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katuschka · 2 months ago

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Pierrot Sleeps

Josh Kiszka x f!OC/reader

/friends to lovers/

8.036 words

I dedicate this one to everyone who needs some healing...

Pierrot sleeps, silently He’s dreaming next to me Painted black tear, on his soft face And the sweetest lips; they never speak to me My Pierrot sleeps (Barbora Mochowa – Pierrot)

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction, intended for adult readers. Any resemblance to real persons is purely coincidental. Also, if you're under 18, go find some other entertainment elsewhere.

Warnings (are spoilers): heartbreak, unrequitted love, pining for a friend, breakup, friends to lovers, slow burn, sweet Josh, kissing, fluff, smut: petting, oral sex, vag. sex, a few allusions to a suicise of a minor character (in the past), briefly mentioned attempted suicide (retrospective), depressive thoughts, expressive language, bad weather

You can also view my Masterlist, join the Taglist or listen to Pierrot Sleeps Playlist 🎶

At least it stopped raining… eventually.

Josh had expected there would be morning fog, so the fact that the world around them was shrouded in a thick blanket of clouds did not surprise him. Not only was it just as the forecast predicted, but he had been even looking forward to it. Foggy woods looked dreamy at this time of year. They’d have the best time, surely, and he could take a lot of pictures...

He however did not expect to be woken up by heavy rain drumming on the roof above them, and – on top of that – a whole half an hour before the alarm clock was supposed to rouse them. Too early to be happy about being awake, and too little time left to go back to sleep. Had it been the fall morning sun shining right into his face, he wouldn’t say a word. But rainfall? That didn’t go according to the plan.

He had been warned though, and despite his own nature, he chose to believe the technology instead.

The initial rhythmic patter only grew in intensity and it soon sounded as if the cabin was built right under a waterfall. That, together with the obtrusive light coming from the screen of his phone, finally woke her too. She didn’t make herself known at first. She listened silently for several seconds to the downpour growing stronger and waiting for his reaction with malicious glee. She was rewarded pretty soon, and his loud, annoyed grunt made her chuckle.

“Told you…,” she mumbled from under the cozy blanket sleepily, suddenly hopeful that they’d just stay inside, sipping sahlep in front of the fireplace. She would eat almond truffles and he could have his dried apple chips, or whatever. Maybe they could even try to play a game of chess. Josh had been telling her that he didn’t have the right brain for that, but she was adamant; and determined to teach him. His annoyed face, illuminated by the light blue light, however told that it probably wasn’t the best day for that. Again.

They had been both really looking forward to the trip, so she wasn’t even sure why she suddenly felt almost glad that their hiking plans might be ruined. The prospect of getting wet and numb with cold didn’t appeal to her at all, but it usually didn’t stop her. And when it did (When the heavens literally opened just like that morning), she’d be pretty pissed off for being forced to stay inside. Not this time though. Not when she was enveloped with the warmth and the scent of him. And that was something she had been looking forward to even more.

They shared the bed, just like many times before, just like friends often do. The cabin had two separate bedrooms, but it didn’t even occur to them to part their ways for the night. Not when the whole point of this trip was not to be alone. That would be silly.

And just like many mornings before, she closed her eyes again in a pretense of having fallen back to sleep just to revel in the morning smell of his body close to her for a little bit longer. But he wouldn’t be fooled by her closed eyes; being already quite familiar with her breathing patterns.

“Yeah, you did, weather girl, but let’s not get discouraged, yeah? The…the app says it’ll be over in an hour. So, we’re still on schedule. AND it also says there might be some sunlight by midday, and so does the radar… Hey, hey, wake up! Tea?”

“Coffee!” she huffed in exasperation. After all that time, he still kept trying. Coffee’s bad for you, blah blah blah… And maybe he was right. Just look at him! Fit and bubbly, filled with sunshine and energy right from the moment his eyes opened to greet the new day. Even when he was hurting, he always mustered enough energy to fill every room with light and love. As long as there were other people willing to share the moment with him, he was ok. Meanwhile, she felt like Gollum, torn between love and hate for the things that kept her (barely) functioning. Not just coffee… him, too. Her precious. She kept pursuing him, seeking his presence, while hoping that one day, she would be free, while not really wanting to. It was always the worst on mornings like this one, when she almost had him in her grasp, and then he always slipped out, because he was never hers.

She watched him fumbling for his clothes in semi darkness, pondering. Sleeping just in his briefs right next to her never seemed to faze him, and the thought always made her heart sink. Maybe he didn’t like the way she looked, so he never considered those moments to be overly intimate. That’s fine. But didn’t it ever occur to him how much she loved his body? Probably not. They were such good friends, after all. Right? Truth be told, she really tried her best to hide the truth from him. There were so many things to say, but she never did.

‘Come back to bed.’ What a simple request; one that people often say in situations like this one. ‘Come back to bed and just be with me. The world can wait…’ Yet she couldn't. She had no privilege to ask that.

Such good friends. That’s what everyone kept saying: ‘You two are such good friends.’ Everyone except Jake; that nosy, observant asshole. He mentioned his suspicion just once, and then abandoned the topic forever after she made it VERY clear that she didn’t want to discuss it and threatened to cut his balls off if he ever mentioned that to Josh.

They had been so close from the very start – she and Josh – despite the fact that they were from two seemingly different worlds. Or maybe because of that, because he seemed to deliberately seek the company of the people who didn’t care what he was. He didn’t have to pretend anything in front of her; she just let him be himself, even when it was not always nice or flattering. She loved all of him.

Yeah, she did. She loved him. And she knew she would from the moment she first saw him, when he ran into the coffee shop she worked in to hide from the rain...

The bell chimed, and she looked up, together with several other people, all of them surprised by the sudden commotion that disrupted the serenity of that lazy afternoon. He literally fell through the door, giggling awkwardly before he looked around, beaming and taking everything in, like a child in a toy store.

Are you familiar with those cheeky and extremely cliche movie scenes when the hero sees the object of their desire for the very first time and everything suddenly turns to slow motion? So melodramatic and stupid, very stupid indeed; so stupid they use it mostly in parodies these days. And yet, it’s also exactly what happened to her when her eyes first fell on the dampened halo of his messy curls. What a tiny, beautiful, ethereal man. He looked like an angel on vacation, dressed in pale jeans and a simple white long-sleeved shirt. Quite ordinary. It was the long string of beads around his neck, almost like a rosary, that made him look out of this world. But nothing could prepare her for the feeling that swept through her and he finally looked at her.

When she was very little, maybe two or three, she had a very strange dream once. The sun fell from the sky, landed on their street right next to their house and she watched, quite mesmerized, how it rolled behind their windows like a huge fiery balloon. She was too small to know that the sun was literally just a ball of fire, and yet that’s exactly how it appeared to her in the dream, except “her” sun didn’t have more than two meters in diameter and it didn’t scorch anything. That strange and bizarre dream left such an imprint on her young and expanding mind that it eventually became one of her core memories. Then, as years went by and adulthood hit her with brutal force, she almost forgot about it.

Until he appeared.

He introduced himself as Josh without even being asked, ordered matcha tea and then he took a barstool by the counter right opposite to her, because she was the only person in the whole room willing to talk to him; everyone else was staring at their phones or laptops and just minding their own business.

And it was SO easy talking to him, despite the fact that she was completely and utterly smitten with him, which usually tied her tongue in similar situations. Not with Josh. They talked for only half an hour about nothing important, but it was enough for him to unknowingly etch himself in her brain and gut.

Then he finally picked Josh up, just when the rain stopped, and they left together, seemingly forever.

Her mind was still full with the images of him when she went to bed that day, and he even materialized again as a drunken memory in her dreams. Her conviction that she wasn’t destined to have people like him in her life made the apparition both sweet and distant, but destiny never prevented anyone from having dreams about it, right? His existence seemed almost unreal the morning after. He became a vision – and an illusion – of a better world where people were actually nice to one another. Like a character from a favorite comfort book: someone who never really existed, but it was still nice to imagine.

Then, five days later, Josh came back.

He stayed for three long hours, as if he had no responsibilities in this world except for filling it with his contagious laughter. He ordered a whole pot of oolong and charmingly voiced his desire to pester her for the rest of the afternoon. When she asked why, his answer was simply ‘why not.’ That’s what the places like the one she worked in were for, and she shouldn’t get excluded, he said.

So they talked again, pausing only when other people came to take their order. They talked about poetry and cartoons and favorite sweets (she loved almond truffles!). She told him about her early childhood and a grandmother who could bake heavenly pastries, and he shared funny stories about his brothers and praised the wit and beauty of his sister.

There were times when such stories would make her feel miserable, but his own tales filled her with hopefulness. He exuded so much love and light no doubt because those people he talked about had always been there for him. If only she hadn’t failed to be there for her sister when she needed her the most. People kept telling her that it wasn’t her fault, but their words fell flat. Convinced that she should have known, she almost followed the same footsteps. They just found her in time…

Back then she told him that she was an only child.

The next time, Josh came back with a small bag full of almond truffles, which he traded for her number. And so they slowly became regular friends, with their lives gradually intertwining even outside of that coffee shop.

Days went by, then weeks. Slowly, she learned all about his passions and dreams, and nothing about his job. Then one day, just before Christmas, a group of people asked for a picture and he had to come clear afterwards. Nothing shocking in Nashville, It just made her admire him even more, and he couldn’t get mad when she finally told him her truth. Months passed by and finally there were no more secrets, even though her initial childish idea that he must have fallen from the sky was crushed.

At least she wasn’t surprised when he disappeared for months.

He often said ‘I love you’ and sometimes she imagined how it would feel if one day he’d mean it in a way that would make her skin tingle and cheeks burn. But that was not to be. The meaning was reserved for someone else, because he belonged to someone else. Plain and simple. They were so in love. Even through the veil of her jealousy, she could see the pure miracle of it. Everything Josh did seemed miraculous. It kept breaking her heart in the most peculiar and strangely addictive way.

He was always there for her as a dear friend, but never as someone who could keep her warm at night. He was unavailable.

Until he wasn’t. And yet…

He called her around two am that night, crying so hard he couldn’t even talk coherently. She wasted no time; having thrown just a long cardigan over her pajamas, she ran out the door, jumped in the car and headed straight to their… to his house.

They snuggled together in his bed, and she kept holding him tight until he finally relaxed and fell asleep. And when she woke up a few hours later, feeling his limbs wrapped around her body and his hot breath on the exposed skin of her shoulder, she looked up at the ceiling and her heart broke in a thousand little pieces once again. So this was how it felt… and she was destined to experience it only when they both felt like that, only not for each other… His touches during waking hours kept whispering ‘I’m glad’, but never ‘I yearn’.

He mewled suddenly, no doubt tormented by some disturbing dream, and grip around her only tightened. She turned to her side and hugged him back, watching his peaceful, doll-like face and listening to his light snores that made his parted lips quiver ever so slightly.

“Why didn’t you call one of your brothers?” she asked once he finally opened his eyes and, seeing her face right in front of his, greeted her with his sweet smile, even though it was short lived.

“You don’t judge me…,” he mumbled after a while.

“Your brothers don’t judge you either, silly! I know that, and so do you.”

“Yeah, but…I guess I needed a hug, and not just having my shoulder squeezed. Besides, they…they have their own people and, uh… other creatures to take care of...”

Ouch…

The truth is, he had tried to set her up with other people in the past, oblivious to the fact that the only one she wanted was him. So she kept lying to him, making up reasons why the dates and hook-ups never did work out. Even when she ended up in bed with them – and some of them were really good – it never made her want to see them more than just a couple times.

She had been like that even before she met him, to be honest. Men and women had come and gone, and her heart had remained closed, save for a few youthful infatuations. Her resolve not to commit to anyone only strengthened after what happened to Shania. Then one day, Josh appeared with a golden key, forced it in the lock and occupied the tiny space ever since, unaware of what he really did.

And the reason why she always tried to hide it the best way she (physically) could was because she was too grateful for what she already had in him. Such good friends… The risk of ruining it all was too great and too foolish. Because, by being there for her as a friend, he had already helped her more than she could possibly imagine. He had danced into the darkness of her dreary life and brought sunshine into it. She had a wonderful friend in him. The fact that she loved him romantically was just a minor snag. Maybe, just maybe, if she had known him sooner, she wouldn’t have to keep hiding the scarry reminder of forecast days on her wrists. But for everything there is a season…

… and fall is perfect for hiking.

So was the summer after he left, and so they – Josh and her – took advantage of every opportunity to spend it together in nature… or at least in his garden. Because, in spite of all the bad things happening, one could always rely on nature to be beautiful and welcoming, at least for now.

Josh’s busy schedule and constant traveling blessed him with the mercy of having his mind occupied, so that he wouldn’t have to think about the breakup so much, but everytime he got home – even when it was just for a few days – he kept seeking her company as well as her hugs, because his house suddenly seemed too big and silent and scary, and his brothers naturally wanted to spend the valuable time with their own significant others.

After that first, painful night, falling asleep in each other’s embrace became at first a frequent occurrence, and later almost a habit. Their movie nights, Sunday outdoor trips or late night garden picnics often ended that way. Lying on a blanket under a cloudless sky and pretending they could actually see any stars, they cuddled more often than not as the temperature dropped. He cried a few more times in early June, but after a while it just became a pleasant habit. Josh was never the person to shy away from physical contact, so it felt completely natural to him. It was always innocent, too, with their hands never wandering to any inappropriate places. A few times she could feel his lips brush against her locks – feather-like kisses that never touched the skin – but that was it. It always left her hungry for more, and the hunger kept growing…

The smell of coffee and vanilla coming from the kitchen put an end to her reminiscing, as it made her stomach rumble and pulled her mind back into the physical reality of the cabin. She finally managed to drag her lazy body out of bed and, after a short stop in the bathroom, followed the smell and the sound and the light, like a curious cat.

Josh was not a fruit loop guy and she was not allowed to eat that shit either, at least not under his watch. In consequence, their days spent together also meant that she was eating properly for a while.

She found him standing by the stove, making oatmeal with raisins and swaying to some unknown tune he was humming. She caught just a few words, something about bed and needing to touch again, and immediately wanted to go back, because damn! He was reading her mind.

Her footsteps made him stop and turn around, greeting her with his radiant smile. Snap. Another beautiful picture for the photo album of her mind. Having been blessed with an excellent memory, she often used it as an internal polaroid, taking snapshots of the beauty of the world to browse through when old. She, however, cheated with her stills of Josh, replaying them in her mind every time she was alone in her own bed.

“Finally! I thought I’d have to drag… you’re doing it again!”

“Doing what?” She couldn’t help but to reciprocate the toothy smile.

“You know what!” He threatened to pat her head playfully with the stirring spoon, making her duck down so as not to have chunks of hot oatmeal in her hair. “Save some space in that fancy brain of yours for the wonders of nature. Today’s gonna be EPIC!” He swung the spoon epicly towards the milky blue nothingness outside the window.

“It’s still raining, Josh.”

“Mmmm, not for long, I’m tellin’ya. Now grab that mug before that bitter shit gets cold.” He nearly overturned the cup of coffee with the large spoon and she snatched it out of his reach just in time to save the valuable fragrant liquid. He turned back to the stove, chuckling. “Gonna serve this heavenly manna in a sec, so take a seat, mademoiselle,” he added playfully in a low voice. “Cinnamon?”

“Yeah, why not. Just a pinch.”

“As you wisssssssh… Here comes the sun, little daaaarling, here comes the su-un, and Iiiiii saaay…”

Moments like these often made her mind and body dissociate. The body was drawn to him, yearning to hug him from behind and bite at his exposed earlobe, while the mind knew her place was at the table, where she was told to patiently wait for the breakfast to be served, while admiring his beauty from a respectable distance. The mind always won. Their new-found closeness, however exciting and really borderline intimate sometimes, had its boundaries.

He was right. The rain stopped eventually, so they packed their bags with all the necessities they might need for the whole day outside, and together they entered the misty world of barren bony branches, orange leaves and hidden horizons. It was already almost 8 am when they left the warm confines of their rented cabin, but the landscape remained shrouded in early November murkiness. They walked for at least an hour without speaking, the ubiquitous mist still unwilling to dissipate.

“It’s almost like a completely different planet, isn’t in,” she finally broke the silence.

“M-hm,” was the only response she got. She honestly often preferred it that way, being able to get lost in her own thoughts and daydreams, but that very rarely happened when Josh kept her company. His need to share everything that was on his mind – which was usually a LOT – could often be quite overwhelming. It also never failed to entertain everyone around him, because the vastness of his mind could compete with the plains on Mars, and it was just as untamed.

The fact that he was suddenly so unusually taciturn made her a bit uneasy. Something was wrong. She already noticed it the night before, and thought it was only understandable, given the recent events. She was devastated as well, thinking about Shania again, and how it would break her heart if she hadn’t chosen to make it stop beating willingly.

But then they talked quite openly about that and he returned back to his normal, radiant self as soon as they climbed in their shared bed. Now she had that nagging feeling once again… as if he was hiding something from her. Something was different.

“Are you still sad?” she asked tentatively.

“About what?” His tone was wary, making her uncertain whether she should even continue or just let it be. Alas, her nosy nature prevailed.

“The breakup.”

It took him a few seconds to respond, clearing his throat and kicking a few pebbles first. She’d swear she could sense a brand new kind of tension in the air, but she couldn’t really put her finger on it. It was almost just a split second.

“No, not anymore. Sometimes at night, when the house is quiet, I feel a sense of melancholy, you know? I guess I’m just not used to being alone. But I welcome the feeling, really. I think I wrote my best lyrics feeling just like that. And…” And he kept on talking. On and on and on. She asked a simple question and he could have provided a simple answer, but after three minutes of babbling, just when his mind somehow wandered to Sam’s ravioli, she suddenly stopped in her tracks and started laughing. The bitch was back, as he himself would say, although that was not really it. He sensed her worry and just wanted to do anything he could to disperse it.

“What?” He really tried to frown at her accusingly, but failed miserably, the corners of his mouth twitching.

“It’s just… you could have just said ‘no’, but I admire the lengths you go to prove that you’re not.”

“Keep mocking my eloquence, love, and you’ll regret it, I tell ya!” Already a few steps ahead of her, he started walking backwards, pointing his finger at her menacingly.

“Josh, be care…”

“FUUU…ouch!”

“...ful… Moron!”

Of course he stumbled over an exposed tree root and fell right on his butt. Thankfully, he managed to land in the middle of a small heap of wet foliage instead of stones or worse – down the steep slope adjacent to the path they were on. She offered him her hand with an exasperated sigh and helped him get back on his feet, feigning anger – anything to hide how much that one word reverberated inside her ribcage. Love…

“C’mon! Don’t be mad. My ass is damp and freezing now, so it’s fun, yeah?” Once back on his feet, he grabbed her shoulder for support in order to regain balance and smiled reassuringly to wipe that frown off her face. To no avail. No, it wasn’t exactly fun, and seeing his beautiful eyes so close only made it worse. She stared back into those dark beads before her gaze slid down to his lips that he licked just a moment ago, and the chilly mist filling her lungs suddenly felt like water, together with a totally unwelcome wave of arousal that swept through her body. She was genuinely mad all of the sudden, but only at herself.

“You’re an idiot, Josh.” She let go and stormed up the path, forcing him to speed up to catch up with her.

“Y/N, hang on… why are you so angry?”

“You were literally just a few feet from breaking your leg… or something else!” she spat in response and with her eyes set on the path ahead.

“No, I wasn’t. And nothing happened!” Josh raised his voice just a notch, his own anger growing. They were side to side again and he finally forced her to turn back to him. She tried to fight it, she really did, but in spite of her efforts to behave reasonably, she could feel her eyes prickle again, threatening to betray her.

“It’s been almost five years since she jumped… in November…just…stop scaring me like that, ok?” Her voice quivered under the burden of her sudden deliberate machinations. What she said was true, but it wasn’t the real reason why she felt so upset at that very moment and she felt bad instantly for using it as an excuse. That was completely unfair to both of them.

Josh’s features immediately softened and he pulled her in for a tight hug. “I know… sorry,” he whispered, and she melted into his touch, no longer caring how she “deserved” it. They remained like that for almost a minute before he commanded that it was time to move if they didn’t want to return back after dark.

The rest of the morning was spent more or less in silence once again, interspersed with occasional casual chit chat. As the path grew steeper and more stony, pale patches of light cerulean blue began to show up through thinning low clouds, making them both hopeful. The air temperature grew gradually milder, too. “The inversion season’s finally here! Yay!” he exclaimed with childish enthusiasm – one of many things that kept people drawn to him like moths to a flame. It seemed just impossible not to love him.

They reached the ridge – their final destination – just around midday, and just in time to step out of the clouds that still hung low in the surrounding valleys. It felt like reaching the sky, with the ridge and a few surrounding rounded peaks looking like floating islands in the midst of a foamy ocean.

“Aaaah, this is beautiful!” She tilted her head back, letting the sun warm up her damp cheeks.

“Told ya,” he smiled softly and she expected him to continue teasing her, but he seemed unnaturally quiet and serene once again. Pulling his camera from the bag, he took a few snapshots of the misty sea below them. They watched the clouds roll by slowly for a while before he spoke. “I used to dream about telling stories through pictures...”

She knew all about his old passion, but she also thought he was exceptional at what fate chose for him eventually. “You do tell stories Josh. You help people paint their own internal landscapes.”

“Do I…”

“Of course you do!”

“So I believed. Pictures, words, soundwaves, doesn’t really matter, that’s not my point. I mean,.. I wasn’t really telling the… the truth yesterday. I am scared…I mean, not for myself, not really, but…I don’t…I guess, sometimes things are just destined to remain broken no matter how hard you try, you know…I’m mostly heartbroken, really.”

She wasn’t really sure where this was going. Having been familiar with his insecurities for quite some time, she knew too well that he was sometimes too humble for his own good, but he hardly ever sounded that defeated. “Well, you know…how was that line…’Take your broken heart and make it into art.”

“But what’s the point?”

And just like that, with a snap of a finger, the temperature dropped, making her shiver. Speaking to the world through art was the core of his whole existence and she’d rather die than watch him doubt the importance of it.

“Josh!”

“Y/N!”

His feeble attempt to mock her sudden urgent tone annoyed her, but definitely not enough to stop her from trying to prevent him from going down that gloomy path. “Listen, asshole! Stop with the bullshit, ok? You believed we’d have sun today. And look! I absolutely needed this, and would have missed it if it weren’t for you. And MANY people feel the same, because you inspire them, so cut that defeatist crap or else I’ll smack it out of you!”

He looked at her as if she had already really slapped him in the face, but his shocked and astonished expression slowly morphed into a soft and grateful smile. “Thank you, Y/N.”

“WELL YOU’RE WELCOME!” she responded with an unnecessary theatricality, unwilling to abandon the angry pose just yet, just in case. “Now give me this, because I think you need to see what I see.” She snatched the camera out of his hand and took a step back so that the viewfinder showed exactly what she wanted to capture. He, however, started fumbling for a phone in his jacket, completely ruining the shot.

“No, let’s take a selfie,” he said when he finally found and unlocked it.

“Selfie? You? Since when have you been taking selfies?”

“I DO from time to time.” He looked almost offended, pouting at her like a defiant child. Sighing exasperatedly, she finally agreed to it, stepping closer to him, letting him wrap his arm around her shoulder.

“But you need to look into the lens Jo…” On the display, she could see him looking sideways at her, his eyes slowly tracing the contours of her profile. His jaw clenched and she could no longer finish the sentence. Instead, she slowly turned her own face to meet his gaze. He lowered his arm, snaked it around her and she held her breath, barely conscious of his other hand slowly finding its way to cup the nape of her head just below her ponytail. Dreamily, she watched his lips growing closer to hers until they met and she could swear her heart stopped.

He tasted like apples.

It was soft and tender at first, his pouty lips just brushing over hers like the wings of a butterfly. She leaned into it and invited him in, and soon they could taste each other properly, with their tongues entangling and dancing around languidly. She turned deaf and blind, but acutely aware of every cell of his body she could reach and taste and caress and devour, and getting high on it, her head spinning more and more with each passing second.

When they finally parted and her sight returned, they looked at each other and even though neither said a word, they could both see the same question in each other’s eyes.

What now…

The entire walk back into the cabin was spent in silent anticipation. The way he held her hand was completely innocent, even with their fingers intertwined…

The contents of their minds, not so much. They didn’t dare to speak about it just yet, in fear that they might jinx it. She kept replaying it in her head, over and over again. The feeling of his soft lips on hers still lingered and her insides twisted and turned with the primal need for him to do it again. It was just as strong as thirst, and much more overwhelming.

As the hour grew late, even the valleys were now sun-soaked. The world joined them in their silence and only the rustling of gravel and foliage under their feet disturbed the unearthly peace. Having kept her eyes on the ground, she looked up when they left the shadows of trees behind them and set foot on the vast clearing that separated them from their cabin… the fireplace… the bed… The road to it was blinding, as the late afternoon sun turned the distant horizon into silver ribbons, making them squint. She squeezed his hand involuntarily as her heart freaked out again, and he responded by stroking her knuckles with the tip of his thumb. The lust was palpable, making them both alert like lonely puppies just before hearing the door knob turn.

Having avoided the topic for a few long hours, the tension between them only grew when they reached the cabin, only to be replaced with a sense of panic and uncertainty when they stepped inside.

“So…”

“Are you hungry?” She interrupted him, before he could say more. Please say yes, so that I can cook us dinner and...

“Not really, no.”

“Me neither.” She was fidgety, biting her lip, scratching her arm nervously, looking up at him and then averting her gaze repeatedly.

“Y/N… we don’t have to…”

“I want to!” she blurted out and then sank her teeth in her lower lip again.

Ok… calm down baby, let me…follow me…” he offered her his hand and slowly led her into the bathroom.

They stripped each other slowly and then they kissed again. He turned on the shower and she bashfully stepped under the streaming water next to him. He pulled her closer and kissed her some more, while tracing the outline of her shoulders with his fingertips. Only then he dared to venture lower.

His fingers brushed over her left nipple before he cupped the whole breast gently in his palm and she could swear it felt like he was cradling her very own heart in it instead, making her hold her breath. His eyes were lowered the whole time, watching his own actions intently and attentively, almost apprehensively, waiting for her reactions and receiving none. She was frozen with illogical fear. He looked up suddenly, making her head spin. “Tell me what you like,” he whispered.

“Everything.” His brows shot up in question, so she clarified: “I like everything about this, Josh.”

She meant it as encouragement, but it wasn’t helpful at all. He cleared his throat nervously and stroked her arm gently, from her shoulder all the way down to her elbow. His eyes once again followed the motions of his hand. “I wanna know everything about you.” This time he wasn’t talking about her life or soul. He already knew almost everything about that, after all those hours and hours spent talking and daydreaming together. Her body, however, was an unknown instrument, and he was desperate to learn how to play it well.

Feeling wanted, and with all the newfound courage she could muster, she cupped his cheeks and kissed him with long suppressed passion, pausing only briefly to ask him back. “Can I learn everything about you, too?”

“Please! You must,” he whispered against her lips, while she wrapped her fingers around his full-blown erection and started stroking him tentatively, making him moan in her mouth. Encouraged, she tightened her grip and quickened her pace. He gasped, breaking the kiss and pressing his forehead against hers instead. “You learn quickly, baby,” he whimpered, leaning with his outstretched arm against the tiled wall behind her. She kissed his flexed bicep in response and slid down on her knees in front of him, but he only shook his head and pulled her back up.

“You don’t want that?” she asked, confused. There was a hint of hurt in her voice, so he pulled her in an embrace and kissed her wet hair as the water kept pouring down on them.

“Just the idea of your lips wrapped around my dick tells me it’d be very quick… and I don’t want that. Let’s take this slow, yeah? Let me…”

She let him take the lead and his lips went on a journey. They traced the edge of her jaw when he shampooed her hair and she tilted her head in delight. This new intimacy could only be described as ecstatic. Everything turned into a blur. She was just barely aware of him wrapping her in a bath towel, and she couldn’t remember how they got in bed. It was his tongue licking a stripe up her inner thigh that made her acutely aware of her surroundings once again. She gasped in surprise when she felt his hot breath on her wet pussy. Looking at her daringly, he hovered just an inch above it, the tip of his tongue resting on his upper lip tellingly. “May I?”

She swallowed harshly to relieve her parched throat. “I want you fuck me, Josh. Please.”

“And I will… but let me make you fly first.” Without any further ado, he darted his tongue between her folds and she arched her back as if struck by electricity. After a few more teasing licks, he wrapped his lips around her clit and started sucking gently, with his velvet tongue drawing slow circles on the underside before it started fluttering rapidly over the whole bud. Soon he sent her into orbit, just as he promised. She was still shaking and gasping for air when he swiftly climbed up her body and positioned himself in between her legs.

Once inside her, he could no longer keep it slow. He let out a deep guttural groan and, as if a bolt of electricity shot through him, started thrusting into her with newfound virility. She wrapped both her arms and legs around him and pulled him even closer to her, almost afraid that he would float away and dissolve in midair if she stopped holding him tight enough, just like he always had done in her dreams. Even her own mind never allowed her to feel like this, so how could this possibly be real? After all that time. It felt too good to be real. His hands cradling her head, his own loud moans so close to her ear, urgent and melodic and almost lewd, all in one. With his elbows on each side of her head, and his lips brushing against her earlobe, she felt enshrined under him. It was overwhelming, it made her head spin as if high on oxygen…which she probably was. Unable to control her wildly beating heart and her quickened breath, she was barely conscious of that pleasant feeling he was stirring deep inside her. It didn’t even matter. She arched her back again and shivered as his singing grew louder. She could come just from listening to him.

The skin on his back under her wandering hands, warm and velvety at first, soon turned damp and sticky from exertion, as his movements grew even more frantic and wild. She tilted her head back and cried out when he hit her cervix particularly hard… and he stopped.

“What…” she asked dreamily.

“You’re so tender and soft, I don’t wanna hurt you.” His face was hovering mere inches above her, as he was searching for more cues. Still inside her to the hilt, the blissful feeling of her velvety walls caressing his cock still lingered and it took all his will to keep himself from moving momentarily. His hips jerked involuntarily and she responded by deliberately tightening around him, making him hiss.

“You’re not hurting me,” she mumbled, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. “I don’t even know if I ever felt this good. I’ve been waiting for this for so long…” Her own words made her freeze. She opened her eyes again and looked at him, frightened. His own expression was somber and almost unreadable. Oh god, you stupid cow, why did you say that?

“How long, Y/N?”

Please, don’t make me ruin this even more, Josh. Just go on, just let me feel this at least once…

His eyes never looked more beautiful. He kept looking down at her, searching for the answer. She knew she should say something, but the sudden lump in her throat made her only gasp for air as she tried to fight off the tears. Stupid, unstable bitch!

It seemed that he took mercy on her. Instead of pushing the subject, he leaned down and pressed his lips on the pulsing point under the skin of her neck. She closed her eyes and sighed in delight, waiting for him to resume the previous pace and make her mind go blank once more, letting her dream about her sun before the real one would come.

He remained still though. His dick twitched inside her, making it known that he too wanted more, but he wasn’t merciful enough. And he wouldn’t let it go.

“How long, Y/N?” Josh whispered once again against her skin. Each syllable was like a kiss, soothing. He left a physical trace of his words along her jugular, smoothing the gravity of that question mark with the tip of his nose. There was a new kind of urgency in his voice. At last, as if really reading her mind, he finally moved inside her once again, rolling his hips slowly as if to say ‘I’m not going anywhere’, encouraging her.

“Since the first matcha tea,” she sobbed and he tried to soothe her nerves with yet another slow and deep thrust. But it was no use, the dam that had been holding her pent up emotions broke. He pulled out and lied down beside her. She missed him instantly but had enough dignity not to beg. She expected him to get up and leave. Instead, he pulled her closer and patiently waited for her to calm down. Only then he spoke.

“Y/N, he left because he…he thought that I liked you a bit too much. And, uh, after I called you and you came to me that night, I realized he might have been right…”

Josh was crying, he was yelling, he even tried to beg eventually, as the warm spring breeze coming from the open window suddenly felt like a winter gale on his exposed skin. He kept repeating ‘what does it mean, what do you mean…’, only to be told that it was up to him to figure it out. ‘But I love you!’ Josh cried some more, and it was met with silence for the first time. ‘I can no longer say it back,’ he broke that silence after a while, and Josh’s hopeful eyes veiled with even more tears. ‘I wanted to be the only one. I’m not an idiot, so I beg you to stop treating me like one. Goodbye, Josh.’

And once again, Josh’s words were met with silence. The only difference was that she wanted to scream it back. “I’m so sorry,” she said instead after a long minute. “I didn’t want to be the reason for his leaving.”

“Y/N…” he inched closer and buried his face in her still damp hair. “You weren’t. I was. Didn’t you hear me?”

She did, but her self destructive mind chose to ignore it. His cryptic might-have-beens couldn’t penetrate the armor that she had spent long years building. Thankfully, he knew her well enough to realize his mistake. Enough of all this beating around the bush.

“I love you,” he whispered in her ear and this time it made her skin tingle and her toes curl.

His caressing hand traveled from her shoulder down the middle of her chest, where he could feel the fast rhythm of her wildly beating heart. Her eyes were closer and she lay unmoving, except for her hand that wrapped around his fingers, stopping them momentarily. “I’m sorry babe, I just had to say it,” he continued. “And since you…”

“I love you more than life.” Her own words startled her, as if something fell down with a crash. Without waiting for him to make another move, she pulled his hand down to her wet pussy and his middle finger slid inside with ease.

It quickly made him hard again. She spread her legs, inviting him back in. He shifted just a bit, with his head still resting next to hers on the pillow. She turned towards him, threw her leg around him and he entered her again just as their mouths reconnected again in a hungry, sloppy kiss.

It was slow this time, but no less intense, with their senses heightened by the recent revelations. They were making love. She kept her eyes open, watching how his own rolled up and he moaned loudly with his tongue still swirling around hers, their parted lips barely touching. She could feel a second orgasm building soon and her breathing quickened, turning her own moans into short, high pitched gasps, making him hiss when her fingernails dug deep into his skin.

Suddenly, he shifted and straightened, sliding his knees under her legs and grabbing her hips possessively. “That’s it baby, one more, go on, let go,” he urged and started thrusting into her with a new force that made her thighs tremble. She looked up and her jaw slackened at the sight. Her sweet and radiant Josh looked almost demonic in the twilight. He was watching her too, with his jaw clenched and his brows furrowed and glistening with sweat.

“Harder,” she cried out and he obeyed, hissing and baring his teeth as he tried to hold on a little longer. Then suddenly, she could feel it snap and her whole body tensed, making him groan as she squeezed him inside her. A few more deep strokes before she could feel him falter. “Fill me up,” she whispered and her eyes widened. He placed his hand between her breasts, bent his head down and let out a long, high pitched whine, his body jerking erratically as he spilled inside her. Then he collapsed on top of her, panting.

Josh

She looked like an injured doe, you know? So lonely and abandoned behind that counter. The room was full of people of all sorts, but – as it often happens – nobody paid attention to the things that desperately needed all the attention in the world. So I stayed a while – even though I didn’t really have to – watching her face brighten up, growing more and more beautiful with every passing second. I knew she had it in her.

Someone ordered an irish coffee and she had to grab a bottle of whisky from the upper shelf. That’s when I saw the scars on her wrists, and the shadows behind her deep blue eyes suddenly made perfect sense.

There are millions of people on this planet who are hurting and I’ve always believed that nothing happens without a reason. When I was younger, I wished I could have saved everyone, but that’s impossible. There’s only so much burden one can bear. But I believe that every wounded soul has their person somewhere. A sibling, a parent, a friend, a lover… Someone willing to share the load. Sometimes they don’t find each other in time, otherwise the world wouldn’t be full of tragedies and tears. Sometimes you don’t choose it. It just happens. And sometimes, you fuck up in the process. Colossally, even. I’m painfully aware of the fact that I did, too. But everything happens for a reason.

I just had to go back…

I can't imagine how it is To be forbidden from loving (ah, ah) 'Cause when you walked into my life I could feel my life begin And then I learned the truth How everything good in life seems to lead back to you And every single time I run into your arms I feel like I exist for love Only for love (Aurora – Exist For Love)

@thewritingbeforesunrise @fleet-of-fiction @writingcold @lvnterninthenight @its-interesting-van-kleep @takenbythemadness @edgingthedarkness @myownparadise96 @gvfstuddedmajesty @jazzyfigz @sanguinebats @josh-iamyour-mama @lyndz2names @wetkleenex-gvf @peaceloveunitygvf @cheersdannyx2 @fleetingjake @lizzys-sunflower @emojakekiszka @gvfmarge @Dayumclarizzel @lipstickitty @clownstarr @gretasfallingsky @musicislove3389 @i-love-gvf @psychedelectable

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nametakensff · 2 months ago

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✨F/F NSFW snz fantasy incoming✨

Absolutely nothing original from me but I was thinking about a mean female boss calling me into her office to get her off, as she often has me do, but she either has really bad hayfever or a terrible cold and cannot stop sneezing. They're extremely loud, aggressive sounding sneezes that sound almost masculine; as angry and obtrusive as she is in her day to day life. Of course, because she's an inconsiderate asshole, she makes no attempt to cover and sprays all over me as I spend my entire lunch break making her come in various different ways. She doesn't particularly like me but she likes the way I'm absolutely crazy for her body; the desperation of the way I start grabbing at her always does a lot for her already hugely inflated ego.

I'm an absolute mess when she's done with me, hands and face having been buried in her cunt, and ofc evidence of her sneezes staining my shirt, front and back. She stops me from eating her out again by simply pushing me back with a foot on my chest. She then makes me lick her clean before plainly pulling up her underwear and leaning back in her chair. She doesn't bother to say thank you or even acknowledge me now that she's done cumming, just lights a cigarette (absolutely against building policy) and waves me away to clean up in her little en suite, where I immediately start masturbating. I end up cumming to the sound of one of her intensely violent sneezing fits. I want to keep going but she impatiently shouts at me to hurry up and that she doesn't pay me to get off on company time

(More general + snz fantasy stuff under readmore!)

If I want to really makes this insanely horny, everybody in the office knows about this arrangement and she makes no efforts to disguise it. Every now and then, someone who wasn't aware I was in there servicing her at the time will knock on the door, enter her office and find her right on the brink of orgasm as I'm on my knees in front of her. Nobody is even phased by this sight anymore - they know how insatiable and shameless she is. Almost all of her employees have heard her cum, and a handful have seen her do so with her thighs squeezing around my head.

I really love the idea of somebody walking in when I'm just getting started with her, and they start talking business, ignoring my presence and the obscene licking and sucking sounds I'm making. Every now and then the conversation goes on long enough that I make her cum during, and the other employee has to patiently wait for her to finish.

Combining this scenario with sneezing, during this conversation where I continue to eat her out, she's sneezing all over me and this other employee, as well as the papers they're showing her. They are, again, so used to her rudeness they barely even flinch as her sneezes spray all over them. They bless her even though she never says thank you because she expects it either way. After a particularly violent, messy couple of sneezes, she reaches out for their tie and proceeds to scrub her itchy, damp nostrils with it, leaving it totally ruined. The employee lets it happen. Maybe everyone in this office is a total freak who loves being disrespected by her. Maybe the job just pays enough that nobody cares to complain.

#i typed this out sometime last week upon waking and then had to spend time getting myself off before going about my day lol 😮‍💨#a girl can dream about this kind of arrangement lmao #sneeze kink #snzblr #snzario #snzfucker #snz kink

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gamma-radio · 1 year ago

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I hate when people play phone audio out loud in public spaces. The screechy quality of phone speakers, the disregard for literally anyone's auditory comfort, my poor autistic ears — I rage mode.

I know I'm not alone, so I am going to share my flawless embarrassment-free technique to get them to stop.

1) Carry a pair of earbuds on you. Not required, but it helps give you the confidence to actually confront them

2) walk up to them and be as nice as possible, no matter how mad you are. However, do not explain yourself or apologize, just make a simple request: "Hi, would you mind using earbuds for that?" (You're not asking them to stop, just change their method)

3a) 90% of the time they will shamefully put their phone away, and because you were so nice, they aren't even mad at you!! Then you can thank them for being so thoughtful, and maybe compliment their shirt or something! Everybody loves compliments.

3b) Alternatively, they might say, "I don't have earbuds." Normally, this would put you in an awkward situation, but You aren't normal. You are Prepared.

OFFER THE EARBUDS: "That's okay," you say, "you can borrow mine!" dazzling smile, you are so nice and thoughtful, what a great guy you are

Don't worry about losing your earbuds (or if you don't actually have earbuds), because they won't accept your offer. THEN they will put their phone away of their own free will. You never even had to ask.

If you want a detailed explanation of why this works (for the autistic besties, I see u):

People don't like it when you tell them what to do, especially if that request is to stop doing their activity in any shape or form. It pisses them off, and rightfully so! No one wants to be controlled.

That's why this method is so good: you never asked them to stop their activity, you asked them to make a small change to how they are doing the activity, which is far less obtrusive.

This works for lots of things, and lots of people. Imagine being a kid, goofing around, and someone says, "Stop doing that." Upsetting! Compared to: "Would you mind being quieter?" Because really, the issue is not that you are goofing around, the issue is that you are being loud and disruptive about it.

Same goes for the stranger on their phone in public. It's totally fine that they're watching a video, the problem is that they're being disruptive, and chances are they know that being disruptive is rude.

The second half of why this works is offering the earbuds.

When you ask them to change how they're doing their activity, you are placing a burden on them. If they have a pair already, it is a very tiny burden. If they don't have a pair, it is suddenly an insurmountable burden, and that's very uncomfortable. In fact, it's so uncomfortable that by making the request, you might become the bad guy in the situation (according to them) even if you're being nice, and even if they're in the wrong.

That's why you offer the earbuds. Now you are actively helping them by alleviating the burden. You are being kind and thoughtful instead of demanding!

Sure, they might think you're a little weird, because it's not part of the social script, but they've got no ground to be mad at you.

Which brings up the last point: offering to lend your earbuds isn't part of the social script. It's surprising, and so their default reaction is to avoid that path: they will decline your offer. So, you don't have to worry about a stranger wearing your earbuds with their gross stranger ears.

So that's the whole idea behind the method. Confrontation that is respectful and thoughtful of their autonomy and your comfort all at the same time. ~social engineering for good~

#sensory overstimulation #autism #sensory overload #autistic #neurodivergent #social engineering #social etiquette #my post

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kinardsheart · 2 months ago

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so i literally couldn’t get @epiphainie’s guardian angel au oit of my head. here’s their very short introduction!!

——————

If you had told Tommy from 5 hours ago that the explanation for everything in his life going wrong would come in the form of a beautiful stranger with teary big blue eyes staring at him like he just watched 8 puppies get kicked down stairs, he probably would’ve raised an eyebrow and chuckled. Might as well happen, with everything else. He would take any reason for why his life was such a fucked up mess.

Now that he was actually here… he wasn’t so sure.

The stranger stepped past him, into his apartment, and he was so taken back by the claim that had just come out of the other that no objection was made to the sudden obtrusion of his privacy. Nothing in this shitty apartment was worth anything anyways.

“Sorry? What’d you just say?”

The door slammed shut behind them.

A huff escaped through the man’s lips, forming into a pout that Tommy would’ve thought was endearing, if he hadn’t just been jumped with the possible explanation to all of his problems.

“I said that- Ugh. I’ll just start again.” He sits as if he’s never sat on a couch before, so upright it seemed as if one tap could send him flying over. “My name’s Evan Buckley. I’m your guardian angel- well.. was,” Big hands begin to fiddle with eachother, face sheepish as he continued, “Basically, I messed up. I’m really really sorry. Your files just got lost under one of my cabinets and I only just found it. I’m sorry again, I swear it wasn’t on purpose! You can punch me, I get it, I’m basically the reason your life sucks. Sorry.”

A deep breath, and those eyes were on him again.

“Yeah, so uh, my bosses saw. To say they aren’t happy is an understatement… I’m down here for a while. They want me to make up for your life being a trainwreck, which is again, totally my fault. My bad. I’m sorry.” There was a long pause. “Also, is this a cat?”

He looked down to see Biscuit, his rescue, nuzzling against the stranger’s frozen frame.

What the fuck.

#9-1-1 #bucktommy #evan buckley #tommy kinard #au

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dashielldeveron · 1 year ago

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soulmate trope | dabi

Dabi’s route of soulmate trope.

"post-canon dabi? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 30 july 2023!" to you. i know he's doing just fine. and obviously i will be wrong about some things. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to chapter 390: specifically about touya's body but vaguely about ~all of that~. sexual content. food mention/discussion. injury descriptions (burns) that aren't reader's. weeb slander. a note: part of the plot revolves around...analysing anime. i use hunter x hunter here, and if you are not into that, i have, to the best of my knowledge, included neither spoilers (aside from early story arc names) nor information that cannot be understood via context clues. additionally, there is a brief pokemon metaphor that also can hopefully be understood with context clues as well.

~27.7k

You’re being watched.

Or rather, you had the eerily intense inkling that you were being watched, or as if you were some sort of recently awakened sleeper agent—as if you were somehow the key to someone’s spying into U.A., even though the most secretive thing going on right now in 3-A’s common area was that Hagakure’s facial features were somewhat revealed by the drying face mask.

“Jirou,” you said, bookmarking your place, “Would you mind checking for—I don’t know, any kind of outside surveillance devices in here?”

Jirou bit the stem of the carnation she’d been about to weave into Yaoyorozu’s hair and shifted all the strands of the braid into one hand, and she tilted her head to jab the arm of the couch with her earjack. After a few moments, she unsheathed it, the hole in the couch sealing itself, and shook her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. What’s up?”

Furrowing your brow, you shoved your book between the cushion and arm of your chair. “I’m not sure. It’s—I have this weird feeling that someone’s looking at me. Or through me, really. Both? I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels like someone else is seeing what I’m seeing.”

“Do your eyes hurt, ribbit?” Asui asked from her spot on the floor, where she was sorting her m&ms by colour.

“No. More like I’m hyperaware of them,” you said, “But I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching all of this because of me.”

“What’s there to watch? It’s nothing but a Girls and Todoroki Night. There’s nothing worth seeing and or any big secrets being spilled. Well, spoilers for the New Year’s episode of Kamisama Kiss, but it’s been out for years already,” said Mina, gesturing towards the television, and Uraraka snatched Mina’s hand out of the air and laid it flat on the coffee table again, because she’s not done painting her nails, damn it. Mina sighed dreamily at the sheep whose wool fluffed enough to take up the entire screen. “What I wouldn’t give for my hair to have that much volume.”

“I guess you’re right,” you said, settling down into your chair, pulling Shinsou’s blue-pineappled blanket up to your neck (he was out on his bike, so he wasn’t attending this Girls and Todoroki Night [Shinsou and Todoroki were the only boys allowed, since their presence wasn’t obtrusive or contrary to the vibe. Additionally, Shinsou thought it was funnier if his name weren’t included in the title of these events]). “Y’know, in the manga, the New Year avatar isn’t a sheep. It’s a dragon.”

Mina blew on her hands as Uraraka rebottled the nail polish brush. “Whaaaaat?

“It was changed to a sheep to align with the year the episode was released,” said Todoroki, his thumb and index finger pinching his lower lip with his eyes glued to the screen, “I understand the change on a narrative scale, but I believe the dragon had more of a character arc than the sheep. The dragon didn’t think it was as appealing as other years’ avatars, and it had to learn to accept itself and accept others’ love for it. It was rooted in misunderstanding.”

For some reason, when you looked at Todoroki, you were doused with regret. Sharp and cold, followed by a splash of something more muddled: envy, maybe? Gratitude?

These…these feelings weren’t yours.

***

“I can’t believe I missed a Girls and Todoroki Night,” said Shinsou, grinning, his legs dangling off the dorm’s kitchen counter, “but alas! The night was calling, and I had to go out in it.”

“We will not spoil Kamisama Kiss for you,” said Todoroki. He was crouched in front of the oven, hands clasped as he stared through the tinted window at the browning potato wedges. “You will have to watch that episode on your own.”

“You should really read the manga,” you were saying as you scanned the inside of the refrigerator, looking for anything that might go well with the potatoes—ah, Aoyama’s got some bougie-looking sauce. Savoury, by the looks of it. “It goes farther than the anime covers, and it’s so sweet. The worldbuilding gets better, too.” You took out the bottle and gave it an experimental shake.

“Really?” Shinsou wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know; that villain guy isn’t very fun. Feels like too much time is wasted on him.”

Todoroki’s head snapped towards Shinsou at the same time you slammed the refrigerator shut. “No,” the both of you said at the same time, and you continued. “The anime hasn’t been quite as accurate in tone regarding that character, but he’s really wonderful, eventually. You really feel for what happened to him and for his past relationship to the main characters. Simple but effective job of deconstructing his villainy and granting him humanity.”

“Huh.” Shinsou propped his cheek on his fist, his ankle resting on his opposite knee. “I wonder how much nuance I’m missing because I’m only watching the anime.”

For a second, you felt as groggy as if you’d just woken up, your eyes focusing a bit more precisely, blurring the kitchen tiles for a moment before re-focusing, and it crept in again: the feeling that someone was watching you, that someone else was here.

“Hey, Shinsou, Todoroki,” you said, blinking several times, Aoyama’s brown sauce clutched in both hands, “Do my eyes look any different?”

Both of them looked you over. Shinsou shook his head. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’ve got—” You nodded towards Todoroki. “I have that same feeling from last night. Like someone’s watching. But Jirou said nothing was wrong.” Shrugging, you tossed the sauce to Shinsou and sat in front of the oven with Todoroki. “I guess Kamisama Kiss must bring out the voyeur in me. Or being voyeur-ed. Watched.” You crossed your legs at the same time Todoroki jolted because of a crushed peppercorn popping in the oven. “Maybe we should start reading manga alongside the anime so that we can judge how accurate they are. See how much character nuance is lost or preserved.”

Todoroki’s eyes bulged. “You have no idea how much that appeals to me. I desperately need to discuss the differences between the Hunter x Hunter 1999 anime, the 2011 anime, and the manga. Sero refuses to watch the 1999 version.”

Amusement. Condescension. Bubbling to the top of your consciousness.

Distinctly not yours.

Why would you be feeling these things in the face of something that sounded so wonderfully, uselessly pedantic? A project like Todoroki’s just proposed sounded like an absolutely ideal waste of time that would allow you to be more accurate than the vast majority of people when it came to plot, lore, and characterisation. Why would emotions you’d associate with making fun of someone pop up now? You didn’t want to make fun of Todoroki; you were enthusiastic about joining him in this pointless endeavour.

The timer on Shinsou’s phone blared, and he tapped it off, patting his pockets (?) for the oven mitt, which he spotted on the counter next to him. “Why would Sero refuse to watch the older version?”

Todoroki helped you stand and guided the both of you away from the oven. “To be fair, in the 1999 anime, the animators did take liberties with panel composition and brought in new angles and lines sporadically. Colours are also odd and inaccurate, and those are corrected, for the most part, in the 2011 version. More of the manga is covered, and the animation is smoother in the 2011 version as well.”

Why did you feel the distant sensation of laughing? Nothing about this has been funny, per se, but the…what was going on?

“Okay, I’ll bite,” you said, strangely heavy and hyperaware and surveying the tray of steaming potato wedges as Shinsou shuffled it to the stove, “I’ll do it with you, all this manga accuracy checking.”

“Me, too,” said Shinsou, shaking the over mitt off, “My suggestion is that we keep it to just the three of us, to prevent exhausting arguments, like we’d have in a big group the size of Girls and Todoroki Nights.”

“I can lend you the first few volumes,” said Todoroki, opening a cabinet to search for Aoyama’s sauce bowls, “After that, I have a link to high-quality scans I can send you.”

“Sounds perfect,” you said, reaching for a potato wedge that did not sizzle and screech as much as the others, “Should we watch the first episode tomorrow night?” When you retracted your hand at the burn, you felt your own pain and someone else’s sense of nostalgia.

***

You’d already been on the precipice of falling asleep during Present Mic’s lesson, but when a concentrated shot of fatigue pierced you, you set down your pen and reluctantly resolved to get the subsequent notes from Iida. God, couldn’t this wait until you were out of class? No one needed to see how terrible your own notes were. No one needed to see your drawings in the margins.

Burying your face in your hands, you dug the heels of your palms into your eyes, rubbing them as the lethargy kicked in, and you braced yourself for the uncanny sensation of being your own worst voyeur.

When you opened them, after the lightheaded dots blinked away, you weren’t in the classroom, instead entrenched in darkness. Well, wait—you groped around on your desk: physically, you still were upright in your desk at U.A., able to grasp your pen, set it down, able to faintly hear Present Mic, as if he’s in the next room over.

Blindly, you tapped Mina’s desk behind you, turning your head over your shoulder. “Do my eyes look weird to you?”

“No. Should they?” she whispered back—or maybe she said it at a normal volume, and the classroom had been so far removed the distance silenced her.

Biting the inside of your cheek, you faced the front again. Looks like you have to figure this out yourself, or else you’ll be sitting in pitch black for who knows how long.

A minute passed. Your eyes adjusted to the darkness, shapes appearing—you’re inside. In a room with the lights off. Sideways, for some reason. One of the shapes was so rigidly rectangular that it had to be a shoji divider, and you were just trying to estimate its size when all of your mental facilities halted at a loud, rumbling groan.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” a scratchy, masculine voice said, “Must be my turn, huh?”

He flipped over, and barely cracked venetian blinds behind dark curtains just barely illuminated part of the scene: you were seeing this sideways because he was lying in bed, an out-of-place, opulent, Western-style bed in what you assumed was an Eastern-style room, judging what you could make out of traditional wallpaper and tatami flooring.

“Well, you’re not getting anything out of me,” he said, reaching for one of the many strewn pillows and hugging it—you lost half of your sight when his face sank into it (too dark for you to get a good look at his hands or arms), “Sucks for you, but I’m going back to sleep. Don’t care how curious you are. Not sharin’ anything with someone who can’t cook potato wedges right.”

No, get up. Get up. Say more right now. Who was he? It’s—it’s the middle of the day, anyhow; what is he doing asleep?

“Hah. You’re angry with me.” His laugh sounded more like a hiss, somehow. “Get used to it.”

He shut his eyes. After about a minute, the darkness faded, and Present Mic’s voice hit you at full volume, and you winced, clamping a hand down on your notes when the classroom came into view.

***

“You are not dropping out of school the semester you’re supposed to graduate,” said Aizawa, pinching the bridge of his nose, elbow digging into the puffy leather chair by Nezu’s desk.

“From my perspective, it does not appear you are a liability to U.A.’s security.” Nezu steepled his paws together, his pink toe beans preventing him from pressing them completely flat. “Simply seeing through each other’s eyes and feeling some of his emotions are no cause for the drastic security measures you are proposing. I believe that so long as you have some sort of indicator that either situation is happening, faculty can prepare for your temporary debility.”

“Don’t even think about abusing it to get out of class,” said Aizawa, propping his chin on his fist.

“You think I would? Shocked! Shocked and offended,” you said, “I’m gonna be in class; I don’t trust anyone else’s notes. I want my own interpretations of lectures.” You slumped down in your seat, tilting your head back to stare at the ceiling. “Principal Nezu, do you have an idea of why this is happening to me?”

“I do.” Nezu opened the top drawer in his desk to retrieve a stack of yellow-green papers, torn from a legal pad and crimped because of whatever was spilled on it. “Recovery Girl and Midnight have been analysing the results of Tainted Love’s quirk for some time now. The female rehabilitation centre with which Midnight works, Sakura Grove, has uncovered evidence of two other incidents that caused a soulmate bond with similar qualities to form.”

“What? No,” you said, letting a whine creep into your voice, “That means my soulmate’s a jerk. He was rude to me. He insulted my potato wedge recipe.”

Aizawa raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching upward as he crossed his arms. “You can’t expect there to be love at first sight, can you? Love is a choice. You work at it every day. You have to keep choosing it.”

“Yaoyorozu and Jirou were already dating when they got assigned soulmates,” you said, listing on your fingers, “Midoriya and Uraraka had been pining after each other for years—”

Aizawa scowled. “Stop that.”

“So, do you want me to report anything? Do you want me to duck out of class when he—checks in?”

“If you feel unsafe, let us know. Otherwise, it is of my opinion that you will be just fine,” said Nezu, and he reached for his paw-sized coffee cup to remove the melting stroopwaffle cookie off the top. “Report what you perceive as dangerous, but you deserve privacy. When you decide on your signal that the bond is active, please send an email to faculty members. Whether or not you inform your peers is at your discretion.”

***

So, of course, you told everyone.

Meaning no one batted an eye the next time the soulmate bond activated, which was in class. Feeling the exhaustion and the slight buzz from your soulmate popping in to watch through you, you made the phone call symbol, grabbed a marker from the whiteboard, and headed out into the hall, no questions asked.

“Hey,” you were saying, shoving your forearm against the concrete-block wall and popping the marker cap off with your mouth, “Good to hear from you. Didn’t know I could see through you, too. Excited to see how we’ll deal with that. This is my phone number.” You scrawled it across your arm, along with your given name above it. “If you can’t memorise it now, that’s fine. I’ll write it down next time, too, so you could prepare to have something nearby to record it with. I look forward to getting to know you.”

No strong emotions on his part. But he was there.

“Okay,” you said, and you turned to sink down against the wall to sit in the deserted hallway. “Some basic stuff: I’m a student at U.A., in my last year. I’m in that—uh, I’m in the class that’s gotten into a bit of trouble over the past few years. Midoriya, Bakugou, and all of them, if you watch the news. I’ve just ducked out of class with everyone.” You kept looking at your arm so that he could memorise it. “I don’t really wanna talk about my quirk, since that seems like such a boring, capital-A adult question, but I can tell you about it later, if you really want to know. Oh! I do not suck at making potato wedges. It was just a recipe that none of us had made before, and they were fine. They were good. I—”

And he’s gone, link severed.

Crossing your arms, you slumped against the wall. Did he choose to end it? Could he? He didn’t seem very receptive, so you wouldn’t put it past him.

***

You woke up from a nap watching through him play a video game, some non-discernible, first-person shooter. Again in the dark, but perhaps not in the same room. The windows weren’t open enough to let in enough light to tell.

Your soulmate never acknowledged you were there by gesture or word. Just played his stupid fucking game. You were trying to send him foul vibes of frustration and indignation, but he ignored you.

After a mere six minutes of the world’s worst Let’s Play, you decided you could be a little bitch as well.

***

“Oh! He’s here. Excuse me,” you said to Shinsou and Jirou, making the phone call gesture as you pushed yourself up from the lunch table, “I’ll be back in a moment. Please guard my gummies from Monoma.”

A flash of curiosity, finally, from your soulmate as he got the image of Shinsou and Jirou smirking to themselves and waving you off.

Once you were alone outside in the courtyard, you pulled out and unfolded the piece of pink construction paper, at this point every inch covered by doodles of flowers and increasingly shitty bulbasaurs. You tapped at the writing in the centre. “This is called a telephone number,” you said, “This one belongs to me. If you dial this number into a phone to call it, you will reach me. Then, we could have a conversation and arrange to meet up, instead of this unreliable, one-sided bond.”

You flattened your hand to smooth out the creases, halting midway when it struck you. “I’ve just realised you may be confused by this situation. Don’t worry; I am as well. But be assured, due to a quirk incident, we’ve been assigned soulmates. Yeah, I know they’re fake, but with this villain Tainted Love’s quirk, soulmates are real.”

He evidently was feeling like he wanted to walk straight into the ocean.

“I’m assuming you’re not a U.A. student, so—do you remember breathing in some sort of pink dust? Within about the past—I don’t know, two and a half years? That’s how long Tainted Love was active. She only got arrested about a month or so ago.” You couldn’t garner anything from him except for exasperation, so you continued. “And not, like, snorting a line of pink dust. It would’ve been in a dust cloud. A bit like fog. You would’ve noticed it.”

Staring at your phone number the whole time, you allowed him silence to think. Whatever he was feeling was very subdued, so you couldn’t really surmise what it was, but ten seconds before the bond broke, a livid, fiery ire consumed your whole body in the heat of recognition.

***

Shinsou, Todoroki, and you were all crowded around a laptop in Shinsou’s dorm to watch the beginning episodes of Hunter x Hunter the next time your soulmate spoke to you. He’d gone a couple of times ignoring you in silence, once outside on a walk during the day on a path uptown you didn’t recognise, and the other on some rooftop while playing on his phone and watching a meteor shower. Completely disregarding your attempts to give him your number or talk to him in real time.

It just figured that he bothered to spare you any information when you were trying to see what the next phase of the Hunter Exam was, so Todoroki and Shinsou paused the show for you and waited. With a stab of affection for your friends, you moved to the corner, waiting for your soulmate to say something.

And he was. Your soulmate knew more combinations of swear words and general filth than you’ve ever cared to consider, and you were almost impressed with the creativity of his vulgarity. Outside under the night sky, he was furiously ripping open some medium-sized, cardboard box as he stomped towards a carefully cultivated, lilypad-covered, manmade pond towards the back of a highly organised, traditional garden.

Eventually, non-profanity was added. “Goddamn fucking shit-ass fish and goddamn fucking shit-ass crusty motherfucking doctor can’t take care of his own goddamn fucking pet project.” Tips of his house slippers stopping at the pond only by way of running into the stone wall, he stumbled, growling in frustration, before regaining his balance and yanking out the plastic bag inside the remnants of the box. “Wants a goddamn gift for fucking Mom but can’t be arsed to do it him-fucking-self. Deserves every fish fucked into his respiratory system, clogging up his arteries to give himself a goddamn heart attack. And then I can’t be blamed for—” The plastic stretched, and he ended up tearing it in half above the water, pieces falling atop waterlilies. “Shit on a cuntbag. What the fuck. I don’t deserve this.”

He stretched to reach the waterlilies, cupping his hands to sweep the fish food off and into the water. And—the moonlight struck the gently rippling water, enough for you to see a flash of an orange koi tail break the surface tension, but not enough to see whatever was going on with his hands—not that he was doing anything strange with them (just picking shreds of plastic out of the water), but they somehow were strange. They moved stiffly and had some sort of bumps on them, but—does this guy live in darkness? You couldn’t tell anything about what his hands looked like aside from the shadowed bumps, which could be anything.

“I deserve a lot, but I sure as hell don’t deserve this.” He rounded the pond and punched a few buttons on a small, hidden, monitor, checking the pH of the pool and water levels. “Not my fucking job. Not my fucking job. Why do they think—why am I the one to do this shit. How come I can get in trouble with my fucking brother for him not taking care of his project.” He swatted at his wet bathrobe sleeve, pissed, and shook out some of the water. “Hey, you. I know you’re there.”

Back in the dorm, you jolted in your seat. In the distance, you could hear Shinsou ask what was wrong. “Nothing,” you said, sounding distant yourself, “He acknowledged me is all. Hasn’t done that for a while, so it felt like a fourth wall break.”

Your soulmate sat down on the edge of the pond, glaring out at the rest of the garden (wisteria heavy, vines swaying in the night wind). “Are you hot?”

You’d never wanted to be able to transfer direct words or actions to him so much, because he needed to be strangled.

“I’m not kidding.” He crossed his arms, covered by a dark bathrobe, sticking his hands in his armpits. “Are you hot? I don’t like the idea of being connected to some hideous fuckwad.”

Never mind. Now you have never wanted to be—

“This quirk shit isn’t gonna last long, but if you’re hot, you need to get on my dick before it goes away. I wanna see how it looks giving me a blowjob from your perspective.”

Kill. Destroy. Maim. Eviscerate, even.

“Ooh, watch out. We’ve got an uptight, prudish bitch over here,” he said, and he laughed—again, sounding more like a hiss than anything else. “Well, then. If you’re not gonna put out, then I’ve got no use for you. Don’t need anyone, especially not some goddamn lunatic who claims to be my soulmate. Too many people are interfering in my life, anyway. And to be honest, it seems like you’re dumb and irritating. I don’t like people like you.”

Maybe you’re soulmates because you’re destined to kill him on sight. Your soul, calling out for his to suffer extreme violence. He’d deserve it.

May all his potato wedges burn.

***

Monoma was at the next Hunter x Hunter anime viewing, because he’d been dying to know why you were wearing an actual and literal clown costume, wig and enormous foam nose included.

“I’m liking the new hero outfit,” Monoma said, flipping his hair back with a flourish, “but why are you wearing it during our off-hours?”

“Shove off,” you said, grinning as Shinsou tossed you a pillow to hold, “Did you bring your peach gummies?”

“I did,” said Monoma, sitting next to you on Todoroki’s tatami mats, and he pulled a massive bag of white peach gummies from inside his jacket, handing it to you to open. “May I ask if it’s seriously part of your new uniform, or—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Monoma,” you said, ripping open the bag at the notch, “I’m making a point.”

“Her soulmate,” Shinsou supplied, pulling up the next episode, “He wants to know what she looks like. So, she’s been dressing up in horrible, gawdy shit so that he can never really tell, even around mirrors.”

“He’s pissed,” you said, beaming, digging into the bag and popping a gummy into your mouth, “He wants me to stop playing around, but he was mean to me. Mean to me, unprovoked, and in a way that wasn’t hot. Tomorrow, I’m wearing a sheet and running around like a ghost. I will say nothing to him but boo.”

“I suppose that explains the influx of regular face masks you’ve taken to wearing during class.” Monoma scoffed, his incredulous, open mouth stretching into a grin. “You are impossible. If your humourless soulmate is worth his salt, then he should at least value the effort you’re putting into it.”

“Sero has sent me a message,” interrupted Todoroki, thumb swiping his phone screen, “He says that he has changed his mind and would like to join us. He’s started rereading the series and likes it more this time around.” Todoroki looked up and around his room, lips pursed. “There is not much space for five people. It is getter harder to see the laptop.”

***

The five of you started the Heaven’s Arena arc of Hunter x Hunter in Aizawa’s dorm apartment, seeing as he had the best television setup: for one, having an actual television instead of simply relying on his computer. His sound system held up, too, though you suspected Present Mic had something to do with that, instead of Aizawa’s own preferences.

You, Shinsou, Todoroki, Monoma, and Sero were scattered across Aizawa’s living room, all cosied under blankets and pillows and pointed towards his wall-mounted television, sitting on his cat-hair covered couch and armchairs, mugs and snacks on his coffee table, socked feet loose, and house slippers at the edge of the shag rug. The cats, Dango and Konpeito, chose to snuggle up towards Todoroki and you (beat that, Shinsou!), so you were careful not to disturb them from their slumber on your lap. No sudden movements, even when the tired dizziness of your bitch soulmate faded in.

“Spoilers for Hunter x Hunter, I suppose, even though it’s been out for decades,” you said under your breath, raising your hand to signal to the others that your soulmate was looking in. At your movement, Dango raised her head from her cocoon in your lap to yawn, her face nearly turning inside out, and she flinched, her pupils dilating, at the creak of the door.

Laden with groceries, Aizawa stepped into his own apartment, his brow furrowing at the sight of his students in his living room. “You have ten seconds to tell me what you’re doing here.”

“The fuck?” Sero whipped his head towards Shinsou and back at Aizawa. “Shinsou told us you were okay with it.”

“I said that he wouldn’t mind, which he can’t if he doesn’t catch us,” said Shinsou, bracing himself when Aizawa tugged at his capture weapon around his neck, “It’s my fault, Aizawa-sensei. Please don’t get angry at anyone else.”

Your soulmate seemed pleased that you were getting in trouble. Bastard.

Aizawa set his cloth bags on his kitchen counter, the insides shifting with the weight of the groceries. “Is this appropriate for Eri to watch?”

“Well, in general—”

A character onscreen chose that moment to seductively moan another character’s name, over and over again.

Aizawa winced, scrunching his eyes shut tightly. “Turn that shit off. Find another place to watch it.” Shaking his head, he unbagged the first of his groceries. “Shinsou, never bring anyone, including yourself, into my personal space again with express permission.”

“Damn it,” you said, reaching for the remote. You pressed the power button, watching the screen fade from the vibrant colours of Heaven’s Arena to black, with Aizawa’s living room reflecting back at you. Forlornly, you scratched the back of Dango’s neck, watching her mirrored reaction, before you realised what you were doing: giving your bitch-ass soulmate a clear view of your bare face. Eyes bulging, you gasped and bent over to hide your face, with Dango scurrying away at being disturbed.

The connection cut at the faint suggestion of intrigue.

***

YOU

hey i know we said we’d keep it small but. i think midoriya would really enjoy the battle analysis that the hxh characters are doing

YOU

bc they be doing some QUICK analytic work based on their opponents’ personalities

TODOROKI 💅🎏

Midoriya has been asking more questions than usual during our sparring sessions.

SERO 🧃🍊

ffs why isn’t he already in the group? should’ve thought of him

SHINSOU 💜🍡

want me to add him?

YOU

would that be okay, todoroki?

TODOROKI 💅🎏

There’s more than enough room at our new venue. We should invite him.

SHINSOU 💜🍡

why don’t you text him then? it’s at your place

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Midoriya CANNOT sit next to me

MONOMA 🔇🎭

I’d like to hear the onscreen dialogue instead of whatever he’s saying under his breath

MONOMA 🔇🎭

He CANNOT shut up

YOU

WHOMST won’t shut up??????

SERO 🧃🍊

don’t worry no one will sit next to you

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Good

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Wait

TODOROKI 💅🎏

Midoriya can attend! He’ll be a little late today, but I think we should wait for him, since it’s his first time joining us.

Startled by the waiter, you put your phone down on your notebook and accepted your coffee graciously. You shifted your laptop and notebook over so that you could cup the mug in front of you, its warmth seeping through the sides, and you took a tentative slurp. Interesting. You’ll finish it, but you won’t order this again.

You were killing time that Saturday by getting ahead on your work for Put Your Hands Up Radio: editing and fact-checking news segments that Yamada would read between songs towards the evening. Electing to get some sunshine on your skin before hunkering down with the group again to analyse some anime, you’d chosen to edit the articles outside at a café you’d discovered recently, one at which you hadn’t decided on a regular order yet and were shopping around the menu each time you came. Plus, if you’d stayed on campus, no doubt Shinsou or Monoma would’ve found you to distract you.

The café’s patio with scorching, cast-iron furniture and haphazard parasol installation led to most of its customers sitting inside, but that meant you had space to think, even with the hot groves of your seat imprinting patterns into your skin.

Your soulmate was probably being rude because he was scared, or perhaps he didn’t believe that Tainted Love’s quirk was legitimate. You’d have to assure him that it was, as you’d run through Nezu’s report with Midnight and Recovery Girl, fact-checking that. Either way. Some frustrated guy—living at home, apparently, and pissed about it—was paired out of the blue with some student at U.A. He might be scared that you were a creep.

Tainted Love’s team’s notes on her quirk that Midnight had confiscated explained that each soulmate bond, somehow, was moulded around the pair’s personalities and would fulfil a lifelong need. A lot of responsibility, it seemed, but if it were true—and other pairs proved it true—you would fulfil it naturally, and so would he.

So, even though your soulmate had been rude, you’d give him a chance. The soulmate bond existed for a reason. Plus, he might be a real-life tsundere, and wouldn’t that be fun to crack? To be the only one a rude, evil person was soft for was the ideal, wasn’t it? Someone so naturally cruel and heartless but learning to be kind for you—

Get a hold of yourself. He’s a real guy who will be in your life forever, not just someone you can throw away, like a celebrity/pro-hero crush. Treat him seriously.

“I’m…being serious,” you said to yourself, pouting into your coffee. You hunched in your seat to drink from the mug without lifting it, and you slorped away the neck of the latte art swan the barista had so carefully poured. “He’s probably not even be a sexy sort of cold-hearted. He’s just a type of bitchiness I haven’t learnt how to handle yet.”

Those boys in the anime analysis group? You could play their types of bitchiness like the world’s smallest fiddle. They were all so easy to handle (especially Monoma because of his predictability; Todoroki gave you the most trouble due to his complete non sequiturs), and it was fun bouncing off the petty parts of their personalities. Your soulmate spun things differently, but you’d learn his inclinations in time. If not, it’s not worth your time trying to “fix” someone who has no redeeming vulnerability.

You sighed. Now that you’ve lost your editing groove, you might as well do some last-minute reading before watching the next few episodes tonight. Closing your laptop, you reached down into your bag to get the next volume of Todoroki’s manga, and your vision blurred over, dizziness incoming. Well, at least you’re sitting down.

You held the manga volume in your lap and waited for your soulmate’s line of sight to appear. If he were in a darkened room yet again, you could buy yourself a little treat. The café’s display case had some sort of new chess square that you’d been eyeing. And—shit, sunlight was coming through. No little treat for you.

Well, maybe you’ll get one, anyway. You slumped farther down in your seat, blinking as dappled, sunlight-covered pavement and an empty terrace outside a business across a busy street came into view—your soulmate jumped back off the road when a car whooshed by, and after that, he jaywalked, horns blaring in his wake.

He did a little hop to get on the opposite sidewalk, hands in his pockets, and peered past the iron fence into the window of the shop—a packed coffee shop; maybe you could at least learn his coffee order, because then you’d have some shred of information about him. But no, he unlatched the iron gate and wove his way through the cast-iron patio chairs and tables, and—

You’re staring right at you: sitting, legs crossed, not taking up space, stuff spread out over your table, and he’s gaining on you. You flinched, watched yourself flinch, and your gaze darted around until you were able to meet his (your) eyes (your head making minor, nervous movements you wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t seen them), expression cautious, curling in on yourself on impulse. When you saw how, through an outsider, that made you look small, you made the effort to sit up and roll your shoulders back, elbows on the table. You watched yourself recoil at the heat of the iron, and you had to use his perspective to know where your notebook was so that you could rest your arms on it.

He brushed past your table’s open chair, instead yanking the table by the edge away from your lap so that he could stand closer to you and grabbing your face. He first cupped your jaw with his whole hand, pale skin and leather of a fingerless glove cold to the touch, and then, when he seemed sure you weren’t going to protest (his vision turned slightly to the left—he must have tilted his head), he narrowed his grip in little jerks of his hand, sliding erratically from gripping your jaw to just tilting your chin upwards towards him. He turned your head to the left and to the right before returning to centre to stare you down (you’d been pliant under his control, because the doubling of you watching you do things was throwing off your senses of balance and direction).

“Not as hard as you fucking made it out to be, huh?” His thumb rubbed over your chin. His nail was cracked. “Now, are you gonna stop acting like a little bitch, or are we gonna keep playing your stupid game?”

“First of all,” you said, fascinated by the way your lips curled in under your teeth to shape the consonants, and judging by where your soulmate was looking, he was, too. “It’s not an act. I am a little bitch.”

“No more of that hiding shit.” He tapped your cheek a little harder than he needed to with his middle two fingers. “Don’t know why you’d wanna hide this, anyway.”

You wouldn’t’ve said you winced at his rough touch, but you noticed enough of an aggravated microexpression around your eyes that you could tell you didn’t like it. “You’re doing the same. Hiding what you look like from me.”

“And I’m gonna keep doing it. You get nothing. There is no us. Soulmates don’t exist, and even if some hack fraud’s quirk has paired us off, I don’t need anybody, least of all you.”

“Well, maybe you don’t need anyone,” you said, your eyes dipping to see more of his hand (hot damn, we forgot we can’t see through our own eyes that quickly?) and then raising them to look directly into your soulmate’s—hyperaware of the way your eyelashes fluttered against your skin, of the slight pinch of your eyebrows, of the way the sun struck your cheeks, “but you could want someone.”

A sliver of a cool breeze wove its way through the patio, some of your hair swaying with it.

“I won’t pressure you to do anything you don’t want,” you said, lying, “but at the very least, we could communicate enough for this to be easy for us. Please let me give you my phone number, and please save it this time.”

His thumb inched up to press into your lower lip.

“Please,” you said, eyes dark but slightly glassy, letting your tongue tap the tip of his thumb, so lightly wetting it that it was as if you hadn’t touched it at all.

Your soulmate tilted his head again, lurching to the side as he shifted his weight to lean on the table. He knocked your pen onto the ground, and when you made the slightest movement to grab it, he pressed his thumb harder against you to still you, and he shook his head.

Your throat ran dry. Your (his) eyes honed in on the bead of sweat dripping down it and into your blouse. “Give me your name, then. A name, if you hate me that much.”

“It’s Touya,” he grumbled, and he closed his eyes in the moment before he kissed you, cold lips open before even touching yours (both rough, but his lower lip was much rougher for some reason). Blind, you startled back at the initial touch, but he held your chin firmly near his, sliding his gloved hand to your cheek as his tongue did into your mouth, pressing against the roof of your mouth and along your gums, alternating pressure where he pleased, not seeming to care what you did with your tongue—not that you were doing much at all due to surprise, but you at least had the mind to press your lips back, because while yes, his style was unorthodox, it still felt good. He laughed through his nose, once, when you slid your tongue against his, but when you raised a hand to cup his cheek, he pulled away before you could do more than graze him.

“Touya,” you said, and now that he was looking at you again, you—well, you looked kissed out, leaning towards him to chase that feeling, to encourage him to touch you again, and you looked fucking hot (the hell? It took a lot for you to think of yourself that way, and today hadn’t even been a good day for you, but now, freshly kissed, saying your soulmate’s name, you found yourself thinking you were pretty. Uh. Could this be what he was thinking instead of you? You couldn’t tell; it felt like it was coming from somewhere deep in your gut). “Touya. Let me write—”

You watched yourself grapple for your pen for a while. He huffed, crossed his arms, and bothered to look down where your pen was for you, and when he did, you finally grabbed it.

“Touya,” you said, uncapping the pen and hovering over your notebook, and you paused after the first stroke. “Touya spelled like that Todoroki Touya who released that Endeavor video during the war?”

The ink bled through the sheet of paper from being pressed in one spot for too long.

“Yeah,” he said eventually, voice rasping, “Spelled just like his.”

“Okay,” you said, bending over your paper and writing based on muscle memory, and under his name, you wrote your phone number for him again, with your name written beneath it, just to hammer it in. You ripped the page out of your notebook with some difficulty before passing it to him.

Touya scanned it and rubbed his thumb over your name, the leather of his fingerless glove catching on the uneven tear.

Cute. Nerd. “Do the gloves have something to do with your quirk?”

“What? No,” he said, crumpling the paper and stowing it in his pocket, and he kept his hands there, hiding them, “I don’t have a quirk.”

Okay, so Touya spoke in a rush and concealed evidence. Sounds like a lie. Monoma took that route on occasion, so the obvious thing for you to say was “Oh, so you wear them because of Naruto? Do you run like him, too?”

“Fuck off,” he spat, and you watched yourself grin: you’ve got him. “As if I had time to be a fuckin’ otaku.”

“Good to know,” you said, “So, all the manga re-analysis I’ve been doing with my friends is new to you? I hope you’re not planning on reading or watching any of the works that we’re covering, then. Unless you wanted to read along with us?”

��I don’t need that shit to scorch my brain.” For some reason, he winced, scrunching his eyes shut for a moment, and you waited in the dark for him.

“You have enough going on?”

He pried his eyes open, blinking blearily at you, still grinning, still smug. “Yeah,” he said, and he dug his left hand out to stare at the back of it, leather shining in the sunlight while he wiggled his fingers. He bent across the table to grab your coffee, fingers spidering over the rim to grip it, and he brought it to his mouth. “This is fucking awful; what’s wrong with you?” he asked after an audible swallow.

“It’s not my usual order.” Closing your notebook, you crossed your arms, staring down at you and feeling more and more like you’re in a dream. “You can either tell me what your quirk is, because I know you’re lying, or you could stay? For coffee? I’ll buy you something better.”

(You would have asked what’s up with his appearance that he didn’t want you to see or feel, but considering how early in your first official meeting it was, the question may be too insensitive, especially if he were born with it.)

Touya glanced over his shoulder, saw something you couldn’t, and set your mug on the iron table with a quiet clink. “I’ve got to go,” he said, and he spun around, taking the first step away.

You slammed a hand on the table purely on guesswork based on where he left your mug, and the sound of shaking iron and tinkling porcelain resounded, distant when you heard it through his ears, yet feeling the vibrations travel through your own arms. “Tell me your goddamn quirk, you daft fucker.”

Touya paused, and he turned back to you. “That’s more like it.” He sat on your table, at the place over your lap, and he reached out towards your face. You saw yourself lean back, eyes wide, but he simply dug his fingers into your hair at your hairline, scratching your scalp and digging his nails in enough to hear the movement.

(You saw yourself frown the moment you noticed his skin was colder than the glove.)

“Barking at me like that is how information is usually torn out of me. Makes me feel at home,” he said, a bit too cheerfully for your liking, “You can be trained to be a bitch towards me yet.”

“Touya,” you said, raising your head to embolden more of his touch, “Who’s—who’s been treating you like that? You don’t deserve it.”

“Shut up.” Touya laid his hand flat atop your head, the weight of it pushing down on you. “Sure, I lied. Said I didn’t have a quirk. Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.” Your tongue swiped over your lower lip, and Touya’s gaze darted to it. “I want any scrap of you I can get. Everything I’ve already learnt I’ve filed away in my heart: your name, the way you speak, your hatred of your brother’s fish and living at home—”

The hand on your hand slipped to slap over your mouth. “Jesus Christ, stop noticing things about me. Freak. Goddamn.” Touya lifted his hand off of you, and based on his perspective, he ran it through his own hair. “So that you don’t go making your own intrusive observations, I’ll tell you about my quirk: I effectively don’t have one anymore. I used it a lot, and it fucked me up. So, for my own self-preservation, which I’ve been told I should value, I can’t use it anymore. Good enough for you?”

“Great enough for me,” you said, “I’ll take care not to talk about my quirk or hero course stuff too much. I don’t want you to feel left out.”

“Holy shit,” said Touya, and he broke eye contact with you to stare at his boots (scuffed, black, but new, so the scuffing must be intentional), blinking rapidly before pressing—probably—his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids.

Something was deeply wrong with this man. You needed him to kiss you again. You opened your mouth to ask him to, but wooziness and your dry throat called; the ripped page of your notebook you’d been staring at dripped back into your own perspective at a glacial pace. You heard the scuffle of his shuffling off the iron table and the grit of his boot against the concrete, and when you grappled for him in the dark, your hand clenched around nothing.

You rubbed your eyes until the vertigo passed, and when you opened them, Touya was gone.

***

Later that afternoon, you were scrolling through your phone on the end cushion of one of Todoroki’s couches in the living room in a poor effort not to gawk at everything. You expected some of it could be excused, since it’s your first time at his house, but good God, rich people were insane. This was the biggest, traditionally-styled building (estate?) you’ve been in since you toured a castle preserved from the Edo period—but it was apt, you supposed, since Endeavor had been acting as a sort of daimyo of his own.

Dormer gables. Hip-and-gable roofs, with golden shachihoko shibi cupping the corners—though instead of the customary sea monsters, if your eyes weren’t deceiving you, they appeared to be made for flame-swimming instead of in water. A recessed entryway, its wooden flooring tiles hand-cut in tiny designs to make you aware of the space, with brand-new guest slippers already provided before you could ask. Todoroki’s house (estate?) screamed business, or at the very least, don’t touch anything.

At least the living room in which you sat stiffly had a touch of clear modernity—and so it seemed that the inner rooms actually revealed that they were living in the modern age, but the barrier of traditional architecture to get to actual living space heaved a hyperawareness of outsider onto your shoulders.

Todoroki himself, bless him, moved around like the elegant austerity didn’t even occur to him. Waiting for Midoriya with the rest of you, he’d helped everyone spread out their notes and manga over the short table and floor, gathering blankets for everyone when it occurred to him that not everyone’s body tolerated temperature like he did (since the house was kept oddly cold), and, instead of offering tea, like he’d said his sister would expect him to do, he provided a peculiar but pleasant combination of snacks: cheap-ass cup noodles, strawberry chardonnay-flavoured cheese on soup crackers, old mooncakes that had been in the fridge for a month but he declared were still good, and gummy worms for Monoma.

The bitch even bought everyone a fancy little drink according to personal preferences—and no one had even requested them or informed him what to get, but he’d gotten everything right, regardless (you suspected he’d asked Shinsou for help).

“Thank you,” you said, turning over in your hands the poshest bottle of pink lemonade you’ve ever seen, “You’re a very gracious host, Todoroki.”

He slurped his own caramel frappe. “I’m very excited to have so many friends over at once.”

“Of course,” you said, your weight jostling on the couch cushion as Todoroki sat next to you, “I can’t believe we didn’t think of going off-campus to watch this shit earlier. There’s way more privacy here.”

“Our doors are always open nowadays,” he said, and when Sero tapped Todoroki on his shoulder to help open another package of cheese, he held up a finger to pause your conversation.

Smiling softly, you twisted off the bottlecap of your lemonade, holding it up to your nose to inhale that pressurised burst of lemon scent, and—oh, hey, you felt a little lightheaded as you did so. Two times in one day? That’s new. At least it was from your perspective this time, so you didn’t have to worry about knocking anyone’s drink over.

“Hey,” you said, snuggling down into the couch, your palm atop the opening of your drink (when Monoma shot you a questioning look with the phone call hand signal, you nodded, and he relaxed and leaned towards you, his teeth cutting into his lower lip as he grinned). “Funny how we keep meeting like this, yeah?” you asked, feeling soft and full of love for this fucker, and you reached towards the coffee table to set down your drink and grab a flower-shaped mooncake. “I guess I can stop hiding from my reflection now, sweet boy.” You made eye contact with yourself in the reflection of the Torodokis’ enormous flatscreen, and you held your mooncake up in a toast before biting into it. “Hope you’re well. You seemed stressed earlier. I’m currently—”

Your phone rang in your lap, and you narrowed your eyes at the unknown number before answering it. “Hello?”

“Where the hell are you right now?”

“Wow,” you said, chewing, “No greeting, even? No mention of how much that you miss my voice or my lips now that you’ve—”

“Just tell me where the fuck you are,” said Touya, at the same time that Monoma’s eyebrows shot to his hairline at the kissing implication, and he thumped Shinsou in the chest for him to look up from his phone.

“Does it matter?”

“I told you my quirk shit when I didn’t want to, so fucking tell me,” said Touya, sounding muffled and, again, like he stood near traffic.

Swallowing mooncake in a rush and choking a bit, you cleared your throat and said, “Fine. I don’t know why it matters that much to you, but I’m at a friend’s house. Our anime analysis group has gotten too big for the dorms, so we’re trying out his place.”

You had to ensure the call hadn’t dropped due to his long response time. “What friend?” he asked.

You raised a brow, though he couldn’t see you. “I doubt you would know—shit!”

Struggling to tear the plastic covering the cheese, Todoroki had accidentally slammed his elbow into your collarbone.

“Geez.” You winced at Todoroki and rubbed the spot. “No, no, I’m fine,” you said when he reached towards your collarbone, his fingertips already icing over, “You may want to go get a knife to open that, though.”

Nodding soberly, Todoroki lowered his thawing hand and rose from the couch, tossing the cheese to himself. “I’ll do that. Anyone need anything from the kitchen while I’m up?”

While the others answered, you spoke into your phone again, hand on your chest. “Sorry about that. I guess if you paid attention to the news last year, you’d know him: one of Endeavor’s kids, Todoroki Shouto.”

The soulmate connection started to trickle away, but Touya stayed on the phone. “Do you not have any other friends who have a place?” Plastic crinkled on his end, along with a car horn in the background. “Hell, the library downtown rents out portable TVs—”

“Why should I be at another friend’s house?” Touya wouldn’t be able to see the reflection of your self-satisfied smirk now, but surely he could hear it in your voice. “Jealous that I’m at the house of another man?”

Touya gagged into the speaker. “Someone’s full of herself. Don’t wait up for me,” he said, and he hung up.

You pulled your phone away from your ear, pouting at the call screen before creating a new contact.

“You didn’t tell us you’d met your soulmate,” said Shinsou.

“It only happened this afternoon,” you said, saving his number under Touya 🐠🚷 (the fish for the koi pond he hated, and the no pedestrians sign for his apparent propensity to jaywalk), “and I’m not sure what to make of him. I was hoping to form my own opinion before telling all of you.”

Todoroki perked up and tilted his ear skyward at the sound of the front door opening. “I’ll get it,” he said, standing, “I bet that’s my brother. He’s back four hours late from physical therapy; I hope everything’s okay.”

Your eye twitched.

(Todoroki had warned everyone before coming over that his family would probably be in and out. Less so Fuyumi and Natsuo, because Fuyumi had recently moved in with her significant other and Natsuo had his own place near campus, but more of his parents and Dabi. Well. Touya, now, but you had your own Touya to worry about.

You’d met Dabi. Twice, during freshman year. When he’d been a villain, instead of whatever was happening with him in recovery. Rather formulative experiences for you, ones you only permitted yourself to think about in the hollowness of lonely nights—but you didn’t need those memories anymore, because you had your Touya now.

Remember? You have your own Touya. You don’t need another.)

“Do you want me to carry that for you?”

Todoroki’s voice trailed behind boot scuffing and a sliding door, and in Dabi/Touya shuffled—hoodie yanked up (layered over a longer coat?), strings pulled firmly around his face, plastic bags from the convenience store down the street on his wrist, very determinedly staring at the floor as he strode past behind the couch instead of at the four of you strewn across his living room, ducking into the kitchen as soon as possible.

You’d barely seen him for five seconds, and your heart was going to beat out of your chest. Or maybe that was just the bruise forming on your collarbone.

Todoroki nodded after his brother, standing behind your place at the couch. “There’s no ceremonial introduction, I assume. That’s my brother, Touya. You’ve all,” said Todoroki, scratching the back of his neck, “met him before. But! If you’re nervous, we will not be seeing much of him. He doesn’t spend much time in the main house; he lives in the old-fashioned teahouse towards the back of the garden. Privacy, you know, even though we’ve got to keep him close.” Todoroki wetted his lips as he looked towards the emptied shrine on the far wall. “He shouldn’t be any trouble, but I may have to zip out on occasion to help him. Not all of his skin grafts are taking.”

The doorbell rang, and Todoroki started towards it. “That must be Midoriya. Sero, would you please pull up the next episode?”

When Todoroki stepped into the entryway to greet him, you couldn’t suppress your curiosity. “I’m gonna go pour this over ice,” you said, gesturing with your pink lemonade bottle, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Shinsou—the only one whom you’ve told about what happened with Dabi back then—shot you a crooked grin, but he distracted Monoma from noticing exactly what you were doing while you sneaked away down the hall.

His back was to you. Water flowed out of the kitchen faucet while he yanked his hoodie over his head and tossed it over the back of a chair, and he did the same with a longer, black coat—similar in shape to the coat he’d worn as a villain but not the same one. Maybe he’d grown accustomed to having the weight of it on his body, so what he wore now was a type of security blanket. While he ran a spoon under the faucet, he fumbled behind himself for his plastic, convenience store bag and fished out a pudding cup.

Backtracking a little, you purposely made your footsteps audible so that you wouldn’t startle him, and you entered the kitchen, shaking your lemonade for more noise to alert him of your presence.

His white brows pinched when he saw you, and he hastily shut the water off and scooted off to the edge of the counter while he put his stuff away, his movements rigid and close to his chest.

“Hi,” you said (oh, my God, you were talking to Dabi; holy shit), “Where do the cups live?”

Dabi blinked slowly, unable to look at you, and he peeled the lid off of his pudding cup. He glanced towards the door and back towards his stuff on the table, and he pointed towards a cabinet, his finger returning to his fist in a rush to get back what he was doing.

“Thank you,” you said, opening the one he’d pointed to. Oh. Fancy. Lots of choices. “I hope we’re not bothering you. We can—we can always leave, if you need us to. Or you could join us, if you like.” You turned around in time to see the flat of his tongue lick pudding off of the lid, stitches showing at the back of his tongue, and in the moment where he ducked his head, the tiny, unblemished part of his skin near the corners of his eyes blazing pink, your brain short-circuited.

(Dabi had been your first kiss.

During freshman year, in the week of that first round of internships, you’d been planted in Hosu City, around the time Stain closed his fist around the public consciousness. On a night patrol, your mentor had slipped into a restaurant that the yakuza frequented and stationed you in a nearby alley to watch for other yakuza incoming from the employees’ entrance.

An official sidekick had caught up with you—late forties, spandex, unrecognisable. You’d been terse in your replies, since he’d been essentially blowing your cover, but he couldn’t take a hint.

It’d only occurred to you that he’d been hitting on you when he’d propped an arm on the brick wall above your head to dominate your personal space, and an all-consuming dread had erupted in your stomach when he’d said, moving to take your chin in hand, “You know, you remind me a lot of my daughter.”

Before he’d been able to touch you, something rabid and ravenous about the size of a labrador had tackled him to the ground, the force knocking him almost two whole meters away, and the thing ripped into the sidekick’s chest, blood spewing—and somehow having the sense to cover his mouth to stifle the shouts.

In the moment you’d moved to get a better look at what was, in retrospect, a nomu, another figure had stepped between you and the sidekick, his own arm resting on the wall to keep you from getting closer.

“Hey,” Dabi had said, an easy grin stretching across his face, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about anything. Just testing some shit out for someone. So long as you don’t go making any noise, I’ll let you walk away.”

Dabi hadn’t made his villain debut back then, but even so, it hadn’t seemed like it was just testing something out for someone; this guy had seemed his own brand of dangerous. Your gaze had started to creep towards the source of crunching, but he’d tapped your cheek, making you look at him. “Nuh-uh. Keep your eyes on me. If you don’t know anything, I don’t have to kill you, do I?”

“I, I’m—” You’d steeled yourself somewhat, your hands clenching into fists at your sides. “I’m not just gonna let you kill a hero while I stand here.”

Again, Dabi had stopped you before you could take a full step, this time by gripping your jaw, letting it rest in his palm while his fingers dug into your cheeks. “Can’t call him a hero. Was comparing you to his daughter—didn’t you hear? And it looked like he was gonna assault you. Some guys aren’t meant to be fathers.” His syrupy gaze had fallen to your neck, and he’d squeezed your face. “Jesus, your heart is beating like crazy.”

“I don’t normally calm myself down to the sounds of someone getting maimed,” you’d said, blood splattering in the air behind him, “Oh! Fuck.” You’d scrunched your eyes shut and curled in on yourself, trying to block out the sound of bones snapping.

“Some hero you are.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you’d said, “You’re more of one than I am, tonight. Thanks—?”

“Dabi,” he’d said, and at the time, it had just been a name. When you’d pried open your eyes, he’d been smiling, mouth closed, head tilted at being called a hero. You’d smiled back, but at an enormously strident crack from behind him, you’d had a full-body jolt. “Fucking hell, calm down,” he’d said, his arm sliding from the wall to your upper arm, “For once, you’re safe with me.” Seeing you try to look over his shoulder again, Dabi had dragged you forward by the jaw to kiss you, closed-mouthed but hot, leaning into you, his mouth overwhelming you with hardly any effort on his end, and he’d kept kissing you, stroking your cheek with the back of his hand, until the nomu slinked into silence.

Dabi had broken off when the nomu scuttled farther down the alley. “Right.” He’d taken a deep breath. “You gonna tell anyone about me?”

You’d shaken your head, confused as to why he seemed more concerned about descriptions of him rather than descriptions of the murder. But he’d been nice to you. Had given you a hell of a first kiss. “I can say someone in the yakuza killed him.”

He’d roughly patted your cheek and dropped away from you, stowing his hands in the deep pockets of his coat. “His death isn’t worth reporting, but I’ll take it.” He’d spun on his heel, raising a lazy hand in a wave as he disappeared into the night. “You’d better hope you never see me again.”)

And now, here he was, hunched over shitty gas station snacks in his family kitchen, a spoon hanging out of his mouth while he stowed things away. His naturally white hair showed now, and…he seemed terribly shy. Dabi, shy. Fucking ridiculous. But, you supposed, there’s guilt and shame around, uh, doing what he did. And—and his body was horribly, horribly mangled and mottled. He might not think anyone should look at him.

Todoroki (Shouto, you supposed you should think of him as, since Dabi was a Todoroki, too) had mentioned not all of Dabi’s skin grafts were taking. It was obvious. He’d burnt up during the war, and while you’d heard Recovery Girl and Eri had worked on him, despite outside protests that he wasn’t worth it, he still was very clearly cobbled together.

He still had a lot of staples, though faded stitches filled in new gaps, and those that remained had been replaced with medical-grade staples that wouldn’t get infected. Patches of successful grafts left a waning diamond pattern, particularly around his neck. Very little purple, overall, but going by the scars, you could still tell where it had been. Based on his appearance, he shouldn’t be alive, let alone able to walk around.

But he scooted with such speed out of your way when you got ice out of the freezer. “But really, you could stick around with us, if you wanted to. No pressure, though, if you want to be alone.” Calmly. You were calmly popping ice out of a tray and letting them clatter into your glass. “We’re watching Hunter x Hunter right now, if you’re interested. Have you read or watched it before, either the 1999 or 2011 version? Do you have a favourite character?”

Dabi clutched his snacks and discarded clothes to his chest, almost at the door, with his eyes darting all around the kitchen except on you.

Yeah. Must be shy. You were one of the U.A. students who fought in the war, after all, even though you didn’t personally fight him in the end. Probably feels guilty about the whole thing. Shy could be refreshing, after those bitches in the living room and your cunning soulmate.

Finally, tentatively, Dabi shifted his belongings to his right arm, and he raised his left to pat his throat, swallowing so that his Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Oh,” you said, ice melting in your hand, “I’m sorry. Are you on vocal rest? Vocal cords messed up somehow?”

After a moment, Dabi nodded. He edged towards the hallway.

“Okay. I hope you feel better soon,” you said, and you poured your lemonade over the ice. “I’ve kept you long enough. Please go rest; I hope we don’t disturb you further.”

Before you finished, he’d already skibbled off, his house shoes slipping on the wood.

***

(The second time you’d met Dabi hadn’t been as hands-on, but it’d still left an odd impression.

It’d been in an urban jungle-type battle, after knowing his involvement the League but before his backstory reveal, and you and some classmates had been fighting a handful of PLF-aligned villains.

You’d slithered underneath a lean-to created by a partially collapsed building to catch your breath, along with shielding yourself from an explosion Bakugou had been building up. You hadn’t even known Dabi was in the group you were chasing, but he’d slinked underneath the same, protective ruins as you had, barely slipping underneath the cover before Bakugou’s explosion had shaken it.

Dabi had braced himself on the crumbling entrance, scrunching his face away from the explosion, and once it’d stopped, he’d noticed you were barely two paces away from him, sweat dribbling down your face the same as it’d been down his.

You still didn’t know if his startled, constipated expression had been of recognition or simple surprise to see someone else taking cover under something that could collapse and kill them. He’d taken in your U.A. gym uniform—your personal hero costume had been in repairs that week—and there’d been a couple of heavy seconds where neither of you had done anything besides pant and let sweat drip onto the rubble.

He'd slipped out first, since he’d been blocking the entrance, and you’d left soon after. You hadn’t been five steps out of the lean-to before someone on the PLF side had destroyed it, and in the privacy of your heart, you liked to think that Dabi had waited until you were out to raze it.)

***

You made it a habit to call Touya whenever the soulmate bond activated. Though he never initiated a call, he answered most of yours. What else was he going to do, if it were on your side, besides sit there in the dark? He continued to be hold information about himself like a miser clutching coins, but you found it refreshing to have a charismatic grouch of a pseudo-pen pal.

You’d closed the door of a library study room behind you as you called him this time, setting your stack of books on the table.

“You’re finally reading something besides manga? I thought your brain was gonna rot,” he said upon picking up.

You slung the strap of your purse over a chair. “No greeting? No admittance of missing the melodious sound of my voice?”

“Why in the hell would I do that,” he said over the screech of pulling out your chair.

“Because you missed the melodious sound of my voice?” You pulled out your notebook, flipped it to a new page, and fossicked around for a pen. Clicking the one you found, you reached for the first book in your stack, a rudimentary sign language dictionary, and you jotted down a list of common words as they came to you, such as thank you, help, and, of course, the all-important cat.

Touya clicked his tongue. “Are you seriously gonna make me study with you?”

You made the final stroke in the word pudding. “I don’t expect you to absorb the information. If you rather I read manga, I can go to that section for a while. Pick out a shoujo.”

“Get fucked with that otaku shit,” said Touya, and—he must have had his phone on speaker, because a couple of people were speaking to each other nearby about what must be the latest Assassins’ Creed, and the sound changed after some scrapes, with Touya sounding closer. “Why study sign language?”

“There’s someone in my life who recently became unable to talk all of the time,” you said, “and I’d like to help give him some way to communicate.”

“Just text him,” said Touya, “Well—never mind. Who’d wanna text you, anyway?”

“Sometimes, people put away their phones, Touya. Have you heard of it?” You drew a line down the half of your paper to make a new column, one sorting the words in groups—places, family members, requests, and the like.

“What are you getting out of it?” Touya must have scratched somewhere on his face, the sound coming over the phone. “You makin’ fun of him? Making him feel bad? If he wants to talk to you, he can just write shit down.”

“I think he might hate it because of how slow it is. And what if I luck out, and he knows sign already? Then half of my work is done for me,” you said, listing off all of the terms for family members, “Text-to-speech may be okay, but I don’t know. Still slow.”

“He probably doesn’t even want to talk to you,” said Touya, “let alone learn something for you. That’s a lot to ask for someone you ain’t fuckin’.”

You hummed and ignored him. You titled a new column Body, and the first word under it was burns. Followed by healing, surgery, hands, skin, hurt, and rest. For the first time in a while, Touya’s emotions were strong enough for you to feel, but you couldn’t name them. More like some pitiful, fearful soup, if anything, and other stuff you couldn’t put your finger on.

His voice still came in confidently derisive, though. “What kind of fucked up guy are you spreading your legs for, since those are what you’re writing down for his body? Seems like you’d be better off as a cocksleeve for someone else actually capable of fucking you.”

“Oh, rude! Rude!” Scowling, you set down your pen. “That’s rude to both me and him. I’m not talking to you anymore. Enjoy studying, asshole.” You flipped to a random page in the dictionary and started memorising, a bit too pissed to be productive for real, and you kept it up—if Touya were going to be here, then he’s not learning productive sign language, either. Try using marble and mare in everyday conversation, jackass.

Later, you caught yourself zoning out while staring at an entry, only shaking yourself out of it when Touya grumbled under his breath for you to turn the page already.

***

Todoroki paused the episode when the pizza arrived.

Moaning way too sensually, Kaminari stretched his arms above his head and arched his back. “My electricity is cooler than Killua’s, right? I have more swag than him?”

“No.”

“In your dreams.”

“Yikes.”

“Wrong,” said Shinsou, pelting him in the face with a popcorn kernel.

Kaminari picked it up off the floor and ate it mournfully. “I’m getting beaten by a fictional twelve year old.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you announced, pushing yourself up from your seat between Shinsou and Monoma (which was just as well, since they were comparing scans of the current manga chapter over your lap), and you set off with the intention going to the farthest bathroom to increase your chances of bumping into Dabi.

No such luck, even though you deliberately stomped your slippers as loudly as you could to try to draw him out. Sighing, you backtracked to a tiny bathroom you’ve used before, one that wasn’t as intimidatingly wealthy as the rest of the house and therefore actually felt like it was meant to be used, and you opened the creaking door onto an exhausted, shirtless Dabi trying to rub some sort of cream on the back of his neck, a massive jar open on the sink, blood seeping down his biceps at the strain around his staples.

Both of you froze. He took a quick glance to the gobs of cream on his hands and managed to kick the door shut from his seat on the closed toilet, but your foot caught in the door, which struck your nose and cheekbone, with you yelping and clutching the area.

“Sorry! I’m sorry,” you said through the crack in the door, shakily dragging your bruised foot out of it, “I didn’t know anyone was even in this side of the house. Are you okay? No, wait, sorry again—you’re bleeding; of course you’re not okay. I’m sorry.” You checked your nose for bleeding of your own, but nothing leaked out of your nose. “Can I—may I help with whatever you’re doing?”

No answer. But he hadn’t shut the door.

“Fine,” you said, and you spoke into the crack, only able to make out the granite on the near side of the sink. “I don’t know what’s going on with you nowadays, but I hope you’re doing okay. Or that you’ll be okay soon, at least. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through, and I’m sorry you had to go through it. But I can grasp, I think, that having a bunch of your brother’s friends over can be intimidating and isolating. If nothing else, I’d like to get to know you better—or you could just get to know me better, if you don’t feel like sharing—so that having all of us over isn’t as terrible. I’m sorry we’re bursting into your life when you’re working out a lot of stuff in recovery—”

Dabi yanked open the door, brow furrowed, and instead of looking at you, he clamped his slimy hands on the sink and stood on his toes to arch towards the mirror, opening his mouth wide to breathe hot air onto it, teeth bared, as if he were roaring. In its fleeting fog, he traced out kanji, streaked with lotion and hidden by his left hand as he wrote, and he blew over it a final time before stepping back and jabbing at the message.

Stop apologising.

“Ah—oh,” you said, while Dabi squatted and rooted through the cabinet under the sink, “Okay. I’ll try. Thank you for saying so.” How do you talk to someone who was formerly 1) an S-tier villain and, more importantly, 2) your longest-running crush?

Dabi plopped a meagre first-aid kit on the counter and pointed to the source of bleeding on one of his arms, the inside bicep where two staples had come loose.

“I don’t know shit about first-aid,” you said, reaching for the kit anyway, “I know you have to keep pressure on it, and stuff, but—”

And so the first time Dabi looked you in the eyes was to shoot you an incredulous, suspicious glare that accompanied his snatching the kit back from you, clutching it out of your reach. Relaxing once it was in his hands, he hesitated a moment, shifting his jaw, before nudging the open jar of lotion with his knuckle, reverting to his fixed gaze on his feet.

“I can do that,” you said, heart racing, “You wanna—why don’t you sit back down?”

Not lotion, you noted, as Dabi pulled out disinfectant wipes and a roll of gauze near its end, burn cream. Aw. You dipped your first three fingers into it (heavy, roll-around slimy, like holding a frog) and hoped to God that your soulmate didn’t tune in during this. Touya didn’t like a lot of things you did, but he’d probably loathe your gawking over the scarred back of someone who wasn’t him.

Yeah, Touya would probably hate how you would hone in, laser-sharp, each time Dabi’s muscles flexed as he wrapped his wound, how the space between his shoulder blades with the tiny dent along his spine (well, his spine indented at the top of his back, where he was broader and still held muscle, and poked out towards his lower back as he bent over) held your focus far too long to be impersonal—and you got to touch it. You kept the contact to your fingertips, because as much as you wanted to flatten your hands to feel every moving tendon, you didn’t want to scare him. He’s probably not used to outside touch, and you shouldn’t come on too strongly, especially when someone else’s soul was fucking bound to yours.

But as your fingers smoothed over the marks around his shoulders where burns used to be, skin cold to the touch, as Dabi turned his head to the side just barely so that he could watch you out of his periphery, you found it hard to remind yourself that you already had a Touya. Can’t have two.

“I know it’s none of my business, but, uh, if you’re on vocal rest this often, I could—I could help you learn some sign language?” You scratched underneath your eye in a nervous gesture and smeared some of the burn cream on your cheek. “Nothing intensive. Only simple, everyday stuff, like—well. I don’t know what frequents your vocabulary. You don’t have to, but I’m offering. Just in case.”

In the mirror, Dabi halted in tying the gauze to glare up at you, his lip curling up in flash of a sneer.

“Okay, that’s cool. That’s fine. I can—I can leave a sign language book with your brother, if you—if you ever change your mind.” You nodded, just to have some sort of reaction he could see, and he tucked away the disinfectant wipes and tossed the empty roll of gauze into the trash bin. “Hey,” you said, noting how he’d only bled at his left arm, which was covered with mottled patches of skin, staples, and stitches, along with the faint diamond-pattern of skin grafts, while his right arm needed no medical attention, pale and unblemished without any sign of damage, “What’s up with—if you’re comfortable with sharing, why doesn’t your right arm have any scars? Was Recovery Girl able to heal that more effectively, or something?”

Holding your gaze in the mirror, Dabi raised his eyebrows, nearly vanishing under the drooping, white spikes of his hair, and he reached over with his left hand to rub his thumb over his right shoulder and curving down into his armpit.

He actually laughed (a laugh through his nose, yes, and one without the humming sort of vocalisation usually accompanying a laugh through a nose, but a laugh nevertheless) at how hard you jumped when he popped off what was apparently a prosthetic.

***

“If you hate gardening this much, why keep doing it?” you asked, once again trapped in Touya’s perspective late at night while he tended to a traditional, Japanese garden. You lay flat on your back in bed, hands and phone resting on your chest (laptop closed to the side. Your essay was due at eight o’clock in the morning. Would Present Mic accept late work due to soulmate interference?).

“Lots of dumb fucking reasons that all fold in together,” said Touya, shovelling gravel out of a wheelbarrow and into the man-made brook he was trying to shape, “One: my stupid fucking family has decided that doing this earthy shit would calm me down. Zen gardening, or whatever.”

“Oh, do you have issues controlling your anger, Touya?”

“Stop that. Two.” Gravel pittered off the shovel blade, falling into the trickling water with a series of tiny plops. “One of my brothers brought up how Mom always liked the garden but was stopped from taking care of it herself, and since I did some shit to—it’s not like I could’ve helped it; they were keeping stuff from her, too. Anyway, Mom’s fucking sad nowadays. Better, but sad.” Touya sank the shovel into the gravel to lean on it, tracking the flow of the water for a moment, twisting through the previous path currently being overtaken by moss and fallen stone. “And my brother thinks the garden being fancy again will make our mom happy, especially if I’m the one to do it. Dick. Saying if we hired people to do it, it wouldn’t be the same. Started with just the damn fish, but now the whole fucking thing’s my job. It’s fucking shit. It’s blackmail and family obligation and rent all at once. It’s a fuckin’ nasty trick.”

Touya dug into the wheelbarrow again. “And my fa—that guy had the nerve to suggest that I needed something to do during the day. As if I’m not busy enough.”

“During the day? Touya, I’ve only seen you garden at night.”

“Because it’s too damn hot outside all the time. And I don’t want anyone watching me. I’m no one’s business. But I bet they’d like staring out of a window at me, while I break my fucking body again moving all of these shitty rocks and shaping Mom’s fucking evergreens.” He shovelled with deep malice. “Did you fucking know that there’s goddamn symbolism in these shitty gardens? That you can’t just put things anywhere without it meaning something? Somehow ponds are supposed to be oceans. Rocks are supposed to be mountains. Forced perspective shit, paired with tenets of Zen and Shinto, and it’s the pettiest, most unnecessary bullshit I’ve ever had to deal with, and I dealt with a friend’s abominable driving for years. Never got any better at it, even though I got fucking motion sick.”

He knelt, and when two, fat glops of Touya’s sweat dripped onto the stone at the impact, you rather enjoyed the gentle wafting about your dorm room at the blades of your ceiling fan.

He must have felt your appreciation. “Stop that. I’m making a point. Look at this shit,” he said, gesturing to the brook and then up at the three-quarter moon, “I’ve gotta change the course of the water, because it’s better to face towards the moon to capture its reflection, and I’ve gotta make it somehow cascade or waterfall at some point over there.” He pointed far across the garden towards a flickering pair of stone lanterns. “How am I supposed to do that? I can’t even make it flow through gravel right. I might have to move some of the stepping stones again. I fucking hate those things. They’re too heavy for one person, and I’ve already had to rearrange them because some of them weren’t fucking weathered or natural-looking enough.”

“Sure. Death to aesthetics,” you said, blindly feeling around for a pack of gum you kept in your bedside table, “I’d come help you if I could, but somebody—”

“You’re not getting a location out of me, princess.”

You paused, hand on the knob of the first drawer, and a wide, smug smile broke across your face (Princess, Touya? You’re gonna call me princess? You sure you don’t care about me?).

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I could feel it,” said Touya, flexing his fingers on his knees, “so shut up.”

Gloved hands clenched into fists, he glared at the brook, the gravel, up at the moon, and back into the water.

“You know, it looks like if you moved most of the gravel to one side, the water might flow the direction you need it to.”

“Who’s the one busting their ass here, me or you?” But he plunged his hands into the water, grabbed heaping fistfuls of rocks, and patted them onto the far side of the stone bed.

“Touya,” you said, feeling around in your drawer for the pack of gum, “Take your gloves off! You’re gonna ruin the leather.”

“Like I care.” He dragged more gravel underwater. “If I took ’em off, you’d see my hands.”

“Come off of it, Touya. I bet they’re perfectly fine,” you said, successfully grabbing gum and sliding your drawer shut, “Hands are often the most attractive part of a man.”

He paused, water flowing around his arms up to his elbows (he wouldn’t roll up his sleeves, either. Stubborn boy. He must hate whatever’s going on with him). “Not the dick?” He sounded like he was grinning.

“Not always. Some of them look like sad, sea creatures,” you said, unwrapping your gum into your phone’s speaker to annoy him, “It takes talent to have a pretty cock. Hands, however, can easily be lusted over because of what they’re capable of. Or what you know they’ve done.”

(Hee hoo hah, like burn down a city. You’re so normal about it.)

“Not how they look?”

“Appearance can help, but it’s not the whole cow,” you said, chewing while the flavour faded fast.

Touya scoffed, his fingers sinking into gravel. “You makin’ fun of me?”

What? “Of course not. Why?”

“Don’t say shit like that to get on my good side. I’m more than aware I ain’t got anything besides my shitty personality goin’ for me.” He cleared his throat. “That sign language guy got anything I don’t?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You sure seem obsessed with him,” said Touya, leaning more deeply into the water, soaking his hoodie even more, “even though he sounds pathetic. You tryin’ to fix him to make yourself look good?”

“Of course not. I know no one can fix anyone else. He has to choose to do that himself,” you said, “Not that there’s anything about him that merits fixing.”

Laughing (oh? hot), Touya scooped a handful of gravel out of the wheelbarrow to add it to the far side. “Yeah, you’re fucking obsessed with him. Am I not your soulmate?”

You rolled your eyes, even though he couldn’t see it (and…you…couldn’t see it). “You haven’t given me anything to obsess over, unless you want me to research gardening tips or how to breed carp.”

“I would love for you to be obsessed with breeding, sweet—”

“Oh, my God, you have to ease into that sort of thing, Touya.”

He pulled his hands out of the brook, drenched sleeves gushing water back into it. “D’you want me to start with how much I wanna suck on your perfect tits?”

“Touya,” you said carefully, shoving the gum to one cheek, “Is everything okay? You’re acting—strange.”

“What do you—”

“Where’s the blind hatred for me? Where’s the disdain?”

Sitting back on his knees, Touya shoved his leather-wet-dripping hands into the damp, double pocket of his hoodie with a muted slosh. “You think I hate you?”

“You’re that rude to people you don’t hate?”

Water seeped through the pocket and through his jeans, visibly darker in the moonlight and soaking his thighs. “Fuck off. I mean—what I mean is that I’m not used to people like you. Who don’t talk like me. Who aren’t mean to me back. Or who don’t seem to want anything from me. Didn’t know you really thought I was rude.”

You screwed up your face. “Who have you been hanging out with? What the hell is wrong with you? Spend time with people who like you, please?”

“No one likes me—”

“Get your head out of your ass, edgelord,” you said, sitting up in bed and holding the phone up to your mouth, “Newsflash, dipshit, it sounds like lots of people like you. Your brother, who wants to help you make your mom happy, in an easy, physical way that you’re more than capable of. Your mom, who sounds like she’s happier now that you’re back in her life. The rest of your goddamn family, who want you close by so that they can help you if you ever fucking accepted it. Your stupid friends who are into Assassins’ Creed.”

“Stop fucking noticing things about—”

“And me. I like you, dipshit. Get over yourself. You’re digging yourself your own lonely, self-deprecating hole, where I guess you’re at your most comfortable. But tonight alone you’ve shown in your garden that you fucking hate digging holes. They mean unnecessary work.”

Inhaling sharply, you threw your phone into the bedspread, but all that came through was a distant deer scare, bamboo hitting rock.

“Since when do you like me?” he asked, pushing on his knees to stand.

The artificial-yellow light from your lamp starting creeping in around the rim of your vision, blotting out parts of Touya’s silhouette in the moonlight. “I talk to you, don’t I? I wouldn’t even acknowledge the bond if I weren’t open to—we’ve been hanging out. You didn’t know?”

“Like I would know what that looks like,” said Touya, the walls of your room coming into view while Touya pulled his own phone out of his inner pocket, tapping the screen to see how long the call has lasted, “Like I would know how someone like you would behave when they like me.”

“Stay on the goddamn phone,” you said in the moment his thumb hovered over the end call button, the last thing you made out before fully sinking back into your dorm room, “If you don’t know what I—well, what does your love look like, Touya? What do you do when you like someone?”

“Sexually? Romantically?”

“Not necessarily,” you said, pissed to have the connection severed and sliding off of the bed to turn off the lights, “Just when you care for someone at all.”

“Gimme a minute,” came Touya’s voice, and after you flipped the lights and the ceiling fan off, you wandered over to your window, switched your phone off speaker, and held it to your ear as you stared up at the same moon Touya was under, and you waited.

“Right, I don’t know for sure,” he said after a while (but it sounded like he’d stopped dealing with the gravel to think about it), “but this is the only thing that’s coming to mind. Before I was living at home again, me and some friends didn’t have consistent sources of food. Don’t interrupt to say you’re sorry. But. So, whenever I’d, uh, buy stuff. From a store. I’d make sure I got some sort of snack for whoever I was with, even though we were all too proud to ask for shit. Didn’t really think about doing it on purpose. But I guess I did.”

“You are deliciously, delightfully, tender as fuck,” you said, clenching a fist over your heart, your boob jostling with the fervent impact (and it pleased you knowing that Touya would’ve laughed if he’d seen), and you kept talking over his sounds of disapproval. “And I am gonna cook for you. I am going to set you a table so vast that you’re gonna be eating off it for a long, long time. You’re never gonna be fucking hungry ever again, Touya.”

When he didn’t answer, you worried you said the wrong thing, but you stayed on the line, listening. Two minutes later, he hung up, and you could have sworn he cut off in the middle of a wet sniffle.

***

What can you cook? What were you good at cooking that actually constituted a filling meal?

Start small, you supposed.

Fuyumi kept the Todoroki kitchen much more well-stocked than the kitchen to which you had access, and so, with welcome permission, you headed over to the estate earlier than the scheduled viewing time to prepare, with Shinsou and Todoroki hanging out in the kitchen with you.

“Jirou says she can attend,” said Todoroki, thumb swiping across his phone screen, “Turns out her tipping point was stating the merits of studying Melody’s music powers. She’s asking if Yaoyorozu may attend as well?”

“It’s your house.” Shinsou was folding his napkin into an origami frog. “If there’s a need for excuses, you can always say Yao might like—I forget his name, but he’s that character in the Phantom Troupe whose hair looks like a mop? She might like analysing how his power lets him copy anything, even though it doesn’t have the same limitations like her quirk.”

“I will mention that,” said Todoroki, nodding sagely.

The plan was simple: with a captive audience of anime nerds, you could get feedback on your cooking until it was good enough for Touya (a small part of you still cringed thinking about how he reacted to your potato wedges). You would lure your friends into a state of complacency with your smaller dishes—baked goods, and the like—until there was no escape when you served them something more filling, like soups.

Today, you were making teeny little lemon ricotta pancakes (the recipe called for them to be regular-sized, but if you made them around the size of a potato chip, it would be more accessible to eat with fingers in the living room) that gave you the air of being fancy but were actually mindless to make, it turned out, and right now, you were stirring the stewing blueberry syrup that you’d decided would be a dipping sauce rather than drizzled over—the Todorokis had an excess of white furniture, and you would like to be invited to use their kitchen again.

“I think,” you said, once the syrup was behaving like syrup when you let it dribble out of the ladle back into the pot, “I’m gonna take some to your brother. I don’t want him feeling left out, if he comes through. He’s home right now, yeah?”

“He’s in his teahouse. It’s towards the back of the garden.” Todoroki got up from the table. “Do you want me to show you?”

“I’m sure I can find it, since it’s the only building not connected to the main one,” you said, but you did accept his help finding a tray and sauce cup for the syrup, and once it was set, you picked up the tray and strode with purpose towards the garden.

Walking through its seemingly-natural landscape while balancing food and liquids proved to be miraculously easy. Their hired gardeners must be doing insane upkeep to ensure its deliberate, natural-but-not cosiness. You made a mental note to ask Touya what some of the structures symbolised, like the recurring patterns of three rocks of different heights close together. He’d know, reluctantly, since he did stuff like this, and you considered his work to be superior to this, anyway.

In the blistering sun, you had to narrow your eyes to slits, regretting that both of your hands were full so that you couldn’t shield them from the light, and you found a gated, stone path to the teahouse. Clearly, it had once been slightly dilapidated but had since been worked on; another room had been latched on to the side to double its size, judging by the change in architecture styles, and the roof reflected sunlight a little too well for its polished, stone tiles to be less than a year old.

Bracing the tray, you took the steep step onto the neatly swept, bamboo engawa running around the edge of the teahouse, and you—was the door around to the side? Around the left side of the original part of the tearoom, two shoji panels had been spread to let in sunlight upon an empty room with an actual fucking sunken hearth, unlit, with one of the same fire-fish as on the estate’s roofs for the crank’s lever. Behind what would have been the seat of honour stood a dishevelled tokonoma, devoid of scrolls or incense burners but instead housing an unzipped backpack atop a long coat, its sleeves trailing onto the floor outside the tokonoma, with sticky notes taped to its inner wall. A red-tinted wood dresser had been pushed into the corner, tissues and hand sanitiser atop it and a single stack of books propped next to it.

A pair of boots was tucked inside the open shoji. Maybe he’s asleep.

At your first step inside, you jolted so hard you had to struggle to hold onto the tray—the floor had chirped at you. Dead ringer for a bird call. Tentatively, you took another step, and it chirped again, this time with a bit of a wheeze, more artificial-sounding.

You jumped and stumbled again at another wall sliding open, giving the impression that a flock of birds had flown inside, and Dabi poked his head through the gap (you could make out the gleaming pause screen of a gaming system in the newer room behind him). His face had relaxed when he’d seen it was you, but it pinched into a strange, unnameable expression when he saw what you were carrying.

“Hi,” you said, holding out the tray, “I’ve made too many snacks for the anime group today, so I thought you might like some? I can take it away, if you don’t want any.”

Since he probably didn’t know the amount of people attending nowadays, he probably didn’t recognise your lie. Dabi held up a finger for you to wait while he exhumed a short table and two floor seats from storage in the walls, and he waited for you to sit before he did, slowly, crossing his legs on the cushion, his joints creaking.

“They’re little lemon ricotta pancakes. Todo—Shouto told me you didn’t have any food allergies, so it should be fine. That’s blueberry syrup,” you said when he pointed at it. “I’m—I guess you could say I’m practising recipes for cooking for someone else. If you don’t like it, please let me know. I’ll make it better next time.”

Dabi fiddled with two of the tiny pancakes before selecting one, inspecting it in the sunlight, and dipping it into the syrup (you went a little crazy when it dripped onto his tongue stitches, but you managed to suppress it). As he chewed and swallowed loudly, Dabi’s eyes bulged, brow furrowed, and he, panicked, fumbled around for probably his phone, patting the pockets on his jeans. Hands pausing after slapping the empty pockets on his ass, he sprung up, grabbed a pen off of the dresser, and snatched a sticky note off of the inner wall of the tokonoma. He returned to the table and knelt half on the seat, scribbling furiously, and when he pushed the sticky note to you, under a crossed-out potting soil, sledgehammer, he’d written fuck you marry me NOW.

There’s a moment in which you forgot, a moment in which you laugh, head tilted back, flooded with endorphins at your long-time, pseudo-celebrity crush liking something you made to even joke about being in a relationship with you. You opened your mouth to make some joke about how you’d like to go on a few dates first, to have some sort of courtship, but you stopped at the first word: “Touya.” You cut yourself off, brow pinched. You can’t have two.

Not that…not that Dabi/Touya could ever genuinely like you, who fought against him and now witnessed his debasement, but in the far-flung chance that he could, you should clarify about your Touya.

“Touya,” you said again, this time sober and grim, hands folded on your lap, “I know you were only joking, but I was in a quirk-related incident a while ago, and it assigned me a soulmate. So, even if you could like me, I’ve got someone waiting. Presumptuous of me to say, I know, but. I want to treat you with kindness and not make you wonder, in the case it arises. Funnily enough, his name is Touya, too—”

Your phone rang loudly in your back pocket (you kept it on loud nowadays so you could easily feel around for Touya’s call, but it’d led you to awkward moments like this, too). Dabi scowled when you brought it out to silence it and dipped another pancake in the syrup, letting it absorb what it could to tinge it purple.

“It’s him, actually. Odd timing.” Lying flat in your palm, your phone flashed an incoming call from Touya. Leaning across the table, Dabi grabbed it out of your hands to answer it, put it on speaker, and lay it in the centre of the table while he ate his soggy pancake, shaking his head when you moved to undo all of that.

“Hey,” came a tinny, raspy voice that was very much not your Touya’s, “You’re the soulmate, right?”

Dabi shouldn’t have to hear this. Before you could tap the speaker button again, Dabi swatted your hand out of the way, gesturing for you to answer.

“Uh, yeah,” you said, shifting in your seat, “Who are you? Where’s—”

“Tell Touya he left his phone at my place the next time you see through him.” A repetitive, techno instrumental played in the background (video game music?). “At Shiiiiiiiimura’s place. Yeah.”

“I can do that, Shimura,” you said, unsure if you should hold out the vowel as long as he did, and perhaps you can take advantage of the situation for a brief moment, because Dabi was staring at your phone with a constipated sort of expression as he listened. “I can’t control when the bond activates, but I’ll let him know. Do you know what sort of food he likes?”

Shimura barked out a laugh, filling the room in a wide, cleansing way you wouldn’t expect from someone with his scratchy voice. “I heard your potato wedges are shit.”

You sputtered, “He didn’t even have any—”

Dabi ended the call, frowning, shaking his head, and tipping your phone off the table to gently bounce twice when it hit the tatami. He held up a tiny pancake and made a show of looking at it, at you, and back at it, and he shot you an aggressive thumbs-up.

***

Uraraka spent an entire patrol gushing about how she would fuck the author of Hunter x Hunter if she could, so she showed up to the next get-together, along with Asui, whom everyone already thought would be friends with the story’s protagonist if he were real. When you Aoyama caught you in the act of stealing one of his posh cookbooks, you explained the situation to him, and so he tagged along to taste what you were cooking, along with supplying some of the fancier ingredients you wouldn’t’ve known how to obtain. Then you’d asked Sato for advice on how to make the swirl in a strawberry swirl loaf not go to shit, and then the group had spent a few hours discussing the good relationships with animals that Hunters are inherently supposed to have, so Kouda was summoned for his opinions.

The long of short of it was that there were many more spectators than necessary to when Dabi strode into the viewing room, drenched in sweat from his walk back home, to pelt the back of your head with a two-pack of Sakeru cheese. As you rubbed the back of your head, pulling the cold plastic from between your shirt collar and skin, he at least had the decency to drop the single-wrapped fish bread into your lap.

“Hey, Touya,” you said, grabbing his hand before he could skitter away as usual (his wide eyes couldn’t decide to look at both of your hands or at your face), “I’ve set aside slices of both strawberry swirl bread and garlic bread for you in the kitchen. I recommend heating the garlic bread up so the cheese gets all melty again, but it’s good at room temperature, too. Thank you, by the way. For these.”

Nodding hastily, Dabi tore his hand away from your in two, spasming jerks, and he slithered into the kitchen.

Though the rest were watching the show, Shinsou was turned towards you, his head tilted with an incredulous sort of smile. You stuck your tongue out at him and crinkled open the cheese.

Dabi returned with both slices on a paper towel and stood behind you at the couch for a minute, watching the episode. Shifting his weight, he pulled out his phone. “This is garbage,” came a droning, text-to-speech voice from behind.

He stood behind the couch for three more episodes.

***

Through another moonlit, soulmate connection, Touya was failing to prod stray ducks out of the koi pond with the skimmer.

“They’re tenacious little bastards,” you said, sitting on the counter of the dorm kitchen and praying to God that the oven timer wouldn’t go off while you couldn’t see.

“Why. Won’t they. Move.” Touya nudged a duck with the flat of the skimmer, its width as long as the entire duck, and the duck kept gabbing to its friends. “I have no idea if ducks upset the chemical balance of the water enough to kill koi; I’ve never seen them in here before ten minutes ago. Goddamn.” He waved the skimmer over the water’s surface, filtering some debris, and he flipped it onto a duck, who remained vexingly apathetic at the new source of wet. “Tonight was gonna be easy; I was only gonna put up windchimes; I was gonna get to go to bed early. Now I—no, no, no, don’t—!”

One duck bit at the skimmer net, and having pierced it, the duck led the rest of them to the centre of the pond, where the skimmer couldn’t reach, no matter how Touya strained.

“I fucking hate birds,” said Touya, slamming the skimmer on the ground, “and I fucking hate fish. They’re not even good when they’re alive.” Seeming to have a change of heart, Touya picked the skimmer up and took care to lean it against the stone wall of the pond. “Tell me something good, won’t you?”

Does that imply you don’t have to work on any fish dishes? “You’ll be thrilled to hear that my little anime analysis group is almost through the Hunter x Hunter anime, probably. We got to the end of the 1999 version last night.”

Touya sat and splayed his legs on the koi pond stone, watching the moon’s reflection ripple as koi tails broke surface tension. “That’ll only make your process more streamlined, since you’re not watching two episodes covering the same chapters in conjunction anymore. The Chimera Ant arc takes forever, though. You’re not almost done.”

Groping around for your oven mitts, you smiled. “How do you know that, Touya? Thought you hated—”

“What are you going to watch next?”

Stupid boy. Shy boy. “Well, Sero is pushing for Pokémon since there’s so much of it.”

“God, no,” said Touya, leaning back on his hands, “Iconic, yeah. Fun, not really, because in the games, you’re the one getting to battle and bond with the things. It’s not fun to watch someone else get to do it.”

“I can rely on you for negative reviews of everything.” Oven mitt? Oven mitt. Now, where’s its pair? “You want a pokémon, Touya? Which ones?”

“You are such a fucking child—”

“You want a pikachu, don’t you?”

“Hell, no,” Touya spat, “None of that cliché shit. Pikachu isn’t even that good. I—” Cutting himself off, he hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his gloved hands together. “You’ll shit on me for it. Forget I said anything.”

“Should I let you make fun of me first?” You slipped on the other mitt. “I’m cliché as hell. My top choice is either a certain starter or an eevolution.”

“No, I—”

“All right. How about you tell me your favourite as a kid and the one you would choose now?”

“You’re pushy as hell. When I was a kid, I wanted a Ninetales. I was—my mom had read enough for me to know about traditional kitsune,” said Touya, and he ducked his head to stare between his legs (crotch unfortunately hidden in shadow), “and Ninetales is immune to fire. It can use it and not burn up, and it’s not affected by outside fire attacks.”

The memory of rubbing burn cream across Dabi’s shoulders and how delicate his skin looked surfaced. You wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “You scared of being burned, Touya?”

Touya kicked the stone beneath his boot, scuffing it. “Just seems like it’d be neat.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” you said, wrapping your muppet-y, mitted hands around the oven handle in preparation for whenever it would go off, “and a perfectly logical pokémon to latch onto. It’s fairly popular. I don’t see how I’m supposed to make fun of you for that.”

“Sure.” Touya bent farther to re-tie his bootlaces. “I like my current choice for a dumb as hell reason, though. Shiiiiiiiimura,” said Touya, yanking the laces tightly (and he dragged out Shimura’s name, too. Was that the proper pronunciation?), “was trying to hype us up for something stupid we had to do that some of our friends were scared of. Shimura’s teacher—’scuse me, abusive fucking manipulative shithead of an adoptive father—wanted him to make a speech to show leadership, or some bullshit. Instead, Shimura pulled out his phone and showed us someone’s video of playing one of the early Pokémon games, for the battle at the end to win the game. And to defeat the last boss’s toughest Dragonite, the player used this…this fuckin’ weak-ass, all-around insignificant pokémon picked up from the beginning of the game, and it fuckin’ won. It won against the toughest opponent, and—and Shimura was saying, oh, the Venomoth is us, and we can win against our big-ass enemy, oh, ho, ho—”

“Excuse me. A Venomoth? You only use them temporarily at the beginning of the game, when you don’t have anything cool yet. They fucking suck.”

“See, you’re making fun of me. I’m not going to say anything else.” Touya leant back on his hands again, this time crossing his legs to prop his ankle on his opposite knee.

“No, I’m—I’m sorry. Sorry. First impressions. But you’re convincing me. Go on. I’m listening.”

Touya flicked water towards the ducks. “Are you gonna keep insulting—”

“I won’t! I won’t,” you said, sliding off the kitchen counter to stand directly in front of the oven, “So, Venomoths. I hear they’re fantastic.”

Touya rolled his eyes, and it was cute, you thought, how you had to follow the motion, seeing the moon at the upwards roll and back at its reflection in the pond. “Yeah. I bet Shimura’s forgotten all about it, but it stuck with me. Not immediately—at the time it was stupid, and to be fair, it’s still stupid. But now that I’m back here, living at home, it’s—it’s stupid. It’s, like, if that stupid fucking bug can defeat a goddamn dragon, then I can tend the garden. I can keep that stupid tsukubai clean. I can hang out with my brother. I can fucking—” He cut himself off again, this time striking the water hard enough to splash one of the ducks (it quacked at him with disdain and simply swam a couple of centimetres away).

“Do what, Touya?” The oven timer started beeping, and you tensed. “Hold on; don’t say anything. Don’t say—I have to concentrate; I’m getting stuff out of an oven.”

Touya stirred the pondwater with his ring and middle fingers while you blindly approximated the logistics of getting the tray out of the oven, and by standing at the oven’s side inside of reaching into it from the front, you were eventually able to remove the tray and rest it on the counter above it—you’re not going to bother feeling around for the pot holders.

When you sighed in relief once you’d closed the oven again, Touya asked, “What are you cooking?”

“Strawberry cheesecake muffins,” you said, frowning in the tray’s general direction, “They’re supposed to have a marbling effect, and I’m supposed to be putting on some sort of streusel-type sugar on top right now, but I’m not gonna risk it. I hope they’re done. You have to trust the recipe’s bake time with cheesecakes exactly, so I’m hoping it’s the same for—”

“I am gonna make you come so hard,” Touya was saying in a strained sort of way as he ran his hands down his face, “I am gonna fuck you so hard that you leave in a permanent dent in my mattress. I am gonna hold you and kiss the back of your neck and make you cry out as you gush around my fingers. You’re—you’re so fucking per—I am gonna take care of you back.”

“Cool.” Right, so bake the muffins again at some point. “Do you have any food allergies?”

“I’m allergic to you not saying anything hot in response to what I just said.”

Sure, Touya. “I’m also gonna make you this really sexy tomato soup with what the recipe calls a grilled cheese top. It’s got cheesy bread cut into chunks that coat the surface so that you can’t even see the red, and it melts into the soup—”

“Stop, I can only get so hard—”

“Show me your cock, then.”

“No,” said Touya, deliberately looking at a trio of fish convening near the pond’s surface, their o-shaped mouths blorbing and blobbing underneath the water towards Touya’s waving fingers, “I meant—well, first, you are gonna make that soup, pl—please—but I meant that—I mean.” He twirled his finger under the water, and the koi were fascinated. One of them kissed his finger. You were feeling a similar impulse—and perhaps that’s what prompted Touya to continue. “I came the first time someone stuck their tongue in my mouth.”

It occurred to you that anyone could be walking by the dorm kitchen to overhear. Now that the muffins were out of the oven, you elected to turn off the speaker setting to hold you phone to your ear. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I was sixteen and insane with hormones, and it hadn’t been long since I’d woken up from—well. When someone kissed me with tongue for the first time, I came in my pants. Taken completely by surprise that someone was even kissing me, that someone could even want me when I look like—and then that. We were outside, on a public bridge, during the day. I haven’t seen that fucker since.”

You had been contemplating whether it’d be worth fumbling around for a knife to ease the muffins out of the tray, but all cogs stopped at Touya’s story. “Why are you telling me this?”

“So you’ll tell me something back. I already told you some embarrassing shit about pokémon and shit, so you have to embarrass yourself back. You’re the one who brought up cocks, anyway. So—so you have to share something back,” said Touya, allowing a fish to rub up against his hand in a pseudo-sort of petting it, “Something about when you were young and stupid.”

“And preferably sexual, right? I know what you’re about, you shy, baby boy.”

“Ffffffuck that.I ain’t shy—”

“You won’t show me your face, Touya. You’re scared for me to see it. Shy boy.”

Touya scratched along the side of the koi like it wanted, and another nudged the back of his hand to be scratched, too. “Fuck off.”

“I’ve only told one other person about my first kiss,” you said, moving to sit on the counter again, “Wanna hear that story?”

“Fine,” said Touya, and he pulled his hand out of the pond, flicking water off his fingers and into the open, mournful mouths of the koi he’d been petting. “You had better be about to tell me about seeing through me at that coffee shop.”

“Come off of it, Touya; isn’t it better for me to have outside experience and still choose you regardless? My first kiss was way before that,” you said, hoping how pleased you were at his mild possessiveness was being transferred to his side of the bond, “and I didn’t even know the guy’s name at the time. And it was—it could’ve turned really bad, really quickly. Because my first kiss was with Dabi, before he made his villain debut.”

“Do—huh?” Touya shook his head, causing you to wince and steady yourself at the dizziness. “Beg pardon? Beg your fucking pardon? I didn’t—know that that Dabi guy went around kissing people.”

“He did at least once. It was back in freshman year, and I was out at night during my hero internship.” Getting comfortable on the kitchen counter, you crossed your legs and leant against the cabinets to support your back, exhaustion kicking in. “Some older sidekick hit on me in what was an exceedingly creepy way—he made it pseudo-incestuous by saying I reminded him of his daughter. In retrospect, the interaction could have gone much, much worse, if Dabi hadn’t inadvertently rescued me—scratch that, it may have been intentional, looking back, because he’d said stuff about the sidekick being a shitty father, and now he’s, uh, let us know about his own dad.”

It took Touya a moment. At least he wasn’t shaking his head anymore. “Are you saying Dabi burnt some guy to death in front of you, and you still kissed him?”

You sucked in through your teeth. “Not exactly. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was testing out a nomu, and that ripped the other guy to pieces. And—this is gonna sound wild—I think Dabi may have kissed me to comfort me? I know it was a distraction from the gore and from getting a good look at the nomu, but I think he may have also done it to calm me down. It was—oddly sweet.”

Touya gripped the edge of the stone wall, his fingers dipping into water (but not deep enough to remoisten his leather gloves) and koi swarming. “What did the nomu look like?”

Even though you couldn’t see it, you held your phone away from your ear for a second to shoot it an incredulous look. “Wha—Touya, weren’t you going to ask if he were a good kisser, or something?”

His knuckles popped when he clenched his fingers and asked flatly, “Was he a good—”

“You’re better.”

“Thanks,” he said, not sounding like he cared about that at all, letting a koi drag his hand into the water by biting his finger, “What did the nomu look like?”

“God, I don’t fucking know. That wasn’t important to me. I, uh—it was around the size of a good-sized dog, like a golden retriever or a lab. I don’t—I guess it walked on all fours,” you said, wondering why the fuck—oh, the dizziness must not have come only from Touya shaking his head, because it’s sweeping over you again, waves emanating from the bond. “Now that I’ve seen other nomu, I can recognise that its head looked whacky because its brain was exposed, and I think its skin was more green-tinged than the others who had that navy-black colour going on. Honestly, Touya, I wasn’t—”

Through the phone came such a strident, alarming crack that you halted mid-sentence to listen for it again. It’d come from Touya’s side, clearly, but nothing in his line of vision betrayed its source, although—and you would not have noticed this if you hadn’t been scanning his environment for any hint—something that looked like split glass frosted the inside of Touya’s fist before he unclenched his hand a second later, any illusion of something there melting into the water.

But something was wrong. “Touya?”

“You still see that Dabi guy when you watch anime at Shouto’s house, yeah? Stay on the line,” he said, darkness of the bond fading drabbling at the edges of his vision from your perspective.

“I am,” you said, uncrossing your legs, “I do.”

“What do you think of him? Ugly fucker, isn’t he?” Touya fell still as a duck approached him as it navigated through the water lilies, and Touya’s outstretching his hand to its head was the last thing you saw before the bond gave out. “Still as pathetic as he was in the war? Think he should be in prison?”

“Negative reviews of people, negative reviews of television, negative reviews of potato wedges—so cool, bro. Now say something true and beautiful.”

“Answer me, damn it.” A disgruntled quack.

“You’d better not be strangling that duck.”

“You think so little of me? Do you want me to put the duck on the phone?”

“I don’t think it could sit comfortably,” you said, pushing yourself off the counter and walking to the knife drawer now that you could see, “I see Dabi every once in a while when I’m at Todoroki’s house. He’s shy. I don’t mind. It’s not my place to assume anything, but. I don’t think he’s doing okay, since it seems like he’s spent a good part of his life wanting someone to look at him, to pay attention, and now he’s getting that in a way he probably didn’t anticipate, and I want him to be okay. I think I’d like to help him get there, if he’d let me. But I know I’m nobody important to him, and that’s fine.”

“Sounds a lot like pity,” said Touya, and when you made a noise of protest, he kept going. “Or maybe you’re fucked up enough that you like him? From when he kissed you?”

You couldn’t exactly tell your soulmate that you’ve been suppressing naïve, celebrity-crush-type feelings for someone else. “Well,” you said, grimacing as you slid knife edge between a muffin and the tray and started to remove it, “He’s very babygirl-coded.”

***

TOUYA 🐠🚷

looked it up. definition of babygirl does NOT help

TOUYA 🐠🚷

incidentally

TOUYA 🐠🚷

what should a guy wear to impress someone

YOU

a guy? or you specifically?

YOU

because i am, of course about to suggest the golden standard of rolling up thy sleeves to thy elbows, but you won’t even showing your fucken hands asldkjfa;

TOUYA 🐠🚷

gloves necessary.

TOUYA 🐠🚷

but think formal. formal setting.

YOU

why are YOU going to a formal event?

TOUYA 🐠🚷

have to. blackmail/family obligation/rent.

TOUYA 🐠🚷

open to suggestions. about style more than brand, because if I go too expensive, my dad will think I’m making him pay a lot as sabotage.

YOU

and here i was about to recommend that you go skinny-dipping in a vat of liquid gold

TOUYA 🐠🚷

you just wanna see my cock, don’t cha

YOU

what makes you think I’D be invited to some shitty formal event

TOUYA 🐠🚷

I’m betting you’d hear about it on the news

YOU

i think i’d be more interested in what food is provided

TOUYA 🐠🚷

…

TOUYA 🐠🚷

no, I shan’t say

YOU

is this a cum joke

TOUYA 🐠🚷

but seriously. what should I wear. assume I will do something awful and evil and that you will see the outfit on the news when I get arrested.

YOU

touya, how would i recognise you. idk what YOU even look like. not that it matters, i guess. all that matters is that you wear something that fits you well. you don’t need to impress me; you’ve already won me over

TOUYA 🐠🚷

i what

TOUYA 🐠🚷

wait what do you MEAN it doesn’t matter

YOU

does it help get it through your thick head if i tell you that you are also babygirl-coded? perhaps not even coded but genuinely babygirl??

TOUYA 🐠🚷

it does not.

***

Adjusting your lace shawl, you gripped Shouto’s arm as the both of you furtively sneaked away from the hordes of pro-heroes, industry workers, and flashing press to slink back to the enormous table of hors d'oeuvres to see how many of them you could pack into your purse and his strategically planned inner coat pocket, sewn into the inside of his lapel for the occasion.

When Shouto had invited you to this ghastly awards ceremony for Endeavor, he’d claimed his motivation was that so he could talk to you about how the 2011 Hunter x Hunter anime was wrapping up, since he (flatterer!) said you had the best interpretations of certain characters, unlike some of your classmates, and Shouto tempted you with how you could stake out whatever posh food they had for you to try to recreate later. So, you’d dug out the dress you’d only worn to All Might’s official retirement party and agreed to attend.

Those present were a strange conglomeration of people, since the public opinion of Endeavor has been odd and tenuous lately. Essentially, the handful of attendees you knew were busy ingratiating themselves to people you’ve never seen before but they evidently were acquainted with, so those with whom you could hold an actual conversation with were scattered and few.

However, you didn’t even need to bring a book, because once you and Shouto had settled at a back table with both of your plates stacked with the most variety you could fit on them, he deadass pulled out his anime analysis notebook, which was starting to resemble Midoriya’s quirk analysis notebooks in terms of extensiveness and insanity, with lines crossing several pages to connect ideas. As you discussed where the two of you thought the characters were going, you had your own notebook—a new one, this one for recipes, and whenever either of you thought one of the appetizers was interesting, you wrote it down.

You were chewing on what Shouto had informed you was a water chestnut when the chair on your other side was pulled out with a screech against the tile, and Todoroki Touya plopped into it, his legs hardly having the time to spread before swiping a piece of candied salmon from your plate. The instant he bit down into it, his nose scrunched up.

“It’s fish, Touya,” said Shouto, dipping his own crudité in a tiny bowl of raspberry vinaigrette, and he passed his napkin to him. Touya spat the salmon into it, bunched it up, and edged it underneath the edge of your plate.

On your list, you wrote no fish! at the top, but before you even lifted your pen from the paper, you froze. The list wasn’t for this Touya; it was for your Touya. You crosshatched it out, trying to remember if your Touya had ever said anything about liking fish. He’d said he hadn’t, right? He didn’t like them alive, at the very least.

Shouto chomped down harshly, the crunch of raw celery distinct even through his closed mouth. “What brings you over here, Touya?”

He already had the text-to-speech function pulled up on his phone, and he held a parmesan palmier between his teeth as he typed. “People were asking Natsuo and Fuyumi about what they’re doing with their lives. It was only a matter of time before they got to me. Don’t wanna hear anyone else describe the nothing I’m doing. At least I know you guys are too busy talking about nerd crap to shit on me.”

“Oh, sweet boy,” you said, pursing your lips, “You’re in recovery. That’s enough. You don’t have to do anything to be worthwhile.” Wait. Fuck. You don’t talk to this Touya this way. Reel it back.

Crumbs fell from his mouth to the tablecloth. “The hell is wrong with you?” he typed.

Yeah, reel it way back. You elected not to respond, instead biting with difficulty into a brie/fig/prosciutto crostini and not being able to taste any of it.

“Would you like to discuss some so-called nerd crap with us?” Shouto arranged his notebook father across the table to be more in the middle of the three of you. “I know it’s been a while since you read Hunter x Hunter, but it’s been on hiatus so long that there’s not much new information that you need to know.”

“Hey,” you said, rushing to swallow, “You’ve read this before? How come you haven’t been sitting in to watch stuff with us?”

Touya shot Shouto a dark look, tongued a chunk of palmier into his cheek, and furiously typed on his phone. “I’m not interested in that shit anymore. It’s for kids.”

Shouto looked taken aback. “This is news to me. Do I have permission to take your manga volumes out of the house, then?”

“Fuck you,” Touya had already typed while Shouto was talking.

You bit back a smile. You’ve been borrowing a former, major villain’s manga? Cute. “But if you read it a while back, that means you’ve had more time to think about the characters,” you said, resting your elbow on the back of your chair as you shifted to face him, “Most of us are absorbing the story for the first time. It’d be cool to hear what you think.”

That parmesan palmier had looked good. Trusting this Touya on his taste, you wrote it on your list to investigate later, while he typed his response.

His expression fell flat enough to match the robotic tone. “Do you just want to hear me project my daddy and mommy issues onto the characters in the Zoldyck family?”

“No, Touya,” you said, laughing, “You have valuable things to say across the board, and I want to listen.” You almost nudged his knee with yours, but you had to stop yourself, something dark swirling in your chest. This wasn’t your Touya. You’re not allowed to.

His eyes flicked down towards the movement, but he didn’t comment. Shifting his jaw, he slipped off his white tuxedo jacket to drape it over the back of his chair, and for some reason, his gaze kept darting to you while he rolled the sleeves of his button-down up to his elbows, but he tried to give the appearance of being very focused on whatever skewered meat and pineapple was on the rim of your plate.

You were frowning. Fuck this. Fuck him. Touya was probably one of those guys who knew their effect on women, so he would know about the rolling-sleeves-to-elbows move. And fucking hell, was it effective for him, because the way he’s lost a lot of weight but was currently gaining it back made the tendons in his forearms much more noticeable when they tensed and strained, and the asymmetry of the burns and scars up his left arm in comparison to the smoothness of his prosthetic right only made him even more horribly, horribly attractive, and you were pissed about it, only getting more furious as he wrapped his tongue around the base of the first pineapple chunk and used his teeth to maneuver it off of the stolen skewer, hooded eyes staring you down. This Touya can act like a fucking slut, sure, but your Touya won’t even show you his goddamn hands.

“Hey, watch out.” You scratched your forehead in an attempt to conceal how enraged you were. “I’ve already had one of those. That lump at the end is an overly-breaded coconut shrimp. So—fish—be careful,” you finished lamely.

Touya’s hands and mouth were full with the skewer. Unable to type on his phone, he shifted the skewer to his left hand, flattened his right, and tapped his left wrist with it—the JSL sign for thank you.

You nodded and didn’t think anything of it for a moment, but when it hit you, you seized up and stared at him, chest swelling, proud and confused and frozen. Getting a little lightheaded, actually, but oh, God, who wouldn’t at the sight of Todoroki Touya, quiet and subdued but still suave as fuck, sitting so close to you in a freshly dishevelled white tuxedo that fit like it was custom-made for him, smelling so, so good and smiling with his perfect teeth (how are they that good when he was with the League for so long?), leaning towards you to steal your food and showing that he’d been paying attention to you, that he’d taken the JSL book you’d left with Shouto, that he’d thought about you when you’ve been apart and cared enough to try to learn something new with you, and you were going to kiss him; he deserved it; you were going to grab that stupidly adorable face and—no, that lightheadedness was also stemming from the soulmate bond activating.

Nausea swept through you for more than one reason. If your Touya discovered you were fighting the urge to kiss someone else, let alone the other Touya, then—you didn’t know. You didn’t know how you’d ever recover. Please let this be from your perspective, so he can’t feel your feelings, please.

“I have to go,” you said, pushing up on the table to stand, not even bothering to flash Shouto the soulmate hand signal. You had to get away. No matter if it were from your perspective or his, distance would help you suppress your fucking shameful crush on your friend’s older brother.

Good God, you were crossing the streams, you noted and fumed as you escaped onto a vacant alcove. Because they have the same goddamn name, your brain has been conflating the two of them. Shut up. You’re only allowed to have one Touya. Two would be greedy and dismissive of the soulmate bond in the first place.

Vertigo struck you so severely that you had to brace yourself against the nearest column, but you swopped to the balcony railing because you could grasp it and put most of your weight on it, and because your brain was swimming, you hand to get on your knees to wait for it to pass. “No, you can’t,” you said, trying your hardest to push thought of that Touya out of your head in case your Touya could feel them, “You can’t—that one doesn’t need to be in a romantic relationship right now. He’s working on himself. It’d fuck him up.” And ohhhh, you left your phone at the table, so you couldn’t call your Touya, and fuck, you didn’t want him to feel confused or betrayed because you weren’t calling him—

“Whose future are you deciding, here?”

Your Touya. He was here?

You opened your eyes to the sight of the balcony and the garden below, thank fuck. Okay, you could work with this. You could work with this; he’s not supposed to be able to feel—

His voice came from close behind you, as if he were leaning on another side of the column. “What’s got you feeling this guilty?”

Holy shit holy shit, has the bond evolved? Can feelings be felt from both sides regardless of perspective? “Hey, Touya.”

“Don’t turn around,” he said, even though you’d made no movement to.

“Can you see?”

“Only through you, angel. Otherwise, I’m in the dark.” With the sounds of clothes shifting, Touya must have crouched behind you, joints cracking. A fingerless-gloved hand brushed down your arm, and he moved your lace shawl out of the way to stroke your bare skin. Your mind was already going haywire at your betrayal, and his cold, gentle touch was not helping. “What’s wrong, hm?” He adjusted himself again behind you so that he could wrap his other arm around your waist, pulling you back into him, and his cool, rough lips pressed against the curve of your neck as he rested his head there.

You were going to cry. You’ll do it. For real, this time.

“Did that Todoroki Touya guy bother you? I saw him sitting at your table.”

God, no, he brought up whom you were trying to avoid, and you cringed, hating yourself as Touya’s hand sank down your arms to entwine his fingers with yours, rumpled shirtsleeves grazing your bare skin and leather gloves curbing the maximal skin-to-skin contact.

“He’s so fucked up that I wouldn’t be surprised if you hated him,” Touya was saying into your ear, “I could grind him into a pulp for you. He’d deserve it, wouldn’t he, for what he did to everyone? And I was burning up with jealousy from across the room; someone as pretty as you shouldn’t have such a hideous thing by your side.”

You made a noise from the back of your throat. You didn’t know, and you especially didn’t need the one person you were trying to hide your internal conflict from while you were actively trying to work out the internal conflict. First things first, you supposed. “Touya’s not fucking ugly.”

Your Touya snorted against your neck, hot air washing down the hollow of your throat. “I forgot how twisted you are. But there’s no way you could actually like him, right?”

“I can’t,” you said, releasing the balcony to clench your fists on your knees, “I can’t like him. He needs to discover who he is as an individual before he finds out how he functions in a relationship. He doesn’t need romance—or me, at this point in his life.”

“Interesting,” he said, more clearly now that his mouth wasn’t muffled against your skin, “Sounds like you think something’s wrong with him. Like he’s not whole. And isn’t he broken? You’d have to be, if you pulled the shit he did, burning cities to the ground and murdering—”

“Shut up,” you said, hunching in on yourself, “You’re don’t know. You’re believing what other people have told you about him. You’re just—you’re just like people who talk about that nerd shit you hate without checking the source material. They’ll talk about certain characters in terms of false narratives they’ve crafted, and they’ll talk about them for so long that the false information becomes conflated with the characters, with everyone thinking the wrong stuff is real. I—fuck.” You winced, but he was listening, his free hand winding around your neck to adjust the migrant clasp on your necklace to the back of your throat. “I know my ideas of Touya stem from propaganda, but I want to learn about him from him. Just based on what I’ve seen, there’s so much out there that’s wrong—it’s even subconsciously perpetuated in his own home, since the shrine where his family mourned him is still there. And I hate it. I hate it, because he seems so lovable, but so are you, and I hate myself because I want to love only you, because you’re my soulmate, and I’m so, so, so goddamn terrified that you’re gonna reject me and leave me alone forever now that I’ve betrayed you. By feeling stuff for someone else.”

You were crying. You were crying, nose stopping up, and Touya kissed your throat, over the clasp of your necklace. “Rejection’s a bitch. I know that,” he said under his breath, “So, I’m not gonna do that to you, even if…” He trailed off, instead latching his mouth to your neck again, letting his tongue flick over your skin once, as if it were an afterthought. “You really like him?”

“I’m scared that I do,” you said, taking a corner of your shawl to daub at your tears.

“The only thing to do is feel it out, I guess.” Touya settled at last, shifting weight and moving his legs so that they’d be on either side of you, and his left arm joined the other around your waist to hold you close. “Or let it die, if you want. The soulmate bond doesn’t matter in the end. You don’t have to love him or me.”

“But Touya,” you said, sniffing, dying to look back at him but restraining yourself, “I do.”

***

Later that night, you were researching how to make little cheese balls that were shaped like pumpkins like they’d had at the awards ceremony when you felt the familiar wooziness. Funny. It’s not often that the bond activates twice in one day. You closed your laptop and set your notebook aside, waiting for the slow, drowsy fade into Touya’s eyes.

Tonight, it’s a jarring, instantaneous slam into his perspective, and you felt like you’d been knocked about in the baggage rack of a train. You threw out your hands to balance yourself, even though you hadn’t been physically moved, and the queasiness made it hard to concentrate, blackness blotting at the edges of your periphery.

But the darkness of Touya’s bedroom wasn’t helping, with only partially drawn curtains letting in moonlight, and—and oh, my God, he’s flat on his back in bed, tousled bedsheets, cock out, and it’s so pretty, unfairly pretty, thick as hell but thicker at the head than the base, blushing deep pink, leaking onto the faint lines of re-developing abs and a vaguely red trail of hair, and—

The hand touching it has skin grafts.

“—ugh, darlin’, fuck, you know what I’m gonna—gonna do to you, angel?” Touya was muttering to himself, too caught up to realise you were there. “You don’t—you don’t know what you do to me.”

You’d registered his pubic hair as vaguely red because, now that you were staring, only the very tips of the untouched hair trailing down his stomach were red, with what he’d probably shaved at some point lower on his body snowy against whatever unburnt skin could still grow hair. He’s gripping himself at an angle that doesn’t make him rub against a strand of load-bearing staples on his upper thigh (did someone say load?), connecting a stretch of familiarly burned skin to a healing graft, diamond-speckled and twitching with his cock the closer he drew to orgasm (from the back of your mind surfaced a questioning thought of if he’d advocated for healing his hands first, since staples would hinder smooth masturbation). His prosthetic arm lay unattached at his side.

“Hahh, I wanna,” said Touya, drawing in a ragged breath, “wanna make a mess outta you, y’always too put together, too fuckin’ pretty for y’own damn good, fuck.” He rubbed his thumb over his tip, the skin there giving everso slightly at the pressure, with another bead of precum swelling before it dripped onto his stomach. “Gonna find wha—whatever I can do to make you fuckin’ whine, and I’m gonna, hah, follow that sound for the rest of my goddamn life, and, oh—fuck, fuck, how, how sweet you’d feel wrapped around me, how much I don’t fuckin’ deserve—”

He cut himself off to take a deep, stuttering breath, and you saw the gates of heaven in the way his chest surged forward when he arched his back, lines of burns and scars carved into his skin like a roadmap. And Touya moaned for you, and you didn’t know how much you’d needed to hear both Touyas do that until now, but before he could finish the first syllable of your name, you were lurched out of the bond and back into your room, just as abruptly as it had begun.

Your hands were shaking as you tied your shoelaces, aware of the leak into your underwear when you bent over, and you dashed to the nearest train depot, navigating in fervent, distant buzz all the way to the Todoroki estate. You must have appeared sufficiently crazy, because the only vacant seats on the train were next to you.

(In your heart of hearts, you had known.

If you’d put it into words, consciously, where both Touyas overlapped, it would’ve been too hard to bear if they’d been different people, which was, regardless, the most logical situation. Getting excited for your soulmate to be your former crush and then being disappointed when it wasn’t him felt like a betrayal to your soulmate. You hadn’t wanted to set yourself up for disappointment or betrayal, because you shouldn’t feel guilt when you look at your soulmate. Someone who holds your heart in his hand should never be second best to you. Touya’s had enough of not being enough in his life.

Surely the random chance of a stranger’s quirk wouldn’t be so kind to give you whom you’ve been wanting. You haven’t allowed yourself to hope.)

You didn’t even go in the front door. You clambered over the garden wall and berated yourself for not recognising Touya’s garden earlier, even though you’ve usually been around the kitchen and living room when you’re here. It took you longer than it could’ve to get to his teahouse, because you were deliberately staying on the garden path instead of walking on his hard work, but you didn’t even take off your shoes at the entrance, the nightingale floors chirping out in the night as you surged towards his bedroom door.

Touya lay facing the window in his very Western bed that took up most of the room—and much of his bedroom was like that, with his modern belongings scattered across other outdated furnishings, clean but cluttered, thought it startled you to open the door onto a Naruto poster taped in the space designated for a hanging scroll.

You only had time to absorb poster and lived-in before you saw the face of God in how Touya stretched and groaned in bed, arching his back and holding it until his back popped (a little too fixated on his moonlit nipples, like seeing them would fix you, flip you back to your factory settings). “Natsuo,” he said, coming out of his groan, eyes scrunched shut, “Don’t say you’re here to make me re-hang the windchimes. I spent all day tracking how air flows through the garden.”

You sat at the foot of his bed, mattress dipping slightly, still in your coat and shoes and hesitant to spread dirt, but the need to be near Touya, even if it were through blankets, consumed you. Hands folded behind his head, Touya cracked open an eye at the weight, and he froze.

You hadn’t prepared any confession on the train. You’d been too focused on the memory of his thighs. So, what garbled nonsense that came out of your mouth was “I figured your dick would be pierced.”

Touya appeared to snap back into reality, and he sat up in bed, pulling the blankets up to cover more of his bare chest (mourning for his nipples. Inconsolable about it, even) and quite obviously tried so hard to be chill (the way his leg started jiggling underneath the covers and how he wouldn’t look you in the eyes for more than a couple of seconds gave him away, though). “Is that what they say about me?”

You folded your hands in your lap, bent over for a swift escape in case he wanted you to leave “Jirou conjectures that you have a Jacob’s ladder.”

“Just what I need. More holes in my body.” He ran his tongue over his lower lip—much more scarred than the upper one, clarifying some things about kissing him. “Don’t know how to take that a bunch of kids who resent me talk about the state of my dick. You a part of that crowd?”

“I was shown a picture of what was advertised to be a very realistic dildo,” you said, scooting your ass farther back onto the bed now that he wasn’t going to send you away, “It had many, many piercings. It wasn’t as thick, if that makes you feel better.”

“It does not,” said Touya, brow pinched. He brought his legs up to hug them to his chest, but he must have changed his mind, instead just letting them block your view of him, hiding behind the cover of the lumpy comforter.

You waited for him to elaborate. His tuxedo was thrown over a wicker trunk, bowtie tossed onto a kotatsu, even though it wasn’t cold enough outside, with his gaming controller next to it and an open can of black tea. Two floor seats were haphazardly tucked underneath the kotatsu’s blanket, the one facing the TV flatter and duller than the one nearer the door. His only bookshelf had the illusion that it was constantly being added to, with the first shelf arranged neatly and the rest completely shoved together, the lowest one still mostly empty—your sign language book lay horizontally on it.

He should’ve said something by now, right? Antsy, you shifted your weight, staring down at your shoes. To have something to do, you slowly took them off, lining them up with Touya’s house slippers (with seahorses on them?) next to the bed, and you swallowed your pride to break the ice. “I’m glad it’s you, by the way. Very glad.”

Touya grunted and draped an arm over his knees. “Did you know?”

“I will be generous and say not really,” you said, shuffling off your coat to hang on the bedpost, “I didn’t permit myself to make the connections.”

“Eh.” He shrugged with one shoulder—the left one, the natural one. He’d reattached his prosthetic in the meantime. “There are around one hundred Touyas in Japan, according to the last census.”

“Sounds like a prepared statistic,” you said, holding back that the name frequency has probably plummeted in the last few years, “I’m serious, though. I wanted my Touya—soulmate, you, Touya—to be Todoroki Touya. So badly.”

He covered his mouth, thumbing at his lower lip and simply staring at you. In the moonlight, his eyes were as fucking bright blue as—well. As his flames. More things were clicking into place.

“Really, Touya,” you said, desperate for him to believe you, “I liked you as the stranger in the alley, and I liked you as Dabi, and when my soulmate seemed to share some traits with the other Touya in my life, I didn’t give myself permission to think about it. Because I was growing fond of the you that spoke to me, that I was getting to know, and while my feelings for the other you were being rekindled, too, I wanted to love the soulmate you more, because it's become fucking evident to me that I was made to love you, even without this soulmate stuff. You’ve been scattered throughout my life, anyway. It just happened to speed things up, since it forced you to talk to me. Otherwise, you’d probably still be at the point where you’re the brooding-older-brother figure who isolates himself in his room when his brother’s friends are over.”

Touya was frowning, but you waited it out entirely this time. “You saw…all that,” he eventually said, gesturing down himself, “and you still want me?”

Biting back a smile, you lifted your knees to the bed, moving slowly to gauge his reaction before getting closer to him. “I saw you decapitate someone, and I still want you.”

“You’re insane,” said Touya, tensing up as you neared him but twitching into a nervous grin, eyes falling to your boobs, away to the window, and back to your face.

“Correct,” you said, and you knelt next to him, taking all of your restraint to keep from reaching out the final few centimetres to run your hands down his chest. “Don’t you need someone a little insane, though?”

The comforter fell a few inches down his chest, and you throat ran dry at the long line of fading stitches and staples.

You raised a quivering hand to his face, and it’s strange: both of you flinched in the moment your fingertips felt the tiniest bit of body heat emanating from his cheek, and it’s strange: it’s the first time you’ve felt any heat come from Touya at all, and it’s strange: you could see yourself so clearly waking up next to him every day, putting your chin on his shoulder while he picked out fruits at the grocery store, feeding the koi late at night together while you lured the ducks away, watching his eyes soften in the same way both when he sinks his teeth into something you’ve baked and his cock deep into you while he cradled you closely to his chest, but at the moment, it might be too much for you—and perhaps Touya as well, judging by the nearly incomprehensible, jumbled sort of expression—if you even touched his face.

Perhaps the prospect of romance was too much for him at this point in his life. The last thing Touya should be feeling about that was guilt.

“I don’t mind being on the backburner while you figure things out,” you said, returning your hand to your lap and trying very hard not to look at his nipples, “I’ll wait for whatever you need to do. I’ll—”

“No,” said Touya, shaking himself out of whatever spiralling dive he’d been leaning into, “Hell, no. No fucking—” He snatched the hand you’d almost touched him with and clenched it hard, smushing your fingers together (startled by the physical contact, even though he’d initiated it), and after a flash of frustration at his prosthetic arm, he passed your hand to his left. “You’re fucking sticking around. You—you don’t just look at me; you see me, in such a different fucking way than anyone else, and you did it immedia—it took my family so long to look, and you—you’ve been watching. Been paying attention. It’s all I’ve ever—” He frowned, rolling his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “It’s good to have you around while I dig myself out of this hole,” he said, squeezing your hand harder but glaring outside through the window, “I wish I had known you sooner.”

“I’m here now, and I want to get to know you better. I want to hear more about you, things that are true,” you said, “and don’t start with anything self-deprecating, Touya. The next time the bond lets you see through me, I’m gonna show you what you look like through my eyes. And I’m not lying to you when I say you are so very, very pretty.”

Grunting, Touya fidgeted in bed, the covers slipping down to his stomach, drawing your hand closer to him, with your body leaning in to follow his pull. “Shit,” he said, “Don’t say shit like that right now.”

“Touya, I am gonna tell you how gorgeous you are until you believe it, and that starts now.”

“Not tha—well, yes, that, but I—” He sucked in through his teeth (also sucking in through a tiny hollow in his cheek caused by a loose staple, with a faint, wheezing whistle) and threaded his fingers through yours, pulling your hands towards his shoulder so that you loomed over his chest, “I have a hell of a refractory period now. It’s fuckin’ hard for me to get hard a lot, and you saw me; I just—” Inhaling sharply, he jerked his hand away from yours and frantically started wiping it on the blankets. The new skin around the tips of his ears bloomed pink. “I haven’t washed my hands.”

“Touya,” you said, “Like I care.” You took the hand he was trying to hide in the folds of the blanket and licked up his palm, holding eye contact and relishing the way the blush spread to the untouched skin around the corners of his eyes. “I want all of you. Both sides you’ve shown me, and more. So long as it’s real. So long as it’s you.”

“All right. First step is getting on top of me,” said Touya, and, palm wet, he took your hand again, and he tugged on it, guiding you into his lap, other hand sliding down the thigh you swung over him. “Makes it easier to talk, y’know. To look at you.”

“Oh? Are we starting with your tragic backstory? If you’re taking requests,” you said, sliding your hand up and over his shoulder to run your fingers over his collarbone (jutting out from under both burnt and new skin), “then I’d like to hear your perspective of when you first kissed me.”

Touya lift his prosthetic hand to your cheek, just as cold and strong as his real one, and he placed his thumb at the corner of your lower lip, tip breaking the seal of your lips to press in just barely. “Actually, I think we’ll start with this pretty mouth of yours.”

***

Iida was shouting and gesturing from the living room that you only had fifteen minutes before the episode viewing was scheduled to start, and Shinsou shut him up by reminding him that Tokoyami had to pick up Ojiro and Hagakure from the floristry across town and that they’d start watching whenever they started watching, so chill out, Iida. Go help Mina pick the bugles out of her hair, or something.

You and Touya crouched together in front of the oven, staring through the glass at the rows of potato wedges—the recipe he claims his mother made when he was five, but surely a woman as sensible as Todoroki Rei wouldn’t put that much fucking cayenne pepper or paprika or chili sauce or—listen, it was a lot.

“C’mon, pretty boy, tell me something else true about you,” you said, nudging his shoulder with yours while you made eye contact with him in the oven’s reflection.

“Hm,” he said, scratching the underside of his chin with a bare hand (the gloves lay folded back on the teahouse dresser), “I hate fish.”

(Here you sighed dramatically, because you obviously already knew this. His loathing was intensified at the moment, though, because he’d had to get up and leave you in the middle of the night last night because the koi pond monitor was blaring at a stupid clog in the filter.)

“Tastes fuckin’ gross dead. Bitch to take care of livin’.”

You pushed on your knees to stand, and you held out a hand to help him up. “Enough with the negativity, dickhead. Tell me more about what you like.”

“Besides you?” He took your hand and grinned, putting all his weight into it as you strained to lift him, and when the oven timer beeped and you’d shot a few choice words his way, he had mercy and stood up by himself. He grabbed the oven mitts and tossed them to you, and while you removed the tray from the oven, he ran his hand through the sharp, white spikes of his hair, inadvertently wiping specks of paprika into it.

You set the tray on a cooling rack. “C’mon, Touya. No need to be so cheesy.”

“I can be worse,” he said, winding his arms around your waist before you could even take off the oven mitts, cradling you close to him, no room in between, and he propped his chin on your shoulder. “I can even incorporate—you call me cheesy; you’re the one who called me pretty boy not a minute ago.”

Blindly, you raised a hand to run it back through Touya’s soft, soft hair, and you gently bumped your cheek against his. “I am not being cheesy by simply stating the truth. You’re gorgeous, Touya.”

“Bet I’d look even better throbbing inside you.”

“Please follow a logical flow in conversation like the rest of us,” you said, and when you couldn’t grasp the spatula you were reaching for, Touya grabbed it for you, scraping up some of the first row, having to release you during the process.

Leaning on the counter to face him, you flinched at the heat before pinching a potato wedge between the tips of your fingers, but Touya held one like it was completely cool. It had almost touched his tongue before he paused and waited for your reaction to his recipe.

His potato wedges were bad. Too crunchy on top because of the odd broil time and not-fully-ground peppercorns and too soggy and soft underneath, especially in the part where it’d stuck to the tin foil and peeled off, and the combination of spices didn’t quite mesh together well. With a sliver of quiet triumph, you swallowed a bite of potato wedge decidedly worse than the ones you made.

But Touya was looking at you, eyes brimming with hope despite his otherwise carefully cultivated cool exterior, watching, waiting for you—and it was Touya, after all; Touya was the one who cooked these—made them for you, deliberately, on purpose—and so that made what words were about to come out of your mouth true and beautiful.

soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare

#bnha #dabi #dabi x reader #dabi/reader #dabi imagine #dabi fic #mha #dabi headcanons #dabi fanfiction #dabi fanfic #soulmates #soulmate au #soulmate #dash it all

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its-actually-minicika · 2 years ago

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The Harshest Winters (18+)

I - II - III - IV - V;

Pairing(s): Jacaerys x Reader x bookcanon!Aemond;

Warnings: We all know what to expect by now - sexual themes, obsessive and possessive behaviour, bookcanon Aemond, angst (there is no light at the end of the tunnel ♡), semi-spoilers (but not really) for Fire&Blood;

Word Count: 23k+ (yes. yes indeed.)

Author's Note: AND I HATH RETURNED!!

Only 3 more instalments to go - this feels surreal. As always, I would like to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for still following Lady Tully's adventures, and for being so patient with my updating schedule (or lack thereof). Without further ado, please enjoy ♡

♡♡♡ Drop me a comment if you would like to be added to the taglist! And don't forget to reblog your favourite fic writers ♡♡♡

Paths that used to interwoven thread themselves with great uncertainty. When you're free to roam again, which road will you choose to take?

When Aemond beckoned his return, Harrenhal was basked in smoke. Vhagar shuddered low beneath him, letting out enraged, rogue roars. His guts hung low inside his midriff, his heart ached hard inside his chest… his one lone thought was of his Lady – of what became of her, of them.

"Ah – My apologies, Your Grace!" The muted hues of her blue dress obscured across his measured view. Thus Aemond hummed, dissatisfied, and merely moved his gawp ahead. His eye transfixed her for a moment, yet bore through her slighter frame. Nought of what he noticed then deterred him to even bow. To even offer her the courtesy that a highborn lady would receive. He had left their clash at that – with not a singular lax word exchanged, and not a singular exultant glance. He spared no reaction. No compact feeling. And the deep courtesy she offered him was met with deplorable impassiveness. Whether or not she had felt slighted, or passed across as less compelling, was of nought of his concerns. He heard her steps, although unwilling, move fast across the vacant halls – the mousy girl with straight long locks ergo dissolved through the thin air; and as if made of feeble matter, as if diffused whole by the soil, she shed herself briskly afore. Perhaps, he thought but for a moment, the paling shade suited her well. And as she skipped her trail all proper, through the obtrusive and abstaining lanes, her gown outcast a pleasant echo – the rattled bite of a spirited woman, a proof of presence, of fair existence. He made his strides long and decided, reaching towards the damp courtyard. And as he trained, breaking his stupor, the man had thought of her quick struts. Perplexed and quite unparalleled, he deemed the dress had worn her nicely. The girl was far from an alluring beauty, standing small and slight in stature. Still the brief sweep of her garment reached for the goal it had then bared – for the Prince thought of it, admired it, and thoroughly remained somewhat impressed.

He’d been a foolish boy back then, though he remained so as a man. A roguish Prince of one and twenty, far too absorbed by pain and ire to even care about the keep. Alys’ heed had been ignored, his lungs had been filled up with ash. His headlong steps urged through the hallways, desperate to reach for the one door that served so long as their shared chamber. He screamed her name from the base of his throat, so wildly torn and fraught forlorn, that his shrieks of anguish reached for the ears of the few maids and wenches left rooted in place, all hoarded outside and taken aback by his despondent outraged display.

But that wouldn't be the last he'd see her – and the chain of humdrum meetings would thereon constantly happen. They were both quite early risers, insatiable to the seductive waves of glaring rays of humid sunsets, and devotees of the peace and quiet brought across by the luminescence. Still the synopsis would repeat – he, far too preoccupied with the handling of putrid sticks; she, far too absorbed by her dashing knight of golden armour; the Waters brute, as they so styled him, who seemed to be rooted abreast her, eternally waiting for some command which rested readily atop her lips. Though she wasn’t one of his sister’s ladies – the smirking vixens with a lacking sense of pride –, she served as a ward under Lyman Beesbury, the old Master of Coin of his father’s late Small Council. Not the particularly quiet or specifically reserved young maiden, she failed to strike up the attention of any callow man at Court. She wasn’t one for idle chatter, or flamboyant dances at Soirees. Yet he would hear her voice each morning, as she bowed low to him and slithered away.

‘Good morrow, Your Grace.’

‘Greetings, Your Grace.’

‘Good day, Your Grace.’

His hands balled up to aching fists, as the grave callouses inside his palm slid across the piece of silk. Several slices of burnt meat adorned the ground he stood atop. The mess that was made of the bed they had once slept on and the tapestries behind the grate all but pointed towards one thing – that she had made her brash escape, and effectively deceived them all. The Crown Prince sucked in a breath, and turned his head towards a rattled and alerted Alys. What was expected was for him to scream. Trash about, around the room, until his blood would cease to boil. She was ready for that. On all accounts, she had prepared for that. What was most unexpected was the lacing calmness of his evened tone.

“I don’t suppose she morphed outside, waiting submissively by the guards.” Within the first half of a drawn-out breath, the older woman shook her head. “No, my Prince.” He nodded slowly, and expelled a weighty laugh, “She started a fire and ran away.”

“Yes, my Prince.”

“Did she take a horse, as well?”

“... I don’t kn–”

“Every man, woman and child in this stronghold knows by now. Did she take a horse, as well?”

“No, my Prince. I swear she didn’t.”

“How much of this was of your doing?”

Two years she stayed inside the Keep. Two years of residence, of life, of growth. Two years of incandescent worth, during which he could have acted.

Notice her.

Court her.

Marry her.

Cruel Fate had all but laughed at him – for two years she had lived below him, right within his steady grasp. In those two years he could’ve bedded her, he could have won her horrid heart. He could have fathered her her freckled children, he could have owned her House’s flags. He could have dressed her in the finest dresses, and ripped them off her every night. He could have seen her cross stark naked – then it would have been his right. He could have kissed her, touched her, fucked her… he could have made her love him back.

A fantasy. A bitter laugh. A pang of pain, and guilt, and wrath.

The Gods spoke of their directed favour – when the Whore of Dragonstone came forth home with her misbegotten son. When his bastard nephew set his eyes on her, on the nameday of his eldest brother. When he sullied her with his abhorrent probe, and when he danced with her throughout the night. The night of which he finally saw her, twirling in her auburn dress.

“My Prince, I’ve helped you find her before – I shall help you find her again…!” Her delicate fingers entwined together in a tightened and reluctant hold, which morphed the pose of a covetous and tattered statue; a ready vision of the Maiden, praying to absolve all sin. Her slit eyes widened to two round specs of emerald sheen, and Alys opened her mouth again, only to be stopped by Aemond. “‘Tis not your barren promises I want – rather, I demand something more palpable.” She quirked her head low to the side, and almost caught herself relax her shoulders; Endless thoughts surged through her head, each more humiliating than the next. If it was her body he desired, she would promptly let him take her – disputes of the flesh she’d handle, and face proudly with a stiffened lip. His wife was gone, and though lamentable, she could still surge him back in. Shake and wake the stifled feelings that he’d once relished her into, win his favour and his grace, save her and her unborn son.

But two blind steps he took towards her, and Alys finally understood.

“You watched your home burn to its core." Aemond's tone was light and leveled, "You must have gazed into the fires.”

It had been a truth universally assumed, that he wouldn’t even look upon her. Though a first daughter, she presented as a mere third child. Loved among her Lords, ‘twas true, but with a trivial, worthless last name, who’d be of little to no use to him, and honour him no less or more than a lease daughter of Pike or Ambrose. He’d scoffed back then, under his breath, as the two conversed so freely. The graceless children of low descent, so shamelessly engrossed in the raptures of the other’s company.

If only he had loved her then. For Jace wouldn't have walked away from Aegon's nameday scrape unharmed. How many things would have played differently, if only he asked her first to dance? ... But a lowbred with a bastard was a common sight to see. Aemond thus stood at his table, playing harsh tunes with his slim fingers, whilst knocking on the table’s wood.

His hand enwrapped at the base of her throat, moving languidly over the nape of her neck, and thwarting her forward with an exponential pull. The dying logs inside the fireplace still cracked with their dispersive strokes, impelling the air with charred ashes, and softened groans of sizzled smoke. Her cheek had touched a snapping flame – the arch of her enticing lip almost pressed firmly against it. The low sputtering of her ragged breath, the agonizing scream she’d let out, the fear that seeped within her bones; they deterred her to choke out worried, terror-stricken by his dwelling words. “My Prince, please, I’m begging you –” His silk-smooth baritone came out sullen by perpetually placid waves. A clementful element to the fear and trepidation swarming about the narrow place.

“I’m merely helping you reach a conclusion.”

Her body contorted in a desperate attempt to flee him, and her hands pushed instinctively into the fires, as if to cast aside their perpetual danger, and better protect her face from the raptures of the growing heat. Fellen sobs escaped her lips, rolling down and off her cheeks, hearthing right in the blaze. “Please, please, please–”

“Well?” He sighed, calm and taciturn inside her ear, sparing her no lessened hold. And she failed once more to answer him, opting instead to let out another shrill of strangled moans. Her vision blurred throughout with horror – her gaze cast forth the lingering effect of fear, and her body stiffened in anticipation.

“Perhaps you need more help, then.” His disquieted mutter churned her guts over with dread.

Her wails of anguish pierced through his heart – yet his grip didn't uncurl.

He’d be a liar to say he thought much back then of their light and foolish prancing. The shades of orange in her dress laced his eye with milky spots of irritation, and Jace’s laughter filled him with surfeited hatred. Thus he didn’t linger past the notion of a second, and when Daeron’s warm eyes met with his, he only hummed in discontent. “You ought to dance with someone tonight,” He reminded his elder brother through the musings of a quirked-up brow, “There’s plenty of handsome ladies here tonight.”

Strenuously he looked around, though at last settled his orb on the heaving and coveted form of the latter of Helaena’s ladies. Her very own shone bright with wonder as she listened to her nearby friend, which dispersed her hands about with adorning youthful bliss. She was laughing in good spirit, whispering her minor gossip; Still, when his gape was met with hers, her slight smile instantly falthered.

Five seconds it took for her to turn and flee into the crowd – and five more it took the Prince to work through the nearest cup, by fully draining it of wine, and allowing its sharpened sting to warm and breach his stiffened limbs. His deflation would be short-lived, and the ripe pierce of rejection heal itself in a moment’s heed.

“‘Tis not their looks I’m worried of.” He pensively added to his brother.

“She had a rather awkward smile.” The youngest tried to comfort him.

“Yet she still preferred to flee.” Though his tune carried no bitter candour, Aemond sharply turned around, “You’re wasting your time with me, brother. You fail to look where you’re supposed to.”

“Your Grace, I know – I know of another way!”

Confused by his elusive words, Daeron turned his head around. “Elanour Frey has all but thrown herself at you.” He clarified slightly amused, and when Daeron’s ears piqued through with red, the corners of his mouth quriked up. “Go take the fair cunt for a whirl. Enjoy her smiles and dulling company.”

“She’s a Lady, brother! It’s wrong of you to slight her so.” Despite the youth’s endless chastising, the boy still rose to kvetch an approach.

“The spell is not without its consequences.” She drew in through a shaky breath, “B-But I can make you see her by yourself. I know the Riverlands like the back of my hand. I’ll tell you where she’s headed.” It was a risky plan. Yet it had the potential to appease Aemond, and in the process, save her life. When his iron fist had loosened, she hastily convulsed away. Her words spoke of an old ritual, one she could avid perform – one that would show him his Lady, one that would reveal her whole. “I’ll need your blood – blood from the both of you. The fresher it is, the better for the enchantment.”

Aemond solely parted with the piece of cloth used for their wedding. When the notion of shared blood was uttered, he hastily dug for the sleeve, revealing the blotches which took the front of a maroon-brown colour. “It’s two days old.”

“It’ll work for her part. But I greatly urge you to spare fresher droplets from your own share.” Her heart beat frantically inside her chest. She prayed to her God to send her lease, to grant her mercy and forgiveness for that of which she would soon do. She nicked Aemond with the sharp end of a perusing tool. Drops of thick, red-bludgeon clot surged over her waiting hands, dripping in rapid slithers from his damaged shoulder. She forged a phoney incantation, muttering it slowly for the man to hear. She then waited, and waited, for the sphagnum moss to reach its peak. “Tonight is a half-crescent moon,” She explained brashly in a lulling tune, “I’ll throw the damp cloth into a fire and we’ll see where she is headed.” Why exactly she had lied to him, and continued to do just so, eluded Alys in her steep attempts to cast her spell. Perhaps it was due to her poignant state – as her condition would begin to show erelong, and Aemond had to be reminded of the care he held for her. Perhaps it was because she’d die if his wife of chestnut hair uttered to him that she’d helped with her escape. Perhaps it was because she’d learned to like the forlong and dismissive Lady, and saw within her the potential to prevail. Perhaps his loyalists had begun to matter – as she well knew the wrath and ruin that Aemond would bring upon the boys, were he to notice that they all survived the clashing flames, and not emerged with his sweet Lady. “... But we need to leave, Your Grace, and soon.” She ergo pleaded as she sewed him shut, “Daemon Targaryen reached the gables of Maidenpool. He’s to come for us, for all of us.”

“Yet another reason not to leave without my wife.”

Perhaps she’d seen enough of death, and felt the need to reach for safety – for the reclusion brought by Oldtown, and for the one she'd felt with Aemond. The lot of troubled knights be damned down to the Seven Hells and back. Criston Cole could meet the troops, take them to increase his numbers, and march on towards the Fields of Fire, to join forces with the Lannisters.

"There is a chance he's still unaware of your union. If that be the case, she’ll be safer without you taking her back right now.”

“Are you suggesting I leave her here? To be used by the Blacks as leverage?"

"– Twirled with two Princes in a night! Gods, and the most comely of the bunch, as well…"

"How lucky she must feel right now. Having two push for her hand."

"She's not that much of an exquisite beauty. And her sewing is quite crooked." With a loud huff to calm her nerves, the Lady dared to carry onward, " I wouldn't go as far as to proclaim something like that."

His wide step fathered on the course of the narrow and secluded hallway. The maidens’ voices washed over his form like whiplash, and Aemond stood hammered in place, whilst listening to their low chirping.

The latter lady of the two shrugged her shoulders in indifference, as she jabbed her slight companion right into her bottom ribs. Her painted lips sketched to a smirk, and her thin brows rose up in wonder. “Poor Dyenne,” She snickered briefly as she paused her idle gossip, “Imagine having the One-Eyed Prince glance at you with such a stare – reckon she’ll send out a raven and beg her father to return to Pyke?” The taller redhead looked around in grave and unmistaken panic, before setting her washed eyes on her giggling accomplice. Her hands wrapped around the shawl that she wore over her gown, and she sighed in discontent, as she weighed her words inside her. “Hush now, Talia!” She ended up conducting sharply, “You shouldn't dare to speak such words. Especially in the Red Keep!”

His hands formed into light fists, as the rousing sting of shame prickled across his pale-white skin. With his jaw now tightly set and a frown upon his face, the Prince cast his long gaze downwards – vexing himself for the impropriety of eavesdropping in the first place. He’d come to terms with his mien, well before he turned a man. With how he scared the finer ladies, with how they all deemed him a cripple. But to be such crass acknowledged as a ghastly and revolting monster, so coolly and without chargin, with such ease and nonchalance.... A bitter taste caught in his mouth, as aggravation dauntly surged him – for how dare those two low women speak so freely of his face?

The shorter girl huffed out expectantly, whilst her companion rained her chastation. Her face was hidden, protected onward by her loosened golden locks. But even so, by name alone, Aemond had apputed her; She was yet another one of Helaena’s hexing ladies. “Even if someone would hear me, certainly they'd feel the same!” With her nose held high and her back all straightened, the lassie added with a perfect diction, “I, for one, would never dance with such a brute. He could be the heir to the Iron Throne itself – I would still flinch at his touch. He is such a morbid freak.”

He could feel his cheeks catch on to a shade of putrid red. His probing and now heated leathers fell tightly on his heaving chest, leaving him appalled, constricted, and resigned in his dark space.

Black spots surged and filled his vision before he could extend his arm. Heinous pain stabbed through his heart, rushing through his mustered veins. The last he felt was of his shoulder, which throbbed in place with blazing heat.

***

“Aemond? Gods, Aemond, are you alright?”

The mere softness of her distant voice sent a pleasurable thrill within him. His lilac orb opened with stupor, gazing above him at the remnants of the littered candles, which flickered both across her face and at the sobriety of the dark room. His tenebrous brow rose in surprise, as her brilliant eyes met him with love, and her reddened lips broke to a smile.

“Thank the Gods you’re awake.” She whispered with a timbre of exhilaration, as her small hand came up to brush over the arch of his unfurrowed brows and against his tired face. Her touch was light and barely proded – and, for the first time since he’d truly seen her, a refulgent smile formed on her lips; caused by and bared out for him – in all its kind and gracious nature. His chest heaved once with every turn of his lungs’ deep and churning exhales, as her vivid and concisive image allowed for a heatwave of ardour to surge through his very being. The deep purple of his eye glimmered with abstained affection – the corners of his downward mouth all but quirked into a grin.

As if burnt by dragon fire, his body rose to a quick halt – propped upwards by his left forearm, and supported through the same. The wound that caused him ached discomfort all forgotten with the notion of her brightened and reclusive face. “But –” He began feverishly, whilst turning her head from side to side, “How,” He choked out with a desperate hiss, caressing her cheeks with his rough digits, “You left. You left me.”

A soft gasp lodged from her throat, as Aemond’s hands enwrapped her whole. Her own slim limbs entwined with his, running through his silver hair and over his unyielding jaw, resting on his raucous back and grazing over his resounding heart. The tension in his rigid shoulders eased with every gaudy touch. She wordlessly reached for his eyepatch, and yanked it off in a swift move. Her lips descended on his shoulder, moving upwards to peck lightly at his jugged and immersive scar, reaching for his poignant cheekbones, and pressing softly at his mouth’s high arch.

“How,” He whispered lowly once again, as her eyes met his with glee. "Foolish boy,” She kissed him slowly, whilst aligning her hips to his, “I came back for you. We’re man and wife now, you and I.” She added with a prompt elation, “I could never truly leave you.”

“Harrenhal, the Riverlands –” He grunted meekly as he insatiably chased her mouth. His wife bit over his lower lip, and swallowed down his grouchy growl. “Shh,” She subdued him back to calmness, “We are both in Oldtown now. All is well.” She nodded once to ease his nerves, “Your brother, Daeron, took care of everything.” Before the Prince could inquire anything less or more wanting, her leg prodded in between his thighs, widdling to pry them open. She moved her attentive focus to his red and swollen lips, and gently led his heated body back into a lying pose. The woman smirked at his perplexed submission, and flummeted a listless array of sensual and loving kisses down the curve of his adonis belt. Her knees plunged into the mattress that enwrapped him in a state of lust, straddling and guiding him as she considered at that time.

“Relax, my love,” She urged him gently, “I plan to take good care of you.” For but a moment, her movement stilled. And his wife rose up her head to kiss him in pleded benevolence. “I almost lost you. Never again.” She promised him with an elusive stare. The hardness in his hazy iris softened with her every word. His digits came to touch her own, and he entwined their hands together, taking her own to his mouth. Tenderly he kissed each finger, trailing the softness of her palms with the unquaint and possessed devotion of his flectuous and awaiting lips. She relaxed into his hold, and used her thumbs to graze his cheeks, rubbing faintly at the jarring redness that was forming on his skin. “I would burn the world to ashes if it meant possessing you,” He muttered lowly as he kissed her hands, “The Gods may curse me if they will it – but I would sooner kill a thousand men, and ravock against hundreds of armies, before I should see you leave again.”

Her giggle pierced his very soul, and that alone had been enough for him to free his damning urges. He pawed at her compressing bodice, and sucked with fevervour at the apex of her thighs and neck. “I am sick with the desire to have you. I am not a man to be tamed, my Lady; ‘tis with you and only you that I will submit willingly.” Poignant yet without a hurry, her fingers threaded through his silver hair, earning a salacious moan from the lips of the perturbed. Aemond’s eye was blown with lust, and a shallow but incessive pant ached within his naked chest. Desperate to hear her voice, and maddened by her ceaseless silence, the man drove on with upstrained force. “Tis only you who makes me whole,” He whispered as he shut his eye, “Your beauty is a curse that bound me since the first day that we met. No matter where I turn to look, I cannot escape your presence.”

“Say something – say anything. Tell me that I may – may I?” The desperate edge within his tone transpired over his extended hand. Tremulous and undecided, it touched the lacings of her back, itching to reveal her skin. “Please let me touch you. Please… I need you.” A reserved smile upturned her lips, and the woman trailed her hands over the appended width of his shuddering and throbbing chest. His every muscle tensed at the feeling of her cold and sanity hands – a downy sigh beleft his throat, followed by a swallowed whine. She leaned over to his ear, and trailed a long lick to his jaw. “I love you…” She subdued to his lax face, whilst letting out a brisk exhale. Her forehead came to touch his own, as she muttered once again, “I love you, Aemond.” The sluggish roll of her scant hips deterred the Prince to drone a curse. "Don't say that, my love," His breathing came to ragged pants, "I'm going to… spend… if you say that once more…" His hand came forth to grip her thigh, pausing slightly for a moment to ensure her disposition, before leading her into him with nuanced and languid movements. His brows furrowed in concentration, as his hazy and fogged over eye trailed across her freckled face. “To hell with keeping the bloodline pure,” He gulped as he relaxed into her, “Fuck principle.” His loins ached him with elation at the promise of release. The way she looked at him was too much. “Sīkudi nopāzmi, skori ao umbagon va bē hen issa…” His speech halted with the abstinence of another guttural growl, “Qrimbrōzagon, jorrāelagon, nyke jāhor tepagon ao nykeā gār trēsi.”

Very little he could say on the wild infatuation that he felt for the slight girl. He knew that he had well surrendered his will, his mind, and his whole being to the jolting peaks of madness – of love and lust and quaint desire.

He’d been a man bound by his duty. Prepared to marry his own sister and ensure their pure volition, should his brother prove himself more or less inapt to do it. Marry the Baratheon girl, concur with her father’s banners and one day sit at Storm’s End. But then he went against his mother – against the wishes of his grandsire, against the better of the Realm; he’d married her in disheartened haste, with no quaint or real regard over what would come of them. His extended family, the premise of his purpose as a simple second son, the scarce but mandatory expectations that were laid upon him since the first conditioned moments of his cursed and unwanted birth… they’d all have grown to account to nothing in the face of her lithe form. She was, by all righteous accounts, the one woman that the poets spoke of. The inviting and mistrusting siren that would lure tired men in, the innocent and stainless maiden that drove them all insane with need. His wife, His Lady – the only woman who could drive Aemond Targaryen wild with pure fervour. With every kiss on her pale skin, the falthered licks of true devotion cascaded from his parted lips – with every promise that he uttered in his olden mother tongue, too scared and afraid to claim them in a way she’d understand. For he was nought but a damn coward. A foolish man. One that was frightened. Frightened of the situation which he himself had put her under. Frightened of being rejected by his one true love again. Frightened of loving her wholly, as if but a single touch placed upon her skin would burn him.

Scared, that he would do anything it took to have her. Scared, that he would desolate his House, renounce his titles, give up his birthright – just to be allowed to stay quaintly over by her side. The tightness of his burdened sex deterred him to writhe and moan. His hands had worked throughout without him, undressing her with a light tremour – one that would have better matched a young and senseless stable boy, than a true and balanced Prince. His mouth latched on her heaving bosom, sucking its possessive mark along the low side of her collarbones. His right hand touched upon her thigh, and she immediately spread out her legs. “Se nyke jāhor jorrāelagon hen se tolvie mēn hen zirȳ.”

His trail of open-mouthed kisses faltered in their pushed longevity, as she offered her reply in kind. Her eyes washed over with confusion, and a quivering but dainty hand came up to rest over his scar. Her mouth opened as his closed, daring to utter but one question, after what felt like an eternity of eluding and punishing silence. “Is everything alright, my King?”

As if struck by a red arrow, Aemond countered her position – though he kept her tightly on him, his own chest touching with hers. “What did you say?” Following his own accord, the Prince wrapped a hand around her, “You do not speak High Valyrian.”

Not with this level of content.

“My love…” She strained herself to finally stay, whilst the Targaryen seized up her hand, “Aemond, my heart, what are you doing?”

“This isn’t real,” His voice cracked with dissolution, “This isn’t real.” His thumb trailed where her cut should be, across the soft mound of her flesh – though the only feel against it was her soft and healed-up muscle. In vain she tried to grip his face, and make him face her eyes again. In vain her face had gotten closer, urging him to probe her skin. “Aemond…” She tried her best to reel him back.

“You couldn’t have healed in two days' time.”

“I’m here, Aemond – I’m real. I am real just as you are.”

His thumb grazed her lower lip, trailing at her cupid’s bow. “No,” He muttered with a broken tone, “No, you’re not.”

Regret washed over her fair face – though whether felt or simply mimicked, Aemond wouldn’t dare to guess. Before he could swat her away, her hands gripped urgently at his loose shirt. The sick illusion stilled her movements, and merely pressed up against his form. “What does it matter if I’m not cut?” Her gaze softened as he pulled her nether, “This can be real,” She muttered meekly, as she trailed her smaller hand down the apex of his silver hair. Shyly she encouraged him to wrap a hand around her waist, and to rest his cluching chin on the nakedness of her small chest. “You and me,” She deterred further, “We can make this whole thing work.” She nodded fervently at her own words, as she unclasped the ready dagger that remained tied to his leg. Quietly she brought it forward, presenting it in her clean palms – and smiled at him encouragingly, as she pointed it to his big hands. “We can wed each other again,” She promised with a sweet allure, “And we can make it right this time.” Roaring anguish and relenting pain was all that Aemond found he felt, as her soft digits tried to trail over the sharpness of his jaw again. She raised herself back to her knees and straddled him with a shy look. “You know the words, Aemond, come on,” She coaxed him with a shallow grind, “Father, Smith, Warrior,” Her lips descended on his neck, “Mother, Maiden, Crone, Stranger…” A blinding array of wet kisses was panned insistently across his face. The cruel illusion pouted slightly, as her lost set of aching motions failed to be returned by Aemond. She stirred observantly in her found seat, and simply grazed his chest again. “I am his and he is mine…”

“Stop this.”

“From this day, until the end of my days.”

His hand had wrapped around her throat, holding her gently in her place – though firmly enough for her plump lips not to scoot a figment closer. His lone orb bore into her form, sending waves of apt vexation down the curve of her hicked bosom, “Enough.” He domineered his lady faintly, while swatting her off his heaving body. “Aemond,” She tried once more, thoroughly banished, and latched onto his extended arm, “Please,” Her tune had grown desperate in edge, “We can be so, so happy… I can be so good for you–”

But by then it’d been too late – for Aemond opened his eye, and was met with thorough light.

“Aemond.” A faraway voice called out for him.

His head was throbbing, his scar itching, stinging at his tightened skin with waves of blinding and deafening pain. His lips parted with the prying of a hardened groan, and the man hissed at the contact that the mattress made with him. “Shit,” He panted with a shaky exhale. The Prince’s lips pressed hard together, and a harsh frown scorned his features. As he glanced on at the man who’d dared perturb him in his sleep, his own surprise jolted him upward. “Daeron?”

As if motioned by his hiss of pain, the young Targaryen heathered closer, enwrapping his own slender fingers around his older brother’s forearm. Gentily he hoisted him better, making sure to shield his shoulder and press his back against the tall edge of his given bed. “You have slept for too long, brother.” He uttered in a sympathetic tone, “We thought that you might not wake up.”

“What happened?” Aemond jerked his whole arm forward, loosening his sibling’s hold. He winced at the grave discomfort, and Daeron breathed out a tut – though the two remained up close, even through Aemond’s conniption. Defeated or perhaps unnerved, Daeron straightened back his shoulders, broadening his slighter frame. He hummed towards him in slight admission, before resuming his known poise. “It’s good to see you, too, dear brother.” A sadenned smile played at his lips, before his eyes bore his again. “... The Riverlands have been secured two days ago by nuncle’s presence. I came and took you back to Oldtown.” His reply had been quite simple, yet Aemond’s blood surged through with ire. He almost jumped up to his feet, demanding for a hurried answer. “You mean to tell me… Harrenhal has been abandoned. The strongest keep in terms of rally.” His voice had grown huskier yet, as he strained his vocal cords to concur a neutral tone. A bludgeon red obscured his vision, as a palpable realisation hit – his wife had been abandoned, too. “The Lady of Riverrun –” He began with grave ferocity, yet Daeron’s voice befell his ears.

“What was once your prized war captive appears to have remained scot-free.” The deep purple in his eyes registered his wrathful face, “There was nothing we could do. Your shoulder blade was soberly infected. The girl could have been anywhere further South, and Daemon emerged up North with that vexing bastard filly.” As his speech came to a halt, the man expelled a briskened heave, “You’re lucky that you’re still alive, and that Ser Cole stuck out from Maidenpool to take over your share of men.” Aemond’s features turned impassive, as his bold and younger brother carried forward with his discourse. Recoil sprung inside his guts, densening his leaden body. Fury fought with better judgement, until the former struck its claim. “How long have I been asleep.” Though a poignant and illusive question, his words spewed out as a command, “How long has it been.”

“A little over three moon turns.”

“Three days,” The man spat out in disarray, “Three days,” He thus insistently repeated, as he fixed on the lowest point of the cranky wooden floor. His mind’s eye surged with hasty questions, with possibilities and made scenarios that could have feasibly played at her fate. She could not have gotten far. Walking through those fields on foot came near close to be impossible, even for the ones who worked them. She hadn’t stolen any horse, for Alys told him –

Alys Rivers.

The harlot witch who’d sworn before him that she’d find out where she would be.

“Where is the Rivers witch residing now?” Almost clearing through his trail of thought, Daeron’s body hindered forward. “Take it easy, Aemond, please. You have not yet healed your wounds.” The sharpened edge of his advice echoed through the dim lit room. “I shan’t allow your temper to recline your better health.”

“You listen here and listen well,” His wide stance dominated their reclusion, “I remain your Prince Regent until Aegon’s recuperation. You will tell me where that bastard is, or I’ll break this hedge to find her.”

“Do not make me choose between my man’s honour and my family,” Daeron sighed as he unsheathed his sword, “Lady Alys is under my protection. And no harm shall fall upon her.” A humourless laugh broke Aemond’s scowl, as a wild expression settled in. Her ongrowing popularity with younger men with silver hair hadn’t failed to irk him onward. “Ah, she’s shown you her loose cunny yet?” With two wide steps, he reached his brother, “You get the bull-tip of your cock wet and call that an act of honour? For agreeing to protect her whilst buried to the hilt inside her?”

Her deep-set eyes shone with uncertainty. The witch had bit over her lower lip, surging forward with her pleading. “I’m begging you, my Prince, Aemond cannot know.” Taken aback by her renowned persistence, Daeron merely nodded his head. “My Lady, you are well in Oldtown now. For saving my brother’s life as you did, I remain deeply indebted.” Though his stare had but ghosted over the appendix of her womb, the man frowned with laced dubiety. She followed his fixation vaguely, before bringing out a hand to rest over her emergent stomach. “Your brother isn’t a bad man – and he’s never wronged me, my Prince, however–” Her quaint unease shortened her argument. And alas, she’d lost her courage, lowering her arid stare. “However, I do not think it wise to spur him on with my condition.” With how her eyes avoided his, her kind admission of his resting brother might not have been all true and fair. Still he didn’t dwell on it; and merely chose to nod his head.

“He is certain to be mad at me.”

“You ought not to feel afraid, my lady. Any news of your condition will not come forth from my own lips.”

“Careful now, Aemond, you forget yourself.”

“And remain unarmed.” He gingerly agreed, “Did lord Ormund tell you how to be a man of honour? Was swinging your sword about in the face of your unguarded kin a lesson he’d formerly taught you? Or did you already possess such knowledge?”

“I do not wish to fight you, brother. Though you will stay your hand whilst here.” A damning silence cut right through them, clogging up their lungs with pressure and spiking up their avid hearts. Restlessness and grief filled Aemond, who only glanced in trepidation at his shorter and unmoving brother. The crackling fire of the room danced its flames across his face, thus distorting Daeron’s image of the fervour which he felt. “I’d tread lightly if I were you, brother. The Blacks did style me a Kinslayer.” Though filled with vehemence and zeal, Aemond had been smarter yet. With his small hum and low admission, he relaxed his back again. He took a seat near the small fire, and glanced at the boy again. His eye swirled with an iron glint, that merged into the biting flames of the red inviting blaze. His right arm rose in mocked surrender, though his sharp features didn’t lessen from their venomous display.

Despite his face being flushed red by his brother’s cruel last words, Daeron faced his flare with courage, and a straighter back than most, “Is it true?” He interjected, after a trifling plummet of silence. Though neither Prince required clarity upon the nature of his question, the younger lass protracted onward, as to secure Aemond’s reply. “Is it true that I should call the Tully girl my sister now?” The remnants of the aching fire danced across their heaving bodies. The avid churning of the olden wood dominated the wide room – two Targaryens singled each other, mirroring their counterpart in both elation and in stance. Aemond’s orb never once found itself leaving his face. Lilac clashed with spilling purple, until the latter of the two men moved.

“Yes.” Was all the Regent mustered to answer.

The oak floor creaked under the pressure of Daeron’s long and urgent steps. His hands sprawled over to the pine-wood table. His head lulled forward in a broken image.

In the nearing distance of the fertile fields of Oldtown, both Tessarion and Vhagar unleashed their frightening and unruly growls.

The Rushing Halls. The Half Calf’s Inn. Green Fork. Hag’s Mire.

Rushing Halls, Half Calf’s Inn, Green Fork, Hag’s Mire –

The North.

Words she whispered under her breath as she ran with a willingness unbent but strained. A ceaseless mantra of tied locations, that would hopefully bring forth her safety. Eventual peace within the Ream, to her family – and Gods be good, to the kindred spirits of all the souls she had selfishly left behind. She prayed and hung upon the last image that she got of Alys. Nought of what she said to her could be tested to be certain, and she might as well have sent her to an early and untimely death. She knew I wanted to march North, she'd ceaselessly remind herself, Could my own judgement be faulty?

Her legs had long been taken over by the blissful licks of numbness. And the soles of her silk shoes were long gnawed over by the pressure she had tirelessly put them under. Heaving breaths rattled her throat, and hot tears rolled off her cheeks. With a stupor which perturbed her greatly, the girl observed what had occurred.

She’d been crying. And for an awfully long time, at that.

Of exhaustion, of guilt, of desperation. Of feeling more caged than before, moving blindly like a pawn when bigger schemes were now at play – schemes that could have only been orchestrated by the Greens. Or the Blacks. Or the allies of those fractioned Houses. She could feel her heart emerge in the back-end of her throat. Her mouth dried up, although her tears quickened their flow into a heavy sheen of frightened spoil. The question in her mind remained – How long would it take until word reached the Blacks' most leal camps? Until Daemon or Rhaenyra found out about her bitter marriage, until her family – her real family – was used as bait to sway her heart?

They couldn’t know.

Would they believe it?

Would she be wrong to reach up North, in the hopes of peace and solace? Would she be caged and executed by the one Jace called his friend?

Her Jace. Her sweet and kind and perfect Jace.

His fingers threaded through her hair, as she sat across his lap. The padding of his calloused finger ran over her puffy cheek, prodding at her jaw affectionately as she read the book aloud. “Jace,” She hummed with contrary amusement laced within her tender voice, “However do you plan on learning all those words in High Valyrian if you can’t focus at all?” A boyish smirk spread on his face, which followed suit with a slight chuckle. Despite her chastising remark, the girl rose both eyebrows in wonder – she clicked her tongue in feigned dejection, but soon gave in to his strange joy. “Ah, but how can I be expected to concentrate on anything when you are so very beautiful,” Her Prince lowered his face to her, “And your lips look so inviting?” A myriad of little pecks descended on her face like rain, reaching wherever they could.

Three on her forehead, two on her brows, five on her nose and six on her lips.

A rather violent and aggressive turn stole the ground beneath her feet, and the woman found herself lying on the mudded earth.

Get up. Hurry and get up right now.

No matter how much she’d dare to try, she’d never be an avid runner. She’d never dare desert a post, but she’d never win a race.

Their giggles filled the blooming garden, as they both whispered their stale promises. “Avy jorrāelan,” He muttered right above her lips, “I swear that I’ll make you my Queen.” Her tiny gasps were soon all swallowed by the hunger of his mouth, “Avy jorrāelan–” She tentatively rolled the words in the back end of her throat, “That means ‘I love you’, doesn’t it?” The older boy let out a pur at her rightful and correct assumption, “My beautiful and smart betrothed,” He gently caressed her cheeks, “I love you,” He mustered up to say again, “I love you. I love you so, so much.”

“I love you more,” She strained herself to faintly exhale as she captured him again in an open-mouthed kiss.

She’d never seen love as a weakness, so she never felt the need to run. Although she’d never been the one to chase – always the last to eat her dinner, always the last to speak her mind. She was, in fact, a mere ground-holder. The one that always chose to stay.

“I’ll go with you,” Her weary eyes searched wide for his, “I won’t let you face the Triarchy alone.” Jace’s hands beckoned her hither, in a tight and chaste embrace. “You must stay here,” He softly uttered, “Your grandsire and brothers need you.”

“Not as much as you need me,” Her hands tightened their loose hold, “We’re a team. We’ve always been a team. I just–” Although the latter of her words were muttered, Jace still broke into a smile, “I just can’t let you go alone. I have a bad feeling about this.” He kissed the crown of her tied hair, and breathed in her daisy scent. “Stay,” He sighed in a low tone, “I did promise you, did I not?” His hawk-like orbs bore holes into her, “I swore to you that I’d return. I intend to keep my oath.”

Even when her shoes were laced, or when all her muscles tensed at the simple call of ready – she just wouldn’t move her legs. She was a stayer. Always the one to get up last.

“You shouldn’t be so taciturn,” Kermit’s voice rang through her ears. “Good things come to those who wait.” She dismissed him with a jab, and Oscar’s lips pulled to a smile. “In this world? In Westeros?” Her younger brother tightly questioned, “To a Tully? I don’t think so.”

Gods be good, her knees were bleeding from the sheer force of that fall. She blinked her eyes and panted loudly, trying to regain her vision. Dwellings on matters disclosed were the least bit of her worries. If she managed to escape her husband, then she could torment her soul.

The Rushing Halls. The Half Calf’s Inn.

Alys had at last been right.

“Hey, boy! You, from over there!” Her breathless callings were soon answered with a frail and slight refrain.

“Greetings, traveller!” The man instilled his horse to stop, whilst turning his face towards her. “You seem to be in a big rush.” Her heartbeat pounded in her ears. Her breathing came as short and laboured. “Aye, I am,” The girl agreed with a forced smile, whilst focusing to stop her pants. She glanced atop the horse’s rider, and merely nodded up ahead, “See, I was planning to go to High Heart – take the Gold Road back to Silverhill.” As she winced at her attempt to recall the map of Westeros, the nervous Lady of the Riverlands shrugged her shoulders in dismay. She swallowed deeply for a moment, and prayed to whatever God would listen for the man to be convinced. “But, uh,” She took in a shaky breath, as her lungs burned up her insides, “I didn’t realise the lands would be so muddy.” She chuckled as the boy relaxed, and aligned his horse to face her, “Not from these parts, are you, Lady?”

“I’m afraid I’m here in passing. My own family awaits in Appleton.”

If until then the lass had treated her with piercing and perusing distance, his facade had broken down, in the singular and stellar moment when her words mentioned the Reach – the modest castle of King’s Road where some lower lords resided. Immediately his shoulders slouched, as his eyes widened with joy. “You’re from Appleton, Lady?” Without awaiting for an answer, the boy shook his head and clarified, “My good mother comes from Appleton – she used to take me there in summers, since I was still in my cradle!” He dismounted his small horse with a feverished, good-willed felicity, and approached the waiting girl, “‘Tis good to see another lowborn of the Reach! My name is Dalron. Dalron Flowers.” As he proudly spoke his words, the Dalron bastard of the Reach leaned into a profound bow.

Another bastard of the Reach – this was starting to become a theme.

The amusing thought that reached her mind hindered the girl to suppress a laugh. Still, her eyes darted in focus to the side of the road, and she faltered a moment to plunge back into her words.

“I’m Sara Webber.” She lied without a single tick, and smiled crookedly when the man tripped over his better words, “M’lady!” He forthwith spat out his flattery, “Forgive me, m’lady, I hadn’t realised I was talking to a – well, uh, ah, a highborn lady.”

Relieved that her lie had worked and that her new identity had stuck so well – for she was painfully unaware if such a Webber even existed in the lands of Coldmoat Keep –, her hands came briskly in the air, as she waved them both good-heartedly. “It is I who should apologise, ser – I don’t reside exactly in Appleton. Though I share the enthusiasm: it is a rather beautiful place." Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and her stare focused on the tiny horse; how very perfect it would suit her in the joncture of her little trip.

“I struck up a conversation to inquire about your horse. Would you ever think to sell her?"

“She's not truly a horse, my lady, but a half mule –”

Alys.

"Still, she's as good as any purebred! And she can last for a long distance."

“She must be quite valuable and dear, then!”

The lanky bastard nodded with a smile upon his lips. His eyebrows furrowed shortly after, as he patted the old yerdle on her boney and emblemished back, “Aye, m’lady, dear she is – but I must say with honesty that she can’t carry much weight.” A shy quirk befell his lips, and the boy dared to look away again. His black eyes ran over the hills she’d pointed – and he shook his head whilst thinking. “But with just you on her back, m’lady,” His yellow teeth showed for a moment, “I’d say she could take you to Appleton.”

Her dirtied hand dug through her breeches for the remaining coins from Alys. After but a hissed-out curse and a sheepish smile thrown at him, her unclenched palm revealed both silvers, and a carefully polished ring. “It’s not much, I must confess,” Her breath staggered with an inept swallow, “But it should be of enough value to at least make up for her.”

The way his face switched brash emotions made her squirm within her place. She filled her lungs with putrid air, and merely drove on ahead, “Of course, I’d deal you with these clothes, as well.” She humorously jabbed at Dalron, “If you could tell I was a lady, then my job wasn’t done right.”

The rags the bastard wore in daylight contrasted her shirt and braise. And Dalron looked at the two silvers, and at the stone caught in her ring.

In those unparalleled moments of quiet, the Lady smiled at him with patience, but prayed upon the Seven Heavens that the man accept her offer.

***

The mule’s strides were long and hearty – filled with more determination than the girl ever expected; swift and agile on her scrawny, although weirdly elongated feet.

The girl noticed, although dumbfounded, that her shoulders had relaxed. Her lips pressed into a tight line, as her back turned stiff again.

Such a fool’s role she was playing, disassociating from her nimble body, daydreaming with her eyes wide open, when she hadn't yet found shelter. She could not afford missteps – not another hurried movement, or another close miscall. Relaxation was a dreaded feeling.

Her, overcome with confidence in her own wit and reason, on her slim chance of escaping and her margin of enclosed direction could not have brought good news with it. And that bastard boy she’d left, wearing all of Aemond’s clothes…

She’d smiled at him in a faint manner, and fooled him to dress in her garments.

When quietness set in the fields, and all the birds ceased with their loud humming, the tired Lady of the Riverlands wondered if she’d killed the lass – if somehow, although unwilling, she’d condemned him to his death. Would he be found out by Aemond? Or by one of his unchanged supporters? Would any woman from his town recognise the three-faced dragon on the back-end of his shirt, and denounce him as a traitor, style him someone who plotted against the betterment of the Black flags? … Would he know her true identity? Had he figured it all out from the moment that he saw her, and only bargained with her money to suck her dry of all she had?

She was Elmo Tully's daughter. The granddaughter of mighty Grover. Kermit's sister–

Aemond's wife.

Both her brothers were well-liked, known and welcomed with great reverie on North to Kingsroad and South to Ashford. Surely then the boy won’t talk.

… But what if he were made to talk? Tortured on and on for hours, seemingly without an end? He’d seen her take to Wayfarer’s Rest, so if he’d give them those directions, then at least they would be wrong.

The mule was panting, hard but slow. Her feet had started giving out.

“Attagirl,” The girl encouraged, patting her on her slim neck, “Hold on for me. Hold on, sweet thing – we have to walk for a while longer.” The half-breed puffed through her pink nose, and merely grunted in her slight retreat. “I promise you, we’ll stop real soon.” Had she turned fully insane? Overcome by grief, fatigue, and so desperate to talk again?

Human company couldn't be traded with the one of a small horse. But conversing with the mare was better than not cackling at all.

A lousy crack of a felled branch unsettled both the mount and owner to the heights of deep hysteria – but only the former jolted and curdled out a high-pitched shriek.

“Shh, shh, attagirl – calm down, sweet thing, calm down.” The Bliss of Riverrun commanded gently. Her hands were shaking, still holding up the yearling’s bridle. She exhaled once through her straight nose, and tried to calm her aching nerves. “I got scared, too, but it was nothing.” Though darkness ate away the forest, her avid eyes searched through the shadows – and her own hand rested quite stiffly, palming at her thigh to ground her. “See, it was just a stupid bird. The breeze. A noise.” Her own breathlessness surprised her.

In olden days, she'd laugh at that. For she always teased the children that were still scared of the dark.

Droplets of sweat coated her forehead, tickling down her dirtied cheek. The girl didn't feel like laughing. The girl felt the need to scream.

Should Aemond venture out to find her, she’d be well aware of that. And no amount of greenery would mask Vhagar’s laid out shadow. The dragon’s roars had made her ears bleed – they would be louder than a measly crack.

As she looked up from the bushes, the girl's big eyes filled up with glee; for there it was, up on the hill – the unkept and deformed Hag’s Mire.

《"You'll go towards the Rushing Halls and buy yourself a mule from the Half Calf's Inn." As the younger Lady nodded feverishly at her late advice, Alys clasped her cheeks with her hands, and brought her head further towards her. "You'll keep a straight line to the Green Fork. You won't stop to eat or drink – you won't stop until you reach Hag's Mire.》

Alys told her she could stop there. And Alys had been right before; why would she be lying now?

Maybe she should stop about. Allow her mule the rest of night, eat something hot, starchy and fat.

She still possessed her golden pendant. And she could trade it for a meal, and a high stable for her tired mule. Her heart picked up with faith and hope, as her own lips parted with gratitude.

Thank the Gods for Alys Rivers, she compelled within her thoughts.

His eyes looked far into the distance, matching shadows to their forms. The grey within his tired iris faltered over with light languor – and a quaint sigh left his lips, as the man straightened his back.

“And so quietness enwrapped the Realm.” Her satin voice enveloped Cain, and whilst he turned his head around, he returned her smile with grace. His fatigued limbs chastised in protest, yet he still bowed in his reply. “Lady Arryn,” He echoed slightly, announcing the woman's presence. The night’s air flogged at his pale skin, leaving forth their angry marks at the apex of his hollow cheeks. “The hour’s grown quite late, my Lady.” Instead of an outright reply, the woman nodded in effervency, as she walked on by to sit near the stones he rested on. She turned her stare to the vast distance, and sucked a breath with a light tut. “When my ancestors built the Vale,” She began with a small hum, “They said it was impenetrable.” Her hands rested in her lap, playing with her golden rings.

“Why are you here alone?” The quaint recoil of her tone matched the weariness of his low stance. “Apologies, my lady. I hadn’t meant to abandon my post.” Though he tried his hardest to level out his prickled throat, the words he uttered maintained their shaky undertones. The subtle feel of her wool shawl surrounded Cain with love and warmth. Her hands had draped the silky felt over his unyielded back, and she rubbed long, soothing circles in the thick of the material. Twice she had patted his shoulders, before gently letting go.

A wordless colloquy was thus exchanged. “It’s really cold.” She hushed beside him.

“But I’ve always found their logic to be lacking in that sense.” Jayne transfixed Cain with her blue eyes, “No one's tried to break us in. But I'm certain that some could." She paused a while to maul her thoughts, before she carried on her speech, "Just because something looks to be untouchable, that doesn't make it rightly so.”

“It doesn’t quite inspire men to go to arms, either, my lady.”

“Yeah…” The knight chocked-out an affirm, “It is.” Her eyes pleaded silently with his, and the five and ten year old lowered her head over her knees. “You talked to him.” She merely sighed, as he quickly shook his head. “He reached out to me,” Cain muttered simply, ��I was in the training yard when he showed up out of nowhere.” A wobbly hand came to wipe his tears away, and the lass scratched himself with the callous ends of his rough digits. “Said we needed to talk. I thought that… Gods, I never allowed myself to hope, my lady, but for once I–” The fever in his growing tone wantonly shredded his heart. The anguish in his gape was evident, but the girl lest found herself transfixed by his iron gaze – so close to being blue or green, so close to turning milky white. “Is he…?” She asked him with a reserved pitch. “His twin brother.” Cain huffed out, as a bitter laugh slipped past his lips. “Tyland was just there to make sure I wouldn’t yelp. His brother’s too much of a coward to address his son his questions.”

Lady Arryn forced a smirk, yet agreed with the tall knight. “Every coward seems courageous in the safety of the crowd.” She murmured through a marginal chuckle, “And bravery can be contagious when the band is playing loud.” Her tense gaze drowned him like a river – and the swirl beneath her eyes let the man know of her wide plan. “To be led by the force of example can be a very tricky thing.” Cain exhaled through his nose.

“Is that why you cannot find sleep?”

“Was he worried you would say something?” Her drawn voice laced with the cobwebs of uncertainty, “What would you have to gain from calling yourself a Lannister’s bastard?”

“A whole lot, Tyland thinks.” The corners of his mouth quirked upwards, “For one, Jason doesn’t have any sons.” Her eyebrows rose from perplexed to intrigued. “Even rumours of an illegitimate one could very well ruin their thread of succession.” As the two friends pressed on forth with their treasonous exaltion, the younger girl lowered her head. “But you don't want it. You don’t want Casterly Rock.”

“No.” His own body had become a vessel, a means to chain his most protruding thoughts. The corners of his mouth had watered, as his vision turned unclear. Gods forgive him, and Gods be good – but how he wanted it as his. He wanted to sit on that damned chair more than presidency would allow. He wanted to feel the weight of that ridiculous and pompous cape upon the broadness of his shoulders, he wanted to know what it would be like; For but a moment, he wanted to know their power. To know what it was like to be seen, quaint regarded as an equal, and not as a produce of lust. “No, I don’t want it.” His head surged clear with a response. The world was yet to make a man who lacked the much needed ambition to climb the ladder to the heights of power. The impulse he felt had made no difference – what he wanted and what he was owed were on the two sides of the same coin.

His shoulders tensed, much like that night. “I feel…” He strained himself to give an answer, “When I faced the Kinslayer in that dark, secluded cave," His diction halted for a moment, as he thought on what to say, "I felt more than prepared to die.”

“But you didn’t die.”

“No, I didn’t.” His shame slid down his throat with ease, “I survived; and in the process of that, I failed her.” His stare threaded with the winter’s sky. And when he dared to speak again, his voice hung low with deep uncertainty. “There’s nothing to say I won’t fail again.”

“Nothing makes a man so bold as a woman’s smile, and a hand to hold.”

The redness in his cheeks had deepened, and though his mouth opened in protest, quietness ensued a while – He would have avidly denied her musings, swearing on the Gods above that what he felt for his fair lady was nothing but a lasted friendship.

I owe my very life to her, he might have been endowed to say, When no one else believed in me, she was the one who gave me hope. And the right purpose to uphold.

Only when he turned her way, did the knight realise that he was tired. Tired – but tired up and far beyond the constrictions of the mind and flesh. The only sound that left his lips was a faint sigh of refrain. Everyone inside his life abandoned him or ran away. How cowardly it was of him to wish to do the very same.

His weary and incessive shoulders stiffened with the gentle breeze.

A single tear rolled off his cheek, and Cain swallowed back a curse. “I always lived under the impression that fathers grow to love their sons.” The silence that swaddled the gardens exceeded deafening amounts. Crickets nestled in the grass, opening their wings to fly to the delicate petals of flowers in the raptures of the night. A gust of wind prodded her vision, swaying forth her longer hair. The young girl’s eyes closed shut in focus, as her lips parted instead. “Jason Lannister is an idiot.” She ended up concluding then, “He doesn't deserve to call you that.”

A steadied breath escaped Cain’s throat, and her wide orbs softened in pain. Her gaze moved forth to the green bushes, and her smooth hands twitched in her lap. Suddenly and without thinking, her palm enwrapped his shaking fist. “I’m glad he’s not making you live with the shame of being his first male offspring, you know.” Although her moody tone of voice snapped right through the orchid garden in a patronising way, the Bliss of Riverrun made use of her free remaining hand; digging through her gown’s loose pockets, searching for a piece of cloth. They emerged not moments later, holding up the handkerchief – which she brought up to his face, to wipe away his trail of thought. “Fuck him.” She disclosed with a sure frown, “How something so defiled and ugly managed to mend such a good and patient boy should be studied by the Citadel.”

“You should go back to the feast, my Lady. Your grandsire will be very mad once he notices you left.” Though his gentle tone of voice tried to lead the girl away, his calloused thumb stroked tenderly at her palm’s inner soft flesh. She gave his hand a caring squeeze, and aligned her grasp with his. “I’m not going to leave you.” Her eyes spoke the honest truth, “Not when you’re hurting like that. What kind of friend would I be then?”

A small smile formed on his lips, pulling them upward in a comical but quite strained fashion. All his blood surged in his ears, and the tall and blonde young knight wished to tell her how he feels. He wanted to at least say ‘Thank you’, but the words escaped his clasp. His weary eyes were set upon her – upon the small curve of her nose and the wide curls of her soft hair. His tongue felt tied inside his mouth, and he was glad she’d smiled instead. “Besides,” The young girl spoke to fill the silence, “I don’t think I’ve ever attended a more dull and stale soiree.” Though his tears had long dried up, her hand stayed rested on his cheek. “The smallfolk starves so the Lannisters can stuff their faces, and congratulate each other for being so stupidly wealthy.” She threw her hands up in the air, peeking at her sole companion for one of his amused reactions. Sure enough, the boy was grinning – and that lone and simple notion made her all the more excited to upkeep cheering him up. “They must think we’re stupid,” She hummed in a degreeing voice, “I swear to you – they’re taught one dance, and one dance only. They just slightly change the music in the hopes that we won’t notice.”

By then his laughter echoed like pure crystal through the otherwise deserted grounds. Her own smile broadened with elation, as her curious and searching eyes reached up to his jolting shoulders. The youngest child of great House Tully crooked her head to the left side. “Hey,” She called out for his attention, “I just had the best idea.” Her dire lips pressed up together, before she went on with a smile. “Do you want to do something fun?”

If not for Jayne’s inessive stare, and the lethargy he felt throughout, Cain might have bothered to deny her brazen, yet affitely laid-out assumption. Orbs of forged steel fought to maintain the stare of ones tempered in frost – yet still the man shifted about, landing both his muted eyes on the ventured meadowed cliffs. Defeat swarded up his chest – sieging his brain and better reason, making him almost lose his temper. The greenery before his eyes coveted a single truth; more than six moons had passed between them. From the last time he’d seen his friend.

Alone at night he often questioned whether she’d at least survived. He prayed flaringly without a fault that she’d end up safe and about – protected and abstained from harm, and from the swandering of the Kinslayer.

“But all alone his blood runs thin.” He swallowed back his lost refrain, finally answering the waiting lady. “Then doubt comes – doubt comes in.”

He’d seen her Septas teach her Prayer. He listened to their wilted teachings, to the encouragements she’d be swarmed by. It was shameful and disruptive – his need to bite his tongue so hard, that he’d draw blood inside his mouth. Laughing would be crass and vile, he’d repeat inside his head, when her weekly call to “Grace” led them to the striking Sept. Faith can be encouraging, he’d reason, Not all of us are dealt bad hands.

There was no mercy to be had once fate fell into Their harsh hands. Bastard boys knew it too well, and so did every man and child who’d go to bed without their supper. Survival had to come by first – and faith would take the back-end stroll, until the former be assured. No, Cain had never prayed before. For there was no amount of prayer to be whispered by his lips that would possibly bring forth reclusion and relief to all he’d lost. It was the Gods who took his mother. It was the Gods who made him so. It was the Gods who made him feel like the sombrest in the world. But in a twisted and deformed way, it was the Gods that gave him comfort – for it was easiest to blame them so, for all the slights which he had faced.

Cain had never prayed before, but how he prayed for his friend now.

“Place your hand upon my waist, like so.” Her tender voice led with an instruction.

“I don’t think this is…”

“Whatever are you scared of, Cain? I’ve not seen you so tense before – not even in jousts or tourneys.” Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, as her brows fixed in concentration, “And you faced knights there that were twice your age.” Defeated by her lack of presidence, the boy let out a shaky sigh, and focused on his burning stare on the forming trees ahead. His gape bore long and cutting daggers to the entrance of the gardens, and with each passing momentum, his back turned all the more stiff. Such an intimate position would have ruined any lady, were she caught with a high lord – and all the more vexing it’d be if she’d strayed with a sought bastard. His ears caught with a rosy tint, as his mouth parted with a forming protest. “My Lady–” The Waters boy had tried again.

Mayhaps sensing his mistrust, or simply carrying her own joke further, his lady rose her left hand up and swatted him with a slight grin, “See? You’re already a natural at it.” The music of the Great Hall carried to their small corner of the keep. And the Tully nodded once to encourage Cain to move. “Septa Harlow says it’s important to upkeep your stare,” She muttered as she twirled with him, “When dancing with a fellow lord, it is improper for a lady to look at anything below the brows.”

He could feel his hands get clammy, and his limbs turn firm and heavy. Though her words had eased him in, the boy remained brittle and set. “Boring, right?” She questioned with a tiny laugh, “As I told you – you didn’t miss much. That’s nothing else that people do there.”

As the music caught incentive, her feet stopped into their track. She mocked a deep bow at her partner, and slowly rose her gentle eyes. She turned around without a warning, and started running up ahead. “Keep up, Cain!” She yelled before her with a zeal that filled her heart, “I have a better idea than just staying here – but we’ll have to really hurry!”

The witty Lady of the Vale shifted on the cold, wet stones. She turned to fully face the bastard, and offered him a knowing nod. “The only time a man can be brave is when he is afraid.” Her azure eyes looked at his hand, and at the bandages that covered it. “To lose two fingers at three and twenty, to be unable to move your arm, or to fight as you’ve been used to,” The older woman spoke to him, “It’s a misfortune that’s more than daunting.” Her slighter frame approached his crouching and recoiled in body, choosing to stand next to him. “You’ve managed to hang onto life when everything else seemed to be lost.” She muttered lowly, as if taken by surprise by the man’s pure strength of spirit.

“I failed her.” He whispered back in spat disgust.

“You didn’t fail anyone.” The lady interjected swiftly, “From the very beginning, you’ve been sent on a death mission.”

His loosened locks of golden hair fell upon his ample shoulders as he marginally shook his head. “Oscar was right,” Cain murmured plainly, “In between the two of us, she should have been the one to get here.” His body twisted towards the older woman, as his brows furrowed in pain, “I failed her.”

“If she knew you were alive, leading troops to save her homeland, I think she’d be ample proud.”

Despite the empathy she felt for him, the small brunette hardened her stare, “‘Tis not about what Oscar, or Grover, or Elmo think – ‘tis not about what your Lady thinks.” Her hand took hold of his good shoulder, giving it a toughened squeeze, “‘Tis about what you do now, with the resources that you were given.” The leal fire in her eyes caused the man to straighten up from the slouch that bent his back, “I expect you to be nervous. I expect you to be scared. I’m asking you to go back there, and risk your life all over again for the sake of something that we’re losing.” As her speech came to a halt, she gnawed harshly at her bottom lip, reddening her paling mouth. “If you go back there, you might die. Forget about holding your sword the right way, or about fighting with honour – you might face dragon fire, and dragon fire doesn’t spare even the most able of men.”

Though her words were scarce and prudent, Cain waited patiently for her to finish. Slithers of shame gathered in the low pits of his stomach. How could he have lost his nerve when his Lady hung onto him? With so many lives at stake, whom all readily lent to him?

“We’re counting on you, ser Waters.” Jayne continued her trail of speech, “We’re counting on you. But can we truly do that?”

If he chose to fight again, it wouldn’t be for wealth or glory. It wouldn’t be for great renown, or to prove something to others. Even if he lived it down, no applauses would be heard like at the end of a big tourney. He’d emerge a new man, changed, lacking of some of the scarce qualities that he felt he had that day. But what would happen to him – inside of him – mattered not to the young knight. Once again her kindred eyes came across his spinning view. And he knew, once and for all, that he’d throw his life away, if only to shelter her own.

His peer had mended to determined, and he swore upon his honour that he’d see his deed go through.

Allyn Swann. Lady Jayne Arryn. Four thousand men and (Y/N) Tully.

All the people that believed in him. All the souls that trusted him.

Just like on that autumn night, when he and (Y/N) ran away to see a circus in Flea Bottom, the heavy-lidded cavalier felt his words die right on his parted lips. But he came forth with a swift answer – one which he truly believed in.

Her gentle voice seeped in his ears. ‘You’re the only one who understands me, Cain.’

“I swear it, before the Old Gods and the New – upon Faithkeeper, upon my honour. I’ll return your trust tenfold.”

A true smile formed upon her lips, at the near end of his pledge. “Do come with me, Ser Cain,” She instructed with a leveled tone, “I have a gift prepared for you.”

Fuck the Gods. Fuck Alys Rivers. That lying, scheming, filthy whore.

To think she almost prayed for her, and thanked her feverishly inside her head. Her trip ensued without a hitch – and so she let herself believe in her, and nearly bumped into the Redwynes. The lousy troops that gathered up and swarmed the entrance of Hag’s Mire. Had she not spotted their banner, she might have set her foot inside. And that ostentative and golden dragon, which she despised with her whole being, served as her only decent cover against their clumpy eyes and ears. Her mule had come free of her bridle before she could hide any better, and advanced without her forth into the crowd of foul usurpers. ‘You fucking traitor…’ Her soul was screaming, as a Green soldier gripped her small saddle, ‘I give you that damned red apple, and you go to feed from them?!” Her jaw was clenched, as were her muscles. She couldn’t bolt. She couldn’t run.

“Where is that useless boy we paid for?!” The high-pitched scream of an old woman reached for her tense and prodded ears, “This is the last time I let you deal with the stupid boys of bloody Ramsford!”

Her eyes darted to the source of noise, and her mind surged with an idea. It would be risky. She could well die. If Darlon Flowers had found her out, then the haughty and sullen madame would see right through her flimsy scheme. But she had no other choice. Hurriedly and with great ardour, she dug her hands in the fresh mud, and scraped its contents on her face, smearing them wildly about. “A-Apologies for being late!” Her hoarse voice echoed through the clearing. She mildly coughed inside her hand, and tried her best to engross her timbre. “I never went further than Oldstones, ma’am–”

“I care not for your excuses, lad!” Her antsy wording cut her off, “You were to be here for a good five hours,” Her hand enclasped and tugged her wrist, “So take your mind off being paid today!” Her hazy irises bore daggers in and out the Lady’s heart, and her nose scrunched in daunting wonder at both her face and dirty garments. “Gods be good, they sent an animal. Are you clean of spreading warts?”

“I-I, uh–”

“What about catching diseases? Are you simple-minded, boy? Address me when I speak to you!”

Her wrinkled hand prodded above the laced-up waistline of her linen breeches. Were she not to open her mouth, the madame would have no shame to check and see her parts herself. “No – no, ma’am. I’ve no disorders left in sight. N-no warts, no yellow cough,” Her face contorted with abstained tension, as her hands rose into the air, “Nor any other spreading disease, I can assure you well of that.” With a loud snort and a dismissive hand, the aged madame turned to the wench, “You take this Ramsford boy inside and help clean up his grisly mug.” Her glacial tone waved with intent, “Then back to work, the both of you!” The younger girl nodded her head, shaking off her loosened braids, “Y-Yes, madam, of course! I’d be glad to help him out!”

“Well?” Her cutting question sucked all the air from the blonde girl’s arid lungs, “Don’t just stay there and look stupid – now!”

***

The lost blonde girl was called Mariah. A jumpy but dexterous cook, more used to the blazing heat provided by the kitchen fires than the cool air of the airy inn. She’d awkwardly handed the Lady the much-awaited handkerchief – and merely played with her plump fingers as the girl wiped off the mud that hadn’t yet fully dried up. And although her nose scrunched up at her resistance to a watered cloth, she failed to do anything wanting besides pushing her towards a closed door. “You-you’re going to be their attendee tonight. They don’t like women overhearing their stories or their spoils of war… so it’ll just be you in there.” Her green eyes widened to two round specs, “O-oh, of course, well – it won’t be just you in there, since you’re serving a table full of men, but – I-I meant that you’ll be the only servant there.” The words that followed her expansive ramble turned from stutters to incentive murmurs. And the Lady nodded weakly, whilst trying to decipher them. When her speech near loomed its end, the girl coughed loudly with insistence, and offered Mary a small smile. “Thank you, Mariah. I’ll handle it.”

Her burning eyes interwovened with alight uncertainty, “J-just be careful,” She confided through the notion of a fragile sniff, “They tend to scream when they get angry… A-And they got angry quite a lot.”

Ghastly and impending savages – that is what the soldiers were, as they laughed and drank and scarfed right into their mead and ale. The short remnants of her hair brushed across her cupid’s bow, falling straight over her view and narrowing it to the front. Her breathing turned to short and laboured, as she turned her back to them – and her hand enclasped the wine pouch with a faint but thrilling shudder. She’d seen men get drunk before, and she knew how they could talk. How the pints of liquid courage pulled the truth from their loose tongues, how their vision and their temper simmered them to gentle hearts.

Wine and ale made men more placid, but they also riled them up.

Her fingers brushed across the table, and she crouched close to the surface, seemingly inspecting it. Although her ears and head were pounding, she’d have to play her cards just right.

The well-known shrill of a low voice sent a shiver down her spine. “The Targaryens have all extended their lines,” Arlow Redwyne spat out bitterly, and all eyes turned back on him. Her own head jerked upwards in wonder, as she sucked in a harsh breath. “And now that summer’s over, the Blacks will have a harder time keeping their men and horses fed.”

“Summer or no, they can’t even call that an army,” A haughty voice echoed amused, “What was it – six hundred men from our dear Tullys, and a couple more from close to Sherrer?”

Now her eyes had been blown wide. Six hundred men. That was all they could afford. Were six hundred starving men all they had left of their home?

“Those searing leeches, along with the Freys, understand the woes of winter better than we ever will. The cold won’t beat them. As for the Northerners…”

Her guts hung lowly in her midriff. She’d recognised the last man speaking – the infamous “Bloody Mance” Pyke: a lesser lord under House Greyjoy, one of the few who’d known her brothers in an up, ‘personal’ manner. He’d visited their home in Riverrun, and saw the little Lady grow. How much of her he would remember was a query without answer.

“The Starks have no interest at play here.” A bitter voice shook through the room, “They haven’t been involved thus far. Cregan Stark won’t risk his forces for a war that never reached him.”

“Our spies,” Lord Pyke snapped tartly, “Report growing discontent among the northern and south-western lords. The latter wants to return home and gather the harvest before the crops turn. The former has sent word out to gather an army.” His amber eyes rose to Lord Redwyne, who merely let out a hum.

He licked his lips off the sweet ale, and whistled lowly at the Lady to refill his empty cup. She briskly moved to his direction, and poured him in a hefty cup. “And I’m sure if those same spies snuck into our own encampments, they’d report growing discontent amongst the southern lords.” His own flat tune disconcerted any worry from his sons’ long freckled faces, “This is war. No one’s content. And the northerners might take years to even gather half a regiment. The conditions make it such that any message travels slowly; before the Boltons and the Banfields, and House Mormont from the West manage to defrost their troops…” His heavy hand dismissed the girl, “The battles will be long well-ended.” A cutting silence reigned the room, as Lord Mance Pyke drowned his tall cup. He shifted lowly in his wooden seat, and signed for (Y/N) to grant him a refill.

She approached with her chin down, chewing on her bottom lip.

Gods be good, let him not notice me. Gods be good, let him not see me.

“We’ve underestimated the Tully boy for far too long.” One of the soldiers dared to mutter, “He has a good mind for warfare, his men worship him.”

'The Tully boy,’ She exhaled slowly, Would that be Oscar or our elder brother?

“As long as he keeps winning battles, they’ll keep abstaining for Rhaenyra.” His voice had come to shake with fervour, “We’ve been waiting for him to fail, he is not going to fail. Not without our help.”

“Then think, Ser Wylde, exactly what would make the lass break.” Arlow Redwyne interrupted when his fist landed on cutlery. “What is the one thing a Tully cares for more than anything?” Lord Pyke surged forward with the burning but evasive question.

The blood had run from her slim face, making her seem pale and sickly. Though the mud masked her quite well, the Lady arched her shoulders forward, trying to appear unbothered. A rattle of contented laughter turned the men’s whole disposition. “Family, honour and duty.” A black-eyed boy mocked the lords’ distinctive dictum.

“You stupid fuck,” Another wheezed right next to him, “It’s ‘Family, duty, honour’ – at least say their calling right.”

“The point still stands,” Mance ushered with ascendence, “There is nothing a Tully cares for more than family.”

It was as if a punch had been directed at her carved-out chest. The air immediately left her lungs, and her fingers gripped the pouch. She’d take a knife to all their throats before she’d let them harm her brothers. In his seat, Arlow deflated. “Of course,” He puffed through his broken nose, “And how, exactly, do you plan to reach such an impressive feat?” His callous digits jerked a march over the corners of the wooden table, “You forget mayhaps, good ser, how both Grover and that Oscar rest somewhere in Baelish Keep. The girl disappeared near Hayford–”

So Kermit was still fighting out there… and they thought that she was dead.

“‘Heard our Prince made her his wife.” The searing words befell the chamber. Ser Wylde had captured their attention, and even the men drunk out their minds rose their heads to listen better.

The unhealed flesh of her soft palm stung her over the long cut.

"If he had, he never would have left without her. And more than enough rivermen thanked the Gods when they saw Vhagar heading towards nought else but Oldtown.”

He left…?

She had lived the past three days in excruciating paranoia. And her ‘husband’ simply left her? Confusion, anger and relief all surged into her pulsing heart. He’d given up on finding her. She’d finally see both her brothers. And with any ounce of luck, their paths would never cross together. She should have felt elated. She should have felt relieved. She should have tried to mask her happiness, the smile that pulled at her fair lips – yet all she felt within her soul was a plentifully bitter feeling.

May he rot in the darkest pits of the Seven Hells, she exhaled briefly, Both him and his damned witch.

A lousy snort bounced off the walls that sealed the chamber of their council. And Lord Redwyne's youngest son shook his head with a deep frown, “Don’t you find it rather strange,” he asked, “How he left in such a hurry?”

“‘Tis not for us to safely say.”

“Yet even so!” His youthful face churned with suspicion, “He kept us wholly in the dark.”

The only thing that truly mattered was that Aemond had abandoned Harrenhal.

“And what are we to do now? Daemon lurks with that strange lassie – that’s two dragons against none!”

“Aemond won’t abandon us.”

“Open up your eyes, ser Wylde!” Bowen Redwyne rose his voice, “He might just as well have done that. He left with Daeron to hide in Oldtown, and burnt Harrenhal to the ground.”

Her breathing hitched inside her throat. Not only were they aware of the stronghold’s current state – but they thought Aemond had burnt it with the aid of trusty Vhagar. It had been three days of running – the word surely traveled fast.

“He left us with no defence–”

“Enough!” The mighty roar let out by Mance silenced the forfeiting room. “We’ve gathered here to speak of war. Not gossip like fishermen’s wives.”

Where did Aemond’s army head to? Oldtown was a place secured. So had he left because of Daemon?

《"Going out to face two dragons is a death sentence." His deep voice rumbled through the silence of the chamber, "I can't afford that risk anymore with you involved. We'll have to move from Harrenhal. You'll get to meet Daeron in Oldtown."》

The plan was to leave for Oldtown – why was she acting so surprised? Why did she care whether or not he’d made it safe? Whether or not his wounds had healed? Why was she somehow weirdly hurt by the fact that he just left her? Her trailing thoughts and inner conflict came to a halt as Mance addressed her. “Drain that pouch of any wine, boy.” He commanded with a rumble to his stern and cutting timbre, “And bring out water. We’ll be here for quite some time.” As she turned her back whilst nodding, the lanky Lord heaved out a sigh. “Can you read, Lord Edmure Rosby?”

“I-I beg your pardon?”

“Can. You. Read.”

The Lord of Cornhill met his stare with a blacked-out and confused expression. “Y-... Yes, my Lord, I can.”

Just as Edmure answered his question, the Lord of Pyke let out a chuckle. He wiped his hands off the cooked supper, and reached his breeches for some paper. “This letter,” He clarified to the slow lordling, “detailing our infantry movements was meant for Lord Quentyn of House Marbrand.” After a slight egregious pause, his droopy eyes fell on the man, “It was sent to Lord Marlin of House Qallister.” The young Lord Rosby sucked in a breath, and allowed his orbs to trail to the stones of the hedged floor, “My apologies, my Lord, I must’ve–”

“Boy?” Mance called out to the working Lady Tully. “Fetch me The History of the Greater and the Lesser Houses.” He pointed forward with his finger, “It’s the second one on the side.”

Her feet might have given up on her, were it not for his stale order. She’d never been addressed before, and that alone made her breath hitch. Her eyes shut close in concentration, and a small curse beleft her lips. She could feel the break of sweat crown her forehead in round droplets, but she calmed her rabid breathing with a small roll of her shoulders. Her hands rose to grab the book, but wavered on for just a moment – touching up the edges of another heavy leaflet, before picking up the right one, and carrying it to her chest.

“Even this cupbearer can execute commands better than you,” Mance scolded the sitting lord, as the girl laid out the tome. “To whom does House Qallister owe allegiance?” He questioned with a honeyed tone. The frail lass rose up timidly, pointing forward to the laid-out scriptures, “My Lord, I…”

“To the Tullys of Riverrun!” His enraged scream and cutting look arose the silence of the whole commandment. “And who, pray tell, do the Tullys of Riverrun owe allegiance?” His fist came into contact with the freshly laid out table, “To the Blacks, to the Usurpers, to the Whore of Dragonstone and her bunch of bastard cunts!”

The Bliss of Riverrun remained hammered in her weary spot – somehow still holding her breath, in spite of being overlooked.

“I judged you might be good for something more than brutalizing peasants.” He exhaled slowly through his flared-up nose, “I see I overestimated you–”

A timid knock at the locked door caused the girl to jolt upfront. She caught her lip into her teeth, and chewed with tremor at its bottom, as the loud gates opened wide, to reveal a pale Mariah. “M-My lords…” She began with a light pause, “M-My mistress would like to ask you… when you’ll… p-pay… the charging fee.”

Bowen Redwyne smiled politely, bowing his head in return, “We must have overstayed our welcome.” He whispered mirthly to his brother.

Lord Redwyne glanced at the girl, mirroring his son’s refrain. “You can go announce your mistress that we will be done here shortly. Tell her to bring the written tax for the food and for the shelter.” As Mariah curtsied deeply, shutting the door in her departure, the old man turned to his sons, and to the lesser lords at present. “All of you except Lord Pyke – leave. Boy, clear this table.” Runceford’s even and dispersive voice rang right through her nimble body. She offered him a brisk ‘M’lord’, and hastily got up to work. As tiny Edmure rose as well, the lord of Old Wyk grabbed his arm. “We are not done with our talk.” He hissed in his petulant ear.

***

“We cannot allow this impunity to go on.” Mance spat out in a rough tone as the door closed in on them, “No matter what has been discussed today – the Tully boy remains a problem.”

Her dirty hands wavered a moment, ‘till they resumed their hurried task.

“His clever move near Redglass Field nearly cost us all the Capitol. We will not fall for that again – we look like fools and they look like heroes. That’s how Kings fall.” Runceford agreed with a small frown.

For a while, the only sound that thus emerged in their secret and concisive council was the clank of all their plates. “I want him dead. I want every last one of them dead.”

Her small, albeit stiffened fingers clasped over a sharpened stake knife.

“Killing them isn’t the problem. It’s finding them.”

If you kill them both right now, no one will know how to alert your brothers. The word will spread that they had butchered you – and then they’ll both come for revenge.

Her focused eyes softened at once, as her steel grip loosened the blade.

“Have you gone soft, Lord Pyke? I always thought you had a talent for violence – and an eye for weaknesses, as you so put it at this dinner table.” The iris of his tired eyes clashed with his protruding amber, “Burn the villages, burn the farms. Aemond might have left the Reach, but that doesn’t mean that the smallfolk will get a break. Let them know what it means to choose the wrong side.” With one last nod and a small bow, Mance and Runceford left the room.

In less than a moment’s notice, her upstrained feet gave out before her.

***

Not a single nearby lord cared enough to look at her. Not a single drunken soldier gripped her shoulders or her arm. She had slipped by unobserved, written off as less than cattle. In her time spent in that stiff room, she found of Aemond’s long departure. She knew now the North was angry, that the Rogue Prince beckoned hither – that her brothers and her grandsire were still on the loose. Alive. No matter her conflicted feelings. No matter all the new-found worry that she had for the Kinslayer. She was still breathing and living – her shortened breaths and anxious tears felt like proof enough of that. She found herself growing with purpose – to relive her climb up North. To alert both of her brothers of the Greens’ most jarring thoughts. To find what happened to her father, since his mention had been scarce and worn.

As she turned to leave the alcove, her eyes caught her in a nearby mirror. Her silky locks, darkened by mud and chopped inaptly by that dreadful shard. The black-rimmed circles underneath her foggy globes, the lone dictator of her sleepless ventures. Darlon’s garments were made to fit loosely – but even she could may well tell that she’d lost a lot of weight. Her sodden cheeks that cracked with dirt, and the way she stood preleened… it was of no immersive wonder that she hadn’t been spotted or seen.

A gust of hope picked at her skin – at her left leg, her forming scars. She trailed her palm with a smooth digit, and felt the ridges closing in. The dragon glass had cut her smoothly, and it was feasible the war did, too. Time heals all. Time mends scars well. Perhaps she could hope again.

What if this war could still be won – by the Blacks, by her, by them? Would she cling enough to life to see such a far-out feat?

And if she managed to live…when the slight girl watched herself be so changed by it already, could she ever tell herself to go back to how she was? The laws of men made it as such that she would never dare forget – any or all that had transpired in those years of grief and anguish. Her abatement would be short and minimal. She’d never dare forget her Jace, or sweet Cain, or loyal Beesbury. The almond eyes of baby Luke, or the laughs she’d shared with friends. Friends she’d never see again. Friends who all died long ago.

Desolation and resentment were not new to the young Lady. And she swore it to herself, as she glanced into the mirror, that she’d never ache again. For the betterment of her brothers. For their mother. For either father or their grandsire – she would make it so she’s useful. Strong. Contented. And reliable. No Hightower would make her kneel. Their time was spent and since ran out.

Fuck the Gods. Fuck Alys Rivers.

She would leave that inn at dawn.

***

At dawn she said, and dawn it was.

“Enjoyed your pats from those Green scum?” She asked the mule with a raised brow, as she untied her from the stable’s pole. “I hope you rested well last night. The real journey has just begun.”

Almost as if she understood her words, the half-bred mare shook her black mane, huffing through her tinted nose. “I don’t like how that sounds, either.” The girl sighed in a spent tone, “I never thought I’d get to say this, but the more distance I put in between me and my home…”

The road was quiet. All too quiet. The Redwyne company left way before her, as the hooves that trailed towards south indicated half as much. It was bold and quite peculiar – that those pompous Green supporters were so close to their Green Fork. For both The Twins and Castle Seagard were unwavering, leal to Daemon. To the one true heir and Queen.

It had been too long for her – since she felt the rays of sunlight. And if those treacherous and shifty lords felt so at home existing North, then both strongholds must have been emptied. The Trident’s lords were scattered somewhere, fighting in some vacant halls. Even so, it was too quiet. Not a single man in sight.

Perhaps allowing herself to glance behind was the girl’s biggest mistake. Or mayhaps it was stagnating, as she let her mule rest up.

“Haaaalt! Halt right there, lassie, don’t move!” A faraway, salacious scream deterred her to jolt straight up. The tenseness of her stiffened muscles ceased as her eyes prodded onward, setting on the crest above them – made of a bird, and of a seahorse, and two dragons. An even more attentive glance let her know of their bronze armour – of their brown hair and mousy faces.

Freys, she laughed inside her head with glee, An actual Frey company – marching South from the Twins’ gates.

“Good day to you, soldier. It seems we serve the same leal camp.” She greeted him with a bright smile, but as she tried to move up forward, the sharpened edge of six steel blades pointed at her nape and neck. She swallowed thickly, but kept her temper, and rose both hands up in surrender. “I yield,” She tried to jest with the tall men, before speaking up toward them, “I’m (Y/N) Tully. I believe I have a right to be here.”

“(Y/N) Tully’s dead,” One of the more suspicious knights ushered at her from the back, “She perished near Hayford’s lone bridge – every man, woman and child heard the story a thousand times.”

“Oh, you better be joking,” She hissed through an acrid breath, as she let out a small curse, “I know I may not look the part, but I am (Y/N) Tully.” Her wanton orbs searched for the soldier’s, who only weighed her with conceit. “‘Course you are,” He answered crassly, “And I’m the Lord of Bastion Keep.”

She offered him a blithted smile, although not one that reached her eyes. “I can’t catch a single break, now can I?” The Lady murmured to herself, “Very well,” She spoke out clearly, “I suppose you are commanded by your good lord, Forrest Frey?” Whilst her tone was domineering, a subtle smirk graced her pink lips, “Call him over, see for yourselves. He will tell you who I am.”

“Look, girl, it’s gettin’ cold and we’re quite busy. So, you know.” One of the men shrugged his broad shoulders, “Best fuck off. Either that or stop your lying.”

“Tell your lord his niece is home.” She betted onward once again, “You wish to know who it is I am, and I wish to wash my hair. So call for your lord. And be done with all this bother.”

“Lord Frey’s too busy to waste his breath on you. Just like us.” His short patience had been running thin, as for his hand – awfully cold, “So for the last time – fuck right off, and state your business.”

“Maybe we should just detain her.” One of the more lithe men suggested, “Tie ‘er up, resume our marching.”

“Should you value your good hands, you won’t touch a hair of mine.”

“Careful now,” The fourth boy muttered, “We’re enjoying you here, lassie, but don’t think you’ll make demands.”

“You would harm an innocent, because you’re too lazy and stupid to call for your own lord?” Her latter comment set him off, and he jumped off his starving horse to come to grip her by her loosened shirt. “Now listen here, you dirty fuck–”

“What appears to be the matter here?” A hardened voice commanded swiftly. Slowly and without much heart, the younger boys broke off the circle, as they readied their report. “My Lord, as you can see–” The one who seemed to be best-spoken tried to give out his account.

But no more words ever escaped him. For the wide and gentle Frey spurted out with a burst of solid laughter. He made great haste to debark his stallion – to reach with fervour for the small girl’s shoulders and to ruffle her short matted hair. “Well, I’ll be damned,” He exhaled shortly, “I would recognise those shrew eyes everywhere.”

“Uncle,” She greeted him with forming tears, “It’s good to see a well-known face.

Aemond had been right, he thought. In spite of their pleasant small talk, Evelynn had latched onto him. Laughing at his every word, even if he wasn’t joking – gripping down onto his thighs when the odd pair had sat down. He had been courteous and kind to dance with her two tamer waltzes, but even the boldest one of the confined Targaryens couldn’t possibly stomach another. When his deep stare started avoiding her, boring holes throughout the hall, the man noticed his escape, and thanked the Gods before his fall. Seated not one yard away, in a dress that matched her hair, rested Elmo Tully’s only daughter – a quiet child, not five and ten, which appeared fully engrossed as she talked with her tall friend.

“Do you have any idea what you’ve just done?” Daeron’s voice shook the whole room. As he turned his head around, his incessant stare bore daggers right into his brother’s throat, “What this decision makes of our political agreements?” His body was steadied and tense, taut and rigid, at attention – the implications brought on over by Aemond’s ill and thought-out match made his pulse readily quicken, and his whole soul seethe in anger. When he glanced over at him, not a single trail of shame registered on his sharp face. “We gain nothing from an alliance with the Riverlords,” Daeron desperately tried to tell him. “She's a comely girl, I'll give you that, but we’re at war, and she’s ill-favoured!” Finally, his dire words seemed to spark up a response – for Aemond took in a sharp inhale, and readily rose from his chair. “You will speak no more of her.” He deterred out in a deep growl, “Whom I marry is my business. I will not have you rebuke me.”

“I should not have questioned you,” The lone boy had swallowed thickly, as he met his brother’s eye, “Evelynn is… nice, ‘tis true. However…” His comforting and handsome face shifted with bitter intent, “I don’t know how to discourage her.”

Aemond smirked in deep amusement, drumming his fingers on the pine wood table. “Have you lost her in the crowd?”

“Momentarily,” Daeron surged forward, “But there are only so many men with short white hair inside this room.”

“I will question your decisions if they put us all at risk.” The youth spat out in a quick warning, “And your wrong choice to marry her will ruin every deal we had with Borros.” Daeron had fought to keep his voice down to a levelled plane of field, but even he cracked underneath Aemond’s lack of mournful interest. “I heard from mother of your obsession,” He breathed in a staggered breath, “But I never thought you foolish enough to marry a lowborn riverlander–”

The circumstances were not ideal, and he’d acted like a little boy – but he managed to desert the Frey and acquaint himself with the Riverrun girl. “I’m afraid I’ve two left feet, my Prince,” She granted him a small apology, as she ducked his offered hand, “There hasn’t been any time for me to practice my dancing whilst confined to the Red Keep.”

“Truly?” The corners of his hawk-like eyes glimmered with jocund distraction, and the young man tried once more, though his hand had then been lowered. “But the Red Keep swarms with banquets. Have none of my elder brothers taken you to dance before?” The Tully girl let out a laugh, and a faint pink caught her plump cheeks – and whether that was from frustration, of being irked by Daeron’s presence, or flattered by his light attention, the boy would find out soon enough. “As I said,” She smiled at him, “I’m afraid I’m a poor dancer.” Her almond eyes swirled with deep mischief, and she bit her lower lip to stifle down a roaring laugh. “If you wanted to escape my cousin, you should have checked in on the further right.” If his face hadn't been red, then it surely caught in pigment when she uttered her last words. “I assure you, my dear Lady, I had no such ill intent.” He clarified with a bent smile, but shook his head in grave embarrassment when she quirked up her shapely brow. “I shadn’t pressure you to dance with me.” He bit over his lip, defeated, “But I beg you to give me a chance.”

Her eyes softened at his request, and she gave her knight a nod. She mouthed him something intangible, and turned to face Daeron’s advances. “I will step on your feet, you know.” A loud laugh rattled his insides, “You may not believe it, my lady, but Tessarion once placed her entire weight on them.” She tutted lightly in reply, and merely entwined their hands, “My Prince…” She let out a tiny snort, as she gingerly laughed by herself. “You don’t believe me,” He feigned offence, as he spun her twice around. “You should know then, Lady Tully, that I scarcely ever lie.”

“Oh, I would never even dream of styling your good Grace a liar.” Her voice softened to a murmur, lowering in false sobriety. Almost as if they’d been conspiring, her youthful face leaned near his shoulder. “But you can’t be cross with me when I say I don’t believe you.”

Before either one of them could register Daeron’s last words, the lithe Targaryen grabbed his green collar and pushed him up against the wall. “You and I are family.” He rumbled out in a low tone, “Speak one more word of the one I have with her, and you’ll regret not dying sooner, during that raid of the Three Towers.” Daeron’s head shook with uncertainty, pounding in his ears from pain, and the young lass pressured him onward, as the blood tickled his tongue. “Did you go through with it, then?” He asked him through a gasping wheeze, “Did you bed her?”

The quietness that washed them both forced the boy to curse again.

“I take it that your charms have failed you.” Aemond hummed inside his goblet, as he looked at the small girl. “She’s talking with her brute again.”

“If only Evelynn wasn’t her cousin.” The boy laughed in miscontempt, “The Lady may have two left feet, but even then it was exaggerated how many times she stepped on me.” Their purple eyes set back on her – and Aemond was the first to stop. “I wouldn’t be distraught, dear brother.” His upturned mouth broke to a smirk, when Jace’s laughter seeped with hers – drawing long stares from the room and pulling whispers from lax mouths, “She seems to have an affinity towards bastards.” His good eye focused in on him, “The odds were truly set against you.”

Daeron’s face mirrored his brother’s, though the former tried to hide it. “Careful, Aemond. The Blacks are listening.” He pointed forward with a simper, to where their half-sister was sitting with her pompous and elusive smile. “I don’t think there’ll be a problem,” The One-Eyed Prince addressed his sibling, “She is quite taken with our father.”

His smaller hand scratched up at Aemond’s, endeavouring to put an end to his strong, unyielding grasp. “Brother…” He tried to word out in a plea. His tightened hold loosened a moment, and Aemond let his brother breathe. “I have lain with her before.” He asserted with a levelled timber, “The marriage was consummated.”

“Gods be good.” Daeron exhaled, as his hand ran through his hair, “What did you do?” He asked once more, as he pressed his back again right onto the jagged wall. “This doesn’t just put us in danger. Your wife’s a target – now more than ever.” He concluded after a while. “Lord Borros is too involved to annul our misalliance. But if word reaches the Blacks –”

“Which is why I must go find her.” Aemond gritted through his teeth. “So take me to that damned witch, and send word to the dragon keepers to fetch some bulls to cater Vhagar.” Daeron’s brows twisted in bafflement, creasing his face and his ravishing features. “You cannot mean this. She could be anywhere. Your shoulder hasn’t even healed.”

“I will tear down every castle, and every town, and every home that she could ever hide within.” Aemond’s eye was blazed with anger. The noble lines of his fair countenance bore the marks of his pursuit – disentangled to his face, his hands, found in every forming scar and in every galling crease. A bitter longing and a hopelessness interwoven in the need to find her – to hold her to his chest again, to feel her breathing hitch against him, to feel the pulse of her warm heat. The raw intensity of her brazen and uncaring kisses, the delicious and erotic sting of the one slap she had given him.

“Whether she wants that or not, I will have her by my side.”

All of this to feel her near. To own her essence. To drink her screams. To wake up and see her body lying consciously with his, to feel her eyes follow his movements and her warm, plump lips on his.

She must have hoped for this arrangement when she was betrothed to Jace – a life of comfort and of safety; a life where she would be The Queen. And for her, Aemond would do it. He’d subside his sister’s children and he’d sit the Iron Throne. He would place his crown atop her and bend to her every whim. “And she can try to break her chains a thousand times – over and over. There is not a single corner of this world that she can run to. I will always find a way to reclaim that which is mine.”

“Well then,”

In spite of the relief she felt to be parted from the Redwynes, Lady Tully’s restless mind seemed to be somewhat estranged.

"Which one of these fat ugly cunts tried to lay their hand on you?" Forrest’s voice plummeted through the small camp they had laid out. Strenuous licks of fair amusements pulled the corners of her lips, and the woman smiled contently, as she shook her head in earnest, “Please, uncle, there should be no need for that.”

“There should and there will!” His silk smooth baritone came out definitive, “No man will hurt a niece of mine and get to live to tell the tale.” Although his words were rough and final, the gentle furrow of his brow revealed the lord’s attempt to bluff. She laughed once more, in lifted spirits, and took a stance alongside his. Her eyes glossed over with incertitude, and the girl hummed, lost in her thoughts. “It would be quite a shame, you know,” She muttered lowly to her uncle, “For this fine army to be slain before they even set off to war.” Though he laughed at her poor joke, the Lord of Green Fork sighed in exhaustion, “Sometimes I think it’d be a kindness.” A bitter pause cut his lungs’ air, until he deterred out a breath, “None of these boys are ready for war.”

“I don’t think anyone is.” She muttered slowly by his side, “We think we are… we train for it – with jousts and tourneys and in combat yards.” Her latter thoughts had turned to Aemond, and how he’d train each daunting morning whilst she lived in the Red Keep. It was a somehow sacred ritual – a clash of swords, of wit, of power. It was a way for men to ease their stress, and wash away their stale frustrations with breakages of blood and sweat. It was a way to prove themselves, an easy way to become envied by the gossiping and gathered masses. Throughout their short acquaintanceship, she’d never once figured it out; whether or not Aemond was training for other people to admire him.

His mornings were moments of solitude – for scarcely anyone would gather hither. The nights and eves were for the lordlings – who slithered forward as he sparred Ser Criston. As proud as he ever was, she thought, everyone yearns for approval. And who else would need it more than the crippled second son.

Her cheeks reddened with slight colour, as her lips jolted a tremor – she could no longer think of him and remain listless and passive. With each and every chance she’d get, her trailing thoughts would reach for him – to the bump of his big nose, to the sharpness of his eye.

Had he reached his brother yet? Did he take Alys with him? Was his shoulder blade still healing?

Stop it.

Morbid curiosity is what killed the restless cat. What she now felt towards her captor was nought else but forced attachment.

But was he safe? And did he miss her–

She knead her hands in one another; both hidden by a pair of gloves. Realising that she’d been too quiet, she blurted out the next of her words. “... But no one is truly ready for the horrors that it brings.” Her chest felt hot. Her breathing ragged. Had she grown to care for him?

“Has your father ever told you how you sound just like your mother?” He breathed out through a soft exhale, “She hated war. Thought it was dumb.”

“‘Tis good, then, that she’s not here to witness it.” Though both of them had started walking, neither one let out their thoughts. Her clothes were clean, her hair was dried – she told him with a staggered breath what she’d gathered of the Redwynes, of the Targaryens and of the Greens. In return, Forrest confided her with her grandsire’s location – telling her Oscar was fine, that Kermit oft’ communicated by sending them concisive letters. “Thank the Gods,” She breathed out, with a hand upon her chest, "So my father is alive."

… But what of Cain? And what of Jace? What of Lord Beesbury and her dear cousins?

Suddenly she felt ashamed that she ever thought of Aemond.

“Where will you be heading now?” She asked her uncle with a shaky but consistent voice. “To meet your brother at Lakehore, of course.” Forrest responded with a growing smirk, “We won’t allow those mudded fuckers any further Crownland passage.”

“He’s near the God’s Eye?!” She stopped abruptly, whilst widening her tired eyes. A passing shadow of a smile lit the girl’s quivering lips, and she fixed the nearby stones as she tottered out a laugh. “To think that if I hadn’t ran, I might’ve met up with my brother.”

To think if Aemond hadn’t left, he would have met his in-law brother.

“But Harrenhal has been cleared out,” She turned abruptly to her uncle, “There’ll be no battle to be fought. The Pykes and Wyldes and Redwynes think that the stronghold is a waste – my fire has made sure of that.”

“Kitchen fires can’t melt stone.”

“... But the Greens would know that, too.” She gnawed at her bottom lip. Her eyes closed in concentration, trying to recall Hag’s Mire. She had been too scared to listen – truly listen to their tales. But a slight echo surged forward, as she rummaged through her brains.

《“He left with Daeron to wait in Oldtown, and burnt Harrenhal to the ground!”》

“They were arguing that Aemond had left them defenceless. That he took off to Oldtown and burnt Harrenhal to nothing.”

“But that was you.” Forrest Frey regarded her with an awfully twisted look.

“Not necessarily.” She mauled it slowly, “With age, dragon fire grows stronger. I’ve seen both Vermax and Vhagar burn open fields to ash and smoke.” Her orbs came into clash with his, and the man swallowed intently, gesturing her to go on, “There is a vast difference between those acres. The aftermath of Vermax was… closer to searings caused by people, than the inferno of a dragon.” As she pressed her lips together, she exhaled a deeper sigh, “But Vhagar…”

“I’ve seen that fatted lizard go to work.” Forrest agreed with a light hum, “Over at Mummer’s Ford; Gods, if I hadn’t grown up in the region, I wouldn’t have known there was a town at all.”

“So what if Aemond did burn Harrenhal?”

“He definitely had the time.”

“It doesn’t take long to yell out ‘Dracarys’.”

Their simmered dialogue had turned to whispers – and their small council reached an agreement. “Lakehore remains a strong location,” Forrest offered up his hand to her, as they passed the flowing river, “Even if Harrenhal should be no more. We’ll meet up there and ride towards East.”

“Will you meet up with the Arryns, then?” Her last refrain dumbfounded him, and the man stopped on the small path. “The plan is to take you there. Reunite you with your family.” His searching stare mended with hers, and the girl’s uncle quirked a brow. His mouth pressed to a thin line – a hereditary trait, it seemed –, and he shook his head again. “... You seem conflicted and obscured.” He muttered, whilst awaiting her reply.

“I am closer to the North than East.”

“No. I cannot let you go alone. Your father would strangle me for it.”

“So don’t,” The self-assured and poised young Lady now agreed with him wholeheartedly, “I’ll give you my mule if you give me a horse.” Her eyebrows rose in confirmation, “That way I won’t go alone.”

Although his face rattled conflicted, the older Frey gave her a nod. He paused to look at her thick gloves, and faltered on his mouthed reply. “You’ll need warmer clothes to survive their ever-winter.”

“And ink and paper before I go, so I may send out some letters.”

As he laid his preparations, Forrest Frey turned to his niece. The wide corners of his lips had twisted to an outline of a subtle grin. “I suppose you’d need an envoy for your grandsire and brothers.” He agreed before she could, as he rummaged through his vest and breeches for his House’s patterned seal.

***

“I cannot possibly accept this.”

“Given that it’s yours, ser Cain, I must urge you to reconsider.”

And so it was – sturdy Faithkeeper. His oldest and most trusted sword, and the one gift he got from Allyn as he departed all those years ago – to the grounds of the Red Keep, to the new home of his fair Lady. The blade remained as he had known it – with its intricate design of leaves and tender words carved on red iron. Though his mentor told him nothing when he handed him the gift, there was no avid denying of the nature of the shiv; A family heirloom with unmeasured value, and a kindness he could never repay.

“I cannot take it.” The boy had uttered, looking at the greying white-cloak.

“You can and you will.” The older man pointed a finger at his vest and heavy armour, “I am not having a conversation, boy, I am stating an order.” Though his eyes were rough and rigid, a coil of softness interwovened in the creases of his face. His wrinkled hand reached for his back, to give it a small squeeze of farewell. “You do good now.” The man instructed, furrowing his bushy brows, “I want no report to come through from any raven of King’s Landing telling me you’ve gotten lazy.”

“I swear to you that I’ll protect her.”

“Of that, I have no doubt, my boy.”

Upon throwing it a better look, the man remained engraved with shock. Both the handle and the hilt of it had been replaced to suit his needs. Sculpted by acquitted silver with a slight hole for his hand, and a velvety but silk-like ribbon to enwrap around his arm. “We thought the minor adjustments would prove useful when in battle.”

Almost too preoccupied to inspect its sharpened edges, Cain’s eyes snapped away from it at the inkling of Jayne’s voice. “We?” He repeated her words slowly, whilst raising his brows in stupor. His bewilderment would not live long, as the Lady of the Vale keenly offered him an answer. “The sketch for its newer hilt does come from the youngest Tully.” Upon his silence, she continued, as she spared a patent look, “I have reason to believe it’s his way of saying sorry.”

“Lord Oscar has no reason to apologise to me.” Though his words pondered definitive, a content arch pulled at his lips. His stare soon turned back to serious and his back awfully stiff. “I… wouldn’t know how to thank him.” Seemingly losing his face, the Tully’s sworn shield bowed to Jayne deeply, “Or you, my lady.”

“There is hardly any need for you to thank me, Ser Cain. It is us who should bow to you for your willingness to keep us safe.”

When her hand beckoned him onward to return to his wide stance, the woman faltered for a moment as she looked at his grey eyes. A look of startled but conclusive shock spread across her older face.

“Have you no shame, you stupid boy?” Tyland’s low hiss was followed suit by his stinging and petulant words, “You have a lot of nerve to show up here.”

“Ironborn?” She asked her question, as her features smoothed over.

“I wouldn’t be able to say, my lady. My mother died after my birth.” By all accounts, he’d been quite truthful – he knew who his father was, as it had been awfully clear when he glanced at his twin brother. He’d find lost remnants of himself as such, and questions of his build or hair had been answered with a single look. His mother was a simple woman – a merchant’s daughter, as he was told, once very beautiful and fair and honest. He didn’t know the way she looked, though he assumed that his eye colour came from her, and not the Lannisters.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I’m sure you are, you foolish bastard.” The words that tumbled from his lips reddened the tips of Cain’s big ears.

The sheer aversion in the man’s slim face sent a shiver down his back. Confusion laced with grave recoil, as a small curse beleft his lips – Gods, let this not be how he finally got to meet his dad.

When the boy stayed lost in silence, the younger Lannister pushed him again. “Doesn’t loyalty mean anything to you?”

He did desperately hope that he looked like his good mother; and sometimes, during the night, he would pray that she would guide him – prayed, but prayed not to a faceless God, but to the memory of her lost image. He would pray that she should guide him through his avid quests for glory; through his cluttered and entangled life path, through his hardest and most straining choices. There was something rather comforting in imagining his eyes were hers – that they looked like hers so much, that she’d still somehow live through him. He hoped that the Gods left an homage to the sole fact she existed. A silent proof that she’d not gone without leaving her own mark behind. That she had made him in her image, that he somehow held her inside. That men would glance right at Cain Waters and know that he was Wynne’s son.

“Loyalty means everything to me.” He spat out in a lowly tone, despite his evident confusion.

“Yet you show up here, threatening to ruin everything we’ve set in place.”

“You?” Cain’s face contorted to a deepened scowl. He shook his head in half-regret, and merely swatted Tyland’s hands away. “I haven’t shown up here for you.” His light-grey eyes shone forth with grief, “Don’t worry. I’ve no desire to be recognised.” The colour from the old man’s cheeks drained itself from his stiff face, “Not that anyone would believe you.” He muttered fast and quietly, “You cannot threaten us with this.”

“Of course not,” Cain interjected with a rattled and bemused expression, “I am just another bastard. I’d sooner die than see myself legitimized as one of you.”

“I am truly sorry to hear that.”

He leaned his head in a swift bow, as he spared her a small grin, “It is quite possible she was from Orkmont.”

Her expression shifted upward to a placid but elusive smile. Nodding once at his picked words, the lady shifted in her place, quirking up a thin blonde brow. “If you ought to be in search of Oscar, he should be near Longbow Hall.”

***

Angry, reckless, non-deserving; with an unquenchable desire just to prove himself as worthy – Oscar had been a wild child, and remained so as an adult. Always quick to take offence, always ready for a brawl and always willing to show off; despite the fact that he’d never won a joust or tourney in his life, and most lordlings of the Riverlands failed to give him credit’s due.

Restless, loyal and headstrong. Those were words that well-described him. Even in the crack of dawn, he was spotted in the training yard, walking miles in aching circles, practising with his great sword.

Family. Duty. Honour.

For the better part of his young life, Oscar had lived pledged to oath, to upkeep his House's words.

He’d go to war with his brother, he’d avenge his sister’s honour and take every man who ever helped tarnish his homeland through the judgement of his bitter steel.

Oscar Tully loved his family. Even when it was much smaller – when it was just him, and Kermit, and their loving and ambitious Mother. He swore to himself to always enact as a pillar to them – to turn responsible, reliable and trustworthy. And when his mother died, leaving behind his only sister, he promised himself to always protect her. When they were but small, lithe children, very rarely did they not bicker and argue like a bunch of wildings – yet when push came to shove, and either one of them stole one too many jam tarts to not go unseen, it was always one or the other who jumped to the rescue of their misbegotten sibling.

Oscar Tully was certain that he’d always fulfil his promise. He was the fair image of a future lord of the Trident – honour drove him to oblige his duty, and his one duty was to take care of his family. He was a second son, and as such, he served as a spare to his brother. Taught in the same way that he was, although with less vigour and effort by the thousand swarming maesters that took rest in Riverrun. He was only four and ten when he watched his whole world crumble; and his closest blood relations scatter through the lands of Westeros. He helplessly obeyed his grandsire, when he was sent away to squire under the greying Lord Tyrell – perhaps in the hopes that the Reach would temper him, or that he’d fall madly in love with his slight and sickly daughter. He watched as his sister was taken, away from the comforts of home – sent to the Capitol as a ward to elderly Lord Beesbury. All alone in shitty King’s Landing, to learn the mannerisms of a proper Lady, and to find a husband that would be competent enough to keep her and her offspring safe.

Dreadful, he thought it then, and awfully unfair deal now. For years he’d been unable to see his siblings, his father, and his grandfather – and when the war finally started, and alliances were formed, he lost his sister to the wrath of that sick freak.

The One-Eyed Kinslayer. The One-Eyed Prince.

《The boy scoffed at the knight’s attempt to pardon and explain himself. He nodded affirmatively, and scrutinized Cain with his piercing gaze. "You returned with an empty hand, Ser Cain. You failed: miserably." His back straightened in an attempt to appear bigger, and the hot-headed lass rose from his chair in a hurling daze. "Because of you, my sister is in the hands of that cycloptic freak. Because of you, we don't know anything about her whereabouts. She could be tortured, enslaved, sullied – worse!"》

He’d lost his temper. In his attempts to ground himself, he himself had failed his grandsire – who not only had to worry for his own son and House’s future, but for his two grandkids, as well. His blue eyes closed in concentration, as his lips parted in an exhale. He wondered if he had done right, to alter Faithkeeper like that.

Cain Waters was akin more to a beast than to a man. Seemingly fearless and focused, big as a mountain and wide as a bear. His pride had stung him when his grandsire chose him to rescue his sister, but even he had to agree that Cain had been their only choice. He just made sense, the lass agreed, as he watched him lead and point over Jayne’s numerous troops. Still, his mind remained unchanged – if only he had been allowed to, he would have seen his sister home. But he was the second son. The son whom nobody had wanted, the one who wasn’t even needed. Elmo and Kermit were thousands of miles away to fight; and he had begged them both to join them, but to no righteous avail. He just wasn’t skilled enough. His duty bound him to the Arryns. To taking care of his grandfather.

“Do you not feel forced to fight?”

“Forced?” Grover Tully’s husky voice echoed through the marbled walls.

“Pushed by your free will to do it.” Oscar sucked in a big breath, “I’m one and twenty. It is expected that I go out there.”

“It is expected that we do… all it should take to survive.” The older man hummed in admission. His piercing gaze cut through the boy, before his head turned to the sky, “Your lousy father and reckless brother are away to fight for a cause we don’t believe in. In the best case for your sister, she’s been taken forth as prisoner.”

“Which is why I should fight, instead of hiding like a coward behind these stupid walls.”

“Which is why it is imperative that you should stay here to remain alive.”

His face contorted to a painful scowl, as his legs carried him to the edge of his viewpoint.

“I’m afraid I do not follow.”

“I will not let those damned Targaryens put an end to my own House.”

“So you would let your own son perish? You’d let his heir go down with him?” By then their voices rose to screaming. “People die at war, my boy – good people, bad people, people who only did their part. Should I not word the possibility that your own brother might be killed?”

“You should not say it with such ease – you should not see your only family as some fucked pieces on a board!”

“I am trying to protect our family! Preserve our House, our heritage! By keeping one male heir alive – even if it brings the scorn of others!”

Oscar was the second son. The spare. The one who had to sit behind and watch how his remaining siblings struggled on their own to make it.

“My lord,” The gruff echo of Cain’s voice deterred him to turn his head. Tempered eyes were met with grey, and the young man nodded deeply in a stiff but poignant greeting.

“... Ser Cain.”

A small nod was shared between them, followed by an ushered silence.

"I believe we need to talk."

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Translations:

“Sīkudi nopāzmi, skori ao umbagon va bē hen issa…” = “Seven Hells, when you stay on top of me…”;

“Qrimbrōzagon, jorrāelagon, nyke jāhor tepagon ao nykeā gār trēsi.” = “Fuck, my love, I would give you a hundred sons.”;

“Se nyke jāhor jorrāelagon hen se tolvie mēn hen zirȳ.” = “And I would love each and every one of them.”;

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