#i need read more i'm a chatty shitty person when it comes to him

[skzstoryvault]

Shattered Illusion (Hyunjin smut & fluff)

F!Reader x Hyunjin

Hyunjin is absolutely smitten with his wife, although the rest of the world doesn't see her the way he does.

This is in no way meant as a commentary on the real person Hyunjin. The persona he projects for us to enjoy is just so enticing and invites naughty fantasies.

This story is connected to a bigger story I am still writing and editing.

The "you" used here is not generic, I'm using it to allow myself some immersion on later re-reads. I know that's selfish but isn't all the writing advice telling us to write what we want to read? If you still find something in here to like, all the better - I hope you enjoy it and have a good time.

Please be kind.

Please do not report this post. If it's not your thing, just scroll away.

If you're underage, please scroll on, there is nothing for you here.

“I think we should drop a sex tape.” Hyunjin says in a low voice, right as he presses you higher and harder into the wet shower wall. He is leaving hot, open-mouthed kisses all over your neck, shoulders and chest, savouring how closely the two of you are joined and the way your heated, soft skins sliding against each other make it feel like the line where he ends and you begin is erased.

Moments later, he’s placing you back onto the shower floor and sliding down to his knees. 

“No!” You yelp, feeling his teeth dig into the soft tissue right under your chin. No scarf is going to cover that hickie. “I’m not sharing you with the world. Us fucking is all they ever think about anyway. Let them have their fantasies and die mad about them.”

“I just can’t stand them calling you all these names. You’re my wife, I chose you!” He pants out, growling to further drive his point home.

“Hyune… how about focusing on fucking me now, and plotting revenge against your few shitty fans later? I feel like we’re enjoying both things less if we combine them.” 

“Leg up.” He says, tapping one of your thighs and guiding it over his shoulder when you comply. “Ride my face.” He instructs, and it’s all you can think of doing when his nose rubs against your clit and his tongue snakes inside you, lapping up the mess he made. 

And, unlike many men, he doesn’t roll over and start snoring as soon as he’s come once. Getting off makes him chatty, and you get to hear an unfiltered reel of his thoughts as he cuddles you afterwards.

Instead of losing momentum the more he gets you to come, your body gets ever more eager to comply with his requests. Once he’s gotten you to this point of heightened stimulation, you’ll come just from him saying you should.

Sex with Hyunjin is usually a brain melting, loving, hot fusion. But sometimes he just chases more, and he needs to be further lost into you. Like today. He won’t stop until you’ve forgotten your name and all you can do is tremble in his arms, eyes unfocused and limbs pliable, letting him clean you up and tuck you in like his most beloved doll. 

“I want to slap every single one of these bastards.” He huffs, getting worked back up. “There are other idols they can move on to, if they hate it so much that I got married. And that you’re a woman! I’m sorry not sorry I don’t live my life to cater to their fantasies.”

The biggest problem, as you were made painfully and explicitly aware by the fansites and social media fan content about you, is not that Hyunjin got married, because everyone expected that. Everyone pictured him as a soft, perfect and aesthetic husband. But no one thought, in a million years, that Hyunjin would marry a woman. People looked at his stage persona and decided he is gayer than anyone who gayed before, and therefore he would remain publicly single and have a discreet relationship that fans could play detective about and project their speculations and fantasies on. 

It breaks your heart to see how easily the unending love turned directly to hate towards your softest boy. People love to shout tolerance and acceptance of all love forms, until it doesn’t match their ideas or politics. 

What no one besides Hyunjin, his mom and you know, is that he wasn’t planning to fall in love, he wasn’t even looking for a mate and he was bitter about marriage, given the examples he saw around him and the culture in his country around the concept.

But then he met you and all bets were off. You’re the same height and build - so similar in fact that you two wear each other’s clothes and shoes all the time, especially considering the fact that you were never the most feminine woman, unable to walk in heels and to wear thongs or to go for all the impossibly uncomfortable things that make a woman pass as a woman in the world.

In you, Hyunjin found a best friend, an ally, a twin mind and someone who loves him the way he needs to be loved. He fell in love gradually, but realised it in a stroke of clarity, not having seen that coming. When faced with his heart’s verdict, he had to admit that this was a case of “life is curly” and, the deeper within himself he looked, the more he knew for a fact that he did not care what packaging you came wrapped in.

This was something that upset many - they cannot, to this day, grasp how someone who’s been talking about boyfriends and posting erotic art of two men can go on and marry some Frau. People even go so far as to call him a coward, for allegedly remaining in the closet for the sake of superficial benefits of being publicly straight, and hate him for supposedly betraying every gay stan who made him their bias in Stray Kids.

That’s why the same fans calling you a horse and referring to you as “Miss Mann”, the name of a gruesome transphobic caricature character from a movie in the 2000s, does not bother you at all. You had resigned yourself to the thought that love would never cross your path. It was lonely and isolating being a tall girl in your home country, and it got worse in Korea. Men felt it was their duty to tell you they wouldn’t fuck you for all the money in the world because most of them felt threatened by you being taller than them and by the chance of you wearing heels on top of that. When it wasn’t the height, it was your lean, muscular body or your naturally white hair and icy blue eyes. Judging by how desperate idols were to dye their hair white and wear the lightest blue contacts, you’d think it was something to aspire to and covet. But it wasn’t as cool if it was natural, you supposed. So you minded your business and did your job. And then Hyunjin had stood in your office one day, along with the other members, and the rest was history.

There’s also the people who love to snicker thinly and point at pap pics of you and Hyunjin running errands, saying that Hyunjin did marry a man, he just doesn’t realise it yet. That kind of thing has you laughing maniacally like Skeletor, because this lot of people are just another variety in the big pool of folks who, instead of sleeping at night, stay up and think of you fucking Hyunjin. 

“Mmm, devilish. I love it.” Hyunjin puts his hands under his head, allowing himself to daydream. “I will ask Donatella to send me the smallest swim trunks she has in this year’s collection.”

Every doubt the haters sneak into your heart, Hyunjin undoes effortlessly by loving you with everything he is, every moment of every day. You had no idea any man could be this soft and loving. Your father was a man of actions, not words, and he was distant; his understanding of love was that of quiet sacrifice, and while you grew up safely thanks to him, you also learned that men don’t do emotions and are always stoic and reserved. It was not the most enticing picture to keep in your mind, so at some point, you let it go.

Hyunjin is funny, doesn’t take himself seriously, has no filter on his mouth and most importantly, he laughs with you, not at you. He never calls you things he can never take back, not even in the throes of passion. He never raises his voice at you. None of his facets have it in them to demean and humiliate you, not even for fleeting gratification in the moment, and he is extremely careful about not putting you on the spot in public, no matter if you’re on a red carpet or at the grocery store. He chooses you over the rest of the world, over and over and over again - not because he read in a book how to manipulate a woman into being loyal to him, but because he needs it for himself - needs to see you content and smiling happily at him.

You suspect he has a partial idea, if not a more in depth one, of the wounds you carry on the inside since you were small, and he must have sworn to himself not to add to them, but to do his best to help you heal them.

“But baby I want to make the fuckers lose their heads with powerless envy. They should know that you are mine and I am yours and they can never come between us.” He says, running a hand through your white, still damp from the shower hair. 

“Then how about an Acro Yoga video?” You suggest. “That shit is hot and challenging and it will trigger folks a lot more than something they can do at home in their stanky bedroom too.”

“Boo, those won’t help at all during acro yoga. They will go up your crack right away.”

“Don't care. I want people jerking off with one hand and crying with the other!”

“Hyune… that’s not-”

He doesn’t let you finish, pouncing on you and peppering your face with loud, enthusiastic kisses all over at once, like a smitten octopus.

“We are putting out a hot video. Hotter even than a sex tape.” He says in a singsong voice. “I’ll get to organising. And we can start choreographing the whole thing right away.” He adds, giddiness still audible in his voice.

[gaykey]

Hello!!

i'm not wildly invested in this whole key situation(s) but i've just seen so many posts about it and i was curious about your response as you've been very vocal within this discussion haha (pls read this ask in a nice chatty tone, not an argumentative one!). and sorry for the massive text below, you don't have to answer this ask if you don't wanna <3

But, i feel like a lot of the things ppl have gotten angry at key for lately are to a degree unavoidable for him. Like the m*donalds thing: i thought he'd signed an exclusive contract with them way before people starting caring that the chain was in support of isrl. He can't exactly back out of it? i also heard the general opinions of ppl in korea are pretty apathetic towards the current conflict (tho that is it's own conversation) and are unlikely to consider how supporting a brand would impact the situation. it's a lot to expect the average person to display overt political reactions when the conversations they're hearing don't influence their respective communities. Take us, for ex: we wouldn't be as opinionated about this if the spaces we occupy online weren't as vocal as they are. i know the ppl i meet irl don't really talk about it much, who's to say the ppl he knows talk about it? Just a general observation, not an "excuse" for their apathy rly. I just don't see a possibility of him cancelling his contract with them, to sum things up.

As for the Hyuna thing: he's still a person and a celebrity. It's not really like he can just suddenly go public at exclaim to the world how little he wants to associate with her. A response from him would only make the matter worse really, no? He would offend a lot of personal and public people whom he needs to associate with regularly. It would impact his group (shine as a whole) and all the people he works with (like I live alone/amazing saturday casts/etc) and the multitude of brands he is the face of. It's a huge cost to take a stance on a conversation he didn't start (cause hyuna brought it up, not him right? -- sry i don't know much i could be wrong!!). i feel his silence on the matter makes more sense then acknowledging the issue - as sad as that is. and if they have been close firends for years, is it not alot to ask him to drop all contact forever? <perhaps a controversial question, but i would not so readily throw away my own friends. I would hope they come to their senses and/or i'd find a way to make them lol

as for the colorist comments... yeah, that's a long conversation. i'm glad he apologized and has decidedly not said anything like that since..? bare minimum, but don't have much to say on this aspect. he said something truly nasty, but acknowledged it and the harm it did at least.

Just in general, i feel a lot of what he's getting slack for are out of his control and not necessarily indicative of who he is as a person. There is so much ambiguity to how he must behave given his career, it feels like his lack of response(s) are fairly justifiable. Shinee has been trying so hard lately to become as relevant as possible so they can compete with newer generations of kpop. I don't see him realistically putting that at risk. But, perhaps i'm wrong! who knows!

i've thought long and hard about this ask, which is why i left it a little while, because tbh, i do think you have some points. i'll be so real with you though, i've had some wine tonight, so this might not be the best time to reply to this, buuut here i am

so.

kibum is the kind of person, though incredibly professional, has always spoken out when he thinks something is wrong, or if there has been injustice. he's not the type to hold his tongue. he, on many occasions, has spoken out against the company HE IS STILL CONTRACTED WITH.

i get not being able to brush off hyuna on national tv-

i get maaaaybe be tied to a contract you can't get out of (though it was established that he very much could have if he wanted to)-

i even forgave him for his ignorant & shitty colourist comments-

but what about his behavior since?

key, who is well-known for not giving a fuck about the 'idol image', who has spoken out against his company, the industry...has had nothing to say.

he could have NOT signed up for more contracts with shitty israel supporting companies, he could have given a statement in regards to hyuna, he could have been outspoken about donating to charities and fundraisers aiding palestinians, and the cause?

and yes, i know the other members have not either, as well as many other idols, but, i don't think it's crazy of me to think that DUE to the shit he's done over the last few months, he should be held MORE accountable in a way?

i don't think it's a wild concept to expect these people to have basic good morals?????

non eof this was out of his control. these idols are more than gold enough at controling their image when they want tl.

[jokerownsmysoul]

Sweet angel of course he doesn't care 🥺🥺 and he doesn't care either as long as he has the chance to live these days with you by his side.

"Isn't it beautiful?" He'd tell you enjoying the world you're living in, his eyes fixed on the sunset on the horizon, whose bright red color creates surreal shades on his emeralds eyes as if they belonged to a fairy tale.

"I've never seen anything more ethereal." You'd whisper, his eyes fixed on Arthur. His hair moved by the wind caress his angelic face, the wind transfers his scent to you, enveloping you in an overwhelming sensation of love. He'd be the embodiment of perfection.

Arthur would turn to you catching you staring at him. He'd realize you’re not talking about the view, you’re talking about him. He'd blush, the red color on his cheeks would match the sunset that is taking place in front of you, an embarrassed but happy whine would come out of his parted lips. He still cannot believe that life has allowed him to live these moments, let alone live these days with his one and only. Perhaps you're the gift life gave him to apologize for all the evil he went through before he met you, he'd think while he's kissing you, and the sunset would envy you.

IT'S MIDNIGHT OVER HERE IT'S TOO EARLY FOR YEARNING LIKE THAT OMG 😭😭

THINK OF THOSE BOUNCING SUNKISSED CHESTNUT CURLS! THINK OF HIS EYES GLIMMERING LIKE LIQUID EMERALDS UNDER THE SUMMER SUN. AN ANGEL IN A SEA OF SUNFLOWERS. 😩😩😩😩😩

KAREN YOU SUMMONED THE DEMON IN ME WITH THAT POST SERIOUSLY BUT ILY ANYWAY I FORGIVE YOU

Arthur x flowers is my WEAKNESS OKAY MY WEAKNESS I JUST- *screams*

He would caress every single flower with ecstatic eyes and a playful and innocent smile on his lips, like a child who is tasting happiness for the first time, his heart would be warmer than the sun itself.

He wouldn’t rip off not even a single flower from the garden because when people selfishly rip them off he's sorry for them, because plants can suffer too, and he doesn't want that. Instead, he'd take the flowers already on the ground, and he’d smell them and tuck them behind your ear, watching your ethereal beauty even more beautiful than any landscape he could ever see.

His hair would have amber and golden reflections, his body covered by small strands of magic light, his eyes would have small supernovae swimming in his pupils, the green of his irises highlighted by the sun, the warm sunlight would sink in his already emeralds eyes making his natural color even brighter and he would be a total work of art, an angel on heart came among us to make us understand that having beauty inside despite a life full of pain, is possible, and that actually is through pain that sometimes allows us to see beauty everywhere and get excited for anything, like a baby who get excited for everything surrounding them.

I GOT CARRIED AWAY MY HEART IS SQUEEZING KAREN I- WHAT YOU'VE DONE TO ME TONIGHT

[jjk-anime-horray]

A Call in the Night

Dazai Osamu x reader x Oda Sakunosuke

Series Summary: While Dazai finally gets over the death of his friend and moves on with his life, he has to watch him unnaturally return into the world, and now he has to watch him turn twisted and into everything he hated in a way.

Chapter Summary: The Armed Detective Agency gets a call about an warehouse incident that happened in the middle of the night, and send two detectives to respond to it.

Notice: This fic series is going to have some dark themes in it so be warned, and in this AU Dazai and the reader are members of the armed detective agency, and this is a spiritual successor to “Late Night Tickets, and Meeting Him.” So I recommend reading that first even though you don’t need to. This is going to be a series!

Trigger Warnings: Blood, mentions of extreme violence, and description of illegal activities.

Getting a call about a mandatory and emergency investigation in the middle of the night, to be specific 2:32am, was something no one at the Armed Detective Agency wanted to do. So what's the most logical solution? Draw straws and the two people who draw the shortest are forced to go.

Unfortunately for you, you were one of the two unfortunate souls that drew a short straw. At least the other person who drew the short straw was Dazai Osamu, your coworker but most importantly the first friend you made in this city, so maybe you would be able to get a kick out of the bad situation at hand.

But when the two of you emerged from an alley to meet the crime scene at hand, that would by no means be the case because by the sight of the horror that layed out infront of you two it was enough for the both of you want to hurl.

Crime scene would describe the atrocity in front of as much as the phrases bloodbath and massacre would. No wonder this was an emergency for the ADA there were probably more than 30 people dead killed in various atypical ways.

First walking into the warehouse the most out of the ordinary sight would be a round wooden table with a duffle bag on it, but once someone took a closer look the rest of the ware house was completely empty other than the congealing crimson liquid that was pooling everywhere.

The five chairs around rickety table were matched with four bodies of executives of some sort laid face down on the table or dangling of the chairs.

But the most appalling sight was what was inside the duffle-bag, you were wishing it would be something tame like left behind money, however, much to your displeasure, they where severed off human heads. That by the looks of it were cut off with some sort of serrated knife my the edge markings.

"What are you thinking (Y/N)?" Were the words that Dazai spoke to snap you out of your spiraling train of thought. "I sure as hell am thinking this isn't the way I would have wanted to go."

"I'll have to agree with you on that one, this shit is something right out of a cheesy crime or horror movie.The only thing I can think of is the heads were a message of some kind to the people who were sitting at the table, and either the person at the empty seat with accomplices who killed everyone or are the only survivor, but it could be either. Were you able to identify anyone bodies or do you recognize anyone?"

"I don't recognize anyone, and most of the bodies are too mangled to be identified, but everyone at the table is wearing a customized Rolex, so I suspect that they were all executives of a organization of some kind, probably an illegal on based on all the gun men that were probably guarding the meeting before they got taken out."

"The only lead we have is the Rolex I guess, so Daz, will you take one for reference, we can visit all of the watch makers in the city to try to find out who was the person who commissioned these watches to be made, and then maybe through that we kind find out who the soul survivor was."

"Agreed."

Honestly the two of you would have been a little more playful and chatty if the events that took place tonight weren't so gruesome. The two of you were used to having to see and do brutal things, but Dazai had this gut feeling that this wasn't the typical violent act, and things weren't as the seemed.

The brown eyed detective just wanted to go take a nap after this, which was something you also wanted to do after see all the blood. Deciding to leave the true start to your investigation for a decent time the two of you swiftly communicated with the responders about the potential situation at hand. Then left to go deal with is mess the next day.

Timeskip........

After a horrible night's sleep and about three cups of coffee you were finally able to be semi-functional, so then you decided to grab your partner Dazai after dressing to impress and make for the horrible mood you currently were in from multiple factors. Dazai was even in a worse state than you where, you found him at the trying to convince Kunikida to go on the investigation for him, which was ultimately denied by the blonde haired man. Also leaving you to drag the genius yet idiotic maniac out of the office.

Walking down the streets in-between visiting different watchmakers and jewelers, you noticed some was off each time your boots hit the ridged pavement. In particular something about Dazai, his face was contorted into a being in deep thought, not to be disturbed for any reason. It was so out of character you were going to ask what he was thinking about, but then opted out.

"I know you were going to ask what I was thinking, I am a detective you know." He said his face morphing into one not of deep thought but of cockiness with a smirk. Damn, sometimes you really loved and hated that smirk, but right now you didn't know what to think of it. "I was just thinking of how now I know exactly who made the watches, and where is is for your information."

"Really who would that be? For my information."

"His name is Opāru Shokunin, he's done a lot of custom jewelry for Elise-chan and the port mafia in the past, but recently he's been doing a lot of foreign commissions for gangs and syndicates outside of Japan my word of mouth. When I first saw the watches I was initially reminded of how it looked like his handy work, but since the first three places we've visited were a bust, i'm confident it's him."

"Alright Mr. Mic-cocky, lead the way by all means." You scoughed lightly.

Unfortunately for the two of you, your desired destination was all the way across yokohama, so you had to hail a taxi which you knew you were going to be the one paying or it. The icing on the shitty cake was that you got stuck in rush hour traffic, so, the total time until arrival was three time longer than it should have been. At least you got dibs on the radio choice.

When the two of you arrived at your desired destination you now witnessed a normal looking office building, unfortunately, there was no elevator so the two of you had to work your legs up three flights of stairs to make it to Opāru's workshop.

Before you went in however you whispered to Dazai "how do we know he's even gonna be willing to talk to us?"

"He's going to be willing...."

"Why?"

"Simple you're gonna pay him."

"Um no you're going to pay him because I payed for the cab!"

"Um no."

"Yes!"

"No."

"Yes!"

"You realize I can hear you two bickering right?" was the raspy voice of the man you were looking for that ended your whisper argument. He was actually younger than you expected, about 38, but he looked older than his body by his eyes, the eyes of someone very worn out. Which would explain the smoking. "He's right i'll talk if you pay me, just come in before ya give everyone else a headache."

The two of you swiftly made your way into the working man's shop room. The room was a lot nicer than you thought it would be, and a lot lighter too. The man possessed a very nice view from his wall because his wall was almost completely filled with by windows. Dazai did mention something about the craftsmen liking natural light in the cab on the way here, so it wasn't too surprising and really lightened the room up.

You followed Dazai to the two chairs across from the white tufted sofa that Opāru was already occupying. Then Dazai placed the watch and a thick wad of cash on the coffee table separating the two parties of people.

"Oh, so you're here to ask who paid me to customize this for them? No surprise there they were particularly nasty."

"How where they particularly nasty?"

"I'm pretty sure that they were doing things even nastier than the port mafia, like taking kids of the streets and shipping them off."

"So, supposedly by word of mouth were human traffickers."

" Yeah, supposedly, but I didn't ask when the guy approached me."

"The guy?" You reconfirmed.

"Yeah, the guy, he had this weird tattoo on his wrist. The guy's name was Zinnnnnng, THUMP.

The two of you didn't even have time to blink or create when the bullet zipped through the head of the craftsman from. The crimson liquid from his head pooling on the couch were he was just alive a few seconds ago. The blood seeping into the fabric like the disparity of situation into Dazai and yourself.

Glimpsing out middle window now tainted with a hole you see the silhouette of the person responsible for this.

Dashing up without a second thought you sprint to pursue the culprit of the murder that just took place infront of you. Eyeing your target through the broken window.

Ahhhhhhh! Okay I’m literally really proud of how this came out! I’m really hope people like it. I’m really new to writing full fanics so if any experienced writer is reading this will you please give some pointers, that would be very helpful!

-Ellie

[goodlucktai]

I just read that Natsume is scared of thunderstorms, could we maybe see something about that please?

Consider this the beginning of a mininishinatsu series :’) 120% because there was talk on the discord about this pairing and now it’s stuck in my head rip

Story tag

x

Tsuji may have assigned Satoru andNatsume out of turn cleaning duties to get back at them for beingchatty, in the passive aggressive way of all overly-cheerful classrepresentatives, but Satoru doesn’t really mind. Hanging out withNatsume beats going home any day—and since it’s more or lesshis fault they’re in trouble, he can’t exactly complain to his friendabout it without sounding like a total heel.

“This is the worst,”Satoru says with feeling, hauling the heavier of two trash cansoutside. “Tsuji’s got in for me, I swear.”

Hecan’t complain more than usual, anyway.

Dumping his half ofthe trash, he turns to glance at his quiet companion. Natsume is nextto him but he may as well be miles away. The half-empty bin ishanging loosely from his hands and his head is tipped back, roundeyes trained without blinking on the sky. Satoru follows his gaze,nonplussed.

There arethunderheads rolling in, dark and foreboding as they build up in a graysky. He hadn’t noticed before, but now that he’s paying attention,the air definitely smells like rain.

“Oh, wow,”Satoru says, eyebrows shooting up. “It’s really gonna storm. Nowonder my brother bullied me into taking his umbrella this morning.”

Pluckingthe trashcan out of Natsume’s hands, he dumps it for him, then stacksit inside his own empty bin. Natsume seems out of it, but Satoru isno stranger to his vacant moods—the guy zones out a lot—sohe simply hefts the stacked bins under one arm, grabs Natsume’s handin his free one, and leads the way back inside.

“Ifwe hurry, we can make it home without getting too wet,”he says, all but dragging his unresistant friend up the stairs. “Imean, there’s no way we can beat the rain, but—you have anumbrella, right? I can walk you home with mine if you don’t.”

“No, that’sokay,” Natsume finally replies. “I have mine with me.”

He’s keeping pacewith Satoru on his own now, but he doesn’t tug his hand away. Satorutakes that as implicit permission to keep holding it. The only soundsthat accompany them as they run through empty hallways are the echoedstamping of rapid footfalls and the faraway rumble of approachingthunder.

In alittle under ten minutes, they’re back at the front doors. Satoru isshoving his school slippers in his locker and yanking on hissneakers in their place, a little out of breath from tearing throughthe school—and glad no staff had caught them, because that wouldhave given Tsuji a whole heap of disciplinary material to work with if he was still in a bad mood tomorrow.

“Alright,” hesays with a triumphant grin, as a light rain begins to fall, “it’sbarely started out there. Come on, Natsume, and we can—”

He trails off ashis eyes move from the doorway to his classmate. Natsume is still inhis uwabaki, jack and umbrella bundled under his arm. He hasn’t evenstepped down into the entry area yet, lingering on the raised floor afew feet away, with what looks like absolutely no intention of takinganother step.

“Go on withoutme,” he says with a smile. “I forgot something.”

Satoru blinks athim. “What? Just go get it real quick, I can wait.”

“I might have tolook for it,” he deflects easily. “It could be awhile. You shouldgo ahead though, before it gets too bad out there.”

His expression isempty and serene. It stirs something uneasy to life in the pit ofSatoru’s stomach.

This is whatNatsume looked like when he first came to this town; agreeable andindulgent without giving an inch, without letting anyone in. Satoruremembers the slow, painstaking work of extracting a childish,sarcastic, endlessly earnest personality from where it was hiddenneatly behind a pretty face and a distant smile.

He doesn’t likethat Natsume can so easily revert back to what he used to be.

Hedoesn’t like that there must be a reason forit.

Lightning flashesoutside, illuminating the room for a split second. Natsume goesstiff. Satoru takes a step towards him, frowning. Uncomprehending, but he wants to understand, and so he reaches out with abewildered, “Natsume—”

Thunder cuts himoff. It stops him cold. Because Natsume flinches, full-body, andSatoru’s voice gets stuck in his throat. The distance between theminches wider somehow, even though they’re both standing still.

He’s never seenNatsume so transparent before. He didn’t expect it to be hard to lookat him, when for so long he thought it would be nice for Natsume tobear his feelings every once in awhile.

“You,” he saysslowly, and pauses. “You’re scared of the storm?”

The next handful ofseconds feel like an hour. Natsume is silent as he dips his head in anod, hair hanging into his eyes. Satoru stares at him.

“Andyou weren’t gonna say anything?”he asks, incredulous. “You were just gonna let me leave you byyourself?”

The rain outside is beginning to pickup, drumming against the roof and the windows, and another roll ofthunder cuts through the air only moments after the first. Natsumeshudders, hugging his coat to his chest.

“It’s so stupid,”he mutters. His hands are shaking. Satoru gravitates closer to himhelplessly. “Ever since I was little, I’ve always—”

He winces again atanother streak of lightning across the windows, folding in on himselfin time with the accompanying thunder. He drops his umbrella and hisjacket in favor of clapping his hands over his ears, and he’sshaking, and Satoru crosses the rest of the space between them in asecond.

He wishes Kitamoto was here. Or Tanuma.He’d even take Tsuji.

Because he can’tjust leave this alone, there’s no way he could, but hedesperately doesn’t want to do the wrong thing. Not when Natsume isso pale and frightened, curling up into something tiny and tremblingand fragile.

Kicking off hisshoes and dropping his bag on the floor, Satoru steps up to joinNatsume in stocking feet and hooks a hand around his elbow. Triesto ignore the way Natsume’s breath hitches, and instead tows him backdown the hall.

There’s a classroomon the first floor no one ever uses, not that anyone is still aroundto mind them making use of it themselves. Satoru shoves the door openwith his free hand and tugs his friend inside, shutting it behindthem. It’s a small room with wide windows, and Satoru leaves Natsumeby the door for as long as it takes to draw the curtains closed.

A fresh crack ofthunder has him hurrying back with the last window left bare, becauseNatsume makes a sound uncomfortably close to a whimper and Satoru isphysically incapable of anything else but putting both arms aroundhis shoulders and squeezing him tight.

“How’d yourfoster parents usually help you get through storms?” he asks,desperate to be useful. Natsume doesn’t uncurl even slightly, but heleans forward in the circle of Satoru’s arms, leans into him, andSatoru will take anything he can get. “Natsume, hey. How do Ihelp?”

“I—I don’tknow, I—no one’s ever—”

He’s drowned out bythe storm. Satoru could very quickly learn to hate thunder. Andpointing his hate in that direction instead of towards all ofNatsume’s shitty former foster families is probably a much safer roadto travel in the long run. Even if it’s a hundred times lesssatisfying.

Satoru does hisbest not to think about how many times it’s stormed since Natsumemoved here.

“Okay, that’sokay,” he says, in what he hopes is a reasonable tone. “We’lljust figure this out together, then. No big deal. Let’s just—here,Natsume, let’s sit.”

There’s a shelfpushed sideways against the blackboard wall, and it creates acomfortable little corner in the front of the room. Satoru sits, andtugs Natsume down beside him, their backs to the cabinet doors,facing the wall opposite the windows.

It’s dim and cool,and probably not entirely comforting, but it’s the best he can thinkof. Satoru keeps an arm around Natsume’s shoulders, and picks up oneof his hands in one of his own, and tries to impress warmth andcomfort and support into his cold body.

He can feel Natsumeflinch with the next heavy boom of thunder. He wishes he hadhis phone on him, so he could look up how long this ugly weather issupposed to last. He’ll sit here all night if that’s what Natsumeneeds, and he’s happy to do it, too—but it isn’t fair thathis friend should be so miserable just because he was never taughthow not to be afraid when he was growing up.

“It’s nothing tobe embarrassed about, you know,” Satoru tells him over the sound ofthe wind and rain. “I mean, I wasn’t scared of thunder growing up,but I slept with a nightlight till I was like, nine. I was certainthere were monsters in the dark, and nothing anyone told me convincedme otherwise. Pretty silly, right?”

Natsume makes asoft noise against his shoulder, and murmurs, “I don’t think so.”

“You wouldn’t,”Satoru says fondly. “I swear, any one of us could tell youanything, and you’d just nod right along like it made perfectsense.”

It’s like blanketacceptance, given freely and without reservation, when for so longthe singular person Satoru could expect anything unconditional fromwas always only Kitamoto.

“Is that weird?”Natsume asks. His hair is soft under Satoru’s cheek, and it smellsgood, and it’s distracting. Satoru has no idea why, and pushes theintrusive thought to the back of his brain.

“A little bit.But it’s not bad.”

“Still,” hisfriend says in a small voice, “that was when you were a kid. Youstopped being afraid of the dark. I'm—I’m still—“

“Okay, I’m gonnastop you right there,” Satoru says right over him, a little tooloudly, because he knows he’ll get heated if Natsume says literallyone more word. “You get a pass on this, okay? I don’t care how oldyou are. You are officially allowed to be scared of thunderstorms.And I’ll tell you why.

“Because I’veseen you fall off a bridge before. Off a bridge—like, intothe river—and all you said was pretty much just “Sorryfor getting you wet” when me and Kitamoto fished you out. That jerkShibata showed up out of nowhere to make trouble for you, and youdealt with him on your own, even though you obviously wanted nothingto do with the guy. And there was that time in the woods,” he adds,frowning a little as he tries to sort through fuzzy memories, “rightafter you transferred here, remember? Something happened to me outthere, and you came and found me, and carried me all the way back totown. You never even batted an eye.”

Thunder cracksoutside the window. Natsume doesn’t react to it, absorbed in Satoru’slong-winded ranting instead.

“Natsume, all ofthat is—really cool. Well, maybe not the bridge thing—don’tever do that again. But the rest of it? You have yet to meetyour fear quota, and at this rate, even if it storms every day forten years straight, you probably never will. So, this?” Satorugestures at the room at large, trying to encompass the last half houras a whole in a wave of his hand. “This is nothing. No big.”

He can feel Natsume’s heart beating fast through the tight press of their hands. Lightning illuminates the room through the window on the far end that Satoru didn’t get to cover, casting long shadows for a few flickering seconds. And he thinks it makes sense, objectively, to be afraid of things like this. Of darkness and storms. It makes sense to be scared when you’re alone and there isn’t a light or shelter to keep you safe. 

“It’s notnothing, Nishimura,” Natsume finally says. His voice isstronger than it’s been since the storm started. He wavers a littlewhen the windows rattle with a particularly fierce gust of wind, butrallies himself and presses on, “It's—a really big deal. It meansa lot to me that you—that you’re here.”

“You’d do thesame thing for me,” Satoru says comfortably, because he doesn’tdoubt for a second where they would be if their positions werereversed. Natsume is quiet beside him, but his hand in Satoru’ssqueezes tight.

The rain is stillcoming down in heavy sheets, and each new roll of thunder is still asloud as the one before. Natsume is still leaning into Satoru’sside, and Satoru still has an arm around Natsume’s shoulders.

Natsume isn’tshaking anymore. For a person who can seem so delicate at times,Natsume is impossibly resilient. Satoru manages to forget that everynow and then, but never for very long.

It’s one of thethings he loves most about him.