#ms or no title is fine

[a-tale-of-legends]

I like to think Luca also makes curry during their time in Paldea. It's probably harder to do since I don't think he exactly packed to make curry, but when he does, it's kinda like a treat for him and his pokemon. Probably something done after a gym battle or something.

Also! Curry sandwiches. Not sure if they're good or not but Luca definitely makes them!

[4m1rz]

Young Luv

NMIXX Sullyoon x Male Reader

Kink: multiple creampies, class sex, mommy kink

Special thanks to @lustspren for giving me the idea for the title of the fic. Also thanks to @mode-lfy for beta-read it as well being the inspiration of the fic.

It was a normal day in PJY University. All of the students have done the middle term exam and are waiting to know how they did and what their results will be. This also includes Han Yechan, despite him being nervous about it.

Han Yechan is in the final year of university. He is well known to be the top athlete in the university as being the notorious basketball player of the university. He is always getting picked for basketball matches, whether it's against other universities or the nationals. This even happens in his final year as he is still being scouted for those matches.

However, due to him being too active with his basketball matches, his grades were always at the lowest. This causes him to always get scolded by the lecturers that teach his classes. Some lecturers even threaten him by saying that they will report it to the coach of the basketball team, hoping that he'll get dropped off from the team.

This makes him scared a bit despite the fact that he believes that the basketball coach would not be removing his name from the team. Unfortunately, no matter how he tries, he is not able to catch up with the learnings due to his hectic schedule. This does make him a bit frustrated and almost given up as he does not want to repeat his semesters.

This time however, he is confident that he will pass the exam. The reason; he had an amazing tutor that helped him to study back the subjects he's been missing for such a long time. His tutor also tries the best to make him focus on his study and gives advice.

Back to the present time, Yechan is at the entrance of his classroom. As he opens the door, he notices there are some students already in the classroom. However, there is one girl who takes all of his attention which is the class representative, Seol Yoona or mostly known as Sullyoon.

Sullyoon is the daughter of the university director, Seol Taehyun. She is always being talked about all around the university because of her beauty. However, there's also some students and lecturers in the university who talk badly about her.

The first reason is about how inappropriate she wears on the university campus. This can be seen with how short her skirt is and the unnecessary accessory all over her uniform. She is also being talked badly about because she always gets good scores in exams as if she bribes the lecturers that teach her by using his dad as a threat. Nonetheless, there is still someone that believes how she actually is.

Back to the present time, Yechan walks towards where Sullyoon is sitting and greets her. “Hey there Yoona, how are you doing today?” He says. Despite almost all of the students and lecturers calling her Sullyoon, only Yechan prefers to call her by her real name. He believes that her real name suits her and sounds prettier, which makes him constantly calling her that.

This makes her look at him with her eyes gleaming with excitement. “Hey Yechan. I'm doing just fine. Are you excited to know your result for this exam?” She chimes which makes him giggle and scratch his head awkwardly. “I sup-pose… Well then, I'm going to my seat.” He exclaims, to which she nods and lets him go to his seat.

Several minutes later, everyone else was already in the class and the lecturer, Ms Song Jimin had finally arrived. She teaches the subject a bit first before announcing that she'll be giving the results of the exam. This causes some students to be nervous yet excited at the same time.

And with that, it is time to announce the grades for every student in the class, starting from the lowest and progressively moving to the highest. After Ms Song reveals each student's result, they go to the front and take the exam paper. However, most of the students in the class feel weird as Yechan’s name hasn't been called as they know that he always has the lowest grade.

“Now, I'll announce the ones getting the highest grades for the exam. This time, there's two people in this class that achieve the highest grades...” The lecturer says and then continues. “The first person is, as always, our class representative, Sullyoon.” She says to which it is followed with an applause from everyone in the class. Then, Sullyoon goes to the front and takes her graded exam paper before Ms Song says to her, “Keep up the good work.”

“For the second person, oh wow… I didn't expect this would happen. It's Han Yechan.” She says it with a very surprised yet excited tone. This results in all of the students in the class to be shocked and engage in small chats amongst each other as this incident hasn't happened till now. Then, he shyly walks to the front and takes the exam paper.

“I didn't expect you'd ace this exam, Yechan. Did you cheat or is someone able to tutor you?” Ms. Song asks him which makes him chuckle sheepishly before answering. “Yeah, I had someone to tutor me. That someone is able to make me recap the whole subject without letting me be distracted. I really have to thank that person later.” He says.

After that, he walks back towards his seat. As he was going back to his seat, he felt someone had passed a folded paper on his used-to-be-free hand. Nonetheless, he waits until he is finally at his seat before unfolding the paper to which there's something written on it:

‘Stay with me here after class’

-SY-

After he reads the paper, he looks to the possible culprit which is Sullyoon to see that she's looking back at him. Then, she gives him a sultry wink which makes him giggle a bit. He is eager to know what she is up to later on.

About 3 hours later, at around 5 pm, the class ends; to be frank, it's the only class of the day. Everyone in the class starts to leave the classroom one by one, except for Yechan and Sullyoon. After it is confirmed that there's only the two of them in the class, Sullyoon walks towards the door before closing and locking it.

After that, she walks towards Yechan's seat before sitting on his table. However, before she sits on his table, she lifts his head before pecking his lips which makes him a bit stunned. “Congrats baby, I knew you could ace this exam.” She says.

Well, there is a secret that both of them have been keeping from anyone else in which they are secretly a couple. They have been dating in secret for about 4 months now since the day that she agrees to tutor him. The person that he has been thanking earlier is actually her.

That is also why he didn't believe any of the rumours that had been pointed towards her. Despite sometimes asking her dad to do or buy stuff for her, she is mostly independent and very hardworking. This is mostly due to her dad trains her to do things by herself and not hoping for others yet still pampering her with love and wealth. He also remembers how diligently she tutors him for the exam.

“Hehe, thanks… It is all thanks to my beautiful, sexy and diligent tutor right in front of me. I thank you so much for it, babe.” He says and gives her a wink. Somehow, she suddenly frowns after he says that. Then, she leans forward and grabs his necktie before tugging it towards her, making their face really close.

“That’s not what you should call me right now, baby. Come on, call me correctly.” She says while giving him a sultry smirk. Knowing her agenda, he playfully rolls his eyes before saying back. “Ugh, fine. Thank you so much for tutoring me, mommy.” This makes her giggle before releasing her grip on his necktie.

“That's more like it, baby. You're such a good boy.” She exclaims and returns him back with a wink. “Oh please mommy, don't act like you're the dominant one here. I still remember the way you begged me the last time I rammed your pussy.” He retorts with a playful mocking tone. This only makes her giggle even more.

“What can I say, my sweet, strong baby has an amazing dick, mmmmh…” She says and licks her lips, imagining how he always fuck her. He is only able to shake his head while looking at her expressions.

“... Anyways, since you did excel in this exam, I will tell you your gift as promised. Well, it's in front of you right now.” She chimes and gives yet another wink. “So… you're my gift huh? Hehe, I guess you finally want to fulfill your fantasy of getting fucked in the classroom, mommy. About time we make these soundproof walls for good use.” He retorts and smirks at her.

Apparently, the whole university building had soundproofing walls installed about a year ago, thanks to Sullyoon asking her dad for it. She says that she wants it to make her even more focused in class but deep down, she really wants to have sex at school which is on her bucket list.

“Mommy has been planning for this since forever…” She says. Then, she suddenly lifts her skirt a bit, showing her laced purple panties that already had some wet spots on her crotch region. “... besides, don't you want to help mommy fulfill her bucket list of getting fucked in school?” She continues before biting her lips seductively.

This causes his dick to start getting hard underneath his pants, creating a bulge. She smirks even more, seeing how her actions make him hard already.

“Alright, fine mommy. I'm also getting impatient with all of your teasing. Let's start now.” He says which makes her feel giddy. “Now that's a good boy. However, mommy has set up some rules. Mommy only letting you to fuck my pussy for up to 3 rounds. Also, you must cum with mommy for each round, understand?” She orders to which he nods to it.

After that, she gets down from the table and starts pulling down her skirt and panties at the same time. This also indicates him to pull down his pants and boxers, revealing his already hard dick. Upon seeing his hard dick, she smirks more before getting onto his lap, sitting right on top of his dick. Then, she starts to grind on it which makes both of them moan.

“Mmmh, mommy… I thought you wanted to do this quickly.” He whines which makes her giggle. “Be patient, baby. Mommy wants to… mmmmh… make your dick wet enough first.” After a while, as she confirms that his dick is wet enough, she lifts herself a bit. Then, she holds his dick, aiming with her pussy before plunging down, making both of them moan even more.

“Oh god, your pussy still feels so tight, mommy… Even af-ter what we did two days ago, mmmmh.” Yechan chimes. As Sullyoon keeps on riding his dick, both of them start to unbutton each of their shirts before removing it, leaving him fully naked while her with only a matching laced purple bra which he then unclasps and removes it from her.

After removing her bra, he immediately attacks her tits with licks, sucks and bites which makes her squirm more. “Mmmmh, that's it baby. Make mommy’s tits feel good, oh gosh!!” Her response makes him do it more to her a lot more erratically.

About 15 minutes later, both of them feel each other about to have their own releases with his dick pulsating and her pussy throbbing. “Go on t-then, baby. Cum with mommy. Mommy needs to be filled right now, mmmmh…” Sullyoon groans, which leads to them to cum at once and also indicates the first creampie for her.

Five minutes worth of pantings later, she gets up from his lap and their mixed cums start to get out from her pussy. “Oops, it starts leaking. I guess you have to fill mommy with your cum again, baby.” She says to him with a smirk on her face. This makes him scoff before getting up and carrying her towards the lecturer table.

As he put her on the table, she instantly spreads her leg, insisting him to fuck her in that instance. However, instead of inserting his dick back into her pussy, he inserts two fingers inside her and starts fingering. This makes her shocked which leads to her whining madly.

“Nnngh, come on baby. Fuck mommy’s pussy again, I need it!!!” This makes him chuckle and pulls his fingers before pushing his dick back into her pussy. “Y-Yes, baby. Fuck this needy mommy of yours, nice and hard, mmmh.” She squeals loudly, feeling the pleasure from getting her pussy filled with his dick.

As he thrusts his dick back inside her pussy and starts fucking her again, he wants to ask the one question he had since before they did this. “So mommy, that purple lingerie… mmmmh… seems new. When exactly did you buy- oh god- those? How exactly have you been…. mmmmh… planning this?” His question makes her chuckle with moans in between.

“Oh baby, mommy just bought that purple lingerie a couple days ago. You see, mommy has been planning this… mmmmh… since our exam ended a few weeks ago.” She answers, yet she continues more. “Mommy knows that you have worked hard for the test… and I might have been spoiled with the results earlier than the rest of us since my dad got the info from our teacher. That's why I've been preparing for this.”

Her answers make him become more ecstatic which causes him to thrust into her pussy even faster and harder from their first round. This causes her to moan as loud as she could, as if she was screaming for her life.

“Y-Yes baby!!! Keep fucking my pussy. Make mommy sore really good at the end of this session, oh god!!” Her moans just keep making him more aroused to which he complies with keep fucking her pussy. It didn't take a long time after that before both of them cum at the same time yet again, which also makes it the second time he fills her up with his cum.

“Make sure you hold it in this time, mommy.” He warns her to not let his cum to get out from her pussy. However, as soon as he pulls out his dick, a huge load of their mixed cums spill out from her. This makes him sigh before looking at her face to see a huge smirk is formed on her face.

He then puts his hand around her neck, lightly chokes her. “You really know how to make me infuriated. Such a bratty mommy you are.” He playfully mocks her to which she nods pretty quickly to it. “Yes baby, I am your bratty mommy. I love to make you mad so that you could fuck mommy harder and harder.” She answers with gleaming eyes.

Her answers just make him only able to shake his head, baffled at her brattiness. Minutes later, he lifts her once again and carries her towards the classroom door. Then, he bends her over before lining himself at her back.

“Y-Yah, why here? Don't we have somewhere else in this classroom to fuck?” She asks with a worried tone which results in him scoffing. “Oh please mommy, you're the one who is always asking for having sex in public places. Besides, when we did it, your pussy seemed to be wetter, as if you really wanted us to get caught.”

She shakes her head to what he just said, trying to deny his exclamation. However, it is futile as he pushes his dick back into her pussy to experience that her pussy is indeed, feels a lot wetter than their previous two rounds. With a smirk on his face, he mouths ‘I told you so’ at her before pounding her pussy again.

She still tries to retaliate, meeting his poundings and shaking her head continuously while looking at him innocently, she tried though. However, it is no use as he hardens his poundings every time she tries to meet his pounds. In the end, she just whimpers before admitting her defeat.

“F-Fine, you win. Mommy always wanted us to have sex… nnng… in secluded public places. Mommy also loves adrenaline when doing it and hopes we might have a moment when we almost got caught doing this.” This results with him humming in satisfaction towards her response as he's still pounding her pussy.

As time goes by, both of them are at the brink of cumming for the third and final round of their sex sessions. “G-Gosh, baby… I'm so close and I know you are too. Fill mommy’s pussy one last time with your hot cum, please, mmmmh!!!” She insists on him. In the end, he obliges and after a minute later, he releases the final load of cum for the session deep inside her pussy. This also triggers her to cum all over his lower body.

As both of them are panting after that tiring session, Yechan roams his hands all over Sullyoon's body, trying to prolong the sensation of their orgasms. This makes her hum, feeling the warmth of his touch. Amusingly, he ends it by giving her butt cheeks some spanking which makes her yelp and turns her head towards him before giving her a playful yet deadly glare.

He then pulls his dick from her pussy after he feels that he has felt relaxed enough after his orgasm. Fortunately, this time, there is just a small amount of their mixed cums spilling out. “I guess you do know how to save my cum inside of you after all, mommy.” He says with a big smirk on his face which makes her scoff as if he's mocking her.

“Anyways, do you like the prize that I have prepared for you, baby?” She asks him, right after she turns around from her previous position. He just nods as an answer. “It was, indeed. Honestly, any present from you is good enough for me, but this is definitely top tier. At least, we're able to fulfill your bucket list.” He continues not until there's a loud rumbling sound coming from their tummies.

This makes both of them chuckle, knowing that both of them are exactly hungry. “Well then, I guess we better get something to eat. We did spend our time here without knowing it's almost dinner time.” Sullyoon says while looking at the wall clock in the classroom.

“I guess you're correct, Yoona.” He says which results in him getting pinched by her. “Yah, I told you to call me that when we're in public. You can only call me baby or mommy when it's just the two of us.” She whines and follows it up with her lips pouting. This makes him chuckle, seeing her looking so cute at the moment before giving those lips of hers some pecks.

“Hehe, I know… It's just, I love to see your pouting lips when you're upset.” He explains. “Anyways, let's get back dressed and get ourselves our dinner. I'm sure you're up for more rounds after dinner. Gonna get your other two holes to be filled with my cream.” He adds more with a smirk on his face to which, there is also a smirk appearing on her face as well. Nonetheless, they went back to where their outfits are left, putting them back on before leaving the classroom.

[sundrop-writes]

Hiii !! I wanted to request a reaction for Derek, Emily and Spencer

When Single Parent! Reader (GN is fine !!) has to bring their daughter to the BAU for a little bit and she won't stop following the Character around and doesn't want to leave "her new friend" when its time to go? Thank you sm in advance if you write it !! 💕💕

i might swing by later with a dif request, this was the first thing my sleep ridden brain blessed me with ;p

I love this so much (I have been in such a parent fic mood since writing the Dad Spence fic, Star thank you so much) - I think this idea is so adorable, I love it!!!

(I wrote Derek's part and then trailed off and left this in my drafts for a few days, so sorry if there's a huge disconnect between the characters' parts. Ooops.)

Requests are currently - OPEN

How would Derek Morgan, Emily Prentiss, and Spencer Reid react to your daughter becoming attached to them? (Derek, Emily, and Spencer x GN!Reader)

Warnings: mentions of corporate/white collar crimes (embezzlement, etc.); mentions of the reader being threatened by white collar criminals, mentions of criminals threatening to kill a child; as it says in the title, the reader has a daughter but the reader's gender is not described in any way; surprisingly, for this one, I didn't give the daughter a name. idk, I think that's it. (Edit: now fixed so that the reader is actually fully GN and I am so sorry about the mistake before!!!)

It was a pretty basic case. You were an attorney working on a large company merger - you had found evidence of millions of dollars being embezzled, and when you had copied the files with the intention of bringing them to the IRS, you had started receiving threatening letters. It weighed on your conscience - you knew that the men who ran the company had more than enough money and resources to make you disappear, likely leaving your daughter an orphan, leaving her to wonder what had happened to you for the rest of her life. When you received another letter with photos of your daughter at her preschool attached, now threatening her - you had made your decision fully.

You took your files and evidence to the BAU - you had met Rossi at a seminar he gave, talking about how sociopathy is incredibly common in corporate circles - how sociopaths do very well in corporate jobs due to their driven, goal oriented, emotionless nature. And warning signs to look out for if someone is using those traits to cross into dangerous territory. It was a seminar you had gone to out of curiosity, but you were glad that you had taken his card and you were able to contact him now.

He invited you to the BAU, and the team offered to take your case - to find out who was threatening you and bring them to justice.

Derek found you incredibly beautiful.

He was intrigued by your looks at first, and when Hotch mentioned that someone needed to interview you and get the full details from you in order for the team to get a better perspective on the case, Derek volunteered immediately. He hadn't gotten a full briefing - too eager to get to talk to you.

He came into the room with a bottle of water for you, looking to comfort you with his smile and his charms, and he was surprised when Penelope came back into the room and a small girl came barreling toward you, incredibly excited to tell you that she had gotten M&Ms from the vending machine (which Penelope had taken her to).

Typically, Derek didn't go for people who had kids. Any other time, with any other person - it would have immediately turned him off. It would have dampened your attractiveness in his eyes. He generally had a 'no single parents' policy, because he thought that dating someone with kids was just a lot of baggage. But seeing you - he was immediately taken with you. And seeing you with your daughter, somehow made you instantly more attractive.

And he thought the way that you scooped your daughter up into your lap and let her feed you M&Ms with her chubby little fingers was all too cute. It was unprofessional, but the case definitely wasn't the only thing on his mind that day.

Penelope took your daughter out of the room again while Derek interviewed you, and it was only when you spoke of the fear you felt for your daughter - the potential of her being her by the anonymous person, that you actually teared up. Derek couldn't help but to pull you in close, holding you tight in an effort to comfort you (secretly loving how tightly you hugged him back) - and it was in that moment that he vowed to himself that he would do whatever it took to protect you and your child. He would always keep the two of you out of harm's way.

And he certainly tried his hardest to accommodate your daughter when he found out that the two of you would be sticking around the office for the day - to ensure that you would be protected until the team found out who had sent the threats. He got her a kids meal with a toy when he ordered lunch, he knew there wasn't much in the office in the way of "toys" - but he swung by Garcia's office borrowed something she had that was fuzzy and lights up (with the promise of returning it) and he scrounged up a blank pad of paper and some coloured pens so your daughter could have something to do.

It wasn't surprising when she excitedly ran over to his desk and gave him a picture she had drawn of him - a very cartoonish muscled man with his same facial hair and an eggish bald head. His exaggerated features in the picture made you and Morgan laugh, and before you left the BAU for the day (when your safety was assured and the local police were on their way to arrest the men who had made the threats to you) - you found a different pen and wrote your number on the bottom corner of the picture for him.

He knew that something in you had changed him when he started thinking about taking you on a first date in the park - something your daughter could enjoy as well, rather than considering what bar or late night restaurant he was going to take you to.

Emily was surprised by the entire thing.

She hadn't been around children since, well - she was one. Due to events in her past, and due to the way her mother treated her, she never imagined herself being a parent. Ever. She was someone who thought that she was just naturally terrible with kids, like her own mom was. She hadn't met the person she thought that she could settle down with, so she never thought that kids were in the cards for her. So it definitely caught her off guard when your daughter seemed to take to her like a duck to water.

It was in her natural instinct to comfort you. You were so shaken up about the whole thing, the anonymous danger lurking in your life - and she took some extra time to assure you that things were going to be okay, that the team was the best, and they were going to catch whoever was doing this.

She thought it was a natural kindness to get down on your daughter's level and ask what she was playing with, to compliment her cute little doll and then take her down the hallway to grab a snack to give you a few minutes to breathe. The little girl was sweet and Emily didn't mind spending some extra time with her.

On their way back along, your daughter plucked a crossword puzzle book off Emily's desk and asked what it was, and Emily explained it - so then she took a few minutes to find some crosswords for children online and printed them out, and when she came to delivery them, alone with some pens, your daughter enthusiastically asked if Emily would sit and 'show her' - and while you said that Emily was busy and had other work to do, Emily shrugged and said she had a few minutes to spare. Again, she thought it was common manners, sitting with the girl on her lap while she guided her through the puzzles, praising her intellect when she got the answers right.

She didn't see the way you were looking at the pair, pure affection bubbling up in your eyes.

When the day was over, and it was cleared as safe for you and your daughter to return home, the little girl let out a loud complaint that she didn't want to leave her 'new friend Emily' - and Emily couldn't have predicted the way that those words tugged at something in her chest. She didn't know what led her to kneeling down at the girl's level, promising to see her that weekend when she had a free day - that was, if you didn't mind. Getting nothing but a bright smile from you, and feeling a certain spark there.

(She had to resist the urge to punch Morgan in the ribs when she walked back to her desk to nothing but teasing, how she was getting 'the whole family package' on 'her first date'.)

Spencer found the whole thing (secretly) adorable.

It is no secret that Spencer loves kids. He is very good with kids, and it's clear by the way he acts around kids that he definitely wants kids of his own someday. He hasn't met 'the one' yet - the person that he's going to have kids with. Whether that's through the natural, old-fashioned way or through adoption. But he did always imagine that if he raised kids of his own, it would be from infancy.

He never imagined that the person he was meant to be with would stumble into his life with a child that was already walking and talking - but when he met you and your daughter, it felt so right. Even if the circumstances were a bit dark.

He interviewed you about the whole situation, and when you apologized for crying and getting emotional, he was quick to assure you that it was natural - you were shaking, and though Spencer was usually someone to avoid touch, he found his need to hold you so overwhelming. He didn't regret his choice to wrap his arms around you when you hugged him back tightly.

When your daughter burst into the room (no longer occupied making paper airplanes with Emily and JJ), she was quick to ask why you were crying, extending out a small chubby finger to point at you, seemingly warbling with half-baked tears of her own at seeing you so upset. Spencer knelt down and assured her that everything was going to be okay, and then he moved to distract her by taking the little paper airplane out of her hand and telling her that he knew a trick to make it fly so much farther.

And he did. It was simple aerodynamics and folding techniques. And then they stood near the top of the bullpen, silently trying to get Morgan to look up by flying planes onto his desk - and the man couldn't bring himself to get too mad when he heard childish giggling coming from your daughter every few minutes.

You truly felt those butterflies for Spencer turn into more when he showed your daughter a trick that ended with a fake flower somehow coming out of his sleeve - something feathery and pink that he tucked behind her ear for her to keep, having her smiling and laughing brightly on a day where you had been wracked with worry, fearing for her life.

By the time the day was over and both of your safety was assured, you weren't surprised that she didn't want to leave him. And you made the bold move, telling him (rather than asking him) - that he should come over for dinner and a movie on Saturday, and then leaning over to gently whisper in his ear that the two of you could enjoy a another, more adult flick after your daughter was tucked into bed. Your daughter was too excited at the prospect of seeing Spencer again, tugging on his pant leg, waiting for him to agree - and he was speechless at the implications of what you had said.

He couldn't even think of the word 'no' if he tried.

So, it was a date, then.

Criminal Minds Masterlist

[kurogane2512]

Ningguang Birthday 2024

Happy birthday mommy Ningguang!! 😩❤️ Sorry I'm late but sdifhwoeifh

18+ CONTENT

Ningguang x g!p reader (can also read as gn!reader with a dick but there are instances of female titles being used, Y/n is Traveller)

Smut and fluff (very slight drunk sex but everything is consensual, long fic)

It was a pleasant day, adorned by a warm sun and breezy wind, a perfect day to be out doing any kind of activity as many would put it. One could say it felt like the weather knew the specialty of the day and the nature lent its hand to make it perfect. The Tianquan of Liyue wasn't one to make a grand gesture of her birthday, she preferred a more private gathering with close associates and that's exactly what she had been doing for years.

But recently, after the catastrophic events that unfolded in Liyue, one even involving the destruction of the Tianquan's own home, her secretaries wanted to celebrate with a huge feast so to show their and Liyue's gratitude for their Tianquan's contributions and make her feel appreciated. They felt Ningguang's birthday was the best occasion to do so since any other separate event would attract unnecessary gossip.

While Ningguang was initially slightly displeased at the revelation- the moment the three of them invited her to the party- she eventually accepted as she could see the sincerity behind their thought and earnestness on their faces. Not to mention, it had indeed been quite a while since she attended a grand feast like this. So, here she stood at the vibrant Liuli Pavillion, dressed in her evening gown.

The guests weren't elaborate but still quite a few to make the place packed. Some of her long-time business partners were also invited alongside her family and friends. There was a lavish display of buffet for everyone to serve themselves and a proper dinner planned with her friends and family for later. Ningguang had no particular expectations or wishes for the day, the only 1 hope she had was to see a particular guest.

She thought of asking her secretaries if they had invited that person but dismissed the thought and decided to not feel bothered by it. Some time passed into the party and Ningguang felt bored now, attending to all guests was tiring and engaging in professional conversations even on her birthday wasn't something she fould pleasing but knew she had to sit through.

All of a sudden, she looked in the direction of the entrance door to see it being opened by Baishi who then followed by welcoming the new guest rather enthusiastically. Baiwen and Baixiao also joined in and seemed excited just like Baishi, Ningguang became more curious and hopeful then her eyes widened when the person finally came into view. It couldn't be, she found it hard to believe but it was true. Her one and only hope came true.

"Ms Y/n, we are so glad you could make it!" Baishi exclaimed looking at you then cleared the way for you to come in.

"Thank you for inviting me and I'm sorry for being late."

"Oh, it's fine. There's still plenty of time left, please enjoy yourself." Baiwen said.

Baishi then leaned near your ear to whisper, "Lady Ningguang will be very happy to see you. We'll try to give you two some privacy whenever possible~"

Your face flushed, "T-Thank you, that's very kind of you...."

You scratched your cheek then looked up front towards the main area and your eyes immediately met Ningguang's, it didn't even take you a moment to find her and she was also directly looking at you. The secretaries dispersed away and you slowly walked towards Ningguang, your eyes not leaving hers at all. Your body automatically moved and navigated through the space, you felt like being pulled by an indescribable force.

There was a large group of people around Ningguang who kept blabbering on and on, not even noticing that she was no longer paying attention to them. You could tell they were likely some kind of business partners, all of them trying to woo her and get some kind of benefit from her even at her own birthday party. Her secretaries had informed you in the letter about the party and guests.

"A-Ahem, excuse me, may I have a moment with the birthday girl?"

You cleared your throat and did your best to speak between the imposing group, all of them going silent at your words. They knew you were the esteemed Traveller, the Hero of Liyue, and they also knew the Tianquan held you in high regard. They had no choice but to step away and clear the way for you and Ningguang to finally meet. You smiled and moved closer to her then extended out your gift box.

"Happy birthday, Lady Ningguang. I hope you'll like this."

Ningguang was at a loss of words for a moment then regained composure and gave a gentle smile before accepting the gift, "Thank you, Y/n. It's a pleasant surprise to see you here. How's your journey been?"

"Quite well, I went to many new places but I couldn't stop from coming back here. Liyue always feels much closer to home."

Ningguang smiled wider then both of you trailed off, unsure of what to speak.

"U-Um, please enjoy the day and I hope you'll like the gift...!" you stuttered then got ready to walk away.

"Oh, I was hoping we could catch up. It's been more than a year since we met~" Ningguang attempted to stop you but you looked around and saw people giving you unpleasant stares and whispering some things.

"Ah, well, I'm here for a few days so I'll come meet you when you are free. There are many people here waiting to talk to you."

Ningguang felt dejected and soon after lots of people came in between you and her and started talking to her, practically pushing you away before Ningguang could even give an answer. You let out a sigh then went to the food section and picked up a drink with some snacks and sat at an empty table in the corner, enjoying the party in solitude while your eyes couldn't leave Ningguang.

The people surrounding her kept increasing as time went on and you could tell she was feeling quite exhausted after a while. You met Keqing and Ganyu in the party who invited you to chat and play some games together, taking your mind off Ningguang for that moment. Almost an hour passed when you came back to your table and were in mood for some more food then Baishi approached you from the back.

"Ms Y/n, we have a request for you."

"Oh, what is it?"

"Could you....help Lady Ningguang get away for some time? As in get some fresh air? She hasn't eaten anything and only keeps drinking wine, I'm afraid she's become slightly drunk and must be hungry now."

You looked at Ningguang in shock and Baishi was correct, her face seemed flushed and her eyes were hooded either out of tiredness or drunkenness. You immediately agreed to help and wasted no time to go to Ningguang. Ningguang was giggling and conversing with the people around when she saw you come near and wondered what you were up to.

You tried to find a way to join in the conversation but had scare knowledge on the topics they were discussing. You even tried to introduce new topics and stir the conversation away, even Ningguang joined you in that but others were keener on continuing their own talks and tried to push you away again. Your patience was running thin and so was Ningguang's, she was ready to act now but you spoke first.

"Ningguang, will you come with me for a moment?"

Speaking her name without a title certainly made everyone stop in their tracks and stare at you with disdain. Ningguang became amused and agreed easily, extending her hand out to join yours and you walked away together to the balcony. You closed the door behind you while Ningguang leaned on the railing with a sigh.

"Thank you for taking me away, I was going to end it on my own but I'm glad you came~"

"Oh, it's nothing much. Should I get something for you to eat? You seem like you haven't eaten at all...."

"Hmm, it's alright. I'd rather spend this moment talking with you~"

Her words were slightly slurred, likely an effect from the alcohol. She then took out a golden foldable bamboo fan and blew it on her face, wiping away some sweat and feeling the cold air.

"That fan is quite beautiful, it compliments you perfectly." you naturally commented, the words coming out on their own.

"Oh? My, have me parted so long that your gift of flattery has matured this much?~"

You blushed, "No, I'm just saying the truth. It really suits you well...."

Ningguang chuckled, "This is just a trinket I use to pass the time. I could give it to you if it strikes your fancy~"

"Oh, no, that's okay. I doubt I'd have much use of it, and I don't want to take away what's made for you."

Ningguang also lightly blushed then stepped closer to you.

"Oh, right, I'm sorry for being late, by the way. I had received the invitation yesterday only...."

"Hehe, it's okay. I can make a few guesses for the reason- the most likely one being that you were busy finding a gift and came all the way from Fontaine~"

You blinked in surprise, "How did you....?"

"I can tell from the packaging it's from Fontaine. And, I'd say I know you well enough by now to understand the kind of person you are. You were looking for something special and useful, something unique yet simple to operate so that I could use it and still be reminded of you. Am I right?~"

You stared at her in silence then chuckled, "I guess my surprise is ruined now, haha~"

"Not at all. The value and message still remains, that's what matters most to me~"

"Nothing escapes you, does it, Lady Ningguang?~"

"Hmmm.... There is one thing that keeps escaping me quite a lot, and I suppose I can never really own it as I wish~"

Her words were suspicious and you wondered if she talking about you.

"Doesn't it keep coming back to you, though?~"

"I suppose it does, and that's the only satisfaction...."

Ningguang gazed at you and extended her hand to cup your face. You were lost in each other's eyes, her ruby eyes capturing you in them and you almost leaned closer until she abruptly pulled away.

"Ahem, so, tell me, how was your journey in Fontaine? I read quite a few news pieces about the case there."

"O-Oh, it was....adventurous, to say the least. I ended up becoming a temporary attorney and fought in the court, I stayed in their underwater prison for about a month then fought a giant whale from the abyss. You know, the usual stuff~"

Ningguang chuckled at your response, "Certainly usual for you, our Hero of Teyvat~"

"Haha, this time I'm not the hero— not that I ever think I am but this time even more so. Fontaine's own people did much more, just like Liyue did in its time of crisis."

"Hmm, speaking of Fontaine's people. I read about your.... relationship with a certain individual named Navia, the President of an organization called the Spina di Rosula, if I recall correctly?"

"Oh, Navia... Yes, I did spend lot of time with her. The case was quite personally related to her so we ended up investigating together a lot. But, what did you read about us?"

"Hm, nothing much, it was an interview she gave in a newspaper. She referred to you as her partner and spoke highly of your skills and personality, it almost felt like she was smitten with you but I'll put it on the editor for making it sound more dramatic than the truth."

"That's....not untrue, yes. But we were really just friends...."

Ningguang chuckled, "Is that so? I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if she's a bit more special to you than that. There were also photos of you two being rather intimate, or I suppose such actions are quite common in Fontaine compared to Liyue~"

"No, that's not the case.... She's a great friend, for sure, but I treat her just like my other friends in Teyvat."

Ningguang's eyes perked up, "Like your other friends, hm? Am I included in that?~"

Your words were caught in your throat as you realized what she was referring to. You couldn't band her with others considering the things you did with her in the past....

Ningguang smirked and slid her finger down your cheek in a seductive manner, "Do you remember our past encounters and the things we did? Do you do that with many other people?~"

Several memories rushed to your mind, making you blush and become embarrassed. Of course, you didn't forget any of the moments. How could you? They were utterly beautiful.

"I... um... I remember everything, of course. And no, I don't do that with everybody. In fact, you are the only one...."

Ningguang seemingly didn't expect that answer but she was pleasantly surprised. She suddenly moved in front of you and pinned you against the railing, her hand holding up your chin.

"You remember we agreed to do it just once but then, every time when you came back for any purpose, we couldn't help ourselves. I wonder if tonight would be the same?~"

Her face was close to you, her breath brushing past your cheek.

"Do you want it to be?~" you replied.

Ningguang smirked and leaned down in an attempt to kiss you, "W-Wait, not here!"

Ningguang stopped but instead embraced you tightly, keeping her head near your neck, "Shame, it would have been useful to show everyone this~"

You looked behind Ningguang and spotted some people around the balcony, staring through the glass with focused eyes. You sighed but wrapped your arms around her and pulled her closer, "If you want to give them a show then just say so, I don't mind~"

Ningguang chuckled then leaned back and stepped away, "I'm tempted to, but I'd rather not. I'm quite possessive of my things, you know?~"

You smiled then she turned around to walk back inside, "I'm going to finish this up. Let's meet later, shall we?~"

You did meet later, of course. You took on the responsibility to escort her back to the Jade Chamber as her secretaries were busy winding things up and Ningguang was slightly drunk that they didn't want her to be alone. The way back to the Jade Chamber was mostly quiet and normal, Ningguang simply leaned against your arm as you helped her walk. However, the moment you stepped foot on the Jade Chamber, all hell let loose.

Ningguang was quick to wrap her arms around your neck and press her lips to yours in a heated and passionate kiss. She wasted no time to slip her tongue in and roll it with yours, moaning into the kiss while you attempted to walk inside. It was a messy affair, your steps fumbled a few times as you hurriedly kissed before finally being inside and then she pinned you against the nearest wall.

Her body squeezed you into the wall and her lips sought yours impatiently. You could have sworn you knocked down some furniture as you walked further inside but neither of you cared. Ningguang haphazardly attempted to take off your clothes, she was always quite smooth with it but today she seemed more impatient which made her movements fumble. Though, she eventually got you out of your shirt, at least.

You then pinned her on the wall once you were near her bedroom, you coulnd't wait anymore and she never said she wanted to do it in the bedroom. In fact, with the way her legs wrapped around you and her body grinded against you indicated enough that she'd do it practically anywhere. There was a hint of wine on her lips which made you slightly tipsy too, perhaps it was exactly what you needed at this moment.

"Mmmh!~ C-Come on, give me more, Y/n~"

Ningguang moaned as you released the kiss and went to kiss her neck. She was still wearing her dress and wished for you to take it off right away, but you wanted to marvel at her wearing it longer. You trailed kisses down her breasts then dropped to your knees and slipped off her panties before flipping up the front of her dress and burying your face in her warmth.

Ningguang gasped feeling your lips wrap around her clit and flick your tongue over it. She arched off the wall and raised her right leg to rest on your shoulder while her left hand intertwined in your hair. She breathed out hard as your tongue lapped up her folds, her body convulsing from the rising pleasure. You then raised her left leg and placed it on your shoulder as well then lifted her lower body off the wall with ease, a surprised moan leaving her and her hands fiddling to grab onto anything before clenching your hair only.

"O-Oh, Y/n! Yes.... right there— aaahn!~"

Ningguang found it hard to balance herself yet she trusted you to hold her up and you did, she was always impressed by your sudden display of strength in unexpected moments even though she knew it was natural for someone like you having the power of 5 elements inside on top of your existing prowess. Her legs wrapped around your head while your tongue plunged inside her slit and prodded her sweet spots.

Her head threw and eyes rolled to the back as your tongue went deeper, grinding and scissoring her walls and sucking out her juices. Ningguang's mind was blurry now, the effect of the alcohol felt enhanced as the pleasure increased and she approached her release. She did not drink beyond her limit and she was conscious of everything happening, yet she felt tipsy and intoxicated.

"Aaaah! Aaahn..... Y-Y/n, darling.... Ngh! I-I'm close...."

Ningguang's fingers gripped your hair tighter and you bounced her on the wall once to adjust better, slightly raising her more and plunging your tongue even deeper than before. Her hips rutted forward making you thrust your tongue inside before you pulled out and sucked on her clit again. She couldn't hold on more and finally came with a loud, her slick coating your lips as her body arched.

You licked off her release from her folds and your own mouth, enjoying her delicious taste that was sweeter than any delicacy you had in all of Teyvat. Ningguang panted out while gazing at you, you slowly stood up while still holding her legs on your shoulders then swiftly dropped them to wrap them around your waist and pull her in your arms.

Ningguang gasped then chuckled from the surprising action, her arms wrapping around your neck tightly as she embraced you like a koala. She could feel your own tightening bulge press against her abdomen and slyly rutted against it, a shiver going up your body. She leaned back and cupped your face then connected your lips in a passionate kiss while you made your way over to her bedroom.

The moonlight illuminated her room just perfectly and you navigated through with ease as if you remembered the blueprint despite not being here for more than a year. Your lips didn't leave Ningguang's even for a moment as you walked towards the bed, her hands clawing and groping all over your body as she yearned to feel you as much as possible. You reached the bed and laid her upon it while climbing up yourself as she didn't let go of you at all.

Ningguang could feel your bulge rubbing into her crotch while you made out with her and subconsciously grinded against it, making you release the kiss with a groan. You both panted out from the overwhelming kiss, your eyes gazing at her gorgeous figure laid under you as it sparkled in the moonlight. She was ethereal in every way, and you still found it hard to believe you had the privilege to be so close to her. You hoped you were the only one.

"What are you waiting for? Go on, undress me.... I want you~"

Ningguang husked in a sultry tone and cupped your face. Your eyes trailed all over her body and a lustful feeling came over you, an animalistic urge to take her. Your hands grabbed her breasts and kneaded them over her dress while your hips thrusted into her core, your erection humping against her. You then suddenly pulled off her dress and freed her breasts, a gasp leaving her as cold air hit her nipples.

Your fingers pinched and pulled her sensitive buds before you leaned down to place one in your mouth, your tongue swirling around and flicking against it followed by sucking her breast. Ningguang held your held closely as you sucked, her legs wrapped around your waist to pull you closer as you continued humping into her at the same. But she wanted more, she was almost on the verge of turning you over and taking the lead.

You released her nipple with a pop then pulled her dress down and finally removed it completely, exposing her naked body for you to feast on. She looked at your own throbbing erection and wondered how you hadn't cum yet, impressed by your endurance and becoming excited for how intense the night was going to be. You then came closer to her and started kissing her neck, burying yourself in her shoulder and inhaling her exquisite scent.

"Ngh.... put it in already. Are you making me wait intentionally, hm?~"

"No, I just wanted to please you as much...."

Ningguang couldn't help but smile at your sweetness. It was one of the many things she came to like about you. She recalled how you were always this way, always putting her pleasure and satisfaction above yours.

"You have been holding on as soon as we reached the Jade Chamber, don't pain yourself this way."

"It's fine, you deserve the best today. I wish I came sooner, I wanted to celebrate with you more...."

Ningguang chuckled and pecked your lips, "You said you are here for a few days, right? You have plenty of time to make up for this~"

All of a sudden, she wrapped her arms around your torso and flipped over. The ceiling came in your vision before being overtaken by Ningguang's face as she straddled you. Her hair splayed messily yet looked picture perfect, the moonlight making her skin and hair glow brighter. You realized she was sitting right on top of your erection and her hips grinded back n forth, the wetness from her folds seeping through your fabric even.

Her hands finally went to unbutton and unzip your pants and within a single motion, she pulled off both your pants and underwear to take out your shaft. Ningguang licked her lips looking at your cock- hard and throbbing with pre cum staining the tip and ready to fuck her senseless the way she liked. She gripped the shaft and began pumping it sensually, more pre cum gathering on the tip.

"Hmm, has it grown bigger or do I just remember wrong? Was someone else taking care of it? Ms Navia, perhaps?~"

Ningguang was teasing you, she knew you hadn't done it with Navia or anyone else but her jealousy from before wasn't satiated.

"Haah... no, I told you.... I only do it with you, nggh~"

She smirked then leaned down and flicked her tongue over the tip, perhaps she was still in a drunken haze which made her needier and more possessive than she'd ever show. She wasted no time to wrap her mouth around the tip and started sucking, you threw your head back from the sudden feeling as you expected her to be slower. Her palm kept pumping the length while her tongue swiped over the head and sucked on it, eager to make you cum.

"Guh—! N-Ningguang.... you are sucking too hard! I'm going to....!"

Ningguang pulled away her hand and swallowed your cock completely in one ago, your tip almost hitting the back of her throat. Your hips bucked into her but she held your thighs down and began bobbing her head instead. It was unlike her to be so impatient since she usually liked to be slow and tease you, but it seemed you both were equally needy for each other right now.

"Aaah.... Ning.... that feels so good— I'm cumming.... ah, fuck!~"

Ningguang swirled her tongue around the length as best as she could while bobbing up and down, practically swallowing every bit and sucking on the tip. You tried to grab her head to hold her down but she slapped your hand away, her eyes squinting while looking at you as if she was scolding you to behave. She went at her own pace and practically sucked you dry as you came deep inside her mouth, your hips bucking up and being held in place by her as she drank every drop.

She pulled away with a satisfied sigh, licking her lips to clean up the cum that dripped down then licked the residue from your tip as well. She smirked looking at your defeated state as you laid panting from the intense orgasm but your dick was still hard and ready to go for more. She was about to crawl forward to put your dick inside but you suddenly sat up and flipped your positions, pinning her down once again.

Ningguang was surprised but didn't retaliate when she felt your cock rub against her slit. You aligned the tip and slowly pushed in then bucked forward and buried all the way, sheathing in her warmth in one go. She gasped out a moan then clenched the sheet as you started thrusting without break, setting fast pace right away and pounding into her. It was exactly was she needed, what she was waiting for.

You gripped her waist and raised her body slightly, making her legs rest on your thighs then resumed pumping your hips. It was an unrealistic pace even for you, but you couldn't help it knowing how much she wanted it. You pulled her in by her hips at the same time, your thighs slapping against them producing harsh sounds of skin-on-skin. You just wanted to fuck her out of her mind, make her numb enough that she wouldn't be able to work the next day.

"Aaah! Yes! Yes! This is it! Aaaahn~ More, Y/n! Give me more of this! Oh, ravage me!~"

Ningguang was already blinded by pleasure, feeling too good from how you fucked her into the sheets. Her breasts bounced against the force of your thrusting, the bed creaking from your harsh pace but all you could focus was on her walls clenching your length in a deathly grip and the pleasure-induced expression on her face. It was heavenly and you could look at it all day.

Changing things slightly, you held up her left leg on your shoulder and turned her body to the side then continued drilling forward. Ningguang gasped, moaned, whimpered— everything, she was feeling everything and so much more. She knew nobody could give her this, she didn't even need to test it out. That's why she waited every time for you.

"Oh— f-fuck! Y/n! Yes! Right there, ! I'm so close! Hngh~!"

Ningguang looked at you and moaned with your thrusts. She felt your tip throb and knew you were close as well.

"Cum inside.... don't you dare pull out! I need you! Inside me, do you hear me, Y/n?!~"

You were shocked for a moment but didn't deny, you also wanted to just as much. You leaned forward and pressed her leg to her chest, still pumping your hips and pounding.

"Would have asked you the same.... aaah.... it's better when you say it yourself~"

You then grabbed her waist and halted for a second before making a harsh thrust forward, suddenly hilting all the way inside. Her walls fluttered around your length and you finally came right after, flooding her insides with your hot and sticky release. Ningguang moaned feeling your cum fill her up to the deepest depths, yet it wasn't enough and she wanted more.

Just like she had hoped, it indeed became an intense night thanks to your stamina. She didn't know when she was bent against the wall with you fucking her from behind but she loved it, she could feel your cum overflowing inside and dripping down her thighs yet you kept going and had more to give her. Your hands moulded her plump ass, feeling her soft skin and bouncy flesh as it jiggled with your thrusts.

"Aaah! Aaah! Y/n! S-So good! Mmm— hngh!~"

Ningguang pressed her cheek into the wall as her legs were on the verge of giving out, the relentless assault on her behind was overpowering her and she had no idea how long it had been since you started. You noticed her leaning forward and quickly turned her over to make her face you then grabbed her legs and picked her up, holding her against the wall as you kept fucking her.

She wrapped her arms around your neck and fell on your shoulder, her angelic voice moaning in your ear making you go faster and harder. She was bouncing against the wall with your fierce pace, her breasts squeezing against your chest. You then placed your lips on hers and initiated a passionate kiss, her mind plunging in a lovey-dovey state.

The next thing she knew was that you came inside her again but now she was suddenly on the bed again and on top of you now, riding you to her heart's content. She didn't remember when she took this position, she only knew how fast she was riding you and how eager she was for you fill her up again. Nobody would believe this was the same Tianquan of Liyue who was always composed and elegant in public, the same woman who was riding you now like a wild animal.

"Archons— yes! Yes! Fill me up! Cum again, Y/n! I want it! Oh, you are so good! I love you! I love you!"

Ningguang chanted in a lovestruck state, you didn't know if she meant those words truly but you wanted to fuck her just like a lover as she wanted. Perhaps this was the best gift you could give her. You held her waist and bucked your hips with her bouncing then spilled inside her soon after, her body arching with a loud moan as she came with you. How much had it been? Neither of you cared.

She only cared about how your hips were plouging into her from behind while she laid flat on the bed, how your body was resting on top of her as you tightly held her and drilled into her warmth. Your lips made messy kisses on her back and shoulder, your grunts and groans flowing past her ear making her wetter and tighter around you.

"Aaaahn! Yes... oh, I needed this! Faster! Harder1 Y/n— fuck me!~"

You certainly went all night as you both passed out quickly after stopping. The next morning came and you found her laying beside you, her arm put around your stomach and her face buried in your shoulder as she soundly slept. You smiled looking at her and recalled the passionate night, you actually ended up doing all around the room and even the lobby outside.

"Hmm.... good morning, darling~" Ningguang murmured in a sleepy voice and shifted closer to you, holding you tighter.

"Good morning, Ning. It's still early, you can sleep more."

"Mm, I have to work. But I don't think I can move for today, I don't feel my legs at all...."

"S-Sorry, what can I do for you?" you asked in a concerned tone and turned to face, gently cupping her face.

Ningguang opened her eyes and smiled at you then pecked your lips, "Just stay here, I want to talk with you relax together."

"As you wish, Lady Ningguang~"

Ningguang softly chuckled then climbed up to lay on your body and embraced you, her head lying on your chest.

"My apologies if I became.... overbearing last night. I'm not sure what came over me." Ningguang said.

"It's fine, I guess I felt the same. I do wonder, were you jealous?"

Ningguang contemplated her answer then let out a sigh and looked up at you, "To some extent, yes. I felt uneasy reading those articles and seeing those pictures, even though I'm aware how the media tends to overdramatize."

"I'm sorry for making you feel that way...."

Ningguang smiled then sat up on your waist, "It's strange.... you have no reason to be sorry. We are not dating, this is just a convenient arrangement we have to release stress and indulge in our desires. That's the terms we agreed upon. At the same time, I shouldn't feel jealous. I don't own you and I cannot dictate what you do with others...."

You looked at her silently then sat up and lightly held her waist, "Do you remember what you said last night....?"

Ningguang pondered and knew what you were referring to, it was one of the things she remembered vividly from last night.

"Yes, those words.... They were true, I suppose. I can't help but feel that way for you when you treat me so well even when you see me only once or twice a year. What is it that you do to me, Y/n, hm?~"

"I could say the same for you. I have met so many different people, women who are amazing just like you and many of them conveyed similar desires for me yet I refused everyone. You were the first one I agreed to and since then, I have only wanted it to be you."

She smiled and gently kissed you.

"We decided not to cross this line, didn't we?" she spoke.

"Mhm, what do you want now?"

"You tell me, it depends on you. Your goal, your journey, your.... fate."

You looked away with an upset expression, Ningguang knew your answer would disappoint her but she didn't want you to feel bad about it.

"It's fine, I'm not going to make you choose. Your answer has always been the same and it shouldn't waver. I'm always here for you to come back to as a relief, a home, if you still require it."

You furrowed your brows, "Don't bound yourself to me. Please, find someone suitable and live your life. Don't wait for me, I'm not meant for this kind of life. I.... I don't want you to waste time on me. I'm already happy with these memories you gave me."

Ningguang smiled and kissed your forehead, "It's for me to decide whether my life is wasted or fruitful. Besides, I don't exactly have the time for a serious relationship anytime soon. So, this kind of arrangement is best for me for now. We can decide later when to end it~"

You chuckled then went closer to embrace her, burying your face in the crook of her neck while she caressed your head in a soothing manner.

"Ah, before I forget. I have a return gift for you~" Ningguang chimed.

"Heh~ There's still more? I think I got return gifts worth a few years last night~" you teased.

Ningguang bit her lower lip and playfully tapped your nose then stood up on shaking legs and walked towards her cupboard to search for something. She found what was she was looking for then came back to your side and sat on the edge of the bed.

"I acquired several pieces of jade at an auction a few days ago. They looked rather plain compared to other pieces but they have a natural clarity and potential to become anything. I realized it's best to not keep them stored here and instead let me experience a journey of a lifetime. So, I'd like you to have them and take them with you. Fine iterms are best matched with the talented, only then they can shine together."

Your eyes widened at the surprising gift and you slowly accepted them, "Thank you, they look beautiful. I'll be sure to keep them safe and sound."

Ningguang smiled, "I wonder what kind of hue they will display as they travel with you and age gracefully, I'm sure it'll be a brilliant and unique shine like yours. I hope you'll come back and show me with time how they turn out~"

You nodded with a smile then chuckled, "Is this another excuse to just call me back? You can't stay away from me, Lady Ningguang?~"

Ningguang smirked then suddenly pushed you down by your shoulders and pinned you before climbing above you, "Running your mouth too much, aren't you? Seems I need to show you who's in-charge here~"

[crackedpumpkin]

𝐈𝐧𝐟𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐞𝐬 | 𝟎𝟑 |

[ 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐨𝐮𝐬 ] | [ 𝐧𝐞𝐱𝐭 ] | [ 𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 ]

The last time anyone picked you up was when you were getting your butt kicked by your previous master. He’d grabbed you by the waist, easily lifting you and slamming you back down onto the floor in a swift manoeuvre. 

This is exactly the reason why you’re unable to fathom someone carrying you without the intention to fight or harm you. You stare grumpily at Cole’s face, legs dangling off his arm as he carries you to the ambulance. 

“I’m fine, y’know. You can put me down now.” 

He barely spares you a glance, scanning the crowd for any more injured people. “You’ve sprained your ankle — must’ve been when you fell in that pit. You should get it checked out.”

“Oh, so now you show me concern?” Your sarcastic jab doesn’t go unnoticed, his brows furrowing under his hood. 

“What’re you even talking about?” Scoffing, you roll your eyes at the audacity of this man. Luckily, he didn’t hear what you’d uttered before about him being your soulmate and whatever. 

In the meantime, the paramedics had checked on other guests who had mumbled grievances about the auction being cancelled. On the other hand, the mayor had personally announced that they would hold it again soon after checking the museum thoroughly to avoid an incident like this again.

You’re surprised when Cole decides to remain with you, citing his duties as a ninja to come to the aid of any injured citizens. The other four are on a makeshift stage set up by the mayor’s team, standing proud and tall as he speaks.

“And lastly, I would like to thank the ninja for once again, being the heroes we need. Additionally, they will be doing another meet-and-greet on the new auction date.” He pauses, noticing someone gesturing to him to hand over the mic to another. “Additionally, it seems that Ms Hamla has something to say.”

Your stepmother walks onto the stage without a single hair out of place, still in her emerald gown. Your eyes narrow in suspicion from where you’re sitting on the chair Cole had managed to score for you.

“What’s she doing…?” Your mutter doesn’t go unnoticed, Cole turning to look at you with curiosity in his gaze. His eyes flit between your glare and the famous writer on stage, before voicing his question.

“Do you know her personally?”

Laughing, a hint of bitterness gives away exactly how you feel about that. “You could say that,” You answer vaguely. 

“Hello, citizens of Ninjago. First of all, thank you to the ninjas for evacuating everyone safely and securing the status of the threat. Truly from the bottom of my heart,” Her eyes somehow find yours from the stage. You hold a steady, yet defiant gaze. “Thank you,” She finishes softly, finally looking away.

“I will be here again on the new date of the charity auction,” She continues, her strong voice carrying the weight of her words effectively, “and I will also be selling a limited edition of a new book I’m writing, titled: ‘You Complete Me’. All proceeds will go to charity. I hope you will be able to make it.”

Scoffing, you brush off the odd look the paramedic gives you before he finishes bandaging your ankle. Chatters break out amongst the audience, everyone’s invested excitement helping fuel the eagerness of the mayor’s team. 

She better not be expecting you to come again, though. Once is more than the amount you’re willing to do for her. Your vision is blocked by a pair of concerned eyes, Cole having knelt to check on your ankle. 

“I’m fine,” You repeat with a sigh, letting him scan the now bandaged ankle. Wincing when he presses down on a sore spot, you quickly mask it with an annoyed purse of your lips. “If you keep doing that, I might end up hospitalised.”

“Fine,” He quickly drops your ankle, sucking a sharp breath through his teeth at your glare. “Sorry…” The tinge of guilt in his smile makes you feel a little bad for being so mean, but the very thought of confronting him about anything makes you feel squeamish inside. 

Pausing, you recall the hooded figure you saw in the room he’d found you in. Do any of them know…? The scroll they held looked valuable, and if there’s anything you’ve learnt from watching detective shows and reading mystery novels, it’s that it’s never a good sign to leave any stone unturned.

“Hey,” you begin, faltering slightly when he looks up at you with a doe-like gaze. You ignore it, pushing past the way your stupid heart kind of squeezes. “Earlier in the exhibition room, there was someone. They had a scroll in their hands and it looked pretty important.”

“Well, maybe it’s just a common thief. We get some of those around these parts.” He replies lightheartedly. 

“The scroll was glowing.” Now that got his attention. The disbelief in his eyes is more than enough for you to crack an amused grin, tilting your head to the side as you observe the cogs in his brain starting to turn.

“Glowing?” He repeats.

You nod. “Glowing.” Now having his full attention, you begin telling him about your encounter, and how the stranger had fled through the skylight with the weird gauntlet they had. He listens to every word with intrigue, the space between his brows creasing more and more until a full frown is on his face.

“Thanks for telling me this,” He says once you’re done, standing back up and dusting off the specks of dirt on his gi, “I’ll be sure to alert the others. Can I have your number?” You hesitate, raising a sceptical brow. 

He pauses, shoulders tense as he tries to clarify his intentions. “It’s so that we can ask you some follow-up questions if we have any, and maybe you can provide Zane with a description so he can do a sketch.” 

So much for never seeing each other again.

“Fine,” you shrug, keying in your number on the phone he hands you and adding your name. He takes it back and gives it a quick call. You pull out your phone as it rings, swiping left to pick up the call before holding it to your ear and going, “Truth or dare?”

“Neither, unfortunately,” he chuckles, pocketing his phone after hanging up. “Thanks for the info. You can send me the medical bill for your ankle, the ninja fund will cover it.”

“Ninja fund?” You repeat incredulously. If there were an award for the worst names of a foundation or charity, you’d give it to him, no questions asked. 

He turns with a grin. “Ninja fund.” 

You hesitate for a split second before making a decision. “Let’s not meet again, Cole.” His back stiffens, his steps slowing to a halt, clearly having heard you. He turns slowly, eyes wide like a deer in headlights as the realisation dawns on him that you know that he knows.

“I’ll- uh, do my best, random citizen!” He replies robotically, lifting his arm in an awkward salute before taking off to where the rest of his teammates are. You watch his retreating back with a half-smile, filled with pure amusement. 

“There you are!” You’re ambushed by a sudden hug, the shock fading as you lean into your father’s embrace. The judge’s wig he still has on tickles your nose a little, but you repress the sneeze that threatens to ruin the moment. 

He pulls away, firmly planting on your shoulders as he checks you over for injuries. “I was looking all over the place for you. Did anyone hurt you-” His eyes finally land on your bandaged ankle, looking up with a huge frown.

The sheepish chuckle that slips past your lips doesn’t help your case. “That’s it. We’re going home now.” 

“What about her?” You reluctantly nod over to Emily who’s getting swarmed by reporters, her calm composure somehow irking you even more than Cole did. 

“She’ll be fine,” His eyes soften when he looks over at her. The sight makes you feel queasy, looking down at your shoes and fiddling with your cuticles, picking away at them. “Come on,” He helps you up, placing an arm under your shoulder and walking with you to the car.

“Also,” He adds upon closing the car doors after helping you in, “Your classes are supposed to start next week. So till then, no going out until you’re better.” He holds up a finger, stopping you in your tracks as you part your lips to protest. You slouch in your seat instead with an annoyed frown, glaring out the window. A thought occurs to you, inhaling sharply when you realise something crucial.

You forgot to get the rest of the ninjas’ autographs.

— — — — — 

School is boring. That’s a fact you’ll never grow accustomed to. Classes are typical, with few lectures that grab your attention. Professors are mostly chill, though there’s a Miss Grenadine in every school it seems. 

All the pain in your sprained ankle had faded in about a week, two days after classes started. Luckily, this meant that Dad wouldn’t drop you off at school every day anymore, and you’d be able to take the bus or train as usual. 

However, the time taken for your ankle to fully recover meant that you were mostly cooped up at home with nothing to do except decorate or rearrange your bedroom however you liked. Dad had painted your room a soft grey and installed a few pieces of IKEA furniture you’d bought online. 

Your room began to feel more cosy, more like your own personal space. Before you moved, you were too lazy to redecorate and kept the pastel blue walls you’d painted when you were seven years old.

Now though, you’re trekking out of the university with your tote bag and an iced latte in hand, trying to beat the heat by taking refuge in the shadows of tall buildings around. Your laptop is dangerously exposed in the bag, occasionally hitting your arm as you walk down the street.

Your phone begins to vibrate, playing the opening lines of a trot song that Nico had made you put in as a penalty for losing a bet. You’d grown used to the cheesy tune over time, no longer bothered by it and actually embracing how cringy it sounds. 

“What up?” You greet nonchalantly, hearing your dad’s soft chuckle on the other end.

“Hey munchkin, just wanted to check if you’re on the way to the monastery.” 

“Yeah, I think I’ll reach home by eight. Want anything?” 

Your dad hums over the phone, pondering. “No, I’ll be fine. I’ll get dinner for Emily. Make sure you don’t stay out too late though, you’re not used to the city layout yet.” He was supposed to drive you to the monastery, but a sudden work emergency needed his presence and he had to let you go by yourself instead.

To be fair, it did require a bit of persuasion on your side. He relented after a while and sent you the location. You just didn’t know that it’d be absolutely sweltering in the afternoon. Spotting a boba store only a few feet away, you quickly end the conversation.

“No problem, I’ll see you tonight! Bye!” The monotonous dial greets your ears upon hanging up, approaching the bored staff member who’s chilling at the cashier. “Hi, can I get an Earl Grey milk tea?” 

She keys in the order with lazy fingers, practically jabbing at the screen and telling you the price. Warily taking out the cash in your wallet, you hand it to her with a small smile. The boba is made quickly enough to your surprise, the staff member’s swift movements leave you impressed when she hands you the packaged cup with a blank stare and goodbye. 

Sweet, sweet relief.

That’s exactly what hits your tongue when you take a sip, gulping down almost a third of the drink before finding some semblance of self-control. This won’t do. You need to get there faster than walking under the hot sun. 

Flagging down a taxi takes only mere seconds, leaving you astounded by the sheer amount of drivers who halted in front of you before demanding that you should choose them.

City life is intimidating.

You choose to go with a friendly uncle who wasn’t as aggressive as the rest, sitting in the back and sighing in relief as the air-conditioning hits. “Where to?” He asks, shutting the car door. 

“Uh,” you double-check your phone, “The monastery of Spinjitsu please.” He gives a single nod, beginning the drive. You relax your upper body, tilting your head sideways to ease your tense neck. The smooth drive kinda makes you a little drowsy, but mainly relieved that you’re no longer exposed to the heat. 

Would your new teacher be young and agile, or old and wise? Wondering about the different possibilities of what he might teach you does make you feel sceptical. After all, Emily’s the one who signed you up for it without your consent. 

Either way, you’re actually kind of excited to meet this new teacher of yours. 

— — — — — 

“There is no fucking way I’m climbing up this many steps.” you stare in disbelief at the stretch ahead, unable to even see a glimpse of the foretold monastery your phone directs you to. 

The distance is unbelievable, let alone the amount of cardio this would mean for you. Sure, you’re somewhat fit from the occasional jogging and kendo, but this? You’re not sure you’ll make it up there alive. 

Maybe there’s a lift or wheelchair platform…? 

You look around hopefully, only to be utterly crushed by the absence of any potential aid. Shaking your head with a sigh, you mentally prepare yourself for the journey ahead. Luckily, you have your drink in hand, so perhaps doing this under the sun won’t be as bad as you think.

Fifteen minutes later, you very much regret choosing today of all days to check this off the to-do list. Gritting your teeth, you turn around and take a break, collapsing on the step and catching your breath. 

You’d made it halfway so far, but the sun’s relentless heat continuously beats down on your back, practically sweating through the already thin material of your black tank top. Regret fills you with the memory of an identical tank top in white hanging in your wardrobe back home, the current colour absorbing even more heat than it should.

You’d taken off the chic outer layer and stuffed it into your tote bag, though it’s becoming heavier with each step up the mountain. “Out of all places, they chose a mountain,” You mutter heatedly, gulping down the rest of your now warm drink. 

After a few more moments of rest, you pick yourself back up, groaning as the joints in your hips pop loudly. “I swear, when I get there, they better have a towel or something…” If they didn’t, you’d be damned sure to get your hands on some water at least.

Encouraged by the thought, you pick up the pace. 

Twenty minutes later, you finally reach the huge, ornate doors that stand tall above you. Sweat drips down the sides of your face, and your shirt soaked with sweat. God knows how your armpits feel. 

You barely have the strength to push the doors wide open, opting instead for a simple knock. There’s no response. You’re practically on your knees, hands placed flat on the ground from exhaustion. 

Just as you lift a limp arm to knock once more, the door opens. 

“...Can I help you…?”

Looking up, your eyes widen upon seeing a familiar face. The Ice Ninja mirrors your reaction, kneeling and offering you a hand. “Come in, let’s get you something cold.” 

Summoning enough strength to nod, you grab his hand and pull yourself up. Tiredness hinders your normal movements but certainly isn’t enough to keep a snarky comment from escaping your mouth.

“You guys ever thought about relocation?” 

— — — — — 

A shower and quick change of clothes kindly provided by Zane leave you a whole new person. Towelling your hair dry, you hand Zane the towel he lent from the supply closet. “Thanks, Zane, I don’t think I could’ve survived any training, much less meet Master Wu as I was earlier.” 

He chuckles, neatly folding the towel. “It’s quite alright. I understand our location may not be the best, which is why we always have a guest room and shower available for those who visit.” 

Depositing the towel into a random laundry basket in the hallway, he continues to guide you through the area. “Those are Nya’s clothes, by the way. She doesn’t mind if you take them; they’re usually meant for beachwear. What brings you here?” 

“I’m supposed to be a new student. Emily signed me up for lessons here, since I had to quit my previous dojo when we moved to the city,” You explain, pausing to stare at the courtyard with intrigue.

“Oh? What did you do there?” Zane asks, stopping with you. The children who take lessons at the monastery run amok in the courtyard with joy, practising their moves and playing games cheerfully. You’re simply amazed at how they’re able to tolerate the heat. “The walls are built with technology that keeps the interior cool,” he explains, sensing your curiosity.

“That’s a dream come true,” You sigh wistfully, wishing that it was installed into the mountains so that your journey here wasn’t so treacherous. “I used to learn Kendo.” You resume your walk, answering his earlier question. 

“Kendo is difficult. It’s very admirable that you’ve learnt it, and are continuing to learn other styles of self-defence.” He brings you to a large room with a tea set neatly laid out on a table in the middle, soft mats covering the wooden floor. “Master Wu will be with you shortly.” You smile in response, giving him your thanks as you sit down. 

Once he closes the door, you take a sip of the tea in front of you. They’d been so kind as to already put ice cubes inside your cup, and leave a cooler filled with more drink alternatives like soda to the side. 

Say what you will about the ninja and their team, but they know how to treat their guests.

The wooden doors are rather beautiful, you note. Few beams of sunlight pass through, giving the room an almost ethereal glow. Upon placing a hand on the carpet, you notice the coolness seeping through. They must’ve installed something underneath.

Withdrawing your hand and taking another sip, you let out a happy hum at the relief that greets your butt. Impressed doesn't begin to cover how you feel. The atmosphere is tranquil, and you begin to absentmindedly watch the water streaming down a small waterfall in the corner of the room. 

The sound of a door sliding open jolts you to your senses, fumbling to put down your teacup. Standing up to greet whoever’s walked in, you’re surprised to see an old man holding a cane staring at you from the doorway. 

Is he your new teacher?

“Master Wu…?” You trail off cautiously, not wanting to offend the man in case he’s someone else entirely. He enters the room, sliding the door back into place before turning to assess you.

His gaze is filled with clarity and knowledge, scanning your arms and legs as if knowing how to read even the subtlest scars on your elbows made from blocking your previous teacher’s blows. “I take it that you are Emily’s daughter?”

“Step-daughter,” You correct, though the immediate tensing of your shoulders doesn’t escape his notice. He chooses not to address it, sitting down opposite you and pouring himself a steaming cup of tea instead. “You’re Master Wu, right?”

“Indeed I am if you choose to continue with your lessons.” He takes a single sip, his behaviour akin to wine tasting as he frowns at the tea in his cup. Ascertaining that it’s up to standard, he continues to sip away while keeping a thoughtful eye on you. “I take it that the climb was tiring?”

Heat tinges your cheeks, though you’re unsure as to why you’re so embarrassed. After all, it’s not like you dedicate your time to hiking up a mountain every day. “Yeah. I take it that you guys haven’t thought about installing a lift?” As soon as the words leave your mouth, you cover it in shock. 

Damn your impulsiveness, you curse yourself mentally. Your dad already warned you about keeping your mouth shut at times like this. Your previous master even lectured you on it when you said goodbye. You sneak a peek at Master Wu, hoping that you haven’t offended one of the most powerful men in Ninjago City, literally and figuratively. 

Instead, he regards you with an emotionless stare. You hold your breath, awaiting a rejection. However, he cracks a smile, rendering you speechless. “We will begin our lessons next Wednesday after your lessons. You can coordinate with Pixal on the schedule.” He picks himself off the floor, dusting off any dirt that had gotten on his robe before exiting the room. 

The door slides shut, and your hands fall to your lap. Disbelief is all you can register, replaying a frame-by-frame of your interaction with him and trying to figure out what he found so amusing. Does this signal good news or bad? 

“Did everything go well?” You look up to see Zane poking his head in through the doorway. Once he spots the pure astonishment on your face, he chuckles, sitting down in front of you. “He was smiling when he left, so I’m sure it went well.”

“I…I don’t know. I think I pissed him off?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so. He rarely smiles, so you should take it as a compliment.” His reassurance soothes your nerves somewhat, and you manage to muster a smile. 

“Thanks again for your help Zane,” you say gratefully, walking back through the hallways. He stops by the kitchen to grab a bag with your clothes inside, handing it back to you. The very girl you borrowed clothes from is in the kitchen, eyeing you with intrigue. 

“The outfit looks good on you.” You recognise her face from the newspaper, an embarrassed flush on your cheeks when you feel underdressed in front of Nya and her gi. “You can keep it. I’m Nya.” 

You shake the hand she holds out to you, heart warmed by her kind smile. “Thanks for the clothes. I was pretty much drenched by the time I got up here,” you laugh. She grins at your joking words. “Are you sure I can keep these though? I mean, they do belong to you after all.”

“I’m sure,” she easily waves it off, grabbing your hands with an excited glint in her eyes. “I’m just glad there’s gonna be another girl around! How old are you, anyway?” 

“She’s Cole’s age,” Zane chimes in. You cast him a wary look, surprised that he even knew. Well, that and the fact that you’re still getting used to your soulmate being the literal earth ninja. Luckily, it seems that he hasn’t told anyone here yet about the connection between you both.

“Oh, that’s cool! You’re like an older sister then,” She says happily. “Well, don’t let me stop you from going home to rest. I heard you had an injury not too long ago from the charity auction. Do you feel better now?”

You swivel your ankle with a grin showing it off proudly. “Got it moving and all too.” 

“That’s a relief! Zane, you should bring her home. I’d ask Jay but…he and Kai are currently preoccupied,” she trails off, pointing to the other connected room that’s out of sight, a few yells and what seems to be game sound effects reveal what they're up to. 

“Anyway, I gotta get back in there with snacks. It was nice meeting you, I hope we get to hang out soon!” You wave goodbye, watching her leave with a bowl of chips in one hand, a bottle of soda in the other, and another bowl of salsa balancing precariously on top of her head.

Ninja things, you reckon. 

“So, how do you know my age, exactly?” 

“Pixal studied up on you. Please don’t be offended, we didn’t dig too deep. We just do it in case a villain tries to slip into the monastery in disguise.” Zane holds his hands up, the innocence in his eyes drawing a laugh out of you. 

“It’s fine. We’re good. Plus, I get it. I’d do that too. It’s hard to trust anyone.”

His shoulders sag with relief, guiding you past the doors and to a space on the side of the monastery. “Please step back,” He instructs. You quickly move a few feet away, unsure of what ninja stuff he might be up to. 

A single wave of his arms summons a huge dragon with blue flames that cover its entire being. It roars in greeting, moving its head down to nudge Zane playfully. He chuckles, hopping atop the saddle on its back. 

You’re frozen in place not by fright or terror, but by pure amazement at the being before you. You’d only heard tales like this in stories or legends, so to see an actual mythical being right in front of you is quite frankly mind-blowing. A multitude of questions race through your mind, only for a single one to stand out among the others.

“Do you like, not feel heat? Y’know, being a robot and all.” He pauses, seemingly amused by your question. He ponders an answer, a hand cupping his chin in thought. 

“I suppose not, as I have an automated cooling system designed to regulate my temperature so I don’t explode.” He replies simply, reaching his hand down to help you up. “Now, where do you live?” 

You part your lips, not giving it much thought when you say your address. Realisation dawns on you when you see the expectant look on his face, your lips pulling into a beam filled with utter glee. “Am I going to ride Fridgey back home??”

He cocks his head, bewildered by the sudden name. “Fridgey, because he’s cold? Like a fridge? Whatever, let’s go!!” You dismiss any questions as you eagerly grab his outstretched hand, awed by how high up you are. Thankfully, the dragon is cold to the touch, an assumption you’d made based purely on Zane’s element.

“I suppose ‘Fridgey’ is a somewhat suitable name.”

“Somewhat? It’s perfect!” You laugh maniacally when he takes off, holding tight to the sides of the saddle as you soar through the sky on a dragon’s back. When else would you ever be able to experience this? “Today is the best. day. ever!!!!”You whoop, daring to lift a single arm to feel the clouds. 

Euphoria floods your veins, ignoring the concerned looks Zane sends your way. Breathing in the chilly evening breeze sends a rush of delight down your spine as if injected with morphine. 

Nothing can get you down now, not even the soft rock music that begins to play in the back of your mind.

— — — — — 

A knock on your bedroom door makes you turn, thankful to be distracted from your assignment. Opening it, however, multiplies the stress tenfold. Emily stands at your door dressed in her usual nightgown, pulling the cardigan around her in an attempt to calm down. 

You remain silent, giving her the bare minimum courtesy of not slamming the door in her face at the very least. Waiting proves futile, however, and you’re unable to hold back your eye roll as she drags out what she’s trying to say.

The slight motion of you starting to close the door seems to bring her to her senses, finally revealing her intentions. “How are you feeling? I was so busy during the past few days setting up a new date for the charity fundraiser that I didn’t have the time to check on you.” She asks quickly, perhaps sensing your impatience. 

“I’m fine. Look, I’m busy doing my assignments, so what did you want to ask? Besides, my ankle already healed a couple of days ago, so you’re kinda late to the party.” Sarcasm coats each word, unbothered by the hurt that flits across her face. 

“I’m sorry…” She says quietly. You sigh, crossing your arms and leaning against the doorway, keeping the door open. It’s an unspoken sign that you’re willing to hear her out, whatever it may be.

She realises this, her eyes lighting up as she seizes the chance. “Do you remember the book I mentioned during the speech? ‘You Complete Me’?” You nod, raising a brow. She moves a concealed hand from behind her back, holding out an object to you.

“I, uh, saved you a copy.” You stare at the book in her hands, recognising the name on the cover as the very book she’s talking about. “I know it’s not your usual genre, but I was hoping maybe you could give it a read sometime…?” Her voice trails off hopefully, looking at you with an almost pleading gaze.

You mull over your options. Accept it and shove it somewhere in your room? Or reject it and get scolded by your dad? 

Option one it is.

“Thanks.” You say shortly, taking the book. Delight fills her face, practically beaming when you do. She claps her hands together excitedly. “Let me know what you think when you’re done!” You wave off her words, closing the door behind you. 

She’s too happy to be hurt by your actions, and her footsteps bound down the stairs with an enthusiastic note. Sighing, you push the book into a random bookshelf, mentally deleting the memory from your head. 

Maybe you can sell it to get some money. You shake off the thought. She’d probably hear about it somehow, and that means your dad would know. You didn’t like the potential argument that would follow. 

The book shall remain holed up for all eternity, you decide.

Collapsing back into your bed, you waste no time unlocking your tablet and checking your calendar for tomorrow’s appointments. A visit to the dentist, a quick stop at Papa’s Cakeria, then a quick session at the cafe nearby to finish the assignment you leave unfinished on your desk. 

The bakery’s name makes you pause, a finger hovering over the black-coloured tag. Of course, you had to be reminded of your soulmate, now of all times. As if having his music occasionally filling your head still wasn’t horrible, the fact that you’d been overly cautious not to run into him again is a nightmare in itself.

The ninja is always around and about, and you’d already run into Zane a couple of times including earlier today. You’d met Jay once when he helped you get your purse back after a thief tried to run off with it. Well, you say helped, but in reality, he showed up just as you tackled the thief, using a random stick to beat him to a crap.

Thankfully, it seems that Cole is always updated about your location, making sure he’s never in the vicinity. Listening to music helps to gauge the distance, and though you’d never admit it out loud, you’re thankful for this soulmate ‘feature’. 

Now though, the memory of your interaction during that night haunts you. Try as you might, you can’t deny that the pan au chocolat was one of the best you’d ever had. You pull up their menu, excitement flooding your veins when you see that they sell a multitude of different cakes, including red velvet. Luckily, orders can be made in person, and the fact that your dad’s birthday is coming up is the perfect excuse to order more.

He did say that you could use his name to speed up an order as a fellow cake enthusiast… 

Biting your lip in thought, you decide to take a chance. Besides, what’s the worst that could happen? You’ve already made your disdain for each other evident anyway. It’s just a one-off thing.

Musketeer [ 10:00 PM ]: Hey, it’s your soulmate here. Was just wondering if the offer to speed up an order at Papa’s Cakeria is still valid?

There. Sent. You place your phone screen-side down, unwilling to submit to impatience for his reply. A ding alerts you to a new notification, abandoning all resolve and snatching it up eagerly.

Cake Enthusiast [ 10:03 PM ]: Yeah, of course. I promised after all, even if it’s you

You raise an offended brow, your temper flaring up again as you decide whether to keep being nice. Unfortunately, your love for pastries wins out.

Musketeer [ 10:03 PM ]: That’s a relief. I need to speed up an order for my dad’s birthday cake, and I was wondering if you’d be able to help me with that

You watch the floating bubbles on the screen that indicate him typing a reply, growing frustrated when it takes longer than expected. Is he going to help you or not? 

Cake Enthusiast [ 10:07 PM ]: yea sure. What time are you heading there?

Frowning, you type a response, not thinking much of it. 

Musketeer [ 10:07 PM ]: idk like 2pm?

Cake Enthusiast [ 10:08 PM ]: ok

Musketeer [ 10:08 PM ]: wait howre you going to help me speed it up??

Cake Enthusiast [ 10:08 PM ]: youll see tmr

“You’ll see tomorrow?” You mutter in bewilderment, about to type a response. However, stubborn pride gets in the way, and you turn off your phone instead, placing it on your bedside table. A chime indicates another message, but you refuse to check it. 

Plopping your head onto the pillow with a huff, you try to quell the frustration you can feel building within you. It’s incredible how a short text exchange can get you so worked up over nothing. 

“Calm down, he’s already agreed. You’ll get your pastries soon…” You chant to yourself in the form of a mantra, finally calming down fully. Whatever. You’ll find out tomorrow, you suppose. And if not…There’s always your new friend Zane who can pass on a message in your stead. 

Satisfied with the thought of potentially exacting revenge, you begin to drift off with a smile. 

Only to be interrupted by more soft jazz in your head.

— — — — — 

“You’re back.”

Jay pauses his game, glancing over at his friend who’s just gotten out of the shower after returning from patrol. Cole raises a brow, adjusting the towel that hangs low on his waist. He grabs another, starting the process of drying his hair. 

“I didn’t get any supper this time if that’s what you’re gonna ask.” He tosses the towel he used to dry his hair at Jay, the latter letting out a screech when it lands on his face. He chuckles, taking his time to scroll through his phone. 

“That’s not what I was gonna ask, thank you very much,” Jay huffs, dropping the towel on the floor with a disgusted frown. An excited glint in his eyes is all Cole needs to see before realising that he probably wanted to talk or gossip about something. Probably gossip.

So, he puts down his phone and stares expectantly, waiting silently for his friend to start speaking. True enough, Jay immediately starts to talk about how Nya met someone new, and Master Wu taking in another student. However, the name that slips from Jay’s mouth is the last thing he expects. 

“Who?” Jay repeats your name once more with a tilt of his head, not thinking much of it until he sees the baffled look in Cole’s eyes. 

“Why? Do you know her?”

“Know her-?!” Cole stops himself from speaking, dragging a hand down his face with a frustrated groan. Every single day without fail he’d keep a wary lookout for your presence, and the moment a single note was played in his mind he’d flee from the area. “N-no, I don’t know her.”

You didn’t want him around, and it was made abundantly clear. But now, as a student of Master Wu, he’d probably get at least some of the ninjas including him to meet her!

Talk about a worst-case scenario.

He’d had just about enough. How is he supposed to get on with his life now? He sighs, wringing his head in his hands and completely forgetting that Jay’s still in the room with him. 

“What’s with him?” He recognises the voice as Nya’s, lifting his head to stare blankly at her. Jay shrugs, choosing to resume his game instead of dealing with Cole’s possible mental breakdown. 

“At least put some clothes on, damn.” She tosses a shirt at him. He puts it on without comment, running a hand through his damp hair as he tries to figure out how to deal with the bomb that Jay’s brought him. 

“Anyway, guess what?” Nya’s chirpy voice distracts him for a moment. “I met someone new today! She’s supposed to be Master Wu’s new student. She seems pretty cool, and Zane said that she’s your age, Cole!” 

Screw this. Maybe that invitation for a vacation from Vania is still valid. I could stay there for a week. Maybe a month.

Why is he even feeling this frustrated anyway? He’d done nothing to deserve this. Sure, he was a little rude or cold when you first met, but he had good reason to do so. Besides, he’s pretty sure he’s more than made up for it by quite literally saving your life.

Right?

“Cole? Did you hear me?” Jay shakes his head, nudging Nya’s side as she glances at him with concern. 

“I already told him about it, but he pretty much short-circuited when I said her name,” Jay snorts. “You’d think she’s her ex or something-”

“She’s not my ex,” Cole deadpans, glaring at Jay from the corner of his eyes. “She’s just…someone I met before.”

“Ohhh….She’s an ex alright,” Nya whispers loudly with a nod.

Giving up, Cole heads back to his room instead. Trying to reason with them would be futile. His phone buzzes limply, the screen damp from the remaining shower water on his arms. Laying on his bed, he unlocks his phone and scrolls through social media, smiling at a thank you video a few people had made for the ninja. 

The image of your figure standing close to him that night at the charity auction flashes through his mind. He tries to push it aside, but his mind keeps drifting to your sly gaze, and the playful smile that played on your lips during your conversation.

The same smile that vanished once you made eye contact with him as the Earth Ninja. 

The phone drops to his chest, placing a hand on his face and rubbing it in hopes of curing it of the intolerable pang that resonates at the memory. He never needed a soulmate before, and he definitely didn’t need one now. 

The soft fabric of the black shirt settles on his chest, bringing him some form of comfort as he wrestles with his thoughts. If Master Wu’s already accepted you, it just signals an inevitable meeting.

May as well start trying to be amicable somehow, so that no one can figure out the connection between you both.

But how?

As he tries to find a solution that would ease all his worries, the phone vibrates loudly. Picking it up, a text notification from you makes his heart drop. He slams the phone back down onto his chest, eyes wide. 

Is this a sign?

Musketeer [ 10:00 PM ]: Hey, it’s your soulmate here. Was just wondering if the offer to speed up an order at Papa’s Cakeria is still valid?

Oh, that’s right. He processes the message, remembering that he had promised before the whole theft incident took place. He sends a quick agreement, though rereading it makes him wince.

Musketeer [ 10:03 PM ]: That’s a relief. I need to speed up an order for my dad’s birthday cake, and I was wondering if you’d be able to help me with that

Cake Enthusiast [ 10:03 PM ]: ok

He deletes the message, trying different variations of agreement before finally settling on one that he decides isn’t hostile-sounding or rude. Pausing, an idea hits him. His fingers hover above the screen, barely touching the keypad. The moment of hesitation doesn’t last long, however, when he finds himself typing a response and sending it faster than he can process.

Cake Enthusiast [ 10:07 PM ]: yea sure. What time are you heading there?

Musketeer [ 10:07 PM ]: idk like 2pm?

Is he really about to take the risk? What if you grow to hate him even more? He sighs. What is there to lose? If you leave, so be it. If you never see each other again, so be it. At the very least, maybe you’d be able to reach some form of an agreement to keep things civil between you two.

Cake Enthusiast [ 10:08 PM ]: ok

Musketeer [ 10:08 PM ]: wait howre you going to help me speed it up??

Cake Enthusiast [ 10:08 PM ]: youll see tmr

He sends another thumbs up before placing the phone on his bedside table to charge. Looks like he’ll be postponing tomorrow’s patrol. 

[ellethespaceunicorn]

Some Things You Just Can't Refuse

Title: Some Things You Just Can't Refuse

Rating: Explicit, 18+, Minors - DNI

Pairing: Dom!Clark Kent x Sub!Reader

Word Count: 4.7K+

Summary: A collection of first times with Clark Kent, and one last time.

Warnings: dacryphilia, unprotected p-in-v sex (wrap it up babes), creampie, spit kink (for like two seconds), Reader being a brat

A/N: This has been a plot bunny that sat in my Google Docs while all my other works got attention. Did I really just write a 5+1? Unbeta’d, we die like people who tried their best. 

Dividers by: @firefly-graphics

Support/Reblog banner by me

Cover Art by me

My Masterlist 

Clark Kent was a simple man, for the most part. He had preferences, sure. But he knew what he liked, and went for those things more often than not. One of his preferences was a certain kind of woman. 

And you were that kind of woman. His Sunflower.

The perfect combination of submissive and strong-willed. What others may call bratty, Clark would call “a little feisty” and he wouldn’t change it for the world.

And that is where Clark was anything but simple. He was your Dominant, you were his submissive. He loved you, he provided for you, and he kept you safe. He kissed the ground you walked on, he broke you, and he put you back together.

The first time you met Clark Kent was in the break room of the Daily Planet. 

You were an intern for the summer, just working to get some credits toward your journalism degree. You weren’t all that interested in going to warzones and reporting on drug lords and shit. You wanted to tell stories about starving artists and activism. You wanted to surprise people with your ability to capture the essence of someone’s emotion and relate it to the reader’s own experiences.

While doing your writing at work, while you were supposed to be doing whatever Lois Lane threw at you this morning, you decided to take a break to recharge. Since energy drinks gave you the jitters, you opted for a warm-ish mug of hours-old coffee.

As you reached up to the cabinet to get a mug, you watched as a hand appears above you to grab the handles of two mugs. You turned, following the hand, to see who reached over you. Eyes blue like the Atlantic Ocean behind a pair of plain black rectangular frames looked back at you. You can’t help but smile at him as he beamed, bright enough to illuminate your entire day.

And your writer’s brain was getting way ahead of itself already. Who the hell was this mountain of a man? I wonder what his lips taste like. Should that tie go with that shirt? Fuck, did he just ask me something?

“I’m sorry, what?” You shook yourself out of your thoughts.

“I asked if you wanted the black or the flower mug. I was gonna offer the flower. But I’d rather not assume you didn’t wanna just take the plain one. So, I’m gonna stop talking and let you answer.” 

Fuck, he’s cute when he rambles.

“Sunflowers are my favorite.” He offered the mug and your fingers touch and you’re glad that you are the only two in the break room.

“Clark,” he says, as he poured himself some coffee, “Clark Kent.”

You gave your name and he put out a hand to shake yours. With your hand in his, you notice how it engulfed your own. You thought to yourself about that hand around your throat. Just lightly squeezing the sides of your neck, as a warning.

“Nice to meet you. I hope Lois has been easy on you. She can be a little…much.” He said it in a way that lead you to believe he’s been on the demanding end of Lois more than once.

“Eh, she’s alright. I mean, Ms. Lane is just fine.” You tried to cover your disdain for Lois. In reality, you saw her as a ‘Pick-Me’, but you tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.

“Yeah, sure she is. I dated her, so I know her pretty well. Not that I should be saying anything. But, don’t let her try and get in your head. She’ll use whatever she can to get a scoop, whether in the field or the workplace. She’s a great journalist, but-” You cut him off, not wanting to take part in putting down another woman.

“I think I get the hint. Watch my back around her.” You assure him you understood as you poured your coffee and put in some cream and sugar.

“Yeah, sorry. I shouldn’t talk about her behind her back. That was rude of me. My mother would be disappointed in me for that.” He looked into his mug, and you saw that he was not proud of himself for putting down his ex.

“It’s all good, Clark. I can tell you didn’t mean anything by it. Emotions are tricky, ya know?” You don’t know why you wanted to give him an ‘out’, but you did.

“That, they are. I better get back. See ya around,” He gave a cute little wave and exited the room.

The first time Clark Kent called you Sunflower happened about a month after your first meeting. 

The two of you ended up together on a test run for Perry to see how you go about working with other reporters. He probably just wanted to see if I could share a byline.

You could tell that Lois saw a tenacity in you that reminded her of her younger self. While that was great, you wanted to be seen for your ability to get people to talk to you without making them feel like they were in an interview. Just a conversation between people.

When you asked Clark to work on the assignment with you, he jumped at the opportunity. In truth, he wanted the chance to see you at work. He’d listen to Lois talk about how you just saw things differently. Almost like she was jealous, but she would never admit to that.

“So I was thinking we could go to Gotham. Before you say anything, I know it’s dangerous there but we’ll be going during the day. And I finally got the go-ahead from Wayne Enterprises to shadow one of their board members. A Day in the Life kind of piece. What do you think?” You rambled out, arms crossed as you leaned against Clark’s desk.

“I think I can get you an exclusive with Bruce Wayne if you wanted.” He stated nonchalantly.

“I would owe you big time. Wait, how the hell do you know Wayne? What, were you boy scouts together or something?”

“We just end up at a lot of the same places.” Clark offers no other explanation.

“Right,” you nodded at him, not letting it go, “So, I run point on this and you back me up?”

“Sounds perfect. You’ll do great, just know he will try and flirt with you so don’t make it easy for him, Sunflower.” The nickname caused heat to rise to your face, remembering that first time you met him.

“Sure, like the most eligible bachelor in Gotham who can buy whatever he wanted would look at me twice?” You weren’t being down on yourself too much, more like you were being realistic. The man had dated supermodels and heiresses, not chubby junior reporters.

“Without sounding unprofessional, trust me when I say Bruce will look at you more than twice. You say the word and I’ll set him straight.” Was that flirtatious? No way.

“Um, if you say so, Clark,” you tried to laugh it off and walk away but Clark caught your wrist, your eyes locked with his and you felt…something. 

“I do say so, Sunflower,” he lowered his hand from around your wrist, “Just prepare to shut him down more than once. He’s, uh, persistent.”

“You trying to save me for yourself, huh?” You couldn’t help yourself. If he denies it, you could say you were joking. If he confirms it, then…

He simply smiled and tilted his head, neither confirming nor denying. 

During your interview with Bruce Wayne, you were surprised that he indeed did flirt with you as Clark said he would. You managed to steer the conversation back to Wanye Enterprises each time he would stray to learn more about you. You would give him a detail here and a tidbit there, but you kept it professional. Clark was there to take notes, letting you take the lead. He was impressed by you. You kept Bruce flirting with you to get him to spill details about new things he was working on for Gotham.

The first time you kissed Clark Kent was three months into your internship. 

Lois had taken a shine to you, loving what few pieces you were able to get past the intern pool and into an issue. You figured it would be in your best interest to go to her with any journalistic questions you had. You may not like her very much, but she was still a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and you would be an idiot not to take a few pointers from her.

There was one thing you didn’t talk to her about, and that was the massive crush you had on her ex. It just seemed too messy, and honestly, you didn’t need her permission to do anything. 

That’s why you accepted Clark’s invitation to make you dinner. Frankly, you weren't surprised he asked you. You had been flirting with each other, exchanging glances and smiles across the office. Spending hours a night talking on the phone and texting back and forth naturally lead you here.

Armed with a bottle of wine and all the courage you could muster, you make it to Clark’s apartment just as he is finishing dinner. He answers the door in jeans and a grey long-sleeved henley, looking so comfortable and so different without a tie on. He thanked you for the wine, took your wrist to pull you behind him, and shut the door with a socked foot.

Pouring you both a glass, he congratulated you for completing half of your internship. It completely slipped your mind that you had reached this milestone, but he remembered. And that was saying a lot. You clinked your glasses together and took a sip of the pinot noir. 

“This is going to go great with dinner. Thank you again for picking up some. I can’t believe I forgot to,” Clark bantered, setting his wine glass down to check on the pork tenderloin and roasted potatoes.

“You were too busy trying to impress me,” You insisted, smiling when he gives you a stern look.

“Watch it, Sunflower,” is all you hear and you shifted from one foot to the other to hide your search for friction. You barely had two sips of wine in your system before this man had you feeling drunk.

“Time to let the pork rest while the potatoes finish up. Should be done in a bit,” Clark picked up his wine glass, settling his other hand on your lower back to guide you to the island counter. He didn’t expect it when a shiver ran up your spine and caused you to giggle, but he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it.

You sat and chatted during dinner like you’ve known each other for ages and it just felt very comfortable. He told you about his mom, growing up in Smallville, and how he came to work at the Daily Planet. You spoke about your schooling and how you’d one day like to write for the Planet and publish a book of short stories. He was stuck on your every word and it made you feel important to have his undivided attention.

After dinner, you retired to the living room to watch some tv. It was more just on as background noise as you conversed with each other. When you both reached for the wine bottle at the same, you both laugh and then look at each other. And it was all you could do not to melt into a puddle as those blue eyes stare longingly at you.

Clark reached up and took off his glasses before tossing them on the coffee table. Fuck. But, he does nothing more. For what seems like minutes, you sat in silence just staring into each other’s eyes until you speak up. 

“Clark, please?” You whined, growing more frustrated with every second.

“Use your words. Tell me what you need, Sunflower.” The way he said it had you shifting in your seat.

“I need you to kiss me, please?” You pleaded, the little crack in your voice not missed by Clark.

He cupped your face with one large paw, his touch so soft that you leaned into it to feel his warmth. His thumb moved over to wipe across your lips, followed swiftly by his lips.

Your lips met and you felt the warmth radiating from him. You could taste the sweetness of the wine on his tongue as he begged for entry. You let him in, moaning into his mouth. Clark grunted in return and pulled away to rest your foreheads together.

“I have wanted that for far too long, Sunflower,” Clark groaned, licking his lips.

“Me too,” you whisper, scooting closer to Clark to lace your fingers together, “Can we do it again?”

Instead of answering you, he pulled you into his lap and attacked your mouth with fervor.

The first time you tell Clark Kent you love him is exactly two months after your first kiss.

It was completely by accident, but no less true. 

Clark invited you over for dinner and a movie. The two of you were in the middle of watching 10 Things I Hate About You. Patrick was dancing on the bleachers and singing to Kat. The most romantic scene in the movie apart from the poetry scene.

“Ya know, if we went to high school together and you sang ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ to me in front of the whole school, I would have melted,” you say, stuffing popcorn into your face, “But then, I already love you, so you wouldn’t have to do the whole singing thing.”

Clark’s head whipped around so fast that you can feel the wind coming off of him. “What did you just say, Sunflower?”

You look to Clark and you realized what you had said at the same moment and your eyes went wide. “I think I just confessed love during a ‘90s romcom.”

“Yeah, I think you did,” Clark looked at you with that look in his eyes, “Good thing I love you, too.” He says nonchalantly, trying to not freak you out, and went back to watching the movie.

“Clark, I love you.” You wanted to feel the words on your tongue again.

“I love you too, Sunflower.” Hearing the words come from him was like a cozy embrace that coated the night in warmth.

The first time you had sex with Clark Kent was at the end of your internship.

Clark wanted to wait- 

No, he didn’t want to wait, but he chose to wait until your internship was over and you were offered an actual job at the Daily Planet to not seem like he was cruising for tail in the intern pool. 

Little did you know, but Clark had it all planned out. Candlelit dinner, romantic music, wine, and chocolates. The whole nine yards. But you didn’t get to experience that version of lovemaking. 

At the same time Clark was lighting candles, he heard your heartbeat spike across town. He sped away to your location, without putting on his suit. He flew above the city before he found you being held up at gunpoint in an alleyway and his blood boiled. He watched you comply with your attacker and hand over your purse before flying down behind the man quietly. The man had no idea what hit him when Clark flicked his temple and the assailant falls over unconscious.

He didn’t even think to keep his identity secret anymore. He steps over the man to get to you and check you over for injuries, both external and internal. When he sees nothing, he questions you, “Are you alright, Sunflower?”

You look almost through him because there he is in a sweater and dark-wash jeans, glasses slightly askew. You step back an inch as he reaches out to you. He can see it in your eyes that you are piecing together little moments. 

How he got across town in what seemed like seconds. How he never got sick. How it felt like he was always hiding something. This is what he was hiding from you. For your safety? For his?

“There were so many times I wanted to tell you I was Superman, I just didn’t know how. Do you forgive me, Sunflower?” Clark’s pleading ultramarine eyes burned into yours. 

“I mean, I guess this is as good a time as any to tell me. I have so many questions. Of which, you will answer all of them, Clark. But, all I need to know right now is how the hell you found me?” Your breathing was starting to speed up again and you tried to calm down but given the circumstances, you were acting pretty normal.

“I kind of, know your heartbeat. I can hear it at all times. Wherever you are, I can hear you,” Clark makes an odd face and then forces out an embarrassed laugh, “Now that I say that out loud, it sounds weird.”

“Yeah, it’s a little weird. But it’s also super romantic, too,” you reach to Clark and pull him to you, “What’s my heart sound like now?”

“Sounds like you’re excited,” he let his hand drag down your body, “Smells like it too. Now, why would that be?”

“I mean, I did just find out my boyfriend is a superhero. That’s sorta hot. Sorta, I mean, he hasn’t taken me flying yet.”

“Brat! How hard is it to ask for what you want?” He picked up your purse from the unconscious attacker and handed it to you. When it is secured around your shoulder, Clark picked you up and you wrap your legs around his hips. “Hold on, Sunflower.” He took off so fast that the world blurred around you.

As he got closer to his apartment, he slowed down and flew a bit higher near the clouds. He rolled over onto his back so that you are straddling him. His hands found each other behind his head as he floated above Metropolis, all attention directed at you. Your eyes wandered around the city as you adjusted your seating which stirred his arousal.

Clark tried to adjust himself under you without you noticing but instead, you took the opportunity to grind your clothed sexes together. The groan that escaped Clark’s mouth is enough to spur you on to continue your ministrations. His eyes are already rolling back in his head and you feel quite proud of yourself. You reached under Clark’s sweater and ran your fingers through his chest hair as you continue to work your hips over him.

“Clark?”

“Yes, Sunflower?” He opened his eyes, pupils were blown wide with lust, breathing becoming unstable.

“Take me to your place so we can get more comfortable?” You flirted with him, wrapping your arms around his neck and shimmying up his body.

“Yes, Ma’am.” He grabbed under your thighs to have you wrap your legs around him once more and began to descend to the balcony of his apartment. He let you inside first but is quickly behind you following you into his bedroom as you start to shed your layers.

You spun around and gave Clark a show of your skin becoming visible in the moonlight. When you are fully undressed, you knelt in front of him with your head down and your hands on your thighs. 

He walked over to you and kissed the top of your head. He listened for your heartbeat, and it was steady, if not a little heightened. You were awaiting instruction, as far as he could tell.

“Sunflower, I want you to pick a safe word.” He stood behind you and undressed down to his underwear.

“Unicorn is my safe word.”

“Good girl,” Clark caressed your shoulders and squeezed them, “Are you okay with calling me Sir?”

“Yes, Sir.” Your heart rate evened out, Clark noticed. You’re happy. He beamed down at you.

“Good girl, now turn around and take out Sir’s dick.” 

You turned around and reach up to Clark’s boxer briefs, cupping him over the fabric before hooking your fingers into the waistband and pulling the underwear down and off. His length sprung up to bounce in front of your face and you lick your lips in anticipation but don’t go any further without direction.

“Such a good girl, Sunflower,” he grabbed your chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting your face up to meet his eyes, “Come lay down so Sir can taste you. I can already smell how wet you are.”

You took his hands as he helped you up. Clark pulled you close to his body, your back against his chest. He attacked your neck, nipping and sucking marks that would show in the morning. His length on your hip has you testing your limits. 

As if reading your mind, Clark reached down and cupped your netherlips. You instinctively clamped your thighs around his hand and he used a foot to kick your legs apart. With one hand exploring your cunt, the other slides around your throat as a warning.

“Don’t ever block me from my pussy, Sunflower. This belongs to Sir now, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, Sir, it belongs to you.” You were sure Clark could feel you clench around nothing and you didn’t care. You wanted him to know he was doing everything right.

“Good girl,” He dipped a finger into your wetness and pulled it back out to wipe across your bottom lip, “We’re both gonna taste your sweet honey.” He used the hand around your throat to turn you around so he could claim your lips.

You tasted yourself as his tongue invaded you, whimpering into his mouth. His answering groans had you trembling. He walked you backward until your legs hit the edge and he pushed you down. Leaning over, he knelt and pushed your thighs back as far as they would go, marveling at your glistening slit.

With the flat of his tongue, he licked from your entrance to your neglected nub, pausing to suck on it lightly. He ate with the hunger of a man starved. He steeled his tongue, probing your core and tasting you from within. He made out with your pussy, pulling back to spit on it which drew moans from you and had you squeezing your breasts in response.

Clark was good at this, not that you were surprised because of how good of a kisser he was, but fuck! The way he fingered your pussy, making sure to curve his fingers to hit that sensitive bundle of nerves inside was heavenly. 

When he sped up his fingers and pushed down on your lower stomach, you gasped and realized he understood the assignment. He was rewarded with you squirting over his hands and chest.

“Such a good girl for me, Sunflower,” he said, before sucking your juices off of his fingers and moving your limp body up the bed, “Now, you’re going to be an extra good girl and take Sir’s dick.”

That was all the warning you received before Clark was pushing in, stretching you wide over his thick hardness. With every inch, he would pull out and press in an inch more than the last thrust. He made sure to stretch you slowly, keeping your tightness while allowing you to get used to his girth. 

“That’s right, Sunflower, open those sweet petals for Sir,” Clark soothes your whines as he fucks into you, “I promise I’ll make it all better when you let me all…the way…in.” He punctuated his words with jolts from his hips. 

When he is finally seated inside you, he pauses. The sudden stop has you reaching for Clark and moving your hips to gain friction.

“Look at you trying to fuck yourself on my cock,” he leaned over you and watched as tears flow from your eyes, “These tears are gorgeous, but use your words. Tell me what you want.”

“Sir, please,” you whined, looking into his eyes, “Need you to fuck me, please.” 

The smile on Clark’s face is brilliant, he’s got you right where he wants you. He kissed your face, stopping to wipe away your tears with his tongue. Pulling back, he secured your legs around his hips before he leaned down to wrap one hand around both of your wrists, holding them above your head.

When Clark fucked you, he paid attention to every aspect of your body. He looked into your eyes. He kissed and nipped at your neck. He pinched and teased your nipples. He rubbed your clit while he pounded inside you. 

Clark just did it better than any of your partners before. Maybe because you allowed yourself to be vulnerable around him? Or maybe because he was just…better. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that you were with him and he was inside you and you were all his.

You lost track of how many times you came, but Clark remembers every time. He committed them to memory, seeing you arch your back and feeling your walls flutter around him. He could tell by the sheen of sweat on your body and the way your body is vibrating that you were beyond spent. Possibly even a bit overstimulated. Perfect.

“You ready for my cum, Sunflower?” He licked his thumb and pressed on your clit as you keen, “Do you think you can hold on for me for just a bit longer?” 

“Yes, Sir,” you moan as he slid his hands to your hips.

“There’s my good girl,” he groaned and began his assault on your pussy. At this angle, he can stimulate both your hooded center and your G-spot. A punishing pace that set you ablaze. While you held onto his biceps, you looked into his eyes. Where there used to be blue irises, only dark pupils remained. His curly hair was a sweaty mess on his forehead. He was barely a man now, more like an animal rutting into you.

Before long, his hips stutter in their onslaught. Breathing erratically, he squeezed your hips so hard you knew there would be bruises tomorrow. He moved to kiss your neck and latched onto your shoulder with his teeth as you feel every twitch of him releasing inside you. You know there will be bite marks in your shoulder for days but you don’t care.

Clark’s teeth left you, followed closely by his tongue soothing your almost-broken skin. Sometimes, he didn’t know his strength. And it was a close one this time. He was still inside you semi-hard before he decided to pull out slowly causing you to whine at the sudden feeling of emptiness.

He moved from the bed for a moment. You closed your eyes for a millisecond before you feel warm wetness between your legs.

“Just cleaning you up, Sunflower,” He wipes your delicate folds softly and throws the towel in the clothes hamper before crawling in bed beside you, “You go right to sleep, you deserve it.”

The last time you refer to yourself as Clark’s girlfriend is a year and a half into your relationship.

Clark proposes to you over dinner in the house you bought together. He bought the ring after you talked about marriage just two weeks ago. Well, technically, Bruce helped him buy the ring. As in, Bruce bought the jewelers store and had them design the perfect ring for you. 

A smoky quartz center with marquise and pear-shaped citrine petals around it. You had mentioned more than once that you didn’t want a diamond engagement ring, you wanted something that matched your style.

Clark presented the ring to you on one knee, ever the traditionalist. You said yes, of course.

This man was your life, your hope, and your future. You looked forward to every minute of every hour of every day with him. 

He is your light in the darkness, and you are his Sunflower.

A/N: Yes, the title is from "Sunflower" by Post Malone/Swae Lee. Yes, the song was for a Spider-Man movie. So, what? It's a good song.

**Tag List**

@brattymum96 @ambinxe @avengersfan25 @kebabgirl67

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Let me know if you wanna be added and for what plz  😁 Also if you want to be removed from tags, lemme know!

[willow-does-stuff]

it’s 2025 and class of 09 has gone WOKE.

the title is now class of gay-is-fine.

nicole is now nicotine-cole. jecka has transitioned into jax from amazing digital circus. jeffery is now transgenderfy. emily is now they/themily. kylar is now bi-lar. crispin is now crispy pringle. karen is now a middle aged woman.

ms ames is now ms deadnames. mr burleday is now mr slay all day. mr white now makes meth with nicotine-cole in the re-up. mr katz has a cat fursona. principal lynn is now principal lesbian.

nicotine-cole is in the psych ward again. they/themily is on bipolar medication and donates aderall to charity. the is now an ending where bi-lar and transgenderfy make out. ari has had no changes.

[selfishdoll]

NOW PLAYING…. SUPERMASSIVE BLACK HOLE

You're the queen of the superficial, And how long before you tell the truth?

sum: being a physical therapist assistant wasn’t easy work at all, and it didn’t help that one of your patients was beginning to plague your thoughts, in more ways than one.

PURE COINCIDENCE . camboy & martial artist! kashimo hajime x physical therapist assistant! reader

cw: strangers to lovers (lowkey), kashimo & reader are 19-21, kashimo is ooc of course, modern au (no cursed techniques but he’s still strong asf), sex work, pet names, teasing, degradation & praise, shy!reader, curvy reader, kashimo is an ass man, lowkey corruption kink, slightly public sex, kashimo is reckless & dumb, dumbification, manhandling, rough sex, multiple orgasms, orgasm denial, choking, cervix fucking, unprotected sex, etc.

i spent so much time on this & was winging it fr so it didn’t come out how i liked 😭😭. & it got much longer then i wanted it to be. also please excuse any typos or errors, it’s late 🙏🏾

You always thought boxing, wrestling, and martial arts were such violent sports. You didn’t see the appeal of beating someone black and blue— or forcing them into submission. You weren’t a pacifist by any means but fighting was just something you didn’t get it. Especially, when it came to making money off it.

Truthfully, however— you didn’t need to see the point. Your only concern was massaging your patients and assuring they didn’t overextend themselves.

Which happened often.

Today would be a good day for you, a starting point actually. After two years of grueling work, several months of training, and being placed in a hospital you hated; you were finally sought out by a private practice— a gym for martial artists. From what you’ve heard they were good; winning tournaments back to back and putting on quite a show for the audience.

A name that frequently showed up was Kashimo Hajime, the proclaimed God of Lightning. A title earned given how fast he was, no one able to keep up with the amount of punches that he landed on his opponent. You were sure that was impressive in its own right, but you simply couldn’t get past the name.

It made you giggle each time you heard it.

Your eyes trailed away from the building infront of you and over to your phone hooked up to the stand in your car. You pressed your lips together, “Looks like I’m here..” You mumbled to yourself, feeling anxiety gather at the pit of your stomach. A new job always did that to you, imagining just about everything going wrong. From possibly falling or messing up a chart.

First day jitters always killed your motivation.

But, you took a small breath; eyes closed briefly as you sinked into your seat for a moment. It would be fine, this would be fine. You’re gonna do great. Such affirmations swarmed in your mind, pushing you away from delving down a deep hole of anxiety and insecurity. Once you felt your heart relax just a bit you grabbed your phone and tote bag, turning the car off and soon exiting it. Shutting the door behind you, you assured the doors were locked before approaching the large metal doors of the building. Pulling them open, your eyes scanned the large area. It looked like a relatively regular gym; punching bags hanging from the ceiling in a few places, weights, and treadmills. The most interesting thing was the boxing ring in the middle of the room.

“Hello, miss? Can I help you?” You jumped a little as the voice interrupted your train of thought, turning to face a woman who was seated behind the front desk. You flashed a false confident smile, approaching her while shifting through your bag. “H—hi, I’m [Full Name]. I’m here to start as a PTA.” Your hand finally clasped around what you needed, lifting a packet of papers from the confinements of your bag and passing them over to her awaiting hand.

Her eyes scanned the pages rather quickly, “Oh, you’ll be working with Ms. Makoto.” She mused, flashing you a small smile as she passed the papers back. “She always comes late, so for now; I’d suggest walking around to get a feel for your surroundings. Maybe even talk to your future patients.” She shrugged to which you nodded, a small thank you, escaping you.

You wish she hadn’t suggested the thing at all, given how nerve-racking it felt to you. However, you now felt obligated to do it, especially with the way she was smiling at you so sweetly. Damn her.

Situating the strap of your bag onto your shoulder correctly, you headed over towards the actual gym area; eyes on the swivel to assure you didn’t end up in anyone’s way. Like you hoped, however, the martial artists were far too focused on their training, paying you no mind as their fists slammed against some punch bag or they pumped their legs on the treadmill.

The atmosphere itself was nice, really. You didn’t mind it, maybe you would get used to it.

Once you were finished walking around the people lifting weights, your eyes traveled over to the boxing ring in the middle, noticing two forms entering it and several people surrounding it. Interest quickly invaded your mind, moving towards the crowd to get a better look. You luckily found your way to the front, staring up at the two men that were currently stretching.

One was unimpressionable; hair shaved short with tanned skin. He was shirtless showcasing his simple build. He wasn’t small but wasn’t big either, sculpted but not bulky? It was clear he wasn’t a seasoned fighter. But, as your eyes turned over to his opponent; the difference was all too clear.

Standing at an impressive six feet, cloaked in a tight black shirt and baggy white pants, bandages wrapped around his forearms. You watched as he cupped his hands together behind his back, stretching his arms and fuck, were they big. Or rather the man was big in general, enough so you pitied his opponent.

You watched as he rose his arms above his head this time, eyes zoning in on the way his shirt followed— revealing his toned stomach and the pretty blue trail that traveled down. Oh, how you wanted to see where it lead to.

“[Name]?”

“Huh!?” You gasped out of your daze, head snapping over to a woman that stood beside you. She had short black hair that illuminated her pale features perfectly, sharp dark eyes already staring at you. Her gloss stained lips curled once she had your attention, “I’m Makoto. I’m sorry for being late.”

You gave a nervous smile, “I—I don’t mind. I was just uh.. getting to know my surroundings.” The physical therapist nodded at you with a smile, eyes turning over to the ring as a small sigh escaped her.

“I’ve told Kashimo to stop entertaining these rookies.”

“Entertaining?”

Makoto nodded with a soft hum, crossing her arms over her chest. “They always want to fight him for some reason, riling him up until he finally agrees to a spar. It’s ridiculous,” She mused, tapping a finger against her skin. “It’s clear whose going to win.”

You pressed your lips together, eyes turning back to the ring. To your surprise, Kashimo was standing upright while his opponent was in a fighting stance. Cocky.. Was what ran through your mind, eyes darting between the two men.

The man with a shaved head blew air from his mouth, springing towards Kashimo in a single step. Your eyes widened as you watched the cyan-haired man step out of the other’s way, bawling his fists. The sound of skin to skin contact was the only thing you could register, astonished by the pure speed of his fists, opponent trapped under the flurry of his hits. Makoto was right, he didn’t stand a chance; falling to the ring the moment the god of lightning was finished with him. The match couldn’t have been longer than five seconds.

“Kashimo, It was only supposed to be a spar— not a knockout!” Makoto called, softly complaining about unnecessary concussions. You watched as Kashimo’s bored expression fixed onto the physical therapist, a small snarl on his face. Makoto hissed at this, fussing at him not to glare at her.

He didn’t entertain her yelling long, eyes traveling away from her and fixing onto you. You didn’t hold his gaze long, or rather— you couldn’t, given its intensity. You simply turned to face Makoto waiting for her to get over her yelling so you could get started.

. . .

A few hours of work passed, the only major concern being Kashimo’s opponent and assuring he had no fractures or concussions from the match. Much to Makoto’s relief, he didn’t. Other than that you were observing and looking over charts, noticing the inconsistencies in Kashimo’s. Makoto then explained to you the man ignored injuries and she quite literally has to corner him to get him into her office. The mental image made you laugh softly.

Soon enough your shift was over, being informed you did well and to come at the same time tomorrow. It delighted you to hear such a thing. Exiting the building, you approached your car while searching for your keys in your bag, humming softly to yourself. Finally finding them, you pull them out; attention however, shifting over to the gym doors when they opened.

To your surprise Kashimo stepped out, holding a large duffel bag in his left hand while his right? Reached for the end of his shirt, lifting it up and using it to wipe his face. All under your gaze.

You felt ashamed staring at him in such a way, especially since he was technically your patient.

“You need somethin’, Miss [Name]?” His voice was muffled against the damp fabric, pulling his shirt down to reveal his sharp eyes starting at you. You jumped in surprise, nearly dropping your keys. “Oh, oh, no! No..” You breathed out, shakily pressing the button on them to unlock your car. To your horror the man gave you a small smirk;

“Safe travels then.”

“Mhm! You too!” The words escaped you meekly and far louder then you wished. Snatching the driver’s side door open, you entered the vehicle, barely even slamming the door closed before you turned the engine over. You quickly pulled out of that parking lot, attempting to forget the scene that just happened.

. . .

A soft sigh escaped you as you sat on your bed, leaning back to lay down, arms laying across your stomach. The sky was painted black, stars twinkling overhead with the moon rested aimlessly. It was getting late and you needed to get some sleep for tomorrow. You weren’t sure how work would be but you wanted to mentally prepare for the worst. However, you just.. didn’t want to sleep yet?

It was weird, really. You didn’t feel tired despite how nervous you were today. You almost felt proud of yourself.

“Still need to get some sleep though..” You mumbled to yourself, rolling over to your stomach. Pressing your face into your plush blankets for a moment, you mulled over how to force yourself to sleep. Milk, melatonin maybe? You don’t know if you had either. You spared two more minutes of thought before an idea entered your mind.

Masturbation. You were a genius.

You reached blindly for your phone while turning onto your back again, scooting up farther onto your bed as you opened the dreaded X app. Ignoring tweets from friends and celebrities you went straight to the search bar typing in something random. You just needed to get off once, it normally worked for you.

Using one hand to scroll, the other went down to your lower half, happy you previously discarded your pants as your fingers brushed across your thinly covered pussy. Warming yourself up, your fingers pressed against your covered clit, slowly rubbing it; feeling the gentle pleasure travel up your spine.

Fifteen minutes passed of this and your agitated scrolling, frustration building as nothing in particular caught your eye. Each video was either too short or too boring for something to use, or even some too much. This wasn’t supposed to be difficult anyhow. Just a quick session and then sleep. Yet, here you were; boredly scrolling.

You nearly settled for your imagination rather then a video until something caught your eye. Your thumb hovered over the video, eyes zoning in on it. It was simple, a male by himself, showcasing his lower half but nothing else. You saw the imprint of his dick through his sweats, strong hand gliding across it; teasing himself.

Pursing your lips, you clicked on the video, getting into a comfortable position. You watched as he delicately pulled the strings on his pants, watching the band loosen. His hips rose, hooking a thumb under the waistband to slowly tug down— not far, but far enough his length slowly came into view; popping out when his sweats rested on his thighs.

You sucked in a breath, watching his veined hand clasp around his pretty cock. He was pale, tip a soft red with precum spilling from the slit. He was also.. well, big; lengthy and thick— particularly around the base. You attempted to imagine it inside you, pussy pulsing at the thought of it splitting you open.

His thumb rolled on the crown of his length, collecting some precum before smoothing it down his shaft. To your surprise you heard a soft groan, feeling your stomach tighten from the sound. Most men on this annoying app were quiet in their videos, something you couldn’t stand. And while he wasn’t loud, it was loud enough your hand went straight under your panties, beginning to roll tight circles on your clit.

You moved in sync to how he fisted himself, his soft sighs and grunts escaping your phone’s speaker; envious you couldn’t hear such things right into your ear. You bit your lip as your legs shook, two fingers traveling down your slick slit to plunge inside you. Your hips rose, grinding your clit into your palm as your eyes focused on the man. You gasped out, watching as his pace quickened, hips rising to meet the thrusts of his hands.

His voice became ragged, pants desperate as he chased his release. And you, your own. You were so close, watching this stranger fuck himself. A pretty sight you couldn’t look away from.

“Oh, fuck..” Was what he hissed, nearly making your eyes roll back. You were there, right there, so close, until— you noticed something. Your eyes had unfortunately wandered from his cock to his stomach peeking out under his shirt, spotting something.

A soft tuft of cyan colored hair.

Your eyes widened for a moment, feeling your pleasure come crashing down as flashes of Kashimo in the ring and outside the building entered your mound. The way it lined below his navel so perfectly, it was all too familiar. “There’s no way..” You thought to yourself, attempting to rationalize it in your head. Kashimo Hajime, martial artist known as the god of lightning just didn’t seem like the type to do such a thing.

But then again, you knew nothing about him, so who were you to declare it wasn’t like him?

Such thoughts killed your lust filled high, pulling your hand out of your panties and quickly clicking out of the app. You turned on your side, phone rested face down on your blankets. Your eyes pinched close, attempting to calm your racing thoughts and think of solutions to this.

It was all pure coincidence. Nothing more, nothing less. Maybe dying happy trails that particular color was some trend you didn’t hear about?

You seriously hoped it was.

. . .

Despite your many thoughts last night, you fell asleep shortly after that event. Though you did wake up and feel miserable, just imagining how nervous you’ll be facing Kashimo.

It’s probably not him.. right? You continued to try and convince yourself, closing your car door shut and beginning your trek over to the gym. Opening the doors and entering, you gave a brief smile to the receptionist that greeted you and made a beeline to Makoto’s office, reaching for the door.

Only for it to open, right in your face.

“[Name]! I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were there!” The physical therapist hissed softly, watching as you soothed the pain on your forehead. You only gave a small smile, shaking your head. “It’s okay. I wasn’t paying attention anyway.” The brief pain knocked Kashimo right from your thoughts, something you deeply appreciated and nearly thanked the reckless older woman for.

Makoto looked you over for a moment before sighing softly, nodding. “Alright, well. Set your things down. It’s not a lot to do today, but that could change.”

You gave a brief smile and nodded, entering her office. It was simple, resembling a hospital room with shelves lining the walls and a long black bed off against the wall. You placed your bag beside her own, turning around to spot Makoto at the door, talking to someone.

Moving closer you quickly realized it was Kashimo. His expression just like yesterday, bored with a snarl pointed towards the older woman— who was currently nagging, just like yesterday. You swallowed a breath, flashes of the previous night entering your mind, far too quick and vivid to ignore. It didn’t help that in the midst of her words his eyes traveled to you, causing you to still; wishing to fall through the floor right then and there.

The corner of his mouth twitched, “Don’t you have someone to mentor instead of wasting your time, naggin’?” Hajime questioned, finally releasing you from his gaze to stare back at Makoto. The physical therapist’s voice rose in pitch, Hajime turning on his heel and walking off much to her annoyance..

And your relief. You hoped he was too busy training to acknowledge you today.

Two hours passed with you following Makoto around, writing down a few notes on people’s charts and even tapping some people. They were nice and encouraged you even when your hands shook a little or you stumbled over your words. You really did like this job so far.

It was the afternoon now, Makoto letting you go on a thirty minute break. You entered the lounge room of the gym, hand clasped around the black container of food you had grabbed from your bag. Approaching the microwave, you opened it open and slid the container inside— shutting the door and pressing a random time. You leaned against the counter, scrolling through your phone for a moment before an idea creeped into your mind.

Assuring no one else was in the room, you clicked onto the app you used last night, going to your previous search and beginning to scroll. It took about five minutes before you finally reached where you wanted; the video you watched last night. Taking your food from the microwave, you clicked onto the account of the video, waltzing over to a chair and sitting down.

You attempted to rationalize looking at porn — or rather a porn account at work. It’s not like you were actively watching the videos, or touching yourself; you were simply searching for something, anything that signified this wasn’t Kashimo’s account.

But, you weren’t given much. Firstly, the account’s icon and header was blank while the bio was empty too. Despite this, it had quite a few tweets and followers, highlighting this account was quite popular. You bit the inside of your cheek once again, looking around you for a moment before clicking on the media section of the page. You scrolled, leaning your cheek into your palm. Most of it was solo stuff, showcasing his lower half and never his face. Your heart thumped however; when you noticed the spiky, cyan colored hair that rested behind him in a certain video. You bit the inside of your cheek, jumping when the lounge room door opened.

To your horror, Kashimo entered— giving you a brief glance before walking over to the fridge in the room. His hand reached for something, snatching it from the fridge and rising to shut the door, moving over to the microwave. While opening the door and placing his food inside, you watched his other hand fish his phone from his sweats.

And that’s when a idea popped into your head. A very, very stupid one. Your face turned back to your phone screen, biting your lip. You were still trying to convince yourself this wasn’t him, this was just some random man you’ve never met before.

And so, if you were to like a tweet of his where— your name was completely visible, you were sure he wouldn’t react at all. Your plan seemed solid, ignoring the nagging feeling in the back of your mind.

Taking a shaky breath, your thumb pressed against the hollow heart of a random tweet, slowly placing your phone back onto the table. Maybe.. maybe you were imagining it but, you could have sworn you heard the soft buzz of a phone.

One that wasn’t yours.

Fear shot up your spine, head moving slowly to the side, eyes traveling to the only other person in the room.

Who was already staring at you, cradling his black cased phone.

Your eyes locked, watching as a grin pulled his features. It was him, oh it was definitely him. Your eyes widened as the realization set in, quickly turning forward to snatch your phone and food from the table, getting up on shaky legs and heading towards the door.

“Not hungry, [Name]?” His tone was mocking, far too teasing for you to ignore. You didn’t even spare him a glance as you quickly shook your head, snatching the door open and exiting the lounge.

The realization of the situation finally dawned on you as you sped over to Makoto’s office, nearly crushing your container of food in your hand.

You had found Kashimo Hajime’s twitter, his.. special twitter. And he knew, you knew it was him.

. . .

About three weeks had passed since that fateful day. You were, surprisingly— okay. The day after it happened Kashimo seemed normal, not ignoring you but focused on his training. You remained on edge for the rest of the week expecting something. Maybe a big blow out or a private conversation, but you got neither.

And if you weren’t sure if you were happy, or upset by that. Either way, three weeks went by with radio silence and you growing accustomed to your job.

It was about forty minutes until you would clock out, seated at Makoto’s desk and flipping through papers. Your eyes scanned the page, assuring each chart was up to date and nothing was out of order. Luckily no one has gotten injured majorly these last few weeks, but the necessary procedures had to be done.

You heard movement beside you, eyes drifting away from the stack for a moment to spot your boss grabbing her things and placing them into her bag. Noticing your stare, she turned with an apologetic smile— “Sorry, [Name]! My daughter needs to get picked up. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

You nodded at her with a smile, glancing at the clock. You would have been nervous to be left alone, but it was only thirty minutes. And once you clocked out anyone that stayed back for training were on their own.

The door closed behind Makoto as she exited the office, your head turning to focus back on the papers. You hummed softly to yourself, pressing your cheek into your palm as you scribbled something on a page, flipping to the next.

Several minutes passed with this continuous routine, eyes finally shifting away from the work over to your phone. Five minutes until your shift was over. With that, you stood, collecting the papers into a neat stack before placing it back into its manila folder; placing that into your tote bag. You glanced around the area, assuring you weren’t leaving anything behind before grabbing your bag, pulling it onto your shoulder. Turning on your heel, you approached the door and opened it; letting out a soft startled noise.

“Oh, I was expecting Makoto..” Kashimo spoke, leaning against the doorframe. He was dressed in his usual attire; a black tight shirt with white sweatpants. His dark eyes traced over your form, tilting his head at you. You attempted to ignore the way his lips twitched a bit, as if holding something back.

You quickly cleared your throat, “Did you.. uh— need her for something? She left early is all.”

Kashimo hummed softly, “No..I think you’ll do.”

“What?”

“Think you could get the kink out my arm? I must have.. punched the bag wrong.” Kashimo claimed, smiling down at you. You withtook a breath, clenching the strap of your bag tightly. He was lying, and he knew he was lying too. Kashimo Hajime, punching the bag wrong? You could almost laugh at the thought.

And that smile? Oh— it was far from genuine, far from pure. Every alarm in your head rung, warning you to refuse and leave. Yet, you didn’t listen to a single one. Your body instead turned, waltzing over to the desk and setting your things down. “You can sit on the bed. I’ll take a look at your arm.”

The words barely escaped you before the deafening sound of the door closed behind him, a soft thanks, escaping him as he sat down. You felt his eyes on your every move, watching as you approached the sink and began to wash your hands— shakily, you might add. You spent extra time there, afraid to face the man.

Soon enough, however, you grabbed a paper towel from beside you; drying your hands and turning the faucet off. Tossing the soiled towel in the trash, you turned and walked over to him. “Wh—which arm?” You questioned softly, watching as he lifted his right one. You nibbled on your cheek, gently grabbing his bicep, thumbs pressing against the muscle carefully.

“If it starts to hurt, tell me..” You murmured softly, room back to being silent. This was stupid really; you making such a show of things. You knew he wasn’t hurt, shown in the way he reacted little with each squeeze you gave him; even pressing harder to see if he would react.

Like you suspected, Kashimo didn’t react at all.

“I wonder..” You blinked as his words interrupted your jumbled thoughts, blinking over to him. He was already staring at you, a small smirk pulling his lips. One that caused your stomach to drop. One that he wore in the lounge room that day. “—when you connected the dots, when you found out it was me.. did still watch me?”

You breathed softly, releasing his arm. “I’m… I’m sorry, I’m not sure what you mean.” You played at acting dumb, a useless facade he didn’t fall for at all. Instead, Kashimo chuckled softly, turning to glance away from you.

“Oh, don’t play dumb sweetheart. You know I’m asking if you fucked yourself to my videos.” His tone was harsh, eyes turning back to you; gaze intense. You swallowed heavily, watching him slowly lift himself off the bed. You stepped back, murmuring as he met your step, backing you against the cabinets. “Bet you wished it was my cock instead of your fingers; splitting you open, fucking you until your nothing but a crying mess.”

“Kashimo..” You spoke softly, rising your hands and placing them at his waist. You needed space, air— you felt like you would suffocate with his large form covering; with his smell swarming your senses. You gasped softly as his lips moved to your ear, cool breath tickling your skin. “Please..”

��Haven’t even touched you and you’re already beggin’ for me.” His words were mocking, a breathy chuckle escaping him shortly after. “Go on.. tell me what you want, [Name].”

You could nearly moan at the way your name fell from his lips, eyes pinched closed as your hands crumbled his shirt in a tight grip. You struggled for a moment to form words, eyes pinned to the floor to avoid his gaze. Unfortunately for you, this was one of the few times Kashimo was ever patient; hands seated perfectly on the porcelain cabinets, refusing to touch you until you answer his question.

Finally, after what seemed like moments you glanced up at him, rising to lock your lips with his own. You, please. Was what you whimpered into his mouth, feeling him react immediately. A hand rose to wrap around your neck, the other coming to the underside of your thigh. Kashimo’s clenched around your throat a little, driving his tongue into your mouth and marking it as his own. You whined softly at this, gripping his shirt so much the fear of ripping it entered your mind briefly. The heavy makeout continued only his hand dropped from your neck, grasping your either thigh and lifting you. Your legs wrapped around his waist, feeling him walk backwards until he sat on the bed.

Your pussy rested just above his crotch, feeling his hardening length through the fabric of your stockings and his sweats. Your arms wrapped around his neck, murmuring against his lips as you slowly ground against him. To your dismay; the man rose his hand, slamming his palm against your ass— the sting causing you to jump, pulling back as a whine escaped your throat. “Kashimo—!” You hissed softly, glaring at the man who grinned back at you.

His fingers soothed the path, rubbing slowly circles into your covered skin, gripping every once in a while. “I suggest you fix your face or you won’t be coming at all tonight.” Kashimo breathed, slapping the same cheek once again. You lurched forward, gripping him so harshly as a soft cry escaped you. “Gonna take my time with you.. explore every inch of you under these clothes,” He hummed softly, hand reaching under your black dress, running his fingers across your thinly covered ass.

“— and i’m not gonna rush just cause your slutty pussy is desperate for my attention.”

“Kashimo…” You whined softly, pleading with your eyes. The man only smiled at you, a sinister smile; highlighting how much he enjoyed toying with you.

“It’s Hajime, princess.” The martial artist corrected, leaning to place wet kisses against your cheeks and neck. You moaned softly, feeling his fingers curl under your dress, slowly pulling it up your body. You moved uncomfortably as the cool air hit your bare skin, feeling him reach behind you; fiddling with your bra for a moment. Once he had unclipped the undergarment he tossed it aside with your dress, pulling back to glance at your exposed chest. You grew nervous under his gaze, having half a mind to cover yourself. Only, he didn’t give you enough time to do so before his large hands grabbed the soft mounds, leaning down to suck a kiss on your collarbone.

His thumbs pressed against your slowly hardening nipple, nicking your skin with his canines. You breathed softly at this, hands rising to curl your fingers into his hair, gasping as you felt his kisses lower; soft lips grazing your areola before he opened his mouth— wrapping his lips around your nipple. The unfamiliar feeling caused you to gasp, eyes pinched closed as you felt him began to suck; gently grazing his teeth across your heated skin while his tongue slid across your pretty bud. Hajime’s other hand was busy playing with your unattended breast, groping and rolling your nipple between his fingers.

Your moans grew, rising your chest into his face more; chasing after the pleasure he was giving, searching for more. All he was doing was sucking your breasts and yet, your pussy was clenching around nothing— feeling as if you were an inch away from release. You gasped out as he gently clamped down on your nipple, rolling the tender bud to hear you squeal. The ministrations continued as a hand traveled down your body, tracing the stretch marks that lined your skin— rubbing across your rolls before his fingers collected your stockings; pulling them down your body with such force they began to rip.

“Ha—hajime, they’re ripping.” You whimpered softly, words ignored as he snatched the rest of the ruined fabric from your body, tossing it to the forming pile. Your breath hitched as his hand traveled between your legs, two fingers gliding across your covered slit, feeling the wet spot forming on your panties. A soft swear escaped you as he pushed down, pressing against your clit, slowing rolling circles against it.

The added pleasure caused you to lean your head back, eyes pinched close as the feeling consumed your body. This was wrong, more than wrong actually. He was a patient and this was your boss’s office, the bed used by several others when being checked on. Yet here the two of you were, dirtying it with your own selfish desires. You should be embarrassed, maybe even ashamed.

Maybe you would feel so after he was done with you.

A soft pop escaped him as he rose away from your chest, the pretty mounds now tainted with his saliva. His eyes carried down your form, enjoying the sight; your hips moving at an attempt to find more friction in his hand, biting your bottom lip to cover the soft, pretty breaths threatening to escape your throat. Hajime hated himself for waiting to touch you like this.. to make you his. His eyelids lowered as he leaned close, pressing hot kisses against your skin again. “Using my hand to get off, huh? How pathetic..”

In any other situation you would have been offended by his choice of words, but now? It only caused you to moan softly, hips moving fast against his hand— feeling Hajime’s lips move over to your throat. You gripped him as you felt yourself grow more and more aroused, a band forming that was ready to break. Your moans grew louder as you got closer, digging your fingers into his shoulders before your eyes widened; feeling him move his hand away from between your legs.

The band slowly faded, high slipping through your fingers. You nearly sobbed— his name exiting you in a soft whine as the man did nothing but grin down at you. Hajime’s hands traveled up your form, soon tenderly wrapping his fingers around your neck, leaning close.

“Quit whinin’..” He cooed, stamping a kiss against your skin. You gasped as you felt his hood tighten a bit, hand drifting right back between your legs, breaching your panties. Without much warning he curled two fingers inside you, feeling your wet walls clench his thick digits. You swore softly, feeling his fingers reach much deeper then your own could; stretching you out and working you open.

Your pussy began to squelch with each thrust of the digits inside you, thumb rising to push against your engorged clit; hand continuing to hold you steady by the throat. Hajime enjoyed the way your pretty broken moans escaped your throat, voice vibrating against his palm. He curled his fingers once more, watching the way you jumped, tears threatening to spill from your eyes. “Can’t believe I’m fucking you dumb just from my fingers..” The words came out in an astonished coo, cock twitching under the confinements of his sweats and pants. Oh he couldn’t wait.. wait to see the way you fell apart as he split you open with his length.

But he needed to be patient. Needed to warm you up properly before completely ruining you.

So the pace of his fingers quickened, sounds of your messy pussy surrounding the room; acting as background noise for the high-pitched moans that escaped you. Your hips met each thrust, gripping his wrist to ground yourself. Your thighs squeezed his forearm, head knocking back as you came all over his hand. The man’s fingers soon slowed to a complete stop, withdrawing them from your wetness.

You barely registered him sticking his fingers into his mouth, sucking your mess off them. Once they were clean he leaned forward, kissing you softly— allowing you to taste yourself. So dirty..

Your lips moved slow, his thumb tracing your throat as a soft praise pushed from his lips. Soon enough you felt his hips rise, pressing his clothed cock against your wetness, grinding slowly. Even if you were still sensitive from just a few moments ago, you wanted, no, needed him desperately. So much so it nearly physically hurt.

Hajime rose, switching your positions to slowly lay you out on the bed, pushing you up higher. You whined as he body left you for a second, the sound quickly dying down when you noticed him unclothing. First was his shirt, revealing his sculpted torso and that damned happy trail. The man smirked at you as he tossed his shirt to the side, reaching for his bottoms next. Pushing them down, you watched as his length was revealed. To have it right infront of you rather then on a screen, well.. your phone didn’t do him justice at all.

“‘S not gonna fit.” You mused softly, eyes snapping back to his face, nervous. Hajime almost felt prideful from your words if it wasn’t for your tone of voice. He leaned close, pressing a kiss to your chin. “I’ll make it fit.” He mumbled, pushing close against you, grabbing his cock with one hand while the other grasped your thigh. Rubbing the tip across your slit, he smoothed your juices down his shaft, biting the inside of his cheek. Slowly, he pushed inside you, watching the way your eyebrows twitched, how your legs began to close.

A pained sigh escaped you, Hajime smoothing his hand up and down your heated skin. “Taking me so well, baby.. Just relax.” He spoke softly, hissing when he felt your walls clench from the praise. Soon enough his hips stilled the moment he pushed all the way inside, grasping the underside of your thighs— eyes closed. It took everything not to fuck you into the bed right then and there, feeling the way you carefully moved to adjust yourself; but each clench caused his resolve to wither away more and more.

Moments passed before Hajime opened his eyes, glancing down at you and searching for any sign of pain. When he realized there was none, he experimentally pulled his hips back so only his tip was inside, pushing back in— watching in delight at the way your mouth fell open in a ring O.

Nothing else held the martial artist, soft ruts quickly changing into slams. His cock bullied it’s way inside you, filling you completely. Your legs shook in his hold, gripping the fabric underneath you as broken moans escaped you. Hajime was knocking the wind out of you; pushing your legs up higher so that your knees were touching your chest. The stretch was uncomfortable for a moment, something you would surely feel in the morning— but you didn’t care. The pleasure this man was giving you overshadowed it all.

Your walls clenched him with each drag of his hips, his dark eyes captivated by the way you hugged him so tightly. “Wanted me so fucking bad, didn’t you, princess?“ Hajime hissed, grinning as he watched your eyes attempt to focus on him. The man chuckled softly to himself, leaning over you, trapping you under his body. “Oh, you don’t have to answer sweetheart— I already know the truth.”

The man was drilling into you at this point, tip kissing your g-spot as shameless cries escaped you. Tears treaded down your warm cheeks, grasping his arms for stability. Your breaths were hurried, stomach clenching as you felt yourself get closer and closer. “H—haji.. Fuck, I’m so close!”

He relished under the nickname, slamming you into the bed as he planted hot kisses against your skin. “Go on, then. Make a mess on my cock, sweet girl.” With his permission you came, gushing around him; arousal dripping down his length to the floor. You trembled from the feeling, gasping once you realized he hadn’t stopped moving. So sensitive you were, crying out to him as you reached to grip his arm.

“I—I cant, Haji—!”

“You can..“ The man corrected, angling his hips to push deeper inside you. “Waited so long to fuck you like this, to watch you go dumb on my cock— ‘M not stopping until I repay you for those three weeks.”

And he wasn’t lying either. It was almost felt like hours passed with him putting you into different positions, driving you deeper and deeper into the bed to the point it began to creak. By now you could barely speak, could barely form a sound other then a jumbled babble of his name and a soft gasp.

In the midst of it all you were suddenly pushed against the wall, thighs wrapped around his form as he shoved himself into you; a spark of pain washing over you each time he brushed your cervix— pain that melted away rather quickly.

From the way his hips stuttered you knew he was close, his face pushed into your neck as he gripped your skin harshly. Skin on skin contact filled the room, desperate sounds of pleasure following until Hajime swore; spilling into you. The warmth alone pushed you over the edge, cumming for the upteenth time that night— walls milking his cock.

The man’s hips finally came to a halt, breathing heavily as he simply held you there up against the wall. After a few moments he walked backwards, sitting on the bed; the two of you groaning in sensitivity. He pulled your hot body against his own, cradling your lower back with his fingers tracing the dimples there.

The room was silent as the two of you caught your breath, simply enjoying holding the other.

Soon enough the man pulled back, continuing to smooth his hands across your skin. “You’ll probably have to call in sick tomorrow.” Hajime murmured, grinning at the soft chuckle that escaped you.

“Yeah.. you’re probably right.”

[dashielldeveron]

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

[justmeinadaze]

Take It Out On Me (Steddie X Plus Size Reader)

A/N: *melts into goo* I swear the vibes I get from this story and where I can go with it are a mix of Ariana Grande's "Dangerous Woman" and "I Didn't Change My Number" but Billie Eilish lol That lost song is actually where I got the title because I saw a TikTok where some did the Steddie AI followed by the lyrics "Take it out on you...and your best friend to."

So this is set in the 80s and I chose to make the reader plus size because I haven't done it before with these two and because we plus sized babes are sexy bitches ;). (All you souls, no matter your size are beautiful. Never forget that <3)

Warnings: Dominate Steddie and Sub Reader, she's not a virgin but she's definitely new to this. Everything in this story is consensual! Even though they are rough with her they do come up with a safe word and tell her she can stop if she wants (and they would! I would never write a version of these boys who wouldn't.)

There is degrading (mostly about how the reader wants to be used), spanking, choking... rough smut for sure but followed with aftercare.

Word Count: 3953

This wasn’t normal for you. You never got in trouble at school but today was just one of those days. Carol was picking on you again because of your appearance. Every day it was something different. Your hair looked flat, your clothes were hideous, or something you were reading at the lunch table made you “a dork”. 

Today, it was how fat your ass looked in your jeans. You slammed your locker shut as you turned to face her. “At least I have an ass, you ugly bitch!”

“Y/N Y/L/N!”, Ms. O’Donnell scolded. You hadn’t even noticed she was there. She sent you to the principal’s office where he gave you a week’s worth of detention after school. 

You were surprised when you entered the designated classroom to find it empty except for the teacher in charge. 

“Ah Miss Y/N, I presume. In for offensive language and bullying a fellow student. Come in and have a seat. I’m waiting on two more.” 

You flash him a soft smile as you slide into the desk in the front corner. The door opens again and fear dances through your eyes as Steve Harrington saunters in and throws himself down in a desk in the middle of the room. 

“Our very own basketball and swim star himself, Steven Harrington. Currently in detention today fooooor…”, the teacher looks at the papers in front of him. “Being caught in the girl’s bathroom. Huh. Did you get lost?”

Before he could respond, the final student entered loudly swinging the door open as he flew in. “Hey! Mr. C! How are we this fine afternoon?”

“Mr. Eddie Munson. Always a pleasure, sir. What are we in for today?”

“I may or may not have caused a disruption in the lunchroom today.”

“Mhmm. Well, since everyone is here, we can start. Detention begins at 5pm sharp and if you aren’t here on time, I do get to tell the principal who will do with you as he will.”

“Sounds sexy.”, the metalhead grins as he sits on top of a desk and crosses his legs. 

“Mr. Munson, I know you’ve heard this many, MANY times but for the new prisoners can you please…shut up.” The boy salutes him as the teacher continues. “The majority of the time, you guys will be here, SILENTLY, doing homework or reading, I really don’t care. Just be quiet. Depending on what is going on that day this week we may help out with things. The theater kids have a play on Friday and need help with the sets. As I’m sure Mr. Harrington knows, there’s also a game so the pep squad may need stuff set up.”

“Other than that, let’s just shut up and get through the week, okay?”

The first twenty minutes go by extremely slow as you try to focus on the homework in front of you. After a while, you felt someone watching, turning your head to see Steve staring at you. Something in those admittedly gorgeous brown irises sent a tingle through your body. It felt like he was trying to read you with the little information he had in front of him. 

You jumped as a loud beeping echoed through the room and a small devious smile spread across his face. 

“Shit.” The teacher pulled his beeper off his belt, furrowing his eyebrows anxiously. “That’s my wife. I’m going to make a quick call but if I come back and I catch you all talking or fucking around…” He points at the metalhead accusingly as he runs out the door. 

“Jesus Christ. I thought he would never leave.” Eddie sighed as he got up and slid into the desk in front of Steve reaching out to high five him. “Harrington. What are you in for?”

“Fucking Tammie told Ms. Luhrmann I was hiding in the girl’s bathroom.”

“You pervert.”

“It’s not what you think, ok! I left Nancy a note but she never showed up.”

“I told you, man. You need to stay away from those good girls. Speaking of…” Eddie swivels around on the desk to face you. “What are you in for, sweetheart?”

You curl a bit into your body, hoping they’ll just leave you alone. You don’t belong here. This isn’t normal for you. You just wanted to get through the week and never think about this again. 

Two hands, one of them covered in rings, come into your field of view in front of you as they press against your desk. “I asked you something, princess. Don’t be rude now.”

You closed your eyes at the deep tone of his voice. He sounds so sexy…

“She can definitely speak. Talked back to Carol today. It was amazing.”

That grabbed your attention as you turned to look at him. When you yelled at Carol, he wasn’t in the immediate group but he must have been nearby. They were his friends after all. 

“What did that bitch say?” Eddie asked Steve but his eyes never left you. 

“Said she had a fat ass.” The other boy rolls his eyes. 

“And what did you say?” He asks, speaking to you again. 

Your eyes found his before they left to scan you lips, down your curvy body, and back up to your face. 

“Boo!” Eddie shouted as he slammed his palms on the wood in front of you, making you jump again. He and Steve both chuckled as he sauntered away, back to his friend. 

“She commented on the fact that Carol lacks any kind of an ass and then followed that up with the word ‘bitch’.”

“Ooooh, you bad girl. You’re not wrong. That evil little person has nothing behind her. I prefer a girl who has some extra umph you know? Plus, their pussy always tastes the sweetest.”

You exhaled shakily at his words, having only heard or read them in stories. You definitely weren’t a virgin. You had been with men and had boyfriends but none of them ever spoke like Eddie had. They were always extremely shy type guys who had no idea what they were doing on top of you.

“Mr. Munson!” The teacher came back, sighing with his hands in the air. “Really?”

“Sorry, Mr. C. I had a question for the pretty girl but she doesn’t seem to be capable of speech.”

“I don’t blame her when it comes to you.”

################

The next day, you became more aware of Eddie and Steve’s presences. You didn’t realize you actually had a couple of classes with Steve and lunch with both he and Eddie. The metalhead’s eyes watched you walk past the Hellfire club table as you tried to ignore him and the other boy constantly turned to glace at you as he ate with his friends. 

At the end of the day, you filed into the detention room, surprised to find both boys already there and seated in the front row, much closer to you than they were yesterday. 

“Ok troublemakers, collect your things, we are headed to the theater room.”

“I believe thespians refer to it as an auditorium, sir.” Eddie replied in a comical voice that made you smile but only Steve caught it.

“Yeah whatever. I don’t care. Just paint and behave. I’ll be right back there watching so no funny business.”

“Can we talk, Warden or is that still a no-no?”

“Yes, Mr. Munson. You can speak as long as you paint.”

You descend to your knees and they both follow suit. Steve reaches over for the paintbrushes but as he leans over towards you, he lifts it out of your grasp and hands it to his friend. 

“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you want something? You gotta ask for it.”, he smiled over at you as he waited. “No? Ok then.”

“Please.”

They froze as he sat back to look you over. “Please what?” He laughs as your face scrunches in disgust. “I don’t know what you want unless you ask me for it.”

“Please, Steve…can I have a brush?”

He nods as he passes it to you and you immediately duck down again to focus on the task in front of you. 

“Your voice is pretty. You should talk more.” Eddie’s eyes remained on the board as he painted. 

“It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk. She just doesn’t want to talk to us.”

You don’t know why but hearing Steve say it like that made you feel bad. It wasn’t exactly that you didn’t WANT to. You just didn’t trust or know them. King Steve was close friends with the people that tortured you daily and Eddie was the resident bad boy your parents warned you to stay away from. They both intimated you greatly not just because of their air of dominance but because you wanted them to wield it on you. 

You wanted them to use you until you or they couldn’t take it anymore and that scared the hell out of you. You were so inexperienced when it came this stuff plus…how do you explain that to someone? Shouldn’t you want to be wined and dined? Yes, you did. You absolutely did but you wanted to be fucked senseless first.

“I do want to talk to you.”

“Then why don’t you?”, Eddie asked.

“You scare me.”

“Well, shit, sweetheart. I’m not a fucking devil worshipper like these asshole people think.”

“It’s not just you and that’s not why.”

“I’ve never made fun of you, Y/N.”

“Oh, hey. She has a name! Steve, you should have told me.”

“Yeah, you never made fun of me but you never stopped them either. You laughed along with them while they picked on me and degraded me in front of the entire school. You’re just as much an asshole as they are.”

“Y/N!”, the teacher hollers from his seat. “As much as I am enjoying watching you tear the king of Hawkins high a new one, I don’t see much painting happening.”

Blinking, you shut your mouth and begin moving the brush again. 

“If you ever talk to me like that again, I don’t care where we are or who is in the room, I will throw you over my knee and punish you. Do you understand me?” You turn to look him, finding his angry eyes penetrating yours. “I said, do you understand me?”

“Steve, come on.” Eddie rolls onto his back as he stares up you. “She doesn’t play like that. Do you? Probably still a virgin.”

“I’m not a virgin.”

“I see. Ok, not a virgin but definitely not a hardcore kind of girl, right? You like the missionary, vanilla, candles by the bed, listening to slow 70s tunes. Am I right?”

“You don’t know me. Jesus, no wonder you two are friends.”

“Oh wow, Eds. Look at her. No, she doesn’t like that at all. I mean, on some nights yeah, but you prefer being told to shut the fuck up and do as your told.”

“N-n-no. I don’t.”

Your answer makes them giggle. “I would not have pictured that. You like being used?”

“Edward Munson! I swear to God. If I have yell at you guys one more time, we are going back to the classroom to sit silently.”

As detention came to a close, the teacher asked if you wouldn’t mind staying a little later to put everything away. You agreed especially since he told the guys they could leave. You needed that space away from them. 

When Steve scolded you, you felt your panties dampen but you meant what you said. He never did anything to keep the popular kids from picking on you. You saw him laugh with them multiple times. Thinking about Eddie asking if you liked being used, had your pussy clenching around nothing as you rubbed your thighs together. You didn’t know enough about him to really form an opinion. The town talked about him a lot and his club he had at school but you two never crossed paths. 

You kept thinking about them as you collected your things and headed down the hallway to leave for the day. Suddenly, a hand covered your mouth as arms lifted you by your waist into a nearby open classroom. 

“Hey, sweetheart. Steve and I wanted us to finish our conversation. Now that that asshole isn’t here, we can!” Your eyes widen as you listen to Eddie speak. His tone light but there’s a strength behind it that frightens (and excites) you. “Now, where did we leave off? Ah, yes. You were just about to tell us if you liked being used.”

Steve lifted his palm from your lips, resting it gently against your throat.  “Please.”

“Nope. We already had that discussion. You have to say what you want to get it.” Eddie sighs as you push back against the man behind you and he quickly tightens his grip on your neck. “Sweetheart, give me a word. Any word you feel like you’ll remember in any…overwhelming situation.” His eyes seductively raked along your body. 

“Vanilla.” You aren’t sure why that’s the first word that came to mind but it was the only thing you could think of as Steve loosened his grip and your head fell back against him. 

“If there’s one thing you are not, baby, it’s vanilla but… that’s fine. If at ANY point during our little talk here you feel unsafe or you want to stop just say that word. Do you understand me?”

“Yes, I understand.”

He steps forward, running his thumb along your bottom lip. “Good girl.”  His fingers trailed down to your shirt, grinning before he roughly ripped it open exposing your bra covered breasts. “Now…I’m only going to ask one more time. Do you…like…being used?”

“I-I-I don’t know. I want t-t-to be.”

His eyes widened in genuine surprise. 

“You said you’re not a virgin, right?”, Steve asked and you shook your head. 

“Aw, Harrington. What she’s telling us is she’s never been fucked properly. Is that right?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?”

“Yes, Eddie, that’s right.”

The metalhead rolls his eyes in frustration and takes a few steps back. Steve flips you around and slams your upper body down against the desk, reaching around to unbutton your pants as he pulls them below your ass. You hear the sound of a lighter being closed before the echo of his palm slapping your skin reverberates through the room. 

As a handcuff belt buckle places itself in front of you, the smell of smoke fills the air. 

“Sweetheart, this would go a lot smoother if you just listened and did as you were told.” He bent down on his heels so his face was level with your own. “Yes. What?”

“Yes, Eddie, I’ve never been fucked properly.”

“That’s better.”

Steve’s hand moves to hold your face flat to the wood and your arms reach to claw in front of you. You whine as he spanks you again. “Stop moving!”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m…” Your apology trails off as the tears start to fall down your cheeks. 

Eddie balances the cigarette between his fingers as he runs his thumb under your eye. The gesture was sweet in contrast and he noticed you begin to settle. His eyes flicked above you and a few moments pass before Steve slides his hand off your head to between your shoulder blades. 

“You said you were afraid of us. Why?”

When you don’t immediately answer he sighs and the other boy delivers two hard slaps to your bottom. Instead of pushing back or fighting underneath the weight of his palm holding you down, you laid still, accepting it. The only movements you made were with your face as you winced at the feeling.

“Why?”, he repeats. 

“Be-be-because of… how you m-m-make me feel.”, you whisper. 

“Did you hear that, Stevie?”, Eddie smirked up at him.

“Just barely but yeah. Y/N, I was there when you shouted at Carol, remember? I know you can speak louder than that.”

Your face scrunched at his words and the metalhead held his chest as he laughed.  “It kills you doesn’t it, princess? To both hate someone AND want them at the same time.”

Suddenly, you felt yourself being lifted as Steve tugged on your shirt and adjusted you so you were facing him again. “You hate me, Y/N?”

When you took too long, his fingers pinched your cheeks roughly as he tilted forward till his nose was touching yours. “I asked you a question. You fucking answer! Do you hate me?!”

“Yes! You fucking asshole! I hate you!” You defiantly glared at him as you screamed at him. 

“His friends kind of suck. They don’t even know about me. Do they, Harrington?” Eddie snuffed out his cigarette, tossing the butt in the garbage. “I mean it’s fine. I don’t care. What I do find fascinating through is this electricity between you two even though you both hate each other.”

“I don’t hate her.” Your eyelids fluttered at his admission. Why did you torture you with his friends if it wasn’t because he didn’t like you? “If I hated her, I wouldn’t want to make her cum right now.”

Eddie pressed himself to your side as his lips hovered over your ear. “Has anyone ever made you cum before?”

You couldn’t tear your eyes from Steves and you didn’t even both trying. “No. No one has ever made cum.”

“Good girl. See? She’s learning. I knew you were smart.” Eddie’s palm slid along your shoulder, bringing your bra strap down your arm. His fingers, almost delicately, freed one of your breasts from its confine and you panted out a silent moan as the pad of his thumb grazed your nipple. 

“Do you want Steve here to make you cum?”

You couldn’t help it. Your hand wrapped around the back of the other boy’s neck as you brought his lips to yours. The first thing you noticed was how delicious he tasted. You felt like you could orgasm just from this alone. His hands remained still against your hips except for the little twitch of his fingers when your mouths connected. 

Your bliss was short lived as a hand abruptly clung to your neck and violently shoved your back flat to the desk. 

“Did I ask you if you wanted to fucking kiss him?!” You trembled as Eddie angrily shouted in your face. His gripped tightened against your neck for a brief moment before he let go and you turned to the side as you gasped for air. 

“Munson.” The metalhead glanced at Steve realizing quickly the man was gone. His eyes were black with lust and need, practically hyperventilating as his hands dug into your meaty hips. “Jesus fucking Christ. Fine. She said she wanted to be used. I guess we’re doing it this way since someone can’t fucking listen.”

Steve hastily unbuckled his belt, pushing down his pants just enough to free his cock before spitting in his hand and stroking it along his length. You gasped as he breached your entrance, giving you no time to adjust to the size of him as he stretched you open. He was much bigger than anyone you had every been with and you cried out as you reached out into the air, grazing your hand along Eddie’s shirt as you grabbed the fabric. 

“How does she feel, Harrington?”

The man’s grunts filled the room as he slammed his hips into yours. “So, fucking tight. My god.” He slowed his pace as he craned his neck to watch between your legs as his dick disappeared inside of you. 

As you continued to moan, you focused on Eddie as he unzipped his pants and pulled out his own cock, pumping it with his fist. “Open your mouth, princess.” You did as you were told as his fingers tangled in your hair, pushing you lips to length. “Good girl. Fuck me…” His teeth bit into his bottom lip as he slowly thrust hips. 

The feeling of you moaning around him causes him to wipe his head towards Steve, watching as the boy pressed rapid circles into your clit. With both of them inside of you, you were quickly hurtling toward that ledge. 

“Yes, pretty girl. Take it. Fuck…your mouth feels amazing.” 

Both boys thrust into at a fast pace, Steve slamming his hips into yours so hard the desk underneath you began to shake. You started to gag and gurgle around Eddie’s cock. 

“Wh-what, baby? You gonna cum? That’s right. Just let go and feel it.”

He pulled himself out from between your lips, continuing to pump himself as he watched you. Your body shook as your back arched and you came.

Steve murmured obscenities under his breath as your pussy clenched around him. 

“God damn. That was so fucking sexy.” The metalhead shoved his cock back into your mouth as they both chased their highs.  

Steve came first, pulling out of you just as he released ropes of his seed on to your stomach. Eddie soon followed, holding your head in his firm grip as he came down your throat.

You laid flat against the desk, staring up at the ceiling as you tried to catch your breath. As you heard them pull up their pants, you half expected them to leave you there having got what they wanted but were startled when you felt a napkin being run along your stomach. 

“Geez. Always so jumpy.” Eddie gripped your arm as he helped you sit up so he could adjust your bra and shirt. “Shit.” You followed his eyes realizing what he did; that when he tore open your shirt a lot of the buttons flew off with it. On impulse you covered your chest with your arms as you tried thinking of excuses to give your mom when you got home. 

While his face furrowed in thought, Steve lifted you off the desk and guided your pants up your legs before buttoning them back up. 

“I got it.”, the metalhead snapped his fingers as he tugged his shirt over his head. Gently, he removed your blouse, handing it the other boy before throwing his own over your head. He smiled in triumph at himself as he walked around you both towards the student desks and put on his leather jacket. 

“Do you drive here or…?”, Steve asked. 

“Yeah, my car is out front.”

“Good. Come on. We’ll walk with you.”

As they started to head for the door, you reached for Eddie’s arm, turning him around, and yanked him to your body as you leaned up to kiss him. It startled him at first but after moment he keened into it as his hands cupped your cheeks. He definitely tasted different than Steve but you still wanted more. You could kiss him all night if he let you. 

After pulling away, you pushed past them and headed for the parking lot, feeling their eyes watch you as they followed. When you guys got to the parking lot, you were thankful for the slight breeze as it cooled your still somewhat sweaty skin. 

There were only three cars remaining; yours, the BMW you assumed was Steve’s, and Eddie’s van. Steve reached across you, cutting you off as he opened the vehicle door for you. You paused for a moment before turning to look at them. You weren’t sure what you were expecting but the soft eyes that looked back at you were completely different than what you had experienced these last two days. 

You wanted to say something but weren’t sure what. Thankfully, they understood as Eddie stepped forward, placing his hand on your shoulder as he guided you into your car. 

“See you tomorrow, sweetheart.”

#################

@sidthedollface2 @luna-munson83 @devilinthepalemoonlite @corrodedcorpses

[stevie-petey]

not sure if this has been sent before but rewatching season 3 and the scene where the group are together visiting ms driscol and el and max are reading comics, maybe a blurb about bug introducing them to comics in the summer before it all went wrong again? like her and steve are hanging out and they burst in declaring they are having a girls day/sleepover and wanted comics to read

i LOVE doing some max/el content with big <33

enjoy !

"you dont have to be here, you know."

"i know, but the one day im free from robin, youre stuck at work." steve shrugs, hopping up onto the counter so he can sit. he plucks a discarded pen and tosses it between his hands. "had to enjoy my day somehow, right?"

you stack a book onto the shelf and roll your eyes at him. "because everyone agrees that a dying bookstore is loads of fun to be in for hours on end."

"hey, i thought we agreed not to use the 'd' word?" steve clicks the pen a few times, eyes following you as you tidy around the store.

"my bad," clearing your throat, you look pointedly at him. "what i meant to say is that Bookstrordinary is as lively as a graveyard now due to stupid Starcourt."

"you know that i only have a job because of the mall, right?"

"youre terrible at comforting me."

its steves turn to roll his eyes, only his is done with fondness rather than annoyance. your hair is tied up to keep out of your eyes and youre wearing a denim dress to combat the junes unexpected heat. steve had grown so used to your usual wardrobe of sweaters and flannels that the sight of you showing so much skin leaves him breathless still.

deciding that you look too good today (youre always beautiful to him), steve gets down from the counter and follows after you. his body aches to be close to yours, his hands itch to trace the exposed skin. but he cant. you arent his, steve still hasnt managed to say the three words that sit inside his chest.

"im sorry, angel. how must i comfort you?" he asks, taking a few books from you instinctively. steve could work an entire shift at bookstrordinary at this point with his eyes closed.

you turn to him, eyes shining. "well, if youre really feeling sympathetic, id happily accept your fathers money for some ice cream-"

"you get free ice cream from me every day."

"with your employee discount. but richard harringtons money? i need it, steve."

"okay, im feeling really used right now-"

the store bell rings and a storm of red hair and giggles interrupt your conversation with steve. the laughter is familiar, the sound a welcomed surprise. immediately you leave steve behind as you rush to the front to greet the girls.

"max! el!" before they can argue, you pull them in for a hug. their skin is damp from sweat, but you dont care. you hardly see the girls these days, theyre always off with the boys or together on their own. while youre happy theyre finally friends, you cant help but miss them.

"hi, y/n." el greets you enthusiastically. her hair is a mess, shes wearing one of hoppers old shirts.

max stands next to her, hair a wild mess of red strands from the humidity. "we got bored," she tells you, eyes already roaming around the store. "you got anything good in here?"

"it depends on what you guys are looking for." you inform her. youve come to learn what everyone in the party enjoys reading. for el, she loves fairy tales, mike and dustin enjoy science fiction, lucas and max prefer more thriller and horror, while will loves fantasy.

steve grabs a handful of books for the girls, hes also come to learn what genre the kids read, and places them on the table. "heres my selection of fine reading."

"and by 'fine reading', he means books i already set aside for you guys." you nudge steve playfully, which the girls giggle at.

"same thing."

el carefully looks through the books, her finger pokes through the titles. while shes still learning how to read, shes slowly able to piece together the names and authors before her. she carefully reads through every title, eyes searching for something. when she doesnt find what shes looking for, she frows. "where is the man insect?"

"man insect?" steve looks at you, confused.

"the one with the webs."

neither max nor steve understand what el is asking, but you realize with excitement what shes referring to. "oh!" ducking down, you grab your personal stash of comics from the counters shelf and place them in front of the girls. "spider-man! here he is."

"that is the one!" el says happily, grabbing the first comic she can reach. "he is an insect."

"yes he is," you nod proudly at her. "ive taught you well."

max flicks through one of the comics with slight interest, shes curious, you can see it. "youve read spider-man with el?"

"yup, we used to read them all the time at the cabin. figured it was easy enough to understand while learning how to read. plus, spidey is the best."

"spider-man is very cool." el agrees.

steve practically melts when he hears this. eyes softening, he leans against you. "thats sickeningly adorable."

"ew, dude." max glares at him, disgusted. "we're right here, you know. go be pathetic somewhere else."

"i... i was here first." steve mumbles, slightly intimidated by the girl.

you laugh at him and place a gentle hand on his arm. "why dont you go write up some shipments for me while i introduce max to the man im going to marry someday?"

"you know peter parker isnt real, right?"

"i know, and it haunts me every day."

max shoves steve away from you, taking his place. "we're having a girls day, get lost."

"what-?"

"sorry, honey." you kiss steves cheek quickly before allowing max and el to tug you away. halfway across the store you shout behind you, "i'll make it up to you later!"

steve is left alone the rest of the day, basically taking over your shift for you. luckily with so few customers coming in these days, it isnt so bad. he mostly spends the day admiring you as you read spider-man to el and max. your eyes are lit up with raw adoration for the storylines and the girls lean into your every word. theyre wrapped around your finger, wound so tightly that theyve become one. while steve resents that peter parker has ruined your day together, he cant help but warm at the idea that the comics have brought the girls to you and have given you a rare, sunny day together.

hes willing to share you with the party if it means the soft, genuine smile that you get only when youre with them never leaves your face.

[lowkeyrobin]

Hello !

could I request a pheobe Spengler x reader ?

(romantic)

I don’t see anybody here that writes for her .

You can like do anything , like a oneshot or hc, idm ! c:

ty! xoxo.

oo yeah sure!! ; I did a little soulmate au on this one cause I love writing them haha ; thanks for requesting and I hope you enjoy!

PHOEBE SPENGLER ; spotify

summary/prompt ; soulmates can share songs telepathically

warnings ; language

word count ; 1.1k

masterlist

Phoebe bites back a laugh, a smile tugging at her lips as she sits at her desk. She clasps a hand over her mouth, staring down at the Geometry test in front of her.

"Is something funny, Ms. Spengler?" The teacher asks, having noticed her very obvious reaction.

"No, no, sorry" She quickly replies, composing herself as music plays in her head.

"There is something wrong with you, soulmate. I'm taking a test! I can't focus to Sabrina Carpenter" She thinks, wishing you could hear her. She telepathically sends a song she knows back just for moments like this, subtly rolling her eyes.

Why she even knew Fuck You by Lily Allen was a conversation for another time, but now it blares in your brain, distracting you from your work. You roll your eyes, as you'd deserved this, assuming your soulmate was probably trying to focus on their work.

"Fine, you don't like Nonsense? Take Espresso on repeat" You think, switching up the track halfway through.

Phoebe quietly exhales, switching your song to Better by Khalid, wanting to communicate that this was much better and she could actually focus now. She looks back down at her test, quickly jotting down the pythagorean theorem on her paper.

You take this as your well-deserved apology and smile, kind of wishing she picked a better song. You're able to turn the volume down, and she luckily turns it off so you can focus on whatever you were doing. You didn't ask her to do it, but it was probably the best idea to do so.

You tune into her brain again near the end of the period, where Espresso is still being played on loop. You chuckle.

"She must like it"

You decide to play a song, wanting to be a little detective and figure out who you've been playing around with for six years now. You had a will and a way, who was to say you were cheating love?

What's Your Name by Lynyrd Skynyrd caught Phoebe off guard by a long shot. She realizes that maybe you're asking her a question or are maybe trying to taunt her.

She plays you What's My Name? by Rihanna, trying to show that she caught onto the title but was a bit confused.

You play Yeah! in reply, happy she even answered in the first place. She nods, playing Waiting Room by Phoebe Bridgers.

It takes you a moment but you're able to piece together what her name was, definitely not Waiting Room, but Phoebe. Maybe Bridgers, probably not however.

You play My Name Is... then after about a minute, switch to a song with the same name as you, Y/n.

She plays Get It Sexyy, trying to joke around with you after the big reveal of your name. You smile and giggle as you lean against the bus window. Tyler The Creator's See You Again plays for her as the busses take you home.

You leave her with an accomplished smile to match yours. She'd honestly been too shy to try and ask your name all these years, so now she felt a little proud of you for asking for hers.

"My soulmates name is Y/n. I don't even know a Y/n"

"You don't know anyone"

Podcast and Phoebe sit in Ray's Occult Books, lounging on one of the couches as they talk. Ray is polishing jewelry under the counter, half way listening to their conversation.

"Who do you know that's named Y/n?"

"Y/n Riggs?"

"A funny Y/n," Phoebe clarifies, not wanting to imagine that her soulmate was some asshole. She knew it was just someone with the same name as you. "They're a walking Spotify playlist, Y/n Riggs doesn't have shit for a music taste"

"Y/n L/n?" Podcast asks, "That's the only other Y/n I know of"

"I don't know them" Phoebe sighs

Podcast shrugs, "I can introduce you to them? I have like, three classes with them"

Phoebe nods with a little smile, picking up a book and opening it to hide her excited grin.

"Remind me on Monday"

While you sit in class, Phoebe plays you Fainted Love by Conan Gray, almost like she knew you were just working on an essay in silence. Podcast, who sits next to you in that class, waves to Phoebe as she awkwardly walks into the class.

He'd asked the teacher if she could come down, seeing as she had a study hall at this time, and the class was gifted a free period / study hall for the day.

You didn't know Phoebe at all, well, kind of. She was a Ghostbuster which you'd seen on TV here and there, but you didn't really know her that well. She sits behind Podcast in the empty desk, where he turns around to talk to her for the next half hour.

You hear the two whispering but pay no mind, enjoying the Conan Gray playing in your head. You doodle on the side of your paper the title of the song, giving it a cool little font to fit the vibe of the song, which the curly haired girl sees.

You see in your head, or invision, that Phoebe didn't have any music playing at the moment, and decided to play her a song that you liked. Pink Floyd's Breathe plays in her mind on a low volume, and she can't help but direct her gaze towards you as Podcast speaks to her.

Luckily, just about everyone else in the class was talking loud enough that his soft-spoken voice couldn't be heard, but he made sure to be careful next to you.

Clairo's Hello? plays in your head, catching your attention. You sit up straight in contrast to your half-slumped position before and furrow your eyebrows.

You look over at Podcast and Phoebe, already looking at you. You quickly change Phoebe's song to Is It Really You? by Loathe, and she lightly smiles, the corners of her lips slowly turning upwards.

You awkwardly smile and wave at her as she returns the wave while Podcast next to her smiles widely, wanting to cheer loudly, but obviously doesn't in the small classroom. You can see the look of adoration in her eyes as she looks at you, her eyes glimmering like she fell in love at first sight.

A song plays in both of your heads, not instructed by either of you, Something New by Tokio Hotel.

Podcast giggles, tapping Phoebe's desk twice. "I'm gonna run to the cafeteria and get a drink, have fun, lovebirds"

As he walks away, Phoebe speaks. "I'm Phoebe, I think I'm your soulmate"

"I'm Y/n, nice to meet you, soulmate"

[introspectivememories]

high school timber is all about repression!!!

it's about bernard desperately trying to prove to himself and his parents that he's straight!! because his parents already don't like him and he cannot be gay. not now not ever!!!! so he puts up this front of a ladies man and he picks a girl he cant ever get together with and maybe he kisses like 3/4 of the female population at grieves and gains a reputation but hey! at least he's not gay! but he's so caught up in making sure his eyes don't to stick too long on tyrone's face or michael-from-biology's eyes or kabir-from-study-hall's thick thighs that even his attraction to women is under a filter. and it's not that he doesn't like women, he does! very much so!! but it's that he's soo caught on not being perceived as gay that he cant show his attraction to women the way he'd like to. it's all under this filter of what he thinks Real Men who are attracted to women act like so it's this brash, loud, crass, thing and it's not him at all. it's "ooh tim, ms. winters is soooo hot!" or "hey kayla, why don't you and i get to know each other a little better, if you know what i mean?" or "god her tits are soo big. she's so fucking hot!" and all this other shit when he really means, "tim, why the fuck does your stepmom have such a pretty smile?" or "kayla, you said you liked yugioh? i'd love to hear more about it!" or "god fuck, that girl has such pretty hands. i think if i held them i'd combust." but none of that is how a Real Man likes women so he shuts that shit down before it even has a chance to come up. it's fine, he's fine. so what if no one ever holds him like he holds those girls? it's fine. he'll take the manwhore label and the fuckboy title and he'll give out as many kisses as those girls want and if sometimes when he's kissing a girl he wonders what it'd be like to sit on kabir's thighs or if tyrone's lips really are as soft as they look, that's just the devil speaking. and if sometimes when he walks back into the cafeteria at lunch, lipstick still smudged on the corner of his mouth, after making out with a girl and his eyes skirt over tim's lithe body and he wonders what it'd be like to draw out the same sounds he's heard girls make when he kisses them, or what it'd be like to brush his thumb over tim's hands, or what it'd be like to hold tim or press a kiss to his shoulder, or a million and one other things, well that'll just have to be another one his secrets.

and it's about tim who's in a relationship with stephanie and his dad knows he's robin and he doesn't have time to figure out why his mouth goes dry when the light hits bernard's hair just right. he's too busy trying to figure out a way back to his nightlife. and so what if bernard has pretty pink lips that look very plush? so what if he's looked at some of his teammates and thought they were handsome? he's not blind!!! he has a girlfriend! and he loves her! and so what if his hand brushes bear's during fourth-period bio? so what if the tingles last all day? it was just some static! and it doesn't matter that when bear laughs his eyes get squinty and they water over -- cause bear always laughs so hard he almost cries -- and it sounds like bells. and it doesn't even matter, that sometimes when bernard walks back into the lunchroom, 10 minutes before the bell rings, lipstick smeared across the corner of his mouth, lips tilted up in the most charming smirk he's ever seen, that his chest fills with jealousy. it doesn't matter that his hands clench into fists so hard that his nails leave crescents marks all day. it doesn't matter that he wants to be bear's flavor of the day, week, month, whatever. he wants to leave the lipstick marks!! he wants to know if bear really is as good as he hears the girls speak about!!! he wants to know "that thing bernard does with his tongue!" is! he wants to drape himself over bear the same way he sees those girls do! he wants to know what bear's hands feel like gripping his waist. he wants, wants, wants!!! but it doesn't matter. it doesn't. he's got a girlfriend, her name is stephanie, she's gorgeous and, most importantly he loves her. he's too busy for bernard anyway.

[agoldenchara]

A Bat's Ultimate Plan for Vengeance!

Ch. 2: Absolute goosebumps! What the hell?!

CW: Rina's food. W/C: 2.9k

Though he was upset at your behavior, Mr. Lycaon took no action to move you, nor did he raise his voice. “When our client comes, it is your agreed duty to maintain the reputation of our establishment.” “Fine, fine.” You scoffed. Just at the delivery of your remark, the door to the foyer swung open.

Softness blanketed around you, bringing a source of unfamiliarity and discomfort. Your body ached lightly while your wings twitched numbly beneath your form on the mattress. ‘…. That's weird.. Why is the ground so soft?’ 

Opening your eyes, you squinted as the coffered ceiling came into focus. The room was dimly lit for your comfort, curtains blacking out the sunlight. The comfort of the situation made you feel fuzzy and warm…’This is wrong’. You jolted up.

“Ahh! Please lay down, my lord!” Your servant from beside you sat up from your bedside and pushed you back into the mattress. “You're still injured from before,” she sniffed. The memory of cold hard metal returned to you, leaving your chest pulsing and aching. “...My dear lackey..” You began by clearing your throat, staring back up at the ceiling, “Just where have you brought me?”

“Uhm, you're at the café the Victoria Housekeeping Co. uses as their front.” She rambled, hoping to satiate your curiosity. You didn't interrupt, favoring to listen instead. “We’re a human resource dispatch agency… We do normal housekeeping, but sometimes we venture into the hollows if we're asked to! The aristocrats like our cafe, and it gives privacy for our clients when they want to hire us. Mr. Lycaon is the boss around here, but Ms. Sebastiane is like the second boss. Ah, wait, you haven’t met her yet..sorry..”

“Hmm.. really?” Corin made a noise of agreement, though it sounded like a squeak instead. “You guys sound like mercenaries. Or like. Assassins. Does that mean you.. can't serve me?” Corin silently helped you sit up as you leaned forward, piling more pillows behind for you to lean on. She opened her mouth to respond, but three knocks on the door interrupted.

Corin pursed her lips, pausing, and turning to answer the door. From behind her, you could make out the intimidating figure of the wolf-thiren from before. “How is he?”

The girl twiddled her fingers nervously. “Mr. Lycaon! They're awake. Would you like to talk to him?” Without answer, she moved aside to let Lycaon through the door. “If that is alright with them,” He responded stiffly.

Corin looked at you, and you looked away, but you still nodded. This wasn't your territory, but his. 

He walked forward to your side. Each step he took against the tiled floors made you want to curl in on yourself again. As the distance between you two shortened, you had to forcibly keep your hand from shaking beneath the blanket. “Master..” He tried, but you only bit your lip harder. 

“Y/N.” You corrected him, not willing to accept the title. Though you boldly said so, you refused to make eye contact, staring at the blanket below you. Somewhere in thought, you realized that they had changed your clothes. Gone was the ragged sleeveless bodysuit you wore, replaced by a pristine white button up and black shorts. You couldn't tell if you liked this change or not.

“Sir Y/N, do you have anywhere to return?” 

“Hmph. I don't need anybody else but Corin by my side. Those loser batholes don't deserve me anyway.” You crossed your arms in defiance, attempting to look smug, but that only put pressure on your chest. You wheezed lightly and uncrossed your arms.

From Lycaon’s eyes, you looked like a kicked puppy instead, ostracized and left alone. Corin perked up and tugged at his sleeve, gesturing for him to bend down so that she could reach his ear. The two whispered back and forth, Lycaon clearly hesitating, but giving in with a sigh. He did not put up much of a fight. Corin beamed, blinking away the tears that had formed from her pleading.

She gently grasped your hands, “Why don’t don't you join us, my lord?” 

The longer you stared at her, the more she grew puppy-eyed, lips trembling in embarrassment. “That is.. if you want to..” She trailed off, flushing at your lack of response.

You were torn. Would you stoop as low as to become a servant yourself? “But.. how am I supposed to be seen as a top-notch villain when I'm out there serving others? No one's going to see me as imposing!” Corin side-eyed her boss before looking back at you, letting go of your hands. “S-so you don't want to stay with me? I'm- I'm so sorry for assuming! You probably don't want to be with someone like-”

Before she could completely let go, you held on tighter. “Now, hold on!” She stopped. “If the corporate pyramid scheme is truly a pyramid, then there's absolutely nothing that’s stopping me from climbing it. Your company will be my stepping stone to success! Therefore, you will have me.” Declaring your plans, you clenched a fist up, as if solidifying your emotions.

“So.. you will join!” 

“Yes, my dear lackey. That’s what I just said.”

Lycaon- Er, I guess Mr. Lycaon now, cleared his throat after allowing the two of you to have your moment. Seeing as you weren't truly a harm to the agency, he decided to allow you to continue your theatrics, though it would have to be toned down when you were inevitably allowed to interact with the clients. The two of you paused and stared at him, blinking owlishly. He felt as if he had interrupted something between you two.

“Then, in the meantime, we shall have you accommodated. After you're deemed healthy enough to move out and about, your training will begin.”

You nodded at your new superior. Corin raised her hand from beside you, “I can help you.. if you'd let me..”

You swung your arm around her, forcing her to lean closer to your bedside. “I wouldn't have it any other way, my dear servant.”

You realized that it would take you a while to get adjusted to not only the new etiquette of the agency, but to not being constantly out and about as well. Instead of hunting for critters, you were granted packets of thiren-specialized… food, your taste buds unable to cope with the palate of homemade dishes that Rina served you. Lycaon allowed Corin to tend to you especially, Rina encouraging this so that Corin could gain more experience as well as confidence.

“It’s just this way, my lord…!” Corin guided you, your hand on her shoulder as she led you towards the kitchen. You slumped your head over her shoulder dramatically, careful not to put pressure on your bruised ribs. “Ueheuhehh.. I’m so hungry...I could eat a..” Corin nodded. “Yes, Ms. Sebastiane told me that recovering can take a lot out of the body, s-so she said that she would cook up a special remedy for you.” Corin had a good feeling about this dish in her heart, though in her head.. She feared that you would not last. “Um.. if you don’t want to eat it, it’s okay. Don’t force yourself..!” The two of you made your way through the velvet carpeted floors which blanketed the checkered tiles, passing through the beams of sunlight which streamed through the window. Your shadows phased and glided across the floor, dancing between each fleck of light.

Past the double doors was the dining room, where Rina glided to and fro, her skirt swishing delicately as her bangboo spun past, delivering cutlery to their designated places beside the engraved charger plates. “Ah! Corin, little lord. You’ve arrived on time.” “I’m not little.” You replied on reflex. “Wow, this place is super fancy. I’ve only seen stuff like this in movies. Do you all normally have lunch together?” You questioned as you sat, the little bangboo with braids pushing in your chair. You watched the puppets curiously as they twirled about the room, not unlike fairies. The blonde bangboo pushed the dining cart closer as Ms. Sebastiane lifted the lid to the pot, stirring the ladle, the braided one bringing her more plates. “No, unfortunately not. Lycaon will not be joining us because he will be preparing for the arrival of our next client. Ellen is out with her friends at the moment. Sometimes, we all have shifts at different times, according to our clients. This is a special occasion.” Corin spoke up from behind your chair, “Miss..Is it okay if he tries a small serving? I think he should see if he likes it first..” “Well, if you say so~” Rina gently placed down the plate before you, pointing at the specific cutlery you needed. “Remember, outside inwards.” “Right…” You began to sweat. “Nothing that the likes of me can’t handle! Ahaha..” The soup appeared downright unappealing, the broth swirling like purple miasma. It bubbled with unidentified ingredients, shifting around the soup on their own. The soup actually lacked a distinct smell despite its appearance, but seeing as it was soup, that was worrying. You gulped. Corin was practically shaking behind you in fear and worry. If you listened closely, you could hear the beating heart of her bear plush speed up to match its owner’s.

Quickly, you placed the spoon into your mouth, gulping down the soup. 

Immediately, shivers ran down your spine, and you dropped the spoon back onto the plate with a clang.  Complex flavors flooded your senses and the texture of the liquid was indescribable. Your mouth tingled and your throat numbed as the spices left its aftertaste, the particles roughly sliding down. You’d never tasted anything like it. A gasp was heard behind you. “How is it?”

“G-goosebumps..” You hung your head in shock, though Rina took it positively. You could still feel the warm soup make its way to its destination, burning through your gut. In restrained excitement, she prattled off the exotic list of ingredients she had acquired for the recipe. You recognized none of the herbs or spices used, but Corin seemed to grow paler and paler. “Ms. Sebastiane..” You weakly began, though she corrected you. “Please, call me Rina. We’re soon to be co-workers.” And perhaps her new taste-tester, seeing as you had reacted so strongly.

“Rina… I don’t think anything you listed off is healthy for me..I’ve never been fed those things.” Her dolls giggled behind her, mocking your reaction. One of them hung their head like a limp doll while the other exaggerated you by choking on air and falling over. “What a shame. I’ve heard many call this recipe reenergizing, but I wouldn’t want to force it upon you if you cannot stomach it. It’d only be worse for you in the long run.” She turned to Corin, “Dear, would you like to help me finish off the soup?”

Said girl stuttered and quickly shook her head, headband almost coming loose in the process. “N-No thank you! I’m not hungry.”

Later, Corin would bow to you repeatedly as you downed nutritional packets that you had found in the back of the cupboards, promising to cook for you the next time as an apology. “I get to try your cooking?!” Your head shot out of the compartment in surprise.

The maid nodded meekly as you chewed on the plastic, your teeth piercing through. “Well why didn’t you say so? You’re mine right? Make that an everyday thing and we have a deal!” You pointed at her from halfway within the shelf, your other hand continuing to unwrap the prepackaged meals. “Ahh! D-deal! Please slow down..” 

You were granted a small wardrobe of your own that fit the aesthetic of the company. Not quite the uniform, the clothing given to you was both flowy in order to appear elegant, and form fitting at certain points to allow for mobility when you wanted to be more active.

Active, as in.. “Sir Y/N, please come down from the ceiling, or I will have to call Rina to fetch you.” Lycaon sighed as he found you perched upside down on the chandelier, swinging lightly. From beside him, Ellen stood uninterested, tapping away at her phone while leaning on the side of the guest sofa. You clicked your tongue disrespectfully, “Well, you’re no fun, Mr. Lycaon. Rina only captures me because you tell her to. Why don’t you just come up here instead? Didn’t you tell me I had to watch? I can see the whole room from here!” You taunted him, watching as he narrowed his eyes. You wrapped your wings around yourself in a cocoon as your knees bent around the metal frame.

Though he was upset at your behavior, Mr. Lycaon took no action to move you, nor did he raise his voice. “When our client comes, it is your agreed duty to maintain the reputation of our establishment.”

“Fine, fine.” You scoffed.

Just at the delivery of your remark, the door to the foyer swung open. Rina walked through, stopping to acknowledge the person following. “After you.” She bowed her head and folded her hands, awaiting their entrance. 

With a silent ‘swoop’, you appeared to the right of Ellen as Lycaon side-eyed you, sparing no more than a glance. You winked and mouthed the words ‘eyes and ears’.

Your boss stepped forward to greet the client. As if a hidden cue played, the attendants of Victoria Housekeeping Co. bowed simultaneously, minus you. Ellen sighed inaudibly and pushed your head down so that you were unable to make eye contact with the aristocrat, or embarrass them.

“Thank you for using the Victoria Housekeeping, where your wish is our command, Master. Please, make yourself comfortable.” Lycaon greeted the client, and only sat when the client did so. From beside, Rina poured out tea, her bangboo delivering the cups.

From behind the sofa, you could tell the guy was oddly young. His coat looked elaborate, yet colorfully pleasing, and his rings glimmered from his fingers, the gems in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Though, his most noticeable feature was his long purple hair, which was tied into a low side ponytail. In fact, he looked so regal that if he had sat still enough, people would assume the scene to be a portrait of an unnamed historical figure. 

All in all, this person seemed very unreal to you.

“Let’s.. skip over the pleasantries, shall we?” The client began, placing both hands on his decorative cane. “I’d like to request a few of your attendants to work as temporary bodyguards for my daughter. I’m afraid that one’s a bit too rambunctious for her own good, always sneaking out somewhere.”

He exaggeratedly sighed, like the noble he was. “That girl will probably go and get lost somewhere, and I really need to keep an eye on her. I’ll be away for two weeks, so it’ll probably be in that timeframe.” From behind the man, you silently mimicked his sigh, placing a hand on your forehead in mock worry. Ellen pinched your arm. “Is that something you can do?”

Lycaon nodded in understanding. “Yes, our services do include protection. Is there anybody you would like to request, in particular?”

The man leaned back into the sofa and gestured a hand to his side. The side that you and Ellen were standing at. You began to sweat.

“How about these two?” The butler hesitated. “Master, I’m afraid that will not be possible. Those two are not full time workers. Furthermore, I have yet to train the other. He is simply here for observation.” The man waved a hand in dismissal. “Bah, it’s fine! I’ll just pay extra for the overtime. Young workers like that, right? Besides, people who are a little feisty are perfect for my daughter.” He leaned forward and picked up the teacup, placing the rim of the cup against his lips to test the temperature. “The girl always complains about how stiff her personal maids are. Those two look like they can keep in line enough.” Lycaon hardened his eyes. “Master, no amount of payment shall sway me to jeopardize the completion of the commission nor the safety of my workers if I do not believe them to be ready.” “Can’t he just have training on the job? There’s nothing like on-the-field experience, so I’ve heard.” The man grew increasingly agitated at the resistance, though he smoothed it away with a sip of the tea. “How about just the shark girl?” Lycaon looked to the both of you for your opinions on the matter. Even if he was your employer, he prioritized your decisions first. You and Ellen looked at each other. 

‘What do you think?’ You raised an eyebrow. 

She nodded her head in the direction of the man. ‘Do you wanna do it?’ She seemed to signal back. The two of you looked back at Mr. Lycaon. 

You nodded and grinned while Ellen shrugged uncaringly.

Ellen looked back at you and also nodded in agreement with you, though still shrugging.

Lycaon looked back at the man, him tapping impatiently at the rim of the cup, his cane lay leaning against his leg. “So?”

Lycaon held back another sigh. “Your selected attendants shall do their best to carry out your wishes.” His response pleased the man. “Wonderful. I expect them to be ready at this address by tonight.” He reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a thin business card. Lycaon received the card with both paws and stood to bow. This time, the entirety of the Victoria Housekeep bowed along. “Thank you for reaching out to us. We hope to meet your expectations throughout the duration of our partnership.”

“As promised, I’ll send over a check for half of the commission.” The man stood with his cane and gleefully sauntered out the room, Rina escorting him out.

Lycaon looked back at the two of you, signaling you both to follow him. It seemed like your smooth recovery at the household would be briefly interrupted.

[Wait, backtrack!] [Onwards!]

[phoenixyfriend]

Comics Liquidation: eBay

Heya, folks!

I collected comics from 2014-2021 or so, and I'm now looking to sell off most of my collection. While I'm not going to sell everything, I'm selling off about 80%-90% of what I've got, and that's looking like over 1000 comics.

I'm posting these to eBay (along with, most likely, some other items I decide to sell off from my closet or bookshelf), and while I could wait for the comics collectors of eBay to find those organically, I figured I could jumpstart a bit by letting tumblr know as well.

Here's my new eBay store

The biggest portions of the collection to be sold are Iron Man, Ms Marvel (Kamala), Spider-Man (Miles), and Jane!Thor titles, but there are various others, some of which have already been listed. The vast majority is Marvel, but I do have some Image, Dark Horse, DC, and Aftershock in there.

I'm listing pretty slowly, as I'm not even done cataloguing it all yet, but I've started with a couple of the shorter series so far. Most of it is in very fine condition and sold at or just below original cover price, but there's a few gems in there too.

[swiftiereaders]

Hello everyone, Jen here! I found a bunch of books that share titles with Taylor Swift songs, so I wanted to post a list here for anyone interested! You can find the list as well as book covers and info on each book at this -> site

'Tis the Damn Season' by Kimi Freeman

'Begin Again' by Emma Lord

'I Think He Knows' by Katie Bailey

'Call It What You Want' by Alissa DeRogatis

'Long Story Short' by Serena Kaylor

'I Knew You Were Trouble' by Pip Fox

'Enchanted to Meet You' by Meg Cabot 

'This Is Me Trying' by Racquel Marie

'Never Ever Getting Back Together' by Sophie Gonzales 

'Champagne Problems' by Staci Hart 

'Better Than Revenge' by Elizabeth Adler

'I Wish You Would' by Eva Des Lauriers

'How You Get the Girl' by Anita Kelly

'Ms. Perfectly Fine' by Kate Callaghan

'Sparks Fly' by Birdie Lynn

'Look What You Made Me Do' by Elaine Murphy

'I Knew You Were Trouble' by Lauren Layne