#ppl not known to be open minded:
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junewongapologia ¡ 1 year ago
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On The Origin Of The Species was feasibly published within the lifetime of Edmund Bertram, and you just know he would have been insufferable about it.
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the-somwthing ¡ 1 year ago
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[ someone saying flower husbands was toxic in an analysis of Jimmy ] boo ur wrong 🙄
[ someone saying flower husbands was toxic in an analysis of Scott ] OMG!! SO TRUE 😭
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ashennightingale ¡ 2 years ago
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imo good character-establishing things to have for pcs are like
- the usual why are they on this adventure, why are they w this group, etc
- what's one personality trait that drives them to do the stupid but fun thing
- what's one aspect that might make them act in ways contrary to how they do normally (including Not doing the stupid thing if it wouldn't be fun)
that last one is beneficial for the collaborative aspect of ttrpgs: if everyone else wants to do x, & as a player u wanna cooperate but ur pc would be opposed, how can u navigate that? there's still times to dig ur heels in, but often I've found more value in establishing Why or How my character can be convinced to go along w smth anyway
also just. ppl contradict themselves sometimes, & having even a simple sense of that in ur pcs can both make rp richer & assist in collaborating w the other ppl at ur table
#for example one of my fave moments w my first urban shadows pc (sloane - a fae)#was when we visited the winter court as a party & bc shes a winter fae she got to meet the king#mind u. sloane had spent the Entire game hiding from winter ppl bc she ran away & was scared shed get in trouble#but when the option to Go To The Realm Of Winter came up i was like. okay. everybody else wants to do this. ooc i wanna do this too.#it wouldve been perfectly ic for sloane to refuse but that wouldnt have been fun! so instead#we had a scene where she found out the court had known where was the whole time she was on the run and she went Hey What The Fuck?#you couldve dragged me back the whole time and you Didnt? excuse me? am i not special enough for that??#im offended open the fuckin door so i can go tell the king how cool i am & demand why he didnt want me back more#& like that established So much character for her! shes v prideful to the point of recklessness! & not only was playing that up more fun#it also resulted in a rlly cool session that i wouldnt have gotten to play if she just said No#anyway can u tell i have Opinions lmao#esp on that last point <3#as a dm ive had to manage issues amongst my players multiple times bc ppl get stuck in the mindset of 'but its what my char would do'#even as it gets in the way of collaborative storytelling and actively rankles their friends at the table ooc#ur character can do other things too bud. u just gotta be willing to compromise#okay tangents over ive just been Thinkin#sorrel speaks#dnd#<- does tumblr still only put the first 5 tags in search results. god i hope so i want this in my tag not the main one
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triggeringtommy ¡ 15 days ago
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yall im not tired at all tn im actually rly fed up with my dad for being a maga trump loving idiot it makes me so sad and angry as a openly gay and also publicly closeted trans man this shit stings! especially when he supports me being gay and says hes inclusive towards everyone BUT trans ppl he thinks being gay is OK but being trans is a disease??? Go fuck urself dad
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hoshigray ¡ 1 year ago
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𝐎𝐥𝐝 𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐬, 𝐒𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐬 | toji fushiguro
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𝐒𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬: Your ex-husband bringing the kids over for trick-or-treating is one thing; him wanting to spend the night at your place is another. But it's just for the night. There's no way one night can rekindle some old feelings...right?
𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬: ex-husband! Toji x fem! reader - explicit content; minors DNI - the reader is around their mid-30s - Tsumiki (age 11) and Megumi (age 9) - mutual pining - kissing/makeout sessions - unprotected sex - Daddy kink - breast sucking + nipple play - fingering (f! receiving) - oral (f! receiving) - spooning + mating press - cervix fucking - breeding kink - praise - clitoral play (pressing and grinding) - pet names (baby, good girl, mama, princess, sweetie, sweet thing) - you and Toji have been divorced for five years - cameos: Gojo, Utahime and Mei Mei - mention of drool/spit and tears - humor bc I'm [not] funny.
𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐝 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 7.6k (....dawg.)
𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐍𝐨𝐭𝐞𝐬: happy Halloween, everyone!! so, randomly missed writing ex-husband! toji bc it's lowkey my favorite, soooo yeah, this is what we're doing to celebrate the end of the month! anywho, happy October, beautiful ppl, and tysm for reading my works!! Alsooo, ty for 2.8k!!!
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“Trick-or-treat!!”
“Gasp—Oh my goodness!” 
“We came to celebrate Halloween! Also, Megumi forgot his toothbrush here again.”
Opening your door to children at the sunset of Halloween day isn’t out of the ordinary or anything special. However, it’s always a pleasant surprise when it’s two kids you hold dear to your heart. You greet them with a hug, two siblings you know too well to say you’re acquainted with. If anything, you’re practically family. 
The raven-haired brother, referred to as Megumi, speaks up. “It’s not my fault! Dad was rushing me last time.”
“Because you had to bring your stuffed animals last time, holding us back for your baseball practice.” Tsumiki, the older sister, snapped back. The two argue amongst themselves in front of you as you try to mediate. It’s no avail until another voice comes to the fray.
“All right, chill out, you two.” The voice belonged to the person approaching the porch stairs, your eyesight capturing the familiar figure walking up with two duffle bags. The one standing tall before you was the father of the children, Toji Fushiguro. Who’s also known as your one and only former husband. “Get inside and finish y’r homework, or else we’re goin’ back home.” 
The siblings stop bickering and head inside, taking off their shoes at the foyer and walking upstairs. Now that they’re gone, you turn to the man with the jet-black hair, his viridian orbs focused on you. The weather was chilly, so the man wore his usual dark denim jacket over his plain black sweatshirt, matching his jeans. “You look good, big guy. What’s in the bags?”
He greets you with a curled lip, and the scar on the side of his lip lifts. “Picked them up from their after-school sports, so it’s their sports gear and costumes for tonight. Mind helpin’ me here?” 
“Hmmm,” you merge your facial expressions to that of faux pondering, turning your back to Toji. “Nah, can’t. Got dinner to finish making.”
“Hmph, should’ve known.” He makes his way through between you and the front door. “Wouldn’t wanna break your pretty nails carrying heavy shit, huh, princess?” 
You glare at him using the nickname, hating his patronizing gaze. “From what I remembered, you would never let me carry the heavy stuff because you thought I was too fragile and easy to break. So how about that, Mr. Knight in Shining Armor?”
“Really? I don’t remember sayin’ all that before. You must’ve put me in a spell.” 
“Probably, I’ve been told I’m quite cute~.”
“Mmm, nah, more like an old hag of a witch.” Toji barks a laugh at your offended reaction, and he immediately ducks and heads for the stairs when you throw a sandal at him.
“At the very least, say I’m a cute witch, fucker.” You say the final word under your breath, grabbing the sandal you threw and heading back to the kitchen.
To say you and Toji were acquainted with one another would be the biggest understatement of the century. The two of you met a decade ago, fell madly in love, and married within a year of the relationship. When you tied the knot, Tsumiki had to have been two years old, and Megumi just turned one year old. You two had been together for four years after that, and you could confidently say those were one of [if not THE] best years of your life. You often second-guessed yourself being in a relationship with someone who had children, fearing that they wouldn’t like you or ignore you.
However, those worries were blown right away as the days went by. Every time you spent time with the children brought you three closer than ever; it was to the point that they saw you as their mother. How sweet! And there’s no denying that Toji loved you. The man would break someone’s nose for you  — yes, it happened before, and it wasn’t pretty — for you were his sweet little thing that kept him going.  
Well, if it was so great, why the divorce? Let’s just say you weren’t Toji’s first love. That title would have to be awarded to the Megumi’s mother. Even in her unfortunate passing, you can tell that Toji loved that woman like no other. It didn’t make you jealous or anything, seeing the man you love still mourn for a dead woman. Hell, you’d probably do the same if you were him. But, you can’t lie; it felt like you were cast over a “shadow” when it came to her influence. It was damn near suffocating to bear, especially in those four years of marriage. So, for your sake and his aching heart, you pulled him aside and suggested a divorce. And Toji didn’t fight you on the proposition, signing the papers and setting you free from the thick air.
Although things ended between you two, that didn’t mean things stopped being what they were. If anything, it was as if nothing happened at all. Even if you still don’t live under the same roof, you still make time to hang with the Fushiguros, whether invited to some occasion or exchange phone calls or texts to check up on them. Even now, five years after your separation, it warms your heart knowing that you get to interact with the people you care about. 
There are moments you find yourself missing living under the same roof with all three of them and living alone can be pretty lonely. But all in all, as long as they’re comfortable and trust you enough to be around, there’s no need to change things up again. Like right now — the four of you sit at the dinner table eating before the kids go off trick-or-treating.
“Are you going to trick-or-treat with us, Y/n?” The brown-haired child sitting next to you asks while finishing up her dinner. 
“Sorry, not this time, gotta be at a Zoom meeting for my job in a few minutes. But I do have someone else to take my place. Gojo will be here at around—Why are you two making that face?” You stop mid-sentence to notice Megumi and Toji at the other side of the table, displaying disgusted facial expressions at the mention of the white-haired other’s name.
“Why him?” They said in unison.
“Why not??” You question their irritation.
“He’s so annoying…” Again, in unison. Proof enough that they’re father and son.
You sigh as you get up to take your plate to the sink. “Oh, come on, you two, it’s not like he’ll be with you guys the entire night. He has a party at a friend’s he’s going to later.” 
“Isn’t he too old to trick-or-treat?” Tsumiki questions, noting that Gojo is way past his undergraduate years. 
“He is, but whatever gets that prick any free sweets,” Toji answers his daughter before getting up to put his dish in the sink. 
You exit the kitchen, head into the living room, and sit on the couch. The laptop you had placed there was ready to open and unlock, and you clicked on applications and windows to look through before your meeting started in the next three to two minutes. He should be here about—
DING-DONG!!
Now.
Right on cue, you motion for Toji to grab the front door, and he follows your command. “Kids, Gojo’s here!” You shout out to the two kids who still sit at the table. “When you’re done eating, you can go upstairs and put your costumes on. But whoever finishes last has to do the dishes.” You can hear commotion from the table as the brunette rushes to put her dish in the sink and dash for the stairs. Megumi groans to himself; you giggle when you hear him mutter an “Aww man…”
You pull out your headphones to connect to your laptop, put them in their respective ears, and prepare yourself for the meeting. Ignoring the faint passive-aggressive tones of your ex-husband when greeting Gojo at the door…
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
Your eyes flutter open, noticing the lighting change around the living room. The orange sunlight no longer decorated the space, substituted with the gradual darkness that overtakes you. The only source of light you can figure out is the flashing from the television screen.
Aside from the TV, there are no other signs of life. There aren’t any signs of Tsumiki or Megumi around playing or causing a raucous. It could only mean the two are still trick-or-treating with Gojo. 
One blink, two blinks. I must’ve fallen asleep after the meeting… You hum while sinking to the couch, burying your face into the pillow. 
But…since when did your pillow act like it was breathing with a heartbeat? And…I smelt that cologne before…How?
“Ya awake now?”
You raise your head, realizing you are not lying on your couch. Technically, you were; however, you were lying on something else on the furniture with you – more like someone. 
It’s then you realize that you were lying on Toji during your entire slumber, him leaning on the end of the couch, one leg spread to make room for you to sleep on him while you sit on the other. And you can guess that you had your head on his chest, snuggling up to his warm figure. He looks at you with his green eyes now darkened by the room, yet you can see their glow from the television light. And that small smile he gives you, the scar on the right side of his lip lifted upward. The familiar butterflies in your stomach flutter like before. Like old times sake…That must be embarrassing, huh?
You frantically try to get off of him, “Sorry about that, I thought—“
“No, no,” Toji places a stern hand on your back, keeping you from moving further. “You were comfortable.” 
You stare at him for a few seconds until your face contours to a look, and a smile starts to creep up while you situate yourself back to your original position, pressing your face back on his chest to listen to the beats of his heart again. “I recall having this couch all to myself not too long ago, so where’d you come from?”
“Well, I wanted to watch some sports highlights, but I figured you’d kick my ass if I pulled you off and had you sleep on the floor instead.” With the click of your tongue, he chortles. You bet your ass I would. “So, I decided to have ya sleep on me while I watch TV.”
“What’s wrong with the other side of the couch? It’s quite vacant and enough for a big guy like you.” 
“True,” his hand rubs circles on your back, an old habit he did when he used to have you like this. “But then I’d be lonely.” 
You titter. “That’s big for someone who said he thrives on being alone.”
“I thrive being alone when I’m working.” You’re glad he can’t see your eyes roll; he’d probably grab you by the cheeks like a child. “Besides, why would I wanna be alone when I have you for myself.”
And there it is, your cheeks begin to warm up. Or was it because you’re so close to him that his heat is transferring to you? That’s probably it, yeah. Let’s change the subject…”How long was I out for? I remember the kids left around 7:30-ish.”
“Mmm, it’s going to eleven right now.”
Three and a half hours? Damn. “It’s past their bedtime.”
Toji scoffs. The abrupt motion of his chest rising is satisfying in a way that makes you even more comfortable. “You still think they’re gonna sleep with all that sweet shit they got?” He snickers some more as you shake your head.
“They know better. When you guys get home, be sure to put their candy bags on the top shelf of the closet for the morning.” 
“Still traumatized from that one time?” 
“Uhhh, yes??” The memory flashes to you for a quick moment, but the dread from before still haunts you. Megumi was six years old and Tsumiki seven, returning home from trick-or-treating and immediately tasting their labor from that night. However, what you didn’t expect was for them both to eat almost half their bags. Let’s just say, thanks to their sugar rushes, they didn’t drop dead until the hour hand touched two of the morning. “Unless it’s the weekend, never again.”
The way the older man chuckles is so therapeutic — it nearly makes you want to fall asleep again. “You weren’t the one chasin' Megumi all over the place tryin' to get him to sleep. Little squirt gets his speed from me.”
“Awww, poor you~” You can sense the glare as you respond in a condescending, sing-song tune. “You and him are always butting heads. Like father, like son.”
“Tch, hate that sayin’ so fuckin’ much.”
“Why? ‘Because it’s true?”
“Shut up.” The hand he used to rest his head comes down to pinch your nose. You wriggle out of his hold with giggles, but he happily keeps you grounded to him with his stronghold and a leg wrapped around to prevent yours from moving. “He only listens to you. Such a sweet lil’ baby to you, huh? Puttin’ my own son against me.”
More giggles prompt out of tiny guilt, and you bring up a hand to rub on his chest. “He’s such a bright boy now. Growing up so big and fast.”
“Miki, too. That girl is way too smart fr' me to catch up. And she’s becoming so kind and strong, crazy to think she made me play teacups when she could barely go down the stairs by herself.” Toji hums, the vibrations felt on the pads of your fingers. “Think she gets that from you.” 
You shook your head. “They’re your babies. They do amazing things because they have a big guy like you to catch them if they ever fall.”
“Hmm, fair…But let’s not pretend I’m the best dad in the world. Fuck, never in my life did I think I’d be a dad, especially with two kids. I didn’t know shit back then — still! I still don’t know shit.” You don’t say anything, just listening to him voice his thoughts to you. Because he knows you’d listen – you always do. “If you weren’t there for them, I don’t think they’d be shining like this. Y’re definitely the thing that brought us up together. They look up to you so much. Ya did so well with them.”
Nodding aimlessly, his black sweatshirt grazing on your cheek. “Thank you. Same to you. Didn’t do so bad yourself, big guy.”
“Mmm.”
Nothing is said between you two after that. The only thing that makes noise is the voices coming from the television. The volume lowered, an initiative you could guess from Toji wanting you to get some rest. The silence was too awkward that it might torture some, but it was fine where it was. There was no need to change it, especially when you were comfortable in each other’s embrace.
That is, until Toji asks, “Do you miss it?” The rubs on your back go slower, his fingertips drawing a ticklish sensation.
“Of course I do. All the time.” You answer honestly, turning your head to rest your chin on him. Your eyes glimpse directly at his, giving him a tiny grin. “Why ask? I know the kids miss me being around; what about you? Miss me nagging and putting you to work all the time?”
He sneers at your comment. “Every day.”
It was such a simple answer, yet it had the power to wipe that smirk right off your face. Your eyes locked in his sight, and your heart tuning to an irregular rhythm. Oh, come on, Y/n, get a grip! “Ahem—Toji, I hope you know that I never stopped missing everything we had — I never will. Those years that we shared were probably the best I’ve had. We had happy moments, others sad, of course. But, God, do I miss it all. I miss it so much. I miss having you guys here. Miki and Gumi and—“
“Me?” Good Lord, if this man doesn’t stop looking at you with those goddamn eyes of his, such captivating orbs that say more than he lets on. Your breath hitches, and so does the hand on your back. “Hmm? Ya miss me, baby?”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. Why’d you have to call me that? And it gets worse when he places his free hand on your cheek, his thumb brushing your skin while the forefinger teases the lobe and tragus of your ear. Goddammnit…
“...Yes,” your voice was down a whisper, which could easily be mistaken with the television. But you know Toji heard you, loud and clear. “Especially you, Toji.” You said it. The words that he wanted to hear from you. They felt so forbidden to say, yet it was the truth. You avert your gaze away from him. But you knew that wouldn’t work, not right now. Toji taps your cheek with his thumb, and your eyes sheepishly return to his.
He doesn’t say anything, and that makes your heart beat at an unbearable rate. It’s all you can hear when you stare into his deep emerald eyes, the sound of it ringing your eardrums as if you could puke. Your throat running dry, so you gulp to ease the uncomfortable bob. If something could just happen to end this anxious torture, that would be great. 
And then your prayers get answered: something does happen. Toji slowly brings his face closer to yours — your body goes rigid, and you instantly face away before the inevitable happens. No, I didn’t mean that!
“Aht aht, don’t do that, baby.” His hand slithers from your cheek to your chin, forcing you to face straight at him. “Lemme see you.”
“Toji, wait,” your voice travels out in a shaky breath. “We shouldn’t be doing this. We can’t cross this line anymore.”
He listens to your pleas, but his body does otherwise. Placing a gentle kiss on your forehead while the hand on your back snakes downward. “Why not?” His gruff voice dialed down to a whisper.
“Because—Mmmm…” Toji interrupts you by licking the helix of your ear. Oh, you slick bastard. “We’re supposed to be done…” 
“That’s not stoppin’ me from takin’ care of my sweet thing.” Jesus Christ, you almost melted from the way he whispered that to your ear. He’s pulling out all the same old tricks, and it gets more hellish by the second as you try not to give in. “So, y're gonna let me take care of you like I always do, right, mama?”
Both his hands now rest on your ass, groping it while your hips sway as if they have a mind of their own. The leg between yours comes up slightly, making you ride on it. The heat on your cheeks has already blossomed to your ears, making it hard to think straight. Gripping his sweatshirt, your hips ride his thigh to ease the throbbing sensation that grows with every motion. Good God, you shouldn’t be doing this. You know you shouldn’t be doing this. However, it’s been so long that you felt wanted like this — wanted by him. It’s all the same – his voice, his hands, his words, his body, and the names he calls – yet here you are turning into putty. 
“Haaahh, Mmmfff…Toji, please,” Toji withdraws his face from your shoulder, leaving him to examine your expression. You must look so dumb right now, with your hooded eyes and shivering lips. But, at this point, do you even care? “Please…Treat me right.”
One moment, you see his gaze narrow with a devious glint. Next, you’re taken aback when Toji slams his lips on yours, kissing and sucking your bottom lip until you give him access. With a moan, you open your mouth for him and sink deeper into the kiss. Your hands come around his neck, keeping him focused on you and you alone. Not that he would have it any other way.
His strong hands continue to knead your asscheeks while you hump and grind on his thigh. Nibbling on your lip, you whimper helplessly for him. It strokes his ego, knowing he’s making you like this, the fucking bastard. He takes in your tiny cries happily, shoving his tongue to play with yours. You give in to him, almost losing your balance riding his thigh, yet Toji’s lips never leave yours.
You break the kiss to get an imperative breath, panting loudly and sweetly for him as Toji kisses and licks your ear. The sounds make your lower region twitch. “Hnnmm, fuck…That’s my girl. So fuckin’ good fr’ me always, Y/n…” You can feel him slide a hand up to the hem of your leggings, forcing it inside for his thick fingers to brush up on the bare flesh of your butt. You gasp sharply. Him squeezing your butt has you biting down on his sweatshirt. “—Hahhh, Oh God, Toji,” With every squeeze, he inches closer to your panty-covered chasm, where you know he’d find a damp spot. Please touch me. Please, please, plea—
CLACK-CLINK!!
The two of you are frozen stiff when you hear the sound of the door opening and closing, the foyer lights turned on. “Alright~, we got you guys home. See ya later!” That was Gojo’s voice, indicating everyone was finally back from trick-or-treating. This means that Tsumiki and Megumi are about to see you on top of their father, his hand in your leggings and smacking lips with yours. Your eyes shoot wide with horror — immediately remove yourself from Toji and stand up from the couch to pull your bottoms up. You barely had the chance to peek at Toji because the kids already run to the living room to find you two.
“Y/n, Y/n, look!” The brunette was the first to greet you with her adorable pink Barbie cowgirl costume. She and her brother, dressed as Sasuke Uchiha, cheerfully showcased their pillowcases full of candy. “Look at all this candy we got!”
“Wooow, you guys really went on a haul,” you can only hope they can’t see you sweating bullets through your fake reaction. “Wh–Where’s Gojo?” 
“He dropped us off here a few seconds ago and left for the party,” The raven-haired boy answered while scanning his pillowcase.
You only nod along until you frantically wipe your mouth, realizing the tiny trail of spit from the corner of your mouth. “Umm—Ahem, well then, I’m glad you two got all that candy. Now, let’s hurry up and get you guys home so you can get ready for school tomorrow!” 
But the children didn’t move an inch. Actually, they looked like they were going to tell you something. You lift a brow. Oh no, they’re going to look at each other. They looked at each other and then glanced back at you. Oh, God, no. “Uhhh, Y/n, we were thinking.” Big sister Tsumiki is always the one who asks the following question. “Can we stay over?”
You inhale a massive breath, yet you do your best not to exhale a heavy sigh. “Kids, you promised to keep the overnight stays to three at max per month. This will be the fifth!” 
“Yeah, but it’s dark out. Plus, it’s way past our bedtime.” The younger chimes in with a tiny pout. “We’ll be asleep by the time Dad gets us home.”
And here comes Tsumiki with the tag-team response to add on. “And that means he’ll have to make continuous trips back and forth from the car. Picking me and Megumi up, getting our bookbags, the bags full of candy, the whole thing! We already packed up our PJs just in case.” 
You stood there staring at the two in astonishment. There’s no way they thoroughly planned this out. There’s just no way… And to make it worse, they were making valid arguments. You open your mouth to say something, but the two give the best puppy eyes they can. The wave of guilt hits like a train, internally cringing. You turn to Toji, who still sits on the couch, and the motherfucker only gives you a shrug. Wow, what a helpful father he is.
You groan into your hands, shaking your head while looking at the kids who wait for your verdict. “…Alright, you can stay as long as you PROMISE to put those candy bags in my bedroom closet. Deal?” The happy smiles and aggressive head shakes should answer your question. “Good, now go ahead and take your showers before you head for bed.” They rushed to the stairs by the time you finished that sentence, so enthusiastic about staying the night at your house, and you can’t help but smile hearing their footsteps run up the stairs. 
With that being said, you turn to the older man again. Your brows are trenched down, but your smile is still present. “So, you legit just sat there and let those two tag-team me like that? In my own house?”
Another shrug with a dumb smirk on his handsome face. “Told you: too smart fr’ me to catch up.” You shake your head before exiting to get the kids and guest rooms ready, leaving him with the television. 
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
The midnight hour has finally danced its way into the darkness of the night. Halloween is finally over, and the month of October is no more. The pitter-patter sound of the rain cleanses the neighborhood of its merits and festivities that partook hours ago, ready for a new phase of the year to take over.
After having the guest room ready with sheets and sleepwear for Toji and kissing the kids goodnight, you rinse your stress off with a nice shower and put on your pajamas to get ready for bed. After you turn the lights off, you drape the comforter over your figure as your body sinks with the cozy sheets and pillowcase. Your eyes close while focusing on the curtains of your window, the only light piercing inside being the lampposts by the street. 
…Well, at least that’s what’s supposed to happen. But that’s not the case because you’re not the only one lying comfortably on your mattress. Instead, Toji is here with you, in your room, on your bed, his chest to your back, and his hand roaming inside your oversized shirt. Your lips are now connected with his, sharing your erotic moans with his enticing groans, and you get a little louder as his fingers cup and play with your breast.
“Mmphh…Ahhhh, I thought I told you you’re sleeping in the guest room—Nmmff!” He tweezes your nipple with his forefinger and thumb roughly.  
“And I thought you’d be smart enough to know that wasn’t gonna happen.” Toji kisses the crook of your neck, drawing near your ear for him to whisper. “Besides, look at you. Still sleepin’ with no underwear on?”
“Hmph, only when I have a man around the house.” That answer got you another rough tweak on your nip and a purposeful gnaw to your ear. You knew he’d react like that, never liking the mention of another man leaving your mouth – especially during an intimate time like this.
“That so? What man you know that can handle all this?” Toji then moves from his side to be between your legs, pulling up your shirt to fully expose your chest. And your breathe hitches while his free hand travels down your abdomen to your bottoms.
“Ahhhh, no one. Just you...” You look at him with half-lidded eyes, taking in his reaction to what you said. The salacious grin on his face becoming broader should entail that he greatly loved that retort.
He brings his face to your other unattended nipple, “Good answer, princess.” The nub of your breast enters his mouth, and the wet warmth of his tongue greets it with lapped motions and grazes from his teeth. Despite that, it doesn’t distract you from the fact your bottoms are pulled down with ease and are thrown to the bedroom floor, leaving your cunt out for him, your erotic fluids seeping and glistening from the outside lights. 
Toji plays with your folds until he can stuff his pointer finger into your chasm, the insertion resulting in your body’s jolt. It’s been a long while since you had his thick digit inside you, playing and scraping the inner walls to evoke whimpers. God, it felt so good, this satisfying feeling returning to awaken your body to his touch. He interacts with your body as if he’s the only person who knows how to get you going – and it’s the truth. No one can put you in a blissful haze quicker than this man. And you’d prefer to keep it that way. 
The addition of his middle finger into your leaky entrance startles you, the thick digit making its way in with such vigor that he uses both fingers to scrape the velvety texture of your walls. Your eyes are now screwed shut at the growing commotion between your thighs, and the heat within your body flourishing all around gets to your head. “—Khmm, Oh fuuck, Toji. Please, don’t stop.” 
With a soft ‘pop’ noise from his lips, Toji replies to your demands. “I’m sorry, what’s my name again?” You giggle with trenched brows. Of course, how could I forget?
“Nmmph, D-Daddy, pleaseee, I’m so clo—Ahhhann!!” He puts his thumb to your clit, grinding down on it unexpectedly. “I wanna cum, pleaseee…”
“Hmmm, good girl,” he teased, laying down kisses, nibbling on the skin of your stomach and inner thighs until he arrives at your leaking slit. Your body jerks up from the bed when you feel the cold, wet muscle slowly lick on your clitoris before ravaging your folds. The sounds of his mouth on your cunt are so lewd to the ear, slurping noises from his lips with the lapping motions of his tongue claiming your come are too much for you. And when he uses his hand to swipe and pinch your clit? Oh, it’s a wrap. Your release comes out without control, biting down on your bottom lip to make sure your cries don’t leave this space for the kids to hear. Their room is on the other side down the hall; tonight isn’t the night for too many risks.
When your trembling body calms down and subsides, Toji withdraws his face from between your thighs. Your essence paints his mouth, and he wipes his chin clean while licking the remnants that coat his scarred lips. “Hmph, missed tastin’ you like that.” You open your eyes when your high finally evades you, watching your ex-husband pull down his sweats. His erection springs out and hits his stomach, your mind going rampant with thoughts as you ogle at his freed limb. Shit, it’s been so long. Will that shit even fit me again?
“Don’t think it’ll fit, baby?” Damn him, he loves teasing you. Toji then discards his black wife-beater, at long last revealing his well-built, brawny physique that has you drooling for him. He uses his hands to maneuver your legs—your knees pushed to your chest as your legs propped up on his shoulders. A position you’re all too familiar with. Your eyes don’t leave Toji’s cock as he aligns his cock to your slick-coated folds. “Take some breaths fr’ me, sweetie. Can’t take care of you when you’re all tense.”
You take up on his advice and begin taking deep breaths, reminding yourself to maintain the steady pattern as he pushes the tip of his dick between the lips of your cunt. Every inhale is where he nudges into the hole of your inner cavern, and every exhale gives you time to breathe out the pain that comes in for a split second. This carries on until the cockhead wedges itself perfectly into your vagina, along with the inches of his girth that stretches until the base kisses your lips, the tip of him kissing your cervix. Tears swell up in your eyes, taking more deep breaths to prepare yourself for what’s about to come. 
“Oooh fuuuck…Heh, yeah, that’s my baby right there. Fittin’ so perfect fr’ me, mama…” He puts his weight on you, keeping your figure unmoving under his bow. 
“Nmmmf, Daddyyy,” you’re forced to take in all of him, and drool trails down your lips with no hope of taking care of it. “…I’m so full, you’re too much…”
“I know, sweetie, I know.” He wipes your spit after kissing your forehead. How gentle compared to what you’re about to go through. “Gonna move now.” His thrusts start slow for the two of you to adjust to each other; the feeling of his length’s veins coming in and out of your chasm is so euphoric, and the kisses to your cervix want your body to writhe and squirm. But you’re bent into this position for a reason: forced to submit to him no matter what. So you do just that.
Yet your horny haze gets more potent once he picks up the pace, rutting into you with increased speed. Your slit, still sensitive from earlier, gets overstimulated with the constant grazes on your gummy walls and jabs to your tender cervix. It takes everything in your power not to come so early.
“—Hahhhh, Nmmph. Oh, shit, shit, shit…” Toji groans above you, the thrusts of his pelvis increase to an irregular rhythm, grinding deep into your cunt to the point of uncontrollable babbles escaping your lips. His bullying on your insides results in you gripping his length hard, causing the older man to hiss and moan at your contractions. “—Ohhhfuuuckk!! Jesus Christ, baby. Y’re gonna make me go crazy.” 
As if that wasn’t already happening now that he pistons his cock into your wetness, your brain turning into mush from the onslaught of ruts to your puffy wet chasm. Tears stream down your face, and more drool follows down with more precise hits to your delicate canal. The pounding in your head makes it hard to think of anything else, the squelching noises and paps of Toji’s balls hitting your cunt making it worse. 
“D-Daddyyy, I’m—Ohoooo!! Oh, Jesus, ohhhshit!” You can’t formulate a proper sentence, too engulfed with the electrifying sensations coursing through your body. 
“Damn, you feel too fucking good—Hnngh!!” Toji places his forehead on yours, resting his entire weight on you while his hips have a mind of their own. “‘Bout to make me knock you up…”
Oh, good Lord. The mere thought of having a child is the last thing that should be on your mind. But in a time like this, who in their right mind would be thinking straight? “Nnnfff! Oh God, pleaseee, fill me up, Daddyy!” Green eyes narrow with trenched brows. “—Pleasepleasepleaseee!! I want you to fill me up so bad, I want it, I want—Hyaaaaa!!” 
How can he deny your desperate, teary pleas when you’re urging him on like this? “Heh, you’re so fuckin’ sexy, mama.” Toji captures your lips with his, your mewls taken by him as you sink further into your pleasurable thrill.
Sporadic thrusts of his pelvis produce more raunchy noises in the joining of your sexes, his heavy balls smacking on your cunt as he drives the base of his cock straight into you. Your slit is now a puffy mess, come and slick form a soapy mess that Toji now harbors a milky ring around his girth. A few rushed, sloppy thrusts heighten your high once more, and then Toji presses his pelvis down to the hilt on one final, harsh thrust, unloading his seed into your aching folds. And your climax follows in a few seconds, the walls of your cunt fluttering on his pulsating dick as your essence soaks him. Your muffled shrieks are received by him, quivering under him until the aftershocks wash through your body. 
Once you two breathe at a steady tempo and the nerves of your sweaty bodies fall still, the kiss is broken with heavy pants and a string of spit that links you two together. Toji buries his face between your neck and shoulder, licking and kissing your skin as you’re allowed time to experience your clarity.
“Hmmm…You know I’m not done yet, princess.” Toji mumbles to your ear before stationing your legs off his shoulders for them to rest.
“Yeah, I know, big guy.” You tease him with a breathless laugh, kissing him on the temple. “Always wanting more…”
─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───
“…So, you’re telling me you had your ex-husband spend the night? Not just the kids?”
“Yup, that’s what happened.” 
This morning was different from your usual routine – well, you can’t say it’s different if you have done it before, huh? After five years of divorce, you thought you’d be so used to waking up and getting ready for work without worrying about others. However, this morning proves otherwise.
It felt natural walking into the kids’ room and lightly shaking them awake, telling them to get ready while you whip up something quick for them to eat as Toji showers (using your bathroom, by the way). Watching the kids run down the stairs and eat breakfast puts a smile on your face, reminiscing about the good old days when they were younger and teenier. It sometimes feels surreal doing the same thing for them now that they’re getting older and taller. But seeing them bicker and interact with each other in your presence never fails to warm your heart.
When Toji’s finished freshening up and loading his kids’ stuff in his truck, it’s time to bid them farewell for their departure for school. You give them final touch-ups on their hair and outfits, reminding them to be safe and not get into trouble (especially Megumi, now that the boy’s been getting into fights). And before they rush to the car, you hug them and give each a kiss on the cheek. Here is where the warm feeling inside your heart begins to deteriorate, not wanting to let them go. Yet, for their sake – and education – you release them and hope for the best.
The last to leave was Toji, who came from the kitchen to the front door with a paper plate wrapped in foil in one hand. His name is written boldly by a black Sharpie. “This fr' me?” 
“No, it’s for Shiu Kong, for dealing with you all the time.” You stick your tongue out at Toji as he glares at you, not even moving out of the way while he exits through the door. “You better eat that when you get to work, you have a terrible habit of skipping lunch.” 
“Whatever ya say, mom.” He pesters you with the title, knowing you’re technically not a mother anymore. Yet it only makes you smile knowing he notices your maternal side. 
“Don’t forget to text me when Tsumiki’s soccer game is next week.” You watch him go down the porch stairs. 
“Will do.”He whistles. 
“And Toji?”
The man stops walking to turn to you, his forest green eyes fixed on you so quickly that you almost forget what you want to say. Or what you wanted to do. You place your fingers on your lips and blow a kiss with an outward gesture. It was an old habit you did whenever he left, something you can’t seem to get out of practice with. It’s embroidered in your mind at this point. 
And when he catches the kiss with his free hand and places it on his chest, it makes your heart skip a beat. Toji grins, “I’ll be damned if that was fr' Shiu, too.”
You snicker with a shaken head. “Drive safe, Toji.” Closing the front door, you stand there for a while. Your smile doesn’t falter; it gets bigger as you replay the moment instead. Thinking about him, hearing him, seeing him, it all drives you crazy. And that’s a good thing…right?
“I don’t know, sounds like you still kinda care about the guy.” 
“Of course I do,” So here you are, sitting in your living room enjoying the rays of the sunset decorating the space, in a video call with your best friends, Utahime and Mei Mei. You reply to the former’s comment. “Just because I don’t have the ring on my finger doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care about him. I mean, he’s the father of two lovely children.”
“Shoot, you’re better than me, then.” The dark-haired woman admits. “But you’re kinda proving my point, Y/n. Even when you don’t have the ring on, you two act like the same old couple, and it’s definitely not just for the kids’ sake. Let’s be real here.” 
You try to interject, but the pale-blue-haired other, Mei Mei, intervenes, “I agree. It’s one thing if you let the children stay over, but he also wanted to spend the night. Sure, he could’ve been tired from driving all day and such. However, if you’re still seeing a man for the last five years – while legally unbound – and he says he wants to spend the night under your roof, which is rare, that should ring some bells at least.”
“I know, it did…” you nod along with what your friend is saying, throwing your head back with a heavy sigh. “But it’s not like he’s never spent the night here before, nor is he banished from stepping inside.” 
“Oh? Then why is this time different from the others?”
Utahime jumps in after Mei Mei’s chirp. “Yeah, you’re telling us about all these nostalgic lovey-dovey feelings as if you’re falling in love with him all over again. What, did you two have sex or something?” 
An open mouth, yet no words come out, leaving you in a predicament. You could’ve just lied or swerved the subject to something else. But you didn’t. And the two women on the screen lift their brows with hooded eyes, a look meaning a thousand words. You couldn’t even explain yourself either because a sudden knock on your door captured the attention of all three of you. 
You stand up and walk towards the door, your friends still on call on the phone at hand. Opening the door, you’re almost stunned to see in front of you. Tsumiki and Megumi with nervous smiles, and their father at the car collecting the same duffles bags from last night. You’re kidding.
“Hey, kids.” The two of them gulped from not calling them by their names. You bring up the phone to face the screen to them. “Say hello to Auntie Mei Mei and Utahime.” The women on the line smile and wave at the children, who sheepishly wave back.
“Hi, aunties.” Megumi greets them, and then his eyes drift back to you. “So, Y/n—“
“What did you forget this time?” Straight to the point, no room for excuses.
“It was Miki this time! She forgot her soccer cleats.” The older sibling gawks at her younger brother for calling her out.
“Tsumiki, I know you have cleats at home.”
“I do, but these are special! You bought them for my birthday, and I’ve been wearing them to every game ever since! So, I was scared when I couldn’t find them at home.” The brunette was quick to defend her stand. “Also, Dad doesn’t feel like driving up here and then back. So…can we…”
You close your eyes and bring the phone to your face to shield your vexation. Twice in a row, the sixth time this month. You can hear the giggles of your friends from the other side of the phone, adding more fuel to the fire. You don’t look up until you hear heavy footsteps on the porch, seeing Toji holding both duffle bags with a hand and shoulder. He stares at you as you stare at him, a silent conversation on how to handle this situation. And when he shrugs with lifted brows, you realize it’s no use and release the long-awaited sigh.
“….If I see one more thing being left behind here, you guys can’t come back till December, understand?” It wasn’t anything serious, but enough for the kids to know you weren’t joking. They nod their heads in unison while you roll your eyes. “Okay, get in here.” They rushed inside with gleeful laughs, the shuffling of their backpacks following along with them. Your eyes then drift to Toji as he walks up to you. “Did you forget something here, too?”
“Yeah,” you lift a brow when he drops Megumi’s bag to the floor. Before you can register his hand on your chin, you squeak when he brings his lips to yours. It lasted for seconds, but the kiss was sweet and tender, sucking on your lip before letting go with a playful bite. “Meant to give you that when you woke up. Thanks fr' the food, mama.” 
Toji picks the bag up and walks inside your home to put the bags in the rooms, leaving you standing on the porch with an astounded expression. You couldn’t appropriately calibrate your thoughts until you heard faint laughs from the phone. Then, you realize your best friends witnessed the entire scene that transpired. 
Utahime, with the slyest leer, was the first to say something. “Oh yeah, he laid that pipe on you good, without a doubt.”
“Mhmm,” Mei Mei agrees with a chuckle. “And I'm guessing he’s gonna do it again tonight. Isn’t that right, Y/n?”
You end the video call with a heated face. “Sh-Shut your damn mouths!!” Again, you groan into your hands before returning inside. Thank God I still have those birth control pills...
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♱ 𝐌𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭
© 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐲2023 – reblogs + comments are appreciated wholeheartedly ☆ header art by rororogi mogera + dividers by the amazing @/cafekitsune!!
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sp4ceboo ¡ 14 days ago
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As Selfish as Love: Merman!Bakugou Katsuki x Reader
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genre: merfolk au, fantasy au, merman!bakugou x witch!reader, strangers to lovers, bakugou x f!reader, smut and angst and fluff
summary: in a world infested with purgers of magic, neither a clandestine witch nor a lone merman can remain safe for long.
tw: 18+, smut (afab reader, p in v, bkg has a merman cock, marking + biting, oral f receiving, fingering, crying during sex but not like you think, unprotected sex, creampie), violence, blood, death, vivid gore, grief, reader treated as a tool by evil ppl, random worldbuilding, questionable medical knowledge, kinda plot heavy, other stuff i don't remember
wc: 19.8k
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For years, all you’ve known is darkness.
Chained by the wrist to a ring in the wall, swaddled and asphyxiating in the blackness of the brig - it is there where your closest companion has become the dark. It is the absence of light: not only because they do not deem you human enough to spare lamp oil on you, but because the kiss of the sun has been reduced to a foreign concept, a distant, syrupy memory.
Every morning when that door opens, letting light leak in and crawl painfully between the cracks of the roughly hewn floorboards like an intruder, you repeat your name back to yourself, remind yourself who you are - a witch, a survivor, a person at the end of their tether but that all the same does what they can to keep the shadows at bay.
For the darkness is not just the absence of light: it is the absence of hope, and if you let it take you, your very substance will dissolve and you will sink beneath obsidian waves and melt away without a sound. They will have won.
This is something you will not allow.
White knuckled, you hold onto memories of the past the way a drowning man clings to driftwood. They swirl in the currents of your mind, fickle things. Sometimes they are so tangible you can feel the grass beneath your feet and the bracing wind of the highlands on your face even in the still, humid air of the brig, sometimes they eddy away before you can catch a glimpse.
You were barely a woman when they caught you, when they tore you out from where you’d been rooted to the earth, ripping through the stitches that held your life together. You were young, and you were naive and ignorant. This would not have happened if I had been as I am now, you think, but as you are now is shackled in the belly of a ship built for the single purpose of hunting merfolk.
They hunt to purge. Their so-called divine has commanded the eradication of magic, and so that is what each and every child is trained for from birth. The land has been rife with their conquest for centuries, making witches such as your kind unheard of, yet the sea for all its worth has lain mostly untouched until recently.
You are jealous of the merfolk. The magic must come easily to them, because they have not had to suppress it out of fear - it seethes in their blood, potent as an ocean storm, imbued within their essences as salt is in seawater. For this, they are feared, and for this, the hunters are more so hellbent on their extermination.
Over your years spent in the hull’s constant night you’ve learnt that your captors are the most celebrated hunters of their time, held above everything but their leader and their divine. They are revered among their people, and that is why they are allowed to chain a witch in their brig and force her to heal wounds sustained from hunting the undeserving - because they are strong enough and honourable enough to not be corrupted by your magic.
There is nothing honourable about the way they treat you.
Though you are human as they are, you are lower than an animal to them. They have no care for your limits - oftentimes, you are pushed to heal and heal and heal until you are exhausted, and yet you refuse to succumb when the darkness calls, because each time you meet their eyes, without fail, you see, buried deep within, is fear.
They fear what is unknown, what is not under their control, and every time you refuse to break when they beat you just for entertainment, every time they push you almost to death yet you survive, you wrest back an inch of control. You are needed, and that is something you will use one day, when the time is right. For now, you collect those sparks of fear in their eyes and let it feed the fire nestled within your soul that fends off the growing dark.
It is a day like any of the other days. Stirring in your fraying blankets, you wake up to the sound of the crew’s strident voices, and as it is sometimes, you almost forget that they are cruel and stained by their own wrong doings because for now, there is no talk of blood shed, just breakfast. You hate that they can seem so normal with so many innocent lives on their hands.
The day very quickly progresses into the type you have come to dread.
They neglect to bring you your daily portion of bread and water, nor the echinacea you had asked for more of, and it can only mean one thing - a hunt is on. Already, you can feel the unruly lurch of the ship as it skims over the waves, picking up speed. The crew’s voices become louder, crowing and eager, and you despise them so deeply your heart twists and becomes an ugly thing in your chest.
Almost imperceptible, you can hear the rattle and hiss of ropes as they ready their harpoons. This part is the worst, where the darkness closes in so near that you can feel its cold touch brush up your arms and its breath ghosting over your face. Sometimes you hear the anguished cries of the merfolk, sometimes the whoops and victory cries of the crew are loud enough to drown it out. You don’t know which is worse.
After will come the wounded, grinning still and soaked in blood of two kinds - theirs and their victims. You are always numb to it by then, turning a blind eye to the crimson dipped trophies they grip in dirty hands: lopped off fins and strips of scales, sometimes small enough to be a child’s.
How they can butcher beings as beautiful as the merfolk and think it the right thing to do, you do not know.
It makes you sick to your stomach, that somehow you have become their accomplice, stitching their wounds with your magic, saving their lives so they can kill again. You vow that one day, you will strike back, but what good can you do now, trapped in the bowels of a boat that was designed as a vessel for murder?
You have to try. You have to survive, if just to try. You are yet to come up with a method for escaping past what you have already attempted, but if you do not, more lives will be lost, more bloodshed that you had inadvertently aided. Right now, on deck, the patterns for it to happen all over again are falling into place.
You’re sure that this time will be no different.
And so you wait for the injured to come, almost defeated if not for the hard, bright little ball of hate settled in your throat. You wait, and you wait, listening to the strange thumping above that you can’t decipher, and still they don’t bring you their wounded. Neither comes their usual sickening shouts of triumph - you wonder if the merfolk managed to escape. You hope desperately that they did.
Listless, you turn your head as footsteps approach. There are more than normal. You can’t count exactly - five, maybe six, and they all walk with a strange irregular gait as they approach the brig.
I hope the merfolk put up a magnificent fight, you think as the key scrapes in the lock. I hope that taught them; you know it never does. The more damage the merfolk do while they fight for the lives of their mates and children, the more they are damned as unnatural and beastly and deserving of the fates that are doled out to them by men.
With a rusty squeal, the door swings wide, and with it comes the same influx of light that always spills greedily through, stinging your eyes and making them ache - the doing of a tiny, wayward star moulded from precious lamp oil. You blink away the tears that well up at your lash line, testament to your accustomation to the dark, and then blink again.
Back when you took the warmth of the sun on your face for granted, you lived too far inland to ever see one in the flesh. You were still a witch under the disguise of a healer, though. You’d heard tales, seen artists’ renderings and gorey body parts wrenched off as sick memorabilia.
None of those could have ever come close to preparing you for the sight before your eyes.
A merman.
Deep in enemy territory - so deep, in fact, that all those surrounding him, bar you, have murdered more than dozens of his kind each. He is on a galleon rammed bow to stern with killers. And yet, despite it, he has not fallen victim to the purge. Yes, there is a splintered harpoon sunken into his side, yes, he is limp and broken, but even so, shallowly, his chest rises and falls.
He breathes. He breathes, and even that is beautiful. The lamp’s light reflects off his scales; he is mainly jet black, but broad swathes of orange run across the length of his powerful tail like they were drawn with the loving stroke of a painter’s brush. In parts, they darken into a ruby red that glitters and winks as the lamp light dances.
Or maybe that’s just blood.
There’s a lot of it. It soaks into the sheet they strain to carry between them, pools in the dip his weight makes, streaks in smears down his chest and face, coats his hands and is embedded under his sharp nails. You hope that all of it is not his, that he made them regret whatever they must have done to get a merman vulnerable enough and far enough from his pod to capture him.
Deep lacerations cut all along his chest and tail, and one of the spines that extend from his sail-like dorsal fin is bent in a way that must mean it is broken. A smattering of scales reach wide across his shoulders and back and down his arms, some of them twisted and bent out of shape. Your eyes fall to the harpoon buried just below his hip, and you feel the bite of your nails digging into your palms.
“Heal it,” commands the man holding the corner of the sheet closest to you. “We’ve been ordered to bring back a merfolk to be studied. It must be in peak condition.”
You frown as they begin to manoeuvre all three metres of merman into the brig. Studied? They must be looking for a weakness to exploit. After all, merfolk succumb less easily to flesh wounds than humans - the magic of the sea resides in their very bones.
A hand fists the front of your shirt and you’re jerked forward. You can feel the hunter’s foul breath on your cheek, feel the violence roiling just below the surface of his skin, and yet you cannot tear your eyes from the merman until you’re struck across the face. Reeling back, you raise your head to look at him, a hand flying up to cradle your jaw where it has begun to swell.
“Are you deaf? What are you waiting for?” he spits.
Your brain is still stuck on the fact that there is a merman before you, alive on a ship full of specialised mermen killers, but your body has gone through these motions many times before and brings you to kneel by your patient so fast your chain jingles crassly in the relative quiet, your hands already working to gather herbs for a poultice that will slow the bleeding.
Glancing over your shoulder, you see your captors filing out of the door, the last of them grumbling and wiping his hands on his trousers as if being near enough to hit you had sullied him. Realisation dawns abruptly on you.
They’re leaving you alone with the merman.
“Wait,” you call.
Disquiet grows in your stomach. As much as you hate the life forced upon you, serving as a tool for men who would not hesitate to kill you if you ran out of worth, you have gotten used to it, and this merman at your feet has disrupted your delicate equilibrium, tripping you as you balance on a knife’s blade.
You have never had problems with thinking fast in a pinch. You are a healer, you are accustomed to endless wells of blood and snapped bones sticking through skin. Conversely, you are not accustomed to the sight of a half conscious merman taking up the majority of your floor space, a single fingernail on his hand no doubt potent with more magic than is contained in your whole body.
Your tongue is slow, your mind slower, but you force the words out, emboldened because whether he likes it or not, this merman is leverage for you. There is no one else on board that could save him.
“I will need a lamp indefinitely, while I’m in the process of healing.”
You realise how important the health of this merman is to their study because the hunter holding the lamp brings it over with no words of criticism, just the curl of his lip when you draw near enough to take it from him.
Its metal is warm in your hands, and you cup it in your palms - a little sun that clears the clinging shadows from the brig like they’re cobwebs. Carefully, you set it on the floor next to you, just outside the border of the canvas the merman lies upon, sitting back on your heels as the door slams shut.
You stare at the merman for a weighty moment. If it did, there’s no telling what organ the harpoon may have punctured - do his intestines extend all the way down his tail? Or are they in the same place as a human’s, and his tail is just muscles, like legs would be?
Never in your life did you think merfolk anatomy would have any significance to you. Even if you’d thought it did, there wouldn’t be any books for you to study on it. A hysterical, jittery laugh builds in your throat, wringing itself from you when you spot the strange slit - for lack of better words - that sits just below where his skin turns to obsidian scales.
The nervous sound breaks the silence, jolting you into action. Never mind his anatomy, he’s still bleeding out. Somehow, you need to get that harpoon out of him: the hunters don’t clean them off once they’ve used them, and if you’re not vigilant, infection will get him before whatever they’ve got in store will.
Determinedly, you scoot closer to his lower half, stretching out a hand to test the area around the wound. In preparation, you will your healing magic to rise to the surface, and it fizzles at the surface of your palms, warming them.
Your fingertips have barely brushed over his scales when pain slashes across your cheek.
The merman jerks away from you so hard that he cries out, and you wince as you see the wound pull wide, blood oozing out from where it gapes. Gingerly, you touch a hand to your cheek - one of his spines had glanced off your face as he’d moved away, its tip sharp enough to shed blood.
Any human patient would have lost consciousness moments after being hit by the harpoon that’s buried in his tail, and if by a miracle they hadn’t yet, the pain caused by what he just did surely would have knocked them out. Inexplicably, he’s still conscious, blood red eyes glaring at you with blatant distrust.
You hadn’t gotten a chance to look closely at his face before - you’d been too busy ogling his tail. Spikey, sandy hair casts a shadow over his eyes. They glow, carmine and half crazed, no doubt with the same agony that pinches at his face and curls his lip, revealing sharp canines that he bares at you, twin ivory warnings.
A rattling, hissing sound emanates from deep in his chest when you attempt to move closer again, his dorsal fin undulating in an obvious threat display. You can tell it hurts him; the spine you’d noticed before is definitely broken, the parts of the fin around it drooping and limp. He growls when he catches you looking.
You really, really don't know what to do.
Your skin prickles, the hairs on the back of your neck rising. He hasn’t taken his eyes off you since you were left alone with him. Aside from the obvious hostility, his face is effectively blank; there’s nothing in his gaze except the primal instinct to survive, and the unspeakable, offensive terror of a wounded animal backed into a corner and trapped there.
There’s no getting through to him with words. You remember the night you were ripped from your cottage by the hunters, the way you clawed and screamed until your voice was gone and your nails were torn and bleeding. You know what it’s like to have the adrenaline coursing through your veins so fast it burns, you know what it’s like to feel the anger and fear blend together in your chest until it strips away your humanity and you’re reduced to nothing more than a feral, wild eyed animal.
Slowly, you get to your feet, your chains rattling. He growls, making that hissing sound again, and despite his size, despite the muscles straining in his chest and the magic you can sense in his form, he looks small. You grit your teeth. The shock is beginning to wear off, burnt to ashes by a roaring fury that licks up your throat and fills your lungs.
You wonder if he had a pod. You wonder if they got massacred before his eyes.
Ignoring the trembling of your hands, you scoop up the piece of dried fish that remains from yesterday’s meal. It’s the only food you have, so you turn and offer it to him - when he doesn’t hiss immediately, you slide it over to him on the dented tin plate it had been on.
Tentatively, the merman picks up the fish, his nose very obviously wrinkling. As he examines your peace offering, you notice his hands are webbed up to the lowest knuckle and are a little larger than a human man’s, the fingers longer and the nails considerably sharper.
Relief fills you as he begins to chew at the fish, and you retreat to your pile of blankets, sitting down and half facing away to give him as much privacy as is possible in as small a space as the brig. You begin to make a poultice for him, crushing the herbs between your fingers because you’re not allowed a mortar and pestle and depositing them on one of the dishes you have lying around.
Once you’re done, you turn back to him. The edge in his eyes has softened a touch, and when you scoot over to settle closer to him, he doesn’t make a sound, instead just leaning away a little, watching you warily. Warningly, he hisses when you lift your hand, his red eyes flashing.
“I’m going to have to touch you to put this poultice on,” you tell him. “It will reduce the bleeding and might alleviate the pain.”
He twitches but remains silent. You wonder briefly if he even understands - people don’t talk to merfolk these days. They either run or they kill. For all you know, he might speak some ancient language of the sea that you have no hope in understanding.
You scoop the poultice up in your fingers and lean forward, aiming to ease him in by angling first for a smaller wound situated just over a hip bone on a human would be (you’re not even sure if his equivalent qualifies as a hip seeing as he lacks legs).
“Don’t,” he snarls, his voice guttural and rasping, like he hasn’t uttered a word in years.
Fumbling, you almost drop the dish. You guess that answers one of your many questions - he can speak your language, although you presume one word doesn’t really express fluency. For a moment, you consider telling him that they’ll no doubt beat you for not healing him, but it seems rather insignificant since it’s nothing they haven’t inflicted on you before.
Sighing, you sit back on your heels and look at him, defeated. He regards you with those same crimson eyes as before, but they’ve cooled considerably and hold traces of scathing criticism you find you aren’t the fondest of.
You begin to realise that he’s not going to give you any explanation as to why he doesn’t want you to treat him. He doesn’t trust you, most likely - you haven’t given him any reason to think otherwise of you, rather, you’d gawped openly at him. You’re not surprised he hasn’t taken a liking to you. You wouldn’t either.
So you retreat back to what has now become your corner of the brig, since the other three are taken up by the length of his tail and the doorway. On a whim, you prepare yourself a turmeric tea; it’s anti-inflammatory and you know you’ll be needing it sooner or later.
It takes a day, but one of the hunters barges in, light sneaking in past the outline of his silhouette. You don’t know any of them by name, nor would you want to, but you do know that this particular one is the first mate.
The merman hasn’t let you near him still, and although at points his eyes are closed, you’re worried that if you try to sneak up on him, he’ll move away again and tear open the parts of the wound around the harpoon that have partially closed up. The perimeter of blood soaked canvas beneath him has slowed its expansion but still grows.
It’s amazing that he’s survived this long while still losing blood. You presume merfolk must be rather resilient, unsurprisingly - the sea is no easy place to live in, nor is it made any easier by its recent infestation of merfolk hunters.
“Did you not hear your orders yesterday, you useless bitch?”
Passively, you look up at him as he looms closer. “I did.”
“So you don’t want to cooperate, then,” he snaps. “Do I have to encourage you?”
You don’t get to answer. A fist full of scarred knuckles collides with your nose, and your head snaps back, white exploding across your vision as the hunter shoves you backwards. Your back hits the ground and before you can even think of scrambling away, you’re kicked hard in the ribs.
You don’t try to resist it. You’ve learnt it’s better to take it than to fight and make him hit harder.
Red hot pain shoots through you when the tip of his boot catches your chin, clacking your teeth together. You cry out as your blood fills your mouth, streams from your nose, stains his knuckle bones. Hands up in a pitiful attempt at protecting your face, you curl up on the floor, as small as you can. Your ribs throb, your chain trapped awkwardly beneath your body.
You’re still balled up with your arms over your head long after he slams the door behind him. You ache all over, and your lower lip is trembling treacherously. Tears press at the backs of your eyes so you squeeze them shut: you’re not going to cry.
You need to get up.
You need to down that damned turmeric tea you made, just to feel the ginger burn as it slips down your throat.
When you open your eyes, the merman is staring. You grimace as you heave yourself to sit upright, the metallic taste of blood still coating your tongue and curdling until it’s sour. His face is unreadable, shuttered and devoid of any emotion. He doesn’t speak, although that isn’t exactly atypical.
“Well, now you’re not the only one bleeding all over the floor,” you mutter, unable to keep the resentment from your tone.
You turn your back to him as you set your nose with a grunt, letting your magic flow through your fingers and knit your flesh back together. Running a hand over your ribs, you check if any are broken, but when none are, you don’t heal them up; you’ll need to save your energy. The hunter didn’t bring food for you, and you doubt he’ll be bringing you any more until you treat the merman. That could take anything from an hour to a week.
Falteringly, you glance over your shoulder. He stares off to a place far away, a place you cannot see. A scowl furrows his brow, and you sigh, wondering if he thinks of the sea and the freedom that was torn away from him the way it was for you.
Curling up on your blankets, you pull one over yourself, rolling to face the wall and shutting your eyes. Loud in the darkness, your stomach growls, and you twitch but ignore the urge to look over your shoulder and stare accusingly at the merman - you too would not trust a human if all their kind had brought him was pain.
Your ribs hurt. It is alright, though. You’ve fallen asleep through worse.
When you wake, the first thing you do is crouch down beside the merman to check his wounds. The rattle of your chains makes him open his eyes, and you see that his face has paled, the alertness in his gaze dimmer now the adrenaline has worn off. As is becoming clear, he’s more resistant to injury than humans are, but there’s a worrying amount of blood saturating the canvas sheet beneath him, and you doubt he’ll make it much longer without help.
If he lets you near, what you’re going to have to do is far from ideal. The hunters’ harpoons are barbed and vicious, but you can’t exactly keep it in, and you can’t exactly cut it out without risking more blood loss. You’re just going to have to yank on it and hope it doesn’t destroy anything too vital on its way out.
“I’m going to have to take the harpoon out,” you tell him measuredly, gauging his facial expression.
He simply stares at you, his face blank but for the slight pinch of his brow. Shadows bathe half of his face; there is barely any lamp oil left to burn. The little flame flickers and sputters, letting darkness dance up the close walls of the brig, and if you do not hurry, you may have to treat him in the dark.
Slowly, you lift your hand, letting it hover over the splintered end of the harpoon. Tension bleeds into his body, the set of his jaw tight and his hands fisting as if he’s bracing himself, but he doesn’t growl or flinch away. Expectancy and resignation lurk in his gaze.
You don’t like that he won’t say anything in response even though he’s proven he can talk. You can feel his eyes boring into the back of your head as you gather your materials: the poultice from yesterday, a roll of bandages, a thick strip of worn leather. The latter you give to him, sighing when he turns it over in his hands, quizzical,
“Bite down on it,” you instruct him as you roll up your sleeves. “Either that or it’ll be your tongue.”
He frowns, but does as you say. You glance up at him to check if he’s ready. The hard lines of his body stand out, taut as a bowstring. He looks brittle, as if he might break and crumble into dust the moment you touch him.
Years ago, when you healed children’s scraped knees and the broken bones of men who had fallen from their ladders while fixing leaks in roofs, you had the words to comfort your patients. These you lost to the eternal darkness of the merfolk hunters’ ship, and these you wish to find again but cannot.
Instead, you murmur a quiet warning as you kneel by his tail, wiping your sweaty palms off on your trousers before getting a strong two handed grip on the end of the harpoon. Under your breath, you count down: three, two, one. Pull.
It makes a squelching, sucking noise as it comes out. You cringe but keep on tugging - if you stop now, it’ll be worse for both of you. He cries out, voice ragged and spilling over with agony, his tail arcing off the floor, and you feel the movement in the way the harpoon jerks in your hands with the bunching of his muscles.
All of a sudden, the resistance disappears. His tail fin slaps against the floor as he goes limp, both his and your heavy panting filling the room. You’re left with the splintered harpoon in your hands, a chunk of flesh and a twisted scale still clinging to one of the bloodied, rusted spokes. He spits the strip of leather out and it lands near your knee.
Carefully, you set down the harpoon and begin applying the poultice straight onto the weeping gash in his side, spreading the rest over the bandages which you bind tightly around his tail. Leaking from your fingertips, your magic suffuses across his skin as you work; you can’t heal him accurately without knowing much about his inner workings, but it should help to stave off any infection.
He shelters his face in the crook of his elbow, and though he tucks his other hand tightly to his chest, you can see the way he trembles.
You give him his space by swiftly moving on, busying yourself with his other injuries. You splint the spine in his dorsal fin, ignoring the way his hands shake and gently placing the arm crossed over his torso by his side so you can use your magic to clean and close up the various cuts and slashes littering his scar flecked body.
His scales seem to be damp, even though it’s almost been a full twenty four hours since he was brought in. It must be seawater somehow, you decide, or a sweat-like substance that keeps his tail wet enough when he hasn’t been in water for a while. He doesn’t look the most comfortable: he’s probably not used to having to support his own weight without the buoyancy of the waves.
There are little scars all over him, his skin a map of cicatrices, but the one that catches your attention is raised and jagged, spanning from the middle of his sternum to his navel. You touch your index finger to the centre of it, and he inhales sharply, flinching away.
“Sorry,” you mutter, pulling back, half expecting him not to hear you.
He’s silent for a while, ignoring your apology, but then comes a begrudging: “Thank you.”
Though he won’t see it - he’s still hiding his face from you - you shrug. “You should never have been hurt in the first place.”
He’s quiet again, lying still enough for you to imagine him dead if not for the rise and fall of his broad chest. You slouch, the energy having leaked from your body in order to mend his. The lamp finally gutters and winks out, leaving in its absence a tiny pinprick of light, a vanishing ember at the wick’s tip, buried in ashes.
When you tear your gaze away from your expired little sun, you’re confronted with a pair of blazing eyes. Pinned on you, they glow in the darkness like two pools of blood, but you find their luminosity strangely comforting, like Arcturus and Betelgeuse to a sailor: stars to lead you on your course.
“You are a witch, are you not?”
You jump at the sound of his voice, rough around the syllables but measured, as if he rolled them around on his tongue before he spoke. The scarlet light from his eyes dims a little as they narrow (you’re not sure if that’s meant to convey amusement or distaste) and you become aware that maybe he can see a lot more in the dark than you can.
“I am,” you confirm, still squinting at him - to no avail.
“Why do you not fight them, then?” He demands, his tone darkening. “Surely you cannot like it here.”
You scoff. “Of course I don’t like it here. You think I like the way they beat me?”
He’s silent, and though you still cannot see his face, you sense his scowl.
Sighing, you reign yourself in. This merman comes the closest to being an ally than all the others that have entered the brig, and you cannot squander this. He may not trust you, and you may be ignorant and ill informed of his kind, but you both have a common enemy, and though he may not like the thought, you are similar enough: the raw energy that flows through him is the same that you harness to perform your magic.
“I could fight, but there is nowhere for me to go if I escape the ship - there is just the sea,” you explain. “In the end, they are scared of all those associated with magic, even the witch they keep chained in the dark. The moment they deem that the risk I pose outweighs the use I have to them, they’ll kill me.”
He’s quiet again while he processes what you’ve said. “And what of me, witch? Why have they not killed me yet?”
“They want to study you,” you reply, wincing at how harsh your voice comes out. “I think we’re quite far from their lands - a few months’ travel, maybe - but it’s hard to tell.”
“What - ”
“Enough questions,” you cut him off. “My turn.”
A plethora of questions crowd your mind, but as you think of the merman in front of you, you find that they can wait, because although he must have stories of the sea that you’d only dreamed of hearing, and although magic you could learn endlessly from is threaded through his being, he is primarily, before anything, a soul. He is a soul: a soul with eyes that make the permanent night you are lost within just a little more manageable.
You will have to find out whether the kraken is real or not later; you will ask him about selkie skins afterwards.
Instead, you ask him his name, and tell him your own.
Bakugou, he grunts in response before turning his head to face the wall, clearly ending the conversation. Frowning, you stare at his back - or where you presume his back is, in the darkness - and mull over the name he provided you with; you are certain he has given you the one he gives to strangers. You suppose that is what you are.
Pulling absently at your chain, you sit with your back to the wall, your knees to your chest, and think about the merman, about Bakugou. For a moment, you are seized by the absurd belief that his most grave injury is a bleeding heart, but that cannot be true, for he has not said anything that indicates it. Questions find their way to your tongue, but you let them stick there, stifling them before they deign to interrupt the silence.
Neither of you move from your positions until the door opens, revealing the first mate. Squinting, you rise to your feet, a muscle feathering in your jaw as he purposefully kicks Bakugou in the shoulder, lifting his lamp high so he can see the bandages you’d applied.
“I’ll need a top up on lamp oil if I’m to continue the healing process,” you announce. “And we’ll need food and water. He’ll have - ”
You hesitate, glancing over at Bakugou, but he just lifts a shoulder and makes a face of disgust that you know isn’t conscious. Deliberating for a moment, you wrack your brain for any clues about merfolk diets.
“Fresh fish,” you decide. “And crabs. The bigger the better. Also, he’ll need a tub big enough for him, filled with seawater.”
“Watch the way you address me,” the first mate snaps, taking a step forward.
You shrug. “You wanted him healed, didn’t you?”
Your first two requests come within the next few hours, appeasing the increasing hollowness that had resided in your stomach and sending the shadows inhabiting the brig retreating up the walls and into the corners of the room, but the tub doesn’t come until two days after. It is barely watertight, plugged with tar and made from rough sawn wood.
You haven’t exchanged words with Bakugou since you asked his name and he gave you one, though you find yourself on the receiving end of his red eyes more often than not. He’s silent as the hunters bring the tub in, as they fill it with pails of seawater, as they leave and slam the brig’s door behind them. He’s silent, even as he slips into the tub and into a thin slice of his home.
And then, after a moment, he turns to you, and there’s something painful and cutting and cynical in his eyes.
“You know, the water doesn’t speed up the healing.”
You nod. “I know it doesn’t. You were uncomfortable.”
His eyes blaze. “What do you want?”
You regard him, regard the intensity of the fire in his gaze and the way his chest heaves. His tail fin hangs out of the tub, but even so, water swills over the side and splashes onto the floor like it can sense his agitation. Loudly, the links of your chain clank against each other as you cross your arms. 
“I do not want anything, Bakugou.”
He narrows his eyes. “All humans I have known but one are cruel, witch. You wish for me to owe you something.”
“I don’t,” you reply, noticing the strange look that creeps onto his face. “Who is this human you hold in such high esteem?”
A distant look erases the furrow in his brow, and you get the sense he is no longer talking to you when he speaks again: he is lost in some place far away, a place coated in the golden sheen that tints all good memories. His voice turns soft as he brushes his fingers over the scar on his chest.
“His name was Izuku,” he murmurs. “But I called him Deku.”
“Deku?” You echo, your voice crudely loud all of a sudden.
A flash of grief slashes across his features like lightning on the high seas, there and gone so fast you almost don’t catch it. It’s like a switch flips, and suddenly shutters slam down behind his eyes and his expression melts away until his face is blank and cold. Regret sinks heavy in your stomach.
You wince. “I’m sorr - ”
“He’s dead,” Bakugou growls.
He doesn’t speak to you for three days. There is a certain rawness in his blood red eyes that makes you gentler as you change his dressings and reapply your poultices. He looks at you as if he hates that you are healing him instead of leaving him to die, so you avoid his gaze, staring instead at the scars that cover him like warpaint.
You get the sense that he is mourning this human he told you of all over again, and you cannot help but see the weight of it in the tension of his body and wonder if you could alleviate the pain.
On the fourth day, he shuts the vulnerability away somewhere deep inside of him, buried far enough beneath other things that he can pretend it never even existed. Yet you remember it, still vivid and fresh in your mind as you lie curled up on your side, watching the lamp’s flame until your eyes burn. He breaks the silence by clearing his throat, his gaze fixed on you.
“Witch,” Bakugou says softly. “How did they catch you?”
You glance over at him. “I was young and foolish and alone. It’s easy to snatch a girl from her home under those circumstances.”
“You have been here for years, then.”
“I have,” you sigh. “I tried to escape once. That’s why I’m chained down.”
“A weaker soul would not have survived this darkness,” he remarks solemnly. “You are strong, witch.”
You look down at your hands, watching your fingers fidget to and fro in your lap. Your tongue is frozen in your mouth - you had not spoken properly to someone in years before he was captured, and his behaviour confuses you. No words come to mind that express how grateful you are for his acknowledgement.
“Thank you,” you settle with in the end.
He hums but other than that remains silent.
Later you discuss with him the possible logistics of an escape. He explains to you that he cannot channel the magic the way you can, but that he is soaked in the magic of the sea; he is unable to use it for spells because it is innately part of him, enhancing him beyond human capabilities. Together, you come to the conclusion that you must get off the ship before you arrive at the hunters’ lands, or your chances of freedom will have narrowed to almost nothing.
An actual method of subduing or injuring the hunters enough to allow an exit route evades you, though. After all, you are chained to the wall, and there’s no easy way of moving Bakugou - he is, evidently, far too heavy for you to drag around all by yourself.
Uneasy silence falls over the brig. You stare at the lamp again: with it, your ability to see has been restored, along with a piece of your humanity, but now its light seems to illuminate how small a space you are contained in, how strong the chain binding you to the wall is.
As you drift off to sleep that night, you find yourself gripped by the fear that Bakugou will never return to the sea, and instead, they will inflict unspeakable torments upon him.
You will be the one who kept him alive for them. You will be the one who he grows to hate, because you had the chance to let future pain pass him by, but you saved him, and by doing so, you failed to spare him from their torture. And while they cut him open and study his insides, you will be somewhere far away, still risking yourself to heal their most elite, almost as if they are beloved to you.
The thought gnaws at you as the weeks pass. Blood no longer soaks the bandages wrapped around his tail; his dorsal fin is almost healed. He is gaining strength, more rapidly through your magic, and it is clear he has shaken off death many times before if his scars are testament to anything. In particular, the one on his chest draws you: though it is long healed, you can tell it was deep.
He almost died back then, too - the scar tissue around its edges is strange, lumpy and malformed as if he was kneaded back together by a child who saw his flesh as nothing more than clay harvested gleefully from a river bank. Even so, the shape of it is familiar. You know you shouldn’t pry. You remember the way he flinched away when you first touched it, but you ask, anyway.
“Bakugou,” you ask him once you’ve finished changing his bandages. “What did you do to get a merfolk’s blade stuck in your chest?”
He snarls. “All you do is fucking dig, you shitty witch.”
“I - ”
Hissing, he swipes at you half heartedly, and you stumble backwards, dodging his fist and almost tripping on your chain, caught off guard by the agitation in his eyes. Stunned, you gape at him. The fury is vehement on his face, evident in the grit of his teeth and the tremor in his hands as he grips the side of the tub; you can tell he despises how he is trapped in here with you, fending you off with the sting of his words.
You open your mouth. You’re not certain what you’re supposed to say, other than an apology that he will shake off easily, but you hope that words will form on your tongue. He levels his gaze on you, and this time, within it dwells an overwhelming sorrow that stops you short.
“Don’t try,” he whispers. “You cannot change the past.”
Brow furrowed, you stare at him. You take in the pain carved all over him, and this, you realise, not his scars, is his warpaint - he holds it close to him, like a cloak of inwardly turned, savage blades, reminding him to keep his distance. It is present in the bow of his head, the slump of his shoulders, a weight so heavy it threatens to rend his flesh from his bones.
You get to your feet, and in the lamp light, the single tear that rolls down his face is turned to solid gold.
Balefully, he looks at you, yet he holds still as you reach out and smooth it away with your thumb. A rawness resides in his eyes that you wish you could soothe as you catch the next tear that spills over, gently as if he is made of porcelain.
“You need not bear the weight of your world on your shoulders, Bakugou.”
Your words wrench a sob from him. His fingers curl tight around your wrist, tearing your hand away from his face, silently weeping as he grips you so hard you begin to lose feeling in your palm. You watch as the anguish in his eyes evolves into anger, harsh and brittle and bleak.
“Get away from me,” he spits, voice strangled, and yet he does not release you, so you perch on the side of the tub and make a show of not looking at him so he is not alone in his privacy.
It’s then that you realise that whether or not he likes it, you have gotten through to him. In the month that goes by, sometimes he is cold and aloof, keeping to himself, and sometimes he allows you close enough that you can feel his warmth. You find you savour his company when it’s there.
His wound is fully healed, a pink scar bordered by healing scales, and his dorsal fin spine is back in working order. You check up on him still, every other day or so, careful to monitor them in case you have somehow healed him wrong, careful to keep your regular intersections with him, because although you would never admit it to him, he is amusing, and he keeps the darkness at bay.
You are unsure what he thinks of you. Sometimes, he smacks you upside the head with no real force, and you dare to label it as affectionate. He gives you the name which he gives to those that mean more to him than strangers, too - well, you wring it out of him.
(“Bakugou, what’s your name?”
A scoff. “Witch, have you hit your head?”
“We both know you’re not obliged to answer, so if you’re not going to tell me, spare me the insults.”
Pause. “Katsuki. It’s Katsuki.”)
There are times when he has nightmares, too. You surmise that most of them are about Deku, and that the scar branding his chest, the one made by a merfolk forged weapon, is linked somehow to this dead human. Incomprehensibly, he mutters in his sleep, snarling about krakens and storms and sometimes even witches, but it always leads back to Deku.
Sometimes he protests against him, speaking a language you do not fully understand, cursing and thrashing so hard you fear the tub will splinter, while sometimes he proclaims his love, his voice slurred as he slumbers, but each time, without fail, he begs: forgive me, Izuku, forgive me, Deku, I’m sorry.
Katsuki is unaware of what he gives away in his sleep. Often, he settles down quickly after raising his voice, but sometimes you look over to see him stiff and terrified and shake him awake; he then jolts upright, the water sloshing out of the tub as he reaches for you, his stricken eyes searching yours for something you do not know the identity of, but he always finds.
He does not let you go, not ever. At these times, you lean or sit by the tub and let him crush your fingers in his grip.
He never speaks of it in the morning.
You would not hide from him what you have learnt, nor the feelings that grow treacherously in your heart, but you are too cowardly to tell him of either. It is certain that he loved Deku, and that maybe Deku loved him too. What was it like, you often wonder, to have loved Katsuki?
When he holds onto you, still half lost in the dark lands of his nightmares, you think about it. He would have been less guarded, a young merman not yet covered in scars; he would have given Deku his name immediately, for he would not have learnt that he needed to be wary of humans. Still, he would have fought for him until the end with the same ferocity he would fight for his own heart - because Deku was his own heart.
And Deku, you imagine Deku saw people as they really were. You imagine Deku with bright eyes and a brighter smile, with a face that all his emotions could be read off as easily as a book. He must have been good, persistent, if Katsuki had fallen for him. Soft, even, but tough when he needed to be.
They fit each other, no doubt.
You feel guilty, as if your speculations are invasive, rummaging around within Bakugou’s heart where he has not let you set foot. Mercifully, he can pin his red eyes on you as much as he likes, which he often does, but he will not hear your mind.
Now that he is healed, that is how you pass your days, exchanging words with him when either of you wish to, while you wrestle with the unspoken in your head and while god knows what happens behind his eyes. It is normal for silence to fall after a conversation - it is not awkward, but not comfortable either. It is pensive, it is familiar.
And today, it is shattered by screams up on deck.
Katsuki perks up, his keen ears picking up things your dull ones cannot, and he tilts his head, listening intently. You do not have to hear what he does to know what is happening: there is the sound of clashing steel above you, the all too familiar war cries of the hunters. It is not often that the merfolk are prepared for the hunters as they pass by, but neither is it impossible.
The ship lurches, harshly enough that some of the water in Katsuki’s tub overflows. You wager it must be a whole pod, then, maybe two, and you glance over at him, wondering if he knows who they are, wondering if -
“Are they yours?” You blurt.
“Huh?”
“Your pod,” you clarify.
Bitterly, he scoffs. “If the merfolk wanted to rescue me, they wouldn’t have waited months.”
You freeze. The detachment in his voice does nothing to hide the betrayal beneath, and ice begins to crawl up your spine, for he addresses them as the merfolk, not as his kind, his people. Harshly, you swallow as you start to understand that the hunters would never have been able to capture a merman if he wasn’t alone.
“You don’t have a…” You trail off, feeling far too inadequate and stupid to continue.
“My pod renounced me the moment they learnt about Deku and I.”
A picture forms in your mind, of a Katsuki who lost his family because he gave away his heart to a human - of a Katsuki to which the sea was no longer home, but a huge expanse of alone. Horror closes over your head like cold water as your eyes slide down to the scar on his chest.
His pod didn’t stop at just renouncing him.
You had always hoped that beings whose very essence was rooted in magic would be fair and just as the tales said. Your hope had always been that the merfolk would see that humanity was not united in the purging of them, that they would spare you if your path ever crossed theirs. Never did you think they would be so blind as to turn on one of their own for something as reliant on fate as love. You are a fool.
“I’m sorry,” you whisper, and it comes out almost like a sob.
“We are no better than you are,” he replies.
His voice is so devoid of hope that it cuts you to the quick. You open your mouth so say more, to try and fill that emptiness inside him if you can, but your words are stuck in your throat and before you can force them out the door flies open, banging loudly against the wall and almost extinguishing the lamp’s flame.
Three gravely wounded are deposited in front of you and then the door slams. Silently, you get to work, sealing the deep slashes to their flesh more carelessly than you should be - but with Katsuki watching, you feel sullied, a betrayer who works for the purgers of magic. Their blood coats your tingling palms, and yet not in the way you wish it could be.
You have just finished the last when four more are dragged in, and you’re hit hard across the face and ordered to work faster, which signifies only one thing: more are coming. As blood wells up in your mouth, you hope that the merfolk are victorious, even if it means sinking the ship and letting you drown within.
Hate rises within you again, searing and acrid like smoke clogging your lungs, but this time it is different. You hate them for what they have made you; a tool, a means to an end. The determination you nurse in your heart is unimportant as long as you do what they say, and yet you cannot defy them, and this is what you hate yourself for.
Prickling sensations begin to claw up your arms as you heal. You are lost in it, the blood and the battle and the patients, and you swear you see the same faces twice: hunters who you healed once coming back more injured than last time. Your energy dwindles like a dying flame and you dip into your reserves when you recognise the violent light in the hunters’ eyes.
You cannot ask for a break. They already bay for blood and death; what more is yours but just another magic using bitch’s?
You are being bled dry. You are no longer aware of your surroundings, just the halting of the flow of blood beneath your hands and the wheezing gasp of your breath and the rattle of the chain locked around your wrist.
They have not been attacked like this in a long time. You almost forgot how fast the darkness closes in when you send out your energy through your palms to knit flesh and skin back together again. Spots cloud your vision, and futilely, you swat them away. Muffled, Katsuki’s voice hums in your right ear, but you do not understand the words he utters.
Your hands tremble. You pitch forward, slumping over your newest patient.
A hand fists in your hair. Knuckles press into your jaw, far harder than a lover’s touch and yet it feels like it in the way your head lolls slowly to the side. It takes time, but pain radiates through your skull, vibrating your teeth and sharpening your focus, and then you can hear yelling, yelling for you to wake up, yelling for you to carry on or they’ll kill you -
There are so many of them. So many hunters with frenzied eyes and blades that shine where they are not coated in innocent blood, and they are hurt and they want to return back to the battle and you must abide by their demands. The air is too thin as it whistles in and out of your lungs. You cannot think.
You press your palms to the blood slick abdomen of the next man placed down before you and do as they say. Your mouth is dry, your head pounds, your eyes won’t focus, and yet, you do as they say, you always do what they say.
What a fucking coward you are.
Letting them push you farther than you ever would let yourself go. You’re right on the edge, right over the edge, clinging onto the side of the perilously vertical cliff face even as the mossy stone crumbles beneath your fingers and threatens to make you fall down down down. But still, you heal. Your body performs numbly what your mind cannot take any more.
All of a sudden, there is not an open wound for you to heal or guts to force back inside a torso, there are just crimson soaked planks and a raised voice. Loud. An incensed, raised voice, cursing and roaring. Can’t you see she’s almost gone? They shout, earsplitting enough to make your head pound. She can’t heal you fucking bastards if she’s dead!
Bakugou. No, not that name. It’s… Katsuki. Katsuki making all that racket. You don’t know when it happened, but now your cheek is pressed to the rough planks that make up the floor. There’s blood everywhere. Some more splatters to the ground and you notice that the din isn’t being made by Katsuki any more. Your eyes are hazy as you lift them upwards and see a hunter raise his fist again.
“Kats,” you slur. “Watch… watch out…”
The lamp goes out, which is strange, since the oil got topped up this morning. You pay it no mind, though.
You’re too tired.
You wake surrounded by water. For a moment, you wonder if the merfolk won, and if somehow you managed to get tossed off the boat and into the sea, but then you move your leg and it hits something hard and vertical which must be wood. Peeling your eyes open, you find you’re in… the tub? Katsuki’s tub?
Lifting your head, you’re met with a pair of concerned red eyes. One is almost swollen shut, and blood has crusted down the side of his face from a wound in his temple, yet he smooths his hand soothingly over your upper back, watching attentively as you come to.
“You’ve been out for just under two days,” Katsuki says. “You need to eat, get your strength back up.”
Your memory begins to trickle back, and with it floods a torrent of shame: you always told yourself that you survived out of spite, out of the belief and conviction that one day you would hurt them enough to negate all the healing they made you to do, but it was all a pretence. You were scared and so you took the easier road of complacency, and it has caused the deaths of hundreds of merfolk.
It is without a doubt that if you had healed even just a papercut more, that if Katsuki had not stopped them, the life force within you would have winked out, and you would have died. Death had loomed right over you, brushing boney fingers over your face, and even now, it lingers.
You are burnt out, exhaustion weighing on you as if a whole mountain rests on your back. Worse is the fear, revealed in the blinding light, shackling you, for you are its slave, and you cannot shake its hold off you.
Your face crumples. “I am spineless, for letting them use me so. I am a coward, a - ”
“They give you no choice, witch,” Katsuki remarks. “Do not put it on yourself.”
You shake your head. “You cannot ask that of me. How many lives have been lost because I obeyed when the hunters told me to save them?”
Bowing your head, you sob. Fatigue envelops you, the chain around your wrist unspeakably heavy, and you lean heavily against Katsuki; he holds you like you are precious, handling you with care so that the pieces you have shattered into do not fall apart and scatter onto the floor. He tips up your chin, forcing you to look him in those eyes of his as he wipes away your tears.
“What was that you told me, as I wept like you do now?” He asks. “You need not bear the weight of your world on your shoulders. That was what you said to me.”
Nodding, you feel more tears leak out when you squeeze your eyes closed. He strokes your hair, and you hide your face in his chest and wish you could do forever, for he is warm and he is far gentler than you ever imagined he could be. You are tempted, but he nudges you and chides you, reminding you that you will feel much better once you have eaten.
Wobbly as a newborn fawn, you climb out of the tub, Katsuki steadying you with a hand on your arm. Wrapping one of your blankets around you like a shawl, you retrieve a hunk of bread to gnaw on before planting yourself on the tub’s rim, loath to be any farther away from him than you have to be.
Though hunger worries insistently at your insides, sending tremors through your hands and weakness in your legs, you force yourself to eat slowly; you cannot risk wasting any of the food by throwing up. Katsuki rests his forearms on the sides of the tub, watching you with a keen gaze that you cannot read. You become more aware of the purpling bruising across his face and reach out without thinking.
He catches your hand before you can tap into the slowly replenishing well of magic inside of you, his fingers circling your wrist before he lets them slip down and lace with yours. Something ignites behind his eyes, and you find you are mesmerised - you lean closer to see how the spark dances.
“Katsuki,” you breathe, and then your lips are on his.
He tips his chin up to lean into you, his fingers threading into your hair as he pulls you closer to him, so tender that it makes your chest ache. You could stay like this for eternity, simply doing nothing but tasting the salt of him on your tongue and savouring the sweet, sweet scrape of his canines over your lower lip; he is all that matters, all that is.
Slowly, his hands come round to cup your shoulders, pressing you closer to him, and so you feel the moment his grip falters and he stiffens, feel the way he recoils from you as if you have burnt him, and you can do nothing to prevent it. You’re propelled backwards with the force he jolts away. Though it is only a few steps, you feel the gap between you yawn wide, stretching into an uncrossable chasm.
“No,” he chokes out, shaking his head. “No, not - not like - ”
Abruptly, he falls terribly, terribly silent. Stunned, you touch a hand to your mouth; your legs buckle, and you throw out a hand to steady yourself against the wall before sinking to the floor. It feels as if you are drowning.
Katsuki does not love you - how can he, when he fits with Deku like they were made for each other? You were wrong to hope for anything else, wrong to give in to what you wanted, because you have torn open old wounds that never properly healed. It is no longer significant that he does not love you, for you should have seen that already; what matters is that in your blindness, you have ripped him open.
You’re beginning to realise that it was not the lamp that kept the shadows back, but him. It is only natural that you are drawn to him like a moth to a flame, only natural that you were too weak to resist flying straight into the fire. This time, it is not only the moth who gets hurt.
You are left alone with your thoughts. Time passes, as it always does, but you pay it no mind. However hard you try, you cannot bring yourself to meet his eyes. You are numb, numb to the slow rock of the ship as it cuts through the waves, numb to the sounds of the crew at their battle stations again, numb to it all now that it is undeniable: you love him.
He cannot love you.
Wearily, warily, you raise your head when the door opens, revealing the first mate, soaked in blood. Crossing the room in a few strides, he stands before you, chest heaving, a frantic sort of desperation contorting his face as he tightens his hand around the hilt of his sword and glares at you.
“The captain is near death. We drop anchor home in a fortnight. I will be put in command if he does not survive, and if this happens, I will make certain that you come upon a death slower and far more painful than his.”
You do not answer, nor do you pay any mind to his threats. You can sense Katsuki staring in your direction, the feeling of his red eyes on your skin unmistakable: no doubt, he has heard what you have. We drop anchor home in a fortnight - a fortnight until Katsuki is delivered into hands who seek to study him, to slit him open while he still lives and examine his insides and the way his heart beats, ensnared in the cage of his ribs.
Just like that, you know what to do.
You wait silently until they bring the captain to you. The first mate did not lie when he said the captain is near death. Sweat creates a sheen on his brow, and though his eyes are open, he is barely conscious, for he has been sliced open from gullet to navel by a merfolk blade. Briefly, you touch a fingertip to the lip of the gash, ignoring the pained moan it causes and the disquieted mutters of the other hunters.
If you were superstitious, you would deem the wound too similar to Katsuki’s to be anything but fate, but you do not believe in such things. Instead, you put your trust in the strength of good steel and the sharpness of a tongue. Yes, you know what to do, and you will do it.
The chain fixed around your wrist is not broken, but it does not have to be. You are free to do what you wish, because before you is the captain, and he is leverage. There is no fear left in you, no shame to hold you back as you look up at the first mate; he opens his mouth, about to ask why you do not jump to heal his captain, but he pauses when he takes in your cold smile.
“Free the merman, and then I will heal him.”
A silence falls. They are left with no other choice but to do as you say, and they know it. The first mate’s hands ball into fists, a reminder to you of what will come once Katsuki is let go and you heal their captain, but it does not concern you any more. None of it is of concern to you, only his freedom.
“What the fuck did you just say, witch?” Katsuki spits.
His voice jolts the first mate into action. He heaves you to your feet by the front of your shirt, seething, and punches you squarely in the nose. Something cracks. Your head snaps back, the air knocked from your lungs when he drives his knee into your stomach and lets you crumple to the floor by his feet. Gritting your teeth, you glower up at him.
“Come at me all you like,” you hiss as blood pours down your face. “It will not save your captain.”
He crouches down before you. You do not listen as he shouts at you, because you see it in his eyes. He knows you have them all backed into a corner, he knows you’re aware he will not risk the captain’s life. Over his shoulder, Katsuki urgently mouths something to you: do you know what they will do to you because of this? They will do worse than just kill you!
“Let them,” you reply, and as you gaze at him, you smile again. To the first mate, you say: “Bring me up on deck. I want to see.”
The first mate hurls you away from him, barking orders at the other hunters, but all you hear is the crash of the waves outside and all you taste is the nectar of victory on your tongue. You watch, still smiling, as they grab Katsuki and drag him from the tub. He fights, of course he does, screaming your name and slashing at the hunters, but there is but one of him, and he is unarmed.
Cursing, the first mate unfastens your chain from the ring in the wall, wrapping the length of it around his hand and jerking you forward with it, pulling you to follow him through the ship. There is murder written on his face and in the curl of his lip, and you let it slide it off you like water from a sea bird's feathers.
He throws open the hatch, and for the first time in years, you see the sun. Slowly, you step into the light, and the salty breeze tugs playfully at your clothes and hair, fresh and briney and strong, pulling tears from your eyes. All around you is empty space, just blue sea and blue sky and the wind that dances gloriously between them as far as you can see.
The air is invigorating and crisp in your lungs. Hesitantly, you take a step forward, then another and another, seeing the way the sun plays on the water’s surface, scintillating as it warms your cold skin. It is as resplendent as you remember it.
“Witch!” Katsuki cries, shaking the hunters’ hands off him. “Why? Why would you do this to yourself?”
There are countless ways you could answer him. Instead, you take him in one last time, his spiky ash blonde hair and his crimson eyes and the way his scales glitter under the sunlight. You do this for love: if you can’t give him your heart, you will give him his freedom.
“Go,” is all you say, and though tears stream down your face, you smile.
“I will not forget you, witch,” he replies, voice thick. “I swear it.”
Running to the side of the ship, you cling to the taffrail and lean forwards to watch as he dives overboard. He slices through the water, the amber of his tail bright as he goes, further from you with each passing second, and your breath catches in your throat - he is more beautiful than you imagined he would be in the light.
As he crests a wave, he looks back at you, and you see the shimmer of his scales and the graceful arc of his dorsal fin one last time before he twirls in the surf and dives. With that, he is gone, and you are alone again, yet you do not fear what is to come.
A hand grips your shoulder, nails digging sharply into your skin. “Enjoy your peace, you thankless bitch, because once you heal the captain, all you’re going to know is pain.”
You turn to the first mate and laugh in his face.
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He loves you.
Bakugou Katsuki fucking loves you.
He loves your deft hands, careful despite their calluses and nimble despite the chain around your wrist. He loves the smell of you, herby and laced with petrichor. He loves the brightness dancing in your eyes when you laugh. Most of all, he loves your sweet soul: the fierceness woven into it like second nature, the blaze of your heart when you stand up for what you believe in.
He was stupid for pulling away from that kiss. You had fit your lips to his, and suddenly panic rose in his chest, and he jerked backwards as if ignoring his heart would silence it; he was scared to love another human, scared because last time it led to pain. His fear had hurt you, and this is his regret - that he was the one to cause the slow dimming of the light in your eyes.
There are countless other things he regrets. He should have trusted more easily, he should have fought harder as they yanked him out of that silly tub and away from you, and he should never have left you by yourself on that ship with those despicable hunters.
He didn’t tell you he loved you, and now he is scared he will never get the chance.
He has left you in a den of beasts. Deku would never have let this happen if it was Katsuki in danger. Deku would have found a way to get him out. In fact, Deku did, he saved him instead of himself, and now Deku is gone, and he fears his heart is not strong enough to lose another. He does not want to lose another.
That serene little smile on your face as you watched him go - it haunts him, fucking burns itself into his retinas, because you knew. You knew precisely what you were doing, when you bargained with that hunter’s life, and you knew exactly what they were going to do to you for making them let him go.
You must be hurting right now. You must have been beaten within an inch of your life. You, who broke down the walls he rebuilt, brick by brick, after Deku was gone - the same walls that Deku himself tore down too. Katsuki is beginning to think that their foundation has always been flawed, or maybe they crumbled like Jericho simply because you shine brighter than the sun on the waves, and he could not look away if he wanted to.
He has been tailing the ship for little over a day. Keeping out of sight and in the shadows is easy; he has felt the sting of their harpoons enough and he will not risk an injury when getting you away from them is the priority, yet he can’t help but resent the way he must hide. There is no other way, though. Currently, he has no plan, and he must bide his time.
Katsuki was never the most patient, but he has no choice but to be patient since he has no sword and no allies. It is plausible that he could scuttle the ship by himself, but he can’t risk it with you chained inside and possibly unconscious.
But then he sees it - a shape in the distance.
It is an isle, small enough that it could sustain maybe one hamlet of people, and rather plain, with rocks that make up a small cliff on one side and a sandy beach dotted with rock pools on the other, a thicket of trees spanning the distance between. One could call it nondescript, but there is nothing nondescript about it to Katsuki.
He has bled out on that golden beach. He has fought to protect his own life and the life of another in the waters near that isle, and he has failed. He has wept on that shore, wept enough to cleanse the blood soaked sand beneath his newly fixed body that held his newly broken heart.
That isle is where Deku washed up, half dead, a decade ago. It is where he watched from afar as this green eyed, freckled human nursed himself back to health, and where he watched from a little closer as he learnt that humans were more than what they are portrayed as in the tales of his pod.
He understood many things on that isle: what love was - the touch of his lips to a man with unruly green curls and an infectious smile, and what betrayal was - when his pod found out and the waters were tinted red because of it.
Just like that, he knows what to do.
Hidden in the underwater caves below the isle is a monster that slumbers until a soul dares to wake it. The humans call it a kraken, but the merfolk leave it unnamed, for it is too great to be reduced to a simple moniker. He has seen it once before, through the haze that descends over one close to death, and felt as its power stymied the lifeblood that poured hot from a wound spanning from the middle of his sternum to his navel.
Both he and Deku had lain on the beach after his pod ambushed, both bleeding from fatal wounds. He had been too fucking weak to get to the kraken first, and so Deku had been the one to sacrifice himself and give himself to the monster so Katsuki could live, when it should have been the other way round.
This time, though, he is strong enough.
He remembers slipping back into the ocean with his freshly healed wound so the saltwater of his tears mixed with the sea, unable to understand why Deku would leave him. Now, he understands all too well, and he will not fail to protect the one he loves again.
Summoning the kraken means no going back. After waking it, the summoner is transported into the kraken’s form, and they have a limited time within it before the kraken reaps its payment - the summoner’s soul. It will shatter their spirit and ensure they cannot return to their body.
Katsuki dives down deep, breaking away from the ship and swimming ahead of it to find the gaping mouth of the cave that the kraken slumbers within. He is far down enough that the water is murky, frigid as it weighs heavily on him, the sun a weak pinprick of light suspended somewhere above him that does nothing to pierce the gloom.
The entrance is curtained with seaweed, the cold fronds  caressing his skin as he slips past them. Nestled in the darkness, it lies there, slumbering: a behemoth shadow, looming as high as the cavern’s ceiling and filling its width like the berth of a warship docked in a seaside hamlet’s harbour.
As he swims towards it, he realises he has already had his last glimpse of you through his own eyes. The last time he will see you, he will be fighting to keep hold of himself before he loses his soul to the kraken, and then it will just be bottomless darkness until it is summoned again. You might not even know it is him inside the monster.
It doesn’t matter - a lot has ceased to matter to Katsuki. He can no longer deny that he loves you, and with that epiphany comes another: you knew what the hunters would do to you when you bargained for his freedom, and yet you did it anyway, with no fear of the consequences. Now, it is his turn to put his life on the line for you, and though he may lose it, you will be free.
He will never feel the sweet touch of lips again, but that’s alright. He hopes that you will find another to make you happy, another who will make your heart soar and help you forget him. They will be to you what you were to him: a light to scare away the shadows, a star in the night sky to guide you, even if at times, just like him, you believe you do not wish to be guided.
Katsuki pictures your face as he draws near to the kraken.
Its flesh is odd beneath his palm - slippery and uncomfortably cold. Pressing his palm to its skin, he wills it awake, and it obeys him alarmingly fast, an eye as big as his head snapping open and rolling around until it fixates on him. An abyss of a pupil sucks him in, beckoning him forward to a place that will be the last he ever visits.
Though he knows his body remains still, he feels himself fall forward, sucked towards the magnetic emptiness within the kraken as if it aches to be occupied. For a moment, he resists, pure instincts making him struggle against it, but he forces himself to let go. Sensation briefly forsakes him.
When his vision is restored, he finds that he is looking at his body, limp and vacant. Already he can feel a difference in the water, the sharp tang of fear drifting toward him on currents that hadn’t been there before as creatures begin to flee, aware that something ancient has been roused from its sleep.
A tempest is brewing.
Katsuki - or a version of him that no longer is really Katsuki, but instead a wrathful monster caller - cannot see the dark clouds amassing above, but he knows they are scudding across the blue skies to taint the high midday sun, and it is his doing. Cruel winds accumulate in the shadows cast by his thunderhead, and he can hear the sharp snap of canvas and the raised voices of a crew readying their ship for a storm.
Unfurling a tentacle, he curls it around his old body, careful not to crush it, and reaches up high enough to deposit it on the beach. He begins to move the kraken out of the cave, dislodging pebbles that would have been boulders as the bulk of its body manoeuvres through the exit.
In a way, he is disconnected from the body that is his now; there is empty space that he is not large enough to occupy, like he has donned a garment made for a merman the size of a mountain. It is strangely silent inside this huge vessel, although he is not alone. Shadow wreathed souls lurk in the corners of his mind, and he knows they are disgusted by him.
He is not surprised. Historically, the kraken have been summoned only in the utmost peril. To the merfolk, the kraken are as sacred and as old as the sea, called upon in the wars of old, when the magic beings of the sky were eradicated. Despite being only scattered shards of themselves, the past summoners look down on him, because he does not summon to seek the solution to mighty matters.
For the second time in a lifetime, the kraken is being summoned for a cause as selfish as love.
There’s an awful symmetry to it, really. He imagines the way they must have abhorred Deku, a dying human who did not use the kraken’s power to destroy, but to knit together the wound of a simple, unnoteworthy merman.
Faces contorted beyond recognition flash before his eyes and hands claw at his sides with nails as vicious as knives. They want blood, they want a whole fleet to rip through and ruin. He tells them that they will have to settle with one ship, and they cry their discontent in his ears, their voices rough and rasping, like rusting metal on stone.
He has not broken the surface of the water yet. His body prowls many leagues down, but still, he spots the shadow cast by the ship, and the moment he does, his vision narrows, blurs, and he sees winking lights on board: the lives of the crew, twinkling and tantalising and begging to be snuffed out.
The kraken jets upwards and breaches, spraying up a wall of water, and though he does not command it, he bellows a war cry, the sound so bloodthirsty and wild it almost sweeps him up and incapacitates him. The shadow souls close in, fragments of vengeful souls garbed in shadow, greedy and eager to see him torn apart, and he shakes them off, wrenching himself from their grasp with all his strength.
A twinge pinches at his side, and he glances down to see a volley of harpoons glance off his hide, leaving shallow gashes in their wake. The crew swarm on the deck, their terror sour as he breathes it in and savours it. They are but ants, small and irritating with their measly weapons and made to be crushed and devoured -
He seizes the mast and uses it to rock the ship from side to side, fighting to keep the visions of blood staining the water red away from him. Too fast, his control is slipping, and he feels the souls swarm around him, filling his field of view with darkness until all he can see is those tiny flames that he must put out. There is something he wanted to do, something he needs to do -
Selfish, the souls hiss in his ears, trying to sink their hateful claws into him again, and he agrees with them.
He loves, and therefore he is selfish.
It is no bad thing.
The storm clouds gather over the ship, roiling and rumbling with thunder. Lightning strikes, a bolt of white fury that splinters the deck and extinguishes one of the little lives on board, producing a delighted cackle from the souls at his back, but he ignores them. He knows what he must do.
“Bring me the witch,” he roars.
His voice comes out warped and foreign, the words of men coming out strange and misshapen on his tongue, but the crew understand enough, scuttling to obey, desperate to believe he may spare them if they give you to him. The grip of the souls tightens, squeezing at his throat - he has spent too long in their presence already, and they nip at the edges of his mind, stealing away parts of him when he isn’t looking.
He realises with a jolt that he does not remember his name any more.
It is fine, though. He will join the souls in their namelessness soon. They are a cacophony in his head, and he can no longer hear anything but them, the burn of their claws threatening to tear him apart and shred him the way they are already torn apart, but he barely cares.
The little gnats bring another up and present it to him. This one shines brighter, suffused with a magic the souls cannot wait to devour, and they encourage him forward - surely he too will enjoy the honeyed taste of this offering? Plucking it off the ship’s deck, he brings it to his eye level, and his shadow companions clamour for him to crush it, but he hesitates.
It looks at him like it knows him. In its weak, tiny voice, it yells something that gets lost in the howl of the winds, but even so, it makes the souls shrink back, receding enough for him to remember that this little thing he holds is important. Important for what, he can’t recall, but it is important all the same.
Kicking its legs, the small being beats its fist on his tentacle, still shouting. He leans closer, wincing as the shadows scratch and tear at his back, trying to draw him away again.
“Katsuki!” You scream.
He jolts. It is you, his little, beloved witch - you are why he is being so selfish, summoning the kraken just to save one life. Peering closer, he notices that you are bruised all over, and suddenly the storm worsens overhead, crackling as bolts of lightning stab down like vindictive knives and the wind tears at the ship full of aghast hunters, tossing it violently among the waves.
Carefully, he places you on the beach, next to a body that used to be his. You scramble towards it, limping, and he turns away, looking back towards the ship and the lights it is infested with that still need to be destroyed. Anger comes easily to him, because these are the ones that have marred you with bruises.
The shadows close in again.
Roaring, he tears at the ship, rending it in two and crushing those that leap overboard, yet the souls are never appeased, never satiated. It feels as if power leaks out the seams of his spirit and if he does not let it go it will destroy him from the inside, but he knows he cannot let go. He needs to hold on, to hold himself together, for something that drifts further and further out of reach -
It is as if he has been tied to the bottom of a sea trench for so long, drowning in darkness, that the surface is just a fanciful thought. He does not remember the sun’s sweet face, nor the sound of your voice as you called out the name he has lost again. They sink their teeth into him, ready to tear him apart.
He struggles. He will not go without a fucking fight, he will not let them have him before he has tried valiantly to swim upwards to the sun, where the shadows will not survive.
But the light is so far from him. It floats away every time he strives to be closer, or maybe there are hands holding him back, ripping him open and tethering him to the blackness. They cling to him, shrieking in his ears, sinking curved claws into him and refusing to let go, ready to reap the kraken’s payment.
He is losing himself.
And then - a hand, gentle, touching his face. Emerald eyes fill his vision, wide and lovely, and suddenly he is able to ignore the souls and their blaring dissonance, the pain in his side fading away into nothing. There is a soul that still remains named here, mixed in with those who have been rent apart by hate.
“Kacchan,” the soul says earnestly. “You must fight it, Kacchan.”
“Deku,” he sobs, leaning into the soul’s warm palms as he wipes his tears away. “I’m sorry.”
Deku smiles, and Katsuki weeps, because he looks so proud of him, as if he is worth an eternity spent trapped within a kraken alongside shattered souls that only wish for chaos and destruction. He weeps, because here are Deku and Kacchan, back together again, but they cannot stay this way forever.
“I understand,” Deku whispers, and his touch heals Kacchan once more. “I understand you love her. You need to fight, you need to return to her and love her like you want to. I died so you could live, Kacchan. Let go.”
He looks down and sees the way he clutches onto Deku so hard he is white knuckled, while Deku cradles his hands in his scarred ones, softly as if Kacchan is fragile. Trembling, he loosens his grip, and he feels the light draw closer, the sun’s rays warming his face. Something tightens in his chest when he finally allows himself to release Deku, but it hurts in the manner of stitches pulling taut inside him and binding him together again.
One last time, he looks over his shoulder, to where Deku watches as he goes, smiling brightly, shining like he is a star plucked from the night sky. His brilliance holds the shadows back, rendering them powerless. He pays them no mind, though - his viridescent eyes are lit up and fixed only on his Kacchan.
Deku says something, but the sound of his voice is drowned out by the crashing of the waves and the winds of a dying down of a storm. Still, Katsuki knows what he said by the shape of his lips: I love you. Smiling, he takes a final look at him, at those unruly green curls and those sweet eyes and bright smile, and then he turns and is bathed in light.
The kraken sinks again beneath the waves, but Katsuki does not sink with it.
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You know it’s impossible, but you sense the moment Katsuki is back in his body. You’ve heard the tales of the kraken, and you know he should have been taken from you, but there he is, present in the weak pulse of his heart beneath your palm and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Shallow cuts have appeared all over his body, remnants of the damage of the hunter’s harpoons.
His eyes are open, but barely, and he blinks slowly, fighting to keep them fixed on you, giving you only glimpses of familiar crimson. There is a strange looseness to his awareness that must come with the recency of doing the impossible, but still he grips your hand desperately, struggling to stay awake long enough to force words out.
“I - I lo - ”
Before he can finish, his voice cracks and he coughs. His eyes widen, and he opens his mouth to start again, but you smile, tears blurring your vision as you press a finger to his lips and hush him, and thankfully he relaxes under your touch, curling closer to you and seeking shelter in your embrace. Once he is rested, he will have all the time in the world to tell you whatever he likes.
What matters is that he is here. That in itself is beyond even a miracle. 
Almost disbelieving, you cradle him to you, pressing your forehead to his as tears you cannot stop spill down your face and mingle with his blood. You are bone tired after repeatedly healing your own cracked ribs and fractured wrists, but you are whole enough for now - you won’t waste your energy on your own bruises while he still hurts.
So you hold him against your chest, sweeping your fingers delicately over the deeper of his cuts to seal them. The sky has cleared, the storm clouds departing as fast as they arrived, and the sea is dipped in ruby by the bleeding sunset. It lacquers the wet sand with the glow of dying embers as the incoming tide smooths over where the storm had churned it up, erasing the mark left on the island as if this afternoon had never happened.
If it were not for Katsuki in your arms, it would be like the kraken never came.
You glance down at him. He seems at peace, though worn and battered, as if he has reconciled something deep within his heart; he has closed his eyes, simply leaning against you with his face pressed into your side, his warm hands tucked just beneath the hem of your shirt.
You cannot help but smile. Because of him, you are free. No chains bind your wrists, no threats limit you in what you decide to do next. You are not sure where you will end up later, but for now you intend to fall asleep beneath the open sky, beside the one you love infinitely more than any life you might have had and even this new life he has fought and bled to give you.
When you drift out of your dreams - just simple, golden things full of a contentment that lingers past waking - the tide is high, the ocean lapping at the sand at your feet. The moon is almost at its highest point in the sky, depositing a residue of silver on everything around you.
Katsuki stirs in your arms, and when you glance down, you are met with the twin beacons of his eyes, luminous in the dark and full, brimming and spilling over with unspoken things that leave a deep ache in your heart. Trembling, he grips your hands, and you lace your fingers with his, brushing your lips over his knuckles and stroking his face as the tears begin to flow.
He cries like he is mourning. You wonder what he saw while his soul donned the kraken’s skin, how poignant it must have been to wrench these fitful sobs from him. Cupping his face in your palms, you wipe his tears away, and he clings to you to keep you close while he bares his newly healing heart to you; it is wrapped in the past’s scars. He shows you the rawest parts of him, and you soothe them as best you can with your healing hands.
There is no magic to this cure, though. It is just the love that burns within you, consuming you so entirely it makes you shake. You did not know it was possible to love like this, but the proof weeps in your arms, a merman who summoned the kraken and somehow conquered it so he could make it back to you.
“Tell me,” you whisper, tracing the strong lines of his face with your fingertips.
Curling his arms around you, he hides his face in your neck. “Deku stood with me against the dark inside the kraken,” he replies softly. “He held them back so I could come back to you. I - I thought I had lost him forever, when he summoned the kraken to save me.”
Carefully, he brings your hand to touch the scar stretching down his chest, and you outline its edges, comforted by the warmth of his body and the steadiness of his breathing beneath your fingers. You would be happy to stay like that forever, linked to him by your skin on his and the synchronised beat of your hearts.
“He told me to fight so I could return to you,” Katsuki murmurs. “So I could love you.”
Your breath catches, your voice sticking before any words come out. He is blunt and honest as always, but this time, he is without his walls, without his guard up, open and vulnerable for you to lash out at him if you wished to, but he trusts you will not. Still, you hesitate, your throat constricting.
“I… I didn’t know him, or what he was like, but I know I can’t be him to you,” you falter. “I cannot be Deku, Katsuki.”
You do not expect your voice to come out so small, so timid. Neither do you expect the overwhelming tenderness that fills his eyes - no one has ever looked at you like that, as if they really see the whole of you, the blemishes and shadows on your soul and they love those too.
“I don’t ask you to be like him,” he replies. “No one will ever be like him. No one will ever be like you, either. I love you because you are you, not because you are him.”
“Katsuki,” you breathe, unable to swallow down the tears welling in your eyes.
“You know I can’t give you the life you deserve, either,” he continues, voice thick. “If you tie yourself to me, you tie yourself to the sea too, regardless of if you like it or not.”
Searchingly, you look at him, and it feels for a second that as you meet his eyes, you know the whole ocean, down to its unexplorable depths, down to every grain of sand and every critter it shelters and sustains. In that moment, there is a total, utter understanding within you - you would love him whatever the condition.
“I would tie myself to the most pitiful of the things on this earth if it meant I could love you, Katsuki.”
“I too, witch,” he replies, and a fond little smile pulls at his lips. “I would summon that kraken a thousand times if it meant I could win your heart.”
You laugh, out of pure joy more than anything else, and he laughs too, rolling in the sand so he can prop himself up on his elbows. Flopping over, you adjust yourself so you can rest your head against his stomach, lifting your eyes to watch as he tips his face up to the sky, letting the stars reflect in his gaze, as if he holds the galaxies of the universe in each pupil.
Your fingers find his as you stare up at the moon where it hangs highest in the sky now, full and silver as the stars. A new moon: symbolising fresh starts and new beginnings, or maybe even the waxing of a love that was planted in the darkness of the brig of a ship soaked in blood, nourished by nothing but the weak flame of a lamp and swift hands knitting flesh back together.
A familiar prickle trails coyly down the side of your neck, and the sound of sand whispering against itself reaches your ears as Katsuki shifts beneath you, lightly skimming the high tide’s surf with his tail. You are not ready to leave the easy silence you’ve made yet, so you bask in his presence and his warmth a little longer.
The moon has just begun its descent when you turn to face him. He’s just looking at you, looking and looking and looking as if he can’t get enough. You smile, aware of the fresh edge in his gaze that was not there before, the string binding your soul to his pulling delightfully taut.
“You’re as beautiful as the ocean,” he mumbles, fiddling with a lock of your hair. “More beautiful than the ocean. But in a different way, you’re…”
You grin. “Worse?”
“Worse,” he agrees, smirking, but he looks at you as if you breathed life into his seas. “Much worse.”
Time stops for a moment, and you sit up, bringing your face close to his until your breaths mingle - you cannot help but let his crimson eyes consume you, heart and soul. You linger there for a moment, the air crackling between you, both of you waiting as if to see who will give in and pounce first.
Bringing his hand up, Katsuki lets his fingers slide under your jaw, lifting your chin so you are merely a hair’s breadth away. He fills your senses; you can feel the warmth of his body, the roughness of the calluses on his fingers, the feather-like brush of his breath against your cheek, smell his briney sea scent, hear the swish of sand as he shifts infinitesimally closer. A lethal spark gleams in his eyes, tying you in helpless knots.
You lean forward and claim his lips.
It draws a quiet groan from him, and suddenly you are beneath him in the sand and his hands are all over you, grabbing handfuls of you and shucking the damp material of your shirt up and over your head so he can touch your skin. The way he looks at you, with those stirring embers that tug at something low in your stomach, reduces you to a sailor under the influence of a siren’s song - he is irresistible, he is magnificent.
Tangling your fingers in his hair, you pull him ever closer, licking into his mouth as if you might find the god’s nectar hiding beneath his tongue. He nips at your lower lip with those keen canines of his, and you cannot help but buck your hips as the tide swirls around the both of you.
Chuckling, he skims a palm over your thigh, pulling your leg up to hook over his hip. It brings your clothed core right against the length of his hardening cock that has emerged from the slit in his tail; you stifle a moan at the feel of him, grinding agonisingly slowly down on him and sighing as he trails wet kisses and purpling bites down your throat.
Katsuki licks at the spot under your jaw, and this time, at the second graze of his teeth against your skin, your fingers tighten in his hair, pulling at it and squeezing another sweet noise from him. You keep your hands threaded through his ash blonde locks as he licks at the valley between your breasts. Meticulously, he marks your plush flesh with the imprints of his teeth, laying his claim on you.
When he reaches your stomach, he mouths at your skin, nipping playfully just over your hip bone before he raises his eyes to meet yours. They are heavy lidded and sultry, and they stir the fire building in your core as he toys lazily with the waistband of your trousers. His fingers are casual as they curl beneath the fabric.
“Let me taste you, witch,” he implores.
“I cannot argue when you look at me like that,” you reply, breathless. “Nor would I, anyways.”
That is all the consent he needs before he is helping you out of your remaining clothes, almost ripping them in his hurry to have you on his tongue. His hands slip beneath you, gripping your ass and guiding your legs over his shoulders, and there he pauses. Yearning blazes in his crimson eyes, and then he dips his head and puts his mouth on you.
You gasp his name. Your hands scramble for purchase before you bury them in his hair again, yanking to encourage him further, and he responds by sucking harshly on your clit, making your hips jump and buck into his face. He groans into your heat, and the vibrations of it make you see stars.
Slowly, he pulls back, glancing up at you, and the sight of him is enough to make you moan: his eyes are glazed, fervent, worshipful, and your slick drips down his chin, the moonlight making it seem like liquid diamond. Bewitched by him, you choke out his name, and he smirks and slips two fingers inside you. Your legs begin to shake when he pumps them slowly in and out of you, bending them at the knuckle so he can hit that spot inside you.
The friction enraptures you, mounting in the pit of your stomach and winding up tight, and your thighs close around his head, clenching as Katsuki pushes you closer and closer to the edge. Turning his head, he sucks at your skin, marking you there, too.
You balance on a knife blade’s edge.
Abruptly, he slides his fingers out and your pussy clamps down a second too late; already, you open your mouth to lament it when he bends his head and replaces them with his tongue. Your words dissolve into wretched moans; you grind your hips against his face and lightning spears through you when his nose nudges at your clit.
Pleasure rises within you, a gradual, swelling thing that sneaks up on you in the unhurried nature of his movements. You can feel his smile against your cunt. You can feel the light burn as he grips your flesh, anchoring you to him so you could not pull away and part him from the taste of you even if you wished to.
You cry out his name as you come.
Katsuki nestles you close to his chest as you come down from your high, kissing your face as the aftershocks send shivers down your spine. Tenderness resides in his eyes, right beside a longing that makes you melt into him, weak with ardour as you slip your hand between your sea damp bodies to curl your fingers slyly around his cock.
His lips part as you jerk him, and you cross the small distance between you to bite at his lower lip, sucking it into your mouth and swiping your tongue over it as you feel him grow impossibly harder in your palm. Ridges swell down his length, flushed a coruscant orange that blurs down into obsidian at his base.
Tipping your head back, you look him in the eye. “I - I need you inside me, Katsuki.”
The words are clumsy on your tongue. You do not know how to articulate the pressing need to feel him, to not know where you end and he begins, to collide with him right there on the beach of this island that houses a kraken, to get lost in the salt on his skin and the eddy of the sea at your joined hips.
Lowly, he curses, treating you as if you are holy as he spreads your legs and settles between them, gripping the curve of your hip with one hand as he lines himself up. You press your lips against the warm bronze skin of his shoulder, sighing against him, urging him forward, urging him closer, a blissed out sound slipping from you as the ridges of his cock push past your entrance, the stretch nothing short of divine.
At last, he is sheathed fully within you. His hips kiss yours, and he remains there, pulsing hotly within you, the pleasure on his face bordering on pain as your cunt bears down on him, yet still, he will not move. Jaw clenching, he squeezes his eyes shut, and a hoarse groan tears itself from deep in his chest.
Panting, he bows his head, and when he looks up, tears rim his lash line, glittering like individual crystals dipped in the light of the stars. One rolls down his cheek and plops down onto yours, and you raise a hand to caress his face, raking your fingers through his hair to push it back from his forehead; he leans into your touch, turning his head to kiss your palm.
Slipping your hand round to cup the nape of his neck, you bring your mouth to his. Delicately, Katsuki kisses you before pulling back to press his lips feather-light to your eyelids - he lingers there, his breath fluttering warmly against your skin, his thumb drawing circles on your cheekbone.
Again, he kisses you, and it is only then that you taste the salt of your own tears on his tongue.
Your soft, raw sob echoes across the beach, and you dig your nails into his wide shoulders, urging him to move. With a gasp, he begins to rock his hips into you, and it breaks you apart. You keen, pushing back into his fluid, achingly unhurried strokes, scrabbling at his back in an attempt to bring him closer, to let him consume your very being.
Right there on the sand, under the moonlight with the seafoam lapping at your sides, he fucks into you, slow and deep, trembling and crying above you, and tenderly, you kiss him again. The roll of his thumb over your clit sends thrills chasing down your spine. He dips his head, burying his face in your neck, and fiercely, you hold him to you.
“Mine,” Katsuki whispers, and his teeth sink into your skin.
Something snaps inside you, and the fire in your gut blazes. Your cunt clenches hard around him, vice like around his cock, and you feel him twitch when your velvety walls clamp down on him, feel his soft exhale and know that he too knows the burn of the inferno in your core.
“Please, Katsuki,” you whine. “Harder.”
“Fuck,” he growls, his voice rasping in your ear, and suddenly you are empty.
Before you can protest, he flips you over, pressing your back into his chest and you reel, momentarily blinded by the night sky stretching high and wide above you. He is solid beneath you, and he knocks the breath from your lungs when he surges up into you.
You can feel all of him. Ruthlessly, Katsuki pounds up into you, as if he is desperate to taste the sea salt on your skin and inhale your scent and never let you go. Your body jerks with each thrust, your voice cracking as you cry out his name, the new heady angle of his cock inside you leaving you writhing, lost in the bliss he wrings from you.
His tail thrashes in the surf as he fucks up into you. You are limp in his arms, trembling all over as your back arches - he squeezes your breasts in one hand while the other settles between your legs, his skilled fingers working over your clit to kindle a mind shattering type of euphoria within you that renders you boneless and speechless, your jaw slack.
Your head falls back on his shoulder, your eyes falling shut as you moan, your pussy constricting tight around him. A hand circles your throat, squeezing lightly, and you mewl, your cunt unashamedly spasming at the feel of his calloused fingers about your neck.
“Let the moon and stars witness how I pleasure you, my love,” he snarls.
Your eyes roll, your toes curl. Somehow, he fucks up into you faster, harder, and his cock hits places that cause your vision to white out, the relentless friction of his ridges on your walls enough to make you sob and claw at the arm he uses to keep you in place. Distantly, you can hear yourself begging him, pleading for him to go harder, deeper, to not stop, to ruin you.
You scream Katsuki’s name as you come for the second time tonight. Uncontrollably, your thighs shake, and your cunt convulses around his cock; you can feel him slowing his thrusts, letting you ride out your high, but despite the overstimulation building in the tautness inside your stomach, you grind against him.
“Don’t stop,” you gasp. “Want - want you to come inside me.”
Your words elicit a groan from him. “Fucking filthy, aren’t you?”
Helplessly, you whimper in response, your pussy fluttering as he hammers up into you. He swears as he comes, spilling hot inside you, the sweet sound he makes muffled when he bites down on your shoulder. Both of you lie there for a moment, catching your breath, before gently, he manoeuvres the two of you so you lie on your sides, careful to keep himself deep in your heat; he is warm against your back.
Katsuki splays a palm over your stomach, holding you close, and you lace your fingers with his, sighing happily as he begins to pepper kisses over your back. You can feel the upwards curve of his lips as he smiles against your skin.
“Are you alright?” He asks, nuzzling the nape of your neck.
“Better than alright,” you confirm.
You remain silent for a while longer, happy just to lie there cocooned in his arms and the quiet wash of the ocean; you can feel the pulse of his heart against your back, steady and comforting. A hushed, steady noise comes from him, a satisfied noise, almost a purr. His cock is beginning to soften inside you, its ridges coming down - you both groan as he slips out, moving so his length is tucked against the curve of your ass.
“How did you know it was me?” He asks suddenly. “When I summoned the kraken.”
You squeeze his hand. “I saw you in its eyes. You know, I couldn’t have missed it if I tried, especially not when you yelled for the hunters to bring me to you. I heard it all the way from below deck.”
He laughs, and you shuffle closer to him, feeling his arms tighten around you.
“I didn’t even know the kraken was a real thing,” you tell him. “I wasn’t scared, though. I knew I’d be safe when I saw it was you.”
Katsuki scoffs. “You’re horrendously sappy, witch.”
You laugh, pushing your ass back against him. “I think you like it, merman.”
Laughing, you roll to and fro in the sand, with you grinding on him as he grips your hips and tries to wrestle you into submission. Eventually, he manages to incapacitate you by holding you tightly against his chest, dipping his head so he can whisper hotly in your ear.
“Keep that up and I’ll have to fuck you again,” he grits out.
“You’ll have to catch me first,” you challenge.
Giggling, you wriggle out of his grip and plunge further into the shallows, just catching him muttering something about insatiable and damn witch before he dives in and streaks after you, his dorsal fin cutting through the water. A hand closes around your ankle, and you squeal, flailing as you shake him off.
Clumsily, you take off towards the rock pools, wading through the sea water as fast as you can. You know Katsuki will catch you (you’re not exactly opposed to it - you’re running into the sea rather than out of it, after all). Again, he makes another grab at you, and you romp with him in the waves, grinning as you fend him off by splashing water at him, squirming out of his arms again.
In the end, he grabs you around the waist and traps you against one of the tide pools, the rock rough against your back as he smirks down at you. The sight of him above you is enthralling: droplets run down his chest in rivulets, rolling down the grooves his muscles make, and the moon hangs the sky behind him, crowning him with a halo made of silver. Your mouth waters.
Taking your chin in between his thumb and forefinger, he brings his face close to yours. A shiver runs down your spine. His red eyes fill your vision, glowing in the night, hypnotic and burning with craving so devout it borders on veneration.
He smiles. “Caught you.”
Katsuki takes you again, against the rock at your back. Afterwards, you lie there, spent and tangled together in the waning moonlight until you grow hungry again and you straddle him, mesmerised by the sight of him staring up at you, pleasure twisting his features as you ride him. You fuck and make love until the sun begins to rise, and it is only then that the two of you are finally sated.
So there you lie, held in his arms and the sea’s embrace - and inexplicably, you find that you do not regret all the pain you suffered at the hands of the hunters, because if it was not for them, you would never have been in that brig to heal him. Inside you, something blossoms within your soul, young and fresh and beautiful as the new moon, and it spills forth from your lips, a whispered confession pressed to his skin like a kiss.
“I love you, Bakugou Katsuki.”
Cupping your jaw, he brings his forehead to yours and murmurs your name. “I love you too.”
Katsuki glances down at you, where you are curled into the curve of his side like you were made to fit him, and he feels his failing, tired heart bloom once again. You have healed him in ways that run deeper than just his flesh.
He looks in your eyes, and when he does, the sea looks back.
You are his home.
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A/N: by the way guys, afterwards they travel somewhere cool and the reader sets up a lil witchy abode by the sea and the villagers come to her for cures and half of them are lowkey a bit terrified of her mermaid husband but it doesn’t matter because she still gives really good remedies and he hasn’t eaten anyone yet and sometimes she and bakugou go out in their boat and attack hunter ships for funsies
also here's a picture i found off pinterest which i kind of imagine his tail being like except it's a bit more rigid and the dorsal fins are more spiney and longer, also there's more black and less red
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taglist: @freakingsparkydreamer @d1orhaz3 @msjaeger @mellasimp14 @eyesforbkg @cottagedumpling @silkdolli @teeesthings @raksstuff
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qwimblenorrisstan ¡ 4 months ago
Text
Meaningful Mistakes | Azriel x Cassian x Reader
Summary: After what you had thought to only be a simple one night stand with Cassian and Azriel, you discover that you’re pregnant, and while delivering the news, the bond between the three of you snaps.
Word Count: ~3.4k
Warnings: Smut, so much smut, mlm, gay smut, threesome, penetration, oral, hate sex, ovulating? just a monster in general, also (surprise) pregnancy, mentions of morning sickness, nausea..all the things that come along with pregnancy
Minors, do not interact
A/N: I feel like so many ppl make the multiple mates thing but then only make it seem like they’re in love w reader which is so weird to me…this request was such a good one and a chance for me to play around with this, hope you enjoy<3
Requests are open!
Masterlist | Next
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Azriel and Cassian had known you for a few centuries, and while the three of you were close friends, you never would’ve thought you found yourself in this situation.
Sure, the two were close, but when you’d woken from a nightmare late at night, walking to Azriel’s room, you found it odd that the shadows weren’t swirling beneath the door like usual.
Even weirder, the door was slightly ajar, half an inch or so, and the sounds of panting and ragged breathing from inside only registered in your brain as you peeked open, sniffling before your mind was registered blank as you saw both of the males inside.
Cassian was sprawled out, wings spread and twitching, legs being forcefully held open by dark shadows, the shadowsinger himself above Cassian, Azriel shoving himself in and out of the General at a punishing pace, dark splotchy marks on his necks. It looked more like a hate fuck than anything, Cassian trembling and babbling beneath him.
Azriel’s gaze immediately snapped to you as you stared, frozen in place, at the sight before you. His sharp gaze took in everything, even while Cassian squeezed him so tightly. The dried tears on your cheeks, the way you sniffled a bit, and your scent, even while slightly tainted by arousal, still reeked of being upset or fearful. His gaze softened as he leaned down to speak to Cassian, pace slowing down until stopping completely as he pulled out.
He murmured something to the male, who groaned as the shadows slowly released him, moving his large body to sit up, eyes widening slightly as he saw you, a tiny blush on his cheeks that you were quickly distracted from as he softly grinned at you, waving you over.
“C’mere, sweet girl.”
You sniffled, still upset from the nightmare, and now feeling even worse for interrupting them in the throes of their pleasure. You walked over to him, and he promptly pulled you into his lap, seemingly in a more affectionate mood than usual as he rubbed his face against your inner neck multiple times, his length rubbing against the bottom of your nightgown.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Azriel asked, voice quiet and gentle as ever, as if nothing had been happening mere moments before. His shadows’ soothing touch against your skin mingled with his scarred hands as he reached to grab you from Cassian’s arms, only for the male to refuse to hand you over, intent on rubbing into you until you reeked of his scent.
You shook your head, though the answer was lost as you watched the two of them glare at each other, Azriel’s growl that tumbled from his lips doing nothing to alleviate the tension, and Cassian’s returning growl not helping. You sighed, a nightmare long forgotten as you dealt with the new nightmare you’d created.
“Quit with the territorial shit, just…share, or something.”
You said, Cassian giving you a skeptical glance. Azriel, however, looked like he’d just realized something, a dark feline glimmer entering his eyes as he smiled slowly. Cassian and you both noticed this, glancing at each other.
“Scheming face?”
You asked in a low tone. Cassian sighed.
“Definitely.”
He answered, already dreading what his brother would think, but excited as well.
“You want us to share you, hmm?”
Azriel’s voice, now a low purr, asked as he crept closer to you and Cassian on the bed. A flush entered your cheeks as you realized what he was implying, and how much you liked the idea was obvious based on the heat already pooling in your core, much faster than it usually would’ve, and should’ve been.
Cassian grinned wickedly, clearly enjoying where this was going. Azriel tilted his head slightly at you, clearly asking for your consent, even if the answer was obvious. Your little nod was all he needed before his hands were on both you and Cassian.
“Let’s continue where we left off.”
He said with a small smirk, easily flipping Cassian’s muscular body over onto his stomach, with you lying further above him on the bed. You watched, nearly entranced as Azriel’s throbbing cock pushed into Cassian’s ass, the male jerking and rubbing his hips into the bed for any relief or friction.
“Az—“
“Get her ready for me, Cass.”
That little order was all the General needed, clothes ripped off by his large hands and lying on the floor in pieces. His tongue was immediately on you, giving you no reprieve as it licked a stripe through your sopping wet core, the erotic sounds of slurping filling the air as he lapped up everything your pussy had to offer for him, nose brushing against your clit as he began tongue fucking you, groaning against you as you moaned his name.
The familiar white-hot pleasure was building in your core as your hand fisted in Cassian’s hair, tugging at the already loose bun it was in as he moaned into you, tongue loosely vibrating with the action as he began sloppily sucking your clit, throwing his ass out to meet Azriel’s thrusts as the shadowsinger also grabbed his hair, pulling back as you pulled forwards.
He’d already been on the edge, but the minute your hands gripped the base of your wings and squeezed, he came all over the mattress, face buried in you as Azriel groaned at how he’d tightened around him, thrusts speeding up before he came right after you.
It was a mess of moans and sloppy sex, before Azriel slipped out of Cassian, pulling the General up into a wet kiss, both males were still dazed, but Cassian pulled away despite Az’s growl of protest to mumble something out.
“She’s ovulating, Az.”
He said, panting for air as you watched the both of them in a heated gaze. Azriel’s eyes widened, before filling with a dark heat as he looked down at your spread form.
“Is she?”
He crooned as he pulled you back up into his arms, glancing at Cassian as the other male moved behind you, arms sliding over your waist and groping your sensitive breasts as you moaned at it, mind still spinning from your last orgasm as Azriel’s hand went to settle on your hips, the other stroking himself as he looked down at you.
“Does our pretty girl want to be bred? Does she need two big, strong males to fill her up?”
He crooned, a rare and wicked smile beginning to form on his lips as you whimpered, nodding as he lined himself up with your entrance. You heard the ‘click’ of something opening and squirting out, before being put back on the nightstand.
Glancing back, you saw Cassian rubbing lube onto his dick. He gave you a lazy grin when he saw you watching him before Azriel pushed into you and made your attention snap back to him, despite Cassian’s slick hands fingering your hole, lubing you up now.
“Azriel..”
You said breathlessly, inches and inches of him pushing in, stretching you wider than anyone you’d ever had before. It didn’t help that Cassian slowly began pushing into your ass at the same time, sandwiching you between their warm chests as Az’s shadows caressed your nipples.
“Please, please-“
You mumbled as they both finally were to the hilt, rubbing gently up and down your walls, only a thin layer of flesh separating their dicks.
“Easy, angel. Tell us ‘red’ if it gets too much, alright?”
You nodded, but Azriel didn’t seem impressed, looking you in the eye as he began moving in little thrusts that Cassian quickly picked up on and matched.
“Words.”
Azriel said firmly, looking you in the eye. You whimpered.
“Y- yes.”
You managed to get out, even as their thrusts turned deeper, faster until you could feel every delicious vein rubbing against you. Cassian groaned, hips snapping against you at a punishing pace as his chest rubbed against your back, his teeth and tongue on your neck.
“Oh fuck, ‘can feel you throbbing, Az.”
He groaned, panting against your skin, the pace only speeding up with Azriel matching him. Azriel’s gaze was unfocused as you tightened around him, his wings shuddering.
Cassian’s hands went from around you to around Azriel, reaching over and to his back. Azriel’s eyes widened as he saw what he was about to do, and his hands shot out to stop him, but they were too late as Cassian groped the base of Azriel’s wings. Azriel let out a lewd moan, hands then groping Cassian’s wings and he did the same, both bucking into you at random, eyes rolling skywards as Azriel came, spewing thick buckets into you.
Cassian panted, dick throbbing as you came for the umpteenth time that night. The two exchanged a glance, a silent conversation happening between them as Azriel pulled out, and before you could even whine at it, Cassian bullied his dick into your hole, pushing it as deep as he could as you cried out, his cum mixing with Azriel’s
He shuddered, collapsing onto you, only pulling out because Azriel managed to grab you and move you over to him, pulling you against his chest as Cassian whined and scooted over to the both of you, arms sliding around you next to Az’s, his wing draping over both of you, Azriel’s wrapped around both of you underneath his.
“You okay?”
Cassian asked, sounding tired, but content and satisfied. You nodded, sighing.
“Yeah, that was nice.”
You mumbled against Azriel’s shoulder, eyes starting to slowly shut, your mind keenly ignoring the mess all three of you had made in the bed.
*********************************************************
That night had been a one-night thing, you told yourself.
Even if you’d had morning sickness the past three months, your stomach had been bloating badly for weeks, the mornings you’d had to skip training or found your feet sore and aching.
Even as you lay down on the table, Madja’s cold, skilled hands ran over your stomach and pushed, touching, feeling for tense minutes, before she delivered the news you’d been hoping against.
“You are…pregnant. It’s too early to determine anything further than that and too late to abort it.”
Her old voice rang out, and you swallowed, shoving down the feelings and tears that bubbled up as you nodded. Getting up and pulling your shirt back on as you went for the door, mumbling thanks.
“I..wish you the best.”
She muttered as you walked out, making your way to the training grounds from Madja’s tent, where you knew Azriel and Cassian would be sparring, or maybe today’s training would be over by now.
Your suspicion was confirmed as you spotted the two downing water, Cassian grinning about something that was probably as stupid as he could be sometimes, while Azriel gave him an unamused look. Azriel noticed you first, gaze darting towards you, seeing your upset and slightly panicked look and immediately trying to figure out what was wrong, why, when it had happened, and how he could fix it.
He said something to Cassian that not even your Fae hearing could register, and Cassian frowned, glancing at you. When you reached them, the General held his arms out, and you stumbled into them, bursting into tears and reprimanding yourself mentally for it.
Both of their eyes softened and Cass was holding you close, Azriel right by him, one hand on your shoulder comfortingly.
“Hey, what’s wrong?”
The words tumbled out before you could stop them.
“I’m pregnant.”
You said with a sniffle, and then your already hazy vision went downright blurry as you began crying anew, this time at the feeling, the snapping in your chest of something slotting right into place. And then Azriel was crying and holding onto you and Cassian, and then Cassian was crying.
It was an entire mess, but you wouldn’t have it any other way, having those two as your mates, and them having each other as mates. The need to be around and with them at all times, to have them inside and out, to hold you, was all too overwhelming.
And to know that…
“It’s…ours?”
You were carrying one of their children?
“Yes.”
You managed to get out, tears reduced to sniffles from all parties as Azriel then easily picked you up, Cassian right beside him, the both of them walking into the House, but Azriel faltered at the stairs.
“Your room.”
Cassian said. The male wanted to be smothered with the scent of his mate’s scent in his room, in his sheets, with his shadows. You lived in the townhouse, so your room wasn’t an option, unfortunately enough.
“Yours.”
Azriel countered, a hint of pleading in his gaze that Cassian had rarely seen before. With a sigh, and running a hand through his dark hair, he relented.
“Fine. My room.”
Cassian’s room probably had fewer hidden daggers under pillows, mattresses, and gods know where anyway, you figured, as you were carried to Cassian’s room and into the warmth inside it, Az’s shadows following along eagerly. They were surprisingly friendly, immediately tightening around you and Cassian, especially on your stomach, even if there was barely any sign of it showing yet. As he noticed it, Azriel’s gaze turned concerned.
“Have you had any morning sickness?”
He asked in a concerned tone. You hesitated before speaking.
“Or cramps?”
Cassian then asked, shuddering at the thought of it.
“Or aches and pains?”
“Or sore ankles?”
“Or nausea, vomiting, and fatigue?
“Oh gods, don’t tell me you’ve had any heat flashes…those are the worst.”
They went on and on listing any and every pregnancy symptom you’ve heard of, and some you hadn’t before you interrupted them.
“Guys, yes to most of those, but I’m fine.”
Their faces only seemed more concerned with that, Azriel speaking.
“You are growing a child, one of our children inside of you, which might have wings that can make a birth deadly, might I remind you, and you expect us not to be concerned?”
He asked, Cassian then horrified at the thought of it. You sighed, rubbing the bridge of your nose.
“It’ll all be okay, Madja told me that some females adjust to the wings and their birth canal widens.”
Cassian raised a brow.
“Feyre’s didn’t.”
“Yeah, well Feyre was born human, died, and was brought back to life with magic. She might not be the best example.”
You said dryly, Azriel setting you on the large bed, big enough for both of the Illyrian males to easily have enough room for their wings to spread. That was probably purposeful, given what you’d caught them doing three months ago. Your face crinkled in a thoughtful frown as you thought about it.
“How long have you two been fucking?”
You then asked. Cassian coughed for a minute, swallowing, and Azriel had a light dusting of pink on his cheeks as he tried to answer, stammering, before giving a resigned sigh.
“It’s an…on and off thing.”
He answered in a slightly strained tone, and you were skeptical, as was clear based on your expression.
“Not anymore, I guess. Not that I mind.”
You said with an amused smile, and Cassian only grinned, sitting down next to you as he leaned over and gave Az a chaste kiss on the lips, still grinning like an idiot when he pulled away.
“You don’t know how good it feels to do that and not feel an ounce of regret or the urge to hide it.”
He said to you, still grinning out of pure joy as he then kissed you on the lips. Even Azriel had a small smile on his face, one that turned into more of a surprised expression as you pulled a packet of crackers from your pocket, the kind you would only get from a restaurant as a small side, and opened the package, offering one to Cassian, and one to him.
“Are you sure?”
Azriel asked, clearly mirroring Cassian’s thoughts as they shared a glance. You nodded.
“I’m sure, and before you even think about it, it won’t hurt the baby as long as we don’t go too rough.”
“It’s called a frenzy for a reason.”
“I wasn’t aware a frenzy would involve bashing my stomach in.”
A low growl sounded from both males as you even said that in a dry tone.
“Don’t say such things.”
Azriel said with a huff, pulling you further back into the bed to lay down with his hand on your stomach, Cassian eagerly joined you, laying his head down right above your stomach and smiling down at the tiniest of little bumps that were there, his hand caressing the bottom of it. It could easily be mistaken as just bloating or a little stomach pouch, but they knew.
With one hand, Cassian popped the cracker into his mouth. Azriel hesitated, but seeing Cassian do it, and seeing you so at ease with them made him sigh and relent, one bite swallowing the cracker whole from him.
*********************************************************
The frenzy hadn’t been tame at all, but the full force and frustrations they couldn’t involve in their sex with you, they took out on each other.
Sometimes it was slow, and loving while you got to watch and lay on the sidelines, and with how often you were sick in the mornings or nauseous or just plain tired, you were perfectly content doing when not catching up on lost sleep. However, more often than not it was fast, aggressive, and more like a battle of dominance between the two males that Azriel usually ended up winning, but when Cassian did….
You still couldn’t get the sight of Az, ass up and filled by Cassian, face shoved down halfway into the mattress by the firm hand pulling on his hair, his mouth open as he, the stoic shadowsinger and Spymaster, moaned and whimpered, eyes wide and shadows holding him down for Cass.
When they did take their turns with you, determined not to overwhelm you, they were nothing more than gentle and loving, restraining themselves to an almost painful point.
When the bond had finally died down, the two took up what was almost like shifts. When Azriel had missions, Cassian was watching you, tending to you and your every need. When Cassian had to go visit the war camps, Azriel was there, quiet and loving you in his quiet way. On the very rare occasions that they were busy, Azriel would leave his shadows with you, or some of them at least, and check in on you very often.
You wanted to go walk and get food? No. They could carry you. You didn’t need to be putting weight on your ankles.
Your feet hurt? Cassian would take the left and massage it, Azriel on the right while the shadows fetched a cold towel for the heat flashes you’d had.
Morning sickness? They had Madja on speed dial with the herbs and tonics and everything they could get for you, besides holding your hair back as you hurled and cleaning it from your mouth.
Weird food cravings? They would fetch it without a single weird look, and you even got Cassian to try a pickle with hot sauce on it once.
Anything you wanted, you got. Hot baths with both of them, massages, heating pads, specific cravings, medicine, love and affection, cuddles, kisses, literally anything. These men were whipped for you and each other, and their favorite time of day was when you were all home together at night.
Cassian would be on your left side always, claiming it as the superior side and his favorite, his arm wrapped under you, his hand on your belly and wing curled around both you and Az as his head lay on the pillow next to you, hot breath fanning over your neck.
“G’night, love ya.”
He mumbled, a sleepy grin on his face as he looked from you to Az. Azriel had one arm wrapped under and around you as well, the hand that wasn’t in use on your stomach right above Cassian’s. His wings were stretched beside him, hanging off the bed so the wind from the window would blow onto them, something you suspected helped soothe the scars that covered the leathery appendages.
“Goodnight, Cassian. Goodnight, Y/N.”
Azriel would speak, voice betraying a bit of drowsiness. You were sandwiched between the two, but between Cassian’s heat on your left, and the cool window air and touch of Azriel on your right, it was a nice balance. You smiled, one hand on your stomach, between Azriel’s on the top and Cassian’s on the bottom, yours just in the middle.
“Goodnight, mates.”
You murmured, smiling to no one in particular as you drifted off to sleep.
835 notes ¡ View notes
chrissdollie ¡ 10 months ago
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𝐮𝐧𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥 - 𝐜.𝐬
wc: 440 warnings/notes: lovey dovey some may even say cringe wahh, reader has been with chris since hs, mentions of hairy armpits LMFAO its hot imo but it bothers some ppl, uhh ya thats it hehehe
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the sun shines into your shared bedroom with the chris sturniolo. and not 'the' as in the viral sturniolo triplets and their silly little car videos that helped them gain popularity and a fandom. nono, you mean the chris sturniolo as in the man who has always taken care of you ever since you've known him. since mary lou introduced you to him in the 7th grade. since he kissed your injuries whenever you fell off your bike or when he danced with you at your junior high prom since your date stood you up, to now. the love of your life.
as you stare at the beauty infront of you, he can't help but stir awake like he somehow knew you had awoken. he slowly opens his eyes and yawns, stretching out his bare arms to reveal his hairy armpits. he wraps an arm around you, tiredly leaning onto you. "hii" you greet, grabbing his face to kiss his cheek. "hey" he looks up at you. you look like you've been struck by lightning and are absolutely fascinated (you would be)
"you okay?" he rubs your arm up and down, raising a brow in concern. you smile softly, nodding your head. "just thinkin'" he perks up at this. you already know what he's going to say. "thinking 'bout what?" he looks at you as the early sunlight rises to your face. of course, you were right. he loves to hear your thoughts, always. even in the worst moments. he just adores your mindset and you! you're just so.. perfect.
"you, duh" you respond as he begins stroking your messy morning hair. you can smell his stinky breath from here, but you don't mind. you've gotten used to it and he's surely gotten used to yours. "atta girl." he grins, waiting for more. you place your finger on his bottom lip. he pretends to bite you causing you to break out into giggles.
"what elseee" he drags out the word like a child and he tugs on the bottom of your his shirt. you adjust yourself against the pillows to move down so you're directly eye to eye. "yer just unreal. dunno how to explain it. i just love you so much." you cheesily smile, feeling suddenly shy. you have no reason to be bashful, you've been with the man for almost six years. nonetheless, you still get butterflies when you talk about him so romantically.
meanwhile, he's thinking 'how does one respond to that?' as already said, he thinks, you're perfect. so he replies in the best way possible for both of you.
"gimme a kiss, gorgeous."
868 notes ¡ View notes
giddyfatherchris ¡ 6 months ago
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At your mercy
pairing. han jisung x afab!reader
type. requested
warnings. suggestive, MDNI! we get to see more of dom han👀 and curse words
words. ~2k
a/n. thank you to my angel @solisyeah for this request i hope you’ll like it!! also, dom han lives rent free in my head:) and this fic is a continuation of han’s part in this text fic we made in collab
a/n2. the first time i wrote this it was kinda really frickin toxic and I'm sorry but I just couldn't. being in a dom relationship does NOT EQUAL that toxic behaviors are okay. boundaries are important people! and what can I say I'm a whore for ppl who respect them:) hope you enjoy xxx
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You're so flushed when you head out of the lunch room that you want to crawl under the earth's crust, as opposed to your boyfriend walking out like he owns the world. He's cocky and particularly satisfied when he notices Seungmin trying to avoid at all cost to lock eyes with you or him. You try to get rid of the aura of sex surrounding you and decide to sit near Felix while Hannie gets back to the recording booth as if nothing happened. He gives you a cocky wink, but you quickly advert your eyes, feeling your cheeks heat up with fire once more. You're determined to move on, so you focus on your friend to notice Felix really looks down in the dumps. "Hey, you okay?" you ask while nudging his shoulder. 
The blonde boy lets out a heavy sigh, "Not really. Management has been really tough on us these past few weeks. Our schedules keep multiplying, I'm tired and miss my family. I feel like I can't breathe." His eyes fill with tears, breaking your heart in two. Even if Felix is known for being easily moved, he isn't the type to start crying like this in the middle of a room. You gently stroke your hand down his back to comfort him. "Can I do anything to help? I'm so sorry you're going through this. You should have told me earlier instead of enduring this all alone." 
He quickly wipes his tears away before anyone notices and whispers. "Can I have a hug?"
You immediately wrap your arms around his neck to bring him closer to your body. You won't pull away from this hug before he does. From the way he clings to you, you know he needs this. Suddenly, he pulls you on his lap to lay his head better in the crook of your neck. You don't mind the physical touch, Felix and the other boys had always been a touchy bunch, so you kept stroking his soft hair, shushing sweet nothings to console him. 
What you don't notice is your boyfriend's piercing death stare from across the recording booth as he stares at the way his member's head is lying on your skin, how tightly you hold him and how you are sitting on his goddamn lap. Felix and you are in a bubble of your own, lost in your little world when you hear a familiar ping from your phone. Without letting go, you reach out for your device, your eyes turning round as saucers as you notice the texts coming from your boyfriend. They keep popping up on the screen in a raging litany. They come so fast that you barely have the time to read them all.
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One second you're hugging your friend the next a firm grip is roughly pulling you off his lap. You lift surprised eyes to see a fuming Jisung. His gaze is set on his junior with an aggressive spark. Everyone stares in silence at the scene, shocked to see such a demeanor coming from one of the most peaceful members.
"It's time for Y/n to go. They have things to do." 
You can barely mutter a confused 'what?' when he grabs your things, shoves them in your hands, gives you a quick kiss on the cheek, and pushes you out of the room. The door behind you closes in a slam, leaving you alone, feeling on your back the baffled gaze of the other boys through the glass.
"Ji, what the" you barely hear Bang Chan start, but he's quickly shut down by the boy's poisonous tone. You don't know what he said, but from the way Chan's mouth is hanging out open, it was not good. You watch your boyfriend head to the booth, put back on his headphones, and resume his verse like nothing happened for the second time today. 
You head home completely enraged with his behavior. You never minded his dominant side. In fact, you loved it, but today was too much. The first thing with Seungmin was hot, even if it had raised warning signs in your brain. The way he kept it going with Felix was something else. He crossed a limit you couldn't tolerate.
When he gets home hours later, he's back to being his cute usual self. He babbles about his day while you stare silently at him from your seat at the table.
After a while, he notices you haven't said a word since he got home. He finally turns to you with questions in his big eyes. "Is everything okay, sweetheart?"
You stare back with flames in yours. You're basically breathing fire. "I don't know Ji. Are you okay? I don't know what was up with you today, but I don't want you to do something like that ever again. There's a difference between being dominant and being an asshole. Felix is one of my best friends and one of yours too. He really wasn't feeling well. You know I would never ever leave or cheat on you. He just needed comfort. I will not allow you to throw me around like a rag doll and act like that towards me or your friends."
His soft expression vanishes with your words. Suddenly, he looks like he's burning from the inside too. "Their hands were all over you today." 
"Their?" you furrow your brows in question. "What are you even talking about?"
"First, Seungmin pushes you, bruises you, and then keeps touching you while he apologizes. Then Felix whines and brings you on his lap. I don't get why they think it's okay for them to touch you like that." His hands tighten in fists while you stare at him in disbelief.
"What happened with Seungmin was an accident, and he was just APOLOGIZING! Felix was sad and needed a hug. We've always been like this. I don't know what's your problem, but you better figure it out."
His gaze zeroes on you, and he's fuming at this point. "My problem is that you are mine. No one else gets to touch you like that. Only I get to leave marks on your body. Only I get to have you writhing on my lap. Only me. I don't get why you don't understand that. I don't get why you're being such a brat right now."
"That's not what this is about. You being dominant and possessive in our private life is something. Having you push me out of a room and throw fits because our friends touched me in a platonic way is another. I'm not some object you can control to your will. If I decide to hug my friend for 30 fucking minutes because he needs it, it's no one else's business. Especially not you. I've had my fair share of experiences with toxic pricks. I need to make sure this is not happening again." 
Pleasure and toxic conduct are two different things. You won't let him get away with this behavior. Even if the tension in the room, the look he keeps giving you, and the way his eyes burn make you want to let him do anything he wants with you, you won't avert your gaze. You have a point to make, and won't shy away from it. 
You start to get nervous when he stays silent, but the way the fire in his eyes slightly dims makes you breathe a little easier. He walks up to you, and you keep your chin up, not showing one inch of weakness. He stops unbearably close, he's not touching you but every inch of your skin feels on fire by his simple proximity. "Listen," he starts in an ushed voice. "I'm sorry about today. I didn't want to make you feel like I was trying to control you. I respect you, and I would never want to make you feel like that. I want you to know I also apologized to Felix and Chan for my attitude. I know it wasn't okay. You just have this way of making me go absolutely berserk." You let go of a breath you didn't know you were holding, relief flooding your blood. "I think I got a little too carried away. I love feeling like you are mine and only mine. And after our little... adventure in the lunchroom, I think my brain was a little fogged up." Your cheeks flush at the mention of what you did. Phantom sensations of his fingers inside of you make shivers run down your spine. "Still, it wasn't okay for me to act the way I did. I truly apologize." His eyes connect with yours, and you only see soft and caring love in his dark orbs, even a hint of shame for the behavior he displayed. 
You feel your fears vanish into nothingness, "I appreciate your apologies, and I'm glad you apologized to the boys. They didn't deserve this. I love what we have going together, but I needed to make clear that I won't tolerate being used or treated like an object." He shakes his head with a nod. You can see he is taking everything you're telling him very seriously. "And I want you to know that I agree. Nobody else should touch me the way you did in that lunchroom earlier," you add with a tempting smile. "I am yours and only yours. Heart, body, mind, and soul." Your breath comes out in small puffs as you look at his plush lips.
"You are?" His own gaze keeps traveling from your eyes to your lips with a dizzying hunger. 
"I am completely at your mercy."
Your eyes lock one last time before he tilts the chair up and it hits the wall with a small thud. His hands are caging you while his lips smash against yours. The kiss he gives you makes your head spin and your pulse accelerate. The way his tongue slips against your own makes you moan in seconds. As suddenly as it started, the kiss ended. You open hazy eyes, a question on your lips, but one of his hands softly wraps around your throat while his feverish gaze burns through your skull. 
"You're my little plaything, aren't you? Just one kiss and you're already panting so much sugar." His eyes are basically undressing you. You feel his hand slip up your thigh to the center of your desire. You're whimpering before his fingers even reach your clothed core. He presses three digits on it once, making you melt on the chair under you. You're waiting for more, you need more but he's not making any further motion. He's looking at you like a predator ready to pounce on his prey and you feel your insides burn like molten fire. You know what he's waiting for. You know what you both need to hear to break past this tension point. 
You lean so close to him you feel his breath fan over your lips, and you're only staring at them when you utter your next words. "I'm a little plaything who needs to be reminded who they belong to."
It's all your boyfriend needs to dive back like a tidal wave, unleashing all the tension accumulated. In a second, your clothes are torn off your body. Soon, your legs are up in the air, your hands gripping his soft curls, and all you can feel is his hot mouth attached to your core as he feeds on you like a starved man.
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rkiveinmarvel ¡ 9 months ago
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anatomy of hands and sake - roronoa zoro. (18+) des. angst-fluff-smut, wano arc. zoro finally woke up after the fight with big mom and kaido--he missed you. porn with plot. clothed sex. make up sex. unprotected sex (practice safe sex ppl) marking and biting>; soft sex, established relationship. soft!dom zoro, people being inlove, aftercare!! nsfw
notes. my propaganda: soft!zoro is canon zoro-again this contains smut (minors dni, pls) zoro big cock energy, mentions of wounds and stitches. F! Reader
hello. i had this idea for a while and yeah, here it is. it's my first time writing smut so, bear with me--n e way he might be ooc here but zoro is zoro and iluvhim. hiyori is mention as well tho-no hate to hiyori-luv that girl--livelaughlovemarimo
w.c: 3k (damn, zoro)
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The infamous swordsman of the Straw Hat is known for his ability to stand his ground in any battle and situation, with one foot in front of him–he doesn’t hesitate to draw his sword if someone pisses off the crew. Saints forbid those who pissed off the swordsman because he will show no mercy and no hesitation, until it’s the captain’s orders—and an order from you.
            It’s no secret that you and the straw hats were once against each other in the fight at skypiea but that fight is the fight Zoro hesitated to hold his sword—maybe because he’s finally facing a right hand of the so-called god or maybe you were fighting against your will or maybe—just maybe—he didn’t want to hurt you. He still remembers how you gripped your sword with such anger and shouting at them to leave the island to protect themselves—call it a warning or a sign but at that moment, Zoro wanted to save you; he was glad he did.
            That was two years ago and here you are now waiting Zoro to wake up from his slumber after fighting Kaido and Big Mom. You reached for the damp towel as you wiped his worn-out body and slow heaving chest—Zoro looked peaceful when he sleeps, he always does, but moments like this you wish you can just see him working out at the crow’s nest, hear him argue with the cook, look out for Chopper, or just seat and listen to you.
            This is what you hate the most every time a battle ended, the silence of waiting, hoping, and wishing that all of the crew members are okay—the unwanted fast paced heartbeat as you wished for them to be okay. You sighed deeply as you caressed Zoro’s face and continue to wipe his cheeks and dance your fingertips in his hair.
            “Please, wake up…” You whispered lowly as you stare at this sleeping state and replace his old bandages with new ones. Once you finished cleaning him up—a small smile left your lips as you kissed his forehead. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
    ��       Morning after morning, the green-haired swordsman and the future king of the pirates are still asleep—with no luck, you decided to spend the night looking out for the two; which Chopper didn’t agree at first, but as Chopper felt the tiredness catching up in his body—he agreed.
            Then, it was a week: a week of looking out for the two whilst also switching watching duties with the straw hat; but most of the time: you stayed there not wanting to switch with Sanji nor Nami as you hold Zoro’s hand muttering and wishing that he should wake up.
--
            Usopp rushes in the hallway and knocked on the room where you stayed—with a loud voice he announced that Zoro and Luffy are awake. You two immediately rush into the room—your pounding heartbeat and the ringing in your ear didn’t stop you—he’s awake, Zoro is awake—you kept on repeating on your head—the two of them are alive and okay.
            Hesitation floods in your mind as you stood by the door but soon was replaced when you hear cheers and a familiar laugh coming out from the room—as Usopp opened the door: there you saw him and Luffy.
            You didn’t know when or how but Chopper was clinging and trying to stop Zoro as he chugs a huge bottle of sake. A smile escaped your lips as Luffy called your name in such glee, with a last chug, Zoro finally locked eyes with you: saints, he missed you. You gave him a relieved smile but somehow covered when Hiyori placed a bottle of sake in front of him in which he groaned. He moved the sake aside and watched you talk to Luffy—he should speak to you­­—but before he can speak, he felt hands of Hiyori creeping from behind.
            “You were out for a week.” Brook explained as he drank and ate next to the crew.
            “We aren’t dirty though.” Zoro stated as he eyed his hands.
            “I cleaned you up.” Hiyori announced from behind him, earning a choke from Yamato, as Yamoto looks at you, as you catch his look—you chuckled in your cup as you drank sake. As Sanji and Zoro banters about Hiyori—you laughed at the sight—everything is okay, Wano is free, the crew are laughing, and Zoro is okay.
            “We should have the banquet, today!” Momonosuke announces.
            ---As the entire people cheers, Zoro locked eyes with you once again, as you raised a cup signaling him for a cheer in which he nodded and gave you a cheeky smirk. For the time being, Nami have decided to take a bath, inviting you, Robin, Hiyori, and the others as well.
            You leave the room as the boys continue to drink and eat—that until Zoro noticed that you’re no longer in the room he’s in—he stood up and left the room while also removing the bandages on his body because it restricts his movement as he walked.
--
            You were preparing for the bath when you entered your room until you felt a familiar arm holding you from behind. It didn’t make you flinch nor scared, somehow, it comforted you. You hummed at the person who’s hugging you from behind.
            You felt his chest on your back he holds you tighter. “You left early.”
            “Nami invited us for a bath.”
            “You didn’t talk to me.”
            “You were busy drinking.”
            He then let you go from his grasp and hold your shoulder to make you look at him. “Thanks for cleaning me up.” You smiled softly as you eyed him.
            “Hiyori did.” I teased innocently.
            “She did but you did it every day…”
            “How can you say so?” He then holds your hand and placed it on his cheeks. “I know how your hand feels when you hold me, woman.”
            As he placed your hand on your cheeks—he leaned in at the contact. “I’ve missed you, Zo.” You whispered lowly as you pulled him into an embrace, you settled in his chest as you listen to his heartbeat, beating pretty fast.
            He hummed as you said those words as he fiddled with the strand of your hair as you hugged him. “That was pretty dumb, you know.”
            That left him confused. “Law and Sanji told me what happened—that was dumb, Zoro.” He pulled away from the hug and noticed that some tears are threatening to fall from your eyes.
            He wiped them away as he waited you to continue what you’re about to say. “You almost died.” In that moment, his heartbeat begins to beat faster: you were that worried.
            “That was dumb because the way Law told me, it seems like you were ready to die---”
            “I wanted to protect Luffy and you—”
            His heart breaks as you shook your head. “Protect yourself too. I know you care about the crew but I don’t want to face this again—the fear of you not waking up, like in Thriller Bark? I know you don’t want to lose anyone but—I don’t want to lose you too.” Your hand shakes as you cup his cheeks again.
            He grips your wrist and gave your wrist a ghost kiss, uttering a soft whisper that he can only hear. As he kissed your wrist, he just stared at you. He kissed your hand, fingertips; he kept staring at you.
            As he looked at you with a soft gaze, he pulled you closer to him.
            “I’m sorry.” He only follows Luffy’s orders but—somehow, even you’re not the captain—he follows you. “I’ll get stronger so, you won’t feel like you will lose me again.” He kissed your temples and wiped your tears, as you nodded.
            He stared at you for a while and his eyes lingered in your lips. Without a warning, he placed his lips into yours as you taste the sake he drunk from before. He hummed in your lips as you reciprocate the kiss, he placed his hand on your nape as he was eager to pull you closer to him if that was possible, while your hands roam around his body.
            His chest, neck, abdomen, arms, and biceps—it was explored by you—he pulled away as he settles his lips on your neck muttering your name while he does. Your hand fumbles his hair, as you hold him closer. He kisses and left marks on your neck, while indulge himself with your scent.
            You tilted your head as you gave him more space as his hand traveled in your kimono, pulling it down softly. He pulled away from your neck as his hand travels in your kimono—slowly untying its knot. He whispered your name as low as he could: “Can I…?”
            Your hand travels into his nape as you nod. “Use your words, doll.”
            “Yes…Zo.” You hummed as he let his hand let loose of the knots in your kimono. “I fucking missed you.” He whispered lowly as his lips travel from your neck towards your collarbone.
            “I was just here, Zo.” You felt goosebumps as his hand travels every inch of your body. As his breaths shallows and his lips relaxes on your collarbone and chest. You whimpered his name so low; he’s the only person hearing it. He let his clothes fall on the floor as he lay you down on the futon. But he clicks his tongue as he felt a sharp pain on his chest in which you immediately pulled away.
            “We don’t have to---” He stared at you with flushed cheeks and half lidded eyes: as his eyes travels at everything that is you, he groaned and shook his head as he grabbed you by the hips switching your positions—making you straddle him. He smirked as he saw you on top of him with pride as he pulled you down for a kiss.
            “I fucking want you.” He holds your hips as he moved you in a rhythm. He hummed as you gasped at the pace. “Been looking for you when I woke up.” You felt him so close, despite the small clothes keeping you two apart.
            “You sure it wasn’t the sake?” You teased as you stopped your hips.
            “Take it off…” He whimpered.
            You never thought for a million of years that the pirate hunter would whimper under you—in hearing his plea: you take everything off your body including his: for a moment, the world seemed to stop as your hand travels into his new wounds. Your hand shakes as you saw new stitches.
            Before you can say anything—he grabbed your hand that was tracing his new wounds. “Eyes up here, doll.” He said into your fingertips—but unknown emotion filled you as your lips find his wounds, you carefully kiss them as blush continue to travel around Zoro’s body.
            “Oi…” He continues to repeat as you kiss his wounds. His gaze locks into you as you kissed him on his lower abdomen. He gave you a knowing look: “Come kiss me, woman.”
            So, you did. His hand travels into your clit as he continues to kiss you—as he pulled away: he stared at your expression whilst you stare at him, breathless, blushing mess, and muttering his name every chance you get. As he finds the right time to slip his finger inside you and it made you gasp. “Fuck—so, fucking warm.” He whispered in your ear as his fingers continues to mark your inside.
            He was slow in pace as if he was memorizing your sound, voice, expression, and your look. He kissed your temple as he feels you tightening up. “Great job…baby.” There are times where he lets himself be vulnerable and call you names, he thought he would never use.
            But as your hips meet his hands—he groaned as he moved his hand in a pace where you find yourself gripping his biceps—with one last move, you came undone into his hand as he kissed your temple; “My girl…” he whispered as he felt you shiver in his touch—he pulled his hand away and he kisses his hand while staring at you.
            You smiled and kissed him in his lips: tasting yourself in his mouth. “Better than any sake…” He whispered with a smirk as he continues to kiss your lips. He stared at you as his hand take hold of your hips once more as you aligned yourself into him—he slides his cock between your folds, he felt warm and you felt full.
            “Relax…” You didn’t know how or why or maybe because of the orgasm you had earlier but at the same time he felt bigger. As you settle into his cock, you stayed there as he looks at you. “Babe…” He called you like a prayer—without saying anything, you knew what he wanted. He flipped your over so, he’s now on top of you.
            “I got you—relax, doll.” He whispered in your ear as he stared at you. You pulled him for a kiss as he moves his body to meet yours. “Move…” He takes a short and slow thrust while he stared at your expression which let a small and deep growl out of him.
            As his impatient character caught up to him—he starts to get faster; your head thrown against the futon as you moan his name is if that’s the only word you know. Your hands find his shoulder as you pulled him closer. You’re too perfect for him, your walls were made for him—he finds your neck as he continues to suck and bite on it as you hold onto his shoulder as his make your inside fit for him and only him. At this moment, your name was the only thing leaving his mouth as breathless pleas, whimpers, sound of skin, and moans left the room—tears were stinging in your eye, Zoro noticed it he stopped with the fear that maybe he was hurting you but—it’s different, he saw your tears and you were smiling, you pulled him again for a hug but this time your hips met his. “I really thought I lost you.” You whispered in your embrace.
            That was his call—he holds you’re his hips as your legs wrapped around his waist—as his name left your mouth in a high-pitched whimper; he leaned in and kiss you once more. As he felt your walls claiming his cock again—he knew you were close and so was he; he reaches for your clit and move it with his thrust—without a second, you’re bound for the second orgasm from the hands of the swordsman. Your legs tighten up at his waist, as you arch your back and you feel yourself shakes. Your walls tighten around him as you keep saying his name.
            As you keep saying his name, Roronoa leaned in and kissed your shoulder—for a moment, he swore, he wants to keep you like this; only like this. He fills you up with his cock as his bite into your shoulder; he twitched inside—but he didn’t pull out, reliving and enjoying the warmth settling inside you. His heaving chest and your breathless state; you stared at each other.
            When you two catch your breaths, he pulls out as the both of you hiss at the loss contact. He kissed your inner thighs, chest, hand, head, and lips: uttering a thank you. His hand caress your inner thighs softly, as he kisses your temple over and over again.
            Before you can say anything—he leans down and kisses your lips as you smiled at the kiss. “Still better than sake?” You teased at his kiss.
            He nodded and kissed you deeper. “Still better.” You noticed that one of his stitches on his biceps were getting red—you’re scared that he can get infection— but he just laughed and pulled you into his chest. “I’ll get Chopper to check on it—in the meantime, let’s stay here.” His hands play on your hair as you listen to his heartbeat.
            “I was supposed to be in the bath with Nami.”
            “Hmmm…You could’ve push me away.”
            “You’re lucky that I like you.”
            “I know.” He nodded as he heaved a deep sigh. “Robin told me you didn’t went to sleep, when you’re looking out for me while I was out—don’t do that again, okay, doll?”
            “Just promise me you won’t get yourself killed.” He nodded as he placed your hand on his chest and gently kiss it.           
            “You always kiss my hand…why is that?”
            “I just like it. My hands are like filled with wounds and yours are soft, warm…” He kissed it again. “Mine…” He whispered. “You always hold me so softly.” He admitted.
            You looked at him as you rest your chin on his chest. “Any person should be hold softly and nicely.” He chuckled and shook his head. “With these wound and the swords, I highly doubt I’ll be considered as a person.”
            “What makes you think that…?” You frown.
            “I’m a monster, woman, so, sometimes it surprises me that you stay—"
            “Why do you think you’re a monster?” This time you sat up—he looked at you with a surprise look on his face a parallel to your caring look as his eyes travels on the marks he left in your body; he placed his hand on your shoulder.
            “I don’t see any monster.” You hold his hand that is placed on his shoulder. He always kisses your hand—so, this time, you kissed his.
            “I only see the person that I love.” You kissed his hand, in a delicate manner—as if he was a porcelain glass, a gift from above; he felt his eyes sting as he cleared his throat fighting the blush trying to settle on his cheek.
            “The things you me feel woman—The things you make me feel.” He muttered as he pulled you down for a kiss. You smiled at the kiss as he places his hands on your cheeks, without a sign or a signal; he muttered those three words and eight letters with a small tint of blush on his cheeks.
            “I love you too, Roronoa.”
-- FIN
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holy shit--my first ever smut; if it sucks--i'm sorry :,> zoro the man that you are! trafalgar law is next and it's fluff--wano arc has me gripping all story ideas lmaooo
⚘ masterlist 1 | 2 | 3
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mrsriddlenott ¡ 18 days ago
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It’s Okay To Love Them Both
Mattheo Riddle x Fem!Reader x Enzo Berkshire
Kinda from all their POVs at different times. I absolutely love this and I am putting so much work into it that it is honestly funny and I’m gonna cry when I’m done🥹😂(may have gotten carried away) not entirely proofread yet.
Warnings: Fluff,Angst,Insecurities, Manipulation(kinda ig? I don’t see it as manipulative but I wanted to include the warning for ppl who don’t share that opinion), Nicknames(Princess, Gorgeous, Petal, Little Badger, etc)
*No smut but I can make a pt2 for that if it’s wanted*
{masterlist}
This was requested a LONG time ago and I REALLY hope the person who requested it is still here or in the old Taglist, I am so sorry this took so long. My brain just was not working properly for a long time but I think I am back in my groove. I have been working on this on and off for a literal YEAR so if you are not here I am so disappointed in myself for not getting it out to you.
You couldn’t pinpoint exactly when you started to fall for both the boys, but it started so innocently, and now it felt like it was always bound to grow from the very beginning. You met Enzo first, he had been assigned your tutor at the start of term thanks to your poor Potions grade every year prior. He worked with you tirelessly as though it was more than something asked of him by the head of his house, and when you inevitably out grew the need for a tutor, he invited you to your first Slytherin party as a celebration. A party that was of course thrown by his best friend. Enzo talked about Mattheo non-stop and you just had to meet him, however when he spoke with you that fateful night, you realized the trouble you were in and you just couldn’t stay away from him, you tried at first, but it was pointless.
The more you talked with them the more you felt for them. They were so easy to be around, Mattheo made you feel safe and heard, he always stood up for you even though his reputation could have been hindered by befriending a Hufflepuff. While Enzo made you feel known, he looked at you in a way that no one had before and opened your own mind up to itself. Even though they were so clearly different, as you grew closer with them, you began to notice just how similar the two were. Mattheo tried his hardest to hide it but on the inside he was the sweet boy no one saw, and Enzo had a hidden darkness within him that no one would guess, one that helped you come to terms with your own.
“Hello Princess, I’ve got a question,” Enzo stated from your side as he caught you off guard in the corridors, ripping you out of your thoughts with his smile alone. He watched you intently with his soft, safe eyes as he waited for you to respond. He was used to your adorable shocked expression by now, he knew you somehow weren’t used to this kind of attention yet, and certainly not from Slytherins, but he just couldn’t stop coming back to you. Neither of them could, so they just didn’t.
It’s not like they sat down and planned it….well not exactly. The idea was there of course, from the second Mattheo saw you he knew he wanted you he just didn’t want to hurt Enzo and even when they soon both realized they felt the same way, it wasn’t really a conscious decision….not in the beginning anyway. They’d speak to you one after the other like a pattern of turns, and never without telling each other beforehand. Eventually they started whispering about your little chats in their dorm late at night, almost debriefing the other as they reminisced and waited for their next chance to see you. It took quite awhile for the boys to realize just how far their feelings had grown, and not only for you, their own bond had been strengthened by their shared affections and time spent solely focused on you.
“Oh….what is it?” You spoke, slightly dazed after staring into Enzo’s eyes for a few seconds too many, something he reveled in as your pupils dilated and your lips formed a smile against your will. He chuckled at your nervousness, poking his elbow out for you to take as you resumed your walk to the Library, you took it immediately, settling your palm into the crook of his arm as he took your books into his free hand.
“I was wondering if you wanted to accompany me to Hogsmeade tomorrow?” His voice was soft, calming, and comforting as he gently guided you through the tidal wave of students suddenly parting to let him through. It shocked you how not one, but two boys of such a high popularity status seemed to care so much about your presence. At first you genuinely assumed it was some joke, a prank some classmate had put them up to maybe, but after months of the two always coming back to you and getting absolutely nothing in return, you deemed yourself safe.
“Like a….?” You started, letting your sentence die out in embarrassment of being wrong, Enzo chuckled making your stomach jump as you entered the Library, “Yes Petal, I wanna take you out on a date.” He turned to face you as he set your books on the nearest study desk, taking your hand in his as he reiterated in a soft voice, “Would you like to go on a date with me? We can do whatever you like….or we can go with my plan?”
“You….have a plan?” It wasn’t like you were new to dating or having a partner, but you certainly weren’t used to said partner putting in such effort for you, making you feel as special as Enzo and Mattheo did so easily. You gulped slightly upon remembering Mattheo, would he be mad if you said yes? Or hurt? Would he care at all? Would he plan a date for you like this?
“Is that a yes?” Enzo chuckled as he watched your brows furrow upon you falling into your thoughts again, “It’s okay if you have plans or….or don’t want to join me,” He suddenly seemed very worried, his confidence faltering as you watched his face quietly.
“Of course I want to go with you Lorenzo,” He audibly sighed at your words, a warm feeling washing over him as soon as his arms wrapped around you, his head falling heavily against your shoulder as he laughed, “Had me thinking I ruined the best part of Hogwarts Lovely.” Your giggles pulled him from his hiding spot in your neck as your hands held onto his shoulders.
“No way I am for favorite thing about Hogwarts,” You laughed with a shake of your head, avoiding his eyes as you moved away to settle into your study spot. Enzo watched you from a few feet away now, observing your genuine misbelief and wondering how you could look in the mirror everyday and not see a portrait of royal standard. How you could possibly not see that he was falling madly in love with you, certainly he wasn’t that subtle was he? He’d just have to turn in up a notch then.
“I was thinking we could get a drink at the Three Broomsticks,” his voice was low and soft as he approached you again, slowly “After which I’ll spoil us with a trip to Honeydukes,” he paused, stepping closer still as you avoided direct eye contact, “Then we can eat sweets as we take a walk around the Black Lake and talk,” you gasped as his cold fingers brushed your warm skin, pulling a strand of hair behind your ear and tracing the shape of your jaw before pulling your chin up, forcing an intense eye contact, “How does that sound?” His voice was laced with his usual confidence once again as he placed his free hand on the desk, leaning into you further and towering over you with a smile. That crooked smile that was always so contagious made it impossible to stop yourself from smiling back and agreeing to the perfect date once more.
Enzo left the Library with a triumphant grin, giving you one last glance over his shoulder and throwing you a wink, reveling in your face glowing bright red. You found it difficult to suppress giggles as you tried to work on your studying, beginning to imagine your date with Enzo instead.
~~~~
It felt like you had spent days alone in the Library working on your homework, every little thought of Enzo distracting you from the work that had accumulated in your classes this week. You regretted not asking Enzo to keep you company, even though you were such a nervous wreck around him when you were alone together you just found everything to be so much easier with him there. It was like every bit of anxiety flitted away when either of your boys were there to comfort you.
“Hey Gorgeous,” Mattheo’s smooth voice derailed your train of thought as the chair behind you loudly scraped across the dusty stone floor, making you cringe as Mattheo plopped onto the creaking wood so he was sat only inches from you. “What are you stud-“ The loud shush from Madam Pince interrupted him as he laughed and held his finger to his lips jokingly, pulling his chair impossibly closer only to slowly whisper in your ear, “What are you studying?”
You tried to hide the shiver his voice sent down your spine, tingles covering your entire body before you could gain your control, “Just Transfiguration stuff, I’m almost done though,” Mattheo hums beside you, letting you silently work as he watched your very concentrated face while you wrote. He quickly became impatient however, tapping his fingers and feet to different beats you didn’t recognize as he slouched in his chair before dramatically sighing after only a few minutes and sitting up.
“Are you done yet?” He whispered, desperate for your undivided attention as he leant into you further, resting his chin on your shoulder to watch you like a lost puppy, “I’ve got something for you, ya know,” His excitement was evident in his hushed tone, making you finally turn to look at him again while he excitedly reached into his pocket with a proud smile upon getting you to look at him. He struggled momentarily, cursing under his breath as he pulled out a thin golden chain with a badger charm dangling from it.
You eyed the fine jewelry in his hand for only a split second, it was truly beautiful and your exact style, but it looked expensive and too elegant to be for you. Noticing the guilty glint in your eye, Mattheo didn’t give you the chance to deny the gift, believing it was yours already even if you wanted to throw it in the garbage as soon as he left. You would have to get used to being spoiled, he thought as he got up to delicately drape it across your neck and clip it in the back before you could ask the price or where he got it. He freed your hair from being trapped below the chain, bouncing it and fixing stray strands for you before leaving a kiss on the top of your head, “It’s almost as beautiful as you isn’t it my Little Badger?”
Your face was painted red in a matter of seconds as his hands felt up and down your arms mindlessly, his fingertips leaving tingles everywhere they touched giving you an entirely uncommon burst of confidence. You jumped from your seat with a loud thank you as your arms draped across his shoulders, letting your head rest on his toned body as his arms engulfed you in his warmth and his chest vibrated with a laugh, “You are very welcome Pretty Girl.”
Your eyes met as you pulled away from him, glossy eyes darting between his and his lips before you launched yourself forward to attack them with yours. Mattheo didn’t waste a second in returning your kiss, letting your lips meld together as he sighed against your mouth, the taste of your lips better than he could have ever imagined. Your fingers got lost in his hair, tugging at his curls and deepening the kiss, forcing him to restrain himself by gripping onto your hips tighter to keep from smashing you into the bookshelf behind him and starting a battle between your tongues. You hummed in satisfaction, your senses and thoughts lost in Mattheo as he nipped at your bottom lip making you whimper and fall farther into him. You wanted the kiss to last forever, the feeling of his hands grounding you, letting your brain focus for the first time since…..Enzo.
The image of the sweet boy who cared so much for you catching you making out with his best friend flashed in your mind, snapping you out of your pleasure as you abruptly pulled away from Mattheo with a shocked expression. Your eyes brimmed with tears at the thought of Enzo crying, hurting over you betraying him, hating you forever….you felt horrible. Your teary gaze locked with Mattheo’s before you were pushing away and grabbing your books, rushing from the Library without another word. After only a second of truly believing someone had Stupefied him, the curly headed boy tried to catch up to you, desperately calling your name before losing you in the packed corridors.
Mattheo cursed to himself as he reluctantly turned away from the direction you took and toward the Slytherin Common Room. He couldn’t stop thinking about every possible outcome this could cause, he should have said something, done something, but he was far too focused on your scent, your taste, the way you felt in his hands. He’s such an idiot, he needed to fix this, the thoughts bouncing back and forth in his mind as his legs numbly carried him through the castle.
“You need to make sure this date we planed goes well because I may have just royally screwed us” Mattheo was almost shouting as he slammed the door of his and Enzo’s shared dorm behind him, thanking the Gods that their dorm mates were off doing who knows what.
“What!? What are you talking about?” Enzo rushed forward on his bed, tossing his reading aside as he watched Mattheo’s face contort in worry. He could tell by his fidgeting hands and pacing of the room that he was truly worried there was no going back from whatever he did, and without a second thought, Enzo was standing to pull him into a hug, asking again, softer this time, “What went wrong?”
“She kissed me and I fucking kissed her back,” Mattheo snapped, slipping out of Enzo’s comfortable grasp as he pinched at the bridge of his nose, “and then she looked so sad and my mouth just would not form any words. I stood there like a fucking asshole while she was crying because I was too focused on her lips on mine.” He sighed, chewing at his thumb as he paced back and forth in the middle of the dorm.
“She kissed you though that’s a good thing, not exactly to plan, but that means she probably likes us bo-“ Mattheo was always so calm and collected, except for when it came to you, every worry that flashes through his brain about never seeing you again makes him less and less reasonable.
“I think her rushing out crying tells me otherwise Enzo,” Mattheo began to ramble, his brain was far too worried to be able to keep a single thought inside, “We need to give her space, let her have time to think before your date, she’s probably confused she….she probably doesn’t want to get hurt or or I don’t know hurt anyone else. She doesn’t know we want to be with her together….what if she thinks something bad li-like you’ll be mad.” Mattheo snapped his fingers and pointed to his best friend as though he had it all figured out, just to return to his ranting.
“Mattheo calm down, we don’t know anything yet okay,” Enzo knew that when Mattheo got like this, feeding his worries would not help, but as he continued to list off the many holes this plan had that they were just now realizing, the heavy feeling of anxiety settled into his chest.
~~~~
When the next afternoon finally came, you contemplated skipping the date entirely, telling Enzo you had plans after all, but some part of you just wouldn’t allow it. That same part controlled you as you desperately searched for an appropriate first date outfit, throwing dresses and various tops and bottoms on and off as your dorm room grew messy. “Damn Y/N/N, I knew you liked this boy but jeez….this much worry about an outfit?” Your dorm mate and best friend since First Year jokes as she strutted into the room.
“Hannah you’re a lifesaver, I need to borrow a dress, and it needs to be a good one because I already have something to apologize for.” You rambled, turning to her trunk that was always available for you to search through.
“What could you have possibly done to that boy that needs an apology? I think he very well could be obsessed with you.” She giggled, not realizing your worry as you halted your actions entirely, “Ikissedhisbestfriend” you jumbled, turning but avoiding the eyes of your best friend who only understood you thanks to her knowing you so well.
“You…wait did I hear that correctly? You- you and Riddle did what now?” Her shocked, almost excited expression had you feeling worse as you abandoned your search for a dress, flopping down onto your bed as tears welled in your eyes. “He’s gonna hate me when he finds out.” You sighed, hiding your face in your hands as the bed dipped beside you to make room for Hannah.
“Hey hey….Sweetie no rational person could ever hate you.” She sighed, rubbing the back of your hands as she pulled them from your face, “This is a grey area okay, you haven’t made a commitment to either of them and it’s clear they both want to be the one picked. You need to make a decision somehow and if they don’t want to make it easy on you this is going to get dramatic.” Your eyes met hers in confusion as tears ran down your face and onto your mattress, “I guess what I’m trying to say is….you need to make a decision either way and the only way to make the right choice is to know how they both would treat you, and the only way to find that out is to explore both options for a bit.”
“But….I don’t want to hurt them, and I want them both in my life still….I don’t know what I’d do if I made a decision and the other never spoke to me again.” Hannah gave you an apologetic smile before piping up again, “Well….it would be cruel to keep them both at your feet waiting just to never pick, you’ve got two options here, let them go and hope you meet someone else one day, or come to terms with what may happen after you do choose.”
“I’m gonna choose, I just can’t yet, I don’t wanna lose either of them.”
~~~~
Enzo’s breath catches in his throat as he sees you walking into the crowed dining room of the restaurant, the red fabric of your dress hugging you perfectly. The badger necklace he had helped Mattheo pick out rested on your chest so wonderfully he just had to comment on it. “Well isn’t this cute, where’d ya get it huh?” He asks in a teasing tone you know so well.
“Um well, I” As you start trying to speak all that can come out is sobs at the thought of hurting him, suddenly your dress is too tight and the room too stuffy, you can’t breath. “I um,” you try but once again fail. Before you can think you feel hands on your waste and your being tugged out of the busy restaurant by someone as Enzo follows. Once the door was open you rushed into the cold air and walked away from the two.
“Did i do something?” Enzo’s voice was desperate, strained to a point that you thought he was about to cry right now, “Please just tell me how I messed up so i can fix it, I promise I didn’t mean to hurt you,” His voice raised as you kept walking to catch your breath pacing back and forth before taking notice of Mattheo standing beside him.
“What are you doing here?” You spit out, not meaning for it so sound as mean as it did, you sigh as you correct your voice, tears beginning to fall again. “I’m so sorry, I thought I could pick but I can’t, I love you both and I am so so sorry.”
The boys eyes lock together immediately and as though on cue they start to laugh, they know it’s wrong, they know they shouldn’t but they can’t stop. And somehow you know it is okay and start to laugh too.
“What is wrong with you two?” You ask between tears and laughter, you must look a mess but your two best friends still stare at you as though you hung the moon.
“Petal, we want you too, you think we can chose. Us. Two of the dumbest people you have ever known.” Enzo says with a giggle as he steps up to you to kiss you tear streaked face. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you sooner Petal, but I was planning on having Mattheo come to our little date anyway, we wanted to tell you tonight how much we want you. Together. All of us.”
Your eyes dart to Mattheo as he smiles wildly down at you, “so you’re not mad at me”
“Of course not Princess, you’re our perfect girl.” Mattheo says in a soft voice as he moves to wrap his arms around both Enzo and y/n, leaving a kiss on both their cheeks as comfort he has never felt begins to settle in his chest. He can be happy like this.
Your rapid heart beat begins to settle in the arms of your two favorite boys, your tears continue but only from happiness and the feeling of pure luck bringing you to the happiest moment of your life.
“Now, how about we finish the date we had planned for you Petal.” Enzo sates as he grabs your hand, your other quickly being grabbed by Mattheo as they begin to lead you to Honeydukes.
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yongislong ¡ 2 years ago
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ideal types + dreamies.
genre: fluff? haha
note: ty anon! i hope this is what you meant! this is just my opinion btw i don't know what these mfs like, i tried not to do body types or anything like that bc... ya lol. lmk if anything comes across as harmful! not proofread...
mark... would probably want someone who is just very chill in general. an ambivert for sure. someone very genuine, personable and freindly. someone who can go with the flow but is also so naturally funny. he laughs at everything so that shouldn't be too hard LMAO. loves people who have good music taste. LOOVE a street style type of person. dancer maybe?? someone who he can spend alone time with and fully drop any act he feels he needs to put up. someone who makes him feel safe and comforted. i don't think height matters to him since i think he's pretty secure with himself! likes someone with a loud laugh hehe. someone poc probably. prefers longer hair but will hype you up no matter what you look like because he genuinely finds you perfect. someone who hypes him up as well
renjun... someone artsy for sure! probably someone softer and a more... calming? aura? if he can sit in silence with you and still feel fulfilled i think that's perfect for him. someone shorter maybe? likes full cheeks. doesn't really matter what style for him tbh, he has a pretty dark academia style so if you're similar that cool but if you can change the way he dresses and have him explore new things, he is so down for that. someone who supports him and comforts him when he's having a hard week/month/etc. someone who likes cafes and museums. likes unique features. bubbly personality but also someone who is silently observant. a sucker for intelligent ppl
jeno... hmm... someone cool for sure. likes darker styles i feel like? but also likes it when you dress in lighter colors and stuff as well! doesn't matter what length your hair is, but likes pixie cuts tbh. i feel like he likes more quirky people since he can be a bit serious sometimes. shy boy/excited cute partner trope for sure. someone more assertive. nice smile so you can both be known as the cute smile couple muahaha. like someone who he can go on hikes with and someone who likes nature, dogs and enjoys being more adventurous. would like someone to nurture him tbh, like not baby him but... can take care of him and make him feel loved and relaxed. likes to feel wanted and manly most of the time though. giving very wattpad bad boy whos also a sweetheart?
haechan... someone shy probably so he can be brought back down to earth LMAO but again!!! i think as long as he clicks with someone, he won't really mind. likes to reassure his partner but also likes someone who is driven and passionate about something. would enjoy being around someone who enjoys watching movies and tv. looots of movie dates. someone in a more vintage style would be very intriguing to him. likes people out of the norm. think of chae from twice in regards to style. someone confident no matter what people say about them. likes to be able to have emotional conversations and be open about issues so someone more mature in that aspect would be appreciated. likes clingy people tbh. someone who's probably a bit more structured
jaemin... likes people who are hard to understand. likes people who dress and act however they want to. would support you no matter what LMAO. someone respectful and polite and full of love. animal lover. he pegs me as the type of person who goes for personality more than anything else, if he finds you attractive its just a plus LOL. definitely someone who's an ambivert. someone who can keep up when he's more excited/extroverted but also someone who can sit, cuddle, cook and read in silence with. definitely someone cute! especially if they seem more intimidating on the outside. he finds that juxtaposition really charming. maybe someone short but i don't think it would make or break anything. a poc lover, SLAAYY. hates try-hards or pick me's. someone who can give him confidence and vice versa
chenle... someone more emotionally mature and go with the flow. someone who is consistent. probably someone smart but not necessarily academically? like someone who is wise! life smart LOL. someone who enjoys cooking and shopping together. likes someone who is able to drive him forward if he feels stuck. someone who's really nice. like really REALLY nice. someone who can teach him good values and helps him see life through different perspectives. doesn't really care too much about style, i can't see him being with someone who is heavy heavy into fashion unless its more leaned towards street wear. just someone really cool, yknow? enjoys introverts because he likes to be able to be the only person to see you come out of your shell
jisung... short extrovert HAHA. he's pretty tall so tbh... most people are shorter than him so it doesn't really matter. but i love the trope of him being super quiet with a partner who enjoys peppering his face in kisses and bragging about him to all their friends. carefree person for sure. someone who can let him look at hard situations and help him alleviate his anxiety and let him know everything is gonna be okay because he's trying his best. likes darker styles. i think of like 2014 tumblr when i think of him LMAOO. so yeah... maybe something like that but modernized? likes bangs. loooves people who are naturally cute. likes people who get flustered easily haha. someone who's not embarrassed to show that they love him
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quixotin ¡ 9 months ago
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OK OK I FINISHED BINGING THE ENTIRETY OF NATLA AND I GOTTA SAY IT WAS A GREAT ADAPTATION!!!
Here are my thoughts so far:
The parts where I still had my reservations for the first half were definitely addressed in the second. There were more Kataang beats, especially in the last three episodes.
Please that whole part before the zutara showdown where Aang goes like "go easy, enough ppl have suffered" and zuko is more or less like "lol it's cute u think i'd hold back" and then aang has this proud little smirk like "oh i wasn’t talking to you"😏 Also his proud little smirk when Katara is fighting Pakku PLEASE HE IS GOING TO BE THE PROUDEST BF
They covered the most important points and had a decent few scenes of fan service, loved that.
However, the adaptation is not perfect and there are definitely parts that were lacking, at least to me. Primarily, I think they did our girl Katara a little dirty not emphasizing as much on her arc as opposed to Sokka's, for example, and also the way her ascension to master was pretty telly instead of showy
There was definitely something to love in every episode, but I think the weakest ones have to be Omashu and Spirited Away.
My ABSOULUTE FAVORITE episodes were Into the Dark and Masks. Dallas, Paul, and Gordon did SUCH a great job in them. I cannot WAIT for the proper leaves from the vine scene and also to have more of zuko interacting with aang.
ZUKO IS BABY BOY AND DOES NOT KNOW ANYTHING NOT EVEN ABCs 🥺🥺🥺
My favorite was Zuko by far, yes. I think the performance and the was he was written struck the best balance of that goofiness and tragedy atla is originally known for. That’s not to say the other kids didn't do a good job, but Dallas' Zuko was by far the best imo
I understand now what the showrunners meant by making the show more mature and serious. I cannot say I didn't like it, but I can see it being an acquired taste especially for the part of the fandom that is more purist/demanding. I like that the focus emphasized more on the consequences of war and that it reflected on the cycles of violence and hurt, what they do to a person and how the wounds pass down generationally. I think this emphasis on war, compassion, kindness, all those things are definitely an important message in this time and day. However, it is a little too serious for my taste, PRECISELY because of the times we are living in. Back when the OG came about the world was in a time of relative peace. But now we get pictures of carnage and genocide mixed in with videos of cute puppies, so it's definitely a different place. It was much easier to understand the gravity of the genocidal/bombing scenes imo, almost to a point that they seemed watered down/kid friendly compared to the real thing that we see on our phones everyday. Because of that, I think erring more on the comedy, the balance between what it ACTUALLY means to be hopeful and not just talking about it, is the one thing the show could improve upon for next seasons.
All in all I am VERY pleased with the adaptation. There were moments where I definitely bawled my eyes out, shouted, and laughed the same way I did the first time I watched the show. All I can say is, for those still on the fence about watching it, so long as you go in with an open mind and with the explicit objective of enjoying yourself, it will be a fun watch.
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naneun-no ¡ 10 months ago
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From my drafts so it’s late but:
Today’s delulu thought is that Standing Next to You has too many lyrical coincidences to not be about Jimin.
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🫣 I SAID IT WAS DELUSIONAL OKAY
You are free to disagree. You probably should 🤣
I mean we know it wasn’t written by Jung Kook but obviously the version he recorded was arranged with and for JK, and “leave your body golden” can’t be a coincidence right? Like it’s the whole ass album name, plus a word that carries connotations of JK himself, which the ppl who worked with him on Seven must have known.
So if that wasn’t a coincidence… then what about:
1. “How we left and right is something we control” — a callback to both Left and Right by CP feat JK, but also a nod to Butter, a massive BTS hit and a song that he performs alongside his boyfie bestie JM.
2. “When it’s deep like DNA, something they can’t take away” — a callback to another massive BTS hit, interesting. And *delulu warning* also reminds me of JM and JK’s extreme similarities that they themselves have referred to before?? They’re wired the same, they have the same sense of humor, they live and breathe for the same shit and even though they have some very key differences, they really do seem like twin flames (even if you just see it as platonic). They are similar in ways that seem braided into the fibers of their being. Like, in their DNA 🧬 some may say. *delulu warning #2* I’m also reminded of Jimin’s Letter lyrics: “After all this time has passed will we still be the same? Just like we were when we first met.”
Also, “something they can’t take away” is an interesting turn of phrase… more on that later.
3. Okay the real meaty part:
Screaming I’ll testify that we'll survive the test of time, they can't deny our love. They can't divide us, we'll survive the test of time I promise I'll be right here
[I seriously can’t believe how closeted-couple-coded this song is]
First off, again with the Letter lyrics mirrored here with the “test of time.” Then it’s got all this drama about being ripped apart and how it won’t happen and how they’ll be next to each other no matter what and that they have “something they can’t take away.”
Not only does all that line up with other Letter lyrics, but it is so goddamn dramatic and for what?
Be for real, what straight couple in this day and age would have this much working against them?? The only possible explanations are: 1) within the fantasy world of a song I suppose this could be some sort of Romeo and Juliet/West Side Story motif, and to be fair the music video did have a kind of rival gang/crime family look to it? Sort of? With the men fighting below the stage? Idk. Or it could be 2) the fact that idols do in fact often have to hide even their straight relationships, which is wild to me. But I know it’s a thing, so. I suppose there’s that. JK doesn’t seem the type though honestly. I think he’d be even more open about it than V.
On the other hand, the lyrics seem SO fit for a couple who are a) queer, b) closeted, c) currently in/about to be in a legislatively homophobic military and country (am I saying that right? Lol) and d) internationally famous pop idols in the SAME BAND who are both widely regarded as heterosexual sex symbols and would be shunned by many people in their homeland AND internationally if their queerness were to be revealed, much less if they were truly an item and THAT news broke.
Whew. That was a lot but like… that would be a real example of a relationship that would be VERY threatened by outside forces plotting against them and trying to separate them. Not JK and a hot blonde model, not him and a Korean actress, not basically any other scenario but a queer relationship.
Idk I know he didn’t write it but like ??? What the hell is that theme? I’m dying to get inside the mind of the people who DID write it, because are they or are they jikookers at this point like?!
4. Just for fun I’ll also point out the “leave your body golden like the sun and moon” 😏 like. Okay. At this point the songwriters are watching Jikook compilations, drooling over @slaaverin edits like convince me they’re not. CONVINCE ME.
5. “Deeper than the rain”?! “The pain”?! Alright I’m not even serious at this point but ??? Rainy day fight 🌧️?!?! 🤣🤣
6. “Standing next to you” oh you mean like… for 18 months? In a companion enlistment program? Like that?
Alright alright I’m done but you get my point. What even is this song if not an anthem of jikookery?! It’s more on-the-nose than Letter, more sneaky than Still With You. It wasn’t written by JK but at this point I’m calling that the songwriters are as delulu as me.
Hope y’all are well. If you made it to the end of this thank you for donning your tinfoil hat with me and I hope you at least got a giggle.
✌️
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thatdeadaquarius ¡ 2 years ago
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Genshin Sagau (?) Isekai Brainrot - Language
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I've seen like ONE small kinda related Genshin Sagau/isekai idea for this but I wanted more of it so BAD
It’s not the most interesting thing in the world, it’s about our modern vernacular vs. Teyvat's flowery speech
Pls feel free to expand on or add to this pLEASE TAG ME IF U DO IM STARVING OUT HERE :)))
So I saw someone write like one sentence abt this (can’t remember who :( sorry I’ll update if I find them ) or like a brutally honest version??
But I also took inspo from how fucking wordy and long conversations that are in Genshin, even with ppl like Xiao (the rude boy that he is) or even Tighnari who gets to the point pretty quickly
It goes smth like:
So, all of Teyvet, (esp ppl like Zhongli 💀 u know the ones) talk,, flowery.
Like, the whole Pride and Prejudice style speaking, euphemisms, metaphors, for some characters (or Npcs) its full on POETRY. 
Lookin’ at you Kazuha.
.
And going off of any variation of you being the Creator, (or otherwise an older mythical being?), they could have this thing where the older a deity/mythical thingy is, the simpler the speech. 
Kinda makes sense to them y’know? The older beings are serious, commanding, intimidating
And nothing says "I'm ancient as fuck and powerful as fuck" like simple blunt speech.
And being closer to the literal creation of the world, language would understandably be less complex (I’m assuming it’s the same as in human cultures in our world's history)
Like literally look at our fantasy typical stories, plenty of them have a dragon or ancient god that speaks in extremes, like so flowery its a metaphor, or so bluntly its startling (ie, "Be not afraid." "I am all powerful." etc etc)
And so, ancient powerful being = direct/blunt speech
..
…
...Y'know,, almost like our modern vernacular.
Like, part of some of our modern day comedy is purely based on a sentence being delivered bluntly for impact
Hell our ads and videos and content in general we always want to get to the point, to say things simply
So with this in mind, even if you try to deny being the Creator, they might still think you are, or at least a more minor ancient deity/creature
 .
(like the Seven Sovereigns/Phanes/Shades/etc. for example would sound eerily modern or at least easy for you to understand bc of this trait lol)
(Also I'm just assuming u know Genshin lore enough to know what I meant by that ^)
____
So, I love the AU where you just,, hitch a ride with the traveler like Paimon bc u start at the "beginning of the game",
And with every person you meet, you're like, "Ok, no, I promise this is just how my country/world speaks, it's not like that, I'm not some ancient deity…" 
And They're all like 🤨🤨🤨 "Well, fine traveler and companions, why does your speech sound so simplistic and sharp? Surely, you do not expect me to truly believe you.."
You: "Please I just talk like this, I'm a regular human."
Them: "Alright, if it is as you say,, you wish to not experience being "known" yes? Fear not, I will keep your secrets close to my chest."
You: "No, for the last time, that's not-" 
.
And it just keeps happening, lol
.
(srry I tried my best at emulate Genshin language + flowery speech idk how to do it)
.
Like maybe you would just sound weird or like a foreigner speaking y’know in simpler sentences bc they don't know the language as well as native speakers, at least that could be how you sound to NPCs and ppl who don’t know abt simpler speech meaning
.
...But the Adepti? Zhongli?? Barbatos maybe??? Even the Aranara??? Those who are old enough to maybe have heard how older beings speak or at least have knowledge of how they should speak/sound??
You couldn’t have predicted how shocked their faces were the second you opened you’re mouth… 
Sumeru scholars would freak tf out i stg, as soon as you meet Haypasia, she's already losing it, first the Irminsul progress, now this ancient being/Creator?? Girlie thinks its a sign lmao
.
(I’m an Aether lover, and also bc I think Lumine looks badass as Abyss ruler, so I’m gonna go with Aether for traveler sorry Lumine mains love yall T-T)
.
You, and Aether being equally confused at first pLEASE 😭 
lets say he speaks a little more fluffy than you at least, after all I’m assuming bc of the outfit that he’s from a fantasy-like place, and his replies can be a little fluffy like Teyvat’s residents, so he kinda fits in, kinda like everybody assumes he's just from another country when he gets to a new nation (at least that’s what I think happens??)
.
Like after (maybe Diluc?) Lisa, Kaeya, Venti, and Jean (who I think would all be knowledgeable, thru diff means, about this enough to maybe recognize the simpler speech = ancient god thing)
ALL reacted shocked as hell at hearing you talk, and would probably explain (or Paimon before then?) in that infuriatingly roundabout way, that you would usually skip a couple dialogue boxes just to avoid bc yOU ALREADY GOT THE POINT or alternatively WHATS THE POINT HERE?? JUST SAY IT, WHATS THE COMMISSION/QUEST FOR/WHAT DO I DO??
(Those blue highlights be savin my impatient life, and i actually like lore stuff 💀)
.
Oh that’s also another frustration. For you.
.
It would drive me crazy if I had to wait like,, 2-3 minutes for ppl to explain what they ate for dinner or sm shit
Like, now imagine that’s everyone, about everything.
You don’t know how anything gets done in battles or wars, like you need faster communication for that right??💀
.
Anyway, you, Aether and Paimon decide you just gotta not talk when you first meet people or like,, make sure you're gonna be around that person for a while so you don’t have to possibly get someone over the shock of your speech every time you guys talk to people 😭 that'd be so miserable I can already tell,,
Like at first, every convo ya’ll have had with people who recognize that direct speech trait as a thing, would take at least 10 minutes to finish talking about it/being shocked,,
It got so old so fast.
.
(Like I already can’t communicate that good with ppl irl bc I misunderstand them, or they do me, or they just dont get what I mean, and as my friends put it, which I think would fit here for any language shenanigans we go thru in Teyvat, "A Shakespearean level of misunderstanding, hilarious but such a downward spiral to watch, it just gets more and more ridiculous as it goes on...")
.
On another note, making fun of someone would be so fucking funny,
I’d like to give myself the benefit of the doubt that many characters, after getting used to your speech, would generally understand you (even if they always notice it, like an accent) and would actually rlly love hearing insults or even just generally how you would put things
(like maybe treating this almost like those vids of ppl with non-native english speaknig relatives/parents and its the most hilarious thing to watch them, usually get pissed 😭, at their kid, if u dont know what I mean look up on tiktok or smth)
And You just come off like those insults where you dont even use cuss words, you just like, drag queen read them into never showing their face again, and you did it in so few words!! 
They're amazed and oh, 
you've become the John Mulaney of Teyvat 
(Bad examples include:
Fontaine inventor: "...And I shall call my invention, crocks!"
You: "I wouldn't even be cremated in those." ) 
*Aether crying laughing in the background bc he never knows what you’re gonna say next, and Paimon's jaw dropped so hard
JFC this post is so long sorry, I probably will spam with a Part 2 but let me know if you’re interested in hearing more anyway!!
Thanks for reading this rambling!!
Or send in asks abt this 👀
Cheers,
🌒🌊🌧Aquarius♒️🌌🌘
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gingergofastboatsmojito ¡ 14 days ago
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Syd is the pattern breaker
Which is great news in terms of Sydcarmy ENDGAME.
It's not like we all, Sydcarmy truthers, haven't seen that one coming. Of course, we have always known this lady came to turn it all around in Carmy's world from the very get-go, it was always painfully obvious.
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BUT
Here is another pattern that she has come to erase from the life of Carmy (and the show)
(He's fighting it like a champ, I must say)
Storer likes strong women who take charge and take the initiative to go after the men they love so the man doesn’t have to (in fiction, IDK about his real life). The guy is the one who gets to decide whether he accepts her advances or innuendos and responds to them, but he doesn’t really take the first step; she does.
Refer to my napkins theory (handkerchief section) please.
Exhibit A: Jess
Jess made it clear she was into Richie in 2x7. Also, at Syd's party. She is up for it and made it clear, even when Richie has not picked up her handkerchief yet.
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I don't know about Tiff, nor do I care
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Exhibit B: The C person
He created the C person and I will not elaborate on that one. Fuck her!
Exhibit C: Sugar
He created Sugar who is clearly the one who wears the pants in the relationship, and taking into account Pete’s personality, was probably the one who was all over him from day 1, and he was just like: “Yeah Nat, whatever you say, you’re so great, ILY.”
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Exhibit D: Tina
He created Tina, same energy as Nat but her husband is no Pete, so I’m not sure about how her relationship with her husband began, I can only safely assume she always speaks her mind. So I’m sure she was open about her feelings when she met her husband, no riddles.
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Exhibit E: Donna
He created Donna and same, there’s no version of the story where Donna was ever shy or quiet and not open, if not too open, about her feelings when she met Carmy’s dad (like you know who: the C person) and that’s probably why they got together to begin with and also one of the reasons why he left her eventually. She’s overwhelmingly vocal about how she feels for ppl because the excessive booze removes any social boundaries and barriers and she’s always ready to shout it in everyone’s face. That’s changing though. But that's how she was written into existence by Storer, to begin with.
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The game changer → Sydney Adamu
So, that takes us to Syd who never openly flirted with Carmy, unless we count Pasta 2x2 (which I don’t).
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And never really read the awkward signs he was trying to give her (which I hate but totally understand because they are business partners and she's a professional).
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And so… we have a pattern breaker here. That in Storer’s book means MEAT.
We've reached the meat of the matter, chefs! YAY!
So, there are about a zillion foreshadowing leads we could analyze of how that game change in terms of the female role in the courtship dynamic will play out SOON, Storer wasn't precisely slick throughout the series, but the most obvious and recent one was brought to us hidden in plain sight, in S3 -3x5- and I already went over it here (my own RB notes from 7/27):
The point is that as the post it says: "ALL QUESTIONS ASK SYDNEY!"
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That means that dynamic will have to be reversed for Sydcarmy to happen, CARMY WILL HAVE TO POP THE QUESTION. LOL!
No, not that question. Well... maybe eventually, but I'm actually talking about the CONFESSION and asking her out, asking her out on a date or something and I don't mean a symbolic date like the fucking funeral he completely ignored her at and where he then ditched her too. I'm talking about really and openly telling her how he feels for her, and exposing himself to her rejection. Not the other way around.
She has to enable this, of course, so in a sense, she will have to break her patterns for Carmy too, because love is an act of mirroring, as we all know by now.
But it´s Carmy who will have to grow a pair and put into words what has remained unspoken between them and is starting to decay inside -and it's ruining their whole relationship-. He will have to turn the dynamic around and take the role that Storer usually puts "strong women" in, and open up and go after who he wants. He will have to be the strong one and say it out loud. ASK ALL THE QUESTIONS because Syd has all the answers and her answers are the game changers of the show.
I wish it went like this (let's imagine Tanner is either Shapiro or Luca):
Fun fact: Demian Lewis said that he characterized Bobby Axelrod by playing him like a wild animal, tapping into that energy and bringing in it on set every day to play his scenes. He didn't say the beast was a bear though.
Bonus track: Ayo Edebiri. Ayo´s pattern is to be the pattern breaker of the plot. The → plot twist.
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Ayo always plays the game-changer character. In Omni Loop, she did too, I'm sure her next movie with Luca Guadagnino will be the same thing. She is drawn to that type of characters and plays them beautifully.
Remember to follow my tag #Gingerpovs💋
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