#heroes is litterally their song
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Their last day of school!! In tcoptp!!!
This chapter made me so sad and happy at the same time im gonna miss their school days so much @motswolo
#heroes is litterally their song#tcoptp wolfstar is just superior#tcoptp#tcoptp fanart#wolfstar#wolfstar fanart#remus x sirius#remus lupin#remus fanart#sirius black#sirius fanart#marauders#marauders fanart#marauders era#artwork#fanart#artists on tumblr#art#illustration
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swinging through — peter parker *TEASER*
summary: her whole teen life had revolved around her dorky next-door neighbor, Peter Parker but that was five years ago, now, at twenty, she’s got her eyes set on a new bo—no, man; Spider-Man.
warning: minor age gap (three years), suggestive themes (reader likes the mask), mentions of blood/injuries, angst with a happy ending, not actually unrequited love, fem pronouns used, nicknames used instead of y/n, kinda sarcastic!reader,
theme song: another soul-mico
teaser wc: 300
a/n: it’s my first time posting on here in years, but i had to contribute to the small amount of insomniac spiderman fics (i need more). this will probably be a 2-3 part series, please be patient! I’ll post the first part soon but here is a small teaser! reblogs/likes/comments are appreciated! can be imagined as any peter but im writing with video game peter in mind so minor spoiler warning if you haven’t played any of the games? some spelling mistakes
Out of eight million people who lived in New York, of course, only this would happen to her.
Being held hostage in a crappy store with two other people, that is.
All she had wanted to do was get a bag of cat litter, due to running out the night before but here she is, sitting down in a mystery liquid she’d rather not be in, and with the cow villain(she cannot get over the cow ears he was wearing) pacing back and forth in front of her.
“Uhm, if you let me go, I swear I won't tell anyone. Pinky promise!” she had held a pinky up from her now-freed hands. It had been easier to untie herself due to the crappy knot they did.
“Didn't I tie your ha—never mind! No, he's on his way already and then I’ll extricate revenge!” The cow villain exclaims.
Who was on their way? Was it one of the Avengers, or Fantastic Four? Or was it Spider-Man?
In all honesty, she was getting kind of excited, of all of the heroes in New York, she had never encountered him.
She had lived in Harlem for the past three years and had only seen him swing by her window.
“Revenge for what exactly? Also, what is your name? I just keep calling you cow villain in my mind.”
“No one has ever asked for my name,” the villain seemed to tear up a bit before continuing,” it’s Cow-Median.”
She tried to choke back her laugh.
“Sorry.” She cleared her throat.
“No worries, you’re fine!” Cow-Median smiles and then becomes serious.
“And for revenge,” Cow-Median paused for a dramatic effect, “well, it’s because he’s obviously a meat eater!”
…
What?
That’s when the red and blue hero burst into the store where she was being held hostage.
#peter parker x reader#peter parker#insomniac spider man#insomniac peter parker x reader#spiderman#spiderman x reader#spiderman x y/n#peter parker x y/n#ps4!Peter Parker x reader#spider man 2 ps5#ps5!peter parker x reader#spiderman remastered#peter parker fluff#peter parker angst#coming soon#teaser
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sucking and marking kiri’s neck for your own pleasure not his and leaving purply marks all over him.
૮ ͈>◡< ͈ა warnings — please read + mdni ! characters aged up to 20s, established relationship, suggestive, dry humping, jealousy, possession, excessive marking, hickies, hair pulling, pro hero!kirishima, gn!reader - not beta read !
walk with me nonnie, can you imagine like marking the shit out of kiri’s chest and neck after watching one of his post-rescue interviews— the damsel in distress having thrown themselves all over him on national TV.
he’ll come home tired after his patrol and the agency work— flopping down on the couch to curl into you and while you flick through channels, giving eijirou the unknown silent treatment. the news will flash with the report of his brave work, the girl clinging to him for dear life and looking up at your boyfriend with bright, twinkling eyes as she purposefully drags her words so kiri will pay extra attention to her.
you thought that by the time eijirou came home you’d be completely calm, over it but then just the sight of him getting all flustered rewatching the clip — asking if his arms look to big or if he should have been a little more humble. you can’t even fault kirishima because he’s just too nice to realise when other people are crossing an invisible line. even sitting next to him, you feel like you can smell her all over him and see exactly where she put her hands on him.
so after a few more moments of ignoring the big guy, you haul yourself into his lap — not kissing the way surprise spreads over eijirou’s handsome features before his large hands settle on the dips in your waist. his red eyes darkening with amusement.
“well, hello there, gorgeous.”
“shut up.” the way you latch onto his thick neck could be compared to that of a vampire — sinking your teeth into the golden hue of his skin, nibbling on the flesh until a purple-like bruise rises to the surface. “‘m mad at you,” you whisper, voice basking in a huskiness that empties eijirou’s brain. he’s too slow, too sweet to catch onto what’s happening.
instead he twitches and rumbles and whines underneath you as you use his chest and neck like a canvas. you aggressively paint shades of blue, burgundy and purple across eijirou’s skin, slowly but surely turning him into a needy mess. he chases a friction that you don’t give to him even while perched pretty in his lap. he whines like an angel’s song as you tongue the marks you’ve given him, lapping at the sensitive areas on your boyfriend’s collar bones while you debate on covering them up with more.
having this amount of control and possession over such a big and strong pro hero sends loved up and hormones shooting across your brain and right around your body. it makes you feel good knowing that red riot lets you have him like this, let’s you do these things to him. even though you both know he could very well turn this situation around.
“please, honey. i just wanna…god let me feel you. please?” kirishima pleads and begs as you litter him with enough love bites to last a life time. you know it feels good for him, but for you it’s better. like taking a shot of whatever alcohol you desire — it gives you a buzz. makes you hyperaware that everyone will see your claim in eijirou peeking out of his hero costume.
“baby,” he tries again, breathless and bucking his hips up into yours, anything to soothe the aching, leaking hard-on he sports. “god, i know i’ve got some teeth on me…but you’re really tearin’ a guy up here. please give me more… s’frustrating.” kirishima mewls weakly but lets you grab the black roots of his hair, tugging his head back so you can expose more of his unmarred flesh to your ravenous mouth.
you have an appetite for ruining him, blessing every inch of his sensitive skin with your bite marks. “you know what’s really frustrating, eijirou?” you mumble after sucking on a spot just under his ear — one of those spots that makes his huge body convulse under a simple touch. “watching your boyfriend let some girl put her hands all over him. watching him do nothing about it too.” he groans low and sexy at what you say, hiccuping between the open mouthed kisses you trail down to his plush chest. “it’s like you wanted to make me mad on purpose, red.”
“maybe…fuck… maybe i did.” kirishima sighs, back arching from the couch when you wrap your wet mouth around his juicy peck — biting down on his pebbled nipples before you move to leave teeth marks all across them. “if it gets you like this.”
you lick, you suck, you bite and teeth and bring red riot crumbling down to the ground. by the time you’re done, his chest, neck and tits are sore with midnight purple marks you’ve left all over them and kirishima lets you kiss every single one to soothe him.
it’s safe to say that the headlines reporting in red riot change over the next few days — most of them highly focused on the aftermath of your jealousy he wears proudly on his exposed chest.
#kirishima x reader#kirishima x you#kirishima smut#kirishima thirst#kirishima imagine#bnha smut#bnha thirst#bnha x reader#bnha x you#bnha imagine#eijirou kirishima x reader#eijirou kirishima smut#mha smut#mha thirst#✧ ₊˚੭ — writing#tteokdoroki#✧ ₊˚✉️੭ — new notification#✧ ₊˚💬੭ — unknown messenger
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PENUMBRA ┊ AIZAWA SHOUTA
synopsis: navigating life with two identities is no easy feat. falling for the underground hero known as Eraserhead makes keeping your worlds separate that much harder. it was bound to fall apart at some point.
tags: AFAB GN reader, strangers to friends to lovers, secret identity (reader is a vigilante; wears a mask; reader has a quirk), minor oc characters, morally conflicting relationships, romantic + sexual tension, cats + coffee, hurt/comfort, canon typical violence (weapons; quirk brutality; kidnapping; villain gun quirk), quirkless discrimination, criticisms of hero system, blood loss + injury (bruises, fractures, bullet wounds, reader gets stitches), mutual pining, making out + heavy petting, I promise this is fluffier than it sounds, mild angst with a happy + hopeful ending
wc: 20k
It happens between blinks. Always a forgiving, dreamless sleep.
When you wake to the obnoxious wail of your alarm the honeysuckle sun has already unsheathed itself from the horizon. “Fuck,” you groan, smacking your lips in displeasure at the dry, cotton feeling in your mouth.
Three and a half hours was better than none at all. You had fifteen minutes to make yourself moderately presentable — wipe away the sand from your cornea with cold water, lethargically brush your teeth, appraise the shadows beneath your eyes and twist in the mirror reflection as you try to map out any fresh bruises.
You paint over the purples and blues, wincing as you go. Most were easily covered up by your shirt but you couldn’t take any chances; not the slip of your sleeve, or the dip of your collar. Nocturne’s remnants littered your body, and he would surely recognise them at first glance.
Your lips shape slowly around the consonants and vowels. “Aizawa,” repeated again and again as you dress yourself. Not Eraser now, just Aizawa. Kill the latter part of yourself, saved only for the night. Don’t slip up. You tuck your rudimentary wings back into thick, woolly socks pulled up over your ankles, snug around your calves. Wearing just jeans and a sweater always feels unnaturally light the morning after a patrol.
The key eases into the lock. You turn it clockwise, and try the handle once more before you leave. In passing you can hear your neighbours beginning to wake and get ready for their day. Hasty footsteps echo throughout the stairway as you descend it, too behind on time to even think about waiting for the lift.
You start down the road towards the cafe and tug your jacket closer to your chest. The pavements are wet, rainwater fed into the uprooted cracks. Tired as you are, there’s a restless giddiness building in your chest, and it spurs you on further. Aizawa is a creature of habit — he would be there, rumpled and windswept, as he always is.
The mundane routine wasn’t something you disliked. Not everything had to be exhilarating or dangerous for it to be worthwhile. Life was an accumulation of small victories. When the sun is up, that is when you get to enjoy the fruits of your labour; people in your community with relaxed smiles, unrestrained laughter, going about their day without the burden of worry.
You enter through the back door of Meowtini. Waiting diligently for your arrival, as soon as they hear the click of a lock the cats are flocking to the staff room, a cacophony of yowls of every pitch. “Okay, okay! I hear you!” you laugh, pushing them away gently with the tip of your foot as you try to get to the kitchen.
One leg after the other, you step over the security gate. “No kitties in the kitchen,” your voice threads together in a sing-song cadence, hands busy at work collecting the tubs of cat food from the pantry. “I promise it’s comin’!”
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes since your handover, Hideki, had left, and still they behave as if they’d been abandoned for weeks.
At the cafe there are three rotations. The morning shift runs from eight till twelve. During lunch the doors would be locked, allowing the feline residents reprieve from the public. Second is the afternoon, three till six, and third is the late night shift, reserved strictly for employees able to bake and restock the display cases for the following day.
You always took the morning shift, without fail.
A quiet bell sounds by the entrance and all ears in the vicinity perk up. Aizawa enters at eight on the dot just as he does every Friday, still in the all black jumpsuit and weighted capture weapon you saw him in only hours ago, now with his usual work bag slung over his arm.
You straighten self consciously and smooth down the front of your apron. His furtive stare finds yours through the second security door, peeking over top the new missing person poster tacked front and centre, slightly obscured by the dark hair curtaining his face.
Some of the older cats slink out from their hiding spots, mewling like kittens. They’re only ever like this with him; their internal clockwork has synced to his arrival, you think. It’s only natural — Aizawa spoils them more than any other regular.
They shuffle back as the door pushes inward, and he slips through the narrow space into the warmth of your cafe. You watch with inundated fondness as he takes a moment to breathe in the scent, those broad shoulders lifting, chest expanding with his lungs.
Aizawa bends forward like a puppet cut free of its strings and proffers his hand to the feline closest to him. Ren, an older long haired cat with a black coat to match his own. You get a glimpse of the muscle hidden under that plain fabric, as it slips forward over his bruised collar, and you swallow thickly.
“G’morning,” you call to him, turning to busy yourself with his usual order. A red eye — black coffee with one added shot of espresso — and a glass of cold water. You massage the ache in your knuckles as the coffee drips steadily into the shot glass, conscious of the broken skin on your third and fourth knuckle that you’d covered with concealer.
You hear his gruff response, voice low and rough with fatigue in a way that prickles at the nape of your neck. There’s a familiar, pointed weight at your back that fades the moment you turn, his stare now set firmly on the baked goods in the display counter.
“Want one?” his eyes flicker up, meeting your own as you set the coffee on the surface. “You can give up the bit, Aizawa. I’m already well aware you’ve got a secret sweet tooth”.
It’s still odd interacting with him like this — as yourself, plain clothed and unmasked, voice as clear as the bell by the door. The first time he had stepped foot in the cafe you’d been overwhelmed by trepidation and fear, only to realise he didn’t recognise you at all.
“You pick something,” he murmurs, reaching across. Your fingers are still looped through the handle of the mug, and they brush against his rough skin as he takes it from you. There’s coarse, dark hair on the back of his hand, you notice. “So long as it’s warm”.
Pleased, you hum an affirmative, picking up the pair of tongs behind the counter and plucking one of the croissants from the shelf; crust crisp with a soft yielding centre, brushed with golden egg.
“Hard week?”
Something indiscernible shifts in his expression. He considers you, “What makes you say that?”
This is another of those fleeting instances that you think he may have connected the dots. Face pinched in quiet suspicion, he visibly weighs the possibilities. Your pulse throbs on the back of your tongue as the blood rushes to your ears. You warily telegraph your movements and ignore the urge to turn away from prying eyes.
“Just making conversation,” you smile, though it is strained despite your efforts, and gesture to your collarbones. “I saw the bruises, so…”
A beat of silence passes, and you are forced to exhale on the off chance that your quirk activated itself amidst the one sided panic. When Aizawa accepts your flimsy excuse with a lazy nod you are forced to temper the immediate relief that follows.
“I did run into trouble. Though not the kind you’re thinking,” he continues to speak, bending to pet one of the younger cats. Suzu, judging by the broken mewl. He sounds… unbearably fond. “Just someone that likes to get on my nerves”.
Blunted teeth sink into your tongue. The toaster oven pings behind you, startling you out of your gentle astonishment. Taking the croissant out of the oven, the hot air plumes upward to sting your eyes, and you set it onto a small plate.
“That’s hardly distinct. I’ve heard you say that about everyone in your life,” you tease lightly. “Starting to think you enjoy it”.
“I wonder about that,” Aizawa huffs, sliding the plate across the counter and stepping around the flock that has inevitably gathered at his feet. He hugs the coffee mug to his sternum, glancing toward his usual spot.
Despite being the only person to arrive this early, he always checks. Recently, he has also begun to ask, “Too busy to join me?”
Weeks ago, you’d taken an early break and graded some papers for him while he slept, and he had yet to forget it. “You do a guy's work for him one time,” you laugh, head shaking amusedly. No doubt there were enough poorly written student essays in that worn leather bag to fill your skull with cotton. “I have to feed the cats”.
Do your own job, Hero. The comment sits right at the tip of your tongue, and it takes conscious effort to smother it, pressed up against the back of your teeth. Too much like Nocturne.
Aizawa levels you with a playful glare — playful by his standards — and his nose wrinkles above the ribbons of carbon alloy coiled around his neck. Then he sleuths off to his booth, gait heavy as if he were wading through wet mud.
Now you’re free to enjoy the sides of him Nocturne doesn’t get to see; the man you knew as a force to be reckoned with, the voice of reason and stickler for the law, draping himself across the booth like he was part of the furniture, where he could just be; embedded into a scene that gently unfolded around him.
Ren leaps up onto the cushioned seat, stretching her limbs across his thighs with toes spread. The pro hero slumps down and slips his fingers into her thick fur, head tipping back as the rigidity bleeds from his body. You drink in the way his throat shifts when he swallows, how the dark stubble on his cheeks shadows the underside of his jaw, and quickly cast your eyes to the countertop.
Aizawa Shouta is unbearably handsome in all manner of ways. You’re sure he would regard you with flat disdain if ever you told him so. The unkempt, rugged appearance was all purposeful — being overlooked or underestimated was the whole point. But you liked it. A lot.
You recall the whiplash of seeing him during a press conference all those months ago; hair brushed and neatly styled into a half up do, a youthful face freshly shaven, his suit cinching tight in all the right places. Thankfully his facial hair is as stubborn as he is, and you never needed to grieve it much.
Paradoxically, you are far more masked standing behind the cafe counter now than you were in your gear. There was caution and forethought in every word, every movement; constantly weighing the possible outcomes came with a lot of mental fatigue. You wanted to reach out and touch him, to grasp every version of yourself and overlay them in his mind until it painted a full picture. Look at me.
Maybe it’s silly, with him sitting so close. But you missed him. You wanted to banter with him again, poke and prod until he got a little rough.
Eventually a pair of friends trickle in, bringing a brief gust of cold air when they greet you. The dewy morning sun is bright as it peeks over the surrounding buildings, glittering faintly where the condensation clings to the window panes and casting dappled shadows across the floor. You serve them together and make idle conversation, sneaking quick glances at the weathered hero. He rested against his fist, squishing the fat of his cheek.
“Thank you. Here, since you’re new, take a few bribes too,” you restrain a smile at the sight of him nodding off over his paperwork as you press a few small tubes of wet cat treats into their open palms. “It’ll help warm them up to ya”.
When the coast is clear you gather some for yourself, fiddling nervously with the packaging and approaching Aizawa’s booth. He’s awake again now. Coffee cup empty and croissant half eaten. The man is a grazer; when he eats Aizawa will nibble around the edges and save the centre. You hear the rough scratch of his pen across paper. Spine arched and tail quivering happily, Ren spreads her toes as she pushes up into his equally heavy handed back pats.
You know well enough that he’s aware of your presence. Subtle, his shoulders roll back, opening his chest, chin tilted toward you and hair tucked behind his ear to show he’s listening while he works, leg unfolding from beneath his body and stretching until the tip of his toe taps the opposite seat.
That’s just how he is. Eraserhead’s intentions are largely unspoken. A test, in a way. Tuning into the body language of others and deciphering it is what kept you alive most nights. Hearing the question, the bid for more explanation, the silent praise behind his less-than-expressive expressions had been child’s play.
Not here though. You needed to maintain a level of ignorance to keep his guard down. Standing at the end of the table you ask if you can sit despite knowing you can. He answers again by gesturing his pen over the table, never lifting his gaze.
You slide across from him. “How’s the pastry?”
“Groundbreaking,” he concedes dryly before tearing off another bite.
“Good answer,” you snort, resting your elbows on the table and leaning forward to shamelessly read what he’s working on. The handwriting is barely legible. “What’s the assignment about this week?”
“Overlap of ethics and law. It was supposed to be a two thousand word essay on any case study of their choosing,” he bends back the corner of the papers laid out in front of him to emphasise the thickness and deadpans. “This is all from one student. Five times the word count I set”.
“Midoriya again, I presume?”
The long suffering sigh is all the answer you need. You decidedly do not watch the slow swipe of his thumb across his mouth. His lips part and he sucks the remaining crumbs. Heat flashes through your body that almost makes your tea seem cold.
“Should never have clarified that the word count was a soft limit,” he mutters, clicking the end of his pen twice. “Kid is terrible at cutting down his own work. I advised him to only include the key sections of the essay he said ‘but Sensei, it’s all important’”.
“Sensei,” you repeat, mimicking his voice. “Why did you become a teacher again?”
“I regret it every day,” he replies. You can tell it’s without malice, and not just by the fondness there. He doesn’t mean it — never does. Aizawa Shouta is forthright and honest about everything but his personal feelings.
“Sure,” your cheeks hurt with the effort not to laugh; amusement hidden safely behind the rim of your mug. The tea burns, and you feel it all the way down to your stomach as you swallow. “If you say so”.
Dark eyes narrow in on you. It becomes another of those moments where the proverbial walls are closing in. Pushing back is useless, so you have learned to sit and wait. He’s always… surveying you. You think, deep down, his instincts are telling him things that he desperately wants to put a name to.
“I do,” he rumbles, absentmindedly circling his pen against paper. He twirls it between each knuckle with ease, staring at you for a long while before he says: “You remind me of somebody I know”.
Bracing yourself for collision does not lessen the impact. As expected, this is when the guilt invites itself in and replaces your fear of being caught with the nauseating shame that too often comes with lying to someone you care about. “Is that a good or a bad thing?” you ask, rubbing at that frantic, skittish thing behind your sternum. “I can never tell with you”.
Aizawa laughs. More of a snuffed out, breathy sound than anything, but a laugh all the same. You feel it echo to every nerve ending, simmering into a pleasant buzz. He didn’t do it much, and as Nocturne you knew it was embarrassingly obvious how hard you tried to pluck the reaction from him. So much so that you’d started to suspect he repressed it on purpose.
“It’s a good thing,” he murmurs, overturning another page of Midoriya’s work. Your heart jumps at the unfettered warmth in his tone. Then, following a short pause, he adds, “Mostly”.
You’re semi content to watch him work. There are always questions, but you’re afraid of what he might see in you if you ask. Forgetting yourself would lead to a lapse in control. Disturbance in the deception might not create an immediate break, but restless, inquisitive Eraserhead would not be able to keep his nails from picking at the frayed thread until the tapestry fell apart.
Names do not often come up in conversation, only ever by accident. Mostly, he refers to the majority of his class and his daughter with half-baked terms of endearment. You already knew many of the students at UA — albeit not personally, but it was clear that maintaining a strict level of anonymity for his kids was important to him.
So you dance around the lines he had so boorishly lain, flirting with them a little, but only if you can’t help it. It’s a repetitiveness you’ll never tire of, it’s scripted exchanges and the subtle coaxing until he’s there, in your magnetism. You liked how he’d smile as he receives the tube of cat treat, even if it is a private exchange with the cat in his lap and not you.
How’s work, how’ve you been sleeping, did you shave again?
Work is work, sleeping hours should be longer, do you often pay attention to my shaving habits?
People filter in as the time passes. You return to your place at the counter soon enough, kept in place by one of the newer, clingier kittens, Suzu, sprawled on the top of your right shoe.
You call out to Aizawa as he saunters toward the door. Once again, his stare lingers for longer than necessary on the missing person poster you had tacked to the window. He slouches further into himself at the volume, hands deep in his pockets when he turns to squint with displeasure.
Wearing a sheepish grin, you wave the little powder blue stamp in the air. When Aizawa leaves his face is flushed and hidden behind the sturdy material of his capture weapon, yet another ink impression of a cat on his pink point card.
Exhaustion catches up to you near the end of your shift. Your coworker, Saeko, a young woman fresh out of college, had arrived miraculously early. She gave you a playful, disapproving once over, smiling til a crooked tooth peeks from between her thin lips.
“Senpai. With all due respect, you look worse than I did during my final exams last year,” she snorted, jaw rolling as she idly chewed a fresh stick of gum. The teasing jab is fermented with fresh mint. “You can totally dip, if you want. I got it from here”.
“Are you sure?”
A wet smack of her lips. She shucked off her coat with a shrug, untucking the ends of blonde hair caught in the collar. It fell just below the hemline of her skirt, and you saw a faint ladder stretch in her dark tights when she stretched to hang it in the staff room. “Yea, it’s cool. Unless you’re still stickin’ around to wait for Melatonin-san? Thought he usually came at the ass crack of dawn”.
“That’s not his name and you know it,” you laughed, bundling yourself back up with a passing glance to the back window. Trepidatious, dark clouds make your little concrete world a smidge duller. “But no, I’ve got nothing left to do. Aizawa already stopped by”.
“Aizawa,” she recites, brows wiggling suggestively. “He asked for your number yet?”
“No, Saeko”.
“Want me to get it for you?” she pressed the tip of her index finger to her left eye. There’s gold tinted circuitry in the sclera paving toward the iris. It is vivid orange, without a pupil, and it appears to pulse like the lense of a camera. “On the house. Maybe if you get laid you’ll actually be able to sleep”.
Jacket wrapped close to your chest to brace for the incoming gust, your hand tightened around the door handle. “No, Saeko,” you repeated with feeling, as though you were chiding a toddler. “I mean it. No illegal data syphoning at work”.
Her voice carried through into the side alley, all the way onto the bustling street. Suit yourself, she cackled. The glaring implication that Aizawa could be interested in anything beyond pleasantries fed yarn into that ever-present knot of anxiety in your gut.
As Eraserhead he entertained Nocturne just fine, but that relationship was more akin to that of a kitten latched to his pant leg than anything else.
Even if it was a possibility of something more, that flame would be diminished as soon as he found out who you were.
You rub your hands together, creating heat with the friction and massaging it into your cheeks. The cold bites at the tip of your nose. Falling back into your normal route is natural. Sewn into muscle memory, your legs carry you back home and the thoughts wash over you.
The apartment seems less welcoming when the sun is up. You thought it might be the clutter, or the sound of your upstairs neighbours slow dancing in the kitchen. Creaky floorboards groan under your feet, above your head, as you find no reason to avoid the weak spots. There were things that needed to be done, and little time to do it.
Redress the wounds which have not scabbed. Throw some food into the air fryer and scrub your gear clean while it cooks. Eat well, press on all the areas of your body that feel tender and decide to take a painkiller. Plug in your phone and your mask, turn on the TV and listen to the news report as you stretch. Check your costume on the clothes horse, spend close to an hour examining for tears or concerning damage before laying it out on the end of your bed. Nap.
Blearily, you wake in a dark room, remnants of the day barely visible where it has slipped beneath the horizon, and wash your cotton mouth down with a glass of water. The news cycle is repeating, a red banner rolling bright across the lower half of the screen with urgency. Sidekicks from the Endeavor agency had pursued a villain from the Shizuoka border to the Meguro line on the Shuto Expressway, effectively destroying, in part, one of the main arteries into central Tokyo.
Not your jurisdiction. Not theirs either, if you think about it. Typical. You pat around aimlessly for the TV remote, lowering the volume to a whisper with a heavy sigh as you scoot toward the edge of your bed.
Unsteady on your feet, you amble toward the pinboard kept on your accent wall. An oeuvre of loss. You run your fingertips along the pins until they stop on one particular thread. Ono Mizuki. There are others — lines of every colour, yellow, blue, green, orange, interwoven and connected, overlapping from point to point until the pattern becomes clear.
Tonight you’d patrol further east of the prefecture. There’s one specific neighbourhood in which all the threads crossed. This area was the only other similarity between the victims aside from quirk status, or lack thereof.
Shadows pleat across your floorboards. The room is always a bit stuffy after you’ve squeezed into your gear. The kevlar strapped securely around your torso beneath the layers of clothing is weighted, and you’re quietly comforted by its sturdiness.
Strapping on your utility belt is the fun part. Three pouches secured either side of your hips — tucked into each are a basic first aid kit, flash bombs, smoke bombs and a few nightsticks. In the holsters is a granite baton and a small combat knife. Cuffs confiscated last week, all you have righ now are zip ties. You sniff petulantly. Eraserhead’s fault.
Even on the nights you don’t run into him during a patrol, Eraser’s presence is ubiquitous. A veritable shadow. He could be anywhere, could be anyone, and it was comforting in an odd way. You supposed that is what made him such a renowned underground hero. The possibility of being caught by him was enough to deter most criminals.
That sentiment was not unlike the legacy left by All Might, yet comparing the two — comparing him to any other daylight left an unpleasant taste in your mouth. Less bitter-sweet, more bitter-resentment.
By definition, heroes are not supposed to be human. Humanbeings are multifaceted. Messy. Heroes are scrubbed to the bone, puritanical, manufactured to symbolise something bigger. A bright, special kind of person in a black and white landscape; an iron club wielded by the voices of the people; the displacement of their personal responsibility.
To be a hero is to be the penultimate. A moment of choice, gestures of grandeur against one great foe that unites the people. They answer fears, like a God would.
It’s theatre.
You found solace in Eraserhead’s own translucence. His stubborn humanity set him apart. You had the unique opportunity to see Aizawa from other angles, to observe the ways in which he illuminated the facets of his soul. He was not all that dissimilar to you.
The lackadaisical man openly bore his heart on his sleeve only to convince you it’s a trick of the light. A hero that could shoulder accountability and admit fault. He’s well meaning and rough around the edges to ward off those he deems intolerant. Quiet when he knows to be with the memory of a fox — the ears of one, too. Carelessness wouldn’t be easily forgiven.
Thoughts of him carry you across a grey landscape, towering rooftops and buildings that dwarfed you. The sound of your feet hitting the gravel barely echoes. It had taken months to learn to lighten your footsteps, and even longer to know where to put them. Eraserhead wasn’t the only person that liked to remind you that your fighting stance needed work.
Dropping into the narrow alley below, you begin to weave through the prefecture's interconnected veins, senses attuned to your surroundings and prepared; any sudden noises, a shift in atmosphere, an item out of place, your breathing came to a stand still.
Something prickles under your skin as you approach the singular street where all the victims had once been. There is the innate feeling that something wrong has happened here — the kind that beats against your breast bone and begs you to turn back. At first glance the area isn’t overtly suspicious. Some of the buildings are boarded up, broken into or covered in anti-HPSC graffiti, but that wasn’t necessarily a red flag.
More often than not, areas that received less government funding tended to receive fewer patrols from heroes, and when they did, compensation for damages was rarely offered. It would need to go through the courts, and every day people did not have the means to fight a branch of government when they were busy with mouths to feed. Causation aside, their anger was natural, understood.
The true source of your discomfort comes from a warehouse at the far end of the road. A big, hulking structure, outer paint peeling to reveal varying layers of sun baked hues, encircled by fire escapes fastened firmly to each floor that gave it an almost skeletal appearance. Creaking in its decrepitude, you hear groans echoing throughout the empty rafters. That unnerving emptiness follows you in, finding a wide empty space entrenched in shadows.
Except, it feels strangely lived in. Touched by something. Light filters through the window panes enough to outline the tall pillars, looming and evenly spaced. Rubble has been swept into the corners, faint lines from the bristles in the dirt, and tread marks left by the wielder.
There’s an elevator in the back that you daren’t risk using. You apply some of your weight to the floor and it yields as though it would plummet. You come across a trash bag full of beer bottles and food tubs, which upon closer inspection, are mostly filled with needles and bloodied fabric.
Tipping the contents onto the floor would only alert someone if they returned later. You wanted to rummage through it piece by piece, maybe bag some of it up to hand off, but as thick as your gloves are you didn’t want to chance being pricked or contaminating something.
Your shoulder sag with a deep sigh, the sound crackling through your voice changer. One thing that does catch your eye is a bracelet — or what was once a bracelet. The chain has snapped and most of the beads are lost, but a few remain caught by the thicker part of the clasp. They’re speckled like granite and warm coloured, brown, green and orange. You can make out some kanji script etched into the beads. It is not a name you know, but an instinctive urge encourages you to keep it.
The bracelet is bagged and heavy in your utility belt as you peruse what’s left of the space, passing various rusted machinery covered in tarp. There’s a vice fixed to one of the work benches. The wood is stained dark, smatterings of dried blood dotting the lever. You try not to think about it.
Tension slips notably from your muscles as the distance lengthens between you and the warehouse. Heading back west, this route winds through the busier parts of the city. People of every shape are weaving around one another in every direction, filing out from the clubs and bars in a chorus of raucous laughter. Non locals might call this the heart but you know the heart lies in where they’re going — home.
You stick to the rooftops to maintain a vantage point. The air is thick with the bitter smell of alcohol and street food. Vendors made good money on nights like this; you feel your stomach twist in hunger, mouth watering at the sight of browning yakitori sizzling just below.
A woman stands off to the side, picking off the morsels of meat from her little stick, visibly unstable on her feet. The glow of satisfaction on her flushed face dims with discomfort when her foot narrowly misses the curb, and she bends to rub where the strap of her heels crosses over her ankle.
Your attention is magnetised to the figure near her. Unremarkable at first glance. The two stand out clearly, both immovable against the tide of civilians stumbling toward Futoura station, much further up the road. He’s watching her intently. Beady focused, unblinking. You notice another pair above his— no, a mimicry of them. Eyespots blending into a close-cropped head of hair.
His movements are carefully telegraphed as he begins to follow her. In turn, you do the same. The pace picks up when she nears a corner, mostly vacant, forking off into an alleyway that leads to the back of a club. Quicker than you could’ve expected, he throws a look over his shoulder before crowding her into the shadows.
The arch of your boot meets the ledge. You take a deep, deep breath. Desperate and obstructed by a large hand, her frightened yelp is cut short by the abrupt freezing of time.
You fall through it. The sensation is odd, as if you can feel every atmospheric thread breaking around you like spun sugar. Gravity is merciless. Untouched by your quirk, you drop hard as a stone, and you exhale.
Everything resumes. The dissonance of stepping into a frame and suddenly being written into it is hard to explain. You buffer and snap forward like a band into the maw of the alley. Startled by the impact, the pursuer swings his elbow back and reaches you first. They often do. Your quirk was good for gaining an advantage or getting away, but it did nothing to enhance your own speed.
Your balance is terrible, Eraserhead murmured blithely in the back of your mind. Ground yourself. Keep your upper body aligned over your lower.
“Fuck—!”
Blood is pumping frantically through your veins. Every pained grunt rings loud in your ears, tuning out the muffled cries coming from behind you. There’s a tenderness blossoming across your left side, and it throbs by the fifth and sixth rib.
While you might be well adjusted to fighting in the dark now, you’re still human. Living, breathing, feeling. Your body and your mind must be split at times like this — two creatures on your shoulder, one that begs to run and live, another that wills you to fight.
The assailant dives forward in one sluggish motion, rewarded with the sharp chink of your armoured glove as his fist connects with hard steel. He reels away in pain, cradling the injured hand to his chest while the other frantically reaches into his coat pocket.
Polished silver glints in the moonlight. Your boot meets the hilt of his knife and it pirouettes into the shadowed alley, skidding across the gravel. A look of pure rage crosses his face and his mouth splits open. Fangs. You’re ready when he charges, arms flailing heavily, a roar pushed from deep in his gut.
Your lungs bloat, and again, you hold. Everything freezes in time and the sound cuts out. A large hand caked in dirt hovers only a hairsbreadth from your nose. His skin smells of cheap alcohol and cigarettes. You step aside and draw your arm back.
Exhale. One fast, hard punch to the man’s unprotected jaw and his head whips to the right, body arching sideways as all his momentum snaps backward like a rubber band. Time resumes and you power through the sudden sensory overload as his body collapses to the floor with a weighted thud.
The lack of movement doesn’t deter you from dragging the knife forward with your foot, eyes focused on the unconscious stranger as you crouch to pick it up. A sharp sensation shoots through your muscles as you twirl the weapon between your fingers. It’s clearly new and not well kept. His stance had been entirely amateur.
After tying his wrists together with multiple zip ties, you turn your attention to his victim. “Are you physically unharmed?” you ask with a gentle tone that still bleeds through your voice changer.
The woman he'd pinned to the brick wall is curled up by the dumpster, knees tucked protectively to her chest. She has her phone held to her ear with a shaking hand, the fear visibly wracking through her form, stuttering her words.
“Yes, I— are you—,” she stammers, tears spilling over her pink cheeks. There’s an insistent, tinny voice coming through her mobile speaker, but she appears unaware of it as she appraises you, her eyes wide with what looks to be gratitude. “Are you a hero?”
“Not really,” you smile at the question and hope she can see the assurance in the happy squint of your own.
Flipping the knife to pinch the blade, you beckon her to take the hilt. Sirens wail in the far off distance. Shuffling closer in careful, considerate movements, you murmur encouragement as she takes the weapon from you.
Blue and red cut through the darkness, flashing interchangeably and obscuring her vision. As you move to leave the scene you tell her, “Ask whoever’s on dispatch Nocturne said to send Eraserhead. He’s the best hero I know”.
Inhale, hold, flee. You are gone from the canvas before anyone can blink.
The night is alive with a muted bustling. People on all walks of life filter out into the neon lit streets, worn by the day and rushing home to their warm beds. A sense of calm settles around your bones, bleeds into the ache left by old wounds and quietens the restlessness that you permanently house in your body.
You’re teetering on the precipice of an old office building — a publishing house, if you remember correctly. The cement beneath your boots shifts like a loose tooth as you lean forward, heart reflexively crawling up your throat at the drop, pulse rocketing in your ears.
Here, you are simultaneously burning and at ease. There’s a satisfaction that comes only when you are standing exactly where you belong. Freedom tastes like three minutes to midnight; crisp air and the faint scent of oncoming rain gathering in the dense cumuli above.
You smile behind your headgear, adjusting the straps drawn tight around your masked hood with thick gloved fingers. The carbon fiber is an extension of you now, a permanent part of your skin, leaving behind a phantom pressure face even when you have stored this part of yourself away.
That yearning for self is constant and comes with the setting sun. You exhale and feel the warmth of your breath stick to your cheeks. Swaying against a gust of wind, steadied by a practiced hand, your arms spread wide in a welcoming embrace.
Like every night before, you whisper to the place you grew up in: “I’m home”.
Amidst your reverie, you sense a shift in the atmosphere. Barely audible footfalls. Boots scuff against loose gravel. The new presence clouds your senses, as if it has physically reached out to strum the dipole between you and him, and you’re turning before his feet make contact with the rooftop.
Poppy red eyes scan drag over your form. The clothing you wear is padded and loose fitting for concealment, but still you find yourself conscious of the shape of your body. Humming under your skin is the urge to cock a hip, maybe tilt your head in a manner that is coy, to close the distance between you.
“Surprise?”
“Hardly,” he drawls. “There’s really nothing I can say to stop you from bothering me on my patrol, is there?”
“You catch on quick,” you reply with a grin. He may not see it behind the mask, but he hears it. “Only took you… what, six months?”
He looks rightfully exasperated, “Seven”.
Stepping down from the ledge with barely a sound, your hands clasp against the small of your back and bouncing on your toes despite yourself. “You’ve been counting? That’s cute, Eraser”.
Warmth trails behind him and plumes into the air as he exhales tiredly. You follow his movements as he comes to a stop at your side, hand flexing into a fist and out, overlooking the busy streets below, much like you had. “The woman you saved earlier asked me to extend her gratitude,” he returns, ignoring your teasing comment.
His words temper the playful atmosphere. A quiet bud of pride begins to bloom and your smile wanes into something bashful. Saved, he’d called it. As exhilarating as fighting was, the most fulfilling part of being Nocturne may be receiving gratitude.
The gleam in Eraserhead's gaze wasn’t so bad to be on the receiving end of, either; half lidded in a way that suggested he was at ease, the scar cutting over his eye and another across his cheekbone, slightly curved. “She wasn’t injured, was she? I didn’t get the chance to check her over,” you fret.
Another chill dances across the roof and he tucks behind his capture weapon, comically burrowed into the nest of cloth and thick hair. “No, just shaken up,” he reassured. Watching closely from the corner of his eye, he adds, “Refused to tell the detective which direction you ran, though. Quite intent on protecting you”.
You don’t like the suspicion bleeding into his tone — not that you can blame him. Still, “You think I’d ask a civilian to cover for me?”
Eraser sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose with a thumb and forefinger. “No. But you know it doesn’t matter what I think,”— it does, you want to insist, staring as his fingers spread to rub roughly over his closed eyelids — “the victim insists they don’t recall you using a quirk, so you’re in the clear. But you need to tread carefully. The guys at the precinct aren’t happy”.
“Then they should do their job better so schmucks like me don’t need to step in. Didn’t they receive a pay increase just last year?” you respond bitterly. “I don’t need you to lecture me, Eraserhead. I need you to help, because you’re the only one that ever does”.
The steel toe of your boot meets the ledge with a dull thud, chipping off some of the old brick, and you cross your arms defensively over your chest. You release a hiss as a painful throb pulses through your knuckles where they’re tucked into the crook of your elbow.
There’s no hiding it. You flinch as he catches your wrist in one quick movement. Struggling is fruitless, you know that better than anyone, but still you like doing it for show. It has the grip reflexively tightening, keeping you in place with a bid for compliance, authoritatively murmuring come here.
You enjoy it when he touches you. Maybe more than you should. He’s careful, uncharacteristically gentle as his fingers slip beneath the cuff of your glove. Anticipation zips through you and settles in your stomach like a fluttering kaleidoscope. Fingertips brush your palm and suddenly, breathing becomes a conscious act.
Inhale. Exhale. Each greedier than the last. The temptation to draw out this moment is too great. You wanted his hands on you for a little longer.
The night air bites at your skin. Aizawa turns your wrist over in his grasp, delicately tracing the ley lines stitched into your frigid hand, rubbing over the faded bruising by your third and fourth knuckle.
“Seems like the fractures healed nicely,” he stated. “Still should’ve rested it longer”.
You can’t look away from his face; softened like wax to a flame, his frown smoothed out in a way you rarely get to see with the mask on. All of that subdued concern and care directed at the point where your bodies connect — at you.
You reel yourself in. “I am capable of looking after myself, you know,” his tired eyes lift to pin you with a sceptical stare that has your hackles rising. “I am!”
“Right,” he drawls. His touch lingers on your wrist after he lets go, and you cradle it to your chest. Before you’re able to retort, his eyes dim and he steers the topic to something sombre, “Have you heard anything more about the missing civilians since I last saw you?”
You rub idly at your pulse point and it beats rhythmically under the skin. You can still feel him. Even when reminded of such sobering circumstances you can’t help but wish, in the deep recesses of your mind, that he had kept his hands on you.
A young couple stumbles down the lamp lit street. They are hand in hand and sharing unabashed laughter. It’s the sound of freedom; loud and ugly in a way that is wholly human. They stop in a circle of concentrated light and you smile as one man spins the other, their improvisation sloppy in a way that’s heartwarming.
“A young woman by the name of Ono Mizuki disappeared two days ago. Her father is in fits about it,” you shift your weight between each foot, shoulder bumping against him. Eraser doesn’t move. He listens to you attentively as he watches the very same couple dance with one another, and when you think you feel him leaning into your warmth, you decide to put it down to imagination.
“She’d been on her way home from cram school when she was taken. He reported it to the police that night but she hadn’t been missing long enough. They said she probably ran away”.
Eraser releases a heavy breath. “Quirkless?” he asks.
“Yeah”.
“Thought as much”.
You shiver, instinctively seeking shelter from the cold, and Eraserhead lets you press to his side. As the couple walks out of sight, the unattainable image of you bundled up in his arms flashes unbidden through your mind. Hastily, you continue to speak, “I followed her usual route home a few days ago and found her rucksack tossed in the trash with her ID and such. Took it to her father”.
“That’s good,” he murmurs. You try not to preen at what sounds like genuine praise. “Anything unusual at the scene?”
“No,” you step away to turn and face him with resolve. “But I’m going to keep trying to find her. And the rest of them”.
Above your heads, the plume of cloud is severed into two, crisp moonlight spilling through the fissures. Eraserhead hums as he lifts his chin to survey the everchanging canvas and you find yourself following his line of sight to a cluster of stars shaped vaguely like a scorpion.
“And what’ll you do when you find them?” he says after a few beats of comfortable silence. There’s a teasing intonation to his words. “Will you restrain their captor with another zip tie you found at the hardware store?”
You play along, scoffing as he dodges an elbow to the ribs, “You’re making fun of me. You, the reason why my newest pair of cuffs were confiscated in the first place? Who cares what I use. It did the job, didn’t it?”
Eraserhead does not like heroes without potential. Those who act thoughtlessly; who do not know their own strengths and weaknesses; who put others in danger with their insatiable greed. Quirks may have birthed a new world, but power or not, humans would always be the same. Special power, not special people.
Which is why his sudden lightheartedness felt so significant. Eraser trusted you, in his own way. If he didn’t you would’ve found yourself on the receiving end of another tiresome lecture. In the early days he’d even cited one of his young students' quirk law essays, dubbing you ‘more troublesome than a fourteen year old’.
“He was over six feet tall with a strong arachnid quirk. It only worked because you managed to knock him out cold first”.
It’s hard not to preen as he appraises you from his periphery, almost proudly. You let yourself grin; concealed, yet so wide that it’s obvious, “Correct, I apprehended a guy three times the size of me —
Slowly, you exaggerate your point further by winding up your middle finger, and waggling it in his direction in time with the mocking punctuation of your voice,
— And I didn’t even need a fancy scarf to do it”.
His hand wraps around the offending finger and gently pulls it back, applying just enough pressure to cause discomfort. “A little respect goes a long way,” the threat falls flat, his voice entirely amused and lacking malice. “I could easily break this again”.
You exhale a breathless laugh, still making no move to get away from him. “It can’t be much worse than dislocating my shoulder”.
Bingo. Abject regret flits across his features and he lowers his chin behind his capture weapon. “I’ve already apologised for that,” he grunts.
It sounds as if he’s pouting. His grip pulses once, like he couldn’t help himself.
“Actually you reset the bone, handed me an ice pack and threatened to arrest me if I got in the way again,” you recount fondly, your smile widening as he retreats further into his carbon alloy cocoon. “Then you said sorry”.
“That’s what happens when you jump into a fight without announcing yourself,” he mutters, loosening his grip on your finger. Distracted by the new, gentle rub of his thumb into your knuckles, you almost miss it as he tacks on a quiet, “Troublesome”.
Laughter bubbles in your chest, partially conjured by the nerves as he cradles your hand, “You act like I do it on purpose. My body just—”
“—moves on its own,” he interrupts you, finishing the sentence with a light shake of his head. You mourn the loss of heat when he lets go of your hand. The arm falls limp at your side and you feel him tense as it brushes his hip. “You really didn’t use a quirk against the suspect back in the alley?”
“Who knows”.
The topic of your quirk came up every so often — though lesser now that you’d formed some sort of camaraderie. You evaded answering each time he asked. At first it was a matter of trust; your meta ability was rare and easily found in the quirk database should he focus his search on your prefecture. Now it’s purely for security.
As an underground hero Eraserhead played nice with vigilantes, most of the time. There were others, like Knuckleduster, a grievously-injure-first and ask later kinda guy, whom he wasn’t a fan of. But he never tattled on anyone or turned them in, to your knowledge, as long as they abided by the law. If he knew you’d been using your quirk, he was then still legally obligated to report it. Eraser had a lot to lose by keeping secrets on your behalf.
That first night you met this other half of him had been surprisingly startling, because so much of him is unchanging. Eraserhead and Aizawa truly were one in the same. His expression so nonchalant and frayed with exhaustion, eyes narrowed and red rimmed, the incredible manner in which he carried his body — somehow simultaneously lazy and graceful, like an old cat.
Suddenly being wrapped up in white lengths of metal alloy and sent careening into the concrete had been another surprise, albeit less pleasant. The reminder makes your shoulder ache. You recall how his knees straddled either side of your hips, one large hand gripping the nape of your neck while the other bent your uninjured arm at an awkward angle. He’d leaned forward, the full weight of him, hair draping over his shoulders and falling into your vision like a black curtain, mouth rough against the shell of your ear.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
You revisited that particular moment a shameful amount. It was as if his voice had rewritten the memory into one of fondness, and somehow the immense pain you’d endured was merely a blip in the story. Eraserheads gruff, bumbling method of apologising had only endeared him to you more.
Then came the hunger. Voracious, you would finish your less-than-legal nights of patrol with a twisting sensation in your stomach beside the kindling satisfaction. You weren’t willing to seek him out. The Aizawa you know wouldn’t respond well to such an intrusion. Rather, you broadened your routes into the next district over — an area you knew he frequented — and prayed it would play out naturally.
“You’re being quiet”.
You blink out of your stupor as the memories retreat, “What?”
“You’re being unsettlingly quiet,” he repeats. “What are you thinking about?”
The whole of his face is visible now. In the time you were reminiscing he had tucked his hair behind his ears and risen from the confines of his capture weapon. Outlined by cool moonlight, casting a shadow of his lashes against pale cheeks and exaggerating the bags beneath his eyes.
Plainly, “I think I’m realising I'm in too deep”.
Your success at worming into his good graces can only be attributed to your persistence. It helped that you already knew most of his tells—
Exasperation slips from his expression in favour of subdued wonder. His eyes burn red, and you thought if he stared any longer you’d be reduced to nothing but ash.
You hold his gaze and purposefully exhale. His jaw shifts as he swallows, and the air around you is unbearably thick. The pager on his utility belt sounds off once more in staccato beats.
All heroes available within a five kilometre radius please attend.
“Go,” you chide with a wry smirk, “do your job, Hero”.
He grits his teeth and abruptly reaches for his capture weapon in preparation, motions stilted as he glances back at you once more.
“We’re tabling this for later,” he insists firmly, teetering over the weathered rooftop edge. You nod and offer a complacent wave as he leaves, all too relieved that your disappointment is hidden by the mask.
—and kept him unaware that he, too, knew many of yours.
Fatigue wears on you through the night, and you find yourself ambling home at around three in the morning with aching permafrost chipping away at your bones. You wondered if the world fell silent might your joints audibly creak, straining under the weight of your self imposed responsibilities.
Your thighs protest as you leap over to the next building, heart squeezing in anticipation as your lack of force shortens the distance of the jump. Landing hard with a haphazard roll, your body unravels itself and you lay spread out as you catch your breath.
There’s a question you’ve been asked many times by both civilians and public servants alike: Why you?
As you pass yet another missing persons poster, Ono Mizuki’s young, heart shaped face smiling back at you, the only answer left to give is: If not me, then who?
The stairwell leading down from the roof is only slightly warmer, illuminated by a single stream of moonlight from a small broken window. You keep your eyes closed as the door shuts behind you with a resounding slam, blinking them open slowly as your vision adjusts to the darkness.
Piloted by your subconscious, you can hardly recall reaching your apartment, keys held between your trembling knuckles. It takes three tries before it slots into the keyhole, turning with a resolute click. The familiarity of home lowers your inhibitions with such abrupt immediacy that you could collapse.
The protective gear you wear works so well because it is armoured, padded, layer upon layer of protection sewn to fit you perfectly. While you’re grateful, you hated how difficult it was to take off. As you lumber further down the hallway you peel away the clothing bit by bit. Mask left atop the shoe rack, boots kicked off haphazardly after a weak attempt at untying the buckles, your soiled jacket left strewn across the living room floor.
“Shower…,” you mutter aloud, your unaltered voice still foreign to your ears. The police scanner is nestled beside the television and habitually, you turn the volume in passing, overlapping tinny, static voices echoing throughout the space. You enter the bathroom and tug at the string light, flinching when you’re blinded by the cheap fluorescence.
Instinctively, your eyes are drawn to the reflection in the mirror. Left only in your thermal under wear, you look as tired as you feel. The impression of your mask curves over the bridge of your nose and across your cheeks. You trace it lightly with the tip of your finger.
Stripped naked, you stand beneath the spray and let the sharp pressure unravel the knots in your spine. It’s hot against your cooler skin. Soon the rhythmic pitter patter dwindles into numbness and you urge yourself to get out despite the protest from your muscles.
You fall onto your half-made bed wrapped in an old bath towel, hair still damp, fighting a losing battle to keep your eyes open. Your consciousness blurs as soon as your head hits the pillow; you find yourself pulled into the recesses of sleep, ever sinking.
The week passes with disturbingly little fanfare. Not wanting to abandon your regular patrol routes, specific days are allocated to observing activity in the far eastern parts of Musutafu. No other people have been reported missing, thus your pinboard remains unchanged, and the investigation stagnant.
Eraserhead offered no new information, and could sense some pent up restlessness in you. Suddenly your roles have been reversed, and he is seeking you out frequently with the sole excuse of keeping you in line. He begrudgingly allows you to assist him in smaller takedowns; public quirk usage, purse snatchers, drunken brawls. Tasks for fingers much greener than your own, but placating his concern was more important than pride.
Your abject indulgence in his company feeds the guilt hollowing out your bones. He felt better having you in his sights, that was clear. You are brittle, weathered by his appreciative glances and quiet praise, slipping away whenever you get the chance before he can see the cracks.
It’d be simpler if you could tell him everything. About yourself, your quirk, the warehouse, the blood, the bracelet. Eraserhead had taken part in numerous trafficking raids, and that experience is invaluable. But understanding and leniency didn’t mean the rules that bound him were miraculously undone.
He would be required to inform the PD and hand over any evidence. Your involvement would be revoked, and his report would likely be shucked to the bottom of the pile, ‘quirkless individuals’ typed bold and underlined in red pen.
Six were already missing, and those were just the people you were aware of. There could be more out there. Other families left wondering, unanswered grief persisting. You had the ability to meddle before you were shut out, and bring them closure.
Losing an underground hero's tail was a uniquely difficult task. He remained in your periphery in the nights leading up to Friday. His presence was poignant, beguiling in a way that demanded your attention. If the wind changed you could taste him. There was no doubt — for reasons unbeknownst to you, you had escaped capture all this time because Eraserhead chose to let you leave.
“Gotta admit, you’ve been a bit annoying this week,” you accused. He presses something into your palm in lieu of a response and exhales a short, snuffed out little noise that might’ve been a laugh, or close to one.
You peer down at the small box of salmiakki and pout as you weigh it between your hands. Salty licorice. “Is this supposed to convince me not to put out a restraining order? I’ll be honest, it’s doing the exact opposite”.
Aizawa clicks his tongue. His profile is outlined in soft, dewy moonlight, egregious yellow goggles pushed back into his hair. “Salmiakki is good. I like things a little bitter,” he griped.
You watch him push a piece of the licorice from his own box and tear at it gracelessly with his teeth, strong jaw shifting as he chews. There’s a dry itch in the back of your throat. Averting your gaze to the moon breaking through the stretches of cirrus cloud, you said, “I bet you add extra espresso to your coffee”.
There’s a shift in tension and you instinctively hold your breath. He’s staring at you, and the intensity seems to worsen the longer time is frozen. Fleeting, you wonder if his quirk makes him sensitive to the use of others. You’d never needed to activate it in his presence before.
Exhale. Unaffected, Aizawa blinks slowly from the corner of your vision. “My regular is a red eye”.
“Not a dead eye?”
He hums, “That’s not as on the nose”.
You laugh just like you did the first time he ordered it, reflexively tucking your chin to hide the surge of affection despite being concealed. You roll the licorice between your fingers before bringing a piece up to your mouth. It thunks deliberately against your mask, once, twice.
“Guess I’ll have to save it,” you spin on your heel to leave, pausing when he follows close behind. “Gonna stalk me home, too?”
“You’re up to something,” he insisted solemnly. “I’ve dealt with my fair share of impulsive people. Jump first, think later. You’re going to get yourself killed”.
“I’m not one of your students, Eraserhead. You don’t need to feel responsible for me. Unless…” the hero doesn’t move when you take a step towards him, then another, “you’d miss me?”
The teasing intonation doesn’t translate well through your voice changer, a strangely eldritch quality to it. You think he hears it all the same. His expression pinches into a tired glare, but he doesn’t refute your comment and it pleases you; warms you from the inside out.
Quiet befalls you. You worry your lip and tug at the velcro around your wrist. The sound rips through the silence. When it’s loose enough you pull the glove off, hissing under your breath at the sudden chill. “Okay,” you falter, lifting your pinky finger into a hook and holding it out between your bodies. “I’ll pinky promise to try and be careful, then”.
Despite offering, you’re still a little breathless when Aizawa reciprocates. Cautious, finger twitches at first, before slowly wrapping around your own. His skin is expectedly rough in comparison. You’d seen the scar tissue and callus build up before, uneven on his broad palms, a little dry on foggy mornings.
He gazes softly where you connect then back up from beneath half lidded eyes and emphasises his next words with a firm squeeze, “I’m holding you to this. Behave yourself, because if you keep meddling you’ll end up with more than just fractured bones”.
You return the pressure to solidify the promise, bending your wrist slightly until the heels of your hands kiss. A new ache spreads throughout your wrist that you dutifully ignore. I promise.
There’s no purposeful intention to break it — but he speaks like his word is law, and when have you ever adhered to that?
Friday morning starts gradually. You struggle to pry your eyes open, the forces of gravity exerted on you from all directions, keeping you pinned like a butterfly to the mattress under your thick winter duvet. The sun is barely out of bed herself, dusky horizon bludgeoned with hues of orange and pink, a glow bleeding around your curtains, filling the room with warmth.
Everything is palpably insipid. Exhaustion dulls your senses, vision barely focused as you pull up a pair of loose pants, only realising they are backwards when they bunch up awkwardly between your thighs.
The lifeless reflection in the bathroom mirror glares back at you. Running a cloth under cold running water, you press it to the swelling around your under eyes until the puffiness lessens. You haven’t taken a single break this week, too fixated on all the things that could happen if you did, and your body was paying for it.
Meowtini is a welcome sight. Being greeted at the door by a gaggle of excitable, nagging cats would never get old. Suzu, five months old, demands to be held and doesn’t settle until you’ve tucked her into the front pocket of your hoodie.
“Better hope we don’t get any surprise health inspections,” Hideki smirks, nodding pointedly at the inconspicuous smoky blue lump. Rarely do you cross paths, but admittedly you’re a little late, and you’ve caught him on the end of a long night.
“I’ll put her in one of the hammocks and wash my hands before I handle anything,” you huff, hanging your coat up in your locker. The stretch draws your sleeve to your forearm. “Fuck”.
“Hm?”
“Nothing. Actually, can you hand me some of the disposable gloves?”
Suzu yowls in complaint as you gather her up and set her on the cool tiled floor prematurely. Hideki sidles beside where you are standing, examining your bruised hands under the fluorescent light, and hisses sympathetically.
“Didn’t know you threw hands in your spare time, Senpai,” he comments with genuine curiosity, tilting his head, pink framed glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose with the movement. “Ah. Hiding them from your boyfriend out there, s’that it?”
“Not my boyfriend,” you mutter reflexively, eyeing his palms face up where they wave in surrender. You snatch the gloves pinched between his thumb and forefinger, pausing as his words finally register. “Fuck, is he out there already?”
Hideki’s face wrinkles with the effort of keeping his amusement concealed. Restless, he tucks the silvery springlets of hair hung over his eyes back behind his ear, only for them to stubbornly bounce back into place. “Got here early, actually. And you’re kinda late, so he’s grouchier than usual”.
Pulling on an apron, you tie it into a sloppy bow at the back of your neck with stiff fingers, then repeat around your waist. Rushing to the kitchen sink with careful steps around the gathering felines, you call over your shoulder, “Did you serve him?“
The water is soothing over the tenderised flesh. It isn’t your knuckles this time — the bruising is obviously new, and begins from the side of your pinky, past the heel of your hand to the bump by your wrist.
“Course not,” Hideki answers genially from the doorway, perched on the balls of his feet and swaying slightly as he tries to stroke every cat within reach. “The coffee I make tastes like piss compared to yours”.
“He did not say that to you,” you laugh, tugging the polythene gloves on one hand at a time, fingers wiggling until the material sits comfortably.
“He did. With his face,” pushing his glasses up to sit on his crown, Hideki’s features flatten into a blank expression, devoid of emotion, and he stares at you unblinkingly with an air of disdain.
“Come on, that doesn’t mean anything. Aizawa always looks like that,” you try not to grin, biting the soft inside of your cheek between your teeth as you bend to flick his frames back onto his nose.
It wrinkles as he pouts, pushing up to stand and brushing nonexistent dust from his knees, “Not with you”.
You head out onto the main floor. Cats and kittens alike tottle over on their paws, coiling their bodies up and around your calves, fur clinging to the dark material of your pants. To prolong the inevitable, and stew a little longer in cowardice, you dip to individually scratch under their chins in greeting.
“Sorry I’m late,” Ren’s pupils are needle thin, her big eyes blinking up at you as she registers the whisper, blunt claws kneading your thigh like dough. “You’ll help soften him up for me, won’t you?”
She’s about as impressed as he is, you’d say.
Rather than ask, you speed straight to the coffee machine. Aizawa glances over from the corner of your eye. Memory guides your hands — you needn’t think twice about it, having made this drink more times than you can count. Still, your movement stutters under the blatant intensity of his stare.
The gloves pull uncomfortably at your skin and irritate the bruising. You tuck a surreptitious grimace into your shoulder, self conscious of how your shape changes under the cheap recessed light; whether you can’t shake your own shadows, no matter how hard you try to conceal them.
Approaching sheepishly, you feel the hot cup sting against the pads of your fingers. He has pointedly returned his gaze to the papers in front of him, pen tucked between his knuckles and flicking back and forth. It makes you think of a cat’s tail.
“Morning,” you say, apology clear in your voice as you set the red eye down beside him. Ren is under the table, curled up in the space between his ankles. Her lacklustre effort is appreciated.
A grunt in return. Aizawa taps the ballpoint to paper, leaving a speck of red ink. Beneath it are hastily written characters, something illegible about the overarching qualities of justice and virtue. He spares no glance to the coffee percolating beside him. Instead you are caught in a leaden snare, his eyes sharp as they skim over your form.
They linger on the pair of powder purple gloves. “Did something happen?”
“Aside from oversleeping and almost forgetting to brush my teeth?” you reply bemusedly, allowing some of your fatigue to bleed through. Lies are easier said when there’s a little bit of truth in them. “I’m alright. Made it here in one piece”.
Now that you’re looking, the lines around Aizawa’s eyes are more pronounced. His skin is pallid as if he’d bathed in moonlight. It is common for Aizawa to be tired but this is different. Worn, there’s a distinct tightness in his shoulders where they knot beneath his ear, flesh and bone brick and mortar, woven with his stubborn concern.
Casting a quick glance across the empty cafe, you slip into the seat opposite. “Are you?” he peers up through windswept, unkempt bangs. A thick strand is draped over the small bump in his nose. An old break. Sunlight refracts through the grey in his right iris, bouncing against flecks of artificial red.
“You look more exhausted than usual, and that’s saying something,” you continue lightheartedly, hoping to whittle at his exterior. Tap, tap, tap. His knee bounces restlessly beneath the table. A long breath of contemplation and the first chip flakes off when your eyes meet once more. He looks as tired as you feel.
“People from this prefecture have started going missing, one as recently as two weeks ago. I’m sure you’re aware,” Aizawa murmurs. There’s something underlying those words. Your mind flickers to Mizuki’s poster in the window. You remember how her father had bumbled, shrouded in palpable grief and nails bitten blood-black.
It clicks, “You thought I might’ve…”
The tension briefly pulls taut, as though bracing for whatever impact came alongside the mere thought of you being missing, and then it drains from his body. You ponder, is it possible to be jealous of yourself?
Little feet pad across the room. Suzu leaps onto your lap and her light weight anchors you. Gloved hands kept away from her fur, you lean further forward onto your forearms, shortening the distance. He watches your fingers flex toward him — pinky extended, wilting, returning to the cradle of your palm.
“I’m sorry,” you tell him, apology unsettlingly sincere; it is overarching, overreaching, large enough to cover every minute from the first time you’d met him to the very last. Sorry for what you had done and for what you would inevitably do.
Aizawa doesn’t so much shrug as he does visibly let go of the resentment. The underground hero looks somewhat diffident at his own pettiness. “As long as you’re being careful,” he says.
“I am”. As good a time as any, you take the opportunity to pry with both hands, “Is that what you’ve been working on the past few weeks?”
“You know I can’t share that information”.
“Right”.
He brings the coffee cup to his lips, swallowing a mouthful without bothering to cool the surface. From behind the rim, he relents, “Yes. I was brought into the investigation just over a month ago”.
Suzu kneads at your stomach, giving a muffled mewl as she rolls adipose tissue between her paw pads. Your mouth curls into a small smile only to thin with melancholy, “Ono-san asked that we put Mizuki’s poster up in the window not too long ago. Had it not been for him, I think most people in our community would still be unaware of the other five missing”.
Aizawa weighs his response carefully, slouching until he is fully ensconced in the booth cushions. You feel the briefest of touches beneath the table as his thighs spread. “The relationship with the local PD is pretty poor, I assume?”
You offer a rueful grin, “If by poor you mean non existent, then yeah”.
He exhales thoughtfully through his nose, ruffling the hair curtaining his cheeks. While he did always listen to what Nocturne had to say, it was almost as if he needed to feign suspicion to disempower your claims. With you, here, his expression is one of genuine frustration.
“Why do you think that is?”
Answering his question in a way that wouldn’t arouse suspicion could be hard. You glance toward the large window, spanning the front of the cafe floor. There are various cat trees and shelving fixed across the clear pane for passers by to see. Beyond that is the main street — overcast by a passing cloud, world a little greyer — and a bus shelter directly opposite Meowtini.
A large digital billboard flicks through the latest advertisements of Mt. Lady, her latest hair product now covered in iridescent cracks branching from a fist sized hole in the glass.
Mount Lady has never even stepped foot in this part of Musutafu.
“Y’know, I read that before the sudden appearance of quirks, public servants were usually labelled as heroes,” you absentmindedly snap the glove against your inner wrist to quiet your nerves. “Serve and protect, same shit HPSC peddle now, but with no special abilities”.
Aizawa is entirely silent. Even the felines littering the cafe have fallen decidedly quiet. It accentuates your voice, and feels as though you are carrying something much bigger than yourself. “This area is known for petty crime, assault or drug dealing — mostly. Not the type of stuff that brings notoriety. That’s why heroes rarely pass through here anymore”.
You continue, slow spoken in an effort to properly articulate yourself. “But I think a lot of the police force harbours hidden resentment for those same reasons. Not to suggest they’re… upset by a lack of villainy. But the current hero system has created a hierarchy for crime. There’s no recognition, funding or gratitude working here, so they only really exert themselves when it’ll get them a good headline”.
Aizawa’s gaze falls on the papers laid out in front of him, a deep wrinkle in his brow. “A serial kidnapping case wouldn’t do that?”
“The victims are quirkless,” you reply, because that was all that needed to be said. He sighs in defeat and you know that he understands. Tentative, you shift your feet, knee knocking his own. Neither of you move away.
Just as you are debating returning to the counter with his empty cup, he asks, “What about vigilantism?”
You swallow air and strain with the effort not to choke on it. “What about it?”
“Do you think positively of them?” he clarifies, hunching forward to rest his forearms on the table, mirroring your position. The change sees his knee slide along the outside of your thigh, close enough to feel his natural body heat. “There are a few I’ve dealt with who are local to Shizuoka”.
Heartbeat loud in your ears, you are far too fixated on the press of thick muscle against your right leg to think about the consequences of toeing such an irreversible line. “They’re quite well loved. At least in these parts they are,” you mused, wringing your fingers together. Soreness radiates across the heel of your hand. “I liked The Crawler, back when he was more active”.
“Yeah?” Aizawa’s brow arches. “He saved my life, once”.
You sit up straighter. “Really?!”
Low, he hums an affirmative and you feel it reverb into your chest. All the while he’s watching you carefully, that invasive stare always coming back to your eyes. He holds and tells you, “Most recently it’s been Nocturne pulling my pigtails”.
Spluttering, you repress a noise of embarrassment with the press of your hand, “That’s how you’d describe it?”
He snorts. “How else can I? They follow me around the city like we’re in a playground, do things to get my attention and disappear into the night”.
Your dignity might’ve folded itself into a paper crane if it were not for Aizawa’s gaze softening imperceptibly. The wrinkles by his eyes smoothen, sinew relaxed under the skin, life returning to his cheeks; his expression is one of far off affection, as though his thoughts had strayed to you despite himself.
“Irrational and impulsive,” he adds, notably warm. “Above all, they’re irritating”.
“Hate to have to tell you, Aizawa, but your voice completely gives you away,” you pose, canine teeth sink into the corner of your mouth, afraid you might smile so wide your cheeks will split. “Admit it, you’re a little fond of vigilantes”.
“Shut up,” he mutters indignantly, and you laugh. Too loud, too giddy, Aizawa’s lips react to the sound by pulling into a grin, all teeth, that he quickly tucks to his sternum.
Ren and Suzu startle in tandem when you gasp, crossing your arms and leaning into the teasing atmosphere, “When you said I remind you of someone, was it…?”
He pointedly does not look at you — pointedly does not speak. The tip of his index finger slides the empty cup in your direction, an unspoken request for more as his pen returns to paper.
“Not even going to talk now?”
The hero makes a twisting motion against the seam of his mouth. Lock and key. Your voice completely gives you away. You cradle the coffee cup to your chest, surprised by the adrenal shake, your heart rumbling as though the interaction had created a tectonic shift.
Two plates converge closer. He liked you enough, bipedal creature of the night; you had felt your identities overlap and saw the possibilities it could foster. If you told him everything it might wipe away the emotional constipation from his face.
Then again, it may also make it worse.
So you brew his coffee again, this time plucking one of the freshly made tarts from the display case and setting it onto a plate to sate his sweet tooth. He eyes you perceptively, eyebrow lifted in question, but then a group of college students is stumbling in through the security door, arms interlocked and giggling as they run from the sudden onslaught of rain, saving you the trouble.
Aizawa remains in his spot for longer than usual, unashamedly staring. You can taste the acrimony. Your excitable thoughts have soured, and again you can only wonder what he’d do once he finds out the truth. Nebulously, you know he wouldn’t have you outright arrested, you’re too careful about quirk use. But the knowledge will burden him enough to tighten his leash on you. It wouldn’t ever be the same again — and that was the best case scenario.
Reality is rigid. There are expectations, clear borders and assigned roles. Anything outside the confines of right and wrong is looked upon with contempt and misshapen to fit one or the other. Fantasising about Eraserhead is exhilarating, a secret world kept safely between you and I, but more importantly it isn't real.
You forget yourself. He’s still a hero, and there are is too much at stake for you to be distracted by the intricacies of your relationship.
The night is daunting in a way you cannot put your finger on. Black as a chasm, not a star to be seen, covered by another blanket of dense rain clouds. There’s petrichor in the air, crisp as you breathe in, puddles splashing up the inside of your boots.
Retracing your steps, you’ve made your way back to the warehouse. It stands eerily in the distance. You circumvent the surrounding buildings with ease, pace quickening at the undeniable flicker of light through the broken windows.
Just additional reconnaissance. Nothing more.
But there’s somebody inside this time. You stick close to the shadows and wait with bated breath at the slightest of sound, conscious of the broken bracelet tucked in your zip pocket. At-su, they read; neat kanji lovingly inscribed onto each remaining dainty bead.
You count three guards circling the entrance and exit. Their steps are leaden, deliberately loud as the gravel crunches underfoot, and you watch their movements until a pattern forms. They mustn’t expect anyone to pry; notably lax, stopping together in alcoves to bum a smoke, laughing about whatever it is they did that day. You are grateful, in part. It makes slipping by much simpler.
Navigating the fire escape is a challenge in and of itself. The thing has been corroded beyond belief, left to fend for itself against the elements, loose at the hinges and too loud for your liking. Even so, you land in one sinuous movement and exhale a shallow sigh of relief when the structure accepts your weight with a meagre groan of complaint. Your gloves are covered in flakes of rust, abdomen still coiled tight to brace for the possibility of falling.
You wait silently until the muffled voices continue, unperturbed by your arrival. Could’ve been worse, you reason internally, glancing up the ladder steps toward the source of conversation.
There’s a narrow, tilt and turn window left ajar on one of the higher levels. You curl up beside it and peek down into the warehouse floor. The angle causes strain behind your eyes, obscured by the bulk of your mask. It appears empty, just as you’d found it.
Distantly, “No… call me in… fucked… First Atsushi, now… Mizu...”
Atsushi? At-su, maybe? You lean in closer and slow your breathing to listen, instinctively feeling for the accessory in your pocket. The sounds soon sharpened and coalesced into words, frighteningly calm despite the obvious fury lying beneath them.
“…I told you to be careful. Look at what you’ve fuckin’ done”.
“Sorry sir,” a meeker voice replies, tone sheepish rather than apologetic. “Y’know I can’t help it when they start squirmin’! It pisses me off—!”
An abrupt yelp is caught, the reply bubbling in his throat until the man is wheezing for air. You can’t see a thing, but you imagine he’s being choked. “Ya feel that, Morita? Your body fights instinctively, just like theirs do,” a chill frissons down your spine at the genuine vitriol echoing through the rafters. “Leave any more marks on them and I’ll put both your arms in the vice, got it?”
‘Morita’s’ strained acquiescence is barely heard over the blood rushing in your ears. Theories and assumptions filter through your thoughts, flipping through pages of a book, every new possibility too unthinkable to put your finger on. The needles, the blood, the tattered clothing— the bracelet. Bodies, he’d said. Not products, but people, and more than one.
You’re shaking. You step back, reaching blindly for the rail. Dread swoops through your stomach when it groans loudly and starts to bow under your grip, like it were about to give. “Shit, shit, shit—!”
“Oi!”
There is a hulking figure running across the rooftop towards where you’re hunched. You were careless. Their gait is heavy, movements slowed by the weight of their arms, silhouette unnaturally thick and bulging. For survivals sake you assume it is to do with their quirk and duck when they swing their arm in your direction.
Something zips past your cheek, then. It is so fast that it whistles through the air like a bullet, and lands unceremoniously on the concrete behind you when it loses momentum. Oh. You inhale sharply. It is a bullet. Ivory white, slightly knobbled, shaped like a pellet.
You fall into a crouch with a dramatic inhale and scoop it up into your hand, breath held. Afforded time to glance back at the pursuer, you find him closer than before. Uncomfortably so. Close enough to see the tips of his five fingers unscrewed, hung by a thread, exposed like the barrel of a gun.
He shoots again. And again.
Your lungs burn furiously as you leap over the railing and run, the sensation spreading wildly through your chest to your oesophagus, urging that you exhale. Blood thunders in your ears, you can feel the vessels sweltering under the skin of your cheeks as tears gather along your lash line. There’s pressure behind your eyes — bloating, fervourently pushing at the bars of your rib cage.
Using all the strength in your thighs, you catapult yourself from the next ledge. Your pulse rockets at the momentary loss of stability, held suspended in the air for a fleeting few seconds.
Your right foot meets the next roof. The impact ripples through your body and forces all the air from your lungs. More guards are converging in the alleys below, chasing. A bullet whips past your shoulder. Cold dread washes over you as the frost dances over your skin, causing you to stumble. It had torn open the sleeve.
This is your black ice. The weaker ankle that twists, the skidding of a dull tire, the loss of control. For a fleeting moment, you have no edges. Swallowed by darkness as you careen into the stomach of the city, there is a nauseating moment of surprise in which your body tries to readjust. Your heart thunders as your subconscious spins out and you think, this is it.
“You won’t get far, little mouse,” the voice booms through the night, dripping with vitriol and promise. Your bones rattle as you scramble to move. “We’ll find out who you are!”
There’s no time to consider the abrupt flare of pain in your hip. You need to keep running. You need to regain control and use your quirk, but the gasps keep coming; fast bids for air hiccuping in and out, refusing to slow. Bated breath activates and the world around you pauses in short, staccato beats.
It’s enough to increase the distance. More and more until the landscape changes. Despite that, your body maintains a state of flight, blood pumping forcefully throughout your veins, legs moving even as they ache and tear. You’re bleeding, undoubtedly. Heat is pouring out, saturating your suit, the fabric sticking to your skin as it congeals.
Thoughts filter frantically through your mind in search of a safe place to go. You weren’t often injured enough to warrant a visit to the clinic — technically unregistered with a much appreciated no questions asked policy — but tonight you’d strayed too far, unable to get there before you inevitably passed out.
But Aizawa— Eraserhead had two places of residence. For the sake of convenience he now spent most, if not all, of his time in the UA dorms; stays at his old studio were improbable but not impossible. Like reading from a celestial phone book, you mentally called to every deity that tonight was one of those unlikely instances.
You shouldn’t. You shouldn’t.
In the thick of your lightheaded, bleary eyed attempt at clinging to consciousness, you see a dim glowing light from the fourth floor of the next building's quaint balcony and stumble with relief. Your fingers are wet, leaving behind smears of red where they slip along the window sill, the squeeze into the open crack made easier by fresh blood.
“Sorry,” you whisper into the absent night, feeling tendrils of guilt in your gut at the mess you were making. There’s really no time to consider the loss of your voice changer, or the broken mask hanging askew around your jaw, or how you are barely inches away from revealing yourself.
The window itself is aged, wood splitting under your fingertips, the kind that expands more with every winter and lets in a cold draft you can never quite find. It jams on the first try, loosens a little on the second rattle. Your body protests as you try to lift it open.
When the pane slides up it is sudden and with far too much ease. The abrupt loss of resistance jars your balance, careening forward into a graceless fall as you roll onto the living room carpet, yelping like a pup, only to be met with the sharp end of a knife at your throat.
Hand fisted tight in the material of your hood, Eraser’s face is thunderous. Anger unrestrained and dark in a way you’ve rarely seen, an expression you have never been on the receiving end of. His cheeks are slightly ruddy, quirk blazing as his hair stands on end. He forces your head back and mercifully, you are too out of it to be ashamed by the sound you make.
The blade lowers when he freezes in recognition, the tense atmosphere dissipating while he keeps a tight grip on the hilt. You move with him as he yanks you upright, noticeably gentler than before. “What are you doing here?”
Your eyes are drawn to the tendons flexing in his forearm. There’s a swath of pale skin by his hip where his waistband has slipped. You’ve never seen him in such comfortable, casual clothing before. The black sweatpants are loose with an egregiously neon print of Present Mic’s signature slogan down the side of his right leg. If memory serves you correctly, an exclamation of ‘yeah!’ should be splashed in blocked lettering across his ass.
“Hey. ‘Raser,” blood loss must’ve contributed to your lack of brain to mouth filter. The words are slurred in your ears, thick with amusement as you point at his lower half and try to whistle. Your hand is trembling with the effort. “Turn around for me f’r a sec”.
Aizawa’s jaw shifts as he takes a long, deep inhale. Broad shoulders rise, expanding with his ribs, your mouth drying at the steep dip of his collar where it falls just above his pecs; his muscles defined enough to create a faint shadow of cleavage, darkened by his chest hair.
You’ve changed your mind. He shouldn’t turn around, not at all.
Then he exhales, drawn out and slow. The exercise does nothing to lessen the irritation woven into his expression, “How did you find this apartment?”
A hot, sticky sensation is spreading through the layers of thermal underclothing. Fatigue has draped itself around your bones. You press the heel of your hand harder against the open wound, biting back a pained hiss. Faux bravado prevails even as you are bleeding out on his living room floor.
“I followed the smell of black coffee and despair,” you rasp, licking away the dregs of copper lingering between your teeth. “All perfectly legal”.
Blinking away the frustration, his eyes flicker from your bloodied mouth to your shoulder. The fabric is darker, a disquieting shadow spreading through the threads as it soaks up the weeping wound. “You’re injured,” he notes with a quiet curse. Being bundled up in his arms isn’t so bad, you think. Eraser helps you on your feet then, a hand resting at your waist as he takes most of your weight.
The apartment is quaint. Small. Not enough to feel closed in, just enough to be described as cosy. It is deceptively bare. At first glance you might’ve made a teasing comment about him being a minimalist — but then you look again, eyes racking over the homely touches and trinkets. A pair of old slippers with worn cat ears, cacti kept in matching orange spotted pots, an open book laid face down and full of sticky notes, a framed picture drawn with crayon hung in place of his high school diploma which has been left on the small desk to collect dust.
“…So cute”.
You’re jostled at his side as he reaches over the back of the couch with the click of his tongue to pull over a threadbare blanket, covering both the cushions and another notably nicer, newer blanket that soiled fingers should not touch.
He manoeuvres you in his embrace and circles your lower back, cradling the nape of your neck to lower you with unerring care. “Focus,” you hear him say. “Keep your eyes open”.
Had they been closed?
Two fingers are clicked an inch from your nose, startling you into blinking. The world moves without permission; suffusing into a blur of mosaics, bloating with vertigo that sparks a chilling sense of dread in your chest. Starkly warm blood is saturating your shoulder. “I’m leaking,” you croak, breaths coming quicker. “‘Raserhead. I’m— leaking”.
“Yeah. All over my couch,” he returns. “And I’m going to help you, but I need you to sit still. Can you do that for me?”
There’s not really any choice in it. Your motions feel lethargic as you recline against the cushion, sinking further. Your body flinches, perceiving it as free fall, and Aizawa smooths the flat of his palm over your unwounded shoulder. “I’m going to cut away your gear and stem the bleeding,” he begins.
“No…” you groan at the dryness in your throat, swelling, like your stomach has pushed its way up into your oesophagus. Your cognition rolls to a stop. Suddenly, spoken word is not within reach. All you can say is, “Not… Not the mask”.
At mention of it, his gaze skims over your poorly concealed face, lingering on the oval shaped device tucked under the fabric where it nestled beneath your jugular. The voice changer had devolved into broken static somewhere between being shot at and being found. Had you been able to keep a conscious grasp on your thoughts, you might’ve known to shut your mouth, all too recognisable.
“Not the mask,” he concedes. Mercifully. A large pair of scissors glides through the padding around your middle. You can feel the weight of Nocturne peeling away, tepid air meeting damp skin as the sharp blades nick on your thermal wear, right above your breast.
No longer are you a shadow within a shadow — your formless body takes shape. Bumps and curves and imperfections. Scar tissue, old and new. Aizawa’s fingers brush over a new bruise, collarbone purpling, unspooling a tender whine where it sits in your chest.
“This next part is going to hurt more,” he warns with genuine regret. A little breathless underneath it. You aren’t paying much attention; there’s cloth soaked in antibiotic ointment swiping over the open injury, washing away the dried blood. It cracks like mud, splits into uneven flakes, and creates downstream pathways as the wound overflows.
You hiss at the sting and force yourself rigid, ignoring the urge to squirm out of his hold. The graze runs through the side of your arm, tissue torn into a natural curve around your shoulder. “You’re lucky this doesn’t need stitches,” Aizawa mutters. His brows are drawn tight, dry bottom lip pinched between his canines as he reaches for something to dress the wound with.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Cold settles in your bones but there’s heat curling in your belly. That same feeling after you get a taste and find yourself craving more; you’ll go home and think of this between seconds, when your mind isn’t crowded with lies and excuses. Selfishness is such a human trait. It reminds you that pro heroes are expected to be anything but.
The pads of his fingers are hot, rough yet purposefully gentle. You lean into the touch and hope that they’ll cut through you like smooth, warmed butter. “I think,” there’s saliva pooling beneath your tongue and you wet your lips in hopes it’ll cushion your next words. “I think one of the bullets got my hip”.
An embarrassing noise slips from your mouth when he pulls away. He’s hot even when he’s scowling, you think. Oh, now he’s blushing. Can he read minds? Hey, Eraser. Can you—?
“Stop. Talking,” Aizawa fumes. The order comes through clenched teeth. He rocks back onto his heels, pinching the bridge of his nose as he often does. Continuing under his breath, “You got shot at. Shot. God knows what I did in a past life to deserve this”.
You pout, “Most of them missed, actually”. He could at least praise you for that. “I saved one. Think they were made of bone. How cool”.
“We’ll get to that later. Shoulder’s done. Push your pants down,” he sighs, ignoring your dazed comment. The various bottles, packets and containers clank together as he rifles through the first aid with haste. It stops when he zeroes in on you, and your lack of movement. You are told with gritty authority: “Now”.
You bite your tongue and swallow the suggestive comment waiting idly on it. Trembling, you unbuckle the straps around your waist and open the clasp of your belt to tuck your thumbs under the waistband. There’s an obvious slash through the material, mapping out the bullet's path. A lot of the blood has dried and is sticking to the inflamed skin, pulling at the soft hair on your thighs.
It is as if you’re tearing off another layer of yourself. Jostling the deep wound, fresh blood trickles over the curve of your exposed hip. Aizawa soaks the cloth again, rinsing the exposed tissue then offering quiet instruction to keep it held there as you squirm. He ducks into the kitchen. Your eyes wander at the sound of running water, desperate for an adequate distraction from the disquieting, restless discomfort building in your chest.
You don’t mean to croon out loud. He returns, catching you staring at the framed picture. Stick figures drawn in crayon; depicting him, long black hair scribbled around his large, misshapen head; a small girl at his side coloured in silvers and pinks, waving around what looks to be a candy-apple; green, a boy at her side with a beaming grin, to large to fit his outline.
“It’s good,” you rasp. Aizawa glances between you and the picture, a ephemeral, fiercely protective look passing over his face as quick as it came. “Even drew your scars and eyebags. I love... the commitment to detail”.
He softens. “I’ll let her know you like it”.
And you nod happily, satisfied with that, incognisant of the sterilised thread he is looping through a needle. “Breathe,” you hear him say, feeling the cool press of the forceps once he pulls back the cloth, “Looks like you’ll only need three stitches. I’ll make this quick, alright?”
“...Yeah,” your answer comes shakily, senses already flooded with adrenaline as your body reflexively braces.
It is unlike any pain you’ve experienced. You cry out at the piercing, burning sensation spreading through your left side. Nausea washes over you, overcome by dizziness as your vision litters with black spots. His voice anchors you; uncharacteristic rambling, jaw set in determination, steady hands working.
“Almost done. Deep breaths, just one more to go”.
Words form but they aren’t aired. You are swimming in the depths of your own consciousness, vision wavering, his concerned face duplicating into three. The timbre of his voice probes the sea, familiar vibrations bypassing your ears.
“Hey. Look at me,” and you do, head lolling onto your shoulder. “You with me?”
All that’s left is an unpleasant tenderness. Hip throbbing in time with your heart, the nausea gradually recedes. Aizawa accepts your hand around his wrist, overturning until your fingers entwine, and he squeezes.
Eventually, you croak, “That fucking sucked”.
“It did,” he concurred, equally weary. Three dull taps to the mask barely guarding your mouth, loose on its hinges. He wants to take it off, you realise. The now-jagged ridge has cut into your swollen cheek.
Fear prickles cold over your scalp. “I—I can take care of that myself,” you frantically demur, the remains of your confidence slipping. There are pleas cloying in the back of your throat. We can keep pretending. Let’s stay ignorant. But he waits, he knows— he has known, and he isn’t as generous as you wished he’d be.
Cautious, his thumb slides over your cheekbone and back, tracing the lower curve of your eye socket. It doesn’t hurt, though you think it should. The swell is enough to somewhat obscure your vision. But there’s no pain when he loosens the straps cinched around your hood, no discomfort with the abrupt loss of pressure.
Aizawa pulls down the lower half slowly. The cotton stuffed into your sinuses isn’t enough to dull the anticipation of being seen. You wondered if he hadn’t already heard your voice, would he have known you just from the shape of your lips. Did he ever look long enough to notice?
A part of you hoped that he had.
Everything is heightened. You can feel every spring and divot impressed against your back, his breath stirring in your hair. The sofa dips under him. Chest to chest, his lungs expand with a deep inhale, pushing up against your breasts.
Cautious, his chin lowers, fingers sliding from your temple to your cheek. Your skin pulls. Further still, his touch ghosts over your ear. Infuriatingly slow with it, as if he wanted to discover and memorise each individual reaction. Your fingers tighten at his waist, and he isn’t saying anything.
The light refracts dimly in his irises, still a glimmer of red where it bends, glowing as he looks at you. Aizawa is always suffused with brilliance despite his avid attempts to appear apathetic. Like an old oil lamp turned to low, his gaze is soft and warm, and you’re inexplicably drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
He angles his head. Your mouths could align, and his eyes are murky. You think that he might—
“That should be enough to stop the bleeding,” he says. There are butterfly bandages on your cheek, now, applied amidst his distraction. Layers upon layers of armour can not hide how his voice resonates through your body.
“Oh,” you breathe, awe visible as it dances in the cold night air. “You… weren’t going to kiss me just now”.
Eraserhead’s expression is schooled into something carefully blank. His tongue reflexively dips forward to wet his dry bottom lip and your eyes follow the movement. Exasperatingly, he says, “No, I wasn’t”.
You’re still close, enough that you really could kiss at any moment, feeling a little dazed and justified for it. The anticipation of being touched urges you to chase when he rolls back onto his haunches, legs straightening to stand, but the sharp pull at your shoulder stops you in your tracks.
Aizawa is half bent, tilted to meet your gaze. He’s flushed. The intimate moment is broken instantly at the call of your name. A surprising wave of relief follows as you are doused in the harsh, cold reality. You resurface and scramble for some semblance of control, hold out your upturned wrists and sigh with forced bravado to cover your earlier faux pas, “Put me in cuffs, chief”.
Aizawa snorts, batting you away to present the sterilised bandages in his grasp. You watch the fluid motions of his fingers as he unrolls them, “Not even going to attempt to lie?”
You are half naked. The overlaying waistbands of both your thermal wear and your pants draw tight around your thighs — you’re ensconced in the plush couch cushions, practically splayed out for him, letting him reposition you to wrap your stitches. A strained sound bubbles from your chest that was definitely supposed to be a laugh, “I’m too tired for subterfuge right now, Eraserhead”.
“Shouta,” he corrects. Calloused knuckles knock against your temple, fist unfurling until fingers brush over your crown, hesitant to hold before returning to dressing your wound. “Might as well use my name, now, if I can use yours”.
None of this makes sense. In the many outcomes you had accounted for, this ambivalent kindness wasn’t in any of them. Shouta, above all, is a rational man. A logical man, not known for being led by his emotions, and yet, “I don’t understand why you aren’t…”
“Angry?” he supplies tiredly. “Do you want me to be?”
You push through the balls of your feet when he coaxes you to lift your hips, “Obviously not!”
“I want to understand why you’ve been doing this before I waste any more energy,” he says, focused on tying the bandages. They sit tight, like a second skin. A third. “Why didn’t you just get your licence? You’re clearly capable”.
“Because I didn’t want to be a hero, Shouta! I just wanted…” your burst of frustration tapers, words steadily lose confidence, thoughts scattering and making your voice unsure. “There are always lines you say you won’t cross. But then you cross them, and everything you do becomes a little grayer”.
Your brow furrows, unable to meet his eyes, “When you know you can cross, it becomes easier to do it. Over time, that clear black line starts to fade, until it isn’t there anymore. I can’t go back anymore”.
He gazes at you in quiet contemplation. You feel your defences soften when his fingers brush along the dip of your waist. “I wanted justice for my community. Nobody was doing anything so I… I did it myself”.
“And what is justice to you?”
“Justice is fairness,” you blink at the unexpected question, and your tongue feels unnaturally swollen in your mouth. “That doesn’t always mean a happy ending, but it— it means you had a chance. Same as anyone else. I don’t… care if you think it’s too idyllic. People deserve that much. To feel safe, and to have a community they can depend on”.
He hums. While monotonous, it’s his genuine attempt to listen that silences your frustration, “Then, do you think anyone should be able to commit vigilante acts so long as it works in their favour?”
“Obv—obviously I don’t,” you mutter blithely. Such a broad statement allows for too many loopholes; ones easily weaponised. “But there’ll always be situations that require immediate action. I exist because our… current system doesn’t account for that. People slip through the cracks too easily and they’re forgotten about”.
“So you are the one exception?”
The corner of his mouth twitches. He does a poor job of flatten his voice, even still it drips with warmth until you’re soft with it; sounding suspiciously like respect. Aizawa glides his fingers across your navel. You shiver, soft hair raising.
“Now you’re just being annoying,” you huff. Talking shouldn’t require so much exertion, but it’s enough to distract from the searing pain at your hip. Aizawa works fast, fingers tearing the end of the bandages to knot it above your hipbone. “The law isn't always a clear indication of what is good or bad”.
“No?”
“No,” you emphasise with a heavy nod that knocks something loose in your skull. Suddenly, everything blurs together into long streaks of light, edges softening and diffusing until you aren’t sure where one thing ends and another starts. You flinch and force your eyes shut, face twisted into a grimace.
Over the incessant beat of your heart you hear a low, concerned murmur, “Careful. I’m not done interrogating you”.
You groan, “You’ve got shit bedside manner”.
“Never said otherwise,” he replies plainly, rising to his feet and setting a knee on the cushion beside you. The sofa dips with his weight, and he takes your jaw into the cradle of his hand. You nuzzle into his touch, ready to employ the excuse of delirium.
He says your name again, pauses for a fraction of a moment, “You mentioned the pre quirk era, back at the cafe. What’d you mean by it?”
You huff heavily through your nose as the scabbed skin pulls under his fingers. “It’s just— with quirks, Pro’s became another kind of a bandage on an open wound, right?” his eyes are half lidded, lazy as always, sharp with interest. “People act as if they can fix everything. But ordinary things are what keep us all together, quirk or not. Everyday people who, despite their own hardships, would stop to help another person, are real heroes. To me”.
The warmth of his touch lingers as he pulls away and you quell the urge to chase it. “And Pro Heroes can’t be that?” he asks.
“Being a Pro Hero has been bastardised. It’s like a big celebrity cop game show. I do the same thing they do, and you don’t see me advertising bottled iced tea with my likeness, or plastering my ass on billboards”.
Aizawa clicks his tongue. Your blood has dried under his fingernails. “Not iced tea. You’d probably be on some fizzy drink that gives me heartburn”.
“And I’d sooner see your face in a one hundred yen store,” you grumble, turning up your nose to stare at the ceiling. “Bet you’d do well advertising grubs”.
The corner of his mouth curves into a faint smirk. “And you were behaving so well for me until now,” he murmurs, then reaching forward and slowing with contemplation. Clasped gently around your forearm, you let Eraser guide it under your shirt. After slipping your arm back through the sleeve, he tugs it into place at your wrist. That small gesture should not charm you as much as it does.
“I like this”.
Aizawa hums in response, a bid for clarification. You focus on the space between his brows rather than his eyes when you mumble, “This. I like it when you pay attention to me”.
“Yeah?” his face twitches, as if he were repressing a reaction to your words. “Is that why you enjoy making my life harder?”
You laugh breathlessly in lieu of a response, and Aizawa settles properly at your side, drawing you into him. There’s a bloodied half-hand print staining the blanket behind his shoulder, air still tinged with a distinct copper smell, forgotten at the first hint of his cologne.
“You know,” he intones wearily, soft spoken and enunciated as though he were picking each word with care, “I have my own dislikes for how the current hero system works. Justice shouldn’t be profitable, and something does need to change. But it’s also true that heroic acts, even when done under false pretences, leave some good in the world, too”.
“I have hopes for my students,” he continues. “This is the only full class I’ve ever had make it through an entire school year”.
“Even with Stain, the League and everything?”
Tousled hair slips forward over his shoulder as he nods, tickling your cheek. “They've been exposed to a lot more truths than most graduated heroes I know. It’s…”
The pride in his voice wanes then, rough with guilt. “It’s been rough on them,” he says. On all of us, you hear. “Bettering society shouldn’t require so much blood shed. They’re just kids”.
Your façade feels brittle, whittled away. Lips pursed thin and pulled into a sad smile. There was so much he claimed responsibility for — fretting about things out of his control, just like any parent would.
“It’s inevitable that changing the world will come with some growing pains,” before doubt creeps in, you reach up to cradle his face in your palm and skim the scar tissue surrounding his right eye as it closes. He accepts the touch and leans heavily, like he hadn’t realised how much he needed the comfort of another.
“You’re a good teacher, Shouta. You’ve more than done your part”.
“And your part?” he monotoned. He’s teasing you in his own way, peering through one half open eye. “I have more grey hairs now than I did an hour ago”.
Your abdomen jumps with your short laugh, getting caught in your throat as you suddenly hiss. “Ah. Sorry,” you wheeze, air filling your cheeks. His finger pokes at the swell and they gradually deflate, breathing through the throbbing pain. “I didn’t plan on coming here. Honestly I can barely remember— I just ran to the nearest safe place”.
“I can’t believe it was you all along,” he mutters. His head cocks, stubble rubbing against your skin. “No, I can. You had so many obvious similarities but I could never put my finger on it”.
“You even mentioned my coffee order. Brat”.
Fully spent, you recline against his chest with an apologetic hum and look up. You’re surprised he lets you, heart stuttering when you find him watching you with a glimmer of intrigue.
For a moment it’s just the two of you. Blood pumping, beating like a swans wing; in your ribs, your pelvis, the crook of your neck. Those worn eyes flicker down to your mouth. It’s almost physical, the way they trace over the unique dips and curves of your lips. Instinctively, you feel them part, wet, a coy attempt at holding his attention. He doesn’t stray as he murmurs, “It felt awfully one sided”.
Nose drawing across the bridge of your own, breath ghosting skin. “I’m sorry,” you echo, wedging closer. “Would you’ve preferred not knowing?”
You’re not afraid of his silence. Knowing him, knowing you, he isn’t thinking of a way to let you down gently. Aizawa Shouta is honest, maybe a little too honest — though his tongue is less sharp these days.
Rather, he is entangled in his own reasoning and weighing the trouble of telling you. Pink splotches are spreading up his throat. His upper lip curls. “It’s a relief to know I don’t need to pick between one or the other”.
“Oh,” you whisper in awe, tilting as he is drawn forward. “Are you going to kiss me now?”
Anticipation coils hot in your belly when his mouth grazes your own. Tongue dipping to wet your lips, hand curling into the fabric of his shirt. You shiver as they move, forming his reply.
“No”.
A whine is pulled from the depths of your being when he moves away with a toothy grin. You fall onto his shoulder and turn into his throat, “Why not?”
“Tell me what you were running from first,” he says.
“What I was—Oh!” he startles at your outburst. You pat frantically around your pockets, producing the bullet and the bagged bracelet. You hold them out to him, “I got some intel”.
Frustration wrinkles between his brows. “And why the hell didn’t you lead with that?”
“I was literally bleeding out when I got here and then you got all handsy,” you protest, continuing through the affronted glare he gives you, “It is not my fault you look so cute in Present Mic’s merch”.
“Give me those,” the baggy and the bullet are taken from your grasp with unnecessary force, driven by Aizawa’s obvious embarrassment. He squints at the beading. “At-su?”
“I think it belongs to someone named Atsushi,” you begin. “Are they on the missing persons list?”
Mind no longer a foggy cacophony of unfinished thoughts, every detail comes pouring out into the open. All the things you held close, tucked away in the recesses of your brain, reluctant of who could be trusted with it. He gives you a sheet of paper and you map out your pinboard. You are still shaking from the fatigue, but he doesn’t comment on the janky lettering as you write the warehouse coordinates.
He knows names, better still he wants to hear them from you and more; asks for your theories and hypotheticals, picks through them, gives each one equal consideration. “I know what I heard,” you insist, circling the address over and over until he’s stilling your hand, covered by his own, the other thumbing away at his phone screen.
You can feel the two lives you had cleaved clotting back together. Strings of connective tissue, taut and thickening. Like any scab, you’re tempted to pick at it, to see if anything lies underneath. You weren’t expecting him to take to your identity so quickly — to be treated as though you were an equal.
“I’ve sent the information to a detective I trust,” he states, glaring at the phone until the backlight automatically blinks out. You follow his movements as he pockets it. “That No Name’s gun quirk rings some bells. There’s a group Fourth Kind was keeping an eye on a while back that disappeared. Could’ve moved prefectures”.
You’ve worked tirelessly to find the answers he’s freely giving you; yet the second somebody accepts the weight you’d been carrying, you feel your knees buckle, and all you can think about is kissing him.
“Good. That’s good,” you answer dazedly. “There was a lift in the warehouse. Maybe they’re being kept underground?”
There’s a determined look on his face. You can see the undertones of excitement beneath it. Glowing, hard demeanour turned gauzy and warm. True, you weren’t made to be a pro hero. Aizawa is excellent at that — denying himself the things he wants. You're not. It’s a perfect fit.
When he sets the device down alongside a sigh of relief you take a chance. His chest expands under your hands as you rest them against his collar. Slow, they slide up over his shoulders, then back around to toy with the short hairs on the nape of his neck.
He shudders, but lets you guide him down. You don’t want to disturb the stitches, so he goes willingly, shapes around you as he ducks into your space. Finally, laid in the crook of his arms like a bouquet, your heart is full of him.
Aizawa is all rough edges and purposeful touch. He’s gentle when you need it, teasing when you don’t. The kisses start by your jugular and you’re bereft by it. You can feel a grin broadening against your throat. Mouthing at your pulse point like it could kiss back.
“Shouta,” you whine, nudging your nose into his hair. It’s softer than you expected it to be. He leaves a trail of wet pecks in his wake, following the curve of your jaw to your ears, kissing the delicate shell. It scratches and you tremble, a warm feeling diffusing throughout your body.
The baritone in his voice rumbles through you as he murmurs, “Yeah?”
You bury into his scalp, fingers curling insistently. Seeking more of him your leg moves to hook over his hip, to which he stills, holding you in place. You’re certain the hot impression of his hand splayed over your bare inner thigh will linger for days.
“Can you just…” worse, it moves again, tantalisingly slow. You’re soft between his fingers. His thumb grazes the hem of your underwear while he turns to press an innocent kiss to your cheek. “Don’t do this to me”.
“Do what?”
The air is stifling. His touch dips under the fabric, too quick to register. Your thighs flex beneath the palm of his hand as you pulse. “Fuck. Stop being unfair,” you feel it as he smiles, pressed to the corner of your mouth. “I know you aren’t going to do anything to me while I’m like this”.
A drawn out, pleased sound rumbles in his throat. Almost as if leaving you teetering on the brink was the point, he takes your words as permission to pull your pants back up — both pairs, stretching the waistband carefully over your wound.
You are disturbingly endeared by it and pouting all the same. Giving a warm laugh, knuckles brushing along your cheek, Shouta angles himself just so, and brings you into a kiss.
The seam of your lips part to meet his tongue and he sighs languidly into your mouth. You fist the fabric of his shirt with a sharp inhale, feeling the firm muscle behind it. He kisses you again and again. Chasing, wanting; an ode to your cat and mouse relationship.
Heat prickles over skin. Between breaths, you mumble, “Want you”.
The soft pressure of his hand to your lower back brings you closer. You wanted more. Light handed fingertips walk the length of your spine, murmuring appreciatively as it bows, arching into his chest.
“I’ve wanted you,” he echoes, leaning until your foreheads press together. You watch his eyes fall shut and hear the sotto voce remark, “We shouldn’t be doing this”.
If not for the amused, sanguine tone in his voice, you might’ve started to panic. But he kisses you again. Soft and chaste and shorter than the last.
“What now?” you smile feebly. The adrenaline is tapering off and you can no longer ignore the ache radiating throughout your body, nor the reality of what you are doing.
“Now, you need to take it easy,” he instructs with finality, thumb smoothing over your kiss bitten lip. “I’ll get on the phone with Fourth Kind and see if he’ll cooperate”.
“And the rest?”
Everything is there, in the small, covetous slant of his grin. All the patience, affection, respect and desire. He chooses all of you, said so himself — you’re fine as you are.
“The rest comes after”.
#bnha x reader#aizawa x reader#eraserhead x reader#aizawa shouta x reader#mha x reader#it should go without saying this is not a meta fic. all fun TY!!
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Beats till the song disappears
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Classic era, Sonic 2's bad ending timeline but I made it better. Or worse. Leaving for you to decide. Enjoy :)
...........
He trudged through the dark zone, silent and windless akin to a closed, lifeless chamber.
The place was littered with systematically arranged crystal blocks that would've looked aesthetically pleasing if it were daytime. For now, they just made the place more eerie as he waited for Robotnik to show up.
After what felt like an eternity of worried pacing to the speedy hedgehog but in reality was barely a couple of minutes, two of the structures nearby split apart, revealing a camouflaged panel sliding in the ground.
Sonic stopped, facing the opening to see the Eggmobile rise from the underground, hovering a meter or so above the inclined floor leading into the depth.
The doctor looked composed, unworried, his spectacles glinting with a previously absent touch of confidence, of victory.
"Did you bring them?" He asked, addressing the frustrated hedgehog.
Sonic revealed four emeralds without a word, pulling them away as the other tried to grab for them.
"Tails?"
"Hand them over first."
Sonic was about to retaliate but paused at seeing the other hover a finger over the mobile's control panel, staring straight at him with the unspoken threat clear in his body language. He could kill the kit if Sonic wasn't careful.
His thoughts conflicting with one another and the concern for his little brother chiming in, he finally relented, holding out the gems for the mobile's claws to grab.
"Now tell me where he is."
"Careful, hedgehog, you don't get to make demands here. I believe we had an agreement that he'll be spared only if you brought all five Chaos Emeralds, hmm?"
Silence fell over the terrain, the hero shooting a venomous glare at Robotnik. It would be too much of a gamble to attack him when he had a link open to wherever he was keeping Tails. His lack of acknowledgement to the earlier question was answer enough. He hadn't been able to collect the required number of emeralds on time.
"I see," the scientist murmured.
Sonic gritted his teeth, high strung, on edge. He was aware he had failed but he needed to know...
"Just tell me if my brother is alright."
"He is," the other sighed in an exaggerated display of disappointment, "I would've gotten rid of him by now provided your ineptitude-"
"You know I can't locate them all this fast!" Sonic snarled, looking seconds away from jumping at his throat.
"But I am feeling rather... merciful today," the man continued on without even reacting to the interruption, his demeanor betraying he held all the cards. "I propose another deal, hedgehog. If you agree, I promise that no harm will come to Tails."
Sonic shouldn't trust him. Didn't trust him. But if it meant Tails would be safe...
He nodded, signalling to Robotnik that he was listening. Said scientist smirked under his mustache.
"Become part of my legion. Surrender yourself to me, and your little friend will go unharmed."
His legion. The hero had fought against him enough times, had seen enough horrors and rescued enough critters being used as test subjects to read between the lines, to know what Robotnik meant. The mere mention of that thing still makes him sick. Robotnik wasn't asking him to just give up his freedom. He was demanding for Sonic to give up his mind and body, his free will, in the worst way possible.
Sonic's life or Tails' safety?
It took him less than a second to choose.
"Well?" Robotnik's voice prompted, already knowing his nemesis' decision.
"If you hurt Tails-"
"Oh don't be so leery. I gave you my word. Your fox friend will not be harmed. Now, do we have a deal or do I signal my bots to neutralize that menace?"
Sonic squeezed his eyes shut, shaking with a plethora of emotions he couldn't bring himself to grasp and process as they came and went in waves. He gasped in a breath and stilled, before coiled tension leaked away from his body and he sighed. Surrendered.
"Deal."
"Excellent!" He could hear the victorious grin in Robotnik's voice but he didn't react, unable to bring himself to look up, gaze fixed on his red and white sneakers as he willingly sealed his fate. His iconic shoes held his focus, shoes that allowed him his freedom to run as fast as his heart desired. The same freedom which he was now volunterily giving up for his brother.
It felt like just yesterday when he had met the little guy, his shoes very smilar to Sonic's own, a matching color scheme. Something he had never paid attention to before but was now a glaring memory. He hadn't even told Tails how much he cared for him, how much proud he was, had he?
If he were to be given a chance to speak with Tails, he'd never remain silent again.
His feet moved without his consent, following the rotound man into the underground base until he blinked out of his thoughts and found himelf in a lab, facing a tall glass cylinder strung up in the center of the circular space.
It stood empty, it's front open, waiting to be occupied. Sonic stared on, unable to look away.
"Now don't be shy, step into the capsule. Chop chop!"
A hair's breath pause and he stepped forward, inside the glass confinement and upon the platform inside, fully resigning himself to what he had agreed on. His breath shuddered with anguish and dread as Robotnik moved around it to the front and pressed a switch.
The glass sealed behind him with a decisive click.
Adrenaline shot through his veins as the machine hummed to life, lights glowing awake below the platform he stood on and the welded hatch above him.
His heartbeat began to thunder in his ears, quills pricking up but he held still, letting the titanium clamps reaching for him seal around his ankles and wrists.
He saw Robotnik clicking away at a nearby screen and then he felt a subtle jerk, the machine's hum increasing in volume and intensity, the platform under him rising up.
With one final click at the keyboard, sleek contraptions that looked suspiciously like a sci-fi mixture of scanner and blaster surrounded him and pulsing rays shot out from their openings.
Sonic grunted as he felt the energy strike him, the clamps keeping him still.
2%
It started from below, at the legs. Of course it fucking did. Sonic wanted to scream, wanted to yell and kick and bang his fists against the glass, feeling cold numbness slowly spreading up his most powerful weapons, his legs, his speed, stripped from him painstakingly slowly as flesh turned to metal.
All he did was clench his fists and grit his teeth in anguish, his whole being screaming at him to move but he held still. He couldn't move, not if it placed his first friend, his best friend, at risk.
28%
The titanium bands securing his ankles and wrists seemed to tighten, restricting the little bit of movement he had as the rays slowly climbed up to his torso, inches below his heart.
He didn't let the tears show.
For Tails for Tails for Tails for Tails
His thoughts chanted like a mantra, placing all his being into not moving, letting himself be turned into a machine, until his ears swivelled at the swoosh of a panelled door sliding open, urging him to look up.
His breath caught in his throat, each cell freezing up in a mixture of shock, rage and despair.
No. No no no no no no no no NO!
"TAILS!" The anguished wail left his chest just as his heart stopped beating, an engine's hum replacing its frantic rhythm.
He payed it no mind. It didn't matter when it was ripped to shreds anyway the moment his blurry gaze met his brother's.
Glowing red optics stared back.
He tried to move, tried to break free but it made no difference, half his body frozen on the spot, under the control of the Chaos forsaken monster who did this.
65%
The bands on his wrists burned, something warm and damp flowed down his palms and dripped from his fingers. Sonic was numb to it, struggling and shaking in the glass confine, his own screams becoming muffled to his ears.
"You promised! YOU FUCKING PROMISED YOU WOULDN'T HURT HIM!"
A screen beeped, the vitals' charts on it going haywire as the progress bar reached 78%.
The mustached scientist just stood there grinning, unconcerned and victorious.
"And I kept my promise. He is unharmed, well and alive." The words seemed to echo in his head, reverberating as if imprinting on the walls of his mind, the machine's buzz and hum drowned out by them. "Just as you asked, rodent."
He couldn't take his pained eyes off of the small yellow robot and his captor noticed that, turning to address Tails with a deceptively encouraging smile.
"Isn't that right, Metal Tails?"
The little robot finally moved, startled beeps escaping it as it's mechanical gaze shifted away from hyperfocusing on Sonic and towards what it's systems told it to be it's creator.
The familiar innocence in that small gesture, even though seeing it on a roboticized mecha, broke something in Sonic.
He tried to call out to his brother but realized he couldn't speak. He couldn't feel his muzzle or mouth anymore. Oh...
The screen read 96%.
As the metal climbed up his quills and ears and the world began to fade into static, Sonic drowned out Eggman's smug grin and droning of the roboticizer's rays, putting all that was left of his mind and strenght into focusing on Tails.
He wanted his last memory to be of his brother, even if no longer flesh and blood but mere metal and wires, he was still Tails. His Tails. That much was clear from its demeanor alone, the innocence, the curiosity, the intelligence, it was all there. Sonic would be able to tell his kid apart from a thousand other Tailses if he had to.
The tears he'd been holding back finally slipped down, the last piece of his humanity used into conveying to Tails that he was sorry, that he loved him.
99%
His eyes closed, the metal covered up the last of the organic cells and Sonic finally went still.
............
Metal Tails gazed upon the powering down capsule, his processors showing the progress bar having reached 100%.
He couldn't take his focus off of the inactive hedgehog; organic, mechanical, irrelevant, Metal Tails was drawn to him even before the roboticization was completed.
Something suspiciously illogical was recorded in his archives during the process. He had sensed what organics refer to as emotions being conveyed to him earlier by the same being. It seemed to be a combination of concern, remorse and affection.
How could he do that without any working signal and communication link to Metal Tails?
The roboticized hedgehog suddenly beeped awake, internal fans whirring as his systems rapid-fire processed the new programming and commands. He jerked within the bonds and stilled again, hanging limp for a long beat.
Metal Sonic lifted his head up, optical processors switching on to reveal glowing red optics staring straight into Metal Tails' own.
It appeared the other robot was finally awake.
Metal Tails couldn't calculate why the organic hedgehog had seemed to know about him but he had felt drawn to the blue being just the same.
Perhaps it was a satisfactory calculation on his creator's part as Metal Tails' tended to get lonely and this arrangement made him most pleased.
Another robot companion made for the perfect promised gift.
.................
No characters were killed in the making of this story, just as I promised :]
#i am sleepy#author is sleep deprived#anyways Happy Sunday everyone#this is my counterattack#sonic the hedgehog#sonic#sth#miles tails prower#dr eggman#dr robotnik#sonic and tails#unbreakable bond#angst war weekend#plz if there r any errors ignore them I'll recheck them in the morning#cw body modification#i rather like this au. i might just add nore to it :D
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Cool! Though the songs are kinda,, depressing but you’ll decide if you’re comfortable doing them anyways so one song is called Partner in Crime by Madilyn Mei and the other is Good Enough by Xdinary Heroes and if you’re stumped at what to do I’m pretty sure Madilyn Mei has some shorts with her song using diff character relationships and for Xdinary Heroes if you listen to the official audio there’ll be a top comment that explains how the song came to be
𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘯 𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦 - 𝘮𝘢𝘥𝘪𝘭𝘺𝘯 𝘮𝘦𝘪
౨ৎ ⋆｡˚ psycho!sanzu x psycho!gn!reader , lyric fic , lots of tw’s!
౨ৎ ⋆｡˚ WARNINGS: accusations of cheating. hints of sex but nothing ever really mentioned. mentions of gore, torture and dark content (he’s yakuza whadda ya expect). alcohol and drug consumption. possessive and borderline toxic relationship but it goes both ways.
♬ when you’re gone i feel alone again , the voices cannot hold my hand .
sanzu held the gun closer to you head. this is a common occurrence at your house. you don’t answer one of his calls from headquarters, so he comes piling into the house, gun in hand and ready to shoot any mystery person you’re so obviously cheating on him with.
there is no mystery man or woman, there is only a silenced phone with you knocked out on the lounge, empty vodka bottles and coke bottles next to you.
sanzu only sighs to himself.
♬ they keep me company at very best , distract me from my loneliness .
you barge into the headquarters of bonten, all the executives more then familiar with you by now. you came over a lot, either sanzu forcing you or to drag the said man into work.
“sanzu why the FUCK are there used women’s underwear in our laundry?” you shout and the giggling asshole.
of course, there was no side piece for him. you simply pissed him off, so he decides to fuck you over and toy with your head.
“i don’t know? why don’t you ask the empty bottles i found you sleeping next to 2 hours ago?” he spits, venom lacing his words.
“fuck you.” you respond, slamming the doors on your way out. manjiro only looks over at you, wondering why you put up with him despite all you ever seem to do is bitch to eachother.
♬ maybe i’m just an anomaly , even my demons have their families .
“i won’t let you out of this door asshole.” you say, watching sanzu attempt to walk out of the luxury apartment the two of you share.
“FUCK YOU (Y/N) IM SICK OF YOUR SHIT” he screeches, attempting to leave.
you both knew he was bullshitting. even if he did leave, he’d always end up begging to be let back in, and you both knew that you’d cave.
“you aren’t going anywhere, haruchiyo sanzu.”
it’s like a punch to the stomach. sanzu knew that if you said he wasn’t going anywhere, then he wasn’t going anywhere.
♬ truly something must be wrong with me , to need you as much as i do .
the both of you were passed out on your shared bed, half undressed and with marks littering both of your skins.
the rotten stench of blood filled both of your noses. god only knows who’s blood it was, but you were both too tired to really give a damn.
you only held his pink hair close to your chest, protecting him from his own mind.
sanzu huddled closer, the skin on skin contact soothing his racing thoughts. only your sultry voice and lyrical words could bring sanzu down from his high, the sweetish scent of meth lingering on his breath.
♬ i was never meant to win .
♬ i was never meant to win .
♬ i was never meant to win .
“PLEASE GOD NO” the woman strapped to the chair screeched, her husband’s bare fingers lay next to her, the wedding band still visible on his ring ringer.
“now now, why do you care what happens to him? you’re the whore who came onto my partner.” sanzu’s voice chimes.
he wasn’t lying, the woman came up to you and pressed her chest close against your arm, asking your name and your relationship status.
you wanted to gag at the sight, however your pissed boyfriend had her knocked out before you had the chance to respond.
and so, you watch the love of your life slowly dismember her husband, giggling to yourself.
he’s so sweet to you <3
♬ here’s the reigns , take ahold of me ,
♬ please don’t let go .
sanzu had you sat on his lap, gun in hand and against your head.
why? because he missed you. so, as any sane lover would do, he kidnapped you from your own home and threw you into his office, declaring that if you tried to leave then he’d be painting his walls red.
and so, testing your luck, you stepped out of the office.
hence the forced lap with the gun thing.
♬ you do the talking , see my mouth if i can’t keep it closed .
he was hyperventilating on the floors of your bedroom. yawning and sighing to yourself gently, you plop yourself next to him and wait for the signal.
“don’t just sit there asshole” you hear him mumble from beneath his hands. the signal.
you pull him into an embrace, his face buried into your shoulder as he sooths himself, rocking back and fourth. you grasp his wrists gently and bring his face to yours, as if he was a delicate flower that’s petals could fall at any time.
you press a gentle kiss to his temple, and then to the diamonds on either side of his mouth. his pouty face was too cute to hide away.
despite it all, you can’t bring yourself to allow your lover to suffer alone.
♬ there’s a dog barking right around the block , and a big ol’ whistle blow .
you grasped his hand gently, a ring ever so delicately glimmered on both of your left ring fingers, a nail straight through the finger in order to keep it on forever.
the blood dripping onto the sidewalk as you wandered through the empty streets didn’t phase you, only the symbol of your engagement and the maniacal giggles of your deranged fiancé phased through your mind.
the ring idea was your beloveds, seeing the ring in one of the shops he frequents. a ring with a nail that goes through the middle to keep it on, a diamond on the top to symbolise its meaning.
a perfect ring for a perfect couple.
♬ run for it , i’ll keep em occupied for you .
♬ cause i love you, i love you so .
“hey (Y/N) have you seen sanzu anywhere? he didn’t come into work today and mikeys pissed. he’s kinda the only guy who can talk to mikey without getting shot anyways.” kokonoi hushes to you over the phone, presumably because mikey is nearby and doesn’t want to get shot himself.
sanzu only sighs to himself, knowing he had to go in. he was planning on ditching to spend the afternoon with you, but work is a bitch i guess.
“i’ll let you have my fiancé if i can stay for the day as well” you bargain with the treasurer, knowing he’s easy to persuade with the current situation.
“i don’t give a shit if you’re here or not, just get the vice head here soon or mikey won’t hesitate to blow your brains in either.” he hangs up the phone.
giggling quietly, the both of you get dressed and mentally prepare yourself for a LOT of yelling.
♬ left me hangin at the station , but you’ll be back for me soon .
you could hear haruchiyo ever so slowly calming the exhausted kid down, little by little his voice stilled and you presumed that was the end.
you were surprised to hear mikey had summoned for your presence as well.
entering the boss’ office, you find a sleepy mikey with a pissed haruchiyo holding him up.
“jackass goes off on me then falls asleep on me afterwards. you’re better at this touchy shit.” haruchiyo spits out at you, before shrugging the boy onto you.
he was extremely thin and his white hair was a mess, but even you couldn’t bring yourself to give him any shit. you knew mikey before he went haywire and knew he had a shitty childhood.
so, you spent the next three hours on the lounge of the most dangerous man in japan’s office, with the said man sleeping like a baby on your lap.
you could tell sanzu was ready to strangle manjiro, however you only whacked him up the head before letting your fiancé rest on your other shoulder.
♬ i’m ‘bout to die , yet the only thing i find i’m worried about is you .
shopping for your beloveds birthday was difficult considering every time you left his side he’d threaten to abandon you, however the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity presented itself when manjiro sent haruchiyo on a mission for him.
you found yourself in the middle of the mall, looking around at anything that would interest your crazed parter. despite not being in bonten, you were much associated with them and therefore had to stay careful.
looking around at the assortment of jewellery stores, you finally settle on something.
forever bracelets.
bracelets that could not be removed, and you knew exactly what you wanted it to be laced with.
♬ something tells me you aren’t coming , guess i’m truly doomed .
the day of your lovers birthday had arrived. you woke up at around 3:30 pm, had some cake and dragged him out to the same shop you had his gift waiting for him.
walking up to the ladies who were going to prepare your bracelets (who instantly recognised your fiancé) , you held your gun to them as they did sanzu.
the gold bracelets were laced with eachothers blood, the light of the sun showed it off beautifully. and when it came time for yours to be completed, the cops were about 3 minutes away.
giggling to yourselves as you left the store, you grasped eachothers hands.
“perhaps we should get the necklace version on our honeymoon” haruchiyo voices, the sun slowly setting. the two of you walked the streets, before eventually making your way back home. the cops sirens couldn’t be heard, presumably still looking for you in the mall you had both left already.
“maybe, if you’re able to walk properly once i’m through with you” you joke to him, laughing together.
boy is he going to show off his birthday present to the executives tomorrow.
♬ i’m ‘bout to die , yet the only thing i find i’m worried about is you .
♬ i’m ‘bout to die , yet the thing on my mind seems to nearly be nothin but you .
#sanzu haruchiyo#sanzu x male reader#sanzu x reader#tokyo revengers x reader#tokyo revengers x male reader#tr x reader#tr x male reader#bonten sanzu#bonten#sanzu#haruchiyo x male reader#akashi haruchiyo
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hey emmy, i hope you’re having the best day!
maybe a blurb about modern!eddie being forced to go to a taylor swift concert with reader, even though it doesn’t fit his super cool, edgy, metal vibe?
love all your work, smooches
You knew that the majority of the crowd was made up of girls. Screaming girls, actually. Dressed in glitter and sequins, red lipstick and hidden wine bottles in their platform boots. But Eddie seemed enraptured by it all, sticking out like a pretty sore thumb in the chaos of it, all shades of black in a sea of colour.
He held your hand with a renewed tightness, clinging to you tightly as you manoeuvred you both into a position where you could see the stage, but you weren’t crushed between eager fans. The arena was already filling up, the overhead music barely noticeable under the din of a thousand conversations. The girl next to you was already crying, mascara streaked, tiny gold stars leaking down her cheeks. Eddie was staring.
“Hey, stop,” you told him, nudging at his ribs with your elbow. “You’re being rude.”
“I’m concerned,” he said in response, leaning down to talk into your ear, his lips just touching the shell of it, his hand curled over your hip bone. “I knew this would be mental, but this— this is unreal.”
You sympathised, taking in his wide eyes and parted lips as he surveyed the crowd, groups of friends making tiktoks on the outskirts, people screaming at the sound guys on stage, asking the man who was fixing a lighting rig where Taylor was.
“Thank you,” you said for the eighteenth time that day, “for coming with me, you didn’t have to.” You smiled, warm and fond. “I appreciate it, Eddie.”
Nancy had been struck down with a sickness bug only hours before you were due to meet her in town, both of you planning to grab some food before jumping on the subway to the arena. She’d apologised profusely between throwing up, her texts littered with rare spelling errors as her hands shook with the fever that had come on so quickly.
Robin was adamant about looking after Nancy, Jonathan was out of town with Argyle, Steve laughed and said absolutely not and Max was on holiday with El and Hopper, some camping trip in the middle of god knows where. You didn’t ask the boys, you didn’t want to waste your breath. And then Eddie texted you, with a screenshot from Robin telling him his friend needed a date along with the words: “what time will I pick you up? :)”
The boy shrugged, smiling right back. “Couldn’t have you all alone.”
You made a face, because although you wouldn’t have loved standing on your own for a concert you’d paid far too much money for… you knew this wasn’t Eddie’s kinda scene. You told him as such and he grinned, nose scrunching as he avoided the eye contact of a girl who was taking way too much interest in him
“S’fine,” he said, “I know some songs, I can scream along.”
“Oh yeah?” You raised your brows, amused.
Eddie scoffed, shuffling closer as more people filled up the floor space, edging towards the stage. “You kiddin’? A little Lover? Anti-hero? I’m down with the kids.”
A crowd of newcomers surged past you as you laughed and you winced as your shoulder got knocked by someone’s bag, no doubt crammed with glass bottles of the alcohol they weren’t supposed to have. Eddie tutted, taking you gently by your wrist until he coaxed you to stand in front of him, your back to his chest. You felt a little more safe there, his solid warmth a protective wall behind you. His hands ghosted over the dip in your waist before they dropped again, like he wasn’t sure what to do with them.
You looked up, head on his chest and you grinned your appreciation.
The boy looked like he was blushing, cheeks a little pink and lips twisted to his the smile that was threatening to break out. Despite the leather jacket, the ripped denim and all the chains, Eddie Munson still looked like the softest boy there.
“Can you see okay?” He asked, bending down to you again so you could hear. He smelled like the aftershave he always wore, like smoke and spice. “You good?”
You nodded, pleased at his closeness, all the attention he was giving you and god, this was starting to feel a little more like a date, despite the other few thousand people around you both. “Yeah, I’m all good.”
Eddie nodded, “good. Maybe to make up for it, you can come with me to see one of my favourite bands.” His smile was teasing, but his words and his eyes seemed hesitant, like he was asking a question he wasn’t sure of the answer to.
You turned, still close to the boy, toe to toe and you tilted your chin up to beam at him. “Yeah?” You asked, pleased at the idea of another outing with just Eddie. Most of the time, you saw him with the rest of the group, too busy catching up with Robin and letting Will show you his new art pieces to talk to the person you wanted to most. “I can do that.”
Eddie blinked, surprised but grinning all the same. “Yeah?” He asked back. “Rammstein is playing in Chicago next month.”
You squinted at him, familiar with the name. “Is that the German guys who sound kinda demonic?”
The boy looked proud. “That’s the one, sweetheart.” He half expected to you to firmly, but politely, turn him down. German heavy metal was most definitely not your kind of music. But then again, Taylor Swift wasn’t really his either, and here he was.
“Will you take me to dinner first?” You said instead and Eddie’s heart stuttered.
Warmth bloomed in his chest, a heat that crept up across his neck and cheeks and he swallowed, nervous. “Dinner? Yeah. Yeah, I can do that.”
He could most definitely do that.
“Great,” you beamed again, eyes bright and a flush to your cheeks that made him think you were as happy as he was at this outcome. “It’s a date.”
Eddie didn’t have time to reply to that, ‘cause the crowd started screaming and Taylor Swift came out on stage, the opening chords of Love Story ringing through the arena. You turned, clapping along with the rest of the girls around you, your body firmly pressed to Eddie’s and by the third song, his arms were around your shoulders, his hands tangled between yours as he tried his best to sing along to the songs he knew through the grin that wouldn’t leave his lips.
...
#eddie munson#eddie munson x you#eddie munson x reader#eddie munson x y/n#eddie munson fic#eddie munson fanfiction#eddie munson fanfic#eddie munson fluff#eddie munson imagine#eddie munson oneshot#eddie munson blurb#eddie baby blurb
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best friends don’t look at each other the way we do
A low stakes, high reward, and self-indulgent Zelink fan fiction. Canon-compliant. takes place between BOTW and TOTK.
Unedited
chapter four: I’m better than ever
Read chapter three here
My masterlist
Song: Landscape with a Fairy by aspidistrafly
Summary: Link and Zelda start to get back on their feet, local problems in Hateno Village start to arise.
Warnings: PTSD, dealing with trauma
Word Count: 3.3k
Authors Note: sorry this took me so long to update! This is unedited so pls be kind haha. I love you all! Also I’m working on getting this uploaded to Ao3!
A few days go by, and Zelda finally starts to feel like herself again. After three days of laying in bed, drinking broth that Link makes for her, and falling into deep, dreary sleeps, she can finally get herself out of bed.
She walks downstairs, not feeling dizzy or nauseous, to find Link passed out against the table. His mouth is slack, and the smallest amount of drool dribbles out onto the cracked wood. His eyelashes are long and thick, and he has an old scar through one of his eyebrows, causing a clean-cut line of no hair. He looks so gentle when he sleeps, soft and peaceful. You would never guess he was the threat he was.
Zelda knew how badly he needed to sleep, he had spent days restless over her. She knew he got some rest here and there, but never enough to really help. She notices his shoulder shake, he isn’t wearing a shirt. She swears he never does at home. It was cold, despite it nearing summertime. Zelda goes to grab one of the wool blankets he keeps on a bench against the wall. Before she carefully drapes it around his shoulders, she examines the scars on his back. It’s littered with cuts and bruises. Some had healed well, and were only suggesting an injury. Others were a pale shade of tissue, some were still red and pink. One even still had his make-do stitches in it. She wondered who did them for him, and what battle caused the injury. Link still had bruises on his side and bicep from the fight with the calamity. They were starting to turn a jaundiced yellow and green, his body slowly healing them. Zelda’s stomach turns at the memories of the beast.
She shakes her head and sighs, placing the blanket over his bare skin and positioning it over his shoulders. Link stirs and his breathing shifts, he closes his mouth, swallowing before continuing his dreams. His hair is out of his hair tie, and it lies loose around his shoulders and face.
His face and look is so alluring, there's something about him that’s so comforting. She could sit with him all day, just with him as he slept, knowing that she’s safe.
She uses the washroom, taking her hair out of the old braid and letting the soft waves fall over her shoulders and cascade down her back. A pit churns in her stomach as she looks at her long hair. Her hair was always a part of her identity. Something she never cut, never damaged. It was beautiful, even after the years of divine wear and tear on it. She never had a choice with her hair. She didn’t get to make hardly any choices for herself. He runs her hands through her hair, sometimes she wished she could just rip it all out. Have a fresh slate.
She changes her clothes after searching for something fresh to wear, she would eventually need some of her own clothes. Zelda does all of this being as quiet as she can be. She doesn’t want to wake the sleeping hero at any cost. She finds an old pair of green pants that hit her at the knees, they’re comfortable, but tight to her skin. She finds the matching blue tank top that goes with it, and pulls it over her head. It feels nice to have some clean clothes on. When Link wakes up, she’ll ask if there’s a clothing store nearby.
The princess starts on breakfast, pulling some bird eggs from the cool inventory and a bit of goat butter. She has no idea what she’s doing, and very quickly realizes that she’s burning the eggs. In a panic, Zelda attempts to fix her mess, but somehow makes it worse. She quietly swears and before she knows it, Link is standing behind her, wrapping his arms around her body and replacing her grip on the skillet with his own calloused hands.
He engulfs himself around her, resting his chin on her shoulder as he pulls the burnt egg away from her. Her heart flutters, skipping a beat. She wonders how he was able to do an act that was so simple, so domestic. Did he think about it the same way she did? She felt safer and warmer in his embrace, wanting to linger there forever, feeling his bare chest against her back, but it's over all too soon. He steps away and fixes her mistake.
“I-I’m so sorry.” Zelda sighs. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothings wrong with you.” Link assures, “Open the windows.” He nods to the glass. Zelda goes to push them open, and they must not have been opened in years because they creak open with a tired groan and dust falls from the frames. Her breaths are quickly followed by coughs after the fact, and she scrunches her nose.
Almost immediately, Link is making a perfect omelet, and it smells wonderful.
“How do you do that?”
“Years of practice.” He smiles. “Grab some plates.” She follows his request again, his voice is still gruff and gravely from his sleep. Zelda places the plates on the table, facing across from each other. Link carries the pan over to the plates, cutting the omelet in half with his spoon and then placing each half on the plates, being sure to give Zelda the bigger piece. Zelda sits after thanking him, and instead of Link sitting across from her, he drags the plate for himself across the table to be next to hers, taking his place right next to her on the bench, legs pressing up against one another. Zelda begs her thoughts not to be too ambitious.
They eat mostly in silence.
“Is there a clothing store nearby?”
Link nods, “Yup, two of ‘em actually.” He looks at her, his eyes still sleepy, “I can go get you some if you like.”
“I would like to go with you, if that’s alright.” Zelda nods.
“Are you feeling well enough?” He asks.
“Mhm,” She hums, “I would really like to get out of this house.”
“What, you don’t like my house?” Link asks, pretending to be hurt.
Zelda giggles, chiding him, “I love your house.” She sighs, those words came so easily. The word ‘love’ lingers in her mind. “Will you teach me how to cook?”
Link laughs, “Oh no you can’t fix that.” He teases her in reference to her antics this morning. She frowns, unamused, and he sighs, “I’ll teach you, but in return I want you to teach me something, too.”
“Anything.” Zelda smiles.
“Teach me how to be brave. Like you.” He asks after a beat.
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about it… and I’m terrified. All the time I am.” He swallows, scared to open up like this, proving his own point. He glances at the princess who stares at him with her beautiful, green eyes which inspires him to keep going, “I know I’m the courage guy and everything, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not afraid of things, like I’m not afraid to beat up monsters or jump headfirst into a well, but I’m filled with this… this dread. Like something bad is going to happen and no matter what I do, I can’t stop it.” He explains, never being this vulnerable with anyone anymore. He used to be with Mipha back in the day, but she was gone because of something Link couldn’t stop.
“Link… courage and bravery are two different things.” Zelda states, taking a risk and placing a dainty hand on his, the touch is electric, they both feel it. “Bravery is the ability to walk into an enemy camp with a decayed weapon and two apples. Courage is the strength to keep fighting when it feels impossible to.” She explains.
Link looks at her, and he realizes how easy it would be to just lean over and kiss her. Her lips are so soft, so pink, so inviting. He glances at them a few times. He decides not to.
“I just… I just don’t want to lose you again.” He pulls his hand away, looking down at the empty plate dejectedly.
“Hey.” She pulls his gaze again, their eyes meeting once more. “You got me. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.” She reassures him, and then rests her head on his shoulder. They needed one another.
He’s worried sick about her the entire time they’re in town. He can’t quit watching her, and she’s enthralled by the stimulation of the world around her. She almost gets plowed over by a kid running through the street, and she just laughs when it happens, the brightest smile on her face.
She takes a deep breath, feeling the sun on her face. The warmth of early summertime makes her cheeks a soft pink and eyelashes flutter.
“Did you have to bring that with you?” She asks, referencing the legendary sword that was strapped to his back. “It’s safe now, remember?”
Link frowns, “You can never be too-safe.” He just nods and she shrugs.
Zelda takes a hop-like step to the bulletin board posted in town to read the notices. One read that there would be a sale on milk up at the farm the next week, another was basic town hubbub, but one stood out to her. It was written by the hands of someone who isn’t very skilled with penmanship. It was a note asking for books, probably by a child. The note asked that someone would kindly donate a few new books for this young reader, leaving them on the bench outside of the mayor's home. She smiled, this was the type of kid she was.
A completely different note catches Link’s eye.
New monster spotted north-east of town. Killed two cattle. Please be cautious.
Link hums, turning the paper over to see if there’s any more information, but that was it.
“What is it?” Zelda asks.
“A monster. I would guess it's just a Moblin, but the note says it's new.” LInk frowns, perplexed. “I’ve fought every monster in Hyrule ten times over, there are only Moblins and Bokoblins in these parts.”
“Should we be worried?” She asks, her eyes blown-wide. She’s in constant fear of having to go through anything traumatic again.
Link shrugs, “I saw a destroyed fence the other day up there, I should probably go speak with the rancher.” He shoves the note in his back pocket, “Come on, let’s get you some clothes.” He holds his arm out for her to take, something he hasn’t done in a long time. He almost pulls it away in embarrassment but she gladly takes it, smiling at him as she does.
Both of their hearts threatened to burst out of their chests, but they each calmly forced themselves to stay composed.
Link leads her into one of the clothing stores, the door ringing from a bell as they enter. The shop was small, but had plenty of things in stock. Zelda pulls away from his arm sooner than either of them would have liked to start browsing. Link follows three steps behind, where he usually was.
“Link!” A woman smiles from the back of the shop. Ivee walks towards him, cheerful. “You’ve been gone for so long! I thought I heard you were back in town.” She says before wrapping her arms around him and hugging him. Link is a little surprised by it and doesn’t really hug her back.
Link nods with a smile. “I’ll be in town for a while.” He states, being friendly but not too friendly. He and Ivee have some history.
“You? Never.” She giggled, stepping closer to him, she was a bit shorter than him, and had cute brown eyes that sparkled up at him. “You can’t stay put in one place for too long, you'll get bored!” Her body language was flirty, handsy, she thought Link was as handsome as everyone else did.
Zelda is made aware of the situation and tries to keep her cool. There’s no reason to get jealous. “Well you all better give me some work to keep myself busy.” He smiles, scratching the back of his head.
“Oh I would love to.” She sighs and Link awkwardly laughs.
Zelda steps in at that moment, “I’m sorry I didn’t catch your name.” She stands a little closer to Link than she normally does, not quite touching him, but close enough.
“Ivee.” She says to Zelda. “And who are you…”
Zelda takes a harrowing breath, “Who am I?” She asks, her tone increasingly offended, “Who am I?” She asks again laughing at Link, “Well I am the Pri-“ She starts to say and Link interrupts her grabbing her shoulder.
“This is Zelda, she’s from the west. She’ll be staying with me for a while.”
“Oh.” Ivee looks visibly hurt. She then looks at Zelda with a frown, “You know, it’s bad luck to be named Zelda. That’s what the Princess who killed herself a hundred years ago was named.” She sighs, glaring at Zelda. Her gaze softens when she returns to speaking with Link, “If you need any assistance, I’ll just be up here.” She smiles and turns around, “It’s great to have you back in town, Linky. I would love to walk up to the waterfall at Nirvata lake with you again. It was so fun last time.” She winks at him before returning back to her perch.
Links cheeks burn red.
“Rude.” Zelda mutters under her breath. “What in the name of Hylia does she mean by that?…Linky?” Zelda teases, scoffing at him. Link swallows, embarrassed.
He then signs to Zelda, ‘Ivee makes up stories’.
Zelda lifts an eyebrow, not believing it, ‘She’s not very polite’.
Link shakes his head, ‘She’s young. Times are different’. He pulls Zelda into a more secluded corner of the store, not wanting to embarrass anyone, ‘You can’t tell people you’re the Princess’.
‘Why Not?’ Zelda signs back, her expression frustrated and confused, ‘I am, aren’t I? I didn’t kill myself. Do they really believe that?’
Link nods, ‘Some people don’t even believe the Calamity happened’.
“What?” Zelda verbally exclaims.
Link holds his pointer-finger to his lips, hushing her, Conspiracy theorists or something.’ He signs, ‘besides, people won’t believe you if you tell them you’re The Princess’.
‘That’s absurd!’ Zelda angrily signs at him.
Link tries to calm her down, looking at her with his understanding eyes, ‘Until we can get the Zora to confirm for the Hylians that you are The Princess, It’s best to just lay low’.
Zelda frowns, wrapping her arms across her chest. ‘Fine’. She signs back.
Link nods, “Let’s get you some clothes.”
They leave the store with a good collection of items, some shirts and trousers, a hooded cloak, socks and a pair of boots for her. She was still wandering around in her goddess sandals. “Most ladies wear skirts these days, when you’re in town, you should too.” He explains as they walk next door to a nicer, more prestigious shop. Zelda was acutely aware that he did not offer her his arm when they left Ivee’s shop.
“So they’ve regressed?” Zelda asks, back in her day, it was becoming quite popular for women to sport trousers, even in formal situations.
“Very much, yes.” Link nods. “The calamity threw the world back, technology has been put on a complete hold, there have been little-to-no scientific breakthroughs since.” Link explains. It makes Zelda sad.
“That’s a real tragedy.” She frowns, “We were making so much progress.”
“I know.” Link says, “but now everyone just fends for themselves. If there's a famine or illness in a town, it's up to that town to solve it. There was a village in West Hyrule, before the canyon that had survived the Calamity. They were doing pretty well for the first fifty or so years. But then they had a bad plague, and were completely wiped out. There's nothing but a ruin there now.”
Zelda’s heart hurts, “It’s my fault.” She stops in her tracks. Link turns around, looking at her dejected composure. He walks back to her, taking her hand with his.
“Look at me.” He says, but she keeps her gaze set on the dirt road. Link takes his hand and gently lifts her chin to make eye-contact with him. “It’s not your fault. This is not on one person's shoulders.”
“I know but-“
“Zelda.” He stops her, “We can’t change the past. It happened. But we are both still here.” He takes both her hands now, “We survived, so let's look into the future. There’s only up from here.” He reassures her.
Zelda cracks a smile, and she desperately wants to lean in and give him a quick, gentle kiss on his lips. But she doesn’t, because she can’t guarantee he would kiss her back, and she would rather suffer in silence over her desires for him, but stay close, than jeopardize their friendship at all.
“Come on.” He leads her into the store, not letting go of one of her hands until they’re inside.
Zelda leaves with two dresses now, a soft, cotton dress that’s blue, and a white one with green and yellow details on the hem of the fabrics. “Thank you, Link.” She says as they begin their walk back home. “How do you have so much money?”
“Talus.” Link nods, not giving anymore context. Zelda shrugs, catching up with him.
They spent that evening cleaning, Link finally took care of all the junk he stored there, discarding old weapons and starting a burn pile outback to get rid of scraps and wooden bows. Zelda takes a big broom and dusts out all of the cobwebs, sweeping out piles of dirt, and taking care of the sand pile that had accumulated from his treasures found in the desert. She noticed how her heart twinged at the idea of the desert, the idea of Urbosa. She shakes the thought away, focusing on the task.
Dusk falls on them, and Zelda is wiping down the walls with an old rag while Link is sitting up in the rafters, dusting the wooden beams the roof is built on and trying to reach a bird's nest that had been built up there. He straddles a beam, shirtless, barefoot, and dusty.
As he sits up there, he peers down at the girl who kneels twenty feet below him, her long hair tied back into a bun and secured with a stick shoved through the center of it. Her feet bare and dirty, toes poking out from under her bottom as she sat on them. She couldn’t see him looking at her, couldn’t hear how his heart beat twice as fast when he thought about her, wasn’t aware of how his pupils grew at the sight of her.
She hummed, and he could hear it. Humming a song he didn’t know, but felt vaguely familiar, like he knew it in a past life. Link wondered if the past incarnations of the Goddess and the Hero ever loved each other. Surely they did, to some degree. Maybe platonic, or the type of love you have for someone you work alongside and deeply respect. He wondered if any of them ever loved each other the way he wanted to love his Zelda. Did it ever work? Had he been a king in a past life? Did their past selves ever have children? His stomach flutters at the idea of having a family with her.
She must have sensed his gaze because as soon as he begins to fantasize about Zelda having a baby with him, she looks up at him, and smiles. He’s so shocked by her sudden gaze, terrified that she could read his mind and almost loses his balance on the beam, falling his chest onto it and holding on. He smiles back and laughs. Zelda giggles at him.
“How’s the view? Up there?” She stands up and does a silly little dance around herself.
He sighs, and laughs, “the view is perfect!” He shouts down, “A little dusty.” Coughing a bit.
She asks, “Are you alright up there?”
Link smiles, “I’m better than ever.”
—
Chapter five
#fan fiction#tloz#zelink#zelda#botw#legend of zelda#the legend of zelda#link x zelda#zelda fandom#zelda tears of the kingdom#botw zelink#totk zelink#zelink smut#zelink totk#zelink fluff#zelink fanfic#zelink thoughts#zelink angst#zelink pining#totk#Zelda x link#zelda fanfic#link zelda#hurt/comfort#Zelink hurt/comfort#fanfic#botw totk#totk spoilers#botw tears of the kingdom#botw fanfic
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Kirishima and the Washing Machines
You lived in a pretty large apartment complex about 150 residents in all. And yet, somehow, you always found yourself using the washer and dryer after this one individual. Every. Time.
And you now what, they never remember to clean out the lint tray after they’re done.
You sigh through your nose, inching out the door of the lint tray and seeing a very full cage. Reaching in and deftly scooping it all up in one hand and dropping it into the trash can without second thought.
Whoever this person was they had the most ridiculously long and lacking hair care routine ever. Seriously, 5-6 inch long firetruck red hairs that were coarse and fried to hell littered your clothes now. Probably because said person never emptied the lint tray after their laundry so now their hair littered your own wardrobe. And this would naturally urge anyone to choose a different washer and dryer out of the apartment laundromat. And it wasn’t like you hadn’t tried, it just seemed that whoever this person was seemed to read you mind — move laundry machines with you, so you’d given up.
Subjected to a life of dyed red hair in all your clothing. A lifetime supply of lint rollers in hand at all times.
And in Kirishima’s defense he was a busy prohero — but you’d never seen him in the apartment complex, much less seen him patrolling the neighborhood in order to make the connection.
Although he’d seen you — only a handful of times though — over the past few months of living here. He thought you were pretty — the kind where you have to mentally acknowledge a strangers beauty just because they are so attractive.
Except for today.
And You were having a good day.
You’d hit massive stroke of luck to this week to find that this red-haired person and your secret domestic enemy hadn’t been to the laundromat before you. You couldn’t be more pleased as you sat down on one of the lobbies padded chairs. Content with sitting and reading your book as you waited for the little chiming song of the washer and dryer to alert you that this batch of clothes was free of a strangers weird hairstyle.
And you were ready, sliding back in the chair, tittering your hips, slipping your finger between the fresh crisp pages and into the sweet spot where your little impromptu receipt bookmark lay nestled next to the spine — a perfect morning.
you’d gotten through that euphoric breath part of the process before the awkward spinning doors to the complex blew open and you’d dropped the book into your lap — staggering in was a beefcake of a man.
It was the first thing you noticed, and how could you not? The stranger was shirtless and only clad in a pair of worn joggers that bear the emblem of the most famous hero producing highschool — hung snuggly around his hips, but just low enough that you could see the elastic of his boxers peaking out. And up from there was the defined muscles of his abdomen, not full on bread rolls, but a smoother definition and one that fit him nicely. The slight healthy layer of fat smoothing over the man’s defined and sturdy trunk — which lead to a completely hairless chest — a conscious decision. And then his arms were huge like the rest of him, but had a very strange reverse farmers tan to them. Another conscious decision?
You didn’t even make it to his face before he was already in the room — and he took up space.
somehow you found the conscious effort to close your mouth when he turned in your direction flaming locks of hair reaching his broad shoulders.
Beefcake had noticed you as soon as he had walked in. The gorgeous h/c woman. And he could see the whites of your eyes and the pink of your tongue from the door.
He flashed you an award winning smile full of sharp canines before awkwardly tugging on a few small strands near his face. The book in your lap now open to a random page, a receipt lay fluttered close to your feet.
Kirishima chuckled, deep and low, bending down on one knee to hand you the receipt that’d been flung out on the ground from your shocked stare — yeah, that was a perfectly normal reaction he got often as a pro.
“Sorry to startle you, beautiful. Here’s your bookmark,” he said, holding it out to you. You blinked back surprised before taking it back from his outstretched hand rather stiffly. He could see a crinkle between your brows as you seemingly took in every single detail about his face — tongue prodding the corners of your mouth as you did so.
You were not, in fact, openly checking him out as much as Kirishima was secretly kind of hoping — a reaction he would naturally have gotten fairly often since you presumed he was a hero of sorts with his build and those flashy alum joggers.
No — you were busy studying his hair: eyebrows, eyelashes, stubble, the whole lot. All of it thick and black — unlike the hair on top of his head, but similarly matching with the sometimes atrocious roots on those long hairs from the laundry machine.
“Aha—“ you thrust out the hand with the reciept and waved it in front of Kirishimas face. “It’s you! My laundromat enemy — you’re the guy that always forgets to empty the lint drawer!”
Kirishima blinked back at you crossed eyed. A vague recognition of what you were taking about slipping past his eyes like a montage. He couldn’t remember a single time where he emptied that lint drawer, now that you mentioned it. He swallowed thickly
“I — I, how? How do you know it’s me?” He garbled.
You shoot him a pointed look that reminded him of his best friend, “You really think there’s that many other people around here with hair like yours?” You hummed, gesturing to his still damp locks. You answered for him, “yeah, me neither.”
Kirishima was shocked at your certainty, but he was also pretty certain that you were absolutely right. He gulped nervously, adams apple bobbing in that thick neck of his.
of course he had luck like this, upsetting the beautiful woman in the apartment complex before he’d even meet her. You called him an enemy. A domestic enemy — he was supposed to be a hero!
He started, “Look . . .”
“Y/N” you supplied.
“Look Y/N,” he said, noticing the way you perked up more at his use of your name. “I’m really sorry to have bothered you by forgetting to clean out the lint in the dryer. There’s no excuse for me forgetting, or actively ignoring, that in a communal space. That’s really un-neighborly of me and I promise to actually take the time to do it from now on.” He finished, hand strapped across his heart like a knight of old making a pledge to you.
he watched as you slowly uncrossed your arms and tapped at the cover of your book. Your eyes of some beautiful color — that he would commit to memory if you looked up at him, stared down in your lap.
He put placed his hands on the side of the armrests, pleading with the best puppy dog eyes he could give, “anything I can do to make it up to you?” Practically begging.
you looked up, ahh so they were e/c then.
“I don’t know,” you shrugged, nose wrinkling.
He seemed genuine, and charming and polite, but he was large and intimidating — and in your personal space, “you do owe me quite a handful of change in lint roller money.”
Kirishima grinned, that he could do.
“How about I take you out — this time, next week. There’s a really cool bookshop cafe on my patrol route. I’ll come by and pick you up.” He noticed your hesitation, a worrying shimmy closer to the back of the seat and away from him. He removed his hands from the armrests and reached for the wallet in his pocket, “— we could just walk then, if that’s not comfortable for you. Or you could meet me there. Here see, Kirishima Eijirou prohero alias Red Riot.”
That caused you to relax and lean forward, as you examined his hero license.
He really was a hero. You were already pretty sure with those UA joggers, but it felt good to know you were right. One that wore an oddly terrifying dog-muzzle? You glanced back up at his strong jaw littered with a stiff 5 o’clock shadow. And surely enough there were faint lines of pale skin surrounding his mouth and just under his eyes that confirmed the weird existence of this accessory. Again, what is with the fashion choices here??
You raised a brow, “Ever think this is a little unusual for a hero?” You asked pointing at his ID.
Red Riot glowed like his namesake. “I thought it was cool back in highschool — now it’s part of my image.” He chuckled, a hand touching at the place where it would be.
you wondered what that would feel like having that cage against your skin all the time — surely uncomfortable.
Kirishima wondered if you’d consider yanking him by those bars to bring him into a kiss. Metal clanking on metal as the pretty ring on your finger gripped around the edges of its frame. If you’d be a woman he could come home to after a long mission and be fall into lovingly seering embrace like some of his pals. . .
Clearly two very different trains of thought going on here, but Eijirou was always a hopeless romantic at heart and nothing but a gentlemen.
He heart leapt into his throat when you placed a cool hand against his forearm with a little conformational pat, “I’ve got work next week, but I’ll go ahead and meet you there.”
He grinned standing up to his full height and pocketing his wallet, face morphing as a realization dawned on him. He quickly scrambled for his phone, “I — wait you don’t have my number and I haven’t even told you where it is. And it’s pretty far, so I don’t think you’d know it — because it’s all the way in Fatgums district and —“
and now you were laughing at him. Kirishima tucked a thick strand of hair behind his ear as he looked down at you — washing machine songs lighting up the atmosphere.
“Actually I do have your number. We — apparently — live on the same floor, Kirishima.” You snorted holding out your phone with the familiar floor group text that he was apart of. A ridiculous dorky contact photo of himself as Crimson Riot as the contact photo he send in the chat.
Plus Ultra! Forget red, crimson — he was scarlet right about now.
“Ah right . . .”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” you waved, “you’re much cuter in person. Ya know, for a laundromat menace.”
Kirishima scratched awkwardly at his chest which was hardening there randomly — oh wait nope, it’s because he heart was thumping a mile a minute and he was on a mad adrenaline rush right now in the middle of the apartment complex lobby bc was talking to the beautiful stranger of his complex.
You rose from your chair and stood in front of him, book clutched to your chest.
the only thought running through his head was don’t move. And you watched as this handsome young pro hero stood stock still — every muscular plain of his body becoming rock hard and just towering over you.
the chimes started up again.
“Uh excuse me, you’re kinda blocking the entire door?” You giggled.
In a flash this Kirishima was hardening even more and now you could clearly see a set of abs in the early morning dim lobby light as he stepped further into the elevator so he wouldn’t be crushed — although with that quirk you think the elevator might take most of the damage.
Now he was too cute.
And as he backpedaled into the elevator you could hear him audibly sigh with relief as the sound of your book pages started flicking.
“Kirishima—“
he looked down, the apples of your cheeks light and bouncy — such a pretty little smile on your face, “you should really invest in some conditioner.”
And the last you saw was a sliver of a grin and framing tan lines from that muzzle/cage looking mask of his. He beamed staring at the space you were in before the doors closed, a blissful whisper as he realized he was replying to an empty elevator, “yeah I do.”
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Christmas Headcannons Part One -The Main Three x Reader (separately)
A/n: I got a writing laptop so I'm most likely going to be writing a whole lot more. Merry Christmas, I hope you enjoy!
General info:
Genre: fluff \\ wc: 590 \\ posted: 12/25/2023
Warnings!: a teeny bit of Hawks', Dabi's, and Shiggy's childhoods/backstories.
Bakugo Katsuki:
Bakugo likes to act like he doesn’t give a crap about Christmas or anything to do with it.
He refuses to admit that he got a present for anyone.
If you ask him what he wants for Christmas, he will either insult you in some way or tell you some kind of way overpriced gift.
He absolutely hates Christmas music.
Though if he sees you happy while screaming Christmas songs on the top of your lungs, he won’t complain.
He lets you buy as many Christmas decorations as you want.
He’ll pretend to be annoyed but he’s secretly just happy to see your smiling face.
He’ll wear those “stupid” pajamas you give him on Christmas Eve, but the second you guys walk into your bedroom he’s stripping down to his boxers to sleep.
This man overheats and he refuses to wear anything but boxers to bed.
He’ll wake up really early on Christmas. He’ll hold you for a few minutes, occasionally littering feather like kisses to your lips and forehead.
After a while he’ll get up, yawning as he goes out to the living room. He’ll wait for you to wake up, refusing to disturb your sleep for something so “silly”.
When you wake up you come out to see dozens of presents... all without a name.
He ends up getting you dozens of presents. Every single one of them has a special meaning.
He listens. He really does, even when it looks like he couldn’t care less.
(Bakugo's masterlist)
Shoto Todoroki:
He adores spoiling you.
He didn’t get Christmas as a kid, so he only knew the idea of Christmas. Not the actual feeling.
After a few years his gifts became a lot more meaningful. He listened months in advance to what you wanted/needed, and slowly piled up your gift pile.
He’s a high-ranking hero, so he definitely has the money to spend.
His favorite part of Christmas is drinking hot chocolate by the fireplace on Christmas Eve with you wrapped in his arms.
He’ll hold you to his chest, his arms wrapped around your waist as you lean against him. He’ll rest his chin on your shoulder/head, kissing your neck and shoulders every few minutes.
He’ll tell you how much he loves you, and how thankful he is that he has you.
You brought him away from his horrid past, drowning his mind with love instead of his trauma.
He is eternally grateful to you for that, and he always will be.
If you want him to wear pajamas, he will.
If he wakes up before you, he’ll stare at you for a while, stroking your cheek gently.
He won’t react much to gifts, but he’s smiling the entire time you open yours.
Most of the time his gifts consist of notes on either your own quirk, someone else’s, or All Might merch.
If he knows the person well- like you- he'll get them a few things they mentioned needing/wanting.
And of course, a page on their quirk.
He’ll spend hours making sure your gifts are wrapped perfectly. He ends up wasting a lot of wrapping paper.
But your smile and compliments of his wrapping makes it all worth it.
He appreciates every single gift. And no matter how bad you think the wrapping is he’ll compliment you on it.
If you pour your heart into a gift, he will cry.
He feels really really bad if he thinks you don’t like your gift.
You always reassure him, and as soon as you flash that pretty smile at him, he’s instantly reassured.
If he knows the person well- like you- he'll get them a few things they mentioned needing/wanting.
And of course, a page on their quirk.
He’ll spend hours making sure your gifts are wrapped perfectly. He ends up wasting a lot of wrapping paper.
But your smile and compliments of his wrapping makes it all worth it.
(Izuku's masterlist)
~~~~~
Masterlist | Navigation | You can tip me here <3
Reblogs and feedback are greatly appreciated! <33
~~~~~
Do not copy, repost, nor plagiarize my work. Ask before you translate or use my work in any way- minus reblogging.
#mha#bnha#mha x reader#bnha x reader#mha fanfiction#thehusbandoden#fluff#mha fluff#bakugo katsuki#katsuki bakugo#bakugo x reader#bakugo x reader fluff#shoto todoroki#todoroki shoto#shoto x reader#shoto x reader fluff#izuku midoriya#midoriya izuku#izuku x reader#izuku x reader fluff#mha headcannons#headcannons#christmas#christmas headcannons#mha x reader fluff#bnha x reader fluff#mha x reader christmas headcannons
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The story
Summary: She's not going to let him down.
Pairing: TFATW!Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader
Warnings: angst, self-loathing, Bucky feels not worth being loved, written in Bucky’s PoV, fluff
A/N: Inspired by the song “The Story” by Brandi Carlile. Lyrics are taken from the song.
Sequel to: Ruined
No one wants to hear my story. I get it. I’m a relic from the past most people want to forget about.
Why think about dark times and the monsters I worked for? Or what I had to endure.
Even my best friend, the man I considered my brother, left me to go back to better times.
Steve wanted to live the dream he believed he wanted. He didn’t care that I had to hold his hand when he died.
I’m stuck in this world, with my past hanging over me like a dark cloud. There is nothing I can do about it.
The only light in my life is her. She makes the world brighter, and my life bearable.
Sometimes I believe I’m not attractive enough for her. I have lines across my face, and scars litter my body and mind.
She’s perfect, looking like an angel. Every man turns their head when she enters a room. I always wonder why she chose me.
My girl left this perfect guy. He had it all. The looks, a shit-ton of money, and a good reputation. I can’t even hate him. It’s not his fault that my life got fucked up so bad that I can’t even sleep.
No wonder he fought tooth and nail and even played dirty to get her back. He spread rumors and lies about me, and Sam. Telling everyone we turned dark and tried to extort him.
Y/N refused to go back to him. She even sent the huge diamond ring I’ll never be able to afford back to him. My girl told him to fuck off and grow up.
Still, I hate the man I see in the mirror. He’s not the cocky man going to war, or dancing with the ladies.
I feel like my body and soul are scared so badly that I’m not going to heal. And I don’t mean my missing arm, and the pain I feel most days.
“Baby,” her soft voice brings me out of my thoughts. She breaks the endless circle of self-loathing once again. “Stop it right now.”
Y/N wraps her arms around my waistline from behind. She dips her head to look at me in the mirror. “I love you the way you are,” Y/N says and kisses the scar tissue around my metal arm. “There is not a single thing I’d change about you, baby.”
“Y/N,” I stare at the man in the mirror as she steps next to me to take my hand. “I—”
“Look again, B,“ she says. “For me. I want you to see the man I see.”
I exhale sharply and drop my gaze. It’s so hard to look at myself and like what I see.
“What do you see in me? I’m…no good.”
“Bucky, look again,” she squeezes my hand, holding it tightly. “Please…”
I lift my gaze, and oddly I see a different man.
All of these lines across my face
Tell you the story of who I am
So many stories of where I've been
And how I got to where I am
The longer I stare at myself, the more I see.
I see the young man, full of dreams, who tries to lift his small and weak friend up.
I see the soldier, becoming a man during endless nights spent in fear of getting killed.
I see the prisoner, praying that the monsters capturing him end his life.
I see the man, freed of his shackles as his best friend became a hero.
I see the man fighting alongside Captain America. Brave and fierce.
I see the wounded man, torn apart and put back together by the enemy.
I see the Winter Soldier.
I see the man buying plums first thing after he escaped his handlers.
I see the man fighting alongside his best friend.
I see the man losing it all again.
I see the man finding love when he is about to give up.
“I’m nothing without you, doll. You helped me become this man too,” I dip my head to glance at my girl. “I want you to look at yourself too and see the woman I see.”
She smiles, and we look at the mirror again. Together.
But these stories don't mean anything
When you've got no one to tell them to
It's true, I was made for you
“You came a long way, Bucky,” she says. “I know that there are still things you don’t want to talk about. But if you are ready, I’ll be here to hold your hand. Always.”
“Always.”
Tags in reblog.
#bucky barnes#bucky barnes x female reader#tfatws!bucky#bucky barnes x reader#bucky barnes x you#female reader#angst#fluff#The story
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Idolizing Imperfection: The Ancient Allusions of 'Midas Touch' - KISS OF LIFE (an essay)
I have missed writing kpop essays so much and after watching the new Kiss of Life MV, I couldn't resist doing a scene by scene (with some lyrics) breakdown of the allusions to ancient mythology - (there are lots of other modern references, especially to Britney Spears, but the ancient ones are what I will be focusing on here, believe me there is more than enough to talk about.) I don't have any official qualifications surrounding this field (yet), but I am studying classical civilization and roman literature for a qualification, and I have a long time obsession with Greek mythology especially. Obviously all of these are my interpretations, this is not a definite guide to what exactly the creative direction team at S2 Ent. were thinking about for this comeback, and if you think I missed something or have a different interpretation of one of the scenes, please let me know in the reblogs/comments.
Let’s begin with the title of the track, ‘Midas Touch’. It references the Greek myth of King Midas, who (according to Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’) after winning the favour of the god Dionysus, was granted any wish he desired. Midas chose the ability to make everything he touched turn into gold, a wish driven by greed. Midas revelled in his new found powers, but the problems arose when he realised that all food he touched would be turned to gold too - he had condemned himself to starve to death. The myth is essentially a cautionary tale about the effects of greed; Midas is a tragic hero that brought about his own suffering due to his hamartia (tragic flaw) - his blessing becomes his curse. Today, having a ‘midas touch’ means that everything you are involved with is successful, but the main association of Midas with greed still remains. In the context of the song, KOL are saying that a relationship with them, although destined to end in tragedy, would be worth it for the ‘gold’ they can bring - “위험할수록 재밌잖아” (“The more dangerous it is, the more fun it is”). Midas may have died a tragic death, but his time alive was quite literally golden. Still, it feels slightly odd that KOL are associating themselves with someone so flawed - an idol should be the image of perfection, and in this way, the meaning of the song becomes quite subversive on a meta level. Keep this interpretation in the back of your mind, we will return to it later.
Within the music video itself, each of the four members are given solo scenes that I believe allude to different women of Greek mythology. Julie is first, depicted lying on a blush pink velvet heart with gold embellishments, shell and heart shaped boxes littered around her. The composition of the framing, as well as the beach imagery seems to allude to Boticelli’s ‘The Birth of Venus’, linking Julie with Aphrodite/Venus, the goddess of love. In Greek mythology, Aphrodite is seen as beautiful beyond compare, but is also often characterised as highly vain and self absorbed. After hearing that some Greeks had begun to worship the ludicrously beautiful mortal woman Psyche instead of her, (and also out of protection of her son Eros to whom Psyche was married), she sent Psyche on a series of impossible trials designed to kill her, so she could remain the most beautiful. Once again, KOL compare themselves to people in the ancient world who were famously flawed.
Natty is seen next, intertwined with glittering spider webs. This is perhaps a reference to the tale of Arachne, a mortal woman who was highly skilled at weaving. She boasted that her skills were greater than Athena herself, the goddess of handicraft (and many other things), and Athena transformed her into a spider as punishment for her hubris (excessive pride). Like the tale of King Midas, Arachne’s story also centres around a fatal flaw bringing your own downfall, and like Midas and Aphrodite, Arachne is not typically remembered fondly within Greek Mythology canon.
Perched on a half dress, half throne that resembles a peacock, Belle is seen next. Originally I wasn’t certain who was being referenced here, but after some research I believe it may be Hera, although if you have another interpretation here I would love to hear it. Hera, the goddess of marriage and fertility, queen of the gods, and wife to Zeus, is affiliated with peacocks as they are one of her sacred animals, and are said to pull her chariot like horses. Hera is also, like Aphrodite, a goddess often portrayed in a negative light in mythology, repeatedly characterised as jealous and spiteful. A famous example of this is when Hera sent two snakes to strangle Heracles/Hercules, the illegitimate son of her husband Zeus, out of spite and jealousy for the boy’s mortal mother. Whether Hera had a right to be annoyed at her husband’s repeated adultery is another discussion, but generally speaking, when Hera is in a myth, she is often the villain.
Finally, we see Haneul, perched upon a corinthian style column (we love a greek column) surrounded by severed heads on spikes, a clearly war ridden scene. This is the allusion I am the least confident about, but I think perhaps she is supposed to be Helen of Troy? Helen is famous for being the catalyst for the Trojan War (perhaps this is the war scene she sits within?), she is the ‘face that launched a thousand ships’. Depending on the source, Helen is either a victim, kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris, or she was seduced and went willingly, abandoning her Greek husband King Menelaus. The second seems to be the accepted narrative among many Roman authors, with writers such as Martial (in Epigrams 1.62) portraying her as the polar opposite of Penelope, who was seen as the image of loyalty. As a result, Helen is commonly portrayed as disloyal and unfaithful, the opposite of what an ideal woman in the ancient world was supposed to act like.
In their group scenes, there is also SO MUCH Medusa imagery - with snakes crawling all over their faces and hissing at the camera, and half broken stone statues littered here and there. As I am sure you are probably aware, Medusa is very much a villain in the myths she is depicted in, and despite modern reevaluations of her story (that I agree with) portraying her as a victim, in the primary sources, she is essentially an evil monster for Perseus to destroy - her death marks Perseus’s ascension to hero status.
So why oh why are KOL comparing themselves to figures so flawed? In their previous releases, especially their first comeback with ‘Bad News’, the girls are depicted trying to fix injustices in society - they expose corruption in corporations, they combat casual misogyny and sexual harassment, and they call out bullying and abuse. In ‘Midas Touch’ I believe they continue their addressing of injustices and double standards, this time with a focus on the idol industry, their own stomping ground. In the kpop industry, idols are expected to be perfect in every way - beautiful, highly skilled, never controversial, and loyal to their fans. Should an idol fail to uphold these impossible standards, they are relentlessly punished, especially if the idol is a woman. Last month, Karina’s earnest apology to ‘fans’ for falling in love exposed how ludicrous the standards are to the world, and other idols like Sakura, Wonyoung, and Jennie, continue to get bullied on a daily basis for not meeting all of the bars the industry sets them. A kpop idol should be talented, but never show off, they should be beautiful and care about their looks but never be vain, confident but never egotistical, and driven by passion, not the desire for fame and money. It’s all fucking impossible, especially when what constitutes being called the second traits is utterly arbitrary and depends on how many people woke up on stan twitter and decided they didn’t like you that day. In ‘Midas Touch’ KOL calls this out by openly depicting themselves with the traits that kpop stans hate - Julie is Aphrodite, beautiful but vain, Natty is Arachne, talented but boastful, Belle is Hera, confident but jealous, Haneul is Helen, influential but disloyal, and they all are Midas, spurred on by greed instead of passion. They recognise that these accusations are unavoidable, and by reclaiming the imagery of these symbols of undesirable traits, they call out and reject the standards the idol industry places upon them. Like Medusa, they may be seen by many fans as a villain, a hurdle for their favourite groups that have more promotion and budget to overcome on their way to the top, but in actuality, they are victims of an industry desperate to mould them into products to be bought and sold. I’ve seen lots of discussion online about what KISS OF LIFE’s concept is, as it seems to vary every comeback, but after ‘Midas Touch’ I am led to believe that their concept is rebellion, against society, idol culture, and the things they deem as wrong in the world. Other groups have done concepts similar in the past, such as LOONA in ‘Butterfly’ (you really thought I wasn’t going to bring them up at some point?? Are you new here??) but KOL is doing it explicitly, and consistently, and to me, that's very exciting. The kpop industry is ever changing, and with the foundations of the new 5th generation being established as we speak, perhaps KOL could cause it to change for the better. In summary, I am SO excited to see what they do next.
That honestly took a turn I wasn’t fully expecting at the end, but I hope you enjoyed regardless - I didn’t really talk about the actual song here, but I fucking loved it, and my full review will be part of my April monthly roundup - see previous installments on my masterlist. I encourage all of you to listen to ‘Midas Touch’ if you haven’t already, congratulations KISS OF LIFE for graduating nugudom, stream Birth by ARTMS, stan loona, and prepare for the loossemble comeback - lmk if you have any thoughts on my analysis or any other interpretations, or any topics you want me to write an essay on. cya next time
~ ari
#kiss of life#midas touch#greek mythology#haneul#belle#natty#julie#kiof#kpop#kpop girls#kpop gg#kpop commentary#review#nothing#loona#not kpop#loona boycott#arachne#aphrodite#helen of troy#medusa#hera#greek gods
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I'm very Filament Fever mood
I want to interpret the filament fever song using Tsukasa as the POV
I'm doing it per paragraph and using the english translation from the wiki cause the official is kinda a tad bit off.
When I was still young, whenever I started dreaming, my heart would beat faster.
What I'm still longing for, my hand reaches for it.
> When Tsukasa was a kid he always wants to make his sister smile. So "Reach my hands towards the things he longed for" is Tsukasa doing his best to make Saki and people around him smile.
Seems like I can do anything I wish,
In a showtime that resembles magic itself.
Seems like I can become anyone I wish,
Even the hero that manages to make you laugh.
> This part talks about the shows Tsukasa makes. With shows, Tsukasa can be anything he wants. The most important one would be "The hero that makes you laugh".
It's awfully dramatic and sparkly,
But also so lonely...
My feelings are simply doing loop-de-loops,
I'm a total failure, an utterly hopeless person.
I'm still searching for my ideal today,
I wish I could be more like you.
> This can be about Tsukasa behind the scenes. While he can be amazing during the shows, he does struggles by himself. There's some self loathing but he still kept going to be what he wants and to be just like the star Tsukasa admires.
Be captivated by the sensitivity and sensation and shine!
Even if you can't see tomorrow, don't be scared.
At an instance of resonance, the filament illuminates this world! Now!
Let's discover a piece of that talent.
> Tsukasa use his feelings and inspiration to grow. In addition, the feelings will also help him stop his fear and doubts. The filament is use because it can shine the world. That is what Tsukasa wants to be but it's also what Tsukasa can do. He has the talent. Tsukasa is the filament.
Gradually, it's coming true, it's not just a dream anymore,
Won't you be the only one to believe in who I really am?
Gradually, it's coming true, it's not just a dream anymore,
There's a fever rising from my heart, our potential.
> This part feels like WXS centric. The dreams that Tsukasa has is slowly coming true. What he wants is for his trope to support his journey and he wants them to trust him too. As Tsukasa is growing wxs also growing alongside with him.
Running away from the changing flow of time,
I have forgotten even who I was.
But still, I just wouldn't let go of my longing.
> You could say that this is about Tsukasa before the main story. Tsukasa makes shows for so long he forgot why he did in the first place. Thus its similar to him losing himself. But he still wants to be a star. He may forget the main reason that he wants to be star but he never gave up the aim of wanting to be a star.
No matter how many times I throw my hands up in defeat and find myself feeling down,
I still don't want to write a reportage.
Even my feelings, all of them can be placed here,
The expression only I can make.
> Tsukasa struggles a lot but he doesn't want to dwell on it. He used the emotions he has to express himself instead. Aka his acting. Similar with how he did it with his role as Rio.
Be captivated by the spectacle and sensation and shine!
My hands may be littered with scars, yet they aren't in pain.
Delicate yet vivid, the filament illuminates this world! Ah!
I wish that I could say it was chance and fate.
> By growing and overcoming, the struggles Tsukasa has getting there feels like nothing of importance. Tsukasa as an actor is shining brighter and instead of thinking it as a coincidence he manage to get there, he wants to think that he is destined to be a star.
It's not a flashy, eccentric show,
But isn't this exactly what a real show is?
Props and backlights can't deceive anyone,
If possible, let's check their characteristics.
> I'm dividing this part to two since it's long. I kinda think it's about what Tsukasa's shows tend to be. Tsukasa isn't as great of a director like Rui but he still direct his shows. What he prioritize more is the acting and performance.
The show he made isn't high quality as he mention in his latest event on chapter 6. But he still manages to convey his performance towards his audience and that is what important to him.
Don't throw away those inner details,
Though I'm sure no one would notice the difference.
But even fake and surreal things get boring,
So that's a big problem for us.
> The "details " can be interpret as the roles. The characters on the stage. Like how Tsukasa does with Nakayama. He act as Nakayama even in his thoughts so no one actually notice that act that he made but he still doing it.
As for the "fake and surreal things gets boring" I think it means that Tsukasa wants to make the character he plays as real as possible and doesn't want to make his character feel fake. Such as how he doesn't want to just copy other Rio contestants just because he is desperate (phoenix event chapter 6).
Today, again, my heart burns as it lights up,
Such an ordinary thing, yet it thrusts me forward, gets me to move.
The song I longed for, what I've been eyeing for so long,
Ah! To remember it-
> Tsukasa's goal of wanting to be a star is the reason why he keeps growing and moving forward. I just don't know what to think about the song and why Tsukasa wants to remember it tho. What "song" does he want to remember?
....
Anyways that's all from me, it's just how I interpret so it could be different from anyone else perspective of the song.
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Ok, for the song thing (if you’re still doing it), I’ve got quite a few:
Bang! By AJR
How far we’ve come by Matchbox twenty
Little lion man by Mumford & Sons
Lotta true crime by Penelope scott
Rät by Penelope Scott
Take me to war by The Crane Wives
Villain by Stella Jang
Touchy feely fool by AJR
Room where it happens from Hamilton
(You don’t have to do all these I just wanted to give as many options as possible)
-Raven
(Good thing for you is that I know almost all of these, so I am going to do those... it might take a while XD)
~~~~~~~~
(Bang)
Scott: Ok nice start, very rythmey.
Grian: Those lyrics "come hang" "let's go out with a bang"... is this one of those songs that have a cheery tune but have like deep stuff in the lyrics?
LimL!Jimmy: Oh I wasn't feeling it at first but that electric oh-dee-la-de-do just hit and wow.
Pearl:... Let's go out with a bang... thats a bit of an on the nose reference to Double Life.
Grian: What-
Pearl: You'll see when we watch Double Life.
~~~~~~~~
(How far we have come)
Pearl: Another fast one, nice!
LimL!Jimmy: 🎶Let's see how far we've come, 🎵let's see how far we've come🎶. It's catchy.
Scott: I feel kinda sad? It gives the vibe of an ending song... An end in general... But endings don't exist do they? we know now that even death isn't one... Everything just goes on wether or not you are there to experience it...
Grian: Though...At the same time everything ends doesn't it? Everything dies, everything is eventually destroyed, mountains erode away and stars die and black holes evaporate...
LimL!Jimmy:... Why are you guys getting philosophical... It's a song... Don't take it so seriously....
~~~~~~~~
(Little Lion Man)
Scott: Oh this one is slower...
Pearl: I don't need a song telling me to weep and what's with the lion man thing?
Grian: Oh ... That... Oh... (The "It was not your fault but mine, i really fucked it up this time didn't I my dear" really hit Grian in the feels)
LimL!Jimmy:... I mean, if you mess up enough times you eventually get used to being a failure, speaking from experience eventually you just accept it.
Scott: You are not a failure... Jimmy. No matter what mistakes you might have done.
LimL!Jimmy:...
~~~~~~~~
(Rat)
Grian: Like a daddy should? My parents litterally left me so yeah, thats not true, think again... Did...I say that out loud?
Scott:... Uhhhh...this is akward... Do you want an hug?
Grian:... Kinda.
Pearl: ... ... ... Anyway.
LimL!Jimmy: *alward hum* 🎶Take me to the moo-oo-on🎵
~~~~~~~~
(Villain- english ver)
LimL!Jimmy: What do you mean pretend? I am the hero!
Scott: Oh the way "so many shades of gray" is sung is just so suave... This is very nice.
Pearl: 🎵I am villain why pretend🎶 that it isn't true? 🎶Didn't realize what an awful little devil I could be.🎵
I am going to have this in my head for a while.
Grian:... It's alright I guess...
~~~~~~~~
(The room where it happened)
Scott: Good start already has a beat.
LimL!Jimmy: All you had to do was to die? Aha we are already dead!
Pearl: Are they just gonna keep calling him the immigrant, did we miss something?
Scott: It's from a musical I think so probably context we don't have.
Grian: *humming at "no one else was in the room where it happened"*
LimL!Jimmy: ...I know none of these names... (Logical result of making 2 British people, a Scottish man and an Australian listen to a song about people from the American Revolution).
Pearl: Me neither.
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High Spirits at the Hard Deck
Pairing: Bradley 'Rooster' Bradshaw x wife!reader
A familiar call of “darlin’!” left [y/n] little time to brace before Rooster Bradshaw came barreling towards her. As if forgetting his own stature, [y/n]’s right forearm bumped into the tabletop as she prevented herself from falling off the bar stool as he draped himself over her.
“Hi handsome, you a little drunk?” Running her hands through his locks, [y/n] giggled at her deliciously disheveled husband. Ruffled light brown hair, tousled Hawaiian shirt exposing a tanned left shoulder, and glossy red lips left Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw looking like trouble.
However, instead of responding, Bradley busied himself with nestling into his wife’s neck, a small version of home to him. They had lost each other in the last half hour, Bradley to the piano to sing with his fellow pilots and [y/n] to watch from afar.
“Yeah, Mav and I broke into Penny’s good stuff.” Bradley mumbled as his hands began to circle her body.
With Penny out on her boat, Tommy was left to run the Hard Deck. A choice which left the top shelf open to two charming pilots.
“Good for you, you heroes deserve it.” Running her hand down his back, [y/n] let Bradley attempt to mold their bodies into one. Bradley couldn’t tell her exactly what transpired on the mission but from their emotional reunion she had an inclination. In a familiar position to the one he was in now; Bradley had wept tears of relief into her neck when he disembarked from the naval carrier. Coupled with the whispers she’s overheard all night; she knew Bradley deserved this. Deserved a night of unadulterated fun before the nightmares would set in. Nightmares that would keep them both up, Bradley by force and [y/n] by the choice she made when she fell for him.
Removing himself from her neck and his sunglasses from atop her head, Bradley placed his signature glasses on before turning his attention to his wife. Pushing his glasses down the bridge of his nose, Lieutenant Bradshaw gave her a sultry look. “You know what I also deserve?”
But before [y/n] could provide her own retort, a familiar figure broke their bubble.
“Hi Mrs. Bradshaw!” Came Maverick’s greeting as he crashed into the nearby stool.
Despite Penny’s absence, Maverick had stuck around in Fightertown. When [y/n] had found him in their bungalow sharing pizza and beer with Bradley, the implication of reconciliation was clear. She was just thankful he had the mind to show up four hours after they returned giving her proper time to care for his husband. Care that began with patching the various scraps and bruises littering his body with medicine. But care that progressed to comfort sought in each other’s embrace. Comfort that allowed them to impress their devotion to each other with spoken words as well their hands, lips and body.
“Mav invited us to visit his hanger tomorrow, baby!” Sharing in Bradley’s infectious smile, [y/n] enjoyed the childlike excitement he exuded. Looking around the bar, she noticed it was the same excitement all the returning pilots shared. Hangman and Phoenix were currently by the jukebox arguing about the best Queen song. Coyote was showing off what he called his “sick dance skills” as Fanboy offered critique in the form of thumbs up and down. Payback was currently missing but so was the nurse he was sweet talking earlier. And poor Bob was passed out underneath a pool table thanks to all the shots Hangman had treated him to.
“Maybe not tomorrow since I have a feeling you two will be too hungover.”
After placing a kiss on his cheek, [y/n] watched with amusement at Bradley's attempt to sit on her lap despite their notable size difference and his inebriated state.
“You married a smart one, Roos.” Maverick spoke to himself more than anyone else as he watched the young couple getting lost in each other.
With a smile that Maverick thought would rival Goose’s, Rooster did not break his gaze from his wife as he spoke in earnest. “Isn’t she the best?”
Bradley moved to kiss her cheek in return but stopped short as the jukebox song switched. “Hangman loves this song! We gotta sing now, baby! You get to the piano, and I’ll pull the jukebox plug!”
And just as quick as he came in, Lieutenant Bradley Bradshaw disappeared to cause trouble like the man she knew and loved.
Sharing a smile with Maverick, [y/n] took his outstretched hand. [y/n] knew that whatever comes next, the three of them would face it together, as a family.
A/N: I hope you guys enjoyed! Thank you to everyone who read, liked, commented, reblogged!
Taglist: @ateliefloresdaprimavera @n3ssm0nique @shadeds-library
#bradley bradshaw x reader#bradley bradshaw fic#rooster bradshaw x reader#bradley bradshaw imagine#rooster x reader#top gun imagine#top gun maverick x reader
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Lovers & Friends (18+ Fic)
Pairing: Keigo Takami x Black!Fem!Reader (Friends to Lovers)
Synopsis: In which you and Keigo have begun to realize the strange new feelings you both have for each other after one drunken night at a close friend’s wedding that ends with you in his bed, but because of your longtime friendship and committed relationships with other people, you’re more than happy to forget that night even happened and keep your mutual feelings in the dark…for now, at least.
Story Warnings: Smutty smut; 18+ (MINORS GET AWAY); Cheating/Infidelity; Mating; Light Degradation; Spanking; Exhibitionism; Multiple Positions; Creampie; Unprotected PIV Sex; Facial; Scent Play; Marking; Spitting; Deepthroating; Cunnilingus; Begging; Edgeplay; Power Play; Wing-Stroking; Daddy Kink; Some Angst; Hurt/Comfort; Mild Violence
Disclaimer: I own none of the characters mentioned in this fic. However, as this is my writing, I do not give permission for my work to be reposted on any other sites that are not from my own accounts. Thank you!
Writer's Note: I GOT ASKED TO BE ON ANOTHER PROJECT AS A RESEARCH ASSISTANT @ MY JOB. GOD IS OUT HERE FOR ME. -Jazz
Chapters: One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. Nineteen. Twenty. Bonus Chapter.
Read on AO3 here!
***********
Chapter Sixteen: Funny Seeing You Here.
When Keigo finally gets in the venue for the Heroes’ Gala, he’s just relieved to finally be away from the prying eyes of cameras and the sight of you with that dickhead Tempo.
You look absolutely beautiful tonight. Positively stunning. And you barely even looked at him on the red carpet. It was only for a flitting moment that your eyes met, and in them, he saw only a wall that you were keeping up to keep him out.
The amount of disappointment he felt was astronomical, but he knows that he caused it. He knows that he deserves it. You owe absolutely nothing to him, especially after that Saturday night when he told you about his suspicions regarding Rei.
But even so, the anger he felt watching you with your ex tonight nearly overpowered him. How could you not see the red flags? How can you not see right through Rei’s bullshit? He can only wonder when he walks into the venue, admiring the decor.
The HPSC chose a gorgeous ballroom for tonight’s event with marbled floors, golden tapestries, and white table-clothed tables surrounding the floors in front of the large stage where a band is currently playing jazz renditions of popular pop songs. Off to either side of the room are tables littered in luxurious delicacies and champagne flutes while a fountain where pink flowers bob in the water sits in the center of the room. Waitresses and waiters walk to and fro, offering h’orderves and extra champagne flutes filled to the brim to the famous, well-dressed guests walking about the room.
Not seeing his friends yet, Keigo hangs back in the cut and just observes people, wanting this thing to be over so he can win his award and leave for his afterparty. Everything is already set up at the venue, including the DJ, food, alcohol, and decorations. He’s hoping you will show up as you said you would, but he’s starting to think that maybe that won’t be the case tonight. He has the chance to ask you when he sees you walk into the venue minutes later, your hand in Rei’s.
He looks away, not wanting to see you. It’s too painful seeing you look so gorgeous with such an asshole. A human stain. “Wow,” you cutely say in awe, marveling at the decorations and the decor of the venue. “This is so beautiful! They really went all out.”
“You ain’t kidding,” Rei agrees. “I’m shocked the floors aren’t paved in gold. And look at all of these waiters!” Keigo knows he shouldn’t look, but he does, and as he turns to look at you and Rei, the bastard sees him. And he smirks. It is a cocky, knowing, and pisses Keigo off even more. Rei knows exactly what he’s doing and the effect he has on the winged pro standing there with you, eating up the cameras and attention.
Keigo knows he needs to keep his self-control. He needs to keep calm and collected for the sake of his relationship with you…but the petty side of him wins the war. He stands and struts over to you and Rei, relishing in the way your man’s smile falters a bit.
When he finally nears you, you finally notice him and your eyes grow wide, shocked to see him actually approaching you. Then they narrow as you probably think he is here to stir shit…which he is. “Well, I’m shocked to see you here, H/N,” he greets. “I thought you said you weren’t coming.”
Your eyes, looking so pretty all done up with glitter and lashes, sharpen like daggers at him. “I just changed my mind,” you reply, a little cooler than Keigo would’ve liked. He sees you grip Rei’s hand, making your plus-one smile proudly. All he wants to do is wipe it off his face. “Where’s your guest, Hawks?” Rei asks, falsely concerned and majorly curious. You look just as curious and confused at Keigo’s arm being empty.
“Eh, she couldn’t make it,” he easily lies. “She had work.” He would definitely tell you that he and Sakura broke it off if Rei wasn’t standing right there, but something tells him that you wouldn’t want to hear that. “So you managed to get her out of her condo, Tempo?” he jokes, cocking his head to the side.
You avert your eyes while Rei gives a fake laugh. “I’m just as surprised as you, but doesn't she look amazing?” he asks. He motions a hand over your gown, hair, and makeup, not once making you smile. “Got her a stylist and everything! Don’t you think she looks gorgeous, Hawks?”
A devious glint reveals itself in his eyes, irking Keigo to the point where his wings ruffle, especially when you look so uncomfortable. Rei is trying to get a rise out of him at the expense of your feelings, and it’s starting to work.
But a blessing of a distraction luckily stops him from possibly putting a fist in Rei’s face. “I know I do,” a familiar voice interjects from behind Keigo. “My, you three are a nice-looking group, indeed.”
He turns to find Nemuri looking like an old Hollywood vixen in a skin-tight purple dress that flares out at the bottom and leaves nothing to the imagination. Rumi is with her and wearing a strapless, glittering silver dress that outlines her muscles while her hair is wrapped in an updo by her ears. She places her hands on her hips, eyeing the three. “Eh, I guess they clean up well,” she passively says. She nods at Keigo, smirking. “You should’ve left the wings though. They’re kinda over the top.”
Keigo smirks at her, moving to tug on one of her ears. “I’d say the same about those ears.” She swats him away while Nemuri gives a tittering laugh. It is the exact kind of silliness to break the ice that the tension between him, you, and Rei has caused. Even better is when a waitress comes up to you and the group, smiling politely, with a tray of champagne flutes in her hand. “Champagne, anyone?” she chirps.
Rumi squeals and takes one while Nemuri politely thanks her but passes, wanting to save the alcohol for later. “Just one, thanks,” Keigo says, taking one of the glasses.
But at the sight of Rei whispering into your ear at the corner of his eye, he rethinks this. “Actually,” he mumbles, “gimme two of those.” He takes another one, surprising Rumi, Nemuri, and you. The three of you share a look between each other, knowing that something is up, but he doesn't give a fuck. Because something is up. Nothing is normal and he isn’t going to hide it.
You give the girls a smile, not even looking at him. “Uh, we’re gonna go sit,” you awkwardly announce. “Come find us once the awards are done.” You walk off with Rei hand in hand, going to find your assigned table which is four tables away from the stage in the center. Keigo doesn’t even know where his seat is and doesn’t really care. He would stand up for the whole night if he could.
Rumi shimmies up next to him, her Chanel perfume in his nose. “You know, you could always just talk to her in private instead of drinking it away, bird brain,” she whispers. They both watch as Rei takes your seat out for you and then pushes it in once you’re sitting down. Keigo downs his first glass, about to move on to his second. “I’ll think about it after my third glass,” he acerbically replies.
Nemuri, who has been standing a good distance from him and Rumi, now scoots closer to them too. “Is everything okay?” she timidly asks, her eyebrows furrowed in concern. Keigo immediately gives her a false smile, not wanting her or Yu’s night to be dampened by the drama. It’s bad enough that Rumi knows and she’s nominated for an award. He doesn’t need his other friends worrying over him.
“Yeah,” he reassures her. “You know I hate paparazzi though. I saw at least three camera lenses in those potted plants over there.” He nods at the large potted plants near one of the exits where, sure enough, the lens of a camera glitters between one of the leaves. It’s always nice to have real things to use an excuses. Nemuri nudges his arm, giggling. “Least they’ll get your good side,” she jokes. That makes him laugh.
He tries to keep laughing the majority of the night before the awards start. He tries to ignore you and your ex by guzzling down champagne and fried chicken skewers at the snack table; chatting up his friends, coworkers, and colleagues; bothering Endeavor, and holding his stomach laughing at Ms. Joke’s horrible yet endearing bad jokes and her attempts at flirting with Aizawa (to which Mic doesn’t mind about because he thinks it’s hilarious). But it all feels weird. Empty. Because he does all of this without you.
As the night goes on, he becomes restless without your company and seeing you with Rei. It’s like he’s your goddamn shadow! When you’re speaking to a fellow pro, there he is. When you’re getting yourself something to eat, there he fucking is. If you go to the bathroom, there he fucking is. He follows you around like a puppy, showing off your “relationship” to everyone in the ballroom.
Everyone is so happy for you, so overjoyed that you’ve finally come to a Gala with a date, but they have no idea. They have no clue of the facade Keigo can practically see melting off of Rei. You apparently have no clue either. You smile at Rei; rub his back; laugh when he whispers in your ear.
Keigo is fuming by the time he sits down, tipsy from the champagne. He sits at a table with Rumi, Yu, and Nemuri who are talking among themselves, not noticing how much their friend is hanging onto the last strip of self-control he has. You and Rei have transitioned to the dance floor now, hand in hand, and have already had your fill of socializing. He watches, stewing with anger and envy, as Rei pulls you close by your arm so your body is flush with his. Then he takes one of your hands while your other falls onto his shoulder. He’s practically ready to tip over the table when he sees Rei’s hands fall to your waist.
The two of you begin to sway to the smooth jazz rendition of Beyoncè’s “Plastic Off The Sofa”, you softly singing the words while Rei laughs, smiling down at you. His hands linger on your hips and lower back, his fingers stroking down and up again. He touches you the way Keigo wants to. The way he did that night at the hotel. He almost feel your soft skin on his fingertips; smell your perfume in his nostrils; taste your–
“Keigo?” He turns, finding Rumi staring at him peculiarly. “You good?” she whispers, leaning in to avoid Nemuri and Yu catching her words. “Because you look like you want to strangle someone.” She nods down at his hand which he realizes is gripping the tablecloth so hard that his knuckles are stark white. He quickly releases the tablecloth, ignoring Rumi’s concerned yet knowing look. “Yeah,” he exhales, trying to calm himself. “I’m fine.”
He tries to do breathing exercises which involves sucking in a breath, counting to five, and then releasing. It’s supposed to calm your heart rate and relax you…but he feels none of that as he watches you and Rei sway to the music, eyes on each other, and smiles on your faces. When you suddenly lean your head on his shoulder and close your eyes, like nothing in the world matters but him, Keigo just about loses his cool. His nostrils flare as his breathing speeds up and his upper lip twitches. He’s about to blow. He can’t stay here. If he does, there is no telling what he’ll do.
“Hawks?” Nemuri questions, worry in her soft voice. “Are you alright?” She then gasps, earning his attention. She is staring at him with her hand at her mouth, shocked. “Darling, your wings!” she warns him. Rumi and Yu are ogling at him too, alarmed.
Keigo looks at his wings and startles. They are glowing red and each feather is sharp to the touch and vibrating with rage. He is ready to attack as if a villain is in the room tonight…that villain being Rei.
“What is it?” Yu asks, already flipping into pro mode and looking quite intimidating despite her hot pink gown and updo. “Is it a villain? Do I need to transform?”
“No, no!” Rumi quickly replies, stopping her from shifting into her giant mode. “Hawks just needs a walk outside.” She turns to him expectantly, her eyes sharp and urging. “Don’t you, Hawks?” she pushes.
Keigo is up immediately, being careful to not bump into anything or startle anyone else. He already feels horrible enough for alarming his friends with his bullshit. “Y-Yeah,” he stutters. “I’m sorry, ladies. I just need some air.”
Before either of them can say anything more, he hurries away from the table and across the ballroom to one of the exits that leads out to a ramp leading towards the gardens behind the venue building. It is a perfect place to get away from the prying eyes of paparazzi and colleagues when you’re having a mental breakdown. Keigo practically catapults himself out of the door, passing by the security guards posted there, and rushes down the ramp to the gardens. As soon as the cool summer breeze hits his skin, he feels a lot better than he did staying in the ballroom.
The night is quiet, the muffled sound of the music inside the venue becoming quieter the further he walks away from the building. At the beginning of the gardens are stone benches sitting around a fountain spouting water from the mouths of two mermaid statues lounging on a large rock.
He begins to walk through the hedge maze that the gardens provide, admiring the beautiful flowers blooming all around him and the cherry blossom petals cascading down below from the trees above. The sky is starry and clear, not a cloud in the sky. It is a beautiful, peaceful night, one that calms him the further he walks through the maze. He wonders if he’ll get lost in here among the sweet-smelling flowers and the towering hedges. He wonders if someone will come and find him. Would it be you?
“I hope you’re not deciding to stay out here all night,” Dabi suddenly says in his raspy, dry voice…wait. Keigo immediately skids to a stop and looks in the direction of the disembodied voice. He expects to see his friend standing there or maybe behind him, but all he sees is a hedge wall. He is alone…at least somewhat.
He walks towards the hedge wall and squints through the many leaves and cut branches. Sure enough, a crystal blue eye is staring back at him. “Shit!” he shouts in surprise, jumping back from the hedge.
Dabi begins to laugh is a dry, smoker laugh, finding this creepy shit funny. “What the hell are you doin’ here?” Keigo hisses, keeping his voice low. “I thought you weren’t gettin’ dropped off till later for my party.”
At least that’s what they had planned on initially. “I pulled some strings,” Dabi deviously chuckles from the other side of the hedge wall. “And by that, I mean that I told my personal guard I’d keep quiet about him fuckin’ his boss on the low…well, I guess I broke that promise just know, didn’t I?” The familiar, unmistakable sound of a lighter flickering fills the air along with the smell of cigarette smoke.
“What if someone catches you here?” Keigo hisses, worried and irked that his friend can be so careless. “You know they’ve got cameras everywhere. If somebody sees you–“
“Christ, when did you become so paranoid?” Dabi interjects, sounding disappointed. “And so damn uptight. Here, I thought you’d be glad to see me.”
Keigo sighs, harshly pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs tiredly. “I just need to be alone right now, Dabi.” He stares up at the sky, waiting for the stars to give him an answer to his problems. “I shouldn’t have even come to this stupid ass event,” he mutters.
“What, and miss out on gettin’ your shiny award?” Dabi asks jokingly. “And finally seeing our mutual friend realize her ex is a fake ass bitch. I mostly came here to see all of that unfold from the window. You know I’m a slut for drama.”
“That, you are,” Keigo agrees, chuckling a bit. “But I think you’re out of a show, man. She’s completely oblivious to the fact that her ex is a total bum and is only using her for popularity points.” Dabi is silent, taking in this information for a moment. Around them, crickets chirp and a saxophone plays from inside the venue. “So are you gonna show her?” Dabi curiously asks.
“I’ve tried!” Keigo groans, exasperated. “I went to her condo, remember? She turned me away.” He leans against the hedge wall, letting the leaves and branches poke him in the back. Now the gardens’ powers aren’t working on him anymore. He feels way less relaxed than he did walking in here. “I’ve completely ruined my friendship with her, and for what?” he laments. "Just because I hate her man? If she’s happy with him then we should just–“
But he can't get the rest of the words out because his ass is suddenly burning hot. He yelps, jumping away from the hedge and using his wings to fan the sensation away. It fades as quickly as it came, leaving the fabric at the backside of his pants slightly burned. He suddenly hears footsteps behind him and whirls around to see Dabi with one hand holding his cigarette while the other is encased in blue flames. “What the fuck is wrong with you?!” he angrily hollers.
Dabi blows the flame out, leaving his hand billowing in smoke. “What the fuck is wrong with you?” he retorts, irked. He stands at the end of the trail, glaring Keigo down. “We aren't going to do anything, but you are going to show that girl that she can’t be happy with that fake motherfucker. You’ve been friends with her longer than me and you’re gonna just let her go like this?”
His blue eyes trail over Keigo’s form critically and Keigo feels the sting of shame as his friend does so. “You and I both know that he ain't good for her, Kei,” he firmly continues. “And I’ll be damned if I let her settle and find false happiness with a guy that doesn’t love her like you do. Even if she doesn't feel the same way, you need to tell her she deserves more than that prick.”
He nods towards the window, referring to Rei being just behind it. “You love her, don’t you?” he asks, staring at Keigo expectantly.
Keigo runs a frustrated hand down his face, but answers regardless of his frustrations because he knows Dabi will push the issue. “Yes,” he sighs. Dabi steps closer to him, a stern look in his blue eyes. “Then you’d better get your narrow ass in there and tell her,” he replies, his voice barely above a growl. “And make sure you tell Rumi so she can put $50 on my commissary.”
Keigo scowls confusedly at his words until the realization hits him. “You bet on this?” he blurts, shocked. The stern look in Dabi’s eyes doesn’t leave, even when he passively shrugs and doesn’t deny nor confirm this.
He must expect Keigo to be angry and throw a fit at this, but he shocks Dabi and himself when he begins to laugh. It starts as a tiny bubble in his chest that expands until it bursts inside of him, leaving him in fits of giggles that have his shoulders shaking and him hugging his stomach. It makes Dabi crack a crooked smile as he watches his friend break free of his frustrations and the trap that is his mind, finally feeling more relaxed than he has all night.
When he finally manages to calm down and wipes his tears away, he notices that the music has stopped and applause has started. “Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats!” the host announces. “We are about to commence the award segment of the Gala, beginning with a speech by the symbol of peace aka the one and only All Might!”
More applause, along with cheers, explode from the building. Keigo straightens up and calms himself, realizing that the time has come. “I’ll deal with you two assholes later,” he sighs, shoving Dabi back with his hand. “They’re about to announce the awards.”
Dabi nods, puffing on his cigarette as he begins to backpedal down the trail to exit the maze. “You’d better show up tonight so I can thank you with a round,” Keigo says with a smirk. “Tequila?”
Dabi’s eyes sparkle at the winged pro’s version of a thank you. “Only if I get to take a bottle back to my cell,” he chortles. “Now get in there and kick some ass.” Then, without another word, he disappears behind the hedge where he once was and grows silent, becoming one with the darkness for all Keigo knows.
He feels a lot more confident and less anxious when he walks back into the Gala. A hush falls onto the audience as Toshinori takes the stage, ditching his All Might persona in favor of his skinnier, lankier form in a black tux. He stands at the podium with cue cards, the audience in the palm of his hand.
“Good evening,” he says in his normal, low-toned voice. “I am very pleased to be standing among all of you tonight and extremely honored to be given a chance to open these awards with my speech. Tonight, we are gathered here not just as heroes, but as friends. A family. A team. No one but us knows or understands the hardships and challenges we have to go through day after day, whether they are injuries or missing out on time with loved ones to protect our city. And tonight, we’re here to celebrate and honor these challenges, hardships, and sacrifices.”
Applause breaks his speech for a moment along with a couple of whoops and cheers. He begins again, closing his speech off on a high and inspiring note: “Please, my friends: remember that even if you do not win an award, that doesn’t make you any less of a hero. And if you win one, that doesn’t make you more of one either. You are only a hero if you remember what matters most and why you fight every single day: to protect each other and the innocent lives that depend on our quirks. We fight to defend them and to defend each other. To keep each other safe. To love one another.”
Keigo doesn’t know why, but he looks at you and is shocked to find Rei’s seat empty. The audience applauds Toshinori as he walks off the stage, bowing as he does. The host walks back onto the stage, applauding the pro. “Thank you, Mr. All Might, sir!” he brightly says. "Now to present the first award category is Tempo!”
And here comes Rei from the side stage, confident and cocky with an award and an envelope in his hand. Keigo bites the inside of his cheek as he watches your ex lean over the microphone at the podium. “The award category is for Best Fighter,” he says into the mic. “The nominees are Eraserhead, Butterfly, Chain Link, and H/N.”
He pauses as the audience claps for each nominee. Keigo looks at you, unable to keep his eyes off of you. You have a blank look on your face as you look toward the stage, but he can tell you’re nervous from the way your hands shake against the table. He wants to be there to hold your hand. He wants to tell you that no matter what, you’re still an amazing fighter and hero.
“And the award goes to…” Rei pauses for dramatic effect as he tears open the envelope.
Silence falls onto the crowd, including Keigo who waits for an answer with bated breath. Finally, Rei’s eyes light up and he gasps at the response. Keigo instantly knows that you’ve won. “My girlfriend!” Rei exclaims into the mic. “H/N, get up here and get your award, babe!”
Keigo stands up with Rumi, Nemuri, and Yu who holler and scream for you, their applause louder than the rest of the crowd that is now giving you a standing ovation. The screen hanging above the stage flickers on, showing your shocked reaction. It’s the cutest thing ever. You stand and carefully walk to the stage, hiking up your dress to avoid tripping. Once you’re near, Rei takes your hand to help you up the stage’s steps before handing you your award and standing at the sidelines.
You turn to the audience as you face the podium, revealing your damp eyes and excited smile. Keigo has never been happier for you. “Oh, my God!” you shout tearfully, staring down at your award in shock. “I can't begin to say how much this means to me. I’ve trained and practiced for so long to improve my fighting skills, and now…now I feel like all of it means something.”
You pause to stare down at your award, your bottom lip wobbling. “I want to thank my family and friends for always supporting me, especially my dreams of becoming a pro. I want to thank my agency and publicist. Everyone on my team. My coworkers and colleagues. And especially my amazing fans who made this possible for me!”
You grin happily, overflowing with happiness as the applause grows louder like a roaring sea. Despite everything happening between you two, Keigo whistles for you, joining the adoring crowd. You deserve this moment and more. “Thank you all so, so much!” you exclaim, teeming with joy and gratitude. You then go to walk off the stage with your award, but Rei blocks you. Your smile falters slightly, confused as to what he is doing. He just smiles, pressing a hand to your back.
“There’s just one thing I have to say before we move on,” he says, staring adoringly at you. The crowd’s applause dies down, filling the room with silence. “Y/N, I can’t tell you how proud I am of you. I’ve seen you fight and you deserve this award more than anyone in here, including me. You’re so strong, intelligent, beautiful, and…and…” He pauses and slowly gets down onto one knee. “And I want you in my life.”
A hushed gasp emits from the crowd as he begins to reach into his jacket pocket. Your entire smile fades while Keigo’s stomach drops straight into his ass. “What the hell is he doing?” Rumi murmurs.
You’re wondering the same thing judging by your face, etched in confusion and fear. “What are you doing?” you softly ask, the mic picking up your words.
Rei grins up at you as he takes a tiny black box from out of his jacket and presents it to you, and the audience. “Now, this isn't an engagement ring,” he sheepishly admits, “but it is a promise ring. It’s a promise of my love and loyalty to only you.” He opens it, revealing a gorgeous, 14k gold ring. The camera by the stage picks up each detail, including your birthstone etched into the metal.
Whispers and gasps of astonishment fill the air as the audience watches the scene unfold in real-time.
Meanwhile, Keigo is fuming.‘This motherfucker!’ he thinks. He wants to fly onto that stage and deck this fool so bad, but he’ll be damned if he embarrasses you any more than your boyfriend is doing right now. You look like you want to crawl into a hole and die as Rei presents you with the promise ring, your eyes wide with fear.
“Y/N, I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life,” Rei continues, “but I refuse to make the mistake of letting you go. I’ve been in love with you for so long and I want that love to make us stronger. The best power couple in the world!”
Dimples etch into his cheeks as he takes the ring out of the box, holding it out for your hand. “Will you join me, Y/N?” he asks, hope in his eyes. "Will you promise yourself to me too?”
The silence that falls onto the crowd is deafening. All eyes are on you now, anticipating an answer. You stare at Rei, wide-eyed, before looking out into the audience and cameras like a deer in headlights.
“I…I…” You stumble onto your words, your brain slowly processing your situation and what your ex is asking of you in front of your friends, colleagues, and dozens of fans behind their laptops and TV screens. You look like you want to die right there. All Keigo wants to do is run up on stage, hide you behind his wings, and hold you forever.
But he can’t. All he can do is sit still and grip the table as shit continues to hit the fan. Finally, you crumble and look down at Rei, your bottom lip wobbling.
“I-I’m sorry,” you whimper as you rush off the stage, leaving your award sitting on the podium. Rei stares at you as you run off, confused and hurt, which pisses Keigo off to no end. With the crowd still silent, the host quickly rushes onto the stage to save the show. “U-Uh, sorry to jump in, but moving on!” he quickly announces. “The next award category is…”
Keigo doesn’t even hear which one is next. He is too busy worrying over you. He notices Rumi stand up immediately, but he puts a hand on her arm. “No,” he firmly says. “I’ll go. You stay here.” Though she looks indifferent to the idea, she gives him a firm nod and sits back down.
Keigo is running after you immediately.
#friends to lovers#keigo takami x black reader#hawks x black reader#feral hawks is the only hawks#black fanfic writer#smutty smut#bnha smut#my fic shit#black coded reader#keigo takami#my works#hawks smut
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