#and every single time it has been so worth it

[sp4ceboo]

As Selfish as Love: Merman!Bakugou Katsuki x Reader

genre: merfolk au, fantasy au, merman!bakugou x witch!reader, strangers to lovers, bakugou x f!reader, smut and angst and fluff

summary: in a world infested with purgers of magic, neither a clandestine witch nor a lone merman can remain safe for long.

tw: 18+, smut (afab reader, p in v, bkg has a merman cock, marking + biting, oral f receiving, fingering, crying during sex but not like you think, unprotected sex, creampie), violence, blood, death, vivid gore, grief, reader treated as a tool by evil ppl, random worldbuilding, questionable medical knowledge, kinda plot heavy, other stuff i don't remember

wc: 19.8k

For years, all you’ve known is darkness.

Chained by the wrist to a ring in the wall, swaddled and asphyxiating in the blackness of the brig - it is there where your closest companion has become the dark. It is the absence of light: not only because they do not deem you human enough to spare lamp oil on you, but because the kiss of the sun has been reduced to a foreign concept, a distant, syrupy memory.

Every morning when that door opens, letting light leak in and crawl painfully between the cracks of the roughly hewn floorboards like an intruder, you repeat your name back to yourself, remind yourself who you are - a witch, a survivor, a person at the end of their tether but that all the same does what they can to keep the shadows at bay.

For the darkness is not just the absence of light: it is the absence of hope, and if you let it take you, your very substance will dissolve and you will sink beneath obsidian waves and melt away without a sound. They will have won.

This is something you will not allow.

White knuckled, you hold onto memories of the past the way a drowning man clings to driftwood. They swirl in the currents of your mind, fickle things. Sometimes they are so tangible you can feel the grass beneath your feet and the bracing wind of the highlands on your face even in the still, humid air of the brig, sometimes they eddy away before you can catch a glimpse.

You were barely a woman when they caught you, when they tore you out from where you’d been rooted to the earth, ripping through the stitches that held your life together. You were young, and you were naive and ignorant. This would not have happened if I had been as I am now, you think, but as you are now is shackled in the belly of a ship built for the single purpose of hunting merfolk.

They hunt to purge. Their so-called divine has commanded the eradication of magic, and so that is what each and every child is trained for from birth. The land has been rife with their conquest for centuries, making witches such as your kind unheard of, yet the sea for all its worth has lain mostly untouched until recently.

You are jealous of the merfolk. The magic must come easily to them, because they have not had to suppress it out of fear - it seethes in their blood, potent as an ocean storm, imbued within their essences as salt is in seawater. For this, they are feared, and for this, the hunters are more so hellbent on their extermination.

Over your years spent in the hull’s constant night you’ve learnt that your captors are the most celebrated hunters of their time, held above everything but their leader and their divine. They are revered among their people, and that is why they are allowed to chain a witch in their brig and force her to heal wounds sustained from hunting the undeserving - because they are strong enough and honourable enough to not be corrupted by your magic.

There is nothing honourable about the way they treat you.

Though you are human as they are, you are lower than an animal to them. They have no care for your limits - oftentimes, you are pushed to heal and heal and heal until you are exhausted, and yet you refuse to succumb when the darkness calls, because each time you meet their eyes, without fail, you see, buried deep within, is fear.

They fear what is unknown, what is not under their control, and every time you refuse to break when they beat you just for entertainment, every time they push you almost to death yet you survive, you wrest back an inch of control. You are needed, and that is something you will use one day, when the time is right. For now, you collect those sparks of fear in their eyes and let it feed the fire nestled within your soul that fends off the growing dark.

It is a day like any of the other days. Stirring in your fraying blankets, you wake up to the sound of the crew’s strident voices, and as it is sometimes, you almost forget that they are cruel and stained by their own wrong doings because for now, there is no talk of blood shed, just breakfast. You hate that they can seem so normal with so many innocent lives on their hands.

The day very quickly progresses into the type you have come to dread.

They neglect to bring you your daily portion of bread and water, nor the echinacea you had asked for more of, and it can only mean one thing - a hunt is on. Already, you can feel the unruly lurch of the ship as it skims over the waves, picking up speed. The crew’s voices become louder, crowing and eager, and you despise them so deeply your heart twists and becomes an ugly thing in your chest.

Almost imperceptible, you can hear the rattle and hiss of ropes as they ready their harpoons. This part is the worst, where the darkness closes in so near that you can feel its cold touch brush up your arms and its breath ghosting over your face. Sometimes you hear the anguished cries of the merfolk, sometimes the whoops and victory cries of the crew are loud enough to drown it out. You don’t know which is worse.

After will come the wounded, grinning still and soaked in blood of two kinds - theirs and their victims. You are always numb to it by then, turning a blind eye to the crimson dipped trophies they grip in dirty hands: lopped off fins and strips of scales, sometimes small enough to be a child’s.

How they can butcher beings as beautiful as the merfolk and think it the right thing to do, you do not know.

It makes you sick to your stomach, that somehow you have become their accomplice, stitching their wounds with your magic, saving their lives so they can kill again. You vow that one day, you will strike back, but what good can you do now, trapped in the bowels of a boat that was designed as a vessel for murder?

You have to try. You have to survive, if just to try. You are yet to come up with a method for escaping past what you have already attempted, but if you do not, more lives will be lost, more bloodshed that you had inadvertently aided. Right now, on deck, the patterns for it to happen all over again are falling into place.

You’re sure that this time will be no different.

And so you wait for the injured to come, almost defeated if not for the hard, bright little ball of hate settled in your throat. You wait, and you wait, listening to the strange thumping above that you can’t decipher, and still they don’t bring you their wounded. Neither comes their usual sickening shouts of triumph - you wonder if the merfolk managed to escape. You hope desperately that they did.

Listless, you turn your head as footsteps approach. There are more than normal. You can’t count exactly - five, maybe six, and they all walk with a strange irregular gait as they approach the brig.

I hope the merfolk put up a magnificent fight, you think as the key scrapes in the lock. I hope that taught them; you know it never does. The more damage the merfolk do while they fight for the lives of their mates and children, the more they are damned as unnatural and beastly and deserving of the fates that are doled out to them by men.

With a rusty squeal, the door swings wide, and with it comes the same influx of light that always spills greedily through, stinging your eyes and making them ache - the doing of a tiny, wayward star moulded from precious lamp oil. You blink away the tears that well up at your lash line, testament to your accustomation to the dark, and then blink again.

Back when you took the warmth of the sun on your face for granted, you lived too far inland to ever see one in the flesh. You were still a witch under the disguise of a healer, though. You’d heard tales, seen artists’ renderings and gorey body parts wrenched off as sick memorabilia.

None of those could have ever come close to preparing you for the sight before your eyes.

A merman.

Deep in enemy territory - so deep, in fact, that all those surrounding him, bar you, have murdered more than dozens of his kind each. He is on a galleon rammed bow to stern with killers. And yet, despite it, he has not fallen victim to the purge. Yes, there is a splintered harpoon sunken into his side, yes, he is limp and broken, but even so, shallowly, his chest rises and falls.

He breathes. He breathes, and even that is beautiful. The lamp’s light reflects off his scales; he is mainly jet black, but broad swathes of orange run across the length of his powerful tail like they were drawn with the loving stroke of a painter’s brush. In parts, they darken into a ruby red that glitters and winks as the lamp light dances.

Or maybe that’s just blood.

There’s a lot of it. It soaks into the sheet they strain to carry between them, pools in the dip his weight makes, streaks in smears down his chest and face, coats his hands and is embedded under his sharp nails. You hope that all of it is not his, that he made them regret whatever they must have done to get a merman vulnerable enough and far enough from his pod to capture him.

Deep lacerations cut all along his chest and tail, and one of the spines that extend from his sail-like dorsal fin is bent in a way that must mean it is broken. A smattering of scales reach wide across his shoulders and back and down his arms, some of them twisted and bent out of shape. Your eyes fall to the harpoon buried just below his hip, and you feel the bite of your nails digging into your palms.

“Heal it,” commands the man holding the corner of the sheet closest to you. “We’ve been ordered to bring back a merfolk to be studied. It must be in peak condition.”

You frown as they begin to manoeuvre all three metres of merman into the brig. Studied? They must be looking for a weakness to exploit. After all, merfolk succumb less easily to flesh wounds than humans - the magic of the sea resides in their very bones.

A hand fists the front of your shirt and you’re jerked forward. You can feel the hunter’s foul breath on your cheek, feel the violence roiling just below the surface of his skin, and yet you cannot tear your eyes from the merman until you’re struck across the face. Reeling back, you raise your head to look at him, a hand flying up to cradle your jaw where it has begun to swell.

“Are you deaf? What are you waiting for?” he spits.

Your brain is still stuck on the fact that there is a merman before you, alive on a ship full of specialised mermen killers, but your body has gone through these motions many times before and brings you to kneel by your patient so fast your chain jingles crassly in the relative quiet, your hands already working to gather herbs for a poultice that will slow the bleeding.

Glancing over your shoulder, you see your captors filing out of the door, the last of them grumbling and wiping his hands on his trousers as if being near enough to hit you had sullied him. Realisation dawns abruptly on you.

They’re leaving you alone with the merman.

“Wait,” you call.

Disquiet grows in your stomach. As much as you hate the life forced upon you, serving as a tool for men who would not hesitate to kill you if you ran out of worth, you have gotten used to it, and this merman at your feet has disrupted your delicate equilibrium, tripping you as you balance on a knife’s blade.

You have never had problems with thinking fast in a pinch. You are a healer, you are accustomed to endless wells of blood and snapped bones sticking through skin. Conversely, you are not accustomed to the sight of a half conscious merman taking up the majority of your floor space, a single fingernail on his hand no doubt potent with more magic than is contained in your whole body.

Your tongue is slow, your mind slower, but you force the words out, emboldened because whether he likes it or not, this merman is leverage for you. There is no one else on board that could save him.

“I will need a lamp indefinitely, while I’m in the process of healing.”

You realise how important the health of this merman is to their study because the hunter holding the lamp brings it over with no words of criticism, just the curl of his lip when you draw near enough to take it from him.

Its metal is warm in your hands, and you cup it in your palms - a little sun that clears the clinging shadows from the brig like they’re cobwebs. Carefully, you set it on the floor next to you, just outside the border of the canvas the merman lies upon, sitting back on your heels as the door slams shut.

You stare at the merman for a weighty moment. If it did, there’s no telling what organ the harpoon may have punctured - do his intestines extend all the way down his tail? Or are they in the same place as a human’s, and his tail is just muscles, like legs would be?

Never in your life did you think merfolk anatomy would have any significance to you. Even if you’d thought it did, there wouldn’t be any books for you to study on it. A hysterical, jittery laugh builds in your throat, wringing itself from you when you spot the strange slit - for lack of better words - that sits just below where his skin turns to obsidian scales.

The nervous sound breaks the silence, jolting you into action. Never mind his anatomy, he’s still bleeding out. Somehow, you need to get that harpoon out of him: the hunters don’t clean them off once they’ve used them, and if you’re not vigilant, infection will get him before whatever they’ve got in store will.

Determinedly, you scoot closer to his lower half, stretching out a hand to test the area around the wound. In preparation, you will your healing magic to rise to the surface, and it fizzles at the surface of your palms, warming them.

Your fingertips have barely brushed over his scales when pain slashes across your cheek.

The merman jerks away from you so hard that he cries out, and you wince as you see the wound pull wide, blood oozing out from where it gapes. Gingerly, you touch a hand to your cheek - one of his spines had glanced off your face as he’d moved away, its tip sharp enough to shed blood.

Any human patient would have lost consciousness moments after being hit by the harpoon that’s buried in his tail, and if by a miracle they hadn’t yet, the pain caused by what he just did surely would have knocked them out. Inexplicably, he’s still conscious, blood red eyes glaring at you with blatant distrust.

You hadn’t gotten a chance to look closely at his face before - you’d been too busy ogling his tail. Spikey, sandy hair casts a shadow over his eyes. They glow, carmine and half crazed, no doubt with the same agony that pinches at his face and curls his lip, revealing sharp canines that he bares at you, twin ivory warnings.

A rattling, hissing sound emanates from deep in his chest when you attempt to move closer again, his dorsal fin undulating in an obvious threat display. You can tell it hurts him; the spine you’d noticed before is definitely broken, the parts of the fin around it drooping and limp. He growls when he catches you looking.

You really, really don't know what to do.

Your skin prickles, the hairs on the back of your neck rising. He hasn’t taken his eyes off you since you were left alone with him. Aside from the obvious hostility, his face is effectively blank; there’s nothing in his gaze except the primal instinct to survive, and the unspeakable, offensive terror of a wounded animal backed into a corner and trapped there.

There’s no getting through to him with words. You remember the night you were ripped from your cottage by the hunters, the way you clawed and screamed until your voice was gone and your nails were torn and bleeding. You know what it’s like to have the adrenaline coursing through your veins so fast it burns, you know what it’s like to feel the anger and fear blend together in your chest until it strips away your humanity and you’re reduced to nothing more than a feral, wild eyed animal.

Slowly, you get to your feet, your chains rattling. He growls, making that hissing sound again, and despite his size, despite the muscles straining in his chest and the magic you can sense in his form, he looks small. You grit your teeth. The shock is beginning to wear off, burnt to ashes by a roaring fury that licks up your throat and fills your lungs.

You wonder if he had a pod. You wonder if they got massacred before his eyes.

Ignoring the trembling of your hands, you scoop up the piece of dried fish that remains from yesterday’s meal. It’s the only food you have, so you turn and offer it to him - when he doesn’t hiss immediately, you slide it over to him on the dented tin plate it had been on.

Tentatively, the merman picks up the fish, his nose very obviously wrinkling. As he examines your peace offering, you notice his hands are webbed up to the lowest knuckle and are a little larger than a human man’s, the fingers longer and the nails considerably sharper.

Relief fills you as he begins to chew at the fish, and you retreat to your pile of blankets, sitting down and half facing away to give him as much privacy as is possible in as small a space as the brig. You begin to make a poultice for him, crushing the herbs between your fingers because you’re not allowed a mortar and pestle and depositing them on one of the dishes you have lying around.

Once you’re done, you turn back to him. The edge in his eyes has softened a touch, and when you scoot over to settle closer to him, he doesn’t make a sound, instead just leaning away a little, watching you warily. Warningly, he hisses when you lift your hand, his red eyes flashing.

“I’m going to have to touch you to put this poultice on,” you tell him. “It will reduce the bleeding and might alleviate the pain.”

He twitches but remains silent. You wonder briefly if he even understands - people don’t talk to merfolk these days. They either run or they kill. For all you know, he might speak some ancient language of the sea that you have no hope in understanding.

You scoop the poultice up in your fingers and lean forward, aiming to ease him in by angling first for a smaller wound situated just over a hip bone on a human would be (you’re not even sure if his equivalent qualifies as a hip seeing as he lacks legs).

“Don’t,” he snarls, his voice guttural and rasping, like he hasn’t uttered a word in years.

Fumbling, you almost drop the dish. You guess that answers one of your many questions - he can speak your language, although you presume one word doesn’t really express fluency. For a moment, you consider telling him that they’ll no doubt beat you for not healing him, but it seems rather insignificant since it’s nothing they haven’t inflicted on you before.

Sighing, you sit back on your heels and look at him, defeated. He regards you with those same crimson eyes as before, but they’ve cooled considerably and hold traces of scathing criticism you find you aren’t the fondest of.

You begin to realise that he’s not going to give you any explanation as to why he doesn’t want you to treat him. He doesn’t trust you, most likely - you haven’t given him any reason to think otherwise of you, rather, you’d gawped openly at him. You’re not surprised he hasn’t taken a liking to you. You wouldn’t either.

So you retreat back to what has now become your corner of the brig, since the other three are taken up by the length of his tail and the doorway. On a whim, you prepare yourself a turmeric tea; it’s anti-inflammatory and you know you’ll be needing it sooner or later.

It takes a day, but one of the hunters barges in, light sneaking in past the outline of his silhouette. You don’t know any of them by name, nor would you want to, but you do know that this particular one is the first mate.

The merman hasn’t let you near him still, and although at points his eyes are closed, you’re worried that if you try to sneak up on him, he’ll move away again and tear open the parts of the wound around the harpoon that have partially closed up. The perimeter of blood soaked canvas beneath him has slowed its expansion but still grows.

It’s amazing that he’s survived this long while still losing blood. You presume merfolk must be rather resilient, unsurprisingly - the sea is no easy place to live in, nor is it made any easier by its recent infestation of merfolk hunters.

“Did you not hear your orders yesterday, you useless bitch?”

Passively, you look up at him as he looms closer. “I did.”

“So you don’t want to cooperate, then,” he snaps. “Do I have to encourage you?”

You don’t get to answer. A fist full of scarred knuckles collides with your nose, and your head snaps back, white exploding across your vision as the hunter shoves you backwards. Your back hits the ground and before you can even think of scrambling away, you’re kicked hard in the ribs.

You don’t try to resist it. You’ve learnt it’s better to take it than to fight and make him hit harder.

Red hot pain shoots through you when the tip of his boot catches your chin, clacking your teeth together. You cry out as your blood fills your mouth, streams from your nose, stains his knuckle bones. Hands up in a pitiful attempt at protecting your face, you curl up on the floor, as small as you can. Your ribs throb, your chain trapped awkwardly beneath your body.

You’re still balled up with your arms over your head long after he slams the door behind him. You ache all over, and your lower lip is trembling treacherously. Tears press at the backs of your eyes so you squeeze them shut: you’re not going to cry.

You need to get up.

You need to down that damned turmeric tea you made, just to feel the ginger burn as it slips down your throat.

When you open your eyes, the merman is staring. You grimace as you heave yourself to sit upright, the metallic taste of blood still coating your tongue and curdling until it’s sour. His face is unreadable, shuttered and devoid of any emotion. He doesn’t speak, although that isn’t exactly atypical.

“Well, now you’re not the only one bleeding all over the floor,” you mutter, unable to keep the resentment from your tone.

You turn your back to him as you set your nose with a grunt, letting your magic flow through your fingers and knit your flesh back together. Running a hand over your ribs, you check if any are broken, but when none are, you don’t heal them up; you’ll need to save your energy. The hunter didn’t bring food for you, and you doubt he’ll be bringing you any more until you treat the merman. That could take anything from an hour to a week.

Falteringly, you glance over your shoulder. He stares off to a place far away, a place you cannot see. A scowl furrows his brow, and you sigh, wondering if he thinks of the sea and the freedom that was torn away from him the way it was for you.

Curling up on your blankets, you pull one over yourself, rolling to face the wall and shutting your eyes. Loud in the darkness, your stomach growls, and you twitch but ignore the urge to look over your shoulder and stare accusingly at the merman - you too would not trust a human if all their kind had brought him was pain.

Your ribs hurt. It is alright, though. You’ve fallen asleep through worse.

When you wake, the first thing you do is crouch down beside the merman to check his wounds. The rattle of your chains makes him open his eyes, and you see that his face has paled, the alertness in his gaze dimmer now the adrenaline has worn off. As is becoming clear, he’s more resistant to injury than humans are, but there’s a worrying amount of blood saturating the canvas sheet beneath him, and you doubt he’ll make it much longer without help.

If he lets you near, what you’re going to have to do is far from ideal. The hunters’ harpoons are barbed and vicious, but you can’t exactly keep it in, and you can’t exactly cut it out without risking more blood loss. You’re just going to have to yank on it and hope it doesn’t destroy anything too vital on its way out.

“I’m going to have to take the harpoon out,” you tell him measuredly, gauging his facial expression.

He simply stares at you, his face blank but for the slight pinch of his brow. Shadows bathe half of his face; there is barely any lamp oil left to burn. The little flame flickers and sputters, letting darkness dance up the close walls of the brig, and if you do not hurry, you may have to treat him in the dark.

Slowly, you lift your hand, letting it hover over the splintered end of the harpoon. Tension bleeds into his body, the set of his jaw tight and his hands fisting as if he’s bracing himself, but he doesn’t growl or flinch away. Expectancy and resignation lurk in his gaze.

You don’t like that he won’t say anything in response even though he’s proven he can talk. You can feel his eyes boring into the back of your head as you gather your materials: the poultice from yesterday, a roll of bandages, a thick strip of worn leather. The latter you give to him, sighing when he turns it over in his hands, quizzical,

“Bite down on it,” you instruct him as you roll up your sleeves. “Either that or it’ll be your tongue.”

He frowns, but does as you say. You glance up at him to check if he’s ready. The hard lines of his body stand out, taut as a bowstring. He looks brittle, as if he might break and crumble into dust the moment you touch him.

Years ago, when you healed children’s scraped knees and the broken bones of men who had fallen from their ladders while fixing leaks in roofs, you had the words to comfort your patients. These you lost to the eternal darkness of the merfolk hunters’ ship, and these you wish to find again but cannot.

Instead, you murmur a quiet warning as you kneel by his tail, wiping your sweaty palms off on your trousers before getting a strong two handed grip on the end of the harpoon. Under your breath, you count down: three, two, one. Pull.

It makes a squelching, sucking noise as it comes out. You cringe but keep on tugging - if you stop now, it’ll be worse for both of you. He cries out, voice ragged and spilling over with agony, his tail arcing off the floor, and you feel the movement in the way the harpoon jerks in your hands with the bunching of his muscles.

All of a sudden, the resistance disappears. His tail fin slaps against the floor as he goes limp, both his and your heavy panting filling the room. You’re left with the splintered harpoon in your hands, a chunk of flesh and a twisted scale still clinging to one of the bloodied, rusted spokes. He spits the strip of leather out and it lands near your knee.

Carefully, you set down the harpoon and begin applying the poultice straight onto the weeping gash in his side, spreading the rest over the bandages which you bind tightly around his tail. Leaking from your fingertips, your magic suffuses across his skin as you work; you can’t heal him accurately without knowing much about his inner workings, but it should help to stave off any infection.

He shelters his face in the crook of his elbow, and though he tucks his other hand tightly to his chest, you can see the way he trembles.

You give him his space by swiftly moving on, busying yourself with his other injuries. You splint the spine in his dorsal fin, ignoring the way his hands shake and gently placing the arm crossed over his torso by his side so you can use your magic to clean and close up the various cuts and slashes littering his scar flecked body.

His scales seem to be damp, even though it’s almost been a full twenty four hours since he was brought in. It must be seawater somehow, you decide, or a sweat-like substance that keeps his tail wet enough when he hasn’t been in water for a while. He doesn’t look the most comfortable: he’s probably not used to having to support his own weight without the buoyancy of the waves.

There are little scars all over him, his skin a map of cicatrices, but the one that catches your attention is raised and jagged, spanning from the middle of his sternum to his navel. You touch your index finger to the centre of it, and he inhales sharply, flinching away.

“Sorry,” you mutter, pulling back, half expecting him not to hear you.

He’s silent for a while, ignoring your apology, but then comes a begrudging: “Thank you.”

Though he won’t see it - he’s still hiding his face from you - you shrug. “You should never have been hurt in the first place.”

He’s quiet again, lying still enough for you to imagine him dead if not for the rise and fall of his broad chest. You slouch, the energy having leaked from your body in order to mend his. The lamp finally gutters and winks out, leaving in its absence a tiny pinprick of light, a vanishing ember at the wick’s tip, buried in ashes.

When you tear your gaze away from your expired little sun, you’re confronted with a pair of blazing eyes. Pinned on you, they glow in the darkness like two pools of blood, but you find their luminosity strangely comforting, like Arcturus and Betelgeuse to a sailor: stars to lead you on your course.

“You are a witch, are you not?”

You jump at the sound of his voice, rough around the syllables but measured, as if he rolled them around on his tongue before he spoke. The scarlet light from his eyes dims a little as they narrow (you’re not sure if that’s meant to convey amusement or distaste) and you become aware that maybe he can see a lot more in the dark than you can.

“I am,” you confirm, still squinting at him - to no avail.

“Why do you not fight them, then?” He demands, his tone darkening. “Surely you cannot like it here.”

You scoff. “Of course I don’t like it here. You think I like the way they beat me?”

He’s silent, and though you still cannot see his face, you sense his scowl.

Sighing, you reign yourself in. This merman comes the closest to being an ally than all the others that have entered the brig, and you cannot squander this. He may not trust you, and you may be ignorant and ill informed of his kind, but you both have a common enemy, and though he may not like the thought, you are similar enough: the raw energy that flows through him is the same that you harness to perform your magic.

“I could fight, but there is nowhere for me to go if I escape the ship - there is just the sea,” you explain. “In the end, they are scared of all those associated with magic, even the witch they keep chained in the dark. The moment they deem that the risk I pose outweighs the use I have to them, they’ll kill me.”

He’s quiet again while he processes what you’ve said. “And what of me, witch? Why have they not killed me yet?”

“They want to study you,” you reply, wincing at how harsh your voice comes out. “I think we’re quite far from their lands - a few months’ travel, maybe - but it’s hard to tell.”

“What - ”

“Enough questions,” you cut him off. “My turn.”

A plethora of questions crowd your mind, but as you think of the merman in front of you, you find that they can wait, because although he must have stories of the sea that you’d only dreamed of hearing, and although magic you could learn endlessly from is threaded through his being, he is primarily, before anything, a soul. He is a soul: a soul with eyes that make the permanent night you are lost within just a little more manageable.

You will have to find out whether the kraken is real or not later; you will ask him about selkie skins afterwards.

Instead, you ask him his name, and tell him your own.

Bakugou, he grunts in response before turning his head to face the wall, clearly ending the conversation. Frowning, you stare at his back - or where you presume his back is, in the darkness - and mull over the name he provided you with; you are certain he has given you the one he gives to strangers. You suppose that is what you are.

Pulling absently at your chain, you sit with your back to the wall, your knees to your chest, and think about the merman, about Bakugou. For a moment, you are seized by the absurd belief that his most grave injury is a bleeding heart, but that cannot be true, for he has not said anything that indicates it. Questions find their way to your tongue, but you let them stick there, stifling them before they deign to interrupt the silence.

Neither of you move from your positions until the door opens, revealing the first mate. Squinting, you rise to your feet, a muscle feathering in your jaw as he purposefully kicks Bakugou in the shoulder, lifting his lamp high so he can see the bandages you’d applied.

“I’ll need a top up on lamp oil if I’m to continue the healing process,” you announce. “And we’ll need food and water. He’ll have - ”

You hesitate, glancing over at Bakugou, but he just lifts a shoulder and makes a face of disgust that you know isn’t conscious. Deliberating for a moment, you wrack your brain for any clues about merfolk diets.

“Fresh fish,” you decide. “And crabs. The bigger the better. Also, he’ll need a tub big enough for him, filled with seawater.”

“Watch the way you address me,” the first mate snaps, taking a step forward.

You shrug. “You wanted him healed, didn’t you?”

Your first two requests come within the next few hours, appeasing the increasing hollowness that had resided in your stomach and sending the shadows inhabiting the brig retreating up the walls and into the corners of the room, but the tub doesn’t come until two days after. It is barely watertight, plugged with tar and made from rough sawn wood.

You haven’t exchanged words with Bakugou since you asked his name and he gave you one, though you find yourself on the receiving end of his red eyes more often than not. He’s silent as the hunters bring the tub in, as they fill it with pails of seawater, as they leave and slam the brig’s door behind them. He’s silent, even as he slips into the tub and into a thin slice of his home.

And then, after a moment, he turns to you, and there’s something painful and cutting and cynical in his eyes.

“You know, the water doesn’t speed up the healing.”

You nod. “I know it doesn’t. You were uncomfortable.”

His eyes blaze. “What do you want?”

You regard him, regard the intensity of the fire in his gaze and the way his chest heaves. His tail fin hangs out of the tub, but even so, water swills over the side and splashes onto the floor like it can sense his agitation. Loudly, the links of your chain clank against each other as you cross your arms. 

“I do not want anything, Bakugou.”

He narrows his eyes. “All humans I have known but one are cruel, witch. You wish for me to owe you something.”

“I don’t,” you reply, noticing the strange look that creeps onto his face. “Who is this human you hold in such high esteem?”

A distant look erases the furrow in his brow, and you get the sense he is no longer talking to you when he speaks again: he is lost in some place far away, a place coated in the golden sheen that tints all good memories. His voice turns soft as he brushes his fingers over the scar on his chest.

“His name was Izuku,” he murmurs. “But I called him Deku.”

“Deku?” You echo, your voice crudely loud all of a sudden.

A flash of grief slashes across his features like lightning on the high seas, there and gone so fast you almost don’t catch it. It’s like a switch flips, and suddenly shutters slam down behind his eyes and his expression melts away until his face is blank and cold. Regret sinks heavy in your stomach.

You wince. “I’m sorr - ”

“He’s dead,” Bakugou growls.

He doesn’t speak to you for three days. There is a certain rawness in his blood red eyes that makes you gentler as you change his dressings and reapply your poultices. He looks at you as if he hates that you are healing him instead of leaving him to die, so you avoid his gaze, staring instead at the scars that cover him like warpaint.

You get the sense that he is mourning this human he told you of all over again, and you cannot help but see the weight of it in the tension of his body and wonder if you could alleviate the pain.

On the fourth day, he shuts the vulnerability away somewhere deep inside of him, buried far enough beneath other things that he can pretend it never even existed. Yet you remember it, still vivid and fresh in your mind as you lie curled up on your side, watching the lamp’s flame until your eyes burn. He breaks the silence by clearing his throat, his gaze fixed on you.

“Witch,” Bakugou says softly. “How did they catch you?”

You glance over at him. “I was young and foolish and alone. It’s easy to snatch a girl from her home under those circumstances.”

“You have been here for years, then.”

“I have,” you sigh. “I tried to escape once. That’s why I’m chained down.”

“A weaker soul would not have survived this darkness,” he remarks solemnly. “You are strong, witch.”

You look down at your hands, watching your fingers fidget to and fro in your lap. Your tongue is frozen in your mouth - you had not spoken properly to someone in years before he was captured, and his behaviour confuses you. No words come to mind that express how grateful you are for his acknowledgement.

“Thank you,” you settle with in the end.

He hums but other than that remains silent.

Later you discuss with him the possible logistics of an escape. He explains to you that he cannot channel the magic the way you can, but that he is soaked in the magic of the sea; he is unable to use it for spells because it is innately part of him, enhancing him beyond human capabilities. Together, you come to the conclusion that you must get off the ship before you arrive at the hunters’ lands, or your chances of freedom will have narrowed to almost nothing.

An actual method of subduing or injuring the hunters enough to allow an exit route evades you, though. After all, you are chained to the wall, and there’s no easy way of moving Bakugou - he is, evidently, far too heavy for you to drag around all by yourself.

Uneasy silence falls over the brig. You stare at the lamp again: with it, your ability to see has been restored, along with a piece of your humanity, but now its light seems to illuminate how small a space you are contained in, how strong the chain binding you to the wall is.

As you drift off to sleep that night, you find yourself gripped by the fear that Bakugou will never return to the sea, and instead, they will inflict unspeakable torments upon him.

You will be the one who kept him alive for them. You will be the one who he grows to hate, because you had the chance to let future pain pass him by, but you saved him, and by doing so, you failed to spare him from their torture. And while they cut him open and study his insides, you will be somewhere far away, still risking yourself to heal their most elite, almost as if they are beloved to you.

The thought gnaws at you as the weeks pass. Blood no longer soaks the bandages wrapped around his tail; his dorsal fin is almost healed. He is gaining strength, more rapidly through your magic, and it is clear he has shaken off death many times before if his scars are testament to anything. In particular, the one on his chest draws you: though it is long healed, you can tell it was deep.

He almost died back then, too - the scar tissue around its edges is strange, lumpy and malformed as if he was kneaded back together by a child who saw his flesh as nothing more than clay harvested gleefully from a river bank. Even so, the shape of it is familiar. You know you shouldn’t pry. You remember the way he flinched away when you first touched it, but you ask, anyway.

“Bakugou,” you ask him once you’ve finished changing his bandages. “What did you do to get a merfolk’s blade stuck in your chest?”

He snarls. “All you do is fucking dig, you shitty witch.”

“I - ”

Hissing, he swipes at you half heartedly, and you stumble backwards, dodging his fist and almost tripping on your chain, caught off guard by the agitation in his eyes. Stunned, you gape at him. The fury is vehement on his face, evident in the grit of his teeth and the tremor in his hands as he grips the side of the tub; you can tell he despises how he is trapped in here with you, fending you off with the sting of his words.

You open your mouth. You’re not certain what you’re supposed to say, other than an apology that he will shake off easily, but you hope that words will form on your tongue. He levels his gaze on you, and this time, within it dwells an overwhelming sorrow that stops you short.

“Don’t try,” he whispers. “You cannot change the past.”

Brow furrowed, you stare at him. You take in the pain carved all over him, and this, you realise, not his scars, is his warpaint - he holds it close to him, like a cloak of inwardly turned, savage blades, reminding him to keep his distance. It is present in the bow of his head, the slump of his shoulders, a weight so heavy it threatens to rend his flesh from his bones.

You get to your feet, and in the lamp light, the single tear that rolls down his face is turned to solid gold.

Balefully, he looks at you, yet he holds still as you reach out and smooth it away with your thumb. A rawness resides in his eyes that you wish you could soothe as you catch the next tear that spills over, gently as if he is made of porcelain.

“You need not bear the weight of your world on your shoulders, Bakugou.”

Your words wrench a sob from him. His fingers curl tight around your wrist, tearing your hand away from his face, silently weeping as he grips you so hard you begin to lose feeling in your palm. You watch as the anguish in his eyes evolves into anger, harsh and brittle and bleak.

“Get away from me,” he spits, voice strangled, and yet he does not release you, so you perch on the side of the tub and make a show of not looking at him so he is not alone in his privacy.

It’s then that you realise that whether or not he likes it, you have gotten through to him. In the month that goes by, sometimes he is cold and aloof, keeping to himself, and sometimes he allows you close enough that you can feel his warmth. You find you savour his company when it’s there.

His wound is fully healed, a pink scar bordered by healing scales, and his dorsal fin spine is back in working order. You check up on him still, every other day or so, careful to monitor them in case you have somehow healed him wrong, careful to keep your regular intersections with him, because although you would never admit it to him, he is amusing, and he keeps the darkness at bay.

You are unsure what he thinks of you. Sometimes, he smacks you upside the head with no real force, and you dare to label it as affectionate. He gives you the name which he gives to those that mean more to him than strangers, too - well, you wring it out of him.

(“Bakugou, what’s your name?”

A scoff. “Witch, have you hit your head?”

“We both know you’re not obliged to answer, so if you’re not going to tell me, spare me the insults.”

Pause. “Katsuki. It’s Katsuki.”)

There are times when he has nightmares, too. You surmise that most of them are about Deku, and that the scar branding his chest, the one made by a merfolk forged weapon, is linked somehow to this dead human. Incomprehensibly, he mutters in his sleep, snarling about krakens and storms and sometimes even witches, but it always leads back to Deku.

Sometimes he protests against him, speaking a language you do not fully understand, cursing and thrashing so hard you fear the tub will splinter, while sometimes he proclaims his love, his voice slurred as he slumbers, but each time, without fail, he begs: forgive me, Izuku, forgive me, Deku, I’m sorry.

Katsuki is unaware of what he gives away in his sleep. Often, he settles down quickly after raising his voice, but sometimes you look over to see him stiff and terrified and shake him awake; he then jolts upright, the water sloshing out of the tub as he reaches for you, his stricken eyes searching yours for something you do not know the identity of, but he always finds.

He does not let you go, not ever. At these times, you lean or sit by the tub and let him crush your fingers in his grip.

He never speaks of it in the morning.

You would not hide from him what you have learnt, nor the feelings that grow treacherously in your heart, but you are too cowardly to tell him of either. It is certain that he loved Deku, and that maybe Deku loved him too. What was it like, you often wonder, to have loved Katsuki?

When he holds onto you, still half lost in the dark lands of his nightmares, you think about it. He would have been less guarded, a young merman not yet covered in scars; he would have given Deku his name immediately, for he would not have learnt that he needed to be wary of humans. Still, he would have fought for him until the end with the same ferocity he would fight for his own heart - because Deku was his own heart.

And Deku, you imagine Deku saw people as they really were. You imagine Deku with bright eyes and a brighter smile, with a face that all his emotions could be read off as easily as a book. He must have been good, persistent, if Katsuki had fallen for him. Soft, even, but tough when he needed to be.

They fit each other, no doubt.

You feel guilty, as if your speculations are invasive, rummaging around within Bakugou’s heart where he has not let you set foot. Mercifully, he can pin his red eyes on you as much as he likes, which he often does, but he will not hear your mind.

Now that he is healed, that is how you pass your days, exchanging words with him when either of you wish to, while you wrestle with the unspoken in your head and while god knows what happens behind his eyes. It is normal for silence to fall after a conversation - it is not awkward, but not comfortable either. It is pensive, it is familiar.

And today, it is shattered by screams up on deck.

Katsuki perks up, his keen ears picking up things your dull ones cannot, and he tilts his head, listening intently. You do not have to hear what he does to know what is happening: there is the sound of clashing steel above you, the all too familiar war cries of the hunters. It is not often that the merfolk are prepared for the hunters as they pass by, but neither is it impossible.

The ship lurches, harshly enough that some of the water in Katsuki’s tub overflows. You wager it must be a whole pod, then, maybe two, and you glance over at him, wondering if he knows who they are, wondering if -

“Are they yours?” You blurt.

“Huh?”

“Your pod,” you clarify.

Bitterly, he scoffs. “If the merfolk wanted to rescue me, they wouldn’t have waited months.”

You freeze. The detachment in his voice does nothing to hide the betrayal beneath, and ice begins to crawl up your spine, for he addresses them as the merfolk, not as his kind, his people. Harshly, you swallow as you start to understand that the hunters would never have been able to capture a merman if he wasn’t alone.

“You don’t have a…” You trail off, feeling far too inadequate and stupid to continue.

“My pod renounced me the moment they learnt about Deku and I.”

A picture forms in your mind, of a Katsuki who lost his family because he gave away his heart to a human - of a Katsuki to which the sea was no longer home, but a huge expanse of alone. Horror closes over your head like cold water as your eyes slide down to the scar on his chest.

His pod didn’t stop at just renouncing him.

You had always hoped that beings whose very essence was rooted in magic would be fair and just as the tales said. Your hope had always been that the merfolk would see that humanity was not united in the purging of them, that they would spare you if your path ever crossed theirs. Never did you think they would be so blind as to turn on one of their own for something as reliant on fate as love. You are a fool.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and it comes out almost like a sob.

“We are no better than you are,” he replies.

His voice is so devoid of hope that it cuts you to the quick. You open your mouth so say more, to try and fill that emptiness inside him if you can, but your words are stuck in your throat and before you can force them out the door flies open, banging loudly against the wall and almost extinguishing the lamp’s flame.

Three gravely wounded are deposited in front of you and then the door slams. Silently, you get to work, sealing the deep slashes to their flesh more carelessly than you should be - but with Katsuki watching, you feel sullied, a betrayer who works for the purgers of magic. Their blood coats your tingling palms, and yet not in the way you wish it could be.

You have just finished the last when four more are dragged in, and you’re hit hard across the face and ordered to work faster, which signifies only one thing: more are coming. As blood wells up in your mouth, you hope that the merfolk are victorious, even if it means sinking the ship and letting you drown within.

Hate rises within you again, searing and acrid like smoke clogging your lungs, but this time it is different. You hate them for what they have made you; a tool, a means to an end. The determination you nurse in your heart is unimportant as long as you do what they say, and yet you cannot defy them, and this is what you hate yourself for.

Prickling sensations begin to claw up your arms as you heal. You are lost in it, the blood and the battle and the patients, and you swear you see the same faces twice: hunters who you healed once coming back more injured than last time. Your energy dwindles like a dying flame and you dip into your reserves when you recognise the violent light in the hunters’ eyes.

You cannot ask for a break. They already bay for blood and death; what more is yours but just another magic using bitch’s?

You are being bled dry. You are no longer aware of your surroundings, just the halting of the flow of blood beneath your hands and the wheezing gasp of your breath and the rattle of the chain locked around your wrist.

They have not been attacked like this in a long time. You almost forgot how fast the darkness closes in when you send out your energy through your palms to knit flesh and skin back together again. Spots cloud your vision, and futilely, you swat them away. Muffled, Katsuki’s voice hums in your right ear, but you do not understand the words he utters.

Your hands tremble. You pitch forward, slumping over your newest patient.

A hand fists in your hair. Knuckles press into your jaw, far harder than a lover’s touch and yet it feels like it in the way your head lolls slowly to the side. It takes time, but pain radiates through your skull, vibrating your teeth and sharpening your focus, and then you can hear yelling, yelling for you to wake up, yelling for you to carry on or they’ll kill you -

There are so many of them. So many hunters with frenzied eyes and blades that shine where they are not coated in innocent blood, and they are hurt and they want to return back to the battle and you must abide by their demands. The air is too thin as it whistles in and out of your lungs. You cannot think.

You press your palms to the blood slick abdomen of the next man placed down before you and do as they say. Your mouth is dry, your head pounds, your eyes won’t focus, and yet, you do as they say, you always do what they say.

What a fucking coward you are.

Letting them push you farther than you ever would let yourself go. You’re right on the edge, right over the edge, clinging onto the side of the perilously vertical cliff face even as the mossy stone crumbles beneath your fingers and threatens to make you fall down down down. But still, you heal. Your body performs numbly what your mind cannot take any more.

All of a sudden, there is not an open wound for you to heal or guts to force back inside a torso, there are just crimson soaked planks and a raised voice. Loud. An incensed, raised voice, cursing and roaring. Can’t you see she’s almost gone? They shout, earsplitting enough to make your head pound. She can’t heal you fucking bastards if she’s dead!

Bakugou. No, not that name. It’s… Katsuki. Katsuki making all that racket. You don’t know when it happened, but now your cheek is pressed to the rough planks that make up the floor. There’s blood everywhere. Some more splatters to the ground and you notice that the din isn’t being made by Katsuki any more. Your eyes are hazy as you lift them upwards and see a hunter raise his fist again.

“Kats,” you slur. “Watch… watch out…”

The lamp goes out, which is strange, since the oil got topped up this morning. You pay it no mind, though.

You’re too tired.

You wake surrounded by water. For a moment, you wonder if the merfolk won, and if somehow you managed to get tossed off the boat and into the sea, but then you move your leg and it hits something hard and vertical which must be wood. Peeling your eyes open, you find you’re in… the tub? Katsuki’s tub?

Lifting your head, you’re met with a pair of concerned red eyes. One is almost swollen shut, and blood has crusted down the side of his face from a wound in his temple, yet he smooths his hand soothingly over your upper back, watching attentively as you come to.

“You’ve been out for just under two days,” Katsuki says. “You need to eat, get your strength back up.”

Your memory begins to trickle back, and with it floods a torrent of shame: you always told yourself that you survived out of spite, out of the belief and conviction that one day you would hurt them enough to negate all the healing they made you to do, but it was all a pretence. You were scared and so you took the easier road of complacency, and it has caused the deaths of hundreds of merfolk.

It is without a doubt that if you had healed even just a papercut more, that if Katsuki had not stopped them, the life force within you would have winked out, and you would have died. Death had loomed right over you, brushing boney fingers over your face, and even now, it lingers.

You are burnt out, exhaustion weighing on you as if a whole mountain rests on your back. Worse is the fear, revealed in the blinding light, shackling you, for you are its slave, and you cannot shake its hold off you.

Your face crumples. “I am spineless, for letting them use me so. I am a coward, a - ”

“They give you no choice, witch,” Katsuki remarks. “Do not put it on yourself.”

You shake your head. “You cannot ask that of me. How many lives have been lost because I obeyed when the hunters told me to save them?”

Bowing your head, you sob. Fatigue envelops you, the chain around your wrist unspeakably heavy, and you lean heavily against Katsuki; he holds you like you are precious, handling you with care so that the pieces you have shattered into do not fall apart and scatter onto the floor. He tips up your chin, forcing you to look him in those eyes of his as he wipes away your tears.

“What was that you told me, as I wept like you do now?” He asks. “You need not bear the weight of your world on your shoulders. That was what you said to me.”

Nodding, you feel more tears leak out when you squeeze your eyes closed. He strokes your hair, and you hide your face in his chest and wish you could do forever, for he is warm and he is far gentler than you ever imagined he could be. You are tempted, but he nudges you and chides you, reminding you that you will feel much better once you have eaten.

Wobbly as a newborn fawn, you climb out of the tub, Katsuki steadying you with a hand on your arm. Wrapping one of your blankets around you like a shawl, you retrieve a hunk of bread to gnaw on before planting yourself on the tub’s rim, loath to be any farther away from him than you have to be.

Though hunger worries insistently at your insides, sending tremors through your hands and weakness in your legs, you force yourself to eat slowly; you cannot risk wasting any of the food by throwing up. Katsuki rests his forearms on the sides of the tub, watching you with a keen gaze that you cannot read. You become more aware of the purpling bruising across his face and reach out without thinking.

He catches your hand before you can tap into the slowly replenishing well of magic inside of you, his fingers circling your wrist before he lets them slip down and lace with yours. Something ignites behind his eyes, and you find you are mesmerised - you lean closer to see how the spark dances.

“Katsuki,” you breathe, and then your lips are on his.

He tips his chin up to lean into you, his fingers threading into your hair as he pulls you closer to him, so tender that it makes your chest ache. You could stay like this for eternity, simply doing nothing but tasting the salt of him on your tongue and savouring the sweet, sweet scrape of his canines over your lower lip; he is all that matters, all that is.

Slowly, his hands come round to cup your shoulders, pressing you closer to him, and so you feel the moment his grip falters and he stiffens, feel the way he recoils from you as if you have burnt him, and you can do nothing to prevent it. You’re propelled backwards with the force he jolts away. Though it is only a few steps, you feel the gap between you yawn wide, stretching into an uncrossable chasm.

“No,” he chokes out, shaking his head. “No, not - not like - ”

Abruptly, he falls terribly, terribly silent. Stunned, you touch a hand to your mouth; your legs buckle, and you throw out a hand to steady yourself against the wall before sinking to the floor. It feels as if you are drowning.

Katsuki does not love you - how can he, when he fits with Deku like they were made for each other? You were wrong to hope for anything else, wrong to give in to what you wanted, because you have torn open old wounds that never properly healed. It is no longer significant that he does not love you, for you should have seen that already; what matters is that in your blindness, you have ripped him open.

You’re beginning to realise that it was not the lamp that kept the shadows back, but him. It is only natural that you are drawn to him like a moth to a flame, only natural that you were too weak to resist flying straight into the fire. This time, it is not only the moth who gets hurt.

You are left alone with your thoughts. Time passes, as it always does, but you pay it no mind. However hard you try, you cannot bring yourself to meet his eyes. You are numb, numb to the slow rock of the ship as it cuts through the waves, numb to the sounds of the crew at their battle stations again, numb to it all now that it is undeniable: you love him.

He cannot love you.

Wearily, warily, you raise your head when the door opens, revealing the first mate, soaked in blood. Crossing the room in a few strides, he stands before you, chest heaving, a frantic sort of desperation contorting his face as he tightens his hand around the hilt of his sword and glares at you.

“The captain is near death. We drop anchor home in a fortnight. I will be put in command if he does not survive, and if this happens, I will make certain that you come upon a death slower and far more painful than his.”

You do not answer, nor do you pay any mind to his threats. You can sense Katsuki staring in your direction, the feeling of his red eyes on your skin unmistakable: no doubt, he has heard what you have. We drop anchor home in a fortnight - a fortnight until Katsuki is delivered into hands who seek to study him, to slit him open while he still lives and examine his insides and the way his heart beats, ensnared in the cage of his ribs.

Just like that, you know what to do.

You wait silently until they bring the captain to you. The first mate did not lie when he said the captain is near death. Sweat creates a sheen on his brow, and though his eyes are open, he is barely conscious, for he has been sliced open from gullet to navel by a merfolk blade. Briefly, you touch a fingertip to the lip of the gash, ignoring the pained moan it causes and the disquieted mutters of the other hunters.

If you were superstitious, you would deem the wound too similar to Katsuki’s to be anything but fate, but you do not believe in such things. Instead, you put your trust in the strength of good steel and the sharpness of a tongue. Yes, you know what to do, and you will do it.

The chain fixed around your wrist is not broken, but it does not have to be. You are free to do what you wish, because before you is the captain, and he is leverage. There is no fear left in you, no shame to hold you back as you look up at the first mate; he opens his mouth, about to ask why you do not jump to heal his captain, but he pauses when he takes in your cold smile.

“Free the merman, and then I will heal him.”

A silence falls. They are left with no other choice but to do as you say, and they know it. The first mate’s hands ball into fists, a reminder to you of what will come once Katsuki is let go and you heal their captain, but it does not concern you any more. None of it is of concern to you, only his freedom.

“What the fuck did you just say, witch?” Katsuki spits.

His voice jolts the first mate into action. He heaves you to your feet by the front of your shirt, seething, and punches you squarely in the nose. Something cracks. Your head snaps back, the air knocked from your lungs when he drives his knee into your stomach and lets you crumple to the floor by his feet. Gritting your teeth, you glower up at him.

“Come at me all you like,” you hiss as blood pours down your face. “It will not save your captain.”

He crouches down before you. You do not listen as he shouts at you, because you see it in his eyes. He knows you have them all backed into a corner, he knows you’re aware he will not risk the captain’s life. Over his shoulder, Katsuki urgently mouths something to you: do you know what they will do to you because of this? They will do worse than just kill you!

“Let them,” you reply, and as you gaze at him, you smile again. To the first mate, you say: “Bring me up on deck. I want to see.”

The first mate hurls you away from him, barking orders at the other hunters, but all you hear is the crash of the waves outside and all you taste is the nectar of victory on your tongue. You watch, still smiling, as they grab Katsuki and drag him from the tub. He fights, of course he does, screaming your name and slashing at the hunters, but there is but one of him, and he is unarmed.

Cursing, the first mate unfastens your chain from the ring in the wall, wrapping the length of it around his hand and jerking you forward with it, pulling you to follow him through the ship. There is murder written on his face and in the curl of his lip, and you let it slide it off you like water from a sea bird's feathers.

He throws open the hatch, and for the first time in years, you see the sun. Slowly, you step into the light, and the salty breeze tugs playfully at your clothes and hair, fresh and briney and strong, pulling tears from your eyes. All around you is empty space, just blue sea and blue sky and the wind that dances gloriously between them as far as you can see.

The air is invigorating and crisp in your lungs. Hesitantly, you take a step forward, then another and another, seeing the way the sun plays on the water’s surface, scintillating as it warms your cold skin. It is as resplendent as you remember it.

“Witch!” Katsuki cries, shaking the hunters’ hands off him. “Why? Why would you do this to yourself?”

There are countless ways you could answer him. Instead, you take him in one last time, his spiky ash blonde hair and his crimson eyes and the way his scales glitter under the sunlight. You do this for love: if you can’t give him your heart, you will give him his freedom.

“Go,” is all you say, and though tears stream down your face, you smile.

“I will not forget you, witch,” he replies, voice thick. “I swear it.”

Running to the side of the ship, you cling to the taffrail and lean forwards to watch as he dives overboard. He slices through the water, the amber of his tail bright as he goes, further from you with each passing second, and your breath catches in your throat - he is more beautiful than you imagined he would be in the light.

As he crests a wave, he looks back at you, and you see the shimmer of his scales and the graceful arc of his dorsal fin one last time before he twirls in the surf and dives. With that, he is gone, and you are alone again, yet you do not fear what is to come.

A hand grips your shoulder, nails digging sharply into your skin. “Enjoy your peace, you thankless bitch, because once you heal the captain, all you’re going to know is pain.”

You turn to the first mate and laugh in his face.

He loves you.

Bakugou Katsuki fucking loves you.

He loves your deft hands, careful despite their calluses and nimble despite the chain around your wrist. He loves the smell of you, herby and laced with petrichor. He loves the brightness dancing in your eyes when you laugh. Most of all, he loves your sweet soul: the fierceness woven into it like second nature, the blaze of your heart when you stand up for what you believe in.

He was stupid for pulling away from that kiss. You had fit your lips to his, and suddenly panic rose in his chest, and he jerked backwards as if ignoring his heart would silence it; he was scared to love another human, scared because last time it led to pain. His fear had hurt you, and this is his regret - that he was the one to cause the slow dimming of the light in your eyes.

There are countless other things he regrets. He should have trusted more easily, he should have fought harder as they yanked him out of that silly tub and away from you, and he should never have left you by yourself on that ship with those despicable hunters.

He didn’t tell you he loved you, and now he is scared he will never get the chance.

He has left you in a den of beasts. Deku would never have let this happen if it was Katsuki in danger. Deku would have found a way to get him out. In fact, Deku did, he saved him instead of himself, and now Deku is gone, and he fears his heart is not strong enough to lose another. He does not want to lose another.

That serene little smile on your face as you watched him go - it haunts him, fucking burns itself into his retinas, because you knew. You knew precisely what you were doing, when you bargained with that hunter’s life, and you knew exactly what they were going to do to you for making them let him go.

You must be hurting right now. You must have been beaten within an inch of your life. You, who broke down the walls he rebuilt, brick by brick, after Deku was gone - the same walls that Deku himself tore down too. Katsuki is beginning to think that their foundation has always been flawed, or maybe they crumbled like Jericho simply because you shine brighter than the sun on the waves, and he could not look away if he wanted to.

He has been tailing the ship for little over a day. Keeping out of sight and in the shadows is easy; he has felt the sting of their harpoons enough and he will not risk an injury when getting you away from them is the priority, yet he can’t help but resent the way he must hide. There is no other way, though. Currently, he has no plan, and he must bide his time.

Katsuki was never the most patient, but he has no choice but to be patient since he has no sword and no allies. It is plausible that he could scuttle the ship by himself, but he can’t risk it with you chained inside and possibly unconscious.

But then he sees it - a shape in the distance.

It is an isle, small enough that it could sustain maybe one hamlet of people, and rather plain, with rocks that make up a small cliff on one side and a sandy beach dotted with rock pools on the other, a thicket of trees spanning the distance between. One could call it nondescript, but there is nothing nondescript about it to Katsuki.

He has bled out on that golden beach. He has fought to protect his own life and the life of another in the waters near that isle, and he has failed. He has wept on that shore, wept enough to cleanse the blood soaked sand beneath his newly fixed body that held his newly broken heart.

That isle is where Deku washed up, half dead, a decade ago. It is where he watched from afar as this green eyed, freckled human nursed himself back to health, and where he watched from a little closer as he learnt that humans were more than what they are portrayed as in the tales of his pod.

He understood many things on that isle: what love was - the touch of his lips to a man with unruly green curls and an infectious smile, and what betrayal was - when his pod found out and the waters were tinted red because of it.

Just like that, he knows what to do.

Hidden in the underwater caves below the isle is a monster that slumbers until a soul dares to wake it. The humans call it a kraken, but the merfolk leave it unnamed, for it is too great to be reduced to a simple moniker. He has seen it once before, through the haze that descends over one close to death, and felt as its power stymied the lifeblood that poured hot from a wound spanning from the middle of his sternum to his navel.

Both he and Deku had lain on the beach after his pod ambushed, both bleeding from fatal wounds. He had been too fucking weak to get to the kraken first, and so Deku had been the one to sacrifice himself and give himself to the monster so Katsuki could live, when it should have been the other way round.

This time, though, he is strong enough.

He remembers slipping back into the ocean with his freshly healed wound so the saltwater of his tears mixed with the sea, unable to understand why Deku would leave him. Now, he understands all too well, and he will not fail to protect the one he loves again.

Summoning the kraken means no going back. After waking it, the summoner is transported into the kraken’s form, and they have a limited time within it before the kraken reaps its payment - the summoner’s soul. It will shatter their spirit and ensure they cannot return to their body.

Katsuki dives down deep, breaking away from the ship and swimming ahead of it to find the gaping mouth of the cave that the kraken slumbers within. He is far down enough that the water is murky, frigid as it weighs heavily on him, the sun a weak pinprick of light suspended somewhere above him that does nothing to pierce the gloom.

The entrance is curtained with seaweed, the cold fronds  caressing his skin as he slips past them. Nestled in the darkness, it lies there, slumbering: a behemoth shadow, looming as high as the cavern’s ceiling and filling its width like the berth of a warship docked in a seaside hamlet’s harbour.

As he swims towards it, he realises he has already had his last glimpse of you through his own eyes. The last time he will see you, he will be fighting to keep hold of himself before he loses his soul to the kraken, and then it will just be bottomless darkness until it is summoned again. You might not even know it is him inside the monster.

It doesn’t matter - a lot has ceased to matter to Katsuki. He can no longer deny that he loves you, and with that epiphany comes another: you knew what the hunters would do to you when you bargained for his freedom, and yet you did it anyway, with no fear of the consequences. Now, it is his turn to put his life on the line for you, and though he may lose it, you will be free.

He will never feel the sweet touch of lips again, but that’s alright. He hopes that you will find another to make you happy, another who will make your heart soar and help you forget him. They will be to you what you were to him: a light to scare away the shadows, a star in the night sky to guide you, even if at times, just like him, you believe you do not wish to be guided.

Katsuki pictures your face as he draws near to the kraken.

Its flesh is odd beneath his palm - slippery and uncomfortably cold. Pressing his palm to its skin, he wills it awake, and it obeys him alarmingly fast, an eye as big as his head snapping open and rolling around until it fixates on him. An abyss of a pupil sucks him in, beckoning him forward to a place that will be the last he ever visits.

Though he knows his body remains still, he feels himself fall forward, sucked towards the magnetic emptiness within the kraken as if it aches to be occupied. For a moment, he resists, pure instincts making him struggle against it, but he forces himself to let go. Sensation briefly forsakes him.

When his vision is restored, he finds that he is looking at his body, limp and vacant. Already he can feel a difference in the water, the sharp tang of fear drifting toward him on currents that hadn’t been there before as creatures begin to flee, aware that something ancient has been roused from its sleep.

A tempest is brewing.

Katsuki - or a version of him that no longer is really Katsuki, but instead a wrathful monster caller - cannot see the dark clouds amassing above, but he knows they are scudding across the blue skies to taint the high midday sun, and it is his doing. Cruel winds accumulate in the shadows cast by his thunderhead, and he can hear the sharp snap of canvas and the raised voices of a crew readying their ship for a storm.

Unfurling a tentacle, he curls it around his old body, careful not to crush it, and reaches up high enough to deposit it on the beach. He begins to move the kraken out of the cave, dislodging pebbles that would have been boulders as the bulk of its body manoeuvres through the exit.

In a way, he is disconnected from the body that is his now; there is empty space that he is not large enough to occupy, like he has donned a garment made for a merman the size of a mountain. It is strangely silent inside this huge vessel, although he is not alone. Shadow wreathed souls lurk in the corners of his mind, and he knows they are disgusted by him.

He is not surprised. Historically, the kraken have been summoned only in the utmost peril. To the merfolk, the kraken are as sacred and as old as the sea, called upon in the wars of old, when the magic beings of the sky were eradicated. Despite being only scattered shards of themselves, the past summoners look down on him, because he does not summon to seek the solution to mighty matters.

For the second time in a lifetime, the kraken is being summoned for a cause as selfish as love.

There’s an awful symmetry to it, really. He imagines the way they must have abhorred Deku, a dying human who did not use the kraken’s power to destroy, but to knit together the wound of a simple, unnoteworthy merman.

Faces contorted beyond recognition flash before his eyes and hands claw at his sides with nails as vicious as knives. They want blood, they want a whole fleet to rip through and ruin. He tells them that they will have to settle with one ship, and they cry their discontent in his ears, their voices rough and rasping, like rusting metal on stone.

He has not broken the surface of the water yet. His body prowls many leagues down, but still, he spots the shadow cast by the ship, and the moment he does, his vision narrows, blurs, and he sees winking lights on board: the lives of the crew, twinkling and tantalising and begging to be snuffed out.

The kraken jets upwards and breaches, spraying up a wall of water, and though he does not command it, he bellows a war cry, the sound so bloodthirsty and wild it almost sweeps him up and incapacitates him. The shadow souls close in, fragments of vengeful souls garbed in shadow, greedy and eager to see him torn apart, and he shakes them off, wrenching himself from their grasp with all his strength.

A twinge pinches at his side, and he glances down to see a volley of harpoons glance off his hide, leaving shallow gashes in their wake. The crew swarm on the deck, their terror sour as he breathes it in and savours it. They are but ants, small and irritating with their measly weapons and made to be crushed and devoured -

He seizes the mast and uses it to rock the ship from side to side, fighting to keep the visions of blood staining the water red away from him. Too fast, his control is slipping, and he feels the souls swarm around him, filling his field of view with darkness until all he can see is those tiny flames that he must put out. There is something he wanted to do, something he needs to do -

Selfish, the souls hiss in his ears, trying to sink their hateful claws into him again, and he agrees with them.

He loves, and therefore he is selfish.

It is no bad thing.

The storm clouds gather over the ship, roiling and rumbling with thunder. Lightning strikes, a bolt of white fury that splinters the deck and extinguishes one of the little lives on board, producing a delighted cackle from the souls at his back, but he ignores them. He knows what he must do.

“Bring me the witch,” he roars.

His voice comes out warped and foreign, the words of men coming out strange and misshapen on his tongue, but the crew understand enough, scuttling to obey, desperate to believe he may spare them if they give you to him. The grip of the souls tightens, squeezing at his throat - he has spent too long in their presence already, and they nip at the edges of his mind, stealing away parts of him when he isn’t looking.

He realises with a jolt that he does not remember his name any more.

It is fine, though. He will join the souls in their namelessness soon. They are a cacophony in his head, and he can no longer hear anything but them, the burn of their claws threatening to tear him apart and shred him the way they are already torn apart, but he barely cares.

The little gnats bring another up and present it to him. This one shines brighter, suffused with a magic the souls cannot wait to devour, and they encourage him forward - surely he too will enjoy the honeyed taste of this offering? Plucking it off the ship’s deck, he brings it to his eye level, and his shadow companions clamour for him to crush it, but he hesitates.

It looks at him like it knows him. In its weak, tiny voice, it yells something that gets lost in the howl of the winds, but even so, it makes the souls shrink back, receding enough for him to remember that this little thing he holds is important. Important for what, he can’t recall, but it is important all the same.

Kicking its legs, the small being beats its fist on his tentacle, still shouting. He leans closer, wincing as the shadows scratch and tear at his back, trying to draw him away again.

“Katsuki!” You scream.

He jolts. It is you, his little, beloved witch - you are why he is being so selfish, summoning the kraken just to save one life. Peering closer, he notices that you are bruised all over, and suddenly the storm worsens overhead, crackling as bolts of lightning stab down like vindictive knives and the wind tears at the ship full of aghast hunters, tossing it violently among the waves.

Carefully, he places you on the beach, next to a body that used to be his. You scramble towards it, limping, and he turns away, looking back towards the ship and the lights it is infested with that still need to be destroyed. Anger comes easily to him, because these are the ones that have marred you with bruises.

The shadows close in again.

Roaring, he tears at the ship, rending it in two and crushing those that leap overboard, yet the souls are never appeased, never satiated. It feels as if power leaks out the seams of his spirit and if he does not let it go it will destroy him from the inside, but he knows he cannot let go. He needs to hold on, to hold himself together, for something that drifts further and further out of reach -

It is as if he has been tied to the bottom of a sea trench for so long, drowning in darkness, that the surface is just a fanciful thought. He does not remember the sun’s sweet face, nor the sound of your voice as you called out the name he has lost again. They sink their teeth into him, ready to tear him apart.

He struggles. He will not go without a fucking fight, he will not let them have him before he has tried valiantly to swim upwards to the sun, where the shadows will not survive.

But the light is so far from him. It floats away every time he strives to be closer, or maybe there are hands holding him back, ripping him open and tethering him to the blackness. They cling to him, shrieking in his ears, sinking curved claws into him and refusing to let go, ready to reap the kraken’s payment.

He is losing himself.

And then - a hand, gentle, touching his face. Emerald eyes fill his vision, wide and lovely, and suddenly he is able to ignore the souls and their blaring dissonance, the pain in his side fading away into nothing. There is a soul that still remains named here, mixed in with those who have been rent apart by hate.

“Kacchan,” the soul says earnestly. “You must fight it, Kacchan.”

“Deku,” he sobs, leaning into the soul’s warm palms as he wipes his tears away. “I’m sorry.”

Deku smiles, and Katsuki weeps, because he looks so proud of him, as if he is worth an eternity spent trapped within a kraken alongside shattered souls that only wish for chaos and destruction. He weeps, because here are Deku and Kacchan, back together again, but they cannot stay this way forever.

“I understand,” Deku whispers, and his touch heals Kacchan once more. “I understand you love her. You need to fight, you need to return to her and love her like you want to. I died so you could live, Kacchan. Let go.”

He looks down and sees the way he clutches onto Deku so hard he is white knuckled, while Deku cradles his hands in his scarred ones, softly as if Kacchan is fragile. Trembling, he loosens his grip, and he feels the light draw closer, the sun’s rays warming his face. Something tightens in his chest when he finally allows himself to release Deku, but it hurts in the manner of stitches pulling taut inside him and binding him together again.

One last time, he looks over his shoulder, to where Deku watches as he goes, smiling brightly, shining like he is a star plucked from the night sky. His brilliance holds the shadows back, rendering them powerless. He pays them no mind, though - his viridescent eyes are lit up and fixed only on his Kacchan.

Deku says something, but the sound of his voice is drowned out by the crashing of the waves and the winds of a dying down of a storm. Still, Katsuki knows what he said by the shape of his lips: I love you. Smiling, he takes a final look at him, at those unruly green curls and those sweet eyes and bright smile, and then he turns and is bathed in light.

The kraken sinks again beneath the waves, but Katsuki does not sink with it.

You know it’s impossible, but you sense the moment Katsuki is back in his body. You’ve heard the tales of the kraken, and you know he should have been taken from you, but there he is, present in the weak pulse of his heart beneath your palm and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Shallow cuts have appeared all over his body, remnants of the damage of the hunter’s harpoons.

His eyes are open, but barely, and he blinks slowly, fighting to keep them fixed on you, giving you only glimpses of familiar crimson. There is a strange looseness to his awareness that must come with the recency of doing the impossible, but still he grips your hand desperately, struggling to stay awake long enough to force words out.

“I - I lo - ”

Before he can finish, his voice cracks and he coughs. His eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to start again, but you smile, tears blurring your vision as you press a finger to his lips and hush him, and thankfully he relaxes under your touch, curling closer to you and seeking shelter in your embrace. Once he is rested, he will have all the time in the world to tell you whatever he likes.

What matters is that he is here. That in itself is beyond even a miracle. 

Almost disbelieving, you cradle him to you, pressing your forehead to his as tears you cannot stop spill down your face and mingle with his blood. You are bone tired after repeatedly healing your own cracked ribs and fractured wrists, but you are whole enough for now - you won’t waste your energy on your own bruises while he still hurts.

So you hold him against your chest, sweeping your fingers delicately over the deeper of his cuts to seal them. The sky has cleared, the storm clouds departing as fast as they arrived, and the sea is dipped in ruby by the bleeding sunset. It lacquers the wet sand with the glow of dying embers as the incoming tide smooths over where the storm had churned it up, erasing the mark left on the island as if this afternoon had never happened.

If it were not for Katsuki in your arms, it would be like the kraken never came.

You glance down at him. He seems at peace, though worn and battered, as if he has reconciled something deep within his heart; he has closed his eyes, simply leaning against you with his face pressed into your side, his warm hands tucked just beneath the hem of your shirt.

You cannot help but smile. Because of him, you are free. No chains bind your wrists, no threats limit you in what you decide to do next. You are not sure where you will end up later, but for now you intend to fall asleep beneath the open sky, beside the one you love infinitely more than any life you might have had and even this new life he has fought and bled to give you.

When you drift out of your dreams - just simple, golden things full of a contentment that lingers past waking - the tide is high, the ocean lapping at the sand at your feet. The moon is almost at its highest point in the sky, depositing a residue of silver on everything around you.

Katsuki stirs in your arms, and when you glance down, you are met with the twin beacons of his eyes, luminous in the dark and full, brimming and spilling over with unspoken things that leave a deep ache in your heart. Trembling, he grips your hands, and you lace your fingers with his, brushing your lips over his knuckles and stroking his face as the tears begin to flow.

He cries like he is mourning. You wonder what he saw while his soul donned the kraken’s skin, how poignant it must have been to wrench these fitful sobs from him. Cupping his face in your palms, you wipe his tears away, and he clings to you to keep you close while he bares his newly healing heart to you; it is wrapped in the past’s scars. He shows you the rawest parts of him, and you soothe them as best you can with your healing hands.

There is no magic to this cure, though. It is just the love that burns within you, consuming you so entirely it makes you shake. You did not know it was possible to love like this, but the proof weeps in your arms, a merman who summoned the kraken and somehow conquered it so he could make it back to you.

“Tell me,” you whisper, tracing the strong lines of his face with your fingertips.

Curling his arms around you, he hides his face in your neck. “Deku stood with me against the dark inside the kraken,” he replies softly. “He held them back so I could come back to you. I - I thought I had lost him forever, when he summoned the kraken to save me.”

Carefully, he brings your hand to touch the scar stretching down his chest, and you outline its edges, comforted by the warmth of his body and the steadiness of his breathing beneath your fingers. You would be happy to stay like that forever, linked to him by your skin on his and the synchronised beat of your hearts.

“He told me to fight so I could return to you,” Katsuki murmurs. “So I could love you.”

Your breath catches, your voice sticking before any words come out. He is blunt and honest as always, but this time, he is without his walls, without his guard up, open and vulnerable for you to lash out at him if you wished to, but he trusts you will not. Still, you hesitate, your throat constricting.

“I… I didn’t know him, or what he was like, but I know I can’t be him to you,” you falter. “I cannot be Deku, Katsuki.”

You do not expect your voice to come out so small, so timid. Neither do you expect the overwhelming tenderness that fills his eyes - no one has ever looked at you like that, as if they really see the whole of you, the blemishes and shadows on your soul and they love those too.

“I don’t ask you to be like him,” he replies. “No one will ever be like him. No one will ever be like you, either. I love you because you are you, not because you are him.”

“Katsuki,” you breathe, unable to swallow down the tears welling in your eyes.

“You know I can’t give you the life you deserve, either,” he continues, voice thick. “If you tie yourself to me, you tie yourself to the sea too, regardless of if you like it or not.”

Searchingly, you look at him, and it feels for a second that as you meet his eyes, you know the whole ocean, down to its unexplorable depths, down to every grain of sand and every critter it shelters and sustains. In that moment, there is a total, utter understanding within you - you would love him whatever the condition.

“I would tie myself to the most pitiful of the things on this earth if it meant I could love you, Katsuki.”

“I too, witch,” he replies, and a fond little smile pulls at his lips. “I would summon that kraken a thousand times if it meant I could win your heart.”

You laugh, out of pure joy more than anything else, and he laughs too, rolling in the sand so he can prop himself up on his elbows. Flopping over, you adjust yourself so you can rest your head against his stomach, lifting your eyes to watch as he tips his face up to the sky, letting the stars reflect in his gaze, as if he holds the galaxies of the universe in each pupil.

Your fingers find his as you stare up at the moon where it hangs highest in the sky now, full and silver as the stars. A new moon: symbolising fresh starts and new beginnings, or maybe even the waxing of a love that was planted in the darkness of the brig of a ship soaked in blood, nourished by nothing but the weak flame of a lamp and swift hands knitting flesh back together.

A familiar prickle trails coyly down the side of your neck, and the sound of sand whispering against itself reaches your ears as Katsuki shifts beneath you, lightly skimming the high tide’s surf with his tail. You are not ready to leave the easy silence you’ve made yet, so you bask in his presence and his warmth a little longer.

The moon has just begun its descent when you turn to face him. He’s just looking at you, looking and looking and looking as if he can’t get enough. You smile, aware of the fresh edge in his gaze that was not there before, the string binding your soul to his pulling delightfully taut.

“You’re as beautiful as the ocean,” he mumbles, fiddling with a lock of your hair. “More beautiful than the ocean. But in a different way, you’re…”

You grin. “Worse?”

“Worse,” he agrees, smirking, but he looks at you as if you breathed life into his seas. “Much worse.”

Time stops for a moment, and you sit up, bringing your face close to his until your breaths mingle - you cannot help but let his crimson eyes consume you, heart and soul. You linger there for a moment, the air crackling between you, both of you waiting as if to see who will give in and pounce first.

Bringing his hand up, Katsuki lets his fingers slide under your jaw, lifting your chin so you are merely a hair’s breadth away. He fills your senses; you can feel the warmth of his body, the roughness of the calluses on his fingers, the feather-like brush of his breath against your cheek, smell his briney sea scent, hear the swish of sand as he shifts infinitesimally closer. A lethal spark gleams in his eyes, tying you in helpless knots.

You lean forward and claim his lips.

It draws a quiet groan from him, and suddenly you are beneath him in the sand and his hands are all over you, grabbing handfuls of you and shucking the damp material of your shirt up and over your head so he can touch your skin. The way he looks at you, with those stirring embers that tug at something low in your stomach, reduces you to a sailor under the influence of a siren’s song - he is irresistible, he is magnificent.

Tangling your fingers in his hair, you pull him ever closer, licking into his mouth as if you might find the god’s nectar hiding beneath his tongue. He nips at your lower lip with those keen canines of his, and you cannot help but buck your hips as the tide swirls around the both of you.

Chuckling, he skims a palm over your thigh, pulling your leg up to hook over his hip. It brings your clothed core right against the length of his hardening cock that has emerged from the slit in his tail; you stifle a moan at the feel of him, grinding agonisingly slowly down on him and sighing as he trails wet kisses and purpling bites down your throat.

Katsuki licks at the spot under your jaw, and this time, at the second graze of his teeth against your skin, your fingers tighten in his hair, pulling at it and squeezing another sweet noise from him. You keep your hands threaded through his ash blonde locks as he licks at the valley between your breasts. Meticulously, he marks your plush flesh with the imprints of his teeth, laying his claim on you.

When he reaches your stomach, he mouths at your skin, nipping playfully just over your hip bone before he raises his eyes to meet yours. They are heavy lidded and sultry, and they stir the fire building in your core as he toys lazily with the waistband of your trousers. His fingers are casual as they curl beneath the fabric.

“Let me taste you, witch,” he implores.

“I cannot argue when you look at me like that,” you reply, breathless. “Nor would I, anyways.”

That is all the consent he needs before he is helping you out of your remaining clothes, almost ripping them in his hurry to have you on his tongue. His hands slip beneath you, gripping your ass and guiding your legs over his shoulders, and there he pauses. Yearning blazes in his crimson eyes, and then he dips his head and puts his mouth on you.

You gasp his name. Your hands scramble for purchase before you bury them in his hair again, yanking to encourage him further, and he responds by sucking harshly on your clit, making your hips jump and buck into his face. He groans into your heat, and the vibrations of it make you see stars.

Slowly, he pulls back, glancing up at you, and the sight of him is enough to make you moan: his eyes are glazed, fervent, worshipful, and your slick drips down his chin, the moonlight making it seem like liquid diamond. Bewitched by him, you choke out his name, and he smirks and slips two fingers inside you. Your legs begin to shake when he pumps them slowly in and out of you, bending them at the knuckle so he can hit that spot inside you.

The friction enraptures you, mounting in the pit of your stomach and winding up tight, and your thighs close around his head, clenching as Katsuki pushes you closer and closer to the edge. Turning his head, he sucks at your skin, marking you there, too.

You balance on a knife blade’s edge.

Abruptly, he slides his fingers out and your pussy clamps down a second too late; already, you open your mouth to lament it when he bends his head and replaces them with his tongue. Your words dissolve into wretched moans; you grind your hips against his face and lightning spears through you when his nose nudges at your clit.

Pleasure rises within you, a gradual, swelling thing that sneaks up on you in the unhurried nature of his movements. You can feel his smile against your cunt. You can feel the light burn as he grips your flesh, anchoring you to him so you could not pull away and part him from the taste of you even if you wished to.

You cry out his name as you come.

Katsuki nestles you close to his chest as you come down from your high, kissing your face as the aftershocks send shivers down your spine. Tenderness resides in his eyes, right beside a longing that makes you melt into him, weak with ardour as you slip your hand between your sea damp bodies to curl your fingers slyly around his cock.

His lips part as you jerk him, and you cross the small distance between you to bite at his lower lip, sucking it into your mouth and swiping your tongue over it as you feel him grow impossibly harder in your palm. Ridges swell down his length, flushed a coruscant orange that blurs down into obsidian at his base.

Tipping your head back, you look him in the eye. “I - I need you inside me, Katsuki.”

The words are clumsy on your tongue. You do not know how to articulate the pressing need to feel him, to not know where you end and he begins, to collide with him right there on the beach of this island that houses a kraken, to get lost in the salt on his skin and the eddy of the sea at your joined hips.

Lowly, he curses, treating you as if you are holy as he spreads your legs and settles between them, gripping the curve of your hip with one hand as he lines himself up. You press your lips against the warm bronze skin of his shoulder, sighing against him, urging him forward, urging him closer, a blissed out sound slipping from you as the ridges of his cock push past your entrance, the stretch nothing short of divine.

At last, he is sheathed fully within you. His hips kiss yours, and he remains there, pulsing hotly within you, the pleasure on his face bordering on pain as your cunt bears down on him, yet still, he will not move. Jaw clenching, he squeezes his eyes shut, and a hoarse groan tears itself from deep in his chest.

Panting, he bows his head, and when he looks up, tears rim his lash line, glittering like individual crystals dipped in the light of the stars. One rolls down his cheek and plops down onto yours, and you raise a hand to caress his face, raking your fingers through his hair to push it back from his forehead; he leans into your touch, turning his head to kiss your palm.

Slipping your hand round to cup the nape of his neck, you bring your mouth to his. Delicately, Katsuki kisses you before pulling back to press his lips feather-light to your eyelids - he lingers there, his breath fluttering warmly against your skin, his thumb drawing circles on your cheekbone.

Again, he kisses you, and it is only then that you taste the salt of your own tears on his tongue.

Your soft, raw sob echoes across the beach, and you dig your nails into his wide shoulders, urging him to move. With a gasp, he begins to rock his hips into you, and it breaks you apart. You keen, pushing back into his fluid, achingly unhurried strokes, scrabbling at his back in an attempt to bring him closer, to let him consume your very being.

Right there on the sand, under the moonlight with the seafoam lapping at your sides, he fucks into you, slow and deep, trembling and crying above you, and tenderly, you kiss him again. The roll of his thumb over your clit sends thrills chasing down your spine. He dips his head, burying his face in your neck, and fiercely, you hold him to you.

“Mine,” Katsuki whispers, and his teeth sink into your skin.

Something snaps inside you, and the fire in your gut blazes. Your cunt clenches hard around him, vice like around his cock, and you feel him twitch when your velvety walls clamp down on him, feel his soft exhale and know that he too knows the burn of the inferno in your core.

“Please, Katsuki,” you whine. “Harder.”

“Fuck,” he growls, his voice rasping in your ear, and suddenly you are empty.

Before you can protest, he flips you over, pressing your back into his chest and you reel, momentarily blinded by the night sky stretching high and wide above you. He is solid beneath you, and he knocks the breath from your lungs when he surges up into you.

You can feel all of him. Ruthlessly, Katsuki pounds up into you, as if he is desperate to taste the sea salt on your skin and inhale your scent and never let you go. Your body jerks with each thrust, your voice cracking as you cry out his name, the new heady angle of his cock inside you leaving you writhing, lost in the bliss he wrings from you.

His tail thrashes in the surf as he fucks up into you. You are limp in his arms, trembling all over as your back arches - he squeezes your breasts in one hand while the other settles between your legs, his skilled fingers working over your clit to kindle a mind shattering type of euphoria within you that renders you boneless and speechless, your jaw slack.

Your head falls back on his shoulder, your eyes falling shut as you moan, your pussy constricting tight around him. A hand circles your throat, squeezing lightly, and you mewl, your cunt unashamedly spasming at the feel of his calloused fingers about your neck.

“Let the moon and stars witness how I pleasure you, my love,” he snarls.

Your eyes roll, your toes curl. Somehow, he fucks up into you faster, harder, and his cock hits places that cause your vision to white out, the relentless friction of his ridges on your walls enough to make you sob and claw at the arm he uses to keep you in place. Distantly, you can hear yourself begging him, pleading for him to go harder, deeper, to not stop, to ruin you.

You scream Katsuki’s name as you come for the second time tonight. Uncontrollably, your thighs shake, and your cunt convulses around his cock; you can feel him slowing his thrusts, letting you ride out your high, but despite the overstimulation building in the tautness inside your stomach, you grind against him.

“Don’t stop,” you gasp. “Want - want you to come inside me.”

Your words elicit a groan from him. “Fucking filthy, aren’t you?”

Helplessly, you whimper in response, your pussy fluttering as he hammers up into you. He swears as he comes, spilling hot inside you, the sweet sound he makes muffled when he bites down on your shoulder. Both of you lie there for a moment, catching your breath, before gently, he manoeuvres the two of you so you lie on your sides, careful to keep himself deep in your heat; he is warm against your back.

Katsuki splays a palm over your stomach, holding you close, and you lace your fingers with his, sighing happily as he begins to pepper kisses over your back. You can feel the upwards curve of his lips as he smiles against your skin.

“Are you alright?” He asks, nuzzling the nape of your neck.

“Better than alright,” you confirm.

You remain silent for a while longer, happy just to lie there cocooned in his arms and the quiet wash of the ocean; you can feel the pulse of his heart against your back, steady and comforting. A hushed, steady noise comes from him, a satisfied noise, almost a purr. His cock is beginning to soften inside you, its ridges coming down - you both groan as he slips out, moving so his length is tucked against the curve of your ass.

“How did you know it was me?” He asks suddenly. “When I summoned the kraken.”

You squeeze his hand. “I saw you in its eyes. You know, I couldn’t have missed it if I tried, especially not when you yelled for the hunters to bring me to you. I heard it all the way from below deck.”

He laughs, and you shuffle closer to him, feeling his arms tighten around you.

“I didn’t even know the kraken was a real thing,” you tell him. “I wasn’t scared, though. I knew I’d be safe when I saw it was you.”

Katsuki scoffs. “You’re horrendously sappy, witch.”

You laugh, pushing your ass back against him. “I think you like it, merman.”

Laughing, you roll to and fro in the sand, with you grinding on him as he grips your hips and tries to wrestle you into submission. Eventually, he manages to incapacitate you by holding you tightly against his chest, dipping his head so he can whisper hotly in your ear.

“Keep that up and I’ll have to fuck you again,” he grits out.

“You’ll have to catch me first,” you challenge.

Giggling, you wriggle out of his grip and plunge further into the shallows, just catching him muttering something about insatiable and damn witch before he dives in and streaks after you, his dorsal fin cutting through the water. A hand closes around your ankle, and you squeal, flailing as you shake him off.

Clumsily, you take off towards the rock pools, wading through the sea water as fast as you can. You know Katsuki will catch you (you’re not exactly opposed to it - you’re running into the sea rather than out of it, after all). Again, he makes another grab at you, and you romp with him in the waves, grinning as you fend him off by splashing water at him, squirming out of his arms again.

In the end, he grabs you around the waist and traps you against one of the tide pools, the rock rough against your back as he smirks down at you. The sight of him above you is enthralling: droplets run down his chest in rivulets, rolling down the grooves his muscles make, and the moon hangs the sky behind him, crowning him with a halo made of silver. Your mouth waters.

Taking your chin in between his thumb and forefinger, he brings his face close to yours. A shiver runs down your spine. His red eyes fill your vision, glowing in the night, hypnotic and burning with craving so devout it borders on veneration.

He smiles. “Caught you.”

Katsuki takes you again, against the rock at your back. Afterwards, you lie there, spent and tangled together in the waning moonlight until you grow hungry again and you straddle him, mesmerised by the sight of him staring up at you, pleasure twisting his features as you ride him. You fuck and make love until the sun begins to rise, and it is only then that the two of you are finally sated.

So there you lie, held in his arms and the sea’s embrace - and inexplicably, you find that you do not regret all the pain you suffered at the hands of the hunters, because if it was not for them, you would never have been in that brig to heal him. Inside you, something blossoms within your soul, young and fresh and beautiful as the new moon, and it spills forth from your lips, a whispered confession pressed to his skin like a kiss.

“I love you, Bakugou Katsuki.”

Cupping your jaw, he brings his forehead to yours and murmurs your name. “I love you too.”

Katsuki glances down at you, where you are curled into the curve of his side like you were made to fit him, and he feels his failing, tired heart bloom once again. You have healed him in ways that run deeper than just his flesh.

He looks in your eyes, and when he does, the sea looks back.

You are his home.

A/N: by the way guys, afterwards they travel somewhere cool and the reader sets up a lil witchy abode by the sea and the villagers come to her for cures and half of them are lowkey a bit terrified of her mermaid husband but it doesn’t matter because she still gives really good remedies and he hasn’t eaten anyone yet and sometimes she and bakugou go out in their boat and attack hunter ships for funsies

also here's a picture i found off pinterest which i kind of imagine his tail being like except it's a bit more rigid and the dorsal fins are more spiney and longer, also there's more black and less red

taglist: @freakingsparkydreamer @d1orhaz3 @msjaeger @mellasimp14 @eyesforbkg @cottagedumpling @silkdolli @teeesthings @raksstuff

[mortalityplays]

Forgive me if I'm mistaking you for another person, but I remember you speaking at multiple points on the unsustainability of free social media services (I think especially in response to the cohost collapse?), and I'm curious on what your thoughts on bluesky are so far. I'm not an expert on the subject, but from what I've read previously it seemed like they were on track to be financially sustainable, but I don't know if the recent floods of users has thrown those projections off. Sorry if I'm mixing you up with someone else on my timeline, in that case just ignore me.

bluesky will almost certainly follow the same trajectory of monetisation => bloat => enshittification => decline as every other major platform built on venture capital and user hoarding. it's a terrible model that only works in the short term as a mirage for attracting funding and making founders look good for a year or two before they sell.

you can see the same effect in the decline of all the subscription box services that came into vogue just before covid: they feel great to use for as long as the initial injection of venture funding lasts, because the purpose of that funding at that stage is to attract users and impress the next round of funders with how pleasant/intuitive/efficient/ethical/good value the service is. that's the stage where they're handing out freebies and bowling over influencers, and every ingredient in the box is fresh and high quality and locally sourced. wow what a good deal, what a great system!!! why hasn't anyone done this before? the answer is because it's unsustainable by design. they rack up good reviews, sign on a billion new users, attract new funding from a bunch of much more credulous investors, and then gut all of the expensive parts. portions get smaller, ingredients get worse, packaging gets flimsier, prices go up, freebies turn into "5% off your first 9 boxes when you invite 3 friends", and customer service vanishes.

with social media (and platforms like discord) the logic is the same, it's just a little less glaringly obvious to the end user because they're not coming home to leaking packages of rancid chicken on the doorstep. bluesky has an advantage over tiny operations like cohost because it was founded by a billionaire making a point for the sake of his own image. it got a really significant chunk of startup funding, and the owner had existing connections and rep in the space to attract more. That's why it has survived the goldrush period, why it still feels good to use, and why users who have been burned so many times before are finally accepting it as a stable, reliable option. It's still in its venture capital honeymoon phase where the only thing worth spending money on is making the service attractive to users.

What I expect we will see next, with another mass influx of users from twitter and new funding from a rogue's gallery of tech venture sickos led by Blockchain Capital is a strong ramp up into monetising that userbase. They've already been pretty forthright about how they plan to do this, and I think it's a solid roadmap of how Bluesky will bloat and decay over the next few years:

this is a huge lol. don't worry, we're not going to hyperfinancialize the social experience through NFTs. the thing even crypto freaks started feigning amnesia about a year ago. real "our health conscious sodas are 100% arsenic free" messaging here. They know perfectly well that rubes users are suspicious of their typical 5 dimensional tech finance chess games and are patting our hands about last week's bogeymen so nobody worries too hard about whatever 'decentralised developer ecosystem' just happens to be helmed by a bunch of crypto guys. this definitely means something good and based and not a google-like single sign on user data harvesting operation.

This is the same shit that's currently rotting the floorboards of discord. Bluntly, there is no way to run a platform on this scale without gating functionality behind paid services. Discord has been squeezing free-tier file uploads and call quality etc. down steadily and cranking up subscription costs over the last year or two, throwing in chaff like animated avatar frames to try and justify the user cost. They're also doing the same misdirection thing again here, pointing to Thing We All Hate to deflect from thing we might not like very much when they do it. Booo elon booo we all hate elon!!! wait how do we feel about subscription models again,

watch out for this to kill porn on bsky like it has killed porn on every other social platform 👍 boooo we hate elon boooo stupid idiot and his 'everything app' booooo wait why do you need my tax information, what's that about mastercard,

Look, we are all aware social media is a money pit. Let's not forget dorsey was looking to sell twitter in the first place, long before elon's very public plunge into total online derangement. Subscription services are not going to plug the hole, so we are gradually going to see more and more spaghetti thrown at the wall while early funders shuffle cards and do their pyramid scheme bit bringing in stupider and stupider investments. this is the window in which bluesky will be temporarily worth using for us, for the idiot public, the poorly rendered crowd jpegs in the background of their venture capital MOBA. it's in their interests to slow and pad the decline as much as possible, because that is how they get maximally paid.

Given the scale of the money involved, and dorsey's weird ego investment, I think bluesky will probably manage a controlled drift for a good few years before it gets really bloated and painful. and by then we will all be so used to the *checks notes* decentralised developer ecosystem that we'll just be posting through it, watching another generation of columnists call another collapsing platform 'their beloved hellsite' and passing around that meme about not getting out of our chairs no sir until idk we all get on a fediverse neurolink alternative to stick it to the elongated muskrat and our brains pop peacefully in our sleep. which I guess is the closest thing to viability any social media platform can achieve.

anyway diogenes the cynic is also on bluesky

[yuanist]

kuroo texts you at 3:52 am, almost three months after you broke up.

admittedly, you probably should've silenced notifications from him by now, but when you roll over—eyes barely open, a little headache from the light—you know you're much, much too late.

a text, from your ex-boyfriend, the big, blue bubble stretched across your phone.

i just moaned your name during sex.

you blink at the screen.

you what?

moaned your name, he sends. totally ruined the moment.

you look up, and then down, and then up one more time to make sure what you’re looking it is real and not some strange, midnight hallucination before typing again.

you’re fucking with me, right?

dead serious, he replies. worst moment of my life.

you can hear his voice in the text, and if you weren’t so caught up in thinking about the poor girl who probably just had the worst sexual experience of her life, you would laugh.

you need to find a hobby or something, tetsurou. you send. and preferably one that doesn't involve tinder.

i have hobbies!

non-sexual ones?

he types for a while before a short, little totally! pops up on his side of the conversation.

and you hate that this is the part of him that’s most intriguing. the unintentional charm, too weird for his own good part that keeps you texting him at four in the morning.

yeah, you send, quicker than you intended. totally.

and suddenly, you're really considering something you shouldn't. before tonight, you hadn't heard from in a while—at least not enough to be thinking about him. you'd resigned yourself to your little, single life and you figured boyfriends might be more harm than they're worth (at least for a while, anyway), but now you have a new little do you wanna come over? typed out into your messaging app, finger hovering over the send button.

you take a minute, trying to rationalize.

the responsible part of you thinks it's way too late to be asking for anything good. you have class in the morning, and you're all tucked into bed, and bringing him here would really stir up some old feelings you weren't looking to bring back right now.

the other part of you—the more fun of the two, you'll admit—knows that you're thinking about him and he's... definitely thinking of you, so what's the harm in indulging a little bit? maybe nothing would happen anyway and you'd just end up staring at each other for a while, but sitting in your bed alone, staring doesn't sound like the worst thing in the world.

you send the text.

there's radio silence for a moment, and you think you might have just fucked the whole we can be exes and friends! thing up, but after a moment or two, he replies.

really?

and you sigh, don't make me change my mind.

he sends an immediate be there in 10, and you flop yourself back into the pillows.

now, okay, you'd be lying if you said you haven't been in this situation before. you and kuroo have always had a strange habit of—gravitating towards each other, to put it politely. it doesn't matter how many times you guys swear each other off, there's always going to be a party, or a text, or a run-in at the grocery store that brings you together (in more ways than one).

the whole i just moaned your name thing, though, that one's new.

your eyes flicker up to the ceiling, then down to your feet, and then, finally, your phone—the reality of this whole thing sinking in a little.

are you supposed to—shave your legs for this? put on your good pajamas: the ones that ride up a little when you bend over? is that where this is going? you're pretty sure it is, but every time this has happened before, it's been a little more spontaneous than this. right now, you have time to prepare and time to think, which you're now realizing is something you really did not want.

you sit there for a minute, coming to the conclusion that this is kuroo. you dated for two years, and you shared a bed at night for more of that time than you'd care to admit, so what does it matter how prepared you are?

you hear a key turn in the front door (the one from under the mat; you took away his actual key you think) and, all of a sudden, you're kind of nervous.

you haven't felt this way in a while, especially when it comes to him. you think you might hate it.

nevertheless, your feet hit the floor and you let yourself pad your way into the entryway, just in time to see someone sliding his shoes into the gap between the doorway and the wall.

you flick the light on, and he jumps a little.

a beat of silence, and then, "hi."

that's all you can come up with right now, truly, and you blame half of it on the time and the other half on the fact that kuroo looks like that.

he's always been pretty, no doubt about that, but right now he looks a little beat up in a way that you have to admit you're kind of into.

his hair's messed up: half of it shifted more left than right, with a little curl to it that he doesn't normally have. his cheeks are red, and he's a sort of out of breath and—did he run here?

"hi," he says, smiling, heaving out a breath.

(oh, he totally did. maybe you're a little more alluring than you thought).

you chuckle out one more, final hi, before he steps towards you.

he smells good—not that that's something you focus on, obviously—but he's still wearing that cologne you bought him last christmas and there's a little tinge of sweat to him that suits him so much better than you'd think.

he has a t-shirt on—one you got from a concert a couple years ago; you can't remember exactly when anymore, but it's clear that the thing has gotten its wear. the hole in the left shoulder is glaring at you from here and you kind of want to poke it.

"i have your key, by the way," he says then, dangling the little thing between his fingers. "did you ask for it back?"

oops.

"i—meant to." you snatch it from him, tossing it onto one of the side tables. "definitely meant to."

his hand lingers there for a second, a big, toothy smile spread across his face. "oh, sure you did."

and you eye him, a short what's that supposed to mean? rolling out of your lips.

he shakes his head, moving closer again—so much so that you can feel the cast of his breath along your cheeks.

"you still like me," he says, and you swear you can see his vocal cords bob in his throat.

"pardon?"

"you think i'm fun—and endearing, and still worthy of a house key."

"i think you're nuts." you say, fluttering your lashes a little. "and really not in the position to be making these accusations."

"you really think so?" he leans in one more time, close enough that his lips brush that arch between your jaw and your neck. "go ahead—tell me all about how crazy i am."

you feel something inside you quiver.

this right here, this is the whole game between the two of you. some sick little cat-and-mouse thing that always leads to something that you regret in the morning and—inevitably—repeat next week.

truthfully, though, you're getting kind of sick of fighting it.

"god, i can't stand you." you back away, edging towards the hallway that leads to your room. "are you coming with me or what?"

and he grins, because of course he is.

reblogs are appreciated! ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡

[violenteconomics]

remember this post i made about ace and epel (and eventually the other freshmen) pranking their upperclassmen?

yeah, so, here’s an idea for a significantly less funny prequel:

the first-years actually met their housewardens as kids, where they got very attached to one another, but absolutely none of them remember this. 

i’ve got a drabble written for riddle, ace, and deuce, but for the others, i’m completely lost, lol.

^

(warning: mentions of child abuse)

^

4-year-old ace trappola, a pint-sized brat who loses a ball in dr rosehearts’s backyard. since dr rosehearts has an extremely sour reputation around town for being impossible to be polite with, ace decides it’s not worth the patience it’ll take to knock on her door. so instead, he climbs her fence to retrieve it.

that’s when he notices the boy sitting by the windowsill, with a thousand books stacked all around him, looking very intrigued at the book in his hands. ace has never seen someone so engrossed with a book that doesn’t even have a picture on the cover, and having absolutely no filter, even at that age, he simply walks up to him and asks what he’s doing.

at first, riddle tries to shoo him away, knowing how his mother will react when she finds out there’s a random kid stepping on her perfectly-cut grass. eventually, though, ace’s childish stubbornness wins out, and riddle tells him about the history book he’s reading.

[ace is alice and riddle is alice’s sister in this scenario in case you don’t get the reference, they make me insane, okay—]

everyday, ace comes back to the windowsill at the same time (at riddle’s request, because he only has so much independent study time) just to listen to him. everyday, he says that it’s stupid, boring, and he can’t believe riddle actually reads book without pictures. everyday, he comes back to sit under riddle’s windowsill and listen to him go on about food chemistry.

but then dr rosehearts finds out.

ace doesn’t really know what happens after she showed up to their doorstep, looking down on him like he was a bug underneath her heeled feet, but next thing he knows, his dad’s telling him and brother that they’re moving to a different town. he tells ace that their house just isn’t pretty enough, but ace is young— not stupid.

(in the future, whenever ace scores high on a test, and riddle will smile and tell him he’s proud of him. every single time, it leaves a bad taste in his mouth for reasons ace can’t explain.)

^

5-year-old deuce spade only knows ace as “the kid who moved out”, but through some wicked twist of fate, he’s the next person to lose something in dr roseheart’s backyard.

deuce’s mom actually used to work for dr rosehearts as her secretary, but deuce doesn’t really like her, because she used to make his mom work long hours with little pay in return. his mom lived in dr rosehearts’s medical practice more than she actually lived in the crappy apartment they could barely afford. he was so glad when she quit.

but unfortunately, dr rosehearts’s house is right next to the park, and losing balls in her garden is unfortunately very common for most kids in the neighborhood. and since deuce really doesn’t want to talk to her, he jumps over her fence instead.

this time, riddle’s the one who notices him.

riddle’s missing ace a lot (he never found out why he stopped coming around), so to fill the hole in his heart, he invited deuce over. sheepishly, deuce walks over and lets riddle tell him about the book on agricultural trade he’s been reading. deuce doesn’t quite get it as fast as ace did, but unlike ace, he’s patient and hard-working and oh-so earnest in his attempts to understand.

of course, dr rosehearts isn’t going to help this relationship in the slightest. a few weeks later, she waits for deuce right outside the fence, before dragging him off once he’s out of riddle’s view. she mocks his attempts at trying to learn something that’s clearly above his mental capacity, for trying to be someone above his station, for knowing the rules and being too stupid to stick to them.

(“What sort of pitiful education have you received, that you cannot follow such simple rules?”)

when she delivers deuce back to his house, his mother says nothing. when she tells him they’re moving to a bigger house on the complete other side of the queendom, deuce doesn’t argue.

(deuce couldn’t tell you why doing so bad in school frustrated him to the point of becoming a delinquent. he really couldn't.)

[puppyguppy]

The birthday cake is simple for many, various reasons. For one, Shouta's never been the kind of guy for anything over the top, at least, not when it comes to him. For another, it was pretty damn cheap, doing it that way. A single-layer, white cake with just a little bit of black icing scrawled across the top, just enough to say 'its your birthday.' Yes, unenthusiastic period and all. Not that he isn't worth way more than that, but he'd appreciate the fact you didn't spend a fortune on some silly and disposable sweet-treat; the sentiment denser than the calories. It's also just very, very fitting.

Very funny.

Yes, you think you're funny (but so do a few others you let in on it).

There's not even a single candle in the cake, unlit or otherwise.

But, there's a reason for that, too.

At least, there was a reason for that, but Shouta has absolutely refused to cooperate with your little secret plan thus far. All you need him to do is sit down by his own damn cake for like, five seconds --

Eventually, you give up. Inevitably, probably.

It was stupid to think you'd even be able to pull something like that off, anyways. On Shouta Aizawa, of all people. Sure would've been something, though -- to see him, caught off guard with a face full of frosting. Still, there's a party to enjoy, and that's kind of hard to do while so hopefully hyper-focussed on Shouta's every movement.

Not that he's not nice to look at --

So, you let your guard down.

You relax and laugh along with everyone else; it's not a large party by any means, but Shouta knows quite a few people. Which is to say, quite a few people know Shouta. With gifts, good drinks, and great company, it's easy to get distracted.

You don't realize where you're sitting.

Not until fingers thread up into your hair from the nape of your neck, stopping once in the perfect spot to curl against your skull and cradle it, just for a second, in a false sense of security. You're given just enough time to shiver, scalp to shoes, but not enough to figure out who or what or why. And then your center of gravity shifts, your head suddenly forced heavier than the rest of you, and you're promptly suffocated by the dark, squishy, sugary embrace of cake. The very same cake you were trying so, so hard to shove Shouta's face into.

There's more laughter and some cheering, and you think you hear the shutter of a few cellphone cameras going off, all before you're pulled back up for air.

Pulled back up by the very same hand that'd pushed you down, and then had never left.

That grip tugs until taut, until your neck kinks and your head falls back, and you can't help it.

You moan.

And then you flush, heat following the same path as your goosebumps. And someone, somewhere, wolf-whistles while you blink and squint through the smushed confectionary covering your face.

And there, standing both beside and above you, is Shouta, looking every bit the smug birthday bastard that he is.

"You looked like you wanted a taste."

[rhiannonsknife]

Would you ever write dom Jackie? I feel like she would have two moods: mean dom and soft dom

nsfw content. mdni. soft & mean dom jackie taylor. fem!reader. should i start beta-reading? probably. am i going to do that? i doubt it.

jackie would definitely…evolve over the course of your relationship. she’s only ever ‘been’ with jeff before and even though they never actually got to having sex, the little experience obviously influenced the way she thought things were supposed to be done.

she’d be rather shy at first, i think, assuming it’s her ‘job’ to take, rather than give. it’s not like she doesn’t enjoy it, don’t get me wrong!! jackie loves it when you first touch her, when she -for once- doesn’t have to fake it like she’s used to but instead has a mind-blowing orgasm during your first time with her. so, yes, jackie does like it when you touch her. she likes the feeling of your body on top of hers and the way you’ll grind against her until she’s seeing stars.

and, still, she feels like there’s just something missing. or rather something she’s missing out on.

jackie doesn’t figure out what that certain something is until, one night, where she’s propped upon your thigh, grinding against you in ways she hadn’t done before. she’s still fully dressed too, while you’re almost completely naked beneath her. exposed, jackie can’t help but think as she rocks back and forth, at her mercy. pathetic, she thinks, too, then instantly feels embarrassed for the way that thought makes her throb.

to push the thoughts away for good, she leans down and kisses your mouth. with every stroke of her tongue, though, jackie feels another surge of that strange sense of possessiveness. blame it on the way she’s been socialized all her life, but she didn’t even think it would be possible for her to feel this kind of want until she finds herself rocking against you harder, kissing you deeper, feeling a constant pulse of mine, mine, mine that shoots straight between her thighs. she’s certain she’s soaking through her jeans.

you obviously notice the change in your girlfriend’s demeanor, but -god- you’re not going to complain with the way she’s riding you, head thrown back in pleasure, moans spilling from her parted lips freely.

when you reach out to touch, jackie bats your hands off of her without thinking. “no” she hisses, not even bothering to look at you. “don’t you dare.”

the facade falls just seconds later when she realizes what she’s said. anxiously, she glares down at you. she’s blushing furiously, trying to apologize and stumbling over her words. “i didn’t mean to” and “i don’t know what i was thinking, we can stop”

it takes a lot of reassurance but, finally, you’ve convinced her that it’s okay, that you liked it. after that night, which ends with jackie cumming multiple times as she pins your hands down onto the mattress (using you) and tells you to ‘shut up and take it’, she slowly becomes more confident in her sexuality and the way she wants to express it around you!!

i think she starts out as the soft, tame type of dom which only becomes meaner over time. but, while it does take a while for her to give in to her wants, oh boy, is it worth the wait…

mean!dom jackie who loves to make you strip out of all of your clothes for her without ever taking off a single item herself. who makes you get on your knees naked and shoves her fingers in your mouth, then chuckles softly as you gag on them. who forces you to look back up at her when you break the eye contact and grabs your cheeks so harshly that they’re all smudged between her index and thumb. who loves the way it makes her feel to tower above you and see you so willingly down beneath her.

mean!dom jackie who loves to hold you in place. whether it’s by actually tying you up somehow or by simply holding you in place. she gets so turned on from having you however she wants to. she’ll either eat you out for hours, to a point where you’re so overstimulated you’re trembling. you’re trying to close your legs but jackie won’t have that. instead, she is forcing them apart again harshly, lapping up your wetness with a broad tongue against your raw pussy. or she’ll use you for her own pleasure instead, completely ignoring the aching between your thighs. she’ll ride your face, or finger fuck herself right above you but just a little too far out of reach. and she will do that until you’re at a point where you’re babbling nonsense, sticking your tongue out and craning your neck for just a taste of her that she’s depriving you of.

mean!dom jackie who discovers strap-on sex….maybe she’s on a trip to a bigger city and actually dares to go into one of the sex shops there. not knowing any of the people and not having the risk of getting caught definitely makes it easier. she would probably be so shy to bring it up to you the first time :( that is until she’s got you on all fours for the first time…

mean!dom jackie who never got the hype of blow-jobs until she’s on the receiving end. saying she didn’t get the hype is an understatement, actually. with jeff, she hated everything about it: it was uncomfortable, he was too demanding, too messy about it. everything just seemed wrong. but that was before she got you between her legs, preparing her length for your cunt with your mouth; licking along the shaft and taking the tip in, sucking it gently. she can’t even feel it and she’s losing it already, fighting against the urge to just grab your hair and fuck your face right then and there. or maybe she does. her painted nails scrape your scalp as she grabs a fistful of your hair and forces the toy down your throat until you’re gagging around it <3

mean!dom jackie who loves to edge you!!! she knows exactly what to do to get you worked up and painfully close to the edge, only to pull away last minute. she’ll laugh when she sees you struggling and makes fun of the way you desperately grind your hips against nothing to chase the friction of her fingers. (guys…mean!dom jackie who spanks your cunt and makes you count the slaps then giggles each time you gush around her fingers…)

mean!dom jackie who, at the same time, likes to overstimulate you too. when you don’t stop rocking your hips up, she’ll suddenly force her fingers back into you. she doesn’t let up after the first orgasm, fucks you through two in a row, and shakes her head when you start shaking from the overstimulation. “oh but you wanted this, didn’t you?” she pouts. “you wanted this. now take it”

guys i feel like this has become an exclusive jackie taylor/rhiannon lewis stan blog…(i mean, hey, nothing wrong with that! but just in case anyone was wondering: i do write for the other yellowjackets as well! 😭)

[scary-grace]

Off-Script (Act 2) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Tomura's been Dabi's stunt double for almost a decade, and he's not easily impressed, but when he squares up with you for a fight scene, he finds himself caught off-guard in more ways than one. As the shoot progresses and sparks fly between the two of you, Tomura has to decide if you're worth the risk -- or if the best sparring partner he's ever had is all you'll ever be. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Act 1

Act 2

Tomura’s done stunts on at least four big-budget superhero movies by now, and the one thing he’s learned is that there’s always a lot to do – and at the same time, basically none of it is his job. He’s got a lot of downtime. Tomura counts the time he spends observing Dabi’s scenes as downtime, too, since Dabi’s a perfectionist who will do as many takes as a director will put up with. It takes Tomura a maximum of two takes to memorize what Dabi’s supposed to do, and after that, he’s free to do what he wants.

Nap, usually. Play a game on his phone if there’s WiFi, don’t burn through his data if there isn’t. Watch everything else that’s happening on-set, and since today was set aside from the beginning of the shoot to rehearse the second of the film’s three major battle scenes, there’s a lot for Tomura to look at.

He thought he was going to have to double Dabi for the fight scene, but because Quicksilver’s fighting Archangel rather than Psylocke, there’s no swordfighting involved. Dabi and Hawks got their fight choreography set early on, and it’s boring. Trade hits, banter, trade a few more hits, banter some more, drop a snippy one-liner, and flee the scene. Easy. More complex stuff is happening in the other battle groupings – Storm, played by Miruko, is fighting Cyclops, played by Bakugou, while Nightcrawler, played by a guy named Shirakumo who’s been around forever, zips around in the background. In Tomura’s opinion, having Quicksilver and Nightcrawler in the same movie is kind of pointless, but no one’s asking him.

Beast and Colossus are fighting. Tomura’s never bothered to learn their actual names, and he’s not planning on it today. The most interesting fight is the one that’s happening off to his right – a three and soon to be four-way brawl between Mystique, Jubilee, Phoenix, and Psylocke. It’s the most interesting, but also the most complicated. Aizawa hasn’t left you and the other three alone for more than five seconds since rehearsal started.

Tomura’s read the script, but the scene’s gone through some rewrites since then. The choreography hasn’t changed, though – there’s still an extended hand-to-hand exchange between Mystique and Psylocke, and it still ends with Psylocke getting thrown across the battlefield by Phoenix. Aizawa’s made you practice everything but the throw so far, probably in preparation for Midoriya’s sure-to-be-stupid plan to film everything in one take. According to Spinner, it’s getting to be sort of an obsession.

Not that Tomura can really blame him. He got a copy of the single-take fight scene he did with you and he’s watched it at least a few times a day ever since. It looks incredible, even though Tomura’s in it and Tomura knows he can’t act worth a damn. Even with half your face covered up for most of the scene, you’re acting enough to make up for him, and Tomura can’t get over how fluid and natural the exchanges look – like somebody choreographed them and the two of you practiced until it was flawless. No wonder Midoriya wants every fight to look like that.

But most fights never look like that, even with choreography, so everybody’s getting choregraphed within an inch of their lives. Tomura’s just glad he’s not involved.

“Hey, Shigaraki!” The voice belongs to Aizawa’s assistant or apprentice or whatever, who’s hurrying towards Tomura. “Aizawa wants you to come over. We’re going to practice the throw and we need someone to run the new girl through the basics.”

Tomura’s been avoiding you as much as possible. “Did she say she’s got it? If she said she’s got it, you don’t need me. You go over it with her.”

“This is a stunt. If it was Dabi’s scene, you’d be doing it,” Shinsou says. ‘We can’t afford a double for her. Just run her through the basics, and then you can go right back to doing fuck all.”

Tomura was already annoyed. Now it spills over. “Yeah, sure. Why not? I can do my job and yours and still spend the day doing fuck all while you run around in that stupid hat.”

Shinsou yanks the brim of his sunhat down, scowling, a second before he pitches a bottle of sunscreen at Tomura. “Put that shit on. FX will kill me if they have to edit out a sunburn.”

Tomura hates sunscreen, and he doesn’t give a shit if FX is mad at him. But he’s too experienced to make a mistake like that. Only newbies end up with sunburns on set. You’ve probably got one already. Tomura smears the sunscreen on as they walk, and Shinsou updates him on the proposed stunt. “It’s gonna be a launchpad, but it’s angled, so it’ll throw her backwards, not up in the air. Phoenix doesn’t have to be anywhere nearby, since she’s using tele-whatever –”

“Telekinesis.”

“Yeah, that. So it’s literally just going to be the fight, and then she steps back on the pad and gets launched. Easy.”

Tomura can do a stunt like that in his sleep, but you’re new. “How far is she supposed to get launched?”

“They’ll decide once they start filming. This is just to test it out.” Shinsou fumbles the slimy bottle of sunscreen when Tomura throws it back at him. “Come on. Dabi can play this shit off as eccentric, but you just look like an asshole.”

“I am an asshole,” Tomura says, only to realize that Shinsou’s stopped walking, and Tomura’s continued right into the middle of the scene. “Uh –”

“Thank you for sharing,” Aizawa says blandly. “Shigaraki, you’ve met –”

He says your name, and Tomura looks at you. You’re in the same set of practice clothes as everybody else, and your face is smudged with dirt and dust. And you’re not happy. “I can do it myself. You don’t need to bother Shigaraki.”

“You’re not bothering him. He was doing fuck all when I came over there,” Shinsou says. Him and his stupid hat. Fuck him. “Better safe than sorry.”

“The sooner we do this, the sooner we can go hang out somewhere with shade and air conditioning,” Ashido says. She’s wearing a few pieces of her Jubilee costume. Some actors like to. “Come on.”

Shade and air conditioning sounds nice. Tomura’s been out in the sun for three minutes and it’s already too hot. “Let’s get this over with,” he says to you. You nod. “Before you do any stunt, you need to check the equipment. Since you don’t know anything, I’ll do it for you.”

The crash pad you’re supposed to hit is lined up wrong. Tomura drags it into place, then crouches down to examine the launchpad itself. He knows who made this thing. “This had better not be a prototype, Hatsume.”

“It’s not! We already used it today for Kirishima’s student.” Hatsume has even more dirt on her face than you do, and she’s about ten times as hyped. “My precious baby works just fine.”

Even if the equipment’s been used before, Tomura’s not ready to sign off. He turns to you and finds you studying the launchpad yourself. “Hey, pay attention. I know you know how to fake hits. Have you ever done this before?”

“On wires,” you say. When? “Same principle, right?”

“No. Once they launch you off of this, your trajectory’s out of your control.” Tomura studies the distance between the launchpad and the crash pad. “Stay tensed up. You need to be in control of your body the entire time or you’re going to break something.”

You’re listening now. You nod. “This is still a movie and you want it to look believable, even if it’s stylized. Think about what you’re going to do with your arms and legs so you aren’t just flailing around,” Tomura continues. It’s weird to have you looking at him like this. Your eye contact was really intense during the duel, too. “Even if the throw gets out of hand, protect your head and neck. You can absorb a hit anywhere else, but land on either of those and it’s game over. Got it?”

“Got it.”

You’re still looking at him. Tomura racks his brain for something else to say. “If you’re in trouble and you can rotate, try to hit on your side instead of your back. That’s it.”

You nod. “Can you show me?”

“Huh?”

“I want to see what it’s supposed to look like before I try it,” you say. That’s – smart. Irritating as hell, because Tomura wasn’t planning on getting launched today, but smart. “Do you mind?”

“Yes,” Aizawa says. “The temperature is climbing and we’re on a tight schedule.”

“This will take fifteen seconds.” Tomura repositions the crash pad one more time, glances at you to make sure you’re watching as he steps onto the launchpad. You’re watching. It’s weird. “Count off. Three – two –”

Hatsume launches Tomura on one, as usual, and Tomura spends a split second being surprised at the force before he remembers that he’s supposed to be demonstrating. He chooses his arm positioning at random, rolls slightly in the air so he won’t strike the crash pad spine-first, and hits hard enough to wind himself. “I told you it worked,” Hatsume crows.

It works. Like being launched out of a cannon, sure, but it works. Tomura’s not going to hop up looking out of breath. He stays sprawled out for another few seconds, long enough for you to come over and offer him a hand up. You look a little worried. “Are you okay?”

“That was nothing,” Tomura says. He’s been doing stunts like that since he was a kid. He ignores your hand and gets up on his own. “Any questions?”

“What happens if it throws you harder than you expected?”

You’re observant. Tomura doesn’t like that very much. That plus the staring makes him feel like he’s under a microscope, and he’s way too experienced to get caught being caught off-guard. “Make sure you exhale when you hit. You won’t get as winded if you knock the wind out of yourself first.”

You nod. Tomura takes a closer look at him, wondering if you’re actually worried about him or just worried about stepping on Hatsume’s rocket launcher for yourself. Probably the latter. “Thanks for showing me,” you say. You’re standing close enough that Tomura can smell your sunscreen, which smells a lot nicer than whatever Shinsou threw at Tomura. “It helped a lot. And thanks for checking the equipment.”

“Yeah, whatever.” Tomura turns away to head back to his spot. He’s got fuck-all to do, so maybe he’ll nap, and maybe when he wakes up he’ll watch the fight scene again. Fighting you is a lot less awkward than talking to you, even if the fight ended with you pinning him to the ground.

“Tomura-kun!” Toga draws up alongside him. Like Ashido, she’s wearing part of her costume – the wig and facepaint for Mystique. “That was a nice throw. But you need to be nicer to the new girl. She’ll never go out with you if you keep being mean!”

“Why can’t you and Spinner drop it? I don’t want to go out with her.” There aren’t words for how much Tomura doesn’t want to think about this right now. Or ever. “Why do you even think that?”

“Why do you keep watching that fight scene?” Toga challenges. Shit. Tomura’s face heats up. “It’s because you have chemistry. I know all about chemistry. You’re mean to her when you aren’t mean to anybody else because you don’t want to have chemistry with anybody. I’ve never met a guy who hates being horny as much as you do.”

“I don’t hate being horny.” Tomura doesn’t even know where Toga dug that one out of. Then again, he’s known her since they both started working on the X-Men films, so she’s got ten years of Tomura’s bullshit to back herself up with. “What does that even mean?”

“You don’t want to like people because you think nobody will like you, but that isn’t true!” Toga pats Tomura’s arm. “But she’s not going to like you if you keep being mean to her. That’s not how you sweep a cute girl off her feet.”

Tomura’s got a lot of problems with that statement – mainly that he’s not being mean to you, that he doesn’t think you’re cute, and that he doesn’t want to sweep you anywhere, let alone off your feet. You don’t need him to do that when you’re doing your own stunts. And there’s something about the stunt that’s bothering Tomura, something that’s got nothing to do with the crush everyone’s pretending he has on you. The launchpad threw him hard. It must have thrown Kirishima pretty hard, too. Tomura’s not as tall as Kirishima, but both of them are taller and heavier than you. If Hatsume doesn’t recalibrate the launchpad, she’s going to throw you into the sun.

Tomura whips around and takes off back towards the practice site. Toga chases after him, but they’re both too late. Somebody’s already shouting, and Shinsou books it past Tomura in the opposite direction, already calling for a medic. Fuck. The others are crowded around you, and Tomura can’t see. He shoulders his way into the huddle and finds himself staring down at you.

You look sort of pale, and you’re smiling, but Tomura can tell it’s faked. Whoever taught you to smile through pain didn’t do a good job. Either that or you’re really hurt. You’re already trying to sit up. “Stay down,” Tomura snaps. He crouches down next to you, looks you over for obvious injuries, but you aren’t bleeding and nothing looks broken. “Where did you hit?”

“Just my shoulder. I’m fine.”

You don’t look fine. You look rattled as hell, and Tomura feels a sharp surge of guilt. He checked the equipment. He knew the throw was going to be hard, and if he hadn’t been so busy being pissed that you were looking at him while he talked to you, he’d have realized that what was a hard launch for him could actually throw you clear of the crash pad. In the bigger picture, this is Midoriya’s fault for not hiring a stuntwoman for you. Right here, right now, it’s on Tomura.

He hates feeling like this. “What happened?”

You don’t answer, but Uraraka, who plays Phoenix, fills in. What happened was exactly what Tomura could have predicted if he’d been paying attention instead of being stupid – you were thrown almost completely clear of the crash pad, and the only part of you that hit it was your shoulder. “It doesn’t hurt,” you insist, and you sit up, getting right in Tomura’s face. He can still smell your sunscreen. “It was just a shock. I’m good. Can we try it again?”

Ashido’s eyes widen. “Are you crazy? That thing almost threw you into orbit.”

“I’m calibrating it down,” Hatsume calls.

“She’s calibrating it down,” you say. “And now I know what it feels like, so I’ll do better.”

“Quit trying to be a hero,” Tomura says. “If you’re hurt –”

“I’m not hurt,” you say. Tomura realizes that short of pushing you back down in the dirt, he can’t stop you from getting up. He gets up first so he can offer his hand. Which you ignore. “I’m not bleeding, nothing’s broken, and I didn’t pass out. Let’s do it right this time.”

Aizawa’s phone buzzes, and he glances at it. “The medics are dealing with three cases of heatstroke. It’ll be a while.”

“Then I’ll go see them after we’re done here,” you say. “Come on. I thought we were on a schedule?”

Schedule is the magic word. It gets Aizawa’s attention, and everybody else still wants to get it over with and get out of the sun. Tomura sticks around to watch, or supervise – after what happened, he doesn’t trust anybody not to fuck things up. He sees Toga check in with you, and the others do the same. People like you. Sure, they like working with you, but based on the way they’re joking around with you, they like you for yourself, too. And they’re probably not the only ones.

Tomura’s stomach cramps at the thought, and his shit brain decides it’s a good time to think about the fight again. Thinking about it turns into watching it, as usual, only this time Tomura knows what your stupid sunscreen smells like. And just like every time he watches the fight, he’s caught off-guard by just how good the two of you are together. How easy you make an improvised fight scene look. Like you know each other’s moves by heart, even though you’d never met before, let alone watched each other fight. That’s chemistry. That’s why Tomura’s been waiting so impatiently for his next fight scene with you. He wants to feel like that again.

Toga was right. Unfortunately, Spinner was right, too, when he said Tomura looked into it. Tomura looks really into it. Tomura puts his phone away so he won’t have to look at his own stupid face any longer.

The second run-through of the four-way fight goes well, and nothing goes wrong with the launchpad, so Aizawa calls it good for the day. The actors scatter to their trailers or to the shuttle back into town with more urgency than usual. There’s some kind of producer party/press thing going on tonight, and all the big-name actors are supposed to go. Dabi included.

But Dabi’s back on his bullshit, of course. When Tomura goes to check on him, he’s lying facedown on the floor of his trailer with music playing in the background and a giant water bottle within easy reach. Water’s not the only clear liquid on the planet. Tomura pries open the water bottle and sniffs it. Just water. This time.

“You really think I’d chug water out of a Nalgene? Fuck off,” Dabi says from the floor. “Who did and made you my sponsor?”

“I’m not your sponsor. You asked me and Spinner to check in with you about this shit.” Tomura wasn’t crazy about being part of Dabi’s official sober support system, but he does spend more time with Dabi than almost anybody else who’s involved. “Are you going to that party tonight?”

“Sure, why not?” Dabi flops over to his back. He’s famous for looking bored whenever he’s not on camera, but this looks worse than usual. “Dress up in a stupid outfit and go watch my coworkers have fun drinking stuff I can’t drink and snorting stuff I’m not supposed to touch. It sounds like a great time.”

It sounds like shit, but that’s how Tomura feels about most parties. “I should make you go,” Dabi says. “If you got trashed you’d just puke in the bushes like a college girl instead of going batshit crazy in front of the paparazzi.”

He sits up to drink some water, then flops back down. “Too bad you don’t look more like me. I’d make you do all the stuff and I could go die in peace.”

The door to the trailer opens and Spinner comes in without asking first. “What are we talking about?”

“Me dying in peace.”

“Okay, are we seriously talking about that? Do I need to call somebody?” Spinner’s a lot better at this than Tomura is. “Or do you just not want to go to the party tonight?”

“Don’t call anybody,” Dabi growls. “If you were me, you wouldn’t want to go to a photo op, either.”

“Yeah, I guess this would be your first official one since the thing,” Spinner says. He sits down on the floor next to Dabi. Tomura leans back against the wall with his arms cross, idly tuning in to the music. “Want one of us to come with you?”

Tomura kicks him, glares when Spinner looks up, but Dabi’s already shooting the idea down. “No. My sister already gets DMed way too much RPF with you dipsticks in it.”

“Okay, then find somebody who’s going to be there who’s not a huge partier,” Spinner suggests. “Just glue yourself to them the whole night and do whatever they do.”

For a second Dabi looks like he might go for it. “They’re all partiers except the lame ones.”

Spinner punches Tomura in the leg. “What do you think, Shigaraki?”

“I don’t care about this,” Tomura says. Spinner punches him again, harder. “Just hang out with Hawks. He only gets wasted at the wrap parties.”

“No,” Dabi says at once. “Not him. I hate him.”

“So go hang out with him and you’ll hate him less,” Spinner says. Dabi groans. “Worst comes to worst, text us and we’ll come get you.”

“Like that’ll happen.” Dabi sits up for another swig of water, but doesn’t lay down again. “Get out. I have to find a ride.”

“Have fun,” Spinner says. Tomura’s out the door already, and Spinner catches up to him before he’s down the steps. “Was that water in there?”

“Yeah, I checked.”

“Good,” Spinner says. “Speaking of parties, though –”

He trails off like he’s expecting Tomura to fill in the blank. “What?” Tomura asks.

“Everybody who’s not at the producer thing is throwing one of our own. Tonight,” Spinner says. “And that means you should –”

“What?”

“Invite her to the party,” Spinner says. Tomura starts walking faster. “Seriously. She’s not a big enough star to get invited to the main one and she might not know ours is even happening. Go find her and ask.”

“No.”

“Do it.”

“No,” Tomura says. “Leave it alone.”

Spinner shakes his head. “Go ask her or I’m sending everybody that livestream where you played a dating sim and got shot down by all the characters.”

There was a while where Tomura wanted to be a streamer, but what little there is that’s engaging about him in person absolutely fails to translate live on camera. He had to resort to gimmicks to get views, and one of the gimmicks was playing easy games while getting drunk. Or at least Tomura thought they were easy games. Dating sims are harder than he thought they were, and once every single romanceable character had rejected him, he secured the achievement Turbo Virgin, won by the 0.06% of players who couldn’t pull even one fictional girl.

That would have been bad enough all on its own, but Tomura teared up during the last rejection cutscene, too. The fact that the stream still exists somewhere haunts Tomura daily. “You wouldn’t.”

“Hey, I’m just trying to help make your dream a reality,” Spinner says. “Go ask her to the party. The worst thing she can say is no.”

In theory, that’s true. In practice there are a lot of ways to say no, and Tomura thinks of all of them as he heads off in search of you. Of course you’re nowhere to be found. You might have caught the bus back to town already, or maybe you got invited to the actor party after all. The only thing Tomura has to work off of is you telling the others that you’d go see the medics after shooting wrapped for the day. He sticks his head in the medic tent and steps back out again in a hurry, his face going up in flames. You’re in there, all right. You’re sitting on a cot with your back to the door and your shirt in a heap next to you.

You’re just sitting there with your clothes off when anyone could walk in. What is wrong with you? Sure, there are plenty of actresses whose costumes are revealing as hell, and sure, half the women Tomura knows dress for a trip to the convenience store like they’re headed to the club, but you? Tomura didn’t think you were that type, and if you are – this is an even worse idea than he originally thought.

Tomura needs to get his shit together. Of course your shirt’s off. You hit your shoulder and the medics need to look at it. He’s pretty sure you’re wearing a bra, and even if you aren’t, you’re facing away from the door. He’s not going to see anything, and if he keeps this bullshit up, he’s going to earn a real-life Turbo Virgin achievement half a decade after he lost his virginity. Tomura steels himself and ducks back inside.

The medic’s talking to you. “I put the rib back in place and it should stay there, but no more launching stunts for the next day or two, all right? And I’m giving you one of these so you’ll sleep tonight – but don’t take it until after the party. It doesn’t play well with alcohol or anything else.”

“I’m not going to the party,” you say, reaching for your shirt. Tomura gets a good look at the bruise darkening across your shoulder blade and back before your shirt conceals it. “I’ll take that and go to bed early.”

“I meant the other party,” the medic says.

“There’s another party?”

Fuck. “Of course,” the medic says, surprised. “Hasn’t anyone – what are you doing here, Shigaraki? You should know better than to just barge in.”

The medics don’t like Tomura very much. He ignores her. “There’s another party,” he says to you, and you turn slowly to face him. “Everybody who’s not A-list goes to that one. I came to invite you, in case you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t,” you say.”

“Well, now you know,” the medic says briskly. “Remember what I said. Don’t mix that medication with anything.”

“I won’t.” You get up from the cot and brush past Tomura, stepping back into the sun. The smell of your sunscreen drifts over his face as he follows you out. “So there’s a party?”

“Yeah. We throw one whenever the A-listers call some over-the-top press conference a party.” Tomura falls into step next to you. “You dislocated a rib?”

“Only a little bit.”

“You can’t dislocate something a little bit. It’s dislocated or it’s not.” Tomura glances at you. “You should have made them wait on the second stunt. Keeping going after you get hurt makes you stupid, not tough.”

“Really?” You look up at him. “Where I come from, anything that’s not performance-impairing is something you can push through.”

“Right, because there’s no difference between a Broadway show and a superhero movie.”

“No, there’s a difference,” you say. “Broadway’s a lot hard than this.”

Tomura scoffs. “Nice try.”

“It is,” you say. “Six to eight weeks of all-day rehearsals, plus physical conditioning on the side, and after that it’s seven shows a week – the same thing, over and over again, for however long the show runs or however long you can take it.”

Huh. “The leads have it the toughest,” you continue, “but the ensemble’s made up of understudies, and there are multiple backups for each of the leading roles. You know, because the show must go on. In practice that means being responsible for ensemble work plus one or two entire roles – which you only get to perform if something happens to the person above you. It’s a house of cards, and if enough people fold the whole thing comes tumbling down.”

You stop walking, and so does Tomura. “So yeah, I’d say theatre and this aren’t comparable. I don’t know where we’re going.”

“I was following you,” Tomura says. You give him a frustrated look. “So you’re saying you’d do a whole show with a rib out of place.”

“I did a whole show throwing up in the bathroom every time I went offstage,” you say. Tomura blinks. “Your job’s a lot rougher than mine, though. Catastrophic injuries are kind of rare in theatre. It’s hard to break your neck falling off the stage.”

“It’s a lot easier to break it falling off a building.”

“You – what?” Your eyes widen with surprise – and worry. “How?”

“That one space movie – Venus Rising or something.” Tomura always pretends he doesn’t remember the title. You must know it, though. He sees your mouth twitch. “The villain falls off a building at the end of Act One and comes back as a crazy cyborg. I didn’t double-check my equipment, and my harness snapped right when it was supposed to catch me.”

Your mouth turns down at the corners, in the same moment as Tomura remembers why you wound up in the medic tent in the first place. He grits his teeth against the guilt. “I should have learned from that and checked yours better.”

“I should have known how to do it myself,” you say. “It wasn’t on you.”

Maybe it wouldn’t have been, if Tomura had only checked the device instead of trying it out. “I knew the launch was too hard. If I’d been thinking instead of –” thinking about you “– I would have told Hatsume to recalibrate it before it was your turn. I’m sorry.”

“It happens,” you say. “Nobody died, and now I know to ask about that stuff. It’s okay.”

Tomura wants to tell you that you’re being naïve, but before he can do that, you change the subject. “So, this party. What are crew parties usually like?”

“Like any party. Drinks, food. Games, sometimes.” Tomura thinks about it. “Music. Yamada, the composer – he has this DJ person he puts on. There might be karaoke. It’s not the worst.”

“Are you going?”

“Yeah,” Tomura says. “You think I’d invite you to a party I’m not going to?”

“I didn’t think you’d invite me anywhere at all,” you say, and shrug. And wince. “I’ll see you there, okay?”

Is Tomura supposed to walk with you or something? Is that how this is supposed to work? “Just follow the music. I’ll see you there.”

Tomura watches you walk away, a disgusting knot of anticipation pulling tight in his stomach. He’s pretty sure he asked you out. He’s pretty sure you said yes. And he’s damn sure that whether you show up or not, whether he drinks too much or nothing at all, and whether he gets called to drag Dabi out of some easily-photographed situation he got himself into, he’s in for a really rough night.

[sur-i-ki]

5/20

The nights before and mornings after

The camp is silent when you finally slip into sleep, the weight of the day’s battle heavy on your shoulders. Beside you, he’s resting, or so you think, his breathing shallow but steady, a comforting rhythm that lulls you deeper into the quiet embrace of slumber. He’s here, and that’s all that matters; his hand is close to yours, his warmth within reach. You close your eyes, finally allowing yourself to feel safe.

But he doesn’t sleep.

He’s been fighting the darkness creeping through his body, a chill that has nothing to do with the night air. You don’t know about the wound, hidden beneath his armor, the blood that’s been soaking into the fabric, too slow to notice but deadly all the same. He’s slipping away, and he knows it, but he won’t wake you. Instead, he reaches for the scrap of paper tucked into his pack, pulling it out with shaking fingers. He forces himself to write, his vision blurring, his hand unsteady, the pain sharp with each movement. His gaze flickers to you, and his heart aches with everything he’s about to say—everything he should have said long before now.

If you’re reading this, then I’m gone.

The words are jagged, the ink smudging as he presses harder, pushing through the pain that sears through him with each heartbeat.

I didn’t tell you. I wanted to, every single day, but I was afraid. Afraid that if I said it, I’d lose you. But now… now I’m out of time, and I need you to know: I’ve loved you from the moment I met you. I love you now. I love you forever.

He pauses, breathing shallow, struggling to stay conscious as he fights to keep going.

Every moment, you were there, this light I didn’t deserve. You made me believe I could be someone better, someone worthy of standing by your side. I wanted so much to tell you, but I could never find the words. You, with your laugh that could cut through even the darkest nights, with your strength that left me awed—every part of you was something I cherished.

His fingers shake as he writes, his hand smearing the ink as he struggles to continue.

There were so many times I almost told you. On the long nights when it was just us, sitting in silence, I almost reached for you. Almost touched your hand, hoping you’d understand without words. And each time, I held back. I was afraid of losing you, of ruining what we had, but I can see now how foolish I was.

I imagined a life with you—one where we’d have quiet mornings together, where I’d get to see you smile every day. A life where I’d tell you I loved you as often as I could, just to see your eyes light up.

The pain sharpens, and he forces himself through it, pushing every ounce of strength he has into these last words.

If I could, I’d have given you everything. I’d have spent my days making you laugh, my nights protecting you, my life in your hands. I’d have told you every single day that I loved you, that you were the reason I kept going, that you were my hope, my reason to fight.

Please remember that, if nothing else. You gave me a life worth living. You were everything to me. Even now, my heart is only yours.

Don't cry, idiot

See you not too soon

His hand falters, the pen slipping, and the letter trails off in a shaky line as his strength leaves him. He pushes a final kiss onto the letter, leans over and kisses your head. The, his head leans back, eyes fluttering closed, the letter slipping from his fingers as he falls into stillness.

----

Hours later, you wake, your mind foggy, your limbs heavy with sleep. You reach for him instinctively, but something feels wrong. His hand is cold, his skin unnaturally pale in the soft dawn light. Panic blooms in your chest as you sit up, turning to him, shaking him gently, calling his name. But he doesn’t stir. His face is peaceful, but there’s an eerie stillness to him that chills you to the bone.

Gods, no.

Your eyes catch on the crumpled paper beside him, his handwriting scrawled across it, shaky and uneven. Trembling, you reach for it, clutching it tightly, feeling the roughness of the paper against your fingers as you unfold it. The words blur through your tears, each line a fresh wave of agony as you read his final confession.

“I’ve loved you from the moment I met you.”

The words are heavy, every stroke of ink a reminder of what he never said, of everything he’s leaving behind. His love, his regret, his dreams—each line pierces deeper, a wound that leaves you breathless. You can feel him there, in every word, his presence lingering like a ghost in the paper you clutch to your chest.

His scent clings faintly to his cloak, mixing with the metallic tang of blood and the lingering smoke from last night’s battle. Your chest tightens, your heart pounding as you bring the letter closer, his words mingling with the pain that radiates through you. Each line is a glimpse into the life he’d imagined with you, a life you’ll never share, every word a reminder of what’s been lost.

You close your eyes, pressing the letter to your chest, feeling the rough edges dig into your skin, grounding you in the unbearable reality of his absence. The world around you is muted, sounds blurring together, the dawn too bright, too harsh against the hollow ache in your heart. The warmth of his final touch is fading, slipping from your grasp as you clutch the letter tightly, as though holding it close could somehow bring him back.

You lean down, pressing a kiss to his forehead, his skin cold beneath your lips, the finality of it settling over you like a shroud. The air is thick with silence, broken only by your whispered words, your voice cracking as you say all the things you never got to say, the words he’ll never hear.

"I love you too, idiot."

And your heart shatters, never to be healed again, holding him and his echoes close.

⇝ 𝘓𝘪𝘬𝘦𝘴, 𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥! 𝘗𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘦 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘶𝘵𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘮𝘺 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯

[scorndotexe]

Out of curiosity, why do you dislike Midnight Mass? It's really like hear your opinions.

it's just so fucking BORING!! the concept is interesting i do find the concept interesting (vampire priest who believes his vampirism is a gift from god) but somehow it was done in the least interesting way possible. sometimes there's like a minute where i thought "holy shit is it finally gonna get better" and then i watched the next episode and it continued to be exactly the same.

all the characters are basically exactly the same. i know it's by monologue flanagan but can they at least monologue in DIFFERENT ways??? dear god. he edited it himself and you can REALLY tell. the fucking ten minute scene that's just "what do you think happens after we die? vcnvncmrnwbvnjef vdmnnc cmnennwneetnewnnwbefnbrtnbemrbermnbmrbtrtbwnrebeb" is crazy who thought that was a good idea. god every character was so forgettable i think i remember like 4 names. genuinely i see people talking about a character and i have to look them up and i STILL don't remember them. don't get me started on the fucking therapy speak. also riley flynn is the most boring protagonist i've ever seen i can't think of a single personality trait he has. i can barely think of ANY personality traits ANY characters have.

i know we shit on his adaptations a lot (as we should) and at the very fucking least he didn't ruin another excellent work of horror with midnight mass but he is NOT a good writer with his own stuff either!! it's so BLAND. even when it's not boring it's bland and uninteresting. i know i'm biased i know i watch extreme horror to find artistic value in underlooked pieces of media so i'm used to "that freak shit" but he did nothing!!! he did nothing with his vampire priest! he was literally irrelevant by the end because he gave that antagonist role to some other character and he was never really the protagonist either. he was just there for a really dumb late-game romance plot/plot twist.

it's such an unbearable show and the ending isn't even good!!! its tone is so fucking weird like everyone dies and yet there's still a weirdly hopeful tone to it. i feel like that's a moment to REALLY lean into the tragedy. it doesn't have a happy ending but it also doesn't let you feel sad enough for it to be truly tragic.

also there's like three different types of vampire in the show and it makes NO sense why they're so different from each other. i'm not asking for extensive lore i'm just asking for consistency.

it's like 8 hours long and i know i've probably spent way more than that complaining about this fucking show but still a waste of my time. it just sucks so much. it could have been an okay movie but as a whole show it's so dragged out and doesn't DO anything with those eight hours. i don't mind a slow burn i really don't but a) the build up has to be worth something and b) it has to have something really really good at the end of the build up.

honestly it looks SO good in gifs and screenshots and fanart that it makes me wish the show was better because you could have a much better experience just looking at those and imagining a good show than actually watching it.

on the plus side if you DO watch the actual show riley's death scene is the funniest shit in the whole thing.

[veilofaponia]

Xiao is no good at navigating human emotions, but even he can tell there’s something off about you.

They’ve always been much more effort to figure out than what it was worth, so he’s never given them much thought, but it’s hard to miss what’s going on with you. Even he notices the dullness in your eyes, as if you’re never fully present, that twinkle he had gotten so used to now gone. He notes that your movements are sluggish, if you even move at all. You tend to spend a lot of your time simply laying down, staring down at a wall or something comparably unremarkable.

He wants you to go back to who you were, that old attitude that ultimately caused you to end up like this. Thus, he sets out to observe humans to find some kind of solution.

That one couple catches his eye, the one that always seems to be arguing yet still remains a pair. Xiao notices that every time the woman is mad at her husband, he gets her some kind of gift, and suddenly they’re all lovey-dovey again.

Getting you a gift… That’s within Xiao’s realm of capabilities. He finds something he’s sure you’ll appreciate, you’ve always liked pretty things. He places it next to you while you’re sleeping (an activity you’ve been doing a lot more than before, he thinks) on the mattress of your room in his abode and quickly teleports away, lest you wake up and catch him in the act.

The next day, he returns, assured you’ll be back to normal, maybe even gushing over the trinket. You’re awake, but alas, you’re staring at the wall again, back turned to both Xiao and his gift. The shiny rock he got you hadn’t even moved a single inch.

That’s odd. He was sure that should’ve been enough, but apparently he was wrong.

Staring at your figure on the mattress, he racks his brain for any kind of alternative, only to come up with nothing but blanks.

This is frustrating. If there’s something wrong, just tell him already, then he can fix whatever the issue is and have this solved.

Communication, he realizes because of his train of thought. He’s caught wind of communication being important in relationships. You two technically aren’t dating, but it’s close enough.

You don’t turn to face him when he demands you tell him what you’re doing, this whole thing of doing all day, of never talking or reacting, but you do reply, though your voice is a little muffled from the blankets you're covered by.

I want to go outside.

That confuses him. There is an outside, but you’re still insisting on staying inside the whole time.

You can go outside. Just walk through the front door.

That’s not the same, you bemoan, everyday is the exact same, it’s like living in a time loop.

That’s it? The repetitiveness of the cycle in his abode was causing this? That’s an easy fix, so much so he almost scoffs that this was all it took to make you so depressed. Humans are so sensitive. He’s sure you’ll feel better the second he changes things up.

. . .

Okay, apparently not.

He’s changed the weather and time in his abode. Many times now, actually. So then why do you remain the same? It’s not like you haven’t noticed, he’s dragged you outside to show you, but you just shrug and shuffle back inside.

Why?

He did what you asked, got you what he thought to be the right treatment, so why aren't you cured?

This whole ordeal feels like a pesky weed that won’t be removed no matter how hard he tugs. He’s aware that his attitude is the root of said weed, but he feels there’s no way for him to disperse of something that already digs so deep. This is the way he chose for things to go, spontaneous and badly planned as it was. Nothing to be done now, that’s his reasoning.

Then, are you really going to stay like this forever? This dull, unresponsive you? Is this going to become the new “normal”?

Xiao doesn’t want it to (and he insists it’s because he wants to protect your livelihood, not because of some selfish reason like wanting to quell this sense of anxiety within him or not wanting to lose you). There has to be something, anything he can do to get even a glimpse of the real you.

Now that he’s really thinking about it, there is something, but it has a bitter taste building in his throat at the thought of going along with it.

But if it’s what it takes to get any kind of reaction out of you, maybe it’s worth it.

I’ll take you outside. To the real world.

The response is immediate, so quick it even shocks Xiao. You sit up in bed and stare at him with wide pupils and your mouth a little agape, almost as if you’re asking him really? The real world, the place Xiao ripped you from, deeming it too dangerous. Too many risks, too many variables, making it impossible for him to secure your safety there.

He gives little time for questioning. He walks up to you and grabs hold of you, pulling you to your feet, then your surroundings become unstable.

You’re attacked by a sudden brightness, stinging and closing your eyes that grew too used to the lighting of your room, and you can’t help but gasp at what you see when you reopen then.

You’re high up, far away from civilization, but you know this isn’t something Xiao created. That familiar, dingy mattress is replaced by grass under your feet. The neutral temperature is replaced by the heat of the sun shining on you, the rays causing your eyes to twinkle in the light, only further adding to how happy you look right now, with those wide eyes and that smile reaching them.

You realize now he’s brought you to a mountain. It’s cold, really cold, but you’d rather jump down right now than voice your discomfort. Knowing Xiao, his paranoia would immediately kick in and you’d go right back to his abode.

He’s holding your wrist far too tight for comfort — you’ll have to convince yourself you don’t notice the way his cheeks are dusted red at the contact — but you can almost pretend he isn’t there at all, because he is of no concern right now.

You’re outside, the real world. Not some fabricated world where Xiao controls every little detail, down to the length of every individual blade of grass.

It feels surreal.

You’re preoccupied with taking in everything while you still can; there’s no saying when Xiao will decide it’s been enough and take you back, so better make every second count. You don’t notice how the adeptus is looking at you. You don’t notice the relief painted on his features, usually stoic and awkward.

If this is the result of taking you to this real world, then perhaps this wasn’t a terribly stupid thing to do. Necessary sacrifices and all that.

He just really hopes you won’t get used to this and start demanding he take you out more.

[rat-rosemary]

I want to write a fic about Dream moving into a frat mid college for some reason and he has the surgery scars he has and every single time a frat bro sees him without a shirt on their reaction is "Dude, cool scars!! ... is it a trans thing?" "Uh... no, they're like, surgery scars" "Cool cool... you're still going with he/him right? Just to check" "yeah"

[cloudcountry]

thank you to the three people that tagged me in the twst author spotlight ^^ irene, siren, and sapphy, thank you. i read what you said about me and i was very touched. i didnt think i would gain so many friends in such a short period of time, and you all deserve to be recognized for your contributions to the twst community!! :D

EVERYONE LOOK AT MY FRIENDS.

@tinyletterz, who has a beautiful soul and amazing writing. i've known her since my baby days on quotev writing for a fandom which shall not be named, and it's so such a pleasure being her friend. she writes twst x reader content and has a gorgeous series about flower languages that i think about a lot. thank you remy for helping me get accustomed to tumblr, you're the og!!

@shkrmpp, who was my first mutual that i'd never met before here. thank you for asking about jellyfish and being such a bubbly presence on my dash. shrimpy writes x reader content and creates adorable art!! their hair dye series with the leech twins is super cute and i find myself thinking about teh floyd part in particular very often ^^

@fukashiin, with the prettiest themes and the gorgeous art style. winou CONSISTENTLY writes absolute bangers that make me so giddy. this one in particular is one of my favorites, and her writing style reminds me of a soft summer breeze. she's such a bubbly person and its so fun talking to her, even if we don't talk often. ^^ she's one of the three people that keeps my deuce content afloat.

one could say many things about the beloved @hisui-dreamer!! from the way she adores her friends to teh way she writes, rinna is always soft and sweet. she radiates comfort and is such a soothing person, i feel so safe around her. she writes x reader content and every single piece is its own masterpiece. she's one of my closest friends on here and i wish nothing but the best for her every day.

@merotwst, who has a bucnh of adorable oc content (on @meromessy !!) and writes x readers!! ellie in on haitus right now takinga well deserved break. <3 but she writing is amazing and i am FLOORED whenever i see her art!!! it's literally so gorgeous and i don't understand how she does it. its crazy. how is so much talent in one person.

@siren-serenity is not only a lovely author of x reader content, but also a lovely friend. ^^ siren also has an oc named melody who is so cool!!!! she was the pastor at my wedding and fought TOOTH AND NAIL for that position LMAO love u renren!!! she really writes azul SUPER WELL and im so happy to have met someone so calm and soothing to talk to.

@officialdaydreamer00, aka nutmeg, is a rascal. an absolutely rascal but they're really the best. they have a yuusona with LORE and a bunch of really creative & cute events!! seriously nutmeg, nobody does it like you. if you want to see our favorite twst boys in strawberry dresses or recieve a pair of cute earrings, irene's blog is the place for you!!!

@the-v-lociraptor has STELLAR art. she was one of my firts mutuals on twst tumblr and i was terrified of talking to people but her vibes were very much "i am nice you dont need to be afraid" and sniffling scared me was like "OKAY I CAN TALK TO YOU" LMAO but yeah. she draws people so,,, full. thats the only word i can use to describe it. they just look s soft and alive and its really so amazing. i love her art so much!!

@siphoklansan is another artist!! i think about the art she drew from loona's heart attack with twst character weekly basically. it has been stuck in my brain since i started following her. sippy, its trully beautiful how you mix your culture and your art together. i remember you talking about it when you were drawing fairy gala stuff and it was just stunning. please keep doing what you're doing!! i hope your hiatus proves restful <3

@ceruleancattail is one of THE most creative writers i have ever met on this platform. every time i check out their account theyre talking about a new au or doing something different. they write x reader stuff and ar ethe biggest cater kisser ever (even if they wont admit it hehe!!) their writing is so refreshing, if that makes sense. their butler au is so goofy whaahwwahwah

@moonlit-midnight has the prettiest writing style :((( hannah is literally so sweet and it shows in everything you can find on this blog. THIS BLOG HAS PLATONIC FICS TOO!!!! DID YOU KNOW THAT?????? and even better, they're inspired by hannah's own friendships :((( literally the most wholesome thing. you can find x reader's here!!!

@iseethatimicy is an x reader writer and fellow azul kisser!!! she writes some really cute stuff for oour favorite silly little cephalopod AND AND AND AND HAS SOME OCS!!! THATA ARE SUPER COOL!!!!! shimiko and icy are both so cool and interesting 9EVEN THOUGH IM VERY SHIMIKO BIASED AAAAA I LOEV SIREN TROPES !!!!!)

@ryker-writes IS SO KIND. he gave me the sweetest set of flowers for his garden event :(( i still think about them and aaaaa i havent forgotten when he fought me over me being cool LMAO so goofy wahhwaawh!! HIS OC JAXON AND RIDDLE ARE LITERALLY SO CUTE :((( he writes x reader content & makes oc content!!!

@totallymem3 draws occasionally and omgggg meme's art is gorgeous. HAVE YOU SEEN HER DRAW AZUL. her art is so soft and its honestly adorable :(( meme is such a nice mutual too!!! like i met her on anon a while ago we've been besties ever since fr. HER ART REMINDS ME OF SPRING GO CHECK IT OUT PLEASE!!!!!

@z3llous is SO TALENTED!!!! another mutual that im liek WOW how do you exist??? he creates the most stunning twst fanart :((( THE OCTAVINELLE BIAS IIS SO REAL AND SO SO OBVIOUS BUT WOW.....WOW IS IT GOOD. zell is also a game developer and if you like cute little kitties and adventure games you should totally try it out here!!!

@cecilebutcher MAKES THE BEST OCS. creator of igor and saver of the universe. im not kidding igor saved the universe IDC WHAT YOU SAY ITS CANON TO ME. cece i sliterally the sweetest and soososososo creative i am eating up every crumb of igor content i get fed. OM NOM NOM. ofc junto is nice too and hes so sweet!!! GAHH you just put so much love and care into yoru ocs its so admirable :((((

@ang33333333l is another azul kisser that i became mutuals with a while ago!!! dolls love for sebek and azul is very sweet to see and her yuusona fauna is adorable too!! she also draws her yuu and characters sometimes!! :D she doesn't have a lot of oc content up on dolls blog yet but im looking forward to seeing more!! >:D

@leonistic deserves the most underrated writer of the year award. soru writes x reader content and is another super sweet mutual of mien (I KNOW IM SAYING THAT A LOT OKAY.) she writes aroace content and its literally feeds me. seriously. their aroace azul content makes me giggle and kick my feet and GAHHHHH !!! plus they have the patient to do matchups which is crazy and i love them for that ^^

@rains-asleep is the nickname master because he calls me straubs and thats such an adorable nickname :(((( HIS WRITING IS SUPER CUTE AND IT GIVE SME SO MUCH SEROTONIN (they write x readers btw!!!!!) they recently hit 500 followers (CONGRATS AGAIN!!!!!) and they also write for haikyuu, mha, genshin impact, and obey me!!!

@shinysparklesapphires is an artists that has a lot of cool ocs!! i believe navi was the first one i was introduced to and he's such an icon ^^ sapphy is also really into precure and produces a lot of content for the fandom!! i have yet to finish the precure series she recommended to me but its good so far and laura is the best so true!!

@datboredpencil has THE most STUNNING art. if you want idia x cater content this is DEFINITELY THE BLOG FOR YOU!!! each piece has so much love poured into it and i swear. YOURE ALWAYS LIEK "its a work in progress" BUT IT STILL LOTS SO LOVELY :((( YOUR USE OF COLOR IS JUST SO MUAH!!! CHEFS KISS!!!!!!! I ADORE IT

@twistwonderlanddevotee makes really pretty backgrounds!!! i actually used the isaac one she made for my private account AND ITS SO CUTE I LOVE IT I WANT TO EAT IT SWALLOW IT WHOLE MUNCH ON IT SHAKE IT AROUND LIEK A DOG TOY ANYWAYS. i am very normal about sofia's backgrounds. PLEASE GO CHECK THEM OUT its literally so unique?? like who else makes backgroudns liek sofia. Nobody.

@queen-shiba has an open inbox everyone!! you're welcome to send in requests!!! ^^ the queen of savanaclaw makes oc content for chuki, a really sweet kid taht deserves all the cookies in teh world :((( ALSO!!! she has an au for the tsavo man-eaters which is super cool!!! :O she passion for lions and tigers really is admirable and its nic eto see her talk about them :3

@beeirdos-buzzing-bogaloo has a gift when it comes to making ocs!! thule remains my favorite of the ones he has talked about because his design is just so neat!!! I LOVE THAT HIS NICKNAME FROM ROOK IS "MONSIEUR STARGAZER" :((( you have so many ocs that i havent even heard about yet...so im super curious to see what else you put out!!!

@dove-da-birb IS SUCH A GENIUS. they're one of my closests friends and their writing is SO BEAUTIFUL. they're also kidn of a little shit though so watch out /aff tehy write x reader content and draw sometimes, although i dont think theyve posted any of them. ^^ dove is SUCH a delight i promise you'll have fun every single time you talk to them. their energy is infectious and im genuinely really glad im the main target for their chaos. i would not have it any otehr way.

@ashipiko has such delicious art!!! the colors are always so vibrant and the way she draws is so unique. truly, a staple of both the twisted wonderland and as3! fandoms!! her energy is always upbeat and cheery, its hard not to smile when youre talking to her!! truly the biggest ace kisser on thsi platform (probably in the world too hehe)

@shyhaya writes for a myriad of fandoms!!!!!! hayami writes an azul thing for me that made me lose my mind IT WAS SO GOOD. PLEASE check out this blog. you wont regret it. requests are open!! ^^ even twst content aside, im sure you'll find something you like sich haya writes for so many fandoms!! talk about multitalented :3

@thehollowwriter has so many gems. quinn writes every character in twst so well, teh writing is so immersive and just ughhhh MUAH!!!!! every piece with azul in it is such a banger and it makes me giggle and kick my feet :3 LITERALLY THERE IS SO MUCH X READER FLUFF AND ITS ALL GOOD ITS A CRIME I DIDNT FIND THIS BLOG SOONER.

@cyath, who has some of the PRETTIEST art i have EVER seen. they draw stuff based on my fics all of the time and i adore it so much. examples of their art can be found here, here, here, and here. do you understand what i mean. do you get it. their art style is SUPERIOR and i ADORE IT!!!!!! they truly have so much talent like damn save some for the rest of us hello!!!!!

@crheativity writes twst x readers!! she's a beginner writer so PLEASE PELASE SHOW HER SOME LOVE!!! right nwo she has some heartslabyul content that i havent gotten around to reading yet but i am SUPER excited to go through them when i get the chance!!! rhea is super fun to talk to hehe <3

and lastly, @jade-s-nymph who organized this whole thing!!! rubia is on hiatus right now but i've seen some of her projects and a few of the things she's written and they're all really good!! there's a lot of x reader content on her writing blog and self indulgent nymphleech content on her personal blog :3

[tromboneralert]

Just found out that my worthlessly incompetent coworker got the same raise as me so I will no longer be Working Hard. I will, unfortunately, continue to Work, but I will be Taking It Very Easy from now on. I will no longer bust my ass for this job. I will show up and follow my job description, and then I will leave at my scheduled time. Since they clearly haven't been paying me enough nor valuing me for my hard work this whole time anyway.

[moodr1ng]

i always say im able-bodied bc i feel like it best describes my General Lived Experience but i do have that like. thing in my legs where if i walk briskly for some distance (like 500 meters) i get this crushing pain in my whole lower legs which gets worse and worse if i keep walking until i eventually have to sit down for a few minutes and wait for it to go away. which im still trying to get diagnosed bc so far artery scans and muscle ultrasounds render nothing. and ngl it is like, an issue often enough and is a pretty bothersome thing when it happens (like not only bc its extremely painful but also having to find some place to sit down in the middle of the street and having to stay there a while isnt awesome) so im not entirely sure "able-bodied" fully describes me but i also am not sure its a disability bc we dont know wtf it is. so i guess im kind of in a weird inbetween where i err on the side of just assuming its not a disability and its just like, an annoying body thing..

[shiroselia]

Play 13 Sentinels I am no longer asking

[rhiannonsknife]

https://www.tumblr.com/rhiannonsknife/766686034414174208/thinking-about-sleepy-cuddles-w-jackie-shes-so

same anon here :3 u are so right about falling asleep so quickly in her arms, i feel like she gives the most comforting hugs and cuddles ever and she’s so warm too. like a human heater

i strongly believe that her go to show of affection is hugs. doesn’t matter what the situation is. whether you’re sad, sick, angry, scared, happy, anything, you best believe it always ends up with jackie opening her arms and offering you a hug.

i could make it angsty about how she doesn’t ever really feel loved herself so she’s always giving hugs to try and make up for that but anyway ☺️☺️ i would die happy in jackie taylor’s arms mhm mhm

i’m so sorry but i giggled when you said “she’s so warm like a human heater”…..because like….actually no, never mind, let’s not go there!! 🤗

anyway, anon, you are so right!! especially with that angsty take, i 100% agree! jackie never really felt loved the way she always wanted (and deserved) to, so from the moment she met you, she’s made it her mission to give all the love she never received!! i just know she has so much love in her heart that she a) has never been given and b) could never give before

okay no pause this just gave me an idea: 5 love languages of jackie taylor, anyone??

physical touch

okay starting with physical touch, of course!! as established: jackie is 100% more touchy-feely than she might admit, especially when she’s feeling vulnerable or sleepy. jackie is definitely affectionate, always finding small ways to reach out and remind you she’s there. she’ll hold your hand, link her arm with yours, or give you spontaneous hugs, warm and sincere. she loves being close, resting her head on your shoulder during movie nights, or tucking her arm around you in crowded hallways. to her, physical touch is a way of grounding herself in the comfort of being with someone she adores, and she’s never shy about showing it with /to you. it’s her way of making sure you always feel secure and loved!! and also a way to ground herself, though she has a harder time admitting to that!

words of affirmation

jackie is your biggest supporter!! if that girl wasn’t already the captain of the soccer team, she’d be your own personal cheerleader! she makes it a point to remind you often how much she believes in you, with little affirmations she sneaks into conversations. “you know you’re amazing, right?” she’ll say, catching your eye with a sincerity that leaves no room for doubt. she makes sure you never forget how special you are to her, giving compliments freely and reminding you of your worth, always wanting you to feel as cherished as she wishes she could feel at home :(

acts of service

jackie is attentive to the smallest details of your day-to-day life and finds ways to make things easier for you to a point where you don’t even have to verbalize them: if she knows you have a big test or a stressful week, she’ll show up with your favorite coffee/snacks or leave a hand-written note in your locker wishing you luck. when you’re busy or overwhelmed, she jumps in to help, always quietly and without making a big deal out of it. she has a nurturing side she rarely shows to anyone else, and through these gestures, she lets you know that you can always lean on her!!

giving/receiving gifts

jackie puts a lot of thought into the things she gives you, always with the intent of making you feel special!! she might make a small scrapbook of memories together or surprise you with a book you once mentioned liking, just because. she has a way of finding gifts that are all meaningful and personal, every single one of them evidence of how much she pays attention to you. they’re all an additional way of her saying i see you, and i want you to feel loved. aside from small, causal things she gets you occasionally, she also has a thing for preparing bigger surprises for you, whether it’s for a birthday, an anniversary, or just because she felt like it. because she can afford it, jackie will surprise you with things like expensive dinners for just the two of you or a necklace that matches hers that has you wondering just how much money she spent on it! she’ll insist on it, though, pouting whenever you even mention that you “can’t possibly accept that”.

quality time

okay last but not least: quality time!! for jackie, spending time with you is the highlight of her day. she’ll come up with endless reasons to be around you: whether it’s studying together, taking a walk, or planning an elaborate day out, just to have uninterrupted time with you. she craves these moments, where she can drop her polished, “perfect” exterior and just be herself, laughing and talking about everything and nothing. you’re her safe space, and she loves making time for you, savoring every second!! <3