their own separate thing, all crawling in sync. Down, down. Dragon feels the curve of each nail, feels beyond that, the press of something,  pressure - power. Still, the touch is gentle.
Gentle, maybe. That it is cautious, he's sure of. And that- -cautiousness is Crocodile's gentleness. One could mistake it for being one and the same, and they'd be a fool. They are nothing alike. And yet.
Gently - cautiously - slowly, heavily, the fingers settle on his hip, curve over it, press flat. Slide down, down, in.
It's an instinctual thing when Dragon shifts his weight, lines up pressure to pressure, fills the hollow of Crocodile's palm.
Crocodile laughs, his fingers squeeze down, and Dragon thinks that he can feel every joint, the thrum of every tendon, the tiny swirling ridges that make up Crocodile's fingertips. He can't, but he can.  "Ah," he says, because to to say anything else would be utterly injudicious. "Ah." Crocodile says, mocks. Mocks, but he's smiling, his entire face is, that grin above a grin. Dear god, but he is beautiful. No- - handsome, handsome, Dragon corrects himself. A woman is beautiful, a man is handsome, and Crocodile will not appreciate if he conflates the two. But the word feels wrong, tastes wrong, a phantom sourness on his tongue. It's not enough. Not enough to describe Crocodile, not even close. What is handsome?  The gleam of Crocodile's eye, curve of Crocodile's lips, the stretch of Crocodile's jaw? The way his neck slopes into his shoulders, the way his hair is always tucked tightly behind his ears? The long deftness of his remaining fingers? No, that's beauty. He's beautiful, Dragon thinks. There's nothing else to think.  "What are you thinking about?"  Dragon almost starts, but then doesn't. He can't, he won't. Won't let Crocodile see, see- See. Crocodile's smile has become wider, sharper, Dragon sees the hint of spit-shiny canines poking out from under the stretch of Crocodile's lip, almost coy in a way.  "You're thinking about something," Crocodile prods, voice a distant deep hum. His throat works as he speaks, all undulating smoothness. Dragon's fingers twitch, the muscles along his arm suddenly burn with the effort of keeping his hand at his side. "How do you know that?" The words sound weak as he says them, they are weak, but any other words seem to elude Dragon. He braces for Crocodile to laugh again, for the raspy edge that will be in it, the one that signifies Crocodile's most petty amusement, but it doesn't come.   Instead. Instead, the touch. Cool, light, smooth and strangely slick in the way that only metal can be, filling the space under his chin, pressing upwards into the hollow there.  Dragon had not noticed Crocodile raising his hook. Had not, how had he not? How could he be so...so. Careless? Is it? Careless?  Careless? He won't hurt me. He will not. I know he will not. Canines. They appear suddenly, white in the darkness around them. Fuck, Dragon thinks, and then can't think at all. "I can tell," Crocodile says. He'd be purring, if not for the undertone of gravel in his voice. "I can tell, because your jaw locks up here-" Metal against the side of his face, cool for only a moment. Because Dragon is burning up.   Burning. Ah. Metal slides up his cheek, it's warm now. Rests on the center of his forehead. "- and your forehead wrinkles here."
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mysticworks · 1 year ago
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Your eyes ~ LN4 x Reader
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P R O L O G U E:
Lando falls in love with your eyes and can't look away.
Next part -> Part i
Coworker Reader! x Lando
Preview:
This was a duel between the two of them, the rest of the table, all but spectators.
I felt a smirk creeping up on my own face - Well this meeting just got interesting.
Words: <1k
Genre: ? McLaren worker! x lando, she's feisty and he's whipped
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L A N D O'S P O V :
She sat across the meeting table with the rest of the engineers, her eyes staring straight ahead; focused. There was always this concentrated look about her, like the cogs in her brain were constantly whirring.
The team had been called together by the managing director, to reflect on the performance of our 2023 season so far. 
The air was tense - Zak was not happy, and every person in that room knew it.
“The car, after so many updates, is still lacking the pace that our competitors are able to reach. I take that as a massive disappointment from the engineering team.” 
He threw a pointed look towards the far end of the table, and Stella - the team principal - dropped his head mumbling an apology.
I watched as her eyes sharpened at Zak’s word, and she bit the inside of her cheek as if refraining from saying something. 
Zak paid no heed to the apology, continuing harshly in his well rehearsed business voice, “If this sort of performance continues we’ll have to be looking at a restructuring of the team; see if everyone truly has the skill they claim.”
That was a threat directly thrown at the engineering team - Zak was intending to dismiss employees.
Her eyes narrowed at this comment, hands coming to rest on the table as she cleared her throat. 
“With all due respect Mr Brown,”
No one but the CEO had said a word for the half hour we’d been sitting here, and the sudden voice speaking up made every head turn her way.
She looked unfazed by the attention, continuing her words anyway, her stare at Zak, piercing. I noticed just how sharp her eyes were, a gaze so intent it threatened to cut through ice.
��To place the blame on the engineering team is an extremely injudicious pretext.”
Zak looked taken aback, his eyes widening at the answer - he looked surprised almost, like he hadn’t expected anyone to challenge him. 
“We’ve seen the team performance rise massively in the last race when compared to the start of the season. We’ve now moved from the back of the grid to being in the top 4. That’s enough evidence of the car being up to par with our competitors.”  
She brought her arms onto the table now, leaning forward. 
“In my opinion, it’s the drivers, who need to do their part better.”
The room filled with an audible gasp.
No one had ever questioned me or Oscar for our season so far. Not even Zak himself.
Andreas sent a look towards y/n, a glare with murderous rage, as if telling her to take her words back or risk the consequences - yet she didn’t falter - not even for a second, ignoring his look completely. 
Her eyes remained trailed on Zak, who looked torn between intimidation and bemusement. 
He sat for a while in silence, as if pressured now to weigh his words wisely. It seemed an eternity before he spoke.
"And what exactly, are you suggesting we do," his gaze flickered to her name badge for a split second, "miss y/l/n?"
There was a smile on her face now, one eyebrow raised. There was a fire in her eyes, burning so vividly it was captivating. "I suggest we make the drivers extract the best from their cars, before you randomly fire us engineers."
Another gasp went around the table - murmurs and slow movement before a heavy silence fell upon the room again.
Both Zak and y/n had brought on some sort of staring competition, leaning into the table and watching either - Zak was in charge, by order of hierarchy, but the power dynamic had flipped, and it was y/n who exerted a powerful control.
This was a duel between the two of them, the rest of the table, all but spectators.
I felt a smirk creeping up on my own face - Well this meeting just got interesting.
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After the meeting - 10pm:
The revolving doors to the McLaren HQ finally slid open, and out she came. Her hair was tied back now, and she’d changed out of her uniform too, into a more comfortable outfit.
She still had that same look on her face; the look of surety, confidence.
I'd been waiting on the front lawn of the office space, hoping to catch her leaving and strike up a conversation. Her retorts in the meeting room had been so fierce as she held her ground, unwavering as she went head on with the CEO.
It was admirable really, and maybe that’s what piqued my curiosity so much. Maybe that’s what made me want to know more. 
Grabbing two cones from the nearby ice cream vendor, I jogged across the cobblestone pavement towards where she was headed.
This was my chance.
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platrom · 2 years ago
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One Last Chance.
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Midoriya x F! Reader, Bakugou x F! Reader (partially/eventually)
WORD COUNT: 20.7k words
NOTE: Here is the ending to OLT. What do you all think? Please leave me some comments!!
If you guys would like to see side stories to this or have some questions, please send some asks! My inbox is always open. And if you have any other story ideas, please request as well.
TW: DEAD DOVE: DO NOT EAT, flashback scenes, hospital setting, mentions of prior and current injuries, death, talk about perceptions of death, mentions of suicide attempt/suicide, fluff, therapy, Bakugou has undergone therapy, childhood best friends, toxic friendships, unrequited love, happy ending, the voice leaves, a new voice appears (is personified), reader has a panic attack in a fancy restaurant, reader and Shoto are friends, Bakugou has genuine friends, the reader is loved, kind of ambiguous parts in the ending (must read first part to understand it), reader confronts Midoriya, reader kisses Bakugou
THIS STORY MUST BE READ WITH THE FIRST PART— IT IS NOT A STAND ALONE.
PART 1 / PART 2 (HERE)/IMPORTANT ASK
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BAKUGOU OBSERVED your shaken figure as it faded into the distance, head hung low and fists clenched in agony. When you first pulled away from him and continued onward, your feet tapped lightly against every slab of concrete you trekked on, until after a few yards your brisk walk bursted into a hurried sprint. Nobody nor anything was spared a second glance as you fled from his presence.
Candidly, he couldn’t blame you. Bakugou had overstepped your boundaries and attempted to plow through the brick walls you had built around yourself for the sake of your welfare. He understood how you felt and how overwhelming such an invasion of privacy was, notably with his straightforward approach. Bakugou was notorious for diving headfirst into situations, but that didn’t mean it was invariably appropriate.
For instance, now.
Howbeit, he didn’t know what else to do. Bakugou may have gone through years of therapy and anger management courses (thanks to that spiky-haired idiot), but that didn’t mean he knew how to confront everyone about their personal endeavors.
Tackling his own issues differed from helping others address theirs. He had friends, family, and a therapist to talk him through his problems and conjure solutions with. Even his fellow colleagues wouldn’t mind lending a comforting shoulder for Bakugou to lean on; the people around him had read countless books on how to support loved ones who were struggling.
Bakugou had a support system that took years to discover, expand, and wholeheartedly trust. With thousands of hours of therapy under his belt, he was blessed with tools to aid him in the gloomiest and sunniest of days, with or without his therapist by his side.
In comparison, you were not armed with the same lessons and techniques as he was.
Not yet, at least.
Bakugou wanted to change that.
For all of his years of friendship with you, he analyzed your growth and development as a person: how you went from an adorable and frivolous child who was insouciant to the prying eyes of others into a beauteous, percipient young lady who shied away from any unforgiving glares. He remembered how decades ago you, him, and Deku would tussle around in your childhood playground’s decrepit sandbox playing Heroes.
Bakugou had invented the game when you and Deku had been laying against one of the thick blue poles that held up a patent yellow slide incised by impetuous teenagers that lurked around the park at the perturbing time of midnight. To his dismay, despite being in front of you both, none of you batted an eyelash at him. He wasn’t even aware of what you two were discussing, but all he cognized was that the ongoing chatter between you and the freckled nerd was irritating him and he wanted your attention instanter.
Looking back, Bakugou could admit that it was an impulsive suggestion and injudicious decision. In contrast to what any other sensible child or person would have done, as soon as the words ‘Let’s play heroes, Deku and (Name)!’ escaped Bakugou’s lips, the green-haired idiot accepted the request instantly, so eager to please Katsuki. On the other hand, you simply watched in silence as Bakugou beamed in pride with his hands on his hips and Deku enthusiastically pumped his arms in the air, jumping and squealing in both anticipation and delight.
Years after, Bakugou eventually understood why you sat quietly that day and made no move to even consider rejecting the idea. Exactly like Midoriya, you shadowed Bakugou’s footsteps and obliged to his every whim. Yet, unlike Deku, you didn’t quite concur with his exclamations even inside your head and heart. Cleverly, you chose to keep your mouth shut and follow in step because it caused you less trouble than if you voiced your opinion.
That didn’t exactly mean you always emulated that similar action and thought process. There were at times you spoke against Bakugou when you knew you would be reprimanded the least or experience little to no consequences.
Bakugou couldn’t deny that he didn’t enjoy those quirks of yours: your fight, your spunk— your tactical and logical thinking. They all were your qualities that Bakugou internally commended you for.
As children, whenever you three played Heroes, Bakugou forced you to take the role of the damsel in distress. Due to your bestowed position as a distressed maiden, the ash blond referred to you as “Princess” often, both during and outside the game. With every fictional mission the two boys conjured, they intended to save you from villains (which happened to be figurines of heroes with a small piece of dark cloth draped over it).
When Bakugou wanted to impress you (and spite the green-haired bastard), after he and the nerd rescued you, he would hoist you off your feet and carry you bridal style, your head tucked into the crook of his neck. Boastfully and vaingloriously, he would exclaim to the other boy with a smug grin, “This is how a real princess should be treated, Deku!”
The young boy would stare in awe, analyzing how Bakugou kept a firm grip on you and refused to let you take a step on your own, despite your occasional protests.
And the times when a small giggle would be heard near Katsuki’s chest, widened vermillion eyes would snap to your face and watch as you grinned up at him, eyes sparkling, glowing, and filled with adoration. Your ridiculously sweet and unfaltering smile never failed to make his chest puff out in pride, cheeks warm in fluster, and heart pound faster.
Katsuki craved to see that expression on your face again.
He yearned to be the one who flipped your entire world upside down and set you anew. Like a festering disease, that ardent desire plagued his heart. It urged Bakugou to be the hero in your life and pillar of strength- the one you were able to lean on for stability when your walls of welfare began to crumble and crash.
When you were merely arm’s reach away, at times in that freckled-dork’s arms, an unremitting voice rung remorselessly in his ears, imploring for him to pull you into his chest and conceal you from the world, to cradle your supple face between his callused palms and tenderly stroke your cheek in hopes his actions could describe an ounce of his perennial love for you. The vexatious voice begged Bakugou to press his lips against yours to convey all the unspoken emotions he could not fathom formulating into lucid and complete sentences.
Katsuki wanted all of the pieces of you: brain, body, and soul.
In bed, during the hours of dusk until dawn, Bakugou’s mind conjured vivid imaginations of a domestic life with you. In many of the scenarios, Katsuki would already be at home in the spacious kitchen, preparing dinner for you both before you returned after a strenuous day at work. Whatever meal he was cooking didn’t matter; you would love his cooking anyway.
He would be so absorbed with cooking that he wouldn’t hear the sound of the door lock clicking open, or the rustling of your clothes as you stripped off your coat. Your lethargic steps would fall on deaf ears as you snuck behind Katsuki, the corner of your lips curling in satisfaction and glee at the aromatic fragrance wafting throughout the house and at the sight of him cooking, no less in the apron you had gifted him for Christmas at the start of his hero career. The apron was black and had the words “THE BOMB” splayed across his chest in thick, white cursive.
Without hesitation, you would pounce onto Bakugou and smush your face into his back, wrapping your arms around his waist. He would quietly hum as you sighed and relaxed into his cozy warmth, mumbling a word of greeting.
After, small bits of chatter would be exchanged between you two until your voices died down and a comforting silence would permeate your shared home.
Eventually, when Bakugou would feel your eyelashes flutter shut as you fruitlessly essayed to stay awake and on your toes, he would lightly smack the top of your head with a wooden spoon and chide you to get your oil-stained arms off his apron and shower before he finished dinner.
The dopey grin that would spread across your adorable face would leave butterflies flittering in his stomach and blood rushing to the tips of his ears. When you noticed his bashful expression, you would raise your calves and wrap your arms around Bakugou’s neck to press a chaste kiss to the corner of his mouth, before escaping his clutches as he processed your actions.
Irritatingly, he would wave a wooden spoon in the air menacingly at your retreating figure, screaming, “You shitty woman, if you’re going to kiss me, do it properly!”
Katsuki Bakugou was a selfish man; he knew that just as well as anybody else. All of his life, he took everything he could and prospered with whatever resources he had. Everything he did was done in his favor, to his advantage. The cost of his actions and behavior was never significant to him. Even presently, as a hero, he didn‘t bat an eye to his brash language on television or crass attitude. He never spared a second thought about what he did or was going to do.
Until now, when your life, your fate, was placed directly into the palm of his destructive, blood-shedding hands.
If he pursued the direction of which you ran and found you, what would happen to the two of you? To him? To you?
What were the rewards and the risks? Would possibly risking your life be worth it? If push came to shove and you threatened your life, could he save you?
His quirk wasn’t built for the typical rescue training; Bakugou was trained to ward off villains and allow the official rescue heroes do their work. He could handle the battle— the blood, the deafening blasts and shards of glass and slabs of concrete that would fly at him, the blazing ache in his muscles, the adrenaline from fighting and the reality of his eventual, impeding death.
Yet, he wasn’t created to dive into the murky and freezing cold water of the ocean and pull civilians from the bottom. Bakugou Katsuki, Dynamight, wasn’t the one who was meant to lift fissured buildings off of civilians to allow them to escape.
Of course, Bakugou could blow things up. Though, was it really the smartest for him to possibly detonate an already ticking time bomb?
Perhaps, he wasn’t the man for this rescue. But there was somebody else who he knew was.
Bakugou whipped out his phone, scrolling past hundreds of unobtrusive contacts, most lacking a personalized profile picture. Swipe after swipe, blurs of gray passed his vision before his eyes caught the name of a man he would never willingly speak to, not even for work.
You were an exception.
Always and forever.
Tapping the telephone icon with hasty fingers, Katsuki lifted the device up to his ear and began to trace your footsteps.
In his wildest dreams, never did he picture himself dialing one of his biggest rivals over a girl he loved for decades— over a girl they loved for decades— since as long as he could remember.
A confused voice answered on the other end. “Kacchan?”
“Deku,” Bakugou sighed, teeth gritting and fists clenched.
Hopefully, the world would reward him for not being selfish this once.
“I need your damn help.”
For the first time.
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Contrary to popular belief, there were countless disparate ideas and thoughts of what death was like. For numerous individuals, it was foreseen as a riveting and transfixing experience. On the other hand, many voiced death to be an ongoing horror that terrorized them in the back of their minds. The twisted thoughts would trickle past the cracks of the mind, seeping into the limelight of their thoughts.
Certainly, there were opinions that fell between the lines and even strayed far from the common and classic perceptions of such an inevitable fate all would face.
Though, you had a rather specific conclusion about death.
Your declaration was that it was quite dull; banal even, considering everything to your vision (more so lack of it) was pitch black, akin to as if you had your eyelids shut— just permanently.
To be fair, you were dead. What did you expect? No one wanted to see the eyes of a rotting corpse, so it made sense that they would shut them.
You prayed your body was being prepared for your funeral. If they even found it, deep down below the surface of the ocean’s beguiling, glossy droplets of liquid transparency that lured innocent strangers to explore what was another’s liquid death.
Your death would also explain why you were frozen like a corpse. Your mouth remained clamp shut, your limbs stayed in place no matter how much you fruitlessly shrieked at your brain to move the lifeless limbs, and every inch of your body felt stone cold despite that if you were alive, warm blood would be flowing through your veins to keep you functioning.
However, there was one minor issue that made you question your predicament and if you were truly dead— you could still hear. What you were able to hear in the oblivion of black that surrounded you was debatable, but it vaguely reminded you of muffled chatter, similar to if cotton stuffed your ears.
Perhaps, if you focused enough you could distinguish the words, possibly even the syllables in hopes of discovering whether or not you had truly met death face-to-face.
All you had to do was listen- stay silent. Just like a dead person. You were dead. You could do just that with ease.
So, you let your conscious fade into the abyss of surrounding black, let the hold you had on the remnants of your soul slide lower and lower, the tight grip of your finger slipping so only the tips of them could reach the sole part of you that held you inside your body— your prison. You let the comfort of your humanity rest and the blaring silence of death deafen your ears.
Unexpectedly, the small, high-pitched voice of a child is what you hear first whose words die at the end of their sentence.
“If you need help, you can just ask for it.”
You want to ask who they are and what they’re talking about, and you try— you pull your dangling humanity closer and repeat the questions like a mantra until you’re screaming them, but they never exit your throat.
When your soul slips from your fingers again, the child remains quiet. Light footsteps begin to echo in the abyss of darkness, faintly reminding you of the days you used to spend in your room listening to rain splattering against your window, the atoms of hydrogen and oxygen splitting as they made contact with the clear surface.
This all seems like a sick, cruel joke from the universe.
Was this the voice messing with you?
Was the voice that haunted you still here with you, even in the after life?
But it didn’t sound the same.
That ominous voice in your head was your own voice. It had the exact same pitch, the same quirky pronunciations you had, even down to the accent. Possibly at first, it had been the voice of others and the words that were spat at you were theirs.
To begin, they were theirs; their crude thoughts, their deleterious words, their abhorrent statements and opinions.
Not yours, not at all.
Those noxious words laced with the deadliest of poisonous toxins gradually infiltrated your mind, the traces of their presence faint. As time passed, the once small stains became vast and covered the expanse of your once kind thoughts, turning each present one bitterer from the last. Once upon a time, the voice in your head was the voice of others.
Until it became yours.
In contrast, the speaker in the pit of eternal darkness had a voice of a naive young girl whose heart was just as pure and innocent as it was when the day she was born. It was filled with glee and utmost care, one that most lost to their greed for coin and success. Genuine people— those who constantly gave back and assisted others out of the goodness of their heart had long gone extinct, or were an endangered species. Those who got ahold of these rare beings either sunk their canines into their flesh for a finishing blow or kept them safe under their thumb, a primordial part of them vocalizing their need to keep someone so precious in the safety of their arms.
The girl moved closer to you.
“The attempt to escape pain is what creates more pain. At least, that’s what my parents tell me.”
That voice . . . It was once yours. The little girl who was speaking to you was you, or the shell of who you once were.
Although the memories of your childhood had lost their precision of detail overtime and existence as the years trudged by, you had always considered them the apex of the years you spent alive. The naivety of being a child and the blanket of being sheltered protected you from the corruption of the real world was a sensation you missed dearly.
“Instead of trying to avoid your troubles and problems, they say to resolve them so nobody gets hurt anymore!”
Your recollection of this particular encounter as a child was not the most prominent, as the once vivid and animated details of that day slowly evanesced from your brain with time.
The interaction had occurred nearly two decades ago in the commonly favored season of saccharine spring in Japan, when the sun’s rays gently kissed your skin and the soft gusts of wind weaved through your hair and brushed it back. You were there solely because the mothers in the city of Musutafu always met up during the spring to gossip about their husbands and children and revel in the scenery of blossoming Sakura flowers that swayed gingerly in the wind from their delicate stems that connected to the branches.
It hadn’t been the first time your mother had dragged you to an event like this with the enticing promise that you would be able to make new friends; that had been the deal-breaker for you. Hence, it had led you to the park funded by the richest of the local heroes and civilians.
The place could only be described in one word: perfect. Gossip from the mothers of the town declared it was kept in pristine condition by countless gardeners who would sweat over every blade of grass they sliced. The shrubbery was luscious, vibrant, and full of life. One would say it was just as youthful as the children that roamed every acre of the greenery.
The mothers had stationed themself near the entrance of the park, where the benches that were bolted into the ground to set down the dishes, snacks, and desserts they brought for everyone to snack on. Further in was the actual playground, which contained the children of the many attending mothers.
After kindly asking your mother for permission to go to the playground by yourself, you waltzed your way over.
That was where the interaction began.
You weren’t sure how you even noticed this peculiar person— nothing about them stood out. Not their hair, not their eyes, not their face.
Absolutely nothing differentiated from the rest.
That much you remembered.
Maybe it was a stroke of luck that brought you to them, that fate decided to pull your strings together and wrap a knot around you both for a moment.
They had been sobbing uncontrollably, their arms hugging their knees and small hiccups of desperate gulps of fresh air had reached your unsuspecting ears.
It was odd how out of all the children there, you were the only one who could hear their muffled cries of pain.
The background, your surroundings, the calls of the other children to return to their side as they watched you step towards the outcast was all a haze to you. You couldn’t recognize or process anything other than the child that sat alone in tears.
It was a complete blur from there.
“Forever doesn’t exist, that’s why you should apologize before it’s too late!”
Why am I remembering this now?
Tears fell that day.
When have they not?
Unspoken words lingered in the air, thick and heavy on your tongue.
How many days have been like that? How many days have I lived like them?
Your mind answers for itself.
In the past, you had labeled them minor inconveniences. They didn’t matter to you.
They were minor inconveniences, you tried to convince yourself like so many times before.
Were the tears you shed over so many lost ones just minor?
Would you just toss them away?
Would you belittle the memories of one of your former closest elementary friends, years of friendship washed away in the downpour due to a nasty little rumor spread about you? Erase the little drawings and cards they made for you, each one describing how you would be by each other’s side forever?
Would you forget about the best friend that got away, the one that was forced to move away at the end of your primary years? The walk around the field, the stories you both wrote together, the secrets you entrusted with one another— were you going to toss that all away?
Would you forget about the one who you worked vigorously to build a friendship with when everyone was forced to split ways in junior high? Did you really think so little of the late night conversations, the occasional but rather spontaneous (and sometimes one-sided) heart-to-hearts, the long hours spent chatting away, learning about a love that stemmed deeper than the plants whose roots dipped beneath the soil under your feet? What about when they had chosen to push you out of their lives— manipulating you to keep you attached?
Would you be willing to forget when the empire you had fought endlessly to build and protect collapsed on you after quakes so powerful the once granite walls fissured and crumbled right above your head when you were at your weakest?
Would the scars that remained from the knives that were stabbed into your back, your chest, your heart, finally heal? Would the nasty and discolored marks fade from your skin like water slipping down a drain?
Would you forget about your family? The ones who raised you, who were by your side, near your side, even when it felt like they were miles away?
Would you forget about those who loved you unconditionally— for every one of your flaws, mistakes, and imperfections? The loyal ones who stood close enough to catch you if you fell, even when you didn’t deserve it. Even when you took them for granted.
What about Izuku and Katsuki? The ones that at one point in your life or another, meant the world to you?
Could you erase the memory of Katsuki’s passionate carmine eyes, irises the colors of the ripest of strawberries in the patch, filled with unspoken emotions that only the most observant and attentive of people could detect? The number of fingers on your hands could not come close to totaling the indefinite amount of days you spent staring into his eyes, (e/c) piercing through the thin panes of glass behind his eyes that sheltered his heart and soul, learning lessons that words could not formulate, that he would never dare let leave his mouth.
Would those minuscule yet intimate moments with the blond escape you at last?
Ironically, your calmest and most content moments resided with the boy from your childhood who always claimed one day he would be the greatest hero in the world. These tranquil times didn’t stem from your days as kids in primary school or pre-teens in middle school, but rather when you both were studying at UA.
Unbeknownst to Midoriya and nearly the entirety of Class A, Bakugou would constantly sneak you into his room late at night when neither of you could sleep or only wanted to bask in the the other’s presence. He always grumbled and complained about the unruly times you chose to sneak out of your room and how dangerous it was for you to risk injuring yourself just to see him, but every time you countered his argument with a simple smile and a “I missed you” before proceeding to hug him tightly.
The first few times you told Bakugou this, audible explosions began to crackle from his palms and immediately he shoved you off of him (after wiping his sweaty hands on his pants) and barked curses at you. Eventually, he welcomed you silently with open arms.
During those quiet nights, you both would lay on his bed, limbs intertwined. At first, you and Katsuki sat at a distance, until he began to lay down on his bed and hissed at you to follow suit. Then, you made the first move to cuddle Bakugou after he called you over because of a nightmare— the rest was history from there.
Brushing fingertips was your first taste of intimacy with Bakugou, until he gained the courage to hold your hand. Afterwards came the long hugs. Then, those hugs transformed into Bakugou pulling your head to rest on his bicep. Next came intertwined legs and gentle caresses. And the cherry on top was when his walls finally came down and he allowed you to be his rock, the shoulder he cried on when his studies and hero work caught up to him and left him doubled over in hopelessness, desperate to put himself back together.
But what about Izuku?
What about the boy you spent practically every year of your life with, the man that plagued your mind in the early hours of dawn and the late hours of dusk?
Were you ready to remove him forever? Were you truly ready to give up on the one you loved fearlessly for all those years, even in the face of adversity?
For ages, Midoriya was your beacon of hope. When the world felt like it was caving in, when you shoved everyone out and suffered in solitude, he stood unwavering and unrelenting to listen to your command; he defied your expectations and exceeded them.
Though, good things cannot survive for eternities.
At one point Izuku Midoriya, the one who claimed your heart long ago, slowly began to fade right in front of your eyes. He prioritized his work— he made saving others the reason why he breathed.
When that realization dawned upon you and you understood that he would never fawn at you the same way you did with him, you drowned yourself.
It felt like death.
You didn’t want to think about this anymore.
I want the pain to finally end.
It was pointless to clutch onto the minuscule semblance of mortality you had left before you completely rested in the grave. If you accepted the hand the reaper held out to you, sleep would be eternal.
That’s what I always wanted, right? So take it. It’s not like I ever had anything to lose. Whatever I once owned will never be mine again.
Succumbing was always easy. Succumbing to desires always rewarded you, albeit only temporarily. It was simpler that way— to fall under the umbrella of constantly accepting demands.
“Let go.”
You did; you drank every night until you were blackout drunk.
“Hide.”
You did. You pushed everyone away and isolated yourself.
“Suffer.”
You did. You never sought out help when your thoughts became too grim and dreary to bare alone.
“End it.”
You did. You jumped off the cliff and into the ocean.
“Accept it.”
Slowly, you were.
Slowly, you let your thoughts disintegrate into the dark, emptying your mind of coherency. Of rationality, of humanity.
That lifeless feeling of iciness within you traveled across the expanse of your body until you wholeheartedly believed you had always been a glacier of ice and not once a living being.
Like a sinking boulder, you slipped from consciousness to never resurface.
And like a gentle kiss, a speck of warmth formed on your skin before disappearing.
“Please don’t leave me, (Name). I love you.”
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“Don’t do that again, idiot.”
The voice is warm like apple cider on a winter day, mixed with a twinge of sweet, sugary cinnamon that permeates the expanse of your tongue. It feels so welcoming, so safe despite the harshness lingering in the undertones of the voice— akin to if a thick and heavy spoonful of honey coated your tongue like syrup flowing off a stack of fluffy and golden-brown pancakes. You craved to have the sugary sap reach the back of your mouth and slide down your throat before it saturated your system with the sticky sweetness.
A tepid and sweaty hand enveloped yours, coarse callouses sheltering the dry and peeling skin of your knuckles from the bitter cold breeze blown from the air conditioning.
More words fall deaf on your ears as the strings of consciousness tie themselves back together in effort to push you out of your drowning slumber. The soothing and homely voice continues to repeat broken and fractured phrases that you try to reach, pushing yourself out of the sinister hold of the tendrils.
Enraged by your defiant behavior, the obsidian tentacles wrap themselves around the tied strings and tug harshly in an attempt to tear you apart, to send you back to where the worst of your melancholy and despondent thoughts resided.
“Come back, don’t leave me here!” the voice cried. “You and I, we’re both the same. Wherever I go, you come with. We are one.”
Were you the same as that evil voice that had plagued your mind like a virus, worming its way into your bloodstream in hopes of controlling your body and fatally killing you?
Would you ever do that to someone?
You’d like to think not.
“You better not leave me behind. You need to be there when I become number one.”
There was that familiar voice again— it was so warm. It felt like hugging a toasty bag of freshly baked bread in the chilly morning, or sitting down on your couch with a steaming cup of hot cocoa on a rainy day, slowly sipping at the aromatic and creamy chocolate that made your stomach squeal in pleasure and delight.
You craved to feel like this forever.
With the threat of betrayal, the tendrils furiously tightened their bruising grip on your limbs, unwilling to part ways with you.
“I was there for you when nobody ever was! I stuck by your side when you isolated yourself and had nobody— when everyone ignored you!” the voice reminded you, enraged by your defiance.
Why couldn’t you just submit to it?
But weren’t you the one that caused it? If it wasn’t for you, would I really be here now?
The idea is a sudden one that sends you reeling, heart pumping and sweat beading at the top of your head. The once cozy heat that flooded your body boils, burning hotter than the fiery and explosive stars above. An audible sizzling sound can be heard where the tendrils meet your skin.
“You better fight back, damn nerd. Everyone’s been waiting for you out here— they dropped everything to come see you.”
Everyone? Your classmates and friends?
But weren’t they the ones who knew of your suffering and still refused to extend a helping hand to you?
“They all come and go, you know that. Why would you go back to them? Don’t go back on the promise you made. Just for Midoriya, remember?”
Promise? Midoriya?
Your mind was too muddled to comprehend the voice’s words.
“That dumb Deku is here too. He’s worried sick about you, wouldn’t stop blubbering like an idiot the minute he saw me.”
The sight of emerald eyes filled with tears flashes through the darkness of your mind, a blur of a murky white, lifeless black, and a faded green.
You should react— you should feel something. Anything.
But you don’t.
The imagery fades as fast as it arrives, leaving you to reside with the black of your mind. There’s no fluttering of butterflies or red rose petals swirling in the air out of the corner of your eyes. The thought of Midoriya doesn’t warm you further— it only leaves you colder than before.
In the pit of death, it’s just you and the last of your humanity.
“He never liked you anyway. You never mattered. You knew that, didn’t you?”
A meek part of you wants to disagree, argue that he had to have appreciated you at least in the slightest to have stuck around you for as long as he did. But the majority of you solemnly nods in agreement, aware of the countless times where you blindly reached out to Izuku Midoriya.
He simply tolerated you because you constantly suffocated him with your presence. Midoriya never had a mean bone in his body, he would never speak up if someone was a nuisance to him.
“Yes!” the voice hissed, delighted. Slowly but surely, you were falling prey to its hold; to the negativity it had spread wide throughout your mind.
It was only a matter of time before you succumbed.
“Wake up, (Name). Please.”
It isn’t worth it, is it?
“I know I haven’t been the best, but I’ll make it up to you. Promise. Just please, please don’t leave me.”
The warm voice cracks, its words quivering, and there’s a shaky intake of breath. It sounds pained.
“You caused that pain.”
You did, didn’t you?
“Just let it all go,” the voice sung. “Come with me and it’ll all go away. Everyone will be okay. You will be okay.”
You should.
You know you should.
You know you should finally let go. You’d lost everything. You’d lost your life and were trapped in this bottomless pit of black.
If you just let go, you could be free.
“Then do it. Stop listening. Ignore it all. Let me take over.”
There’s words that are being spoken to you from the voice beside you, some louder and intenser than the last, but you block them out. You ignore and let the ferocious tendrils wrap around you and pull you down.
The thin string that holds you together snaps.
And finally, finally, it all stops. The noise, the voices, the thoughts, the feelings, the aches and pains.
At last, it’s all over, you tell yourself.
But do you really believe it?
You would never know.
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You don’t think you’ve seen this many people crowded into a single hospital room.
For you, no less.
All of the former Class A students from your years in high school have flooded your room, some of them even stuck in the doorway. From Grape Juice to Creati, the space is absolutely cramped.
Beside your bed are mountain-high piles of gifts and letters from your friends as well as others who could not attend in time for the visiting hours. Without a doubt, some of those presents contained articles of lavish and luxurious gifts you could only afford in the wildest of your dreams if you had the money of a top pro-hero. (Money that these heroes had, considering some had been born into wealthy families while others had become filthy rich after making bold headlines as heroes in the media.)
Not to mention, all their attention had been focused entirely on you since the moment you awoke.
Uraraka had been the first to pounce on you, spewing words that flew past her mouth with such vigor and rush that you could not keep up. Like a koala, she clung to you— arms wrapped around your neck in a vice and warm grip as she sobbed uncontrollably into your shoulder. Tsuyu had pried her off apologetically, but you merely continued to stare in a daze, the countless medications that they had pumped through your blood still in effect.
One by one, each visitor came up to your bedside and sat down beside you to speak while the others watched. Each interaction differed from the last.
Mina had buried your head into the crook of her necks as she brokenly whispered words of endearment and utmost adoration into your ear, rubbing your back softly as salty tears spilled from her eyes and onto the pillow behind you. Eventually, Mina clasped your face between her hands and grinned through tears at the sight of your face between her hands, further cementing the fact that you were alive and still with her.
After a couple more shared moments with some of the others, Todoroki had stepped up to you with an indecipherable expression painted onto his features before sitting down and opening his arms in a silent offer of a hug. You lifted yourself up and leaned into his hold and he held you delicately like glass, murmuring a gentle “I’m so sorry” and “Thank you for not leaving us.”
Once Todoroki left your side, Momo immediately took his place and buried your head into her chest. At that point, your eyes had begun to sting in response to the endless tears your friends had shed and you were sure they were just as red as Momo’s bloodshot ones.
After Yaomomo came Eijiro Kirishima, your personal golden retriever.
He had lunged at you, scooping you into his arms. Squeezing you tightly, Kirishima could not help but sob into the crook of your neck, shaking while doing so. Apologetic words were whispered brokenly, his voice cracking and changing pitch every syllable.
For someone so sturdy, so stable, you never thought the unbreakable Red Riot could crumble quite so easily.
At the hands of your own, no less.
Finally, the tears began to flow from your eyes, overpowering the dam that stubbornly refused to budge whenever it splintered. Wrapping your arms around Kirishima’s back, you clutch on for dear life, crying into his shoulder.
You almost died.
You did die.
The horror of your situation finally settles.
Your behavior and actions, it really did matter. It affected others, not only yourself. If these people were barely holding it together from seeing you now, alive and safe in a hospital, how would they have reacted if you did indeed die?
If the voice had truly beaten the odds, what would have happened to those around you?
You’re glad, you conclude, that you’ll never know and they’ll never really experience it either.
Death may conclude your story, but it doesn’t end theirs. You just close the book of their life and stop reading their story.
Glancing up from Kirishima’s quivering shoulders, you inspect the body language of everyone there. Some are hunched over, hands clasped over their mouths with tears staining their face. Others comfort each other, tenderly rubbing their backs.
However, there’s one person in particular that catches your eye.
He broods alone in the back, carmine eyes staring daggers into the ground. Dressed in his infamous black skull t-shirt and black sweatpants, his ash-blond hair stands out like a sore thumb.
You know that hunched figure like the back of your hand, even despite his immense growth over the years.
“Bakugou?”
It’s a quiet croak, a frightened whisper. But like the hawk he is, his head whips up, eyes widened in surprise.
And it is then, you see the true damage you’ve caused.
The rims of his eyes are a soft red, like the powdery light red of blush. Below his eyelashes lay streaks of fallen tears, their traces as evident as a bear’s footprints in still snow. His eyebrows are pulled together, wrinkling the space between his glassy eyes. It’s uncanny seeing Bakugou showing an emotion besides anger or neutrality, especially one akin to despair.
You’ve never seen such a hopeless expression visible on his face before.
You’re a monster.
For doing that to someone like him, you know you are.
Kirishima raises his head up and gives a small grin, glancing back at his companion. “Bakugou’s been here since you arrived at the hospital. He was the first person to contact us all about . . . this.”
You wince, pursing your lips at his not-so-subtle tiptoeing around your attempt. He means no harm, but the sting is just as intense at the reminder of your breakdown.
He moves off you and motions Katsuki to move towards your side, patting the blond on the back as he trudged over.
His steps are hesitant and slow— like a zookeeper approaching a wounded, rabid animal. Vermillion eyes inspect the tears that cling onto your eyelashes, the trembling at the corner of your lips, and the shallow intakes and exhales of breath from your throat.
The air between you is thick, but no matter how tense, you open your arms for Bakugou, staring at him teary eyed. He hovers above you, unsure of closing the distance between you both.
“Please?” Your arms tremble mid-air, and the tears on your face stream down faster. You don’t look decent— no one would look their best in such a weak, raw, and vulnerable moment, but you don’t care.
You don’t care because you know surviving is worth so much more than a presentable exterior.
Bakugou swallows thickly before moving into your embrace. His warmth contrasts the iciness in your bones and brings the blood rushing to the rest of your body. Your heart pounds rapidly and your lungs expand further and further, desperate to inhale all of Bakugou Katsuki in.
You stay like that for a few moments before he breaks the silence. “You idiot.”
Your breath hitches in your throat.
“If you need help, you better ask for it next time.”
And then, a small bit of warmth blossoms in your cheeks.
“Yeah, I know.”
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MIDORIYA IS FRAGILE.
Midoriya is weak.
No matter how much time had passed and no matter how strong he became, he would always be that same helpless kid he once was. It was an innate part of him— Defenseless Deku would always be the child that existed in the corners of the Number One, Symbol of Peace Pro-Hero Deku’s mind.
Those thin, shaking arms and glassy, red-rimmed eyes all sewn onto a young boy would always be the reflection of Midoriya whenever he stared at the mirror.
Years of scars, fractured bones, and matured features would always fail at hiding the truth about the soul that lived within the body of the greatest hero in all of Japan’s history.
It’s something that lingered in his mind at the late hours of dusk and early hours of dawn— the harrowing truth about the Symbol of Peace.
How could one man be so strong, so powerful, yet be so weak, helpless, and vulnerable?
The thought bounced in his mind as he sat tiredly in the rickety chair of the hospital after receiving a panicked, cryptic worried message from Kacchan.
“‘She was tired. Bleak— dull. She wasn’t herself. She needs our help.’”
His words floated in Midoriya’s head, crashing into the sides of his mind once they resurfaced ashore, only to slip from the sandy outskirts of the beach and back into the rippling waves of the ocean.
“‘She needs you, Izuku.’”
(Name), his (Name), was in danger. You needed help- his help.
He wondered why Kacchan hadn’t just followed you himself. He had always loved you, long before Midoriya even did (or knew he did, for that matter). Midoriya had always known that.
Why didn’t he just play hero as he always would (just like when they were kids and Bakugou always wanted to be the one to only rescue you), and take all the glory for himself? It would end as it always did in those Hollywood films— the hero would save the girl and get her, and they would live happily ever after.
Isn’t that what Kacchan wanted? To live happily ever after with you?
At least, that’s what Midoriya had always concluded whenever his thoughts would trail back to the rather confusing relationship between you and his biggest rival.
Kacchan had always held a soft spot for you. Although the brashness of his actions and pointed words would’ve pierced anyone (like they soon did with him), those icicles simply melted before they could touch the surface of your skin.
And at first, that love was platonic (he believes, but Midoriya is unsure. He may have been able to read Kacchan like a book after years of knowing him, but he could never grasp his concept of romantic and platonic love. He didn’t know him like that.)
Gradually, however, it blossomed into something deeper than just a friendship. In the soil of his greatest rival’s heart, the roots of that love penetrated the layers of dirt before it overtook his heart and became something much stronger than either of them could have fathomed.
Kacchan would deny it all, though. Even to Midoriya.
Distinctly, Midoriya recalled watching Bakugou walk off to your dorm when you both were in your second year at U.A. He hadn’t thought much of it then (as it wasn’t until months afterwards did he begin to suspect Bakugou’s true feelings for you), but it became a frequent sight as the weeks passed.
In due time, Midoriya realized that Bakugou had been meeting up with you more than just those moments he saw Kacchan heading to your dorm room.
A polite voice snapped Midoriya from his spiraling thoughts.
“Mr. Midoriya, you are free to see (Last Name) (First Name).”
He gave a kind smile, bowing his head before he rose. Mindlessly, he walked down the hall until he found your room number the nurse gave.
Your room is secluded off into the end of the hall, beside nothing but a sterile white wall. It’s lonely out here— there are no people or gifts waiting outside the patient’s doors; just sterile, white walls and tiles.
You don’t belong here.
When Midoriya entered your room, the sight of your still body laying unceremoniously on the thin white bedding of the hospital greeted him. Not even a paper blanket had been thrown on you.
An IV drip is lodged into one of your arms, with wires of other sorts filling out the rest of the space on your forearms. Your hair is tangled and matted together by the salty water that once absorbed your body whole. There are fresh, pink cuts laying all over your body, no doubt sterilized by alcohol.
The scene reminded Midoriya of the many times he had landed himself in the hospital critically injured and on the verge of death.
You shouldn’t be in his place.
Never should you be in his place.
He loved you too much to stand seeing you so injured. You were a support hero— you stayed in the background to make the heroes of the public stronger. You belonged in an office where you would be safe and protected. Midoriya made sure of that when he requested you work for him.
But he let this happen.
It’s an unfortunate truth he doesn’t want to accept.
Midoriya knew about your feelings the whole time. He had seen the lovesick, dazed expressions you gave him. He saw the way you would grin happily after each passing interaction with him, how your eyes would light up whenever he stepped in the same room as you.
He knew because he would do all the same for you.
Every time he stepped into the office, his eyes would search for any semblance of you. It had always been like that.
He had always sought out for you, even as kids.
That’s why as he got older and realized the grasp you had on him, Midoriya attempted to flee his emotions. The longer he was around you, the deeper he spiraled in his endless pit of love for you. Butterflies would erupt every second he thought of you— they covered every inch of his being until he became a colorful mess of emotions.
And as he neared the number one spot, he realized the danger that came with such feelings. He would place a target on both your backs. Any villain looking for revenge against him would find you first as a means to get to him. And if they did— if they hurt you— he would have shattered
He would shatter.
That’s why he fled from your life: to protect you.
And himself.
Selfish Izuku.
But he failed to realize the affect it had on you. He never cared to look back and see how you took his sudden disappearance.
Look where that got you both, he tells himself.
You, in a hospital bed barely alive and him, guilty and torn apart at the seams.
Izuku Midoriya may be a hero, but he is a villain all the same.
Whether or not you’re aware of it, he is the villain in your story.
But he is— and that is enough to send the strongest man alive sprinting out of your hospital room and into the night, far away from you, his emotions, and the reality of your lives. Tears prick at the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision as he soars in the air, pouncing from rooftop to rooftop.
The world will always remind Izuku Midoriya that while your worlds were meant to meet, they were meant to collide together and cause destruction.
He just never meant to damage yours as much as he did.
But Midoriya is weak. He is as fragile and helpless as they come, even if he is trapped in the body of the most powerful and capable being known to man.
The cruel universe continued to laugh at him, bathing gloriously in his misery.
Dumb little boy, it condescendingly cooed.
Helpless Izuku, it reminded him.
And he let it torment him, as he always had. Because while he may be the closest thing to God, even he cannot defy fate.
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The world doesn’t welcome you with open arms after you’re discharged from the hospital.
When you step outside of the hospital doors, the weather isn’t warm and sunny with a gentle breeze that kisses your skin in those Hollywood movies. The ends of your clothes and hair don’t flutter majestically in the wind. Birds don’t swoop down and tweet enthusiastically at you, hopping to inch near you. There aren’t people happily chattering as they trek down the sidewalks and kids squealing as they sprint freely across the street.
Instead, it’s a sweltering kind of heat that causes sweat to form in every crevice of your body; it’s the kind that burns your skin the moment you step outside, tearing apart your dry, AC-adapted skin. Hair sticks to your face at unflattering angles and your wrinkled clothes are impossibly uncomfortable with every step you take. The polyester of your shirt rubs uncomfortably against the cuts and bruises located all around your body, making you wince. Animals and critters skitter away into the shade in hopes of cooling down. There are no pedestrians on the street or giddy kids. All you can see and hear are cars honking at each other, angry drivers, and speeding motorcycles.
Life is hideous, unfortunate, and cruel. Life is reality. Life is the truth and the truth was never meant to be kind or forgiving. It was meant to kick you off your high horse and humble yourself. It was meant to remind you no matter the strength you possessed, no matter how perfect you were perceived, you would always have to bow your head to the hand above. It was meant to teach you to never bite the hand that feeds you, or else dire consequences will come from those who are disobedient.
And you disobeyed it. You defied fate. You chose your own death, against the death the world had planned for you. You sunk your canines into the hand of life and tore its fingers off, letting the blood spurt over your face.
Now, you are paying for it by living through misery.
Before and after death.
Always and forever.
“Pathetic,” the voice whispered. “How pathetic, (Name). You can’t do anything right, can you?”
A sleek black cars rolls to the curb and a tinted window is rolled down. Ash-blond spikes stick out of the window and you are met with Bakugou’s gleaming eyes.
“You getting in, Princess?”
He sticks a thumb behind him, signaling for you to go to the back. Nodding your head, you step into the back of the vehicle and shut the door behind you, buckling your seatbelt.
You’re right, you agreed with the voice, I can’t do anything right.
Beside Bakugou in the driver’s seat is Todoroki, who sends you a charming smile when he looks back at you. Bakugou turns over as well.
“Hello, (Name).”
You softened at the sight of his body’s tension melting under your gaze. “Hi, Shoto. How are you?”
“Better now that you’re here.”
A bright laugh escapes you— it’s abrupt and loud— the kind that makes you roll around in your bed rethinking your every choice at the crack of dawn.
Yet, somehow for the first time in months, nearly years, you feel a little bit lighter.
The world seems a little brighter.
The voice boils in rage.
“Aren’t you just a charmer, Todoroki?” your hand waves teasingly as you press your head to the glass, swooning to the side. “I always knew your were my Prince Charming waiting to sweep me off my feet!”
Bakugou sucks air through his teeth, huffing loudly. Shoto’s eyes twinkle in amusement as he peers over at Katsuki, his eyes crinkling as his smile grows wider and the pearls of his teeth begin to show.
“If you have something to say Bakugou, you should communicate with us,” Todoroki stated matter-of-factly, glancing behind him before reversing out of his spot. “We’re friends, after all.”
Bakugou scowls, rolling his eyes before turning back and staring at you from the dash mirror. “You got all your stuff, (Name)?”
You nodded, watching as he turned to look off into the distance.
Bakugou had changed drastically from the teenager he once was in UA and even though you saw his development each year, never did you focus on each of his features as he matured.
Your mind wanders to the memories stored of the nights you continuously spent with Bakugou, drinking in his features. The images of the moonlight glowing on his skin like a gentle kiss from a loving mother. The slight curl of his eyelashes, always so long and full that the girls in middle school would jealously whisper over how pretty he was. The deep carmine of his eyes that resembled the reddest of apples, so shiny and perfectly polished that even the fruit trees strewn across Japan enviously would turn away, swaying their branches in the opposite direction just to look away from his breathtaking features.
Those features remained as an adult. Though, the only difference between younger Bakugou and your current one were their builds. Katsuki was taller, bulkier, and somehow even leaner to the point every angle of him appeared sharp. His jawline, the outline of his shoulders, his calf muscles, and everything inbetween. You had gotten accustomed to hearing the fangirls and fanboys of Dynamight ramble about his striking appearance, but you never noticed it properly until this moment.
He’s healthier.
Happier, too.
The once permanent scowl on his face has toned down to a stoic expression and his eyes seem purer than they ever had been before. His soul is kinder, his intentions are gentler. It’s evident with the way he interacts with the world around him, how his touch is less sudden and rough.
You’re glad to see him flourishing in life.
He deserves nothing but the best.
“You don’t,” the voice sneered.
A catchy tune permeates the air and you snap back to the present to find Shoto fiddling with the radio. Slender fingers twisted the black knob back and forth, lingering on each different station for only a moment before moving onto the next.
Shoto cleared his throat. “Are there any radio stations you both like?”
Bakugou shook his head. “I only listen to music from my phone.” He tilts his head back to look at you, cocking an eyebrow.
“Not really,” you tugged at your shirt, trying to distract yourself. “I’m kinda like Bakugou.”
Todoroki lets go of the knob and returns both hands to the steering wheel. “Well, I suggest one of you pull out your phone because we have a long way to go.”
His head bobs in Katsuki’s direction and Bakugou whips out his phone.
Quizzically, you peer at the two. Raising an eyebrow, you reiterate, “. . . A long way to go? My home isn’t that far from the general hospital. It’s not more than 10 minutes driving.”
Immediately, you look outside, reading the names of the streets that pass by. Street names you’ve never heard before pass by and you are met with unfamiliar roads and scenery. Instead of the usual shrubs you’re used to walking by, there are blossoming trees on every corner. This part of the city is far nicer than what you’re used to.
They aren’t taking you home.
“Hope you like animals, princess,” Bakugou chuckled, patting Shoto on the shoulder.
“Road-trip,” Shoto said in the most monotone voice possible.
You gulp.
Geez, maybe I shouldn’t have gotten in this car in the first place.
You grumble, pulling your legs to your chest.
Bakugou cackles loudly and Todoroki emits a small chuckle.
You crack a grin and close your eyes. The voice fumes.
Your smile brightens.
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Life gradually begins to slow down as the months pass.
Time doesn’t go as fast, memories don’t escape your mind as much, and moments seem to last long enough to engrave themselves into you. No longer do you live life through your eyes as a spectator in your own body, but as an actual human being present in the moment.
In short, you’re recovering.
At least, that’s what your therapist says. Your friends too.
Not everyday is perfect. You’re not productive every morning, afternoon, or night. Sometimes, you can get out of bed with ease and settle into the little routine you’ve built for yourself. You can wake up, make your bed, change your clothes, wash your face, perform a skincare routine, make breakfast and commence with the day. You might be productive the whole days and run errands, make phone calls, book appointments, and catch up with friends and family. In other instances, your day is much more mundane. You lounge on the couch, hangout with friends, or treat yourself to some nice takeout or a nice walk to that local cafe or bakery. You end the day with a nice movie and popcorn, and even desert if you’re feeling something sweet. Then, you go to bed and the process repeats.
Other times, it feels impossible to even crack your eyes open. You can’t bring yourself to break through the state of slumber. All you can pray for are for those black tendrils to pull you back under into a dreamless world to distract you from reality. Getting out of bed is nearly impossible; it requires hours of coaxing yourself, frustrated tears, frantic thoughts, and maybe a pair of helping hands. The distance from your bed to your bathroom is infinite and the idea of even picking up your toothbrush has you collapsing on the spot. The tears bleed from your eyes and pile onto the sink and your pained sobs echo throughout the halls. The water of the shower is too much and you have to just sit there and wallow until a nagging feeling, a sliver of an authoritative voice reminds you there are bills to pay and there is a life to live. The day is filled with long hours of work and unrest and agony, but it only takes one text to guarantee a pair of warm arms will pick up the pieces of your pain when you get home.
Those days are the hardest, but you’ve survived each one. That in its own is a feat that you’re reminded of everyday you stare in the mirror. You imagine the faces of those who remain with you today whenever the thought dwells and you continue on.
Guilt sparks in your chest when you think of all of those who had suffered in the way you had but received no support and were left to suffer. Your heart cracks, but you know you must do this.
If not for you, for them. For those who were not as fortunate. You will live to tell the tale they could not.
You will remember them in life while they are remembered in death.
Your therapist says trial and error is how you succeed in life. Learning from mistakes is how you grow into someone greater than you were before.
To conclude each session, she reminds you consistency is key. Each time you tell her, “‘Frankly, that’s the hardest part about recovery.’”
It’s hard to be consistent because nothing is consistent in your life. Nothing is consistent in life. The world is ever-changing. Everyday, the Earth spins and something changes around you. A child grows a year older. A baby is born. A loved one is lost. Life dies. Life is reborn. Love blossoms and love dies. A new creation is discovered while another is destroyed. A heart is broken while another is mended.
Someone changes. And at one point in time, you were that person who changed.
Without a beat, she sends you that wistful smile of hers and that one sentence that leads you snorting out of her office.
“‘You like to surprise the world, (Name).’”
For the longest time you had thought she was going mad listening to you, but you eat your words now.
“Did you love him?”
A voice snaps you out of your thoughts.
Slender fingers wrap around the end of the teaspoon, digging the head into the cup of sugar. Another few reach for the China teacup placed in the middle of the table, gently moving it forward to meet the now full spoon of sugar. The grains of white tumble out of the rounded metal and into the warm water, sinking to the bottom until the same spoon hits the water and stirs them around, dissolving them.
The fresh cup of tea is handed to you.
“Who?” The ceramic’s temperature is a favorable kind of warm— the type that spreads from your fingertips into the rest of your body until you’ve melted in a comfortable pile of goo that brings a content feeling swelling in your chest.
The tea is even warmer, steam hitting your face as you go to sip it. The liquid slips past your lips and over your tongue, coating every crevice of your mouth. The hints of mint and Jasmine blend perfectly with each other, the sweet floral balances out the spice of the mentha.
It reminds you of him.
“Don’t be coy, (Name). You know who I’m talking about.” You want to decline her assertion— to argue that her generality is misleading and she should specify who the man she suspects you have fallen in love with is. But this lady is one you have known for your whole life, one who you believe may just know better than all the rest despite your drastic differences. She was always there to keep you in check between reality and fiction.
Finally, you look up.
Astute and inquisitive eyes the color of carmine align with yours. Mitsuki grins slyly, her eyes twinkling in amusement. “There’s those pretty eyes. Glad to see you’re still in tact, sweetheart.”
You roll your eyes. “I’m not fragile, Mitsuki. And you’re starting to sound like Katsuki.”
The woman’s eyes soften at the sound of her son’s name and crinkle at the edges in thought. “He got his language from me, y’know. I was the one who called you all those sweet things when you were young. I mean, you were just the cutest little girl!” She wears an adoring smile on her face as she gazes at you with so much motherly love that you can only fidget under her gaze, lowering your eyes in embarrassment.
You never got used to the fireball known as Mitsuki Bakugou, nor her affections. From your earliest days, you could recall the way she would just coddle you. Whenever her son seemed to be talking your ear off or you were overwhelmed, she would simply pluck you out of Bakugou’s reach and walk away from his vicinity, cradling you in her arms cooing quietly at you. No matter how much he would protest, Mitsuki would be your getaway from any situation you couldn’t seem to defuse yourself.
On the weekends, she would take you out shopping with her as if you were her own kin, doting on you like a second mother. She would buy you clothes, books, get you icecream and take you out to eat. Your parents liked to joke that she was their own free babysitter, to which she would always exclaim that you would always be the daughter she never had.
As you got older, that powerful kind of love Mitsuki possessed was one you saw less and less of. That growing rift between you and her son was greater than ever, and the chances you had of seeing her was minimal, minus the outings she would frequently invite your folks to. Even then, she would always be mingling with the crowd.
Sometimes, you wondered if she was there with you through your hardest years would your life have turned out differently. It’s a thought to entertain, but the consequences of misery and despair flare at the idea.
You push the concept down whenever it pops up.
She continues.
“Katsuki simply followed suit. He’s my boy, after all.”
“Your own personal carbon copy,” you agree, stroking the intricately painted patterns of the fine China. The thought of Mitsuki’s question lingers in your head, prodding at a hidden part of your mind you had tucked away for ages now.
The topic of Izuku Midoriya was one you stopped entertaining after the night at the cliff. You had ripped it from the forefront of your mind, shoved it deep inside a metal vault, locked it shut, and tossed the key away.
The relationship between you both was messy— it was a lack of communication, a tangled mess of emotions and one-sided care. The bubble of your affections was filled with mistreatment, betrayal, selfishness, and greed. It was take, take, take from Midoriya and give, give, give from you. It wasn’t healthy for you nor Midoriya.
After you had opened the can of worms that was the man you once loved with your therapist, it wasn’t possible for you to ever see him in the same light. You could never stare at Midoriya with that blindly lovestruck gaze through those rose-tinted lenses. All that flashed before your eyes at the mere mention of him was the horror, sympathy, and guilt that swirled in her eyes as she listened to you. The shaky hug she had given you made you quiver in your shoes and the tears that fell from her eyes made your own slip past your hold.
That was the first time you had seen her professional facade break.
The thought that even the most experienced and knowledgeable of people in the world breaking at the seams from your supposed love story sickened you to your core.
“Was it that obvious?” Truthfully, you’re curious. Did everyone around you know how you used to feel about him? Were your affections for him that palpable?
“Very,” she nods, bringing the cup to her lips once again. “None of us saw it at first when you were kids. Not Inko, myself, or your family.”
Mitsuki sets the cup down, leaning her head on her hand. “But as you all grew up, we all realized that whenever you were with Izuku, you lit up in a way none of us had ever seen before. It was puppy love in our eyes, so we didn’t think much of it at first.”
A noncommittal hum leaves your throat and you inspect Mitsuki as she speaks.
“I mean, you were obvious. It was sweet,” Mitsuki laughs, the vermillion irises of her eyes shining in glee. Suddenly, she placed a finger to her cheek in thought. “Have you spoken to him as of late, (Name)?”
“Midoriya?” you blink, surprised. She doesn’t know, (Name). Stay calm.
You shake your head before going to down the rest of your tea. Mitsuki waved her hand in the air, her face morphing into an indecipherable expression.
“The brat told me about how worried the both of them were over you when you were still in the hospital,” she begins, and she looks down, lowering her voice. “He . . . He was scared.”
You still.
“Scared?” you parrot. “Why? He’s seen worse, hasn’t he?”
The eyebrows of Mitsuki’s face furrow and she sets her teacup down, clasping her hands together. It’s as if the air around you stills and time begins to freeze, pausing the orbiting of Earth itself.
Mitsuki hesitates. “He called me in tears when he was waiting for you to wake up— he was terrified. And when your heartbeat flatlined?” Mitsuki shakes her head. “He couldn’t hold himself together anymore. That Todoroki kid and Kirishima had to take him outside to console him.”
She stares at you, smiling sadly. “The last time he was that petrified was when he was a child, (Name).” A small exhale leaves her lips. “If he lost you that day, he would have lost everything.”
“Huh?” you sweat-drop. “Katsuki has a lot going for him in life, Mitsuki. I don’t think my . . . disappearance would be the end of him.”
Mitsuki shakes her head with a solemn smile, the low curl of her lips hinting at a secret unbeknownst to you. “You just don’t know how much you mean to my boy, (Name).”
She sighs. “I wish he would just tell you already. But I suppose now isn’t this time, is it?”
Mitsuki stands from her position, moving over to pat your head affectionally before leaving the kitchen.
A small part of you claws at your throat, screeching at you to stop her fading figure. It itches at you, desperate to scratch at the surface of your curiosity.
What does Katsuki need to tell me? And why won’t he?
“Curiosity killed the cat, (Name),” the voice giggles in glee. “You don’t want to meet that same end again, do you?”
A booming voice cuts through the clouds in the sky, sending you falling back to the ground.
“You ready to go?”
Leaning against the frame of the hall in all his glory is Katsuki Bakugou, dressed nicer than you’ve ever seen him. He’s wearing a fitted black polo from a brand far too expensive for you to name off the top of your head and a pair of tailored khaki pants. Placed on his right wrist is a black Vacheron Constantin watch with intricate carvings and stones within the clock that looks far too expensive for you to even fathom purchasing or even browsing through.
Like a moth to a flame, Mitsuki steps over to her son, fussing over him like a mother bird with her chick. She huffs as she adjusts the collar of his shirt accordingly, and he groans as his mother who was nearly a foot shorter than him pranced around and fixed his appearance.
The sight was heartwarming, sending a wave of nostalgia through you.
“You expect to go out with (Name) looking like that? I raised you better than this, Katsuki! You’re the son of a fashion designer!” Mitsuki scolds, combing out his hair.
He grumbles, swatting her hand away. “You hag—! I look fine!”
The bickering between the two continues, both of them going back and forth. She swats at his shoulder, even going as far to beat him with her slipper.
Bakugou takes each hit, not moving to fight back. You know he could stop her if he wanted. After all, he was the second strongest hero of Japan and pure muscle. No woman or man stood a chance against him.
Though, when you see Bakugou wince as his mom smacks him for the nth time, you’re left thinking that maybe Mitsuki might be the exception to the rule.
The thought bubbles a giggle in your throat that leaves you chortling to the point of tears. It’s a sound that hasn’t escaped you in ages.
Your chest feels full. Your body feels warm— not the restricting kind, but the comforting one.
They both turn to the sound, their expressions softening as you doubled over in joy. You look up and find Bakugou’s eyes swirling with an emotion that sends your heart fluttering and a brighter grin growing on your face against your will.
The expression reminds you of one you always stared at Midoriya with.
Could it be . . . ?
Heat spreads across your body and your heart skips a beat.
“No one could ever love you, (Name). No one ever will. You’re unlovable,” the voice smirked. “Foolish little (Name). Lovestruck already for another man you’ll never get? How humiliating.”
You recoil back into your timid shell, causing Mitsuki to give Katsuki a look.
The look.
It shouts at him, “Go comfort (Name)! How else are you going to win her heart?”
The one Katsuki returns barks, “What do you think I was going to do?! You’re bothering me, hag!”
Mitsuki rolls her eyes before slapping his shoulder with a huff. “Well, you better go now Romeo, or else I’ll whisk her away from you first!”
He breaks eye contact first, rolling his eyes as he nears towards your hunched figure. From the lowering of your head, he suspects your eyes are trained on the table in front of you. Though, his vision is obscured by the hair that falls in front of your eyes that he so desperately desires to tuck behind your ear.
Be selfish, his mind screamed. Take what you want the most.
But for you, he swore to never bite the hand you fed him from. He would always be grateful for the attention, affection, and care you gave him. You were always so generous with him and the twerp.
Perhaps this time, he would become the hand that did not feed you, but pampered you. Loved you. Took care of you. He would prove that he was not a man greater than the world when he was on his knees beside you. You were his equal, his other half.
He would treat you better than Midoriya ever did. While the Symbol of Peace was blessed with countless chances to end as yours, to take off running with you into a never-ending fairytale, he always left you to eat dust and dirt. Even when Bakugou sacrificed the one chance he had for Midoriya, he refused to atone for his sins. Instead, he only ran further.
This time, Bakugou would not wait for the world to give him a chance. He would create his one last chance with you.
He would love you right. Properly, fully, and unconditionally.
Unlike Midoriya.
A calloused hand gently pushes a few strands behind your ear before cupping the side of your face, bringing your eyes back into focus. Rough palms lovingly caress the apple of your cheeks and instinctively you lean into their hold.
From their touch alone, you know who this is.
Kneeling beside you is Katsuki Bakugou in all his glory, vermillion eyes and all trained on your face. Delicately, you move your hand to wrap around his wrist, giving him a small grin at his delicate behavior. It reminded you of the nights you spent back at UA together.
The syrupy feeling in your chest swirls faster.
A sudden flick smacks your forehead and instinctively you grab your head, face morphing into a glare. “You done prancing with your head in the clouds? We got a reservation to meet.”
You playfully scoff, standing up. “You can’t be nice for once, can you Katsuki?”
He laughed. “Never, Princess.”
The two of you head towards the front door, hugging Mitsuki as you leave. As you both enter Bakugou’s car, she waves you off with a “stay safe name! And protect her Katsuki!”
“We will, Mitsuki!” you shouted, waving. Bakugou grumbles and affectionately, you ruffle his hair. “He says he will, too!”
Mitsuki emits a hearty laugh as she walks back inside the comforts of her own home.
“So where are we headed to eat?” you trace the end of your dress, twirling the loose fabric. “You said to dress nicer than normal, but I’m not too sure what to expect with you pro-heroes.“
Bakugou snorts. “What makes you say that, sweetheart?”
You side-eye Bakugou, cocking an eyebrow. “Take a wild guess.”
“Half-N’-Half took you to one of those rich restaurants in Tokyo?” Bakugou doesn’t even glance over. He’s right and he knows it.
As always.
You grimace, melting into your seat. “I wish I could have evaporated into thin air the moment I stepped inside.”
The occurrence had happened not even a week ago. Only hours before you were meant to hangout with Todoroki, he had sent you an ominous text to simply dress well. When he picked you up, all he would tell you was that you both were attending somewhere nice to dine for the night. And as clueless as ever, you assumed it would be a slightly more upscale restaurant than you both typically frequented.
But boy, were you wrong.
The restaurant was at least fifteen stories tall with clear panes of glass covering every inch of each wall. Chandeliers covered each foot of the high rise ceilings and the floors were glassy, gargantuan tiles that were a pale color of hessonite. The furniture in the establishment were expensive— mulberry silk, plush cushions, bocote wood and all.
The patrons appeared to be just as wealthy, if not more. Dressed in the finest of suits and dresses, adorned with flashy and gauzy jewelry, each and every one of them burned brighter than last.
Shoto too, fit right in. Elegant and classy, they all gawked at the Number Three Pro-Hero.
And you, in comparison to them, stood out like a sore thumb. Meek, humble, and intimidated. You could hear their whispers about you, that night. But you chose to suck down your raging emotions to enjoy the night and tasty dishes.
Well, for as long as you could.
“Was the food good? Shit like that is either hit or miss,” Bakugou commented as he took a right turn, peeking at the GPS set up in the car. “We’re almost there.”
You nod, watching as the once filled roads of the highway cleared into empty streets of residential neighborhoods. “The food was fantastic, but the portions wouldn’t have even fed an infant. I don’t think I’d ever go back, though.”
“Why not?”
You blink, scratching at the skin of your arm to distract yourself from Bakugou’s question. Maybe, just maybe he would ignore your silence—
He repeats his question, opting to now stare at you. You shrink further back into your seat.
There’s no point in lying now, is there?
“I kind of freaked out,” you admit, leaning against the window. The glass is cool against your skin and you let your eyes close momentarily. “I was thrown into an unknown environment and I could feel all their eyes on me. They weren’t trying to hide the fact that they were talking about me.”
You kicked off your heels, sitting your legs up on the seat. “Halfway through, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I told Shoto I had a call to take and nearly sprinted outside to get some fresh air.” You open your eyes, looking at the dashboard in front of you. “It’s humiliating to think about it now, but I left for nearly an hour trying to calm myself down. I must’ve looked insane to anyone walking by.”
The imagery of you sitting on your bottom in front of a Michelin star restaurant with your head in your hands breathing erratically and on the verge of tears made you cringe at the idea. You definitely got some dirty looks, even if no one approached you.
Timidly, you peered at Bakugou. His expression was blank and his lips formed no response.
Your heart constricts itself in your chest.
I should’ve kept my mouth shut, you chastise, curling deeper into yourself. Dread filled your stomach. Why did I even open my mouth?
“Why did you?” the voice taunts. “Everything is easier when you just stay quiet.”
Tears bud at the corner of your eyes and you curl deeper into yourself, focusing on the scenery flying by outside.
Despite the two of you entering residential roads, the area looks familiar. The quiet streets eventually delve into a busy intersection filled with grocery stores and small businesses. The scene looks familiar, but you can’t quite place your finger on it.
“Stupid, little (Name),” the voice coos patronizingly. You grit your teeth. The dread that once resided in your stomach transforms into a festering anger that dribbles into your bloodstream, spreading like pure poison.
The voice beams, spinning circles around your mind eagerly. “Didn’t we go over this last time, (Name)? I’m always right. You’re always wrong. That’s just how it is. That’s life.”
That’s not true— you’re nothing but a filthy liar! you seeth, digging your nails into your skin. I believed you and look where I am—
The thought freezes you. As soon as it comes, it dies. You can hear the voice giggling in delight. Horror creeps into your chest. You tremble in return.
I thought I was getting better. That hopelessness you thought left your system months ago seeps into your bones, attempting to crack the wall of sanity you had spent months building. I thought I was supposed to be healing.
The mantra that rung repeatedly in your head that evening at your office plays again, mimicking that dull little tune. I can’t, I can’t, I—
“We’re here,” Bakugou turns off the ignition of the car. Swiveling your head, you are met with carmine irises and narrowed eyes inspecting your features.
You gulp.
Choke it down, (Name). You’re ruining it for him. Don’t cry, don’t cry. You’re okay. You’re fine. You’ll be okay. Just get out. Just leave. It’s only a few more hours and then you can kiss the bed goodnight and never wake up again.
Finally, when you turn to see where you arrived, your heart plummets.
To your side lay swaying blades of grass, swinging to the current of the evening breeze. They dance in the wind, luring the unknown to enter their arcane kingdom. In between the luscious planes of evergreen grass is a dirt road, soiled with muddy tracks from those who had come before you two.
The idea that some of those tracks could have been yours sends you reeling.
I can’t do this. This has to be some sick joke the universe is playing on me. A nightmare.
Suddenly, Bakugou is in front of your door, unlocking it for you. No words are said, except for the calloused hand he has laid out for you. You can’t see his eyes, but you’re sure he must think you’re insane.
If he didn’t before, he surely did now.
Just get the night over with, (Name). It can’t be that bad, right? You’re just overthinking it. It’s not that big of a deal.
“You’re too naive,” the voice sings. Slowly, the inky tendrils of despair emerged from the crevices of your mind, circling your brain. Latching onto any expanse of mind, they pulled and pushed. “You’re hopeless. Why do you even try? You failed once. You’re nothing. You’re worthless.”
I’m not worthless, you argue back, taking Bakugou’s hand. He’s saying something that you can’t pick up, but you don’t care enough to. Rage bubbled beneath your skin. I’ve made it this far. I survived. I can do this.
Storming off, you walk on the trail. Each step you take is filled with fury and steam, gallons upon gallons of boiling emotions that you can’t wait to scream into the night.
When you walk along the curves, twists, and turns of the trail, you don’t picture the nights you spent running up the path with Midoriya. You don’t envision locks of green rooted with black bouncing with each step, galaxies of freckles or the craters you call dimples. Those stupidly bright red shoes the color of maraschino cherries aren’t what form in your mind as you stare at the ground, watching one foot go in front of the other.
Instead, those memories are replaced with the days you spent drinking yourself into oblivion, desperate to drown your sorrows. Flashes and flickers of empty beer bottles strewn across patches of damp, crushed and curled grass play in your head. The sight of filthy and grimy white tiles and a pair of shoes dragging themselves repeat in your head like a broken tape, the beep of a scanner continuously breaks each train of coherent thought that attempts to enter your head.
“‘Would that be all?’”
Thousands of voices ask, some more feminine, some more masculine, some exactly in-between or strewn off into the left or right. Their faces are blurs and unrecognizable blends, obtuse and acute shapes. Their noses are thin, thick, long, short, stout, round, curved up or down, broken or centered perfectly. Their faces are long, round, slender, puffy, soft, rough, bony, or chubby. It’s angles and curves, proportions and disproportions. There’s marks— dots, lines, squiggles, blobs— imperfections in their eyes, but they’re just shapes in yours. Their strands of hair are slicked back, falling forward, parted down the middle, sides, sticking up, down, left and right, or to the side. Their eyes come in different shapes— circles, ovals, diamonds, almonds, pistachios. The outlines are round, big, small, sharp, soft, thin, delicate, tough.
There’s billions of them.
But you never cared enough to truly study their features, instead opting to let a hum and snatch the alcohol from the counter, disappearing in the night.
Now, you wonder if you had cared to stare them in the eyes for a moment longer, to peer past the veil of darkness before your eyes, would you have been saved? Would you have been stopped in your tracks, staring at glistening eyes filled with life, youth, and humanity, disturbed at your disgusting, reckless behavior?
“No one could have saved you,” the voice reminds. “No one can save you. No one will save you.”
Your blood boils and the sense of reconciliation shatters, leaving you sourer than before. Frustrated, you stomp faster, ignoring Bakugou.
The only thing audible is the blood pumping in your veins, the angered huffs from your mouths, and the stomping of your heels against the trail. Each step causes the ends of your shoes to stick further into the soil, making each motion more exerting than last. At the rate you storm up the path, sooner or later fate will bring you down on your knees to kiss the dirt.
With every few feet, the soil beneath your feet hardens. The layers become dryer, returning every step with enough abrupt force to keep you resurfaced. No longer do the pebbles littering the ground sink in; instead, they slide with the specks of dirt, tumbling up and down with the breeze of the wind. You ascend further and further, rise higher and higher. No longer do you fall to your surroundings.
Instead, you rise above them.
“Just like the waves,” the voice beams. “But this time, will you fall below them?”
Time seems to slow to a stop, and you are brought back to reality, frozen in your tracks.
The sea sings its song, the one it always has— the lullaby that sailors fall asleep to and creatures far below the surface awaken for. Each wave crashes against the rocks littered around the cliff wall, the impact of every hit resonating in the air. The droplets of salty water fly high into the air, dropping as fast as they bounced from the cold stone.
The once comforting noises of the deep blue haunt you, seeping into your ears and drowning your heart.
“Don’t step too close to the edge, or you’ll fall off, Princess.”
A sudden warmth blooms on your wrist and when you turn your head, your gaze meets Bakugou’s. Carmine meets (e/c), the two melting into the other.
He wears a cocky grin, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. It looks forced, dare you say, nothing like the bright and deadly grin that adorns his face on the battlefield or when he jokes with friends.
You want to ask, “Are you okay?” But your mouth is glued shut and your body is too heavy to move, so you opt to stand in silence with your wrist in his rough palms, allowing the heat of him to bleed into the coldness of you.
“You’re missing the main attraction, sweetheart,” Bakugou nods his head to the side and your gaze follows suit.
Laying a few feet away from you is a picturesque picnic, straight out of any girl’s Pinterest board. There’s a large black blanket laid out with fairy lights spread all around it, lighting up a pathway for you to enter its soft kingdom. Plates of pastries, fruits, and different foods rest around each inch, goading you to come and take a bite. There’s a wooden basket woven to create the finest pattern, a heart, centered in the middle filled with ice and two bottles of what you believe are champagne and wine.
Your stomach lurches and the tea you had earlier churns in delight to make a reappearance from your gut. You swallow thickly.
“Wow,” is all you manage, but you see the corners of Bakugou’s lips turn just a little bit higher at the words. He doesn’t seem to notice your inner turmoil.
“Did you really think he would? After he hid the fact that he knew you were suffering all this time?”
You answer with memories of going out with friends, with him distracting you from your crumbling life after you escaped the hospital. The voice scoffs at each one and with every noise of disappointment, you hole yourself further and further into your mind.
Bakugou gently tugs you forward, leading you to the picnic. Moving to the side, he guides you to sit down, to which you curl your legs into your side. Carefully walking around the fairy lights, he takes a seat, crossing his legs.
The air between the two of you is tense, awkward. None of you make the first move to speak or eat. You just sit in silence with your hands in your lap, fiddling with your fingers. Never once do you dare to peer up and see how Bakugou reacts to the feel of the room.
Selfish.
He makes the move to pick up a piece of food, and you follow suit by grabbing some mochi. At least that would keep you busy.
Bits of conversation fall between you two, but no sparks fly. It’s lifeless and dull— the fireworks that once blew up beside you two now blew up between the two of you, creating a rift greater than the Nile River.
The mochi is soft as it is sticky, refusing to tear from its body. Though, when it finally breaks, it resists your teeth as you chew it slowly, fighting to keep itself whole. The doughy inside burst into your mouth, sweetening your tastebuds.
Though, the saccharine goodness does little to cancel out the bitterness in your heart and the sourness on your tongue.
“You should see the water. Looks gorgeous when you’re up close,” Bakugou sets down a piece of strawberry cake he had bitten through, nearly halfway done. Rising from his position, he extends a hand to you, goading you to follow in his steps. You mindlessly take the bait, allowing him to drag you like a little girl with her dolls.
Each step closer is painstaking. A nasty feeling latches itself onto your mind, eating through the walls of your sanity. Long, thick, silver drills press into the cement, chomping with all its might to destroy the structure.
“Isn’t it just nostalgic?” the voice prances, jumping back and forth in ecstasy. “You and me, just like from day one.”
You wonder if the glass shards from the broken beer bottles remained spread across the plains of grass, nestled deep between each patch of blades. Had others whom trekked these hills let the glass crunch beneath their feet, shattering the sticky, translucent material? Did they ever consider the story behind the pile of broken bottles, wondering if a soul was suffering the way you were? Or did they merely scoff at the sight, commenting about how reckless others were at the sight of haphazardly tossed glasses with the image of a group of teenagers drinking and giggling into the night?
Did they treat it kindly, lifting each individual piece and storing it to toss away? Or did they kick it to the side with a huff, stepping around any other messes nearby?
Would they have believed a soul if they told the story about a woman drowning in her own agony, her own lovesick foolery? Would they have empathized with the lost soul tethered together by a vile voice, haunting her every living moment?
Would they have listened to the soul beneath their shoes and the sky above their heads sing the tale of misery?
“Would you believe them?”
No, you answer, now peering at the water that soared to the edge of the cliff. I wouldn’t have even listened.
The salty liquid crashes against the boulders, flooding every crevice until the dips overflowed, spilling back into the ocean. Algae resurfaces with every wave, creeping further upon the cliff. Different creatures slip from the holes, desperate to escape the vicious cycle of life and Mother Nature.
Some drown, some drift off into the abyss of black, and others survive. It’s as beautiful as it’s painful and horrific.
Life is cruel. Life is unfair. Life is unforgiving.
Life is a rose— deceptively gorgeous with its bright lights, warm skies, cool breezes and pretty organisms. But with every creation comes its thorns— its threats and consequences for such beauty.
Life is you. You are life.
You are living.
Your throat constricts and your fists clench.
The sky is no longer a melting pot of warmth. There are no hues of burgundy, honey, or marmalade. All that lingers in its tracks are the sinister obsidian, with streaks of berry blue and a deep indigo that looks nearly the same as the vantablack that permeates the entirety of the atmosphere surrounding you. It is freezing cold and frigid.
The twinkles of fluorescence in the air are the only symbol of warmth left, but they are just as cold as the world around you is. They never lit up in the cozy tones of color. They were overshadowed, for they thawed under that gentle glow it emitted.
Static trickles into your ears, blocking out the noise of your surroundings. The control of your own body slips from between your fingertips, tipping into the ocean below. The sight of the world around you blurs and finally, you are rendered helpless.
Bile comes up instantly.
The world seems to nearly tip over as you hurl, coughing up all the liquids and food that had once churned within your stomach. Thick, corded arms wrap around your waist, stabilizing you and soothing your pained body.
Choked coughs escape your throat as you are forced to expel all the contents of your stomach, burning your throat. A tang of bitterness is heavy on your tongue and your mouth is impossibly dry. Grabbing at your throat, you perform a poor hand motion of drinking and instantly Bakugou hands you a glass.
It’s clear— it looks close enough to water. You down it.
It’s sweet, bubbly, and nothing like water. Once again, you vomit. It rushes back through your nose and out of your mouth, leaving you shuddering in place. A surprised “Shit!” leaves Bakugou’s mouth and he tugs you to him, rubbing your back with those large calloused palms of his.
You cough, inhaling every bit of air. “You— god— you gave me champagne?”
Bakugou hissed. “I didn’t realize that we didn’t have water— I was trying to help!”
It burns, stings. Your throat is on fire, your chest is constricting on itself and your heart is pounding. The heat of Bakugou only adds to the coldness of your skin, the iciness that seeped from your insides to your skin. Your eyes demand to fall shut, the lids drooping with every breath. The world feels dead around you, your head is heavy, and you are limp.
You are dead. You are a dead man trapped in a living body.
Bakugou shifts. “Are you . . . okay? Fuck— that’s a dumb question but—”
The thumping of Bakugou’s heart brings your eyes to shut. “I thought I was. Yanno, I thought I was recovering and all that. I was making progress. That’s what everyone said.”
A warm finger slides under your eye, brushing the puffy skin gently. “But?”
“I guess I didn’t. Or I did and I fell backwards. Took one step forward and six steps back.” You push your head further into his chest in a poor attempt to allow the exhaustion of your body to seep into the heat and disappear. “Lately, it feels like I’m back to before the hospital. I don’t reach for the beer like I did before, but that misery and hopelessness still lingers within me.”
Does it ever go away? you want to ask. Do I ever heal?
Nobody can answer. Time can only tell. Life can only smile.
You glance up at Bakugou and watch as his face contorts into a confused expression, lost at your words. A sad smile graces your lips. “You know, it was here where it all happened. I don’t think you even knew— I don’t even know how you knew about this spot— but I guess that’s what I get. I mean, it’s what I get for not telling you the entire truth, I guess. The world likes to make people pay for their actions, huh?”
Bakugou remains silent.
“I hate this place. It reminds me of him.” You both are aware of who you’re referring to. “We found it together. When we were kids in UA. Maybe even before, I don’t really remember.”
Bakugou shifts the two of you so you’re both laying down, inching away from the cliff and back to the cloth. He brings his hand to your back, rubbing soft circles and figure eights. You bury your head into his chest, words muffled by his shirt.
“There’s so many memories here. Good and bad. And I kept coming back all this time to relieve them because of him. But he never cared. It’s stupid now— I can’t believe I never saw it. I was holding onto something that had died long ago and I was dying because of it. I think I’m dead now, anyway. I don’t feel alive.”
You choke on your words. “I want it to all go away, Katsuki,” you say plaintively like a child, clutching his shirt. “Please.”
The waves smash against the cliff and you curl closer to him. He’s warm, so impossibly warm, but you can’t seem to seek equilibrium and match temperatures.
The noise won’t be drowned out.
Stop, please. Stop, stop, stop.
“I can’t save you,” he begins.
Your heart falters in your chest. The dam in your eyes splinters, the wood that held the water behind your eyes begging to flood.
“‘M a hero, but some battles aren’t meant to be fought by all.”
You whimper.
“I can try to help you, (Name), but no one can save you. You have to want to get better to heal. It’s not going to be easy and you won’t be alone, but you have to be willing to hold yourself together. We can only support you, but you have to be the change you want to happen.”
He tilts your head to him, pointer finger under your chin. The soft carmine bleeds into the blurry (e/c). “I know you can do it. You’re strong and you flourish even when everyone around you tells you you can’t. You’ve outdone the best of the best in your fields.”
You sniffle. “That was once. Hatsume just made a dumb mistake.”
He rolls his eyes. “You’re capable, (Name). But you need to trust and believe in yourself. It’s hard; I know. But you’ve gotta if you want to move on.”
Your lip quivers. “Did— did you know?”
His eyebrow raises.
“About Midoriya?”
His face falls into a neutral expression and you swallow thickly. He nods.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“If I did, would you have listened? I think you knew but refused to accept it.”
You sigh, wiping your eyes. “I guess that’s true.”
Silence settles before he breaks it.
“(Name).”
You look at him and watch as he hesitates, looking away from your eyes before speaking.
“I—”
The words fade into the steady sloshing of the water, drowning into the night.
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“Don’t give me that look.”
Kind, cerulean eyes follow the twitch of your fingers as you twirl the ends of your hair between your fingertips, until you let it fall back to its original spot.
She lets out an amused hum, spinning her machina fountain pen between the area where her thumb and pointer finger connected. The expensive pen had a pointed tip with edges sharper than the tip of a freshly-shaven knife, curving beautifully into a fine line. The body of it was a gooey, deep decadent chocolate brown mixed with a tint of crimson and carmine that left a particular shine when placed into the light. Thin strips of white and a blush, baby pink spilled onto the body, twisting and curving until it wrapped around the top of the pen.
Wealthy people, you shiver.
“If you continue to burn holes into the pen, it might as well explode.” She tosses the pen up for good measure, showcasing a number of spins before it slips right between her middle and index finger, securely settling it in a perfect pencil hold. “My late husband bought it for me.“
Your heart twists. “Oh.”
She chuckles, lowering her gaze to the pen held in her right hand. “He always spoiled me with lavish gifts. I was so frugal and stingy when I was younger, but he wanted nothing but the greatest for me. Everything I own now is all from him.”
A thin glaze coats her eyes, the pale sapphire flooding into a deep, engulfing azul. The flecks of silver seem to brighten against the cerulean tint, the blacks of her pupils tracing the intricate lines carefully. Long sections of white hair fall around her face, covering nothing more than the corners of her eyes and the highest end of her cheekbones.
“Is that your quirk?” The question jolts her out of her mind, eyebrows furrowing at your directness. You swallow, peeking at the window to protect your mind from her piercing eyes. “You’re young— or at least you look like it. Your husband passed away. Your quirk must stop you from aging, right? Because you don’t look older than 26 at most.”
There’s shifting in front of you, but your eyes refuse to look back ahead. Embarrassment burns in your cheeks and the fear of overstepping swirls within your gut.
“You should have stayed quiet,” the voice reprimands. “You’re so dumb, (Name).”
I was so dumb, why did I say that? She probably hates me now. She’s going to kick me out and I’m going to be stuck here forever and it won’t stop and—
“You’re more observant than you let on. But you also like to avoid confrontation, don’t you?” It’s not condescending or patronizing; it’s a factual statement— the truth. There’s no tone other than neutrality and genuinity. “That’s why you’re here today. A bit earlier than I expected you to come around, but you did nevertheless.”
Your lips purse. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She picks up the clipboard, flipping through some pages. “You weren’t completely honest about your past when we first began chatting, were you?”
The silence that lingers answers her question.
“Why not?”
You sigh. She smiles.
“I just . . . didn’t want to.”
“You’re not a burden, (Name),” her hand grabs the delicate pen and begins to trace unintelligible shapes onto the paper. “I understand why you closed yourself off. I read your file, you know. Spoke to Dynamight and Deku about you.”
You still.
What?
The knife of dread, fear, and panic slices it’s way into your heart, carefully tracing the outline of your aorta, atriums, and ventricles. The pointed tips glides over each ridge, caressing the soft tissue and flirting with the idea of piercing its way inside, only to send blood spurting everywhere and leave you cold inside out, once again.
She continues. “They both care for you a lot, in their own ways of course. Deku is much more vocal about his concern, but Dynamight is the silent, brooding type. He expresses his concern through his actions and behavior.”
She spoke to them? To him? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?
Why didn’t Bakugou tell me?
“Yeah,” you breathe out, averting your eyes to the window outside. Your heart palpitates inside your chest. “That, uhm, really sounds like them.”
The sky is a bright blue today, with not a single cloud in sight. Buildings decorate the slopes of blue, with light shades of gray and dark shades of a hybrid of obsidian black and white.
“What a shame,” the voice pouts. “The view is obstructed. Wasn’t it just so lovely?”
The collar of your shirt is suddenly a tad bit too high, too tight, and suffocating. It clings to your throat, wrapping its fuzzy tendrils around the base, before slowly gliding across the expanse of your skin.
“Doesn’t it just remind you of those beautiful waters? The one near the cliffs, you know. Don’t you just want to go for a swim?” the voice purrs. “I, for one, think it sounds refreshing.”
The tentacles speed their movements, rushing their efforts to close their tendrils around your throat. The inky black swallows your throat, leaking into your lungs. Faster, they move. Tighter, they squeeze. Together, they suffocate you.
“It’s not fun when you’ve gone right back, y’know. Takes the fun out of your misery. Now, you’re all lifeless like a doll. You have no hero to save you. Just what will you do, (Name)?”
The sight in front of your eyes fades from a lovely sky and high rise buildings to a murky, endless bank of water screaming at you to fall below. Like a siren’s call, the kelp sings to you by teasingly waving its green body, luring you down below.
Sweat pools on your forehead, threatening to drip down your neck and onto your shirt. You can see it all now.
You remember it all now— vividly.
The beer. The cliff. The staff worker. The evening sky, the water, the spray of the salty sea, the stabs of the grass. The incessant nagging of the voice— the reminder of him, everything about him and how little you meant to him.
It all washes over you like a tide, overflowing with the means of drowning you to snap you back to reality.
“‘Wake up!’” it screams.
“—(Name)?”
Virdescent eyes bore into yours, pupils dilating as they continue to hold your gaze. The flecks of obsidian and rim of a deep, mysterious amethyst capture your attention.
The kelp twirls.
“(Name)?” A gentle, unnatural hand places itself upon your shoulder. The aroma of distilled rose water permeates your nostrils. “(Name), are you okay?”
The toxic green melts, burning through to reveal a set of pure, bright ruby red eyes.
The sky glimmers.
You blink.
She grins.
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He doesn’t react.
You don’t know if that’s good or bad, really.
But the words continue to tumble.
“I— I loved him. That’s what hurts, Katsuki. I loved this man who returned an unobtainable love and I was too blind to see it.”
How foolish am I? How stupid do I have to be to not have seen this further?
“How stupid are you, (Name)?” the voice parrots.
It hurts. You’re tired. Everything is dark. The sky, the grass, your vision, your mind, your thoughts.
The stars in the sky are so faint, so dull. You miss their shine.
You miss the bright lens that were placed above your eyes, lighting up the sky.
Slowly, your world crumbled. Now, it was tumbling, shattering into millions of pieces.
Your chest tightens, and it feels as if you are back in the office, curled into a ball on the verge of suffocation.
You can remember the warm traces of tears spilling from your eyes, trickling down your cheeks. If you close your eyes, it feels as if you’re there, in those stuffy office clothes with the haphazardly thrown stacks of papers and splayed out tools, shattered pieces of glass, and a throbbing heart.
You’re dying. Lifeless. Hopeless.
I just want it all to end, please, please, please—
Warm hands snap you out of your thoughts. Large, calloused hands cup your face, tracing the dull tips of its fingers along the outline of your jaw, thumbs circling comfortingly under the bags of your eyes.
It’s cozy and loving, like warm cider on a chilly autumn day. Your heart pounds in your chest in excitement. Goosebumps erupt on your skin, and an older, kinder voice whispers at you to simply open your eyes.
When you feel the tickling of hair against your head, your eyes flutter open. A warm head bumps against yours, resting itself in the very center of your forehead, as if it fit there. The remedial hands of warmth continue their trek of tracing the outline of your features, encapturing your face in their hold.
Boring into your eyes are Katsuki’s, in all their cherry red glory.
“Bakugou . . . ?”
A hint of doubt flickers across his features. The corners of his eyes crease, and the middle of his brows furrow.
“You’re a cruel monster, (Name).”
“Always hated when you called me that, y’know,” is all he replies with.
He’s close.
“Too close,” the voice reiterates.
Despite the warmth radiating from Katsuki, goosebumps erupt on your skin like a volcano’s molten lava bursting through the surface to cover the earth’s surface in its flames.
Is it from the cold?
“No,” a foreign voice answers.
Red eyes flit to your lips and a shaky exhale leaves your nose.
Is it anticipation?
“Yes,” it responds again.
“Lean in,” it goads. “Give in. Don’t hold back.”
“You’ll hurt him, just like you hurt yourself,” the voice chimes. Your heart plunges into your stomach
The quiet lull of the other voice drowns out the terrors of the voice. “Be his. Just for tonight, let him have you.”
“Okay,” you breathe. The doubt and hesistance leaves you.
He press his lips against yours.
The kiss is a warm caress, one that lets warmth blossom on your own. It’s soft but so sweet, so gooey like maple syrup dripping down your throat. A tinge of cinnamon bleeds into your mouth and the smell of caramel floods your nose.
You pull away first, but Bakugou’s hand keeps your head touching his, staring into the other’s eyes.
Am I going to hurt him? Is this fair to him? Am I using him?
“You’re a horrible person, (Name),” the voice says. You want to agree.
The foreign voice speaks up. “Listen, (Name). Stay quiet and listen, please.”
“I know you still love him.”
His voice breaks and you feel your heart follow.
No, I don’t. You want to answer.
“But how much of that is true?”
You’re not sure.
“I know how much he matters to you. Izuku matters to me too.”
You want to cry.
“But I won’t give up on you. I never have and never will. Not— not unles you want me to. I won’t chase you if you don’t want me to. But if you’re willing to have me, even just for a bit to let me love you whole, I’ll stay.”
“Katsuki,” your voice breaks. The tears flow. Calloused fingers rub off the tears.
“He may have been your first love, but I intend to be your last.”
You panic. “But what if it takes too long? What if I take too long to lose feelings and you have to try again to make me fall in love with you?”
A warmth envelops you. “As long as you want me, I’ll work as hard for as long as I have in this life to be your final love.”
The heat is familiar and gentle; it doesn’t set your skin aflame, but instead adds a slight increase with every second, adjusting you.
It’s accommodating and loving.
It feels like home.
“It’s him, isn’t it? It always was.”
I was just too blind to see it.
The new voice whispers, “He could never hold it against you; he would always forgive you. All he wants and needs is you. Remember what Mitsuki said? You’re his everything.”
And he is the same to me.
——————————-——————————————
Midoriya is kind.
“Are you sure that’s all you want to order?” A large, scarred hand settles itself upon your smaller one, rubbing the area of your wrist with slow, gentle strokes.
Midoriya is kind in the way that he would help an elderly lady cross the street with her hand wrapped around his arm, guiding her safely to the other side. He is kind that when a child cried in the middle of the sidewalk all alone, he would approach them with nothing but a gentle smile on his face and kneel down to their height, offering his help.
Midoriya Izuku is a good man with a big heart and a bright smile. He is the sickly saccharine type of person— a man who despite being made of hard muscle, is truly all marshmallow and gumdrops.
He is a glorious man who chose to devote his life to saving the world— but that in itself is what made him so utterly selfish.
“He loves you, (Name).” the soft voice whispers. “Do you know that?”
His love is not enough for me to stay any longer.
“I ordered a whole bowl of pasta, Midoriya. I think that’s more than enough,” you grin, sliding your arm out of his grasp. He pouts like a kicked puppy who was just scolded by their own for eating one too many dog treats.
Maybe long ago, your heart would have squeezed at the expression. Now, no butterflies erupt in your stomach. No heat spreads to your neck and to the tips of your cheeks. All that churns in your stomach is the acidic sips of a mocktail you had and the glass of water you downed before going to meet Midoriya.
“You know, you can still call me Izuku,” Midoriya begins, retracting his hand from your side of the table. You dig your fork into the pasta, swirling it around in the plate. “I’m still your Izuku, right?”
What am I supposed to say to that?
You peer up, watching as his emerald irises swim with a fondness and intimacy you could only picture thousands of women would die to see Izuku Midoriya, Japan’s greatest hero, to gaze at them with.
But to you, it is meaningless.
“Do you pity him?” the gentle voice asks. “Do you pity yourself for how blindly you behaved as him, too?”
In front of you, you hear a group of girls squeal, “Oh my gosh, it’s Pro-Hero Deku!”
A big bite of pasta with a pointed smile is all you offer Midoriya as he turns to face the approaching group of gals murmuring in excitement, asking to take photos.
At least the pasta is good.
——————————-——————————————
“Say it,” the voice utters.
The city lights at the ripe time of midnight are a beautiful sight, filling the world with a plethora of icy and earthy tones. Giggly couples stumble down the street, hand in hand, high off of joy and young love. Teenagers skate down the sidewalks, hollering profanities and excited cheers into the night sky.
The whole world is bright and alive around you, despite the pit of black surrounding it.
“Will you let this moment slip? After all you’ve gone through?”
Midoriya’s hand once again reaches for yours, scarred fingers entangling themselves with yours. The pupils in the greens of his eyes seem to shrink as your palms make contact, and a faint blush sprouts on his cheeks.
In the moonlight, Midoriya Izuku is alive.
He is glowing brightly in the light of the city, with his unruly mess of curls draping over the tops of his eyes.
But beside him, you stand in the darkness of his shadows. In the presence of the Symbol of Peace, Izuku Midoriya, you are nothing more than the spirit that he is championed to destroy.
Once again, you are nothing more than a lost soul falling into the hands of death.
“Is that all you will ever be? Will you let all of your hard work dwindle to waste? Will you fall back into his arms only to repeat this same miserable cycle?”
Tips of blurry blonde spikes materialize in the depths of your mind. The crashing of waves against rocks bleeds into your ears and the pricks of blades of grass send tingles exploding across your skin.
“How much will it take until you truly break, (Name)?”
A pair of loving carmine eyes stare back at you, a bright twinkle in the corners of its pupils. They are a reminder of the gentle kiss and the tender love you had experienced only days before.
‘I want you, Katsuki.’
He had cried, when he heard those words.
‘Please, will you let me love you the way you loved me?’
You never thought you could reduce a man as powerful as Bakugou into a mess of joyous tears. But life has a habit of surprising people in the most unexpected ways.
I’m sorry, Midoriya, you long to say. I’m sorry you are slipping down the path you forced me to tumble down. But I’ll save you in the way you failed to save me in before. I’ll right your wrongs.
Not for you, but for me.
“I can’t do this,” you rip your hand out of his grasp, stepping back. “I can’t do this to you, Midoriya.”
He jumps, startled by your abrupt movements. He opens his mouth to speak, but you interrupt.
“I can’t live with you in my life— not anymore.”
“(Name), what? What are you saying right now?” Midoriya reaches his hand out to anchor you— or himself— but you widen the gap between you two.
“I’m talking about you— I’m talking about us,” you gasp. The waves slosh in the bottomless pit of the sea. “You can’t tell me you didn’t see it like everyone else did. You can’t lie to me and say what you did wasn’t purposeful!”
Boots smush into the wet mud, slipping off the bottom of your foot. “_____________!” Midoriya exclaims.
The beating of your heart smashes against your ribcage and blood rushes to your face. “You were given so many chances, Izuku,” you cry as the tears finally slip. The bottle fissures and the dam explodes; the beast is unleashed. “You gave up. You gave up on yourself, you gave up on me, you gave up on us. You always have— you always will. You never took a single chance because you never cared enough!”
There are tears streaming down his own face, distorting the sight of those freckles you once adored so much. You had once believed them to be kisses from the gods themselves. Now, they seemed nothing more than a painter’s deception of beauty.
Midoriya weeps. “________________!”
No longer do you crumble under the weight of Midoriya’s tears. You stand proudly under the pour of your own.
“You’re forgetting someone, aren’t you, (Name)?” the voice curls around you, peering at you gleefully. She giggles. “You should go and surprise him, (Name).”
Katsuki. Your heart shines, despite the pain of the tears.
You turn away from Midoriya, sparing nothing more than a turn if your head. “Thank you for giving me the story of a lifetime, but this is the end of us. Our chapter closes today, Izuku.”
Around you, the city blurs. “The story of us wasn’t meant to last a lifetime. It was meant to be for only a moment.“
And slowly, so does Midoriya. You laugh, “But it is one I’ll never forget.”
Stuffing your hands into your coat, you move away, preparing to cross the street. But you pause before your foot meets the pavement.
“Midoriya,” you murmur, glancing side-to-side as the cars fly by, before looking back at him.
He stares at you, petrified, as if you were a ghost of his past.
Maybe, you are.
Maybe, you have truly become another ghost in his world.
“Do you remember me?”
The Symbol of Peace stares at you like a deer in headlights, frozen and lost. For the first of many times, Izuku Midoriya is clueless.
A smile plays on your lips.
“Who knew you could bring the most powerful man to his knees?” she pinches your cheek affectionately.
Fractured excuses and phrases of rambles slip past his lips, sending circles spinning upon circles.
You know the truth.
So does he.
“Don’t think about it too hard, Izuku.”
As you step onto the street, the moonlight falls upon you, covering Midoriya in its pit of dark.
Finally, you burn brighter than the stars above.
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The clock reads 2:37 AM.
You remember this road and the corner where Bakugou caught your arm.
You remember running and running until you got to the convenience store, pouring liquor while sitting on the hill. Downing bottle after bottle, bleeding away into a pool of water.
You remember the lights flashing, the salty spray of sea against your skin.
But you don’t remember the feeling or the pain of your broken heart.
It’s all gone.
It’s over.
The memories remain, the sleepless nights, the sober-less dreams.
But the pain does not.
For the first time, it’s gone; the wound has healed. The rift in your heart has shut.
“Call him.”
Frozen fingers reach into the depths of your purse, unlatching the metal clip to reach your phone as you trek down the street. With a few swipes, you press the call button.
Two rings pass before you hear a click and a groggy, gruff voice. A warm grin plays upon your lips.
“Hi, Katsuki.”
You chatter into the night, walking with a pep in your step. Muffled groans can be heard on the other side.
The voice sighs wistfully, resting her head on your shoulder. “Young love,” she twirls her hair around her finger, lips curling into a pleased smile. “How romantic it is, to be so young and utterly in love.”
Unwrapping her limbs from yours, she slips away into the dark, melting into the shadows of the moon. The wisps of her hair fade into a glimmer that twinkles in the streams of light and her body blows away with the breeze of the night.
You check the time in your phone.
2:37 AM, the clock reads.
The edges of your eyes crinkle.
He knew.
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#© platrom, plot / writing / banners & headers. do not repost, reblogs are appreciated! please consider leaving a comment and a heart! <3
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reverie-quotes · 4 months ago
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We dignify our stupidities when we put them in print. It carries very different weight with this people if you say “I have read it” than if you say “I have heard it.” But I, who do not disbelieve men’s mouths any more than their hands, and who know that people write just as injudiciously as they speak.
— Michel de Montaigne, "Of experience"
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catilinas · 5 months ago
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where’s that post that’s like hey girl are you my sleep cycle because im slonking you up most injudiciously. it is 4:28am
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isfjmel-phleg · 5 months ago
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January 2025 Books
Work by Louisa May Alcott
The first part of the book, which explores the protagonist's efforts to get by in various lines of work, caught my interest. But I was less invested in the second half, which was mostly a lot of pining and hero-worship. Alcott has interesting things to say, but the ending with its emphasis on the sisterhood/partnership of many different women doesn't feel as earned as it could be after chapters and chapters of swooning over Mr. Totally Not Thoreau.
Wormwood Abbey and Drake Hall by Christina Baehr
The premise of these is striking and I feel there's a middle-grade adventure novel in here about the protagonist's brother and younger cousins that is just dying to emerge.
A Clearer Sky by Krystal Bailey
A sequel to The Secret Garden ostensibly about the effects of WWI on the now grown-up Mary, Dickon, and Colin, but mostly concerned with a love triangle between them. It seems to be more influenced by the 1993 film than the original book; multiple features specific to the film come up, and the narrative contradicts the book multiple times and ignores or misinterprets important characters and relationships.
(For instance: Colin's obnoxiousness is exaggerated and made defining in order to emphasize Dickon's preferability as a romantic prospect, and the boys are not friends but openly hostile romantic rivals until Colin is safely interested in a woman who isn't Mary. Mrs. Sowerby is just an obstacle to Mary and Dickon's romance rather than a beloved mother figure, and she dies off-screen in passing, barely mourned. Martha and Dickon are the only Sowerby siblings. Dr. Craven is never mentioned and seems not to exist, since the long-tenured local doctor whom Mary goes to work for is an OC. Mrs. Medlock retires to spend time with her grandchildren, although it's implicit in the book that she is not a mother. Mary brushes off her parents' neglect by acknowledging to herself that it must be hard to have to deal with a child, especially one as "introspective" [???] as she was. Etc.)
There was potential in subplots like Mary's working for the local clinic and eventually going to London to work as a postal carrier, but ultimately the book's point is all the romance. I did not care for how this was portrayed--yes, I am very picky about this sort of thing, but I felt that the relationships between Mary / Dickon and Colin / Female OC were shallow, increasingly so as the book ended.
This was made more difficult because, despite the presence of an editor, this text badly needed editing for wordiness, excessive and poorly-used dialogue tags, injudicious overuse of adverbs, "off" word choices, preoccupation with facial tics, etc. Lack of historical research also stood out; although the author states in her note that she did research certain aspects of WWI but did not want this story to be a work of academic research, attention to basic details of daily life and social customs in England at this time would have better grounded the narrative in the setting it was attempting to portray without getting too "academic" about it.
For a novel that presented itself as a homage to the original story, it showed a lot less interest in interacting with and drawing from the story than it did in how soon the ship will kiss. And as someone who loves The Secret Garden for its friendships and themes and who has never particularly cared whom any of these kids got together with, I was disappointed.
Shirley by Charlotte Bronte
A few interesting characters, but so much digression into social issues and satire and so. much. pining. for an incredibly mediocre man. The friendship between Caroline and Shirley felt more real, probably because Shirley apparently was inspired by Emily Bronte, who passed away before this book was completed.
Cousin Phillis and Other Tales by Elizabeth Gaskell
These are uneven for me. Some of them I liked well enough, others dragged, and others puzzled me more than anything. Whatever the case, though, Gaskell is always fantastic at characterization.
The Blithedale Romance by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Once again, I don't get why any of these people are romantically interested in the people they're interested in (which is a major part of everyone's motivations here). I see what Hawthorne is doing thematically, I think, and I respect it, but this isn't one I'll pick up again in a hurry. I'm still interested in trying some of his other works, though.
Here in the Real World by Sara Pennypacker (reread)
There's a whole middle-grade subgenre about young people finding some kind of healing or personal growth through engaging with a private place in nature, and maybe someday I'll hunt more down. This story was still good on the second read, although I wanted very badly to step in and help the kids with the religious misconceptions that follow them throughout the narrative. (They're planting a garden in the ruins of a demolished church. One of the kids knows practically nothing about Christianity; the other knows just enough to completely misunderstand it, and they never get to a point of deeper understanding but are left to arrive at their own disjointed conclusions.)
Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells (reread)
Still enjoying the reread of this series.
The Road to Roswell by Connie Willis
I expected to like this one, but not as much as I actually did! It reads like a screwball comedy crossed with scifi, westerns, and road trip comedies. It's so much fun. I never expected to find an alien that resembles a tumbleweed to be so ultimately endearing, the adventure and plot twists kept things interesting, and I actually liked this romance because it wasn't all-consuming, the characters developed an actual relationship over the course of the story, and it made sense for the genre(s). Definitely the best story I could have started the year off with.
Comics
Space Boy by Stephen McCranie (reread)
I need to reread this sometimes. This month was one of those times.
JSA Omnibus Vol. 1-2
Like a lot of team books, JSA 1999 tends to be more about action than character development, and a lot of the storylines didn't do much for me. But some of them did, like the time travel arc in which various JSA legacies have to go back in time to convince their predecessors not to give up on heroics. And Albert's rather heart-breaking descent into darkness and desire for redemption. And Rick's storyline about the one last hour he gets to spend with his dad and how that resolves. I need to finish the last twenty or so issues for completeness.
DC Finest: Events: Zero Hour Part One
Nice to have some context for this event that's so pivotal to the era of comics that I tend to read from! Not all of these issues made sense to me, since I'm not familiar with all these characters, but the ones that I have enough background for were interesting. I will definitely be getting Part Two when it's released (in part because it collects some issues featuring some of my particular people).
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sgiandubh · 2 years ago
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Jottings: Season 7, episode 8. Just fucking try me
By TPTB's Sovereign Decree, this season is - as we all know - split in two, which proved to be at the same time abysmally disrespectful to ***'s subscribers, frustrating - to say the least- to Netflixers, but involuntarily prescient, given the current SAG-AFTRA stalemate. The protracted strike scenario (still a possibility) would have truly flunked OL, drowning it in a sea of irrelevance and effectively making all promo impossible. So, let us count our blessings and bide our time: it ain't over till the fat lady sings. For the time being, we are still haunted by Sinéad's moving huskiness. For the sake of speculation only, I wonder if they are going to stick with this option until the official end of Season 7, as an homage of sorts. Or promote somebody else, while time and space are still available to do so.
You are definitely going to need tissues for this one. And any random type of your favorite comfort food. It is intense. It is almost impeccable. SS & RR sketches are tolerably short. S is supercalifragilistic. C is giving it her all and she is just perfect. And all the rest are flawless. So, pardon the sarcasm deficit and perhaps also my less fluid quill: you surely know, by now, my struggle with encomium is real.
The bonnie wee swordsman moment immediately brought to this book outsider's mind the exceptional fanfic author on AO3. So, if you still missed Flood My Mornings, by some obscure glitch in the Matrix, do give it a try. It is one of my top 3 , with #1 being @zeya-zg's TRS (it packs a punch, takes great risks and does so with grace). And yes - blasphemy ensues - the swordsman's fic is simply better than Herself in so, so many ways. A good starting point for a Droughtlander of undetermined amplitude (what in the name of hoo-ha is 'the story continues next year' supposed to mean?), for example. But I digress.
With Saratoga 2.0 in plain, inevitable sight, I incorrectly presumed we would see the blue light mojo - is it in Bees...? more plausibly so - and I am glad C saved JAMMF's finger. My sick mind did try to imagine a mutilated limb at some point in time, failed to do so and had to reboot entirely. I am grateful to the writer for having spared me a potential ordeal, in this respect. I am, however, less grateful to the same writer for butchering up to the point of no return the very delicate scene between Rachel Hunter and Young Ian, who initially fail to get their (impossibly to reach) bearings. It feels contrived at first, reads as injudicious as trying to become proficient in Thai after spending three hours on Duolinguo and jumps on the storyline's windshield out of virtually nowhere. The main weak point of this season (spare SS/RR's endless death row sojourn) has to be the blatant injustice done by the writers to characters I wanted to see and hear more of: the Hunter siblings, Buck Mackenzie and yes, William himself.
Speaking of William, there is an epic but fleeting moment outside Simon Fraser's tent, just after Jamie gives him his tricorn hat, that made me wonder out loud. Who are you, first and foremost, Ellesmere: a courtier? a soldier? a son? All three avatars briefly cross his face and if that is not prowess, I don't know what is. Enthusiastic kudos, again.
Cynical, lunatic, despicable me ugly cried three times in a row. Laudanum. Simon Fraser. The Scottish shores. That is a lot for one single intake.
Spoiler: I must have eaten something that disagreed with me. For such an inconsistent character, Simon Fraser saved his soul with this intense, dignified and subdued moment. There is something akin to a Roman deathbed scene one could perhaps find in Tacitus' Histories, essentially thanks to S's perfectly mastered gravitas. So yes, you can cry for the sudden demise of a secondary character you had no sympathy for and on top of that be surprised by your own tears.
A death that proves instrumental for their return to Scotland. And maybe it is time we acknowledge the simple fact that Scotland never really was just a trope of all this intricate narrative scaffolding, but a character in its own right. It is alive and it prompts the kind of raw, irrational emotions able to make your tears well up all the same in Bilbao, in Vancouver, in Seattle, in Athens or in Cairo. And it doesn't matter if you could not place Inverness on a map before finding out that well, people do disappear all the time, or if you were haunted since forever by majestic visions of glens & lochs. You will fall and you will fall hard, despite all the misgivings and the shortcomings, of which there are many.
We leave them teary-eyed on a boat sailing near the Scottish shores. It is a carefully chosen and very effective parting moment. Overall, this was an excellent half-season, if you chose to ignore Mordor's endless, reckless and soulless bitching. I sometimes wish for all these people to suddenly develop an interest for origami or find another obsessable rookie duo or simply try to be happy on their own. Nothing more, but nothing less.
This Droughtlander will be a massive pain in the rear. Mark me. And I am finally allowed to hope for better sleep patterns. But hey, no regrets: it was worth it, always is. They are worth it. A lot.
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Gif choice could only involve a ship. Credit given to @avasetocallmyown. Very elegant :)
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black-is-iconic · 1 year ago
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The Red Means I Love You
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If there was anything Muzan loathed, it was the preposterous idea of fate. An outcome decided even before birth was just…..ludicrous, nonsensical, and completely incongruous from his view. How could one even begin to consider something so inane and injudicious? Only a fool would willing to submit to such nonsense.
Naturally, he didn't believe in the concept of soulmates, twin flames, or any other mystical beliefs that suggested a predetermined fate for one's romantic or platonic relations. Some people believed that these ideals were a gift from the gods, but he didn't see it that way.
He had no interest in seeking favor from entities that had already condemned him to die before he even took his first breath. In his eyes, the gods were his enemies. And everything they smiled down upon should be tainted by the very creature they hated.
Starting with the vile cretins known as human beings, although this wasn't necessarily to spite the gods this was more so his own vendetta against the abhorrent vermin who'd maliciously picked and pestered him as a sickly boy.
Useless parental figures and an iniquitous doctor made his miserable short human life a misery beyond measure. But now with all this power at his fingertips, he could do as he pleased without any interference. With the world at his feet, he could become a god-like never before, and then, maybe then he might actually find peace for a few brief moments in this wretched existence.
He'd never garnered those 'precious' red strings but he never wanted them in the first place, he viewed them and anything else from the gods as a blight on his life.
But just as pieces were falling into place and things were finally going his way (for once) he felt a small tug under the cusps of his sleeve, at first he ignored it thinking it was simply the scrap of paper against his wrist as he flipped through an old book in his the comfort of his study lounge.
However, as the tug became more insistence like a pestilent itch, the more curious he got as to its source. Without much thought, he tore through the taut white linen fabric, revealing a single red thread pulsing in a bright, almost ethereal light, like a freshly lit lantern digging into the flesh of his wrist.
His brow furrowed, he tried to ignore the sensation but couldn't help but think it was slightly odd, and yet not unpleasant, to be honest. It seemed to be growing stronger every second, and the longer he stared the more his curiosity grew.
He rolled the thread between his fingers feeling the soft yet warm smoothness of the silk texture. It was peculiar and felt unnatural like nothing he ever encountered.
He watched as the little thread began spreading slowly into his veins and he furrowed his brows deeper but nevertheless, he sharpened one of his claws and attempted to cut the string. But the string began to glow a bright reddish-orange and burn like a thousand suns, he dropped the strain with a hiss cradling his singed fingertips where it was scorched in an instant.
The pain and sting made his blood boil as he glared angrily at the offending line of color that was now glowing and radiating energy.
He growled in irritation and frustration as it was becoming clear to him that he couldn't just cut through the thread without risking harming himself.
He reached for one of his glass viles shattering it along the edge of the desk and spilling the failed cure-all along the mahogany floor. Picking up a particularly sharp glass shard, he yet again tried to sever the forming connection to whatever contemptible wretched creature unfortunate enough to be on the other end.
And once again, he found himself unable to sever it, instead the blood-red line grew brighter and fiercer. Burning his finger with searing heat as if the thread was molten steel, he let out a displeased grunt dropping the glass and watching as the burned skin that had been holding the glass quickly healed once he stopped trying to pry the damn thing off.
With an annoyed cluck of his tongue, he leaned back into his seat staring down at the thin red thread as it continued to weave itself into his veins and into his skin.
He could hardly contain the frustration and aggravation he felt as it crawled like some vile insect up his arm causing an uncomfortable prickling sensation that ran down his spine, what a bothersome little pest. A thorny nuisance and he wished dearly to destroy it.
But alas it would seem the little thread was here to stay, for now at least until he found a safe way to get rid of it, perhaps…..
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camisoledadparis · 6 months ago
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THIS DAY IN GAY HISTORY
based on: The White Crane Institute's 'Gay Wisdom', Gay Birthdays, Gay For Today, Famous GLBT, glbt-Gay Encylopedia, Today in Gay History, Wikipedia, and more … January 17
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1558 – French Cardinal Charles de Lorraine requests that the French Ambassador to Rome report scandals involving Cardinal Carlo Carafa and Giovanni Carafa, Duke of Paliano to Pope Paul VI. They had engaged in "that sin so loathsome in which there is no longer a distinction between the male and female sex." They are first exiled then sentenced to death.
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1837 – English writer, historian and educational reformer. Oscar Browning was born in London (d.1923). In 1868 he became the lover of the great English Pre-Raphaelite painter Simeon Solomon. For fifteen years he was a master at Eton College , until he was dismissed in the Autumn of 1875 following a dispute over his "overly amorous" (but purportedly chaste) relationship with a pupil, George Curzon. . He had taken Curzon on a trip through Europe with Curzon's father's permission, despite having been warned away from the boy by the Headmaster at Eton, F W Hornby. His parents' church, St. Andrew's, in Clewer, describes the reasons for his dismissal as 'his injudicious talk, his favourites, and his anarchic spirit'.
After Eton he took up a life Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, where he achieved a reputation as a wit, and became universally known as "O.B.".He traveled to India at Curzon's invitation after the latter had become viceroy. He resumed residence in 1876 at Cambridge, where he became university lecturer in history. He left Cambridge in 1908 and and in 1914 was visiting Italy when World War I broke out.
He spent his later years in Rome where he died in 1923 at the age of eighty-six. A large part of his papers disappeared. These include "all Browning's letters to his mother, diaries that covered the whole of his career from his arrival at Eton in 1851, much of his correspondence as an Eton master, and no doubt also a number of his subject files." This disappearance has been attributed to Hugo Wortham, Browning's nephew and sole executor and legatee, who took the materials to produce a biography of his uncle, Victorian Eton and Cambridge: being the life and times of Oscar Browning.
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1886 – On this date the British novelist Ronald Firbank was born in London (d.1926). Firbank was a prototype for Evelyn Waugh. His best novels are Caprice (1917) and Concerning the Eccentricities of Cardinal Pirelli (1926). The latter book begins with the cardinal baptizing a police puppy named Crack, and ends when the naked cardinal ("elementary now as Adam himself") drops dead while pursuing a choirboy named Chicklet around his church. Firbank was not without his own eccentricities. He as known to wear two dressing gowns at once, painted his nails, lived in an apartment painted black, and owned only books bound in blue leather. He dined only on champagne and flower petals and died malnourished.
At one time, Firbank visited Rome with the intention of taking holy orders; however, as he later revealed in a letter to Lord Berners, "The Church of Rome wouldn't have me, and so I mock her." Accordingly, his mature fiction is populated with a ribald gallery of homosexual choirboys, lesbian nuns, cross-dressing priests, salacious bishops, flagellants, and self-canonized saints.
His work was championed by a large number of English novelists including E. M. Forster, Evelyn Waugh, Simon Raven and the poet W. H. Auden . Susan Sontag named his novels as constituting part of "the canon of camp" in her 1964 essay "Notes on 'Camp."
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1897 – Nils Asther (d.1981) was a Swedish actor active in Hollywood from 1926 to the mid-1950s, known for his beautiful face and often called "the male Greta Garbo". Between 1916 and 1963 he appeared in over 70 feature films, 16 of which were produced in the silent era. He is mainly remembered today for two silent films he made with his fellow Swede, Greta Garbo, and the pre-code interracial love affair in The Bitter Tea of General Yen.
Asther was the son of Anton Asther and Hilda Åkerlund. Although his parents were Swedish, Asther was born in Denmark in Sankt Matteus parish, Copenhagen, where unwed mothers at the time often went to give birth discreetly. Nils spent his first year as a foster child in Limhamn, Sweden, until his parents married in 1898 and he moved in with them in Malmö, where he would grow up. As a young man he moved to Stockholm, where he received acting lessons from Augusta Lindberg. It was through Lindberg that Asther received his first theatrical engagement at Lorensbergsteatern in Gothenburg, and in 1916 Mauritz Stiller cast him in The Wings (Swedish: Vingarne), a gay-themed Swedish silent film from 1916, directed by Mauritz Stiller, based on Herman Bang's 1902 novel Mikaël. In Copenhagen, one of Sweden's best known actors, Aage Hertel of the Royal Danish Theatre, took Asther under his wing. This soon led to a number of film roles in Sweden, Denmark and Germany between 1918 and 1926.
In 1927, Asther left for Hollywood, where his first film was Topsy and Eva. By 1928 his good looks had made him into a leading man, playing opposite such stars as Pola Negri, Marion Davies and Joan Crawford. He grew a thin mustache which amplified his suave appearance. One of his most popular films was Our Dancing Daughters. Asther was cast opposite Greta Garbo in Wild Orchids as the tempting Javenese Prince De Gace. With the arrival of sound in movies, Asther took diction and voice lessons to minimize his accent, and was generally cast in roles where an accent wasn't a problem, such as the Chinese General Yen in The Bitter Tea of General Yen.
Asther was a homosexual in a time when it was a stigma to be gay. He grew up in a deeply religious Lutheran home, believing homosexuality was a sin and society viewed homosexuality as a disease. In Sweden it was called "unnatural fornication." While sexual relations between adults of the same sex were legalized in 1944, the medical classification of homosexuality as a form of mental disorder continued until 1979.
The theatrical community and the film industry in the 1920s accepted gay actors with little reservation, always provided they remained discreet about their sexual orientation and there was no public suggestion of impropriety. Asther was closeted. He proposed marriage to Greta Garbo to hide the true nature of his sexual preferences. Asther and Garbo had known each other in Sweden, and finding themselves relatively new to a foreign land they spent a great deal of time together. They often visited a friend's ranch outside Hollywood where they could relax, ride horses, go climbing, or swim at Lake Arrowhead. "Sailor” was a favored term for Greta Garbo's male, gay/bisexual friends. In 1929 during filming on location in Catalina filming with Nils Asther, she was overheard berating the actor for grabbing her so roughly. "I'm not one of your sailors," she reminded him.
Rumors exist from the early 1930s that Nils had relationships with Swedish director Mauritz Stiller and Swedish writer Hjalmar Bergman and with other male colleagues. Nils mentions some of this in his memoirs. He had a long term relationship with actor/stuntman and World War II navy soldier Ken DuMain. According to Ken DuMain, he met Asther on Hollywood Boulevard in the early 1940s and they enjoyed a long-term relationship.
In August 1930, Nils entered a lavender marriage, with one of his Topsy and Eva co-stars, Vivian Duncan. They had one child nicknamed in the media as "the international Baby" due to her Swedish father, American mother, and Bavarian birth. Their daughter's nationality was debated and Asther offered to apply for American citizenship if it would help the process of getting their daughter into America. Right from the start, Asther and Duncan's marriage proved stormy and became fodder for the tabloids. They divorced in 1932.
Nils Asther died on October 13, 1981 at a hospital in Farsta, Stockholms län, Sweden.
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1927 – On this date the American physician and writer Tom Dooley was born (d.1961). Born in St. Louis, Missouri as Thomas Anthony Dooley III, Dooley was an American Catholic who, while serving as a physician in the United States Navy, became increasingly famous for his humanitarian and anti-Communist activities in South East Asia during the late 1950s until his early death from cancer. Based on his experiences working in Vietnam and Laos, he authored a number of popular anti-communist books in the years preceding the Vietnam War.
According to classmate Michael Harrington, Dooley never attempted to hide his same-sex orientation. Even after cancer surgery in 1960, Dooley resorted to the 2nd floor of Bangkok's Erawan Hotel, a "central preserve of his Gay life in Southeast Asia." The best-known victim of military homophobia in Randy Shilts's book Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S. Military is Thomas A. Dooley, the jungle doctor of Laos and folk hero to millions of American Catholics in the late 1950s. Shilts describes the U.S. Navy's frenzied investigation of Dooley's sexuality while Dooley was on the American lecture circuit in early 1956, promoting Deliver Us from Evil , the best-selling, highly embellished account of his role in the Navy's 1954 "Operation Passage to Freedom," which transplanted over 600,000 Catholics from North Vietnam to the new regime of Ngo Dinh Diem in the South. Fearing a scandal that would diminish its own prestige, the Navy hounded Dooley into confessing his homosexuality following a campaign of surveillance and perhaps entrapment by Office of Naval Intelligence operatives who bugged Dooley's phone and eavesdropped on his hotel room conversations.
After leaving the navy, Dooley went to Laos to establish medical clinics and hospitals under the sponsorship of the International Rescue Committee. Dooley founded the Medical International Cooperation Organization (MEDICO) under the auspices of which he built hospitals. During this same time period he wrote two books, The Edge of Tomorrow and The Night They Burned the Mountain about his experience in Laos.
In 1959 Dooley returned to the United States for cancer treatment; he died in 1961 from malignant melanoma. Following his death John F. Kennedy cited Dooley's example when he launched the Peace Corps. He was also awarded a Congressional Gold Medal posthumously. There have been efforts following his death to have him canonized as a Roman Catholic saint.
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1927 – Eartha Kitt (d.2008) was an American singer, actress, and cabaret star. She was perhaps best known for her highly distinctive singing style and her 1953 hit recordings of "C'est Si Bon" and the enduring Christmas novelty smash "Santa Baby". Orson Welles once called her the "most exciting woman in the world." She took over the role of Catwoman for the third and final season of the 1960s Batman television series, replacing Julie Newmar, who was unavailable due to other commitments. She also voiced Yzma on Disney's The Emperor's New Groove and its television spinoff, The Emperor's New School, earning five Emmy Awards in the process, the last shortly before her death.
Kitt became a vocal advocate for homosexual rights and publicly supported same-sex marriage, which she considered a civil right. She had been quoted as saying: "I support it [gay marriage] because we're asking for the same thing. If I have a partner and something happens to me, I want that partner to enjoy the benefits of what we have reaped together. It's a civil-rights thing, isn't it?" Kitt famously appeared at many LGBT fundraisers, including a mega event in Baltimore, Maryland, with George Burns and Jimmy James. Scott Sherman, an agent at Atlantic Entertainment Group, stated: "Eartha Kitt is fantastic... appears at so many LGBT events in support of civil rights."
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1956 – The poet Allen Ginsberg wrote his intensely personal anti-war, love-hate poem "America" on this date. He later published it in his collection "Howl." It is one of the first poems to deal openly and honestly with homosexuality. "America "is a largely political work, with much of the poem consisting of various accusations against the United States, its government, and its citizens.
Ginsberg uses sarcasm to accuse America of a ttempting to divert responsibility for the Cold War ("America you don't want to go to war/ it's them bad Russians / Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. / And them Russians"), and makes numerous references to both leftist and anarchist political movements and figures (including Sacco and Vanzetti , the Scottsboro Boys and the Wobblies). Ginsberg's dissatisfaction, however, is tinged with optimism and hope, as exemplified by phrases like "When will you end the human war?" (as opposed to "why don't you...?"). The poem's ending is also highly optimistic, a promise to put his "queer shoulder to the wheel," although the original draft ended on a bleaker note: "Dark America! toward whom I close my eyes for prophecy, / and bend my speaking heart! / Betrayed! Betrayed!"
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1962 – Today's the birthday of Tony-award winning American actor and singer Denis O'Hare. He came out as gay during high school.
O'Hare won a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in Richard Greenberg's Take Me Out, where his character's lengthy monologues in which he slowly falls in love with the game of baseball were considered the main reason for his award. He also won the 2005 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical for his role as Oscar Lindquist in the Broadway revival of Sweet Charity.
In 2004 he played Charles J. Guiteau in the Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins, for which he was nominated for the Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical Tony Award. He appeared on Broadway in the 1998 revival of Cabaret. He has appeared as a guest star on several episodes of Law & Order and Brothers & Sisters. His feature film credits include 21 Grams, Garden State, Derailed, Michael Clayton, A Mighty Heart, Half Nelson, and Milk. In 2007, he appeared in the film Charlie Wilson's War. In 2009 O'Hare portrayed Phillip Steele (an amalgam character based on Quentin Crisp's friends Phillip Ward and Tom Steele) in the television biopic on Quentin Crisp, An Englishman in New York. In 2011 he starred as Larry Harvey in the FX series American Horror Story and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie.
O'Hare married his partner, Hugo Redwood, on July 28, 2011 in New York.
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1975 – Tom Dolby is an American novelist, essayist, journalist, and editor. He is the author of the best-selling novel The Trouble Boy (2004), The Sixth Form (2008), and the Secret Society books, including Secret Society (2009) and The Trust: A Secret Society Novel (2011). He was also the co-editor of Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys (2007).
Tom Dolby's debut novel, The Trouble Boy, concerns a young gay freelance writer in Manhattan. It was followed by the boarding school novel The Sixth Form (2008), set in an elite Massachusetts prep school. Dolby's first young adult novel, Secret Society, was published in October 2009. Its followup, The Trust: A Secret Society Novel, was released in February 2011.
He was also the co-editor, with the novelist Melissa de la Cruz, of the personal essay anthology Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: True Tales of Love, Lust, and Friendship Between Straight Women and Gay Men (2007), featuring works by various gay writers. A reality television show inspired by the anthology, entitled Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys aired on the Sundance Channel in Winter 2010.
He currently lives in Manhattan and Wainscott, New York. In June 2008, his engagement to Andrew Frist was announced. Dolby and Frist were legally married in Connecticut in April 2009, and celebrated their union with a wedding ceremony and reception for family and friends in Sonoma, California in September 2009. Dolby and Frist were involved in an appeal that raised over $150,000 towards efforts to promote the legalisation of same-sex marriage in California.
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1986 – Hale Appleman is an American actor. He is known for playing Tobey Cobb in the 2007 film Teeth and Eliot in the television fantasy series The Magicians.
Appleman's credits on stage include the revival of Streamers at the Roundabout Theater Company, Clifford Odets' Paradise Lost at the American Repertory Theater, and the New York premiere of Sarah Ruhl's Passion Play as Jesus. In 2011, he played Bob in Moonchildren at the Berkshire Theatre Festival, and can be heard on the L.A. Theatre Works recording of Sam Shepard's Buried Child. Appleman was seen at The Old Globe Theater as Mercutio in The Last Goodbye.
Appleman played Zach on the NBC musical drama series Smash. He made his film debut in Beautiful Ohio and portrayed cartoonist Judd Winick in Pedro. His other credits include Mercutio in Private Romeo, the short film Oysters Rockefeller, and The Magicians, a TV series based on the novel of the same name by Lev Grossman, on which he has played the magician Eliot since 2015.
Appleman has said that he is "definitely not straight" and identifies as queer.
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Ryan Russell (L) with Corey O'Brien
1992 – Ryan Russell is an American former professional football player who was a defensive end in the National Football League (NFL) for the Dallas Cowboys and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He played college football at Purdue University.
Following the death of close friend and former teammate Joseph Gilliam in 2018, Russell suffered from a severe bout of depression. He moved to Los Angeles and began writing.
In August 2019, he came out publicly as bisexual in an essay for ESPN. He did so to live honestly and without fear of being outed; he also cited the fear of not being able to support his mother and grandfather if he lost his career. At the same time he introduced his boyfriend Corey O'Brien, a dancer; they opened Corey & Russ, a YouTube channel; as of June 2020, they have over 15,600 followers.
A former NFL offensive lineman Ryan O'Callaghan, who came out as gay after he left the league, said that as of August 2019 every NFL team had at least one closeted gay or bisexual player. Sarah McBride, national Press Secretary for Human Rights Campaign, praised Russell for "creating more space and opportunity for young LGBTQ people to dream big and to pursue their goals".
In April 2021, Russell penned an article in The Guardian against the anti-trans laws being proposed in multiple American states, stating that "sport is one of the strongest conduits to help show society what it is capable of when we come together, but it has to be used for the better of all of us."
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2009 – In a New York Times op-ed column on this date, Mary Frances Berry, the chair of the Commission On Civil Rights from 1993-2004, called for the "abolishing" of the commission she headed for 11 years and its replacement with one that will fully address LGBT rights. She wrote:
"The Commission on Civil Rights has been crippled since the Reagan years by the appointments of commissioners who see themselves as agents of the presidential administration rather than as independent watchdogs. The creation of a new, independent human and civil rights commission could help us determine our next steps in the pursuit of freedom and justice in our society. A number of explosive issues like immigration reform await such a commission, but recommendations for resolving the controversies over the rights of Gays, Lesbians and Transgendered people should be its first order of business."
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