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burnedbyshoto · 4 years ago

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i wonder

i wonder (if you remember the way we looked at each other)

— Living as roommates with your best friend is easy until someone fucks up and catches feelings.

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pairing: todoroki shouto x fem!reader

warnings: 18+, smut fem!reader, and they were roommates, childhood friends!au, university!au, quirkless!au, modern!au, americanized university experience, alcohol consumption, drug consumption, the plot is for the sex AHA, womanizer!shouto, shouto and reader are bad roommates but seiji is worse, shouto has sex at 16 for the first time, vouyerism-ish, iffy shouto tendencies, jealous!shouto, jealous!reader, drunk sex so dubcon depending on you, nipplegasms, reader has nipple piercings, blowjob, switching, marking, biting, scratching, praise kink, missing tag ;)

word count: 20,141

a/n: this is for the roommates bnharem collab! please check out all the other amazing fics and art! note to self, dont get drunk the night before this is due and I hope you guys enjoy this!!! I had a lot of fun writing it!!! also,,, sorry if mobile doesn’t correctly format!

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You cracked your eyes open.

The gentle white stream of light permeated through soft cotton curtains, lighting the room in pale stripes and careful touches. Dust particles danced within the shining light, bending and twirling with the flowing air and moving winds. You breathed in deeply, your body still tired, your head still foggy from a night of distractions and too many drinks.

Your eyes are closed once again, your still hazy mind trying to ignore the bitter, rank taste of the alcohol and cum on your tongue and your hands scratching as your naked cleavage. There was still enough time in the day; it was Sunday after—

Wait.

CUM?!

Your eyes flew open, your lips smacking each other as you confirm the awful, salty taste of cum on your tongue. Your hands swiping up and down your front to confirm your state of undress. Your heart starts hammering in your chest, your palms immediately sweating as you try to think about just who the fuck you ended up back in bed with.

Think, y/n, think!

A small grunt came from behind you, and you felt your entire body go rigid immediately. The soft expel of air fanning against your sticky neck is both welcomed and untrusted. With what can only be described as you, as stiff as a stick, peering behind your shoulder similar to a mother who definitely heard her child throw up on her bed but is somehow praying that she was hearing shit, you turned around.

A messy bedhead of red and white greeted you: unfocused, sleepy grey, and brilliant blue eyes staring back at you with fond familiarity and welcome.

“‘Morning, y/n,” Todoroki Shouto grumbles, voice husky, scratchy, deeply warm from his slumber. His next words are damning, though, the slight pride and knowing implications in the small breathe he uttered next. “Had fun last night?”

There was silence, a stroke of hesitancy, then crushing all-consuming fear.

You screamed.

At the top of your lungs.

O N E W E E K A N D A D A Y E A R L I E R

“Who the fuck touched my fucking Angry Orchard Rosés?!” a voice snapped from the kitchen; the tone was fed up, seconds from blasting to smithereens.

You were in the living room, a pair of sweats on, your hair not put together, your face still bare. The music you played as part of your pregame ritual was practically vibrating the wooden floor as you sang along to your music. The telling glass bottle of deliciously pink alcohol swinging inconspicuously between your fingers as you drank it between verses. Despite your other roommate (who you repeatedly told your friends to be ‘like Bakugou but a gazillion times worse because you don’t and can’t like him,’) being seconds from trying to start another feud or possibly a lawsuit against you, your mouth dropped in mock shock before guzzling down the rest of the drink.

“I saw that you fucking skank!” Shishikura Seiji screeched from the kitchen; his stomps were long and heavy as he made his way from the kitchen to the living room where you were. “There were two bottles left in there! Don’t tell me your alcoholic ass drank them both! So help me, I’ll press on your damn chest until you’re puking out my drink.”

“Shishikura, stop,” Shouto spoke up, his own arm raising as he took a long, slow drink from the other missing rosé bottle. “These are 2% alcohol, you’ve had them in the fridge for months now, and you never drink them anyways.”

You grinned as you pulled the glass bottle from your lip, your face failing at the fake look of surprise, guilt, and sorrow for your unwanted and unneeded roommate.

“Sorry, they’re such girly drinks. I figured I’d take them off your hands,” you speak with distractingly bright amusement. “Alcoholics like me, we don’t care. Watch out; I might go for your mouth wash if you’re not too careful.”

“You do that, and I’ll poison you like a damn bitch,” Shishikura threatened, his voice in a menacing growl.

“Ooooo, you want me to bark for you, Shishikura? Want me on my hands and knees?” you taunt back, walking backward until you’re collapsing onto the couch besides Shouto. Your arm quickly sneaks between his, and you lay your head on his shoulder. Shishikura’s face is flushed red, his pupils beady as he trembles with concealed rage.

“She’s quite good at it,” Shouto chimes in, the corner of his mouth twitching into an amused smirk as he takes another drink of the weak liquor. He shifts on the couch, allowing you to curl more comfortably at his side; the both of you know just how much your incredibly prude roommate hates any sort of PDA. “Want to hear her bark? She’s also quite good with her tongue.”

As if to emphasize Shouto’s point, you stuck out your tongue, refusing to break eye contact with Shishikura as the tip of your tongue breached the opening of the bottle.

“The actual fuck is wrong with the both of you?!” Shishikura spluttered, his face somehow turning purple and green and red. A truly incredible sight to be had. “‘Childhood friends are great roommates to have’ my fucking ass, you both are monstrosities!”

Shishikura stormed out of the living room, his ears neon red as his purple hair fell to cover his face. As soon as he was out of sight, you turned to Shouto, your tongue removing itself from the bottle and back into your mouth as you began to laugh loudly.

Childhood friends to roommates, ah, what a remarkable story you had with Todoroki Shouto.

It was accurate to relay that you had known Shouto for more than seventeen years now at your current age of twenty-one. Seventeen years of being what is easily seen as the best of friends, the closest companions, and indeed a bond that would withstand time and situation.

The two of you met during the first week of what was preschool. Although both of you could not remember a single instance of events during this time, your mothers had always been excited to relay this story to you for many years that you could remember. It was odd to try to remember it, but even as they painted a picture of your first interaction, you could do nothing but admit that it sounded exactly like how it could have gone.

You couldn’t remember being four years old; you don’t recall what it was like to strain your neck to look up at your parents or how it felt to be so utterly dependent but to scream brazenly about your childish independence. Your mother smiles when she retells the story of your first interaction, of how you were holding her hand as she walked you to the building where your preschool was to be had.

Your hand was so small in hers. Tightly clutching onto her fingers as you looked around at the other children who were also arriving or had already arrived. Some children were bawling by their parents, others aimlessly playing with toys, and some were attempting to talk to one another, but by the apparent looks of curiosity surrounding the babbling and rambling tangents that could only be understood by a firing toddler brain, everyone was getting along.

A teacher greeted you kindly, squatting down to reach your eye level as they excitedly introduced themselves and asked for your name. You, of course, with your hands clutching the skirts of your mother’s dress, responded with hesitant confidence.

“You’re such a brave girl!” the teacher awed happily, stretching out a hand for you. “Is it okay if I take you from your mom and show you which cubby is yours?”

There was a moment of confusion, then clear understanding hovering over your little head. Your mom looked down with an encouraging smile and pushed you forward.

“Do I get a middle cubby? I don’t want a top one,” you admit, your hand stretching out to grab the teacher’s stretched-out hand.

Your mother watched on happily as you removed your schoolbag and lunchpail and placed them neatly within the somehow middle cubby marked with your name. The teacher also helped you put on your white school slippers before gesturing towards the bright, colorful room, their mouth moving as if explaining every little detail before pointing at the corner. Your mother tilted her head, curious as she followed the teachers point to the corner of the room where a boy with exceptional red and white hair — split perfectly in the middle — sat quietly, with fat tears rolling down his cheeks.

(Shouto, although he can not remember this day himself, will argue with you and only you that he was, in fact, NOT crying.)

Trying to not allow the shock of the unnatural hair color affect her, your mother watched as you nodded to your new teacher and walked over with clenched fist confidence to the small boy.

She watched as you approached him, your jaw moving as you so obviously spoke, hopefully introducing yourself. The boy looked up at you with bright, wet eyes but seemed to speak right back to you.

“Alright, parents! Thank you all for dropping off your children! Do not worry. We will take great care of them all, and they are in competent hands! First days are hard for everyone, so if you can exit quietly, I, and the rest of us teachers, would appreciate that greatly!”

Or at least that’s what Rei claimed the teacher said. However, your mother was watching on with increasing exponential horror as she watched you throw a punch at the air before twisting around and pointing right at her and saying with a voice that was much too loud.

“Punch whoever made you cry, Shouto-chan! My mama says that it is okay to punch bullies!”

Thankfully no one but your mother heard you, and even though she scolded you on the way out, whisper yelling that you “better not punch anyone!” her relief was for naught.

When she would return in the afternoon, a bit late because there had been a hold up on the train, you were pouting sitting on the floor with a scuffled uniform, your arms crossed definitely. Next to you was the boy with red and white hair, equally scuffed next to a white-haired woman and an older white-haired boy.

“Oh my god, what happened?!” she shrieked, racing over to you.

“Y/l/n-san,” the teacher spoke with a tone that indicated disappointment with the subtle undertone of amusement. “Y/n-chan has something to tell you.”

Your mother had taught you many things, she will admit, in your very short life. But sass and annoyment was something not often seen in your household or in you, and to see it so blatantly on your chubby-cheeked face was quickly giving your mother greys.

“Shouto-chan told me that his stupid bully brother Touya was being a meanie, and so I helped him punch him back!” you said with tears in your eyes because you didn’t want to back down from your actions, but you also did not like being scolded. “I don’t regret it!”

“Y/n!”

“Y/n-chan!”

“I don’t either,” Shouto-chan grumbled as your mother collapsed to her knees and began to profusely apologize for you to the woman who was undoubtedly Shouto’s mother. “Touya-nii was making fun of my hair again… y/n-chan helped me, though. Please don’t scold her!”

To say the most in the shortest amount of time, you were, in fact, scolded despite Shouto’s begging. Touya stopped making fun of Shouto’s natural hair. Rei accepted your mother’s apology. The teachers were given two bottles of sake.

And, of course, the most important, the most paramount thing to arise from this first day of school was that your and Todoroki Shouto’s friendship was now bound by blood, sweat, and tears.

Preschool became elementary school, which became middle school, and fading into highschool.

It was without saying that your relationship, your friendship with Todoroki Shouto, was probably one of the biggest, most defining parts of your entire life. He was there when your first tooth fell out, when he dropped ice cubes down people’s shirts, you two had bathed together when you were young, had sleepovers well past the age where him being a boy and you being a girl should have made things weird. You laughed when his voice cracked and dropped, he elbowed your chest plenty when you began growing boobs, you taunted his lack of body hair, he bought you your favorite ice cream and heating packs on your first period. You attended cram school together, went to the park and beaches on days off from school. You were partners in every school activity except under specific circumstances. He had listened to you when you told him excitedly about your first kiss when you turned fourteen, and you laughed when he said at the age of fifteen that he had still yet to kiss anyone.

Everyone always claimed, always asked, wondered, and whispered if the two of you were dating. Childhood friends still this close and not dating? Unheard of; practically illegal! Nevertheless, you ignored the disappointed frowns or the hopeful grins as you and Shouto both denied any sort of romantic connection.

Soon the both of you were in high school, and Shouto was mere days from turning sixteen. Much like when the both of you were when you were four years old, you seemed to be the one spouting many words — sometimes unnecessary words that wound you both up in trouble — of wisdom. You were loud when you needed, talking most of the time only to him and your surprisingly large group of friends. (You weren’t that surprised. Everyone wanted to be friends with the handsome, could easily be royalty or a model, Todoroki Shouto.) Shouto remained, for better or worse, quiet, reserved, and a bit awkward. He was a sweet boy, don’t get it wrong, and you would protect him until the end of your days, but the boy was a complete airhead and relied on you for interpreting social interactions.

“Camie-senpai wants me to go over to her house after my birthday,” Shouto explains, his hands exchanging his school shoes for his outdoor ones. “Something about wanting to do that one second-year first-year student project thing for the third years right away.”

“You have Camie?” you ask, slumping against the metal lockers with a slight thud. “Lucky, she’s so nice… I have stupid Agoyamato. Have you had a conversation with him? It’s actually the worst! He thinks he’s all that!”

“I’m sure it’ll be okay; you’re nice enough that he won’t be like… that,” Shouto smiles, slinging his bag on his shoulders before nudging his head towards the exit. “Ready?”

“Am I ever ready?” you ask with a whine but nevertheless proceed onward.

Time passed, and between cram school, actual school, some clubs, eventually January 11th passed and you held an ice cream cake that Shouto loved. You ate the cake together, relaxing as you sat in the warmth of his kitchen.

“Happy birthday, Shoucchan, never change!” you chirp, shoving his arm that rose to place the piece of cake in his mouth with your shoulder and watched as the sweet pastry splattered on top of the table. “...um?”

“I’ll give you ten seconds to run.”

“Only ten?! What about the happy birthday boy.”

“Oh, true. Three seconds to run.”

“Why?!”

“It’s my birthday.”

An hour later, when your stomach hurt from laughing too much and the sickly sweet weight of too much ice cream cake, you lay snuggled into Shouto’s side as the both of you watched some old movie.

“Thanks for always being here for me,” you mumble, eyes growing heavy as the heat of Shouto’s body began to lull you to sleep.

“I’m always here for you,” Shouto softly responded, hand gliding up and down the curve of your spine. “We should get you home. Your mom yelled and nearly skinned us both the last time you fell asleep here.”

“Only cuz she’s scared that we’ll have some sudden revelation we like each other and fuck each other’s brains out,” you groaned, absolutely not content with having to move. With your face buried in your hands now, you missed the weird pattern in Shouto’s chest over that.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“...fine, just because it’s your birthday.”

The next day, when Shouto followed Camie home instead of you, there was something that made you feel off as you waved at them goodbye. It wasn’t jealousy, that much you knew, but something worse when you watched the way your never-been-kissed-before best friend was ignorant to the dark eyes Camie sent his way.

To be quite honest, you’re not sure if you should be as surprised as you are when you get a phone call at ten p.m. to the sound of a confused, suppressed, overwhelmed voice of your best friend asking if you could confirm if Camie had fucked him. You then stayed on the phone for Shouto until well past two a.m., your heart hurting as he recounted the memory over and over again. You weren’t sure as to why your heart was breaking. By the sounds of it, Shouto had actually enjoyed it, but with every stammer to his voice, you felt lightyears away.

Most shockingly, however, was the effects this had on Shouto and his overall persona.

From ages four until fifteen, Todoroki Shouto was someone who was quiet, observant, took things a bit too literally, at all times was entirely precious in the way he interacted with people, and most importantly, unaware of the female population who lusted after him. It worked well for you because it was fun to tease him about things, nag him about how he was sixteen, and hadn’t been kissed even though if he asked any girl at school to kiss him, they definitely would.

But sixteen-year-old Todoroki Shouto was a new shift, a new paradigm for you to learn. It wasn’t that he wasn’t confident before, but now he emitted a sense of confidence that he was aware of, that everyone was aware of. He became mature, sophisticated, styled even. He was still at times quiet, always completely observant. He rarely took things literally and understood rhetoric and sarcasm and hyperboles. Long gone were the days of preciousness, and instead, there was a sense of a predator on the hunt that bled in the way that he talked to people. Most importantly, however, he was fully aware of the female population and precisely who was lusting after him.

He flirted with women and girls. You would find him leaning against the lockers talking with them, somehow trapping them despite not actually trapping them. A new girl was sitting at your table with him practically every week in high school, each girl asking for the hundredth millionth time that the both of you were not dating. Some girls were even bold enough to apologize to you for stealing your best friend — as if you wanted Shouto.

You had already seen his dick, thank you very much (although the last time you saw it was well before you were nine years old), you weren’t missing out on how it probably looked now! Honestly, you had no idea how Shouto never managed to run out of female students to fuck, the school wasn’t that large, and he seemed to go through a few a week sometimes.

But he was your best friend, your childhood friend, and no matter how many girls came crawling back to your lunch table, bawling to Shouto to take him back, soaking the fabric of your skirt to help convince him to take her back, you stayed. You stayed, accepting the fact that your best friend had become an awkward teenage boy and turned into some high school sex freak.

You stayed when his shaggy hairstyle was clipped and became short.

Overnight, just as he went from being a complete virgin to not one, he went from a scrawny sixteen-year-old boy to a leanly built eighteen-year-old hot-ass heartthrob womanizer.

High school wasn’t forever. Even though it took you about a year to accept and integrate Shouto’s new sex life and behavior into your daily lifestyle with him (he always left four of the three days open for you as all his relationships were casual only). Soon enough, the both of you relaxed and found your own relationship to be entirely the same, and when university exams and applications came about, it was decided that yet again, the both of you would follow each other anywhere.

Which is where you were now.

Tokyo University, a third-year student, living in an upscale three-person apartment with your best friend, of course. Shouto plus someone who practically begged in the most unbegging way to live with you.

Todoroki Shouto and Shishikura Seiji in the same apartment as you made for an interesting combination.

You hadn’t wanted Shishikura Seiji as a roommate at all. Period.

There were about eleven other people you only considered asking, but they all said no for their own reasons. Bakugou and Midoriya had found their own apartment closer to the University, and for much cheaper, Kirishima and Mina were RA’s and could not move in. Kaminari said he liked Sero’s couch too much to leave, and Sero couldn’t live in an apartment without a balcony. Momo said the room was too small, Jirou said she’d rather continue living with Momo, Uraraka said it was a tad bit too much for her to afford (to be fair, you didn’t have to pay because the Todoroki’s were paying for your housing, but you understood), Tsuyu and Hagakure said they were living at home. Iida said he would be too uncomfortable living with a couple.

Everyone you found on the street wouldn’t accept your offer. Hence, Shouto invited the meatball and rosé obsessed Shishikura Seiji to live with the two of you simply because he was Shouto’s lab partner in one of his advanced physics classes. Stupid chemical engineering nerd.

At twenty-one years, you can now say that you’ve entirely adjusted to Shouto’s womanizer ways. Too often do you find yourself sitting at the kitchen counter, a steaming cup of tea in your hand as you drink it in slowly, watching with much amusement as either a no-name girl leaves or a walk of shame Shouto enters. It happens at most five times a week; you were used to it. While the unease had finally left, you had to admit you were impressed your best friend could easily sleep around as he did and maintain his outstanding grades.

However, just because you were finally used to Shouto’s womanizer tendencies didn’t mean the world was. Even in University, your fellow students would ask with wide eyes and behind flat palms if the two of you were dating — specifically if Shouto was cheating on you or if it was an open relationship. You would each and every time, smile cheekily, shake your head and say with a roll of your eyes: “No, we’re not dating. He’s not cheating, and no, this is nothing more than us being best friends. Sho is too much of a jealous person to allow for an open relationship.”

Somehow, the constant begging of approval and the erasure of any romantic connection between you and Shouto from the plethora of female students at Tokyo University wasn’t even the most annoying part of it all. No, not at all.

What really ground your nerves was a pattern you noticed when you were eighteen.

Unlike Shouto, you hadn’t had the chance to lose your virginity until you were eighteen. Most of the boys who liked you always assumed you and Shouto were dating, the ones who gathered the courage to ask you out anyways were boys you were less than impressed with. By some act of some higher god, your crush — the school's third-year baseball team's captain when you were a first-year — reappeared in your life and asked you out. It wasn’t your best decision, you can fully admit it, but he was friendly and sweet as he fucked you in his small bed.

You hadn’t expected sex to be like that, and if you had enjoyed this, you couldn’t help but wonder just how Shouto was in bed to have girls behaving like that.

However, the spell was broken when he helped you change back into your clothes, and he begged you not to tell Shouto he was the person you cheated on him with.

It was on this day that it clicked.

What went for him, unfortunately, went for you too.

Except where girls rose to the challenge to dethrone you from Shouto’s side (a shame because they were vying for a seat that you had no claim over), the boys lowered their head like some damn omega to Shouto’s alpha.

Disgusting.

Even with the plentiful, plethora, consistent denial of your relationship with Shouto, even with the tally of girls, Shouto’s bedded (and more excitedly, deflowered — ugh!) rose consistently, no one ever really believed you weren’t dating him! Too many a time, you had been centimeters from making out with a guy for them to pull away, screeching that they couldn’t allow you to betray Shouto. The men who didn’t care were sleezebags, and thus, with a growl and a snarl, you found that you were only able to fuck men who thought jackhammering their fingers into your labia — yes, your labia — would make you cum.

You didn’t want to say you hated your childhood best friend for such duplicitous, selfish reasons… but you did.

But today was Saturday, a few months into the new second semester of the school year, and with school spirit once again high and workload low. The entire campus was brimming with parties, celebrations, alcohol drinking competition, sleazy dancing, and enough sexual tension to kill all celibate people.

So, we look back to where we started.

Shishikura Seiji running away as you nestled back against Shouto’s chest.

“I didn’t think he was actually going to drink these things,” Shouto sighed, spinning the last few remaining drinks of his rosé in his hand. “It’s been in the fridge for almost five months.”

“He probably made his meatballs again and needed something terrible to blame the flavor on,” you half joke half say in complete seriousness. You were not fond of Shishikura at all, and he was not fond of you either. He had a tendency to mansplain everything, which continuously ground on your nerves, especially when he had no jurisdiction to act so confidently.

He was a physics major, not a goddamn god.

Fuck off.

“I feel sorta bad,” Shouto sighs, his hand low and warm on your waist. “But I will admit, these drinks are practically like carbonated water.”

“2% alcohol,” you stress, your grin widening as you pull away from his chest to stare at him. Your gaze is bright, and his eyes are filled with amusement. “You’re either the world's lightest lightweight or a child with no tolerance to actually expect to get drunk off this shit.”

“I think you’re slurring your words already though, you sure you’re okay, lightweight?” Shouto teases, his soft smirk teasing.

“Who was the one who took three shots and passed out?” you wonder innocently, finger to your chin as if you were trying to remember.

“At least I don’t throw up when I crossfade.”

“IT'S NOT MY FAULT. MY BIOLOGY JUST HAPPENS TO WORKS THAT WAY!”

“Alright, bitch,” Shouto snorts, completely unattractively, “hurry up and get ready, yeah? We have a party we’re already late to, and we have no drinks for an actual pregame.”

You squeal excitedly, having forgotten the massive party that was being held a few blocks away. “I’ll be ready in ten!”

Typically, when you went out partying, you went with the group of eleven people you would have rather replaced Shishikura as a roommate. To get ready for said parties, you would always find yourself at Momo’s place with an outfit change, makeup bag, and hair styling items. You had made it a tradition with the other girls to get ready together. The only exceptions to which this wouldn’t happen was when someone had a work event or some family thing come up.

In your case, you had been stuck at a professor's office, diligently helping to put together their research journal as they were in their final steps of publishing their findings. Due to your friendly relationship with your professor, the time had been lost, and your ten p.m. call time to arrive at Momo’s had been missed with a quick:

↳ held up at work! go on without me, sorry! see you at the party!!!!

When you crashed through the front door of your apartment, you froze, seeing Shouto in the hallway by the mirror. Sometime between getting his haircut to be shorter and from this day, he had begun to style his hair by threading it back by his fingers, and boy, it looked fucking good. He was already dressed up for the party. Black joggers, a white t-shirt that was a bit too small if the tight, seductive way it clung to his muscles spoke of anything, and a hoodie he had no care about in case he lost it after taking it off once getting there. Shouto was practically immune to all weather types, he could be in both snow or fire without a single worry, but he knew that a large sweatshirt that smelled like him was enough to hook and line any truly desperate female.

Shouto had chuckled, taking in your frazzled state with years of practice and nudged toward the fridge, already knowing that you had missed your pregaming with the girls.

“Shishikura has two rosés left. Grab ‘em, and we can pregame together.”

But that was all unimportant and already said.

In the end, it took you thirty minutes to get ready.

You had practically smeared on your makeup, hoping the warm, crazy miscoloring would be hidden within the crazy light show the party would definitely be displaying. Your outfit consisted of a tank top that exposed your cleavage and a skirt that hugged your legs and ass just right.

You came stumbling out of your room, fingers trying to shove on your earrings, the rings on your fingers clicking loudly against each other. You smiled breathily, gratefully accepting Shouto’s sweater as you slipped on your comfortable heels at the doorway before hurrying out.

Shouto kept an arm around your shoulder the entire way out, the immense heat of his body keeping you warm as his sweater rested lazily, awkwardly, around your shoulders and arms. You didn’t want to put it entirely on to save your makeup, and in case anyone had any fucking thing to say about the show you and Shouto were putting on. Eventually, the bright and comical conversation between you and Shouto began to grow louder as the pounding of dance music began to ring in your ears. Soon enough, you passed a few drunk people, more and more, until you reached the house where the party was.

Shoving the sweatshirt into Shouto’s chest, you grinned as the smell of alcohol, weed, over-cologne men and women, the faint smell of puke, and the gross crawl of BO flooded your nose.

Ah yes, nothing like a university party.

Shouto laughs at your evident piqued excitement, and after he pulls on the light blue sweatshirt, he grabs your hand, and into the overcrowded home you go.

The intense heat of overcrowded bodies on a dance floor that also makes up a drinking game floor makes you grateful for your choice of clothes. Everyone around you is already drunk, sloshed, intoxicated off their ass as unknown drinks spill from their red Solo cups, sometimes even raining down on you. You grimace as Shouto continues to pull you through. You can taste the Hennesy on your upper lip and somehow know that whoever was drinking it was a freshman with a vendetta to kill his liver and love for drinking before coming of legal age.

“What do you want to drink?” Shouto yells over the nearly obnoxiously loud music. He has his sight on the drinks counter. “Mixed or the juice?”

“Fuck me up with the jungle juice!” you yell right back, pressing to his side as two dancing (see, vigorously dry-humping) nearly trample on top of you. “Parties are meant to be a non-sober event. I need to be borderline blacked out five hours ago!”

The agreeing chuckle from Shouto isn’t heard by you at all, but you can feel his chest give a familiar vibration as finally, he pulls you from the sea of bodies to where the floor is especially wet and sticky. You’ve reached the bar area.

Grabbing your own red Solo Cup, you watch as Shouto makes his own drink. Heavy on the alcohol, light on the mixer, and a good handful of ice (he’s always liked the cold better). His hand reaches for your cup and you offer your cup up as he opens up an ice chest filled with neon-colored jungle juice.

When the drink is returned to you, the both of you cheers and take a long drink.

“Y/N!”

“Y/N-CHAN!”

“You’re finally here, you fucking slut! Getcha fat ass over here now!”

Your neck is twisted to see the absolutely plastered group of girls you considered to be your closest friends, and you laugh loudly.

“Seems like I’m needed,” you yell at Shouto, trying your best to act nonchalantly as he smiles knowingly at you. “Text me about what you decide to do if we don’t see each other?”

“Of course,” he simply responds before placing the curve of his cup back onto his lip as hands grabbed your arms and whisked you away.

In a matter of sixty minutes, you all had played five drinking games.

The girls felt it was imperative to get you to their level right away, so they started off with a game of King’s Cup. Not only was the deck rigged against you — you pulled all four of the four cards and thus had to chug four times — but you had drawn the last King and drank some weird concoction of jungle juice, a tequila shot, a vodka shot, and whatever the fucking hell Mina was drinking. How you managed to chug that and stay on your feet was beyond you, but it was without saying that you had utterly and inevitably caught up with the girls.

After the King's Cup came the Flip Cup game, your team won thankfully due to Mina’s one flip wonder as Kaminari struggled to down the shot in the cup.

After Flip Cup came Smoke or Fire, a game that had Tsuyu stuck on the bus for a record-breaking one round. No one could believe she did that.

Then came a round of Shot Roulette to end with what you were currently doing now, using a drinking card game Momo had made in her spare time to do embarrassing things at random.

Five games in an hour… you questioned if there was by any chance illegal substances in the jungle juice because it had felt like a whopping two minutes.

“It’s midnight!” Hagakure hollered, stumbling backward as she grinned in drunken, stupid happiness. She giggled before singing, “Midnight… memoriessss~!”

Mina groaned at the reference but completely perked up as the dance music changed suddenly from its slightly mellow, good vibe song to none other than Everytime We Touch by Cascada. By tradition, by applicable law by all and every god, when this one song played, everyone needed to stop what they were doing and immediately head to the dance floor.

With your hand slightly sticky with alcohol, and your mind absolutely clouded with alcohol, you whooped loudly as Mina dragged you to the dancefloor.

You, seven girls, formed a closed circle, your Solo cups sloshing over with alcohol, and your faces scrunched tight as you danced and sang as loudly as you could. Each pounding beat of music vibrated in your chest, each offkey note sung by the party-goers making you feel light, happy, dizzy, and oh so perfectly drunk. For just a split moment, you lock eyes with Shouto, who’s across the dance floor, his arms wrapped around some girl you don’t recognize, eyes drinking you in. You smile for a bit before turning back around, arms rocketing up to the air with your excitement.

Although the song ended, the DJ continued to play bangers, and you never once stopped in your mirthful dancing and grinding against your friends as the night continued to carry on. But when you spun out from Mina, your entire world spinning with it, a pair of warm, heavy, large hands rested on your waist, and you laughed.

“Who is this?” you ask, head slamming backward to try and look at the person who had caught you yet hadn’t tried grinding against you. “Oh, Inasa? Hi!”

Yoarashi Inasa was one of your University's well-known jocks. He was a skilled runner, one of the best Japan has ever seen despite his body type telling you he was a bodybuilder. Immediately your smile of idiotic stupor became intentful, seductive, still bordering extreme intoxication. Was Inasa your type? No, not really, but you could reasonably and accurately say that he was a handsome man, with a fantastic body, not to mention a pleasant personality.

You also itched to know what his dick looked like.

This was definitely someone you could see yourself fucking tonight.

“Hi, y/l/n,” Inasa said, his naturally loud voice easily picked up on despite the music being blasted in your ear. “How’s your night going?”

You lick your dry lips, eyes blinking a few times before you turn in his arms, your arms stretching so that you could wrap them around his neck. “Better now that you’re here,” you smile shyly. “How’s yours.”

“Ahem,” Inasa blushes, his eyes staring straight at your cleavage before looking back up at you. “H-Hoping to get better from here! Well, I’m sure it will be.”

“Oh?” you ask, your confidence building faster and faster as you press further against him. “Anything you have in mind?” —you press your thigh suggestively against the semi-hard spot against his jeans. — “Anyway... I can... help?”

Inasa groans deep in his chest, his head knocking backward at your implications, the pleasant vibrations passing on to you. You grin, fingers scraping against the bottom of his buzzcut and bringing him closer, praying for a kiss. But as he returns his head back down, his gaze leaves yours for a split second, and you watch in horror as a sobering look washes over him.

“Actually… you’re here with some random dude, right? I don’t want to step on his toes. I thought I saw you come in with some guy; sorry y/l/n, I can’t do this.”

And just as quickly as he was against you, he was gone.

It took everything in you not to screech bloody murder over the fact that you were once again left horny with no man to take responsibility for it.

Calculated Rate of Not Getting Dicked Down When I Want to Get Dicked Down When Coming to a Party With Shouto: 78% Calculated Rate of Not Getting Dicked Down When I Want to Get Dicked Down When Coming to a Party Without Shouto: 22%

Walking home alone, cold, and with extreme bitterness towards Yoarashi Inasa was a sadly sobering experience. By the time you collapsed onto your bed, you were only slightly buzzed, boarding sobriety while not being sober exactly.

Fuck men.

Fuck their cowardness over a nonexistent romantic/sexual relationship between you and Shouto.

But also… you really wanted to fuck men right now.

The slicked horniness of the potential thought of bedding Inasa had made its unignorable appearance via your soaked panties. You hated yourself, hated your biological needs and lusts.

“I’ll wring Shouto’s neck in front of all of them next time,” you grumble to yourself. “Stage a fake breakup for an imaginary thing…”

Nestling further into your pillows, your eyes closed, body relaxing against the bed when a peculiar sound seemed to echo in your ear.

Thud.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Your eyes slammed open, your jaw-dropping at the very obvious, entirely embarrassing sound of Shouto having sex on his desk sounded in your room! Of course it sounded in your room. His desk was pressed to your wall because that would mean whenever he was his icky womanizer self, you wouldn’t have to hear anything! Your rooms were soundproof but apparently not movement proof.

The thwack of the wood desk slammed against the wall, and with your ear so close to the wall, you began to hear the shaky, intense breathing of Shouto. The whines, keens, and screams of the girl he was fucking as she begged for more. Sobbing that his cock was too much for her.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Your panties soaked even more, and with a brain that somehow retracted back into its state of stupor, your fingers brushed against your swollen, ready clit.

This was wrong, so very, very wrong, you thought, the sounds of pitched whining against the stupidly impressive, steady, consistent fucking.

Your mind was a drunken fever.

Your eyes closed not all the way, yet blind to the wall before you as your finger danced and teased against your demanding clit.

You whined softly, matching the groaning of Shouto, who banged something other than the desk into the wall.

For a moment, just this once, you wanted to be the one desperately clinging to Shouto’s back, hips snapping and circling in tandem to his, allowing him to drill his cock deep within you. Your back arched, heat reaching your toes, buzzing filling your lips.

“Yes, fuck, right there, Todoroki!” the girl screamed, begged, and prayed. “Oh my god, yes, yes yes, right there, right the— mmph!”

You find your teeth sinking into your fist, trying to keep your pounding, horny induced brain from crying out. You wanted to know what he was doing to her, if he had kissed her silent, shoved his fingers in her mouth. Maybe he had fucked her so good she couldn’t possibly say more.

There is nothing from Shouto you can hear, no noises of praise, nothing except the occasional ragged breath that seems to permeate through the walls and whisper sweetly, teasingly, like a succumbs in your ear.

Thud.

It increases, in noise, the wall separating your room from his beginning to rattle, shake in his conquest.

Your fingers are wet, entirely slippery with your conquest, your hips thrashing against your touch, clinging to a phantom memory of the last male you had managed to fuck. Then, as your stomach trembles with the orgasm that's mere seconds from blessing you with a release, you hear him—Shouto.

“Fuck.”

It’s not much. If anything, this girl should be so embarrassed she hasn’t been able to elicit a loud response from Shouto, but it’s a verbal gift from heaven above for you. His voice, tight, husky, drenched with a driving lust, whispers to you and only you, wrapping you in this blanket of solitude and need.

With your back arching from the mattress, your hips leaving the soft surface, and your jaw growing slack, your moan is silent, unheard by no one but the heavens as you cum. Heat floods throughout your entire body, tickling and twirling in you until you can’t do anything but shudder, shaking as you fall back down on your bed, dizzy and completely satisfied.

You don’t think about it.

Don’t try to unpack just what happened right now because the reality that you had just masturbated to the sound of your childhood best friend fucking some random girl is a bit too much. Even for you.

So you don’t think about it, and soon the thudding of the desk on the wall is nothing but a drumming lullaby, and sleep consumes you.

When you wake up, you don’t remember what you did.

You get up and trudge to the bathroom, your party clothes abandoned completely so that you’re wearing nothing but a large shirt you had stolen from Shouto years ago. You scratch your belly as you walk into the bathroom, eyes caked with your sleep still as you begin brushing your teeth.

As you brush your teeth, you begin to take off last night's makeup — well, whatever remained of it.

Spitting out the last foamy remains of the paste from your mouth, you rinsed your mouth before washing your skin. You looked much more awake now. Slapping your cheeks in an encouraging, ‘im a functional human adult taking part in some random face wash commercial,’ you exited the bathroom and went to the kitchen.

Shishikura was already in the kitchen, his face expressionless, entirely dead to the world as he scooped some rice into a bowl and topped it off with some eggs.

“Morning,” you yawn, arms stretching over your head as you near closer to your unwanted roommate.

Shishikura sneers at you, but even he was more polite in the morning, sometimes.

“I heard the both of you get back last night,” Shishikura mocked, slamming the lid to his rice cooker with an unimpressed scowl. “You were thirty minutes apart. You know, if you two still want to be partying like a bunch of eighteen-year-olds, do it respectfully.”

Your smile back at him is as fake as he is, and you refuse to move out of the way as he tries to walk back to his room. He growls — gross? — and sidesteps you, grumbling the entire way back to his room as you roll your eyes at his retreating form.

What a child.

You entered the kitchen, fixing up your own things for breakfast.

Kettle brewing hot water for tea, rice cooker on for your own rice (you make enough for Shouto too), and you begin cooking some ham and eggs, readying yourself for a Sunday for going to the library and studying. You hummed to yourself, your phone plugged into the speaker as your music filled the quiet morning air.

You bobbed your head in rhythm with the music, your eyes concentrating on slowly cooking eggs as you poured the hot water from your kettle into the teacup. As you placed your teabag in, you looked up to the sound of a creaking door and grinned wickedly as a girl with light blue hair walked out of the hall you and Shouto’s room were in.

Her dress was rumbled, a few blooming red and purple marks sitting prettily on her collarbone, and her face flushed red as she began to scurry out.

“Bye!” you call out, laughing at the scared eep from the girl and the disgruntled groan from Shouto’s room.

You set down your tea, flipping the eggs in the pan as you heard more shuffling before finally, Shouto made his appearance. He was in nothing but grey sweatpants that sat so low on his waist you could not only see the band of his boxer-briefs, but you were entirely aware of the v-lines, the abs, the pecs, and the small happy trail from his belly button down. You also noted that there was not a single mark on his body, and you wondered if he had ever taken a single mark from a one-night fuck before.

God really cursed you with an objectively attractive best friend, huh.

“Morning, slut,” you sing, noticing with happiness that your rice cooker sang a merry tune, indicating that the rice was done. “Breakfast?”

“Mm,” Shouto grumbled, his hands rubbing his face as he trudged closer to the kitchen, taking a spot on one of the stools. “Depends. Did you make it?”

“...I always make it.”

“I think I like Shishikura’s breakfast better.”

Silence.

You glare at Shouto, and in turn, his lips press to a comfortable, teasing smile.

“Fend for your damn self then.”

Shouto laughed loudly as you began to stubbornly fix yourself a bowl of both your servings. You ate far less than he did, but still enough to fill you until after three pm, so the size of your bowl was hysterical.

“You’re such a horrible wife-roommate,” Shouto accuses, standing up from the stool and entering the kitchen to try and persuade you otherwise to give him his own food. “And here I thought that you liked cooking for me.”

“Go tell your stupid wife-roommate Shishikura instead,” you cry loudly, the faux sniffles from you stupidly fake as you begin to shovel a mouthful of rice and eggs into your mouth. “I’m shwure you’chll beh happ t’gther!”

“That’s absolutely disgusting, y/l/n,” Shouto accuses, his nose scrunching as he traps you in his arms, mouth trying to intercept the food moving from your bowl and into your mouth.

With another desire to prove how unsatisfied in your roommate-marriage you were, you opened your mouth and stuck out your tongue full of uneaten, partially chewed rice.

“Ea’ eh!” you mocked, your grin growing as Shouto’s initial instinct was to whip his head away from you.

But as always, because Shouto enjoyed being incredibly annoying, he went after your tongue, readying to eat the chewed-up food off your very tongue.

Eventually, you gave Shouto back his part of the breakfast, laughing as the both of you chatted about who was going to repay Shishikura for the used rosés. Neither one of you could decide, and so it was something to be solved later. Noon, however, came and with a nod, you accepted Shouto’s hug goodbye, to which you twisted his nose triumphantly as you waddled out of the front door, clothed in your winter gear, textbooks, and laptop,

It was time to brave the world and get this paper done.

“Mina, I mean… absolutely no offense when I say this, but it still shocks me every time you say you’re a chemistry major. You just seem so…”

“Dumb?”

“Yeah.”

“You gotta be some kind of stupid to willingly take inorganic chem,” Mina laughed, balancing her textbooks on her head as the both of you climbed the stairwell to the library’s study rooms. “That's why I have the dance minor! Best of both worlds!”

“Could never forget about that,” you laughed as the both of you neared the top of the stairwell.

You didn’t mean to notice him. As a matter of fact, most of your failed conquests at parties never amounted to much anger from you, but seeing Inasa from across the way, his face buried in some aerodynamics textbook, anger boiled in you. On the way to meeting with Mina, you had realized your mistake last night and how you wouldn’t have made said mistake if it hadn’t been for Inasa! You could’ve been dicked down, slammed against your bed and wall as the giant of a man fucked you!

“I’ll be right back,” you sneered, eyes narrowing as you passed your textbook to Mina.

With fire following in ever long, powerful stride, you blinked and immediately found yourself before Inasa.

“Hi. Wanna explain what happened last night?”

Inasa reacted as if you had shot him, his knees coming up to hit the table, his body knocking backward, and he tumbled, crashing to the floor as you watched with a gaping mouth.

“Y-Y/L/N!” Inasa shouted, his face going through half a billion emotions before settling in anxiety-filled fear. You watched, horrified yourself, as he swung to his knees, his head crashing to the floor as he began apologizing to you. “GOODMORNING, HOW ARE YOU TODAY?!”

“Pipe it down, Inasa!” you hiss, your cheeks flooding with embarrassed heat as you garnered the attention of everyone on the floor. “I’m not going to hurt you! I just wanted to talk!”

“Aha, yes, of course!” Inasa laughs, a full belly laugh. He sits up and you freeze seeing the bloodied cut on his forehead. He stands up, completely unaffected by the gash on his forehead, and uprights his chair before sitting comfortably. “How can I help you?”

“What happened to you last night?” you try again, eyebrow raised, arms crossed definitely and awkwardly because yeah… you were confronting a guy who didn't want to sleep with you. “You were into me and then suddenly wasn’t.”

Inasa laughs more, although nothing you said, implied, or did was even remotely funny.

Irritation runs through your veins.

“Inasa, please,” you sigh in helplessness, your eyes annoyed, pleading, and hopeful that he would be the one to finally give you an actual reason.

“It’s… it’s not you. If that’s what you’re wondering,” Inasa finally sighs. His face turns uncharacteristically solemn as his tongue passes through his lips, his shoulders raising to a shrug. “Typically speaking, you are exactly who and what I want when I endeavor in less than chivalrous but still passionate activities. I wanted you last night, and I will not lie that even as I left, I regretted behaving as I did.”

“Well, you did it, and it sorta really sucked,” you laugh, your mouth taut in a frown as your feelings are genuinely hurt.

You keep being put down, and there’s no reason for it.

Why couldn’t you be as sexually active as you wish you could be?

“...Todoroki has a claim on you,” Inasa spoke slowly, his mouth dipping from a usual smile to a frown. “I know you guys aren’t together, but in a way, you two are.”

“No,” you say with complete certainty, anger burning in your chest, “we’re not.”

“Try telling Todoroki that,” Inasa shrugs, his fingers scratching through his buzz cut. “Listen, I wanted to have intercourse with you last night; I did. I also am aware that Todoroki is a womanizer, but he said you were off-limits for all of us.”

“He said that?” your voice is perfectly calm, not showing the raging fire in you.

“Well, no, he definitely did not,” Inasa sighs, the palm of his hands pressing tightly against his eyes. “He has never said it… but it’s the way he talks about you, how he looks at you. It’s a claim on you, even if it’s not a verbal one, and well, no one wants to defy him.”

Your nostrils flare in your irritation, and you find that you’re stepping into Inasa’s personal space, his eyes going wide as you step between his legs and press your hands on his chest.

“I’ll be going home in about five hours. If you still want to fuck me, wait for me,” you say slowly, trying to make sure he understands. “I don’t care if Sho looks at me the way he does; he is not my boyfriend.”

Inasa gulps, his tan skin sporting a healthy pink flush, “Yes, ma’am.”

Five hours later, you’re walking into your apartment with Inasa behind you, his warm, slightly sweaty hand clasped in yours. You make eye contact with both your roommates, Shishikura, whose eyes are rolling to the depths of his skull, and Shouto, who looks like a wall. You, despite the anger you’re feeling for Shouto, smile prettily, then grin wolfishly as you corral Inasa towards your room. You send your roommates a wink before closing the door with a decisive click.

Much like you assumed the night prior, your drunken hazed, lust-driven, anger-flared thoughts proved to be right. Inasa fucked you against the wall, deep into the mattress, he drilled and fucked you until his dick was wet with your slick, and his leg was trembling with his plentiful unleashed loads. But you weren’t done yet, too many times have you been denied, and even though Inasa was trembling, his voice shaking with desperate pleas to slow down or he would cum too fast, you rode him with powerful, swiveling hips.

Once he left, you felt light again.

Your head light, body glowing as you dressed your bruised, cum slick body in a robe as you trudged to the bathroom. You showered, letting the warm water and sweet-smelling oils drench your body before you eventually exited, your hair in a towel, Shouto’s shirt on your person again.

Waltzing to the living room, you grinned as you collapsed on the couch, every grievance you held when you walked in forgotten at the moment.

“Hello,” you smile, your head falling onto Shouto’s lap who was, at the moment, very interested in his phone. Shishikura was gone, undoubtedly leaving in case he heard something he didn’t want to hear during your little four-hour sexscapade. “I am a leaf flowing through the river right now, if you’re wondering.”

“Don’t need to wonder. You were perfectly loud enough,” Shouto grumbled, his eyes rolling. “Says something that I could, considering the rooms are soundproof.”

“I should hope so! After you, the girls rave that Inasa is the best fuck on campus,” you hum, still on a delirious high as you attempt to reach for your best friend's hand to grasp. But to your shock, Shouto jerks away from your touch, and he stands, letting your head fall roughly on the couch. And just like that, your anger is back. The emotion Inasa had managed to fuck out of you for a bit returned at full force. “Shouto?!”

“What?” he snaps.

“What the fuck is your problem?!”

“My problem is that you brought someone to fuck at fucking five p.m.,” Shouto explains, his expression like the void, empty, dark, menacing. “We agreed to keep it until past ten.”

Your face screws up as you push up off the couch, “Are you kidding me?! I’ve seen you constantly bring girls to fuck at any and all times of the day! Don’t suddenly bring that shit in when it clearly isn’t an actual rule in this apartment!”

“You were also being obnoxiously loud,” Shouto narrows his eyes at you.

“You are too!”

“When am I ever?”

“I literally listened to you fuck that girl last night against our shared wall!”

“You moved your bed to our shared wall?! When?!”

“Doesn’t matter! I would’ve heard it just fine on the other side!”

“The girl wasn’t even that fucking loud!”

“You can’t ever remember the names of the girls you fuck! Do you know anything about them ever? Are you even using condoms?!”

“You only ever fuck men with questionable personalities.”

“Gee, I wonder fucking why!”

The two of you were nose to nose, anger flaring and near tangible between the two of you.

“What do you mean?” he grits slowly.

“I’m talking about you mad dogging any male human who so much as looks or thinks of me!” you snap, finger shoving between his pecs. “No one touches me because somehow they respect the way a womanizer looks at me.”

“I’m not looking at you in any special way,” Shouto squints his eyes, completely not having your accusations.

“Even if you don’t, this fucking behavior is pathetic of you!” you say, hands motioning between you two and the room. “I had sex, and you’re acting like some pathetic child! I have been putting up with your sex-craze tendencies since we were sixteen, asshole! Sixteen! If I want to gloat and float about having sex, then I fucking deserve to.”

His nostrils flare, his upper lip curling in a small twitch before he rolls his eyes and walks away.

“That’s right, Todoroki,” you laugh bitterly at his retreating form. “Walk away from a fight because you can never win them.”

It took a bit for the dust to settle, but as soon as it did, you realized in horror that you and Shouto had, for the first time ever, fought.

Being roommates with Shouto was always a fun thing. Having your childhood best friend right at your disposal meant that you could have dinner nights, movie nights, game nights, morning waffles, hikes, and literally anything whenever and wherever you wanted. He was a person to talk to when the days were long, and there was no one else in the world, the person who was there for you through thick and thin. But for two days, he had been locked away in his room, unwilling to look at you, refusing to be anywhere near you.

Your friends had noticed immediately.

The way the both of you hadn’t shown up together, the way you sat at opposite ends of the table, refusing to be trapped in a conversation together. Separate the two of you were, and the world acted as if Earth had dropped out of gravity.

You could care less right now.

You were rightfully mad at him! How dare he act so pettily over you having a sex life when you were expected to blink, turn the other way, and laugh when he would shower after a girl would leave before joining you on the couch to watch a movie. He was in the wrong, not you!

But even if you were unwilling to budge and he was refusing to see things the way they should be, you were now incredibly lonesome. So as you sat with your back on the mattress. Your butt to the wall, and your legs kicking against the wall, you thought of what you could do. With a bitter sigh, you rolled off your bed and scurried out of the apartment. Nothing but your wallet and ID on you so that you could get to the store on the first floor of the complex.

Holding the item in hand, you knocked on a door, your gaze already on the floor, embarrassed that you were going to do what you had to do.

“What?” came the annoyed voice of Shishikura, the door to his room opening as he looked at you unimpressed and very obviously unwelcomed.

“Truce?” you asked, raising the six-pack of Angry Orchard Rosé Cider.

Shishikura looks at you, at the ciders, then back at you.

“Fine.”

How in the world you’re drunk off of four rosé ciders is beyond you, but you are. You’re in the living room, laughing so hard that your stomach hurts as you’re trying not to snort the liquid from your mouth and out your nose. Shishikura is equally plastered off of one drink, his red a ruby red against his purple hair. He’s leaning against you, his breathing ragged, near asthmatic as he tries to once explain just how Shouto looked like when some girl slapped him across the face yesterday for ghosting her after sex.

“He was so shocked!” Shishikura squeaked out, his voice pitchy and incredibly high as he laughed more and more. “You should have seen it!”

Your feet kicked at the air, your face and lungs burning with a fire you hadn’t felt in so long as your laughter turned silent. You gasped for air, trying to contain yourself but failing hysterically.

“Do you wa’ another meatballsh?” Shishikura suddenly asked, his hands flailing to grab his plate of meat. “I think you want another o’.”

“I wan’ ‘ne!” you cried with a slight slur, tears of joy slipping past your eyes to which you haphazardly scrubbed them off your face. “They’re soooo good! I didn’t think they could be so… be so good!”

You find yourself eating another meatball, drinking it down with the cider and feeling happy again. Shishikura goes still by your side, and you hum in wonder, unfocused eyes trying to find what had caught his attention and falling onto the one man you were mad at currently.

Shouto was standing at the apartment entrance, dressed in ripped black jeans, a tight grey turtleneck sweater, and his backpack slung on his shoulder. It was, without a doubt, a studying-only outfit. You knew and have discussed too many times with Shouto about how he never trusted women to take his turtlenecks off without potentially ruining the fabric.

“Well, someone’s finally home... from a night of beddin mo’ women, huh?” a voice spoke, but you were completely unsure if it was you or Shishikura who said it.

Judging by the way Shouto’s eyes locked on Shishikura and not yours, it seemed it was him who said it.

“No, I was doing something,” Shouto retorted, his hand gripping the strap of his backpack, his eyes shifting between you and Shishikura. “A paper for class.”

“Sure,” you end up speaking up, your voice sounding completely sober. You sit up so that your elbow is resting on Shishikura’s nearest shoulder. You raise the glass bottle to your lips, drinking its content without care, never once breaking eye contact. “What was the paper's name? You going after your TA? Or was it a professor by chance?”

Shouto’s eyebrows furrow, his face completely unimpressed by your comeback, but he remains silent.

“He looks like he’s trying to cosplay that one Young The Rock picture, no way would a dignified professor or TA fuck him!” Shishikura laughed with a loud bark, and all of a sudden, that was all you could see too.

The both of you howled with laughter, laughing and slapping each other as you attempted to drink the last bits of the rosés as Shouto rolled his eyes and walked away.

“This is fun. No wonder why you guys do it to me so often.”

As time does, it moves forward.

It seemed as if the entire campus had tuned in to what had transpired between you and Shouto. No one the slightest bit sure as to what happened, but everyone knew something big had happened. There was no more walking together before classes or after classes, no weird Instagram or Snapchat stories of the other, both of you never having to excuse yourself because you had plans with the other. Even though they claimed to not care about other people’s business, the school was suddenly invested in the single speculation that Todoroki Shouto’s and Y/l/n Y/n’s relationship was over.

“Breaking News, it was never a real relationship!” you would scream the first few times you heard it, which only worked to make them whisper louder that you were in further denial.

For the last seventeen years of your life, you had never gone more than two days without talking or seeing your childhood best friend. Those two days happened when Rei had experienced a staggering, hospital-inducing breakdown from stress and had subsequently burned Shouto when you were five years old. The two days were because he spent four days in the hospital. The first two days, he was not allowed visitors as the hospital staff put him under a coma to help his body from entering shock and heal. Of course, the moment he was awakened, you were dragging your mother to his bedside.

That was the only time you hadn’t seen or spoken to Shouto consistently.

But since Sunday evening, you had only seen Shouto once when you were drunk with Shishikura. You had only spoken to him then too.

For the first time in seventeen years, you broke your record of not talking or seeing Shouto.

From two days to five.

It was weird.

You felt almost empty.

So when Mina and Uraraka placed their arms around your shoulders, their eyes dead serious, you knew that they had a distraction for you.

“The deltas are throwing a party,” Uraraka spoke with mystery. “It is on Saturday.”

“It is only right that we go, get our asses so drunk our blood is practically a distillery, and fuck anyone who looks at us a second longer than anyone else,” Mina agrees, her tone wise and knowing as she nods her head.

“Our question to you is:” they spoke together, their voices weirdly, obviously practiced, in synch. “Are you in?”

Your tongue is pressed between your lips, your fingers pressing against the textbook you were using to help support your essay’s thesis, and you roll your eyes.

You grin.

“Obviously.”

And as time promises each and every time, Saturday finally came.

“What is our objective tonight?!” Mina screams over the background music that Jirou is blasting in Momo’s larger-than-life bathroom.

“To fuck bitches and get money!” Hagakure, the only one currently not downing a drink, screams back.

“NO, WRONG!” Mina shakes her head, climbing onto the white marble countertops and pointing at Jirou. “Kyo! Your turn!”

“To beat that prick in the sound booth and prove that I’m—”

“NO! Wrong again! Yaomomo!”

“Um, to make everlasting mem—”

“INCORRECT, YOU GORGEOUS PRINCESS! Tsuyu, don’t fail me, babe!”

“Well, it’s to prove to Todoroki that y/n-chan should be able to fuck any person she wants.”

“A bit lengthy, a bit focused on the wrong parts of it, but YES! Tonight’s operation: get y/n a man — preferably Inasa — who fucks the negativity out of her!”

You laugh loudly, rolling your eyes as you lean in closer to the mirror. You hold a Mike’s Hard in one hand, and in the other is your eyeliner as you paint on your makeup. You’re not really hearing the conversations that the girls are having, your own mind too lost in the music, and the swaying you’ve picked up as the three bottles of Mike’s you’ve had in the past thirty minutes are calming down your still frazzled nerves.

You don’t pull away from your reflection until after you’re done smoothing over your favorite lipstick on your pouty lips. You look over at your reflection and see Mina dancing with an awkwardly stiff Jirou and a delightfully giggling Momo on the bathroom countertops. A smile forms on your face, happiness radiating in your chest, and you grin looking at your friends.

But Shouto still sat in your mind, and you couldn’t help but wonder why.

Why did it hurt knowing that he was avoiding you as much as you were him?

Why didn’t he just try to corner you?

Why did you care that he didn’t?

He was your best friend in the entire world, since your earliest memories, he’s been there, you reason, your whooping not quite as loud as you watch Jirou awkwardly be sandwich between a grinding Mina and a complacent Momo.

It was his fault you, you further reasoned, smiling widely at Hagakure, who was twirling around you, applying her lipstick as a super crazy never before seen talent of hers. He was the one acting like an idiot over the people you slept with even though you let all the people he slept with slide!

But why did you?

Your brows furrowed slightly, unfurrowing just as quickly as Mina pulled you and Uraraka up onto the countertop with her as Jirou and Momo dropped to the floor.

You fucking were in love with Shouto, damnit! Of course you let the stupid personal things go just to appease him! Your back straightened, your eyes rolling as you began to dance with the Kehlani music thumping in the background, but then you freeze.

You were in love with him.

You loved Shouto.

Not in a friendly, platonic, family way.

In an ‘I would date you if I could and marry you on the prettiest beach in front of the most beautiful sunset’ way.

You found that your body was dancing on autopilot as you began to reassess your thoughts, your actions, your wants with Shouto, desperately trying to disprove this love for him. But no matter what you did, you found that it was true no matter what angle you looked at it.

The bass dropped, and you went stiff, your body standing straight and tall although you felt incredibly, terribly small.

“I love him,” you spoke, although you’re not sure who to. Maybe it was to the laughing gods above you or the crying spirits around you. But the girls heard it for some reason, and they, as they were patiently waiting for these past six, nearly seven days, caught you as you went weak.

Finally, realizing that you were in love with your childhood best friend was not the conclusion you expected from a week's silence from Shouto and you. But as you were currently in a crop top with a mesh shirt underneath and the most ripped jeans you owned, chugging down a neon green and blue nearly toxic alcoholic drink, you realized that being at this party was the right way to conclude this circus of a week.

The rush of the liquid dropping down the beer bong was something you found yourself struggling to keep up with, and you felt some of the liquid pour out of your mouth as you grunt, trailing down your heaving chest, creating an image in your onlookers as you refused to choke or pull away. Swallowing the last bit of the drink, ripping the plastic tube out of your mouth, you threw your hands in the air, Tsuyu, who had held and poured the contents for you, screaming too as she lifted your arm in victory.

You couldn’t really hear the music anymore, much more entranced with the music you were singing on your own, and you were currently holding Mina’s face, touching foreheads with her as you spoke a mantra of your love for her.

“Ashido Mina, you are the baddest bitch in the whole wide world. I love your pink hair and your fat ass, and I would die for you. I love you… so fucking much,” is what you said. How it was actually said and how it was perceived is a whole other story because Mina laughed loudly and allowed you to hug her despite your sticky alcohol body.

Your twenties were the new two’s, it seemed.

“Yo, y/l/n!” a voice yelled, and although you let go of Mina’s face, your arms found a new home around her neck as you turned around.

“Hm?”

Your terrible drunk eyes looked all over before falling on a man wearing a basketball jersey and joggers.

Shindou Yo, one of campus’ manwhores. He had a reputation similar to Shouto, you knew that very well, but you were aware that he was disturbingly creepy. According to many vital witnesses, the man slept with just about anyone willing regardless of gender, so not only did you know what the girls thought of him, experienced with him, there was a wider demographic not even Shouto had entered. Number one thing to be told was the fact that Shindou was into some heavy, dark shit to an extreme, his room reeked of sex, and he himself smelled like booze, weed, and BO. But a strong dick was a strong dick at the end of the day.

“Come play beer pong with me?” he asked, his hands shoved into his pockets as he smiled innocently. “I’ve heard some pretty solid shit about your skills, and I want to see how I add up.”

“I’ll play!” you agree immediately, jumping at the thought of drinking more. “Bu I don’t wa’ beer… ish nashty.”

“Anything for you, darling.”

With your arm still holding onto Mina, you accepted Shindou’s hand and allowed him to drag you off to where he wanted to play the game of beer pong.

The game of beer pong went without a single thing going wrong. You were paired up with Shindou, and Mina had managed to find Kirishima in the crowd before you got to your destination and demanded she have him as a partner and not Monoma.

It was safe to say that you were drunk, disgustingly out of your mind. It was an intense game of Cup Pong, the two different teams equally as bad in the drunken stupor, but finally, the two teams were down to a single cup and Kirishima — who was the only reason why they were winning!!!! — had the last ball. You watched in terrible apprehension, fingers digging into Shinsou’s biceps as Kirishima rose the wet ping pong ball to Mina’s lips and let her blow on it for good luck before bringing it back in and began a few steadying practice throws.

“You know, I’m glad I saw you at this party,” Shindou whispers to you, his head ducking down so that you and only you could hear that.

“Why?” you say a lot louder than you wanted, your heart hammering in fear that you would lose this game.

“Because you’re sexy as fuck,” Shindou spoke, his voice turning deeper, huskier, “and now you’re single.”

You blink, attention stolen from the game as you forgot about the final cup and looked at Shindou with a blank stare and an open mouth.

“What?”

“Cuz you and Todoroki are over,” Shindou explains to you as if you’re a child. “You guys are over, right? That’s all everyone’s talking about, and all us guys are ready to fuck you whenever you’re ready.”

His smirk irritates you, the lust in his eyes angering you as you drop your hold on his arm.

“We weren’t together, and you knew that,” you say, eyes narrowing as the crowd watching the game explodes in raging cheers as Kirishima sinks the ball into the cup. “Why the fuck would Shouto be fucking every girl that walks if we were together? What makes you think I’d be okay with it?”

“You’re a cuck,” Shindou continues on, confidence unaffected. “Oh, are the two of you maybe changing roles now? Does the big guy want me to fuck you in front of him?”

Your fist makes contact with his throat before you can even stop yourself and the cheers quickly turn into gasps.

After apologizing profusely to the party holders, they decided that you could, in fact, stay at the party. Your knuckles throbbed in pain, the alcohol in your system buzzing in you in a way that wasn’t fun or relaxing as you made a simple side-step dance move in the middle of the dance floor. The girls, who had at the beginning of the party, drifted ways, had once more glued themselves at your side on the floor. You weren’t in a dancing mood as you took a drink of what you assumed to be a Moscow mule made by Mina for you to keep you at a high for the rest of the party.

Like hell you would ever let Shouto cuck you!

Let him fuck another woman in front of you?

You would go insane if he ever thought that would be acceptable.

“Down girl, relax!” Mina yelled by your ear. “I thought I was babysitting y/n, not Bakugou Katsuki!”

You startled, realizing that your frown had become a fierce snarl as you danced on the floor.

“Come on, babe, let’s get you feeling good again; let’s enjoy this night!” Mina exclaimed, her hands pushing your drink to your mouth and forcing you to chug the contents of the drink. The red Solo Cup is dropped to the floor as soon as you finish. She grabbed your wrists and began to fluidly move your arms — or as well as she could manage herself because she, too, was drunk.

But with Mina winking and smiling at you, the rest of the girls eventually throw themselves into your linked dance circle, your own negative emotions left and in came joy.

It took about another round of ten songs for the dance circle to be destroyed and to have all of you resuming a rave-like jumping and scream-singing as Jirou finally snuck her way into the DJ booth and succeeded to take over. You spun around at the end of one song, laughing completely out of breath as you clapped your hands together. You often forget that while Jirou only listened to a very specific genre, she was a musical genius who had banger playlists for every occasion.

It seemed frat parties were one of them.

However, the next song had your head tilting backward, your grin spreading even wider as you began to move your hips in slow, distinct movements. Dancing with your hips was something you had learned, something you instilled into your dancing category for as long as you could remember.

The beats were loud, deep, thumping deep in the ground and vibrating with great strength in your chest as you pointed a finger at Mina, who was also dancing similarly to you. Your lips moved as you sang the song quietly, the heat and humidity of the room suddenly pressing onto you like another person. You hummed, flicking the parts of your hair sticking to the nape of your neck off, grateful for the slightly cooler air hitting your sweaty skin.

As you rolled your hips down, your hands fanning yourself, trying to cool down your deliriously warm, alcohol-heated body, you froze for just a bit. A person pressed to your back, your ass pressing against a hot thigh, and a hand resting upon the curve of your thigh, keeping you in place. You might have cared, but the body against yours was a welcomed one. Your hips and ass continuing to move in tandem with the music, deliberate highs and lows, and you worked your way up and down the man's body who met yours with spinning accuracy that made you began to pant, your heart racing because this was hot to you. You raised your arms behind you, clasping onto his neck, keeping him on you.

His hair was soft under your touch, slightly sweaty but threaded and parted between your fingers just too easily. His left hand, which had found a spot on your stomach, was radiating heat, something easily felt due to you only having mesh cloth there.

It was slow.

Sensual.

Somehow familiar.

Absolutely mind-numbing.

His chest broad against your back, muscles strong and tight against you.

He was skilled, practiced. Someone you knew was not going to disappoint you, and as your lust-glazed eyes took in the entirely shocked looks of your friends, you finally turned to look.

Somehow, someway, you weren’t shocked at all to see Shouto’s clouded, dark eyes locking on yours. Your world seems to freeze as something between you and Shouto is so obviously broken between you, forever changing, no longer able to go back. It didn’t matter that this was the first time in almost a week you had seen him, had talked to him, he was there, and you wanted to feel his skin scorching against yours. His touch screamed of his want for you, your recognition of your love for him, and your current lust for him. You were angry, hurt, confused, but you were too drunk to care, too intoxicated on the spell the two of you created on this dance floor.

But even as your world froze, the music continued on.

Grabbing Shouto’s hand, you spun around so that his chest was now pressed against yours, your legs between his. You continued dancing, continued to roll your hips down as you sunk down to the ground as Shouto remained standing, his hand supporting and balancing you as you went down and up. He began to dance with you again, the world seemingly disappearing as the two of you ground and panted heavily in each other's ears.

He pushed forward, and you whined, feeling the blazing swollen heat of his semi-hard cock against your stomach, but you met him there.

Your fingers fisting in his hair as his hands found their way into your back pockets, gripping your ass, and your eyes fluttered shut as his mouth, blazing, intense, and intentful, mashed against yours. You kissed him back immediately, all defenses abandoned to that of your lust, wants, and needs. His mouth was a fire, his kiss a blaze that consumed you, drowned you, made you push for more.

It was a kiss that lasted who knows how long, but by the time you had separated, you could feel the familiar sting to your slowly swelling lips and the song that had ended.

His eyes were a near black, his cheeks flushed, and his arms kept you so close you had to think if you were in the privacy of your home or in public.

“I want you,” you whispered, your voice begging, pleading for him.

“I need you,” he responded, his voice equally wishing.

“Take me home,” you speak, lips pressing sloppy, desperate hot kisses to his neck. “Take me home and fuck me.”

“Fuck, yes, okay. Let’s go,” Shouto pants, his hands leaving your ass and grabbing onto one of yours before taking you and dragging you away.

It wouldn’t hit you until much later, but the very first kiss you had ever had with Shouto was in the middle of a dance floor, at a party where the male population had been ready to snatch you up after your relationship with Shouto was so-called over.

You were breathless.

No matter how deep you inhaled, you felt like you weren’t having enough oxygen flooding your veins, filling your lungs. You laugh loudly in the night, uncaring about the strangers you passed looking at you and Shouto, who chuckled and snorted with every giggle you made.

This felt crazy, insane, something serendipitous and not real even in the smallest of bits.

He kissed you.

He wanted you.

He said he needed you.

Wants and needs were different things, but he said need.

He needed you.

Just you.

Your feet ached from the running, but you could only focus on Shouto, your mind filling and swimming in the memory of his body pressed to you. The way his lips ghosted over your neck, and the way he danced against you — with you. The four-block walk back to your apartment seemed too far, and your eyes locked on a nearing alleyway.

With much more strength than you should have, you shoved Shouto into the alleyway, your mouth immediately pressing onto his.

Shouto groaned into your mouth, letting you drink his noises as you pulled him close, consuming him in a messy clash of teeth, spit, and tongue. You whined back, your legs slotting between his thigh and grinding down on the hard muscle. It alleviated the growing, scorching heat in your panties but also intensified it, making you want for more and more and more.

“You drive me fucking insane,” Shouto groaned in your mouth, shifting and guiding your rolling hips his thigh better, more fluid, more intense.

Your eyes barely cracked open, your mouth no longer kissing him put pressing against his in an open mouth pant. Your drunken breath saying nothing but implying the world.

Something Shouto was more than keen on giving you.

“Holy fuck,” he whispered for you to hear, so reverent, so holy. And so that you, the center of his world, the only thing he saw and believed in, knew how passionately, how ardently he believed in you, his mouth slid down your neck, and his teeth sunk in your flesh. He claimed you, praised you, making you a part of him.

“I’m still so mad at you!” you moan, voice pitched, whiny, and deliriously high. “I love you, asshole. I love you, and you sleep around! I love you, and I don’t care if you sleep around, but you care that I sleep around?!”

“I love you too,” Shouto mumbles against your neck, his teeth continuing to press into your skin that seems to explode with heat at the revelation. “I love, and I’m an idiot; I’m so sorry.”

And then he does something with his tongue against your neck, the soft of swipes, the wet tickling heat making your head slam back against the brick wall, and a mangled, strangled moan of unadulterated want emits from you.

“We'll talk about this in the morning,” you pant, fingers fisting in his shirt. “We can fix this, but right now, shut up and fuck me.”

“Y/n—”

“I’m horny,” you interrupt, hips sharply jutting into his leg. “You made me horny. Take responsibility.”

His eyes flashed dark, his nostrils flaring, and your words cemented in his head. He resumed his painting, his worship on your neck as you cried loudly in the alleyway, desperate, needy for more.

It was dizzying to have him on you like this.

For so long, you had only touched him in a few ways, had only ever felt a specific type of warmth. But this was unlike anything you’ve ever done with him, to him. It felt like you were burning and freezing, consumed by heat and energy and everything Shouto. His all too familiar cologne filled your nose, drowning your brain, invading your senses. His frantic heartbeat felt against your own body, telling you exactly how you were affecting him, how you made his heart speed and jump with every breathy whine.

“Fuck, I can’t do this. We need to get home now!” Shouto growls, his hands grabbing you by the wrist yet again and pulling you away.

His strides are long, quick, and powerful. You’re running to keep up, beautifully out of breath, staggering and stumbling to keep up in his objective to get back to the apartment now.

It doesn’t seem to take long before he’s pushing open the doors to the apartment complex, corralling you through the doors and into the elevator to get to the eleventh floor. The elevator doors are behind you, and with no one else in the life, you turn on him and immediately resume your own endeavor of claiming Shouto with your mouth, body, and soul. He matches your intensity, hands roaming from where the clasp of your bra sat to the curve of your ass. He grabbed you, pulled you in closer, the air in his nose staggering as you stammer against his mouth.

Teeth touch lips, tongues in each other's cheeks, and Shouto leads you out of the elevator backward, his one hand on your waist forever steady and the other one holding the key. Your fingers are back in his hair, pulling and tugging sharply on the soft, short strands with nearly disappeared gel. He gets to the door, fumbling with the key as you continue to kiss him, distracting him with the smallest of movements.

“Which room?” he asks against your mouth, pushing you through the threshold, his foot closing the door behind him.

The shoes are haphazardly kicked off and you’re now on your tiptoes to continue kissing him as you were. You tried to think, tried to figure out if you wanted to be surrounded by Shouto’s scent or to have him displayed in your room. His teeth then suckle on your bottom lip, biting down on the swollen, hot flesh just gentle enough that your mind draws a blank and your voice responds on its own.

“Mine.”

You shriek then, Shouto swiftly picking you up off the floor and you panic, hands swatting and beating on him as you scream to let you down. He continues walking, holding you without a worry, his arms remaining strong and firm beneath you. But with your distraction, with your lips no longer pressed sinfully against his, Shouto’s mouth finds a junction point on your clavicle and sinks his teeth down again, claiming you once more.

“S-Sho—” your voice hitches, the feeling too intense for you to process all at once. You hear your room door open and close, and without warning, you’re soaring through the air before collapsing on the bed.

“You think I go to the gym to get muscles for fun?” Shouto taunts, his fingers hooking under the dark grey t-shirt he’s wearing. “Angel, I go to the gym to make sure I can fuck you in any position, against any surface or wall you want.”

Your body feels like it's scorching as he removes his shirt, his muscles rippling and moving seductively with the devious, intentional movement.

“What’s wrong, y/n?” Shouto asks, the shirt dropping to the floor, removing all traces of oxygen from your person. He steps closer, fingers circling around your ankle and suddenly pulling you in toward him until you were sitting at the edge, his lips hovering over yours. “Cat got your tongue?”

Your tongue feels dry in your mouth, but your eyes narrow before you push up and capture his mouth back with yours. He kisses you back deeply, bending down so that you begin to shift backward, allowing him the space to crawl onto the bed with you, and at the last moment, your leg wraps around his waist and spins the both of you. Shouto gasps as you pin him onto the mattress, your tongue invading his mouth, brushing and swirling against his, coaxing his own tongue back into your own mouth. With the wet heat in your mouth, your teeth playfully, just gently dig into his appendage and tug.

“No, but it seems like I got yours,” you humor him, your teeth releasing his tongue, and Shouto looks up at you like you were both the sun and the moon, and the stars were a gift to him.

It takes your breath away.

Shouto grins, shifting onto his elbows so that he’s closer to you before kissing you again.

The kiss is growing louder, both your mouths ever so consuming, trying to relay years of repressed, unknown emotions and feelings within a drastic, incredible touch. Your hips begin shifting against his crotch, humping his clothed erection, demonstrating yet again the power and grace you hold in your body.

Shouto’s hands move from your ribs up to your breasts, and with the hot, rough flesh of his skin, he squeezes your tender flesh. You moan into his mouth, hips bucking wildly against him at the sensation. It isn’t a powerful flesh, but a reminder, a demonstration of just what and where he could inflect passionate actions.

Your hands scour his chest, fingernails dragging teasingly down his firm, developed muscles, fingers flicking and teasing at his own exposed nipples. Shouto grunts into your mouth, hips bucking powerfully upward into your clothed cunt, and you splutter at the power behind it. But it seems as though Shouto is over the fishnet mesh shirt and crop top you’re wearing because he’s tugging it out of the waistband of your jeans and commands in a deep, lust-ridden voice: “Off.”

Goosebumps flash across your skin, bubbling and spraying across your sensitive skin as your shirt and crop top join Shouto’s on the floor. Your gasp loudly when Shouto rolls the both of you over swiftly, his mouth immediately pressing hot, viper kisses on your breasts. All thought and reason leave your mind as his teeth nip and pull. His fingers pushing the straps of your bra off your shoulders and shoving your boobs out of the bra in a firm hold.

“You have no idea how fucking long I’ve wanted to touch you, kiss you, fuck you,” Shouto whispers, his tone almost dark as his hot air fans against your already pebbling nipples. “Fuck, angel, you’re better than anything I’ve ever dreamed about.”

You whine loudly, fingers tangling in his hair as you desperately, wordlessly try to persuade him to put his lips around your attentive, eager nipples.

“I always forget you got these things,” Shouto says in wonder, his fingers touching the metal bars sitting so innocently, deviously on through your nipple. He tugs on the bar, and all the nerves in your breast fire and tingle, and your feet curl by his back as you whimper. “Fuck... I can’t believe I forgot…”

“S-Shouto, I fucking swear!” you almost screech, hands desperately pulling at strands of red and white, wanting his teeth and tongue and the suction of his mouth on your nipple. “Stop. Fucking. Talking!”

Shouto chuckles, his eyes of blue and grey flashing up at you dangerously, knowingly.

“Okay,” he says cheekily, and as if he read your thoughts, his teeth gently bit down on your all too ready nipple. Your head slams against the mattress, your chest feeling alive as if you had been electrocuted. He sucks your nipple, teeth tugging on the sensitive flesh, clacking against the metal in your flesh. His fingers taking care of your lonesome nipple, keeping it company with gentle, purposeful rolls as he has you sobbing his name.

“Please, please, please,” you beg, although you have no idea what you’re begging for. Your hips pathetically grinding into his clothed cock, trying to get yourself to cum while not having been touched. “Sho— Shouto!”

Shouto pulls away from your nipple with a loud pop. His breath panting, short, and overwhelmingly strained as if simply sucking your throbbing, needy nipple had given him the same amount of pleasure as it did you before consuming your forgotten one. Just as before, you melted against him, begging please, pretty please to him but never telling him what you were wanting. You didn’t know what you were wanting.

But unlike before, his hands leave their attentive position on your free nipple and slam your hips back down onto the mattress, keeping you down and still as he continued his ministrations until you were nipplegasming. You choked as the orgasm consumed you, your body going rigid and your eyes rolling to the depths of your head as his hot mouth was all you could think of. For a moment, the needy wet heat between your thighs was easily ignorable, something unneeded until Shouto was pulling away and kissing you again.

His chest was pressed tight against your own chest, your sensitive, overstimulated nipples rubbing against his chest with the welcomed friction as you let out a wordless, near-dizzy sigh into Shouto’s mouth. He kissed you with incredible passion, with dizzying heat, and consuming lust.

Your voice was so small, your voice easily drowned in Shouto’s mouth as your fingernails dug into his back and raked down pathetically, desperately proving that you were still here. Still fighting him on just who would win this night. Your fingers went down the curve of his spine, trailing down until you found the waistband of his sweats, and with his mouth everso distractingly on the swell of your breasts, biting, marking, and sucking hickies and his print on you for forever, he helped you slide the pants off.

In an almost dramatic fashion, his eyes burning deep into yours, leaving you stunned and a worshiper at his feet, he rose off your bed and let the pants fall. You shakily inhaled, your eyes suddenly transfixed and only seeing the hard, leaking dick that stood tall and proud against his twitching stomach. At the mere sight of him, you now truly, completely, and entirely understood just why the girls were obsessed.

From tip to the base, he was thick, the flush of his skin gorgeous, the curve of his cock optimal to fuck anyone. He was long, thick, and delicious—trimmed pubes of red and white and balls that had your mouth watering and going dry. You wondered, imagined, tried to visualize just how much it was going to hurt getting that in you. You’ve never had a man with a dick like that, never had to choke or fuck on something that looked like it would possibly render you stupid the moment you were impaled.

“Can I?” you ask, ‘can I touch you? Can I suck you?’ go unsaid.

“You owe me one,” Shouto says, his words teasing if it wasn’t for the way his voice betrayed him with the eagerness, the want and inexplicable tell that says if you don’t touch him, he will lose his fucking mind. “Please, do it.”

You’re dragging him back onto the bed, sitting him by your headboard, spreading his legs apart as you situate yourself between them. With a tentative, shaky hand, you reach out and grab on his dick.

His flesh is hot to the touch; it's hard and twitches just so at your grasp. Shouto lets out a gasp mixed with a whine, and you look at him with wide eyes and parted lips. Unable to help yourself, you lean in, your nose touching the underside of his length and nuzzling into the flesh. You look back up at him with hooded eyes, eyes dark with mirth, lust, and an overwhelming need to please Shouto. He stares back, eyes entirely too bright, almost scared, almost as if he can’t believe this is happening.

You smile softly, eyes breaking contact to look at the swelling cock in your hand, and then back at him as your tongue pokes out of your mouth and puts a long, wet stripe against his length.

And Shouto?

Shouto moans like a man who’s had warm food after days of starving.

You lick from base to tip, saliva mixing with precum as your mouth presses teasing, open mouth kisses down the length of his cock, tongue pressing against the sweltering heat of his balls.

“Fuck, y/n, stop teasing,” Shouto grits, his hips pathetically snapping into nothing, his hands desperately trying to touch you, to which you swatted him away each and every time. You tut, shaking your head. With both your hands fisting his dick at the middle of his length, your squeeze and pull in opposite directions.

The reaction is one that you were hoping for, Shouto’s head slamming to the headboard with a clash, his legs jumping just a bit, and precum coming out in even heavy drops. You laugh breathlessly at his display, enamored with how fucking easy he is to get to make noises. He’d never made noises before, no other girl had him the way you did, and that made you crazy with power.

Before you wanted to, your mouth consumed to head of his cock, allowing the musky smell that was completely and only Shouto to fully consume you. You sucked on his thick swollen head, tongue pressing on the leaking slit on his head as he choked on your name. You smile, taking him in further, straining against the weight in your mouth, the pressure on the back of your throat, and the stretch of your throat. As soon as you had him a bit way in, you were pushing out, his hips driving to find you but missing you. Shouto’s noise was almost broken, near needy, and your head spun with his noises. Unable to stop, you pushed in again, allowing the drive of his hips to send his cock further down your throat.

Tears filled your eyes at the action, his cock much too large, much too thick to be fucked into your throat as such. Your fists acted as a barrier as you adjusted, your throat humming, mouth moaning as Shouto lost himself to the heat of your wet mouth. You bobbed your head, fucking him diligently and intently with your mouth, driving him further down, your tongue and hollowed cheeks. You sucked his dick with the intention of ruining him, of making him fill your mouth and throat with him so he could never doubt that it was him you wanted, him you needed to consume. You let go of one hand, allowing it to fondle with his balls as his cock went further into your mouth, the sounds of your choking, gagging, and crying egging him on.

“You take me so good,” Shouto sang to you, whispering words that only you’ve heard. “Fuck, angel, take me all the way. I know you can do it.”

With his hands at the back of your head, your fingers squeezing his balls, and the shaky removal of your final hand on his cock, he drives his hips all the way up. Shouto curses loudly, and you choke, feeling the rush of cum shooting down your throat, and you’re let free.

“Swallow it all, don’t spit it up,” Shouto breathes, his body shifting upward, eyes intent, focused. “Let me see.”

You cough violently, mouth closed as you swallow the salty cum, only letting your mouth open to allow the drool and spit to drip from your flat tongue as you show him that you swallowed every last seed. He groaned, grasping you by the chin and pulling you back in for a passionate, all-consuming kiss. The taste of Shouto and his cum sat heavily in your throat, and you were shaking as he began to unbutton your jeans, shedding them off of you as he flipped you back around so that your back was resting against the mattress.

Salt sweat dripped down your neck, and Shouto left fingertip bruises on your waist, your knees and legs awkwardly kicking as you finally got your jeans off your ankles. You shuttered, feeling Shouto’s hot, spit-slick dick pressing against your stomach, your cunt flipping and twisting at the thought of taking him all in.

“You’re still, fuck… you’re still hard?” you gasp, Shouto’s fingers tracing the innards of your thighs, scratching at your ass, slapping it once, twice, leaving you pitched and shaking.

“How can I not be when you’re down beneath me?” Shouto asks, his eyes looking at you as if he was burning the very naked image to you in his brain for him forever. “You’re mine, right?”

The question itself, while unexpected, was not unwanted.

You feel yourself nodding, your fingers scratching up his flexed arms, “Yours and only yours.”

“Good,” Shouto smirks, leaning in, his entire weight on the one hand beside your head, making you groan as his lips were so close yet so far away. “I’m yours as you are mine.”

With that, his fingers pressed to your thus far, unattended to clit, your legs shaking, kicking the air as you howled in pleasure. But it was such an intimate place, something you never expected Shouto to ever touch, and so, in a voice so pathetic you couldn’t even recognize it as yours, you screeched: “D-Don’t touch that!”

Shouto cocked an eyebrow, his head tilting as his fingers swirled around your swollen nub, sending just enough electrifying pleasure through every neuron in your body. “Why not?” he asked, voice authoritative and curious and sadistic. “It’s mine — you’re mine. I can play with what’s mine whenever I want.”

The words make your entire will collapse, the words liquid heat in your ears and mind. You moan loudly, feeling Shouto adjust your hips, lining your spasming cunt with his cock, and with his tongue delving into your mouth, his lips pressing against yours, he slowly pushed into you.

Shouto was loud the entire way into you, the deep grunts, breathless moans, and mindless babble of how this was unlike anything he’s had before, better than anything he’s ever imagined. He bottoms out quickly, hands leaving purple bruises against your skin as you lay on the bed silent.

Your back is entirely arched, jaw slacked, voice dead on your tongue because the feeling of him buried deep within you is staggering. You let out a single tone noise, your mouth gasping for breath as your voice finally begins to come back to you.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you whisper over and over, your legs tight around Shouto’s hips, shaking with the feeling in you. “God, y-you’re so big, Sho… I’m—”

You can’t finish your sentence because he shifts just enough that his cock is meeting places in you that had never been encountered before. Your eyes roll back again, your fingers pressing ruby red scars to his back as you scratch and tear his back.

“You’re so fucking tight, shit,” Shouto pants, his mouth panting against the sweat on your collarbone, his own breathing heavy and spaced. “You’re perfect, y/n, so fucking perfect.”

You preen with those words, your mouth finding a home at his temple to which you kiss him, drag your lips down to his ear. You bite and nibble as you adjust to him buried deep within you. And he heaves a sigh and pushes up off you, eyes daring to stare into you as he huffs almost in disbelief of this entire night.

“I’m going to start moving,” he says, fingers scratching down your sides to your thighs. “Are you ready?”

Not trusting your voice, you nod. Shouto smiles, leaning back down for one last kiss to which you quickly returned, staying there as his hips moved backward before thrusting back into you. It's the first thrust of many, but your arms wrap even tighter underneath his own, your nails scarring his back as he goes again and again. You fucks into you deliberately, readily, with purpose and skill that speaks wonders and lives up to the many rumors you’ve ever heard.

His thrusts are powerful, slapping into your thighs with a mighty smack, making you whimper and wail into his salty neck as your hips lift up to meet his. It's a powerful dance, a dizzying cycle. His cock sliding up and down your puffy velvet walls, your weeping walls clenching him in a vice, unforgiving and unwilling to let go.

He speaks praises into your ear, your yours, your mouth.

“Such a pretty angel, moaning for me, crying for me, tell me you want my cock. Tell me you want me buried in your fucking stomach.”

You are converted to him in return, seeing him, speaking to him, devoted to him.

“Fuck, I want you more. Faster, harder! Don’t stop! I can feel you in my stomach, Sho! Fuck! Fuck me, fuck me fuck me!”

His weight is pressed on your thighs, spreading your thighs further apart, fucking into deeper, fucking you so powerfully, so desperately your soaked cunt squelches and drips your essence, soaking your bed and his legs. Your teeth sink into his skin, copper filling your mouth, and your vision feels missing as you are slamming your hips up, rolling them desperately to fuck back into him. You can feel his hand clutching yours, pressing it into the mattress as he somehow speeds up again, drilling you into the mattress, the bed creaking and bending under both your weight.

“More, more, more!”

And he gives, and gives, and gives.

You wail his name, the heat in your skin, tickling your clit and innards making you sweat, the alcohol on your skin sticking you to Shouto.

Shouto grunts your name, hisses your name, damns you heaven and back for having such a fucking grip on him. It's when he looks into your eyes, cock drilling into you at a speed and power that no human should ever obtain, one hand gripping yours and the other pinching and teasing your clit, you cum, bursting open at the seams.

Your orgasm is loud, clenching, all-consuming, and you drag Shouto down with you as he stammers, shudders, and cums deep within your womb. His seed spilling out of you as the both of you collapse onto the bed with breathless, thoughtless minds.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Right?” you chuckle.

And with your nose pressed to his sweaty, sex-lulled body, you fall asleep with his hands traveling up and down your spine. Hopefully, things would be well when you woke up.

P R E S E N T

To stop you from screeching so loudly you woke up the entire world, Shouto held his hand to your mouth, his eyes wide, terrified, and completely confused.

“Please stop yelling… my head hurts…” Shouto begs, his face completely exhausted but with that post-orgasm sleep glow.

“We had sex?!” you shriek, throwing his hand off your mouth. “We were mad at each other, and we had sex?!”

“Oh,” Shouto seems to remember, his head rolling before he sat up, bringing you up with him. “Right, we should talk about that, huh?”

“You think?!” you shriek, entirely overwhelmed with the fact that you had done so much embarrassing shit last night.

It’s quiet for a bit. The birds chirping outside an almost cheerful taunt as the both of you, for the first time in seventeen years, find it too awkward to talk. No one wants to speak first, to mention the elephant in the room, for once it happened, there really was no going back. Not that there was much to go back from.

“I’m in love with you,” Shouto finally says. It’s an admittance, a whisper that's strong despite it told in such a hushed voice as if you would laugh at him as he confessed. “I’ve actually been in love with you for as long as I can remember.”

Now that shocks you.

Your eyes are wide, and you’re staring at Shouto, unsure what to say, what to ask, but you know you need more answers.

“I know, hard to believe, huh?” Shouto chuckles, his hand running through his sex and sleep disheveled hair. “It’s true, though… I don’t remember not ever being in love with you.”

“No… no way,” you say, your body running cold, and you shiver. You remember then that you’re sitting up, and you’re very incredibly naked. Shouto notices and moves to grab a blanket at the foot of the bed and wraps it around you. “That doesn’t make sense,” you argue, your furrowed brows making your skin crease as you try to think back on all your years and memories, looking for signs in which Todoroki Shouto loved you. “You never showed it.”

“Camie said the same thing,” Shouto sighed, his hand rubbing the back of his neck as he shrugged nonchalantly. “Before I was sixteen… I don’t know; I guess I could understand why. I only ever talked to you, always paired up with you. I let you hold my hand, and I let you hug me… I thought me telling you that I had never been kissed before would make you want to kiss me, but it never did. I know I was awkward and a little different when we were younger, so when I was paired up with Camie… I thought she would help me.”

“By fucking you?” you asked, your frown deepening as you remembered your bitter feelings over Camie stealing Shouto’s virginity.

“She… she said that by being sexual, maybe you would see me as a man, and not the four-year-old crying boy in preschool,” Shouto smiled sadly, his fingers picking at one another. “Me having sex was supposed to show you that I was a man who wanted to see you as a woman in return, but it didn’t work.”

“Well, no shit,” you snort, relaxing a bit although you felt limp. You found yourself leaning against Shouto’s strong shoulders, your head landing heavily on him. “You went from a virgin to fucking anything with a wet hole.”

“...yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Shouto said with regret, his shoulders sagging just a bit. “At first, I thought I needed to fuck more girls to prove I was a man to you because you acted like nothing had happened after Camie… but sex was fun, it felt good.”

“Sex is good,” you agree with a soft chuckle to which he returned.

He shifted a bit, arms tightening and relaxing before he finally admitted, “It helped distract me from you because you looked at others the way I wanted you to look at me.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper back.

“No, don’t be,” Shouto speaks firmly, his arm wrapping around your shoulder and pressing a kiss to your temple. “It was my fault. I was never assertive enough, confident enough to simply confess.”

“So, does you being in love with me having anything to do with you driving the entire male population away from me?”

Your eyes look up at him, finding his embarrassed gaze before he glances away.

“That actually wasn’t intentional… I guess I just talk about you a lot.”

“Yeah, but still doesn’t mean you couldn’t ever deny it yourself!”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Apologize then.”

“Y/l/n Y/n, I am sorry for making the entire male population we’ve ever come across think we were an item and not telling them otherwise. I am sorry for keeping you from enjoying sex while I continued to. I am lousy, and my love for you should be unreturned because that was ass of me.”

You sigh, your lips pursed to keep from smiling as you looked back at his handsome face.

“Now, ask me the damn question, crybaby.”

“Crybaby?”

“You finally admitted that you were, in fact, crying!!!!!”

If you asked Shishikura Seiji what the worst thing about being the third roommate to Todoroki Shouto and you was, he would give a million and three answers as to why it was the worst.

One: he absolutely hated how loud the both of you were. Todoroki Shouto was someone he thought was quiet and introverted, but whenever he was around you, he was loud. You were just plain old loud, and he thought it was annoying.

Two: he absolutely hated your rice. Call it petty, but after you fed him on his first night and tried putting him into a chokehold for saying the song your rice cooker sang at its end was the stupidest fucking thing ever made, everything you made taste like ash and dirt.

Twenty: he hated that there were biweekly karaoke nights. He would be studying away in his room and wanted to die when he heard the all too familiar sound of Mamma Mia’s Here We Go Again blasting in the living room.

Hundred fifty-seven: SO. MUCH. FUCKING. SEX.

Three hundred thirteen: SO. MUCH. DRINKING.

Five thousand: SO. MUCH. WEED.

Ten thousand three: you put his toilet seat up whenever you’re drunk, so he falls in when he goes to pee in the morning.

Five hundred: the way the both of you looked at each other, fucking disgusting.

To say the least, there were a lot of many different reasons scaling from actual issues to petty small shit, but Shishikura was not in any position to find a new apartment, so he stayed. To be quite honest, having been living with Dumb and Dumber (you and Shouto, respectively), he only thought there would be one thing that would make him lose his actual mind.

The day that would inevitably come and the both of you realized your feelings were, in fact, returned. He didn’t want to even imagine how the animalistic sex he often had to hear coming from your hallway would increase, or the sappy stupid romantic love he would see in the living room because as best friends, you both had no care for PDA and if you were allowed to kiss? Allowed to have sex? He feared he would have to wear a hazmat suit in every corner of the apartment. You both were already incredibly loud as a duo (see reason one as to why he hates living here); he feared the worst when the mutual love was realized.

But he exited his room a week after that Sunday morning with a fully loaded water gun just in case. His eyes narrowed, the hair on his neck raised as his beady eyes focused in on the living room.

Shouto sat on the couch, his back on the armrest, and you sitting between his thighs as you watched him play some game on his Switch, your smile large and annoyingly bright, but he realized that he couldn’t hear you screaming or speaking so loudly he could listen to the conversation.

No, as a matter of fact, Shishikura couldn’t hear a single word; the words being exchanged between you and Shouto spoke so softly, so intimately, it shocked him. Shishikura noticed with an almost awed surprise that even though your smile was as annoyingly bright as before. It wasn’t directed at anything but Shouto, and Shouto’s smile, while nowhere near as big, just as warm and full to you.

It was intimate, romantic even.

Nothing had changed in your relationship except now, finally, now, you were allowed to kiss and fuck each other like heat-driven animals.

Shishikura was shocked to his core, unable to comprehend the sight in front of him.

You nor Shouto paid him any mind, too lost in the game and in each other to look his way as he made his way into the kitchen for his lunch. Shishikura set the water gun on the counter, a small smile spreading on his face despite himself, and chuckled.

Maybe the two of you together weren’t something to hate on after all.

“Hey, is that a water gun?!”

#todoroki x reader #todoroki smut #bnha #bnha x reader #mha

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internetjulian · 2 years ago

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I rewatched Avatar (2009) and now I hate Jake Sully

This is mostly copy-pasted from my Letterboxd review, something I might keep doing here whenever I write longer things on that website. So here are some unpolished thoughts about Avatar, a movie that I like but have complicated feelings about.

Avatar is a very well made movie whose central analogy doesn't quite work as well as it wants to and whose lovingly derivative story perpetuates some uncomfortable tropes that bring the whole thing down for me.

The movie is definitely not the vapid thoughtless tech showcase some people make it out to be. Much of the film is genuinely inspired. But while its heart is in the right place, the parallels it draws between the conflict on Pandora and actual historical events are so overt and rigid that when it strays from this 1:1 allegory, some odd implications start to arise that are difficult to stomach (spoilers ahead).

The magic tree being an observable phenomenon is a choice that baffles me. Surely the fact that it is culturally important and sacred to the Na'vi is reason enough to leave it alone, right? But the movie goes out of its way to establish that it is important because of its scientific value, and that that's why it must be saved. In fairness, this information is delivered by a scientist, but the choice to give the sacred forest these magical properties at all feels like a genre trope that is at odds with the story. The Na'vi being attuned to nature is conveyed well enough without the magic, and this sci-fi development unintentionally contributes to the legitimization of actual destruction of sacred Indigenous lands: in real life, they're not magic, so why shouldn't they be destroyed? This obviously goes against the movie's very clear messaging, but the implications are there, and the movie would be better off without them.

Also, the premise itself is a very strange one to couple with the setting and messaging of the movie. Jake Sully's double life (one a harsh and unkind reality and the other a beautiful world with gorgeous 3D graphics) feels like it's participating in a conversation about virtual worlds and wish-fulfillment. Despite Pandora existing in-universe as a real place, there is a video game quality to it that feels intentional. Jake himself is a clear audience surrogate. We inhabit him and he inhabits a virtual character called an Avatar.

The unfortunate side effect of pairing this specific premise with this specific story is that it uses our current language of video game escapism to tell a white savior story, because that's really the only kind of story you can tell when you combine these two ideas. Jake is the Protagonist. He's the Player Character, and so when he joins the Na'vi, he must become The Most Important Na'vi. He's the one who inspires them to fight. He's the one who tames the beast no one could. He gets the girl and he stops the bad guys. It's a video game campaign.

To have an outsider be the one who solves all these problems for the Na'vi feels gross to me. But it's what this premise necessitates. The protagonist can't be Na'vi, because we aren't Na'vi. We need to learn about the world through his eyes, because he's our Avatar. But this complicates the theme of the movie. The struggle for Indigenous rights is not fought by a Protagonist like Jake Sully. There is no magic tree that picks a Chosen One, and if there were it certainly wouldn't choose the white man who just learned about this struggle yesterday.

The movie has a similarly uneasy relationship with disability. It's commendable that the main character of this blockbuster is disabled, but leveraging this first as his motivation to betray the Na'vi and then as a reward for his change of heart feels unnecessary. The former feels like a byproduct of the film's adherence to traditional western story structure, and the latter feels like a byproduct of the film's adherence to traditional video game structure. I like that the movie is engaging with the way disabled people are treated by both the people around them and the systems that neglect them, and there's an interesting transhumanist angle to the in-universe Avatar technology, but the movie doesn't linger on either of these. The philosophical and thematic questions that these ideas pose go unanswered and unexplored.

I still think this is a good movie. It has a lot of really great qualities that I haven't mentioned because I think they're pretty obvious. The cast rules. The action rips. The romance hits. The spectacle is awesome. I watched this movie in 3D in a virtual movie theater using my Quest 2, and while this wasn't a perfect recreation of the theater experience, it was certainly better than watching it on a flat TV screen with only two measly dimensions. There are some small details in the worldbuilding that are invisible in 2D, such as printed photographs and flat computer screens having visible depth in the 3D version.

The movie leans on well-established tropes and familiar story beats in ways that feel playful and timeless, lending the story a confidence that it wears with glee. Even though this results in ideas that undermine the movie's political messaging, at least the messaging is there, and it is well-intentioned. Avatar even improves upon some of the stories it remixes by treating the (fictional but analogous to real tribes) Na'vi and their culture with the bare minimum level of respect.

The fact that Avatar raises all these questions and invites these conversations is neat, in my opinion. This is a massively expensive movie with CGI spectacle up the wazoo and it's making me talk about imperialism and colonialism. I prefer a movie that does that to what we generally get in the blockbuster space these days, even if the conversations it invites are criticisms of how it stumbles. I hate Jake Sully, and that's cool.

#avatar #avatar 2009 #james cameron #jake sully #na'vi

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no-reply95 · 3 years ago

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The Power Of Framing: John and Paul

Over the last few days I've been posting some quotes of interest that I'd bookmarked from Mark Lewisohn's Tune In book.

Tune In's reputation preceded it, every Beatles podcast I listened to mentioned it, Lewisohn's name either came up in conversation or the man himself would turn up for an interview so it got to the point that Tune In was so ubiquitous that I had to read the book and form an opinion for myself.

There are a lot of opinions I have on Tune In, both good and bad, but I'm not going touch on all of that here, at least not in this post.

The aspect of Lewisohn's narrative style that I want to get into is the way he frames the "bad" behaviour displayed by John and Paul.

There are two quotes from the book that I want to analyse, I'll start with John first:

John

“George was second only to John in the swallowing of Prellies and knew better than most the sum effect of taking too many for too long, how the combination of pills plus booze plus several sleepless days caused hallucinations and extreme conduct. He’d describe one occasion when he, Paul and Pete were lying in their bunk beds, trying to sleep, only for John to barge into the room in a wild state. ‘One night John came in and some chick was in bed with Paul and he cut all her clothes up with a pair of scissors, and was stabbing the wardrobe. Everybody was lying in bed thinking, “Oh fuck, I hope he doesn’t kill me.” [He was] a frothing mad person - he knew how to have “fun”.

Handling John was something his friends were well used to doing. If he didn’t murder them in their beds there was no greater buddy. They might fear for their lives but they loved him still. No way would they walk out and join another group. John was just John, and Paul and George’s hero-worship stayed fully intact.”

The above passage comes from the stint in Hamburg directly after Stu's death. John had always been the one to take the most prellies, as Lewisohn highlights, but he relays the fact that John was even more messed up than before subsequent to Stu's sudden death. I've highlighted a couple of lines from the extract to highlight how John's behaviour is framed by Lewisohn:

"the combination of pills plus booze plus several sleepless days caused hallucinations and extreme conduct"

From the outset Lewisohn is careful to outline the fact that John is under the influence of both bills and booze as well as being exhausted as a result of "several sleepless days" which has the sum impact of causing hallucinations and "extreme conduct" so in short, Lewisohn suggests that this behaviour from John is atypical and directly related to the substances and conditions he is under, the subsequent behaviour he displays, therefore, isn't a function of his innate personality, just a reaction to the chemicals and circumstances he currently finds himself beholden to.

"he, Paul and Pete were lying in their bunk beds, trying to sleep"

In terms of those impacted by John's actions, it isn't one individual that Lewisohn highlights, it's George, Paul and Pete, which to me suggests that anyone could have been on the receiving end of John's outburst. When describing the bedroom scene prior to John's entrance, Lewisohn describes the three guys as "trying to sleep", so a picture is painted of a quiet room where there's a lack of activity as everyone is tired and, either on their way to or currently, asleep.

"some chick was in bed with Paul and he cut all her clothes up with a pair of scissors, and was stabbing the wardrobe"

Firstly, the story that George relates (source Anthology, 2000), unlike the scene Lewisohn sets, makes it clear that there was only one target for John's outburst, not George, Pete or even Paul but an unnamed woman whose only crime was to be "in bed with Paul" so, far from trying to get to sleep, Paul was in fact having sex with this woman when John barged into the room. John, in the altered state that he's in, zeroes in on this woman by cutting up her clothes and stabbing at the wardrobe - it's a scary scene that George describes, so what is the lasting impression Lewisohn leaves us with?

"John was just John, and Paul and George’s hero-worship stayed fully intact.”

Despite the shock of the scene that George describes, ultimately John's behaviour has no lasting impact on his relationships with the others or on the future of the band. Lewisohn confirms that "Paul and George's hero-worship stayed fully intact" so not only was their view of John unharmed but they continued to hold him in the highest possible esteem, but how did they rationalise the unpredictability of John's behaviour? Well, "John was just John" the others knew that this was how John got from time to time, this was nothing new for them and their hero worship continued on, the core relationships were unaffected and the operation of the band was unscathed because there was no way that George and Paul would ever leave and join another band so, all in all, no harm done.

Paul

“Brian, John and George went to the Beehive and John used a public box to call Paul, returning with the message ‘He says he’s not coming.’ Brian must have been apoplectic: they’d be unable to play the booking, letting down the university and their paying audience, embarrassing him, ruining their chance of a rebooking, and undoing his repair work to the Beatles’ old bad reputation. He went back to his office to phone Paul, but Paul refused to speak. Jim informed Brian that Paul said he wouldn’t be turning up, and that was that.

Recalling the night five years later, Paul told of how, having discovered Brian and the others hadn’t waited outside his house for him, he decided ‘Fuck them - if they can’t be arsed waiting for me, I can’t be arsed going after them. So I sat down and watched telly.’ Jim was unable to persuade Paul to change his mind. Paul said he’d felt he’d always been ‘the keen one’, so now he’d go sharp the other way and make no effort at all.

John saw a bigger picture, and it would be surprising if it wasn’t equally obvious, or made obvious to Brian and George. He likened Paul’s enduring snag with Brian to his other long-standing difficulty: ‘[Brian] and Paul didn’t get along - it was a bit like [Stuart and Paul] between the two of them’.”

The above passage comes from a time in the Beatles' career, not long after they've agreed to take Brian on as their manager. Brian's hard work on their behalf is starting to pay off and they're getting the opportunity to do loads of gigs for good money. Lewisohn discusses an instance where Brian goes to 20 Forthlin Road to pick up Paul for the night's gig only to be told that he's running late and won't be able to get going for a while. As with the first passage, I've highlighted a couple of lines to highlight how Paul's behaviour is framed:

"Brian must have been apoplectic"

In this passage Lewisohn provides his interpretation of how Brian must have felt to turn up at Paul's house only to find that he'd defied his instructions to be on time. Right from the beginning of this story we are able to empathise with Brian, as the principle victim of Paul's actions.

"letting down the university and their paying audience, embarrassing him, ruining their chance of a rebooking, and undoing his repair work to the Beatles’ old bad reputation."

For the avoidance of doubt, Lewisohn details the wide reaching impact of Paul's behaviour and the list of the aggrieved is long: the university, the paying audience and ultimately the band, all the hard work that they and Brian have put in has been undone by Paul's actions and the tarnished reputation of old is back with a vengeance.

"John saw a bigger picture, and it would be surprising if it wasn’t equally obvious, or made obvious to Brian and George. He likened Paul’s enduring snag with Brian to his other long-standing difficulty: ‘[Brian] and Paul didn’t get along - it was a bit like [Stuart and Paul] between the two of them’.”

If the reader was left wondering if this was a one-off incident or if Paul was just having a bad day that he'd taken out on Brian, Lewisohn suggests that this was, in fact, part of a pattern of behaviour as "John saw a bigger picture" and Lewisohn remarks that "it would be surprising" if both Brian and George weren't equally aware of the bigger forces at play here. To reinforce the lasting implications of Paul's actions, Lewisohn talks about "Paul's enduring snag with Brian" and then likens it to Paul's other "long-standing difficulty" with Stu, which triggers the readers' knowledge of Paul's jealousy of Stu's closeness to John and invites the reader to also view Paul's relationship with Brian through that lens. The extract is then capped up by a quote from John (source, McCabe and Schonfled interview, 1971), seemingly, supporting Lewisohn's premise by linking the clash between Paul and Brian to the clash, that Lewisohn has already expertly laid out in his book, between Paul and Stu.

How the framing differs

In both excerpts I've pulled Lewisohn uses direct quotes from the principles as well as his own interpretation, both to varying impacts.

In the first excerpt, Lewisohn provides a context for John's behaviour, it's not long after Stu has died, John is under the influence of a cocktail of drugs and substances, so we're led to feel sympathy for the state that he's in and to excuse the frightening behaviour that subsequently follows. Lewisohn doesn't offer any context for Paul's behaviour, we assume that Paul is sober and of sound mind so there's no confusion as to the fact that Paul is in full control of his actions so we're less likely to excuse or able to rationalise his actions.

The preamble that Lewisohn writes prior to George's recounting of John barging into the room, mentions George, Pete and Paul being present, so Lewisohn gives us the impression that John's later actions are almost random, maybe it could have been Pete, or George, it just happened to be the woman in bed with Paul who triggered John's anger. We never hear about how the woman reacted to having her clothes torn to shreds just because she slept with Paul, Lewisohn doesn't offer any thoughts to Paul's reaction to having John barging into the room and raising hell while he was sharing an intimate moment with this woman. In stark contract, we're told precisely by Lewisohn about how he presumes Brian felt in the face of Paul's obstinance and the seriousness isn't lost on the reader because every possible group of people negatively impacted is called out with evocative language (i.e. embarrassing, ruining).

Lewisohn frames the Hamburg scissors incident in such a way that it's clear that this was just a blip on the band's radar, the "hero-worship" of George and Paul is undimmed and we're given the framework, either by accident or design, by which to view any similar outburst in the future, it's just John, he may overdo it from time to time but his negative actions will never be consequential because the love and worship the others have for him will never be overcome "no way would they walk out and join another group" because no matter what John did, Paul and George would condone it, stick by him and love him regardless, so why shouldn't we?

However, Lewisohn couldn't be clearer that Paul's disobedience of Brian was part of a larger pattern of behaviour that was detrimental to the band, John could see the bigger picture, the same bigger picture that was "obvious" to Brian and George. Rather than startling an unnamed German woman (Lewisohn leaves this to our imagination) Lewisohn carefully plots out how Paul's actions directly hurt the band and the good work they'd been doing with Brian's help. Far from a moment of chemically induced madness, Paul's behaviour is familiar, we've seen it before with Stu, now we're seeing it with Brian - Lewisohn is clear that the seeds of the break up are sewn in Tune In so is he suggesting that the behaviour Paul displays here can also be traced to 1969?

Was this difference in framing called for?

These two stories outlining John and Paul's behaviour aren't identical, one takes place in Hamburg in the privacy of a bedroom and directly impacts two people while the other takes place in Liverpool and directly impacts several people as well as the band, it could be argued that on this basis these situations Lewisohn was justified in framing these two incidents differently.

However, there are several similarities that I can spot between the behaviour John and Paul displayed:

Pattern of behaviour - Lewisohn appears to be making the case that John's outburst was purely circumstantial while Paul's clash with Brian was part of a longstanding jealousy issue Paul had of anyone close to John. I do think that jealousy may have been a factor in the clashes Paul had initially with Brian (as referenced briefly in my Jealous Guys post) but in my opinion there are complexities that exist with Paul's relationship with Brian (namely around Paul's dislike of authority figures and need for control) that don't exist in Paul's relationship with Stu or, further down the road, Yoko as neither Stu nor Yoko were ever in a position of authority over Paul, John didn't bring them into the band as a manager or producer so I think the more natural comparison is Stu and Yoko not Stu and Brian. Further, despite Lewisohn's descriptions to the contrary and lack of relation to a bigger picture, John's behaviour here was in fact part of a pattern of behaviour, this woman wasn't the first and would not be the last of Paul's love interests that John reacted negatively to; Jane Asher, Peggy Lipton and ultimately Linda would feel the brunt of John's negative attention throughout the Beatles and post-Beatles years, this was an opportunity for Lewisohn to lay the groundwork of that but unfortunately he didn't want to connect these particular dots.

Impact on the band - Lewisohn is at pains to outline how George and Paul weren't going anywhere and there's no suggestion that John's actions would have any impact on the band or its future but, with the hindsight we have, is that correct? Even before Hamburg, John is abusing alcohol, largely to numb the effects of the sudden death of his mother, then in Hamburg, he's now abusing drugs too which negatively impacts his behaviour. For the rest of the Beatle years John's substance abuse issues appear again and again (Bob Wooler incident at Paul's 21st birthday, destruction of ego and fall in productivity due to prolonged LSD use, increase in the communication issues in the band in the wake of John and Yoko's heroin addiction). If Lewisohn was really interested in giving us the bigger picture, why didn't he outline the detrimental impact that John's substance abuse issues were having on the band, all it would have taken was for him to help the reader to understand how the woman and Paul felt as a result of John's actions but instead he uses this story as another opportunity to reinforce the idea that Paul and George hero-worshipped John.

Links to the break up: In many of his podcast interviews (Nothing Is Real and Fabcast spring to mind) Lewisohn is clear that, although the events of the break-up are years away from being committed to paper, the roots are laid out in Tune In. Paul's clash with Brian is framed in such a way to underscore how it fostered long difficulties between Paul and the band's manager in a way that was obvious to the others, does that sound familiar? If we sub Klein in for Brian, we've suddenly been transported to the summer of '69, I believe this is intentional and given the pretty uncharitable way Paul's actions are described (Paul should have been on time but leaving without him so that he had to take several buses instead only made everyone later and poured gasoline on an already open flame, neither Paul, Brian or the band won in this situation which I think all parties came to realise at a later stage) we're already being conditioned to believe that by the time it's 1969 this reckoning for Paul has been a long time coming and we should be glad that John, George, Ringo and Klein are finally stand up to Paul's immature power plays. However, can the break up also be traced to John's actions. As already discussed, the first excerpt outlines one of the first instances of John's substance abuse negatively impacting the band, in 1961 he's destroying a woman's clothing, cock-blocking Paul and terrorising everyone, in 1969 he's in a heroin haze with Yoko which hinders the already frayed communication links with the rest of the band and fosters an environment where, to John, only "JohnandYoko" matter ("I mean, I’m not going to lie, you know. I would sacrifice you all for her [Ono]", Get Back Sessions, 1969) to the extent that they're able to be wooed by Allen Klein who knows exactly what John and Yoko want so they allow him to give it to them, irrespective of what the rest of band need or want.

In the end, I have no problem with either story being included in Tune In, neither John or Paul were saints and in these instances we can see aspects of their personality that will feature, for better and for worse, over the course of the rest of the Beatles' career and, in John's case, his life. However, it is a shame that time and time again, when given the opportunity to frame John and Paul's actions Lewisohn opts to minimise John's misdeeds via his emphasis on Paul and George's love and patience for him, while for Paul almost no context is provided for his negative actions and Lewisohn subtlety begins to plot the lines that will eventually lead to the 3 to 1 split and the lawsuit that, not only breaks up the band but ensures they never reform again. The part Paul plays in the break-up does have roots in his personality, which we see glimpses of in his interactions with Brian in 1961 (he won't be pushed around and his reaction to being pushed is to fight back not fall in line) but we also see John's role start to take shape too (the unpredictability of his actions under the influence of substances and the chain of events that would occur as a result i.e. LSD - loss of ego - jealousy of Paul's output and his loss of dominance - openness to Klein who identifies John as the leader and reinforces his belief in his supremacy in the Lennon-McCartney partnership as well as filling John with misinformation like reminding him he wrote most of Eleanor Rigby). It's a problem that only Paul's negative reactions and missteps are framed in the wider context of the band because this skews the story and fails to accurately plot the role John also played in the band's demise. If Lewisohn's aim is to provide us with a balanced, definitive take on the band's story then, based on this evidence, he's falling short.

#the beatles #john lennon #paul mccartney #george harrison #ringo starr #brian epstein #john and paul #mark lewisohn #tune in #framing behaviour #interested to hear any alternative takes on my thoughts #i do think lewisohn's preference for john and disregard for paul's feelings may undermine his books #both john and paul's action can be seen in a bigger picture #i think we can provide context without whitewashing john's behaviour #long post #thoughts #apologies for rambling

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hopefullystillatheatrestudent · 4 years ago

Text

The One Where Jensen Ackles Confirmed Cockles in 2016(????) No. Seriously. For real.

this is a DOOZY. strap in folks.

DISCLAIMER: this is chock full of rps. if you are against cockles/jenmish in any way, this post is not for you. however, if you’re like me, ummmmm...

alright. so. we are REALLY in it now, cockles truthers. and make no mistake, i DO NOT want to undersell the significance of what we have found on this glorious day in 2021.

BUT HEY! DISCLAIMER FIRST, THOUGH IT SHOULD GO WITHOUT SAYING! do not EVER bring this to jensen and misha’s attention. do not comment disrespectful things on social media. when cons/panels start again, don’t ask them questions about it. ever!!! that’s super weird, for one thing, and for two, they won’t give you the answer you want anyway! so, yeah. just be decent, y’all. let’s continue.

so my dear mutual @green-blue-heller made this post today and i promptly lost my mind. in it, they link this video:

youtube

as far as i can tell, it’s from VegasCon 2016 but was only unprivated on january 24, 2020(dean winchester’s birthday??? wow ok) for some reason, and we have overlooked it until now. to whoever it was that posted it, THANK you for my reason for being and this delayed gratification five years later. anyway, let’s get into it.

right off the bat, those expressions in the thumbnail kind of tell you all you need to know about what we’re venturing into. i have to thank BOTH jensen AND j*red for being ridiculously transparent. i mean...j*red purposefully avoiding eye contact with jensen and looking at the ceiling with his eyebrows raised sky high? jensen hiding his face in his hands, smiling and blushing like a fool, the misha face™ & grin???

so let’s break down what happens with timestamps and everything.

so! i looked up what the question was, i scoured through the entire Vegas Con video, and here it is:

‘My question is for Jensen and Jared. You guys are both happily married, and I noticed that many people had a hard time explaining how they know their significant other is the one. The one they want to spend the rest of their life with, the one that they want to be with, and so, I wanted to ask you guys, how did you know that your current- who you’re with now(audience laughter cuts the rest of the question off and it’s unintelligible)’ ….i’m solidly guessing that the end of that question boils down to ‘was the one’. (....i...uhhhh....have some thoughts on how this question affected jensen, and i will be going into them later.)

Jared: *laughs* Jared, Jensen. When did you first meet your future ex-wives?

*both of them laugh*

Jared: I’m just kidding-I get what you’re trying to say and thank you, um...I, uh, I guess my current wife, uh-

*both laugh again*

Jensen: (sarcastically) Let’s start with her.

Jared: (repeats) Let’s start with her. I, uh, I...you said something kinda, uh, amazing in your question, which is that a lot of people have a tough time or a difficult time explaining to their significant others or to themselves what it is. And I guess I feel that I have no way to possibly explain it to myself or to her... I remember that I had been in a relationship and that I was single and I was like ‘I am not interested in getting in a relationship’ and then she and I went on a date and I was like, ‘I can’t go anywhere else. I’m not interested.’ So, that was kinda what, um, what started it for me *clears throat loudly* Uh. Yeah, I just feel like (searching for words) she makes me a better person-there are a lot of people that make you a better person, and so that’s not enough, I don’t think-or maybe it is, who knows-um...I don’t know, I can’t really...if I could explain, I’d be a poet.

here’s where things start to get interesting. before jared says ‘If I could explain, I’d be a poet,’ Jensen’s face looks like this:

stoic, thoughtful, composed. and then AFTER jared says that his face makes THIS little journey:

go watch it for yourself. this man is ridiculous. in terms of body language? he gazes up and AWAY from jared. it is a private thought, he is not sharing in jared’s joke with him, if at all. it is his own personal musings that make his face LIGHT up like that. this fool looks lovestruck!!! this fool is lovestruck!!!

now, i think it goes without saying, but there is an obvious cockles reason that springs to mind for this reaction. (hint: misha is a poet. that’s it, that’s the reason.) i don’t think jared intentionally said this with misha in mind, but jensen’s thoughts IMMEDIATELY went there. whether or not this is because he was already planning on answering and hinting at his relationship with misha before jared says this, which i think he was-you can certainly see the wheels turning in jensen’s head before this moment-his brain involuntarily makes the connection and it shows in his glowing smile. after that remark...jensen’s gone. he’s whipped. and he HAS to say something about it.

continuing from where we left off:

Jared: ...and I would love to be a poet. (thought it would be fun to mention that at this point Jensen catches what his face did and immediately looks over to Jared and WIPES the expression of his face...but it’s too late, because someone recorded it, i saw it, and now i’m writing about it five years later)

Jared: But uhh…

Jensen: (interrupting) Just tap me when you want me to take over.

i think that jensen is simultaneously joking and is also more than ready to say what he’s been composing in his head diligently for the last thirty or so seconds. he has made up his mind, and is now ready to drop the bomb on us.

*audience laughs, Jared playfully swats at him*

Jared: Uh… *thinks in silence for a bit* It’s really difficult, it’s really difficult. She makes me feel safe, she makes me feel loved. Uh...when...I’m in a position where I don’t love myself, I know she loves me, you know, um...she’s just an awesome, awesome lady.

*audience claps*

alright! so in terms of my OWN analysis for what’s happened up until this point, the conclusion i have come to is that there was something in the question that was asked that sets jensen’s mind off about misha, and i think it was the ‘the one’ comment. if we’re putting our cockles goggles on, jensen doesn’t HAVE a ‘the one’. he resents thinking like that. i’m also very intuitive, and i get a sense that jensen is an honest person and can’t really tell a convincing lie. i mean...we all saw that horrible airbnb debacle, right? and his slip up when he accidentally confirms that misha woke up and said ‘i miss (maison)’[which how would you know that unless you were...nvm] and became a stammering mess and had to sit down and cover his face. and that misha is always the one to take the lead when it comes to denying clothes sharing, for instance. jensen has never ONCE attempted to explain that away, because i don’t think anyone would believe him, and i think he’s incapable of doing so because he’s not a dishonest person and can’t lie easily. i’m the same way, so to avoid telling a lie i always speak partial truths, and i’m 99% sure jensen is well versed in this talent as well. oh, also, just to really land my point....we all know how he feels about the finale because he can’t make himself speak well on it. he’ll gush about 15x18 and the PEOPLE BEHIND the finale, but he has not uttered one. positive. word. about the actual finale itself. i mean, we all know what he thinks about it. in his own way, he has made his rage glaringly obvious. and i think he’s doing that exact thing here, where he resents the implication that daneel is the only ‘one’ for him, because that’s simply not true, and he can’t and won’t lie about something like that.

i watched it back again and wrote notes on jensen’s body language as he’s processing the question. here they are:

from 0:13 to 1:21, jensen:

looks down - tenses face - searching eyes, lost in thought - jared’s comment brings him out of it but it takes a second - fidgets, adjusts clothes, looks at jared - bites the inside of his cheeks and moves tongue around his mouth(pacifying gesture) - eyes start wandering away from jared, looks down and tenses face, looks back at jared - then looks away, eyes and mind far from the panel and pondering the question itself - somewhat wistful expression, gears clearly turning in his head, lips pursed, stops reacting to what jared is saying, fingers start fidgeting, eyes have moved downward as he is lost in thought - something shifts in his brain, he looks to the ceiling, fidgets and adjusts his clothing, squints and seems to resolve an inner thought - slightly comes back down to earth with newfound resolution - and then jared’s ‘i would be a poet’ comment happens while he’s coming down from that

i mean, this obviously doesn’t necessarily mean anything huge(yet), all it shows is that this question took a lot of thinking for him. when you compare it to how jared kind of just dove in?

anyway; so then jared’s done, he slaps jensen’s thigh to indicate it’s his turn, jensen makes THAT face you see in the thumbnail, jared’s eyebrows raise, jensen looks down and scratches his forehead, and then makes the statement of a lifetime.

here’s the link for this next part

Jensen: Ummm..I kind of feel like there’s two types of people ..uh..in regards to marriage and the, the one. Uh, it’s the ones that just, just know with an absolute and, and have a certainty of like, this is the one for me, unequivocally. And then there’s those who are, you know, I don’t know, I’m scared, but I’m willing to take that leap of faith with you. And, I kind of find myself in between both of those(...types of people). And uh, and so, it can be a scary endeavour, and it can, and it will certainly have it’s ups and downs, um, but I think it’s a, uh, it’s a bond, and it’s a connection, and it’s a friendship, and it’s a ride, and it’s a journey that, uh, if you’re willing to stick it out with one another, can be an amazing, beautiful thing and I’m glad that I picked the partner and the teammate that I have, so.

i’ll give you like a second to recuperate before we dig in.

let’s start with both jared and jensen’s body language first, because it wasn’t even the words that clued me in, it was whatever the hell was going on with jared’s face.

i really wish i could gif, but i can only attempt to convey the SPEED and VIGOUR with which jared snaps his head toward jensen.

these pictures are objectively hilarious because you can see the entire mental journey that jared goes on. he was aloof and kind of relaxed because he was done, it’s jensen’s turn now, he’s surely not gonna out himself with this question right? and then jensen goes ahead and says ‘there are two-’ and jared instantly zones right into jensen with a look of horror on his face, that he tries to contain, but does so unsuccessfully. that is the face of a man who is internally freaking out, thought to himself ‘did he seriously just say...’ and is kind of staring at the culprit in shock and awe.

i know that’s what’s happening, because this is not the first time we’ve seen him react like this to something jensen has said. the classic head whip. a few examples, just off the top of my head:

1. ‘he has, hasn’t he?’

2. ‘he sounds like that in the morning’ ‘how do you know’

3. when he whips his head around when he notices jensen’s face(and instantly understands when he realizes it’s misha)

so yeah, i’m sure you get it by now. jared can’t really keep it off of his face. there’s no real analyzing to be done here...it’s just an obvious tell on his part. there’s no real reason for him to have reacted this way if jensen was saying something inconspicuous, is there? he would have continued to just kind of space out if jensen hadn’t just said something jarringly questionable.

as for jensen’s body language, i can’t really tell where he’s looking from either angle of both videos i’ve seen. sometimes it seems like he’s looking straight at jared, and maybe nods at him once, but he could also(and is most likely) looking at the fan who asked the question. i don’t think there’s anything particularly telling about his body language because i think he rehearsed his answer in his head and also, he’s not shying away because he’s not lying about anything. like...everything he’s saying is true, so he’s not going to have any tells. and it’s the fact that he is TELLING THE TRUTH that is freaking jared out.

now for what he actually says. because oh my god.

right off the bat, he says “i kind of feel like there’s two types of people..” and first off, what? what does that even mean? if you think of it in terms of ‘this is about daneel and only daneel’....isn’t this a realllyyyyy strange thing to start out with? objectively? the question that was asked to him was ‘how did you know they were the one?’ and he goes ‘actually there’s TWO types of people’ ...like, jensen never answers the question at hand.

and then he goes “in regards to marriage and the one”. i hope i’m not the only one who noticed he said the words ‘the one’ in a resentful and kind of degrading tone? seriously, listen to it again. he seems like he’s almost mocking that sentiment. i swear i’m not making it up, it really sounds like that to me.

and then he says “-it’s the ones that just, just know with an absolute and, and have a certainty of like, this is the one for me, unequivocally. And then there’s those who are, you know, I don’t know, I’m scared, but I’m willing to take that leap of faith with you.” *NON TINHAT VERSION OF EVENTS* what he could mean, i guess, is he was both scared to be with daneel but also knew she was the one for him. which....ok. alright. *TINHAT BACK ON* first off, there’s absolutely no risk with daneel. that’s not a judgement, because i love her; it’s just true. she’s a pretty, talented, amazing woman and they are very much in love. i’m not sure what risks he’s taking there. next up: pretty strange wording then, don’t you think? idk, if it were you, and you wanted to get that point across, wouldn’t you use words like ‘she both scared me and i knew i wanted to be with her at the same time’ and NOT this convoluted mess of ‘there’s two types of people and they are both drastically different but also one and the same’?

SECOND OF ALL, as many people have pointed out.....he never uses pronouns. this is strange. jared does. jared says gen’s name, even. and uses ‘she’ and ‘her’. jensen never once does that, he practically refuses to do so. and yes, i fully believe it is entirely intentional.

because if you look at this phrase from a cockles lens it makes more sense then if you do not.

the one that jensen knows, unequivocally, with the utmost certainty, is the one for him, no doubts, no risks; is daneel. the one that he doesn’t know about, is scared of being with, but is willing to take that leap of faith anyway; is misha. and all of a sudden the puzzle pieces fall into place.

because he goes on to say “I kind of find myself in between both of those.”

he doesn’t say ‘i find myself in between both of those...with her.’ nope. he’s just...in between. caught in the middle. of those two types of people. translation: of those two people. mish. dee.

“And it can be a scary endeavour, and it will certainly have it’s ups and downs, but I think it’s a bond, and it’s a connection, and it’s a friendship, and it’s a ride, and it’s a journey...”

every single one of those words can be applied to more than one person. think about it. bond(between three people). connection(between three people). friendship(between three people!!!). there’s no ‘partnership’ in here, which does only apply to two people.

lastly, “i’m glad i picked the partner and the teammate that i have.”

ok, look. you can easily say that it’s just one person he’s talking about here! of course you can. but this is jensen ackles we’re talking about. jensen ‘rock and pebble’ ackles. jensen ‘mish. dee.’ ackles. so yes. i definitely think that ‘the partner and the teammate’ fall into this category. and i think daneel is the partner and misha is the teammate.

to put it matter-of-factly: you simply cannot prove that this isn’t about a poly relationship. there is absolutely nothing he says that makes it obvious he is talking about one person here. because he isn’t.

i just feel like, in the simplest terms, if this were about only daneel, that he would not be using these weird phrases that are half-hidden truths. just to compare, i watched another panel where pretty much the exact same question was asked, minus the whole ‘the one’ debacle, and, just as i suspected, it was an entirely different answer. he talks about the moment where he knew he liked her. her, specifically. says the name daneel. gushes about her. there’s no tiptoeing and weird pronoun usage and vague terminology.

tl; dr : i think he answered the question this way because there is no ‘the one’ in his life. and he is physically incapable of leaving misha out when talking about ‘the one’ because he has TWO ‘the ones’. and he wants to answer the question to the best of his best ability, but lying is unnatural to him. he will talk about daneel at length and misha at length, but i honestly to my core don’t think you could make him choose between the two. oh! and we literally had confirmation all the way back in fucking 2016, we just never paid attention until now. so......thanks, jensen?

sorry, this got super long, but i hope i warned you well enough.

#helloooo cockles truthing community #my anxiety is sky-high rn bc this is so damning for them #but i mean i can't feel bad because jensen SAID those things.#anyway am i contributing to cockles lore??? god i hope so #i mean it when i say i am SWEATING #if you think i'm reaching...i know more than you #rps for ts #team dumpster mansion #cockles confirmation #cockles #jenmish #long post for ts #cockles meta #relationship spec #all that jazz #jensenxmisha #mine

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daenqyu · 4 years ago

Text

heather | kaminari denki

— gif isn’t mine !! credits go to @misakachan

pairing: kaminari x fem!reader | platonic!kirishima x fem!reader

genre: LOTS of angst, some comfort(?)

summary: kaminari had been oblivious to your feelings for years now, and at first it was okay, you didn’t mind hiding them. until you noticed the way he looked at her and suddenly, it wasn’t okay anymore.

warnings: swearing

word count: 5.6k

a/n: this is my first time writing and posting for a bnha character so i really hope you guys like it <3 i usually don’t write angst, but i couldn’t stop thinking about this and decided to write it down and i’m very happy with how it turned out.

« i still remember third of december

me in your sweater, you said it looked better

on me, than it did you, only if you knew

how much i liked you »

YOUR whole body trembled thanks to the coldness surrounding you, the snow decorating the floor and trees being a clear sign that winter had already begun in japan. you hugged your arms in a poor attempt to provide yourself some kind of heath, only to be met with the feeling of your cold hands. out of all the days you could’ve forgotten your jacket, it had to be on one of the coldest days of december. profanities fell from your lips as you tried your best to endure the pain until the bus came, but you were sure you would pass out by then. or maybe you were exaggerating.

the bus stop wasn’t that far away from your house, maybe if you ran you could get your jacket and get back on time to catch the bus. you checked your phone to see the time, a groan leaving your lips as you realized that was going to be practically impossible. if you left now, by the time you came back the bus would be long gone. dammit, why do i have to forget everything?

“well well, look who we have here.” your ears perked up as soon as you heard the male’s voice, a small smile making its way to your lips.

kaminari made his way over to you, both hands on his pockets as he returned the smile, making the butterflies in your stomach go crazy. the smile didn't falter until he took note of your current state. his eyes widened with concern and his hands worked fast to take his jacket off.

“denki, what are you doing?” confusion was evident on your face, but that didn’t stop the blonde from wrapping you up in the warm material.

you blushed from the sudden proximity, his face just inches away as he finished zipping up the piece of clothing. it didn’t take long before his cologne filled your nostrils and you basked in the comfort it gave you; it smelled like home. kaminari’s smile returned to his face when he saw your body visibly relax at the newfound heath, even though goosebumps began to form on his skin by the sudden change of temperature. he could handle being cold for a few hours.

“there, now you won’t die of hypothermia.”

“but what about you?”

he shrugged, tilting his head to the side before answering, “it’s fine, it looks better on you anyways.”

you knew he probably meant it in a friendly way, but you couldn’t help the way your heart skipped a beat at the compliment. suddenly you felt all warm inside, and it wasn’t because of the jacket. but rather the effect your best friend had on you.

right.

the smile slowly disappeared from your face, replaced with a hurt expression instead.

that’s all we are.

realization dawned upon you quickly and you scolded yourself for almost believing something so irrational and overall stupid. but as he nudged your arm with his elbow and started talking to you about a new video game that had come out that exact same day, his eyes sparkling with excitement as he did so, you allowed yourself to hold on to that fantasy a little longer. after all, dreaming didn’t hurt anyone right?

and so, you spent the whole ride to school envisioning an universe in which kaminari returned your feelings for him. an universe in which he loved you just as much as you loved him and you didn’t have to worry about anything, because at least you had him. an universe in which you didn’t have to overthink every little thing he did, wondering whether or not he actually meant it or if he was being his usual flirty self. an universe in which you were able to call him yours.

when school ended and you found yourself at the bus station once again, with kaminari next to you, you began to take off the jacket, having it worn all day and deciding it was time to give it back. but kaminari’s hands stopped you, hovering on top of yours, before you could finish unzipping it. you looked at him questioningly, trying your best to ignore the erratic beating of your heart and the electricity you felt right where your hands were touching.

“you can keep it.” his words confused you even more.

“what? no. it’s your jacket, you’ll get cold and besides it’s-”

“oh please don’t act like you don’t love wearing my clothes.” his tone was teasing, yet knowingly eyes scanned your face and you looked away, a hint of blush across your cheeks.

“whatever, but don’t expect to get it back.” kaminari laughed, his hands leaving your own and you had to hold back from taking it and interlacing your fingers together.

as you parted ways, walking in opposite directions to head back to your houses after a long day at school, you hugged yourself for the second time that day. this time, actually being able to feel warm. both inside and out.

—

« but I watch your eyes

as she walks by

what a sight for sore eyes

brighter than the blue sky

she’s got you mesmerized

while I die »

YOU and kaminari told each other everything, well at least most things. so it didn’t surprise you when he started rambling about yet another girl. don’t get me wrong, you loved him to death, but you had to admit that the boy could be quite unlucky with the ladies, much to own your luck that is. but this time was different and you both knew it. you noticed it in the way he smiled whenever he talked about her, how he was able to light up from just hearing her name, and most importantly, the way he looked at her. and you immediately knew. because it was the same way you looked at him.

she was your classmate and friend, and you could totally understand why kaminari was so smitten with her. she was funny, smart, caring, beautiful; in other words everything you weren’t. and while it’s true you knew it was bad to be envious of people, specially your friends, you simply couldn’t not wish to be her. i mean come on, not only did she have an awesome quirk you had no chance of competing against, she also had the boy you loved wrapped around her finger and she wasn’t even aware of it.

“and then when he was about to- denki, are you even listening?” he wasn’t, but you didn’t want to admit that.

“hm? oh sorry! what were you saying?” his pretty amber eyes looked at you for only a split second, before going back to admire the dark purpled haired girl.

jirou stood a few feet away from you guys, talking and laughing with sero and mina. you could feel your heart slowly breaking as you saw kaminari’s lips curl into a small smile when she briefly looked at him, waving at him in the process. and of course you didn’t miss the way she blushed.

“ah it’s nothing important anyways.”

“hey y/n, do you think i should ask jirou out?”

oh.

you were pretty certain you stopped breathing once your brain registered his words. how could he be so oblivious?! you had been friends since fucking middle school and you were supposed to believe that he never once noticed how hopelessly in love you were with him? did you not show it enough? were you that bad at displaying your love for people? or was he just ridiculously dumb? you desperately hoped it was the latter, because deep down a part of you still believed that there was a possibility for you two. that an us could be possible if you just showed him how serious you were about him.

but the rational part of you was screaming at you to stop being so damn stupid, to finally open your eyes and realize kaminari didn’t and would never reciprocate your feelings. that you were hoping for the impossible to happen, that you were preparing yourself for absolute heartbreak if you thought for a second he would choose you over her. and while you wanted nothing more than to yell at him for being so dense, for not seeing that you were right there, you simply couldn’t. so you went with the safer option.

“y-yeah, you should. i’m sure she’ll say yes.” you were able to muster a smile, and despite the lump in your throat, you feel happiness surge through you as he turns around and gives you a big smile.

“you think so? but what if she says no?”

“any girl would be lucky to have you, denki. you’re sweet, cool, and funny. what more could a girl ask for?” you were only half joking, but of course he didn’t notice.

“well if you say it like that it just sounds like you have a crush on me.” he winked at you and you swore you were about to pass out. not only because of the wink, but because of his sudden implication. (which was a fact)

“you wish,” you snort to make it seem more real, and it seems to work because kaminari’s now pouting at you. “now go get em’ tiger.”

“please don’t say that again.”

“wow okay, cold.”

he stood up, taking a deep breath before walking over to jirou, starting off with a joke as he leaned down on her desk and, as much as she tried to stifle it, a loud laugh escaped her. apparently kaminari’s charm didn’t only work on you. but oh how you wished it did because that way you would be the one getting asked out right now, not her. quite frankly, you would give anything to have him look at you the way he was looking at her right now, as if she was some mystical creature. or better yet, as if he was under some kind of love spell that made him unable to look at anyone else like that.

from the other corner of the classroom, a certain red haired guy looked at you with pity in his eyes, but also concern. he made his way to you, sitting down in kaminari’s previous spot. you sent him a, clearly fake, smile when you noticed it was none other than kirishima, one of your best friends. but he saw right through that.

“hey,” his voice was soft and low, he didn’t exactly want the whole class to know about what was going on. “are you okay?”

you gulped, but still nodded. “of course, why wouldn’t i be?” another fake smile.

“don’t give me that bullshit y/n. you don’t need to lie to me.” that was all you needed to hear before dropping the act, your smile quickly being replaced with a frown and kirishima’s heart hurt for you.

“this sucks,” you say under your breath, looking away towards their direction only to see kaminari playing with one of jirou’s earphone jacks, which obviously made the pain in your chest worsen. “i just want him to look at me the same way he looks at her,” tears began to sting at the corners of your eyes. “is that too much to ask for?” you asked no one in particular as you looked up to kirishima.

“it’s not, but you’ll be okay,” without thinking it twice, he hugged you and you didn’t fight back, instead welcoming the warmth his chest provided you and resting your head against one of his shoulders. “you know he doesn’t know y/n, if he did i’m sure things would be different.”

“i know, but it’s fine. i just want him to be happy.”

even if it’s not with me.

but you don’t say that, preferring to just stay on kirishima’s arms a little longer while trying to ignore the two love birds giggling behind you, your heart breaking more and more each time you heard kaminari’s sweet words. because they weren’t for you, they were for her.

—

« why would you ever kiss me?

i’m not even half as pretty

you gave her your sweater

it’s just polyester

but you like her better

wish i were heather »

HIDING your emotions was something you mastered pretty well by now. you spent years keeping your feelings for kaminari to yourself and you didn’t mind at all; you had come to terms with the fact that this crush was probably one sided a long time ago. so, why did you suddenly felt the need to tell him? it never bothered you, but now, after having to see him every day making heart eyes at her and hear him talk about how cool she was, you thought maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. you just wanted him to have the option; he deserved to know right? or maybe you were just hoping that he would choose you over her. just like you would choose him over anyone in a heartbeat.

but to be honest, you didn’t know what you would do with yourself if he didn’t. if he chose her over you while knowing you loved him too. what if she meant more to him than you did? what if he thought you were outright weird and things became awkward? what if your friendship wasn’t as special as you thought it was? you shook your head, hands coming up to your temples to try and get rid of some of the tension. no, that couldn’t be. you knew he loved you...at least as a friend.

it had been 2 months already since kaminari and jirou started talking. they weren’t oficial yet, but you accidentally overheard her conversation with yaoyorozu a few days ago and heard her complaining about how she wished he finally made a move on her. that somehow relieved you because at least they hadn’t gotten physical yet, but at the same time you wondered if you were being a bad friend by thinking that. maybe you were, but you couldn’t help it. i mean you liked the boy for fucks sake, it was understandable that you weren’t exactly hoping for them to pounce on each other.

“where’s denki?” kirishima asked as he caught up with you in the hallway, both of you making your way to the new dorms.

“don’t know, he left before i could even ask him.” you tried your best to sound neutral, but you knew you didn’t do a good job when you heard kirishima sighing. however, much to your liking, he stayed quiet and didn’t say anything about it, changing the topic to today’s events.

you were grateful to have him; he was the only one who knew about your crush on kaminari and the only one who was able to take your mind off things even for just a little while. soon enough you found yourself laughing by his side as he talked about bakugou’s weird antics and how hot-headed he could be at times, which you had experienced firsthand.

“he was all like ‘hey shitty hair, if you’re not gonna do a good work then fuck off!’ like man calm down, i didn’t even do anything.” you giggled at his accurate impersonation of the angry blonde. shaking your head as you looked up, noticing you were already at the dorms building.

you squinted your eyes when you saw two people standing right in front of the main entrance, but couldn’t make out their faces thanks to the long distance. yet the closer you got, the better you could see them. and once your eyes focused on the couple completely, everything stopped.

it was them.

they were kissing.

right in front of you.

his arms were wrapped around her waist, holding her close to him as if he never wanted to let her go, and her own were wrapped around his neck, caressing his soft blonde hair which you loved to ruffle whenever he laid down on your lap.

they looked so beautiful, straight out of a cheesy romcom movie. the sun was beginning to set and its rays reflected on their skin perfectly, making them look golden. and in that precise moment you realized just how beautiful jirou was and how much she complimented kaminari in every sense of the word. could it be that they were made for each other?

before you knew it, a single tear rolled down your cheek, and you weakly smiled at kirishima when he opened his mouth to try and comfort you, yet no words seemed to come out. because he knew that no matter what he said, the damage was already done. the couple hadn’t even noticed you two, too immersed in their own little world as they giggled and made their way inside, all while holding each other’s hands.

“they make a good couple, don’t they?” you fixed your eyes on your shoes, holding back the sobs that desperately wanted to escape you.

“y/n…” kirishima’s tone was sad, mostly because he didn’t know what to do, but also because he understood perfectly the pain you were going through. he had been experiencing it for a while now.

“i’ll see you tomorrow, kiri.” you sent him another smile, but right when you started walking towards the entrance he managed to see the tears falling down your cheeks as you bit down on your lower lip.

and somehow, that kiss proved to you that you could never beat her, that she had won over kaminari’s heart. something you could never do.

—

« watch as she stands with her holding your hand

put your arm 'round her shoulder,

now I'm getting colder

but how could I hate her?

she’s such an angel

but then again, kinda wish she were dead »

PEOPLE often say one’s happiness shouldn’t relay on others and you had always been a firm believer of that, knowing that people were unpredictable and that they could change at any moment given. so it was only reasonable that you made yourself happy, without needing to depend on other people, yet that didn’t really add up with your current situation. it made you look like a hypocrite.

ever since jirou and kaminari started dating, you had been spending less and less time together. the only time you could have him all to yourself was when you occasionally paired up during training and even then you didn’t really talk much. you were happy everything had worked out for them, and you loved to see kaminari happy, but it hurt you. it hurt so much, to the point that sometimes it was hard to get out of bed.

you missed your best friend. and you knew it was selfish, but did it even matter at this point? did he he notice how you talked less and less? how you barely smiled anymore? of course he didn’t. he was too busy looking at her anyways, too busy going on dates and learning how to play the guitar just for her. his girlfriend.

and as much as you wanted to hate them both, you didn’t have it in you. why would you? because they were happy and in love? you weren’t that desperate. but sometimes, as you watched her throw her head back while she laughed at something kaminari said, you wished he had never met her. you wished you never came to UA in the first place, that way they wouldn’t have met and you would probably still have your best friend by your side. no. even if he hadn’t met her, you knew he would never go for a girl like you.

these past few months had been hell for you, you barely left your room unless it was for school, your eating habits couldn’t have gotten any worse, and you weren’t getting any sleep, too busy crying your eyes out as you wondered what the hell you did wrong. and you knew what you were doing wasn’t healthy, but a part of you wished that something really bad happened to you just so kaminari would pay attention to you again. but he didn’t.

today was one of those days, you didn’t feel like getting up your bed just to watch a dumb movie with your classmates, and possible have to witness jirou and kaminari being all lovey dovey right in front of you. the thought alone was enough to make you roll your eyes, scoffing at how much the pair loved PDA.

“come on y/n! it’ll be so fun.” kirishima was currently trying to convince you to go watch a movie with the rest of class 1-A in the common room, but as expected you denied his invitation. “even bakugou is going!”

“then you’ll be more than fine without me.”

“i’ll miss you tho.” he gave you puppy eyes and you groaned, placing your pillow over your face.

“since when are you so cheesy?”

“stop trying to change the subject,” a frustrated sigh left his lips, and you lowered your pillow to look at him. he was sitting down on the floor with his legs crossed, a frown evident on his face. “i know you don’t wanna talk about it, but you can’t keep on like this y/n.” you flinched slightly at his serious tone.

“i know,” this time it was you who sighed, weighing your options in your head. you knew kirishima was right and he was trying his best to make you feel better, so the least you could do was make him some company. “okay fine,” his head turned in your direction, looking at you hopefully. “i’ll go, but it better be a good movie.”

“yes! you won’t regret it, i promise. and if at some point you wanna leave, then we’ll leave, but you have to at least try.” your heart swelled at his consideration; he was too sweet to you and you didn’t deserve it at all.

“you don’t have to do that, kiri.”

“but i want to. i know it’s not easy, so i’m proud of you for doing this.” his words made a lump appear in your throat. maybe you were being overly sensitive, but hearing him say that meant a lot.

it wasn’t long before the clock striked 9PM and everyone started making their way to the common room, chatting happily as they sat down and got everything ready for the night. you watched as people started to take a seat, whether it was on the couches or on the floor, and you started to get a bit anxious when you noticed kaminari walking down the stairs, but jirou was nowhere to be seen. thankfully.

as much as you tried to not let him have an effect on you, your heart still skipped a beat whenever you saw him. it was truly inevitable, but what you hated the most was knowing you had no effect on him whatsoever.

before you could look away and hide from his view, kaminari spotted you. he sent you a big smile, waving his hand before walking over to where you stood. ok, calm down act normal. it’s just denki. you tried to calm yourself down, but your breath hitched in your throat when you suddenly felt his arms engulf you in a tight hug, your arms slowly coming up to his neck to return the gesture. you would be lying if you said you hadn’t miss this feeling. the feeling of being home again.

but it ended way too fast for your liking.

“hey you! we haven’t hung out in a while, i miss you.”

because you’re too busy with your girlfriend, asshole.

“yeah sorry about that, i’ve been kinda busy i guess.” your tone was off and he noticed, but he brushed it off. maybe she’s tired.

“then what are you doing tomorrow? we can go to the mall or wherever you want to.” your head quickly shot up, looking at him with nothing but hope in your eyes.

“really?”

“of course! we need to have some bestie time.” the wink he sent you was playful, but your lips still curved into a smile from hearing him saying he wanted to spend time with you.

“then maybe we can go to this new-”

“hey babe i saved you a seat,” out of the blue, jirou appeared right next to kaminari, slipping her hand into his. and your heart clenched when you noticed he held it back tightly. “oh, hi y/n!” she sent you a warm, genuine smile, and you felt so bad for wanting her to feel your pain.

“hi jirou.”

“i was just telling y/n about how we should hang out.” you frowned at him, is he inviting her?

“oh? where did you plan on going?”

“i told her she should pick.”

“well that sounds even more fun, any ideas?”

“actually i just remembered i got some homework to finish.” it was a lie, but you didn’t have it in you to third wheel on what was supposed to be a date with your best friend.

“what?” kaminari asked you, not understanding you sudden change in attitude.

“yeah, maybe next time tho.” he wanted to ask what was wrong, but as he opened his mouth to do so, you saw kirishima walking towards the common room with bakugou and took that as your cue to leave the awkward encounter.

“well that was weird.” he mumbled to himself and jirou looked at him questioningly, wondering what he meant.

“hm? what was that babe?” the blonde shook his head, convincing himself he was probably overthinking things. he placed his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulder before walking over to one of the couches. to be more precise, the couch in front of yours.

you sat beside kirishima, your leg bouncing up and down anxiously as you waited for iida to finally play the goddamn movie so you had something else to pay attention to instead of them. kirishima quickly noticed the unusual movement and was about to ask you what was wrong, but once he saw where your gaze was locked on, it didn’t take him long to put two and two together.

he knew better than to ask you in front of everyone if you were okay, so he just gave your knee a light squeeze, which you highly appreciated and let him know so by smiling at him. after a few minutes that felt like eternity, iida played the movie and told everyone to not make any unnecessary noises and be considerate of your classmates which made you scoff slightly.

twenty minutes into the movie and everything was going great so far. you had actually managed to get immersed in the plot and found yourself leaning your head against kirishima’s shoulder to get a better view, but also because the effect of not having a stable sleeping schedule was dawning on you. however, just when you thought you were about to fall asleep on your friend’s comfortable shoulder, you heard some giggles. you opened your eyes slowly, frowning when you saw kaminari leaving small kisses on jirou’s neck. your heart felt like it was being stabbed for the hundredth time and you tried to ignore them and just focus on the tv screen. you really tried to remain calm, to keep up your act just as you had done all this months, but you lost it when you heard those three damn words leave his lips.

“i love you.”

it was low, barely even audible, but you heard it. you heard it loud and clear. and just like that, with your heart losing every last bit of hope it had, you stood up from your seat abruptly, making everyone look at you, before making your way upstairs without saying another word. all of your classmates looked between them, not only confused, but also concerned.

“oi shitty hair,” bakugou spoke from his place next to kirishima, who looked at him with an eyebrow raised. “go check up on her.” he muttered and kirishima only nodded before walking upstairs to follow you.

bakugou’s words worried kaminari even more, was there something going on with you that he didn’t know about? was that why you were acting so weird earlier? no way, you told him everything. you were best friends after all...right? and with that question on his mind, he couldn’t focus on the movie or his girlfriend anymore.

you walked towards your room silently, even though you wanted nothing more than to scream and fight someone. you wanted, no, needed to let all of your pent up frustration out. you had been patient enough, putting his happiness before your own for years now, and while you knew it wasn’t his fault at all, you wanted to be mad at him about something. you wanted him to understand that this wasn’t fair, that you could be good for him if he gave you the chance, that you wouldn’t be a waste of his time, but the only thing that was coming out of you were tears.

angry tears stained your face as they furiously ran down your cheeks, reminding you of all the sleepless nights you spent alone, crying your heart out to no one but yourself. you stood in front of your room, hand reaching out to the door’s knob to open it and spend yet another night wondering why the hell you weren’t enough. but a hand stopped you.

kirishima’s grip on your forearm was gentle, but firm enough to let you know he wasn’t going anywhere, and somehow, his touch made you want to cry even more. you tried to push him away, telling him that you were perfectly fine, yet your bloodshot eyes told a whole different story. and as much as you kicked and screamed, kirishima knew the last thing you needed was to be alone.

“let go!” seeing that holding your arms had no effect on you whatsoever, he tried a different approach. his strong arms hugged you to his chest, and, as much as you wanted to deny it, you found comfort in them. “i said let me go, kirishima.”

“no. y/n listen to me. you need to stop bottling all your feelings up, nothing good will come out of that,” you finally started to relax, breathing heavily as you listened to his words. “it doesn’t matter if you talk, cry, or scream, but you need to voice out how you feel. if it’s not to him, then tell me. i’m always ready to listen.” his voice was so gentle, so soft, yet it held so much emotion and honesty.

more tears fell down your cheeks as you gripped kirishima’s shirt tightly against your fingers, your face hiding comfortably on his chest.

“i can’t take this anymore kiri,” you started talking and kirishima was quick to hug you a little tighter, one of his hands rubbing small circles on the small of your back. “i miss him so much, i miss my best friend. and i want him to be happy, i really do, but why must his happiness cause me so much pain?” a sob racked through your whole body after hearing yourself say those words, the ones you never thought you’d voice out to someone. “at first it was fine and i didn’t mind that much, but now? we barely even talk anymore, and when we do it’s always small talk. and we used to talk for hours about everything and anything, we would never get bored when we were together. now it’s like i don’t even exist to him except for when he seems to have some time to spare. did our friendship meant shit to him? because fuck i wasted years of my life loving someone who can’t even notice how much i’ve been struggling.”

by this point your tears had stained kirishima’s shirt almost completely, but he couldn’t give less of a fuck about that. all that mattered was you and only you. the only thought on his mind was how he was gonna make you feel better. so he held you in his arms a little longer, hoping that somehow his actions could express everything he felt. his free hand came up to caress your hair while he shushed you softly, rocking you two back and forth.

that’s how the night ended.

you, with your heart broken in a million pieces, longing for the person who made you feel this way. because you knew you would always love him, maybe even more than you loved yourself. you knew that no matter how much you tried to hate him, you could never even get close to feeling anything but pure adoration for the boy. and if having him in your life implied having to handle all this heartache and hurt, then maybe you could endure it. because for him it was all worth it.

and a certain redhead with all his feelings caught in his throat. he wanted nothing more than to scream at you for not noticing he understood completely how you felt, way more than you imagined, yet he knew that you would always only have eyes for him. but perhaps that was okay. if the only way to be close to you was comforting you because you loved a guy who was too dense to see what he had in front of him, then so be it. in the end it was all worth it for you.

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pebblysand · 2 years ago

Note

I love castles so much and i know you probably know how the last few chapters will go but I can’t help picturing, either now or a couple years down the line, the Shacklebolt administration falling because it is exposed that Kingsley was accomplice to rape and torture of a minor because, let’s be honest, once she gave up one piece of that false order info he gave her then the Carrows would assume she knew things and would torture her further for more and Kingsley knew or at least suspected this-he’s not stupid. Then there’s him knowing she was writing the Quibbler articles and approaching her about it — this could be construed as him condoning and encouraging her writing them despite the fact that by this point it was clear that she would be tortured for it since students were already being hurt by the Carrows (including Ginny). I just really want it to be like exposed in the papers or something and Ginny becomes the girl who brought down the ministry (despite her not actually doing anything) and some people completely vilify her for it and call her a wh**e whilst others are so vocal about her being a victim of both the order and the Carrows. Like there would be psychiatrists who have never even met her writing articles about how her her experience with Amycus is the reason why she sleeps with lots of boys.

And Ginny would possibly hear about the article the day before it’s release (if they ask her for a comment) and she spends the whole day before telling her family and stuff and preparing them for the scrutiny and questions they will all face tomorrow and when she’s telling the weasleys she starts by saying that “a story is breaking tomorrow. And I’m involved in it.” She swallows tightly. “And it might bring down the ministry.” Then she tells them what the article is going to say and her family is speechless then someone asks “Is it true?” And Ginny says “I don’t know. Amycus raped me. That’s true. But the stuff about Kingsley... I don’t know.” Then later on at some point “I think it might be true.”

And there would maybe be a big public trial or at least inquisition and major order members would be called to testify as well as Ginny herself and, no matter what the outcome, Kingsley would be forced to resign (because he can’t recover politically from being accused of a sex crime, even if it was during wartime). And McGonagall would also be implicated because she obviously knew about Amycus raping Ginny and she did nothing, just let it happen, so she might be forced to resign as headmistress also.

And imagine how her everyone at school reacts in the great hall when they get the paper and Ginny weasley’s face is on it (which in itself is not that unusual) but this time it’s saying that all last year she was being raped by a death eater and the current minister of magic knew about it.

And this is a lot but omg I need to read this. I get if it’s completely away from ur current plan for the story’s end but please, please release that then if you have time then please write this alternate ending (or even like a sequel when this happens when Ginny is like nineteen or something and this happens).

If you can’t tell I really loved castles. It lit up my brain with all these alternate ideas which only happens when I live what I’m reading so thank you for writing it.

anon. are you okay? 🤣😱 (lolz but also ily. you seem as invested in this story as i am and i can't thank you enough. ❤️)

jokes aside, though, let's do this: wait until i finish castles and if you still want this to happen, how about you write it? i'm very happy for you guys to create your own AUs if you want haha.

one thing i will say, though, is: i don't think mcgonagall knew. about the torture, sure. that's sort of implied in the books when the carrows instruct students to practise the cruciatus curse on eleven year olds. and you do sort of wonder - how on earth did she let that happen? i can't speak too much about this but i do want to address that in the future. her knowing about ginny being raped, though, that's something else. i think it's one of those instances where: she should have known, but she didn't. because some things are just unfathomable. and it's a problem, don't get me wrong, but it's the same problem as these women who were married to serial killers. 'how could she not know?' but, they don't. they truly don't. and it's a fascinating thing, i think.

#castles #asked and answered

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dreamingofaizawa · 4 years ago

Text

Guys My Age

Title and concept inspo: Guys My Age by Hey Violet

Soft Dom! Aizawa Shouta x Medium-sized Fem! Reader

Quirkless AU

***18+ Fic***

You must be at least 18 years old to participate in this reading. If you are under the age of 18 please step out of line and find another fic. Thank you and have a good day.

Warnings: Age gap, praise kink, DD/LG dynamic and terms, use of the words daddy and sir, light bondage, overstimulation, smut.

Word Count: 4.1k

Author’s Note: I KNOW, I know, I write a lot of Aizawa fics, and they’re all DD/LG stuff. I know, okay? It’s an obsession, I’m in love with this man. Anyway, another soft dom Aizawa, but reader isn’t very well-versed in intimacy. Also, reader is what some would call medium-sized. Not necessarily big, but definitely not small. This is for all my medium-sized girls, including myself. I was very self-indulgent with this one.

Part 2

Enjoy~

You’d always been told you were mature for your age. It wasn’t until recently you realized how true that statement might be. You’re currently 21. And very, very single. You’ve had a total of six different relationships, and all of them fell through for one very simple reason. The boys you dated were just that. Boys. They were extremely immature. Only ever wanting to ‘hang with the boys’ or stay at home. No effort was put into the relationship on their part after the first few weeks. You didn’t understand why these vastly different boys were all so adamant on staying inside.

You’d tried desperately to get them to go out on dates with you. You offered to pay, and drive, and literally anything else. But no, they were too busy playing video games or getting higher than the damn sky. Don’t even start thinking about sex. You hadn’t got any of that shit since your first ‘boyfriend’ at 17, who used you like a sex doll and broke it off once he found someone hotter and sexier and altogether better in his eyes. You were sick of it. So you did the last thing you’d ever want to do. You went on a blind date.

You’d stumbled on a website last week that allowed you to set up a blind date with a stranger. It seemed legit, and had background checks on all participants. It also allowed you to put in any preferences you had, and matched you with someone that had similar preferences and hobbies. The age range you put in? 30-35 years old. Because guys your age just didn’t cut it. You needed someone more mature, someone who could treat you like a woman, not some girl.

Today, almost a week after matching with someone, you were standing outside an italian restaurant. You didn’t know his face, just his name and age, and that he was a teacher. Aizawa Shouta, 31 years old. And he’d sent a single message when you matched.

Meet me at this location on Saturday. When you enter, I’ll be at the back corner table. Semi-formal. 8 pm, please don’t be late.

It was blunt and straightforward. You liked it. You just hoped he wasn’t quite this blunt in person. You’d put on a black knee-length cocktail dress with a halter top and a partially open back that fell to the small of your back. It accentuated your shoulders and the top half of your torso before fanning out at your waist, the silky material falling and swaying around you.

You slipped on simple white heels and silver jewelry, with a white clutch purse. You’d decided to pull your hair into a loose half-up half-down, a silver comb pinning your hair in place, minimal makeup and clear lip gloss. For the first time in a while you felt pretty. You knew you weren’t exactly small, but the way you were dressed gave you confidence.

You looked at your watch. 7:55 pm. You took a deep breath, straightened out your dress, and stepped into the restaurant. The host asked if you had a reservation, and you told him you were meeting someone who already arrived. He let you pass, and you walked back to the table Aizawa told you to meet at. He had his back to you as you approached, but you could see his broad shoulders and muscular frame easily.

He wore a white long-sleeve button down, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and a black vest fitted to his form. His slacks were also fitted, showing off his muscular thighs. His long raven hair was pulled in a half-up half-down similar to yours. You hadn’t even seen his face yet and he looked delicious.

Your heels clacked on the wood flooring, and as you neared the booth he turned to look at you. You stopped next to the table and got a good look at the stranger. He was beautiful. His dark bloodshot eyes looked tired, the bags underneath giving him away and only adding to his appeal, and a scar curved under his right eye. A sharp jawline, with a tamed scruff, and thin lips in a neutral expression. You were about to introduce yourself, but he stood from the booth and held his hand out, palm up. “You must be (y/l/n) (y/n).” You smiled at the gesture, and placed your hand in his. “That’s me. And you are Aizawa Shouta. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” He pulled your hand to his lips and placed a kiss on your knuckles, before leading you to your seat.

As he sat down, you noticed a bottle of wine sitting in the center of the table in a bucket of ice, and two glasses of wine halfway full. One sat in front of you, and the other in front of Aizawa. He began the conversation with a rather specific question. “So, (y/l/n), why are you on a dating website looking for men that are so much older than you?” Normally you’d take offense to a question like that, but the way he said it was pure curiosity. So, you answered. “If I’m being honest, it’s actually pretty simple. Guys my age just don’t know how to treat me.”

He raised an eyebrow at that, a barely noticeable smirk tugging at his lips. “And how do you want to be treated?” You smiled a little at the implications behind the question, and answered. “I don’t want to be stuck in my room while my ‘boyfriend’ plays video games and smokes weed. I don’t want to be ‘one of the boys’, and I don’t want to have to plead and beg to go on a date or spend time with him. I want to be treated like a woman, not a girl. And I want to spend my time with a man, not waste it on a boy.”

At that, Aizawa smirked and sipped at his wine. You both took a quick look at the menu and ordered when the waiter came. As you ate, you talked about random subjects and hit it off quite well. The date went by quickly, and at the end of the night you’d exchanged numbers. “I look forward to another date with you, Ms. (y/l/n).” “The feeling is mutual, Mr. Aizawa.”

When you got back home, you undressed and cleaned your face and got into bed. As you lay there, your mind drifted back to the date, and how undeniably handsome Aizawa is. The way he spoke to you like you were his equal, and looking at you like an ancient treasure. He was everything you wanted, without even considering anything sexual. Little did you know he felt much the same way.

____

When the date ended he texted Hizashi to let him know he was free. Hizashi, of course, called him immediately, and began drilling him about the date. “How’d it go Sho? Was it a rando with a thing for older guys? Did she want a sugar daddy?” Shouta rolled his eyes. “No, Zashi, she wasn’t looking for a sugar daddy. She was...actually really mature for a 21 year old. She knows what she wants. I admire that a little. And I won’t lie, she’s quite beautiful. Not the generic, model, beauty-pageant, barbie doll pretty. It’s a natural glow she has. It’s...quite mesmerizing...”

Hizashi exploded on the other side, laughing at the new infatuation his friend had for a blind date. “I hope she’s your type, Sho. I mean physically. I know how much you like them with a little meat on their bones.” Aizawa groaned at his comment. He knew he was just teasing, but that his blonde friend was 100% right. He knew he had a type, and he’d be lying to himself if he hadn’t looked at your full figure quite frequently.

He’d taken in your dress, how it showed off your shoulders and back. As you climbed into your car and took off your heels, he trailed his eyes up your legs, getting a small glimpse at your thick thighs. When you sat up behind the wheel, he revelled in the small rolls showing through your dress, wanting nothing more than to squeeze them and kiss them and bite them...

He shook away the thoughts that were threatening to take over his mind. “Shut it Hizashi. Her body is none of my concern, and is most definitely none of yours. I enjoyed the date and that’s what matters.” The loud blonde gasped dramatically, “Oh my god she totally is! Damn you go get some Sho!” Aizawa just ended the call.

The next date was planned once again by Aizawa, and it was only a week after the first. It was a simple coffee date at a small cafe. You talked casually about the things you enjoyed doing. You convinced him to let you take care of the next date, which you decided would be a relaxed ramen date. You’d gotten comfortable around each other, and after about six more dates, he invited you over to his place for dinner. Of course, you accepted.

He’d sent you the address and apartment number, and you stood outside his door in dark jeans, black flats, and a beige sweater with a white tank top underneath. You knocked on the door, and when it opened he greeted you with a peck on the cheek. It had become a normal greeting, since you’d gotten so close, though the gesture always made you a little shy. He told you to get comfortable as he finished up dinner, and you sat at the kitchen table and admired him as he worked in the kitchen. He wore fitted blue denim jeans, and a black cotton t-shirt, his hair pulled up in a bun.

No matter how many times you looked at him, he was always just as shockingly handsome as the first time you saw him. His t-shirt left his toned arms exposed, and it was fitted to his torso, showing off his muscular frame. Your eyes traced the outline of his muscles from his shoulder, down his arm, drifting to his hips and up his back. You didn’t notice him glance back and smirk at you. “Like what you see kitty cat?” Heat rushed to your face at the realization that you’d been staring, and the fact that he’d noticed. And that name… “K-kitty?” you barely whispered, before quickly apologizing. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to stare.”

You didn’t think he heard the first part. You were wrong. “It’s alright. And yes, kitty. Don’t like the pet name?” Your face burned at the tone of his voice. “N-no, the name’s fine, you just...caught me off guard.” He chuckled. “I should do it more often. You’re cute when you’re flustered.” You didn’t think your face could get any hotter, but it did. You tilted your head down and away from him and bit your lip, letting your hair fall to hide your face. You’d never gotten this kind of attention before, and you had no idea how to handle it.

You were too busy trying to calm your breathing to hear him approach you. The proximity and demanding tone of his voice made you jump a little. “Look at me, kitten.” You swallowed and took a breath before turning your head to him, and he hooked a finger under your chin, tilting your head so you were forced to sit up taller. He moved even closer, your shoulder brushing against his abdomen, and you nearly had to look straight up to look in his eyes.

Your eyes began to drift away from his, and he jerked your chin up higher, silently commanding you not to look away. You brought your eyes back to his and held his gaze, and after a few moments he smirked. The hand under your chin moved to stroke your cheek with his knuckles. “Good girl.”

He quickly dropped his hand and went back to the kitchen to finish preparing dinner. It took you a few seconds to let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. You panted a little, trying to calm yourself from what just happened, and clasped your shaking hands together. But they weren’t shaking from fear. In fact, you couldn’t quite tell why you were so shaky and out of breath. And the praise from him sent a shiver down your spine.

He managed to distract you while you ate, and you had completely recovered from whatever that was earlier. After dinner you moved into the living room and relaxed on the couch while you talked some more. Soon he’d leaned his head back and closed his eyes, still talking and listening, but clearly relaxed. Once again you found yourself distracted by his body, following the muscles in his neck down to his toned chest and abdomen. And again, he noticed. “I can feel your eyes on me, kitten.” His voice was low, a rumble of smooth baritone. You found yourself turning away to hide your face again, and the command in his voice controlled you with ease.

“Don’t look away from me, kitten.” You turned back to him, and when your eyes met his, you looked away, and he let out a low growl and your eyes snapped back to him. He adjusted and sat up, your eyes still fixed on each other. He pat his leg, “Come here kitty.” You blinked at him, not quite prepared for such a demand. His eyes darkened a little and his voice dropped to a growl, “I won’t ask twice.”

At that you got up and went to sit on one of his legs, but he pulled his knees together and shook his head. So you climbed over and straddled his legs on your knees. He grabbed your hips and pulled you so you were fully sitting on his lap, your core dangerously close to his growing bulge.

Your eyes were still locked on his as he leaned close to you, his hands rubbing circles into your hips. He leaned past your face and whispered into your ear. “Can I touch you kitty?” You took a shaky breath and nodded. He laid a light spank on your ass and you jumped. “Use your words kitty cat.” “Y-yes, you can t-touch me.” He laid a kiss on your neck and whispered ‘good girl’ before moving his hands under your sweater and tank top. He ran his hands up and down your back, and he gripped the fatty flesh of your stomach and hips, kneading it in his palms gently as he worked his way up your body, leaving feather light kisses along your neck and jaw.

The intimacy had you quivering, and the way he nearly worshipped your body had your breaths coming out shaky and heavy. Shouta caught on quickly. “Is it safe for me to assume you haven’t done anything in a while?” he said in your ear. You started to nod, but quickly caught yourself, “Y-yes.” He stilled his movements and wrapped his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder. “Tell me what you did before this.” You took a breath and explained the situation as simply and quickly as possible.

His arms tensed, clearly upset that you’d been used like that. But he didn’t pry into that right now. “So you haven’t explored anything? Like any preferences you might have?” You shook your head quickly, “N-no...why?” He chuckled. “Well, kitty, you’re quite submissive. If you’d let me, I can help you explore this side of you.” You swallowed and nodded. “Y-yeah, I think I’d like that.” He hummed into your neck, “We can start tonight, but only if you’re comfortable and you want to.” You took a few moments to think about your answer. This man had been nothing but good to you. He treated you with more respect than all the boys you dated had combined. And you trusted him. “I...I’m comfortable starting tonight.”

“Alright kitty. Now, listen to me closely, because this is important, okay?” “Okay, I’m listening.” “Good. Since this is new to you, we need to establish a safeword. Is ‘roses’ alright?” You nod. “Okay. Now if anything ever gets too much for you, if you feel uncomfortable for any reason, if you need to stop for any reason, or if there’s a medical emergency, you need to use it. And that goes for me too. If I don’t like where things are going, I’ll use it. Once we use the safeword, everything will stop right there, no questions asked. Understand?”

“I understand.” “Okay. Can I trust you to use it if you feel the need to?” You nod, “Yes. I’ll use it if I need to.” He kisses your neck, “Good girl.” The praise makes you shudder, and you feel him smile into your neck. “Now, kitty, I want you to address me as either ‘Daddy’, ‘Sir’, or ‘Master’ when we’re like this, do you understand?” “Yes.” He spanks you a little harder. “Yes what?” You jump at the contact “Y-yes Sir.” Another kiss on your neck, “Good girl.” He leans back and taps your arms, “Up.” You lift your arms and he pulls off your sweater and tank top at the same time.

His hands come back down on your shoulders, and he runs his hands down your chest and stomach, taking the time to remove your bra and knead your breasts. He wraps his arms around you and stands up, and you wrap your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist as he carries you to his bedroom. He puts you down on the bed on your back and takes a rope out of the bedside table. You let him take your hands and tie your wrists to the bar at the headboard. It’s not uncomfortably tight, but a few experimental tugs tell you it’s solid and you won’t be getting out of it unless he unties you.

He trails kisses down your body, unbuttoning your jeans and removing them as he goes. Once your jeans are off, he loops his fingers in the band of your panties and pulls them off. After that, he leans back and just rakes his eyes up and down your body, eating up every inch of your skin. “You’re such a pretty kitty.” His words have you shuddering and blushing. You’d never been called pretty before, and you knew why. You were a little bigger than other girls. You weren’t necessarily insecure about it. You didn’t care all that much about how people saw you with just your looks alone. But you knew Shouta was admiring your body after knowing who you are as a person, and it made you a little giddy.

His mouth and hands were all over you, squeezing and groping, sucking bruises onto your skin. His touches were sending waves of heat through your body, and pooling between your legs. You desperately wanted him to touch you there, and you whined and rolled your hips up into the air. “Such a needy kitty. Be patient. I’m not done here yet.” He rolled a nipple in between his index and thumb, pulling the other into his mouth and teasing it with his tongue. You mewled at the sensation, and he switched his mouth over to the other side.

Your legs were rubbing together, begging for friction, and he finally moved down to your dripping core. He took a finger and slipped it over your folds. He groaned as his finger collected your slick, “You’re so wet kitty. Are you this wet for me?” You nodded your head frantically, and he laid a light smack on your pussy. You let out a soft whimper, “Yes Sir, it’s for you,” you answered quickly. He hummed, “Good girl. I didn’t even need to remind you to use your words.” He kissed the inside of your thigh, and moved to lick a stripe up your folds. You gasped at the new feeling, never having anyone’s mouth down there before.

He slipped the pink muscle into you easily, groaning when he tasted you. The sound sent vibrations through your dripping cunt, making you squirm at the pleasure. He looped his arms around your legs, dipping his fingers into your core and using the slick to rub tight circles onto your clit. An unfamiliar sensation built in the pit of your stomach, your muscles tightening in your abdomen as it got stronger. You knit your eyebrows together, and in between heavy breaths you gasped out, “S-sir...it feels strange.” He raised his eyebrows at the statement, and increased his pace until that coil inside you snapped, which didn’t take very long.

Your back arched off the bed as you let out a loud, sharp moan, your legs shaking from the intensity of your first orgasm. Aizawa kept lapping at your pussy, letting you ride out your high, and once you were relaxed and panting on the bed, he lifted his head and wiped his chin. “Kitty, have you never cum before?” He asked, a small smirk tugging at his lips. You shake your head, “No S-sir...Is that what just happened?” He chuckled, but didn’t answer the question, “You’re going to have fun tonight kitty.” You didn’t have time to question what he meant, though, because he slipped a thick finger into your core, and you mewled as your walls clenched down on him.

The game he played went on for what felt like hours, and you lost count of how many times he’s made you cum. He’d fucked you and cum multiple times himself. You’d already squirted several times, and tears were streaming down your face from the overstimulation. It felt so good, but it was starting to melt your brain and the title of ‘Sir’ drifted to ‘Daddy’ as it went on. All the muscles in your body were burning from flexing so hard, and your wrists were feeling raw from how hard you’d been tugging at your restraints. It felt so, so good...but it was too much. He leaned down close to your face and kissed at the tears, “You’re doing so well babygirl. You got one more for me?”

You giggled lightly at the praise, your mind fuzzy, unable to form coherent thoughts as he thrust his hips into you. He stilled his movements and caressed your jaw. “How are you feeling, kitten?” Your eyes looked up into his, struggling to stay open. You giggled a little as you answered. “It’s… I f-feel…” You knit your eyebrows together in concentration, searching your brain. “R-roses?”

Everything stopped, and he instantly reached up and tugged off your restraints, and pulled your exhausted body close to his chest. Your breathing got heavier, and your chest got tight, and fresh tears fell down your cheeks. He held you tight, kissing your tears and petting your hair as your cries died down. He held you like that until your breathing was normal again. You slowly opened your eyes, weakly calling out to him, “Daddy?” He kissed your forehead, “I’m right here kitten. Tell me what you need.” You nuzzled your head into his neck and mumbled, “Water. Can I have water?” He wrapped you in a soft blanket and stood up, carrying you with him. “Anything for my kitten.”

He set you on the counter and made a glass of iced water, holding it up to your lips. As you sipped, he rubbed your back and kissed your forehead and neck, and he didn’t stop or move until you had drained the cup. He left it in the sink and picked you up again, taking you to the bathroom and filling the tub with warm water. He turned off the tap, took off your blanket, and carried you into the tub. He washed the both of you, massaging your scalp, and you let out a sound like a pur, which he smiled at.

When he was done, he stood you up and wrapped you in a fluffy towel, dried himself with one, and carried you back to bed. You curled into him, and he wrapped his arms around you. “Are you okay (y/n)?” You nodded into his chest, “Yeah, I’m okay. It was just intense.” You could hear the smile in his voice as he spoke, “Thank you for using the safeword. You did so well for me kitten, trusting me like that.” You nuzzled into his chest some more, relishing in the heat his body gave.

You loved the praise he gave you. It made you feel warm and fuzzy in your belly, and it felt so good. Soon you were drifting into a deep sleep, comfortable in Shouta’s arms. This was nice. You’d be happy to let him guide you, let him take care of you like this. One thought drifted through your head as you drifted.

‘Guys my age could never.’

#aizawa shouta #shouta aizawa #aizawa #aizawa shouta x reader #aizawa shouta x fem reader #shouta aizawa x reader #shouta aizawa x fem reader #aizawa shouta smut #shouta aizawa smut #aizawa shouta bnha #aizawa shouta mha #shouta aizawa bnha #shouta aizawa mha #dom aizawa

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babypandawrites · 4 years ago

Text

Allies, Pt. 12

The Siege of the North, Part Two

Pairing: Sokka x F Reader Warnings: Implications of Death, I think that's all? Word Count: 3,286 Summary: With the Fire Nation waging war on the Northern Water Tribe, you didn't expect things of the past to be brought up, but, when do you expect anything at this point.

Note: And here we have, the final part of Allies :') But don't worry- the story will continue in a sequel 👀 Phew I did not mean for this to take so long, but I was having a really hard time with the end and ended up having to change where the reader was towards the end for me to... actually be able to write the chapter. Thank you to everyone who has enjoyed the story thus far! It means the world to me, really. It's crazy to think about how I've been working on this for four months! I hope you guys will stick with me for the months to come while I write the sequel :') I'll be carrying over the taglist to the sequel since it's the... same story just a different name heh. Let me know if you want to be added or taken off! I hope you guys enjoy this chapter, and that you all have a great day! <3 Also hi sorry bringing this poll back up bc the results are currently tied!!!

-Navigation- | -Atla Masterlist- -Last Part- | -Allies Masterlist- | -Next Part-

Taglist: @boomeraangin | @brokennerdalert

Eyes blinking open, Y/n slowly came too. Her vision was blurry, and her head was pounding. Faintly, she could hear someone talking, but her head was too fuzzy to make out who it was and what they were saying. Her vision clearing, she could see a rocky ceiling, which seemed… odd. Was she in a cave?

When she tried to sit up, she found that she couldn’t move. Her arms were trapped against her sides, and her legs were bound together. Groaning quietly, Y/n twisted onto her side. Aang was on the ground a few feet away from her, hands bound behind his back. He didn’t seem… present.

Observing the situation more, she noted the figure that stood at the entrance to what she was assuming was a cave. They were still talking, and her head was finally clear enough to make out what they were saying.

“I don’t need luck though, I don’t want it. I’ve always had to struggle and fight and that’s made me strong. It’s made me who I am.”

Struggling weakly against her bindings, Y/n furrowed her eyebrows together. “..Zuko..?”

His head turned to the side slightly, an acknowledgement that she was awake, but he didn’t turn to face her. “Don’t bother trying to get free, I’ll just knock you out again.” He paused for a short moment. “Sorry about that, I just.. I knew you wouldn’t give up. You never have.”

Zuko had… taken her too. Why…?

Grunting, she continued to struggle against the rope, stopping only when Zuko rested his hand on her arm. “What did I just say? Did I knock you in the head that hard?” Sighing, Zuko settled on the ground next to her. “I’d prefer if you didn’t make me knock you out again. You probably think otherwise but I don’t want to hurt you.”

Opting to stay silent, she shuffled in place. He watched her carefully, before awkwardly looking about once she stopped moving. He took in a deep breath, when she started shuffling again. “Are you.. uncomfortable?” Being met with silence, Zuko glanced at Y/n to see she was looking at him with a blank expression. “I can sit you up, if you want.”

Not receiving an answer once again, he let out an annoyed breath. “Conversations usually go both ways, Y/n.”

Still, she looked at him blankly. “I don’t think people typically converse with their captors, Zuko.”

“Well, we used to be friends!” Crossing his arms with a huff, Zuko slumped against the cave wall. “I guess the key phrase is ‘used to be’, isn’t it?” He clicked his tongue, before breathing out a sigh. “I didn’t capture you to turn you in, we could… still be friends.”

Y/n took on a pensive expression. “Then why..?”

“Why did I capture you..?” Receiving a nod of confirmation, Zuko shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t… I don’t know.”

“You don’t… know..?”

“No! Okay?! I just-” Breathing out another annoyed breath, he dropped his head into his hands. “Why? Why did you leave? I thought… I thought we had each other's backs and… and you just up and leave?! Just like that?! No explanation, no nothing!? So why?!” Continuing to stay silent, Y/n grimaced internally at the rise in Zuko’s volume. The more he spoke, the louder he got. It was almost hard to imagine that this was the boy she grew up with.

Zuko scoffed, shaking his head slightly. “Fine then. It doesn’t matter anyways- You’ve chosen your path.” He let out a laugh, one edging on hysterical. “You know, I thought maybe I could sit here and convince you to come back, but I can see that isn’t going to work… The Avatar and his friends have won your favor.” He was silent for a moment, seemingly calming down from his outburst. “Uncle told me that I shouldn’t be mad at you, that I should respect your decision to find your own path. How can I do that when your so-called path is going against me?”

Before Zuko could continue, Aang came too, returning from the spirit world. Attention turned to the boy, when he started to struggle against his bonds. After a short moment of futile struggle, he sat up to face Zuko.

“Welcome back.”

“Good to be back.” Aang spoke with a threatening tone, blinding reaching around with his hands- which were tied behind his back -to try and find Y/n’s wrist. Once he was able to grab onto her wrist, he took in a deep breath and blew Zuko away from them while simultaneously shooting both him and Y/n out of the cave. The two landed in the snow outside, where Aang started to caterpillar crawl.

It didn’t take long for Zuko to get to them, grabbing Aang by the collar and lifting him in the air once he did. “That won’t be enough to escape.”

Suddenly, Appa appeared above them, before landing on the ground. Y/n breathed out a sigh of relief. Katara got off the bison, as Zuko dropped Aang back into the snow. “Here for a rematch?”

“Trust me, Zuko, it’s not going to be much of a match.”

Katara blocked a fireball Zuko shot at her, sending a wave of ice towards him. Once the ice reached him, she encased him in a pillar of ice that she raised high from the ground. When she dropped him, he fell to the ground unconscious.

Sokka jumped off of Appa, rushing over to Aang to cut his bonds. “Hey! This is some quality rope!” He commented, before moving to Y/n to free her as well.

“We need to get to the oasis! The spirits are in trouble!” Aang got up, and ran to Appa, while Sokka helped Y/n to her feet.

Everyone was on the bison, ready for take off, but Aang hesitated on leaving, looking towards Zuko’s knocked out form. “Wait, we can’t just leave him here.”

“Sure we can. Let’s go.”

Y/n shook her head softly. “No, Aang’s right, we can’t leave him. He could die.”

Aang jumped off Appa, and grabbed Zuko to bring him up onto the bison. Sokka watched him with a somewhat exasperated expression. “Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. Let’s bring the guy who’s constantly trying to kill us!”

As they started to fly back to the Spirit Oasis, the moon changed to a blood red, casting a red light over everything. This seemed to affect Yue, who held her head in pain, letting out a groan.

Sokka looked at her concerned. “Are you okay?”

“I feel faint.”

Aang, with a hand to his head, looked at the moon. “I feel it too. The Moon Spirit is in trouble.”

Yue glanced at the moon as well. “I owe the Moon Spirit my life.”

“What do you mean?” Sokka questioned.

“When I was born I was very sick and very weak. Most babies cry when they’re born… But I was born as if I were asleep. My eyes closed. Our healers did everything they could. They told my mother and father I was going to die. My father pleaded with the spirits to save me… that night, beneath the full moon, he brought me to the oasis and placed me in the pond. My dark hair turned white, I opened my eyes and began to cry- and they knew I would live. That’s why my mother named me Yue, for the moon.”

They neared the oasis as Yue finished her story, to find Zhao there- a bag in hand and Momo on his head trying to stop him from what he was doing. The group got off Appa when he landed, sans Yue and Zuko, ready to fight Zhao and the other Fire Nation soldiers in the oasis.

“Don’t bother!” Zhao held a knife to the bag he had, which must have had the Moon Spirit trapped inside.

Aang dropped his staff, raising his hands in surrender. “Zhao! Don’t!”

“It’s my destiny… to destroy the Moon… and the Water Tribe.”

Y/n glared at the man, resisting her urge to attack him. “You’re insane.”

“Destroying the moon won’t just hurt the Water Tribe. It will hurt everyone- including you. Without the moon, everything would fall out of balance. You have no idea what kind of chaos that would unleash on the world.” Aang tried to reason with him, but Y/n wasn’t sure words alone would stop the man.

“He is right, Zhao!” Heads turned to Iroh, as he approached.

“General Iroh, why am I not surprised to discover your treachery?” Zhao spoke in a bored tone.

Iroh lowered his hood. “I’m no traitor, Zhao, the Fire Nation needs the moon too. We all depend on the balance.”

Unsurprisingly, Zhao continued to hold his threat on the Moon Spirit, the knife he held at the bag it was captive in not dropping.

“Whatever you do to that spirit I’ll unleash on you ten-fold!” Iroh pointed a finger at Zhao, before taking on a firebending stance. “LET IT GO, NOW!”

After a moment of stillness, Zhao faltered, lowering the bag. He kneeled and released the fish of the Moon Spirit back into the pond. The red light casted from the moon returned back to normal.

Seeing something move in the corner of her eye, Y/n’s attention moved to the right, just in time for her to see a figure sneaking away. Careful not to draw attention to herself, she followed after them, noting that Zuko was missing from Appa’s saddle as she snuck by. He was taking the chance to sneak away, while everyone was focused on Zhao. If she had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t be getting far.

In her pursuit, the moon fell dark, probably thanks to Zhao. It’s not a surprise that he would try and kill the moon spirit, even after letting it go. Keeping her distance and staying as hidden as she can, Y/n continued to follow Zuko- Only stopping when he did. Eyebrows furrowing together, she watched as he shot a blast of flames to a lower area from where they stood- Which was shot at Zhao.

The man stopped in his steps, looking up at Zuko incredulously. “You’re alive?”

“You tried to have me killed!”

He shot several more blasts at Zhao, which he was able to dodge. When he tried to run off in the other direction, Y/n moved quickly to grab her bow and an arrow, shooting it at the ground in front of him. Both Zhao and Zuko were shocked by this, not having noticed her before.

“You tried to have him killed?!”

Zhao’s gaze darted between the two, before primarily focusing on Zuko. “Yes, I did. You’re the Blue Spirit- and enemy of the Fire Nation! You freed the Avatar!” Pausing, he pointed to Y/n. “And her!” His words dripped with venom.

“I had no choice!”

Zuko fired several more attacks at Zhao, while Y/n readied an arrow- though she waited to shoot it until the right moment. Zhao avoided the attacks, removing and dropping his smoking cloak as they subsided. “You should have chosen to accept your failure- your disgrace! Then, at least you could have lived.”

Returning the fire, the two end up in a short exchange of attacks, before Zuko blasted Zhao in the chest, knocking him down. Having seemed to realize Y/n was waiting for the right moment for attack, Zuko glanced at her. “Now.”

Though she didn’t need his signal- In quick succession she fired two arrows at Zhao, one pinning his sleeve to the ground, the other pinning his pant leg. The two jumped down to the lower level Zhao was, landing on either side of him as he struggled to free his clothes from the arrows. Zuko took on a firebending stance, while Y/n pulled another arrow through her bow. They both waited to attack, watching the man carefully.

Finally wiggling the arrow free from his shirt sleeve, he scoffed, looking between the two. “Two traitors working together again, hm? I’m not surprised at this point.”

Y/n narrowed her eyes when the Admiral quit trying to wiggle the arrow pinning his pant leg down free, quickly pivoting on her heel at realization. Twisting to the side, she narrowly dodged the arrow when he threw it at her. This initiated the fight once again, Zuko sending a relentless stream of attacks. Realizing her bow wasn’t going to get her anywhere in a close range fight, Y/n hooked it away onto her quiver, running at Zhao while he traded fire blasts with Zuko. She grabbed onto his arm as he tried to send an attack at the prince, yanking it to the side so the blast shot to the right. He twisted his other arm to send a fireball right into her face, which she was able to duck away from as she released his arm. The momentary distraction gave Zuko the opening to shoot a powerful blast at Zhao, knocking him back a bit.

Unable to keep his attention on both of them at once, Y/n was able to swipe her leg at his ankles while he was focused on Zuko, knocking him down. Not relenting, Zhao shot a blast at Y/n, catching her off guard and knocking her down. She rolled out of the way of another blast, before Zuko helped her off the ground- While firing at Zhao. The two looked at each other briefly, sharing a nod.

Running at Zhao once again, Y/n twisted, ducked and dodged the attacks sent at her, while also giving room for Zuko to send his own blasts at the man. Once close enough, she started throwing punches at Zhao, taking his attention in the fight. The close proximity of the fight didn’t stop him from using his fire, leaving parts of her clothes to be singed. She ducked when he tried to punch her with a blazing fist, giving the opening for Zuko to send another powerful blast at Zhao, knocking him down once again.

He didn’t get up this time, rather looking past the two with a horror ridden expression. “It can’t be!”

Furrowing her eyebrows, Y/n turned to see what he was looking at- The moon. In the heat of the battle, she hadn’t noticed it started to shine bright once again.

Suddenly, water rose up coalescing around the bridge they were on, taking the form of a large fish like creature. It reached out and grabbed Zhao, pulling him off the bridge. He struggled against it, before Zuko reached out to him. “Take my hand!”

For a moment, it seemed like he was going to grasp onto Zuko’s hand, but instead drew back- an expression of hate taking over his features. Zhao was taken under the surface of the water, disappearing. Crossing her arms, Y/n looked at the surface of the water in near disbelief.

Silence lingered in the air, it only being broken when Zuko quietly cleared his throat. Looking up from the surface of the water, she glanced over at him. He took a minute, before speaking up.

“Listen, Y/n… I’m… sorry. For everything. I- Ugh, what am I even trying to say here.”

She raised an eyebrow in amusement. “That you’re sorry?”

“Yes- Wait, I already said that..” He breathed out a sigh, holding a hand to his forehead. Laughing softly, she held out her hand.

“Truce?”

He hesitated for a moment, before grasping onto her hand, a soft smile tugging up his lips. “Truce.”

Tugging him a step closer, Y/n put an arm around his neck, bringing him into a hug. Zuko tensed at the action, but returned it nonetheless.

“We can still be friends..” Mumbling quietly, she broke away from the hug. “But I need to get back to them.”

“I.. understand.” He paused. “Actually, no, I don’t. But… I won’t stop you.”

Offering a small smile, she slipped past him, intending to go back to the oasis. She stopped on the way there, however, seeing that her friends were gathered. Katara waved her over, inviting her into the group hug they were currently sharing. Running over, she joined them, a wide smile on her face.

---

Sea water gently splashed up against the sides of the boat, spraying past the railings. The more Y/n sat with her back against them, her head leaned back, the more the back of her shirt and her hair dampened from the water. Eyes closed, she took in a deep breath. With her terrible track record on boats, she didn’t know that being out at sea could be so… relaxing.

“Can’t sleep?”

She shook her head softly in response. “You can’t either?”

Sokka breathed out a quiet, somewhat tense, laugh. “No..” He paused for a short moment. “Do you mind?”

Opening her eyes to see that he was motioning to the space on the deck next to her, Y/n offered a soft smile. “Not at all.”

Muttering a small thanks, he gave a weak smile in return, before settling down next to her. He sat close enough for their shoulders to press together, the close proximity made her heart race.

Silence lingered over them for a long moment, before Y/n spoke up. “I heard what happened… With Yue.”

Breathing out a soft sigh, Sokka tilted his head back, looking up at the moon. “Yeah… I figured you would.”

“I’m sorry for bringing it up but- I just wanted to say if you ever need someone to talk to, I’m always right here.”

“Thanks..” He paused for a moment. “You know, I went to that shop you were working at once when you weren’t there. I was trying to catch you there, that… didn’t work out- Obviously.” He breathed out a quiet chuckle, digging into his coat pocket. “But I did meet that lady you worked for, and she asked me to make sure this got to you.” He held out a bracelet, the one she’d been looking at in the shop before she started working there.

Her eyes widened slightly. “I forgot about that.”

“That’s why she asked me to give it to you. Let me see your wrist.” He tied the bracelet around her wrist, once she held it out to him.

“Thanks.” She spoke with a smile, twisting her wrist slightly causing the stone to glint in the moonlight.

“It’s no problem.” Smirking, he took on a slightly teasing tone. “I didn’t expect you to be a jewelry person.”

Pressing a hand to her chest, she feigned an over exaggerated offence. “Just because I lived in a forest and can fight better than you doesn’t mean I can’t like girly things.”

He looked at her offended. “You cannot fight better than me!” She leaned a bit closer to him, raising an eyebrow. “You wanna test that theory?”

Falling silent, he gulped. “No, I think I’m good.”

They were both quiet, before breaking into a short fit of laughter. Leaning back against the boat's railing, Y/n hugged one of her knees to her chest.

Once again, silence fell over them. After a few moments, a sudden weight was on her shoulder. Tensing slightly, she looked to the side, to see that Sokka had fallen asleep- His head now leaning on her shoulder. She opened her mouth to wake him up, but stopped herself.

Something in her didn’t want to wake him up… The closeness was… Nice.

Letting her eyes fall closed, she leaned her head back, absentmindedly fiddling with the bracelet tied around her wrist. She felt so calm, but still her heart raced, and she wasn’t sure why.

With certain thoughts and memories coming to mind, however, the pieces started to fit together.

And it was in that moment, Y/n realized.

#avatar the last airbender #atla #avatar the last airbender x reader #atla x reader #reader insert #sokka x reader #sokka x y/n #sokka x you #team avatar #slowburn #book one allies

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itsclydebitches · 4 years ago

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RWBY Recaps: Volume 8 “Ultimatum”

Welcome back, everyone! We had an unexpected break last week due to the horror going on in Texas. I'm glad we did. Not because of any salty "RWBY is bad right now yay free Saturday" feelings, but because keeping to a schedule for a fictional webseries should never take precedence over peoples' safety. I can't believe I need to type that sentence out, but it's true! Over the last seven days I've seen fans who are not merely disappointed by the mini hiatus (understandable) but outright hostile towards the crew because they... were ensuring everyone survived during an unprecedented emergency? Yeah. Given the highly critical nature of these recaps — including today's! — I want to be clear that my thoughts towards Rooster Teeth's creative choices are distinct from any thoughts about the crew itself, including the most basic forms of compassion like, “I sure hope everyone is okay over there.” In an age where it has become horrifically common to harass creators and even send them death threats over stories, it has likewise become necessary to remind people: Don't do that shit. Never do that shit. If I can teach anyone anything at all, let it be that!

Anyway, dark fandom reminders out of the way, let's dive straight into our delayed episode. It was certainly a doozy. Titled "Ultimatum," we open on a trigger warning for flashing lights. Good on Rooster Teeth for including that, though I do wonder if creators shouldn't be including time stamps as well? Or perhaps a note that you can find those time stamps in the credits, avoiding any (minor) spoilers for everyone else? I'm not photosensitive myself, so I certainly don't mean to speak for that group, but my first thought was, "So how would I watch this episode if I was? Hand on the pause button, hoping I stop fast enough as soon as the lights start?" Hard to do given the surprise nature of the scene. Really, my answer would be, "Wait for the fandom to post warnings of their own, likely including where it happens so I know when to skip" which is perhaps an indication that this information that should be included from the get-go.

But I am glad the warning exists, regardless. The episode itself begins with a shot of Ironwood looking down at the kingdom. He's used his windows as a vantage point since Volume 7, so that's nothing new, but something about this particular shot reminded me of Ozpin, looking down from his tower. I'm sure the response from many would be simply, "Ah yes, the two power hungry dictators watching over their victims," but I think there's a much more nuanced reading here about leaders being expected to fix the literally unfixable and what that responsibility does to an individual. Of course, it's a nuance that is absolutely obliterated by the episode’s end, but the implication existed for a hot second!

Two other soldiers are in the room with Ironwood, reporting that Cinder has helped Watts escape. They try to soften this with news that they still have Jacques in custody, but receive only a, "I don't give a damn about Jacques Schnee." Which, fair. He's pretty useless at this point. It's when Ironwood learns that both Qrow and Robin escaped too that he really gets mad, something his subordinates have been expecting given their scared expressions.

Now, I'm treading lightly here because I realize how this is going to sound given the end of our episode, but I still want to note that outside of that ending... this is a weird take? Just hear me out. Since Volume 7 the show has worked very hard to make Ironwood seem scary and unstable — bad setup for what we end with today — but the problem is that none of it works in context and it certainly doesn't work when compared to other characters' actions. They are literally in the midst of an unwinnable battle and thousands of his people are dying. If the audience wants a human being — who also just lost a limb and was betrayed by half his allies — o remain perfectly poised and polite during that, sorry, but that's not how human beings work. But even beyond this, what’s the message here? Ironwood raises his voice, so does Yang. Ironwood hits his desk, Qrow hits a child. If we're going to examine how Ironwood handles his stress and anger, he often handles it better than many of our heroes. Namely, by continually taking that anger out on inanimate objects. I kept waiting for him to attack his subordinates or attack Winter this episode, especially given where we end up, but it never came. Ironwood always has enough control to break the desk or punch the wall, not the person in front of him. Which, of course, would not be a good thing in the real world. I want to be clear given these sensitive subjects that if someone is breaking things in your presence that's a major problem to address. But this isn't the real world. This is a fantasy world in the middle of a war, populated by other characters who express their anger by punching people, slamming them into walls, or screaming at them until they run away. The story wants us to fear Ironwood long before he makes his objectively horrific choices and it tries to achieve that by showing us characters who are clearly terrified in his presence, by giving us a string of broken objects in his wake. But those details don't land well when we compare them to other instances of stress. In the same volume I have watched Ironwood take a deep breath to calm himself down when things have gone horribly wrong. I've also watched Weiss start a conversation by threatening her defenseless brother. So again, what’s the message here? It can’t be that acting violently towards someone = villainous behavior because, as established since Volume 6, that’s common for the heroes. Why are these subordinates terrified about Ironwood slamming his fist on a table, but Whitley has no problem hugging the woman who threatened him? Obviously there is a HUGE difference between our main group and Ironwood when it comes to other actions (cough-bomb threats-cough), but these day-to-day moments don't match up. The show wants to use violence as a way for us to easily identify the Bad Guy while ignoring all the times when our heroes do the same thing.

All of which isn't meant to be a defense of Ironwood. As we'll see in a bit, there is no defense for what he's done. Rather, it's a way of acknowledging just how badly he's been written. Why does a man who consistently reins in his anger and takes it out on objects suddenly shoot a councilman for literally no reason? Why does a man defined by wanting to save as many people as he can suddenly threaten to bomb his city? Ironwood's characterization is all over the place, in the sense that they keep writing him as the morally gray, sometimes harsh, but ultimately compassionate man he started out as... up until they need a villain. Salem isn't here yet, so Ironwood can shoot Oscar. Salem isn't attacking yet, so Ironwood can shoot the councilman. Salem is currently reforming, so Ironwood can threaten YJR and Mantle. He's the B-plot villain whenever Salem is out of commission, which is a problem for both their characterizations. This filler doesn't make sense for Ironwood and it severely undermines the threat of Salem. You finally introduce the Magical Big Bad and our heroes are facing more of a threat from a guy with a broken army and three loyal allies left? Hmmm.

The tl;dr is that Ironwood's arc is a disaster and, frankly, it's gotten old reading simplified takes of, "It's just a realistic look at what white U.S. men will do in power sweetie :) " RWBY does not have the context capable of conveying that sort of critical take because our world is not besieged by literal monsters and an immortal witch, to say nothing of how real life good guys do not get deus ex machina canes that fix the problem instantaneously. Ironwood is not an example of anti-U.S. imperialism, he's an example of writers who don't know how to write.

Anyway, I'm getting severely off topic. Obviously Ironwood is a major part of this episode, but the problems demonstrated here are two years in the making. This is the culmination of things I've been discussing for months across hundreds of posts... so I should probably stop trying to summarize it all in a few paragraphs lol. Perhaps when RWBY is over — or Ironwood has died — I'll do a single meta on his character, try to pull everything into one, unified argument.

For now though, we have an episode to analyze.

While Ironwood is receiving this news we get flashbacks to Qrow and Robyn. Qrow attacks a soldier in his bird form, which is hilarious. Someone GIF that please. It does raise some interesting questions about this magic though: does Qrow retain his aura and strength in this form (something I thought given his choice to transform during the explosion), or was that soldier just so shocked at being attacked by a crow that he went down easy? We'll never know, because that would require establishing concrete rules for this world. The point is Qrow is going feral in his freedom, throwing punches left and right — did he kill that guard? — while Robyn watches it all from under a rock. They're apparently still somewhere in the facility since all the exits are guarded, but that's not the good thing Ironwood seems to think it is. After all, Qrow is out to murder him. He wants to be there.

We all see where this is going, right? The show is going to ignore Qrow's crazy belief that Ironwood got Clover killed in favor of a "Qrow saved Mantle by murdering Ironwood"/“Qrow got revenge for Mantle by murdering Ironwood” ending. Who cares why Qrow wanted to kill him in the first place now that Ironwood has his finger on the trigger? If RWBY is good at anything, it's writing moments that encourage you to ignore everything that came before it. We'll be seeing more of that in just a bit.

"Damn it!" Ironwood yells, because the show is leaning into its cursing. He orders that the subordinates not return until "you have Qrow Branwen in custody." Here we have another great example of the show conflating what the audience knows with what other characters know. See, we know Qrow has a vendetta against Ironwood. We know their relationship is the important one to the story and that Robyn is incidental. Ironwood doesn't know that. There's no reason for him, as a character, to specify that they only bring Qrow back, but it makes sense for the audience who has the whole, thematic picture. Our understanding of the situation is influencing Ironwood's dialogue, which is... not great.

This entire scene we've had creepy music to hammer home just how evil Ironwood is. Except, as said, he takes a breath to calm down and the music fades. Instead of flying into a rage, hurting someone, or doing anything the music suggests he might, Ironwood calmly calls in for an update — which is when the explosion hits.

It's MASSIVE, seeming to originate from a lightning strike, which is weird, since it's coming from inside the whale, but whatever. The animation is very dramatic and pretty, as we've come to expect of RWBY, but the actual plot is lackluster at best. It's funny though because I thought for a hot second, when Winter and the Ace Ops were caught in the blast, that RWBY had actually done something exciting. I mean, holy shit! There are the deaths we expect from a battle like this. My god, what is everyone going to do when they realize that Oscar's needless attack took out five characters, including Weiss' sister —

No wait, never mind. They're fine.

Let's talk about that "needless" descriptor for a moment though. Do you all remember, two weeks ago, when I went, "Hey, why isn't anyone telling Oscar that that Ace Ops are approaching with a bomb? They're on a time limit! If someone would just mention that Very Important Information then Oscar wouldn't keep standing around to fight Salem." See, at the time I was frustrated because of how the plot was needlessly allowing Oscar to put himself in danger (especially when the whole point of this mission was to rescue him). Now, I'm frustrated because that same plot needlessly wasted the most powerful weapon the group had. There was no reason for Oscar to use literal lifetimes worth of stored energy when the heroes already had a bomb to do the same job! What was the point of that? I guess he took out the other grimm too, but without the whale that still would have been a challenge with a finite end, one Ironwood's army and the remaining huntsmen should have been able to handle. It doesn't feel justified to have Oscar use a weapon kept on the bench for lifetimes when there was another option literally minutes away.

There's so much wrong with this I need another list. So:

Ozpin's cane supposedly stores kinetic energy, which may contradict what we've seen from it before. Regardless, we’ve never heard about this. The all powerful weapon comes out of nowhere

It also begs the question of why Ozpin wouldn't use that power at Beacon and why he wouldn't insist that they try to get their cane back while captured. You had an out this whole time! But we’re going to ignore that because Oscar is a little hesitant?

Which makes YJR's presence even more useless than it originally was, which was already pretty useless. Oscar essentially rescued himself

This kinetic energy miraculously doesn't hurt any people or buildings, just grimm

So what is the point of Silver Eyes? That's been their MO since they were first introduced. Sure, Silver Eyes can be used far more often than Ozpin's cane, but it still feels like a let down to learn that the Big Secret behind this weapon is... the exact same thing Ruby has been doing for years

Like Ruby, Oscar likewise didn't need any practice or training. He just set off this massive attack perfectly and without issue

We have now eliminated the biggest threat to the cast instantaneously — the whale and the other grimm — with no effort from the rest of the heroes. Like the Hound, the stakes are obliterated with no satisfying work on the part of our protagonists

Instead, as said, the actual plan already in place never happened. The bomb just... goes back. Kind of like how Cinder attacked and then just went back to Salem. Penny woke up and then just got knocked out again. We continue to go in circles

This is because no one took two seconds to tell Oscar, "There's a bomb on the way"

Because this threat is gone the show needs a new one, hence Ironwood randomly threatening Mantle with said bomb

The one way we might have justified Oscar blowing up the whale instead of Winter is if he did it to save Hazel, but Hazel is implied to be dead

Maybe he's alive, but if he's not that happened off screen and we're not sure how. It couldn't have been because of the blast itself — everyone else is fine — so what, Salem somehow killed him before she was blasted to bits? While he was holding her?

And there's no body?

Salem was torn apart multiple times during that fight and reformed instantaneously, yet now, conveniently, she's taking her time

None of the characters mention the issues above. None of them admit that there was no reason for Oscar to waste LIFETIMES worth of power when they already had a solution in the works. Fantastic

I need to take a moment to acknowledge that so far this recap feels... bad. Disjointed. Bit all over the place. Which makes a certain amount of sense because that's where my thoughts are at. There's so much going on in this episode — so much wrong with it — that I don't know how to boil it all down into a few, neat claims. This episode is a mess! We're barely a few minutes in and the combined issues of Ironwood's characterization and Oscar's choice have left me reeling. So if you're still reading this, bless your patience, I think we'll both need it for the rest of this journey.

Let's snag a neater plot-point to discuss. Amidst all the chaos Neo literally skips away with the Lamp, clearly thrilled at how her own life is going. Later in the episode she'll text Cinder with the obvious: Salem is going to be pretty pissed when she realizes this is gone. “If you want her name you know what you owe me."

So wait... what is Neo leveraging here? Is she agreeing to give the Lamp back so Cinder doesn't get in trouble with Salem? Give Salem the password she's been looking for? Or give Cinder the password to use the Lamp for herself? What would Cinder even want the Lamp for when she's after the Maiden powers? I'm confused about what Cinder is being blackmailed with. Regardless, she needs the lamp for something and presumably what she "owes" Neo is Ruby. We get a cut to her just to hammer that home.

(Side note: both pictures of Neo are hilarious.)

Before that though, back at the whale, everyone is taking stock of the situation when Marrow cries, "Hey, they were still in there!" I feel like this is another scene meant to make him look like the one good guy in the group — he cares about YJOR while the others can’t be bothered — but as always, that reading doesn't fit well with the situation as a whole. The others have barely had time to realize they're alive. I don't think it's a moral failing that they didn't instinctually worry about four betrayers, one of whom attacked them, while they're still checking that they have all their limbs intact. Besides, why does Marrow assume they're dead? The Ace Ops were caught in the blast as well, yet miraculously came out unharmed. They clearly didn't set their own bomb off, so it's logical to assume that YJOR did something themselves. It feels weird to have a "Marrow mourns them and Winter is the only other character who cares" moment when everyone is recovering from bomb shock and no one even knows if the others are dead. But, of course, the show is out to portray only two of these characters as good people, so ignore the logic and run with the emotion of the scene.

All of which is bolstered by Elm pulling away when Vine puts a hand on her shoulder. Why is she acting cold towards him now? Because they're not friends, remember?

While we get more ridiculous relationship dynamics, Ironwood calls in and congratulates them on the bomb working, but tells them to get back because they have another problem in the works. That would be Qrow and Robyn. Winter decides to tell him about the bomb in person.

We cut to Watts and Cinder watching the remnants of the blast from a rooftop. Cinder has tried calling, but no one answered. Unsurprising, given that Salem doesn't have any other allies left. Cinder says that the plan hasn't changed, she's still going to take the Winter Maiden's power for herself, and Watts can help her by bringing Penny here. He explains that he doesn't have full control over her. Rather, he implemented a virus that is setting her on a single path: open the vault, then self-destruct. Cinder, as one might expect, is furious.

She snags Watts by her grimm arm and threatens to toss him over the side of the building. Thus begins the best part of the episode, hands down. Despite the danger he's in, Watts throws common sense out the window in favor of dragging Cinder in the most satisfying manner possible.

“You think you’re entitled to everything just because you suffered, but suffering isn’t enough. You can’t just be strong, you have to be smart. You can’t just be deserving, you have to be worthy! But all you have ever been is a bloody migraine!”

It's true! You know what else is true? This speech could apply to our heroes as well. Accusations of entitlement and reminders to be smart as opposed to just strong hit hard, considering those are the same flaws our protagonists are struggling with. The difference is that Cinder, miraculously, listens, pulling Watts back to safety and going to cry by herself. That moment is simultaneously more growth than Ruby has gotten and more sympathy than Ironwood has gotten. The woman who murdered Pyrrha is treated more kindly by the narrative than one of our initial heroes and our very first villain has taken more time to reconsider her choices than our title character. You know a show is falling apart when excellent choices are applied to the worst possible character.

So Cinder is crying while Watts looks guilty and we cut back to YJOR's group post-blast. Yang is finally able to answer a call from Blake who is obviously overjoyed to see her. Weiss gives them directions to the mansion and they ask what in the world they'll do with Emerald, currently on her knees, mourning Hazel.

Thus begins the third most frustrating part of this episode. See, on the way back the group continues the conversation about what to do with Emerald, with Yang and Jaune distrusting her vs. Ren and Oscar encouraging cooperation. I can't believe I'm saying this after's Ren's speech and Oscar's entire existence... but I'm team Jaune and Yang here. Look, what Oscar and Ren say — the literal words coming out of their mouth — is nonsense. Ren goes, “We can’t let all of our actions stem from fear," as if Yang and Jaune are being ridiculous for mistrusting Emerald, one of the established villains, after years worth of harm from her. It’s weird that Yang points to her arm as something Emerald is responsible for, rather than being framed or the deaths at Beacon, but the general sentiment of, “She’s done horrible things!” is true. Ren’s perspective is the same simplification that was applied to Ironwood last volume, wherein everyone acted as if he was crazy for fearing an attack on his kingdom... post an attack on another kingdom and pre an attack on his kingdom. Putting generic lines in Ren's mouth about not being afraid makes him sound willfully ignorant, as if choosing to believe that someone is good will magically make them so, to say nothing of thinking it will erase all the harm they've already done.

Oscar at least acknowledges the difficulty here, but then follows this up with, “You don’t have to forgive her… just give her a second chance."

Oscar, honey, that amounts to the same thing in this situation. Allowing Emerald a second chance means working with her, which means trust, which means emotionally reaching a point where these characters can put aside the harm she's done them in an effort to give her that chance in the first place. This actually ties into a post I saw last night, one I've come across before, that claims redemption arcs don't require any suffering on the part of the person who has done wrong. I agree in theory, that prolonged suffering doesn't help anyone, but the problem is that people tend to conflate suffering with consequences and someone who has done this level of harm should face consequences for their actions. The problem with redemption arcs is not that the bad people suffer too much — emotionally and physically beating on them as a form of revenge — but that the people they've harmed are put into situations like this one. If Yang and Jaune let Emerald go like she suggests, they are agreeing that she doesn't have to face any consequences for the damage she's done (which, keep in mind, involves multiple deaths, not including all the lost lives here in Atlas). If they agree to give her a second chance, they are forced to jump straight to some level of forgiveness. We might claim they don't have to forgive Emerald to work with her, but from a practical perspective how are they meant to function, especially during a warzone? Anything she provides them with — information, watching their back in a fight, undertaking missions, etc. — requires trusting her enough to allow those things to happen: working with that info, letting her protect them, allowing her that responsibility. It's all about trust, trust she has yet to earn. In order for a redemption arc to be successful, the power has to be in the hands of the victims. They need to be able to see some justice for what was done to them, be offered some proof that the person in question has truly changed, and have the ability to walk away if they decide no, I don't forgive you, glad to hear you've improved, but please stay out of my life. Jaune and Yang have none of that. There are currently no systems in place for Emerald to face consequences for her choices, she has offered them no proof of her remorse or true motivations, and the other half of the group is pressuring them to give her that second chance without closure or reassurance. None of that makes for a good redemption arc and reducing that to, "So you want to see poor Emerald suffer, huh?" ignores the suffering she has already caused. The group are her victims and they are under no obligation to give her a second chance, particularly under these circumstances, which makes the story's choice to have Ren and Oscar act like Yang and Jaune are being stubborn or inconsiderate a problem. The conversation boils down to, "Give the woman you know to be a liar, manipulator, murder accomplice, and servant of our enemy a second chance based entirely on unfounded faith. If you don't you're letting yourself be ruled by fear."

RWBY's touchy-feely themes really don't sit well within its realistic, morally gray premise. We cannot continually have these characters go through hell one moment and then have others accuse them of being paranoid the next. The fact that all of this is wrapped up in the group trusting Robyn, Emerald, and Hazel over their established allies remains beyond frustrating.

Because yeah, you know how Oscar finishes his speech? “I’ve already gotten a lot of help today from someone I don’t exactly trust right now." Meaning Ozpin.

The story is trying to compare Emerald and Hazel to Ozpin.

"Oh hey, I kept a secret from you after lifetimes of watching that secret lead to betrayal and death. I keep apologizing for my mistakes while ignoring that I had no reason to trust a bunch of kids with such world-shattering information and also that you tore it from me in the most traumatic way possible."

"Oh hey, I willingly joined our world's version of the devil and helped her destroy your school, leading to numerous deaths including your friend and headmaster. It was his death that put Oscar in this position in the first place! I then continued to attack your group, leading to another near death of a friend, and a kidnapping, and the destruction of Amity, until I became scared enough to make a run for it."

Which one of these characters is granted an instant second chance? You'll never guess who!

And I do think the word "instant" is important here because just like Jaune and Yang have the right to have distance and justice from Emerald, they had that right with Ozpin too. The difference is they got it. They had the power in the situation, as evidenced by their use of the Lamp and physically attacking him. Ozpin heard what they needed from him — leave us alone — and did that without complaint. They were given months to come to terms with the secrets he kept. They were offered apologies and acts of service to demonstrate intent: saving them in the airship and continually saving Oscar. I don't believe Ozpin ever needed a redemption arc, but even if we think he did, he had it. After three volumes of material Oscar's perspective is still "I don't exactly trust [him] right now" but Hazel and Emerald have earned at least the same amount of trust in a matter of hours? They're really having my boy look at the guy who has tried desperately to do right by him despite unimaginable circumstances, and the guy who tortured him to get information for Salem, and went, "That first guy. He's the one we need to watch out for."

To make things even worse, Oscar tells the others that Ozpin took on all the torture so he wouldn't have to. So he did that and they still don't trust him? If you had told me back in Volume 6 that two years later the group would still be hostile towards Ozpin, while simultaneously urging one another to trust Emerald, I would have said you were lying. RWBY has its problems, but it's not that bad. Yet here we are. I suppose the one silver lining here is that Ren smiles when he realizes Ozpin is back? So at least one of them isn't prepared to draw their weapon at the mere mention of his name.

Both these moments raise more questions though. How in the world did Ozpin take on that torture when we clearly saw Oscar getting pummeled for a good portion of the kidnapping? Is that a weird merge thing the story hasn't bothered to explain? I wouldn't be surprised, considering Oscar said last episode he didn't want to use magic because it hastened the merge, he uses the biggest explosion of magic we've ever seen, and nothing has changed. Ozpin is still in the back of his head, thanking him for the tinniest shreds of decency they get. Ren, meanwhile, seems to be back to mindreading. How in the world does he know that Ozpin is back? I assume it has something to do with his semblance, but we don't know what. They could have shown us Oscar from Ren's perspective, perhaps with two distinct emotions swilling around to imply that he sees two different people now, not a useless shot of Emerald with purple flower petals, whatever purple means.

Oh, but no, we shouldn't have gotten either of these scenes. Remember that Ren's aura broke a very, very short time ago? Is it back already? Can he use this part of his semblance without it? Considering it was near impossible to see Ironwood's aura breaking in the Watts fight and we were then mistakenly told he used his semblance in the office, I'm going to go with, "The writers forgot."

Oscar explains that the cane had "lifetime after lifetime" of power in it and though there's still some left, "we have to be careful with how we use the rest." He says that Ozpin trusted his judgement and of course he did! Ozpin also didn’t know that there was a bomb on the way. Yet funnily enough, no one else mentions that, whoops, your choice made in ignorance was a waste and that's due entirely to us prioritizing hugs over basic mission information.

Also, all these explanations take place in front of Emerald. Half the group doesn't trust her, but they'll freely discuss their powers and limitations here. Remember how the group once wanted to talk about magical relics in front of the old lady they'd just met? Yeah, they've learned nothing.

Combine all this insanity with the fact that Ozpin's magic saved the day before Ironwood's bomb could do the same... while Ruby sat in a mansion drinking tea. Who's our hero again?

So things are a hot mess, to put it lightly. Their conversation finally ends when they hear voices and round the corner to find all the Atlas citizens huddled in the subway. For once the show actually writes them in a sympathetic manner, emphasizing how terrified and helpless they are. This image doesn't lead the group to any revelations though, certainly not anything that would tie back to Ren's earlier speech in the snow. No, once again the justified criticisms here are ignored as we hear that “However this fight ends, we could really use someone like you, [Emerald.]” That's it then. Discussion over. We knew as soon as it started that blindly trusting her was being presented as the "right" thing to do and now here we are, deciding that conclusively, despite Jaune and Yang's complaints. By the time the group reaches the mansion, Oscar is defending Emerald from Ruby. We're supposed to just accept that she's a part of the group now, only minimal pushback allowed.

Before that though we return to Ironwood getting news that their bomb never went off. He briefly wonders who else could have done that, but puts the currently unanswerable question aside for what he does know. They still have the bomb and it could be "useful." See, this moment — like shooting Oscar and the councilman — is when Ironwood just randomly goes off the deep end. One minute he's talking about what they've lost and cradling his new arm,

the next he's saying that he should have tortured Qrow to get Penny to obey him! Which doesn't even make sense since I'm pretty sure Penny hasn't ever spoken to Qrow. She wouldn't want anyone to suffer, true, but it's not like Ironwood had a close friend like Ruby to use as leverage. Qrow is just Some Guy to her. Regardless, he thinks Yang, Jaune, and Ren are decent replacements, despite Penny also having no relationships with them. This is what happens when your characters only start breaking up their teams eight years into the story, the response to Ironwood wanting to torture Ren to hurt Penny is, “Does Penny know Ren exists?” But, you know, torture is torture, right? Maybe. Probably not. I mean, if they're going to turn Ironwood into a cartoon villain, they could at least keep him smart.

Because all of this is just the height of stupidity. Ironwood wants to torture people Penny barely knows to make her listen (so just grab some civilians? It would do the same job...). Ironwood wants to shoot down empty ships, even though no one, including us, knows where in the world those ships would have gone. Ironwood wants to destroy an entire city to try and save another city. He wants to use a bomb meant for a comparatively small whale and acts like that alone will take out the majority of a kingdom. None of it makes sense! And I know the easy comeback for that is, "Well yeah, Ironwood is crazy and evil" but he's not. I mean he is. Threatening torture and bombings is obviously evil, but he's never been insane, or stupid. As said before, his arc (or lack thereof) is an absolute disaster. The fandom assumes so many things about Ironwood given the opportunity — the whale is a suicide mission. He expects the Ace Ops to die on his order — and the writing hints at so many things that never happen — he's going to hurt his subordinates, attack Winter for disobeying him — and every time what we actually get is a far more compassionate, level-headed character... until he randomly does a 180 and goes, "Let's murder a whole city now!" I never wanted Ironwood to be the bad guy, but they could have at least given me a persuasive decent into this level of horror.

So... yeah. Ironwood has got to die by the end of the volume, yeah? Between Ruby warning the whole world about him and him going into full villain mode, there's no coming back from this.

Neo sends her text to Cinder and the group makes it back to the mansion. Remember Yang's criticisms of Ruby's leadership? The ones she conveniently forgot about when Ren started to agree with her? Yeah, those are entirely gone as the sisters hug it out and, presumably, forgive one another for... daring to admit that things are bad? Look, I'm not going to deny that Ironwood's scene with Winter was creepy as fuck,

but I'm not of the opinion that the heroes are any better when it comes to the theme of obedience. They've attacked one another, screamed at one another, and any dissent from Ruby's leadership results in the questioner being left behind in the snow. We'll accept you again when you fall back in line. I used to adore the relationships in this show, but watching them now is just discomforting. The show might be 100% more obvious with Ironwood, using creepy music, a smile, and that hand on Winter's shoulder, but the concept of, "Sorry I dared to question you before! We won't ever do it again :)" isn't healthy either. The fact that the show keeps erasing theses problems with hugs — Weiss hugs Whitley now, Yang hugs Ruby, someone will probably hug Emerald soon — doesn't make the circumstances any less uncomfortable.

None of this even gets into the Blake and Yang hug. First of all, why is Blake acting like they had a fight and Yang might not want to see her? She's hiding inside rather than rushing to greet them, ears down in a devastated expression until Yang touches her. Combine this with Yang's "Do you think she's mad at me?" and it feels like the writers cut a fight in the final script and then didn't bother to remove the fallout from that. Seriously, where did any of this come from? You can't just have characters act like they've been fighting when they haven’t.

Also, can't forget this.

At this point there's nothing more I can say in regards to RWBY's almost-queer baiting. Is touching foreheads more intimate than the hugs Yang gave the others? Absolutely. Is that an appropriate stand-in for overt representation? Absolutely not. This would have been a perfect time for them to kiss. Take out Blake's nonsensical fear and replace it with them both reuniting after their first separation since Volume 5, working under the knowledge that either one could have been killed, finally admitting their feelings. Hell, they don't actually have to kiss. Not all girlfriends are interested in kissing! But they could use the terminology that makes things unequivocally canon. Another forehead touch when we got that in Volume 6? It's not enough, especially not when our straight couples have all been allowed their rep.

Ren at least wants to know where Nora is. He's presumably told what happened off screen as Oscar tells Ruby that Emerald is their friend now.

Then an emergency call from May interrupts the reunion and the group learns that Ironwood is bombing the Schnee ships. “Those ships… they were going to save people” Weiss whispers. How? Tell me how they were going to save anyone. Where were you going to take these people where they would be safer than where they are now? RWBY continually asserts things without explaining them, meaning there is precisely zero emotional weight here. Again, Ironwood is far past the point of defense, but I'd be a whole lot more critical of this particular action if I had a better sense of why it's bad. He appears to be endangering the people given May's shout to run — falling debris? — but the further implication is that Ironwood has doomed the people of Mantle by denying them these ships. It's that part that makes no sense based on what we've been told.

Which finally comes to the ultimatum of our episode title: Penny opens the vault, or Ironwood bombs Mantle. Great! So glad this plan is wicked smart and works well for his characterization. It's definitely not a nonsensical, unfounded, overblown change that feels like it belongs in a child's cartoon, complete with dramatic spotlight. Nope. Excellent writing choices all around.

Our final line of the episode is, “I hope you live up to the title I gave you," referring to Penny's job as the Protector of Mantle, and you know what? That line could have been very cool if it was delivered by an Ironwood with a persuasive fall and a halfway decent plan in place. I love that we've twisted the concept of a protector and turned the title into a horrifying, rather than honorable responsibility... I just hate everything surrounding those details.

So, usual RWBY fare.

(At least we get to see that Nora is awake!)

Will things get better over the next four episodes? I doubt it. We're still expecting the rest of the Ace Ops + Winter to ditch Ironwood, someone getting the vault open, the fall of Atlas, now the potential destruction of Mantle, and none of that includes Salem who should reform at any moment. Frankly, I'm not looking forward to any of it. The final leg of a season should make its audience excited to see how everything turns out, not dreading it. I've heard from multiple people that this is the volume that finally got them to drop the show and honestly? I'm not surprised.

As a final (happier?) note: we've finally got a bingo! I completely forgot our board last time, which was a terrible oversight, but we can update it now.

Our army of grimm can't kill anyone now that it got KOed by Oscar (that is the third one hit defeat of a major enemy we've seen this volume. Yes, I'm including the Hound considering it was obviously on its last legs after Ruby's eyes.)

I'm likewise including "Ozpin apologizes for everything including his existence" because he's done nothing but apologize since he came back. The emotion is there even if the literal words are not. Oscar reminded everyone of how untrustworthy he is, but kept the group from jumping them again. And Ozpin thanked him for it.

Neo didn't literally backstab Cinder (shame), but the Relic still counts.

So a triple bingo! Is that how bingo works? Idk, I've never played. I feel like I should have thought up some sort of humorous prize, but sadly I've got nothing. If you think of anything, let me know lol

That’s all then, folks. Until next week! 💜

#rwby #rwby spoilers #rwby volume 8 #rwby ultimatum #rwby recaps #mymetas

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