#book julie is the best and is so much more than she is in the movie
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Head in my hands I love Warm Bodies sm and I'm so mad the supposed tv adaption is on indefinite pause
#crying screaming throwing up#plz im so devastated!!!!#i love the movie but the book has so much more!!!#book julie is the best and is so much more than she is in the movie#same with perry#the culture and community that the Dead and the Boney's have is also sooo much more vast#whatever production studio was gunna make the show bought the rights to all 4 books....#and its probably....never going to do anything with them.....#:(#SAD!!!!
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we can’t be friends (wait for your love) - teaser
pairing: childhoodfriend!jk x childhoodfriend!oc
summary: you and jungkook have been friends since birth, and as you both grow into teenagers, you can’t help but have some sorr of longing feeling towards him. but after a turn of events, you move away from your home town, growing apart from the boy you onced were close to. almost a decade later when you decide to move back, there’s someone familiar yet unfamiliar waiting for your arrival… was this the universe giving you a sign about him?
warnings/tags: story starts off when the both of them are children, but most of the plot is when they are adults :)), eventual: kissing, an emotional rollercoaster 🥲, they’re stuck in a ‘what are we’ moment, playing a waiting game of who confesses first, a little bit of angst, smut, but fluff too hehe
a/n: IM BACK 🥲 after being in writers block sighhh but i am back hehehe hope u r excited for this!! anyways this is just an intro for the actual fic, its more of what happened before the present which will be in the main part hehehe
TAGLIST OPEN!!
(this is the introduction, the main part is coming soon :)))
MASTERLIST
23 July 2007
You’re currently wedged between two bookshelves in the living room of your house, eyes trained on the words in your book, giggling to yourself when the plot takes a funny turn. Meanwhile in the background, Jungkook and your brother Taehyung, both a year older than you, the two ten year old boys play fighting in your parents backyard, their game was way too rough for you to even watch, you decided.
That’s always the way it’s been since you were young, Jungkook’s mum dropping him off at your parents place as he spent time with your brother, mostly roughhousing like they are now, and you, at nine years old, simply tucking yourself in another fairytale, which to you seemed like a much better way to past time.
You never truly spent a lot of time with the two of them when Jungkook would come over, besides the once-in-a-while moments where your parents would make you guys bond a little through board games or card games which the two elder boys would never take seriously, the games always ending in them either throwing the board game pieces at each other or stacking the cards into a pyramid.
When it came to school, you tried your best to stay away from bumping into your brother at school, but you’d always end up being teased in front of your friends by him and Jungkook, making fun of your two pigtails or your very glittery pink bag you had just gotten as a birthday gift, but you were used to it anyways, having grown up with a brother.
12 August 2011
Four years go by and now you’re finally completing your last year in middle school, Jungkook and your brother having moved on to high school, and as expected, they end up attending the same school, as they have done their whole life.
But since four years ago, a lot has changed. You’ve grown much closer to Jungkook, having gone on quite a few trips with his family, and you could even consider him a close friend. Most importantly, he’d grown from being a kid to a teenager, even though he was only a year older than you, the 14 year old boy suddenly became someone you always wanted to hang out with. To you, you saw him as someone cool. Instead of teasing you along with your brother, he now would defend you from your brother’s teasing, treat you to ice cream on the weekends and even teach you the video games he played with your brother.
“And then he let me get as many toppings as I wanted,” You tell your friends, clicking the buttons on your phone to show them the picture of your ice cream, filled to the brim with all sorts of toppings because Jungkook said you could.
“You’re so lucky, I wish I had a boyfriend like that,” Jiyeon sighs, pouting her lips as she sulks.
Your face turns red, tip of your ears warm as you quickly deny, “He isn’t my boyfriend! Just a friend… In fact he was my brother’s friend first,” No, you couldn’t even begin to try and imagine Jungkook as someone more than your friend!
“Well, but you should definitely confess to him on valentine’s day, it’s in like six months,” Yuji twirls her hair, nudging your leg slightly as she giggled.
To the three of you, as 13 year old girls, having a valentine was a big deal, especially since the whole idea of a crush and all was new to you guys as teenage girls.
“No! I don’t have feelings for him! He’s just nice to me I guess,” You frown at Yuji, just because she confessed to her crush and now apparently has a boyfriend, doesn’t mean you need to do it too, you decided.
You didn’t have a crush on Jungkook right?
You push away the thought quickly, this whole topic was so taboo to you, it made you feel squirmy thinking about it. No, you didn’t have any sort of feelings towards the older boy, never.
-
So that day when you arrived back at home, spotting Jungkook and Taehyung sitting at the table and doing their homework, you decide to take a seat away from the certain boy.
“Huh? Why are you sitting all the way there? Come back here,” Jungkook hums, pulling out his earphones in bewilderment, you had always sat next to him whilst the three of you would do homework together after school, nudging him here and there to ask for help with a math problem.
“I- okay,” You scooch towards the chair next to him, dragging your books along the table as you avoid eye contact. Your cheeks heating up again as you remember your conversation with your friends in school earlier, it made you feel all tingly inside, but why were you being so weird in front of him?
“You’ve been staring at that math problem for ages, need help?”
You jump up in surprise at Jungkook’s voice , letting out a small yelp as your brother snickers at you from across the table, you kick his shin in response, sending his hands flailing to the injury, mumbling some cuss word you don’t understand.
“Yeah,” You only muster out a whisper, handing over your pencil to the boy, who finds your behaviour a little off but nonetheless, doesn’t comment on it.
And while he explains the solution and working to find the value of X, you can only notice his eyes, his nose, the mole under his lips, the scar on his cheek from when he fought with your brother years ago, his lips.
And then you for yourself to snap out of your daydream when his eyes lock with yours in confusion as to why you’re staring at him instead of your workbook.
03 January 2012
But then five months later, opportunity for valentine’s day didn’t even come for you anyways, as you pack your bags to move miles away from the place you once called home, since your father had been posted to a new country for his work.
The whole idea of leaving your life behind and all the people you’ve ever known since young was such an overwhelming feeling that you didn’t even think once about your feelings for Jungkook anymore, or maybe you did once, but it didn’t matter.
So when you tugged your luggage and watch your brother sadly hug his best friend goodbye at the airport, reality struck, you wouldn’t ever get a chance to even properly assess your feelings for Jungkook anyways, so you simply wave him goodbye, not looking back so you don’t think further than a goodbye.
He did make sure to exchange his Instagram and Facebook with you, promising you and your brother to keep in touch, which you agreed to. Maybe there was a part of you that wanted to cling onto the idea of him, but you didn’t let yourself believe that anyways.
#jungkook fluff#jungkook#jungkook x reader#jungkook au#jungkook ff#jungkook smut#jungkook x oc#bts#jungkook x you#jungkook drabble#jungkook angst#jungkook imagine#jungkook imagines#jungkook fanfic#jungkook scenarios
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Summer (part 1/3)
Reader x Matt Sturniolo
summery: summer camp has always been your favourite thing, but as you enter you last year at the camp, as a councillor, you meet someone that changes everything.
warnings: none other than swearing and mention of a parent passing
credits to @inlovewithmattstur for helping me figure out an ending !
part 2 here
enjoy!!!
love, sienna <3
you have always been referred to as a “goody two shoes” by practically every person in your life. it wasn’t a nickname you were fond of, but based on the way you always had a book in your hands and the way you never broke a single rule, they weren’t entirely wrong.
it wasn’t like you hadn’t thought about living your teenage life to the fullest with parties and boys, you’ve thought about it every waking second because deep down you felt like you were wasting your adolescence on abiding by the rules adults set in place.
something as silly as a single nickname weighed on your head more than you’d like to admit, was it negative? was it just another way to call you a nerd?
you weren’t sure, and honestly it’s probably better you don’t know. blissful ignorance is just that, blissful.
so here you are, sat on a bus in mid july, sporting your two dutch braids and overall shorts, as you make your way to summer camp.
this year was different than the last few, because you were finally old enough to be a councillor, although it’s silly, you actually love kids, and you love camp.
which all adds to your iconic nickname, because what teenager is excited for summer camp? not most.
something about summer was special to you. most kids like summer because it’s a break from school, but you liked it for almost every other reason.
you liked it for the late night swims with your best friend who’s asleep beside you, you liked it because the abundance of wildlife brings you peace, and you like it because it’s the one time of year your hardworking dad can take a week off.
that and summer camp of course.
you’ve been going since you were 7 and you almost never got homesick because you loved it so much. except for when you peed the bed that one time, then you really wanted to go home.
regardless, the pure essence of being surrounded by log cabins and bright stars was enough to bring you peace, and when you add on swimming with your best friends and getting pushed on the camp swings, you were in heaven.
practically everyone that goes to your camp, you’ve grown up with, and they’re all like your temporary best friends for the summer.
well besides Amara, you and her have been friends since preschool and the two of you were practically inseparable. she was the sister you never had and you were hers.
speaking of family, your family life was a little bit rough. when you were 12 your mom passed away from brain cancer. the doctors gave her two weeks after the diagnosis, but a mere 6 days later she was gone.
you never understood how death happens so fast, how people can be gone from the earth in a blink of an eye with nothing but fond memories left behind.
at the time it felt like it was the end of the world. you and your mom were always close, you told her anything and everything as you procrastinated going to sleep on a school night.
it was impossible to not feel alone. sure, you had your dad and Amara, but no one could ever compare to the mother-daughter relationship you held so close to your heart.
like a constant void within you that would never be filled again.
it took weeks for you to “move on” although obviously, you never would. but soon enough you began leaving your room and eating full meals, and at the time, that was everything.
routine wasn’t easy for you, but it kept you stable. reading books all night and getting good grades became a form of therapy for you because it was all in your control, and you craved control more than anything after she passed.
other than the general sadness of losing your built in best friend, financially your dad struggled. he did whatever he could to provide for you, but with the rapid inflation and one singular income, it wasn’t easy for him.
your mothers passing made you and him closer, but you both mourned the main person who connected you, and it was hard for it to feel the same without her.
at camp, you could forget about this all and live in the moment, actively becoming the person you want to be.
so although you may be referred as a goody two shoes because of it, none of that really got you because you were happiest at camp, and that’s all that mattered.
you were never able to fall asleep in a moving vehicle, brain moving faster than the bus you were in, so you just read yet another romance novel as Amara slept soundly in your lap.
thirty more minutes until everything would be okay again—till you could breathe again.
the time flew by as you read, it’s what you loved most about it. it passed time and you were able to indulge in the words on the page, forgetting about your own sad life.
soon enough you saw the familiar forests and you knew you were getting close. “Amara wake up” you whispered as you rubbed the blondes back.
Amara was everything you wished you were. she’s charismatic, more beautiful than any other person you’d ever met, and most of all she had a sense of balance that made you jealous.
she was able to go to parties and have boys wrapped around her finger all while getting good grades and maintaining a good relationship with her parents.
you loved her, but it was hard not to feel your heart hurt as she rejected yet another guy who fell to her feet. it was exhausting to witness.
she furrows her eyes shut, rubbing her face as she wakes up. “good morning” she smiles. somehow she looks beautiful right as she wakes up—that could never be you.
“it’s three pm but okay” you put your bookmark in between the pages of your book, shoving it into your tote bag that resides on the bus floor as your friend situates herself next to you.
“are you excited?” she asks, grabbing a brush from her own bag, hoping to brush through her ruler straight hair and look more desirable.
she knows the answer to her question, because the answer is the same every year. “i am” you smile like a kid on Christmas morning.
once she’s done brushing her hair next to you, she leans back into the seat, placing her head on your shoulder. “i heard camp councillors do way more crazy shit” she pokes your arm, teasing you without needing to say anything, because you knew what she meant. “my friend told me that when she was a councillor, they all snuck out and got drunk by the lake”
you just roll your eyes and place your own head onto hers. “when have i ever come off as someone that’s itching to get cold and plastered with a bunch of random teenagers?”
“cmon you’re older now, you could try and have some fun” she groans. “soon you’ll be in college and then you’ll be too busy to do stuff like this”
she’s right of course, she usually is. you had planned to go to Boston University and get a degree in english, hoping to maybe become a writer someday, but you didn’t tell many people that.
it’s embarrassing the high hopes you have for yourself—sometimes you can’t help but feel completely delusional.
you’re mom was the one person who fully believed in you. sure, Amara and your dad were supportive, but you could tell they were worried about your career choice, and that was probably the rational thought process to have.
“we’ll see” you say, knowing full well you won’t be doing anything crazy. it’s just easier to give Amara a small beacon of hope every once and a while.
you look out the window the see your camp sign with a bunch of kids lined up for registration at the main cabin. you missed this more than ever and you’re sad that is is your last year.
everything goes according to plan which you are grateful for. some councillors came early to assist in the registration process but you and Amara decided against that.
it feels like home here. the dragonflies flying past you as you walk towards your cabin on the dirt road while the red duffel bag on your shoulder weighs you down. it’s also the hottest day of the year which causes you to squint your eyes slightly as you walk towards where you’re going.
theres around 8 different cabins for campers and a designated councillor for each. they’re close enough in proximity that it’s not a hassle to go between the two which is a relief because you’d be walking to Amaras cabin constantly.
soon enough you make it to your designated cabin and begin to unload your stuff, which doesn’t take long seeing as you packed light. you had grown pretty accustomed to packing for camp and you’ve really narrowed down your long list of stuff over the years.
the campers aren’t in the cabin yet but they will be soon, and that’s when the chaos will begin. until then though, you plan to go help Amara unpack in her cabin, walking out the door of you’re own.
you suddenly bump into someone you hadn’t seen here before, a sharp pain now lingering on your right shoulder as you fall onto the small pebbles scattered on the ground. you groan out in pain but ultimately go to apologize to the figure as you begin to stand up.
that’s when you fully take in the boy your looking at. he’s straight out of a book in the best way possible, wavy brown hair that’s split down the middle, a few strands placed on his face. his eyes are a light shade of blue that make you want to melt onto the floor with the way the sun reflects off of them, as beautiful as he is, he doesn’t look pleased.
another thing you make note of is his few piercings, a few on his ear and one on his nose—for whatever reason it weirdly made him more attractive to you.
“watch where you’re walking” he mumbles under his breath, ultimately continuing in the same direction he started in.
you wipe your dirty hands on you shorts. “oh yeah uh sorry” you almost call out as his back now faces you, eyes trained on the ground ahead of him. “asshole” you whisper under your breath.
most people at this camp were kind, it was rare someone here wasn’t as excited as you were to be attending, but as your eyes follow the boy, you know he’s one of few who’d rather be anywhere else.
you try to get the thought of him out of your head. not only was he rude but there was also something intriguing about him that weighed on you.
he had a look in his eyes that you were drawn to more than the colour of them, a look of hopelessness that drove you insane.
you weren’t even sure why he was here, some random guy who looks like he hates his life wearing a hoodie on the hottest day.
it was all weird, but you try your best to shake the thought of him out of your head as you walk to Amaras cabin.
the next few hours go as normal. you help Amara unpack her cabin which is help she desperately needed.
you’ve never understood how you could be best friends with someone so different from yourself.
by now it’s evening, the sun is still shining fully as you make your way to the dining hall with you cabin. the kids are chaotic, but for the most part they listen to you, and you appreciate it.
naturally you are a leader, which stems from your need to be in control— it works for this job, so for the time being, you get teased slightly less by your peers.
once your kids are sat at the long table, with food on their plates, you take a moment to look around the hall—subconsciously looking for the boy you had your interaction with earlier in the day.
as your eyes trail across the tables placed accordingly in the hall, you see every face but his.
“councillor when can we leave?” a small hand pokes your arm, snapping you back into reality.
you smile down at the girl and place your arm on her shoulder. “just a few more minutes” she groans but ultimately agrees.
looking around once more you finally see him, and to your immediate surprise, you find out that he’s a camp councillor.
councillors are usually people that have gone to the camp growing up and yet here is a boy you’ve never seen before, helping some kid open the ketchup container.
the boy was immediately blunt with you, rude even, but here he is with a new sense of purpose in his eyes and if you look close enough you could see a small smile.
this alone could send you into a spiral.
you never liked the idea of someone disliking you, even if you also didn’t like them—you had wrapped your head around the idea that the brunette boy was just mean to everyone, but the way he talks to kids has you thinking differently.
weirdly enough you’re hurt.
hurt over someone you’ve barley even spoken to all because there was a small glimmer of hope that sparked within you that he’d offer you a helping hand off the ground.
you should have known your life isn’t one that’s capable of being in one of the romance novels that you spend hours obsessing over.
the plan for the night was to have a campfire with all the cabins together while some facility told stories and sang songs. as a child this was your favourite part—the huge bonfire that heats up your face if you get to close, and the acoustic guitar playing in the background brought you comfort.
once again you have your kids riled together as you make your way down to the forest where the fire happens.
there is benches scattered throughout and at this time the campers are able to sit with whoever they want, meaning the councillors can too.
so once your cabin is situated you look for Amaras face on one of the benches.
it doesn’t take you long to see that she’s now flirting with one of the older councillors on a bench in the back.
the way his hand drops on her knee and the eye contact the two are holding makes you wanna puke. you would be happy for her if you thought that he’d be more to her than a hookup, but you knew he wasn’t.
if it wasn’t clear enough already, you were a virgin. technically you had your first kiss in freshman year at the dance but it wasn’t memorable in the slightest because the boy didn’t mean anything to you.
it’s not because you didn’t want to fall in love and go along with the intimacy that follows, but you were hopeless around boys—always saying the wrong thing or wearing the wrong outfit. no matter what it was, according to boys you were a walking turn off, and your best friend happened to be the opposite.
so now you look for a spot to sit, deciding to choose the seat furthest to the back, away from everyone while you think.
you were grateful you brought a blanket because although it’s nice out, the breeze leaves goosebumps all over your arms.
you knees make their way to you face as you curl up on the cold wood bench—you loved camp but something about this year was different and you weren’t sure why.
regardless, you kept your eyes trained on the fire in the distance, completely oblivious to your surroundings.
completely oblivious to the fact that the boy from earlier just sat down next to you. “why are you sitting by yourself? don’t you have friends here or something” he asks, rubbing his hands together to create friction and warm himself up.
you practically jump at his first words, eyebrows furrowing as he keeps his gaze towards the flames ahead. “why do you even care?” you stopped for a second, realization hitting in. “if you’re just here to make fun of me then you may as well go because you aren’t the first”
it didn’t make sense that the same boy who completely avoided you was now making conversation—kind conversation or not, it was weird.
he just chuckles. “that wasn’t my goal but if the shoe fits” you roll your eyes and look back away from him. “you just seem like a social butterfly who’s currently sitting by herself, away from like everyone here” he looks to you now, which you can see in the corner of your eye but you choose to ignore it.
“you see my friend over there?” you point towards the blonde that now has her legs sprawled over the older councillors lap, the boy next to you just nods. “she’s my best friend, but as you can tell she’s a little busy right now, and no chance i was gonna sit next to that sheer amount of pda”
you aren’t sure why your sharing with the guy who once gave you dirty looks, but his demeanour is different now—slightly more welcoming.
“ahh i see” he just sort of nods his head and keeps his eyes focused on the pair. “what’s your name?”
immediate confusion sets in. “what?” you look to him now, expecting a laugh or something but he’s dead serious, so you speak again.“y/n”
he nods again slowly. “i like that, it suits you”
you’re not entirely sure how to feel about the sudden compliment. “thanks” you wait a second before speaking again. “are you going to tell me yours now or are you remaining mysterious?” you tease, weirdly enough now enjoying your time with him.
he smiles slightly. “hmmm it would be more fun to not tell you” the way he looks at you could make you fold. something about his eyes hold power over you that you can’t comprehend. “i’m Matt”
you just nuzzle your face into the blanket slightly more, turning your head to look at him as you wrap your arms around your shins. “so Matt, what brings you to camp?”
he’s silent for a moment, and you can tell he’s grown slightly uncomfortable, which is hard to understand for you.
a question so simple wouldn’t cause most people to feel awkward, but here he is, shifting in his seat, mentally debating how to answer.
“can you try to not be judgemental?” this question intrigues you more than anything.
what could possibly be more embarrassing than being a camp councillor for 9 year olds?
you just nod, trying to smile supportively but ultimately furrowing your eyebrows slightly at the question.
“it was here or military school”
oh. shit.
you try to kind any looks of judgement that may make their way to your face as you muster up the courage to ask a question of your own. “what did you do that warranted that? like were your parents sending you?”
you could ask a million more questions, but you don’t want to interrogate the poor boy who’s being vulnerable with you.
“i kinda got in to the “wrong crowd” or whatever” he uses air quotes to emphasize his point. “and i had a couple of juvie scares for vandalism and trespassing and shit so my parents basically gave me the ultimatum”
suddenly it makes more sense why he looked so miserable when you first ran into each other.
you find yourself internally conflicted on whether or not him breaking the law actually matters to you. he’s a nice enough person—not striking you as the type to be an actual criminal.
so you shrug. “i feel like there’s worse crimes to be committing” this makes him laugh, his hands covering his eyes as if he’s about to wipe away tears of joy.
“i didn’t strike miss “goody two shoes” as the type to be okay with that” he must be able to tell the way that nickname immediately ticked you off because the look in his eyes is one of actual empathy. “struck a nerve?”
you just groan into the blanket in front of you.
something in the way he said it made you slightly less mad at it—maybe you just like his voice enough for it to be okay.
you lift your head and fix your fizzy strands of hair that made contact with your forehead. “it’s kind of what everyone calls me”
you sigh. for some reason you feel like it’s okay to tell him how you feel, although you’ve never told another soul this before. “i just wish i was more than that, like i wish my whole personality didn’t rely on my rule abiding tendencies”
he looks at you as if he’s not sure what to say. “you use really big words sometimes” you just roll your eyes, now being referred to as a nerd as well. “no wait i like it, i don’t think it’s a bad thing to be smart, i wish i was better at saying what i mean or whatever”
once again your thrown off by his abundance of kindness.
“i won’t call you that again i promise” he sticks out his pinky, and as dumb as you feel, your inclined to interlock your own.
“thank you” you look back to the fire and see a bunch of kids now standing, signalling your need to go and line them up—it was pretty late after all. “see you tomorrow Matt”
he nods his head, gesturing you to the clueless kids, as well as saying goodbye to you. “see you, y/n”
a/n: praying you guys like this as much as i do bc it’s my favourite thing to write rn i’m obsessed with it
taglist: @tastesousweet (ily)
#sturniolo triplets#matt sturniolo#sturniolo#matt sturniolo fluff#matt sturniolo fanfic#matt sturniolo smut#matthew sturniolo#sturniolo triplets smut#sturniolo triplets fan fiction
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soulmate trope | dabi
Dabi’s route of soulmate trope.
"post-canon dabi? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 30 july 2023!"
to you. i know he's doing just fine. and obviously i will be wrong about some things.
warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to chapter 390: specifically about touya's body but vaguely about ~all of that~. sexual content. food mention/discussion. injury descriptions (burns) that aren't reader's. weeb slander.
a note: part of the plot revolves around...analysing anime. i use hunter x hunter here, and if you are not into that, i have, to the best of my knowledge, included neither spoilers (aside from early story arc names) nor information that cannot be understood via context clues. additionally, there is a brief pokemon metaphor that also can hopefully be understood with context clues as well.
~27.7k
You’re being watched.
Or rather, you had the eerily intense inkling that you were being watched, or as if you were some sort of recently awakened sleeper agent—as if you were somehow the key to someone’s spying into U.A., even though the most secretive thing going on right now in 3-A’s common area was that Hagakure’s facial features were somewhat revealed by the drying face mask.
“Jirou,” you said, bookmarking your place, “Would you mind checking for—I don’t know, any kind of outside surveillance devices in here?”
Jirou bit the stem of the carnation she’d been about to weave into Yaoyorozu’s hair and shifted all the strands of the braid into one hand, and she tilted her head to jab the arm of the couch with her earjack. After a few moments, she unsheathed it, the hole in the couch sealing itself, and shook her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. What’s up?”
Furrowing your brow, you shoved your book between the cushion and arm of your chair. “I’m not sure. It’s—I have this weird feeling that someone’s looking at me. Or through me, really. Both? I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels like someone else is seeing what I’m seeing.”
“Do your eyes hurt, ribbit?” Asui asked from her spot on the floor, where she was sorting her m&ms by colour.
“No. More like I’m hyperaware of them,” you said, “But I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching all of this because of me.”
“What’s there to watch? It’s nothing but a Girls and Todoroki Night. There’s nothing worth seeing and or any big secrets being spilled. Well, spoilers for the New Year’s episode of Kamisama Kiss, but it’s been out for years already,” said Mina, gesturing towards the television, and Uraraka snatched Mina’s hand out of the air and laid it flat on the coffee table again, because she’s not done painting her nails, damn it. Mina sighed dreamily at the sheep whose wool fluffed enough to take up the entire screen. “What I wouldn’t give for my hair to have that much volume.”
“I guess you’re right,” you said, settling down into your chair, pulling Shinsou’s blue-pineappled blanket up to your neck (he was out on his bike, so he wasn’t attending this Girls and Todoroki Night [Shinsou and Todoroki were the only boys allowed, since their presence wasn’t obtrusive or contrary to the vibe. Additionally, Shinsou thought it was funnier if his name weren’t included in the title of these events]). “Y’know, in the manga, the New Year avatar isn’t a sheep. It’s a dragon.”
Mina blew on her hands as Uraraka rebottled the nail polish brush. “Whaaaaat?
“It was changed to a sheep to align with the year the episode was released,” said Todoroki, his thumb and index finger pinching his lower lip with his eyes glued to the screen, “I understand the change on a narrative scale, but I believe the dragon had more of a character arc than the sheep. The dragon didn’t think it was as appealing as other years’ avatars, and it had to learn to accept itself and accept others’ love for it. It was rooted in misunderstanding.”
For some reason, when you looked at Todoroki, you were doused with regret. Sharp and cold, followed by a splash of something more muddled: envy, maybe? Gratitude?
These…these feelings weren’t yours.
***
“I can’t believe I missed a Girls and Todoroki Night,” said Shinsou, grinning, his legs dangling off the dorm’s kitchen counter, “but alas! The night was calling, and I had to go out in it.”
“We will not spoil Kamisama Kiss for you,” said Todoroki. He was crouched in front of the oven, hands clasped as he stared through the tinted window at the browning potato wedges. “You will have to watch that episode on your own.”
“You should really read the manga,” you were saying as you scanned the inside of the refrigerator, looking for anything that might go well with the potatoes—ah, Aoyama’s got some bougie-looking sauce. Savoury, by the looks of it. “It goes farther than the anime covers, and it’s so sweet. The worldbuilding gets better, too.” You took out the bottle and gave it an experimental shake.
“Really?” Shinsou wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know; that villain guy isn’t very fun. Feels like too much time is wasted on him.”
Todoroki’s head snapped towards Shinsou at the same time you slammed the refrigerator shut. “No,” the both of you said at the same time, and you continued. “The anime hasn’t been quite as accurate in tone regarding that character, but he’s really wonderful, eventually. You really feel for what happened to him and for his past relationship to the main characters. Simple but effective job of deconstructing his villainy and granting him humanity.”
“Huh.” Shinsou propped his cheek on his fist, his ankle resting on his opposite knee. “I wonder how much nuance I’m missing because I’m only watching the anime.”
For a second, you felt as groggy as if you’d just woken up, your eyes focusing a bit more precisely, blurring the kitchen tiles for a moment before re-focusing, and it crept in again: the feeling that someone was watching you, that someone else was here.
“Hey, Shinsou, Todoroki,” you said, blinking several times, Aoyama’s brown sauce clutched in both hands, “Do my eyes look any different?”
Both of them looked you over. Shinsou shook his head. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I’ve got—” You nodded towards Todoroki. “I have that same feeling from last night. Like someone’s watching. But Jirou said nothing was wrong.” Shrugging, you tossed the sauce to Shinsou and sat in front of the oven with Todoroki. “I guess Kamisama Kiss must bring out the voyeur in me. Or being voyeur-ed. Watched.” You crossed your legs at the same time Todoroki jolted because of a crushed peppercorn popping in the oven. “Maybe we should start reading manga alongside the anime so that we can judge how accurate they are. See how much character nuance is lost or preserved.”
Todoroki’s eyes bulged. “You have no idea how much that appeals to me. I desperately need to discuss the differences between the Hunter x Hunter 1999 anime, the 2011 anime, and the manga. Sero refuses to watch the 1999 version.”
Amusement. Condescension. Bubbling to the top of your consciousness.
Distinctly not yours.
Why would you be feeling these things in the face of something that sounded so wonderfully, uselessly pedantic? A project like Todoroki’s just proposed sounded like an absolutely ideal waste of time that would allow you to be more accurate than the vast majority of people when it came to plot, lore, and characterisation. Why would emotions you’d associate with making fun of someone pop up now? You didn’t want to make fun of Todoroki; you were enthusiastic about joining him in this pointless endeavour.
The timer on Shinsou’s phone blared, and he tapped it off, patting his pockets (?) for the oven mitt, which he spotted on the counter next to him. “Why would Sero refuse to watch the older version?”
Todoroki helped you stand and guided the both of you away from the oven. “To be fair, in the 1999 anime, the animators did take liberties with panel composition and brought in new angles and lines sporadically. Colours are also odd and inaccurate, and those are corrected, for the most part, in the 2011 version. More of the manga is covered, and the animation is smoother in the 2011 version as well.”
Why did you feel the distant sensation of laughing? Nothing about this has been funny, per se, but the…what was going on?
“Okay, I’ll bite,” you said, strangely heavy and hyperaware and surveying the tray of steaming potato wedges as Shinsou shuffled it to the stove, “I’ll do it with you, all this manga accuracy checking.”
“Me, too,” said Shinsou, shaking the over mitt off, “My suggestion is that we keep it to just the three of us, to prevent exhausting arguments, like we’d have in a big group the size of Girls and Todoroki Nights.”
“I can lend you the first few volumes,” said Todoroki, opening a cabinet to search for Aoyama’s sauce bowls, “After that, I have a link to high-quality scans I can send you.”
“Sounds perfect,” you said, reaching for a potato wedge that did not sizzle and screech as much as the others, “Should we watch the first episode tomorrow night?” When you retracted your hand at the burn, you felt your own pain and someone else’s sense of nostalgia.
***
You’d already been on the precipice of falling asleep during Present Mic’s lesson, but when a concentrated shot of fatigue pierced you, you set down your pen and reluctantly resolved to get the subsequent notes from Iida. God, couldn’t this wait until you were out of class? No one needed to see how terrible your own notes were. No one needed to see your drawings in the margins.
Burying your face in your hands, you dug the heels of your palms into your eyes, rubbing them as the lethargy kicked in, and you braced yourself for the uncanny sensation of being your own worst voyeur.
When you opened them, after the lightheaded dots blinked away, you weren’t in the classroom, instead entrenched in darkness. Well, wait—you groped around on your desk: physically, you still were upright in your desk at U.A., able to grasp your pen, set it down, able to faintly hear Present Mic, as if he’s in the next room over.
Blindly, you tapped Mina’s desk behind you, turning your head over your shoulder. “Do my eyes look weird to you?”
“No. Should they?” she whispered back—or maybe she said it at a normal volume, and the classroom had been so far removed the distance silenced her.
Biting the inside of your cheek, you faced the front again. Looks like you have to figure this out yourself, or else you’ll be sitting in pitch black for who knows how long.
A minute passed. Your eyes adjusted to the darkness, shapes appearing—you’re inside. In a room with the lights off. Sideways, for some reason. One of the shapes was so rigidly rectangular that it had to be a shoji divider, and you were just trying to estimate its size when all of your mental facilities halted at a loud, rumbling groan.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” a scratchy, masculine voice said, “Must be my turn, huh?”
He flipped over, and barely cracked venetian blinds behind dark curtains just barely illuminated part of the scene: you were seeing this sideways because he was lying in bed, an out-of-place, opulent, Western-style bed in what you assumed was an Eastern-style room, judging what you could make out of traditional wallpaper and tatami flooring.
“Well, you’re not getting anything out of me,” he said, reaching for one of the many strewn pillows and hugging it—you lost half of your sight when his face sank into it (too dark for you to get a good look at his hands or arms), “Sucks for you, but I’m going back to sleep. Don’t care how curious you are. Not sharin’ anything with someone who can’t cook potato wedges right.”
No, get up. Get up. Say more right now. Who was he? It’s—it’s the middle of the day, anyhow; what is he doing asleep?
“Hah. You’re angry with me.” His laugh sounded more like a hiss, somehow. “Get used to it.”
He shut his eyes. After about a minute, the darkness faded, and Present Mic’s voice hit you at full volume, and you winced, clamping a hand down on your notes when the classroom came into view.
***
“You are not dropping out of school the semester you’re supposed to graduate,” said Aizawa, pinching the bridge of his nose, elbow digging into the puffy leather chair by Nezu’s desk.
“From my perspective, it does not appear you are a liability to U.A.’s security.” Nezu steepled his paws together, his pink toe beans preventing him from pressing them completely flat. “Simply seeing through each other’s eyes and feeling some of his emotions are no cause for the drastic security measures you are proposing. I believe that so long as you have some sort of indicator that either situation is happening, faculty can prepare for your temporary debility.”
“Don’t even think about abusing it to get out of class,” said Aizawa, propping his chin on his fist.
“You think I would? Shocked! Shocked and offended,” you said, “I’m gonna be in class; I don’t trust anyone else’s notes. I want my own interpretations of lectures.” You slumped down in your seat, tilting your head back to stare at the ceiling. “Principal Nezu, do you have an idea of why this is happening to me?”
“I do.” Nezu opened the top drawer in his desk to retrieve a stack of yellow-green papers, torn from a legal pad and crimped because of whatever was spilled on it. “Recovery Girl and Midnight have been analysing the results of Tainted Love’s quirk for some time now. The female rehabilitation centre with which Midnight works, Sakura Grove, has uncovered evidence of two other incidents that caused a soulmate bond with similar qualities to form.”
“What? No,” you said, letting a whine creep into your voice, “That means my soulmate’s a jerk. He was rude to me. He insulted my potato wedge recipe.”
Aizawa raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching upward as he crossed his arms. “You can’t expect there to be love at first sight, can you? Love is a choice. You work at it every day. You have to keep choosing it.”
“Yaoyorozu and Jirou were already dating when they got assigned soulmates,” you said, listing on your fingers, “Midoriya and Uraraka had been pining after each other for years—”
Aizawa scowled. “Stop that.”
“So, do you want me to report anything? Do you want me to duck out of class when he—checks in?”
“If you feel unsafe, let us know. Otherwise, it is of my opinion that you will be just fine,” said Nezu, and he reached for his paw-sized coffee cup to remove the melting stroopwaffle cookie off the top. “Report what you perceive as dangerous, but you deserve privacy. When you decide on your signal that the bond is active, please send an email to faculty members. Whether or not you inform your peers is at your discretion.”
***
So, of course, you told everyone.
Meaning no one batted an eye the next time the soulmate bond activated, which was in class. Feeling the exhaustion and the slight buzz from your soulmate popping in to watch through you, you made the phone call symbol, grabbed a marker from the whiteboard, and headed out into the hall, no questions asked.
“Hey,” you were saying, shoving your forearm against the concrete-block wall and popping the marker cap off with your mouth, “Good to hear from you. Didn’t know I could see through you, too. Excited to see how we’ll deal with that. This is my phone number.” You scrawled it across your arm, along with your given name above it. “If you can’t memorise it now, that’s fine. I’ll write it down next time, too, so you could prepare to have something nearby to record it with. I look forward to getting to know you.”
No strong emotions on his part. But he was there.
“Okay,” you said, and you turned to sink down against the wall to sit in the deserted hallway. “Some basic stuff: I’m a student at U.A., in my last year. I’m in that—uh, I’m in the class that’s gotten into a bit of trouble over the past few years. Midoriya, Bakugou, and all of them, if you watch the news. I’ve just ducked out of class with everyone.” You kept looking at your arm so that he could memorise it. “I don’t really wanna talk about my quirk, since that seems like such a boring, capital-A adult question, but I can tell you about it later, if you really want to know. Oh! I do not suck at making potato wedges. It was just a recipe that none of us had made before, and they were fine. They were good. I—”
And he’s gone, link severed.
Crossing your arms, you slumped against the wall. Did he choose to end it? Could he? He didn’t seem very receptive, so you wouldn’t put it past him.
***
You woke up from a nap watching through him play a video game, some non-discernible, first-person shooter. Again in the dark, but perhaps not in the same room. The windows weren’t open enough to let in enough light to tell.
Your soulmate never acknowledged you were there by gesture or word. Just played his stupid fucking game. You were trying to send him foul vibes of frustration and indignation, but he ignored you.
After a mere six minutes of the world’s worst Let’s Play, you decided you could be a little bitch as well.
***
“Oh! He’s here. Excuse me,” you said to Shinsou and Jirou, making the phone call gesture as you pushed yourself up from the lunch table, “I’ll be back in a moment. Please guard my gummies from Monoma.”
A flash of curiosity, finally, from your soulmate as he got the image of Shinsou and Jirou smirking to themselves and waving you off.
Once you were alone outside in the courtyard, you pulled out and unfolded the piece of pink construction paper, at this point every inch covered by doodles of flowers and increasingly shitty bulbasaurs. You tapped at the writing in the centre. “This is called a telephone number,” you said, “This one belongs to me. If you dial this number into a phone to call it, you will reach me. Then, we could have a conversation and arrange to meet up, instead of this unreliable, one-sided bond.”
You flattened your hand to smooth out the creases, halting midway when it struck you. “I’ve just realised you may be confused by this situation. Don’t worry; I am as well. But be assured, due to a quirk incident, we’ve been assigned soulmates. Yeah, I know they’re fake, but with this villain Tainted Love’s quirk, soulmates are real.”
He evidently was feeling like he wanted to walk straight into the ocean.
“I’m assuming you’re not a U.A. student, so—do you remember breathing in some sort of pink dust? Within about the past—I don’t know, two and a half years? That’s how long Tainted Love was active. She only got arrested about a month or so ago.” You couldn’t garner anything from him except for exasperation, so you continued. “And not, like, snorting a line of pink dust. It would’ve been in a dust cloud. A bit like fog. You would’ve noticed it.”
Staring at your phone number the whole time, you allowed him silence to think. Whatever he was feeling was very subdued, so you couldn’t really surmise what it was, but ten seconds before the bond broke, a livid, fiery ire consumed your whole body in the heat of recognition.
***
Shinsou, Todoroki, and you were all crowded around a laptop in Shinsou’s dorm to watch the beginning episodes of Hunter x Hunter the next time your soulmate spoke to you. He’d gone a couple of times ignoring you in silence, once outside on a walk during the day on a path uptown you didn’t recognise, and the other on some rooftop while playing on his phone and watching a meteor shower. Completely disregarding your attempts to give him your number or talk to him in real time.
It just figured that he bothered to spare you any information when you were trying to see what the next phase of the Hunter Exam was, so Todoroki and Shinsou paused the show for you and waited. With a stab of affection for your friends, you moved to the corner, waiting for your soulmate to say something.
And he was. Your soulmate knew more combinations of swear words and general filth than you’ve ever cared to consider, and you were almost impressed with the creativity of his vulgarity. Outside under the night sky, he was furiously ripping open some medium-sized, cardboard box as he stomped towards a carefully cultivated, lilypad-covered, manmade pond towards the back of a highly organised, traditional garden.
Eventually, non-profanity was added. “Goddamn fucking shit-ass fish and goddamn fucking shit-ass crusty motherfucking doctor can’t take care of his own goddamn fucking pet project.” Tips of his house slippers stopping at the pond only by way of running into the stone wall, he stumbled, growling in frustration, before regaining his balance and yanking out the plastic bag inside the remnants of the box. “Wants a goddamn gift for fucking Mom but can’t be arsed to do it him-fucking-self. Deserves every fish fucked into his respiratory system, clogging up his arteries to give himself a goddamn heart attack. And then I can’t be blamed for—” The plastic stretched, and he ended up tearing it in half above the water, pieces falling atop waterlilies. “Shit on a cuntbag. What the fuck. I don’t deserve this.”
He stretched to reach the waterlilies, cupping his hands to sweep the fish food off and into the water. And—the moonlight struck the gently rippling water, enough for you to see a flash of an orange koi tail break the surface tension, but not enough to see whatever was going on with his hands—not that he was doing anything strange with them (just picking shreds of plastic out of the water), but they somehow were strange. They moved stiffly and had some sort of bumps on them, but—does this guy live in darkness? You couldn’t tell anything about what his hands looked like aside from the shadowed bumps, which could be anything.
“I deserve a lot, but I sure as hell don’t deserve this.” He rounded the pond and punched a few buttons on a small, hidden, monitor, checking the pH of the pool and water levels. “Not my fucking job. Not my fucking job. Why do they think—why am I the one to do this shit. How come I can get in trouble with my fucking brother for him not taking care of his project.” He swatted at his wet bathrobe sleeve, pissed, and shook out some of the water. “Hey, you. I know you’re there.”
Back in the dorm, you jolted in your seat. In the distance, you could hear Shinsou ask what was wrong. “Nothing,” you said, sounding distant yourself, “He acknowledged me is all. Hasn’t done that for a while, so it felt like a fourth wall break.”
Your soulmate sat down on the edge of the pond, glaring out at the rest of the garden (wisteria heavy, vines swaying in the night wind). “Are you hot?”
You’d never wanted to be able to transfer direct words or actions to him so much, because he needed to be strangled.
“I’m not kidding.” He crossed his arms, covered by a dark bathrobe, sticking his hands in his armpits. “Are you hot? I don’t like the idea of being connected to some hideous fuckwad.”
Never mind. Now you have never wanted to be—
“This quirk shit isn’t gonna last long, but if you’re hot, you need to get on my dick before it goes away. I wanna see how it looks giving me a blowjob from your perspective.”
Kill. Destroy. Maim. Eviscerate, even.
“Ooh, watch out. We’ve got an uptight, prudish bitch over here,” he said, and he laughed—again, sounding more like a hiss than anything else. “Well, then. If you’re not gonna put out, then I’ve got no use for you. Don’t need anyone, especially not some goddamn lunatic who claims to be my soulmate. Too many people are interfering in my life, anyway. And to be honest, it seems like you’re dumb and irritating. I don’t like people like you.”
Maybe you’re soulmates because you’re destined to kill him on sight. Your soul, calling out for his to suffer extreme violence. He’d deserve it.
May all his potato wedges burn.
***
Monoma was at the next Hunter x Hunter anime viewing, because he’d been dying to know why you were wearing an actual and literal clown costume, wig and enormous foam nose included.
“I’m liking the new hero outfit,” Monoma said, flipping his hair back with a flourish, “but why are you wearing it during our off-hours?”
“Shove off,” you said, grinning as Shinsou tossed you a pillow to hold, “Did you bring your peach gummies?”
“I did,” said Monoma, sitting next to you on Todoroki’s tatami mats, and he pulled a massive bag of white peach gummies from inside his jacket, handing it to you to open. “May I ask if it’s seriously part of your new uniform, or—”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Monoma,” you said, ripping open the bag at the notch, “I’m making a point.”
“Her soulmate,” Shinsou supplied, pulling up the next episode, “He wants to know what she looks like. So, she’s been dressing up in horrible, gawdy shit so that he can never really tell, even around mirrors.”
“He’s pissed,” you said, beaming, digging into the bag and popping a gummy into your mouth, “He wants me to stop playing around, but he was mean to me. Mean to me, unprovoked, and in a way that wasn’t hot. Tomorrow, I’m wearing a sheet and running around like a ghost. I will say nothing to him but boo.”
“I suppose that explains the influx of regular face masks you’ve taken to wearing during class.” Monoma scoffed, his incredulous, open mouth stretching into a grin. “You are impossible. If your humourless soulmate is worth his salt, then he should at least value the effort you’re putting into it.”
“Sero has sent me a message,” interrupted Todoroki, thumb swiping his phone screen, “He says that he has changed his mind and would like to join us. He’s started rereading the series and likes it more this time around.” Todoroki looked up and around his room, lips pursed. “There is not much space for five people. It is getter harder to see the laptop.”
***
The five of you started the Heaven’s Arena arc of Hunter x Hunter in Aizawa’s dorm apartment, seeing as he had the best television setup: for one, having an actual television instead of simply relying on his computer. His sound system held up, too, though you suspected Present Mic had something to do with that, instead of Aizawa’s own preferences.
You, Shinsou, Todoroki, Monoma, and Sero were scattered across Aizawa’s living room, all cosied under blankets and pillows and pointed towards his wall-mounted television, sitting on his cat-hair covered couch and armchairs, mugs and snacks on his coffee table, socked feet loose, and house slippers at the edge of the shag rug. The cats, Dango and Konpeito, chose to snuggle up towards Todoroki and you (beat that, Shinsou!), so you were careful not to disturb them from their slumber on your lap. No sudden movements, even when the tired dizziness of your bitch soulmate faded in.
“Spoilers for Hunter x Hunter, I suppose, even though it’s been out for decades,” you said under your breath, raising your hand to signal to the others that your soulmate was looking in. At your movement, Dango raised her head from her cocoon in your lap to yawn, her face nearly turning inside out, and she flinched, her pupils dilating, at the creak of the door.
Laden with groceries, Aizawa stepped into his own apartment, his brow furrowing at the sight of his students in his living room. “You have ten seconds to tell me what you’re doing here.”
“The fuck?” Sero whipped his head towards Shinsou and back at Aizawa. “Shinsou told us you were okay with it.”
“I said that he wouldn’t mind, which he can’t if he doesn’t catch us,” said Shinsou, bracing himself when Aizawa tugged at his capture weapon around his neck, “It’s my fault, Aizawa-sensei. Please don’t get angry at anyone else.”
Your soulmate seemed pleased that you were getting in trouble. Bastard.
Aizawa set his cloth bags on his kitchen counter, the insides shifting with the weight of the groceries. “Is this appropriate for Eri to watch?”
“Well, in general—”
A character onscreen chose that moment to seductively moan another character’s name, over and over again.
Aizawa winced, scrunching his eyes shut tightly. “Turn that shit off. Find another place to watch it.” Shaking his head, he unbagged the first of his groceries. “Shinsou, never bring anyone, including yourself, into my personal space again with express permission.”
“Damn it,” you said, reaching for the remote. You pressed the power button, watching the screen fade from the vibrant colours of Heaven’s Arena to black, with Aizawa’s living room reflecting back at you. Forlornly, you scratched the back of Dango’s neck, watching her mirrored reaction, before you realised what you were doing: giving your bitch-ass soulmate a clear view of your bare face. Eyes bulging, you gasped and bent over to hide your face, with Dango scurrying away at being disturbed.
The connection cut at the faint suggestion of intrigue.
***
YOU
hey i know we said we’d keep it small but. i think midoriya would really enjoy the battle analysis that the hxh characters are doing
YOU
bc they be doing some QUICK analytic work based on their opponents’ personalities
TODOROKI 💅🎏
Midoriya has been asking more questions than usual during our sparring sessions.
SERO 🧃🍊
ffs why isn’t he already in the group? should’ve thought of him
SHINSOU 💜🍡
want me to add him?
YOU
would that be okay, todoroki?
TODOROKI 💅🎏
There’s more than enough room at our new venue. We should invite him.
SHINSOU 💜🍡
why don’t you text him then? it’s at your place
MONOMA 🔇🎭
Midoriya CANNOT sit next to me
MONOMA 🔇🎭
I’d like to hear the onscreen dialogue instead of whatever he’s saying under his breath
MONOMA 🔇🎭
He CANNOT shut up
YOU
WHOMST won’t shut up??????
SERO 🧃🍊
don’t worry no one will sit next to you
MONOMA 🔇🎭
Good
MONOMA 🔇🎭
Wait
TODOROKI 💅🎏
Midoriya can attend! He’ll be a little late today, but I think we should wait for him, since it’s his first time joining us.
Startled by the waiter, you put your phone down on your notebook and accepted your coffee graciously. You shifted your laptop and notebook over so that you could cup the mug in front of you, its warmth seeping through the sides, and you took a tentative slurp. Interesting. You’ll finish it, but you won’t order this again.
You were killing time that Saturday by getting ahead on your work for Put Your Hands Up Radio: editing and fact-checking news segments that Yamada would read between songs towards the evening. Electing to get some sunshine on your skin before hunkering down with the group again to analyse some anime, you’d chosen to edit the articles outside at a café you’d discovered recently, one at which you hadn’t decided on a regular order yet and were shopping around the menu each time you came. Plus, if you’d stayed on campus, no doubt Shinsou or Monoma would’ve found you to distract you.
The café’s patio with scorching, cast-iron furniture and haphazard parasol installation led to most of its customers sitting inside, but that meant you had space to think, even with the hot groves of your seat imprinting patterns into your skin.
Your soulmate was probably being rude because he was scared, or perhaps he didn’t believe that Tainted Love’s quirk was legitimate. You’d have to assure him that it was, as you’d run through Nezu’s report with Midnight and Recovery Girl, fact-checking that. Either way. Some frustrated guy—living at home, apparently, and pissed about it—was paired out of the blue with some student at U.A. He might be scared that you were a creep.
Tainted Love’s team’s notes on her quirk that Midnight had confiscated explained that each soulmate bond, somehow, was moulded around the pair’s personalities and would fulfil a lifelong need. A lot of responsibility, it seemed, but if it were true—and other pairs proved it true—you would fulfil it naturally, and so would he.
So, even though your soulmate had been rude, you’d give him a chance. The soulmate bond existed for a reason. Plus, he might be a real-life tsundere, and wouldn’t that be fun to crack? To be the only one a rude, evil person was soft for was the ideal, wasn’t it? Someone so naturally cruel and heartless but learning to be kind for you—
Get a hold of yourself. He’s a real guy who will be in your life forever, not just someone you can throw away, like a celebrity/pro-hero crush. Treat him seriously.
“I’m…being serious,” you said to yourself, pouting into your coffee. You hunched in your seat to drink from the mug without lifting it, and you slorped away the neck of the latte art swan the barista had so carefully poured. “He’s probably not even be a sexy sort of cold-hearted. He’s just a type of bitchiness I haven’t learnt how to handle yet.”
Those boys in the anime analysis group? You could play their types of bitchiness like the world’s smallest fiddle. They were all so easy to handle (especially Monoma because of his predictability; Todoroki gave you the most trouble due to his complete non sequiturs), and it was fun bouncing off the petty parts of their personalities. Your soulmate spun things differently, but you’d learn his inclinations in time. If not, it’s not worth your time trying to “fix” someone who has no redeeming vulnerability.
You sighed. Now that you’ve lost your editing groove, you might as well do some last-minute reading before watching the next few episodes tonight. Closing your laptop, you reached down into your bag to get the next volume of Todoroki’s manga, and your vision blurred over, dizziness incoming. Well, at least you’re sitting down.
You held the manga volume in your lap and waited for your soulmate’s line of sight to appear. If he were in a darkened room yet again, you could buy yourself a little treat. The café’s display case had some sort of new chess square that you’d been eyeing. And—shit, sunlight was coming through. No little treat for you.
Well, maybe you’ll get one, anyway. You slumped farther down in your seat, blinking as dappled, sunlight-covered pavement and an empty terrace outside a business across a busy street came into view—your soulmate jumped back off the road when a car whooshed by, and after that, he jaywalked, horns blaring in his wake.
He did a little hop to get on the opposite sidewalk, hands in his pockets, and peered past the iron fence into the window of the shop—a packed coffee shop; maybe you could at least learn his coffee order, because then you’d have some shred of information about him. But no, he unlatched the iron gate and wove his way through the cast-iron patio chairs and tables, and—
You’re staring right at you: sitting, legs crossed, not taking up space, stuff spread out over your table, and he’s gaining on you. You flinched, watched yourself flinch, and your gaze darted around until you were able to meet his (your) eyes (your head making minor, nervous movements you wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t seen them), expression cautious, curling in on yourself on impulse. When you saw how, through an outsider, that made you look small, you made the effort to sit up and roll your shoulders back, elbows on the table. You watched yourself recoil at the heat of the iron, and you had to use his perspective to know where your notebook was so that you could rest your arms on it.
He brushed past your table’s open chair, instead yanking the table by the edge away from your lap so that he could stand closer to you and grabbing your face. He first cupped your jaw with his whole hand, pale skin and leather of a fingerless glove cold to the touch, and then, when he seemed sure you weren’t going to protest (his vision turned slightly to the left—he must have tilted his head), he narrowed his grip in little jerks of his hand, sliding erratically from gripping your jaw to just tilting your chin upwards towards him. He turned your head to the left and to the right before returning to centre to stare you down (you’d been pliant under his control, because the doubling of you watching you do things was throwing off your senses of balance and direction).
“Not as hard as you fucking made it out to be, huh?” His thumb rubbed over your chin. His nail was cracked. “Now, are you gonna stop acting like a little bitch, or are we gonna keep playing your stupid game?”
“First of all,” you said, fascinated by the way your lips curled in under your teeth to shape the consonants, and judging by where your soulmate was looking, he was, too. “It’s not an act. I am a little bitch.”
“No more of that hiding shit.” He tapped your cheek a little harder than he needed to with his middle two fingers. “Don’t know why you’d wanna hide this, anyway.”
You wouldn’t’ve said you winced at his rough touch, but you noticed enough of an aggravated microexpression around your eyes that you could tell you didn’t like it. “You’re doing the same. Hiding what you look like from me.”
“And I’m gonna keep doing it. You get nothing. There is no us. Soulmates don’t exist, and even if some hack fraud’s quirk has paired us off, I don’t need anybody, least of all you.”
“Well, maybe you don’t need anyone,” you said, your eyes dipping to see more of his hand (hot damn, we forgot we can’t see through our own eyes that quickly?) and then raising them to look directly into your soulmate’s—hyperaware of the way your eyelashes fluttered against your skin, of the slight pinch of your eyebrows, of the way the sun struck your cheeks, “but you could want someone.”
A sliver of a cool breeze wove its way through the patio, some of your hair swaying with it.
“I won’t pressure you to do anything you don’t want,” you said, lying, “but at the very least, we could communicate enough for this to be easy for us. Please let me give you my phone number, and please save it this time.”
His thumb inched up to press into your lower lip.
“Please,” you said, eyes dark but slightly glassy, letting your tongue tap the tip of his thumb, so lightly wetting it that it was as if you hadn’t touched it at all.
Your soulmate tilted his head again, lurching to the side as he shifted his weight to lean on the table. He knocked your pen onto the ground, and when you made the slightest movement to grab it, he pressed his thumb harder against you to still you, and he shook his head.
Your throat ran dry. Your (his) eyes honed in on the bead of sweat dripping down it and into your blouse. “Give me your name, then. A name, if you hate me that much.”
“It’s Touya,” he grumbled, and he closed his eyes in the moment before he kissed you, cold lips open before even touching yours (both rough, but his lower lip was much rougher for some reason). Blind, you startled back at the initial touch, but he held your chin firmly near his, sliding his gloved hand to your cheek as his tongue did into your mouth, pressing against the roof of your mouth and along your gums, alternating pressure where he pleased, not seeming to care what you did with your tongue—not that you were doing much at all due to surprise, but you at least had the mind to press your lips back, because while yes, his style was unorthodox, it still felt good. He laughed through his nose, once, when you slid your tongue against his, but when you raised a hand to cup his cheek, he pulled away before you could do more than graze him.
“Touya,” you said, and now that he was looking at you again, you—well, you looked kissed out, leaning towards him to chase that feeling, to encourage him to touch you again, and you looked fucking hot (the hell? It took a lot for you to think of yourself that way, and today hadn’t even been a good day for you, but now, freshly kissed, saying your soulmate’s name, you found yourself thinking you were pretty. Uh. Could this be what he was thinking instead of you? You couldn’t tell; it felt like it was coming from somewhere deep in your gut). “Touya. Let me write—”
You watched yourself grapple for your pen for a while. He huffed, crossed his arms, and bothered to look down where your pen was for you, and when he did, you finally grabbed it.
“Touya,” you said, uncapping the pen and hovering over your notebook, and you paused after the first stroke. “Touya spelled like that Todoroki Touya who released that Endeavor video during the war?”
The ink bled through the sheet of paper from being pressed in one spot for too long.
“Yeah,” he said eventually, voice rasping, “Spelled just like his.”
“Okay,” you said, bending over your paper and writing based on muscle memory, and under his name, you wrote your phone number for him again, with your name written beneath it, just to hammer it in. You ripped the page out of your notebook with some difficulty before passing it to him.
Touya scanned it and rubbed his thumb over your name, the leather of his fingerless glove catching on the uneven tear.
Cute. Nerd. “Do the gloves have something to do with your quirk?”
“What? No,” he said, crumpling the paper and stowing it in his pocket, and he kept his hands there, hiding them, “I don’t have a quirk.”
Okay, so Touya spoke in a rush and concealed evidence. Sounds like a lie. Monoma took that route on occasion, so the obvious thing for you to say was “Oh, so you wear them because of Naruto? Do you run like him, too?”
“Fuck off,” he spat, and you watched yourself grin: you’ve got him. “As if I had time to be a fuckin’ otaku.”
“Good to know,” you said, “So, all the manga re-analysis I’ve been doing with my friends is new to you? I hope you’re not planning on reading or watching any of the works that we’re covering, then. Unless you wanted to read along with us?”
“I don’t need that shit to scorch my brain.” For some reason, he winced, scrunching his eyes shut for a moment, and you waited in the dark for him.
“You have enough going on?”
He pried his eyes open, blinking blearily at you, still grinning, still smug. “Yeah,” he said, and he dug his left hand out to stare at the back of it, leather shining in the sunlight while he wiggled his fingers. He bent across the table to grab your coffee, fingers spidering over the rim to grip it, and he brought it to his mouth. “This is fucking awful; what’s wrong with you?” he asked after an audible swallow.
“It’s not my usual order.” Closing your notebook, you crossed your arms, staring down at you and feeling more and more like you’re in a dream. “You can either tell me what your quirk is, because I know you’re lying, or you could stay? For coffee? I’ll buy you something better.”
(You would have asked what’s up with his appearance that he didn’t want you to see or feel, but considering how early in your first official meeting it was, the question may be too insensitive, especially if he were born with it.)
Touya glanced over his shoulder, saw something you couldn’t, and set your mug on the iron table with a quiet clink. “I’ve got to go,” he said, and he spun around, taking the first step away.
You slammed a hand on the table purely on guesswork based on where he left your mug, and the sound of shaking iron and tinkling porcelain resounded, distant when you heard it through his ears, yet feeling the vibrations travel through your own arms. “Tell me your goddamn quirk, you daft fucker.”
Touya paused, and he turned back to you. “That’s more like it.” He sat on your table, at the place over your lap, and he reached out towards your face. You saw yourself lean back, eyes wide, but he simply dug his fingers into your hair at your hairline, scratching your scalp and digging his nails in enough to hear the movement.
(You saw yourself frown the moment you noticed his skin was colder than the glove.)
“Barking at me like that is how information is usually torn out of me. Makes me feel at home,” he said, a bit too cheerfully for your liking, “You can be trained to be a bitch towards me yet.”
“Touya,” you said, raising your head to embolden more of his touch, “Who’s—who’s been treating you like that? You don’t deserve it.”
“Shut up.” Touya laid his hand flat atop your head, the weight of it pushing down on you. “Sure, I lied. Said I didn’t have a quirk. Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters.” Your tongue swiped over your lower lip, and Touya’s gaze darted to it. “I want any scrap of you I can get. Everything I’ve already learnt I’ve filed away in my heart: your name, the way you speak, your hatred of your brother’s fish and living at home—”
The hand on your hand slipped to slap over your mouth. “Jesus Christ, stop noticing things about me. Freak. Goddamn.” Touya lifted his hand off of you, and based on his perspective, he ran it through his own hair. “So that you don’t go making your own intrusive observations, I’ll tell you about my quirk: I effectively don’t have one anymore. I used it a lot, and it fucked me up. So, for my own self-preservation, which I’ve been told I should value, I can’t use it anymore. Good enough for you?”
“Great enough for me,” you said, “I’ll take care not to talk about my quirk or hero course stuff too much. I don’t want you to feel left out.”
“Holy shit,” said Touya, and he broke eye contact with you to stare at his boots (scuffed, black, but new, so the scuffing must be intentional), blinking rapidly before pressing—probably—his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids.
Something was deeply wrong with this man. You needed him to kiss you again. You opened your mouth to ask him to, but wooziness and your dry throat called; the ripped page of your notebook you’d been staring at dripped back into your own perspective at a glacial pace. You heard the scuffle of his shuffling off the iron table and the grit of his boot against the concrete, and when you grappled for him in the dark, your hand clenched around nothing.
You rubbed your eyes until the vertigo passed, and when you opened them, Touya was gone.
***
Later that afternoon, you were scrolling through your phone on the end cushion of one of Todoroki’s couches in the living room in a poor effort not to gawk at everything. You expected some of it could be excused, since it’s your first time at his house, but good God, rich people were insane. This was the biggest, traditionally-styled building (estate?) you’ve been in since you toured a castle preserved from the Edo period—but it was apt, you supposed, since Endeavor had been acting as a sort of daimyo of his own.
Dormer gables. Hip-and-gable roofs, with golden shachihoko shibi cupping the corners—though instead of the customary sea monsters, if your eyes weren’t deceiving you, they appeared to be made for flame-swimming instead of in water. A recessed entryway, its wooden flooring tiles hand-cut in tiny designs to make you aware of the space, with brand-new guest slippers already provided before you could ask. Todoroki’s house (estate?) screamed business, or at the very least, don’t touch anything.
At least the living room in which you sat stiffly had a touch of clear modernity—and so it seemed that the inner rooms actually revealed that they were living in the modern age, but the barrier of traditional architecture to get to actual living space heaved a hyperawareness of outsider onto your shoulders.
Todoroki himself, bless him, moved around like the elegant austerity didn’t even occur to him. Waiting for Midoriya with the rest of you, he’d helped everyone spread out their notes and manga over the short table and floor, gathering blankets for everyone when it occurred to him that not everyone’s body tolerated temperature like he did (since the house was kept oddly cold), and, instead of offering tea, like he’d said his sister would expect him to do, he provided a peculiar but pleasant combination of snacks: cheap-ass cup noodles, strawberry chardonnay-flavoured cheese on soup crackers, old mooncakes that had been in the fridge for a month but he declared were still good, and gummy worms for Monoma.
The bitch even bought everyone a fancy little drink according to personal preferences—and no one had even requested them or informed him what to get, but he’d gotten everything right, regardless (you suspected he’d asked Shinsou for help).
“Thank you,” you said, turning over in your hands the poshest bottle of pink lemonade you’ve ever seen, “You’re a very gracious host, Todoroki.”
He slurped his own caramel frappe. “I’m very excited to have so many friends over at once.”
“Of course,” you said, your weight jostling on the couch cushion as Todoroki sat next to you, “I can’t believe we didn’t think of going off-campus to watch this shit earlier. There’s way more privacy here.”
“Our doors are always open nowadays,” he said, and when Sero tapped Todoroki on his shoulder to help open another package of cheese, he held up a finger to pause your conversation.
Smiling softly, you twisted off the bottlecap of your lemonade, holding it up to your nose to inhale that pressurised burst of lemon scent, and—oh, hey, you felt a little lightheaded as you did so. Two times in one day? That’s new. At least it was from your perspective this time, so you didn’t have to worry about knocking anyone’s drink over.
“Hey,” you said, snuggling down into the couch, your palm atop the opening of your drink (when Monoma shot you a questioning look with the phone call hand signal, you nodded, and he relaxed and leaned towards you, his teeth cutting into his lower lip as he grinned). “Funny how we keep meeting like this, yeah?” you asked, feeling soft and full of love for this fucker, and you reached towards the coffee table to set down your drink and grab a flower-shaped mooncake. “I guess I can stop hiding from my reflection now, sweet boy.” You made eye contact with yourself in the reflection of the Torodokis’ enormous flatscreen, and you held your mooncake up in a toast before biting into it. “Hope you’re well. You seemed stressed earlier. I’m currently—”
Your phone rang in your lap, and you narrowed your eyes at the unknown number before answering it. “Hello?”
“Where the hell are you right now?”
“Wow,” you said, chewing, “No greeting, even? No mention of how much that you miss my voice or my lips now that you’ve—”
“Just tell me where the fuck you are,” said Touya, at the same time that Monoma’s eyebrows shot to his hairline at the kissing implication, and he thumped Shinsou in the chest for him to look up from his phone.
“Does it matter?”
“I told you my quirk shit when I didn’t want to, so fucking tell me,” said Touya, sounding muffled and, again, like he stood near traffic.
Swallowing mooncake in a rush and choking a bit, you cleared your throat and said, “Fine. I don’t know why it matters that much to you, but I’m at a friend’s house. Our anime analysis group has gotten too big for the dorms, so we’re trying out his place.”
You had to ensure the call hadn’t dropped due to his long response time. “What friend?” he asked.
You raised a brow, though he couldn’t see you. “I doubt you would know—shit!”
Struggling to tear the plastic covering the cheese, Todoroki had accidentally slammed his elbow into your collarbone.
“Geez.” You winced at Todoroki and rubbed the spot. “No, no, I’m fine,” you said when he reached towards your collarbone, his fingertips already icing over, “You may want to go get a knife to open that, though.”
Nodding soberly, Todoroki lowered his thawing hand and rose from the couch, tossing the cheese to himself. “I’ll do that. Anyone need anything from the kitchen while I’m up?”
While the others answered, you spoke into your phone again, hand on your chest. “Sorry about that. I guess if you paid attention to the news last year, you’d know him: one of Endeavor’s kids, Todoroki Shouto.”
The soulmate connection started to trickle away, but Touya stayed on the phone. “Do you not have any other friends who have a place?” Plastic crinkled on his end, along with a car horn in the background. “Hell, the library downtown rents out portable TVs—”
“Why should I be at another friend’s house?” Touya wouldn’t be able to see the reflection of your self-satisfied smirk now, but surely he could hear it in your voice. “Jealous that I’m at the house of another man?”
Touya gagged into the speaker. “Someone’s full of herself. Don’t wait up for me,” he said, and he hung up.
You pulled your phone away from your ear, pouting at the call screen before creating a new contact.
“You didn’t tell us you’d met your soulmate,” said Shinsou.
“It only happened this afternoon,” you said, saving his number under Touya 🐠🚷 (the fish for the koi pond he hated, and the no pedestrians sign for his apparent propensity to jaywalk), “and I’m not sure what to make of him. I was hoping to form my own opinion before telling all of you.”
Todoroki perked up and tilted his ear skyward at the sound of the front door opening. “I’ll get it,” he said, standing, “I bet that’s my brother. He’s back four hours late from physical therapy; I hope everything’s okay.”
Your eye twitched.
(Todoroki had warned everyone before coming over that his family would probably be in and out. Less so Fuyumi and Natsuo, because Fuyumi had recently moved in with her significant other and Natsuo had his own place near campus, but more of his parents and Dabi. Well. Touya, now, but you had your own Touya to worry about.
You’d met Dabi. Twice, during freshman year. When he’d been a villain, instead of whatever was happening with him in recovery. Rather formulative experiences for you, ones you only permitted yourself to think about in the hollowness of lonely nights—but you didn’t need those memories anymore, because you had your Touya now.
Remember? You have your own Touya. You don’t need another.)
“Do you want me to carry that for you?”
Todoroki’s voice trailed behind boot scuffing and a sliding door, and in Dabi/Touya shuffled—hoodie yanked up (layered over a longer coat?), strings pulled firmly around his face, plastic bags from the convenience store down the street on his wrist, very determinedly staring at the floor as he strode past behind the couch instead of at the four of you strewn across his living room, ducking into the kitchen as soon as possible.
You’d barely seen him for five seconds, and your heart was going to beat out of your chest. Or maybe that was just the bruise forming on your collarbone.
Todoroki nodded after his brother, standing behind your place at the couch. “There’s no ceremonial introduction, I assume. That’s my brother, Touya. You’ve all,” said Todoroki, scratching the back of his neck, “met him before. But! If you’re nervous, we will not be seeing much of him. He doesn’t spend much time in the main house; he lives in the old-fashioned teahouse towards the back of the garden. Privacy, you know, even though we’ve got to keep him close.” Todoroki wetted his lips as he looked towards the emptied shrine on the far wall. “He shouldn’t be any trouble, but I may have to zip out on occasion to help him. Not all of his skin grafts are taking.”
The doorbell rang, and Todoroki started towards it. “That must be Midoriya. Sero, would you please pull up the next episode?”
When Todoroki stepped into the entryway to greet him, you couldn’t suppress your curiosity. “I’m gonna go pour this over ice,” you said, gesturing with your pink lemonade bottle, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Shinsou—the only one whom you’ve told about what happened with Dabi back then—shot you a crooked grin, but he distracted Monoma from noticing exactly what you were doing while you sneaked away down the hall.
His back was to you. Water flowed out of the kitchen faucet while he yanked his hoodie over his head and tossed it over the back of a chair, and he did the same with a longer, black coat—similar in shape to the coat he’d worn as a villain but not the same one. Maybe he’d grown accustomed to having the weight of it on his body, so what he wore now was a type of security blanket. While he ran a spoon under the faucet, he fumbled behind himself for his plastic, convenience store bag and fished out a pudding cup.
Backtracking a little, you purposely made your footsteps audible so that you wouldn’t startle him, and you entered the kitchen, shaking your lemonade for more noise to alert him of your presence.
His white brows pinched when he saw you, and he hastily shut the water off and scooted off to the edge of the counter while he put his stuff away, his movements rigid and close to his chest.
“Hi,” you said (oh, my God, you were talking to Dabi; holy shit), “Where do the cups live?”
Dabi blinked slowly, unable to look at you, and he peeled the lid off of his pudding cup. He glanced towards the door and back towards his stuff on the table, and he pointed towards a cabinet, his finger returning to his fist in a rush to get back what he was doing.
“Thank you,” you said, opening the one he’d pointed to. Oh. Fancy. Lots of choices. “I hope we’re not bothering you. We can—we can always leave, if you need us to. Or you could join us, if you like.” You turned around in time to see the flat of his tongue lick pudding off of the lid, stitches showing at the back of his tongue, and in the moment where he ducked his head, the tiny, unblemished part of his skin near the corners of his eyes blazing pink, your brain short-circuited.
(Dabi had been your first kiss.
During freshman year, in the week of that first round of internships, you’d been planted in Hosu City, around the time Stain closed his fist around the public consciousness. On a night patrol, your mentor had slipped into a restaurant that the yakuza frequented and stationed you in a nearby alley to watch for other yakuza incoming from the employees’ entrance.
An official sidekick had caught up with you—late forties, spandex, unrecognisable. You’d been terse in your replies, since he’d been essentially blowing your cover, but he couldn’t take a hint.
It’d only occurred to you that he’d been hitting on you when he’d propped an arm on the brick wall above your head to dominate your personal space, and an all-consuming dread had erupted in your stomach when he’d said, moving to take your chin in hand, “You know, you remind me a lot of my daughter.”
Before he’d been able to touch you, something rabid and ravenous about the size of a labrador had tackled him to the ground, the force knocking him almost two whole meters away, and the thing ripped into the sidekick’s chest, blood spewing—and somehow having the sense to cover his mouth to stifle the shouts.
In the moment you’d moved to get a better look at what was, in retrospect, a nomu, another figure had stepped between you and the sidekick, his own arm resting on the wall to keep you from getting closer.
“Hey,” Dabi had said, an easy grin stretching across his face, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about anything. Just testing some shit out for someone. So long as you don’t go making any noise, I’ll let you walk away.”
Dabi hadn’t made his villain debut back then, but even so, it hadn’t seemed like it was just testing something out for someone; this guy had seemed his own brand of dangerous. Your gaze had started to creep towards the source of crunching, but he’d tapped your cheek, making you look at him. “Nuh-uh. Keep your eyes on me. If you don’t know anything, I don’t have to kill you, do I?”
“I, I’m—” You’d steeled yourself somewhat, your hands clenching into fists at your sides. “I’m not just gonna let you kill a hero while I stand here.”
Again, Dabi had stopped you before you could take a full step, this time by gripping your jaw, letting it rest in his palm while his fingers dug into your cheeks. “Can’t call him a hero. Was comparing you to his daughter—didn’t you hear? And it looked like he was gonna assault you. Some guys aren’t meant to be fathers.” His syrupy gaze had fallen to your neck, and he’d squeezed your face. “Jesus, your heart is beating like crazy.”
“I don’t normally calm myself down to the sounds of someone getting maimed,” you’d said, blood splattering in the air behind him, “Oh! Fuck.” You’d scrunched your eyes shut and curled in on yourself, trying to block out the sound of bones snapping.
“Some hero you are.”
“Yeah, yeah,” you’d said, “You’re more of one than I am, tonight. Thanks—?”
“Dabi,” he’d said, and at the time, it had just been a name. When you’d pried open your eyes, he’d been smiling, mouth closed, head tilted at being called a hero. You’d smiled back, but at an enormously strident crack from behind him, you’d had a full-body jolt. “Fucking hell, calm down,” he’d said, his arm sliding from the wall to your upper arm, “For once, you’re safe with me.” Seeing you try to look over his shoulder again, Dabi had dragged you forward by the jaw to kiss you, closed-mouthed but hot, leaning into you, his mouth overwhelming you with hardly any effort on his end, and he’d kept kissing you, stroking your cheek with the back of his hand, until the nomu slinked into silence.
Dabi had broken off when the nomu scuttled farther down the alley. “Right.” He’d taken a deep breath. “You gonna tell anyone about me?”
You’d shaken your head, confused as to why he seemed more concerned about descriptions of him rather than descriptions of the murder. But he’d been nice to you. Had given you a hell of a first kiss. “I can say someone in the yakuza killed him.”
He’d roughly patted your cheek and dropped away from you, stowing his hands in the deep pockets of his coat. “His death isn’t worth reporting, but I’ll take it.” He’d spun on his heel, raising a lazy hand in a wave as he disappeared into the night. “You’d better hope you never see me again.”)
And now, here he was, hunched over shitty gas station snacks in his family kitchen, a spoon hanging out of his mouth while he stowed things away. His naturally white hair showed now, and…he seemed terribly shy. Dabi, shy. Fucking ridiculous. But, you supposed, there’s guilt and shame around, uh, doing what he did. And—and his body was horribly, horribly mangled and mottled. He might not think anyone should look at him.
Todoroki (Shouto, you supposed you should think of him as, since Dabi was a Todoroki, too) had mentioned not all of Dabi’s skin grafts were taking. It was obvious. He’d burnt up during the war, and while you’d heard Recovery Girl and Eri had worked on him, despite outside protests that he wasn’t worth it, he still was very clearly cobbled together.
He still had a lot of staples, though faded stitches filled in new gaps, and those that remained had been replaced with medical-grade staples that wouldn’t get infected. Patches of successful grafts left a waning diamond pattern, particularly around his neck. Very little purple, overall, but going by the scars, you could still tell where it had been. Based on his appearance, he shouldn’t be alive, let alone able to walk around.
But he scooted with such speed out of your way when you got ice out of the freezer. “But really, you could stick around with us, if you wanted to. No pressure, though, if you want to be alone.” Calmly. You were calmly popping ice out of a tray and letting them clatter into your glass. “We’re watching Hunter x Hunter right now, if you’re interested. Have you read or watched it before, either the 1999 or 2011 version? Do you have a favourite character?”
Dabi clutched his snacks and discarded clothes to his chest, almost at the door, with his eyes darting all around the kitchen except on you.
Yeah. Must be shy. You were one of the U.A. students who fought in the war, after all, even though you didn’t personally fight him in the end. Probably feels guilty about the whole thing. Shy could be refreshing, after those bitches in the living room and your cunning soulmate.
Finally, tentatively, Dabi shifted his belongings to his right arm, and he raised his left to pat his throat, swallowing so that his Adam’s apple bobbed.
“Oh,” you said, ice melting in your hand, “I’m sorry. Are you on vocal rest? Vocal cords messed up somehow?”
After a moment, Dabi nodded. He edged towards the hallway.
“Okay. I hope you feel better soon,” you said, and you poured your lemonade over the ice. “I’ve kept you long enough. Please go rest; I hope we don’t disturb you further.”
Before you finished, he’d already skibbled off, his house shoes slipping on the wood.
***
(The second time you’d met Dabi hadn’t been as hands-on, but it’d still left an odd impression.
It’d been in an urban jungle-type battle, after knowing his involvement the League but before his backstory reveal, and you and some classmates had been fighting a handful of PLF-aligned villains.
You’d slithered underneath a lean-to created by a partially collapsed building to catch your breath, along with shielding yourself from an explosion Bakugou had been building up. You hadn’t even known Dabi was in the group you were chasing, but he’d slinked underneath the same, protective ruins as you had, barely slipping underneath the cover before Bakugou’s explosion had shaken it.
Dabi had braced himself on the crumbling entrance, scrunching his face away from the explosion, and once it’d stopped, he’d noticed you were barely two paces away from him, sweat dribbling down your face the same as it’d been down his.
You still didn’t know if his startled, constipated expression had been of recognition or simple surprise to see someone else taking cover under something that could collapse and kill them. He’d taken in your U.A. gym uniform—your personal hero costume had been in repairs that week—and there’d been a couple of heavy seconds where neither of you had done anything besides pant and let sweat drip onto the rubble.
He'd slipped out first, since he’d been blocking the entrance, and you’d left soon after. You hadn’t been five steps out of the lean-to before someone on the PLF side had destroyed it, and in the privacy of your heart, you liked to think that Dabi had waited until you were out to raze it.)
***
You made it a habit to call Touya whenever the soulmate bond activated. Though he never initiated a call, he answered most of yours. What else was he going to do, if it were on your side, besides sit there in the dark? He continued to be hold information about himself like a miser clutching coins, but you found it refreshing to have a charismatic grouch of a pseudo-pen pal.
You’d closed the door of a library study room behind you as you called him this time, setting your stack of books on the table.
“You’re finally reading something besides manga? I thought your brain was gonna rot,” he said upon picking up.
You slung the strap of your purse over a chair. “No greeting? No admittance of missing the melodious sound of my voice?”
“Why in the hell would I do that,” he said over the screech of pulling out your chair.
“Because you missed the melodious sound of my voice?” You pulled out your notebook, flipped it to a new page, and fossicked around for a pen. Clicking the one you found, you reached for the first book in your stack, a rudimentary sign language dictionary, and you jotted down a list of common words as they came to you, such as thank you, help, and, of course, the all-important cat.
Touya clicked his tongue. “Are you seriously gonna make me study with you?”
You made the final stroke in the word pudding. “I don’t expect you to absorb the information. If you rather I read manga, I can go to that section for a while. Pick out a shoujo.”
“Get fucked with that otaku shit,” said Touya, and—he must have had his phone on speaker, because a couple of people were speaking to each other nearby about what must be the latest Assassins’ Creed, and the sound changed after some scrapes, with Touya sounding closer. “Why study sign language?”
“There’s someone in my life who recently became unable to talk all of the time,” you said, “and I’d like to help give him some way to communicate.”
“Just text him,” said Touya, “Well—never mind. Who’d wanna text you, anyway?”
“Sometimes, people put away their phones, Touya. Have you heard of it?” You drew a line down the half of your paper to make a new column, one sorting the words in groups—places, family members, requests, and the like.
“What are you getting out of it?” Touya must have scratched somewhere on his face, the sound coming over the phone. “You makin’ fun of him? Making him feel bad? If he wants to talk to you, he can just write shit down.”
“I think he might hate it because of how slow it is. And what if I luck out, and he knows sign already? Then half of my work is done for me,” you said, listing off all of the terms for family members, “Text-to-speech may be okay, but I don’t know. Still slow.”
“He probably doesn’t even want to talk to you,” said Touya, “let alone learn something for you. That’s a lot to ask for someone you ain’t fuckin’.”
You hummed and ignored him. You titled a new column Body, and the first word under it was burns. Followed by healing, surgery, hands, skin, hurt, and rest. For the first time in a while, Touya’s emotions were strong enough for you to feel, but you couldn’t name them. More like some pitiful, fearful soup, if anything, and other stuff you couldn’t put your finger on.
His voice still came in confidently derisive, though. “What kind of fucked up guy are you spreading your legs for, since those are what you’re writing down for his body? Seems like you’d be better off as a cocksleeve for someone else actually capable of fucking you.”
“Oh, rude! Rude!” Scowling, you set down your pen. “That’s rude to both me and him. I’m not talking to you anymore. Enjoy studying, asshole.” You flipped to a random page in the dictionary and started memorising, a bit too pissed to be productive for real, and you kept it up—if Touya were going to be here, then he’s not learning productive sign language, either. Try using marble and mare in everyday conversation, jackass.
Later, you caught yourself zoning out while staring at an entry, only shaking yourself out of it when Touya grumbled under his breath for you to turn the page already.
***
Todoroki paused the episode when the pizza arrived.
Moaning way too sensually, Kaminari stretched his arms above his head and arched his back. “My electricity is cooler than Killua’s, right? I have more swag than him?”
“No.”
“In your dreams.”
“Yikes.”
“Wrong,” said Shinsou, pelting him in the face with a popcorn kernel.
Kaminari picked it up off the floor and ate it mournfully. “I’m getting beaten by a fictional twelve year old.”
“I’m going to the bathroom,” you announced, pushing yourself up from your seat between Shinsou and Monoma (which was just as well, since they were comparing scans of the current manga chapter over your lap), and you set off with the intention going to the farthest bathroom to increase your chances of bumping into Dabi.
No such luck, even though you deliberately stomped your slippers as loudly as you could to try to draw him out. Sighing, you backtracked to a tiny bathroom you’ve used before, one that wasn’t as intimidatingly wealthy as the rest of the house and therefore actually felt like it was meant to be used, and you opened the creaking door onto an exhausted, shirtless Dabi trying to rub some sort of cream on the back of his neck, a massive jar open on the sink, blood seeping down his biceps at the strain around his staples.
Both of you froze. He took a quick glance to the gobs of cream on his hands and managed to kick the door shut from his seat on the closed toilet, but your foot caught in the door, which struck your nose and cheekbone, with you yelping and clutching the area.
“Sorry! I’m sorry,” you said through the crack in the door, shakily dragging your bruised foot out of it, “I didn’t know anyone was even in this side of the house. Are you okay? No, wait, sorry again—you’re bleeding; of course you’re not okay. I’m sorry.” You checked your nose for bleeding of your own, but nothing leaked out of your nose. “Can I—may I help with whatever you’re doing?”
No answer. But he hadn’t shut the door.
“Fine,” you said, and you spoke into the crack, only able to make out the granite on the near side of the sink. “I don’t know what’s going on with you nowadays, but I hope you’re doing okay. Or that you’ll be okay soon, at least. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through, and I’m sorry you had to go through it. But I can grasp, I think, that having a bunch of your brother’s friends over can be intimidating and isolating. If nothing else, I’d like to get to know you better—or you could just get to know me better, if you don’t feel like sharing—so that having all of us over isn’t as terrible. I’m sorry we’re bursting into your life when you’re working out a lot of stuff in recovery—”
Dabi yanked open the door, brow furrowed, and instead of looking at you, he clamped his slimy hands on the sink and stood on his toes to arch towards the mirror, opening his mouth wide to breathe hot air onto it, teeth bared, as if he were roaring. In its fleeting fog, he traced out kanji, streaked with lotion and hidden by his left hand as he wrote, and he blew over it a final time before stepping back and jabbing at the message.
Stop apologising.
“Ah—oh,” you said, while Dabi squatted and rooted through the cabinet under the sink, “Okay. I’ll try. Thank you for saying so.” How do you talk to someone who was formerly 1) an S-tier villain and, more importantly, 2) your longest-running crush?
Dabi plopped a meagre first-aid kit on the counter and pointed to the source of bleeding on one of his arms, the inside bicep where two staples had come loose.
“I don’t know shit about first-aid,” you said, reaching for the kit anyway, “I know you have to keep pressure on it, and stuff, but—”
And so the first time Dabi looked you in the eyes was to shoot you an incredulous, suspicious glare that accompanied his snatching the kit back from you, clutching it out of your reach. Relaxing once it was in his hands, he hesitated a moment, shifting his jaw, before nudging the open jar of lotion with his knuckle, reverting to his fixed gaze on his feet.
“I can do that,” you said, heart racing, “You wanna—why don’t you sit back down?”
Not lotion, you noted, as Dabi pulled out disinfectant wipes and a roll of gauze near its end, burn cream. Aw. You dipped your first three fingers into it (heavy, roll-around slimy, like holding a frog) and hoped to God that your soulmate didn’t tune in during this. Touya didn’t like a lot of things you did, but he’d probably loathe your gawking over the scarred back of someone who wasn’t him.
Yeah, Touya would probably hate how you would hone in, laser-sharp, each time Dabi’s muscles flexed as he wrapped his wound, how the space between his shoulder blades with the tiny dent along his spine (well, his spine indented at the top of his back, where he was broader and still held muscle, and poked out towards his lower back as he bent over) held your focus far too long to be impersonal—and you got to touch it. You kept the contact to your fingertips, because as much as you wanted to flatten your hands to feel every moving tendon, you didn’t want to scare him. He’s probably not used to outside touch, and you shouldn’t come on too strongly, especially when someone else’s soul was fucking bound to yours.
But as your fingers smoothed over the marks around his shoulders where burns used to be, skin cold to the touch, as Dabi turned his head to the side just barely so that he could watch you out of his periphery, you found it hard to remind yourself that you already had a Touya. Can’t have two.
“I know it’s none of my business, but, uh, if you’re on vocal rest this often, I could—I could help you learn some sign language?” You scratched underneath your eye in a nervous gesture and smeared some of the burn cream on your cheek. “Nothing intensive. Only simple, everyday stuff, like—well. I don’t know what frequents your vocabulary. You don’t have to, but I’m offering. Just in case.”
In the mirror, Dabi halted in tying the gauze to glare up at you, his lip curling up in flash of a sneer.
“Okay, that’s cool. That’s fine. I can—I can leave a sign language book with your brother, if you—if you ever change your mind.” You nodded, just to have some sort of reaction he could see, and he tucked away the disinfectant wipes and tossed the empty roll of gauze into the trash bin. “Hey,” you said, noting how he’d only bled at his left arm, which was covered with mottled patches of skin, staples, and stitches, along with the faint diamond-pattern of skin grafts, while his right arm needed no medical attention, pale and unblemished without any sign of damage, “What’s up with—if you’re comfortable with sharing, why doesn’t your right arm have any scars? Was Recovery Girl able to heal that more effectively, or something?”
Holding your gaze in the mirror, Dabi raised his eyebrows, nearly vanishing under the drooping, white spikes of his hair, and he reached over with his left hand to rub his thumb over his right shoulder and curving down into his armpit.
He actually laughed (a laugh through his nose, yes, and one without the humming sort of vocalisation usually accompanying a laugh through a nose, but a laugh nevertheless) at how hard you jumped when he popped off what was apparently a prosthetic.
***
“If you hate gardening this much, why keep doing it?” you asked, once again trapped in Touya’s perspective late at night while he tended to a traditional, Japanese garden. You lay flat on your back in bed, hands and phone resting on your chest (laptop closed to the side. Your essay was due at eight o’clock in the morning. Would Present Mic accept late work due to soulmate interference?).
“Lots of dumb fucking reasons that all fold in together,” said Touya, shovelling gravel out of a wheelbarrow and into the man-made brook he was trying to shape, “One: my stupid fucking family has decided that doing this earthy shit would calm me down. Zen gardening, or whatever.”
“Oh, do you have issues controlling your anger, Touya?”
“Stop that. Two.” Gravel pittered off the shovel blade, falling into the trickling water with a series of tiny plops. “One of my brothers brought up how Mom always liked the garden but was stopped from taking care of it herself, and since I did some shit to—it’s not like I could’ve helped it; they were keeping stuff from her, too. Anyway, Mom’s fucking sad nowadays. Better, but sad.” Touya sank the shovel into the gravel to lean on it, tracking the flow of the water for a moment, twisting through the previous path currently being overtaken by moss and fallen stone. “And my brother thinks the garden being fancy again will make our mom happy, especially if I’m the one to do it. Dick. Saying if we hired people to do it, it wouldn’t be the same. Started with just the damn fish, but now the whole fucking thing’s my job. It’s fucking shit. It’s blackmail and family obligation and rent all at once. It’s a fuckin’ nasty trick.”
Touya dug into the wheelbarrow again. “And my fa—that guy had the nerve to suggest that I needed something to do during the day. As if I’m not busy enough.”
“During the day? Touya, I’ve only seen you garden at night.”
“Because it’s too damn hot outside all the time. And I don’t want anyone watching me. I’m no one’s business. But I bet they’d like staring out of a window at me, while I break my fucking body again moving all of these shitty rocks and shaping Mom’s fucking evergreens.” He shovelled with deep malice. “Did you fucking know that there’s goddamn symbolism in these shitty gardens? That you can’t just put things anywhere without it meaning something? Somehow ponds are supposed to be oceans. Rocks are supposed to be mountains. Forced perspective shit, paired with tenets of Zen and Shinto, and it’s the pettiest, most unnecessary bullshit I’ve ever had to deal with, and I dealt with a friend’s abominable driving for years. Never got any better at it, even though I got fucking motion sick.”
He knelt, and when two, fat glops of Touya’s sweat dripped onto the stone at the impact, you rather enjoyed the gentle wafting about your dorm room at the blades of your ceiling fan.
He must have felt your appreciation. “Stop that. I’m making a point. Look at this shit,” he said, gesturing to the brook and then up at the three-quarter moon, “I’ve gotta change the course of the water, because it’s better to face towards the moon to capture its reflection, and I’ve gotta make it somehow cascade or waterfall at some point over there.” He pointed far across the garden towards a flickering pair of stone lanterns. “How am I supposed to do that? I can’t even make it flow through gravel right. I might have to move some of the stepping stones again. I fucking hate those things. They’re too heavy for one person, and I’ve already had to rearrange them because some of them weren’t fucking weathered or natural-looking enough.”
“Sure. Death to aesthetics,” you said, blindly feeling around for a pack of gum you kept in your bedside table, “I’d come help you if I could, but somebody—”
“You’re not getting a location out of me, princess.”
You paused, hand on the knob of the first drawer, and a wide, smug smile broke across your face (Princess, Touya? You’re gonna call me princess? You sure you don’t care about me?).
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything!”
“I could feel it,” said Touya, flexing his fingers on his knees, “so shut up.”
Gloved hands clenched into fists, he glared at the brook, the gravel, up at the moon, and back into the water.
“You know, it looks like if you moved most of the gravel to one side, the water might flow the direction you need it to.”
“Who’s the one busting their ass here, me or you?” But he plunged his hands into the water, grabbed heaping fistfuls of rocks, and patted them onto the far side of the stone bed.
“Touya,” you said, feeling around in your drawer for the pack of gum, “Take your gloves off! You’re gonna ruin the leather.”
“Like I care.” He dragged more gravel underwater. “If I took ’em off, you’d see my hands.”
“Come off of it, Touya. I bet they’re perfectly fine,” you said, successfully grabbing gum and sliding your drawer shut, “Hands are often the most attractive part of a man.”
He paused, water flowing around his arms up to his elbows (he wouldn’t roll up his sleeves, either. Stubborn boy. He must hate whatever’s going on with him). “Not the dick?” He sounded like he was grinning.
“Not always. Some of them look like sad, sea creatures,” you said, unwrapping your gum into your phone’s speaker to annoy him, “It takes talent to have a pretty cock. Hands, however, can easily be lusted over because of what they’re capable of. Or what you know they’ve done.”
(Hee hoo hah, like burn down a city. You’re so normal about it.)
“Not how they look?”
“Appearance can help, but it’s not the whole cow,” you said, chewing while the flavour faded fast.
Touya scoffed, his fingers sinking into gravel. “You makin’ fun of me?”
What? “Of course not. Why?”
“Don’t say shit like that to get on my good side. I’m more than aware I ain’t got anything besides my shitty personality goin’ for me.” He cleared his throat. “That sign language guy got anything I don’t?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You sure seem obsessed with him,” said Touya, leaning more deeply into the water, soaking his hoodie even more, “even though he sounds pathetic. You tryin’ to fix him to make yourself look good?”
“Of course not. I know no one can fix anyone else. He has to choose to do that himself,” you said, “Not that there’s anything about him that merits fixing.”
Laughing (oh? hot), Touya scooped a handful of gravel out of the wheelbarrow to add it to the far side. “Yeah, you’re fucking obsessed with him. Am I not your soulmate?”
You rolled your eyes, even though he couldn’t see it (and…you…couldn’t see it). “You haven’t given me anything to obsess over, unless you want me to research gardening tips or how to breed carp.”
“I would love for you to be obsessed with breeding, sweet—”
“Oh, my God, you have to ease into that sort of thing, Touya.”
He pulled his hands out of the brook, drenched sleeves gushing water back into it. “D’you want me to start with how much I wanna suck on your perfect tits?”
“Touya,” you said carefully, shoving the gum to one cheek, “Is everything okay? You’re acting—strange.”
“What do you—”
“Where’s the blind hatred for me? Where’s the disdain?”
Sitting back on his knees, Touya shoved his leather-wet-dripping hands into the damp, double pocket of his hoodie with a muted slosh. “You think I hate you?”
“You’re that rude to people you don’t hate?”
Water seeped through the pocket and through his jeans, visibly darker in the moonlight and soaking his thighs. “Fuck off. I mean—what I mean is that I’m not used to people like you. Who don’t talk like me. Who aren’t mean to me back. Or who don’t seem to want anything from me. Didn’t know you really thought I was rude.”
You screwed up your face. “Who have you been hanging out with? What the hell is wrong with you? Spend time with people who like you, please?”
“No one likes me—”
“Get your head out of your ass, edgelord,” you said, sitting up in bed and holding the phone up to your mouth, “Newsflash, dipshit, it sounds like lots of people like you. Your brother, who wants to help you make your mom happy, in an easy, physical way that you’re more than capable of. Your mom, who sounds like she’s happier now that you’re back in her life. The rest of your goddamn family, who want you close by so that they can help you if you ever fucking accepted it. Your stupid friends who are into Assassins’ Creed.”
“Stop fucking noticing things about—”
“And me. I like you, dipshit. Get over yourself. You’re digging yourself your own lonely, self-deprecating hole, where I guess you’re at your most comfortable. But tonight alone you’ve shown in your garden that you fucking hate digging holes. They mean unnecessary work.”
Inhaling sharply, you threw your phone into the bedspread, but all that came through was a distant deer scare, bamboo hitting rock.
“Since when do you like me?” he asked, pushing on his knees to stand.
The artificial-yellow light from your lamp starting creeping in around the rim of your vision, blotting out parts of Touya’s silhouette in the moonlight. “I talk to you, don’t I? I wouldn’t even acknowledge the bond if I weren’t open to—we’ve been hanging out. You didn’t know?”
“Like I would know what that looks like,” said Touya, the walls of your room coming into view while Touya pulled his own phone out of his inner pocket, tapping the screen to see how long the call has lasted, “Like I would know how someone like you would behave when they like me.”
“Stay on the goddamn phone,” you said in the moment his thumb hovered over the end call button, the last thing you made out before fully sinking back into your dorm room, “If you don’t know what I—well, what does your love look like, Touya? What do you do when you like someone?”
“Sexually? Romantically?”
“Not necessarily,” you said, pissed to have the connection severed and sliding off of the bed to turn off the lights, “Just when you care for someone at all.”
“Gimme a minute,” came Touya’s voice, and after you flipped the lights and the ceiling fan off, you wandered over to your window, switched your phone off speaker, and held it to your ear as you stared up at the same moon Touya was under, and you waited.
“Right, I don’t know for sure,” he said after a while (but it sounded like he’d stopped dealing with the gravel to think about it), “but this is the only thing that’s coming to mind. Before I was living at home again, me and some friends didn’t have consistent sources of food. Don’t interrupt to say you’re sorry. But. So, whenever I’d, uh, buy stuff. From a store. I’d make sure I got some sort of snack for whoever I was with, even though we were all too proud to ask for shit. Didn’t really think about doing it on purpose. But I guess I did.”
“You are deliciously, delightfully, tender as fuck,” you said, clenching a fist over your heart, your boob jostling with the fervent impact (and it pleased you knowing that Touya would’ve laughed if he’d seen), and you kept talking over his sounds of disapproval. “And I am gonna cook for you. I am going to set you a table so vast that you’re gonna be eating off it for a long, long time. You’re never gonna be fucking hungry ever again, Touya.”
When he didn’t answer, you worried you said the wrong thing, but you stayed on the line, listening. Two minutes later, he hung up, and you could have sworn he cut off in the middle of a wet sniffle.
***
What can you cook? What were you good at cooking that actually constituted a filling meal?
Start small, you supposed.
Fuyumi kept the Todoroki kitchen much more well-stocked than the kitchen to which you had access, and so, with welcome permission, you headed over to the estate earlier than the scheduled viewing time to prepare, with Shinsou and Todoroki hanging out in the kitchen with you.
“Jirou says she can attend,” said Todoroki, thumb swiping across his phone screen, “Turns out her tipping point was stating the merits of studying Melody’s music powers. She’s asking if Yaoyorozu may attend as well?”
“It’s your house.” Shinsou was folding his napkin into an origami frog. “If there’s a need for excuses, you can always say Yao might like—I forget his name, but he’s that character in the Phantom Troupe whose hair looks like a mop? She might like analysing how his power lets him copy anything, even though it doesn’t have the same limitations like her quirk.”
“I will mention that,” said Todoroki, nodding sagely.
The plan was simple: with a captive audience of anime nerds, you could get feedback on your cooking until it was good enough for Touya (a small part of you still cringed thinking about how he reacted to your potato wedges). You would lure your friends into a state of complacency with your smaller dishes—baked goods, and the like—until there was no escape when you served them something more filling, like soups.
Today, you were making teeny little lemon ricotta pancakes (the recipe called for them to be regular-sized, but if you made them around the size of a potato chip, it would be more accessible to eat with fingers in the living room) that gave you the air of being fancy but were actually mindless to make, it turned out, and right now, you were stirring the stewing blueberry syrup that you’d decided would be a dipping sauce rather than drizzled over—the Todorokis had an excess of white furniture, and you would like to be invited to use their kitchen again.
“I think,” you said, once the syrup was behaving like syrup when you let it dribble out of the ladle back into the pot, “I’m gonna take some to your brother. I don’t want him feeling left out, if he comes through. He’s home right now, yeah?”
“He’s in his teahouse. It’s towards the back of the garden.” Todoroki got up from the table. “Do you want me to show you?”
“I’m sure I can find it, since it’s the only building not connected to the main one,” you said, but you did accept his help finding a tray and sauce cup for the syrup, and once it was set, you picked up the tray and strode with purpose towards the garden.
Walking through its seemingly-natural landscape while balancing food and liquids proved to be miraculously easy. Their hired gardeners must be doing insane upkeep to ensure its deliberate, natural-but-not cosiness. You made a mental note to ask Touya what some of the structures symbolised, like the recurring patterns of three rocks of different heights close together. He’d know, reluctantly, since he did stuff like this, and you considered his work to be superior to this, anyway.
In the blistering sun, you had to narrow your eyes to slits, regretting that both of your hands were full so that you couldn’t shield them from the light, and you found a gated, stone path to the teahouse. Clearly, it had once been slightly dilapidated but had since been worked on; another room had been latched on to the side to double its size, judging by the change in architecture styles, and the roof reflected sunlight a little too well for its polished, stone tiles to be less than a year old.
Bracing the tray, you took the steep step onto the neatly swept, bamboo engawa running around the edge of the teahouse, and you—was the door around to the side? Around the left side of the original part of the tearoom, two shoji panels had been spread to let in sunlight upon an empty room with an actual fucking sunken hearth, unlit, with one of the same fire-fish as on the estate’s roofs for the crank’s lever. Behind what would have been the seat of honour stood a dishevelled tokonoma, devoid of scrolls or incense burners but instead housing an unzipped backpack atop a long coat, its sleeves trailing onto the floor outside the tokonoma, with sticky notes taped to its inner wall. A red-tinted wood dresser had been pushed into the corner, tissues and hand sanitiser atop it and a single stack of books propped next to it.
A pair of boots was tucked inside the open shoji. Maybe he’s asleep.
At your first step inside, you jolted so hard you had to struggle to hold onto the tray—the floor had chirped at you. Dead ringer for a bird call. Tentatively, you took another step, and it chirped again, this time with a bit of a wheeze, more artificial-sounding.
You jumped and stumbled again at another wall sliding open, giving the impression that a flock of birds had flown inside, and Dabi poked his head through the gap (you could make out the gleaming pause screen of a gaming system in the newer room behind him). His face had relaxed when he’d seen it was you, but it pinched into a strange, unnameable expression when he saw what you were carrying.
“Hi,” you said, holding out the tray, “I’ve made too many snacks for the anime group today, so I thought you might like some? I can take it away, if you don’t want any.”
Since he probably didn’t know the amount of people attending nowadays, he probably didn’t recognise your lie. Dabi held up a finger for you to wait while he exhumed a short table and two floor seats from storage in the walls, and he waited for you to sit before he did, slowly, crossing his legs on the cushion, his joints creaking.
“They’re little lemon ricotta pancakes. Todo—Shouto told me you didn’t have any food allergies, so it should be fine. That’s blueberry syrup,” you said when he pointed at it. “I’m—I guess you could say I’m practising recipes for cooking for someone else. If you don’t like it, please let me know. I’ll make it better next time.”
Dabi fiddled with two of the tiny pancakes before selecting one, inspecting it in the sunlight, and dipping it into the syrup (you went a little crazy when it dripped onto his tongue stitches, but you managed to suppress it). As he chewed and swallowed loudly, Dabi’s eyes bulged, brow furrowed, and he, panicked, fumbled around for probably his phone, patting the pockets on his jeans. Hands pausing after slapping the empty pockets on his ass, he sprung up, grabbed a pen off of the dresser, and snatched a sticky note off of the inner wall of the tokonoma. He returned to the table and knelt half on the seat, scribbling furiously, and when he pushed the sticky note to you, under a crossed-out potting soil, sledgehammer, he’d written fuck you marry me NOW.
There’s a moment in which you forgot, a moment in which you laugh, head tilted back, flooded with endorphins at your long-time, pseudo-celebrity crush liking something you made to even joke about being in a relationship with you. You opened your mouth to make some joke about how you’d like to go on a few dates first, to have some sort of courtship, but you stopped at the first word: “Touya.” You cut yourself off, brow pinched. You can’t have two.
Not that…not that Dabi/Touya could ever genuinely like you, who fought against him and now witnessed his debasement, but in the far-flung chance that he could, you should clarify about your Touya.
“Touya,” you said again, this time sober and grim, hands folded on your lap, “I know you were only joking, but I was in a quirk-related incident a while ago, and it assigned me a soulmate. So, even if you could like me, I’ve got someone waiting. Presumptuous of me to say, I know, but. I want to treat you with kindness and not make you wonder, in the case it arises. Funnily enough, his name is Touya, too—”
Your phone rang loudly in your back pocket (you kept it on loud nowadays so you could easily feel around for Touya’s call, but it’d led you to awkward moments like this, too). Dabi scowled when you brought it out to silence it and dipped another pancake in the syrup, letting it absorb what it could to tinge it purple.
“It’s him, actually. Odd timing.” Lying flat in your palm, your phone flashed an incoming call from Touya. Leaning across the table, Dabi grabbed it out of your hands to answer it, put it on speaker, and lay it in the centre of the table while he ate his soggy pancake, shaking his head when you moved to undo all of that.
“Hey,” came a tinny, raspy voice that was very much not your Touya’s, “You’re the soulmate, right?”
Dabi shouldn’t have to hear this. Before you could tap the speaker button again, Dabi swatted your hand out of the way, gesturing for you to answer.
“Uh, yeah,” you said, shifting in your seat, “Who are you? Where’s—”
“Tell Touya he left his phone at my place the next time you see through him.” A repetitive, techno instrumental played in the background (video game music?). “At Shiiiiiiiimura’s place. Yeah.”
“I can do that, Shimura,” you said, unsure if you should hold out the vowel as long as he did, and perhaps you can take advantage of the situation for a brief moment, because Dabi was staring at your phone with a constipated sort of expression as he listened. “I can’t control when the bond activates, but I’ll let him know. Do you know what sort of food he likes?”
Shimura barked out a laugh, filling the room in a wide, cleansing way you wouldn’t expect from someone with his scratchy voice. “I heard your potato wedges are shit.”
You sputtered, “He didn’t even have any—”
Dabi ended the call, frowning, shaking his head, and tipping your phone off the table to gently bounce twice when it hit the tatami. He held up a tiny pancake and made a show of looking at it, at you, and back at it, and he shot you an aggressive thumbs-up.
***
Uraraka spent an entire patrol gushing about how she would fuck the author of Hunter x Hunter if she could, so she showed up to the next get-together, along with Asui, whom everyone already thought would be friends with the story’s protagonist if he were real. When you Aoyama caught you in the act of stealing one of his posh cookbooks, you explained the situation to him, and so he tagged along to taste what you were cooking, along with supplying some of the fancier ingredients you wouldn’t’ve known how to obtain. Then you’d asked Sato for advice on how to make the swirl in a strawberry swirl loaf not go to shit, and then the group had spent a few hours discussing the good relationships with animals that Hunters are inherently supposed to have, so Kouda was summoned for his opinions.
The long of short of it was that there were many more spectators than necessary to when Dabi strode into the viewing room, drenched in sweat from his walk back home, to pelt the back of your head with a two-pack of Sakeru cheese. As you rubbed the back of your head, pulling the cold plastic from between your shirt collar and skin, he at least had the decency to drop the single-wrapped fish bread into your lap.
“Hey, Touya,” you said, grabbing his hand before he could skitter away as usual (his wide eyes couldn’t decide to look at both of your hands or at your face), “I’ve set aside slices of both strawberry swirl bread and garlic bread for you in the kitchen. I recommend heating the garlic bread up so the cheese gets all melty again, but it’s good at room temperature, too. Thank you, by the way. For these.”
Nodding hastily, Dabi tore his hand away from your in two, spasming jerks, and he slithered into the kitchen.
Though the rest were watching the show, Shinsou was turned towards you, his head tilted with an incredulous sort of smile. You stuck your tongue out at him and crinkled open the cheese.
Dabi returned with both slices on a paper towel and stood behind you at the couch for a minute, watching the episode. Shifting his weight, he pulled out his phone. “This is garbage,” came a droning, text-to-speech voice from behind.
He stood behind the couch for three more episodes.
***
Through another moonlit, soulmate connection, Touya was failing to prod stray ducks out of the koi pond with the skimmer.
“They’re tenacious little bastards,” you said, sitting on the counter of the dorm kitchen and praying to God that the oven timer wouldn’t go off while you couldn’t see.
“Why. Won’t they. Move.” Touya nudged a duck with the flat of the skimmer, its width as long as the entire duck, and the duck kept gabbing to its friends. “I have no idea if ducks upset the chemical balance of the water enough to kill koi; I’ve never seen them in here before ten minutes ago. Goddamn.” He waved the skimmer over the water’s surface, filtering some debris, and he flipped it onto a duck, who remained vexingly apathetic at the new source of wet. “Tonight was gonna be easy; I was only gonna put up windchimes; I was gonna get to go to bed early. Now I—no, no, no, don’t—!”
One duck bit at the skimmer net, and having pierced it, the duck led the rest of them to the centre of the pond, where the skimmer couldn’t reach, no matter how Touya strained.
“I fucking hate birds,” said Touya, slamming the skimmer on the ground, “and I fucking hate fish. They’re not even good when they’re alive.” Seeming to have a change of heart, Touya picked the skimmer up and took care to lean it against the stone wall of the pond. “Tell me something good, won’t you?”
Does that imply you don’t have to work on any fish dishes? “You’ll be thrilled to hear that my little anime analysis group is almost through the Hunter x Hunter anime, probably. We got to the end of the 1999 version last night.”
Touya sat and splayed his legs on the koi pond stone, watching the moon’s reflection ripple as koi tails broke surface tension. “That’ll only make your process more streamlined, since you’re not watching two episodes covering the same chapters in conjunction anymore. The Chimera Ant arc takes forever, though. You’re not almost done.”
Groping around for your oven mitts, you smiled. “How do you know that, Touya? Thought you hated—”
“What are you going to watch next?”
Stupid boy. Shy boy. “Well, Sero is pushing for Pokémon since there’s so much of it.”
“God, no,” said Touya, leaning back on his hands, “Iconic, yeah. Fun, not really, because in the games, you’re the one getting to battle and bond with the things. It’s not fun to watch someone else get to do it.”
“I can rely on you for negative reviews of everything.” Oven mitt? Oven mitt. Now, where’s its pair? “You want a pokémon, Touya? Which ones?”
“You are such a fucking child—”
“You want a pikachu, don’t you?”
“Hell, no,” Touya spat, “None of that cliché shit. Pikachu isn’t even that good. I—” Cutting himself off, he hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his gloved hands together. “You’ll shit on me for it. Forget I said anything.”
“Should I let you make fun of me first?” You slipped on the other mitt. “I’m cliché as hell. My top choice is either a certain starter or an eevolution.”
“No, I—”
“All right. How about you tell me your favourite as a kid and the one you would choose now?”
“You’re pushy as hell. When I was a kid, I wanted a Ninetales. I was—my mom had read enough for me to know about traditional kitsune,” said Touya, and he ducked his head to stare between his legs (crotch unfortunately hidden in shadow), “and Ninetales is immune to fire. It can use it and not burn up, and it’s not affected by outside fire attacks.”
The memory of rubbing burn cream across Dabi’s shoulders and how delicate his skin looked surfaced. You wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “You scared of being burned, Touya?”
Touya kicked the stone beneath his boot, scuffing it. “Just seems like it’d be neat.”
“Perfectly reasonable,” you said, wrapping your muppet-y, mitted hands around the oven handle in preparation for whenever it would go off, “and a perfectly logical pokémon to latch onto. It’s fairly popular. I don’t see how I’m supposed to make fun of you for that.”
“Sure.” Touya bent farther to re-tie his bootlaces. “I like my current choice for a dumb as hell reason, though. Shiiiiiiiimura,” said Touya, yanking the laces tightly (and he dragged out Shimura’s name, too. Was that the proper pronunciation?), “was trying to hype us up for something stupid we had to do that some of our friends were scared of. Shimura’s teacher—’scuse me, abusive fucking manipulative shithead of an adoptive father—wanted him to make a speech to show leadership, or some bullshit. Instead, Shimura pulled out his phone and showed us someone’s video of playing one of the early Pokémon games, for the battle at the end to win the game. And to defeat the last boss’s toughest Dragonite, the player used this…this fuckin’ weak-ass, all-around insignificant pokémon picked up from the beginning of the game, and it fuckin’ won. It won against the toughest opponent, and—and Shimura was saying, oh, the Venomoth is us, and we can win against our big-ass enemy, oh, ho, ho—”
“Excuse me. A Venomoth? You only use them temporarily at the beginning of the game, when you don’t have anything cool yet. They fucking suck.”
“See, you’re making fun of me. I’m not going to say anything else.” Touya leant back on his hands again, this time crossing his legs to prop his ankle on his opposite knee.
“No, I’m—I’m sorry. Sorry. First impressions. But you’re convincing me. Go on. I’m listening.”
Touya flicked water towards the ducks. “Are you gonna keep insulting—”
“I won’t! I won’t,” you said, sliding off the kitchen counter to stand directly in front of the oven, “So, Venomoths. I hear they’re fantastic.”
Touya rolled his eyes, and it was cute, you thought, how you had to follow the motion, seeing the moon at the upwards roll and back at its reflection in the pond. “Yeah. I bet Shimura’s forgotten all about it, but it stuck with me. Not immediately—at the time it was stupid, and to be fair, it’s still stupid. But now that I’m back here, living at home, it’s—it’s stupid. It’s, like, if that stupid fucking bug can defeat a goddamn dragon, then I can tend the garden. I can keep that stupid tsukubai clean. I can hang out with my brother. I can fucking—” He cut himself off again, this time striking the water hard enough to splash one of the ducks (it quacked at him with disdain and simply swam a couple of centimetres away).
“Do what, Touya?” The oven timer started beeping, and you tensed. “Hold on; don’t say anything. Don’t say—I have to concentrate; I’m getting stuff out of an oven.”
Touya stirred the pondwater with his ring and middle fingers while you blindly approximated the logistics of getting the tray out of the oven, and by standing at the oven’s side inside of reaching into it from the front, you were eventually able to remove the tray and rest it on the counter above it—you’re not going to bother feeling around for the pot holders.
When you sighed in relief once you’d closed the oven again, Touya asked, “What are you cooking?”
“Strawberry cheesecake muffins,” you said, frowning in the tray’s general direction, “They’re supposed to have a marbling effect, and I’m supposed to be putting on some sort of streusel-type sugar on top right now, but I’m not gonna risk it. I hope they’re done. You have to trust the recipe’s bake time with cheesecakes exactly, so I’m hoping it’s the same for—”
“I am gonna make you come so hard,” Touya was saying in a strained sort of way as he ran his hands down his face, “I am gonna fuck you so hard that you leave in a permanent dent in my mattress. I am gonna hold you and kiss the back of your neck and make you cry out as you gush around my fingers. You’re—you’re so fucking per—I am gonna take care of you back.”
“Cool.” Right, so bake the muffins again at some point. “Do you have any food allergies?”
“I’m allergic to you not saying anything hot in response to what I just said.”
Sure, Touya. “I’m also gonna make you this really sexy tomato soup with what the recipe calls a grilled cheese top. It’s got cheesy bread cut into chunks that coat the surface so that you can’t even see the red, and it melts into the soup—”
“Stop, I can only get so hard—”
“Show me your cock, then.”
“No,” said Touya, deliberately looking at a trio of fish convening near the pond’s surface, their o-shaped mouths blorbing and blobbing underneath the water towards Touya’s waving fingers, “I meant—well, first, you are gonna make that soup, pl—please—but I meant that—I mean.” He twirled his finger under the water, and the koi were fascinated. One of them kissed his finger. You were feeling a similar impulse—and perhaps that’s what prompted Touya to continue. “I came the first time someone stuck their tongue in my mouth.”
It occurred to you that anyone could be walking by the dorm kitchen to overhear. Now that the muffins were out of the oven, you elected to turn off the speaker setting to hold you phone to your ear. “I’m sorry, what?”
“I was sixteen and insane with hormones, and it hadn’t been long since I’d woken up from—well. When someone kissed me with tongue for the first time, I came in my pants. Taken completely by surprise that someone was even kissing me, that someone could even want me when I look like—and then that. We were outside, on a public bridge, during the day. I haven’t seen that fucker since.”
You had been contemplating whether it’d be worth fumbling around for a knife to ease the muffins out of the tray, but all cogs stopped at Touya’s story. “Why are you telling me this?”
“So you’ll tell me something back. I already told you some embarrassing shit about pokémon and shit, so you have to embarrass yourself back. You’re the one who brought up cocks, anyway. So—so you have to share something back,” said Touya, allowing a fish to rub up against his hand in a pseudo-sort of petting it, “Something about when you were young and stupid.”
“And preferably sexual, right? I know what you’re about, you shy, baby boy.”
“Ffffffuck that.I ain’t shy—”
“You won’t show me your face, Touya. You’re scared for me to see it. Shy boy.”
Touya scratched along the side of the koi like it wanted, and another nudged the back of his hand to be scratched, too. “Fuck off.”
“I’ve only told one other person about my first kiss,” you said, moving to sit on the counter again, “Wanna hear that story?”
“Fine,” said Touya, and he pulled his hand out of the pond, flicking water off his fingers and into the open, mournful mouths of the koi he’d been petting. “You had better be about to tell me about seeing through me at that coffee shop.”
“Come off of it, Touya; isn’t it better for me to have outside experience and still choose you regardless? My first kiss was way before that,” you said, hoping how pleased you were at his mild possessiveness was being transferred to his side of the bond, “and I didn’t even know the guy’s name at the time. And it was—it could’ve turned really bad, really quickly. Because my first kiss was with Dabi, before he made his villain debut.”
“Do—huh?” Touya shook his head, causing you to wince and steady yourself at the dizziness. “Beg pardon? Beg your fucking pardon? I didn’t—know that that Dabi guy went around kissing people.”
“He did at least once. It was back in freshman year, and I was out at night during my hero internship.” Getting comfortable on the kitchen counter, you crossed your legs and leant against the cabinets to support your back, exhaustion kicking in. “Some older sidekick hit on me in what was an exceedingly creepy way—he made it pseudo-incestuous by saying I reminded him of his daughter. In retrospect, the interaction could have gone much, much worse, if Dabi hadn’t inadvertently rescued me—scratch that, it may have been intentional, looking back, because he’d said stuff about the sidekick being a shitty father, and now he’s, uh, let us know about his own dad.”
It took Touya a moment. At least he wasn’t shaking his head anymore. “Are you saying Dabi burnt some guy to death in front of you, and you still kissed him?”
You sucked in through your teeth. “Not exactly. I didn���t know it at the time, but he was testing out a nomu, and that ripped the other guy to pieces. And—this is gonna sound wild—I think Dabi may have kissed me to comfort me? I know it was a distraction from the gore and from getting a good look at the nomu, but I think he may have also done it to calm me down. It was—oddly sweet.”
Touya gripped the edge of the stone wall, his fingers dipping into water (but not deep enough to remoisten his leather gloves) and koi swarming. “What did the nomu look like?”
Even though you couldn’t see it, you held your phone away from your ear for a second to shoot it an incredulous look. “Wha—Touya, weren’t you going to ask if he were a good kisser, or something?”
His knuckles popped when he clenched his fingers and asked flatly, “Was he a good—”
“You’re better.”
“Thanks,” he said, not sounding like he cared about that at all, letting a koi drag his hand into the water by biting his finger, “What did the nomu look like?”
“God, I don’t fucking know. That wasn’t important to me. I, uh—it was around the size of a good-sized dog, like a golden retriever or a lab. I don’t—I guess it walked on all fours,” you said, wondering why the fuck—oh, the dizziness must not have come only from Touya shaking his head, because it’s sweeping over you again, waves emanating from the bond. “Now that I’ve seen other nomu, I can recognise that its head looked whacky because its brain was exposed, and I think its skin was more green-tinged than the others who had that navy-black colour going on. Honestly, Touya, I wasn’t—”
Through the phone came such a strident, alarming crack that you halted mid-sentence to listen for it again. It’d come from Touya’s side, clearly, but nothing in his line of vision betrayed its source, although—and you would not have noticed this if you hadn’t been scanning his environment for any hint—something that looked like split glass frosted the inside of Touya’s fist before he unclenched his hand a second later, any illusion of something there melting into the water.
But something was wrong. “Touya?”
“You still see that Dabi guy when you watch anime at Shouto’s house, yeah? Stay on the line,” he said, darkness of the bond fading drabbling at the edges of his vision from your perspective.
“I am,” you said, uncrossing your legs, “I do.”
“What do you think of him? Ugly fucker, isn’t he?” Touya fell still as a duck approached him as it navigated through the water lilies, and Touya’s outstretching his hand to its head was the last thing you saw before the bond gave out. “Still as pathetic as he was in the war? Think he should be in prison?”
“Negative reviews of people, negative reviews of television, negative reviews of potato wedges—so cool, bro. Now say something true and beautiful.”
“Answer me, damn it.” A disgruntled quack.
“You’d better not be strangling that duck.”
“You think so little of me? Do you want me to put the duck on the phone?”
“I don’t think it could sit comfortably,” you said, pushing yourself off the counter and walking to the knife drawer now that you could see, “I see Dabi every once in a while when I’m at Todoroki’s house. He’s shy. I don’t mind. It’s not my place to assume anything, but. I don’t think he’s doing okay, since it seems like he’s spent a good part of his life wanting someone to look at him, to pay attention, and now he’s getting that in a way he probably didn’t anticipate, and I want him to be okay. I think I’d like to help him get there, if he’d let me. But I know I’m nobody important to him, and that’s fine.”
“Sounds a lot like pity,” said Touya, and when you made a noise of protest, he kept going. “Or maybe you’re fucked up enough that you like him? From when he kissed you?”
You couldn’t exactly tell your soulmate that you’ve been suppressing naïve, celebrity-crush-type feelings for someone else. “Well,” you said, grimacing as you slid knife edge between a muffin and the tray and started to remove it, “He’s very babygirl-coded.”
***
TOUYA 🐠🚷
looked it up. definition of babygirl does NOT help
TOUYA 🐠🚷
incidentally
TOUYA 🐠🚷
what should a guy wear to impress someone
YOU
a guy? or you specifically?
YOU
because i am, of course about to suggest the golden standard of rolling up thy sleeves to thy elbows, but you won’t even showing your fucken hands asldkjfa;
TOUYA 🐠🚷
gloves necessary.
TOUYA 🐠🚷
but think formal. formal setting.
YOU
why are YOU going to a formal event?
TOUYA 🐠🚷
have to. blackmail/family obligation/rent.
TOUYA 🐠🚷
open to suggestions. about style more than brand, because if I go too expensive, my dad will think I’m making him pay a lot as sabotage.
YOU
and here i was about to recommend that you go skinny-dipping in a vat of liquid gold
TOUYA 🐠🚷
you just wanna see my cock, don’t cha
YOU
what makes you think I’D be invited to some shitty formal event
TOUYA 🐠🚷
I’m betting you’d hear about it on the news
YOU
i think i’d be more interested in what food is provided
TOUYA 🐠🚷
…
TOUYA 🐠🚷
no, I shan’t say
YOU
is this a cum joke
TOUYA 🐠🚷
but seriously. what should I wear. assume I will do something awful and evil and that you will see the outfit on the news when I get arrested.
YOU
touya, how would i recognise you. idk what YOU even look like. not that it matters, i guess. all that matters is that you wear something that fits you well. you don’t need to impress me; you’ve already won me over
TOUYA 🐠🚷
i what
TOUYA 🐠🚷
wait what do you MEAN it doesn’t matter
YOU
does it help get it through your thick head if i tell you that you are also babygirl-coded? perhaps not even coded but genuinely babygirl??
TOUYA 🐠🚷
it does not.
***
Adjusting your lace shawl, you gripped Shouto’s arm as the both of you furtively sneaked away from the hordes of pro-heroes, industry workers, and flashing press to slink back to the enormous table of hors d'oeuvres to see how many of them you could pack into your purse and his strategically planned inner coat pocket, sewn into the inside of his lapel for the occasion.
When Shouto had invited you to this ghastly awards ceremony for Endeavor, he’d claimed his motivation was that so he could talk to you about how the 2011 Hunter x Hunter anime was wrapping up, since he (flatterer!) said you had the best interpretations of certain characters, unlike some of your classmates, and Shouto tempted you with how you could stake out whatever posh food they had for you to try to recreate later. So, you’d dug out the dress you’d only worn to All Might’s official retirement party and agreed to attend.
Those present were a strange conglomeration of people, since the public opinion of Endeavor has been odd and tenuous lately. Essentially, the handful of attendees you knew were busy ingratiating themselves to people you’ve never seen before but they evidently were acquainted with, so those with whom you could hold an actual conversation with were scattered and few.
However, you didn’t even need to bring a book, because once you and Shouto had settled at a back table with both of your plates stacked with the most variety you could fit on them, he deadass pulled out his anime analysis notebook, which was starting to resemble Midoriya’s quirk analysis notebooks in terms of extensiveness and insanity, with lines crossing several pages to connect ideas. As you discussed where the two of you thought the characters were going, you had your own notebook—a new one, this one for recipes, and whenever either of you thought one of the appetizers was interesting, you wrote it down.
You were chewing on what Shouto had informed you was a water chestnut when the chair on your other side was pulled out with a screech against the tile, and Todoroki Touya plopped into it, his legs hardly having the time to spread before swiping a piece of candied salmon from your plate. The instant he bit down into it, his nose scrunched up.
“It’s fish, Touya,” said Shouto, dipping his own crudité in a tiny bowl of raspberry vinaigrette, and he passed his napkin to him. Touya spat the salmon into it, bunched it up, and edged it underneath the edge of your plate.
On your list, you wrote no fish! at the top, but before you even lifted your pen from the paper, you froze. The list wasn’t for this Touya; it was for your Touya. You crosshatched it out, trying to remember if your Touya had ever said anything about liking fish. He’d said he hadn’t, right? He didn’t like them alive, at the very least.
Shouto chomped down harshly, the crunch of raw celery distinct even through his closed mouth. “What brings you over here, Touya?”
He already had the text-to-speech function pulled up on his phone, and he held a parmesan palmier between his teeth as he typed. “People were asking Natsuo and Fuyumi about what they’re doing with their lives. It was only a matter of time before they got to me. Don’t wanna hear anyone else describe the nothing I’m doing. At least I know you guys are too busy talking about nerd crap to shit on me.”
“Oh, sweet boy,” you said, pursing your lips, “You’re in recovery. That’s enough. You don’t have to do anything to be worthwhile.” Wait. Fuck. You don’t talk to this Touya this way. Reel it back.
Crumbs fell from his mouth to the tablecloth. “The hell is wrong with you?” he typed.
Yeah, reel it way back. You elected not to respond, instead biting with difficulty into a brie/fig/prosciutto crostini and not being able to taste any of it.
“Would you like to discuss some so-called nerd crap with us?” Shouto arranged his notebook father across the table to be more in the middle of the three of you. “I know it’s been a while since you read Hunter x Hunter, but it’s been on hiatus so long that there’s not much new information that you need to know.”
“Hey,” you said, rushing to swallow, “You’ve read this before? How come you haven’t been sitting in to watch stuff with us?”
Touya shot Shouto a dark look, tongued a chunk of palmier into his cheek, and furiously typed on his phone. “I’m not interested in that shit anymore. It’s for kids.”
Shouto looked taken aback. “This is news to me. Do I have permission to take your manga volumes out of the house, then?”
“Fuck you,” Touya had already typed while Shouto was talking.
You bit back a smile. You’ve been borrowing a former, major villain’s manga? Cute. “But if you read it a while back, that means you’ve had more time to think about the characters,” you said, resting your elbow on the back of your chair as you shifted to face him, “Most of us are absorbing the story for the first time. It’d be cool to hear what you think.”
That parmesan palmier had looked good. Trusting this Touya on his taste, you wrote it on your list to investigate later, while he typed his response.
His expression fell flat enough to match the robotic tone. “Do you just want to hear me project my daddy and mommy issues onto the characters in the Zoldyck family?”
“No, Touya,” you said, laughing, “You have valuable things to say across the board, and I want to listen.” You almost nudged his knee with yours, but you had to stop yourself, something dark swirling in your chest. This wasn’t your Touya. You’re not allowed to.
His eyes flicked down towards the movement, but he didn’t comment. Shifting his jaw, he slipped off his white tuxedo jacket to drape it over the back of his chair, and for some reason, his gaze kept darting to you while he rolled the sleeves of his button-down up to his elbows, but he tried to give the appearance of being very focused on whatever skewered meat and pineapple was on the rim of your plate.
You were frowning. Fuck this. Fuck him. Touya was probably one of those guys who knew their effect on women, so he would know about the rolling-sleeves-to-elbows move. And fucking hell, was it effective for him, because the way he’s lost a lot of weight but was currently gaining it back made the tendons in his forearms much more noticeable when they tensed and strained, and the asymmetry of the burns and scars up his left arm in comparison to the smoothness of his prosthetic right only made him even more horribly, horribly attractive, and you were pissed about it, only getting more furious as he wrapped his tongue around the base of the first pineapple chunk and used his teeth to maneuver it off of the stolen skewer, hooded eyes staring you down. This Touya can act like a fucking slut, sure, but your Touya won’t even show you his goddamn hands.
“Hey, watch out.” You scratched your forehead in an attempt to conceal how enraged you were. “I’ve already had one of those. That lump at the end is an overly-breaded coconut shrimp. So—fish—be careful,” you finished lamely.
Touya’s hands and mouth were full with the skewer. Unable to type on his phone, he shifted the skewer to his left hand, flattened his right, and tapped his left wrist with it—the JSL sign for thank you.
You nodded and didn’t think anything of it for a moment, but when it hit you, you seized up and stared at him, chest swelling, proud and confused and frozen. Getting a little lightheaded, actually, but oh, God, who wouldn’t at the sight of Todoroki Touya, quiet and subdued but still suave as fuck, sitting so close to you in a freshly dishevelled white tuxedo that fit like it was custom-made for him, smelling so, so good and smiling with his perfect teeth (how are they that good when he was with the League for so long?), leaning towards you to steal your food and showing that he’d been paying attention to you, that he’d taken the JSL book you’d left with Shouto, that he’d thought about you when you’ve been apart and cared enough to try to learn something new with you, and you were going to kiss him; he deserved it; you were going to grab that stupidly adorable face and—no, that lightheadedness was also stemming from the soulmate bond activating.
Nausea swept through you for more than one reason. If your Touya discovered you were fighting the urge to kiss someone else, let alone the other Touya, then—you didn’t know. You didn’t know how you’d ever recover. Please let this be from your perspective, so he can’t feel your feelings, please.
“I have to go,” you said, pushing up on the table to stand, not even bothering to flash Shouto the soulmate hand signal. You had to get away. No matter if it were from your perspective or his, distance would help you suppress your fucking shameful crush on your friend’s older brother.
Good God, you were crossing the streams, you noted and fumed as you escaped onto a vacant alcove. Because they have the same goddamn name, your brain has been conflating the two of them. Shut up. You’re only allowed to have one Touya. Two would be greedy and dismissive of the soulmate bond in the first place.
Vertigo struck you so severely that you had to brace yourself against the nearest column, but you swopped to the balcony railing because you could grasp it and put most of your weight on it, and because your brain was swimming, you hand to get on your knees to wait for it to pass. “No, you can’t,” you said, trying your hardest to push thought of that Touya out of your head in case your Touya could feel them, “You can’t—that one doesn’t need to be in a romantic relationship right now. He’s working on himself. It’d fuck him up.” And ohhhh, you left your phone at the table, so you couldn’t call your Touya, and fuck, you didn’t want him to feel confused or betrayed because you weren’t calling him—
“Whose future are you deciding, here?”
Your Touya. He was here?
You opened your eyes to the sight of the balcony and the garden below, thank fuck. Okay, you could work with this. You could work with this; he’s not supposed to be able to feel—
His voice came from close behind you, as if he were leaning on another side of the column. “What’s got you feeling this guilty?”
Holy shit holy shit, has the bond evolved? Can feelings be felt from both sides regardless of perspective? “Hey, Touya.”
“Don’t turn around,” he said, even though you’d made no movement to.
“Can you see?”
“Only through you, angel. Otherwise, I’m in the dark.” With the sounds of clothes shifting, Touya must have crouched behind you, joints cracking. A fingerless-gloved hand brushed down your arm, and he moved your lace shawl out of the way to stroke your bare skin. Your mind was already going haywire at your betrayal, and his cold, gentle touch was not helping. “What’s wrong, hm?” He adjusted himself again behind you so that he could wrap his other arm around your waist, pulling you back into him, and his cool, rough lips pressed against the curve of your neck as he rested his head there.
You were going to cry. You’ll do it. For real, this time.
“Did that Todoroki Touya guy bother you? I saw him sitting at your table.”
God, no, he brought up whom you were trying to avoid, and you cringed, hating yourself as Touya’s hand sank down your arms to entwine his fingers with yours, rumpled shirtsleeves grazing your bare skin and leather gloves curbing the maximal skin-to-skin contact.
“He’s so fucked up that I wouldn’t be surprised if you hated him,” Touya was saying into your ear, “I could grind him into a pulp for you. He’d deserve it, wouldn’t he, for what he did to everyone? And I was burning up with jealousy from across the room; someone as pretty as you shouldn’t have such a hideous thing by your side.”
You made a noise from the back of your throat. You didn’t know, and you especially didn’t need the one person you were trying to hide your internal conflict from while you were actively trying to work out the internal conflict. First things first, you supposed. “Touya’s not fucking ugly.”
Your Touya snorted against your neck, hot air washing down the hollow of your throat. “I forgot how twisted you are. But there’s no way you could actually like him, right?”
“I can’t,” you said, releasing the balcony to clench your fists on your knees, “I can’t like him. He needs to discover who he is as an individual before he finds out how he functions in a relationship. He doesn’t need romance—or me, at this point in his life.”
“Interesting,” he said, more clearly now that his mouth wasn’t muffled against your skin, “Sounds like you think something’s wrong with him. Like he’s not whole. And isn’t he broken? You’d have to be, if you pulled the shit he did, burning cities to the ground and murdering—”
“Shut up,” you said, hunching in on yourself, “You’re don’t know. You’re believing what other people have told you about him. You’re just—you’re just like people who talk about that nerd shit you hate without checking the source material. They’ll talk about certain characters in terms of false narratives they’ve crafted, and they’ll talk about them for so long that the false information becomes conflated with the characters, with everyone thinking the wrong stuff is real. I—fuck.” You winced, but he was listening, his free hand winding around your neck to adjust the migrant clasp on your necklace to the back of your throat. “I know my ideas of Touya stem from propaganda, but I want to learn about him from him. Just based on what I’ve seen, there’s so much out there that’s wrong—it’s even subconsciously perpetuated in his own home, since the shrine where his family mourned him is still there. And I hate it. I hate it, because he seems so lovable, but so are you, and I hate myself because I want to love only you, because you’re my soulmate, and I’m so, so, so goddamn terrified that you’re gonna reject me and leave me alone forever now that I’ve betrayed you. By feeling stuff for someone else.”
You were crying. You were crying, nose stopping up, and Touya kissed your throat, over the clasp of your necklace. “Rejection’s a bitch. I know that,” he said under his breath, “So, I’m not gonna do that to you, even if…” He trailed off, instead latching his mouth to your neck again, letting his tongue flick over your skin once, as if it were an afterthought. “You really like him?”
“I’m scared that I do,” you said, taking a corner of your shawl to daub at your tears.
“The only thing to do is feel it out, I guess.” Touya settled at last, shifting weight and moving his legs so that they’d be on either side of you, and his left arm joined the other around your waist to hold you close. “Or let it die, if you want. The soulmate bond doesn’t matter in the end. You don’t have to love him or me.”
“But Touya,” you said, sniffing, dying to look back at him but restraining yourself, “I do.”
***
Later that night, you were researching how to make little cheese balls that were shaped like pumpkins like they’d had at the awards ceremony when you felt the familiar wooziness. Funny. It’s not often that the bond activates twice in one day. You closed your laptop and set your notebook aside, waiting for the slow, drowsy fade into Touya’s eyes.
Tonight, it’s a jarring, instantaneous slam into his perspective, and you felt like you’d been knocked about in the baggage rack of a train. You threw out your hands to balance yourself, even though you hadn’t been physically moved, and the queasiness made it hard to concentrate, blackness blotting at the edges of your periphery.
But the darkness of Touya’s bedroom wasn’t helping, with only partially drawn curtains letting in moonlight, and—and oh, my God, he’s flat on his back in bed, tousled bedsheets, cock out, and it’s so pretty, unfairly pretty, thick as hell but thicker at the head than the base, blushing deep pink, leaking onto the faint lines of re-developing abs and a vaguely red trail of hair, and—
The hand touching it has skin grafts.
“—ugh, darlin’, fuck, you know what I’m gonna—gonna do to you, angel?” Touya was muttering to himself, too caught up to realise you were there. “You don’t—you don’t know what you do to me.”
You’d registered his pubic hair as vaguely red because, now that you were staring, only the very tips of the untouched hair trailing down his stomach were red, with what he’d probably shaved at some point lower on his body snowy against whatever unburnt skin could still grow hair. He’s gripping himself at an angle that doesn’t make him rub against a strand of load-bearing staples on his upper thigh (did someone say load?), connecting a stretch of familiarly burned skin to a healing graft, diamond-speckled and twitching with his cock the closer he drew to orgasm (from the back of your mind surfaced a questioning thought of if he’d advocated for healing his hands first, since staples would hinder smooth masturbation). His prosthetic arm lay unattached at his side.
“Hahh, I wanna,” said Touya, drawing in a ragged breath, “wanna make a mess outta you, y’always too put together, too fuckin’ pretty for y’own damn good, fuck.” He rubbed his thumb over his tip, the skin there giving everso slightly at the pressure, with another bead of precum swelling before it dripped onto his stomach. “Gonna find wha—whatever I can do to make you fuckin’ whine, and I’m gonna, hah, follow that sound for the rest of my goddamn life, and, oh—fuck, fuck, how, how sweet you’d feel wrapped around me, how much I don’t fuckin’ deserve—”
He cut himself off to take a deep, stuttering breath, and you saw the gates of heaven in the way his chest surged forward when he arched his back, lines of burns and scars carved into his skin like a roadmap. And Touya moaned for you, and you didn’t know how much you’d needed to hear both Touyas do that until now, but before he could finish the first syllable of your name, you were lurched out of the bond and back into your room, just as abruptly as it had begun.
Your hands were shaking as you tied your shoelaces, aware of the leak into your underwear when you bent over, and you dashed to the nearest train depot, navigating in fervent, distant buzz all the way to the Todoroki estate. You must have appeared sufficiently crazy, because the only vacant seats on the train were next to you.
(In your heart of hearts, you had known.
If you’d put it into words, consciously, where both Touyas overlapped, it would’ve been too hard to bear if they’d been different people, which was, regardless, the most logical situation. Getting excited for your soulmate to be your former crush and then being disappointed when it wasn’t him felt like a betrayal to your soulmate. You hadn’t wanted to set yourself up for disappointment or betrayal, because you shouldn’t feel guilt when you look at your soulmate. Someone who holds your heart in his hand should never be second best to you. Touya’s had enough of not being enough in his life.
Surely the random chance of a stranger’s quirk wouldn’t be so kind to give you whom you’ve been wanting. You haven’t allowed yourself to hope.)
You didn’t even go in the front door. You clambered over the garden wall and berated yourself for not recognising Touya’s garden earlier, even though you’ve usually been around the kitchen and living room when you’re here. It took you longer than it could’ve to get to his teahouse, because you were deliberately staying on the garden path instead of walking on his hard work, but you didn’t even take off your shoes at the entrance, the nightingale floors chirping out in the night as you surged towards his bedroom door.
Touya lay facing the window in his very Western bed that took up most of the room—and much of his bedroom was like that, with his modern belongings scattered across other outdated furnishings, clean but cluttered, thought it startled you to open the door onto a Naruto poster taped in the space designated for a hanging scroll.
You only had time to absorb poster and lived-in before you saw the face of God in how Touya stretched and groaned in bed, arching his back and holding it until his back popped (a little too fixated on his moonlit nipples, like seeing them would fix you, flip you back to your factory settings). “Natsuo,” he said, coming out of his groan, eyes scrunched shut, “Don’t say you’re here to make me re-hang the windchimes. I spent all day tracking how air flows through the garden.”
You sat at the foot of his bed, mattress dipping slightly, still in your coat and shoes and hesitant to spread dirt, but the need to be near Touya, even if it were through blankets, consumed you. Hands folded behind his head, Touya cracked open an eye at the weight, and he froze.
You hadn’t prepared any confession on the train. You’d been too focused on the memory of his thighs. So, what garbled nonsense that came out of your mouth was “I figured your dick would be pierced.”
Touya appeared to snap back into reality, and he sat up in bed, pulling the blankets up to cover more of his bare chest (mourning for his nipples. Inconsolable about it, even) and quite obviously tried so hard to be chill (the way his leg started jiggling underneath the covers and how he wouldn’t look you in the eyes for more than a couple of seconds gave him away, though). “Is that what they say about me?”
You folded your hands in your lap, bent over for a swift escape in case he wanted you to leave “Jirou conjectures that you have a Jacob’s ladder.”
“Just what I need. More holes in my body.” He ran his tongue over his lower lip—much more scarred than the upper one, clarifying some things about kissing him. “Don’t know how to take that a bunch of kids who resent me talk about the state of my dick. You a part of that crowd?”
“I was shown a picture of what was advertised to be a very realistic dildo,” you said, scooting your ass farther back onto the bed now that he wasn’t going to send you away, “It had many, many piercings. It wasn’t as thick, if that makes you feel better.”
“It does not,” said Touya, brow pinched. He brought his legs up to hug them to his chest, but he must have changed his mind, instead just letting them block your view of him, hiding behind the cover of the lumpy comforter.
You waited for him to elaborate. His tuxedo was thrown over a wicker trunk, bowtie tossed onto a kotatsu, even though it wasn’t cold enough outside, with his gaming controller next to it and an open can of black tea. Two floor seats were haphazardly tucked underneath the kotatsu’s blanket, the one facing the TV flatter and duller than the one nearer the door. His only bookshelf had the illusion that it was constantly being added to, with the first shelf arranged neatly and the rest completely shoved together, the lowest one still mostly empty—your sign language book lay horizontally on it.
He should’ve said something by now, right? Antsy, you shifted your weight, staring down at your shoes. To have something to do, you slowly took them off, lining them up with Touya’s house slippers (with seahorses on them?) next to the bed, and you swallowed your pride to break the ice. “I’m glad it’s you, by the way. Very glad.”
Touya grunted and draped an arm over his knees. “Did you know?”
“I will be generous and say not really,” you said, shuffling off your coat to hang on the bedpost, “I didn’t permit myself to make the connections.”
“Eh.” He shrugged with one shoulder—the left one, the natural one. He’d reattached his prosthetic in the meantime. “There are around one hundred Touyas in Japan, according to the last census.”
“Sounds like a prepared statistic,” you said, holding back that the name frequency has probably plummeted in the last few years, “I’m serious, though. I wanted my Touya—soulmate, you, Touya—to be Todoroki Touya. So badly.”
He covered his mouth, thumbing at his lower lip and simply staring at you. In the moonlight, his eyes were as fucking bright blue as—well. As his flames. More things were clicking into place.
“Really, Touya,” you said, desperate for him to believe you, “I liked you as the stranger in the alley, and I liked you as Dabi, and when my soulmate seemed to share some traits with the other Touya in my life, I didn’t give myself permission to think about it. Because I was growing fond of the you that spoke to me, that I was getting to know, and while my feelings for the other you were being rekindled, too, I wanted to love the soulmate you more, because it's become fucking evident to me that I was made to love you, even without this soulmate stuff. You’ve been scattered throughout my life, anyway. It just happened to speed things up, since it forced you to talk to me. Otherwise, you’d probably still be at the point where you’re the brooding-older-brother figure who isolates himself in his room when his brother’s friends are over.”
Touya was frowning, but you waited it out entirely this time. “You saw…all that,” he eventually said, gesturing down himself, “and you still want me?”
Biting back a smile, you lifted your knees to the bed, moving slowly to gauge his reaction before getting closer to him. “I saw you decapitate someone, and I still want you.”
“You’re insane,” said Touya, tensing up as you neared him but twitching into a nervous grin, eyes falling to your boobs, away to the window, and back to your face.
“Correct,” you said, and you knelt next to him, taking all of your restraint to keep from reaching out the final few centimetres to run your hands down his chest. “Don’t you need someone a little insane, though?”
The comforter fell a few inches down his chest, and you throat ran dry at the long line of fading stitches and staples.
You raised a quivering hand to his face, and it’s strange: both of you flinched in the moment your fingertips felt the tiniest bit of body heat emanating from his cheek, and it’s strange: it’s the first time you’ve felt any heat come from Touya at all, and it’s strange: you could see yourself so clearly waking up next to him every day, putting your chin on his shoulder while he picked out fruits at the grocery store, feeding the koi late at night together while you lured the ducks away, watching his eyes soften in the same way both when he sinks his teeth into something you’ve baked and his cock deep into you while he cradled you closely to his chest, but at the moment, it might be too much for you—and perhaps Touya as well, judging by the nearly incomprehensible, jumbled sort of expression—if you even touched his face.
Perhaps the prospect of romance was too much for him at this point in his life. The last thing Touya should be feeling about that was guilt.
“I don’t mind being on the backburner while you figure things out,” you said, returning your hand to your lap and trying very hard not to look at his nipples, “I’ll wait for whatever you need to do. I’ll—”
“No,” said Touya, shaking himself out of whatever spiralling dive he’d been leaning into, “Hell, no. No fucking—” He snatched the hand you’d almost touched him with and clenched it hard, smushing your fingers together (startled by the physical contact, even though he’d initiated it), and after a flash of frustration at his prosthetic arm, he passed your hand to his left. “You’re fucking sticking around. You—you don’t just look at me; you see me, in such a different fucking way than anyone else, and you did it immedia—it took my family so long to look, and you—you’ve been watching. Been paying attention. It’s all I’ve ever—” He frowned, rolling his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “It’s good to have you around while I dig myself out of this hole,” he said, squeezing your hand harder but glaring outside through the window, “I wish I had known you sooner.”
“I’m here now, and I want to get to know you better. I want to hear more about you, things that are true,” you said, “and don’t start with anything self-deprecating, Touya. The next time the bond lets you see through me, I’m gonna show you what you look like through my eyes. And I’m not lying to you when I say you are so very, very pretty.”
Grunting, Touya fidgeted in bed, the covers slipping down to his stomach, drawing your hand closer to him, with your body leaning in to follow his pull. “Shit,” he said, “Don’t say shit like that right now.”
“Touya, I am gonna tell you how gorgeous you are until you believe it, and that starts now.”
“Not tha—well, yes, that, but I—” He sucked in through his teeth (also sucking in through a tiny hollow in his cheek caused by a loose staple, with a faint, wheezing whistle) and threaded his fingers through yours, pulling your hands towards his shoulder so that you loomed over his chest, “I have a hell of a refractory period now. It’s fuckin’ hard for me to get hard a lot, and you saw me; I just—” Inhaling sharply, he jerked his hand away from yours and frantically started wiping it on the blankets. The new skin around the tips of his ears bloomed pink. “I haven’t washed my hands.”
“Touya,” you said, “Like I care.” You took the hand he was trying to hide in the folds of the blanket and licked up his palm, holding eye contact and relishing the way the blush spread to the untouched skin around the corners of his eyes. “I want all of you. Both sides you’ve shown me, and more. So long as it’s real. So long as it’s you.”
“All right. First step is getting on top of me,” said Touya, and, palm wet, he took your hand again, and he tugged on it, guiding you into his lap, other hand sliding down the thigh you swung over him. “Makes it easier to talk, y’know. To look at you.”
“Oh? Are we starting with your tragic backstory? If you’re taking requests,” you said, sliding your hand up and over his shoulder to run your fingers over his collarbone (jutting out from under both burnt and new skin), “then I’d like to hear your perspective of when you first kissed me.”
Touya lift his prosthetic hand to your cheek, just as cold and strong as his real one, and he placed his thumb at the corner of your lower lip, tip breaking the seal of your lips to press in just barely. “Actually, I think we’ll start with this pretty mouth of yours.”
***
Iida was shouting and gesturing from the living room that you only had fifteen minutes before the episode viewing was scheduled to start, and Shinsou shut him up by reminding him that Tokoyami had to pick up Ojiro and Hagakure from the floristry across town and that they’d start watching whenever they started watching, so chill out, Iida. Go help Mina pick the bugles out of her hair, or something.
You and Touya crouched together in front of the oven, staring through the glass at the rows of potato wedges—the recipe he claims his mother made when he was five, but surely a woman as sensible as Todoroki Rei wouldn’t put that much fucking cayenne pepper or paprika or chili sauce or—listen, it was a lot.
“C’mon, pretty boy, tell me something else true about you,” you said, nudging his shoulder with yours while you made eye contact with him in the oven’s reflection.
“Hm,” he said, scratching the underside of his chin with a bare hand (the gloves lay folded back on the teahouse dresser), “I hate fish.”
(Here you sighed dramatically, because you obviously already knew this. His loathing was intensified at the moment, though, because he’d had to get up and leave you in the middle of the night last night because the koi pond monitor was blaring at a stupid clog in the filter.)
“Tastes fuckin’ gross dead. Bitch to take care of livin’.”
You pushed on your knees to stand, and you held out a hand to help him up. “Enough with the negativity, dickhead. Tell me more about what you like.”
“Besides you?” He took your hand and grinned, putting all his weight into it as you strained to lift him, and when the oven timer beeped and you’d shot a few choice words his way, he had mercy and stood up by himself. He grabbed the oven mitts and tossed them to you, and while you removed the tray from the oven, he ran his hand through the sharp, white spikes of his hair, inadvertently wiping specks of paprika into it.
You set the tray on a cooling rack. “C’mon, Touya. No need to be so cheesy.”
“I can be worse,” he said, winding his arms around your waist before you could even take off the oven mitts, cradling you close to him, no room in between, and he propped his chin on your shoulder. “I can even incorporate—you call me cheesy; you’re the one who called me pretty boy not a minute ago.”
Blindly, you raised a hand to run it back through Touya’s soft, soft hair, and you gently bumped your cheek against his. “I am not being cheesy by simply stating the truth. You’re gorgeous, Touya.”
“Bet I’d look even better throbbing inside you.”
“Please follow a logical flow in conversation like the rest of us,” you said, and when you couldn’t grasp the spatula you were reaching for, Touya grabbed it for you, scraping up some of the first row, having to release you during the process.
Leaning on the counter to face him, you flinched at the heat before pinching a potato wedge between the tips of your fingers, but Touya held one like it was completely cool. It had almost touched his tongue before he paused and waited for your reaction to his recipe.
His potato wedges were bad. Too crunchy on top because of the odd broil time and not-fully-ground peppercorns and too soggy and soft underneath, especially in the part where it’d stuck to the tin foil and peeled off, and the combination of spices didn’t quite mesh together well. With a sliver of quiet triumph, you swallowed a bite of potato wedge decidedly worse than the ones you made.
But Touya was looking at you, eyes brimming with hope despite his otherwise carefully cultivated cool exterior, watching, waiting for you—and it was Touya, after all; Touya was the one who cooked these—made them for you, deliberately, on purpose—and so that made what words were about to come out of your mouth true and beautiful.
soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare
#bnha#dabi#dabi x reader#dabi/reader#dabi imagine#dabi fic#mha#dabi headcanons#dabi fanfiction#dabi fanfic#soulmates#soulmate au#soulmate#dash it all
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A collection of WK headcanons because I can
MARTIN - 28, 5'10, he/him, December 23rd
BIGGEST heart on the team. Sees good in everybody
He's like if someone gave a golden retriever a human suit.
BANNED from the kitchen he CANNOT COOK at his ancient self
He pulls the 'big brother card' a LOT
He LOVES to sing, but nobody has the heart to tell him he sucks so they just...let him
He loves so easily
Martin makes the stupidest dad jokes
He labels his things with a blue sticker so he can keep his stuff organized... he still loses things
He taught himself Mandarin Chinese out of sheer boredom; he is now almost fluent
He needs people to like him or he will DIE
Do not give him coffee; he will be insane and hyperactive and then go awol for the rest of the day
CHRIS - 24, 5'8, he/him, July 19th(Gemini)
Burned-out gifted kid? Yes
His experiments normally consist of him using Martin as his guinea pig for payback for all the jokes he got pulled on as a kid
Loves cinnamon-flavoured anything
He also has a pretty high spice tolerance
Used to be friends with Zach in preschool, but it stopped not long after that
He climbs trees because he's a sensory seeker.
Chris is an avid tea drinker
He is also the best dancer on the team
Chris was such a geek in high school, he didn't 'glow up' until he was 17
Since the Tazzy incident, Chris occasionally has cravings for raw meat but chalks it up to low-iron
The only one on the team with a consistent sleep schedule
AVIVA -26, 5'5, she/her, April 5th(Aries)
Her dad raised her to be tough and strong, therefore making her a perfectionist and a maniac lol
Aviva loves Hot chocolate with Marshmallows, and watching nostalgic cartoons
She has a nasty habit of comparing herself to others and gets ridiculously insecure when anyone challenges her opinion. She masks it by being defensive and doubling down
Beautiful by default(duh) but she doesn't see it
She has a nasty older brother who was the stem of all her insecurities
She found a grey hair once and cried
She was cheer captain in high school, hence her athleticism
Aviva is messy as hell. Like, more messy than Martin.
She also dislikes mud
The worst dancer on the crew(I'm sorry), but she's the most talented singer
NEVER lets her hair down, it gets in the way too much.
KOKI - 27, 5'4, she/they, Feburary 13th(Aquarius)
Raised by a single dad(parents divorced)
Grew up basically rich, but was kept humble
Koki's uncle taught her mechanics before he passed away when she was in middle school
She had a pet canary named Booboo
She has pent-up anger issues
LOVES Zytago music as her family comes from New Orleans
She 100% has muscles and biceps. Martin is jealous
"No, I'm not gay. Everyone wants to kiss their girlfriends at some point....right?"
When it comes to cooking, she's Jimmy's sous-chef
HATES being in tight or confined spaces
Wants to style her hair in something else other than a single puff, but always gets busy before she can book an appointment with a stylist
JIMMY - 25, 5'9, he/they/doesn't care, August 20th(Leo)
Had a very normal childhood. Like, eerily normal.
Has a younger brother and an older sister and they are ALL GINGER.
Everyone in his family is a Ginge except for his mom
Jimmy can speak nearly fluent Korean because he took a gap year in South Korea after High School.
He studied software engineering but dropped out to attend culinary school instead
He is the COOKING MASTER EVER
His family is secretly wealthy as FUCK
He has his own power suit, just never uses it
Had an emo phase
Jimmy's full name is James Coleman Benedict Zeigler
Grandma Jimmena has a bunch of random stories from her childhood and they are all UNHINGED
#wild kratts#martin kratt#chris kratt#aviva corcovado#jimmy z#koki#wild kratts aviva#wild kratts martin#wild kratts chris#wild kratts koki#wild kratts jimmy z#wild kratts fandom#wild kratts headcanon
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go away (or don't)
pairing: wally darling/reader
rating: g
author's note: gender neutral reader to the best of my ability! i'm very new to welcome home so please be kind @:)
ao3 (it looks so much better there! go to hell, tumblr!)
Your relationship with Wally, new as it may be, is not without its challenges.
The transition from friends to something more had been a bit of a sticky subject at first, tacky to the touch. But a dozen long conversations and drawn-out explanations had really cleared a lot of things up, and by the end of your first official month as Home's newest couple, things had seemed to be tilting towards hopeful.
Now, as you stand in the middle of Wally's living room, arms folded over your chest, you're not positive that you didn't rush into things.
You aren't mad at him. He is standing just a few feet away, face carefully blank, arms limp by his sides. He is nearly impossible to be mad at. But for all your talk of boundaries, you'd forgotten to discuss something very important with him; your dedication to your friendship with Julie.
"She spends the night with you," Wally says, voice even. "A lot. I don't even get to spend the night with you."
He'd been upset to find out that your twice-weekly sleepovers with Julie hadn't stopped even after your relationship with him kicked into gear. You hadn't brought it up during any of your discussions because you didn't think it mattered. You weren't– you aren't– willing to change anything about your relationship with Julie. You won't sacrifice it. It's too important to you.
"Julie is my friend," you tell him. It's important to keep a level head. Getting upset will only make the situation worse. "I'm not going to stop spending time with her just because you and I are together."
"She lies in your bed," he says. "With you. Beside you."
Bickering with him is…not what you expected it would be. Despite him being more in touch with his emotions than ever, it still doesn't transfer well into his voice. He speaks slowly, the cadence near-robotic, and it's difficult for you to decipher how intense the emotions that he's feeling actually are right now. He doesn't look mad. He isn't smiling, and his eyes are slightly narrowed, but besides that, he is a blank slate. It's as infuriating as it is confusing.
"Wally," you sigh, uncrossing your arms. "She's just a friend, okay? I'm allowed to have friends."
He tilts his chin up defiantly, and there it is–something to latch on to.
"I don't think it's appropriate," he says. "Frank and Eddie don't sleep in other neighbors' beds."
"You do understand that we can't model our entire relationship around Frank and Eddie's, right?" You ask, quirking a brow.
"You're not listening," he huffs. His hands twitch at his sides, fingertips curling into his palms. "You're being unkind."
"No," your jaw flexes subconsciously. "You're being unreasonable."
He lifts his eyes to the ceiling. "Home? Do you think I'm being unreasonable?"
There's a subtle creak, and a consecutive bang, bang.
"Well, there you have it," his mouth curls up into a smile, but it is smug and a little bit cruel.
"Wha–You can't ask Home!" You exclaim, throwing your hands up. "That isn't fair! This is between you and I."
He mimics your earlier stance by crossing his arms over his chest. It's a little off; a little clunky, but he gets the gist of it. He looks closed off, and hurt, and maybe angry. You can't read his eyes well enough. It's a learning process, and he is the kind of book that people spend hundreds of years decoding.
"I think you've overstayed your welcome," He nods towards the front door, and it swings open. "Goodbye, neighbor."
You don't move. He's kicking you out? Your legs feel like they've been cased in cement, and your tongue is heavy in your mouth. No. The argument cannot end like this. There has to be a resolution, or the two of you will never come back from this. Your relationship is too new to handle something so detrimental.
"Wally," you try. His name sounds soft and sweet in your voice because, for all the bickering and the mean words, you cannot be mad at him. You just can't.
"Please leave," he says. He shifts on his feet. "I think I'm…mad. And I really, really don't want to be mad at you, but I don't know how not to be. So, you should go."
You appreciate the fact that he is attempting to explain his feelings. That he's digging deep, and being honest with you. You know that it hasn't been easy for him, learning about conceptualizing emotions, and letting himself take the time to decode them. He has struggled. You've helped him through almost-panic attacks too many times to count. He gets overwhelmed sometimes, and you know that, even for you, relationships aren't simple. Standing up to you, it must be difficult.
"Relationships are hard, sometimes," you say, taking a step towards him. "It's normal to be angry with your partner when you both disagree on something very important. And…I know that trying to talk about it can be frustrating."
He relaxes just slightly at your words; you see it in the way his shoulders droop. He still has his arms crossed over his chest, but he is looking at you now, and his eyes go round at the edges. They lose their sharpness.
"Frank and Eddie disagree on things, too," you continue. "Being partners with someone means compromising."
"Compromising," Wally repeats. "But you won't–you're not compromising with me."
"Let's sit down and talk about it some more," you suggest, offering him a warm smile. "We should never intentionally hurt each other, alright? If my sleepovers with Julie have hurt your feelings, I want to make that right."
You take a seat on his sofa, patting the spot next to you. He hesitates for a moment, and then sits down, too. His ankles cross, and he folds his hands in his lap.
"You don't like it when I have sleepovers with Julie because she lies in my bed with me?" You ask. You're careful with your words, with your tone. You don't want to upset him further, or have him close himself off.
He nods. "I've read Julie's romance books, and when two people love each other, they always share a bed."
Ah, yes. Since the realization of his feelings for you, Wally has been in love with the idea of love. He reads Julie's silly, cliché stories, and asks Frank and Eddie questions that are perhaps a bit too personal. He is smart and curious, and he's always wanting to learn. This–all things romance– has just been his newest fixation. You're not sure that Julie's books or Frank and Eddie's ever-changing dynamic are the best references for him, though. He is not like the love interest in a romance novel. He shouldn't try to compare himself to anyone else.
"Sharing a bed isn't always romantic," you explain. "There are a lot of different kinds of love. But," you reach out to place a hand on his knee, soothing, and he lets you. Does not move away, so you take that as a good sign. "If me sharing a bed with someone else makes you uncomfortable, I'm willing to compromise. How about when Julie comes over, she lies in my bed, and I sleep on the couch?"
He takes a moment to think about this. You see the cogs turning in his head, the way his mouth straightens out, and then pulls down at the corners.
"Okay," he says. "I think that would be…okay. I would feel happier with that."
"And," you tell him, "you can't keep basing your idea of love around what you read in books, okay? All relationships are different. You have to learn to navigate it through experience."
"I just," he looks down, eyes closing for a second. "I have questions, sometimes. I don't know where to find answers."
Your hand slides up to cup his cheek, and his skin goes a little pink beneath your touch.
"Next time you have a question, just ask me about it, alright?" You say. Your thumb smooths along his skin, and you brush a bit of blue hair behind his ear. "We'll work on it together."
"I like how that sounds," he smiles, eyes twinkling beneath high noon's light beaming in through the windows. "Together."
Pleased now, he scoots closer to you on the couch. His mouth curves up, and he gets this mischievous look on his face that you've come to associate with his silly little antics. He dives forward and kisses the round apple of your cheek, darting away with a sweet, "muah!"
"So you're not mad at me anymore, then?" You ask, tips of your ears warm.
He shakes his head. "Not mad. Sorry I tried to make you leave earlier."
You take his face between your hands, and squish his cheeks until his mouth puckers up. He looks goofy and open and so, so happy. Before you can talk yourself out of it, you press forward and kiss him on the mouth, once, then twice. The pink on his face goes deeper, and his ears turn red, too.
"I'm sorry for not taking your feelings seriously at first," you say. "I accept your apology. Do you accept mine?"
"I don't know," he shrugs. "Maybe a few more kisses will sway me."
You laugh, falling against his chest, and he wraps both arms around your shoulders. He is soft, and smells like cedar and sunlight. You breathe him in, and tilt your head back to leave a little kiss to his jawline.
"You drive a hard bargain, Darling. I suppose I've got no choice but to bend to your will."
You tackle him onto the couch until he's lying on his back, head propped up on the arm rest. You pin his wrists by his sides and leave chaste kisses all over his face, each one signed with a tiny smack, and a "muah!" He laughs, and it is still drawn out and slow and stale, but it is so very him, and that's all you have ever wanted.
He buries his devastatingly cute, "ha, ha, ha's" into your shoulder, and you kiss him and kiss him until the both of you are breathless, and the sun begins to set.
#is this cute? i don't know. i just love wally.#welcome home#wally darling#wally darling x reader#wally darling x you#wally darling x y/n#welcome home arg#wally darling fanfic
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Wally and a Puppeteer Reader (part 11)
Looks like we are getting close to the end. Idk how many more parts there will be but I, for once, gotta plan in mind! Yippee!
TW: Obsessive Behavior, Idol Worshipping, Interrogation, Derealization, Scopophobia/Eye Imagery, Threats
🎥 You have waited a couple days for this. You wanted to make sure that Henry was alright after what happened. Currently, he and his uncle are out, picking Angela up from the hospital. No one is home, so it is the perfect time for this.
🎥 You place Wally down on your bed, before placing two heavy books on the extra blanket hanging off of the ends of the knot you tied to heep him down. He squirms, looking up at you with the most fearful eyes you have ever seen... on a puppet, at least. Nothing could ever beat the fear you saw in the eyes of Eddie's puppeteer when they handed you the box holding this cursed puppet.
🎥 Speaking of, the puppet opens its mouth, crying out "Let me go! I'm sorry! I didn't hurt her! I think I just spooked her... she tripped on her own!" You shake your head "I don't really care about whether or not you did or didn't do that... Because, even if you didn't, you still hurt people! What about the person YOU filled with staples? Or the one you dropped a bucket of paint on, cracking their head open?! Or these cursed notes and drawings you kept sending me?! You still did damage to people, including me! I have been going insane from fear because of you!"
🎥 His eyes widen more so than they already were. He grows silent, looking around. He begins to mutter "No... no no no... I never meant to... I never meant to hurt YOU!" He then looks you straight in the eyes, the most intense stare held within his own. His pupils seem to expand until they overtake the entirety of his large eyes. "I NEED YOU. I would never hurt you willingly! I thought the notes were lovely! The drawings, too! Isn't it nice to know that your most faithful puppet is watching over you? The paint guy was being mean to you! He deserved it! I even warned him before I did it. I always saw the other guy with Eddie, so I thought it would be fitting if he delivered mail to you! See? I put so much thought into it all so it would be perfect! I love you! I am so sorry you didn't see what I meant to get across..."
🎥 You take a step back, placing your hands on your hips "Oh, you got your message across, alright. I know you love me. You love me too much. You love me to a dangerous degree and you clearly are willing to harm people for the smallest of reasons. I know the boss will probably fire me for this, but I think it would be best if I just burned you-"
🎥"NO! NO, DON'T DO THAT! I mean-!" He looks over to the clock in your room, before saying "I mean... can we... can we have one last round on set? Whatever story you want, you can tell! You can make me do anything you like! I don't care... I can clearly see that I deserve it... I caused so much damage. If you want me burned, I can't stop you. I am your puppet. You are in control, right? Just one more little story. For me? For your good, friendly neighbor?"
🎥 You feel... uncomfortable. However, you think about it for a bit. The studio is far from most other people and since Wally can talk, he can probably scream. It would be... concerning, to say the least, if your neighbors saw you burning a screaming, flailing thing that looked vaguely like a person. So, it might be for the best that you go through with his wishes. "Alright. You want one more story? You will get one more story. You better not double-cross me, though."
🎥 Wally nods, a his permanent grin widening. "Don't worry. I won't. As I said, I would never hurt you intentionally. Let's go! Now! I wanna go now!" You untie him, before slinging him over your shoulder and placing him in your car. You drive to the studio, listening to Wally talking about how much he can't wait to see Barnaby, Julie, and all the others. You tune him out, focusing entirely on the road and your destination.
🎥 You arrive, parking your car and hopping out. You grab Wally, before reaching into the glove box and taking out your emergency key to the studio. You really don't understand why the boss gives everyone a key. Apparently it is so they can have someone open the door if they lose their own? You don't really care, though. All you care about is finishing whatever this puppet has started.
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Well she is. 21 babies in just over a year to be exact.
Kristina has authored a book titled Baby's Diary. News18Join our Whatsapp channel
The feeling of motherhood is a special one and many experience it multiple times, choosing to have more than one child. Kristina Ozturk, the wife of a wealthy Turkish individual, stands out in this regard. Despite being only 26 years old, she has already become the mother of 22 children via surrogacy. Originally from Russia, Kristina, along with her millionaire businessman husband, 57-year old Galip, welcomed 21 surrogate babies into their lives between March 2020 and July 2021. Despite this remarkable number, Kristina expresses her desire for even more children.
Kristina’s eldest child, an eight-year-old daughter named Victoria, was born naturally from a previous relationship. Despite facing criticism for what some perceive as “buying babies,” this mother from Georgia remains steadfast in her decision to expand her family. Kristina has openly expressed her ambition to have even more children, aiming to reach a three-digit figure.
Her plans face challenges as her Turkish businessman husband was imprisoned in 2023 on charges of money laundering and document falsification. Fortunately, Kristina is supported by a team of 16 live-in nannies to assist her while her husband serves an eight-year sentence behind bars.
Kristina first met Galip in a club in Moscow, Russia and started a relationship in spite of the 31 year age difference between them. They started living in a lavish three-story mansion in Batumi, Georgia. In February last year, Kristina had paid Rs 1 crore 43 lakh to the surrogates.
Kristina has also authored a book titled Baby’s Diary, in which she shares her journey as a mother of so many children. She reflects that while much has been written about parenting, every day parents seek valuable insights from her to provide the best for their children.
Kristina’s unconventional path in parenting hasn’t been without challenges. She revealed an incident where one of the surrogate mothers expressed a desire to keep a baby after giving birth. As the baby’s genetic makeup consisted of Kristina and her husband’s DNA, the child rightfully belonged to them.
Although Kristina has openly discussed her aspiration for at least 105 children, she now intends to hold off on further steps toward that goal until her existing children are older. While she hasn’t dismissed the possibility of becoming pregnant herself again, she acknowledges the impracticality of doing so with a household full of young children.
#Kristina Ozturk#Babies are not commodities#Babies are not collectibles#Surrogacy exploits women#Her much oolder husband is in jail and she wants to have even more kids?#How they hell is she going to take care of over 22 kids so close in age if he loses their money or they money is used up in legal fees?#What is Rs 1 crore 43 lakh in USD?#One of her surrogates tried to keep the baby#She has no plans to get pregnant while she has 20 toddlers and a husband in jail#This dude is going to be in his early 70's when his over 20 kids turn 18
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blissfulness | i want you pt. 5
natasha romanoff masterlist | series masterlist | navigation
pairings: older!natasha romanoff x young!fem reader
summary: your father doesn’t know it yet, but you’re in love with his best friend. and what makes it better is that you’re sure enough that she feels the same way. the sad part is, neither of you can word out your love for each other properly.
warnings: slight anxiety attack (just a tinge), bucky being a little bitch, smut involved, oral sex (n receiving), g!p natasha, dirty talking, fluff, and a little angst - MINORS DNI.
notes: i might be uploading part 6 later since i’m so motivated right now! and i’m sorry that i haven’t been updating, but i’ll do my best to update from now on! anyway, enjoy x
The residents of the town began to throw their own parties in the middle of July. Therefore, I was invited, as well as my dear friends. When I asked Bucky about the large party near the swimming lake, he informed me that Felicia, one of our old friends, was hosting it. I considered joining and having fun with them, as I always do, but then I focused on Natasha because we were secretly developing a relationship. Though I knew deep down that our affair could never be in public, I still wanted to show her how much I love her as much as she loves me.
But Bucky kept an eye on both of us. And if he found out she loved me, my father would find out and tear us apart as if we were nothing to each other. Natasha is like a mother to me, but I don't see her that way, so I knew that my father would never approve of this kind of relationship. How can I think that way about her when all she offers is an act of affection that goes beyond platonic? How can I sleep when all I could think about is her? Her, her, her. I love her, I love her more than anything else in this world. I love her because she sees me, and only me. I love her.
Love is not always enough.
Reading in the sun is always my favorite activity when I'm in Italy with my father and the people around us. While fiddling through the pages, I pay close attention to Natasha as she flips the steak she was roasting near the garden area where we all eat. She turned her gaze to me and smiled, while my father was ranting to her about something so oblivious. I looked at her defined shoulders with a churn in my stomach. Oh, how many times I’ve bit onto her skin while her cock was ramming inside of my cunt, whispering my name each time she thrusts into me. In and out, in and out. My cunt began to feel tingly, and I had to close my legs to calm myself down. Not right now, I thought. It’s too obvious.
But her skin was flawless in the Tuscan sun. How easily she moves her hands in the air while talking to my father, how gracefully she smiles at him, making me wish she would do the same with me. I was the sun if she was the moon. Everything was flawless in my presence, and this summer has gone above and beyond perfection. I gave one more look before reading through the pages of my favorite book, sighing happily to myself.
I was about to fall asleep in the sun after fifteen minutes had passed when I overheard two people laughing and chatting as they approached our house. I sat up and looked over my shoulder to see Bucky and MJ walking by. What are they doing here? I thought to myself. Should I shoo them away to prevent ruining my day? Knowing Bucky, I know that my day will be ruined when he is around Natasha. I had to do something.
Until I was too late.
“Hey, Steve!” Bucky patted his back while inhaling the amazing smell of steak from the grill. He looked at Natasha and gave her a small smile, reaching out his hand. “It’s nice seeing you again, Nat.”
If they would see my face right now, they would notice how uncomfortable I was with this scenery.
"Good to see you too, Buck." She scratched the back of her neck and smiled at him. “And who is this lady? I’ve never seen her before.”
Steve responded in her place, taking a sip from his cold beer. "That's Y/n's other good friend Mj, they've been friends ever since we built the house here," he said. “Along with Bucky, of course. The three of them have been good friends.”
“You live here?” Natasha asked Mj.
She gleefully replied to the woman, "I only come here during the summer or Christmas. And whenever I’m here, Bucky and Y/n will be around the area. They’ve been my friends ever since I was a kid.”
Natasha nodded slowly and grabbed herself a cold beer from the red box that was filled with other beverages. “Y/n is over there, reading her book. Does she always like to read while the sun is out?”
“It’s one of her favorite things to do,” Mj chuckled, crossing her arms while whistling to catch my attention. I stood up from the grass and walked towards them all, brushing my hair away from my face. I smiled at Mj and gave her a small kiss on the cheek, greeting her in a friendly matter.
“When did you guys get here?” I asked. Before MJ could respond, Bucky wrapped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me close to him, as though I were his love. I knew Natasha was watching his arm, and there was nothing I could do about it.
“The minute we smelled these amazing fucking steaks!” Bucky exclaimed happily, kissing the temple of my forehead. I looked into Natasha’s green eyes, and the sparkling light behind them was gone. Did she envy me, now? Did she envy the way he touched me? If she only knew that I never meant for this to happen, then I would’ve gladly said that out loud. But I couldn’t risk it, not when my father and my other friend were around.
“Hey Y/n, why don’t you help Natasha bring out the wine glasses?” my father asked, which felt like some type of relief. I got out of Bucky’s embrace and followed Natasha to the kitchen quietly, not looking back at his staring eyes.
Because I knew he was staring.
I can feel the beginning of our silence as I make my way to the kitchen. When we arrived, neither of us exchanged a word, and I was unsure of how to start a conversation with her while she was nearby. She turned around and smiled at me, which was completely unexpected. I couldn't help but return her smile.
“Enjoying yourself out there?” she asked me with a deep sultry voice while her hands kept themselves busy. I shook my head and reached for four wine glasses, gripping them tightly with my fingers.
“Are you okay?”
“Of course,” she replied almost instantly and grabbed two bottles of red wine from the pantry. “Are you?”
I felt myself pausing, lacking words as her eyes stared deep into mine – as if she wanted to kiss me right there where everybody could see, where everybody could witness our unhinged love for each other. Instead, I nodded sheepishly and replied with a stutter, “W-Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
“I know you, Y/n.”
“Were you jealous a while ago?”
She quirked an eyebrow and let out a small quiet chuckle, shaking her head.
“Was I jealous?”
I rolled my eyes, leaning against the countertop. “Can you answer my question properly, please?”
“I wasn’t,” she said. “I just… he’s holding you as if you were his.”
“But you know that I’m yours, right?” my voice sounded timid, and the air started to feel warm. My skin also felt warm, almost to the point of sweating. She nodded and slowly walked towards me, her breath trickling down my face. She leans in close and smiles to herself. Like a proud woman, she is.
“I know, sweetheart. Maybe that’s why I want to fuck you tonight.”
I let out a quiet gasp when she kissed my bottom lip searingly and walked away with a proud grin on her face. I tried to walk properly, but I could feel my legs tingling once again. This effect that she has on me, cannot be hidden anymore. At some point, everyone will know and I will be the one who is to blame for it. Not her. But could that even happen right now? I doubt it.
We ate the steak in the garden with laughs and giggles coming from us all. I was sitting beside Bucky while Natasha was sitting with my father, pouring herself a drink while my father helps her out with the cigarette in her mouth. MJ couldn’t help but ask, “Are you two dating?”
Natasha and Steve exchanged glances before giggling softly. That caused my heart to race because I felt as though I were witnessing their love story. It wasn't, though, so that. They might be dating, but I doubt it. It could just be a theoretical idea. Not when Natasha gave me a different kind of look than everyone else.
Bucky felt his body stiffen and ate a huge piece of meat. MJ scrunched her eyebrows together, asking the same question again. “So, are you?”
“No, we’re not dating,” the woman replied to her. “I don’t think he would be my type anyway.”
“Wait, so are you–”
“Yes,” Natasha cuts her off with an amusing smile, flicking the ash from the cigarette near the ground. “I’m a lesbian, MJ. I like women.”
There was a brief silence before MJ nodded with a flushed face, sipping her drink from the wine glass. Bucky nodded slowly and brought his arm back around me, as if protecting me from something so dangerous. Natasha looked at us both, but her face looked nonchalant. She wasn’t bothered. Why wasn’t she bothered by the two of us?
“I heard that Felicia is throwing a party again,” my father mentioned, wiping his chin with a paper towel. MJ looked at me with a smirk, a devilish one, and I could feel my eyes rolling in a playful matter. “Are you three going? You know, Felicia was one of your best friends.”
“Until she fucking backstabbed us with that boyfriend of his, what was his name again?”
“Peter Parker,” Bucky answered for MJ. “Parker got jacked up actually, have you seen his abs?”
“Now I’m suddenly thinking you might be gay, Mr. Barnes,” I whispered, shoving my elbow against his rib playfully – causing him to wince. I hear Natasha chuckling quietly from the scene and sipping from her wine glass, looking away.
Eventually, I realized that I did that on purpose. To make her laugh and see that I do not love him nor worship him and that I was all hers instead of his. I could continue to show my love for her like this, out in the open.
“Peter fucking Parker,” MJ mumbled to herself, grabbing one stick of cigarette that was on the middle of the table. She borrowed Natasha’s lighter and puffed out smoke in the air. “I’ve always had feelings for her.”
“You had feelings for Felicia?” I asked and she nodded. “Wait, how come I didn’t know about this?”
“Us gay people are good at hiding it,” Natasha butts herself in, looking at me with a slight grin on her face. “I say you did a pretty good job at hiding it.”
“Well, thanks for that.”
While Bucky had his arm around me as we ate and engaged in a number of new conversations, I could feel the woman's glare. She took one final bite of her steak before leaving to use the restroom. I desperately wanted to go after her and confess my love to her, but I knew that would endanger our relationship. Instead, I see her stepping away from the table while slightly hunching her back. “You're making it obvious, Y/n,” Bucky said as he continued to pull me in. “Stop it.”
It cringes me that he knew so quickly that I was in love with my father’s best friend.
“Are you two together now?” my father asked with a huge grin on his face that purely disgusts me how he thinks that way, that I was supposed to be in love with Bucky instead of Natasha. “Bucky, did she say yes?”
“Yes to what exactly?" They both looked at me with intriguing eyes that scared me away as my curiosity took over. What could he possibly be talking about–
“That you’re Bucky’s girlfriend,” dad slowly said with a frown. “Did you not say yes?”
What?!
“I-I don’t know what you’re talking about–”
“I haven’t asked her yet,” Bucky murmured to my father, and he looked at me with an apologetic look. “Y/n, I was going to ask you–”
“You know how I feel about you, Buck,” I whispered to him, eyeing everyone else at the table with my heart pounding like crazy. It was like I was being humiliated or being used like another toy, just like how my mother would use me when I still lived with her. I looked at my father one last time before giving him that look that I had never used on him before. “And you know that I’m not ready for any of this.”
“But I thought…” his word drifted, just like how my trust drifted away as well. “I thought we felt the same way?”
Don’t act like you know my love for Natasha.
“Can we not do this here?" I got to my feet and wiped my skirt. “I’ll be in my room.” I started walking to the other house and started crying before he could utter a word. He would never make me happy, let alone if I tried to discover my feelings for him. He should be my boyfriend—never her. But the fact remains that she will always be the culprit, and that hurts.
Because I know that it’s impossible to love someone in secret.
Being by yourself by the lake is quiet and sentimental. I enjoy bringing my books here, and occasionally Bucky too. But following that event that afternoon, I made the decision that I could no longer bring him here. I tried to forget what had happened as I frantically read through the pages of my book. As I've learned from Cris, our housekeeper, Natasha has left with Steve. What were they doing, perhaps getting another drink at a bar with some people their age? I could never know, I never understood the meaning behind that.
As I close my eyes, I can feel like someone was walking toward me. When I opened the lids of my eyes, Natasha was right in front of me, with a solemn look on her face – as if she was sorry for what happened a while ago. She sat down beside me and gave me a peck on the head.
“I heard what happened a while ago,” I sighed as she whispered that statement to me. Of course, MJ has told her. “Did Bucky hurt you?”
“Not physically.”
“What happened then, dove?”
“I don’t have the energy to tell you, Tash.”
While lying down next to me and watching the wind-blown tree leaves, she sighed. I felt her hand entwined with mine, but I did not object because I sort of like it when she does these things without saying them out loud. She looked at me, and asked: “What did he say?”
“Something with ‘I was supposed to ask you to become my girlfriend'," but I made a dramatic walk out,” I answered briefly. “I mean, he knew about us, but why would he even ask that question? He knows I’d say no.”
“Maybe Steve planned this,” she reasoned, which made me turn my head a little to look her in the eye. “I mean, Steve loves you both. He wants to see you two as a pair, so I assume maybe he gave Bucky his blessing or he told him to get you as his girlfriend.”
“I thought Dad wanted the best for me.”
“And I’m sure he does, baby girl…” her hand crept inside of my tank top and pulled my body closer to her, our noses touching – without a word. “He does. It’s just that… he doesn’t really know what your heart wants.”
My heart screams for you, my body wants you. Every part of me wants you and only you.
“Do you love me?” I asked her with an unmelodic voice. I pressed our noses together hard and begged, “Do you love me? Tell me you love me, Tasha. Tell me that you do.”
Natasha cups the right side of my face and pulls me into a french kiss, her tongue sliding into my mouth that I could’ve sworn I let out a guttural moan. I didn't pull away nor push her away, I let her in. She whispered breathlessly, “I love you more than the words described.”
“Then show me,” I begged once again as I trailed my hand down into her brown shorts, feeling her erection against the palm of my hand. She moans into my mouth and drags me closer to her, grunting each time I stroke her cock in her confinement. “Show me that you love me, Tasha.”
“You want me to show you, huh?” her hands hurriedly pulled down her shorts along with her boxers as her cock pokes out in the air, precum leaking from its head. She grabbed my hand and wrapped it around her length, her eyes fluttering close as I dragged the skin downward. “Oh fuck, your hand feels so warm…”
Our tongues danced as I slowly pumped her cock. I could feel her spitting saliva into my mouth, pleading with me to swallow it. As soon as I did, she softly pinched my right nipple with her hand concealed inside my tank top while licking the roof of my mouth. Everything felt at peace – pure silence and bliss. I couldn’t ask anything for more.
“Touch me,” she whispered with a weary tone, dragging her lips down to my chest. I realized that she was begging, she had never begged before in my presence. “Touch me harder, go faster with your hand.”
I’d never touched a cock before in my life until she came around. At first, I had no idea how to use my hand. Whether I should just lick the tip of her cock or bring her to orgasm with my hand. But as I get skillful with every part of my body, I already know how to pleasure her – yet it feels all new to me as if I’ve never touched anyone in my life.
It was just me and her, in my little world.
The sloshing sounds filled our area and were not audible as I jerked her cock off, and she stared directly into my face. I couldn't help but stoop down and suck all of her pre-cum into my mouth as the tip of her penis started to turn this sort of purplish color. Despite how bitter it tasted, I savored every last drop of her juice. It almost had a sweet-bitter flavor that resembled glazed donuts. My head was touched by her hand as she pushed me deeper into her long cock while groaning in pain from the chokehold.
“That’s a good girl,” she stuttered, her breathing hitching each time I gagged while taking her cock into my throat. She slowly lifts her hips and starts to thrust into my mouth, making me let out choking sounds. “Use your tongue baby, fuck–your mouth is so wet, I could be in your mouth forever…”
Forever, you say? What about your feelings for me? Would that be forever too?
The way she uses her words too, I could go on forever about how much I’ve loved her talking like that with me.
When my nose was pressed against her pelvis, I knew that her cock was all the way into my mouth – and I could barely breathe because of it. So I pulled out quickly and let my saliva dribble onto her cock. I watch as it twitches in my hand, and I gradually pull the skin of her dick all the way down before bringing it back up, pushing out more precum from her. She flexes her stomach as I continue to do this, whispering: “What else do you want me to do, Daddy?”
“J-Just keep sucking on it,” she softly demands, I could not resist. So I put her penis back into my mouth and started to bob my head up and down, my tongue pressing against her rod. “Oh yeah… that’s so good. Your tongue feels so good, baby. A-Ah–”
I could feel the sun burning into the back of my neck, yet I didn’t care. I continued to devour her cock, slurping and licking every bit of it. She throws her head back and thrusts into my mouth in a shallow pace, making my face all puffy and red. “More, more…” she said. “Need to fucking blow into your mouth, let me cum in your mouth?”
I nodded vigorously as I massaged her balls, her moans turning into a whine. She prompts both of her elbows on the grass as she watches me bobbing my mouth up and down, savoring every taste that she has. Natasha bites her lower lip, almost causing me to draw blood, and continues to thrust slowly into my mouth.
I pulled away with a wet pop and jerked her length while kissing the tip of it. “Are you going to cum soon, Daddy?”
“Uh-huh…” she nodded, scooting closer as she got closer to her high. “I’m going to cum soon baby, j-just stick out your tongue!”
I did what I was told to do, bringing my tongue out as she rapidly jerked herself off, her hooded eyes staring at my mouth rather than at my eyes. She humps the air until her hips stiffen, screaming quietly: “I’m cumming! I’m–Oh god…”
My eyes began to close as I felt her sperm splash onto my mouth, then open again as some of it landed on my nose and then my eyes. Her world is filled with rainbows and other forms of happiness as she sprawls out on the grass during an explosive orgasm. I sat next to her and used her boxers as a tissue to wipe off the cum from my face. She hugged me tightly while her bottom was completely exposed, looking at me with guilt in her eyes.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I liked it.”
“I would make love to you here but…” her words trailed off when she looked over her shoulder, the house was a few feet away from the lake. “Maybe in your room this time?”
She gave me a tight hug as I giggled in her arms. How could I ever let this go over a boy when I’m truly happy with another person? She was my happy place forever, and this was my happy place. My eternal crush on a woman. We talked and laughed for another hour while we were sitting by the lake, remembering all the other experiences we had as a couple. Perhaps I should consider moving away with her so that I don't have to live in this neglectful environment, that I call home.
As soon as we got back, my friends were inside the house. I looked at Bucky at first, then Felicia since I haven’t seen her in so long. She smiled at me and gave me a warm hug – I gladly accepted it.
“I haven’t seen you in a really long time, Y/n.” she contemplated with a sigh. “I’ve missed my best friend.”
“Don’t steal her away from me,” Bucky mentions with a chuckle, dragging the cigarette away from his mouth while his eyes were on Natasha. I looked at them both, and I noticed that Natasha wasn’t looking at him but instead, looked at Felicia. “What did you do with your Auntie?”
Of course, he would sound condescending. But I couldn’t get mad at him right now, not in front of everyone who is watching us both. So I replied with a nonchalant tone, “We just sat by the lake, anything wrong with that?”
He shook his head slowly, examining my body as if he might find something that would be evidential that I gave Natasha a hard blow job.
He didn’t inspect anything, I was too good at this.
“Nothing at all, pretty girl.”
“You should go to my party tonight,” Felicia happily shook both sides of my arms, squealing with excitement. “Everyone will be there! There will be drinks, music, and loads of other stuff! You know I’m great at hosting parties.”
“That I do remember,” I chuckled, kissing her cheek. “I’ll have to dress up first, you guys should go ahead.”
I watch as they all leave, including Bucky, before I can walk to Natasha. We both knew, for some reason, that I would never be his when he turned to look back. I wish I could have chosen him instead, and it does break my heart that I can't. But I also want to be with someone who makes me feel complete and important. After everyone left, Natasha pulled me into an embrace while sighing into my neck. She seemed to have been waiting for this, so I happily gave it to her. A simple hug has the potential to become something magical.
“I’ll never let you go,” she whimpered. “Just don’t let me go too, okay?”
We gave each other a tight hug as I nodded and kissed her. I noticed she was wearing the kind of woodsy fragrance I liked from her as soon as I smelled her. But I was unable to fully explain it because saying anything more would be overwhelming. I don’t ever want to slip away from her, and I knew that I won’t if there was a time that my father would find out about us both.
“I promise.”
“I know.” she sighed and kissed my mouth with no agony, no torture.
taglist: @trans-wolf-boi @generousfartdragon @marvelogic @that-one-gay-mosquito @wandanotsosure @madelineleong @kksalexa @karsonromanoff @natashaswife4125 @florojas @natashaxwife
#natasha romanoff x reader#natasha x reader#black widow x you#black widow x reader#I Want You Series#natasha romanoff fanfic#natasha romanoff smut
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No Shame. (c.f)
“Love is fatal. Won't you give it a chance?”
Pairing: Conrad Fisher x Fem!Reader
Summary: returning back to Cousins felt different compared to all the other years. everything around you felt like it was changing but maybe it was for the better.
Warnings: most part is fluff, maybe a lil swears, mention of parents divorce. best friends to lovers…
a/n: i missed you guys so much during my trip <3 thank you for all the love! also your parents’ names are Julia and William because it makes writing easier throughout this :)
word count: 4.38k basically 4.4k...
masterlist
You were ecstatic to return to Cousins and even more excited to see the Fishers and Conklins again. Sure you kept in contact throughout the year for holidays and birthdays but it wasn’t the same. You counted the months down to the trip back. It almost felt like after you left Cousins you were already waiting to come back.
This year would be different. You had a feeling it would be. Maybe it would be the year Conrad finally noticed you for something more than just the little girl he grew up with. Conrad was always your best friend out of the bunch but you thought that’s all he saw in you. He was probably the only one you really kept in contact with throughout the year with small texts every month and little updates about each other's life.
You were turning 17 in a few weeks, but in the past year, you felt like you changed a lot yourself. You didn’t know if you finally felt more confident in your own skin or if you found yourself in the past year. You have better style now, finally feel more confident in your body to ditch the one piece, and got your license too.
You missed everyone, of course. It felt like you needed a break from your life. Your parents got divorced since the last time you came to Cousins. It was hard for everyone in the family. You stayed with your mom, Julia, in New York while your dad, William, decided to move back to Toronto.
You didn’t know if the others knew about the divorce, but you knew it wouldn’t be much of a difference considering your dad only came to the Fourth of July party Susannah throws. You decided not to tell Conrad about the divorce because you already knew the problems between Susannah and Adam, you didn’t want to add more to that pile.
As your mom pulled up to the Fisher’s driveway, you quickly took off your seat belt and waited for the car to come to a full stop before heading out of the car. You guys came a week earlier than you were supposed to, so you guys could surprise them. They thought you were still on a volleyball camp.
You and your mom quietly made your way into the house where you noticed everyone was sitting in the dining room eating dinner. All their attention was on Laurel who was talking about her book party that’s planned for tomorrow night. You made your way to hug Susannah from behind as your mom went to Laurel.
“Surprise!” you and your mom shouted from behind gaining the others’ attention.
“Y/n, darling!” Susannah said as she turned in her chair to face you.
“Hey Susannah,” you smiled letting go of her as she went to stand.
“Oh, you’re so beautiful, sweetheart,” as she took your face in her hands taking you in.
“Finally, got rid of the glasses and frizzy hair,” you joked.
“No, you’ve always been so pretty but you matured from the last time I saw you,” Susannah complimented.
"Thanks, Susannah," you blushed.
“I miss the glasses and wild hair, Y/n/n,” Conrad smirked getting up from his chair.
“Maybe the glasses but definitely not the rats nest you know?” you giggled going to him to give him a hug. You felt his arms wrap around your waist as yours wrapped around his neck. You both held onto each other but slightly pulled away after Jeremiah coughed.
You turned your head to see a grinning Jeremiah who always somehow knew about your crush on Conrad. You saw his eyes look down for a second before grinning even wider. You were suddenly aware of Conrad’s hands that were still on your hips while yours were on his shoulders.
“Y/n, you gotta give me your skincare routine,” Belly says saving you from more self-embarrassment.
“Ahh! Belly, you’ve grown so much from last summer!” you said letting go of Conrad to rush Belly into a hug.
“You and William must be shooing guys left and right, Julia,” Laurel joked as she looked at you and Belly catching each other up on their lives.
“With her rejecting any guy that looks at her, she does the work for us,” your mom laughed while shaking her head about the last guy you rejected.
It was the middle of April and the sweetest guy named, Matthew asked you to prom but you decided to go with a group of friends instead. Because going with someone else didn’t really feel right to you, all your life you wanted Conrad Fisher and now wasn’t a time to stop. Your mom was in the kitchen and you were in the living room when you heard a knock. Poor Matthew was waiting on your front porch with balloons, a lavender bouquet, a chocolate heart, and a sign saying “Will you be by my side for the night?”
Let’s just say it didn’t go the way Matthew wanted. You tried your best to let him down easy, but you felt like you were making it worse. Only your mom knew about his promposal considering you didn’t want them to tease you on why you didn’t give the guy a chance. You told Jeremiah about Matthew since you knew he would understand why.
That night you and Jeremiah talked for hours. It made you miss being in Cousins even more. Conrad might be your best friend but you and Jeremiah always had a special friendship where you always knew what the other is feeling. You ranted about Conrad to him and he told you how he was sick of people trying to define his sexuality. Both of you knew that you could always talk to the other about anything with no judgment whatsoever.
“Mom!” your cheeks turned bright red from embarrassment.
“Honey, you got to give a guy a chance someday, you know,” your mom teased.
“Or don’t?” Conrad muttered but you caught what he said. You turned your attention to him and raise your eyebrow at his comment. He looked back at you and smirked.
“Wait, Julia are you thinking about Matthew?” Jeremiah asked loudly.
You felt yourself get whiplash from snapping your head to Jeremiah's direction to give him a glare. You were trying to signal him to cut it out but it was too late.
“Who’s Matthew?” Conrad voiced out.
“Nobody!” you tried your hardest to keep a straight face when you said it out loud.
“That’s what his name was! Oh, poor boy, I kind of liked him too,” your mom said.
“He was okay,” Jeremiah replied.
“But he was so sweet with the flowers and those chocolates were good,” your mom rambled on.
“That’s true the lavender and baby's breath mixed was a nice touch,” Jeremiah added.
“Jeremiah, for the love of god, shut up!” you said while looking for something to throw at him but sadly you remembered there were still people eating dinner.
“No keep going,” Conrad pushed on with a frown placed on his face.
“Oh, my bad…” Jeremiah trailed off when he saw the glare you were giving him.
“Okay, I’m done for the night. I’m going to get my bags and go to my room,” you told your mom while heading out of the dining room.
“I’ll help,” you hear Conrad from behind you not taking long to catch up to your pace.
“Oh, you don’t need to.”
“Oh, I want to, trust me.”
“So why didn’t you tell me about Matthew?” Conrad asked while he sat on the edge of your bed while you continued to unpack all of your bags into the drawers.
“There’s not much to say about him. How’s the beach right now?” you answered trying to avoid this conversation with Conrad.
“Nope. You’re not getting out of this one. You told Jeremiah, but not me?”
“Conrad, I don’t get why this matters right now it’s in the past.”
“I’m just wondering why you kept this from me.”
“Because I didn’t think it was that important, and you hate whenever I tell you about guys so I thought you wouldn’t care if I told you or not,” you said trying to set aside a bikini to wear later.
“Did you like him or something is that why you didn’t want to tell me?” Conrad continued to push on with the topic.
“No, I didn’t, but it shouldn’t even matter anymore since I already rejected the guy,” you sighed.
“I’m sorry, it just bothers me that you told Jere instead of me. I thought we were closer than that.”
“Con, we are. Jeremiah happened to call me on the night it happened and I explained the whole thing to him. I was going to tell you, but it wasn’t anything important, really,” you explained telling him the half-truth while going up to where he was sitting and giving him a hug.
This would be the only time you’re taller than him with his tall structure. His hands squeezed your waist as you pressed a kiss on his forehead. You always felt so connected to Conrad. Sure you guys had your ups and downs but it was always made up for.
“You going for a night swim?” he asked quietly looking up at you while you kept your arms around his shoulders and a hand playing with his hair the way you knew he liked. This felt different, it was more intimate than you two have ever been. You liked it.
“Yeah, wanna join?”
“Of course, not gonna let you go out there alone.”
“Well, you got to get out for me to change you know.”
“I don’t mind,” Conrad smirked.
“Well, I happen too.”
“I think I’ll stay,” he said with no shame holding on tighter to your waist and pulling you closer to him.
“Con, get out!” you tried to laugh off the red spreading your cheeks. You took his hands off your waist and pulled him off the bed. You struggled to try to get him out of the room but you finally pushed him out the door.
“I’ll see you down in 15?” he said over his shoulder as he walked to his room.
Well, that was odd. Conrad’s never joked with you like that before you didn’t know how to feel. It was like he saw you more than the little girl with glasses and frizzy hair. Maybe this would really be the summer for everything.
The house was dark when you were walking downstairs and heading to the back doors. When you walked out you saw Conrad sitting down by the pool dangling his feet in. He turned his head by the creak of the steps when you walked down.
“You ready?” he asked getting up from beside the pool.
“As I’ll ever be,” you replied walking towards him.
“Everyone else went to bed already,” he said as you two walked down to the beach.
“Am I not enough for you?” you joked with him.
“N-no, I didn’t mean that I was just telling you…” he cut himself off.
“I missed this,” you said when you took in the smell of the water and sand. It gave you such comfort that nothing else could ever compare to.
Cousins Beach felt more like home than your actual home in New York. You had the people you loved here. No unnecessary problems or worries that majorly concerned you while you were here. When you were back home you had to worry about schools, sports, your parents, and everything else in the mix.
“I missed you,” Conrad mumbled under his breath.
“What was that?” you asked not catching what he said.
“I think the water missed you too.”
“We’ll have to find out then, shall we?” you stuck your right hand out for him to hold and the second you felt your hands touch you tighten your grip and ran with him to the water.
You felt free. It was like nothing could ever go wrong with having Conrad with you and amazing water. You splashed Conrad as a joke before you realized he didn’t take it as a joke and you started swimming for the life of you. But Conrad being himself caught you and dragged the both of you underwater. You resurfaced and tried getting your hair out of your face which you weren’t doing a very good job at it.
“Your hair will always be wild,” Conrad smiled pushing the hair you missed out of your face and tucking it behind your ear. You were glad it was dark so he couldn’t see the obvious flush on your cheeks.
“And to think I just tamed it,” you giggled pushing him away from you.
“I like it better this way, it’s more you,” he said as he swam closer to you.
“Con, you feeling okay today?” you laughed as you placed your hands on his shoulders when he lifted you onto his lap. Your legs wrapped around his waist as his hands went to grip your hips.
“Never better,” he grinned as he gazed into your eyes, you wanted to break the eye contact but it was like you couldn’t.
“Con, what are we doing?” you sighed as you played with the hairs on the back of his head. This was a dangerous game you two were playing and you didn’t know how to stop. Better yet you didn’t want to.
“Whatever feels right I guess?” Conrad’s gaze went from your eyes down to your lips before traveling up again to your eyes.
“Conrad.”
“Y/n. Can I kiss you?” he scanned your face for any signs of hesitation. You nodded your head as a yes for him.
“You gotta tell me, Y/n,” he added on.
“Yes, Con,” he leans in to softly placed his lips on yours and kisses you tenderly before pulling pack to see your reaction.
When his lips touched yours you felt like fireworks were going off in the back. It didn’t feel real. Here you were kissing Conrad Fisher, the boy you’ve wanted since you learned about crushes. When he pulled back you were afraid, he thought it was a mistake before you saw the look on his face.
His face was filled with love and contentment. It made you want him more so this time you pushed your lips on his going into a heated kiss. It wasn’t perfect but then again nothing ever is. It was filled with such eagerness and hunger. His hold on your hips tightened and pulled you closer to him till there was no space separating you two.
As the kiss deepened you felt his tongue swipe against your bottom lip, and you opened your mouth slightly allowing him to slip his tongue in. You guys kissed for what felt like an eternity but it was something you could never get enough of.
You two pulled back from one another and tried to catch your breath. You felt a slight buzz lingering around your head from the kiss. Your foreheads leaned against each other, enjoying the moment between you two.
“Conrad, why now?” you voiced, breaking the silence as you continued staring into his eyes. Something about them was so alluring and beautiful. The blue looked so pure but at the same time so intimidating.
“I never realized how much I wanted you until you were right in front of me. I should’ve realized sooner,” he said softly.
“Realized what?” you whispered.
“You’re the only one for me.”
“Don’t say something you don’t mean,” you muttered breaking the eye contact and looking at the waves crashing down onto the water.
“I’ll only ever want you,” he said raising one of his hands to turn you back to him. His hand cupped your cheek and he pressed his lips on yours gently. He pulled back before you could respond to the kiss.
“You’re the only one I’ve ever wanted,” you admitted to him in a whisper.
“And here I was thinking you didn’t want me,” he joked.
“Oh shut up,” you scoffed in amusement.
“You going to give us a chance?”
“Always.”
You woke up snuggled up in your sheets with the sun shining through the window. Last night felt like a huge fever dream that never happened. You felt all giddy and blushy at the thought of what happened between you and Conrad on that beach.
You guys had to sneak back into the house while trying not to wake anyone up last night. Conrad walked you to your room pulling you into a quick kiss before sneaking back into his room.
After getting ready you walked downstairs for some breakfast. You walked into the kitchen not realizing everyone else was already there. All their eyes landed on you making you the center of their attention.
“Mornin’ sleeping beauty,” Jeremiah poked your cheek when you grabbed a mug from the cabinet.
“Someone had a late night…” Steven teased when you went to pour some coffee into your mug.
“Mind sharing the details?” Belly questioned handing you the creamer from the fridge.
“Yeah, share it with the class, Y/n,” Conrad added on with a grin.
‘Of course, this would happen to you,’ you thought to yourself. You wanted to wipe that damn grin off Conrad’s face so bad.
“Umm, what do you mean?” you played dumb.
“I mean that you came home when everyone was already asleep last night,” Steven replied.
“Yeah, so who were you with last night?” Belly asked.
“Yeah, who were you with, Y/n? You look awfully happy,” Jeremiah pointed out.
“I wonder who could make you like that, Y/n?” Conrad said widening his grin. He was having way too much with this for your liking.
“So who was the lucky guy??” Jeremiah asked eagerly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you shrugged as you focused on stirring your coffee instead of the faces staring at you.
“Honey, I’m glad you were with someone,” your mom said from the table sitting with Laurel and Susannah.
“Not you too,” you said exasperated.
“Do we know the guy, sweetie?” Susannah asked smiling at you. Though you could tell she already had her guess at who ‘this guy’ was.
“Maybe you could invite him to the signing party tonight!” Laurel happily added.
“Oh, I’m not too sure about that,” you hesitated.
“That’s a perfect idea! Bring him later and we can all meet him,” Jeremiah announced to everybody in the room. Everyone came to an agreement about it except for you. Considering you didn’t know how you were going to get out of this one this time.
“Conrad!” you exclaimed walking into his room, making sure to shut the door behind you.
“What?” he asked smugly sitting up from his bed.
“I cannot believe you right now,” you said as you sat on the edge of the bed.
“I didn’t do anything,” he said putting both of his hands up in defense.
“You know exactly what you did.”
“Do I really make you that happy?” he teased you.
“You always do,” you smiled looking down at your hands in your lap.
“Come here,” he said opening up his blanket to let you crawl in.
“Do you actually want to tell them tonight?”
“Maybe not directly,” he grinned.
“How?” you wondered.
“At the party, we won’t hide anything you know?”
“So we’re letting them figure it out by themselves?” you laughed at the idea. You could see their reactions now.
“Why not?”
“Is this us labeling what we are?”
A question that would not leave your mind since last night. Sure you both admitted having feelings for one another and started doing more intimate things but you never said anything about labels. Not that it was extremely important but it still lingered around your mind.
“We are, whatever you want us to be.”
“So I’m hearing you wanna be my boyfriend,” you giggled.
“Say it again,” he whispered against your lips.
“My boyfriend,” when you said that it was like something lit up in Conrad’s eyes, and he pulled you into a greedy kiss.
“Y/n, when are going to meet this secret boy of yours?” Susannah said excitedly when you guys walked into the bookshop giving you and Conrad a glance from the corner of her eye.
“So you did invite him?” Jeremiah asked intrigued by the topic of conversation.
“We’re going to meet Y/n’s boyfriend?!” your mom squealed.
“You’re not meeting anybody,” you answered.
“So you didn’t?” Jeremiah continued in a very confused tone.
“Why does it matter so much?” you asked Jeremiah as you guys went to go sit on the couch.
You sat in the middle leaving the seat next to you open while Jeremiah took your other side. Conrad went to get you guys some drinks and Belly & Steven were off helping their mom with something.
“Because I wanna know how this mystery guy that got you to think of anyone else but Conrad,” Jeremiah whispered to you when he saw Conrad walking back towards you two.
“Whatcha guys talking about?” Conrad whispered to you two mockingly as he handed you a glass of champagne that you were pretty sure was for the guests.
“Nothing much,” you replied giving him a look that basically said you.
“Just about our girl’s man,” Jeremiah answered him with a teasing undertone.
“Oh, he’s here?” Conrad added with a smirk plastered across his face.
“We don’t know because Y/n won’t tell us anything about him,” Jeremiah complained.
“Jeremiah, why don’t you go help Steven with the books, he looks like he needs some help,” you moved on from the topic, wanting to talk with Conrad alone without Jeremiah’s constant questions.
“Yo, Steven, you good?” Jeremiah hollered across the room to him.
“Bro, get your ass over here,” Steven called back.
“That’s my cue. Conrad, figure out the guy for us?” Jeremiah turned back to Conrad before walking away.
“Yeah totally,” Conrad replied back to him.
“How long do you think it’ll take for them?” you snickered to Conrad looking at Jeremiah and Steven mess around with the extra copies of Laurel’s book.
“Once one notices all of them do,” Conrad said sneaking an arm around your waist.
“That is very true,” as you scooted closer to his side not caring if anyone saw you.
You leaned your head on his shoulder as he pressed a quick kiss on the top of your head. Even with the constant questioning that occurred at the beginning of the party, it was nice. Everyone was having a good time. Laurel was signing copies of her book for people; Steven and Jeremiah were messing with the signs; Belly was talking with Cameron, a guy she brought to the party; Susannah was enjoying being able to mingle around with everyone in the room. Conrad and you watched everyone from the couch sitting in comfortable silence before the inevitable chaos that could happen at any time.
“You two look comfy,” a voice said standing in front of you and Conrad which startled the both of you causing you two to separate quickly from each other.
“Hey, mom…” Conrad tried to play off.
“I knew it!” Susannah claimed to point her finger at you two smugly.
“I had a feeling you knew,” you admitted smiling at her.
“How?” Conrad questioned Susannah.
“Honey, you’re never this smiley with anyone, and we all know you would’ve thrown a literal fit if it was anyone but you,” Susannah answered with a lovingly tease.
“No, I wouldn’t,” Conrad tried to defend himself fully knowing he probably would have.
“Con, yes you would,” you laughed.
“Conrad, would what?” Steven asked coming up to you guys with Jeremiah trailing behind him.
“Thrown a fit if the guy Y/n’s talking to was here,” Susannah covered for you two before walking back towards Laurel.
“I’m surprised he isn’t, to be honest,” Jeremiah commented.
“Wait that’s actually so true,” Steven said as he thought about it.
“Guys, come on,” Conrad tried.
“No wait, you’re not upset at all? Or like acting super protective. You know the guy already, huh,” Jeremiah said as if he was putting pieces of a puzzle together.
“Why would I be?” Conrad shrugged. You took one side glance at him and started giggling at this entire situation.
“You little missy are not going to get out of this one, so who’s the guy? And why does Conrad already know him?” Jeremiah pointed his finger at you accusingly.
“I would hope he knows him,” you said already knowing how this was going to go down.
“And why’s that?” Steven asked taking the seat beside you.
“Cause I am him?” Conrad muttered amused by this whole thing.
“What’d you just say!?” Jeremiah jumped up looking back and forth between you and Conrad.
“Say what?’ Conrad played dumb.
“You know what you just said!” Steven caught on.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about right now,” Conrad continued.
“I can’t believe this right now,” Jeremiah said in disbelief.
“Believe what?” Belly asked as she made it up to you guys with Cameron by her side.
“They’re together!” Jeremiah exclaimed while Steven pointed at you and Conrad.
“Wait you guys really didn’t notice?” Belly laughed at their reactions.
“You did?” Steven asked.
“It was so obvious this morning plus I caught Y/n sneaking out of his room to get ready for the party,” Belly explained to the two boys before walking away again.
“Oops?” you said looking back to Conrad who just laughed.
“Only you,” Conrad chuckled pulling you back into him.
“Gross,” Steven said while getting up from beside you two.
“Can I just say, finally!” Jeremiah commented looking at your and Conrad’s interaction.
“Jere, would you please shut up,” you told the boy in front of you.
“Finally?” Conrad questioned from beside you.
“Yeah, bro, she’s liked you since like forever! You remember that one time-”
“I would shut up right now before you say something you’ll regret later,” you threatened Jeremiah before he said too much.
“No, I would love to hear this,” Conrad smirked, nodding to Jeremiah to continue with his little story.
#conrad fisher fluff#conrad fisher imagine#conrad x reader#conrad fisher x reader#conrad fisher#conrad#tsitp fanfic#tsitp x reader#tsitp imagine#tsitp#tsitp x y/n#jeremiah fisher#belly conklin#steven conklin#fic#fluff#christopher briney#the summer i turned pretty x you#the summer i turned pretty#the summer i turned pretty x reader#imagines#imagine#conrad fisher fanfic#conrad fisher x you#conrad fisher x y/n#conrad fisher angst#tsitp x you
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quiet
July 31, 2023
The Hughes Lake house was packed as it always is in the summer, filled with loud voices and laughter throughout most the day and night.
Maddox friends had stayed the week before and he had some coming in a few days but he was happy with some alone time, if that meant he actually got alone time without anyone or more specifically Trevor interrupting.
When Maddox, Quinn and Jack were searching for Lake house, Maddox didn’t care about anything as long as he had his own room. When they bought the house Maddox ended up finding a quiet little area by the end of the house that is covered and put in a hanging bed, where he can read in the shade.
Most of the time at the lake house you can find Maddox there, something Trevor knew all too well.
Trevor walked across the patio quietly stopping and admiring Maddox who had an arm behind his head and the other holding his book while only wearing a pair of green swim shorts, meaning Trevor can see all the muscle Maddox has, something that made him gulp before shaking his head and walking over.
Trevor hasn’t told anyone he truly does have feelings for Maddox besides Cole, who guessed it. Cole suggested for Trevor being less pushy with Maddox as Maddox enjoys being alone and his own space so Trevor can sometimes easily overwhelm him, something that no matter how much Trevor can tell he’s annoying Maddox, Maddox never tells him to stop talking or to shut up.
Trevor stepped on the wood that creaked making Maddox’s head snap up towards the sound seeing Trevor there with a sheepish look. Maddox raised an eye brow towards Trevor.
“I’ll be quiet i promise.” Trevor grinned pretending to zip his mouth, Maddox only gave him another look not believing that for a second, “Scouts honor.” Trevor goofily grinned.
Maddox rolled his eyes but nodded, Trevor cheered walking over to the swing bed, not seeing the twitch of Maddox’s lips. Trevor laid down next to Maddox, laying on his side facing Maddox with his head on a pillow.
Maddox continued to read surprised Trevor actually stayed quiet, Maddox froze when he felt Trevor move and lay his head on his shoulder, Maddox looked down seeing Trevor fast asleep and knew that’s why Trevor was so quiet. Maddox slowly relaxed and let Trevor stay fast asleep on his shoulder something he hasn’t let Trevor do in years and continued his book.
Sophia St. Claire walked out of the lake house looking for her best friend, she stopped once she saw Trevor sleeping on her best friend. She walked over gaining Maddox’s attention, Sophia raised a teasing eyebrow and smiled at Maddox.
Maddox just shook his head at his best friend. Sophia wondered when Maddox would finally let himself admit he’s more fond of Trevor than he lets on and that’s it’s okay that he likes Trevor.
#maddox hughes au#mh22#jack hughes x reader#nhl x reader#jack hughes#luke hughes#quinn hughes x reader#jh86#quinn hughes#luke hughes x reader#trevor zegras x reader#trevor zegras#chicago blackhawks#connor bedard x reader#connor bedard#nick foligno#anthony beauvillier x reader#kevin korchinski#lukas reichel#alex vlasic#jamie drysdale x reader#jamie drysdale
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Trimax Thoughts Vol. 5 Pt. 2
I want to talk about Knives for a sec. Up to where I've read in the manga so far, we really don't have much of an understanding of him yet. I think I may have a slight advantage in having watched one of the shows before starting (I've watched Tristamp) because otherwise I don't know if I would quite get what to make of him so far.
I won't say anything about Tristamp here since I'm not going to assume everyone in book club has seen it, but I did draw a conclusion from it that, after reading volume 5, I am almost positive applies to the manga version of Knives too.
Knives treats Vash as if he were an extension of himself.
[ID: A panel from Trigun Maximum volume 5. Knives stands casually, holding a cup and smiling as he greets his brother in Vash and Hoppered's shared flashback to July. Hoppered thinks "It's him..." as Knives says "Hey Vash." End ID.]
Ok so first off I need to establish something because it's important. Listen. I have no doubt that Knives loves his brother. I do not doubt that. But his behaviour towards Vash is actively and deeply cruel. Knives is friendly up until Vash disagrees with him, and then his mood suddenly changes for the worse - he has gone so far as to specifically target people Vash loves just to break the ideology he disagrees with, shifted culpability from himself to solely on Vash several times, violated his autonomy, and has on a few occasions physically restrained him. <- That's. Really bad. I would argue that these behaviours are in keeping with uh... pretty textbook manipulative/abusive behaviours.
However, here’s the thing: these kinds of behaviours are typically perpetrated because the person wants power over the victim. I think it's easy to read that into it, but I honestly don't think that's Knives' intention at all. He wants Vash with him. If anything his little "Watch it!" when Vash shoves him away just after the colony ships fall reads as genuine confusion. He's incredulous every time Vash points his gun at him. After all, as Knives puts it: they're brothers. They only have each other.
If Knives wants power over anything, I'd argue it's power over Rem, not Vash. He sees Vash's suffering and believes it was her who "made him like this", disregarding his own accountability in both Vash's continued pain... and her death. I do have to wonder if his attempts to break Vash's pacifism is also an attempt to make Rem's ghost leave them both for good, because there is no way Millions "I thought I'd spare her but now I see she was just as flawed" Knives felt no sadness or remorse over her death.
[ID: A screenshot from Trigun Volume 2. Knives sits in the escape ship with most of his face shadowed. He is hunched slightly, with a difficult to read, rather blank expression. End ID.]
^He is totally not bothered by this, definitely a-ok with her death. /j
But here's the thing: I really do think Knives believes that without Rem's influence, his brother will think and act exactly like him; that she has "corrupted" him somehow. This plays out in the way he's almost eager to show Vash their Plant abilities, apparently completely ignoring that Vash is confused and terrified - there's a serious dissonance to their interactions, where Knives seems less uncaring then oblivious to Vash's obvious distress. A good first indicator is directly before Fifth Moon, where Knives realizes that Vash has blocked out the memory of July, and is more intrigued than alarmed by this. Idk man if that was my brother I would be. Concerned.
See, if you read Knives as wanting power over Vash, then it's kind of reminiscent of the older sibling who thinks they know what's best for the younger. Indeed, that is the role Knives seems to take on at times.
But Knives is not actually older. They're twins.
Zazie also has an intriguing line after seeing the lengths Vash will go to in order to protect those he cares for: "It definitely isn't in Knives' nature to fight for anyone." <- This is an odd conclusion to come to for someone who is supposedly doing everything for a new world that's safe for all Plants, including Vash. I'm choosing to take Zazie at their word since I don't think they would have any real reason to lie or really see the point in lying.
So, what this implies is exactly what I stated earlier - Knives makes little, if any distinction between him and Vash. The world is divided into "same" and "different", "family" and "threat". It unfortunately allows Knives to continuously undermine Vash's autonomy - it's fine to forcibly activate Vash's angel arm because it's "our" power. It's fine for the doctor to poke and prod at Vash's arm to get readings because Knives is supervising it. Vash will stick with him because they're brothers, right? Of course he will. And if he doesn't... well that can't possibly be Vash. It's Rem's corrupting influence. And that makes him violently angry as he attempts to destroy any last trace of her that persists in his brother. Because surely, without her, Vash would be just like him, right?
One last note I'd like to make is the way Knives keeps obscuring Vash's face when he forcibly activates Vash's angel arm.
[ID: Two screenshots from Trigun and Trigun Maximum. The first image shows Knives grabbing Vash's face as he forces him to activate his angel arm during the Fifth Moon incident. The second image is of the same during the July flashback. End ID.]
The thing is, you can't argue this is necessary to activate the ability. In the July flashback, Knives actually has his hand placed rather gently on the side of Vash's head... up until Vash tries to resist. That's when Knives slams his hand down over his face instead and shoves him onto the floor.
In the context of Knives seeing Vash as an extension of himself, it could take on a few different meanings. If he muffles Vash's screaming and crying, perhaps he doesn't have to see the clear distress on his brother's face. Maybe it's representative of stripping Vash of his personal choice in these scenes. Maybe because this is the truth of the matter - Knives does not want to see the person Vash is if that person is so wildly different from himself, to ruin the illusion of twin as extension instead of a separate person.
Meanwhile, Vash is trying so hard to be everything Knives isn't. Knives' face is shadowed in flashbacks to create distance between them until July reveals the destruction they both caused and Vash can no longer deny the harm he too is capable of causing. The twins cause me emotional damage man.
#hey this wasn't the best written thing i've done and there's more nuance to it than i was able to capture here but i hope you still enjoy#or. maybe not enjoy. :/#trigun#trimax#trigunbookclub#vash the stampede#millions knives#trigun meta#there's also the way vash forcibly separates himself from being anything like knives... which is why they never manage to#actually hear each other#call me ace detective the way i am ace. and also a detective.#storyrambles
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Do you have a post on Maria Reynolds? I haven't been able to find much information about her, I read she became a nun or something after the scandal??
i know i do, i am struggling to find it because tumblr's search function has and always will be ass
RAHHH I CANT FIND ANY OF THEM fuck this im giving you a short history of her life because i love you with all my heart
DISCLAIMER: i fucking hate Ron Chernow, especially for his treatment of Maria Reynolds in his book, but him and wikipedia are all I have right now and my relationship with him is very toxic pls help. also this post will discuss heavy things like forced prostitution and ron chernow absolutely butchering this subject so just be aware of what is best for you
Early Life
Maria Reynolds was born as Mary Lewis on March 30, 1768 to Susannah Van Der Burgh and Richard Lewis, who was Susannah's second husband. She had eleven siblings, and they did not have very much money, and were likely a pretty average 18th century white family in America, with poor literacy rates, struggles with debt, and the women being taken advantage of. They lived in Dutchess County, New York.
Maria was literate, but not well educated. This is something she was strongly mocked for by both her husband, Hamilton, Chernow, and other men. Well, I guess Hamilton didn't really mock her, but he definitely looked down on her for it. Fucking asshole. She also seemed to have very strong mood swings from a young age, and this could have been something psychological, like a mood disorder, or it could have been physiological or hormonal, such a menstrual disorder that was never properly treated because women's issues were not taken seriously at the time, mental or physical. This is also something she was mocked for.
Maria was married off to James Reynolds, a Revolutionary War veteran, on July 28th, 1783 when she was 15 years old. James Reynolds often lobbied the government for money after the war, foreshadowing his debt problems and later exploitation of his underage wife for money.
Together, the couple would have one daughter, Susan, named after her grandmother, who was born on August 18, 1785. Maria showed herself to be a devoted mother who would do anything for her daughter, including putting herself in harms way to make sure she didn't face the same fate. Unfortunately, Susan would also later be in an unhealthy relationship, despite her mother's efforts.
Maria Lewis was always described as very emotional, innocent, smart, and pretty, despite those who attempted to degrade her.
Men before Hamilton
It was early in her marriage when she was looked down upon by men, beginning with the son of her first landlady in Philadelphia.
"Her mind at this time was far from being tranquil or consistent, for almost the same minute that she would declare her respect for her husband, cry and feel distressed, [the tears] would vanish and levity would succeed, with bitter execrations on her husband. This inconsistency and folly was ascribed to a troubled, but innocent and harmless mind... [Reynolds] had frequently enjoined and insisted that she should insinuate herself on certain high and influential characters- endeavor to make assignments with them and actually prostitute herself to gull money from them." -Richard Folwell, August 12, 1797
Her complicated feelings about her husband allowed men to reduce her to being deceptive, however it shows that she was torn between her bias towards her husband, who had been around her and influencing her throughout her formative, adolescent years, and the things he was asking her to do, including prostituting herself.
These escalated to more than requests for her to prostitute herself to rich men into demands and threats. Reynolds became physically abusive to his wife if she did not comply with his demands to sleep with and extort rich men. Eventually, this became a pattern, and she became known as a prostitute who slept separately from her husband so she could entertain her midnight visitors, when essentially she was being human trafficked by her husband at the age of 18.
There is evidence to suggest that she only slept with Hamilton when Reynolds threatened to physically abuse her daughter, Susan. I'm not going to go into too much detail about the affair because I believe it's over done, but I am going to discuss how Ron Chernow talks about this woman, and the consequences of victim blaming.
Ron Chernow Hates Women
Ron Chernow discusses the Reynolds Affair in chapter 19 of his novel Alexander Hamilton. Already, he places some of the blame on Elizabeth Hamilton with the sentence "It was a dangerous moment for Eliza to abandon Hamilton,", even though he likes to put her on a pedestal so people think he's a feminist (Chernow 363). You're not a feminist, Ron, you're a 75 year old incel, and I feel bad for your wife.
Chernow introduces Maria Reynolds by stating her age at the time of the affair (23), and for some reason, making up the fact that her name is pronounced "Mariah"??? He gives no citation for this, so I'm assuming he made it up to make her seem more slutty. Her name was Maria. Actually, her name was Mary, but if we had any link between her and the Christian figure for maternity and purity, well that wouldn't work with the portrayal of her as a disgusting, crazy, lying whore, right?
Chernow uses words like "doleful tale", "fanciful", "conspired", and "trickster" to describe Maria, but gives no proof of her malicious intent towards Hamilton. He portrays Hamilton as vain, however a savior to Maria, and she simply HAD to have been in love with him because of how good of a person he was. Ron Chernow manipulates Maria Reynolds' character to fit his personal belief that there are two kinds of women: good, pure, Christian homemakers, and uneducated sluts who deserve their mistreatment from men (Chernow 367).
Even though Ron Chernow finds it more comfortable to believe that Maria worked in cohorts with her piece of shit husband, and that they together decided to use Hamilton for his money, the truth is that she was a severely abused woman throughout her entire life, especially at the hands of James Reynolds. Her manipulation of Hamilton was not to gain something, but to prevent her and her daughter from being abused. Chernow glosses over this, dismissing it as something she made up to secure a divorce, but it was proven true in a court of law. Chernow's famous cognitive dissonance strikes again: the US government is very securely made with a magnificent justice system, yet uneducated, illiterate women can manipulate it to get... a piece of notarized paper! Yeah, don't let this senile old man write any more books. Thanks.
Aftermath
The backlash from The Reynolds Pamphlet, published 1797, would haunt Maria for the rest of her life. She remarried twice, once to Jacob Clingman, who is another piece of shit who should have his dick guillotined, and the other time to Dr. Matthew (idk his last name) who she was a housekeeper for. She allegedly wrote her own pamphlet, but never published it. Idk anything about that.
Maria would raise her two grandchildren after her daughter's untimely death. She also changed her name back to Mary, becoming Mary Matthew for the rest of her life. She was devoutly religious, joining the Methodist Church, but not a nun. She died loved on March 25, 1828. And if there isn't someone on earth who loves Mary Matthew, then I am dead.
Here's your Maria Reynolds post. I love her so much, and I will defend her until I have no voice left, my fingers can't write or type, my eyes can't move, and my legs can't walk. She deserves so much better than what she got and how she's been portrayed. Vive Mary Lewis.
#history#amrev#american history#women's history#maria reynolds#the reynolds pamphlet#the reynolds affair#alexander hamilton#asks#still pissed that i cant find my other posts on her because i know i have a few :/
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Chronicle of Emotions (Fluff)
FastForward!Raphael x reader
Gif credit: isitdonproof
A/N: This would very much create a paradox in space and time, but fuck it. Let have some fun!❤️ Also, I know that BTTS aired in 2008, but April mentions that they have been gone for around a year, so I’ve set their return to their own timeline in 2007.
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Being punished with cleaning off Cody’s collection after an incident with Mikey, Raphael stumbles upon your diary from the past.
Warnings: Other than invasion of privacy, one that I can think of❤️
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Raphael grumbled and cursed to himself as he dusted off the boxes around him, mumbling about how much he hated the future. He couldn’t believe he was the one that had to take the fall for this! It was Mikey that started it! Continuously poking that Helix game into his face, until Raph finally jumped on him to give him a beating. But Master Splinter wasn't having it, especially not in Cody’s penthouse. So Raph was the one that got punished with cleaning Cody’s collection.
Raphael wandered through Cody's collection of artifacts, recognizing quite a few of them. A samurai suit, some utrom technology and things from their lair. Some of them were more dusty than others, like the many books that once stood in Leonardo’s bedroom. Understandable. He didn’t even read them now in the future. But as he browsed through the items and boxes, one particular object caught his attention - a small, worn notebook. Raph frowned. He had never seen this before. Was it one of Donnie’s notebooks? Or one of his future ones? Raph did not know, so he opened it and looked at the first page.
Property of (Y/N) (L/N).
Raphael's heart skipped a beat. (Y/N). The name resonated with a sense of familiarity and warmth. You. One of his best friends left back home in 2006. Officially his best friend, yet he had dreamed of you to be so much more to him. He admitted it to himself long ago - he loved you. And to be standing there, 99 years in the future with your diary in his hand, he could not help but feel a slight pain in his heart. He missed you.
But to say that Raphael didn’t find himself curious about what the diary in his hand held, would be a lie. So with a mix of curiosity and trepidation, Raphael delved into the diary, turning to the first page.
19th of July, 2003.
Dear diary
You wouldn’t believe what just happened to me today. I’ve met four turtles! Four MUTANT turtles! Talking, walking on two feet, carrying weapons and doing ninja things! And get this, they are my age! How sick is that?!
I know, I know, it’s hard to believe. Even I feared I had lost my mind for a moment, but they are as real as the page I’m writing on. And they are nice. They are sweet and funny and I hope I can see them again soon!
Raph felt a smile spread on his lips, remembering the day he and his brothers first met you. It had been a Friday night when you came to surprise your cousin April, not knowing she already had four mutant turtles and their rat father staying in her living room, using it as a hideout for a short time. Raph and his brothers would have stayed hidden away from you in April’s closet, had a bug not been crawling on Raph’s arm, causing him to burst through the door and directly into your face.
Raph felt his face get hot when he remembered that you actually caught the bug, and managed to calm him down, even though you were still shocked by the sudden surprise of a humanoid turtle in your cousin’s home. And that had been the starting point for Raphael’s growing feelings for you.
Raph flipped through the pages, skimming at the words, feeling curiosity growing. There were entries about battles fought and victories celebrated, about friendships forged and broken. Names he knew and names he had never heard of before. Someone from school or work mentioned once, just to never be mentioned again. Raphael's eyes widened as he read about your reflections on their encounters, realizing that his presence had left an impact on you just as you had on him. Raphael's cheeks warmed, and he couldn't deny the fluttering in his chest. You were not just a friend; you were someone he had held close in his heart, even if it was a secret he had kept buried beneath his tough skin. And even though it was wrong of him to be reading the words of your thoughts, he just couldn’t help himself.
In the quiet solitude of Cody's futuristic lair, Raphael found himself drawn not only to your words in your diary but to the feeling of being around you once more. He couldn't deny the impact your diary’s presents had on him, awakening emotions he had long kept guarded. Raph knew he would see you again one day, but he could not stop himself from missing you.
“How is the cleaning going, Raphael?”
Splinter’s voice from the doorway made Raph jump. Even with his graduation to Chunin coming up, Raph’s skills could not match his Master’s sneaking skills… especially not when he stood with his beak deep in your diary.
“Great, Master Splinter!”, Raph said, hiding your diary on the back of his shell. “Absolutely great!”
Splinter was quick to notice the way his son was standing. His smile on his face, along with the way his arms was bent to the back of his shell. Having been the one raising Raphael and his brothers for the past 18 years, Splinter knew way too well how it looked when they tried to keep something from him. But knowing Raph’s hatred for the future, Splinter found it somewhat comforting that his son had found something he wished to keep hidden. To keep for himself. Maybe it was enough to make him more comfortable with their current situation.
“That sounds good”, Splinter said, taking in the somewhat cleaner state of Cody’s collection. There was only so much you could do with an almost hundred years old collection and an angry turtle. “I believe you’ve been punished enough for today, Raphael”.
Raph breathed a sigh of relief. After his father’s reaction to he and his brothers finding April and Casey's old journal, he feared what he would say, had he known about your diary in his hands. He thanked his Master before waiting for him to leave, so he could run to his room all while keeping the old worn book in his hand a secret.
Once Raph was sure he was alone and that none of his brothers would burst through the door, Raph turned to open your diary once more. With a page open he turned to look at the date.
29th of July 2006
Raph almost slammed your diary shut again. His hands trembled a bit. That was the day he and his brothers traveled to the future. The day they left you, April and Casey in the past, reminding him just how much he hated the future. Yet Raph did not leave your diary.
Raph’s heart broke a bit when he read your words. A whole year you were left in confusion before any of them returned home. You, Casey and April looked everywhere for them. Every place you had known for them to call home. You had searched in Casey’s farmhouse and Leatherhead’s lair. April had even traveled to Japan to ask the Ancient One, while Casey searched out of state, all while you stayed back, just in case they got home. A whole year, and nothing. April and Casey came home empty handed. No one knew where the turtle brothers and their father were.
Raphael continued flipping through the worn pages of your diary, his eyes scanning the entries searching for something he did not know how to describe. As he turned a page, he halted.
13th of September 2007
Raph knew he shouldn’t read it. Donnie has already told him and his brothers the dangers of meddling with their timelines, and how just being in the year 2105 could already have made unknown changes to their own future. But did Raph care about that? No. He already hated the future as it was, so making it worse would feel any different to him.
It happened! They are home! The boys are home!
So much happened, and I don’t know where to start, but the most important part is that the boys are home and safe.
April and Casey texted me and told me they had found them in the lair. And it was true! They were all there! Leo, Mikey, Donnie, Splinter and Raph. Speaking of Raph, it happened. It fucking happened. Finally it fucking happened!
Raph narrowed his eyes in confusion. What happened? Or… what will happen? - The fucking future thing was going to fry his brain one day.
Raphael kissed me!
Raphael's eyes widened as he absorbed the words on the page. The realization hit him like a tidal wave. He kissed you. He would kiss you! At some time in the future… or in the past… fuck that shit! He kissed you!
He did not say hey nor let his brothers say anything. He just walked straight over to me and kissed me! Just like that! In front of everyone! I will not lie and tell you that I didn’t want it, because in actuality, I did. I really wanted it, probably for way longer than I originally thought. I do really like Raphael, and it’s safe to say that he likes me as well.
His heart thudded in his chest as he read your words. You liked him? Just like he liked you? His hands shook as he tried to calm his breath. It was like an adrenaline bomb had hit him, making his heart raise even further.
Raph was tempted to read further. Turn to the next page and learn what would happen next. What words you would exchange and what actions the two of you would take. But just as he was about to turn the page, he decided against it. He already knew too much. Or maybe just enough. He now knew it was safe to kiss you when he turned home, and that you wouldn’t push him away nor fight against it. Learning more than that would take the excitement out of everything the two of you would do together.
Closing the diary with a mixture of awe and anticipation, Raphael couldn't help but smile. The knowledge that you harbored feelings for him, even if it was in a moment he had not yet experienced himself, filled him with warmth. And as he snuck out of his room to return your diary to Cody’s collection, he hoped that none of his brothers would notice him nor the little skip in his step.
Maybe the future wasn’t as bad as he had made it out to be.
#tmnt#teenage mutant ninja turtles#tmnt raphael#tmnt raph#tmnt donatello#tmnt leonardo#tmnt michelangelo#tmnt donnie#tmnt mikey#tmnt x y/n#tmnt leo#tmnt x you#tmnt x reader#tmnt 2003#tmnt 2k3#2003 tmnt#tmnt 2003 raphael#tmnt 2003 raph#tmnt 2003 leo#tmnt 2003 leonardo#tmnt 2003 donnie#tmnt 2003 donatello#tmnt 2003 mikey#tmnt 2003 michelangelo#tmnt 2003 x reader#tmnt 2k3 x reader#tmnt leo 2003#tmnt leonardo 2003#tmnt raph 2003#tmnt raphael 2003
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Fourth of July
Warnings: angst, mentions of depression and anxiety, panic attacks, suicidal thoughts?, mention of alcohol and drug use, fluff at the end
Pairing: Eddie Munson x female hopper!reader (reader is adopted)
*not proofread!
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Loss.
You have experienced so much loss in your life. So much that it made you feel nothing and yet everything at once. Everything bad.
You wake up crying, every night. Drenched in sweat, gasping for air as you’re clutching your chest. It takes a few minutes for you to calm down but it really feels like hours. Hours of replaying your nightmares even though you’re trying to forget them, so desperately.
You see the faces of the people you lost, the people that died or left. Every night, you hear their screams as they are getting torn apart by whatever it is down there and you know your mind is playing tricks on you, considering that half of those people you see in your dreams are still alive. They are still here and so are you even though you catch yourself thinking you wish you weren't.
You wish you weren't here.
All you felt was pain, this agonizing kind of pain that made every little thing so unbearable but you told yourself to hold on, that there was more than just this pain.
The pain that never seemed to stop.
-
Blinking, you stare at the heavy rain hitting the windows. Single droplets streaming down the glass, just the way your tears stream down your face whenever you wake up crying.
You drown out the teacher’s voice or the ringing of the bell. Not even noticing that everyone is packing up and leaving the classroom.
You don’t even know why you’re here, at school.
Your bad grades and failed classes have forced you to stay behind, repeating your senior year; if someone had told you this one year ago, you would have laughed in their face and called them crazy. Your grades were good and you have never, ever failed a class in your life.
That is until you lost your dad.
Everything just changed after he was gone.
It wasn't the same anymore.
You shut everyone out, pushed your friends away. Not because you wanted them out of your life but because you weren't ready for them to see you this way and you weren't ready to lose someone else.
You felt as though you were a curse. Everyone who got too close to you, ended up getting hurt or worse. They died.
Your dad called himself a curse once and maybe it wasn't actually him. Maybe it was you.
The rain is falling, freely.
Just like it did that night you watched Joyce walk out of the mall without him, without your dad.
“(y/n)?”
Tearing your eyes away from the window, you look up to find Nancy standing in front of you, looking at you in concern.
Furrowing your brows, you look around the now empty classroom. You were so deep in thought, you didn't even hear the bell ringing. You don't notice anything anymore.
Looking back at your friend, you mumble a quiet ‘hey’ as you get up. Tucking a loose strand of hair behind you ear, you grab your history book.
“Are you okay?”
No.
“Yeah, just kinda tired.” you lie as you force a smile on your face.
Nancy eyes your expression, noticing the dark circles under your eyes, the dull look in your eyes and the tired expression on your face. You are suffering. She knows you’re lying about your feelings, that you refuse to open up and she worries about you, she worries about her best friend.
“Nightmares?” she asks carefully as you both walk out of the classroom.
“Uh- n-no, just, staying up late to study. I need to fix my grades and I’m behind on some stuff.” you lie, again. That’s all you seem to be doing lately.
Lying about your feelings, lying about your wellbeing, lying about your nightmares.
Lies.
It’s all just lies now.
Hell, you’re even lying to yourself. Telling yourself that you’re fine. That you will be okay. Eventually.
Nancy nods, pretending to believe your lies. She isn't stupid, she knows you and she knows that you’re an awful liar when it comes to your feelings. You always get that look in your eyes, that guilty one before you look away to avoid eye contact.
“Hey, would you like to have a sleepover tonight? Just like old times?” Nancy asks, opening the door to the cafeteria, she glances back at you to find you with a skeptic expression on your face, one that gives your answer away already and while she respected your decisions and the distance you needed after what happened last year, she started to feel frustrated with you. Not because she was angry at you but because she was worried about you. Worried about her best friend “we could watch a movie, paint our finger nails and listen to whatever music you want.” she adds.
Your eyes soften at her suggestion, a sad smile tugging at your lips as you think about all the sleepovers you used to have together. How careless and happy you were when things were.. so much simpler.
You miss it.
You would have loved to have a sleepover but the thought of getting a nightmare during one and giving away the state you’re in kept you from saying ‘yes’ so you came up with a lie. As always.
Guilt creeps up on you as you see the sad look in her eyes.
“B-But we can go to the movies if you want.” you offer as you sit down at one of the less crowded tables in the cafeteria.
Her eyes light up at your words, a smile appearing on her face “yes! that would be perfect.”
You smile at your friend as she starts suggesting all the movies you could watch.
Feelings eyes on you, you glance around the bustling room curiously until your eyes lock with his.
Eddie Munson.
His dark eyes locked on you, he’s staring. As if he is staring into your soul, trying to figure you out.
Blinking, you’re unable to look away from him, his eyes, his glance, he, he pulls you in.
You miss him.
The two of you got assigned to a project a few months before your life changed so drastically.
He was funny and sweet. He made you laugh more than anyone else did and he made you happy. He was amazing and the short time you spent with him as your friend, was the best.
But you were unaware of his feelings for you.
Eddie who spent most of his high school years longing for you, was hopelessly in love with you.
The moment he laid his eyes on you all these years back, he knew. He knew you were the one.
He felt like the luckiest man alive when you were assigned as partners and he felt even more lucky when you continued hanging out with him even after you were done with the project.
Nights spent with music and late night drives turned into a routine over the summer and it was perfect, so perfect.
Until the 4th of July happened.
And everything changed.
You changed.
And you distanced yourself from him, from everyone.
And you never let him back in.
You stare at each other, for what feels like forever, neither of you seem to be able to look away from one another. God, you miss him so much.
The sad gaze his eyes hold is enough for your broken heart to crack even further, tears prickle in the corners of your eyes causing you to tear your eyes away from him, looking down at your hands as you try to focus on Nancy’s voice again but you can still feel his eyes on you.
-
The rain is pouring down on you, mixing in with your tears. Your clothes are drenched, your hair falling in front of your face as you’re walking through the empty streets of Hawkins.
Your heart is racing and you’re barely able to catch your breath, feeling as though you ran all the way here even though you only walked.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
After your night at the movies with Nancy, the two of you shared a few drinks- maybe a few too many but you felt good, better than you did in a while and you finally managed to enjoy life, again.
Until you came back home.
The moment you stepped into the empty and cold house and you walked past your dads room- what used to be his room, your heart just dropped. You felt sick to your stomach.
If he was still here, he would have lectured you about coming home so late, especially after all the things that happened in this town.
But he wasn't here anymore.
And this wasn't your home anymore. It didn't feel like it now that he was gone.
You’re tired, so so tired of feeling this way.
You left the house, not even caring about the raging storm. You just started walking, letting your feet take you wherever.
You didn’t care about the cold rain on your skin. If anything, it felt nice, at least it felt better than waking up drenched in sweat because of nightmares.
-
Strumming his guitar, Eddie is staring at his wall blankly. His thoughts occupied by you, the way they always are.
It’s been almost a year since you came into his life and left just as quickly. He couldn't blame you though. You lost your dad and you needed some time alone, he respected that but seeing you around school and not being able to just go up to you and pull you into his arms the way he always wants to, drives him insane.
He cares about you in a way he never cared for anyone.
Loud knocking echoes through his trailer. Furrowing his brows, Eddie looks at the clock on his table 2:31 AM. Who comes knocking at 2 AM in the morning?
Putting his guitar down, he gets up, sighing as he walks through his trailer.
He sighs in annoyance as the knocking continues.
“I’m coming!”
Ready to yell at whoever decided to knock on his door at this hour, Eddie pulls open his door, about to open his mouth to tell the person on the other side to fuck off but when his eyes lock with yours, his words get caught in his throat.
Standing there, you are shaking from the cold rain, your clothes are drenched, your bottom lip is trembling and he can’t tell whether it’s tears running down your face or if it’s the rain.
“H-Hi..”
He mumbles your name, staring at you worriedly. Grabbing your arm he pulls you into his warm trailer.
“(Y/n), w-what are you doing here? Did something happen? Are you okay?” he rambles as he puts his hand on your shoulders, eying you in concern.
Your glassy eyes give away that you have been crying all the way here, the side alone is enough to make his heart ache.
“I’m gonna grab you a towel or blanket.” he mumbles but before he can make a move, you grab his hand, mumbling a quiet ‘no’.
Looking down at your hand, he notices how badly you are shaking. Worry creeps up on him as he eyes you slowly. Cupping your hand with his other one, he steps closer to you.
“I-I don’t- I’m okay.” you stutter as you grip his hand tightly, looking around the room nervously “I just- c-can you give me something?”
Eddie furrows his brows at your words “w-what?”
He feels stupid for asking, by the look in your eyes, he already knows what you want from him.
You sigh, another tear escaping your eye “drugs, pills anything, please.” you whisper, looking away in shame. This wasn't like you. You didn't even recognize your own voice as you uttered those words but you want to escape reality even if it’s just for a short while.
You want to fall asleep without having to worry about yet another nightmare.
Eddie’s face twisted, sadness clouding his features as he looks at you, taking in your state, he notices that you’re not even shaking from the rain, your lip isn't trembling from the cold. You’re anxious, panicked even. You look scared and tired at the same time and now that you’re standing right in front of him, he can see you.
He can see how you are still suffering.
Your eyes look dull despite the tears in them. You look tired, as if you haven't slept in weeks and you looked as though you were near a goddamn panic attack.
“I- drinks don’t help a-and I can’t take sleeping pills, they don't help and if I take too many, I-I won't-” you hesitated as your eyes met his, even through your blurred vision, you can still see the worry and confusion in his eyes.
“You won’t wake up.” he nods, finishing your sentence. He grows even more concerned as you stare at him with this broken look in your eyes.
Something tells him that you wouldn't even care if you didn't end up waking up.
But he cares, he cares so much, it would break him if something happened to you.
“So please, give me something, Eddie, I don’t care what it is, j-just please, I need it.” you beg as tears roll down your cheek.
A wave of sadness came over him. He has never seen you like this, so broken, so fragile and so desperate for something that you would have never touched one year ago.
You rarely ever had any alcohol, let alone touched any of his weed but now you were asking for drugs?
Eddie shakes his head, his brows pulled together. He will give you anything you want. Anything but this.
“No.”
A sigh leaves your lips. The thought of having to go home and crying yourself to sleep only to wake up sobbing because of your taunting nightmares made you feel so defeated.
“Please Eddie, please.” you cry, not even caring about how miserable you looked. Your tears are falling freely as you look into his large sad eyes. Letting go of his hand, you put your hand into the pockets of your jeans, not even noticing how badly your hands are shaking.
“Here.” grabbing the dollar bills, you hold them against his chest “you can have anything you want.” you cry, your voice so heavy with emotions.
Eddie sighs deeply, closing his eyes for a moment, he takes a deep breath, taking your hand in his, he opens his eyes as he pushes the money towards you again “no.” he repeats.
He won't lose you to this. Not you.
“You can have anything you want from me, sweetheart but not this.”
The way you so desperately asked him for this, basically throwing your money at him whilst looking at him with those teary eyes of yours, gave away the broken state you are in. Making him even more worried about you.
You huff as you close your eyes. A pained expression on your face as you take a step back. Pulling your hand out of his, you nod softly. You feel defeated.
“Okay.” you whisper, trying to blink away your tears “I'm sorry.” you mumble, you look into his eyes one more time before you turn around to leave but before you can take a step forward, he grabs your hand, whispering your name softly.
“Talk to me, sweetheart.” he whispers.
You stand with your back to him, breathing heavily. You want to, you just want to let everything out but you can't. You can’t tell him what actually happened.
He can tell that you’re about to refuse, telling him that there's nothing to talk about but he won't let you go, not again.
Stepping closer to you, he lets go of your hand, instead he brushes your wet hair out of your face, wiping your tears away, his touch is so soft, so warm and comforting.
Cupping your cheeks, he tilts your head up so you look him in the eyes.
“I’m here okay? You can talk to me o-or if that’s not what you want then we can just hang out, we can listen to some music or just drive around like we did last year?” he suggests as he looks at you with hopeful eyes “we can do whatever you want, whatever helps you feel better but taking that shit won't help darling, it won't numb the pain it'll just make everything worse for you and I don’t what for you.”
Furrowing your brows, you stare at him for the longest time, your eyes boring into his. He rubs your cheek with his thumb as he waits for you to say something.
“I-I don’t want to numb the pain, I just- I just want to sleep-” you trail off. Sighing as you notice the confused expression on his face “I want to sleep and not dream about anything.”
Realization dawns on his face.
Nightmares.
“Every goddamn night, I-I get these horrible dreams and I can’t do it anymore, Eddie. I feel like I’m going insane.” your voice cracks, closing your eyes you look down as you feel yourself beginning to cry again.
“Oh y/n.” Eddie breaths, pulling you into his arms, he hugs you close to his chest, rubbing your back with his left hand, his right hand goes to cup the back of your head as he kisses the top of your head “it’s okay, I got you sweetheart.” he whispers as he listens to your cries.
Wrapping your arms around him, you cling to him, holding him tightly as you cry into his chest.
“I got you.” he whispers, over and over again.
Your clothes are still wet, cold on your body as they stick to your skin uncomfortably but right in this moment you feel warm, safe and secure.
You feel comfortable in his arms.
“Let me help you.” he whispers as calm down after a while.
“H-How?”
“Stay with me tonight, you can sleep here and I’ll watch over you, I’ll wake you up if anything happens.”
Your eyes soften at his suggestion “I’d like that.”
A smile tugs at his lips, his eyes lighting up. Leaning in, he kisses your forehead softly “come on.” he whispers, taking your hand in his, he leads you into his bedroom.
Eddie gave you his favorite shirt to wear, his sacred Black Sabbath shirt. Sitting on his bed, you look around the room, nothing has changed since the last time you were here.
Your eyes fall on a piece of paper laying on top of one of his books on his desk. You don’t need to move closer to recognize your handwriting but you get up anyways, picking up the piece of paper, you unfold it fully, it was the note you gave him when the two of you were assigned as partners during history class, last year.
You were too nervous to speak to him, so you wrote him a little note and slid it over to him.
Wanna study at my place tonight? 7pm?
- Y/n
It was nothing special, a simple little note. Just a piece of paper but he kept it.
Because you gave it to him.
The thought of him keeping something so small from you made your heart flutter.
“I made you hot chocolate.” Eddie says as he comes back into his room “the best hot chocolate of Hawkins.” he adds.
Putting the note down, you turn around to find him staring at you. A soft look in his eyes, his cheeks flushed as he looks at you.
The butterflies flutter in his stomach, his heart skips a beat. Standing there in the middle of his room with just his shirt on; you are the prettiest girl to him.
Walking towards him, you smile nervously as your eyes lock “can I try?” you ask, your eyes flicker to his lips for a second.
“W-What?”
“The best hot chocolate of Hawkins.” you whisper, making him chuckle.
“Of course, doll.” he chuckles, smiling at you.
He hands you the mug. Your fingers brush his as you take it from him. You smile softly unaware that such a small action from you is enough to make him weak in the knees.
He loves you. He loves you so much that it hurt when he couldn't be next to you.
“Oh wow.” you mumble after taking a sip of the sweet beverage “that really is the best hot chocolate.” you say making him smile.
“Told you so.” he shrugs with a smirk on his face.
You chuckle, taking another sip before you put the mug down on his table, next to the note. Turning around again, you stare at him for the longest time, eyeing soft expression on his face.
You missed him so much.
You just want to throw your arms around him and never let go again and without a second thought you step closer to him, wrapping your arms around his waist, you lean your head against his chest “I miss you, Eddie.”
“I miss you too, y/n, like crazy.” he whispers as you wraps his arms around you, holding you tightly against him. He longed for this, for you in his arms and now you were finally here, with him.
Looking up at him, your eyes lock, you can’t stop the guilty feeling that creeps up in you. You pushed him away even though you never wanted to but you didn't want him to see you this way, you didn't want to be a burden on him but now as you look into his eyes, you know he would never think of you as that; a burden.
He cares for you, deeply. You can feel it and you can see it in his eyes. Even when he was just staring at you from afar.
You always felt it.
Your hands move up to his neck, standing on your tippy toes, you stare at him for the longest time, just gazing into his eyes.
His hands cup your cheeks softly “y/n” he whispers as he leans in closer, his lips almost touching yours now.
You close the gap between the two of you and press your lips against his as your eyes close.
His eyes flutter close. his heart skips a beat at the feeling of your lips against his. Pulling you in even closer, he kisses you back with all the love he has for you.
The kiss is soft yet passionate. Filled with raw emotions and it just feels right, it feels perfect.
You feel safe in his embrace.
At home.
Right at this moment, you know, that as long as you have him, nothing and no one can hurt you.
-
#eddie munson#eddie munson fluff#eddie munson imagine#eddie munson imagines#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson x you#eddie munson x y/n#eddie munson angst#stranger things imagine#stranger things imagines#stranger things angst#stranger things fluff
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Let's spread some positivity! Tag some of your fellow content creators here and let them know why they are absolutely amazing!❤️
This is a really sweet idea. I'm going to put my list below a cut, because it will be long.
@em-writes-stuff-sometimes - honestly, Em's fan fiction is better than actual published books I've read. You should be doing this professionally, bub, not publishing it for free for us morons on Tumblr. I'm forever amazed that someone with your brain wants to pal around with an idiot like me.
@valeskafics - your tenacity and the sheer volume with which you are able to write will never cease to amaze me. You're a powerhouse, Babybel. You don't have a masterlist, you have a fucking library, it's incredible.
@barbiedragon - your modern Daemon has me in a chokehold. You're also one of the few writers flying the flag for Vizzy 3 and I gobble up everything you write for him like I'm a shark and you've put chum in the water. Can't wait for Kinktober to see what you create!
The rest of this list is just ordered by date of when I followed the person, and expresses no particular favourtism:
@flowerpotmage - not quite so active in fandom anymore, but they're one of the few writers giving gender neutral readers some much needed representation, and their Aemond and Daemon fics are amazing.
@paintb0x - an amazing artist - some of the best I have seen for Ewan and his characters.
@sapphire-writes - I love Jo's modern AUs and her ability to put my heart through the wringer!
@timetravelingpenguin1066 - Eli is one of the sweetest people I've ever met. An incredible gif maker and a great fic writer.
@aemondx - Sili's gifs are wonderful and the kindness she dedicates to this fandom by making icons and headers for people is admirable.
@alicentive - Killy's gifs are insane and I love that she writes for the characters that don't get as much attention from fandom.
@marthawrites - Midnight Passages, you will always be famous.
@exitpursuedbyavulcan - Studious, my beloved. UPDATE WHEN? (sorry)
@targaryenrealnessdarling - I would die for Liz. She's not just an insanely talented writer, but an all round amazing person too, she makes this fandom a much nicer place to be.
@st-eve-barnes - Eve is out here giving the Aegon girlies the content they desperately need. I love her Aemond fics too!
@bottlesandbarricades - one of the funniest fuckers I've ever had the pleasure of speaking too. Only has one fic, but it's a banger, and her edits are unmatched. I will never get over space buns Aemond.
@toms-cherry-trees - more content for Peaky Blinders than HotD, but the Aemond fic is gold.
@just-some-random-blogger - a Daemon girlie, we love to see it! If entertaining reblogs were an Olympic sport then Hani is taking home the gold. Her fics are bonkers, and I love them.
@humanpurposes - Gee's writing is top notch, some of the best Aemond fics I've ever read.
@assortedseaglass - Hilde is one of my favourite writers. Ever. She could write instructions on how to put together IKEA furniture and I'd eat it up, she's that good.
@oneeyedvisenya - another of my favourite Aemond writers. Education is one of my top five fics of all time. So well written.
@lya-dustin - the speed with which Juli produces chapters is mindblowing. All Is Bliss is a great series.
I can only tag 20 accounts at a time, so I shall continue this in a reblog. I wasn't lying in previous ask, when I said my appreciation post would be phonebook sized.
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