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doozie97 · 6 years ago

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Genderfluid!Superhero Marc Anciel Headcanon

As conflicts escalate and the guardian of the Miraculouses is lost, Marinette is entrusted with the Miracle Box. She wonders if the jewelry would be safer from Hawkmoth and his steadily growing legion of villains if scattered and left under the care of trusted individuals, rather than kept together to be captured all at once in the worst case scenario. Plus, Ladybug could use the extra help. (If we’re assuming Marinette would choose all of her classmates because they’re the only people she can trust, I think Ladybug would find a way to contact and choose a small handful of heroes at a time. That way, when an Akuma attacks, Ms. Bustier’s class doesn’t suddenly all have to go to the washroom at once). Ladybug meets all the potential holders individually to give them their Miraculouses, rather than running back home in the middle of battle to pass them out one at a time.

Marc would be given the goat horn earrings, highlighting his parallels with Marinette, and mirroring his black and white colour scheme as Reverser. (Assuming these things are supposed to be earrings, idek)

The day Ladybug walks up to Marc Anciel and entrusts him with protecting the Miraculous of the Goat is one he’ll never forget. He was so unbelievably honoured that Ladybug, his idol and muse, would bestow someone like him of all people with such a sacred responsibility.

He’s especially relieved Ladybug wasn’t upset or creeped out by the comics he made with Nathaniel where he basically shipped her with one of her former adversaries. Secretly, having Ladybug as the protagonist was a scapegoat for his self-insert fanfics that indulge both his desire to be just like the powerful lady superhero, as well as his shameless crush on the Evillustrator. Which, by extension, includes his soft spoken civilian counterpart. Marc will take this fact to the grave.

When the Goat Kwami pops out of the box, Marc curls in on himself and let’s out a dying whale noise, because she’s just. SO. CUTE. His Kwami curls up into his big red hood when they travel together.

Marc and his Kwami quickly learn to love talking to each other and exchanging stories. The Goat Kwami enjoys the writer’s endless creativity and romanticism in his stories. While Marc is enraptured by the tales of previous owners and the true accounts of various historical events, making him just as knowledgeable about Kwamis and the Miraculouses as Alya after she shoots Trixx a million questions. He also learns a few things not even the original three holders are aware of, including how Kwamis can also disguise their owner’s voice if asked. “You guys never talked to your Kwamis about these things? You are carrying around literal GODS among men who’ve been around for millions of years in your pockets, and you don’t want to know everything about them?”.

In Marc’s room they spend hours together working out plot holes or inconsistencies with some of the writer’s original works or his trashiest fics he can’t bring himself to show Nathaniel. Though, most of the time it entails Marc solving the problems himself while his Kwami sits back and listens, devouring pretzels and other salty snacks.

Ladybug isn’t the only girl Marc admires. He feels the same way about Marinette, but he is also envious of her. She’s a fantastic friend and leader figure, and even got the attention of Nathaniel once. Marinette is everything Marc wants to be, but just can’t.

In the art room, Juleka, Rose, and sometimes Alix model for Marinette’s clothes. Marc helps takes photos, and the Goat Kwami ends up seeing them. He secretly wants to try on her designs, but is too afraid to ask, worrying that his friend would think it’s weird for a boy to request such a thing. His Kwami doesn’t really understand Marc’s hesitation, because while Kwamis use male and female pronouns when referring to each other, gender is still just another human social construct to them, and he thinks Marc would look great in a dress or a frilly hat. Those words meant a lot to him. (This headcanon is also accepting the idea that Kwamis use the same gender pronouns of their latest owners, since not all languages have gender-neutral pronouns.)

This conversation happens before all the heroes meet up to introduce each other. Ladybug recommends to everyone to decide on their hero persona in advance, from hero name to their very mannerisms and behaviours. “Become an entirely different person” she says. When the heroes meet up, Ladybug is pleasantly surprised to meet a goat themed super-heroine, with a female voice and all. “I just figured no one would question why Marc and a girl superhero are never around at the same time…you don’t think it’s weird, do you?” “Not at all!”

I can’t for the life of me think of a good french goat pun, but one hero name I thought of is ‘Silene‘, which is the genus of flowers whose petals look like goat hooves, and apparently represents ‘Youthful Love’ in flower language. It’s also a combination of the name Silenus, god of the Satyrs, and Selene, the moon goddess who was seduced by Pan. It was either that or “Panic”. “Pan….ic. Panic. Get it? Because I’m panicking on the inside”.

Joining the Art Room has allowed Marc to express his real sense of humor and show off some of his true colours, but it’s only when he is in his heroine persona that he feels safe enough to fully express his adoration for cute boys. Silene also adopts a much more ‘do no harm, take no bull’ attitude than Marc normally has. He’s dealt with a lot of things in the past before transferring to Collège Françoise Dupont, and quite frankly he’s tired of being pushed around.

One day Marc would tell the Goat Kwami about his crush on a boy in his class. Since “having a crush” is an expression that began in the late 1800s and the zodiac Kwamis haven’t had masters in centuries, he has no clue what Marc is talking about. “You want to CRUSH him? Have you tried using a boulder?” (English has too many idioms, man.)

Marc has to explain to him that having a crush means when you really really like someone and feel like you want to spend the rest of your life with them. The goat Kwami interprets this as something like how he feels towards the Horse Kwami (who just so happens to be under the ownership of a certain artistically talented redhead). Marc’s Kwami feels saddened by the fact that he likely won’t see his lifelong companion again until Nooroo and Duusu are retrieved, which is when Marc and all the other holders will have to give up their Miraculouses.

Over time, Marc becomes more open about himself, even in his civilian form, and becomes a better person because of his time as a Miraculous holder. Unlike with Ladybug and Chat Noir, neither Sirene or Marc is the mask. Both are very real to him. It’s just that Marc has to learn to be honest that both sides of him are valid. When it’s time for the two to separate, the Goat Kwami wants to stay with his holder. “Marc, I want to crush you.”

#marc anciel #genderfluid marc #oh btw DONT harass hope morphin #yeesh #ml headcanon #ml spoilers #ml speculation #miraculous ladybug #marcthaniel #rainbow tomato #nathanciel #goat kwami #ml fanfic #zodiac miraculous

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emily-420 · 8 years ago

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Title: the flowers grow after the brambles, so just keep gardening Fandom/pairing: gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun, mayumiko Words: 7136 Warnings: descriptions of anxiety & dissociation, but it’s intended as a light read Summary: Nozaki makes a discovery, Mikorin panics for several hot minutes, Sakura continues to be a concerned parent, and Mayu remains unfazed.

ao3

After the seventeenth ding! in five minutes, Nozaki cracks.

He’s never seen his brother so attached to his phone in his life, and he’s got an almost compulsive need to know what’s going on. Mayu seems to be texting so quickly that he barely has time to put his phone down, where he would usually eat something and immediately seek the sweet embrace of slumber. He’s got the look in his eye that is usually reserved for judo – clear and intense, unwaveringly focussed. And on top of all that, Mayu seems to be typing for a while, which has Nozaki practically burning with curiosity, as he barely ever receives a message of more than four words from his brother.

Nozaki is starting to wonder if it’s possible for him to die from the complications of Never Finding Out. So he pounces.

Putting his pencil down, Nozaki asks in the most careful tone available to him, “Hey Mayu, who are you texting?”

“A friend.”

Mayu doesn’t even look up. Nozaki briefly feels the urge to physically shake a longer answer out of him, but it passes. “How did you meet? At school?”

Mayu shakes his head, glances up, and says, “No, online.”

An unshowered middle-aged man in an ill-fitting t-shirt springs to mind, and the familiar overprotectiveness threatens to well up again, but Nozaki reminds himself that that’s not the point. “What’s their name?” he asks, and this is where it starts.

Nozaki figures he has to do something about it. Wouldn’t he be an awful friend, brother, and shoujo mangaka if he had the knowledge that his best friend and his brother were infatuated with each other’s online personas all to himself and just sat on it like some kind of heathen? It just wasn’t the way of the world. So of course, he tells Sakura first, because he figures she knows better than him the right way about approaching this kind of thing, even if he’s supposed to be the expert.

That’s just fiction, after all. In his manga, Nozaki is pulling all the strings, which makes it all the more predictable; in real life, he tends to be unable to tell how people are going to react.

And wasn’t that the beauty of reality? Nozaki finds himself musing. That everything has the potential to surprise you – that you could never know everything or everyone, or even know a single person entirely. He mentally segways at the speed of light to how he might be able to explore this thought in his manga. Perhaps he could do an issue where Suzuki reveals something shocking about himself to Mamiko? It would make for some nice drama, that’s for sure. But then –

“Nozaki-kun?” Sakura interrupts his descent into the labyrinth. “Are you okay? You’ve been staring at the wall for a while now.”

Nozaki’s head jerks a little bit, as if it forgot where it was. “Yes, sorry, I’m fine. Anyway. What do you think we should do about them?” Suzuki and Mamiko would still be there at the end of the day, after all.

“Well,” Sakura says slowly, “I think we should probably do the straightforward thing and tell them… No offence, but I can imagine that if we tried to set them up somehow, Mayu-kun wouldn’t realise what was going on.”

“What makes you say that?”

Sakura seems to freeze a little, but it might be his imagination. “Eh,” she hedges, “he just seems like that type of person?”

Well, there’s no arguing with a woman’s intuition. Nodding, Nozaki says, “Yeah, you’re probably right. What else?”

“Well,” she says again, more firmly this time. “We should tell Mikorin first, because he’ll need more time to… come to terms with it.” The freak out for a while and then eventually calm down and see reason is left politely in the subtext, but Nozaki hears it nonetheless, if only because he knows both Sakura and Mikorin so well.

“Okay,” he says easily, “and then we set them up?”

“Ye – no! Nozaki-kun, are you even listening to me?! If we try to manipulate them into a relationship, it’ll turn into an awful mess and then they’ll both be miserable and you’ll feel guilty for the rest of your life!” She points her finger directly and the bridge of his nose, and he goes a little cross-eyed. “Do you want that?!”

“No!” he half-shouts, because Sakura is exuding tense pressure and is scarily good at sounding like a threatening mobster. He thinks he admires that, but he can’t be sure. Nozaki pushes her hand gently away from his face. “Of course I don’t. But how else are we going to get them together?”

Sakura looks a little bit done with him, but explains anyway, god bless her. “To be honest, I don’t think ‘getting them together’ should be the end goal. If we were writing about it, then that makes sense, but as it is we don’t really know if – if they’re going to be okay with the fact that they have feelings for each other, or even if they’ll acknowledge that it’s them who they were falling for.”

Nozaki hums in thought. He can already imagine that Mayu won’t care that it’s Mikorin, but Mikorin himself is an entirely different story.

“Um, say…” Sakura says, suddenly twisting her hands together nervously, “do you, you know, have any idea if Mayu…”

Seeming to leave it there, Sakura gives him a searching look that begs him to read her mind, which, as yet, Nozaki finds himself incapable of. “If Mayu?” he prompts instead.

“If he, you know…”

“I don’t know, Sakura. If he what?”

��Oh, come on!” Ah, she’s fed up now. “If he’s likes boys, obviously! God!”

Her face is quite possibly redder than he’s ever seen it, and he feels kind of bad for neglecting to unlock his telepathic potential. “Oh,” he says, rather inadequately. “Well, sometimes he says stuff like ‘guys and girls and pretty much the same’, so I think yeah?”

“But that could mean anything.” Her face is still very red, and Nozaki wonders absently why this embarrasses her.

“I guess, but he usually says that kind of thing when love or relationships come up. Oh, and Mikoshiba told me that when they went on that group date, Mayu ended up giving the impression that he was only interested in guys, but he didn’t seem to care, so there’s that too.”

“How exactly do you end up giving that impression?” Sakura sighs heavily. “Well, he just might not have noticed, too.”

“I think you’d notice something like that, Sakura,” Nozaki says, feeling oddly defensive.

She gives him a very flat look that he doesn’t know the meaning behind, and says, “You’d be surprised.”

Nozaki tries to shuffle the conversation forward like someone trying to shoo a stubborn animal. “So then what should our goal be, in your opinion?”

Sakura shrugs. “Do our best?”

Which is how, a few days after Nozaki’s initial discovery and an increase in Suspicious Behaviour between him and Sakura, Mikorin finds himself sitting across from his two scheming friends, who are currently looking at him as if he’s a rabid goat who’s at risk of going berserk any given moment.

“What gives?” He asks, frowning at them and feeling generally uncomfortable. “Why do I feel like a kid who’s about to get the sex talk?”

When they’d cornered him at school and said, somewhat ominously, “We have to talk to you about something,” Mikorin’s first thought was that they finally got together. But in the five hours since then he’d realised that if that were the case, Sakura would have come to him screaming about it already, and wouldn’t be saving the news for the seclusion of Nozaki’s living room.

The fact that they’re looking at him like someone died is only making it harder to tell.

“Well,” Sakura says, and visibly struggles to get any further, glancing up at Nozaki like he gives her strength. Which, he probably does, but still. She opens her mouth, closes it, and tries again. “Well. The thing is. Um.”

Taking pity on her, Nozaki takes the wheel. “The thing is, I found something out the other day that I think you should know. But.”

That’s a heavy but if Mikorin ever heard one, and his anxiety feels the need to kick it up a notch with the adrenaline. “But what? What are you guys on about? Who died? What’s going on?”

“It’s just,” Sakura squirms and wrings her hands together, apparently regaining the power of speech. “You might – you might not like it. But you should know.”

Mikorin is really not enjoying all the beating around the bush. If they think they’re easing him into it, they’re wrong; it’s like pulling teeth, and his head is going a million miles an hour in that nausea-inducing way it does on occasion. Mikorin silently tells it to shut up for a minute. “Okay,” he says impatiently, “so tell me.”

“Well,” Sakura says again, and Mikorin swears to God he’s going to break the table if someone doesn’t spit it out in the next twelve seconds. “So, you know how you’ve been texting that girl? The artist?”

“Yeah,” he says slowly, looking between the two of them, “what about her?”

“I found out who she is,” Nozaki says bluntly, which is frankly a relief, but then the words register.

“What?” Mikorin kind of feels like he’s underwater. His heart may have stopped. He doesn’t have the mind to check his pulse, though. At the moment it doesn’t seem to matter. “You – met her? Does she live around here?”

Mikorin supposes that he’s supposed to be happy – he has a crush on Mayumayu that’s approximately the size of the moon – but all he can think is that he’s not ready. He hasn’t prepared, hasn’t built up the nerve, hasn’t thought out what he might say to her if they did meet, and he can only hope that she’s not about to jump out of one of the closets or something. If he’s honest, he likes texting her because it’s so goddamn safe; he has a significantly lower chance of embarrassing himself, and it’s just so much easier than actually talking to a girl he might kind of want to date.

Although he still hasn’t determined whether that last part was because of the texting or because of Mayumayu.

“I know her,” Nozaki says, which is an interesting way of putting it, but then he follows up, “and so do you, actually, which is really why I thought you should know.”

“No way,” Mikorin says, practically in a state of shock. “You’re kidding.” He can’t even feel embarrassed, it’s that bad. Actually… He lets out a groan. “Oh God, if it’s someone I know, that’s so much worse…” Nozaki and Sakura are looking at him like concerned parents, and all of a sudden he thinks he might end up crying after all. “Please tell me it’s not Kashima. Or Seo. Please.”

“It’s not,” Sakura says quickly, which is a minor relief, but Mikorin can’t think of too many other girls they know, and there goes his brain again. If he could, Mikorin would be spraying it with water like you do with a poorly behaved dog.

Mikorin squints at Sakura. “It’s not you?”

“Of course not!” Sakura waves her hands in front of her. “In fact, Mayumayu isn’t…”

“What?” Mikorin asks when she loses her confidence midway. He looks to Nozaki. “Isn’t what?”

Nozaki’s lips thin for a moment’s pause, but he seems to have a bit more stomach than Sakura right now, so he ploughs through it. “You know how you’ve been pretending you’re a girl to her?”

“Yeah?” Mikorin says blankly, and then he thinks about it, and then it clicks. “Oh. Oh no. You’re joking.”

“I don’t have that kind of sense of humour,” Nozaki says baldly, and he’s right, and no wonder they were looking at him like they expected him to burst into tears before they were finished with him.

This time, Mikorin does bury his face in his hands. “I can’t believe this… I said so much mushy shit to her – I mean him – I mean, shit!” It’s a lot to process, and he feels like the gears are jammed. Mikorin knows that he’s more than a little attracted to guys, but he’d never considered actually dating one, and now here he is completely adoring a dude without even realising it. Mikorin has to wonder, too, what his reason for lying was.

“This is such a fucked-up twist of fate,” he groans. Although a lazy, sweet, judo obsessed guy doesn’t sound bad either, Mikorin thinks, and then freezes. Physically and mentally. Slowly, mechanically, he takes his hands away from his face, and looks to Nozaki as if he’s his last hope.

“It’s Mayu, isn’t it,” Mikorin says, and Nozaki’s mouth twists in an attempt at a consoling smile, and he nods.

At hour twenty-eight of The Great Panic, Mikorin still hasn’t decided what to do. The fact that it turns out that he has a crush on Mayu isn’t his problem anymore; it’s more what he’s going to do about it, and if, in fact, doing anything would even work out.

He really wants it to work out.

Mayu has always made him feel a bit wobbly. He’s quiet and handsome and comfortable, and Mikorin keeps remembering Mayu standing in front of him saying ‘He’s mine’ and nearly bursting into flames at the thought that he could make that real. And as far as Nozaki told him, he really could; he thinks that Mayu has given every indication that he’s interested in guys, and Mikorin has to agree.

Whether Mayu is interested in him is another question entirely, even if he does like Mamiko. Because the truth is, Mikorin censors himself a lot in his texts, which makes the chances of Mayu finding out who he’s been texting and saying, ‘Actually, I’d like to pass,’ that much higher.

Although, how is he supposed to do this in the first place? Just get Mayu on his own and say, ‘It was I, Mikoshiba!’? Or maybe he could ask Sakura to be there, because she’s very helpful and understands his anxiety pretty well. Would that make him a coward? Quite possibly, but if that’s the price he pays for Not Hyperventilating, Mikorin thinks he’ll take it, thank you very much.

There’s always the option of calling Mayu out as Mamiko, too – saying something like ‘I want to meet you’, but Mikorin figures if he does that, it’ll get messy and he’s a bad actor anyway.

So he’s most likely going to go with Course B, but he’s still pissing himself at the very possibility of being rejected. Mikorin wonders if there’s a way of statistically predicting that.

The next day is a Friday, and he and Nozaki are halfway to Nozaki’s apartment when Nozaki says suddenly, “By the way, Mayu’s coming over today.”

Nozaki grabs the back of his shirt before he can successfully run in the other direction. Freakin’ ex-basketball-player reflexes, Mikorin fumes, if this was Sakura there would have at least been a chase!

“Hey,” Nozaki says, “what are you doing? You can’t just avoid him.”

“Sure I can,” Mikorin grumbles, tugging his shirt back into place. “I’m not ready to see him yet. Do you realise I’ve had to text him like everything’s normal? If he sees me he’ll know something’s up.”

“I think you’re giving him too much credit,” Nozaki says wearily. “He’ll probably just be sleeping, you know.”

“Still,” Mikorin says, “just being around him is gonna make me nervous.” He kind of knows what he wants to do, but he’s thinking, like, a week from now, when he’s had time to… well, when he’s had time. “Say, is Sakura coming today?”

“Hm? No, she’s gone to the art club, I think,” Nozaki says, and Mikorin immediately whips his phone out and sends her a message that says sos nozaki’s mayu gnna b there and figures she’ll understand.

Nozaki is giving him a flat, almost betrayed look. “So I’m not good enough?”

“It’s not like that,” Mikorin says, even though it kind of is, and doesn’t expand on it. A thought occurs to him, and Mikorin whips his head around to pin Nozaki with a hard stare. “Hey. You aren’t going to try and use this for your manga, are you?”

Nozaki looks away from him. “Well…”

Mikorin grabs the front of his shirt and shakes him. “You aren’t going to use this for your manga, are you!”

“No! I won’t!” Nozaki says, hands up, and Mikorin lets him go. “To tell you the truth, I wanted to do something more dramatic than just telling you what was going on, but Sakura talked me out of it."

“And you wonder why I need her!”

In the end he drags his feet all the way to Nozaki’s place, partly because he feels like he has no choice, and partly because despite his protests, he wants to see Mayu. Their conversations since The Realisation have been normal, and Mikorin thinks he’s playing it cool, but that’s because Mayu can’t see him getting stupidly embarrassed every time his phone goes off. The fact that Mikorin has looked at himself and said ‘I like Mayu’ seems to have increased the intensity of his feelings, and it’s a frankly a little ridiculous.

What else is ridiculous is the way that Nozaki’s apartment seems as intimidating and dangerous as a dragon’s lair.

“It’s going to be fine,” Nozaki tells him, entirely unconvincingly. “It’s not like he’s going to be able to tell.”

“I guess…” Mikorin says, but he can vividly imagine Mayu sensing it and immediately going all ‘the power of Christ compels you’ on him. He shudders.

When they reach Nozaki’s floor, they find Mayu sitting outside Nozaki’s place with a gray cat on his lap and Mikorin is instantly deceased. “He came up to me,” Mayu says by way of explanation, stroking it absently. He stands, picking the cat up as he goes, and it meows in apparent protest.

Nozaki’s cooing and patting the thing without a moment gone to waste. “He’s soft,” Nozaki says, turning to Mikorin and looking far too happy. Past him, Mayu is watching him with dark eyes, making Mikorin feel like his heart is swelling up and pushing against his ribcage.

“Mikoto-san,” Mayu says quietly, and he moves almost subconsciously to his side to pat the cat currently draped over Mayu’s shoulder.

It is soft, and Mikorin focusses on it to avoid looking at Mayu. “Hello,” he says as he scratches its head, feeling particularly foolish. The cat pushes up into his hand and he can’t help grinning and glancing at Mayu, who is watching him with a shadow of a smile that makes something just south of his heart convulse distractingly.

“We should leave it out here,” Nozaki says, effectively ruining the moment. “It probably wandered out of someone’s apartment or something.”

After Mayu puts it down, the cat winds around his legs once, then slinks away as if he knows his time is up. They go inside, and Mayu heads straight for the kitchen, ostensibly to find something to eat, and Mikorin goes to the bathroom to have a minute to himself. He takes longer than is really required, and by the time he’s out, Mayu is asleep on the floor and Sakura is bursting through the front door, chest heaving and eyes wild.

“Mikorin!!” She rushes over to him, and he shushes her, pointing at Mayu’s prone form.

“It’s fine,” he tells her quietly. “I don’t know how you handle this, though. It’s been five minutes and I’ve nearly had a heart attack.”

“Don’t know how she handles what?” Nozaki asks, wandering out of the kitchen, stirring something in a mixing bowl.

Sakura laughs forcibly and says, “Nothing!” in such a false way that it’s really a miracle she’s made it this far without Nozaki figuring it out. The man himself just shrugs.

“Okay, well, I’m making banana pancakes if you want some.”

Hopeless, Mikorin thinks, while Sakura cheers and follows Nozaki back to the kitchen. Mikorin goes to follow them, then pauses, looking back at Mayu. He looks pretty much the same asleep as he does awake; he’s curled up a little, head on a cushion, his hair falling into his eyes. Mikorin really likes his hair, always has, honestly; it makes him look intense, serious.

He’s beautiful, Mikorin thinks, then turns completely red in a split-second. He hurries into the kitchen for his own wellbeing. Sakura and Nozaki are chatting when he bursts in, still furiously red, and says, “I can’t do this!”

“What’s wrong? What happened?” Sakura asks, looking concerned.

“He’s too cute!” Mikorin stage-whispers, and her face falls. Before she can say anything insulting like her expression tells him she wants to, Mikorin says, “Can I talk to you alone?” and leaves the room.

Sakura follows right behind him, because she’s a good friend, and Mikorin closes the bathroom door behind her. “Why are we in here?” she asks, right back at being concerned.

“Seriously, how do you do this? How do you look at him every day and not burst into flames?”

“Oh.” Sakura fidgets a little, looking thoughtful. “Well, at first I was pretty much like that… but by now I’m used to it, I suppose,” she says slowly. “Plus, I’ve known him longer than you’ve known Mayu-kun, so there’s that too…”

Mikorin makes a weak noise in his throat. “Okay. Alright. Then, uh, do you have any. You know. Advice? Or something?”

Smiling at him sympathetically, Sakura grabs him by the arms, and says, “Don’t worry, Mikorin, you can do this! Just focus on what’s happening and don’t build him up too much in your head. Remember, he’s just a person.”

“Sakura,” he smiles at her, feeling his eyes water, “that doesn’t help at all.”

Beginning to freak out, and probably worrying (justifiably) that he’s about to burst into tears, Sakura seems to glitch and says, a little too loudly, “That’s all I’ve got, so just accept it!”

“Fine!” Mikorin says, tone changing in response to her frustration. Somehow, her getting annoyed with him is helping Mikorin calm down. “I’m still kinda scared, though, y’know?”

Sakura grabs his arms again and meets his eyes, solemn and dead serious. “Mikorin, I’m saying this because I love you: toughen up. Be your own heroine. Would Mamiko act like this? Would she?”

“Yeah,” Mikorin says, confused, “she would and she has.”

“Bad example,” Sakura mutters. “But when she does, how do you feel?”

He frowns, and answers slowly, staring just past one of her ribbons. “Frustrated, I guess… Because it’s obvious Suzuki likes her, and it’d be easier if they just talked to each other. Hang on, Sakura–“

“I’m not saying that you have to do it right now,” she says quickly, “but there’s no reason to panic, okay? He’s just Mayu.”

Huffing out a sigh, Mikorin says, “You’re probably right… Okay. Yeah.”

“Good,” Sakura says, “but, Mikorin, if this is how you feel now, you might want to talk to him sooner rather than later.”

She has a point; Mayu has been coming to Nozaki’s place more and more, and there’s only so many times he can ask Sakura to help him like this. Mikorin thinks that he’ll probably always be nervous, no matter how long he waits, so he might as well avoid dragging it out. “Yeah, okay.”

“Just get it over with,” she continues intently, as if he hasn’t understood. “You don’t want to end up in my position.”

“Alright, alright!”

“Like a bandaid!” Her eyes are bright and she’s starting to get up in his face. Mikorin’s eye twitches.

“I get it already! What are you, my mum?!”

In the end, Mayu doesn’t wake up, and Mikorin spends a tense hour staring a hole through the homework he’s attempting to complete. Attempting, because he occasionally gets the shakes for no apparent reason other than his garbage DNA rebelling against him yet again. Sakura and Nozaki diligently do their homework alongside him, and he supposes it’s not so bad. The worst part is from time to time he ends up staring at Mayu and accidentally drifting off to Fantasy Land, imagining everything from Mayu (highly improbably) confessing to him, to how good it would feel to just sit with Mayu’s arm around him. When he returns to the present, Nozaki is watching him with a look in his eye that is a dangerous mixture of expectant and thoughtful.

Mikorin’s not afraid to shake him again, if that’s what it takes to keep his personal life out of Let’s Love.

That probably isn’t going to become an issue until next month, though, so for the time being he leaves the three of them with a wave and walks to the train station in the late afternoon sun. Once on the train, Mikorin stares at the blurred fence lines and the assorted graffiti that they entail and knows, as if he has no control over it, that he’s going to talk to Mayu tomorrow.

Which is very, very soon. But he’s about as ready as he’s ever going to get, even if the prospect does make jumping off a cliff seem incredibly enticing.

After typing up a message to Nozaki asking him to confirm that Mayu is in fact staying the weekend, Mikorin spends four minutes pacing around his house before actually pressing send. The reply takes a while, and every second feels like a step towards the gallows. Mikorin can even imagine the townspeople eyeing him in distaste. But there’s no excuses; Mayu is still there, and he’s made up his mind, so Mikorin grabs his phone and his wallet and tells his mum he’s going out for a while.

On the way over, all he can seem to think is that this isn’t the kind of thing he does. Mikorin’s still scared; resolve hasn’t bought him any courage, and his legs don’t feel normal, like they’re robotic attachments that he has not control over. Feeling himself edging closer to backing out by the minute, he does the entirely reasonable thing to do in a panic: frantically phone a friend.

Sakura answers as her normal, bubbly self, and the fact that she doesn’t know that the world is falling apart somehow makes it worse. When he starts babbling immediately, Sakura shouts at him to slow down, and Mikorin takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“I was going to talk to Mayu about The Situation today because I don’t think I can stand putting it off but I’m on the way now and I’m really scared because I know it can’t possibly work out the way I want it to and I think I just can’t do it, Sakura, I think I’m gonna throw up if I do and honestly I feel kind of like the lowest scum in the world and I just needed to talk to you okay?”

There’s a long pause, and Mikorin breathes shallow and quick, torn between hyperventilating and just straight up bursting into tears. When Sakura talks, it’s slow and careful. “Okay, Mikorin, it’s okay. Take a deep breath.” Like that’ll fix anything, Mikorin thinks hysterically, but he does it anyway, and Sakura keeps talking. “Where are you right now?”

“Going past the park.”

“Okay, can you go sit down somewhere? Maybe in the shade? Just so we can talk?”

He does as she says, sitting at a picnic table under a tree, breathing more normally now, and already feels a bit calmer. “It’s not, like, that bad I guess, but I’m really… I dunno what he’s gonna say, you know?”

“I know,” Sakura sighs, “but he’s just a person. Actually, since it’s Mayu-kun, I’d say it won’t go badly? Because nothing really fazes him and he likes you anyway. As a friend, I mean.”

“You’re probably right,” Mikorin sighs and slumps forward a bit. “And I guess I can just talk about the texting first and then decide if I should… you know, confess or whatever,” he trails off, getting embarrassed.

Neither of them talks for a minute, and Mikorin stares into the middle distance, phone still pressed to his ear. He’s still scared, but he thinks he’s okay with it; he’s not going to die, and it’s not as if Mayu is going to freak out and claw his face off, or judo-throw him into the pond. He’s going to get through it, one way or another.

Eventually, Sakura says quietly, “You’ll be okay, Mikorin.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Thanks, Sakura. Sorry for calling you like this.”

She tells him not to apologise, and they hang up. Really, Mikorin thinks as he gets up and keeps going, he’s pretty lucky to have a friend like her who’s so supportive of him. Even Nozaki has been really good about the whole thing, even though he clearly wants to mine the situation for all it’s worth. He’s sure Kashima would have told him to go for it as well, if he hadn’t been too certain that she’d try to take control of the whole thing to mention it to her.

They all believe in him; he’s going to be fine; there’s an absolute zero per cent chance of dropping dead. He keeps walking.

Standing in front of Nozaki’s door, Mikorin thinks that when he first started helping out with the guy’s manga, he’d never have imagined it would turn out like this. That he’d have a crush on Nozaki’s brother, sure, but more than that, he hadn’t expected to make such weird, supportive friends. Mikorin complains about them all, but he’s happier now.

And there’s really only one way he could be happier. Mikorin wipes his awful hand-sweat off on his jeans and knocks.

Nozaki opens the door with an easy, “Oh, Mikoshiba, what’s up?”

“I, um.” Mikorin clears his throat, unable to look his friend in the eye. “I’m gonna talk to Mayu.”

“Ooh, okay,” Nozaki says, failing to grasp the gravity of the situation. “Question: would you be offended if I made popcorn?”

“Of course I would!” Mikorin bristles, regaining the once-legendary ability of platonic eye-contact and beginning to do a 180 on his earlier thoughts. “This is going to be hard enough without you sitting there like it’s a spectator sport!”

Nozaki wilts like steamed cabbage. It’s pathetic, but Mikorin can’t seem to find it in him to care. “Oh. Okay. So you want me to clear out?”

“No,” Mikorin sighs, scratching the back of his head nervously, “I think we’ll go for a walk, or something…”

Nozaki eyes him in a way he can’t read, then says, “Well, good luck. He’s in here watching TV.” Nozaki turns back in, holding the door open for Mikorin and closing it behind him. Stuffing his hands in his pockets, Mikorin sees what Nozaki means by ‘good luck’. Mayu is stretched out on the floor looking remarkably similar to a murder victim.

Mayu looks away from the drama re-run he’s been absorbed in for god knows how long to say, quietly, “Oh, Mikoto-san.”

“Uh, hi,” Mikorin says, feeling more awkward than he ever has before, which is a feat which he doubts has been bested in recent history. Glancing around, he sees Nozaki vanish into the kitchen, and fumes internally. Of all the times to get considerate…

“Working?” Mayu asks in that shorthand way of his, either not noticing that Mikorin is acting weird or too tired to care. Mikorin stares at him blankly for a few painful seconds before he gets it.

“Oh, nah. I’m, actually, ah.” Mikorin knew this was going to be hard, of course he did, but somehow he hadn’t expected to feel as if he wasn’t actually in the room. He takes his hands out of his pockets, wipes them on his jeans, and crosses his arms, fully aware that he’s stalling for time. Just get on with it, moron, he thinks at himself, and says, “I actually came to see you.”

Mayu sits up at this, and Mikorin feels bizarrely accomplished. “Why?” is all he says, plain and simple why, and Mikorin is struck by the fact that he hasn’t really prepared for this.

“I, um, have to talk to you about something,” Mikorin says; it’s the best he can do and he wishes, not for the first time, that he hadn’t been born so perpetually awkward. At this point he’s like an overgrown Bambi and it stopped being cute when his voice broke.

“Okay,” Mayu says, looking straight at him in an attentive way that Mikorin can’t handle at this exact moment.

He fixates at the bookshelf behind Mayu instead, and all the shoujo manga lined up there seem to be mocking him like a heckling crowd of ridiculously cute girls. Trying to ignore the fact that he’s being slighted by inanimate objects again, Mikorin says, “Um, no, not – not here? Can we go for a walk?”

Mayu gives him a pathetic pained look and Mikorin tacks on irritably, “I’ll buy you a drink or something, okay?”

The look he gives Mikorin then is strange, and it reminds him eerily of how Nozaki had looked at him just a minute ago. Before he can start to feel any weirder about his feelings, Mayu huffs and stands up. Heading to the doorway, he looks back, an afterthought, and says, “Brother.”

Mikorin waves him off, “Yeah, I’ll let him know.”

When Mikorin opens the kitchen door, Nozaki tries very hard to pretend he hasn’t been pressed up against it. Mikorin gives him a betrayed look and Nozaki clears his throat and avoids his eyes.

After Mikorin tells him they’re going, Nozaki gives up pretending he doesn’t know anything and says, “You’re doing well, Mikoshiba.”

“No I’m not,” Mikorin sighs, “but it’s fine, I guess.”

“You can do it,” Nozaki tells him, somehow managing to be uncharacteristically serious. “I believe in you,” he says, and then in a highly rare and somewhat uncomfortable display of affection, hugs him briefly; Mikorin, feeling moved and vulnerable, pats him awkwardly on the back and tries not to suffocate in Nozaki’s shirt.

“Um, thanks,” Mikorin says, embarrassed, when Nozaki lets him go. “Well, anyway, I’m gonna…”

“Yeah, okay,” Nozaki says in a slightly forced breezy manner that does nothing to dispel the emotionally charged mood, “I’ll, uh, be here, I guess.”

“Right.” He lingers for a second, with the sense that there’s something else that needs to be said, but Nozaki’s face is about as bland as ever and all Mikorin can think about is how he’s already got the anxious sweats. “Right,” he says, with more finality, and heads out of the kitchen with the distinct sense that he’s just left the trenches.

Mayu’s waiting in the entryway, shoes already on, leant up against the wall like he can’t even bear to hold his own weight. His eyes slide over and meet Mikorin’s, and, flustered, he just nods at him in a move that he’s sure is spectacularly Not Cool and ducks down to hastily shove his feet into his shoes. They head out the door and into the lift and out onto the street in silence – Mayu’s, serene, and Mikorin’s very much not so.

It’s not until they get to the vending machine along the street next to the park that Mikorin speaks up to ask Mayu if he wants a drink.

Mayu hums. “…Coffee, probably,” he says, like he reluctantly requires the caffeine. Mikorin thinks that if he had even a sip of coffee he’d probably suffer heart failure due to the amount of adrenaline already flooding his system. He may still suffer heart failure, God willing. He gets strawberry milk instead and wonders if Mayu is the kind of person to judge other people’s drink choices; his expression is usually so placid that Mikorin can’t help but conspire that it’s all a front, though he is fully aware that he’s edging on paranoia.

They wind into the park under the cover of old, leafy trees that arch over the neatly trimmed path. With Mikorin wondering how in the hell he’s supposed to start this and Mayu sipping on his coffee like it’s a valuable substance, Mayu says, “Um, not to rush you, Mikoto-san,” though the fact that he’s putting energy into speaking suggests growing frustration, “but what did you want to talk about?”

He makes an indistinguishable noise in his throat and gestures at the picnic table that overlooks the pond – the same one he’d been freaking out at earlier. Swallowing thickly, Mikorin sits and places his drink over a gap in the timber slats of the table, straddling the distance.

“Well. About that,” he starts, unable to look directly at Mayu for more than a moment, his body on an off-kilter autopilot. Abruptly, Mikorin understands why Sakura and Nozaki had such a hard time articulating themselves; the situation is a twisted real-life Operation game, and no one wants to be the one to screw up. Mikorin glances up at Mayu – dark hair brushing his cheekbones, attention all on him, Mayu – and sighs.

“Well,” he tries again, taking his phone out of his back pocket and opening his messaging app, “basically, your big bro figured something out recently that involves both of us.” Tapping the all too familiar mayumayu♡ log, he flips the phone around and hands it to Mayu.

“What’s this?” he asks ineffectually, thumbing at the screen for a few moments before his eyes widen (something which is likely the highest display of emotion Mikorin has seen from him yet). Mayu’s gaze flicks back up to him, and Mikorin shifts uncomfortably. “Where did you get this phone?” he asks, tone sharpening.

“That’s my phone, genius,” Mikorin says, which, okay, probably not the greatest way to sweet-talk the guy you like. Give him points for trying.

Mayu looks at the phone. “Oh,” he says. He looks back to Mikorin, and then back to the phone. “Oh,” he says.

“Yeah, oh,” Mikorin leans forward on his elbows, glad he’s not the only one who’s flustered. “Basically, I liked your art and I thought it would be weird for a high school guy to try and talk to a middle school girl about that kind of art so… here we are.”

“Okay,” Mayu says, clicking the phone’s screen off, placing it on the sun-dappled picnic table, and pushing it back across to him in simple, fine movements. “If you want my reason, it’s that everyone was focussing on throws.”

Mikorin pauses midway through putting his phone back in his pocket and stares at Mayu. “Excuse me?”

Mayu sighs, obviously annoyed at his failure to dive down that particular labyrinth of extrapolation. “In my club. No one was practicing grappling because they didn’t think it was cool, so I tried to find a way to get them interested. Kobayashi started the blog in the beginning – he’s the one who made me a girl.”

I think you said that wrong, Mikorin thinks, amused; he can’t help it – he laughs. “You’re kidding. So the whole thing was about winning tournaments?”

With a look of disdain, Mayu says, “That’s all anything is about, Mikoto-san,” and Mikorin smothers another laugh, feeling entirely like a stupid teenager.

“Sure it is.” There’s a lull, and he takes a drink of his milk, which is sweating and barely cold enough by this point. Mayu drains the rest of his can of coffee, and Mikorin kind of wishes he could just leave it there – say, Okay, good talk, and book it home. But he’s caught up in the momentum now, and it’s whispering him sweet reassurances, turning that adrenaline that gives him the shakes into a driving force.

So he says, his mind floating two steps behind his physical body, “There’s, uh, something else, too.”

“Okay,” Mayu says again, his hands in his lap under the table, and Mikorin thinks, you know, I like you, I really do, but can’t you help me out even a little bit? He hasn’t really been expecting anything different, though, so it’s basically like complaining about a hangover. Not that he’s ever had one, but: you put yourself here, so suck it up.

He remembers something Mayu said once, over text – if everyone just said what they meant everything would be a lot easier. It doesn’t hold true to every situation, of course, but right now it gives Mikorin some sorely-needed courage.

“Uh,” he scratches the back of his neck, “well, you know, we’ve talked a lot, and…” Mikorin looks to the side, short fingernails digging into the skin at the base of his neck. “…I like you.”

As he says it, Mikorin feels as though someone else is controlling his mouth. He’s scared – almost every part of him is telling him that he’s made a huge mistake. He watches a pigeon pick at the ground rather than look directly at Mayu, as if the guy is a trip wire he needs to avoid so he doesn’t get caught. But–

“That’s good,” Mayu says, calm as ever; Mikorin looks at him, sharp and anxious, to find Mayu’s eyes on him still, even and measured. “Me too. Actually, liking both of you was getting exhausting, so I’m glad it’s like this.”

“You – hang on – what?”

“I thought it was fairly obvious.”

“How?”

“Mikoto-san,” Mayu says, quite seriously, “I walked here.”

“Ah.”

“Indeed.”

For a moment, there’s just the sound of the ducks in the pond quacking, and Mikorin feels like this isn’t actually happening, but in a very good way, for once. “Can we go back now?” Mayu asks, and Mikorin snorts.

“Sure.”

They get up, and as they head off Mayu takes his hand without question. Mikorin is almost definitely going to suffer heart failure. He’s smiling uncontrollably, warm all over, and walks just a little bit closer to Mayu’s side.

“What do you want to do for our first date?” Mayu asks idly, and Mikorin is too happy to comment on his apparent lack of enthusiasm.

“I dunno… we could see a movie?” Honestly, he thinks they could watch grass grow and he’d have a good time, but he keeps that to himself.

“I like movies,” Mayu says, “can I pick it?”

“Won’t you just sleep anyway?”

Mayu is giving him that disdainful look again when Mikorin glances up at him. “Not on a date, Mikoto-san.”

“We’ll see about that,” Mikorin says, grinning, because he can.

And they did.

But before that – on return to Nozaki’s apartment, Mikorin is cornered by a bear-like Nozaki brandishing a notepad and a gleam in his eye. Nozaki gets shaken again.

#gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun #mikoshiba mikoto #nozaki mayu #mayumiko #i haven't posted in 84 years my guy

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