#and it’s usually between users who have no fucking business making class jokes
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Socmed discussions about Saltburn, to me —
1) reveal that people are even more squeamish about explicit gay sexuality than they think they are
(And if this is what passes for shocking erotic excess, then we, in the anglosphere, are in a more — not making a comment about individuals here — restrained moment with mainstream American/British adult cinema than we were with mainstream adult heterosexual cinema in the 90s, eg the erotic thriller)
And
2) suggest people are increasingly making art that is in conversation with, if not explicitly nostalgic for, the 2010-16 Tumblr-era.
(I really truly suspect Saltburn is, in part, an adaptation of the tropes and aesthetics that were in certain “The Social Network” fan spaces.)
#Saltburn is a period piece of this very specific very Anglophile tumblr moment#that specifically was obsessed with poshness and the upper class (usually more or less aristocratic) of the UK#much of the tumblr cultural backlash to that moment (eg the British accent jokes now; the food jokes)#is just USAmericans getting embarrassed over having prostrated themselves at the uncaring altar of British old money#and in response to that embarrassment these USAmericans I guess just started shitting on poor British class signifiers (eg usually a lot of#the mockery is about northerners esp northern women)#which is really just a continuation of tasteless American passes at being ‘above’ the poor brits they’re mocking to align with the landed#and titled of the UK#which lol they hate you just like they hate the poor British!! silly silly silly attempt to appear worldly#and to be clear my comments are about a specific kind of American-Brit beef between white tumblr users#and none of the conversation is meaningfully about British colonialism or American cultural or literal imperialism#or even about anglocenticism in general#j realize this a lot to write about something that can be boiled down to : specious and inane comments r being made by the stupidest of the#site from the imperial core of the world#and it’s usually between users who have no fucking business making class jokes#because critically the experiences they’re mocking are so removed from any struggle for survival they’ve had — on both the USA and UK side
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Let's Talk About NatsuMikan: Natsume (pt. 16)
We've just seen a pretty stressful arc, and on the other end of this post is yet another stressful arc. Upcoming is little break from serious plotlines to focus more on relationship growth and introduce some concepts that may seem minor now but will be pretty important later (though that will especially be the case for Mikan's perspective).
I'm on something of a vacation right now so I don't have a lot of time to format and work on this. The editing might be somewhat limited so if there's more mistakes than usual (not that I ever make mistakes) then I'm very sorry.
Chapter Seventy-One
The next few chapters are a welcome respite from the stresses of two major arcs. We just had to deal with Natsume’s heavy backstory, Mikan’s near-death experience, and a lot of fighting. The next major arc is the Sport Fest, and that gets pretty heavy very early on. So having a short break like this is more than needed so that we can catch our breath and maybe foolishly hope that everything will stay “back to normal”.
We join Natsume, who is again looking wistfully at the little Christmas-wrapped bag. We still aren’t entirely sure what’s in it, reading for the first time, but we can surmise it has something to do with Mikan. But reading for the nth time, we know that it’s his alice stone, and he’s been keeping it with himself since at least New Year’s, but probably earlier as well.
Quick! Put that away, it's embarrassing!
He’s interrupted by Ruka, who is eager to spend time with his friend. They’re both able to laugh and joke with each other, which prompts Ruka to say that he knows Mikan helped Natsume get to the point where he can laugh freely.
It’s interesting, because, even though it should be, Natsume’s DA class life is not necessarily any easier. In fact, it’s harder. He’s going through more now than ever as a way to take all the punishment for the problems with the Hana Hime party. And yet somehow, despite all that, he’s still able to smile. He’s light-hearted. He’s at peace with his life, content simply to stand in the same vicinity as Mikan.
Natsume’s love for her is pure and innocent. All he wants is to keep her safe. Seeing her happy makes him happy. The fact that she considers him a friend is more than enough to keep him smiling. He is not morose that she probably doesn’t feel the same. In fact, in a lot of ways, he’d prefer she doesn’t, because he still can’t give much more than he already is.
So, yes, he can smile, despite his life not being much easier, all because Mikan is in it.
Ruka then points out another fact, that he knows Natsume stayed to protect Mikan.
Natsume confirms it. He says he’ll protect Mikan from anything that stands in her way, no matter what.
In the TokyoPop, he just says something like "no matter what" but here he just goes out and says it (sacrificing my own life...). Natsume's fate was obvious from the start. It was all leading to a specific outcome. It was always going to happen this way. He's just too eager...
This scene is a further example of how that scene from after the Christmas Ball has really changed their friendship. They are more open with each other. They have conversations. They laugh together. They communicate. There are still some topics Natsume won’t touch, but he can be open with Ruka about this.
Ruka says he wants to protect her too, because he also likes Mikan, and because he wants to keep Natsume smiling. After all, Ruka promised that if Natsume wasn’t smiling, he wouldn’t either, and now Natsume is smiling. That’s worth protecting, because it didn’t come easy.
There truly are no hard feelings between them about Mikan. They aren’t turning bitter, or arguing over her. There’s no resentment. They loved each other before they loved Mikan and ultimately they just want the other to be happy. And whoever Mikan chooses to love, if it even ends up being one of them, would be fine, because she’ll be happy too. Moreover, they both seem to be somewhat rooting for the other, and always have been, especially Natsume. He wants Ruka and Mikan to be happy, and because he’s aware that his life will be cut very short, he doesn’t think she will be happy if she chooses him, which would never happen, in his own mind. Why would anyone choose him over Ruka?
Ruka then reminisces on the day they both first met Mikan, where we get a full explanation of why Natsume tried to escape that day: not because of Misaki-sensei’s claims that Natsume was a repeat escapee, but because he was getting bullied and wanted a letter from his dad.
The story ends and they both notice Mikan crying, trying to find Hotaru. She finds Narumi instead, who makes a comment that he knew from the moment he first saw her that she’d save Natsume, and confirms that’s why he made her his partner. Now that Natsume is no longer such a troublemaker, and that he has done his job in helping him, there’s less of a weight on his shoulders. Of course, the wind is raging and she can’t hear him, but Natsume heard.
Who the fuck is Narumi calling a burden?
He’s angry because Narumi is right. He also finally knows who exactly pulled the strings to make them partners, and that he’s in love with her because of Naru’s meddling. So he jumps down from the tree and kicks him, causing Mikan, who was in his arms, to be flung far away.
That gives Natsume enough time to scold Naru for hugging Mikan in the first place, and also for having the audacity to say Natsume’s behavior was a weight on his shoulders. Essentially, stay out of my business, despite the fact that Narumi sticking his nose in Natsume’s business is exactly the reason Natsume is so happy right now.
But even when Natsume storms off and Mikan angrily follows him, and they’re both trailed by Ruka, Narumi can see the truth. He was spot on.
Chapter Seventy-Two
This chapter is a fountain of lore! There’s so much new information and the online scans have kept me ignorant to it for a long time! There’s a lot of text and info, so it might be daunting to have to translate it all and write it out, but the price of saving time is that fans who care will be at a disadvantage.
I wanted to share some of the information that I’d found lacking in the scans just in case anybody wanted to know: the more powerful a user is, the more control they have over a stone’s size, shape, and vividness of color. Thus, Tono, a powerful alice user, can make his alice stone look like an eggplant. You could imagine a powerful user making their stone heart-shaped, or more circular or ovular depending on what they like best. The color of the alice stone reflects the user’s personality and maybe even their alice, not necessarily their favorite color, which is how Ruka’s ends up being a cream/brownish color, and not blue like I’d imagined for years. Koko reads some color meanings from an aura textbook to help sort out what the colors in a stone might signify.
This is all brought on anyway by Mikan being followed by an aquamarine alice stone, which we can tell is probably Sakurano’s. Out of loyalty to Yuka, he has strong wishes of wanting to protect Mikan, hence the stone following her around and being aquamarine, which symbolizes feelings of compassion and care.
Natsume and Ruka are both confused about this stone--it’s neither of theirs, after all--but since Mikan has so many friends who care for her, even amongst the staff and upperclassmen, it honestly could have come from anybody.
Although everyone wants to see Natsume make an alice stone, seeing as he is the most powerful alice user in Class B, Narumi makes it clear that he’s already learned everything there is to know about making stones, and thus can do whatever he wants during the lesson, which is what Natsume had wanted. This is intriguing information, because Narumi says specifically, “There’s nothing more we can teach him,” which begs the question: how does Narumi know? Has Natsume shown the staff his alice stone? It’s unlikely he would’ve asked a teacher for help in creating one, since he doesn’t trust any of them as far as he can throw them. But maybe, in order to get out of doing the lesson, he showed a teacher his alice stone to prove that he doesn’t need to be taught anything.
Tono brings up one last tip before they all begin to make their first alice stones. For once, you’re not using your alice for your own use. Somebody else will be using your stone, so how you feel about the person will come out in the stone, whether it’s good or bad. Wanting to protect or harm somebody, whether you have concern or resentment towards them, it will all show up in the stone, so focusing on certain emotions is tantamount to getting the result you want. These feelings can also influence the color, like everything else.
Red is mentioned as being a color of passion and strong feelings, and although Natsume's alice stones are all red anyway, according to his personality, it's interesting that when he makes a stone just for Mikan, it comes out as such a vibrant red. He is very passionately in love with her and it shows in the color. He also only had to think of her to get such a huge stone, and although that's also due to the fact that he has such a powerful control over his alice, it's also impressive that just thinking of her yielded such results.
It is after this lecture that Mikan is finally made aware of the true meaning behind exchanging alice stones and the romantic significance it can carry. Anna and Nonoko explain that the romantic tradition is what inspires girls to give stones with their chocolates on Valentine’s Day, and that it can also connote a proposal of marriage.
Mikan freaks out now that she knows what she and Ruka essentially promised. Natsume can see that she’s freaking out, but because he saved himself this humiliation by rejecting Mikan’s stone, the only person he’d really be concerned for is Ruka, whose feelings he was initially protecting by not telling Mikan anything that night.
Before anything crazy can really happen, everyone starts the lesson and gets to work making their stones. Although Iinchou and Hotaru are more successful, making stones that can actually be seen and held without a microscope, the rest of Class B isn’t quite as skilled yet. They’re all exhausted from the effort, even if it only gave them pebbles as a result, and all somewhat embarrassed and depressed that they couldn’t make bigger stones.
So Tono suggests they play “Alice Stone in the Dark”, that is, that you find someone in the dark and when the lights come back on, you have to exchange stones. Class B only gets really into this idea at the concept of getting their hands on a useful alice to make the most of the possible combinations.
He has this expression for the whole scene. He's so cute when he's flustered.
Thus the game begins, and even Natsume participates, albeit reluctantly. He’s probably just trying to avoid other people and possibly being forced to exchange stones--because he’s not going to make one on the spot and he doesn’t want to give away the stone that rightfully belongs to Mikan.
It turns out luck is on his side, because someone grabs his hand and when the light comes back on, the person is Mikan! She smiles in relief that she was able to find him, and explains that she wanted to force her stone on him. She keeps blabbing on and he doesn’t say a single word the whole time, just standing there shocked because of all the people in the class, Mikan wanted to give her stone specifically to him.
He's never gonna lose that tiny pebble... this is one of the best things that's ever happened to him.
It’s tiny and practically unusable, but that doesn’t matter to him. This little pebble is enough for him. She wanted to give him her stone, because she cares about him, and that gesture is enough to finally spur Natsume into leaving her his alice stone by her bedroom window. It’s more or less anonymous, but he wants her to know that she is thoroughly loved too, even if she has no idea who loves her this much.
Chapter Seventy-Three
It’s Valentine’s Day, otherwise Hell on Earth for popular Alice Academy boys. The romantic and sweet ingredients for chocolates at a normal school are replaced with potions and chemicals and pranks. The more popular and beloved you are, the worse your experience on Valentine’s Day will be.
Mikan decides to give her chocolates to all her friends, but they make it clear to her that accepting chocolate from anyone less than your true love would be terribly risky and stupid, so even if she does give it to all her friends, they probably wouldn’t eat them.
Maybe I’m wrong, but Natsume, who’s looking through a Sanrio catalog, wouldn’t be all that bothered about being one of many to receive chocolate from her. She specifically selected him to receive her pathetic alice stone, after all, and he’s made peace with the fact that they can never be together.
He does get bothered later, however.
He’s hiding, because it’s Valentine’s Day and he’s incredibly popular. He has an overly passionate fan club and closet admirers from all over campus, so being out in the open is dangerous business. He stays in the vents for a while, and thus he witnesses Mikan giving Ruka some Valentine chocolate, asking him to be the first to accept them. They both escape the classroom, Mikan dropping a little baggy of chocolates as she goes.
Natsume drops down and decides that he will be the first to accept them, actually, and eats them. It’s not anything huge, and Mikan won’t even find out that he ate them until a year later, but for now, he’s just acting on his own. He can be selfish here because nobody else knows about it. It’s just a harmless little thing to make himself feel better, with absolutely no consequences. Besides, he finds the chocolate disgusting, so no harm no foul.
Natsume, she couldn't have asked you first, she didn't even know where you were!
The climax of the chapter happens when all the most popular boys in school: Tsubasa, Tono, Natsume, among others, are all running from a stampede of rabid and sadistic girls. They’re flinging chocolates willy-nilly, desperate to get a catch. One is heading right towards Mikan, so Natsume gets in the way, catching it just in time, right when a girl flings one into his mouth.
Natsume has just consumed a love potion chocolate, selflessly, for Mikan (this chapter is so silly), so of course he’s now infatuated with Tsubasa, who is terrified, because it’s embarrassing and because Natsume will be pissed when the potion wears off.
This is very romantic but very ridiculous. Natsume really does take protecting Mikan quite seriously.
More or less, since the love potion is like a pheromone extract, we can see how Natsume has changed in his reactions to such an alice. In the very first chapter, Natsume passed out entirely from the pheromones. Misaki explained that someone entirely inexperienced in romance would pass out immediately, but Natsume is no longer inexperienced, so there’s way more of an effect.
The chapter isn’t particularly important, especially compared to the alice stone one, but it’s a silly little break from the real drama.
Chapter Seventy-Four
The next two chapters are joint, forming the little “Elementary Graduation” arc. We find out that students are to remain at the academy until they are twenty years old, so Natsume wouldn’t have to just power through another seven years, but nine until he could truly be free, and that’s much harder to accomplish.
Anyway, Mikan has seen the senior graduation and is inspired to do something special for the elementary graduation. She doesn’t just want to sing a lame song, she wants to do a special performance! Thus begins the drama of Sumire bossing everyone around because she’s one of the only kids with any real musical talent in a class full of amateurs.
One such amateur proves to be Natsume, who confidently selects the sax to play. Everyone, so convinced that he is talented at everything, is shocked to see how horribly he plays his instrument. Class B gets more and more enraged with Sumire’s attitude, only in part because the only lackluster performer she won’t call out is Natsume, who plays the worst of all of them.
The class breaks in two, and Sumire decides that she will play solo with two other partners who are musically inclined, leaving everyone in the dust. They cheer up eventually, when Ruka leads the class in an impromptu playing session, where everyone prioritizes fun over sound. Even Natsume joins in with his sax, and he seems to be making progress.
It's not a mandatory project, but he wants to join in anyway. (At some point Ruka comments, "You've gotten quite attached to that sax, haven't you?" which is cute because it shows Natsume doesn't just want to fit in, he's also genuinely interested in that specific instrument. Anyway Natsume as a famous jazz performer--)
Natsume electing to join in is very interesting. He doesn’t have to do this, especially because he’s terrible at the sax. He’s choosing to have fun with everyone and learn something new, even if everyone can see how bad he is to start with. He’s finally allowing himself to make friends, not just with Mikan, but with the whole class. He’s in a different place than in the first few chapters. Sure, he still has a fan club and devoted followers, but instead of viewing them as vessels to pass the time at best and annoyances at worst, he now considers them his friends. He wants to spend time with them and have fun together. And, no it wouldn’t have happened without Mikan’s help, but Natsume had to accept the change. He helped go on a mission to save Iinchou and Hotaru, to help Class B, and ever since he’s been slowly getting more involved in class. His birthday in particular also highlighted that his classmates care genuinely about him, so it’s made him all the more willing to repay the favor.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Mikan wants the two rival factions to make up, specifically Sumire and Koko. Nothing she says is enough to inspire peace and she’s distraught that no progress is being made.
She sees Natsume and Ruka playing with fireworks for no reason. They can tell instantly that she’s still bothered about Permy’s falling out from the rest of the class. Last chapter, Ruka tried to help Mikan by cheering everyone up and starting a little music session. This chapter, Natsume gives her advice. He says all relationships have ups and downs, and Permy is just aggravating the situation because she’s a kid and doesn’t know better. They all care about each other; they just need time to figure it out. And besides, he says, it’s way more Mikan’s style to give them an excuse to make up rather than forcing them to communicate. This cheers Mikan up and she runs off to come up with an idea.
They haven't known each other for a full year even but he still knows her pretty well. How cute!
Ruka teases Natsume for watching her and being a stalker, and we can see that despite what Natsume said about all relationships going through fights every once in a while, Natsume and Ruka won’t be having a fight anytime soon, least of all over Mikan. They accept each other’s feelings and are just happy to be happy and crushing on a girl together.
And Natsume has been paying attention, clearly, because he always keeps his eye on Mikan. Of course, he does this to keep her safe, because she’s being used against him by the DA Class, but also because he loves her. He wants to know everything about her, and see her everyday, so naturally small things about her would click into place for him.
Later, when Mikan figures out how to make everyone make up, Natsume is one of the first people to step up and help Permy. He’s helping Mikan too, because what she wanted more than anything was for everyone to make up, and it will help give the rest of the class the courage to step up too. He loves her, so he’s willing to embarrass himself playing the sax to help her bring everyone together again.
Conclusion
Chapter Seventy-Six has almost no Natsume in it, and his few appearances are pretty unimportant. He doesn’t do or say anything, so I felt comfortable skipping it. Anyway, these little chapters showed just how much Natsume has changed since he met Mikan. He’s now involved with the class, willing to have fun and embarrass himself. He is much more like he was before the academy stole all his vivaciousness. Of course, he’ll never be that kid again. He’ll always be more mature and selfless than he should be, but at least he can smile and laugh with the others for now. In the next essay, we’ll see that happiness evaporate as the academy narrows in on Mikan.
I don't think I'll be able to post on Monday, sadly. I'll try to post next Friday instead to make up for it, and to keep up four-day-a-week posting. I don't want y'all to catch up to where I am quite yet, so I'm going to put in a lot of effort into writing as much as I can whenever I can over these next few weeks. Thanks for reading, beloveds.
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#gakuen alice#alice academy#hyuuga natsume#natsume hyuuga#natsumikan#sakura mikan#mikan sakura#my meta#ga#mine#ga meta#ga meta: nm#ga meta: manga#ga meta: manga nm#let's talk about natsumikan#let's talk about natsumikan: natsume#in honor of natsume being flustered in the alice stone chapter we have flustered natsume at the beach w mikan for the title image#bloodsport by raleigh richie this time#listen to it. it fits SO WELL FHBESHFDHSJ im always so obsessed with that song#ill probably post again on tuesday so see you then mwah!#cant wait for luna how exciting
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Here I go again with some smut, fun times.
Pairing: Yoarashi Inasa/Bakugou Katsuki
Rating: Explicit
W/C: 3890
AO3 Link: Have Your Way With Me
“Hey, Bakugou!” The blond looked up from his isolated spot in the corner of the changing room.
There was a reason he always came in here dead last, and remained in the corner far from the rest of the group, on the other side of the damn room. There was plenty of room in here too, after all, it was only the three of them changing. Him, Todoroki, and the new pain in the ass that was Shiketsu’s puppy, Wind-Bitch. Now, at least IcyHot knew how to mind his own business, knew when he wasn’t wanted, despite his oblivious personality. Besides, he was always quick to get changed anyway, meaning that there wasn’t much time for locker room banter or whatever the hell people were calling it.
Then there was this guy. This guy, who didn’t seem to get the memo. To be fair, he didn’t go to U.A., he was just some extra who had failed the licensing exam and now the blond was stuck here with him. He had no reason to know of Katsuki’s preference to be alone, but it wasn’t that damn hard to figure out. By the first day, he should have known, yet the man was like an overgrown puppy; stupid, having to repeat his actions over and over and over again with no achievable goal in mind.
“What now?” The blond had said it in the most displeasing, unwelcoming way he could muster, throwing his costume top down onto the bench and replacing it with a tank top.
“Well, I was wondering, what are you doing after this? Any plans?”Was this guy seriously attempting to hang out with him? How did Katsuki keep attracting these kinds of people? First Shitty-Hair, now this guy? He didn’t even remember the extra's name for fuck sake.
“None of your business.” He shut down, hoping the other would leave it be.
“You always wait for everyone to leave, do you go somewhere after training? He didn’t take the hint, and the whole reason the hothead let everyone else leave first was so he didn’t have to put up with them on the way out, or Todoroki on the way back.
Apparently that was coming back to bite him in the ass with the form of an annoying Shiketsu bitch, because why wouldn’t it? Instead of ignoring a few minutes of brain-numbing conversation, he had to put up with shitty, one-sided, conversation drawn out in the locker room as he waited for the other to give up and fuck off. Which was worse?
“I take your silence as confirmation that you have nowhere you need to be!” Did he now? Did he really? Jesus.
“Fuck off.” Was the blond’s only response, his heavy boots, as well as his socks, being placed to the side just as his top had been, and he went to undo his belt.
“Well, I was wondering,” what part of Katsuki’s words did he not understand, “if you wanted to grab a bite to eat together!
What gave him the idea that the blond would want anything like that? What gave him the fucking gull to ask? If Katsuki was any less of, well, himself, he’d consider humouring the pitiful soul. But no, nothing was worth willingly hanging out with someone, well, almost nothing. See, sparing was fine, it was helpful for the most part, depending on the partner, but they just spent the last hour sparing. He usually went out for a light jog after class anyway, and he sure as hell didn’t need anyone joining him for it.
“You’re joking, right? Fuck off.” He repeated his previous reply, turning only to startle, coming face to... chest with the overgrown puppy, and damn was he noticing the overgrown part.
“It was worth a try, maybe another day?” He didn’t give up, seemingly unaware of the intrusion of personal space.
“What the fuck was your name again?” He couldn’t help but ask, curiosity getting to him, despite his attempts not to fucking care.
You see, there were very few things he’d willingly do with another person, he avoided the common room for that reason. Much of it was a waste of time and didn’t help him at all in the long run. Still, the blond had his own hobbies, most of them didn’t involve another person, but they could. With a face full of bare skin and his brain finally fucking catching up to the social cues he was apparently oblivious to up until now, Katsuki realized there just might be a use for having this guy hanging around.
“Yoarashi Inasa!” He answered, unbothered to the blond’s ignorance, and outright admission to not bothering to remember his fucking name.
“Right,” the blond lifted a hand to place on his chest, the dark eyes that looked down at him hardened like steel.
<p>Why the hell did he only notice how much taller this guy was now? No, not just taller, bigger, he was like a fucking wall. And it fucking annoyed the blond to no end, yet he couldn’t help but let his mind wander... Katsuki bit his lip, his fingers parting, reaching across as much of the skin as he could manage.
“I can’t read your mind Bakugou, but you look like you want something?” Damn, maybe he did.>
See, there’s one hobby he likes to do in the privacy of his room, alone, with the help of some toys he kept clean in a box under his bed, and they weren’t small. He didn't like any of that small shit, the bigger the better. And the airhead was big. He wondered if everything was proportional. He hoped it was. He found himself hoping he’d be able to find out.
Despite the other’s question, it looked like he knew exactly what was going through Katsuki’s mind; as if I’d want anything from you.
He felt his way down the bare skin, muscles hard against his hand. It's not like he's done something like this before, and it was better if he didn't, but Katsuki thought he deserved to indulge for a bit. He wondered, what happened to trying to get this guy off his ass? Now he fucking wanted him there.
“Your eyes speak otherwise.” The deep voice sent a chill down the pale blond’s spine.
He let his hand fall from the body bringing his traitorous red eyes back up to the annoying face, clicking his tongue. He was about to take a step back when the taller one grabbed the falling hand. Katsuki thought his own hands were freakishly big, after all, that's where his quirk came from, they felt like leather and was always large compared to his other classmates, but Inasa's dominated his, fitting the fucking appendage in the palm of his hand.
A foreign noise escaped the blond as he held it up to his mouth and kissed the knuckle, “sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that you had to stop.”
What was with this guy? If Katsuki stopped it wasn't just because he'd think someone might want him to. A flush crept up his neck, another unusual experience, the blond hardly blushed, it wasn't that easy to get him embarrassed, but this guy was embarrassing as hell.
He flattened Katsuk's hand against his chest just as the blond had it seconds ago, “you can touch me as much as you want.”
<p>He was straightforward, Katsuki liked to think they were similar in that way, only he was so much more embarrassing. Still, it went straight to the blond';s cock. Once again, his hands were on the move, mapping out the other's body, a mind of their own, taking the other's invitation for what it was.
Katsuki swallowed, having to correct his line of sight once again, only it turns out, looking the larger one in the eyes made things much worse.
The dark, blown pupils and intense look had him blushing like a schoolgirl. Looking down at him with hunger, with intent, with knowing. Knowing that the blond was feeling the exact same way, knowing that Katsuki was all his for the time being.
"How can someone be so small yet possess so much character?" he pondered, maybe they weren't on exactly the same wavelength.
"The hell is that supposed to mean?" His voice came out more bothered than he intended.
“It means I like you Bakugou!" And the large hands were on his hips, the calloused thumbs brushing at the pale skin just above his pants, under his shirt, "is it okay that I touch you?"
Another choked noise, "don’t just touch me only to ask if you could or not! And I don’t care, do whatever the hell you want!”
“Oh,” he sounded disappointed, "that's okay, I'll take that as a challenge to make you care then.”
The hands slide up the smooth skin causing the blond to let out a small gasp. They slowed to clench his middle, the top rising with them. They groped in there as if ready to lift him. For a second Katsuki hoped he would, but they only continued to feel his body, along his abdomen, the small of his back, moving up and around until they reached his pecs. Katsuki clenched his jaw, staring the other straight in the eyes with lidded ones of his own, daring him to make the bold move.
The soft muscle was grasped, squeezed in the wind-users hands, and was treated like putty. The UA student’s jaw unclenched, falling open as the pair of hands went to work kneading the flesh. And a second later Katsuk's shirt was being pulled off his body, his clearly hardened nipples on display, only worsening as they were exposed to the cool air, perking up obscenely. The hand was back to fondling his breasts, this time flicking the hardened buds, rolling one between his fingers before doing the same to the other. It was as if Inasa were trying to squeeze milk out of them, they were swollen bigger than Katsuki's ever had them and sensitive as hell, the blond knew he had started making some noise already, small groans but still embarrassing as all hell. What was he supposed to do about it though? This felt so fucking good.
“I’m going to lift you, okay?" And yes, that's what he's been waiting for, the hands returning to his small waist, giving it another squeeze, Inasa's fingers practically meeting at the blond's navel.
“Yeah-” at the confirmation he was quickly lifted into the air, weighing seemingly nothing “fuck,”
Katsuk’s legs quickly found their place, wrapping around the other's tree trunk of a body. One of Inasa's hands came to hold him up by his ass, the other resting on the small of his back, guiding Katsuki to lean back into his grip.
His head then dipped down, coming to take one of the swollen tits into his mouth. Katsuki jerked as the wet cavern engulfed his pec causing his cock to grind against Inasa's pants. That didn't deter the other as he continued to lap at the abused nipples, allowing Katsuki to hump him like a dog would hump a leg. And Katsuki had no qualms about grinding against the other's navel, selfishly seeking his own pleasure, a hand coming to finish unlatching his belt, the accessory falling to the floor with a clash. Though the blond paid no mind to it, it could have fallen into a pool of lava for all the fucks he could give. His hands come up to dig into the broad shoulders as his partner's mouth rises to suck bruises into his neck, drawing a gasp out from the blond's lips. It was quickly silenced though as the other's mouth met his mark, fitting against Katsuki's own, hungrily forcing his lips open to push his tongue into the hothead’s wet cavern. The larger appendage quickly mapping out his mouth. And just like that, he parted.
Lifting his head, Inasa voices his intention, "I'll make sure to have you begging Katsuki."
Bakugou fucking moans at the suggestion.
With a breathy voice, and the heated gaze he replies, "you fucking better.”
Gone is the annoying puppy from early, seeing him now, Katsuki's previous descriptions didn’t compare. His eyes ravaged the blond, he wasn’t going to go soft, expecting the blond to keep himself up as any supporting hands were removed from his body, leaving the teen hanging to Inasa with legs tightly clamped around his center, arms holding on for his dear life. The other's own hands finding their way to the waistband of the blond's costume. He looked like a beast as he tore the garment off Katsuki's body as if it were nothing but a mere tissue.
The thing is, those pants were built to withstand danger, to stay in one piece, whether it be explosions, blades, fucking acid, they weren’t fucking easy to tear. Yet he did it in one go, muscles bulging as the fabric ripped, draping off the blond's body, revealing his tight boxers that were dampening by the second. It was fucking hot, it had Katsuki's cock harder than ever before, begging for some relief.
“You have an amazing body Bakugou.” The brown eyes looked him over, every small detail, running his fingers up and down the revealed skin, pushing the boxers up to gain more and more.
<p>His other hand sneaking back under the blond's ass to ravish the newly shown skin there. The large appendage holding the round of his butt, squeezing it as if he's been waiting to do so for weeks. Katsuki grunted at the action, shifting as if to find the most comfortable position he possibly could, whether that was away from the hands that felt him up or closer, he didn’t know.
"Yeah I do, you better fucking appreciate- shit.” He didn’t get to finish his reply, Inasa dipping his body down to sit on the cold bench he was previously using, Katsuki's boxers were off his body before he could process it happening, the taller man pulling his legs out so that his bottom slid partially off the bench.
“Hold this for me?" The Shiketsu hat was placed upon Katsuki’s spiky hair, and Inasa was down on his knees, "I’ll make sure to appreciate you, Bakugou.”
"Gah- what the, hah, hell do you think you’re... hunnh.” The blond trailed off, throwing his head back as his hardened member was engulfed in the hot, wet mouth of his partner, the wind-user taking him down to the hilt as if it were nothing.
"Oh fuck!' His tongue flattening against the underside of the blond's weeping cock as he sucked, moving his mouth up and down.
Katsuki's own hand came to rest at the back of his head, the short hairs brushing against his skin. The muscles in his leg tensed as the other took his time, slowly mapping out Katsuki's most private parts with his tongue, filing them to memory. Breathy moans filling the empty space of the locker room, bouncing off the wall. Only, it was when the other removed his mouth from his erection, lowering it and spreading his legs farther, that Katsuki’s moans picked up, got louder. The brunet’s tongue lapped against the first year’s entrance, hands coming to part the globs of fat that shielded it, Teeth nipping at the tight ring of muscle, saliva making a mess of it, running down into his crack.
<p>He glared at the other with heated, red eyes, mouth agape, chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. A traitorous mewl escaping at the other’s tongue dipped into Katsuki’s entrance, both loosening and wetting his hole, stretching him open. It was a new feeling, a fucking amazing feeling that had Katsuki squirming, had his body quivering for more, relishing in the attention.
This was much better than his fucking toys under the shitty dorm's bed. Having someone else please him. Having his hands free, free to roam the other’s body, his own body if he wanted. With that in mind, his hand came up to squeeze his pec, play with his own tits. Inasa didn't miss it, eyes gleaming as they focused on the blond's hands, thumbs brushing over his hardened nipples, before rolling them between his thumb and forefinger. Inasa began nipping at his hole again, hands squeezing his ass cheeks as he did, eyes hungrily gazing at Katsuki, who's own couldn't help but roll back, unrecognizable pleads and groans falling from his lips.
“That's right Katsuki, all mine." The other purred.
Ah, that's what he's been whining about? Was Katsuki so out of it he couldn't fucking recognize his own speech? Whatever it didn't matter, Inasa was taking care of him, he was Inasa's.
“Fucking use me.” He confirmed with as much force as he could muster.
The brunet’s tongue was gone in an instant, Katsuki's eyes snapping open, a disappointed groan leaving him. He was ready to complain when he felt the pads of the other's fingers at his opening instead. The blond's body betrayed him as it pushed closer, looking for more, recognizing the teasing of a finger that rubbed at the rim, urging him to relax. A substance left in its wake, lube? It felt different as his large finger sunk in, not like the lube Katsuki was used to. Or maybe it was the feeling of another man’s fingers that made this different.
“I wasn’t expecting for this to happen, I made do with what I have,” he explained, holding up a bottle of aloe vera.
"Why the hell-?”
His answer came a second later, causing an embarrassed flush to materialize across his fair skin, “you’re an intense character with an equally as intense quirk! If I was risking getting burned, I wanted to be prepared. Beside, Todoroki also has a heat-related quirk.”
“Don’t talk about damn half-and-half with a finger in my ass.” He deflected.
"Should I add another then?” The blond moaned as the second digit was pushed in beside the first despite his lack of reply, "you stretch really well, Katsuki. I wonder how you'll look around my cock. "
Goddamn, Katsuki liked the thought of that. Fuck, so did his dick with the way it pulsed, precum gathering below his navel.
"I could put the third one in already,” he observed, scissoring the pair already in there, "your body's amazing! It's perfect."
Katsuki shamelessly soaked in the praise, his hole twitching around the thick fingers that penetrated him. That seemed to push deeper and deeper into him, curling and stretching his walls.
"Uhh!" Pressing against that spot that had the first year seeing stars, eyes rolling back and mouth dropping open, "yes- Inasa!"
He grinds the digits into Katsuk's prostate before adding a third, the blond’s greedy hole easily sucking it all in, clinging to the digits as they'd retreat, his leg kicking out as they rammed into his prostate.
He didn't need much more stretching from there, or so the other concluded as he pulled the fingers out, Katsuki's hole blinking at the loss, in an attempt to tighten back up. Inasa pecked the blond's lips a few more times before straightening up. Removing his remaining clothing, revealing his cock. The blond was far from disappointed. It was a fucking monster, hard with precum beading at the tip, balls hung heavy, swollen, at the base. Katsuki could't help but shudder at the thought of having that thing inside him, taking the member down to the base, rearranging his guts.
Before he knew it, Inasa was rubbing the thing against his hole, the blunt head catching on his rim. The hothead practically thrust towards it, his smaller body begging to be used, to be plugged up good. </p>
“Ready baby?" The lustful, brown eyes stared expectantly.
Who was the blond to disappoint, "born ready, give it to me fucker!"
And he did. He fucking did. The member sank into the blond’'s pliant body as if it were a fleshlight.
Prompting the bigger one to ask, "have you done this before, Katsuki?”
"Uhh- god no-" his voice hitched as the other went deeper, deeper then any toy Katsuki owned, “so fucking good."
Inasa groaned in return,"I’m your first then? I'm going to ruin you for anyone else Kat.”
The blond’s rim clenched around the cock inside him as if agreeing with the bigger one's words. And fuck, Inasa continued to enter Katsuki, so much of him, and the blond briefly wondered how the hell his body could take it all? He wondered if he could feel Inasa's cock if he were to press down on his middle if he could feel it through his skin. Katsuki felt so full, and god, it pressed against his prostate perfectly.
“Are you ready? I’m going to start moving now, kay?" The blond nodded as best he could.
"Yes, yes- fucking fuck me already!" The blond demanded, throwing a ferocious grin back at the other.
The brunet pulled out his cock, the head pulling on the rim, before grabbing ahold of Katsuki’s hips and pounding back into him, forcing the air out of the blond's lungs in a gasp as his length hit against the bundle of nerves. And Inasa didn't go easy, he gave it to Katsuki just how the first year liked; deep, hard, and fast. The blond’s mouth falling open, moans and drool making its escape. Leaving the locker room filled with the sinful sounds of flesh slapping against flesh and lustful whines.
"Ah! Ah! Come on, come o- Ah, ah.”
"Are you close, Kat?" The low voice whispered in his ear, nipping at the lobe, as he grinds deep into the hot-head.
“Yeah- hell yeah," One of his hands set an explosion off against the bench he was clenching for his life, "shit!"
He was so fucking sweaty. It was so fucking hot in here. His moans echoed through the room, was the door even locked? He didn't care, couldn't find a reason to. Not with the dick that positioned in and out of him, hitting the bundle of nerves each and every time.
One of Inasa's hands reached up to grope his pec, squeezing it, "good, cum while being fucked on my cock Katsuki."
<p>The other wrapped around his center, so fucking big compared to his small waist. He was so fucking big compared to the blond. Everything- so fucking good.
"Ahhh, yes yes yes, INASA!" He came crying out the other's name, his body twitching, his hole spasming around the member inside him, his smaller cock pulsing cum across his stomach. His eyes rolled back as the other came to a stop, painting Katsuki's insides with his warm seed, coming deep in him.
He pulled up, adjusting the blond and himself into a more comfortable position. Katsuki groaned as he clenched around nothing, his hole left gaping. And he swore he could already feel the cum slowly leaking out of him.
“I-” his voice sounded like shit, likely from the yelling, "-I need a fucking shower.”
"Me as well," He sounded winded - no pun intended -"...do you want help up?”
The blond cursed his still shaky body, “just give me a damn minute.”
Katsuki considered his next sentence, "... Dinner better be good, I want something spicy."
"Right" Inasa grinned, "it’s a date.”
#boku no hero academia#my hero academia#bnha#mha#fanfic#inasa yoarashi#bakugou katsuki#inasa x bakugou#inabaku#Smut
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I need to vent about my in-person D&D group...
I was going to do this on /r/DND, but feel like I am whining and crying to strangers. I don’t know why, it feels more comfortable to do it here. I really just need to get this off my chest somewhere. It’s going to be a lot of whining that you don’t need to read.
This group of mine isn't at a place where we can handle a heavy/serious story campaign right now. We tried and it didn't work for multiple reasons. But still wanting to play we decided to do just a fun and long dungeon crawl in Pathfinder. We usually do this sort of thing between story campaigns. It's just a fun way to try new things and sort of "resets" our mind for a new serious campaign.
This time around two players had the idea that we should all play something different. (I mentioned this in my character block post.) Something out of our comfort zone or something other players hadn't seen us play. We all agreed it would be fun. We talked as a group and went around saying what type of character we should try to build. What we were supposed to end up with...
A sorcerer for the player who has never played a magic user ever.
A tough half-orc full martial class fighter for the powergamer who tends to play “dainty” female elves and weird classes/builds.
A *serious* bard for the player who wants to try bard but who always play joke characters.
An arcane trickster for me.
A healer focused character for the player who has never been a healer.
And a "Whatever you want but try something simple/basic." for the new player.
A druid for the player who we’ve never seen play any type of nature-focused character ever.
(Yeah. A lot of characters but it’s a dungeon crawl, we have a new player, and Adem (the DM) is making a character so that at some point the healer can “switch” and trying DMing because she wants to give it a go.)
We’re all starting at level 5 if you’re curious.
And of course that isn't what we ended up with. One of our players is a min-maxer and powergamer which, in my opinion, has never been a problem in this group. Our DM is pretty good with creating combats and situations that works well with whatever our party ends up as and so even with one optimized character it isn’t too bad. A lot of the time this powergamer plays very feminine and "dainty" women which is why we gave him the half-orc. He was pretty upset at the idea of playing a martial fighter as that's "boring," but it is Pathfinder so there is 9,001 classes to choose from.
He ended up building a STR 8 half-orc fighter who uses DEX and has insane AC. Which the rest of us players thought, “That’s fucking bullshit.” but what can we do? So now the highest STR character in the party probably has a STR of 10 or 12. For a dungeon fucking crawl. As a side note, the new player is his girlfriend and so he built her character for her and also got her to have insane AC.
The player behind the healer decided then she would build a fighter instead...and really built a heavy hitter. So what we actually ended up with...
Three extremely optimized characters. Two who have insane AC and one that does insane damage. No proper healer. A buffing bard, a sorcerer, a rogue/wizard, and a shape shifting druid.
And now I am sitting here thinking: We should have rolled stats and maybe that would have helped some. I now see why RP-focused players hate powergamers so much and why powergamers hate RP-focused players. I mean I subscribe to the idea that there is “no wrong way” to play D&D and it’s just that some people get enjoyment out of different things. But having a larger mix of people solely focused on numbers and mechanics with a handful of players who consider RP flavor more...It can really fuck with the combat side of things.
Adem has only had to deal with one optimized character in every party setup...but currently he has three. Adem has been venting his frustration to me and saying he doesn’t know what to do. Anything that works well for the high AC characters will probably get obliterated by the high damage character. Anything good for the high damage character risks just killing a lot of us. And even if he figures out a good setup that accounts for the three optimized characters, there’s two characters who are more better for skills sitting there who wouldn’t be able to contribute much in a meaningful way. Even in the combats he ran for us in the first session, many times I felt absolutely helpless and I can see this as only continuing. Plus our poor bard who tried buffing people and only upset both the fighters.
Now Adem is talking about needing to sit down with the group and expressed this with everyone. And I am gritting my teeth about this.
People were pretty upset when it was brought up that “We can’t seem to play a serious story-heavy campaign right now.” So now I am just bracing myself for what the reaction will be when Adem brings up the concern that this party make-up is...not so great. I mean one of the many reasons we felt like we couldn’t handle the story campaign was Adem’s job keeps him super busy and he can’t devote enough time to prepare. He thought doing a dungeon crawl where he can whip out the monster manual and throw random beasties at us would be easy enough...except he can’t with this party makeup. He’s actually having to sit down and really consider numbers, tactics, and abilities to come up with combats.
And I just. I don’t know where I am going with this. There is actually a lot of tangentially related stuff that is bothering me and talking about bits and pieces of those things to people just hasn’t been helping.
I keep thinking I should just write a story. I would enjoy that more.
#ramble#shut up ani#journal#long post#real life#using tumblr like livejournal#drama#bitch bitch whine
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True Colors
A/N: Yo! This is my entry to IzuOcha week 2017! I was supposed to write 1 story per day but acads got in the way. This came out longer than intended. I’m sorry this is mostly trash??? Because I have abysmal writing skills at this point in my life??? /cries
Tagging @izuochaweek because why not
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Izuku was never a crowd person. He always felt uncomfortable being surrounded by throngs of people, especially because it was easy for something to go wrong in the midst of those sea of people. Also, the stress that can be induced by the noise of dozens, or even hundreds, of persons talking all at once can be detrimental to his mental faculties.
That’s why he felt like fainting upon hearing the loud cheers of the whole student body to the previous performer.
Static noise then pierced the air as the UA resident instructor and pro hero Present Mic grabbed the microphone from Tetsutetsu of Class 1-B, who just finished rocking the whole campus with a Panic! At the Disco song.
“Wwwwooooooooow!” Present Mic exclaimed. “That was a bombastic performance! Really got our blood pumping, eh,” he added while clapping the lead vocalist on the back.
Despite his fidgety state, Izuku still noted some of the happenings on the stage. Tetsutetsu’s legs were shaking so much that Izuku thought he could feel the tremors until his position in the backstage. Meanwhile, the guitarists Monoma and Kendo, and the keyboard player Shiozaki were all hugging and high-fiving each other, leaving Tetsutetsu to deal with the spotlight.
“Looking for someone in the crowd?”
Izuku swore he could have fainted from shock at the sudden voice behind his back. He turned so quickly All Might would have been proud at his reflexes.
Shouto was staring at him questioningly, waiting for him to answer. He was wearing a red coat, white undershirt, and black bowtie that suited his hair quite well.
“Um, not… really,” he said weakly.
Izuku then heard a loud snort from behind Shouto.
“Huh… Ain’t buying that shit,” Kacchan remarked. He slung the red electric guitar that he’s going to use later on his shoulder.
Just like Shouto, he was clad in a red coat with a crème-colored shirt underneath. However, unlike Izuku’s fire-and-ice friend, Kacchan ditched the bowtie. “I don’t like some fucking thing choking me all throughout the performance!” Kacchan growled at them when his bandmates insisted he wear the bowtie.
“You’re just looking for your crush.”
“N-no, I’m not! I’m just nervous, being the front man and everything, and I’m afraid I hit the wrong notes and ruin the image of the whole class and—”
“Whatever, nerd. Just don’t mess up later,” the blond boy interjected before Izuku could proceed to another mumble storm.
Izuku sighed. Don’t mess up, huh…
The presenters from 1-B then entered the backstage, pulling Izuku out from his reverie. Shiozaki looked as serene as always, wearing a white flowing dress, a brown-and-black wedge shoes, and a silver headband that accentuated the green of her hair. Trailing behind her, laughing vivaciously was Kendo, with a get-up quite similar to Shiozaki’s, save for the brown boots.
However, it didn’t help Izuku’s nerves to see 1-B’s front man look so rattled and disheveled after that performance. He was trembling so much that Monoma had to support him.
When the sandy-haired boy saw 1-A’s performers, he flashed his trademark smirk.
“Well, well, if it isn’t class 1-A,” Monoma started.
“Well, well, if it isn’t my favorite douchebag,” Bakugou flatly replied.
Monoma laughed. He was about to retort back when a big hand slapped his face, knocking him unconscious, and his trembling classmate unsupported. As a result, both fell to the floor with a loud thud.
Izuku found the scene quite comical and would have laughed his ass out if only his whole body was not on overdrive.
“Sorry about that guys,” Kendo apologized profusely to the three boys of 1-A. “I wish I could find a perfect gag for him so he could just stop pestering you guys.”
Bakugou looked unimpressed. “A little bit kinky, aren’t you?”
Before Izuku could call out the latter’s off-hand remark, Present Mic’s voice boomed on the speakers.
“All riiiiiiiiiight!”
At that the audience went wild again.
“We’re down to the last performance of the night for this year’s festival! Whoooooo’s excited?!”
Izuku thought the cheering couldn’t get any louder but apparently, it could. Present Mic seemed to be enjoying the attention he’s getting, Izuku noted.
“Our last, but definitely not the least, performers will prove tonight that they’re not only good at fighting villains, but they also excel in other… non-school stuff!”
At that, the audience laughed. Todoroki looked unfazed by the comment while Bakugou was ready to smash the electric guitar on Mic’s head. Izuku, on the other hand, felt like his undershirt was choking him.
Present Mic then gesticulated wildly, pointing his fingers on so many directions while speaking. “Without further ado, here is… CLASS 1-A!!!”
That was the trio’s cue to enter the stage. People went wild with their cheers that Izuku feared some of them might get their vocal chords torn.
Todoroki and Bakugou seemed to be unaffected by the immense attention they’re getting and immediately proceeded to their spots. Meanwhile, Izuku felt like the distance between the stage entrance to the microphone stand increased tenfold.
C’mon Izuku, you can do it. I can do this. Think of it as like controlling One for All. Yes, just keep calm and—
Things happened too quickly for him to process. Izuku was just walking then the next moment, his face hit the stage floor.
The audience went silent. The only audible sounds then were the gentle blow of the chilly November air, the soft sound of static from the sound system, and the blood boiling in Izuku’s ears.
Embarrassing. Truly embarrassing. Way to impress someone.
He moved to get up when one familiar voice sliced through the air. “You can do it, Deku!”
Izuku went stock still for a moment. His mind flashed back many months before, just when before everything started.
It would have been bad luck if you fell.
Brown hair. Red, plump, round cheeks. And that smile. Yes, that smile that lit up a fire inside him since that day.
It took him so long to notice and acknowledge those budding feelings inside him. Seeing her smile, through thick and thin, failures and victories, and everything in between—this urged him to stand up and walk towards the center of the stage, where he must face one of his greatest challenges yet.
Of course, part of that challenge was Bakugou embarrassing him more.
“My damn God, Deku. That was spectacular,” Katsuki commented.
The audience then burst in laughter. He was busy tuning his guitar, but he really made time to make Izuku feel like he was a failure.
“I think Midoriya’s way of clearing his head was to bang his head on the floor,” Todoroki joked on the microphone.
Well, to Izuku, it seemed like Todoroki joked. But the audience once again fell silent, as they didn’t know how to handle a flatly-delivered joke by the overpowered son of Endeavour.
Just then a heartful laugh echoed throughout the grounds. Both Izuku and Shouto snapped their heads in the direction of the person of interest. Much to their surprise, it was Momo who was laughing. She was followed by Ochako, who was standing beside her, then the rest of the 1-A girls followed suit. Some of the 1-A boys (who were probably afraid of being turned into a human icicle) started to giggle as well.
But what surprised Izuku was the little smile and the very faint blush on Shouto’s face when he saw it was Momo who expressed joy first.
Bakugou then tapped his mic twice to get the attention of the audience.
“So much for awkward moments.” Ever the practical man, Izuku thought.
“All right, let’s begin then!” Izuku cheerfully said. This seemed to rile up the audience a bit, giving him the much needed confidence boost.
“Are you fuckin’ ready?!” Katsuki’s voice boomed all over the place. While most of the people cheered, most of 1-A looked at him in horror.
“Kacchan! This is not the right place for cursing!” The green-haired boy admonished.
“So what? It’s a festival, nerd. Hey damn half ‘n’ half, tell this nerd to have some fun a bit.”
The fire-and-ice user looked at both of them in his usual poker-face. “He’s actually right, Bakugou. You should not be cursing in front of this many people.”
Not satisfied with the answer, Katsuki groaned in irritation. “Oh for fuck’s sake let’s begin.”
He strummed his electric guitar, throwing the audience into a frenzy.
Amidst the loud cheering of the people, Izuku noted how near his classmates were to the stage. They were standing four or five rows behind the barricade set up approximately four meters from the stage.
From where he was standing, Izuku could clearly see her—her brunette hair bouncing to the pace of her intense jumping and cheering. He sincerely hoped that from where she stood, she could clearly see him.
Izuku cleared his throat to placate his growing nervousness. “Okay, what we’ll be performing today is dedicated to all those who are facing tremendous challenges right now and—"
“For crying out loud. This song is actually dedicated to his crushey crushey Round Face there.” Bakugou pointed to where Ochako was standing.
Of course. Of fucking course, Izuku thought, he would say that, dammit.
Poor Izuku was mustering everything he can to prevent himself from being a blushing mess. So far he was failing.
“I-it’s not like that! Kacchan why do you—"
“Let’s get this shit done already, nerd,” Katsuki interrupted, preparing to hit the first notes. “Are you fuckin’ ready!?” He roared. This made the audience cheer so loudly again.
Izuku sighed in defeat, preparing himself instead for the performance of his life.
It’s now or never.
Katsuki started to strum his guitar and the audience fell silent.
A month ago…
Fall just started, and the students of Class 1-A in UA High School began to garb themselves in autumn clothes in preparation for the relentless cold in the coming months.
As the cold began to percolate in their lives, the students’ weekends were now spent just inside the dormitories, rather than going out to leisurely expeditions. Who could blame them? It was such a perfect weather for just laying at bed in home or just watching TV.
Come Saturday nighttime, the girls of 1-A decided to watch some movies on the television. While this bummed out many of the boys because they couldn’t play their video games, they just let the girls be to avoid unnecessary arguments.
As for Izuku Midoriya, the successor of All Might, he couldn’t waste no time in training. He often went outside an hour or two after dinner, not going too far from the dorms, to practice his signature One for All Full Cowl kick.
It was a little past 10 o’clock in the evening when Izuku finished his routine workout. After entering the dorms, he heard some voices coming from the common room. Still drying the sweat in his hair, he walked to the door, trying to see the persons in there.
Standing in the doorstep, he saw the squad of 1-A girls all huddled in the sofa in their pajamas and bed clothes. Mina was holding a bowl the contained what looked like popcorn. Momo, on the other hand, was wrapped with a blanket around her person. Tsuyu and Ochako were lying their heads on both shoulders of Jirou, who was quietly sipping something from the glass she was holding. Izuku took a while to notice Hagakure, who, with her invisibility quirk, was really a struggle to find.
All of them were watching intently on the movie playing in the television. From his vantage point, he could recognize the show. He saw it in the internet several times over the past months. He had little interest in movies but he read that prominent singers were cast to the main roles.
Izuku went to get a bottle of water in the kitchen refrigerator to the adjacent room from the common area when Ochako spoke.
“Oh my god here it is!”
“Ssssh!” Mina immediately interjected.
“No spoilers! No spoilers!” Hagakure hurriedly said, in a hushed tone.
“Oh god I love this part, makes me tear up again,” Ochako commented, her voice shaking quite a bit.
Izuki paused to see what’s the fuss about in the movie.
It seemed that the main characters were trapped in a cauldron to be served as food for evil guys. The main female character, who, from the start, was the cheerful one, finally lost her resolve and got drained of color, of life. She stood in the middle of her people, looking dejected at putting everyone dear to her in danger.
The colorless dude, who Izuku thought was the main male character, watched in horror as the liveliest person he knew lose hope.
At that point, Izuku heard some sniffling from the girls, presumably from Ochako. He had to stifle a laugh so as not to compromise his position.
The characters in the movie were all silent and colorless, as they all lost hope. Then, when the main male character started singing, the girls almost sobbed. Apparently, the one who sang didn’t sing much in his life, but his voice was angelic.
By the time the singing was all done, the girls were all crying, wiping tears from their faces. Izuku found it quite amusing, to say the least. It’s not all the time he could witness the girls of 1-A in a vulnerable state. He felt like he was violating their personal space but he can’t help but watch as the scene unfolded before him.
When the characters were making their escape, Mina spoke up.
“That was…,” a sniff, “…so heartwarming,” she said in between sniffs.
“I know! I’ve been listening to the rendition of that song for two weeks already and it really makes me feel so… blessed,” Ochako replied.
“I’m so going to play this on my guitar later,” Jirou commented.
“Both of their voices were so sweet, I can’t even!” Hagakure excitedly said.
“Indeed, their moment was one of a kind,” Momo supplied.
Tsuyu looked at them though with her usual expression. “You wished something like that happens to you and Todoroki-kun?”
Momo’s eyes widened and immediately buried her face in her blanket. The other girls picked up on this and teased her immediately.
Izuku watched their silly banter and walked away from the doorframe as silent as a cat. As he dragged himself to his room, he mentally took note of everything he saw earlier, thinking it could be of some use later.
Katsuki sang first, just as practiced.
“You with the sad eyes…”
Loud cheers erupted from the audience. Even though he heard it many times before for the past two weeks, it still amazed Izuku that Katsuki had a nice voice. He hit the correct notes as he sang the first lines.
“Don’t be discouraged, though I realize… It’s hard to take courage…”
“In this world full of people, you can lose sight of it all,” Shouto, while playing his keyboard, continued singing.
“The darkness inside you, can make you feel so small…”
Izuku swore he saw girls faint when they heard Shouto’s voice. Well, he can’t blame them. It was the first time the whole school population heard of them singing.
Katsuki and Shouto continued in playing the instrumental part of the song. Izuku was surprised that they aren’t missing a single note. He had to keep up.
It was Izuku Midoriya’s time to shine.
“Show me a smile then…,” Izuku began.
Suddenly the whole audience began to go wild again. He was surprised at the reaction, but he kept on going, searching the crowd for one familiar face.
“…don’t be unhappy, can’t remember when… I last saw you laughing…”
At that last line, the three of them sang in unison.
“This world makes you crazy…,” Katasuki sang.
“And you’ve taken all you can bear…,” Shouto continued.
“Just call me up—” Izuku mimicked the phone call hand signal and winked at the general direction of Ochako, hoping he looked as half as cool as his two bandmates.
“And I will always be there,” they sang in unison again.
After the long sustain, the trio cut the sound and silence engulfed the venue.
In four beats, the performers of 1-A continued the song to its chorus.
“And I see your true colors, shining through…”
As Izuku sang the first line, he thought he locked eyes with Ochako for a moment. In that instant, he felt he can do anything.
He reached out his hand, as if to take her hand, hoping she would take his hand.
“I see your true colors,”
Izuku closed his eyes, internalizing the emotions of the song, making his voice blend with the Shouto and Katsuki.
“And that’s why I love you.”
Surprisingly, Izuku hit the high notes perfectly. But what surprised him more was that he was the only who sang that last line in the chorus when in fact it was supposed to be the three of them.
The audience looked as surprised as he thought he did, Izuku noticed. Also, most of his classmates in 1-A were looking at Ochako, as he seemed to be pointing to her when he sang that line. Of course, Katsuki had to fan the fire up.
“There you have it folks, the confession of the year,” Katsuki smiled at Izuku.
The audience, for the nth time during their performance, went wild. And most of them were clapping at Izuku. His brain almost stopped working. Never did he get this much attention in his whole life, and to think they were all praising him.
But what almost made Izuku curl up in a ball and never come out was the look on Ochako’s face.
The brunette’s face was as red as a tomato, and tears were brimming in her eyes. He hoped to whichever deity that those tears in her eyes were tears of joy, and not sorrow or whatever negative emotion.
At that he decided he won’t half-ass this performance. If this is indeed the confession of the year, then I’ll make it one, he thought.
Izuku tapped the microphone twice and continued on with the song.
“So don’t be afraid, to let them show…,” he locked eyes with Ochako again.
“Your true colors, true colors are beautiful.” At that Shouto and Bakugou joined Izuku.
“Like a rainbow…,” Izuku finished, as Bakugou provided the secondary vocals.
It was Shouto who played the ending instrumental sounds. After removing his fingers from the keyboard, hwnce cutting the sound, the crowd burst in cheers. They were all clapping at them, shouting heart-warming words.
Izuku can’t help but tear up. He did it. He finally did it. The performance was done and the people liked it.
He felt Bakugou give him a hard pat in the back, enough to gouge his lungs out.
“Nice one, nerd. You’ll finally have a girlfriend.”
Izuku’s eyes widened at the comment.
“It’s not like that Kacchan! I—”
“Good job, Midoriya. The crowd approves of your technique,” Shouto added while gently patting the freckle-faced boy.
“Not you too, Todoroki-kun!”
As he was about to defend himself, Present Mic entered the stage.
For the most part of the post-performance banter with Present Mic, Izuku didn’t register anything. Only the fact that Ochako disappeared from the crowd was what he was able to process.
Oh no, was she mad at me? Did she disapprove of my “confession”? Am I going to be rejected? Does she only see me as a friend? All those thoughts flitted on his mind, making him think of negative thoughts on the most inopportune moments.
As the trio made their way towards the backstage, Izuku thought of an apology to Ochako. He shouldn’t have made such a thing so public. It might have caused her undue embarrassment and attention.
He immediately went to their dressing room, only to find out Mina standing in front of their door.
He was shocked when Mina suddenly hugged him and whispered something in his ear.
“The dorms. Rooftop. Hurry. She’s waiting.”
After that she went on to hug Todoroki and give Katsuki an acknowledging nod.
Without even bothering to change into more comfortable clothes, he picked up his bag, and dashed towards the dorms.
Upon getting out of the venue, he saw throngs of people waiting outside for him. Since he was in a hurry, he just used One for All to propel himself upwards and towards the dorms.
He got good at estimating the trajectory of his landing that he landed just in the front lawn of the 1-A dorms.
Izuku dashed inside thw building and climbed the flight of stairs towards the rooftop. When he saw the door, he breathed in a lungful of air before turning the knob and opening the door of the unknown.
The cool, chilly air greeted Izuku when he opened the door. He need not scan the surroundings to search for who he was looking for.
Directly in his path stood the woman that left him awestruck every time he sees her. For the past few months, he lied in his bed late at night, thinking about her ecstatic energy and smiling face. When he closed his eyes, he could hear her voice, encouraging him to do his best, and this lulled him to sleep. And when he slept, he looked forward to waking up to a new day in which he could see her again.
He walked slowly, steeling himself to face her and apologize properly for what he did. She did not turn around when he walked in, so he had to walk his way to her side.
Once he was within arm’s length from her, he cleared his throat, and started talking.
“Umm… Uraraka-san… I sincerely apologize for what happened earlier, if it caused you embarrassment. Honestly, we just—”
Izuku was interrupted when Ochako reached her index finger out to touch his lips and to make him stop talking.
“Come here, Deku,” she said, not looking at him.
Entranced, Izuku walked towards Ochako’s side, standing on her left. He leaned forward towards the railings and just stayed quiet for some time.
“So much has happened in the past few weeks,” she began.
“Remember when we rescued Eri? Felt like a long time ago.”
“Yes, it felt so long ago,” he replied. It was two months before that the rescue mission was carried out. Both of them, together with Kirishima and Tsuyi, and the Big Three of UA, helped recapture Eri back from the abusive clutch of Chiisaki, who used her as a weapon.
“Way back before that rescue mission. I had an epiphany, you see,” Ochako continued.
“What was it?”
“That whenever I was with a certain person, my heart started beating quickly, as if I was chasing a villain along a long road. Whenever I walk beside thst person, I can’t help but feel pure joy just by being at his side.
“Whenever I talk to him, I can’t help but admire how he handles himself, how he works hard to achieve his goals, how he purely, genuinely wants to help the people and make the world a tad bit better place to live in.
“Whenever I’m with that person, I think of how aimless I’ve been before I entered UA, and how meeting this person helped me concretize the path I wanted in my life.”
When Ochako stopped talking, tears were streaking her face. Izuku too worked hard on not sobbing.
“I thought that I was idolizing this person so much. But Mina pointed out that it was something else entirely. Instead, it was—”
“Love, of course?” Izuku said while smiling.
“I swear, Deku, if you sing Let It Go right now, I’ll hurl you off this building.”
At that, both of them laughed.
When the laughter subsided, it was Ochako who spoke first.
“Honestly, though, I didn’t know you three could sing so well! You harmonized perfectly, to be quite honest. It felt like rewatching Trolls.”
“Glad you love it,” he replied.
“But I love you more,” Ochako replied in a hush tone.
Izuku’s head snapped towards her. “What did you say?”
The flustered girl couldn’t help but stammer. “N…nothing! I said I loved you voice, yeah that was it”
Izuku couldn’t believe his ears. He must have heard wrong, yeah that must be it. But he had to confirm it once and for all.
“Might I ask… who was the person you were pertaining to earlier?”
Ochako looked at him in the eyes and he could see his soul reflected back to him.
“Deku, I—”
And she couldn’t helpnit anymore. Ochako let the tears spill off from her eyes, her sobs coming ragged heaps. Izuku immediately reached out for her and wrapped his arms around her heaving body.
He thought she was going to shove him away, but much to his surprise, she wrapped her arms around him.
He could hear her uttering something. Izuku slightly pushed her to hear what she’s saying.
“What is it, Uraraka-san?”
She inhaled deeply and said the words Izuku thought he would hear only in his dreams.
“It’s you, Deku. I think I’m in love with you.”
Izuku couldn’t keep it in anymore. He cried as well and hugged the woman tighter and stroke her hair.
They stood there for quite a while, holding each other tightly.
“I think… I’m in love with you too,” Izuku said.
Ochako unburied her face from Izuku’s clothes and smiled her brightest smile at him.
“Well, after what you did earlier in the concert, there’s no reason for me to not know.”
Izuku smiled back at her.
“Touché.”
They both laughed again at the hilarity of all that’s been happening.
Ochako slid her hands to Izuku’s face, to which the latter responded by letting his face rest in her hand.
“Which reminds me, I think I told you on the first time we met that it’s bad luck to fall.”
Izuku giggled.
“Well, I’m not having the worst of luck right now, am I?”
Ochako just hummed in response and the two continued to hold themselves in each other’s arms, making the cold, chilly November air feel a bit warmer.
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title: seasons change (but people don’t) [ao3: here]
main pairing: Malia/Kira
rating: G
word count: ~2300 words
written for: for the Femslash Big Bang April Monthly Challenge (where the prompt was ‘changes’), for the ‘social media au’ square on my Teen Wolf Rare Character Bingo card, and for the following prompt sent to me a few months ago by the lovely @veronicabunch:
"Kira/Malia + "oh god, oh no, oh shit, oh fuck." "um. excuse me, are you okay?" "do I look okay? my life is a mess."
summary: The one where Malia hates airports but is willing to brave the chaos so that she can finally meet Kira in person
Given the choice between spending four hours in a cage full of rabid wolves and spending four hours standing in the middle of an airport, Malia would choose the former every single time.
Even though she’s never flown before, which means she’s bypassed the parts of travelling that people seem to really enjoy whining about, airports are still a test of patience that she just doesn’t have. There’s too much noise, too much movement, too much damn chaos. Children screaming at the top of their lungs, families standing dumb in the middle of the hallways and causing a traffic jam as they peer down at a smartphone, constant announcements overhead, constant rushes of people racing to catch a flight, the wheels of their bags rattling on the tiled floors; it’s all just so much.
If it was anyone else she was picking up at the airport, even if it was her own family, she’d do the same thing she’s been doing for years: she’d make them come to her, meet her in the parking lot outside the arrivals gate.
But this isn’t just her family. This is her girlfriend.
This is Kira.
She’s never met Kira in person, even though they’ve been talking for almost a year and a half and dating for a little over six months. They met online in a discussion board for young musicians that Malia had been frequenting since middle school, when she’d first fallen in love with playing the drums. She’d been scrolling through the board one day before class when she’d come across a new thread posted by a user named foxfire, asking for advice on what drumsticks would be best for someone with absolutely no experience. Malia had jumped in with advice honed from years of users asking the exact same question and, looking back, it was possible that she’d been a little terse, a little snippy.
Okay, she'd been a lot snippy.
But, to her surprise, her response had been followed up with a private message that revealed that, while foxfire didn’t have experience with the drums, they did have musical training that was on the more classical end of the spectrum. That was followed by a few more specific questions that were follow-ups to the information Malia had provided in her response.
Malia had let the message percolate in her inbox for a few days before she finally answered.
Kira had responded only hours later.
Eventually, once their conversation began to veer away from topics unrelated to music, Malia had sent Kira a link to her blog. They’d followed each other and continued talking, leaving comments and likes on each other’s personal posts.
(It was around that time that Malia had received a number of anonymous messages that were all along the lines of you are so amazing!
She’d brought it up to Kira once, later, once they’d moved to Skype and started talking face to face, or the closest thing to it, and while Kira had denied it, her face had been scarlet as she’d done so, and that had given Malia all the answer she’d needed.)
Eventually, barely an hour went by without them talking to each other. It was easy to forget that they hadn’t been best friends since childhood, so long as Malia didn’t think about the thousands of miles between them.
It’d been Kira who brought up becoming something more, one late night while they were Skyping. Kira had been lying on her side in bed in an oversized sweater, loose tendrils of hair falling from her face, breaking out into yawns every so often. Just when Malia had been ready to hang up and let Kira get some sleep, Kira had snuggled deeper into her pillow and murmured seven words.
“You know, my friends think we’re dating.”
“They do?” Malia asked, feeling herself smiling. “Would that be so bad?” She’d meant it as a joke, something to make Kira blush a little; her own friends had been bugging her about the same thing for months, and Malia would have been lying if she said she hadn’t thought about a few times. If it wasn’t for the sheer distance between them, she would have already asked.
Even with the pixelation of the screen, it’d been easy to see the red flush that had spread across Kira’s cheeks, but instead of simply changing the subject, she’d shaken her head and smiled.
“No. I’d like that, actually.”
Kira’s smile had been contagious. Malia felt like an idiot for how quickly a matching grin spread across her face, but there’d been no stopping it even if she had wanted to.
“Yeah. Me too.”
And now, here she is, waiting in what is possibly the most chaotic environment she’s ever stepped foot in, and Kira’s flight was supposed to arrive twenty minutes ago, but there’s absolutely no sign of her, and every time Malia looks up at the multiple screens scattered around the arrivals area, she just ends up more confused.
If she doesn’t figure something out soon, Kira’s first day with her is going to be a disaster.
“Oh God,” she mutters, stepping backwards to avoid getting run over by an entire family with a massive amount of luggage. “Shit. Fuck."
"Excuse me. Are you okay?"
Malia whips around and expects to find herself staring at a TSA agent, ready to escort her out of the airport for loitering. Instead, she’s met with a man who looks to be her own age, frowning softly with concern, noticeably not carrying any luggage.
“Do I look okay?” she snaps, shoving a chunk of hair away from her face. “My girlfriend’s flight was already supposed to be here, and I have no idea where I’m supposed to wait for her, or if her flight has been delayed, or what is happening. This place is a fucking nightmare.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty confusing,” the man agrees. “My girlfriend isn’t getting in for another half hour. I can help you find your gate, if you want?”
Malia raises an eyebrow. Airports don’t seem like the kind of environment to breed kindness, just panic and stress. “You sure?”
“Yeah! I could have used some guidance the first time I had to pick someone up here. Do you know her flight information?” Malia has screencaps of all the information about Kira’s flights, both her arriving and departing ones, and she brings the photos up, keeping an iron grip on her phone with one hand, just in case this whole offer to help turns out to be a play to try and steal her phone.
Thankfully, the guy makes no attempt to do so. He simply peers at Malia’s screen and nods once before he looks up at one of the huge screens dotting the cavernous room. The scrolling text still looks like gibberish to Malia, but he must find something useful in it, because he nods again and points across the vast room.
“They must have changed her gate for some reason,” he says. “Her plane just landed at gate 12. If we move fast, you should be able to catch her just as she gets out.”
“Lead the way,” Malia says, shoving her phone back in her pocket and taking off across the room at her fastest walk. The guy quickly catches up to her, keeps pace without a struggle (which is a feat, she’s been told.)
“I’m Scott, by the way,” he says, right before he effortlessly steps around a couple who are taking a selfie for some godforsaken reason.
“Malia,” she responds. She momentarily debates on sticking her hand out so he can shake it, but that would just slow them down too much, so she settles for a quick nod. “Do you give complimentary tours of this place often?”
“Honestly, pretty much every time I’m here,” he replies with an easy laugh. “My girlfriend travels a lot for business, so I’m usually here at least once a month to pick her up. There’s always someone who needs the help while I wait.”
“The airport should start paying you.”
“Maybe one day,” he says, laughing again. He slows slightly, pulling his phone from his pocket, and his lips crinkle into a frown. “Speaking of my girlfriend, looks like they got in a little early. Do you mind if I-”
“Go for it,” Malia answers, slowing to a stop, even though every nerve in her body demands that she keeps going, that she get to Kira as soon as she can. “Thanks for the help.”
“No problem!” Scott flashes her a beaming grin before he points ahead, the way they were going. “Gate 12 is just a little further. You can’t miss it.” With that, he turns on his heel and starts easily threading his way back through the crowd, moving against the stream. Malia doesn’t waste much time looking after him; one of the speakers over her head blares an announcement, and while she can only half hear it over the hubbub, she does catch the words gate 12, which means she needs to move if she doesn't want to leave Kira waiting.
By the time she reaches the gate, her stomach is cramping with nerves, and there’s sweat gathering on the back of her neck. She hasn’t felt this nervous in literally years, and the feeling is so overwhelming that she kind of wants to vomit. All the questions, the negative thoughts, that she’s been trying to keep at bay since the day Kira officially bought her tickets to come visit, have rushed up into an overwhelming deluge that she can’t even begin to handle.
The doors connecting the gate to the tunnel leading to the plane open, and a group of passengers start making their way out agonizingly slowly. Even though she has a relatively clear line of sight, Malia still can’t help leaning up onto her toes, searching for Kira.
Her whole body feels jittery. Her heartbeat is pounding in her ears. With every second that passes by without Kira emerging from the tunnel, Malia’s stomach inches further and further up her throat.
Just when she’s ready to find the nearest garbage can, Malia sees her.
She’s one of the last people off the plane, wheeling a carry-on suitcase that’s patterned with red and blue elephants. Her sleek black hair is pulled into two braids that dangle down over her shoulders, and she’s dressed for comfort, in a pair of leggings, neon-orange sneakers and an oversized zip-up hoodie that reaches almost to her knees.
She’s the most beautiful person Malia has ever seen.
Her heart takes the place of her stomach, hovering in the base of her throat.
Kira’s face crinkles with concern as she scans the area, but before Malia can call out her name, Kira finds her, and her face illuminates from within. She smiles wide, and she starts jogging forward, suitcase bouncing along behind her.
Malia means to say something cool, something nonchalant that doesn’t make her sound completely gone on Kira; she doesn’t want to be too obvious, after all. She thinks that maybe a simple hey would be a good place to start.
But before she can open her mouth, she realizes that Kira is about to jump on her, and Malia barely has the foresight to open her arms before Kira crashes into her hard enough to make Malia rock back on her feet. She immediately wraps her arms tight around Kira’s slim waist, just as Kira threads her arms tight around Malia’s neck, tight enough to almost cut off Malia’s breath.
For a moment, they don’t say anything. They don’t move. They simply stay like that, wrapped up in each other, Kira’s toes just barely skimming the ground, mostly held up by Malia’s arms. Malia’s face is tucked into the spot where Kira’s neck meets her shoulder, and every single time that she breathes in, all she can smell is Kira, the floral scent of her shampoo and clean sweat and a hint of fabric softener. When she shifts, her nose drags over the curve of Kira’s neck, and Malia tightens her arms further, until it doesn’t feel like even air could worm its way between them.
She’d known, objectively, how amazing it would be to have Kira in front of her, to be able to actually touch and see her. But knowing that had in no way prepared her for how simply amazing the reality is, how amazing it is to feel Kira’s heart beating in her throat, to feel the simple human warmth of her, to feel her squeeze her arms around Malia’s neck.
It’s infinitely more real and more wonderful than she could have imagined in her wildest dreams.
“You’re here,” she mumbles, moving back slightly when Kira wiggles in her arms. She doesn’t end up far; once their foreheads are touching, Kira locks her arms around Malia’s neck, keeping her from moving back any further. “You’re actually here. In front of me.” Kira nods rapidly, a quiet laugh slipping from between her lips, which are still parted in the brightest smile Malia has ever seen.
“Yeah,” she says quietly, dark brown eyes sparkling with wetness. “I am.” For a moment, it looks like she might say something further, but instead, she leans forward and presses her lips against Malia’s. It’s firmer than Malia expects, but she quickly reciprocates in kind, wrapping her fingers in the back of Kira’s hoodie, biting back a moan when Kira’s fingers twist into the hair falling against the nape of her neck.
Malia can’t believe that she ever thought seeing Kira in person, actually meeting her, would somehow make things different between them, would be awkward and complicated, would change things for the worse.
Things have definitely changed between them; all she needs is one kiss to know that.
But it’s the most natural change of her life, as normal and fluid as switching from inhaling to exhaling and, just like breathing, she has no intentions on stopping, on letting Kira go, anytime soon.
#twfemslash#twrarepair#twrarecharbingo#malira#twpoc#mine#mine: fic#maliakira#this is absolute tooth rotting fluff
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Throwing a Stone In a River Part 4
Summary: When Sakura graduates from the academy, she suddenly finds her head invaded by the ghost of Uchiha Shisui. Her inner is gone, but not forgotten, and she struggles with impulse control more than ever before. But also, Shisui gives a lot of unsolicited advice - useful and otherwise - and does not shut the fuck up. He’s not thrilled about current events.
Rating: T
Author’s Notes: First of all, I’d like to thank @tozettewrites for allowing me use of her prompt and for coming up with the idea. The story would not exist without her. This story would also not exist without @jaycrowind, who cheered me on and nagged me as needed in order to get the writing done, only to immediately beta it for me so it looked presentable. Thank you so, so much. Thanks also to @phoenixyfriend, who became an impromptu sounding board and whom I bombarded with many many questions. Finally, thanks to @surfacage, who was probably very surprised when a random stranger popped up in their messages asking about Shisui, but very graciously answered my questions. Thanks for helping me out, and thanks for all the artwork you do for the Naruto fandom.
Chapter Tags/Warnings: discussion of suicide, discussion of eye trauma/gouging, manipulation, hallucinations, loss of bodily autonomy
If you think I've missed a tag or that one should be added, please let me know. Thanks!
Many many thanks to @jaycrowind for beta'ing, @elenathehun, @phoenixyfriend, and @jaycrowind for their ideas and suggestions, and @beyondthemoor for her cheerleading. They're responsible for pushing me into finishing this chapter.
Previous Part: Part 3
In the end, Sakura decided to compromise with Shisui and ordered lunch at a tempura stall, gratefully consuming a full plate’s worth of fried vegetables and shrimp. She still spitefully ordered a small bowl of anmitsu for dessert though and savored every morsel. If he didn’t like being in her slow body that liked to eat anmitsu, he could get out.
‘I really, really don’t think it works like that,’ Shisui paused. ‘I don’t even know how I got stuck inside you in the first place! Trust me, there are more interesting ways to be inside someone else’s body.’
‘What?’ Sakura blinked out into space, her spoon held half way between the bowl and her mouth.
‘Oh, oh shit, you’re like, twelve, right? Pretend you didn’t hear that. I mean, it’s not like you even know what it is-‘
Sakura cut Shisui off. ‘Did you just make a sex joke?’
‘It slipped out! I swear I’m not trying to be creepy.’
Sakura let Shisui stew in silence for a few moments. It wasn’t like the joke had been about her. Still, if the only way she had to make Shisui watch his mouth was by letting him think she thought he was a creepy pervert, she’d take it.
‘I,’ Sakura began once she thought he had waited long enough, ‘am not an idiot. I do in fact know what sex is.’
‘Are you sure about the first part? Because I could’ve sworn that you forgot to check if you could cut yourself loose from some ropes,’ he replied.
‘If you don’t shut up about that I’m going to order some dango for the walk back.’
‘Fine, geez, can’t make a joke around here…’
Sakura ignored him for the sake of her own sanity. All she wanted to do was enjoy her anmitsu in peace and maybe drink a gallon of water. She definitely didn’t want to spend her lunch bickering with a ghostly voice inside her head. If he even was a ghost, which she still wasn’t entirely convinced of.
The rest of her lunch would’ve passed without incident, except that after Sakura had paid her bill, she decided to use the bathroom. As she locked the stall behind her, it didn’t take her long to realize her conundrum.
‘Can…can you actually see what I see?’ Sakura asked, facing the stall door awkwardly.
Luckily for her dignity, Shisui seemed to recognize the problem immediately. ‘I…yeah. As long as your body can perceive it, I can too.’
Sakura fingered with the zipper to her dress as her face gradually grew warm. It shouldn’t be that difficult to use the bathroom with her eyes shut, right…?
‘I’ve definitely seen worse things in my life than a girl using the bathroom.’ Shisui said dryly.
‘That’s not the point! How am I supposed to use the bathroom with a boy in my head?!’ Sakura wailed. She fought the temptation to stomp her foot.
‘Well first you sit down on the toilet seat,’ Shisui began with a snide voice.
‘If you weren’t already dead I’d kill you myself,’ snapped Sakura. She glanced quickly around the stall and then determinedly shut her eyes.
‘Ooh, yes, I’m so terrified of a twelve year old genin.’
Sakura managed not to screech like a tea kettle, but it was a close thing. Instead she pulled on the zipper to her dress.
‘Should I hum or something?’
‘Be quiet, I’m busy trying to pretend you don’t exist.’
Several awkward minutes later, Sakura left the bathroom. She knew her face had to be clashing horribly with her hair but she couldn’t bring herself to calm down. That was the worst experience ever.
‘Let’s just…pretend this never happened,’ Shisui said.
Well at least they finally agreed on something for once. Then again, Sakura supposed it had to be equally uncomfortable for Shisui to be in a girl’s body, and one several years younger than him apparently, as it was for her to have a boy in her head.
Having plenty of time left before Kakashi expected her back at the training grounds, Sakura ambled back. At this point the double layered vision she had walking through the village was no longer surprising. Given the apparently supernatural nature of Shisui’s possession of her, Sakura supposed this might be her new normal.
‘Is what I’m seeing…your memories?’
‘I think so. It’s reasonable; you’re already getting some kind of bleed over from me,’ replied Shisui.
Sakura observed the faded, ghostly images with renewed interest. Depending on when Shisui died and how much older than her he was, she could gain a new insight on what the village looked like before disasters like the Kyuubi. As that thought came to mind, Sakura flicked her eyes to the horizon again, hoping to catch another glimpse of the dreaded bijuu. It wasn’t like she’d get another chance to see the now dead Kyuubi, and without fear of danger at that. Unfortunately for Sakura, the terrifying mirage did not appear.
For a moment Sakura was tempted to ask Shisui about the Kyuubi or even the Third Shinobi War, but just as the intent began to coalesce into actual words in her mind, an image of her parents, waking up exhausted from the nightmares they still had over a decade later surfaced. She grimaced. Shisui probably wanted to answer those kinds of questions just as much as her parents wanted to, which was to say, not at all.
Instead she asked, ‘So if you weren’t a desk chuunin but a jounin, what were your specializations? How were you usually deployed?’
‘My specializations changed based on who you talked to,’ Shisui said with a chuckle. ‘If I were to describe it…hmm, probably a kenjutsu user supplemented by mid-range ninjutsu and genjutsu. I was a burst melee front line shinobi, usually deployed for either assassinations or sabotage, though sometimes I also accompanied intelligence gathering missions as well, either as a specialist or as the muscle.’
If he had been a burst melee shinobi, it was no wonder he emphasized speed so much. Burst melee shinobi were unlike sustained melee shinobi in that, despite their strong offense, they couldn’t keep it up for extended periods of time. Whatever they chose to specialize in, all burst melee shinobi dispatched their enemies as quickly as possible. Depending on the squad, they either acted as a secondary offensive force to sustained melee shinobi, or they remained behind with medical squads and other support shinobi.
‘But why would other people not describe your specializations the same way?’
Shisui hummed thoughtfully. ‘Based on certain abilities I had, there were assumptions people made about what I was and wasn’t capable of doing, and how I preferred to fight. Other people had a tendency to think I focused more on either ninjutsu or genjutsu. I was no slouch, of course, but I knew others who were true masters in those areas. I’m much more generalized by comparison.’
Sakura frowned as she continued to make her way to the training grounds. The topic inadvertently turned Sakura’s thoughts away from asking Shisui more questions and towards her own team. Her quick mind glossed over what she knew of Kakashi, which was more than she thought. Yesterday she only knew that he was a weird shinobi that, despite all appearances, was definitely a part of the elite. Now she knew he was a former ANBU member and in spite of his smaller reserves of chakra, was considered a sustained melee shinobi that specialized in ninjutsu.
It was too soon for Sakura to tell what Naruto was going to choose to specialize in, but based on his stamina alone he would also be meant for ongoing combat. Sasuke at this point could choose to either be a solid all around mid to close range fighter, or focus on improving his ninjutsu, of which she knew he did the best in amongst their class. Which just left her. Sakura clenched her fists.
If nothing else, today highlighted that Sakura didn’t have much of anything that was useable in the field. She was the least physically capable of her team, not just in speed and strength but also in taijutsu; she had no ninjutsu whatsoever; genjutsu was a mystery…Sakura was becoming mortified to realize that the only thing she was good at was memorizing things and battle strategy and tactics. She was a paper ninja.
‘I’m…a terrible shinobi…’
‘Yeah,’ Shisui replied. ‘But a lot of genin are. That’s what training and your jounin instructor is for. Not everyone gets to start out as a talented genius.’
‘But where do I even start? I need to fix everything,’ Sakura said.
‘Well, you start with physical conditioning.’ Shisui paused. ‘Like getting faster.’
Sakura huffed out loud. ‘Ugh, how did I know you were going to say that?’
‘A strong body is the foundation to being a strong shinobi.’
She sulkily seated herself at the base of a tree in the wide training grounds Team 7 had trained in earlier. Naruto and Sasuke weren’t back yet, and if Kakashi was, she couldn’t sense him. Now that she had eaten and rested for awhile, she felt significantly better, though her legs still felt a little like jelly. It was as good a time as any to work through what direction she wanted to take her shinobi career. She flicked her thumbs back and forth while she thought.
As much as Shisui’s suggestion rankled, it was probably the best solution for now. Sakura didn’t have any idea what she wanted to be, as a shinobi. There was more to it than just taking missions and completing the objective. There were all the administrative shinobi, usually semi-retired or with career ending injuries, peppered with able-bodied shinobi to help defend the village in case of an attack. There was the medical corps, where she would have her choice of becoming a hospital medical ninja or a combat medical ninja. ANBU, the Academy, Intelligence, Research and Development…there were plenty of places for shinobi other than on the front lines.
‘It might help if you remember why you want to be a shinobi in the first place,’ said Shisui.
Sakura scowled at the air. ‘Can you not listen to my thoughts for five minutes? And why can you hear mine but I can’t hear yours anyway?’
‘Probably something to do with the Yin chakra. It’s the chakra of mental and spiritual energy. I’m not really an expert on it, like some fuinjutsu specialists, or the Yamanaka or Nara,’ Shisui answered. ‘I don’t exactly go looking through your memories or your thoughts, you know. They just appear. Especially your thoughts. Try meditating or something, maybe that will fix it.’
She dropped her head back against the tree. Physical training, meditation, none of that mattered if she didn’t also pick up a few jutsu along the way. Both of her parents had earth nature chakra, so she probably did too. Doton jutsu were good. They were mostly defensive, which would complement the offensive nature of her teammates. She should learn a few genjutsu too. She didn’t know if her parents knew much in the way of genjutsu, but they’d probably teach her some Doton ninjutsu if she asked and proved she was taking her shinobi training seriously.
But before she could follow that train of thought, she heard the faint sounds of bickering. It was soon followed by Naruto and Sasuke walking down the path. Sakura felt her brows rise. Did they actually eat together, or had they met each other on the way back? Either scenario was surprising. The fact that they were arguing was at least familiar to her.
Naruto waved when he saw her. “Oi! Sakura-chan! Are you ready for the mission?”
‘Mission?’ Sakura blinked. She reviewed the events before lunch and realized she didn’t actually know why Kakashi had asked them to return after lunch. At the time, Shisui had been criticizing her performance during training.
Naruto didn’t seem to notice her confusion. “Heh, this will be so easy. We won’t even need Sasuke. Between you and me, we’ll have this done in no time!”
“All you two would do is slow me down anyway. I’m better off doing it alone,” Sasuke said.
Sakura ignored her two teammates. She was sure at some point it’d get hammered into their skulls that they needed to work together as a team; no need for her to remind them.
‘I wonder what kind of mission we’re going to have.’
‘Something boring and awful. All missions for genin are terrible, it’s a fact of life,’ Shisui answered.
‘Oh yeah? What are they like?’ Sakura asked Shisui.
He made a non-committal noise. ‘Oh, you know, body retrieval, trap and bomb dismantling, chasing cats, that sort of thing. Just stuff that’s a pain in the ass but needs to be done.’
‘One of those things is not like the other, Shisui,’ Sakura said dryly. ‘You’re just messing with me, right? We’re not even in the middle of a war, there are no bodies to get from anywhere. Besides, Kakashi-sensei wouldn’t send three green genin out into an active battle zone, right? Shisui? Hey, I’m talking to y—’
Her internal tirade was cut off by Kakashi’s sudden appearance. Thankfully, he had foregone the chakra smoke this time. “Well, I see we all managed to get here on time. Hopefully you’ve had a full lunch, because we have quite the mission today. I made sure to get an extra special one, for our first time as a team.”
The three of them crowded a little closer to Kakashi. Naruto and Sasuke seemed excited, Naruto moreso than Sasuke, but Sakura found she couldn’t be with Shisui’s answer still weighing on her mind. She kept going over what she knew about various kinds of traps and how to properly disarm them, along with proper storage techniques for corpses.
Kakashi held up a scroll. “Today...” he paused dramatically, “we have been asked to finish roofing someone’s house.”
There was a beat of silence as they processed his words. Then almost as one their shoulders slumped, though Sakura’s did for reasons different than her teammates’.
“What? That’s crap!” Naruto shouted. “We should be doing something like defeating a corrupt daimyou and his army of samurai, or rescuing a princess! Not roofing someone’s house!”
Sasuke didn’t say anything but his expression clearly communicated his disgruntlement.
For her part, Sakura was relieved. Roofing sounded a little disappointing and not at all what she had been expecting but it was a better option than what Shisui had said.
‘I knew you were just joking,’ Sakura told Shisui.
‘You say that now,’ he replied.
“Maa, well, everyone needs to do their part, and sometimes your part is helping to repair someone’s house,” Kakashi replied. “A local construction crew has a few members out sick or otherwise unavailable, and they need more people to finish a client’s house. That’s where you three come in.”
“This is really a mission that genin take?” Sasuke asked dubiously. His brow furrowed as he crossed his arms. As Sakura glanced at him, an image of a small, slightly chubby, sulky Sasuke superimposed itself over her teammate. Her lips twitched and she felt a sudden swell of affection and nostalgia. She had the vague impression that he had hardly changed at all.
“It’s not just a mission genin take – it’s the mission you’re all going to complete.” Kakashi’s mask shifted as he smiled. She didn’t trust it for one second. There had to be a catch.
Fifteen minutes later, and Sakura found out that the catch was that the construction crew wasn’t just missing a few people – everyone but the manager had skipped out of work for the last few days and Team 7 had to do the majority of the work and have it finished by the following day. The house in question was a typical home of Konoha, with one flat section of roof for shinobi to run across and the rest gently sloping towards the ground for rain runoff. They learned this in between the manager’s profuse apologies and angry side comments about his unreliable crew.
“I’m sorry for such short notice, shinobi-san,” the craggy-faced manager said. “You just can’t trust those lazy Wave bastards that have been flocking here lately. My apologies for the language, sweetheart.” The last bit he directed at Sakura.
“It’s no trouble at all, Iwase-san. My team is ready for the work; they’ll have it finished in no time,” Kakashi reassured the man.
He bowed in response. “You shinobi are a bit pricey, but I hear great things about you lot. Finish it up today, and you’ll be getting my crews’ paychecks.”
“We’ll be sure to do an excellent job. You heard Iwase-san, kids. Get to work,” Kakashi said.
The three of them began to fasten the tool kits that were scattered around and nimbly climb up the ladders to the roof of the house. Just as Sakura was nearly at the top, she heard Iwase-san talking to Kakashi.
“Are you sure that little miss should be up there?”
Kakashi, however, had already pulled out his book and was reading it without a care in the world. “Hm?”
“I mean, shouldn’t she be doing more delicate work? Like bringing the boys some refreshments?”
On the roof, as Sakura pulled off sections of old tile, she felt her blood boil. She had gone through the same exact training as Sasuke and Naruto at the Academy, and had passed the same test. She was as much of a shinobi as they were. As she pulled up a particularly stubborn piece of tile, she imagined it was Iwase’s face.
‘I’ll show him delicate work!’ Sakura scowled down at the roof.
‘Easy now. You can’t actually kill your client. Calm down and work out your frustration later; save your energy for the mission,’ said Shisui.
‘I don’t need you to tell me that!’ She snapped.
The internal exchange caused her to miss Kakashi’s response, if there was any, but she didn’t miss the way Naruto looked from Iwase to her.
He shuffled closer. “Oi, Sakura-chan. That roof guy is right; it’s okay if you don’t want to help us fix this stupid house. I know girls get tired faster and you’ve trained hard already today. You can just relax because I’ll have this done in no time!”
Sakura flushed with shame and embarrassment. ‘Even Naruto thinks I can’t do this!’
She glanced at Sasuke to see his reaction. There was no way he hadn’t heard Naruto’s words. Naruto’s lowest volume was only just short of a full yell after all.
But Sasuke only started working on his section of the roof, ignoring them entirely. She bit her lip. Did that mean Sasuke agreed with Naruto? Or was it that he thought she could work on her own? Sakura wilted.
‘So you’re just going to give up?’ Shisui prodded. ‘I thought you were going to prove your client wrong?’
Sakura gritted her teeth and gripped the tool kit hard between her hands. As much as she hated to admit it, Shisui was right. She was tired, true, but she hated giving up even more than she wanted to skip their ridiculous mission.
“That’s okay Naruto,” Sakura finally said, smiling a poisonously sweet smile. “If you can manage not to let your stupidity stop you from being a shinobi, I’m sure being a girl won’t keep me from finishing this mission.”
She leaned in close and dropped her smile as she grabbed his jacket. “Now if you don’t leave me alone, I’ll throw you off the roof.” Then she shoved him away from her so she could start roofing.
As she worked, her foul mood only increased. The respite given to her from lunch only lasted her so long. Before Sakura knew it, she was exhausted and her limbs were trembling with strain. It turned out roofing was really hard work. Not only that, the temperature peaked as the sun reached high overhead. There was no breeze to provide relief and Sakura refused to be the first to ask for a quick break. Sweat dripped down her face and arms, causing her to stop every few minutes to wipe it away.
Nearby, it seemed Sasuke and Naruto had similar thoughts. Both worked relentlessly, and every few tiles they pulled up, they would glance up to check the other’s progress before throwing themselves back into it at a seemingly faster pace than before. Sakura huffed to herself. Boys. She couldn’t deny that their rivalry was going to help them finish the mission faster, but they were also going to exhaust themselves. On a real mission, they’d get themselves killed.
‘Now that’s the way you should be thinking during a mission.’
‘That’s enough out of the peanut gallery.’
In short order, the three genin were collecting small stacks of new tile to nail into the roof. Their collective poor mood had only grown as Kakashi and Iwase both sat in the shade, one drinking from a canteen of undoubtedly icy water and the other reading and occasionally giggling to himself. It was with this cloud hanging over them that things finally came to an explosive head when Sasuke brushed into Naruto, causing him to slip on the roof and drop his stack of tiles.
“Hey, bastard! You did that on purpose!” Naruto shouted as his tiles clattered to the ground below.
Sakura rolled her eyes and knelt down to start hammering in the wood tiles. It was about time they started fighting; they could hardly go a few hours without it.
“Don’t blame me for your incompetence,” Sasuke snapped. “You can do that all on your own.”
Naruto stepped closer into Sasuke’s space. Sakura eyed them warily. An argument was one thing, but they weren’t actually going to have a fist fight on a roof, were they?
“You bumped into me and made me drop my tiles because I’m beating you. I’m not stupid!” he insisted.
‘That’s debatable,’ Sakura thought uncharitably.
‘No need to be so mean, Sakura.’
Shisui sounded awfully amused for someone who was telling her not to be mean to her teammates. In the background, Naruto and Sasuke continued to argue.
Sakura diligently hammered in her tiles one by one. Even though it was beginning to cool at long last, she was completely covered in sweat, making her job difficult. She cursed as the hammer slid in her slippery hand and she hit her thumb.
She sucked her thumb and hissed when she pulled it out to peer down at it. It was a bright angry red and throbbed in time with her heart beat. As she finally considered stopping for some water and to ice her finger, the voices of her teammates crescendoed.
‘Sakura, duck!’
‘What?’
Sakura looked up instinctively at Shisui’s warning. She had just enough time to take in Sasuke dodging a tile that Naruto had flung at him before it hit her squarely on her accursed forehead.
Sakura reeled almost drunkenly, stars bursting across her vision. She tipped backwards and began to slide down towards the edge of the roof. Only some reflexive instinct had her flailing and grasping at the roof until her balance recovered enough for her to ensure she wouldn’t fall off.
There were twin surges of anger inside her and she was caught between the urge to clutch her head and do something about her teammates. A barely coherent impression of ‘those damn brats!’ and the burning desire to hurt them decided it for her and before she knew what she was doing, Sakura grabbed one of her own tiles and threw it with unerring accuracy at Naruto. He yelped when it connected with his chest and the force of it knocked him on his behind. A nasty part of her wished he had fallen off the roof.
In her head, Shisui was a fuzzy, static ball of irritation that made her aching head feel that much worse, which was compounded by her still throbbing thumb. Her other hand twitched with a need to punch her teammates that was not entirely her own.
“You moron!” Sakura’s voice was ragged as she struggled not to scream. “You hit me in the head!”
Naruto staggered to his feet. “H-hey, Sakura-chan, it was just an accident, I didn’t mean to—”
Sakura cut him off. “What did I tell you about leaving me alone?” She too climbed to her feet and started stalking towards Naruto.
Down below, Iwase was watching the exchange warily.
“Hey, shinobi-san, I think you need to do something about your kids. That little miss looks like she’s ready to murder someone,” he said.
Kakashi hummed a bit, unconcerned. “I’m sure they’ll sort it out. These sorts of things happen all the time with new teams.”
Back on the roof, Sakura seized Naruto’s ear. She twisted it roughly as she pulled him towards the edge of the roof, her temper lending her strength.
“No, Sakura-chan, don’t throw me off the roof!” Naruto squealed, his voice breaking on the high pitch.
“Too bad!” She snarled.
As she strode towards the edge, her foot kicked Sasuke’s tiles.
“Hey!” Sasuke jerked as his tiles went tumbling down the roof to the ground below.
‘This is going to be such a disaster.’
‘Shut up, I’ve had it with everyone!’
“Don’t get me caught up in your stupidity,” Sasuke continued.
Sakura stopped. “This wouldn’t have happened if you two weren’t so stupid.” She insisted. She tightened her grip as Naruto tried to squirm out of her hold.
“Don’t blame me because you’re too slow to dodge a brick.” Sasuke’s hands clenched and unclenched reflexively. He didn’t seem to know if it was appropriate to grab her the way he would Naruto. Or maybe he was just trying to keep himself from shaking her. Sakura bared her teeth. The way she was feeling, she wished he would. She would throw him off the roof too.
And then his words registered. For a moment, all seemed to go silent. And then she heard Shisui snicker in her head.
“I’m not slow!” she roared.
She lunged towards Sasuke with her free hand. She should’ve known better; he was far more agile than she, and dodged her easily. What he failed to account for was the slant of the roof. As he tilted backwards dangerously, his arms began to pinwheel. At the sight, Sakura momentarily forgot her anger.
“Sasuke-kun!”
His hand grabbed her shirt. The three of them only had a split second to stare and realize the coming consequences before Sasuke’s weight pulled them all over the edge of the roof.
The three of them lay tangled together, wheezing and groaning in a pile of limbs. Sakura had been lucky; she landed across Naruto and Sasuke, both of whom had taken the brunt of the fall, along with her weight.
“I think you ripped my ear off,” Naruto whimpered.
“You deserve it, moron,” Sasuke snapped back.
Sakura kicked her foot without seeing who she was aiming at. “Both of you, shut up.”
‘I told you this was going to be a disaster.’
‘You can shut up too.’
A shadow fell over them. Sakura looked up to see Kakashi staring down at them. “Now what have we all learned today?” he asked them brightly.
The three of them stared at Kakashi, all simmering with resentment and loathing.
“If you don’t learn to work together as a team,” Kakashi said, “you’re going to fall off a roof.”
Sakura rolled off Naruto and Sasuke and left them to figure out how to untangle themselves. She had a roof to finish and she planned on going home sometime today. Sasuke and Naruto soon followed her, and they resumed their work in stony silence.
By the time they finished, lunch was little more than a daydream and Sakura’s stomach was a gnawing pit of hunger, desperate for dinner. But the house was completely roofed and their client was pleased. Sakura might have felt more of a sense of accomplishment when she was handed her cut of the mission pay if her body weren’t aching everywhere.
Kakashi clapped his hands with faux cheer as he considered them all. “This has been such an illuminating day, hasn’t it? I think we’ve all learned a lot.”
‘I learned a lot about how much I want to punt my teammates all the way across the continent,’ Sakura grumped to herself.
“You’ve all worked very hard today and I look forward to seeing the same effort tomorrow,” Kakashi said, his solitary eye crinkling. In it, Sakura swore she saw the depths of hell. “So I will see you tomorrow at six am sharp.”
He reached out to ruffle hers and Naruto’s hair. As his hand reached towards her, panic suddenly spiked in her throat. She saw an image of someone else’s fingers moving towards her, grasping at her eye. Or was it her own hand? Blood was dripping down her face and she could hear water and she couldn’t stop the hand she was going to lose her eye no no no no
Sakura broke out of her paralysis and slapped away Kakashi’s hand. It hovered in the air for a moment and she could clearly sense his surprise. And then he let it fall away and acted as if she hadn’t done anything at all.
“Bye now.” With a wave, Kakashi disappeared.
Naruto and Sasuke were staring at her. She swallowed hard underneath their scrutiny. “It’s just been such a long day, and I didn’t want him messing up my hair,” she laughed weakly, trying to play off her sudden panic.
“Your hair is already a mess from sweating all day,” Sasuke pointed out bluntly.
“Well it’s not like I know where his hands have been or anything!” Sakura said as she grasped for excuses. “So, I have to get home now. See you tomorrow, Sasuke-kun! And you too, Naruto,” she added as an afterthought. With that, she dashed off into the darkening night.
Her jelly legs and bone deep exhaustion made the trip home longer than usual, but when Sakura came home, the house was filled with the smell of dinner. Her mouth watered in response.
Shisui chanted an unending litany of ‘food food food’ as the smell registered for him as well. She rolled her eyes. He was awfully concerned about food for a guy who was dead.
‘It tastes good,’ he said defensively. ‘I don’t need to be alive to appreciate the finer things in life.’
‘You are going to be murder on my weight loss plan,’ Sakura said.
Thankfully for her sanity, Shisui quieted down again when she sat down for dinner. She was able to make it through the meal and some conversation with her parents peacefully, and in fact she was almost able to forget that there was a ghost in her head. Instead, she got to be a normal twelve year old, complaining to her parents about her awful team and her weird jounin instructor.
After dinner, Sakura trudged upstairs for the bath. One of her parents had already drawn it earlier, so all Sakura had to do was wash herself off before she could relax in its soothing warmth.
Of course, once she was in the bathroom, she found herself facing the same dilemma as she had earlier that day, but even worse.
‘How am I supposed to take a bath with you in my head?’
‘Try closing your eyes again?’ Shisui suggested. Sakura groaned into her hands.
‘I can’t just close my eyes the entire time I take a bath.’ Sakura dropped her head against the wall.
‘Well, you can either get over it and take a bath, or just never take one ever again and reek for the rest of your life,’ he said.
Sakura shifted in place. It wasn’t that different from public bathhouses. There were some that didn’t separate by gender, even in Konoha. And she really wanted to soak before she went to bed.
‘Fine. But don’t you dare make fun of what I look like, or I’ll eat anmitsu for the rest of this week.’
Sakura stripped off her clothes and Shisui remained blissfully quiet. She paused while she folded her clothes, feeling suspicious of his obliging silence, but nothing was forthcoming. A few seconds later she was seated on the low stool and scrubbing away the day’s grime and sweat. Underneath the warm spray, her muscles loosened gratefully.
Once she was properly washed off, Sakura climbed into the deep bath tub and let herself relax and start to contemplate the day’s events. She stared unseeing at the pale islands that were her knees. Water dripped down her back from her pinned hair. The combination of water and her lowered guard resulted in a deluge of thoughts that weren’t her own.
-the clan never had a chance to begin with, he had been working against them the entire time-
-his hand ripped out his eye while he used the other one to brutally beat his body-
-he wasn’t one of the prized shinobi of the clan for nothing, and he needed to get away to warn him-
-no one could have his other eye, it was too dangerous-
Suddenly the impressions seemed to jerk inside her head and then Shisui’s presence seemed to expand in her head.
‘What did you just see?’ his voice was dark and heavy with intent. Sakura pulled her legs close as she processed the mental images. She had known all along, hadn’t she, that someone had hurt Shisui very badly before he died.
‘I said, what did you see? Tell me now Sakura,’ he demanded.
Sakura ignored his words. ‘Who…,’ she swallowed. ‘Who ripped out your eye, Shisui?’
His mental presence seemed to break in an odd way that Sakura instinctively associated with shock. It solidified again and this time was a nearly impenetrable wall that hid thoughts behind it which Sakura could not discern.
When he spoke again, his voice was hard and even, and for the first time she really believed he was a jounin. ‘What makes you think someone took my eye?’
‘I saw it,’ she answered in a small voice. ‘And then… and then you gave the ANBU boy your other eye. You…’ She furrowed her brow as she recalled her nightmare.
‘You told him he was your best friend and that you were giving it to him for safe keeping.’ Sakura’s voice became shrill as her horror mounted. ‘You gave him your eye! And then you jumped into the Naka River! I saw it!’
‘You saw how I died?’ Shisui pressed.
‘It was a little confusing; I had a nightmare about it, it was so awful, I couldn’t move at all except to pull my left eye out and give it to the boy. But I didn’t see very well what happened before then.’ Sakura hesitated a little. Shisui sounded slightly calmer. It was no wonder that his death was a sensitive topic. ‘Shisui… would you like to talk about it? Is that why you came back? To get revenge on the person who took your eye?’
Shisui’s presence remained impassive for a long time, so long in fact, that Sakura thought that maybe he hadn’t heard her or had fallen asleep. And then she felt him sort of shudder, or maybe ripple, and then she felt grief begin to emanate from him as his mental presence shrank in on itself.
‘I… forgive me, Sakura, I just can’t talk about it. It’s too difficult. Please, let it alone.’
‘Oh.’ There was a part of Sakura that wanted to keep pushing. What about the ANBU boy with Shisui’s other eye? Why did Shisui feel the need to commit suicide? And surely he would want to confront the person responsible for hurting him in the first place? Then again, the only way Shisui could do that was through her, and if this person could maim a jounin and escape, then killing her would be too easy.
Shisui’s plea struck a chord in her. It was clear his death was too new and he hadn’t come to grips with it. It probably bothered him that she was reliving it. It seemed like it was a private, intimate thing, and here was Sakura, watching it and picking at the scabs with hardly a care at all for how Shisui might feel about it.
‘I’m sorry,’ she offered lamely.
‘It’s fine. How about you just go to sleep now. You have to wake up early tomorrow, after all.’ With Sakura’s acquiescence to Shisui’s request, his voice became normal again and no longer the oppressive thing it was before.
Sakura made a noise of agreement. She climbed out of the tub and proceeded to finish her nightly routine.
Eventually she made it into her bed, collapsing into it with a grateful sigh. She could only imagine what kind of awful training and missions would be in store for her tomorrow. And that was before Naruto did something stupid to make things worse or Shisui started in on his nagging comments. She curled up beneath her covers and closed her eyes. But for now, sleep.
Not long afterward, the nightmares started.
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