#they helped me realize how toxic my friends were especially the ones in high school

[star-inthesky]

:((

𝓘 𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓮 𝔂𝓸𝓾 𝓲𝓷 𝓽𝓱𝓮 𝓼𝓪𝓶𝓮 𝔀𝓪𝔂 𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻𝓮’𝓼 𝓪 𝓬𝓱𝓪𝓹𝓮𝓵 𝓲𝓷 𝓪 𝓱𝓸𝓼𝓹𝓲𝓽𝓪𝓵

the circus, olivia levez // hum hallelujah, fall out boy // the anthropocene reviewed, john green // @silk-dyke // cocaine jesus, rainbow kitten suprise // the kids aren't alright, fall out boy // hozier on twitter (2018) // the return, dean gioia // @constellatedlove // i loved my friend, langston hughes

[saintmuses]

❝𝙩𝙞𝙢𝙚 𝙘𝙖𝙨𝙩𝙨 𝙖 𝙨𝙥𝙚𝙡𝙡 𝙤𝙣 𝙮𝙤𝙪, 𝙗𝙪𝙩 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙬𝙤𝙣'𝙩 𝙛𝙤𝙧𝙜𝙚𝙩 𝙢𝙚❞

Pairing:

Tom Buckley x Best Friend!Reader

Summary:

When looking at her standing in her white dress, Tom realized he had to be the one to cut the string that tied him and her together despite not wanting to, but he had to.

Warning(s): Angst. Implied jealousy. Mutual pining, but unrequited love. Implied psychic powers. Implied toxic relationship (Reader/Sal). Minors dni! Note: Sal Owen is the male equivalent of Sally in the movie. Also Tom gives me a vibe that girls break his heart. Margaret Matheson is alive in this fic. Silver Springs by Fleetwood Mac especially live version is my Roman Empire!

Word Count: 2k

Tom knocked on the door tentatively, the sounds of his knuckles -the knuckles he had dealt with violence who dared to cross his line that night in the theater- rapping against the wood echoed, drawing the attention of someone in the room.

Y/N turned away from the standing mirror at the corner of the room to face him. He could see that her eyes widened when they laid on him.

"Tom," she said his name in breathless-like quality in her voice as she stared at him. Her hair was curled lightly, and it cascaded down her back, away from her face. His eyes flickered to her hands when she gripped the dress as she looked down.

She was a vision.

He inclined his head towards her, "Y/N." He said her name simply, but it held so much emotion that he held back from her.

"You came," she beamed at him, and the sight of her smile had his heart flutter as he smiled in return.

He then chuckled softly, "how could I not." 

He was seventeen when he met her in the hallway at high school. Her locker was next to his, and they had met when her lock was jammed, and she had roped him into helping her. She went out of her way to bake him his favorite sweets out of gratitude. 

She came and went throughout the years, but they were still best of friends.

He'd remembered the days when she would laugh that slight airy sound that would've warmed his heart, except she was laughing with Sal Owen, her fiancé. He wasn't amused by it, the jokes her fiancé had made in an attempt to make her laugh, wasn't funny at all.

When Y/N left her then-boyfriend the first time after he barely put any efforts in their relationship, she came down to the city to stay with him. It was one of the best and the worst things that could ever happen to him. It was torture, her being nearby all the time and not being able to do anything about it.

She helped him with PowerPoint presentations, put together experiments that debunked supernatural phenomena, and would be a volunteer during Dr. Matheson’s lectures. She loved her like a family.

There was a little animosity from Margaret’s side due to the fact that Y/N was ditzy, but she quickly warmed up to her after learning that she was nothing like she portrayed herself to others who did not know her.

A simple phone call from Sal had Y/N pack up her bags and leave his place.

She came and went, just like that.

Then Y/N and Sal were back together, and he was okay with it because he knew it would end again.

It ended again, a different reason this time. He was caught with another woman, and it broke her.

She had called him one night, with the sounds of sniffling and a shaky voice had him running to the town and take her back to his place like before. 

He was there for her when no one else couldn't. 

She had confessed in a small voice when they were sitting on the couch, saying she missed being here more than where she was at with her ex-boyfriend, and she was considering moving to be closer to him.

It gave him a slither of hope. That he might had a chance, but he wouldn't do anything until she was emotionally feeling better. It wouldn't be good if he took advantage of her in her vulnerable state.

He wished for her to see that Sal wasn't worthy of her affections.

He loved her and he wanted to do this right.

The situation with a world-renowned psychic Simon Silver got out of hand and had taken him away from her.

That was when Sal somehow wormed his way back to her heart, and things were okay again.

With a heavy heart, he knew it wasn't the right time for them.

They talked a few times in few and far between.

When Margaret, his co-worker and a good friend received an invitation to the wedding, she was wide eyed when he entered the lecture. Fortunately for both of them, the classroom was empty. She knew how much he loved Y/N, and dreaded telling him the news.

With a whisper, she told him that his best friend was getting married.

He did nothing but walked out of the room with an unreadable expression.

Tom knew Margaret was somewhat in a foul mood due to his careful stoic persona turned abrasive and irritated which affected the rest of the students.

He tried to keep it together that day, stoic and professional-like, then once the day went by, it was time for him to go home to his empty place.

That was when he’d let go of his façade.

He lashed out in his apartment, turning his room upside down far too many times, and he would be solemnly silent in the dark of nightfall.

A few days before the wedding, Margaret stormed into his office with her arms crossed, staring down at him with hard eyes while he was sitting by his desk, and proceeded to tell him that he needed to get his act together and go to his best friend’s wedding.

She had told him that if he didn’t want his best friend marrying the guy who’d never treated her right then tell her before it was too late, but if he didn’t want to do that then he needed to let her go.

He thought of the memories all those years ago. In his darkest days, she had always been there for him, he hadn't known she wouldn’t make him forget who he was.

Not even his previous relationships were able to make him forget how he felt for the girl he met at the locker. He did love them; but his best friend, with her eyes fierce, and determination that came down onto him like an iron fist, had made his love for them pale in comparison.

He didn't want to fall in love with her; nothing good could come out of it being in love with their best friend, but how could he not when in her eyes, they were the windows to her soul, the one that made her different from the others who wronged him in the past.

Tom gazed at her as she looked out to the window to see the landscape of where she was having the venue at. 

With a sense of heavy heart sitting in his chest, he blinked placing his hands in the pockets of his trousers.

He would have to let her go.

"I came here because Margaret thinks that you shouldn't marry Sal." A tiny white lie slipped from his tongue, as he raked his eyes over her dress as a reminder that she could be making a potential mistake, in his eye that was.

"And I couldn't help but to agree with her," he said slowly, pride nearly rose up to prevent him from speaking any further, but he suppressed it.

Y/N turned away from the window to face him, with a slight disbelief on her face, a taut grimace on her lips. "What?"

He took a step forward, suddenly feeling the courage that he hadn't felt before. "Are you absolutely sure this is what you want?" He murmured.

He was beyond to the point of being exhausted of never getting what he wanted.

Between the time of her spending some time with him to the time of today, he was being driven slowly insane with affection and grief and longing.

A never-ending torment.

He just wanted her, to be loved by her. 

Wholly and irrevocably. 

It was his fault for her to not know how he felt about her, nor could he just expect her to read him, especially since he tried to keep his feelings locked up in the shields of his heart.

It wasn't a coincidence that he kissed her, hovering over her lips back when they were drunk together at a dive bar, excusing for his inebriated behavior. She tried to be someone else that night due to heartbreak she was experiencing again, but he saw right through her within a mile away. 

Y/N didn't dye her hair, it was not something she would do. That night her hair was a different color, she was trying to be different, and he knew that. He could tell the difference in her eyes that night; before when she had the first heartbreak, it was painful to look into her eyes. A third time, her eyes were more guarded and vulnerable all at once.

Since she was playing a game with her liver, he went along for the ride, alcohol running through his bloodstream. She wouldn't know that he was not as drunk as she was, and that was why he took advantage of kissing her.

It was something he had always wanted.

He was truly a selfish man, but he would never tell her so, and he got away with it when her lips caved under his lips. If he could do it again, he would.

When they crossed each other's paths over and over, there was always something in between them. Always. 

He knew he had feelings for her from the beginning, he knew people could see the adoration in his eyes whenever he looked at her, and he didn't care because no one would say anything. 

Even when Sal in the same room as him, he knew that Sal was reminded that there was a serious competition between them due to his position in her life and how long he had been a part of it; the way Sal shifted towards her as if he could protect her from him, hidden threats behind the snide words he tended to throw at him, and most of all, he hated when they spent any second together.

She had always rebelled against her fiancé when it came to him, defended him on her own premise, and trusted him explicitly.

Maybe, he had thought she felt something for him too.

Now, he wasn't so sure, and he hated being unsure of anything, especially something this important. She was supposed to be his. His. Her fiancé didn't appreciate her the way she deserved. Tom would have given her the moon and the stars if she had asked.

He saw her nearly faltered, and he blinked. "I just needed to know if it's something that you truly want, if that is what you desire." He murmured before sauntering over to her.

She didn't say anything other than sadness that flitted in her eyes when she looked at him and he swallowed thickly. With a sense of clarity with the way it was in her eyes when she gazed at him, he knew she loved him too, knowing she made her choice when she said yes to Sal.

Then she closed her eyes when his hand reached out to thread his fingers in her strands. He noticed that she leaned in his touch slightly, and it broke his heart even more.

"I don't want you to marry him, but I know you will.” He chuckled mirthlessly, inhaling slowly then exhaling which sounded shaky. Sadness radiated in his veins. “And when you do, this is it for me after tonight.” The sentence ended in a whisper as his bottom lip slightly trembled at the thought it would be the last time.

She slowly opened her eyes to peer at him under her eyelashes. With glassy eyes, she whispered, “why?"

However, she was always holding him at arm’s length, as if she was afraid of him being the one to truly break her heart, tear it out of her chest, and throw it to the ground for her to never be able to get it back in one piece.

Suddenly his throat began to close on him, and he inhaled sharply before feeling a brim of anguish. The emotion caused his eyes to soften with a bitter smile, he curled his fingers around her ear to brush away a loose strand before confessing.

"I love you, but you would not let me."

Perhaps in another life.

[mxlti-fand0m-imaginess]

🪷 - fav/least fav ship: give me a fandom - Scream, Criminal Minds, stranger things

Congratulations again 👏🥳

thank you so much!!

scream:

fav ship: billy and stu

they’re so perfect together. i love their dynamic, and how utterly crazy they are when they’re together. i wholeheartedly believe they were together in the movie. i mean just look at how stu looks at billy. they were in love, case in point.

least fav ship: amber and richie

i feel like this needs no explanation, but i shall talk about it anyways. richie is an adult. amber is in high school. even if she’s eighteen, richie is at least five years older than her, if not more. that’s disgusting and disturbing and i hate richie so fucking much. even if amber was already crazy, he still manipulated and groomed her, which is not okay.

criminal minds:

fav ship: jj and will

i love these two together so much. i love how much will helps to ground jj, and their bond is just so precious. i love them together and i will always love them together, they’re just so perfect for each other.

least fav ship: morgan and garcia

okay, so i love these two together, but strictly platonically. they have the best character dynamic in the show, and i love these two together so much, but only as best friends. i don’t really understand why people would ship them romantically, specifically because the basis of their relationship is platonic. they’re definitely my favorite ship friend wise, but just not romantically like at all.

stranger things:

fav ship: steve and eddie

i love steve and eddie together. they have such a unique dynamic and a shared parenthood over the kids, especially dustin. the way they look at each other, the tension between them is there. they would just be so cute together, and if eddie didn’t die, i wholeheartedly believe they would’ve ended up together, with dustin probably being the one to make them realize their feelings for each other.

least fav ship: mike and eleven

i feel like a lot of people will disagree with me on this, but i hate mike and eleven together. in seasons one and two, they were great. it was cute and heartwarming and they just seemed like they fit. but then we have mileven in seasons three and four. the relationship gets hella toxic, and mike is weirdly controlling and possessive. it just doesn’t work at all anymore. i feel like they should’ve stayed broken up after el dumped him in season three, and i think the only reason they were pushed back together is because of the diehard mileven shippers who would’ve went ballistic if they stayed broken up.

[https-harlow]

Jack Harlow Masterlist

Series

Lips Of An Angel

You and Jack struggle with the ups and downs of your toxic relationship until you both realize you don’t want anyone else.

Fight The Feeling Prologue

You and Jack meet at a MET gala after party, and slowly fall in love while maintaining your career as a model and his career as a rapper. You keep your whirlwind romance a secret from the public and most of your friends, until Jack makes a mistake he will always regret.

Fight The Feeling

You and Jack get paired up to be in a fake relationship after keeping your real relationship and break up a secret.

I Should Be Missing You

You and Jack deal with the consequences of falling out of love while you are married. Your divorce brings you closer to Urban while Jack tries to decide if he wants you back.

Mixed Emotions

Even though they grew up together, Gabriella and Jack hated each other. As they grow older, their relationship progresses from enemies, to friends enemies with benefits. Until feelings other then hatred get involved.

Single Hearts

Jack Harlow and Sage Taylor have one thing in common: they suffered from failed relationships that they thought would last forever. After crossing paths at an amusement park, Jack missed the chance to catch her name, or so he thought. Fate had them in mind when their kids had a school concert, and they crossed paths again. After exchanging names and numbers, Jack and Sage couldn’t help but feel giddy. Could this be the beginning of something that will last a lifetime?

Drive Safe

Savannah knew she meant nothing to Jack. Sure, he saw her as someone he could rely on when he wanted someone to have sex with. Maybe he’d even consider her a friend because he didn’t want to introduce her as “the girl he fucks”, especially to his parents. That never stopped Savanah from wishing she was something more in Jack’s life even though she could never tell Jack that. She knew he would eventually hurt her, but you can’t change someone if you don’t even try. She also knew that she would get butterflies every time he told her to drive safe.

All of my Jack Harlow Fics (oldest to newest)

Saturday Night Live

The reader is a very famous actress, has been since they were a child. Jack has been very open about his crush. The reader ends up hosting Saturday Night Live the same week Jack is the musical guest.

An Evening I Will Not Forget Part 2

Jack and the reader had been friends as long as they could remember, eventually turning into boyfriend and girlfriend in high school. Until several years later when their relationship fell apart and they had to continue their lives without each other.

Missed You

Jack shows up at your house at 2am because he missed you.

Proposal

Jack takes reader on a helicopter ride in Kentucky or Miami and he proposes afterword it’s at night by the way and urban and everyone set the scene for when they land back at the helipad.

Protect You

Jack wants to keep you and him a secret to protect you and him from the media but it lowkey hurts u. Like let’s say you guys are walking back to ur hotel one night and then he sees paparazzi and instantly drops your hand and your trying to not let it bother u but when he looks up at you after dropping ur hand you have tears in your eyes and he feels bad.

Settle Down

Jack wants to settle down, but you think he should continue to focus on his career.

Mini-Me

Paisley’s first dance recital, where you find out that she truly is a mini-Jack, and Jack, you, Paisley, and Olive start a new tradition.

The Early Years

You met Urban in middle school, which eventually led you to meeting Jack in high school. Urban saw how much you two liked each other before either you or Jack did, eventually setting you two up. Causing you to realize your feelings and make your relationship official shortly after.

Paisley's First Word

You and Jack had been trying to get Paisley to say mama or dada as her first word, but when Urban returns from a trip her first word isn’t what any of you expected.

Pumpkin Patch

Taking Paisley and Olive to a pumpkin patch.

Taking Care Of You

All Jack wants to do while you’re pregnant with your first daughter, Paisley, is take care of you even if it’s something small like putting lotion on your belly. You and Jack also start to celebrate Jack’s birthday with your tradition of giving each other gifts at midnight, though this time it is a matching gift. Jack can’t sleep and ends up talking to Paisley while you’re asleep.

Gentle

Paisley watches how Jack interacts with you during your pregnancy with Olive, and with Paisley being Jack’s mini me, it only makes sense that she copies him.

After Party

Jack and the reader would rather spend the after party alone then with others.

Keeping Secrets Part 2

You decide to tell Urban about your relationship with Jack, but he doesn’t respond in the way you thought he would.

Halloween Costumes

Paisley and Olive pick out their Halloween costumes, along with yours, Jack’s, Urban’s, and Clay’s.

That's Not My Daddy

Paisley and Olive see Jack in his wigs for Saturday Night Live for the first time and Olive refuses to believe it is him.

I'm Not Jealous, Just Protective

You and Jack go out to a club when a guy approaches you to hit on you and Jack gets jealous.

I Love You Because

You are struggling after giving birth to your second daughter Olive between feeling overwhelmed and dealing with the changes that happened to your body during your pregnancies, while also comparing yourself to some of the girls in Jack’s music videos. Jack reassures you that he loves everything about you.

Christmas Date

Knowing Christmas was your favorite holiday, Jack planned a Christmas inspired day for the two of you, decorating your Christmas Tree, watching Christmas movies, looking at Christmas lights, wanting to make your first Christmas as a couple and living together special, then on Christmas you exchange gifts.

Meeting Santa

You and Jack take Paisley and Olive to meet Santa.

Christmas Eve

How you and Jack spend Christmas Eve with Paisley and Olive.

Christmas Morning

Christmas morning with the family and you and Jack, with Clays help, surprise Paisley and Olive with a special present.

Elf Emergency

Olive accidentally touches the Elf on a shelf and Paisley is afraid the elf is going to lose its magic.

24 Hours With Jack Harlow

Based off the Vogue 24 Hours With Jack Harlow video.

I Should Be Missing You

You and Jack deal with the consequences of falling out of love while you are married.

New Sibling Reactions

You and Jack tell Paisley and Olive about their new sibling, except Olive isn’t ready to be a big sister.

Touring & Pregnancy Tests

Towards the end of the Come Home The Kids Miss You tour, you and Jack find out you’re pregnant with baby number 3.

Aren't You Nervous?

How you and Jack find out you are pregnant with your first born, Paisley.

Memories

You and Jack take Paisley and Olive to the park you went to a lot while dating, where they ask you questions about your relationship.

Baby Brother Or Baby Sister

You and Jack tell Paisley and Olive if they are getting a baby brother or a baby sister.

Officially Outnumbered

You give birth to your and Jack's third baby. Paisley and Olive meet their little brother.

First Concert

You and Jack take Paisley to the Eras tour, which happens to be their first concert other then watching Jack preform.

Pool Day

You, Jack, Paisley, Olive, and Hayden spend a day in the pool.

Christmas Day

You, Jack, Paisley, Olive, and Hayden celebrate Christmas.

10 Years Later

You and Jack felt like your family was complete after four kids, but you start thinking about having a fifth baby.

She's Totally Flirting With You

Jack gets hit on by a waitress, though he thinks she's just being nice, Paisley and Olive come to your defense to convince Jack she's flirting with him.

First Time Parents (Paisley's birth fic)

You give birth to you and Jack's first daughter, Paisley.

We're Doing Something Right

You and Jack catch Paisley and Olive trying to make sure Hayden falls asleep.

Cheered Up

After Gazebo festival is cancelled, you find a way to cheer Jack up.

Met Gala 2024

You and Jack attend the Met Gala, except not together, technically.

Insta AU’s

Date Night

My Girl

Paisley’s Pregnancy & Birth Announcement 

Olive’s Pregnancy & Birth Announcement

Christmas Trees & Gingerbread Houses

Valentine’s Day

Baby #3 Pregnancy Announcement

Concepts

[total-feminism-takes]

Lesbian Courtney anon here!

Courntey and Duncan are so much more than toxic exes... they are human to me.

They are both sides of the same coin that am aware of is my own soul.

Basically, this ship not all that to you but to me, Courtney is just like me in the need of PERFECT!

I crashed and failed for many years to finally get I was drowning and dying to be loved and comfort by the wrong person and my family doesn't see me as human but legacy to continue.

I love them a lot.

Courtney needs help with therapy like Duncan.

Basically they made me realize my childhood up bringing and more is not my fault but it is my fault for hitting. sprialing, and losing my sense of my reality because of no one offered to help me or realizing I was getting abused at home by own flesh and blood.

The abuse can become abusers sadly.

We don't need you to deem us as crazy abusive exes, sometimes we need to be left alone to grow and health, more help understanding what we were taught was wrong.

I was a bad person I blew up things like Duncan with fire and hit others in the name of justice I said to myself like Courtney but end of the day.

I will not be seen as not a martyr. But death and the villain of itself in most people's stories!

But I will still be branded off as abusive and awful even if I was trying to defend myself or walk away from the fight.

It's hard out here especially when we love and adopt TD characters to represent ourselves out here.

I am growing slowly but surely, I used to hate the world and everything due to the unfairness of the world and hatred brought on by others to my feet.

I couldn't just turn the other cheek when someone hits you first or threatens you at time you fight back then regret.

I want many to know sometimes we are seen as monsters and have no redemption, yet you are you are own writer and person!

Sometimes we got look in mirror and go I know I am bad, toxic, and piece shite but guess what sunshine! We are still alive and live for ourselves! We can thrive for ourselves and do better from now on!

I used to be hateful bible thumping Christian because I was raised that way, every hit was because I love you, your fault is being a women, but guess what?!

I like girls and love boys!

I love girls so much my friends think I wanted to date them since high school, but I was just trying to be affectionate and their own personal cheerleaders when needed!

It is not sin to love, or be women. It is not wrong to like to like characters like Courtney or Duncan!

I am tired of it!

Let people enjoy things! That's personal opinion! Why am going tell you what's wrong with you and what's right if I am no saint myself!

Courtney my beloved and Duncan my dove, I love you even if you just a silly parody/satire teenagers of reality tv series!

I hate that made you so awful in the end of time they could punch up with the jokes and the satire but no they doom us all with brain rot of blah blah Courtney is abusive only.

You saw how they treated Leshawna as well yet many of you racially profile her still. You bestialize and fetishize my girl and carry her with shame of no growth and tie her to white man- sorry Harold, who is basically a parody of napoleon dynamite kip and lafawnduh!!!

You cowards, shame on you only smut and fetishize for my girl Leshawna yet put Courtney to the slaughter brand her a demon and abuser without remorse.

Yet you do not humanize the women in TD fandom but brand them as awful people or make them inhuman sex dolls for you pleasure without remorse but hey hehe TD fandom so silly and accepting to all.

I want smut readers and writers to understand that you can have your own piece of cake too but goddamn! LET THEM BE MORE HUMAN AND REALSTIC IN SOME WAYS!

BODY HAIR

PERIODS

BODY ISSUES

FORBBIEN ROMANCE DUE TO NOT RACE THINGS BUT SOMETHING ELSE!

I am not good person I know but I have my own brain to tell me that. I love Courtney, she did a lot for me because she wasn't perfect. I don't love because oh she must hate Gwen. No. I like Gwen but I hate that you guys think she's saint (I feel like you- most think pale skin tone people or cartoons do no wrong ever) Gwen is complex like everyone in TD. You guys just sleep on Gwen to make her your weird plaything to have someone to ship with but no growth or her own standing in some cases.

Oh to the point when I say Courtney can do nothing wrong and is saint I snort (I say that a lot my readers might think I don't see her as a bad guy ever which tbh not true) I snort because that's wrong! She's so bad and needs be better for herself not to be "FIX"

Love you guys...

XoXo

From someone who is Duncan Stan of heart and Courtney Stan in her DNA and loves Dunceny ship.

Mostly I relate to Duncan more in chaos and Courtney in cry and tantrums because I get too overwhelmed to speak with my brain goes time to scream and rage now! As a teenager I was more of mini-Duncan with a mess of Courtney Action you saw!

Yes, I am getting help now, I am being diagnosed with stuff (OH ACT SHOCK!!) and I will take therapy and pills as needed.

The point is we can spare a bit humanity along the way, F U you to your abusive partners, and I am not telling you stay with them or humanize them!

RUN AWAY AND STAY AWAY FROM THEM TOO!

From someone who barely escaped they're on and off again abusive relationship. I was the "Courtney" in the relationship but behind closed doors he was awful, I cried so much, and he told me to die often but the world only saw a teenager girl and young adult me acting like "COURTNEY" and didn't help me but blamed me for it.

Anyway, if you love Courtney or Duncan, it's not your fault others don't!

You don't need them? You don't need valid your love for anything or likes in this world!

Abuse is harsh and comes in many forms than one.

I am bad person I know- I used to be my first mantra since I was 16 years old now.

I go I was not a healed person back then just a child who didn't know better, my actions have consequences, I regret, I let go, and I relearn to grow, and I heal slowly but surely. I am not my father, I am not my abuser, I am not my abuse, it's okay to like this, it's okay they don't like this or me!

I am allowed to live and I am allowed to like this if makes me happy. Then I can block them or mute them if it really hurts me!

That's all.

I did my first session of therapy in long time and I saw post the Courtney pushed to only to the role of "crazy abusive ex" of Duncan's which is harsh especially I have to live through it still.

It's embarrassing at 24 years old people act like I chained up my ex-boyfriend to be with me and that I was the controlling abuser when they don't know the whole story or how much he threatened to off himself or me if I left him. Then he cheats on me through the whole relationship, and I have to stay in it because I loved him and feared him.

Duncan wasn't like my ex.

And Courtney wasn't like me.

But I love them because they are just silly characters and ship that I enjoy and work through my own bullshit. And say I did love a lot but no more to that, but I can love again in forms in these silly dumb cartoons and make them kiss sometimes as fanfic writer!

Anyway, love you all and sorry for ranting my nonsense again peace out girl scouts but mother nature needs to be saved with love and money these days-sadly no money, but I can clean up the beaches and feed the stray cats now!

Treat yourself with not needed valid your existence or but I love them to random haters or people that just don't give a F about anything but their own mind...

You can like things too without needing explanation, honey! You got this!

BLOCK THEM IF THEY DON'T LEAVE YOU ALONE!

- 🧡

[sometimesiammybpd]

the last post was really really difficult to write because for as much as i've spent time working on changing myself from who i used to be, i still really don't enjoy looking back on it. but i have to for one reason more than any other. i think i may be aromantic.

i've talked to my close friends about this a few times because even at that point, i thought i was demi-romantic. i had never been the person to like anyone. especially not in a romantic or "normal" sense. in late elementary / early middle school, i actually had a habit where i had a list in my head of who i "liked" that year. it's in quotes because i didn't but i was already getting bullied pretty badly at that point and one of the biggest topics for kids who are getting closer and closer to thirteen is who do you like? i didn't want to give them another reason to go after me and i also just . . . didn't have an answer if they were to ask me why i didn't like anyone. i was about 11 when i first realized that. it was weird to me. everyone likes someone. that's always what i was told and what i thought. what little friends i did have actually were already having first kisses and things and i started to hate myself because i knew i was going to be left behind.

i mean, something had to be wrong. that's how i started to feel. i couldn't tell anyone and i couldn't understand myself why it was happening, so that's why i kept a mental list. i wanted them to just see me as normal (i had so many issues at this point in my life that there was no chance in hell of that ever happening). i didn't like guys or girls. no one interested me and i'd go home every day feeling worse than the last. by freshman year, i had accepted this would go nowhere and i'd probably just be alone. i still had zero answers but things had only gotten worse with everything for me. kids were bullying me so bad that i had to switch schools and then when i did, i met a kid who somehow was more of a bully than any of the ones from my previous school. entering high school, i felt beaten down. also again, this is the "toxic era" at this point too. it was one giant cluster-fuck in all the worst ways. anyways. freshman year, i saw love, simon. i know it's considered to be bad because of the stereotypical-ness of it down to the "perfect family who accepted me from the start, accepting friends, everything is great," but that movie really did help me to understand more about myself for the first time. nick robinson was my first ever crush. and that's what made me think i was gay at first because i never felt a thing towards a girl.

and what i remember the most was that i believed this made me normal. sure, my family wanted me to be raised to be homophobic, transphobic, racist, far-right, all that shit, but it never really worked. once i was able to look into things myself, their beliefs fell apart to me. but feeling that made me feel happy for once. i still never had a crush on someone i knew, but it was something. and pretty quickly, i got a crush on my friend at the time. we'll call them madi for the sake of anonymity. i don't even know why i liked them. we didn't have much in common and they did not like me because for a long time, they were the subject of my hate and rage. i didn't want to and i think that i, at the time saw it as me being a good friend instead of what it really was: abuse. either way (this is not me downplaying it. it's just not the focus of this post), i eventually did try to ask madi out because i remember that at the end of eighth grade, they did like me back. we did talk about that. but i quickly drove it into the ground and ruined whatever chance there was. usual stuff for me at the time.

one of the memories that has stuck with me was them having to pull me aside at the end of one day of freshman year. madi had to tell me that she really didn't see me like that anymore and we could be friends but that was it. that was the first time i ever really felt heartbreak. i never truly let it go and i do believe that in hindsight, the feelings did leave after that day. i just couldn't let it go because ???

but after madi (give or take a year) came . . . him. god, i still have so much i want to say about this dude that it will have to be its own post. the quickest context is that i was 13 when i first met him. and i started to like him at 15. we talked daily and he treated me like shit half the time but i didn't care. he was my first favorite person, even though i had no idea at that time. but this dude manipulated and groomed me. i honestly couldn't even accept that until i was twenty and even to this day i still can't believe it most of the time. he was the person i talked to every day. i'd stay up and wait until i couldn't keep my eyes open just to see him get online because he lived in a different country. i forced myself to play games like stardew valley and terraria for him. at the time i had no interest in either, but i was in love. it was the first time i ever really felt that way. and i've left out one detail. he was 19 when i was 15. and 20 by the time we officially dated. we only dated for two, maybe three days. but it was something that stuck with me. because he blamed me for how bad it went. we literally couldn't talk to each other. he ignored me for three straight days and then broke up with me. i remember feeling like such a piece of shit because i made him hate me. that's how i felt for so long. i didn't stop liking him until i was 17. i literally couldn't. no matter how hard i tried or told myself he didn't like me back, i couldn't. he's also the same guy who told me my anxiety was hurting him when he knew i had no support system and half the time contributed to making sure i had none. there's so much more i could say and i will at a later date. i don't want to think about him anymore.

after him, i didn't like someone for almost two years before nathan (fake name, see previous post). this was also around the time i started having hyper-fixations that got mistakenly labeled as crushes. if we went off those, i'd have had hundreds of crushes. in reality, they lasted less than 72 hours and barely felt like anything. this is still a concept i struggle to recognize, but always working on it. anyways i've already said all i needed to say about him so. just know that if you didn't read the last post, it fucked me up. i did as much shit as he did (if not more) during the year and a half we knew each other, but it damaged me in ways i'm still trying to fix to this day. and after nathan, i really stopped feeling things for people. i had a crush like two - three years after him on a friend but that never really went anywhere. i would say i'd write a post about it, but that's one of the few things i'm legitimately over in a good way. after that, more mislabeled hyper-fixations but no real crushes. and it's kind of been that way ever since nathan overall.

i don't know.

i don't know if i even want a relationship. the biggest point i tried to make in his post was that i was so infatuated with the idea of a relationship in general that i let so much happen because it didn't matter to me. and after him, i just don't find relationships appealing anymore. i mean yeah, romance is cool. it's sweet and i'm not a complete heartless bastard lol. i love seeing my favorite characters on tv shows get their happy endings and usually end up with the ones that they deserve to be with the most. but when i picture relationships now that involve me, i just. i'm not interested.

it's probably stupid but it's honestly how i feel. i have massive hyper-sexuality issues which would probably say otherwise here (separate post), but as far as romance goes, i just don't feel that way anymore as far as i can tell. i got to experience all of the things i used to crave so much. first kiss, holding hands, sleeping together (not sex), etc. and now that i've done it, i don't really want to do it again lol. the most recent attempt i had at a relationship lasted for only a week. we met on bumble and seemed to hit it off at first, but this guy was a giant series of walking red flags and i mean that literally. i'm not at all trying to be mean or hurtful. i don't want to make anyone feel bad. it's just that i really did like him. it was the first time in almost four years that i felt something. and he used it against me so fast. he had the same awful traits that nathan had (alcoholism, insults = love, etc) except he didn't need to be drunk to say i love you. there were two big things that happened that both collectively ruined what little we did have.

one of the first messages i got from them was them saying they also had bpd. that really made me like interested because i still didn't feel heard and thought maybe this is my chance. that first day was good. we were texting back and forth like the rest of the world didn't matter and it was sweet as fuck. but i mention him revealing his bpd because he was never diagnosed with anything and the more i spoke to him, the less i believed he actually had any of what he said. that was the first thing because seriously, the more i got to know him, the more i got upset because he just . . . i don't believe he had bpd. like, he told me he had serious hyper-sexuality which eventually led us to fucking on the first date. woohoo for sex. i made it clear that i really didn't want to approach sex because i knew once i did, i wouldn't be able to think about anything else because masturbation barely keeps me in check and when its bad bad, even proper sex doesn't do anything but make it worse. so i was seriously afraid of what this would do to us because we barely knew each other. but they kept insisting so we did it.

and magically, their hyper-sexuality went away and never came back. completely serious. it wasn't like they got repulsed by sex like actual hs. i'll talk about hs in detail in a proper post, but for those who don't know, usually it comes and goes. and the phases are either that sex is all you can think about and it basically becomes you for months, or you are so physically repulsed by even the idea that you just stop completely. and that can last weeks or months on its own. they weren't repulsed. they were just . . . normal. satisfied like anyone else. and what did it do for me? it made it so so so much worse. it made it kick into high gear and i stopped being able to function half of the time because all i could think about was having sex. and it made it so fucking awful cause like i said, masturbation did nothing to help. that was the first like big red-flag for me.

the second one almost made me block them in that moment. a day or so before we broke up, they texted me:

them: hey uh if you want to be polyamorus and see other people that's okay. i know i'm not enough for you

me: what??? i'm honestly so confused you are enough but i'm not comfortable seeing other people. why did you ask this

them: oh sorry. i just worry i wont be enough and you'll leave me (we knew each other for not even two weeks atp.)

me: i barely like anyone. i dont get crushes on people and i did on you. it really hurt me that you said that and asked if i would want to see other people. am i not good enough for you?

i really did start to question it because who asks something like that? it was asked like it was somehow nothing. like it wasn't going to hurt me. and i couldn't take it anymore after that. i didn't want to be in another relationship where it felt like i was just fixing the other person.

and that's honestly where i stand on relationships. i don't know if i'm 100% aromantic, but i believe i am. i don't see the point of relationships because even going on bumble and talking to this guy felt like too much. and as much as i did kind of like him, it faded so quickly and i realized i didn't want to be in a relationship. i really don't think it has anything to do with him specifically even after all the shit happened. i just,,, don't need one to be who i want to be. and i accept that honestly. i'm content with my life as far as what i do with my free time. and don't get me wrong, i love romance so much. i really do. it's just not for me i guess. and hey, things could change. who knows but for now, it makes the most sense and gives me the most relief.

[wahlpaper]

Meet Cute Diary Review

Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

CW: Transphobia, Manipulation, Money Problems, Moving Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Cyberbullying, Social Media Anxiety, Toxic Relationship, Past Suicide Attempt, Past Bullying, Microaggressions, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Vomit, Described Gender Dysphoria

4.5/5

I am not one for the Meet Cute trope because they aren't realistic and don't feel like the safest way to meet someone. I want to know someone before I fall for them. For this reason, I had been avoiding Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee although it has been on my TBR list for a while. Finally, I took another look at the description and realized that Meet Cutes not being realistic is exactly what the book was about. I downloaded it to my phone immediately and fell in love with it.

Noah, a Tumblr(!) blogger and trans teenager, is in Colorado for the summer while his parents work on setting up a new home in California. Leaving his best friend behind at the time his blog receives a determined troll, he needs help to keep his blog going. This blog, "The Meet Cute Diary" anonymously posts fake Meet Cutes featuring trans folks stumbling upon love. While the fans are misled to believe the blog posts are true stories, the blog is meant to inspire hope. Noah soon gets a Meet Cute of his own with a blog fan and starts to fake date him in an effort to squash the troll. Along the way Noah learns more about what he truly wants in a relationship, his future, and for the blog.

I was not immediately hooked because I didn't like Noah all that much. He is careless with his parents' money, a problem which is only barely solved. Thankfully his other flaws gave him a place to grow from. As Noah started to face consequences and learn from them, I got hooked on Meet Cute Diary. He has a problem with boundaries, rash decisions, and living in the real world. All realistic for a teen and all of these helped to build the story. Noah is lucky to have a good support system and learns not to take it for granted.

For every queer Tumblr kid, Meet Cute Diary is going to feel like a familiar setting. The site functions are described well, the users are painfully real, and Noah's stress over follower numbers really took me back to high school. Lee handles world building in a way that connects for both those in-the-know and those that aren't. E seems to be very good at world building in general. I have never been to Colorado, but I could understand what the summer camp, mountain, bookstore, and more were like. I could step into Noah's summer and didn't want to leave any more than he did.

I know there are others out there, but this is the first contemporary YA romcom (my favorite genre) that I've read with a trans main character. I've read some in the genre by trans authors, but it makes me happy to read about a trans teen finding love, especially with a genderqueer love interest. By halfway through the book, Noah finds himself in a love triangle. Drew, the fan, and Devon, his summer camp co-worker. Devon uses the same pronouns as Lee, E/Em/Eir/Eirs. Throughout the book, Noah and Devon inspire each other to be their more authentic selves. For Devon, this includes experimenting with pronouns. Noah never bats an eye. I am a cis person, so it is not my place to rank how well the trans experience was incorporated into the book, but I will say that it made me feel happy and as though everything flowed well.

Remember if you choose to read Meet Cute Diary that messy characters do not equal a messy book. Characters make mistakes which makes them that much more real. For those that want to see more trans love stories, check Lee's book out! I could really use some folks to gush about this one with!

[blossomingtoanewme]

To the boy I met 5 years later

You made me realize something about myself the other day

I've been so alone and isolated that I forgot what it was like to be treated nicely like that

All of the guys I met were horrible especially the one from high school

But you were different

You seemed to genuinely care about me and was always willing to help without hestitating

I use to have to beg for help by the high school guy or else he wouldn't have

I know its because he didn't find me attractive

But with you I don't have to worry about my looks to be treated like a friend

You seem to be very attentive and care for me alot

But I know that's how you are with all your girl friends

That's the thing I never had a guy friend that actually saw me as there friend

It was never reciporcated

You made me feel like I wasn't the problem

And it was the toxic people I use to be surrounded by that ruined my self esteem

You helped me build it back up

It was so nice to not think while speaking for once

Live in the present moment and allow my lips to speak for themselves

I truly enjoyed your presence

You made me feel special but I know that's just the type of person you are

You're genuinely nice and care for others

It doesn't make it better that I use to have a crush on you

I think you're the first guy friend I had that I liked that treated me well

As an adult

I'm so happy we got to be reunited

You'll never know how much I cherished these small interactions as they fixed something that was broken inside

You made me feel whole

Thank you so much for that

I will always appreciate it as you have opened my eyes

And new chapter within myself

That has endless of opportunities Infront of her

Who knows maybe I'll meet a partner that cherishes me and I'll get into a relationship

[adamsart]

Long story short about my 2 years at Davis JR high. Fell into gang banging, continued to sell drugs and tried to stay high as much as possible to help cope with the reality’s of a young man who had to deal with abuse at home from my parents and the abuses of Utah society. I also was incarcerated during this time because I added on new charges to my record often and stayed at home rarely. I felt more loved at friends houses by their families than I did in my parents home. They mostly showed me hate contempt and would tell me how I was never going to be shit. This After the daily beatings were put to an end by standing on my own two and fighting back. I was full of anger that I was always in trouble for a drug that I believe helped me survive. I was too outspoken about how unjust I felt persecuting someone for using weed was wrong especially when the mainstream was providing me with speeders my biker and mechanic friends preferred over meth and this was the early to mid 90s. Dexedrine with spansel is not only one but two forms of amphedimine in one awesome pill. It was a cleaner high than the early shards of dope that made you sweat toxic shit out ones pores and would lock u in place tweaking out for 8 hour sessions of doodling lol. Anyways I remember having the “weed will be legal in my lifetime” debate with any adult that would take me up on the challenge. Lots of drug program setbacks because I never would accept I had a problem only that the system had a problem and I wasn’t going to change for anyone. A smart adult once told me I don’t have to believe what they preach but just play along until I get out of thier system then don’t get caught again. Should have listened but nope I was already on the fuck anyone that wants to have a problem. I could go on for hours about these years because there were a lot of profound realizations that made me who I am today during this part of my life. The single biggest influence in my life from 6th to 9th grade was a 50 year old hells angel affiliated biker with the stereotypical zz top biker beard. Who I met thru a new kid that came from Washington his name was AC Devlin and when I went to AC’s one night to hang out I met my street dad Walter Livingston. For those of you who don’t know what a street dad is my definition would be a strong male influence/role model that takes a child under thier wing but more on a respectful friendship level. Basically Walter did all of the things that my own father never did or even wanted to do like working on bikes, teaching me about integrity, how to treat women, what a real gangster looks like and what a personal code of conduct is as well as cool shit like how to ride a bike, shoot a 38 snub, where to get artillery shells, how to make the best whiskey and water and yes we even smoked some serious drugs together because of Walt I always had the best weed around I was smoking chronic when everyone else I knew was still smokeing that piss biscuits and gasoline brick weed that you had to de seed forever or face the headache that came from leaving them in there. I was also snorting lines of peanut butter and rosebud crank and was there in the very beginning of crystal meth. This is when meth was made easier and the precursors were readily available so the strength was far more potent than what someone would run into now days. In my mind it did the same thing only a little stronger than the speeders I was made to take for school which coincidentally is the only reason they couldn’t bust me for using meth cause I was on paper my whole teenage years so piss tests came weekly but the meth came up the same thing as my amphedimines prescribed by my doctor. Walter was my best friend and father all in one package I only hope to one day be as good of a human being or have half the intelligence Walter had. An old orphan from Hershey pa with the heart of a lion. I can’t be more greatful to anyone else although I’ve had other phenomenal people in my life Walter took me under his wing and taught me how to conduct myself.

[larvalgrl]

just ranting i will forget about all of this in approx. thirty minutes

wasting time wishing you did something different doesn't really do anything productive but i wish so often that i could go back in time and tell myself to keep my head down and focus on my studies when i was in high school, get good grades and get into a better program, ignore everyone around me, don't date, don't make friends (but make as many connections as possible so you can manipulate job opportunities out of people later), get a job and make lots of money because i used to ignore material things like wealth and success for the sake of friendship and love but now i realize that most people will hurt you and fuck you over in whatever ways they can (even if they think they won't) regardless of how close to you they are (life is hard people have incompatibilities generational trauma personal trauma etc etc) and money drugs cute little objects and self-worship are pretty much the only consistent sources of happiness to be found... like i still don't believe that money truly buys happiness but it gets pretty close to it.

thinking about how much time i wasted just doing nothing, being sad, having friends who i thought would be with me forever who actually were just kind of shitty, dating people who were just using me for an ego-boost, whatever. it pains me so much. thinking about how much money i could've made, how much better i could have become at manipulating the system, etc. i genuinely feel so awful that i didn't realize that 99% of the time people are fake as fuck, only really concerned about their own next paycheck, and don't actually care whether you live or die.

this also does not mean that i advocate for anarcho capitalism because i think that capitalism is stupid, immature, and uncivilized and i think that people deserve care, love, security, etc. regardless of who they are or what mistakes they've made because everyone is flawed. like that's literally the point of being a human being is to care. and i think being able to care at all and help each other out and build art and societies and volumes of knowledge and extend our lifespans by looking out for one another is what separates us from animals. but also like i do not want to fuck with anyone ever again except my fiancé. she is legit the only thing stopping me from like fully going off the grid and living in a hut in the woods and surviving off weed and raw venison until i die from malnutrition, prion disease, or the bacteria from smoking out of a crusty ass bong. the evil of humanity literally makes my soul wither up so much sometimes like how cruel i've been to others and how cruel other people have been to me (especially when i was just a child) hurts me so so much. a think a lot of my relationships being toxic is my fault as well so i think it's better for everyone, me included, if i just like stick to my own thing for now and try to find ways to make myself happy without relying too much on other people. other people are not consistent.

bad thots are catching up to me i need to get stoned beyond all recognition so i can ignore my psyche 🤭

[marvelseries19]

EVERYTHING'S GREAT

Pairing: Wanda Maximoff x reader

Genre: Angst, fluff

Summary: Can Wanda eventually muster up enough courage to confess her feelings to the kind, big-hearted, biology teacher and get out of her toxic relationship with Vision to save not only herself but her sons, and get the help she needs, or will she be trapped forever in an abusive marriage.

A/N: So this turned out to be completely different from my original idea. I do love the way it turned out though. This story wouldn't have happen without @inluvwithfictionalwomen, she gave me the idea I just wrote a little more context, so credits to you love💖. Also this will have a part two and depending on how that one turns out I might make more. Enjoy❤

Warnings: Abusive relationship, description of physical and verbal abuse. Due to mature themes, this is an 18+ story. MINORS DNI. Remember that you are responsible for your actions, if you are a minor or you are triggered by any of the warnings, please don't read this.

Word count: 2.4k+

[You do not have permission to repost or translate any of my stories or claim them as yours]

When you woke up this morning you realized that it was a beautiful day, despite the fact that it was actually Monday. You got up and started your daily routine as usual before you went to shower. You were excited for another school year. Teaching was your calling; it was the one thing you had been sure your whole life and getting to that every day was the best feeling.

After your shower, you got dressed and got everything you needed. It wasn't hard since the excitement the previous night had made you get everything pretty much ready to go.

When you got everything inside your bag, you took it and made your way to the parking lot of your building. You got there and put everything in the trunk. You drove to a small coffee shop on the way to get some coffee before you drove to the high school where you worked.

--

There was a short line at the coffee shop, so it didn't take long to buy what you wanted. A few minutes later you found yourself walking the halls you had engraved in your memory. You were humming a song that you heard on the radio on the way here. You maneuvered the cardboard with three coffees you got and knocked softly on the door frame of your long-time friend.

Natasha was the school's secretary for about two year now, but you knew her since you were toddlers. She applied for the job when she got out of the army. It was nice being able to connect with her again. Her whole family was in the military so you didn't get the chance to see her as much as you would have liked but the trips and the distance was never enough to break the bond between you two. You were sisters, you trusted her with your life, and she did the same, even after all these years.

"There you are!" Nat jumped out of her seat to run to you. It was the first day back from summer vacations, so you hadn't had the chance to see her for two weeks.

"How are you? How are your parents? How was Ohio?" Natasha's parents had moved to Ohio about two years ago and she spend her vacations visiting them. You were close with them too, especially after your mom died. They were like your parents too.

She laughed at your excitement. "I've been great, Ohio is a wonderful place to relax, and my parents are good too. They told me to bring you next time" She received the coffee you were handing her. "Thanks"

"No problem and I'll hold you to that" You took a seat in front of her desk. "I miss them too, maybe I should give them a call" you said while sipping your own coffee.

"I'm sure my mom would appreciate that" She moved to get a folder out of her desk. "Oh, Yelena says hi too" She remembered.

"Yelena? I thought you didn't really talked much" you said confused.

"Yeah, she was there when I arrived, and we talked things out." Yelena was angry at Nat when she got deployed the first time and it kind of broke their bond.

"That's awesome, Nat!" You were really glad that she got to fix things with her, it broke your heart seeing them so far apart.

"Yeah… I really missed her" she said smiling like you had never seen her smile before. It warmed your heart seeing her this happy.

A few seconds of silence later Natasha decided to ask the question that she had pushed at the back of her mind the minute she saw you walk through her door. "So... Who is the other coffee for?" She pointed without looking at the cardboard in her desk.

You could feel the heat in your face as you blushed a little. You gave her an innocent smile. "A friend…" You said slowly.

"Right… a friend" She repeated. "Y/N... she is married" She looked at you with a dash of disappointment but mainly sadness.

"I know… it's just coffee, I swear" You really wanted to believe that.

"She has kids Y/N, be careful, I don't want to see you hurt again" She had been there when your ex cheated on you. It really devastated you, trusting someone wasn't easy and that didn't help at all.

You smiled softly at her. "I know she does and I love her kids by the way but thanks for looking out for me" You were grateful to have her. You didn't know if you would have been able to get back up without her. "I don't know what I would do without you"

"I hope we don't have to find out." She gave you your schedule which you received gratefully. "Now, go give her the coffee before it gets cold and hand her this, please." She encouraged you and gave you her schedule.

"Thanks Nat, will do. See you later" you said before disappearing back to the hallway.

--

You walked all the way across the high school to go find your closest friend besides Natasha. Wanda was the world geography teacher. You became friends the second she realized you were as excited about teaching as she was. You both being the youngest teachers in the school were obviously the favorites. You both ensure that your classrooms were a safe space for students to learn and be themselves. A place where it was okay to make mistakes and learn from them instead of being embarrassed about them.

It was your dream, inspiring people to become whoever they wanted to be and to do whatever made them happy. It warmed your heart to listen to them when they thanked you when you helped them with something, especially when it was something besides your class.

They would always be in your classroom when they had a free period, and you weren't giving a class. They knew they could go there to talk or just to be with someone. It was the same with Wanda, which by the way, since there was trust between you all, they would often tease you and Wanda about being a couple. Not many people knew she was married. She wore her wedding ring in a necklace as to not lose it so if you didn't know, you couldn't guess. You were close with her and not just because you obviously had a huge crush on her. I know… cliche, right? You just had a connection. There's no other way you would describe it. It was almost as if she was like a magnet.

Something that you had noticeably clear though, is that you would never interfere with her relationship, nor do something to make her feel uncomfortable, you were painfully aware that you were just friends.

And as such, you brought her coffee every first day back from vacations. So here you were knocking on her closed door. Which now that you think about it, she rarely closed it. Maybe she was taking a call, you were sure you heard her saying something before you knocked.

She cleared her throat. "Come in" she said with seriousness in her voice. Quite different from the overly excited and bubbly tone she used to have.

"I come baring gifts" you said showing her the cardboard with her coffee. "I mean, a gift, this other thing" You lifted your other hand. "It's your schedule from Nat."

"Y/N Hi!" She looked tired, drained even. There were small dark bags under her eyes. She always had them, I mean, being a mom of not one but two thirteen-year-old twins was no walk in the park, but they looked a little bit bigger and darker than usual.

She got up from her desk and went to give you a hug which you obviously reciprocated. "It's everything okay? You look a bit tired" You were worried, in the four years that you knew her she had never looked this tired. Maybe something happened.

"Yeah, everything is great I just couldn't sleep last night." There was something off in her statement, you could see it in her eyes, but you let it be, she was tired after all.

"Well then… here you go" You handed her the coffee. She was incredibly grateful for it. She was really tired, but the boys weren't the problem. Her husband was, he had been trying to get her to quit her job for weeks now and last night there was a fight over it, he had arrived drunk, as usual lately. It seemed as if he was looking for a fight, it was an all-night discussion that ended quite violently.

Truth was, Vision was progressively more violent as the years passed. It all started when Wanda had the twins. He was possessive, controlling. It had calmed down a bit over the years but there was always something with him. From the way he behaved towards Wanda to the inability to have a father-son relationship with the boys.

He never took care of them when they were alone at home. He didn't change diapers, he didn't tuck them in bed at night nor did he cared for them when they were sick. He was there but not as a father and as of lately not as a husband either. Those things are what actually helped Wanda to get close to you. She was craving someone that cared for her, someone that noticed the details, just like you did.

You did that and not just for her but for her boys too. The always had a safe place to go whenever they weren't at school and couldn't go home. Wanda didn't like to ask you to babysit but you insisted. They were smart and sweet. Tommie would spend some time playing in your computer while his brother Billy would ask random questions about biology. He was quite advanced for his age.

"Thank you, Y/N, you really didn't have to" she said while cradling the coffee cup in her hands.

"Oh, come on, we do this every time, you say I don't have to, I say I know but I want to and then we talk until we need to start the class" you said seating in a corner of her desk.

"Well then… thank you" she said smiling. This time her smile was genuine, it reached her eyes, and her nose did that cute wrinkle.

"No problem" you said smiling widely.

You staid a while talking about everything and nothing, not giving a single care about the hour. You realized how late it was when her students arrived in her classroom. They were a bit startled by the fact that you were there, you were supposed to be in your own classroom.

Some of the student wiggled their eyebrows in your direction. Nothing new to it, the tended to do this whenever one of you went to the other's classroom but for some reason today it just made you blush. For the second time today the topic of Wanda had made blush, you seemed to do that a lot lately.

"Well… what are you waiting for? take a seat" Wanda said a little more cheerful now. There were two things that could cheer her day right now. One, the students, she really did love teaching and getting to do it was a feeling she wouldn't quit. And two, she secretly really liked to think sometimes that she was with you, just to herself. She couldn't help but compare Vision with you.

"I will see you at lunch miss Maximoff" you said standing from your place in her desk.

"See you later miss Y/L/N" she said smiling at how the kids reacted.

You made your way to your own classroom, where you found your students waiting for you. The look on their faces told you that they already knew where you were. Damn you internet.

You apologized for being late and started your class. The day went by uneventfully. You went light on your class since they were just coming back from vacations. You knew that they were nowhere near to being as excited as you were about coming back to class.

At the end of the day, you gather your things and went to find Natasha. She was already waiting for you ready to go. You were the one to drive both of you most of the time. Nat had a car and her driver’s license, but she liked spending time with you, and she didn't really feel like driving. You both went to the parking lot to find your car when you saw Vision talking to Wanda. He seemed agitated and the interaction seemed a little too heated to be just a casual conversation. They were fighting and he looked mad, enraged even. He grabbed her arm quite hard and that's when you had enough. One thing was to argue with your partner, and another was putting your hands on them.

You tried to think of and excuse to get him to let her go. You realized that among the folders you had was her schedule. In the rush of leaving her classroom this morning, you took her schedule with you. "Hey! Wanda, I forgot to give you your schedule" You ran towards them, and you couldn't believe it worked. He effectively let go of her arm and compose himself.

You handed the paper to her, and you tried to give her a comforting smile. "Hey Vision. It's nice to see you again" You shifted your eyes towards his. He looked a bit calmer now.

"Hi Y/N, nice to see you too" If looks could kill you would be six feet under already. Despite him being calmer, he still looks pretty pissed. "I wish we could talk but we have to get going"

Wanda nodded and went to say goodbye with a hug, when she was in your arms, she whispered a thank you and let go. "I'll see you tomorrow, Y/N"

The both got in his car before you could think of a reply. Natasha approached you once his car was gone. "What the hell happened?!" She was as worried as you were.

"I don't know, but I'll find out" you said with determination dripping from your tone.

You had made a promise to yourself, you would never let anything, or anyone hurt her. Especially someone that has the chance to go home with her, to have a family with her. He should take care of her not hurt her. You would protect her from the world if it was necessary.

[seijorhi]

Inescapable

Part 2 of Always - another soulmate au with extra angst!

Oikawa Tooru x female reader, Miya Atsumu x female reader

TW toxic relationships, implied abuse, blind reader

“Stay here,” he murmurs, soft lips brushing briefly against your cheek before you feel his warmth retreat.

It’s an effort to quell the fleeting panic that rises in his absence. Japan is your home – was your home – but Tokyo… You’re not supposed to be in the village. Only the athletes, trainers and the support crew for the national team were supposed to stay there. It kept out distractions, made it easier for security, gave the athletes the space to focus on what they’re there for; to compete. To win. 

You don’t know how he did it, what strings he had to pull, but somehow he’d managed.

A room for the two of you. Just the two of you.

“You’re staying with me,” he’d told you when you’d brought up the possibility of going home to Miyagi to visit your family, or even spend a few days with Makki and Mattsun. “I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

The words had been whispered, a soft, teasing purr as lips curled into a smirk at your neck, but you know what he’s like when he’s competing. The focus and obsession he’ll throw himself into. 

Especially when you both know who he’ll be competing against. 

Nevertheless, you’re here. Alone now, standing in a sea of strangers talking too loud in a cacophony of foreign tongues while Tooru left to go find his team–

Strong, familiar arms encircle your waist, a kiss pressed to the top of your head. 

– but only for a moment.

“C’mon, cutie. Let’s get going – Coach gave us twenty before he wants us at the gym.”

—

You know one or two of the players on the national team from San Juan. They’re friendly enough, and they’ll stop and chat with you on the odd nights you venture out into the cafeterias dotted around the village for dinner. But for the most part they’re focused on other things and Tooru–

Tooru’s possessive enough of your attention at the best of times. 

Which means that you’re either with him, tucked carefully under his arm as he guides you around the village, or you’re stuck in the room, bored out of your mind waiting for him to come home to you. And for lack of anything better to do, you have the games playing on the TV.

Just for the sound of your mother tongue filling the room around you. Just so you won’t be alone with your thoughts for too long.

It’s different, back home in San Juan. But you understand it – why he brought you. 

“Where I go, you go, always.”

“Always.”

And the loneliness is worth it, you think, when he sinks down into the mattress beside you after a long day’s training and pulls you close, nuzzling into your side. This is better than being left behind. You’re here to support the man you love. Your soulmate, the name on your arm be damned. 

His good luck charm, he hums, kissing you in the early hours of the morning before slipping away. 

But even you can’t just sit around the apartment all day long. It’s good to stretch your legs, even when you’re in strange, unfamiliar territory. You tell yourself that what Tooru doesn’t know won’t hurt him, forgetting just for one blissful moment that your soulmate and his team are not the only ones who might catch you wandering. 

Of course, that realisation doesn’t sink in until broad shoulders suddenly barrel past you, knocking you off your feet. And you would have fallen, awkwardly probably, had a pair of strong, lean arms not caught at your waist, steadying you.

“Jeeze, Bokkun! Watch where yer goin’, wouldja!”

The first voice, the thick, drawling Kansai dialect isn’t familiar, but the voice that follows is impossible to misplace.

“Thought I told you two–”

It cuts off abruptly, and in some distant part of your brain you register that the stranger’s still holding you, the warmth of his hand still braced on your hip, but all you can really focus on is the owner of that second voice.

“Iwa?”

Tooru had told you he’d be here, Hinata too and Kageyama. And of course Ushijima, but you’d assumed that – at least up until they played against one another or team Japan got knocked out of the running – they’d be busy and you wouldn’t cross paths.

There’s a surprised intake of air from your left – ‘Bokkun’, you imagine – and he asks, “Wait, you know her, dude?”

And still, the warm body holding you doesn’t move an inch. Not until a familiar, irritated huff sounds, “Get your hands off her, dumbass.”

The body behind you tenses for a split second before obeying, hands ripping themselves away from you as if he’d been scalded. “Shit, sorry!”

“Don’t worry about it, it’s fine,” you murmur with what you hope is a polite smile, only half paying attention because you can hear Iwa striding towards you. In one breath, he’s knocking back your saviour and pulling you into a one armed hug.

“Shittykawa said he’d be bringing you,” he says quietly as you squeeze him back. It’s been such a long time since you’ve been face to face with him. Tooru calls him to catch up most weeks, more often than putting him on speaker so that you can say hi, but it’s not the same. “Didn’t think he meant to the actual village, though.”

You’ve missed him, you realise. Him and Makki and Mattsun, and suddenly there’s a lump in your throat, emotions welling that you can’t name. There’s so much you want to say to him, things he knows but should be said anyway, but–

“Aren’t you gonna introduce us to your pretty friend, Iwa?”

Your cheeks heat as the two of you part, yet it’s Iwa who answers for the both of you.

“No. You two need to get your asses moving,” he says. “Back to the gym, now. Unless you wanna stay back after everyone else finishes up to run extra drills?”

It’s a clear dismissal, and the two only pause for a heartbeat before grumbling their assent – and one sheepish apology – and heading off to continue their run.

“Let me walk you back.”

Some things never change, you suppose. “Iwa, you have an Olympic team to train,” you tell him with a wry grin. ”I’m not going to risk being accused of sabotaging the Japanese national volleyball team just because you feel the need to be gentlemanly.”

It’s clearly meant as a tease, but instead of the good-natured huff you’re expecting, he sighs. “C’mon. You almost got knocked on your ass, let me walk you back.”

It’s not a suggestion, and as he takes you by the hand and starts leading you back the way you came you’re reminded of high school - he used to do exactly same thing any timeTooru wasn’t around. There’s a slight flicker of irritation at your first breath of fresh air without Oikawa’s overprotective hovering being snatched away, but you know he means well.

He always does.

So you shove those feelings down and offer him a smile. “You know I’m stupidly proud of you, right?” you tell him. “Both of you.”

And something in Iwa relaxes and he laughs, “Yeah well I’m just glad you’re gonna be here to witness me wipe the floor with Shittykawa’s ass.”

—

It’s late, and Tooru isn’t back yet. 

And it wouldn’t bother you except that lunch had been hours ago, and your stomach is starting to growl, hunger settling in. 

Tooru works hard, he pushes himself and stays late when he should be home resting, you know that, but even if you did want to go and find him, pull him back so that he won’t push past his limits days out from competing, you wouldn’t have a clue where to find him – not in this sprawling maze of a complex.

What else can you do but wait, as fifteen minutes turns into half an hour, then an hour, and suddenly it’s almost nine. 

He won’t be happy that you’ve left without him, but either he’ll meet you at the cafeteria, or you’ll get home before he’s back and you’ll have dinner waiting for him. At this time of the night it’s likely to be empty anyway, it’s not like you’re running off in the middle of the dinner rush.

Most of the athletes’ll be back in their rooms, you’re not gonna get knocked around in the mad scramble for food, nobody’s going to pay you any mind.

But once again, you’re proven wrong. 

It’s not quite the roaring din that you’ve come to associate with the dining hall, but you can hear a few quiet conversations scattered throughout the room. At least none of them pay you any heed as you slowly wander the buffet, shyly asking one of the servers to help you pick out something for you and Tooru both.

It’s not until you move to take a seat, hoping that Tooru will get there before you have to try and cart his dinner back to the room that you hear the unmistakable scraping of a chair being dragged back beside you.

“Ya know, Iwaizumi never did end up telling us yer name,” a familiar voice states, settling down into the seat. “He did end up making me ‘n Bokuto run extra laps as punishment for knockin’ into ya, though.”

Out of habit, your fingers fiddle with the sleeve of your jacket – Tooru’s actually – warmth flooding your cheeks. He doesn’t sound pissed off by the fact, and you suppose he probably wouldn’t have sat down beside you if all he wanted was to pick a fight. 

“Oh, I’m… sorry?” It comes out sounding more like a question than anything else. 

He laughs at that, the sound surprisingly warm and pleasant. “Nah, not your fault. Iwa’s a hardass at the best of times.”

“Sounds like he hasn’t changed much since high school,” you muse.

Oikawa might’ve been Captain back then, but that never stopped Iwa from slapping him upside of the head whenever he did something particularly stupid. He was a hard ass, but he was also incredible at keeping the rest of the team in line and motivated, and he kept Tooru grounded. He kept you grounded. Aggressive, tough love was simply a part of that. 

You wonder distantly if his new team realizes just how lucky they are to have somebody like him in their corner.

“High school? Ya knew him back then?” he prods.

He’s a stranger. Not just a competitor, but ‘The Enemy’ just like Kageyama and Ushiwaka. Out of all the teams that Tooru might go up against during the games, you know that they’re the ones he’s most determined to defeat. And you don’t necessarily buy into the whole ‘destined rivals’ thing – Kageyama was never anything but polite to you, but you know you’re supposed to back your soulmate up on this. You know he’d be pissed to find you casually chatting away with any one of them, except maybe Hinata. 

Maybe.

But it’s nice just to indulge in a conversation – even meaningless small talk – with somebody who doesn’t know you as Tooru’s. You can’t help but relax a little, the tension easing from your shoulders, a small smile creeping across your face. 

“I’ve known Iwa since I was six years old. He’s one of my best friends.”

The man hums a little, his chair creaking as he leans back, “Really? He’s never mentioned ya.”

And it’s clear from the sharp intake of his breath that he regrets the words the moment they’re said, but instead of feeling offended, you simply laugh, the sound bubbling up before you can stop it. 

“It’s fine,” you say when he tries to backtrack. “Do you often have deep and meaningful’s with Iwa about his childhood friends?”

He snorts, “Yeah, point taken, I guess. So how come yer here then? Didn’t think they allowed cheerleaders in the village, even the cute ones.”

Something flutters in your stomach at his tone; it’s warm like honey, just a hint of teasing. He’s flirting, you realise, and in an instant you know you should shut it down. Harmless small talk is one thing, but you’re–

You have your soulmate. 

“What makes you think I’m not staff?” you ask instead.

“No uniform,” he counters, and you can’t argue with that. It’s not your fault that you can’t see what everybody’s wandering around wearing. “And you don’t really strike me as the ‘athlete’ type, no offense.”

You don’t really know how to respond to that, so you just shrug somewhat self consciously. He’s not wrong; you don’t really belong here, but you find yourself reluctant to tell him the truth.

The only reason you’re here is because Tooru cheated the system, because he couldn’t bear to be without you.

Or maybe because he knows how much of a mess you are without him. Blind and helpless without him to guide you, even here, back in the country you’d both left behind all those years ago.

“I’m here to support my soulmate,” you tell him instead, and it’s not entirely a lie. No matter what, you’ll always support Oikawa – here, back home, to whatever ends. That was the promise you’d made to each other long before you’d ever left Japan.

There’s a short pause, and you take the opportunity to turn back to the plate of food in front of you – you’d forgotten about it entirely. You half expect that he’ll take it as the perfect opportunity to politely bow out of the conversation. 

You might’ve been blind, but you’re not naive; you know exactly what athletes get up to after the sun goes down in the village. There’s a reason that your welcome packs were stuffed full of free condoms. 

And you’re not interested in that. You have Tooru and he has you. If that’s all that this guy is after; some quick, meaningless fuck, then–

“Volleyball?” he asks, and you almost roll your eyes.

He’s not wrong, of course he’s not, and you suppose considering your connection with Iwa it makes sense that he’d make that leap, but still. One track mind, all of them.

“If I tell you, you might not like me very much,” you say in lieu of an answer.

He leans closer, the chair creaking once more. “So I’m right.” He sounds so smug about it, you almost wanna tell him he’s wrong just to mess with him a little. “What position does he play?”

Not what team, what position. That, more than anything else, mattered to him – and again, you understood it. The pride players took in their position within the machine.

 “You first,” you shoot back instead, because you feel like you have a sneaking suspicion. 

And with a little huffing laugh, he confirms it, “Setter.”

Of course.

And the smile on your face tugs wider, a strange trill running through you, “Ah, and here I thought Kageyama,” you draw the name out, “was Japan’s starting setter.”

He scoffs, dragged in by your teasing jab, “Yer kiddin’, right? Tobio’s talented an’ all, but he ain’t half the setter I am.”

Cocky and smug. You wonder if he has the skills to back it up. Yet just as you open your mouth to pry further, you’re interrupted by a voice.

Several actually. 

“Talking shit again, Miya?”

“Who’s she?”

“Oh hey – Iwa’s friend!”

And your heart skips a beat, your body tensing as those voices close in, more chairs being pulled out, trays of food dumped on the table as his teammates settle down around you. It’s just a name, one name. It doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t–

“Atsumu, why don’t you shut– oh. Y/N, hey. Didn’t realise you'd be here. Isn’t the village restricted to athletes only?”

Kageyama’s blunt greeting isn’t intended to be antagonistic, but it washes over you regardless. You’re frozen, heart pounding, a sick, twisting feeling settling into your gut.

Atsumu, he’d said.

Miya Atsumu. 

Two words, and your world stops spinning. 

You’d promised him – Tooru – years ago that the name on your arm didn’t mean anything. It was all just a cruel cosmic mistake because from the moment you met him, you were his, and he was yours and nothing else mattered.

And you’d told yourself that, repeated it like a mantra until you started to believe it yourself. Because Tooru loved you, you were his soulmate and what kind of horrible fucking person would you be to take that gift, that bond and shove it back in his face.

Tooru isn’t perfect, and he’d freaked out and lied to you, but he’s your soulmate. 

The name on your arm didn’t matter, it didn’t matter that you didn’t know whose it was, because you had Tooru. It should have been his.

And you told yourself that for six months, until some blowout fight had Tooru storming out, you following in his footsteps. 

It was a stranger, some random passerby in the street. You can’t remember what prompted you to stop her and ask, why it suddenly mattered when Tooru had all but convinced you that it didn’t, but you had.

Miya Atsumu. The pronunciation had been unsure, her tongue clunky over the foreign syllables, but in that moment when you’d heard his name every lie you’d convinced yourself of had fallen apart.

It was like you’d been drowning without ever realising it, and the second you’d heard that name a hand was dragging you up to the surface and suddenly air was flooding your lungs.

Miya Atsumu.

There are voices surrounding you, somebody laughing uproariously, but it’s all just white noise. 

“Y/N,” a choked, hoarse whisper that shouldn’t have been heard, but it pierces you like a knife, cutting through everything else. It’s too much. 

On shaking legs you stand, knocking your chair back as you grab for your cane. 

The name hadn’t mattered, until you’d heard it. He hadn’t mattered, until he was standing right there in front of you.

“I– I have to go,” you mutter, not entirely sure if they heard you, or if they even cared. You leave your food untouched on the table, stumbling as you step back.

And again, you hear that whisper of your name. There’s a hand that reaches for you – his or somebody else’s you don’t know, you shrug it off regardless. “I have to go.”

Nobody stops you as you skitter back towards the entrance, but for once the cafeteria is silent. The moment you burst out through the double doors, the brisk, summer night air hits you like a slap, and you don't realise that your cheeks are wet with tears until the breeze cuts through, the damp skin prickling uncomfortably. 

And the sob that follows rips through your chest like a knife.

This isn’t what you wanted. 

If there’s a god out there, he must have a cruel sense of humour, because your name is being called again, and suddenly there’s a hand on your cheek brushing at your tears, an arm wrapping around your waist, pulling you close. “Cutie, what’s wrong?”

The scent of him, all citrus and summer, invades your nose as you clutch at him tighter. You can’t speak, can’t find the words to tell him, so you just squeeze your eyes shut and burrow into him. 

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he repeats, not asking this time. 

You take a deep, shuddering breath. “I want to go home,” you whisper, clutching at his jersey. “I wanna go home, Tooru.”

A kiss brushes against the crown of your head, and you almost miss the sound of footsteps pounding on the pavement behind you – at least until the interloper speaks.

“You–” Atsumu breaks off, his breath ragged and raw, and you don’t miss the way that Oikawa stiffens, his grip tightening, fingers digging in. “Yer my soulmate.”

Three simple words, and everything, everything just falls apart.

Tooru snarls, taking a step back and dragging you with him. “She’s not your anything, Miya. Fuck off.”

“You can’t leave me! You can’t - you’re mine!”

It hurts, the grip he has on you. He’s trembling, from rage or fear you honestly don’t know, but you can feel his heart pounding a vicious beat as his arms lock around you like a cage.

“Yeah, that’s why it’s my goddamn name on her arm. Let ‘er go, yer hurting her,” he snaps. 

“She’s my soulmate, so mind your own business and run off back home.”

You can’t breathe.

“Not when yer hurting her.”

It’s like the floor’s suddenly disappeared from beneath you, and you’re in free fall, hurtling back towards god knows what. Your head’s spinning, your legs feel like jelly, and if Tooru wasn’t holding you up against him, you’re not sure you’d still be standing. 

You can’t breathe. 

“Leave, right now,” he hisses. “She’s mine. She always has been, and always will be mine!”

You’d promised him that much, hadn’t you?

“Ya don’t scare me, and I don’t give a flying fuck if yer wearing her name on your arm. That’s my soulmate, and you’ll take yer fucking hands off ‘a her.”

You can’t breathe, not as the shouting gets louder and Tooru’s grip gets tighter. 

He takes another step back, pulling you with him, and another hiccuping sob catches in your throat. You try to speak, to stop this before it gets any worse, but the words won’t come–

“You’re hurting her!”

“I LOVE HER!” he screams. “I would never, ever hurt her!”

“T–Tooru, please…” you beg. It’s little more than a whisper, and neither one of them seems to hear it.

But somebody else does. 

“Hey, hey! What the fuck are you dumbasses doing?!” 

Iwa, always your second protector, your best and oldest friend, wastes no time in getting between the two of them, shoving Miya back.

“What is wrong with you both?!” he snaps, grabbing you by the wrist and ripping you from Oikawa. And you don’t fight it when he tugs you towards him, a protective arm wrapping around your waist. 

You cling to him, like a scared child with tears streaming down your face. 

“Iwa–”

“No, shut up. I don’t wanna hear a single word out of either one of you! Not a goddamn word!”

He doesn’t bother berating them in front of you, though you know that’ll come later. He doesn’t say anything to you either, but his hand doesn’t leave yours all the way back to his apartment. Not the one in the village, but the one just outside of the city.

“You knew, didn’t you?” you ask quietly when he drops his keys on the counter.

There’s a beat of silence, and he sighs. “Yeah, I knew.”

It’s hanging in the air between you, like a dark, stormy cloud about to unleash. “Iwa,” you whisper, your bottom lip trembling once more. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know,” he answers, as honestly as he can. “But you’re gonna stay here tonight, and tomorrow I’ll call Makki and Mattsun and they’ll come and take you back to Sendai for a little while if that’s what you want. You don’t have to see either one of those assholes, not until…” 

Not until you figure out how you’re supposed to make this impossible choice. 

He squeezes your shoulder as you sniffle. “It’s gonna be alright, whatever you decide to do.”

Neither one of you truly believes that, but what’s left to say?

He hugs you again before he leaves, makes you promise to call if you need him, but you both know you won’t.

Not tonight, not when he has other priorities. 

And then you’re alone, sitting on his couch surrounded by blankets with a mug of hot chocolate warming your hands. You know you should try to get some sleep, you’re exhausted, overwhelmed, but every time you close your eyes, you can’t stop thinking about it.

About the way Tooru’s voice had shook, how you’d smiled for Atsumu, that familiar warmth blooming in your chest when the two of you talked and you’d teased him.

And you remember how it was the day Tooru first told you that he loved you, the butterflies in your stomach the first time he’d kissed you, spinning you around and laughing as his lips met yours again and again and again. 

How he’d yelled and screamed and fallen apart in your arms that night, begging you not to leave him. 

You love him, for better or for worse, you love him. 

A loud knock echoes through the apartment, shaking you from your thoughts.

It’s almost 2am, and nobody but Iwa knows you’re here. Nobody should be knocking, and so you sit, frozen in the dark listening as your heart hammers uneasily.

One beat, then two, and then–

“I know you’re in there, just– just please. I need… I need–” he breaks off with a frustrated huff, and there’s a low thud, like his head’s fallen against the door. “Please,” he begs, quieter this time. 

There’s another thud.

“I need ya. Don’t lock me out, I’m beggin’.”

[dracowars]

LOVED YOUR TOM RIDDLE. Can I please request a arranged marriage au where yn is in love with him but he hates her so when she decides to let him go or someone else wants to marry her, Tom finally realises he’s in love with her. happ ending :))))

my heart belongs to you | tom riddle

pairing: tom x black!reader

word count: 3,3k

summary: where tom and y/n are in an arranged marriage

a/n: i'm so sorry for being so inactive recently, uni is taking its toll on me.. i had to do a bit of research for this one and also tom is a pureblood here!

warnings: toxic relationship, violence

universe: harry potter

“Get out of my sight, will you?”, he angrily snaps at you out of nowhere, for the third time already on this still very early day. Furiously, he stomps past you, pushing you to the side harshly, the filled glasses on your tray swaying dangerously. Knowing that you should just leave him alone, you stand there completely frozen at the door, still feeling the breeze on your skin after he stormed past you.

The glasses clink on the serving tray as you try to keep your trembling hands under control, but you terribly fail while tears shoot into your eyes. A lump forms in your throat and you gasp in desperation, losing your composure after hearing the front door slam shut.

Slowly, you slump down and therefore with a loud rattle let happen what could have been foreseen already: a thousand shattered pieces of glass scattered across the floor around you while you cower against the wall, your elegant dress pulled over your knees, your forehead leaning against it. Heavy sobs rock through your body and tears find their way down your cheeks, dripping from your chin onto the expensive fabric of your dress.

You just wanted to spend some time with him. Together, in the house of your parents, who went on a daily trip with their close friends early in the morning, all part of the most notorious popular pureblood families in the wizarding world – the Nott’s, the Macmillan’s, the Malfoy’s, the Lestrange’s. And if his parents were still alive, probably with the Riddle’s as well.

This is primarily the reason why you even are in this position right now; crying and huddled in the living room because your fiancé hates you profoundly.

After graduating from Hogwarts last year, the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, you, descendant of the pureblood Black family, got engaged to Tom Marvolo Riddle, the last living heir of the Riddle’s. He would offer you a good future, they said, and you would never have to worry about anything again.

But nobody knows that in reality, your own beloved fiancé really does not want to have anything to do with you. He does not even want to stay in the same room as you.

You can’t explain why he acts like this towards you. You do not know why he harbors such an abysmal hatred for you and any clear-headed, rational person would have done something about it long ago. Unfortunately for you, you feel the exact opposite for him.

Your heart belongs to him and only to him.

You have liked him since you first met him at Hogwarts, back in 1938, when the two of you were sorted into the Slytherin house. This initial friendly liking has quickly evolved into something more than that over the years and lead you to where you are now, at a point where you would have never seen yourself back then.

You have already tried everything to convince him that you are not as bad as he seems to think. Every morning you bring him his breakfast, you give him everything he needs. Even when you were still at Hogwarts, you always looked after him, finished his homework for him when he was too busy to do it by himself, and helped him pass all of his exams.

And not once did you hear a thank you. Not then and not now either.

Slowly gathering your thoughts together again, you rub the long sleeves of your velvet dress over your damp face, wiping away all of your tears before you get up on shaky legs and begin to clean up the mess that you have created. After you went back to the kitchen with the broken pieces and some injuries on your hands, your gaze longingly slides out the window.

Outside, the sun stands high over the magnificent garden of the mansion, making the clear water in the fountain shimmer in its bright light. A gentle breeze blows through the air and rustles through the perfectly cut trees that line a small path through the garden.

The loud, excited voices that suddenly roar through the house snap you out of your daydream and you quickly wipe the blood from your fingers before you step into the huge marble entrance hall. You arrive at the front door just in time to open it for your parents, who, to your surprise, did not come back alone. You are amazed to find not too familiar faces in front of you as they climb up the stairs to the door where you are still standing.

“And that has to be Y/N. Oh, how you have grown!”, an older man smiles friendly at you and you return his smile with a certain uncertainty in your face.

“Darling, we brought guests over for dinner today. You surely remember the Lestranges?”, your father announces happily and only now do the faces that you have seen at numerous balls and celebrations seem familiar again. Especially one.

“Reinhard?”, you ask in amazement when you spot him standing behind his parents, a big smile on his face when he sees you.

“Y/N, how nice to see you again”, he grins, carefully pushing his way past your parents in order to slightly bow venerably to you, taking your hand in his to place a kiss on the back of it. “It has been some time.”

“I am sure you have a lot to tell each other”, your mother mentions in a sweet voice, but before she can continue, she watches how your facial expression changes from one second to the other as you look past them, out into the yard.

Next to the carriage with which they have returned, Tom is standing now, petting one of the splendid noble white horses before he joins all of you.

“Tom! There you are, I was already wondering where you went”, your father says, visibly pleased when he too spotted his future son-in-law, drawing everyone’s attention to him.

“Reinhard?”

“Tom?”

Within a few seconds, the two former best friends lay in each other’s arms, obviously happy to finally see the other again.

“Let us go inside. We want to show you our newest masterpiece of art in our wonderful collection, come on”, your mother announces happily and leads the Lestranges inside, but not without turning around to you once more. “The children can catch up on what they have missed.”

“I can’t believe it! You are really here, Tom. Man, you look even better than at Hogwarts”, Reinhard laughs, playfully pushing Tom to the side while you watch them in silence. “What are you doing here with the Blacks?”

“They kindly took me in”, Tom lies to him and for a moment you think he threw you a glance out of the corner of his eyes after uttering these words. His statement makes Reinhard realize that you were still there with them, who had apparently completely forgotten that you were even there.

“I am so happy to see you again, Y/N!”, he grins and takes a step closer to you, probably to be able to take a closer look at you. “Still just as beautiful as I imagined. And just as smart, I guess?”

Reinhard’s sudden compliments make you blush and your cheeks glow, which is why you nervously avert your gaze from him, directly falling on Tom, who looks at the scene in front of him with incredible resentment.

Unlike Tom, Reinhard was always there for you. You spent a lot of time together in your school days and if your parents had known about your close friendship, you are sure that he would have been your fiancé by now. Which, to be honest, does not sound bad anymore right now.

And yet your heart still belongs to Tom.

When you all sit together at dinner later in the evening, where your parents are talking about irrelevant things like Ministry of Magic, you keep making eye contact with Reinhard, who seems to be staring at you.

“Is there something on my face?”, you ask uncertainly and put your glass back on the table when you can no longer bear his piercing gaze.

“No, no, not at all. I was just wondering how a beautiful witch like you could have become so much more stunning”, Reinhard winks at you, causing you to swallow hard. You are not used to getting compliments, especially not from a handsome young man like him. Before you can answer to him, however, there is a loud clink and you startle, your eyes immediately fixed on the cause of the noise.

The glass, which you have certainly placed far away from the edge, is now lying in your lap, the little liquid that was still inside now spread over your elegant evening gown. You move your chair back in shock when, in the corner of your eye, you see how Tom puts away his wand. And not only did you notice Tom just now, but the rest of them follow your gaze.

“Tom, darling, how about you tell our guests how you and our daughter got to know each other”, your mother suddenly prompts him, not even realizing that he has just deliberately spilled your drink on you. But why did he in the first place?

„I would love to“, Tom puts on a really believable smile that no one but you questions and starts telling them how you met and fell in love with each other. He tells one lie after another, explaining the web of lies that you have spun around you over time to make your relationship as credible as possible, at least in front of other people. And suddenly nobody cares about you or your still soaking wet dress anymore.

“What a wonderful story”, Mrs. Lestrange applauds and everyone else seems to be completely enthusiastic about Tom’s fairytale. To top it off, he then reaches across the table to take your hand in his, just like a real affectionate couple would do.

You lower your gaze as he gently strokes the back of your hand with his thumb, trying your best to not show how uncomfortable you are. Oh, how much you wish that this were real, that Tom would actually treat you like this when you are alone, the same way as he does in front of your parents.

But he does not and deep down you know that he will never do.

“So, you are engaged?”, Reinhard scrutinizes the statement of his former best friend, his eyes focused on you suspiciously, as if he is expecting an answer from you and not from Tom. A slight pressure on your hand makes you flinch and look up.

“Y-Yes”, you force a smile onto your lips, whereupon Tom seems satisfied with your answer, letting go of your hand again with a - what seemed to you like a – disgusted expression on his face.

An uncomfortable silence spreads between the three of you, which is drowned out by the loud conversation of the adults on the other side of the table. Finally, making up your mind, you clear your throat loudly and get up from your chair, gaining everyone’s attention in a matter of seconds.

“Excuse me, I have to go freshen up for a moment”, you explain with a slight polite bow before turning away to leave the dining room.

“Reinhard, would you be so kind and help Y/N”, Mr. Lestrange asks his son, who stands up with furrowed brows, apparently just as surprised about this sudden request as you, but then follows you out into the hallway with no further objection.

“I really do not need any help, thank you”, you try to get rid of him as you walk up the large staircase leading to the first floor together, only wanting to be alone.

“Dinner like these are totally boring anyway”, he chuckles softly and shows no intentions of leaving your side any time soon, which is why you do not even try to search for further arguments. He follows you to your room where you are able to tear yourself away from him to put on a new dress while he waits outside in front of the door.

With an equally elegant burgundy red dress you step out of your room after a few minutes, Reinhard’s eyes greeting you with a sparkle.

“Wow”, he breathes out barely audible and takes you hand without asking to swirl you around, causing your dress to fly around gorgeously. Unintentionally, warmth rises in your face again and your hearts makes a barely noticeable jump inside your chest when he looks deep into your eyes after catching you back in his arms.

The loud clearing of a throat behind you makes you turn around in shock, only to see that Tom himself is now standing at the end of the corridor, not seeming very enthusiastic.

“We did not see you there, Tom”, Reinhard disguises his obvious nervousness with a laugh, acting like Tom had just caught you in doing something he should not have seen. Tom, however, does not even react to his words, but looks past Reinhard at you, his eyebrows raised meaningfully.

But when you do not move under his piercing gaze, his facial expression changes and he quickly approaches you, Reinhard instinctively pushing you behind him so that you can only see Tom approaching further over his shoulder. Before neither you nor Reinhard can say or do anything, Tom has already pulled out his wand and aims it directly at Reinhard, who flies back through the air only a few seconds later, hitting the hard marble floor at the end of the corridor with a thud.

“What the-?!”

“Come with me”, Tom orders, now standing directly in front of you. When you stubbornly refuse, he suddenly grabs your wrist to pull you away from there. No matter how much you fight against his firm grip, you cannot tear yourself away from him as he pulls you into the closest room, which turns out to be the library.

Once there, you can finally free yourself from his tight grip, but before you can reach for the doorknob to leave immediately, he locks the door with a spell. Angrily, you turn to him, despair written all over your stunning face.

“What is this supposed to be, Tom? Let me out of here, now!”, you command him in a loud voice, not caring if anybody can hear.

“What did he want from you?”, he asks you urgently and steps closer to you. Since the door is in your back, every possible escape route is blocked, and you are caught.

“We just talked to each other, you know. Like normal people do”, you answer irritably and cross your arms in front of your chest, not in the mood to justify yourself, especially not in front of someone who does not care about you at all and not after what he has done.

“But that did not look like it.”

“Tom, stop it.”

“You belong to me and nobody else!”

These words coming out of his mouth echo loudly through the dark library, his face wrapped in an eerie candlelight. Before you can even control yourself and fully process what he said, you severely slap him.

Frightened by your own horrible deed, you immediately pull your hand away, your gaze filled with fear, but the anger that keeps building up inside of you winning the upper hand after all.

“How dare you call me your property?!”, you scream in rage and tears form in your eyes because of your uncontrollable anger. However, Tom needs a moment to collect his thoughts after your heavy smack before he can answer you.

“You are my fiancé”, he spits out coldly, a touch of shock in his voice, apparently not expecting you to react like this.

“And that does not make me nowhere near your property! You never treat me like your fiancé anyway, so why now all of a sudden?!”, you bicker at him, your voice loud and constant, even though you would like to flee from this situation right away if you were able to.

But Tom does not have an answer.

“Fine, okay. If you have nothing to say to me, like you never have, then I will go back now and ask my parents to end this damn failed engagement and engage me with someone else who truly cares for me!”

Suddenly, without letting you time to catch your breath after your outburst, he presses you with your back against the door completely, his hands tightly grabbing your wrists, a little too tight for your personal liking.

“You mustn’t do that”, he softly whispers, his head lowered as if he does not dare to look you in the eyes.

“What is stopping me?”, you hiss, still full of anger and – probably for the very first time – hatred towards him.

But when you feel his lips on yours all of a sudden, all of these emotions evaporate and all that remains is your racing heartbeat, which is being repaired at this very moment. You never would have thought that at some point in your life the moment would come when Tom Marvolo Riddle, who absolutely loathes his fiancé, kisses you.

After kissing you, he looks straight into your eyes, and the Tom you met in 1938 is standing in front of you again. The Tom you fell so deeply in love with.

“I can’t explain it to you”, he finally breaks the silence, his gaze directed to the floor as he moves away from you, giving you enough space to breathe regularly again. You, however, do not say anything but just stare at him.

“I was not aware that I am capable of feeling such feelings for someone. I am unfamiliar with this feeling and I did not know how to deal with it, Y/N. I treated you badly because I did not want it to be true, I did not want to accept it. I could not imagine having feelings for the little nuisance that has always been running after me”, Tom explains, choosing each and every single word very carefully, trying to put his emotions into words which does not really work the way he would like it to. But that is how you know him. You know that this confession must be extremely difficult for him, but you can’t help but feel a sense of relief inside of you.

“When?”, you ask and manage, with this tiny little word, to make him look up at you. “When did you know?”

“Since I have been here. You served me every day and took care of me, even though I wanted to push you away from me with all of my might. You have already helped me so many times in the past without me even asking, you have always accepted me for who I am”, he desperately tries to but his feelings into words, asking himself what he is even doing right now.

“Tom..”

“No, I have to sincerely apologize to you. I had no right to treat you the way I did. And also today.. when I saw you with him and how well you got along, it finally became clear to me. Reinhard has felt something for you since our school days, I know that even though I could never understand, but now I do. I understand why he fell in love with you”, Tom continues without breathing, pouring out all of his feelings that he has hidden for so long.

“I understand if you want to dissolve this engagement and I will not stop you if that is what you want”, he quickly adds, looking at you with desperation in his eyes. He already prepares himself for the worst when you are the one getting closer to him this time.

“Idiot”, you smile slightly and place a gentle kiss on his lips while he looks at you puzzled. “I love you, I thought you knew that.”

“I know, but-“

“But nothing”, you interrupt him and take his hand to lead it to your fast pounding heart. “It always belonged to you.”

[in-tua-deep]

idk if you still do au ideas but what if delores was a real person in the apocalypse? how it woul dbe done i have no idea but i love all your aus and thought it would be cool

okay okay I don't tend to go for real!Dolores aus admittedly because I find her much more compelling as what she is: a reflection of five himself and a symptom of his crushing loneliness

but i started thinking about it and you know what?? i think five deserves a little socialization, as a treat

so say like, 0.5% of the population is resistant to abilities. Allison would really struggle to rumor them, Five wouldn't be able to jump with them, and, most importantly, whatever the fuck Vanya's ability does has like, reduced damage or something

and the og apocalypse isn't the moon apocalypse, so let's say that it was pure waves of Vanya's powers that fucked over the earth

so 0.5% of the population survives the apocalypse. though, let's be honestly, the real number is a lot smaller than that. People who might have survived Vanya's initial power wave (miraculously) did not survive buildings crushing them or survive the car/plane/bus/train/other transportation crashes or survive being left alone when they are too young to reliably look after themselves, or the variety of other problems that come with 99.5% of the population dying at once

So, Five arrives in the apocalypse and is met with ruin and fire and a whole lot of dead people. He finds his siblings, but it doesn't matter. They're dead. He doesn't even recognize them at first, these strange grown-ups who he identifies not by their faces but by the umbrellas on their wrists that match his own

As he realizes the full impact of his situation, he hears a voice that says, very succinctly, "holy shit!"

It's a girl a few years older than Five himself, maybe 15 or 16, and she is very excited to see another survivor.

And here's where I u-turn this au around bc i'm not all that interested in real!Dolores, but I would be down to talk about Five meeting survivors in the apocalypse, because if Dolores is real I don't buy no one else survived.

So Dolores shows up and see a Literal Child crying over the corpses of his family and assumes that Five is a fellow survivor, and she immediately grabs him up. Five is incoherent with grief at this point anyway, so he doesn't even protest when she basically hauls him away from the bodies. She's babbling at him, but he doesn't really hear anything she's saying

And then she takes him to her dad

(Why not, let's have the 1% potentially be a heritable thing)

and her dad, let's call him just some dad name. like Rick. it has been a fucking WEEK for him, okay. he had his daughter with him, his ex-wife is on the other coast for her work, and by some miracle he survived the apocalypse and so did his child, and he's been wracking his brains trying to figure out what the fuck to do next

and then his daughter shows up with a traumatized thirteen-year-old in tow

now rick is a good dude. he's a dad. they get out of five that his name is five ("what the fuck" dolores mouths to him over five's shoulder and rick can't help but agree) and the bodies he found were his siblings ("Dad and Ben and Vanya weren't there though," this child cries desperately and rick feels his own heart clench in response, "They might still be alive!")

"We can look for them." Rick assures his new adopted child, because he is an adult in a fresh apocalypse and this kid has presumably lost everything he's ever known (more than rick even knows at the time)

and they do. They each get wagons and they go out and find supplies and look for other survivors. Five is... surprisingly helpful and also surprisingly docile as he is able to rely on Someone Else to give orders while he attempts to (dissociate) process what the fuck has happened

and here's the thing: Five prides himself on being independent, sort of. He's independent for a child soldier, but he's used to taking orders from a male authority figure and Rick happens to be just that

The first time that Five does something dangerous and Rick yells is a revelation

(Rick isn't sure if he hopes that Five's dad is alive or not, because if they find that man alive then Rick might just kill the jackass himself. Also like, Five is bizarrely knowledgeable out survival skills, like way too knowledgeable about it, which is helpful for them but also very concerning)

they find a newspaper and Five finds the article that mentions his father's recent death ("Huh. Heart attack." Five says, and there is no emotion in his voice)

(Years later, years later, Five and Rick talk. "I don't think I wanted to find him, either." Five admits, softly because Dolores is asleep, "I think I was more scared of finding him alive than I was of finding his body. He would've been so mad at me, I think.")

this newspaper is how Rick and Dolores find out about Five being Number Five, Umbrella Academy Missing Person

"Dude, what the fuck." Dolores says, wide eyes, "You're like, thirty?"

"I'm thirteen." Five says, and then checks the date on the newspaper again, "Also I think I would technically be 29 if I lived through all of it, 'cause it's April and my birthday is in October."

"You... time travelled?" Rick asks, which is honestly the more relevant question, "Can you go back?"

And Five just,,, crumples on himself. Because he tried, he tried really hard. It didn't work. "I'm gonna figure it out. I'm gonna go back, I'm going to save them."

That, Rick thinks, is a lot of weight to put on one person's shoulders, but especially the shoulders of a child.

"Alright." Rick says, because what else can he say after finding out his new child has superpowers and is from like, 2004? "What do you need?"

("Oh my god I have so many memes to teach you." Dolores says later, reverently. Five blinks in confusion and Rick mentally prepares himself for the recitation of so many vines)

And it's easier, somehow. Five sometimes feels like it's a betrayal, but he settles into apocalypse life with an ease that surprises him.

He lets Rick fuss over him and help tie his scarf securely around his head every morning before he sets off on supply runs with Dolores. And they're kids! Five has never had a friend before, and Dolores is funny and smart and she's struggling just as much as he is.

"I don't know if my mom's alive." She says to him, in solidarity when he checks the face of every corpse to see if they're Vanya.

Five is practical in the way only a child soldier can be. He's economical with the room in their wagons, carefully examining what might and what might not be useful.

Dolores, on the other hand, constantly takes up space with what Five sees as useless shit.

"Excuse you," Dolores says, shoving a game of monopoly, the entire discworld series, and a pack of glitter gel pens into her wagon, "These are absolutely vital apocalypse supplies."

She challenges him, plays with him in a way no one ever has. "I bet you I can find more batteries today than you can," She grins at him, "Winner gets to pick dinner first?"

"You're on." Five says, directly before Dolores pulls two packs of 24 AA batteries from behind her back, like a cheat.

Dolores makes him take a ten minute break when they find a playground that has been mostly not-destroyed. They rummage around kids backpacks and mother's handbags for some good loot, too numb to corpses to even be bothered all that badly about the corpses they belong to.

"I'm getting on the swings." Dolores says when Five starts making noises about moving on, "I haven't been on a swingset in ages."

"What's the point?" Five grumps.

"Don't be sour because you can't swing as high as I can!" Dolores laughs, getting higher and higher as the swings creak ominously.

Five grumpily gets into the other swing and grudgingly kicks himself back and forth until Dolores takes pity on him and teaches him how to properly move his legs and body to get higher and higher.

Dolores jumps from the swing seat and lands with a flourish and smile. Five jumps out of his seat and then jumps, warping right in front of Dolores and making her yell and hit at him in outrage. Five smiles the widest he has all week.

This is how Five grows up in the apocalypse, with Dolores teasing him into taking breaks and leaning over his shoulder to look at his math and scandalizing him by stating that she'd only just started on matrices in her own high school math class.

Every night they huddle around Rick while he picks up whatever book Dolores picked out that day because it is a travesty that Five has never read hunger games or whatever, and then they read together because it would be a genuine blood bath if they all took turns. The first time Five accidentally mentioned a spoiler and Dolores genuinely considered murder was the birthday of this tradition

Some days the air is too smoky or there are dust storms or it's just plain too dangerous to go out, and they all stay in. Dolores regales Five with stories about public school, and Five tells them about his siblings.

Then they all cry

"I shouldn't be crying." Five sobs.

"Shut the fuck up," Dolores sobs back, "You literally watched me lose my shit over remembering my shitty eighth grade dance and listened to me sob-sing toxic for like four hours."

"In fairness I also wished you would shut up then."

"Let me hug you or I will start singing songs that I only remember the chorus for again you absolute fucker."

"I could always sing some -"

"No, Rick/Dad."

And Five grows up. Rick shows him how to shave very carefully in front of cracked mirrors. Dolores teases him every time his voice cracks. Rick tells Five in no uncertain terms that he loves and cares for him, and that Reginald was a little bitch. There are a lot of heartfelt conversations around that, honestly. Rick telling Five that he and the siblings deserved better, that they were children and deserved to have a childhood.

And that he has faith in Five. Rick and Dolores both do, they bring him back paper and pens and pencils and chalk and anything Five can use to write equations. They poke around any libraries for books on theoretical mathematics and quantum physics. Rick and Dolores go out scouting for food while Five stays home and can work longer.

They also make him take breaks, make sure that he's looking after himself.

They're a little better off than OG!Five when it comes to food, because some animals survive. Enough that Rick figures out how to hunt. Five is the first one to each bugs, and even though Dolores makes faces they all start eating bugs as well.

"Pretty sure there's loads of cultures that eat bugs." Rick says grudgingly, wondering if he should try stirfry the cockroaches and if that would improve the taste. "There's even, uh, cricket flour or whatever, right?"

"Plus you eat like, five spiders a year when you're asleep." Dolores says cheerfully, just to watch her dad's face scrunch up in displeasure.

"That doesn't sound true, but I don't know enough about spiders to dispute it." Five mutters, and Dolores gives him such a proud look that it makes him roll his eyes.

They're in their thirties when Rick dies. He's out foraging and hunting, and the rubble he's standing on gives way and he ends up with a gash in his leg. He manages to stop the bleeding, but the world is filthy and they don't have any antibiotics.

He gets an infection.

"It's okay." He tells both of his kids, "It's okay. I'm just so glad that you guys have each other, y'hear? I'm so glad."

"It's not okay." Five says, voice thick and choked, "It's not."

"Yeah, well, you're going to figure out how to go back, right? Go back in time and save everyone. Then I'll have never died, right?" Rick smiles, "And even if you don't, I'll be waiting for you on the other side and we'll see each other again anyway."

"I'm going to fix it."

"I know. I have faith in you, Five." Ricks says honestly, and that's more than Reginald ever said.

They sit quietly together while Dolores is out scavenging. They've been taking turns sitting with Rick.

"I won't remember you, in the past, will I?" Rick says rhetorically, but Five answers anyway.

"I don't think so."

Rick hums, "Well, doesn't matter. If you need help in the past, you come to me, y'hear?"

"You won't remember me."

"Doesn't matter. You come find me, and you tell me your crazy story until I believe you, and then I'll help you." Rick says firmly, "You're family. You're my son. Timelines? Don't matter. If you need help, with anything, even if it's just with - with filling out a bowling team or something -"

"I have never been bowling in my life and you know it." Five interrupts, but it makes him laugh just a little bit which was clearly Rick's intention.

"Well who knows what you'll get up to in the past! You'll be able to go bowling, you know. Get to wear those uncomfortable shoes. Hey, you go far enough back maybe you can go to Dolores's tenth birthday party and put me out of my misery."

"Was she bad at bowling?"

"Oh, she was wiping the floor with me. No contest."

"Honestly, that sounds absolutely accurate."

"Shut up, bowling just wasn't my sport. Regardless, the point was that I'm giving you a free pass to come and get me. Because I know you, I know how you think." Rick brings up his hand to tap his finger against Five's forehead, "You get it into your head that you need to go it alone, take it all on your shoulders. I'm telling you that if you do that I'll somehow manifest my memories and come smack you over the head for being stupid, you hear?"

"I'm not dragging you into anything." Five says firmly, "I'll have my siblings."

"Who were also children." Rick points out. "And dragging? Dragging is such a strong word for a volunteer."

"A volunteer who won't remember volunteering." Five shoots back.

Rick just shrugs, and then winces when the movement jolts his bad leg. "Five, I'm going to be honest with you here. And sappy. Can you handle a bit of sappiness for a minute?"

"No."

"Well too bad. Can't leave a dying man, you'd feel too bad. So you're stuck with me. But you listen good, okay? Because you aren't dragging me into anything. Whatever life you have, I want to have a part of that. Because you're my son. Wherever you are, whatever you do, I want to help because you're family. What you'd be doing by leaving me out of it is depriving me of someone I love, depriving me of knowing one of the best kids I've ever known."

"Shut up." Five says, choked.

"Nope, it's sappy time." Rick states, "Maybe asking you to come find me is selfish, but I don't care. No matter what version of me exists, I want to be in your life."

"My life is a walking joke, why would you want any part of that?"

"It has been my privilege to watch you grow up. To help you. To be here for you. Of course I'd want to be there to watch you grow up the rest of the way."

"But -"

"Shut up, just let me tell you that I am so proud of you. You never give up, and your heart is so big. You love so much and so loudly, and it's been the highest honor of my life to be included in your family."

Five pauses for a moment to collect himself before simply saying - "You're the best dad I've ever had."

Rick snorts, "Considering my competition, I'd sure hope so. That bar was so low old Reggie was practically limbo dancing with the devil. Now get over here and give an old man a hug."

They don't bury Rick, when he dies. They don't have time and the ground is too hard and they don't have the heart to move him. Instead the pack everything up and seal him in the shelter they'd lived in.

Dolores pulls out a bottle of ancient nail polish and painstakingly writes Rick's name on the wall with his birth year and an approximate current year. They aren't 100% sure though, since time blends together out in the apocalypse, but it's something.

They continue by themselves. They get older.

Dolores jokingly calls him her husband because the way his face scrunches up makes her cackle. They see other people very occasionally, usually passing through. Usually groups. Dolores and Five get to flex their hosting skills, though more than one group declines their cockroach stirfry.

("It's a family recipe." Five says with amusement in his eyes that usually manages to drown out old grief.)

"Jeeze, that kid couldn't have been older'n twenty-three." Dolores complains, "Makes me feels positively ancient."

"They wouldn't have known any world 'cept for the apocalypse." Five muses, pouring some boiled water into wine glasses because they might be living in the apocalypse but they can be fancy.

"Do you ever think about that?" Dolores asks, turning to him with no judgement, just curiosity. "When you go back, you'll be like, erasing them from existence."

Five shrugs, "Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe this place will just split off into an alternate timeline."

"Maybe none of this is real." Dolores says, amusement coloring her voice. "Maybe you aren't talking to a real person at all. Maybe this is just a symbol of your insanity and cracked mind."

"Dolores, I literally have a scar where you stabbed me. Did I somehow manage to stab myself in the back?"

"Scraped you, I scraped you. By accident."

"So you maintain." Five says haughtily, swirling his water in his wine glass like a pretentious prick.

"I could totally be fake. You don't know my life."

"I know way too much about you, Dolores. Like, way way too much." Five scoffs, because Dolores and him have literally no secrets from one another at this point. Five even knows the truth behind what happened at Janet Scranton's thirteenth birthday party. Like, he said, way too much.

"Maybe you made it up. Maybe that's why you know so much."

"Dolores, I'm going to be honest with you right now." Five presses the tips of his fingers to his chin, "If you were a figment of my imagination, you would be so much better at math."

"Hey!" Dolores squawks indignantly, "I didn't even get to finish high school you pretentious prick!"

"Neither did I!"

"You didn't even go to high school, you brat."

"I'm fifty-two I think I've outgrown 'brat.'"

"Tell that to your attitude." Dolores says haughtily, "You're still younger than me."

"Won't be when I go back in time." Five says cheerfully, completely ignoring Dolores's venomous look.

"That's cheating."

"Sucks to suck." Five says loftily, taking another sip of his water.

Sometimes they talk about The Plan, with capital letters. What Five is going to do when he goes back in time, depending on when he pops out. Is he going to adopt his siblings? What about Reginald?

"You don't think I could kill Reginald?" Five says, holding a hand to his chest in mock offense.

"I think you should let me do it. I'll even give you control of tonight's music if you do."

"What are you doing to do? Bite his ankles? What if you're like, seven or something?"

"All the better to get away with it since I'll be too young to convict or whatever."

"Pretty sure that's not how the law works."

"How would you know? Just for that I'm playing Istanbul on repeat again."

"I don't know why you think that's a threat. That song slaps."

It takes a few more years before Five is close enough that the Commission comes to interfere. Because that's what I think happened - Five was getting too close and they stepped in because they might as well distract the man as much as they can with missions, right?

So the Handler shows up. And she offers Five a job, telling him that they have the ability to travel through time. And Five - hesitates.

"Give me some time?" Five asks, and the Handler graciously gives him 24 hours.

And he and Dolores talk it over, because now that his goal is more in sight than it has ever been and Five is scared.

"What are you waiting for? You have the chance to see your siblings again." Dolores says patiently.

"Yeah," Five says, and what he doesn't say is clear. But I won't see you.

"Five." Dolores says, and she cradles his face between her palms like he is something precious, "I have had so much time with you already. More than I would have ever. We have been so lucky, to have this time. How can I demand more than what we have already been given?"

"When have you ever not demanded the world, Dolores?" Five asks, his own hand coming up to cover Dolores's own.

"We've had decades together, Five. We're getting old. I was always going to lose you, one way or another. Nothing lasts forever."

"I don't want to lose you."

"I know. But if I had to choose a way, if I could decide where our story ends, this would be it. Letting you go, because this way you get to live. You get to see your family again. You get to save the world. I could ask for nothing more than for you to get your happy ending."

Five removes Dolores's hand from his cheek so that he can cradle it between them, "I'm happy here with you. I've never been happier. Isn't that silly? That I was happier in the apocalypse?"

"I bet killing Reggie would make you happy." Dolores laughs rustily.

"One day you're going to see the mysterious disappearance of a famous billionaire in the paper and feel a twinge of satisfaction and now have a clue why." Five laughs as well, shaking his head.

Dolores pats Five's hands, "Five, look at me. We've had our time. And you're going to give me even more of it. More time with my father. More time with my mother. I'll never know it, but you'll have saved me."

"What if this is - what if this is an alternate reality? What if I leave you here alone?"

"Then you'll be saving a 15-year-old girl from the same fate as me. Because as much as I love you, as much as I have loved this time we have had together, this is still an apocalypse. This should never have happened, and if you have a chance to go back and prevent it, then I want you to take that chance with both hands."

"Even if it means leaving you alone?"

Dolores smiles at him, "I'm not going to be alone. Far too many creepy crawlies in the apocalypse for that."

"Shut up, I'm being serious."

"Hmm." Dolores hums consideringly, "Maybe I'll head North, to that new settlement that last group said they'd heard word of. Sure they'd find some use for an old woman who's survived this long in the wilderness."

"You can have my half of the record collection." Five says, pulling her against him into a hug that she easily returns.

"As if I wouldn't have stolen them as soon as you left." She scoffs, but it's a little wet, and Five pretends his own eyes aren't leaking tears.

When The Handler comes back, Dolores gives him another hug. She also slips something into his pocket - some photos. They'd taken it a year into the apocalypse, when Dolores had found an ancient looking polaroid camera and towed it home despite Five's protests about practicality. The photos are worn and faded at the edges, but the smiles on Five's little apocalypse family's faces are undeniable.

"You'll have to see if they magically fade when you change the timeline." Dolores whispers to him with a grin, "Like in the movies."

"Okay." Five whispers back.

"You have the list of movies to watch, right?" Dolores says. Five rolls his eyes and nods because he wrote the list last night into his Vanya-book while Dolores hovered over his shoulder and critiqued his handwriting.

"And you promise to try a proper non-expired twinkie at some point?"

"That I do not promise. I think even looking at one would make me lose my lunch. I have twinkie-trauma."

"Shut up and get going." Dolores says, because the Handler is starting to tap her foot impatiently.

And off Five goes to become an assassin. Though - he's much more gentle this time. He's careful, he doesn't kill children and he usually takes jobs that don't require killing at all. He distracts and manipulates events as much as he can without killing.

He's actually much more well socialized, thanks to Rick and Dolores. Less feral child and more determined man on a mission.

Which is why he's so frustrated when he finally, finally manages to get the equations to work and falls through and falls - directly back into his stupid thirteen-year-old body.

"Shit." Five says, loudly, and revels in the surprised look on his siblings faces.

He strides into the kitchen, and they all follow him like ducklings. They look exactly the way they did when they died.

"Wow this is actually way harder than I thought it would be." Five muses, looking at their dead faces. But as Dolores would say, life is hard but you have to keep on trucking sometimes. "Whatever, what's the date?"

"Five, where have you been?" Diego demands, looking irritated. It makes Five snort in amusement.

"The future. The past. If you want like, an exact list of dates you'll have to hold your horses. I spent like, two weeks in Peru once. No souvenirs though, unfortunately."

They look taken aback, like they didn't expect Five to have quite this much sass. Oops. That is definitely Dolores's influence. Or maybe he was always a little asshole. In fairness, what teenagers aren't tiny assholes? He has an excuse.

"What the fuck does that mean?" Diego's eyebrows are furrowed in anger. It kind of takes Five aback for a second, because he remembers a Diego who stutters when he argued.

"When did you learn the fuck-word?" Five asks, raising an eyebrow before her can help it, "Grace ought to wash your mouth out with soap."

Diego immediately goes red, "Shut up!"

"Wow you're so easy to rile up. Aren't you like, twenty-something? Actually, I could figure out for myself how old you are if you gave me the date."

"I'm twenty-nine." Diego growls, like that was the point.

"Haunting!" Five says cheerfully, because that means there is way less time than he would like, narrowing his time down to a six month window.

It's extremely funny how his cheer makes all of them make faces.

It's Klaus who leans forward, "Why do you need to know?"

Klaus's face is open and curious and - (looks exactly like he did when Five found him all those years ago) - and Five can't help but answer him. "The world end on April 1st, 2019. No it isn't an April Fools joke, yes I have heard that joke like a million different times. I just want to know how close I landed so I can, you know, start working on how to fix that."

"Woah woah woah, roll it back." Allison says, holding a hand up, "What?"

"The apocalypse occurs on April 1st, 2019." Five says, slowly. "I have traveled from afar to prevent this from happening, because like, everyone dies."

"Everyone?" Vanya says weakly from the side.

She's clearly expecting to be ignored, so Five turns his head to address her directly by wiggling his hand back and forth a little. "Sort of. Like, not too many people survive at all. A handful of the human population, you know."

"But you survived?" Diego recovers admirably, if bitingly.

"Well, no." Five says rolling his eyes, "Wouldn't you just know it, Klaus here has managed to figure out a new ability!"

Everyone turns to look at Klaus, who immediately holds up his hands like he's being arrested or something, "I did not!"

"Wonderful! Now that we've established that I'm alive -"

"Why should we trust a word you say?" Luther says for the first time, looking pensive.

Five blinks, genuinely taken aback. "Because... I'm your brother? Because I can clearly and obviously time travel? Like, yeah, it would have been more convenient if I'd arrived in like, my old-body for proof-purposes, but like. I mean. Thirteen is still a pretty convincing age to be to prove time travel considering if I hadn't, I would be like, almost thirty."

"Roll it back again." Allison says firmly, "What do you mean by 'old body'?"

"Great question!" Five says pointing at Allison and smiling. Everyone looks at him weird again, and Five takes a moment to wonder if they've ever experienced positive reinforcement. Knowing Reginald, probably not. "Wait! Is Reggie alive? Wait, no, answer that in a second. Uh. When I time traveled I fucked up my body I guess, I was like, old. White hair and wrinkles-type old from spending decades in the apocalypse. But I fucked up the calculations and got booted back to my thirteen-year-old body, I guess. How, I have no idea."

"What?" Vanya says, still equally weakly.

"You have no idea how fucked up time travel is." Five whispers conspiratorially to Vanya, loud enough for the whole table to hear, "There are so many ways to die. Or permanently tear a hold in space time. But like, with life as we know if ending soon-ish, I figured I couldn't possibly fuck it up worse than it already was, y'know? Speaking of, anyone have the date again?"

"Wait, what was that about dad?" Luther asks, very focused.

"Oh, you still call him dad? Big oof." Five says automatically, because apparently his verbal filter is shot to hell after living with Dolores. It does make Klaus bark out a too-loud laugh.

"What does that mean?" Luther asks aggressively.

"It means Reginald sucks and doesn't deserve the title of 'dad,' what did you think I meant?" Five asks, and now both Diego and Vanya and both cracking smiles, though Vanya is covering hers with a hand.

"Have some respect for the dead." Luther growls, standing up and looking very large and threatening.

Five sways back, craning his head up, "Woah there big buy, sit down before I injure my poor growing spine looking up at you. Jeeze, did Reggie force feed you steroids or something? I wouldn't put it past him but like, I just want to know he at least went over the side effects of the drug with you. Also like, thanks for narrowing it down. Also terrifying! Seriously though, exact date please because if I have less than 24 hours I am going to break down crying and that is a threat."

"I love this Five." Klaus says reverently.

"March 21st." Vanya offers, finally.

"Wow! Terrifying!" Five says, clapping his hands together, "Hate that. Ten days, huh? Well, who wants to get on board the save-the-world express?"

Klaus immediately flings his hand in the air, Five points at his brother appreciatively. "Yes, excellent! I'll take the volunteer in the lovely skirt as my first team member. Any other volunteers?"

"Danke!" Klaus simpers, grinning widely like this is the vest entertainment he's had in weeks.

"I'm not just going to stand here and listen to you badmouth dad and boss us around." Luther slams his hands on the table.

"Well not with that attitude." Five snarks.

Diego raises his hand, "I would like to join team fuck dad as well."

"We can certainly debate team names later." Five says, nodding wisely as Luther gives some sort of scandalized gasp.

"Honestly, I just want to see where this is going." Klaus confesses.

Five shrugs, because he doesn't really care about the reason. "Don't you want to prove me wrong them? Prove what a well-adjusted young man Reginald Hargreeves raised?"

"Shut up." Luther grinds out, looking a moment away from throwing a punch.

"If this is all true, I have to get home." Allison cuts in, looking concerned, "I have - I have a daughter."

"I mean, if you want to give Claire a world to live in then I'd stick around, but that's just me." Five shrugs.

"You know her name?" Allison asks, obviously taken aback.

Five is almost offended, "Uh, yeah. I have her photo as well. Y'all get on like, a bizarre number of gossip magazine covers did you know that?"

Allison manages to outdo herself in terms of being taken aback once more.

There's a beat of silence, and then Five turns, "Vanya? You in?"

"Me?" Vanya blinks, looking shocked. "What can I do?"

"Yeah, what can she do?" Diego asks, crossing his arms and suddenly looking grumpy.

It baffles Five, who scrunches his nose, "Uh, like, a lot? I assume? I mean. I'm going to be honest here, just looking at y'all right now is a lot. In more ways than one! Hashtag trauma and all that, but like, name a single one of you that wouldn't be the most obvious person in the room as soon as you walked into it. Except Vanya, who somehow manages to look like a well adjusted adult, by some miracle."

"Did you just verbally say the word hashtag?" Allison asks, looking so deeply confused.

"More concerned about the trauma he tacked onto there, but y'know, to each their own." Klaus immediately cuts in.

"You think I'm well-adjusted?" Vanya asks, looking oddly touched.

"I would like to direct your attention to Diego's leather pants-scowl combo and Luther's general aura of daddy-issues." Five says pointedly, "I can practically smell the tragic comic book backstory in this room. If I'd jumped back a decade earlier this would have been Batman's wet dream of orphan selection."

"Alright! Game plan!" Five says, waving Diego's knife in his hand.

Diego's hands immediately go to his weird harness looking thing, "Hey!"

"Give me just one moment to get the tracker out." Five rolls his eyes, "Then I'll give it back, I promise. Also if someone could ask Grace for like, some antibiotics that would be good."

"What?" Allison asks, directly before Five stabs himself and there is suddenly panic at the table.

"Relax!" Five says, allowing Diego to remove the knife from his hands. He doesn't need it anyway and his hand immediately drops down to root in the wound.

"Five what the fuck!" Diego yells, but Five just pulls up bloody fingers and waves the tracker into Diego's stupefied face.

"What the fuck is that, Five?" Allison demands, looking very shaken.

"I literally just said it was a tracker." Five points out, "Now, I think our first team activity should be voting on whether we destroy it or take it out to bumfuck nowhere and ditch it to confuse the Commission."

"What the fuck is the Commission?" Diego barks.

"Man. Maybe I should just hit up Rick." Five muses, "This is going to take so much explaining."

"Who is Rick."

"So much explaining."

[gothriotgrrl]

So, I want to have a talk about the Bryke hate towards Zutarians, because it is so much more toxic and misogynistic than a lot of people realize. Back when the show originally started we had communities on livejournal, and these communities were filled with girls in their mid teens-early 20. Many of us were BIPOC, we were either the only girl in a family of boys, or the one that got the most responsibility thrust on them, we were nerdy but girly, had interests in martial arts/ weapons fighting, because of our family situations we were usually pretty skilled with domestic tasks, and had a habit of being a motherly, or big sister figures to people; in other words, we were live action versions of Katara. And in these communities, on top of posting fanfiction, fan art, and theories, many of us would talk about our experiences with boys like Aang and why those experiences made us so disdainful of that ship. The Aangs of the world had been our first boyfriends who pressured us into s*x without condoms, our high school "sweethearts" who told us we didn't love them if we didn't give up our scholarships and go to the much more expensive college they were going to, the philosophy majors who kept interrupting our study time in the library (ie following us) so he could talk down to us about Nietzsche while we were trying to do biology homework, the creepy kid two lockers down from us who doesn't shower, talks a lot about Miyazaki, and brags about his knife collection. The Aangs of the world had been our abusers, our assaulters, and our stalkers, and we were not quiet about it.

The other thing about these communities were that they were usually public, you could make posts "members only", but a lot of people didn't. We wanted the community to be open for people to find, and have a place. Because these communities were public, the creators of the show had a habit of poking their heads in. They did not take well to our discourse. Especially since Aang is based off of one of the creators, and the other creator is his best friend. Here was, literally hundreds, of real world Kataras talking about how terrible their relationships with the real world Aangs had been, and how damaged they were from them. So, this man (in his 30s) looked at a bunch of young women and their stories of trauma, and instead of going "I didn't realize my main character had so many textbook, abusive traits, that literally half of my audience notices. I should probably do something to make the character realize that, and grow through it, especially since growing into better people is the main theme of the story" he did what most "nice guys" do; he doubled down. He decided he was going to show us all that "No, Aang is a great boyfriend! And we need to realize this! And Katara would totally fall in love and marry someone like ME! I mean Aang. Fall in love with someone like Aang! Yeah, he's the Avatar, and he's my avatar, but it's not like that! I don't have any issues with women!"

And how did he do this? By making Aang a character who ignored Katara's boundaries, and forced affection on her without her permission, by gaslighting her emotions, by talking down to her while tearing down her race and culture, by favoring the child who is more like him, and putting less time and energy into the ones who are more like her, and her race, (for those of you who don't come from a biracial background, this is called parental racism, and as someone who's experienced it, I can tell you it destroys you) he did all of these things until, by the time we get to the sequel, she is nothing but an elderly husk of what she had been with no friends, no true standing in the community she helped save, and reliant on children who were bitter about having to care for her. In his misguided attempt to prove us wrong, he proved us right! To the point the voice actors, many of the shows writers, and the Korean animation director ship it! And the funny thing is, a lot of the girls from those Livejournal communities (who shared our terrible experiences with Aangs) have gone to college, gotten degrees and married men, or women, just like Zuko! And we are not quiet about it, and never have been! And he is still trying to prove us wrong with terrible, abusive storylines about Aang, 15 YEARS LATER! Yes, we are still in the Zutara community, and yes we still write stories, and do fan art but, with us it's a sense of camaraderie and the joy of being able to discuss something nerdy that you like, he's still doing it because he's trying to prove a bunch of abuse victims wrong. That kind of says it all.

[uwuwriting]

Abusive boyfriend w/ Midoriya, Bakugou and Todoroki

Request: Can I have deku, bakugo and Todoroki reacting to the readers unhealthy boyfriend. He brings her down a lot and abusive. - anonymous

Being part of a toxic relationship is so so soooo painful. Thankfully reader-chan has her heroes to save her. Hope you like it. Love ya.💖💖💖

masterlist

rules

warnings: abuse both physical and mental, ptsd and panic attacks, cursing, characters are aged up (they have graduated)

Midoriya Izuku

-Okay so he basically was the one who managed to build your confidence back up after the horrendous break up with your ex. 

-Your ex never laid a hand on you but his words were enough to bruise your ego and self worth so much that you believed that you were nothing compared to others. 

-From looks to personality, you believed that even a snail was more worth it than you. 

-Now you are a beautiful girl and very very smart. 

-Guys and girls looked your way even though you were in a relationship. 

-And your ex was having none of it. 

-It started off really subtly.

- “Are you sure you want to wear that to dinner?”

- “We are going to grab some coffee not going out for drinks.”

- “Don’t you think you are showing too much skin?”

-Then the body shaming started. 

- “I think you shouldn’t wear that, I mean look how large it makes you look.”

- “Have you been eating more?”

- “How about I make a diet for you?”

-This really brought you down. 

-It reached the point where you would only wear really baggy hoodies in order to hide your body. 

-After that turning point he still wasn’t satisfied. 

-People, although fewer than before, still had the nerve to hit on you and it was getting on his nerve. 

-He started belittling you in front of friends and acquaintances, destroying your already fragile confidence. 

-He had dug you a grave and sugarcoated the casket with empty I love you’s. 

-He had made you believe that he was the only one who would accept you and love you despite you’re so flawed. 

-And he managed to keep you for quite some time. 

-Then Midoriya comes along. 

-A childhood friend who had become a pro hero and on the top five. 

-He saw how skinny you had become, borderline unhealthy, how you shied away from him and literally everyone. 

-You were like a scared deer. 

-Then the boyfriend came in and everything fell into place. 

-Midoriya is smart, he caught on your boyfriend’s belittlement and the reason behind it. 

-Now getting you out of this toxic relationship is his new mission. 

-You ran into him more often after that first encounter and he always talked to you, complimenting you whenever he could. 

-Your boyfriend didn’t catch on until it was too late. 

-Midoriya had managed to get you to talk about your relationship and what your boyfriend was like, he had opened your eyes to his abuse and helped you built up the courage to stand up to him and dump his ass. 

-He was there of course to support you after the break up. 

-And of course after months and months of seeing each other almost everyday, you two became a thing. 

-Finally you get to experience true love with someone who truly appreciates you. 

Bakugou Katsuki 

-You and Bakugou have been friends since high school. 

-Inseparable. 

-He comes to you for everything, all his troubles are solved by you and you alone. 

-You’re special!!

-So when you get a boyfriend he is the first to meet the guy. 

-In truth he really didn’t want to because he has been in lobe with you for the longest time and seeing you with someone else reminds him that he is a coward. 

-Anyway he meets him and everything is fine, he looks decent and he seems to treat you well. 

-As months pass you seem to distance yourself more and more from him. 

-Bakugou at first is angry, he is fuming I tell you. 

-He doesn’t like the silence that he receives when he calls, or the single word replies when he texts and he especially despises your refusal to go out with him like you used to. 

-He gets that you have a boyfriend now and you have to spend more time with your bf but he still felt betrayed. 

-Then doubt started to settle in his mind. 

-Maybe you realized he wasn’t worth the trouble, I mean he is a difficult person, maybe your new boyfriend opened your eyes and now you want nothing to do with him. 

-Or maybe you figured out he was in love with you. 

-Had he been scowling more than usual while he was meeting your boyfriend? 

-He wanted to ask you what he did wrong but he couldn’t reach you. 

-So he sucked it up and drowned himself in his hero work, drowning his nagging mind along with his free time.

-Then something unexpected happened. 

-Uraraka visited him, worry written all over her face. 

-She was worried for you and wanted to ask him if everything was alright, since he was your best friend. 

- “She stopped showing up to our weekly girl evening and she won’t answer my texts.... I’m really worried for her Bakugou.”

-That was the last straw for him. 

-He went to your apartment and after five minutes of knocking your boyfriend opened the door. 

-The scowls on the guy’s face was really REALLY pushing his buttons. 

- “Is Y/N here?”

- “What do you want her for?”

- “I want to talk to her.”

-This man..... he closed the door in Bakugou’s face. 

-Well closed is putting it mildly. 

-He slammed the door shut with so much force that a mirror down the hall rattled. 

-Bakugou was ready to blow the door open when he heard the shouts. 

- “Y/N why the fuck is that guy here?”

- “W-what guy?”

- “Don’t act all innocent you slut! The guy you are fucking!”

- “I-I don’t k-know who y-you are talking a-about.” 

-The moment he heard your sniffles echo through the door he was inside the apartment shoving the guy away from you. 

- “Don’t you fucking dare speak to her like that, asshole.” 

-You were trembling behind him and Bakugou could feel the sob threatening to escape your lips. 

-Looking over his shoulder at you he spoke gently as if you were a scared kitten. 

- “Y/N could you go get some of your stuff ready? I’m taking you away from this dickhead.”

- “Who do you think you are? That’s MY girlfriend she listens to me alone!”

- “Don’t speak as if she’s an object!”

-You had disappeared to your room to get your things and were now clinging to Bakugou’s back. 

- “So you are fucking him. What should I have expected from a whore like you!” 

-Okay now Bakugou was presented with two options. 

-Option A: beat the living shit out of this guy and most likely losing his hero license for a week. 

-Option B: get you out of here and let this asshole boil in his own defeat. 

-He went with option B. 

-Wordlessly he guided you out of your apartment complex and into his car, drove you to his house and proceeded to help you calm down. 

-You had had one panic attack in the past so he didn’t really know what to do. 

-But he managed. 

- “Whatever he said to you isn’t true. I don’t know what actually went down between you two and what he got into the pretty little head of your but none of that matters. Just know that we are all here for you. Me, the girls even stupid Deku. And we love you, I love you so don’t worry about anything. Everything will be alright.” 

-From that point on everything was history. 

-It didn’t take long for you two to start dating and Bakugou made sure to have a firm talk with your now ex boyfriend when you ran into him at the grocery store. 

-Get wrecked douchebag.

 Todoroki Shouto 

-Toxic relationships is something Todoroki is a pro at this point. 

-He grew up in one so yeah. 

-He sees the signs of the abuse faster than anyone. 

-First of all, you inch away from anyone who starts flaying their arms. 

-Despite the warm weather you always wear long sleeves. 

-And he has seen you applying extra make up around your eye once. 

-He also notices how you always try to avoid annoying your boyfriend, like you take extreme measures. 

-You distance yourself from other males going as far as to avoid him to an extent. 

-Then he sees the bruises. 

-You two were training at the agency’s gym when your shirt rode up your torso and there was this huge bruise right under your  ribs. 

- “Y/N who did this?”

- “Oh I just got slightly injured during my last patrol.”

-He isn’t buying it since he was with you during your last patrol and you didn’t get injured. 

-But he lets it slide because he believes that you know whats best for you and you will get away from this guy. 

-But for some reason you stay with him. 

-For months. 

-And Todo can’t take it anymore.

- “Y/N can I talk to you?”

-He talks to you about what he has seen and that he knows that your boyfriend is doing this to you. 

- “So please, please leave him, get out while you can. Y/N I can’t see you hurt like this.”

-You see the thing was that you had made the stupid decision of moving in with him and now.... you had nowhere to go. 

-If you broke up with him you wouldn’t have a place to stay and you couldn’t start searching for a new place, he traces your phone and search history. 

- “You’ll live with me. I’ll give you everything you need just please please let go of him. He doesn’t deserve you. I hate seeing you so hurt and broken.” 

- “Please come with me then, Shouto I-I can’t do this alone.”

-Of course he came with you, standing in between you and that asshole as he went to strike you when you broke the news to him.

- “You are leaving me for this piece of shit huh? Of course you would you whore!”

-He went as far as activating his quirk, attacking Shouto in an attempt to get to you. 

- “I own you you fucking slut! No one will want you! You are mine!”

-Shouto wasn’t as calm as Bakugou in this situation, punching the guy before leaving the apartment, making sure that the guy got the message and wouldn’t try to come after you. 

-Back at his apartment, Shouto comforted you as best he could. 

-You know where this leads. 

-Shouto gives you the space you need before making a move. 

-My mans waits months before even remotely flirting with you. 

-After a year long wait he finally manages to ask you out. 

-And the rest is history.

TAG TEAM AY:

@iwaqchan​ @the-arcana-fan-fic​ @angelwritings​ @axerrri​ @dnarez-mangetsu​ @reinyrei​ @bemorefiction​