#you’re telling me you weren’t tormented by/didn’t torment anyone growing up | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

josiebelladonna · 8 months ago

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hello, i’m back with this nonsense because tumblr needs sex like… yesterday, or back on monday when you goons were boop boop booping each other even though i am trying, desperately, to understand what on earth was even the point of that, that was so stupid (and not good-stupid, either, like genuinely stupid).

don’t know if i’ll torment myself with the other prompts later, i need a shower and go make dinner.

What does my LGBTQ+ identity mean to me?

I actually forget I am lgbtq+ such that I have to remind myself, “oh, yeah, that’s right. I’m pansexual.” It’s exhausting thinking about it; exhausting and depressing and terrifying and overwhelming. It almost doesn’t feel like a part of me: I have to drag it in like it’s this big bag without any handles so it hurts my hands to hold it.

How has society’s attitudes towards LGBTQ+ individuals impacted me?

I have dealt with internalized homophobia in my teen years. Growing up, I worried about letting my eyes wander around and getting caught. I knew I wasn’t lesbian because I like boys, too, but people always assumed that I was because no one asked me out and I was tomboyish. There’s great validation in being seen as sexy and attractive; you can imagine how the opposite will go for you. I don’t trust anyone: I have been the subject of too much gossip. I imagine people treating you differently when you come out, too, like they talk to you differently or they don’t want to touch you.

What moments in my life have been pivotal in the development of my LGBTQ+ identity?

When my best friend Elizabeth kissed me: we were 6 or 7 and I was going back home, and before I left, she kissed me on the cheek when her conservative parents weren’t looking (no, I don’t count that as my first kiss because it was a goodbye). Like the next day, I was told that one of the boys in the schoolyard had a crush on me.

When I entered puberty, I found myself thinking about dicks, but my eyes liked to wander to girls’ butts and legs.

Just looked at myself in the mirror and said “I’m pansexual” out loud. There was a bit of an internal squirm.

When did I first realize I was lgbtq+?

I don’t remember. I had no resources to the culture until I was like 19, but I’ve always dressed in unisex form. It’s like people can tell I’m not straight just with a single glimpse at me.

How has my understanding of my gender identity and/or sexual orientation changed over time?

It’s twisted and contorted and muddied itself around about a million times over. I feel it breaking down and busting apart like a rock slide. The first time I started questioning my sexuality, it felt like I had just landed on a big slab of stone. I often break apart and I can feel it in me, like it actually leaves me feeling physically broken apart, even though I didn’t do anything. I break apart and land in the river where I drown.

What is one thing I wish people understood better about my LGBTQ+ identity?

It’s lonely being pan—I think to myself, “who would want this?”—and more so when you live in an area that forbids you from really embracing it and tells you that you should marry young and procreate, and you’re surrounded by a generation that screams about this sort of thing ad nauseam and have turned it into a literal meme (I mean, cue like clockwork every year on National Coming Out Day, the influx of posts that are like “if you’re coming out today, I luv you!! 🥺” and you don’t buy it at all… at least, i don’t).

Who has been most influential in my journey to understand my LGBTQ+ identity?

Probably my cousin Harmony: when he was about 14, he came out as lesbian and the family (save for my parents) freaked the fuck out; he identified as male some time afterwards. I was a baby so I have no memory of it, but I do feel it in my bones, though.

What has been the most difficult part of coming out?

Between finding the courage to picking a label for myself.

What has been the most rewarding part of coming out?

I finally came out to myself back on Leap Day… and that was it. I came out online… and that was it. It was all so anticlimactic. Nothing rewarding about any of it.

What is my experience with LGBTQ+ culture?

I was betrayed by a trans friend last year. I’ve been betrayed by bisexuals. People think I’m lesbian because I’ve never been asked out before. Some of the absolute rudest, vilest, most disrespectful and hateful people I’ve ever encountered were in this community.

How has my intersectionality impacted my LGBTQ+ identity?

A tomboyish girl who’s mostly French who grew up hearing that she’s strictly Irish and nothing else who could either pass off as Native American, Jewish, or Creole who’s confused as fuck about her sexuality, how do you think it’s impacted my identity.

What are my hopes for the future of the LGBTQ+ community?

I doubt there will be a future: this is a marginalized community filled with pain, plus, with the existential threats of the Donald and antisemitism… this community is looking at a long, horrific demise.

What are some common misconceptions about being LGBTQ+ that I would like to clear up?

It’s not a choice. That’s all I’ve got: everything that I’ve wanted to say has already been said, like everything else.

What advice would I have for someone who is just discovering their LGBTQ+ identity?

Don’t you fucking dare become anti-Israel. You become anti-Israel, you join a literal suicide cult running on the illusion of being supportive to people like us.

What role has self-care played in my journey to understand my LGBTQ+ identity?

I don’t think it has played a role. I remember thinking if I was bisexual or gay and wanting to cut myself. Why do you think I sought therapy on my own terms? When Prop 8 was a hot topic, I remember my dad saying that it’s a “disgusting culture, but I’ll support them, though.” I dealt with anorexia. I dealt with obesity. I was active and tried eating healthy growing up but it was just for my physical health and to remedy the eating disorder: my sexuality didn’t even cross my mind until fairly recently.

I guess… this? But this has been more of a form of torture than self-care: I do this to vent and scream my frustrations into but I actually want to heal, though, and every time it’s fucking failed. Every time I do this, I go into it with the intent and then it completely derails itself at some point and I’m like a volcano: I get enraged and then horribly, horribly depressed afterward. There’s only been one time where I didn’t want to rip my own throat out.

Allotting time to this whole thing, too? Discovering something about myself, sure, but self-care shouldn’t make you cry and hate yourself, should it?

I make erotic art… at least not recently. I keep saying that I’m going to do more but I never do. I do want to, though. I’m not like every other dumbass on tumblr and saying that with a “lol” at the end of that because I’m not a psychopath and I’m serious. It’s not funny: it’s actually something I want to do but I can’t bring myself to it.

After I do all of this (usually at night), I go to bed and I am OUT. This literally makes me sleep like a rock.

The means of self-care that I do carry out, I am literally not sure how it ties into my identity, like I feel like I’m bullshitting here. I do yoga to help me realize I’m pansexual? No, I started doing yoga because 20 minutes on the rowing machine was hurting my back and shoulders, I needed a change of pace, and it was also to help me relax (I started doing it when my mom got sick). I’m a pansexual baker? No, I’m just a baker. Do I show my sexuality through art? Yes. Yes, I do. But it’s what I do, though, I don’t view it as “self-care”. I masturbate and touch myself in the hopes of healing myself… maybe that counts. I don’t know. Who knows.

What are some of your most intimate desires?

I just want to kiss someone and I want them to like it.

I want to bake food for someone and watch them gain a few pounds: a few pounds means a hand or lips rested upon their soft belly and a nice little massage session.

I like the “horror-romance” trope, mainly because you never see it. Something about you running from a deadly threat with your crush.

Participate in polyamory.

To explore the full laundry list of kinks that I have, as fucking repulsive as they are. No, I don’t think they enrich anything: there’s so many of them, and they’ll annihilate everything and paint me as “that” girl. I have always been “that” girl, even into adulthood.

How do you want to be touched?

Softly. Lightly. Maybe with the slightest bit of force but not too much.

A bit of force if in a pinch.

What does it mean for you to be vulnerable during sexual experiences?

To be vulnerable with my sexuality quite literally feels like I have a gun to my head. To confess to someone I like them feels like having a gun to my head. This is literally the worst part of me, the one part of me that I would just rather not think about because it pains me too much, the one part of me I have to venture into with a hazmat suit because all the feelings here could kill someone—seriously, if it’s a cross I have to bear, I just imagine how someone would react to me venting to them.

Vulnerability has gotten me in trouble before, even to the point of having the police called on me. Yeah. No exaggeration. I used to vent my feelings to people and they would freak the fuck out on me, not realizing that I needed to do this because I didn’t know any other way.

*The backstory on this is bit of a complicated one, and i can’t really go into details without talking about Chris and Ben, either, but it basically started when I wrote my letter to Ben, and I talked to people in my old Soundgarden group about it… and at one point, these random people (primarily women for some reason) began gossiping about me and him, and I didn’t take it well (I actually have something of ptsd about this, too). I suffered a breakdown at one point, followed by a few more, and one that nearly put me in the hospital. Next thing I know, my own family is talking to me differently, like… talking down to me. I met Chris and started asserting myself more and the dumb idiots inexplicably took that to mean that something was wrong with me (mainly because I said “don’t talk to me unless it’s important”, but they apparently didn’t read the rest of it and that was “I’m going to take time to myself and figure things out on my end”). As for the cops getting called on me… I was having a bad night. Plain and simple.

But this is the price I pay to be vulnerable, which is supposedly this “wonder trait”. It’s seriously anything but. I really do feel like I’m not allowed to vent feelings of any caliber or employ any sort of black humor even though that’s literally my sense of humor: it’s dark and twisted and fucked up but also all manner of nuanced. It’s probably why I don’t get along well with people who post meme humor ad infinitum: it’s too on the nose to the point I ask, “so what’s the joke?”

Rambling and completely off-topic, but this is all I have when it comes to vulnerability. I bring my sense of humor, my angst, the category five hurricane that is my emotional state, to the tips of my fingers and that’s all I can say, and I fully expect to be misinterpreted and even trashed. Being vulnerable does not bring love or pleasure to me.

What do you find most attractive in a partner?

Long hair. A little soft. Strong. “Layered” (like Shrek). Smart. Kind to animals. Artistic and/or musical. Something about them is odd or unusual. Something about them is also the slightest bit of intense, like you look into their eyes and you’re drawn into the ocean that resides within them.

What are your biggest turn-ons and turn-offs?

Touches, really all over my body but especially on my chest. I like soft touch. I like being held. I like fantasy. I like intelligence. I like sweetness. I’m all about feeling and being close. I love Alex’s chest hair—I like him in white shirts, especially when they button. I love Eric in knit sweaters with white buttons, and with shorts, too. I like boys in crop tops and leather that shows off their skin. I like boys with long hair. I like velvet. I like silk. I like denim and corduroy. Seeing as there’s a general theme of violence throughout all of this, I have the weirdest inkling for that, too. Give me a soft tummy, and I’ll take a flat one or a chubby one: chubby tummies are very cute and even gorgeous on the right person (bonus if they’re full, too! I remember being little and having a hard time trying to talk about anything that had to do with the middle of the body because it was very erotic for me. To this day, if someone says they’re full, I squirm a bit).

My turn-offs: cigarettes or any kind of smoking—pot, I’m way more lenient about. If anything, I think a bit of weed could add to the experience. But I don’t want kisses from an ashtray. I like good hygiene. I’m hugely turned off by the love of power dynamics and controlling behavior that is a dime a dozen on tumblr and in the fanfic community. I’m not too crazy about abs, either: I like some tone, but that’s about it.

What does sexual pleasure mean to you?

A unicorn. I am for certain that it just doesn’t exist.

What are your boundaries when it comes to sex?

What I want is elusive and a pipe dream so I figure “why bother” at some point. I’m fucking slow. Trying to get me aroused alone is like climbing a mountain, because I have to trust someone to the point they better take a bullet for me in order to get completely naked in front of them.

How do you want to communicate your desires and boundaries to your partner?

Actually communicate them, how the fuck else. But it’s far easier said than done. And I’m being sincere when I say that I can’t imagine anyone wanting me. I can already see eyes glazing over talking about boundaries. I can hear the laughter and the “awww, that’s cute” with desires because what I think about just isn’t sexy or good enough (for example, everyone seems to be obsessed with penetrative sex, whereas I couldn’t be bothered by it; I think more in terms of kinks, or oral, or straight up cuddling or spooning, and it’s just never good enough. I’m doing kinktober all year and I thought for sure it was going to catch on at this point given how the popular the main event is). Always cute, never sexy or a “wild idea” or what the fuck have you.

What are some sexual fantasies you’ve had that you’ve never shared with anyone?

I’ve written my fantasies through my fics. I don’t think there’s any one that I haven’t shared, and I don’t call any of them sexy.

How can you create a safe and comfortable environment for yourself during sexual experiences?

Lock the door? I like to have a clean space, too, like clean sheets.

What makes you feel most confident and empowered during sex?

I never had sex with someone so I can’t say.

Doing it by myself, this feeling has never happened. I put my fingers on the head of my clit and a shiver runs up my spine and I get a ticklish feeling inside my hips… and that’s it. I guess I could just say that these feelings are mine, maybe? I suppose? That…I keep these feelings within and no one will ever know how I actually feel and with how everyone is ~obsessed~ with ~being vulnerable~ there’s like the weirdest comfort in this and—did I seriously just find some clarity for once?

What have been some of your past sexual experiences, and how have they shaped your desires and boundaries?

Aside from cybering with that boy who used to sit behind me when I was 18, and kissing my best friend when we were 6, I don’t really have any experiences.

There was the boy in 2nd-ish grade who had a crush on me and while I was flattered, I didn’t feel the same way so I told him the truth and it wound up breaking him.

I let my eyes wander around while in puberty but I couldn’t make a move. Why do people find this so hard to understand: I never found anyone attractive enough. There were literally no attractive people at my high school, and I had been bullied too many times to even consider it. Plus, I felt vulnerable around guys and girls didn’t like me.

One time in high school, I was wearing my rock n roll jacket and a teacher asked me if my boyfriend let me wear it. When I said it was mine and I was single, he gave me the same look my grandmother gave me when I said I wanted to go to college.

I thought I was bi and I wanted to “get it out of me.”

I was a bridesmaid in my brother’s wedding and people acted like it was front page news.

I wrote a letter to Ben Shepherd because I had a crush on him but I couldn’t fully tell him because I was in a bad place mentally and I also thought he would find me weird for it—I don’t really like talking about the Ben Shepherd chapter of my life for that reason, and also because he wound up breaking my heart. He broke my heart: I thought I could hint my crush to him but I couldn’t do it (and I soon found out that he’s way too dumb to figure it out, too). He was my first serious crush and he just… never reciprocated it and left me hanging. He wound up getting into a relationship and had a bunch of kids (even into middle age, which is striking), and the day I found out—the day, the very day—I began writing now it’s dark. That’s why I’m so protective of that fic. I remember being angry with him and crying about it, and then I looked on at a drawing I had made in my sketchbook, of Joey and the girl Maya, and I got right to it.

I watched my best friends get married to other people and wondered what could have been: kissed her, told him how I felt about him.

As I say above, I hate the pervasive obsession with penetrative sex. I see fics a dime a dozen, usually penned by people ages 18 to 25 (every so often you’ll see someone my age or older), that are nothing but penetrating, penises in vaginas/vaginal sex, pregnancy… and when I see them, I start thinking about birth control and how my options there are so limited because of my family history of blood clots/blood disorders and also gastrointestinal problems. I can’t not be kinky. And I’m sorry: a kink that is commonplace or mainstream isn’t kink anymore. “Kink” means it’s unusual: dick in coochie and subsequently getting knocked up is something straight out of seventh grade sex ed, you fucking wieners.

I don’t really know how to communicate my desires, either, because when I first learned the concept of setting boundaries, I was made to feel like an idiot—in fact, when I think about my boundaries, I feel stupid. I feel a great deal of desire and no idea what to do with any of it.

How can you incorporate sexual exploration into your self-care routine?

First off, I don’t have a “self-care routine” (not saying I don’t do self-care; it’s just not a routine).

Second… um. Get to know myself better? I come back to these quite often—although I don’t consider this self-care at all because I can’t find pleasure or power or anything positive at all. This is more of a chance for me to just bleed out everything. Be alone with my wounds in hopes to clean them of their infection… and I often run out of Neosporin. You can’t think of a way out when you’re drowning in your own tears.

I try not to do these when I’m in a bad mood, because I know how I am and I’ll just tear myself apart.

I sit cross-legged and put my hand inside my underwear every other night in hopes to feel something. I think I’ve felt something on my clit all of twice.

I think about sex now. It’s often fleeting, but I do catch myself thinking about it every once in a great while.

I’m so picky about my smut. I try to explore other people’s kinks in hopes to explore myself and my own predilections about things like grammar, storytelling, perspective, etc., just… get in the way and ruin everything. It could be deemed the hottest thing ever: if it has second-person perspective or utilizes Y/N, no. I wish I could just relax and read some smut, but I can’t. I have too high of standards and preferences and expectations: my boundaries ruin everything. They leave me isolated. I feel like such a… a… a tight-ass.

What are some sexual experiences that you’re curious about?

Just a positive experience. I just want to think about sexuality in a good light.

How can you ensure that your sexual experiences align with your values and beliefs?

I read this one and I just started crying. I don’t know my values, or my beliefs—or at least I think I do but I don’t feel good about them. If anything, I’m kind of ashamed of them. I’m probably more ashamed of them than my kinks.

(I quite literally just asked myself, “is there anything I’m not ashamed of?” And the answer is… no. If I’m not ashamed, I have complex feelings)

What do you love about your body?

I can’t say I love anything about it.

What thoughts or beliefs do you have about your body that hold you back from feeling confident?

I have never really been built up in terms of my body, and the last person who was willing to do something close to that for me turned out to be a complete bitch. I would be told things like I’m beautiful or pretty but it always felt so throwaway—or the person who said it would turn around and trash me in some way, like it didn’t mean anything.

My boobs are too big. I don’t have a nice butt. I’m prone to weight gain. Even thin, I’m still too fat. I straightened my hair once and it lasted an hour. Even when I was thin, I thought my belly was too round. No one likes olive skin with brown eyes, Madonna eyebrows, and high Nordic features.

“I’m going to look ridiculous in this.”

What positive feedback have you received about your body in the past, and how can you draw strength from it?

I do remember the bridesmaid dress I wore to my brother’s wedding at sixteen. No one would shut up about it and it eventually made me really uncomfortable. It was this hot pink satin dress with a bejeweled belt and a black bolero (it took place in a church): no one would shut up about it when that day wasn’t about me. How does one draw strength from that, from being put on the spot and made star of the show when the show wasn’t about me? I was especially humiliated by the fact that I was the biggest of the three bridesmaids at a size 14: the other two were sizes 2 and 4 respectively.

I also remember going bra shopping about 5 years ago (which reminds me I need new bras) and the saleswoman telling me this one black bra looked really good on me and my at-the-time 40DDDs. Considering I hate my boobs, I’m still not sure how to feel about that.

When I was in high school, people would play with my hair and always without warning and without asking me, and it eventually got my nerves. Ever since then I have a major hang-up about people even so much as complimenting my hair.

Since I started losing weight, I get told that I look good… but I never know how to react to it (and if anything, I want to cover up). What’s worse is I don’t know if this is normal or not: it’s so confusing. It makes me uncomfortable, actually, like… don’t look at me.

What negative feedback or comments have you received about your body in the past, and how can you work towards letting go of them?

I have never been made to feel desirable. If there was anything positive, I literally don’t remember it, or I don’t remember it in a good way, though.

What activities do you enjoy doing that make you feel good about your body?

I lift weights, I do calisthenics and cardio, I stretch, I go for a walk twice a day with my dog and once a week i do that mile, I like to go bike riding, I like rowing and doing yoga and martial arts like tai chi and Krav Maga. I also do boxing. I like to sleep. I move around the kitchen a lot on my baking days.

What physical features do you find attractive in others, and how can you apply those standards towards yourself?

I have a thing for bellies, like… it’s a kink. I like when (especially) metal boys wear shirts that are a bit too small and they show off their tummies. I always feel… something whenever anyone bares their midriff, mainly because I was forbidden from doing that growing up.

I have a hair and leg kink, too. Long beautiful hair, preferably curly, and long shapely legs. My hair has been growing since the year 2000, but my legs have never been seen as attractive by anyone else: I would have a little bit of stubble on my lower legs and it would be met with sneers of disgust. Everyone I meet will say something about my hair and I actually don’t like it, simply because I hear it all the time—it gets exhausting. But I don’t have the gumption to rid of my hair, though.

I have such a complicated relationship with compliments. They make me uncomfortable, and I never know how to react to them aside from a simple thanks. I feel like I should do more than that.

How do you feel when seeing images of people with different body types and sizes?

Nothing. I just see people.

What is one thing you can do to show your body appreciation and love?

Lie down and sleep. Shower. Exercise. Give it fresh food and clean water. I touch myself. Lose a whopping 80 pounds.

What are some compliments you can give yourself about your body every day?

I don’t think about paying compliments to myself.

What negative self-talk can you acknowledge and work towards replacing with positive affirmations about your body?

I don’t really talk about myself in a negative manner by that same token.

What body parts do you feel most self-conscious about, and how can you start to appreciate them more?

My face, believe it or not: round face with a sharp brow, small features, and a large cranium. I like to wear hats: thing is, you know that tag on some hats that says “one size fits most”? Nine times out of ten, I’m not most. I don’t like wearing makeup because it always feels like it “sits” on my skin (cue girls telling me “there are buff tones! there are natural ones!” even though I wasn’t asking for advice). I hate the pressure to wear makeup if you identify as female, too.

I don’t like my boobs, like… I am so wounded here. When the green druidess was in the picture and she wrote anything erotic, her character Lizzy always had ~pale pink nipples~ and ~pale milky breasts~ and of course, everyone went apeshit over them. Mine? Dark nipples, almost like that of a black woman, and my skin, while pale there, is more olive. I always wonder what is even the point of representation. And people would make fun of them all the time when I was growing up. I remember hearing the whispers, the giggles, the random question if they were real (yeah, a teenage girl getting free school lunches because her parents are working class and has to walk home because she lives within the two-mile range otherwise she’d take the bus can afford implants).

I don’t like my hips because they don’t seem full enough. The other day I was taking some measurements… since I started losing weight last summer, I have lost a whopping 23 inches off my waist, 10 inches off my chest, and 13 inches off my hips. I’m an hourglass shape as my hips and my chest are both 44” as of writing, but the tape measure tells a different story on my waist, which rings in at 37”. I feel I could probably lose another twenty, thirty pounds and I still wouldn’t be that figure.

I don’t like my feet because they’re just funny-looking: long and thin and boney and with long toes, the first two of which are longer than my big one. I never liked wearing sandals out in public or painting my toenails for this reason.

And I don’t like my ass because I see other women with these smooth, toned yoga butts like perfect watermelons and mine just… isn’t. I got these weird dips on the sides so it looks like I’ve been keeping it clamped tight for some time.

I don’t like my lips, either (and by that, I mean the ones on my mouth; the ones below the equator, I have no opinion on). Everyone has full lips. I don’t.

And I love how the things I hate about myself physically are the usual erogenous zones for other people. Are we at all surprised that arousal is as fleeting as it is for me. I have too much pain in these places to even see them as vaguely sexy.

I’m hairy—I always have been, too. My mom says when I was born, I was covered in fine dark hair, like that of a monkey. It’s really dark hair, too: dark hair to contrast with my pale olive-toned skin. I’ll never forget hearing a classmate tell me that my arms are gross because of the hair (and yes, I made the mistake of shaving my arms, too: to this day, I still get ingrown hairs).

To make matters more complicated: I don’t hide my face, and I actually really like wearing low cut tops and snug jeans.

What societal beauty standards have you been conditioned to believe in, and how can you challenge and redefine them for yourself?

I should always be girly. I should always wear makeup. I shouldn’t have hair anywhere on my body other than my head. I shouldn’t have stretch marks and if I do (and though they’re faded now, you don’t walk away from obesity without them), I’m required to show them off. Representation matters but it also doesn’t because if it does, people would be open to the vast variety of shapes and sizes and shit like this wouldn’t reign supreme in all the land.

Challenging any of this feels like trying to scour Mount Everest.

What clothing or outfits make you feel confident in your body, and why?

I like wearing camisoles under my sweater and with no pants: something about being in my underwear while wrapped up in my sweater.

Conversely, I like wearing nothing more than a bra with my pants: I heard from a young age that girls aren’t supposed to walk around topless and it’s just the rebellious young girl in me coming out.

My Alex Skolnick trio shirt: I only wear it to bed. It’s like the one place I get to have Alex all to myself.

What physical sensations do you experience when you feel good about your body?

I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.

I’ll tell you what I feel when I don’t feel good: a heavy dead weight in my chest, a pain in my back, a sickly feeling in my stomach, and depending on the severity, a headache.

What role has media played in shaping your body image, and how can you filter and consume media that promotes inclusivity and diversity?

It’s like all media is trying to be inclusive and diverse now, such that it’s starting to feel hollow and selective. There’s not a lot of full-figured brunette women with pale olive skin running around, unless they’re Jewish or Israeli, and we all know how we feel about Israel…

What does gender mean to you?

A social construct that has brought me an inordinate amount of misunderstandings, side glances, bullying, isolation, depression, angst, criticism, hate, weird questions like “why won’t you dress like this?”, laughter, (no exaggeration) cutting, and most recently, plagiarism and condescension. I hate what the concept of gender has done to me, so I actually don’t think about this at all.

I read around about this one this time around and let me just say that I hate how this is forced on us. I hate how people badger other people about this, and conversely, I hate how there’s a whole horde of people who are so wishy-washy about this. I don’t want to think about it but I also do because I feel it’s important somehow.

How do you define your gender identity?

I’m female but I have a very masculine personality (I get mistaken for a guy all the time). I guess this could count as mere nonconformist but I can’t say for certain. For a time, I thought I was any of the following: demigirl, two-spirit, genderless/agender, nonbinary, genderqueer, gender-fluid, and for about five seconds, transgender.

Surprised I haven’t suffered a stroke trying to figure this shit out and put it into words.

When my mom was in the hospital and I was by myself, I was hanging up my laundry and I had to stop and compare it to my mom’s wardrobe: she has lots of bright pink and light stuff where my clothes are heavy on the black and the bold tones like bright red and dark purple. My mom always tries to get me to dress modestly and… I really don’t like it (I’m just glad I’m not so heavy anymore because I don’t know what it is with clothing designers and thinking anyone over a size 18 likes fucking gaudy-ass clothes). I love pinup style so I always want an influence there. People tell me I would look better if my wardrobe is all dresses but I prefer pants and the unisex look. I have one dress and I have only worn it twice.

What societal messages have influenced your understanding of gender?

It should be rigid and in place with zero wiggle room for experimentation. Tomboys are only that way because they’re insecure and have lost touch with their femininity and the day they all adhere to that strict femininity is the day society heals. We have a whole generation that’s all like “gender is stupid and pointless” among us to boot, and if anything, it’s only added to my pain. I don’t know what to make of the female gender, if I’m perfectly honest. I see women say shit like “be whatever you want” but then they dote right into female stereotypes like wearing makeup. I feel like a lame excuse of a woman, and while we’re here, I don’t feel like a man, either.

To be completely honest, I actually don’t want to feel like anything. I’m so tired.

What is your sexual orientation?

Pansexual… I guess? I have ruminated over this more times than I ever would have liked. Along with my fucking gender, I have thought I was asexual, bi, lesbian, bi again, graysexual, bi again, demisexual, asexual again, bi-curious, merely queer, bi again, and then I landed on pansexual at some point and decided I had enough because I was going to check myself into a psych ward, it was ruining my mental health which has enough scars on it as is.

When did you first realize your sexual orientation?

I was really young, I know that much. Just the way that I dressed, in shorts and shirts in the summer, in little sweaters and flannel dresses and pants in the winter, should tip off that my gender is not set in stone. The fact I hung out with boys and kissed my best friend starting from elementary school should tip you off. The problem was I didn’t believe I could be queer when I got older because it was seen as unacceptable. And it’s especially sad because I know I’m widely disliked.

In what ways has your sexuality been affected by your cultural background?

Imagine growing up hearing your family say that you’re white and Irish, but you look in the mirror and you see dark hair and dark eyes in junction with pale olive-tinged skin like you came from the Mediterranean. Imagine being told you’re a white girl but you have nipples and lower lips as dark as night. Imagine thinking you’re different sexually but knowing what happened to your cousin Harmony when you were a baby. Cue the confusion.

What stereotypes about gender and sexuality do you struggle with?

All of them, but especially the one pertaining to the fact that because I’m female, I should be submissive and romantically-minded at all times and if I’m not hanging off a man’s arm, I’m nothing. I don’t consider myself the least bit romantic or sexual, and I feel like I’m missing something saying that.

And I’m sorry, I grew up poor, in rural areas and I currently live on a mountain. I got my knees scraped. We had/still have to set aside whole days just to go into town. I can’t really afford to be prissy in a rustic, farmlike setting. To be a girly girl is to spend a shitload of money I don’t have. I eat my pie. I tend to my cacti, flowers, and blackberries. I write the shittiest erotic fanfic you’ve ever seen and then walk my dog. When my mom was in the hospital and I was by myself for three days, I would fantasize about going anywhere and everywhere once I get my license.

What does consent mean to you?

It’s like oxygen, especially when it comes to my hair. I hear so much about consent but no one ever actually elaborates on it, like what it encapsulates (yes, just assume that everyone over the age of 18 is sexually active and is no longer a virgin 🤦🏻‍♀️): I actually have to look up what it looks like because no one will tell me and I feel dumb for it, too. I feel behind because I feel like I should just know this.

What are your personal sexual boundaries?

You have to be willing to take a bullet for me if we’re going to get completely naked (and with my pathetic history, good luck with that). That’s right: the clothes stay on. Or at least one article goes off like my pants.

What role does communication play in your sexual relationships?

I don’t have any sexual relationships so I can’t say (no pun intended). I guess it could be important, especially since half of consent is verbal?

How do you approach contraception and safe sex practices?

I’ve never had sex with someone so i don’t know about either of these. I’m honestly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of contraceptives out there, too: I always hear “pick what’s right for you” but I’m wanting to lay down on the floor and bawl from the utter overload before me. I will say that with the new history of blood clots and bleeding disorders in my family, should I ever be so gosh-darn lucky to become sexually active, the range is very limited. I either have the choice of those copper devices or non hormonal pills, both of which come with a host of side effects, like intense pain and organ perforation with IUDs (great 🙃; especially when I remember gastrointestinal problems run in the family, too) or an increased chance of toxic shock syndrome or UTIs with non-hormonal pills. The other thing is I’m not into penetrative sex, either—I mean, look at the sheer laundry list of kinks that I have!!

And you know what? I’ll just say it. There’s too much to choose from. It’s like shopping for pads: there’s too much to choose from.

What does sex positivity mean to you?

It’s two-faced bullshit, especially now. No, really. You would think that being open minded to yourself and other people’s schlock no matter who they are would bring everyone together but when you have someone like me or they’re of particularly reviled backgrounds, all of a sudden, you hear a door slamming on some faces.

It’s so fucking hypocritical: I don’t know what it is about people who claim to be sex positive and inclusive, but they’re not inclusive. I just try to picture myself where I’m talking to some others and all of a sudden, the conversation changes over to sex lives, and I can’t see myself being comfortable. I have a boring history. I also don’t think anyone would be willing to know avalanche of kinks behind this face.

There doesn’t seem to be room for Jewish people especially—I’m not Jewish per se, but I wouldn’t be safe in a so-called “safe place” that doesn’t include literally everyone and makes my Israelite neighbors uncomfortable with the way they scream nonstop about Palestine. And since antisemitism is in the stratosphere right now, you can imagine how I feel looking at so-called “positive spaces” now even as a gentile. I don’t believe it for a second.

I guess it could be taken on a case by case basis? But I have yet to come across someone who claimed to be sex positive that I didn’t want to punch in the face. I wish I could be sex positive, like truly sex positive, just to be better than them.

What is your stance on sex education?

It needs to be thorough, like it needs to delve into topics like kink and boundaries and consent. Abstinence-only and “insert penis into vagina, use protection because s.t.d.s and pregnancy, the end” are fucking useless on their own. You not only don’t learn anything from that but it gives you a painfully distorted view of it, at least that’s how it is for me.

What societal changes would you like to see regarding gender and sexuality?

All of them.

How can you support and advocate for the LGBTQ+ community?

The community has turned away and left me to die, even as I’m one of them. Even if I identify as a member myself.

I have a Matthew Shepard memorial bracelet (it’s a black bracelet with a silver plaque reading “erase hate”) but I get no questions about it, like who he was, what happened to him, or what the bracelet stands for. And like I said, this community is well past the point of parody now, and I hate to say it but I find it genuinely hard to support them now, especially when they don’t support each other. Moreover, I will never forgive these people for being anti-Israel, anti-the most lgbtq+-friendly country in the Middle East (if not, the world). I will never forgive someone like Amanda Palmer for being pro-AI art. It’s becoming so hard to even look at now. “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

#journal #journaling #personal #sexuality #text #gender

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bored-storyteller · 3 years ago

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Hey! I really like how you write about Sally Face, I love how you highlight his kindness but also his strength. It struck me a lot how he wonders if anyone will ever love him, I guess it's hard for him to believe in someone's love for him, from a romantic point of view. I thought ... could you write something about a reader in love with him, who gets rejected for that reason but still loves him until Sal dies? You don't have to do it (also because you prefer angst / comfort right?), But I try to ask you ... I'd like to see it written by you. It will hurt but it will be worth it.

Dear Anon,

I hope you like this because I suffered the pain of hell writing this :3

But jokes aside, I hope it does justice to your expectations, I hope I have treated everything with the right delicacy.

Warning: ANGST and SPOILER (I say this for safety)

The story is set in the canonical plot, even if there may be slight differences (after all there is always one more character, you). But for those who haven't played Sally Face this could be revealing.

77- Sally Face, Sal Fisher x reader (Angst)

“The sunflower that cannot bloom “

"I love you."

Those words had slipped off your lips with one of the most beautiful smiles Sal had ever seen.

You weren't perfect, but you were tailor-made for him. Somehow, he had thought that from the first day he met you, by mistake, on a black day. You had offered him a sunflower, a huge yellow flower that shone like the sun in the midst of his misfortunes, and his black day had grown better.

This was you, what he needed when the weight was too much to carry, when he found himself snorting one too many times, when he felt like crying.

Still, even though you were tailor-made for him, he wasn't tailor-made for you.

He would have liked to believe you, with all his heart, he would have asked for nothing more than to be loved by you.

But he couldn't believe it.

"No, you don't ..." His voice was gentle, as if he were explaining something important to a little child.

Your brows had furrowed as you pointed your gaze into the depths of his soul.

"You do not believe me?" Your tone wandered between uncertainty and offense "Do you think I'm lying to you?"

A sigh rang through the empty hollows of his mask: “No, you're not lying to me. I just think you… don't really know what you're saying. "

Your expression deepened as you prepared to argue back. He had seen the wound open inside you and he had looked away; he couldn't watch you while he hurt you.

Oh, he was so good at making himself loved. The river of emotions that had overwhelmed you had died out as soon as his one living eye was separated from you.

Disappointment, anger, sadness had disappeared in favor of affection for him.

His mask was flat, helpless, cold towards his heart, yet he communicated more than anyone else with that immense little soul of him.

"Sal ..." finally you called him gently, reassuring, while your fingers lovingly brushed the cheek of the cold prosthesis.

"I love you." You repeated it, and he turned to tell you to stop. He couldn't be loved, he didn't feel capable of being loved.

He would never have a love like that of movies, or even like that of normal people, like Maple and Chug. He, as he was, could never have been loved, not even by you.

He was going to tell you, to tell you everything, but you stopped him softly: "but it's okay if you don't want to."

You barely laughed, as if everything was really okay with you, and you leaned on his shoulder, cuddling against his neck.

"I have my whole life to make you understand." You said cheerfully, and he just looked at you, accepting that little stubbornness of yours.

Even though he was aware that one day he would see you happy in the arms of someone you really would love, for the time being it was okay for him to bask in that little illusion you were giving him.

---

Life had been cruel.

"I had no choice."

Those words had pierced your brain.

The first time he had told you with a force that you almost confused with anger. His body had never been so rigid in front of you, motionless, sitting on the other side of the table in the visiting room of the prison, surrounded by other inmates like him.

You wondered if you were sane, because you looked into the eyes of a murderer, a killer who had exterminated families, who had even killed a little girl, yet your tears were for them, but also for him.

Whatever it was, Sal hadn't changed, and behind his mask he was more broken into pieces than you were. He hadn't had a choice, for some reason he hadn't had a choice.

It was weird and unreal, but you had no doubts about him, even though your mind still couldn't believe what happened, and Sal probably didn't really realize it either.

However, the second time he told you "I had no choice" his voice was different. He was different, and so were you. You had grown up, but both of you had stood still in what had happened. At that moment he was telling you so that you believed him, so that you knew it was not what he wanted, because if he could have chosen at that moment you would have been together in front of a pizza, telling you how boring the day had been.

"I beg you ..." You whispered so as not to let him hear how broken your voice was "... tell me what I have to do to save you."

It was the first time you used that word, out of pure desperation.

For a moment he hesitated and hoped you wouldn't see his uncertainty behind the mask. Finally, Sal shook his head in silence; he didn't know if it would do any good, but at least he would try to protect you.

Your hand was holding his for the first time in years, and you both knew it would be the last time you would hold it. You had done everything to be able to have that last contact, to still be able to hold him before they took him away from you forever.

You didn't want to cry, you wouldn't have done it on your last time together, but your heart was so heavy that you thought you would die as soon as you separated.

While you massaged the back of his hand with your thumb, you tried to record every detail in your mind that belonged to him, to burn the heat of his palm against yours, to remember the exact weight of his touch.

I love you, you wanted to tell him, you never stopped doing it, not a second you stopped giving him your best side, and you would have given it only to him also in the future.

"You are so important to me, Sal ..." your blue sky under which sunflowers bloom.

"Thank you ... for always being with me."

Part of you died when you let go of his hand that day.

---

Until the last you hoped that something would happen. A ghost that suddenly appears, an angel, a new discovery ... anything, as long as he was kept away from that electric chair.

When your phone rang, you were deluded for a moment.

"Hey…"

"Sal?"

"They ... allowed me to call whoever I wanted ..."

Your heart fell on hearing his voice. It was his last day, his last day in your own world, that was his farewell to you.

"Sal, I-" Your words broke into a sob you couldn't hold back "I'm with you, I'll always be with you."

Silence invaded the line between the two of you as you tried not to give him your tears as your last caress.

"I know it." He was holding back the crying, you could hear it "And I'll always be with you too, know that."

You were tailor-made for him, and his heart would remain for you, even if you moved on, you would love someone worthy sooner or later, or at least he hoped you would, that the demon would not devour your future. .

"Bring me some sunflowers if you can ... ok?" That request trembled "They always make me think of you."

You forced yourself to cover your mouth with your palm to stifle your agony: "I'll fill you with sunflowers."

Something told you that even if you couldn't see him, he was trying to smile: "It's a bit a cliché but ... be happy."

You would have preferred to have died in that very moment.

"Sal, wait!" You begged for him now, holding on to the phone like it was him, like you could hold him there.

He hesitated at the desperation of your voice.

"I can't ..." his voice was soft, light, like when he consoled you years ago, when all this seemed simply impossible.

“I beg you…” You didn't know who you were really praying for, but you weren't ready to hear his voice go out.

One more minute, one more touch, a hug.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry you had to put up with this." A sob from him too. “Please… fight for your happiness, okay? You deserve all the happiness in the world. "

"Sal ..."

The answer that followed was the only intermittent sound of the blank phone line.

It's over, you'll never be able to hear Sal's voice again. You won't be able to talk to him anymore.

And he never believed you loved him.

---

How could you ever be happy?

His mask still looks at you as it always did, but behind the empty gaze there are nothing but blades of grass growing above his burial.

How could they bury him without his mask? He will feel uncomfortable.

Now you don't have to be strong for him anymore, you can collapse, break, destroy yourself, scream like you've never screamed, ask him to come back, because you need him.

Your fingers caress the cold, hard cheeks of his prosthesis as they always did, as if he were still behind it. Next to it, the sunflower he asked you for, like the one you gave him the first time you saw him.

"I love you Sally face ..." your words now go to the wind, they cannot be refused.

"I really love you."

---

Where you don't know, where you are not, a guy who has the weight of the world on his shoulders thinks about how much he could never be loved as people love each other in movies, or how people love each other in the world. But suddenly, like a ray of light, in the darkness he is facing, the yellow of a sunflower blooms. It's just a thought, but for a moment it's warm, and sweet, and it carries your voice with it.

You exist only within him, but you give him the love he needs, the one he didn't believe in, but which instead exists.

It is a tormented love, which suffers, but still welcomes him and wraps him as your arms did.

You are not there, you are far away, unreachable.

But he feels it, you're still there with him

#sally face #sally face x reader #sal fisher x reader #sal fisher #sally face sal #angst #death of a character #spoiler alert #gaming #horror

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aimfor-theheart · 4 years ago

Text

COIN TOSS– PART II

(18+ MINORS DNI)

PART I

PAIRINGS: Tomura Shigaraki x Reader, a little Shouta Aizawa x Reader

SUMMARY: As you fall asleep, you wonder faintly, almost sadly, if you’re the first thing he’s fully touched without losing in a long time.

You are Eraserhead’s troubled protege with a Quirk that cancels out others the moment they touch you. Tomura Shigaraki takes great interest in you.

(Enemies to lovers, a lot of angst, some hurt/comfort)

WARNINGS: Unhealthy/complicated relationships, age gap/power struggle, violence, gore, Tomura’s trauma specifically, (in later chapters) murder, heroes’ abuse of power, smut, some blurred lines, rough sex, a smidge of a spit kink, a smidge of somnophilia (let me know if I’ve missed anything!)

If you are under the age of 18, you should not be reading or interacting with this!

A/N: again, thank you @randomrosewrites for beta-ing!! and thank you guys for the support and comments on the first part! here is your part two!! it's tomura heavy, but for those who love shouta, there's a lot of him in the final part! i hope you enjoy! let me know what you thought!

i also am obsessed with making playlists for when i write and i spend far too much time organizing it all and making sure the songs blend together so if you'd like to take a look at the playlist i made for this fic, it's here!

Read on Ao3

***

Shouta, like the responsible adult he is, soothes things out with you. Well, it doesn’t feel very soothed to you, but Shouta’s made his position clear and you’ve both returned to some semblance of normalcy.

He keeps his distance.

You try not to overstep, but you’re aching and furious.

(You’re holding a secret, too, letting it tear apart your insides, letting it turn circles in your mind until all you can think about is the chill of rain, the bite of a desperate kiss).

You hate that Shouta has retreated from you now. You hate that he’ll stop his hand before reaching out to touch you, like he always has to make sure, like he has to decide if that will be good for you. If you can handle it.

You feel shockingly alone.

You lash out at him more, bicker and argue over things you never used to. You don’t even know why you do it, can’t stop yourself from trying to dig into him. You regret it every time when all he gives you is impassiveness, levelheaded coolness. An adult speaking with an unruly child. He’s good at that, unfortunately.

Some days you want to beg him for answers. Why can’t you love me the way I love you? Is it me? How would you have me? If I was older? I can be more mature, I can be better and better and better–

His undercover work grows greater, draws him away from both you and Shinsou more. Shouta seems to ghost around your life now, drawn away from you, keeping a very careful space between you both.

But there are nights where he tells you to train with Shinsou alone now. You feel responsible. Mature. You glow with pride that he can trust you with one of his students, that you could be a mentor to Shinsou, too.

You grow closer to Shinsou because of this, too, when it’s just the two of you in the gym.

There is one evening in particular, when you’re both sprawled out on the floor taking a too-long water break because Shouta isn’t around when he admits that he used to be– still is sometimes– feared for his Quirk.

He tells you everyone expected him to be a villain.

“I used to be a thief,” you admit, “I was a petty villain, I guess.”

Shinsou looks at you and if he’s surprised, he doesn’t entirely show it, except for the lifting of his brows. You don’t sense judgement from him, though, when he asks, “Really?”

You take another swig of water, humming in affirmation. You swallow, “I was homeless, had no money, nothing. I was stealing from a supermarket when Shouta caught me.”

“You were just trying to survive,” Shinsou adds, like he’s trying to justify the crime, like it soothes him to know there was a good reason for a misdeed.

“Sure,” you reply, fiddling with your water bottle, “But I stole things I didn’t need, too. Just things I wanted.”

“But you’ve changed,” Shinsou says and you can’t tell if he’s trying to reassure himself or you more. “You’re a hero now.”

“Only because my circumstances changed. I was given a roof over my head, food to fill me. Clothes of my own that fit and weren’t torn. I was accepted.” You explain, “If it hadn’t been for Shouta, I would never have become a hero.”

Shinsou is silent, watching you.

“I’d probably be in jail. Or still a thief, in the least, if any other hero would’ve caught me.”

You don’t know why, but you think of Shigaraki suddenly. You think of how young some of the League of Villains are. You wonder if it had been them who offered you food and a home, if you’d be with them now, and not here, sitting on the floor of a nice, sparkling gym attached to U.A.’s dorms.

Something strange grows inside you, something a little bitter. It simmers with sympathy for them, for their lives. For kids like Shinsou with their villainous quirks. You wonder if he’d been poor, if he’d been alone, would he be here, too? Or somewhere else?

“But you were good before,” he says, and it almost feels naive, “I know you’re good.”

You shrug, “Good is relative, you know? I thought I was good because I didn’t kill people, I didn’t steal from other poor people, but society didn’t think I was good. I was still a thief.”

“But you were only a thief because you needed to survive.” he says again, “When given the chance, you changed and became a hero.”

“Exactly.” you say, “How many villains do you think just needed a chance?”

Shinsou goes silent now. His brows furrow in thought, pinching together in a way that makes him look a little too old for his age. You think all of the kids at U.A. grow up too quickly, all of them with too much on their small shoulders.

They’re only kids.

You’re barely older.

Shigaraki is barely older than you.

You push him out of your mind, toss your water bottle aside, and rise to your feet again. “C’mon,” you offer Shinsou your hand to help him up, too, “Shouta would kill me to know I let you lay around so much.”

This seems to pull him from his thoughts and he snorts, taking your hand.

You pull him up. And you both stare at each other a moment. You think he looks at you in a different light now and it isn’t bad, no, he seems to be pondering you more.

(And you’ll realize later that he’s become more sympathetic, that he sees you in villains now, reminds himself they’re people, too, with lives and needs and wants–)

It gives you a strange hope, as you begin to train with him again, to know that he’s the future of hero society.

***

Tomura spots you while he’s out stealing with Toga. Usually it’s Twice or Magne with her, but Twice was onto something else and Toga had decided to latch herself onto him for the day. He’s grown to tolerate her.

Besides, she’d managed to steal him a jean jacket, dark, rough, and worn with holes but it keeps him warmer while still being able to keep the hood of his sweatshirt up to hide himself. To blend in. She’d stolen herself something, too, as the weather begins to get colder and they still don’t have a base, wandering aimlessly.

(He feels stupidly responsible for them. But he’s learned good leaders are, in some way, responsible for their people. They don’t have to care in any way that is emotional, but they have to care in some way, make the group feel important to them. And begrudgingly, they are important to him–)

You’re with a boy around Toga’s age. Wild violet hair. You’re laughing at something he’s saying and you’re sharing street food, he thinks, something that’s warm, steaming up into the air.

He feels a vicious surge of jealousy for a moment. It’s so sharp and jarring that he reaches up to scratch at his neck, tearing into his skin.

But the boy looks too young and you tousle his hair like he’s a younger brother, not someone romantic. While there’s familiarity between you two, it’s not overly intimate.

Toga, unfortunately, follows his line of sight.

She looks between him and you. She tilts her head and Tomura can practically see the gears turning in her strange little mind.

“Do you know them?” she asks, almost innocently.

He doesn’t know why, but he says, “Just her.”

Toga looks back at you. She watches as you talk with the boy– the sun through the autumn leaves cast you in tangerine light, all golden and warm.

When she looks back at Tomura, a smile creeps onto her face. One that he knows is going to give him a migraine.

“She’s so pretty,” she trills, eyeing him too closely.

Tomura scratches at his neck again, harder, wincing a little when he feels a cut reopen.

“Do you have a crush, Tomura?” Toga sings, dancing in front of him to force herself into his line of sight.

“No,” Tomura snaps, bristling, which only seems to encourage her.

“Let’s say hi!” she says, about to bound off and Tomura catches her by the scruff of her jacket like a kitten. He’s wearing his partial gloves, but he still keeps a finger away from her.

“No,” he hisses, firmer now, pulling her back towards him. “They’re heroes. Don’t get distracted.”

Toga twists in his hold, wide-eyed for a moment, before her face settles into another enormous and excited smile. “You’re in love with a hero, too?!”

Tomura grits his teeth, snarling out, “I’m not in love with anyone.” He shakes her then and she yelps a little, “Now focus. We need food and I don’t want to deal with them.”

Toga finally squirms her way out of his hold, pouting at him, “You’re no fun.” she whines and all he does is shoulder past her. He stalks ahead, trying not to look at you again, if only to not draw your eye.

“Do you want to starve?” he asks waspishly, glancing at Toga over his shoulder.

She huffs, rolling her eyes, before hustling to catch up to him. She hums a strange little tune the rest of the time, knocking into his side, throwing him new looks as if to suggest they share some sort of commonality or secret. He grits his teeth but suffers through her torment.

When they return to the rest of the League with what they’d stolen, Toga announces to the whole group, “Tomura is in love with a hero, too!”

The migraine that had begun earlier in his temples reaches full force now. He doesn’t bother trying to deny it. He decides he doesn’t care.

Dabi’s laugh grates on him, though, “Is that so? Which little hero?” he asks Toga, and just as she’s skipping past him, he snags her, snatching the granola bar she’d had in her hand from their little raid.

She turns to grab it back and he pulls it out of her reach, “I don’t know! Give that back!” she squawks, clawing at him.

She must really dig at him because Dabi hisses, “You little twerp–” Just before Magne snatches the outstretched granola bar from Dabi’s hand. She hands it back to Toga, who quickly rushes off with it now.

And thankfully, for Tomura’s sanity, you’re not brought up again.

But he hadn’t noticed you– hadn’t noticed the way you’d seen him with Toga, too. Just a girl Shinsou’s age, following after him like an eager puppy.

Shinsou had trailed beside you like that, too, when you’d both walked back to U.A. with full bellies and new coffees in hand, warm and content.

***

There is a night where Shouta is out doing work undercover and you’re left to patrol on your own. You can’t take Shinsou yet, since he hasn’t earned his provisional license. You don’t mind these nights, by yourself, when you stick to shadows and rooftops, watching the city from above.

It’s cooler now and you tuck your face into the high collar of your hero uniform to hide from the wind that brushes past.

It’s been a quiet night so far. There are other, flashier heroes patrolling, too, meandering around the sidewalks to deter petty crime.

You check the time on your phone, noting that you have a little less than an hour until your shift is over, until you can go home and take a hot shower in an attempt to warm yourself up– especially your fingers, the tips of your ears.

You stretch, standing on one of the low roofs of a building. You’re stiff from crouching, so you decide to move around, change position. You use a grappling tool to shoot it onto a higher roof of the next building. You scale the bricks easily and once safely up, retract your grappling hook.

You look out over the quiet city, the golden light of lampposts, the meandering of cars through the streets. Some restaurants and bars are still open, their windows look warm and inviting with the flush of people inside.

You waste most of the last hour of your shift trying to remain warm, keeping a careful eye on the world below.

Towards the end, you notice a familiar figure in one of the alleyways down below. You don’t even see his face, just the back of his hoodie, just the angle of his shoulders.

Just the way he walks.

The thought should frighten you– that you know him like this, that you’re familiar with just the movement of his body.

Shigaraki Tomura walks away from the soft light of the main city, slips away into alleyways and darkness. You glance at the time. Your shift is nearly over.

This counts as hero work, doesn’t it? Silently following after him?

You drop down onto a fire escape– leap off to latch onto a lower window sill, until you’re dropping silently on to the ground a distance away from him.

You are careful to keep away from him, to use everything Shouta taught you about stealth to remain hidden. And you know Shigaraki is observant, you know he’s always looking over his shoulder so you have to stick to hidden places– behind dumpsters, ducking into alcoves of buildings.

He heads back to the part of the city you grew up in, where everything is falling apart, where there are plenty of abandoned buildings for hiding, plenty of places for runaway teens and homeless to sleep. The cheapest apartments, the streets that are the least patrolled by heroes and police alike, where parts of the Yakuza groups are bolder.

These streets are familiar to you. It’s a strange trip down memory lane.

You think of the last time you saw Shigaraki and flush darkly– it was around here, too, what happened that night.

Still, you follow him because you think you still have some upper hand. Maybe he’ll lead you to the rest of the League of Villains. For a heartbeat, you wonder if you’ll tell Shouta, if you’ll tell the Hero Commissions– you’d have to, right? That isn’t some little squirmish. That’s important information.

But he doesn’t lead you to the rest of the League.

He leads you to an apartment building, small and falling apart on the outside. A window is boarded up poorly. There are stray cats that linger around the side, where the trash is. You’re sure there are rats and bugs, too. You’re sure the building is one bad day away from falling apart.

Shigaraki pauses by the door that is nearly falling off its hinges.

He glances over his shoulder, “Are you following me in, too?”

Your heart kicks up, hammering against the inside of your chest. You swallow hard, internally cursing.

For all your effort of stealth, he still noticed you?

Well, there’s no use lying about it now.

You step around the corner you’d been hiding behind, moving towards the glow of a street light that flickers in and out of power to reveal yourself fully to him.

“When did you notice me?” you ask, peering at him, at the shape of him in the dark.

You catch the lifting of his scar when he smiles, just a baring of teeth, “I saw you on the roof.”

Damn, you curse again, you’ll have to work on that, “That bad, huh?”

He shrugs gracelessly, lifting of his shoulders only for them to fall unevenly, “If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have known. You were silent otherwise.”

It feels like a compliment– a generous one, coming from him. You don’t know why you have to hold off a smile.

He turns back to the door, shouldering it open. He walks through the archway without another word. He leaves it open and it seems there is no light on the inside, just a blackness that swallows up your vision. He disappears inside.

You stand there, beneath the light that flickers in and out, eyeing the doorway. You could go now, run back home to Shouta, to the Hero Commission and tell them you think you know where he stays, you have a lead on him. You look behind you, glance at the alleyway you came from with it’s’ dull, fluorescent lights that splash against the concrete, that barely fight against the shadows.

You look back towards where Shigaraki had been, the entrance to the building.

You’d probably even get extra little hero points for it from the Commission.

Shouta would be proud of you.

For bringing them to this dilapidated, shabby little apartment complex that rests on the streets of the place you used to call home.

You swallow hard, flex your freezing fingers.

Then you step towards the doorway, peer inside carefully. You hold your breath and the door creaks quietly when you cross it’s threshold, into the darkness.

Tomura is mildly surprised when he hears the door creak behind him. He can feel you, even in the dark of this hallway, the tentative steps you take after him. They’re almost shy.

But you followed him, didn’t you?

You followed and followed and followed him– and of course you did, he thinks, you had kissed him back, hadn’t you?

He supposes you could be playing a part, trying to get close to him but his intuition tells him differently, not with the genuine reaction you’d had. Your sudden guilt for giving in to him. Still, he’ll be careful around you.

He’ll probably have to move again, which would be a shame, since he has already killed the tenant of this apartment– he’d been sure they wouldn’t be missed by anyone, made sure he’d have time. He did the work to get it, thought he’d have it for just long enough until the League made another move.

He almost wants to test you, see if you’re going to run and tattle on his location. He wonders how far you’re willing to follow him.

Tomura walks steadily down the hallway, to the apartment he has taken claim to. He unlocks the door, hands in his partial gloves, shoving it with his shoulder to then enter. He leaves it open for you.

The apartment is a studio, shabby and the heat isn’t amazing, but it has hot water and a lack of bugs in this particular room. It has furniture– a bed, specifically, was all he had cared about. There’s empty wrappers of food and cans of energy drinks on the counters because he doesn’t really bother to pick up after himself but otherwise, the space isn’t his. There’s nothing else of his, besides some spare clothes on the floor.

And still, you follow him here, too. But you stand at the doorway, peeking inside.

He glances at you and is reminded of a fox, something with clever eyes but wary, a little skittish– would bite if he got too close too soon.

So he gives you space, just like he let you leave.

If there’s one thing Tomura has learned, it’s patience. Any good plan takes patience. The reward is always sweeter. The longer and harder the level, the greater the wins.

He ignores you, puts even more distance between the two of you as he wanders further in. He flicks on lights. He takes off his shoes, shrugs off his jean jacket and throws it over the couch. He gives the appearance of carelessness, of letting his guard down. Non threatening.

And you take your fist shy step inside. The door behind you remains ajar, though, for escape.

Tomura has to fight a terrifying smile, fight the sudden twisting in his heart, the inhale of his breath.

“I don’t know how wise it was of you to bring a hero to your home.” you finally speak, cutting through the silence. You’re trying to be witty, but he can tell you’re nervous.

“This isn’t my home,” he answers.

Home, with it’s round and warm syllabus, is not what he thinks of this place.

You eye him some more, but before you can respond, he says, “I don’t know how wise it was of you to follow a villain into his home.”

“I thought it wasn’t your home,” you quip and he only gives you a dry look.

Your bravado is wavering, especially when the door clicks shut behind you, your hand finally falling to your side.

And the two of you are sealed away from the outside world.

“Why did you bring me here?” you ask him and your voice is deceptively quiet. Small.

“Why did you follow me?” he asks in return.

You inhale like you’re trying to steady yourself, “Because I’m supposed to.”

Tomura smiles now, something lazy, almost amused. He knows it’s a lie, can feel it slide along his skin, can see the floundering, desperate look in your eyes.

“Why did you follow me?” he asks again, forcing himself not to move, not to step towards you in his budding excitement. Patience, he tells himself, be patient.

“Why did you kiss me?” you ask instead and the question is raw, as if it’s plagued you, haunted you like an insistent ghost. Crept around in the back of your mind, growing teeth and fangs and spindly, lampshade bat wings large enough to terrify you.

The idea that he’s taken root in your mind in the same way you have infested his is near dizzying.

Tomura weighs his answers carefully. He’s silent for a long moment and it’s heavy, charged with something that he can’t name– has never felt before.

When he speaks, his voice is just a rasp of breath, a little more honest than he’d like, a touch annoyed with the truth, “Because I wanted to.”

Another long stretch of silence where you watch him carefully, where he can see your chest rising and falling too quickly. He can see that frightened look in the rounding of your eyes, the high flush in your cheeks.

And when you speak again, it’s hardly louder than a whisper, like it’s all you can manage,“Do you want to kiss me again?”

It is far too gentle of a question for what he wants– it almost feels innocent, juvenile. Out of place between the two of you. But he’ll take it, he’ll take whatever you give him and then some.

He takes a step towards you. You don’t flinch away so he takes another, then another, until he is standing in front of you. You’re close now– so close that he has to force air into his lungs. He reminds himself of patience, of waiting–

He could take whatever he wanted from you now, he supposes, but he doesn’t want to have to wrestle you for it. He wants it given freely, he wants you to kiss back, like you had before. He wants you to willingly submit and it’s taken longer but it’ll be sweeter, so much sweeter.

“Are you going to run away again?” he asks and he can feel his heart quicken, the squeezing of it awful and tight.

You look up at him in a way that reminds him of his dreams, the ones he pretends to hate, where you make those small, soft noises. Where you let him touch you and taste you and have you.

And you shake your head no, just fractionally, the barest hint of movement but it’s enough for him.

The force of his kiss slams you back against the door. You make a surprised noise against him as he crushes himself to you. It’s just as violent as the first, but this time you take back what he gives. You get your bearings quicker, like you’ve learned a lesson already. He grins into the kiss, opening it, when he feels your little hands clawing at his shoulders, at his back.

He groans when you part your lips for him, when you lick tentatively into his mouth. He possesses you, bears onto you, pinning you to the door as his hands, still gloved, curl around your sides, your hips.

Your hero costume is tight, fits the curves of you snugly and in a way that’s making him nearly insane. He isn’t careful, doesn’t care if he’s moving too fast now as his hands roam and grab and squeeze. There’s layers between you, he naturally keeps a finger lifted away.

One of your hands tightens in his hair, pulling when he bites your bottom lip.

But you don’t seem to mind, either, with the way your breath is hitching, with the way you’re trying to pull him closer, desperately fuse him to you.

Your lips are so soft, he notices, even with the forcefulness with which you’re kissing him back.

It feels surreal for a moment, like one of his dreams, when he parts from your mouth only to slot his lips against your jaw, your neck. A whine is loosened from you, which breaks when he sets teeth to the vulnerable line of your throat.

Your hands are in his hair still, body arching into him eagerly. Youthful in your earnestness.

You’re better than anything he could’ve ever imagined, so alive and rosy and warm beneath his hands, beneath his mouth, which is making a mess of your neck. A particular hard suck over the sensitive line of your pulse makes you pull at his hair.

“Don’t leave a mark,” you hush and he thinks you meant to sound more threatening, but it’s softened by the desperation in your voice.

He scoffs into your throat, dragging teeth roughly along your skin.

“Shigaraki–”

“Tomura.” he corrects without thinking, finally pulling away to look at you, which is almost a mistake because you–

You’re flushed, lips kiss stung and pink, all swollen. Your head is tipped back, exposing the column of your throat, hair mussed with being pressed to the door so roughly. Your eyes are hazy and fever pink with your Quirk activated, like spring flowers, glowing in the low light.

He thinks of paintings and colors and dreams, something like beauty, if he knew anything about that.

And he’s so hard it hurts, teeth grinding together as he looks at you because he can’t even fucking stomach this feeling.

Then you repeat his name for him, “Tomura.”

He’s never heard his name like that, bedroom soft, more of a lullaby and less of a tragedy. He feels like he’s going to shake apart, his body to become just old ruins– he feels as if it’ll collapse inwards, topple over to crush his heart.

Where he’s usually seething and livid and clawing ruthlessly, the festering feeling in his chest is replaced with a new energy; something bursting and squirming and warm. His Quirk lies dormant and docile inside of him with your hand in his hair, your other now at his neck, fingers pressing lightly at his jaw.

It’s terrifying, he realizes, to not feel his Quirk at the edges of his fingers.

(It’s freeing, too, he’ll come to find, to not feel it’s weight, it’s demand that had been encouraged and shaped in him.)

You’re both trying to catch your breaths, looking at each other now. His fingers, still gloved, flex and squeeze at your waist, like he’s scared you’ll run off again.

You inch forward instead, rock onto the tips of your toes to press your lips to his again– softer this time, but no less heated, no less desperate.

He thinks you must be starving, too, with the way you pull him close. His mouth slants over yours, demanding more, a little rougher.

You squirm against the door, the slightest rocking of your hips– he can feel it against his thigh, against his waist. It makes him hiss out a breath against your lips, makes him grab harder at your waist, force you to do it again, harder this time.

You whine and it’s the snapping of his patience.

He reaches for the zipper at the back of your hero uniform, gives it a rough tug, pulling it down some. And then you’re pushing at him, nudging him away from the door and it’s a flurry of movement as you yank at his hoodie while he pulls at your clothes. You’re both stumbling further into the room, towards the bed pushed back into the corner.

Tomura feels young suddenly– feels his age. He feels like a twenty something year old with a girl in his apartment who wants his hoodie off. Who's kissing him hard in between every article of clothing that manages to come off.

He sits back on the edge of the bed to ease the rest of your cat-suit down. He watches with interest as you wiggle your hips to help him get the fabric down over you– and it’s nothing romantic, he doesn’t kiss the newly revealed skin, he doesn’t gently run his fingertips over you, but you grow shy under his gaze.

You’re still in undergarments, athletic slips of fabric, but his eyes fly over your face. You’re nervous, he can nearly feel it, with the way you shift, with the way you catch your bottom lip between your teeth and worry it.

A thought strikes him.

“Have you done this before?” he rasps, hooking his hand in the crux of your knee to drag your forward so you nearly fall into his lap.

“Yes,” you grit out, arms coming up to his shoulders to steady yourself. “Once.” you then shakily exhale.

He doesn’t particularly care– your answer wouldn’t have changed how he’d treat you. He’s not going to be gentler nor slower because you’re less experienced.

“Have you?” you ask, eyeing him, fingers nervously toying with the ends of his hair.

“Yes,” he says, perhaps too sharply, but he gives no other information and you don’t press him, which he’s thankful for. He doesn’t have the patience for useless questions.

Rather, he pulls you down harder, so your bare thighs finally settle into his lap. He slides his gloved hands up the notches of your ribs to hitch beneath your bra. That comes off, too, and then he’s got his hands on you more. You gasp, arching into his touch when his fingers curl around a breast, fingers roughly brushing over the peak.

He doesn’t think anymore, just acts, just moves and does as he pleases. All the things he’s done in dreams or in his mind– he sets lips and teeth to your breast, tongue laving over your nipple. He forces your squirming still with an arm banded around your torso, keeping you flush to his eager mouth.

You yelp in pain when he uses his teeth too roughly, trying to jerk away from him but you can’t with his hold on you. He grins, mouth opening, spit slick and wet against your breast again. He groans against you when you pull on his hair.

But then he twists you, throws you down onto the bed only to crawl over you. He yanks at your panties just as you pull him down for another kiss– maybe to distract yourself, to settle your nerves. When you pull away, you’re on your back and he’s over you, your legs hitching over his narrow waist. His hands are on your thighs and you–

You suddenly grab for his hands.

“Take off your gloves,” you get out, breathless, and before he can respond, your fingers are sliding against his wrist, up to his hand, beneath the glove and against his palm.

It makes him shiver, makes him grit his teeth. You pull off one, then the other.

For a moment, he just looks at you all spread out and bare for him, his hands now open and uncovered, too.

You squirm under his scrutinizing gaze.

“C’mon,” you coax and he thinks you’re trying to find your bravado, “Touch me.”

There’s nothing between his hands and your skin now and he settles his palm on your stomach, beneath your breast.

He naturally keeps a finger lifted away.

“Tomura,” your voice is pitched, almost pleading, “You’re not going to hurt me– c’mon.”

He tenses for a moment, eyes flashing over your face. For a moment, his heart stumbles, he grows wary. He thinks of you slipping away beneath his touch, falling away into nothing and all he’d have is a bed of ashes.

But your eyes are bright with your Quirk.

His final finger comes down. Nothing happens, except you smile a little, except you arch up into his touch– alive and vivid and furiously warm.

He feels like he can’t breathe, can’t even function.

He catches a groan behind his teeth, falls forward as his hands become feverish and possessive, suddenly confident, suddenly brash– touching and squeezing and grabbing at you.

His teeth clank with yours as he tumbles into another kiss. You’re needier now, making those higher pitched noises that used to haunt him.

It drives him insane, makes him feel half feral, overeager and desperate. His fingers wander lower, seeking and searching, just as the kiss grows in intensity again. It’s messier, all open mouth and tongue.

When he pulls away, a string of spit connects the two of you and he lets more of the saliva pooling in his mouth drip down with it, letting it fall between your open lips, some on your bottom lip, too. It’s depraved and dirty and his eyes simmer as he gazes down at you.

Your face scrunches up as you go to wipe at your mouth, and he hates it because all he can think of is how cute that face is.

“Gross,” you mewl, but his fingers finally move between your legs and–

And all he finds is that you’re hot and slick for him.

He has to grit his teeth to keep from moaning.

But you nearly cry at the touch, a pathetic little noise, hips jolting like you’re not sure if you want to go towards his touch or away.

“Gross, huh?” Tomura asks, voice low, the pad of his finger sliding easily, teasing you slowly before he goads, “Why are you so wet then?”

He sinks a finger in suddenly– just because he can. Just because he wants to watch your face screw up again, which it does, your mouth falling open, eyes squeezing shut.

“Hm?” he hums, amused with the way you’re gasping beneath him. He starts a slow but deep rhythm and–

And he’s had sex before, a handful of times, but it’d always been for him. He hadn’t cared how the other person felt, hadn’t cared to try and get them off. But now he suddenly wishes he had learned, if only for you, now. He wants you as obsessed as he is, wants you to feel as maddened as he feels.

Thankfully, you’re so expressive. And he doesn’t have to worry about his fingers. He can find the spot inside you that makes you toss your head back into the sheets and moan for him, he can focus on the way you keen when he finds your clit with his thumb.

You’re a sensitive little thing, clawing at his bare shoulders, whining into his neck. He forces in another finger and you start rocking your hips, growing more desperate until–

“Fuck,” you gasp, “Fuck, I’m going to–”

He curls his fingers harder, watching your face as you fall apart, as you try and twist and squirm beneath him. He forces you through it, isn’t gentle, but selfish, wringing everything he can from you.

And when he’s finished watching you whimper and feeling you flutter and gush around his fingers, he takes them out only to force them between your lips.

Once more your face screws up, but you close your mouth around them and he groans low and raw. You look hazy, drooling all over his fingers, lashes fluttering prettily.

He uses his other hand to fumble with his belt, to work his pants down low enough for his cock, aching so bad that he swears he’s going to go insane–

He pulls his fingers from your mouth, watching the mess that comes with it, so wet and slick and shiny. He can’t help the growl he gives, before covering his mouth with yours again.

As you kiss, sloppy and desperate, Tomura slides the head of his cock against you and you’re so slippery and soft and molten for him that his next moan tapers off into a whine.

You pull away fractionally, “Shouldn’t we–”

He thinks maybe you were about to ask about protection of some kind, but he shoves inside you hard, breaches your body and watches as your eyes roll back, just about to cross as your nails turn sharp against his back.

You moan, low and drawn out.

He can’t help the absurd laugh that is wretched from him, his head dropping onto your neck as he snaps his hips forward. He can’t believe he’s actually gotten you here, in his bed, beneath him– let him inside where you’re so warm and soft.

“Fuck,” you gasp, maybe laced with pain, clawing at him, raking your nails down his back.

“Does it hurt?” he hisses, excited, his teeth coming down to close over your exposed neck.

“Yes,” you get out, almost a whimper, “Feels good, too.”

He snaps his hip forwards roughly, grinding deep as he laughs again when you just about sob into his shoulder.

You latch your teeth onto the vulnerable juncture between his neck and his shoulder, where you’d already laid claim to him once before.

He wrestles for your wrist, the one he broke, and forces it down onto the bed.

“Look at you,” he almost snarls, voice low and gravely, “Little hero letting me fuck her.”

You gasp when he angles his hips, when his other hand reaches beneath you, to fist a hand in your hair and pull so your neck is arched and exposed to him.

“I used to dream of this,” he admits roughly, the confession like a curse being spit out of his mouth, “Wanted to stalk you or possess you or–” he groans because he can feel how you’re throbbing around him, how slick you are for him, “Wanted to fucking ruin you–”

He pulls at your hair more, tries to get you to look at him through your wet lashes. The flash of pink meets red and his smile is more a cruel bearing of teeth.

“And you feel so much better than I dreamt– fuck, so much tighter–” he babbles as he ruts into you hard and quick. You keen, high and broken, just as he feels you flutter around him again and he almost loses his mind because–

“Are you going to fucking come again?” he growls, pulling harder on your hair.

“Yes,” you groan, “Please, fuck, please, c’mon–” your voice is high and wrecked and all he has to do is angle his hips a few more times before you’re shattering, nearly breaking apart, squeezing down on his cock so tightly that he shudders, that he let’s go of your hair just to focus on his own pleasure.

He doesn’t even realize he’s drooling into your neck, not as he loses his rhythm, as he shoves himself as deep into you as he can and comes hard. Pleasure races up his spine, turns him white-hot and sensitive, making his eyes roll back into his head, too.

You’re both breathing hard when he collapses on top of you. Your fingers, which were once scratching down his back to cause sharp shooting pain, are now surprisingly gentle, slipping back into his hair.

You squirm, fussing slightly– no doubt sore, no doubt aching with him still inside you but he doesn’t move. Doesn’t want to.

He mouths at your neck, feels you sigh, before he moves to cover his mouth with yours again. He kisses you languidly now, slow and deep.

You’re making breathy little noises against him, content and surprisingly soft, your other hand tracing over his side.

(He doesn’t like how much he enjoys this part, the afterglow, all that violence slipping away, expelled from you both–)

Tomura feels his cock twitch inside of you again, feels your hips arch up a little, and before he knows it, he’s moving his hips again. It’s a slow rocking, your lips still attached to his, heated and gentle.

“Gross,” you say again, just a breath against him as he fucks his cum further into you, feels himself harden, feels the mess he made of you. But you still hitch your leg over his hip, pull him deeper into you.

He grins lazily against your lips, “You like it,” he says and it’s not a question, rolling his hips until he gets you to shut your eyes and moan against him.

“Yeah,” you reply, nudging your cheek against his, rubbing like a cat until he returns the gesture. Until he’s humming because he’s sensitive and you feel so good, better than anything he’s ever felt in this miserable fucking life–

You whine a little, ‘Touch me again?”

He doesn’t deny you for whatever reason, doesn’t even have something smart to say as he slides his hand down your torso, down to where you’re both slick and connected. He rubs unpracticed, messy circles around that sensitive bundle of nerves until you’re sighing.

He’s no expert but he doesn’t really care and you don’t seem to mind this time, either. It’s unhurried now, lazy.

This time your peak is a fluttery, soft thing, and he watches as you gasp, as you blink away tears. She’s pretty, he thinks, feeling stupidly young again, she’s pretty like this. Like his dreams.

Tomura spills inside you again soon after, groaning against your collarbones, and this time you force him to slip out of you. Force him to lay beside you as you both catch your breath again.

And he’s not expecting it, but he has the vicious need to be close to you, desperately wants to feel your skin against his. It’s a new feeling– usually after sex, he wants to be as far away from someone as possible. Usually he can’t leave or kick them out fast enough.

But there’s something about you now, hazy and pleasure-drunk, fucked out and dazed, that makes him want to stay close. Maybe it’s just that you’ve soothed all the festering that usually squirms in his chest. Maybe it’s just that you’ve made everything in him quiet for once.

He expects you to find some sort of your regret now, he’s sure that you’ll feel guilty, collect your clothes and go. But you don’t. You stay in bed with him. And it’s strange but he knows he wants to touch you, so he does. He doesn’t deny himself, why would he? He’s always taken what he wanted.

He curls around you, shivering a little with the skin to skin contact after the fog of sex has cleared from his mind. His hands slide over you, touch you fully and without restraint because he can, because you won’t disappear beneath his touch.

And for a moment, as he traces along the dips of your waist, he thinks maybe you were made for him– cut from his rib, isn’t that how the story goes?

He doesn’t know, only that there’s no one else in the world he can touch like this.

You’re surprised.

You’d figured after Tomura had his fill of you, he’d kick you out, send you away. You figured you’d feel guilty, that you would rush out of here and try to wish the whole thing away. But your hero suit stays on the floor and you’re still in his bed.

You didn’t think he’d be a cuddler, you assumed that he wouldn’t want nor care for any sort of contact after. But his arms are wrapped around you now, one of his hands sliding curiously over the curves of your body. All five fingers down, pressing into your skin.

But you suppose, for someone who has to be so careful with touch, that he would like this. That he might want this. You wonder if he ever gets to touch anyone like this, if he ever allows himself intimate touch like this– tender and for no other reason than to soothe or comfort.

You get the impression that he doesn’t, that touch is just a means to an end for him; sex is probably just an itch to scratch. You can’t imagine that he’s very relaxed or enjoying himself when he’s worried about decaying the person he’s with.

But all his crackling, restless energy now seems subdued, sated, as he walks his fingers over you. His hair tickles your bare skin as he nudges closer, nose running along your jaw.

Once more, you feel your age. You don’t feel like a hero, but just someone young, maybe on the cusp of being old. He looks young now, too, with his vivid eyes shut and relaxed, nothing to crease his brow. He doesn’t seem like a villain, either.

You brush a finger over his cheek, touch lightly at the scratches beneath his eyes, drag your thumb down to touch the scar at the corner of his lips.

His eyes flutter open to watch you, half lidded, squinted almost like a cat.

But he allows you to run your fingers over his face, doesn’t protest or jerk away from your touch.

No, his eyes fall shut again. He lets out a deep sigh that you think he has held inside him for years.

He doesn’t have a gentle face, but one that shows it’s angles and sharp edges, the scars and cuts that trail down onto his neck. You’d noticed some on his chest, too. Proof of an uneasy life lived, proof of violence and pain.

You imagine he’s seen horrors, kept them trapped inside for fear of letting them spill out, like maybe it’ll be as gruesome as the memories.

His body hasn’t been handled gently, you can tell, with it’s indents and scars and scratches. You don’t know who was the last person who touched him without wanting to hurt him. And you shouldn’t but you think of yourself when you were a child– desperate for love and affection, desperate for any scrap of attention like the scavenger you always were.

Maybe still are.

So desperate that you’d end up in the bed of your enemy– all because you couldn’t end up in the bed of your ally. So hungry that you’d eat out of a hand that has harmed and killed and destroyed.

Hands that haven’t known gentleness, a body that hasn’t known peace. But he’s being gentle with you now, isn’t he?

So you try to give gentleness to him now, too, with your careful touch. You keep your fingers kind and sympathetic.

Even your own eyes drift shut for a moment, still tracing idle patterns into his skin.

You only slip away from him for a moment, to use the bathroom, to clean up. Your reflection in the mirror looks strange; raw and flushed with color. Honest in a way that makes you turn away.

You slip back into bed with Tomura, let him latch onto you again. You drag your fingers gently over his ribs, over his sides.

You let your eyes fall shut, too.

There’s a sudden, loud buzzing from the floor that cuts through the quiet, which makes your eyes startle open. It’s insistent and you realize after a moment that it’s your phone, caught up in your hero suit on the floor.

You never came home after your shift. You curse softly, almost certain you know who's calling.

You squirm out of Tomura’s hold again, which he huffs at in irritation, but eventually allows you up.

“Where are you going now?” he asks, annoyed, when you climb out of bed to find your phone. Once found, you hold it up to him.

It’s still buzzing in your hand, lit up with Shouta’s contact.

You think the guilt should hit you now.

It doesn’t and that’s what you feel worse over. You swallow hard, frown down at your phone.

(Horribly, you even feel somewhat spiteful, as if you’re trying to prove something to Shouta. Maybe to yourself.)

You don’t answer.

And then you see the several texts from him, wondering where you are. They’re all bland, but you can tell he must be worried. It’s unlike you to not tell him where you are.

“Are you going to leave?” Tomura asks and there’s something strange in his voice, something you can’t place.

“Do you want me to?” you ask in return.

He doesn’t answer right away. But he does eventually give an annoyed drawl, “Do what you want.”

You take that as a no, don’t leave, since you’re certain if he wanted you gone, he would’ve told you.

You send a text to Shouta;

Sorry. Staying with an old friend for the night. Be back tomorrow.

It’s not unheard of, for you to spend time with an old friend from the foster care system.

You get a dry “okay” from him in response. You fight the urge to roll your eyes for some reason, tossing your phone away again.

You end up staying the night with Tomura Shigaraki, one of the most wanted villains in all of Japan.

Its not romantic— he isn’t sweet or funny or caring. But he holds you tight, leaves no room for distance. And it is the first time you’ve ever slept with someone like this, tucked away into a bed, bare, and wrapped up in each other.

Is this what it always feels like? You press yourself into the crooks of his body. You wonder if you’re supposed to fit this well together.

And it’s the first time since his Quirk developed that he hasn’t needed to wear his partial gloves to sleep in fear of decaying something.

He won’t admit it but it’s the best he’s slept in a long, long time.

You won’t admit it, either, but you think you could get used to this, too; this closeness, being held as if you’ll slip away, being held like he doesn’t want you to.

The morning brings rosy sunlight that slants through the windows. Neither of you talk much. You try to tell yourself this won’t happen again, can’t happen again.

But you had kissed him goodbye before you’d left, like he was a boyfriend and not a criminal, and you’d been in a surprisingly good mood for the rest of the day.

Like you had a crush, puppy love you never got as a teenager because you were too busy trying not to starve, only to realize you’d been starving in other ways, too.

But you’re sugar soft and excitable, dropping into bed that night alone, and allowing yourself to admit, in the quiet and privacy of your own thoughts, that you wish you were in his again.

***

One time turns into two which turns into three which turns into so many times you’ve lost count. That little, rundown apartment that isn’t really Tomura’s has turned into another world entirely, some harbor away from the rules of society. It’s almost too good to be true, a dream, a place for a secret as bad as this one.

When you’re here, you don’t talk of heroes and villains. You urge him not to; you think you’ll keep some part of your innocence in this affair if you don’t actually know anything about him or the League of Villains. You’ll feel too guilty, if you know any part of their plans and don’t tell Shouta. And telling Shouta anything about Tomura is beginning to feel like a betrayal, too.

You don’t know anything substantial about Tomura Shigaraki and that’s the way it needs to stay.

You know he likes sour candy, though, and drinks too many energy drinks– they’re sickly sweet and you think kissing him might make your teeth ache. You know he likes video games but no longer has a console. He has trouble sleeping at night. You’re familiar with the scars on his skin, the jagged ones across his neck, the one on his lip. The beauty mark on his chin. You know his moods; from the prickly ones to the downright vengeful ones. You even know the calmer ones, the quiet, contemplative ones.

(In this way, he seems like a normal twenty-something-year-old. In the quiet moments, when you’ve convinced him to watch a cheap horror movie on the tiny, staticky TV in the apartment, he could be anybody. When he’s got his bare hand up your shirt as someone onscreen screams and begs for their life, he’s not the heir to an underground empire. He’s just Tomura, with his face buried in the crook of your neck).

He pretends to get annoyed with you, huffs and scoffs against your lips when you’re being cheeky. You wear his worn down hoodies, slip your thumbs in the holes at the sleeves. He eyes you when you wear them, pulls you to him by the collar.

(He likes to fuck you in them– pushes the hoodie up your stomach to watch you ride him. But he likes things bare and raw, too. Skin to skin. So close it’s terrifying, so close you feel like he’s trying to tear you apart from the inside out. He likes it dirty, you think, because it makes it more intimate.)

You soothe him. You know you do because when he’s festering and angry, all it takes is your hand on his wrist, pulling it away from his neck. Sometimes, when he can’t think straight and there is too much on his mind, he forces you to lay on top of him until his breathing slows and his head is clear.

He can’t talk to you aloud about what’s plaguing him, but you must quiet some part of him. He likes to use you to think, runs his long fingers through your hair as you lay atop him. He pets you until his thoughts aren’t as jumbled, but smoothed out and sharp. Or until he doesn’t want to think anymore at all and he drags you into languid makeouts that always end with him surrounding you, inside you, possessing you.

You bicker sometimes, flash your teeth to make his eyes spark ruby and excited. Mostly, you act your age with him.

You don’t know when his birthday is or where he grew up. You don’t know what his childhood was like or what memories shaped him, don’t know where he’s been or where he’s going to be. You only know him now, in this moment, in this little world you’ve created for each other.

He’s what you imagined first boyfriends are supposed to be; excitable and often immature but fun and new. You never had the luxury of first loves, just odd first kisses with strangers and an uncomfortable loss of virginity with a friend of a friend of a friend who jammed his tongue too far down your throat. You hadn’t had anything stable until–

Until Shouta.

Shouta has grown suspicious of this old friend of yours and how much time you now spend with him.

He questions you about him and you wish you felt worse for lying. The rebellious part of this affair is thrilling, though. Feels like you’re sixteen and sneaking out from under your dad’s nose to be picked up by the boyfriend you’d know he’d hate. Feels like swiping liquor too young and getting sick off it, smashing the bottles and laughing with your friends because sometimes things just need to break.

“Will you at least tell me his name?” Shouta had asked one morning, when you’d let yourself into his apartment after another night at Tomura’s. You had your own hood pulled up around your face to hide the rose blossom hickeys against the skin of your neck.

He’d still poured you a cup of coffee. You’d watched his careful, large hands as they made it the way you liked it.

You’d given him a lie, fed it to him the way he feeds you breakfast, “Shinta. Are you happy?”

He’d slid the mug to you, let you catch in the cradle of your palm. He’d shrugged, but you think his eyes had flashed to you, “You know you can bring him around, right? You don’t always have to go to him.”

You’d had to bite back a painful laugh. It wasn’t funny. It had hurt strangely in the pit of your chest.

You had shaken your head, tried to brush him off, “It’s not like that.”

“Alright,” he’d said, but he hadn’t believed you. “You’re training alone with Shinsou again tonight, I’ll be busy with a job.” Then he’d given you a stern look, “And don’t cut it early to go see Shinta.”

“I’ve never done that!” you’d protested, perhaps a little too defensively. But it was true, you’d never do that to Shinsou, wouldn’t dream of it. The only time you’d cut training early was to share takeout with Shinsou, not ditch him for–

This comment had rubbed you wrong, scratched up against something abrasive and surprisingly fragile inside of you. Maybe because he was questioning your dedication which already felt so flimsy, even if he hadn’t been entirely serious, even if maybe he’d just been trying to take a dig at you. At this new boyfriend.

Shouta had grown cold then, shrugged impassively, took his mug of coffee and brushed past you to keep getting ready.

It had angered you enough to bring it up later to Tomura, when you’re falling into his lap and he’s squirming his cold, fluttery hands beneath your shirt to touch skin, to make you hiss through your teeth.

His lips tilt into a small smile as you fidget while he warms his frigid fingers on your body.

“Eraserhead asked about you yesterday,” you tell him, letting your nose brush against his, “Told me I could bring my friend around– don’t always have to go to him.”

Tomura snorts, eyes falling half-lidded when your lips skim over his. The night is plum dark, presses into this little apartment that’s tucked away from the world.

“How’d you get out of that one?” he asks, fingers walking over the dips of your spine. He likes tracing the bone beneath your skin, likes making you shiver.

“Told him it’s not like that.” you respond, your own hands wandering to his neck. You're careful over the ridges of flesh there, skim lightly to get to his jaw.

“No?” Tomura asks, pulling you closer, pressing his chest to yours, “Don’t want to bring me home to meet Eraserhead?” he sneers and there’s something underneath his voice, lurking, with its hackles raised.

You think maybe it’s jealousy, the same flash of his eyes like Shouta’s when he’d said Shinta.

But then he kisses you deep and drags your hips against his, forces a warbly, surprised little moan from you.

Most of your thoughts melt away then, most turn to something base and desperate, all desire and need. You can’t help but think about it, though, how you can’t ever take him home to Shouta. You can’t ever expect anything more than whatever stays in this room. He kisses you hard, your teeth clinking against his like clashing with the truth of it all.

There’s no happy ending here.

It’s like smashing bottles because sometimes things just need to break.

***

Tomura thinks you would be a good edition to the League of Villains.

You’re clever and capable. He comes to find you’re not just a good thief and pickpocket but an excellent one. You swipe everything from his pockets, right from under his nose, just to play with him. You’re stealthy and sharp; he could use someone like you at his side.

Your Quirk could be useful, though he doesn’t like the idea of you getting so close to people while in battles. You have a reckless streak, but he thinks he could temper that. All you need is a little guidance.

You were a thief once. You give him clues of your past; you didn’t grow up like the other heroes, didn’t come from a warm home with dreams of saving the world. Your head wasn’t filled with fantasies of rescuing the downtrodden. You were the downtrodden. And you learned that there was no one who was going to save you, except yourself. So you stole and fought and survived a world that was willing to forget you.

You’re like him, a very quiet part of him thinks, no one saved you. Not until you were too old, all grown up with sharpened teeth and claws, eyes that see in the dark. That could be now used and extorted by the heroes.

He thinks they’ve leashed you, taught you how to sit and stay and sic ‘em.

He wonders if he’d have gotten to you first, if you’d be with him and not your heroes.

Tomura doesn’t dwell on it, though. He refuses to imagine it. What would be the point? It didn’t happen.

Besides, he is certain he is capable of slowly swaying you to them still. You possess a startling amount of compassion for villains which, perhaps wouldn’t help you as a villain, but that’s fine.

(You’d have him. No one would touch you if you were at his side. You could be as stupidly compassionate as you wanted.)

You meet members of the League with him by accident, times when Toga and Twice’s meeting with him overlap with you arriving. Toga goes on endlessly about you, it seems. Dabi drops by once in the middle of the night, bloody and demanding a place to sleep because he’s tired of sleeping on the streets.

It’d been one of the more insufferable nights, perhaps one of the worst ways for Dabi to find out about you. You’d already been asleep, cocooned beneath blankets and Tomura’s body, just in one of his loose shirts.

Tomura had already been lying awake, listening to your even breathing when he’d heard the handle of the door shake roughly. He’d gotten up then, slipped into clothes, melted into the darkness by the door and waited for the intruder to try and step inside.

The lock had been picked.

He had nearly decayed Dabi by accident before realizing it was him.

A ridiculously quiet but terse argument had ensued then, before Dabi had asked, in a regular speaking voice, “Why the fuck are we whispering?”

Tomura had almost winced when he heard you stir from the bed before your small, sleepy voice had murmured into the darkness, “Tomura?”

You’d said it too soft, too sweet. It’d been for his ears only and something about Dabi hearing you, seeing you, being in this space that had been for you and for him had made Tomura suddenly livid.

He had watched Dabi’s mouth fall open in shock before you’d switched on the bedside lamp to flood the room with artificial, golden light.

Dabi’s face had been near horrific in the light, one side of it all bloody, the stitches mangled or falling out. Part of his face almost looked like it was melting, his eye squinted shut with the damage.

But he’d thrown his head back and laughed when he’d seen you, sitting up in the bed, blinking sleepily at them. Tomura hated a lot of things, but he’d hated nothing more than the sound of Dabi’s rasping laugh in that moment.

You’d narrowed your eyes when you had realized who it was.

“I had no idea you had it in you, Tomura.” Dabi had said.

“Why the fuck are you here?” Tomura had hissed instead, fighting the urge to tear into his neck, fingers twitching agitatedly.

Dabi had gestured to his face with a lazy flourish, “I need medical attention and I’m crashing on your couch.”

Tomura’s teeth had ground together, “Get. Out.”

“No, I’m sick of sleeping on the streets when you’re here playing house with your little hero bitch–”

Before Tomura could even react, though, you had found the small supply of first aid from beneath the sink in the tiny bathroom. You had come up beside them near silently and offered it up, asked, “Do you want help?”

And there it had been– that compassion of yours. Even for the likes of Dabi.

In that moment, he’d wondered how you had ever survived with it. He’d thought that you’d lose your hand if you kept extending it.

Dabi hadn’t let you touch him but you’d gotten a cool rag for him to clean up the blood, watched as he tried to patch up the wound. It was made worse by a mangled staple in his cheek, jutting out strangely.

“Does it hurt?” You’d asked but with the way you were looking at him, at his marred skin up close, Tomura could tell that you weren’t just referring to this one injury.

Does it hurt? You’d asked, like you were asking if it all hurt. You weren’t just seeing a singular part of Dabi, but a series of tragedies that was proudly presented in large, rippling scars against his skin.

“Of course it fucking hurts,” Dabi had spit out, all venom and bitterness. But you hadn’t even flinched.

Tomura had tried to kick him out again once his wound had been treated.

“It’s fine,” you’d said, resigned, tired and rubbing at your eyes.

(Later you’d shrug and tell him, I know what it’s like to not have somewhere to sleep).

“Yeah, it’s fine,” Dabi had drawled, already pulling off his heavy boots, prying the coat from his body to toss onto the floor. “Just don’t do any weird shit.”

And you’d gotten back into bed with Tomura, fit yourself against him, ducked your head down beneath his chin and pressed your hands against his sides, felt the notches of his ribs.

Sometimes he wonders if you can feel the missing one, the one you took from him, the one you’d been made out of.

It had occurred to Tomura that either you didn’t fear Dabi or you trusted him enough to know he’d never let Dabi harm you while sleeping.

Both were acceptable to him, both would aid him in converting you. And they were true, too. You shouldn’t fear Dabi, especially not with him around.

Tomura had brought his hand up then, suddenly covered your mouth with his large palm, letting all five of his fingers come down against your pretty face.

You’d furrowed your brows in confusion, not fear, which made something inside of him grow warm and hungry.

Then he’d slid his other hand down your body, between your legs, just to spite Dabi.

He’d watched as your eyes went wide in the dark, cheeks flushing beneath his hand. He could feel his smirk, smug and sharp, fitting across his teeth like a muzzle.

You’d tried to shake your head, tried to squirm away from his touch, but he’d been persistent and soon enough you were sighing against his hand, melting into the bed he pressed you into. Soon enough you were trying to hold back whimpers, all slippery and soft beneath his fingers, silently begging with your eyes.

He hadn’t denied you that night; no, you were being good, walking the steps he wanted for you. You were moldable and sweet beneath him so he’d give you what you wanted.

He watched in satisfaction as you came hard around his fingers, face scrunching up in that way he loved, fingers easing you through it. He was gentle with you then, taking his hand away from your mouth slowly, letting you nudge closer and cling to him.

(He loved when you clung to him).

You’d wanted so much affection that night and he had indulged you, letting your nose brush against his, or rubbing your cheek against his chest while his fingers wound through your hair.

You’d fallen asleep all tied up in him.

The next morning, you were gone before Dabi even woke up.

Dabi had asked, “What the fuck are you doing with her?”

“Mind your business,” Tomura had snapped, fingers already seeking out his neck again when they couldn't find you. He hated that he wanted your presence so badly now. (Hated that he missed you, but he would never say that, never even dream of it). Then he’d added,“And find someone else’s doorstep to show up on.”

Dabi had scoffed, “Whatever. Just don’t get distracted.” He’d pulled out a cigarette from his jacket still on the floor then, much to Tomura’s annoyance, and lit it with a spark of his fingers. Smoke curled into the air with his first drag. “I’m not about to watch all our efforts fall apart because you wanted to play Romeo and Juliet with some braindead little hero.”

He’d torn into the skin of his neck then. Wished he could tear into you instead.

“Violent delights and violent ends and all that shit,” Dabi had said then, his smile just a curled stitch, smoke pouring from his lips, evidently amused with himself.

But Tomura has never read that play and he doesn’t know anything about poetry in the same way he doesn’t know anything about art or beauty, just that you’re the only thing he’s bothered to compare to a painting.

***

You put Tomura into your phone as Shinta and when you’re too busy to visit him between missions and training, you text him. Though short, he is surprisingly witty over text, something that has you biting back grins and distracted, feeling like a schoolgirl as you try to hide the screen of your phone from the rest of the world.

You grow distracted with hero work, with Shouta. You pay less attention to your life at U.A. You don’t visit Shouta for lunch as often. You haven’t spent a quiet night with Shouta in weeks. You tell yourself you don’t care.

It’s better than fighting with him. It’s better than trying to beg for his love and affection.

Early tomorrow morning you’re supposed to shadow Shouta on a brief mission.

The Hero Commission is trying to train you into espionage and underground work, trying to mold you in the shape of Shouta.

But at night, when you’re alone in your bedroom, tucked away into your own apartment and not with Tomura, he calls you.

You let yourself say his name into the receiver of your phone, hushed and excited.

He doesn’t say I miss you or when will I see you again?

He says, “Touch yourself.”

And you don’t say I miss you, too, or hopefully soon.

You do as he says, let your fingers fan out over your stomach like they might be his. You listen to his breathing turn ragged over the phone. You moan softly for him.

You do what he says in the navy dark of night, bite back frustrated whines because you’ve gotten too used to his touch.

“–Wish it was you, fuck, it’s not fair,” you gasp, tilting your hips up into your fingers desperately.

You can hear the hiss of breath he takes, “Did I ruin you?” he croons into the phone lowly, his voice slithering through to you, making your thighs clench. “Can’t even touch yourself without needing me?”

You groan, high and defeated, fingers slipping against yourself. You’re aching and empty and bereft without him, “Yes, yes–”

He rambles about what he’s done to you, almost seething by the end, when he demands you tell him that you’re his, that he’s the one who made you this way. He’s the only one who can soothe you now. You need him.

He isn’t wrong, you realize, when you still aren’t satisfied after your climax. When it doesn’t feel as good as when you’re with him. You realize you hate sleeping alone now. You miss the press of his body to yours. You coo into the phone about it, lay on your stomach, arms curled around your pillow with your ear still to your phone.

It never gets overly sentimental. You don’t want to scare him, especially as you grow terrified of your own feelings. It doesn’t feel as fun anymore, you realize, only because your attraction to him has now grown serious.

Your crush has grown teeth and claws, ready to tear apart the vulnerable, fleshy parts of you.

But he talks with you until you fall asleep, phone still in hand, heart still on the line.

***

There’s a stray kitten that hangs out around Tomura’s apartment– he thinks there must be a colony of strays in the area, since it’s not the only one. But this one is scrawny, just a messy tuft of grey fur. It’d be sleek and pretty, if it wasn’t so malnourished, if it wasn’t missing clumps of fur or full of scars and scratches.

The kitten likes Tomura a great deal for some reason. It rubs itself against his legs, follows him around outside of the apartment, much to your utter delight.

You coo and fawn over it, scoop the little thing up into your arms and hold it up to Tomura’s face.

He hates it, the face you give him. The face the kitten gives him. He hates that the corner of his lips twitch upwards.

“He’s so cute,” you gush and he can hear now that the little thing is purring furiously in your hands. You wiggle the cat a little bit in front of his face and Tomura finally reaches up to stroke the back of his knuckles against the kitten’s head, if only to appease you.

Your smile is crooked– an excited curve of your lips, your eyes alight.

You’re always so expressive and he used to be livid about it, wanted to teach you a lesson in the worst way possible, but now he just wants to keep you from learning them.

He has to turn away from you at the thought, heads towards the door of the apartment building. You follow after him dutifully, coming up to nudge against his side. He’s become too comfortable with you there, knocking into his elbow.

You’re still smiling down at the kitten in your arms and he wants to look away because some part of this is starting to sting.

The kitten is excitedly looking around, green eyes all round and bright. It’s purring happily.

“Put it down, it’s not coming in with us.” Tomura tells you, his voice rough and soft.

You stop in front of the door with him. Your bottom lip pulls out into a pout. Your eyes get round like the kitten’s.

He gives you a cold stare.

You hug the kitten tighter to your body, “C’mon,” you whine, “It’s just a baby.”

“I’m not taking care of a cat.”

“I’ll take care of it!”

“No,” he responds, harsher, voice a little sharper.

Maybe, in the beginning of this little affair, you would’ve headed the warning in his tone, but now you don’t even bat an eye at him.

“Yes,” you respond indignantly.

You both glare at each other. The kitten’s purr still rumbles on.

Tomura can tell you’re not giving this one up, he can tell by the set of your jaw, the way you’re clinging to that little creature. There’s a determined flush to your face. Your eyes are bright and fiery.

All over this little stray.

“You’re a brat,” is all Tomura says and you take that as a win, because your face immediately morphs, brightens up completely. You duck past him, into the apartment building with the kitten cradled in your arms.

He heaves a deep sigh, following in after you. “I’m kicking it out when you leave.”

“Don’t be mean,” you reply, waiting at the door, and the irony is not lost on him. He comes up behind you, his chest to your back, crowding you against the door.

“I think you need to remember who you’re speaking to,” he says, his voice just a rasp against your ear and maybe at some point, it would’ve sounded threatening, but now you just lean back into his chest. His heart beats against the curve of your back.

Something soft is growing between the two of you, he can feel it. It has no place here, though, in this world. In the two of you. His ugly infatuation with you, all that anger and vitriol he had for you has melted, turned spring soft inside of him after an unforgiving winter.

He unlocks the door, he lets you in.

The kitten ends up coming and going. He opens the window to let it in and out, let’s you feed it. You call it Ryuji. It lives partially in this new little world the two of you have built.

He thinks of it like the pause screen in a video game, somewhere to return to when he’s frustrated or tired or done. Idle, soft music and the freezing of his screen. A moment away from the turmoil or struggle of the game.

But he’ll have to unpause eventually.

He can’t stay here forever, he knows it, but he just has to be sure he plays it right– he doesn’t think he’ll be able to start over this time, with you.

And he wants you there at the ending, at his side like in his dreams.

The ones where it’s all in ruins, the world nothing but his, destroyed, but he gives you his hand to have, and you take it in yours to hold.

***

The distance between you and Shouta stretches and grows until it snaps in the form of a blowout argument. Which, is mostly just you, shouting, crying furiously, and Shouta stone-faced and cool.

It had started with an offhand comment from him about how you’re not focused anymore. You’re getting sloppy. You’re distracted. And usually, you take his criticism with a stiff upper lip and a determined glare.

But you and Shouta haven’t been the same since you tried to kiss him.

You blame yourself, maybe, but part of you feels angry with him, too. Bitter. You thought, in some way, he reciprocated your feelings. He’d acted like it. And when he’d rejected you, he’d pulled away, been more careful with you.

(You wonder if this proves your point, that he was toeing a line with you then.)

And maybe your lies are starting to eat at you, too, starting to rot away on the inside of you. If you focused on them too hard and all that Shouta’s done for you, you think you’d start crying every time you looked at him.

But Tomura has also thrown all you know into question. And you’d already been critical of the life you were afforded by becoming a hero.

You look at all of Shouta’s students and you just get angry. You look at Shinsou, so determined to prove he can be a hero, that he’s good and you are livid. You look at Toga, with her villainous Quirk. She’s near Shinsou’s age and something about it just makes you ache, it makes you sick.

You look at her and see who she could’ve been as a hero– you wonder if they would’ve stuck her in espionage, with the likes of you and Shouta. You wonder if she would’ve gone to U.A. You wonder what it would’ve taken to change her fate.

Even Tomura, you look at him and in the safety and privacy of your own heart, you dare to wonder what he would’ve been like if he hadn’t been a villain.

(He could’ve been a rescue hero, you think, and he could’ve decayed debris to save people. This version of him lives in the quiet, tentative parts of you. It grows soft and underground, a seedling that has sprouted on the inside of your chest, and one day you think this little dream of yours will grow so large inside of you that it’ll breach skin and show the world it’s horror.)

It feels like a coin toss, almost, like the difference between a hero and a villain sometimes is one flip away from changing.

You don’t bother to wonder what would’ve happened if it hadn’t been Shouta that found you, but someone like Tomura. Or All For One. You know if you’d been given somewhere to sleep and a warm meal, you would’ve done what they wanted.

You wish you could say you were a noble, starving person, that there was something shining and golden inside of you. But all you were was starving.

Shouta says you’ve been underperforming lately. He says he’s considering limiting the nights you patrol until you can get it together.

The Hero Commission was supposed to come observe you to see if you’d progressed enough to begin accepting your own missions. He tells you he doesn’t think they should come any longer. It feels like a dig, too, like he’s reprimanding you somehow.

And you snap, “Well maybe I didn’t want them to observe me!”

He looks taken aback for a moment, before he asks, “What is that supposed to mean?”

“I don’t know! Maybe I’m tired of being observed and used and watching all of these kids be observed and sought after and–”

“Alright,” Shouta sighs, and it makes your teeth grit because he sounds like he’s trying to parent you, “It’s one thing to be upset yourself, but I don’t see how this has anything to do with these kids.”

Your nails dig into your palms as you try to find the words to get him to understand you.

But he speaks before you can, almost patronizingly, “Clearly, you’re struggling through something, so it’s probably a good thing we’ve put this off.”

Tears well up hard and fast. It hurts to be dismissed like this. It hurts to look at him, to think that he’s a part of the ever growing issue that has been itching beneath your skin. You’re a part of it, too, but you have the sudden urge to run. To get out.

Still, you swallow down all of that turmoil and say, “I hardly know what I want now, so how do you expect children to know that they want to be a hero?”

“What is this about?” Shouta asks.

“It’s about the Hero Commission and U.A. and the entire fucking system. That’s what it’s about.” you seethe, looking up into his eyes, trying to find something there.

“It’s not just about you?” he asks, unperturbed.

“Why can’t it be both?” you respond, trying to keep your voice from going high, from going hysterical. There’s so much you want to say, so much that it’s making you sick, that it’s turning your stomach. “I’m– I’m barely older than them!” you say, because all you keep thinking about is how they’re just kids. And you were just a kid. And at one point, Tomura was just a kid.

He’s barely older than you. Closer in age to Shouta’s students than to him.

“I didn’t invent the system,” Shouta says and he sounds weary, “I just try to give my students the best opportunity at surviving being a hero. I try to teach them everything to keep them alive.”

They’re just kids! You want to shriek, kids that were chosen or forgotten or accepted or shunned.

Looking in the face of the system now feels so massive that it’s hopeless; a system that produces shiny heroes from children with their perfect and acceptable Quirks and discards the rest. Even you and Shouta, with your Quirks that aren’t as flashy, are pushed into the shadows to do the Hero Commissions business. And what business is that? You have to wonder their intentions, too, with all the money that’s pumped into it. Into all of these heroes. A system that forgets anyone who doesn’t fit into it’s perfect mold.

“But you see how it’s wrong, right? And just because you didn’t invent the system doesn’t mean you get to throw your hands up!” You say, voice raising.

Shouta levels you with a cool look. He lets loose a sigh. “What would you like me to do?”

You don’t have an answer, it’s too big of a question.

(You see the appeal suddenly, in wanting to get rid of it all, in destroying it since it’s such a mess.)

But you hate his aloofness, you hate that he doesn’t care. You hate that you feel crazy.

“I don’t know!” you shout, tears finally falling down your angry and flushed face. “I don’t know!”

“Are you done?” Shouta asks and it makes you want to scream more. You just want a reaction from him, you realize, you want something more than his impassiveness. You think of trying to shout more, to try and say something cutting or powerful or enough to make him wince.

But nothing comes to mind and you’re just stubbornly trying to keep back a sob.

So you shoulder past him, rush out of his apartment, rubbing at your cheeks and trying to keep back your hiccuping cries.

You have every intention of going to Tomura’s.

But you realize when you’ve nearly made it to his door that it might be foolish to go to someone like Tomura with tears in your eyes. What is the leader of the League of Villains going to do? You have a feeling you might just get your feelings hurt more.

So you pause, rub at your eyes again, try to dispel all the turmoil inside you. It doesn’t work, so you turn away from him, too, and you start moving.

Your feet carry you to the train station, carry you across town, to a warehouse you used to vandalize and hide in when you were young and alone.

You haven’t been here in years.

It feels strange, loping around the side of the building. The alleyways are cast in garnet light with the fading sun. It makes it look prettier than it is. You enter through the same hole in the wall that you used to when you were young; you’re bigger now, though, need to duck lower, curl yourself up to get through it.

You think of yourself scurrying around, knowing the ins and outs of this dilapidated building the way most children know their childhood home.

It’s strange, stepping back into a place you haven’t been to in years. You know, in some way, it has to have changed. It’s falling apart more, there’s larger holes in the ceiling, letting in auburn light, setting everything ablaze. There’s a lot of debris; from torn tents to discarded sleeping bags to spare junk, it’s all spread out throughout the place. Graffiti covers every corner of the walls. You used to look for a face painted in pink, it’s eyes dripping down it’s face in the back corner of a wall. When your eyes slide along all the artwork, it’s nowhere to be found now. No doubt covered up by the years, but you know it’s there, somewhere beneath all that color and paint.

There are a lot of empty bottles, glass laying around that crunches beneath your shoe.

You pick up a glass by the spout, watch as it catches in the light, murky gold and sunkissed.

You feel small again, fragile like the bottle in your hand. You stopped crying at least, but all that’s left is the aftertaste. Just the lingering frustration, the bitter aloneness that settles over you as cold as Shouta’s stare.

Your fingers squeeze around the glass, curling tight, before you suddenly hurl it at the wall.

It bursts on impact, explodes into thousands of shining, glittering pieces that spark in the sun.

It feels good, so you pick up another glass– this one’s mint green, pretty like the sea, reminds you of spring and the stems of flowers.

It breaks prettily, too, the sound ringing and sharp in your ears, your eyes trying to catch all the splinters of it. It explodes in the light. It’s cathartic, letting all your aching frustration and hurt rush out with each breaking, with each smashing.

You don’t get through many more, not before you hear footsteps behind you.

You can’t say you’re surprised to find Tomura, but you can’t say you were expecting it either. Quickly, you turn away, try to school your features. You try to rub at your eyes again, as if this will somehow dispel damp lashes and splotchy cheeks.

“Are you stalking me?” you ask, but there’s no bite to it as he comes to stand beside you.

He doesn’t answer.

You think he might be, but you can’t find it in you to care.

The sound of the distant city is just a hum between you two. Glass sparkles on the floor like stars in the fading, ruby light.

You turn to face him, don’t bother trying to look up into his face, just shove yourself into his chest. You bury your face into his hoodie, rubbing your cheek against his chest. “Creep,” you mumble, “What are you doing here?”

His hands come up, one at the back of your head, the other along your back. He has his gloves on. Not that it matters.

“I followed you from the apartment,” he admits and his voice is quiet, but it seems to echo in this open space. Then he says, “You should be more watchful.”

“Don’t start,” you grumble, letting your fingers curl in his jacket, “Been scolded enough today.”

The hand at the back of your head tugs at your hair lightly, lifting your head from its hiding place against his chest so that he can look you over carefully.

The light casts him in maroon and russet, saturating him, making the dark of him stand out sharply. It makes the silver of his hair seem peach, brands him in all the sun’s honey and whiskey glory.

His eyes are vivid, maybe the most true shade of red you’ve ever seen in your life.

He takes in your face, perhaps your bloodshot eyes, your damp lashes. You aren’t a fool; you’re certain he can tell you’ve been crying. You have the urge to squirm away, to try and hide from his gaze.

But all he asks, in a surprisingly gentle tone, is “What happened?”

You shake your head fractionally, “Nothing. Got into an argument, that’s all.”

He hums lightly, tracking your expression. You want to glance away from him, but he holds you still for a moment longer.

When you can’t take his scrutinization any longer, you ask, “Wanna break some shit with me?”

He lets you go finally, let’s you step out of his arms despite not responding. You pick up another glass, this once an icy blue that reflects light that reminds you of the color of morning skies.

You watch as it explodes against the wall, flashing like a little firework. Glass rains down onto the ground, some of it flinging up into the air or back towards you. Tomura pulls you away from it by the back of your jacket, yanks you back into his chest as glass shards fly past you.

He glares at you somewhat and you can tell he wants to scold you, but he doesn’t. You squirm out of his grasp to do it again.

Glass showers down as you break another bottle. It rains in shards of tangerine and pale yellow, bright pops of cherry in the light. It feels good, to watch it all burst apart in the sunlight, like watching little stars burst and explode at your hands. It’s so pretty, for such a violent act.

You hand a bottle to Tomura, offering him the chance to also act out. Instead, he pulls off one of his gloves– tugs it off with his teeth, the glint of sharp white against flesh pink. You watch fascinated for a moment, catch his eyes, blazing and barbed.

When he takes it with all five fingers, you watch as it first cracks in your palm, before fluttering away into dust. Into nothing.

You make a face, “That’s not as exciting as breaking them.”

He rolls his eyes, but you catch the way the corner of his lips hike up. He takes another glass, this one icy silver, caught peach in the honey light, though. He keeps a finger lifted away delicately as he lifts it up to the beams of scarlet sun that flare through the rafters.

And in that fiery patch of dusk, with the glass reflecting iridescence onto the angular plains of his face, your heart gives a violent lurch, like it’s trying to burst free from your chest.

I think I love you, you think, unbridled, and so suddenly that it feels as if the thought has slammed into you the way a body might fall from the ledge of a roof.

I think I love you, you think again, because you can’t quite believe it, as he lobs the bottle at the wall. It fractures into a thousand little beams of glass and light, like an exploding comet. You feel as fragile as that, like he’ll do the same to you. Maybe you’ll be nothing but shards by the end of this, nothing but dust slipping through his fingers.

He turns to you, no doubt to say something snarky, but you’re already taking quick steps to him. He doesn’t get the chance to speak, not when you collide with him, hard and reckless, throwing yourself up onto your toes to kiss him with a new violence.

He makes a surprised noise, soft, but catches you otherwise. His hand is already up, worming beneath your clothes to press chilled fingers into the bare skin of your upper waist. He likes the way you hiss into his mouth, and you like the way they dig roughly into you. He forces you closer, melds his mouth to yours, rough at the edges, slick and warm at the center as the kiss blossoms into slow simmering heat.

And by the end of it all, when the light has given way to violet darkness, the press of indigo shadows that stretch tall in this abandoned warehouse, there is too much glass on the floor. Everything is shattered or decayed. Your lips are stinging from sharp-toothed kisses and the desperate press of his mouth to yours. You’ve turned molten, fallen apart the way glass does.

You walk home together, hand in seeking hand.

Your eyes flush pink with your Quirk, brightening up in the dark.

You knock into his side like you’re a kid, eagerly trailing beside him. He has the hood of his sweatshirt up, hidden, as you rush into the next train back to the part of town that holds the little, distant world of his apartment.

You sit beside each other on the train, knees pressing into each other. He leans over to crowd you against the cool glass as the world streaks past you in a wash of darkness. He ducks his face to yours, his hood hiding the both of you from any onlookers as he seers his mouth to yours again.

You feel like a teenager, kissing in front of strangers, beneath the flickering light of the train car. You feel young and reckless, letting him have you like this, while the city burns like a blurry halo behind you. But you feel older, too, older and in love, like you finally know the secret of the universe, the one that every adult knows and has only learned in the burn of a kiss, in the messy squeezing of your heart.

He licks into your mouth slow, you curl your small hand into his worn hoodie. If people stare, you don’t know, don’t care.

He pulls away from you, forcing you up when your stop is announced, leaving you a little dazed and dizzy, but you eagerly follow after him. Your hands bunch into the back of his jean jacket. You stumble behind him a little, feet tangling with his as you duck beneath his arm to come to his side.

Ryuji finds the two of you on your walk home the closer you get, follows you both inside, happily chirping at your coos. But he paws at the window to be let out again a short time later, after you’ve fed him something. Tomura opens the window for the cat, but not before you catch him rubbing a knuckle against the kitten’s fuzzy cheek, brief but gentle.

You think he likes Ryuji more than he lets on. You think he loves all this more than he lets on.

Tomura takes his time with you that night, surprisingly languid for once, like you’re not on borrowed time. Like this is an entirely new planet, a version of the two of you that is not bound by pasts and future expectations. No strings puppeteering you both, no invisible hands holding you both back.

He pulls you down into his lap, to sink onto him, fill yourself with him as you please. You twine your arms around his slender neck to pull him close, eyes half lidded and pyretic pink, fiery and soft with the way your Quirk reacts to his. It always hums somewhere inside of you, brushes against his until it quiets, until he’s soothed and relaxed.

“Do you feel powerful?” he murmurs against your lips, eyes flickering up to find yours.

The question takes you by surprise for a moment, pulling away fractionally from his parted lips. And with the way your heart squirms in your chest, looking down at him like this, you want to say no, I feel terrified and new and desperate.

But he drags nails down your back, makes you gasp and roll your hips down onto him, which startles a groan out of him. The sound of it turning your stomach in the best and worst ways, making you flush, making you squirm to try and sink lower onto him. Greedy and desperate, you wiggle your hips to make his breathing come out ragged.

It makes you realize you have one of the most dangerous villains beneath you, as desperate as you are.

You roll your hips again, slow, take what you want of him. You fist your hand in his hair, tilt his head back and watch as his eyes flutter. His cheeks are flushed.

Pretty, you think faintly.

“Yeah,” you breathe, gliding your lips along his, heart a storm in your chest to have him looking up at you like this, “I do.”

His lips tilt into a knife-sharp smile, enough to gut you.

And he lets you take what you please of him that night, and the thief that you are, you take and take and take. You steal from him with deft hands and a smile that he thinks he’d destroy the world for. You take all the love that you want from him, gorge yourself on it until you feel sick.

Until you feel as if you could rot with it, carrying your love for him in the pits of you, coveting in the safe, secret parts of you, for no one else to find.

Just you and him, like this, hand in seeking hand.

***

PART III

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shokami · 4 years ago

Text

I HATE ALL MEN...

pairing ; megumi fushiguro x reader

word count ; 2.8k

genre ; fluff to angst. established relationship!

warning(s) ; major character death (not descriptive). mentions of blood, injuries. minor spoilers to ep nineteen.

i hate all men, but when he loves me… i feel like i’m floating...

doubling over in laughter, you held your side as you let out several gasps of air. listening to the ridiculous spout of words between itadori and kugisaki, never failed to make you crack a wheeze or two.

your bubbly sounds echoing around the room quickly caught your boyfriend’s attention. those laughs were always capable of making him stop dead in his tracks, all so he could take a mental picture of that moment. your laughter slowly died down as you turned to look over your shoulder, finding fushiguro watching from afar. he looked at you with nothing but fondness in his gaze, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

fushiguro swore that you were the sunshine in human form. that genuine smile, and intoxicating laugh— was exactly what he would expect the sun to appear as. those were also the very things that had made him fall for you so long ago. he never spoke about it, but he was glad that being surrounded by curses, and the constant negativity invading your life, never dulled your happiness. he didn’t know what he would do without such a beaming sunshine.

“you know, i heard that staring isn’t polite.”

basking in your presence, and appearance caused megumi’s mind to momentarily drift off into an abyss of his own thoughts. so much so, that he hadn’t even noticed that you had approached him from across the training room.

“earth to megumi— hello?” you snapped your fingers in front of his face, rolling your eyes at the distant minded boy as his eyes suddenly snapped to yours “hi, yeah. there you are!”

“sorry, i was distracted.” fushiguro said simply, that same soft smile from earlier returning to his face.

to those who didn’t see him the way you did, or even to those who weren’t a part of your immediate friend group— no one saw fushiguro smile. ever. if you had to compare his daily facial expressions to someone, you’d probably say he reminded you of nanami. always straight faced, serious, and ready to get to the point. but his smile was never foreign to you.

despite the assumption to anyone else, a smile or laughter, or sense of joy from megumi was not a rare sight. in fact, it happened more and more than usual. his tormented soul began to lighten up, and feel free once more. some say it was because of you, but that wasn’t a credit you deserved to claim. not when itadori existed, and gave him the friends he deserved.

you were but a mere bonus in his life.

megumi was no stranger in displaying the fact that he fell for you based on your smile, and humor. he would tell you until he was blue in the face, but what he didn’t know was that the sight of that once rare grin is also what had you swooning in a matter of minutes.

leaning up towards his face, you pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek that quickly became the rosy color of the flowers outside in the garden. he was always so easily flustered, “distracted by what, hm?”

between you and megumi, neither one of you craved public displays of affection. you preferred keeping any acts of shared love just to yourselves, behind closed doors only accompanied by the soft glow of the moon.

that however, never stopped the occasional peck on the cheek, or subtle hand holding.

“what am i ever distracted by?”

“training? cursed techniques? shadow puppets?”

fushiguro snorted, “shadow puppets?”

several more giggles left your throat, sounding just the same as earlier, “yeah! you know, demon dogs… flying owl things—“

“divine dogs, and nue.” he interrupted.

“shadow puppets!”

“... shikigami.” megumi looked at you, quickly shaking his head at your antics and refusal to use his cursed techniques proper titles. “no, to all of those... i was distracted by you.”

you gasped loudly, drawing the attention of yuuji and nobara still standing across the room, “by me?! me oh my! not THE fushiguro megumi being distracted by little ‘ol me!”

yuuji and nobara bursted into a fit of laughter, enjoying the scrowl that crossed megumi’s face. though you loved him indefinitely, there was nothing more you enjoyed doing than bringing him embarrassment from your flare for dramatics.

“you’re worse than gojo, you know that?”

“worse than gojo how?” you jetted your bottom lip out, creating a fake pout.

“annoying. a nuisance. unnecessarily loud,” for what felt like the first time in your relationship, megumi took no care in sharing a moment of affection with you in the public eye as he leaned in to steal a kiss. “and a brat… but i suppose that’s why i love you.”

three words was all it took. three words and suddenly the world froze. you couldn’t see anything beyond megumi, you couldn’t hear your friends gasps’ in the background, and you struggled to exhale the breath stuck in your chest. love?

neither one of you knew love before each other, just like neither one of you dared to drop that damned four letter word until now… love terrified you. how could it not in this life? how could love not make you want to run in the opposite direction, fearing that the moment you loved— something would rip away that serenity.

“you… you love me?”

“i love you, y/n.”

another long pause.

your mind was racing, your heart beat felt like it would pulsate out of your chest at any given moment. why did the temperature skyrocket so suddenly? please don’t faint, you told yourself over and over.

surely, at this rate megumi thought he screwed everything up. did you not love him back? was the feeling not mutual? after months of being with one another, growing close, learning each other inside and out… did he read it all wrong?

“y/n, i’m sorr—“

“i love you too.”

that was the moment everything in this dark and gloomy world suddenly made sense. if you had nobody to love, what was the point of living?

megumi fushiguro may have seen you as the sun, and his never ending happiness… but he didn’t know that he was your reason for becoming that light. he would never understand the joy he brought to your dull world.

when he calls me pretty, i feel like somebody.

why is it always raining? you wondered.

to be fair, you didn’t hate the rain. you enjoyed it at times, and found peace in the sounds that came along with it; but it became a hassle when you’d have to travel across the jujutsu high campus. you cursed them for making the dorms such a distance from classes.

mentally preparing for the journey to your room, you tucked your books away into your bag to shield them from the downpour.

the onslaught of rain grew as you stepped out from the awning that protected you. an earthy smell wafted through your nostrils, filling your senses. the wetness against your skin was freezing, making goosebumps rise with each prick of the harsh rains. seconds ago you dreaded stepping out into the horrific weather, but now you stood perfectly still with your face tilted towards the sky enjoying the refreshingness.

all you could hear was the raging thunder up above, and it made you feel free. no sounds of other students could be heard, no screaming noises from the bustling city of tokyo, no ugly walling from cursed spirits. just the thunder, just your breathing, just the droplets of rain falling against the concrete and rooftops around you.

it was a beautiful moment.

which is why you dropped your bag, spread your arms as far as they could reach, and spun in the violent rainfall. the world slowed down for those few seconds.

“are you crazy?!”

your eyes snapped open as you turned to watch fushiguro rush towards you, an umbrella in hand.

“you’re going to get struck by lightning one of these days,” he picked up your bag and tossed it over his shoulder, before holding the umbrella over both of your bodies. “what the hell are you doing out here?”

smiling up at fushiguro, you stepped out from the umbrella once again with a laugh, “i’m enjoying the rain! enjoy it with me!”

you snatched the umbrella, quickly closing it and tossing it to the ground. letting all of your worries and fears fade away, you yearned to have one moment with megumi that wasn’t ripped away by the darkness of your world… one normal moment.

one normal moment where you were just kids playing in the freezing rain.

expecting him to look annoyed at your antics like usual, you were pleasantly surprised to find him matching your smile and looking at you with nothing but bliss.

“you’re so annoying.”

“and you love me,” you grinned.

“... and i love you.”

fushiguro stepped towards you, encasing his arms around your waist as he picked you up and spun you around in a circle. laughter filled the air, and you felt nothing but joy.

time froze as the two of you basked in your youth, enjoying only the company of one another and the rainstorm. it felt like an eternity before your feet met the ground once more. your hair and clothes were soaked, strands of your own hair felt plastered to your face as you giggled. megumi pushed those strands aside, and replaced them with smothering kisses.

“you look different when your hair is wet,” you told him as you pushed it all out of his eyes.

“and you look just as pretty as ever.”

ever since your relationship with megumi began, he’s slowly come further out of that shell that he placed himself in. seeing him be able to enjoy himself like this… it brought a new type of happiness.

kissing his nose quickly, you looked up at the sky as the rain finally lightened up, “you know, if i didn’t know any better i’d say i’m wearing off on you.”

“is that so?” megumi asked, picking up your bag again along with the umbrella.

“mhm! you’ve let loose more,” you huddled close to him underneath the safety of the umbrella for warmth, “finally taking back your youth.”

megumi chuckled, holding you close. “i guess i have my beautiful sun to thank for that, don’t i?”

even when we fade eventually to nothing...

everything was blurry. there was an ache spreading throughout your body, and it felt as if someone was landing a blow to your rib cage over and over again. there was barely any fight left in you, but you would continue to push forward until someone got to you. surely one of the teachers would find you soon, right? of course they would! gojo must’ve been on his way.

that’s what you thought.

it’s what you desperately wanted to believe, but as the time passed you began to think their fight had just begun. you knew what was happening back at the school, you were there when that special grade stepped out and attacked you and inumaki.

the problem was, everyone knew you weren’t strong enough to fight in that battle. inumaki knew. before you knew it, megumi’s divine dog was shoving you away as inumaki commanded you to run in the opposite direction. damn him.

you wanted to curse him for sending you away with the shikigami, but deep down you knew he was right. there were still lower level curses running around, and they needed to be dealt with… but you didn’t foresee coming face to face with mahito as he made his get away from jujutsu high.

“your friends left you all alone? what a shame.” he spoke with a bubbly laugh, watching the blood trickle down from your hairline.

you wanted to speak, you wanted to charge at him and rip him to shreds for everything he’s done. yet, all you could do was cry out in agony as you fell to your knees. every part of your body felt like it would combust into flames at any given second, you weren’t sure if it was from the pain or the sickening warmth of your blood soaking through your clothes. your eyes became heavier, struggling to focus on the laughing maniac in front of you.

the shikigami shielded you from mahito, a deep growl emitting from its body as it took a stance to protect you. the divine creature had one job, and it was to protect you when he was not with megumi; but you couldn’t stand by and watch another one of his shikigami be destroyed. not for your sake.

“return to megumi.” you reach out, your fingertips barely ghosting over it’s fur.

with a sad whine, the divine dog gave you one last look before disappearing from the air. he was safe, and that is all that mattered. he could protect megumi now, and be far away from the monster you faced.

“that demon dog could’ve been your only chance of survival, y/n!” mahito laughed again, causing you to grimace at the sound.

“divine. dog. you scum,” you made no move to try and stand, nor defend yourself. the wounds in your chest, and side were fatal and crippling. there was nothing left for you to do, other than to accept your fate.

as a jujutsu sorcerer, you are taught to live without regret. to live without fear of death. to accept it, when your time comes… but you were terrified.

what kind of cruel life was this?

this was why you did not want to love fushiguro… because every sweet thing, has a bitter end.

you couldn’t remember when your eyes had closed, or when all of the pain in your body seemed to go numb. all you knew is that when you awoke, mahito was gone. you were face to face with gojo as he carried you away from the scene.

your teacher noticed your eyes drifting open almost immediately. for the first time, you saw him look concerned. he wasn’t smiling, or laughing like usual— he looked like he was in as much pain as you felt.

“gojo…” you coughed, blood quickly filled your lungs and nearly made you collapse at the loss of breath.

“save your energy, yn.”

your eyes slowly shut once more, the willpower to survive was fleeting, “tell him… tell him i love him?”

in a whisper that you barely caught, gojo tried his best to scold you for your shitty goodbye, “you’re not going to die, you’re staying here.”

“protect him, satoru… protect them all.”

they say that when you die, you experience a flashback of your entire life in seconds. that was the worst lie you had ever heard. aside from finally escaping the pain, all you saw was a blinding flash of white and the memory of the very last kiss you ever shared with megumi…

… you will always be my favorite form of loving.

weeks after your funeral, megumi visited your grave every single day. each day, a new flower was brought from the garden of jujutsu high. the garden where he grew the nerve to ask you to be his girlfriend, the garden where you kissed for the very first time, said your first i love you, and danced in the rain as if your youth depended on it.

an array of flowers built up around your grave, and you all swore that before you knew it? megumi and nobara would have their own garden to tend to around you.

you hoped they would, and that it would bring them joy… just as you once had.

staring down at where you laid in the ground, megumi placed down the head of a single lotus flower on the front of your tombstone.

ETERNAL SUN Y/N L/N.

friend. family. student. lover.

cherished by many, adored by all.

in life, or in death, you would always be the eternal sunlight to megumi fushiguro. no matter the consequences to your spirit, you vowed to never leave his side and to always protect him and your friends.

a loyal guardian from the other side. their guide.

your spirit smiled, glancing from megumi’s tear streaked face to the sight of the moon as you placed a hand on his shoulder. being a part of the supernatural world now, fushiguro could sense your presence.

“the moon is beautiful, isn’t it?” megumi mumbled to your grave, the rain pouring down around the umbrella you once shared together.

you whispered to the wind, “i can die happy…”

authors note ; this was so fun to write. this is the first thing i’ve written that’s over 1k words and posted. if megumi is ooc, mind your business </3 i’m trying to learn him as a character xoxo

reblogs are appreciated!!

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bitsandbobsofwriting · 3 years ago

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The former God of Magic resents The Mother for sticking him on Earth, and plans on causing as much havoc as he can to punish Her;

Version 2, Dark!Merlin

INTRO

(Version 1, Good!Merlin)

TW: A lot of emotional manipulation, a little violence, a lot of angst.

“You’re late.”

The woman’s well practiced blank mask falls into a scowl as she stares at Merlin with mistrust:

“Well, perhaps I was putting off coming to see you, no matter how necessary it is.”

The gang can see the bob of Merlin’s head as he lets out a low chuckle, and they have to stop themselves from recoiling; they’d never heard a noise like that from their young friend before, it sounded almost... cruel.

He lifts a hand to cover his heart as he says in faux offense:

“You wound me, sister. You didn’t want to see your favourite sibling?”

Everyone frowns in confusion, Merlin doesn’t have... siblings. That’s not even mentioning the fact that this woman barely seems human.

The woman doesn’t hide her slight disgust, taking a step back from Merlin and letting out a harsh breath:

“I came here to tell you that you need to hurry up. Time is running out.”

Merlin chuckles again, turning to the side and taking a few short paces, his hands held leisurely behind his back. The amusement on his face is disturbing, and Arthur gulps, not noticing the way Mordred is growing paler and paler by the second. Merlin doesn’t turn to look at the woman as he speaks, and his smirk stretches wider:

“But I’m having so much fun, Ava!”

The woman, Ava, huffs again, rolling her eyes and crossing her arms over her chest. If the gang weren’t so semi-sure that Merlin wasn’t dangerous, they’d think she looked scared:

“Mother sent you here to complete a task. Get it done, and you can come home. Isn’t that what you want? To come home?”

Merlin’s smirk falls, and the snarl that the gang briefly see on his face before he whips around to face Ava takes their breath away. They barely notice the thunder, snapping in the distance in time with Merlin’s anger:

“Mother’s the one keeping me here in the first place. She could accept me back any time.”

Ava takes another step back, and Merlin tilts his head ever so slightly at the movement, but waits for her to speak:

“As punishment for your cruelty. She isn’t happy, you’re making a mess of things.”

Merlin chuckles again, tilting his head even further, and his words have an immediate chilling effect on the group hiding in the bushes:

“Well, if she insists on sending the God of Chaos to fix a problem, perhaps she should expect a little mess. Plus, I’m having more fun here than I’ve had in centuries. These humans... so gullible.-”

Ava shakes her head mournfully, but before she can say anything, Merlin continues, now pacing calmly around the clearing, waving his hands and grinning in his excitement:

“-I mean, they’re just so... easy. To play with, to manipulate. You know they all trust me? They all come running to naïve, innocent, loving little Merlin, spilling all their secrets as they go. Did you know, the drunkard is the son of a noble? “Fuck nobility” my arse, he is nobility.-”

Gwaine clenches his jaw and looks to the floor, ignoring the stares of Arthur and Leon, but before anything can be muttered, Merlin continues, listing their greatest secrets off on his fingers:

“-The gentle giant is terrified that someone’s going to find out that his preferences lie with men, which is ridiculous considering the way he stares at the aforementioned drunkard when he thinks no one but little old me is watching. The blacksmith, even years on, is terrified that his whore sister will never forgive him for... something or other, I wasn’t really paying attention. Camelot’s first, The King’s most trusted, has a debilitating fear of heights, and oh if it isn’t just hilarious to watch when he has to patrol the city walls. And then, there’s the-”

Ava rolls her mournful eyes and interrupts him:

“Your point, Em?”

Merlin laughs, fully and from the belly, but the sound doesn’t bring the gang joy like it normally does:

“My point, is that I’ve got these idiots wrapped around my finger. Mortals: the universe’s most fun toy. I haven’t even gotten to half of them yet. There’s the noble one, who thinks he holds my trust, the Druid boy, whose only redeeming feature is that he’s destined to kill the King Prat one day; believe me, if it weren’t for that I’d have killed the annoying little twerp years ago. Then there’s the King Prat’s magical sister, who is full of such terror. I play with her dreams some nights, force visions of pyres and hatred and destruction to play over and over in her mind. It’s rather amusing, watching her thrash and sweat and whimper in her sleep.-”

Arthur’s head had whipped around to Morgana when Merlin had mentioned her, but the tears streaming down her face and the way her hand was clamped tightly over her mouth stripped his anger from him. Which left him with no distraction, no way to ignore the simple fact of what was happening right now. Merlin was... not what they thought. He was powerful, he was using them. He was playing with them like puppets and pulling their strings this way and that, watching as they could do nothing but follow. Arthur didn’t know what to think, and he definitely didn’t notice the tears on his own cheeks.

Mordred was pale to the point of looking like he was about to faint and Lancelot had a deep frown on his face, tears in his eyes but not quite falling, not yet. This was... a misunderstanding. He... he knows Merlin, this is a trick, or a trap, he’ll explain later and everything will be just fine. He just has to... to trust him. Everything will be fine.

Gwaine keeps his gaze on the floor. A small part of him was feeling a little prideful that Percival liked him back, but the rest of him... had no room for anything but grief. He had suspected that Merlin had magic, but this was something else, this was... a whole new person. Did he ever really know Merlin? Did any of them?

Elyan and Gwen sat pressed together tightly, though Gwen had one hand on Morgana’s shaking back, and her other was reaching around Elyan, gripping Leon’s shoulder tightly. Leon was just staring blankly at the scene in front of him, though anyone that knew him well enough would be able to see the tight clench of his jaw and the anger (and grief) in his eyes.

Ava interrupted Merlin’s gleeful ranting, the tears in her eyes a little more prominent as she took on a slightly more desperate tone:

“Please, Em, just... stop. They’re important, they have destinies, you can not destroy them or push them too far; this is cruel, even for you. This... you never used to be like this.”

Merlin turns around, facing away from his sister and giving the hidden group full view of his rage-filled face. His voice is quiet and clipped and angry as he asks:

“Oh?”

Another roll of thunder echoes through the clearing, closer this time, and fat droplets of rain fall harshly from the sky, mixing with the tears on everyone’s face. Ava sighs, tears overflowing as she gulps before answering, her voice shaking slightly as she takes a step towards Merlin:

“You’re meant to be the God of Magic, not Chaos. You were so... beautiful, balanced. You saw wonder in everything, every little spark of magic and every single prayer put a smile on your face. You loved humanity even more than Mother did. Now look at you, you’re tormenting them, torturing them. This isn’t you, Em, please. Help them, and things can go back to the way they were, help them and you can come home.”

The anger on Merlin’s face had only grown as she spoke, and each individual hidden in the bushes had to make a concerted effort to stop themselves from bolting. None of them had felt terror like it, and the fact that it was Merlin they were all so scared of... well, it didn’t help.

Lightening streaks across the sky and wind howls violently through the forest, calming only when Merlin shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, straightening his back and smirking slightly before he replies, still not turning around to face his sister:

“You’re right. I loved humanity, I was desperate to see them succeed. And then they butchered me. I gave them this universe to frolic in, and in return they call me a monster, a beast, they call me evil, they make nightmares out of me. I still listen to every little prayer, and do you know what I hear? I hear my people, my wonderful little creations, my creatures of magic, begging for mercy, begging for the pain to stop. The humanity I so used to love turned on them, began to burn them, out of spite and fear and hatred. I will not show them any more grace than they have showed me, I will give them exactly what they deserve, and that blonde idiot is at the top of my list of people who have to fucking pay. I won’t destroy him entirely, because ultimately I want my creatures to stop suffering, but I will break him. I will rip him apart piece by piece for what he has done to me.-”

The absolute fury in Merlin’s words, the hatred, translates to thunder in the sky and agony in Arthur’s chest. The King can barely breathe, muffling the sobs tearing from his mouth with both hands, both terrified of being discovered, and desperate to... to let Merlin punish him for the pain he has caused.

Leon settles a shaking hand on his shoulder, but Arthur doesn’t look his way, his blurry gaze focused on Merlin, now finally turning back to his sister:

“-You know, I’m this close to getting that big blonde idiot to fall in love with me. How pathetic is that?? All it took was a few touches here, a few lingering stares there, saving his life occasionally. The man is so pathetically starved for attention I imagine he’d fall for anyone who showed him the barest amount of affection. That is how I will break him.-”

The only thing stopping Arthur from sobbing aloud is Leon collapsing behind him, pulling the young King back into his chest and wrapping a tight arm around his torso, one hand clamped over his mouth as he mutters desperate reassurances into his ear. Morgana pulls Gwen close in a similar way when the servant’s cries grow harsher, her brother burying his face in her shoulder.

Lancelot barely notices Gwaine gripping his arm hard enough to leave bruises for weeks, or Percival pushing his forehead into Lance’s shoulder blade. All he can do is sit and stare at the ground, his breathing slow but shaky, tears streaming silently down his face as he rethinks everything he’s ever known.

Mordred sits on his own, rocking back and forth rhythmically as he tightens the clutch he has around his knees. Tears drip from his young cheeks, poisoning the ground beneath him as he struggles to consider his faith. His faith in magic, in Emrys, who was meant to be balanced and beautiful and giving. Emrys, who he now knew was twisted and angry and desperate for revenge.

All of their hearts are splitting, cracking down the middle.

“-It won’t be physical pain, no, that’ll be down to the Druid boy. He doesn’t want to kill Arthur now, but he will, one day, when I give him one final push. He’ll fall so far into the darkness there’ll be nothing of him left to save, and when he plunges his sword into The Pendragon’s chest, I’ll sit back and watch with a smile on my face, and Arthur will realise that the man he loves, the man who claimed to love him in return, hated him all along. Tricked him. I will watch the life drain from his eyes, and he will spend his last few moments on this world in every kind of agony imaginable, lost in the knowledge that I wanted him to suffer, that he is being punished for his sins.”

Ava shakes her head, silver tears dripping from her emerald eyes as she stares at the floor:

“Are Sir Mordred and the Lady Morgana not your creatures? Do you not wish to save at least them?”

Merlin chuckles darkly:

“I had faith in them once, but they made their decisions. They sided with a Pendragon over me. Mother may be fond of her precious Once and Future King, but to be fair, she’s fond of anything with a pulse, and I, for one, can not wait until she’s not quite so fond of him anymore.”

Ava gulps, taking a desperate step towards her amused brother, but before she can say anything, before she can make one last plea for mercy on humanity’s behalf, Merlin tilts his head, smirking dangerously:

“Do you think they’re scared?”

She halts in her tracks, blinking in confusion, and Merlin’s smile grows into a chuckle as he gestures behind him:

“The King and all his little friends, hidden in the bushes. Do you think they’re scared?”

The gang barely have time to look up in shock before their bodies are moving, out of their control. They stand rigidly and walk single-file out from their hiding place, coming to stand in a line at the side of the clearing. Merlin hasn’t even looked at them, but his hand floats in the air, a sickly looking yellow mist swirling around his fingers as he tilts his head at his sister, staring in horror at The King, the knights, the Lady, and the servant.

Merlin drops his hand and they all fall to their knees, not even bothering to be brave as they sob. The angry God finally turns, and the serene smile on his face is chilling as he walks towards them, coming to stand in front of Lance and Mordred first. The two of them are the calmest, though calm in the way that they don’t really look... present. They stare blankly ahead, breathing shallow and tears still falling as Merlin crouches in front of them, gripping a chin in each hand and shaking their heads roughly. His voice comes out a whisper, the frown on his face looking more disappointed than anything:

“So much faith, so much trust. It’s a little pitiful, if I’m being honest.”

They don’t react to his words and he smirks before letting them go and standing, moving on to Elyan and Gwen, gripping the knight’s shoulder and saying with mocking sympathy in his voice:

“You were right, by the way,-”

He glances at a fully sobbing Gwen with disgust:

“-she’ll never forgive you, but she’ll never tell you that. You’ll just spend the rest of your life wondering why your relationship was never the same.”

Next, he shuffles over to Gwaine, not even bothering to see the siblings’ reactions as he passes Leon and Percival with a look of disinterest on his face. He leans down in front of the knight, running a soft hand through his hair, waiting for the man to relax slightly before gripping his hair harshly and yanking back, so he has to look up at him. Merlin gives him a blindingly cruel smile:

“You're grateful that Percival is just as in love with you as you are with him, but don’t think yourself too lucky. You’re a hypocrite and a drunk, and my dear old Percy has too much self respect to put himself through that. I’d go for a good tumble in the hay and give up while you’re ahead.”

Once again, he moves back, his sister having to look away in her grief, her empathy drowning her. The God comes to stand in front of Morgana, who is desperately trying to look brave but failing miserably:

“And you. You’re meant to be The Darkness, but I couldn’t very well have you outdo me, could I? Try your hardest, I’ll still be the end of you, and I wait with baited breath for the day you fall, and the day soon after that, when I get to kill you.”

She break down in tears again at that, horrified with the idea that she might one day be on the same end of morality and cruelty as this monster in front of her.

Merlin smirks before rolling his eyes and finally coming to stand in front of Arthur. The King calms his breathing just enough to look up at a smirking Merlin, his voice cracking and barely-there as he mutters:

“Please... Merlin, please...”

The smirk drops from Merlin’s face as he brings his hand up, the sickly yellow mist back again. Arthur rises from the floor, hands clutching at his throat as the air is drawn from his lungs. Merlin steps closer to his with a snarl, his free hand gripping Arthur’s chin like a vice, though his voice eerily calm as he murmurs:

“You. You and Uther were so desperate for a scape-goat, for a villain, for a monster. And you picked magic, you picked me. So stop being so fucking pathetic, I’m just playing the part you gave me to perfection. You picked the premise, I’m writing the ending.”

Ava finally speaks up, her voice loud, despite the waver:

“Brother please, this is... this is beyond cruelty, please just stop.”

Arthur is dropped, and The King can barely find it in himself to choke for air as Merlin turns back to his sister, the amused smirk back on his face:

“Why? None of them are going to remember in the morning anyway. I’ve had my fun, this has been cathartic, but I can’t have them ruining my plans. So run along now sister, tell Mother that her precious task is being completed, I’m just taking the scenic route.”

She shakes her head in defeat, staring at the floor. She lifts her head, opening her mouth to make one last attempt, but she closes it, realising that there’s nothing she could possibly say to persuade him to suddenly have mercy, mercy that no one had ever shown him. She gulps, letting out a deep breath before shaking her head again and turning around, walking back into the trees, the way she came.

The God looks back to his puppets, shivering in time with their knotted strings, smirking once more before he clicks his fingers and everything goes dark.

Arthur wakes the next morning feeling oddly refreshed and surprisingly unannoyed at his idiot manservant’s lateness. He rolls his eyes at the bright sunshine glaring through his curtains, the sun certainly a lot higher in the sky than it should be at the time The King wakes, but oh well. Merlin has been chipper lately, and the warmth that Arthur feels in his chest at the younger man’s happiness makes him more likely to forgive him his tardiness.

As if thinking of him had summoned him (wishful thinking on Arthur’s part), Merlin bursts through the doors, not bothering to knock as per usual, a breakfast-laden tray in his arms and a cheeky grin on his face. Arthur rolls his eyes again, chucking a pillow at Merlin half-heartedly as he grumbles, also half-heartedly:

“You’re late.”

Merlin chuckles, setting the tray down on the table before jogging endearingly over to Arthur’s bedside, grabbing his hand and pulling him to stand upright:

“Something tells me you don’t mind all that much, Your Pratness.”

Arthur huffs, but only to stop himself from smiling, and resolutely ignores the way Merlin’s hand is still in his. The servant squeezes his palm softly, and Arthur gulps, pulling away and walking towards his meal, hoping the food would squash the butterflies in his stomach.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes, smiling to himself softly at a whole range of things: the good night’s rest he’d had, the bright sunshine, Merlin’s good mood, the sensation of Merlin’s hand in his own, Merlin’s dazzling smile, Merlin, Merlin, Merlin...

Merlin stares at his back as he goes, noting with a dangerously satisfied smirk the red blush of his ears.

The scenic route indeed.

THE END!!

Oops I made myself sad. Sorry to say but I hope this makes you sad too.

This was SUPER fun to write and I’m so glad I decided to do two versions😅

Link to the Good!Merlin version (much MUCH fluffier, I promise) at the top!!

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ghxst-heart · 3 years ago

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sᴀғᴇ ─ ᴀʟɪsᴏɴ ᴅɪʟᴀᴜʀᴇɴᴛɪs

ʀᴇǫᴜᴇsᴛᴇᴅ? Yes, by Anon

sᴜᴍᴍᴀʀʏ: After everything that Alison had been through, (Y/N) decides that Ali could use a day of relaxation and preparation for her return to Rosewood High.

ᴛʀɪɢɢᴇʀ ᴡᴀʀɴɪɴɢs: None! Just fluff!

ɴᴇᴇᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴋɴᴏᴡ ɪɴғᴏ: Pronouns used are She/Her/Hers, Established Friendship with The Liars and Alison

ɪɴᴄʟᴜᴅᴇs: Fem!Reader, Crushing!Alison DiLaurentis X Reader

ᴡᴏʀᴅ ᴄᴏᴜɴᴛ: 1.1k

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎(Y/N) and Ali had spent the morning preparing Ali for what her first day back at school was going to be like, and they had retired to Ali’s bedroom by the time that the afternoon had rolled around. The girls were quiet, peacefully enjoying each other’s company as they rested on Ali’s bed. (Y/N) found herself with her back against the headrest of the bed and Ali let herself lay her head on (Y/N)’s lap, her eyes fluttering shut as (Y/N) ran her fingers through her hair.

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎(Y/N) and Ali were closer than the other girls of their group, it had always been that way. Even while Ali was gone, (Y/N) hadn’t quite assimilated into the dynamic that the other four girls in their group had fallen into. In hindsight, that was probably for the best. The girls were all being tormented by an invisible bully that went by the name of A, but (Y/N) had lucked out. A didn’t seem too interested in her, which had kept her safe and out of harm's way. However, that just drove a further wedge between (Y/N) and the girls.

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎“Thank you for today.” Ali broke the silence, her voice small and far away, almost as if she were lost in thought. (Y/N) smiled, looking at Ali as she continued to comb through Ali’s hair. She let her fingers start to scratch her scalp, earning a content hum from Ali as the DiLaurentis girl opened her eyes to meet (Y/N)’s. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎(Y/N) felt her heart flutter at Ali’s words, her face growing warm with a deep blush. It was rare for Ali to be so vulnerable, so sweet, and (Y/N) always felt blessed that she was able to see it. “I’m just glad you’re back, Ali.”

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Ali abruptly sat up and turned her body to face (Y/N), tucking her legs under her as she scooted closer to her. The DiLaurentis girl gently took (Y/N)’s hand in her own and softly smiled at her. “I mean it. I don’t think I’d be able to go back to school and face everyone if you weren’t going to be there with me.”

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎“Well, I’ll be there to protect you from anyone that even thinks about being mean to you. You’ve been through enough, the least I can do is protect you from petty high school bullies.” (Y/N) said, squeezing Ali’s hand and offering her a sincere smile. “Just like you used to do for me, remember?”

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Ali’s face grew very solemn at (Y/N)’s words, her eyes dropping to their hands and her mouth twisting into a frown. (Y/N) suddenly felt self-conscious, as if she had said something wrong, but she didn’t know what. She had hoped that mentioning their middle school years would bring a smile back to Ali’s face, to remind her of the times where the most complicated part of their lives was what lipgloss matched the eyeshadow they weren’t supposed to be wearing to school.

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎(Y/N) reached out and gently placed her fingers under Ali’s chin to pull her gaze back to hers. (Y/N)’s eyebrows had knitted together, a questioning look swimming in her eyes. Ali’s pretty blue eyes were now cloudy with tears and her teeth had locked into her bottom lip to stop her from crying. (Y/N) had always scolded Ali for that habit, she would rather that Ali let herself cry, but they both knew that Ali’s mother had ruined her ability to feel her emotions long ago.

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎“What happened, Ali?” (Y/N) whispered, letting her thumb run across Ali’s jaw as she held her gaze. “You know you can tell me anything, right? That hasn’t changed.”

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Ali nodded, biting into her lip harder as she tried to keep herself composed. She let herself fall into (Y/N)’s hand, relishing in the feel of her delicate hand on her cheek, as she took a deep breath. She was hesitant, unsure, but she found herself speaking before she could think over her words. (Y/N) always had that effect on Ali, the DiLaurentis girl couldn’t keep anything from her.

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎“I just wish I could keep you safe.” Ali finally said, somehow quieter than a whisper. (Y/N) opened her mouth to ask what she had said, because, even with the little distance there was between them, she still hadn’t been able to discern what Ali had said, but the DiLaurentis girl cleared her throat and spoke again. “I don’t know how to protect you from A anymore, (Y/N). While I was gone, you were off the table, A couldn’t touch you, but now, I’m not sure.”

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎(Y/N) found herself sitting back, her hand dropping from Ali’s face and her body leaning away from Ali as she processed her words. What did she mean by “off the table?” Was that why she had never been in any serious danger from A? Hanna was hit by a car, Emily was nearly asphyxiated to death, Spencer had to go to Radley Sanitorium, and Aria had to kill Shana. The worst that ever happened to (Y/N) was coming face-to-face with A in her own bedroom and being shoved into the wall so A could get away. But, why was (Y/N) the only one that Ali wanted to protect?

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎(Y/N) pursed her lips and met Ali’s eyes again, her head shaking in disbelief as she asked. “Why me? Why not your brother, or even CeCe?”

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎“I wouldn’t have been able to survive if I didn’t have you here when I returned.” Ali immediately answered. There wasn’t a hint of hesitation or thought behind her words, they were the truth. (Y/N) knew that the moment Ali spoke them.

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎(Y/N)’s heart swelled and her face broke into a stupid grin. She couldn’t help the teasing words from leaving her mouth, “Oh, Ali, don’t act as if you actually like me.”

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎Ali laughed at (Y/N)’s words, the beautiful laugh that (Y/N) had missed more than she could ever admit, and leaned forward to wrap her arms around (Y/N)’s neck to pull her into a hug. (Y/N) blushed as the DiLaurentis girl hugged her, her arms tightening around Ali’s body as she returned it. She had missed Ali so much, she had almost forgotten what it was like to have her in her arms.

‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎“You’re the only one I can’t live without, (Y/N),” Ali said, burying her face in the spot where (Y/N)’s neck and shoulder met. (Y/N) was suddenly at a loss for words. Ali was always the type of girl to keep her emotions close to her chest, rarely did she ever let herself show them. But, just as (Y/N) was the only one that she couldn’t live without, she was also the only one that truly got to see who Ali was and know how she felt. She was the only one that Ali needed.

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎

✧─── ･｡ﾟ✧: *.✧ .* :✧. ───✧

‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎‏‏‎ ‎

ᴀᴜᴛʜᴏʀ's ɴᴏᴛᴇs: I wasn’t sure if the person that sent the ask meant for a romantic or platonic relationship between (Y/N) and Ali, so I kept it platonic, but I tried to sprinkle in some romance/romantic gestures in! I personally feel that it has a somewhat transitional feel, like Ali’s return has brought some romantic feelings to the surface. Also, vaguely inspired by “Power Over Me” by Dermot Kennedy, I couldn’t stop listening to it while writing this. Thank you for this request, I loved it!

#pll #pretty little liars #alison dilaurentis #ali dilaurentis #alison dilaurentis imagine #alison dilaurentis fanfiction #imagine #one shot #pretty little liars imagine #aria montgomery #hanna marin #spencer hastings #emily fields #aria montgomery imagine #hanna marin imagine #spencer hastings imagine #emily fields imagine #masterlist #pretty little liars masterlist

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asthmark · 4 years ago

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❝ chemistry ❞ o.st

synopsis → osaki shotaro moving to town means trips to the dance studio, boba dates, and the perpetual teasing of lee donghyuck.

pairing → shotaro, reader

requested? → yes! based off @onlyjihoons’s shipping game answer ♡

word count → 5.5k (this was supposed to be 1k.... goodbye.)

a/n → i enjoy writing texting scenes WAY too much ;; tbh this is like 50% texts im cryign but i had to convey how much i love 00 line .... and also how firmly i believe in lee donghyuck devil supremacy. as always, feedback is greatly appreciated and enjoy!

if someone were to ask you how you felt about your friends, you would without any hesitation, answer that you loved them to death. of course, if you were being completely honest, you would also have to add that you experienced the urge to strangle them from time to time. that might earn you a couple odd stares but you’re sure people would be more understanding if they knew who was in your inner circle to begin with.

for starters, there was lee jeno — tall, handsome, and the textbook definition of a gentleman. then, na jaemin, who you would consider to be the yin to jeno’s yang. an extremely energetic guy and, in your book, a total freak of nature ever since you found out that he inhales four shots of espresso on the daily. liu yangyang was a more recent addition to your group but, being as quick-witted as he was, he quickly fit right in. he also had a habit of going on somewhat aggressive rants in german which renjun found to be extremely amusing. speaking of, huang renjun was another one of your close friends — the shortest of the group, actually. (and, much to renjun’s dismay, that’s exactly how donghyuck liked to introduce him to people.) he was the type of guy you could trust to keep everyone in check which consequently made you mildly terrified of him.

however, it could never compare to the perpetual fear you have of lee donghyuck.

of course, you love him to pieces but sometimes you really wish he didn’t find so much joy in, well, making everyone miserable. you couldn’t deny it was funny to watch him tease and taunt your other friends. you still remember him purposefully messing up renjun’s game at the local arcade just when he was about to reach his high score — and also the way renjun had tackled him to the floor right then and there, resulting in the six of you being banned from the place. or, that time he offered to pay for everyone’s starbucks orders only to tell the barista that jaemin’s name was ben dover. (to no one’s surprise, yangyang had found that joke particularly hilarious.) you can also clearly recall how hard you had laughed in both of those situations.

but, donghyuck never let anyone laugh for too long.

according to him it was ’only fair’ to make sure each of his friends was at the receiving end of his gags. so, despite laughing at his latest victim’s expense, each of you knew that donghyuck would make sure you were in the same position sooner or later.

you definitely weren’t expecting it to be your turn one dull friday evening.

things are going slow for you as you sit at your desk, typing away on your laptop. school has been out for hours and your professors have decided to be saints and leave you little homework for the weekend. beside you, your phone dings, alerting you of the new text message in your group chat.

[4:23 pm] hyuck: i’m bored 🥺

[4:23 pm] you: plz never use that emoji again

[4:24 pm] nana: it’s misleading dude

[4:25 pm] yangx2: yeah like when have u ever made a face that isn’t this 😈

[4:25 pm] renjun: donghyuck is the devil = confirmed

[4:25 pm] nana: CALLED IT

[4:26 pm] hyuck: u guys are literally so evil

jeno laughed at “u guys are literally so evil”

[4:27 pm] jeno: look who’s talking lol

[4:27 pm] you: dangg u know it’s bad when lee jeno disses u

[4:28 pm] jeno: ...ngl it kinda feels like ur shading me rn

[4:28 pm] you: u would be correct :)

[4:29 pm] hyuck: um HELLO can u guys go back to paying attention to me???

[4:29 pm] renjun: what do u want, diva?

[4:29 pm] hyuck: i just wanna spend some quality time with my best friends ;(

renjun disliked “i just wanna spend some quality time with my best friends ;(”

yangx2 disliked “i just wanna spend some quality time with my best friends ;(”

you disliked “i just wanna spend some quality time with my best friends ;(”

nana disliked “i just wanna spend some quality time with my best friends ;(”

jeno disliked “i just wanna spend some quality time with my best friends ;(”

[4:30 pm] hyuck: OH COME ON

[4:30 pm] yangx2: i think what u meant to say is that u wanna make one of us very miserable today, right?

[4:30 pm] hyuck: .....no comment

nana renamed the group chat “hyuck hate club”

[4:31 pm] hyuck: ok i’m honestly feeling so attacked right now

[4:31 pm] jeno: well now u know what it’s like to be friends with u

[4:31 pm] you: so true king omg ur on a roll

[4:32 pm] hyuck: hmm okay so either jeno or y/n is gonna be today’s target, got it

[4:32 pm] hyuck: anyway can u guys come down to the dance studio now??

[4:32 pm] you: what makes u think i would go anywhere near u when i know ur plotting ur revenge on me as we speak

[4:32 pm] hyuck: because maybe i’ll have mercy on u and just terrorize jeno instead

[4:33 pm] you: good enough for me! thnx bestie, see u soon!!

[4:33 pm] jeno: HEY

nana laughed at “good enough for me! thnx bestie, see u soon!!”

[4:34 pm] yangx2: u literally cannot trust anyone in this friend group

[4:34 pm] renjun: ikr isn’t it great???

you might have been slightly out of your mind to willingly go see donghyuck knowing you had teased him in your group chat earlier. although, if there was a slight chance he would show you mercy if you did hang out with him, you were going to take it.

the studio was where you had first met donghyuck, along with the rest of your friends due to the dance classes you attended. after bumping into each in between classes and during practice, you began to get well acquainted. turns out, the six of you actually got along incredibly well and after a while, you began to share routines and tips, even choreographing together from time to time. obviously, this led to the infamous group chat being formed and lots of time spent outside the studio as well.

but, none of you had lost that love for dancing. in fact, forming your little clique had only made it grow. as you opened the front doors of the building you had made so many memories in, you wondered if donghyuck wanted your insight on a certain routine or needed some help choreographing. of course, there was also the possibility that he really was just bored and wanted you to suffer with him.

what you did not expect, however, was to see him caught up in conversation with another person. you couldn’t clearly see them with donghyuck in the way; all you knew for certain was that your best friend’s mouth was moving a mile a minute. you tentatively tiptoe into the room, hoping to not intrude on their discussion. but, at hearing the doors creak open, donghyuck puts his rant on pause to enthusiastically wave you over.

you sigh, putting your belongings down and approaching the pair. as you near, you notice that hyuck has a huge smile — no, smirk — on his face. you internally curse yourself for believing that he would ever pass up an opportunity to torment you, especially in front of a stranger.

“this is a very dear friend of mine,” you hear him introduce to his acquaintance. “her name is y/n. she dances, too.”

“oh, that’s really cool!”

the stranger’s unusually cheery tone prompts you to finally peek behind donghyuck and put a face to the voice.

and what a face he has.

“this is shotaro,” donghyuck informs you. “he’s new to town and quite the dancer. caught him in the middle of a routine.”

your knees almost wobble as you take in the stranger — shotaro’s — kind eyes that almost sparkle. (you aren’t sure if it’s because of the fluorescent lights of the studio or just part of his charm.) his lips are curved up into a friendly smile that makes you feel slightly giddy. his hair falls into his face almost perfectly, not a strand out of place and you’re uncertain as to how that’s even possible since, as donghyuck had said, he was dancing. not to mention, there’s not a bead of sweat on his face. did this guy come straight out of a disney movie or something?

“excuse her,” donghyuck chuckles. “good looking people tend to make her freeze up. don’t worry, this happened when she met me, too.”

you offer your friend a glare and an elbow to the side and you swear you hear shotaro chuckle. you turn to him instead, putting on a welcoming smile.

“my bad, i just—”

“got lost in his eyes?”

you pinch the bridge of your nose. “donghyuck, please don’t make me have to attack you in front of our guest.”

more giggles escape shotaro. (you swear it’s the prettiest thing you’ve ever heard.) you curiously tilt your head at him.

“sorry, it’s just that, you guys are too funny,” he admits with a sheepish smile.

you mirror his grin, slightly relieved he was amused instead of weirded out. “yeah, well, just wait ’til you meet the rest of us. it’s like a circus show, you’ll love it.”

“hello, clowns!”

“speak of the devil,” donghyuck murmurs, watching as yangyang and renjun enter, followed by jeno and jaemin.

“woah, who’s the cutie?” yangyang asks renjun, in what you presume he thinks is a whisper. however, yangyang has never spoken quietly a day in his life. renjun simply shrugs at his question.

having clearly heard the compliment, a faint blush creeps onto shotaro’s cheeks.

“guys, this is shotaro,” donghyuck answers, tugging the sandy blonde forward.

he gives a somewhat shy wave. “hi, y/n’s friends.”

jaemin erupts into laughter. “uh oh, looks like he likes y/n more than hyuck.”

“don’t blame him,” jeno mutters.

shotaro’s forehead creases, face suddenly twisted in worry. “oh, i’m sorry, was i not supposed to say that?”

“oh no, don’t worry,” donghyuck denies, quickly. “i’m sure y/n doesn’t mind at all, right?”

if you could crawl into a hole to avoid the embarrassment, you would. of course, donghyuck was 100% right; you really didn’t mind shotaro calling the group that if it meant you could hear him say your name over and over again. in fact, his sweet voice could probably make the dictionary sound like the most addictive song. but, donghyuck had no right putting you on the spot like that.

jeno suddenly speaks, catching on to your flustered state and donghyuck’s evil grin. “so, it’s y/n’s turn today? sweet, i’m off the hook!”

shotaro furrows his brows slightly. “huh?”

“oh, it’s just an inside joke,” jeno says, smile reaching all the way up to his eyes.

you wish you could strangle him right then and there for finding amusement at your expense but the last thing you want is for shotaro to think you’re some sort of psychopath. (although, with a friend group like this, you’re definitely beginning to think that’s where you’re headed.)

“got it,” shotaro responds, breaking out into a grin himself. “you guys seem like a really close bunch!”

“the closest,” donghyuck corrects, overly sweet, as he wraps an arm around you. (you resist the urge to shove him off.) “you’ll fit right in!”

you believed that the torture was over the day donghyuck introduced shotaro to your group. you would probably just see him from time to time and the studio (hopefully without hyuck around) and it would all be downhill from there, right? the latest notification on your phone alerts you that you are absolutely wrong.

hyuck has added one (1) user to the group chat

[1:05 pm] hyuck: welcome shotaro!!

[1:06 pm] unknown: oh hey guys! :]

the emoticon almost makes your heart beat right out of your chest. you roll your eyes in frustration at how easily affected you were by this guy. seriously, why did everything he do have to be so cute? regardless, you quickly add his number to your contacts.

[1:06 pm] hyuck: why don’t we do a little roll call so shotaro can save ur numbers to his phone

[1:07 pm] yangx2: YANGYANG

[1:07 pm] yangx2: HA I WAS FIRST

[1:07 pm] jeno: ...

[1:08 pm] jeno: anyway this is jeno :)

[1:08 pm] nana: jaemin present!

[1:08 pm] renjun: hi shotaro, this is renjun

[1:10 pm] shotaro: haha cool thanks a lot, i just saved all ur numbers!

[1:10 pm] shotaro: but quick question, is y/n in this group chat? :0

you almost drop your phone at reading shotaro’s message although you’re unsure why. he just typed your name, get it together, you urge yourself.

[1:11 pm] you: heyy shotaro! i’m right here :)

[1:11 pm] shotaro: oh yayy! i’m so glad ^^

hyuck disliked “oh yayy! i’m so glad ^^”

[1:12 pm] hyuck: shotaro plz return my love what does she have that i don’t T-T

[1:12 pm] nana: a heart

[1:12 pm] yangx2: a brain

[1:12 pm] jeno: a conscience

[1:12 pm] renjun: a functioning moral compass

[1:13 pm] hyuck: wtf

[1:13 pm] shotaro: ahahaha it’s like i’m watching a comedy

[1:14 pm] you: told u it’s a circus

[1:14 pm] you: i say get out while u still can

[1:14 pm] shotaro: whaatt and leave u behind? no way!

nana renamed the group chat “shotaro x y/n supremacists”

[1:15 pm] jeno: my thoughts exactly

[1:15 pm] renjun: took the words right out of my mouth

you cringe at your friends’ blunt behavior, praying shotaro didn’t find their antics to be too strange.

[1:16 pm] shotaro: 😳

[1:16 pm] nana: aww someone’s shy

[1:17 pm] renjun: he wouldn’t last a day in itzy

[1:17 pm] yangx2: HELPP

you shake your head, laughing silently to yourself as you mute the group chat and place your phone back down. although, moments later, you receive a direct message. you presume it’s one of the boys trying to rope you back into the chat but the moment you see the contact name, you’re forced to do a double take.

[1:21 pm] shotaro: i hope i’m not bothering u but i just wanted to make sure ur okay .. you kinda went quiet in the gc :>

[1:21 pm] shotaro: it’s shotaro from the dance studio btw!

you can’t help but find the fact that he seriously thought you wouldn’t remember him adorable. how could you ever forget a face like his?

[1:22 pm] you: that’s so kind! i’m okay, i promise. i’ve just had to put up with those dorks for way too long, sometimes i just ignore them haha

[1:22 pm] shotaro: lol yeah they do seem like a handful! but i look forward to getting to know them better!!

[1:23 pm] shotaro: and u too ofc~~

it takes all your willpower not to spam dozens of heart emojis in an attempt to show shotaro just how he has reduced you to a lovesick fool. instead, your response is short and sweet.

[1:23 pm] you: right back at u, taro! ♡

“okay, take five,” donghyuck pants, pausing the music blaring from the speakers.

you gladly obey, wiping away the light sweat you had worked up from the latest routine you and hyuck were constructing.

you both belonged to the same dance class and frequently paired together for partnered projects. the rest of your friends attended different classes, which you constantly joked was for the best since there was no way one dance instructor could possibly handle the six of you together.

“how do you feel?” donghyuck asks you, running a hand through his tousled hair.

“the choreo’s great, i’m proud of what we got so far,” you reply. “of course, i would be happier if i didn’t have to get so up close and personal with you.”

donghyuck scoffs at your joke. “i can’t do anything about that. the teacher said the whole concept of the routine is supposed to be is intimate.”

you fake a gag, failing to contain a laugh when hyuck playfully shoves you in offense.

“i’m sorry i can’t be shotaro,” he adds, a smirk forming on his lips.

you roll your eyes. “oh, very funny.”

“c’mon, you’re acting like you wouldn’t kill to have him as your partner, especially with choreo as spicy as this.”

“well, it would beat being paired with you,” you remark, picking up your water bottle and taking a swig.

“hm, then looks like today might be your lucky day,” donghyuck replies, eyes trained somewhere behind you.

you follow his gaze, nearly choking on your water as soon as you catch sight of shotaro entering the studio. he meets your eyes, plucking out his earbuds and offering you a small wave.

“oh, hey guys!” he exclaims, cheerfully.

“hey ’taro,” you greet, rather quickly, earning you a knowing glance from your partner.

“’taro?” hyuck repeats, amused, as he folds his arms over his chest. “you guys are already on cute nickname basis?”

shotaro giggles, eyes squinting adorably as he does so. “it is a pretty adorable nickname, right? she’s the only one who calls me that!”

your heart beats faster when you see how oddly excited that seems to make him. did he somehow find it endearing?

“seems like the two of you are becoming quite close, hm?” continues hyuck.

shotaro nods enthusiastically before glancing at you tentatively, as if to check for confirmation.

“yeah, you could say that.”

your agreement causes yet another smile to grace shotaro’s lips — this time he seems relieved. you briefly wonder if the kid ever stops flashing those pearly whites of his. you certainly hope so, or else your heart may never catch a break.

“well, since you’re comfortable enough with each other,” donghyuck begins, flashing you a grin.

you’re not even sure what he’s gonna say but you already feel the need to put an end to it. after all, nothing good has ever come of donghyuck’s mischievous grins. you subtly purse your lips and narrow your eyes in an attempt to get him to stop whatever chaos he’s planning to ensue.

nevertheless, he proceeds. “maybe you could help me out with this choreography?”

you want to facepalm at donghyuck’s lame excuse of a lie. however, on the other hand, shotaro’s face lights up in delight.

“you’re working on choreo? what for?” he inquires, curiously.

“for our dance class,” hyuck explains, motioning towards you. “i have a couple ideas so i was thinking you two could maybe try out some steps i’m planning to include. you know, to help me... visualize.”

“that sounds awesome,” shotaro responds, oblivious to your friend’s untruths. “i would love to help you guys out.”

“great!” donghyuck claps his hands together. “just a heads up, the theme of the routine is intimacy, so i wanna see all that charm of yours, shotaro. it’ll, uh, help me choreograph.”

you cringe at the obvious fib. meanwhile, it’s as if a switch has gone off in shotaro’s mind. his smile fades and his eyebrows knit together. “hold on, i-intimacy? does that mean—”

“that you’ll have to get a bit touchy-feely with her? yeah,” donghyuck interjects, innocently.

“y’know... i’ve really been wanting to dance with her.” he faces you, sheepishly rubbing the back of his neck. “just never thought it would be like this.”

you offer him an apologetic smile. “i know, it might be a bit... uncomfortable. you can back out if you’d like. i promise hyuck and i won’t mind.”

shotaro’s head shakes, vigorously. “no, of course not!” he must realize how quick he was to deny your offer, making him suspiciously eager to be close to you as he immediately adds, “i mean, it’s good practice.”

you suppress a giggle. “sure thing. hyuck, should we get started now?”

the boy in question dramatically picks at his nails, acting as if he had been waiting on you both for hours. “if you guys are done flirting, then, yeah.”

you roll your eyes, shooting shotaro a mildly annoyed stare. he grins, finding it to be equally amusing as it is endearing. (what can he say, the faint pout that appeared on your face was cute.)

“shotaro, how about you get in position right behind her.”

shotaro obeys, making sure to leave a significant amount of space between the two of you. however, donghyuck doesn’t seem to approve.

“closer!” he commands. “the concept is intimacy, not social distancing!”

shotaro shuffles forward, pressing his front into your back. you can’t help but notice how firmly toned his chest is. curse his dancers body, you think.

“okay, now, lemme see your hands on her waist!”

you feel the breath of shotaro’s shaky exhale on the back of your neck as he obeys, sliding apprehensive hands around your midsection. there’s silence on donghyuck’s end and through the mirror you watch him observe the two of you, no doubt acting way more pensive than he truly is. you know he’s just prolonging your flustered state by keeping you in this intimate position with the younger boy.

although, shotaro himself might know it too, considering the fact that he begins to rub comforting circles into your sides that he’s currently gripping, as per donghyuck’s request, in an attempt to calm you down. you nearly melt right then and there. at the same time, you hope he doesn’t plan on stopping anytime soon.

donghyuck calls out your name, successfully startling you and putting an end to the peaceful atmosphere. “why don’t you go ahead and lean on his shoulder. just lay your head back nice and easy— good, very good! look at that chemistry!”

if you’re being sincere, reclining on shotaro feels way more natural and enjoyable than it should. he steadily holds you in place, almost as if he secretly wishes to never let go. you wouldn’t be completely opposed to the idea either.

“alright, last thing, guys! y/n, how about you hook your arm around shotaro’s neck?”

you do so, fingers brushing softly against his jaw. he shivers beneath your touch, erupting into giggles when you shoot him an odd stare.

“i’m ticklish,” he confesses, in a whisper.

you can’t help but smile widely. “is that so? hm, i might have to exploit that information sooner or later.”

“as long as donghyuck doesn’t find out,” he replies.

his comment certainly gets a chuckle out of you. “did you finally realize how evil he is?”

“if the torture he’s putting you through right now is anything to go by, then absolutely.”

“only a matter of time before it’s your turn,” you reply. you lean into his ear to add, “by the way, this is anything but torture for me.”

“hey! no whispering!” donghyuck reprimands.

for the first time, shotaro goes against the older boy’s orders to whisper back, “it’s mutual. if anything, i think this is the best thing i’ve done since i moved here.”

your heart melts at the sincere admission. you stare at shotaro in what you’re sure is a very obvious case of heart eyes. you’re taken aback to find that he, too, returns the lovesick look. perhaps he was immersing himself a bit too much in the intimacy concept...

“stop! pause! cut!”

you and shotaro (reluctantly) untangle yourselves from each other to face a seemingly unhappy donghyuck.

“can you guys please just focus on my instructions without falling in love with each other?” he pleads. “i mean, you haven’t even gotten out of the starting position yet.” he groans, exasperated. “actually, you know what, just take five.”

[2:03 pm] hyuck: good morning

[2:03 pm] nana: it’s 2 o clock in the afternoon but ok

[2:03 pm] hyuck: i just woke up, therefore it’s morning

[2:03 pm] shotaro: good morning :3 did u sleep well?

[2:04 pm] hyuck: i slept a wonderful 27 hours, thnx for asking!

[2:04 pm] yangx2: ?????? THERES NOT EVEN 27 HOURS IN A DAY IM SCREAMING

[2:04 pm] you: LOLLL WHY WAS HE HIBERNATING

[2:05 pm] renjun: i was just gonna ignore him but i am genuinely concerned now

[2:05 pm] shotaro: woww,, well at least you’re well rested now! :]

[2:04 pm] nana: shotaro, i am begging u not to encourage him

[2:04 pm] you: all it takes is one (1) supportive person and he becomes an unstoppable force of evil

[2:04 pm] shotaro: o_0

[2:05 pm] jeno: besides ur like the only other person here with common sense besides myself and maybe renjun. i can’t lose u to donghyuck :(

[2:05 pm] renjun: ykw i’m not even gonna argue with that

[2:05 pm] yangx2: yeah shotaro is a good guy™

[2:06 pm] hyuck: i hate u guys and ur goldfish attention spans

[2:06 pm] you: sigh what do you need hyuck?

[2:06 pm] hyuck: i want boba :(

[2:07 pm] you: that actually sounds really good but idk if it’s worth being around u

[2:07 pm] hyuck: i’ll pretend like u didn’t just say that <3 what if i paid?

[2:07 pm] you: ....

[2:08 pm] yangx2: LMAO HYUCK BEING NICE IS SUSPICIOUS BEHAVIOR

[2:08 pm] renjun: ikr it’s making me super uncomfortable rn

[2:08 pm] hyuck: can’t i do something nice for my friends? :/

[2:08 pm] jeno: no

[2:09 pm] nana: nope

[2:09 pm] yangx2: nah

[2:09 pm] renjun: absolutely not

[2:09 pm] you: never seen it happen before so no

[2:10 pm] hyuck: u guys are so fake :( shotaro do u wanna hang out with me? if u say no i’ll scream :)

[2:11 pm] shotaro: yeah i guess i could :]

[2:11 pm] renjun: oh this just got interesting.. i guess i could tag along

[2:11 pm] yangx2: me too, i gotta be there to record whatever happens

[2:12 pm] nana: i’m in

[2:12 pm] jeno: same

[2:12 pm] you: hhhhh okay fine.. only to ensure taro’s safety

[2:13 pm] shotaro: (^з^)-︎♡

due to the fact that you believed donghyuck was going to try and officially initiate shotaro into your friend group with one of his infamous pranks, you decided to head to the boba shop. you hoped that if you showed up, you would be able to prevent whatever mayhem he had planned or at the very least, provide some damage control.

you pushed open the door to the quaint building, the bell dinging to announce your arrival. your eyes immediately lock onto the table in the far back since it was where you and your friends always sat — you had practically claimed it. you expect to see all the chairs filled but, to your surprise, only one person occupies the space.

osaki shotaro.

he beams, probably relieved to finally have some company in the otherwise empty shop. (after all, you weren’t sure how long he had been sitting there all alone.) nevertheless, you allow yourself to wonder — just for a second — if maybe he was just that ecstatic to see you. the way he enthusiastically waves you over seems to be in favor of that theory. it’s almost confirmed when you reach he table and he pats the chair beside him.

you let out a soft laugh. “the whole table’s empty, ‘taro.”

“i know,” he admits. “i just really want you to sit next to me.”

you swear you could break down in tears simply from the way he’s looking at you; like you’re all he needs. it’s pure adoration. you wonder if that’s how you look at him too. you can’t help but ask yourself if he, too, notices your longing stares.

you decide that you would be a monster if you denied shotaro his wish, so, you internally prepare yourself to sit next to possibly the sweetest boy you’ve ever known. yet, that proves to be difficult as said boy stands up to pull out your chair like the gentleman he is. you shoot him a grateful smile, mentally dethroning jeno as the most well-mannered person you know and passing the crown on to shotaro.

“so, how long have you been waiting for?” you ask, resting your elbow on the table and leaning into your palm to stare attentively at the boy to your right.

“actually, i only got here a couple minutes before you. we did agree to meet up here a quarter before three, right?” he asks, slightly confused.

you nod in confirmation. “honestly, i think we got set up.”

shotaro tilts his head. “really? why would they do that?”

“might have something to do with our ‘chemistry’,” you explain, quoting donghyuck.

the japanese boy’s mouth falls agape, as he comes to the realization. “oh, so they literally set us up.”

“mhm,” you agree, smiling ever so slightly.

shotaro must be paying closer attention than you thought because he picks up on your grin. “what’s with the smile?”

you shrug, feigning uncertainty. “i guess i just don’t feel so bad about being set up if it’s with a certain cutie i know.”

“oh?” he raises a brow, cheeks growing as he too mirrors your lovestruck look. “should i be worried about this guy?”

“certainly not,” you reassure him. “i’ve only got eyes for one.”

you see a faded tint of pink rush to his cheeks and you find it adorable how your confession flusters him. you can’t help but caress the supple skin as gently as possible. shotaro leans into your touch, his own hand coming up to cup your own, almost as if he were holding you in place. after a couple moments of basking in the intimate moment, you retract your hand.

“maybe we should try and get hyuck to include that in the choreo, huh?” you suggest, a teasing smile on your lips.

shotaro chuckles, “sounds good to me. i might even ask if i can fill his position, too. if not, i just might get jealous.”

you playfully shove him and he raises his hands in surrender. you chuckle, grabbing one of the menus that litter the table, planning to offer shotaro some help choosing an item from the list that is surely unfamiliar to him but it seems something outside the window behind you has caught his focus instead.

“looks like we have an audience.”

you take a deep breath at his words, preparing yourself for whatever it is you’re going to see upon turning around. when you finally do, all you manage to catch is five heads ducking beneath the windowsill, in a weak attempt to not get caught.

“of course,” you nearly laugh. “they’re so predictable.”

shotaro seems to find the situation humorous as well, if his amused tone is anything to go by. “to be honest, we should be thanking them. they got us together.”

“oh, so we’re together now?” you inquire, raising a brow.

“w-well, i mean, if you want to. i-i definitely want to.”

“no need for stuttering,” you reassure him, reaching over to stroke that one ticklish spot on his neck. “to quote a very wise — and handsome — young man, ‘it’s mutual.’”

he smiles at his own words being recited to him. “i don’t know about you, but i think we should seal the deal.”

“interesting. how do you suppose we do that?” you ask with faux curiosity. you certainly had some ideas of your own.

“maybe... a kiss?” shotaro leans forward, eyes closed expectantly as he taps his cheek. you resist the urge to pinch his lovely, round baby cheeks. he peeks one eye open to add, “for the audience, of course.”

you giggle, completely and utterly love-struck by the boy before you. in fact, you are so enamored by him that you decide to go the extra mile and press a sweet, chaste peck to his lips.

it seems as if he himself didn’t expect it as his eyes snap open, hand coming up to cup his lips in shock. when he finally uncovers his mouth, you see there’s a dazed, giddy grin on his face that let’s you know the smooch was very welcome pleasant surprise.

your phones simultaneously go off, alerting you of incoming messages. it’s a given that it’s none other than the group chat.

[3:15 pm] nana: that smooch was romcom worthy i’m so impressed right now

[3:15 pm] jeno: shotaro is living proof that being a gentleman has its perks! everyone in this gc should take notes!

[3:15 pm] yangx2: HERE IHAVE THE VDIEO OF THE WHOELE THIGN IF ANYOEN WANTS IT

[3:16 pm] yangx2: attachment: 1 video

[3:16 pm] yangx2: SORURY FOR THE TYPSO MY TEARS ARE BLURRIGN THE KYEBIOARD

[3:16 pm] renjun: can we get boba now?

[3:16 pm] renjun: oh wait my bad, congrats to the new couple :-)

[3:16 pm] renjun: to celebrate they should pay for everyone’s drinks.. just a thought

[3:17 pm] hyuck: ur welcome, y/n and shotaro ;)

415 notes · View notes

homerforsure · 3 years ago

Text

Whumptober No. 6 Bruises / Touch Starved / Hunger Whumptober No. 30 major character death / left for dead / ghosts

Me: I can’t believe I have to post this absolutely incomprehensible piece of writing.

Me: You don’t... have to?

Me: No, I’m gonna.

Buck has an exceptional number of pillows on his bed. There are six, before he knocks a few to the floor every night, and he burrows into them like a nest, curling up with one against his chest, two pressed against his back, one between his legs. His sheets are a ridiculously priced, cool, crisp cotton that welcomes him in, surrounding him. The blankets he uses aren’t weighted, but they’re heavy and thick and he keeps his air conditioning turned up so he doesn’t have to give up the feeling of nestling into them in the heat of summer. Along with the white noise machine on his night stand, all of it is chosen to trick him into sleep. To keep back the feeling that night time in his own apartment is the loneliest part of Buck’s day.

It wasn’t perfect, pre-covid. It’s been a long time since Buck had someone share his space, share his bed, someone he could reach out and touch whenever he wanted. But his life outside of home was full. He didn’t lack for closeness; in some ways he had more than he’d ever dreamed. So while he had lonely moments, they weren’t a constant ache in his chest.

These months though. These months hurt. Facetime isn’t a substitute for curling up on Maddie’s couch with whatever silly-labeled wine she’d liked best that week. It’s definitely not a substitute for Eddie’s couch and losing to Christopher over and over again at Mario Kart. The last time they talked, Eddie had reached over and ruffled Christopher’s hair and Buck felt it. First as a tingle up the back of his scalp and then as a bruise to his heart. Eddie’s touches, so constant and so casual, became essential somewhere along the way and Buck feels himself reaching out for them even when he knows it’s not allowed.

“Six feet, gentlemen,” Bobby says gently when their orbits swing toward each other and Eddie makes a dramatic show of raising his hands and taking a giant step backward. Bobby just shakes his head and reminds them it’s the price they all agreed to pay for not wearing masks in the firehouse.

Buck starts dreading the end of a call when taking off his heavy turnout coat leaves him feeling cold and exposed. He folds into himself, claiming a chair, putting in earbuds and crossing his arms tight over his chest, pulling his knees up even though he knows better than to put his shoes on the furniture.

It’s a similar position to the one he lies in at night, clinging to the pillows, trying to draw comfort out of the smooth fabric. In those moments, his loneliness is so loud it might as well be a beacon sent out into the universe, a burning shout of need.

And that shout is heard.

***

“Have you guys heard of exploding head syndrome?” Buck asks one morning when the calls are slow and the crew is all lingering in a lazy way rather than rushing off to take care of their other duties.

“What, the band?” Chimney asks.

“I think it was an album,” Bobby says.

“No,” Buck sighs. “It’s a sleep thing. It’s this loud noise that you hear when you’re falling asleep like a massively loud explosion. Only it’s just happening in your head.”

“Is your brain actually exploding? Like an aneurism?”

“No. It’s just the noise.”

Just the loudest noise Buck had ever heard. It woke him up with a feeling of abject terror. It was an explosion that didn’t echo. It just rang, clear and true through his eardrums like the end of the world. Even as he struggled out of his sheets, searching for the source so he could run from it, part of him knew it wasn’t a sound that left any physical evidence. What could it even be? A sound like that? An old fashioned safe dropping from two stories up? A car crash without the crunch? Just a high speed collision of two immovable objects, all of the equal and opposite reaction of their momentum forced to escape as sound.

Once his heart rate had slowed, he googled. He wasn’t initially sure what to google. “Ridiculously loud noise woke me up” seemed at once too vague and too specific but sure enough. Exploding Head Syndrome. It was what happened. Obviously. But Buck remained too full of adrenaline to sleep. As he sat up in bed, he couldn’t shake the urge to look around. Under the bed, in the closet, behind the shower curtain. He didn’t feel alone.

“I’m just glad it’s happening in your head instead of mine,” Chim laughs. “Maybe try putting some earmuffs on before you go to sleep tonight.” ***

The sound doesn’t reappear. Buck is relieved, but sleeping doesn’t get any easier. He tries to soothe himself with obscenely long hot baths, by ordering a hoodie that’s more fluff than fabric, by running a foam roller across his muscles, trying to pry them into relaxation. It’s so much work and it does so little. Buck’s entire body is screaming out at all times for a hug or a massage or even just a really fucking good haircut. It takes longer and longer to fall asleep and the little sleep he does get isn’t restful. It’s like whatever meager comfort he manages to give himself during the day is leached away in the night.

He doesn’t even notice the bruises at first. It’s an easy enough thing to miss. Their job is heavy physical labor and Buck barrels through a scene like a one man stampede. Bruises are as common as the smell of smoke in his hair. The ones Eddie points out on his arm though are different.

Buck’s carrying a kitten at the time. The fire they’ve been fighting is beaten back to smolders. Buck shucked off his coat, wet and dripping from the hose and too cold for the shaking animal, and grabbed a blanket from the ambulance to wrap her up and cradle her against his chest. He’s rubbing his face against her damp fur, feeling the softness like a concentrated shot of endorphins when Eddie asks, “What the hell happened to you?”

“What are you talking about?” Buck asks and Eddie’s hands are pushing up the sleeves of his shirt, rolling them up to his shoulders while Buck’s trying to hold onto the cat.

“You don’t feel that?”

“Feel what?” He’s maybe a little ruder than he means to be but the sleep deprivation makes him cranky and the touch deprivation means that Eddie’s gently probing fingers feel like a dream on his skin. The care in the brush of his hands makes Buck’s knees weak.

“Your arms are bruised to hell,” Eddie says. “Are you- Did someone grab you or something?”

“I swear to god, Eddie. I don’t feel anything.” Except grumpy and exhausted and longing.

“Jesus, it goes all the way up your shoulders. It looks like-” He stops, pulling Buck’s collar aside and tracing a small spot that Buck can’t see even if he turns his head. “They look like fingerprints, Buck. Are you seeing someone?”

“What!”

“These are handprints. And they’re dark. Do you really not-”

Buck wrenches himself from Eddie’s grasp so he can turn around and look at him because if Eddie’s really accusing him of putting everyone at risk by trying to date someone right now… But Eddie’s face is nothing but concerned. Which makes Buck scared.

“Is it really that bad?” he asks, clutching the cat to his chest.

Eddie rubs a hand up Buck’s back (it feels so good, hot like Buck’s t-shirt isn’t even between them and is it just because it’s been so long or just because it’s Eddie?) without looking around to see if Bobby’s watching and that’s really all the confirmation Buck needs. It’s bad.

***

After that, Buck starts to feel them. He wakes up and he can’t breathe. He wakes up and he can’t move. He wakes up on the floor. He spends every moment that he’s asleep fighting to wake up. Buck can only remember fragments and pieces of the torment but he knows that it feels like drowning. Like being held down. Like being grabbed and pulled and smothered. He thinks he remembers long dark hair.

Google is useless. Sleep apnea. Sleep paralysis. Sleep terrors. Even sleepwalking. None of them can account for the worst of it. For the physical signs of whatever is happening to him while he sleeps.

Bruises bloom blue on the pale skin of his hips. Purple on his ribs. Green on the back of his neck. The ones that Eddie saw first on his arm fade to yellow. A long scratch runs down the side of his face. Dark circles under his eyes grow darker every day.

“What’s happening to me?” he asks his reflection.

All he wants is to be able to ask that question with someone’s arms around him. He wants anyone to hold him tight and shush his fears and tell him that it’ll be okay.

It’s easier than he thought to hide it. Buck just chooses his shower times strategically and opts for a long sleeve uniform, complaining that he ruined his short sleeves ones by grabbing bleach instead of detergent while he was half asleep.

He’s always half asleep these days.

At least in the bunk rooms, he gets some semblance of rest. Whatever presence he feels in his own bedroom doesn’t cross this threshold and Buck sleeps deeply, almost missing the scream of the alarm.

“It’s getting worse isn’t it?” Eddie asks, cornering Buck in the locker room. Buck can’t help but nod and Eddie steps closer as if to touch him.

Buck flinches away and Eddie pulls up short as though hitting an invisible wall.

He breathes Buck’s name on a pained exhale and says, “You have to get some help. Whatever it is…”

“I don’t know what it is!’ Buck answers. “It’s living in my house and it- it- God. Maybe I need an exorcism.”

“Maybe you should come home with me,” Eddie suggests and Buck recoils again.

The firehouse seems safe but there’s no guarantee that Buck won’t be followed anywhere else. He’s desperate to be safe--desperate for Eddie to make him safe--but not at the expense of anyone else. Not when he doesn’t know what he’s facing.

“Okay,” Eddie says. “But call me in the morning.”

***

The burned girl screams louder when she sees Buck than she did while they were putting out the inferno of her car.

“Stay away from me!” She shrieks. “Stay awaystayawaystayaway.”

“Miss, we’re going to need you to calm down,” Hen says to her. “Buck, you wanna move aside? Like preferably somewhere she can’t see you?”

Buck does because the patient’s well-being is more important than anything, but his skin feels like ice. He wants to demand to know what else she sees when she looks at him. Wants to know how she knows. For half a second, he imagines following her to the hospital and waiting for her outside the glass doors.

They aren’t far from her house (52% of accidents happen within five miles of home) and the girl’s father arrives on the scene before they finish prepping her to be transported. And he sees Buck.

He freezes when he does, but at least he doesn’t scream. He ignores Buck completely, instead going to the ambulance where his daughter is still crying and trying to soothe her. Hen offers to let him ride in the ambulance, but he says that he’ll take his car.

“You’re in a lot of trouble,” he says, returning to Buck as the ambulance pulls away. “What you summoned… That’s not a normal ghost.”

“I didn’t summon anything! It just happened.” Buck’s voice is high-pitched and he just barely stops himself from grabbing onto the man’s arm, but the man doesn’t seem afraid of Buck the way his daughter was. “What is it? How do I make it go away?”

The man shrugs, “She came in through an open door. Which door depends on the person. But she’ll do everything in her power to keep it pried open. All you can do is try to close it again.”

It is… the least helpful advice Buck’s ever been given in his entire life. But the man’s daughter is on her way to the hospital and he needs to follow her. He vanishes.

***

They’re about to have four days off. Buck’s bracing himself to meet the woman in his dreams. To look around in that dreamspace for open doors and slam them shut again. He can do it. He has to.

***

The next night Buck wakes up and he can’t move. He’s paralyzed on the bed. He’s paralyzed on the bed and someone’s standing at the top of his stairs.

She’s not… right. Buck can’t quite see in the dark and he can’t lift his head but the woman on his stairs isn’t solid in the way a human should be. The outline of her is strong, but it’s like she’s a shell wrapped around a cavernous emptiness. She’s across the room but she’s already pulling at him.

Buck tries to thrash but his arms are pinned as if her hands are already on his wrists. He needs to reach the lamp. If he can just turn on the light.

“Get away from me,” he pleads and the part of her face where lips should be turns up, revealing pointed teeth that stand in front of a void.

“You called me,” she says. The words don’t come from her mouth and Buck doesn’t hear them with his ears. It’s wrong wrong wrong. He throws himself hard to the left and he rolls, flying further than he expected to, suddenly free, and crashes hard into the table, knocking the lamp to the floor. It shatters, bulb and all and pain scrapes across Buck’s shoulders.

“Poor boy,” the ghost mocks. “Poor lonely boy. Just wants someone to touch him. Just wants someone to stay with him. I heard you.”

“No,” Buck says and he tries to scramble, but his feet can’t find purchase on the floor. “I didn’t want you.”

He doesn’t deny the call. Can’t deny it when his heart is reaching out in the same pleading, desperate way now. Please. Anyone.

In the time it takes to blink she’s in front of him. She’s so close. She shouldn’t be able to get that close without standing on him but she’s there. Her voice whispers in his mind, “You should choose your words more carefully.”

And then her hands are around his throat.

The pressure is insistent and her motive is unmistakable. She’s going to kill him. She’s going to squeeze the life out of him. He’s going to die here and Eddie’s going to find his body because Eddie’s going to come rushing over as soon as Buck doesn’t call him in the morning and what if this thing is still here waiting for him.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

Buck’s mind yells for him like his lungs did when Eddie was buried except now it’s Buck who’s too far away, who’s trapped somewhere deep and dark with no hope of escape.

He tries to breathe and his breath whistles. It’s like the first time someone handed him a styrofoam cup of coffee and he tried to drink through the plastic stir stick. Black stars twinkle in the room and tears build in his eyes.

Eddie, Eddie, Eddie.

There’s a shift as she adjusts her grip and it’s enough for the stars to clear. Buck throws himself forward, shaking his head like he isn’t a ragdoll trapped in the jaws of a rottweiler, like he has a hope of breaking free and then he does. The ghost is thrown off balance and Buck jumps, scrambling back over his bed for the stairs. He can’t even think about defeating her, finding out the secrets of where she came from, closing whatever fucking door he left open. All Buck wants to do is live.

A force behind him swells like a wave to lift Buck off his feet and slams him into the bathroom door. He expects to slide off of it and onto the floor, but he’s held in place hard, his head turned and his cheek pressed to the wood, toes just brushing the ground.

“You begged me to come,” the ghost hisses. “I’m here for you, lonely boy. Don’t fight so hard.”

A hand skims up his back, nearly gentle, but leaving a numbness in its path and Buck shudders in disgust. He jerks against the door, but his arms are wrenched behind him and he screams. He realizes it’s the first time he has.

“I didn’t call you! I don’t want you here! Get out.”

“I came because you needed me.” A long finger trails down his cheek and Buck whimpers. She’s taller than him now. Was she always? “I could feel you from so far away. An aching ball of need. I’m here for you now.”

“I don’t need you,” Buck growls and the room flashes like lightning. He hopes to fall, almost expects to fall, where he can scramble again but instead, Buck is hurled away from the door completely. He has time to see that he’s above the stairs, throw his hands out uselessly and then he’s frozen.

Buck hovers there in the air above the stairs, dangling in the grip of the ghost, like a cat grabbed by his scruff. Kicking wildly, he grabs for the invisible hand that’s holding him, yelling “No, no, no, no.”

“Need me now?” the ghost asks.

Smothering the terrified part of him that nearly answers yes, Buck forces himself to stop twisting and just hang there. He doesn’t want to fall. He doesn’t want to die. But what he needs isn’t going to come from the ghost.

“No,” he answers.

And he can’t explain how he knows what her face looks like when it’s screwed up in fury, but he does. It’s vicious and vindictive and Buck’s not surprised at all when he’s flicked away from her and down the flight of stairs.

He seems to hit each one as he falls, something that should be impossible with the speed that he’s traveling and the force with which he bounces off of them, but the ghost is obviously responsible. Air leaves his lungs as his ribs crack against the stairs. His elbows and knees scrape. His head bangs the rail. Buck’s long, long legs seem to tangle as he falls, cartwheeling him down and he lands in a heap at the bottom.

As he tries to figure out if he can still move, the door flies open.

Warmth rushes in. Buck hadn’t even realized how cold it had gotten since he first woke up, but the room seems to thaw around him. It’s like sunlight.

It’s Eddie.

“Oh fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Evan. Buck. I’ve got you, Buck. I’ve got you.”

Tenderly, he scoops Buck off the floor, unsnarling the mess of his limbs and feeling all over for the damage he can’t see. “I’ve got you. Open your eyes. Come on.”

The ghost stands at the top of the stairs and then she’s at the bottom. Buck clambers backward again, digging his heels into the floor to push himself upright in front of Eddie, to try and hide him from view. Eddie doesn’t seem to see the ghost. All of his attention is still on Buck, stroking his hair, promising over and over that he’s there, that he has Buck.

All of the ghost’s attention is on Buck too. “You need me,” she says. “You called for me.” She sounds different now. Bitter. Like Buck wasted her precious time.

“I don’t need you,” he says and he reaches behind him to grab Eddie’s hand. “I already have everything I need.”

Lights flicker and that impossibly loud sound bangs in Buck’s ears again. He gets one last look at the ghost’s vicious, violent visage and then she’s gone.

And then Buck wakes up.

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goldenkirstein · 4 years ago

Text

She lives in daydreams with me

or alternatively, when jean and you visit Ikea

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

pairing: jean x fem! reader

wc: 1.5k+

tags: fluff, modern! au, female reader, language, mentions of food.

a/n: I was inspired by this post, also I just like Ikea, I think Jean would to tbh. am i living out my own daydreams with Jean by writing this? potentially. i love him lol. Feedback and any criticism encouraged lmao.

⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

Your head tilted as you stared dead-on at the boy in front of you.

“Jean, what is that?”

“What are you talking about baby, this is a-” He squinted, looking at the tag, of what you assumed to be a night light?

“An-garna.” Jean looked back up at you, grinning widely.

You had come earlier to Ikea, needing to buy some storage baskets for your room, and yet here you were standing in a miniature model of a child’s room, staring at the six-foot three-man holding a children’s night light, that had...Was that panda face design on it?

“Jean, my love, my dear, we don’t have kids; why on Earth would I need a children’s night light?” The toothy grin quickly disappeared from his face, quickly replaced with a stern expression.

“Just because something is marketed towards children doesn’t mean adults can’t buy it, and anyways I was merely suggesting it, knowing how you can’t sleep after watching horror movies.” It’s more like when he can’t sleep after watching, but his ego would never let him admit that.

You rolled your eyes at your boyfriend, “put it in the cart, Kirstein.” He flashed you a smile, coming over and placing a kiss on your cheek before mumbling a small thank you.

As much as you would act annoyed or unamused when it came to Jean’s antics, it was more or less a front. You loved it when he would let his guard down in public with you. He wasn’t always like this; the Jean you met years prior would be caught dead before expressing his affections in public. He would get easily flustered, blush to sport his face if anyone he knew saw him admiring and doting on his girlfriend. It wasn’t something that deeply upset you; in a way, you were able to keep a tiny part of Jean to yourself, the goofy, tender side of him that he only let out when he was with you. However, watching him become more confident in himself and expressing his love for you outranked any desires that you had to keep Jean bottled up for your gratification.

He walked in front, long legs carrying him practically miles in front of you until he turned a corner and found himself situated in a living-room model. You followed shortly after and saw that he was making himself comfortable on a charcoal-grey couch.

“Mm, come sit,” he patted gently on the cushion next to him, gesturing to you to join him on the sofa. You raised your eyebrows and let out a giggle, situating the cart near a side table before accompanying him.

“What do you wanna watch babe,” Jean tilted his head, signalling to the fake flat-screen in front of you. You thought about tormenting the boy; however, you opted to play along with him this time.

“Oooh, I don’t know, check if the new Grey’s episode is out.” He smiled at you, appreciating your willingness to get lost in this daydream with him. His smile quickly shifted into a mischievous grin as he poked your side.

“Heyyy, what the fuck was that for!” You recoiled, shrinking away from him, but before you could get far enough away from him, he pulled you back into his side. You tried squirming away from him, only for his grip on you to get stronger, and you were met with a chuckle—the noise reverberating around the tiny living room.

“Really? Greys? On a night like this?” You shifted your body, turning your head to look at the “window” covered with sheer beige curtains, overlaid with opaque maroon ones. Outside, or rather you should say the wall was painted white, so you began drumming up a scenario in your mind. That was tonight, a spring evening, stars visible in the night sky? Or a cold and snowy winter’s night? The purple tinge of the atmosphere apparent through the translucent curtains. Jean stared at you intently, wondering what you will come up with, his gaze shifting as the corners of your lips upturned; you had settled on an idea.

“Oooh yeah, it’s practically pitch black outside; I can only see the streetlights in the distance. We should really do something about that pesky tree, though. Its branches keep tapping on the window; it’s frankly quite annoying.” A rosy tinge was present on his cheeks, hazel eyes twinkling at you.

You placed a hand on his chest, your focus entirely on the love-struck boy in front of you, “You know what? We should totally watch a horror movie!” Just as you began to immerse yourself in the daydream, Jean shot up from the couch, leaving an indent where he was sitting behind.

“Alright, enough dilly-dallying, we should go home now.” He clapped his hands together, moving to grab the cart to leave the store display.

Dilly-dallying? Did he really just say dilly-dallying?

“What’s wrong, Jean-boy? This is our home! Oooh, don’t tell me you don’t wanna watch because you’re scared.” You fell back on the couch, beaming, elbows propping you up as you teased him.

“Am not. I just decided that I’m in the mood for cinnamon rolls and fro-yo.” He placed his elbow on the handles of the cart, head resting in the palm of his hand. He gave you an unimpressed look.

“Oh really? Who’s that night-light for again? I seem to have forgotten.” This time it was his turn to roll his eyes at you. Without saying anything, he placed his hands back on the cart’s handle and began to leave the “living room.”

You swung your legs over, a giggle leaving your mouth as you walked over to your boyfriend. You wrapped your arms around his middle, resting your cheek on him. “Babe, I was just joking; I didn’t mean to upset you,” you mumbled into him.

He let out a sigh and stopped in the middle of the aisle. You watched as he brought one of his hands down to grasp one of yours that had taken hold of his waist. Jean turned to face you, head tilting as a slight smirk overtook his face. “That’s what I was waiting to hear.” He placed a soft kiss on your forehead before turning around to continue rolling the cart forward to his destination.

His arm extended behind him, motioning to you to hold his hand. You obliged, your palm sliding in his, fingers curling around your knuckles as his. “Whatever,” you grumbled, choosing to turn your head to observe the variety of rugs that were hanging on display. He tugged at your hand, an amused expression painting his face.

“You want those cinnamon buns or not, pretty girl?” The pet name almost made you choke. He knew what it would do to you. He would use it sparsely, only to coax a reaction out of you, but you weren’t going to give him the satisfaction of letting him know the hold he had over you.

You whipped your head back to face him, confident to quip back at him, but it all melted when you saw the way he was looking at you; a lop-sided smirk, his tongue peeked out to wet his bottom lip before capturing it between his teeth. He raised his eyebrows, waiting for what you had to say.

“Yeah, I do.” You managed to slip a few words out. He had won this one, using his charms to debilitate any assuredness you had. He brought your linked hands up to his lips, tenderly kissing the back of your hand, humming in delight.

“You know, we should come here more often, live out our domestic daydreams together.” The smells of cinnamon buns were getting stronger as you walked on.

“Sure, but you could also just move in with me.”

The tips of his ears went red, and you paused, realizing what you just said, the weight of what you just said. You had thought about asking him to move in with you, but you didn’t mean for it to slip out in the middle of a random conversation; in Ikea nonetheless. “I- You don’t have to. I was just joking. I don’t know why I said that.”

Your voice dwindled to merely a whisper as you completed your sentence. Jean stopped the cart once more. “Yes. Yes, I’ll move in with you.” His expression was earnest as he looked at you, eyes glittering with adoration as he waited for your response.

“Whoa, whoa, hold your horses cowboy. We can talk about this after you get me those cinnamon buns you promised.” you wiped any sense of embarrassment from your face as you tried to suppress your laughter, which was caused by the zealousness your boyfriend had just shown.

However, there was no doubt that your heart did grow in fondness for Jean, and you were relieved that he wasn’t off-put by your haphazard confession. He was absolutely whipped for you, and you couldn’t deny that you were head over heels in love with him either. You desired to continue to share your life with him, and moving in together would be the next step in your relationship.

“Yes, Ma’am” His voice broke you out of your thoughts as he placed his hand to his forehead to salute you. You giggled at his actions.

“Lead the way, Kirstein.”

a/n: lol, this was practically for my own self-indulgence. and i feel like this was a tad bit ooc idk. Anywayssss, I would like to mention that I'm working on a navigation page with taglists and such and thinking about requests. I wanna branch out write for more aot characters as well as jjk and hq. Again, I'm very new to this so it's gonna take some time. I would love to know ur thoughts on all of this lol.

As always, please leave a like/reblog (i love reading tags makes me happy heh) if you enjoyed this, I appreciate lots <33

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retrogalwrites · 4 years ago

Text

Title: “Shigaraki and the perfect girl” / see on ao3

Pairing: Incel!Shigaraki x f!reader

Summary: Shigaraki has a crush on what seems to be the perfect girl who everyone loves, and becomes obsessed with the idea of corrupting her.

Warnings: attempted sexual assault, virginity fetishization, dub con, creepy behavior, stalking, manipulation and somnophilia with a twist

Contents: creampie, vaginal sex, breeding kink, scent kink (in a gross way), mating press, slight dumbification, corruption kink

Word: 4873

Shigaraki had been watching you from the very beginning, all through your high school years. It hadn't been much of his fault, he always told himself, when your existence alone did nothing but to stand out.

You had always been the center of attention, the most popular girl in the entire school, little Miss Perfect. With your good grades, unrivaled beauty, hordes of friends, admired by all students and professors alike. Being always so kind and innocent, with a friendly demeanor towards everyone, including an unwanted outcast like Shigaraki.

On his end, he had always been the creepy one, the strange one, the antisocial one that sneered at others and cursed them under his breath. Everyone avoided him like the plague, at least whenever they weren't too busy tormenting him, all too eager to remind him of how unwanted he was.

The complete opposite of you, Shigaraki was a social pariah.

On your third year, whenever other students would bully him publicly, give him looks and tell him how gross and disgusting he looked, you always had to come right to his rescue.

"Stop it, guys! That's no way to treat someone." You'd say softly, standing between him and his tormentors like some kind of protector. "Leave him alone, would you?"

And they couldn't say 'no' to you, no one could. Reluctantly they would give in to your heartfelt request and leave him be, those fools always dancing on the palm of your hand, but who could blame them? The hottest girl in class, lusted after by every boy in school, including Shigaraki himself, there was no way anyone could resist doing whatever you wanted them to. So pretty, so sweet, so perfect.

You had it all so easy, didn't you?

Shigaraki hated you for that, deeply and passionately loathed your very existence, a resentment that only grew stronger every time you would turn around, with that expression full of concern, to ask if he was okay.

Yes, he hated you for that. He also desired you for that, adored you in fact, wanted you as badly as any other buffoon in your class did. But not in the same way as them. No, when you looked at him with those sparkly eyes, pouting lips, leaning over his desk to give him an eyeful of your chest straining against the fabric of your school uniform, the feelings that stirred inside him were ugly and suffocating, something too depraved to be love.

When the other guys glared at him for having your attention even for a minute, it made his heart beat faster, it made his blood boil as his hands itched to grab you and destroy you, bend you over his desk and tainting every corner of your body right in front of them.

"You're lucky [name] takes pity on your sorry ass, Shigaraki." One of his bullies would scoff, once you were out of earshot.

"I didn't fucking ask her to. Maybe the bitch has crush on me, huh?" He'd spat back with vitriol, just to be met with a kick to the shin. As he hunched over in pain, he'd always hear those same words.

"Know your damn place, freak. A crush? Please, she's too perfect for you."

And they were right, so very right, but it only made Shigaraki want you more, more, more. His infatuation was warped with the thought of revenge, the desire of getting back at everyone by taking you away for himself, and to get back at you simply for daring to exist.

So Shigaraki would curse you in his mind, every single day, and then every night he'd spent it pleasuring himself to fantasies of you, sometimes holding the items he had stolen from you in the past (a gym shirt, your lip balm, the pencil you'd chew on during class). Creating scenarios where he'd get you alone to taint you, destroy you, turn you into dust and ashes with his own hands until he had dragged you down to his own level: a freak, a pariah, the lowest of the low.

If only he had the guts to do it, if only he could admit to himself that he wanted to do it at all, for real.

—————

After graduation, not seeing you for the following months pushed his mind deeper into that brewing obsession, drove him mad with it.

Shigaraki stalked your social media, watching his phone all day to make sure he didn't miss any of your publications and updates, downloading every selfie you uploaded to keep for himself and fap to later. His infatuation had been growing more and more out of control with each passing day, you invaded his thoughts every waking hour.

And yet Shigaraki told himself that it was really only a coincidence that he had ended up in the same college as you. Despite having read through a conversation on the comments from one of your posts on your Instagram a month or so before graduating, about your college prospects. Despite writing down those prospects to later tell his school advisor that he wanted to get into that same school. Despite having begged his father to send him there despite the inconvenient distance away from home in his daily commute, despite having chosen a major he didn't care about just to be in the same class as you.

His self-denial kept that obsession barely restrained, keeping it from pouring out into reality, and you also had to ruin that.

"Tomura!" You had approached him on the first day at campus, excitedly calling his name with such familiarity. The sound made his breath hitch and his cock twitch inside his pants, stomach fluttering.

"Oh, umm...hey." He chewed on his chapped lip, looking away as he lied through his teeth. "Didn't expect to see Miss Perfect here, of all people."

Despite of his dismissive tone being cold as ice, you kept smiling at him, only laughing as if he had been joking.

"It's so good to see a familiar face, you know? Come, sit next to me!!" You had grabbed his hand without a second thought, pulling him along with you into the classroom. People already whispering just from seeing you two walking together hand in hand: a breathtaking beauty like you and him, a disheveled mess, who had been wearing the same dirty hoodie for already a week.

Yet you didn't let go of his hand, even when he had already started to sweat and his palm got all clammy against yours, you didn't let go. The thought of rubbing off his filth onto your skin filled him with joy.

You really were a fucking idiot.

Holding hands with your stalker so casually, with the guy that wanted to ravish you in a dark corner, break you with his cock until you were screaming his name, and make you beg for your life like a pathetic bitch. Yes, that's what he wanted to do, more than anything in the world. He wanted to destroy you, to violate you, to break you, to make you his. Those weren't fantasies, it was reality.

Shigaraki used that same hand to jerk himself off that night in his dorm, imagining that it was you being forced to stroke his throbbing cock. He imagined that you would be so disgusted by his filthy self, your clear skin getting all of his dirt rubbed all over, fat tears streaming down your face as he forced you to open your mouth and take him in until you chocked on his cock.

Soon enough, he was thrusting into his fist, cumming all over himself until his cock softened, and his hands and abdomen were covered in his sticky semen.

What would you do if you found out that the guy you had been so kind to all these years wanted to hurt you so badly? Shigaraki imagined the despair on your face, and soon he was hard again.

—————

For most people, life after high school plays differently. Once you get to college, popularity contests become a thing of the past...but not for you, it seemed. During that first semester, Shigaraki had to watch how everyone around you was back to fawning all over you. Stumbling over themselves to ask you out to parties and dates (how many times did he overhear guys talking about what they wanted to with your tits and ass?), professors favoring you for your perfect grades, everyone adoring you as the perfect girl once again.

He was still an unwanted pariah, ignored by everyone, looked at with scorn by others. Except whenever you gave him your attention, of course, only then did people want to get all buddy-buddy probably hoping to get to you with his help.

God. He fucking hated you. And he fucking wanted you.

One day, he finally snapped.

Shigaraki decided that he was going to have you before anyone else got the chance to put their hands on you, the perfect girl that everyone loved so much, would belong to the guy everyone hated.

He was going to tear you down once and for all, like you deserved, for living all these years with a silver spoon in your mouth having it all so damn easy. Wipe off that smile off your face, take it for himself, and make sure you were sullied, miserable, broken.

So, Shigaraki planned his next actions very carefully then. For a whole month, he tried to be more open towards you, more friendly, taking advantage of how kind you had always been towards him despite of the dismissive way he always had treated you with. Despite his awkwardness at it too, something that anyone else would've been turned off by already, but you took his attempts with endearment.

It pleased him, how you fell for it so easily, excited to see him reciprocate your attempts at friendship, the excitement on your face whenever you two were paired together for a project or study sessions.

You were so innocent, and so stupid. He truly loved you.

—————

Shigaraki couldn't believe his luck, the day after an assignment when he got you to come with him to his dorm to start working on how you were going to plan around the workload.

His dorm room was, admittedly, filthy. Unwashed clothes and trash scattered everywhere all over the floor, wraps of junk food and snacks hastily piled on an full trash bin in the corner. Anime figurines, video games, and posters decorated the shelves and the walls. The only spot that was kind of well kept was his gaming corner, with his pc and monitors all sparkly clean. He knew it was a shameful way to live, and he excitedly looked at your face hoping to see any semblance of disgust towards it. The lack of it, made Shigaraki frown.

"Err...sorry, I didn't know you were coming so I didn't clean up the place." He feigned concern, trying to edge a reaction out of you.

"That's ok, sorry for barging in." You gave an understanding smile.

Shigaraki's twisted resolve only became stronger. He was going to wipe that smile off your face, and that thought echoed in his mind on repeat for the following hour you two sat down to work.

Though, of course, his attention was not in the books in front if him. Shigaraki was too focused on the fact you were sitting on his bed, your bare things peaking underneath your skirt making direct contact with his dirty bedsheets.

Could you even begin to imagine that those bedsheets were stained with cum from his daily fapping? That he furiously had been jerking himself off to you for months in that same bed? His blood had begun to run towards his loins, and his cock was starting to strain against his jeans. Shigaraki had to cover himself with the textbook as to not to give himself away.

"Tomura, can we take a break? I'm getting tired." You yawned some time later, putting the book away and stretching your arms above your head. An action that gave Shigaraki a perfect view of your pretty curves, the way your tits heaved slightly as you pushed your chest forward, and a flash of midriff peaked from underneath your top.

"We still got a lot to do, dumbass." He curtly replied, pretending he wasn't leering.

You pouted, like a brat. He couldn't understand how you got such good grades when you could be this lazy sometimes. "Please, just fifteen minutes?"

He pretended to think about it, before shrugging at you begrudgingly. "Alright, just stop looking at me like that."

With a pleased, cheeky smile, you let your back fell on his mattress. Something that actually took him by surprise, Shigaraki watched in disbelief how you bounced on his bed, thighs and tits jiggling. You yawned again as you curled into a ball, he wondered if you even noticed how he ran his tongue over his dry lips. Were you really going to make it this easy for him? Were you that stupid?

"Wake me up in fifteen minutes." and you closed your eyes.

"Sure thing." He couldn't stop his lips from stretching into a huge, sinister smile.

—————

Shigaraki had never been a patient man, but he exercised all of the patience he had within him just to wait out the agonizingly slow seconds as you gradually fell asleep. He kept his eyes glued on your laying form through the first five minutes, casually but excitedly palming his erection through his jeans as he watched you fall asleep. He waited, and waited, silently observing your breathing until it fell into slow, regular rhythm. Soft snoring sounds purred from your throat, leaving your lips.

His cock was so fucking hard it hurt.

Hesitantly, Shigaraki called your name once in a hushed voice, then twice a little bit louder, and when he got no response from you, he knew that the time he had waited for all those years had finally come.

The time to break you.

The beating of his heart hammered loudly in his ears, as Shigaraki crawled over the bed towards you. His weight shifted the shape of the mattress, so he moved as slowly as his desperation allowed him to, as to not wake you up yet. Positioning himself above you, his legs straddled you underneath him as he unbuckled his pants and pulled out his throbbing erection, veiny shaft all with the head red and swollen, looking like he was about to burst. Then, supporting himself on his knees, he leaned back for a moment just to take in the wonderful sight you made.

Spread on his filthy bed, so comfortably on your back, breathing through lush parted lips. The girl chased after by everyone at school, they all would've killed to be in his place and to see you like this, to have you like this. Looking so small, so fragile, so defenseless, so fucking perfect.

Years of abstinence came down crashing all at once and Shigaraki's depravity took a hold of him completely, and it felt damn good.

His lips came down to cover yours with such pathetic urgency, Shigaraki crushed your soft body underneath his larger, even if skinny, frame. Dry and chapped lips devoured the softness of yours, and they tasted so sweet and creamy, exactly the same flavor of lip balm he had stolen from you back in high school. God, he could feel your heavy, round tits pressing against his chest, his erect cock rubbing needy against the snug gash of your clothed crotch, the engorged head poking at your entrance like he was in heat like a dog, shuddering violently at the stimulation. He moaned loudly against your mouth, forcing his tongue between your teeth and into your sweet mouth, as drool trailed down the corners of his mouth and smearing against your pristine skin. God, he forgot to brush his teeth after his morning coffee, his mouth was surely filthy...not like it even mattered to him anyway. Neither did it matter that he was going to wake you up like that, he indulged on tasting you completely. In fact, he anticipated to watch you wake up, and realize what a stupid bitch you had been.

Bringing his hands to your face, he forced your mouth to press harder against his as he kissed you so sloppily, his throbbing erection rutting against your core.

"(Name)...oh fuck, (Name)..." He whined against your lips. Just a virgin that he was, Shigaraki couldn't help that the mere stimulation of your clothed pussy-mound rubbing on his bare cock was really firing him up, pushing him so much that he was creaming his pants already. He shuddered, muscles tensing as the head of his cock spurted huge jets if his smelly, sticky cum all over the front of your skirt and your thighs.

He breathed heavily, looking at the mess he made.

Then he heard you call out to him, and the sound of your voice was anything but distressed, or even angry.

Instead, you sounded disappointed.

"Aww, you already came?" His eyes shot to your face. You were wide awake, face flushed as you stared at him through fluttering lashes and glossy eyes, the expression of someone who was throughly aroused. Shigaraki was the one struck by shock, and confusion.

"Tomura, I can't believe you are such a quick shot. I was looking forward to this, you know?" Your disappointment somehow puzzled him more than the sheer anger of being called out for his quick ejaculation, and that was impressive on itself. His expression made you giggle.

"What the fuck are you laughing for?!" He growled with bared teeth, his hands moving to your writs to restrain them above your head, crushing you with his body again. You whined, not in fear, but need.

He couldn't begin to understand what was happening. You weren't freaking out, you weren't crying, you weren't despairing.

"Do you understand what is happening here? I'm assaulting you, stupid bitch!" He lost his cool so quickly.

"Of course I know." Speaking in a whisper, your back arched, pressing yourself further against Shigaraki, raising your thighs to catch his cock between the soft flesh of your exposed, sticky thighs. He hissed through his teeth, the touch easily making his cock spring back to life, harder than before.

"Tomura, you've always been a creep." For the first time, your voice sounded harsh, condescending.

And disgusted.

Finally, that disgusted look. Shigaraki stared at you with a burning gaze through red eyes, mouth agape at the sound of those words being uttered by you, that look on your face that he had wanted to see for the longest time. His cock twitched, a spurt of cum drooling down the tip and getting on your exposed panties. The feeling made you shudder, your things squeezing his cock between them again. His back arched, hands restraining you gripped your wrists tighter, he cursed at how fucking good it felt.

"But I always liked that about you, honestly! How gross you are, how dirty and smelly you are, you are always so mean to me too! I wanted you to take me like this by force one day."

"You...wanted this to happen?" Shigaraki was starting to understand, though none of it made sense. You snorted, giving him a suddenly smug grin that made his blood boil.

"I always hoped it would." A candid confession, your own breathing had become erratic, the euphoria of pouring out your deepest secrets. "It always made me feel so hot to imagine that you fucked me and made me all dirty and disgusting, that you turned me into a freak like you."

It sounded like pure bullshit, and yet the genuine honesty in your voice left no room to question it. The reality you presented him with had shattered his own. And it made him so damn angry and so fucking turned on. He felt all light-headed suddenly, like he was in a dream.

"So you've been fucking with me all this time?! Is that it, you damn bitch?!"

One of his hands roughly grabbed your throat, fingers circling the frail column of bone and squeezing hard, you gasped at the sudden pressure keeping you from breathing. You stared up at him. His gaze bore into yours, face inching closer to snarl with pure, scorching fury.

And yet you still looked so ecstatic, a lewd expression that couldn't be further from that angelic, innocent look everyone always said made you so perfect. You looked absolutely wicked in that moment.

"Yes...I have." You spoke through labored breaths, clawing and the hand around your throat. "You fucking...disgusting...creep."

Shigaraki realized then, that you hadn't ever been perfect, in fact, you had been the same as him from the beginning. A depraved fucking mess.

And he hated you for that, loved you for that.

Shigaraki then let go of both your wrist and neck, slipping his leaking cock away from your thighs as he leaned back on his knees. Gasping for oxygen, your head already felt light by the time you felt your clothes being violently ripped off from your body, blouse and skirt tearing away and being thrown behind Shigaraki's towering frame, leaving you in only your underwear.

The frilly, see-through thing that looked more like lingerie. God, you really were such a fucking freak, weren't you?

Shigaraki's hands went to unclip your bra that so luckily opened at the front. Throwing the item with the thorn pile of your other clothes. The sight of your bare tits bouncing in front if him was like out of his deepest fantasies, and Shigaraki didn't wait a second longer to roughly squeeze your breasts in his calloused hands, taking handfuls of the supple mounds of flesh he had always dreamed to grope. They felt full and heavy in his palms, fingers sinking into their softness, and seeing the way you mewled when his thumbs teased the hardening nubs of your nipples, making you softly moan his name, Shigaraki lost it.

His mouth attacked one of your nipples, mouth latching to the puffy areolae and teeth sinking into the flesh as he sucked hard and desperate. Your reaction was immediate, hands tangling into his messy white hair and fingers pulling at his scalp, mouth parted to mewl his name in pain and delight. He kept suckling at your breasts, hungry and rough like he was hoping to suck milk out of them, the other hand already playing with the other breast, mercilessly pulling and twisting your hard nipple, bruising the tender skin.

"Tomura wait — ooh!!" Your body trembled as you whined out his name, another wave of pleasurable pain hitting you when Shigaraki squeezed your breasts together and brought both nipples into his greedy mouth. Sucking at them and lapping at the pebbled skin with his tongue, until your were squirming underneath him like a needy little whore.

One of his hands delved down to your panties, the thin string that held them up all to easy to break with one powerful tug. You gasped, a sound that turned into a loud scream when you felt his fingers teasing the hot wetness of your pussy lips, before he buried one digit into your core, testing your insides.

"Oh fuck..." You breathed, biting your lip, feeling him experimentally finger your inner walls. Shigaraki was fascinated at how hot and slick you felt inside, your fleshy walls sucking around his fingers so tightly that he wanted to stuff his cock inside that hole now, now, now.

He let go of your nipples with a lewd pop, spit dribbling down the abused skin. "Who would've thought...that you had such a filthy mouth." He snickered. "You are so fucking wet already, you goddamn degenerate, you want my cock so bad, huh? I'll let you know I haven't showered in a few days." It was like he was testing you by basking in his own disgusting habits.

"Y-Yes, I do, I want your filthy cock!!" Another loud moan, uncaring that other people in the dorm were going to hear. "Please, Tomura, make me filthy!!" The expression on your face, mouth agape with your little tongue out so unabashedly desperate for someone like him made his heart flutter.

Shigaraki would've wanted to keep you begging for so much longer, but in reality, his own desperation had him pulling back his hand from your pussy, leaving you empty and sighing disappointed for a moment, but not for long. Firmly anchoring himself down with his knees on the mattress, he raised your hips with a bruising touch and with the clumsiness of an inexperienced man, plunged his cock into your pussy in one punishingly rough thrust. The sudden feeling of being full had you arching your back and curling your toes, nails clawing at his forearms as you writhed in pain from the sudden intrusion. Shigaraki buried his cock into you until his pubes brushed your outer lips, and he was balls depp inside.

"Fuck, fuck, ooh...holy shit you...are fucking tight." Tomura groaned with his mouth agape, eyes rolling to the back of his head. His breath hot against your skin as he leaned over for a moment, taking in the unbelievably hot sensation of you squeezing around him. "This fucking greedy pussy, hngg..." Your insides felt so good, better than he ever imagined, you were so tight sucking him in like you were trying to rip off his cock. Was this what pussy felt like, or was this just you? Seeing what a slut you were, he didn't think you were even a virgin. And yet your velvety walls wrapped around his shaft in a snug fit inside that scorching, pulsating heat, Shigaraki couldn't imagine anything else comparing to it.

He couldn't stop himself as he began thrusting his cock into your hole, pulling only slightly before sinking back, selfishly unwilling to let go of that delirious sensation around his length. The harder he snapped his hips, the better it felt, his balls throbbed as they slapped against your plump ass.

"Tomura, i-it hurts....mmm, oh!" Tears swelled in your eyes, and yet your hips were needly sinking on his cock like there was anything else of him to take. What a glutton for punishment you were, but soon that burning pain became something just as good, even better actually, delicious pain, and your were soon arching your back and bouncing on his cock with all your might.

"Guess neither of us are virgins anymore, huh?" You panted with a laugh. Shigaraki froze then for a second, his eyes stared at your face contorted by pain and pleasure with wide eyes, enraptured and burning with something a little hotter than desire. A virgin, so even after the truth of your character, you really were as untainted as he thought.

Shigaraki was scrapping your virgin insides with his cock, truly making you filthy in the most pure sense of the word. He was tainting you, breaking you, the perfect girl everyone adored.

That was it, Shigaraki cursed under his breath as he pulled out, earning a confused and disappointed sound of from your lips, that then became a little help when he grabbed the back of your legs and pushed them up, bending them against your chest. He positioned himself over you and stuffed his cock back inside, thrusting into you as hard as he could, taking up a new merciless pace. In that new position, both of you could feel him reaching even deeper inside you, the engorged head on his cock hitting the entrance of your cervix, that little orifice sucking at his tip like it was begging for his filthy, fertile seed. The thought made him fuck you even harder, the image of him pouring his cum inside you and impregnating your insides.

"Tomura, Tomura, Tomura!!"

His name was a chant on your lips, arms thrown around his shoulders to pull him closer. You could smell the sweat and grime on his hair, and the thought someone so gross like him was taking you made your insides flutter and twist with the build up of an orgasm. "Tomura, don't stop, fuck...don't stop!!"

He didn't and soon you were clamping on his cock, your orgasm making you so tight that Shigaraki was shooting his load too reaching an abrupt climax, pleasure hitting him as his cum flooded your insides with its warmth, painting your walls white and filling up your womb until it was overflowing out of you, steaming down your thighs and ass onto his bedsheets.

It was like a dream, the best dream he had ever had. And he would've thought that it was nothing but a dream, too. If not for the arms that were still clinging to him and refusing to let go, the pretty mouth breathing against his ear.

"Tomura, you...really are disgusting." A satisfied voice filled with disgust, and affection. His cock began hardening inside you and you barked a laugh.

He hated you for that, and he loved you for that. The perfect girl everyone wanted, that was just so perfect for him too.

#yandere x reader #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki tomura x reader #tw noncon #tw yandere #tw somnophilia #tw assault #smut #yandere thirst

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just-another-blog-of-fluff · 3 years ago

Text

An Unfortunate Predicament - Part 2

I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of likes on my last post, and so I was inspired to continue yesterday's fic and write a part 2... The ideas flow while I'm writing the lead-in portion, and then I get to the tickling part and my brain goes ----does not compute---- and short circuits, so... hopefully this turned out ok!

Part one is here

Word count: 2300

* * *

You weren’t sure if he actually expected that you would willingly come down to greet the Avengers when they arrived home that evening, just so that you could keep your end of the deal. Regardless, you weren’t dumb enough to come out of your room when you finally heard the commotion that was your teammates entering the tower (mostly because Thor’s boisterous voice echoed in every corner of the building.) Just to be on the safe side, you remained in your room for the rest of the evening, scrolling through your phone and watching some TV to keep yourself entertained.

The following morning, you awoke to your stomach growling so loudly you thought Wanda could probably hear it through the wall in her room next door. Having hidden away for the entire evening, you realized you hadn’t eaten an actual meal last night, having only munched on some chips you had stashed away in your desk for when you got hungry while you worked. Reluctantly, you knew you would have to actually exit your room if you wanted to get some breakfast.

Besides – he must have forgotten by now, right?

… Of course not, you remembered. Loki doesn’t forget when someone crossed him, and he certainly didn’t forgive either.

Despite your knowing it was probably a very bad idea, you slipped on your softest pair of socks in hopes they would help muffle your footsteps before pressing your ear to the door, trying to hear whether there was anyone talking or shuffling about outside. Satisfied when you were met only with silence, you gradually cracked the door open and peeking cautiously out into the hallway.

Empty. Perfect.

As quickly as you could while still ensuring your every step was soundless, you tiptoed your way to the kitchen down the hall, pausing at the doorway to listen for any signs of movement. Nothing. Perfect. You leaned forward and peeked around the door frame, your weight shifted to the balls of your feet in case you needed to make a quick exit. Your eyes scanned the room from corner to corner, even glancing under the table and at the cabinet doors to assess for anything that might indicate someone was hiding in there.

Ok, so maybe you were a little paranoid.

Seeing nothing out of place, no cabinet doors cracked ajar or anything, you let out a breath and stepped into the room. You reached the fridge and opened the door slowly so as not to allow it to make that suction noise it always did. Someone had stolen the last yogurt cup apparently. Slightly annoyed, you scanned the fridge trying to decide what you wanted instead. You settled on a bowl of cereal, grabbing the bottle of milk and turning around to get the cereal box out of the cabinet.

“Eep!”

Heart leaping into your throat, you let out a sound that was somewhere between a scream and a squeak when you found yourself face to face with none other than the god of mischief himself, his face mere inches away from yours. In your shock, your fingers slipped from around the handle of the milk bottle. It would have exploded all over the floor had Loki not reached out and caught it with his cat-like reflexes before it hit the ground. He leaned toward you to place the milk bottle on the counter directly behind you, boxing you in with your back against the countertop.

“You didn’t show up to the common room last night.” He had a deep, menacing edge to his tone as he made this simple observation, his narrowed eyes and wide smirk only reinforcing the fact that you were in deep trouble.

Fight or flight instinct took over, and you rapidly ducked under his arm and started to sprint away from the trickster. Unfortunately, he had predicted this move, his hand latching onto your upper arm before you could even take two steps.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

“Ahah… well, you see, I have a really important assignment I have to get done, and I just came down here to grab some breakfast to take back to my room while I work, and…”

“Do you really expect me to believe that?” he chuckled.

“… yes?” you replied, your voice increasing an octave with nervousness. Loki shook his head, giving you a pitying look.

“Darling, I am the god of lies and mischief. I know a lie when I hear one.” You tried to jerk your arm abruptly out of his grasp in hopes it would catch him off guard, but he merely tightened his grip on your bicep. “I do believe we have some unfinished business, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Really? Because I thought we were done with that, actually…” you stammered, frantically scanning the room for some way to escape. Your eyes darted back to Loki, catching his gaze as he realized what you were doing.

“Sorry, but there’s no way out of this,” he declared. In one fluid motion, Loki had scooped you up off the floor into his arms, holding fast despite your kicking and squirming. You hadn’t realized you could become any more flustered around the god, but he had proven you wrong just now, your face burning hot. He started to make his way out of the kitchen, careful not to slam your head into the doorframe as he carried you out into the hallway.

“Loki! Put me down this instant!” you demanded, kicking your legs to try to throw him off balance.

“Hmm… no, actually, I don’t think I will,” he teased, tossing you up just the slightest bit so he could gain a better grip on you.

“Where are you taking me, then?” you growled. You could hear faintly the voices of the other Avengers in the common area, growing slightly louder as Loki continued to stroll along with you still captive in his grasp. “Really? You’re still going to make me announce that you’re ‘the superior prankster’ to the team? Don’t you think that’s sort of lame?”

“No, darling. I have more effective methods of humiliating you.” His eyes flitted down to glance at your face, his smirk expanding across his.

Was it possible to die from blushing so hard?

When Loki had finally reached the opening to the common room, the rest of the team glanced up at the two of you with immediate expressions of confusion.

“Good morning, lady Y/N! Why is my brother carrying you? Are you injured?” Thor asked, genuinely concerned.

“No! He’s holding me prisoner! Help!” you cried, starting to squirm again to try to get him to put you down. Tired of having to keep hiking you up to keep from dropping you, Loki finally lowered your legs so you could plant your feet on the floor. He wrapped an arm around you tightly, pinning you to his side so you couldn’t run off.

“Is that true, Loki?” Thor inquired, squinting at him.

“I just thought you’d like her to be here when I inform you all that I found her on the ropes course yesterday,” Loki announced. To your confusion, the entire team let out groans of frustration.

“What the hell?! We’ve been trying to decide who was going to make you try it with all of us! You never wanted to join in!” Peter complained. You raised your eyebrows in shock.

“Wait, what? Why are we changing the subject, here?? Do none of you care that he is holding me captive??” you protested.

“Sorry, Y/N, but this is unforgivable,” Tony sighed with mock disappointment, shooting you a mischievous wink. “The ropes course is a team-building activity. There’s no ‘I’ in team.”

“But… what… ugh. You guys are unbelievable,” you groaned, shaking your head.

“Don’t worry – that’s not all I learned about our devious little mortal yesterday,” Loki began. You immediately tensed up, heart pounding impossibly faster, although you weren’t sure if it was because of what you knew was coming next or because you were mortified to find you actually liked the unusual pet name he just used to refer to you.

“Oh really? Do tell,” Bucky urged, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees in anticipation.

“You see…” Loki reached over and grasped your wrists, yanking your arms behind your back so he could hold both wrists with just one hand. You looked up at him and bit your lip, shaking your head rapidly in desperate, silent protest. He merely grinned, wiggling the fingers of his free hand in the air at you to taunt you even further. You had to fight to keep yourself from allowing anticipatory giggles to slip out. “… our little friend, here, is devastatingly ticklish.”

Without further ado, Loki’s hand darted down to your side, squeezing rapidly as laughter immediately began pouring from your mouth. You twisted your upper body in hopes you could break his hold, but you quickly realized there was no escaping the vice grip he had on your wrists. Defeated, and weakened from laughter, your knees buckled, and you slowly sank to the floor. Loki only followed you down, finally letting go of your wrists in favor of freeing his other hand up to torment you. He moved his hands to your belly, scratching at it in the most maddeningly light and rapid way, eliciting a shriek from you.

“Oh, no way! She really is ticklish!” Peter exclaimed over your laughter.

“Damn. She’s worse than this kid,” Tony observed, patting Peter on the shoulder as he blushed and glared at his mentor.

“WHY AREN’T YOU HELPING MEHEHE!” you shouted, throwing your friends a betrayed look.

“Sorry, Y/N, but you’re just too damn adorable to make him stop,” Bucky apologized, his voice dripping with sarcasm.

Meanwhile, Loki had pressed one of his shins down on both your legs, leaning on you to hold you down as his fingers traveled up to your sides. He drilled his thumbs into the front of your lowermost ribs, digging his fingers into the sides of your ribcage simultaneously. You supposed you should have known that someone with his mischievous title would be good at tickling, but the way his fingertips sought out every single one of your weak spots was causing you to slowly slip into madness.

“Why don’t you try her knees?” Wanda suggested with a smirk.

“Wanda!! Why are you helping hiHIHIHIM!” your voice pitched up an octave as Loki began to pinch the soft skin just above your kneecap, sending ticklish shocks up your leg.

“Thank you for the suggestion,” Loki said casually, removing his shin from your legs so he could reach around and flutter his fingers against the backs of your knees. Without his weight on you, you were free to kick your legs and squirm to try to escape. If you accidentally kicked Loki in the process, well, that was just an added bonus. At least, you thought so, until he wrapped his fingers around one of your ankles and dragged a finger down the sole of your socked foot to test your reaction.

“NOHOHO LOKI STAHAHAP!” you pleaded, jerking your leg wildly without success. Loki shot you a positively evil smile before lightly scratching five fingers up and down the bottom of your foot. You covered your face with your hands to hide the fact that you had never felt shyer and more embarrassed in your life, muffling your laughter behind your palms.

“Aww, lady Y/N, there’s no need to hide!” Thor insisted, kneeling down beside you and pulling your hands off your face.

“Ah, brother! Why don’t you help me hold her down? She is making this increasingly difficult,” Loki suggested, moving back up to torment your ribs again.

“Certainly, brother!” Thor obliged, tightening his grip on your wrists, and pinning them above your head. You shot him the biggest glare you could possibly muster in your frazzled state.

“THOR! That’s BETRAYAL!” you exclaimed. “What the h-“ Loki started to scribble his fingers into the soft skin under your arms and the remainder of your sentence died in your mouth, your body shaking in silent laughter. At long last, Loki finally took this as his cue to let up, tracing feather-light fingers along your sides to keep you giggling.

“What an unfortunate weakness you have. So easy to exploit,” he teased. Your blush spread down to your neck and up to the tips of your ears. Luckily, Thor let go of your wrists so you could cover your face again, doing anything in your power not to see the arrogant look of victory on Loki’s face.

“Whyhyhy Loki?” you groaned as he finally stopped torturing you. You immediately rolled onto your side and curled up in a ball, rubbing the residual ticklish tingles off your sides.

“Well, darling, I had to make a statement… Don’t mess with the god of mischief,” he warned, referring back to the prank you’d pulled when you hid his books.

“U-understood,” you acknowledged firmly, your breathing finally returning to normal.

“Well – that was the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. My day is made,” Tony teased, reaching down to pat you on the shoulder and causing you to flinch away involuntarily. “Relax, kid! You clearly need a break, I’m not that mean!”

“Sorry… reflex,” you mumbled. Loki stood and offered you a hand to help you up off the floor, which you took after a moment’s hesitation. “You… better not do that again, or I’ll… I’ll… punch you.”

“Really, darling? That was the weakest threat you’ve ever made,” he snickered. "Clearly you're losing your touch." Throwing your hands up in frustration, you turned around to walk back to your room, suddenly realizing you were still in your pajamas. “And I can’t make any guarantees,” he called after you, “so you’d better behave yourself!” You turned around and stuck your tongue out at him, eliciting a laugh, before you turned down the hallway and made your way to your bedroom door.

Note to self, you thought – Loki doesn’t do mercy.

#loki tickle #loki x reader #marvel tickle #ticklish!reader #tickle fic #tickle fluff #part 2!#I'm so happy so many of you enjoyed reading part one!#also I have an idea for another fic #might write it later this week…

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un2-verse · 4 years ago

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BILLY — Kim Taehyung (1)

》 News of a Sadistic Serial Killer nicknamed “Jigsaw” is spreading around town like wildfire… the nickname stemming from the puzzle piece he cuts from every victim’s body. No one knows who he’ll trap next but in a town full of delinquents and criminals, it could never be you. Right? 《

pairings: john kramer!taehyung x female reader

warnings: dark themes, angst, yandere, murder, torture, self harm, suicide, stalking etc.... (will add more when i know lol) although it is rather innocent in the first couple chapters(?) so idk it could be slow burn but i guess we’ll find out as i write it >< ,, it’s my version of saw if saw was a fucked up love story lol. Please don’t read if any of the topics mentioned trigger you!! 18+

this fic is exactly that, fiction!!!! the au does not represent the characters mentioned irl......

synopsis: you end up lost on the other side of town, where you cross paths with a handsome stranger, kim taehyung, only.... are you a stranger to him?

[a/n: daffodils represent; love me, sympathy, desire and affection returned...]

word count: 3k

series masterlist

part two

——————————————————————————

Hiding behind a mask was something you were accustomed to. Your friend group and family were clueless to the torment you endured from simply existing. You were confident your masking had convinced the world you were happy with yourself. Unbeknown to you, one other person saw straight through your façade.

You wanted to end your life.

He needed you to cherish your life.

Nothing looked familiar. The café you frequented was nowhere to be found. Your usual hangout was most definitely not on the side of town you found yourself in. You felt anxiety slowly curl its way around your body, you were frigid. You tried and tried but couldn’t find it in yourself to run.

You lived in the more friendly part of town (so to speak) – where houses were colourful, gardens pristine, warm-hearted neighbours who would treat you like family and white picket fences are what surrounded you. That was your norm, sure, you weren’t exactly loaded but you weren’t exactly poor either. It was a healthy balance in the middle. That’s not to say you hadn’t lived or seen this side of town before.

Your Mother and Father had grown up on this side of the fence. Two young people brought up in the rougher, more unfortunate areas. Your Mother was tough; she looked like a naïve, weak girl, albeit that was not the case. She was strong willed, used to life on the streets and doing anything she could to get money to make sure there was at least some food on the table. While your Mum was the leader, your Dad was more of a sheep. He was easily influenced and was dragged into the wrong crowd (had his fair share with drugs and street racing). That was their life for a few years till they crossed paths and your Mum helped your Dad get back on the right track.

They didn’t tell you much about their childhood and adolescence but they told you enough to make you appreciate what you have and to always work hard for it. To stick with the right people, be wise and conscious of your decisions. Be kind to those around you.

Your family owned a garage; your Dad was the head mechanic. This was the sole reason you were here. You knew it wouldn’t be simple when you agreed to go to this side of town to get a few bits for your Father’s shop. However, you didn’t expect it to be this difficult. How could you be so stupid? Why didn’t you just ask Hoseok and Yoongi to come with you like your father told you to? Or at least tell them where you were… yet you decided today of all days to be stubborn and venture on yourself, knowing full well how unsafe the area was. There were rundown businesses on either side of the road, beggars at every doorstep; drug dealings happening in broad daylight, no one even trying to hide it.

You felt your phone buzz in your pocket, you took it out and sighed a breath of relief once you’d read the texts.

14:37— From Papa: U ok munchkin ??? Did u get the stuff ?

14:39— From Papa: its ok if u didnt. Yoongs rang said hes got majority this morning lol so be safe n get home soon . Love u

14:40— To Papa: ohhh ok pops, i couldn’t find the shop anyway lol i’ll head back soon, love u too x

*LOW BATTERY*

“Fuck, trust me to forget to charge the bastard.” You rolled your eyes as you stuffed the phone back in your pocket.

Muffled shouting was heard around you. People ran across the street, bumping into you as they ran past. You gathered yourself and moved further down the path. “Great!” you exasperated, “honestly I’m so fucking stupid! Yoongi’s gonna kill me for this, I knew, I knew I should’ve told him I was coming over here but no,” your head was hung low as you dragged your feet across the pavement, “maybe I could tell Hobi, he wouldn’t be as angry right? I’m sure he’ll come,“ A sudden scream ripped you out of your chuntering. You whipped your head to the right, you could make out some figures bustling about in front of you, a group of men were quite clearly fighting… your anxiety struck you and you held your breath as you saw a man pull a knife from the waistband of his sweatpants. All thoughts and common sense seemed to leave all at once. Statue like, feet stuck to the ground. You watched on as the group rushed towards the brown haired man, you scanned his figure: tall, broad, confident… he exuded an intimidating aura even when you were this far away from him.

How could someone be so sure of themselves? It was one against five, surely the loner had no chance?

The glistening of the knife brought you back to your senses. Fucking hell. How do you always end up in these situations when you’re alone? Why me? Why? Good Lord, I need to run. Just as you were about to leave, the group who were arguing charged past you; one gripped his side as another supported his weight. Holy fuck, did he stab him? you stood frozen, yet again, your mind raced a mile a minute. Panic bubbled in your chest.

“You okay there Doll?” His voice was deep, velvet-like. It flowed so smoothly you doubted it was real, it was so soothing like it had wrapped itself around you, embracing your body. You heard his footsteps before he planted himself beside you. His shoulder reached the top of your head, his hand brushed yours. Swallowing your nerves you dared a glance up. He was fucking breath-taking, like a fallen angel. The stranger shot you a small smile that you would’ve easily missed had you not been staring at his features… a blush crept up your neck as you nodded. His smile slowly twisted into a smirk.

Cute, Taehyung thought to himself. Couldn’t help but adore the way you slightly trembled under his gaze, the way your hands gripped and twisted your sweater paws. Almost like a puppy. He cleared his throat and reached his hand to yours, “Sorry, I should’ve introduced myself. I’m Taehyung.” you took his hand into yours, apprehensively you greeted him, “I’m Y/N.”

“Ah, Y/N. I haven’t seen you round here before, you new or something?” Taehyung cocked his head to the side, his eyes seemed to stare right through you.

“Uhm, I don’t live here. I live over the other part of Town… I was just grabbing some stuff for my Dad but, my phones about to die. I have no idea where I am or how to get home, I’m sorry, I promise I didn’t see anything!” a deep chuckle cut you off, Taehyung smiled and beckoned you to follow him.

“Come on Y/N, you’re not suited for this side of Town, I’ll walk you back. A pretty little thing like you, you’re easy prey to these guys.” your feet fell into a cautious pace behind him, he glanced over his shoulder, “hurry up Buttercup, I don’t bite.” Taehyung flashed a boxy grin in your direction, which caused you to speed up ever so slightly.

You were unsure how you felt about letting a complete stranger walk you home, Yoongi would definitely kill you for this. Especially with the recent news of some serial killer named ‘Jigsaw’, Yoongi and Hoseok had been very stern and their usual, overprotective selves when the news had broken out. “It’s on every headline Y/Nie! No more leaving the house on yourself, you need to go anywhere you ring either of us. Got it? Don’t talk to anyone you don’t know either. There’s some dodgy fucks about recently.” Although, you loved them dearly, sometimes their protectiveness was a...little overbearing. You already felt suffocated from your parents (you didn’t need it from your best friends as well). They were happy and believed you to be too; but that was exhausting, faking happiness. You had a constant façade, acted like a happy normal teenager with a happy family; when that was far from the truth.

Drowning. That’s how you’d explain the way you felt. Breathing was difficult and brought you more pain than it was worth. Growing up was tedious, you had grown differently to your peers which only brought ridicule and embarrassment for you. You had struggled with your speech (sometimes you still do), you often stuttered, mispronounced words, the list was endless. That was one of the first reasons you were a castaway. As you grew, the ridicule worsened. Verbal abuse turned physical from your classmates. They made you feel like you were a waste of space. The names they called you, you soon started to believe them. Ugly. Weird. Freak. Stupid. They took root in your brain, slowly they grew and grew till your head was overgrown with twisted, rotten weeds.

Eventually, you sought comfort in blood. You didn’t care that it hurt you; you were almost happy to feel pain. Like you deserved to.

By age 14, you had started to skip school. Only ever there for exams and a couple of art classes you had with Jeongguk. He was what you would’ve called a best friend, he supported you and was by your side till you left school. He went away to college and like always with school friends, you drifted apart. Nevertheless, he still texts you now and then to check in.

Although you were (once) close with Jeongguk. He never knew of your inner demons, the same with Yoongi and Hoseok. You didn’t want to feel like a burden and worry your friends when they had shit to worry about themselves.

Why devastate flowers that flourish beautifully with weeds that manage to twist their way around every crack?

You had walked for a few minutes now, having chatted absentmindedly about anything and everything. The roads still didn’t look familiar to you and you just wished they did, you didn’t want to be away from your home any longer, your feet were starting to ache, your phone was on 10% battery and it was fucking cold. You just wanted to be back in bed tucked up watching Lady and the Tramp or 101 Dalmatians for the millionth time. You felt safe and content when you indulged in your comfort films. Far away from the real world and wrapped up in the false reality. They easily distracted you and that's when you truly felt at peace. Your mind was always too busy thinking about how cute it was when Tramp calls Lady, Pidge or how in love Pongo and Perdy were.

Majority of the time you fantasised about having a love similar, but then again, why would you wanna make yourself vulnerable like that? Is the risk of being hurt (more than you are now) any good? Of course it’s not. Fuck that, life isn’t nothing like those shitty romance films or novels… It’s real and painful.

As you and Taehyung rounded the corner, a little cafe caught your eye, a dainty blue and pink building. Fairy Lights strung up around the windows, you could see a handful of people inside, busy sipping their drinks and chatting away to one another. ‘Aroma Mocha’ hung above the doors. It looked so cute and simple. Your previous thoughts left your mind as quick as they had come. You wanted to go inside, it had an enticing atmosphere.

Taehyung hadn’t realised you’d stopped walking until he couldn’t hear the soft thud of your footsteps behind him, he turned as he called out to you, your eyes still fixed on the cafe. He chuckled to himself, “Fucking adorable, like a kid at christmas,” he walked back over to you. “Hey Doll, you wanna go in?” He felt his heart quicken when you looked at him with those pretty eyes, “We’ve plenty of time to get you back before it’s dark angel.” You answered him with a nod as you turned your head from Taehyung to look back at the alluring little cafe.

Not a second had passed before Taehyung grabbed your hand and pulled you across the road to the entrance; you ignored the warmth of his hand as it intertwined with yours; you ignored the way your tummy erupted with butterflies. Taehyung had stopped to hold the door for you, you murmured a small, “thank you,” looking up at him, the heat that crept up your cheeks making your face resemble that of a doll’s he thought to himself. Once he ushered you fully inside, he placed his hand to rest on the curve of your waist as he guided you to the back corner of the room, where a quaint table for two was unoccupied, a little pot of Daffodils sat atop. How fitting...

Taehyung was quick to pull the chair out for you to take a seat, you pulled it in as you sat down and sent a shy smile his way, “I’m sorry, I know we just met Taehyung but this place is so fucking precious! I hope I’m not bothering you, if I am we can just carry on walking or, I could ring a Taxi? Is this weird? Oh god, I can’t believe--”, Taehyung threw his head back as he laughed, a sound that seemed to wrap its way around your soul, twisting around your heart in the nicest of ways, it was almost like a killer to the weeds taking over your body. A temporary release. You felt like you could really breathe in those short seconds of his laughter.

“Angel, if you were bothering me, I’d have kept on walking. That, or I would’ve called you a Taxi myself, it’s no problem honestly.” You ducked your head as he sent a wink your way, fuck sake Y/N get it together! Why are you acting like a fucking schoolgirl?

“Well I uh, appreciate it so, yeah thank you?” You don’t know what to do, you’re here with the most gorgeous person you’ve ever laid your eyes on… yet you have no clue if what you saw was real, did Taehyung stab someone? Could someone have had the knife who wasn’t Taehyung? Was he even the person you saw in that altercation? Did you imagine everything that had gone off?

Before you had chance to overthink it, a light bubbly voice greeted your ears, “Hi! Welcome to Aroma Mocha, I’m Jimin and I’ll be your server today. Is there anything I can get you?” Jimin held his gaze on you as he flashed you a friendly smile, Taehyung turned around at the sound of his best friend, “Oh, Tae! I wasn’t expecting to see you today, what are you doing here? And who’s this pretty little lady?”

“This is Y/Nie, she was in the neighbourhood so we thought we’d nip in for something to drink before I take her back to hers.” you sent a warm smile to Jimin which he gladly returned, “I’ll have my usual and can you get Y/Nie a Strawberry Iced Tea? Thanks man.”

Once Jimin had disappeared to make your drinks, you shot your eyes to Taehyung, “Uhm, how’d you know I like Strawberry Iced Tea?” Taehyung didn’t even look in your direction as he scrolled through his phone, eyes glued to the screen. A minute passed by and he’d still not acknowledged your question so you let it slide, it wasn’t that big of a deal right? Your mind drifted. Your fingers rested atop of your lap, hidden from the sight of onlookers, picking around your nails as anxiety flooded your body. You felt like you were about to suffocate. You shouldn’t be talking to anyone, you shouldn’t let anyone close. You were only going to fuck everything up in a heartbeat. It’s only natural. Self deprecating thoughts devoured and made their way through your veins, poisoning yourself further; your whole body felt as though it was alight.

Jimin brought you your drinks, placed them carefully in front of the pair of you as you both said your thanks.

The click of Taehyung’s phone being locked and the clearing of his throat brought you back to your senses. “The drink I ordered for you is popular here so, I assumed you’d like to try it. You wanna talk about what’s bothering you?” your eyes shot up to meet his, your head tilted a little to the left as your tongue wet your lip, so puppy like...

You stared incredulously, “I don’t know what you’re talking about Taehyung.” You leant forward slightly as you wrapped your lips around the straw and took a sip.

Taehyung saw the way you sucked your drink up through your straw, his eyes darkened. Thankful to have worn sweatpants that day, he shifted himself discreetly, “I’m not stupid Angel, I know what you’re doing under the table. I’m here, so talk to me. I’ll listen to whatever you gotta say.”

You stuttered as you wracked your brain for something to say, “I-I only met you like forty minutes ago, I don’t even tell my friends what’s wrong. Not that there is, everything’s fine.”

You met me just short of an hour ago, he thought to himself, “You don’t have to lie to me Y/Nie…” he grabbed your hands that were laid near the cup of your Iced Tea. His thumb rubbing circles onto the back of your hand. You looked small and fragile, like the Daffodils on the table; one little pluck and you’d be ruined. He wouldn’t admit it to you just yet but, Taehyung fucking loved how delicate you seemed as you sat across from him.

How easy it would be to take your life away. How easy it’d be to pull those weeds up that are poisoning you, torturing you every single day. He shook his head, as he cleared those thoughts. No, only Y/N can make that decision. I’m just going to help her choose.

Live or Die.

You visibly winced, “You don’t know me. Think whatever the fuck you want about me, it doesn’t matter.” your eyes flashed hurt as you went back to picking your skin. You knew it, this whole encounter was too good to be true. A complete stranger (well acquaintance technically) had just presumed shit about you, the fact he was right is what hurt more. You didn’t want anyone to know how you were feeling. Or how you were dealing with it.

You couldn’t exactly tell him to piss off, you still needed his help home and so you tried to distract yourself from the unsettling gaze that watched your every move. You let out a breath as Taehyung went back to his phone. Your eyes drifted as you picked up the local Newspaper, your eyes skimmed over the headline, ‘Jigsaw Traps Continue’. Taehyung noticed you staring at the front page, and chuckled, “you scared of Jigsaw Angel?”

You shook your head, why would you be scared of some nutjob who’s targeted criminals and drug dealers? You’re a nobody. “Of some psychopathic puppet?” if anyone did anything to you that would threaten your life, it would be you. Taehyung just laughed in return as you skipped the article and skim-read the other pointless stories.

You were fucking clueless as to who he was while he knew every little thing about you. He had watched you for months… His precious little Y/Nie… Oh how silly you were, taking your life for granted.

You hated yourself that much, you were willingly marking yourself up. Tainting your skin… oh your skin, how fucking beautiful and soft it looked, even with all the scars it still looked perfect… Taehyung wanted nothing more than to whisk you away and lock you inside with him. Forever. He didn’t want anyone touching what was his.

He knew you wore a mask when in public, too afraid to show your real self. Little did you know, he wore a mask himself...only he wore it to better other people.

He had a plan.

And you’d soon find out.

Let the games begin.

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primitivejunketer · 3 years ago

Text

I Want to Tell You- A George Harrison FanFiction

Chapter 1 // Chapter 2 // Chapter 3 // Chapter 4 // Chapter 5

Chapter 6- A Tear Fell

Fic Summary: George and Rosemarie have been next door neighbors their entire lives. As they grow older, feelings grow stronger. Will they fall in love or fall apart? angst/fluff/slow burn

Chapter Summary: We gain some background on Rosemarie’s new school, and introduce a few new characters.

Word Count: 4165

Rating: T

Warnings: Language/Minor affection

Note from the author: So I honestly thought I was going to abandon this fic, but I got a random wave of motivation and cranked out the longest chapter yet. I’m sorry it’s so long, but it’s a pretty easy read so I hope it isn’t too boring. As always, thank you so much for reading. Enjoy!

Listen while you read! xx

July 16, 1955

Finally the last day of school. Rose couldn’t wait. The end of year activities had been so time consuming, Rose and George hadn’t seen one another since Rose’s birthday a month ago.

Over the few months that Rose had been going to Trinity Catholic Girls’ School, she had only made two friends. Eloise and Marina were all that got her through school. Being that she had started in the middle of the year, it was hard for her to fit in. Not to mention, Rose nor her family were actually Catholic. Since Rose started at Trinity, Nancy Canes was the worst thing to happen to her.

Nancy started a rumor that Rose was an orphan. Since Rose and her parents weren’t technically members of the church and because Rose always had George and Paul pick her up after school, Nancy made up some elaborate rumor that they were her adopted brothers and the church was doing charity by allowing Rose to attend the school.

In reality, Rose’s father took up a second job so that her family could afford to send her to private school. Trinity just happened to be the school within walking distance and her parents were married in a Catholic Church. Really, they had all the proof they needed.

After about two weeks of Rose attending Trinity is when it started. One day George and Paul’s bus was late.

“Waiting for your brothers, Marie?” Nancy spat.

“My name is Rosemarie. You may call me Rose.” Rose deadpanned, hoping Nancy would become bored with this cheap entertainment.

“If they’re not your brothers then they must be your boyfriends. How scandalous you are little RoseMARY.” Nancy sneered.

“They are just my friends, Nancy.” Rose huffed, resting her chin in her hand and leaning forward on her knees.

Nancy pressed on with her rumors. Telling the school that Rose was poor, couldn’t afford a new uniform and needed hand me down donations from the church.

It was only a matter of days before Nancy had told virtually the entire school.

Rose met Marina shortly after the rumor began.

“Psst.”

Rose was focused on writing her Language Arts essay quickly so she could get home and see George.

“PSST!”

The sound was coming from behind her. She couldn’t hear exactly where it was coming from, but figured it was Nancy, attempting to torment her.

“Hey!” A harsh whisper-yell came from directly behind her.

“What?!” She whisper-yelled back through her teeth, turning around.

“You’re Rose, right?” The girl behind her asked.

Rose sighed, she already knew what question was coming.

“Yes, I’m Rose. No, I’m not an orphan.” She deadpanned.

“What? Oh, no. I know.” The girl responded quickly. “I’m Marina. Sorry about Nancy.”

“Oh, it’s alright.” Rose brushed Marina off, not knowing what she wanted.

“Anyway, just wanted you to know there’s good people at this school too,” she motioned to herself and the girl sitting next to her.

The girl beside her waved and smiled. Rose waved and smiled back.

Since that day, the three girls have been inseparable. At least at school anyway.

Rose was terrified to let any of her girl friends meet George or Paul. She wanted to avoid the drama on both sides. As selfish as it was, and as much as she didn’t want to admit it, she didn’t want anyone taking George from her.

The two had avoided any talk of feelings or any talk of the kiss since it happened. They basically went on as normal as if it never happened. But that didn’t take the feelings away. They still wanted to be around one another all the time and they were still each other’s favorite person.

Being that it was finally the last day of school, Rose figured it was time that she introduced the boys and girls after all.

She wanted to be able to spend time with everyone over the summer and this seemed to be the only right way to do it.

“Alright, Rose, so I know George is your boyfriend, but what about Paul? You said he’s tall right?” Eloise went on and on about how excited she was and how dreamy she thought Paul would be.

“El, George is not my boyfriend! Don’t say that in front of him. You’ll freak him out.” Rose groaned.

“Well, are you kissing anyone else?” Marina laughed.

“Stop!” Rose shushed Marina, tugging on her shirt sleeve.

As if on cue, Paul and George approached.

Rose hopped up from the curb swiftly, embracing George first. She soon realized that her hug may have lingered for too long. To recover, she grabbed Paul in a half hug.

“Alright, let’s get it over with.” She said, rolling her eyes.

“Marina and Eloise, George and Paul. George and Paul, Marina and Eloise.” She motioned back and forth to them.

“Very lovely to meet you, ladies.” Paul immediately switched over to his cheeky self and shook their hands, giving them both a small peck.

Marina and Eloise blushed and shared glances of excitement with one another and with Rose. Rose returned the look with a scoff and a smile.

George put out his hand to shake and quickly introduced himself to the girls.

The five of them walked together through the sunny town.

“I am so glad school is over!” Paul exclaimed.

“What’re your plans for the summer?” Marina asked him.

“George and I are gunna start a band.” He grinned widely and wiggled his eyebrows at George.

“Really?” Rose piped up.

“Mhm,” George started, he had a mouth full of a candy bar and couldn’t speak, “gunna be the best skiffle band in Liverpool!”

“Best in the country!” Paul replied excitedly.

“In the world!!” George giggled.

Rose watched Marina and Eloise practically swoon over George and Paul and she laughed.

Being a musician was something George always wanted. He grew up with music and it’s been his life from day one. The moment he first picked up a guitar, it just felt right.

Rose knew this. She knew that music was his entire heart and soul. George wouldn’t be George without a guitar in his hands and a grin on his face.

Although it was a joke to George, the idea of him actually becoming a famous musician was not a distant thought in Rose’s mind. She thought about it often. She feared George would leave and forget about her. That he’d be too famous for little Liverpool. Too famous for her.

Rose didn’t spend much time thinking about what she wanted to be when she grew up. She knew for sure that she definitely didn’t want to be a nurse like her mother. Her mother was a strong woman for what she did- especially during the war, but Rose saw how exhausted, how hurt her mother was. She knew that her mother carried the weight of a thousand burdens and still stayed strong enough.

Rose didn’t see herself as strong. She was afraid of everything. She made up ridiculous scenarios in her head that could never come true, yet she was still afraid of them. She feared that something would happen to her parents, or that George would leave, or die, or that the world would end, or she would come down with an illness, or her father would get laid off, or—

“Rose!” George nearly shouted at her.

“Huh?” Rose was quickly snapped back to reality, “oh sorry, I was just- uh-… thinking.”

Marina and Eloise laughed at her.

“Thinking about George in a skiffle band?” Eloise quietly singsong teased at Rose.

Rose elbowed Eloise, “what did I tell you?! Cut it out!” She playfully hissed.

The group had finally arrived at Rose and George’s favorite record store. The one they’d been kicked out of on multiple occasions for either knocking things over or playing music too loud. The shopkeep, Simon, knew the two well by now so when they caused a ruckus they had to pay up by working for a few hours. They never minded because that meant they could go through all of the brand new records and before anyone else. They’d save up whatever allowance and lunch money they could to save up for sparkly new albums.

“What ruffians have you two brought into my shop this time?” Simon jokingly greeted.

“Only the WORST of little Catholic schoolgirls!” Rose said dramatically.

The five of them spent the first day of summer walking around town, listening for any sign of good music or fun. Rose took every moment in as if it was the last time she would ever experience this. She wanted to remember things this way forever.

October 23, 1955

The summer came and went and Rose wished so terribly that it never ended. Another year older means more time at school and less time for fun. She hadn’t seen George since the last day of summer. Every day he was either staying late at school or going to Paul’s to practice. Rose was busy herself, she started a Journalism Club at Trinity and she, Marina, and Eloise were rather consumed with reporting all of the news in Trinity Catholic School for Girls- and there was a lot.

As much as Rose loved her time with George, she’d grown rather close to her two best gals.

She hadn’t had any more romantic encounters with George since the kiss 8 months ago. They may have exchanged a long glance every so often, but nothing more. After all, they hadn’t spent time alone together in a while.

For what seemed like the first time in weeks, Rose went straight home after school with no companionship. Normally she’d linger at the school, do journalism club, or have the girls over. Today was different. She needed space.

Rose entered an empty home. Both of her parents were away at work. The house seemed eerily quiet. She rarely came home before them.

She took off her shoes and sat on the sofa but something just didn’t feel right.

“I can’t be here like this.” She mumbled to herself, slipping her shoes back on.

She decided to go for a walk. As she stepped onto the pavement, she looked left and right. Right was the way to George’s house. She decided to go left.

As she walked, she stared at her feet, counting her steps as she went, thinking about nothing… and everything.

She continued making left turns around the block, not looking up much. Before she knew it, she was standing in front of George’s house.

She slowed to a stop and her eyes gently gazed up at the familiar building. She sat and stared for a moment. She considered knocking. Hell, she considered going to George’s every day. He just didn’t seem as eager anymore. Rose felt that he’d grow bored of her. That he was growing bored of her.

The sound of a lock clicked and before she could react, the front door opened.

“Rosie?” George chimed.

The nickname and sweet tone in his voice nearly made Rose’s heart melt.

“Hi, George.” Rose replied, awkwardly.

“What’re you doing here?” He laughed.

“I was in the neighborhood.” Rose beamed, trying not to smile.

“Good one,” George laughed, “would you like to come in?”

“Alright,” She wanted more than nothing but to come in, but didn’t want to seem too eager.

Rose slowly followed George inside.

“I’m not interrupting anything, right?” Rose timidly questioned.

“No not at all, Mum’s just making supper.” He motioned to his mother in the kitchen.

“Rosemarie!” She exclaimed happily, embracing the girl.

“Hi, Mrs. Harrison.” She greeted back.

“Our little Rosie, it seems like we haven’t had you over in ages.” Mrs. Harrison cooed.

“Yeah, it’s been busy… y’know, school and stuff.” Rose couldn’t place it, but something felt awkward.

“Well, if you’re not busy today, we’d love to have you for dinner. I know George surely does miss you.”

“Mum!” George interrupted, his cheeks turning rosy.

Mrs. Harrison smiled as the two retreated upstairs, George practically dragging Rose away before his mother could say anything more.

Rosemarie laid on George’s floor, staring at his ceiling. She imagined stars and planets swirling above her.

George sat on his bed, playing guitar and humming. They could faintly hear Mrs. Harrison’s Indian music and the subtle tapping together of pots and pans coming from downstairs.

“So,” George started awkwardly, his words stuck in the back of his throat, “there’s going to be this Halloween party at Paul’s church.”

By now, Rose had sat up and was looking at George.

“I was wondering if you wanted to go?” He grew nervous as he gazed into Rose’s eyes, “I mean- only if you want to… And you could bring Marina and Eloise too… if you wanted.”

Rose tried to ignore the little flutter in her chest. George inviting her to the party almost felt like a date. But he invited Marina and Eloise, too. So how much of a date could it really be?

Rose hated how many thoughts flooded her mind. Of course she wanted to see George and spend time with him, he was her best friend. But ever since they kissed she couldn’t shake her feelings. Being alone with George felt different, it was exciting. She felt like she had to repress herself around him now- like if she didn’t try her hardest she might accidentally kiss him again.

Rose swallowed her thoughts and feelings so she could respond, “we’ll be there.” She half smiled at George.

He could tell there was something off about Rose. He knew it was from the kiss but he wouldn’t dare bring it up. So instead he pretended he didn’t see it. He distanced himself from her and tried to act normal.

Neither of the two knew what normal was anymore. That kiss changed them forever.

“George please,” Rose finally blurted. She couldn’t take it anymore.

“What?” George decided to keep up with the clueless act.

“Why did you kiss me?” Rose didn’t mean to be so straight to the point, but she couldn’t think of any better way to put it.

“What do you mean?” The boy was caught off guard and didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know why he kissed Rose. He just did, he just wanted to.

Rose was obviously annoyed with his response, “You can’t just expect me to forget it happened. I want us to go back to normal but it just feels strange.”

George finally understood the impact it had on Rose. He saw it eating at her. The more she talked about it, the more he realized it was eating at him, too.

“I just felt like I had to.” George didn’t know what else to say, “I want to go back to normal, too. We can act like it didn’t happen. We’ll be good old G and Rosie again.” He smiled, hoping his words would make her feel better.

“I would like that,” Rose smiled and her eyes met George’s, “fresh start,” she said, putting out her hand for him to shake. He shook and the two grinned. Things sort of felt okay again.

The day of the Halloween party had arrived and Rose still hadn’t decided on a costume.

Marina was dressed as a cute clown, she wore a pale face with rosy cheeks and a red nose and fluffy hair.

Eloise went with a more classic look, cutting holes in her bed sheets for a ghost costume.

Rose was dressed in a dress that her Aunt Dominique had made for her in Paris. It was black with a deep purple trim and had a matching purple ascot. As she was getting dressed, a knock came from the door.

Rose’s mother entered with a smile.

“Darling, I thought this might help.” She pulled a cute felt witch’s hat from behind her back. She had customized it with a ribbon the same color as Rose’s ascot.

“Mum it’s perfect!” She exclaimed.

The witch, the ghost, and the clown walked down the pavement to the party.

“Do you think George will ask you to dance?” Eloise asked Rose.

“No, El. It’s not like that. We’re just friends. We’ll always just be friends.” Rose wouldn’t admit she liked the idea of having a dance with him, but she didn’t want to indulge in her feelings.

“Do you want to always be friends? Only friends?...Forever?” Marina asked.

Rose bit her lip and thought about it for a moment. She knew the risks of accepting feelings. She knew that even if George did feel the same way, and they someday started a relationship, it would just end up complicating things. Plus, it was too easy to get hurt, or worse- lose him.

The trio eventually arrived at the church and it was a lively scene. They had no idea where George and Paul would be, so they enjoyed their girl time.

The church was set up like a carnival, with games and treats. The three girls were playing a game when Rose looked up and saw them.

Twin cowboys strutted through the church grounds, one slightly taller than the other.

“Oh. My. God.” Rose gasped, trying not to shriek with laughter.

Marina and Eloise quickly looked up and joined in with Rose’s laughter.

“Howdy, little darlin’s.” Paul greeted, with a strong southern American accent, tipping his hat.

“Ladies,” George did the same.

“You two look amazing!” Marina laughed, touching Paul’s leather jacket.

“Where did you get these costumes?!” Eloise gawked.

“My mum made ‘em.” Paul beamed, proud of his mother’s work.

“Tell her to open a shop, these are magnificent!” Rose complimented.

The five of them had a blast at the party, Rose and George released the feelings of awkwardness and enjoyed their time together.

While the group snacked on popcorn, a man walked up onto a stage to get everyone’s attention.

“That’s the pastor,” Paul informed.

“Thank you all for coming this evening. In just a moment, our church band will begin the entertainment for tonight.” The Pastor announced. He retreated from the stage and a few men took his place, preparing instruments.

“George!” A voice shouted.

George and all four of his friends turned to see what it was.

“Oh, no. Not her.” Paul muttered.

Before anyone could ask what he meant, she was in front of them.

“Hello, Daphne.” George monotonically greeted.

“Georgie! It’s so good to see you!” She squealed, grasping him in a tight embrace, her blonde curls bouncing and pink tutu surrounding him.

Rose’s mouth grew sour. Who the absolute hell is this? Surely George would have mentioned Daphne before, especially with how friendly she was.

“Paulie! Great to see you too!” She shouted, squeezing Paul as well.

“Who are your…” she looked the girls up and down, “friends?” She flashed a fake smile.

“This is Rose, Eloise, and Marina.” Paul said motioning at the girls, “Ladies, this is… Daphne.” He introduced her embarrassingly aniticlamatic.

Before any of the girls could respond, Daphne started up again.

“Anyway, boys, some of the church band is running late tonight and my father said you could fill in until they get here. We really need you.” She whined.

George and Paul would never pass up an opportunity to play, especially for an audience. The two vibrated with excitement. George shot Rose a look, almost as if he were asking her permission. Rose swallowed any ounce of jealousy and smiled at George. As long as he’s happy, she thought.

“Meet us behind the stage after?” Paul suggested to the group. The girls nodded back in agreement.

Paul and George made their way to the stage, Daphne dragging them along.

Rose, Marina, and Eloise approached the stage, front and center so they could cheer on their pals.

The church band began to ascend onto the stage, Paul and George following timidly behind. The excitement and confidence they had mere moments ago vanished as reality set in for the two boys.

George found his place on stage and gulped. Suddenly, he felt so silly in his cowboy costume. With all of the eyes in the room on him, he grew hot. His clothes felt too tight. Then, his eyes met Rose’s.

She was grinning widely at him, her face glowing with pride.

“You’ve got this!” She mouthed at George.

Not long after they started playing, George loosened up. He was in the music- he was apart of it. It didn’t matter to him that they were playing gospel music, they were playing music.

After about three songs, the pastor informed the group that the actual band members had arrived. The crowd applauded Paul and George for their talents as well and good sportsmanship.

Paul and George retreated to the back of the stage. Rose, Marina and Eloise followed, expecting to meet them. By the time the girls had discovered where the stage entrance was, the boys were nowhere to be found.

“I thought they were supposed to meet us here.” Marina groaned, rubbing her feet. She had borrowed her mother’s high heels for the costume, but quickly regretted it.

“It’s alright,” Rose started, “they’re probably in the loo or something. I’ll go find them. You can rest here.” Rose had no idea where the loo even was, but she figured there were only so many places the boys could be.

Rose wandered around the hallways of the church community center. She eyed the plaques beside the doors. Some had numbers, some had names, but most of them were locked. Finally, she approached a door that was cracked open. The plaque beside the door read “Practice Room”.

She pulled the door open and was immediately faced with a horror. Dead in the center of the dim room were George and Daphne- lips locked.

“Oh my God- I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what to do. She felt hot and her vision blurred as tears filled her eyes. The agonizing pang in her chest was a feeling she had never experienced before. Her body moved as if in autopilot, kicking into fight or flight. She quickly turned around and retreated down the hallway, running.

“Rose! Wait!” She could faintly hear the shout as she turned the corner, exiting the building.

She approached Marina and Eloise, not stopping as she walked past.

“Rose? Where are you going? Where are George and Paul?” Eloise questioned as her friend ignored her existence. She shot Marina a concerned look and the girls made haste to catch up with Rose.

Rose was angry. She was sad. She was jealous. She was mad at herself. She could feel the heat radiating from her cheeks in the chill October night.

“Rose, what happened?!” Eloise, grabbed Rose’s arm, halting her stomping.

She turned to face the girls, a mess of mascara and eyeliner running down her face.

“George was kissing Daphne.” She nearly sobbed. She thought she sounded so pathetic when she said it, like it was the end of the world. She didn’t even know why she was jealous. She and George were only friends and he could kiss whomever he saw fit.

Despite how pathetic Rose thought she was being, her two best gals were always there for her.

“Aww, love, I’m so sorry.” Marina cooed, embracing Rose.

“He’ll come around, Rosie. He doesn’t know what he’s missing.” Eloise reassured, joining in the embrace.

Rose sniffled, “I shouldn’t even care. We just had a chat about how things are normal again. I don’t even know why I’m so upset.”

Marina pat her back, “You love him. Nothing to be ashamed of.” She smiled at Rose.

The three girls returned to Rose’s house and bundled into their pajamas. Rose’s mother made them cozy cups of tea to comfort them to bed.

Rose felt better, surrounded by the love of her best friends and her parents. She hoped she would soon forget what she had seen. But of course things didn’t work like that. The image felt as if it had been carved into her brain- frozen in time there forever.

She observed her friends- Eloise lying sprawled out on the floor, mouth hanging open, Marina crumpled into light blue velvet chair in the corner of the room, her head resting in her hand. They looked so peaceful. Rose decided that for now, she would sleep, too. She could deal with her feelings in the morning.

Her breathing slowed and her shoulders sank as she finally relaxed, drifting off to sleep.

*TAP*

…

*TAP*

Rose’s eyes sprung open. As her vision adjusted, she focused on the room around her. She saw her two friends, Eloise now lying on her side, snoring lightly, Marina now slumped down in the chair, her head resting on the arm rest.

*TAP*

Rose soon realized the sound came from her window. She moved slowly and quietly, careful not to wake her friends. She pulled back the curtain and opened the window with a ghostly stillness, poking her head out of the open space.

“George?”

#The Beatles #George Harrison #Paul McCartney #John Lennon #Ringo Starr #the beatles fanfic #the beatles fanfiction #geroge harrison fanfic #George Harrison fan fiction #iwtty

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