#i think i’ll probably stick w english though

[cloudofdarkness]

Pragma

Rating: Teen And Up Audiences

Archive Warning  Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings

Category:  M/M

Fandom: Final Fantasy XIV

Relationship: G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch/Warrior of Light

Characters:

G'raha Tia | Crystal Exarch

Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)

Ryne | Minfilia

Thancred Waters

           Additional Tags:

Shadowbringers Spoilers

Angst

Healing

wound depictions

           Language: English

Words:2,576 

ao3 link

Summary: Through the hurt and the rush of battle, the lies and years of waiting, you still find that ever familiar, ever known comfort; that poetically correct love.

The waves on Kholusia’s shore were so much calmer than the ones washing up on the Ruby Tithe. The warrior noted this as the water just barely brushed his sea soaked boots. He smelled of salt, his undone hair sticking to his face unceremoniously from the unkind current. The Scions had swam all the way back, and it was pretty well as tiring as Alphinaud had made it out to be. He didn’t blame him for collapsing in contact with land. This was simply one of the few things he tuned in to however, as his thoughts were colliding against each other in his brain; feelings like confusion and stress and fear ever pulled at every thought.

He was exhausted.

Watching the waves was all he could do, though even still, this had proved difficult. The last time he’d done this wasn’t long after the calamity. After he’d lost his family. He couldn’t save anything, couldn’t change anything, had nothing left. So he just watched the waves.

He had more now than he did then, but for some reason, he still felt...scared. Unsure.

He had had a feeling for the longest time that the Exarch was truly G’raha. He wanted to believe his gut feeling, that he knew that voice, those lips, that smile, but his self doubt would always be the worst part of him. He had known that small moment before they scaled Mt Gulg, and yet he still said nothing. He didn’t believe he could have something that felt so right to him come true. Of course fate would only reward him with such a reassurance while he was giving his life.

And even still, they had both lived another day. His pale eyes flickered over to the Exarch, sitting himself back on the sand and seeming to be lost in thought himself, or perhaps that was a side effect from being away from the tower for far too long. They probably felt just about the same in that moment. He could tell as soon as they’d reached the edge of the Tempest. The warrior had had to carry him on his back, and even if his fatigue hadn’t gotten the best of him, he would have done it anyways. He’d never seen a man aside from himself walk his injuries off as well as he did.

He was jolted from his thoughts as a hand gently placed itself on his shoulder, turning curiously to see Ryne staring down at him, her hands clasped over her chest, azure eyes full of worry.

“Are you feeling well, A’tali? I sensed something...off.” She observed, a hand coming to her chin in thought.  So she could sense his unease now. He supposed that was only fair, considering the light no longer burned inside of him. Though realizing she might’ve been intruding on his seclusion, her eyes were quick to soften in apology. “W-which is obviously why you’re taking a moment for yourself! I apologize, I was just worried-“

The Oracle was halted as the warrior took her hand, a tired, but gentle smile forming on his lips as he met her gaze. It was as if everyone knew but her that she was merely a child still. She was allowed to have childlike behaviors, and even still, this was hardly one of them. She was ever kind and empathetic, all heroes tended to be. “No need for apologies. That was quite thoughtful of you to check in on me. Though I’ll be alright, there’s just...a bit to think about. I promise I’ll be settled in a moment.”

This seemed to calm her, that childlike worry in her eyes softening as she placed her other hand over his; a simple last reassurance. He appreciated her presence more than she knew.

It was then that Thancred had called her over, and he could hear talk of them arranging a ride back, as there was no way they were carrying Alphinaud all the way to the Crystarium. He managed a laugh, and nodded in assurance to take her leave. Ever spritely as she was, she hurried herself back over to her found guardian, presumably letting him know that he was alright. He knew Thancred worried about him behind all of his newfound stoic demeanor. They had always been close.

The warrior decided then that if they were to be heading back soon, he would do one last thing, privately. Through his ringing head and burning chest, he managed the small walk over to where Thancred, Y’shtola and G’raha were conversing, holding himself more than he figured, as the two older Scions looked to him in concern.

“Should we be going then? You look awful.” Ever the honest one, Thancred was, and it near brought a smile to A’tali’s face. At least he could always count on him not to pity his condition. Perhaps that was why he liked him so much. In truth, he absolutely felt like shit, but he had to save his energy for now. “In a moment. If you all would make the arrangements and assure the poor Chais of our triumphant return, I would speak with our friend here ere I do much more.”

He almost noticed the miqo'te sitting on the shore perk up at the slight mention, as if he knew he was to be confronted by the other. Even through his mass drain of energy did he stumble when the warrior spoke of him.

Before he did anything, however, he watched the Scions take their leave, Thancred having to hoist Alphinaud over his shoulder, as the boy remained unconscious. Oh the stories that would elicit upon his awakening…

They were alone then, and he hardly knew where to start. G’raha had averted his gaze, his eyes lazily watching the sunrise reflecting off of the waves.

“Exarch, May I?”

It was spoken with uncertainty, as he had no idea where they currently stood with each other. Did he want to welcome him as an old friend, or had he wished to keep his identity a secret? Did he no longer wish to burden him with his friendship any longer? The warrior would respect whatever he wanted, but he was to tread carefully.

And on the other hand, the casually spoken title was enough to worry the Exarch. It was much different than the heartfelt cry of “Good Morning, Raha” that he’d received earlier. Perhaps that short moment had passed, just as everything else might have for them. He gave a simple nod in return, watching the warrior seemingly collapse on the sand out of the corner of his eye.

“...you’ve been away from the tower for some time now. Will you be able to make the trek back to the Crystarium?”

By the look on his face, A’tali knew he couldn’t, but he wasn’t much one to admit that. He was recovering from a bullet wound and still he would walk on. How he did it, the warrior never knew.

“I shall be fine. Whatever I cannot carry, my staff can support. I assure you, I can handle most things.” It was a lie, but only one to lift a weight off his shoulders. Sure, just like everything else he’d fed the warrior for the past month. It was getting easier, wasn't it?

There was silence for a long moment, only the movement of A’tali’s knees being pulled to his chest was heard, and they simply sat there, taking in the moment, that they wouldn’t have something like this for who knew how long.

“...I understand if you would choose to be upset with me. I have not been the most honest or open person…” the Exarch began, but he quickly stopped himself as the warrior shifted against the sands, a seemingly long inhale lifting his chest.

“I understand why you did what you did. It takes courage to hide such a delicate plan from someone such as I, and you sought it out to near perfection. I could not be upset with the choices you made, as you’ve always decided the right path for yourself, as I told you to do so all those years ago. If that was what you chose then...I would accept it.” There was a brief pause, a small jolt in his chest, and G’raha worried for a moment that his affliction from the light had returned. He learned only soon after what had caused it.

He had been weeping.

His pale eyes shone brightly against the sunrise and he could see those silent tears trickling down his cheeks. How many times had he cried so silently like this? That the rest of the world wouldn’t hear their warrior break?

“...Tali…” he probably hadn’t the slightest permission to refer to him as such, but he barely cared in that moment. They were both so exhausted.

That was all it took though, as the warrior turned to wrap his arms around the Exarch’s shoulders, his face buried against the crystal cuffing his neck. Despite the cold, saltiness of the sea still invading their every senses, A’Tali merely wished to be near him, to hold him. “...I respect your choices...but gods I’ve missed you...and you can call me whatever you’d like; selfish, stubborn, idiotic...but I’ve missed you all the same and I would only wish to see you standing here, by my side.”

He hardly knew how to react, what to say. His brain was buzzing with the reminder from the tower that he’d strayed too far, he could hardly focus on his words had it not been for his stubborn want to hear him. All he could do in that moment was gently clutch the fabric of his shirt with his non crystal hand, tears of his own trailing down his cheeks. “..then if that is what you wish, I shall remain by your side, that I owe you much and more…”

His voice was hoarse now, barely a whisper as they sat on the shore, simply holding one another. It had been so long...so very long since they could just exist near each other. They would have this moment, as they both were prepared for it to not last much longer. — The warrior of darkness and the Exarch were never spotted at the Crystarium’s festivities later that night. In fact, the last time anyone had seen them, they had been walking along with the Captain of the guard, hastily escorting them inside the tower. The Scions had assured them not to worry, as the time for worrying had come to pass, the Captain was merely concerned for their health. In the end, they were simply pleased to know that the warrior had kept his promise, and returned their leader home safely. If only he knew how deeply important he was to them, that they would be thrown into such discomfort at his absence.

Crossing the threshold to his private chambers, they had been left alone, Lyna respectfully smiling to the warrior as she took her leave. A’Tali liked her; always keeping guard, always loyal to her duty, but there was also something playful and caring underneath that he would see be brought to light one of these days. Perhaps that was possible now.

He thought of this, as he carefully set the Exarch down against his bed. He was hardly conscious, though he still held onto that last bit -like a child waiting up during Starlight- so that he wouldn’t miss a moment next to his inspiration.

Lazily did he watch A’tali pull a now dried handkerchief from his pocket, dabbing it with some form of liquid dripping from a bottle from his side pouch. He would heal him properly, but there was no point in doing so if he still remained dirty.

He kicked off his boots then, sitting himself on the bed and leaning over the exarch. There was hardly a wince as the cloth was pressed to the corner of his lips; he was seemingly too drained to care. He supposed it wouldn’t make this too hard then. The blood cleaned away easily, and the warrior’s hand brushed back his bangs to get a better look at the wound cut into his forehead. It was deeper than the one below, and he wondered how in the seven hells he’d walked this off when it was fresh. He truly was a wonder…

Cautiously, he cleaned around the gash, feeling a bit of tension as he noticed G’raha’s grip on the bedsheets. So he had been feeling this. He almost felt bad now, but he knew it had to be done. There wouldn’t be any risk of infection before they could see someone about it.

When he finished, he set the cloth aside, removing the sleeve on his left hand and holding it focused over the wound. It had been quite some time since he’d healed anyone but himself, but he was determined to ease the other man’s mind. If it meant he could wake up without the pain of a few injuries, it would put him at ease. He could feel the familiar pull of aether at the palm of his hand, spinning him lightheaded in his already drained state. He could feel the wound closing, and he knew he was never ready for how that felt. Mayhap that was why he took to the sword instead, the feeling of torn flesh at his fingertips always had him nauseous.

When his hand fell away, he chanced a look to the Exarch, who was seemingly asleep below him, and he smiled. It was all over now. They could both properly rest.

Yet his hand worriedly found its way to his chest, gracing the crystal that supposedly lined it under the fabric of his robes. He wondered how durable it was, whether it could withstand a bullet or if it would tear right through, as it would any other body.

“M’alright...it...protects…” the Exarch mumbled softly, as if he knew his exact thoughts in that moment. He couldn’t blame him for worrying, he knew of his friend who had fallen to a similar wound. That tale had always pained him, written by a grieving father who remained hopeful in the shadow of his late son. No, he would not allow himself to fall to such a thing, but A’tali didn’t know this. He hardly knew anything about him now.

He had stopped his tracing then, figuring if he’d even located the chipped crystal, he would have worried himself further into a fit trying to fix it. The tower would probably heal him anyways.

Giving in to his fatigue, he removed his other sleeve, laying himself back against the plush mattress and pulling the Exarch to his chest. He could hardly protest, whether it was due to his drain or otherwise, he needn’t care. A hand came up to brush back his hair, undoing his pesky braid before moving to massage his ears; how poorly they must’ve been treated over the years, pressed against his head so tightly. He wouldn’t have that anymore. He could tell that the Exarch enjoyed this, a faint purr emanating from his chest as he barely nuzzled closer. He was calm. They were calm.

They slept like so for nearly three days, hardly caring to wake one another in their blissful rest.

The First would finally know peace. Our heroes spared no shortage of it.

[moreaujeans]

guys im actually really nervous abt taking an english class next semester 😭 im so out of practice i feel like stem has rotted my brain*

[tytangfei]

did you manage to find the uncut ver of advance bravely?

hi! omg, so sorry that I forgot to update that info! yes, I did! I’ll put this under a cut.

you can watch the uncut version on dailymotion! if you just search it in general, you can find the episodes in english sub. keep in mind though: I think the first several episodes are quite similar to what the youtube channel has. so you’re probably okay if you watch the beginning on the youtube channel. but the rule of thumb is that whichever version has the longer minutes, that’s the uncut version. the youtube version is typically shorter like under 19mins. the uncut version is typically 21-22mins. 

here’s what I recommend since multiple channels uploaded and then stopped at certain parts. 

ep 1 ep 2 -  ep 15 is from the same channel, so stick with their name.

From ep16 w/ the subber Kiyoshi Ryota (shown on the video) is how you know that it’s the uncut version. Unfortunately, for ep17-18, dailymotion doesn’t have them so you have to venture into those video-hosting websites like dramacool. I try not to go there very much tho due to a lot of ad pop-ups. You can also just settle for the episodes on Youtube.

But ep19 (subbed by Kiyoshi) is on dailymotion! Stick with those videos with that subber’s name.

And I believe the rest of the episodes are on dailymotion. 

[hedgiwithapen]

How about the Leverage Crew arriving in Central City in time for the that time Barry got accused of murdering DeVoe. Basically, Leverage Crew (Classic or Redeption is your choice) meddling in that plan. Because screw DeVoe. Can be in the same universe as The Central City job, or a brand new AU; your choice.

this one Long The courthouse was packed when a sleek black van pulled up to a loading zone. Nathan Ford turned from the passenger seat. “You all know the play?” “Mm, yup,” Parker said, clipping a badge to her blazer pocket. ��The Boston skip.” “It’s not the Boston Skip,” Hardison snapped, fussing with his tie.. “You’re just grumpy because you have to play the lawyer again.” Eliot smirked. “Hey, you said only if it comes to a cross examine, I did my job, if you all do your jobs right and it doesn’t come to that,” Hardison’s voice pitched upwards. “If?” Sophie put on the emergency break. “If? Hardison, I’m hurt.” “Soph,” Nate sighed. “Let it go.” “For now. We’re having words later,” Sophie insisted. “Can we just get this over with?” Eliot asked, maneuvering to take the driver’s seat. “ you know I don’t like us splitting up like this.” “It’ll only be for a bit,” Parker said, squeezing his hand. “ We’ll be fine.” They left the van in twos, first Parker and hardison, briefcase and extraneous computer in hand, and a minute or two later Sophie and Nate followed-- and Nate with a plain folder tucked under his arm. Eliot drove in the direction of the police station, ready for the next phase of the plan. They hadn’t exactly called ahead, but that wasn’t going to be much of a problem. Cisco Ramon was the first to spot them. He goggled a bit. “What are you doing here?” he asked as Hardison approached the bench where Team Flash had congregated. Hardison smiled, knowing the prosecutor was watching. “I came to offer my services,” he said, sending a quick text with a thought. “ Where is Ms Horton?” “Here,” the short woman said, her eyes cutting between the two as Cisco checked his phone. “ Who are you? Cisco, who is--” Cisco looked up from the message--you didn’t see us coming?-- and relaxed slightly for the first time in weeks. “I’m part of Mr. Allen’s legal team,” Hardison smiled wide. “He’s ok, Cecile,” Cisco vouched. “ He and his, uh, coworkers have helped us in the past. With Z--wait, that was before you. Um.” “My firm helped get Henry Allen some money, after that unfortunate mess. And we’re here to see justice through again.” He hesitated. “ Or pick up where it leaves off,” he said under his breath. Cecile took in a sharp breath. “When did we hire you?” “Uh--” “Cecile, it’s really ok,” Caitlin joined the cluster. “They know about STAR. And apparently about the recent… developments.” “You think we don’t keep tabs on your crazy city? Now, Ms. Horton, as your co-lawyer, we need to discuss strategy. I’ve got some character witnesses I’d like to introduce, some crucial evidence that needs to be submitted, is there an office we might use?” He steered her away, nodding to Parker, deep in conversation with the prosecutor.

“You let that jerk stick around?” Iris jumped when she heard the voice in her ear. Turning she sighed with recognition. “ Lilli--Sophie?” “In the flesh.” She smiled. “I can’t stay long, but Eliot wanted me to ask.” Iris sighed. “If it’s Eliot asking, I guess you mean Harry. He’s been a lot better since Eliot kicked his ass, that’s for sure. And he has been helpful.” “I’m sure,” Sophie sounded anything but sure. “Listen, we’ve got this pretty well handled, but you and your friends may wish to be ready in case of reprisals. Have you upgraded security lately?” “Cisco’s worked on it,” Iris confirmed. “Good. Hardison would love to take a look, later. We’re probably going to be in the area, we’ve had word something’s fishy at that prison of yours.” When Iris opened her mouth Sophie shook her head. “Iron Heights. Point is, we’ll be around should you need anything.” “Thank you for the offer,” Iris said. She shook her head. “ These people are smart, Sophie. Dangerous.” “Not compared to my team,” Sophie smiled. “Save your worry. Look, see? Hardison’s in place, and Parker’s in the wings. I’ve got to go take care of my part. If you see your husband, let him know, will you?” “I-- sure,” Iris said, and she watched as Sophie stood and walked into a crowd. An entirely different person made her way past a bailiff and into the Juror’s box, leaning over to the man beside her and nodding in the direction of the door Barry Allen had just been escorted through. As Iris stood to take his hand across the gap between his seat and the benches, Sophie gave a little nod to the two of them. “It is strange,” the man said. “But I don’t think we’re meant to discuss the case until we’re in the back.” “Of course not,” Sophie said. “I was just thinking about it, is all. If it were a scene in a mystery novel, I’d call it too obvious.” “You do have a point,” the man agreed. “I’m actually a novelist myself.” “You don’t say,” Sophie smiled. “Classic red herring, am I right? And what a story. Two men in the same family accused of nearly identical murders…” She tapped her com, giving a quick signal. Nate was up. “Ah, a quick word?” Nate stepped away from the wall, flagging down Mrs. DeVoe and her companion. “No,” she snapped, putting on what Nate could see was a reasonably convincing mask of Grieving Widow. Convincing to a mark, maybe. But the Mako was right--you can’t con a conman. “Vultures, all of you.” “Oh, I’m not a reporter.” Nate said easily. He nodded to the tall man at Marlize’s Elbow. “Mr. DeVoe, I’m sure you’ll want to hear what I have to say.” He was pleased to see shock cross the face of Dominic Lanse. The man grabbed him by the arm, yanking him into an empty room. Mrs. DeVoe followed, locking it behind her. “Just so you are aware, there is video footage of you dragging me in here,” Nate said in his most helpful voice. “In case you decide to kill me here, probably not your smartest move.” he glanced around. “Private, though. Good.” He gave his signature infuriating grin. “Make this quick,” Clifford said in Dominic’s voice. “Court begins soon.” “Right, well, that’s going to be your problem.” Nate shrugged. “ Let’s skip the pleasantries. I know everything, about your plan at least. Your computer banks! Normal people couldn’t even find them, so you’ve got that going for you, though the security is lacking once you get past that, so B+. I am not Normal People. I have the best hacker in the multiverse, though, so,” he clicked his tongue in mock dismay, “like I said, my team and I --I’m sure you’re trying to think of who we are right now--know everything.” Marlize glanced at her silent watch, frowning. “Oh, no, no, I’m not a meta.” Nate shook his head. “But the thing is, I don’t have to be to destroy you.” “What--” “Again. I know everything, Thinker. Your basement prison, your hidden files, what you want with that satellite… you really shouldn’t have written everything down… twice even.” He fished a small book out of his pocket, and let them see the plain cover. Clifford’s eyes darkened. “That’s mine.” “Yeah, well, I also have the

multiverse’s greatest thief.” “Our home is under police protection and surveillance. There are officers--” “There right now, I’m aware.” Eliot Spencer, clutching a cup of coffee in one hand, flashed a badge at the pair of officers standing by a door. “Any trouble?” “Nope. She just left for the courthouse. Some work, huh? Just standing here.” “Hmm.“ Eliot agreed. “Though I guess if something did happen, the Flash would swoop in.” “Nine times out of ten,” the first officer agreed. “Or one of his buddies. “ “Maybe 8 times,” the second officer shrugged. “ You new?” “Just transferred from Keystone.” Eliot said. “Not so much nonsense there.” “I hear that. Good to have the backup though.” Eliot nodded. “ You do a walk through?” “Uh, no…. Like I said, no trouble, officer-- “Ted Crichton,” Eliot interrupted. “You haven’t walked through? What if someone’s in there, waiting to assault Mrs. DeVoe when she gets back?” “Well, uh, we don’t have a warrant--” “For crying out loud--” Eliot pulled a paper from his pocket. “See? Now let's go. You stay out here. Who has the back-- does no one have the back door? “ The officers hurried inside. “Don’t forget to check the closets,” Eliot called. -- “ Like I said. Best thief. Best hacker. Now, honestly--and you can run the numbers-- your best bet would be to cut your losses right here, right now. You’re already lying on the stand, so say you were coerced into implicating Mr. Allen--if you need someone to blame I do have a list of patsys that really need the jail time. You do that, put your little plan,” he waggled the book “ back in the box or write it up as the next dystopian best seller for High School English classes to dissect for decades to come, and you can walk away from this.” A laugh. “No one will believe anything you say. That book can’t be traced to me, and even if it could be, it doesn’t prove anything. So someone thinks I’m a supervillain. I’m dead. You have nothing that proves Mr. Allen innocent. You’re out of your mind, Mr. Ford.” “Oh good, you know who I am. Think a little harder.” “As threats go, it’s half baked,” Marlize challenged. “What are you going to do if we refuse? Break Allen out of jail so he can be a fugitive? He’d never go along with it. And the Flash can’t stop us.” “I’d run those numbers again, you’ve left out quite a few variables. But no.” “No?” “If you refuse, if you keep up your little game, lie on the stand, sell that sob story, maybe you're right and the Flash can’t stop you. But he doesn’t need to. I’ll destroy you.” “You.” It was not a question. “For someone claiming to be the smartest man in the world, I’m a bit worried about your memory. I said it already--I’m not here alone. But be my guest. Tell your lies. Right about now the Jury is thinking about what an embarrassment to the city Henry Allen’s trial was and how closely this resembles it… the similarities, the way the timelines don’t quite match up… “ “Really? You’re trying to convince the jury to ignore evidence and go with their hearts? A pathos appeal? That’s not going to work. There’s less than a 3% chance of that even ending in a mistrial, much less acquittal.” “I’m sure that’s what your numbers said,” Nate smiled yet again, this time sharklike. “Cute. I bet you think it’s difficult to get assigned jury duty. “ “It-- we checked all the names. We know--” “You know who they are, yes, yes. But you don’t know who we are. Another sloppy mistake. Now, the jury’s, you're right, not a total slam dunk. So, right now the prosecutor is getting word of some new evidence from a very well respected FBI agent about how helpful the Flash and Mr Allen have both been in assisting with a case against a known human trafficker--you know her, Ammunet Black. The one you bought your puppet from. FBI picked her up…mmm, ten minutes ago? And she had some very interesting things to say. You can guess what they were. Add to that the evidence--” “What evidence?” “The wire transfers between you and Ms. Black. In December and a few days ago. We didn’t even have to fake that first one, but even if the second

one looks a little fishy, the fact that--” “Nate, we got him,” crackled Eliot’s voice in his ear. “--the police just found a metahuman locked in your hall closet--Weeper, I think is what Ms. Black called him-- should make things clear. He wasn’t thrilled about having to stick around much longer but your basement is pretty hard for normal people to find so we had to nudge that a bit. But hey, you’re all for planting evidence. Anyways, court’s in ten minutes…. but the police will be arresting you in about three, if my math’s right-- care to check?-- so I can make this very quick. We have video of you threatening the Flash, holding him prisoner the same night as that wire transfer, proof of Dominic’s powers and sale--my hacker thanks you for all those cameras and bugs, by the way, made his job much easier-- and you add that all up and it sure looks like you got upset at the Flash and Allen for poking into your meta trafficking and decided a frame up was in order.” Nate hefted the folder, “and then there’s this.” “And what,” Marlize asked, shaking with rage, “ is that?” “A copy of files that will be delivered to the FBI, NSA and Dean of Husdson University if you don’t admit to the frame up.” Nate said, thumbing through them. “Proof that you, Mrs. DeVoe, fed information to certain entities across Africa and the Middle East where you were doing your research and aid work to assist in their terror attacks and human trafficking--ties in quite nicely to your work with Ammunet, if I do say so myself. And proof that the “late” Mr. DeVoe plagiarized his thesis, his dissertation, even the syllabi for his classes.” “Lies. No one will believe any of--” “Oh, it’s all very well forged. Except for the bit about the Syllabi. For shame.” Nate tutted. “And part of the dissertation. Can they take away a PH.d posthumously? Anyways, even if it wasn’t, do you really think that no one would believe a man who thinks that giving everyone on the planet late stage Alzheimer’s is going to solve famine and illness? What kind of legitimate history teacher doesn’t know about cholera or the effects of the agricultural revolution? Every lie has a kernel of truth to it.” Nate glanced at the clock on the wall. “Well, that certainly was enlightening. And before you decide to simply kill me, run your little calculations with one more variable: Eliot Spencer.” DeVoe’s brow furrowed and what little color he had drained from his face. “ That’s what I thought. Three.. Two.. one.” Nate raised his voice. “ Help! I’m in here!” The door crashed from its hinges. “The Gloat is the best part,” Parker, FBI badge swinging, put an arm over Barry’s shoulders. He stood with Iris next to her and Eliot as the DeVoes were hauled away. “You know, I think I might have to agree,” Iris said, squeezing Barry’s hand. “Or second best, at least,” she added meaningfully. “So… what now?” Joe asked. “I mean, there’s still… the red tape, but… do we need to be worried? Don’t they still have--” “Oh, that sick chair and computer set up?” Hardison asked with a smirk. “I want it.” Harry announced. “When did you get here?” Hardison asked, affronted. -- Parker held up her badge as she pushed the crate up a ramp into Lucille. “Special Agent Hagen! Let me help you with that,” Agent McSweeten said, taking the dolley handle from her. Parker beamed, patting the side, careful not to dislodge the panel on the side. “Thanks!” -- “Anyways, you can’t just call dibs. You’re too late,” Hardison added, giving Parker a fistbump. “We stole it.”

[hariosborn]

 sirius black fic rec list!!

okay but imagine having sirius black fall in love with you...a concept 😌

the feeling that we’re meeting again by @writesowhatnext

cross house relationships!!!!! literally yall are missing out if you project yourself into the same house as your lover!! you’re missing out on the tension, the passion, the romance!!! and once you get out of hogwarts and that tension is still there!!! post hogwarts sirius!!! hes so hot!!! and grumpy >:) you can never go wrong with slowburn fics!! 

the risk of love by @with1love1anu

ive been following anu for foreeeeeever and she never fails!! her writing is always so good and shes one of my favorite marauders era writers <33 you’ll see as you go down this list - but i love pining fics like im obsesssssed!! ooo and this one has a hint of best friend james and it just makes the story 10x better! 

breakfast in bed by @wondernimbus

when authors are 14 years old but can write flawlessly even though i struggle doing simple short stories in english class 😘not but fr ysa is such a good writer xx. breakfast in bed! what would yall eat 🤔if we’re talking abt english food (like food from england) idk what they eat over there tbh but i would pick roasted potatoes and waffles for breakfast :) wait actually no i wouldn’t, id probably do french toast with powdered sugar, strawberries, and french fries. ik it sounds weird but i had that the other day and i teared up, it tasted so good. but in this fic they have something even better!! have you ever wondered what it would be like to have toast, strawberry flavored muffins, and fruit for breakfast, all from the comfort of your bed, with the one and only sirius black? well look no further bc this fic has that and everything more!! 

godmother by @blisfvll

jen does it again!! coming through with the godmother!reader x godfather!sirius fics <33 (shes on this list three times bc she just writes so much good sirius content 😫) not to be morbid but when im gone i want someone to talk abt me the way sirius talks about the reader 😔i just love the way the sirius talked about her so lovingly and treated her like this ethereal being and painted her like this angel bc that must be so comforting for harry knowing that not only are his parents looking after him but his angel of a godmother is too ♥︎

oh shit + pt2 by @im-a-writer-right 

big brother remus am i right! as the oldest child, i love reading fics where im the younger sibling bc i just want someone to be able to look after me and care for me and be protective abt who i date bc they’re like “ i just don’t want you to get hurt” 😔 but anyways - this was a rlly cute and funny fic! i love snarky sirius and butthead james and overprotective remus and scared of falling for her brothers best friend reader :) if you like those all too you should read this one 😌

warnings by @blisfvll  

i felt like i was watching a short film! i loved this one! its so well written that you can like watch the play by play of everything happening in your head, like its sooo good! im sorry i keep putting so many angsty fics on this list 🥺👉🏼👈🏼 they’re just all so beautifully written and jen is such an amazing writer <33 

just a natural fact by @iliveiloveiwrite 

MILLIE!! YOU DID IT AGAIN!! guys if you are not following millie pls do i freaking love her sh*t and shes so far been on every fic rec list ive made :)) back to the review tho! im a very big fan of those timeskip fics like where theres a scenario for every year at hogwarts - and this one is one of those and i just - AGHHHGH!!! idk if this counts as a slowburn but like as someone who injects themself into the hogwarts timeline and pretends to be studying for her NEWTS when shes really doing AP work - i love reading about study sessions w remus where sirius tries to interject himself so he can be close to you 😊i dont want to spoil anything but like the tagline “Break my heart. Break it a thousand times if you like. It was only ever yours to break.” RUINED ME!! and you know what! i’ll do it again! i will read this fic and let it ruin me three more times and ten more times and however many i feel like! so yes, if you couldn’t tell, i love this one, and you guys should totally read it

die for you by @blisfvll 

i like to torture myself with sad fics so now im passing them along to you so we can all cry together ;( domestic life with sirius is something so very personal to me 😌so ofc i jumped at the idea of being harry’s godparent along w hubby sirius! but do not be fooled by my review - this one is sad - but its totally worth it!!! the things we do for baby harry am i right?? i am right 😌

wrapped around my finger by @remusishotterthansirius

jealous sirius jealous sirius jealous sirius!! oooo and when he growls >:)) i love the idea of being like this unattainable magical being in sirius’s eyes and you’re just like completely unaware of his feelings and it just adds to the mystery about you like imagine him sitting with the marauders by the black lake and him picking at a flower being like “she loves me, she loves me not, she loves me, she loves me not” and then him being all sad and pouty once the petals are all gone and he was left with ‘she loves me not’ :(( but  n e  ways - this was so cute and so masterfully written and i just love everything this author puts out so do not be surprised if you see at least one of their works on every single one of my hp fic rec lists >:))

misunderstandings by @imagineitup

oof this one really played with my heart! you know those fics where someones feelings are painfully obvious and you just want the other person to finally realize so they can both be put out of their misery and then go on to have this cute relationship BUT NONE OF THAT CAN HAPPEN UNTIL THEY COME TO THE REALIZATION THAT THEY ARE CAPABLE OF BEING LOVED!!! i love those fics and this is one of them :)))

thats all for my recs! sorry this ones so short - ive been drifting in and out of life, and school has been hard for me. there was a lot more to this list but a lot of my favorite writers have left tumblr so i dont have as much to share w yall 😔and theres obviously so many more amazing writers out there, im just sharing what i know! i’m thinking of just finishing up the other fic rec lists i have and then im going to move over to anime recs! ive been obsessed w haikyuu lately and theres a lot of fics i want to share with others - so if you guys don’t stick around for that i totally understand - but don’t worry im not making that switch till much later ✌🏼love you all so much! hope you’re all taking care of yourself, but dont worry if you’re not, its always a process so don’t put too much pressure on yourself to get stuff done and make sure to celebrate what you do get done! congratulate yourself when no one else will, and remember i’ll always be in your corner cheering you on! 

happy reading!

- love, hari !!

[fbfh]

leo x reader relationship and intimacy hcs pt 2

As with all steamy/nsfw works all characters are 18+

1.2k

Sooo

Let’s get started ‘,:)

Aight i’m gonna say it if i haven’t before i genuinely don’t remember-

Leo and Nico are tied for first place in terms of stamina

Percy is in a close second and he’s very salty about it

And pretty much everyone else is within the reasonable to high stamina zone

So this boy could just

He’s non stop

Relentless

Insatiable if you will

Aka at least a little horny all the time 

But like in a sweet way

He loves you so much it’s always coming from a place of wanting to be close to you and make you feel good

Loves to go down on you

A lot

Like could spend hours between your legs

And has at least once or twice

Goes apeshit when he’s going down on you and you grab his hair

I have a personal headcanon that he’s great at rapping seamlessly between spanish and english so uh 

Do with that what you will

To quote min yoongi, Leo’s got some tongue technology

And knows how to use it

You never fail to return the favor though

The only word that comes to mind for him is euphoric

He’s come to the conclusion that he can’t compare which is better, when he goes down on you or vice versa

It’s apple orgasms with the hottest person in the world and orange orgasms with the hottest person in the world

They’re different but both fucking fantastic

He holds your hand a lot in the bedroom

Like he’s pretty grabby

We can all agree on this

But as soon as one of his hands finds yours, he doesn’t let go

The other one will kind of roam around jumping from place to place cause he can’t get enough of you

But his other hand will be locked with yours, fingertips brushing lovingly against your knuckles, thumb rubbing the side of your hand

Makes out with you a lot when things get heated

Like a lot

He’s very kissy

Doesn’t like positions or situations where he can’t kiss you nearly as much

If you get embarrassed or flustered by eye contact he kisses your neck and collarbones more

You being comfy is his top priority

Also I feel like I need to mention

Demigods either have massive horse choking schlongs or ultra gorilla grip coochies

Like “shouldn’t logically be able to fit but can bc of god magic” kinda dicks

I’m talking exclusively buying durex xxl xtra wide xtra long condoms

This goes for all the fellas

You can pry this headcanon from my cold dead hands

Or could if I was capable of being killed

Anyway

Shopping for stuff is always fun with him

You two end up laughing and giggling like middle schoolers in a sex ed class

Not in like a tee hee sex is scandalous way

But I feel like being able to laugh abt stuff w your partner is rlly important 

Also sex doesn’t always have to be super serious all the time yk??? 

“raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens” “sticking my dick in rotisserie chickens” is funny for a reason yk

Plus there’s not much you wouldn’t be able to laugh about with Leo 

I ended up writing a one shot about last minute condom shopping with leo by accident so i’ll link it once it’s posted

God help me

He dances with you a lot

Does he feel you up and grind a little??

Or a lot???

Yes

More like a lot

Definitely a lot

Especially in the kitchen

He thinks dancing in the kitchen is really cute

You’ve gotten a lot better at dancing since being with him

He also likes giving you piggy backs cause you have full access to his neck

Do with that what you will

Especially if it’s neck kisses and hickeys

Any way shape or form he can be physically close to you he will

And he loves it

Still doesn’t 100% expect you to reciprocate his feelings

Little ones like loving to cuddle you and instigating it

Cause like

Have you met you

Thinks you’re so fucking beyond incredible

He still doesn’t really know how he got you

He can’t think about it too much or it freaks him out

He just ends up giving you a lot of attention when that happens

Usually pulls you aside somewhere to make out

If you get asmr tingles easily

He’ll take full advantage of it

He’ll whisper shit really close to your ears and you just like

Get anime spiky shivers all over your body

Emotional intimacy is also like a huge turn on for him

Like that one scene from new girl (2:10)

So like dirty talk is fun or w/e

But if you really wanna get him riled up

Just kinda run your hands up and down his chest 

Rest your head on his shoulder

And whisper about how much he means to you

“I love being around you”

Leo: on

“You make me really happy”

Leo: on

“I dunno what I’d do without you”

Leo: on

“You’re so important to me” 

Leo: on

Punctuate it with a kiss and nuzzle your face into the crook of his neck

Leo: fucking on

Make sure to take a lot of pictures and videos of him and the two of you

Cause he gets a lot of pictures of you

Like a lot

He likes using a polaroid cause he can physically hold them, yk

He has one or two physical pictures of his mom that mean a lot to him

Once you got a butt ton of copies of those two pictures made for him

“Just in case something happened, this is too important to lose”

He hugged you so fucking tight

He’s surprisingly good at photography and shooting videos

Like he has good instincts behind the camera

You’re really surprised when you notice there’s not one picture he’s taken of you that you hate

You each probably have at least a few hickeys somewhere at any given time

Also if I haven’t brought this up yet

Leo in just his boxers is uuuuuh

Really really nice

You usually see him like that one of three (or four) times

He’s either gonna be hovering over you with his hair in his face taking in the sight of you before things escalate further

Lying on his stomach tangled in your sheets first thing in the morning, still reeling and blissed out from the night before

His back muscles also look especially nice then

Or standing behind you kissing your neck while you pour some coffee, his hands on your waist under his shirt you’re wearing

Or, bonus, when you’re straddling his hips, his face bright red as you roll your hips just the right way to get him to buck up a little, and he stops biting his lip to tell you to stop teasing him

To which you happily comply

A lot

I’m gonna stop here or i’ll just go on and on forever and never stop

Just like leo

[karlajoyner]

first of all: i absolute LOVE your write

also....can you write an enemies to lovers smut with reggie or jeremy (what you feel more comfortable with), and if you have a taglist for jatp could you add me?

(english isn't my first language, sorry if there's something wrong!)

Why Wait? (Jeremy Shada x Reader)

A/N: So I got two requests a Jeremy one and a Reggie or Jeremy enemy to lover one so I put them in one. I have a enemy to lover one coming out about Charlie. It’s a smut and gets well aggressive so make sure not to read it if it makes you uncomfortable! It was as well per someone's request so I hope you guys enjoy!

Requested by: @epikskool (Tumblr)

@agotzmann (Wattpad)

Warnings: None

(P.S I do not do smut for Jeremy, Madison, Jadah, Booboo, and or Sacha! Only for their characters!)

————

I sighed getting out my car unprepared for tonight's events. My best friend Savannah invited me to a game night with some of her co-stars from her new show on Netflix. They were nice people I visited on set a couple times when they were shooting in LA and got along pretty well with most of them. Well all except one. Jeremy. Jeremy Shada.

Flashback

I frustratedly walked towards Savannah's set beyond pissed. I was visiting my best friend on set today when I anonymously received photos from an unknown number. After 2 hours of sitting in her trailer I had just confirmed that my now ex boyfriend had been cheating on me and to make it worse it was with someone who I though was my friend. I finally reached the location she was filming at watching as she spoke to the director who was probably giving her instruction. She threw a glance at me realization hitting her what we had suspected since I got the pictures was true. I stood back as she said something to the director before making her way towards me.

"Did you talk to him?" She asked.

"Yeah. He admitted it to me. He straight up told me he cheated on me" I said on the verge of tears.

"He's such an asshole" She whispered pulling me into a hug.

“I know. I just don't know what I'm gonna do Savannah. I live with the man for fucks sake" I sobbed pulling away.

"Well for starters your moving in with me"

"I can't do that Sav, our lease isn't up for another 2 months"

"Your not staying with that jerk for 2 months y/n. Over my dead body am I gonna let my best friend stay in the same apartment with such a pig" She said getting ticked off. I sighed knowing there was no point in trying to argue right now when I was filled with too many emotions to count. I simply nodded fidgeting with my fingers.

"Go wait for me in my trailer. I almost done with this scene then I'm done for the day. After that we can go pick up some clothes then head over to mine for a breakup ritual"

"You really think that'll fix this?" I asked letting another tear slip out.

"No but it'll sure help. We'll order takeout, paint our nails, and have a high school musical marathon"

"Your just saying that because you can't wait to drool over Zac”

"Well yeah but your gonna be doing the same"

"Fair enough" I said smiling at the girl.

"See you in a bit k?"

"Okay" I smiled walking away.

I was walking back the route I came from when I received a message.

"You know we don't have to stop it here if don't want to😏" I read aloud making anger boil in me. He's such a fucking Asshole.

I groaned in frustration suddenly feeling myself collide with something hard.

“What the fuck!?" I cried holding my forehead. I looked up realizing I had just collided with an opening door.

"Oh my god are you okay?"

"Do I look okay? Are you fucking serious?"

"Look I'm sorry but you don't have to be such a dick about it" The person spoke. I finally looked up seeing a guy around my age who looked awfully familiar but I couldn't place my finger on it.

"I'm the dick? You hit me with a fucking door"

"Look I said I'm sorry" He said sticking out a hand to help me up. I was so fed up with men today. I scoffed standing up on my own.

"I don't need your help. Just watch where your going next time"

"It's not my fault. I didn't know anyone was gonna be passing by"

"So it's my fault I just got knocked to the ground by an opening door?" I shouted holding the part of my head that was now throbbing.

"W-well n-"

"You know what save it! I'm tired of men today I'm tired of everyone" I said passing by the dark haired guy bumping his shoulder in anger. That guy ended up being Jeremy Shada. Savannah's cast mate. And now my worst enemy.

“I brought lasagna” I announced to the group of people who were in the living room. Specifically Charlie, Savannah, Sacha, Owen, Jadah, Tori of course, and unfortunately enough Jeremy.

“Yes!” Sacha shouted with excitement. I giggled putting down the dish in the kitchen going over to greet everyone.

“Hey Charles!”

“How you doin?” He smirked making me laugh.

“I’m doin good baby. How you doin?” I played along. Recreated one of my favorite scenes from friends.

“This is why I love you! You get me!” He shouted pulling me in for a hug.

“Hey Owen. Sacha” I greeted the two boys with a hug.

“Y/n! We missed you the last couple weeks on set”

“Owen you were shooting in Vancouver”

“I know we just really missed you. Savannah was no fun”

“I was fun!” The girl shouted form the kitchen.

“What he means is we missed our biggest cheerleader” Tori corrected.

“I am great aren’t I?” I jokingly flipped my hair on my shoulder earning laughs from around the room.

“I beg to differ” Jeremy’s voice spoke making me roll my eyes.

“Seriously? I just got here and your gonna start?” I asked looking at him.

“Hey! Guys! It’s game night let’s chill out tonight” Charlie tried to reason shuffling the uno cards in his hand.

It wasn’t the first time he or any of the other cast tried to talk me and Jeremy down but sometimes his side comments got to me so much that I’d burst. God I hated his luscious dark hair. And his snarky little smirk. And his beautiful brown eyes. And his adorable dimples.

“Charlie’s right” I spoke calming down.

“It’s game night. I’m with my friends and nothings gonna ruin that. Even you Shada”

“It was ruined the moment you stepped in”

“Man chill out” Owen said placing a hand on Jeremys shoulder. I watched as the two small talked on the side before turning my attention back to the rest of group.

Internally groaning I took a seat in between Jadah and Savannah who had finally made it back to the living room.

“Glad to see your lasagna didn’t come out burnt” Savannah said making me let out a giggle. Referring to the first time I tried baking lasagna.

“Sav that was one time and it was an accident”

“I can think of other things that were an accident” Jeremy said my eyes going wide. Gasps filling the room.

“Dude yo chill out”

“That’s low even for you Jeremy” I said standing up and making my way down the familiar hallway. I reach a room I recognized as Toris. Locking myself in. I began to cry sitting down on her bed in the center of the room.

That was it. Those were the words that finally triggered me.

Flashback

“Your a drunk! Can’t even take care of your own daughter!” “She was a fucking accident!” “You don’t mean that daddy” I cried holding my chest to my knees. Drowning out the voices of my parents fighting. Wanting anything. Anything to happen that would get me out of this house. But nothing did.

My thoughts were cut off by a sudden knock on the door.

“Who is it?” I questioned wiping the stray tears that had escaped.

“It’s me”

“Who’s me?” I asked sniffling.

“Jeremy”

“Go away you fucking prick”

“Can we talk? Please” He pleaded confusion hitting me. Why would he want to talk to me? Why now?

I made my way toward the door slowly unlocking it.

“What do you want?” I asked moving back onto the bed.

“I wanna apologize. Savannah told me about your parents. She also said if I didn’t cool it she’d have my head” He said moving slowly to sit beside me on the bed.

“Yeah. She’s a sweet girl but she’ll have your head in seconds” I tried to joke only to have more tears fall down my face.

“Look I’m really sorry for acting like such a jerk”

“A dick” I corrected him earning a chuckle from the guy.

“A dick. I’m really sorry”

“For the sake of our friends outside. I guess I’m sorry too. Sav always talks about how much of a great guy you are but I never actually got to know you. I honestly I don’t know why I always went out my way to attack you”

“I do” He spoke. My head cocking to the side in confusion.

“I mean I know why I always acted like that”

“And why is that?”

“Maybe it was to conceal the big fat crush I had on you since the moment I laid eyes on you”

“What?” I questioned looking him in the eyes.

“Don’t make me say it again. Look I’ve acted like such an ass especially lately. But every time I see you I just remember the first time we met. How beautiful you were. But then we interacted. And now I realize how terrible I really was. Then the way you reacted didn’t help the situation. I mean it looked like you weren’t having the best day and I made it worse. And guilt has been eating away at me ever since but I could never bring myself to apologize because of my stupid pride”

“Your pride is pretty stupid. But your face makes up for it” I spoke with a nervous smile.

“Was that a compliment?” He teased.

“So what if it was? What are you gonna do about it Shada?”

“Well for starters.....I’m gonna take you on a date. A proper date. Maybe to the beach. We could have a picnic. Make a day out of it. The I’ll drive you back to yours and Savannah’s. We’ll walk hand and had up to your door. We’ll make casual small talk about how great it was. Then I’ll say we should do this again sometime and you’ll agree of course. Then I’ll lean in at the last second and....kiss you”

He said our bodies seemingly to have gotten closer within the period he had begun talking to now.

“Why wait?” I whispered finally looking straight at him to see him already looking at me.

We gazed into each other’s eyes until our lips met in the middle. The kiss was short but sweet. We finally pulled away looking down I watched as he intertwined our fingers. Smiles plastered on both of our faces

This was it. No more backhanded comments. No more glaring at each other from across the room. No more uncomfortable tension in the air.

It was me and Jeremy.

————

Up Next: Charlie Gillespie x Reader (Smut)

Owen Patrick Joyner x Reader

Sacha Carlson x Reader

[akaashiclub]

girls chase boys ☇ t.k.

☇ pairing: tsukishima kei x fem!reader

☇ genre: fluff, oc is an absolute babie who has no shame, tsukishima goes from ‘she’s annoying’ to ‘she’s aight’ to ‘i may be lowkey in love w her it’s nbd tho’, oc will literally not give up, tsukishima is still a first year (word count: 4.1k)

☇ synopsis: usually when experiencing such a soul-crushing rejection, one would give up on their feelings, right? right?

☇ a/n: i binge-read some haikyuu fanmanga and i was ~inspired~ plus like... this trope?? persistant bubbly x uninterested cold is?? literally everything?? (playlist link: here)

“i like you!!!”

you kind of felt like the main character of a shoujo, with the wind making your hair dance in the air

standing face to face with your longtime crush

(and by longtime, you mean about two months)

that’s when it all started

no— it was earlier

the orientation ceremony

all the first years standing in neat, organized rows, listening to the principal give a welcoming speech

at least, that’s what you were supposed to be doing

in reality, your eyes were trained on the 188cm tall blonde in the row in front of you

you couldn’t see the stage— also, you didn’t care

bc ~he~ was in front of you

tsukishima kei

you learned his name later when you discovered you were in the same class

and he sat in the adjacent row, one seat forward

the absolutely perfect position to stare at his side profile the entire class

and that is exactly what you did for two months

that and gathering info on him

tsukishima kei, 188.3cm (now 190.1), born on september 27th, best friends with yamaguchi tadashi, #11 on the karasuno volleyball team

and then there you were, confessing your undying love to him

...or something like that

“no thanks. not interested.”

usually, that would soul-crushing enough to make them leave him alone

not you <3

the giggle that escapes your lips makes his eyebrow twitch on confusion for a second

“that’s okay~” you respond. 

(that’s okay ?)

(what the fuck kind of response is that being rejected ???)

(yours!!!!)

you’re exhaustingly persistent, as tsukishima comes to find out

or should i say—

“tsukki~!!” 

the hair on his neck rises when you flounce into homeroom with that sing-song tone

you plop down into the seat in front of him (key note: not yours) and rest your elbows on his desk with a little grin

“don’t call me that,” (he doesn’t look up from his book)

“what~! why not?”

“only my friends call me 'tsukki’”

you snort, scooting a little closer

“that’s mean. how many times have we walked home together, and we still aren’t friends?”

“you followed me home, i didn’t consent.”

“‘followed you’?” you pout. “we live on the same road, naturally we’d walk home together,”

he doesn’t respond, just flips to the next page in his book

“do you have volleyball club today~?”

ignored. 

lol

she stays strong!! she doesn’t give up in the face of adversity!!!

“you don’t have to answer, i already know you do.” you chirp. “it’s boring walking home without you... maybe i’ll come with you today~!”

it’s like talking to a wall

(a very cute, 190cm, blonde, glasses-wearing wall.)

(🥰)

instead of responding, he puts his headphones on and keeps reading 

a small exhale escapes your lips, and one of the girls in the next row over leans towards you

“y/n... i think it’s a lost cause...”

“he’ll come around eventually,” you shoot her a smile, and then turn back to tsukki

you lean forward, reaching towards his head and tugging the headphones down around his neck

and when he looks up (he does within an instant), you shoot him a sly smile

several students around you gasp

after all, who would dare bother tsukishima with his headphones on??? that’s some instant death shit

“move.”

“i like being this close to you though,” you tease

and he rolls his eyes, standing up and heading for the exit of the classroom

the shock in the classroom — that you’re still ALIVE — is clear

your friend from before gapes 

“y-y/n what are you playing at??”

“courtship,” you sigh dramatically, and hop to your feet to chase after the blonde monster

“tsukki~!! are you getting lunch?? wait for me~!!”

everyone on the first floor knows: it’s become the norm to see tsukishima, book in hand, headphones around neck, and followed by a chirpy pipsqueak 

even yamaguchi doesn’t stick as closely to him as ‘tsukishima’s lapdog’ (as you’ve started being called by the fellow first years) does

the nickname doesn’t really bother you

after all, it’s just a reminder of your determination and refusal to give up

which is a virtue, in your mind!!

some people feel bad for tsukishima, constantly being bothered by you for weeks on end

others admire your stubbornness

and one group of people you can always count on supporting you are the karasuno volleyball club <3

ever since you started showing up to their practices 

and all their practice matches and official games too

they all befriended you

but you grew tired of just sitting and watching tsukki on the sidelines, so you asked coach ukai if you could help out during practices!!!

there can’t rly be ... three managers... so you suggested retrieving balls or being tsukki’s personal assistant

he saw right through you <3 

but it’s ok bc he thought it would be entertaining and agreed

tsukki: angy

even when he’s annoyed he’s cute tho <33 and you make sure to tell him that <333

and so! you get tsukki’s water, towels, etc etc (ofc u help other ppl too when they need it but tht’s what the two managers r for... tsukki is ur #1)

the other players are like 0.0 she’s kinda scary... but cute at the same time doe... 

one day you’re in a particularly good mood (aka: a bad day for tsukki lol)

“tsukki~!”

“don’t call me that.”

“i want to tell you something,”

the whole gym is kinda just 👁️👄👁️ waiting to see what happens

“what? i need to change, hurry it up.”

ur inner monologue: kdNNN even when he’s mean he’s cute!!!!

but anyways:

“i like you,”

hinata, kageyama, tanaka, noya, literally everyone: 😳😨 mf what—

sugawara’s like “oh god he’s just reject her and crush her heart... right in front of EVERYONE—”

“not interested.” tsukki says, and his tone isn’t any less cold than usual

u kno that anime lightning effect when the character’s body is joLtED...

tht’s everyone else in the gym

tanaka and nishinoya are highkey ready to let you cry into their jerseys when—

you laugh

you right after being mercilessly rejected: 🥰

you can’t help it !!!!! it’s not discouraging you ok??? you alr knew what he’d say!!! but you had to tell him <3 can’t let him forget tht he’s the ✨love of your life✨

entire gym: s h o o k

“did she just  l a u g h??”

“is she okay?? no srsly”

“what... just happened”

tsukki walks off, water bottle in hand

you follow after him, bouncing on the soles of your feet 

“don’t forget your towel~! want me to wipe off your sweat~?”

“no thanks.”

cue fading banter between you two as he goes to change his clothes

he has to be like hOe GeT oUT for you to not go into the locker room lmfao damn... thirsty bitch... same tho

later tanaka and noya (feat. hinata who just wants to be included) jump tsukki

“shE LAUGHED WHEN U REJECTED HER??? IS SHE OK???”

“she confesses to me every week. she’ll do it again. it’s not that big of a deal.”

“not thAT BIG— can u imagine if kiyoko liked us that much.... ”

(cue tanaka sobbing)

tsukki was right tho

after the third time you randomly confessed to him in front of them they were just like

same shit different day, anyways rolling thunder

but they still highkey adopted you

so they go grr grr when tsukki rejects you all cold and shit

shockingly tho??? the more you confess the less it’s “not interested” and more just “*sigh*”

is this... PROGRESS???

but the zero braincell triad cornered him again in the locker room one day 

(it’s their trademark)

(nishinoya) “so why do you keep rejecting her??”

(hinata popping in) “yea she’s super dedicated and helpful!!!”

(tanaka lowkey shuddering) “she’d probably let herself get hit in the face w a volleyball if u asked”

(and tanaka would be: correct)

(but anyway)

“she was annoying,”

“she... ‘was’ annoying???”

“... she IS annoying”

“tsukki... do you possibly like her??? but you’ve gotten so used to rejecting her that it’s automatic now??”

tsukki’s like V.V

“you’re reading too much into it,”

sage!nishinoya is about to probe deeper but at that moment you pop your head around the corner of the locker room and shout

“tSUKKI~!!!”

and they all scatter to hide themselves while shrieking

except tsukki, who is already clothed and gives zero fucks lmao

but anyways!!! a couple weeks pass and takeda got y’all set up with a practice match !!

with who?? nekoma!!!

hinata is like 🤩🤩 kENMA!!

only players and members of the club are supposed to go rly....

but you’re like “??? i’m tsukki’s personal assistant are you trying to take away my rights??? i’ll sue you” and coach ukai gives in sdjfkf

“tsukki can i sit with you~?”

yamaguchi about to sit there: 👁️👄👁️ bruh

tsukki doesn’t say yes but he also doesn’t say no :D

 “what’re you reading?”

“english book,”

you’re like: wait— mf hold up... did he actually just answer ??

tsukki simp mode: ACTIVATED

“can i see??”

“you’re failing english, you won’t be able to read it.”

“ouch,” you pout, but there’s a small smile on your lips. “but how’d you know i was failing english?”

he doesn’t respond

“i guess it is unfair that i know everything about you and you don’t know anything about me...” you sigh

“you don’t know everything about me,” he retorts, still not looking up from his book

hehe~ gotcha

“oh? test me,” you grin, scooting closer to him

“don’t wanna.”

“you’re just scared i do know everything,” you say smugly, trying to bait him

“bet you don’t know everything about me!!!” hinata pops up from the seat in front of you

“you’re right, i don’t,” 

(he pouts and disappears again)

“tsukki~” you whine. “tsukkiiiii~ i’m bored.”

“so?”

“can i wear your headphones?”

“no thanks. i don’t wanna get headlice.”

you scowl. “mean,”

you bite your cheek, staring a hole in the side of his head but he doesn’t even blink

if tsukki could major in ignoring you people, he’d have straight A’s

fortunately, you have ways to counter this

“kei~~” you whisper a little too close to his ear, and he jolts up

you try not to let the amusement show on your face, but you can’t help it

glaring at you, he pulls his headphones off his head and puts them on yours

“now be quiet,”

“mm~” you chuckle

a couple hours later, you pull into the parking lot of nekoma

the friend groups pair off, and kuroo makes a beeline for tsukki, only to catch sight of you

“hey four-eyes— who’s this?”

tsukki glances down at you, to which you shoot him a sugary smile

“dunno,” he says, and walks off

you wave to kuroo with a sunny grin

“i’m y/n~! i’m tsukki’s personal assistant and future wife~”

his eyebrows rise, and with a quick bow, you bounce after the blonde

once the group is all in the gym, practice jerseys are handed out and you help yachi and shimizu prepare the water and towels

you’re about to make a beeline for tsukki, when someone calling your name stops you

“y/n! wanna get me some water?” kuroo calls

you only blink for a moment before hopping to it, darting across the gym

for the rest of the day, kuroo is constantly calling for you—

“y/n! can you wipe the sweat off my neck?”

“hey, y/n, get me some water~”

“y/n!”

“y/n, over here!”

and by the time the several hours is over, you haven’t gotten to speak to tsukki once 🥺 snnff :(

when you finally get a free moment, you look around for him, but he’s nowhere to be found

sad face :(

and then !!!! turns out nekoma paid for bbq for everyone 🤩🤩 cats are so generous

and somehow??? you find yourself surrounded by nekoma players???

“here y/n, want some of my bbq?”

“no, take mine!!!”

“do you want any fruit?? i have some!!”

“you were so helpful today!! how’d you stay so energetic the whole time??”

you flash a smile, ready to charm the shit out of them, when a voice interrupts:

"hey, personal assistant.”

your eyes light up, bc you’d recognize that salty ass voice anywhere!!!

the guys around you part to reveal—

“tsukki!!!” you squeal, maybe a little too excitedly

“aren’t you supposed to be assisting me?? get me some food.”

you shove your plate into the free hand of one of the nekoma players (his name was... liam? lief... lev?) and dart to get tsukki something to eat

when you hand it to him, you flash him your most dazzling smile

“eat up! you worked hard today~”

he eyes you silently before digging in, and you smile absentmindedly while watching him

“why are you staring at me like that?”

“because i like you,” you respond without hesitation

he averts his eyes, but doesn’t say anything mean 

your stomach flips a little 

i’m coming for you, tsukishima kei.

on the ride home, you’re once again sitting next to him, and he gives up his headphones without a fight this time

you’re so tired from running around helping kuroo all day that you find your eyelids getting heavy as tsukki’s music plays in your ears

you try to subtly lean on his shoulder but he pokes you away 

you glare at him, pouting, but settle for leaning against the headrest

and then, you’re drifting off

..

and you’re having a strange dream

a pleasant dream, with fuzzy corners and honey-colored light streaming across the scene, but still strange

in this dream, he’s kissing you

it’s not like you haven’t had dreams like this before, it’s just that this one feels so much more vivid

and yet blurry at the same time

even when the dream ends and you blink back into consciousness you can still distinctly feel his lips against yours

his glasses brushing against your cheek

his fingers interlacing with your hair

a warm smile curls up your lips as you grasp lingering wisps of the dream, when—

“you’re drooling.”

your eyes snap open and you jolt up, furiously wiping the side of your mouth

“am not!!”

tsukishima blinks uninterestedly from the empty bus aisle, arms crossed

“dreaming about something vulgar?”

you grin, resting your chin on your palm

“would you like to hear ab—?”

he’s just “nope,” and turns towards the exit

hopping out of the seat, you follow him

“it was such a nice dream,” you sigh

“must’ve been, if you were drooling that much.”

“i was not—”

and then you notice something

everyone else is already gone from the bus

“wait a minute... did you wait for me?”

you hear a scoff

bUt hE dOEsNt DeNy iT

“you WAITED for me!!!!” you exclaim, happiness radiating off you in waves

“if i’d left you on the bus, nishinoya and tanaka would’ve killed me if i didn’t,” he says curtly

but you are, after all, the human equivalent of ‘this sign can’t stop me because i can’t read’

or that tiktok trend 

tsukishima: i don’t like you, i only waited for you because i was literally forced at gunpoint 

y/n: 🎶i waited for you🎶

the next day, it’s practice as usual at the karasuno gym

but?? sniff sniff someone is here that shouldn’t be

this rando first year has been pacing around right outside the gym entrance

and all the vbc members are like 👁️ whomst?

and when you finally arrive (right along behind tsukki)

he yells out your name

and holds out a bouquet of flowers <3 how cute

“y/n, um— i, i know you don’t know me but i’ve liked you since the orientation ceremony!!! i think you’re really pretty and cute and smart—”

cue a quiet scoff from tsukki, “if she’s his definition of smart, then how dumb is he?”

cue sugawara jabbing his side (sugamama is protective of his child y/n)   

“—and i know you like tsukishima, but i hope you’ll give me a chance!! i can make you happier than him!!”

at this point, everyone in the gym is watching like 👁️ oh?? TEA?? 

and is that... is that an aura of raging irritation coming from tsukishima?? 

you open your mouth to politely reject the guy, when

literally out of nowhere tsukki just  a p p e a r s

“hey, idiot. aren’t you supposed to be my personal assistant?? go set out the volleyballs instead of flirting,”

you dip your head and smile apologetically at the guy before heading towards the store room

and after that, you notice tsukki is a bit harsher, a bit more off his game, a little more easily irritated than usual

during a free moment, you nudge tanaka

“doesn’t he seem like he’s in a bad mood??”

zero braincell tanaka is like “??? isn’t he always like that??”

“no... something is definitely off today...”

what . could it be . i wonder .

every time you try to do your usual “tsukki~!!” he just turns away and ignores you

doesn’t sound too out of the ordinary, but you can just tell something is wrong

you still have no idea why he’s acting like this by the time practice ends

and when you go to the locker room to find him (so y’all can walk home together), he’s already gone :(

so, a little more droopy than usual, you head out

only to be surprised by a voice when you step outside

“took you long enough,”

you whip around to see tsukki leaning against the wall with crossed arms

he clicks his tongue and then sets off

and when you don’t immediately follow him, he glances over his shoulder

“are you coming or not?”

sdjfksjsdkjfsdjf smmpdfhsdf !!!!!!!

it’s just one sentence, and it doesn’t really mean anything

but hearing the words makes something incredibly warm bloom in your chest

you grin

“of course i am,”

that feeling lasts well into the next morning, but is replaced by a nauseating knot in your stomach when you arrive at school

because everyone’s whispering about one thing:

“tsukishima got called to the principal’s office!!!”

“whaaat ! why??”

“i heard he was caught with the answers for the upcoming exam!!”

your stomach . clenches

and before anybody can say another word, you’re sweeping out the door and down the hall

and in less than 30 seconds, you’re slamming open the door to the principal’s office

the principal and tsukki both look up, equally shocked at your sudden appearance

“y/n, what—”

you ignore him for the first time in your life

“sir, i need to tell you something.”

the principal is just like “... ?? can it wait??”

“no, it can’t.” you take several steps forward “the test answers, they—”

“y/n, don’t—”

you ignore him for the second time in your life again

“they’re mine,”

the principal blinks 

“then why was tsukishima found holding them before class??”

“yesterday, they must’ve fallen out of my backpack. he probably picked them up without knowing what they were, so please don’t punish him,” you bow. “punish me instead,”

.. y/n dumb bitch

yea, you’re suspended for two weeks

and ofc there’ll be a mark on your record

plus you’re automatically given a fail for the upcoming exam so you’ll have to retake it later oof....

but as much as all that sucks, you don’t regret it bc you’d rather take the fall than let tsukki be wrongly accused and suffer for it

but honestly the break from school is kinda vibes 🥴

don’t even think about the homework you’ll have to make up

your phone is blowing up with texts from your friends

including your surrogate dads and moms from the karasuno vbc 🤧 they’re so worried about you

you’re sad you have to miss practice for such a long time but... you don’t regret your decision

“y/n!!” your little sister knocks on your door “one of your classmates is here for you,”

“‘kay!!” you call back, checking the time

shidt bitch time flies when you’re watching anime alone in your bedroom

you hop up and open your bedroom door to come face to face with the one. the only. tsukishima kei

your eyes are like O.O 

“tsukki??? what are you doing here??” you grin “are you here because you’re worr—”

“no,” he cuts you off “i’m here to deliver your homework,”

“you could’ve given it to my sister, y’know,” you tease. “why’d you come all the way to my bedroom?? you missed me, hm?”

he doesn’t answer, instead surveying the room before sitting down on the edge of your bed

you blink, surprised he didn’t comeback with a cold retort

“tsukki?” you ask quietly, sliding into your desk chair

after a moment of silence, he fixes you with a stoic gaze

“why’d you lie?”

“because... because i couldn’t let you take the blame for that. i don’t know what happened, but i know you weren’t cheating. i know it.”

“neither were you. what’s the difference?”

you press your lips together in a frustrated pout

“the difference is that it’s you!!! i’m mediocre. i’m not outstanding. i’ll go to an average college either way, and it’ll be fine. but you..! you’re so smart!! and talented!!! you could do anything you want!!! you could get into an elite college!! the last thing you need is for some stupid misunderstanding to sully your transcript—”

“y/n—” he tries to cut in, but you bulldoze right over him

“— and i know you probably think what i did was useless and unhelpful, but i don’t care!!! i don’t care about a mark on my transcript, or being suspended, or failing all my exams, or even being expelled—”

“y/n—”

“— but i absolutely refuse to let that happen to you!! you’re too special for—”

this time, it’s not him speaking that interrupts you

this time, it’s him kissing you

you nearly combust on the spot

tsukki— tsukishima kei is kissing you

he’s leaning over you, with one hand on the chair’s armrest and the other steadying your head with his fingertips

your stomach does several full somersaults 

and then, all too quickly, he pulls away and returns to his spot on your bed

you stare, eyes wide as saucers, mouth slightly agape

“w— what was— why did—”

“you wouldn’t stop talking,” he mutters, eyes focused a little too hard on the wall

for a moment, you’re too shocked to move

and then your 🥰tsukki🥰 mode activates

and you just fuckin LUNGE at him

“y/n??? what—!”

kisses!!! kisses on his cheeks!! his nose!!! his forehead!!!

and shockingly he doesn’t?? push you off??

me heart just skipped a beat wjdkfjs

he’s just like “y/n, you’re fogging up my glasses, please stop,”

“i refuse!!!! i’ve been waiting months to do this!!!!!”

once he manages to de-suction you from him, you fix him with doe eyes and a cheeky grin

“hey, tsukki??”

“.. what?”

“i like you,”

he blinks

adjusts his glasses

“make sure to finish that homework. i’m bringing tomorrow’s homework too,”

as he’s leaving, you hope he can feel your glowing smile on his back

the next day, you get a message from the school letting you know that your suspension and other punishments have been retracted

as the real culprit of the cheating was found

an unannounced locker-search discovered several exam cheatsheets almost exactly like the one tsukki found in the locker of a student, and the school realized their mistake <3 how nice of them

and that meant you were free to return to school, name cleared!!!

the volleyball club was eagerly awaiting your return

so when they saw tsukki arrive for practice, they expected you’d be following right along behind him

but instead???

you were koala-ing on his abdomen

“bro... did you carry her all the way here like that??”

“the real question is why he allowed it,”

you shoot a blinding grin at the guys 

“he can at least do this much for his girlfriend~!”

the entire gym is like WhA T !!!!! 

“hE SAID YES???”

“nope,”

“he... asked you out?? then??”

“also no...” 

“did he at least tell you he liked you...?”

“...”

“NISHINOYA STOP SHE’S TEARING UP,” sugamama to the rescue

you let go of tsukki and half the team goes IN on him

“dude wtf!!! she got suspended for you and you didn’t even at least tell her you like her???”

“not just suspended, almost expelled!!!”

“yeah that!!!”

“i say we kill tsukki,”

“tanaka no,”

“GUYS!!” angry!daichi makes an appearance “it’s time for practice!!!”

grumbling, the team disperses

you’re about to head to the store room to help get out the practice equipment, when—

“y/n.”

you turn “hm?”

he’s silent for a moment

“i wouldn’t have kissed you if i didn’t like you.”

your face flushes a deep red

but then he adds, “either time.”

either...? time...?

W A I T

your eyes POP OUT

“that— that wasn’t a DREAM???”

he doesn’t answer, just heads onto the court

but you think you see a slight smirk

and maybe... just maybe?? 

his ears are a little more red than usual.

[bound-writings]

Teru x female reader who's bad at her studies headcannons! Teru has secret crush on her

BUEIDW I LOVE THIS SO MUCH I HOPE U ENJOY ANON!!! ALSO TAGGING @jshk-oneshots AND @toilettebound BC I THINK THEY WANTED TO SEE THE TERU FLUFF! ALSO @daikon-legss BC THEY ARE IN A TERU LOVING MOOD! (aLSO PARTIALLY INSPIRED BY CH 59 OF TBHK)

Teru Helping His Crush Study HCS

As we all know, Teru, quite frankly, is smart as hell. Good at English, bad with nothing. A ranking of #1 out of #231. A true perfect student. He’s never had too much trouble studying, so when you go up to him wailing about your studies, he’s a bit surprised (and also in awe at how cute you look.)

You quickly opened the door to the student council, slamming the door against the wall, your hand placed on your chest as you furiously looked around the room, looking for a specific cheese head which you secretly adored. You must have looked like a crazy person but you didn’t care right now. 

“(Name)?”

You whipped your head over to the direction of the voice. Teru was standing over his desk, his head tilted slightly to the side curiously, paperwork scattered about.

Cute, you thought.

You shook your head, trying to get rid of that kind of thought.

“(Name)? Are you ok? You look very frazzled-”

You ran up to him, your feet skidding to a halt as you clutched his shirt. 

“T-Teru… it’s the worst possible situation ever!”

Teru looked down at you. Big puppy eyes and your lip jutting out, small fingers locked onto his shirt and one hand even on his tie, you looked adorable. Your hair was ruffled and pieces were sticking out, some bags under your eye, and your chest was heaving up and down as if you were running for quite a while. The tips of his ears went red as you were so close to him, your warmth was a comfort to him.

“What’s the matter, (Name)?”

You buried his head into his chest, a small whine escaping you. 

“Finals, Teru. FINALS!”

Teru raised his eyebrows as he brought his fingers to his chin.

“Finals, huh…”

“Yes, finals! How and why do you sound so calm about it?!”

“Well-”

“Oh yea.. I almost forgot. You’re the undefeated top-scoring student, amazing at everything…” you sulked, fingers dragging down his chest. You turned your back to him as you crossed your arms, pouting.

“Now, (Name)… why are you so scared about it in the first place? You’re quite capable and smart.”

You whipped around, grabbing his shoulders as you pursed your lips. “That’s not even true! But the worst part is…”

“Is..?” Teru was amused at your antics. You were very entertaining, one of the reasons he loved you.

“Is that I’m absolutely lost when studying!”

Teru blinked his eyes at you, while you stared straight into his own with the most serious expression he’s ever seen on you before he broke out in a chuckle and covered his mouth to try to muffle his laughs. You furrowed your eyebrows at his reaction.

“Teru, this is not a laughing matter! I’m being 100% serious right now!”

Teru smiled at you as he gently removed your hands from his shirt and set them at your side, his heart slightly pounding against his chest as he savored the softness of your hands in his.

“(Name), I’m sure you’re exaggerating-”

“I’m not, Teru! Every time I tried to study, I always got distracted, or I don’t understand the material, and just- grr!” you scowled, running your hands through your hair. “And imagine what everyone will think when they see a member of the student council fail their exams! They’ll call me the dumbest person in the school!”

Then, your shoulders perked up, as you nervously glanced up at him. “T-That’s why I came to ask you to help me.”

“Oh?”

“Y-yea!” You glided over to Teru once again and clasped your hands together. “Please, Teru! Help me study!”

“Sure, (Name.)”

“Please, this is a once in a lifetime reque- eh?” You hastily looked up, eyes shining with hope. “You will?!”

Teru smiled as he smoothed your ruffled hair. “Of course, (Name.) Anything for you,” he said, twirling a lock of hair around his fingers.

You blushed as you bowed. “Thank you so much, Teru! Oh, I’ll help you finish all your paperwork and-”

“But-”

“Oh God, there’s a but?! Teru, please don’t make me do something crazy-”

“Don’t look so scared, I didn’t even say anything yet (Name)!” he smiled, sparkles floating around him.

You squinted your eyes at his suspiciously. Even though you had a secret infatuation with the boy, you knew how he would, well, treat Akane. Teru leaned forward, whispering into your ear.

“You have to listen to one command from me, no matter what it is.” His breath tickled your ear and you were sure you were going to combust.

“If you’re fine with that, come see me after school, (Name).”

The sly mf already knew you were going to say yes. This boy knows how to work his magic to get you to come to him. Not just he means any harm, he’s just itching to spend some alone time with you (even if he appears to be neutral on the surface.) So he’s not surprised when you’re there waiting for him, hands on your hips, cheeks slightly flushed. (All according to plan!)

“I agree to your condition, Teru! But it better not be anything weird!”

He just smiles at you but inside he’s giddy with joy. Some alone time? With you? The most beautiful person he knows, loves, and adores? HELL YES! He doesn’t miss the opportunity to invite you to his house, despite the amount of paperwork he has left to do. (He’ll just dump it on Akane.) When you two arrive at his house, you’re probably marveling at how big it is and he’s just smiling at you all happy because he’s so glad he just snatched you up for some alone time. When Kou and Tiara saw you they got all excited because they love you too!! The two youngest siblings were giving each other looks because the only time their big brother brings anyone home is when he really likes them so they’re like ;) you go get them, tiger!!

Of course, y’all actually have to study, unfortunately. Teru has everything organized already (he prepared just for you!) You would start with the easiest stuff first because he didn’t want you to get overwhelmed too early on. Sometimes it’s hard for both of you to focus. When you’re trying to figure out a question, Teru points and shows you how to do it and his fingers brush ever so gently against yours. Both of you are flustered, but neither of you pull away, because, well, both of you like the feeling. Teru tends to stare at you a lot, whether it’s intentional or not, you don’t know. You are just chewing your pencil, glaring at the question while Teru just stares at you patiently with literal sparkles around him, and when you looked up you are blinded by how precious he looks. Similarly, whenever you get a question right, you always send Teru a closed eye smile, one hand against your cheek and the other making a peace sign. Cue Teru trying not to blush. He just wants to hold your hand and squeeze it every time you got something right and to maybe give you some cheek and forehead kisses every time you did something adorable (which is like 24/7 according to Teru’s logic.) It is actually quite a productive studying session, much to your delight, and Teru is also satisfied because he got to spend time with his beloved and also him you!

Much like a few days ago, you busted open the door to the student council, hopping in while you waved your hands around delightedly. You squealed with glee at the sight of Teru, rushing over to him with a piece of paper in your hand.

“Teru, Teru! Look!” you giggled as shoved the slip of paper that had the grades for your final exams.

“I actually did good!” you twirled around, humming, slightly hoping Teru would praise you.

Teru smiled at you, his face going soft at your adorableness. “I told you that you were going to do fine. You didn’t even need my help.”

“Hey! That’s not true! Without you, I would have failed! So I guess I’m in your debt now!” you grinned, shyly scratching your cheek.

“Of course you are, (Name). Don’t you remember the condition?”

“The condition? What- oh.. that conditon..” your face fell as a nervous grin replaced your previous one. “W-well, Teru, it was nice seeing you but I think I have to go now!” you started backing up towards the door but it was pushed in and your back hit the wall. When did that happen? There was no time to think or escape as Teru was quicker than your tiny little legs.

A hand gently hit the wall next to your face, as you nearly jumped at the sound as you glanced at it. When you glanced back to speak up, Teru’s face was already alarmingly close to yours. His beautiful blue eyes stared at you, and you could see his features close up. He was handsome already… but damn, you could feel your whole body heating up.

“You know, (Name), it’s not good to go back on your word.”

You couldn’t conjure any words to respond. 

“You don’t have to worry though. My request is a very simple one.”

You merely nodded as you averted eye contact, you could barely even stand as your legs turned to jelly.

“Close your eyes for me, (Name).”

You furrowed your eyebrows at his particularly strange request but did as he asked, squeezing your eyes shut as you swallowed in anticipation of something bad to happen.

A hand caressed your cheek, causing you to stiffen in surprise. A finger traced your lips and lifted your chin up. Then another pair of lips brushed against yours, and then smashed onto yours leaving you in complete and utter shock. Teru’s hand gently combed through your locks, and it all sank in.

Teru was kissing you.

He pulled away almost too fast, his hands leaving your body and returning to his side, leaving you in a flurry of emotions and also wanting more of those sweet, delectable, kisses.

“That wasn’t too bad of a condition, was it, (Name)?” he asked playfully, enjoying the sight of your flustered face and messy hair displayed before him.

There was one thing you knew for sure.

If this was the condition for studying with Teru, you’d be very interested in studying with him a lot more often.

[birlcholtz]

Fic Questions

tagged by @the-lincyclopedia thank you!! (fun game: watch my writing get progressively less formal as the post continues. by the end it’s like what is capitalization)

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

77!

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

434,378 as of this week but it does go up quite regularly

3. How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Okay so in terms of what’s on my AO3, I have Check Please, All For the Game, Sharp Zero, HP, and Miraculous Ladybug. I also have The Forbidden LOTR and PJO Fanfiction (as in, I’ve written it, but it’s never seeing the light of day)

(technically there is a PJO fic out there that has seen the light of day but I orphaned it because I was tired of getting comments asking about when it would be updated)

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

and then i met you (and the whole world changed)

for the better

Knew It Was You

come home (to you, to us)

sin bin schematics

All of these are Check Please and all of them except Knew It Was You are part of my Zimbits Airport AU!

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do! It’s actually a very recent thing that I’ve started not responding to literally every single comment. Mainly I respond because I love talking about my writing so I am going to seize that opportunity when it comes up

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Oh, DEFINITELY Happy Birthday (HP). Check out that MCD tag ahah. (I say HP but what I really mean is that I write fic about Regulus Black. The Regulus Black-centric tag is my home in the HP fandom)

fun fact: this is a very short fic that I wrote when I was 15 and basically forgot about until recently, and then I reread it recently and went holy shit?? I pulled NO punches????

7. Do you write crossovers? If so, what is the wildest one you’ve written?

Not a ton? I think a lot of the fandoms I write for don’t really mesh that well. That being said, the aforementioned orphaned PJO fic is actually a PJO/ML crossover, so there’s that

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope! Sometimes I get comments that are just.... really confusing? And a more common thing is that in my AFTG fic I’ll get comments from people who are so focused on Andreil (or the most common ships in general) to the point that like. they miss the point of what I actually wrote. Those are annoying but they’re not hate, they’re very enthusiastic, they’re just... enthusiastic about a story I’m not writing? So it’s a bit frustrating.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

No sjflskgjhgf I struggle enough to write kissing, I think if I ever tried to write smut my brain would just shut down. I’ve managed some fade-to-blacks (which are mostly in WIPs that haven’t been posted) but they rely HEAVILY on the powers of implication

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, although I have occasionally made a brief go of it, not to post, more as an exercise for myself in a language that I’m learning. Anyway I never finish them so I’m gonna say no

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not really? I’ve definitely group brainstormed fics and then written them (the best example of this being Q&A (AFTG), which was the product of a truly off-the-walls group chat), but I tend to do all the actual writing myself. I think the way I write would drive a co-writer up the wall since it’s very disorganized and I don’t write stuff down because ~I know what’s gonna happen I don’t need notes~ and it would infuriate me if I was co-writing with me lmao, so I won’t inflict that on someone else

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I regularly move through ships I’m SUPER focused on, like it’s kind of a rotation. I will forever and always ship Percabeth though.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Okay so if you follow me at @birlwrites you may know this already, but i have this ‘warmups’ document that is just like, random ideas i get that i don’t necessarily want to finish but i just want to try out for a bit? and i have a rule that once a ‘warmup’ is more than 10 pages long (so 11+) then it has to be moved to its own document, just to make scrolling through the warmups doc easier. but usually, a warmup only passes 10 pages when i’m INTO it. so i have a bazillion wips i will probably never finish. i complain about this a lot. i have so many wips. i don’t need more.

here’s one: it’s titled ‘interrobang doesn’t know they’re dating’, it’s basically a full outline for a chowder/tango fic and it would be SO cool if i could ever like. get around to writing it. but i am constantly swamped with writing projects, so it’s probably not gonna happen. if anyone’s interested in adopting it though i’d be down for that!! i think it’s a fun idea i just almost def won’t write it myself

15. What are your writing strengths?

SNAPPY DIALOGUE AND SNARKY INTERNAL MONOLOGUE. my writing is COMEDIC, 90% of my ideas are based on a funny snippet that popped into my head, a lot of my worldbuilding is based on ‘hey you know what would be hilarious’ (whenever i explain how larai selects a chosen one in the rainfall universe i start laughing, which is a STARK contrast to how it plays out on the page), i love writing funny stuff!!

also i think my writing sounds nice, a lot of the time i pick words/syntax based on sound and flow so there’s that too. and i have lots of ideas! i don’t struggle much with writer’s block because a) i have a lot of strategies to deal with it and b) i have a lot of ideas to help get around it/work with it

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

PHYSICAL INTIMACY LMAO, sometimes in my end notes on shippy fics you can see me complaining ‘it took me literally 4 hours to write that very brief kiss’. also sometimes the humor in my writing gets in the way a bit, i have to very consciously put it away so characters can actually have serious, genuine emotions. also i don’t like outlining and i tend not to get betas for fanfiction so like..... i do my best continuity-wise but having really tightly plotted stories is just not my focus lol. (and i do put more effort into that for original stuff, it’s just fic where i kind of go wild)

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

If the reader’s supposed to know what it means, then writing it in another language is iffy for me. (stuff like terms of endearment which come up a lot in fic are fine imo, you can just put a note in to translate them and your reader will prob remember)

If the pov character isn’t supposed to understand it, and it doesn’t matter if the reader understands it, then ig it’s fine? but unless you already speak the other language (and i am NOT confident in my ability to translate english into literally any other language), then i think it’s way easier to just note that a character’s speaking x language and provide tone indicators, body language cues, etc. so the reader understands as much as the pov character.

That being said there are def times when it’s used super effectively--the dialogue in spanish in cemetery boys comes to mind! that’s not fanfic but it’s still creative writing so w/e

so i guess it comes down to: does actually writing out the dialogue in the other language serve a purpose? if it doesn’t, then you’re filling up the screen with words your reader isn’t likely to understand, which i try to avoid doing

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

so the first fandom i actually *wrote* for was PJO, but i distinctly remember creating warrior cats OCs when i was little. i never actually did anything w them but i had them and my favorite was a riverclan warrior named shellstream i remember this VIVIDLY

19. What’s your favorite fic you’ve ever written?

oh boy. okay so this is hard because i feel like i’m continuously improving as a writer. like in the sense that my writing is getting closer and closer to really matching my own taste? my favorites tend to always be my current projects as a result. and i do really love set those ghosts alight (HP) but it feels a little like cheating to say a fic i haven’t even finished writing yet. even though it’s def not cheating, that’s just the direction my brain is taking it.

i’m gonna say and then what? (OMGCP) because i’m super proud of the prose (especially ch 2 aka the first actual prose chapter), survived by (HP) for SUCCESSFULLY WRITING AN EMOTION and making readers cry :), and Q&A (AFTG) because i’m literally the one who wrote it and yet it still makes me wheeze. those are all fics i reread occasionally, because i’m big enough to admit i enjoy rereading my old stuff! (just like. to a point. some of my old stuff i can’t look at anymore because all the mistakes stick out to me like they have spotlights shining directly on them)

this was fun!! i’m gonna do an open tag because i just started my fall semester and brain tired. i know sometimes people see open tags and assume the op didn’t really mean it but I MEAN IT, PLEASE DO THIS AND TAG ME!!!!! YES YOU READING THIS

[pumpkinpaix]

anonymous:

I just discovered your mdzs pronunciation stuff and it's super helpful!!! Especially to an english speaker, it's so helpful to hear everything pronounced slowly! Would you ever consider doing more but on Chinese basics? Like tones, or differences between similar sounds? (But please don't feel obligated! Just a suggestion bc I find your pronunciation super helpful :) 

hhhhh the file was too big for tumblr :’) even after I exported it at medium instead of standard quality, so i made a soundcloud after all aha.... it’s downloadable, even!

anyways! chinese school with cyan? :D transcript with helpful links under the cut.

previous chinese pronunciation posts with pinyin if you want to go back review them armed with new knowledge to practice: mdzs names 1, mdzs names 2

rough transcript (brackets indicate things i didn’t say but wanted to add as a note, or laughs lol):

hello everyone! okay, so I’m going to make an attempt to do some basic pinyin, I guess, a basic pinyin post? so the goal is by the end you should be able to hopefully! look at basic pinyin or any pinyin word and get a general sense of how it might sound. this is not comprehensive, and you shouldn’t take it as such,  but i hope you might be able to get a good foundation out of it? I don’t know, just for sort of, a basic general overview.

I’ll use some MDZS words or names or whatever to I guess keep it fun as examples? But the rules should be generally applicable across the board. This is geared towards native English speakers because that’s what I am. I am not a linguist, just a layperson, so I’m going to be explaining like a layperson.

So, this is pinyin with cyan! chinese school with cyan. horrible, I thought i escaped this [laugh] oh, all those horrible saturdays. [all sounds will be read with first tone unless otherwise indicated]

okay, so, I’m going to do the basic vowels first. there are five so it’s: a o e i u ü

so I’ll do that a — oh wait, no there’s six, oh gosh! okay. bad start! so there are SIX basic vowels: a o e i u ü

so i’ll do that one more time: a o e i u ü

so there’s actually a seventh vowel sound, but we can get to that in a minute. it’s not included in the orthography.

so ü is usually the hardest for native english speakers since it doesn’t exist in english, but a friend of mine recently explained it really well. so if you say “ee” just like, “ee” like in creek or something like that, then shape your lips as if you’re saying “oo”.  so if you speak french or german, it might be easier for you, those are just the two languages I’m familiar with. the ü is the same as the ü in german, like in die Tür, in french it’s just like you know, la lune, mur, etc.

basically say “ee” then move your lips until it looks like you’re saying “oo” — eeeeeüüüü or you can do the opposite, you can say “oo” then move your tongue as if it’s saying “ee” so: ooooüüüüüü. ü. and that’s basically it.

so now i’m going to do the initial consonants. that’s all the vowels. but the initial consonants, the consonants, or the consonant sounds that can start words, there are… well there’s not that many, but I’ll go through them really quick. there is an order, and every consonant is associated, every initial consonant is associated with a natural vowel sound and they come in groups. the order that i learned them in is this:

b p m f • d t n l g k h • j q x • z c s zh ch sh r

[repeated slower]

b(o) p(o) m(o) f(o) • d(e) t(e) n(e) l(e) g(e) k(e) h(e) • j(i) q(i) x(i) • z(i) c(i) s(i) zh(i) ch(i) sh(i) r(i)

I think the official one [the official order, i mean] might have the z c s and the zh ch sh r switched, but it doesn’t really matter they’re both in the same group. so you’ll notice that there are only four naturally associated vowels: o e i and ï [not sure if this is technically the right way to write it, but it’s convenient for illustrative purposes here].

so ï is the one that’s with the z c s, zh ch sh r group. I also think this is a pretty hard vowel to pronounce for english speakers, but i don’t really have a handy way of explaining it. i’ll try though!

so for things like the z c s sounds: say “sss” like you would in english. “ssss” then change your lips to the way you say “ee” and then vocalize without moving your tongue. so you can also produce this sound without changing your lip shape, but doing so will kind of force it, or make it easier to find I think. so ssssssi. sssssi. so that was me doing the whole process with saying ssss and then moving my lips and then vocalizing. but i can also do it with my lips rounded. “si”. that’s me with lips rounded, but having the lips wide like that helps i think

[or you can just vocalize “zzzzz” like in “buzz” or “jazz”. that zzzzzz sound gives you the vowel you want. that probably would’ve been an easier way to explain it haha.]

for the zh ch sh r sounds, to get that, you can say “juh” like how you would say j, a j sound in english, so it’s “juh” but dont’ say the “uh” just stick to the “j”. so that’s the zh sound. “zhii” just like hold it. then ch sh r. I don’t know, I think that’s pretty intuitive once you get those.

in terms of the consonants that i think that are difficult, they are d, j q x and z maybe? so i’ll go over them.

so d taps the palate in english, “duh”, “duh”. the d sound, it taps further back on the little bump [on the roof of your mouth] there, but it taps on the teeth in chinese. I think it’s a non-aspirated t sound? so say “tuh” but then instead of having that breath, just take that out. “de”. it’s a non-aspirated t, it taps in the same spot. so that’s the d, the “de” sound.

j q x, it’s the same sort of things, if you stretch your lips, I think i helps to move it into the right space. so instead of “juh” it’s “ji”. “ji”. “ji ji ji ji”. “qi”, “xi”. the q has the “ch” sound, but instead of sitting so far in the front, it sits a little further back [in the mouth]. instead of “ch” which is the ch, it’s “qi”, which is moving further back. and same with “xi”. instead of “sh” it’s “x”. i don’t know if that helps [laugh]. but instead of “sh” it’s “x”. so “xi”.

again, instead of “ch” it’s “q” and instead of “sh” it’s “x” [laugh]

[I forgot to talk about z oops. it’s basically a combination of d and z in english: “dz”. like the end of “hands”. that “dz” sound.]

okay, so, you can start a word with any of the vowels, any of them can be initials, but some of them will change orthography when they’re at the start of a word. so i think it’s pretty intuitive, but a o e all stay the same. but the “i” sound, the i, turns into a y, the “u”, the u, turns into a w, and the “ü”, the ü turns into yu. so “yu”.

okay, so that’s all the initials! that’s it! that’s not too bad.

okay, so now I’m going to start doing the finals, like the ends of words. you can end any word with any of the vowels, but I’m going to include them anyways because it’s in the table. i just copied this table from wikipedia because it’s i think pretty intuitive and clearly stated. they show both how the sound would be written as a full word and how it would be spelled when it was attached to an initial. so basically what i just talked about regarding changing orthography when you start a word with vowels, things like that.

[link to table in wikipedia]

okay starting with the first row, I’m pretty sure this is ï. the i sound that i said was difficult:

[row 1]

so I’m going to do that again. I’m going to do each one twice and then we’re going to move onto the second row.

[row 1 repeated, each sound twice]

okay, now the second row:

[row 2]

so we’re going to do the same thing again, twice each:

[row 2 repeated, each sound twice]

okay, and the third row:

[row 3]

and again, twice each:

[row 3 repeated, each sound twice]

and then the final row:

[row 4]

and then one more time, twice each:

[row 4 repeated, each sound twice]

okay so that’s it, that’s all the finals I think.

so I think -(i)un/yun is probably one of the harder sounds, the -un with the y at the beginning, the -iun? “yun”, with the umlaut. I don’t really know how to explain how to pronounce that one, but you know it’s the… yun [laugh]

okay so a note on u vs ü. when a word begins with j q x or y, and it’s followed by a u, it’s automatically be pronounced as ü even though it will not be marked. so here are some examples.

names like Ā’Yuàn: yuàn. it’s a ü sound automatically, and it’s not marked in the orthography. or Yú Zǐyuān. yú zǐ yuān. same thing. and then with something like in hánguāng-jūn, jūn, the j the “ji” combined with the -un becomes “jun” like the “yun” sound. or Jīn Zixuān. Xuān. Xuān. it’s the ü sound.

so an example of the same final spellings but with different initials. like the yuàn in ā’yuàn — you can see it automatically changes to an ü pronunciation, but spelled the same way the -uan ending, but you have a different starting consonant that’s not one of the exceptions, so “le” — so in luànzàng gǎng. luàn. it’s “u”. luàn. and then for like yú, yú zǐyuān, yú, instead of the ü, in jīn rúlán, rú, rú, it’s the “u” sound, and they’re marked the same way.

okay! yeah that’s pretty much it. that’s like all the basic sounds in chinese, I’m pretty sure. [laugh] it’s not actually that hard. i mean, it’s obviously hard, but there’s not as many sounds as you expect, or it’s less complex than you might think.

so obviously now we have to deal with tones. i know this is the one that everybody finds really scary, but i actually i know it’s easy for me to say because i’m a native speaker, but i actually think they’re very intuitive and easy to hear, as tones go. it’s gonna be fine. anyways, we’re gonna get through it.

here is how i remember tones: I do it with a cadence. and i literally sometimes have to go through this cadence on words when i’m not sure how to identify what tone they are. this is how i learned it, my grandmother taught me this, you know, i mean, it’s very standard, but:

ā á ǎ à

or hummed it’s: ¯ ´ ˇ `

and then I’ll do it again:

ā á ǎ à

¯ ´ ˇ `

so yeah, i really do sing it sometimes when i’m trying to figure out or remember what tone mark goes on something, I go dūh dúh dǔh dùh [laugh] over and over again until i figure it out.

and yeah, that’s it! they’re pretty intuitive, they follow the path of the tone, or the shape of the tone markers. so you can see the ā is flat, the á goes up, the ǎ goes down and then up, ǎ, and then à, the fourth one, just goes down.

so whenever you’re writing a tone mark on a word, they always go on the last vowel UNLESS there’s an a or e present. those always take precedence. I’ll spell out a couple of examples in the text.

[EXAMPLES: hào not haò and méi not meí, but jiù]

[laugh]

so i will go over, um… okay, i think my dad’s having a meeting downstairs, so maybe you’ll hear him in the background, but okay, the last thing i will go over a couple of sandhi rules, just a few! this isn’t all of them, i think there might be five? but i’m just going to do the three that are most relevant or the most commonly seen I think, or the ones that I think about that will trip you up most likely, i think, when you’re pronouncing things.

so the one that everybody knows, or the one that everybody teaches first, i think is the two third tones in a row will cause the first third tone to turn into a second tone. so for example, in Yílíng Lǎozǔ. “Láozǔ”. the two characters by themselves are lǎo and zǔ, but because they’re right next to each other, it becomes láo, second tone, “láozǔ”. [NOTE: the pinyin will still be spelled as lǎozǔ. you will just automatically read it aloud as láozǔ] so instead of “lǎo zǔ”, it’s “láozǔ”.

and then, the second thing that a third tone does is that a third tone that is followed by anything that is not a third tone drops to a thing that is called a low tone, I know i said there are only four, but this is… here’s an example. [there is also the soft tone, which is kind of the absence of tone, but I’m not going to talk about it here haha] in liǎnfāng-zūn, jin guangyao’s title.

liǎnfāng-zūn, you can kinda hear it doesn’t really rise again at the liǎn, liǎn, liǎn, by itself it goes down up, like a valley, but when it’s followed by the rest of the title, liǎnfāng-zūn, it just kinda sits at the bottom and then jumps back up. liǎnfāng-zūn, liǎnfāng-zūn, it just kind of sits at the bottom as opposed to coming back up, so it’s still. it still follows the same curve, it just doesn’t quite come back up i think

i actually had to look that one up, because I was like. oh is that real? i hadn’t noticed it.

but the third tone on its own is just the third tone, so for example, in xuē yáng’s courtesy name, xuē chéngměi, měi, you can hear it there, it comes back up—oh birds!

so xuē chéngměi, měi. dǔh. [laugh]

[LOL I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT THE THIRD SANDHI RULE I WAS GONNA TALK ABOUT. you can read about it in the link to sandhi rules i’m going to post at the end of the post.]

so yeah, that’s pretty much it actually! hooray! I’m sure, I mean, chinese is a whole language, so it’s complicated, this won’t really get you to a point where you can read pinyin entirely, but i think those are like the basic rules that i use when i’m reading pinyin, but of course, i’ve been reading pinyin for a really long time, that was the primary way i engaged with chinese text for many many years because i was illiterate! i’m still pretty illiterate, but that’s okay. i’m getting better! but yeah, so like i said, this isn’t comprehensive. if it was horribly confusing, if there was stuff in it that just didn’t make any sense, you can ask me questions! I will try to answer them. my brother’s coming home today, and i’ve been using his desk to record because his room has been empty, so i’ll have to figure out something else. but for now, um, yeah!

okay, bye. :)

/end transcript

okay!! so here are the promised links:

tone sandhi rules

very useful interactive table where you can click on sounds to hear them read aloud! (linked to me by @nerd-bastard​ thank you so much!)

obviously the wikipedia page is very good, though it’s a little dense

@tonyglowheart​ sent me a thread of someone reading out mxtx names on twitter here! the reader has a different accent than i do (they say they sound like they’re from the northern mainland. i would guess my accent is probably closer to something near shanghai? since I learned pronunciation from my grandmother, and then of course tempered by my american upbringing)

I would probably recommend going back to the other pronunciation posts I made to see a variation of sounds written out with different tones? i feel like that would be helpful!

anyways WOO thanks for your patience, it’s been a minute. brain’s doing kinda oomf these days, but we’re gonna make it :’) state of the world is. something.

normally i would just link my ko-fi here, but this time, i’m going to say check out my donations tag or do your own research into someplace more in need to put your money instead. :)

[surveys-at-your-service]

Survey #480

“the doomsday clock was made by mankind”

Do you support PETA? No, because they are WAY too extreme. Have you ever lied about your gender? No. Have you ever had escargot? NOOOOOOOO. You couldn't pay me to try that shit. Have you played Breath of the Wild? No; Zelda games aren't my thing. I've watched Game Grumps play it, though. At what venue was the last concert you attended? Idr, somewhere in Raleigh. Who was playing at the last concert you attended? Alice Cooper. Maybe one day I'll have a new answer, lol. Do you have any anniversaries coming up? No. Would you try grapes on a pizza? Holy fuck, ew. Have you ever tried an oyster? How would you describe the experience? Oysters look fucking disgusting. Never. Has anyone ever specifically painted you a painting? Not a painting, no, but I've had drawings made for me. Would you ever want to try pole dancing? Nah. Have you ever had any sort of paranormal experience? Yes. Have you ever gotten something stuck in your skin? (ie: glass shard, gravel) Yeah, like splinters. And graphite. Do any of your grandparents live a nursing home? They're all deceased, but none did. Do you have a USB drive that is shaped like anything unique? No; mine is just a solid hot pink. What country would you like to visit most? South Africa. Whose birthday is closest to today’s date? (someone you know) Girt's birthday is the 10th! Do you know anyone in another country? I have Australian and European friends, yes. Have you ever wanted to be on a game show? Not seriously. Do you believe taking a picture of someone is taking a piece of their soul? Ha, this question makes me think of the quote from SOMA. Anyway, no. Do you have any friends with the same first name as you? No. How many states have you lived in? One. Pancakes or waffles? Waffles, so I can spread peanut butter on them. :') What is the saddest book you’ve ever read? Johnny Got His Gun. ZERO competition. What political cause are you most passionate about? Probably LGBTQ+ rights. Really just equality in general. Have you ever considered having children? The only time I've ever in my life thought I wanted kids was when I was with Jason. Hell, I wanted two or three. Now I'm just like... nah man no thank you. Have you ever considered acting? No. Who was the last person you slept next to? Sara. Do you think you can be in love and still cheat on your S.O.? Ha, no. What is the most embarrassing thing anyone has on video of you? I dunno. Did you ever get lost as a child? Once at the grocery store. A sweet old lady helped me find Mom. Do you know how to play any card games? The very basic ones, and Magic: The Gathering. What are you currently most looking forward to? Mom to feel better so Girt can come over. What is the best television show you’ve ever watched? Hm... Fullmetal Alchemist has a pretty bangin' story. What color are your parents’ eyes? Brown. Are you more dependent or independent? I've very dependent, honestly. Are there any stuffed animals in the room you’re in? Yeah, loads. I have a shelf full of my meerkat collection. Do you love animals? I adore them. I quite frankly don't like anyone who doesn't, because... how. How many people have you kissed in a car? One or two? Who made you mad last? My mom. She said something that just really hurt my feelings. How long was your last shower? It was longer than usual because standing, taking steps to turn, propping my legs up, etc. was fucking excruciating because my feet, ankles, and calves were so swollen. It's so fucking infuriating; in a previous survey I mentioned "oh it's because my body isn't used to getting up and down so much! it's improvement! :D", but no. The swelling was from sitting too long at the desk. My legs are so used to being propped up from being in bed that it caused edema when I was finally sitting. I went back to my fucking bed now because Mom mentioned that it could get extremely dangerous if the fluid buildup got too severe. And of course now that I'm back in bed, the swelling is receding. I can't fucking win. Have you ever had a really bad haircut? Looking back, I think the haircut I had before this current one was pretty bad, but at least it showed me I'd like short hair on myself. What’s your favorite DIY crafts YouTube channel? I don't watch DIY. What would be the best surprise you could receive right now? At this moment, just give me the magic answer to losing all this fucking weight and getting in shape and being happy. Do you usually forgive when someone hurts your or try to get revenge? I forgive too much. Were there any subjects in school that were really easy for you? English and most science. Did you ever skip a grade or get held back a grade? No. Was your first car used or new? I haven't had my own car yet. How often do you watch the news? Never. Do you have a fan in your room? I have two. Have you ever hatched an egg? In elementary school, as a class. It was a chick. :') I think it was in kindergarten? Would you like to go to a fortune teller? No, because I wouldn't support them spouting bullshit and lying to people. Do you chew gum on a daily basis? No. I've actually been craving gum for a long time now... For each person you’ve kissed, describe your feelings in one word: My feelings towards them? Jason: Remorseful. Tyler: Eye roll. Sara: thankful. Girt: love. Do you have “friends” that you actually hate? That's some juvenile shit. No. Would you rather get [another] tattoo or piercing? Gimme both, but if I had to pick, a tattoo. If you’re dating someone, how long has it been? It's been just shy of a month Feels a lot longer. If you’re a girl, have you ever had the urge shave your hair? Not shave my entire head, no. Do you live by a forest? Not anymore. :/ Do your parents drink? My dad is a recovered alcoholic, so he doesn't touch it anymore. Mom only drinks lightly for special occasions. Does downloading music without paying make you feel guilty? Yes, and yet I do it anyway. :x Does your house have air conditioning? Yes. What do you believe in more: Ghosts or demons? Ghosts. I don't believe in demons. Do you think they’re making too big of a deal over Michael Jackson’s death? Old survey is old, but no, not really. He was an absolute pop icon that was deeply loved by millions and millions and inspired the genre deeply. I wasn't even a big fan and yet I felt for those who were. French fries or onion rings? The former. I don't like onion rings. Favorite healthy snack? Um. I suppose apple slices w/ peanut butter, especially lately. Or strawberries. ]If you see a bee in your house... are you going to kill it? Bees honestly scare me, so I'm not touching it. Mom will have to get it, and I know she would kill it. Would you feel funny if you kissed somebody of the same sex? Done it before, and it didn't feel weird. If your best friend grabs your hand, what do you automatically do? I'd look at her and ask what's wrong. What’s something you can cook or bake like a pro? Nothing. Do you tend to flirt a lot, even when the person isn’t single? No, especially if the person is taken. Can grills be sexy on a guy? Grills are unattractive on everyone. Have you ever flown first class? Ha, yeah right. Are you the type of person who can shake insults off easily, or do they tend to stick around in your brain & bother you? They stick around for years upon years. Some I think I'll never forget.

[lockefanfic]

Business Trip - Pt 14: Temptation

When you awaken later that night, it takes you a few moments to determine whether the soft, slim body climbing atop you is real or part of some wonderful dream - but the warmth of the young woman, and the soft, pleasant smell of her hair, convinces you that this was all real.

Sana places soft kisses on your neck and jawline, before moving to your mouth and kissing your lips softly. You are still only half awake, but your senses and instincts take over, and you find your mouth welcoming her kiss and returning it with one of your own, your hands moving to either side of her hips and finding, to your surprise, that there was only bare skin there and no clothing.

“Sana…” you begin, as she deepens her kiss, her lips pressing more firmly against yours.

“Shhh,” she answers, “please. I need this. I need you, right now. Please.”

The soaring glass walls and abundance of brushed steel and marble lent the SM head office building an intimidating aura. It was modern, yes, and likely cost a fortune to build, but it lacked warmth and personality. This was a building that was the workplace of the rich, powerful, and successful - it seemed fitting that they built a building to match their personality. These people didn’t get where they were by being nice.

 You much preferred to meet at a coffee shop somewhere, or perhaps even a park or other open space - somewhere neutral. Sana told you that the response she got from Irene was the address for SM’s head office. It was enemy ground or nowhere at all, it seemed.

 You take another glance at your watch, which had moved… twenty four seconds since you last glanced at it. It was now 4:17, a full hour and seventeen minutes after your supposed appointment time.

 She was making you wait.

 The receptionist, seated at an expensive looking desk to your right, continued to type away dutifully. What the hell was she doing that required her to be typing non-stop since you first got here?

 At least she was pleasant to look at, with her cute, round face and pleasantly sculpted, small features. You’d have guessed she was around Momo’s age, or maybe a little younger. The small nameplate on her desk told you her name was “Joy” - clearly not a Korean name. Was that her codename, like Sana said everyone in this department had? The whole concept was silly. What kind of business gave its employees codenames, aside from the military or some spy agency?

 Joy’s typing suddenly stops, her eyes snapping to the corner of her monitor where you assumed a notification had appeared. She shows no further emotion as she stands and gestures towards the door to her right. No words leave her mouth. Just a gesture, and a blank, unreadable look. Nothing more.

 This place was creeping you out already.

 You stand and button your suit jacket as you mentally prepare yourself for the confrontation to come. Taking a last glance at your watch and shooting Joy a look to ensure she caught on to your displeasure at the lateness of your appointment, you walk towards the door. If Joy even noticed your displeasure, she made no outward sign of it.

 The brushed steel door is heavy, and took more effort that you were expecting to push open. Yet another thing about this building that made you feel uncomfortable. It was too clean, too neat, too heavy and imposing. This was a place that belonged in a science fiction dystopia.

 The room beyond - what you’d assumed was Irene’s office - matched the rest of the building in decor. It was large, far larger than any one person needed his or her office to be, but that in itself exuded a sort of power. Even here in Seoul, where space was scarce, this company could devote what surely must have been almost a thousand square feet to a single employee.

 It said almost as much about the woman you found standing at the end of the spacious office, her back to you as she gazed out at Seoul’s skyline through the floor to ceiling windows that lined the two corners of her office. She must be a woman of some power and influence to command such a workspace.

 One other woman is in the room - she is sitting leisurely in one of two leather chairs in front of an imposing looking desk. The chairs are the type that sacrifice comfort for minimalist style. Not that the woman looked uncomfortable, leaning back into the seat, her long, smooth legs laid bare by her short black dress.

 The seated woman locks eyes with you and makes no attempt to hide the head to toe scan she gives you. A small smirk appears on her lips, and you wonder what it might mean. She is pretty, as every female you’d encountered in this building was - but there was a sense of mischief in her features and especially in her smirk that both interested you and scared you.

 “Sit down,” she says, in perfect English. Whoever she was, she must have spent some time overseas, or at least had a damn good language teacher.

 You let a snort of air out of your nose, ensuring that it was loud enough for both women to hear. It wouldn’t behoove you to display weakness simply by doing whatever these women ordered you to do. You were here to get a measure of your opponent, not show them an easy target.

 You stride, as casually as you can, over to the seat.

 “You take your damn time with your appointments,” you say to the woman standing at the window - the one you assumed was Irene.

 The seated woman speaks in Korean to the standing woman - so that’s who she was; the translator.

 The standing woman lets out a snort of her own before saying something under her breath in Korean. Her comment draws a small giggle from the seated girl, but she doesn’t bother translating it.

 “My name is Wendy,” she says, “and I am Irene’s director of operations. And since you don’t speak our language, I guess I’ll be the translator for this afternoon as well.”

 “You can tell Irene I don’t appreciate being made to wait.”

 Wendy doesn’t bother translating. By your tone alone Irene must have understood what you said.

 Finally, Irene turns around to face you - and you are struck, for a moment, by her beauty.

 She is beautiful in the way that Mina was beautiful; elegant, sophisticated, the kind of young woman one would find at an art museum, or taking in a show at the theatre. The kind of young woman who seemed to exist at a level above the average girl you’d find on the street. She was ethereal, royal - princess-like.

 Irene says something in Korean. A moment later, Wendy translates.

 “Why are you here?”

 “I’m here to ask you why the hell you tried to attack our company by hiring our ex-employee to sabotage our product launch by stealing our data.”

 Wendy translates. When she hears what you have said, Irene lets a sly smile appear on her lips. Somewhere in your subconscious you are struck by her beauty, but you do your best to hide it. Irene responds in Korean.

 “Your accusation is bold, but pointless without proof.”

 You were expecting this. You reach into your suit jacket pocket and grasp a small USB drive that you then toss to Wendy. She catches it with one hand, her gaze never leaving yours.

 “That’s proof.”

 There was no need to explain what was on the stick. Everyone in the room knew.

 Irene speaks again.

 “So what if you have proof? What makes you think people will care?” Wendy says, her tone capturing the same arrogance you detected in Irene’s voice.

 “We could leak this out to the public. Ruin your reputation. On top of that, we have two of your ex-employees that are willing to speak out against you.”

 “Ah yes, the two turncoats,” Wendy says, “What were their names? Chou Tzuyu and Minatozaki Sana?”

 At the mention of the two names Irene makes a comment in Korean. Wendy appears to agree, replying to her in the same language and adding a giggle that Irene shares.

 “What’s so funny?”

 “We were just wondering,” Wendy says, “if you’ve fucked both of those whores yet.”

 “You little son of a b-”

 You are silenced by Irene raising her hand in the air. She says something in Korean with a distinctly disdainful tone, and Wendy’s smirk deepens as she translates.

 “We don’t care about Tzuyu or Sana. Hire them and have them speak out against us, fuck them and ditch them, we don’t give a shit. They’ve served their purpose.”

 “And what purpose is that?”

 “Showing us who’s really in charge,” Wendy continues, “and apparently it’s you. Now we know who you are. Now we know who our opponent is.”

 “That goes both ways,” you say, your glare resting on Irene.

 The woman gives you another look from head to toe, similar to the one Wendy gave you as you entered the room. She bites the corner of her lower lip - such a small, almost imperceptible gesture - and you think maybe she wanted you to see it. When she speaks again, her tone is soft, almost flirty.

 Wendy smiles as she hears what Irene has to say, a devilish look on her young features.

 “Irene says it’s a shame we have to be enemies. Things would be much more interesting if we were partners.”

 “There’s no way in hell I’d work with the likes of you,” you spit immediately. Wendy translates for Irene with just a few words, although you know your tone probably told Irene what you said without need for translation.

 There is a pause in the room that lasts just a few seconds, but they are heavy and tense seconds of silence.

 Eventually Irene walks over to her desk and presses a button that appears to be built into the surface of it. She says something in Korean, and though you didn’t understand any of it, you sure caught the name ‘Joy’.

 A second or two later, the door to the office opens and in walks Joy, the receptionist. You take a moment to admire her long, thin legs and slim body, her black minidress - apparently the uniform around here - doing little to hide the delicious looking curves beneath it.

 When she approaches the three of you, Joy says something in Korean that might have been a greeting, or something, before giving Irene a short bow.

 “You may want to sit down for this,” Wendy says.

 “I’d rather not,” you answer, “I think we’re done here.”

 “I don’t think we are,” Wendy declares.

 You are about to ask her what she means when Irene begins speaking to Joy in Korean, ending her sentence with a gesture towards you.

 When you turn towards Joy again, the young woman is reaching behind her, and the sound of a zipper undoing itself is all you need to hear to understand what was going on here. You mean to say something, to tell her to stop, but you are enraptured by the young woman’s eyes as she slowly finishes unzipping her dress. With thin, delicate hands, she pulls the top of the dress off her torso, and with a little shimmy of her hips, lets the black dress fall to the floor.

 Joy steps out of the silk pooled at her feet, the click-clack of her black heels on the hard floor sounding almost impossibly loud in the silent room. Her body is almost impossibly perfect, her limbs toned, her breasts perfectly round and pert. Her eyes are heavy now, heavy with lust and sultry with desire. Gone was the cold and aloof receptionist - this was a woman who knew what she was about to do, and her every gesture implied to you that she was good at it.

 When Joy reaches you, her hands immediately go to the belt at your waist.

 “Stop right fucking there,” you say, grasping Joy’s wrists and pushing them away, “what the fuck is going on here?”

 “We’ve heard of your exploits with women in this industry,” Wendy begins, “and we wanted to see if the stories about your prowess were true.”

 “I’m here to talk about what you did in Taiwan,” you retort, “not give you some sick sex show.”

 Wendy laughs before answering, “That’s rich. As if business has ever stopped you from fucking any of the other women you’ve had over the past few years. Minatozaki Sana, Park Choa, Kim Seolhyun, Miyoui Mina, even Chou Tzuyu… she’s just barely legal, isn’t she?”

 “Fuck off,” you say angrily, shooting Irene one last look before turning away, “this isn’t over.”

 “How could we forget,” Wendy continues as you begin to storm out of the room, “about Hirai Momo?”

 Momo’s name stops you in your tracks. If they did anything to her…

 “She’s gorgeous,” Wendy admits, “and if I were you I’d be fucking her too. Tell me, did she spread her legs for you immediately or did you have to buy her a drink first?”

 You storm over to Wendy’s seat. You grasp the arms of her chair and lean in until your faces are inches apart.

 “Say that again, you bitch. Say it again and see if I don’t do anything about it.”

 “Enough,” you hear, and it takes you a moment to realize the English word has come from Irene. Inches away from you, a cocky smile is plastered all over Wendy’s face, infuriating you to no end.

 Irene speaks again in Korean, and Wendy translates, her eyes not once leaving yours. She didn't even blink. There is a craziness in her eyes that has overtaken the mischeviousness that was present there before.

 “Irene has an offer for you. Join SM. We could use someone like you around here,” she begins.

 Irene says something in Korean.

 “...and you can have Joy as a fucktoy for you to use whenever you want, to make up for all that tail you’re leaving behind at JYP,” Wendy finishes. As she does so she brings her mouth to your ear.

 “Although I might want a turn too, big boy.”

 That was the last straw for you. You had to leave now, lest you lose control of your anger.

 “You’re all messed up, all of you,” you say, backing away from Wendy and glaring angrily at Irene, “We’re done here.”

 “What makes you think we are? We’re done when we say we’re done,” Wendy spits. You are about to rebuke her when Irene speaks again in Korean. It was hard to miss Sana’s name amidst the Korean.

 “It would be a shame if Minatozaki Sana’s exploits and her role in illegal theft of data were to reach the police,” Wendy says.

 You are frozen by the implications of Irene’s threat.

 “You leave her out of this,” you state, “she’s back with JYP now. She’s done with you.”

 “Is that so? We’ve been in contact with her this whole time. Can you ever really be sure of her loyalty, ever again?”

 Irene takes a few steps towards you, speaking in Korean as she does so.

 “We could demolish her career. And not only that - she could spend a lot of time in jail. With what we know about her, we could ruin her.”

 “You’d throw your own person under the bus like that?”

 “In a heartbeat,” Wendy answers. You are acutely aware of Joy approaching you from your left. Her left hand reaches for your belt buckle again, and this time you don’t stop her.

 “Fuck this girl’s brains out,” Wendy says, every word now freighted with lust, “make her cum. If she does, maybe we forget about Minatozaki Sana. Maybe we let her go.”

 “You people are sick,” you state, even as Joy succeeds in unbuckling your belt, and her slim fingers are slowly drawing down the zipper of your pants, even as she removes the suit jacket from your torso with her other hand, letting the garment fall to the floor.

 “Shut up, big boy. Maybe you’ll enjoy it.”

 Joy turns to face you, her cute features inches away from yours, her eyes half-lidded with lust and desire and need. A sly smile perks up the corner of her mouth. She was certainly willing - there was no doubt about that.

 Her fingers find themselves inside the waistband of your boxers, and her palm quickly wraps itself around your quickly hardening shaft. She gives you one, two, three soft strokes, and before you know it your eyes have shut as pleasure begins to emanate from your crotch.

 “Fuck her,” Wendy starts, “and we’ll leave Sana alone.”

 You are seconds away from giving in, and as Joy brings her mouth to your neck and plants a soft kiss there, you can almost feel the last remnants of your resistance crack before -

 “No,” you state with all the conviction you could muster, “This isn’t right.”

 You grasp Joy’s wrist, still pumping your shaft, and rip it off your crotch before quickly re-zipping and buttoning your pants.

 “You’re all sick, all of you, for even trying something like this.”

 Your statements draw nothing but a sly grin from Wendy and Irene, as if they both knew this was coming and were amused by it all.

 Wendy rises from her seat and struts over to you, that infuriating grin still on her lips. She draws a business card from the inner pocket of the short black blazer she is wearing and places it in your pants pocket.

 “You have one week to think about it. If you want to join us, give us a call, and we’ll make it worth your while. I know it’ll hurt to give up pieces of ass like Momo and Seolhyun, but I assure you we’ll make it up to you. She’s just the start,” she finishes with a nod towards Joy.

 You return Wendy’s smirk with a glare before shooting one at Irene, who still has that slick, sly grin on her lips, as though she were above it all, watching puppets dance on a stage. She reminded you again of Mina’s elegance, but with a ruthless, callous edge to it that frightened you.

 You turn to leave, to find that Joy has picked up your suit blazer and is holding it up for you. You are a little surprised to find a little bit of shame and regret and another emotion you cannot name in her eyes. She seemed entirely willing and even enthusiastic about carrying out her superiors’ orders to have sex with a man she didn’t even know - how much of it was her wanting to please her bosses, and how much of it was consensual?

 You didn’t care, not at the moment - your only focus was on storming out of the building.

 ---

You could trace the exact moment Minatozaki Sana’s world shattered. When you met her the next day after your flight back home, she still carried that air of defiance she had been holding since the events in Taiwan, but as you played back the conversation with Wendy and Irene that you had recorded with a listening device hidden in your suit jacket, her defiant air slowly began to crumble.

 You reach forward and press stop on the digital recorder. To say that Sana looked shaken by what she had just heard was an understatement.

 “They are ready and willing to completely throw you under the bus,” you say, “and if they go to the police or leak info about what you did in Taiwan, it could lead to the police prosecuting you for intellectual property theft, not to mention breaking into a secure server and any one of any number of invasion charges.”

 “...Why,” Sana mumbles, the small word seemingly all she could say.

 “I don’t know. They want to get me to join them. I guess they expect that if I do, I’ll bring along all of JYP’s inner secrets and help them build up that section of their company. That’ll also disrupt JYP’s foothold in the industry. At the very least, by throwing this threat at me they can disrupt our operations for the near future while we figure out how to deal with it. They gain, JYP loses.”

 “What… what will you do?”

 “I don’t know,” you answer truthfully, “but I’ll figure something out. I just thought you should know what’s going on here. Tomorrow at work we’ll reconvene with everyone and figure out a plan.”

 Sana still seems shaken. You reach over with a palm and grasp the back of her left hand.

 “You’ll be okay, Sana. I won’t let them do anything to you.”

 Sana looks up at you with her large, expressive eyes. Tears have begun to well up.

 “Why? Why are you helping me, after I just tried my hardest to ruin you?”

 You take a moment to compose your response. The hurt of her betrayal still lingered somewhat, but it was overcome by the memories and genuine affection you had for her.

 “Because it’s the right thing to do. I told you I’d give you a second chance and that I would protect you, and that’s what I’m doing. Besides,” you add, “you still have that blue hoodie I gave you in Tokyo, and I want it back someday.”

 You grin sheepishly at the young woman, and you earn a soft giggle in response.

 “It’s getting late, so you should stay here. It’s been a long flight and I’m wiped. You’ll have to ignore the complete mess in the guest room.”

 Sana manages a weak smile, and you are heartened to find a little bit of color returning to her face.

 “Thank you,” she says softly, trying her best to smile for you.

 “Oyasumi,” you answer, before leaning forward and kissing her on the forehead and heading to your own bedroom to pass out.

 ---

 When you awaken later that night, it takes you a few moments to determine whether the soft, slim body climbing atop you is real or part of some wonderful dream - but the warmth of the young woman, and the soft, pleasant smell of her hair, convinces you that this was all real.

 Sana places soft kisses on your neck and jawline, before moving to your mouth and kissing your lips softly. You are still only half awake, but your senses and instincts take over, and you find your mouth welcoming her kiss and returning it with one of your own, your hands moving to either side of her hips and finding, to your surprise, that there was only bare skin there and no clothing.

 “Sana…” you begin, as she deepens her kiss, her lips pressing more firmly against yours.

 “Shhh,” she answers, “please. I need this. I need you, right now. Please.”

 A part of you wants to stop her, make sure this was what she really wanted. Another part of you wanted to stop her to ensure that sex didn’t further complicate the already tricky circumstances of your relationship. But a final part of you knew that she was in a hurt state, and that she needed something, some comfort, to ease her mind, if only temporarily, from the danger SM posed to her career and her wellbeing.

 And so unlike your experience with Joy a day prior, you found yourself willingly giving in. When Sana’s tongue presses softly against your lips, you didn’t resist, and soon your tongues were reacquainting themselves with one another as the passion begins to ignite in your bodies.

 Sana is straddling you now, and your hands have begun to roam, up and down her slim torso and finally down to her firm butt, to find again that she wasn’t wearing underwear. As you continue to make out she has drawn the bed covers down with her left hand, revealing your shirtless torso before pressing her naked upper body against you. You revel in the newfound warmth of her small frame, and the sensation of her soft breasts and already erect nipples poking against your chest.

 Sana breaks your kiss and, emboldened by your consent for her desire, she returns to placing kisses on your jawline before moving to your neck and lower. You have been with her enough times to realize what she is about to do, and you watch, enraptured, as she kisses her way to your chest, and then your belly, sliding her body down yours until her face is inches away from your boxers and the quickly hardening shaft they are covering.

 Reaching up with both hands, she hooks slim fingers around the waistband of your boxers before drawing them down. She wastes little time - the boxers are lowered just enough to let your hard shaft spring free, before she grasps it with the fingertips of her right hand, and, taking a moment to ensure your eyes are glued to hers, licks it from base to tip with one long, slow slurp.

 The electricity that courses throughout your body is breathtaking. Sana had given you head before, of course, not that it did anything to dull the utter pleasure that she was able to inspire in your body. Soon she has begun her blowjob in earnest, taking your shaft in and out of the wet, warm cavern of her mouth, her tongue swirling around the sensitive flesh in random patterns, each entry and exit into her lips sending spikes of pleasure from your crotch to the rest of your body.

 When she had given you oral sex before it was often hurried, lustful - but tonight was different. Sana took her time, ensuring you felt every flick of her tongue and pump of her palm, the young woman seeking to revel in the moment, enjoy every second just as much as you did. She wanted to lose herself, wanted to forget that anything else in the world existed aside from the sensual act she was performing on you.

 “Fuck, Sana, that’s so good,” you say, more descriptive words failing to come to mind amidst the pleasure currently overtaking your senses. A minute or an hour passes - you didn’t know or care. All that existed in the world was the young woman bobbing her head up and down between your legs.

 You look down to watch as she performs, taking a stray lock of hair and brushing it behind her left ear, such an innocent act framed by such an indecent one. But there is a certain kind of sweetness to it, in a way - the act of a woman seeking to make her partner feel good by whatever means necessary.

 That thought only adds to the pleasure, and you watch, enraptured, for a few more minutes as Sana pleasures you.

 “Sana… God, you’re so good at that.”

 Sana responds by bringing her left hand between your legs ripping your boxers free, raising her body to allow you to kick them off, finally leaving you as naked as she was. Giving your cock one last lick, she straightens her body and straddles you once again.

 “Damn,” you say, “I wanted you to keep going.”

 “Later, I will,” Sana says with a soft, seductive smile, “but now I want more.”

 You take a moment to drink in the sight of her slim, tight body straddling your hips. Her frame is perfect, a little more on the slim side now than she was before, without losing any of the feminine charm she had in spades. Her breasts, small and humble, sit proudly high on her chest, her torso painted stripes of blue and gold by the street light filtering in through the half-shut window blinds.

 “I’ve wanted you for so long,” she begins, “I… I’m sorry for what I did. You’ve been so good to me, even after I betrayed you. And now you’re protecting me.”

 You raise your upper body up so that you are almost sitting, bringing a hand to her soft cheek. Your faces are inches apart, and you are struck once more by her simple beauty, her cuteness and sexiness giving way tonight to sincere vulnerability. Sana nuzzles against your warm palm, her eyes closing, a soft smile on her cheeks.

 “I would never let anyone hurt you, Sana.”

 “I know,” she answers, “and I want you to know that I’m yours. I’ve cut off all my ties with SM. I’m yours, whether you want me just as a fuck, or as a friend, or as something more, I’m yours...”

 Sana lets a soft smile appear on her lips before pressing her lips to yours once again. Her left arm wraps itself around your shoulders, and you are slightly aware of her raising her hips, her right hand finding its way between your bodies to grasp your wet, erect shaft, and line it up with her entrance.

 You feel the head of your cock press against her wet, tight opening. Slowly, carefully, Sana lowers herself down onto your shaft, your cockhead parting her tight lips to impale her pussy.

 Sana gasps loudly as she impales herself fully, and she opens her eyes slightly to match your gaze. You brush stray locks of hair away to reveal her face fully, and you bring her mouth back to yours to kiss her deeply.

 As your tongues duel Sana begins to raise her hips, drawing your shaft out of her body before lowering it once more, and soon she has found a soft, slow rhythm as she rides you, grinding her warm, tight body against yours.

 You release her from your kiss and lean backward slightly, keeping yourself upright with your hands, allowing yourself to watch as Sana takes you in and out of her body with soft grinding motions, riding you slowly, enjoying every entry and exit of your shaft.

 You burn the image in your mind of her slim, young body, her small, alluring breasts, her flat stomach, the tight muscles of her thighs and hips as they work to grind her body on and off your shaft again and again and again. You watch as your shaft appears for a split second or so before driving back into her, each disappearance accompanied by a soft spike of pleasure.

 As she always did, Sana has let a long string of gasps and moans stream from her mouth, beginning with your first entry into her body and not stopping, you knew, until you were done.

 “Fuck,” she manages to say, “I’ve missed this. I’ve missed you so much. It’s so good.”

 She rides you a little harder, a little faster, and you begin to feel her pussy tightening slightly against you, the first signs of an orgasm building inside her young body. You bring your right hand to her left hip, guiding her, pressing her down at the apex of her rhythm while you drive upward slightly with your own hips, crashing your bodies together just a little harder, a little faster against one another.

 “Ohhh!” Sana exclaims, throwing her head back, sending sweat matted brown hair flying as your shaft creates a new splash of pleasure on the canvas of her senses. The moan is accompanied by a pulse of her walls around your shaft.

 Sana doesn’t stop, the moans and gasps emitting from her mouth rising in volume steadily, contending only with the slap of wet skin against wet skin and the soft slurring sounds of her juices as your shaft swirls them around the inside of her body.

 “I… I’m going to cum. I’m going to cum on your cock,” Sana gasps, “I… I’m cumming!”

 Sana does just that, and her body erupts in pleasure, her small frame writhing and shivering as the orgasm overtakes her senses. Her lustful gasps turn into a long, passionate moan, her arms tightening around your torso as her pussy tightens in pulses around your shaft.

 It takes her a minute or so to recover, but you are more than content to let her cling to your upper body as she recovers, her body occasionally shaking with pleasurable aftershocks as her orgasm winds itself out. You bury your nose in the crook of her neck, planting soft kisses on warm, sweaty skin. Eventually Sana finds the strength to bring her mouth to your ear.

 “It’s your turn. Do whatever you want. I’m yours. Everything I am, all of me… I’m yours.”

 You are struck by her words, not just by her consent for you to do as you wanted with her - but more so for the genuine gratitude you sensed behind them. She seemed truly contrite for what she had done to someone she cared deeply about, and wanted you to know it.

 You know that this isn’t the time for rough sex, and as much as the thought of turning her around and taking her hard from behind appealed to you, this wasn’t the time for it; perhaps there would be an opportunity to do so in the near future. For now, this was a time for slow, passionate sex, and to that end you grasp her upper body to yours before rolling over on the bed so you are on top.

 Sana spreads her legs instinctively, and as soon as she is on her back she raises her hands above her head, presenting you with the beautiful image of her body laid out in offering to you - her eyes are filled with lust and passion and genuine feelings for you, her perfectly sculpted body almost an afterthought to the affection you find in her eyes.  

  “Take me, please,” she says, her voice hardly above a whisper, “fill me with you.”

 You have no other reaction than to kiss her again, your tongue invading her mouth even as your shaft does the same to her pussy, beginning to fuck her slowly, carefully, with the same amount of passion and consideration she had when she was riding you minutes earlier. You savor every thrust, every small pulse of her pussy, enjoy the feeling of her juices and wetness coating your shaft and balls and making every entry into her body so slick, so easy, so pleasurable.

 You are almost ashamed to admit that your orgasm is fast approaching - something about the emotion in Sana’s eyes and warmth of her body only heightened the pleasure coursing throughout your body and mind. You quicken your thrusts slightly, and Sana wraps her legs around your thrusting hips as she senses what that means. You rip your mouth from hers and bury it in the pillow next to her face.

 Her mouth is next to your ear now, and she does her best to encourage you, urging you on with soft gasps and moans with each thrust you take into her pussy. She is tight and wet around you, but most overwhelming of all is the heat of her body pressed and wrapped around yours, welcoming each thrust into your body.

 “Cum for me, please… fill me. Fill me with your cum. I want it. Please… cum inside me.”

 Almost immediately you begin to orgasm, as though her words are a trigger. The pleasure is almost overwhelming, contributed to by the passion between you, the desire in her words, and the need to provide Sana with some comfort, some security in knowing you were there for her. Your shaft pulses with each burst of semen erupting from it, filling Sana’s pussy with thick, hot cum, every splash of hot juice eliciting a sharp gasp from the young woman.

 You breath heavily into the pillow, and Sana hugs you tightly with each of her limbs, breathing heavily and loudly into your own ear. Eventually she recovers enough to kiss your ear lightly.

 “Arigato,” she whispers softly.

 ---

 When you wake up in the morning you are immediately aware of the weight on your chest that has rendered the entire left side of your body numb. But your fear is quickly abated by the realization that the ball of brown hair that is the cause of the numbness is Minatozaki Sana’s head. Smiling softly to yourself and taking a moment to savor the feel of her warm body pressed against yours, you slowly ease yourself up and away from the young woman’s tangling limbs - you only partially succeed, and she appears to awaken slightly, but she mumbles something beneath her breath before seemingly falling back to sleep.

 You brush hair away from her head to reveal her sleeping features; ostensibly to get her hair out of her face and allow her to breathe easier, but you knew inside that it was because you wanted a clearer look at her sleeping face. She was adorable sleeping, but she could also be sensual and sexy, and smart, and charming, and intelligent… despite the events of the past month, you were nonetheless stricken once more by the young woman.

 You smile to yourself as you get up and head towards the kitchen to make some coffee.

 On your bedside, there is a picture of you and Momo - a simple couple selfie taken during one of your dates. For the first time in many months, its existence was temporarily forgotten.

 ---

 On the way to the kitchen, you pick up your suit blazer, still lying where it was when you threw it over the couch after you got home from the airport but before Sana arrived. You reach into the suit jacket pocket to find your passport, happy to find that it was still there. You take out the small booklet to find a small slip of paper falling out with it. For a second you think it might have been the business card Wendy had slipped into your pants back in Seoul, but then you remember having put that away in your briefcase before the flight home.

 You think it might be a receipt or some other inconsequential scrap of paper - but as you pick it up you decide to open it. Odd, because you don’t remember putting anything aside from your passport into your suit jacket, and no one else would have had the opportunity to put anything in there, except for...

 It is a handwritten note, consisting of short note and an email address.

 I can help you.

-joy@rvelvet.com

---

[dallanebbia]

agape

fandom: bnha pariring: kacchako; bakugou katsuki x uraraka ochako word count: 9.0k warnings: angst, mentions of panic attacks synopsis: ten ways to say ‘i love you’ – moments in the relationship between ochako and katuski. future fic, third year. notes: written for day 7 of kacchako week 2020, with the prompt ‘it was always you.’ this was the first fic i finished writing, and i threw a truck’s worth of tropes into this just because i could. i headcanon an empathetic, compassionate ochako and a soft, self-aware katsuki who grow and mature in their later years at u.a. ao3: [link]

agape – Ancient Greek, selfless, unconditional love

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

March: With a hand on their shoulder, a song on your lips, or a carton of their favorite ice cream in the freezer.

On move-in day of her third year at U.A., Ochako confesses to Deku. She can’t say that she’s surprised when he rejects her, but she hides her real feelings behind a practiced, wobbly smile. 

It feels like someone has just stomped all over her heart.

Within a few hours, the entirety of her class, along with Class 3-B, knows what happened. Nobody realizes that Ochako just doesn’t want to talk about it – people keep bringing it up to her, trying to be consoling, but it just makes her feel worse and worse. 

Finally, when she can’t take it anymore, she hides away on the roof of the dorms, trying to find a moment of peace. 

Ochako is alone, collapsed on the ground and crying when she hears the door to the roof scrape open. 

“Oi.” Her heart drops. Aside from Deku, Bakugou is the very last person she wants to see right now. 

“Leave me alone,” she croaks, wiping her cheeks with her sleeves. The fabric is damp, soaked through with her tears. It stopped being useful about ten minutes ago, but Ochako doesn’t really have the presence of mind to use anything else. 

“Tch.” Her blonde classmate scoffs. “You’re seriously crying over the dumb nerd?” 

“The last thing I need right now is your stupid gloating, Bakugou,” Ochako hisses, and glares at him. “Go. Away.” 

Not that she thinks he’d actually listen, but she’s caught off guard when he squats down in front of her, elbows resting on his knees. “Forget about stupid Deku, Round Face. He’s a fucking dumbass.” 

Her heart twinges, and a fresh round of tears fill her eyes. “You’re seriously not helping –”

“I thought you were better than this, Cheeks,” he says, and Ochako looks up to see Bakugou scowling. “So he doesn’t like you – tough shit. Pull up your big girl panties and move the fuck on. He’s a fuckstick who doesn’t deserve you anyways.”

She opens her mouth to retort, but pauses as the words register in her brain. 

When the news spread, everyone who came to comfort her all said the same things - that Deku would come around, that he’d change his mind if she proved that she was better off without him. She knows that her friends mean well, but all she can focus on is the fact that everyone assumes that Ochako is the one who has to change – like she somehow isn’t good enough. 

Bakugou – her occasional sparring partner, an acquaintance-turned-friend by virtue of exposure more than anything else – doesn’t even hesitate.

He doesn’t deserve you anyways.

“Don’t call him that,” she mutters, but there’s a tiny smile on her lips. Who would’ve guessed that the boy who had wanted to be King Explosion Murder would one day be comforting her? “You’re such an asshole.”

The blonde rolls his eyes. “I’m a fucking saint,” he snarks, and shoves a handkerchief into her trembling hands. “Stop crying already, you look ridiculous.”

Ochako glares at him again, but begrudgingly uses the black square of fabric to dab at her face. The heady smell of sugar and smoke fills her nose, and it’s the complete opposite of the clean soap scent she associates with Deku. It’s comforting, somehow.

“Move on, huh?” She laughs sadly. “You say that like it’s so easy.” 

He flicks her in the forehead, and she yelps in surprise. “Nothing worth doing is gonna be easy, Round Face. You know that just as well as I do.”

It’s her turn to roll her eyes, but the words resonate deeply and leave her feeling pensive. She folds the handkerchief neatly and tucks it into her blazer pocket. “I’ll wash it,” she promises, but Bakugou waves her off. 

“Keep it.” He stands, grabbing her wrist and hauling her to her feet. A familiar, challenging smirk that spreads across his face. “You’ll need it for when I beat your ass in the Sports Festival again this year.”

She scoffs, and even though she probably looks like a pathetic mess, she feels a little better. She can always count on Bakugou to not treat her like she’s spun glass. 

Ochako sticks her tongue out, some of her grief dissipating without her even realizing it. “In your dreams, Blasty.” 

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

April: Casually, as if you don’t mean it. Trying like hell not to mean it.

From the stove, Katsuki listens to Uraraka make up some excuse to skip out on going out with her shitty friends for ramen. He looks over his shoulder – she’s smiling in a way that doesn’t quite mask the tight line of her mouth, and it’s so obvious that Frogface and Four Eyes exchange wary glances. Uraraka heads back upstairs, and as she leaves, Deku seems to visibly deflate.  

“Maybe I should go talk to her,” he hears Deku mumble sadly, and Katsuki rolls his eyes before turning back to the pot of curry he has sitting on the stove. 

“She probably wants some space.” Somehow, Half-and-half is the only one of their little group left with any sense, and it's really fucking pathetic.

“But isn’t it better if –” Katsuki tunes out the shitty nerd’s voice as they pass the kitchen and head to the front door, focusing back on stirring. 

He tests the consistency, frowning as the curry comes out too thick, and turns up the heat a little as he adds some more stock. He’s usually pretty good about eyeballing the ingredients, but to be fair, the shitty nerd was jabbering away about something dumb with Icyhot. Usually, when things don’t go his way, it all leads back to Deku, one way or another. 

He grabs the jar of hot sauce, and is just about to dump the entire contents into the pot when he suddenly pauses and thinks of Uraraka again. 

Should he…?

Katsuki wages an internal war for about thirty seconds before slamming the jar onto the counter, grabbing a spare bowl. He doesn’t let himself think as he ladles a spoonful of curry onto a bed of rice, making sure that there’s a proper ratio of vegetables and meat to sauce, and places it off to the side as he dumps the hot sauce into the pot. He gives the curry a quick stir, turns the heat down low, and grabs a spoon before heading to the elevator with the bowl in hand. 

It smells good, and even though it’s missing the familiar red tinge that comes from the hot sauce he loves, he knows that it tastes good too. Still, he can’t help it when a flutter of nervousness blooms in his chest. 

There’s a stupid English proverb that comes to mind. The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. Never mind that he’s flipping the roles around; he just hopes that Uraraka will like it. 

Katsuki knocks on her door firmly, rapping his knuckles against the cheap wood. He can hear the shuffling of fabric, a low grunt, and then Uraraka is standing there. The frustrated look in her eyes fades at the sight of him, and he absolutely hates that his breath catches when she smiles at him.

“Oh hey, what’s up?” She sounds happy to see him, her tone totally different from earlier, and something in him glows in pleasure. Uraraka tilts her head to one side, before finally noticing the bowl of curry in his hands. Her eyes go round as dinner plates. 

“I… I made too much.” He thrusts it towards her with one hand, averting his eyes. “Since you’re not going out with those extras, I just –”

“Oh, wow,” she says softly. She takes the bowl carefully, and when the skin of her fingers touches his hand, he feels goosebumps crawl up his arms. “It smells so good, Bakugou! Thank you!” 

“Don’t mention it,” he grunts, and then shoves his hand into his pockets. She’s standing there, inhaling the savory aroma with a stupid smile on her face, and his nerves are frazzled as he blurts, “Well? Don’t just stand there, taste it!”

Uraraka blinks, looking at him with surprise. “Oh...  oh! Yeah, let me just –” She balances the bowl in her palm, scooping up a mix of sauce and rice and meat before raising the spoon at him in a weird little toast. “Itadakimasu!” 

She stuffs the entire spoon in her mouth, her eyes closing blissfully as she chews, and she does this ridiculous, adorable little wiggle that makes his heart thump pathetically in his chest. 

“Oh my god, I love you so much,” she moans, and his mouth drops open in stunned shock. The sound of her voice jolts down his spine like ice. “I could kiss you.” 

“W-what?? What the fuck, Uraraka?” he yelps, stumbling back a little. It’s not that he hasn’t imagined her saying things like that to him, but he isn’t exactly expecting to hear it right now.  

Uraraka’s eyes flutter open, and there’s a split second of dreamy contentment on her face before the realization hits. She squeaks, and nearly drops the bowl in mortification.

“Oh god, I didn’t  –  I didn’t mean that to  –” she stutters, her face turning red. “That came out wrong! I just meant that  –  I haven’t eaten since yesterday, and I wasn’t having a good day because I was missing my parents, and then you made this and I’m just  –  I’m really happy, I’m sorry  –”

“Tch, it’s… it’s whatever, Cheeks,” Katsuki grumbles, heat crawling up the back of his neck. Uraraka’s words burn into his brain, cycling on repeat, and he suddenly, he feels like he could run a fucking marathon. He’s almost drunk on the feeling, and doesn’t even think as he blurts out, “Someone’s gotta keep you round.” 

There’s a beat of silence, and then it’s his turn to freeze. “Fuck. I didn’t mean … shit, not that you’re fat or whatever, you’re hot, okay? I wasn't talking about your ass… fuck, I mean, your face! Your face, I was talking about…motherfucker –”

God, he wants to go die in a hole. 

Uraraka stares at him as he snaps his mouth shut, hugging the bowl to her chest, and her face is a bright pink. “Um,” she squeaks. “Uh, I…” 

The awkward silence between them is physically painful, and Katsuki is too mortified to move for about three seconds before he bolts for the stairs. 

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

May: Through laughter, over a chorus of voices, knowing it’ll strike home anyway. It’s meant for everyone here, after all.

Aizawa gives them the day off before the Sports Festival, banning them from training. Most people take advantage of the free day to relax and destress, but a few people still sneak into Ground Zeta for extra training before being lugged back to the dorms by Aizawa’s capture weapon. 

Mina and Kaminari suggest a class bonding activity as everyone fixes their lunches. The slots for the impromptu Class 3-A Mario Kart tournament fill up quickly, but Ochako opts out to watch instead of participating. Most of the boys are quick to start the games, Bakugou included. 

She hasn’t spoken to him since the curry incident, but the memory of it is something Ochako thinks about often. His awkward stammering had been both embarrassing and endearing, and even now, remembering the fumbling compliments makes her blush. 

The most attractive boy in their class, and possibly in the entire school, thinks that Ochako is hot. It’s a surreal but amazing confidence booster, especially after the rough few weeks she’d had, and although Bakugou’s ears turn red whenever they make eye contact, he doesn’t suddenly ignore her and he doesn’t take it back. 

Instead, he returns her glances with intense stares, ones that sometimes make her turn away from embarrassment. Their spars gain a playful edge, teasing out an odd, thrilling tension that leaves her face flushed and her cheeks aching from smiling. 

It makes her heart beat a little faster every time she meets his gaze, and it’s different because she can see that it means something to Bakugou too. 

It’s nice. 

“Uh… is this seat taken?” Ochako snaps out of her thoughts to see Deku standing in front of her, looking sheepish. 

She realizes with a sinking heart that the only available spot in the room is on the loveseat by her side. Mina and Tooru aren’t being discreet in the way they’re whispering excitedly while staring in their direction, and everywhere she looks, people are casting them curious glances.

It makes her a little angry, but Ochako pastes a smile on and says, “Go ahead, Deku.” 

He lowers himself onto the cushion carefully, and she pulls her legs in so that she’s sitting in a ball, arms wrapped around her knees. She glances towards Bakugou, who’s staring at the TV screen and determinedly not looking in her direction, but somehow knowing that he’s there helps her relax a little. 

“I’m sorry,” Deku says quietly, and Ochako holds back her sigh. They’ve had this conversation multiple times since she confessed weeks ago, and it was starting to grate on her. She was training to be a fellow Pro Hero – does he really think that she can't take a rejection?

“I know, Deku.” She tries to smile reassuringly. “I’m okay with it.” 

“Still. I never wanted to hurt you, Uraraka.” Bakugou’s words come back to mind, and she has to bite back the tiny thread of resentment that sprouts in her chest. Deku said that before too. At this point, she wonders if the repeated apologies are for her benefit or his. 

“Deku.” The green-haired boy looks up at her, a little surprised by the firmness of her tone. “I understand that you’re trying to be considerate, but you keep bringing it up when I already told you. I’m fine.” 

“I just…” He trails off, frowning. “I just feel like you’re mad at me.”

“I’m frustrated,” she says candidly. “I’m trying to be mature about this, but you’re making it really hard for me to move on when you keep bringing up how sorry you are. Can we just agree to be friends and forget about it?”

“... are you okay with that?” He looks a little shocked, and so do some of her eavesdropping classmates. From the corner of her eye, she can tell that about half the room is listening to their conversation, but she doesn’t care. Ochako is sick and tired of people making offhand comments and references to her and Deku. She still has some feelings for him, but the combination of repeated apologies and continuous gossip have worn her down to where only frustration and exhaustion remain.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” she asks. Deku stammers, but Ochako doesn’t waver. “I love you as a friend, first and foremost. That hasn’t changed. But my world isn’t going to end just because you don’t return my feelings.”

“… Oh,” he mumbles, looking a little ashamed. “I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.” 

“Well, you did.” 

“I know you just said not to but... sorry,” he says quietly. “Last time, I promise.” 

Ochako unfurls herself to lean over and give Deku a side hug. “Thanks. Friends?” 

“Friends.” He smiles. “I love you too, Uraraka.” 

There’s something bittersweet about hearing those words, but it doesn’t hurt as much as she thought it would. She opens her mouth to reply, but a heavy weight suddenly throws itself on her back. 

“God, you guys are so manly,” Kirishima sniffs, leaning over the couch to wrap his beefy arms around the pair of them. “Bakubro, why don’t you ever tell me you love me?” 

The disgusted look on Bakugou’s face is so funny that Ochako can’t hold back the tiny snort that escapes. “I hate you,” he says flatly. 

“Love you too, bro!” Kirishima just calls back cheerfully, beaming despite the middle finger Bakugou aims in his direction. 

“What the hell, why is Bakubro the one who gets an ‘I love you?’ ” Kaminari appears from behind a different couch like a gopher, looking offended. 

Sero pops up right next to the electricity manipulator with a matching expression on his face. “Yeah, bro, what gives?” 

Kirishima yelps as the pair of them lock their arms around the redhead’s neck, pulling him off of her and Deku as they start wrestling in a pile on the floor. Ochako can’t quite keep track of things, but in the span of a few seconds, Mina has jumped into the fray, dragging Jirou and Momo and Tooru along with her. 

Aoyama leaps in too, somehow bringing Ojirou and Sato along for the ride, and Tokoyami’s protests are drowned out by Dark Shadow lifting him up and dumping him head first into the mass of bodies. The final addition comes as Todoroki nonchalantly tumbles into the chaos, dramatic declarations of love echoing above the music from Mario Kart playing in the background. 

Despite her earlier frustrations, Ochako can’t help but sit back and watch the growing dog pile with a fond smile.

“God, I love you guys,” Mina crows loudly, and Ochako can’t help but join the chorus of voices that echo the sentiment. Across the room, she sees Bakugou sneering at the display of affection, scanning over the room until his gaze meets hers. 

She smiles a little, raising her eyebrows at him in a silent question, and something she can’t quite name glows in her stomach when he rolls his eyes at her, the barest hint of a grin curled behind his hand. 

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

May: Slipped under your tongue, twisted into something else. “I trust you,” maybe. Trust them to figure it out.

The Sports Festival is bigger this year than it ever has been before. It’s everyone’s last chance to prove themselves, their final showcase before graduating, and nobody wants to go down without a fight.

Katsuki is pitted against Uraraka in the quarter-finals. The fight between them is an intense, heavy-fire version of tag that leaves him exhilarated, grinning wildly as they dodge and duck and weave around each other. Her quirk is leagues beyond where it was in first year, and it shows when Uraraka literally lifts the entire stadium floor out from under her feet before swatting him out of his Howitzer Impact like a fly. 

He wakes up in time to watch the final matchup between Uraraka and Deku, and proceeds to spend the next twenty minutes screaming at the infirmary television in frustrated rage. 

It’s painfully obvious that Deku goes easy on her. He pulls his punches, uses a fraction of One for All, and when he lets Uraraka push him out of the ring, Katsuki can see the incandescent, seething anger that emanates from her in literal waves. 

That night, he finds her on the roof again, after the award ceremonies are over. She’s crying, but this time, there’s resentment and bitterness and fury in place of the brokenhearted grief. Her gold medal is lying on the ground by her feet, discarded to the side. 

“You were right, you know,” she says, laughing hollowly. She doesn’t have to look to know that he’s there. “First place… it isn’t worth anything when you win it like this.” 

He doesn’t say anything – he knows exactly how she feels, and he knows better than anyone that empty platitudes will only make things worse. Instead, he leans against the railing at her side, back facing the horizon, and quietly waits as she uses the handkerchief he gave her weeks earlier to mop at her face. 

They stand there in silence, and at some point, Uraraka shuffles closer and closer until she’s leaning on him, head heavy against his arm. He slouches a little more so that she can rest against his shoulder, and watches her nuzzle against the sleeve of his gym uniform. 

“Is it always like this?” she whispers, so low that he almost misses the words. “Feeling like you can never catch up, like you’re always walking in someone’s shadow?” 

“Welcome to the club, Cheeks,” he says gruffly. Katsuki looks over at her, and she’s staring blankly into the setting sun, tear tracks shining on her cheeks and the bruise below her left eye a mottled green. “Membership includes being referenced in relation to the shitty nerd in every article you’re in for the rest of your life, toxic friendships, and a crippling inferiority complex.” 

Uraraka snorts. “Any way I can get my member status revoked?” 

“If you find out, let me know,” he mutters. “Been trying to get the hell out for as long as I can remember.”

She doesn’t answer, instead pressing the back of her hand against his wrist. Her skin is cool and dry, soothing against his perpetually warm body temperature, and Katsuki savors it. 

“God, I’m going to be the biggest joke in all of Japan tomorrow.” Uraraka laughs a little wetly. “After today, after everyone saw how he just let me win – nobody’s going to take me seriously.”

She says it like she isn’t amazing – like she’s just another worthless extra, like she didn’t just single handedly hand his ass to him only a few hours earlier. She says it like she’s giving up, and what Katsuki was planning to say – something quippy and grouchy and vaguely encouraging – is replaced by words that say everything, all at once.

“I do,” Katsuki says quietly, and she stills. “I always have.”

Slowly, she draws away, pulling back so she can turn and face him head on. He keeps his gaze steady, even as he wants to look away. 

Part of him hopes that she’ll take it at face value, take the words as encouragement and nothing else. Things would be easier if she did – he’d be able to take his feelings and hide them for days and months and years, like he’s done since she caught his eye back in their first year. He’d be safe for a little while longer, waiting for the perfect moment. 

At the same time, a larger part of him wills her to read between the lines, to see underneath the surface, because this is the closest thing to a confession he can manage. She knows him – she sees him the way Deku never could, and she’s able to read him in ways that took Eijirou years to pick up. 

She knows him, and when the realization crosses her eyes, he plucks the truth out and lays himself bare. 

There’s no going back.  

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

May: Over a nervous smile, biting back the just-this-side-of-desperate hope they’ll say it back.

Ochako doesn’t know when her feelings start to change. It might have been the curry incident. It might have been the spars. It might have been that moment on the roof, and it might have even been the Sports Festival, two years ago.  

What she does know is this: she’s in the middle of falling for Bakugou when she recognizes her feelings for what they really are, and what she feels is nothing like what she felt for Deku.

With Deku, she had felt like she was in freefall, somersaulting and trying to right herself when she didn’t know which way was up or down. It felt scary and frantic, and in some ways, she feels that she confused her fear with adrenaline and her admiration for love. 

With Bakugou, it feels familiar. It feels like she’s standing on the sparring mats in Gym Zeta, intimate and safe, with the spark of competition and plenty of passionate intensity to keep things alive. It feels like a dance – an equal push and pull, an ebb and flow that works in tandem rather than apart – and she doesn’t have to chase after anyone because he’s facing her instead of leaving her to watch his retreating back.

So when Bakugou says those five words, she pulls back a little so she can look him in the eye. He waits, patiently, as she studies him, and even though she can see the hope and love and fear in his steady gaze, he never looks away.

“Are you sure, Bakugou?” She has to make sure. 

He raises an eyebrow. “You really have to ask?” Yeah, I am.  

Ochako reaches out, grazing her hand against his, and she swallows when Bakugou slowly slides his fingers between hers. 

She stares at the sight of their entwined hands, and smiles a little when she feels him stroking her skin with his thumb. “Can I ask when you knew?”

“A while.” He’s quiet, watching their hands too. Red eyes flicker to meet hers, and he shrugs. “It’s always been you.” 

Her heart soars. She comes in closer, and as she tilts her head up to look at him, Bakugou leans down to press his forehead to hers. 

“I think I could fall in love with you,” she admits softly, her heartbeat pounding like drums in her ears. I think I’m already halfway there.

The words hang there, suspended in the space between them, and then he breathes in and smiles. 

“Way ahead of you, Cheeks,” he murmurs. “Hurry up, will you?” 

Something in her sings as he tugs her closer, and the touch of his lips to hers feels like coming home. 

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

June: Under your breath while the whole house sleeps, just before you have to leave for the day. More for yourself than for them.

When Ochako asks if he wants to tell people, Katsuki is torn. On one hand, he wants people to know – he wants to shout to the entire world that Uraraka Ochako is his, that she chose him in the end.

And yet, on the other, he’s selfish. He wants to keep her to himself for as long as he can, to learn everything about her on his own time, and when he makes his choice, Ochako agrees. 

Keeping it a secret is laughably easy. They do everything like they did before – they attend class, hang out with their respective friend groups, and occasionally meet up to spar after school. To their classmates and the rest of the world, nothing has changed. 

Behind closed doors, it’s a different story. 

He wakes to all-encompassing warmth, hair tickling his nose and a pliant body tucked tight to his chest. The curve of Ochako’s back under his hand is soft, and when he tightens his hold on her, she snuffles a little into her pillow before settling back into sleep. 

The light filtering through Uraraka’s cheap curtains is faint. He knows from experience that it’s probably around five in the morning, too early for any of his classmates or teachers to be awake. It’s the safest time for him to steal out of Ochako’s room and get back to the boy’s side of the dorms, but it’s harder and harder to leave each time he wakes up with his girlfriend gathered in his arms. 

His girlfriend. The thought sends a dopey, stupid smile stretching over his face. It’s been close to two months since that day on the roof after the Sports Festival, but part of him still can’t believe it. Uraraka Ochako is his girlfriend.  

Katsuki is pretty sure he’s the luckiest bastard alive.

He withdraws from her slowly, painstakingly peeling his body from hers. She whines a little at the loss of warmth, and he can’t help but melt a little when she gravitates towards the divot he left in the mattress, burrowing into the spot where his head lay on her pillow.

His clothes are in a crumpled pile by the foot of the bed, and he tugs on his pants carelessly, shoving his shirt over his messy hair. When he’s done, he rearranges the blankets around Ochako’s sleeping form, tucking them up to her chin. Her forehead peeks out from under her messy hair, and Katsuki brushes his lips against the little patch of skin, cupping the curve of her face as he does.

Here, staring down at his slumbering girlfriend, he’s struck by the familiar, sudden wave of affection that tempts him to stay.

“I love you,” he breathes, almost mouthing the words as he strokes her cheek gently. He watches as she nuzzles into his touch, smiling in her sleep, and tiptoes out of her room before he’s late for his morning run.

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

August: With a soft sigh. Past exhaustion and frustration and despair, like it’s the only good thing left. Sometimes it is.

Neither she nor Katsuki are strangers to nightmares. They’re a given, at this point – most heroes suffer from them in one capacity or another, but it doesn’t make things any easier to deal with.

In some ways, Ochako is lucky – she’s used to working through the nightmares alone, and can still function around them. She doesn’t have to go to Katsuki for comfort unless it’s a particularly vivid dream, but the same couldn’t be said for her boyfriend.

Ochako wakes up to the low sound of her phone chiming. Her head is spinning from being woken up in the middle of a sleep cycle, but as she blearily squints in the darkness, she recognizes the ringtone as the one she set for Bakugou.

She picks up just before the call drops. “Hello?”

“Cheeks?” The whispered, raspy sound of Bakugou’s voice cracks in her ear, and she shakes off the last vestiges of sleep, concern shooting through her.

“Katuski? Are you okay?”

“M’outside,” he mumbles, and Ochako throws herself out of bed and nearly trips over the low tea table in her haste to get to the door. She throws it open, and Katsuki is leaning against her door frame. He’s shaking, bundled in a hoodie she recognizes as one he wears when the nightmares are especially bad. Worriedly, she cups a hand around his elbow and pulls him into her room.

She steers him to her bed, careful to avoid the table this time, and sits Katsuki on the edge. She gently pries his phone from his hand, ending the call and placing both of their phones on her desk, before she tugs at the hem of his hoodie.

With a slow, steady murmur of nonsensical words, she coaxes him out of his hoodie and sweats and shoes. Katsuki keeps his hands on her, seeking bare skin as she works, until he’s left only in his boxers. He makes a low, wounded sound when she briefly steps away to place his clothes on her desk chair, but he sighs as she returns into his arms, guiding him below her comforter. Ochako quickly sheds the large, oversized shirt she usually wears to sleep, leaving her in just her panties, and lets the rough, calloused hand on her thigh drag her into bed.

She lies on her back, sighing as her boyfriend settles his cheek against her left breast, ear pressed directly above her heart. He wraps his arms around her waist, miles of warm skin pressed against her body, and she carefully scratches across his scalp while he tries to lose himself in the sound of her heartbeat.

Fighting the lull of sleep, her other hand cradles his arm, using her thumb to rub back and forth soothingly. The trembling gradually stops, Katsuki’s panicked breathing evening out, and she hears a rough, heavy exhale before he rubs at her sternum with his nose.

“…Thanks.” He presses his mouth against the skin of her chest in a chaste kiss.

“Anytime.” Smoothing the spiky bangs away from his forehead, she leans forward to place a kiss of her own to his hairline. “You okay?”

She feels Katsuki swallow thickly, his weight falling on her more heavily. “Not really.” It’s the honest answer, and had it been anyone else asking, Ochako knows he would’ve lied.  “But I will be.”

She hums, eyelids slowly getting heavier as the hand carding through his spiky hair moves slower and slower. Faintly, as she’s just on the edge of consciousness, she feels the blonde shift above her.

“I love you.” Ochako tries to keep her eyes open, but she can’t quite fight it any longer. “Go to sleep, baby.”

“Love y’too,” she slurs, and the last thing she hears is a quiet huff of amusement as she drifts off, warm and safe.

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

October: Wrapped up in a question. How’s your day been, have you eaten, you know you can tell me anything, right? You know you can tell them anything. Right?

One day, after class, All Might gathers everyone to make an announcement: two applicants have finally been chosen for the exclusive one-year work study in America. The program starts right after graduation, set up with All Might’s old hero agency, and Katsuki grins in anticipation.

The work study is something that he’s been working towards since coming into U.A. He had submitted the application at the end of second year, along with most of their class, but he figures that he has it in the bag. There are two spots, and while Deku is a given, Katsuki is the only one who can keep up with him when they’re really going all out.

He never thinks, in a million years, that Ochako would be the one to get it instead.

When he doesn’t hear his name, the feeling that falls over him is impossible to describe. On one hand, he’s so incredibly proud – of course Ochako deserves something like this. The program is notoriously competitive, notoriously selective, and for Ochako to be chosen means that they see the potential for her to be an international hero.

On the other hand, he’s so angry and hurt and frustrated, because that should’ve been him. He should’ve been the one to get the work-study, because now he’s getting left behind not just by Deku, but by Ochako too.

He pointedly avoids meeting her gaze, and when she tries to approach him after class, the mess of his feelings makes him blow up.

“Bakugou-kun?” He stiffens at the sound of her voice, but otherwise ignores her as he stomps towards the locker rooms. “Bakugou-kun, wait – ”

A hand lands on his forearm, and without thinking, he whirls around and yanks himself out of Ochako’s grasp. She looks stunned at his violent reaction, but he’s still reeling from All Might’s announcement in a way that makes all his filters disappear.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” he hisses venomously, and hurt blooms across those wide brown eyes. “I don’t want your fucking pity!”

Katsuki regrets it the moment he says it, but pride is what makes him turn his back on Ochako and keep walking. He rips his hero costume off and showers in record time, tossing on his clothes and sprinting back to the dorms to lock himself in his room.  

“Fuck, fuck, FUCK!” Throwing himself on his bed, he buries his face in his pillow and lets himself go. All the bottled emotions explode out, and he’s sobbing and swearing and screaming for God knows how long until he physically can’t do anything but lie there, curled up into his pillow and hurting.

He’s so exhausted and so out of it that he doesn’t notice the door to his balcony sliding open. Still, when he feels the mattress shifting beneath him, he knows that she’s there.

Shame and guilt suddenly join the complex mess of feelings in his head, and part of him is frozen in fear. Why is she here? Is she here to pity him, like he told her not to? Is she here to yell at him for being an asshole?

Worse yet – is she here to tell him that she wants to end things?

Every nerve in his body is on alert, his brain still a jumbled muddle, and he physically can’t bring himself to move as the seconds tick by, agonizingly slow. The sound of his heartbeat thunders in his ears, and he can feel his lungs constrict as he waits for Ochako to speak.

Something desperate in him begs, please don’t go.

A hand settles onto his shoulder. The touch makes him flinch, his shoulders hunching on instinct, but the mattress moves momentarily before a familiar body molds itself to his back.

Ochako maneuvers herself into a big spoon position, curling her legs behind his and wiggling her arms around him so that she can hug him around the waist. He swallows as he feels her gently press a kiss between his shoulders. It’s patient and understanding and everything he feels like he doesn’t deserve.

 “… Sorry.” He swallows thickly, wincing at the rawness of his throat. The word is muffled, spoken into his pillow instead of towards the person behind him, but he feels Ochako bury her face into his shirt.

“Me too.” He closes his eyes at that, his bitterness returning in full force. She tightens her hold on him, as if sensing his mood. “You know you can talk to me, right?”

Katsuki huffs, an acknowledgement but not an answer. Instead, he lets one hand fall to rest on the arms folded across his stomach, finding her hand and sliding his palm against hers.

They lay like that in silence. A few tears escape, leftover from the emotional torrent he’d released earlier, but all he feels now is emptiness.

“I declined the work-study.” His eyes snap open, and he sits up abruptly. The action startles Ochako, who doesn’t manage to let go of him in time, and she lands half-sprawled below him, arms still linked around his body.

“What the hell, Ochako,” he croaks, his voice still hoarse, and he glares down at her. “Why would you – ”

“I can barely afford to feed myself, Katsuki – how in the world am I going to find the money to spend a year in America?” She looks at him gently, reaching up to cup his cheek. “Besides – I applied because the others did. I never really wanted to go in the first place. Not like you.”

Old insecurities crawl out of the dark corners of his mind. “I don’t need your pity, Cheeks,” he says darkly, and she rolls her eyes.

“For God’s sake, it’s not pity,” she says exasperatedly, and folds her arms across her chest. Her expression softens. “I know how much you wanted this. How much you still want it.”

“They picked you, Ochako. Not me.” Saying it out loud stings, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t proud of her. “Not that they shouldn’t have. You deserve it.”  

“So do you, Katsuki.” She sits up, tucking her legs underneath her as she squares her shoulders, staring him directly in the eyes. “You know why I want to be a hero. Stuff like this – it’s not important to me, not like it is for you. You’re the first one on the waiting list – if I didn’t apply, it would’ve been you who got it.”

He scowls. “Why the fuck did you apply if you weren’t gonna do it?”

“Deku convinced me,” Ochako admits, looking apologetic. “I didn’t really expect anything; I knew I wasn’t going to be able to afford it regardless.”

And fuck, hearing her say that makes him feel even shittier. “… It’s whatever, Cheeks,” he says, trying to play things off. “Doesn’t really matter.”

“Yeah, that’s bullshit.” The flat look she gives him is pointed. “You don’t get angry like this unless it’s something you really care about.”

“I didn’t… ugh, fuck.” He closes his eyes and scrubs a free hand over his face, following the line of his jaw until his palm sits at the nape of his neck. “I got pissed because I felt like I was gettin’ left behind again. Not just by the shitty nerd, but...”

“… by me, too,” she says, realization falling over her, and he feels like an asshole for even thinking it, let alone admitting it out loud. “I thought we were both in the same boat? The one where we’re trying not to compare ourselves to other people anymore?”

“Shit, I know that, I just…” He groans, rubbing his neck roughly. “I just… I’ve spent so fuckin’ long chasin’ after them. Fucking years, Cheeks. I can’t just… turn that off.”   

“I know.” And she does – maybe not to the same extent, but she does know, better than anyone else, exactly what he’s feeling. She felt it too, not long ago. “But you’re not Deku, Katsuki; you aren’t All Might either. Sometimes, I feel like you forget that.”

“S’not that I forget.” He lets his hands fall limp in his lap, looking down at them hollowly. “… They’re just… better. Better people, better heroes… trying to crawl out of their damn shadows feels like I’m fighting fuckin’ smoke.”

“Well, nothing worth doing is going to be easy,” she says, and part of him wants to laugh at the sheer fucking audacity of this girl, taking his words and throwing them right back at him. She grins a little, seeing the spark of amusement in his eyes. “You know that as well as I do.”

“You’re a goddamn comedian,” he snorts, and he can’t help but smile.

“The very best,” she agrees as she grabs his free hand, bringing it up to her lips. “So you’ll go, right?”

He studies her, trying to look for a single smidgeon of resentment, and can’t find anything other than genuine sincerity. “… yeah,” he sighs. “I’ll go.”

Ochako nods firmly. “Good.”

And that’s the end of it.

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

December: Instead of “thank you” or “see you soon” or “drive safe.” Because no matter what you say it’ll mean the same thing.

They’re able to keep things quiet for seven months. Living with eighteen other teenagers means almost no privacy, and it’s a goddamn miracle that nobody has found out yet. Katsuki is pretty sure Frogface has an idea – he’s caught her watching the two of them recently, a contemplative look on her face, but otherwise, there isn’t a peep.

When it does come out, it’s partially Ochako's fault, but mostly Katsuki’s. Sparring together always gets him hot and bothered, and while she might have been tempting fate a little by wearing just a sports bra while they’re grappling, he’s entirely to blame for how he slams her into the mats and starts kissing her in the middle of the crowded gym.

Katsuki is not happy to find that there’s a class-wide bet going on about them. He’s even less happy to find that Deku is the one who fucking wins the pot, but when people find out that they’ve been dating since May, Ochako starts hiding on the roof to avoid any more invasive questions about Katsuki’s dick.

By the time winter break rolls around, the fervor around their relationship has died down. There’s still some teasing, especially from people like Kirishima and Mina, but everyone’s focus is redirected as the winter internships offers are finally handed out.

For some, the decision is easy. She knows that Katsuki doesn’t even hesitate when he gets the offer to intern with Endeavor again, alongside Shouto. Ochako, on the other hand, is torn. Her original plan was to go with Ryuko for the third year in a row, but she knows that she’s gotten a little too comfortable there. It’s not challenging anymore, and as much as she loves working with the dragon hero, she knows that she needs to gain more experience somewhere else.

She wants to take Miruko’s offer. The woman is on a case in Sapporo, and she’s looking for a seasoned intern experienced in both rescue and combat to act as her support. It’s an amazing opportunity, especially when Ochako considers the fact that the rabbit hero is notorious for preferring to work alone – apparently the Sports Festival didn’t harm her reputation as much as she’d thought it would.

There’s only one problem.

She and Katsuki had been planning to spend a few days celebrating her birthday before heading out to their respective internships. Miruko’s offer, if Ochako accepts it, lasts the entire two-week winter break.

Not only would she not be able to visit home, she’d also have to cancel her plans with Katsuki.

When she tells him about the offer, something in her breaks a little at the excited, proud grin that spreads across his face. “You’re shitting me. Miruko? For real? That’s fuckin’ amazing, Cheeks.”

“… Yeah.” Ochako smiles back weakly.

He frowns. “Oi, what’s with that face? You aren’t interested or something?”

“It’s not that.” At his puzzled look, she says softly, “The internship lasts the whole break. It’s in Sapporo.”

She already checked online. It takes five hours to get from Sapporo to Tokyo; a one-way ticket costs around thirty thousand yen. There is no way she can afford to visit Katsuki, let alone her parents all the way down in Mie. And even if he could come to her, there is no way to guarantee that she’ll have the time.

“… oh.” She watches as he exhales slowly, the excitement fading in his eyes and replaced by disappointment. “Oh.”

Ochako bites her lip, eyes flickering towards the floor. “I – I don’t have to take the offer, Ryuko still has openings…”

It’s not that she doesn’t want to go. She does – desperately, actually, because it’s Miruko. Number five hero, badass bitch Miruko, who Ochako secretly idolizes for being strong and powerful and uncompromising in a culture where being those things as a woman can be career-ending more than career-making. It’s an opportunity she never dared to dream of – and now it’s being handed to her on a silver platter.

Katsuki knows this. He knows that Ochako wants to say yes, and he knows that for all that she’s offering to stay, she wants him to tell her to go.

And he does.

“Don’t be a dumbass,” he scowls, eyes narrowing. “Miruko asked you for a reason; you’re fucking going.” 

She knows that he won’t let her turn it down – Katsuki would never ask her to sacrifice her career for him – but hearing it still helps settle the guilt that had been festering since she first got the offer. He looks a little dejected still, and so Ochako steps forward until her face is pressed into his chest, arms coming up to wrap around his waist in a hug. “Katsuki, I –”

“I know.” Strong arms band across her back to tuck her more securely against his chest, and one hand cradles the back of her neck. “Just means we gotta make up for your birthday and New Years when you get back.”

“Deal.” She inhales, taking in the smell of smoke and sugar that never fails to make her feel safe and secure. It’s only two weeks, but she already knows that she’ll miss him terribly.

A hand sweeps across her back, settling on her neck. The warmth of his palm is soothing against the tight muscles, and she relaxes into him. “M’proud of you, Cheeks. You’re gonna fucking crush it.”

“I’ll be back before you know it.” It’s a lie, but Katsuki doesn’t call her out on it. Instead, he presses his mouth to the crown of her head.

“I love you,” he murmurs, quietly. Come back to me. 

She pulls back, cradles his face between her palms, kisses him fervently in answer. I will.  

─── ･｡ﾟ❁ﾟ｡･ ───

January: Straightforward. Soft and heavy, like morning before the coffee’s started brewing. Like that’s all there is to say.

He gets the call two days before they’re supposed to get back to the dorms.

“There was an avalanche in Sapporo,” Frogface’s monotone voice sounds tinny over the phone, and Katsuki’s heart drops to his toes. “Ochako – she’s in the hospital.”

The story is broadcast over every news channel, trending on every social media site. The case in Sapporo was an investigation, following rumors about a sex-trafficking ring targeting young girls. Miruko and Uravity had tracked the ring leaders to an abandoned town, where they’d captured the offending criminals with little trouble. The police were on the way, and the heroes had been comforting the scared girls, but nobody knew that one of the criminals had a remote-detonation quirk until it was too late.

The dynamite that exploded wasn’t meant to destroy the town – it was meant to bury it.

The twenty girls and all the criminals make it out alive and unscathed– so do all twelve thousand residents of the neighboring town. According to the reports, Uravity had created an entirely new gravitational field to slow the avalanche, with her own body as the anchorpoint, and had stalled long enough for everyone to evacuate the area. When she finally passed out, Miruko darted in to drag her intern to safety, but they had both ended up getting caught in the crush of snow.

The rescue team, who’d been on standby, found them both quickly, but Uravity’s overuse of her quirk, combined with her injuries, meant that she was rushed immediately to Musutafu, where Recovery Girl kept her alive long enough to get into surgery.

Katsuki skips class to go to the hospital, leg bouncing and his heart breaking as every agonizing minute passes. Mid-way through the day, Aizawa comes to try and bring him back to U.A., accompanied by Midnight. He almost fights both teachers in the middle of the waiting room, until his parents come and formally withdraw him for the day so he can stay.

When he’s finally allowed to see her, she’s in a coma. She looks small, tucked below scratchy white sheets and surrounded by machines he can’t name. There’s a neck brace supporting her head, the breathing tube snaking from her mouth and nose, and all he can do is hold her hand and squeeze, praying for her to wake up.

He comes every day after classes. He sits in the plastic chair by her bedside and talks about his internship, the things they did in class, and the stupid antics their classmates got up to in the dorms.

Every day, before he leaves, Katsuki kisses her and says that he misses her. That he can’t wait for her to wake up.

At one point, Miruko comes by to visit, solemn-faced – she’s in an electric wheelchair, missing her prosthetic limbs, and lugging an IV drip behind her. Part of Katsuki wants to blame her for it all, for giving the offer to Ochako in the first place, but he recognizes the guilt hidden behind the rabbit hero’s stoic façade.  

“I told her not to overdo it.” The woman’s voice is low and throaty, weariness obvious even as she speaks. Katsuki spares a glance at the woman, who’s staring at Ochako’s still body in the bed. “Told her that the mountain was gonna come down one way or another. She didn’t fuckin’ listen – said she could keep going. That she had to.”

He’s seen the footage – it’s not something that he’ll ever forget. A towering wall of snow and ice and rock, a cresting wave over a ramshackle ruin, with a tiny pink form standing in front of the creeping, looming mass. He knows that Ochako’s quirk is more than just zero gravity, but seeing it in action, she looks like a goddess out of legend. Nobody who sees that video will ever call her weak again.

“Sounds like her,” he grunts, and neither of them say anything more.

Days later, he hears the rumor while waiting for shitty vending machine coffee and as he buys flowers at the flower shop on the hospital grounds. Apparently, Miruko called in a favor from one of the top healing quirk specialists to come and help Ochako.

He lugs an entire bushel of organic rainbow carrots to the woman’s hospital room as thanks, and scowls when Miruko points out that he should’ve sent them in an edible arrangement.

Three weeks after the accident, the neck brace and tubes are gone, the life support equipment removed, and all that’s left is to wait for Ochako to wake up. Katsuki is in the middle of complaining about some stupid training exercise he doesn’t really care about when the hand he’s holding squeezes.

“… Mm? Kat… ?” Ochako’s voice is low and gravelly, scratchy from disuse, and her heavy-lidded gaze settles on him tiredly. He stands abruptly, the chair clattering to the floor as the last remnants of fear and worry are replaced by sheer relief.

The hug he gives Ochako is careful and featherlight, but a strong hand pulls him tighter into her chest until he’s almost crushing her in his arms. Katsuki knows that he should be calling for a doctor, but he can’t help but take the moment to keep her for himself, just a little while longer.  

“Shit, Cheeks,” he breathes, basking in the familiar weight of Ochako’s head tucked into the curve between his shoulder and neck. “I was so fuckin’ worried.”

“M’okay.” Her nose feels cold against his pulse. “Sorry,” she says, slurring a little.

“Don’t be.” She had saved those girls, and she was the reason that over ten thousand people were still alive. There was nothing to be sorry about. “You’re okay now, s’all that matters.”

She hums, the warmth of her breath lingering over his skin. “Love you,” she whispers, hands twisting in the fabric of his shirt.

Katsuki exhales in a soft, slow sigh, and presses a kiss into her hair. “Love you too.”

[lady-divine-writes]

Kurtbastian one-shot - “Eyes on the Road” (Rated M)

Summary: Driving down the highway while on vacation, Kurt notices how tense his husband looks and decides to try something he saw in a movie once to loosen him up. It does the job a little too well ... (1970 words)

Notes: This is a re-write I decided to do for Halloween because I think it's really funny. XD Inspired by the movie 'Parenthood'.

Part 58 of Daddies.

Read on AO3.

“That was the insurance agent,” Sebastian says, putting his jacket around Kurt’s shoulders and rubbing his husband’s arms to keep the chill of the night air away. “They're sending a tow. We're gonna call an Uber to take us to the hotel, but they’ll have a rental for us in the morning.”

“That’s … that’s great,” Kurt grumbles. "Just peachy." 

Sebastian snickers. Kurt's cheeks flame red and he hangs his head. He can’t look Sebastian in the eyes, but he also doesn’t want to see Sebastian’s baby - his Porsche Cayman - wrapped around the trunk of an ancient English Oak.

Kurt isn't angry at his husband. This isn't Sebastian's fault. And for as bad as this night has been, Kurt is more embarrassed than upset.

“Are you alright? Nothing hurts? Nothing broken?” Sebastian asks for the fifth time, and for the fifth time, Kurt answers, “Yeah … sure … great.”

There’s nothing else Kurt can think of to say. Physically, he’s fine. Emotionally, he could live a hundred years and never, ever live this down.

Plus, Sebastian is being such a good sport about this.

That makes this whole situation suck worse.

They’re supposed to be on vacation. They got Thomas excused from school and took one week away to visit Kurt’s dad over Halloween. That way, Burt wouldn't have to travel hours to see his grandson dress in costume and go begging for candy. 

But Kurt and Sebastian had ulterior motives. They planned this trip to Ohio to escape everything: PTA meetings, stress, Sebastian’s ultra-needy clients, and Kurt’s new winter clothing line, coming together slowly, but on time for the Vogue Winter Extravaganza.

They'd been traveling to the city more than normal, and they both agreed that they'd forgotten how crowded and hectic it could be, especially at the start of the holidays. It's just Halloween, but that's the top step of a slide that shoots straight into Thanksgiving, loop-de-loops for a few weeks, then slingshots into Christmas.

Isabelle is pretty good about leaving Kurt be when he needs time away and diverting business calls to his receptionist. But Sebastian’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing, which tends to happen when every client you have thinks they're your only client. He shut the damn thing off, but that didn’t solve the problem. It only delayed it for a while. Once he turned it back on, he found he had a million messages, both text and voice, and in less than a minute, it began to ring again.

Sebastian had to change his ring tone. As much as he loves the song Running Home to You, he got sick of hearing it so much.

He didn't want this vacation to be the catalyst that made him hate it.

Driving down the interstate from the Hummel house to their hotel, Sebastian looked tense, gripping the wheel so tightly, Kurt thought he might tear it off the steering column. Kurt's dad and stepmom had noticed Sebastian on edge, too. They offered to take Thomas for the night, giving Kurt and Sebastian some alone time at their hotel.

But Kurt couldn't wait till they got there.

He had to do something. He’d never seen Sebastian so wound up.

He was afraid that if he didn’t find a way to calm Sebastian down, he’d snap, veer off the highway in a rage, and drive straight into a tree.

Not really, but Kurt had an appreciation for the dramatic.

At most, Sebastian would get back to their room and spend the whole night watching Battlestar Galactica reruns on TV. 

He'd been prescribed medication for a chronic case of stress-related acid reflux and had suffered three major bouts of insomnia since the beginning of the fiscal year. Kurt didn’t want that to happen again, not here, where they had come back to the familiar to get away from it all.

Kurt had an idea, but he didn’t know quite how to execute it. It wasn’t exactly his idea. It came from an old movie his dad had been watching during A&E’s Salute to Steve Martin. Kurt had rolled his eyes when he saw it, thought it immature and uncouth. But looking at Sebastian, a vein throbbing in his neck from the anxiety of phone call avoidance, Kurt thought he would give it a try.

What could it hurt?

Kurt had given Sebastian countless hand jobs while driving before. A blow job couldn’t be much more difficult.

Sebastian was focused on the road, his brain caught in a web of issues that had nothing to do with Lima, Halloween, visiting his in-laws, or even Kurt. He didn’t notice Kurt undo the buckle of his belt, unbutton the fly of his jeans, then sneak underneath his arm to get at his flaccid member. It took Kurt grabbing his husband’s cock and sticking it in his mouth before Sebastian reacted, jumping at the unexpected sensation of hot and wet, then letting out a long gasp as that heat crept under his skin.

“God, Kurt,” Sebastian moaned. “W-what are you doing? You can’t … we shouldn’t … be doing that now.”

"Wow," Kurt mumbled. "That's quite a change of tune for the man who used to accept a b.j. pretty much anywhere."

"True, but I'm older. Wiser. Undecided as to whether or not I want my obituary to mention that this is how I died."

“You don’t think you’re a good enough driver to handle a little distraction?” Kurt looked up from Sebastian’s lap, a half-smile on his moistened lips.

“I didn’t say that.” That, to Kurt, was as good as the go-ahead, and he went back to circling the head of Sebastian’s cock with his tongue. “B-but …” Sebastian interrupted in a shuddering voice, “w-what if a cop notices your head in my lap and we get pulled over?”

Kurt climbed up Sebastian’s chest - right hand stroking slowly, the fingers of his left threading into his husband’s hair. “I’ll just tell that nosy officer that I was sitting here beside my sexy husband, getting hard and bothered, and I couldn’t help myself. I just had to have my mouth on him. Then I’d tell him to move along.”

Sebastian smirked. “You’d say that, hmm?”

“You bet your gorgeous ass I would.” And Kurt sank slowly back into his husband’s lap to get his mouth around him again.

“But I wanna be able to properly enjoy it,” Sebastian whined as his husband’s talented tongue began long laps up and down his shaft.

“If you don’t enjoy it,” Kurt purred, “I promise a repeat performance back at the hotel.”

“Mmm, I'm gonna hold you to that.”

“Please do.” Kurt paused a moment to kiss Sebastian gently down the length of his erection – soft little pecks he knew drove his husband wild. “So relax, keep your eyes on the road, and try not to kill us, okay?”

“O-okay,” Sebastian agreed, adjusting his seat as far back as it would go and toeing the pedals to let Kurt work his magic.

Kurt hadn’t meant to make this the best b.j. of Sebastian’s life. He didn't even think that was possible at this point in Sebastian's sexual life. He had hoped to keep his husband at a low boil, relax him but leave him a horny mess so that when they got back to their room, the real fun could begin. But Sebastian sounded like he was enjoying it so much, that he was so desperate to cum, it spurred Kurt on. He found himself doing everything he could to make his husband moan louder, buck up into his mouth, swear like a sailor.

It didn’t take long to get Sebastian to the point where he was shallowly, but rhythmically, snapping his hips. And even though Kurt had intended on torturing him all the way back to their hotel, he was kind of relieved. He had heard Sebastian’s car engine rev twice now. Kurt couldn’t get a good look at the speedometer, but he had a feeling his husband might be exceeding the speed limit.

“Oh, God, Kurt. I’m … I’m cumming, Kurt. I’m …” It was at the moment of his fantastic climax that Sebastian shut his eyes for a split second, opening them when a horn honked too loud and much too close for comfort. Sebastian turned the wheel abruptly, swerving out of the path of oncoming traffic and plowing into a tree. How ever he hit the aged oak, the airbags malfunctioned, which turned out to be a blessing since the force behind one of those deploying might have snapped Kurt’s neck. As it was, Sebastian had managed to slow down enough that, even though the damage to the vehicle looked tremendous, the two shaken men were able to unbuckle their seat belts and exit the car.

Kurt’s mother always said that a separate God looked after fools and children.

Kurt peeks up at the smoking remains of Sebastian’s demolished engine.

Kurt is a thirty-five-year-old man. That definitely makes him a fool.

Flashing lights approach from the slow lane and pull up beside Sebastian’s wrecked Porsche. Kurt knew a highway patrol officer would probably be along any time, but he still didn’t want to have to face up to what happened. Not to a man with a badge and a gun.

The officer doesn’t get out of his patrol car right away, which unnerves Kurt. But he has to remember that the man has things he has to do first: run Sebastian’s plates, check the secret police database to make sure it’s not stolen, that two men fitting their descriptions aren’t wanted by the law. When the officer does leave his car, he has in his possession the brightest flashlight Kurt has ever seen. He shines it almost in their eyes, its beam bouncing from Sebastian, who raises a hand and waves; to Kurt, who nods solemnly and looks down at his shoes; to the once immaculate black car, folded almost in half. Luckily, no one had pulled over with them, either to help them or harass them, so the only two people who know what happened are Kurt and Sebastian.

And Kurt intends on taking this to his grave.

“Good evening,” the officer says. “You gentlemen look like you got yourselves into a bit of trouble.”

“Yes, sir,” Sebastian says. “I’m afraid we did.”

“Are either of you hurt? Do you need medical attention?”

Kurt curls in on himself further, but Sebastian shakes his head, cool and calm, as if his husband isn’t trying to disappear into his own skin like the house at the end of the movie Poltergeist that crumbled inside out before blinking out of existence.

“No,” Sebastian answers. “Luckily, we both came out okay. Not even a scratch.”

“That’s good to hear.” The officer approaches them, wearing a genuine-enough smile. “Do you need a tow truck?”

“No.” Sebastian continues to carry the conversation while Kurt, maintaining a low profile, is quietly impressed by how collected his husband sounds. Maybe that blow job helped a little. Kurt has that to be proud of. It probably wasn’t worth a $60,000 car, though. “I contacted my insurance company. They’re sending a tow.”

“Great. In that case, can either one of you tell me what happened?”

Sebastian glances sideways at his mortified husband, a smile on his lips hiding multiple embarrassing remarks at Kurt’s expense.

“Uh, do you want to tell him what happened, Kurt?” Sebastian asks. “You did say that you’d handle it.”

“No,” Kurt replies quietly, holding himself tighter, thinking that now is not the appropriate time for his husband to be teasing him. Though, if Kurt had stuck to what was appropriate and waited till they got to their hotel room before deep-throating his husband, they might not be in this mess. “No, I do not.”

[cottoncandyreaper]

((I don't think I went through and did edits for this section...sorry in advanced 😂 second part of Undertale story))

He always claimed there was nothing left but I didn't believe him for one second! Settling at the bottom with the doors opening to darkness I stepped out without another thought so use to the sight but the slight whimpering from the elevator said not many people cared for the dark and stopped me in my advancement.

"Guys, I promise nothing is going to jump out and get you. I've done this so many times and it's always fine. Look, maybe this will help."

It didn't illuminate far but just enough as magic flooded my eyes and a simple bone appeared in my hand. It was probably the coolest glow stick around.

"Plus this thing can do damage too! So it's light and defense!"

One hit point of damage but they didn't need to know that part; Nicole stepped out first taking my empty hand and squeezed while waving the others out.

"Come on, the sooner we start walking the faster we get out of this place."

"Yeah, there's another elevator that takes us up and then out to hot land!"

Kloey had to tug Macie along linking hands and forming a human chain.

"F-fine...but make this a fast walk!"

Knowing that Macie was scared of something almost seemed like a useful weapon at school if she ever caused more issues and I was happy to use black mail if needed. With a slight pull we started on as I held the purple glowing bone out away from me lighting up the floor and some ahead of us; papers scattered everywhere and some trash but nothing to dramatic. I waved the bone around the sides showing off that there were just boxes and nothing more even in the direction of places I wanted to explore there wasn't much at all...one super big box but I couldn't open that even if I tried.

"Whats all in these boxes anyway Winny?"

Kloey spoke softly so not to startle anyone as we had mainly walked in the quiet.

"Parts, scraps of ther projects and unneeded tools. Alphys comes down here if she really needs something and knows it's been packed away but other then her most of these will probably go to waste."

"Why not give them to the humans?"

"Because we got these from a human. There's a big trash dump somewhere and that's where all of these were scavenged from."

"Oh...so humans were, dumping into the mountain for a long time."

"Yeah sadly."

She stopped there letting the silence join our company again for a bit more until we all screamed when Macie screamed so blood curdling I thought she was hurt.

"Something touched my leg! Oh my god something touched my leg!"

She ran around releasing her hold on Kloey to hide behind me grabbing my shoulders and shaking me.

"Kill it!"

"Macie stop!"

I hurt her elbowing into her ribs but it was the furthest issue from my mind as I turned and glared.

"Will you relax!? There is nothing here that can hurt you! It was probably just a piece of paper fluttering up from us walking and creating a breeze!"

"N-no!"

She was actually on the verge of tears shaking like a leaf when Kloey came around and held her.

"T-there were fingers! I f-felt at least two fingers brush my ankle!"

"There is literally no possible-"

"👇📫♒♏⚪◽📬📬📬"

((H-help...))

The girls screamed again but I panicked, wingdings, I knew them well given the fact that it was the only other language I knew and the only language Daddy and Uncle Papy knew besides English. He taught me that it was our family's language and I loved that I knew it. To the human hear it probably sounded like jumbled up backwards talking but to me it sounded like...home.

"🕈☟⚐ ✋💧 ❄☟☜☼☜?"

((Who is there?))

"Winny...w-what are you doing!? H-how do you know that it's staying!?"

Macie grabbed my arm shaking me but I yanked free as Nicole answered for me as I stepped away slowly towards the voice.

"You guys don't talk to her as much as I do or have...Winny's first language isn't English obviously since she's a monster kid. It's Wingdings."

"Wingdings?"

At least Kloey was calm as Nicole contiuned.

"Its just a language for her, her Dad and Uncle. From what she's told me no one else knows it."

No one else was suppose to know it so that's why hearing it here in the lab was just as terrifying. Did Daddy find out and come to cut us off and get hurt? But that...voice didn't sound like his. It was deeper and in pain or just so low on magic it hurt.

"👍✌☠ ✡⚐🕆 ✌☠💧🕈☜☼ 💣☜✍"

((Can you answer me?))

"✡📫✡☜💧"

((Y-yes))

I could feel coldness sliding up my back like a hand aiming for my neck as I released the bone letting it float further ahead illuminating close to the ground and finding someone I never knew, never saw even amongest the other monsters and I wondered if Daddy or Uncle Pap knew him. I thought they were also the only skeleton monsters around yet the ones laying on the floor on his back looking like he got ran over by a truck. His skull had cracks in it that seemed old so at least they weren't something to worry about. There were holes in his hands that layed limp on the ground scuffed up slightly from where he had fallen and dirt all over his clothes. He was a mess but he was alive who ever it was.

"✡📫✡⚐🕆 ✌☼☜📬📬📬☟🕆💣✌☠"

((Y-you are...human))

"☟✌☹☞ ☟🕆💣✌☠ 👌🕆❄ ✡☜💧📬 ✋💣 ☝⚐✋☠☝ ❄⚐ ☟☜☹🏱 ✡⚐🕆 ⚐😐✌✡✍"

((Half human but yes. I'm going to help you okay?))

He looked so weak and I think I saw just a bit of annoyance in his eye sockets as they looked me over but he was definitely not in a position to deny any help regardless.

"Winny..."

Nicole stepped closer laying her hand on my shoulder as she knelt down at my side.

"Sorry but, can you really help him?"

"Yeah I can...I have too. Sorry guys, tour is cut off early either way it seems."

I could hear Macie grumble as Kloey only nodded as I turned my attention back to the skeleton who's breaths came out as pained groans. Hovering my hands over his chest not knowing fully where he was actually hurt a soft green glow emitted slowly whisping around my skin and floated down into his shirt towards the bones hidden behind it.

"Whats that? Is that...your magic?"

Macie came towards me slowly probably wanting to be closer to the light it gave off yet still far enough from the unknown monster so it couldn't touch her.

"Its healing magic that Uncle Pap taught me. He's alot better at using it though so what ever I'm able to do can probably only be enough to make him more conscious."

His head rolled to look at me more directly from the corner of my eye as I looked up to Nicole with slight frown.

"I guess you should have stolen your mom's phone after all for this adventure."

"Yeah...but hey, at least we can all help carry him out if he can't walk."

I was glad Nicole was so nice and was a human that would prefer to befriend all the monsters then be scared or disgusted by them unlike some other people I knew.

"🏱🚩✌🏱🚩📬📬📬👎⚐ ✡⚐🕆 💣☜✌☠📪 🏱🚩✌🚩🏱✡☼🕆💧✍."

((Pap...do you mean Papyrus?))

I met his eye sockets with a small smile and nod.

"☟☜ ✋💧 💣✡ 🕆☠👍☹☜📬 👎⚐ ✡⚐🕆 😐☠⚐🕈 ☟✋💣✍"

((He is my uncle. Do you know him?))

His sockets widened noticeably enough as it seemed he was finally looking at me for real, his once fuzzy and unfocused eye lights steady.

"☟☜ ✋💧 💣✡ 💧⚐☠"

((He is my son))

"What?..."

I couldn't even answer back in wingdings feeling his words jump around my head with how for sure he just spoke them. Neither of them ever talked about their parents; I asked Daddy alot when I was younger if I had any grandparent's even and now that I thought on all the interacts he always seemed sad or confused. Like he tried to remember fully but he just...wasn't able too. And he seemed so quick to contiune adding on to the shock some more.

"Papyrus...and Sans...they are my sons...I haven't seen them for, a very long time I think."

"You think?"

He groaned getting the strength suddenly to move wanting to sit up as I stopped the magic and helped him to move till he could lean back against some boxes.

"You may not know much about healing magic...but it's stronger then you think..."

"So it's...helping?"

"Yes...thank you."

I was relieved that I was doing enough to help him and knew I could focus on the new information that still wasn't fully connecting.

"So you're their Dad...they never, talked about you..."

He hummed softly closing his sockets leaning his head back flexing his phalanges and moving his legs around like he was testing their function. Kloey, Nicole and Macie all sat around and behind me like backup incase something happened even if they couldn't do anything even if it did.

"What is your name?"

"Tell me yours and I'll share mine."

He chuckled some opening one eye that swirled with purple magic similar to my own.

"I don't even have to check your soul to know you are Sans daughter...he was always one to be suspicious of others on first meeting...my name is W.D. Gaster...and yours?"

"Winny Font...and these are my friends Nicole, Kloey and Macie."

"Friends?"

He scanned them over probably checking them, his eye lights lingered on Macie probably seeing the fact that was defiantly not the type of soul to befriend someone like me.

"Interesting."