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dashielldeveron · 1 year ago

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soulmate trope | dabi

Dabi’s route of soulmate trope.

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

~27.7k

You’re being watched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

These…these feelings weren’t yours.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Distinctly not yours.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aizawa scowled. “Stop that.”

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

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

***

So, of course, you told everyone.

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

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

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

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

And he’s gone, link severed.

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

***

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Never mind. Now you have never wanted to be—

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

Kill. Destroy. Maim. Eviscerate, even.

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

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

May all his potato wedges burn.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, in general—”

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

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

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

The connection cut at the faint suggestion of intrigue.

***

YOU

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

YOU

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

TODOROKI 💅🎏

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

SERO 🧃🍊

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

SHINSOU 💜🍡

want me to add him?

YOU

would that be okay, todoroki?

TODOROKI 💅🎏

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

SHINSOU 💜🍡

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

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Midoriya CANNOT sit next to me

MONOMA 🔇🎭

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

MONOMA 🔇🎭

He CANNOT shut up

YOU

WHOMST won’t shut up??????

SERO 🧃🍊

don’t worry no one will sit next to you

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Good

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Wait

TODOROKI 💅🎏

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

His thumb inched up to press into your lower lip.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You have enough going on?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Where the hell are you right now?”

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

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

“Does it matter?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your eye twitched.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Dabi had been your first kiss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Some hero you are.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

Todoroki paused the episode when the pizza arrived.

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

“No.”

“In your dreams.”

“Yikes.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stop apologising.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Not how they look?”

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

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

What? “Of course not. Why?”

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

“I’m sorry?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What do you—”

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

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

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

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

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

“No one likes me—”

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

“Stop fucking noticing things about—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sexually? Romantically?”

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

Start small, you supposed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

He stood behind the couch for three more episodes.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What are you going to watch next?”

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

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

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

“You are such a fucking child—”

“You want a pikachu, don’t you?”

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

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

“No, I—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Stop, I can only get so hard—”

“Show me your cock, then.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Ffffffuck that.I ain’t shy—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You’re better.”

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

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

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

But something was wrong. “Touya?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

TOUYA 🐠🚷

looked it up. definition of babygirl does NOT help

TOUYA 🐠🚷

incidentally

TOUYA 🐠🚷

what should a guy wear to impress someone

YOU

a guy? or you specifically?

YOU

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

TOUYA 🐠🚷

gloves necessary.

TOUYA 🐠🚷

but think formal. formal setting.

YOU

why are YOU going to a formal event?

TOUYA 🐠🚷

have to. blackmail/family obligation/rent.

TOUYA 🐠🚷

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

YOU

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

TOUYA 🐠🚷

you just wanna see my cock, don’t cha

YOU

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

TOUYA 🐠🚷

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

YOU

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

TOUYA 🐠🚷

…

TOUYA 🐠🚷

no, I shan’t say

YOU

is this a cum joke

TOUYA 🐠🚷

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

YOU

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

TOUYA 🐠🚷

i what

TOUYA 🐠🚷

wait what do you MEAN it doesn’t matter

YOU

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

TOUYA 🐠🚷

it does not.

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Whose future are you deciding, here?”

Your Touya. He was here?

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

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

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

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

“Can you see?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

The hand touching it has skin grafts.

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

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

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

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

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

(In your heart of hearts, you had known.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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haptronym · 1 month ago

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Hap's Adventures in Dadmight

aka “this experience was really strange so I’m going to write 6,000 words about it”.

Fandoms are bizarre. I know this, but I still keep doing the shocked Pikachu face whenever I join a new one.

This time around, I really thought there would be no surprises. And yet, the fandom ended up having a really weird, really uncomfortable dynamic that confused the hell out of me for a long time. I met several others who said “Yeah, it freaks me out too,” but they couldn’t explain exactly why, and nobody really wanted to talk about it. So now that I’m mostly done with the My Hero Academia fandom, I’ll just go ahead and vaporize my bridges with a whole-ass case study about what on earth seemed to be going on here.

Warning: very long, very self-absorbed, as usual. Contains discussions of relationships, underage shippers, and how to influence whether something “feels” platonic vs. not.

Disclaimer 1: This doesn't apply to everything tagged "Dadmight." Just a select subset. But this subset appeared pretty consistently.

Disclaimer 2: I'm posting brief, fair-use-commentary examples of the content that made me question my sanity because it has to be seen to be believed, but I'm not including names or links because I don’t want to easily funnel negativity to them. If an author really wants me to, I’m happy to link directly to their story.

Disclaimer 3: I’m not trying to “spread awareness” or do a callout. I just like to write for fun and this time the fun was puzzling out why I, personally, had the experience I did. Many people feel differently and that's great. If all fluff has always felt 100% wonderful and charming to you, then this post isn't relevant to you. But if a supposedly "cute" story has ever made you squirm with discomfort, this might help explain why.

A few years ago, I took a terribly wrong turn in life and ended up in the My Hero Academia fandom. My kidnappers were these two:

In short: the little kid on the left, Izuku Midoriya, is exactly as dorky as he looks. He was born powerless in a world of comic-book superheroes and has a tendency to burst into tears under any possible circumstance. The series kicks off when the guy on the right, #1 hero and national celebrity All Might, sees potential in him despite all this. In a fit of inspiration, All Might decides to give Izuku the same chance he was given as a young boy. Despite being a notorious lone wolf, he (secretly) names Izuku as his successor and takes it upon himself to covertly train this weepy, noodle-limbed wimp into a hero, the hero, the next Symbol of Peace who will wield the world’s strongest superpower and safeguard the future of society. Surely they’ll pull it off just fine, right?

(Don’t ask how All Might switches from a bodybuilder to the skeleton pictured above. The show doesn’t know either.)

I loved these two. I wanted eight seasons of beach training montage. The mentor/student shenanigans were hilarious and the found family potential was off the charts. They’re two awkward bumbling fools with several truckfuls of emotional baggage, brought together by purehearted heroic zeal. Wonderful.

However, I quickly discovered that the show shoveled approximately ten thousand new characters into every new episode and definitely wasn't going to slow down long enough to give me the All Might & Izuku content I craved. So I wandered off to see what kind of fanfiction was on tap.

...I wandered off, while bracing myself. I’ve been a weeb long enough to know that any characters who pass on power through “DNA” are never going to escape a fandom unscathed, regardless of pesky things like “Age Of Consent” and “Have You Watched A Single Minute Of This Show, He Would Never Fucking Do That”.

Their canon relationship is impressively alarming all on its own:

Izuku is 14-15. Underage character? Check.

All Might is 55+. Enormous age gap? Check.

All Might is both Izuku’s secret mentor and his high school teacher. Teacher-student dynamics? Check.

Izuku is a nobody. All Might is a global celebrity. Staggering power imbalance? Check.

Izuku’s superpower, which lets him go to the school of his dreams, accomplish his lifelong goals, and be the protagonist of this show, was given to him by All Might at great personal cost. Enormous sense of debt and obligation because of a huge sacrifice? Check.

Izuku is an outright fanboy. His room is full of posters and figurines of All Might in spandex. Other characters frequently comment on how obsessed he is. There is a whole plotline about him being so starstruck by All Might that he can’t think for himself. Literal hero worship? Check.

As the cherry on top, they spend most of the story pretending they don’t know each other and sneak around under the noses of every other character, including Izuku's mother. Secret hidden relationship with a minor that no other adult can learn the true extent of? Check.

What a pair. Japanese fandom constantly cracks jokes about how Izuku is probably that kind of fanboy. Even official media is well aware of how sketchy it all looks:

With all this in play, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the stuff in their platonic-relationship fanfiction tag vastly outnumbered the stuff in their shipping one. Phew. Finally, a pair of characters who got something besides endless gross hornyposting.

As I browsed, I kept seeing a certain tag: "Dadmight." This, unsurprisingly, was used by stories that decided to make All Might into Izuku’s biological father. But it was also used by... pretty much all non-shipping media that focused on their relationship. How interesting! I was used to ship pairings having nicknames, but not platonic ones.

I could imagine why the name caught on. All Might was practically the definition of "goofy wholesome dad energy,” and his mentor/student relationship with Izuku was easy to see in a parental light. Plus, Izuku’s actual dad is never to be seen during the story. Clearly he deserves a replacement.

So I delved in. Man, this was going to be great! A huge amount of good clean platonic content, with an easy-to-find tag too. Reading about cute dadly shenanigans was going to be such a fun-

How he would love to fall asleep to the sound of his soft voice and the touch of his rough hands, telling him he was proud of him, caressing his hair. He was so mortified over having this need, for all kinds of reasons, but it became clear a long time ago that fighting it wouldn’t work, so he let himself dream.

Uh... well... Izuku didn’t grow up with a dad, so... maybe he needed a father figure... to... caress his hair with his rough hands...

More hums of contentment make their way from him, his body swaying with every push and pull from Toshinori’s long fingers. He uses them to massage Midoriya’s head, taking every moment to not just clean his hair, but to make him feel good; Toshinori can’t bear for this to be purely utilitarian.

Uhhh... okay... All Might was a rather isolated guy. I bet he appreciated being able to share time with his student... bathing time...

What if the boy would rather this stay simply as it has been, professional as mentor and mentee? What if Toshinori has read all of this wrong and the boy has no feelings above Toshinori being his teacher, and all Toshinori has done is fall harder and harder for him every day?

What was this? What exactly did people think kids got up to with their dads!?

Well, maybe I just found a few of the strange ones, I told myself. Fanfiction always has its odd outliers. But after more searching, I realized: no. There was wildly uncomfortable stuff all over. It wasn’t all Dadmight stories. But it was a lot. The most popular authors of the “Dadmight” tag wrote it and the rest of the Dadmight authors gave them big thumbs-ups. It was at least as popular as the “All Might is Izuku’s real dad” stuff and sat at the top of the kudos and comments sorting.

Were people just being polite? Or was I overreacting? I know how annoying it is when people deliberately take things in bad faith and demonize perfectly innocent human affectio—

He kept the contact to a minimum, not wanting to take advantage, not wanting to cross a single, unspoken boundary… but how could he possibly completely refrain, with both how proud and how worried Izuku made him?

There was a voice, in the back of his head, that didn’t agree. That voice – either logic or wishful thinking – told him that while Izuku didn’t initiate physical affection, he surely did lean into it, and seemed to crave receiving it as much as Toshinori craved giving it.

Oh god oh god oh god what is happening STOP—

This was horrible. I just wanted to enjoy cute fluff. I’d never had this reaction to platonic fanfic before. I’m a big found family fan and my worst issue with fluff is usually just that it tends to be kind of samey. I normally love reading about chaste affection and closeness between characters who care about each other. So why did these stories read like Lolita AUs to me? Did shippers in this fandom like to hide their softcore stuff in the platonic tags?

I was soon able to find out. I had been writing my own All Might & Izuku story, and got invited to a “Dadmight-centric” Discord server. Almost all the popular Dadmight authors were there, including the ones who wrote the particular stories that made my skin crawl. There were several channels where people brainstormed, critiqued, and discussed the motivations behind their writing.

Cool! I’d be able to meet new people, make some friends, and get a better understanding of what the Dadmight dynamic really was. So I introduced myself, I chatted, I lurked. Everyone was really nice.

I found zero cheeky shippers. The writers claimed to be horrified by the idea of shipping the two of them. They would never disrespect the purity and innocence of this beautiful platonic relationship, they said, as they churned out stories about Izuku “coming undone” under the caress of All Might’s rough hands. Right...

I could’ve understood if this was coming from naive 14-year-olds. But some of these people were in their 30’s, with kids of their own. If anyone understood family dynamics, it should’ve been them.

But after I spent more time around the server, I began to notice something else... something which explained a ton of the strangeness.

Baby Fever

To understand what was happening, you first have to understand that Izuku’s baby face inflicts instant brain damage on sight. I mean, look at him:

aaa his cute widdle cheeks oh my god—

This kid sets off maternal instincts like landmines, and in the Dadmight server, I found that the Izuku infantilization train had gone completely off the rails. Writers constantly cooed over the adorable antics of 2, 3, 5-year olds and constantly talked about how much they wanted to make Izuku act them out. And surely, if All Might could indulge in the parental joy of caring for an innocent young babe, then his emotional scars would be healed and he could find fulfillment outside of that pesky “saving the world” business.

Now, the bio-dadmight folks had it easy: they just wrote about Izuku in his toddler years playing with daddy All Might. The cuddling and tickles made sense and were very cute. But other writers faced a challenge: they wanted to keep him 14-15 so that canon events could occur... but they didn’t want to be left out of the fun.

So... they decided to rationalize and egg each other on. I mean, how much does age really matter? Being a child at heart is always cute and wholesome, right?

Suddenly, a whole lot of very uncomfortable things began to make sense:

So Much Physical Contact

He loved the physical touch. It was embarrassing and he would never admit it out loud, but there wasn’t much in this world he loved more than receiving physical affection from his idol. Every single time it happened he would save the memory to replay it over and over again whenever he felt sad, or almost every night before he went to bed. He was glad no one in the dorms had a mind-reading quirk. And All Might always gave it more freely when he visited his apartment, so of course he went there.

Izuku is often written to have a near-pathological craving for hair stroking and cuddles. Which is cute when directed at, say, classmates or mom, but gets real weird real fast when directed at the adult man he canonically idolizes to a freakish degree. Ever work with teenage boys? Most of them would rather die than be physically affectionate with adults, even parents... unless, you know, they’re that kind of fanboy.

Even freakier is that the grown adult would then reply, “Hell yeah! I see nothing wrong with getting physical with this kid who worships me! I crave it so much! I can't resist!” Ever work at a school? They have rulebooks and seminars specifically about how teachers should never touch or be alone with kids.

Then again, Midnight exists at this school. Maybe U.A.’s infamous lack of safety standards extends to this too.

Either way, though: cute and wholesome for a parent to do with their three-year-old. Very creepy when a high-school teacher makes excuses about why he really needs to cuddle and stroke his fifteen-year-old student in secret.

Narcolepsy Xtreme Edition

His student was never this affectionate or vulnerable when he was conscious, so he enjoyed the moment, even if it was a short one, as he moved to his room upstairs.

If you’ve read fanfiction for more than seven seconds, you’ve probably seen the “cram the character with booze/painkillers until they blurt out Vulnerable Things” plot device. It’s a beloved classic. But Izuku writers are robbed of the alcohol angle since he’s underage, and morphine is pretty niche. So authors who want to use this trick often just make Izuku tired after a long day, conclude that being sleepy is close enough to being five drinks in, and have him murmur “thanks, DAD... OOPS DID I SAY THAT OUT LOUD???” to awkwardly segue into Familial Confessions.

But quite a few stories took the “sleepy” angle to a new, very odd place. Instead of groggily dispensing convenient confessions, Izuku would just... keel over while doing homework and be utterly dead to the world. And instead of having All Might briefly rouse him to shoo him to bed, or worry about his student suddenly becoming catatonic, the writers would make him eerily fixated on the opportunity to physically carry Izuku to his bedroom (which would somehow not wake him up!!!) and tuck him in while waxing poetic about how vulnerable and helpless he looked.

Before joining the Dadmight server, I was mildly alarmed whenever I saw this, wondering why so many authors were obsessed with roofying the teenager and making the adult fondle him. But after joining, I realized: they were just trying to act out the cutesy aww-the-two-year-old-fell-sound-asleep-while-playing, it’s-so-cute scenes that all those darned lucky bio-dadmight people got to indulge in so easily.

Bed Sharing

It wasn’t long before Izuku’s breathing slowed, and soon he was asleep, snoring peacefully. Toshinori, after a few minutes of debating with himself, said screw it and got into the bed with the boy.

Cue me SCREAMING internally in confusion and fear. But no, it was just that the cutesy-kid-trope obsession stretched all the way to “Well, I used to snuggle with my parents at night after I had a nightmare! It was super wholesome!” Which led to scores of stories featuring a celebrity crawling into bed with his student.

All in all, joining this server was a huge relief. I was so glad to see that these hair-raising scenarios were just the result of the authors forgetting to mention “Oh, by the way, the characters are acting weird because we made them all agree to participate in preschooler roleplay.”

Just picture this while reading and it all makes sense.

Fanfic is uniquely susceptible to this sort of “forgot to mention this strange dynamic that I take for granted” issue. After all, 99% of fanfic doesn’t bother to waste time asking “would this make any sense to someone who had never watched the show?” It’s not worth it to focus on such a broad audience. As a result, fanfic normalizes skipping huge swaths of context that would normally be mandatory in a story. Fanfic authors don’t have to practice asking themselves “did I explain this properly?” anywhere near as often as original fiction ones.

This would be bad enough on its own, but then, we go cloister ourselves away into little sub-fandom echo chambers, and spend months crafting obscure in-joke fractals, and get so absorbed in our tiny myopic corners of the community that we also fail to ask, “would this make any sense to someone who hasn’t spent the last 5 months marinating in this specific Discord channel?”

Sometimes we know exactly how niche our stuff is and just don’t care. But too often, we just legitimately suck at guessing how our work might come off to other groups. We don’t have to practice theory of mind as much as original fiction authors do. Our fandom buddies see nothing amiss with our writing (since they know all the server insider lore!) and everyone outside our tiny clique politely ignores our word salad... so we never get proper feedback on how incomprehensible our work can be even to other members of the same fandom.

In this case, this resulted in a whole pack of writers seemingly getting lost in the fluff sauce and completely forgetting to address the fact that the stuff men do with their own five-year-olds generally becomes really weird and creepy when done with someone else’s 15-year-old, whether or not the 15-year-old seems to want it. Izuku was a cute widdle innocent baby in their heads, so they assumed he was a cute widdle innocent baby in everyone else's.

Once I realized where they were coming from, it wasn't so hard to adjust my mental framework and enjoy these stories on their own terms. That said... infantilization still couldn't explain stuff like “What if Toshinori has read all of this wrong and the boy has no feelings above Toshinori being his teacher, and all Toshinori has done is fall harder and harder for him every day?”

To explain why that paragraph makes me want to crawl out of my skin, we first need to answer: what makes a piece of writing feel “questionable?”

“Vibes,” A Primer

Love comes in many forms. The big four are platonic, familial, romantic, and sexual. Sexual is easy: you’re horny for the person. Platonic love is specifically non-sexual, and familial love is a subset of platonic love. Romance usually implies horny, though there’s definitely a difference between outright sexual behavior and the behavior we file under the “romance” label.

There’s also a difference between romantic and platonic behavior. And this is where a lot of “questionable” vibes appear: when you’d expect an interaction between two people to be platonic, but for some reason, it has uncomfortable romantic/sexual overtones instead.

But what causes those overtones? A dad can give his kid a kiss on the head, and it comes off platonic. A suitor can give their crush a kiss on the head, and it comes off romantic. In fact, most romantic gestures have nearly identical platonic counterparts. Kissing, hugging, hand-holding, cuddling, vulnerable confessions. So what gives? What makes something “come off” one way or the other?

The actual answer is: a ton of stuff, most of it subjective. Everyone draws their lines in different places, based on culture and personal experience and how gutterbrained you’re feeling on any given day. A lot of it has to do with context (that thing that us fanfic authors are notoriously bad at judging).

Online wars are fought every day about whether some glance or gesture or phrase means they're "totally into each other fr"

But if you want to draw broad strokes, one way to roughly separate platonic vs romantic love is by gauging the level of passion involved. “Passion” is “a strong and barely controllable emotion that compels action.” That last part is key.

Stereotypical romantic love is incredibly passionate. It’s all about desire to act, desire to change, desire to progress the relationship to something more. It features overwhelming anxious preoccupation about the other person’s thoughts and opinions, feeling irresistibly drawn to them, feeling intense longing. It’s about confessing and hoping the other person also feels the same. It often involves attempting to label the relationship, make it “official”, and show it off. It’s about trying desperately to secure assurance that this love will last forever and ever. You have to do something, and every moment spent not doing something is torture.

Contrast this to typical depictions of platonic and familial love. Familial love is calm, encompassing, soothing. It’s secure. You don’t have to worry, because no matter what rough patches you go through, they’ll always be your family and will always have unconditional love for you. Yes, you’ll fly into action if your loved one is threatened, but at rest, platonic love is generally not “exciting” and there’s generally little sense of urgency.

Romance is usually an insecure, anxious thing that’s trying to get to that secure, grounded familial stage. That’s why people say they progress from being “in love” to just “loving” one another. Romance draws people together and kickstarts the bonding process. And as the steady, mature bond of a long-term relationship forms, the obsessive mania of romantic infatuation fades away.

So the difference between platonic and romantic behavior is not so much about the actual actions. It’s more about the mentality. Is the person anxiously trying to secure their partner’s affection while treating the relationship as a really big deal that will make or break their lives? Then their affectionate actions may come off more romantic. Are they seemingly at home in their partner’s presence and not trying to deepen or change the relationship? Then their affection will probably come off more familial or platonic.

There are, of course, a ton of things that go into it besides this, and caveats out the ass. For example, people trying to establish a new friendship are often anxious too. But when it comes to determining the “vibes” of a kiss or a cuddle, this can be a useful litmus test. Failing this test is often what makes something feel Questionable. The characters seem too invested... maybe because it's not truly innocent.

Now, let’s take a look at our Dadmight characters.

The biggest challenge of writing familial closeness between Izuku and All Might is simple: they are not family. They have no long shared history to justify any sort of intimacy. Instead they have a teacher/student relationship that places them both into rigid, frigid roles.

Usually, familial-style bonding just takes time. You wait a few seasons, the characters slowly get closer and learn to trust one another, and eventually they’re hugging. But these two clowns spent the whole show being the ultimate found-family blue-balls experience. They were just never very emotionally open or touchy-feely. Every time they had the chance for Vulnerable Conversation And Cuddles, they passed it up in favor of a pep talk and a fist bump. It took a near-death experience to extract one (1) brief hug and some tears. But in normal everyday life? Arm’s length.

Literally. For example: after five seasons of bonding and character development, they are separated and Izuku is embroiled in a deadly conflict that almost destroys the world. When they finally reunite after the harrowing ordeal, alone under the starlight, they greet each other with a loving, heartfelt… handshake. This, predictably, spawned furious fix-it fic.

Overall, there is a huge gulf that authors need to cross in order to get these two from “polite handshake” to “tender cuddling and kisses.” They could write 50,000 words of setup to slowly accomplish this, but most authors did not want to wear their fingertips to the bone just to inch these two into an embrace. They wanted to jump the gap within a oneshot, leaping from canon frigidity into an unbreakable lifelong familial love that was also super touchy-feely and extremely vocal.

Now, remember what I was just saying? How romance is generally about trying to establish new family bonds? How it’s all about trying to change the relationship into something more?

Knowing all this, what do you think might happen if an author tried to speedrun two characters to the Family Finish Line as fast as they could? What do you think their shortcuts might end up looking like, completely by accident? Especially if their “sane and appropriate human interactions” gauge was warped by an echo chamber of fluff tropes and baby fever?

You might get:

Was it even possible that his feelings could be reciprocated? Toshinori didn’t want to think about it. It would just pain him more. Young Midoriya only saw him as an idol, a mentor who would help him train his body for One for All. Midoriya did not see him in the way he wanted him to.

Or:

He wanted desperately, desperately to have the courage to cross that threshold, to ask him what he longed for, to ask him for that relationship that he dared not voice.

Or even:

Toshinori feels his heart rate pick up and his gnarled stomach twist with nerves. Is he really going to do this? Is he going to tell this boy what he truly thinks and risk everything they’ve built up together over the past year-plus? His palms are sweating and he wipes them on his suit pants, rubbing the pads of his fingers together.

I'll stop now. The point is that these quotes could all have been word-for-word ripped from a romance novel. These are some industrial-grade Questionable Vibes. And reading them in context really doesn't help that much, for me at least. It's almost comical when they throw in "...I crave the touch of your rough hands as a son! A SON!"

If you know the building blocks of romance, it makes perfect sense why stories like this could come off this way. Platonic love is great, but it’s also stable, calm, and slow. It simply doesn’t have the sheer explosive force needed to catapult two stilted dorks into a brand-new dynamic within 2,000 words. Most stories can only achieve that kind of mileage via near-death experiences... or by inflicting the characters with neurotic infatuation.

Not only that, but their canon relationship is uniquely poised to set off romance-adjacent warning bells. Because they are not actually family, it makes sense for them to yearn for a deeper relationship in a way that a normal family wouldn’t. It makes sense for them to be anxious and insecure about their relationship, because it’s a very strange, hard-to-define thing that has to be kept secret from those around them. And it makes sense for them to consider their relationship a huge deal, because in canon, it’s fundamental to the most important aspects of both their lives.

I actually think it’s kind of inevitable that their character dynamic will sometimes stray into places that feel romantic. But that doesn’t mean the writer is a secret shipper... because I don’t think that passion always has to imply sexual desire, especially in fiction.

I’ve spent some time around the asexuality community, and my biggest takeaway was that sexual desire is very different from the desire to make deep, lifelong connections. Most asexual people still yearned to find that special someone, their anchor, a partner who unconditionally loved them and would stay by their side forever. Family. They would fall for people... they just didn’t want to fall into their pants. But it was almost impossible to keep these partners unless they were asexual too. Every one eventually pushed to “take things further,” or they left to find another person who would.

So I can understand the yearning for a world where sex is kicked to the curb, where two strangers can find each other and share intense, whirlwind, “you’re my #1” love... without any lewd overtones. This little pocket of stories seemed like a manifestation of that yearning.

Nowadays, more and more stories are taking previously romance-exclusive intimacy and yanking off the sexual baggage. For example, looking on the Dadmight tag will reveal “platonic soulmates” and “platonic hanahaki” stories. Yes, platonic hanahaki. No, not parody. There’s a clear unironic market for this content. People really want to be able to indulge in passionate, “till death do us part” emotional bonding in a safe, nonsexual way.

All Might and Izuku sit in a unique place. Not related, but powerfully linked by something thicker than blood. And their relationship is easy to paint as “safe”. It makes perfect sense that these two would attract creators who want to explore this hard-to-define chaste side of passionate love.

In real life, passionate obsessive-style attraction between adults and kids is a huge red flag. We can never really know whether those feelings are innocent or healthy. 99% of the time, they’re not. But in fiction, the author gets to choose what people really feel and whether things turn out well. They can explore the most unbelievable scenario of all: not a world where everyone is a mermaid, but a world where it’s actually wholesome and healing for a high school teacher and his student to confess their deep, undying love for one another, where a famous celebrity can secretly invite his obsessed underage fan over, stroke his hair, tell him how special their relationship is, and sleep with him in bed, without it ending up on Law and Order: SVU.

On Critique

“Hap,” you might be thinking, “surely these stories can’t be as bad as you say. If they were, someone would have pointed it out to these poor souls. You should have pointed it out to these poor souls. You were in their writing server for chrissakes, and now you’re gossiping about them like a heartless goblin.”

First: yes, I'm a goblin. Second: I did bring this topic up to several Dadmight authors one-on-one. After getting a bunch of head-in-sand excuses in response, I decided to just quietly munch popcorn and watch the fandom’s antics unfold like a slow-motion train wreck.

Third: people did try to point this stuff out.

It was fascinating to watch the Dadmight server whenever someone posted a comment expressing concern. Some comments were trolls trying to get a reaction, of course. But others were very gentle: “hey, isn't it kind of weird to have them hop into bed together? It comes off kind of shippy...” I learned that the reason I had never seen comments like these in the past was because they were usually quickly deleted by the fic authors.

After deleting a comment, the author would often flee to the server for reassurance. The other users would agree that the commenter was definitely in the wrong, since they could see absolutely nothing questionable about the writer’s story. Someone would inevitably chime in saying that, oh, one time they got a comment calling things questionable like that, and it turned out to be from a shipper who shipped bad things. So, you know, anyone who sees shipping in things is probably just a bad person.

Phew. Crisis averted. If you can successfully paint the critic as a bad person, then there’s no need to descend into existentialist dread as you’re forced to critically reexamine the foundational concepts of your writing and your grasp on relationship dynamics.

(Credit where credit is due: one of the rules of this particular server was not to bash or insult people who like things you don't like. In most groups this is followed with an unspoken "...unless you can clutch your pearls over it", but to my surprise, when stuff like the above started kicking off, the moderators did step in to remind people to keep it civil. So, good job, mods. More maturity than I usually see in online spaces.)

But still, if anyone actually bothers to read this long screed, I already know what certain responses are going to look like. They’ll smugly assert that people who see questionable things are just sex-obsessed weirdos, projecting their icky lewd thoughts onto every innocent interaction they come across. A morally pure person wouldn’t make such gross assumptions.

I’m familiar with this kind of response because I’ve spent a lot of time around another group that responds the exact same way to these kinds of concerns. That group is known as fundamentalist Christians, and their attitude fosters three things:

People are afraid to speak out when they feel uncomfortable, because they don't want to be accused of being dirty-minded.

People fail to learn the ground rules of normal romance/sexuality and so fail to recognize red flags.

The community is absolutely infested with creeps who take advantage of points 1 and 2 to run rampant.

Sadly, these three things also seem to be true in the Dadmight community. Being a platonic pairing, it naturally attracts people uninterested in and inexperienced with romantic/sexual relationships. And then the vitriolic, derisive responses to people’s concerns teaches them that it’s wrong to bring up those topics around the community at all.

And so, point 3 blooms. I eventually confirmed that my initial suspicions were correct: shippers did camp in the Dadmight tag, and they got away with posting some impressively brazen softcore underage content in public, presumably because even the people who were suspicious knew that going “hey now” would trigger a circular firing squad.

The Dadmight community wasn’t clueless about this problem. They were incredibly paranoid as a whole. They knew there were bad actors lurking in their tag, but since they had disabled all their own safety alarms and expanded the definition of “platonic” to a ridiculous extreme, they had no way of being able to determine what was shipping and what was not until characters started actively whipping their dicks out. I saw constant fretting over whether it was okay to click the “like” button on an affectionate-looking piece of fanart without knowing for sure the intentions of the creator. But asking intentions was pointless anyway, since shippers just lied to them and then laughed as the platonic group eagerly ate up their evil, dirty-minded content.

I get why these “wait, that feels shippy...” comments feel like attacks. It’s fucking awful when your intentions are pure but someone interprets them in such a horrifying, disgusting way. It feels disrespectful when you clearly label something “platonic” but people still doubt.

But remember: Going from “mentor” to “dad” with these two generally means breaking down normal boundaries, to escalate the emotional and physical intimacy between an authority figure and a starstruck, needy, vulnerable kid, because they have such a special and unique bond that no one else understands. So special, in fact, that it needs to be kept secret from the public.

In real life, this scenario is known as Groomer Tactics 101.

Seriously, stop and read that link. It’s short and non-explicit. This is why I called their canon relationship “impressively alarming”—the bullet points of stages 1-3 describe Izuku and All Might nearly word-for-word. This does not mean I’m claiming All Might is a groomer, or that Izuku and All Might’s relationship is bad. Just that, due to their circumstances, they happen to have all the building blocks of relationships that go horribly wrong. All that separates their scenario from tumbling into Bad is the goals of the adult. So when a fanfic then comes along and makes the adult suddenly really interested in excessive touching? And the only reason he gives is “I’m weirdly drawn to this kid and touching them feels really good”? Of course people will get nervous!

Noticing this does not mean someone is “obsessed with shipping”. It means they’re a normal human being with eyes. Accusing someone of being problematic for making the most obvious possible observations about adult/child interactions is like accusing someone of being an arsonist because they embarrassed you by pointing out that your homemade backyard fireworks setup is halfassed and dangerous.

This does not mean it’s wrong to write wish-fulfillment where escalating to bed cuddles actually turns out great and awesome. But it does mean that, if an author writes it ignorantly or carelessly, they risk coming off like they’re glorifying and normalizing Groomer Tactics 101. It’s the same as when careless Twilight fans glorify and normalize stuff that, in real life, is abusive controlling boyfriend behavior.

Yes, it sucks when people come and yuck the yum. I’m sure the Twilight fans also get sick of people who complain and demonize them instead of letting them write their vampire boyfriend fantasies in peace. But the concern usually comes from a well-meaning place.

Proudly announcing “I ignore the most basic child/adult red flags because they ruin my fun” is not the flex that some people think it is. I highly recommend people reconsider before they try to paint anti-child-groomers as the bad guys.

The Recipe

So, let’s summarize how to reproduce the Dadmight phenomenon. It starts with a canon relationship that has the most enticing found-family building blocks the world has ever seen: a downtrodden kid who really needs a dad + a lonely heroic mentor. However, their canon relationship also sits on top of a powder keg, coincidentally featuring all the “setup” stages of the sexual grooming model:

a lonely, low-self-esteem kid

singled out by an esteemed, charismatic adult who is a pillar of the community

sharing a “special” relationship

constantly going off alone and keeping secrets

A platonic fan community forms that is blissfully unaware of the above dynamics. They head off to fluff echo chambers, as platonic fans do. But due to the crybaby tendencies of the teenage character, they start projecting really aged-down toddler-play scenarios onto him. Eventually, as echo-chambered fans do, they decide that contextualization is for chumps. This results in fics that take the powder keg and add:

The adult craving to touch and hold the teenager

The teenager craving touch from the adult and mewling like a kitten when his hair is stroked (I’m not fucking joking)

Completely age-inappropriate stuff like stroking, kisses, and sharing a bed with a teenage student

Izuku and All Might also happen to suffer from loneliness and isolation, even more so in their fanon incarnations. This really resonates with most fans, who want to soothe and heal them. They also want to get to the healing cuddles within a few chapters instead of wasting time on super-slow buildup. So they make the two of them really strongly fixate on and angst about the agony of their loneliness, and how the other person’s love is the only cure that will fix them. In doing so, they insert:

Anxious passionate obsession

Love confessions

Coming-out scenes

Craving for exclusive relationship labels

Desire for exclusivity

Lastly, because platonic groups are either uninterested in or too young for spicy content, they tend to have very little experience with romantic/sexual literature and the tropes and catchphrases they lay claim to. So fic writers will innocently sprinkle in poignant-sounding things they’ve picked up here and there, such as:

Blushing and heart racing when looking at the person

The phrase “falling for each other”

The man “caressing” his partner with “rough hands”

“He came undone”

And because their communities condemn people who “read into things”, nobody points out any of this shit, and it all slides out into the public Internet unquestioned.

And so, we get the most impressively uncomfortable platonic content I’ve ever seen. It’s no wonder I had never encountered something like this before. It required a lot of unusual circumstances intersecting in just the right (wrong) way.

In the end, I think the biggest aspect was just that I'd never become a fan of characters that had such a potentially-problematic canon relationship. Usually adult and kid characters have very different dynamics, so if fics treat their social interactions with all the tact of a bull in a china shop, it just comes off as lazy instead of creepy. I'd be interested to know if other platonic adult&child fandoms suffer from this issue.

In any case, although it was fascinating to watch, I sure hope I never run into it again.

#hap pops off about meta narrative #dadmight

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rs8ndead · 3 months ago

Text

❛ Drummer boy ❜

" anyone tell you you’re pretty..? "

── ﹙ 𝜗𝜚 ‧₊˚ MASTERLIST&INFO.﹚. ☆

→﹐ 𓏵﹒ SUMMARY.﹒⟢ ⸻ dating Rodrick <3

→﹐ 𓏵﹒ PAIRING.﹒⟢ ⸻ rodrick heffley x gender neutral reader

→﹐ 𓏵﹒ A/N.﹒⟢ ⸻ comments & reblogs urged⠀·⠀request a bot⠀★☆ I have written all of this out just from the pure boredom that I go through on a constant, daily basis, and because I have am also very touched starved for affection and bored and want to write and I have a constant fuel for writing and for roleplaying, but I have so many google doc’s for my original characters that I have to finish and i wanna get into a friend group without getting to weird and to attached to other people. Anyways I have no brain cells to write a proper sentence nor do I have the proper brain cells to come up with some jaw dropping title that will make people go like “oh wow that’s a super cool title… wish I came up with that title” BUT NOOOOOOO I came up with drummer boy, and it’s going to stay like that for a while until I come up with something better. I’m going to make a bot for these headcanons by the way THEYRE TO GOOD RO NOT MAKE BOTS FOR. Anyways I have to go back to school tomorrow because I accidentally stepped on my glasses and the leg came off and then another day the other leg of my glasses randomly fell off so I almost missed an entire week and now I am being informed I’m going back to school tomorrow so I have to switch bags because I’m not going back to school having a juicy couture bag and a plush backpack while having the face of an abomination because I’ll just look like some weird weeb with an anime fetish and I also have to make a bunch of focuses for my apps so nobody knows my deepest darkest secret: I run a tumblr blog and post headcanons and all that stuff. I have so much on my plate right now but it’s okay. I’m sorry if any of the bots are weird with their replies, IM SORRY😭

→﹐ 𓏵﹒ TAGLIST﹒⟢ ⸻ none ( ;´ - `;)

→﹐ 𓏵﹒ WHO REQUESTED.﹒⟢ ⸻ no one ( ;´ - `;)

🥁 ⸺ Rodrick, who’s like a touch starved puppy, always following his lover around as if he were afraid of losing them if he were to be separated from them.

୨୧ ᵎᵎ ﹐﹒⟡﹒

🥁 ⸺ literal definition of ‘written by a woman’ that’s been mashed up with a touch starved puppy who just wants some belly rubs along with an emo guy. He’ll follow his partner around, offering to carry their stuff and also compliment his partner because LISTENNN. he’s a very yappery type of man when it comes to complimenting his partner, and I think he’d have quite the emotional attachment to his partner

୨୧ ᵎᵎ ﹐﹒⟡﹒

🥁 ⸺ if his partner likes music playing at their birthday parties ( IF HIS PARTNER CELEBRATES THEIR BIRTHDAY ) then Rodrick will make subtle hints at him wanting to have his band perform at his partners birthday party, from nudging their shoulder and stuff, and if his partner doesn’t get the hint then he will practically go on his knees and beg his partner to let him play for their birthday party ( please do, he’ll make it worth it. )

୨୧ ᵎᵎ ﹐﹒⟡﹒

🥁 ⸺ most likely would have the mentality of a freshman attempting to appear cool to the upper grades, he’d try to steal things from stores that his significant other shops at and if he’s confronted about it by his partner he’ll be all like “whattttt?? pschhh.. no, I didn’t stea- yeah I stole.” He can’t help but tell the truth to his partner, he hates lying to them. I MADE A BOT FOR THIS HEADCANON

୨୧ ᵎᵎ ﹐﹒⟡﹒

🥁 ⸺ best. person. to gossip with!! ( if his partners into that ), he’ll probably forget about it almost immediately so don’t worry about him telling others about it, and it’s not like he has people to tell it to ( except for his band mates, who would be brushing him off and be like “he’s in love love😭” )

୨୧ ᵎᵎ ﹐﹒⟡﹒

🥁 ⸺ when he’s hanging out with his band, he’ll sometimes be like “I miss them,” “it’s been what, a few minutes without them?”

୨୧ ᵎᵎ ﹐﹒⟡﹒

🥁 ⸺ I like to think that he would read some very cheesy poetry to his lover from his lovers window, not poetry that he’s came up with be because he’s obviously to dumb for that, but he’ll read some poetry from a poetry book while some flower petals of his partners favorite flowers are scattered all over him and he’d definitely have one of his bandmates Chris or Ben hiding somewhere and spraying water on him to make it seem like it’s raining for it to be very dramatic as he’s busy trying to pronounce words that are out of his vocabulary while the pages are getting wet from the water spraying onto it, because of him looking at the book most of the time while he’s trying to read to his partner sappy love poetry, he looks like a pastor ( he didn’t memorize the poetry which was his plan, but OOPS!!!!!! he didn’t remember. ) I MADE A BOT FOR THIS HEADCANON

୨୧ ᵎᵎ ﹐﹒⟡﹒

🥁 ⸺ he burns cd’s for his partner, 100%, definitely, he’s an emo or either punk guy, NO DOUBT ( I love that band they’re super good but that’s not the point ), his first ever burned cd given to his partner had some cheesy line written on it ( “drowning in your eyes”, thanks to his mom happily helping him make it up ) along with his and his crushes initials and along with the day they would both get together, so for like example: ‘drowning in your eyes: R+V & 2/14/13’ ( my OC’s initial + the day Rodrick and her got together ), and the songs that Rodrick would burn onto the cd would be ‘I’m not okay ( I promise )’, ‘Vampires will never hurt you’ + ‘This is the best day ever’ all by My Chemical Romance, ‘last night on earth’ by Green Day, ‘the middle’ by Jimmy Eat World, along with some favorite songs of his partner that he’s taken the time to learn. HERES THE LINK TO THE PLAYLIST !! & I MADE A BOT FOR THIS HEADCANON

୨୧ ᵎᵎ ﹐﹒⟡﹒

🥁 ⸺ literally like a schoolgirl in love, in private he’s a giggling mess about his partner and kicking his feet up, but quickly switches sides if someone walks in on him and denies over and over, even if they find out. “Deny deny deny, even if they find out… deny.”

@rs8ndead

#𐂯ྀི　　 ⸝⸝　　 rs8ndead #𐂯ྀི　　 ⸝⸝　　 writings #𐂯ྀི　　 ⸝⸝　　 headcanons #doawk x reader #doawk rodrick #rodrick x reader #rodrick heffley #diary of a wimpy kid #diary of a wimpy kid rodrick

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sailoryooons · 2 years ago

Note

yoonkook crack. jungkook has still not exited his twilight phase and wants to be a cullen soooooo bad. yoongi, an actual hundred-year-old vampire, is tired of him.

❀ Pairing: Human!Jungkook x Vampire!Yoongi

❀ Summary: Jungkook loves reading his smutty vampire comic and so what if he fashions himself a little bit after the main character. Yoongi finds it wildly offensive. Every day he has to watch Jungkook play at being ominous and spooky - and okay, maybe it’s a little cute. But it’s mostly offensive, and Yoongi would know. He’s a vampire, after all.

❀ Word Count: 8,727

❀ Genre: Supernatural, coworkers to lovers, crack, pwp

❀ Rating: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.

❀ Warnings:Jungkook is whatever the weeb equivalent is to Vampires - a Veeb, if you will, a little bit of pining, Misc. Vampire Lore I Made Up, Sekhmet vampire theory makes an appearances again, explicit language, explicit sexual content including unprotected anal sex, oral (m. receiving) a lot of fluids and lub and come and spit, ass play (m. receiving), Jungkook cannot pick a position to fuck Yoongi, bottom Yoongi, top Jungkook, like? Random convos about predator/prey dynamic but not really you’ll see what I mean it’s there if u squint, Jungkook basically being a giant vampire nerd and cringe sometimes but it’s cute?

❀ Published: April 5, 2023

❀ A/N: THANK YOU TO M FOR REQUESTING THIS ABSOLUTE FUCKING GONG SHOW OF A FIC. This fic ame about… I actually do not at all remember how we got on this topic but basically we were laughing at the idea of Vampire Nerd JK losing it after finding out Yoongi was a vampire. Jungkook was originally supposed to be Acting More Like A Vampire but I realize it was more of I’m Kind Of Like A Vampire and The Authority On Them. Whatever, I actually like how this turned out and I REALLY HOPE YOU LIKE IT M I LOVE YOU AND WE ARE IN A COMPLETELY NORMAL, MONOGAMOUS, VERY ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP. ALSO WHOOPS I SLIPPED AND MY 1-2K IS OVER 8K I’M EMBARAZZARDDD

❀ Disclaimer: All members of BTS are faces and name claims for this story. This is entirely a work of fiction and by no means is meant to be a projection, judgment or representation of real-life people. Any scenarios or representations of the people and places mentioned in works are not representative of real-life scenarios.

Masterlist | Ask | Milestone Event Request Fill |

Min Yoongi hates Jeon Jungkook.

No, that’s not entirely true. What Yoongi hates is Jungkook’s stupid fucking comic books.

Jungkook slinks into the breakroom, eyes sweeping the mostly empty room until they settle on Yoongi and he smiles. Yoongi’s stomach flips at the small - perhaps imagined - light in Jungkook’s eyes as he pulls his backpack tighter and rushes over to the chair opposite Yoongi.

Slinging his backpack on the table, Jungkook winces when he knocks Yoongi’s thermos over. Yoongi catches it, lightning quick as Jungkook looks at him with wide, surprised eyes. He murmurs an apology and Yoongi waves it off, settling back into his chair as Jungkook sits down and begins shuffling through his backpack like a pack rat.

Though Yoongi’s eyes are focused on the pages of his book, the letters swim before him as he observes Jungkook from the edge of his vision. He smells sweet, like honeysuckle. Sunshine. Warmth. He makes little sounds of frustration as he struggles to find what he’s looking for. After several huffs, Yoongi looks up, inky eyes looking at Jungkook who stares at his bag angrily.

“There are Hello Pandas in the cabinet,” Yoongi offers gently. Jungkook looks up, blushing and chewing his lip. Yoongi shrugs as though Jungkook asked a question. “Saw them in there this morning.”

“Cool, thanks, hyung.”

When Jungkook gets up, back facing Yoongi to go to the office pantry, Yoongi allows himself a small, secret smile.

This shared routine of reading at lunch is Yoongi’s favorite. Every day they arrive in a pattern. Yoongi first, sitting at the table closest to the fridge and pulling the chair so it’s back is against the wall. He’ll pull out a book and spend the first five minutes reading, the loud noises of office life no longer a distraction after years of practice.

Second, Jungkook will come in. He’ll look around to assess who is in the breakroom, even though he always sits in the seat across from Yoongi. He’ll get his little snacks - usually Hello Panda cookies or a protein smoothie - and sit next to Yoongi and read his Fang Fucker comics, which he hides away with custom book covers.

So no, Yoongi doesn’t hate Jungkook. Not at all, really. But Yoongi does hate the way that he spots little vampire fang pins on Jungkook’s bags. Sees that he’s wrapped a red ribbon around one of the straps, smelling faintly of dried blood.

Yoongi ignores the pang of hunger in his stomach as Jungkook returns, settling into his chair as Jungkook tears the corner of the package open with his teeth. He does everything with his fucking teeth, and Yoongi has told him dozens of times that Jungkook is going to damage them.

I have sharp teeth, hyung, was always the response, a secret smile on Jungkook’s face.

Now, Jungkook pulls out his book and cracks the spine, the sound whisper-soft against Yoongi’s sharp hearing. Jungkook slouches in his seat, popping a cookie into his mouth as his eyes become hypnotized on the page, book supported by his knees as he brings his feet on the edge of his chair, curled up.

Yoongi’s stomach turns to acid when he sees the comic panels. A crass, horrendous take on vampires, Fang Fuckers follows the story of two lovers separated by the laws of the supernatural. Belle, a human prone to accidents and drawing the attention of anything with a pulse forever pines after Eddie, a vampire always clad in jeans and who is effortlessly cool.

Glancing at Jungkook’s outfit, Yoongi presses his lips in a firm line. Today, Jungkook is dressed in jeans with the ankles rolled, a pair of dirty high-tops on his feet. His t-shirt is tucked loosely into the waist of his jeans, making Yoongi’s eyes linger far too long on Jungkook’s tapered waist. His tattoos are hidden by the sleeves of a jean jacket, worn and soft with time.

Lately, Jungkook lets his hair grow out. It’s wild and wavy, trimmed somewhere between a mullet and a wolf cut. Just like Eddies, Yoongi notes with an eye twitch. Still, it looks good on Jungkook, the way most things do.

The hair and the outfits aren’t the only thing that Jungkook imitates. Yoongi tries to focus on his own book instead of thinking about Jungkook’s little habits. The way Jungkook tells people he’s allergic to garlic, or how he has taken to walking as quietly around the office as possible. In a way, it’s a little bit amusing to watch Jungkook try to be mysterious and vague about how he spends his weekend.

Just yesterday, Yoongi watched Jungkook flinch at the sun as everyone started walking to their cars after work. It had made him roll his eyes, but it is… sort of cute, this little fascination Jungkook has with the undead. The eternal. The absolutely ridiculous and not-at-all-accurate vampires in his little stories.

But it’s also a little insulting. Especially when Jungkook argues with Taehyung about whether or not a stake would actually work on a vampire, or if vampires can see their reflections in a mirror. Yoongi has heard them whispering, tucked away in Jungkook’s cubicle next to Yoongi’s as they search Reddit threads about the best place to look for vampires.

Taehyung walks into the breakroom. He’s in flowy tan trousers, a white t-shirt tucked in, and a soft-looking cardigan. He’s got multi-layered necklaces around his neck that clink as he goes to the fridge, asking what Jungkook is reading.

Jungkook doesn’t look up when he says, “Spiderman.”

“That’s nice,” Taehyung answers, a smirk evident in his voice. Yoongi knows Spiderman is their code for reading their little vampire porn. “New volume?”

“Uh huh,” Jungkook mumbles around a mouthful of Hello Pandas.

The snap of the cookies in his mouth sets Yoongi on edge. He glares at Jungkook, but the younger boy doesn’t notice, crunching away as he drinks in the colorful pages of his little book. Yoongi's jaw ticks. Jungkook’s brow is pulled together and he chews with a frown, the only sign that Yoongi has that he’s enjoying his snack and reading.

There is a steady rhythm to the sounds of the breakroom. It’s Yoongi's favorite place at work. He’s always the first in, making coffee that fills the space with a slightly burnt smell. Taehyung comes in next, smiling and clothes swishing, always bright-eyed. Jungkook is usually the last in, quiet and avoidant as he snatches banana milk from the fridge and vanishes to his cubicle.

The break room isn’t much. The linoleum is peeling, the fridge hums so loud that Yoongi can hear it at his desk, and there’s always a mysterious puddle by the sink. But his coworkers fill the space with their chatter. It’s where he learns about their lives.

It’s where Yoongi learns that Taehyung loves to listen to jazz, humming Ella Fitzgerald while he uses the microwave. It’s where he learns that Jimin is dating Hoseok from product marketing, the room filled with their secret smiles and innocent hands brushing against one another. It’s where he learns that Jungkook liked to read Fang Fucker. Where he learns that Jungkook, sometimes a little distracted, communicates in soft noises rather than words.

The break room is filled with the drama of coworkers and whispers. It’s full of humanity and Yoongi is well… not.

A sudden hiss catches Yoongi’s attention. He smells the blood before he sees it. Taehyung is reaching for a rag at the counter, lemon left on a cutting board with a scarlet-painted knife. Yoongi works his jaw as he watches Taehyung wrap his hand, iron and salt blooming in the air, heavy on Yoongi’s tongue.

Jungkook goes rigid. Yoongi is distracted for a split second, eyes turning from Taehyung tending to his sliced finger as Jungkook launches upward out of his chair and bolts for the door. Yoongi raises his brow, watching it slam shut beside him as Taehyung looks up at the closed door, then swivels to Yoongi.

“Uhhh, can you get me a bandaid?”

Yoongi nods, glaring at the door as he stands. “Sure.”

If there is one thing Yoongi knows, it’s that he is sick of Jungkook playing the part of a vampire.

The love-hate relationship between work happy hours and Yoongi is a complexity Yoongi has yet to unravel. He likes watching his coworkers unwind, sipping drinks through their little black straws and admitting they hate Jeffery from the data team. He thinks it’s sweet when he sees Hoseok get Jimin flustered by whispering something in his ear - something Yoongi wishes he didn’t hear over the roar of the bar but does.

And yet Yoongi doesn’t like the press of people. Doesn’t like the way the sound of their collective voices buzz through him, or the way that he can feel their pulses throbbing behind thin skin, a hypnotic beat only he can hear and feel. It makes him feel crowded and irritable, but he likes watching the bright, burning flame of vitality and life here.

It makes him feel human again, even if he hasn’t been for a very, very long time.

Taehyung is pressed against the bar, telling Jungkook at hyperspeed how he met the very tall, very broad man next to him, who watches Taehyung with soft eyes and a dimple carving a hollow in his cheek. Namjoon. His name is Namjoon, Yoongi remembers.

Yoongi watches over the rim of his glass, sipping his whisky as Jungkook’s finger traces the drops of condensation on his beer bottle, zigzagging around the label, ignoring Taehyung as he rambles on about Virginia Woolf. The movement catches his eye, and Yoongi focuses first on Jungkook's finger, long and slender. Then the tattoos and swirling ink that vanish under his sleeve, then the veins in his hand, pumping O positive through his body.

Though there is a unique note to each blood type, people smell different too. Taehyung smells like sugar, something light and spun like cotton candy. Namjoon smells like lemon and wax, something Yoongi would maybe find in a bookstore. And Jungkook…. Jungkook smells like honeysuckle, growing strong under a warm sun in the middle of spring.

Yoongi’s mouth waters and he looks away, knocking back the rest of his whiskey and waving the bartender down for another. When he turns back to the conversation, Jungkook is scowling, brows pinched, mouth pouted. “That isn’t all I know about wolves,” he huffs in Taehyung's direction. His hands disappear in his jacket sleeves as he fiddles with the string. “And anyway, what would you know?”

Taehyung gives Jungkook a look. “About the same as you? We read the same comics.”

“Ugh, those aren’t the only source material.”

Yoongi puts together that somehow the topic of Virgina Woolf has led them to wolves and vampires. He fights the urge to roll his eyes, but he squeezes his glass a little tighter. Yoongi looks at Namjoon, hoping that Taehyung’s new boyfriend will help.

Instead, Namjoon sips his gin and tonic and cocks his head. “I’ve seen Tae reading those comics. Do they actually have any relevance to the historical lore of the vampire, or is it made up?”

“Oh a ton of it is deep rooted in historical and scientific studies,” Jungkook answers excitedly. Yoongi groans and Jungkook casts him a dubious look over his shoulder. Yoongi tongues the inside of his cheek and looks away. “The writer did a ton of research.”

Bullshit, Yoongi thinks but doesn’t say it out loud.

Still, Yoongi listens to Jungkook drone on and on about how the pop culture depictions of vampires originate from the stories and myths of small villages in Romania, furthered by Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Now that makes Yoongi grin into his glass a little, agreeing that almost all of the media surrounding vampires rely heavily on European myths and stories.

He watches the way Jungkook speaks, momentarily hypnotized. Jungkook isn’t an eloquent speaker, stopping often to blush and tuck a strand of hair behind his ear or find his words, chewing on his bottom lip. When he gains confidence, he speaks faster, using his hands more as he speaks, looking back and forth between Namjoon and Taehyung who are a loyal, captive audience.

Yoongi softens a little.

At heart, Jungkook is someone who is a bit of a fanatic. It’s harmless for now, Yoongi thinks. He’s always carefully listening to Jungkook, no matter how annoying it gets. Making sure that he can protect him, that he can pick up when Jungkook is in any real danger.

“Historical research suggests that the first coven of Romanian vampires was called the Ouroborus,” Jungkook says. Yoongi goes rigid. Taehyung looks at Yoongi over Jungkook’s shoulder, tilting his head in a question, but the youngest of their group continues on. “That’s where Stoker got Dracula’s name idea from. It comes from the Romanian word dracul which is the devil but really it’s from the Latin draco for dragon. Really silly, because the dragon looks nothing like the serpent, but I think Dracula was a real figure who started the Our-”

“The Ouroborus are not Romanian, nor was that the point of origin.” Yoongi only belatedly realizes he says this out loud as the group turns to him. Jungkook’s flushed lips are parted and his eyes are round. Yoongi hears the way Jungkook’s heart speeds up, and senses his confusion. Yoongi clears his throat and diverts his eyes, shrugging it off. “That symbol means nothing.”

“The Ouroborus symbol is for eternal life,” Jungkook says slowly, still recovering from the fact that Yoongi has bothered to entertain the conversation. Yoongi already regrets speaking up. The room is noisy and his throat burns. He’s a little hungry, and Jungkook, who turns toward him, smells a little too good. “And the confusion between the snake and the dragon makes perfect sense.”

“The Ouroboros is not eternity. It’s life and death.”

Jungkook frowns and sets his beer on the counter. “Hyung, no it’s not.”

“Ah, whatever. It’s fine, forget I said anything.”

“No, hyung. You’re wrong.”

And oh. Yoongi knows that expression that Jungkook is wearing. His jaw is set and sharp, lips pressed in a firm line. Jungkook stares at Yoongi, eyes intense and fist closed on the bar top, pressing into the sticky, lacquered counter. It’s cute when Jungkook looks like this. He’s determined and frustrated, and Yoongi hears the way Jungkook’s pulse begins to rush and sees the way his jaw flexes.

Jungkook has never turned his argument face on Yoongi. There was nothing to ever argue about. Until now, Yoongi has tolerated Jungkook’s vampire fanaticism in silence. And yet the simple mention of Ouroborus has Yoongi on edge.

“It represents infinity,” Jungkook insists. “The eternity of life of a vampire, the never ending cycle of immortality.”

“It’s the never ending cycle of death and life.” Yoongi’s tone is hard. He feels the overwhelming need for Jungkook to get this right. To not look into Ouruborus. To understand. “The Ouroborus originates as far back as Ancient Egypt when the god Ra created the goddess Sekhmet to destroy and punish humanity. She and her followers were immortal - the eternal representation of death and destruction. And when they couldn’t stop, Ra banished them to the darkness, never to walk in the sun again. Her followers took on the snake eating its tail to represent how their existence would always bring death and destruction.”

Jungkook scoffs. “Vampires didn’t originate in Egypt. That’s not right.”

“They didn’t originate from anywhere, Jungkook. They just are. And they’re not all the same creatures, no matter what your little vampire porn book tells you.”

Yoongi regrets the words as soon as they’re out of his mouth. Jungkook recoils like he’s been slapped, his expression slipping from frustrated to hurt.

Sighing, Yoongi reaches for Jungkook. Jungkook shrugs him off and throws cash on the bar before looking at Taehyung and Namjoon who watch in mute horror, bystanders to a car crash they can’t control. “See you guys later.”

Shoving his way through the crowd, Jungkook vanishes. Yoongi can still smell him, though. Can hear the way Jungkook’s heart is racing, can taste the anxiety and anger rolling off of him. Yoongi wants to smack his own head against the countertop.

“Well go after him,” Taehyung says, drawing Yoongi’s attention. Taehyung looks him up and down and laughs a little. “You’re hopeless.”

“What do you mean?”

Taehyung rolls his eyes. “You obviously hate Jungkook’s obsession with vampires for whatever reason, but you’ve spent the last three years at work circulating him like a little satellite. You think I don’t notice you stocking the cabinet with Hello Pandas? Or putting that nasty banana milk in the fridge? You hate it and yet you indulge in him. So go apologize for making fun of him and make out or something.”

“I…” Yoongi trails off and Taehyung smirks.

“You told Jimin to stop talking about his fascination with tarot two days in because it was annoying you. You’ve let Jungkook talk to you and around you about vampires for three years.”

Yoongi scratches the back of his ear. He can’t blush, but if he could, he would be stained pink from his ears to his nose under Taehyung’s accusations. “Ah. Sorry to ruin the night.”

“Go,” Taehyung grins. “And at least make out for a little, watching you pretend not to notice one another during your little reading lunches is exhausting.”

It’s a cool night, silence blanketing the mostly-empty parking lot. The sun has made her final descent and given way to the moon, which slowly climbs into the sky, bracketed by stars. Yoongi sees Jungkook standing near the entrance to the fenced-in parking lot, looking down at his phone as he toes gravel beneath his shoe. Yoongi hears the soft crunch and he sighs.

Jungkook doesn’t hear him coming. He never does, and this time Yoongi doesn’t announce his arrival or make human noises. Instead, he takes a second to drink in Jungkook. Jungkook is bathed in the halo of a streetlamp that buzzes loudly above their heads. It’s still early night, a little bit of color in the sky near the horizon, but Yoongi only has eyes for Jungkook, who sniffs a little and wipes at his face with the back of his sleeve.

An ache fills Yoongi’s chest when he realizes that Jungkook has been crying. Or at least has shed a single tear. He sees Jungkook swallow thickly, Adam’s apple bobbing. He adjusts his backpack, fang and bat pins reflecting in the street lamp.

“I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Jungkook lurches and cries out in alarm, jumping away from Yoongi and whirling around. Yoongi winces when Jungkook stumbles but catches his balance, pulse beating so loudly that Yoongi can’t help but drop his gaze down to where Jungkook’s blood rushes wildly through his jugular, artery pulsing.

“Yeah, well,” Jungkook huffs, scowling. “You did.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah right.” Jungkook turns away and looks at his phone. Yoongi can see him waiting for an Uber.

“Jungkook.”

“I get it,” Jungkook snaps. “You think I’m weird. You don’t like my comics, you don’t like that I find this stuff cool, and you don’t like me. Message received.”

“I never said any of that.”

Jungkook throws a heated glance his way. “Oh, so you do like my comics?”

“No,” Yoongi admits. “Because they’re wrong.” He sees the hurt flicker across Jungkook’s face and Yoongi wants to scream. “I don’t mean wrong because of the sex shit or whatever. I don’t care about that. They’re wrong about vampires. All of it.”

“How would you know?” Jungkook asks the question and Yoongi wants to answer so badly. Wants to blurt it out, wants to admit that he has the stupid answers to Jungkook’s questions. “You don’t know anything about vampires. And then you made fun of me and embarrassed me.”

“You shouldn’t be talking about or looking into Ouroborus.”

“What do you know?”

“I know things.”

“Not about this, you don’t even like vampires.”

“You don’t know what I like.”

“Yeah, because you barely talk to me. We’ve been coworkers for years - sat next to each other for years. I get it, but don’t make fun of the things I like. Don’t talk nonsense just to tease me.”

And oh Yoongi sees it now. Sees the insecurity creep in, sees the boy who thinks that his coworker is taking the thing he loves most and using it as a weapon.

Jungkook seems to fold in on himself, arms hugging around his middle, chin tucking to his neck. He looks so small like this, and Yoongi wants to kick himself. Hasn't Jungkook seen how much Yoongi does like him? Hasn’t he noticed how Yoongi waters the plants on Jungkook’s desk that would have died by now? How he puts his favorite snacks in the break room? How he always makes sure to stay late at the office and walk out together, just to make sure no one hurts Jungkook?

“I wasn’t making fun of you,” Yoongi says gently. “You scared me.”

“I-” Jungkook cuts himself off and tilts his head. His earrings catch the light. Delicate like the careful slope of his mouth, like the soft skin of his neck. “Scared you?”

“Most of your rambling about vampires is annoying,” Yoongi admits and Jungkook scrunches his nose. “But harmless. Not able to hurt anyone. Sometimes you’re right. Sometimes you’re wrong. But then tonight you started talking about Ouroborus, and I don’t even know where you heard of that, but you shouldn’t be looking into it. Into them.”

“There are symbols in my comic book,” Jungkook says slowly. His lips are a little pouted, distracting Yoongi from the dangerous subject matter. “And hints. So I looked it up. They’re like, a vampire coven-”

“They’re a cult.” Yoongi is firm. Clenches and unclenches his fist. “Stop looking them up, Jungkook. They love people like you, hypnotized by the mystery and the thrill. Please.”

“How do you know?” Yoongi knew he would ask. Jungkook shakes his head, earrings clinking together. Down the street, a cat yowls at someone walking by. “I thought you hated my vampire stuff. You always make a face when Tae and I talk about it.”

“I do not.”

“You do.”

“Okay, well I do hate your vampire stuff.”

“Exactly, so why should I take anything you say for fact? I’ve spent hours reading on this stuff-”

“Well I’ve spent two hundred and seven years as a vampire. My anniversary is actually in two weeks.”

Yoongi’s admission hangs heavily between them. Jungkook stares, open mouth. Yoongi suddenly has the very human urge to shift from foot-to-foot. Or to fidget, which isn’t something that he feels often - nervousness isn’t something that he feels often.

Yet he feels it all the time with Jungkook. Feels like squirming in his chair when Jungkook leans on the breakroom table between them, laying his head on his backpack with Fang Fucker tucked in his lap. Feels annoyed when he sees Eddie turning into bats on the pages, misting across panels to save Belle on the other side. Feels fond and happy when Jungkook gets through a presentation without stumbling, especially after Yoongi could hear him practicing in the bathroom all morning.

Jungkook makes Yoongi feel so human. Makes him feel things that he doesn’t need at all, but wants.

“You what?”

The Uber pulls into the parking lot, tires hissing against crackling gravel. Jungkook ignores the car completely, even though Yoongi waves his hand and moves out of the car's way. Headlights flash toward them as Yoongi turns, and Jungkook gasps, leaning backward but not taking a full step.

Yoongi knows what the younger has just seen. A sliver reflection of eyes, flashing in the sudden flooding of light against them. Predator eyes when exposed to light in the dark. Jungkook is squeezing his phone tight in his hands, knuckles white. His heart is racing and he totally ignores it when the driver rolls down the window and asks if he’s Jungkook.

“Prove it,” Jungkook says to Yoongi.

“What? You believe me?”

“Maybe. Prove you’re one and that you’re not just turning this into a joke.” He takes a deep breath. “Prove you’re not making fun of me.”

“I would never-”

“Prove it, Yoongi.”

Yoongi. Not hyung. Yoongi fights a smile at how ferocious Jungkook demands this, hands fisted at his side. Yoongi gestures to the car. “Get in. To wherever you live. I can show you.”

Nodding, Jungkook pops open the door and slides right into the car. Yoongi sighs, looking upward and closing his eyes briefly. Of course Jungkook would get into a car with someone who just told him he was a vampire. Jungkook has no fear of Yoongi, not a single worry in the world. Even as Yoongi slides into the back seat, casting his dark eyes in Jungkook’s direction, there is not a single iota of anxiety in Jungkook’s face or scent.

Just pure, unfettered excitement.

City lights blur by. Yoongi watches Jungkook, flickering shadows and light as they pass by other cars on the road. Jungkook watches Yoongi right back, his dark eyes studying Yoongi as though he could find some sort of visual indicator that Yoongi is the vampire he says he is.

This is dangerous. Yoongi knows that he shouldn’t be indulging. But the crestfallen face Jungkook made when he thought Yoongi was making fun of him and the memory of Jungkook sniffling softly makes Yoongi throw caution to the wind.

Yoongi trusts himself around Jungkook.

They don’t speak until they’re at Jungkook’s apartment and he’s walking over the threshold, flipping on the light. Yoongi remains on the other side of the door and that urge to fidget is back as Yoongi’s anxiety spikes. He doesn’t move, watching as Jungkook holds the door open, his back facing Yoongi.

Idiot, Yoongi thinks, Jungkook not realizing that he has turned his back to a predator.

When Yoongi doesn’t cross, Jungkook looks over his shoulder, head tilted. Puzzled. Yoongi gazes at Jungkook intently, eyes flickering to the floor back up to Jungkook. For a human, Jungkook is perceptive. He tracks Yoongi’s gaze and his mouth forms a soft ‘o’ as he meets Yoongi’s eyes.

“Can you not cross?” Yoongi shakes his head and Jungkook hums, holding the door open wider. “Prove it.”

Yoongi sighs. Lifts his foot and brings it forward, though he already knows what’s going to happen. He meets an invisible barrier, foot stopping in mid air. It feels like kicking a wall, solid and unrelenting. Yoongi puts his foot back down, but Jungkook doesn’t seem satisfied.

Reaching through the door, Jungkook pulls Yoongi by the hand. Yoongi flinches, startled that Jungkook is touching him so freely as he pulls Yoongi’s hand toward the door frame. Jungkook’s hand passes through just fine, but he meets resistance as Yoongi’s hand hits the invisible wall, palm flat and pressing on it.

With a noise somewhere between a gasp and giggle, Jungkook tugs Yoongi’s arm. Yoongi rolls his eyes, but lets Jungkook yank at his jacket sleeve. Nothing he does helps, and Yoongi is stuck with his hand pressed up against the barrier and Jungkook’s long fingers wrapped around his forearms, tugging.

“Wow,” Jungkook whispers. He looks up at Yoongi, stars in his eyes, blush on his face and the most beautiful smile Yoongi has ever seen. “I just have to…?” Yoongi nods, understanding the question. “Come in, hyung.”

Before Yoongi can step through the door, Jungkook tugs Yoongi’s arm. It doesn’t make Yoongi move much. He’s an aged vampire, strong and fast. But it’s cute when Jungkook lets out a squeal as Yoongi steps over the threshold into Jungkook’s home, the door slamming shut behind him.

Jungkook doesn’t bother turning the lights on, getting up close to Yoongi and tilting his head. He’s much taller than Yoongi, though about as broad. This close, Yoongi can hear the blood rushing through Jungkook’s nervous system, a whisper of sound against his hyper-sensitive ears. He can smell Jungkook, sweet and like spring, nearly taste him on his tongue as Jungkook looks at Yoongi’s mouth.

“Fangs?” he asks, because it’s Jungkook. Of course he isn’t afraid that there is an apex predator in his home, that Yoongi could rip him apart and- “Show me.”

Yoongi doesn’t know why he does it. Or maybe he does. Because since Jungkook walked into work three years ago, Yoongi has done nothing but indulge Jungkook in everything. Let’s him ramble about Fang Fucker. Gives him all of his snacks. Let’s Jungkook take Yoongi’s favorite pens that write nice and smooth when Jungkook loses his own pens.

As Yoongi opens his mouth and feels the sharp sting of his fangs gliding through his gums, he realizes that he told Jungkook the truth simply because it’s Jungkook. Because he wanted Jungkook to know. Because it makes Jungkook light up like a solar flare, clapping his hands as he grins at the two, sharpened points that help Yoongi puncture his prey and drink deeply from the artery.

“How do you turn?”

“No.” Jungkook straightens and looks down the wide bridge of his nose at Yoongi, lips downturned. Yoongi’s fangs vanish and he glares. “I’m not telling you that, you’d just try and do it yourself.”

“I’m not suicidal.”

“Who said death was involved? Don’t fish for information, Jungkook.”

The boy at least has the decency to look chagrined. “Fine. I have questions.”

“I’m tired.”

“Do vampires sleep?”

Yoongi pinches the bridge of his nose, realizing he has opened himself to the world’s longest line of questioning. “In a way, yes. Not the way humans do.”

“So like a resting trance.”

“That’s…” Yoongi thinks about when he lays down, settling somewhere between waking dreams and fully functioning. The dreams aren’t like the dreams that he had when he was a human. They’re more like memories, flipping through like a scrapbook as he rests. “Yeah, actually. Pretty accurate.”

Jungkook’s grin is wicked. “Learned that from Fang Fucker. I guess it’s pretty accurate after all, huh?”

“No.”

“Will you fuck me?”

If Yoongi was a creature that relied on breathing to live, the air would leave his lungs. He doesn’t gasp anymore, but he would now if he could, blinking two dark eyes up at Jungkook who is grinning, and who has something sharp and mischievous in his gaze.

“What?”

“I want you to fuck me.”

Yoongi’s gums ache. “You suddenly find out I’m a vampire and want to fuck me?”

“What? Wait!” Jungkook lurches after Yoongi, who turns on his heel toward the door. He only stops because Jungkook asks. It’s like Jungkook’s word is his command, and Yoongi knows that he could leave. Could vanish from the apartment. And yet he doesn’t. “I didn’t mean it that way. I didn’t… no.”

“Then how did you mean it? You’re telling me you would ask that if I wasn’t a vampire?”

“No, but not because I don’t want to.” Yoongi cocks his head and Jungkook’s face flushes. He hides behind both of his hands and lets out an aggravated sound. “Ugh! I just, I got excited and it was the first thing I could think of and yeah, I do want to fuck you because sex with a vampire like - is it like the comic books? I would love to know.”

“Jungkook,” Yoongi says gently, but it goes unheard.

“But that’s totally not why I want to in general, hyung. Taehyung thinks that you have a crush on me, and it made me so nervous at first because I always thought you were so pretty and quiet and maybe a little bit scary, but now I realize that maybe you’re not scary, you’re just a vampire.”

Yoongi says Jungkook’s name again, but the boy is on a roll, ranting into his hands and hiding his embarrassment from Yoongi as best as he can. Yoongi is no longer irritated, though, as Jungkook continues mumbling and smelling like honeysuckle.

“And I totally have a crush on you, which is why when I thought you were making fun of me I got so upset and had to get out of there. I didn’t want you to see me cry even though crying is totally okay, but you’re always so unemotional and I thought it would annoy you more. And then you’re all here like ‘I’m a vampire’ and it fried my brain and I don’t know? We’re in my apartment, so sex seems like-”

“Jungkook.”

Jungkook looks up from where his face is buried in his palms. Eyes wide, innocent. Mouth parted, slick-shined with his spit. Yoongi’s eyes drop to Jungkook’s mouth. Wants to know if he tastes just as sweet as he smells. Wants to know what the shape of his mouth is like, wants to feel the soft and hard lines of Jungkook’s body hiding under the cotton of his shirt.

Yoongi isn’t like Eddie in Fang Fucker, who kept trying to hide from the desire for Belle. Yoongi isn’t scared of himself. He knows what he’s capable of, he is good at control. He’s been alive long enough to have mastered himself, and he isn’t worried about snapping Jungkook’s neck or taking a bite.

So Yoongi doesn’t fight some long-winded internal war. Doesn’t feel guilty when he slides toward Jungkook, letting his feet move him vampire-smooth. Jungkook sucks in a little bit of air. Watches how Yoongi settles up close to him, tilting his head up.

Jungkook’s breath is warm and is as sweet as his blood smells. Jungkook shivers and Yoongi grins. This close, he can ount each and every one of Jungkook’s long, silky soft eyelashes.

“You,” Yoong murmurs, voice low and soft. “Can fuck me, Jungkook. I will be doing none of the work.”

“Really?”

Yoongi looks down at Jungkook’s mouth again and hums, zeroing in on it.

Jungkook wastes no time. Yoongi watches Jungkook close his eyes and lean in. He has a brief second to smile, to lean up into it, pushing onto his tiptoes to meet Jungkook’s eager mouth. Jungkook’s lips are soft soft, tasting faintly like cherry chapstick that he must have applied in the parking lot waiting for his car and a little bit like beer.

Yoongi doesn’t mind, humming delightly as Jungkook pulls Yoongi toward him. Yoongi lets him, Jungkook pressing their waists together as his hands loop around Yoongi’s back, holding him there. Jungkook is a messy kisser, but he’s eager and gentle, tongue licking at the seam of Yoongi’s mouth until Yoongi opens up.

Jungkook brushes his tongue gently across Yoongi’s teeth, feeling for the sharpness of fangs. Yoongi huffs in Jungkook’s mouth, pushing him slightly and making Jungkook stumble a few inches. Jungkook is shadowed in the dark of his living room, eyes half-lidded and mouth shining in Yoongi’s spit.

“I’m not biting you.”

Jungkook grins, his tongue poking through his teeth as he wiggles his eyebrows. “Bet you want to though, huh? Wanna bite me, hyung?”

“I’m not one of your little fictional vampires,” Yoongi assures Jungkook, who pulls at Yoongi’s shirt to bring him closer. Their chests are pressed together, Yoongi looking up as Jungkook bends down to steal another sloppy, open mouth kiss. “I have control and I’m not worried about it.”

“Control, huh?” Jungkook tugs Yoongi's hand. “I bet you have lots of stamina too.”

Yoongi feels like he’s walking on air when he follows Jungkook to his bedroom. He takes in multiple things at once, able to flick his gaze across the room and see all of the details of Jungkook’s life at the same time that Jungkook tugs on Yoongi’s sleeve, making a soft noise that indicates he wants Yoongi to move faster.

Jungkook’s room has a boyish charm. His bed is pressed up against the wall, a single lamp over it with a stack of comics on the nightstand. His sheets smell clean, though vaguely of floral soap. There are comic panels pressed in glass and displayed in wooden frames over the bed: Spiderman, Scarlet Witch, Fang Fuckers.

Near the bathroom, there’s a meticulously organized bookcase, teeming with comic books and actual books. Yoongi sees the names flash by as Jungkook nudges Yoongi toward the bed and huffs when he realizes he can’t simply shove Yoongi onto the mattress. The vampire laughs and sits down as Jungkook sheds his jean jacket, letting it hit the floor.

It pleases Yoongi that Jungkook’s room isn’t messy, though a little disheveled. There seems to be an organized chaos to it, to Jungkook. He likes that, the way that Jungkook is at the nexus of impossible spectrums. LIke now, when Jungkook looks shy and innocent as he drops to his knees in front of Yoongi, looking up at him through dark lashes.

Jungkook’s hair curls so elegantly across his forehead. Yoongi reaches forward, carding his hands through the silk strands. It’s just as soft as he thought and he smiles, leaning down to catch Jungkook’s mouth again, tongues tangled and the wet smack of their kisses sending heat into Yoongi’s stomach, making his cock stir.

Of course Jungkook can get Yoongi semi-hard by just kissing. But what really does it, is when Jungkook breaks from the kiss, a string of spit between them for a moment. Yoongi watches it break before his eyes zero in on Jungkook’s tattooed hands going for the button on Yoongi’s jeans.

“Wanna suck you off,” Jungkook admits, fingers working the zipper. Yoongi leans back on his arms, watching Jungkook with rapt attention.

He is so fucking beautiful. The ink on his arms is exquisite, moving in artistic whorls of mostly black art with some pieces of color splashed in. Yoongi thinks that the pair of them are a lot like Jungkook’s tattoos. Yoongi is the stark, unchanging black and Jungkook is the bright, splatter of color and life.

Yoongi’s hands go to Jungkook’s arms, fingers tracing the color. Jungkook pauses trying to get Yoongi’s pants off, letting Yoongi feel him. Jungkook is so warm, vitality humming in his veins under paper-thin skin. Jungkook ducks forward, pressing a kiss to Yoongi’s wrist, Jungkook’s mouth eager to place butterfly-soft kisses on Yoongi’s skin.

It makes Yoongi smile. He can’t remember the last time he was intimate with someone. It doesn’t matter. He lets Jungkook feel his skin.

“You're warm,” Jungkook notes, turning his attention to tugging on Yoongi’s jeans. Yoongi lifts his hips, helping him pull them down his thighs and knees, fabric scraping. It feels so good, the heat of Jungkook’s hands, the taste of his excitement in the air. “Not cold at all.”

“We live between life and death,” Yoongi sighs, head tilting back as Jungkook rips off Yoongi’s shoes. Jungkook’s sweet scent mixes with the headiness of his arousal. Every inch of Yoongi’s skin is like an exposed wire, especially when Jungkook places open mouth kisses to Yoongi’s thighs, making him twitch. “We are neither entirely dead nor entirely alive. I adapt to the temperature around me.”

“Fascinating,” Jungkook mumbles as his mouth leaves wet stains, inching toward Yoongi’s briefs.

Yoongi is throbbing. He feels light-headed and shaky when he lifts his head. Jungkook is eager between his legs, pressing his palms against Yoongi’s thighs to spread him open more, to give himself more room. Yoongi lets himself be pried open, watches with parted lips as Jungkook dips forward, licking at the damp spot on his briefs.

A curse drips from Yoongi’s mouth and his lids flutter. He’s determined to watch Jungkook, slack-jawed as the shy little Jungkook Yoongi knows is replaced with an eager, hungry thing. Jungkook mouths at Yoongi’s cock over the fabric, making his hips lift from the bed, a moan falling out of his mouth.

Jungkook looks up, mouth wet and eyes sparkling. “You sound pretty.”

“You look pretty.”

Yoongi smiles when Jungkook’s nose and cheeks turn cherry blossom pink. “Are vampires always so nice?”

“No.” Jungkook skims his hand up Yoongi’s thigh, skating over to grip Yoongi firmly, massaging through what suddenly feels like the world's thinnest fabric. Yoongi hisses between his teeth, eyes shutting as Jungkook teases him. “And you don’t want a mean vampire.”

“I don’t,” Jungkook agrees. “I want,” he continues slowly, pulling at the fabric of Yoongi’s briefs. “A sweet, gentle vampire. Who is very quiet and likes to read his books mysteriously. Who secretly does things around the office for everyone and- fuck you have a thick dick.”

Jungkook stumbles on his cute little monologue, making Yoongi laugh. It comes out closer to a growl, startling Jungkook. Yoongi’s cock bobs against his shirt, precum smearing on the dark fabric. The brown tip is aching for Jungkook’s mouth, inches away and panting.

“That was sweet.”

Jungkook looks up at him, fingers digging into Yoongi’s thigh where he holds his legs open. “You’re sweet. You’re nice. And you…” Jungkook turns his face away, trying to hide that he is furiously blushing again. Yoongi can see it though, can make out every single detail on Jungkook’s face and it makes him melt. “Whatever, I’m going to suck your dick now.”

Laughter dies in Yoongi’s throat, replaced by a deep groan that comes rumbling out of him as Jungkook licks the underside of Yoongi’s shaft, tongue flat and eager. Sparks slide up his back as he clutches the sheets. Jungkook mouths up the side of Yoongi’s cock, hand going to grip at the base, tongue laving, hungry, determined.

“Fuck,” Yoongi whispers. Jungkook giggles, pulling Yoongi’s swollen tip toward his mouth. He licks around the head happily, Jungkook nearly humming in delight.

Yoongi’s mind is blank. He watches, entranced and hips squirming as Jungkook takes Yoongi’s cock into his mouth proper, hollowing his cheeks and giving an experimental suck. Yoongi’s hips come off of the bed, and Jungkook whines, retracting his mouth with a wet sound as he blinks up at Yoongi.

“No,” is all he mumbles in Yoongi’s general direction before he’s back on him, taking Yoongi into his mouth and down to the back of his throat. Yoongi doesn’t move his hips, anchored to the spot like Jungkook wants.

“Holy shit!” Yoongi curses.

He can tell Jungkook loves this. His throat twitches around Yoongi and his eyes water, looking up at the vampire as he pulls back a little. His tongue scrapes the sensitive underside of Yoongi’s dick and Yoongi thinks he might come just like this.

Jungkook seems to lose himself in a messy, wet rhythm. He closes his eyes, lashline shining with unshed tears every time the crown of Yoongi’s cock kisses the back of Jungkook’s throat, feels the soft, dewy spot as Jungkook swallows Yoongi deep.

Curses across many languages spill from Yoongi’s lips. He falls backward on the bed, moaning up toward the ceiling. Jungkook is loud, his ravenous mouth stretched tight around Yoongi, drool escaping the sides of taught lips and dripping down to Yoongi’s balls.

“Your fucking mouth,” Yoongi whispers, voice broken as he trembles under Jungkook’s ministrations.

Jungkook pulls off Yoongi with a wet-pop. “Wanna fuck you.” He licks up Yoongi’s precum again. “Can I fuck you, hyung?”

“Yes.”

Yoongi has no reservations. Hei can protect Jungkook, from both Yoongi himself and anything else. There is no fear there, only want. Only desire that has been burning for three fucking years that he sat next to Jungkook, the cute boy who poured over his vampire comics.

The whisper of clothes is loud in the room. Jungkook presses himself against Yoongi, crawls on top of him and cages him in. His mouth is filled with the taste of Yoongi’s precum and his own unique taste, but Yoongi devours him, biting into Jungkook’s bottom lip, pulling back and letting Jungkook grind into him.

Jungkook is warm, like the sun is trapped underneath his skin. Yoongi hasn’t felt the warmth of human skin like this in so long. He leans into Jungkook, hands pressed on the smooth, strong planes of Jungkook’s back as the younger grabs lube from his nightstand and pops the cap open with ease.

Cool, slick fingers prod at Yoongi’s tight rim and he lets out a rumble, drawing innocent eyes toward him. Yoongi grins and nips Jungkook’s mouth, wiggling his hips to chase Jungkook’s hesitant fingers. “Come on,” Yoongi urges, starving for it. Aching to be fucking filled, to have Jungkook closer. “Loosen hyung up.”

Jungkook whimpers, ever eager to follow instruction. He presses a finger in, sinking to the second knuckle and Yoongi sighs, head going slack as he lets Jungkook experiment, sliding his finger in and out gently. It feels good, but Yoongi wants more. Yoongi needs more. Hasn’t had this in years, hasn’t ever had Jungkook.

“More.”

It’s all Jungkook needs, growing confident and gently fucking into Yoongi’s tight walls with a set pace. Yoongi is spiraling. Feels like he can’t catch his breath, though he doesn’t need it. He vibrates at a new frequency as Jungkook slides in another digit, the wet squelch mixing with their moans.

Yoongi pulls Jungkook’s mouth to his, teeth clacking, tongues uncoordinated, noses bumping together as Jungkook stretches Yoongi. It feels good, especially when Jungkook reaches that soft spot in Yoongi, making his stomach lurch and his feet dig into his bed.

“There?”

“There,” Yoongi agrees in high-keen.

Determined, Jungkook gets after it. Busies his mouth with sucking Yoongi’s flesh raw, nipping, licking his way around the expanse of Yoongi’s throat. Jungkook seems to particularly favor the sensitive spot over Yoongi’s jugular and Yoongi laugh-moans when Jungkook’s teeth drag against where Yoongi’s pulse would be.

“Fuck me,” Yoongi begs. “Just fuck me, I’m good.”

“Okay.”

They’re a tangle of slick limbs. Yoongi tastes sweat on Jungkook’s skin, his tongue heavy in his mouth as Jungkook jostles him up his bed, pushing his thighs open, splaying him open butterfly-perfect.

Jungkook’s eyes are soft and curious, looking down at where Yoongi lays marked and messy, pliant for Jungkook, eager hole gaping, cock weeping. Yoongi pulls at Jungkook’s hands. Makes a soft sound. Wants him, begs for him quietly.

With a soft smirk, Jungkook fists his own cock a few times, pumping his thick, long length. Yoongi’s eyes follow the movement, chewing on his bottom lip, waiting and wanting. He knows is going to feel perfect, wants to feel the push and drag-

Jungkook’s tip catches the rim of Yoongi’s ass and he sighs. Digs his fingers into Jungkook’s skin and pulls. He is careful with his pressure, always regulating what he’s doing, never touching Jungkook hard enough to bruise. The smile on Jungkook’s face as he ducks his head to watch his cock sink into the heat of Yoongi is enough for Yoongi to know that Jungkook knows. Knows Yoongi has this under control. Knows that at any moment, Yoongi could take over. Could ruin Jungkook and leave him dripping and broken.

That’s not what Yoongi wants. He wants this. The pressure of Jungkook filling him up, tight squeeze, light burn, walls hugging and fluttering. He feels Jungkook deep, never ending, ceaseless. And then Jungkook’s tapered hips are pressed against Yoongi’s ass, stilling as Yoongi fights around the stretch.

“Come on,” Yoongi pants, a human habit that had slipped in between the distraction of Jungkook splitting him open. “Come on, Kook.”

Yoongi doesn’t know if it’s the way he whispers the plea or if it’s the nickname, but Jungkook sheds his hesitance. He presses Yoongi’s thighs to the mattress, putting his weight into him. It feels good, to have the heavy feeling of Jungkook on top of him, especially when he starts fucking Yoongi in earnest.

The world turns to liquid. At least, that’s how it feels as Yoongi turns molten under Jungkook. The younger fucks Yoongi hard, face fixed in a snarl as he grabs at Yoongi’s thighs, fingers slipping on lube-slick skin. Yoongi’s eyes roll backward, letting Jungkook’s thrust lull him somewhere like a dream.

“Fuck,” Jungkook hisses. “You like being fucked like this, huh? Big dangerous vampire, split open by me, huh?”

“Yes.” It’s a raspy note stuck in Yoongi’s throat, so he nods. Babbles something else. He doesn’t know.

With a huff of laughter, Jungkook pulls out. Yoongi’s eyes fly open, a protest on his lips, ready to snarl that he felt good, that he felt full. Jungkook cuts him off, flipping Yoongi over, handling him as though Jungkook were the predator here.

Before Yoongi can think much, Jungkook is prying his ass cheeks apart, spitting right on his already wet hole. Yoongi keens and Jungkook chuckles behind him, sliding back in and fuck it feels so good.

With a hand grabbing Yoongi’s hips to lift him, Jungkook powers into him, the snap of his hips fast and efficient. The sounds he makes puts Yoongi’s world on a spinning top, going round and round. Jungkook sounds so pretty, whining as he adjusts himself so he’s fucking deeper into Yoongi.

Warmth blooms inside of Yoongi and he lets out a scream. Jungkook hits his prostate head on and it feels like he’s unraveling, pressing his face into the sheets and arching his back. He scrambles backwards, pushing himself onto Jungkook’s cock, desperate for more more more.

Just as Yoongi starts to crest toward the peak of his orgasm, Jungkook shifts again. Yoongi growls and Jungkook ignores it entirely, pulling out of Yoongi with a wet mess and turning him around. He lifts Yoongi easily and the vampire loves it. Loves how Jungkook handles him, instructing Yoongi to loop his legs around his waist. Loves when he holds onto Jungkook’s shoulders, shining with sweat as Jungkook fucks up into him, his hands bounding Yoongi in his lap.

It’s so deep that Yoongi thinks he might die. Perhaps one can kill a vampire after all. It wouldn’t be such a bad way to go, head sinking into Jungkook’s shoulder. The smell of honeysuckle flooding his senses. The feeling of Jungkook fucking him with everything he has. The soft feeling of Jungkook nosing Yoongi’s hair in contrast with the way he slams Yoongi down into his lap.

Overwhelmed, Yoongi comes suddenly. A snarl rips out of him and his fingers tighten a little, but not enough to do more than bruise. Not enough to hurt Jungkook - never hurt Jungkook. He shudders as Jungkook quickens his pace, chases his orgasm, driving Yoongi toward overstimulation.

Yoongi squirms and squeals, fights Jungkook - but not really. Not in any way that tells Jungkook Yoongi is actually trying to get away, because they both know that he can. Jungkook laughs, pinning Yoongi down and sinking deep into the heart of him where he comes with a long groan, face dropping into Yoongi’s neck.

Yoongi feels the rough wetness of Jungkook’s tongue, licking a stripe up his neck. Despite himself, Yoongi laughs and rolls his eyes, feeling alive and brighter than ever.

“Beast,” he jests, slapping Jungkook’s side.

Jungkook sloppily kisses his way to Yoongi’s mouth, letting himself soften inside, not willing to pull out. Their mouths mingled together, not really kissing, not really not kissing. Just tangled tongues, sometimes just mouths pressed against one another.

“So you like being handled, huh?” Jungkook asks, eyes fluttering open. Yoongi looks up at them. This close, he can see all the different shades of brown, layer after layer of shades. “Vampire likes being a pillow princess?”

“And you like being rough and fast,” Yoongi shoots back. “Makes you feel like a predator, huh?”

Jungkook’s nose goes red. Yoongi likes it when Jungkook’s face reddens. So full of blood and life and lust. “A little.”

When Jungkook pulls out, it’s an audible, wet mess. Yoongi feels the spill out of him. Doesn’t care. Likes the debauchery of it. Plus, he’s distracted when Jungkook lays down next to him, head on Yoongi’s chest. He isn’t going anywhere, seeking the comfort of Yoongi’s arm as Jungkook’s heart rate begins to die down.

“So,” Jungkook says airly. “I guess this makes me a fang fucker?”

Yoongi groans. “Not those fucking comic books.”

“I have so many more things I wanna try, hyung.” Jungkook looks up at him, eyes glittering. “Give me ten minutes. I wanna see how long you can ride me.”

Yoongi huffs, but there’s mirth in it.

So Yoongi doesn’t hate Jeon Jungkook at all. Not one little bit.

#bts smut #bts fanfic #yoonkook smut #yoonkook fanfic #jungkook smut #yoongi smut #vampire yoongi #halis milestone requests #minors dni #minors dont read #yoonkook #yoongi x jungkook #jungkook x yoongi

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