#this may actually be *too* long

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

hey! i love your posts! i was wondering if you could possibly do an analysis on the infamous bathroom scene? why does kaz choose this time to get close to inej and help her with her bandages? do you think he went in with the intention to try and give her physical affection or did it just happen? why does he choose to kiss her neck and is there significance to that? no rush, but i’d love to hear your thoughts!

Thanks so much for your question! I know you said I rush but it really has been a long time so I’m so sorry this took forever, but let’s go!

So the bathroom scene begins very specifically parallel with one of the earliest scenes of Six of Crows, when Kaz is washing in his room at the Slat and Inej walks in to deliver him news, and I think this is supposed to give us a sense of finality. It increases the tension, because at this point the reader is very aware that not everyone is necessarily going to survive Kaz's plan and having this echo could therefore look something frighteningly like closure to prepare us for losing one or both of the pair. Now this can be interpreted as a red herring, Leigh Bardugo is the queen of hitting where the mark’s not looking and she feeds us a lot of red herrings to hide her actual foreshadowing (I made a post about it a while ago now but in summary she’s a genius), and this could definitely be an extension of that to draw attention away from Matthias, similarly to how she focuses on the possibility of Matthias losing Nina a lot more than she does Nina losing Matthias, or it could be a hark back to Inej looking at the murals of animals running in circles in Six of Crows, describing them as “destined to chase each other for as long as the Ice Court stood” (or along those lines sorry I don’t have my books with me at the minute) as a metaphor for her and Kaz’s relationship. I think that the cyclical nature of this scene is meant to reference that in order to suggest that actually they have found a way to break the cycle, because they succeeded at the Ice Court, they metaphorically brought it down and so the cycle is broken, and the fact that there are several distinct differences between these parallel scenes enhances that for me.

This scene is only given to us in detail from Kaz's POV, whereas the early scene is from Inej's, and in each case the opposite character is arguably in the more vulnerable appearing position. In the first scene Kaz is shirtless, washing blood off himself, and Inej is actively discomforted by the immodesty of the interaction between them. In the bathroom scene, Inej has removed her tunic and I believe is wearing a tank top, which for her is a massively vulnerable way to be seen because she covers most of her skin all the time - particularly her arms because of her scars from the removal of the Menagerie tattoo. By this point the scars has been removed by Nina when she was high on parem, but that doesn't make Inej's psychological connection to them end and it definitely doesn't decrease her feeling of vulnerability when her skin is on show. There's also the added tension of Inej being injured in this scene. Although both scenes are in the aftermath of danger, the bathroom scene has a far stronger sense of the further danger to come than the earlier one did, since at the time we knew so little of the heist and the plan. Inej's injury solidifies this and makes the danger feel constant and real, as well as intensely increasing her vulnerability in a way that she is very aware of.

The fact that Kaz chooses now to get close to her intensifies this sense of danger and makes the reader very aware that Kaz Brekker, the Bastard of the Barrel, the man we have witnessed successfully breaking in and out of the Ice Court, cutting out a man's eye, scaring a small child so badly she'll probably need therapy as an adult, murdering, thieving, and being so committed to his plans that he swallowed and regurgitated a set of lockpicks without a second thought, is actually, genuinely terrified that he won't come back from the next stage of his plan. In fact he's so terrified that he has decided to face the only other thing that frightens him, so that if he dies today at least he tried. I'm not sure if he went in with the intention of moving from helping her with the bandages to physical intimacy, because even the bandages alone would be a huge step for him. It's possible that once he'd committed to helping her with the bandages anyway, that he decided to push himself as far as possible in case he never got another chance. Possibly if he'd taken things in smaller steps he would have been able to cope with helping her today, and then know that he could help her again, and maybe one day after that he'll be able to kiss her. But one of the things that makes this moment so beautiful is that this is a snippet of time where Kaz and Inej are the only thing that exist, there is no future and if they try hard enough maybe there can be no past, maybe there can just be the present, there can just be this. Kaz takes these steps now becasue he doesn't see a chance to do it again, and although this does wonders to enhance the importance and the beauty of the scene it is also terrifying as a reader to face the very real possibility of Kaz not coming back.

I’m really glad you mentioned him kissing her neck because I do think it’s possibly symbolic and quite meaningful. Whilst both of them struggle with physical contact to different capacities, it’s important to note that whilst Kaz’s fear of contact has made intimacy a seeming impossibility for him, for Inej it’s intimacy itself that’s the biggest influence on her pain. She struggles with any contact she isn’t prepared for beforehand, but only ever finds it worth explaining when it’s a form of intimacy - “the first time Nina hugged me, I flinched”. Even though Inej consents in the scene and doesn’t, at least not vocally or physically and therefore not to the reader’s knowledge, change her mind, she never initiates anything. I think this is important because it forces Kaz to be the one who handles the initial contact; if she touched him skin-on-skin without him forcing himself to do so first then he probably would have shut down and panicked a lot sooner because he wasn’t in control. But he also shows such an important understanding that Inej also needs some level of control. And that control comes in her decision to return the kiss. If he kissed her lips she would be forced to face the prospect of her worst fear “would she kiss him back? Could she be herself in such a moment or […] a doll in his arms, a girl who would never quite be whole”. (Again, sorry, operating on memory alone for the quotes). By kissing her neck, Kaz is able to create this moment of sensuality without taking control of it any more than he needs to for his own sake, making sure that the choice always remains hers. It also makes me think of when Nina kisses Matthias on the neck whilst searching his pockets for parem, when she says that she didn’t kiss his lips because she would not let the drug take that from her. Leigh Bardugo establishes this kiss on the lips as something powerful early on in the book and it comes into play once again here, with Kaz and Inej acknowledging that kind of connection to be a far more symbolic one for them than an initial contact is. In much the same way that Kaz refused to be the one to mark Inej again, he will not be the one to kiss her lips and create a situation she is unprepared to deal with. Ultimately, he has to be able to touch her skin first, and she has to be able to kiss his lips first.

Ok I wasn't one hundred percent sure how I was going to go about this and then suddenly all of that was on the page, but I think what I'm going to do now is pick some specific quotes or moments from the scene to talk about.

"I don't have the words to thank you" "I'm sure the Suli have a thousand proverbs for such an occasion" "words have not been invented for such an occasion" "if I end up on the gallows you can say something nice over the corpse" - honestly not sure if I have anything to say about this I just love this conversation so damn much

"if that were true my shadow would have put Ketterdam in permananent night" "maybe. or maybe your someone else's shadow" "You mean Pekka" - I feel like I talk about Kaz being Pekka's shadow an awful lot but I am just so obsessed with the idea, they are literary foils but there are also such important distinct differences between them it’s just incredible

“I don’t sell girl into brothels, I don’t con helpless kids out if their money” “look at the floor of the crow club, Kaz,” - okay so of the same vein and again I feel like I talk about it a lot, in fact it’s literally what inspired the entire fic im writing (if you wanna read it all the chapters are tagged under “Maya Olsen oc”) but these lines are so goddamn heartbreaking I will never get over them

“How could she still look at the world that way?” - it’s just really interesting to me to have this direct address of comparison of the way their view has been shaped by their experiences, particularly as I’ve talked a lot about Inej having to come to terms with the idea that what happened to her isn’t just a cruel part of the world but an individual piece of a cruel world especially with seeing the “Rare Spices” billboard using hyper-sexualised Suli women to sell the products (I made a whole post on that too) and yet still she sees hope in the world. A lot of this I think is to do with her faith, because instead of believing that there can be no god or saints or other form of deity because of the cruelty in the world, as Kaz does (it’s confirmed that he prayed as a child but is obviously now very atheistic, though we don’t get a lot of detail about what religion he may or may not have practiced), a big part of Inej’s path to hell by is believing that fate planned this for her so that it would lead her to stopping it from happening to others. I struggle with this idea because it seems to imply that it makes her pain worthy of going through when obviously no-one should ever have to experience such trauma, but there are many different ways of interpreting this and personally I don’t think that Inej believes her Saints did this to her for a reason but that she believes they have found a reason for her to continue after after the fact and given her a cause in order to help her through her experiences. I hope this makes sense it’s starting to feel a bit ramble-y

Oh my god I just wrote loads after that and it didn’t save. Oh my god no I can’t believe it I’ve been writing for so long 😭 ok erm… oh god I’m so annoyed right now I can’t remember everything I wrote and it was so much like I’d nearly got to the end of the chapter doing a quote by quote analysis. Ok I’m going to try and reconstruct what I did but please bare with if this isn’t my best work because usually I write very freely when I do these and just throw whatever comes into my head into the page so cautiously trying to think back to what I said originally might make it come across a bit stilted.

I can’t believe I’ve done this 😭

“The distance between them felt like nothing. It felt like miles” - his internal conflict is so brilliantly written and it’s so heartbreaking; the way this is far too close but it’s much too far away

“Graceful as always. A girl underwater” - again this internal conflict, the way she’s underwater because her movements are fluid but she’s also underwater because to touch her it to drown

“His gloves lay discarded […] they looked like dead animals”

“Maybe he would never get to the Slat. Maybe this would kill him.”

“Inej’s eyes were wide and dark. Lost planets. Black moons” - I will never shut up about the fact that soc starts with Joost wishing Anya had blue eyes instead of brown so they were easier to compliment, and then the two books are absolutely overflowing with Kaz and Inej describing each other’s beautiful brown eyes

“It’s shame that eats men whole. He was drowning it. Drowning in the Ketterdam harbour”

“Even now a boy will smile at me on the street, or Jesper will put his arm around my waist, and I feel I’m going to vanish,” - this is such and important moment, this scene is the most vulnerable and open Inej ever is out loud and I think it’s such a massive concession to her trust in Kaz. I think that, especially because the scene is written from Kaz’s perspective, we get a lot more emphasis on his struggle than on Inej’s and although it’s really important to discuss Kaz I do think that sometimes we tread a thin line of focusing on him at the expense of losing focus on Inej and it’s so massively important to acknowledge both of them. This is also one of the things that I think was the biggest downfall of the way the writing in shadow and bone season 2 treated Inej, although I absolutely adore the show and I think that everything Amita Suman does shows that she understands the character in a deep and beautiful level, I also think it’s so so important to realise that not once in either season does that script actually state that the Menagerie is a brothel. One of my friends who hasn’t read the books didn’t get the full picture of Inej’s backstory until I filled in some small gaps for her because the writing just didn’t do her full justice, and I think that’s really unfortunate not least because it means that to some who hasn’t read the books a lot of Inej’s actions in season 2 would come across as her trying rush Kaz into something he isn’t ready for when that isn’t the situation in the slightest

“The room tilted. He clung to the tether of her voice” - I’ve seen a lot of stuff online about the focus points of contact between grishaverse couples and the way their represented, for example with Malina it’s their hands (the way they hold hands as Alina is grabbed by Volcra and it amplifies her power, the way they reach to intertwine their fingers in the meadow, etc). And most of these label the eyes as Kanej’s focal point of contact, and whilst I agree with that I also think that the voice is a massively underrepresented one, especially from Kaz’s perspective. It’s Inej’s voice that helps him work through his panic attack in soc and it’s Inej’s voice that keeps him afloat now, arguably because it’s a form of connection between them that requires no closeness or input, it just exists and can be relied upon.

“I live in fear that I’ll see one of her… one of my clients on the street. For a long time I thought I recognised them everywhere. But sometimes I think what they did to me wasn’t the worst of it” - okay I want to warn you guys now I wrote a long and in depth analysis on this quote and I was incredibly passionate and very proud of it so I’n really really annoyed it didn’t save, and I’m sorry because my analysis now is probably not going to live up to what I wrote earlier but here we go:

For me, this is a massively important quote and there are two ways to read it. Firstly, that when she refers to “her” Inej means Heleen but edits her words as a continuation of this vulnerability she is forcing herself to share. The second is going to link to something I said a while ago about how we could compare a separation of “Inej” and “The Wraith” to the separation of “Kaz” and “Dirtyhands”, but this is a bit more like the separation of “Rietveld” and “Brekker”. Inej talks a lot about how she would leave her body behind to exist only in her mind, in passages I find particularly reminiscent of passages in The Handmaid’s Tale (although please note soc is not very explicit whereas tht is incredibly explicit). But to take that idea further, I think there are certain hints, and I think this is possibly the biggest one, to imply that one of Inej’s ptsd responses it to actually view herself today as a separate entity from who she was during her indenture, effectively saying ‘yes these things happened to this body but they didn’t happen to this mind so that should make it easier’ to herself, which is massively self-destructive in nature because it almost creates this idea that she needs to get over who she once was and move on, very similar to the way Kaz Brekker represses Kaz Rietveld. Arguably, what she’s saying is the worst of it is this fracturing of the self that has been created by what they put her through and that she cannot seem to escape from. Now obviously I don’t know the intent behind Leigh Bardugo’s words and I want to be very clear that there are different possible interpretations of this, this one in particular does happen to more darkly resonate with her ptsd that does not make it correct or incorrect but I think it’s worth considering, especially when it adds another layer to the parallels between her and Kaz.

Ok I’m not going to write out the full quote because it’s quite long but starting from the line “Tante Heleen wasn’t always cruel” - now I talked about this a bit in my post about a comparison between Inej and Wylan as subsequent to a comparison between Heleen and Van Eck, but very specifically in this passage Inej describes this horrifying, heart-shattering image of the way Heleen attempted to instil something akin to Stockholm Syndrome within the girls at the Menagerie, by forcing them to believe that she was their only hope for survival, that she was kinder to them than anyone else would be, that they had to prove they deserved to stay with her, that any abuse she brought down on them came from a place of some kind of twisted love or care because she had to do this to make them understand, that if they would just be good and if they would just understand then she wouldn’t have to hurt them but they won’t do they are forcing her to do this. It’s so painful and it tells us so much detail about Inej’s experience without actually going into tiny explicit details.

“Feeling regret and release as he broke contact with her skin” - again so brilliantly highlighting his internal conflict

“He could feel the warmth of her on his fingers like fever” - if I had a list of my favourite similes in literature… well it would be very long, but this would be on it!!! The subtlety and yet emphasis on Kaz’s internal conflict is so beautifully written here, with the warmth of her flesh against his creating this sensual atmosphere but the comparison of it to fever, to the illness that killed Jordie and took Kaz to the Reaper’s Barge, adds to the way the reminder of his pain is threaded through every moment even when he isn’t physically suffering a flashback, it’s just constantly present and inescapable

“That rapid pulse fluttering in her throat. Alive. Alive. Alive” - agaiiiiiiiiiiiin with the so brilliantly written internal conflict I will never get over. The entire scene is at war with itself, every sentence at odds with its own content. The sexual tension created in the image of the fast heart rate and the way this makes you feel alive versus the desperate need to keep reminding himself that she is alive and breathing she is not a body on the Reaper’s Barge.

Ohhhhh just the whole description of Kaz saying “after all she’d endured, he was the weak one” and explaining the pain of watching the others able to hold each other, how difficult it is to see Nina hug her and Jesper out his arm around her genuinely makes me want to cry, it resonates so sadly with the scene when they arrive at the Geldrenner and all the others are hugging and so happy to see each other alive, and Nina says that even if Kaz isn’t happy to see them they’re happy to see him, meanwhile Kaz is in a war of self loathing because he so intensely fears that they hate him because they think he hates them but he has no way of expressing himself and it’s just ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you know?

“He watched that pulse, the evidence of her heart”

The whole passage that follows this moment I can’t explain it any other way than I feel like I’m melting every time I read it. I saw a Tumblr post someone had put on Pinterest recently and if I find it again I’ll put the op username in the comments but it basically said that when a writer can write something that isn’t a sex scene as if it’s a sex scene that it’s kind of magical and I think in a lot of ways this resonates massively with this scene

Ugh and then I want to cry again when he can’t cope and the I ability to express himself becomes anger and becomes descriptions of violence. This is the only time we get a full feel for the absolute unending mess of Kaz’s theist for revenge; it’s never enough, not the banks, not the attorneys, not the man from the cafe, not the boy who lured them in, not Margit, not Saskia, and Pekka Rollins won’t be. I always wonder if it’s important that we’re never told what he did to Saskia. We know that the roper was tortured and left dead with “the key to a wind up dog shoved down his throat” so we know Kaz exercises some kind of poetic justice in his violence, and we see that in his revenge against Rollins too. Maybe he strangled her with a red hair ribbon. Maybe he never actually hurt her. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to.

“You don’t ask for forgiveness Kaz. You earn it,” “and is that what you intend to do? By hunting slavers?” “By hunting slavers” - maybe it’s just because of the intonation choice on my audiobook (which btw is awesome shout out to the narrators of the audiobook love you guys) but this to me comes across as Kaz attempting to mock Inej in his harried, terrified, clearly losing control state and her so calmly standing her ground and standing by what she believes in

“His eyes scanned her face […] snatching at the pieces of her like the thief he was”

“But if he was going to die today maybe the one thing he’d earned was the memory of her, brighter than anything he would ever have a right to, to take with him to the other side.”

The way the last moments of the scene include him putting back in the gloves, reconstructing the armour

“He might as well go to meet his death in style” - this is gonna be out of tune with everything else I’ve said but damn what an icon love this line

“Whatever happens to me, survive this city. Get your ship, have your vengeance, carve your name into their bones, but survive this mess I’ve gotten us into.” - I may simply ✨cease to exist✨. But genuinely I’ve mentioned several times before about how the city of Ketterdam almost becomes it’s own character as the antagonist because ultimately it’s the system, not any individual, that has to be defeated and I think this quote highlights it so well. There are individual people that have to be dealt with and deserve everything that will be brought done upon them, but it’s the city itself that you have to watch out for or it will swallow you whole

I’m not going to go into detail about their tells because I’ve made a post devoted to them before and good lord this post is getting long, but I just want to emphasise that it’s a brilliant passage

“If you’ve ever cared about me at all, don’t follow” - I just absolutely adore that the next chapter starts with Inej following him mimicking these exact words I love her so damn much it makes giggle every time

“Inej was wrong about one thing. He knew exactly what he intended to leave behind when was gone: Damage” - *collapses* God I adore this there are no words

Ok wow if you made it this far thank you so much for reading this honestly I’m very impressed that you did because this is long. There are definitely details that I’ve lost because I had to require so much of it, which is a real shame but there’s still a lot to talk about here and I’ve written so much is possibly best for the sake of all our sanity’s that there isn’t more. Sorry I took so long to respond to your question but thank you so so much for asking it, I hope you all like this and that it at least made some sense because as I’ve said before these things often make more sense in my own head than they do on paper. Thanks for reading 💖

[icantdothistodaybruh]

What a terribly dull ending this is.

[tigitaldurtle]

chat wait. chat wait. i think i'm cooking.

[deadpoets]

SOLDIER, POET, KING by The Oh Hellos

[bet-on-me-13]

Talia took a 20+ Year Undercover mission a while ago

So! Talia is the Daughter of Ra's Al Ghul, and has been alive and at his side for many years now. Decades even. She is well into her 100's, even though her physical Body looks like that of a 20 yr old.

And in all the years that she has lived, what's to say she didn't take a few years off as a vacation? Even Ra's must take a few years off every once in a while, leaving to spend time on some remote island he can relax on for once. So, one day in the Early 80's she decided to do the same.

But she wouldn't be completely relaxing, she would take the break to further the League's goals still. She decided to Dye her Hair, change her Name, get into an acceptable College, and study Lazarus Waters to their scientific limit. She decided to name if Ectoplasm, to avoid any unwanted attention.

And while there, she met a pair of men doing the exact same.

Jack and Vladimir were nice enough. Although their Research was more focused on Ghosts, or as she would call them, Pit Demons. They were convinced that Ectoplasm and Ghosts came from another Dimension, and if they could find a way to open a Dimension Gateway to this theoretical Ghost Zone, they could aquire Limitless Clean Energy (and maybe find a way to contain the Ghostly threat).

Over the years, Talia Maddie would fall for Jack. Eventually, even after she had completed her College Studies and Vlad had left contact with them, she decided to extend her Vacation to further study Ectoplasm with Jack. One thing led to another, and eventually she found herself pregnant. And then it happened again.

Jazzmine and Daniel were the cutest little babies. But she knew the danger they would be in if it was ever discovered that she was their Mother, so she trained them in everything she could so they could survive. She knew her time as Maddie Fenton was coming short, but she resolved to stay, at the very least until Jazz was an Adult.

She didn't account for Daniel becoming a Small Town Hero, but those were just the Trials of motherhood.

Then, the day came. She left a note on her bedside table explaining that she regretted what had to happen, and left in the middle of the night. It was better this way.

...

The year right after she returned, her Father forced her to have a Child with his most prospective Heir. The Bat, he called himself. Oh he was Charming, there was no denying that, but unfortunately she was still working through her feelings about Jack.

She treated her resulting child poorly because of that, and that she regreted it deeply. She loved him, honestly she did, but it was hard to look at him and not remember Daniel. Still, she persevered.

The day she once again had to give up her son for his protection was the hardest of her life.

But it was unavoidable. The Coup that had taken her Father's life had also fractured the Organization, anyone could have taken their shot at her Son as the rightful Heir. She needed to protect him as she took care of the Traitors.

...

Damian always knew he was the One True Heir. It was his defining character trait for his early years of life. Even though he had grown to be more than just that over recent years, he always felt like it was a key part of his identity.

Until now.

Because the BatComputer had just finished running a DNA Test on the Blood of a man who he had spotted on his Patrol the previous night.

A DNA Test that had come back, with results claiming that the man, who looked almost exactly like a younger male version of his Mother, was his Half Brother.

[nerdinsandals]

He is not one of us🎵

He has never been one of us~🎶

Have Amethio without all the lighting and effects too! Just because I'm pretty happy with how the hair turned out and you can't really appreciate it in the final version haha

[heartorbit]

the star you've longed for

[devotion-disorder]

hey devo!!! random anon here to ask if u have a ref of your sona 🤲🤲 they seem fun to draw and i have the urge to draw you holding your ocs like theyre plushies to slam against the wall (out of affection? violence? both? who knows……)

hihi!!! this reminds me i really need to update my sona drawing in the intro post, its so crusty and my hair has grown longer. i drew an updated one so i'll also drop it here :D

also!!! thank u for wanting to draw my sona!! which literally is just me but yassified LOL oh and don't worry about putting me in these exact clothes...!! i tend to dress really basic then accessorize the hell out so even when i was drawing it myself it was quite tedious.............

[tianhai03]

didnt have the time to do a full finished drawing, but i tried to keep up with my tradition for redrawing the same good bro day drawing ive done for 3 years already :')

(last year's, which also has links to prev years as well)

[mossy-paws]

they’ve been cooked…. (PHIGHTING!)

Yea Twitter really liked these ones lmao, anyways the first one was for a trend and the second one is just a silly follow up to it LMAO

[arkarti]

Art summary 2024

was quite the year. Onwards to 2025 😊 Happy new year!

[turtleblogatlast]

“Haven’t You Noticed (I’m a Star)” from Steven Universe works so ridiculously well for Leo

[tubapun]

To make it extra clear, all but one of these options occurs in a Direct to Video Animated Scooby-Doo film from the year of 2010 to Present day. Theatrical Releases and TV series are not included here, nor are pre 2010 movies. You vote for the one you think is fake!!

[prolibytherium]

Would kill to read animal POV fiction that has the animal POV’s interaction with humans be like, semi realistic to the level of caution most predators take with large prey and/or competitors (including humans).

Like instead of the usual - “the human is such a weak, pathetic creature... so slow, no claws, blunt teeth… completely helpless without its 'Fire Sticks'. how is it the master of the earth?” type crap it’s like, the bear protagonist or whatever approaches some dude who spreads their arms and yells and the bear is like “FUUUUUUUUCK THAT THING JUST GOT HUGE. IT'S LARGE AND MAKING NOISES. HOLY FUCK.”

[seiwas]

for writing game, iwaizumi + assistance <3

hope this sparks some inspo and thank you in advancee

hi there!! thanks for sending in a prompt 🫶

contains: friends to lovers (ish), halloween parties, reader is dressed as catwoman, expletives, iwaizumi is thiiiiis 🤏 close to murdering seijoh4 (jk)

iwaizumi + assistance

this is a set-up.

iwaizumi knows he shouldn't have fucking believed anything the boys "promised" him back when they assigned him this costume.

the suit is fucking tight, spandex digging into his groins and all other crevices that definitely should be aired out after after a few hours. he's had to constantly readjust his stance almost every few minutes, the black fabric compressing his thighs and torso, significantly constricting the range of motion his shoulders and arms are typically used to. if anything else, it could double up as a back brace from how rigidly straight it's kept his posture all night.

he'll give it to makki though; he did outdo himself sourcing this year's costumes―this batman set looks pretty damn legit.

except for one tiny problem.

there's no fucking pee hole. it's a zip-up, zip-down one-piece situation. and that normally wouldn't be a problem, except that oikawa "accidentally" knocked over a cocktail straight into his pants, the sickeningly sweet liquid now seeping straight into the fabric and past his boxers―cold and sticky as it touches his skin.

and so, the problem: his pants are wet, it makes him want to fucking pee, and coincidentally, the only vacant bathroom is across the hall, at your apartment.

this is why he believes this is a set up. that, and the fact that you're dressed in an outfit strikingly similar―just with cat ears.

he's been asked five times in this party if you're in matching couple outfits.

it catches him off guard, flusters him because of how badly he wants to say yes. but, you're just friends, and he doesn't even think you like him that way (despite mattsun and oikawa practically begging him to confess. makki tells him he thinks you're going to do it first).

so he politely smiles and says no, but you look good, your costume clinging to you in all the right places. thank fucking god he has a cape because he's pretty sure he spent the first 30 minutes in the party hiding his boner.

"hajime, it's fine, i swear," you stand beside him in front of the conveniently locked bathroom in oikawa's apartment. from the other side of the door, he's pretty sure he hears mattsun and his girlfriend mumbling. maybe fucking? who knows. "you can just use the bathroom in my apartment."

he glances at you before closing his eyes, contemplating, before finally agreeing to you.

"okay."

if he's being honest with himself, friends is definitely an incomplete label to what you are. as oikawa's neighbor, you are conveniently around all the time; and oikawa being oikawa, the ever-social butterfly, he's somehow managed to carve a space for you in the friend group.

(never mind the fact that oikawa's sniffed him out from the moment he first introduced you.)

you were a crush, then a friend, and now you're someone he picks up from work and drives back home three times a week, because he "has to train oikawa." you don't question it, even when you both know he stays over for dinner way past the gym's open hours.

"you know where it is," you open your apartment and urge him in.

"sorry again," he turns to face you.

"yeah, yeah, just pee!" you laugh, shoving him towards the bathroom door.

getting out of the suit is manageable, and he's able to wipe off a bit of the cocktail that's leaked to the suit and his boxers just to make sure it isn't gross and sticky when he gets home later. peeing is a big relief once he gets it over with, but it's when he has to suit up again that things become difficult.

stretching out the spandex one body part at a time is a workout in itself―the hardest task being when he has to pull it over his shoulders, adjusting it to fit properly over his arms and chest.

but then the zipper breaks.

and he truly thinks makki has fucked him over.

iwaizumi contemplates what to do next for a good, good while. he tries calling oikawa, only to no success every time; no way in hell is he calling mattsun in the middle of having sex. and calling makki isn't even an option; he'd never hear the end of it.

then you knock on the door, your voice soft and concerned as you ask, "hajime? you good in there?" you hit it spot on, too, "do you need help with your suit?"

iwaizumi presses his palms to his eyes. he's a rational man, straightforward and logical in thinking. there is literally no other option for him right now but to ask help from you. again.

fuck.

.

it's 30 minutes later when oikawa barges in your door, and the sight that greets him is iwaizumi in nothing but a hoodie (the hoodie you borrowed some time ago) and his boxers, with his hands on your waist as you hover your hairdryer over the crotch of his batman costume―cat headpiece off and all.

"you finally got together?!"

[vanyafresita]

what an interesting reading...