#samaritan blues

[blasphemlm]

I'm writing western!ZoSan cause I have a cowboy kink and also I think Zoro would be the funniest goddamn cowboy you've ever seen. He's so competent and can wrangle even the most stubborn steer. He gets lost going to the barn. He shows up six towns over and ends up seducing the restaurant owner's adopted son. He get lost again.

[cinnamorollcrybaby]

Had a thought: reader has a hand-print bruise on their arm — like they stumbled and were caught or pulled out of the way of a curse or smth and the helper accidentally left a bruise when they grabbed reader. Jjk men see it b4 reader can / thinks to tell them so they just see a clearly-handprint bruise with zero context 🙃

Hand Print

Tags: Drabble, Fluff, JJK men getting angry, JJK men getting protective 🫦, smut (Suguru’s, Choso’s, and kinda Sukuna’s), dark content on Mahito’s, mdni

Incl: Satoru, Suguru, Nanami, Choso, Toji, Sukuna, Mahito

SATORU

You had forgotten it even happened. Silly, clumsy you — nearly falling while exiting the subway onto the station platform. Thankfully, that good samaritan was right behind you.

His hand clasped onto your upper arm tightly as he pulled you back up to your feet to find your balance. You didn’t even give it much thought-! You thanked him and went on about your day.

Satoru’s six eyes can immediately spot the bruise before you’ve even taken off your coat after getting home.

“Baby —“ Satoru’s voice was bone chilling when he spoke. He’s normally got such a happy tone, but when he uses that baritone that comes out during fights, you’re frozen out of fear.

“Wha..?” You weren’t even able to get your words out before Satoru has your arm up in the air. His eyes wandering over the bruise that was wrapped around your upper arm.

“Who the fuck touched you?” His heart is slamming into his ribcage. He doesn’t know what happened, but he knew enough. You were hurt, and he wasn’t there to protect you.

He wishes he could extend his infinity out to you at all times, but even he has limits unfortunately.

“Satoru- My arm-“ You whine while your lofty boyfriend with his abnormally long limbs is nearly holding you up by your wrist. You looked pitiful — dangling from his grip.

“Who.” He demands again, and those stormy blue eyes meet yours. His mind is racing — thinking of who he’s going to kill. Will he snuff them out like a cigarette with his infinity? Or maybe he blow a whole in them with hollow purple. Maybe he could figure out a new technique to rip them in half on an atomic level.

“It was an accident!” You cry as you try to pull your arm aways from his unrelenting grip. “I was about to fall off the subway, and this guy grabbed me so I didn’t fall and break my neck.”

Satoru’s face stays cold, and his eyes look back at the obvious handprint bruise on your arm. Judging by the way it’s awkwardly positioned, he knows you’re telling the truth.

“Oh! Well baby, why didn’t you just say that?” Your entirely too happy boyfriend is immediately back with a coy grin as if he wasn’t just fantasizing about murder. “You got to be more careful when getting off the subway, silly goose.” His finger lightly thump you on the forehead.

SUGURU

You’ve always been so clumsy your entire life: tripping over your own feet, bumping into the corners of tables and walls, accidentally stubbing your toe, the list goes on…

You were racing down the broken escalator at the mall to try to get to your favorite store before it closed for the day. You were just so focused on getting to your destination that you weren’t paying attention to ahead of you.

You barrel straight into this guy who miraculously grabs onto you and the railing before both of you take a nasty fall. The two of you pant in each other’s arms for just a moment before you’re backing away — professing your deepest apologies for not being more careful. The guy just awkwardly smiles and waves you on, knowing you were probably trying to get to a specific store.

You didn’t even think about the little incident afterwards. You have so many “near misses” in a day that you just completely black them out.

Suguru’s lips are clasped to your neck, giving you sloppy kisses right on the sweet spot of your neck.

“Fuuuck, pretty girl… can never get tired of this pussy.” He groans softly into your ear. Both of you are so lost in each other, feeling your essences mix with each time his massive cock slips into your clammy entrance. You’re practically sucking him in at this point — greedyyy.

“Sugu- Ah~!” You’re breathy as your hand reaches up to clasp the pillow behind you. The way your pussy flutters around him as you’re nth orgasm is about to take over has him nearly seeing stars.

Nearly.

His eyes normally focus on you while he fucks you until you’re nothing more than a puddle in his arms, but right now, that damn bruise has his attention.

“What fucking monkey touched you?” He asks in a low growl before he’s pinning both your arms above your head. He slips his cock out of you — eliciting a frustrated whine from edging you.

His eyes are too busy scoping out the rest of your body. How did he miss the fresh bruise that was so blatantly displayed on your arm.

“Sugu..” You whine — still mindless and cockdrunk. Your thighs part as you try to seduce him back between your legs.

“Hey.” He snaps his fingers in front of your eyes. “I need my girlfriend right now — not my slut. Who touched you?”

“What are you talkin’ about?” You lazily whine as you look over towards your arm, and you think for a moment of how the bruise must’ve gotten there..

“Which fucking monkey touched you?” He grits again. His temper is only building. How were you unable to remember who touched you?

“Hmm.. oh! I was running down those broken escalators at the mall, and I nearly sent me and this guy down the entire flight. Thankfully, he was able to grab us both.�� You’re finally able to recount the memory to Geto.

Your poor stressed boyfriend pinches the bridge of his nose. He instantly knows that you’re telling the truth because this is just so damn like you.

“What have I told you about being aware of your surroundings? Now you’re going to make me have to punish you.”

Great! Now you’re not getting to finish at all tonight! :(

NANAMI

It was another normal Sunday evening in your home. The lights were turned down low, and the curtains were drawn so the golden hour sun could pool into the kitchen and dining room. You and Ken were listening to your playlist while cooking dinner together.

Cooking dinner with Nanami wasn’t like some normal, ordinary task. Cooking with him was almost as intimate as having sex with him — the way his hands so carefully massaged into your hips. Your back was pressed flush against his toned chest, and his chin was either resting on yours or resting on your shoulder.

He wasn’t dead weight either. Nanami could cook his ass off. You were the one who needed the extra help, so right now, Nanami was guiding your hands on how to perfectly and evenly chop zucchini.

His eyes grazed over your hands, taking in your form to see if he needed to correct you in any way. That’s when he saw the bruise peaking out from underneath your shirt sleeve.

Nanami’s hand is quick, and he swiftly disarms you so you don’t accidentally cut yourself before he tugs your arm sleeve. His usually calm face slowly twisted into a scowl.

“Who did that to you?” He asks lowly with an intimidating glare. Of course, he’s not mad at you, but he is mad that someone touched his wife.

“What…?” You ask with a small pout, not knowing what he was talking about in the slightest. You had clearly forgotten about that nice stranger who pulled you back onto the sidewalk when a car decided to ignore the pedestrian walking symbol. They had saved your life.

“The name of the person who grabbed you.” Nanami demands as he gestures to your marked up wrist. “Now.”

“I- wait, Ken… That’s not what it looks like…” You try to explain with a small frown.

“Then please, do tell me what it is before I go find them for myself.”

When you explained to him that the person who grabbed you actually saved you from severe injury, Nanami let out a sigh — partially of relief and partially of stress.

He brings your wrist up to his mouth before he places light kisses around the bruise. “You have to be more careful, darling… I need you here with me.”

CHOSO

Yuji was the one to grab you harshly and pull you back, creating that nasty bruise on your arm. He really didn’t mean to grab you so hard!! He just forgets his superhuman strength sometimes.

You were about to run into someone while at the school. Yuji was just trying to be a good brother-in-law and protect you. He was nearly in tears when he saw the huge handprint on your arm.

“Please don’t tell Choso. He’ll kill me if he finds out! Please! Say you swear!” He pleads as he clasps his hands together and grovels at your feet.

You tried reassuring him that his brother wasn’t going to kill him, but Yuji wouldn’t rest until you promised not to tell.

“Hi baby.” Choso greets you as usual, pressing a chaste kiss to your temple as he casually strolls towards the bathroom to shower. He’s glistening with sweat from training with Yuki and Todo all day.

“Mm! Wait for me!” You call out, trailing behind him like a horny dog (it’s okay girl me too). Choso happily waits for you in the shower. His dark hair comes down to his shoulders as he lets his hair down and steps into the hot water, immediately rinsing his body of the filth and grime.

“Missed you, baby.” He hums as he slowly corners you against the shower wall. His hand gently cups your chin to press a passionate kiss to your lips.

You softly giggle as you feel something already poking at your leg. “So sensitive~” You tease as you go to wrap your hand around his length.

Choso quickly grabs your arm, going to pin it above your head. He wanted to touch you first. You’re always taking care of him. He wanted to return the favor.

When you softly hiss in response due to him pressing on your bruise, he freezes. “Are you okay? Did I do something wrong?”

“No- no, you did nothing.” You try to reassure him with a wave of your hands. Your bruise catches his eye.

“Did I- Did I do that?” He immediately asks as he takes your arm and cradles it gently into his oversized hands. His face slowly shifts to a guilty pout.

Your eyes widen as you realize your poor boyfriend doesn’t understand the concept of human bruising. He truly thinks he grabbed you so hard that your skin immediately started to bruise.

“No, nonono, baby, you didn’t do that. ‘s okay.” You go to reassure him, gently holding your hand to his cheek, brushing your thumb over the small tattoos under his eyes.

“Then… who did?” His voice shifts to a less panicked one, and his gaze hardens slightly.

Your heart skips a beat as you realize just how quickly he can turn on that more dominant, powerful side of him. “Uh.. well.. it was an accident.. We shouldn’t go on a witch hunt or anything like that…”

“Right. Who grabbed you so hard that they left a mark on you?” He doesn’t relent, towering over you with such an unamused gaze. His eyes are angry while staring at you.

“You have to promise me you won’t hurt him, Cho. It was really an accident. He was trying to save me.”

Choso stays quiet. He’s learned not to make promises that he can’t keep, and all of his thoughts are about how he was going to hurt this mysterious guy who laid a hand on you.

“Choso… It was Yuji. He was trying to keep me from running into somebody! He didn’t mean to hurt me-“

Your boyfriend’s face shifts to one of surprise. He didn’t expect Yuji to be the culprit of the bruise on your arm. His eyes flick over to the bruise, and he lets out a hefty sigh.

“Sometimes… older brothers have to be the one to teach hard lessons…”

“Choso, it was an accident.”

TOJI

“Mmm.. shit…” Toji hums before he goes in for another bite. You watch him with a playful gaze. He always gets so hungry after a completed hit, and when the job takes more than one day, he misses your cooking almost as much as he misses you.

“Toji, slow down. No one’s going to take your food from you.” You gently chide with a laugh. Little three-year-old Megumi is in his high chair, eating like an animal because he’s mimicking daddy.

You’re happy that your husband appreciates your cooking because you did nearly die while trying to get the ingredients to make this stupid dinner.

You were in the parking lot of the grocery store with Megumi in your arms, and while walking towards the store’s entrance, a car nearly backed over you and the small child in your arms.

Thankfully, a stranger was behind you, and he was fast enough to yank you and Megumi back away from the car. It was honestly a miracle that you and Megumi made it completely unscathed.

Well, almost unscathed. You did have a pretty nasty bruise on your hip where the stranger grabbed you with such strength.

“Look at what kind of table manners you’re teaching your son.” You continue on while wiping Megumi’s face clean with a baby wipe. The small child whines and tries to break free from your grasp.

“Can’t help it, doll. Your cooking’s too good.” Toji finally lifts his head up from his plate, and with almost lazer focus, he immediately notices the bruise on your hip due to your shirt hiking up a bit since you’re bent over dealing with Megumi.

“What the fuck happened?” He immediately asks, gesturing his fork towards the bruise on your hip. “Did some fuck touch you?”

You look at him with a hint of confusion for a second, but as soon as you look down and see the bruise, you immediately remember the event that transpired earlier today.

“I-“

You don’t even get the next word out before Toji’s on you, lifting your shirt up to see the perfectly drawn out handprint bruised into your pretty skin. The scar on his lips twitch in frustration, and your heart begins to stutter — understanding exactly what it looks like.

“Toji-“

“What the fuck happened?” His voice is a low grumble as he eyes you closely. He’s itching to hear a name — someone to kill for touching you like that. Only he gets to touch you there.

Your words are choked up in your throat, misunderstanding Toji’s possessiveness for anger towards you. You can’t even think of what to say before your son speaks up for you.

“Mama and I saved by a man!” Megumi shouts, looking up at his dad, even your toddler understood the gravity of the situation.

“Saved?” Toji questions as he shifts his gaze over to Megumi with a raised eyebrow — still angry but albeit a little amused.

“Yeah! Car almost hit mama and me! The man grabbed us to save us.” Your toddler explains it as if it’s a fond memory for him.

Your eyes meet Toji’s, and you nod your head slightly, agreeing with your son. “I was going into the market, and a car nearly backed over Megumi and I. The guy grabbed us up before it completely hit us.”

Toji takes a big breath, and his large palm finds the back of your head, guiding you to lie on his chest for moment. He just needs to he close to you after the gymnastics his brain just did.

“Christ, mama. Don’t worry me like that.” He mumbles lowly before pressing a kiss onto your forehead.

“Daddy, ew! Gross!”

SUKUNA

It was time for nightly worship for you and the other concubines, except here recently, it’s only been you attending nightly worship. The concubines had been dropping like flies recently… like actually dropping dead.

Why would Sukuna need concubines when you were already his most devout follower? Not to mention, he immediately made up his mind once he felt your precious cunt for the first time — so fucking tight and wet, begging to be bred by him — he didn’t need anyone else. You were the solution to all of his problems. Hell, he might even give you his heir one day.

He was sat in his throne with a mere red and black silk robe covering his monstrous body. One of his hands was occupied with a chalice of… well, you don’t really want to know what he was sipping on.

His other oversized hand was tenderly resting on your head. His palm was as big as your head, covering the crown completely, while you had your chin propped up on his thigh — on your knees in front of him. This was his favorite sight. He could really appreciate your beauty when the other concubines weren’t making so much racket. It was the right decision to have them disposed of.

You’re so pliant with your head in his lap. He finds it amusing how comfortable you look before him — as if he isn’t the literal incarnate of evil. He almost finds you adorable like a small kitten.

“What are you thinking about, woman?” He asks, surprisingly breaking the silence between you two. He’s the type of man to value the quiet, and he hates small talk, but he can’t help but want to hear your voice.

“Hm?” You hum lazily, being broken out of your daydream. Your eyes meet his as you look up at him. “I’m just thinking about bedtime… It’s been an eventful day.” You answer softly before a yawn escapes you, earning a small snicker from Sukuna.

“You shall retire in my chambers tonight. Go dispose of your clothes and slip between the sheets. I’ll be in there in just a moment.” He pats your head, signaling you may get up now.

Scurrying off to Sukuna’s chambers, the King of Curses narrows his eyes. He could’ve swore he just saw a bruise on you, and it’s definitely not one that he left…

Once he was inside his chambers, his eyes rested upon your small, frail body. You looked so cute, curled up in his massive bed. He slips his robe off, revealing his sculpted body. He looks like more than a king. He’s no less than a god.

Slipping between the sheets so he can finally feel your flesh against his, Sukuna can’t help but check. One of his hands captures your arm, and he looks at it. A deep scowl forms on his face as he sees the mark of another on you.

“What fool dared to touch you?” He demands, blood pressure already rising.

“What-?” You ask a bit confused, but you’re quickly reminded when Sukuna presses down on the bruise, making it worse. He’s sick in the head, thinking that if he can’t remove the bruise from you, he’ll just make his own mark right on top of it-

“Ow-! Kuna-!” You whine as his thumb presses down firmer. “Why are you- oww! please! I’m sorry, my lord! The gardener was just trying to save me from tripping and falling-“

His hand releases. “The gardener, huh?” He muses before making a few hand symbols. You’ll never see that gardener again. He should’ve known better than you touch you. You watch Sukuna with a slightly fearful look, and Sukuna feels his stomach twist with detest.

“Don’t look at me like that. It displeases me.” He frowns when he notes your fear does not simply vanish. Releasing a tense breath, he carefully brings your arm up to his mouth, and he presses a gentle kiss to the darkening bruise on your arm. “I had to make my own mark. I forget how fragile you mortals are… I… apologize.”

MAHITO

His eyes were wide and filled with utter rage as he saw the bruise displayed on your arm. He didn’t know how to cope with these new… emotions. Mahito didn’t believe he could feel a thing such as jealousy until you came around, his pretty pet. you just didn’t know it yet.

His foot was tapping violently against the ground as he tried to think of a way to bring it up casually in front of the others. He didn’t need Kenjaku on his case again for “falling for you”… whatever that fucking meant.

“Did you have a run in with the sorcerers, pet?” He finally asks as you and Jogo are playing Mahjong.

You look down at your arm at the blue and purple bruise that was welping up on your skin, and you nod your head at Mahito’s question.

“One of them got me good… He barely touched me though, so it caught me off guard.” You finally respond, and Mahito feels his very soul light on fire. Another man dared to touch you? You? His pet?? Even worse, it was a sorcerer.

“Did you kill him?” Mahito asks as he has to place his hands underneath his thighs to keep from reaching out to grab you up. Last time he did that, Kenjaku threatened to swallow him up like an uzumaki, but he can’t help it. He constantly feels an overwhelming urge to just touch you. If he could, he’d merge your soul with his so you’d be bound to him for life.

“No… he got away before I could finish the job.” You pout as you place your next tile down on the playing board.

“What did he look like?” Mahito’s heart starts to race. The thought of killing the guy who dared to touch you is intoxicating. He wants to hear the man cry and beg for mercy. He wants to coat himself in the man’s blood then fuck you until you cry.

“Oh, um, he had pink fluffy hair, and a jujutsu tech uniform on with red sneakers.”

“You ran into Sukuna’s vessel, Yuji Itadori???” Kenjaku perks up from the newspaper he was reading, and he immediately stomps over to you, needing more information.

“Yuji Itadori…. I’ll kill him.” Mahito mumbles to himself before breaking out in a small laugh. The thought of it— it’s so euphoric.

[riaki]

ur highschool bully gojo was chefs kiss 💋 what do u think about them going to the same college and taking the same classes?? and the reader sitting next/talking to some other guy and satoru gets jealous?? arwahhhshdhshshs so many possibilities, i hope u continue writing it!!

hi nonnie !! thank you so much :) this is ur official part 2 ! i was struggling to think up some possibilities but this helped a lot :oo | read part 1 here ! -> cw: swearing, jealousy, i let it get fic length oops

(former) highschoolbully!gojo on the brain again… like. when you end up seeing him again however many months later, and you can tell that he’s changed. it’s not like its immediately obvious to anyone who doesn’t really know him like you (used to); but he’s a little softer-spoken and his smiles seem nine times more genuine. it’s not a hundred percent; the kind that really lights up his face instead of just barely falling short of his stark blue eyes, but it's something.

of course, you have nothing to base it off of, because when you do inevitably see him again it's the very definition of meet ugly.

college is a new frontier, but its also a clean slate. its your first time going into something so new without your old bestfriend at your side, but some faint flickering thought reminds you that it might be better that way. but the universe is against you from the very first day, when youre gettin yourself some coffee from the same chain you did the morning of that fateful presentation so many moons ago. you're too busy thinking to yourself what kind of strange parting ritual it is to relive your trauma to notice the lanky, white-haired boy who hits his head on the chiming bell over the doorway. people are giggling around you n sighing dreamily but youre too deep in the music pumping through your headphones to notice and your eyes are glued to the class schedule on your phone, trying to ensure you dont get lost on the first day when—

you blink and your ass is flat on the dirty floor of the coffee shop, and the first thing you register is that your stomach is soaked and burning. you'd spilled your coffee. it takes you a moment to realize, but when you do you're pissed. so you quickly get to your feet, trying to reign in what little of your ego you have left to give the offender who bumped into you a piece of your mind as you look up, then..

how unlucky do you have to be?

just like that, satoru's slid himself back into your life, after ramming through its locked gates. you forget that he always forgets the point of keys, both when it comes to his apartment (which you still have the spare key of in case of emergencies), and the door to your heart. to rub salt in the wound, the only thing that's stained with your coffee order are his shoes, which look like they cost three weeks of your old job salary, but it's all over your shirt. of course it is. because why not? make it look like you tripped and fell into a patch of mud on your way to the lecture hall and tack on an unwelcome reunion with your ex-bestfriend.

to you, it's like the cloud of gloom from your highschool youth has resettled over your head like a swarm of gnats on a dreary, hot summer day. the stars always seem to skew and misalign themselves for you. but for satoru, the stars have handed him one of those huge swirly lollipops that you only ever see being paraded about by toddlers. he recovers almost instantly, trading the burn on his feet and the way it sours your expression like he's just squirted pure citric acid into your throat for a pleasant burn of his own on his cheeks. but it's whatever. girls seem to like it when he blushes, for some reason. he won't question it, if it works on the only one he cares about.

he holds his hand out, ready to help you out like the good samaritan he's become— and it's like a real burn to his heart this time when you ignore it and stand up on your own, refusing to look up and meet his pleading gaze. might as well have taken an iron stoker right out of the fire and jabbed him with it. but he's gojo satoru! he won't be defeated by this one mere, maybe very significant reunion. he's got stamina.

so he offers to buy you a new drink, feels his heart sink when you shake your head (can't even spare a little 'no' in his direction), and talks enough for the both of you when you leave the dingy little store make your way down to campus and the lecture building. you clearly don't want to see him, but he ignores that in exchange to notice the way you shiver every so often. the previously searing-hot coffee that stains your shirt turns cold fast, and moisture n wind don't mix well. he wishes he could offer you some of his own warm coffee, no doubt sickeningly sweet, but he has some sensitivity now, apparently. so, in a brash moment, he decides to take his blazer off and drape it over your shoulders instead.

when you cross the threshold between city and campus, you expect him to yank it off your back and be on his merry way. but he keeps walking next to you, so you walk a little faster, and you absolutely loathe the cheeky little grin that curves the corners of his lips up to show a glint of teeth when he effortlessly keeps up. you curse his long legs when you find yourself winded, but at least you can lose him when you get there.

or, that's what you think. once again, your constellations break themselves to rebuild anew for satoru. you're about to call him a stalker when he follows you all the way to your classroom with that smirk that's growing exponentially until— oh, no.

your phone that's been on the schedule up until now desperately scrolls to the roster— and there it is. he's in your class. needless to say, not another word goes between you as you stomp in and take a seat. luckily for you, you've already corresponded with your roommate's brother (who's annoyingly cute, satoru notices) and agreed to sit next to each other. satoru takes the seat right above you and never stops kicking his freakishly long legs against the wood the entire time.

so yeah, it's obvious he's not a saint; he still has that undoable ego and he's cocky as fuck (as you have the misfortune of finding out when he quickly bullies your professor), but there's a certain familiarity in that no matter how ugly it might appear to others. and if you asked (which he really, really hopes you will someday), he doesn't hang around douchebags who use kids' foreheads for ashtrays and treat girls like they're candy from a glittery pez dispenser. and at least he's switched harassment targets. even though he has an overwhelming sense of superiority over others and never has his lips together for more than five seconds, and even though he has this hellish habit of clicking his pen whenever he's not talking (or when someone else is), it seems like he's changed.

and over time, you gradually find yourself warming up to him. the spunkiness that used to get on your nerves ceaselessly becomes an object of endearment, and you don't really mind the way he never seems to stop moving anymore. it's a nice sort of distraction in the lifeless still of the lecture hall, albeit the pen clicking still drives you near insanity. you notice he always does it obnoxiously and quickly when you're talking to your roommate's brother, but you ignore it.

and for satoru? he hates that he can kinda sorta really tell that you're the only one who can read him like he's a damn book, cus you slowly start to soften up in the nostalgia of his presence like cold playdough between warm fingers that tell you he may have finally caught you again after letting you slip the first time. and he notices it. this time, he's determined not to let you be the one that got away again. but youre really giving him a shit time outta it with the way you constantly entertain the guy who always has his breath in your face.

yeah, he's got a cute face that's sunkissed by freckles. yeah, his hair looks like he models for shampoo companies. and fuck, he has a nice voice. but what of it? satoru's the one with the mesmerizing blue irises and the cloudy white hair your professor wishes he had instead of sad little wisps of old age. still, as chilly days turn into frigid weeks, he gets the perfect backseat angle of the growing relationship between the two of you. the boy's kinda dumb so you copy off of satoru’s work when you need to (he has to hide the 1-0 scoreboard between him and the guy on a sticky note from you when you take his notes), but said guy’s always buying you stuff and lending you erasers and laughing when you flick the shavings at the annoying girl who never stops whispering in the front of the room.

satoru tries to act unbothered, and he almost convinces everyone. including himself. but the angry, burning knot in his chest that's entirely different from coffee stains suggests something more. that should be him at your side. him, making balls of paper with rude scribbles and silly doodles to throw at the people he knows you don't like. him, surprising you with little gifts and the cheap trinkets he knows you adore so much instead of all the luxury things he could afford. there's no way this punk could possibly measure up to him, right? but at least you and satoru are well on your way to becoming friends again. not as close as you used to be, but it's something. substantial. and he's learned to be patient in the time you've been gone.

but he'd be lying through his teeth if he said he wasn't tired of it. he’s endlessly plagued with thoughts of increasing intensity— first, it starts out with just you. only you. the way he likes it. the way he likes your face, and your pretty eyes and your gorgeous lips and your soft hair and your figure and the complimenting clothes you wear. but it takes a turn; thoughts turn into dreams that turn into fantasies and he's lying when he says he doesn't enjoy them when he accidentally lets it slip during a group study session— and it’s all fine— but then, that guy appears. the brat who seems to sit a centimeter closer to you with each coming day. not only does he haunt satoru in real life, he’s tormenting his dreams, too. tainting the image of beautiful you.

needless to say, satoru starts to wake up with his hands gripping his damp pillow like he's choking it, acutely aware of the sweat sliding down his neck and over his chest as he stares up at the ceiling, listening to the dorm's air conditioner run and thinking of what it'd be like for dreams (the ones where he replaces the boy) to become reality.

it's a buildup. and soon, he reaches the apex; it's like a rollercoaster, that stomach-twisting moment when you reach the top of the rail that points to the steep descent downward. but this time, he hopes it's a thrill he gets instead of the usual falling fright; the one he got when he realized he’d slipped between your fingers in highschool.

and satoru finally comes to a grinding halt at the top of the ride one breezy fall day when he decides he wants you back in his life after you smile brightly at him and wave goodbye for the day. he’s tired of you having one foot in and one foot out of his heart; he wants, needs more. he always has, he realizes.

so he’s thinking about you and how to approach the feelings he’s realized during those long lectures, and one morning he comes up with some semblance of a plan when he’s high on the sugar from the fruit tea you bought him that morning. and he hopes that, by the end of it, he'll leave your apartment with your hand in his currently empty one, chilled with the remnants of cold condensation from the bottle.

soon enough, satoru finds himself extinguishing his nerves and raising a tense fist to knock on the door with nothing but the clothes on his back and a flimsy plan to ask you out on a midterm study sesh and maybe even a date, but he stops when he realizes it’s slightly ajar. a brief thought of what look might be on your face when he surprises you crosses his mind, so he lets himself in quietly, because he knows every single floorboard that creaks like the back of his palm from his childhood. he’s hit with a wave of warmth and an achingly familiar scent that twists at his heart, and your apartment is cozy and safe and it screams you and he thinks he catches sight of his jacket slung across the back of the couch in your living room, but he’s not sure so he takes a step forward and—

he’s greeted with the sight of that stupid guy with the nice hair and the freckles, and it makes his heart drop. but even worse, he’s kissing you and his arms are winding around your waist but you’re kissing him back with a slight hesitation that’s blinded to satoru by his shock and the fingers he thought would end up in his own tonight card through the boy’s hair and your lips glisten with the strawberry-kiwi flavored gloss he watched the boy give you a few days back and his world is turning red and he feels like his throat is constricting and he can’t breathe—

and he doesn’t even realize you’ve parted lips and you’re calling his name through the newfound tightness of his chest and the painful ringing in his ears thats even louder than any silence of a lecture hall, or the void that should’ve been filled with your voice during the time you were apart. but now satoru realizes he’d take that any fucking chance to have that again because it’s so much better than what he’s stuck with now. having you, but not really having you, because you’re there but you’re someone else’s and you’re not his and he isn’t yours. the best thing he could ever hope for was for you to own an article of his clothing and a piece of his shattered heart, broken into a million fragments. some cruel voice in his buzzing head reminds him to change the scoreboard to 0-100.

and he could buy you cheap hot coffee or earn your smiles from scrunched up paper balls or even hear your laugh with crude jokes, but there’s no point when he realizes he can’t buy you with caffeine or earn you with hitting the back of people’s heads with his bio notes or have you and your laugh all to himself anymore.

it’s almost pathetic, the way satoru’s voice cracks and changes. the look of unadulterated concern on the face of the boy who stole your lips just adds fuel to the fire.

“gojo? what are you doing here— hey, are you okay? you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

he noticed you’d stopped calling him satoru a few weeks back. he should’ve seen it coming.

“huh? oh, yeah. i’m good. i think you’re the one hallucinating.”

he’d never told a bigger lie in his life.

satoru had left after excusing himself for intruding. how very unlike him to be so polite, you think.

so in the end, he leaves your apartment with something in his hand, after all. but it's not your own— just his blazer that you’d given back to him before he stepped out the door, taunting him with the faint scent of coffee and lingering perfume. his hope was foolish, so it seems. it’s too bad, he thinks. if it were him, he would’ve sandwiched you against your counter while he kissed. but it wasn’t. apparently, it was your turn for your stars to align at the price of his.

and so, gojo satoru, the boy force-turned man with a chipped ego and a completely broken heart, loses you again.

bonus bonus.. part 2….

[mo-online]

"the other ravens didn't know jean's age!!!"

think of any 16 year old boy you know. does he look like an adult to you? would you call him a whore if you'd found out he'd gotten into five different men's beds in less than a week?

no?

then think of a scrawny, underfed 16 year old boy. his face is bony, but not quite sharp. his nose is crooked, and a part of you thinks that maybe he just hasn't grown into his own face yet, at least until the bruising makes you want to look away before you can think about it any harder. none of his clothes fit him quite right, and you can always hear his joints popping in and out of place. he has the thickest accent you've ever heard, and you still don't quite know what he's saying most of the time, even if he swears it's english and looks close to tears if you insist it's anything but too loudly (he's only been in america for two years and it's hard to grasp much when all you have to develop your language skills from is cruel insults).

he's not as tall as the rest of the court yet — actually, he's far from it. he's not spared enough to build any muscle, even throughout the relentless practices, and he always looks five seconds from passing out by the time the drills even start. he's sweating, panting, and there's a rattling in his chest when he does... has he broken a rib? why is he even here? he's not as big, not nearly as strong, and the other ravens zero in on him until he's a puddle on the floor. he can barely keep his own racquet steady in his hands, and when he props it up to lean on, you realize he isn't much bigger than the damn thing itself. the captain is always dragging him around, sometimes by his wrist, sometimes by his hair. you think it's just messy hazing for a while, and maybe you dare to spare him a pitiful nod and hope for his sake it'll end soon, but months go by and it never does. he's doubled over one day, then running laps the next, and god, why does he always reek of blood? you start to notice his fingers as they change colors, once bony and milky pale, now bruised black and blue and crusted over with scabs. they're misshapen... broken, almost every one. he shouldn't be playing like this, but he tugs his gloves on with his teeth and plays through the pain.

you pass his room on your way to bed, door wide open. he sleeps curled up in a ball, back pressed so hard against the wall, knees into his chest. you can hear his shaky breaths, how his lungs rattle uneasily, even in his sleep. he shakes himself awake from nightmares, gripping the sheets, dry heaving as he forces his own face into the pillow to muffle the sound... but he does not scream. he does not cry. poor kid, you think, because what else could you call him? he's far too beaten down to even think to consider an adult. a puppy kicked one too many times.

the captain calls everyone into a room, arms folded over his chest, face smug as if he'd come up with a solution to the entire world's problems. but there's something strange about the meeting. only backliners. gigantic, sneering, male backliners. he asks for volunteers, a few good samaritans to "fuck some sense into him," and you watch as five greedy hands fight to be the first in the air. riko makes his pick, makes his promise, and for the next week it's all you can hear at night. you wouldn't call it moaning, but... screaming. fighting. teeth and claws and fickle words. "please. please stop. please stop. please—" and then silence. the last night all you hear is defeated silence.

and suddenly it's the child's fault, isn't it? everyone else is saying it, that he slept his way onto the lineup, that he's nothing more than a braindead whore. if everyone's saying it, though, does that make it true?

or is it just easier to stomach?

[gilverrwrites]

Takeout Tuesday

Pairing: Human!Castiel/Fem!Reader (Season 9)

Reader has AFAB body parts, hair long enough for pulling, & feminine pronouns’ are used.

A follow-up/sequel too If you will have me, I am yours. But can 100% be read as a stand alone.

Plot: The reader fulfills Castiel's fantasy of reenacting a porno he once watched. (AKA Clarence the pizza-man & the babysitter)

Rating: M/18+

Words: 3138 (all smut)

Content: Porn without plot, roleplaying, Dominate Cas, cheesy porno dialogue, kitchen sex, dirty talk, degradation, name-calling, rough sex, hair pulling, spanking, clothed man/naked woman, teasing, doggy-style, denial/edging, oral (female receiving), bodily fluids, size difference (slightly), begging, choking, vaginal fingering, p in v sex, swearing.

Excerpt: You force yourself not to cringe at the cheesy dialogue as you make your offer; “Maybe I could pay you with my body?” “That would be acceptable.” He responds curtly, taking a decisive step forward, into the doorframe of your shared apartment. 

You checked the time on your phone; 19:45. It was Takeout Tuesday, and Cas should be home any minute. Normally he’d be home by 2, and it was your job to pick up dinner after your own shift finished at 6. But someone had no call, no showed, and ever the Samaritan; Cas had stayed late to help out. He’d called you on his break to let you know he would be home late, and that he would grab food on the way back.  

The sound of knocking on your front door made you jump. Careful to remain quiet, you made your way over, stopping to grab your gun on the way. Carefully you pressed the firearm to the door and leaned up to look through your peephole. Hunter instincts never really die.

Relieved and confused, you lower the gun and unlock the door, finding Cas on the other side. Your confusion only increased as you realised he was not dressed in his normal button-up and blue vest. Instead, he was dressed in a red and black polo and cap, and holding two large pizza boxes, all bearing the logo of your local pizza shop. 

“Cas, I… I don’t know what to ask first.” You wondered aloud. “Where are your keys? Why are you dressed like that?”

“I do not understand.” Cas stated, tilting his head, and narrowing his eyes. You would almost believe him, were it not for the quiver in the corner of his lip. He was holding back a smile. “My name is Clarence. I am here to deliver your pizzas.” 

“Ooooh, right!” You nod hesitantly, a smile sneaking onto your face. You recall a conversation about sexual fantasies, in which Cas had expressed wanting to reenact a porno he’d once seen in which a babysitter had paid for pizza with sexual favours. You stepped back into your hall, simultaneously returning your gun to its designated spot, and pretending to search for your purse. Purposefully arching your back and sticking your out your ass as you acted out searching through drawers and countertops. 

“I’m really sorry, Clarence.” You say, trying to make your voice sound airy and sexy; rejecting the urge to laugh at yourself. You return to the door where you begin to trail your hand up your body slowly, directing Cas’s eyes over your curves as you move upward until you loop a finger in your hair and begin twirling it. “I don’t have any money to pay you.” 

“That is unfortunate.” Cas responds. His tone is serious and deliberate, but the pink in his cheeks, the way he sucked in his lips, and the growing bulge in his pants told you he was enjoying himself.

“Maybe I could pay you another way?” You ask, batting your lashes at him as you continue to play with your hair. You internally pray no neighbours are passing through to overhear you. 

“What would that be?” He asks, unable to prevent himself from nodding, urging you to continue in your little roleplay. 

You grin at him, leaning forward and fiddling with the top of your shirt, pulling it down to try and expose some of your cleavage. You force yourself not to cringe at the cheesy dialogue as you make your offer; “Maybe I could pay you with my body?”

“That would be acceptable.” He responds curtly, taking a decisive step forward, into the doorframe of your shared apartment. 

You briefly contemplate teasing him, telling him to leave the pizza and come back later, once you’d put the imaginary children you were supposed to be babysitting to bed. But the thought passed quickly, he might actually play along, and you were horny, and hungry, but mostly horny. You did not want to wait.  

“Please, come in.” You tell him, stepping back to allow him full access. He quickly passes you. The apartment is small, the front door leads directly into a joined kitchen and living room. The only other rooms are your bedroom and the bathroom. In a few strides, Cas is already standing in the kitchen area where he deposits the pizza boxes on the counter and turns to watch you. You stare right back, taking him in. His shirt is just slightly too tight, drawing attention to the shape of his chest. His arms look thick and strong protruding out of the too-small sleeves. Heat tingles through your body as you watch him cup himself over his jeans, readjusting his growing erection. 

“Do you like what you see?” He asks you, his lips stretching into a mischievous smirk. 

You nod, locking the door and following him into the kitchen. As you approach, he reaches for you, his hands firmly wrapping around your waist and pulling you close. A hand snakes under your shirt, and you enjoy his warm, gentle touch as he slides it up your spine, guiding your upper body in close so he can plant his lips on yours. 

It starts slow and tentative. The brim of his cap rubs against your head as he delicately ghosts his mouth against yours. The kiss quickly grows heated, his lips pressing ever harder against yours. Knees growing weak, you grab onto his shoulders as you open your mouth up for him to explore, and in return his other hand cups the back of your head, locking you in place as he delves his tongue into you. 

You trail one hand down his chest until you reach his belt and begin to unbuckle him. He groans into your mouth, savouring the moments before clamping a hand around yours and pulling you away. Pouting, you break away from the kiss to look up at him. He returns your questioning gaze with a stern one. He places one last kiss on your lips before locking his fist in your hair and pulling you away from him. 

“If you behave, I might give you what you want, but right now you have a job to do.” He taunts, and you can’t help the whimper that escapes your lips. You’re about to ask him what he wants, but he beats you to the punch, releasing your hair as he instructs you. “Take off your clothes.” 

“Yes sir!” You respond before correcting yourself. “Yes Clarence.” 

Castiel hums appreciatively as he watches you undress. Unable to keep his hands off you, he begins assisting. Making quick work of your bra and kicking your jeans across the floor once you get them off. Your face grows hot as he holds you in place, his eyes unabashedly raking across your body, taking in every inch of you. 

“How would you like to use my body?” You question. 

“I want to kiss every inch of it.” He answers matter-of-factly before doing just that. Pushing your back against the kitchen counter he starts pressing passionate, open-mouthed kisses against your jawline, his tongue traces over your skin as he works his way down your neckline, over your collar, your chest. He holts momentarily over your breasts, giving them extra attention. He catches a nipple between his lips and rolls his tongue against it. Your body jerks at the sensation, and his muffled laugh serves to fuel the sensation. Strong fingers replace his lips, both hands roaming your body before attaching to your breasts as he lowers his head further. 

“Hmmm, you like that?" He asks as he drops to his knees and you let out a breathy pant in response. You’re rapidly losing composure as he peppers more kisses over your stomach, and hips. The rough texture of his hat brushes your thighs as he situates himself between your legs. His breath is warm against your core, and you thrust yourself closer to him. He places one last chase kiss on your folds before leaning back to look up at your flushed face. 

His hands release your chest and gesture to the small dining table in the centre of the kitchen area. “Bend over.” 

You’re barely able to open your mouth to complain before he interrupts. “Don’t whine. Do as you’re told.” 

You remain silent as you follow his order. Unable to refrain from frowning at him while you cross the small space and angle your body against the table. Cas is on you before you’re able to finish adjusting yourself. He slips his feet between yours to nudge your legs apart. Firm hands settle in on the curve of your back, directing you to arch your rear out. 

“You have been a very naughty babysitter.” He growls. 

You wiggle your ass at him as you respond. “Are you going to punish me?”

You hear the slap of his hand coming down on your ass cheek before you feel the sting.

“Yes.” His voice is solemn, and you barely have time to think of a response before his hand comes down on you again. You moan out in pain and unconsciously clench your hands around the edge of the table as you brace yourself for the next hit. Cas hesitates slightly, taking a moment to caress your reddening skin before reeling back to deliver another smack. You moan out again and again with each blow. Your head growing fuzzy, unable to think of anything but the heat pooling between your legs, and the stinging of your butt.

When Cas pokes two fingers between your folds you flinch, not expecting the sensation. He runs his fingers up and down, collecting the wetness before retreating. Lazily you stretch your neck back to watch as he brings them close to his face for inspection. You expect him to taste it, he’s never been shy about his affinity for your wetness or cum before, so you’re surprised when he looks over at you with a devious glint. 

“I think you’re enjoying this too much.” He says as he leans over your slumped frame and presses his fingers to your lips. Following his lead, you open up, allowing him to push his fingers into your mouth, to rub your wetness against your tongue. It's sharp and bitter, but you close your mouth around him and suck until his fingers leave your mouth without wet pop. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

That felt like a trick question. Any semblance of an answer is immediately lost when you feel him grind his crotch against your backside. When you don’t respond, he continues. “Do you like this? Being bent over, and spanked like a filthy whore?”

The words sound so outlandish, coming out of Cas’s mouth. Castiel, (former) angel of the lord, calling you a whore. Outlandish, but so fucking hot. 

Unsure if he’s warning, or chastising you, he pulls his body back and lands another strike on your cheek. 

“Fuck. Yes!” You cry, jolting back, pushing your ass against his crotch again. 

“Yes what?”

“Yes, I like it!” You stare forward, unsure if you could look at him without breaking again. “I like being spanked like a filthy whore.” 

Castiel rewards you by placing a gentle kiss between your shoulder blades. His voice is hoarse as he leans up and whispers. “Then we shall have to find another way to discipline you.” 

You might regret asking, but that doesn’t stop you. “What did you have in mind?”  

Strong arms lift you; Cas turns you to face him and paces you back onto the table in a seated position before dropping to his knees and maneuvering your legs over his shoulders. 

“Keep your hands behind your back.” He instructs, and the moment your arms are locked behind you he delves in, dislodging his cap along the way. He presses his tongue flat against your clit and licks at it mercilessly. A finger inches up your thigh, and circles your entrance before plunging in. 

You want nothing more than to grip his hair, to use it for purchase as you rub your cunt against him, but you can’t. The added challenge of remaining positioned only adds to your growing frustration. The synchronised feel of his finger fucking into you, and his tongue lapping at your sweet-spot has you panting. 

“Holy fuck. Don’t stop, please.” You muster, trying and failing to buck in rhythm with him. “That feels so good Cas, Cas, Ca- Clarence.”

He murmurs something incomprehensible between your lips and the vibration has you coming undone. Your muscles seize, your legs shoot out, and your head rolls back as you approach your climax. No sooner has it started when Cas pulls back, releasing you completely. 

Your mouth falls open, ready to ask him why he stopped, ready to beg him to come back, to finish you off but all that escapes your lips is a frustrated groan. 

“Don’t worry.” Cas assures you, re-adjusting his hat as he stands up. His arousal is evident from his blown-out pupils and the playful smile on his lips. He cups your face between his hands and pulls you in to rest a kiss on your hairline. You don’t miss the chuckle he tries to suppress. “I’m nowhere near done with you.” 

“Are you going to fuck me, Mr Pizza-man?” Your voice is barely a whisper. “Please?”

“You would enjoy that, wouldn’t you?” It’s not really a question. “You’d like me to bend you over again and stretch you out like a needy slut. You’d liked like me to fuck you right here, wouldn’t you?”

You shiver at his words and reach up for him, wrapping your arms around his neck to draw him closer.

“Yes.” You speak between languid kisses to his jaw, and neck. “Please, please Clarence. I would do anything to feel your cock inside me.” 

“I thought you might. You naughty girl.” He states, grasping your wrists and pulling you away from him. “Turn around.”

It’s an order, but you needn’t act. Using your arms and hips for purchase Cas flips you back over. Fresh waves of excitement shoot through your body as you hear his belt and zipper opening. Your breath hitches when you feel the head of his cock at your entrance. He doesn’t make you wait for it, pushing through your lips and bottoming out in seconds. A low moan escapes him as he does so. 

“You don’t cum until I say so.” He commands as you both adjust. The feel of his dick stretching your walls out makes you feel lightheaded. You whimper your response and begin rocking your hips, urging him to start fucking you. Your motion is halted when you feel his hand in your hair. With little warning, your head is whipped back. “Your body is mine. I will decide when and how to use it. You’ll be fortunate if I let you cum at all. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” You answer hastily, you suspect you look like a deer in the headlights. 

“Since you seem to want this so badly, beg for it.” You’re not sure which is more telling to your enjoyment of his dominance. The way your pussy twitches around him, or the involuntary cry you let out. 

“Please… Please Mr Pizza-man, use my pussy.” You begin, through shaky breaths. The excruciatingly slow pump of his body pushing against yours encourages you to keep going. “Use me however you please, I want you, I want to make you cum.” 

“Since you asked so nicely.” Cas pulls back and slams back into you harshly, hand still firmly latched in your hair, keeping you in place as he begins pounding into you, riding you from behind. 

Still on edge from his previous assault, it isn’t long before you felt an orgasm approaching again.

Knowing you won’t be able to fend it off for long you speak up. The jolt of Castiel’s thrusts causes your words to be punctuated by involuntary moans. “Cas, I’m. so. close. Please, I’m. gonna- “ 

“Not yet.” He barks. A moment later he tightens his grip on your hair, forcing you further back until you're close enough for him to lock a hand around your neck. 

Fingers squeeze either side of your throat and you fear you’ll lose your resolve any second. 

For stability, and to try to distract yourself from the growing tension in your cunt, you hold onto his arm. As if determined to make you suffer, Cas slows his speed, focusing on deliberate, torturous thrusts that fill you up and hit all the right places. 

Gurgled cries fall from your lips, attempts to beg for your release, but nothing is intelligible. Unable to move, to breathe, or to think straight, all you can think of is the orgasm you’re barely holding at bay. The pressure of your fingers around the arm holding you by your neck is sure to leave bruises. And then it happens. 

“Now.” He releases his grip on your hair and slides his hand to your folds, erratically pawing until he finds your clit. 

You didn’t really need the extra assistance. You fall apart in an instant, your walls convulsing around his cock, as your body rides the high. Your already tingling, pulsing cunt tightens when you feel the warmth of Castiel’s cum spilling inside you. Low, lethargic hums leave his chest as his thrusts grow sluggish and strained. 

Spent and panting, Cas lets his hands relax, electing to rest them on your waist as he pulls you in, back to his chest for an embrace. His softening cock dislodges as you move together, and you feel his cum trickle out. You elect to ignore it for now, enjoying the hug, and the delicate kisses he places to the back of your head. 

“Do you understand why the pizza-man spanked the babysitter now?” You asked.

The rumble in Cas’s chest as he laughs tickles your skin. “Yes. That was exceedingly enjoyable. How was it for you?”

“That was, amazing.” You concede, turning in his arms until you’re able to rest your face against his chest. He’s smiling down at you, blue eyes filled with admiration. “I should order pizza from Clarence more often.” 

“If that is what you want.” Now that he has a clear view of it, you can see him examining your neck. You’ve no doubt it’s still red, but you doubt it’ll be bruised, at least, not half as much as your ass. “We should get you cleaned up.” 

“Good idea.” You reach up onto your toes and kiss him on the lips. On impulse, you also decide to steal the godforsaken cap from his head and place it on your own before backing towards the bathroom. “Put those pizzas in the oven to reheat, then meet me in the bedroom?”

Cas nods, seemingly unbothered by your thievery as he watches you go. You’ll have to ask him where he got the costume from later. You ask him one last question as you reach the bathroom door. “So, was there ever a sequel to this porno?” 

[dontsh0vethesun]

natasha romanoff masterlist

i’m hungry, i hope you feed me (smut)

how easy you are to need (smut)

double the fun (smut)

follow my lead (smut)

captured (smut)

the good samaritan (dark, smut)

not strong enough (fluff, angst)

wake up 2.0 (smut)

true blue (angst, fluff)

the curse of cupid (fluff)

i did it all for love (dark, smut)

ours forever (smut)

little one (smut)

baby (smut)

serpent (smut)

drunk (smut)

eat you up (smut)

wake up (smut)

bad day (angst, fluff)

doomsday (fluff, angst)

under her thumb (smut)

for you (darkfic, fluff)

your eyes look like coming home (fluff, angst)

quiet (smut)

better boyfriend than him (smut)

dance with me (fluff)

put my name at the top of your list (angst, fluff)

stay, stay, stay (angst, fluff)

is that dirty enough for you? (smut)

dancing 'round the kitchen in the refrigerator light (fluff)

i'll do anything you say, if you say it with your hands (fluff)

[sonotpattismith]

my blues for my brain (megumi fushiguro x reader)

word count: 8.7k inspired by: fate by grey reverend content: angst, fluff, mentions of car accidents, hospitals, invisible string theory, me pretending gojo is still alive for my mental health

“Please don’t leave me here.”

These words were ones all too familiar to you, in an all too familiar scenario. The difference was, it wasn’t you clinging to life with blood soaked skin. Instead, it was the strange boy that had just raced out of the over-priced cafe that you worked at to make a dime during your summer semesters. 

You could recall the exact, desperate words falling from your own lips as a good samaritan crouched in front of you just a few years back, your fingertips just a hair away from death’s door. In an act that would serve to veer you off any sense of understanding for your purpose in life, that person didn’t leave you to die, despite the chaos that was ensuing around him. When you woke, you had more questions that filled your prayers than thanks. 

Why did you live if others had died the same fate that was allotted to your own life? There was meaning to everything that happened in one’s life— at least that’s what everyone told you when you woke in your hospital bed. What was the meaning of this though? Were you meant to find a new purpose in your life; was this meant to steer you in the right path? If so, why did you end up working a minimum wage job as you scraped up enough money for a college education you still had little to no clue what you wanted to do with yet? 

Up until that day, as the pale stranger’s desperate grip on your hand slowly weakened with his waning consciousness, you were sure you had failed whatever god saved you all those years ago. As the man before you opened his eyes for the briefest of moments to beg for your mercy, you thought meaning had finally found you. 

“You’d think for a café in the middle of one of the busiest streets in Tokyo that there would be a little more excitement in here every once and a while.” Your coworker droned as she stared at the front door, which hadn’t opened in exactly forty-one minutes. Who was counting though? 

You shouldered into her with a half-hearted smile as you made yourself a mid-shift drink. Today’s choice happened to be a matcha latte, though you often switched it up for the sake of having something new to look forward to everyday. Peering back at her and then toward the hustle and bustle just outside the shop, you sighed dejectedly. What meaning did standing behind this counter for hours a day have? Perhaps you should be enjoying the life that was granted back to you so fortunately, you thought as you trailed an absentminded finger down the scar that ran down your arm. 

Snapping from your haze, you offered her the most encouraging smile you could muster in the midst of your perpetual existential crisis. 

“Staring at the door isn’t going to make customers appear.” You scolded, and she peered over at you with a bored glare, to which you chuckled lightly. “Quick, pick a syrup, and we’ll put it in my matcha to see if we’re horrible at our jobs or not.”

At this, an amused smile stretched across her face, and she quickly straightened up to look over the options. As you two bickered over which of you had more abysmal taste than the other, the rare chime of the front door interrupted your concocting session. The both of you snapped up like dogs who just heard their food bowl rattle in the next room. 

Appearing slightly out of breath and frantic, a man stepped into the café. There was a determination in his step as he rushed over to the register and rested his hand atop the counter to lean in with purpose. There were prominent, pink scars lining his face, so large in size and quantity that you wondered what kind of trouble someone seemingly your age could have gotten himself into already. Forgoing your growing curiosity, you mustered up a welcoming smile. 

“Welcome! Can I get—”

“Did you see anything strange passing around here just a second ago?” The two of you spoke at the same time, but he paid no mind to your cut-off question as he stared expectantly at you. 

Your mouth slowly shut, brows furrowing in the process as you tried to recall anything that had happened in the last five minutes, but the only memories that surfaced were you trying to decide between lavender or hazelnut syrup. 

“Maybe we have, but we reserve the right to withhold answers for paying customers, actually.” Your coworker chimed in with a mischievous smile, clearly just desperate for any business on this slower-than-usual day. The raven-haired man sighed indignantly.

“This is serious—”

“So is our no loitering policy.” You had to repress a tickled smile at her persistence. She smiled triumphantly as he grumbled and frantically fished a few spare yen from his pockets and slammed them on the table. 

“A black coffee!” He growled his order at her before returning his attention to you, a scowl set deeply on his already intimidating face. Beside you, your coworker mumbled something in reference to his boring order before working to prepare it. “Now what did you see?”

You almost felt bad after the fact, that you could only pathetically shake your head at his question. 

“I’m sorry, I really haven’t seen anything. What are you looking—”

A frustrated grunt from the disgruntled man cut you off, and before you knew it he was storming out of the café. An amused scoff escaped you as you watched him leave, and your coworker leaned against the counter beside you.

“Just our luck— we ask for entertainment, and we get crazy.” She commented with a shake of her head. “He left his coffee, too.”

This made you tear your gaze from the door to the lidded, brown cup she set down on the counter. His yen were still sat messily before you, and you suddenly felt bad for having coerced him into buying something. Peering out to see him speaking to a few pedestrians just outside the shop, you grasped the cup and exited your post behind the register. 

“Hey!” You called out, ignoring your coworker’s questioning as you poked your head out the door. Sighing when he appeared too preoccupied to notice your calls, you prepared to try one more time as he continued his frantic trek through the bustling city. “You forgot your—”

The blaring sound of a truck’s horn sliced through your attempted good deed of the day, and you could only watch in stone-cold horror as the offending vehicle slammed into your distracted customer. His uniform-clad body jolted across the street with a velocity you had trouble keeping up with. Your eyes wouldn’t allow you to stop following the movements no matter how hard you tried though. The steaming cup in your hands slipped from your trembling fingers before splattering across the ground in tandem with the stranger’s blood across the street. 

Vehicle’s horns were blaring behind the truck that had come to a screeching halt. Behind you, your coworker rushed out, shouting words you couldn’t process in your shell-shocked state. You watched with vast, unblinking eyes as his body finally rolled to a stop, and he twitched out in agony. With unwavering precision, you could swear you knew the exact pain that was coursing through his body at that moment; the fear that must be setting his wounds ablaze. It wasn’t that long ago that it was you, laying in uncertainty, at the mercy of whoever might have felt your life was worthy enough to try saving. 

So, you ripped your arm out of your coworker’s frantic grip, and your legs raced toward the scene. The truck driver was stumbling out of the driver’s seat, a horror-stricken expression etched onto his features as you dropped down to your knees beside the barely conscious man. Blood coated the corners of his lips as he continued to weakly sputter up the substance. 

“Oh my god,” You babbled mindlessly, hands hovering over him as you contemplated what to do. As if reacting to your voice, his head swayed in your direction, but his eyes remained shut. He was pale— dare you say even paler than he was when he walked into your shop just moments ago. ���Call an ambulance!” You shouted at the truck driver, who seemed to be too shell-shocked to spring into action himself. Upon hearing your frantic order, he immediately began fumbling with his cellphone. 

Turning your attention back to the stranger, you noted he was now struggling to pry his eyes open, a deep navy color squinting back at you. 

“Can you hear me?” You questioned, fingers twitching with the urge to turn him on his side in an attempt to prevent him choking on his own blood. You didn’t know what was broken though, so you opted to carefully tilt his head toward you. He only stared deliriously up at you as blood began to ooze from the side of his mouth. “Is there someone I can call? 

Megumi’s mind was in a state all too familiar to him though. It clung on the border between life and death, and, in the past, it was a constant struggle of whether or not it was worth fighting to get through. Now though, he was desperately grasping at the straws of his consciousness. It was his first mission by himself after the trauma his mind and body had endured during the Culling Games. After everything he’d gone through, all the battles he’d fought and the mental strife he’d worked through, this couldn’t possibly be how he left this world. A meaningless and pitiful death— is that what he would have to show for when his friends asked what became of him in the end?

“Hey, hey, stay awake, okay?” Megumi was pulled from his wallowing thoughts by the frantic voice above him, and it sounded as though he was under water, though it wouldn’t surprise him if there was blood in his ears as well. His lips parted, but all that left them was a strangled groan. Your fingers, still warm from his black coffee that had just been clutched in your hand, squeezed gently at his cheeks as though to rouse him from sleep. They slipped from his face and fell into his hand, giving his fingers a soft squeeze. “Squeeze my hand if you can hear me.”

Weakly, you felt his trembling fingers grasp back at your hand. You found yourself smiling encouragingly at him, though you doubted he could see it. The sirens of an oncoming ambulance had you looking behind you, and you could see the flashing lights in the distance cutting across the traffic. From your peripheral, you saw your coworker racing out toward you, pushing through the small crowd that had formed. 

“He just— it came out of nowhere. He’s—”

“He’s suspicious as fuck.” She finished for you, concern pooling in her eyes as she grabbed your free hand in an attempt to tug you up. As you stumbled a bit, you felt the stranger’s cold hand grasp at your wrist, turning your attention back to him. “Let’s go, the ambulance is already here. This guy was probably caught up in some seriously shady shit.” 

She was right, and you knew it. It was evident from the grotesque and oddly placed scars that lined his face, the strange uniform he donned, down to the odd questions and abrupt departure he had graced you with before the accident. Still, your memories of meeting the exact same fate kept you empathetically tied to his side as you peered down at him apprehensively. He opened his eyes once again, and it appeared as though he was mustering every last bit of strength he had left. His fingers wrapped around your wrist desperately as his lips parted to plea with you.

“Please don’t leave me.”

It was a cry that was so uncharacteristic of him, but he only knew one thing at the moment. The warmth of your hand and the soothing sound of your voice was the only thing tying him down to the land of the living. Without your grounding, he felt he may slip away, resigned to the fate he had just fought so valiantly to avoid. 

The plea clutched at your heartstrings as the paramedics rushed to the scene. They were bustling around you, asking you questions while simultaneously shouting foreign terminology at each other as they immediately began tending to the situation at hand. Your eyes remained locked on the stranger’s as they slowly drifted shut, and he offered one last desolate squeeze to your hand before darkness seemed to consume him. 

“Ma’am,” The gruff voice of the paramedic beside you pulled you from your trance, and it was then that you noticed the tear that slipped down your cheek. Blinking it away, you looked up at the man, still shell-shocked. “Do you know this man?”

“I…” Your words got caught in your throat as his final plea rang in your ears. Glancing up, you saw your coworker on the other side of the sea of medical personelle, shaking her had at you with wide eyes. In your palm though, the limp, cold hand of the stranger still lay. “He’s my partner.” You lied in a haze, watching as they prepared to carefully shift him onto a stretcher. 

Your lie earned you a ride in the ambulance beside him, staring in an absent haze as the team moved like ants around him, peeling his lids back to check his eyes with a tiny light, cutting his shirt down the middle to check his vitals, prying an oxygen mask over his parted lips and expertly starting an IV on his limp arm despite the rustling of the fast-paced vehicle. They attributed your inability to answer any questions to your shock, which was partially true, but you also feared revealing your white lie to them with the wrong responses. 

Police were awaiting you at the hospital when the ambulance came to a screeching halt.  They questioned you about the accident and what you had seen. You complied easily, however couldn’t help but grow nervous once the staff at the hospital asked you to fill out paperwork on your ‘partner’s’ behalf. 

The pen in your hand shook as you stared down at the first blanks. 

FIRST NAME

LAST NAME

Of which you knew neither. 

“Is everything alright?” The soft voice of a compassionate nurse questioned as she typed away at her computer, likely awaiting your information to complete his admission. 

You looked up at her patient eyes, and you couldn’t hold back your lie any longer, explaining to her what had actually happened. Her slow nod made you feel guilty, as she thanked you for your honesty and explained the paperwork would be different now as they had no way to identify the stranger. He had no identification on him, and the cellphone they’d found in his pocket had shattered in the midst of the accident.

Perhaps you should have gone home after you’d given them all the information they needed, but you stayed in the small waiting room, anxiously bouncing your leg and chewing on your lip. As hours seemed to pass by, you’d perk up each time someone would come in, hoping any of the visitors would be coming to claim the stranger that was currently being tended to in the intensive care unit. They each came and went though, and you remained the only one awaiting him under the fluorescent lights. 

Your eyes were beginning to burn when the nurse you had spoken to hours prior walked carefully up to you, that compassionate smile everpresent on her lips. 

“I know there’s no relation, but I thought you’d like to know his condition is relatively stable as of right now.” She offered, causing you to sit up in the stiff, plastic chair. 

“Thank you— really.” You sighed breathlessly to which she nodded in return. For a moment, you wondered if you were overstepping by asking for anymore details. Casting your eyes down to your lap, you chewed pensively on your lip. She seemed to take note of your bashful apprehension, smiling knowingly. 

“You’re currently the only contact we have for him. There wouldn’t be a problem if you wanted to pay him a visit.”

So, with your fingers wringing nervously at the hem of your shirt, you followed the nurse through the unit and to the room he was occupying. Though you had seen first hand the damage the accident had done to him, you still had to bite back a shocked gasp upon seeing the various monitors he was hooked up to, as well as the clear tube running into his mouth and down his throat. You had endless questions for the god-sent nurse, but she had already mentioned that her shift was ending, so you didn’t want to hold her any longer. 

“He hasn’t woken up yet, but they can still hear you, you know?” She explained with an encouraging smile as she leaned against the doorframe. Tearing your gaze from the various lines and tubes connected to him, you peered back at her in shock, but the nurse only nodded affirmatively at you. “It helps. Especially since he’s by himself.” 

Following her polite goodbye with a promise that she’d be back on shift tomorrow morning, you were left alone with the stranger. It was silent in the sterile room, only the persistent beeping of his monitors filling the space around you. A shiver ran down your spine as if the below normal temperatures of the hospital were finally catching up to you as you shifted your weight from one foot to the other. 

“This would’ve been a lot easier if you had stayed back to drink your stupid, black coffee.” You began hesitantly as you circled the raised bed. Pursing your lips, you slowly sat down on the chair beside him. Toying with the end of the blanket that hung off the bed, the ragged rise and fall of his chest caught your attention, and you wondered how much of it was thanks to the tube running down his throat. “I wonder if you ever found what you were looking for.” 

As an assistant came in to check on him, you peered awkwardly down at your lap while they checked his vitals. Once done with the routine checks, you watched her move the blanket back over him and gently adjust certain chords to settle more comfortably around him. It made your heart warm that they seemed so attentive to his comfort, even if he wasn’t conscious enough to notice. You thanked her quietly as she departed from the room. 

“You know the nurse’s assistant was the only one in the room with me when I first woke up after my accident.” You explained to the unconscious man before you. A fond smile settled onto your lips. “My parents had stepped out for a while just to get some food. Just their luck, huh? He held my hand while I was waking up so I wasn’t all by myself. It meant the world to me.”

It felt as though Megumi was trapped right back in the barrier between his mind and his soul— helpless to find an escape. This time around though, he had more of a will to fight. There was no way he had gone through everything and exhausted his mind, body, and soul, all to meet his demise because he didn’t look both ways before crossing the damn street. Another part of him wondered if this was fate granting him mercy. Perhaps if he didn’t die here, hooked up to all these tubes and machines, his cards held something sacreligious— a gruesome and grotesque death rather than the comparably mundane one that had befallen him. After all he’d been through, maybe this was blissful; the only happy ending that could be promised to him. 

As he lay in that strange veil of unconsciousness though, as if at the bottom of a pool, looking up and barely able to see the sun’s light poking up from the surface— someone was there with him. Your voice sounded as though it was just above the feet of water that separated him from life, muffled but still familiar. It was the same voice that had coaxed him into trusting his body to let go, not knowing whether or not it would be strong enough to reemerge again. 

His brows furrowed— that he could feel, and he willed himself to swim up to the surface as the soft hum of your tired rambling filled his ears. Why were you here? Why were you still here? The sorcerer needed to know, and the urge pushed him to keep struggling against the surface pressure that weighed him down. 

You weren’t sure how long you had sat there mindlessly babbling to the unresponsive man. Wariness was beginning to weigh down on your eyes and shoulders though, likely because you had been up since four that morning to prepare for your shift. If you stopped talking, you thought you might flop over and pass out yourself. He couldn’t be by himself when he woke up, you determined. 

Some staff had come in and dimmed the lights in the room what seemed like hours ago, so they weren’t so harsh in your tired eyes as you tilted your head back to stare at the ceiling while spewing out anything that came to mind. 

“My coworker finally texted me, you know. She said the only weird thing that passed by the shop today was you. Are you in some kind of gang? It would explain the uniform and all the…” Your rambling slowly died out as the sound of sheets rustling filled your ears. In an instant, you were sitting up properly in your uncomfortable chair. His hand twitched against the sheets, and you breathed out in anticipation as you watched his face contort in discomfort. The chair you had been occupying for hours slid back as you stood up abruptly to get a closer look. “Hey— can you hear me?”

Megumi forced his eyes open with what seemed like all the energy left in him. He half expected to be in Shoko’s infirmary with his friends hovering obnoxiously over him, or even in his room where he’d awake in his bed and realize he’d dreamt the entire scenario. The blinding, white ceiling tiles above him were different from the ones he’d grown accustomed to over the years though, and the dull ache radiating through his body served to remind him that he certainly hadn’t been graced by any reverse cursed technique. 

Those mysteriously dark eyes stared incredulously up at the ceiling, and you could see the confusion begin to morph onto his features. All too soon, that confusion shifted into panic as he tried to speak, only to be met by the grueling realization that there was a tube shoved down his throat. 

“It’s okay!” You quickly reassured, placing a careful hand on his shoulder to redirect his attention. With the little he was able to move, his eyes shifted as fast as he could manage to look at you, wide in subtle horror. You took your eyes off him for a second to push the nurse call button to alert them of his waking. “You were in an accident. You’re in the hospital.”

As he peered down at the state of himself, he only seemed more unsettled. You figured it was the mangled state he was left in that freaked him out, but what was going through his head was the mission he’d left behind, along with the curse that was likely still running rampant. Still, his inability to speak paired with his limited mobility certainly didn’t do much to settle his nerves. You watched him become more agitated as he attempted to move each limb to no avail, likely thanks to the arsenal of drugs coursing through his veins. 

“It’s alright, you’re okay.” You insisted, peering out the open door to see if the nurse was nearby. Looking around the room, you left his side for a moment to quickly snatch up a marker from the white board on the wall. You uncapped it and placed it in his hand, securing his weak grip around it before offering your arm. “Is there someone we can call? What’s your name?” 

As he stared incredulously down at your offered up arm, your questions were a jumbled mess in his disoriented mind. All that kept running through his head were questions of who the wide eyed, eager girl at his bedside was, and why her voice had been the only thing he could recall from his supposed accident. Megumi’s fingers trembled as they fought to lift up the marker. A muffled grunt escaped him as he tried to get a grip on it, and it clattered to the floor along with the last string of his patience. 

The sound of the marker clanking against the squeaky clean floor rang in his ears, taunting him in his weak state. Just as he began his attempted thrash against the scratchy sheets, the nurse finally stepped in, picking up her pace a bit as she saw the state of agitation he was in. In an instant, she was dialling someone for help, though you couldn’t be bothered to listen to her, desperate to get any answers out of the stranger. Once again, you offered up your hand to him, placing his fingers against your awaiting palm.

“Trace it on my hand, something—”

“Don’t push him.” The nurse urged as more staff members seemed to flood into the room. She was maneuvering over to the line of his IV with a syringe as she attempted to deescalate the situation herself. “He wasn’t supposed to wake up; if he becomes too agitated he can injure himself further.”

“Wait—” You attempted to stop her as she pushed what you assumed was something to calm him down into his line. Logically, you knew it was in his best interest, however your gnawing curiosity had you hoping he would stay conscious for the least bit longer to provide any answers. It only took seconds though, as the drug flooded his system, and the tension in his shoulders seemed to settle back against the flat bed. His eyelids moved torturously slow as he blinked hazily, and you knew the opportunity had found its way to evade you. 

“I-I’ll wait outside.” The dejected reminder fell from your lips, though you were sure the staff were too occupied to pay you any mind. Just as you moved to get out of their way though, the stranger’s weak fingers laced around your hand. With the waning of his already deplorable strength, you felt the pads of his digits press against you, urging you to stay. Looking up with a quiet gasp, you found his half-lidded eyes on you, a desperation in them that seemed so misplaced on his hard features— even if you didn’t know him. 

Megumi thought maybe if he held onto the now familiar presence that had been beside him all this time, that it would be the one thing to keep him alert enough to continue pushing through the haze of his unconsciousness. Whether it was your continuous, honied voice that pulled him from his drug-induced coma, or the fact that he’d pulled himself out of the depths of chains much stronger than the pharmaceuticals currently in his system, he didn’t know. What he did understand, was that your gentle fingers brushing against his knuckles was practically the only thing he could still feel, and it brought him a comfort he was not prepared to surrender just yet if he were to be pulled under again. 

So, you clung on to his hand as his eyes slowly shut, bleary irises focused on you till the very end as the staff bustled around the room and spoke with the doctors. Even as you felt your own lids growing heavy that night in the darkness of the intensive care room, you couldn’t bring yourself to untangle his fingers from yours. Unable to fight the gravity that weighed down your body to remind you you had been up since four that morning, your head slumped forward and rested on the edge of the bed beside your conjoined hands. 

You hadn’t the energy to think about how odd you may have looked clinging to a complete stranger as you snoozed. Instead, the embarrassment hit you when the kind nurse from the previous day, seemingly having recently clocked in for her shift, gently woke you the next morning with a prepackaged breakfast sandwich. With burning cheeks, you used your free hand to frantically smooth your disheveled hair down and wipe at your under eyes that were undoubtedly smeared with yesterday’s makeup before accepting the food with a shy but grateful smile. 

You waited for her to finish her morning checks on her patient before tearing into the sandwich as your rumbling stomach was demanding of you. In the meantime, she updated you on his condition with jargon that you tried hard to keep up with, but it was offensively early in the morning. Nodding along, you suddenly wished you had paid more attention to all those hospital dramas your roommate used to watch incessantly. A relieved sigh escaped you when she departed, letting you know to press the call button if you needed anything. 

“You’ve really gotta get it together soon, dude.” You commented through a mouthful of bread as you peered over at him thoughtfully. At the very least, you thought, his hand seemed warmer than it had yesterday, and you could only hope that was a good sign. “This hospital food sucks.”

Tossing the wrapper into the small trash bin nearby, you huffed out a sigh. Leaning in closer to him, you hesitantly pushed the thick, black hair away from his face, brushing it gently back against his scalp. A gulp forced its way down your throat at the sight of the thick scars that lined his eyes, and you found yourself carefully brushing against them with baffled curiosity. 

“Who are you?” You whispered, and for a moment you could swear his brows twitched into a furrow.  

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s bad luck to cheat death?” A smoothly amused voice beckoned from the doorway. 

You instantly flinched away from your hovered state over the stranger, the hand that was grasped in his tightening in surprise as you looked up. Leaning against the entry was a tall man that nearly took up the entire door frame. His hair was a striking white that almost rivaled the blinding lights of the hospital room. Though concealed behind dark-rimmed sunglasses, you caught a glimpse of his startling blue eyes as he seemed to tilt his head in amusement at the scene before him. What captured your attention most of all though was the uniform he donned— one nearly identical to the one the mystery patient had been wearing during the accident. 

“Geez, after all you’ve been through, and a truck is what takes you out?” The man’s quip was this time directed at the John Doe, shaking his head with a smile as he slowly strolled into the room. 

“You know him?” You breathed out in relief, watching the fond expression on the man’s face as he scanned over the injuries. 

“Hm? Oh, yeah, he’s my student.” He responded casually, hands shoved into his pockets as he circled the bed curiously. “I assumed he was just ignoring my calls. Go figure, huh?”

The casual lightheartedness in his tone only served to confuse you. You couldn’t wrap your head around the fact that of all the people that came to claim this stranger, his teacher was the first? On top of that, how was he not brimming with concern upon finding the student he seemed so close with in intensive care? Your eyes skimmed down the strange uniform on his long body, lingering just a tad too long on the swirled button on his chest. 

“So, what’s the deal? You a girlfriend he didn’t tell anyone about?” 

Snapping up from your trance, you felt your face heat at his accusation, and you quickly shook your head. The corners of his lips twitched up in amusement. 

“I saw the accident happen.” You explained, allowing your gaze to drift back down to the patient. The edges of your teeth sunk into your bottom lip as you recounted the events of the last twenty-four hours, and you were struck by the absurdity of it all. “He… he asked me not to leave— you know, before he passed out.”

“So you didn’t?” His question sounded more like a statement, you noted. You nodded with a soft sigh. Peering up at the teacher with a pursed lip, your free hand reached up to graze the oddly-shaped scars on your upper arm. 

“I’m sorry if I overstepped. I just… was in a similar accident not too long ago. So, I empathized with him— that kind of fear, you know?” You felt the need to explain it to him, as you were sure you looked like some sort of stalker at the moment. The man didn’t respond, peering pensively down at you for long enough to make you squirm in your seat. “I guess I should go now.”

A wave of unnecessary guilt crashed in your chest as you slowly stood from the chair you had been in for countless hours. Giving once last, lingering regard to the unconscious man, you gulped down the confusing lump in your throat and smiled softly. 

“I hope you find whatever you were looking for.” You whispered, gently sliding your hand from his and placing it carefully over the blanket. Nodding respectfully at the man who had been silently watching the entire encounter, you began walking toward the exit. As you hand grazed the door frame, you turned around apprehensively to find the white-haired man already peering back at you knowingly. “What—What’s his name?”

With a fond smile, the man looked back down at his student as if to say we have a lot to catch up on when your ass wakes up before looking back at you. 

“Megumi.”

His name rang through your mind in the droning days that followed your fated encounter. With every order you rang up, his frantic entrance replayed in your head. Each unfruitful study session paved way for the cinematic replaying of his awakening, projected onto your imagination over and over until it became your favorite film that lulled you into relentless, insomniatic nights.

You wondered if his condition had improved, if he had left the hospital, if he was wondering about the girl who he clung onto at his most vulnerable. As the days dragged on, and you wistfully poured out a customer’s black coffee, you realized you had left those answers behind in the hospital room that morning. Still, the more logical part of your mind told you it was for the best given the concerningly curious circumstances of his accident. Additionally, the equally mysterious man that had come to claim Megumi only fanned the flames of your suspicions. 

Despite the impending sense of danger that came each time that supposed teacher’s words rang in your head—

“After all you’ve been through, and a truck is what takes you out?”

You weren’t sure if it was your concern over his recovery, or the gnawing curiosity about the life he led that had you walking back into the hospital almost a full week later. Whichever it was, it was strong enough to push down the nerves fluttering in your stomach as you walked up to the familiar reception front desk. It was the same woman that had you fill out the paperwork when he was first admitted, and, despite it taking her a bit, she remembered you. 

“Listen, I’m really sorry, but the process isn’t as easy now that someone signed his paperwork. I can’t disclose any information to you.” She explained apologetically as you slumped forward on the cold desk. There was a certain sorrow in her eyes as she watched you sigh in defeat. 

“I mean— could you just tell me if he’s okay?” You pleaded, already dreading the thought of having to leave that day with no answers. 

“I wouldn’t even be able to confirm or deny that that patient is still in our system.” It seemed it was upsetting her just as much to deny you, and it wasn’t your intention to make her job anymore difficult than it was. “I wish I could have been of more help to you.” 

You nodded in silent understanding, offering a grateful smile nonetheless as you pushed off of the desk to take your walk of shame out of the building. Perhaps it was a sign; the thought fleeted into your mind on what seemed like the endless trek to the door. This denial was the closure you needed to move on from this bizarre, chance encounter that happened to mimic one you witnessed firsthand just years ago. In stark terms, whatever seemed to be lying at the bottom of the mysterious well that was Megumi— wasn’t your business.

In the same notion though, maybe it was fate that that oddly large, white haired man was strolling into the very doors you were trying to exit, coffee and a paper bag clutched in his causal grip. Your mouth opened and closed as you looked up at him, unsure if he’d even recognize you or care enough to acknowledge your being there. As if sensing your silent stare, he glanced up from his phone for a moment, doing a small double take upon seeing you.  

“Pick up another straggler?” He teased, sliding his phone into the pocket of his uniform with a known smirk. His head tilted toward you. “What was it this time? Just so happened to be around when they mysteriously fell out a window?” 

Despite the fact that his seemingly playful nature was making you feel more comfortable, you still couldn’t help the heat that rushed to your face. Attempting a breathless chuckle, you smiled nervously at the man. 

“The hospital should start paying me commission, huh?” You quipped with apprehensive amusement. A short but genuine laugh broke through his teasing facade, and he nodded for you to walk with him. Pushing past the slight shock of how easily this was going for you, you stumbled after him. 

“I’m assuming you’re not here to see me?” 

Chewing on your bottom lip, you watched the bright tiles passing under your feet as you followed him through the hospital. Once again, you were hit by the realization that you were meddling in something you seriously had no business in. Still, the nonchalant man leading you through the hallways didn’t seem to have any sort of reaction to your curiosity.

“I’m really sorry if I’m overstepping, it’s just been kind of eating me alive.” You confessed with a halfhearted chuckle.

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, our little overachiever isn’t in intensive care anymore.” He informed with an almost proud smile. 

“Really?” You didn’t intend to sound so relieved, but it was an almost instantaneous reaction. 

“Yuuup. Officially graduated.” He confirmed as he wiped mock tears from under his sunglasses. “Go see for yourself, his room’s right here.” 

As he stopped in front of a cracked open door, you hadn’t even realized the man had been leading you to pay Megumi a visit. Glancing up at him unassuredly, you didn’t have a chance to ask if he was sure before he was waving you off nonchalantly.

“Actually, if you don’t mind taking my stuff in there.” The teacher requested, not giving you a chance to protest as he shoved the coffee and bag into your hands. “Forgot my phone in my car.”

Your brows furrowed for a moment, cause you could have sworn you had just seen him slip the aforementioned phone into his pocket just as you ran into him. There was no time to question it though, because in an instant, his freakishly long legs were traversing him back down the way you came in. With a barely noticeable huff of disbelief, your gaze drifted to the cracked-open door in front of you. You shook your head before pushing in anyway, trying to be mindful of the nearly overflowing coffee cup that was desperately trying to spill onto your hand. 

“Shit.” You muttered under your breath with a flinch as you felt a scalding drop offend your skin. 

“You’re not Gojo.” 

“Shit!” You repeated with a start, posture jolting up to face whoever it was that damn near just sent you to the afterlife. 

What you hadn’t expected to see was the very awake and very alert Megumi sitting up in his hospital bed. His mouth was free of the tube that once restrained it, though you could still hear the after affects of it in the rasp and crack of his voice. In fact, the only thing he appeared to still be connected to was an IV pole and what looked like a heart monitor. 

You could have killed the tall stranger, whom you presumed was the Gojo character he was talking about, for not thinking it important to warn her that Megumi was no longer unconscious before you waltzed into his room so nonchalantly. In truth, you expected to drop by, see with your own two eyes that the man hadn’t succumbed to his injuries, and be on your merry way. 

“Ow! Fuck,” You were babbling at this point, pacing around for anywhere to put down the damned coffee cup that had just scalded your hand in tandem with your startled jump. The black haired man watched you silently, almost moving to get up to help you before he remembered the brace that wrapped his right ankle. “I’m so sorry— I had no idea you were awake.” 

Your frantic apologies continued spilling from your lips as you ran your stinging hand underneath the sink that sat in the corner. You did it partly to soothe the pain, but another part of you just didn’t think you could face the poor man after completely invading his privacy. 

“That weird guy with the sunglasses told me to come in, but then he just—”

“You were the one that stayed with me after the accident, right?”

Unable to gage the flat tone in his voice, you slowly turned the faucet off before finally turning to face him. In the time you hadn’t been looking, it seemed he had pushed the hair out of his face, and he was sitting up a little higher in the bed than you remembered. The book in his lap laid open and forgotten, his large, dark eyes focused intently on you. 

“Uh, yeah.” You admitted softly, wiping your hands nervously on your bottoms. “You were outside the cafe—”

“I remember.” He stated flatly, making you bite down harshly on your bottom lip. Megumi was coming off as rude, guarded, irritated— he knew he was, but he couldn’t for the life of him gather his thoughts well enough to express the gratitude he felt for you. Even more so though, he couldn’t possibly bring himself to understand the curiosity and fondness that had been festering over the past few days in your absence. 

A silence enveloped the room, and you suddenly wondered where the hell his teacher was— desperate for anything to break the tension. 

“Well, I should probably go.” You finally mustered out, setting the bag and cup down onto the counter before turning to leave. “I-I’m glad to see you’re doing better. Sorry again to—”

“Wait,” Megumi urged, leaning forward so quickly it had him wincing with the pressure on his injured ribs. Your hair swayed as you whipped your head back at him in question, and you thought you saw the slightest pink hue on his cheeks. “Sorry, I’m… on a lot of meds. You don’t have to leave.” 

His excuse made your brow slowly quirk up, an amused smirk barely concealed on your lips. Attempting to push down your amusement, you pursed your lips and glanced out the door for any sign of Gojo’s return. Upon seeing only the hospital staff bustling around, you slowly made your way over and sat down on the chair beside his bed. For a moment, the two of you simply stared at one another in silence, both of you unsure of what to say next. 

In your brief study of his now conscious face up close, you noticed each sharp feature of his, from his straight nose, to the strong line of his jaw. Somehow, despite their dark hue, his wide eyes seemed to soften his face even if just minimally with every caress of his long, thick lashes against his cheekbones. You wanted to avert your eyes to stop the incoming flush in your cheeks upon the sudden realization that Megumi was incredibly attractive, but you couldn’t seem to tear your eyes away.

In a last ditch effort to preserve any dignity, you were grasping at straws to say anything. 

“What were you look—”

“Why did you stay?” 

The both of you began simultaneously, but his question made you clam up. There wasn’t malice in his tone, but a raw curiosity instead, an urge to understand. His brows were slowly settling into that familiar furrow you remembered seeing on his sleeping form constantly. 

“I— You asked me to.” You answered simply, your voice quieter than it was before. A small huff of breath raced out his nose at your response. 

“So you just do whatever strange men you just met tell you to do?”

“I think I preferred you when you still had a tube down your throat.” You laughed breathlessly, a little shocked at the sass that emanated from the seemingly reserved man. Almost immediately, he rolled his pretty eyes at your comment, but there was a ghost of a smile threatening to assassinate the cool-boy persona he had built up. 

“Why did you stay?” Megumi asked again. There was more conviction in his rasped tone this time. Subconsciously, your hand creeped up to grasp at your scarred upper arm, and he followed the motion intently. His gaze narrowed slightly at the raised skin, a hint of recognition flashing in his eyes as he continued to stare. 

“Two years ago, I was in a similar accident. There was all sorts of hell breaking loose in the city, so I didn’t think anyone would help me, you know?” You recounted with a sad smile, feeling your breath tremble at the memory. “I still don’t know how they got me out— some guy that was around. He almost ran right past me. I never got to thank him, or ask him how he got me out from under the car. I was already in the hospital when I woke up.”

He processed your words for a moment, blinking slowly down at your scar as the puzzle pieces seemed to click together in his mind. It sounded too familiar— just as the marks on your arms were ones he’d surely seen before. 

“And that scar—  you got it from the accident?” He assumed, though he already knew the answer. You nodded, looking down at it yourself and allowing the tips of your fingers to trace each curve. The corners of his lips twitched up on their own accord, eyes softening with the revelation that fate had always been on his side. “Kind of looks like a bite.”

There was a subtly bemused tone in his voice. You didn’t quite understand where it was coming from, but as you inspected the mark closer with this perspective, you hummed in fascination. 

“I don’t really see it.” You mumbled. 

In an instant, his fingers had reached out to fold gently around your arm. Your eyes fluttered up to look at him in surprise, but he was still focused on your mark with a soft fondness. Swiping his thumb over the raised skin, the pads of his fingers mapped out the familiar canine marks of his demon dog. 

As if the feel of it ignited his memory, he could almost perfectly recall the sight of the large hound tearing through the wrecked car as Megumi exorcised the curse that had been at the cusp of the mangled traffic jam. Working on his command, the boy watched as the dog emerged, dragging a girl out of the rubble by her arm. The skin around the bite was already bloodied and bruised, but you certainly still had more of a chance of survival than you had before the damned bite. 

At once, there was an understanding in his still foggy mind that the machinery of right and wrong he had grown accustomed to over the years was far more prophetic than he ever cared to give it credit for. It didn’t matter what reason you gave him for staying by his side that night, because he already understood it wholeheartedly on a much different level than he had anticipated. Megumi had always been the type to search for reason in his own kindness while cynically picking apart the kindness of others. After all he’d been through, perhaps this was the final nail in the coffin of his nihilistic pattern of viewing his moral compass. 

“See, Megumi? I told you your knight in shining armor would come back for you!” That familiarly sarcastic voice that you had now been able to name Gojo, had the both of you flinching back from the unexpectedly intimate moment. Megumi’s face seemed to sour instantly as the man strolled into the room with a wide smile. “This kid was driving me insane, asking me about you as soon as they pulled that tube out of his throat.” 

The patient grumbled, and if he had more strength and less shit hooked up to him, he would have thrown a pillow at his teacher. Glaring dangerously at him, Megumi swatted his hand away as the older man began to ruffle at his hair in mock affection. Despite his clear mortification, you smiled amusedly at the scene before you. 

“Thanks for looking after the little guy for me.”

“I’m starting to think I should get a job here.” You joked back as you stood from your chair. You looked back at Megumi, who’s hard gaze was slowly melting into subtle confusion as he watched you rise. “I’m really glad you’re okay.”

You bowed in thanks to Gojo before making your way to the door. 

“You’re leaving?” Megumi stopped you at the exit for the second time that day. Had you looked now, you would have caught the deadly glare he shot his sensei’s way for ruining the moment. 

With your hand on the door, you turned around to offer him a warm smile, one that had his shoulders slumping forward as if enveloped in the most welcoming of blankets. 

“Gotta get to work.” You explained regretfully, chewing on the inside of your cheek. In a spark of confidence that was surely spurred on by the fact that you still had endless questions for the man, you continued with a bashful grin. “But you know where to find me. Maybe you can actually stay for your order this time, hm?”

Gojo almost had to turn away to hide the laughter bubbling in his chest upon seeing the dumbstruck expression on Megumi’s face as he could only muster up a small nod. You found yourself nodding along with him. 

“I’ll have your order ready.” You teased with a wink. “Black coffee, right?”

The boy breathed out in disbelief, watching with pink tinted cheeks as your hair swayed behind you while you took your leave. He wished with everything in him, since fate seemed to be playing so mercifully with him these days, that his ankle would miraculously heal in time for him to chase after you to catch one more glimpse of your glittering eyes and incandescent smile. Perhaps he had already had his fill of fate’s luck for one lifetime though, because he could only remain seated dumbly on the hospital bed, jaw hanging down just a hair as he breathed out. 

“Right.”

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[goodlucktai]

till you can breathe on your own

rise of the tmnt word count: 20k i wrote this fic for the turtle trenches server’s november gift exchange ! my giftee was @acewithapaintbrush and ace’s prompts were “found family, leosagi, wholesome disaster twins, and splinter being a good dad to the boys.” instead of being normal and picking one i decided to create an au that included all of those things at once and this is what i came up with. ace i really hope you enjoy it <3 happy turtle day ! title borrowed from keeping your head up by birdy

read on ao3

x

When Leonardo was eight years old, he and his best friend survived a house fire.

The blaze was put out thanks to a passing yokai with a magic spell for rain newly purchased that she was happy to use to help, but two of the children attending lessons there came up unaccounted for. Panicked neighbors searched for upwards of an hour only to find the boys fast asleep in a cart of clean linens parked out front of the bath house. 

There was a faint trace of mystic energy lingering around them but no one came forward as the one it belonged to, and they wouldn’t be able to explain what had happened. One minute they were trapped and frightened, and the next everything was blue and they were safe. 

Ultimately the rescue was credited to a powerful good samaritan who wished to remain anonymous, and the townsfolk collectively decided to be grateful for the miracle without unraveling it any further.

Leonardo’s friend moved away while his house was repaired, and Leonardo was returned to where he belonged at the local orphanage. He smiled when the matron fussed over him, even though he didn’t feel like smiling, and continued to pretend like he didn’t hear the other kids calling him bad luck.  

“You’d think someone would want him,” one of the older kids whispered during lunch. “Last time we had a turtle here they got snatched up in like a week.”

“Miss Toto says that way of thinking is archaic,” a tiny otter yokai piped up with remarkable authority, given that he clearly didn’t know the meaning of the word he was repeating. “Kameko has as much of a chance as the rest of us do.”

“Clearly,” the older kid muttered. 

Leonardo, who wasn’t Leonardo yet—who was called Kameko by the orphanage matron because she wasn’t especially creative, and Lucky by the other kids so they could be mean in a sneaky, underhanded way, and Stripes by his best friend, who mattered more than any of them—spent a lot of time dreaming of having a chance. 

He had no way of knowing that at the same time, miles away and a city above, an early-middle-aged man run ragged day in and out by three energetic children and sloughing through a persistent sadness was dreaming, too. 

The man was dreaming of his own childhood; a garden with a pond and lines of laundry drying in the late summer sun, a delicious smell sneaking out the kitchen window where jiji was grilling fish for dinner, his mother lifting her head to grace him with a smile he once took for granted. 

In the dream, she had to reach up to hold his face, because he was the same age now as she was when she died and several inches taller than her in adulthood. She didn’t mind his fur or snout or big rounded ears, and if anything the involuntary twitch of his whiskers only made her smile deepen. 

“My sweet boy,” she murmured, “I’m so proud of you.”

“How?” he choked out. He clung to her arms. He had a thousand things he wanted to tell her. All that came tripping out was, “How can you be?”

“Because I know how big your heart is,” she said, her tone leaving no room for argument. “You love so richly and earnestly. Even after that was taken advantage of and betrayed, you found more room in your heart for your little ones. Your little turtles.”

The thought of his sons pierced through the gloom of self-hatred like an arrow of light, as simple as flipping a switch in a dark room. He wouldn’t trade a moment with them for anything—not even for another moment with his mother. The overwhelming grief and love coexisted as naturally as two little otters holding hands at sea.

“But don’t you know?” she asked. “Can’t you feel it? Did it get lost in that big heart of yours? One of your children is waiting for you.”

He jerked as if electrocuted, going stiff and still beneath his mother’s hands, because she couldn’t mean to say what it sounded like she was saying. 

That tiny fourth turtle with the blue-patterned shell and bright gold eyes—the first one to smile and reach up to be held, the one that had fallen during their frantic escape and was left behind in the crush of the destroyed lab—the one the little shrine in his room belonged to, even though he didn’t have a proper photo, or a decent idea of what Blue would have looked like grown into personhood—the one that a corner of his heart belonged to, even now, even still—

“He’s alive, my darling,” his mother told him. In the dream, she sounded so certain. The clan symbol on her obi seemed to glow, a warm, shining thing that cast all darkness and doubt aside. “Go and bring my grandbaby home, okay?”

Hamato Yoshi woke up with a gasp, half-blinded by tears. 

——

The boys took the news as well as they possibly could have. It would have felt wrong not to tell them—cruel to keep them in the dark, even if it would shelter them from a hope that might only lead into a dead-end. 

They already knew of their fourth sibling, having long-since discovered the little shrine in Splinter’s room during a pre-Christmas snooping several years ago, but there hadn’t been much that Splinter could offer them when they peppered him for information and eventually those eager questions tapered off. They had only had a few months together in Draxum’s lab before Splinter could stage their escape and bring the facility down behind them—before tragedy had carved a hole into their brand-new family—and that wasn’t long enough to have more than a handful of stories to share. To do the baby’s memory anything resembling justice. 

But since waking up from that dream, Splinter had reached out with his ninpo in the way he hadn’t done since he was very young, like stretching out an atrophied limb, and he felt it. A fourth presence in his heart. It was a very faint echo somewhere far away, like an imprint of smoke left in the sky after a firework. Distant now and fading, but once-bright. Once-blue. 

And he knew. He knew Leonardo was alive.

“Red, you are in charge,” Splinter said, jittery with anticipation. He spared a moment to cup the snapper’s cheek in his palm, brushing his thumb over the rosy-colored diamond pattern there, and added, “Aunt June’s phone number is on the fridge if anything happens—but nothing had better happen! April can visit but you are not allowed to leave our home until I return.”

Red nodded several times, twisting his fingers together. He had inherited Splinter’s anxious heart, but he took being the oldest very seriously, and failure more seriously than that, for all that he was only nine. 

“Are you going to get Leo?” Orange piped up, bouncing in place. He had, in fact, not stopped bouncing since he had gleaned the gist of the conversation that began nearly a full hour ago. “Are you going to bring him home?”

“I am going to try,” Splinter said, kneeling so that he could poke his youngest baby playfully in those ticklish spots on his sides that always elicited a sunny giggle. 

Orange trilled in glee, and then he pulled his limbs and head into his tiny shell the way he often did when he was overexcited or overwhelmed and continued making turtle noises to himself from inside there. 

Splinter caught the talkative box shell before it could clatter to the floor and offered it to Red, who held it to his front the way he hugged his stuffies. 

“Okay my sweet boys,” Splinter said, “stay here and be good and I will see you in a short while.”

Purple trailed him to the front door, or what served as such in their repurposed underground home. After tugging on his coat and boots, Splinter turned to him and crouched down so they were at something approaching eye-level, even if eye contact did not seem to be on the table this morning. 

“You said we hatched at the same time,” Purple surprised the hell out of him by saying. His recalcitrant softshell son very rarely spoke aloud unless asked a direct question, and here he was volunteering whole sentences without preamble. “You said he came out of his egg right after me. He had stripes, and eyes like mine. You called us twins.”

Leonardo was not a forbidden topic in their home, but he was a bit of a sore one. It ached to press on the bruise that was their missing part. Purple in particular had a difficult time making himself understood and being understood in turn. He was also incredibly stubborn, and hard to match wits with. 

A twin must have sounded like a dream. Splinter wondered when Donatello had first shaped this little wish out of clay, and how often he spent taking it out and admiring it, wearing the rough edges into smoothness, giving it substance and character until all that was missing was the life. The color. 

“He was not the same species of turtle as you,” Splinter said. “But you did hatch together, and you did have the same eyes. Blue would fuss at bedtime until I placed him on your shell. You tried to take chunks out of the alchemist’s fingers whenever he parted the two of you.” For tests, he didn’t feel it was necessary to add. He offered his hands, and added, “So that is what I called you. My twin babies.” 

After a moment, Purple took his hands. His mouth was a firm line, golden eyes glued to the floor. There was enough of a wet shine in them that Splinter’s heart strained with the need to right every wrong for him at once. 

“I will find him, Donatello,” Splinter said. “Now that I know he is out there waiting to be found, there is nothing that can stop me. It might take a long time, but we have waited quite a while already, haven’t we?”

Purple nodded, and then stepped forward to bury his snout in the front of Splinter’s coat. It meant that a hug would be not only tolerated but appreciated, and Splinter didn’t hesitate to wrap his arms around his little boy. 

“Go on now,” Splinter said, only when Purple had extracted himself. He turned the child around by the shoulders and propelled him back to where Orange and Red were waiting. “I love you, little monsters,” he called loud enough to be heard by all three of them. “If the lair is still standing when I get home, you will get ice cream.”

Their noisy cheers followed him down the tunnel, warming him more effectively than direct sunlight ever could.  

And now Splinter was back in the Hidden City, although he had sworn to himself he would never return. 

His heart was racing, every nerve a livewire, so prepared he was for danger around each corner. He had hoped that the mad alchemist died in the destruction of the lab—had comforted himself with the fact, even, on those nights he woke up from bad dreams—but with Blue’s miraculous survival, Draxum might very well have lived too. Like a cockroach. 

And so he was hesitant to trace his steps back to the ruins of Draxum’s lab. He was not even sure if he would be able to find it. There was a restless, dislocated thing inside of him that made standing still a painful exercise, he so badly wanted to run and run until he found the little turtle he was looking for—he just didn’t know where to go. Where to start. The Hidden City was larger than he remembered.

“Excuse me,” someone said, startling him. He turned to find a short beetle yokai in a rumpled button down shirt and slacks standing just behind him, mandibles clicking idly. The beetle smiled and said, “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help but notice you seemed lost. Can I help in any way?”

It was Splinter’s first instinct to deny the apparent kindness. Lena—or Big Mama as she was called—had carved out the remains of his idealism as deftly as a gardener pulling up the last stubborn weed in a flower bed. People, he had been taught, were rarely kind for no reason. 

But April’s mother was a force of nature in her own right, and had bullied Splinter into friendship with her within a week of their children meeting. A New Yorker to her core, June O’Neil had only needed a moment to adjust to the sight of a mutant rat and three mutant turtles, at which point any lingering strangeness was overshadowed by the relief of finally having another single parent to commiserate with. She was on-call for every scare, every tantrum that left Splinter feeling out of his depth, every milestone. She refused to allow him to wallow in self-pity while he had three little boys to raise. 

June was the sole reason that there were a few shoots of hope growing in the ruin Lena left of him, stubborn and resilient and flowering. People were rarely kind for no reason, but rarely did not mean never. There was goodness to be found if one took the time to look for it. The risk did not always pay off, but the reward when it did was worthwhile every time. 

And so Splinter took his heart in his hands and faced the stranger and said, “Yes, please. If you’re able. I need help.”

The beetle yokai, a friendly, down-to-earth character named Cricket, listened to the bare bones of Splinter’s story and immediately began to guide him down the street. It was a street that would not have looked out of place in Osaka in the 80s. There were storefronts with neon signs and restaurants with enticing noren doors and the steady foot traffic of thousands of yokai milling about their day. No one paid a tall rat mutant any mind. 

“You’ll want the Chamber of Decisions,” Cricket said with a certainty that settled one small inch of the chaos in Splinter’s heart. “There will be someone there who can help you find your son.”

The beetle yokai took time enough out of his own day to show Splinter all the way through a startlingly mundane municipal building to a floor with a placard on the wall declaring it the Civil Courts. He even waited in line with Splinter, making pleasant conversation, until it was his turn to step forward and address the employee behind the front desk.

“Goodbye,” Cricket said at that point, stepping away. “And good luck!”

He was gone before Splinter could thank him, and the gazelle yokai behind the desk repeated, “Next,” in a tone that suggested she would be deeply unhappy to say it a third time. 

“Yes,” Splinter said quickly, “sorry, that’s me.”

“What is your name?” the yokai asked briskly. She had long spiraling horns and a long, narrow face, deceptively delicate. She wore a badge on a lanyard around her neck that read Helena, Court Clerk, and then a mess of characters beneath it that did not look like English or Japanese. 

“Hamato Yoshi,” Splinter replied by rote. When he spoke, a small crystal hovering unobtrusively above the desk glowed a clear spring green. It seemed to indicate his truthfulness, because the yokai didn’t request any further proof of identity. 

“Hamato?” the yokai, presumably Helena, said with a spark of interest. She read something from the text that populated on the holographic tablet in front of her and then added, “We have a backlog of forms here for you. It has been a long time since someone has claimed tenancy of your clan’s branch house in Neo Edo. I assume that’s why you’re here?”

“Uh,” Splinter said intelligently, “no. What?”

“The Hamato Estate,” Helena said. She seemed less than impressed with him. “The one that has been sitting in disrepair and bringing property values of the neighborhood down for more than a century. That has nothing to do with your visit today?” 

The Chamber of Decisions was very human in structure, and the bureaucracy was completely disarming. Splinter didn’t know what he showed up expecting to find here but he sort of felt as though he was walking through a lucid dream.

“Sorry, no, I—I was unaware my family had any dealings in the Hidden Cities at all. I was raised in Japan. In—a human city in Japan. And now my children and I live in New York.” 

Helena’s expression cleared with understanding, her attitude suddenly more helpful as she seemed to realize Splinter was not being willfully obtuse. She opened a drawer of the filing cabinet beside her desk and rifled through it until she came up with form after form that accumulated in an intimidating heap. 

Splinter bit the inside of his mouth so that he wouldn’t say something unfortunate. He was catching up to himself, the surprise and uncertainty of the situation he had found himself in fading into the background, his single-minded focus sharpening into a point once again. 

Blue had waited long enough to be found. It was deeply unfair to make him wait even a moment more. And unfair to Splinter, too, who just wanted to be given a direction that he could run in until he could scoop his son up and never let him go again. 

“Excuse me,” Splinter said, wrestling with himself until a semblance of good manners won its cage match with snarling impatience, “but I am here because I was told you might help me locate a missing child.” 

The gazelle’s head jerked up, hooved hands stilling. “What missing child?”

For the second time that day, Splinter explained his situation to a stranger. Not the whole thing; not the nature of his or his sons’ mutations, or the desperate life-or-death struggle that preceded their flight from the destroyed lab into the nearby city—this city—and then ultimately New York. But the gist of it. The fire, and the baby who fell from his arms, and the long years he has spent mourning a son he thought had died. That much he imparted as succinctly as he knew how. 

Helena punctuated his story with clipped nods, listening intently. She sifted through the stacked bundles of paperwork and withdrew two or three that she placed on the top of the pile. 

“We will register you and your children as citizens of the Hidden Cities,” she said firmly when Splinter had finished detailing the dream that led him to believe his son was alive. “Your clan has already been established here for centuries, so this will not take long. As a citizen you will have the full weight and reach of this court’s resources behind you. We will locate your son.” 

If there had been a chair behind him, Splinter would have collapsed into it. As it is, he only swayed on his feet for a moment, before mustering a hoarse, “Thank you.”

After the dream of his mother, Splinter had been feeling acutely guilty of the way he had left his family name well behind him, crafting a new identity for a new life in America. Now he was only grateful that Lena and that lunatic Draxum would not think twice about a rat mutant named Hamato Yoshi, or his children.

It felt surreal to write down their names—Raphael, Michelangelo, Donatello, Leonardo. For so long, they had been only his precious joys. The human world was not one he could trust to appreciate them. The O’Neils were a shining exception, one in a million. So his little family was kept a well-guarded secret. 

And now here he was, signing an official document that gave his turtles another place to belong, a place that could not be taken away by a mad alchemist or scheming spider. 

“If you come with me, I can take you to the appropriate department,” Helena said, cordial and efficient as she placed the last of the paperwork in a folder that glowed a friendly green before disappearing into fragments of light that spelled out ‘FILED.’ “It’s lucky you came when you did. We have a witch on retainer, and we would have called her in for this, but she’s already working from the office today.”

“Right,” Splinter said, smoothing down his shirt with nervous fingers. 

He didn’t know what his expression was doing, but it seemed to give the gazelle yokai a sense of urgency. She hustled him down a couple of halls and through more than one doorway that seemed to lead to another building entirely, until he was hopelessly lost somewhere in the depths of the administration.

But the office he finally stepped into was one that wouldn’t have looked place in any of the high rise buildings in FiDi, with an executive desk of solid wood, a neat row of filing cabinets, a less neat wall of overflowing shelves, and sparse, impersonal decor. There were a few oddities—self-watering hanging plants suspended in front of the window, and a glowing crystal levitating above the desk where a computer might have sat otherwise—but nothing that made Splinter’s animal hindbrain balk at the door. 

The young woman sitting behind the desk looked up and smiled, round brown face dimpled and kind. Half of her voluminous braided hair was piled on top of her head in a neat bun, while the rest framed her shoulders in interchanging plaits of black and mint green. Her long, pointed ears were pierced a dozen times each and dripping in tiny precious gemstones. 

“Hello there, Helena and friend,” she greeted. “Can I help you?”

“Nimue, this is Hamato-san. He recently had a prophetic dream that a child he lost in infancy is, in fact, alive,” Helena replied promptly. “We’ll need a spell for finding.”

It sounded actually insane when put so plainly, but she spoke in a way that reminded Splinter of his former account manager, no-nonsense and judicious. The young lady behind the desk took them both seriously and stood, brushing her braids back over her shoulder.

“I’ll start at once,” Nimue said. “It’ll only take a few minutes.” 

“Summon me if you need anything else,” Helena said briskly. “I’ll be finalizing the documentation up front.” 

Both yokai and witch were very perfunctory about the whole thing, as if it was business as usual. It went a long way in disarming that last kernel of doubt that Splinter had harbored every step of the way here.

With the doubt uprooted, there was space at last for painful, smothered hope to burst into full and violent bloom. 

He was shuffled into the adjoining room and into a squashy loveseat. This area seemed much more like a witch’s workshop; there were tricky, delicate glass instruments whirring away under their own power at a carved wooden table in the corner, and stacks of heavy leather volumes on all the shelves and flat surfaces, interspersed with jars of things like feathers and stones and shiny beetle shells. Dried herbs and flowers dangled in neat bundles from a rack on the ceiling, where motes of something too colorful to be dust floated in wandering circles. There was a small furry animal curled up to sleep on the arm rest of the chair opposite Splinter’s, light brown with a darker brown band across its eyes. When it lifted its head at the sound of the door closing, Splinter realized it was a ferret. 

“Please excuse the mess,” Nimue said, “I’m really not here that often so I tend not to prioritize organization. I know it’s a sad excuse.”

“I’m a single father parenting thr—four boys,” Splinter replied, heart skipping a beat at the self-correction. He would be parenting four. “The last thing I am qualified to judge anyone on is tidiness.” 

Nimue laughed. “I’ll take it! Now, I told Helena this would only be a moment, and I meant every word. There are lots of disclaimers and policies I could bog you down with, and probably ought to, but I know they’ll just go in one ear and out the other. You’re here to find your son, and that’s what I’m going to help you do.”

“Yes,” Splinter breathed. “Please.”

“Of course! A spell for finding is one of my favorites, not in the least because it’s super simple.” 

Nimue sat across from him, lifted the ferret off the arm of her chair and into her lap, and then held out both her hands. Splinter took them without second-guessing it. 

“Magic draws so much from nature,” the witch went on. As she spoke, various pieces of glass or crystal in the room began to glow, as if her voice contained a brilliance that could be caught and reflected back. “In our spells, we use plants, stones, animal shed—things given by the earth—and sometimes energy generated by a storm or the sea. A friend that I graduated university with channels power from lightning. Very flashy, but very hard to pin down.”

A pool of light formed between them, beneath their joined hands. It was flat and still, like the surface of calm water. Four little jewels in bright candy colors shone through—red, orange and purple clustered together, and blue clear on the other end. Splinter’s heart ached; he knew them. He knew them. 

“At its core, it’s orderly,” Nimue said, her voice calm and smiling. “The most powerful rituals I know of are tied to star charts or phases of the moon, because even celestial bodies follow a pattern. Magic wants to make right. It wants to return things. And so a spell like this costs absolutely nothing. A lost child belongs with their family; that’s as fundamental a thing as gravity.”

She let go of Splinter’s hands and turned her own to catch the pool of light in the cup of her palms. She closed her hands together, as if compressing something as tight as possible between them, and then with a sudden jerking motion, flung them up and open. 

The light spread between them in a translucent, shimmering curtain. It looked like a chart, or a map, though not one Splinter had any hope of reading.  

Nimue hummed in what could either be surprise or delight, her smile showing teeth. 

“Oh, look at how clear and bright they are,” she cooed, “shining like stars. You must be so proud. And here’s little boy blue,” she added, pointing out the lonely light living by itself, isolated from the others. “He’s in Sawara Town, not too far from here.” 

Splinter’s heart was a frantic drum inside his chest. He wasn’t sure if he’d taken a single full, deep breath since he woke up from that dream that brought him to this moment in the first place. He twitched with the urge to scoop those colorful, twinkling little lights out of the rest and hold them close, hold them safe. 

“So what now?” he managed to choke out. “Are you going to teleport me there or something?”

Nimue laughed again, scritching the ferret’s ruff with the tips of her fingers. 

“Teleport? I’m good but I’m not that good! I’ll call you a cab.”

Not even two full hours later, Splinter was walking up the main street of Sawara. It was a bustling rural town with a mighty canal for a heart, filled with wooden fishing boats and framed by thin wisps of willow trees. Machiya-style houses rambled along in tight rows on either side of the waterway, most of them with front doors and shutters slid open to display shop spaces. 

Splinter stopped at a dry goods store to ask for directions to the orphanage, and the storeowner pointed him toward the sprawling estate at the edge of town, tucked into the natural bend of the river. 

He was floating in that dream feeling again. Everything was two inches left of reality. He was half-prepared to discover that this day felt impossible because it was impossible and he should have known better than to believe it could be this easy. He was half-prepared for someone to yank the curtain back and reveal the wizard was just some guy running a long con the whole time. Splinter had always, always been the punchline of a bad joke. 

But he promised the boys he would find their brother. He thought of Purple’s eyes, wide with hope, and his quiet voice saying, “You called us twins.” He thought of that sweet baby he had only briefly been anything like a father to, the first of the four to smile at him, the first one to want to be held by him. 

Resolve filled every chamber of his heart until it overflowed from there and filled the rest of him for good measure. That floating, dreaming feeling scattered into painful cognizance. 

He was Lou Jitsu. He was Hamato Atsuko’s only son. If life had taught him anything, it was how to take a punch. He would follow this road to wherever it led, and if Blue was not at the end of it, then he would find another road to follow. He would walk forever if he had to. He would let his heart get broken a hundred thousand times. 

Splinter let himself through the gate and strode up the meandering path toward the front of the house. He wondered if he ought to announce himself, and then discovered a doorbell half-hidden beneath the leaves of a drooping hanging plant. He rang it, and squared his shoulders, and waited. 

After about a minute, the door slid open to reveal a harried-looking pangolin yokai with a squirming raccoon child in her arms. It was a scene immediately familiar to Splinter as a pre-naptime battle of wills. 

“Oh, hello,” the pangolin said, offering a smile as she managed not to drop the uncooperative toddler with a deftness that spoke of years of experience. “My name is Tomomi, I’m the matron here. How can I help you?”

“Hello,” Splinter replied, returning her bow automatically. He realized suddenly that he probably should have been practicing what he would say in this moment, because he was coming up blank. “Ah, my name is Hamato Yoshi, and I’m—I’m, uh—I’m here for my kid.” 

Nailed it. 

“You may need to be slightly more specific than that,” the matron said, bemused. 

“Right,” Splinter said. Specifics. He could do specifics. “I had a dream. And then there was a whole thing with a witch and a finding spell. Uh, I have documentation? That the court clerk sent with me?” 

Tomomi maneuvered the child into one arm and reached for the papers Splinter offered with her freed hand, all of them stamped with Helena’s imposing seal. As she read, her eyebrows made a shocked jump toward her scaly hairline. 

Splinter’s heart fluttered madly. His chest felt like a cage full of restless birds. 

“My son was lost to me when he was a baby, and I believed that he was dead. Something happened recently that—that revealed him to me. It showed me that he was still alive. If he’s here, I—I want him. I have always wanted him. He has three brothers who have been missing him, too. He has never,” Splinter faltered, and had to swallow twice before he could go on, “he has never been unwanted, not even for a single day.”

“Oh, my spirits,” Tomomi murmured, crouching to let the little raccoon yokai slide free and then dart victoriously away. She straightened again, a hand pressed flat to her chest as she passed the papers back, perfectly stunned. “If he’s here, and he’s yours, I’ll help you however I can. What can you tell me about him?”

Splinter said, “He’s—he’s a little turtle. Eight years old. His shell is—just, one moment.” 

With shaking hands, he crammed the documents into his jacket pocket and withdrew his phone instead. His pictures weren’t sorted into albums, because 99.99% of them were all pictures of his children or April, rendering any attempt to sort them entirely redundant. That did mean he had to swipe for a moment before he found a decent photo of Orange’s carapace, and the warm yellow pattern of his scutes. 

“His shell pattern would be very similar to his brother’s, you see? And his eyes were this color,” Splinter went on, swiping to a picture of Purple glaring resolutely away from the camera, golden eyes distinctive even when narrowed and averted behind thick prescription glasses. “He was—he was very sweet. Very talkative. He wanted to be held all hours of the day. He—”

“He’s here, Hamato-san,” Tomomi blurted, eyes huge. 

“He’s… oh.” Splinter stared back at her, phone still extended dumbly in his hand. He felt frozen in place. A gust of wind would probably have been enough to knock him clear over. “He’s here?”

The matron seemed to be in disbelief herself, staring at Splinter as though he was a figment of her imagination and if she moved too suddenly he might disappear. 

“I can’t believe it. After all this time.” Then she shook her head, and wrapped professionalism back around her shoulders like a trusty cloak. She said, “Please come with me to my office, I’ll have Kameko brought to us there.” 

Kameko. Turtle child. Splinter didn’t know how he felt about that name, but kept it to himself. He was minutes—minutes— away now. If he absolutely had to go crashing through every single wall in this building one by one to find his child, that was entirely within his power. He would save that as the nuclear option, but not remove it from the table entirely. 

“He really is the sweetest thing,” Tomomi said. “No trouble at all, helpful as can be. Incredibly smart for his age—he’s leagues ahead of his classmates.” 

Like his brothers, Splinter thought, with a sort of dazed, wondering pride. All of them were happy little boys with distinct, dynamic personalities, but June—who had been a parent for one whole year longer than Splinter and had the added experience of helping to keep a dozen nieces and nephews alive, and was therefore the expert between the two of them—had often expressed surprise at how quickly the turtles tore through their learning material. 

Donatello was an unstoppable force that had yet to encounter an immovable object, but Raphael and Michelangelo were both well ahead of the curve, too. Splinter wondered, sometimes, if that had been part of Draxum’s design for them. 

“The younger kids adore him, though the older ones ostracize him a bit,” Tomomi was saying. “He’s had a number of failed placements, I’m afraid. Just bad luck.” She winced, as though the word left a bad taste on her tongue, and hurried to add, “It’s been hard on him since his friend moved away. He really deserves this. You’ll see.”

She was clearly trying to upsell the kid, as if to preemptively change Splinter’s mind about giving him up. As if there was any force in the universe that could even dream of being strong enough to compel him to do that. 

The orphanage as they walked through it was noisy. Kids in clothes that were second-hand but clean and well-fitting chased each other down hallways and in and out of rooms at speed. The building itself showed the inevitable wear and tear that came of hordes of children putting their marks on the place, but it was not dirty, or drafty, or in any sort of disrepair. No one looked hurt or underfed. There was a comfortable amount of clutter, plush toys and books and electronics scattered about the den they passed by. In all corners of the house there was shrieking and laughter and the thunder of little running feet. 

Yoshi was feeling a hundred thousand things right now, all of them in immediate conflict with each other and jostling for first place, but relief was chief among them. He had, in a shadowy corner in the back of his mind, feared the worst upon hearing his child was living in an orphanage. At a glance, the bulk of those fears were dispelled. It was good to know that he probably would not have to raze this place to the ground for their poor treatment of Blue. He could not imagine that would endear him to Helena. 

Tomomi leaned into an open doorway and called out, “Ren, please find Kameko and have him meet me in my office, okay? It’s important that he comes quickly.”

“Okay, Miss Toto!” someone called back, and then a tiny otter yokai went zipping away.

“I don’t know all of his hiding spots, I’m afraid,” the matron murmured, opening another door further down the hall and inviting him inside. “I don’t want to take you on a wild goose chase and waste a second more of your time. You’ve waited long enough already.”

“Thank you,” Splinter said. He sank into the seat she offered him and twisted his fingers, a nervous tic that his eldest son had inherited from him directly. “You said—he’s ostracized by the older kids? Why?”

Tomomi moved around the office, preparing cups of tea with hot water from an electric kettle. She said, “Yokai are very superstitious, as you well know.” Splinter did not know, actually, but nodded to maintain the ruse that he had been a rat yokai his entire life. “Turtles are viewed as—well, lucky. But since every single one of Kameko’s placements failed for some reason or another, some of the children decided he must be an omen for bad luck instead of good. It’s silliness, Hamato-san. But as much as he claimed it never bothered him, I’m sure it must have.”

Splinter had to take a moment to absorb that. Blue was a miracle. The fact that he was alive at all—the Hamato clan in its entirety must have spent every scrap of its allotted good fortune for the next billion year

Bad luck, he thought with a bewildered scoff. Where?

He held the teacup between his hands but forgot what to do with it. He was doing his best to listen to Tomomi but all of his attention craned toward the door instead. Riveted to each pair of footsteps that thundered past, each bright, energetic voice, each unfamiliar spark of qi… 

Splinter stopped breathing a second before a knock sounded on the doorframe. 

“Miss Toto,” a young voice called. “Renren said you wanted to see me?”

Tomomi glanced at Splinter sidelong and then called back, “Come on in, sweetie. There’s someone here who wants to meet you.”

He was unaware of moving, but somehow Splinter turned in time to watch the door rattle open, and there he was. 

In a neat coral pink and cream-colored jinbei, knees dirty from playing outside. Not quite grown into his stripes yet, still huge bright red crescents that took up most of his face. Eyes the same color as Donatello’s, the same shape as Splinter’s. Alive. Healthy. Small for his age. The brightest thing in this little riverside town. 

Leonardo. Blue. 

A painfully dislocated piece of Splinter’s long-broken heart clicked neatly back into place.  

The boy blinked and then smiled widely. He was all at once perfectly charming, happy to be standing there. Tomomi smiled back at him like a knee-jerk reaction and ushered him inside. 

“Hi!” Blue said brightly. “Nice to meet you!” 

Splinter could only sit there and take him in. His smile. The sound of his voice. He was so alive. 

“Kameko, this is Hamato Yoshi-san,” Tomomi said, steering the turtle closer to Splinter’s seat. “He’s come all the way from the human world to find you.” 

Blue’s smile faltered for a split-second, giving away his confusion. He had probably been fed a lot of lines from people looking to adopt a lucky turtle into their family over the last eight years, but this one was brand new. 

It was hard to explain to his little face that he had been—left behind. That Splinter had spent the entirety of his life mourning him. That looking at him was like looking at a ghost. Splinter did the best he could, grateful that Tomomi stepped in to pick things up wherever he faltered. With her help, he didn’t make an entire mess of the conversation.

“I have brothers?” was the first question Blue asked when they had finished. “I really do?”

“Yes, you—here, you can look,” Splinter said clumsily, offering his phone again. Offering anything. 

The turtle looked up into his face, and then over at Tomomi, and only took it after their combined reassurances. He was hesitant with the device even then, as though half-expecting Splinter to change his mind and berate him for handling it at all. 

But when the camera roll came up, Blue’s breath hitched, and all his uncertainty blew clean away. He blew up one of the photos and swiped through them that way, full-screen snapshots of a life he had missed out on. He stared intently at each picture as though doing his best to memorize each one in as much time as he was allowed to look. 

“What,” he started to ask, and then darted a quick glance up at Splinter again. Splinter nodded, heart in his throat, and Blue dared to continue, “What are they like?”

Carefully, Splinter shifted closer, until he and his son were side by side. Reaching around him, Splinter said, “Raphael is your biggest brother, and a year older than you. He may appear spiky and imposing, but he is actually very sensitive, and fond of stuffed animals and Barbie movies. I call him Red because of his rosy diamond patterns.” 

Blue mouthed ‘Raphael,’ drinking him in. 

The next few pictures were a blurred mess, Splinter’s attempt at taking photos while managing chaos as his boys helped in the kitchen the morning of April’s tenth birthday. Finally he landed on a clear one of Orange, covered in a dusting of flour, a comically large mixing bowl of funfetti cake batter in his arms that he had insisted he could handle without help. 

“This is Michelangelo. He is the youngest, only seven now. He is silly and spirited and will probably take over the world one day. We’ll all be better off with him in charge, I think. He would work all day long to win a single smile from someone he loves. Can you guess what his nickname is?”

Blue traced his little brother’s sunny spots with his eyes, overwhelmed. Still he guessed correctly, a soft-spoken, “Orange.” 

“Yes,” Splinter said. “Our crazy Mikan.” 

“Then this is—” Blue said, swiping on his own to a picture of the only remaining sibling. “Purple?” 

“Mm. Donatello. He is about a minute older than you, if that. He is smarter than any one hundred people put together, and creates spectacular things out of scraps and discards. But he struggles to make himself understood, so often opts out of talking at all. It does not mean he does not have anything to say.” 

This final photo rattled Blue completely, because there was an obvious likeness there. Donatello’s striking eyes were a mirror image of Leonardo’s own. There was no argument to be had about it—they were related. 

Remembering Purple’s burdened little hope, Splinter can’t help but add, “I once made the comment to him that the two of you could be twins, because you hatched together, and you were inseparable for every moment after. Donatello has latched onto the idea. And because of who he is as a person, I’m pretty sure he will die on that hill.”

Tomomi looked politely confused by the slang, but Blue huffed out an involuntary laugh, which was Splinter’s goal in the first place. 

“What’s, um,” Blue asked, “my name? Those ones—they all match. They’re artists. We talked about them in class once. Did I—did I match, too?”

“You did,” Splinter replied at once, trying to sound completely normal about the question. “I named you Leonardo. You were fearless, you wanted to see everything, you wanted to be everyone’s friend. Nothing could slow you down.” He reached out, telegraphing every inch of the move as he made it, and cradled that precious striped face in one careful hand. “My little lion. My Baby Blue.”

Leonardo didn’t cry, though it looked like he would like to. He reached up and seized Splinter’s wrist in both hands instead, clinging with the disproportionate strength Splinter was used to from raising his brothers. The four turtles were meant to be weapons, genetically altered to that end, but Splinter had taken one look at the freshly mutated babies and instantly resolved that he would secure a normal life for them if it was the last thing he ever did.  

He felt every inch of that resolve rekindled in this moment. He would do anything. He would topple a hundred laboratories, fight a thousand warrior alchemists, survive a million rounds in the Battle Nexus. If that was what it took to keep his Blue, to bring him home. He would do all of that in a heartbeat. 

“Well,” Tomomi said, unselfconscious about the tears she was blotting away, “let’s just get a few things signed away, and Kame—ah, Leonardo can start the first day of his new life! Sweetie, how about you go and get your things packed? You can say goodbye to your friends, too.” 

Blue pressed his cheek more firmly into Splinter’s palm, not wanting to go. Not wanting to test the limits of this strange, perfect dream. Splinter understood completely, and would prefer that his second-youngest child never left his sight again. 

But he didn’t want Blue to be afraid. He didn’t want to teach him fear.

So Splinter packed away his own anxieties and said, “Why don’t you hold onto my phone for me? It seems I will have my hands full with paperwork. It would be a lot of help.”

“Okay,” the little turtle said, reluctantly drawing away. He kept the phone in a tight grip. “I’m a good helper. And a quick packer! I’ll be right back!” 

“Don’t forget to say goodbye!” Tomomi called after him, but she was only talking to an empty doorway, the door itself left open and Leonardo’s running footsteps already halfway down the hall. “I wish I could bottle up some of that energy and keep it for a rainy day,” she said lightheartedly, getting up to close the door herself.

“I know what you mean,” Splinter said, fully sincere.  

“We really don’t have a lot for you to sign here, since the Chamber has already processed the lion’s share of the paperwork, and he’s rightfully yours to begin with,” Tomomi explained. “I just need you to hear a few things.” 

Splinter nodded, giving her his complete, undivided attention for the first time since he arrived. She didn’t seem to know what to do with it, flustered as she shuffled through a drawer of file folders.

“Ka—Leonardo,” Tomomi corrected herself again ruefully, “has had a rather hard time. I’ll give you a copy of his file, since he’ll pop back in here at any moment, and I hate to discuss it in front of him, but it’s important for you to fully understand. He’s been handed a lot of disappointments in his life. Please be patient. It might take him a long time to really trust you.”

“Then it’s a good thing we have the rest of our lives,” Splinter said firmly. “Blue could be a crazy man-eating alien for all I care—but if he’s going to terrorize humans, he can do it at home.”

The pangolin yokai laughed. “I’ll quote you on that. I also wanted you to be aware that we had a bit of a scare recently. He used to go into town to practice kendo every evening. A few nights ago, some of the other students decided to run around and cause trouble by the hearth,” her curt tone made it clear what she thought about that, “and started a fire that consumed the house. Leonardo was one of two children trapped inside.” 

“A fire?” Splinter parroted, halfway out of his seat in a second. He thought of the densely populated town down the way, the rows of houses he had passed that were all made of wood and straw and rice paper. Houses that would go up like tinder with a single misplaced spark. 

His baby, in a burning house. 

“He was rescued, and only sustained some minor burns and smoke sickness,” Tomomi was quick to reassure. “We had the boys both seen by a healer first thing. I’m letting you know because I would want to know, and Leonardo is unlikely to mention it at all.”

For a moment, Splinter could only imagine the horrifying what-if scenario; what if Leonardo hadn’t been rescued? What if Splinter’s dream had come a day too late? What if they had discovered Leonardo had been alive and that they had already lost him a second time? What if they had never discovered him at all, and he had died as a child that everyone believed nobody wanted?

Yoshi, he could almost hear his mother scolding him, clear as day, what good does it do you to think about that? It did not happen. Life is happening now. You will miss it if you don’t pay attention. 

“Yes,” he said belatedly, bobbing his head. “Right. Anything at all you feel is important, please tell me.”

They only had ten or so minutes to talk before Blue came back at top speed. Along the way he had collected that little otter yokai, as well as a fluffy owl in a pink yukata and a lizard whose green scales shimmered into a dull yellow as Splinter watched. 

“Koko’s leaving again?” the lizard demanded. “Is Ren gonna get that whole room to himself now? That’s not fair.”

“Shut up,” the owl said to her sharply, then turned to ask, “Is he really leaving, Miss Toto?”

“I’m afraid so, Susumu,” the matron said. “Have you all said your goodbyes, darlings?”

The question caused the otter child to burst into tears instantly. Leonardo was quick to drop his bag, shove Splinter’s phone into the pocket of his shorts, and scoop his little foster sibling’s face up in his hands. 

“Renren, don’t cry! How am I supposed to be brave if the bravest person I know is crying, huh?”

“I’m not crying,” the otter sobbed miserably, “I’m just, just so happy for you!”

“Great, I won’t even have to miss you, because Ren’s gonna keep repeating every single stupid thing he’s ever heard you say,” the owl complained, but she put her winged arms around them both and squeezed. “Bye, Koko. I hope these are your people for real this time.”

“Thanks, Suzy,” Blue replied, bonking their heads together lightly. “Take care of yourself or I’ll haunt your dreams!”

“Haunt your dreams,” Ren parroted thickly. 

“And if you see Snowy—” Blue added in a quieter voice. 

“I’ll tell him everything, don’t worry,” Susumu said, and hefted Ren away with her when she stepped back into the hall. 

That left the lizard girl, who looked as though she wanted to shrivel into a tiny bug and disappear through the floorboards with the attention of everyone else focused on her. Shoulders hunched, she whacked Leonardo in the shins with her long tail. 

“I think you should start biting people,” she announced.

“Niji,” Tomomi said warningly. 

The lizard lifted her chin, scales shifting from yellow to defiant red. “I mean it. If this new dad is mean just bite the hell out of him. Then he’ll send you back here and no one else will want you and we can age out of the system together and go start a gang.”

“Niji!” 

“Deal,” Blue said, and they shook on it. It was precious. 

Later, when all goodbyes had been made and Blue had been cried on by the pangolin matron and it was finally just the two of them making the journey back into town, Blue looked up at Splinter and said, “I won’t really bite you, Hamato-san. I just wanted to make Niji feel better. She tries to sound mean but she worries a lot.” 

“You have my full permission to take a bite out of any grown-up who tries to hurt you in any way,” Splinter said, smiling at him. He was carrying his child’s bag over his shoulder with one hand, the other clutched tight in both of Blue’s. “And you can call me whatever makes you comfortable, but Hamato-san is a little stuffy, don’t you think? If you don’t want to try ‘dad,’ how about Splinter?”

“Splinter?” Leonardo bounced on his feet. “Is that a code-name? Do you have a secret identity?”

The walk was long, but it went by quickly, peppered by question after question once Blue seemed to realize Splinter did not mind answering them. 

Where do you live? Have you always lived there? What’s California like? What’s New York City like? Do you know lots of humans? Are they nice? Who’s April? Will my brothers like me? 

Splinter answered, and explained, and reassured. Mostly, he listened to Blue’s animated voice that did its best to fill any empty space it found. Blue was not the jaded, angry child that Splinter himself once was, even if he had just as much—if not more—reason to be. But he was not a naïve boy, either. Hope had been all but trained out of him by now, the way it had clearly been trained out of Niji back at the orphanage. It was still there, clinging on with the tips of its fingers, but only just. 

And when Splinter tilted his head back and laughed at the clever joke Blue came up with on the spot, he saw that fragile little hope peeking out at him in the form of a crooked smile, shy and earnest and daring. 

Afternoon had given way to evening by the time they arrived at the edge of town where the cab was waiting. The driver, a skeleton yokai, was a local, and seemed happy to idle there and let the meter run since it was on the City’s dime. 

He glanced up from his sudoku book when Splinter and Blue approached and belted out, “Well, look who it is! Hey, kiddo!” 

“Hi Benny!” Blue shouted back. “¿Cómo estás?”

“Estoy bien, niño. And you’re doing just fine, too, huh? Guess I won’t be giving you many rides anymore. Hopefully this one sticks.”

Despite his flippant tone, the last remark was clearly aimed at Splinter. Splinter, for his part, held his son’s hand a little tighter and tried not to let the implications sting. Blue was so used to being shuttled back and forth that he was on first-name basis with the guy doing the shuttling. Blue had a reputation in this town as being an unwanted, oft-returned orphan. 

Splinter was simultaneously offended by anyone who would deem his precious child an unworthy addition, and endlessly grateful he had not been snatched up before his family had a chance to claim him. 

“This one,” Splinter said, flinty, “will stick.”

The driver muttered something in Spanish that made Blue muffle giggles behind his hand, and Splinter magnanimously decided to ignore that. The two grown-ups affected a playful antagonism for the duration of the hour and a half car ride, bantering back and forth, because anything that made Blue forget himself enough to lean forward against his seatbelt and fill the cab with chatter was worth doing. 

Benny did not let them go after dropping them off until Splinter agreed to bring the children to visit Benny’s cousin’s restaurant in Neo Edo sometime soon. Only then did he lower a bony hand out the driver’s side window so that Blue could bounce forward and bump their fists together.

“Nos vemos, chiquito,” the skeleton cabbie said fondly. “Have a good life, got it? We’ll have problems if you don’t.” 

He pointed warningly at Splinter, letting him know exactly who the problems would be had with.  

“See you, Benny!” Leonardo said. His eyes were wet, but he did not let his bright smile slip an inch. Splinter had worked with professional actors less talented than this nine year old boy. “I’ll be good, promise!”

“You are already good,” Splinter couldn’t help but interject, brushing a hand over the crown of the little turtle’s head. “That’s quite enough of that. Let’s be happy instead.” 

——

Raphael’s initial impression of his newest little brother was that he was very brave. 

He was tiny, not much bigger than Mikey, with bright yellow stripes on his arms and legs, and two big red ones on his face that curved over his cheeks and eyes. Pops carried him into the lair when he first brought Leonardo home, because the tunnels that wound to and around their house were dark and maze-like. Sometimes Raphie got lost in them if he strayed too far and he’d lived there forever. 

Raph remembered thinking how small Leo was, in a huge, confusing place, surrounded by people he had never met before. It would have been overwhelming for anybody, but he didn’t cry at all. He smiled instead, big and silly, like there was nothing in his whole life he needed to be scared of, actually. 

As Raph got to know him, he realized that Leo very rarely wasn’t smiling. 

He was even smiling a little bit as he poked his head through Raphie’s doorway in the middle of the night.  

“Hi,” Leo whispered, even though he could tell Raph was awake. 

He was doing that thing he always did, greeting first and then hanging back to make sure he was welcome. He never just walked into a room or jumped into a conversation. Raph probably wouldn’t have noticed Leo did that if he hadn’t heard Aunt Junie and Pops talking about it a few days ago. 

Raph wiped his eyes on his blanket quickly and tried to sound like he hadn’t been crying. 

“Hi, Leo. C’mere.”

The smaller turtle crossed the room at a run, climbing up into the bed and under the offered comforter. Raph pulled it up over both their heads when he was settled. The dark, warm space beneath the blanket felt the way Raph imagined the inside of his shell would feel if he could hide there. He squeezed Lamby until she glowed from the star on her belly and laid her between them so they had just enough light to see each other by. 

It was a familiar ritual for Raph. It was what he always did for Mikey and Donnie when they sought him out after bedtime. 

“Are you okay?” Leo asked in his quietest voice. 

“I’m okay,” Raph assured him quickly, feeling stupid about the tacky feeling on his cheeks and his puffy eyes. “Don’t worry about Raph.” When Leo’s brow wrinkled, not comprehending why he shouldn’t worry if he felt like it, Raph quickly said, “What about you, buddy? Why are you up?”

He had definitely been asleep when Raph had peeked in on him and Donnie earlier, but that didn’t mean a whole lot. Leo only seemed to sleep for a couple hours at a time. He always dragged his feet at bedtime, as though a good night’s rest was a concept that applied to other turtles, but not to him. If he didn’t share a room with his twin, it would probably be impossible to convince him to go to bed at all. Raph wasn’t looking forward to the contest of wills they’d probably have every single evening once Leo’s bedroom was finished.  

‘Miss Toto says I’m a night owl,’ Leo had announced at breakfast during his first week at home when Pops asked him how he slept. ‘I don’t know what kind of turtle that is.’ 

Mikey giggled, and Donnie said, ‘It’s not a kind of turtle, it’s an idiom.’

Overly-offended, Leo squawked, ‘You can’t just call people idioms!’

The conversation got so silly from there that Pops forgot about asking in the first place. Leo was really good at making people forget they asked questions. But that just made Raph hold onto his questions really tight until he got an answer. Even if it didn’t really matter—he didn’t want Leo thinking he could get away with sneaking around it when it did matter. 

His little brother’s eyes were big and dark in the blanket cave. Sure enough, he didn’t try to weasel out of answering. 

“Sometimes I lived in places where I couldn’t sleep,” he said. “I got used to it.” 

“Why couldn’t you?” Raph asked, frowning. 

“In one house it was really noisy,” Leo said easily enough. “The badger family that lived there was crepuscular. That meant they mostly were awake before the sun came out. Just a little bit of noise is enough to wake me up, so I started being crepuscular , too. Only kendo practice and all of my school classes were in the daytime, so it didn’t work out.” 

To Raph, that sounded a lot like Leo wasn’t able to sleep at night and didn’t have time to sleep during the day. He can feel anger stirring deep in his heart, because it wasn’t fair. That badger family got to have Raph’s brother when he should have been here, and they didn’t even take care of him. How hard could it have been to give one little turtle a quiet place to rest? Pops found a quiet place for four of them in New York City.  

He reached around Leo to lay a hand flat on his carapace. The scutes there were hard and smooth, unlike Donnie’s spiny, leathery shell and Raph’s rough spiky one. It was slightly flatter than Mikey’s domed shape, but otherwise entirely familiar. And it was second-nature to rub in slow up-and-down motions, because that’s just what you did with little turtle shells when the little turtles inside couldn’t sleep. 

Leo blinked a couple times, all fast and surprised, as if he’d never had a shell-rub before in his life. Raph hoped that wasn’t true. 

“Why are you up?” Leo asked, never one to be waylaid for long. 

Fair was fair. Raph felt embarrassed about it, but since Leo had answered his question, he said truthfully, “I had a bad dream.”

He was maybe a little bit prepared for Leo to laugh or make fun or—something. But Leo said, “Sorry, Raphie. Bad dreams are the worst. Do you want to talk about it, or talk about something else?”

It sounded very practiced, like he had either said it a lot or heard it a lot before tonight. But it still loosened a tight little fist deep in Raph’s chest somewhere that was clutching really hard to worry. 

Carefully, each word picking its tentative way out, Raphie described the dream he’d had the best he could. It had already faded from memory for the most part. The definite edges were gone and all that was left was the nightmare soup—the dark room and his pounding heart and the loneliness that was big enough to eat him whole if it wanted to. 

“I dreamed I didn’t have anybody,” he mumbled out. “I was all alone. It felt like I’d be alone forever.”

“I had one like that before,” Leo said quietly. “I ran all the way to Snowy’s house to make sure he was there. He let me in through his window and we had a sleepover. Why didn’t you have a sleepover with Donnie or Mikey? You wouldn’t even get in trouble for leaving the house like I did since they’re just right down the hall.” 

“I’m the biggest,” Raph said, the truth of his life that had always been and always would be. “I’m responsible for you bozos. I look after you three, not the other way around.” 

He made sure Leo knew it wasn’t a bad thing, poking him playfully on the end of his beak until he scrunched it up. It wasn’t a bad thing. It was the best thing about being Raph. 

“All by yourself?” Leo asked. “Everybody needs help. Even Jupiter Jim has a sidekick.”

Ever since his siblings had shown him those movies, Leo was a big fan. And it was hard to argue his logic, because Red Fox was a character they all loved beyond reason, and Raph would never dream of saying Jupiter Jim didn’t need her. 

But it was different. 

Raph knew that he could be bossy. He didn’t mean to be. Sometimes it took Donnie crossing his arms and baring his teeth to make Raph realize he’d been nagging. Sometimes he didn’t know until Mikey started shouting that Raph had been talking over him. He really didn’t mean to. 

He just hated not knowing what was going to happen. Every accident and surprise—Donnie wandering out of his room for bandaids when his latest build managed to cut past his gloves, Mikey’s experimental stir fry setting off the smoke alarms, Pops juggling too many things at once and dropping something that shattered on the floor—made Raph feel sick. It made him feel unsafe. 

“I just want to be careful,” Raph managed to force out. “That’s all. I don’t want anything bad to happen. I don’t want it to be my fault. I don’t want to mess up and let you guys down. I don’t wanna be—”

Alone. 

Leo nodded solemnly, his cheek pressed against the pillow. Eyes all big and serious and older than the face they peered out of. 

“You’re the best big brother I’ve ever met,” he said, sounding so certain that Raph was a second too slow to doubt him. “You care so much. You care enough for a hundred turtles. I didn’t know anybody could have a heart that big.”

Raph blinked, feeling fresh tears sting his eyes and slide down his face. Donnie would have frozen in distress, like the whole world stopped spinning when one of his siblings was hurting and Donnie stopped spinning right along with it. Mikey would have jumped in for a sticky octopus-style hug, because there was nothing broken that he couldn’t fix by wrapping his arms around it and holding on tight. 

Leo didn’t freeze and he didn’t jump in. He landed somewhere in the middle of those extremes, shuffling closer and putting his problem-solving face on. He tugged on a corner of the sheets beneath them until enough of the blanket came up that he could use it to wipe Raph’s face free of tears. He did everything so earnestly, as if each tiny moment meant the world to him.  

“But guess what?” he went on. “Everybody cares about you that much, too. I can’t even think of something you could do that would make us not want to see you every single day. If you were ever alone it’d only be ‘cause you got lost, and then we’d just burn the whole city down to find you again. We’d never leave you behind.” 

Leo smiled, not the big shining one. This one was different, lopsided and sweet. Raph had only seen this smile of Leo’s a handful of times and it was already so important to him. 

“You know that in your heart, I think,” Leo said. “You just get stuck in your head, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” Raph whispered, feeling wobbly and see-through. 

“It’s okay, Raphie. I can remind you. Just give half of what you’re worried about to me and we’ll share it. I’m on your team! I’m your sidekick! Nothing’s as scary when you have backup. As long as I’m here you don’t have to be scared of anything.” 

Raph’s words got stuck in his throat. He had no idea what he might have said if they hadn’t. Instead he pulled Leo in snug against his plastron, safe beneath his arm. Lamby ended up smushed between them and her glow turned off. Leo wasn’t afraid of the dark, so it was for Raphie’s sake when he worked the stuffed animal free and squeezed the light in her middle back on. 

Maybe Raph cared enough for a hundred turtles, but Leo was brave enough for a thousand. He wasn’t afraid of anything. 

“Deal. And as long as I’m here,” Raph said, “you can sleep.”

“Raphie, I told you,” Leo complained. “I’m a night-owl-badger-turtle. Can I just play Professor Layton on your DS? I’ll be really quiet.”

But Raph knew all the tricks. He put his hand back on that slim shell and scritched idly along the blue-patterned scutes. Leo’s eyes drooped almost immediately, though his big frown was slower to fade. He was so small and so stubborn and Raphael loved him completely.

“Everything you wanna do tomorrow will still be there when you wake up,” he said, borrowing those words straight from Pops, as well as the fond tone he said them in. His own bad dream was the last thing on his mind. It was easy to smile and add on, “You can sleep. Raph’s not gonna let anyone bother you. I’m on your team, too.”

Leo didn’t reply right away. He leaned back enough to look up at Raph as though he was waiting for him to take it back. When he didn’t, because of course he didn’t, Leo curled his arm tighter around Lamby and tucked his head back under Raph’s chin and didn’t say anything at all. 

Raphael imagined what it would have been like to grow up together—having Leo’s certainty and cleverness in his corner when Raph didn’t know what to do, Leo’s courage and silliness when Raph was scared, Leo’s smile that made the darkness shrink no matter how big and impossible it seemed to be at first. 

Imagining it made Raph’s heart ache. He thought about the future instead, and how they’d live in it together forever, and keep each other safe and make each other brave.

When Leo finally dozed off, Raph was only a few minutes behind him. He didn’t have any more bad dreams.

——

Sometimes Mikey felt like he had to shout to be heard. 

Raph and Donnie were his big brothers, and they were also his best friends and secret-keepers and partners-in-crime, but Mikey was their little brother first. He just wished that wasn’t the only thing he was. 

Donnie liked Mikey’s company and never kicked him out of his room, but Mikey wasn’t allowed to touch anything in there, because Donnie didn’t know how to share. Raphie loved to carry Mikey when he got tired or the stormwater runoff in the tunnels was steep, but he didn’t seem to understand that sometimes Mikey didn’t want to be carried. He could walk just fine on his own! He could outrun all of his siblings, actually, without even breaking a sweat. 

Michelangelo knew that he was loved—he had never wasted a single second wondering about that—and he loved his family so much that he could fill the sky with it the way the sun filled it with light in the summertime. 

But he wasn’t listened to. It would be nice to just be listened to sometimes. 

Today Mikey watched avidly as Leo showed off his cool sword. He had been folded into their afternoon martial arts training seamlessly, like he’d always been there. Dad assessed his skill-level and announced that he was not very far behind the rest of them at all, because he had been training in something he called kenjutsu ever since he was little. 

“You are little, pipsqueak,” Raphie said playfully.

“Everyone’s a pipsqueak to you!” Leo retorted.

Splinter smiled proudly and said, “My Blue. You’ll be unstoppable one day, you know that?” Leo radiated joy at Dad’s approval and threw himself headlong into learning ninjutsu alongside his kendo, eager to do well. So he split his time, and in the last half Leo broke away from his brothers to the other side of the dojo, where he practiced the sword. 

He hadn’t brought much with him when he moved in, but his bokken was his pride and joy. It was made of shiny red wood and the handle was wrapped in bright blue cord and there was a little white rabbit charm dangling from the guard. 

“Last year Snowy’s big sister snuck up to the human world for a senior trip with her friends, and she brought us both souvenirs when she came back,” Leo had explained the charm happily. “Like hush money, only bunny-shaped! So way better.”

Dad snorted, and Leo seemed to grow two inches taller at having made him laugh. 

Unlike everything else he owned, Leonardo didn’t offer the sword out to be held or touched. It wasn’t quite like the way Donnie guarded the things important to him, because Mikey didn’t think Leo would hiss at anybody for getting too close—Leo probably wouldn’t even get mad. But at seven whole years old, Mikey knew a thing or two about hurt feelings. If Leo wasn’t willing to snap at somebody for taking his stuff, Mikey would just have to do it for him. 

An hour into training, Mikey was about to snap for a different reason. 

“Mikey, you’re doing it wrong,” Raph said again. “You keep going too fast.” 

“I know, ” Mikey said back through his teeth. He’d done it a billion times, he knew that. Raph didn’t need to keep saying it. 

“If you know, then do it the right way,” his biggest brother replied, not giving an inch. “I know cartwheels are fun but we’re doing kata now. You can play later.”

Frustration boiled inside him. Mikey knew the right way to do the forms, but he was bored. He wanted to do it faster, he wanted to add a flip or a handstand, something to make it more interesting. He didn’t like training at all sometimes—Donnie was quiet and unenthusiastic, and Raphie was bossy and made them start over until they got it right. It was better when April was there, because April could quell the boringest and bossiest of brothers with a single sharp look and then take Mikey out for froyo, but their sister only joined in on the weekends. 

Leo glanced sidelong at Splinter as he slowly began to lean his bokken up against the wall. When Dad didn’t stop him, he put the sword down quicker, then trotted over to fearlessly interject himself into the middle of the brewing storm. Donnie watched him go with round eyes, always one to remain adamantly on the outside of any confrontation.  

“That was really cool, Mike,” Leo called out, beaming. 

Mikey, who had been clenching his fists and preparing himself for another big brother to gang up on him, blinked. 

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah, really! I can kind of do a handstand, but I can’t flip all around like that.” He thumped his knuckles on Raph’s carapace as he passed by, but his shining smile was all for Mikey. “Can you teach me?”

“Really?” Mikey said again, and then excitement swooped in before he could be confused for longer than a second. Bouncing on his toes, he exclaimed, “Of course, Lee! I can teach you right now!”

“I still have to learn this tricky ninja stuff first,” Leo said. “Can we do it after training instead?” 

“Sure! I can help you with the kata, too, I’m really good at it,” Mikey said eagerly, falling into line beside him. He demonstrated the proper form carefully, so that his newest big brother could follow along. “Like that, see? You’ll get it! Try with me this time!” 

He didn’t realize he was mimicking the same thing Raphael told him every time he fumbled in the dojo—his mind jumped straight to the first helpful thing he could say and that was it. He also didn’t catch the wink Leo sent at Raph over his head, or the way Raph’s shoulders loosened from where they had been bunched up by his ears, the way they always bunched up before a disagreement. 

When Leo first came home, Aunt Junie had said that they all needed to be patient with each other and give Leo time to adjust. Like when Piebald’s tank water needed to be changed and they had to do it a little bit at a time, because even a whole bunch of good, fresh and clean water would be bad for her all at once. 

Aunt Junie was right about everything, but maybe she just didn’t know Leo well enough yet. Maybe Leo wasn’t like Piebald at all, and jumping straight into a brand new tank was actually the best thing for him. 

Because Leo seemed so happy to be there, always smiling and in a good mood. Teasing Donnie like he knew exactly where to poke to elicit playful snaps instead of vicious ones—talking Raph’s ear off about the Disney movies their big brother watched with him and singing along once he knew the words—forming inside jokes and super-complicated extended handshakes with April within minutes of meeting her—following gamely wherever Mikey tugged him along to like he couldn’t wait to be a part of the fun. 

The immediate problem was that Donnie, Raph and April loved Leo just as much as Mikey did, and they all wanted to spend time with him, too. But they didn’t always want to spend that time doing the same things. That afternoon, it became an issue.  

“Me and Leo always watch a movie after lunch,” Raphie was saying, brow knit stubbornly. 

“Yeah, so let him do something else for a change,” April replied, poking Raph in the shoulder with the corner of her bedazzled phone case. “I told him about Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh and he wanted to read it. I downloaded the audiobook for us to listen to.”

“Can’t you do that later?”

“We’re building something,” Donnie bit out, impatient enough to speak up instead of just slinking away on his own. 

For his part, Mikey tugged on Leo’s sleeve. “Leeeee, color with meeee.”

Leo didn’t say anything to any of them. He seemed to be frozen in place by all their noise.

Once, when Mikey was way littler than he was now, Dad found a baby bird that had been swept through a grate into the tunnel during a heavy rain. He let Mikey hold it after Mikey promised he’d be careful. They emailed a video of the bird to a wildlife rescue person they found online who said that it looked about three weeks old, and had probably only just left the nest when it hurt its wing. It was a quivering palm-sized ball of brown feathers and beady eyes. Mikey could feel its frantic heartbeat in his hands. It didn’t look big enough to have left its nest. It was hard to believe anything that small could just be on its own in the world. 

Right now Leo reminded Mikey of that bird. His smile had faded to almost nothing, eyes round and worried under their bright red stripes. The longer the arguing went on around him the bigger and more worried his eyes got. 

Then Dad said, “ Enough.”

He had his disappointed frown on as he strode in from the kitchen, sleeves still rolled up from washing the dishes in the sink. He didn’t miss a beat in lifting Leo up into his arms.

“What did your Aunt June tell you all?” Dad said sternly. He included April in his pointed look, even though Aunt Junie was mom to her. “If the four of you can learn to share pizza and video games without killing each other, surely you can learn to share your brother’s time.”

They all shuffled, feeling scolded, and April was the one who said, “Sorry, Leon.”

“It’s okay!” Leo said immediately, smiling brightly at her. But he was still clutching Dad’s shirt with both hands and wasn’t squirming to get down even a little bit. It made Mikey feel bad all the way to the bottom of his stomach. 

“Why don’t you let Blue decide what he wants to do this afternoon?” Splinter suggested in that tone that made it obvious it wasn’t actually a suggestion. 

“Yeah, Leo, you should pick!” Mikey said right away. 

Leo hummed, looking much more like his normal self than he did a moment ago, but he still had one fist bunched in Splinter’s sleeve. Very, very carefully, like he was afraid it wasn’t the right thing to say, Leo offered, “Raphie, you said you’d show me how to skate. Can we?”

“Sure, big man, that sounds fun!” Raph said, all fast. He came over and put out his hands, and when Leo reached back, Splinter allowed the snapper to take him. Raph tossed Leo in the air and caught him again, surprising a squeaky noise out of him that became a giggle. The mood in the lair shifted back towards bright, like magic. “You’re gonna be skating circles around me in no time, Fearless.”

“I wanna watch!” Mikey shouted gleefully. And even though Donnie hated sports, he settled next to Mikey to watch, too, close enough that their shoulders bumped. When Mikey swayed playfully to the side, it made Donnie sway, too. 

April rolled her eyes, like it was very typical of one of her little brothers to want to waste the afternoon skateboarding, but she insisted upon getting pictures of Leo all kitted out in borrowed helmet and knee- and elbow-pads, in poses that got sillier and sillier by the second.  

The afternoon raced by like it had somewhere important to be, punctuated by the rolling and click-clacking of skateboard wheels on the wooden ramp. Leo learned to ollie and shuvit, picking up speed and gaining confidence as he went, but he also learned a lesson the rest of his siblings had learned years and years ago. 

He learned to trust Raph’s hands to catch him. He learned not to be scared of falling because Raph would always catch him. 

In no time at all, Leo’s laughter was bursting out of him in bright, ringing peals. It was easy to forget, just for a minute, that he hadn’t been right there with them all along.  

Mikey felt like there was a sun inside him, he was so happy. He didn’t know what to do with all of it, where he could possibly hold it. So he did what he always did when he felt too much. He popped inside his shell. 

From outside, there was an instant clatter and a thud, the fast-rolling sound of a loose skateboard shooting away, and April calling out, “Woah, Leo, are you—”

Then Mikey felt the familiar sensation of being picked up. His shell was compact and the perfect size for other little turtles to hold. Mikey felt warm and snug, and loved to be held, so he just curled up happily like a cat in a box. 

Outside, he heard them talking.

“He didn’t mean to!” Leo said, so fast it was all a jumble of words bumping into themselves. 

“Who didn’t—Mikey?” Raph said. “‘Course he did, he does that all the time.”

“No, he—he’s good, he doesn’t—” Leo sounded alarmingly like he was going to start crying—something Mikey hadn’t even known it was possible for him to do. “Please don’t let him get in trouble, he’s good. He’ll be good.”

“Of course he is good,” Splinter said, his voice coming closer from where he had been keeping an eye on them from the sofa. He sounded the way he did when Mikey or one of his brothers was sick, worry and love all twisted together. “All of my babies are good. Even when they are dissecting kitchen appliances or flooding the bathroom or sneaking the last donut out of the box that I had been saving, April.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” April said unconvincingly. “What’s a donut?”

“Mmm-hm. That crazy little citrus fruit you are holding is not in trouble, Baby Blue,” Splinter added. 

“Why would he be in trouble?” Raph asked, sounding like something was hurting him. 

“Sorry! I had different rules before,” Leo replied. The arms holding Mikey’s shell were tight, and he could hear the heart he was being held against racing, quick and frantic thump-thump-thumps. “I’m really sorry!”

“No one needs to be sorry,” Splinter told him gently. “No one has done anything wrong. And for future reference, in case you are confused, you will never be punished for hiding inside your shell. You are a turtle, and it is an important part of you. Would you scold a caterpillar for spinning a cocoon?”

“No,” Leo whispered. 

“There you are.”

There was a beat of silence, heavy and thick. Mikey wanted to come out and look around but he thought that if he interrupted the conversation they would start to talk about something else. 

“It wasn’t that bad,” Leo finally said. “I was only there for a little bit, the house where they—so it wasn’t that bad.”

“I’ll be the judge of that,” Donnie said in a loud voice. He said it like ‘judge’ meant ‘monster who bites people until they die,’ even though Mikey was pretty sure it didn’t.

It surprised Mikey at first when Donnie started interjecting loudly at things, because he never used to do that. His jokes were always ones slid in under his breath, and his smile when they made Mikey laugh would be quick and sideways and half-hidden in the collar of his bulky hoodie. 

Now he didn’t hide near as much as he used to, and was a lot less secretive about things he wanted his brothers to hear. Mikey thought that maybe he had wanted to be close to them all along, he just didn’t know how to get there. There wasn’t a bridge between where they were at and the island he ended up on. Then his twin came along. 

Aunt Junie called Leo an instigator. She said it laughingly, and told him he was just what this family needed. She was, after all, right about everything. 

“We’ll discuss it later,” Splinter said. He came closer, and Mikey’s stomach swooped as he was lifted up higher from the floor than he already was—Dad must have picked Leo up again, and Leo was still holding Mikey. “Come here, my little turtles. Ah-ah, you are not getting out of this, O’Neil. In fact, you must hug twice as hard so that your mother is here in spirit.”

Silliness was the best medicine. No gloomy mood could outlast six people cramming together for a big group hug. Raph tripped on the skateboard and almost toppled everyone over and the sudden lurch made Leo giggle. Mikey came out of his shell to join the embrace, managing to get one arm around Leo and the other around Donnie and squeezing for all he was worth. 

Mikey and his brothers kept close to each other even after Splinter left to take April home. A pillow fort was constructed in the TV room and they turtle-piled in there with all the best blankets and stuffed animals and snacks. Leo was quieter than usual and sat tucked against Donnie’s side, like he was absorbing his twin’s strength and stubbornness since his own had run out. 

“Hey, Leo?” Mikey asked, when the movie Bolt was over and Raph was snoring and Donnie was a tiny ball tucked under the snapper’s sprawled arm. Mikey knew that Leo would still be awake.

Sure enough, Leo said, “Yeah?” 

“Why don’t you cry when you’re sad?”

For a little while, the only sound besides Raph’s honking snores was the song playing on TV as the credits rolled. I made a wish upon a star, I turned around, and there you were, the song went. 

“People don’t like kids who cry,” Leo finally said. “No one will want me if I don’t behave.”

Mikey blinked, turning his head to find Leo’s face in the dark. His heart was twisting around unhappily in his chest. It hurt. 

“Raph cries all the time but we still want him,” Mikey said. “He’s Raph.”

“Yeah, of course,” Leo said quickly.

“And I cry, too,” Mikey added, the hurt moving up into his throat. “People want me.”

“Because you’re the best, Angie,” Leo told him. “You guys are the best.”

“Whoever told you that stuff before lied,” Mikey said, clinging to his hand. “They lied. You’re my Leo, and you belong here, and we want you. Don’t ever leave us no matter what. Okay?”

Leo nodded, short and punchy. He was shivering like he was cold. Mikey scooted over so he could curl into Leo’s side, because he was a lot of things, but he was a little brother first. And sometimes—when that meant that he was always welcome, and arms would always open for him, and he could snuggle in and be held tight no matter what—that was the best first thing to be. 

“Promise?” he checked.

Leo turned his face, so he could press his cheek to the top of Mikey’s head, and whispered, “Promise.”

The thing Mikey remembered the most vividly about that injured bird they once found was how restless it had been. How ready to fly it was. All it needed was room to get better and grow a little more. A safe place to land. 

‘Look at this guy,’ Dad had said the morning they released it, smiling at the eager noises happening in the shoebox in his hands, ‘ready to leave us in the dust.’ 

‘Will he come back?’ Raphie asked.

‘I don’t think so, my dear. This isn’t his home.’

It was Leo’s home, though. His place to come back to. They just had to keep showing him that they’d catch him. It wasn’t scary to fall down here, because someone would always catch him.  

——

A true photographic memory had never been proven, but Donatello was a scientific marvel in more ways than just the obvious. He remembered everything he had ever seen. The farther back his memories went the less clarity they retained, until they were mostly just emotion given body and movement—but they still were.

When Donnie, Mikey and Raphie found the shrine in Papa’s room, and Papa sat them all down to explain that they used to have another brother, who couldn’t be with them anymore, Donnie suddenly remembered a steady weight on his shell. He remembered not being able to settle for bed unless the weight was there, clicking and purring until they both drifted off to sleep. 

Oh, he thought, we’re orphans. 

The thought didn’t make sense, because Donnie knew what the definition of orphan was, and their parent hadn’t died. He had never abandoned them. He was, at that moment, gently wiping tears off Raphie’s face and trying to come up with answers for Mikey’s endless questions that didn’t all boil down to life is unfair. 

But it was the only word that felt weighty enough for the truth of it all. 

Donnie was a brother who had lost a brother. A twin who wasn’t a twin anymore. There wasn’t a word for that. He looked it up. 

And then, when Donnie was eight years old, he didn’t need a word for it anymore. 

When he had imagined Leonardo growing up, he imagined someone who was just like him in every way. Someone who understood him effortlessly because they were two halves of a whole. Ten minutes after meeting him again, Donatello felt silly about his initial hypothesis. 

Of course his twin would be his polar opposite—they filled in each other’s empty spaces. Leonardo, who was friendly and talkative, spoke up when Donnie’s voice failed him; Donatello, who was observant and defiant, had no trouble baring his teeth at every hurt that Leonardo would have let roll off his back. 

Leonardo lied with every inch of his body and he did it cheerfully; Donnie would always default to the truth even if a lie would have been kinder. Donnie wanted so badly to be close to his brothers but didn’t always know how to get there, a closed door standing between them that he didn’t have a key to; Leonardo had never met a locked door he couldn’t circumvent and pointed out a neat shortcut here, a handy window there. 

Leo took Donnie’s hand and led the way forward; Donnie held on tight and made sure Leo didn’t stumble, since he was always looking up and never down. 

They found each other in the middle. Maybe if they’d had that middle place all along, Donnie would be able to communicate better, and Leo wouldn’t need to pretend so much. Maybe that’s still the way things would be one day. Donnie imagined a drawing of them, purple leaking past his lines and blue leaking out of Leo, like Mikey’s watercolors mixing on the page, spreading until they filled every gap, completing the picture.

All four turtles were in the dojo, doing cool-down stretches. Mikey had skipped the post-exercise routine and moved on to rolling around on his carapace instead, singing Fireflies to himself with twice as much energy as Owl City. Raph just rolled his eyes and made sure to step around and over his littlest brother as he cleaned up. 

Splinter, who had been checking his phone repeatedly all afternoon, stood up swiftly and said, “You boys stay here and finish up. I think we’ll order in for supper today, so agree on something or I will order the worst soup you can think of. ”

Mikey stopped rolling and sat up with a horrified gasp, because he had opinions about soup. 

“Manhattan Clam Chowder!” 

Ignoring that, Splinter said, “I will be right back.”

Donnie watched Leo watch him go, and knew that his twin’s mind was racing even though his breezy smile hadn’t budged an inch. Leo worried constantly, maybe even more than Raphie did. He was always buzzing with what-ifs, like his brain was a jar filled with angry bees—what if he did something wrong? What if he made someone mad? What if he was too noisy, took too much at supper, didn’t help enough with chores, what if, what if, what if? 

Donnie knew, because sometimes Leo told him. After bedtime, when they had to whisper so Splinter’s keen ears wouldn’t catch them staying up late, sometimes Leo would ask, “Did I mess up today?” 

And Donnie would have to jerk his thoughts onto this new track—this crooked, narrow road that Leo was always running on, with its confusing roundabouts and bridges to nowhere and unpayable tolls. 

He wanted to say that Leo could mess up a billion times and still never reach the end of Donnie’s love. Like how the unobservable universe was so big that light from the Big Bang still hadn’t reached Earth from over there. It was as big as that. 

But Donnie struggled with words even when they weren’t monumentally important ones. And Leo’s face would look so afraid in the dim light of the glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling, those constellations in Leo’s new room that matched the ones in Donnie’s down to the last star. He would be convinced that this was the day he did something bad enough that Papa sent him away. It didn’t matter that that would never happen, because even impossible things could be scary.  

So instead of what he wanted to say, Donnie would tell him, “You were good.” 

It would always make his brother smile and sink into the pillow, like all that worry was the only thing propping him up. Then they would talk about a hundred other things until they forgot to whisper, and Papa or Raph inevitably found them out and carted a giggling Leo or an unrepentant Donnie off to his own room. 

One day, Donnie was determined to make it stick. Even if Leonardo was the worst person in the whole world, he would still be Donatello’s person. That made him the best. It was unquantifiable. No one was a better subject matter expert than Donnie was. He’d stake the scientific reputation he didn’t have yet on it in a heartbeat. 

For now, he nudged Leo’s knee with his foot. 

“Hey,” Donnie said, “let’s be ninjas.”

Leo’s smile turned into the grin that Donnie preferred, the crooked laughing one. He only cared about good behavior when he thought he was being graded on it. Otherwise he was the first to encourage sneakiness, because if there was one thing Leonardo believed in, it was having all the information available all the time. 

Donnie knew that was how Leo kept himself safe in those other places he lived in before he came home, those places he didn’t like to talk about. The ones that taught him not to cry when he was sad and not to hide in his shell when he was scared. 

If there was one thing Donatello believed in, it was that Leo should feel safe, even if that meant breaking a rule or two or a hundred. 

“Where do you two think you’re going?” Raphie said suspiciously before they’d made it more than two steps. “Pops said to stay here.”

“Or else we’ll get gross soup,” Mikey piped up. “Instead of really good soup, like creamy chicken chili. Or minestrone!”

“Angie, it’s too hot outside for soup,” Leo said patiently, verbally dodge-rolling Raph’s question by humoring Mikey. “If we ordered a bunch of soup the delivery person would cry. You don’t want taco salad in a tortilla bowl? Or an Italian hero with extra pickled cherry peppers?”

Reminded of the whole wide world of food delivery possibilities, Mikey started rattling off all of his favorite meals without pausing for inconsequential things like air. Raph sighed, because it instantly became twenty times harder to agree on supper. Leo beamed up at him, like he didn’t just do that on purpose.

Donnie knew an opening when he saw one and slipped out of the dojo first, following the sound of Splinter’s voice to the front of the lair. 

“...haven’t told him you were coming. I did not want to give him a reason to be anxious all day,” Papa was saying, sounding anxious himself. “He’s so prone to worry, it just eats him up. I thought once you arrived, I would go back in and let him know you were here, and we’d—get it rolling fast, get him all swept up, so he didn’t have a chance to be afraid.”

“Dad knows best,” an unfamiliar voice said kindly. 

It made Donnie’s spine go straight, all of his attention sharpening to a point at this sudden proof of a stranger in his home talking about his twin. He inched forward on silent feet to peer around the corner. 

A big creature stood with Splinter, a few inches taller than him and covered from nose to tail in large overlapping scales. She had a curved spine that created a hunched-forward posture and a long narrow head similar to an anteater’s. With the big tote bag hanging off her arm and the green sundress she was wearing, she looked like an animal librarian straight out of one of Mikey’s chapter books. 

She didn’t seem dangerous. But Donatello watched her with narrowed eyes and wished he hadn’t left his bo behind in the dojo. 

“As for moving,” Splinter was saying, “I am still uncertain. My boys would be able to—to go to school, and make friends, and play in the sun. That would mean the world to me. But the house in Neo Edo needs a lot of work, and the Hidden Cities are dangerous, too. For a multitude of reasons.” 

“And you have family here in New York, as well,” the stranger said, her tone understanding. “It is a lot to consider. You haven’t brought up the possibility to the children yet?”

“I haven’t. Blue’s life has been in upheaval enough as it is. I wanted him to have more of a chance to get settled. Besides, it is not a decision that needs to be made right away. We can discuss it as a family and decide together.”

“Of course, Hamato-san,” the stranger said warmly. “These follow-up assessments are mandatory, and, I’ll admit, an excuse for me to visit with my little ones again. But there isn’t a doubt in my mind that you’re doing right by him.” 

Donnie let go of his suspicion just long enough to wonder about the possibility of moving away from New York City. He wouldn’t want to be apart from April and Aunt June for any extra amount of time. But it sounded like he would be able to go to school in that Neo Edo place and he would like that a lot. 

“Here I am,” Leo’s voice said in a whisper as he stepped up beside Donnie. He was holding his bokken across his shoulder, probably because he wouldn’t have had a chance to store it properly and come listen in on Papa’s conversation without Raphie catching him again. “What’d I miss?”

But he was already looking around the corner for himself, and that smiling expression he was wearing changed in a heartbeat to something pale and shocked. His arms fell to his sides. 

“Miss Toto? Why is she here?”

His voice was too loud. Both adults glanced over at where Donnie and Leo were standing, and Donnie felt caught. But Leo took a couple quick steps closer, dragging his sword behind him like he didn’t care at all that the shiny finish might get scuffed on the concrete. 

Papa looked pale himself somehow. “Blue—”

“Am I going back?” Leo said, getting louder. “Are you giving me back? Why? What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything,” the stranger said, hands clutched tight in front of her chest. Her eyes were wide. “It’s okay, sweetheart.” 

“No, you said!” Leo shouted at Splinter. “You said, you said you wouldn’t, you said I could stay, you said I was good! I was good, I was! I did everything I’m supposed to!” 

“Baby, I would never send you away, ” Splinter said, arms open to scoop him up, but Leo stumbled backwards out of reach. Leo couldn’t hear him or anybody else, heaving in frantic gulping breaths. 

The sword in his hand started to glow, as if a light had turned on inside it and was shining through patterns carved up and down its length, even though the whole thing was solid wood and didn’t have any carvings a light could shine out of. The shine got brighter and bluer until Donnie had to squeeze his eyes closed against the glare. 

When he opened them again Leo was gone, but the light was left right where he’d been standing—a perfect circle cut out of thin air, the color of the sky in summertime. It was humming, the way things with an electrical charge hummed, and spinning as playfully as a pinwheel.

“Oh, my spirits,” Miss Toto breathed. 

“Did he just,” Splinter croaked out. 

Of course, Donnie thought, finally solving that big puzzle in the back of his mind.  

Donatello was the first of Leo’s siblings to notice the healed burns on his hands, if the others had noticed them at all. Faint discolorations, smoother than the rest of his textured skin. They didn’t seem to hurt anymore but Donnie worried about them anyway. 

He had gone straight to Splinter with his observations, hovering at the other side of the kitchen table waiting to be acknowledged; but Splinter had been too engrossed in the contents of a folder to notice the round eyes level with the tabletop staring unblinkingly at him, like a fox stalking a bird.

‘Papa,’ he said. Splinter jolted in his seat, slopping tea over the rim of his mug.  

‘Holy—Purple! You will give me a heart attack one day, and then who will feed you?’ He closed the folder and turned his chair, and Donnie trotted around to his side. ‘What’s up, buttercup?’

‘Leo burned his hands,’ Donnie said.  

Splinter’s face did something funny, and he asked quickly, ‘Did he hurt himself just now?’ 

‘No. They were there already. How?’ 

‘Ah. How did it happen?’ he clarified. Donnie nodded, and Splinter weighed his words for a moment before he said, ‘A few days before he came to live with us, the house where Blue took his kendo lessons caught on fire. But someone rescued him—plucked him and his friend right out of danger and left them safe in a basket of clean blankets. We are all very lucky.’ 

Donnie had shivered, and bonked his forehead against Splinter’s arm so his father knew to wrap him up in a tight hug until the shivering stopped. He didn’t want to think about Leo trapped in a fire, so instead he thought about the person who had rescued him. 

‘Who?’ he asked when he could manage it.

‘Who saved them? No one seems to know,’ Splinter said. ‘The boys only remembered a blue light.’ 

Leo saved himself, Donatello realized now. He always saved himself. It was the only thing that made sense. The proof was right in front of them, burning like a star in the living room. 

But now the edges of the circle were wobbling, and then compressing, the whole thing beginning to shrink. A door closing, with his twin on the other side. 

Donatello didn’t need to think about it. He heard a cut-off gasp from the scaly anteater, and Papa yelled “Purple!” but he was already running. He ducked his head to clear the top arc and hopped over the bottom, disappearing neatly through the blue seconds before it dwindled into nothing. 

In just one step, he had gone from the lair under New York to a big open countryside. He’d never seen so much greenery in his life. It was cooler here, and quieter—even with the rush of the river nearby, it was easily half the average decibel level of Manhattan. He could smell fish and sesame oil and salt, a hint of smoke, damp wood—town must have been behind him. Ahead of him, the footpath he was standing on winded away toward the water.

Donnie headed forward. There was a big house up the hill to his left and he could hear other children there. But the door hadn’t taken him to the house. It had led him here, trudging through mud and weeds along the bank, until he rounded the bend and found exactly who he was looking for. 

On the opposite shore, Leo was hiding under a rocky outcrop, where the stones of a towering cliffside formed a secret alcove. Sunken boulders in the water created a natural ford where Donnie could cross and he plunged right in. 

Leo must have heard him coming, but he stayed curled up small. He was crying so hard his face was red and his eyes were squeezed shut, which made Donnie’s eyes sting, too. He hated when his siblings cried. He hated not knowing how to fix it. One day he’d invent a solution for everything that hurt them.

Until then, he’d crawl into this muddy hole, and scratch his knees and palms on the rocks, and put his arms around his twin. It was the right thing to do because it was what Raphie and Mikey would do. It made Leo cry even harder, and that hurt Donnie’s heart more than anything else in his whole life ever had, but he just held on tight.  He’d be one of those stones that the river crashed against. Nothing would move him until he decided to move. 

When Leo quieted into hiccups and wet-sounding sniffles, Donnie thought it was safe enough to let go of him with one hand. He used the other to wipe Leo’s puffy face with the balled-up end of his purple sleeve. 

“Don’t leave again,” Donnie said. “You promised Mikey.”

“I don’t want to,” Leo choked out. “But they—” 

“That anteater wasn’t there to take you away,” Donnie told him matter-of-factly. “Otherwise Papa would have caused a scene. She was just there to visit. It sounds like we have a house around here somewhere, and Papa is thinking about moving. But he hasn’t decided yet. If we did move, you’d come, too.” 

Leo pulled back to stare at him, all dirty and wet and miserable. After a moment, he mumbled, “Miss Toto is a pangolin. Anteaters don’t have scales. You’re dumb.”

“You’re dumb,” Donnie replied, heart lifting like a balloon at Leo sounding more like Leo. “Papa will never let anyone take you away. You don’t have to be good all the time.” His twin’s eyes fell down to look at the muddy stones between them. He didn’t say anything, but Donnie could tell he didn’t believe it yet. So Donnie presented the facts: “Raph is bossy and acts like he’s right even when he’s wrong. Mikey never does what he’s supposed to and makes huge messes with his paints and cries when he gets in trouble. And I’m mean. And I bite. But Papa loves us, even when he says we make him want to tear his hair out. And he loves you.”

“How do you know?” Leo asked, like he’d like to be convinced, but he was still clutching at his old truths instead of this new one. 

“Because I know everything,” Donnie told him plainly. “I’m smarter than you and the older twin so you have to listen to me.” 

Leo made a quiet noise somewhere between crying and laughing. His eyes were gold like Donnie’s. Would that ever stop being amazing? Probably not. Here was Donnie’s other half, the most important part of his heart, back where he belonged. He really was dumb if he thought Donnie was ever going to lose him again.  

They walked hand in hand to the house on the hill, which turned out to be the orphanage where Leo used to live. A few of the kids in the yard gave them strange looks, but Leo didn’t stop to say hi to any of them, which told Donnie everything he needed to know. 

A boy with amphibian features stepped right in their way. He had big protruding eyes and webbed hands and a round, flat head. His mouth stretched from ear to ear when he opened it to call out, “Back already, Lucky?” 

It caused a twitch to pass through Leo’s whole body, not a flinch but not not a flinch, either. He smiled back automatically, and Donnie knew he was about to play along with whatever mean joke was being played on him, because Leo was smart and always knew what the quickest way out of a bad place was. 

But Donnie was smart, too. And he didn’t care about getting out as much as he cared about getting results.

He stopped in his tracks and twisted his head around on his neck in the way that always freaked April out. She said it made him look like an alien from a horror movie, so naturally Donnie practiced it in the mirror a bunch of times. 

He’d never had the chance to use it on anyone else until now. He was pleased with the way it made everyone in the yard stand really still. 

“You know turtles eat frogs, right?” Donnie said. “I heard they taste good with ginger and scallions.”

Heard from his baby brother who had an unhealthy obsession with the Food Network, anyway. 

The frog boy shut right up, his throat ballooning defensively—prey instinct to make himself a more difficult meal. 

“It was nice to see you guys,” Leo said brightly to the terrorized crowd of his former foster siblings, circling behind Donnie and pushing him bodily into the house. Once the door was closed behind them, he added, “They all think you’re an oni now! It was just a nickname, Tello.”

“Good,” Donnie said, smug. “And it’s not just a nickname if you hate it, Nardo.”

Leo took his hand again and led him down the hall. There was a landline phone in the matron’s office that they could use to call Papa. It seemed like a majority of the kids were out of the house, making the most of the sunny day, because they didn’t run into anyone else.

“It’s ‘cause I’m bad luck,” Leo said suddenly. “Turtles—you know, in the stories—they’re good. Since I kept coming back to the orphanage, the older kids started saying it’s ‘cause my luck got messed up. That’s why they call me that.”

“You’re not bad luck,” Donnie said, wishing he’d taken a good bite out of that frog kid after all. “You’re the luckiest thing that ever happened to me and Mikey and Raph and April and Papa and Aunt June. That’s a lot of luck for one turtle and you saved all of it for us. But if you don’t like that name I won’t let anyone call you that anymore.”

Leo hesitated long enough that Donnie knew he was about to do something very brave, like tell the truth, even though a lie would be safer. 

Sure enough, he said, “I don’t like it.” 

Donnie nodded. He’d make sure their brothers and sister knew, too.  

The door slammed open again behind them. Donnie turned around, ready to pick another fight with another stupid bully and maybe show off his sharp canines this time, but the kid who appeared in the hallway wasn’t one of the ones they’d passed by in the yard. 

It was a white rabbit with long ears tied in a topknot. He had a bokken strapped to his back, glossy black where Leo’s was cherry red, handle wrapped in gray cord instead of blue. The rabbit was completely out of breath, bracing himself with a hand against the wall while his shoulders heaved, and he stared straight at Donnie’s brother like Leo would disappear into thin air if he so much as blinked.

“I saw the blue light and ran all the way here,” he huffed. “Give me your hand.”

Donnie bristled at this stranger telling his twin what to do, but Leo’s face was pure sunshine. He shoved his hand out immediately and the rabbit took it, neither of them bothering with so much as a hello. Uncapping a marker with his teeth, the rabbit scrawled something on the inside of Leo’s palm. 

“This is my new phone number,” he said, not letting go of Leo’s hand even when he was done writing and the marker was put away. “When you didn’t call at our usual time,  Auntie asked if you even knew her number, and I realized you only had the number for our house that burned down. And when I called here, Miss Toto said I’d just missed you. And Suzy said you got adopted for real and went to live in New York and weren’t coming back.” 

His eyes were big and wet and his mouth was wobbling, but he stubbornly wasn’t crying. From this close, Donnie could see the charm dangling from the guard of his wooden sword—a little blue turtle. 

“Don’t ever disappear again, Stripes,” the rabbit said. “We promised to stick together forever.”

“Forever, Snowy,” Leo told him, in his voice that meant he meant it. “I always come back.”

It wasn’t until Donatello and the rabbit were sitting in the den, watching two tiny sheep yokai kill each other for their turn on an ancient Nintendo 64 while Leo used the corded landline in the office, that introductions were made. 

“Who are you?” Donnie demanded bluntly. He’d heard enough about ‘Snowy’ that he could probably write the guy’s biography if he had to, but somehow Leo had never mentioned his best friend’s actual name. 

“Usagi Yuichi,” the rabbit replied. He hesitated, sizing Donatello up, then asked, “Are you his family? His actual one?”

“I’m his twin,” Donnie said, feeling prickly and overprotective. He’d only had Leo for thirty-two days and he would defend his spot in Leo’s life with violence if the situation called for it. “He has a big brother and a little brother at home, too. He doesn’t need any more than that.” So there, he thought. 

To his credit, Yuichi got the gist of Donnie’s bottom line quickly. Instead of any of the reactions Donnie was waiting for, Yuichi wrinkled his nose.

“Yuck, I don’t want to be his brother. I’m going to marry him someday.”

Donnie considered that carefully, and decided it was acceptable. They shook on it then quickly jumped apart when Leo wandered back into the room. He collapsed on the sofa between them with a gusty sigh.  

“I think we’re grounded,” he said. “But everyone was shouting too much for me to be sure. They’re coming to get us now. Splinter said stay in this exact spot and wait for him or he’ll have a conniption. What’s a conniption?”

“It means he’ll cry a lot,” Donnie replied. 

“I don’t know how to get to New York,” Yuichi piped up, frowning. “Nee-chan says it’s really big, too. How am I supposed to visit?”

Leo slid his bokken from his belt and laid it across his lap. There wasn’t a single etching or carving on it anywhere, the glossy lacquered finish completely unbroken. If Donnie hadn’t seen those strange glowing runes for himself earlier, he’d have a hard time believing in them now. 

“When I really need to go somewhere, a door opens,” Leo said. “It happened when your house burned up, Snow. We were trapped inside but I got us out. I’ve never done it on purpose before but I think I could. Maybe.”

“Not by yourself,” Donnie said immediately. He didn’t want Leo to get the wrong idea that his family would let him go traipsing off through magic windows all alone. “Or Papa really will have a conniption.”

Leo smiled down at his hands, that crooked, happy smile. He didn’t say anything, which Donnie knew meant he still didn’t believe it all the way yet, but he would someday. He was too smart not to. 

When Splinter arrived nearly two hours later, Donnie didn’t notice him at first. He and Leo were busy conducting experiments, since they had a magical sword on hand and some time to kill. They had collected a bit of a crowd at that point, Leo’s actual friends clustered around him—including a tiny otter who made it abundantly clear why Leo was a professional Mikey-wrangler within seconds of meeting the kid—as he tried to make his bokken glow again. 

“It’s not gonna work,” Niji said with absolute authority. Her scales were teal for now and she kept hitting Leo’s foot with her tail to be annoying on purpose. “Or it would’ve worked already.”

“Google how many tries it took to invent the lightbulb and get back to me,” Donnie replied without looking up, scribbling notes on the back of an algebra worksheet he stole from a bookbag lying on the floor nearby. The lizard girl hissed at him and he hissed right back. 

“Your brother’s mean,” the tiny otter dangling over Leo’s shoulders said with obvious delight. “He made Midori cry.” 

Midori was, of course, the frog yokai that Donnie had threatened to eat. Word got around quickly it seemed—half the room was keeping a healthy distance from the turtles. Donnie tried not to look smug about it, but he didn’t try very hard. 

“He’s nice to me,” Leo said, squinting in concentration. “I think he only makes bullies cry.”

“Doesn’t Midori make fun of you, Renren?” Yuichi asked, poking the otter’s diamond-shaped nose. 

“Yup!” Ren wriggled happily, getting in everyone’s way, obnoxious and noisy and loved for it. “That’s why Koko’s brother is mean and cool. Next time Midori tries to call me a name, I’ll show him the picture Suzy took of his face all puffed up like a balloon!”

“I shouldn’t encourage this,” the Suzy in question, a fluffy owl named Susumu, said primly. “But Midori is such a jerk. I made like twenty copies of the photo in case Miss Toto finds out.” 

“Then I expect to find twenty copies on my desk before bedtime, young lady,” Miss Toto announced firmly, and a ripple of chaos spread through the room as a dozen kids realized their guardian had come home without warning. Even some of the ones who weren’t actually doing something wrong scattered with the ones who should have been working on chores or homework. 

That’s when Donnie realized Splinter was standing in the doorway, looking like he’d just been watching over them for a little while. 

He waved and said, “Hi, Papa. I found Leo.” 

“Don’t you wave at me,” Splinter snapped. “You are in so much trouble, mister. Jumping face-first into a portal! Who raised you?”

“Is that a trick question? I don’t like those.”

Leo shrugged Ren off his shoulders and stood up fast, shoving both his sword and the otter into Yuichi’s arms. When he faced Splinter, he looked like he wanted to hide inside his shell and live there forever, but he only hunched his shoulders and tucked his chin instead. 

“It was my fault,” he managed to say. “I yelled at you and ran away and I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I won’t ever do it again. I’ll be—” 

But by then, Splinter had crossed the room in a few swift strides, and scooped Leo up into his arms the way he’d wanted to back in the lair, and Leo was too startled to speak.

“You can’t just disappear like that, Blue!” Splinter chided fiercely. “Red and Orange are frantic, June keeps forgetting herself and trying to call the police, April just about stormed the Hidden Cities on her own, and I was ready to sell my soul to the nearest witch for another finding spell! It is a whole mess back home!” 

He rubbed his furry cheek on the top of Leo’s head and closed his eyes. It was the closest Donatello had ever seen his father get to tears and it made him feel uneasy. Donnie shoved his notes into Yuichi’s already-full hands and scrambled over to tug at the front of Splinter’s jacket. He was lifted up immediately and Splinter held them both. 

“You are my precious treasures, and I had no idea where you were. Do you have any idea how frightened I was?” Splinter said. 

Donnie watched Leo’s face wobble and scrunch up miserably as he struggled not to cry again. His twin was the only person he’d ever met as stubborn as him.  

“Sorry,” Leo mumbled, “sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Papa’s next breath shuddered out of him. He squeezed them extra tight, and kissed each of their foreheads, and then said, “It’s okay. It’s okay now. We are all going to go home, and have a long talk after this, but it is okay .” He looked right at Leo until Leo nodded slowly. Then he added, “But you’re both grounded until you’re at least thirty! You are never leaving my sight again! If you think I’m joking, you have another thing coming!” 

It was his silly-scolding voice, and it soothed the last of Donnie’s worries. Leo’s worries weren’t gotten rid of so easily, but somehow he managed to have more hope inside him than fear. 

So he was brave enough to lay his head on Splinter’s shoulder and say, “Okay, Papa.” 

That surprised Papa so much he nearly fell over. The tiny yokai children in his path squawked in alarm, and Donatello laughed because the suddenness of the almost-fall made his stomach swoop. 

A moment later, just a second behind, Leonardo laughed, too. 

——

When Leonardo was fourteen years old, he split his time between the yokai world and the human world almost evenly. 

Neo Edo was where their ancestral house was and where they went to school. It was where they had nosey neighbors and block parties and parents night at the junior high, where people recognized Leonardo and his brothers at a glance and collectively referred to them as ‘Yoshi’s boys’.

But there was a part of Leonardo’s heart that belonged to New York City. His portals to the lair always opened up easily, even eagerly, giving the truth of the thing away to anyone who knew what to look for. 

It was home. The first one Leonardo had ever had that he could believe was his to keep. 

“Blue,” Splinter called from the doorway of the living room, pausing on his way through to the kitchen, “what are you doing?” 

Leo, more out of boredom than anything else, was poking Raph in the face while he tried valiantly to read the last chapter of his book, and then looking innocently away every time his big brother leveled a glare at him. 

“Nothing, daddy,” Leo called back in his sweetest voice.

“Orange, what is Blue doing?” Splinter tried next. 

“Invoking the Cain Instinct,” Mikey answered without lifting his eyes from his canvas, three days in on his latest painting and fully in that headspace where time and space didn’t exist and he would only eat if someone physically put a sandwich or something in his free hand. That didn’t stop him from knowing exactly what his brothers were up to at any given point.  

“For what purpose?” Splinter asked.

“Dee went to pick up April from work and the twins are like ninety percent of each other’s impulse control,” Mikey said. “Also Lee is just like that as a person.” 

“That’s true,” Splinter conceded, and stayed to watch the show.  

When Raph finally slammed his book down it was Leo’s cue to gleefully scramble to his feet and run for his life. He shrieked with laughter when he was caught and scooped right off the floor in seconds. 

Raph’s act of revenge was aggressively nuzzling the top of Leo’s head with his cheek, rumbling playful turtle sounds at him that wouldn’t have convinced a single living person that he was actually angry.  

Leo could have hidden in his shell if he wanted to—and no one would yell at him for it, or threaten to crack it open to get him back out, or do anything more than carry it as carefully as they carried Mikey’s until they found a comfy place to put it down—but he didn’t want to. 

Ever since he was a little kid who first crawled under his big brother’s blanket after a nightmare, who first learned to skate while holding onto his big brother’s hands, he knew where he was safe. 

“Is that the sound of Nardo making someone’s life more difficult than it needs to be?” Donnie’s voice rolled drolly from the entrance of the lair. “Note my tone of utter disbelief.”

Leo squirmed around in Raph’s arms until he could free one hand and make a grabby motion toward the sound of his twin. Even if he couldn’t see him, he could smell him, and Donnie had definitely come home with Starbucks. 

“I’m rolling my eyes,” Donnie said, but he crossed the room and put an iced coffee in Leo’s waiting hand anyway. 

“Boys, I got the keys to the roof!” April hollered from the turnstiles. “It’s go-time, baby!”

“What roof?” Splinter asked suspiciously. 

“One that I’m definitely allowed to be at and have keys for,” his honorary daughter replied, lifting her chin. Not even the FBI would be able to crack her. 

Raph set Leo on his feet, then swiped his cup away and took an annoying slurp before Leo managed to snatch it back. 

“You don’t even like coffee!” he complained. 

“Big brother tax,” Raph replied unrepentantly, making his way over to begin the perilous undertaking of extracting Mikey from his creative process without losing a finger. 

“Try not to end up on the news,” Splinter said, knowing when to pick his battles. “April, you are in charge. Red, you are also in charge. Blue, you are in charge in a third and different way.” 

“Can I be in charge of Donnie?” Mikey asked, raising a paint-smeared hand.

“Of course you can, Orange,” their dad said. 

“I’m running away,” Donnie announced to the lair as a whole. 

The familiar noise washed over Leo like sunshine. He totally understood why regular turtles could bask in that stuff for hours. He sipped his latte and drew a gleaming silver katana from over his shoulder, an ancient bunny charm dangling from its bright blue guard. 

Leo smiled up at Splinter as he passed him in the doorway, never missing an opportunity to duck in for a hug. His dad always tucked him under his chin and held him tight, as if he was still that little eight-year-old boy terrified to death of being abandoned. 

“Have fun, my Baby Blue,” Splinter said. “And if you don’t come home with a cheesecake for your poor father, don’t bother coming home at all.” 

Leo snorted and started to laugh, and by then Mikey had had enough lingering around, whining at the top of his lungs, “Come on, Lee, let’s go already! It’s Cannonball Day!”

“Yeah, Fearless, lead the way,” Raph rumbled fondly.

Donnie stood there watching him with steady gold eyes exactly like his own, and said, “We’re all waiting for you.”

Leo grew up in an orphanage, an unwanted bad omen, and now he had two houses and two hometowns. He was one of four brothers and he loved them with a conviction that he hadn’t known existed outside of storybooks when he was a child. He had a shortcut home from anywhere and a family who would fight god to keep him. 

Hamato Leonardo—who was called Koko by his old friends, and Stripes by his best friend, and would always be Blue to his dad—was a very lucky turtle. 

[animusrox]

LETTERBOXD

1.   The Batman 2.   Everything Everywhere All at Once 3.   Prey 4.   Triangle of Sadness 5.   Barbarian 6.  The Northman 7.   Bodies Bodies Bodies 8.   The Banshees of Inisherin 9.   Bones and All 10.   Avatar: The Way of Water

Grade A

11.   Turning Red 12.   The Menu 13.   Babylon 14.   Hit the Road 15.   Cow 16.   Watcher 17.   Funny Pages 18.   Mad God 19.   On the Count of Three 20.   Armageddon Time 21.   Terrifier 2 22.   Marcel the Shell with Shoes On 23.   Smile 24.   Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery 25.   Holy Spider 26.   Aftersun 27.   The Fabelmans 28.   Breaking 29.   Decision to Leave 30.   The Whale 31.   All Quiet on the Western Front 32.   Brian and Charles 33.   Piggy 34.   Saint Omer 35.   Thirteen Lives 36.   Men 37.   The Fallout 38.   Resurrection 39.   Causeway 40.  The Black Phone 41.   Official Competition 42.   Nope 43.  Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio 44.   Apollo 10½: A Space Age Childhood 45.   Till 46.   TÁR 47.   Happening 48.   A Love Song 49.   The Outfit 50.   The Innocents 51.   Jackass Forever 52.   BARDO, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths 53.   Montana Story 54.   Three Thousand Years of Longing 55.   You Won’t Be Alone 56.   The Sadness 57.   Halloween Ends 58.   Pearl 59.   X 60.   Vesper

Click "Keep Reading” For My Full List

Grade B

61.   This Place Rules 62.   Fresh 63.   Windfall 64.   Kimi 65.   No Exit 66.   Top Gun: Maverick 67.   “Sr.” 68.   Farha 69.   The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent 70.   Weird: The Al Yankovic Story 71.   Nitram 72.   Speak No Evil 73.   Run Sweetheart Run 74.   She Said 75.   White Noise 76.   Puss in Boots: The Last Wish 77.   V/H/S/99 78.   The Wonder 79.   Women Talking 80.   Hatching 81.   Soft & Quiet 82.   Scream 83.   To Leslie 84.   Hustle 85.   Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers 86.   Dual 87.   God’s Country 88.   Emancipation 89.   Vengeance 90.   Fire of Love 91.   Bullet Train 92.   Incantation 93.   The Valet 94.   Hellraiser 95.   Christmas Bloody Christmas 96.   Significant Other 97.   Cha Cha Real Smooth 98.   Lucy and Desi 99.   Not Okay 100.   A Christmas Story Christmas 101.   Blonde 102.   Deadstream 103.   Sissy

Grade C

104.   The Bad Guys 105.   The Cursed 106.   Empire of Light 107.   A Man Called Otto 108.   Broker 109.   Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 110.   The Princess 111.   Beast 112.   After Yang 113.   RRR 114.   Fall 115.   Jackass 4.5 116.   Beavis and Butt-Head Do the Universe 117.   Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness 118.   Jennifer Lopez: Halftime 119.   Lightyear 120.   The Pale Blue Eye 121.   The Woman King 122.   Violent Night 123.   God’s Creatures 124.   Ambulance 125.   Elvis 126.   You Are Not My Mother 127.   Emily the Criminal 128.   Crimes of the Future 129.   The Apology 130.   The Lost City 131.   Wendell & Wild 132.   Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 133.   The Found Footage Phenomenon 134.   See How They Run 135.   Spiderhead 136.   Studio 666 137.   Bros 138.   Spin Me Round 139.   We’re All Going to the World’s Fair 140.   Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank 141.   Honor Society

Grade D

142.   Thor: Love and Thunder 143.   Summering 144.   Strange World 145.   Glorious 146.   The Gray Man 147.   Devotion 148.   Clerks III 149.   The Forgiven 150.   Enola Holmes 2 151.   Father Stu 152.   Jurassic World Dominion 153.   DC League of Super-Pets 154.   She Will 155.   The Bob’s Burgers Movie 156.   Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody 157.   Hellbender 158.   Samaritan 159.   Day Shift 160.   Sonic the Hedgehog 2 161.   Prey for the Devil 162.   Troll 163.   Uncharted 164.  Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile 165.   Dashcam 166.   Firestarter 167.   Do Revenge 168.   Catwoman: Hunted 169.   The Munsters 170.   Amsterdam 171.   Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Grade F

172.   Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris 173.   The Bubble 174.   Dead for a Dollar 175.   Jerry & Marge Go Large 176.   Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul. 177.   Infinite Storm 178.   Marry Me 179.   Don’t Worry Darling 180.   Spirited 181.   Disney's Pinocchio 182.   Alice 183.   Black Adam 184.   Orphan: First Kill 185.   The Adam Project 186.   The Invitation 187.   Texas Chainsaw Massacre 188.   Ticket to Paradise 189.   The 355 190.   Umma

Bottom 10

191.   Green Lantern: Beware My Power 192.   Deep Water 193.   Where the Crawdads Sing 194.   Blacklight 195.   Mack & Rita 196.   Memory 197.   Me Time 198.   Death on the Nile 199.   Morbius 200.   Moonfall

[chaithetics]

Devilish Worries and Bodies

Pairing: Matt Murdock x F (afab) reader Word count: 3.3K Warning/note: 18 + MDNI, mentions of anxiety/mental health/worries, and smutty smut smut! P in V intercourse. Some fluff. No description physical description of reader other than afab. Not proofread! Please validate me and this self-indulgent fic, sad girl era is thriving.

************************************************************************

Matt had already come home after a long day of fighting for justice through the legal, sophisticated, respectable way of the courts as the good samaritan lawyer for the voiceless and defenceless of Hell’s Kitchen. And then endured a long night of fighting for justice through the illegal, frowned-upon way of his vigilante persona, Daredevil. He’d come home, you’d helped him clean up the couple of cuts he had and he’d gone to bed now. He was sleeping peacefully, he looked like an angel as his eyes were closed and no worries were etched into his face. 

He had been in a deep slumber by the time you left the bed, he was yet to notice. You hadn’t been able to sleep at all, and it wasn’t his fault that that was the case. You were now sitting on the sofa in the living room that felt even greyer and colder than usual. Everything felt so cold, you almost wondered if your vision was acting up. You just needed some rain outside and you’d be in Catherine Hardwicke’s blue-green-tinted world of Twilight. 

You had a glass of water in your hands that was now room-temperature because you’d been sitting there so long. Holding it. Thinking. Thinking about just tipping the glass of water out onto yourself, because why not? Then that image would replay over and over. Then you’d sip from it. Somehow. Lower it. Back to holding and then back to thinking. It was still pretty full at this stage. 

Staring out the window into the numerous lights that appeared to float mid-air, parallel to the sky at different points. You couldn’t see any stars, you hated that. At least if there were stars you’d have some luck of counting them, maybe trying to name some of them, in an attempt of some distraction technique you told yourself that a normal person could do. Then you thought a normal person probably wouldn’t even to do this. The voice in your head that said it, was mean, it was the kind of a high school bully which made you feel even worse. You let out a deep sigh and choke on a little sob that you didn’t know had been wanting to come out. 

That’s the noise that wakes Matt up, he stretches out in the bed you share as he lets out a quiet but deep yawn as he tiredly rubs his eye. He moves a hand through his sleep-toussled hair as he immediately realises that you’re not in bed with him. He sighs as he focuses on the elevated heartbeat of yours he can hear drumming along further in the apartment. He immediately knows something is up, when he’d originally come home he thought something might’ve been bothering you as you seemed slightly detached but he’d been able to write it off as you just being tired because it was extremely late when he’d come home after a patrol. He couldn’t write this off as early hours fatigue though. He knew you, down to the core, even when you didn’t want to be perceived.

Matt gets up and slowly walks out of the bedroom with gentle footsteps, he could’ve been a ballerina in another lifetime. He’s so quiet with his movement after years of practice that you don’t notice he’s out of bed until he’s standing just a few steps away from the couch. 

It’s when you get the feeling of goosebumps on the back of your neck and that feeling that somebody is watching you that you start to wonder. You’re not sure though if it’s just depressed paranoia that makes you feel like somebody is watching, Matt had absolutely passed out, he should be in a deep sleep still you think. But you try to slow your breathing and not given into the urge to look and further panic, but you think that if someone was behind you it’s better to look and know that there is or that you’re not just feeling depressed but also paranoid. 

With a sigh after a sharp inhale you slowly turn your head and look, you see Matt standing there. He’s just a couple of steps away from you, he’s facing you and well… he’s not just facing you, he’s analysing you. You look at him with tears in your eyes as you know he’s doing a full scan of your senses. 

Matt steps closer immediately and sits on the sofa right next to you as the first tear has just dropped. You’re not sure if it’s because he can hear the tear dropping out of your tear duct to run down your cheek, or if it’s because he can smell the extra stress hormones or something in these emotional tears. 

“I thought you were asleep.” You whisper hoarsely, almost feeling ashamed at this scene happening. 

“I was.” He says gently as he raises his hand to your cheek and then he gently rubs your cheek, wiping up the few tears had already shed. 

“I didn’t mean to wake you. I’m sorry-” Now it’s guilt as well. 

“Don’t apologise.” He quickly cuts you off in a gentle tone. 

He’s caring but he says it so nonchalantly, like this is normal. He’d spent a day working with clients, then he’d had a violent patrol and now you having a mini-breakdown interrupted his sleep. You felt bad and you knew that maybe you shouldn’t because you’re a human and you’re entitled to a cry and love and understanding. And all those things. But brains aren’t logical, and they sure as hell aren’t when you’re going through the emotions. You sigh as you look at his face, seeing the compassion and adoration. 

“Are you going to talk to me, beautiful?” He whispers with a gentle, playful smile. He’s trying to ease this. Diffuse the anxiety. 

“It’s just overwhelming. There’s a lot of mental noise and I’m struggling to not spiral-because well I’m already spiralling and nothing feels good. I’m not good. I’m just not good.” You spit out. 

He quickly pulls you into his arms and your face is pressed against his warm bare chest. You can’t help but let out a soft sigh of relief and bury your head further into his chest. It’s so comforting and even when you’re a mess, he still somehow knows how to comfort you. 

“Maybe you’re not good, and you’re just great instead.” He whispers as he starts to caress your back gently, he seems to be almost tracing an invisible pattern as he does. “That’s how I feel about you. Other days you may be good. It’s been bad before, it’s been good before. It can feel good again, honey. And it will.” 

You sigh and tilt your head to look at him as you move more into his lap and adjust yourself to be more physically comfortable. You trust him, you love him, you believe him but you’re not sure if you believe him more than the disbelief you have in yourself. 

Matt seems to sense this hesitation in you. “Five things you see?” He asks softly as his head is tilted to face you, he’s focusing on you because you’re his whole world. 

“Um…” You inhale and start to look around as you think. “Your face…” You say and almost chuckle, he smiles that charming grin widely and chuckles. “Good, what else.”

You look around and think. “The window… The couch… that plant in the ugly pot my cousin gave us.” You say and you both smile at that. You had to describe in detail the absolute atrocity of the pot to Matt when had been gifted to you both and it was now a bit in your relationship. 

“Good, good, not so good.” He chuckles with the smile that’s slowly distracting you from your worries. “One more thing.” “Um, the light.” You say quietly. 

“Four things you can feel.” He says and you can’t help but chuckle. “Well, you, I guess, and four different parts of you.” You say as you look at him as your cheeks heat up. 

“Sure, I’ll give you that one.” He says playfully. “Do I feel good?” He then asks teasingly. It makes you roll your eyes and chuckle. 

“Yeah.” 

“So something feels good.” He says with a proud smirk. 

“Don’t use my words back at me, like that.” You say as you watch him smile. “Mm, don’t say them then, pretty thing.” He says proudly and he chuckles and kisses your lips softly with a little peck. “Now should I keep going with the grounding and distraction technique?” 

“I don’t know-” 

“Why, are you in your body and out of your head enough?” He asks with a smirk as he caresses your back. 

“Maybe. You’re pretty good at that.” You say, he is. He’s so good at reassuring you and bringing you back to Planet Earth and away from the galaxy of overthinking and mental black holes. 

You lean against him and press a soft gentle kiss to his collarbone as he’s so close to you. All of him is, he’s enveloping you. He lets out a quiet little groan at that, that he tries to muffle but you catch it. You look up at him and bite your lip. 

You move slightly and caress his strong arms gently. “Honey, are you sure? You’re… Well you’ve been upset…” He says softly. He means it. 

“Yeah, but I’m feeling better now. And maybe the dopamine and oxytocin is just what I need.” You say matter of factly but still a little anxiously. “Oh really?” He cocks his head slightly and there’s a devilish grin on his face but his eyes are filled with love and adoration.  

“Yes really.” You smiled softly as you looked up at him, you really loved him and you felt safe with him. Matt started to run his thumb along your jaw and down your throat gently. 

You felt your cheeks heat up more and then you trailed your hand down his chest, his stomach, being careful to avoid any visible cuts or bruises on his pale skin. Your hand made it’s way down to palm him over his boxers. You watched his face carefully, his cheeks started to tinge with a blush and he smiled. 

“Mm, no.” He said with a smirk and then he quickly flipped you carefully and gently so you were now lying on your back on the couch while his hand was firmly on your waist as he looked down. You sharply gasped as this happened but then let out a giggle which just made his smirk grow ten times more. 

Matt lowered himself, caressing your waist gently and then running his hand down to your thigh and up again slowly, your breath started to slow in anticipation as you bit your lip, he was paying attention to your breathing and then he tugged your sleep bottoms down. Your cheeks heated up more at that as you looked down at him. He was completely focused on you now as his fingers danced around your inner thigh, spelling out invisible love letters and filth on your sensitive skin as you gasped at each touch. For a man with a moniker that had the word ‘devil’ in it, he sure was heaven of a man. 

Matt started to kiss your thighs, as his fingers moved up, he then paused his kisses as he finally travelled across to your vulva and ran a single finger through your folds. It triggered an automatic soft moan that made him smirk for a moment as he then gently spread your folds. 

His finger starts to travel more, he teases your hole with his index finger, circling it and almost going in for you to swallow him up but never quite, you feel your core clench up at this and don’t even realise that you’re holding your breath, waiting for him. Waiting for more. He keeps exploring, teasing, and pulling out soft moans and groans of anticipation from you, he starts to slowly insert his finger which makes you gasp and then he pulls it out. He brings the finger to his mouth and sucks on it, tasting your juices. 

You gasp at this and watch him, you’d been watching him the whole time but now your eyes are absolutely glued to him. He then brings his finger mixed with your juices and his saliva to that sweet, sweet, bundle of nerves that’s craving his touch. He starts to circle it slowly in a clockwise motion, applying a little more pressure. 

“You know, that tasted pretty good.” He says. He says it so confidently, the nature of his tones words, and what’s happening makes your cheeks heat up more as you let out some soft moans. “I should probably try it straight from the source, that’s what I need to do, isn’t it?” 

“Oh Matt…” You can’t help but feel like you’re going to explode just from his words. But he’s already dived in. 

Matt kisses along your vulva as he inserts his finger into your hole, lightly, almost teasingly. The kisses get closer and then he starts to lick. You’re almost squirming a little now, it feels so good, he’s not even at your clitoris yet, but his mouth and fingers is the start of an overwhelming heaven and you know that. You let out a loud whine and as you squirm, he moves his free hand to firmly hold your thigh, keeping you in place and he groans against you. The vibration of that is absolutely perfectly and you bite your lip, trying not to cry out, as you feel your eyes close as he licks your folds while pumping the tips of his index and now middle finger out. 

After a loud whine he smirks and then moves his mouth to the sweet spot as he keeps lightly fingering you, he licks your bundles of nerves, slowly, almost painfully so, circling it with his tongue and then you feel him kissing it and then he starts to lightly suck on your clitoris. You whine out at that, desperately so, as you claw the side of the couch and your eyes start to roll back. He hums against your clitoris, he’s so perfect and he knows that you love that so much. It always feels so damn good and it does right now. The vibration of that humming perfectly gets you off every time and sends pleasure right from your core right down to your feet and up to your head. 

Matt keeps humming, well aware of what it does to you, and hungrily sucks on your clitoris, like his life depends on bringing you to orgasm, that he is a man dying of a thirst that only tour sweet juices can quench, that your release will be his salvation. He keeps sucking and you feel your eyes roll back so much and you’re moaning so loudly as your back arches, he’s taking you to the peak and you can’t hold it back anymore. You whine out and grip the sofa more as he firmly holds your thigh, his fingers digging in as his mouth brings you to an overwhelming and incredible orgasm. 

“Oh Matt!” You whine out as the pleasure from it floods you. He keeps sucking and licking, making sure he gets each last drop and makes the most of your taste that he’s obsessed with and needs. He slows down after your release as you pant quickly you can’t help but smile and as you look down and see his face move away, his chin and mouth is wet but his lips are curled up in a smile. 

“You taste sweeter than anything I could ever dream of wanting.” He says as he caresses your thigh, there’s a slight flush in his face as he pants a little. Your cheeks heat up more at his words and as you watch him move. 

Matt takes his boxers off and then quickly kneels on the couch, spreading your legs and you see his thick member aroused and hungry. He’s looking at you as moves closer, holding it and then you move your hand down, feeling it and the precum that’s already dripping. You help him line himself up. 

Matt immediately thrusts in, he bottoms out quickly, you sharply inhale and he lets out a loud, perfect groan that’s music to your ears. 

“Absolutely perfect every time.” He whispers and then he slowly starts to move as his hand moves up your stomach and to your chest as he holds onto a breast while his other hand is planted onto the sofa to steady himself as he moves. 

You feel yourself clenching more around him with each thrust, his rhythm is steady but quick and you’re already so sensitive after the mindblowing orgasm he just gave you. Matt groans as his pace increases while he thrusts into you. You can’t help but whine out as he squeezes your breast and grunts out while moving. 

Matt then moves so his body is flushed against you, chest to chest, he puts his arm under your head, almost cuddling you closer to him as his hips start to move ten times faster. 

“Oh Matt, fuck…oh god…” You whine out loudly as he moves quickly and you’re so physically overwhelmed. He smiles at your reaction and groans into your ear, pressing his lips right against you to kiss your hair and moan into it as he fucks you like his life depends on it. 

His hips are moving so quickly and it completely contrasts to how the way he’s holding you is almost so gentle. You wrap your arms around his back, almost weakly and then start to scratch his toned back as the thrusts become deeper and deeper. You feel so full. 

“So perfect, so beautiful. I love you.” He groans into his ear as he keeps pounding into you. He’s a man in love and one that craves your body. He’s absolutely obsessed. “Your pussy is always so needy. I love it.” He groans into your ear as the thrusts become faster. 

“I love… I love you… t-too…” You whimper out as he keeps thrusting. You bury your head into the crook of his neck as he keeps going, he’s squeezing you tighter. “I love you s-so-so much…” You feel his hips starting to sputter as the rhythm breaks up a little. He’s still thrusting quickly into you but he’s getting close. 

“You feel so good, I’m not gonna last long beautiful.” He moans into your ear as he holds you tighter and keeps thrusting into you. You nod against his shoulder and neck, you knew this, and you have no issue with it. 

You dig your nails into his back and scratch him, goosebumps run along his skin at your touch and his breath changes for a moment as his body trembles slightly and he gives one last thrust as he then releases. He groans out and you look up at him smiling and biting your lip, he always looked so handsome when he finished and he made the sweetest noises. 

He groans and opens his eyes slowly, he looks at you and then immediately kisses you on the lips lovingly and comfortingly. He pants against your soft lips as he rests them there after the kiss. You run your fingers through his dark hair that now has beads of sweat from this exertion. This is peaceful, he loves you and you love him. You’re perceived, and somehow, that’s okay with Matt. 

After a moment he kisses you again and then he carries you to bed, he’s your loving, protective big spoon as your mind finally quietens down and you get to enjoy a deep sleep next to your handsome devil.

[kiwicopia]

what about a request with pregnant reader,so female reader, they're in a poly relationship with Geto and Gojo,she's out for groceries when suddenly her water breaks and she immediatly calls the two?( they have made a group chat)

Meanwhile the two dads are on a mission to find the curse and exterminated when suddenly the curse locate the reader as they huff and phants on the street as Gojo and Geto are on the phone.

thank you in advance

🔞 MDNI | Husband!Gojo x Fem!Reader x Husband!Geto 🔞

TW: poly relationship, pregnancy, birth, twin children, fluffy ending.

Things were not supposed to turn out this way. You were supposed to stay home, not to go out and get groceries while your husband's were away for work. You were too heavily pregnant and just waiting to pop, which was the reason as to why they were so worried when receiving a sudden text about your water breaking in the store. They were foolish to think that someone as stubborn as you would listen to them, but that's what they loved about you.

Suguru tried to keep Satoru calm during it all, but to no avail. "Why did we leave her? Why couldn't she just stay home? What if we miss the birth?" The white-haired man was oozing with worry, his nerves practically shot at the thought of missing the entire thing. The dark-haired man beside him only sighed and shook his head.

"You worry too much, Satoru," he said.

"You don't worry enough," the man snapped.

Suguru only sighed in response. Truth be told, his own nerves ate at him, gnawing on his bones like a rabid dog. However, he had to be the calm one, or at least try to be. With Gojo freaking out as he was, it was up to Geto to be the level-headed one right now. "Worrying won't do either of us any good, you know. Stay calm, Satoru. Deep breaths if you have to."

His words were enough to keep the man from freaking out even more over the situation. Luckily for them, a good samaritan had taken you to the hospital and, to make matters better, the pair arrived in time to be present with you during the birth. Satoru let you hold his hand. A mistake on his part, as every contraction beforehand up until the final push had him believing his hand was torn off from how hard you gripped it. Suguru stood on the other side of the bed, his hand brushing back strands of hair that got in your face, and he cooed and whispered sweet praises as you pushed one last time.

"It's a girl," Geto whispered. Only after the infant was taken care of and swaddled in a soft, pink blanket was he finally able to hold her in his arms.

Satoru smiled brightly at the child. "She's beautiful," he said.

You hummed softly in response, your attention flicking from your baby girl and to your husbands. "You should see her brother." Your words caught them both by surprise, but before either of them could get a word out, in came a nurse with a blue bundle in her arms. Swaddled inside the blanket was a baby boy. Satoru took him from the nurse and carefully held him in his arms. The infant was quiet as he stared up at his father.

"He has my eyes," Gojo smiled.

"And my hair," Geto noted. While your son had Satoru's eyes and Suguru's hair, your daughter sported Suguru's eyes and Satoru's hair. The one thing they shared from you was their sweet smiles, even though it was all gummy.

Your husbands beamed with joy at the twins. You gave them beautiful children, and they love you even more for it. Despite missing the first birth of their son, they were at least happy to be able to witness the birth of their daughter. Gojo pressed a gentle kiss to your temple as he cradled your son in his arms, and Geto thanked you for giving them such wonderful blessings.

[blasphemlm]

Samaritan Blues

Explicit, 16.7k, ZoSan, bloodplay and talk of knifeplay, complete.

Sanji helps a lone gunslinger and accidentally earns a favor from the wildest, most handsome cowboy he's ever had the misfortune to meet.

Zoro will stop at nothing to repay his debt to the pretty cook who saved his life.

[softfem-dom]

mutant file ,, fem oc

name : dolores betelohim nicknames : lola , lolita , dolly , lola dear .

alias : heaven says short form : heaven , heaveny

day of birth : 15th april 19??

height : 5,4

category : mutant (level 4-5)

abbilities : angel morphing , siren song / voice ridden mind-manipulation , dermakinesis , telepathy (weak).

residence : xavier's school for gifted youngsters.

occupation : (apathetic)student

affliction : xmen (occasionally) (since 1998)

state : 𝔞l҉𝔦v҉𝔢?

story

🖇️ early life Dolores was born in a catholic household, under the watch of a caring mother and the hand of a strict yet loving father. As soon as she was old enough to understand the world her she was taught about the love of God, the merciful being above, taken to church every Sunday and with a rosary hanging from her neck.

Pale as a white bunny, with equal curiosity for everything around her, and with eyes as blue as the sky. Her dark, almost coal-y, brunette hair only adding to the purity that seemed to coat her very being.

However, that purity didn't get a chance to last too long. When the priest from the church spotted her, looking like the ethereal esence of a divine being, he revealed himself to not be as kind as everyone had been fooled to believe.

He was part of an organization, an illegal project. To create angels on earth and, by false visual, force the christianism over the rest of religions by existent 'proof' of divine beings.

So, that fateful Sunday after church, she didn't get a chance to go back home. Snatched away with a cloth over her mouth, only to awake in some kind of rusty and old room surrounded by sharp medical props and colorful and strange vials on creaky shelfs.

She was experimented on. Mutated. To grow wings and have the melodic voice of the angels above. Completely stripped off of her own humanity to fake her into a 'divine' being to be worshipped. Surrounded by equal hate and disgust as admiration and amazement. just a prop to a cult.

🖇 xavier's school for gifted youngsters

After years of being trapped within the same walls, being forced to perform like some circus act. After years of being aressed as a divinity yet treated like a lab rat. One fateful days the alarms inside the facility went off, commotion being heard out in the halls, the armored door of her 'room' hiding her away from everything.

Then was when she met Charles Xavier and his team. She would've been scared of the blue man suddenly appearing inside of her room, with a 'poof' and a cloud of smoke, if it weren't for the cross pendant hanging from his neck. Christians were good samaritans, she tried to convince herself.

It turned out, at least that Christian was indeed a good samaritan. Offering her his hand and taking her away from it all, not caring about the wings growing from her back nor the blue in her eyes. She was for once being treated like a human being instead of like a divine being in need to be worshipped yet hidden away.

After that, she met the rest of the team; ororo, jean, charles, scott and kurt —the one who saved her. And found her home in Xavier's school for Gifted Youngsters. She was still seen as an angel within those walls. Yet not for the white wings, nor for the pure blue in her eyes, nor for the pale and perfect of her skin, nor from the melody in her voice, but for her smile and kind heart.

After she started to live out in the open, taking classes like any normal teen and playing outside, it soon became obvious the way her body rejected the necessary nutrients for growing —due to the poor conditions of the lab— and she ended up developing anemia, low iron levels.

Sooner than later, though, new people joined the team. Remy LeBeau aka Gambit, Anna Marie aka Rogue, Piotr "Peter" Nikolaievitch Rasputin aka Colossus, Robert Louis "Bobby" Drake aka Ice-Man, Katherine Anne "Kitty" Pryde aka Shadowcat and Logan Howlett aka Wolverine with whom she'll end up growing closer than she expected. A total contrast to see the dictionary definition of purity and religiousness attached to the hip of the sarcastic and dry-humoured man that was atheist to the damn bone.

🖇character analysis :

dear lola is an optimistic and soft girl, she is deemed extremely chill for her age —y'know puberty and all—. She seems to lack teenager hormones with how calm she is.

despite her past in a laboratory, and all the cultist stuff, she remains catholic and firm to the belief that there is a God up there that will always be there for her in the good and the bad. That's probably one of the reasons she is so close to Kurt, since they share religion and equal passion about it.

She will talk about her religion to anyone who asks or shows interest, even if she knows most people —especially teens— in the school don't give two shits if there is someone above due to their ansty teen rebellion phase she'll remain loyal in her beliefs.

She spends most of her time in the garden, the part with the tallest trees. She likes to climb the trees and spend her hours drawing or reading on the branches.

It's suspected that her calmness and relaxed nature is due to her very low iron, that has her with much less social battery and energy than people her age. She's not allergic to social interaction, but she prefers time alone or time shared in silence.

She's a very loving individual, surprisingly palyful and full of mischief. She loves helping the other teens plot schemes and pranks on the teachers —especially Scott and Logan—.

Everyone believes that the 'angel' part of her are just the white wings in her back, the ones she's always dragging on the floor because they weight quite a lot despite their feather-y appearance. But, in reality, the whole implanted 'divine' part of her is such a monstruous form that she'll never let anyone see it. The fact that she can turn in such a monstruous creature keeps her awake at night sometimes, seeing the reflection of something antromorphic and disgusting in the mirror whenever she looks at it.

Her first encounter with Logan aka the Wolverine wasn't a very pleasant one. He had been living in the school for only two or three days when he stumbled upon the sight of a supposed big bird in the branch of a tree, he wasn't thinking straight when he grabbed a small rock and threw it at the 'animal' —believing it to be something dangerous to the kids in the school—. Only to be met by the sight of a female face turning to him with wide eyes and a heavily offended expression after the loud 'thwack!' of the rock hit her in the back of her head.

She crawled up to the branches of the tree until the green leafs hid her from him and didn't come back down until it was Storm the one calling her from under the tree.

Needless to say Logan was ashamed as fuck after realizing he had threw a rock at a random kid.

After a bit of time and a cookie offering —suggested by Jean— the two of them started to get closer. With Logan freaking the fuck out the first time Lola got up too fast and fell right to the floor, damn low iron.

Despite the two of them being the total ephytomy of opposites, Logan still put up with the religious kid even while being atheist himself. He couldn't give two shits about the 'supposedly' God up in the sky —how would that even work anyways? some huge dude in the sky?—, but he never dismissed her as he never dismissed Kurt even if the two of them paired up were a total pain in the ass.

[purehypnotic]

can i kindly req for arthur morgan hcs,, he falls in love with reader?? -🩷

thank you SO SO much for this request !! it’s our pleasure, love you! hope we did you justice

🧸🏜 arthur morgan x reader, falling in love HCs 🏜🧸

gender neutral, sfw

𖤓⋆｡° ✮ 𓄀⋆⭒˚｡⋆ 𖤓⋆｡° ✮ 𓄀⋆⭒˚｡⋆ 𖤓⋆｡° ✮ 𓄀⋆⭒˚｡

-Arthur slumped in his seat near the bar, thumbing a chipped glass of whiskey. The sun was beating down mercilessly on Valentine, and Arthur found relief in the shade of the saloon.

-until he saw your body fling across the window outside.

-ever the good samaritan, Arthur scrambled to check on you. He tripped on his own feet to rush and survey the situation, expecting the worst reasons as to why you would be thrown so harshly.

-His hand flew to his mouth to stifle a chuckle when he saw a riderless horse and your ankle tangled up in the reins.

-Arthur bit back a smartass comment as he went to help you up, when a few things about you caught his eye.

-first, your outfit was buttoned wrong, as if you had rushed to throw something on.

-second, you weren’t wearing spurs (who the hell doesn’t wear spurs around here?)

-and third, you flinched like a feral cat when he hauled you up by the waist. Arthur had a sneaking suspicion of what was going on.

-“You don’t know how to ride a horse, do ya now?” He squinted at you.

-You lifted a finger to the man’s face, ready to spit back at the accusation when you locked eyes with him.

-Something in his gaze told you he wasn’t trying to belittle you, just offering a hand.

-Lowering your hand, you let out a sigh of frustration. You had run for so long, had fought with everything you had, but still couldn’t figure out how to mount a damn horse. But the blue eyed man in front of you seemed like he knew. He seemed sturdy, reliable, and you had given up all dignity when you caught yourself nearly drooling over his build.

-Grabbing the reins of the horse, you hung your head and held them out to Arthur’s chest.

-”just help please”

-He explained each piece of equipment, showed you how to approach the pony without spooking it, and he found himself laughing when you struggled to jump atop the saddle.

-He offered you a boost, letting his hands linger on you for a bit longer than necessary. You let out a laugh of victory, and the pure joy on your face knocked the breath from Arthur’s lungs.

-With the rush of his racing heart, Arthur impulsively hauled himself up behind you.

-”This alright?” He asked in a low voice as he reached around you to grab the reins. He adjusted himself so he could speak closer to your ear, and his movement caused your back to press into his chest.

-(he did it on purpose).

- Arthur spent the rest of his day taking you on a tour through some backroads, teaching you to steer the whole way through.

-It was the most peaceful evening he’d ever had.

-You made conversation easy. The strange way his heart pounded made him loose-lipped around you, and he gladly told you snippets of his life.

-He told you stories about growing up in the gang, about tricking John into taking showers, about Hosea teaching him to read. And you accepted each story as if they were nuggets of gold. (he loved that)

-You had eventually opened up to him about being a runaway, explaining that you had never needed to learn to ride before going on the run. His heart squeezed to think of what you must have seen.

-As the sun dipped low and the sky turned purple, Arthur realized he had guided your horse toward camp out of habit.

-Despite being a hardened, tough man, Arthur couldn’t let you go.

-He pressed a kiss to your hair and decided that another addition to the gang couldn’t hurt.

𖤓⋆｡° ✮ 𓄀⋆⭒˚｡⋆ 𖤓⋆｡° ✮ 𓄀⋆⭒˚｡⋆ 𖤓⋆｡° ✮ 𓄀⋆⭒˚｡

as always,

love katie 💌

[meiguicha]

Mystified Scholar - Leifeng Pagoda

Jingyuan x Reader - University AU

Asking for help for understanding basic economics may not have been the best idea when your tutor is horrifically attractive (it surely doesn't help that he's bad for your sanity)

//I need him in a way that concerns my grades (grade digger). But seriously I hate this subject so much so this is the weirdest way of testing my barebones knowledge. If anyone is an economics legend please send help. This is probably not that good let's be honest. Poem is 登乐游原 by 李商隐.

向晚意不適，骑车登古原。

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

When you decided to take an introduction to microeconomics unit, you didn’t think your brain would end up hating it so much that it seems to reject any information about the subject to the point that you were miserably hopeless about essentially the entire 75% of the subject. 

While yes, you have done the subject before, in fact you’d say you had a great grasp on the subject up until this unit came around and destroyed your admittedly grandiose delusions about yourself, what you were learning right now could no way in cold hell be an ‘introduction’! So with your dignity and grades on the line, you did what any rational person would do, suffer in silence and watch ten million youtube videos in an attempt to catch up. 

Obviously, that did not work because if it did, you wouldn’t be here, in your room sitting on your dinky little chair with who was essentially the god of economics on your bed. Who was this god you may ask? That would be no other than your tutorial mate and coincidentally also a resident of your dormitory, Jingyuan. 

How convenient you may say, awfully convenient. 

Being the samaritan he was, he offered to help once he all but witnessed your near public breakdown over graphs that a toddler could understand. Which then led to the great moment that was this god of a man hovering over your shoulder, in very close contact and could he smell your perfume? Or did you stink? God you hoped you didn’t stink.

With his hair clipped up, courtesy of a clip you dug around your toiletries basket for, this sight that you bore must certainly be reserved for sages because you did not think this man could get any more handsome with a bright blue clip in his hair, or his rolled up sleeves, or the fact that he existed in general. You were going insane, you just knew it.

His hand is placed near yours, planted by the mouse and for his support as you very honestly tried your best to listen to him. When you reach a certain slide, Jingyuan leans in closer and speaks, soft and gentle, “So you understand business strategies?”

“Yeah.” You have to resist the urge to roll your eyes or scoff, mentally slapping yourself to behave. In an attempt to lighten the mood, or maybe because your mouth is stupid and tries to fill every second of silence in fear of something you aren’t sure of, you send him a side glance as a grin tugs at your lips, “Are you doubting my common sense?”

“Of course not, you’re very smart. I just wanted to make sure,” He reassures, a soft snort of amusement escaping him, yet there was not a single ounce of annoyance even in those golden eyes of his. 

“We’ll get straight to the graphs then.”

Your finger scrolls down on the mouse’s scroll wheel, finally landing on the graph portion for the cost advantage portion of the strategies listed. What was before you was a clearly defined graph with a demand curve and marginal revenue curve touching at the ends, the latter being much steeper than the former. With the marginal cost curve cutting through both lines and an average total cost curve tangent to the demand curve, the faded lines in the background of the curve certainly added nothing to the description to the side. 

Clearly sensing your confusion, Jingyuan merely points towards the faint lines, explaining the exact reasons for each shift with care, “So assuming our firm manages to lower costs, this means that the graph’s marginal costs and average total costs shifts downwards.”

You scramble for a red pen, writing down his explanation on a little post-it-note to paste on your notes. Out of the corner of your eyes, you think you see a smile on his lips, not quite like the usual serene quirk but bearing a different kind of sentiment. Obviously, you ignore it because you aren’t delusional enough to think that he would be looking at you like that, instead busying yourself with making sure you could read your own handwriting in the future. 

When you finish, you scroll to the next slide, a slide titled as ‘Expanding the customer base’. The bolder lines were the same, a pattern you’re starting to notice, but this time there were more faded lines, the only one missing for this slide would be the marginal cost curve. Your eyes scan over the description on the side yet when you inevitably find yourself a little lost, you turn to him with what must be the most wet eyes he has probably ever seen. Jingyuan merely points to your computer screen, gesturing with his finger the exact lines he discusses.

“If they engage in a successful advertising campaign to appeal to a new customer base, while the average total cost will increase, the average variable cost won’t.” He points towards the raised line, your eyes following along naturally. Then he continues, further explaining how the demand curve rises and how the marginal revenue curve accompanies the shift, “Right now we’re at a loss, but later on our demand will move rightwards which moves our marginal revenue and raises our price and lowers our average total costs, leaving us to make a profit.”

With a hand supporting your head while the other writes, you essentially engage in every dermatologist’s worst nightmare, rubbing your face in frustration. Why was it that when he was explaining all of this, not only were you the most stressed you’ve ever been, but the most knowledgeable you’ve ever been? Surely you must be going insane. 

“How did you get this so quickly? I feel like my brain is melting out of my nose,” You mutter into your hand. 

He laughs in dulcet huffs, a concept you never thought you’d describe someone to do yet he just did. When you least expect it, he merely tips his head as words of praise just seem to tumble out of that perfect mouth of his, “You just need time to understand the material. You’re already doing so well.”

“Do you want to continue?”

Does he know that what he’s saying could definitely be taken out of context and used for more… nefarious purposes? You were going to go crazy the more time this man spent teaching you economics of all subjects! If you could, you’d bash your head onto the table and thank every god in this world for giving you this man, then turn around and curse them out for making him too tempting for his own good. 

Pretending that you definitely did not implode inside and were completely normal, you nod and smile, “Yeah.”

Your hand scrolls down, impressive as you could clearly feel the other spasm just a little, and you look through the last slide with a graph, ‘Increase perceived value’. By now, you who have undergone the great teachings as handed to you personally by your saviour Jingyuan (not), could clearly understand what was going on. With the graph being the exact same as the last, with only one minor difference, that being the marginal revenue and demand curve being steeper to represent its elasticity. 

“The same goes for if the firm manages to increase perceived value, however the difference is that our demand moves up and rightwards as well as becoming less elastic because now our consumers have increased and are more willing to pay high prices.”

He turns to you, once again tipping his head as he asks, “Did you understand all that?”

“Yeah, no. That makes sense now,” Nodding along, you really had to admit that he was good. You place down your pen and let out a soft breath of relief, a genuine smile pulling across your lips, “Thanks.”

He responds with a smile of his own, though he brings up a different topic, “No worries, by the way…”

“Hm?” You cock your head, curious on what his next words are.

“If you’d like, I can help you with the other topics over a meal?”

The offer doesn’t fully register in your head, one because you’re still living the high of finally understanding economics, two because you weren’t expecting him to say that all of a sudden and three because… what?

“Ah?”

You must look like a baby deer with how clueless you looked right now, because he lowers himself to be eye level with you, essentially squatting down as he keeps his voice soft and clement, “I’m asking whether you’d want to go out for dinner with me, and maybe I could continue to help you with economics, if you’d like?”

Slapping a hand over your mouth, it takes everything in you to not cry, or laugh, you weren’t sure which you wanted to do more. When a few more moments pass and he only appears ever the more earnest in his offer, you could only nod, knowing that speaking may only betray your cracking voice. 

“I’d like that, yeah. I’d like that very much,” you manage to murmur through your stifling hand and flushed cheeks. 

Jingyuan only laughs, all too amused with the sight of you. He’s so glad he perfected learning and explaining all those theories, how else was he going to approach you when the only glimpses he gets of you are fleeting and few? It only took him about a night’s worth of studying, but if it meant he got to see more of you and that determination in your eyes, it was all worth a few hours of lost sleep. 

✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦ . 　⁺ 　 . ✦

夕阳无限好，只是近黃昏。

[mypearlsareclutched]

I Don't Wanna Do This Anymore

High By The Beach | Chapter Four

Modern!Aegon II x Original Female Character, Modern!Aemond x Original Female Character

Sometimes it is easier to run away instead of facing your fears. But while Mila is ready to give up on herself, a certain Targaryen has no intention of letting her fall apart...

There is a potentially triggering scene in this chapter which depicts attempted sexual assault. Please do not read if this will affect you. If you want a run down of what happens in this chapter, message me and I'll let you know what happens x

Song inspiration | High By The Beach, Lana Del Rey

CW//TW: Attempted Sexual Assault (MDNI), drinking, clubbing, smoking, Jason Lannister being a scheve, angst, Mila-Stark-is-going-through-it.com, girls night out, shots, ANGSTT.

Word count | 3.4k

previous chapter // next chapter

Get out, get out, get out, get out, get out, get out, GET OUT!

The thought kept her going as she ran through the trees. Darting and zigzagging, jumping over bumpy roots and rocks. Her ancient trainers were rubbing against her feet, her lungs were aching for reprieve, her skin breaking out into a sweat, but she kept going, running as far and as fast as she could. The trees were merely green blurs, the darkness no obstacle as pure instinct spurred her on.

Maybe if I run far enough, I can outrun my memories. Aemond and Aegon and the drugs and the Targaryens and everything wil fade into a scar you never pay attention to, something you only catch in your peripheral vision, and only then you pay it no mind.

Gods her legs burned. They began to tremble as she slowed down, her knees wobbling and failing her. As she collapsed, her hands fell flat, prickly sticks and jagged stones stabbed her palms, sending red hot pain into her frenzied mind.

Falling to her side, Mila took deep breaths, her lungs heaving. The world around her was dark, cold, silent.

A horn could be heard distantly, and Mila's eyes searched through the thick forest for any sign of civilisation. Blinking lights swam in her vision, a distant road coming into view. She did not remember standing up, the gods themselves could have lifted her for all she knew, and she took weak steps in the direction of the road.

It was a fairly busy motorway, plenty of cars careening back and forth, bringing Mila back to reality. Over a nearby hill, the cityscape of Kings Landing loomed. Freedom, familiarity...

Escape.

Practically throwing herself out of the trees, she ran to the side of the road, waving her arms frantically in an effort to get some good samaritan to offer her a ride. Or a serial killer, either is preferable to staying here in this godsforsaken forest.

Cars honk furiously, multiple drivers shout complaints and insults at the strange girl standing halfway in the road. A blue ford slows, their hazard light turning on. Mila rushes to the passanger window, leaning over to see inside.

"Good grief, are you alright?!" A middle-aged woman stared at her through thick rimmed glasses, looking tired but concerned.

"I'm... so sorry... I need a lift." Mila said between gasping breaths, "My... uh, my boyfriend, he's after me..."

The woman gasps, "Oh you poor dear... please, get in!" The car clicks and Mila pulls open the door, as soon as she sits and is buckled in, the woman begins driving, asking a million questions that Mila barely has the mind to answer.

Kings Landing, a metropolis full of luxurious bars, expensive restaurants, cultural landmarks, and opportunities to fuck your life up. Royally.

After half an hour of sitting in a strangers car, answering the occasional question and waving off the driver's insistence at going to the police, the city hospital comes in to view. "Can you drop me off here?"

"Of course." The woman stops the car just outside the entrance, giving Mila a worried look, "Will you be alright from here?"

"Yeah, this is great." The Stark lets out a shaky breath, giving the woman a sincere look, "Thank you again."

"Don't worry about it. I hope... I hope things get better for you."

"...Me too." With that, Mila exits the vehicle, sending a small wave to the woman before she drives off. As the car disappears around the street corner, Mila heads down the road, heading towards Flea Bottom.

A familiar apartment complex come into view, deep grey and grungy looking. As almost building in Flea Bottom did. An old section of Kings Landing, it was not known to be glamorous. But Mila wasn't currently in the market for glamour. Walking up the steep stairs towards the main door, Mila pressed the buzzer to apartment 202D, hoping that the woman she was looking for still lived there.

"Hello?" An energetic voice calls out, thick with static from the ancient intercom.

"It's Mila." She responds simply.

"No way, get up here!" The door buzzes, and Mila wastes no time slipping through and climbing the dingy stairs to the apartment.

Alysanne Martell opens the door, auburn-tinted curls bouncing as she looks her friend up and down. She's dressed for dancing, orange dress form-fitting, golden jewellery jangling with her movements.

"Mila? Where've you been, girl?" Aly asks, grabbing Mila into a hug, "Haven't seen you since you got with Blondie McStickuphisass."

"Yeah, life's been... yeah." Mila shrugs, sniffing.

"Baela said you were out of the city, did you just get back?" The Dornish girl looks her up and down, eyebrows furrowing.

"Hitchhiked here."

Alysanne's eyes widen, her eyebrows raising as she stares at Mila, "Shit... are you okay?" She rests a hand on Mila's elbow, offering comfort that Mila has no need for right now.

"All good." She nods, "Where are you headed?"

"Um, Madame Sylvies? The slutty club on Silk Street, you know the one with the cages and male strippers?"

It was quite a famous nightclub. Many people ventured there for the severe atmosphere, a dangerousness was in the air. Something that made people feel alive.

"I know it." Mila nods, bouncing on her feet, "Care to bring a She-Wolf?"

"Are you kidding? I'd be honoured!" Alysanne chuckles, before looking down at her frumpy clothes with a grimace, "You're not going like that, though."

By the time Alysanne had dressed Mila up, they were joined by at least a dozen other girls. Floris Baratheon had been shocked to see Mila, but had given her a big hug... and a bigger tab of ecstasy. As it started to hit, Mila began to loosen up, her body submitting to the sensations quickly, settling into the haziness like it was a pair of well worn boots.

Shots were downed, spliffs were smoked, and meaningless conversations were had. Mila took a moment to look in the mirror before they left, blinking at the girl looking back.

Alysanne had found a deep grey dress in her wardrobe, the classic colours of the Stark siblings. It was tight and showed off her tits, barely covering any skin so Mila paired it with Aegon's coat. A small comfort. The outfit was completed with silver jewellery, and fur lined leather platform boots. "If the She-Wolf is joining us and free from the leash of the Targaryens, she's going to need to look the part.", Alysanne had said.

Mila could admit, she looked fucking hot. Her hair was wild around her head, her makeup glittery and just the right amount of smudged. She was looking very Mila Stark pre-aemond. Druggie, tipsy, scandalous party girl.

The other girls whistled as she excited the flat, hooting and hollering at the appearance of the illustrious She-Wolf.

"Howl for us, wolf girl!" Ally Blackwood called out. Mila grinned as she howled, and the girls erupted in their own meows and woofs, a pack of wasted animals.

The She-Wolf is fucking back.

Madame Sylvie's was packed. Hundreds of sweaty bodies mingled around the club, downing drinks and dancing with strangers. Mila was stood to one side, her fifth drink in her hand as she watched the crowd with bleary eyes. More and more acquaintances had appeared, and she had reintroduced herself to dozens of people, feeling her need for social interaction dwindelling.

Time to shake my ass.

Grabbing the first decent looking man she saw, Mila headed to the dancefloor. Heavy bass pounded, a fog machine spurted out heavy clouds that surrounding the air and swallowed people up. The man she grabbed held her close from behind, his hands loosely on her hips as she swayed to the generic music.

It was soulless, being here. The drinks she had consumed brought her no joy, the ecstasy and weed gave her no relief. The man she danced with was no-one, faceless to her. The music was too loud all of a sudden, and she detangled herself from the person's embrace, hobbling over to her friends again.

"Feeling alright, hot stuff?" Alysanne asks, giving her a concerned look, "Don't tell me you're a lightweight now?"

"Don't insult me." Mila hiccups, blinking blearily, "Do you want to do a line?" Aly's eye's widen, reaching out a hand to steady Mila.

"Um-"

"Floris!" Mila calls out, and Floris' head turns, strawberry blonde curls bouncing, "Line?"

"Hell yeah."

Before long, Mila is crammed in a tiny club bathroom, watching as Floris uses her father's credit card to make pretty lines of white on the edge of the sink. Her hands shake, but she presses them to her waist, gnawing at her lip as she practically drools waiting for her turn. The Baratheon makes quick work of two, smiling giddily as she bounces on the balls of her feet.

Taking the rolled up receipt from Floris' manicured fingers, she leans down and quickly snorts the line, allowing the quick flush of euphoria seep into her mind. Colours burst, her energy increases, but it's not enough.

As Floris giggles and begins dragging her back out the stall, Mina sighs, "Gods... I need more." kicking the bathroom door, she follows after Floris' jittery form.

Her friend gets swallowed by the crowd almost immediately, the neon lights dizzying and the ocean of people making her sway in place. Her hands remain shaking, her head reeling as she blinks in the low light.

A man looks over at her from the bar, his eyes travelling the length of her body. He's handsome enough. Brunette, dark eyes, stubble across his jaw. Different enough to the Targaryen men.

Sidling up to him, the man gives her a smirk, "Hello, gorgeous."

"Hey." Mila smirks, resting her hand on the man's shoulder. He smiles wolfishly, wrapping an arm around her waist to hold her to him.

"Get you a drink?"

"I'd really appreciate it." The stranger calls over the bartender, geting the pair of them shots of tequila that disappear as soon as they arrived. After a few more, Mila is practically draped across the man, letting him kiss down her neck as his hands wander down her back.

Someone familiar pops into view, and Mila's eyes widen as she meets the eyes of Jason Lannister. He smirks, walking over to her. She gently pulls the stranger off of her, giving him a smile, "One of my friends is over there, I'll be back in a second."

"Sure." He slurs, nodding as he reaches for his next shot.

By the time she abandons him, Jason is in her personal space, his beady eyes meeting hers. Mila practically jumps on him, clinging to him like a raft in the ocean. Because right now, this is not a person in front of her.

It's an opportunity to get high again, properly high. To make it all go away.

“Jason, I need a hit, please.” Mila begs, grasping onto the fabric of his jacket.

“Aw, sweetie, of course I can help you.” Jason leans forwards, pinching her chin between his thumb and forefinger, “But baby, you’re gonna have to work for it this time, okay?”

Mila nods, desperation in her veins as she leans into the Lannister's touch, paying no mind to his malicious smile. His hand wraps around her jaw possessively, white teeth gleaming as he nips at her cheekbone. Mila lets him drag her back through the crowd, having just enough sense to grab Aegon's coat from the cloak room before she is pulled by Jason out into the night.

"Come on, gorgeous, let's get you high." He murmurs into her ear as he pulls her along.

The bald doorman gives her a strange look as she is pulled into the dilapidated crack den Jason frequents. A week ago, she had been here getting her first hit since she was fifteen, and now she's back, but being pulled in past the rusty doorway into the dim light of the corridor.

It's near empty, a few vices can be heard from adjoining rooms. Jason says nothing as he pulls her along by her wrist. With bleary eyes, she looks back at the bald man, who watches them both with beady eyes until they disappear into a room.

Jason shuts the door behind them, smirking as Mila sways slightly.

"Why don't you sit down, sweetheart." He murmurs, grabbing hold of the lapels of her coat and tugging it off of her. Mila groans at the sudden disappearance of Aegon's comforting smell, hands feebly going to grab the coat back before her head swims and she stumbles back.

She's way drunker than she thought. And the weed, molly and coke has definitely affected her more than she realised at the club.

"Jason... I don't think I want to do this anymore." She says softly, confused as Jason continues to push her backwards. The backs of her knees collide with a leather couch, and she falls over on to it with a grunt. Jason simply chuckles, taking off his jacket and kneeling over her on the couch.

Panic grips her, and she becomes more alert as he looms over her, his hands dragging over her body.

"Stop..." Mila weakly says, trying to kick the Lannister away. He remains undeterred, laughing bitterly as he runs a hand through her messy hair.

"No, I don't think I will." He bites, "You remember the drill, sweetheart, I gave you that last hit for free, knowing you would come back. Have you forgotten how this works?" His hands drift down her ribcage, the weight of his fingers feeling slimy against her clothed body.

"I don't want to. Get the fuck off of me!" Mila shouts, pushing at his chest as he forces his weight fully on top of her.

"Lannister." The bald doorman walks in, freezing as he spots Jason sprawled on top of a struggling Mila. He averts his eyes, clearly uncomfortable, "Uh... some guy is here to talk to you."

"Tell him to fuck off, Jon, I'm busy!" Jason commands, returning his face to Mila's neck. She whines and tries pushing him off.

Jon looks at the pair, his face conflicted before he turns and leaves, the door clicking shut behind him, the finality of it sending further panic through Mila.

"If you keep struggling, this will be way worse for you." Jason grits out, grabbing her calves and wrangling them around his waist. Mila smacks his chest, clawing at his face until he backhands her, making her see stars.

"Stop!" Mila slurs, feeling him take her wrists into one of his hands, pressing his body impossibly close to her as he groans.

Mila looks away, staring at the blackened tiles of the storeroom, her body shuddering and tears falling down her cheeks as Jason's hands begin push her dress up. Distantly, a door slams open, banging against a wall.

"You fucking bastard!" Someone shouts.

Something breaks, heavy footsteps erupt around her and Jason begins making a spluttering, choking sound. His weight is tugged off of her as she tries to catch her breath. She blinks blearily, trying to see through her tears and her foggy mind. Her jaw drops as she takes in the scene across the room.

An arm is wrapped around Jason's neck, holding him in a chokehold as Jason goes red and struggles against his assailant. A flash of silvery hair can be seen, and Mila breathes a sigh of relief.

Aegon shoves Jason away, sending the man to his knees, coughing and retching.

Trying to sit up, Mila looks to the open doorway. Bald Jon stands in the doorway, looking out in the hallway as if nothing is happening.

"Fucking Aegon fucking Targaryen." Jason groans, his voice hoarse. Mila looks over at him, shivering and shuddering at his murderous, soulless eyes. "Should have known your junkie ass would get a little junkie girlfriend. Guess your brother decided to be done doing charity! You know as well as I do that you put a little dope in her veins and she'll let you do whatever you want to her-"

Aegon silences him with a kick to the nose, sending blood spurting out over his boot and Jason's face as the Lannister screams in pain, curling up into a protective ball. Turning to look at her, Aegon's eyes soften.

"Come on, Mila, let's go." Aegon murmurs, taking a tentative step towards her as to not frighten her.

She lets out a soft sound, allowing him to wrap his arms around her and pull her up, wrapping her in his arms. She holds onto him like a koala, burying her face into the comfort of his neck.

"I've got you, I've got you..." Aegon says, holding her with one arm as he grabs his coat with the other, his crocs squeaking on the tiled floor.

As they leave the room, Aegon nods to Jon. Over Aegon's shoulder, the bald man gives Mila a look.

"I've got a daughter about your age." He says softly, before clicking his teeth and storming back down the hallway, ignoring the sounds of Jason Lannisters pained groans.

It's raining when the pair of them exit the dilapidated building.

Thunder rolls ahead, as thick drops of rain pitter patter around them. Aegon lingers under the shelter of an overhead fire escape, shacking out his coat and wrapping it around Mila's shaking body, covering her head.

He jogs over to a car, a rickety looking thing the colour of the sea. He fumbles slightly as he unlocks it, opening the passanger door and gently sitting Mila down in it. He helps her put her arms through her coat, not before checking her forearms for fresh needle marks. When he finds none, he gives her temple a quick kiss, pulling the coat snug around her. The rain drenches him as he does this, put he pays no mind to it.

When he shuts her door, Mila sits in silence. She watches Aegon walk around the car, his white blonde hair sticking to his skull as he darts through the onslaught. The muffled noise of the rain and nearby traffic makes Mila's head spin, and she wraps her armsa round herself protectively.

"Gods, fuck, seven, shit..." Aegon mumbles as he practically dives into the driver's seat, shaking his head like a dog before he takes a shuddering breath, looking out the windshield.

He seems distant for a second, breathing heavily as his eyes dart around, like a frightened animal. He flinches, remembering Mila is next to him, and turns to her.

Slowly, he reaches a hand forwards, aware of her fragile state. She allows him to place his hand on her cheek, offering a small, soothing gesture as she shakes. A small sob escapes her, and Aegon quickly busies himself with turning the car on and truning on the flimsy heaters.

"Gonna take a while to get warm, this car is a heap of shit. Sorry, Mila." Aegon chuckles nervously.

Mila looks at him, her eyebrows creasing as she takes in his appearance. "Are... are you in your pyjamas?" She asks shakily, looking down at his joggers, sleeping gown and neon crocs.

"I may or may not have ran after you without putting much thought into my outfit, sue me." He murmurs, taking her hands in his and blowing on them to warm her up.

They sit in silence for a moment. Aegon focuses on warming her hands up, eyes distant as he rubs at her numb flesh, and Mila watches him with sad, scared eyes.

"I can't go back there." She sobs, her eyes glassy with unshed tears, "Please, Aegon, I can't go back."

Aegon's eyes rise to look at her, his face illuminated by the streetlights, shadows cast by raindrops freckle his pale skin. He nods, swallowing thickly as he turns his attention back to the street outside.

"Okay. Okay, we won't go back." He says softly, his thumb absentmindedly stroking over her knuckle. He ponders for a moment, gnawing on the inside of his cheek.

Then, his eyes light up, and a small smile appears on his pouty lips. He turns the car on, giving Mila a self-assured smile.

"I know where we can go."

AN// Guys the love and support I have been getting for this fic is actually amazing, thank you all so much for your likes, reblogs, comments and messages <3

Lula x