#the hair the puppy dog eyes i can’t do this

[glittter-skeleton]

For the Spies requests, Agent Mega giving Owen puppy dog eyes?

I had two ideas simultaneously so here

*throws these at you*

[prettyinsophie]

Thinking about Vi being your pathetic girlfriend who acts tough and unbothered, but when it comes to you she turns into a whiny needy puppy.

“Please, please baby. I want you… Let me have you…”

She’d beg you on her knees, her powder blue eyes looking up at you in desperation and desire as she nuzzles her cheek against your thigh.

Your pathetic girlfriend! Vi that needs to be marked by you just as much as she needs to mark you. Whether that means wearing a necklace with your initials/name, or displaying small love bites from you proudly, finding you cute for being scared to hurt her while marking her when in reality she utterly loves the sweet sinking of your teeth into her skin.

Your pathetic girlfriend! Vi that loves eating you out until you’re on the verge of passing out from orgasming too much. And if she’s not using her fingers, she’d pitiably stuff her hand down her boxers to rub her throbbing clit clumsily, whimpering against your pussy. Her nose would rub your clit with each thirsty lap of her tongue, desperately needing to drink every drop of you.

But when you eat her out? You might as well just soundproof your bedroom. Her whines and whimpers for you would echo through the walls. Her cheeks would flush as brightly as her pink hair while her hips buck up to meet your lips.

“So fucking good- Oh my god, don’t stop, princess. D…on’t stop!” She’d blabber between moist pants. Her fingers tangled in your hair to shove your swollen lips to her dripping cunt.

Your pathetic girlfriend! Vi that enjoys dry humping a little too much. Finding an absolute thrill in pinning you down and grinding her hips against yours like a dog in heat. She’d kiss you messily; her tongue and teeth clashing with yours while she moans almost pornographically into your mouth.

“‘M so wet, doll. Need to fuck you. Hmpp, please let me fuck you, yeah?” She’d plead you with half lidded eyes and panting on your ear, clinging to your body because she knows you’ll let her do whatever she wants.

Your pathetic girlfriend! Vi who is an absolute mess when she fucks you with her strap. She’s a moaner and she never tries to hide it, but when she fucks you with her thick, black, veiny strap is like she can feel you around her.

She doesn’t like back shots that much. Vi needs to see every frame of your face when she pounds into you like she’s never fucked before. Just the sight of your pretty face sends a crashing wave down the pit of her stomach, and she has to get so deep into you until her cock kisses your cervix.

“So fucking pretty, thank you for letting me fuck you- Ah…” She’d moan between praises, her brows arching as she tries to focus on you and the bumping of the strap against her clit, “Hmph, thankyouthankyou. Can’t believe you’re mine.”

[littlelamy]

𝓻𝓪𝓯𝓮 𝓪𝓼 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓵𝓪𝓹𝓭𝓸𝓰

overly protective: rafe keeps tabs on your every move. he insists on knowing where you are at all times, not out of concern, but out of a possessive need to "keep you safe." if anyone so much as looks at you the wrong way, he’s immediately on edge, ready to confront them.

desperate for attention: rafe constantly seeks your approval, asking for validation even in small things. he’s quick to compliment you and over-the-top in showing gratitude when you give him any attention or kindness.

jealousy issues:he can’t handle seeing you interact with anyone else for too long. even harmless conversations are a trigger for his insecurities. he’ll interrupt conversations, sometimes with lame excuses, just to reclaim your attention.

invasive devotion: rafe has a tendency to show up wherever you are, whether invited or not. he justifies it as "coincidence" or being worried about you. he’s memorized your schedule and will adjust his own life to align with yours.

gifts and grand gestures: rafe tries to spoil you with expensive gifts, thinking it will win your favor. even if you say you don’t want or need something, he’ll insist.he plans elaborate dates or surprises that feel more like traps to keep you with him than genuine efforts to make you happy.

constant contact: he texts and calls you excessively, needing constant reassurance that you’re thinking about him too. if you don’t respond quickly, he spirals, assuming the worst or accusing you of ignoring him.

unwavering loyalty: rafe would do anything for you—no questions asked. this includes shady or illegal actions if he thinks it’ll benefit you. he’s almost puppy-like in his willingness to take orders or do things just to see you smile.

manipulative streak: he knows how to play on your emotions, guilt-tripping you into spending time with him or choosing him over others. his sad puppy dog eyes and "i just want to make you happy, baby" line are his go-to weapons.

physical affection: rafe constantly hovers around you, leaning into any physical closeness you allow. he’s always looking for excuses to touch you, whether it’s holding your hand, brushing your hair out of your face, or wrapping an arm around your shoulder. he has no problem being openly clingy, even in public.

possessive behavior: to rafe, you’re his person. he talks about you as if you belong to him, even casually. he might even go so far as to subtly (or not-so-subtly) mark his territory by mentioning how close you are or finding ways to keep you away from other potential threats.

taglist: @namelesslosers @maybanksangel @averyoceanblvd @iknowdatsrightbih @rafesheaven @anamiad00msday @ivysprophecy @wearemadeofstardust0 @rafesangelita @sstargirln @rafedaddy01 @soldesole @bakugouswaif @skywalker0809 @vanessa-rafesgirl @evermorx89 @outerhills @ditzyzombiesblog @slavicangelmuah

[cinnamorollcrybaby]

i loved the dom nanami headcanons, can you do one with shiu?🤍

The way Shiu obviously doms you

Tags: Shiu x fem!Reader, dom!Shiu, sub!Reader, dom/sub relationship, aspects of bdsm, daddy kink, NO age regression, nsfw, mdni

An: yeahhh nanami is very subtle, but shiu is quite obvious in his domming antics

• Shiu’s the type of man to cook for you nightly. He’ll employ your help with smaller tasks, but he’s the head chef in the kitchen: showing you how to do basic tasks.

• He’s the one in charge, but like…. is he? When you give him those puppy dog eyes, Shiu will bend over backwards to give you the world and more. He lives life by making sure you don’t get too big for your britches and by the saying, “happy wife; happy life.”

• He worships the ground you walk on. You’re his princess. Why wouldn’t he?

• If you’re shoes are untied, Shiu’s the type to put his cigarette in his mouth, get down on his knees, put your foot on one of his legs as he ties it back for you.

• Unlike Nanami, Shiu will tell you what you can and can’t wear. He’ll honestly pick out your clothes for you on most days, dressing you up like his little doll.

• Loves to bathe you along with simple tasks of taking care of you like brushing/styling your hair. Although, usually bath time turns into something more as you can’t handle when his hands are tenderly rubbing and massaging all over you.

• Shiu does not care where you two are. If you’re acting in a way that could potentially be troublesome, he’ll turn his attention to you and give you that stern but caring. “No.” or “You better start acting right.”

• A little bit condescending when he’s asserting his dominance over you. “Don’t you think daddy knows what’s best for you?”

• He’s the type to say, “Because daddy said so.” When you’re questioning why you can’t do something.

• Shiu’s favorite form of punishment for his sweet sub is spanking your bottom. When he catches you misbehaving or mouthing off, it only takes a few swats from his hand to make you act right.

• Don’t get him started on the rare times he has to bend you over his lap, pull your panties down, and leave handprints on your ass. You also better be counting and saying thank you after each one.

• HATES when you interact with Toji. He tries to keep you separated from his work, but you’ve met Toji on a couple occasions. Shiu gets extra handsy when Toji’s around, clearly staking his claim on you in any way he can. If he didn’t want Toji seeing how pretty you look when you come undone, he would’ve already finger fucked you in front of him.

• Shiu’s the king of mixing praise with degradation. “Yeaahh, you like when daddy treats you like a slut? Mmm, go on. Show daddy just how much you can take. Fuuuuck. Good girl.”

[unorthodoxfaithxx]

Super happy, puppy dog yandere boyfriend that’s happy to have sex with you for the first time

afab reader ; nsfw

You look so beautiful in bed, all dolled up and pretty just for him! And only for him! He’s so excited that his pants feel way too restrictive, and if he had a tail you bet it’d be wagging a mile a minute. 

He looks at your soft curves, your bashful, oh-so-cute-eyes, and the rosiness of your adorable cheeks with so much love. Because he loves you. And he really REALLY means it. And wants to show you how he really feels tonight. He was so happy that you’d agreed to go all the way with him. 

When he undresses and leans over your body, hands squeezing your hips and inner thigh, you feel him trembling with anticipation. You giggle at the sight, and he swears your voice is like an angel from above singing holy scripture into his ears. 

You unclasp your bra, throwing it to the side of the room. He imagines smothering his face between your tits until you slowly peel your laced panties out from under you, revealing a perfectly pink pussy that has him practically drooling, all sense of self restraint bursting at the seams.

He’s all over you before you can even say a word, face between your legs, boyish hands keeping a vice like grip on your thighs to keep you open as he laps and laps away until he’s satisfied. Which in the moment, he thinks he’ll never be with how good you taste. His drool gets everywhere, coating your already wet cunt with his own juices. He apologizes for the mess and eagerly goes to clean it up with his tongue, sucking on your mound like a dog gobbling over a chew toy. 

Did he already say your voice sounds like an angel? Because your moans are so immaculate he can just listen to you say his name and ONLY his name all damn day. Just you and him. Together forever and ever and ever and ever —

The thought of spending eternity with you puts him over the edge, and he practically whines for you to let him put his cock inside. 

“Please, baby? I promise I’ll make you feel good. I promise! I wanna feel you so bad. I can’t take it anymore.”

You find his begging cute, but would be a cruel woman to tell him no when he’s staring at you with such puppy-love, lust ridden eyes. When you say yes, he’s over the moon, already covering your body with sloppy kisses and thank yous, muttering promises of how he’ll make you feel oh so full, oh so good, and that he’ll take care of you forever. 

He knows you’re not a virgin but he doesn’t care. He would have loved to be your first but that doesn’t matter now, the only thing that matters is making you his right this moment and making it to where you’ll never want another man ever again, just him. 

When his cock plunges into you he moans just as loud as you, if not more. You feel his heart pounding like crazy and reach to kiss him, sending him into a frenzy of ‘I love you’s and ‘Mine, mine, MINE��. He latches onto your tits like they’re a lifeline, feeling so high with adrenaline that he almost zones out and ignores your moans. Uh-oh, can’t do that! He wants to hear every noise you’ll make for him tonight. 

He’s fucking you so fast and so good you can barely think straight, and your fucked out expression just sends him over the moon. He squeals at your adorable face and holds you tighter, biting into your neck and laughing when you gasp at his actions. He hasn’t bothered counting how many times you’ve come. He just knows it’s been more than three. 

You ask him to take you from behind, doggystyle, and he happily obliges. He fucks you deep, slamming into you as hard as he can, gripping your ass and giving one cheek a nice smack. With a pull of your hair, he’s got you on both knees pressed flush against his body. He gives you another hickey on your neck, but not before another bite. 

“Oh you’re doing so good for me baby. Just like that! Yeah. Go ahead and cum for me.” He encourages. 

Boy, does he want to come inside you so bad, make you his and mark you, but he knows how you feel about that and opts to come outside instead, all over your perfect ass. 

When he finishes, he flops into bed next to you and holds you tight, looking at you with concerned but hopeful eyes. 

“How was that?? Was it good? You won’t leave me know will you? I know I liked it, but did you? We can go another round if you want. I wanna make you—“

You hush him with a reassuring kiss on the lips. 

[nereidprinc3ss]

baby fever

in which reader and spencer discuss having a baby while at work

fluff warnings/tags: fem/AFAB!reader, bau!reader, BOYFRIEND!SPENCER or husband if u so desire, discussions of pregnancy/having a baby (obviously), reader wants a baby, so does spencer a/n: god i need him so badly. should i write follow up smut?? mwahaha evil emoji......

The coffee finished brewing minutes ago, but you’re still standing by the pot, watching Anderson’s daughter toddling around the bullpen on chubby legs. She’s not very adept at walking, but her spirit is indomitable—every time she tips a little too far forward, she catches herself and gets right back up. It’s not like she’s doing anything particularly impressive or even interesting, but you can’t take your eyes off her. Every movement makes your heart twinge, every giggle or curious quirk of her head is so adorable it physically hurts in your chest. 

From your peripheral vision you see Spencer approaching, bearing his own empty mug, but not even he can draw your attention away from the adorable little pixie and her tutu and her pigtails. 

“That is the cutest kid I have ever seen in my life,” you whisper to Spencer, hoping the quiet tone of your voice will help hide how much you feel like cooing and squealing. 

He smiles to himself as he pours his coffee. 

“That’s Rosie. Have you said hi yet?” 

“I’m afraid if I talk to her I’ll try to keep her.” 

“She is pretty adorable.” 

You turn to him as he leans next to you on the counter, sipping his coffee casually. 

“Adorable? Spencer. Puppies are adorable. You’re not understanding the magnitude of what I mean right now. I can’t explain to you how much adorable doesn’t cut it. I’m not kidding about the child abduction thing.” 

HIs eyes slide around the room as he chuckles into his mug. 

“Let’s maybe not joke about kidnapping a child in FBI headquarters.” 

“I’m not joking,” you hiss. “I feel like I’m going insane. I just—” 

At the last second you stop yourself, pulling your bottom lip between your teeth. 

“You just what?” Spencer asks, adjusting the hem of your shirt with his free hand. You glance down, watching the care he takes in the tiniest detail that you wouldn’t have given a second thought to. 

“Is something wrong with my shirt?” 

His eyes flick up to yours, hazel tinted with mild surprise. 

“No. It just was sliding up your waist a little bit.” As he says it, his knuckles brush the bare skin of your torso. You suppress a shiver, studying his profile once he pulls his hand away and goes for another sip. 

“Can we have one?” 

Your inopportune timing results in coffee dribbling down Spencer’s chin as he quickly attempts to wipe it away, wide eyes torn between you and trying to assess the mess he’s made. 

“You--you mean like a baby?” 

“Yeah, like a baby,” you say, grabbing his shoulders and squaring them to you before dabbing the coffee from his face and jacket. He watches on as you clean him up, completely still except for his wandering eyes. 

“I thought we were waiting on that.” 

“Waiting for what? A better time? There’s never going to be a good time with this job. And it’s not like we’d have to quit. Look at JJ. She has two and still does it.” 

“First of all,” Spencer begins, quickly recovering from your surprise proposition, “I don’t love the idea of either of us being in the field with you pregnant. And secondly, JJ also has Will and her mother to take care of the boys. We don’t have that. We’re both here all the time.” 

“I don’t care,” you groan, trashing the paper towels once you’ve done the best you can with his clothing. “We’d figure it out somehow!” 

“Mhm. It sounds like you’ve really devoted some careful consideration to this.” 

You drop your head to your shoulder, giving him your best puppy dog eyes and pulling lightly on his shirtsleeve. 

“Oh, come on. You haven’t thought about it at all? My perfect brain and your pretty face fusing to create a future Nobel-prize winner? Imagine how cute she would be, Spencer, we could put her hair in little braids and pigtails and we could dress her up and she could be in soccer and ballet and—” 

“She?” he smiles, studying your face intently. You roll your eyes. 

“Yes, she. Obviously we would have a girl. You—” 

The idea of Spencer as the father of your daughter hits you like a tidal wave, stopping you dead in your tracks. The images materialize in your mind’s eye so clearly, it’s like they’re already memories, so real and tangible you have no doubt it must come to fruition someday. But if before, your ranting was mostly a silly fantasy—now it’s become a bit more intense. 

He seems to sense your shift in mood. The big smile thaws slightly as he subtly grabs your hand on the counter. 

“What? What’s wrong?” 

There he goes again. Being kind. Being perfect. 

Tears sting your eyes, but you don’t let them fall.  

“Nothing. Nothing is wrong. I just... didn’t realize how badly I actually wanted that until I said it out loud.” 

The concern in his eyes softens to pure affection as he runs his thumb over the back of your hand. 

“I want it too. And whenever you decide you’re ready I’ll drop everything for you.” 

His words are like compounding pressure to the deep heat within you—forming something so solid and perfect you don’t have to wonder if it’s real. A ten on the Mohs scale, a concept that gets closer to actualizing by the minute.  

Your voice is quiet, revelatory as you admire the amber facets in his eyes. 

“You’re ready?”  

“I’ve been ready for quite some time,” he admits. And at once you feel the certainty of him paint your past and your future with one broad brushstroke. One day you will look back on your life and remember the time before Spencer, and that will be it. There is before Spencer, and with Spencer, but never an after Spencer. He wants to create something utterly permanent with you. “Come here.” 

He sets his mug down, carefully pulling you forward so you’re toe to toe with your back to the rest of the BAU; so that only he can see you. Despite how good the two of you are at avoiding PDA, occasionally an exception is made. He tenderly wipes away the few tears that have sprung from your waterline and accepts your arms around his waist, mirroring your embrace and completely enveloping you.  

“I love you,” he murmurs against the top of your hair, quiet enough that nobody in the office has a chance of hearing it. You sniffle. 

“I love you too. Also you smell really good.” 

He chuckles, hand roaming up and down your back for a moment. 

“And that is why we are holding off on this at least for a while.” 

“What do you mean?” you whisper indignantly as he gently peels you off him. His hands remain a steadying force on your waist as he smiles down at you beatifically. 

“I mean let’s give it two weeks and see if you still want a baby when you’re not ovulating.” 

[tteokdoroki]

yuuji looks so good when he cream pies omg his eyes roll back in his head and he drools <333

warnings. minors, blank and ageless blogs do not interact! nsfw, smut, characters aged up to 20s, creampies, breeding, overstimulation, implied multiple orgasms, unprotected sex, afab!reader - anon pls…. grabs my head like choso </3

because when yuuji cums he’s literally throwing all of his weight into his thrusts — bucking into you so wildly with your legs folded up by your ears. it’s easy to forget how strong he is when he looks so sweet and those brown puppy dog eyes stare down at you with so much lust.

…but when yuuji gets close he has this sudden burst of energy, chasing his high like a madman or someone looking for that same dopamine rush that their addiction gives them. he wants his cum to be so deep inside of you, doesn’t want to pull out of your tight, hot heat that ripples around his aching cock. just begging for him to fill you up.

that’s what you want, right? it’s what your body’s telling him.

“oh. oh my god. fuck—“ he stutters, his warm breath ghosting along your wet Cupid’s bow, honey brown eyes screwing shut every time you clench down on itadori’s cock through the after shocks of your high. “‘m gonna cum baby, all over… all over this pretty pussy. gonna fill you up, gonna cum inside you — gotta cum inside you.”

and he’s so desperate, gyrating his hips in circles while keeping his leaky cock nice ‘n snug inside you — yuuji doesn’t want to waste a drop, it’d be a shame if he couldn’t watch that thick white ooze out of your tiny hole.

it takes the pressure of your nails raking down his freckled back and the tug of his pink hair for yuuji to finally burst — the entire heaviness of his body collapses against your frame, his thrusts never stop as he pumps a thick, heavy load into you until your tummy swells from how much there is.

yuuji’s pretty brown eyes disappear into his skull, his jaw goes slack while he trembles weakly above you — drooling into the crevice of your neck while he twitches and shakes. “‘m sorry,” he moans hoarsely, pressing sloppy kisses to the corner of your mouth, your neck and your lips. “can’t help it, you make me cum so much ‘nd i want it all of it inside of you.” he pants against you like a promise, flinching at the smaller spurts of his arousal that paint your swollen folds and clit opaque white, causing more of it to seep out of you.

and it’s not long before itadori has the energy to go again, determined to push all of his cum up against your sensitive walls to make it stick. the night isn’t over until you’ve had your fill and yuuji itadori’s heavy balls are completely empty.

꒰ end. — all rights reserved © tteokdoroki 2024. do not copy, repost, translate & recommend elsewhere.

[arcadia-of-pluto]

Casually calling them "daddy" LADS

Word count; 1,913

Themes; slightly barely there suggestive content, fluff, established relationship

Warnings; mention of "daddy" ofc, fluff

Notes; So these turned out more fluffy than I originally intended...honestly, thought they'd be more smutty, but I've learnt that it's really difficult for me to write smut. Or at least, smut with little to no context before it all goes down. I might eventually write some smuttier drabbles, but regardless of smut, I hope you enjoy this little thing I wrote!

You saw that there was an old trend about calling your boyfriend “daddy” and videoing their reaction so, obviously, you wanted to give it a try…

Xavier 

It's been almost a year since you and Xavier started dating– and it was a wonderful eleven months! He told you everything about himself. What his future with you was like, all of his feelings throughout the centuries, and you listened. You wholeheartedly believed him, because it would be one hell of a lie if it wasn't true…and you didn't think Xavier had the time or energy to come up with a complex lie like that. 

But even if you now know, time moves on. There's not much you can do about your future self, so you can't really change the future in that way though…Xavier's here now, in the past, and that's all that matters to you. 

Anyway, today was just a normal day as any. 

You were sitting at the counter, keeping a close eye on Xavier– who was attempting to follow, yet another, cooking tutorial. The man was desperate to cook a decent meal for you. His heart dead set on making you something edible for your upcoming year anniversary…and while that was cute, you also wanted to mess with him. 

You push your cup just out of your reach and make a big show of trying to reach for it, before sighing loudly. 

“Daddy, can you pass me my drink please?” 

You can hear the clang of a spatula hitting the floor and you watch Xavier’s body comically whip around to face you. 

“What?” His head cocks to the side as his wide eyes were set on your face. “Say that again..”

“Hmm? I said ‘Xav, can you pass me my drink, please’.” You copy his head tilt and he quickly shakes his head.

 “No, no you didn't.” He takes a few steps toward you before grabbing your hand in-between both of his. “Say it again.” 

You couldn't resist his sweet puppy dog eyes, so you hold back a smile as you meet his eyes. “I...called you daddy.” 

“Really?” He seems unusually excited. “So are we…?” His gaze lowers to your stomach and you can’t help the giggle that slips from your lips. 

Gosh, he was so cute. 

“Baby– no, no. We're not pregnant.” You run your fingers through his hair with a smile on your lips. “Are...you disappointed?” 

“Mmh..” Xavier hums thoughtfully for a moment before he shakes his head. “No. We can just make it a reality later. No need to rush.” 

Zayne 

You and Zayne have only been dating for six months, but it felt like much longer. Having known each other since you were little, you both had always been close– well, your definition of close and his were probably different. You always thought of him as a friend while he tried to keep a distance and thought you hated him. But time brought you both back together with him as your primary care physician. 

The two of you had been flirting up until his birthday and finally made it official once he blew his candles out on the cake you made for him. It was a sweet time, but that was six months ago. 

Now, though, you really want to fluster the man. 

He always embarrasses you and makes you feel nervous, but you never get to see him that way. Sure, his ears will turn red and sometimes he won't meet your eyes when you get too intense with him, but you've never seen him absolutely shocked. And you just wanted to see one look of surprise from him. 

So, what did you decide to do? 

You decided to casually call him "daddy” as a joke.

That should definitely go over well. 

Zayne is seated behind his desk at the hospital, sorting through papers as you longue on his sofa. Your eyes continuously glancing toward the windows to make sure the door was shut and the blinds were closed. 

“If you keep staring at the door, you just might burn a hole through it.” Zayne says, though he didn't even look up from his paperwork. He was attentive like that and probably already knew you wanted something or you were ready to go home. And he was right. 

“When are we going home…daddy?” You ask as you kick your feet in the air behind you. You were on your stomach, resting your cheek against your arms as you watched his expression…which didn't change at all. 

"Just give me a few more minutes, angel, and I'll be done.” Zayne pushes his glasses up with his index finger and clicks his pen, jotting down a few notes. 

“I–” You puff your cheeks out with a small sigh and decide to keep going with it. “I want to go home now, daddy.”

“Didn't I just tell you to be patient?” Now Zayne finally looks up at you with one of his brows raised. “I'll deal with you when we get home.” 

Rafayel 

It's been four months since Rafayel asked you out. Four months since you tugged Rafayel down into the bath with you, which set off a chain reaction of a steamy night, followed by him asking you out the next morning; he also complained that you both went out of order, but he wasn’t too upset when you continued where you left off…

Now, though, you moved out of your apartment and to Rafayel's home, ‘Mo Art Studio’ at Whitesand Bay. 

It was definitely odd at first, but it was a good change of pace. Always being by the ocean, able to take your morning walks together on the beach and collect seashells. You had a whole collection on your desk at work. He'd always give you the most unique and prettiest shells, saying “only the best for his cutie”. 

He was also so easy to fluster. 

You immediately knew you had him wrapped around your finger every time his ears would turn red. That same crimson slowly made its way from his ears to his cheeks, all the way to his whole face. So you assumed your little ‘prank’ would also have the same effect. 

You were sitting on a beach towel in the sand with an umbrella blocking your eyes from the bright sun. In front of you was Rafayel, painting your visage, with an easel. His hand deftly moves across the canvas as he sketches the outline for his new painting. 

Lately, you are the only thing he can paint. Always asking you to stop what you're doing so he can run and get his sketch pad. You could be doing something so normal and mundane, but he'd be struck with the inspiration to record your very image. 

As much as you loved it and thought this was very sweet, after almost two weeks of this…You wanted some form of payback. 

“Hey, daddy, can we take a break for a second? It’s really hot out here.” You squint your eyes to try and see Rafayel's face, your hand fanning at your body because you, seriously, are hot out here. 

“Huh?” 

It's like Rafayel is frozen in time, or buffering. He's just blankly staring at you with a confused expression on his face until his pencil drops into the sand. That's when he quickly stands up  and makes his way toward you. 

“Again.” 

Now, it's your turn to be confused. 

“Raf, what–” 

“Not that, say the other word again.” His ears were red as he crouched down in front of you, a look of determination in his eyes. 

“No– you're making it weird!” You put your hands on his shoulders, trying to put some distance between him as your face turns red. 

“Please, I really need to hear you say it again! I'm seriously going to die if you don't.” There's your overdramatic fishy. 

“Fine, but just this once.” You grumble, turning your head to look away from him. “Daddy…” Though you say it as low as you can and Rafayel groans, tilting his head back. 

“Louder.” He rests his forehead against yours. “Come on, cutie. If you don't…I might want to change that to my new nickname.”

Sylus

It's been about…a year? Yes, definitely a year since you and Sylus started dating. Well, you both have differing opinions on when exactly you started dating. Sylus claims it was the moment he laid eyes on you in the N109 Zone, while you claim it was only about six months ago– which is when you and Sylus made a bet. 

It was a bet where if he came back safely from his mission, he'd leave you alone. He wouldn't bother you anymore, wouldn't talk to you, contact you, anything of the sort…and you won, but you didn't realize he'd actually do it. So whenever you seeked him out to make sure he was safe, and he ignored you, you realized that maybe you did want him in your life. 

This led to you running across the street to him and jumping into his arms like this was a hallmark movie, and you claim this was when you officially started dating Sylus.

But between us, you just agree with Sylus when he says a year, because if you don't, he'll pout for the whole day. 

...And today was one of those ‘pouty Sylus’ days. 

You went on a mission that was probably way too dangerous, even though you told Sylus you were going to slow down on your Hunter's work. But you couldn't just ignore endangered civilians. If any of them would have died, that would've been too much for your sympathetic heart to handle. 

And even if Sylus understands your reasoning, he's still upset that you left without telling him– having woken up to a cold bed without you by his side sent him spiraling into a panic. 

So, when you got home, you noticed he was sulking in the kitchen as he made dinner. 

“Sy…” You take your shoes off by the door, nervously fiddling with your fingers as you tentatively walk into the kitchen. Standing behind the counter, you sigh, “I'm reeaally sorry...” 

“If you're reeaaally sorry, then help me make our dinner.” He says, not looking up at you and that doesn't make you feel any better. 

“Okay..” You finally step past the counter and you look around. “So…what do you need?” You were trying to figure out something– anything that could make Sylus feel better when a thought comes to your mind. 

Most guys probably like it when their girlfriend calls them daddy…right? 

“In the cabinet, top shelf. I need a bottle of garlic powder.” 

Okay, you got this. 

You take a deep breath and open the cabinet, straining your arm to try and reach the seasoning bottle, but your fingertips barely brush it and knock it over. “Shit…” You swallow back your nervousness before continuing, “Daddy, can you grab it for me?” 

The room fills with silence for a moment, but then you hear Sylus chuckle. 

“Sure, kitten.” 

Your back suddenly feels warm as a firm chest presses against it and Sylus reaches up from behind you to grab the bottle. 

“I ask you to do one simple thing and you can't even do that.” Sylus chides, clicking his tongue as he pops the bottle open to pour some into the pan on the stove. 

“Da–”

“If you think a few empty words will make me feel better, kitten…you've got to try a lot harder than that.” 

I'd like to say, this is definitely one of my better drabbles– one of my favorites, in fact!

I have like...six more ideas for drabbles and then I'll need to come up with some more. Like these new cards and Rafayel's student photoshoot event really had me thinking of how seriously the LADS men would take roleplaying– and that spawned a whole different drabble idea, so you can definitely look forward to that!

I'm trying to come up with new ways to do my drabbles, so that's why I did a little prelude before I started writing for the guys. Please let me know any feedback yall have for me! Especially with the coloured dialogue, I'm not too sure if I like it, but it seems really pretty and probably makes it easier to tell who is talking apart. (I won't use it for my fic though, only the drabbles!)

Anyway, I have a small personal project I'm working on this weekend so I probably won't be able to write any chapters for my 'Divisa' fic, but I'm still going to post chapter nineteen of 'Twist of Fate' and try to write at least two more chapters since I'm only on twenty-three or so.

I hope you all enjoyed these drabbles and I hope yall have a great night/day! 🩷

[coryosbaby]

i need sejanus to cum inside me and coryo to eat it out of me bc he wants to taste sejanus so bad but hes too stubborn to ask to suck him off directly

Content warning . 18+, mdni

When Sejanus pulls out of your raw fucked cunt, cooing to you about how precious you are, Coryo’s mouth waters at the sight of the fresh puddle of cum pooling out of you. He can’t seem to explain it, really, but he begins to drool at the sight of the white, creamy fluid. He doesn’t say anything at first— can’t say anything. It would ruin him and Sejanus’ arrangement for sure. Besides, he doesn’t think the other male swings that way.

Until he sees the look on the boy’s face.

He looks smug, a small smirk playing on his lips as he bares those puppy dog eyes into Coryo’s own icy blue ones.

The blonde’s face turns a dusty pink, and he shyly averts his eyes. He tries not to stare at the other man’s softening cock hanging heavy between his muscle-ey thighs, tries not to think about how badly he wants it in his mouth. He feels his own wave of insecurity slicing through him. It would take away his pride to be owned by another man.

But Sejanus slowly but surely rests his hand on the other boy’s smaller back, and smiles.

“It’s okay, Coryo,” he assures him, and Coriolanus doesn’t know what he means by that until he elaborates. “Cmon, why don’t you use her tongue on her?”

You look up at him with pleading eyes, still a desperate cockslut waiting for any type of touch to your sweet, aching cunt.

And fuck it. Coryo’s not doing anything remotely gay, right? After all, he’s only eating pussy.

His tongue nips at his bottom lip, and he slowly crawls in between your spread thighs. Seeing you up close, he can take note that your pussy is swollen and wet, and not just from Sejanus’ cum.

Oh, god. Sejanus’ cum. It isn’t even close to emptying out, still a thick, steady stream coming out of your used hole. Coryo can’t take it anymore— his tongue licks a long, lucid stripe up your throbbing pussy. He groans, your taste and Sejanus’ driving him crazy. He begin to lap at you eagerly, like a puppy getting rewarded a tasty treat. He can hear Sejanus chuckle behind him, amused. He’s too busy satisfying his hunger to care about Sejanus’ fingers slowly trailing up his back. They curl around his golden blonde hair, push him harder, deeper. His tongue slips into your hole with ease, and he slurps up Sejanus’ spend with a hunger he didn’t know he had. As Sejanus guides him up and down, he notices that he’s speaking to him, now.

“I bet you’d like more of my cum, wouldn’t you?” He teases, nearly against the shell of the boys ear. “Cmon, Coryo. Admit it. Wouldn’t it feel so good, having me in your mouth?”

And Coriolanus can’t control himself— he whimpers. Fucking whimpers, as he takes your clit in between his teeth, the heady scent of you and Sejanus and everything between making his head feel fuzzy. Sejanus presses a kiss to his shoulder blade, then, and it’s strangely soft. Strangely comforting.

“We could do that, if you want,” the brunette continues, humming. “I could get you down on your knees, all cute and pretty. Could get Y/N to suck your cock, too…”

Coryo shoves a finger inside you, groaning, rubbing his dick up against the sheets. He gasps when he feels a hand slither underneath his body and palm his bulge. He pulls away from you, ignoring your whine of disappointment.

“Sejanus..” he warns, his eyes nervous. He looks down, sees the hand resting on his crotch. He shivers.

The other boy just smiles at him, squeezing the bulge in his hand. Coryo lets out a tiny moan, and desperately humps into it. Cum drips down his chin, lips, neck. Your knee bumps his, and he sees your pleading face. Sejanus’ hand moves up, towards his waistband. He slips it in, feels the engorged skin there. Coryo lets out the most guttural noise.

“Keep licking her,” Sejanus grunts, beginning to stroke him. “Keep licking her, or I’ll stop.”

[ohimsummer]

OBEDIENCE TRAINING

— minors dni, bully! satoru, dubcon, oral [ m. receiving ], nicknames (puppy, dog), hair pulling, body worship

“kiss it.”

your eyes meet gojo’s, daring blues that just crave your defiance. there’s a light burning in your scalp; he keeps pulling your hair harder every time you hesitate. it’s not worth it.

gojo watches, hissing as you lean forward to press cherry-flavored lips to the head of his cock. it throbs at the affection, spilling drops of precum through the part in your lips to leave a salty taste in your mouth.

“good dog.”, gojo praises, patting your head and giving you a patronizing grin. “do it again.”

another kiss, slightly longer this time. another head pat, another ‘good dog’ to remind you of your place.

“i don’t think i should have to tell you to keep going.”, gojo spits, and you cringe as his fist tightens in your hair again. “kiss it again. make me feel good. i want you to worship me like you mean it.”

there’s no room for bluffs or lies in his expression. gojo means what he says, and you know if you make even a single error, he’ll be doing more than pulling your hair next time.

a blissful sigh escapes through his glossy, pink lips, upturned into a menacing smirk as he watches you shower his length in kiss after kiss. you wrap a tentative hand along it—slowly in case gojo chooses to scold you again for whatever reason—and run your tongue along the underside of his cock. he lets out a low moan as you cross over that sensitive vein, before pressing another firm kiss to the head.

dipping lower, a harsh twitch runs throughout gojo’s body as you lap at his heavy balls. he curses, ‘o—oh, fuck—!’, tossing his head back and bucking up into your touch, where you continue stroking him. ‘jus—just like th—at, shit!’, gojo stutters between bites of his lip.

it takes no time before his chest is heaving, and you can tell he’s on the verge of climax. you study him, partly because he told you not to dare look away, and partly because he is actually quite pretty, though that’s a shock to no one.

“may i, satoru?”, you ask sweetly, politely in that tone just as he instructed you, batting those long lashes at satoru because he just loves when you do that.

gojo’s brows furrow and his jaw goes slack, before he moans out his permission. “yeah, yeah, go ahead, puppy.”

you press one more kiss to his cock, and then suck him down as far as he’ll go. it’s the last push he needs before he’s cumming in your mouth, releasing thick spurts of white deep in your throat, hips bucking and the choked gags you can’t hold back are just the cherry on top.

a few minutes pass as gojo goes limp. he rubs a gentle thumb over your head as he catches his breath, legs still twitching as you layer delicate kisses over his softening cock.

“now,” he rasps out a final question, smiling down at you, “what do we say?”

“thank you, satoru.”

🐾: @anthoosies @teddybeartoji @higurumapet @starlightanyaaa @hehehehesthings @rosso-seta @paradiseoflosers @sbgg @krraayy @astral-hydromancy @lcvelina @lynettess @savethegoddamturtles @apatauaia @sataraxia @starsharkz @h-4-bib @idkluvv @b-b-b-my-b-f-f @sugu-love @xinfvl @mikeysflag @ichikanu @marichat0n @gyaruismind @sugojosgf @xocherishxo @sukunastarr-69 @glmpsfs @anxie-tiddies @euphoriagrae @astrasworldsblog @lovesickliyue @deepenthevoid @bubblez-blop @luvvmae @risuola

[bunni-v1]

Phainon the Pussy Eating King

🍓I gotta get it off my chest.

Tw: Overstim; Squirting (yes); Voyerism (mentioned); NSFW

Info: Phainon x Reader; Reader has a pussy but otherwise isn’t gendered; Blurbs; Incoherent Ramblings of a Man Gone Mad

MDNI

If there is anyone in Amphorus that is good at eating pussy, it’s Phainon. While he isn’t very experienced in the realm of sexual encounters, he’s just as eager to learn as he is in any other capacity. He lives to please, he says, and aims for nothing but the best when it comes to your pleasure. It’s just the kinda guy he is.

He discovers very quickly that he likes eating you out, maybe a bit too much to be normal. Something about it just seems to hit all the right spots in his brain that makes his body hum with delight. The noises you make, the heat of your skin beneath his hands, the way you squeeze him so tight and tug at his hair like a life line, your sweet smell that has him feeling dizzy, and not to mention the sticky syrupy juices that he finds himself getting drunk off of each and every time. He’s surrounded by nothing but signs of your pleasure, and it’s quite literally all he could ever want from sex — he doesn’t care what happens to himself anyway.

He eager like a puppy each time, hoping, praying to the gods you’ll let him go down on you. Allow him taste that glimpse of heaven between your legs and hear the sighs of angels from your mouth. Which you do, every time, because how could you say no when he’s just so excited to make you feel good?

He starts slow, working his way down from your lips, kissing across your jaw. He pays special attention to your neck, sucking a few pretty marks for himself to admire later. Peeling your clothes off all the while, needing the contact of skin on skin like he needs air to breathe. He always takes time to suck on your nipples, enjoying their texture beneath his tongue. They’re so small, and so very sensitive as he bites them. The way you squirm at the warmth of his mouth has him losing his mind with pride.

By then, though, he’s already grown impatient. It doesn’t take much more teasing before he’s settling himself between your legs. His sting calloused hands grasp at your thighs, spreading them open to reveal the shining pearl between them. Perhaps it might embarrass you, but he can’t help but stare for a moment. Admiring the view below him with a proud smile. You were already drooling from his earlier teasing, and the shimmering juices just made you look so much prettier. Ah, yes, this was his pussy. The prettiest pussy in all the lands, his to love and care for like the good man he was.

He’ll drag a finger up from your slit, collecting juices on its tip, and press it up and up until it’s right at that little bud of pleasure. He smiles when you jerk your legs, unable to move from his strong grasp. He takes that very same finger and sucks on it, moaning at the taste — as if it were the finest delicacy in all of Amphorus. To him, it very much was.

After the first taste it doesn’t take much longer for him to swallow you whole. Licking his tongue up in the same path his finger took, giggling when you keen. He presses it flat against your clit, watching you intently with those ungodly focused blues eyes. Then, without warning, he begins his unending assault on your pussy.

He alternated between lapping at your folds like a dog and sucking your clit as if it could pull your very soul into his being. He’s messy, you can feel the mix of cum and spit dribbling down to the sheets but he doesn’t seem to care that he’s absolutely covered in your juices. He’ll moan his enjoyment against you shamelessly, muttering sweet words you can’t quite make out between the sounds of slurping.

It’s nice like that for the first three orgasms, his eagerness is a force to be reckoned with and one that you benefit from. However, he doesn’t stop at just three. No he needs just one more. “You can do it, c’mon starlight~” How one more turned into another three more, you’re not sure, but you’re absolute jelly beneath him and he’s still lapping you up like you’re his last meal. Still just as energetic and enthusiastic as when you started.

When you try to push him away, he’ll pull you closer. You’re no match for his sheer strength, so struggling is futile. “No running,” He’ll hum, strong hands keeping your thighs firmly in place around his head, and even if you do manage to get away he’ll follow you with his mouth like a brainwashed slave, only made to service you and nothing else. Your whining and whimpering only motivate him further, needing to hear more of those noises fall from those blessed lips. Say his name like a mantra, praise him for how good he makes you feel, he thrives off it.

Ah, but he doesn’t just use his mouth. His fingers are also very skilled at what they do. He’s memorized your body with the calloused tips alone, and he knows all the right ways to make you cum. His fingers are thick and long, reaching places you can’t deep inside. So as he sucks on your swollen clit, his fingers curl against your g-spot relentlessly. They won’t stop after you’ve cum, still urging you on, fucking you through your orgasm until he gets what he wants from you.

It’s all too much, the sensations he builds deep within your core. The overstimulation would drive a normal person absolutely mad, but the smile on his face as you squirt all over him is more than enough to make up for the torture he puts you through. His charming grin is made all the more irresistible with his face covered by your juices, praises falling from his lips. “You did so good,” “I’m so proud of you,” “You’re so perfect.”

He likes to play a little game with himself, to see just how many times he can get you to squirt for him in one session. It’s for his own ego, mostly, but the way your face contorts in pleasure is enough for him to justify it in his brain.

And, of course, these sessions are rarely short. He could go on and on for hours just between your legs lapping you up. It’s an obsession of his and his greatest means of relieving stress. Unfortunately, he can get a little… carried away and very frequently forgets about his responsibilities when buried between your folds.

Too many times has he missed important meetings with friends, or forgotten about a task he was meant to complete, all because he was too focused on you. It leads to many situations where his friends come looking for him, and have to turn tail when they hear your unending wailing.

The bolder of them (Mydei) have disregarded it and waltzed right in, expecting him to be shameful (which he usually is after the fact). But Phainon, sweetheart that he is, is anything but shameful. He takes pride in being the reason you fall apart like this, in being your other half, and he’s almost leaping at the opportunity to prove just how good he is to you.

He locks eyes with the intruder, almost begging them to stay and watch. There is something so very titillating about someone else seeing how good he makes you feel — especially someone he has a form of rivalry with. It’s like he’s taunting Mydei, saying “Look at what I have, look at what I can do, can you do this?”

Wether or not that goes anywhere I’ll leave to another day, but Phainon is good at his job. He’s earned himself the title of best pussy eater in Amphorus, and if I were him I would be just as cocky and egotistical about it too.

[spencerreidenjoyer]

love bites | spencer reid x reader

word count: 2k, rating: 18+/explicit

tags: established relationship, hickeys, cunnilingus, vaginal sex, overstimulation

a/n: hello again... i'm back with another pwp fic... idk where this came from ngl, but i sort of ran away with this idea of spencer leaving hickeys and this happened lol. also i've been having chip taylor (mgg's character in 68 kill, a guy who has the biggest, wettest eyes and fucks like a madman) on the brain lately so this is definitely inspired by him too ❤️

(p.s: you can also find this fic on ao3!)

Spencer always wants to give you everything you want. He’s eager to please, with those wide puppy-dog eyes that stare up at you, that gaze that makes your insides warm, the tension between you two that makes you want to spread your legs. Not like you would put up a fight anyway.

He was already such a sweetheart on the date you just came home from, a nice dinner at a nice restaurant. Spencer was a proper gentleman, who was playing footsie with you under the table. You’d wanted to jump his bones the moment you’d left the restaurant. You hoped Spencer would get the hint, from the way you were tracing circles with your fingers onto his thighs on the drive back to his place.

“Baby,” you hum, while Spencer kisses down your neck. He always treats you like a princess, makes you feel so revered.

Sometimes, he loses himself in making you feel good. You have to call his name again – “Spencer–!” you say, in a whimper, before he responds.

“Hmm?”

“Are you leaving marks?” You ask. You feel a little conscious about it, because having to wear a turtleneck to work in the summer heat is definitely funny, but kind of embarrassing.

Spencer’s lips pause against your neck. He murmurs, “Do you want me to?” and you feel his warm breath on your skin as he says it. Your hair stands on end, your body reacting to how close Spencer is to you.

Spencer pulls away, and you mourn the loss of his warmth for a moment. He looks at you, the hazel of his eyes so deep and sweet that you feel like you could lose yourself in them. “Then I can leave them in places that you don’t have to worry about.”

“What? Where?” You ask, but your mind starts running already. His lips on your body. His gaze, scorching as he stares up at you.

He doesn’t give a verbal response, rather lets his hands fall to your waist and slips his thumbs under the waist-cutouts of your dress. Where the tips of his fingers touch your skin, you feel like you’re burning with desire already. Spencer asks, “Can I?”

“Please.” Your voice comes out breathier than you’d like.

Spencer pushes your dress up, revealing your thighs, your stomach. His fingers skirt over your skin softly, the touch almost ticklish. The dress goes up, up, up, until Spencer helps you tug it over your head. Even with the sweet gesture, him getting you undressed is making you flush, the attention he gives you and the lust in his gaze making your stomach flip.

Spencer’s lips find their way back to your neck. You hold your breath as he kisses his way down the column of your neck, taking his time. He kisses your collarbone, then the top of your breast. He nips the skin between his teeth.

“Someone’s bitey,” you gasp, trying to joke.

“Did you know that while the Brits call hickeys ‘love bites’ , you don’t actually need to bite to break the superficial blood vessels under the skin’s surface? Suction is often sufficient to cause bruising.” Spencer murmurs, as if the fun fact is absolutely necessary to him giving you a hickey on your breast. It’s cute to you, though. It kind of turns you on.

“‘Love bites’ are a cute name for hickeys, though.” You laugh. “And sucking… Isn’t that kind of gross?”

Spencer’s eyes flit up to meet yours. “I think it’s hot… I mean, being so desperate to mark you up, that I can’t control myself. Being willing to do anything to make it known that you’re mine.”

Arousal washes over you. “Jesus Christ, Spencer.”

He surges forward to kiss you, slow and languid and kind of sloppy. Still, you can feel the desperation behind his movements, his eagerness as he basically eats your face off. Spencer pulls back panting, eyes studying your face, your shirtless figure, your breasts in your bra. He stares greedily. You’re wet between your legs already.

Spencer dips his head down to press his lips to where your breast spills out of the cup of your bra, flicking his tongue over a spot he’s chosen. His front teeth graze over your skin gently. Spencer nips the skin between his teeth, sucking softly. It makes your hair stand on end – the wet sounds coming from his mouth, the heat of his breath on your skin, the slow but pleasurable twinge of pain that sinks in when he sucks a mark into your breast.

It’s erotic, the way your hand is tangled in Spencer’s hair, holding him close to you as he continues to mark up your chest with his mouth. Spencer’s hair is so soft between your fingers, slightly messy and curling at the ends. He’d moved on to mark up your other breast, his large hand cupping you perfectly, like you were made for him.

Spencer litters hickeys all over you, on your tits, your stomach, and he kisses along the waistband of your panties when he gets to them. You only have to whimper to get him to slide them off as well. He kisses your hip bone, while his hand on your other side feels you up. You feel Spencer slide his hand from the swell of your ass, to feeling the meat of your thigh, before his hand comes around and pushes your leg out to spread your legs.

“Babe,” you moan, as Spencer bites down gently on your plushy inner thigh. His tongue laps over where he had bitten, acting to soothe you from any pain, and he sucks a mark into your thigh. You see the marks of his teeth and the redness of the spot, the beginnings of a bruise. He moves over to your other thigh to give you another mark, then his lips trace their way closer to the heat between your legs, giving you more marks on the way up.

You gasp when he presses a kiss to your clit, your wetness extremely obvious to you now as he blows cool air to tease you. You shiver. Spencer laughs, “Needy. You’re so wet.”

“Because of you, baby,” you sigh, running your hand through his hair to push it back, letting you admire his gorgeous bone structure and those wide eyes of his. “Need you.”

Spencer hums, smiling to himself, as he settles himself between your spread legs. His hand comes up to your heat, two fingers spreading your lips before he leans in, licking a fat stripe up across your hole, to your clit. You moan shakily as he flicks at your clit, playing with you, the tip of his sharp tongue making pleasure jolt through your body.

You let out a sigh when he presses his face deeper because you didn’t think he could get any closer, and you feel his mouth on your cunt– slurping, licking, breathing heavily as he eats you out fervently. He gives you head like he was born to do it. The way he pleasures you makes your head spin, amidst all the slick, wet noises, and Spencer’s own eagerness to make you feel good.

You lock eyes with Spencer, his piercing gaze meeting yours from between your tits. It’s almost funny, but you’re too turned on to even joke about it. You tighten your grasp in his hair. He whimpers, a sound you never get tired of hearing, and the vibrations to your cunt make you shiver.

You want him in you, now. You tell him that. Spencer pulls away, his wide eyes seeming dark and serious.

He wipes his mouth and chin with the back of his hand, shiny with your slick and fluids. You watch the pink of his tongue dart out as he licks his lips. You whimper a little as he gets onto his knees between your spread legs, his nice button-up, slacks and boxers off and on the floor. You admire the smooth lines of his body, the softness of his stomach, his happy trail leading down to where he’s hard and leaking into his hand.

There are no words exchanged, just a knowing glance that tells Spencer to hurry and do it. Spencer’s always been good at following instructions, and he knows you and your likes like the back of his hand. You know he always wants to please.

One hand on your hip, Spencer’s other hand guides his cock to your hole. He teases the head of his cock over your clit, circling over your entrance. You can only imagine how wet and sticky you are down there, with Spencer’s cock making you even more of a mess.

He puts the head in, watches intently as he slides in, and you look up at Spencer, breathing hard. He stops for a moment and begins to pull out, only the tip inside of you. He’s such an ass. You glare at him. Spencer grins cheekily.

“Spencer–” His name leaves your lips brokenly as he suddenly presses himself deeper, in, in, in, until his cock is bottoming out and you feel so incredibly full. “Fuck me.”

Spencer grunts, eyebrows furrowed as he starts fucking into you. He goes hard and fast, knowing that’s how you like it: his skin slapping against yours, the slick sounds of his cock pounding into your hole downright obscene. Even while you shake from the force he’s putting into fucking you, Spencer’s face reads like he’s trying hard to keep it together, trying to concentrate on making you feel as good as he feels.

His mouth falls open as he grips the headboard, fucking you relentlessly. You hold onto his biceps for dear life, close to screaming as he rails you. Spencer moans, as your fingernails dig into his arms in your desperate need, “Fuck, you feel so good. So tight, angel. All wet for me.”

“Spencer, fuck, oh my God–!” You cry out, helpless, horny, feeling like you’re in heaven as Spencer fucks you just how you want, just how you need. His cock hits all the right places, deep inside of you, fucking you open like you’re made for him.

And then, your orgasm hits you like a tidal wave, your body jolting with the pleasure that overtakes you. It’s so good, Spencer ramming into you till the overstimulation starts to sting, pleasure tinged with pain around the edges, and your clenching and writhing has Spencer pushed over the edge as well, his head dropping between his shoulders as he comes with a groan, loud and whiny, his load spilling inside of you.

You’re both breathing hard, but your eyes meet his, and you share a small smile. Spencer has paused, cock softening inside of you, and he kisses you softly. You taste yourself on his lips. You don’t care, and kiss him back. Both of you giggle when you pull away.

One of Spencer’s hands falls from the headboard to your body, his fingers gentle as they skirt over your curves, a sharp contrast to the way he was fucking you just moments ago. His hand slides over your breast, your stomach, your thighs – thumbing over the marks he’d left behind. Spencer presses down on one on your inner thigh. You moan as he grabs the meat of your thigh eagerly. He chuckles, pressing a kiss to your knee.

“I love you,” you giggle softly, feeling like you got your brains fucked out. “You’re too sweet to me.”

“Why wouldn’t I be sweet to you, darling?” Spencer answers softly as he leans in, kissing your jaw gently. Your cheeks feel warm. “I love you too. Let me clean you up.”

You hum softly, laying back while Spencer gets up. You watch as Spencer, even more gorgeous in his post-orgasmic glow, grabs a small towel and slips onto the bathroom. He emerges quickly enough, the towel now damp, and slides back into bed next to you.

Spencer glances down at where you’re wet and messy. His tongue darts out to wet his lips, mind clearly busy, and asks, “Wanna let me finger you before we really go and get clean?”

You let out a laugh, and after a moment’s pause: “Yeah, okay."

[pathologicalreid]

always, i'll wait | s.r.

in which spencer dedicates himself to pulling you out of your depressive state

margotober

who? spencer reid x fem!reader category: angst content warnings: severe depressive episode, dissociation, medication, reader not taking care of herself, not eating, death, corporeal mark word count: 2.16k a/n: if even one person understands what i was doing when i wrote this then i can die happy. based on this request! i hope you enjoy!

The cushion beneath you was slowly becoming displaced. Your body descends into the cavernous no man’s land that is the crevice of your couch as you stare straight ahead. The TV screen went dark moments ago. The blackness following the Are you still there? screen of your show.

Tugging the knit blanket you had curled up with last night under your chin, you close your eyes, the tears that were welling falling sideways down your face until they land on your flattened pillow. The blanket still smells like Spencer, and you can’t help but wonder how long it’ll take before the scent of his tea tree shampoo fades away entirely.

You could lay on the couch for the rest of your life, and you’d still never be able to understand your actions from the past few days. Distracting yourself from the ache in your heart by wondering if your decomposing body would leave a corporeal mark on your couch.

When you open your eyes and find all too familiar ones staring back at you, the only reasonable explanation is that you’re already dead. You’re dead and your punishment is having Spencer Reid give you puppy dog eyes for the rest of your eternal damnation.

And you’d deserve it.

“How long have you been lying here?” Spencer asks you, using the coffee table for support as he shifts from a squat to a kneel. Tentatively, his hand rests on the couch cushion, just in front of yours.

You blink absently in response. Not only are you being forced to look at the man whose heart you broke, but he’s seemingly intent on making you face the fact that you’ve been on the couch since last night.

The concern deepens on Spencer’s face when you don’t respond, “Can you hear me?”

In the back of your mind, you wonder how he managed to get into your apartment without a key, but you don’t air this concern to him, you just look at him.

Slowly, he reaches into his pocket, typing out a quick message on his phone before leaving the device face down on your coffee table. “Honey, will you talk to me?”

Wanting to avoid the visage of your ex-boyfriend in front of you, you let your eyes fall shut again, grunting when your punishment grows sentient and gently shakes your shoulder.

“Hey, uh uh, eyes open,” he chides, revealing himself as the real version of Spencer.

You frown at him, partially in disbelief and partially in distaste, “What are you doing here?” You ask, your voice garbled from lack of use.

His concern softens slightly at the sound of your voice, “No one’s heard from you in two days.”

Lifting your head from the pillow, your eyes widen slightly, “Days?”

Spencer nods in confirmation, “Have you been on the couch this whole time?”

Furrowing your brows, you rest your head back on the pillow, “No, I’ve been… It was… what?”

Gently, he reached out and rested a hand on your head, gently using the pad of his thumb to gently smooth hairs from your forehead, “What’s the last thing you remember?” His question holds no accusation, the honey-sweet tone nearly enough to make your bottom lip quiver.

“Breaking up with you,” you breathed. The text that you had sent in a flurry of tears being the only thing that resurfaced in your memory.

Hi, we’ve gotta break up. Sorry.

Admittedly, it wasn’t the most eloquent text message that you have ever written, but at the time, you weren’t yourself. At least now you knew that you were in the early stages of a dissociative episode. “I broke up with you,” you repeated, more for yourself than for him. “What are you doing here?”

Softly, Spencer smiled at you, cupping your cheek before standing up and grabbing your TV remote, switching the screen from the muted black of standby mode to the pitch black of being completely off. “Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat, “That won’t work for me.”

Peering up at him, you prop your head up in your hand, “What do you mean?” Confusion ruminated through your already troubled mind.

He raised his eyebrows, went over to the curtains, and opened them, allowing rays of light to stream into your living room, the daylight made you cringe, but eventually, your eyes would adjust. “You do not get to drop off the face of the Earth. I won’t let you get lost like that,” he told you, his sugar-coated tone cracking as he grew sterner.

Spencer never minded the way you sank to the bottom of your brain, he was always willing to make the trek to rescue you, but you didn’t want that anymore. “Well, I’m up now,” your body was beginning to settle into your skin once again, “You don’t have to stay.”

Your boyfriend—the jury was still out on that one—scoffed in response, sitting himself down on the corner of your coffee table, “Fine, I’ll just wait here until you can give me a valid explanation for ending our relationship via text message.”

Parting your lips, you hauled yourself to a sitting position, “I thought… I didn’t—” No, he completely had you there. You owed him more than a text message, but you didn’t have the dignity to face him. You knew he’d talk sense into you.

“What happened two nights ago?” Spencer asked, resting his elbows on his knees and watching you intently. “Did something happen to you that you felt like you couldn’t share with me?”

Shaking your head, you reached up and wiped your nose with the sleeve of your sweatshirt, “No, nothing like that.”

His expression softened, looking at you, desperate for an explanation, “Then what was it, baby? You know you can tell me anything.”

Your throat burned with emotion, and holding back tears didn’t take any effort—your body was so devoid of water that none even bothered to form. Even so, you hiccupped a dry sob, covering your mouth with your hand to muffle the sound, “I didn’t want you to have to worry about me.”

Spencer’s face fell. Your heart broke even more than it had when you sent that text, “I tried to text you back. I called you. Everyone called you.”

You hadn’t the slightest idea where your phone was, patting around the couch for any sign of it. “I didn’t hear anything,” you frowned, unsure where it had ended up.

“Are you missing time?” He asked, checking in on where exactly you were mentally.

Nodding, you leaned into the couch cushions. You couldn’t account for anything the night before last, you had sent that text and disappeared into the depths of your own mind. An organ that was necessary for survival playing wicked games with your life.

His lips parted, readying himself to ask a question that he clearly didn’t want to, “Are you off your medication?”

You flinched at his question, screwing your eyes shut and nodding again. “They’re at the pharmacy,” you told him, “My head hurts.”

“You’re coming back,” he said, watching the way your eyes flittered around the room anxiously. “Have you eaten anything?”

His question was innocent enough, but you found yourself unaware of the answer. Surely you had eaten something in the last twenty-four hours, you hadn’t been truly withering away on your couch—had you? The tremble of your hands told a completely different story, you steepled your fingers together to keep them from shaking.

Taking your silence as a response in and of itself, Spencer nodded, “Do you want breakfast?”

“I don’t want you to take care of this,” you told him, the response coming out harsher than you had initially intended.

Realization washed over Spencer’s features, looking at your situation in a completely new light. “That’s what this is?” Hurt seeped into his voice, cocking his head to the side, “Baby, you’re warping your need for independence into a reason to push me away. Why?”

Taking a ragged breath, you shrugged helplessly at him, “You’ve spent your whole life taking care of people, and I don’t want to add to it anymore.”

“Has it occurred to you that I like taking care of you?” He asked, voice softening as he leaned forward to press a kiss to your hairline. “Go take a shower, I’ll get breakfast going,” he instructed you, tenderly tugging the knit blanket off of your body before helping you to your feet.

You grimaced at the feeling of your feet on the floor, “I don’t want to shower.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” Spencer said over his shoulder as he made his way into your kitchen, reaching in the cabinets for your frying pan.

You unceremoniously returned from the shower; strands of damp hair draped over your shoulders. “Are you going to tell me how you got into my apartment in the first place?” Despite the length of your relationship, you’d never given him a key to your apartment. The leasing office had only given you one.

His back was to you, his expression literally unreadable, “Your landlord did.”

“And why did she do that?” You asked, pulling the glass of water that you assumed he poured for you across the granite countertops.

Spencer turned the frying pan on its side, scraping the scrambled eggs off of the Teflon surface and onto a plate. “I told her she was either going to do it for me or for the police when I call for a wellness check,” he informed you, placing the plate in front of you and pushing the saltshaker over to you. He must’ve noticed the face you were making at the eggs on your plate, because he spoke up once more, “You need the protein.”

You recognized that this wasn’t an overreaction to the situation. In fact, Spencer had maintained a completely calm demeanor when speaking with you, but you saw further past his façade. You saw the way the vein on his temple popped when he clenched his jaw, taking the saltshaker into your hand, you added some on top of the eggs before mixing them around, “I scared you.”

While Spencer lived in the district, your address was in Maryland, and you knew he wasn’t above calling Will at MPD to do a wellness check on you, “Yes.”

His answer was simple, and yet, your chest clenched at the brevity of it, “You’re mad at me.”

“Yes,” he answered again, resting his hands on the countertop and leaning over it. He watched as you stirred the eggs around on your plate, steam rising from them as you did. “Do you want to come with me to pick up your prescription?”

You hummed as you shoveled the first bite of eggs into your mouth. “Sure,” you said, watching him dig a carton of blueberries out of your fridge.

Dropping a handful on your plate, careful to make sure they don’t roll into the eggs, Spencer seals the container again, “Antioxidants and vitamins,” he murmured to no one in particular.

“How can you forgive me?” You asked Spencer, watching him endearingly pop a few blueberries into his mouth before placing the container back into your refrigerator.

He shook his head, “It’s not a matter of forgiveness. It wasn’t your fault.”

You couldn’t help but feel like you needed to shoulder the blame, “Then whose fault is it, Spence?”

“There is no fault. At least, there’s not one that falls on either of us. I can’t fault you for your brain. No matter how misguided you might have been, you thought you were acting in both of our best interests,” he admitted, rinsing the pan in the sink.

A beeping sound caught your attention, “Did you start a load of laundry?”

He nodded, scrubbing lightly at the dish in the sink, “Your hamper was full.”

“You’re doing too much,” you told him, pressing your lips in a thin line.

Setting the pan on a drying mat, he dried off his hands before walking over to you, hooking a finger beneath your chin before he murmured, “How is what I’m doing for you right now any different than when you took care of me after I got shot in the leg?”

Your jaw slackened. You had unofficially moved in with Spencer last year when he had been shot in the knee by an UnSub, helping him with everything from walking around the apartment to cooking.

Taking your lack of response as an answer, he nodded to himself, “I am always here for you.” He nodded his head in the direction of the door, “Come on, the sooner we get to the pharmacy the sooner we can start getting your apartment back in order."

He walked around you, pivoting on his heel as he held out a hand for you to take. Eventually, you accepted the hand he had extended, following him outside, into the light.

[shy-writer-999]

Subby Ace + aphrodisiacs: your top turned bottom!

Summary: Poor Ace has gotten into something with sex pollen in it. He's a mess and you're the only person who can help him. There's something delightful about seeing your very dominant boyfriend reduced to begging, whining, and even crying for a crumb of your pleasure. CW: straight up SMUT. very very pathetic needy filthy whiny ace. afab reader w/gendered language ('princess'); sex, edging, masturbation, blow job, hand job, dacryphilia, overstimulation, you name it. countless orgasms from ace, use of 'good boy' and 'pretty boy.' minors do not interact - nsfw content!

Ace is so dramatic and sensitive in bed. It gets worse when he goes on an outing by himself, and just so happens to get exposed to some form of sex pollen. He staggers back to the ship and comes straight to you.

He just won’t stop cumming. He can’t stop cumming.

His face is twisted up in anguish and he’s frowning, genuinely so miserable you think he’s about to cry.

“Baby, please help me, I’m going crazy.”

His erection looks bigger than usual—you didn’t think that was possible, and for a split second you’re worried that it won’t fit at all. But of course it will. It has fit countless times before.

“I need you. I’m begging you, sweetheart, please.” He frowns and does puppy dog eyes at you. Your heart melts, but you have to set him straight.

“Ace,” you tut. “You don’t ever need to beg for me.”

“Can I, though?” He smiles back, and it looks like a bit of a grimace.

“I’ll allow it. But you have to do what I say, okay?”

Ace nods. “Of course.” He’s thrilled at the idea of you being in control.

You sit down on the bed next to him and rest a hand on his thigh. He flinches.

“Fuck.” You can see his cock jump through the fabric of his underwear.

A simple hand on his skin like this is enough to make him squirm? It’s going to be a fun night. He looks pathetic and miserable right now. His brows are bent at the middle and he’s doing the cutest, saddest little pout you’ve ever seen.

“Touch me more, beautiful,” he murmurs and closes his eyes, mouth hanging open in concentration. His mind is fixated how your cool skin feels against his, how soft your hand is, how close you are to his throbbing hard on.

Your fingers wander over his skin, conjuring goosebumps and shudders, eliciting whimpering sounds from Ace’s pretty lips. The whimpers quickly turn into muted sounds of pleasure.

Precum seeps through the fabric of his underwear and you pity him, reaching your fingers upwards to pull the waistband down. When his cock springs out, sure enough, it’s bigger than usual, a fact which is both troubling and tantalizing.

The tip of his long shaft is red, inflamed, and defined. It glistens in the light from the dim lamp in the corner of his cabin, highlighting the precum that smears his head and continues to seep out—it’s a ridiculous amount of precum. You’ve never seen this much before.

You take a moment to admire him. Your eyes wander from his erection to his defined abs and dark, thin happy trail. Your eyes meet his. His pupils are huge and there’s a visible sheen of sweat on his forehead that mats down the hair around his temples.

Ace is trying not to be impatient, but it’s hard because his body is screaming for attention.

“Please, princess. Use me. Do anything you want to me.” His voice comes out as a whisper, tinted in reverence, and bathed in lust.

When you hum in reply, you stand up, slipping off your underwear and bra. He scoots back onto the pillows and his thighs widen while you get on top of him. Your lower yourself down to sit on top of his erection. You don’t fuck him yet, though. You just lay his shaft flat on your core and stay there for a second.

Some teasing couldn’t hurt. So, you slowly start to roll your hips, rubbing yourself on Ace’s wet shaft. It’s starting to get you worked up, too, and before you know it, you’re soaking wet.

Gasp after gasp tumbles out of his mouth and no less than thirty seconds later, he starts to seize up below you, cumming on his lower abdomen. His breaths are shallow and ragged, and he’s lying there panting.

“Don’t stop,” he chokes out, again begging for something he knows he’ll get if he only waits patiently. “Please don’t stop.”

“Poor thing.” You lean down and kiss him. Even the mere feeling of your lips on his makes him let out the softest groan. He feels like his whole body is on fire, but it’s in a way he’s never felt before, different from the logia fire he’s so accustomed to.

His kisses quickly turn greedy and sloppy, and every drag of your aching core over his cock makes him let out repressed puffs of air in your mouth. Soon, he’s moaning straight into your mouth.

God, he’s so worked up it’s starting to be more fun than you imagined.

Lining up his sticky wet tip with your entrance, you finally start to sink down onto his cock, going deliberately slow so he doesn’t cum again (yet). But when he bottoms out, his hips buck up inadvertently, hitting your gooey hot spot inside.

“F-fuck, fuck,” Ace groans again. “Feels, ah, feels so good.”

He’s practically keening at this point, back almost arching off the bed, fingers digging into the skin of your hips.

You start to ride him slowly. Whatever way feels best. Sometimes you pull yourself up his shaft so only the tip is inside and plunge it back in, other times you keep him inside of you and grind your hips back and forth. One moment, you brace your hands on his chest for more leverage; the next moment, you lean in and kiss his neck, leaving love bites in a trail from his neck to his shoulder. The contact draws out a body-wracking moan from the dark-haired man beneath you—the sounds he’s making are delicious.

He cums aggressively again, hips jerking upwards. Each press of his cock up hits your g-spot and when he feels your body shift in response it drives him crazier.

Ace’s fingers are pulling you downwards, pushing himself deeper inside of you.

“Need more,” he chokes out.

When your legs start to burn, he does all the work for you. Muscly, rough hands come under your thighs, moving you effortlessly up and down until you’re the one cumming, writhing in ecstasy on top of him.

But Ace still doesn’t want to stop. “Keep going, please.”

He has the habit of saying please in bed. It’s endearing. When he asks so nicely, it’s hard to say no.

So, your hips move more. And more. And more. Until they’re numb and he’s fucking you stupid.

You’ve collapsed on top of him now, mewling in his neck from each thrust. “C’mon baby, give me another.” You murmur in his ear, voice seductive and honeyed. It’s all he needs to hear before he literally cums on command.

He’s usually an animal in bed. Buy boy, whatever sex pollen or aphrodisiac he ran into today is doing a number on him. You, very obviously, have no issue with it.

Feral sounds escape his lips while Ace pumps more of his hot seed inside. It’s seeping out of you, creeping down the sides of his body, and saturating the fabric of the bedspread below him. It’s going to leave a massive, milky-white stain. And he isn’t done yet.

“Keep going,” he looks absolutely pathetic. “Please, please, I—I’m going crazy.” He can barely get the words out, so pussydrunk and out of it that he’s on the verge of drooling.

You smile and kiss him on the cheek. “Missionary. But you’re going to go nice and slow, okay?”

Ace nods vigorously in return. He repositions. One of his warm hands is on your waist now, while the other gropes upwards to massage and caress your chest.

He takes his time, just like you told him. From this angle, you can see his face more—and it’s glistening, evidently he’s been crying. He’s been crying because of how good it feels. Something about the idea is wildly erotic. He wants pleasure so badly that he’s begging and crying over it, literal tears from those pretty brown eyes.

Every orgasm feels better than the last. He shoots more seed inside of you again, quickly, almost immediately upon entering you. But there’s a rebound period before his second orgasm where you decide to be a bit cruel.

“Slower, Ace.”

He complies, hips shaking, moving centimeters at a time. There’s so much cum inside of you that it’s almost sloshing out, squelching so loud you’re thankful no one is around to hear. His eyes are glued to where the cum seeps out of you, drinking up the sight of his cock disappearing inside of you with every pass.

Gravelly, obscene groans tumble out from him every second—it’s almost a constant stream.

“Wanna go faster,” he rasps, eyes snapping up to yours. You see more tears gathering on his lash line.

“Not yet, baby. Be a good boy and wait for it, okay?”

When he hears you call him that—good boy—a strangled sounding gasp erupts from his lips and his hips shudder. “Fuuuuhhhccckkk.”

Desperate, heaving breaths accompany his extreme efforts. He’s trying not to cum, trying not to buck and rut haphazardly and mindlessly into your cunt like some animal in heat.

A couple more moments of agonizing slowness pass. When you’ve decided he’s behaved, and when you’re similarly desperate enough, you give him the go ahead.

“Faster.”

His hips snap into action and he’s cumming again within a couple seconds. It’s amazing that he still has cum to give, that he’s not completely shooting blanks at this point, that he hasn’t drained his balls completely yet. But, surely, he’ll get there.

“Mmmpppphhhh,” he moans, deafeningly loud. “Ah, ah, fuck, f-feels so good, fuck.”

“Keep going, ‘m close,” you keen his name and his hips pick up the pace. Each time his cock pushes on your sweet spot it makes you see stars. You’re getting close and he’s getting overstimulated.

When you cum again the pleasure is white-hot and euphoric, buzzing every nerve in your body. Ace does the same—he’s too sensitive, can’t handle the feeling of your walls squeezing and milking him for long before he’s careening into his own wave of euphoria.

He slows down and starts to nuzzle into the crook of your neck. He’s sweaty and his body is hot. Looks like the sex pollen is making his devil fruit powers a bit harder to control.

“You want some more, handsome?” You ask, and he nods eagerly. When you move from underneath him, you ask him to lay on his back. Rifling through a bedside drawer, you bring out your vibrator. You usually keep it in his cabin because that’s where you get the most use out of it. But today, instead of using it on yourself, you’re going to try something new.

While you’re grabbing the toy, Ace reaches a hand down to start touching himself but you tell him to knock it off.

“You need to sit there and be good for me. Don’t touch yourself and don’t cum unless I say so, okay?”

When he hears your stern tone, Ace puts his hands behind his head, and peers down to see what happens next. It’s hard for him to stay still, but he tries his very best.

Situating yourself between his thick thighs, you turn the vibrator on and bring it to the head of Ace’s cock. He almost immediately starts to seize up. He’s going to cum again. But where would the fun be if you just let him?

You take the vibrator away and frown. “Do I need to tell you again? Don’t cum until I say so, sweetheart.”

He pouts and nods. You bring the vibrator back and put it on the lowest setting setting. He’s hardly holding on as is, but when you turn the vibrator’s speed up, he starts to writhe in pleasure.

“’m close,” he whines, biting his lip.

You take the vibrator off again, met with a strangled sounding cry of frustration from Ace. He takes a few minutes to cool back down until he’s ready for you to start again.

Twenty, no, thirty minutes pass like this until he’s on the verge of tears again. When you finally let him have it, he asks so nicely. It’s not like he hasn’t been asking nicely before, but this time his voice cracks and you can see the tears in his lash line.

“C-can I please, please cum?” He’s being so sweet and needy. It’s crazy to think this is the strong, courageous man who has protected you countless times. Reduced to a sniveling mess, asking for another orgasm.

You say yes. He’s being so polite, so why not?

After this orgasm, he’s almost ready to tap out. He can use his safe word, obviously but… he really doesn’t want to. It feels too good. He’ll keep going for as long as he physically can.

“You still have another couple to give me, right? Don’t you want to be good for me and keep going?” You say, looking up from between his thighs. The tip of his cock is inflamed from the relentless vibrating, and his abdomen is coated in a sheen of his own cum. He’s at the point where he doesn’t care about anything, fucked-out with his mind empty.

When he nods his head mindlessly, you take your turn. You sink down on his cock (again) and ride him for as long as it takes you to orgasm. For the record, it doesn’t take long, but Ace has lost track of time.

He’s being louder than usual. Every few seconds he lets out some form of a whine, a whimper, a “fuck,” a “please,” or a “’s too much.” His cheeks are bright red, accentuating those cute freckles, and his eyes are half-lidded. He’s so handsome it makes your stomach flip. He’s falling apart with minimal effort, and he’s all hands, too. He grabs handfuls of the plush skin of your hips and ass, kneading and getting himself more wound up.

Ace cums once while you’re working up to your own orgasm, then again when you’re cumming on his cock, and then a third time, when you pull yourself off his length and wrap a hand around his shaft. Every time he cums, you encourage and praise him. It drives him crazier.

“There’s a good boy,” you say. “Keep going for me. Don’t stop.”

You talk dirty to him while you give him one very long hand job. He eats it up, loves the idea of you speaking filth to nobody but him. Before you started seeing each other, he couldn’t imagine you had this sort of mouth on you—not in his wildest dreams. It’s his delight every time you’re in bed that you feel comfortable enough with him to talk like this.

“You’re just too sweet I can’t stop Ace,” your voice oozes in desire. “And you’re being so good for me.”

“’s good?” He slurs, holding your eye contact as much as he can manage.

“Mmmhm. Tell me what it feels like. Use your words, okay?”

His eyes flutter and his voice comes out as a whisper. “So good. F-feels so fucking good.”

You coo in his ear and bite his earlobe softly. “Don’t I always make you feel so good?” He nods in a silent reply, rocking his hips up to fuck himself with your fist.

As you milk more cum from him, he reaches a hand up—you initially think he’s going for your chest, but his hand falls on your cheek and he attempts to pull you into a kiss. He’s a bit weak in his current state, so you oblige him by leaning in.

It’s just gut-wrenchingly cute of him to be fucked dumb like this and still want to get kisses from you. He’s just thanking his lucky stars that you, of all people, is who he ended up with.

While you explore his mouth with your tongue, and cup his face with your free hand, his heart feels like it’s going to burst.

He cums again. The fact that he still has cum to give is preposterous in itself. You’ve lost track of time at this point, too.

You make him eat you out and he’s (understandingly) sloppy with it. His hot mouth feels just right on your core, and he pays just enough attention to your clit. Feeling you pull on his hair makes him feel more aroused than he thought possible.

So, he’s ready to fuck you again. He goes for another round in missionary, then puts you into a mating press. Afterwards, he gets tuckered out and you figure that he has one good one left in him, or, rather, he probably has more to give but he really should give it a rest after that. It would be way too cruel to make him keep going after this one, right? You’ll decide the answer to this question after he cums for you again.

“One more, Ace,” you pet his ruffled up hair and grace him with kisses. “You can do that for me, can’t you, pretty boy?”

He nods obediently.

“There you go,” you purr and start to trace your lips down his abdomen, licking up a small portion of the very large mess he’s made on himself.

His eyes widen as he realizes he’s about to get one of his very favorite things—a blowjob from none other than yourself.

He lifts his head up and watches in awe as you lick a long stripe up his shaft and then take him whole, hollowing your cheeks before you start to suck him off. You’re gentle at first, until he starts moaning louder, then you figure fuck it, he can cum. You let him off easy this time. He’s just been so good for you.

When you look up from your position between his legs, you make eye contact, nod, and then hum. It sends him over the edge. Ace’s fingers snake into your hair and he holds your head down as he cums down your throat.

“C-cumming, ‘m cumming, ah, fuck, fuhhhcckkk that feels good,” his groans are harsh and loud.

He’s so sweet afterwards that it’s heart melting. You know that he must be tired, but he doesn’t act the part. Not when you’ve been so good to him, when you’ve praised him, taken your time with him, coddled and kissed him. It almost makes you feel guilty how affectionate he is.

Pulling into you a long, tender kiss, he so sweetly says, “fuck, you’re perfect. I can’t believe someone like me gets to be with someone like you.”

You cup his cheeks and tell him to cut it out. Of course someone like him gets to be with someone like you. He’s perfect, after all. You cuddle him in bed for a while before he, again, very politely, asks if you’d help clean him up. He’s positively covered in cum and doesn’t want to stain anything else more than he already has. Seems like this is another pair of bedsheets that can be considered properly soiled. Not like that will stop you from doing the same thing in the future.

Now, where did he come across that sex pollen again?

this style of writing for me (when i just write straight up smut with no plot) is akin to a sort of slop. i am the lunch lady handing out scoops of questionable and most likely unsatisfying mush BUT sometimes on a good day it is delicious... i can only hope the slop today did not disappoint... >_> cant say this one is my absolute fave so apologies if it's trash T-T but i love the idea of him being so whiny like this..!!

check out my masterlist and also the best piece i've written on ace so far, if you liked this one!

dividers by @cafekitsune

taglist @eggrollforyou

[silentscrying]

🐾 snowprints

vet student!megumi x dog owner!reader

summary: when you find yourself in need of an emergency trip to the local vet clinic, it's late and the sign on the door is flipped to closed. luckily for you, animal science student megumi fushiguro is still around, and he's willing to help you and your dog out—and maybe get a little more than he bargained for in the process. but he's not used to letting people in, and you've never been particularly patient. when winter rolls around, will you be spending the holidays alone?

content/warnings: 20.7k words. complete. sfw. f!reader, you have a dog, megumi has his dogs, they are unbearably cute, megumi doesn't know how to communicate for shit, language, no use of y/n, christmas yay!!, aged up characters, including riko, she's in college, and she's a menace, (light) angst with a happy ending, mentions of deceased parents (typical fushiguro canon), soft, fluff, you know when your sister psychoanalyzes you at the kitchen table, car crash, alcohol, reader studies environmental science but can't keep plants alive for SHIT, so much unnecessary pining, gratuitous overuse of italics and em-dashes

note: this takes place in the same universe as out of my mind, but you don't have to read that to know what's going on here! though it may help with some context. happy hella late birthday megumi fushiguro you will always be famous

PART I // BATMAN & ROBIN

IT’S TEN O’CLOCK and dark when Batman decides to cause problems.

Batman, of course, being your three-year-old German shepherd mix, the one currently whining and staring up at you with big, dark puppy eyes while he holds one paw up limply.

“Oh, little buddy,” you sigh as you squat down in front of him, despite the fact that he hasn’t been little in a very long time. He’s been restless all night, so you caved and took him on a late night walk, and it’s so dark you can’t tell what’s wrong with his paw even in the glow of the phone flashlight.

God, fuck. Where’s the closest vet? The one in the city is definitely closed. You’re fairly certain there’s a smaller one somewhere on the outskirts of the JU campus, though, one that the pre-vet students use for clinicals.

“C’mon, champ,” you murmur, tugging gently on Batman’s leash. “Let’s go get you checked out, huh?”

The early September air is chilly, a little bit of a bite to it. You’re glad the temperatures haven’t yet dropped below freezing, so you don’t need to let your car defrost before going. “Up,” you say, patting the passenger seat with the door held open for Batman.

You punch the clinic into maps and pull out of your suburban street into the busier roads. It’s not far, thankfully, and you make a beeline for the door with Batman on your heels, not noticing until you’re right in front of it that the massive sign hanging on the door is flipped to CLOSED.

“No,” you groan, leaning forward and pressing your forehead to the cool glass of the closed door. You close your eyes, wondering what the fuck you’re gonna do, and then—thump.

You nearly jump out of your skin, eyes flying open and gaze raising to meet the amused eyes of a guy on the other side of the door, who’s trying and failing to suppress a smile that feels a little teasing. Oops.

You step back and wave sheepishly, and the boy unlocks the door and swings it open, taking in the sight of you and your limping dog.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt. “I know you’re closed and it’s some ungodly hour on a Tuesday, I just didn’t know what else to do—”

“It's fine,” he says, waving it off. “I’m just cleaning up, it’s not a hassle. Come on.” Batman has no qualms about following the guy through the open door, so you follow, glancing around the small clinic. It’s pretty sparse, save for the bulletin board overflowing with pet photos on one wall.

“Fushiguro,” the guy says in introduction, glancing back over his shoulder at you. He’s got deep blue eyes that match his dark scrubs, and his hair sticks out every which way in a manner that feels intentional. He must be around your age. It takes you a beat to remember yourself and give him your own name, stuttered out as you pass into the back exam room.

There’s a white coat tossed haphazardly over a spinning chair, and the guy—Fushiguro—picks Batman up like he weighs nothing and situates him on the metal table.

“Hey, bud. What’s your name?” he asks, scratching behind Batman’s ears. Your dog is usually weary of vets, but today his tail pounds on the metal of the table as he raises his head to sniff at Fushiguro’s face.

“Batman.”

Fushiguro’s gaze snaps to you and he blinks, evidently thinking you’re joking. “No.”

“Yes.” You hold your index fingers up above your head to imitate your dog’s pointy ears. “Batman.”

“Oh. My god,” he says. “And what, you’re Robin?”

“I am not the sidekick in this situation.”

“Batman dragged you out here at eleven on a school night. You absolutely are the sidekick.”

You scoff, moving up to the table and stroking Batman’s fur. “Am I just a sidekick to you, little guy?” you coo. “You wanna be a hero so bad?” He noses happily at your palm.

Fushiguro side-eyes you, half-grimacing as he grabs Batman’s paw to look at it. He doesn’t seem to mind, which is honestly a shock. He hates people touching his paws, even you. “You baby talk your dog?”

“You judge your patients?”

“Course not,” Fushiguro says, smirking as he looks back at you. “Just their owners.”

You roll your eyes but can’t help the huff of laughter, and his dark eyes reflect the fluorescent overhead light as he turns away. He’s undeniably attractive—you don’t remember seeing him around campus.

“You go to JU?” you ask, and he nods.

“Sophomore. Pre-vet. D’you?”

“Nah, Kaisen.” Your school is a lot smaller than the neighboring Jujutsu University. They’ve got something of an athletic rivalry with Kaisen College, but you really don’t care. “Environmental science.”

“You know everything there is to know about trees, or what?” His tone is teasing, and you know he doesn’t mean anything by it. The fact is you do know more about trees than normal college students probably should. Doesn’t mean you can keep plants alive for shit, though.

You’d guess there’s actually a fair bit of crossover between your course of study and a pre-vet student’s bio track, but you say, “I specialize in rare long grasses, actually.” It comes out so deadpan that he glances at you, brows knit together, trying to gauge if you’re being serious. You only last a second before you crack under his scrutiny, and he shakes his head and huffs as he turns back to Batman, who is now trying to lick Fushiguro’s nose.

“Excuse me,” he says. This only seems to encourage the dog kisses, but Fushiguro decides to just ignore them. He hums, grabbing a pair of tweezers and squinting as he moves to pull something out of Batman’s paw. “Just a splinter. The pad of a dog’s paw is one of the most sensitive parts of their body, so it’s not surprising he was so worked up about it.” You watch as he pulls out a thin sliver of wood, probably from stepping on some splintering twig, and drops it into a tray on the table.

You watch as your dog drops his paw back to the table and stands up, tail wagging at lightning speed, like nothing was ever wrong. He jumps off the table before Fushiguro can grab him and bounds over to you, rubbing himself along the outside of your leg like a giant cat.

“How much do I owe you?” you ask, pulling out your card, but he waves you off.

“It was literally a splinter.”

“But—”

“Honestly, it’d be more work to boot up the payment system again anyway. Don’t worry about it.” He holds your gaze, and you can’t tell if he’s lying about the payment system or not, but you slide your card back into your wallet without complaint.

Something passes between you, some weird spark of recognition—not that you’ve met before. You know you haven’t. But you don’t typically have this kind of easy banter with strangers. Something about this guy intrigues you, and you don’t particularly want to stop talking to him.

But you’ve already kept him past close, and you need to get home.

The moment breaks when Fushiguro clears his throat, leaning over to grab something off the counter. “Right. Well, give me a call if he starts limping again, but he should be alright.” He holds out a hand and you realize he’s offering you a business card, weirdly professional for a student.

M. FUSHIGURO Veterinary Technician Trainee, JU

His number and email are printed beneath it in small sans serif lettering.

“Oh, you’re fancy.” You raise a brow at him, tucking the card into your jacket pocket. “Thank you. Seriously.”

“Well, who am I to refuse Batman?” he says wryly. He walks you to the door, and you try not to think too much of it—he just needs to lock up behind you, probably.

Before you slip out, he leans down and pats Batman on the head, earning a happy little tail-wag in response.

“Drive safe, Robin,” he calls, and you groan at the nickname as you unlock your car.

At home, you key his number into your phone and save the contact as fushiguro (cute vet). You sit there for way too long debating over whether you should text him—Batman’s fine, and it’s late, and he gave you a business card. Not exactly an invitation to flirt, tempting as that might be.

But you really want to.

“Should I text him?” you ask your dog, who’s decided to curl up right beside your bed and look up at you, waiting for an invitation. Your twin bed is not big enough for this and he knows it, but he always seems to think he’s a smaller dog than he really is.

Batman, unhelpfully, tilts his head at you, his perky ears flapping with the motion.

Maybe it’s because it’s past eleven and it’s dark out and you’re exhausted and you don’t have the best sense of judgment right now. Maybe it’s because Fushiguro’s just really cute.

“You’re right,” you say, nudging Batman with a socked foot. “No use waiting. Say cheese.”

you: [1 Image Attachment] you: gotham city’s savior says thank you

It’s kind of embarrassing how you sit and stare at the screen for two minutes, waiting for him to answer. Batman snorts, like he’s making fun of you, and you lock your phone and toss it on the bedside table. “Oh, don’t start.”

Your roommate and best friend, Setsuko Sasaki, is studying abroad in Japan for the semester. It’s been lonely, strange without her occupying the second bedroom of your little rented townhouse. You’d like to say this is why you’ve resorted to talking to your dog, but that would very much be a lie, because you’ve always done this. Sometimes, when she’s home, Suko adopts a gruff, low voice and answers for him.

You jump when your phone buzzes and make yourself count to three before checking the screen.

fushiguro (cute vet): don’t mention it. always had a soft spot for batman, anyway. fushiguro (cute vet): his sidekick’s alright too.

“Oh, he likes you,” you tell Batman. “Wingman. Thanks, little buddy.”

you: well, send a bat signal if you’re ever in mortal peril and i might show up

After that, you try to push Fushiguro to the back of your mind. He doesn’t go to Kaisen, so it’s not like you can stalk him in the university directory. You have no reason to run into him around town. As the semester ramps up and you fall back into your routine of classes and exams and friends, you don’t think too much about the cute vet tech who happened to be around that one night.

Or, you don’t for a grand total of six days.

You’re on a jog with Batman, afternoon sun making up for the fall chill in the air that’s hung around since it stormed last night. You don’t intend to stop, but Batman abruptly sticks his nose in the dirt about halfway through your run and refuses to move.

“Dude.” You backtrack and see that he’s discovered a couple pairs of dog prints, pressed faintly into the damp earth. “Oh, you smell friends, huh?” He tugs you forward, following the scent of these other dogs. “Hey!”

The thing about having a massive German shepherd mix, even one as docile as Batman, is that he is inarguably a lot stronger than you. So you don’t really have much of a choice but to stumble along after him as he bounds across the grass and comes out on the other side of the path—you don’t normally come this way, because there’s a dog park over here and he gets way too excited.

But today he’s on a mission, and you only see two other dogs in the fenced-in park—two huge balls of fluff, one white and one black. “Fine,” you say begrudgingly, undoing the gate and letting Batman off his leash. “Go play. But we aren’t staying long.”

He bounds off toward the other dogs while you latch the gate behind you, and then a familiar voice has you spinning around with your eyes wide. “Bat signal wasn’t me,” Fushiguro says, raising both hands in a gesture of innocence. “They did it.” He points at the other dogs, who are now engaged in a butt-sniffing circle with yours.

“Fushiguro!” You grin, making your way over to him. Once the other two dogs have deemed Batman a worthy playmate, they move on to you, sniffing at your palms and circling around you until the black one jumps up and nearly knocks you over with the force of it. “Oh, hello!”

“Kuro,” Fushiguro chides, rushing forward to tug at his collar. “Hey. Down.”

“It’s okay,” you promise through a fit of giggles as Kuro tries to basically hug you. “Oh, you’re cute, aren’t you? Hi, Kuro.”

Fushiguro huffs out a breath of relief when Kuro finally gets down. “That’s Shiro,” he says, gesturing to the white dog, who is now chasing Batman around the park. “Think she’s found a friend.”

“He dragged me all the way here,” you tell Fushiguro. “Guess he missed you or something.”

“Just him?”

You grin. “What, you think I was out here pining after you?” He only smirks in response. “I don’t even know your name, M. Fushiguro. What good is a business card without your first name on it?”

He hums, shoving his hands into his pockets, considering. “Guess.”

“Guess,” you echo. “Okay. Um. Michael.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Max.”

“Nope.”

“Um, Maverick.”

“What the hell?” He looks at you with furrowed brows. “Who in their right mind would name their kid—”

“Okay, hey,” you interrupt, holding up your hands. “I just watched Top Gun, okay? What do you want from me?”

“M—”

“Nope, out of tries for today. Three strikes, you’re out.” He shrugs, wholly unaffected, like this is just how the world works and he’s got no say it in whatsoever.

You gape at him, planting your hands on your hips in affront. “I hope you know I will be insufferable every single day until I’m right.”

Batman trots back over, prancing between you and Fushiguro until he crouches down to pet him. “You come here a lot?” you ask, glancing around the empty park. “I’ve never seen you here. Or your dogs. I think I’d remember giant balls of fluff like that.”

“Yeah, not often,” Fushiguro says, pushing back to his feet. “But Kuro’s been so restless all day. Had to let him run his energy down somehow.” The dog in question is chasing his own tail in circles while Shiro looks at him, unimpressed. “You live over here?”

“Few blocks out, yeah.” Your place is between the two campuses, an easy walk to both places because Suko takes Japanese classes at JU. Apparently Fushiguro doesn’t live too far away, either, just on the other side of the skate park where you know your friend Hajime hangs out all the time.

By “hangs out,” you mean he probably (definitely) buys weed there, but that’s not your business. Maybe he and Fushiguro know each other—they both go to JU. But Hajime’s a senior, so probably not.

You don’t get the chance to ask because Fushiguro’s phone rings, and he sighs and answers it with a glance at you that might be apologetic or might be mildly irritated. Hard to tell with him.

“Yeah, that’s fine,” he says gruffly. “Okay. See you.” He hangs up and tucks his phone back into his pocket, then whistles for the dogs. “Time to go.”

“Good to see you,” you blurt before he can turn away. He seems a little taken aback, but you don’t break eye contact, and you think he might be on the brink of a smile.

“You too, sidekick.”

—

After that, the two of you start texting more often, gradually moving from photos of your dogs to real conversation. And you keep your promise to be insufferable about finding out his name. You send him new M-names every day, never seeming to get any closer to the truth. For his part, he refuses to call you anything but Robin, cementing your existence as a superhero sidekick and nothing more.

you: new theory you: the M stands for mr you: monsieur you: m’lord

He dislikes the messages in response, and you send him a teary-eyed emoji and hope the guilt is enough to get him to tell you.

It is not.

You and Fushiguro are in some sort of convoluted orbit around one another, sometimes colliding, sometimes drifting away. There’s really no reason you should keep stumbling across him, considering you go to different schools, live in different places, study different things.

But after that first day at the dog park, you might take Batman there a little bit more often.

Every time you talk, Fushiguro starts to take up more and more headspace. You find yourself searching for his flash of ink-dark hair, spiky and disheveled, in every crowd. Every set of fading prints in the grass or mud might be his, might be Shiro’s or Kuro’s. It’s stupid, how much you’re thinking about this boy.

At some point you start dragging your friends out to the coffee shops between your two campuses to do work, rather than the one in the student center. You justify it to yourself with the half-assed excuse that if you run into your friends less, you’ll get more work done, but really you’re just hoping he’ll be there. And your friends are happy to oblige, especially Riko, if it means she’ll get a glimpse of this mystery vet man you don’t shut up about.

Riko’s a year below you at Kaisen, but you know her from back home. She’s a frenetic ball of energy and indignation, and she’s fully prepared to go to every coffee shop in a ten-mile radius for the purposes of what she calls “the mission.”

But the coffee at the second place you try is actually god-tier, and you wind up there regularly after that, hunkering down to grind out your assignments in your spare time. It’s there that he finds you, sliding into the seat right across from yours so abruptly that you nearly fall out of your chair—your noise-canceling headphones really block out the entire world. He smirks as you sheepishly tug them down around your neck, glaring.

“Warn a girl, Jesus!”

“I did,” he drawls, taking a sip of his coffee. “Twice.”

“Boo.” You kind of forgot about your own drink because you were so into your work, and you pick it back up now, mostly for something to do with your hands. “Well, hi. What’re you up to?”

“Same as you, I think.” He nods at your laptop. “Mind if I hang out here?”

“You certainly can, but you’ve just stolen someone’s seat and you might have to fight for your life when she gets back from the bathroom.” His eyes widen almost imperceptibly, and as if on cue, Riko is beelining toward the table from across the room.

“Well hello, Mr. Seat Thief. Pleasure to make your acquaintance.”

Fushiguro seems to be gauging Riko, and you realize this is kind of the first look he’s gotten into your private life outside of your dog, and you’re irrationally nervous about it. But he scoots over and grabs a chair from the next table over, giving Riko a mocking bow in response.

“Better?”

Riko nods, and then grabs his coffee and takes a long drag out of it. He doesn’t object, and that should have been your warning—you can see when the bitterness of it hits her all at once, her face twisting in some combination of shock and despair and mild outrage.

“Oh my god,” you say as Riko grabs her water bottle and chugs to get the taste out of her mouth, aggressively shoving Fushiguro's coffee back toward him. “Of course you drink coffee black, you fucking loser.”

“What, you dump six cups of sugar in yours? That’s not coffee.” You flip him off instead of justifying this with a real response.

“I was gonna use that as payment for your crimes,” Riko gasps dramatically, leaning over the table, “but I was instead punished. You’re in my debt now.” She glares at him fiercely, turning up her nose, before abruptly abandoning the bit and grinning at him. “I’m Riko, by the way.”

He snorts, but a very small hint of a smile appears in a corner of his mouth. “Fushiguro.”

Riko nods and glances from him to you, as if to say really? This guy? You can already hear the analysis she’ll be giving you on the way home. Easy on the eyes, I get it, but does he like, have a personality?

“I did research,” you tell Fushiguro, nudging Riko’s shin under the table in warning. “On you.”

“You stalked me online, is what you’re saying.” You’re learning that he’s not a very expressive person. He treats laughs and smiles like rare currency, and everything you need to know about what he’s thinking is in the tiniest shifts—a downturned brow, a blink, a tilt of the head. You’re still learning, but you like to think you’ve got it down enough to know that this doesn’t actually bother him, despite the resting angry face.

“Yes,” you say, shameless. “Except when I typed in Fushiguro and your school, I got all these results for the editor of your campus paper. You have a sister?”

If he’s surprised, he doesn’t show it. “Tsumiki, yeah.”

He doesn’t offer more, so you push. “Older?” You already know the answer, but best let him believe the depth of your internet stalking is shallower than it really was.

“Two years. She’s a senior.”

“Cool. I don’t know a ton of siblings that go to the same school.”

“You’d be surprised,” he sighs. “My cousin and her twin sister both go there, too. And one my roommates’ half-brothers.”

“Convenient, I guess,” you concede. “Sibling discount or something?”

“Nah, but it was easier this way,” he says, pulling a textbook out of his bag. “Go—uh, our legal guardian works around here anyway.”

Riko raises a brow but doesn’t ask, which is a remarkable show of restraint for her.

Legal guardian. Parents aren’t in the picture, then. You want to ask but you don’t, not yet.

The three of you buckle down and get some work done, casually exchanging conversation over the next few hours, and eventually Fushiguro has to head out. “Rehearsal,” he says.

“Rehearsal?” Riko asks, glancing at you as if you know what he’s talking about. You don’t, but you have some absolutely ridiculous mental image of Fushiguro in choir and you almost laugh out loud.

But he just says, as if it’s nothing at all, “Oh, yeah, I’m in a band.”

“What?” you nearly shout, jumping out of your chair so fast it pushes across the floor with a scrrcck. “You’re in a band? You didn’t think to tell me this before? What’s it called? Can I listen—”

“Nope.”

“But—”

“Nice to meet you, Riko,” he says loudly, cutting you off as he slings his bag over one shoulder. He mock-salutes you, two fingers to his brow as he turns to go. “Robin.”

You sink back into your seat and watch him leave, only turning back to Riko when the door swings closed. She opens her mouth and you hold out a hand. “Don’t start.”

—

At some point you start calling, letting yourself fill the silence of your little townhouse with idle chatter as he listens. He’s not one for small talk, you learn, and he’s a good listener. And he pays attention. He remembers the stupid little details you give him, the names of classmates and professors you can’t stand.

“Katie from Ohio?” he asks when you’re ranting one day about the partner you’ve been assigned in enviro. “We don’t like her, correct?” We.

“We do not.” Katie from Ohio does not pull her weight in group projects, and it’s driving you up the wall.

“You tell your prof about it? Isn’t this your favorite one?”

“Yeah, he is,” you groan. Haibara teaches your conservation bio class, and he also taught ecology your freshman year, and he’s the best teacher you’ve ever had. “But no. I don’t want to bother him about it. It’s whatever.”

He hums, unimpressed. “Is it?”

You groan, feeling like you’re getting lectured by your parents. You hate when other people are right. “You want me to talk to him.”

“I’m just saying, if you get a shit grade and it’s Katie’s fault, don’t come crying to me.”

“I will, though,” you say, putting your phone on speaker and setting it on the counter while you pour dog food into Batman’s bowl. “It’ll be super dramatic. I’ll sob in your arms and everything.”

He snorts. “Talk to your prof, Robin.” You stick your tongue out like he can see you.

But you do talk to your prof, and Haibara is your favorite for a reason. Katie gets a shit grade. You do not. Fushiguro does, in fact, say “I told you so.”

By mid-September, you still have no idea what Fushiguro’s first name is. You’re at the end of your rope.

you: GOOD MORNING MASON fushiguro (cute vet): no. you: MORT fushiguro (cute vet): no. you: why don’t you want me to know. is it crazy you: melvin fushiguro (cute vet): NO. you: marie you: meghan fushiguro (cute vet): … you: well, that’s it you: i’m calling you maleficent until you tell me you: i’m gonna do it in public too you: so loud

INCOMING CALL: FUSHIGURO (CUTE VET)

You don’t greet each other when you pick up—you never have. Instead, Fushiguro just says, “You could’ve picked like, ten other Disney characters and you went with Maleficent?”

“Don’t hate. You’d rather be Mufasa? Boy’s dead.”

“Oh my god.” Everything Fushiguro says sounds long-suffering. You wonder what it sounds like when he laughs, really laughs, if those walls ever break down and he lets himself actually outwardly express his emotions.

“I can call you Mickey Mouse if you really want—” Batman starts barking from his spot at the window, and you groan, waving your hand at him pointlessly as you try to get him to stop. “Hey! No! There is nothing outside, what are you on about?”

“He probably just thinks you’re barking with him,” Fushiguro says unhelpfully.

“Oh, and yours don’t bark out of turn?”

“Not really.”

Now that you think about it, you actually aren’t sure you’ve ever heard Shiro and Kuro bark aside from excited greetings at the dog park. “What the fuck, dude? Do they teach you the secrets of the trade in vet school?”

“Nah, I’m just a natural.” He says it so deadpan you aren’t sure if he’s joking or actually being cocky.

“Come over and help, then,” you say, before you can think it through. It’s a Saturday night, and clearly neither of you have anything better to do.

You aren’t sure what exactly you’re expecting him to say, but for some reason you’re surprised when he just responds, “Okay.”

“Bring the dogs.” You text him your address, and half an hour later he shows up with the dogs in tow. Meeting him at the door, you see his car parked along the curb. It’s small, black, as unreadable and practical as everything else about him.

“That,” he says, pointing to the long-deceased cactus in the pot on your front stoop, “is dead.” Probably because it’s been there since August and you forgot it was there after one week.

“Yes, thank you, very astute.”

“Isn’t keeping plants alive your whole thing? What are they teaching you?”

“Okay.” You start to close the door, but Shiro bounces forward and noses between it excitedly, and you laugh, opening it to let her and Kuro in. “Be nice,” you warn Fushiguro, letting him step inside. He rolls his eyes as he passes, and Batman nearly knocks him over with how excitedly he leaps up to greet him.

He’s also barking, and you raise a brow at Fushiguro expectantly. “Okay, Dog Whisperer. Do your thing.” You close the door behind him, and in the two seconds that you’re turned away, Batman fucking stops barking.

You whirl around, planting your hands on your hips, and find Fushiguro kneeling in front of your very silent, very happy dog.

“What the fuck.”

He looks up at you with the most smug expression on his face, and you throw up your hands in exasperation.

“Hey, don’t pout about it,” he teases, standing and following you into the living room. “That’s what you wanted.”

“I wanted you to teach me how to make him stop, but apparently you just slipped him treats behind my back.”

“Insult to my talents,” he says, hesitating when Kuro leaps onto your couch. “Are they allowed—”

“Ah, yeah, it’s fine.” Batman follows suit. “Got enough dog hair on that couch to make another couch, probably.”

You suddenly find you don’t really know what to say. Because Fushiguro is here, in your house, on a Saturday, your dog is not barking, and you’re alone. Alone with a guy you are very much attracted to. Suddenly you just don’t know any of the words in the English language.

But Fushiguro seems entirely at ease. He always does, really. There’s a quiet sort of confidence about him, and you aren’t sure if it’s fabricated or not. He just looks like he belongs wherever he is, nonchalant about everything.

“Done any more stalking?” he asks, sitting next to Shiro on the floor. You flush a little, feeling weirdly caught out when you aren’t the one bringing it up.

“No, but I might if you don’t tell me more about this band of yours.”

He shakes his head, absently playing with Shiro’s fur. “Just a crazy idea my housemates had. We just practice in the basement. Probably not very good.”

You opt to sit on Shiro’s other side on the ground, and Batman uses the opportunity to lick you directly in the face, since he’s on the couch and you’re now eye-level. “Thank you,” you tell him dryly, shoving his snout away.

“Don’t get humble now,” you tell Fushiguro. “What do you play? Or do you sing?” You really can’t imagine him singing. Everything about this guy screams quiet bass player.

Apparently you’re right. He won’t tell you the name of his band, and allegedly he doesn’t have any gigs this month, so you let it drop—but only for now. “Cagey,” you accuse him, but you’re smiling.

You talk about your courseloads for the semester—his is pretty bio and anatomy-heavy this semester where yours is mostly ecology and conservation-focused, but there’s a bit of overlap in your curriculum, and you find that it’s easy to make conversation about your respective career paths, even though he won’t stop bringing up the fact that you managed to kill a cactus.

“They’re notoriously hard to kill,” he drawls. “Did you try to?”

“No!” You cross your arms over your chest indignantly. “Mean.”

“Honest and mean aren’t the same thing.”

You don’t really notice the sun going down until the living room is swathed in shadow and you have to flip on the floor lamp. It’s been hours by now, but it’s felt like minutes. Every thing you learn about Fushiguro opens up ten new lines of questioning, and you want to know so much more about him. But he shrouds himself in this mystery you can’t seem to get around.

Eventually you stand up to grab snacks from the kitchen, and when you return you find Batman practically on top of Fushiguro, licking his face while Fushiguro just takes it. Cute, you think uselessly.

Batman. But also Fushiguro. And also just the sight of Fushiguro playing with your dog and looking entirely at home on your shaggy living room floor. Fuck, he’s really cute.

“Have you always had dogs?”

He shakes his head as he sits up and nudges Batman off of him, gaze going just a little distant. “Not ‘til I was a teenager.” There’s more there.

“Your idea? Tsumiki’s?”

He shrugs it off, picking at loose threads on his sleeve that don’t exist, some nervous tic he’s developed that seems to only show up when you try to talk about him. Hence, shroud of mystery.

Like you gathered at the coffee shop, his parents aren’t in the picture—dead or absent, though, you’re not sure. He does tell you a little bit about his legal guardian. His name’s Gojo, and according to Fushiguro he is certifiably insane. He says this enough that you know he means it fondly—if he didn’t, he just wouldn’t bring Gojo up at all.

It shouldn’t be possible to talk so much and learn so little, but the hours keep slipping by and finally neither of you can hide the yawns punctuating your conversation. “I should go,” he says, and you reluctantly lead him to the door, crouching to say bye to Shiro and Kuro before you open the door.

“Drive safe, Fushiguro.”

You don’t expect him to respond, but he pauses halfway down your drive, turning to look at you over his shoulder. The moon is out now, and it casts him and his dark clothes in silver. You suddenly find you can’t look away.

Not that you really want to.

“Megumi,” he says.

“What?”

“My name.” He swallows, looking away quickly before looking back. “You can call me Megumi. If you want.”

Chill. Be chill, you tell yourself, trying to school your features into that same neutral expression Fushiguro—Megumi—always has, but you know it’s not working. You can’t help but smile. You feel, weirdly, like you’ve earned something.

“Okay,” you say, leaning on the doorjamb. “Megumi.”

Megumi.

You do one last little bit of internet stalking that night, because you just want to know.

His name means blessing.

—

Everything about Megumi’s house speaks to the collision of three wildly different college-aged boys tempered by the saving grace of one girl.

Remotes for a range of gaming consoles are sprawled across the floor, there are way too many half-empty bags of Doritos, and you’re pretty sure there’s just a single half of a drumstick stuck between two of the couch cushions. But there are also nice, dark tapestries pinned to the walls, string lights bordering the room, a couple plants that are better-kept than any of yours have been.

You know very little about Megumi’s three housemates except that one is a golden retriever in human form, one is a skater boy, and one is a senior named Kirara who somehow keeps them all in check.

“Sorry for the mess,” he says, gesturing at the controllers and chip bags that honestly don’t constitute a mess in your book. Not after all the boys’ dorms you’ve seen, including Hajime’s.

“I like it,” you say honestly. “Also, it smells good in here. I’m proud. Kirara?”

“Kirara.” He nods and leads you to the couch, where you confirm that yes, that’s a broken drumstick.

“I don’t even—Jesus,” Megumi says, pulling it out of the gap between the cushions and tossing it onto the low coffee table. “He breaks more of these than I think is normal.”

“He being skater boy or golden retriever?” you ask as you tug your legs onto the couch to sit cross-legged, facing him. You dragged Batman with you—Megumi said his dogs would appreciate the company—and he’s taken it upon himself to sniff every corner of the house before deeming it suitable for playtime.

“Golden retriever. His name’s Yuji. Skater boy is Ino.” None of his housemates are here—it’s a random Thursday afternoon and the two of you happened to not have classes after two thirty.

“How’d you meet them?”

“Kirara went to my high school, so I knew her before coming here. I knew Ino too, actually. Yuji—I don’t know that anyone really meets him so much as gets forcibly adopted by him?” He somehow manages to make his scoff sound affectionate. “Him and our friend Kugisaki. They’re crazy, but we were all in the same orientation group freshman year.”

“Your friends sound fun.” You like the idea of two outgoing freshmen just deciding Megumi had to be their friend. “How’d you know Ino?”

He tugs at the sleeve of his black henley, picking at a nonexistent string. There’s a bit of a pause before he says, “His—I don’t know, his mentor? Nanami, he knows Gojo. So he was around sometimes.”

You don’t really know what to ask, simply because there’s so much to ask. It doesn’t take a detective to know there’s a lot to unpack in Megumi’s past. “How long have you been…” What’s the proper term for this? “Has Gojo been around, like… since you were a kid, or...?”

Despite your attempt to catch his gaze, Megumi’s eyes are trained on the far wall. “Kind of. Yeah.”

When he doesn’t elaborate, you fight to keep your lips sealed, to not push. You don’t have a right to his past. He can tell you if he wants to. But you’ve always been impatient.

And it’s starting to become a pattern, this strange caginess about his own life. His family, his friends. Every so often he lets something slip, and then it’s like you can see the doors in his mind slam shut—six deadbolts holding you out.

You know a little bit about Gojo, but that’s where the information stops. You drop hints that you want to meet Tsumiki, and whether he’s protective or just too oblivious to pick up on them, you can’t tell.

Maybe, then, the issue is that you haven’t given him much either. He’s met your dog and Riko, but maybe you need to offer him more of yourself before he’s comfortable reciprocating.

So you do. You tell him about your family, sitting on his couch with Shiro at his feet and Batman between you, Kuro unable to sit still. He listens while you talk, unsettlingly attentive eyes intent on you. You live about a half-hour drive away from your parents' place, you tell him, though you don’t go home often.

“It’s not that I don’t like my family,” you sigh, leaning back into the couch cushions and stroking Batman’s fur. “It’s more just that they’re never there, always on business, wrapped up in their own shit. So there’s just… no reason for me to stick around, except a couple times a year on holidays.” You shrug. “At least here it’s not an empty house. Or it’s not usually. When my roommate’s not in fucking Japan.”

“At least Japan’s cool,” he says, shrugging.

You sit up, leaning toward him. “You’ve been?”

He shrugs. “Yeah, once. Gojo said Tsumiki and I weren’t allowed to hit sixteen without having been on a stupid-long flight somewhere. Which sounds insane, but that’s pretty standard Gojo logic for you, I guess.”

“That’s so cool,” you sigh, part of you wishing you could be on a stupid-long flight right now. On the way to somewhere warm, preferably. Fall is starting to give way to an early winter, and you’re not looking forward to running Batman in the cold.

Travel, at least, seems to be a safe topic, and the two of you trade stories about road trips and flights and different cities. You challenge Megumi to Mario Kart at some point and immediately regret it, because why is he so good?

After he thoroughly kicks your ass, you sink back into conversation, walk the dogs, and eventually part ways so you can get some work done.

megumi (cute vet): you know when somebody says they’ll text you when they get home megumi (cute vet): and they don’t? you: SHIT SORRY megumi (cute vet): you’re not dead. you: NOPE you: sorry i got back and then batman knocked over a lamp megumi (cute vet): you don’t have to cover for his vigilantism, sidekick. i already know.

You do feel bad for forgetting to text him, but part of you is a little warmed by the fact that he was worried. Not that he’d ever admit to being worried about anyone, except maybe a dog.

you: okay fine he was stopping a robbery you: happy? megumi (cute vet): depends on what they were trying to steal

The work on your desk says you should stop texting and buckle down on your assignments, but he starts teasing, and you start feeding into it, and then you’re on the phone again, and by the time you finally hang up it’s too late to reasonably get anything done.

You can’t say you’re particularly upset about it.

—

The semester ramps up quickly, and you’re drowning in work. That’s your excuse when your basil plant by the kitchen sink dies a week after you bring it home—you’re just busy.

Megumi notices, and the next time he’s over a rosemary plant mysteriously appears in its place. He denies any involvement.

When you aren’t with Riko or Hajime, on the phone with Suko, or hanging out with friends from class, you’re with Megumi. His place, your place, the dog park, the coffee shop. It hasn’t reached a point where your friends comment on how much time you spend together (except Riko, who has a loud opinion on everything and does not care if other people don’t want to hear it), but you like the hours you steal during the week just walking around or drinking coffee or trading idle conversation.

You even visit him at work one Sunday when the clinic is slow, watching him handle the few dogs and single cat that come through. He’s easygoing with the clients and has that same calming effect on every animal—like he speaks some secret language, understands them in a way other people don’t. You love watching him like this.

You like this guy. It’s not rocket science—you put him in your contacts as “cute vet” the day you met him. The hard part is that Megumi is too difficult to read. If he has feelings for you, you have no idea. You don’t think he’d go out of his way to spend time with someone he didn’t genuinely like, but whether it’s platonic or not is so fucking over your head.

Until you finally meet one of his friends.

It’s Riko’s doing, really. The two of you are at the coffee shop when she strikes up a conversation with a redhead in line, and it doesn’t take long for her to make the connection, probably because they’re both talking ten miles a minute and not holding anything back.

“Oh my god!” Riko screeches, turning to you after you place your order. “Hey! This is Nobara. She’s friends with Fushiguro.”

She beams at you. “How do you guys know Fushiguro?”

Riko answers for you. “The vet. She has a dog, the clinic was closed, he was there. It was probably super romantic.” You groan.

Nobara’s mouth forms a small O and then she says, “Ah, you must be the sidekick.”

You can’t stifle your laugh. “He even calls me that when he’s talking to other people?”

She laughs, shaking her head. “No, he doesn’t tell anyone anything. Ever. But that’s what you’re in his phone as, and I saw his screen before he could hide it.” She leans in conspiratorially. “He won’t tell us who you are, which means he’s into you, y’know that, right?”

“Um. Is he? I don’t really—”

“Girl,” Nobara says flatly. “He doesn’t talk to people. Yuji and I have to force that guy out of the house half the time. If he’s hanging out with you, it’s because he likes you. Not that he knows that, probably. He’s horrible at feelings. I offered to give him a free therapy session and he said he’d rather become a monk.”

Riko mutters something about how that wouldn’t be too far off from whatever aesthetic he has going on right now, but you’re hung up on something else—Yuji and I.

“Oh my god,” you say, realizing something. “You’re Kugisaki.”

Her entire face lights up and she bounces on the balls of her feet. “He told you about me?” she squeals. “Ooh, he does love me! I’m gonna give him so much shit! What did he say? Was it good?”

The three of you end up talking for half an hour, after you all get your coffee and find an empty table. Nobara talks a mile a minute, but you can’t help hanging on to every word she says—she has a lot to say about Fushiguro, and you feel like you might be learning more about him this way than from the numerous conversations you’ve had with him.

She lives down the street from his place. She knows Gojo, who is apparently exactly the way Megumi described him—loud and eccentric and kind of stupid, but a guy who obviously loves his kids. She and Yuji, true to Megumi’s recollection, basically forced their friendship upon him on the first day of school, and they’ve been a trio ever since.

“He doesn’t tell anyone shit,” Nobara says, echoing her own words from earlier. “I feel like I probably know more about him from Gojo than anything. Or reading his notifications over his shoulder.” She smirks. “But he’s a good guy. I wouldn’t put up with his shit if I didn’t mean that.”

“About—what you said earlier, about him… maybe having feelings for me,” you start.

“Definitely having feelings for you,” she corrects. “Whether he knows or not? Undetermined.”

“Right. Uh.” You don’t get the idea that Nobara is a person you ever want to argue with. “Could you not… mention anything about that? To him?”

She sighs. “Course I won’t. Y’know, the guys always say I can’t keep my nose out of things, but two of my roommates have been in love for years and haven’t done anything and I haven’t said a word. Even though it sucks out part of my soul every time they’re in a room together and they just stare longingly when the other one isn’t looking. They’re so stupid.”

“You and Fushiguro are also stupid,” Riko says helpfully. You glare at her, and she throws her hands up in exasperation. “What? You like him, right? You can’t look me in the eyes and say you don’t like him.”

“He is a good friend,” you say, feeling the burn in your cheeks give you away even before Riko starts cackling.

“I like you,” Nobara tells her, sizing her up. “I might regret saying this, but I think I need you to meet one of my housemates. You could be chaos goblins together. I feel it in my bones.”

Riko rubs her hands together like she’s plotting something, and you think you should probably keep her as far away from said housemate as possible.

Eventually, Nobara pushes to her feet, draining the rest of her coffee and slinging her bag over her shoulder. “I gotta go, but I’m so glad I ran into you. I feel like a spy, knowing Fushiguro’s secret girlfriend.” She wiggles her brows at you, and you don’t bother denying it, just burying your head in your hands instead. “You guys should give me your numbers. I can give you Fushiguro intel.”

Riko immediately accepts Nobara’s phone. You wonder how Fushiguro will feel about all this—fond exasperation seems like the default emotion when it comes to his friends. But you give her your number, waving goodbye as she skips out the door, and lean back, thinking as Riko immediately starts to tease you about your boyfriend-not-boyfriend and how at least he has cool friends, even if he doesn’t have a personality.

You just keep looking out the window, trading snarky comments with Riko as it gets dark—earlier now, at the end of September.

“Are you ever gonna tell him?” Riko presses. “I don’t wanna watch you pine for the next six months.”

“We haven’t even known each other that long,” you insist, tracing patterns aimlessly on the tabletop. “And I don’t… I don’t know. I kind of want him to be the one to say something. Because if Nobara’s wrong and he isn’t actually into me, I could fuck everything up—”

“Isn’t actually into you?” Riko exclaims. “Oh. My god.” She waves a hand in front of your eyes. “Can you see? Do you need to get your vision checked? Do you—”

“Okay!” you laugh, swatting her hands away. “Message received, Jesus. Chaos goblin was right.”

“I wear that as a badge of honor,” Riko says solemnly.

Yeah. She can never meet Nobara’s housemate.

—

It’s a Wednesday, and you and Megumi are walking back to your place from the dog park. His car’s at your house, and the dogs have just had a very high-energy playdate that hopefully knocks them out for the night. The air is chilly and the sky dimming, and everything about it feels immaculately fall.

That’s where your conversation has ended up—the upcoming fall break, which is really just a Friday where neither of your campuses have classes. A three-day weekend really shouldn’t be called a break, you think. It’s misleading.

“You’re not going home?” he asks, and you sigh, shaking your head.

“Parents won’t be home. Not really much of a point.”

“We could—” He clears his throat. “We can hang out that weekend if you want. If you need the company.”

“You’re not going home either?” You glance over at him, a little puzzled. “Like—to Gojo’s?” His lips become a thin, tight line, and you wonder if you’ve somehow crossed some invisible boundary. You’re about to tell him he doesn’t have to talk about it if he doesn’t want to, despite being on the brink of insanity because he doesn’t tell you anything, ever.

But then he says, “He’s a bartender. Not around weekends, usually.”

“Ah.” Nobara mentioned that.

You did tell Megumi about running into Nobara in the coffee shop, and he immediately looked like you told him that you hung out with Gojo and saw all his baby pictures.

“She’s nice!” you insisted, and he sighed, raking a hand through his hair.

“She has no filter.”

“She’s fun.”

“She’s Kugisaki.” He shrugged. “Learn anything interesting?”

You told him about your conversation, minus the whole feelings thing, and he agreed that Riko and Toge Inumaki should never, ever meet. “For the good of the entire world,” he said solemnly. “People would die, Robin.”

Now, as the two of you turn onto your street, he glances at you like he’s trying to find something. And maybe it’s how tired you are, maybe it’s the way his eyes look so bright even though they’re so dark, maybe it’s that weird streetlight-night aura that makes everything feel a little bit not real, but you find yourself studying him right back, meeting his gaze without shame.

You want to know him, to be a part of his life in the way he’s become a fixture in yours. You want to meet his housemates. You want to meet his sister, his family. You want him to open the door and stop acting like you’re going to rob him or something the second you get inside. He knows you better than that, right?

He blinks, and you smirk. “I win.”

“Wh—that was not a staring contest.”

“It’s okay,” you tell him sympathetically. “You can’t be good at everything.”

His laugh—his real laugh—isn’t anything like you thought it’d be, but somehow it’s even better. It transforms his whole face, some blink-of-an-eye shift that lights up his eyes and makes everything about him brighter, louder.

You want to make him laugh like that again. As often as you can, really. Always.

“What?” he asks, staring at you, the light lingering in his eyes, some sort of afterimage of his joy.

“I just—I like your laugh.”

He stops, and you realize you’ve reached the end of your driveway. You drop Batman’s leash and let him run around the yard, and Megumi’s dogs follow suit, knowing better than to go far.

“I like your laugh, too,” he says, a crooked smile spreading across his face. And somehow that feels more like a confession than anything he’s ever said to you.

You’re very close.

He’s leaning in and you’re almost subconsciously reaching up to meet him, heels leaving the ground, and he’s still got the slightest curve of a smile lingering on his lips, and—

“Oh!” Shiro jumps on you from the side, tail wagging excitedly.

When you look back up at Megumi, laughter on your lips, his smile is gone, and he’s looking away, hands shoved in his pockets.

“Megumi—”

“That’s my cue,” he says, a forced-sounding chuckle punctuating the sentence. “I should, um. Get back.”

“Oh. Um, right. Yeah. Totally.” You’re kicking yourself now, feeling stupid, foolish. Did you just mess this whole thing up? Was it too soon? Did you read it wrong?

Megumi opens the back door of the car and lets the dogs hop in before circling around to the driver’s seat. “Robin…”

You look at him, trying to squash the hope adamant in your chest. And he looks like he doesn’t know what to say, for a moment, his lips parting and then closing and his eyes darting around before they finally land on you again. “Night,” he says quietly.

“Night, Megumi.” You lift a hand in a half-wave. “See you.”

Batman stares at the street long after the car has disappeared around the corner, and so do you.

“Fuck,” you murmur, and then again, louder, “fuck.”

—

Megumi’s texts over the next week are less frequent and more distant—at least, you think so. Maybe you’re getting too in your own head about it.

From then on, he’s pretty quiet. You wonder if you fucked up. You haven’t talked about it, the kiss. Almost-kiss. Your texts start getting fewer and far between, and in the chaos leading up to midterms you almost don’t notice. Almost.

Lots of almosts, lately.

you: still on for break?

Part of you expects him to go back on his word, say something came up. Especially when he takes a half hour to respond. He’s just busy, you tell yourself. Stop being dramatic.

megumi (cute vet): your place at 5, right?

“Oh,” you say aloud to nobody but Batman, smiling a little. Well, that’s good. You can ask him what’s been on his mind lately. He just seems… preoccupied.

When break rolls around, you spend Friday out with friends and Saturday catching up on schoolwork until Megumi comes over. You’ve hung out so often—you don’t know why you’re nervous.

And it seems contagious. He still shows up at your door and immediately picks up a conversation you left off on the last time you texted him, but he just seems slightly out of reach, somehow. You let it slide for about twenty minutes before you sit him down on the couch and ask.

“Okay. What’s going on with you?”

“What?” You don’t know if he’s playing dumb or just actually doesn’t realize he’s been acting strange.

“You’ve been… look. You’re acting weird. And I feel like we need to talk about whatever happened last week.”

The ensuing silence makes you want to take it back, or say something else, or do anything to create sound in the little bubble of waiting that's formed around the both of you. But you make yourself wait. Give him the space to find words.

“I guess… there is something I wanted to talk to you about,” he says suddenly, flatly, without looking at you. Your mouth slams shut and you find yourself drawing back a little, the remoteness of his voice almost physically distancing.

“Uh,” you say, like the eloquent person you are. “Okay?”

He swallows once, hard, and he looks at you with so much reluctance you almost wish he’d just look away. Your heart is twisting itself into knots.

“I think we should… take a step back.”

“What?” you whisper. “What do you mean?”

He sighs, raking a hand through his hair. “I mean—this is going… do you want a relationship?”

The question feels so abrupt you’re momentarily shocked into silence. But you know where he’s going.

He doesn’t want this. Doesn’t want—you. And it hurts more than you thought it would. It’s not so much a sharp stabbing sensation as a thousand needles worming their way into the crevices of your heart, slow and numerous and deadly.

Because you do want this. You want him.

“Yes,” you admit, quiet.

And he says, “I don’t.”

In general, you want to ask, or with me? But the words stall in your mouth, all blocked up and sticky, and you don’t say anything at all.

“You shouldn’t,” he murmurs, looking down. “Want that. With me, I mean. It’s…”

“It’s what?” you ask, hesitant. Another long, horrible silence.

“It’s never going to work,” he says, detached. Almost cold. “Us. This.” He’s still not looking at you.

“Let me ask you something, then,” you say, hating the unsteadiness of your voice. “Do you want it to?” Do you have feelings for me? You want to know if this is something he’s denying himself or if he really just doesn’t like you.

You know your own intelligence, though. You haven’t made up whatever this feeling is between you.

He doesn’t answer your question. Just murmurs, “You don’t know me.” And somehow it sounds like an accusation.

“You won’t let me!” you burst out, your voice louder than you intended. But all this caginess, this dancing around everything real, it’s got you at the end of your fuse. Shiro looks up and whines, Kuro leaping off the couch to stand in front of the both of you, curious. “I told you everything! I told you about my family and my friends and my classes and my hometown and my car problems and fucking Katie from Ohio, and you don’t say anything, Megumi, you won’t talk about your family, you won’t introduce me to your roommates. You won’t tell me about your band or your childhood, you took weeks just to give me your first name! What—are you just embarrassed of me? Do you think I’ll judge you? Do you not trust me? Is that it?”

“No,” he practically growls. “God, it’s just—you don’t understand—”

“You’re right, I don’t!” you exclaim, throwing your hands up. Batman paws at your leg, wondering why you’re shouting. “So help me understand. I know I’m not patient, but if you have shit you’re not ready to talk about, that’s fine. But just say that. Tell me to wait and I’ll wait. Just—give me something.”

He looks at you and he’s utterly unreadable, doors slammed shut.

“If you don’t want me in your life, just fucking say so,” you spit, but your voice is wavering now, uncomposed and only loud so it doesn’t shatter. If he really said it, said I don’t want you, you don’t know what you would do. It would be too sharp, too painful, too much.

“You don’t want this,” he says instead, averting his gaze. His tone is measured and even and emotionless.

“Don’t tell me what I want,” you seethe, but your words come out quiet. “If you really think I don’t want this, it’s because you won’t let me.” You’re whispering now, worried that if your voice raises any more, it’ll crack the paper-thin walls holding back your tears. “Megumi…”

“S’better this way.” He rubs the heel of his hand over his eyes, a messy movement that seems so at odds with the evenness of his tone. “I… I have to go, Robin.”

And the strange, unstable feelings of betrayal and confusion and hurt morph abruptly back into something hotter, something angrier. Because how dare he come here, spend fall break at your house, listen to you spill your heart onto the carpeted floor? How dare he run away, say he doesn’t want this, and then still call you that stupid, endearing fucking nickname?

“Yeah,” you say icily, glancing away with your arms crossed over your chest. “You do.”

You count to five, silently, before he moves, and you don’t look when he does. You blink tears out of your eyes when Kuro hesitates, nosing at your hip before following Megumi out the door.

It slams, hard, and Batman stays perched at the entry, tracking him as he walks out of your house, your life.

You don’t move for a very long time.

INTERMISSION // A REAL GOOD START

MEGUMI FUSHIGURO IS in deep, deep shit.

That is to say, he’s lost control of the situation, which is the one thing he does not allow to happen. Ever.

He can’t stop thinking about you.

Sleep is hard to come by in the days after he fucks everything up. He keeps thinking about how it could have gone if he’d just—if he’d done anything else. If he hadn’t run off after he almost kissed you, traitorous heart thumping in his chest even while his brain screamed danger!

You became part of his life so fast and so naturally he didn’t know it was too late until the damage had already been done. If he let himself kiss you, he would drown.

But he didn’t. He shut you down instead, on a Saturday night that could have been different.

He makes excuses when Gojo invites him over Sunday afternoon, going into work early just to avoid him. Even if Megumi’s perfected his poker face, nothing gets past Gojo. It’s like he has some sixth sense for when his pseudo-kids are in emotional turmoil. He’ll force Megumi into a talk therapy session (run by the most unqualified bartender of all time) and he’ll die of embarrassment on the couch.

So instead of talking to someone, anyone, he throws himself into his work, into rehearsals, into school. He goes to the clinic early and leaves late. His fingers are sore from plucking the same lines out on his bass until his housemates go to sleep. His eyes are dry from staring at his laptop until three in the morning. But it doesn’t matter what he does. He can’t. Stop. Thinking. About. You.

The thing about being in a band with all of his housemates is that there’s really no world in which they don’t notice something’s off. They’re spending even more time together lately than usual with the Battle of the Bands going on, and his only relief is that none of them say anything—at least not aloud. There are a number of raised brows and the occasional questioning shoulder nudge, but it seems Yuji, Ino, and Kirara know him well enough by now not to push. That, at least, he’s grateful for.

Nobara Kugisaki is a different story.

It’s a Monday when she storms into his living room—she didn’t even bother knocking on the front door. Shiro and Kuro run happily around her legs, and normally she’d be fawning over them, but today she looks furious. He can almost see smoke coming right out of her ears, eyes narrowed to dark slits as she stares him down.

“Fushiguro.”

“You,” he points out, “do not live here.”

“And you,” she seethes, “have one minute to explain to me what the fuck you did.” Before he can say anything, she waves her phone around in the air and says, “Hi, Nobara, I was just wondering if Fushiguro seems okay to you? Things kind of fell off and I would feel weird reaching out but I’m just a little worried.”

She’s quoting you.

Texts from you.

Shit.

Megumi knows that you and Kugisaki have met, but for some reason it just did not cross his mind that you might have exchanged contact information.

Control the situation.

He clears his throat, refusing to break eye contact. “Well, she said it,” he huffs, his usual toneless expression. “Things fell off.”

You still wanted to check on him. He treated you like that and you still…

“You broke up with her.”

“We weren’t together—”

“You broke up with her. Are you a fucking moron? This girl—” She jabs her finger into her phone screen so hard he’s surprised it doesn’t hurt— “is so fucking cool. And she puts up with you. And you like her. And now you’re acting all weird. So what, you go over there and tell her you can’t be together? What the fuck, dude? Why?”

What a loaded question that is.

“Because,” he grits out. “It wouldn’t have worked.”

“It wouldn’t have worked,” Kugisaki repeats flatly, walking over to the couch and making herself at home way too close to him, staring him down. He turns his head away. God, she is so persistent. She is so annoying.

“Yeah, congrats, your hearing works. Can you leave me alone?”

“Tell me you don’t have feelings for her and I will.”

“I—”

“Look at me and say it,” she snaps.

Megumi looks at her. “I don’t,” he mutters.

Kugisaki rolls her eyes so hard Megumi can’t believe they stay in her skull. “Okay, sure,” she says skeptically. He doesn’t like this tone, where it’s going. “So if I set her up with Toge, you wouldn’t mind?”

“I—” He clamps his mouth shut, hands curled into fists. “Kugisaki, that’s not—”

“That’s what I thought.” Normally she’d look smug, victorious after pulling one over on him, but this is worse. She just looks… concerned. He hates it.

“Look,” she sighs. “You’re not going to talk to me, so I’m not going to waste my time. But when you figure this out—and you will figure it out, or I might kill somebody, and it will be you—I’ll be all ears.” Her gaze might as well be pinning him to the wall with how fierce it is. Sometimes he lets himself forget how much of a force Kugisaki can be, and right now, she’s got that glint in her eyes that he hates, the one that makes him feel like she knows something he doesn’t. “Understood?”

“If I say understood, will you get out of my house?” he grumbles. She says nothing, just looking at him, and he thinks maybe she could win a staring contest with a fish. For a long, tense minute, he doesn’t say anything, and neither does she.

Whatever. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. She’ll forget about it eventually.

He sighs, tipping his head back against the wall.

“Understood.”

—

Things seem to happen around Megumi, to him, not because of him. The last conscious decision he made was to end things with you, and now he’s just a passive witness to his own life. Ino has something going on with Nobara’s housemate, Yuji’s scrambling to pass his midterms, Kirara bounces between their house and Hakari’s place faster than he can keep track of, and Megumi… he just exists in the periphery, goes through the motions.

He keeps finding his thumb hovering over your contact name. A dog with a silly name comes into the clinic and he wants to text you about it. He hears a song that reminds him of you (every song reminds him of you) and he wants to play it for you.

He wonders if Riko has him on a hit list yet.

A voice in the back of his head that sounds an awful lot like Kugisaki keeps repeating, Why?

Why did he end things? Why did he bite the bullet so fucking hard?

Because you deserve better than him, honestly.

You don’t know me, he told you. What he didn’t say, though—because you wouldn’t want me if you did.

Part of him knows that’s probably unfair to you—your words keep playing back in his mind and not even his music can drown them out. You won’t let me! But there are things he can’t imagine saying out loud. Explaining the way his dad disappeared, not even showing his face again when his mom died—eighteen-year-old Gojo from across the street on their doorstep, promising he and Tsumiki wouldn’t go into foster care. Bloody knuckles from fighting middle school bullies. Gojo and Geto trying to raise a bunch of kids when they were still kids themselves.

Gojo didn’t leave, but he should have. Megumi knows he threw away so much of his life for him, for Tsumiki. He could have done so much more. He could have done anything he wanted. But Megumi held him back.

Maybe he’s holding him back even now. He knows Gojo would deny it.

The point is, Megumi has shit to figure out for himself, and you shouldn’t have to sit by and watch him deal with it. That’s not fair to you. Yeah, he went about it wrong, but—but this is for the best. You can find someone who actually gives you everything you deserve, and he can… whatever.

Megumi’s band, Shibuya Incident, doesn’t perform this Friday at The Fix—Shoko and Geto’s bar. They’ve already made finals. Tonight will just decide who their opponents are. But even if he’s not up there playing, the Battle of the Bands is a welcome distraction. Even if Ino’s just making lovesick puppy eyes at the stage the whole time and Yuji won’t shut up about wanting Taco Bell. Megumi lets himself get a little lost in the music, and Kugisaki’s band is good, really. He votes for them as soon as the digital form opens and then vows to never tell her.

They should win, but Black Flash takes it again. Kasumi Miwa and Maki’s sister and their friends. They won the whole thing last year. Great, Megumi thinks.

The night comes and goes, and he dodges Gojo on his way out of the bar despite knowing he’ll get a text about it later. And then they’re all piled into Yuji’s car on the way to get his beloved Taco Bell, and he’s just about convinced he’s done with feeling anything at all when Kirara screams.

For a second, there’s nothing at all.

And then the world comes back to life around him in a shock of colors and sounds and a lot of cuss words, mostly coming out of his own mouth.

“Holy shit!” Yuji shouts, yanking the wheel hard to the right, and Megumi can barely process the sight of the white car barreling toward them before there’s crunching metal and shattering glass, and it’s like he feels the collision as an aftershock, shaking all his bones back into place. The airbags go off and he’s blind, wind knocked clean from his lungs, and then he’s moving—no, he moves. No more passivity. This is real.

“Everybody out,” he demands, wrenching the passenger door open and taking in the sight of the crash. Smoke is billowing from the hood of Yuji’s car, the vacant passenger side of the other one entirely smashed in. “Everyone okay?”

Yuji circles around the back of the car and Megumi clocks immediately that he’s holding his wrist weird, wrong. “Yuji—”

“Ino, come on—hey. Hey. Ino.”

Kirara’s got one knee on the edge of the backseat and one hand braced on the roof of the car, and Ino is not making any move to get out.

Sirens. Who called the cops?

“Kirara?” Yuji asks, moving to help her, but she holds up a hand and looks back over her shoulder.

“Don’t. I got it. We’re fine. Just—bad memories, I think.”

Megumi knows Ino hates driving. He doesn’t know why, but he can guess. So he doesn’t push it. Kirara’s the psych major, after all. And probably the one with the most emotional intelligence and any semblance of tact. She’s got him.

He’s about to turn to Yuji when somebody stumbles out of the other car. The car that had been driving in the wrong lane,directly toward them. If Yuji hadn’t reacted so quickly, they’d all be dead.

“What the fuck,” he hisses.

It’s his cousin.

“What,” he says, louder, “the fuck? Naoya!” He storms over and grabs Naoya by the front of his shirt—his breath reeks of alcohol, and he’s laughing, like he didn’t just almost commit vehicular manslaughter. “What the hell, man? What’s wrong with you? Are you—”

He hears… screaming?

But not from here. Not in person. It’s…

Megumi looks at the cracked phone on the ground, having been flung straight through Naoya's shattered windshield. He looks at his shitbag cousin, who’s half tipping-over, legs like jelly under him.

“Naoya,” he growls. “Who. Is. That?”

“Hah,” he slurs. “Mm. My ex! My ex. She is… she is.”

He’s not making sense, but Megumi might get back into Yuji’s car and drive it into his cousin on purpose. Naoya was dating this girl—Megumi knows her. She's friends with Yuji. Some brand of art major, he’s pretty sure, and she's nice, way too good for him. And then what, she finally gets away and he still torments her? By drunk calling her from the car, letting her listen as he crashes? The blood in Megumi’s veins might as well be venom.

He shoves Naoya back with a scoff, letting him stumble over himself, and grabs the broken phone off the ground. “Hey,” he says, and she’s still screaming, this poor fucking girl— “Hey! Hey. Calm down. It’s—hello?”

“Naoya? What the fuck, Naoya—”

She’s definitely talking through tears, maybe angry, maybe scared.

“Not Naoya,” Megumi sighs. “Uh, this is Fushiguro.” She’s quieting a little on the other end, and he hears a guy’s voice trying to talk her down. “Listen. Naoya’s fine. Just… drunk. And an asshole. Are you okay?”

After that, the entire night is a blur.

He talks down Naoya’s traumatized ex-girlfriend on the phone, Ino’s girlfriend shows up and calms him down, and then Gojo and Nanami and Shoko are there and Hakari shows up and Gojo’s dragging Megumi to the ER with Yuji to get his wrist checked out and it’s sprained and Tsumiki is running into the waiting room and hugging the life out of him and Maki calls and Naoya’s got a DUI and then finally, finally they’re home. Megumi can barely keep his eyes open. He doesn't know what time it is.

He sleeps harder than he has in months.

—

Megumi is so fucking exhausted that when his phone starts buzzing the next morning at the kitchen table, he doesn’t actually think it’s real for a second.

INCOMING CALL: SIDEKICK

He’s hallucinating. Sleep deprivation, or something. Or maybe he actually got a concussion in that car crash and now he’s seeing things that aren’t real. That’s the only explanation.

That or you butt-dialed.

He doesn’t bother explaining himself to the others as he stands up and retreats to the hallway, almost letting the phone ring out before steeling himself and swiping to accept the call.

“Hey?”

He’s never greeted you like that before. It sounds so fake. He usually picks up the phone and just starts talking about whatever you texted him, or whatever weird thing he saw that he has to tell you about. Not hey. Hey is for people he doesn’t know. Doesn’t care about.

“Um. Hey.” It is stupid, what just the sound of your voice over the phone does to him. “I just saw this article about a car crash? Are you—”

“I’m fine,” he says, too fast, too sharp. Stop it. “Sorry. I’m—yeah. We’re all fine.”

You clear your throat on the other end of the phone. “Okay. That’s—that’s good. I just… wanted to make sure.”

He pushed you out, and you texted Kugisaki to ask if he was alright.

He pushed you out, and you’re calling to make sure he’s okay.

I’m not, he wants to say. I fucked up. I fucked this up.

I miss you.

“Thank you,” he murmurs. “I… appreciate that.”

Maybe he can still salvage this. Still be friends with you, at least. But that’s a slippery slope, isn’t it? He’ll just hurt you again. But…

“It was my cousin,” he offers, not really knowing why he’s saying it. Maybe as a peace offering. He didn’t tell you things before, important things. Maybe he can start now. “Drunk. On the phone with his ex.”

“Oh,” you say. You sound surprised, but Megumi isn’t sure if you’re more shocked about his words or the fact that he gave them to you. “That’s… awful.”

“Yeah,” Megumi breathes. “Um. Yeah, he’s taken care of now.”

“Good. That’s good.” A dog starts barking, and Megumi feels his lips twitch up into an almost-smile.

“There he goes,” he murmurs. You laugh, and he’s actually smiling, now.

“There he goes,” you say fondly. “I should… go calm him down. I’ll…”

“Yeah, yeah, go,” he says, not sure how to end this. “Um, good… luck.” Stupid. That was so fucking stupid.

“Thanks. Bye, Fushiguro.”

“Bye, Robin,” he says, but the line’s already gone dead.

—

Megumi sees you three times in the month of November, and every time he feels ten times closer to a train wreck.

It snows in November, because it’s stupid and cold and winter comes early here, and there are prints leading toward the dog park. Imprints of dog paws and boots, side by side, and he’s a vet student. He knows what size dog those prints mean. He knows exactly who it is.

He lets Shiro and Kuro tug him all the way to the dog park, and he doesn’t even remember letting himself through the gate. He just knows that you see him right after Kuro starts panting excitedly, and you freeze.

He half-waves in the most pathetic, lame response ever known to mankind.

“Robin,” he says, the nickname falling off his tongue like nothing ever changed.

“Fushiguro.” You smile, hesitant, and he wishes it didn’t feel like a needle that you used his last name. He walks over to you—just following the dogs, he tells himself, that’s natural. Batman almost knocks him over in his excitement.

Megumi can’t not smile at a dog. That would just make him a bad vet, wouldn’t it?

“Hey, bud,” he says, crouching down to pet him. “Yeah, I missed you too.” When he looks back up, your gaze is a little distant, and he closes his eyes for a second, collecting himself. He pushes back to his feet and turns to you.

“Did you know I’d be…” You don’t finish the sentence, but he knows what you mean.

“I… snowprints,” he says, shrugging. It seems to be enough of an answer for you.

“Snowprints,” you echo. “We found you with tracks too, the first time. Didn’t we, Batman?” Like he understands, Batman slaps his tail against the ground and flicks his ears forward and back. Yep. Sure did.

He scrambles for something to say in the silence—small talk is the bane of his existence, but is it ever small talk when it’s you?

Small talk doesn’t matter.

Everything you say matters.

“So. They teach you how to keep plants alive yet?” he asks, and has to fight not to physically cringe after he says it. God, it’s like he never learned how to talk. But you laugh, which he counts as a win.

“No, but someone is significantly less barky, so thank you for that.”

He has you for five minutes before your phone rings, and you chuckle, showing him the screen.

“Ah,” he says. Riko. He doesn’t object when you go, slipping out through the gate with your phone pressed to your ear, because he doesn’t have the right.

But you text first, later.

sidekick: it was good to see you sidekick: and the dogs. obviously

“Look at that,” he mutters to Kuro, whose nose is nearly touching his phone screen. “You’re my good luck charm.”

megumi: you too, sidekick. megumi: and batman. obviously.

The second time, you’re crossing paths in the coffee shop, both of you on your way to other places. It’s brief and stilted and still leaves him feeling like a mess.

“Black?” you ask, nodding at his coffee. You’ve got a hat tugged haphazardly over your head to ward off the persistent snowflakes outside, and it’s—you’re cute. Fuck.

He huffs a laugh, looking down at the sleet-stained floor just to avoid staring at you and your cold-flushed cheeks. “What else?”

“Vanilla latte,” he says, glancing at your cup, because he wants you to know he remembers. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but he thinks you look pleasantly surprised.

The third time, you don’t see him.

He knew you had friends at JU, but he’s never seen you around campus before. You’re with the guy with the blue hair, always pulled up into two knots on the top of his head—Hajime, maybe?

You throw your head back and laugh at something he says, and it’s like—fuck. Laughter shouldn’t sound that poetic.

And he knows he can’t lie to himself anymore.

It’s time to talk.

Kirara would probably kick his ass the second he told her anything. Ino’s busy with his new girlfriend, Yuji’s an idiot, Kugisaki is… well, she’s Kugisaki, and he can’t handle that lecture right now. And he sure as hell isn’t gonna talk to Gojo.

Which means he only has one option.

When he knocks on the door of Tsumiki’s apartment, she takes one look at him and sighs, long-suffering.

“You finally ready to talk?”

This was probably a grave miscalculation. If Kirara would kick his ass for the way he treated you, Tsumiki might actually hang him from his ankles out the window and leave him to die. But not before he apologizes to you. So at least he’s got time.

He walks in without responding and ignores her invitation to sit, pacing the kitchen instead in an uncharacteristic show of nerves. “I fucked up.”

“Yeah, I gathered,” Tsumiki says dryly, but she hops up onto the counter and looks at him, patient as ever. Tell me, she doesn’t say, but Megumi hears it anyway.

“I think I might be in love.”

—

To her credit, Tsumiki is dead silent for the entirety of Megumi’s rambling explanation. He’s a little hoarse by the end of it—honestly, he never talks like this. He feels like he just dumped his heart onto his sister’s kitchen floor and is awaiting some sort of judgement.

“Also, I think she hates me,” he finishes, finally sinking into a chair at the kitchen table. He tilts his head back and stares at the popcorn ceiling. “And I deserve it.”

For a beat, Tsumiki is silent. And then she says, “You wrote a song about her.”

He snaps his gaze to her so aggressively it hurts his neck. “What?”

She rolls her eyes and pulls something up on her phone, sliding up the volume and pressing play. She scrolls to some random point in the song, and Ino’s voice sings, “She’s got me up late starin’ at my phone, waitin’ for a text, feelin’ all alone.”

“Tsumiki—”

She turns it up, and Megumi looks anywhere but at his sister. There are plants everywhere, warm light filtering in through the windows onto herbs on the kitchen windowsill and succulents in the living room and god, everything reminds him of you.

“And she don’t even know what she’s doin’ to me, all my hopes are high-strung and she’s just gonna leave, no!”

“Okay! Okay, stop, I get it,” he huffs, dragging the heel of his palm down his face and trying to ignore her smug smile. “How did you even know?” he mumbles. “I’m not on the credits.”

“I know you,” she says dryly. “I also know Ino, and his lyrics are not that… I don’t know, poetically nihilistic.”

“I really can’t tell if you’re trying to insult or compliment me right now,” he says, sighing.

“Also,” Tsumiki says pointedly, “because this is what you do, Gumi.” He gives her a quizzical look in lieu of a response. “When people get close to you, you lash out and then you run away.” She hops off the counter and crosses the room to the table, pulling out a chair across from Megumi.

“No, I don’t,” he grumbles, tilting his chair away on its back legs and inadvertently proving her point.

She just looks at him until he relents, burying his face in his hands.

“I don’t think it’s unprecedented,” Tsumiki says gently, “considering the way we grew up. But you can’t keep shutting down good things, Gumi. You wouldn’t even be friends with Itadori and Kugisaki if they hadn’t forced their way past your bullshit. And you love them, right? They’re great. You know they’re not gonna hurt you.”

“Nobody knows that,” he huffs. “College will end and we’ll all go our separate ways and I’ll never hear from—”

“Nope,” Tsumiki says loudly, cutting him off. “Okay. My turn to talk. Shut up.” She glares at him, planting her elbows on the table. He feels stripped raw. “The whole pushing-people-away-before-I-get-hurt thing? You need to stop. You cannot look me in the eyes right now and tell me you don’t have people who would die for you, Gumi.”

He opens his mouth to object, but she swipes a hand through the air, silencing him. “I’m not done.” Megumi has only seen his sister like this a few times in his life, and he is fairly certain that if he tries to interrupt her again he might not leave this apartment alive.

“You have me. You have Gojo. You have Geto and Shoko and Nanami. You have all of your housemates, and Kugisaki, and probably all of her housemates too,” she says. “And none of us are going anywhere, okay? No walking out on the kids, no betrayal, no kicking you to the curb. So you need to get your head out of your ass, Megumi.”

Well.

“Look. It’s a defense mechanism. I get that,” she says, a little gentler now. “But you are not doing yourself any favors. And this girl? You’re in love with her, Gumi. That means she’s pretty special, okay? Because I don’t think I’ve ever even seen you look twice at a girl in your whole life. And I know she doesn’t deserve this, just as much as you know. So you have two choices.”

Megumi doesn’t think he’s going to like either of the two choices.

Tsumiki leans back in her chair, shrugging. “You can let her move on without you and keep screwing yourself over, or you can go tell her you fucked up and ask her to forgive you.”

He’s never liked asking for things. Tries to avoid it, actually. But he’s finding there are a lot of rules he’s willing to break when it comes to you.

“But if you’re going to ask this girl to step back into your life, you need to make sure you’re ready for it,” his sister says firmly. “You need to have your shit together. You need to know how you feel.” She pauses, catching his gaze, and once she has it she might as well be holding his face in her hands. He can’t look away, not when she’s looking at him this intently, like she’s waiting for an answer she already knows. “So. How do you feel?”

When he doesn’t answer right away, Tsumiki knocks on the table, like a dismissal. “Okay. You think about that, and when you know—you know.” She looks at him for a long moment after he stands up, those eternal curled locks of hair falling into her face, and he’s suddenly hit with a wave of affection, of gratitude, so strong he can barely stand it. Yeah, so he doesn’t have a mom. And fuck his dad. But Tsumiki—thank god he has his sister.

“Miki,” he says, before he can stop himself. “Uh—thank you. I…” He swallows once, hard. “Love you.”

Her smile is slow but wide, the kind that makes her eyes narrow just a little. “I love you too,” she says softly, and then she winks. “Hey, those words? That’s a real good start.”

—

When Megumi sees you next, he’s going to be ready. Just like Tsumiki said. He needs to know how he feels. So he thinks, and he thinks, and he thinks.

There’s a notebook in the bottom drawer of his desk, scrawled song lyrics he’ll never let anyone see. He fills page after page after page trying to figure out what’s going on in his head, in his heart, how he can make it make sense. Fit together like two hands, two sets of prints in the snow. He tries to imagine what he’ll say to you, how you’ll react, but every word he thinks of falls short, everything just sounds stupid in the face of how much you deserve and how little he can give.

He keeps thinking.

It’s December 19, Kugisaki’s Christmas party before everyone parts ways for break.

Megumi won’t admit it, but he’s having a good time. He brought the dogs, and he and Yuji have been bouncing around talking to their friends. Tsumiki’s here too, and when he loses track of Yuji he makes his way over to her, leaning silently against the wall.

“They’re cute,” she says fondly, and he follows her gaze to the hall—Ino is standing there with his girlfriend, Skipper, and there’s mistletoe hanging right above them. No doubt Kugisaki’s doing. Skipper laughs and pecks Ino on the lips before he says something and drags her down the hall, and then Maki and Yuta glance up at the mistletoe, look at each other in mutual horror, and pointedly do not walk beneath it. They’re finally together, but they wouldn’t be caught dead kissing in front of other people.

And he wonders what you’d do, if you were here standing under it with him.

He doesn’t have to say anything. Tsumiki reads him like a book.

It’s like this:

Megumi is very well-acquainted with loss. But he’s not sure he can handle this one.

He let his own insecurities ruin a good thing, a bright thing. He shut it down before it could start. He struck first and he fucking regrets it.

That’s it, then. Pity party over. Delusions down the drain. It’s time to get over himself, to get real.

Because the truth of it is that he doesn’t give a shit about his birthday, about Christmas, about the trees and the lights and the stupid fucking carols, if you’re not there with him.

Oh, he thinks. His sister has the audacity to smirk.

He stays, because this is Kugisaki’s party and despite everything, he does love her. He’s getting better about that, about acknowledging it—he has people who care about him, and he has people he cares about.

But when he heads out just a little bit early, after whispering your name in Kugisaki’s ear, she nearly slaps him for not going sooner.

“Shiro, Kuro,” he calls, heading for the door. “C’mon. We’ve got somewhere to be.”

PART II // TO TRYING

FOR A WEEK after Megumi walks out your front door, you drown in self-pity like the flower you killed in September with too much water. 

And then you open your computer and type his name into the search engine with jujutsu university and band. It’s not hard to find—one of the first results is some Instagram advertisement about a Battle of the Bands at JU, from a couple of weeks ago. One of them’s got to be his. You could just ask Nobara, but—it feels weird, somehow. Wrong. Like you’re encroaching on part of his life that he so clearly doesn’t want you to be a part of.

You can’t helping asking her to check on him, though. You just—it’s probably stupid, but you want him to be okay. Not that you think him pseudo-dumping you would tear him up or anything. But there’s a not insignificant part of you that doesn’t believe what he said that day. Part of you that knows a defense mechanism when you see one.

The thing is, you could’ve asked your friends about him. Hajime goes to JU. He might know Megumi, and if not he could’ve found out. But you wanted this for yourself, this mystery of earning his first name and his history and his heart, except you thought you’d gotten two of the three and it turns out he’ll only ever give you one.

You start typing in the bands one by one, figuring eventually one of them has to be his. A search for Black Flash turns up an artist image of a group of people surrounding a grinning girl with bright blue hair. No Megumi, though.

Shibuya Incident, then. You key it into Spotify and rub your eyes when the artist profile comes up, like you’re maybe seeing it wrong. No. It’s him.

There’s a dark-haired girl who must be Kirara leaning on a familiar-looking guy with pink hair, face split open in a smile. Front and center is a brown-eyed boy with a beanie tugged lopsided over his hair. And in the back, standing, looking characteristically bored, is Megumi Fushiguro.

Why are you doing this? You shouldn’t be doing this.

But you’re scrolling before you know it. Most popular songs. They have an EP called Over Duress. And they have a single—released recently, it looks like.

Strike First.

You only allow yourself one second of hesitation before you press play.

“Catch feels real quick,” a voice sings—Ino, must be. “And they go real deep.” You can’t help paying attention the bassline. It’s steady, constant, holding the rest of the band together as Ino sings. The lyrics almost sink into the background until the chorus snags your attention, and you have to go back and replay it.

“I can hear the heartbreak saying, ooh, I’m on my way. So you strike first, strike first ‘cause she’s not gonna stay.”

Oh.

You understand, then, even if his name isn’t listed in the writing credits, even if you have no proof. Megumi wrote this song. You can hear him in the unfamiliar voice of the lead singer. You can feel him in the pattern of the words. It’s his.

He didn’t want you to leave, so he left first. Is that it?

You understand, but it’s not enough. Abruptly, you’re just—you’re angry. What a stupid reason to let something fall apart. You don’t owe him patience. If he’s not ready to commit, that’s not your problem, it’s his. He needs to figure himself out, learn to let people in, and you can’t just sit here and wait for him to do it. It’s not your responsibility.

It’s not.

There’s some sort of grim satisfaction in knowing that there’s nothing else you could have done.

“Forget that,” you mutter, closing out of Spotify and intending to just toss your laptop on the bed. Case closed. Moving on.

But something in your search results catches your eye first.

JU senior issued DUI after crash on 34th and Olson Blvd Friday night

Okay. So. Nothing to do with Megumi, right? Except it’s showing up in your search of his name. You click on the article, heart suddenly pounding.

Jujutsu University Campus Police responded to an emergency call at 11:41 last night after an automobile collision on 34th Street and Olson Boulevard, four blocks from the popular campus live music bar, The Fix.

“No,” you breathe. “What the fuck?” You keep skimming, everything in you loosening up when it says nobody was seriously hurt, but it just—whose car is that, Yuji’s? It’s bright red. Not Megumi’s.

You’re not really thinking when you make the call. It rings for so long, and right as you’re about to give up, he’s there on the other end of the line, and you realize you have no idea what you’re supposed to say.

“Hey?”

“Um. Hey.” You sound more breathless than you should, just sitting here on your bed with your laptop open to a student news publication. You don’t wait for him to ask why the hell you’re calling, barreling on before you lose your nerve. “I just saw this article about a car crash? Are you o—”

“I’m fine,” he says quickly. Defensively. Oh.

Right. This is overstepping, probably. He doesn’t need you checking up on him. You should’ve just texted Nobara. You should’ve just not read the article, actually, shouldn’t have typed his name into your search engine. He probably thinks you’re a creep who put Google alerts on for his name or something. You don’t have any real excuse for how you stumbled across this fucking article.

But then he says, “Sorry. I’m—yeah. We’re all fine.”

Thank god, you think. But you just clear your throat a little and say, “Okay. That’s—that’s good. I just… wanted to make sure.”

The silence is so long you think for a moment that he’s hung up on you. But then, very quietly, he says, “Thank you. I… appreciate that.”

You don’t really know where to go from here. He’s fine. Of course he’s fine. Why the hell did you call him in the first place? It’s not like he’s going to offer you any information. Because he doesn’t tell you anything, which was the whole problem in the first place—

“It was my cousin.”

You blink.

“Drunk. On the phone with his ex.”

“Oh,” you say, more of a surprised noise slipping out before you can bite it down. It’s less shock at the actual words than the fact that he’s giving you something, that he’s offering you this. You scroll down in the article. Naoya Zenin. The senior in the headline who got a DUI. “That’s… awful.”

“Yeah,” Megumi breathes. “Um. Yeah, he’s taken care of now.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Batman chooses this moment to start barking at absolutely nothing out the window. He actually has been a lot better about that recently, but it’s like it’s his mission today to embarrass you on the phone with the guy who dumped-not-dumped you.

“There he goes,” Megumi says lightly, and you laugh a little, because he sounds almost fond when he says it.

“There he goes,” you echo. “I should… go calm him down. I’ll…” What? You’ll what? See you around? No you won’t. Talk to you later? Unlikely.

“Yeah, yeah, go,” he says. “Um, good… luck.” With what? Batman? Life?

“Thanks. Bye, Fushiguro.”

You slam your finger down on the red button before he can reply.

You don’t want to know what he says. Your name, or sidekick, or Robin, or nothing at all.

—

You try to forget about him, but it’s hard.

Every time your phone buzzes with a message from your friends, classmates, family, your heart jumps, foolishly thinking it might be him. You follow Batman to the dog park without making the conscious decision to, and berate yourself when you realize, lead him off in another direction. Your rosemary plant dies and you hear him in your head, teasing you—isn’t the environment your whole career? Better shape up, sidekick.

Riko prepares a half-hour long PowerPoint presentation about all the reasons he didn’t deserve you in the first place. She must’ve told your roommate, too, because Suko calls you in the middle of the night, Japan time, just to check in.

A week into November, it’s dulled a little bit, the hurt. You’re still startled when he shows up at the dog park, but… not unpleasantly so.

“Snowprints,” he says when you ask if he knew you were here. One word, but it means more to you. Snowprints means he knew what he was walking into, and he came anyway. Snowprints means he saw a chance and followed it to you on purpose.

That’s progress, isn’t it?

You see him at the coffee shop and he remembers your order. It shouldn’t mean anything, but it does. Snowprints and a vanilla latte.

He said he didn’t want this, but you just… don’t believe him.

But you’re not waiting for him. If the cute guy from ecology asked you out tomorrow, you’d say yes. This boy isn’t dictating your life while he figures himself out.

You hope he does figure himself out. But you won’t hold on to scraps.

And you do start to forget, a little. The cute guy in your ecology class does not ask you out, but your friends and your studies and your needy dog are enough of a distraction that Megumi isn’t in the front of your mind all the time. The semester is flying by, and you make an effort to keep in touch with Nobara despite everything—she really is fun.

It’s approaching break before you know it, and you’re going home for the holidays soon, though you’ll probably be back before the new year because Setsuko needs a ride. Man, you’re excited to have a roommate again.

Your suitcase is half-packed, poorly folded clothes covering the whole of your bedspread in some futile attempt at organization. Christmas is in six days—well, five, you think idly, glancing at the clock. Half past midnight. You should go to sleep, but your bed is covered in clothes and you need to finish packing for your drive home in two days.

“Hey, no,” you lecture as Batman sniffs at a shirtsleeve dangling over the side of the bed. You can tell he’s considering making the leap and taking a nap on top of all your freshly laundered clothes. “No. Stay down.”

You push to your feet, yawning, and then Batman freezes in place, his ears perking up and forward like he hears something.

“What’s up?” you mutter, and then his head snaps toward the door. “Dude, what? It’s past midnight—”

The doorbell rings.

“The shit,” you mutter, trudging to the front door. Irrationally you wonder if your roommate’s home early, but that’s stupid—she’d have needed a ride from the airport, and she has a key.

You don’t know what you expect when you nudge Batman aside and open the door into the cold night, barely holding him back from the cracked door with your leg.

Oh.

You’re face to face with Megumi Fushiguro, and your heart does a diving, spinning leap into the bottom of your stomach.

His lips are slightly parted like he stopped speaking mid-word, eyes wild with urgency, and you suddenly wonder if he’s in trouble, if something’s really wrong. Snow peppers his dark hair, the porch light bouncing off the white specks and making him look like he’s sparkling.

You can’t find any words. None at all, nothing that can actually articulate the shock and confusion and barely-squashed hope. What is happening?

“Robin,” he says. And then he says your name, your real name, and—it’s like a dam breaks.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so fucking sorry. I—I’ve had some time to think and I really, really messed up and I don’t know how I’m ever going to make it up to you but I have to try to explain, I—it’s me, it was all me, all my fault, you’re amazing and I’m insecure and I let that get in the way of something really fucking good and that was stupid, so stupid, and I like being with you and I like knowing you and I want you to meet my friends and my weird messed-up family and I want you to know me, I want to let you know me, and I’m sorry I didn’t just because I got too in my own head about it, about you. You take up so much headspace it’s insane and I haven’t stopped thinking about you since—since, I don’t know, since I fucking met you, and I—”

The multi-colored Christmas lights strung between the pillars of your front step cast colors and shadows over him as he rambles, his cheeks red from the cold and maybe something else, and you can’t take it, watching him like this, desperate.

“Fushiguro.”

But he’s on a roll now, the words spilling from him like they’ve been building up in the hollow space of his throat for years, and he’s not stopping now. You’re not sure he even hears you over the rapid, panicked lilting of his own confession.

“You should turn around right now, slam the door in my face, I get it, I deserve that, and I don’t have any excuse that matters, but I realized how important you’d become and that scared me more than anything I’d ever felt because that meant I could lose you, you could leave—”

“Fushiguro.”

“And it’s—I fell in love with you months ago,” he breathes. “I’m sorry, and I love you, I’m so in love with you, and I—”

“Megumi.”

He finally stops, panting, every part of him frenzied and undone. His lips are still parted around a word he hasn’t said, freeze frame, the remote in your hands. “Will you just come inside?”

The silent second feels like ages, years, maybe, and you can see the disbelief in his irises, like he’s afraid to trust this, afraid to hope.

“No,” he breathes suddenly, and something comes dangerously close to cracking in your heart. Did he come here, say all this, only to leave you again?

“I—”

“No, because I brought the dogs and they’re sitting in the back of my car right now,” he explains, sheepish. An unbelieving, slightly hysterical laughter bubbles up out of you, warm and surprising and not at all unpleasant.

You grab Megumi by the dark fabric of his coat and yank him toward you, pressing your lips to his cold ones, hand slipping up to tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck. It’s like your warmth leeches into him limb by limb, slowly unfreezing him both from the cold and the frantic fear that you’d turn him away again, and it’s below freezing but he’s melting beneath your touch, and you missed him so, so much.

You pull back, your breath fogging in the air like an echo. “You idiot,” you tell him. “Go get them, I want to see them.” You cross your arms over your chest, leaning on the doorjamb and finally processing how cold it is out here. It’s like it’s sinking right into your bones. “And then get your ass inside.”

He smiles breathlessly, standing still for a moment, and then it’s like he just snaps into action, like he’s afraid you’ll change your mind if he waits another second. The dogs run up the path before he does, and you let them barrel into you and then have their little reunion with Batman while Megumi catches up.

“Come sit down,” you tell him, shutting the door and closing out the cold air. “And tell me more.”

It’s almost like nothing ever changed.

You talk for hours in the lamp-lit living room, surrounded by three tired dogs and a record spinning in the corner. But this time, Megumi talks more than you’ve ever heard him talk. He tells you everything.

How he pushed you away and justified it to himself by saying you deserved better, when really you deserved the truth. How his dad left and his mom died young and Gojo was barely legal when he took him in. How he had a lot of issues with his self-worth growing up, and even now, and how it took him a very long time to accept that people care about him. How it was Tsumiki's idea to get the dogs, because after their mom died he couldn't stop having nightmares. How he wanted to call you every day and then he finally cracked and he went to Tsumiki and she psychoanalyzed him at the kitchen table and he sorted out all his shit so he could show up here like an absolute nuisance and beg you to give him another chance.

“That’s all I wanted, you know,” you tell him, the both of you on the floor, leaning against Shiro and Kuro as they sleep. Batman’s made himself comfortable on the couch, occasionally using his vantage point to lick you right in the face. “You, being honest. You didn’t have to tell me about your parents, y’know, if you didn’t want to. But just…”

“I know that now,” he murmurs sheepishly. “I’m sorry. Really. But I’m trying to get over the whole self-sabotage thing. Trying to… try. In general. With people.”

And he means it. Because the only time Megumi has ever lied to you was the day he told you he didn’t want this, and you knew even then that it wasn’t true. He might try to be all stoic and poker-faced, but he’s not a very good liar. You smile. “That’s a good start.”

You’re facing each other, knees touching, and you reach out, hand palm-up between you. He glances at you before he makes any move, like he’s asking—are you sure? But then he laces his fingers through yours. His hands are way bigger than yours, fingers folding over your own, warm and encompassing. Something about it feels very right.

“So I was wondering,” he starts, and this new side of him that is so hesitant but also hopeful is maybe the most endearing thing you’ve ever seen. You squeeze his hand a little, and that seems to embolden him enough to ask whatever it is waiting on the tip of his tongue. “Uh, would you… want to meet my housemates?”

—

“They’re crazy,” Megumi says, standing outside his house with you the next day. “I mean it. I don’t know how to prepare you for—”

“Megumi,” you cut him off, laughing. “No disclaimers. I’m friends with Riko, remember?” This actually seems to be an effective argument, because he smiles a little, putting his hand on the door.

“Yeah, okay. That’s fair.”

You are tackled the second you cross the threshold.

“Hi!” someone practically shouts in your ear, full-on bear-hugging you as you stumble back, laughing.

“Oh my god,” Megumi groans. “Itadori—”

“Sorry!” he yelps, pulling back and awkwardly offering a hand like he didn’t just squeeze the living daylights out of you. “I’m Yuji. Kugisaki’s told me all about you and Fushiguro said—”

“Itadori,” he says again. You immediately understand what Megumi meant. This boy is legitimately no different than the two dogs who have come to crowd around your legs. Actually, Shiro and Kuro have greeted you significantly more calmly than Yuji has. It’d be difficult not to like him, you think.

“No, you’re fine,” you laugh him off, using the handshake to pull him back in. “You’re fun. I like you.” Yuji grins victoriously at Megumi and lets you go, and you finally move out of the entryway and into the familiar living space.

“Ino,” you say, pointing at the boy in a beanie, and then shift to the girl crouched in front of the TV, rummaging through a bunch of games. “Kirara.”

The conspiratorial smirk Kirara gives you—along with the way the Wii games are scattered all around her like a personal hurricane—makes you think she might not actually be the long-suffering order in a house full of chaos. More likely, she and Ino and Yuji are only kept in check by Megumi’s neat freak tendencies and blunt nature.

“Hey.” Ino grins. “Okay, I gotta ask, is your dog actually named Batman? Because that’s awesome.”

“She’s been here for two seconds,” Megumi chides, but you nod happily. You are very proud of your dog’s stupid name.

“Well, I approve,” Ino shrugs, patting the space next to him on the couch.

And it feels natural, the way you fall into place with the rest of them. For all Megumi pretends they drive him insane, it’s obvious he loves his friends, and he seems relaxed around them even as you waste away the afternoon chatting and arguing and getting your ass kicked in Mario Kart (specifically by Kirara, whose undefeated record pisses off all the boys but makes you even fonder of her).

By the time night falls, you feel like you’ve been friends with all of them for years. You learn all about the band—Megumi didn’t tell you that they won the Battle of the Bands, which you plan to give him shit for later. They ask you about your school and friends and seem to actually, genuinely want to meet them.

You go home for Christmas, getting your annual few rare days of quality family time, but Megumi sends you photos from Gojo’s with Tsumiki and the dogs. You respond with a picture of Batman in a Santa hat.

megumi: they really want to meet you when you get back. if you want.

A smile splits across your face before you can stop it. Because this is exactly what you wanted—for Megumi to want you to meet his family, to know that part of his life.

“What are you smiling about?” your dad asks from the couch, and your blush must be answer enough, because he turns to your mom with a raised brow and mouths boy. You shove your phone in your pocket. You weren’t prepared for the interrogation, but it’s too late now.

The thing is, if your family had asked you if you were seeing anyone even last week, you’d have nothing to say. And maybe you shouldn’t dump all this information on them when it’s still so fresh, so new.

But something tells you this is going to last. He wants you to meet Tsumiki, to meet Gojo. You won’t keep him from your family if he doesn’t keep you from his. Plus, your parents leave on another trip in two days. You’re not sure when else you’ll get the chance to tell them this in person.

“So,” you say, before they can start grilling you. “His name is Megumi.”

—

There are prints in the snow.

It feels uncannily familiar, walking your usual path with Batman and seeing the two sets of paw prints and accompanying boots. You place your own footsteps in their wake, laughing at how they dwarf your own shoe size.

You aren’t supposed to see Megumi until he picks you up to go to Gojo’s tonight, but it seems fate—or Batman—has other ideas.

You let him drag you all the way to a big, snowy clearing, where you see your boyfriend and Kuro standing in the snow. It takes you a whole five seconds longer to make out Shiro, who basically blends right into the landscape.

The dogs, per usual, see you first, and Megumi turns at their excited noises to see you. He wastes no time setting off across the field toward you, and you grin, meeting him in the middle.

“So is this a coincidence, or is someone following me?” he asks, meeting you at eye-level as you crouch to greet the dogs. Batman basically shoves his nose in Megumi’s face in response.

“Snowprints,” you say, gesturing to the trail behind you. “Seems to be a theme.” Behind the wall of Kuro’s dark fur, you plant your hands in the snow, letting a mischievous smile grow on your lips. “Anyway, I’m glad I ran into you, because—”

You throw a massive snowball right at Megumi’s face.

“Oh,” he says, swiping a gloved hand across his eyes but leaving flakes of white stuck in his brows, on his lashes. “You’ve done it now.”

“Protect me,” you whisper to Kuro, and then you run.

All-out war. The dogs are thrilled at every snowball that misses its mark, all of them leaping to catch the wayward projectiles in the air, and you and Megumi chase each other and trip over the snow and wind up in a big, snow-covered mess on the ground, staring up at a shockingly bright afternoon sky.

You can barely breathe, you’re laughing so hard. “You’re crazy,” you pant, pushing yourself up onto your elbows, then your palms. An absolute mess of snowprints—his, yours, Shiro’s, Kuro’s, Batman’s—cross over each other in the snow, revealing patches of browning grass here and there, showing the signs of your battle. “Aw, hey. It looks like a giant heart.”

“Sap,” Megumi snorts.

“Buzzkill.”

“Instigator.”

“Oh, yeah?” You grab a fistful of snow and put it right on his head, letting it melt into his tousled, snow-streaked hair. “Well, I’ll instigate, then.”

He laughs, shaking his hair out like a dog, and tackles you back into the snow. “Then I’ll instigate something else.”

You’re so cold you can barely feel half your face, but it doesn’t matter. Not when he kisses you like this.

—

The first thing you think when Satoru Gojo opens the door is damn, he’s tall.

The second is holy shit, those are the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

“Gumi!” he shouts, enveloping him in a very one-sided hug.

The third thing? Yeah, you like him.

“Gojo,” Megumi grumbles, half-heartedly pushing him away, but the fondness of the interaction doesn’t escape you.

“And I’ve heard all about you,” Gojo grins, pulling you into a hug as well—you don’t hesitate to hug him back, because now you know exactly what this man has done for Megumi and Tsumiki. And he’s important to Megumi, so he’s important to you.

Megumi telling you about his childhood and Gojo was one thing, but him actually wanting you to meet his family is another. You feel warm all over as Gojo ushers you into the apartment, where Tsumiki is already busy making dinner. She nearly drops the pan in her hands at the sight of you. “Hi!”

“You all hug so much,” Megumi says flatly when she hugs you too, and she just grins and forces him into an embrace as well.

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”

“Shut up.”

“Love you too.”

“So,” Tsumiki says, turning back to the stove and insisting you sit down and make yourself at home when you offer to help. “Tell me about you.” Instead, she enlists Megumi to be her kitchen assistant, and you aren’t sure why it’s so surprising that he knows how to cook, but it is.

The four of you talk about school and the dogs (who are at home with Suko, now that she’s finally back from Japan) and your families and friends, and you can see Megumi growing more comfortable as the night goes on, once he’s sure that Gojo isn’t about to whip out a bunch of embarrassing pictures of him as a kid or tell you all his darkest secrets. Tsumiki is sweet and you take a liking to her immediately, talking all about her job running the campus paper. Gojo tells you about the bar he works at, about his college friends who founded it.

“Do you have to work tomorrow, then?” you ask between bites of the best meatballs you’ve ever had.

Gojo shrugs. “Yeah. But if I wasn’t, I’d be hanging out with all the same people I work with, anyway. Not so bad, huh?”

“We’re actually probably going to swing by the bar tomorrow,” Megumi says, avoiding Gojo’s gaze in favor of looking at you. Gojo lights up. It’s endearing, how excited he is at the prospect of seeing all of Megumi’s friends. “You coming?” Megumi asks Tsumiki.

“To the bar or the house party?”

“Both,” Megumi shrugs.

“Only if you are,” she says not to Megumi but to you, teasingly.

“Yeah, I gotta meet the rest of his friends. All of Nobara’s housemates.”

“Oh, I love them!” Tsumiki says. “Mm, you’ll get along with Yuta. I mean, everyone does. Oh god, and Toge. And S—yeah, okay, all of them, actually. Have you met our cousin Maki?”

“No, but they all sound great,” you say honestly.

“They are!” Gojo says loudly. “They can give you so much dirt on Megumi.” Megumi glares at him with a complete lack of heat.

“You and my friend Riko would get along,” you say, but as soon as you say it you’re not sure it’s true. Either they would immediately gang up on Megumi and make his life a living hell, or Riko would have the same dynamic with Gojo and they would argue until somebody threw a punch.

Megumi stares at you incredulously. “They can never meet. Ever.”

Except they do, because you bring Riko to the bar the following night. You feel like this might have been a dire miscalculation, because not only does this mean she’s meeting Gojo, but it means she’s meeting Nobara’s housemate who, in her words, is a kindred “chaos goblin.” This means that they’re both comm majors with too much time on their hands and they make it everyone else’s problem.

Toge Inumaki is the very possibly the only person you’ve ever met who can match Riko in terms of sheer chaos. It is terrifying. They’ve known each other for a grand total of five minutes before they’re planning a full-on bracketed Just Dance tournament with Rasputin as the final battle.

“You’re insane,” you tell Riko fondly, and she grins at you.

“I think we’re brushing over the fact that you think Rasputin is the hardest one on there,” Gojo says, leaning over the bar incredulously.

“What, you think your old man knees can handle it?” Riko asks shamelessly, and you excuse yourself as they launch into bickering worthy of siblings.

But nothing explodes, and you meet Shoko and Geto and Utahime and Nanami, and all of Nobara’s housemates, including Megumi’s cousin. She’s very no-nonsense in a way that you appreciate, and after you shit-talk Naoya with her, you feel like you’re probably going to be very good friends.

It’s well past eleven by the time you all get back to Megumi’s place, leaving Gojo to ring in the new year with his own friends. Someone puts the ball drop on the TV in the living room and you all scatter across the space, a swell of conversation and laughter as midnight inches closer.

It’s like this:

A living room full of your friends and his, laughing and smiling and teasing and playing Just Dance really aggressively (but that’s just Toge and Riko, really). Megumi’s knee pressed against yours as Tsumiki forces him to smile for a picture with you. Nobara throwing her arms around you, insisting you settle a debate between her and Yuta about the superior shape of pasta noodle. Sneaking off to Megumi’s room while Yuji is distracted, stealing kisses in the dark. Listening to his whispered commentary in your ear as the drinks and sleep deprivation start hitting Toge and Yuta and they get existential on the floor. Suko telling everyone all about Japan and the occult club she started at her university there. Yuji being way too into the idea of starting one between JU and Kaisen, launching animatedly into a discussion of all his favorite conspiracy theories.

Five minutes to midnight, Kirara pops open a bottle of champagne and passes you a glass, and you wave it in front of Megumi teasingly.

“What, you wanna toast to something?” he teases, leaning in toward you. “You gonna say to us? That’s pretty Hallmark movie of you.”

You hum, swirling the glass, lifting your gaze to meet his. “To trying,” you say. “And also vigilantism?”

And there’s his laugh, better than the ball drop, the streamers, the disco ball that came from god knows where in the corner. “I can get behind that,” he says, clinking his glass against yours. “To your superhero dog,” he says, leaning in closer. “And his pretty cool sidekick.” He kisses you as the countdown hits one, and you’re laughing against his lips, savoring the warmth of his hand on the back of your neck.

When he pulls away, it’s only by centimeters, just enough for him to lock eyes with you. “And,” he breathes against your lips, “to trying.”

directory // my masterlist | out of my mind !

jjk taglist open: just send me a message!

@shutuppeter @mikikkoo @reactwithjan @theclassbookworm @lilactaro @bisforbuse @risararelywrites @idkidk32 @gojodickbig @stargazing-with-choso @anonymity-222 @honeyyhuggs

a/n: sorry this took like twenty years and it's SO LONG. heh. i'm incapable of short-form content. it was fun to write though. let me know what you thought, and be sure to pop over to out of my mind (and, if you're curious about naoya's ex, greta's sukuna spinoff, if you are NOT a minor)! thanks loves :)

[toovaeloe]

curse biologist!reader x assistant!gojo hc’s

content: gojo pining off his ass . little flirty lab partners . tw for sliiighhtest mention of an autopsy and related tools . warning for gojo poppin’ a stiff one in the lab cause he’s a freak like that (ur a freak like that), so mildly suggestive

mdni

curse biologist!reader— the higher ups want you dead and gone, that’s for sure. You, who has a cursed technique that turns cursed energy into something tangible. After applying your technique to a cursed spirit, it becomes visible to a naked human eye, and instead of disintegrating, leaves a corpse behind. You’re dangerous. Crazy. And well…too weird. But they just hate progress, don’t they?

Not Gojo. He really doesn’t think you’re doing any harm to be honest (and he’ll do just about anything if it creases another wrinkle into Gakuganji’s ugly mug)

I mean, who else has been able to make waves in the integration of curses into science like you have? You’ve uncovered an exponential amount about the inner workings of curses in a few years when the rest of Jujutsu society’s had centuries, only to scratch the surface. It’s really admirable how you deep dive into the nitty gritty, as he calls it.

assistant!gojo— who loves being your little go-getter. Your own personal cursed spirit Fetch-Fido— maybe if you squint hard enough you’ll be able to see floppy ears perked to attention in his snowy hair or an eager tail whipping up a hurricane behind him as he brings you back his latest catch: a detained grade 2 curse manifested by the fear of monsters under the bed. Yeah, he knew you’d like something like that.

assistant!gojo— loves witnessing the way your eyes light up and it’s as if he can see the cogs immediately gearing to life in your smart little brain. He’s saluting exaggeratedly with a puffed out chest when you give him the go ahead to kill the thing after you’ve had your hand at it. It’s all he can do not to ask for a pat on the head and praise of how well he did. Getting a “Good boy,” out of you is on his mental vision board.

assistant!gojo— sticks around for the autopsies. Likes watching you poke around inside the creatures and is waiting on your hand and foot through the entire process. Scalpel? Bone saw? Enterotomy scissors? The bread knife??? He’s even starting to become attuned to your whims, tool already in hand before you extend your palm.

If you murmured an awed, “look at thaaat,” he’s quick to huddle in close under the pretense of observing whatever oddity that’s intrigued you. Only to squish his cheek against yours with a feigned, “hmm…mhmm…” nodding stiltedly, and not so discreetly nuzzling his face closer to yours with an impish glint in those azure eyes as he casts a sidelong glance to your skeptical neutrality.

assistant!gojo— staring at you with the widest puppy dog eyes as you discard your gloves and begin sketching diagrams of the latest brain you’ve picked apart, comparing it to the contradicting one of another curse, and contrasting from the drastically different human model you have. He can listen to you babble for hours, if only absorbing every other word of your theories on why a curse’s blood runs violet or how you’re so excited to get these samples to the lab. He’ll still chip in with his own question or hypothesis from time to time, because he’s curious too, but more than that he loves the way you answer.

assistant!gojo— purposely uses candy and sweets as a metaphor whenever you plead with him to explain how he views the electromagnetic spectrum through those eyes of his, just because he thinks it’s funny how desperate you are to know. To this day you can’t decode however the fuck that analogy about laffy taffy and rock candy was supposed to relate to infrared waves.

assistant!gojo— Satoru can’t decide what’s worse; the fact that he can’t get you out of his head or the fact that you want inside of his head

This whole situation is basically him giving you googoo eyes and kissy faces as you scribble down something on your clipboard and try to stick him with a needle

assistant!gojo— who’s willing to be a bit of a lab rat for you. He’s all giggles as he prances up to your vertical operation table, huffing lightly when you strap him against the cool steel. “Don’t be shy now, y’could go tighter than that. You know I like it when you tie me up,,” he encourages oh so unhelpfully.

assistant!gojo— chiding you to be careful when you begin application of the biosensors across his chest, cause he’ll get “a little too excited.” You don’t pay mind to his little quip until you see his already irregularly R-R intervals spike impossibly short on the electrocardiogram readings. And then again as you finish hooking him up to the machine.

assistant!gojo— thinks you might be overthinking what environmental stimuli might have caused that anomaly, or maybe judging by that poorly veiled smile and half-hearted “My mistake,” you’ve purposefully placed that one sensor node a little too low on his pelvis this time. Now that he’s thinkin’ about— yeah—there definitely wasn’t any need for you crouch so low until your nose was practically level with the apex of his thigh. Or for you to look up at him in a way that had him failing to suppress a shiver and his breath hitching when you smoothly rubbed the padding of the damn thing into his hip with your thumb. Aaaand fuck, he’s bricked in the lab. (again.)

He’d kill to know what’s going on in your noggin. And frankly he’s dying to get the pants off his fave smartypants.

a/n: as soon as I got this idea i was like ooo biting my lip and bigbig smile,, onto something? am I onto something??? would anybody maybemaybe read a one shot with this concept 👀? okay I love you byyyee