#to my living situation. i look at my peers who are living independently and are somehow struggling through with a lot of wonder

[bringmefoxgloves]

at this point i don’t know how anyone who lives in the usa and isn’t able to work a full time well paying job (at 40 hrs a week, above $25-40/hr, depending on where you live) is able to survive. i’m talking about having a stable home (with or without cost sharing with roommates/caretakers/spouses), having enough food, being able to afford transportation and medical care. none of it seems possible without sacrificing something, somewhere, or needing government assistance (which is increasingly impossible to access). and i’m not even beginning to get into the issues of income disparity suffered by black and poc individuals, disabled individuals, those who are single income with dependents, or live in rural areas with lack of services. it’s becoming impossible to live. 

[accio-bagel]

✨MC Intro Post✨

I finally filled these out for my lil criminal 💚

Explanations & more info (ramblings) below the cut for anyone interested.

✨Family

Does not talk about it. Will either be evasive about her history or outright lie about it if asked. An only child born to parents who didn’t want her, and when it became apparent she had no magic they they cast her out as a Squib. Hadn’t spoken or seen them since, and has no idea whether they're alive or not. Never fitting into the wizarding world or muggle society, she always dreamed of a better life for herself - the life she was supposed to live at Hogwarts.

Struggling to take care of herself after being abandoned by her family, she resorted to petty crime to survive, then more often upon discovering she was rather good at it. At age 15, her first accidental magic outburst involved a chase with authorities after pressing her luck one too many times, resulting in Fig finding her on the streets of London, panicking after she'd suddenly turned a policeman into a chicken. Professor Dad Fig took her in during the summer before term began at Hogwarts.

✨Patronus

Some associations with crows: gregarious, intelligent, creative problem-solvers, mysterious, deceptive, mischievous, manipulative, intuitive, and adaptable. Symbolic of community and loyalty, change and transformation, magic and the supernatural. Conflicting interpretations as harbingers of death or omens of fate, destiny, and good luck. They never forget a face, and will reward those who help them or may punish those who harm them. I also couldn't resist the connection between crows' habit of stealing and collecting shiny objects, and of course a flock of crows is called a Murder. 

✨Classes

She loves learning magic now that she's got the opportunity. Strives to do well at Hogwarts and wants to impress her professors and peers. Open-minded about magic of all kinds.

Charms is her absolute favorite, the most useful and enjoyable form of magic for her. Defense follows closely, as she's got an innate gift for dueling and developed a bit of an ego about it - especially enjoys teasing Sebastian about kicking his ass. Ever pragmatic, she also knows how important the subject is and wants to add to her repertoire of spells.

It's not her strongest subject naturally, but she loves Potions. She can follow a recipe well and works hard at it. While she finds Garreth's experiments interesting and doesn't mind stealing for him, for her own self-preservation she doesn't ever sit at his station, nor will she risk Sharp's wrath again by stealing from his office. Everyone knows she is Sharp's favorite student by the year's end, though he denies it.

History isn't uninteresting to her - it’s just Professor Binns is too boring for her to stay awake through class.

✨Personality

😉 Charismatic and persuasive, comes across as highly confident (faking it til she makes it.) She isn't shy about walking up to talk to someone she finds interesting, loves spending time with a small group of friends, and prefers a partner in crime on her adventures. That said, she is quite independent and needs plenty of alone time to think and recharge.

🧠 She prefers efficient, not lazy. She's highly active with her chosen activities and will take the lead naturally, but it has to be worth her while for her to put in the effort. She'll also take nearly any advantage given to her, especially in high-stakes situations.

💁🏻‍♀️ She wishes she were stylish and tidy, but it doesn’t come naturally and she hasn’t got the time (would rather get the extra 10 minutes of sleep in the mornings.) She starts the day looking relatively put-together, but you'll usually see her looking disheveled from running around, waistcoat askew, hair coming loose, boots dirty, possibly a bit banged up from her adventuring. Leaves half-drunk cups of coffee lying around the RoR and laundry on her dormitory floor. Handwriting is atrocious, she uses an enchanted quill to make her essays legible.

😾 Not that grouchy but can't say she's very nice, either. She isn't taking on extra tasks just out of the kindness of her heart - she needs to get paid or receive something else in exchange. Snarky and sarcastic, somewhat selfish, mocks/teases/messes with people (told Zenobia she’d keep her gobstones, then said jk lol, and gave them back.) Anger issues rage blackouts when pushed to her limit. She's got soft spots though - especially for animals/beasts, orphans, and freckles. Will do anything for her closest friends even if she gives them a hard time.

🤔 Generally weighs the risks of what she's getting herself into before acting. Stealthy and strategic, usually likes to silently petrify a few enemies to even the odds before taking on a group. She's prioritizing protecting herself and her friends rather than foolishly charging into unnecessary danger, balancing out her more reckless companions. Again, if one of her loved ones is in danger she won’t hesitate to dive in and help them.

😏 Mischievous, jokes a lot, a bit silly. Likes breaking rules. She's made many a daring escape with a smile on her face, will turn to her mates and laugh together once they've made it out alive. Taunts and goads her opponents in duels to throw them off. While very capable of deep thoughts and feelings, she covers hurt with humor and doesn’t often let it show.

🏃🏻‍♀️Athletic. Fast runner and climber, she regularly outpaces Sebastian “out-of-breath” Sallow on their outings. An evasive and agile fighter, swiftly dodging all over the place before striking. Quick on a broom, joins the Quidditch team in sixth year as Keeper (and acknowledges the irony here.) Has her clumsy moments when she's not paying attention or had too many Butterbeers, accidentally breaking a vase at the bottom of the stairs in the Slytherin common room on more than one occasion.

✨ Extras

Amortentia scents: autumn rain, freshly baked bread, and smoke

Her scent: green apple and lilac

Bisexual who flirts with everyone, to the point that it's hard to tell when she actually means it. No time to properly court anyone during fifth year but she has many fleeting fancies and won't readily admit to real feelings. All of this inevitably leads to confusion on all sides.

Goes insane for the food at Hogwarts after years of barely scraping by, eating stolen food and scraps. Always snacking to keep her energy up with how much running around she does. If she misses a meal, something is very wrong. 

Funny (at least she thinks so) and uses humor as a coping mechanism.

Loves cats. Pets all the cats.

Loves puns and will give a genuine laugh at a particularly good one.

Constantly running late, much to the chagrin of all her friends.

Drinks like a fish and smokes an occasional cigarette. Swears like a sailor.

Likes to dance but isn't very good at it.

As Sharp says, Wiggenweld doesn't fix everything, so I imagine her gaining quite a few permanent scars over the course of her fifth year. Significant mentions are a cut brow courtesy of Rookwood and some burns on her body from Solomon.

After her hair was partially singed during the battle with Ranrok, she cut it short for a drastic change.

Girl is not doing very well after everything she went through, especially losing Fig. Not sleeping, not eating enough, and prone to thousand-yard stares. She will need time to heal, plus a lot of help from her new chosen family.

✨Future

Ellie is very ambitious and she knows her strengths. She wants to live up to the reputation she's built for herself as a powerful witch, and wants to be known for more than what she went through in her fifth year. Taking time to make a name for herself as a Curse Breaker, she'll spend several years in the field before coming back to Hogwarts as Charms Professor when Ronen retires.

💚 If you have read any of this, I love and appreciate you so much! I have more to say about her but this was already too long so maybe I’ll do a part 2 or something.

✨Presets

5th Year:

6th Year changes:

[haza8877]

What are your strengths?

Hello everyone, I've been quite busy these past few days to update my new reading. I'm back today and I'm going to give you a short reading, hopefully you'll enjoy it. 

Pile 1 -> Pile 2 -> Pile 3

Pile 1

(the hermit)

The strength of Pile 1 is independence and maturity. I have a feeling you'd rather work alone than collaborate with others. You have depth and love to immerse yourself in your inner world. This helps you have a high self-awareness. You don't like crowded places, you don't like parties, you're autonomous and you like to spend time alone studying things. That's why you're somewhat more mature than your peers. I feel like you are always trusted by people around you and asked for advice. 

What do you need to do to develop your strengths? 

(8 of swords)

The advice for you to develop your strengths is to expand your safety zone. Because you're independent people who like to work alone, you live in your own world and think that your judgment-based judgments are right. I feel like sometimes you're "stuck" with your thoughts or fears that haunt you. The advice is to look at the world outside, not just live inside, balance between inside and outside. You're like a hibernating bear, now is the time to "wake up" to welcome spring and see the world. 

Pile 2

(2 of pentacles)

Your strength is the flexible change in every situation in life. You always know what's important to choose at different times. It makes it easier for you to adapt to changes. You are an easy person to integrate in new environments. When you encounter ups and downs in life, you know when to move on and when to stop. I have a feeling you might enjoy overcoming challenges? It's like you just take a potato out of the oven and it's hot, and you take it with your bare hands and juggle it back and forth, not put it down, and as the potato cools down, you enjoy it.  

 What do you need to do to develop your strengths? 

(page of swords)

The advice for pile 2 is to learn from the difficult situations and problems that you encounter in life. Because you already have flexibility and adaptability, you also need to develop more ability to learn from difficult circumstances. Sometimes you're "throwed" at problems and challenges, but don't worry, that's the training the universe wants you to overcome. Always ask questions." What am I going to learn from this situation?" "Why is it happening?" "How am I going to deal with it?". Also, use your mind to assess and analyze those problems. 

Pile 3

(5 of wands)

I see that you in Pile 3 are very competitive people, which is also your strength. Competitiveness can help you constantly try and grow in life and especially work.  However, you know, too competitive sometimes makes people around you feel you are too eager to win and selfish. So. Use this strength wisely and appropriately. In addition, I also feel that you will learn and grow well in a competitive environment. You know what you'll learn from it. 

What do you need to do to develop your strengths? 

(wheel of fortune)

Hmmm, the advice for pile 3 to develop strength is to always broaden your horizons. Whether you're a competitive person or are often faced with competing or conflicting situations, that advice is to broaden your horizons in such situations. Look at the problem as a whole to understand why it happens, simply because it needs to happen. Also, understand that difficulties or unexpected things happen for a reason. Maybe it's destined to perfect your path ahead. Maybe at a difficult time, you won't be able to see the overall picture the universe is creating for you, but always believe in the future and the universe. 

Thank you for your interest in my readings. Your support has motivated me to release more posts. If you have any interesting topics, please recommend for me. Thank you again and love you allllll 🌸🌸❤️❤️❤️💐💐

[imagination-void]

For a few weeks now I’ve been a part of the Inphinity SMP, which is a Phighting Minecraft server that I think is popular on Twitter? I wouldn’t know, I try to stay away from it for the most part.

I got the role of Icedagger in it and it brings me much joy hehe! A give to you my ISMP Icedagger design, lovingly called Pasteldagger by me

His design has changed a little bit since making this doodle but he’s the same for the most part. If it’s of any interest to you at all, I ramble about ISMP!Icedagger and some design + personality things under the cut along with an extra little doodle and some screenshots I and others have taken with him hehe.

I enjoy the beans people make on twt, so I give you the gift of Beandagger hehe

I don’t wanna say I’ve changed his design from canon too much but also I changed his entire palette so whoopsie daisy.. I enjoy his canon palette but I personally have a hard time with designs like that so I gave him a palette that still gives the feeling of ice and snow while also being a bit more in my comfort zone.

Previously I was thinking he should have had a reindeer motif, which is present in him having little hooves and hoof “fingers”, and he’s already got the antlers to match! However I’ve since shifted into a snow leopard motif as I feel it’s more fitting to him now, and also I just love snow leopards <3

Icedagger doesn’t have the most content to go off of unfortunately, I'm mostly just stretching what I do know here. Icedagger, as I interpret him, is shy and awkward at his core, but outwardly gives this persona of being brave and energetic that he doesn’t keep up very well. Sort of like an awkward teenager trying to find his place among his peers in middle/highschool by pretending to be a cool kid? He tries a little too hard to prove he’s not some little kid, how he’s independent and doesn’t need anyone’s help because help is for CHILDREN (of which he is NOT) and FOR THE WEAK!! And he’s a big strong man who is very adult and independent! You know, young teenager thoughts.

It makes for some awkward situations as he’s stumbling to live up to this glorified version of him in his head, one that’s on par with his regal and powerful siblings, but in reality he’s just an anxious kid.

The other half of him, one that he feels internally more than externally, is that he wants to be able to make friends and not be treated differently because of his deity status. He’s seen how demons go to this temple they made in his honor, one that he doesn’t even really want, and pray and give offerings, but none of it really… interests him? He wants to make friends and have fun and feel normal, just like any other kid.

He avoids mortals for this reason, because he just doesn’t wanna deal with being basically worshipped.

Overall, he’s socially anxious and awkward from a lack of proper socialization but tries his best to seem like the kind of guy you’d wanna be friends with while not coming off as pompous or demanding. He kind of wishes he wasn’t a deity sometimes and sort of pushes down his power in attempt to be closer to the “power level” of mortals. He just wants to play hide and seek with the neighborhood kids and go for ice cream after :(

Icedagger spends a lot of time hiding and sleeping the years away, entertaining himself in frozen wastes that mortals prefer to not venture in. His favorite thing to do is to sneak around low-populated areas and hiding because he finds amusement in being able to go undetected. His stealth skills are sharp, and they always have been! His most dangerous move involves sneaking up and attacking his opponents from behind, a trick his siblings learned well when they sparred on the heights. Be not surprised that his favorite game is hide n seek.

That all said, that all fits pretty well into snow leopard behavior, being rare and elusive and difficult to find (look up snow leopard camouflage and have fun) but also very expressive when you get the chance to see them in action. A stealthy big cat that roams the unpopulated snowy mountains..

He loves and cherishes his family deeply, even if they bicker a lot. He’d be at their side in a moments notice if they were in danger. He is fiercely protective of Ban Hammer, Sword, Dom, and Valk especially. Can’t speak for Flipside’s parents because we don’t know them yet..

He has trouble with how he’s perceived, but he’ll get through it and learn to not care as much and just enjoy himself. It’s hard to be upset when you’ve got such cool siblings anyways!

A couple things here may not be accurate to ISMP, as they are my own head canons. Specifically the SFOTH sparring all the time on the heights and Icedagger’s own strength. My head canon is that before mortals, when SFOTH came into existence, all the siblings did was fight because they were strong and it was fun. I also believe (again, head canon) Icedagger is the strongest of his siblings since his gear in-game is a one hit KO.

If you actually read all of that then I love you??? Why are you still here??? Thank you, it means a lot 🥺

As a reward, you get screenshots <3

[l-na]

another poor guide for you

other things to fudge in general for resources: if you need to move out of your abusive household, or need to leave a place youre financially dependent on, or are about to be evicted, or some other very precarious situation that requires you live somewhere cheap....

find a peer resource center near you. you might need insurance for this, but you can ask them for resources on how to get on medicaid. look into transitional age youth if youre under 24.

ask for homelessness verification. youre going to need to HARDCORE bullshit about being homeless. make it realistic, say youre out on the streets three times a week. usually they have an application that will automatically be sent to some sort of service that will then get back to you with resources.

DO NOT CLAIM TO BE IN COLLEGE IN ANY WAY. LIE. I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH.

frame it like you cannot survive in shelters. you want to implore you need independent living. if you have a disability, exaggerate it.

hide income. you do not have a job. you do not have money.

ask for resources for finding low income/no income apartments. if the apartments require a certain amount of income, oh look, you just got a job, isnt that great!

????

success?

its highly dependent on where you live and whats available, but you might be able to squeeze into a studio, one, two, or three bedroom apartment thats low income. and believe it or not, low income apartments are usually in well connected metro areas and look decent. i live in one right now.

oh yeah step zero is do not feel a single ounce of guilt for using these resources.

they will only help you at your lowest if you are in the most desperate situation a human could possibly be in. they still find ways to reject people who are in much worse situations than you, because these systems are built on hate. if this is life or death, lie. lie all day long. as a peer specialist ive advised my clients to lie before, and ive even been given advice on how to lie by my peer specialists back before my training. everyone knows the systems rigged. be confident. i live with three other people who are all low income and poor and we were in danger of being homeless and we STILL had to lie about things to get our apartment. fuck the system. do what must be done.

[princessnijireiki]

like obvs this is a majorly anti cop anti military website, I can read the room and take the temperature of the room & the situation

but it is so fascinating to me the way the LGBT+ community and sphere online has such derision, disdain, and resentment for the people who came before them and ACTUALLY pushed progress in real life... like it's an "extremely online" phenomenon and is perched on such a pedestal, like a tier of unchallenged privilege & safety in these folks' real lives

like to pivot for ex to women's rights in the US, obvs there's soooo much tone deaf racism & classism still regurgitated, right, but we have concrete specific dates for things like the right to vote, right to independent finance, right to independent non inherited land & property ownership, rights to abortion or adoption or divorce, the criminalization of spousal rape, etc etc on top of racially specific laws incl slavery abolition, abolishment of anti miscegenation law, legal protections against forced sterilization, laws around informed medical consent re: experimentation or companies' retention of your cells, DNA, or remains

it's documented!

with racial stuff, the progress is also often so recent, like in a lot of places shit was still legally segregated when my parents were kids, def was segregated in my grandparents' and great grandparents' time, we see the lives & lived memories of our families' existence in this country, the Civil Rights Movement was recorded on video, audio, and in writing, despite Gil Scott-Heron's insistence that the revolution will not be televised, we watched... ALL of that!

and obvs there were & are activists then & now who rightfully point out that if you limit yourself to climbing that sheer cliff face to fight for your rights & for respect & equality within the framework of an oppressive culture, nation, or institution, you then limit the potential for truly radically demanding to be regarded as an equal by destroying & disnantling those unjust systems from the outside, because the master's house will never be dismantled with the master's tools...

but at the same time; there is room for more than "revolution or nothing," and no one secured full rights and killed racism in the womb in one fell swoop, sometimes you have to fight the unglamourous un-gloried fight from within the master's walls because that's where you fucking live.

the US military is not "good," no military is "good," and any military directed by a corrupt imperial/neoimperial racist state even moreso, but it is still the scaffolding through which many of us, our peers, our community, our comrades, must climb. the same as any of our other, many, corrupt institutions, particularly as engaged with the judicial branch of a government that does not care if disenfranchised, oppressed, and/or minority citizens or non-citizens alike live or die.

progress within an institution imposed upon me is still progress, progress within an avenue of survival of that institution, even while that avenue may be oppressive and imposed upon others itself, is still progress. two things can be true at once, and many more besides, if you are willing and mentally capable of looking beyond the limitations of your own life experiences.

[shamsssay]

♡ Invisible String ♡

Time seems to be slipping away rapidly; in just a few months, we will be bidding farewell to our Senior High School years. It feels like just yesterday I was grappling with the effects of the pandemic, pondering which school to attend and which academic path to pursue. I recall feeling envious of my friends who embarked on new journeys, meeting new people and adapting to unfamiliar environments, while I remained in the comfort of the familiar yet feeling the palpable sense of strangeness.

As I navigated through 11th grade, reality hit me hard. The sense of camaraderie and support I once experienced seemed distant as I encountered diverse attitudes, perspectives, and life situations among my peers. Building meaningful connections became challenging; the weight of responsibilities left little time for fostering friendships, and I found myself hesitant to trust others, preferring to tackle tasks independently. It dawned on me that I had become hardened towards myself, reluctant to seek assistance when needed.

I anticipated that the journey ahead would present significant challenges, especially if I remained closed off to new people, learnings, and experiences. However, over time, I was fortunate to find individuals who accompanied me through my senior high school journey. They transformed the journey into something worth enduring.

During those lunch breaks, as we exchanged conversations, laughter, and stories of our daily lives, our connections deepened into profound and meaningful friendships—a highlight I looked forward to each day. Despite facing academic and personal challenges, the solidarity we shared in discussing struggles and motivating each other made everything more bearable. Together, we positively influenced each other's paths.

I was particularly delighted to encourage two friends to join our student council. This decision not only brought me joy but also created a shared experience in preparing initiatives and projects that will leave a lasting impact on our school community.

My senior high school journey has been truly transformative, defined by discovery, growth, and resilience. Despite facing initial challenges and uncertainties, I have emerged with a profound understanding of myself and the immense value of authentic connections. What I initially perceived as a solitary path turned out to be intricately woven with invisible strings, binding me to individuals with whom I've cultivated unexpectedly deep and meaningful relationships.

As I prepare to bid farewell to this chapter, I carry with me cherished friendships and valuable lessons that will shape my future endeavors with optimism and determination.

[welcome-to-oslov]

Alright, sorry to be your ask box penpal this week, but I'm just such an Oslov superfan & binge reading so I have too many thoughts to share 😂.

Last ones: I'm Brazilian but have lived in America half my life (15 years). Just got home to visit São Paulo and it's helping me understand Gersha and the other not-evil-but-complicit characters better. As you may know, we have extreme inequality in Brazilian society. São Paulo's an amazing city with tons of upper social class & rich powerful people. However our lifestyle as upper class people is dependent on there being a huge class of poor people locked out of opportunity with no choice but to learn deference and work as low-paid servants. For example, a live-in nanny who cares for children of well-off families like a second mother, while her own children go without mothering far away. Young people from the impoverished northeast brought to the big cities for "opportunity" that are really just exploitative domestic labor.

Many of us know this feels wrong... yet so many of my class hate politicians whose policies haved lifted many out of poverty - and suddenly the price of maids double and poor kids can get into the excellent universities only WE'd been able to attend. This felt like a threat to our very existence. Many of us performatively talk about social justice & how it's wrong that only WE have power & opportunity, but the few of our peers who actually do something about it do feel threatening.

Of course thankfully we don't have this institionalized crazy kettle boy system, and mistreated maids drivers etc can easily quit & find another shitty job no problem. But, those who are really trapped are a mistreated son or daughter children of an upper class family. Every well-off family has someone who holds all the money & power: a father, uncle, or grandfather. As upper class kids we are supported by our families till ~25 because even it's not possible to launch your young adult life without family money; due to social divisions, you can't go out & get a teen/college kid job like in America, your friends all live at home too you can't really go move with them, the best university is going to be in your home city, and even good entry-level grad jobs at corporations don't really start paying enough till you're older since they figure you're paying your dues while your family patriarch supports you. If that patriarch is or was abusing you, you wouldn't have many clear ways out.

So how does a guy or girl in a bad situation get out? You get married young (20, 21, 22, etc.). Once you're married you're considered an adult: your wealthy family buys you two a starter condo, jobs might give you a raise, etc. You can divorce later, but getting that spouse gives you protection & distance & resources. Ofc easier for a girl to take this route, but a guy too could get a rich daddy's girl he knows at their nice school to marry him & insist her father set them up with young married life if his family drags their feet (though generally even an abusive patriarch would play ball here & realize he's been beat, otherwise he looks bad socially). I've seen this scenario play out with a couple of friends.

Which... basically is Tilrey's escape. He realizes he has an opportunity in Gersha & he goes for it, out of desperation to escape, genuine relief at finding someone nice he can live with & be his ally as he breaks free, etc 😢🙏

(Speaking of Tilrey & Brazil, what do you think of my casting suggestion post?! Hahahaha :) I have such a crush, but c'mon, he's gorgeous!)

I'm here for your thoughts any time! And I know very little about Brazil, so that's a fascinating comparison! Especially the parts about family structure and how young upper-class people might need to marry to establish their independence. That reminds me of 18th- and 19th-century Europe, which was a big influence on Oslov because I've read a ton of novels from that period. Extreme inequality was a factor there, too, and patronage was the main way of advancing in society, which increases both corruption and the power of family elders. There are a lot of stories about people (always women) being trafficked and forced into sex work, but then turning that into a source of power because of their sheer beauty. Of course we have widening inequality in the U.S. too, and connections seem more and more important, and many people are resistant to any form of redistribution. So I wonder if we're headed in the same direction, which scares me. Especially since there are tech billionaires who would definitely justify that as "meritocracy."

He is totally gorgeous! :)

[babsaros]

I think I'm trans and I'm so scared I love and support but I don't want to be trans, is that bad?

I know a lot of my family will hate

me.

I feel like a guy but how did I not know sooner,Idk wut to do, I'm so confused.

Like I've never felt wrong in till this year, idk if it's because maybe I was in Denial, but I feel I wad still know to some extent.

And wut if I'm just going crazy and lieing to my self I don't have a reason to but still.

You probably can answer, because your not me but if you think you can help pleas do.

Thx for your time :>

the very first thing i want to tell you is that i love you. i need you to know that you are loved. i need you to know that no matter who you are, you are loveable.

the second thing i need you to know is that you are strong and brave, even when you feel weak and scared. those feelings are so so so heavy, when you're carrying them around, all you can feel is the weight, and you forget how strong you are for being able to carry it at all. every breath you take is indescribably brave. every beat of your heart is worth it.

the third thing you need to know is that anyone that tries to put you down is scared of you. scared of how brave and strong you are, scared of your happiness, scared of your independence, scared that they won't be able to control you. you scare them. and that is the most wonderful thing in the world.

and it's okay to be scared!!! you are never ever alone in being scared. that's the very nice thing about community, especially the trans community. we've all been there. we know the hardships, we know the struggles. we're all in this together, 1000%. so being scared is okay.

i don't know you, what your living situation is like or how old you are and what your support network looks like. if you want to come off anon at all or shoot me a dm, please feel free to anytime. i can't promise i'll always have the spoons to respond, but you're not alone.

for me personally, i grew up in a pretty conservative household. i just was not exposed to a lot before i got my own computer (and more specifically got on tumblr). transgender was Not a word i had ever heard until i was in my teens probably. and it might never have occurred to me on my own that i could be trans. i know i didn't have a lot of the same experience my cis peers were having, i was always a "tomboy", there were parts of my biology i was deeply uncomfortable with but chalked up to puberty being a bitch. i mean, everyone tells you its awkward but that you'll get used to it eventually, right? :')

(here's a secret: you never have to get used to anything you're not comfortable with. if it sucks, hit da bricks!)

my journey started by identifying with the asexual label, it helped me feel a lot more in control of my own body? if that makes sense? like i had a word that explained (somewhat, at least as far i was aware at the time) my discomfort and boundaries, and it was the first time i realized i didn't have to be "normal". from there i realized i was gay, but it still took me a while to realize i wasn't cis, and then still a while after that to realize i wanted to go on HRT.

figuring out gender stuff is tricky! the good thing is its not a race. there's no way to lose! you can take your time, and experiment, explore your presentation and options! don't fall for the transphobic narrative that if you don't transition young enough you won't pass. that's just not true, and passing is more overrated than you might realize. having fun with is is honestly the most important thing.

dysphoria can be subtle, and it can manifest suddenly, even for things you were previously fine with. nobody has a totally static, unchanging mind. especially if you're young, your brain is still growing in there! even cis people get dysphoria sometimes.

it's probably not true that you're lying to yourself. that's another transphobic myth people like to push, that being trans is a mistake or a phase or something people do for attention. it's much more likely that this is something you've been learning more about yourself recently, and that's a really wonderful thing.

this community will celebrate your journey, no matter where it leads, whether you decide you're trans or not, and what you want to do about it. never let anyone scare you into thinking you're taking resources from someone who "deserves" it more. more demand and support = more resources and support for everyone.

i hope any of this is helpful to you, and i really hope if you do decide you want to talk more about this or look into it more, that you have the support to do so.

[thomascarterpd]

Finding the Right Path Through Study and Work – Sophie's Story

Sophie, an adult with cerebral palsy, shares her story about navigating the challenges of tertiary education and finding a rewarding profession

Year 12 often represents a pivotal transition in someone’s life as they leave school and go onto further education, employment, or other pathways. As a young person with cerebral palsy, I reflect back on this time, nine years later, and I remember feelings of excitement and curiosity but also more nerves and anxiety. This was largely due to the fact that my post school life didn’t have a clear and linear path.

In Year 10, as part of the curriculum in NSW every student is required to participate in a week of work experience. In my case, I felt that my options were extremely limited because while my peers were working in hairdressers, vets, and cafes, I knew due to my physical limitations that these jobs were not going to be practical for me. My mum and I reached out to the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, an organisation that I had been affiliated with all my life. Some people reading this may argue that this was an easy option, and maybe at the time, it was.

From that moment forward I knew that I wanted to work in the disability sector in some capacity.

Fast forward to the last couple of months of year 12 where my head is buried in books trying to retain information that I would forget as soon as the ‘pencils are down’. At this time, I am also juggling many specialist appointments which are exhausting to say the least. Especially when I’m having to undergo rigorous standardised testing to prove the special provisions that I would need to complete the HSC on an equal basis. But amidst all this, I’m also trying to figure out the next chapter.

As part of every students’ departure from schooling life, they and their parent/guardian are required to have a meeting with the Careers Advisor. I remember sitting in the office and the advisor asked if I had any thoughts about my future possibilities and I replied: “I’m looking at social work at uni, but I’m unsure if I can do it because of a key part of the degree is to complete 1000 hours of placement over the 4 year degree”, my mum added “having been to a few uni open days, I am worried that Soph will not get the support she needs whilst being considered a number in such a big place”.

The Careers Advisor looked at both of us and said “have you considered TAFE?”. I must admit, I hadn’t really thought of TAFE as an option. Whether this was because it wasn’t largely advertised or spoken about as a post-school option or, because all I heard amongst my peers was: “what university open day have you been to?”, “what courses are you going to apply for?”. Given this was the conversation that was happening around me, there was a seemingly unspoken pressure or assumption that university was the most prestigious path to take. If you didn’t go to uni, you weren’t going to succeed and you were going to fall behind.

As one door closed, it was time to look forward to the next chapter.

TAFE started in January 2016 and I enrolled in a Certificate IV of Community Services. The worries we had in terms of me being a number in the university system quickly faded. Smaller classes were a reality and in this space I began to find myself and have my voice heard. TAFE allowed me to have meaningful relationships with my peers rather than meeting someone in one class with no guarantee that you would see them again the following semester. TAFE was different. My entire cohort stayed together for the 12-month course and many of us went on to do the Diploma of Community Services the following year.

Both these courses allowed me to slowly take more independent steps in a supportive environment and I witnessed my confidence grow and my anxiety around new situations fade. During this time I also had the support of a Youth Coach who also happened to have lived experience of cerebral palsy. As a young person who was trying to find her feet in the big wide world, I can’t tell you just how invaluable this support was. My Youth Coach was able to pass on the skills and knowledge she had as another person with cerebral palsy.

I was even given the opportunity to learn how to book my own ski holiday for my family. While these skills might seem like common sense to some, these life skills were neglected due to me trying to manage my appointments as well as my fatigue levels during my schooling years. TAFE gave me so much more than a University education ever could and I can say this with confidence because I have attended both institutions, but I will address my university experience in due course.

Throughout my 2 years at TAFE I completed 240 hours of work placement in the disability sector in a variety of roles. This gave me a further taste into the workforce, cementing my passion for the disability sector. TAFE saw me go from a shy teenager to a confident young adult who wanted to secure her first permanent part-time role within the sector. The following year I was successful in achieving my goal when I landed my first role as an administrator for Hireup, a company that aims to give back choice and control to participants in the support that they receive.

The friendships that I built at Hireup were very important to me as many of my colleagues shared the same passion and interests, some also having lived experience of disability. I stayed in this role for 18 months before moving across to their sister organisation called Fighting Chance. I started in this role as a Learning Coordinator and this is where I would stay for the next 3 and a half years. If I didn’t already have enough on my plate, I decided to go to university to complete a Bachelor of Inclusive Education and Disability Studies.

My university experience taught me resilience and the power of my own voice. I remember on my first day of university I was sitting in a big lecture theatre and I had a flashback to what my careers advisor had stated to me those 4 years ago and the comment that was made around me being a number. I definitely did feel this, there was no-one checking in to make sure that I had the support necessary, instead that was all up to me. I soon had the realisation that from this moment forward I could no longer rely on someone else to advocate for me on my behalf. This was an important realisation that I needed to have and something that I carry with me to this day: If I want something to change, no one else is going to do it for me.

Keeping up with the university workload was definitely tough as I had to dictate all of my assignments to my support worker or exam supervisor. Given that this is not a skill that comes naturally to most people, this was incredibly time consuming and fatiguing. Although I thoroughly enjoyed university, for me personally, I am glad that I took the stepping stones that I did up until this point. By the end of my university degree in 2022, I was definitely ready to see the back of assignments and exams. Having been at Fighting Chance now for 3-and-a-half years, I was also looking for my next career move.

Read the full article to know more about Finding the Right Path Through Study and Work — Sophie’s Story

[katherinemathew]

Finding the Right Path Through Study and Work – Sophie's Story

Sophie, an adult with cerebral palsy, shares her story about navigating the challenges of tertiary education and finding a rewarding profession

Year 12 often represents a pivotal transition in someone’s life as they leave school and go onto further education, employment, or other pathways. As a young person with cerebral palsy, I reflect back on this time, nine years later, and I remember feelings of excitement and curiosity but also more nerves and anxiety. This was largely due to the fact that my post school life didn’t have a clear and linear path.

In Year 10, as part of the curriculum in NSW every student is required to participate in a week of work experience. In my case, I felt that my options were extremely limited because while my peers were working in hairdressers, vets, and cafes, I knew due to my physical limitations that these jobs were not going to be practical for me. My mum and I reached out to the Cerebral Palsy Alliance, an organisation that I had been affiliated with all my life. Some people reading this may argue that this was an easy option, and maybe at the time, it was.

From that moment forward I knew that I wanted to work in the disability sector in some capacity.

Fast forward to the last couple of months of year 12 where my head is buried in books trying to retain information that I would forget as soon as the ‘pencils are down’. At this time, I am also juggling many specialist appointments which are exhausting to say the least. Especially when I’m having to undergo rigorous standardised testing to prove the special provisions that I would need to complete the HSC on an equal basis. But amidst all this, I’m also trying to figure out the next chapter.

As part of every students’ departure from schooling life, they and their parent/guardian are required to have a meeting with the Careers Advisor. I remember sitting in the office and the advisor asked if I had any thoughts about my future possibilities and I replied: “I’m looking at social work at uni, but I’m unsure if I can do it because of a key part of the degree is to complete 1000 hours of placement over the 4 year degree”, my mum added “having been to a few uni open days, I am worried that Soph will not get the support she needs whilst being considered a number in such a big place”.

The Careers Advisor looked at both of us and said “have you considered TAFE?”. I must admit, I hadn’t really thought of TAFE as an option. Whether this was because it wasn’t largely advertised or spoken about as a post-school option or, because all I heard amongst my peers was: “what university open day have you been to?”, “what courses are you going to apply for?”. Given this was the conversation that was happening around me, there was a seemingly unspoken pressure or assumption that university was the most prestigious path to take. If you didn’t go to uni, you weren’t going to succeed and you were going to fall behind.

As one door closed, it was time to look forward to the next chapter.

TAFE started in January 2016 and I enrolled in a Certificate IV of Community Services. The worries we had in terms of me being a number in the university system quickly faded. Smaller classes were a reality and in this space I began to find myself and have my voice heard. TAFE allowed me to have meaningful relationships with my peers rather than meeting someone in one class with no guarantee that you would see them again the following semester. TAFE was different. My entire cohort stayed together for the 12-month course and many of us went on to do the Diploma of Community Services the following year.

Both these courses allowed me to slowly take more independent steps in a supportive environment and I witnessed my confidence grow and my anxiety around new situations fade. During this time I also had the support of a Youth Coach who also happened to have lived experience of cerebral palsy. As a young person who was trying to find her feet in the big wide world, I can’t tell you just how invaluable this support was. My Youth Coach was able to pass on the skills and knowledge she had as another person with cerebral palsy.

Read the full article to know more about Finding the Right Path Through Study and Work — Sophie’s Story

#cp #mycpguide #cerebralpalsysupport #cerebralpalsyresources

[keefwho]

September 03 - 2023 Sunday

8:31 am

I am such a huge failure. I didn't go to town today because I'm a weak loser. I feel like I can't show my face around anyone today. I should have just canceled the groceries instead of enabling my own poor behavior. I didn't have a good reason to not go today. Other than feeling extremely depressed, I am fine. Now I plan to not leave my bed unless I know I want to do something for a good reason.

9:38am

I can't remember the last time I hated myself so much. I literally can't do anything right now. I never get like this. I can't pursue anything I "enjoy" because it would be a waste of time and I don't deserve the joy. I can't do something productive for others because it would be wrong of me to pretend like I have the energy for that right now. I am stuck rotting.

I'm proving to myself that my life means nothing and I'm going nowhere. That I don't have the energy to change or hold onto the things I have, like I even deserve them. That there really is nowhere to go but down so what's the point in even trying. If it was possible I'd just will my heart to stop beating.

I feel like apologizing to everyone I've let down and led on. Wasting their time making them think I'm someone worth having around. I'm so selfish

10:25am

Everyone has better things going on in their lives that don't involve me, thats always the case. But look at me being selfish enough to want anyone's attention. I should just die already

12:59pm

I feel like I can't do anything without causing damage in some way.

1:33pm

Everyone I talk to seems to have had a good weekend. While I'm rotting away hoping I can finally die

3:03pm

I'm having the thought that I just can't have certain things. I see anyone doing literally anything happy and fulfilling and I think "that could never be me." "Im just some loser stuck in this cabin doomed to be sad and alone until I die." I hold the core belief that it's impossible for me to find peace, or love, or satisfaction anywhere. I can't be a valued member of a group. I can't be someone who accepts the affection of someone else. I can't be someone who feels like he contributes to the world. I can't be with the same reverence I view others with. I can't even be someone who finds peace with himself, enjoying my alone time.

4:11pm

I hate having to be the one to message first so often. Why am I not fought for. I fight so much. Or maybe I just don't see it because I don't want to.

I definitely hate asking for emotional support because I want to make sure I'm not a drain on other people or that Im misusing them. But sometimes I just rot waiting for anyone to notice/care which doesn't happen. And all I need to do is reach out.

4:46pm

1.What are the major changes you’d like to make in your life?

I want to change how I act and perceive things so that I can stop being someone who assumes the worst of himself. I also want to learn how to drive and become more independent so maybe I can fit in more with my peers. Changing living situation would be a big next step, being truly on my own.

2. How would you act differently if painful thoughts and feelings were no longer an obstacle?

I would be able to act on my decisions rather than sulking so much. I'd be able to operate without distraction.

3. What projects or activities would you start or continue if your time and energy were not consumed by troublesome emotions?

I have so many creative ideas I'd like to do that feel like they are locked behind learning to overcome my thoughts. Not only that but I'd want to make a better effort to get integrated into a friend group or two. I want to play VRchat like I used to where every weekend night felt like a party no matter who I was with, even strangers. I want to be better overall about being active online instead of doing things alone so much.

4. What would you do if fear were no longer an issue?

I would go to town to get my own groceries without it being such a big issue. I'd meet up with someone IRL like my gradeschool friend who reached out but I didn't do anything with. I'd try to get to a con to meet my online friends. I'd join group activities more without worrying about my mood, knowing it's something that would benefit me.

If unhelpful thoughts and unpleasant feelings did not deter you: 5. What sort of relationships would you build and with whom?

First and foremost I'd stabilize things with my bestie as much as possible. Thats the most important relationship to me right now and I want it to be a very healthy one. I want to make more friends in general that I actually care about and want to put my time into. I want relationships that I don't worry about so I can actually maintain multiple. It could be nice to have an art buddy of sorts to draw with on a frequent basis.

6. What improvements would you make in your health and fitness?

I'd stick to my workout schedule better but overall I don't think I'm that unhealthy of a person. There's always room for improvement but I just want to make sure I have something going that is okay and stable which I almost do.

7. What changes would you make in your work?

I'd stick to my schedule extremely well before trying to expand it more. I'd be less afraid and more willing to work on things that might grow my name/business at the cost of being things I might not be super into. But usually it's about the art process more than the content for me. I'd stop skimping out on work just because I am "able" and push myself more.

What feelings, urges and sensations might possibly act as obstacles?

Feelings of loneliness and inadequacy. Feelings that make me believe I am not worth the things I want. Urges to quit or cope self destruct. Sensations that remind me of my fears like an upset stomach or that empty feeling in my chest when I feel like none of it is worth it.

What thoughts and images might possibly act as obstacles?

The thoughts that I can't sustain friends or find out what I really want in life. Images of myself alone, unhappy, or dead. Images of myself in a place remembering how I fucked it all up and can never move on to something better. Knowing it was actually all my fault.

7:25pm

I feel so selfish expecting literally anyone to prioritize me or help when I need it. I really don't deserve it but I expect it anyways. How can I be such a bad person

[rinnouart]

A little more about Angels Friends

I also have my OC there

Her name is Jennie Bri and I am responsible for it in the OC ask

I will publish here the answers that I do. Ask is located in VK

Below will be Jennie's profile :

Name : Jennifer Bricks/Jennie Bri

Age : 16 years old

Race : Human

Gender : Female

Height : 165 cm

Weight : 50 kg

Activity : Golden School Student

Angel : Cassie

Demon : Brevis

Hobbies : Can't live without music. She learns to play the guitar. She also likes to spend time with his only friend Melissa, and in particular, go to concerts of his favorite artists.

Advantages : Friendliness, sociability, innocence, ability to sympathize

Disadvantages : Selfishness, envy, chemical dependence, emotional dependence, habit of swearing, insolence

Biography : Jennie Bri is a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in a private house with her mom, stepfather and younger sister. The girl's father left the family for an unknown reason (Mother does not want to reveal the truth to Jennie) and she believes that her mom is to blame for his departure. Relationships in the family are strained due to several factors.

1. Relationship with stepfather

He immediately indicated the position that as soon as Bri reaches the age of majority, the family stops helping her financially. Thus, the man made it clear that he does not consider Jennie a native person and he absolutely does not care what will happen to her.

2. Relationship with mom

Jennie's mother can be called weak-willed. Instead of objecting to her husband and interceding for her child, she prefers to silently agree with him and take the side of the man in a few conflicts. Thus, it completely discourages Jennie from sharing some thoughts and experiences.

3. Younger sister

With Jennifer, they are in utero, that is, they have one mother, and their fathers are different. Due to the fact that Jennie's real father has left the city and rarely answers her calls, although the girl herself is drawn to him, the situation with her sister is mirrored. The youngest reaches out to Bri, but she ignores or pushes her away. Jennie is very scrupulous about his appearance. She watches the figure, counts calories before and after meals and begins to panic if she eats a little more than normal.

She does not suffer from bulimia, but if she continues like this, sooner or later, she may become ill with anorexia.

Bri not only tries to keep up with fashion trends, but also wants to stand out. Therefore, her appearance is dominated by black and pink colors. They complement her contradictory image. Black seems to be saying: "I am independent! I'm on my own! No one orders me!", and pink continues: "But I'm still a fragile, gentle girl, love me."

This contradiction is due to problems in the family. Due to the fact that Jennifer does not receive love from her parents, she looks for it on the side. It's the same with attention. Parents devote all their time to the youngest, and Jenny always tries to be the center of attention and fights for the title of the most beautiful girl in school, as she is very insecure and she constantly needs a reminder that she is really beautiful, people really love her and she tries not in vain.

Also, Bri usually hides his insecurity behind feigned audacity. She often conflicts with her peers, disrupts lessons, skips school, is rude to teachers and parents.

In conclusion, I would like to say that Jennifer has obvious symptoms of an eating disorder.

[criffyzou]

Chronicled my parisian save in my drafts, because I had a blast. Might aswell post it now that I’ve shelved it for the update.

It started because I wanted to see the new childhood events in the Friends & Foes DLC, so I made a random baby in 867 France. I also wanted a trait I had never played before, it fell on barren.

Eglantine, chaste lazy compassionate countess of Amiens & Clermont, was a-go. (VERY LONG post with images below, best viewed in dashboard)

In her childhood, she befriended a dutch nobliau from nearby Ypres via the meet peers event; his dad refused the proposal because Eglantine was barren, and he eventually got engaged to someone else, but they became lovers in their 20s, then later, soulmates.

She married someone for the council job, but after organizing a threesome to “help Eglantine explore her bisexuality”, her husband then tried to hide that the other woman, who was both their lover, was now bearing his child. She divorced him and married him immediately to their lover.

She finally bore the child of her childhood friend and soulmate, at 44, right when I began accepting I would lose the game.

Miracle child, compassionate ambitious honest Adelinde, had a wonderful childhood, but when her mother died and she became a ruler of her own, I realized I was playing the same game twice, countess all alone with zero family member, no ally, barren. Adelinde even had the added bonus of being a lesbian, so couldn’t keep male lovers, only have sex once during a seducing scheme.

Surprisingly, having an heir was the easy part, with the many fertility artifacts Eglantine had collected in her life. A saxon boy who had showed up parentless at Eglantine’s court, whom she recruited and raised alongside Adelinde, was picked as co-parent. She was pregnant on the second try. He was also gay, married to our best friend the spymaster and lived peacefully at our court.

By that point, France had imploded and no longer existed, and Amiens and Clermont were but two independant counties, in a sea of independant counties other kingdoms were more than happy to swallow whole. I needed a duchy.

Enter Yngvar.

Remember Adelinde’s secret dad, count of Ypres ? After France’s implosion, when I looked for her secret siblings, who should have inherited at that point, I found Yngvar, duke of Flanders. The only surviving son of a minor danish chief, he went on a varangian adventure, and decided north of France was his, actually. There he was, living his best life, merry and boisterous. He took a liking to his young neighbor Adelinde, befriending her, and regularly sending her poems (everytime it was off cooldown it feels like).

Yngvar had a 12k army left over from his adventure, and suddenly the nearby kingdoms of Brittany and Lotharingia, who had swallowed the counties I needed for the duchy of Valois, didn’t seem so scary with this prospective ally.

The only flaw in my plan was, he refused to marry my newborn daughter to his infant son matrilineally, but the babies were engaged anyway, and I could declare all the wars I wanted, throwing my puny 1k army at kingdoms, with Yngvar desperately running after my troups to save my ass, time and time again.

I got my duchy but the stress took its toll on Adelinde, who abdicated, leaving me to sort out heir situation for compassionate diligent arrogant Alix.

I am aware I could have broken off the engagement between the children but you have to understand 1) I was really, extremely grateful to Yngvar and 2) Alix’s husband, like his dad before him, was the only son surviving to adulthood. Like this dynasty was cursed to only have one child a generation, reminding me of my own situation.

Besides, having been engaged since birth, they were both really fond of each other. They had six kids together, that Alix could raise despite belonging to a court in another country, and when viking husband died of pox in their early 40s, the parting text was surprisingly romantic for a lesbian. Oh yeah, Alix was also a lesbian.

His death was honestly the best case scenario. I was hoping he would die young enough for Alix to have a kid belonging to her own dynasty, but I didn’t expect it working out so well.

Alix remarried, using the find spouse option which I never do (too boring !), but as we had been so busy raising six children, and also, I need to stress this, she was a lesbian, finding someone as narratively important as her first husband, and fast enough to conceive while she was still fertile, didn’t seem likely.

We picked this german guy, who already had a daughter, a fact I only became aware of when he asked me to sponsor said daughter. I actually really liked her, invited her to my court, arranged her marriage, raised her kids. She later became the right hand to her half sister, my heir.

Speaking of the heir, Alice, here are traits she could have inherited: -barren, Alix didn’t have it but I assume it was still in her DNA -dwarf, like her dad, the one I was hoping for -slow, quick, or intelligent, her mom having intelligent and her dad slow

Here is the trait she actually got out of nowhere: beautiful. A trait I would soon came to hate because it would not go away for generations and it makes for very bland characters. No freckles, no moles, no interesting features, just basic white bitches from that point onward.

Alice did one thing right by me though: she fell in love with her childhood friend, yet another parentless kid showing up at my court I felt obligated to raise because I’m not a monster.

Said kid was actually the son of a Karling woman, his great uncle had been the last king of France before the implosion. If they didn’t get together on their own, I would have married them later.

Now, let’s take a moment to check on her siblings. Remember, the six kids Alix had with her viking husband ?

When their dad died, the three eldest became rulers. That’s the eldest daughter and the bearded twins. One twin immediately attacked his sister and asked his mom to join the war, which she did so it would end quicker with less bloodshed. Since the twins were now ruling the duchy of Flanders on their own, Alix gave counties from Valois to the rest of them, found them spouses, then left them to their own devices once they were set and happy.

One day, I looked around and realized that while Alix was busy marrying her doppelganger (long story), Lotharingia, my old nemesis, had swallowed Flanders, yet I never got called to a defensive war.

Alix died soon after, and compassionate calm arrogant Alice, heralding the basic white bitch era, immediately got attacked by her brothers the viking twins. (Ignore my foray into cosmetic mods, it was short lived)

Alice’s entire reign was marked by defensive wars, and our dwindling fortune going to mercenaries’ pockets. Everyone had it out for her. Her perfect husband, the love of her life, died in one of those wars, leaving her with two young children. She remarried to some guy I honestly have no memory of, and had two more kids. I don’t remember any more about this era or her death than I do her second husband.

New ruler, first born daughter, had a name but I only remember her as Barbie. She’s probably the one who ruled the longest, but outside of the game deciding rakish was the best coping mechanism for my chaste asexual ruler, nothing noteworthy happened. First asexual ruler of the dynasty, she never married and never had kids, knowing she had enough siblings to get away with it.

But really, it’s because a perfect candidate for her husband showed up during Alice’s rule, but I didn’t save as I was losing a war. I never recovered.

Compassionate lazy chaste Barbie did two very important things in her life, first rebuilt the family fortune to twice what it ever was, and second, she swore fealty to Lotharingia, who had gotten bigger and bigger, once I realized a descendant of Alix was the ruler. All of Alix’s viking children had had children of their own, who intermarried, and somehow the dynasty were now ruling the biggest kingdom around. I suspect that’s why the twins or their kids swore fealty to Lotharingia in the first place, to take it from the inside.

The very last thing she did as a ruler, damning her immortal soul in the process, was assasinate her old crummy bishop when it was revealed he took her only niece as his lover. As she was generally awful in intrigue, she asked her niece and nephews to assist, which they all did, including the niece whose very lover they were trying to kill. This was me making amends, as I had never once paid attention to Barbie’s family during her life; I was on that money grind, too used to my one character generations.

It was now time to play the first male ruler of our dynasty, hopefully the last. Snorri was never supposed to rule; you see, Barbie’s brother had two sons, and fickle paranoid gregarious Snorri was the youngest. However, the oldest son, much more interesting, was serving as a religious figure for most of his adult life and could not inherit according to the game, something I didn’t notice until it was too late to do something about. The two brothers were best friends and always hanging out together so I didn’t mind that much..

Snorri is a surprising name for a frenchman, that’s because he was named after his grandfather: one of Alix’s kids, whose daughter somehow ended up married to Barbie’s brother, merging the two bloodlines together. I would soon see that yellow coat of arms with a Þ everywhere.

After the death of its king, Lotharingia became three separate kingdoms ruled by three siblings, France, Lotharingia, and Germania, and here is their family tree. That’s three (3) of Alix’s kids on the first line. From that point onward, I realized I didn’t have one, but two dynasties to look after, although the second one seemed to be doing very well without me.

The kingdom of France was back from the dead, with its capital somewhere in the duchy of Flanders because at that point, I had been ruling over Paris for more than a hundred years and I was not giving it up.

Snorri married his cousin Alice, also known as avenged niece, because I didn’t trust her to not get involved with another weird old man. They were really happy together, soulmates with 4 kids, or at least as happy as possible with a paranoid ruler doubting the child was his, every single pregnancy. Alice’s brothers also had kids, and the cousins growing up together was the first time it felt like an actual dynasty. We were 7 generations in at that point.

When he died, Snorri was remembered for huh, being a deviant with autoerotic asphyxiation tendencies, according to the game, but to me his biggest feat was joining every war the stupid king of France got into, and winning them all; he is the sole reason France didn’t become Lotharingia again.

Just ambitious diligent Bellesa (actually called Belleassez) was the first ruler with a smart-type trait since Alix, quick, despite both her parents only having variations of beautiful. For that alone, she was already pretty high on my list of favorites.

I didn’t have the luxury of waiting to organically meet a potential spouse, the way I usually like to play my characters: I needed prestige and I needed it fast to reform my new parisian culture, so I just picked whoever gave me the most of it, an indian princeling.

Her era was mostly me panicking that my dynasty got too big to keep track of. and trying to find a good coat of arms. Here is her losing one of the 5 kids I do not even remember us having, something that became an unwanted tradition as the next three generations would also lose one kid young.

It was also my first time in this game actually caring about my siblings AND my cousins and making sure they were thriving.

She abdicated of stress to her first born, honest trusting ambitious Samanta, named after what is technically the title of one of her paternal ancestors but nevermind that.

Samanta’s era was mostly trying to micromanage the two dynasties, making sure branches that would go extinct without my intervention were brought back into the fold, giving titles to those I could.

She also pulled a cask of amontillado on two pregnant women. One was in the way of marrying her childhood friend (from meet peers) whom I had decided would father our children while Samanta was busy having many female lovers including the queen of France; the other walled in woman was because she wanted to marry a prince of France to a distant relative. Neither woman was pregnant when the murder schemes were started, and it’s kind of weird that it happened the same way twice.

Marrying that childhood friend proved a bad idea, because he was a count in another french duchy, but his mother was one of our vassal, and weirdly her son didn’t inherit when she died; instead the county went to my 6yo daughter and heir, now living as a grown-up outside my court.

Fortunately, it only lasted about six years as Samanta died in her early 40s leaving me to play her 12yo kid. Her birth name was Héloïse but when I saw how much she resembled a young Claire Danes in Romeo + Juliet, she was renamed Juliette.

Despite having played part of her childhood, forgiving ambitious stubborn Juliette did not form close ties with anyone, and no Romeo ever came her way, as she was asexual. She married a french princeling who immediately cheated on her with her cousin, and they divorced less than a year into the marriage.

Juliette’s era was also dynasty management and giving titles to as many relatives as I could, because the king kept giving me duchies I did not want. Maybe over gratitude for the family tradition Snorri established, of winning wars for the foolhardy King of France, that we never stopped doing. I didn’t want any more duchy because I was playing tall and focusing on my two counties, and I keep tabs on almost all my relatives all the time anyway, might aswell make them landed.

It was also the era of going back to the french culture we diverged from, because I was finally powerful enough to become culture head. (The french royals were now welsh for some reason)

She eventually (10 years later) married some intelligent and club-footed guy to spice things up now that we were finally free of the beautiful trait, but he turned out to be a cannibal. At that point we already had had (and lost) kids so whatever, keeping him. Outside of the flesh eating thing, he was very nice !

Our heir, ambitious calm vengeful Rosaline, proving to me once and for all that marrying your heir before they’re playable is a mistake, decided to cheat on her very sweet andalusian husband, father of her newborn baby, with a crummy old man, and out of desperation of not being able to break them up, I kept her under house arrest until he died.

It took 12 years, her entire young adulthood, and she hated me for it, but she resumed her life afterwards, having another kid with her husband, even forgiving her mother shortly before her death. No I don’t know either why I didn’t just kill him.

Fate came at her with her vengeance, when the teen daughter she didn’t see grow up for 12 years was roped in a relation with her own crummy old man, got pregnant, then died protecting him of her mother’s assassin.

A lot of things happened very fast in less than 2 years after that event: Juliette had her second son by her husband at 45, got seduced by the heir to the Kingdom of France, somehow got pregnant despite her age, had a legitimized bastard daughter, his first born child, so second in line for the throne, and her husband got murdered. It’s like she took all the years she missed out on living under house arrest, and decided to cram them in two.

Bastard princess and last baby was called Adelinde, a throwback to the first baby of this dynasty who also arrived very late. Unfortunately, she got a beautiful trait from her father, just when I thought I was free of it for good.

That’s where I stopped playing, because I didn’t vibe with being the kingdom of France. I had changed succession laws to female preference at some point, and Rosaline only had two surviving sons from her marriage.

I might pick it up again someday, but my norse-gael game, started when Northern Lords released, is still trying to recover from patches, and I have a feeling Tours and Tournaments will not be kind to existing saves.

I learned a lot though, about playing tall, about warfare, about the kind of gameplay I enjoy. A blast.

[burnedbyshoto]

i wonder

i wonder (if you remember the way we looked at each other)

— Living as roommates with your best friend is easy until someone fucks up and catches feelings.

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pairing: todoroki shouto x fem!reader

warnings: 18+, smut fem!reader, and they were roommates, childhood friends!au, university!au, quirkless!au, modern!au, americanized university experience, alcohol consumption, drug consumption, the plot is for the sex AHA, womanizer!shouto, shouto and reader are bad roommates but seiji is worse, shouto has sex at 16 for the first time, vouyerism-ish, iffy shouto tendencies, jealous!shouto, jealous!reader, drunk sex so dubcon depending on you, nipplegasms, reader has nipple piercings, blowjob, switching, marking, biting, scratching, praise kink, missing tag ;)

word count: 20,141

a/n: this is for the roommates bnharem collab! please check out all the other amazing fics and art! note to self, dont get drunk the night before this is due and I hope you guys enjoy this!!! I had a lot of fun writing it!!! also,,, sorry if mobile doesn’t correctly format!

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You cracked your eyes open.

The gentle white stream of light permeated through soft cotton curtains, lighting the room in pale stripes and careful touches. Dust particles danced within the shining light, bending and twirling with the flowing air and moving winds. You breathed in deeply, your body still tired, your head still foggy from a night of distractions and too many drinks. 

Your eyes are closed once again, your still hazy mind trying to ignore the bitter, rank taste of the alcohol and cum on your tongue and your hands scratching as your naked cleavage. There was still enough time in the day; it was Sunday after—

Wait.

CUM?!

Your eyes flew open, your lips smacking each other as you confirm the awful, salty taste of cum on your tongue. Your hands swiping up and down your front to confirm your state of undress. Your heart starts hammering in your chest, your palms immediately sweating as you try to think about just who the fuck you ended up back in bed with.

Think, y/n, think!

A small grunt came from behind you, and you felt your entire body go rigid immediately. The soft expel of air fanning against your sticky neck is both welcomed and untrusted. With what can only be described as you, as stiff as a stick, peering behind your shoulder similar to a mother who definitely heard her child throw up on her bed but is somehow praying that she was hearing shit, you turned around.

A messy bedhead of red and white greeted you: unfocused, sleepy grey, and brilliant blue eyes staring back at you with fond familiarity and welcome.

“‘Morning, y/n,” Todoroki Shouto grumbles, voice husky, scratchy, deeply warm from his slumber. His next words are damning, though, the slight pride and knowing implications in the small breathe he uttered next. “Had fun last night?”

There was silence, a stroke of hesitancy, then crushing all-consuming fear.

You screamed.

At the top of your lungs.

O N E  W E E K  A N D  A  D A Y  E A R L I E R

“Who the fuck touched my fucking Angry Orchard Rosés?!” a voice snapped from the kitchen; the tone was fed up, seconds from blasting to smithereens.

You were in the living room, a pair of sweats on, your hair not put together, your face still bare. The music you played as part of your pregame ritual was practically vibrating the wooden floor as you sang along to your music. The telling glass bottle of deliciously pink alcohol swinging inconspicuously between your fingers as you drank it between verses. Despite your other roommate (who you repeatedly told your friends to be ‘like Bakugou but a gazillion times worse because you don’t and can’t like him,’) being seconds from trying to start another feud or possibly a lawsuit against you, your mouth dropped in mock shock before guzzling down the rest of the drink.

“I saw that you fucking skank!” Shishikura Seiji screeched from the kitchen; his stomps were long and heavy as he made his way from the kitchen to the living room where you were. “There were two bottles left in there! Don’t tell me your alcoholic ass drank them both! So help me, I’ll press on your damn chest until you’re puking out my drink.”

“Shishikura, stop,” Shouto spoke up, his own arm raising as he took a long, slow drink from the other missing rosé bottle. “These are 2% alcohol, you’ve had them in the fridge for months now, and you never drink them anyways.”

You grinned as you pulled the glass bottle from your lip, your face failing at the fake look of surprise, guilt, and sorrow for your unwanted and unneeded roommate.

“Sorry, they’re such girly drinks. I figured I’d take them off your hands,” you speak with distractingly bright amusement. “Alcoholics like me, we don’t care. Watch out; I might go for your mouth wash if you’re not too careful.”

“You do that, and I’ll poison you like a damn bitch,” Shishikura threatened, his voice in a menacing growl.

“Ooooo, you want me to bark for you, Shishikura? Want me on my hands and knees?” you taunt back, walking backward until you’re collapsing onto the couch besides Shouto. Your arm quickly sneaks between his, and you lay your head on his shoulder. Shishikura’s face is flushed red, his pupils beady as he trembles with concealed rage.

“She’s quite good at it,” Shouto chimes in, the corner of his mouth twitching into an amused smirk as he takes another drink of the weak liquor. He shifts on the couch, allowing you to curl more comfortably at his side; the both of you know just how much your incredibly prude roommate hates any sort of PDA. “Want to hear her bark? She’s also quite good with her tongue.”

As if to emphasize Shouto’s point, you stuck out your tongue, refusing to break eye contact with Shishikura as the tip of your tongue breached the opening of the bottle.

“The actual fuck is wrong with the both of you?!” Shishikura spluttered, his face somehow turning purple and green and red. A truly incredible sight to be had. “‘Childhood friends are great roommates to have’ my fucking ass, you both are monstrosities!”

Shishikura stormed out of the living room, his ears neon red as his purple hair fell to cover his face. As soon as he was out of sight, you turned to Shouto, your tongue removing itself from the bottle and back into your mouth as you began to laugh loudly.

Childhood friends to roommates, ah, what a remarkable story you had with Todoroki Shouto.

It was accurate to relay that you had known Shouto for more than seventeen years now at your current age of twenty-one. Seventeen years of being what is easily seen as the best of friends, the closest companions, and indeed a bond that would withstand time and situation. 

The two of you met during the first week of what was preschool. Although both of you could not remember a single instance of events during this time, your mothers had always been excited to relay this story to you for many years that you could remember. It was odd to try to remember it, but even as they painted a picture of your first interaction, you could do nothing but admit that it sounded exactly like how it could have gone. 

You couldn’t remember being four years old; you don’t recall what it was like to strain your neck to look up at your parents or how it felt to be so utterly dependent but to scream brazenly about your childish independence. Your mother smiles when she retells the story of your first interaction, of how you were holding her hand as she walked you to the building where your preschool was to be had. 

Your hand was so small in hers. Tightly clutching onto her fingers as you looked around at the other children who were also arriving or had already arrived. Some children were bawling by their parents, others aimlessly playing with toys, and some were attempting to talk to one another, but by the apparent looks of curiosity surrounding the babbling and rambling tangents that could only be understood by a firing toddler brain, everyone was getting along. 

A teacher greeted you kindly, squatting down to reach your eye level as they excitedly introduced themselves and asked for your name. You, of course, with your hands clutching the skirts of your mother’s dress, responded with hesitant confidence.

“You’re such a brave girl!” the teacher awed happily, stretching out a hand for you. “Is it okay if I take you from your mom and show you which cubby is yours?”

There was a moment of confusion, then clear understanding hovering over your little head. Your mom looked down with an encouraging smile and pushed you forward.

“Do I get a middle cubby? I don’t want a top one,” you admit, your hand stretching out to grab the teacher’s stretched-out hand. 

Your mother watched on happily as you removed your schoolbag and lunchpail and placed them neatly within the somehow middle cubby marked with your name. The teacher also helped you put on your white school slippers before gesturing towards the bright, colorful room, their mouth moving as if explaining every little detail before pointing at the corner. Your mother tilted her head, curious as she followed the teachers point to the corner of the room where a boy with exceptional red and white hair — split perfectly in the middle — sat quietly, with fat tears rolling down his cheeks.

(Shouto, although he can not remember this day himself, will argue with you and only you that he was, in fact, NOT crying.)

Trying to not allow the shock of the unnatural hair color affect her, your mother watched as you nodded to your new teacher and walked over with clenched fist confidence to the small boy.

She watched as you approached him, your jaw moving as you so obviously spoke, hopefully introducing yourself. The boy looked up at you with bright, wet eyes but seemed to speak right back to you. 

“Alright, parents! Thank you all for dropping off your children! Do not worry. We will take great care of them all, and they are in competent hands! First days are hard for everyone, so if you can exit quietly, I, and the rest of us teachers, would appreciate that greatly!”

Or at least that’s what Rei claimed the teacher said.  However, your mother was watching on with increasing exponential horror as she watched you throw a punch at the air before twisting around and pointing right at her and saying with a voice that was much too loud.

“Punch whoever made you cry, Shouto-chan! My mama says that it is okay to punch bullies!”

Thankfully no one but your mother heard you, and even though she scolded you on the way out, whisper yelling that you “better not punch anyone!” her relief was for naught.

When she would return in the afternoon, a bit late because there had been a hold up on the train, you were pouting sitting on the floor with a scuffled uniform, your arms crossed definitely. Next to you was the boy with red and white hair, equally scuffed next to a white-haired woman and an older white-haired boy.

“Oh my god, what happened?!” she shrieked, racing over to you.

“Y/l/n-san,” the teacher spoke with a tone that indicated disappointment with the subtle undertone of amusement. “Y/n-chan has something to tell you.”

Your mother had taught you many things, she will admit, in your very short life. But sass and annoyment was something not often seen in your household or in you, and to see it so blatantly on your chubby-cheeked face was quickly giving your mother greys.

“Shouto-chan told me that his stupid bully brother Touya was being a meanie, and so I helped him punch him back!” you said with tears in your eyes because you didn’t want to back down from your actions, but you also did not like being scolded. “I don’t regret it!”

“Y/n!”

“Y/n-chan!”

“I don’t either,” Shouto-chan grumbled as your mother collapsed to her knees and began to profusely apologize for you to the woman who was undoubtedly Shouto’s mother. “Touya-nii was making fun of my hair again… y/n-chan helped me, though. Please don’t scold her!”

To say the most in the shortest amount of time, you were, in fact, scolded despite Shouto’s begging. Touya stopped making fun of Shouto’s natural hair. Rei accepted your mother’s apology. The teachers were given two bottles of sake.

And, of course, the most important, the most paramount thing to arise from this first day of school was that your and Todoroki Shouto’s friendship was now bound by blood, sweat, and tears.

Preschool became elementary school, which became middle school, and fading into highschool.

It was without saying that your relationship, your friendship with Todoroki Shouto, was probably one of the biggest, most defining parts of your entire life. He was there when your first tooth fell out, when he dropped ice cubes down people’s shirts, you two had bathed together when you were young, had sleepovers well past the age where him being a boy and you being a girl should have made things weird. You laughed when his voice cracked and dropped, he elbowed your chest plenty when you began growing boobs, you taunted his lack of body hair, he bought you your favorite ice cream and heating packs on your first period. You attended cram school together, went to the park and beaches on days off from school. You were partners in every school activity except under specific circumstances. He had listened to you when you told him excitedly about your first kiss when you turned fourteen, and you laughed when he said at the age of fifteen that he had still yet to kiss anyone.

Everyone always claimed, always asked, wondered, and whispered if the two of you were dating. Childhood friends still this close and not dating? Unheard of; practically illegal! Nevertheless, you ignored the disappointed frowns or the hopeful grins as you and Shouto both denied any sort of romantic connection.

Soon the both of you were in high school, and Shouto was mere days from turning sixteen. Much like when the both of you were when you were four years old, you seemed to be the one spouting many words — sometimes unnecessary words that wound you both up in trouble — of wisdom. You were loud when you needed, talking most of the time only to him and your surprisingly large group of friends. (You weren’t that surprised. Everyone wanted to be friends with the handsome, could easily be royalty or a model, Todoroki Shouto.) Shouto remained, for better or worse, quiet, reserved, and a bit awkward. He was a sweet boy, don’t get it wrong, and you would protect him until the end of your days, but the boy was a complete airhead and relied on you for interpreting social interactions.

“Camie-senpai wants me to go over to her house after my birthday,” Shouto explains, his hands exchanging his school shoes for his outdoor ones. “Something about wanting to do that one second-year first-year student project thing for the third years right away.”

“You have Camie?” you ask, slumping against the metal lockers with a slight thud. “Lucky, she’s so nice… I have stupid Agoyamato. Have you had a conversation with him? It’s actually the worst! He thinks he’s all that!”

“I’m sure it’ll be okay; you’re nice enough that he won’t be like… that,” Shouto smiles, slinging his bag on his shoulders before nudging his head towards the exit. “Ready?”

“Am I ever ready?” you ask with a whine but nevertheless proceed onward.

Time passed, and between cram school, actual school, some clubs, eventually January 11th passed and you held an ice cream cake that Shouto loved. You ate the cake together, relaxing as you sat in the warmth of his kitchen.

“Happy birthday, Shoucchan, never change!” you chirp, shoving his arm that rose to place the piece of cake in his mouth with your shoulder and watched as the sweet pastry splattered on top of the table. “...um?”

“I’ll give you ten seconds to run.”

“Only ten?! What about the happy birthday boy.”

“Oh, true. Three seconds to run.”

“Why?!”

“It’s my birthday.”

An hour later, when your stomach hurt from laughing too much and the sickly sweet weight of too much ice cream cake, you lay snuggled into Shouto’s side as the both of you watched some old movie.

“Thanks for always being here for me,” you mumble, eyes growing heavy as the heat of Shouto’s body began to lull you to sleep.

“I’m always here for you,” Shouto softly responded, hand gliding up and down the curve of your spine. “We should get you home. Your mom yelled and nearly skinned us both the last time you fell asleep here.”

“Only cuz she’s scared that we’ll have some sudden revelation we like each other and fuck each other’s brains out,” you groaned, absolutely not content with having to move. With your face buried in your hands now, you missed the weird pattern in Shouto’s chest over that.

“Come on, let’s go.”

“...fine, just because it’s your birthday.”

The next day, when Shouto followed Camie home instead of you, there was something that made you feel off as you waved at them goodbye. It wasn’t jealousy, that much you knew, but something worse when you watched the way your never-been-kissed-before best friend was ignorant to the dark eyes Camie sent his way.

To be quite honest, you’re not sure if you should be as surprised as you are when you get a phone call at ten p.m. to the sound of a confused, suppressed, overwhelmed voice of your best friend asking if you could confirm if Camie had fucked him. You then stayed on the phone for Shouto until well past two a.m., your heart hurting as he recounted the memory over and over again. You weren’t sure as to why your heart was breaking. By the sounds of it, Shouto had actually enjoyed it, but with every stammer to his voice, you felt lightyears away.

Most shockingly, however, was the effects this had on Shouto and his overall persona.

From ages four until fifteen, Todoroki Shouto was someone who was quiet, observant, took things a bit too literally, at all times was entirely precious in the way he interacted with people, and most importantly, unaware of the female population who lusted after him. It worked well for you because it was fun to tease him about things, nag him about how he was sixteen, and hadn’t been kissed even though if he asked any girl at school to kiss him, they definitely would. 

But sixteen-year-old Todoroki Shouto was a new shift, a new paradigm for you to learn. It wasn’t that he wasn’t confident before, but now he emitted a sense of confidence that he was aware of, that everyone was aware of. He became mature, sophisticated, styled even. He was still at times quiet, always completely observant. He rarely took things literally and understood rhetoric and sarcasm and hyperboles. Long gone were the days of preciousness, and instead, there was a sense of a predator on the hunt that bled in the way that he talked to people. Most importantly, however, he was fully aware of the female population and precisely who was lusting after him.

He flirted with women and girls. You would find him leaning against the lockers talking with them, somehow trapping them despite not actually trapping them. A new girl was sitting at your table with him practically every week in high school, each girl asking for the hundredth millionth time that the both of you were not dating. Some girls were even bold enough to apologize to you for stealing your best friend — as if you wanted Shouto.

You had already seen his dick, thank you very much (although the last time you saw it was well before you were nine years old), you weren’t missing out on how it probably looked now! Honestly, you had no idea how Shouto never managed to run out of female students to fuck, the school wasn’t that large, and he seemed to go through a few a week sometimes.

But he was your best friend, your childhood friend, and no matter how many girls came crawling back to your lunch table, bawling to Shouto to take him back, soaking the fabric of your skirt to help convince him to take her back, you stayed. You stayed, accepting the fact that your best friend had become an awkward teenage boy and turned into some high school sex freak.

You stayed when his shaggy hairstyle was clipped and became short.

Overnight, just as he went from being a complete virgin to not one, he went from a scrawny sixteen-year-old boy to a leanly built eighteen-year-old hot-ass heartthrob womanizer.

High school wasn’t forever. Even though it took you about a year to accept and integrate Shouto’s new sex life and behavior into your daily lifestyle with him (he always left four of the three days open for you as all his relationships were casual only). Soon enough, the both of you relaxed and found your own relationship to be entirely the same, and when university exams and applications came about, it was decided that yet again, the both of you would follow each other anywhere.

Which is where you were now.

Tokyo University,  a third-year student, living in an upscale three-person apartment with your best friend, of course. Shouto plus someone who practically begged in the most unbegging way to live with you.

Todoroki Shouto and Shishikura Seiji in the same apartment as you made for an interesting combination.

You hadn’t wanted Shishikura Seiji as a roommate at all. Period. 

There were about eleven other people you only considered asking, but they all said no for their own reasons. Bakugou and Midoriya had found their own apartment closer to the University, and for much cheaper, Kirishima and Mina were RA’s and could not move in. Kaminari said he liked Sero’s couch too much to leave, and Sero couldn’t live in an apartment without a balcony. Momo said the room was too small, Jirou said she’d rather continue living with Momo, Uraraka said it was a tad bit too much for her to afford (to be fair, you didn’t have to pay because the Todoroki’s were paying for your housing, but you understood), Tsuyu and Hagakure said they were living at home. Iida said he would be too uncomfortable living with a couple.

Everyone you found on the street wouldn’t accept your offer. Hence, Shouto invited the meatball and rosé obsessed Shishikura Seiji to live with the two of you simply because he was Shouto’s lab partner in one of his advanced physics classes. Stupid chemical engineering nerd.

At twenty-one years, you can now say that you’ve entirely adjusted to Shouto’s womanizer ways. Too often do you find yourself sitting at the kitchen counter, a steaming cup of tea in your hand as you drink it in slowly, watching with much amusement as either a no-name girl leaves or a walk of shame Shouto enters. It happens at most five times a week; you were used to it. While the unease had finally left, you had to admit you were impressed your best friend could easily sleep around as he did and maintain his outstanding grades.

However, just because you were finally used to Shouto’s womanizer tendencies didn’t mean the world was. Even in University, your fellow students would ask with wide eyes and behind flat palms if the two of you were dating — specifically if Shouto was cheating on you or if it was an open relationship. You would each and every time, smile cheekily, shake your head and say with a roll of your eyes: “No, we’re not dating. He’s not cheating, and no, this is nothing more than us being best friends. Sho is too much of a jealous person to allow for an open relationship.”

Somehow, the constant begging of approval and the erasure of any romantic connection between you and Shouto from the plethora of female students at Tokyo University wasn’t even the most annoying part of it all. No, not at all.

What really ground your nerves was a pattern you noticed when you were eighteen.

Unlike Shouto, you hadn’t had the chance to lose your virginity until you were eighteen. Most of the boys who liked you always assumed you and Shouto were dating, the ones who gathered the courage to ask you out anyways were boys you were less than impressed with. By some act of some higher god, your crush — the school's third-year baseball team's captain when you were a first-year — reappeared in your life and asked you out. It wasn’t your best decision, you can fully admit it, but he was friendly and sweet as he fucked you in his small bed.

You hadn’t expected sex to be like that, and if you had enjoyed this, you couldn’t help but wonder just how Shouto was in bed to have girls behaving like that.

However, the spell was broken when he helped you change back into your clothes, and he begged you not to tell Shouto he was the person you cheated on him with.

It was on this day that it clicked.

What went for him, unfortunately, went for you too.

Except where girls rose to the challenge to dethrone you from Shouto’s side (a shame because they were vying for a seat that you had no claim over), the boys lowered their head like some damn omega to Shouto’s alpha.

Disgusting.

Even with the plentiful, plethora, consistent denial of your relationship with Shouto, even with the tally of girls, Shouto’s bedded (and more excitedly, deflowered — ugh!) rose consistently, no one ever really believed you weren’t dating him! Too many a time, you had been centimeters from making out with a guy for them to pull away, screeching that they couldn’t allow you to betray Shouto. The men who didn’t care were sleezebags, and thus, with a growl and a snarl, you found that you were only able to fuck men who thought jackhammering their fingers into your labia — yes, your labia — would make you cum.

You didn’t want to say you hated your childhood best friend for such duplicitous, selfish reasons… but you did.

But today was Saturday, a few months into the new second semester of the school year, and with school spirit once again high and workload low. The entire campus was brimming with parties, celebrations, alcohol drinking competition, sleazy dancing, and enough sexual tension to kill all celibate people.

So, we look back to where we started.

Shishikura Seiji running away as you nestled back against Shouto’s chest.

“I didn’t think he was actually going to drink these things,” Shouto sighed, spinning the last few remaining drinks of his rosé in his hand. “It’s been in the fridge for almost five months.”

“He probably made his meatballs again and needed something terrible to blame the flavor on,” you half joke half say in complete seriousness. You were not fond of Shishikura at all, and he was not fond of you either. He had a tendency to mansplain everything, which continuously ground on your nerves, especially when he had no jurisdiction to act so confidently.

He was a physics major, not a goddamn god.

Fuck off.

“I feel sorta bad,” Shouto sighs, his hand low and warm on your waist. “But I will admit, these drinks are practically like carbonated water.”

“2% alcohol,” you stress, your grin widening as you pull away from his chest to stare at him. Your gaze is bright, and his eyes are filled with amusement. “You’re either the world's lightest lightweight or a child with no tolerance to actually expect to get drunk off this shit.”

“I think you’re slurring your words already though, you sure you’re okay, lightweight?” Shouto teases, his soft smirk teasing.

“Who was the one who took three shots and passed out?” you wonder innocently, finger to your chin as if you were trying to remember.

“At least I don’t throw up when I crossfade.”

“IT'S NOT MY FAULT. MY BIOLOGY JUST HAPPENS TO WORKS THAT WAY!”

“Alright, bitch,” Shouto snorts, completely unattractively, “hurry up and get ready, yeah? We have a party we’re already late to, and we have no drinks for an actual pregame.”

You squeal excitedly, having forgotten the massive party that was being held a few blocks away. “I’ll be ready in ten!”

Typically, when you went out partying, you went with the group of eleven people you would have rather replaced Shishikura as a roommate. To get ready for said parties, you would always find yourself at Momo’s place with an outfit change, makeup bag, and hair styling items. You had made it a tradition with the other girls to get ready together. The only exceptions to which this wouldn’t happen was when someone had a work event or some family thing come up.

In your case, you had been stuck at a professor's office, diligently helping to put together their research journal as they were in their final steps of publishing their findings. Due to your friendly relationship with your professor, the time had been lost, and your ten p.m. call time to arrive at Momo’s had been missed with a quick:

↳ held up at work! go on without me, sorry! see you at the party!!!!

When you crashed through the front door of your apartment, you froze, seeing Shouto in the hallway by the mirror. Sometime between getting his haircut to be shorter and from this day, he had begun to style his hair by threading it back by his fingers, and boy, it looked fucking good. He was already dressed up for the party. Black joggers, a white t-shirt that was a bit too small if the tight, seductive way it clung to his muscles spoke of anything, and a hoodie he had no care about in case he lost it after taking it off once getting there. Shouto was practically immune to all weather types, he could be in both snow or fire without a single worry, but he knew that a large sweatshirt that smelled like him was enough to hook and line any truly desperate female.

Shouto had chuckled, taking in your frazzled state with years of practice and nudged toward the fridge, already knowing that you had missed your pregaming with the girls.

“Shishikura has two rosés left. Grab ‘em, and we can pregame together.”

But that was all unimportant and already said.

In the end, it took you thirty minutes to get ready.

You had practically smeared on your makeup, hoping the warm, crazy miscoloring would be hidden within the crazy light show the party would definitely be displaying. Your outfit consisted of a tank top that exposed your cleavage and a skirt that hugged your legs and ass just right.

You came stumbling out of your room, fingers trying to shove on your earrings, the rings on your fingers clicking loudly against each other. You smiled breathily, gratefully accepting Shouto’s sweater as you slipped on your comfortable heels at the doorway before hurrying out.

Shouto kept an arm around your shoulder the entire way out, the immense heat of his body keeping you warm as his sweater rested lazily, awkwardly, around your shoulders and arms. You didn’t want to put it entirely on to save your makeup, and in case anyone had any fucking thing to say about the show you and Shouto were putting on. Eventually, the bright and comical conversation between you and Shouto began to grow louder as the pounding of dance music began to ring in your ears. Soon enough, you passed a few drunk people, more and more, until you reached the house where the party was.

Shoving the sweatshirt into Shouto’s chest, you grinned as the smell of alcohol, weed, over-cologne men and women, the faint smell of puke, and the gross crawl of BO flooded your nose.

Ah yes, nothing like a university party.

Shouto laughs at your evident piqued excitement, and after he pulls on the light blue sweatshirt, he grabs your hand, and into the overcrowded home you go.

The intense heat of overcrowded bodies on a dance floor that also makes up a drinking game floor makes you grateful for your choice of clothes. Everyone around you is already drunk, sloshed, intoxicated off their ass as unknown drinks spill from their red Solo cups, sometimes even raining down on you. You grimace as Shouto continues to pull you through. You can taste the Hennesy on your upper lip and somehow know that whoever was drinking it was a freshman with a vendetta to kill his liver and love for drinking before coming of legal age.

“What do you want to drink?” Shouto yells over the nearly obnoxiously loud music. He has his sight on the drinks counter. “Mixed or the juice?”

“Fuck me up with the jungle juice!” you yell right back, pressing to his side as two dancing (see, vigorously dry-humping) nearly trample on top of you. “Parties are meant to be a non-sober event. I need to be borderline blacked out five hours ago!”

The agreeing chuckle from Shouto isn’t heard by you at all, but you can feel his chest give a familiar vibration as finally, he pulls you from the sea of bodies to where the floor is especially wet and sticky. You’ve reached the bar area.

Grabbing your own red Solo Cup, you watch as Shouto makes his own drink. Heavy on the alcohol, light on the mixer, and a good handful of ice (he’s always liked the cold better). His hand reaches for your cup and you offer your cup up as he opens up an ice chest filled with neon-colored jungle juice.

When the drink is returned to you, the both of you cheers and take a long drink.

“Y/N!”

“Y/N-CHAN!”

“You’re finally here, you fucking slut! Getcha fat ass over here now!”

Your neck is twisted to see the absolutely plastered group of girls you considered to be your closest friends, and you laugh loudly.

“Seems like I’m needed,” you yell at Shouto, trying your best to act nonchalantly as he smiles knowingly at you. “Text me about what you decide to do if we don’t see each other?”

“Of course,” he simply responds before placing the curve of his cup back onto his lip as hands grabbed your arms and whisked you away.

In a matter of sixty minutes, you all had played five drinking games.

The girls felt it was imperative to get you to their level right away, so they started off with a game of King’s Cup. Not only was the deck rigged against you — you pulled all four of the four cards and thus had to chug four times — but you had drawn the last King and drank some weird concoction of jungle juice, a tequila shot, a vodka shot, and whatever the fucking hell Mina was drinking. How you managed to chug that and stay on your feet was beyond you, but it was without saying that you had utterly and inevitably caught up with the girls.

After the King's Cup came the Flip Cup game, your team won thankfully due to Mina’s one flip wonder as Kaminari struggled to down the shot in the cup.

After Flip Cup came Smoke or Fire, a game that had Tsuyu stuck on the bus for a record-breaking one round. No one could believe she did that.

Then came a round of Shot Roulette to end with what you were currently doing now, using a drinking card game Momo had made in her spare time to do embarrassing things at random.

Five games in an hour… you questioned if there was by any chance illegal substances in the jungle juice because it had felt like a whopping two minutes.

“It’s midnight!” Hagakure hollered, stumbling backward as she grinned in drunken, stupid happiness. She giggled before singing, “Midnight… memoriessss~!”

Mina groaned at the reference but completely perked up as the dance music changed suddenly from its slightly mellow, good vibe song to none other than Everytime We Touch by Cascada. By tradition, by applicable law by all and every god, when this one song played, everyone needed to stop what they were doing and immediately head to the dance floor.

With your hand slightly sticky with alcohol, and your mind absolutely clouded with alcohol, you whooped loudly as Mina dragged you to the dancefloor. 

You, seven girls, formed a closed circle, your Solo cups sloshing over with alcohol, and your faces scrunched tight as you danced and sang as loudly as you could. Each pounding beat of music vibrated in your chest, each offkey note sung by the party-goers making you feel light, happy, dizzy, and oh so perfectly drunk. For just a split moment, you lock eyes with Shouto, who’s across the dance floor, his arms wrapped around some girl you don’t recognize, eyes drinking you in. You smile for a bit before turning back around, arms rocketing up to the air with your excitement.

Although the song ended, the DJ continued to play bangers, and you never once stopped in your mirthful dancing and grinding against your friends as the night continued to carry on. But when you spun out from Mina, your entire world spinning with it, a pair of warm, heavy, large hands rested on your waist, and you laughed.

“Who is this?” you ask, head slamming backward to try and look at the person who had caught you yet hadn’t tried grinding against you. “Oh, Inasa? Hi!”

Yoarashi Inasa was one of your University's well-known jocks. He was a skilled runner, one of the best Japan has ever seen despite his body type telling you he was a bodybuilder. Immediately your smile of idiotic stupor became intentful, seductive, still bordering extreme intoxication. Was Inasa your type? No, not really, but you could reasonably and accurately say that he was a handsome man, with a fantastic body, not to mention a pleasant personality.

You also itched to know what his dick looked like.

This was definitely someone you could see yourself fucking tonight.

“Hi, y/l/n,” Inasa said, his naturally loud voice easily picked up on despite the music being blasted in your ear. “How’s your night going?”

You lick your dry lips, eyes blinking a few times before you turn in his arms, your arms stretching so that you could wrap them around his neck. “Better now that you’re here,” you smile shyly. “How’s yours.”

“Ahem,” Inasa blushes, his eyes staring straight at your cleavage before looking back up at you. “H-Hoping to get better from here! Well, I’m sure it will be.”

“Oh?” you ask, your confidence building faster and faster as you press further against him. “Anything you have in mind?” —you press your thigh suggestively against the semi-hard spot against his jeans. — “Anyway... I can... help?”

Inasa groans deep in his chest, his head knocking backward at your implications, the pleasant vibrations passing on to you. You grin, fingers scraping against the bottom of his buzzcut and bringing him closer, praying for a kiss. But as he returns his head back down, his gaze leaves yours for a split second, and you watch in horror as a sobering look washes over him.

“Actually… you’re here with some random dude, right? I don’t want to step on his toes. I thought I saw you come in with some guy; sorry y/l/n, I can’t do this.”

And just as quickly as he was against you, he was gone.

It took everything in you not to screech bloody murder over the fact that you were once again left horny with no man to take responsibility for it.

Calculated Rate of Not Getting Dicked Down When I Want to Get Dicked Down When Coming to a Party With Shouto: 78% Calculated Rate of Not Getting Dicked Down When I Want to Get Dicked Down When Coming to a Party Without Shouto: 22%

Walking home alone, cold, and with extreme bitterness towards Yoarashi Inasa was a sadly sobering experience. By the time you collapsed onto your bed, you were only slightly buzzed, boarding sobriety while not being sober exactly.

Fuck men.

Fuck their cowardness over a nonexistent romantic/sexual relationship between you and Shouto.

But also… you really wanted to fuck men right now.

The slicked horniness of the potential thought of bedding Inasa had made its unignorable appearance via your soaked panties. You hated yourself, hated your biological needs and lusts.

“I’ll wring Shouto’s neck in front of all of them next time,” you grumble to yourself. “Stage a fake breakup for an imaginary thing…”

Nestling further into your pillows, your eyes closed, body relaxing against the bed when a peculiar sound seemed to echo in your ear.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud. Thud. Thud. Thud.

Your eyes slammed open, your jaw-dropping at the very obvious, entirely embarrassing sound of Shouto having sex on his desk sounded in your room! Of course it sounded in your room. His desk was pressed to your wall because that would mean whenever he was his icky womanizer self, you wouldn’t have to hear anything! Your rooms were soundproof but apparently not movement proof.

The thwack of the wood desk slammed against the wall, and with your ear so close to the wall, you began to hear the shaky, intense breathing of Shouto. The whines, keens, and screams of the girl he was fucking as she begged for more. Sobbing that his cock was too much for her.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

Your panties soaked even more, and with a brain that somehow retracted back into its state of stupor, your fingers brushed against your swollen, ready clit.

This was wrong, so very, very wrong, you thought, the sounds of pitched whining against the stupidly impressive, steady, consistent fucking.

Your mind was a drunken fever. 

Your eyes closed not all the way, yet blind to the wall before you as your finger danced and teased against your demanding clit.

You whined softly, matching the groaning of Shouto, who banged something other than the desk into the wall.

For a moment, just this once, you wanted to be the one desperately clinging to Shouto’s back, hips snapping and circling in tandem to his, allowing him to drill his cock deep within you. Your back arched, heat reaching your toes, buzzing filling your lips.

“Yes, fuck, right there, Todoroki!” the girl screamed, begged, and prayed. “Oh my god, yes, yes yes, right there, right the— mmph!”

You find your teeth sinking into your fist, trying to keep your pounding, horny induced brain from crying out. You wanted to know what he was doing to her, if he had kissed her silent, shoved his fingers in her mouth. Maybe he had fucked her so good she couldn’t possibly say more.

There is nothing from Shouto you can hear, no noises of praise, nothing except the occasional ragged breath that seems to permeate through the walls and whisper sweetly, teasingly, like a succumbs in your ear.

Thud.

Thud.

Thud.

It increases, in noise, the wall separating your room from his beginning to rattle, shake in his conquest.

Your fingers are wet, entirely slippery with your conquest, your hips thrashing against your touch, clinging to a phantom memory of the last male you had managed to fuck. Then, as your stomach trembles with the orgasm that's mere seconds from blessing you with a release, you hear him—Shouto.

“Fuck.”

It’s not much. If anything, this girl should be so embarrassed she hasn’t been able to elicit a loud response from Shouto, but it’s a verbal gift from heaven above for you. His voice, tight, husky, drenched with a driving lust, whispers to you and only you, wrapping you in this blanket of solitude and need. 

With your back arching from the mattress, your hips leaving the soft surface, and your jaw growing slack, your moan is silent, unheard by no one but the heavens as you cum. Heat floods throughout your entire body, tickling and twirling in you until you can’t do anything but shudder, shaking as you fall back down on your bed, dizzy and completely satisfied. 

You don’t think about it.

Don’t try to unpack just what happened right now because the reality that you had just masturbated to the sound of your childhood best friend fucking some random girl is a bit too much. Even for you.

So you don’t think about it, and soon the thudding of the desk on the wall is nothing but a drumming lullaby, and sleep consumes you.

When you wake up, you don’t remember what you did.

You get up and trudge to the bathroom, your party clothes abandoned completely so that you’re wearing nothing but a large shirt you had stolen from Shouto years ago. You scratch your belly as you walk into the bathroom, eyes caked with your sleep still as you begin brushing your teeth.

As you brush your teeth, you begin to take off last night's makeup — well, whatever remained of it.

Spitting out the last foamy remains of the paste from your mouth, you rinsed your mouth before washing your skin. You looked much more awake now. Slapping your cheeks in an encouraging, ‘im a functional human adult taking part in some random face wash commercial,’ you exited the bathroom and went to the kitchen. 

Shishikura was already in the kitchen, his face expressionless, entirely dead to the world as he scooped some rice into a bowl and topped it off with some eggs.

“Morning,” you yawn, arms stretching over your head as you near closer to your unwanted roommate.

Shishikura sneers at you, but even he was more polite in the morning, sometimes.

“I heard the both of you get back last night,” Shishikura mocked, slamming the lid to his rice cooker with an unimpressed scowl. “You were thirty minutes apart. You know, if you two still want to be partying like a bunch of eighteen-year-olds, do it respectfully.”

Your smile back at him is as fake as he is, and you refuse to move out of the way as he tries to walk back to his room. He growls — gross? — and sidesteps you, grumbling the entire way back to his room as you roll your eyes at his retreating form.

What a child.

You entered the kitchen, fixing up your own things for breakfast.

Kettle brewing hot water for tea, rice cooker on for your own rice (you make enough for Shouto too), and you begin cooking some ham and eggs, readying yourself for a Sunday for going to the library and studying. You hummed to yourself, your phone plugged into the speaker as your music filled the quiet morning air.

You bobbed your head in rhythm with the music, your eyes concentrating on slowly cooking eggs as you poured the hot water from your kettle into the teacup. As you placed your teabag in, you looked up to the sound of a creaking door and grinned wickedly as a girl with light blue hair walked out of the hall you and Shouto’s room were in.

Her dress was rumbled, a few blooming red and purple marks sitting prettily on her collarbone, and her face flushed red as she began to scurry out.

“Bye!” you call out, laughing at the scared eep from the girl and the disgruntled groan from Shouto’s room.

You set down your tea, flipping the eggs in the pan as you heard more shuffling before finally, Shouto made his appearance. He was in nothing but grey sweatpants that sat so low on his waist you could not only see the band of his boxer-briefs, but you were entirely aware of the v-lines, the abs, the pecs, and the small happy trail from his belly button down. You also noted that there was not a single mark on his body, and you wondered if he had ever taken a single mark from a one-night fuck before.

God really cursed you with an objectively attractive best friend, huh.

“Morning, slut,” you sing, noticing with happiness that your rice cooker sang a merry tune, indicating that the rice was done. “Breakfast?”

“Mm,” Shouto grumbled, his hands rubbing his face as he trudged closer to the kitchen, taking a spot on one of the stools. “Depends. Did you make it?”

“...I always make it.”

“I think I like Shishikura’s breakfast better.”

Silence.

You glare at Shouto, and in turn, his lips press to a comfortable, teasing smile.

“Fend for your damn self then.”

Shouto laughed loudly as you began to stubbornly fix yourself a bowl of both your servings. You ate far less than he did, but still enough to fill you until after three pm, so the size of your bowl was hysterical. 

“You’re such a horrible wife-roommate,” Shouto accuses, standing up from the stool and entering the kitchen to try and persuade you otherwise to give him his own food. “And here I thought that you liked cooking for me.”

“Go tell your stupid wife-roommate Shishikura instead,” you cry loudly, the faux sniffles from you stupidly fake as you begin to shovel a mouthful of rice and eggs into your mouth. “I’m shwure you’chll beh happ t’gther!”

“That’s absolutely disgusting, y/l/n,” Shouto accuses, his nose scrunching as he traps you in his arms, mouth trying to intercept the food moving from your bowl and into your mouth. 

With another desire to prove how unsatisfied in your roommate-marriage you were, you opened your mouth and stuck out your tongue full of uneaten, partially chewed rice.

“Ea’ eh!” you mocked, your grin growing as Shouto’s initial instinct was to whip his head away from you.

But as always, because Shouto enjoyed being incredibly annoying, he went after your tongue, readying to eat the chewed-up food off your very tongue. 

Eventually, you gave Shouto back his part of the breakfast, laughing as the both of you chatted about who was going to repay Shishikura for the used rosés. Neither one of you could decide, and so it was something to be solved later. Noon, however, came and with a nod, you accepted Shouto’s hug goodbye, to which you twisted his nose triumphantly as you waddled out of the front door, clothed in your winter gear, textbooks, and laptop,

It was time to brave the world and get this paper done.

“Mina, I mean… absolutely no offense when I say this, but it still shocks me every time you say you’re a chemistry major. You just seem so…”

“Dumb?”

“Yeah.”

“You gotta be some kind of stupid to willingly take inorganic chem,” Mina laughed, balancing her textbooks on her head as the both of you climbed the stairwell to the library’s study rooms. “That's why I have the dance minor! Best of both worlds!”

“Could never forget about that,” you laughed as the both of you neared the top of the stairwell.

You didn’t mean to notice him. As a matter of fact, most of your failed conquests at parties never amounted to much anger from you, but seeing Inasa from across the way, his face buried in some aerodynamics textbook, anger boiled in you. On the way to meeting with Mina, you had realized your mistake last night and how you wouldn’t have made said mistake if it hadn’t been for Inasa! You could’ve been dicked down, slammed against your bed and wall as the giant of a man fucked you!

“I’ll be right back,” you sneered, eyes narrowing as you passed your textbook to Mina.

With fire following in ever long, powerful stride, you blinked and immediately found yourself before Inasa.

“Hi. Wanna explain what happened last night?”

Inasa reacted as if you had shot him, his knees coming up to hit the table, his body knocking backward, and he tumbled, crashing to the floor as you watched with a gaping mouth.

“Y-Y/L/N!” Inasa shouted, his face going through half a billion emotions before settling in anxiety-filled fear. You watched, horrified yourself, as he swung to his knees, his head crashing to the floor as he began apologizing to you. “GOODMORNING, HOW ARE YOU TODAY?!”

“Pipe it down, Inasa!” you hiss, your cheeks flooding with embarrassed heat as you garnered the attention of everyone on the floor. “I’m not going to hurt you! I just wanted to talk!”

“Aha, yes, of course!” Inasa laughs, a full belly laugh. He sits up and you freeze seeing the bloodied cut on his forehead. He stands up, completely unaffected by the gash on his forehead, and uprights his chair before sitting comfortably. “How can I help you?”

“What happened to you last night?” you try again, eyebrow raised, arms crossed definitely and awkwardly because yeah… you were confronting a guy who didn't want to sleep with you. “You were into me and then suddenly wasn’t.”

Inasa laughs more, although nothing you said, implied, or did was even remotely funny.

Irritation runs through your veins.

“Inasa, please,” you sigh in helplessness, your eyes annoyed, pleading, and hopeful that he would be the one to finally give you an actual reason.

“It’s… it’s not you. If that’s what you’re wondering,” Inasa finally sighs. His face turns uncharacteristically solemn as his tongue passes through his lips, his shoulders raising to a shrug. “Typically speaking, you are exactly who and what I want when I endeavor in less than chivalrous but still passionate activities. I wanted you last night, and I will not lie that even as I left, I regretted behaving as I did.”

“Well, you did it, and it sorta really sucked,” you laugh, your mouth taut in a frown as your feelings are genuinely hurt.

You keep being put down, and there’s no reason for it.

Why couldn’t you be as sexually active as you wish you could be?

“...Todoroki has a claim on you,” Inasa spoke slowly, his mouth dipping from a usual smile to a frown. “I know you guys aren’t together, but in a way, you two are.”

“No,” you say with complete certainty, anger burning in your chest, “we’re not.”

“Try telling Todoroki that,” Inasa shrugs, his fingers scratching through his buzz cut. “Listen, I wanted to have intercourse with you last night; I did. I also am aware that Todoroki is a womanizer, but he said you were off-limits for all of us.”

“He said that?” your voice is perfectly calm, not showing the raging fire in you.

“Well, no, he definitely did not,” Inasa sighs, the palm of his hands pressing tightly against his eyes. “He has never said it… but it’s the way he talks about you, how he looks at you. It’s a claim on you, even if it’s not a verbal one, and well, no one wants to defy him.”

Your nostrils flare in your irritation, and you find that you’re stepping into Inasa’s personal space, his eyes going wide as you step between his legs and press your hands on his chest.

“I’ll be going home in about five hours. If you still want to fuck me, wait for me,” you say slowly, trying to make sure he understands. “I don’t care if Sho looks at me the way he does; he is not my boyfriend.”

Inasa gulps, his tan skin sporting a healthy pink flush, “Yes, ma’am.”

Five hours later, you’re walking into your apartment with Inasa behind you, his warm, slightly sweaty hand clasped in yours. You make eye contact with both your roommates, Shishikura, whose eyes are rolling to the depths of his skull, and Shouto, who looks like a wall. You, despite the anger you’re feeling for Shouto, smile prettily, then grin wolfishly as you corral Inasa towards your room. You send your roommates a wink before closing the door with a decisive click.

Much like you assumed the night prior, your drunken hazed, lust-driven, anger-flared thoughts proved to be right. Inasa fucked you against the wall, deep into the mattress, he drilled and fucked you until his dick was wet with your slick, and his leg was trembling with his plentiful unleashed loads. But you weren’t done yet, too many times have you been denied, and even though Inasa was trembling, his voice shaking with desperate pleas to slow down or he would cum too fast, you rode him with powerful, swiveling hips.

Once he left, you felt light again.

Your head light, body glowing as you dressed your bruised, cum slick body in a robe as you trudged to the bathroom. You showered, letting the warm water and sweet-smelling oils drench your body before you eventually exited, your hair in a towel, Shouto’s shirt on your person again.

Waltzing to the living room, you grinned as you collapsed on the couch, every grievance you held when you walked in forgotten at the moment.

“Hello,” you smile, your head falling onto Shouto’s lap who was, at the moment, very interested in his phone. Shishikura was gone, undoubtedly leaving in case he heard something he didn’t want to hear during your little four-hour sexscapade. “I am a leaf flowing through the river right now, if you’re wondering.”

“Don’t need to wonder. You were perfectly loud enough,” Shouto grumbled, his eyes rolling. “Says something that I could, considering the rooms are soundproof.”

“I should hope so! After you, the girls rave that Inasa is the best fuck on campus,” you hum, still on a delirious high as you attempt to reach for your best friend's hand to grasp. But to your shock, Shouto jerks away from your touch, and he stands, letting your head fall roughly on the couch. And just like that, your anger is back. The emotion Inasa had managed to fuck out of you for a bit returned at full force. “Shouto?!”

“What?” he snaps.

“What the fuck is your problem?!”

“My problem is that you brought someone to fuck at fucking five p.m.,” Shouto explains, his expression like the void, empty, dark, menacing. “We agreed to keep it until past ten.”

Your face screws up as you push up off the couch, “Are you kidding me?! I’ve seen you constantly bring girls to fuck at any and all times of the day! Don’t suddenly bring that shit in when it clearly isn’t an actual rule in this apartment!”

“You were also being obnoxiously loud,” Shouto narrows his eyes at you.

“You are too!”

“When am I ever?”

“I literally listened to you fuck that girl last night against our shared wall!”

“You moved your bed to our shared wall?! When?!”

“Doesn’t matter! I would’ve heard it just fine on the other side!”

“The girl wasn’t even that fucking loud!” 

“You can’t ever remember the names of the girls you fuck! Do you know anything about them ever? Are you even using condoms?!”

“You only ever fuck men with questionable personalities.”

“Gee, I wonder fucking why!”

The two of you were nose to nose, anger flaring and near tangible between the two of you.

“What do you mean?” he grits slowly.

“I’m talking about you mad dogging any male human who so much as looks or thinks of me!” you snap, finger shoving between his pecs. “No one touches me because somehow they respect the way a womanizer looks at me.”

“I’m not looking at you in any special way,” Shouto squints his eyes, completely not having your accusations.

“Even if you don’t, this fucking behavior is pathetic of you!” you say, hands motioning between you two and the room. “I had sex, and you’re acting like some pathetic child! I have been putting up with your sex-craze tendencies since we were sixteen, asshole! Sixteen! If I want to gloat and float about having sex, then I fucking deserve to.”

His nostrils flare, his upper lip curling in a small twitch before he rolls his eyes and walks away.

“That’s right, Todoroki,” you laugh bitterly at his retreating form. “Walk away from a fight because you can never win them.”

It took a bit for the dust to settle, but as soon as it did, you realized in horror that you and Shouto had, for the first time ever, fought.

Being roommates with Shouto was always a fun thing. Having your childhood best friend right at your disposal meant that you could have dinner nights, movie nights, game nights, morning waffles, hikes, and literally anything whenever and wherever you wanted. He was a person to talk to when the days were long, and there was no one else in the world, the person who was there for you through thick and thin. But for two days, he had been locked away in his room, unwilling to look at you, refusing to be anywhere near you.

Your friends had noticed immediately.

The way the both of you hadn’t shown up together, the way you sat at opposite ends of the table, refusing to be trapped in a conversation together. Separate the two of you were, and the world acted as if Earth had dropped out of gravity.

You could care less right now.

You were rightfully mad at him! How dare he act so pettily over you having a sex life when you were expected to blink, turn the other way, and laugh when he would shower after a girl would leave before joining you on the couch to watch a movie. He was in the wrong, not you!

But even if you were unwilling to budge and he was refusing to see things the way they should be, you were now incredibly lonesome. So as you sat with your back on the mattress. Your butt to the wall, and your legs kicking against the wall, you thought of what you could do. With a bitter sigh, you rolled off your bed and scurried out of the apartment. Nothing but your wallet and ID on you so that you could get to the store on the first floor of the complex.

Holding the item in hand, you knocked on a door, your gaze already on the floor, embarrassed that you were going to do what you had to do.

“What?” came the annoyed voice of Shishikura, the door to his room opening as he looked at you unimpressed and very obviously unwelcomed.

“Truce?” you asked, raising the six-pack of Angry Orchard Rosé Cider. 

Shishikura looks at you, at the ciders, then back at you.

“Fine.”

How in the world you’re drunk off of four rosé ciders is beyond you, but you are. You’re in the living room, laughing so hard that your stomach hurts as you’re trying not to snort the liquid from your mouth and out your nose. Shishikura is equally plastered off of one drink, his red a ruby red against his purple hair. He’s leaning against you, his breathing ragged, near asthmatic as he tries to once explain just how Shouto looked like when some girl slapped him across the face yesterday for ghosting her after sex.

“He was so shocked!” Shishikura squeaked out, his voice pitchy and incredibly high as he laughed more and more. “You should have seen it!”

Your feet kicked at the air, your face and lungs burning with a fire you hadn’t felt in so long as your laughter turned silent. You gasped for air, trying to contain yourself but failing hysterically.

“Do you wa’ another meatballsh?” Shishikura suddenly asked, his hands flailing to grab his plate of meat. “I think you want another o’.”

“I wan’ ‘ne!” you cried with a slight slur, tears of joy slipping past your eyes to which you haphazardly scrubbed them off your face. “They’re soooo good! I didn’t think they could be so… be so good!”

You find yourself eating another meatball, drinking it down with the cider and feeling happy again. Shishikura goes still by your side, and you hum in wonder, unfocused eyes trying to find what had caught his attention and falling onto the one man you were mad at currently.

Shouto was standing at the apartment entrance, dressed in ripped black jeans, a tight grey turtleneck sweater, and his backpack slung on his shoulder. It was, without a doubt, a studying-only outfit. You knew and have discussed too many times with Shouto about how he never trusted women to take his turtlenecks off without potentially ruining the fabric.

“Well, someone’s finally home... from a night of beddin mo’ women, huh?” a voice spoke, but you were completely unsure if it was you or Shishikura who said it.

Judging by the way Shouto’s eyes locked on Shishikura and not yours, it seemed it was him who said it.

“No, I was doing something,” Shouto retorted, his hand gripping the strap of his backpack, his eyes shifting between you and Shishikura. “A paper for class.”

“Sure,” you end up speaking up, your voice sounding completely sober. You sit up so that your elbow is resting on Shishikura’s nearest shoulder. You raise the glass bottle to your lips, drinking its content without care, never once breaking eye contact. “What was the paper's name? You going after your TA? Or was it a professor by chance?”

Shouto’s eyebrows furrow, his face completely unimpressed by your comeback, but he remains silent.

“He looks like he’s trying to cosplay that one Young The Rock picture, no way would a dignified professor or TA fuck him!” Shishikura laughed with a loud bark, and all of a sudden, that was all you could see too.

The both of you howled with laughter, laughing and slapping each other as you attempted to drink the last bits of the rosés as Shouto rolled his eyes and walked away.

“This is fun. No wonder why you guys do it to me so often.”

-

As time does, it moves forward.

It seemed as if the entire campus had tuned in to what had transpired between you and Shouto. No one the slightest bit sure as to what happened, but everyone knew something big had happened. There was no more walking together before classes or after classes, no weird Instagram or Snapchat stories of the other, both of you never having to excuse yourself because you had plans with the other. Even though they claimed to not care about other people’s business, the school was suddenly invested in the single speculation that Todoroki Shouto’s and Y/l/n Y/n’s relationship was over.

“Breaking News, it was never a real relationship!” you would scream the first few times you heard it, which only worked to make them whisper louder that you were in further denial.

For the last seventeen years of your life, you had never gone more than two days without talking or seeing your childhood best friend. Those two days happened when Rei had experienced a staggering, hospital-inducing breakdown from stress and had subsequently burned Shouto when you were five years old. The two days were because he spent four days in the hospital. The first two days, he was not allowed visitors as the hospital staff put him under a coma to help his body from entering shock and heal. Of course, the moment he was awakened, you were dragging your mother to his bedside.

That was the only time you hadn’t seen or spoken to Shouto consistently.

But since Sunday evening, you had only seen Shouto once when you were drunk with Shishikura. You had only spoken to him then too.

For the first time in seventeen years, you broke your record of not talking or seeing Shouto.

From two days to five.

It was weird.

You felt almost empty.

So when Mina and Uraraka placed their arms around your shoulders, their eyes dead serious, you knew that they had a distraction for you.

“The deltas are throwing a party,” Uraraka spoke with mystery. “It is on Saturday.”

“It is only right that we go, get our asses so drunk our blood is practically a distillery, and fuck anyone who looks at us a second longer than anyone else,” Mina agrees, her tone wise and knowing as she nods her head.

“Our question to you is:” they spoke together, their voices weirdly, obviously practiced, in synch. “Are you in?”

Your tongue is pressed between your lips, your fingers pressing against the textbook you were using to help support your essay’s thesis, and you roll your eyes.

You grin.

“Obviously.”

And as time promises each and every time, Saturday finally came.

“What is our objective tonight?!” Mina screams over the background music that Jirou is blasting in Momo’s larger-than-life bathroom.

“To fuck bitches and get money!” Hagakure, the only one currently not downing a drink, screams back.

“NO, WRONG!” Mina shakes her head, climbing onto the white marble countertops and pointing at Jirou. “Kyo! Your turn!”

“To beat that prick in the sound booth and prove that I’m—”

“NO! Wrong again! Yaomomo!”

“Um, to make everlasting mem—”

“INCORRECT, YOU GORGEOUS PRINCESS! Tsuyu, don’t fail me, babe!”

“Well, it’s to prove to Todoroki that y/n-chan should be able to fuck any person she wants.”

“A bit lengthy, a bit focused on the wrong parts of it, but YES! Tonight’s operation: get y/n a man — preferably Inasa — who fucks the negativity out of her!”

You laugh loudly, rolling your eyes as you lean in closer to the mirror. You hold a Mike’s Hard in one hand, and in the other is your eyeliner as you paint on your makeup. You’re not really hearing the conversations that the girls are having, your own mind too lost in the music, and the swaying you’ve picked up as the three bottles of Mike’s you’ve had in the past thirty minutes are calming down your still frazzled nerves.

You don’t pull away from your reflection until after you’re done smoothing over your favorite lipstick on your pouty lips. You look over at your reflection and see Mina dancing with an awkwardly stiff Jirou and a delightfully giggling Momo on the bathroom countertops. A smile forms on your face, happiness radiating in your chest, and you grin looking at your friends.

But Shouto still sat in your mind, and you couldn’t help but wonder why.

Why did it hurt knowing that he was avoiding you as much as you were him?

Why didn’t he just try to corner you?

Why did you care that he didn’t?

He was your best friend in the entire world, since your earliest memories, he’s been there, you reason, your whooping not quite as loud as you watch Jirou awkwardly be sandwich between a grinding Mina and a complacent Momo.

It was his fault you, you further reasoned, smiling widely at Hagakure, who was twirling around you, applying her lipstick as a super crazy never before seen talent of hers. He was the one acting like an idiot over the people you slept with even though you let all the people he slept with slide!

But why did you?

Your brows furrowed slightly, unfurrowing just as quickly as Mina pulled you and Uraraka up onto the countertop with her as Jirou and Momo dropped to the floor.

You fucking were in love with Shouto, damnit! Of course you let the stupid personal things go just to appease him! Your back straightened, your eyes rolling as you began to dance with the Kehlani music thumping in the background, but then you freeze.

You were in love with him.

You loved Shouto.

Not in a friendly, platonic, family way.

In an ‘I would date you if I could and marry you on the prettiest beach in front of the most beautiful sunset’ way.

You found that your body was dancing on autopilot as you began to reassess your thoughts, your actions, your wants with Shouto, desperately trying to disprove this love for him. But no matter what you did, you found that it was true no matter what angle you looked at it.

The bass dropped, and you went stiff, your body standing straight and tall although you felt incredibly, terribly small.

“I love him,” you spoke, although you’re not sure who to. Maybe it was to the laughing gods above you or the crying spirits around you. But the girls heard it for some reason, and they, as they were patiently waiting for these past six, nearly seven days, caught you as you went weak.

Finally, realizing that you were in love with your childhood best friend was not the conclusion you expected from a week's silence from Shouto and you. But as you were currently in a crop top with a mesh shirt underneath and the most ripped jeans you owned, chugging down a neon green and blue nearly toxic alcoholic drink, you realized that being at this party was the right way to conclude this circus of a week.

The rush of the liquid dropping down the beer bong was something you found yourself struggling to keep up with, and you felt some of the liquid pour out of your mouth as you grunt, trailing down your heaving chest, creating an image in your onlookers as you refused to choke or pull away. Swallowing the last bit of the drink, ripping the plastic tube out of your mouth, you threw your hands in the air, Tsuyu, who had held and poured the contents for you, screaming too as she lifted your arm in victory.

You couldn’t really hear the music anymore, much more entranced with the music you were singing on your own, and you were currently holding Mina’s face, touching foreheads with her as you spoke a mantra of your love for her.

“Ashido Mina, you are the baddest bitch in the whole wide world. I love your pink hair and your fat ass, and I would die for you. I love you… so fucking much,” is what you said. How it was actually said and how it was perceived is a whole other story because Mina laughed loudly and allowed you to hug her despite your sticky alcohol body.

Your twenties were the new two’s, it seemed.

“Yo, y/l/n!” a voice yelled, and although you let go of Mina’s face, your arms found a new home around her neck as you turned around.

“Hm?”

Your terrible drunk eyes looked all over before falling on a man wearing a basketball jersey and joggers.

Shindou Yo, one of campus’ manwhores. He had a reputation similar to Shouto, you knew that very well, but you were aware that he was disturbingly creepy. According to many vital witnesses, the man slept with just about anyone willing regardless of gender, so not only did you know what the girls thought of him, experienced with him, there was a wider demographic not even Shouto had entered. Number one thing to be told was the fact that Shindou was into some heavy, dark shit to an extreme, his room reeked of sex, and he himself smelled like booze, weed, and BO. But a strong dick was a strong dick at the end of the day.

“Come play beer pong with me?” he asked, his hands shoved into his pockets as he smiled innocently. “I’ve heard some pretty solid shit about your skills, and I want to see how I add up.”

“I’ll play!” you agree immediately, jumping at the thought of drinking more. “Bu I don’t wa’ beer… ish nashty.”

“Anything for you, darling.”

With your arm still holding onto Mina, you accepted Shindou’s hand and allowed him to drag you off to where he wanted to play the game of beer pong.

The game of beer pong went without a single thing going wrong. You were paired up with Shindou, and Mina had managed to find Kirishima in the crowd before you got to your destination and demanded she have him as a partner and not Monoma.

It was safe to say that you were drunk, disgustingly out of your mind. It was an intense game of Cup Pong, the two different teams equally as bad in the drunken stupor, but finally, the two teams were down to a single cup and Kirishima — who was the only reason why they were winning!!!! — had the last ball. You watched in terrible apprehension, fingers digging into Shinsou’s biceps as Kirishima rose the wet ping pong ball to Mina’s lips and let her blow on it for good luck before bringing it back in and began a few steadying practice throws.

“You know, I’m glad I saw you at this party,” Shindou whispers to you, his head ducking down so that you and only you could hear that.

“Why?” you say a lot louder than you wanted, your heart hammering in fear that you would lose this game.

“Because you’re sexy as fuck,” Shindou spoke, his voice turning deeper, huskier, “and now you’re single.”

You blink, attention stolen from the game as you forgot about the final cup and looked at Shindou with a blank stare and an open mouth.

“What?”

“Cuz you and Todoroki are over,” Shindou explains to you as if you’re a child. “You guys are over, right? That’s all everyone’s talking about, and all us guys are ready to fuck you whenever you’re ready.”

His smirk irritates you, the lust in his eyes angering you as you drop your hold on his arm.

“We weren’t together, and you knew that,” you say, eyes narrowing as the crowd watching the game explodes in raging cheers as Kirishima sinks the ball into the cup. “Why the fuck would Shouto be fucking every girl that walks if we were together? What makes you think I’d be okay with it?”

“You’re a cuck,” Shindou continues on, confidence unaffected. “Oh, are the two of you maybe changing roles now? Does the big guy want me to fuck you in front of him?”

Your fist makes contact with his throat before you can even stop yourself and the cheers quickly turn into gasps.

After apologizing profusely to the party holders, they decided that you could, in fact, stay at the party. Your knuckles throbbed in pain, the alcohol in your system buzzing in you in a way that wasn’t fun or relaxing as you made a simple side-step dance move in the middle of the dance floor. The girls, who had at the beginning of the party, drifted ways, had once more glued themselves at your side on the floor. You weren’t in a dancing mood as you took a drink of what you assumed to be a Moscow mule made by Mina for you to keep you at a high for the rest of the party.

Like hell you would ever let Shouto cuck you!

Let him fuck another woman in front of you?

You would go insane if he ever thought that would be acceptable.

“Down girl, relax!” Mina yelled by your ear. “I thought I was babysitting y/n, not Bakugou Katsuki!”

You startled, realizing that your frown had become a fierce snarl as you danced on the floor.

“Come on, babe, let’s get you feeling good again; let’s enjoy this night!” Mina exclaimed, her hands pushing your drink to your mouth and forcing you to chug the contents of the drink. The red Solo Cup is dropped to the floor as soon as you finish. She grabbed your wrists and began to fluidly move your arms — or as well as she could manage herself because she, too, was drunk.

But with Mina winking and smiling at you, the rest of the girls eventually throw themselves into your linked dance circle, your own negative emotions left and in came joy.

It took about another round of ten songs for the dance circle to be destroyed and to have all of you resuming a rave-like jumping and scream-singing as Jirou finally snuck her way into the DJ booth and succeeded to take over. You spun around at the end of one song, laughing completely out of breath as you clapped your hands together. You often forget that while Jirou only listened to a very specific genre, she was a musical genius who had banger playlists for every occasion.

It seemed frat parties were one of them.

However, the next song had your head tilting backward, your grin spreading even wider as you began to move your hips in slow, distinct movements. Dancing with your hips was something you had learned, something you instilled into your dancing category for as long as you could remember.

The beats were loud, deep, thumping deep in the ground and vibrating with great strength in your chest as you pointed a finger at Mina, who was also dancing similarly to you. Your lips moved as you sang the song quietly, the heat and humidity of the room suddenly pressing onto you like another person. You hummed, flicking the parts of your hair sticking to the nape of your neck off, grateful for the slightly cooler air hitting your sweaty skin.

As you rolled your hips down, your hands fanning yourself, trying to cool down your deliriously warm, alcohol-heated body, you froze for just a bit. A person pressed to your back, your ass pressing against a hot thigh, and a hand resting upon the curve of your thigh, keeping you in place. You might have cared, but the body against yours was a welcomed one. Your hips and ass continuing to move in tandem with the music, deliberate highs and lows, and you worked your way up and down the man's body who met yours with spinning accuracy that made you began to pant, your heart racing because this was hot to you. You raised your arms behind you, clasping onto his neck, keeping him on you.

His hair was soft under your touch, slightly sweaty but threaded and parted between your fingers just too easily. His left hand, which had found a spot on your stomach, was radiating heat, something easily felt due to you only having mesh cloth there.

It was slow.

Sensual.

Somehow familiar.

Absolutely mind-numbing.

His chest broad against your back, muscles strong and tight against you.

He was skilled, practiced. Someone you knew was not going to disappoint you, and as your lust-glazed eyes took in the entirely shocked looks of your friends, you finally turned to look.

Somehow, someway, you weren’t shocked at all to see Shouto’s clouded, dark eyes locking on yours. Your world seems to freeze as something between you and Shouto is so obviously broken between you, forever changing, no longer able to go back. It didn’t matter that this was the first time in almost a week you had seen him, had talked to him, he was there, and you wanted to feel his skin scorching against yours. His touch screamed of his want for you, your recognition of your love for him, and your current lust for him. You were angry, hurt, confused, but you were too drunk to care, too intoxicated on the spell the two of you created on this dance floor.

But even as your world froze, the music continued on.

Grabbing Shouto’s hand, you spun around so that his chest was now pressed against yours, your legs between his. You continued dancing, continued to roll your hips down as you sunk down to the ground as Shouto remained standing, his hand supporting and balancing you as you went down and up. He began to dance with you again, the world seemingly disappearing as the two of you ground and panted heavily in each other's ears.

He pushed forward, and you whined, feeling the blazing swollen heat of his semi-hard cock against your stomach, but you met him there.

Your fingers fisting in his hair as his hands found their way into your back pockets, gripping your ass, and your eyes fluttered shut as his mouth, blazing, intense, and intentful, mashed against yours. You kissed him back immediately, all defenses abandoned to that of your lust, wants, and needs. His mouth was a fire, his kiss a blaze that consumed you, drowned you, made you push for more.

It was a kiss that lasted who knows how long, but by the time you had separated, you could feel the familiar sting to your slowly swelling lips and the song that had ended.

His eyes were a near black, his cheeks flushed, and his arms kept you so close you had to think if you were in the privacy of your home or in public.

“I want you,” you whispered, your voice begging, pleading for him.

“I need you,” he responded, his voice equally wishing.

“Take me home,” you speak, lips pressing sloppy, desperate hot kisses to his neck. “Take me home and fuck me.”

“Fuck, yes, okay. Let’s go,” Shouto pants, his hands leaving your ass and grabbing onto one of yours before taking you and dragging you away.

It wouldn’t hit you until much later, but the very first kiss you had ever had with Shouto was in the middle of a dance floor, at a party where the male population had been ready to snatch you up after your relationship with Shouto was so-called over.

You were breathless.

No matter how deep you inhaled, you felt like you weren’t having enough oxygen flooding your veins, filling your lungs. You laugh loudly in the night, uncaring about the strangers you passed looking at you and Shouto, who chuckled and snorted with every giggle you made.

This felt crazy, insane, something serendipitous and not real even in the smallest of bits.

He kissed you.

He wanted you.

He said he needed you.

Wants and needs were different things, but he said need.

He needed you.

Just you.

Your feet ached from the running, but you could only focus on Shouto, your mind filling and swimming in the memory of his body pressed to you. The way his lips ghosted over your neck, and the way he danced against you — with you. The four-block walk back to your apartment seemed too far, and your eyes locked on a nearing alleyway.

With much more strength than you should have, you shoved Shouto into the alleyway, your mouth immediately pressing onto his.

Shouto groaned into your mouth, letting you drink his noises as you pulled him close, consuming him in a messy clash of teeth, spit, and tongue. You whined back, your legs slotting between his thigh and grinding down on the hard muscle. It alleviated the growing, scorching heat in your panties but also intensified it, making you want for more and more and more.

“You drive me fucking insane,” Shouto groaned in your mouth, shifting and guiding your rolling hips his thigh better, more fluid, more intense.

Your eyes barely cracked open, your mouth no longer kissing him put pressing against his in an open mouth pant. Your drunken breath saying nothing but implying the world.

Something Shouto was more than keen on giving you.

“Holy fuck,” he whispered for you to hear, so reverent, so holy. And so that you, the center of his world, the only thing he saw and believed in, knew how passionately, how ardently he believed in you, his mouth slid down your neck, and his teeth sunk in your flesh. He claimed you, praised you, making you a part of him.

“I’m still so mad at you!” you moan, voice pitched, whiny, and deliriously high. “I love you, asshole. I love you, and you sleep around! I love you, and I don’t care if you sleep around, but you care that I sleep around?!”

“I love you too,” Shouto mumbles against your neck, his teeth continuing to press into your skin that seems to explode with heat at the revelation. “I love, and I’m an idiot; I’m so sorry.”

And then he does something with his tongue against your neck, the soft of swipes, the wet tickling heat making your head slam back against the brick wall, and a mangled, strangled moan of unadulterated want emits from you.

“We'll talk about this in the morning,” you pant, fingers fisting in his shirt. “We can fix this, but right now, shut up and fuck me.”

“Y/n—”

“I’m horny,” you interrupt, hips sharply jutting into his leg. “You made me horny. Take responsibility.”

His eyes flashed dark, his nostrils flaring, and your words cemented in his head. He resumed his painting, his worship on your neck as you cried loudly in the alleyway, desperate, needy for more.

It was dizzying to have him on you like this.

For so long, you had only touched him in a few ways, had only ever felt a specific type of warmth. But this was unlike anything you’ve ever done with him, to him. It felt like you were burning and freezing, consumed by heat and energy and everything Shouto. His all too familiar cologne filled your nose, drowning your brain, invading your senses. His frantic heartbeat felt against your own body, telling you exactly how you were affecting him, how you made his heart speed and jump with every breathy whine.

“Fuck, I can’t do this. We need to get home now!” Shouto growls, his hands grabbing you by the wrist yet again and pulling you away.

His strides are long, quick, and powerful. You’re running to keep up, beautifully out of breath, staggering and stumbling to keep up in his objective to get back to the apartment now.

It doesn’t seem to take long before he’s pushing open the doors to the apartment complex, corralling you through the doors and into the elevator to get to the eleventh floor. The elevator doors are behind you, and with no one else in the life, you turn on him and immediately resume your own endeavor of claiming Shouto with your mouth, body, and soul. He matches your intensity, hands roaming from where the clasp of your bra sat to the curve of your ass. He grabbed you, pulled you in closer, the air in his nose staggering as you stammer against his mouth.

Teeth touch lips, tongues in each other's cheeks, and Shouto leads you out of the elevator backward, his one hand on your waist forever steady and the other one holding the key. Your fingers are back in his hair, pulling and tugging sharply on the soft, short strands with nearly disappeared gel. He gets to the door, fumbling with the key as you continue to kiss him, distracting him with the smallest of movements.

“Which room?” he asks against your mouth, pushing you through the threshold, his foot closing the door behind him.

The shoes are haphazardly kicked off and you’re now on your tiptoes to continue kissing him as you were. You tried to think, tried to figure out if you wanted to be surrounded by Shouto’s scent or to have him displayed in your room. His teeth then suckle on your bottom lip, biting down on the swollen, hot flesh just gentle enough that your mind draws a blank and your voice responds on its own.

“Mine.”

You shriek then, Shouto swiftly picking you up off the floor and you panic, hands swatting and beating on him as you scream to let you down. He continues walking, holding you without a worry, his arms remaining strong and firm beneath you. But with your distraction, with your lips no longer pressed sinfully against his, Shouto’s mouth finds a junction point on your clavicle and sinks his teeth down again, claiming you once more.

“S-Sho—” your voice hitches, the feeling too intense for you to process all at once. You hear your room door open and close, and without warning, you’re soaring through the air before collapsing on the bed.

“You think I go to the gym to get muscles for fun?” Shouto taunts, his fingers hooking under the dark grey t-shirt he’s wearing. “Angel, I go to the gym to make sure I can fuck you in any position, against any surface or wall you want.”

Your body feels like it's scorching as he removes his shirt, his muscles rippling and moving seductively with the devious, intentional movement.

“What’s wrong, y/n?” Shouto asks, the shirt dropping to the floor, removing all traces of oxygen from your person. He steps closer, fingers circling around your ankle and suddenly pulling you in toward him until you were sitting at the edge, his lips hovering over yours. “Cat got your tongue?”

Your tongue feels dry in your mouth, but your eyes narrow before you push up and capture his mouth back with yours. He kisses you back deeply, bending down so that you begin to shift backward, allowing him the space to crawl onto the bed with you, and at the last moment, your leg wraps around his waist and spins the both of you. Shouto gasps as you pin him onto the mattress, your tongue invading his mouth, brushing and swirling against his, coaxing his own tongue back into your own mouth. With the wet heat in your mouth, your teeth playfully, just gently dig into his appendage and tug.

“No, but it seems like I got yours,” you humor him, your teeth releasing his tongue, and Shouto looks up at you like you were both the sun and the moon, and the stars were a gift to him.

It takes your breath away.

Shouto grins, shifting onto his elbows so that he’s closer to you before kissing you again.

The kiss is growing louder, both your mouths ever so consuming, trying to relay years of repressed, unknown emotions and feelings within a drastic, incredible touch. Your hips begin shifting against his crotch, humping his clothed erection, demonstrating yet again the power and grace you hold in your body.

Shouto’s hands move from your ribs up to your breasts, and with the hot, rough flesh of his skin, he squeezes your tender flesh. You moan into his mouth, hips bucking wildly against him at the sensation. It isn’t a powerful flesh, but a reminder, a demonstration of just what and where he could inflect passionate actions.

Your hands scour his chest, fingernails dragging teasingly down his firm, developed muscles, fingers flicking and teasing at his own exposed nipples. Shouto grunts into your mouth, hips bucking powerfully upward into your clothed cunt, and you splutter at the power behind it. But it seems as though Shouto is over the fishnet mesh shirt and crop top you’re wearing because he’s tugging it out of the waistband of your jeans and commands in a deep, lust-ridden voice: “Off.”

Goosebumps flash across your skin, bubbling and spraying across your sensitive skin as your shirt and crop top join Shouto’s on the floor. Your gasp loudly when Shouto rolls the both of you over swiftly, his mouth immediately pressing hot, viper kisses on your breasts. All thought and reason leave your mind as his teeth nip and pull. His fingers pushing the straps of your bra off your shoulders and shoving your boobs out of the bra in a firm hold.

“You have no idea how fucking long I’ve wanted to touch you, kiss you, fuck you,” Shouto whispers, his tone almost dark as his hot air fans against your already pebbling nipples. “Fuck, angel, you’re better than anything I’ve ever dreamed about.”

You whine loudly, fingers tangling in his hair as you desperately, wordlessly try to persuade him to put his lips around your attentive, eager nipples.

“I always forget you got these things,” Shouto says in wonder, his fingers touching the metal bars sitting so innocently, deviously on through your nipple. He tugs on the bar, and all the nerves in your breast fire and tingle, and your feet curl by his back as you whimper. “Fuck... I can’t believe I forgot…”

“S-Shouto, I fucking swear!” you almost screech, hands desperately pulling at strands of red and white, wanting his teeth and tongue and the suction of his mouth on your nipple. “Stop. Fucking. Talking!”

Shouto chuckles, his eyes of blue and grey flashing up at you dangerously, knowingly.

“Okay,” he says cheekily, and as if he read your thoughts, his teeth gently bit down on your all too ready nipple. Your head slams against the mattress, your chest feeling alive as if you had been electrocuted. He sucks your nipple, teeth tugging on the sensitive flesh, clacking against the metal in your flesh. His fingers taking care of your lonesome nipple, keeping it company with gentle, purposeful rolls as he has you sobbing his name.

“Please, please, please,” you beg, although you have no idea what you’re begging for. Your hips pathetically grinding into his clothed cock, trying to get yourself to cum while not having been touched. “Sho— Shouto!”

Shouto pulls away from your nipple with a loud pop. His breath panting, short, and overwhelmingly strained as if simply sucking your throbbing, needy nipple had given him the same amount of pleasure as it did you before consuming your forgotten one. Just as before, you melted against him, begging please, pretty please to him but never telling him what you were wanting. You didn’t know what you were wanting.

But unlike before, his hands leave their attentive position on your free nipple and slam your hips back down onto the mattress, keeping you down and still as he continued his ministrations until you were nipplegasming. You choked as the orgasm consumed you, your body going rigid and your eyes rolling to the depths of your head as his hot mouth was all you could think of. For a moment, the needy wet heat between your thighs was easily ignorable, something unneeded until Shouto was pulling away and kissing you again.

His chest was pressed tight against your own chest, your sensitive, overstimulated nipples rubbing against his chest with the welcomed friction as you let out a wordless, near-dizzy sigh into Shouto’s mouth. He kissed you with incredible passion, with dizzying heat, and consuming lust.

Your voice was so small, your voice easily drowned in Shouto’s mouth as your fingernails dug into his back and raked down pathetically, desperately proving that you were still here. Still fighting him on just who would win this night. Your fingers went down the curve of his spine, trailing down until you found the waistband of his sweats, and with his mouth everso distractingly on the swell of your breasts, biting, marking, and sucking hickies and his print on you for forever, he helped you slide the pants off.

In an almost dramatic fashion, his eyes burning deep into yours, leaving you stunned and a worshiper at his feet, he rose off your bed and let the pants fall. You shakily inhaled, your eyes suddenly transfixed and only seeing the hard, leaking dick that stood tall and proud against his twitching stomach. At the mere sight of him, you now truly, completely, and entirely understood just why the girls were obsessed.

From tip to the base, he was thick, the flush of his skin gorgeous, the curve of his cock optimal to fuck anyone. He was long, thick, and delicious—trimmed pubes of red and white and balls that had your mouth watering and going dry. You wondered, imagined, tried to visualize just how much it was going to hurt getting that in you. You’ve never had a man with a dick like that, never had to choke or fuck on something that looked like it would possibly render you stupid the moment you were impaled.

“Can I?” you ask, ‘can I touch you? Can I suck you?’ go unsaid.

“You owe me one,” Shouto says, his words teasing if it wasn’t for the way his voice betrayed him with the eagerness, the want and inexplicable tell that says if you don’t touch him, he will lose his fucking mind. “Please, do it.”

You’re dragging him back onto the bed, sitting him by your headboard, spreading his legs apart as you situate yourself between them. With a tentative, shaky hand, you reach out and grab on his dick.

His flesh is hot to the touch; it's hard and twitches just so at your grasp. Shouto lets out a gasp mixed with a whine, and you look at him with wide eyes and parted lips. Unable to help yourself, you lean in, your nose touching the underside of his length and nuzzling into the flesh. You look back up at him with hooded eyes, eyes dark with mirth, lust, and an overwhelming need to please Shouto. He stares back, eyes entirely too bright, almost scared, almost as if he can’t believe this is happening.

You smile softly, eyes breaking contact to look at the swelling cock in your hand, and then back at him as your tongue pokes out of your mouth and puts a long, wet stripe against his length.

And Shouto?

Shouto moans like a man who’s had warm food after days of starving.

You lick from base to tip, saliva mixing with precum as your mouth presses teasing, open mouth kisses down the length of his cock, tongue pressing against the sweltering heat of his balls.

“Fuck, y/n, stop teasing,” Shouto grits, his hips pathetically snapping into nothing, his hands desperately trying to touch you, to which you swatted him away each and every time. You tut, shaking your head. With both your hands fisting his dick at the middle of his length, your squeeze and pull in opposite directions.

The reaction is one that you were hoping for, Shouto’s head slamming to the headboard with a clash, his legs jumping just a bit, and precum coming out in even heavy drops. You laugh breathlessly at his display, enamored with how fucking easy he is to get to make noises. He’d never made noises before, no other girl had him the way you did, and that made you crazy with power.

Before you wanted to, your mouth consumed to head of his cock, allowing the musky smell that was completely and only Shouto to fully consume you. You sucked on his thick swollen head, tongue pressing on the leaking slit on his head as he choked on your name. You smile, taking him in further, straining against the weight in your mouth, the pressure on the back of your throat, and the stretch of your throat. As soon as you had him a bit way in, you were pushing out, his hips driving to find you but missing you. Shouto’s noise was almost broken, near needy, and your head spun with his noises. Unable to stop, you pushed in again, allowing the drive of his hips to send his cock further down your throat.

Tears filled your eyes at the action, his cock much too large, much too thick to be fucked into your throat as such. Your fists acted as a barrier as you adjusted, your throat humming, mouth moaning as Shouto lost himself to the heat of your wet mouth. You bobbed your head, fucking him diligently and intently with your mouth, driving him further down, your tongue and hollowed cheeks. You sucked his dick with the intention of ruining him, of making him fill your mouth and throat with him so he could never doubt that it was him you wanted, him you needed to consume. You let go of one hand, allowing it to fondle with his balls as his cock went further into your mouth, the sounds of your choking, gagging, and crying egging him on.

“You take me so good,” Shouto sang to you, whispering words that only you’ve heard. “Fuck, angel, take me all the way. I know you can do it.”

With his hands at the back of your head, your fingers squeezing his balls, and the shaky removal of your final hand on his cock, he drives his hips all the way up. Shouto curses loudly, and you choke, feeling the rush of cum shooting down your throat, and you’re let free.

“Swallow it all, don’t spit it up,” Shouto breathes, his body shifting upward, eyes intent, focused. “Let me see.”

You cough violently, mouth closed as you swallow the salty cum, only letting your mouth open to allow the drool and spit to drip from your flat tongue as you show him that you swallowed every last seed. He groaned, grasping you by the chin and pulling you back in for a passionate, all-consuming kiss. The taste of Shouto and his cum sat heavily in your throat, and you were shaking as he began to unbutton your jeans, shedding them off of you as he flipped you back around so that your back was resting against the mattress.

Salt sweat dripped down your neck, and Shouto left fingertip bruises on your waist, your knees and legs awkwardly kicking as you finally got your jeans off your ankles. You shuttered, feeling Shouto’s hot, spit-slick dick pressing against your stomach, your cunt flipping and twisting at the thought of taking him all in.

“You’re still, fuck… you’re still hard?” you gasp, Shouto’s fingers tracing the innards of your thighs, scratching at your ass, slapping it once, twice, leaving you pitched and shaking.

“How can I not be when you’re down beneath me?” Shouto asks, his eyes looking at you as if he was burning the very naked image to you in his brain for him forever. “You’re mine, right?”

The question itself, while unexpected, was not unwanted.

You feel yourself nodding, your fingers scratching up his flexed arms, “Yours and only yours.”

“Good,” Shouto smirks, leaning in, his entire weight on the one hand beside your head, making you groan as his lips were so close yet so far away. “I’m yours as you are mine.”

With that, his fingers pressed to your thus far, unattended to clit, your legs shaking, kicking the air as you howled in pleasure. But it was such an intimate place, something you never expected Shouto to ever touch, and so, in a voice so pathetic you couldn’t even recognize it as yours, you screeched: “D-Don’t touch that!”

Shouto cocked an eyebrow, his head tilting as his fingers swirled around your swollen nub, sending just enough electrifying pleasure through every neuron in your body. “Why not?” he asked, voice authoritative and curious and sadistic. “It’s mine — you’re mine. I can play with what’s mine whenever I want.”

The words make your entire will collapse, the words liquid heat in your ears and mind. You moan loudly, feeling Shouto adjust your hips, lining your spasming cunt with his cock, and with his tongue delving into your mouth, his lips pressing against yours, he slowly pushed into you.

Shouto was loud the entire way into you, the deep grunts, breathless moans, and mindless babble of how this was unlike anything he’s had before, better than anything he’s ever imagined. He bottoms out quickly, hands leaving purple bruises against your skin as you lay on the bed silent.

Your back is entirely arched, jaw slacked, voice dead on your tongue because the feeling of him buried deep within you is staggering. You let out a single tone noise, your mouth gasping for breath as your voice finally begins to come back to you.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” you whisper over and over, your legs tight around Shouto’s hips, shaking with the feeling in you. “God, y-you’re so big, Sho… I’m—”

You can’t finish your sentence because he shifts just enough that his cock is meeting places in you that had never been encountered before. Your eyes roll back again, your fingers pressing ruby red scars to his back as you scratch and tear his back.

“You’re so fucking tight, shit,” Shouto pants, his mouth panting against the sweat on your collarbone, his own breathing heavy and spaced. “You’re perfect, y/n, so fucking perfect.”

You preen with those words, your mouth finding a home at his temple to which you kiss him, drag your lips down to his ear. You bite and nibble as you adjust to him buried deep within you. And he heaves a sigh and pushes up off you, eyes daring to stare into you as he huffs almost in disbelief of this entire night.

“I’m going to start moving,” he says, fingers scratching down your sides to your thighs. “Are you ready?”

Not trusting your voice, you nod. Shouto smiles, leaning back down for one last kiss to which you quickly returned, staying there as his hips moved backward before thrusting back into you. It's the first thrust of many, but your arms wrap even tighter underneath his own, your nails scarring his back as he goes again and again. You fucks into you deliberately, readily, with purpose and skill that speaks wonders and lives up to the many rumors you’ve ever heard.

His thrusts are powerful, slapping into your thighs with a mighty smack, making you whimper and wail into his salty neck as your hips lift up to meet his. It's a powerful dance, a dizzying cycle. His cock sliding up and down your puffy velvet walls, your weeping walls clenching him in a vice, unforgiving and unwilling to let go.

He speaks praises into your ear, your yours, your mouth.

“Such a pretty angel, moaning for me, crying for me, tell me you want my cock. Tell me you want me buried in your fucking stomach.”

You are converted to him in return, seeing him, speaking to him, devoted to him.

“Fuck, I want you more. Faster, harder! Don’t stop! I can feel you in my stomach, Sho! Fuck! Fuck me, fuck me fuck me!”

His weight is pressed on your thighs, spreading your thighs further apart, fucking into deeper, fucking you so powerfully, so desperately your soaked cunt squelches and drips your essence, soaking your bed and his legs. Your teeth sink into his skin, copper filling your mouth, and your vision feels missing as you are slamming your hips up, rolling them desperately to fuck back into him. You can feel his hand clutching yours, pressing it into the mattress as he somehow speeds up again, drilling you into the mattress, the bed creaking and bending under both your weight.

“More, more, more!”

And he gives, and gives, and gives.

You wail his name, the heat in your skin, tickling your clit and innards making you sweat, the alcohol on your skin sticking you to Shouto.

Shouto grunts your name, hisses your name, damns you heaven and back for having such a fucking grip on him. It's when he looks into your eyes, cock drilling into you at a speed and power that no human should ever obtain, one hand gripping yours and the other pinching and teasing your clit, you cum, bursting open at the seams.

Your orgasm is loud, clenching, all-consuming, and you drag Shouto down with you as he stammers, shudders, and cums deep within your womb. His seed spilling out of you as the both of you collapse onto the bed with breathless, thoughtless minds.

“Fuck,” he says.

“Right?” you chuckle.

And with your nose pressed to his sweaty, sex-lulled body, you fall asleep with his hands traveling up and down your spine. Hopefully, things would be well when you woke up.

P R E S E N T

To stop you from screeching so loudly you woke up the entire world, Shouto held his hand to your mouth, his eyes wide, terrified, and completely confused.

“Please stop yelling… my head hurts…” Shouto begs, his face completely exhausted but with that post-orgasm sleep glow.

“We had sex?!” you shriek, throwing his hand off your mouth. “We were mad at each other, and we had sex?!”

“Oh,” Shouto seems to remember, his head rolling before he sat up, bringing you up with him. “Right, we should talk about that, huh?”

“You think?!” you shriek, entirely overwhelmed with the fact that you had done so much embarrassing shit last night.

It’s quiet for a bit. The birds chirping outside an almost cheerful taunt as the both of you, for the first time in seventeen years, find it too awkward to talk. No one wants to speak first, to mention the elephant in the room, for once it happened, there really was no going back. Not that there was much to go back from.

“I’m in love with you,” Shouto finally says. It’s an admittance, a whisper that's strong despite it told in such a hushed voice as if you would laugh at him as he confessed. “I’ve actually been in love with you for as long as I can remember.”

Now that shocks you.

Your eyes are wide, and you’re staring at Shouto, unsure what to say, what to ask, but you know you need more answers.

“I know, hard to believe, huh?” Shouto chuckles, his hand running through his sex and sleep disheveled hair. “It’s true, though… I don’t remember not ever being in love with you.”

“No… no way,” you say, your body running cold, and you shiver. You remember then that you’re sitting up, and you’re very incredibly naked. Shouto notices and moves to grab a blanket at the foot of the bed and wraps it around you. “That doesn’t make sense,” you argue, your furrowed brows making your skin crease as you try to think back on all your years and memories, looking for signs in which Todoroki Shouto loved you. “You never showed it.”

“Camie said the same thing,” Shouto sighed, his hand rubbing the back of his neck as he shrugged nonchalantly. “Before I was sixteen… I don’t know; I guess I could understand why. I only ever talked to you, always paired up with you. I let you hold my hand, and I let you hug me… I thought me telling you that I had never been kissed before would make you want to kiss me, but it never did. I know I was awkward and a little different when we were younger, so when I was paired up with Camie… I thought she would help me.”

“By fucking you?” you asked, your frown deepening as you remembered your bitter feelings over Camie stealing Shouto’s virginity.

“She… she said that by being sexual, maybe you would see me as a man, and not the four-year-old crying boy in preschool,” Shouto smiled sadly, his fingers picking at one another. “Me having sex was supposed to show you that I was a man who wanted to see you as a woman in return, but it didn’t work.”

“Well, no shit,” you snort, relaxing a bit although you felt limp. You found yourself leaning against Shouto’s strong shoulders, your head landing heavily on him. “You went from a virgin to fucking anything with a wet hole.”

“...yeah, I’m sorry about that,” Shouto said with regret, his shoulders sagging just a bit. “At first, I thought I needed to fuck more girls to prove I was a man to you because you acted like nothing had happened after Camie… but sex was fun, it felt good.”

“Sex is good,” you agree with a soft chuckle to which he returned.

He shifted a bit, arms tightening and relaxing before he finally admitted, “It helped distract me from you because you looked at others the way I wanted you to look at me.”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper back.

“No, don’t be,” Shouto speaks firmly, his arm wrapping around your shoulder and pressing a kiss to your temple. “It was my fault. I was never assertive enough, confident enough to simply confess.”

“So, does you being in love with me having anything to do with you driving the entire male population away from me?”

Your eyes look up at him, finding his embarrassed gaze before he glances away.

“That actually wasn’t intentional… I guess I just talk about you a lot.”

“Yeah, but still doesn’t mean you couldn’t ever deny it yourself!”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Apologize then.”

“Y/l/n Y/n, I am sorry for making the entire male population we’ve ever come across think we were an item and not telling them otherwise. I am sorry for keeping you from enjoying sex while I continued to. I am lousy, and my love for you should be unreturned because that was ass of me.”

You sigh, your lips pursed to keep from smiling as you looked back at his handsome face.

“Now, ask me the damn question, crybaby.”

“Crybaby?”

“You finally admitted that you were, in fact, crying!!!!!”

If you asked Shishikura Seiji what the worst thing about being the third roommate to Todoroki Shouto and you was, he would give a million and three answers as to why it was the worst.

One: he absolutely hated how loud the both of you were. Todoroki Shouto was someone he thought was quiet and introverted, but whenever he was around you, he was loud. You were just plain old loud, and he thought it was annoying.

Two: he absolutely hated your rice. Call it petty, but after you fed him on his first night and tried putting him into a chokehold for saying the song your rice cooker sang at its end was the stupidest fucking thing ever made, everything you made taste like ash and dirt.

Twenty: he hated that there were biweekly karaoke nights. He would be studying away in his room and wanted to die when he heard the all too familiar sound of Mamma Mia’s Here We Go Again blasting in the living room.

Hundred fifty-seven: SO. MUCH. FUCKING. SEX.

Three hundred thirteen: SO. MUCH. DRINKING.

Five thousand: SO. MUCH. WEED.

Ten thousand three: you put his toilet seat up whenever you’re drunk, so he falls in when he goes to pee in the morning.

Five hundred: the way the both of you looked at each other, fucking disgusting.

To say the least, there were a lot of many different reasons scaling from actual issues to petty small shit, but Shishikura was not in any position to find a new apartment, so he stayed. To be quite honest, having been living with Dumb and Dumber (you and Shouto, respectively), he only thought there would be one thing that would make him lose his actual mind.

The day that would inevitably come and the both of you realized your feelings were, in fact, returned. He didn’t want to even imagine how the animalistic sex he often had to hear coming from your hallway would increase, or the sappy stupid romantic love he would see in the living room because as best friends, you both had no care for PDA and if you were allowed to kiss? Allowed to have sex? He feared he would have to wear a hazmat suit in every corner of the apartment. You both were already incredibly loud as a duo (see reason one as to why he hates living here); he feared the worst when the mutual love was realized.

But he exited his room a week after that Sunday morning with a fully loaded water gun just in case. His eyes narrowed, the hair on his neck raised as his beady eyes focused in on the living room.

Shouto sat on the couch, his back on the armrest, and you sitting between his thighs as you watched him play some game on his Switch, your smile large and annoyingly bright, but he realized that he couldn’t hear you screaming or speaking so loudly he could listen to the conversation.

No, as a matter of fact, Shishikura couldn’t hear a single word; the words being exchanged between you and Shouto spoke so softly, so intimately, it shocked him. Shishikura noticed with an almost awed surprise that even though your smile was as annoyingly bright as before. It wasn’t directed at anything but Shouto, and Shouto’s smile, while nowhere near as big, just as warm and full to you.

It was intimate, romantic even.

Nothing had changed in your relationship except now, finally, now, you were allowed to kiss and fuck each other like heat-driven animals.

Shishikura was shocked to his core, unable to comprehend the sight in front of him.

You nor Shouto paid him any mind, too lost in the game and in each other to look his way as he made his way into the kitchen for his lunch. Shishikura set the water gun on the counter, a small smile spreading on his face despite himself, and chuckled.

Maybe the two of you together weren’t something to hate on after all.

“Hey, is that a water gun?!”

[prying-pandora666]

I weep for your reading comprehension. I blatantly said a platonic relationship would be great, simply not this creepy daddy/daughter crap. Stripping Maria of any authority?

My sibling in Dracula, what do you think positioning a strange man as her father is doing!?

A father figure isn’t a buddy. A father figure isn’t a good friend who sometimes mentors you. A father figure is explicitly someone who has authority over you! The very point being made is that demanding Alucard become Maria’s “father figure” as a way to remove any uncomfortable optics due to their age difference only makes the very situation they’re trying to correct worse!

Maria is not 6. She is 16. She has lived her whole life up until now without a father. After losing her mother so traumatically, what makes you think this girl is suddenly going to want to run to a strange man she’s never met to guide her and tell her what to do? Fathers don’t just hang out with you, they raise you, they have a hand in molding you. The Maria we meet in the show is independent and fights against authority—notably patriarchal authority too—and you’re telling me she’s suddenly going to rush to a stranger and want him to be her daddy?

The only way that makes any sense is if this adult man took advantage of her vulnerability after losing her mother to inappropriately insert himself. Something Alucard would never do and Richter would never allow. Why doesn’t the fandom want her trusted brother figure to play the role of father?

Tell me, what is the harm of a fantasy story about a fictional girl and a vampire anyway? They’re not real. So what is the issue? Is it actually harm to the fictional characters or to the audience who is watching and real? Is the problem that we are actually concerned about the well being of an imaginary drawing, or is it for the real girls who might have this sort of relationship normalized for them?

Because if it’s the latter then teaching them that strange men showing up to position themselves in an uneven power dynamic with you, such as in a “fatherly” relationship which requires you to be beholden to them to a certain extent without being able to question their authority on equal footing (because a parental and child relationship is inherently NOT an equal relationship), is a FAR worse example to set! This is how groomers operate. They present themselves as harmless and caring, often as peers or parental substitutes, and once they’ve slowly manipulated you into surrendering your sense of agency against them, once you’ve come to trust them rather than your own instincts, even learned to punish yourself for doubting them, that’s when they strike.

How in the world is that an acceptable dynamic for Alucard and Maria to have even if his intentions were 100% pure? How is it at all appropriate or healthy for this strange man—who she undoubtedly will find attractive because he’s a friggin dhampir designed to be—to be acting as an unquestionable authority figure in the life of this teen girl, even with those undertones of attraction? This is such a dangerous and exploitable dynamic.

And what irony to see you defend this crap on tumblr of all places! A website which has an unfortunate history of minors being groomed using these exact “I’ll be your dad” tactics! Seriously look it up!

Why is this better than them being friends? Friends who can be on equal footing. So Maria can stand up for herself and set her own boundaries rather than have Alucard decide them for her as her “dad”? What possible benefit is there to this strange, unequal but inappropriately intimate power dynamic between a strange man and a teen girl vs letting them be friends and colleagues who respect each other?

It’s not Bella Swan slander you ridiculous person. Edward stalks Bella long before she expressed interest in him and even sneaks into her room to watch her sleep at night. He’s controlling and holds all the power in their relationship, to the point Bella wanted to end herself when he left her because she had become so co-dependent on him. Hell, Edward removes the engine from her car—limiting her mobility against her will—because he decided this was best to “protect her”.

None of that is a healthy or equal power dynamic and if you think it is then that says everything about your judgement on this matter.

As I said in my original post, Alucard being a platonic friend with her is always an option. Nothing romantic will happen unless they commit to the time skip because that’s what happens in the games and there’s no way Netflix is going to do worse on this front than decades old games did. This was never an issue until the fandom made it one.

On Alucard and Maria

Are there actually fans advocating for Alucard to be written as Maria’s father figure in the new season of Nocturne? Like that would be a good thing and not infinitely creepier? I don’t think they’ve thought this through.

Alucard is the single most popular character in the franchise. He’s also probably the most shipped character. And yet he has only had one canon love interest in the decades since he’s existed. It’s Maria. And you’re telling me that you think that because he’s 300+ and she’s 17-18 when they started living together in the games, that it would be grooming. However, somehow him inserting himself into her life at age 16 when she’s just lost both her parents wouldn’t come off like grooming!?

Does this man look like he should be picking up random children!? He’s literally terrified of his own cursed blood. Maybe LISTEN TO HIM.

I’m convinced fandoms have forgotten what that word means. Grooming has specific features. It doesn’t just mean “older guy and younger girl.” A relationship with an age gap or an uneven power dynamic can be exploitative or abusive without being a case of grooming. Grooming specifically refers to the process of forming a relationship with a child with the intention of leveraging that relationship and trust to train and prepare (aka brainwash) your victim for the harmful activities the groomer wants to normalize. The relationship Alucard and Maria have in the games is in no way grooming. You know what would be grooming though?

Coming into a 16 year old’s life when she’s vulnerable, traumatized, and recently orphaned only to insinuate yourself as a new father figure. This is so highly inappropriate and a huge red flag. Consider what you’re actually asking for here. These characters do not exist in a a vacuum. They have a long history together as each other’s only canon love interests. You cannot fully extract them from the games, art, interviews, audio dramas, animations, and more where they’re depicted as a couple. There are decades of this precedent and you are asking Netflix to knowingly take the characters with an established romantic dynamic that the audience is already primed to see as romantic and instead portray their meeting as him trying to be her new daddy?

“Oh look! Alucard and his… daughter? Yikes.” This is an official advertisement btw.

THAT is grooming! Think about the optics of this! It would be abysmal! No it would NOT fix the problem of their age gap to make him act like a groomer and get in good with her as a dad. You just cannot completely extract them from the legacy of their relationship in the source materials. It will be incredibly creepy and textbook grooming if you get your way.

Is this really what you want to associate with an “adoptive father Alucard”? Because the art we create doesn’t exist in a vacuum. All the old content—official and fanmade—is still going to exist.

What is so objectionable about the original dynamic anyway? It’s a pretty fun subversion of the tired and problematic vampire trope of “vampire man stalks teen girl and coerces her into being his”. Instead in their original relationship, Maria is the one who pursues Alucard! It’s the young woman who takes initiative and is given the agency to go after what she wants. She courts and woos him. That’s part of the fun!

Yes, Alucard is 300+. He’s also a fictional creature that doesn’t actually exist IRL and stays eternally young. There are no actual people who will ever have his problem of staying 20 forever so it’s rather silly to say he can’t date any humans because of course he will have an age gap with any of them.

The only real problem I have seen people bring up is Maria’s age, but from what I can tell, the show’s already fixed this. Check it out.

In The Games

Rondo of Blood: Maria is 12. She and Alucard do not meet. Richter is a brother-figure and not romantic.

There is then a 5 year time skip.

Symphony of the Night: Maria is 17. She and Alucard meet to save Richter. At the end, Alucard says his goodbyes and intends to return to a life of solitude. Maria goes after him because she has developed feelings for him and doesn’t want him to suffer a life alone.

Maria is given agency to pursue what she wants and prove herself even against Alucard’s resistance and hesitance to let another person into his life.

They spend a year together before we get the audio drama.

Nocturne of Remembrance: Maria continues to try to get close to Alucard. They end up saving each other’s lives and in the end he finally confesses his romantic feelings for her. She is an adult and perfectly able to make her own choices. She chose him. He admits he returns her feelings.

How fandom can look at a story about a young woman subverting the trope and chasing the vampire to get what she wants—basically an anti-Bella Swan—and still find a way to disempower her just so they can pearl clutch? I couldn’t tell you.

So now let’s look at what the show did.

In The Show

Nocturne S1: Maria is 16. She’s been aged up from 12, probably to give her a more active and believable role. But this also means she’s within a normal age to start feeling attraction and expressing her wants. Within her society, she’s even considered of marriageable age. However we are spared the discomfort of our modern values clashing with her contemporaneous ones because Maria in this season isn’t interested in romance. She’s interested in revolution, equality, justice. They’ve portrayed her with so much love and strength. There is no indication they’d betray her by writing her as the child victim of a male suitor. In fact she only meets Alucard in the final few seconds of the season and the two do not even speak a single word to one another.

Now let’s remember the games had a five year time skip. The show only needs two years to get Maria to the adult age of 18, but assuming the follow through with the timeline and go for the full five?

Maria will be 21.

21.

Fan concept for adult Maria. Credit:@esp-art

Are you telling me a 21 year old woman is not old or mature enough to make her own decisions? How is this not a total infantilization of women? Do you think a 21 year old badass vampire hunter needs protection from the ace depressed dhampir boy who just wants to sleep and has in no way tried to pursue her until after she expressed consistent and persistent interest in him?

It is not “grooming” to meet someone when they were younger and then meet them again years later as an adult. That’s a thing that happens! In real life! Adults can still make decisions for themselves! It is only grooming if Alucard behaved in a way that would manipulate teen Maria and put her under his control and authority before she can consent. There is no indication that Alucard in the show is going to do this. And yet the fandom is basically demanding it by saying he should make her “his baby girl”?

And what of Maria’s feelings in all this? She just lost her mother and was betrayed by her father shortly after discovering he even existed. She has lived her whole life without a father. She is in no desperate need of a new one. And if she does need a family member, she already has one! Richter is 19 and is her trusted adoptive brother. Why wouldn’t she go to him over a total stranger she just met and who is half vampire - literally a predator creature that feeds on humans!?

Yeah, hi, Richter Belmont still exists. He and Maria consider each other family. Why would you want her relying on a strange man she just met as a “father figure” rather than her trusted and loving brother?

Have none of you even considered how Maria would feel if Alucard even tried to fill the paternal role? He’d have to force it on her through manipulation and coercion. No way she would want to view him that way. Especially considering she is 16 and likely to be as attracted to the sparkly 20 year old looking sculpted marble beauty as anyone else!

Don’t mind the beautiful eternally young man who looks made of pure porcelain and light. No teen girl has ever been attracted to this, right? No way it could be exploitative and creepy for him to present himself as her new daddy, giving himself authority and influence over her as his child to mold as he wishes, right? Oh yeah, this is MUCH better than Maria pursuing him of her own volition once she becomes an adult, right guys?

We are truly in the stupidest dark timeline.

Frankly, I don’t care if Netflix has them get together or not. They would work just fine as friends too. I just sure as hell hope they’ll ignore the fans clamoring for a creepy daddy/daughter dynamic. Dressing it up as “concern” won’t hide that for some it’s a fetish, and for others they’re just useful idiots who haven’t thought it through.

I implore you to think it through.