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colorseeingchick · 4 years

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Extremities

Summary: A fire alarm kicks you and your classmates outside in the middle of a chilly winter- and all your luck has just about run out. But in the midst of the icy situation, your best friend Kuroo manages to warm your heart.

Warnings: Swearing, fluff, “unrequited” pining

Word Count: 2.5k

A/N: based off something that my good friend used to do in high school, but upon further reflection, was probably MAD sus to everyone else. Anyways hope y’all like it hehe. <3

Why is it that people only manage to start chemical fires in the winter? The blaring of the fire alarm rings in your ears as you carefully hop in the deep footsteps pressed into the snow beneath you- trying very hard to ensure that the snow doesn’t accidentally hit your socks or sink into the soles of your sneakers. The cold was already seeping into your exposed skin, slowly pricking and biting at your arms and cheeks.

Of all the times for a fire alarm, it just had to be during gym. While everyone else had their winter uniforms on, you were stuck in your gym shirt and shorts. Just your luck. You bury your hands into your underarms, attempting to cling onto any remaining warmth your body could generate.

If you were going to be stuck out here, might as well be with any friend you could find. Looking for Yaku amidst the herd of tall 3rd years felt like a lost cause, so instead, you look for the beheaded giant that you call your best friend. Finding him never really seemed to be a problem for you. He stuck out for a variety of reasons, but at the moment, his wack hair was the most prominent.

You hop in footsteps as you make your way towards the spikes of raven black hair, weaving through the other students. Once you’re finally by him, you tug on his sleeve as a form of acknowledgement. He responds by looking at you and smirking (it was supposed to be a smile, but with Kuroo it always ended up looking like a smirk.)

Before you can say anything you hear a teacher say, “We could be out here for anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes class, so try and hold out until then,” while slipping mittens onto her stiff fingers.

“Yaku says most of the team is on the other side of the building with him. So I think it’s just gonna be us over here,” Kuroo types away at his phone while informing you.

You shiver and nod, the skin on the back of your neck begins to tingle as another gush of wind blows in your direction. You let out a deep breath, focusing on the crystallizing vapor that appears like smoke in front of your mouth- trying to distract yourself from the aggravating cold.

I really struck out in terms of luck, huh. You feel the cold start to climb your exposed legs, making your skin feel hypersensitive. You tried to move around in circles, doing an awkward lil shuffle, to try and keep the cold away.

“Are you waddling in a circle because you wanna be a penguin, or because you enjoy looking dumb?” Kuroo’s snarky voice pulls you out of your own head.

“Bold of you to assume penguins don’t enjoy looking dumb,” you retort, rolling your eyes.

“Well yeah, when they do it it’s cute,” he shoves his hands deeper into his pockets.

Are you saying I’m not cute? You don’t ask it. Not out loud.

“Listen, it’s not my fault there was a fire right when I was in the gym.”

“Aren’t we required to bring our track jackets to gym though?”

“I left it in my locker because I thought I would get too hot…” you know how it sounded as it left your mouth.

“So you didn’t listen to instructions?”

“...”

“This is your fault then.”

You scoff, visibly annoyed, which only causes Kuroo’s smirk to widen. That, of course, pisses you off more. He’s right, but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.

“What class were you in? Chemistry?” you change the subject, still slowly waddling while hugging yourself.

“Yeah. The fire was from our room.”

“What even happened?”

“Someone didn’t clean their beaker correctly so there were remnants of previous chemicals. When we were doing our experiments today, it just so happened to be the wrong combination- so it started the fire.”

“Don’t be shy, Kuroo. You can tell me you’re the one who started the fire, I won’t judge too hard,” you tease.

“Tsk, please. I may be an idiot but I’m not that irresponsible…” the faintest of pouts pulls at his lips.

You hum softly, and quietly say, “I know.” Considering everything that Kuroo was- clumsy and irresponsible wasn’t him. He was one of the most chaotic people you knew- only outdone by Bokuto- but he always took good care of the people around him. You usually witnessed this firsthand as the manager for your school’s volleyball team, watching him in all his captaining glory. He kept it together when they couldn’t. And he definitely kept it together when you couldn’t. Kuroo may not have been clumsy, but you definitely were.

While you’re lost in your own head, Kuroo hears his name being called out. “Oi, Y/N, I’ll be right back. One of my lab members is calling me over. Don’t freeze to death in that time”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” You dismiss him.

But now in this moment alone with no annoying cat to distract you, the cold starts to overtake you at a faster pace.

Dizzy from walking in circles, you attempt to shuffle side to side. You did little to pay attention to where you were going, though. Without realizing, you misstep, tripping over your own shoe, left foot digging into a fresh pile of snow when trying to catch yourself- the soft white fluff encasing everything below your ankle.

Shit.

The cold that had been nipping at your exterior had suddenly soaked your entire shoe and sock through- permeating through your skin and now racking your entire body with an aggressive wave of iciness.

********************************4ish minutes later***************************************

Kuroo doesn’t know about this catastrophe on his walk back over. Instead, he’s internally planning on how to continue your teasing banter, his demeanor annoying (it was supposed to be a playful one, but with Kuroo it always just ended up being annoying).

“Oya, did the cold freeze you stiff or what.”

Any patience and energy you had left has frozen over.

“I’m fine,” you deadpan.

Kuroo pauses. ...Oh no, he thinks.

If Bokuto has his emo mode, you have your moody mode. It’s a lot less predictable in comparison to Bokuto, but just as easy to remedy. A little bit of attention or a nice distraction usually does the trick.

“You’re cold,” Kuroo blatantly states.

“I'm not.” Lie of the century and a dumb answer. But on instinct, you just felt like arguing.

“I can see you shaking.” You’re indeed shaking like a leaf.

“Then there’s something wrong with your eyes then...go see an eye doctor or something.” l a m e comeback- but your brain is now freezing up, too. You don’t want to agree with him. If you do, he’d probably just lecture you for not following directions and tell you to own up to it rather than sulk. He would be absolutely correct in saying so, but you really don’t care for logic right now.

Kuroo huffs, taking a broad step into your little waddle circle and grabbing your shoulders to turn you around so you’re facing him. You shuffle back a bit at the sudden closeness, not that it did much to create distance between you two. It’s at that moment that you also realize the wind is no longer hitting your face- Kuroo’s blocking off the breeze with his back.

“Give me your hands.” Kuroo gently grabs your wrists, which were tucked under your arms. He pulls your hands up to his chest level and then proceeds to wrap his hands around your fingers.

“Kuroo wh-what are you--”

“Warming your extremities.”

“Hah?”

“Your extremities, your fingers.”

“My… what?”

“When you get cold, most of the heat in your body centralizes to your core to keep your internal organs warm. So that means the extremities of your body, such as your fingers and toes, get the coldest the fastest. They become prone to frostbite as a result and…”

Everything Kuroo says made perfect sense. Probably. You couldn’t really tell because everything also happened to be going in one ear and out the other. Even the sudden bout of irritation you had felt had suddenly disappeared. You can’t focus on anything but his hands.

They’re markedly bigger than yours. Your fingers feel so tiny in his grasp. They’re calloused from all the volleyball. His grip is strong, unmoving, but it isn’t crushing or tight. Above all, they radiate warmth. Your stiff and numb fingers regain feeling, soothed by the heat of your best friend’s hands.

You want nothing more than to look at them. You want to just see his hands wrapped around your fingers. But there was no way you were going to let Kuroo in on the fact that the physical contact stole every bit of attention you had. So instead, you just opt to blankly stare at him, pretending to listen to him nerd out.

“... it’s the most effective way to mitigate the most harmful effects of the cold. We learned all this in biology, don’t you remember?”

Still completely clueless about what Kuroo's saying, you just hum in agreement.

He lets out an exasperated sigh. “You didn’t listen to a word I said did you.” He squeezes your fingers slightly to refocus your mind on him speaking, rather than… whatever you were daydreaming about.

“Oh- uh… yeah. Sorry for spacing out…” you turn your face away from him. Spacing out was a usual occurrence for you, but for some reason when Kuroo brought attention to it this time, it had you feeling a lot more embarrassed.

He scoffs a little bit, but his voice softens as he says, “You can space out, that’s fine, no need to feel weird about it, y/n.” He squeezes your fingers again while gently stroking the pad of your pointer finger with his thumb. Flustered as it makes you, it's also very calming. Calming enough that you’re able to make stable eye contact again.

“I’m sorry for getting moody with you, Kuroo…” you murmur, sheepishly gazing up at him.

His eyes are unreadable. “You don’t have to apologize for everything, y/n. It makes me feel a little weird... Just, like- say thank you instead.”

You cock your head to the side, confused by his comment.

He takes a deep breath, the condensation thick in front of his mouth. “You saying sorry all the time, it makes it seem like you think you’re a bother or something. You’re not.” This is getting too serious for his liking. A heart to heart in the middle of a fire drill? Not happening. He has to lighten it up. “ So...instead of putting yourself down, just praise me instead. Trust me, I love every ego boost I can get.” His signature Cheshire grin slowly emerges, prompting you to roll your eyes. “So don’t say, ‘sorry I wasn’t paying attention in biology 2 years ago-’ say, ‘thank you for re-educating me like the great tutor you are, Kuroo-kun~~’”

He was a great tutor. He’s been helping you with science for 3 years.

“Or! Or- ‘sorry for letting a volleyball smash into your face,’ you can say, ‘I’m thankful I didn’t damage your gorgeous face-’”

That incident was completely accidental but hilarious anyways.

Kuroo’s nonsensical yet insightful rambling continues, and it helps the embarrassment dissipate from within your chest, amusement taking its place.

“Oi! You narcissistic cat.” Kuroo stops his rambling and just stares at you. “Thanks for being there for me… and putting up with me no matter how emotional I can be..”

Kuroo’s face twists into a smile (yes- a smile! Not a smirk this time) filled with genuine happiness. “No problem. Anything for you.”

Anything, huh.

“Do you not feel cold anymore?” Kuroo quickly realizes his hands are still enclosed around your fingers, now gently resting against his chest.

To be honest, your upper body feels like its on fire. Your face is hot and your heart is pounding like you had run 5 miles. By contrast, your lower body is frozen solid. Your skin is probably extremely cracked, and its stinging. Your feet are also blocks of ice, the revolting feeling of soaked sock ever-present. The two extreme sensations leave you feeling really uncomfortable. But your hands don’t feel hot, though. There was just the perfect amount of warmth- a tingly sensation buzzing through them and faintly running up to your heart.

“Uh, not as much. My feet are messed up but my upper body isn’t as bad.”

“Your feet? You mean your legs?” “No, my feet.”

“Heh? I get your legs- ‘cause of your shorts. But what happened to your feet? I thought you were stepping in other footsteps to avoid getting snow in them.”

“I was but uh I- kinda tripped and stepped right into the snow.”

“...”

A snort. “Dumbass. How do you even trip over your own feet?”

“...oh shut up, nerd.”

The beeps of a loudspeaker cut off your banter, indicating you could all go back inside.

“Finally!” You sigh in relief. Although you would never admit it, a part of you didn’t wanna go back in yet. Which is stupid because HELLO you’re gonna get frostbite at this point. But you really didn’t wanna pull your hands away from Kuroo. Not yet.

Physical contact had always been pretty limited to slaps on the backs during the good games and pats on the shoulders during the bad. This type of closeness was a first, but was it also going to be the last?

Regardless, you knew it would be sus if you, the person who was now essentially a walking ice cube, lingered outside longer than literally anyone else.

So you pull your hands out of his strong, warm, welcoming hold.

“I’m gonna go pour some hot water on my legs and change my shoes… I’ll see you during practice, yeah?”

Before he could respond, you turn around and hop away in the deepest footprints you can find.

You don’t seem as off as you were earlier, but now you were acting weird in a different way. Kuroo stands there for a second, but once he realizes that he can’t figure you out, he just sighs. Clueless as ever, he shrugs, stuffs his hands into his pockets, and then heads in.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As you situate yourself in the bathroom and wipe down your legs with a towel soaked in hot water, you let the series of events finally sink into your slowly dethawing head. You aren’t sure if your face is warm to fight the cold or because of embarrassment.

Pleasant as it was, you knew you couldn’t dwell on the things that just happened with Kuroo. Not for too long, at least. He was one of your closest friends- but just that. So you would have to freeze away whatever wack feelings that were dancing in your chest. It would be better that way for now.

That’s what you’re gonna tell yourself, at least.

#haikyuu!!#haikyuu #haikyu #haikyu oneshot #haikyu fluff #tetsurou kuroo #kuroo tetsurou #kuroo #kuroo x reader #kuroo tetsuro x reader #kuroo oneshot #haikyu imagines #haikyu oneshots #haikyuu fluff #nerdy kuroo #should i make a part 2?#haikyu pining #colorseeingchick writes

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lumassen · 3 years

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I was in the mood to write a drabble cause I haven't written one for so long. It's snowing outside as I sat and wrote this on my lunch break, and yes I know it's February but here's a Christmas themed drabble lmao

Family Feud

Finland, Sweden, Sealand, Ladonia (1k words)

Timo and Berwald get into a yearly competition over who has the best Christmas decorations. Peter and Axel are the real adults here, despite being children.

-------------

"If it's war he wants, then war he'll get."

Peter glanced up from his iPad as his Dad muttered from where he was standing by the window.

"Is it just me, Peter, or do those new lights around the garage seem brighter than ours?"

Timo continued, raising his voice a little now to address his son, who with an exaggerated eye roll tossed his iPad to the side and slid off the couch. Once at the window beside his Dad, who was standing stiff as a soldier with his arms folded tightly across his chest as he glared at the house across the street, Peter shrugged and shook his head slightly,

"I guess they do, yeah." He admitted, not even flinching when Timo stamped his foot and his brow furrowed.

Peter was more than used to this by now.

"Well we'll see about that. C'mon, get your shoes and coat on, we need to catch the store before it closes." Timo said as he waltzed out of the living room, and Peter let out a heavy sigh before trudging after him.

-----------

Berwald watched from the upstairs window as his opposite neighbour furiously scraped the snow from his car with a triumphant gleam in his eye.

"Ha, that'll teach him." He laughed a little under his breath as he watched Timo yank the frozen door open and bundle his son into the back seat of his little red car before stalking around to the driver's side.

"He's only gonna out do you again, Dad. Just admit it, Timo's better at Christmas decorations than you."

Berwald turned to stare at his son, Axel, incredulously as he appeared next to him at the window, his face drawing into a frown,

"Ya think? Well let's see how he can compete with three sets o' string lights, a house-front projector and a real pine needle wreath."

Turning his back on the window and leaving the bedroom, Berwald left Axel watching Timo struggle to start the engine of the car. Part of him wished that it wouldn't start, and so by putting an end to his Dad's oh so tiring annual Christmas decoration war with his neighbour, but eventually the car started and Axel watched as Timo backed out of his driveway and took off down the street.

-------------

"Don't you think it's a bit much, Dad?"

Peter said the next morning when he woke up to find that Timo had been up since the early hours of the morning assembling the latest addition to their front yard that they'd bought yesterday at the hardware store.

He stood in the open doorway in his pyjamas and watched as Timo put the finishing touches on the huge, illuminated Santa's Grotto style arch that now stood at the end of their garden path.

Timo's laugh was breathless and borderline hysterical as he clambered down from the step ladder and proudly made his way toward the front door.

"Don't be silly Peter, of course it's not! It looks great, don't you think?"

Looking between his son and the new Christmas arch, Timo grinned from ear to ear and ignored how his head was beginning to pound from lack of sleep and not enough caffeine.

"Anyway, it's not a big deal. I think it looks lovely. Let's get you some breakfast and ready for school."

He kicked his boots against the doorstep to get the snow off them before hurrying inside into the warmth.

"How about pancakes?" Timo offered once the door was closed and his coat was off. Peter took a moment to ponder the suggestion, tapping a little finger to his chin,

"Only if I can have chocolate spread." he bargained, casting his Dad a puppy eyed look that not even he could refuse.

"Okay, chocolate spread it is."

--------------

The first thing that Berwald saw when he stepped out of the house to leave for work was the gaudy new Christmas decoration that his neighbour had assembled overnight.

It was bright, too bright, a twinkling mass of bright red and green lights and plastic candy canes that were at least three feet tall. It was tacky, tasteless and Berwald knew that he could do better.

"Woah, that's cool." Axel said as he joined his Dad at the door and shrugged himself into his coat.

"Really, ya think so? It looks like something you'd see at the mall in front of a cheap Santa's grotto." Berwald muttered as he stepped aside to let Axel out of the house and locked the door once he was out.

"So… you're gonna be late picking me up tonight then?" Axel teased as he cast his Dad a knowing glance while he made his way over to the car.

Berwald rolled his eyes, not a fan of how his teenage son seemed to be able to read him like an open book these days,

"I won't be late, I just might need you to wait for a couple of minutes." He said as he unlocked the car and slid into the driver's seat. When he looked over at Axel as he fastened his seatbelt in the passenger side he saw a great big smirk on his lips.

"It's fine, I'll just get the bus home. And no, I'm not gonna help you assemble whatever silly new Christmas decoration you buy. I've got homework to do."

To this, Berwald didn't have a response, and so he just started the car and pulled out of the driveway without so much as a word and cast daggers with his gaze at the stupid Christmas arch in Timo's yard as he passed.

--------------

By the time Christmas eve came around, Timo had had to switch energy providers to get a cheaper tarrif once his electricity bills had started to skyrocket, and Berwald had suffered three power outages after too many decorations plugged into his mains caused a shortage.

The outside of both of their houses were covered with hardly an inch to spare in decorations, flashing lights, inflatable snowmen, and in Timo's case, an animatronic penguin on a sledge that he'd managed to convince his friend who worked at the mall to let him borrow.

Taste had long been forgotten, and eventually it had turned into a competition as to who had the most decorations.

"Seventy three, seventy four, seventy five. Only Seventy five! Ha, we won!"

Berwald bellowed once he'd finished meticulously counting the decorations on Timo's house. Axel took his eyes away from the TV for a moment to watch as his Dad stood at the window, then jumped as he gasped dramatically.

"No! No no no no!" He cried as he fled from the living room and flung the front door open. Axel leapt up and followed him outside, the snow quickly seeping through his slippers and soaking them through,

He watched with an open mouth as Berwald dashed across the road just as Timo was bringing a huge LED Santa sleigh complete with all 8 reindeer from his garage.

"That only counts as one decoration, ya know that right?" Berwald called over Timo's picket fence as he leant on it,

"No it doesn't, it counts as nine. 8 reindeer, one sleigh." Timo corrected him, matter of fact, as he continued to haul the heavy decoration out from his garage.

"But they're all attached to the same plug, that… means…" Berwald tried to argue, but his words died on his tongue as Timo held up the wiring of the decoration. In his fist was a bundle of wires, and 9 individual plugs, one for each part of the decoration.

"Sorry, what did you say? I couldn't hear you over the sound of me winning this year." Timo knealt down to flip open the cap on the outdoor electricity outlet that he'd had installed years ago when he first moved to Sweden with his son so that he could plug in his one little snowman lawn ornament. Had he known back then that it would soon turn into an annual competition with his neighbour then he would have had twenty more installed.

"That doesn't even make sense!" Berwald flapped, not willing to accept defeat although he knew he'd been beaten.

His heart sank as he watched Timo's smug grin widen across his lips as he plugged in the first reindeer, but only for it to quickly disappear when a huge spark blew out from the outlet, knocking Timo onto his back and causing the lights down the whole street to suddenly go out.

All traces of rivalry temporarily forgotten, Berwald pushed open Timo's garden gate and ducked under the Christmas arch as he rushed to help him up, fumbling in the darkness.

"Timo, you okay? Where are ya?"

Timo groaned as he sat up, slightly winded from colliding with the cold ground but otherwise okay.

"Here, Ber. I'm fine." He said as he got up, then was momentarily blinded as a torch light shone onto his face.

"Dad? Are you alive?" Came Peters timid voice, and when Timo looked past the torchlight he could see the outline of his son, and Axel by his side.

"Yes honey, I'm alive. The decorations aren't though." Timo said through a sigh, then took hold of Berwalds hand when it was extended out to him and hauled himself to his feet.

"How are we gonna have our Christmas dinner now? The oven will have gone out with the electricity." Axel deadpanned, causing both Timo and Berwald to realise the extremity of what a power outage on Christmas eve meant not only for them, but for the entire neighborhood.

"Shit…" Timo cursed, and Berwald cleared his throat,

"I've got a generator in my garage. Should be enough to power my house for a couple hours - minus the decorations. Do you two, uh, wanna spend Christmas dinner with us?"

Berwald offered, barely able to see Timo's reddening face in the darkness.

He thought for a moment, looking between Peter and Axel, then to Berwald,

"As long as you still acknowledge that I won. I did have more decor-"

"Dad!" Peter interrupted, shooting his Dad a warning look that was even more threatening than any 12 year old should have been capable of from beneath the darkened shadows of the torchlight,

"Okay, okay. Fine. I'm happy to call it a draw this year. No winners, no losers. Deal?"

Extending a hand out once more toward Berwald, Timo looked him dead in the eye until he sighed and accepted the truce.

"Deal. Now let's go inside before the rest of the neighbours come out."

#aph finland #aph sweden #aph sealand #aph ladonia #hetalia #hetalia drabble #sufin #hanatama family #aph nordics #hws Nordics #hws finland #hws sweden #my writing #sorry if theres typos i wrote this in an hour on my phone

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lucas-lowe · 3 years

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TASK 2: IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

July 2010.

Luke idly glared at the retreating dark of the dawn. His stomach let out a pathetic growl, or more accurately, a dying squeak. There comes a point in starvation where you can’t even sleep because of the hunger, and Luke was far too familiar with that pang.

The earth beneath his back was stiff and cold like a cadaver, and he could not think of a reason to get up. His head knew he should go look for food, something to eat-- like one of those small rat like creatures he saw in the woods, a fish swimming in the stream, the berries he ate a few days ago that made him threw up all night. Anything. If he couldn’t find anything to eat, he at least needed to get water. But no, his body didn’t want to move.

Luke coughed off a weak laughter, wheezing at this madness. He was stranded in some kind of an island, like that guy Crusoe in the book, with a group of lunatics who were probably in some cult-- something about elements and the First and not aging. As soon as his ankle healed, he slipped out of the camp and made his way to the west edge of the land.

The trouble was, Luke didn’t know a thing about surviving in the nature. He was a city boy through and through. Even when he was without a home, he could have dumpster-dived and scavenged for food in the city. No such option on this godforsaken island. He didn’t know how to hunt or fish, didn’t know what berries are edible or not. He couldn’t even start fire for fuck’s sake.

Perhaps he should have stayed with the cultists, learn a thing or two about the island living. But no, his tendency to isolate himself got to him again, and he would probably die out here.

December 1997.

The night descended on the open road, breathing down the chilled air on his neck. The cold crept up to his blistered feet, seeped into his shivering bones, and he feared that he was marked for life. The ghost of a white breath danced before his eyes before vanishing without a trace. A raggedy backpack, a half-empty water bottle and a few pieces of clothing were all he had.

Empty-handed and alone, yet he had persisted for almost a year on his own. But for how long? He ran out of his saving months ago. He doubted that his family was looking for him-- if they ever bothered to, that is-- but he couldn’t be too careful with the Lopes. He couldn’t live on the streets forever, either. That’s why he was bound westward, to find a better life for himself. Start anew.

No car had passed by for hours, so he had given up any hope of hitchhiking to the closest town, and had started walking. He was under no illusion that he would get anywhere like this. It was just that he had nothing but his own two legs, and walking was all he could do.

He stopped to catch his breath as his bad leg started to ache. “What the fuck...” he said out loud just to remember his own voice. What the fuck am I doing? Since he couldn’t afford a bus ticket, he reasoned his options were either hitchhiking or walking. But this was his only pair of shoes and it had already started to show wear and tear. He didn’t even own a map so he just had a vague idea that he was heading west. He was, absolutely and completely, un-fucking-prepared for this journey.

A shaky sigh escaped from his cold, empty stomach as he dropped his backpack and flopped down next to the empty road. Up above his head was the cruelly brilliant sky full of stars, and the vast wilderness stretched as far as he could see, but his eyes lingered on the cracks of the asphalt. He knew there was nothing for him out there-- no star watched over him, no light guided his path, and no one was coming to save him.

He had nowhere else to turn but himself.

He should feel sad, or scared, but all he could do was laughing at himself. The truth of the matter was, he was far too talented at isolating himself in a self-destructive way. He knew that. He could have easily asked for a help, but he didn’t. He could have picked a safer, less strenuous journey, but he didn’t. He simply didn’t know how to exist any other way.

The stars burned bright above. He just didn’t look up. There were lights in the distance. He just closed his eyes. Maybe, and just maybe, someone was out there waiting for him-- he just refused to believe that. That very thought scared the life out of him. It was so much easier to hide alone in the dark, not found, not missed, not needed and wanted and loved. No one could hurt him if they couldn’t found him.

So how could he not laugh at himself? This was his own fault, no one else’s.

He breathed in the frigid, forlorn air, let it filled his lungs, and got back up to his own two feet. He stretched his creaking legs, cracked his neck, and turned his eyes forward.

He dug himself into this grave and laid himself down. So it was his job to claw his own way out.

May 1995.

[tw: gun, death]

The sun came up nevertheless, even after a sinful night.

Almost everyday, he watched the frozen colors of daybreak painting the sky. Waking up in the morning, on his way to the training or on the track, he had seen it until it became a part of his routine. But until today, he didn’t realize how painstakingly beautiful it was.

A man just died by the hands of another, yet the dawn was terribly radiant.

“You okay there, kid?” asked Pablo as he lit a cigarette. Pablo was a tall guy with the unkempt, bushy beard, and always smelled like a mix of smoke and horribly musky cologne. He was one of Father’s henchmen, the trusted kind.

Leaning against the hood of the car, he fixed his dry eyes on the sunrise without words. He didn’t know how he was, to be honest. He could still taste the last night’s dinner in his throat after throwing it all up. His body was sore and he could use a shower or ten. So no, he wasn’t okay.

They had arrived at this riverbank a few hours ago as three. Now they were only two. ‘Take care of it’. That was Father’s order.

He quietly ran a thumb on his blistered, dirt-covered palm.

-----

“You know how to use this?” Pablo asked, holding out a grip of a loaded gun. They stood over the brand new grave in the field, both of them covered in sweat and dirt. He never liked guns. Having the weight that could end someone’s life in his hands wasn’t exactly pleasant.

And then Pablo dragged out the third man from the trunk of the car. Blindfolded, tied and gagged. Pablo forced them down on them knees. Their bloodied head and shoulders were shaking uncontrollably. They reeked of desperation and piss, squeezing out a muffled, incomprehensible plead.

He unlocked the safety and cocked the gun just like his brother taught him. ‘Man, your aim’s terrible.’ He remembered Leandro’s crooked laughter when he had managed to hit none of the beer bottles set up as practice targets. He brought the gunpoint up to the back of the captive’s skull. The shudder crawled up the barrel and grasped at his hand like barbed vines.

The cry morphed into a terrible howl, held back only by the spit-soaked gag. It begged and begged and begged for mercy, while spewing fear and rage and curse.

And he wondered, do any other animal beg for their life? Do they experience the same primal hatred that burns in your chest, the ashy black smoke of grudge you exhale at the one who holds your noose? Not just the instinct of self-preservation expressed in aggression, but the acute malice humans carry like a venom.

Because he wished he couldn’t understand what was buried underneath the scream.

Please, I’ll do anything.

He wished he couldn’t feel a thing.

I don’t wanna die.

His finger wrapped around that trigger and--

He lowered the gun, only to realize that he was covered in cold sweat. He couldn’t pull it. It wouldn’t take much force to squeeze that trigger. Just a tiny movement of the finger, and the gun would roar, and all this would be over. That was the impossibly thin line he couldn’t cross, the infinitesimal difference between a man and a killer.

He fumbled at the safety, shivering. His hand was locked in place and couldn’t let go of the gun.

“Hey, hey, hey. It’s okay,” said Pablo, approaching him gingerly. A much bigger hand gently peeled his off the gun.

He stumbled backward as his knees gave in. The captive was now sobbing. From relief or panic, he couldn’t tell. But before he could process it, he heard the mechanical click, followed by a gunshot. With his ears ringing, he stared blankly as the headless body fell into the grave with a thud.

-----

“For what it’s worth,” Pablo started, polluting the fresh morning air with his cloud of smoke. “I thought this whole thing was fucked up.”

He didn’t reply, staring at the sunlight shattering against the surface of the murky river. No speck of cloud wandered in the sky above, and it would be the perfect sunny day of May. The air smelled of cigarette and late night rain. Three or so ducks swam about in the water, quacking without a care in the world. No care at all.

“Hey, don’t worry about your father,” Pablo blurted out. “I’m not gonna rat you out.”

“...okay.” He wasn’t particularly worried about Father. He thought whatever would happen would happen. What he didn’t understand was why would Pablo take a risk like that. He was just too tired to question it. “Thanks.”

The weight shifted as Pablo walked over to his side and sat down on the hood of the car. “Want some?” He extended a stick of cigarette.

He stared at the wrinkled packet in Pablo’s big hand, and then back toward the river. “I can’t.”

“What? You’re old enough.”

“No,” he said, “I run tracks. Can’t fuck up my lungs with that cancer sticks.”

“Oh,” Pablo thought for a second before putting out the cigarette. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine.”

Pablo fished out a pack of gum instead. Without asking, the older man handed one over to him. Instead of unwrapping it, he just stared at it in silence. It was mint.

Disgustingly, his empty stomach demanded food with a grumbling. He recognized in a sick sense of detachment, that nothing had changed. The morning still came. The sky didn’t collapse. They could still talk about insignificant things. He still wanted a breakfast. Maybe no red meat, not at least for a few days, but he was still hungry.

And that moment, he realized that absolutely nothing would change if he were to die. The world would continue regardless.

July 2010.

Luke jolted out of his sleep. Groaning, he forced himself to sit up and rubbed his forehead. He couldn’t have been out longer than a few minutes. The sun was still rising toward the east, and the sky was ablaze with cold amber. He rose to his feet and dragged himself toward the western cliff of the island. Might as well watch the sunrise, he thought.

Just when he reached the end of the land, it occurred to him that he should have gone toward the east for the sunrise. His brain must have gone on a hunger strike or something.

Standing by the edge, he looked down into the mouth of the ocean, its jagged teeth and dark depth. That’s a long way down, he thought. The ocean collided into the land and shattered, crying out in the cacophony of waves. The light was yet to reach this side of the world, but gradually and surely, the boundless firmament was waking up. From the fading darkness emerged thin whisks of clouds. He sat down by the cliff, and aimlessly watched the clouds traveling westward, toward the horizon and beyond.

Even on this god-knows-where island, the world was as always infuriatingly and unabashedly beautiful. It taunted him, a tiny, meaningless blob of existence compared to its marvel, that it didn’t give a damn.

“Fuck my life,” he sighed to himself, laying back down and promptly finding the cliff to be the worst place to lie down. More clouds rushed by him toward the ocean, carried by the salty, lukewarm wind.

Death didn’t scare him-- not in the way it should, anyway. He knew it didn’t matter if he died here or not. He could starve himself to death, eat a poisonous berry, get eaten by a... whatever the fuck that lived in the Jungle, or jump off the cliff-- and the world would not care.

It’s just that, to him, death felt like admitting defeat.

Luke shot his final glare at the audaciously bright sky. He survived his family. He survived the streets-- hell, he was thrown into the ocean with bricks tied to his leg, and that didn’t kill him. Surely, it would take more than an island away from the civilization (and with possible cultists) to kill him.

So he got back up to his feet, as he always did, ready for another day of hunger.

#stranded:task #stranded task 2 #selfpara #tw:gun #tw:death #//if you can't tell this got out of hands lmfao

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somewhereawrite · 4 years

Text

Happy Birthday

Original Fiction

Word Count: 2,268

Warnings: Mentioned Abuse, Brief Suicidal Ideation

TC: Happy birthday dude! 🎂 🎉

IC: thanks

TC: Are you working?

IC: No. I missed my shift

TC: That sucks. Everything ok?

IC: yeah i just got locked out

TC: Of your house?

IC: yeah. I think my dad changed the locks cuz my key doesn’t fit anymore

And he’s not home so

TC: You’re outside right now? Are you okay?

IC: yeah

Just fucking cold

There’s snow everywhere

I went over to that one corner store but they kicked me out for loitering so

Ngl i kinda wanna die right now lol

TC: where are you?

IC: the park across from my house

TC: me and my mom are pretty close by. We’re going to come pick you up

IC: ok

~~~

Ian couldn’t feel his fingers anymore.

They’d skated past the miserably cold stage about an hour ago, and settled into the slightly numb and painful stage. Now he couldn’t feel them at all, and they were like clumsy icicles stuck to his hands than actual digits as he used them to scroll through his texts and see if Taylor had responded to him.

Nothing yet. Ian clicked the lock button and shoved his phone and his hand back into his coat pocket. The battery was at 12%. Probably a good idea not to waste it.

At least the wind had stopped blowing. Ian had swept the snow off of the park bench he’d taken shelter on before sitting down on it, but he could still feel his jeans and the back of his coat getting soaked through. He’d pulled his legs up to his chest to conserve warmth, but at this point it was no longer doing any good.

Maybe his dad really did want him to freeze to death.

Today was Ian’s birthday, but that did not change in the slightest the fact that it was a bad fucking day.

It hadn’t even started out right. He’d woken up this morning (or rather, dragged himself out of bed, semi-conscious and uncertain if he’d gotten anything restful enough to be called “sleep”) feeling sick, but gotten ready for school anyways and jogged out the door barely on time. He hadn’t ridden his bike, because he could hear Dad talking to someone out in the garage from the hallway, and he really didn’t want to go in there and interrupt whatever was going on, so he grabbed his coat and his earbuds and resigned himself to being late.

One of his fucking ear buds broke on the walk there, so there was that. So much for carefully arranging the balance settings in stereo for the best amount of bass versus treble versus mids, because all he could fucking hear now was treble.

He walked in to find out he had enough tardies to equal an unexcused absence, and that admin would be sending his dad a letter and a request to schedule a parent-teacher meeting about attendance. Fan-fucking-tastic.

He missed a quiz first period, used fourth period to scribble down homework he’d completely forgotten, and spent lunch sleeping in the corner of the shop classroom. By the time he headed home to grab his bike for work, his head was throbbing and his sore throat and sniffles were definitely turning into a full-blown cold.

And then he was locked out. He called his dad twice, then texted him a few times after that, but no response. It wasn’t like he was expecting one anyways. He found his manager’s number on his phone and called out.

Then he wandered around for a bit, got kicked out of the corner store, and ended up on the park bench with his school backpack and a dying phone, freezing to death in slow motion.

He felt like his organs were going to rattle apart with how violently he was shivering now. He should probably stand up a bit, move around, get his blood pumping and stomp his feet a little to ward the frostbite off his toes. He didn’t want to. Instead, he buried himself a little deeper into his coat, rested his forehead on his knees, and closed his eyes.

He didn’t want to go home. He didn’t want to go to school tomorrow. He didn’t want to try to explain to his manager why he called out again, and he didn’t want to have to deal with his dad. He didn’t want to think anymore. He just wanted everything to stop.

Everything was bullshit and he was so, so tired.

His phone buzzed and he pulled it out to glance at the screen.

TC: You still there?

We’re right in front, by your house

Ian tapped back a quick “k” and uncurled himself, pushing to his feet and grabbing his bag. The movement and a gust of cold air made his stomach lurch and sent fresh stabs through his skull, but he closed his eyes for a second until it passed, then shouldered his bag and headed toward the front of the park.

Lauren Conroy drove a small silver SUV that was just old enough to look like a mom car. Ian saw the puff of exhaust from the tailpipe and the glow of the headlights cutting through the dimness the second he crested the hill, and something in him gave a little sigh, collapsing into tired relief.

He shuffled down toward them, shoes scuffing and sliding against the icy sidewalk, and then he was there, frigid fingers bumping clumsily against the handle of the back passenger side door, pulling it open, shoving his backpack and then himself inside. Lauren was in the driver’s seat and Taylor was in the back, pulling his backpack out of the way, stabbing the buttons that turned up the heat.

“Good god. Taylor, grab that blanket in the back and give it to him.”

Before he could react, Taylor was reaching past him and dragging the lengths of a soft, heavy comforter from behind the seats. Lauren twisted in her seat, dragging it around and over him as far as she could reach, and directing Taylor to do the same.

“How long have you been out there?” she asked, an edge in her voice.

Ian pulled the rest of the blanket over him so that it covered everything but his head. “Since four-ish.”

Lauren froze and stared back at him. “Since four?”

Ian nodded.

Lauren muttered something under her breath that he couldn’t hear. “Have you eaten?” she asked, louder.

“Not yet.” The words slurred a little, Ian’s lips and tongue stiff from the cold.

“Christ.” Lauren’s expression was lethal. She took the car out of park and pulled into the street, heading towards the edge of the neighborhood. “Taylor, my phone. Look up an Ihop or something. Someplace we can eat inside.”

“Got it.”

The car was so warm it almost hurt. The heater was blowing at full strength now, deafening, and the seat warmers were on full blast. Ian sank into the seat and pulled the blanket as tightly around him as he could, still shivering and sniffling so that his nose wouldn’t start running from the heat.

Lauren glanced back through the rearview mirror. “Are you sick?”

“Yeah. A little.”

“You look awful. Taylor, there’s some Tylenol in my purse, and there should be an extra water bottle back there still.”

“Yeah, got it.”

Taylor handed over the water and Tylenol, and Ian took two of them, then enveloped himself in the blanket again. Lauren glanced back at him once, then again.

Then finally, “I can not believe he left you out there.”

Ian half-shrugged. “It’s fine. It’s happened before.”

Wrong thing to say. Lauren looked furious. “This has happened before?”

Ian dropped his gaze, not in the mood to meet her angry stare. “Yeah, once. Wasn’t this cold though.”

“Of course not, because you would have--” she cut herself off and huffed out a breath, tugging on her ponytail.

Would have frozen to death. Ian knew. They all knew.

Lauren didn’t say it, though. When he looked up, there was a misty sheen in her eyes and the muted anger on her face was mixed with regret. “Sorry, kiddo. I’m just--” she broke off again. “Let’s just go get some food in you.”

The car fell silent, and for a moment, the only sound was the gps’s electronic monotone spitting out directions.

Ian didn’t speak up again until the feeling came back into his fingers with a rush of tingling and pain. “Thanks for picking me up,” he said.

“It’s the least I could do, kiddo. The very, very least.”

No one said anything else until they arrived at the restaurant. Lauren sent them both inside to find a booth, saying she had to make a call, so they went ahead without her.

“What even happened?” Taylor asked over his menu, once they’d gotten in and sat down. “Was there a fight or something?”

Ian shrugged. “No. Don’t think so. Guess he was just done.”

“That’s…” Taylor shook his head, struggling for words. “That’s so crazy.”

“Yeah.” Ian didn’t really want to think about it anymore. “Does your mom care what we get?”

“No, get whatever you want.” Taylor watched him over the menu. “You know you can stay at our house if you want to, right?”

Something inside him twisted. “We already talked about that. You guys live too far away from my school.”

“My mom says she might be able to make the drive before work. Me and Fletcher are almost finished saving for a car, so she wouldn’t have to bring us and Jackie to school.”

Ian hesitated, looking at him. He wanted it. He wanted it so badly. Living someplace where he knew he wouldn’t get screamed at for no reason or locked out without warning, where he liked people he lived with and they didn’t wish he was dead--living someplace normal. It sounded good. Too good to be something within his reach. “I… my dad--”

“Hey, boys! We order yet?” Lauren’s voice, bright and cheery, interrupted him as she swept into view. Taylor scooted to the side and she dropped into the booth next to him, picking up the third menu. Her eyes were rimmed in red, but her smile was genuine and almost defiant.

“Not yet,” Taylor said.

“Well? Come on! Ian, order whatever you want, I’m paying. Are we getting milkshakes? I’m getting a milkshake.”

Ian did get a milkshake. And a breakfast skillet. And hashbrowns. And crepes slathered with fruit and whipped cream. And Lauren didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow, just slapped on an order of birthday pancakes and handed back her menu.

Taylor ordered just as much as he did, and Lauren sat back with her milkshake and strawberry French Toast, watching them converse with a satisfied look on her face.

After they’d finished devouring the last of the dessert pancakes, Lauren glanced at her phone. “Sorry to break up the party, but we have to get going if we’re gonna pick you up a toothbrush before we head home. I told your dad you were staying over.”

Ian narrowed his eyes, wary. “What did he say?”

“He said it was fine, of course. You’re staying for the rest of the week, at least.”

The rest of the week? “Wait, really? He was fine with that?”

“Oh, he was more than fine,” Lauren said, glibly.

Ian stared at her, disbelieving. “He was more than fine?”

“I’m guessing he wants me to go easy once the court proceedings are underway.”

Wait. What? “What court proceedings?”

Lauren looked at Taylor. “You didn’t tell him?”

Taylor shrugged. “Didn’t get the chance.”

Ian frowned. “The chance to tell me what?”

Lauren reached into her purse and pulled out a stack of neatly stapled papers, set them on the table, and slid them over. “The reason we were in town.”

Ian picked them up and read the lettering at the top. He suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Petition for... guardianship?” he read aloud, voice tight. “What are-- are you serious?”

Lauren nodded solemnly. “We’ve talked about it enough. You’ve said plenty of times that you wanted to go ahead.”

“Is that why you called me yesterday?”

Lauren’s face softened. “Yeah. And you told me that it was just your--”

“--my dad,” Ian finished. “He’d never agree. How did you…?”

Lauren grinned slightly. “I talked to him last week. I was very convincing. And he knows we have a case. Seems like he doesn’t want trouble.”

Ian stared down at the papers again, clenching his teeth against the lump growing in his throat. “So that’s it? He’s giving me up?”

“That’s what he’s saying right now. But if he changes his mind and we have to fight for it, we will. If you still want it.”

It was all suddenly too much. Ian’s vision blurred and his breath shuddered, and he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes to block the tears that had sprung from nowhere, but then he was gasping and he felt arms around him, holding him tight and warm.

“Do you still want it?” He heard Lauren ask him, voice quiet and full of emotion he couldn’t quantify.

He felt everything inside of him unravel as he nodded, letting her hug him and leaning into the embrace. “Yes,” he said. His voice sounded choked, but he didn’t care. “I want to.”

Her arms tightened around him, every so slightly. “I guess that’s it then. Happy birthday, Ian.”

Taylor’s hand squeezed his shoulder from wherever he was, still across the table. His voice sounded shaky when he spoke too. “Happy birthday, Ian. Welcome home.”

#original fiction #original characters #hurt/comfort #happy birthday #ian carpenter #taylor conroy #lauren conroy

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thotful-writing · 5 years

Text

Obedience

Jacob Seed/F! Character

Description: She had been reluctantly taken into Jacob's training as a Hunter, she was strong, but needed to learn her place and obey commands. Jacob had tried everything, there was only one other way to teach her.

A/N: I don't write much Jacob stuff, but figured I'd give it a go.

Warnings: Smut, NSFW, dom/sub undertones

Jacob paced the room, he wasn’t sure if he was angry or worried, he decided to go with both. He hadn’t heard from her in hours, he told her not to do anything but of course she was stubborn and constantly trying to prove herself. Suddenly the door opened, he stopped, his heart pounding as all of the worst scenarios ran through his mind. He was set at ease when he saw her walk in.

“I told you-I told you not to go, but you went anyways? You disobeyed a direct order.” He stalked towards her, anger seething through him.

“I-I was doing it for the Project, to help.”

“It was too dangerous to do alone and now I’m going to have to go and fix your mess.” He stopped a few inches away, glaring down at her.

“But-I did it. I secured the outpost.” She stepped back trying to get some distance from his obvious rage.

He blinked at her confused for a moment, how could she have secured the outpost on her own? With no backup?

“You did it? By yourself?”

“Yep. No problems or anything, Sir.” She gave him a weak smile, hoping he’d be grateful.

“You still went against my orders. You’ll have to pay for that.”

She wasn’t fond of Jacob’s punishments, he was always so creative. She had been under his training for a few months now, she desperately wanted more with him, but knew her feelings weren’t reciprocated in any way. Jacob was all work and no play, completely closed off from any emotions or affection.

She shivered outside in the rain as she held the large rock over her head, her arms trembled, ready to give out if she let them.

“Why don’t you just put the rock down? Come inside where it’s warm?” He said as he paced around her.

“No, Sir.” She responded, keeping her gaze forward.

“Just put it down, it’ll be fine.” He continued to try and persuade her.

“N-No, Sir.” She shivered.

“Are you disobeying my orders?” He circled her like a predator circling his prey.

“N-No, Sir. You told me not to put this rock down until the sun came up. That’s what I’m going to do.” Her arms continued to shake. She’d sooner drop it on her head than put it down and disappoint him.

“Have it your way.” He said as he went back inside.

She could no longer feel her fingers, she was pretty sure they were now permanently attached to the rock. The rain let up a little, but she was soaked to her core, there was no way she’d get out of this without getting pneumonia. Jacob returned with a hot bowl of soup, he stood in front of her and got a spoonful, blowing it gently in front of her face. She instinctively licked her lips, she’d give anything for some food right now.

“Oh, I’m sorry, are you hungry?” He furrowed his brow as he looked at her.

“Y-Yes, Sir.” She didn’t look at the soup, she held her gaze to his.

“Come inside and get some food. There’s plenty.” He placed the spoon in his mouth and made the most ridiculously pleased face.

“N-No, Sir.”

“You sure? It’s delicious.” He took another bite.

“Y-Yes, Sir.” This was the only time in her life she ever denied food and it pained her to do so.

“Guess I’ll just give the rest to the Judges then.” He left her once more.

6 hours, 6 hours had passed, she only knew because she could see the sun peaking over the horizon, she continued to wait though, determined to hold out until Jacob gave her permission to come inside.

“Oh, you’re still out here?” Jacob stretched and yawned in front of her.

She nodded her head her body trembled, she no longer had the energy to speak and her mouth was pretty much frozen shut.

Jacob didn’t say anything, he grabbed the rock from her and dropped it to the ground. Her arms immediately fell to her sides, they felt like cooked noodles. She moved to step out of the mud, but her legs gave out and she fell to the ground. Who knew standing in the same position for 6+ hours would cause your legs to become stiff and buckle the second you tried to move? She pushed herself up on her hands and knees, took a deep breath and tried to stand back up, but it was no use, she fell back down to the ground.

Jacob sighed as he watched her feeble attempts. He was initially reluctant to take her on as a Hunter, but she persevered through his training and had proven herself worthy, she still had a stubborn streak that needed to be broken though. He rolled his eyes before he leaned down and picked her up, cradling her in his arms.

“S-Sir?” She looked at him surprised.

“Jesus, you’re freezing.” He said as she shook in his arms.

He carried her inside and passed the shared quarters for the Hunters, he continued walking down the corridor to his quarters, she’d glanced inside but had never fully been in it before. He placed her in his bed and covered her with the thickest fleece comforter. He left for a moment before returning with two more blankets, piling them on her. She continued to shake under the warmth, but the feeling was coming back into her extremities slowly. Jacob stood over her as she shivered, her lips almost blue, he knew she needed more heat. He kicked his shoes off and pulled the covers back, lying down beside her and covering them both back up. He pulled her close to his chest.

“S-Sir, you don’t have-“

“Shut up. Your body temperature is too low. Why did you stand out there so long?” He scolded her.

“B-Because you t-told me to, Sir.”

“If you had followed my orders that closely before then you wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Although it was a bit awkward, she actually enjoyed her current situation, not the freezing to death part, but the being in bed close to Jacob part. His body heat was helping warm her up quicker though, she had stopped shivering as she laid next to him. Jacob tried his hardest to remain completely unfazed by her closeness, he couldn’t deny he’d desired her for a while now, especially in watching her strength and determination increase over the months. Now, as she lay so close to him, he wasn’t sure how much resolve he had to resist her, one glance wouldn’t hurt, would it? He looked down to see her asleep against his chest, breathing softly. He brushed a piece of hair off her face, he panicked slightly when she stirred, but relaxed when she continued to sleep.

She stretched across the bed to find Jacob had left her, she wondered how long he stayed with her? Her arms were still sore and weak as she left the bed, she wanted to seek him out, to thank him, but she decided to return to her quarters instead.

“Heard you got quite the punishment yesterday.” One of the other Hunters commented as she entered the room.

“Lasted longer than you did though, how long did you stay out there before you’d pissed yourself?” She smiled smugly.

“You’re right, I didn’t last long out there. Maybe if I had then Jacob would have shared his bed with me too. But I guess we can’t all spread our legs for special treatment.”

She wanted to lash out, but she refrained, she knew Jacob wouldn’t be happy if she started killing off his Hunters. She ignored the comment and gathered her clothes to go take a shower. She let the hot water warm her still semi-frozen bones, her fingers and toes still felt somewhat numb. When she returned to the shared room the man was still there, he glanced up at her, but she ignored him. Before she knew what was happening, he was behind her, pressing her against the concrete wall.

“Just want a taste of what Jacob gets.” He said into her ear as his hands travelled down her body.

She would have screamed but it wouldn’t have done any good, Jacob would have come to save her, but it would’ve only made things worse for her. She let him get distracted by her compliance, he let his guard down for a moment, she threw her elbow back into his face as hard as she could. He yelled out in pain as he stepped back from her, holding his nose.

“Touch me again and I’ll slit your fucking throat while you sleep.” She turned around to face him.

He was about to say something, but Jacob entered the room, “What’s going on here?” He crossed his arms as he glanced between the two of them.

“Nothing, Sir.” She feigned innocence.

“The blood pouring from his nose tells me it’s more than ‘nothing’. What happened?” He looked at the man.

“I-I tripped.” He said as he continued holding his nose.

“Is that so? Maybe you need more agility training then, clean yourself up and meet me outside in 10.”

The man left, glancing back at her, she held her gaze on Jacob. She didn’t want to tell him what had almost happened, she was worried he’d see her as weak.

“There something else I need to know?”

“No, Sir.” She shook her head. He looked at her for another moment before leaving the room, he was certain he knew what had happened and he didn’t plan on taking it easy on the guy.

“Jacob? Hello? Anyone?” A voice rang over the radio, she looked over at it, Jacob was still outside.

“Yes?” She pressed the button and answered, knowing she should’ve just gone to get Jacob.

“We need help! We’re under attack here at the Elk Jaw Lodge, by the Resistance, there’s too many of them. Send help!”

She stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what to do. She knew she could get there quickly and help, as well as prove herself to Jacob, but he was so furious when she’d done the same thing the other day. She made her decision, she grabbed her guns and headed out. There were a lot more Resistance members than there should have been, by the time she got there it was almost too late, there were only a few followers left. She ran in, guns blazing, taking out anyone and everyone she saw. Her adrenaline was pumping so fast she didn’t realize when she got nicked by a bullet as it tore through the skin on her arm. When it was all over, she had either killed all the Resistance members or they had run away. She helped the remaining followers get patched up until reinforcements could come. She decided it was best if she headed back to the VA Center, hoping Jacob had heard about her success.

She walked in the door, half expecting to see Jacob waiting for her again, but he wasn’t there. She walked down the corridor further until she reached his quarters, she peaked inside but didn’t see him. Suddenly she felt someone grab her arm and turn her around.

“Looking for someone?” Jacob asked as his eyes bore into her.

“N-No, Sir.” She tried to pull free of his grasp, but he held firm.

“Heard you were down at Elk Jaw Lodge.”

“Yes, Sir. They needed help so I-“

“So, you disobeyed a direct order, again, and went to play hero?” He clenched his jaw as he glared down at her.

“Sir, I-“

“What’s it going to take to break you, hm? To get through to you that you don’t call the shots around here?” He narrowed his eyes at her.

She stared up at him, genuinely worried about what he would do. She didn’t think helping would be such a bad thing, but she did go against him, and she had made a habit of it recently. Jacob held her arm as he pushed her into his room, slamming the door closed behind him. She trembled slightly as she stood in front of him, not knowing what he was going to do to her. He grabbed her by the back of her neck, pulling her hair back, forcing her to look at him.

“You’re going to learn how to obey commands.” Before she could register what was happening his lips crashed into hers, kissing her forcefully.

He shoved his tongue into her mouth, she welcomed the intrusion and swirled her tongue around his. She fought for dominance in the kiss but was quickly reminded of her place by a hard pull on her hair and a sharp bite on her bottom lip. He pulled away from her abruptly, leaving her breathless and wanting.

“Clothes.” He commanded.

She didn’t need to be told twice, she quickly rid herself of her shirt and unbuttoned her pants. She paused momentarily when he grabbed her arm, looking over the wound she had, bringing her attention to it as well. He let out a heavy sigh at the sight, but knew it wasn’t anything life threatening, deciding to leave it for later. She returned to her task and removed her pants, remaining only in her panties in front of him.

“Still don’t listen.” He said as he grabbed the waistband of her panties and pulled them until she heard the fabric stretching and then ripping apart.

She shifted her legs, feeling her wetness already soaking her thighs and he hadn’t even touched her yet. He tossed her underwear to the floor with her other clothes and circled her, just as he had done before, like he was a predator and she was his prey. She jumped when his hand landed hard on her bare ass, sending shivers over her body at the contact. He moved forward, pressing his body against her back, she could feel his hardness on her ass, she instinctively reached back to palm him through his pants. He let her for a moment before giving her another smack on her ass. She pulled her hand away from him immediately. He remained there, his hands on her shoulders pulling her back against him, he loved the feeling of her body on his. He trailed kisses down the side of her neck, biting into the flesh on her shoulder. She moaned instinctively and reached back for him again, needing to touch him. The second her hand touched him he spanked her again, harder this time. She withdrew her hand once more.

“Desk.” One word was all she needed, she walked over to his desk and bent over it, waiting.

He remained where he was, admiring her from afar as she waited for him. How he wanted to take her now, on every surface in the room, but she needed to learn her place first. He didn’t move for several minutes, she began to wonder what the hold up was, she turned her head to look at him.

“Something wrong?” He asked.

“No, Sir.” She turned her head forward.

He moved closer, his fingers tracing down her spine lightly, she felt goosebumps form across her skin as his fingers moved down further, barely touching her ass. She pushed back into his hand, hoping to coax him into touching her more, the only thing it earned her was another hard smack on the ass, adding to the already reddened skin.

“Patience.” He growled.

He knelt behind her, bringing his face directly to her center. He smirked at how wet she was already, completely soaked. His hand started down at her ankle, lightly moving up her leg, to her thigh. He spread her open wider, but never touched her where she wanted it most. She whined after a few minutes, shifting her legs. It was taking all his will power not to fuck her over this desk right this instance, but he held back. He leaned forward and pressed his tongue flat against her, starting at her clit and licking up to her entrance, tasting her. Her eyes fluttered shut at the feeling, finally being touched where she needed it. He pushed one finger into her opening, feeling how tight she was.

“This is going to hurt.” He said as he withdrew his finger and stood up behind her.

She furrowed her brow for a moment, what exactly was he talking about? It didn’t take her long to figure it out after he’d unzipped his pants and pressed his tip at her entrance, pushing into her completely without warning her first.

“Wait, fuck…” She squirmed, trying to adjust to his size as he stretched her out, but he grabbed her hips and held her still, not letting her move.

He pulled out almost completely before sliding back in, at this point she was glad she had gotten so wet before he’d done this, if not it would have been a lot more painful. She tried to control the pace by moving further up the desk, but he caught onto her quick and grabbed the wound on her arm, causing her to yell and stop all movements.

“Please, Sir…” She begged as he tightened his grip on her, still thrusting in and out of her slowly.

“Begging is another way of trying to control a situation.” He laughed at her attempt.

He released her arm and gripped her hips once more, thrusting harder into her, causing her to lurch forward on the desk. She was finally getting adjusted to him and moaned each time he dragged against her walls as he pulled out. His pace had increased as did the pressure in which his fingers were digging into her hips. He groaned as he pounded into her, reveling in her tightness, the way she writhed beneath him and under his grasp. She began to tighten around him as she felt her imminent release approaching.

“No.” He said as he slowed his pace back down, bringing her back from the brink.

She panted and wanted to argue, but knew it was no use, he would just continue to drag this out if she did. She remained silent as he started moving faster again. He smiled at her obedience, she was learning quickly, even if she wanted to complain, she wouldn’t. He slowed his pace again, but thrusted deeper inside her, hitting that perfect spot that made her knees weak. She moaned loudly each time he hit it, he knew she was getting close again, as was he. He thrust into her harder and faster again, the desk banging into the wall, if no one had heard it before they definitely did now. She whimpered at each thrust and felt herself tighten around him again.

“S-Sir?” She asked, he knew what she wanted.

“Alright, Darlin’” He said through gritted teeth.

A few more thrusts and she came undone beneath him, her body shuddered her orgasm hit her. Her walls clenching around him pushed him towards his own release, he had no plans of pulling out of her either. He remained inside her, making sure she got every ounce of his cum. They both began to come back down, he finally pulled out of her, she remained on the desk, unable to move.

“You belong to me now.” He leaned down and spoke into her ear, placing a kiss on her shoulder as she lay there.

#Jacob Seed #jacob seedxreader #far cry 5 #far cry 5 fanfiction #fc5

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emoboijk · 5 years

Text

MYG | Lo-Fi Beats (06)

Lo-Fi: an aesthetic of recorded music in which the sound quality is lower than the usual contemporary standards so that imperfections of the recording and production are audible.—fluff, angst, idol!au

prologue :: 01 :: 02 :: 03 :: 04 :: 05 :: 06 :: epilogue

1,835 words

p.cred

You’re staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at Minji, her expression serious now that she’s fully explained that Daniel Ito is, in fact, completely full of shit . She smirks slightly and you can tell that she’s impressed with herself, “You have to come back.”

There’s a flicker of hope in your chest, your heart racing at the prospect. It almost makes you want to cry, how much you’ve missed your old job and friends. How much you’ve missed Yoongi; like missing a piece of yourself.

You say what you’re thinking, “Would he take me back?”

There’s an assumption in the question; an assumption about what Yoongi means to you and what you mean to him. For the first time, you don’t care. The carefully crafted boundaries you’d constructed around your relationship with him have evaporated, because if you go back now...you won’t risk being anything other than the person he was meant to be with.

You look up when Minji doesn’t respond, and you can see she doesn’t know what to say. Before your speech all those weeks ago, the answer would’ve been a definite: yes . But now it’s uncertain. He still cares for you, of course; you can’t erase that kind of connection and dependency so quickly. But could he forgive you? Would things ever be the same? There was no way to know the answer to those questions except to go back.

“I don’t know,” she sighs eventually, “but isn’t it worth the risk?”

And that question you definitely know the answer to.

“Grandma,” you say, ten minutes later, bursting through the front door with Minji at your heels, kicking off your shoes wildly in the entrance. Your grandmother peeks her head out of the kitchen curiously and you say, “I’m leaving!”

You speed past her into your room and hear Minji introduce herself, your grandmother cooing, “I’ve heard so much about you!” And, even though she doesn’t mean for you to, you hear her whisper, “She’s finally leaving!” You know she means it in the best way.

You throw what little belongings you have into your suitcase and reemerge, Minji and your grandmother still chatting by the front door. Your grandmother looks at you knowingly and you smile, pulling her in for an awkward one armed hug. You press a kiss to her cheek and whisper, “I love you.”

She squeezes your shoulder and says, “I’ll see you. Have a good trip.”

You buy two last minute tickets for a train going to Seoul, rushing across the station to make it on time, and squeezing into your seats side by side, your shoulder pressed against the window.

“You know what you’re going to say?” Minji wonders.

“No,” you sigh, leaning your forehead against the glass, unable to picture anything but Yoongi’s expression the day you told him to leave you alone.

“It has to be tonight,” she whispers meekly.

“ What ?” you nearly screech, startling the elderly woman across from you both, who had been napping. She grumbles, glares at you and your bow of apology, and then falls back to sleep.

“They have their dome concert in Seoul tonight,” she glances at her watch, “right now, actually. Then they leave for Japan for two weeks…”

You put your head in your hands, “I can’t wait two weeks.”

“So, it has to be tonight,” she concludes, drumming her fingers on her thighs nervously.

“Why didn’t you come get me earlier?” you grumble.

“Uh, I have my own life?” she smirks, nudging you with her shoulder playfully.

“ Fine ,” you smile, “I guess I better get to thinking.”

By the time you get to Seoul nearly two hours later, you’re no closer to a speech. You don’t even have an opening line. Nothing seems good enough. Even you wouldn’t take yourself back at this point. But as the train pulls into the station, you can’t obsess about it anymore. Minji checks her watch and curses under her breath, the ahjumma from earlier glaring as she takes her bags off the overhead rack. You watch Minji, feeling panicky suddenly, “What is it?”

“The concert’s almost over,” she pulls you up from your seat and you barely have time to get your bags as she starts dragging you off the train. When you land on the platform, Minji goes on her tippy-toes in search of something, gasping when she sees a hand waving in the air. “Jihoon!” she yells, waving erratically as she begins pulling you again. You’re surprised your arm is still in its socket.

“Jihoon,” you grin when you see him, looking frantic as he shakes his car keys around. He doesn’t look at you and instead turns to face Minji.

“You’re late!” he exclaims.

“It was a long talk,” Minji rolls her eyes.

When Jihoon finally turns to look at you he’s glaring. You frown, guilt flooding your chest again. You bow to him and whisper, “Sorry, sunbaenim.”

“Damn right,” he chuckles, pulling you in for a tight hug before gripping your wrist and taking you with Minji to the parking lot, “We’re late! We have to catch them before they leave the venue!”

Jihoon drives like a madman. For all his OCD in the office, he’s chaos on the streets; swerving and speeding and braking suddenly. Minji holds tight to her chair, arms stiff from fear as she grumbles, “What is this, Fast and Furious ?”

“Do you want to get there or not?” he says, pressing his foot down on the gas.

By the time you get there your heart is hammering so fast it might burst, and while Minji and Jihoon are running full speed past security guards (waving their badges frantically) and down the back of the concert venue, everything feels hazy. Your doubts are the only things in your head, huddling together and blacking out all common sense.

When they stop abruptly outside the dressing rooms you nearly crash into them both, chewing on your bottom lip apprehensively.

“Minji…” you whisper, gripping her arm like she’s a life raft, “I don’t know about this…”

“ Come on ,” she urges, taking your hand and pulling you through the crowd of employees and toward the dressing rooms, “The concert is over,” she stands on her tiptoes to try and catch sight of them, “They should be here by now.”

“Couldn’t this have waited?” you ask, but you don’t look at her. Like second nature your eyes scan the surrounding area for him, “Tomorrow morning—” you pause as your heart restarts.

“I told you, they leave for—” she stops, too, when she sees him (all seven of them, plus an entourage, including Daniel Ito). You can’t take your eyes off him. Min Yoongi.

Exhaustion is painted on his face like a tattoo and sits on his shoulders like a heavy winter coat, like protection. You can’t help feeling that you shouldn’t be here. He’s the first to notice you and Minji, huddled together in their path, as if he has a sixth sense for it. He stops dead in his tracks, the boys noticing his pause and stopping too, before suddenly the whole hallway is frozen. But you can’t take your eyes off him.

“Yoongi, I—” you start and are grateful when someone cuts you off. Do you have an excuse? A good one?

Daniel’s voice is like steel against your name. “What are you doing here?” he says, the words tight in his throat.

“ You ,” Jihoon’s voice is serious and unwavering, “You sir, are full of crap!” He steps forward from behind you, pointing a finger accusatorially at Daniel.

Minji, standing at your elbow, adds, “Yeah! Mr. Empty-Threats!”

“Good one,” you mutter, but it’s half-hearted. You haven’t looked away from Yoongi. It’s been three months and he’s so beautiful. And you have so many questions. All the things you miss about him sting so much more now that he’s in front of you.

He doesn’t make eye contact. At first, he watched the floor. But now that Jihoon and Minji have started lobbing insults and hurling accusations he’s looked up at Daniel and the others. But his eyes still avoid you.

You’re consumed with your thoughts, with your mental catalogue of Yoongi (his hair is sticky with sweat and darker now, the purple blotches beneath his eyes tell you he hasn’t slept in at least 36 hours, you can see the sharp definition of his cheekbones so you figure he hasn’t been eating, his hands are shaky so you know he’s been having trouble writing…), but in the background everyone’s fighting. Jihoon and Minji are shouting explanations to the staff and the members, while Daniel demands that you and they be removed.

You’re crying without realizing because, along with all the signs of his unhappiness, he looks so confused . And you’re terrified that you won’t be able to come back from this. You burned a bridge when you left. You broke his heart and your own. And even when he learns that you were manipulated and blackmailed...will he ever be able to dissociate that lie from who you really are?

You think back to the night on his front porch so many years ago...That boy and all of the beautiful things he said, the lo-fi beats in his headphones, the kimchi on his breath. You have to believe that that boy would never give up on you.

Your voice is soft and tear-soaked, but it cuts through the noise, “I’m so sorry.” And then, finally , he’s looking at you.

You step toward him, almost close enough to touch but you aren’t that brave yet. “I’m so sorry,” you say again, “I didn’t mean any of it. Of course, we’re more ,” you pause, looking him in the eye, tasting fear on your tongue, “I hope we’re more.”

He’s a foot away from you and you feel the distance so sharply that it might as well have been an object separating you both. His eyes are sharp and serious, calculating; it’s his editing face, cold and critical. He says your name, half a warning and half a plea.

“Yoongi,” you whisper desperately.

And you’re not sure what shifts, or what part of him inside snaps, but he closes the distance between you, takes your face in his hands, and presses his lips to yours like there’s no other place they should be. You’re caught up in it all, your arms wrapping around him, his emotions and yours flowing through you both like an electric spark.

One thought pierces through it all: he’s a better kisser now. He knows what to do with his tongue. He tastes like cherry chapstick and sweat, and his tongue licks your bottom lip until you concede. It lights a fire in the pit of your stomach and sets your nerves alight.

The only thing that hasn’t changed is the emotion behind it. You can feel it clear as day, just like the last time, he loves you.

author’s note—feels rushed?

epilogue ↝

for more of my works check out my m.list

#bts #rosynamjoon #bangtanbuds #hyunglinenetwork #min yoongi #yoongi #suga #suga x reader #yoongi x reader

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ko-fanatic · 6 years

Photo

For @badthingshappenbingo, Kyoya and amputation!

Rating: Mature

Fandom: Ouran High School Host Club

Character(s): Kyoya Ootori, Original Male Character

Pairing(s): kyokao, non-consensual Kyoya x OC

TW: Kidnapping, Non-Con, paedophilia, nightmares, blood, gore, amputation, trauma

A sequel to forced feeding, forced to beg and attempted rape.

It was getting tiring, laying there in the dark, hoping that he'd eventually open his eyes and this would just be one big, vivid nightmare. That he'd be at home, in his warm, clean bed, in pyjamas that weren't just a little, pink camisole and lacy panties. That he wouldn't stink of sweat and shit and piss. That breakfast would be waiting on the table and Akito would great him with a smack upside the head, to which he'd respond by tripping him up. The usual.

He could hardly say he was disappointed when the cold seeped under his grimy skin, because that would imply that he actually thought he'd be somewhere else. It wasn't an assumption, it was a prayer. In times like these, the only ones you feel you can turn to are the Gods - even if they never answered a single prayer you gave them. It was a delusional facsimile of hope, some pipe dream that you can only pray will help you hold onto sanity a little while longer.

He wanted his father, his brothers, his sister. He wanted the bodyguards and his grandparents. He even wanted his mother. He just wanted someone to hold him and stroke his hair, tell him that this was all a bad dream and he was safe. The monsters in the shadows weren't real, and there was nothing lurking in the basement.

Most of all, he wanted Kaoru. He wanted soft touches and praise whispered against hot-flushed skin. He wanted hand-holding and kisses and cuddles under the stars, surrounded by blankets. He wanted love and tenderness, not the violent perversions of a man that was easily old enough to be his father.

He didn't want cold and dark. He didn't want rice porridge and broken teeth that throbbed with every heartbeat. He didn't want any of the names he called him; every 'pretty boy' and 'baby boy' made him want to tear his eyes out and scream until his throat was bloody.

How long had it even been? God only knew. He honestly wasn't sure if he wanted the answer or not. It was maddening not knowing, but what if the answer was weeks? Months? What if it was only a few days? What would he even prefer? It felt like years, like he was going to die in here. He could remember the outside, but his head messed around with his perception, and it all seemed distant.

His mental health always played with his sense of time, and so this situation was only going to make that worse. At home, he had his phone, calendars, notebooks and organisers - even the fucking sun. Here, he had nothing.

He had to stay focused, couldn't think about that or he'd certainly lose it. If he lost the sanity he was retaining, then it could be game over. PTSD, Stockholm Syndrome, dissociation; it was all so... daunting. He'd read about all of them, and they weren't pretty. He wasn't going to get out of this unscathed, but he could just try not to overthink. People were trying to find him. They would find him. He'd be fine.

The door creaked open, right on cue. It was as if the man had a sickly appropriate sense of timing, but that was okay. He could just be coming in to give him more watery soup or disgusting porridge.

"Hello, baby boy," The man greeted, the words feeling like coarse sandpaper against Kyoya's skin, "How are we?"

He didn't answer. He was too tired, too drained, and honestly... He didn't even know how to respond to that. Instead, he just tilted his head ever so slightly, trying not to aggravate his stiff, sore neck, and groaned when the light hit his eyes painfully. He still hadn't been given his glasses back, everything too blurry; the squinting worsened his headache.

"Well, don't worry! I thought we could do something to pretty you up even more today," The man chirped, and every red flag was instantly raised. That couldn’t mean anything good, not from someone this sickly sadistic.

The sound of duct tape being peeled off the roll made him freeze, a stone in his gut, and realise he was completely right.

"You see, you're lovely as you are, baby boy; but you could be more... suited to certain tastes," The man explained, the thick tape adhering to Kyoya's skin, wrapping around his wrists before he could will himself to move, binding his arms behind his back. He was weak, too afraid to move a single muscle, and he could only scream at himself to lash out. He needed to kick, punch, anything to get the man away from him so he could run out of the door and get to somewhere safe. But he couldn't.

"Please..." He croaked, voice cracking and painful from both disuse and being defiled by force feeding, "Why... Why me? Please don't. Please don't."

The man shushed his gently, those fingers raking through his hair once more, setting his scalp on fire. "Now, now; you don't expect me to list all the reasons why I love my little baby boy, do you? We'd be here far too long, and we need to pretty you up," The man cooed, and Kyoya nearly threw up right then and there, "Still, teenage boys are insecure, even ones as perfect as you."

Kyoya flinched hard when he felt lips press into his hair, teasingly soft kisses.

"You're beautiful."

A kiss to his forehead, and a whimper he didn't remember making.

"You're charming."

A kiss to his cheek, and hands digging into gaunt flesh, forcing his head to stay where it was when he tried to turn away.

"You're so cute when you cry..."

A kiss to his lips, and a feeling of violation that he knew he couldn't wash off. He knew it wasn’t as bad as the other things, but at the same time… It felt different. He hadn’t raped him in the bathroom stall, hadn’t touched him, but even if he had… Rape was violent. Rape was power, a way to hurt, not about intimacy. Kisses were love. He’d always thought of them that way, call him a romantic. It was twisted, perverted affection and he hated it. He wanted to spit all the vile words he’d thought at the man, wanted to bite, wanted to kick… But he couldn’t.

Because he was weak.

Cold metal wrapped around one of his legs, tight and almost painful. A chain. He was still frozen, especially with how the man had decided to tie him down, legs spread apart. His mind flicked back to the bathroom, to that disturbing smile under the door, to that hideous voice telling him to relax. Of course, his mind whispered about all the things the man could be thinking, and he just wanted them to be quiet. He didn’t want to hear it, to think it. He wanted to be home, in the warm.

“Tell me, pretty boy, do you know what Acrotomophilia is?” The man asked, and Kyoya couldn’t even think of the answer, let alone speak, “To put it simply… It’s finding beauty in the broken. The incomplete.”

Kyoya really didn't like the sound of that. If the man were truly interested in broken parts, then there'd be no need to "pretty him up"; he was made of them. This treatment, being left in the dark... It certainly hadn't fixed him, psychologically and emotionally. There was only one thing left that it could mean...

Physically broken.

He lifted his head, trying to see where the man was going as he heard the loud echoes of the shoes tapping against the floor. His blood ran cold at what he saw in the man's hands, more so than ever before. He tried to move back, the tight chains cutting into his thin, dry flesh and causing him to whimper like some sort of animal. He couldn't move back, or really at all. There was no escape.

"No! No, don't! I'll do anything you want! Please don't!" He begged, over and over again. He was shaking, absolutely terrified, "Y-you want me, don't you? I'll let you do anything. You can... You can have sex with me... I don't care, just don't hurt me..."

His cries, rather surprisingly, fell on deaf ears. While Kyoya wasn't sure if sleeping with his captor was a good - or safe - idea, but it was better than whatever he was planning to do with that axe.

"It'll hurt, baby boy. I'm sorry for that, but I'll take good care of you, my little broken doll," The man cooed softly, smiling at the tears falling over Kyoya's cheekbones, thin frame shaking like a little fawn, "Now, hold still."

The axe came down, and Kyoya could only scream. It burned, it stung. There was a deep gash just below his knee, pain settled into the bone, and he wasn't even ashamed of the tears anymore. It hurt. It hurt so much. He was choking on it, struggling to breathe. Not only was the physical sensation so intense, but the thought of he’s cutting my leg off was all too… overwhelming.

Again, the axe came down, blood splattering across the floor as his stomach lurched. The axe was blunt, and the force at which the man swung it was twisting his guts and forcing half-digested, mushy clumps of rice to spill from his lips and onto the filthy floor. His hands clenched into fists, sobs freely echoing around the small room, unrestrained; why bother to hide them?

The axe continued to cut its way through his leg, the pain white hot and making him scream out. He couldn't cope. He couldn't keep doing this. His flesh, his muscle, his bone - all severed and broken, making him sick. Vomit caked some of his hair from him flinching into the bile-soaked puddle, but he barely even registered it. He could hardly smell anything after being locked in that damn room.

The silence that filled the air, the sickening give as something was removed from him, made him want to throw up once more. The man tossed his severed leg aside so easily, as it were just a part that cracked off a little doll, leaning over him to inspect the ragged, bloody stump.

"There, was that so bad?" The man inquired, sickeningly sweet, and softly murmured how adorably useless he looked. How dependant, how helpless, he was with his vomit-soaked hair and blotchy, tear-sticky cheeks, "You can have a break for a few days, then the other leg."

Part of Kyoya burned with rage, wanted to scream about how he'd already taken one of his legs; wasn't he fucking satisfied? But the majority of him just wanted to curl into a ball and sob his heart out, nerves frayed and scared out of his mind.

"We'll get you all bandaged up, then you can sleep, baby boy," The man assured, hand on his thigh, above his stump, "My lovely little doll."

#ouran high school host club #ohshc #kyokao #kyoya ootori #badthingshappenbingo #bad things happen bingo

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lovelycheollie · 6 years

Text

“If I die, I will wait for you, do you understand? No matter how long. I will watch from beyond to make sure you live every year you have to its fullest, and then we’ll have so much to talk about when I see you again… ”

― Jeaniene Frost

Words: 3598

Warning: Mild gore, blood and dying

Jun stood still, in his own dread and agony. He didn’t know how, or why, but he was there, in the middle of a crowd who was frantic with their phones and screamed bloody murder. Everyone was in a state of panic, running to and fro and calling whoever that will help him. His eyes, his dead brown orbs looked at the thick metal, covered in rust and dark red liquid. The white shoes he used to have soaked in the puddle of blood in front of his feet. In such a calm, sunny afternoon, a tear full of guilt streaked down on his cheek.

To his dismay, you were gone, only to leave an empty shell with a bar of metal piercing between your chest.

It was supposed to be a short walk from the playground and across the street, hands holding each other, signaling that everything was going to be fine. He was going to take you somewhere you’ve been dreaming of, and you were already in high spirits. He knew, because you had an unwavering grin on your lips and a soft touch of red all over your face. Jun hoped that it was just going to be an ordinary day, just like yesterday, and the day before that.

“It’s so sunny today. Everything’s so bright in my eyes, I feel so happy,” you said so plainly, but to him, it meant a lot. It felt like he had conquered every single thing in the whole world. Just like that, you drove him to infinite happiness, with a little tingle within his system now and then.

The warmth of your hands flowed through his veins, assuring the man that you were together with him, and ready to face whatever the day has to offer. There was a slight pressure on his grip, but you giggled it away, crossing the road halfway to the other side.

But with a simple stroke of fate’s hands, the warm touch of sunlight faded into a cold embrace of a cruel joke. The traffic lights malfunctioned, turning the red lights into green, the truck which was half a mile away charged towards the two of you, leaving you in the middle of the street as you were mesmerized at the screams of frightened passersby.

“Y/N, what are you doing?! Move!” Jun pleaded to you, as he stood beside you and tried to pull you to safety. You were completely immovable at your place, breaking into a cold sweat under the heat of the sun. Death was all over your head as every memory passed in front of your eyes like a faint stream of firecrackers in the middle of the night. Your fingers were cold, freezing -to be exact- and Jun’s fear crawled throughout his body. He was scared stiff, for the two of you will meet the maker sooner than he expected.

The truck driver was clueless on whatever the city folks were doing, but he had a hunch that there was something absurd happening across the street. He was manning the wheel in full speed, unbothered that his brakes weren’t working, and that he carried bar stocks and metal pieces behind. The lights were green, his speed was dangerously good; he felt like the king of the world.

“Move! Y/N move!” Jun shouted from the top of his lungs, awakening you back to your senses and immediately dashing towards the man you love. There was a sudden wave of relief all over him as he wrapped his arms around you and cradled you as you wept, thinking that it was your end. His calloused hands made gentle circles on your back, his lips landing softly on your forehead.

“Jun, I-I thought that I was-”

“Ssh, it’s alright. You’re safe now,” Jun whispered while he connected his forehead to you, the tips of your noses touching. “Let’s go, the truck is still on the move. We need to go somewhere safe.”

He took your arm and walked in front, eyeing the crowd and trying to push his way for you. Suddenly, he lost his grip on your hand as half of the crowd shifted back, away from the main road, divided into two with a huge space in the middle. Your eyes were blurry, the trail of his voice disappeared, hands empty and chilled to the bone. Panic was written on your face as you tried to search for his loving eyes within the wave of people. Your teeth jittered while you hugged yourself, cold under the rays of the sun.

Your eyes connected with Jun’s worried ones, at the other half of the crowd. You pushed your way out of the buzzing mob. They tried to pull you back to them, to safety, but you ignored their warnings and found yourself in the middle of the empty area.

“Jun! Jun I’m right here!”

“Lady it’s dangerous to stay there! Come back here!”

It was only you in his sight, the sunlight blessing you in its radiance in such a bright day. You still looked pretty, even though you’ve shed a tear earlier and you were afraid of the inevitable. Jun couldn’t stop adoring you, in spite of trouble and danger. You were precious and fragile, altogether that made him protect you within his reach.

And then the truck drifted, trying to halt to the side, it hit the wall at the left with a crash, demolished cement, rock-hard fragments and metal pieces flying at random directions. Citizens covered themselves for safety, and as Jun tried to run beside you, his sight was stuck on you.

You looked beautiful-

-while your splattered blood floated in mid-air, a metal bar stuck in the middle of your chest.

Your body met the asphalt ground, the pool of blood spreading on your blouse like wildfire. There was pain and sadness; you could feel it on the tip of your fingers. You tried to move your lips, your sight even, but your heart gave its last beat, and your sharp inhale was no longer followed. The body that was once springing with joy and laughter was now lifeless, your eyes locked towards the hued sky. You were far away, too far away in this world.

Jun stood right beside your lying corpse, tears flopping down on your frozen arms. A huge gaping hole grew inside, and he knew that was because you were gone. Y/N was nothing more than a memory as of now. But his head didn’t understand how you couldn’t get up. You were still alive; inside his mind you were alive and breathing.

The deafening whispers of the overwhelmed crowd were replaced by the shrill siren of the ambulance. A team of paramedics came in the picture, analyzing you and the man who couldn’t stop himself from bursting into tears. They carefully examined Jun, who was still trying to cope with the shock and the truth in front of him.

“Sir, I know you’re in a state of shock, but I need you to take deep breaths an-”

“She’s gone, Y/N’s gone,” he said, his arms protecting his chest from the agony he was feeling deep inside. He tried to bury their voices; but he didn’t have the strength, he just couldn’t.

“Sir I’m sor-”

“She’s gone! You can’t do anything about it! Y/N gone! Y/N! Why did you have to leave me?!” with a final screech that reached everyone’s ears, the sky faded into darkness. The blue in front of him turned into a monochromatic movie.

It was dark and scary.

Then there was a stream of sunlight in front of him.

Jun jerked forward, sitting with blurred sight and a wrinkled blanket that covered his thighs. Sunlight peered through the thin window curtains beside him, and the hushed ticking of the clock made him gulp down in confusion. He was outside just a minute ago, beside a dying you in a cursed afternoon. Why was he in his bed at 10:45 in the morning?

His fingers ran through his messy bed hair, uncurling and untangling some strands as he comforted himself. Jun strolled toward the bathroom and looked at his reflection, staring directly within his eyes. A sigh escaped his lips, and soon a contented smile grew on him.

“It was all a dream.”

After hours of taking his brunch and figuring out his outfit for the day, he scrambled through the mess on his desk to find his phone. As his thumb swiped left and right, he finally saw your name on his contacts, and decided to leave a message for you.

He was dressed in a plain white shirt and black slacks, ready to tame your heart once again. Jun walked through the streets with high expectations for the day, but with a slightly disturbed heart. His attention was supposed to be only for you, but today, it was all over the place. He could hear the whispers across the street, and the tapping of his loafers were oddly loud for some reason.

“You look lovely today my sweet Y/N,” your shoulders jolted as you felt his hot breath tickle your skin. You stood from your seat straightaway and turned your head to see the man you love, chuckling and sparkling with the rays of the sun. Jun walked towards you and pinched your cheeks, the other one traveled to find its way to connect with your hand.

“You look dashing as well Junhui. But then, what’s new?” You laughed and together you exited the playground. “So where are we headed today? To the cafe I’ve been dreaming of?”

“About that,” he cleared his throat and stopped on his tracks as he found himself in the same street where you experienced an agonizing death in his dreams. “I had a nightmare. Something happened to you.”

His grip tightened on your hand. “Tell me.”

“We were having our date, just like this, and we crossed this street. But a truck came charging at us, and it hit that building. And you,” his index finger pointed at the place where he shed his tears to his lifeless lover in that disturbing nightmare. “You were there. And, you know.”

“You know what Junhui?”

“Let’s just go to the arcade. Old school dates and stuff like that. Okay?” He turned around with you and proceeded to walk ahead to the opposite direction from where the imaginary incident happened.

You lifted your eyebrows at the sudden change of topic. You knew Junhui would always finish whatever he wanted to say. But then, maybe it was too disturbing for him to even speak about it to you. “Okay then Jun. If that’s what you want.”

“You don’t want that?”

“No, I want that too. Let’s run ahead!”

And the two of you did, running ahead and passing by the locals with a dash towards the overpass. The steps were a bit slippery, but that didn’t stop you from having fun and escaping the scary dream you had faced. A wide smile was plastered on his face, wherein you had the same flowery expression. The wind brushed on the hem of your flowing skirt, meanwhile Jun ran behind you, locking his sight to your figure and making sure nothing happens to you.

But then again, fate took its turn to decide what was going to happen at that moment.

The steps were too slippery for some reason, and as you missed a step downwards, you couldn’t take a grip on the railings. You tumbled continuously within a minute, breaking some bones and attaining bruises along the fall. In Jun’s horror, he thought that you were safe in his sight, but you weren’t.

Blood trailed on the steps as Jun ran to your aid, eyes becoming watery and blurred, meanwhile, you didn’t move a muscle, sight stuck on the growing crowd around you. You could feel the blood gush out somewhere on your thighs and arms. Everyone was too terrified to move an inch, and Jun had to push his way through just to see you on the ground, with a pool of blood growing on his feet. You were dead, once again, within reality’s grasp this time.

“No, no. This can’t be. We took a different way,” he fell on his knees, the pain on his skin making sure that he was awake. He cradled your head on his lap and shook you gently, trying to wake you up. Your lashes weren’t fluttering at all, the rise and fall of your chest wasn’t there. There was nothing. You faded so quickly again in his eyes, while he couldn’t do anything to save you.

And everything became black once more. He woke up at the same bed, on the same time, stuck on the same day.

You dying and him trying to save you repeated itself again and again, for years. And today was the day when your gruesome deaths started.

With the stream of light seeping through the curtains, Jun arose from the bed with a clear mind. He shifted his eyes to the clock, 10:45 in the morning, the usual time where he escapes his never-ending nightmare. He had tried to save you for multiple times, risking everything just to stop you from dying. But all that he could do was watch you drown in your own blood, the scent of your perfume and sweat choking him every single afternoon.

His footsteps were weighty as he struggled to walk himself to the bathroom. The image in front of him looked too weary, with drooping shoulders and pale lips. His darkened eyes have seen all of your brutal demise. But no matter what, he had made up his mind.

Junhui was determined to stop the cycle and save you.

His fingers worked as he scanned through his wardrobe, checking for a polo shirt and a pair of pants he could wear for the afternoon that he finally saves you. He rushed while removing his loose t-shirt and sending you a message that he will see you soon today, at the playground on the same time.

He was ecstatic with the plan that he had. Jun was practically running to and fro in his apartment and finalizing all that he needed to do to keep you alive. A small drip of cold sweat slid on his collar, his linen shirt soaking it up while he exited his home and bolted right to the playground.

And you were sitting right there, in your best simplicity, the sunlight filtered by the leaves of the Magnolia tree above you. He noticed that your hands were resting on your chest, calmly and peaceful like a blossoming flower. Your eyes were staring somewhere in another universe, and unknowingly for you, Jun saw your eyes; they were lonely and full of agony.

“She must’ve noticed by now, that we’re both caught up in this wicked cycle.”

It didn’t take him another minute to slyly walk up to you and hand over a bouquet of freshly-picked daisies. Your shoulders jerked when he popped in the scene with a beautiful grin on him. “Flowers for my girl.”

“Oh Jun, you surprised me. And thank you for the flowers,” you said while holding the bouquet within your arms. He ushered you as you stood up from the swing, carefully aiding you away. The two of you walked side by side, towards the street where Jun had taken witness of your first death. The truck was obviously in sight, less than a mile away at the end of the road. The traffic lights were already flickering and the amount of bystanders were increasing.

His right hand fumbled with the sealed envelope which contained a letter for you. He tried to keep it away from your cunning eyes, but you’ve noticed it right away and stole it from his grasp. “What is this for?”

“That was supposed to be a surprise for later. And now you have it. So, surprise Y/N!” he jokingly said as he nuzzled his chin on the top of your head. “Save it for later. You can read it after we part ways today.”

“Oh shut up Jun, you haven’t even told me where we’re going to have our date,” you looked on the traffic light turning into green and nudged him to cross the street. “But eh, let’s go?”

He eyed the nearby candy stall, balloons steadily floating up in the air. It was just a short walk away, and he needed to buy some time “Y/N, do you want a balloon?”

“You must be kidding me. I may look like this but I am not a child.”

He raised an elbow with a playful smirk. In the corner of his eyes, the truck’s speed accelerated, the metal bars were quivering at the back. “Do you want one or not?”

“Geez okay I want one,” with that, he gave you some change and asked you to buy at the candy store. As you turned your back to him, he rushed to the other side of the street, the hushed mumbling of the crowd growing louder by the minute. Soon the vehicle was passing through, moving side to side as if it was trying to stop itself. You looked around for Junhui at the same place, the balloon string tied on your right wrist. And when you finally spotted him, he was in the middle of an empty space, the crowds trying to reach for him and pull him back to the side.

“Jun, what the hell are you doing?!” You screamed at him, taking a quick step on the main road. The truck dashed in front of you, just a meter away from you frightened figure. It hit the building to the side, and as the collision sent huge fragments of cement and metal flying, your eyes were locked to Junhui’s and you moved towards him. But he shook his head and showed his right palm to you, signaling you to stop on your tracks.

“Stay there. I need you safe.”

“Junhui,” You whispered, and a bar of metal punctured him on the stomach, blood gushing out and staining his shirt in red. You couldn’t move an inch from where you were standing as he fell on his knees, looking at you with a small smile. Blood dripped on the corner of his mouth, eyes stuck to your tear-streaked face. In this metallic-scented afternoon, you were still alive at the other side, and even though he was swimming in his own pool of blood, he was okay with it.

Screams and horrid faces filled the streets as they all ran and cried for help. Fat blobs of tears welled up in your eyes and slid on the sides. The hand that held him was freezing and immovable, so did the other that gripped on the last letter he had given you. The sight of him dying in front of you was the last thing you wanted to see.

And all that you could do in that moment is to hold his lifeless shell and weep until someone relieves you from the agonizing hell you’ve witnessed.

The ambulance came within a minute of remorse and took the two of you to the nearest hospital. You sat in the waiting area, with a warm cloth hanging on your shoulders, while they tried to save him. The letter was still in between your fingers, a little bit crumpled. Your head was in a maze, figuring the puzzle and thinking about your regrets and mistakes. With the last wave of strength on your hands, you took the courage to rip the envelope and read the last letter he wrote to you.

To my dearest Y/N,

If you are reading this, then I am happy. You are alive. That’s what all that matters to me.

We were stuck in this disturbing cycle, where you keep on dying no matter what I do, and I keep on waking up on the same day to stop you from dying. This has been going on for months, and today is the day I’ve decided to stop it by sacrificing my all just to keep you safe.

My only wish for you is that you forgive me for doing so, and that you will never forget this foolish man who knew how he wanted to die for you.

And so, I hope that I will sleep with a smile, contented that you are fine.

I love you, and I will always do,

Junhui

A finger brushed on his right cheek as the light shone directly on his closed eyes. He lifted one eyelid, and then the other, his jaw dropping down as he slowly got up. He scratched his head, brows connected to one another with huge doubt in his mind. Jun was supposed to be six feet under, footsteps above him and conscience fleeting into the light. But he was awake, alive, body warm and moving.

He stood up from the mattress and walked towards his drawer, where a folded letter basked in the morning sunlight. A familiar scent sent a wave of terror to his whole being, and there was a sharp tug in his chest as he opened and read the letter. And when he did, he dropped on the floor and cried out, screaming and wiping the tears sliding on his cheeks with misery.

Junhui,

You don’t understand.

I’ve been trying to save you as well.

-Y/N

Hello! Happy birthday to our one and only fabulous prince Junhui! This scenario was supposed to be my gift but then it’s a little bit cruel hahahha

Anyway! I would like to say that school is starting hahahahah can you hear me crying It’s going to be a great academic year yaaass

I would like to say thank you to my one and only boo @chillihansol for giving me the support I needed! I was inspired by your latest fic nwkenfwe time travelling and loops amirite hahahahha Thank youu boo! You’re more than a mutual to me, yknow, like a bunso hahahahha I love youuu

Thank you for reading! And have a nice day!!

#seventeen #svt #sebeuntin #Jun #wen junhui #seventeen scenario #seventeen angst #seventeen scenario angst #seventeen imagines #seventeen imagines angst #seventeen jun #seventeen jun scenario #jun scenario #jun scenario angst #jun angst #happy birthday wen junhui

36 notes · View notes

gripefroot · 3 years

Text

Eyes on You

Bucky lay, utterly enraptured and not a little dazed, on top of damp sheets. Sweat still prickles his skin, come alive in this new way, and it’s with a hundred thoughts and yet somehow none at all that he stares at the ceiling, feeling the pounding in his chest as tries to understand what just happened.

His muscles still quake and seize - but not with pain. With pools of heat and wonder still lingering, possibly because you’re taking your time, tenderly kissing along the ridged muscles of his belly as he breathes in and out - hair tickling his navel, your huffing laugh pretty against his skin.

“Liked that?” A purred question, and your tongue flicks at some sweat beneath his chest.

“Yeah…” Even his voice shakes. Bucky could be embarrassed - if he weren’t so lucid and lax, thanks to you. Thanks to your and your - modern things, he thinks. Whatever it is, whatever it’s called. He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t move - he can’t, frankly - as you get up from the bed - stretching your arms overhead in contended satisfaction, and he watches beadily out of the corner of his eye - the glistening contraption, still there, bobbing innocently as you undo the buckles. Lift it from your skin to set aside. For another day?

Leftover arousal is rushing again to fervid flames.

“I’ll be back,” you promise, casting him a wink. Disappear into the bathroom, come back with a damp cloth. Your weight dips the bed, and still Bucky is completely frozen as the warm wipes away the - er, mess from his belly. He should be embarrassed, but he’s not. A little raw, open and vulnerable - but not embarrassed.

“You know,” he says finally, as you get up once more to take the cloth away. “I was gonna make such good love to you tonight, babe. I had it all planned. I didn’t - I mean, I didn’t expect - ”

“This?” you finish the sentence as you wander back in - face alight with that coy arrogance that makes you so dangerous, and somehow so wonderful - Bucky manages a smile at last, gaze following as you tuck yourself in beside him, cheek against his chest as your fingertips find the sparse hair on his chest. “Aw, c’mon, Bucky - what more do you want?”

“Not that I’m complaining,” he says hastily - oh, there his voice goes, breaking again. “Babe - oh my gosh. That was - that was - ”

“I enjoyed myself,” you interrupt. Prop your chin up, smile a little silly at his face. Your finger strokes his jaw next, and Bucky shivers. “I liked it.” Your tone lowers into dark, sinful territory, eyes glittering like stars. His heart pounds fast, and his arm, around your shoulders, squeezes you nearer. “Watching you come apart for me.” A whisper now. “You’re pretty to watch, Bucky. And I like making you feel so good.”

“I definitely feel that,” he replied hoarsely. “Oh, babe - ”

A husky giggle, and you lean forward to plant a grinning kiss to his lips. He’d missed kissing, for this particular episode, and Bucky leaned over with a soft groan, pressing his mouth more firmly to yours - your lips part, welcoming him in, and he drinks like man dying for water, and you’re the stunning waterfall that offers it.

Still you laugh, wrapped up in his arms - all delighted satisfaction in your success of the evening. New discoveries, new pleasures - and Bucky is sure he’ll never be the same.

And despite his languid slowness, his hands roam. Up and down your silky smooth sides, feeling the goosebumps that trail after his touch. You hadn’t had your own pleasure, he realizes - and that jolts him back from his haze. Guilt, partially. He hadn’t done his job.

“C’mon, babe,” Bucky rasps out. Pats your hip as you pull slightly away, quirking a curious brow. “Get up. Sit on my face.”

“Well - I won’t say no - but - ?” The question is clear. The question is teasing.

“I can’t move yet,” he grumbles. “Your fault, by the way - c’mon, just sit on my face. Let me do my part. You’re soaked.”

And so you are - his fingers have found the junction of your legs, slick and hot and ready for him - not that he can give that yet, strung out as he is - but maybe later. For now, he can offer something else.

A little moan, pressed to his skin as you start to move. Lift yourself up, pushing away pillows to situate yourself most comfortably. And all the while, Bucky’s hands run up your bare legs, your back - bringing your quivering body to life with his touch as you sigh, settling against his chin as his tongue darts out, wetting his lips in anticipation.

That musky, salty scent fills his senses in the best way - floods his tongue, too, as you grind lightly against his eager mouth. Panting breaths above him, whispers of encouragement. His fingers dig into your flesh, to try to hold you still, but it’s no use. All he can smell, all he can taste and see - you. Lithe body arching so pretty above him, all joyous pleasure as you bite back a smile. A laugh now, and Bucky preens.

A shuddering, a whimper - and the tang goes sweet and gushing.

Bucky doesn’t stop. Why should he? After how you’d wrecked him, he ought to return the favor.

Twice more you shiver and clench above and around him - on his fingers, too, until you’re sagging, one hand against the headboard as you laugh, breathless and damp everywhere.

He’s still listless against the sheets. As he stretches his jaw, you falter back slightly and his hands catch your lower back. Let you relax. Drinks in the sight of your well-loved, well-known contours, much-kissed by him in the past, and he’ll have to do that again soon, he thinks. All of you, and your heat pressed against him.

Bucky is damn lucky, and he knows it.

“Better?” he teases.

“So good.” A sigh. “So good, Buck.”

“Good.”

How smooth you are! How pretty and lax, all because of him, his loving. A privilege.

“Mmm,” you sigh, and leaning back - stretched like a contented cat, and Bucky grunts as your soft hand explores his...er, throbbing condition, finally back to attention after such exhausting paces. “Ready for more?” you coo, and he shivers.

“Uh - ye - ”

“Too bad you have to be at the Dolby Theater in a half-hour.”

“A - a half-hour?” Horrified, Bucky finally moves - sits bolt upright, his stiff muscles protesting, as you tumbles into the covers with a squeak. Up to his feet, half-numb - he rushes for the bathroom, yanking the shower on and fumbling in before it can even warm. Ice-cold water splashes over his shoulders as he hears the echo of your laughter.

Well, it’s fine for you - you don’t have to go. It’s too publicized. But Stark had insisted on a full-Avengers turn out, and here Bucky is, yanking a bar of soap through his cracks and crevices, as if to erase all evidence of the sin of the evening. Don’t want anyone knowing...don’t want it to show…

His suit, thankfully, is pressed and ready to go, hanging in the bathroom. You dodge in, whistling a song he doesn’t recognize, placing a pile of clean underwear and an undershirt on the counter.

“Thank you,” he half-shouts.

More laughter.

Washed and dried in record time - yanking on clothes, only barely caring if they wrinkle. You return in a pair of your underwear and an old shirt of his, looking adorable and a little mussed from sex - his favorite look on you, to be honest - and he catches himself staring in the mirror at you behind him, squirting product into your palm as he yanks his belt tight.

Your fingers run through his damp hair, combing it out and slicking it up. What he would do without you - Bucky doesn’t know, and frankly doesn’t care. He smiles into the mirror as you grin back, grabbing a hair tie - and he slides a bowtie beneath his collar.

Calmer now, with your touch. His hair smoothed back into a bun at the nape of his neck, and after you rinse your hands, you search the drawers for cologne. Bucky pauses - lets you spritz his throat even though he’s rather have your lips there - and as you smile, he grabs his jacket and hurries out.

“Stark’s gonna kill me,” he mumbles. Plants himself on the bed, yanking on dress socks.

“Worth it,” you tease from the doorway - arms crossed, looking at a picture. A temptation to stay back, to love you more...but Bucky groans, and tugs the ties of his shoes into a knot.

“Worth it,” he agrees. Still a little raw, perhaps.

A kiss, with your hand lingering on the crisp shirt stretched taut across his chest - a breathy promise that makes his blood sing, and regretfully - he leaves, hurrying down the hallway to the elevator as he realizes - no one else is there.

Definitely late. Shoot.

A car waits in the garage. Lucky for him.

Traffic is awful, of course. Leaves him jittery in the backseat, still tasting your tang on his tongue as he realizes he hadn’t brushed his teeth - oops - and his metal fingers drum against his knee in agitation.

A text buzzes in his pocket - hadn’t even realized he brought his phone, and he tugs it out. You’d must’ve slipped it in when he wasn’t looking…

Your pretty face frozen in a snap, pouting against the pillows. You’re missing The Addams Family on TV, you type. Bucky huffs a laugh, his heart swelling a thousand times. Texts back a quick response - a plaintive, Wish I could be there, which doesn’t quite encapsulate the strength of emotion in his chest.

The party is little more than organized chaos. Flashing cameras as he steps out of the car, putting on a practiced smile - he can see, barely - Stark and Steve, further on. Waving him forward, passing security, he knows he has to pay his dues.

Ten minutes, and then into the event, where he’ll be free. Free-er, at least.

“Who’re you wearing tonight, Sergeant?”

He moves towards the press, giving an answer he can barely hear himself over the noise.

“Any opinions on the UN summit?”

“Got a special lady in your life, Bucky?”

A smile grows on his face. Never one to love the limelight - or cameras, or reporters. But his heart beats a rhythmic confidence - a secret to be shared, a pride to be worn. Well - partially. Because you can’t be known. This - however -

“I’m off the market,” Bucky says, and the cameras click faster. “I’ve been seeing someone for a while now. We’re very, very happy.”

“Who is it, Sergeant Barnes?”

“Can you give us a name?”

“I could,” he says, and lets a smile creep up his face. “But then I’d have to kill you.”

Awkward pause - half-hearted laughs, uncomfortable smiles. He nods his head, pulling away from the press with his hands in his pockets - Steve is waiting by the entrance to the theater with a frown, likely already preparing a lecture for that ‘crass, inappropriate’ quip - but Bucky doesn’t really care.

You are going to love this.

0 notes

tiang0u · 7 years

Text

you left a handprint on my heart (ch. 2)

“But you’ve covered everything,” Midoriya protests earnestly. “Your eyes...” And then he trails off, awkwardly, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows his words down.

Shōto wants to know what he was going to say. “My eyes?”

The cold air naturally condenses from heated breath, but his words imbue a different kind of warmth. “If this is comfortable for you, then that’s one matter. But you…have nice eyes, Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya mumbles.

bnha; tododeku; crossposted on AO3

Technically, Shōto could just ask Yaoyorozu to create a printer and send it over. It’s not like she hasn’t made one before—and she also once reassembled an entire rocket from pure theory and though its existential purpose was to explode in Principal Nedzu’s face and buy them time during a final exam, Shōto was still impressed.

Briefly, he wonders how Yaoyorozu is doing. The last he heard of her, she was heading a consulting firm in the center of Tokyo, doing hero work on the side. He guesses it would’ve been pretty bad of him to reconnect with her by asking her to make a printer for him.

But he now knows that public library printing is free during lunch hours and on weekends, so that’s what he’ll be doing from now on then. This is what it means to be a real adult, saving money and getting paperwork done all at once.

Rather than going through the mail and waiting for the processing delay, he could just directly turn in the forms at the office. So three days before the Day, he prints all thirty pages of his transferral forms and application for temporary leave. It’s just for an afternoon, and hero agencies are anal, but Shōto is the one who decided to go into the pro hero industry anyway.

It hasn’t been and it definitely won’t be a good week, considering what awaits him. He, of course, completely forgets that he was also going to print the articles Iida forwarded to him over recent attacks in the Hiyashi ward. Thankfully, he remembers this right as he unlocks his apartment door.

With a grimace, he sets his papers down inside and takes a slow trek back to the library.

There was another momentous moment like this too, in Shōto’s life. All Might’s retirement was marked by tears and denial, skepticism, bitterness, and fear. Shōto still remembers the day Endeavor almost burned the house down, punching furious flames into the papered walls. Number one hero—even if it was now officially Endeavor’s title, no one really gave weight to it. The prestige behind the title retired itself with All Might, and now, it too has passed.

Shōto thinks of his former teacher’s thinned frame, his sunken eyes and cheeks, and even then, All Might was a handsome man in his warm eyes, his strong voice, his fearless smile the moment he knew he had to give his everything. Shōto wonders how it happened. This is one of the crueler winters in Tokyo.

Was he cold? Was he with someone?

Shōto knows he wasn’t scared. There was only thing All Might could have ever been scared of—and it was that someone could harm the people he wanted to protect.

If All Might could see them now, Shōto thinks, he wonders what his teacher would think. Of all of class 1-A, scattered across Japan. Or maybe others keep in contact. If it weren’t for this case, Shōto would still be at Endeavor’s agency, alone.

He almost steps outside the library with his research papers, but ducks back in quickly enough when the sound of harsh rain beats at the ground. Some droplets hit his skin. He can’t say he didn’t expect it. The clouds, fittingly, are grey and grieving, gravid with water, and Shōto did not bring an umbrella, but he could probably wait out the rain and see if it dies. Or he could use his ice to cover himself. That is also a very good and smart option. This is the option he chooses.

The rain still gets his legs completely. It’s annoyingly loud, the sloshing of water in the storm drain, but it’s not enough to mute the sound of footsteps trailing him. He’s at least two blocks from the apartment complex; there are no pedestrians on this street. He is being followed, very carefully—so carefully that the footsteps stop when he does.

Nonchalantly, he continues to walk until he’s reached a wide street, and then he slows to a stop. He expects it when the blow comes, launching his water shield to block, and whatever weapon it is splinters the ice easily. He yanks his arm away and quickly moves away as the rumble of an attacking quirk shoots past his ear.

When he gets a really good look at his attacker through the rain, arm raised in defense, he finds it’s an ordinary thug. He checks what broke his ice and finds wood shards penetrating the thick layer.

Wood. Wood. Wood.

The thug raises his hand with a smirk, and Shōto narrows his eyes. There’s a reason why a brute like him would smile like he knows something, and when Shōto follows the guy’s line of sight to his left side, to his scar, he understands why.

He knows Shōto won’t use his fire. This is a targeted attack, specific to him.

Wood shoots out from his fingertips, and Shōto barely dodges the second time. The water is slippery, and he grits his teeth as his shoes find purchase on the wet pavement. The branches retract, and Shōto eyes the sharpness of the tips. If that had gone through him, it would’ve taken out at least three vital organs. A trained, cocky thug. That’s annoying.

“Todoroki Shōto,” the man recites. “Pro hero. Endeavor’s son. Doesn’t use his left side.”

Shōto crumples the papers in his hand. His blood boils.

“You did your research,” Shōto says coldly, straightening up. “What business do you have with me?”

“What business do you have with the pro hero industry?” the man retorts. “A man with conviction like you, working a phony’s job? A man like you—” He waves his hands nonsensically around in the rain in the empty street like a madman. “A man like you shouldn’t follow in your father’s footsteps.”

He chooses to ignore that. He is not following in Endeavor’s footsteps. He will never follow in that man’s footsteps.

“You think I won’t use my left side,” Shōto states. “What makes you so confident I won’t turn your quirk to ashes?”

“Why, you’re burning your papers, Todoroki-san.”

And he looks down at his hand, and the villain’s right. His papers are curling into ashes, cinders, embers, and they slip from his trembling, soot-stained fingers. He looks up again, and the maniac in that man’s eyes is feral, his grin pulling back his lips to show his gums.

“The person who dispatched you severely underestimates me,” Shōto replies. There is steel in his voice. “My ice is more powerful than your weak wood.”

The villain curls his fingers. “Your ice, which shattered—”

“My ice,” Shōto mirrors the action, “which turns all around it to the same.”

They both release at the same time. The wood shoots toward him, but Shōto throws his arm to the heavens. The rain freezes layers upon layers when it touches the ice, and the wood stops pathetically short as a sixty foot transparent glacier erects itself and the entire street becomes rime in an instant. The villain is trapped within; he never had a chance. He barely had time to blink, and his eyes are still open, body frozen in the act of attacking.

Shōto’s arm trembles and aches, stiff from wrist to elbow, so frozen that it is crystallized with hoarfrost, and he pulls out his phone with his left.

“Tokoyami,” he says when the ringing picks up.

“Todoroki?”

“I need you to take a guy in. I don’t have my badge. I immobilized him, so he isn’t going anywhere.”

“On my way.”

Tokoyami arrives in five minutes and whistles lowly when he sees exactly how Shōto has immobilized him. “Todo-ro-ki,” Tokoyami says, amused. “What a number.”

“One of Stain’s fanboys,” Shōto says. His right hand curls into a fist, and ice shards break off from his skin. “You’ll need to chisel him out.”

“That’s pretty cold, man. And you’re soaked.” Tokoyami gives him an amiable wave. “I’ve got it from here then. Get a warm shower, okay?”

Shōto nods, kicks aside the ashes from what used to be his papers, and heads back in the rain. The water has plastered his shirt to his freezing skin. He is completely drenched. And there’s probably a metaphor to be found in this, how Endeavor’s quirk will play into the copycat killer case, he thinks, as he ascends the stairs to his floor. He can’t believe that he subconsciously burned the papers.

That’s infuriating.

And what’s also is infuriating is that when he finally arrives, his goddamn apartment door won’t unlock, no matter how hard his quivering hand turns the key—the key, which is also frosting over—he is losing control—

The door opens. Not from any effort on his part, but because someone else opens it on the other side.

It’s his neighbor.

Damn it.

“Todoroki-kun?” he greets Shōto, questioning, and then concerned.

Shōto stares at him for a full minute, his key still in a door lock that is not his.

“…Would you like to come inside?”

He realizes that he is slowly freezing his neighbor’s door, and he quickly yanks his key out. “Sorry for disturbing you,” Shōto says. The flint in his voice is not intentional. It is all he can do to not turn this entire building to ice, to not freeze over and shatter.

Still, despite his tone, his neighbor steps aside meaningfully, albeit hesitantly, opening the door wider to his apartment where it is warm. That’s another thing. The heater in Shōto’s apartment died last week. Inevitably, considering Shōto continuously outputs a chill to vent his body. It wouldn’t have been a problem, since he’s used to being cold, but—

“I got the wrong door,” Shōto says flatly, turning away from his neighbor’s gaze.

His teacher’s funeral is in two days, someone called him Endeavor’s son, and his body temperature is so dangerously low that he will burn in lukewarm water. He’s always been bad at this anyway. He steps away to suffer solitarily in his own apartment.

Today and tomorrow will not be good days. The eve of All Might’s funeral has been like all other days leading up to it: empty but simultaneously heavy with silence. Security around Hosu City has tightened up in all seventeen of its sub-districts, and Shōto, as a consequence of everything, has a raging headache, a white-hot ache throughout his whole body, and struggles not to shake just sitting down.

“You’ll be interested to know that the guy you apprehended yesterday,” Tokoyami says, sighing, “had some pretty interesting stuff to say about Stain’s philosophy. According to him, Stain’s followers are still legion even though he’s been locked up for so long—everyone’s ready to take up arms with the old ways of the cult resurfacing—”

“…Todoroki-kun, are you paying attention right now? You know this is important to—your face looks really red!”

“No, it’s not,” Shōto replies reflexively.

“It’s red,” Iida insists.

Tokoyami peers over at him too, and even though neither of them are in his personal space, he fights the urge to push his chair back at their scrutiny. At least two minutes pass.

“You look like you have a fever,” Tokoyami offers, breaking the silence between the three of them. “Maybe you should go home for today.”

That’s one of the last things Shōto needs to hear, and that is definitely one of the last things he will do, especially with everything going on. The week All Might’s passing was officially announced was relatively peaceful. And now, as undoubtedly the copycat has now felt free to resume, the amount of incapacitated pro heroes has increased by triple. Kiyashi’s hospital is already transferring patients to Hosu City’s trauma center.

“It’ll be fine,” Shōto answers confidently. If the Hero Killer copycat isn’t going to rest, neither is he. “I can regulate my temperature to some degree because of my quirk. Please continue.”

Iida opens his mouth to say in so many words yeah right, because Iida knows him and he knows Shōto would rather freeze to death than use his fire to warm himself—and that is because he is an adult, he should be able to control his ice and he doesn’t need Endeavor’s quirk as some kind of crutch—but Tokoyami holds a hand up.

“We need you at your best, Todoroki.” Shōto stiffens. “Right now, none of us are going to be at one hundred percent—” because they’re all shaken, because they lost a teacher, a mentor, an idol, a symbol of hope, a friend, “—so we definitely can’t afford you being sick and not recovering.”

“I’m not—”

“And the funeral’s tomorrow, man,” Tokoyami sighs, and Shōto finally stills. “At this rate, you’ll be so sick you won’t be able to make it. You have like a billion sick days so take this one, Todoroki, and drink some soup.”

Maybe he shouldn’t have tried to delude himself at the office anyway. By the time he makes it to the sixth floor, he’s broken out in a full-body sweat, and his legs will fail him if he takes another step. On good days, he doesn’t even need to catch his breath once he reaches the top; now, he’s pretty much doubled over panting and wondering how he even made it downstairs this morning.

His body temperature is scorching hot and freezing cold at the same time. He will either explode, melt into a red and white puddle, or shatter into infinite, infinitesimally small Shōto shards. His short-term goals as a pro hero have been all but reduced to making it to the right apartment door and putting the key in the lock.

“Todoroki-kun?”

Maybe if Shōto pretends he didn’t hear, then the voice will politely go away. It sounds like it’s coming from behind him, like his neighbor just made it up the stairs too. Of all times. Does the guy not work?

“Todoroki-kun, are you okay?”

“Yes,” Shōto finally says, turning around to acknowledge his neighbor. The absolute conviction in his own words is there, in his voice, but it’s completely sabotaged by the breathless quality.

The look on that open and…freckled face is blatant concern. It’s obviously a sign that Shōto’s condition probably looks (as) pathetic (as it actually is), and his neighbor is obviously about to call him on it, opening his mouth hesitantly, like he’s trying to approach a wounded animal.

The only thing wounded here is Shōto’s pride.

“…Are you sure?” his neighbor finally settles on saying.

Shōto nods.

“You’re sweating,” he points out.

“I was about to go inside,” Shōto replies curtly.

His neighbor looks at where he’s standing, his fingers gripped tightly around the metal rail like it’s the only force that’s giving him upward support. Then he looks at the distance from the stairs to Shōto’s apartment. Then he turns to the view of Hosu City from their sixth story stairwell and the sunless expanse of sky, the harsh winter winds blowing at trees and he must come to this conclusion too. If Shōto’s sweating, it can really only be from one thing.

“Todoroki-kun,” his neighbor says carefully. “You didn’t warm yourself up last night?”

Well, it’s not that Shōto didn’t try. He jumped into one of the hottest showers of his life—it was on the coldest setting—but the cold in his body is a permanent feature of his quirk; it just so happened that staying out in the hiemal rain and fighting brainwashed thugs lowered his internal temperature critically, to the point where his body couldn’t recover. He gave up on the shower. And his broken heater certainly did no favors last night. And he sure as hell wasn’t going to use Endeavor’s quirk to warm himself up.

Shōto respectfully doesn’t answer and makes to move toward his apartment, but his knee buckles a little.

His neighbor says quietly, “It would make sense that his heater’s probably broken then…seeing as mine broke last month from the sheer cold, and since his quirk is essentially ice... His temperature must be ridiculously low right now…that would explain the sweating…”

It takes Shōto a minute to realize that his neighbor isn’t actually talking to him right now. Cupping his chin in a hand, arms crossed over his chest, his neighbor thoughtfully gazes at him as he states his observations aloud calmly. All valid points, made successively and clinically. His neighbor really does live up to the image his glasses give him.

“Please,” his neighbor says, returning to the not-conversation between them. He walks over to his apartment door, which is undoubtedly closer than Shōto’s, and he’s already unlocked it. “You really shouldn’t subject yourself to the cold, Todoroki-kun. And my heater is still working.” All this—despite the coldness Shōto showed him yesterday.

“Why,” Shōto says bluntly, “would you go this far?”

“I’m sorry?” he asks, confused.

“Whatever this is,” Shōto elaborates, waving his free hand vaguely at the space between them. “Whatever it is you’re doing right now.” He wants to think that he could string together a more eloquent sentence when his condition isn’t addling his mind, but the truth is he probably wouldn’t be that much more coherent. He has no idea what his neighbor wants from him. Shōto’s literally done nothing but rebuff his attempts to make any kind of connection, yet the guy is still trying.

“I…” His neighbor trails off and sighs.

The sigh is loaded with a heaviness that Shōto can’t pinpoint. It makes Shōto listen for it, to understand. His voice, when he responds, is in soft anguish.

“It’s nice to have some company to give you some semblance of normalcy when you’re in a bad place,” he answers, and that’s not at all what Shōto expected him to say.

The blunt honesty of those words takes him by surprise. It also rings true in his muddled mind, and Shōto can’t deny that this week’s really been a terrible one, and the weeks lined up after are looking to be roughly the same level of miserable if he’s still in this physical condition. (Emotionally, there’s nothing to be done. Shōto will always be like this.) Yet he doesn’t understand why those words have resonated so strongly with him, and this is why Shōto finds himself reluctantly stepping towards his neighbor.

“I understand if you’d like to rest in your own apartment,” his neighbor says to fill the long silence between them. “But really—you should warm yourself up properly. And if there’s anything you need, then—”

“Pardon my intrusion,” he says, interrupting, and he tries to ignore the way his neighbor’s face slowly changes from (existential) melancholy to a (soft) relief when he processes what Shōto has said.

“Not at all,” his neighbor says, lips quirking up into a tentative smile, welcoming him in, and when Shōto passes by, glancing at his green eyes, curiously, there is gratitude in them.

His name, Shōto finally learns, is Midoriya Izuku.

It’s a pretty plain name that sounds vaguely familiar, but what’s even more so familiar are the printed All Might photos scattered across Midoriya’s low coffee table. There are action figures everywhere, large, laminated posters plastered to the wall, and the couch has an All Might throw over it. A throw that Midoriya insists Shōto wrap around his shoulders, and when Shōto politely declines, he brooks no argument and puts it over Shōto’s shoulders anyway.

Oddly enough, Shōto doesn’t mind the sensory overload of his late teacher, despite his incomplete grieving; or maybe he’s so cold that he’s just incapable of it. That’s always a possibility—and then it occurs to him that Midoriya must be pretty devastated too then, in a different way from Shōto, since he was such an avid fan.

Shōto, gracelessly melting into the warm couch of his neighbor, looks briefly over the rim of the couch and into the kitchen, where Midoriya is boiling water.

“You should sit closer to the heater, Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya tells him, shuffling over. He carefully sits down next to Shōto and presses a warm cup into Shōto’s cold hands. It burns. “Tea.”

“Thank you.”

Midoriya hums, and then it’s quiet. Shōto waits for the tea to cool a little. He’s still sweating in volume, disgustingly, but it’s necessary to restore his body temperature, and Midoriya has also brought over a hand towel for him to wipe his face. His fingers eventually stop trembling.

“Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya starts.

Shōto turns to him wordlessly.

“Why don’t you use your left side?”

…Only one other person’s ever asked him that before.

It was Endeavor, coldly looking down at his prostrate form, arms crossed over his chest as Shōto knelt on the tatami and hugged his bruised midsection in pain, wiping the caustic bile and spit from his mouth. He remembers responding along the lines of you’re a monster, you’re a monster, you hurt my mother, and I will deny you with everything, I will deny you everything, and then he doesn’t remember much after that.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t find himself irritated that Midoriya’s asked.

“My father is Endeavor,” Shōto says. “His quirk is fire.”

Midoriya knows that, of course, and Shōto sighs, setting down the tea cup.

“He engineered this, with his marriage to my mother.” Shōto gestures with his hands, and he brings them together, wringing them, pressing his palms to one another to let fire meet ice. If he could put any more force in, he’d break his own wrists. Positively acidic, he murmurs, “He considers this his creation, his masterpiece.”

And there’s probably no one who doesn’t think that.

Everyone knows who Endeavor is; everyone knows whom Endeavor’s overbearing, illustrious legacy will burden. Anyone would know a boy with a scarred face.

“Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says.

He turns to Midoriya, ready to conclude his short, tragic lifetime synopsis with a dry but it’s not really your problem and this isn’t supposed to be a sob story, and if he’s loose-lipped enough, the chill is making me say things, but Midoriya reaches up, past his shoulder, past his chin, brushing aside his bangs, to place his palm flat against Shōto’s forehead.

His hand is warm. Shōto blinks and stills and does not stop him.

“It’s your power, isn’t it?” Midoriya continues softly, pressing his other hand to his own forehead. “Not Endeavor’s.”

Though the lines of eyes are soft, his gaze is sharp, trying to gauge the temperature difference between them, and Shōto swallows involuntarily.

“Even if he’s your father, you’re not him. You’re Shōto.”

“Oh,” Shōto’s voice goes. It cracks on the solitary syllable.

It’s a good thing that his face is already tinged red from fever; the heat rising to his cheeks shouldn’t make much of a difference then, especially when Midoriya’s just called him by his given—oh. It’s also his hero name, Shōto remembers, stupidly, but realizing that fact is too late.

Unbidden, his mother’s voice comes back to him. His mother’s warm hand in his hair comes back to him. It’s okay for you to be a hero. He turns his gaze to Midoriya’s freckles, breaking the eye contact, mouth parted and breath halted. Why is he thinking of his mother now? He feels the muted sensation of Midoriya’s fingertips against his dead skin; Midoriya is touching his scar and has not snatched his hand back. It’s okay for you. To be a hero. Shōto. You don’t have to be bound by your blood.

“Your fever’s really high,” Midoriya observes, pulling his hand back, and Shōto breathes in again. “You should lie down after drinking something warm.”

This isn’t something that he wants to continue. Shōto stands and says abruptly, “I need to go.”

“At least the tea, then,” Midoriya says quickly. “Something to warm you from within.”

He drinks the tea so swiftly that it scalds his tongue. If Midoriya notices his haste, he respectfully doesn’t say anything. He bows as low as his sore body with its skewed proprioception will let him, and Midoriya sees him off at the door.

Entering his own apartment, it’s immediately colder. He presses two fingers inside his mouth to cool the burning sensation, and the tea lingers pleasantly in the back of his throat, and the warmth in his stomach diffuses into his chest, loosening the tightness he never noticed before, and he wonders what it’s like, then, to grieve.

He hasn’t dreamed since he graduated from U.A. He doesn’t know why tonight, of all nights, he dreams of his mother.

His mother pours boiling water on his face. But when he stops crying, there is no burn. The sensation is not dead in his destroyed skin. Her hand, warm, covers his left eye and somehow, it feels like forgiveness.

Shōto grudgingly wonders if he should ask Midoriya about the tea brand, because even walking into the office, heralding his return into the world of bureaucracy, doesn’t seem to wear him out as much for some reason. And he’s not cold beyond correction anymore, not throbbing in pain in the trillions of cells in his body.

Maybe he’ll ask after he gets back. From the funeral.

“We still haven’t gotten any news from Tartarus,” Iida murmurs to himself, adjusting his tie in the lounge mirror. He commands an air of seriousness and regality in his black suit. Shōto doesn’t see him wear those often—usually it’s polos—but a funeral is a special occasion after all.

“We should prepare for the worst then,” Shōto says.

Through the reflection, Iida eyes him. “You aren’t changing yet?”

“I’ll change when Tokoyami gets back.”

“He went to assist on patrol,” Iida informs. “It may be a while.”

The decision to make is one of two things: change now and regret it if he gets called out to assist or change later and regret not changing earlier to save his future self the trouble. Shōto stares Iida in the eye and then relents, walking up to his locker.

Right after he straightens his tie and slips his phone into the pocket of his slacks, he learns he’s made the wrong decision. Iida’s handheld receiver goes off.

“Requesting backup—there are a shit ton of villains suddenly hitting the third and fourth wards, and they are firing off their quirks. I repeat—requesting backup in Hosu and Kiyashi—”

Iida goes to deal with evacuating and countering on the main street. Shōto gets assigned to deal with putting out flames—according to intel—black flames that leave charred corpses immediately in their wake. He’s halfway to his destination, and the dread is a heavy stone in his gut. He realized immediately, the moment he saw the directions, that it’s the path to his apartment complex. It’s the route he takes to and from work.

Of all places to attack, he’s not surprised. It’s one of the taller buildings in the quiet area—it’s fucking six floors. There has to be at least a hundred tenants in there, and judging by how harried his division manager was in assigning him to the area, no one’s there right now to commence a formal evacuation.

When he turns the corner, to his surprise, there are people running from the complex in the opposite of direction of him, parents with their kids, adults helping the elderly. They must have known to flee, but Shōto doesn’t see Midoriya as he brushes past the horde.

Midoriya must be at work. Or does he have a job? He was at the apartment complex yesterday during this time. Is he still in the complex? Or did he already run past and Shōto just didn’t see him?

No—he needs to calm down. Midoriya isn’t stupid. He definitely had to have left already.

The towering six-story complex comes into view. Black flames, just as reported, and to Shōto’s horror, two craters have been blown into the northern side. Not enough to break through brick and mortar, and the damage seems superficial, but it’s enough for Shōto to break into a fast sprint. Frustratingly, he can’t freeze the entire building over, not when he isn’t sure what the evacuation status is.

Large plumes of dark flames balloon upward from the open center space in a loud blast, and the air pressure shifts in the cold. Shit. It must be his imagination, but the sable flames are already fading from the bottom half of the building as Shōto bends down and places his hands to the ground. Ice erupts from his fingers and seals itself to the open stairwells, forming a multi-floor escape slide. He propels himself upward to the sixth floor and hopes—beyond reason—that the building is completely empty.

He thinks he might choke. A familiar figure stands protectively in front of a smaller one. It’s him; he’s not even dressed for the winter, a flimsy All Might t-shirt and flannel pajama pants—barefoot, and the little boy behind him is no better, shivering in the cold and from the fear of the shadowed figure on the opposite side of the building. That’s a six story drop to the square courtyard below, and Shōto seethes.

“Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya breathes in sharp surprise.

“Midoriya,” he yells. “Get to the stairs!”

Midoriya’s already hoisted the boy onto his back, and Shōto moves in to intercept as the shadowed figure shifts.

He hears it first, a sharp whistling, and then a blast of black fire hits the ice shield he conjures; the expansion of hot air blows him back into the wall, knocking the breath out of his lungs audibly, a sharp pain ricocheting down his spine, across his shoulder blades, and Midoriya hesitates, looking back, stopping in his tracks.

“Don’t stop!” Shōto snaps through the pain. “Just run!”

As if reading his movements, the shadow shifts back as Shōto presses his palm forward to shoot out a spike of ice. Not quickly enough—It scrapes past the man’s pant leg, drawing blood.

“Todoroki Shōto,” a low voice drawls.

What is it with villains and saying his full name? Shōto peels himself from the wall, and the man steps forth from the shadows, retracting his flames.

It takes all of Shōto’s willpower not to display his shock. The man is more scar tissue than healthy flesh, purple delving parallels of bunched skin into his neck, under his eyes—his arms and hands. His quirk is an emitter type—his body is lankily, almost flimsily built, but his arms are wiry and his shockingly blue eyes are sharp as flint.

“Good,” his target hisses.

Shōto hears a child’s distant scream, it sounds vaguely like Midoriya, and the chill of fear ricochets up his vertebrae; his body starts before he bids it to.

“You’re not the one I’m after,” the man informs him, catching his reaction. The smile twists his face, pulling at the stitches between the living and the dead cells. Shōto’s eyes widen when he realizes—too late— “Consider yourself lucky then.”

“You—”

A wave of black fire surges towards Shōto—the whistling sound again; he throws up another shield, and when the flames fade, the man is gone.

He tries to catch his breath. Then he runs for the stairwell and the makeshift slide and hopes that he makes it in time.

The moment his feet hit the ground, he sees them halfway across the large lawn. The man who disappeared—he must’ve been the powerful one—after fleeing, he left ordinary thugs to clean up and take the fall. Midoriya is running with the boy in his arms, barefooted in the frosted grass and debris.

But still, this next one is no ordinary thug. The man’s quirk is in the way his fingers contort into sharp tines, and they are already tinged with red. He is a living weapon, arms extending towards Midoriya’s back, rapidly catching up, and Shōto will not make it in time, even as he runs as hard as he can to intercept the path.

He sees Midoriya stumble, and before he can stop to think, his left hand comes up, generating a wall of fire that shoots across the distance. The force of combustion blows the augment back, curtaining Midoriya and the boy off from danger, and the moment the stream of fire fizzles from his hand, he realizes that he has no way to control the it now—he wasn’t even in control to begin with. The line of grass is scorched where the moisture has boiled off.

The villain shrieks as he writhes and burns, and Shōto’s arm trembles like a drawn bow as he tries, shamefully, to temper the raging fire with ice.

Wrapped in a red shock blanket, Midoriya looks small, standing in the view of the looming and damaged apartment complex. It’s still habitable. It’ll need repairs, but it doesn’t look like anyone will need to be relocated.

“Midoriya, any injuries?” Shōto asks as he approaches.

Midoriya turns to him, shifting his weight. The rescue teams managed to salvage some socks for him out of gauze wrap, and he smiles, despite everything that’s happened.

“I’m fine,” Midoriya answers. “It was probably pretty frightening to the others though.”

“It’s impressive that you evacuated everyone so quickly,” he says.

He found this out only after collecting the other tenants from the nearby shelter for medical treatment. When he’d asked, curiously, how they knew to run, an old grandmother said, a green-haired boy, a very brave one. There was a young one with him too; both of them went to all of the doors and almost pounded them down—the green-haired one personally carried her down three flights—and Shōto knows that it couldn’t have been anyone but those two on the sixth floor, when he almost didn’t make it in time.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures?” Midoriya supplies lightly.

Midoriya has the unspoken feel of heroism in the steady set of his gaze, the sureness of his still hands. His shoulders are squared compulsorily, even if they are tired and weary. It looks like he is mourning, and yet, no one died in the attack today. He gazes at Shōto wordlessly, and Shōto returns the action with subtle scrutiny.

He wonders who exactly Midoriya Izuku is. He opens his mouth to ask how could you have risked your life like that? but his phone rings in his pocket.

The moment Shōto answers his cell on speakerphone, he already knows he’s made a mistake.

“Todoroki-kun!” Iida’s voice booms across the wreckage of the complex’s courtyard, and Shōto pulls the phone away from his ear swiftly. “Are you okay? Is everyone in your vicinity safe?”

“Yes. You don’t need to yell into the phone,” Shōto says, turning speakerphone off. “We have the situation under control now.”

“We,” Iida repeats curiously. “Is there someone else with you?”

“Yes,” Shōto answers.

“Tokoyami-kun and I are heading over right now,” Iida says. “Stay put.” The keep the other person there with you is implied.

“Got it, Iida,” he replies and hangs up.

Then he turns to Midoriya, lowering his phone.

“…Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says, eyes flickering from Shōto’s phone screen up to him. Something in his voice has changed. In his eyes, something has absolutely changed, like he’s come to a revelation in the span of one second. “I need to go to—m-my mom. She knows I live here and she was waiting for me and she’ll be worried—I don’t even know if she’s—ah—”

Protocol states that Shōto really shouldn’t be endorsing any requests to leave from eyewitnesses at a scene.

But there’s that odd quality to Midoriya’s voice. It doesn’t shake, it doesn’t tremble, but it’s a false calm, and Shōto can hear semitones of hysteria if he listens closely. He’s never seen Midoriya, or anyone for that matter, so undeniably composed in expression but fraying at the seams, a controlled meltdown. The guy evacuated an entire six story complex during a villain attack with a reassuring smile, but now, Shōto doesn’t recognize this face, not on Midoriya.

Midoriya looks like he’s in full control of his mental faculties. He looks like he wishes he weren’t.

“You—you should go then,” Shōto says awkwardly, against his better judgment, and Midoriya gives him a grateful look, brow still furrowed in worry.

“Thanks, Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says softly, hurriedly, and leaves Shōto in the wake of a charred battle plain.

Shōto glances down at his phone again, and the time reads 3:54 PM.

He’s missed the funeral.

It can’t be helped then. He’s donned a suit that will never fulfill its original purpose. The same goes for Iida and Tokoyami. There’s still the memorial service afterwards, a formal tribute that they can pay to their teacher, but Shōto feels a bitter taste in the back of his mouth.

It was a cremation anyway. He missed it. It can’t be helped.

And it also can’t be helped, when Iida arrives with Tokoyami, that Midoriya is long gone.

“You just let him go?” Iida demands. “Todoroki-kun, we need to question all of the people present at the scene to document their accounts!”

“Don’t worry about that then. I’ll just let him know.”

“Protocol—” Iida splutters.

“Seems like you trust this guy, Todoroki,” Tokoyami notes, and though Iida wants to say more, even though Iida’s white dress shirt has a red hand print on it and Tokoyami’s suit is in tatters, he lets it drop at the tired fall of Shōto’s shoulders, considering the fact all three of them have just missed their teacher’s funeral to deal with the mess undoubtedly perpetrated by copycat Hero Killer lackeys.

“I—it’s not that,” Shōto says.

He has no idea how to describe, exactly, the melancholy in Midoriya’s desperate composure. He knows now, what quality Midoriya’s voice took (a soft grief) and he has no way to explain, in that moment, how he couldn’t have possibly kept Midoriya there, so he doesn’t.

Or maybe he misread it. Midoriya is now, judging by his usual countenance, fine. Shōto notes this as he reaches the sixth floor returning from the library in the afternoon and sees Midoriya for the first time in a week, turning the knob to his apartment.

Uselessly, the agency gave them the rest of the week off instead, since they had to come in that day and consequently miss the event they filed leave for. Shōto would’ve rather not been left to his own devices in the aftermath. So it’s paperwork week, Shōto decides. He’s collected at least twenty agencies that he’s considering applying to after this stint is over. And he’s going to read every single Hero Killer article out there. Including the ones he burned two days ago.

“The office seems to give you a lot of paperwork, Todoroki-kun,” Midoriya says conversationally, turning to face him.

“No, I printed this from the library,” Shōto responds idly.

“The library?”

He suddenly realizes that he should not have revealed this.

“Is your—” Midoriya’s face falls a little. “Is your printer broken? Is it because of all of those pictures I printed? Todoroki-kun, you can—you should use my—”

“Midoriya,” Shōto interrupts. “It’s fine. Printing at the public library is free.”

Reluctantly, he drops it, and his gaze goes to the floor. “Okay.”

“How is…your mother?”

Midoriya looks up again, surprised, finding Shōto’s eyes. “She was mad, and she wanted me to stay with her for more than this week, but I talked her out of her worries.”

“Maybe you should. Stay with her, that is,” Shōto suggests. Inwardly, he muses, or maybe I should move away. He’s been pulling nothing but trouble straight to this run-down apartment complex anyway; his plan to move out within the month has been foiled by the slow-moving case. “It’ll probably be safer.”

“I don’t think so,” Midoriya returns immediately. “No place is completely safe anyway.” Then he smiles, directly, at Shōto. “And I’m rather safe here.”

It’s a simple sentence. So simple, in fact, that it has simplified Shōto’s entire reply to dumbfounded silence. He thinks he understands what it means, but at the same time, he doesn’t understand it all. At a loss, he searches Midoriya’s expression for what he’s really saying. And that’s when he notices—

“You have new glasses,” Shōto blurts.

Midoriya, caught off guard by the abrupt topic change, reaches up to touch the thin, circular frames, like he forgot he was wearing them, like a self-conscious action. “Ah, the glasses that I had before…I broke them during the evacuation. But now,” he waves a hand in front of his eyes cheerily, “it’s like I see in high definition! I should’ve gotten new lenses sooner.”

So his eyesight is bad. And it got worse.

Shōto shouldn’t worry. Or care, for that matter. He barely knows his neighbor. Yet, the look on his face apparently prompts Midoriya to explain. “From working in dimly lit spaces,” Midoriya confesses. “And it really hasn’t been the same since I was hit with a blindness quirk.”

“Blindness quirk,” he repeats, unimpressed.

“It casts darkness on the target through eye contact by sealing their optic nerve,” Midoriya supplies. “Or I’m assuming that’s how it worked? The person who had the quirk is still serving time, I think, and I get the feeling he didn’t really understand how it worked either, because his attacks were a fifty-fifty hit or miss.”

Shōto’s face must be expressing something else now.

“Blunt force unsealed it,” Midoriya reassures him.

He gives Midoriya a blank stare. Blunt force? That means a concussion, right?

Midoriya coughs awkwardly at Shōto’s prolonged silence. “Either way, he was detained. As you can see, I am still capable of seeing and am definitely not blind, so you don’t have to look so worried, Todoroki-kun.”

He wasn’t. He’s not. “I’m not.” Shōto clears his throat. “And I meant to tell you this earlier, but I need to ask you to come into our agency. Following procedure, all public attacks require a thorough investigation afterwards, and…”

“And I need to come in to answer any questions you might have,” Midoriya finishes for him.

“Correct.”

“Iida Tenya works there too, right?”

Once again, Midoriya surprises him with his knowledgeability.

“Yes.”

Midoriya slowly adopts a hesitant expression. “…Would it be permissible if you just conduct the interrogation now? Between the two of us?”

“I…don’t see why not,” Shōto admits, because technically, he’s licensed for interrogation too, and if it wasn’t going to be him, it would probably be Iida holding the questioning anyway. “But it has to be done in a formal setting.”

“Dinner, then?”

If Shōto is moderately taken aback by how smoothly that came out, then Midoriya is definitely flabbergasted from his own words. He flushes red the moment they’re in the open and tries to salvage whatever it is they’re in, right now. Shōto’s mirror neurons almost fire in sympathy.

“I mean, I just,” he stutters, “going in is a bit much… I’ll answer any of your questions honestly and directly, Todoroki-kun.”

Okay. Shōto asks, “What were you doing before the attack happened?”

“I... Will you preserve my dignity?”

“What do you mean?”

Midoriya takes in a deep breath. “I…was in the bathroom,” he admits, and that’s certainly not what Shōto expects. Shōto can’t help the snort that leaves his lips.

He doesn’t know why Midoriya is drawing so many reactions from him. He doesn’t know what any of this is, but when Midoriya tries again, a little more hopefully, “You haven’t eaten dinner yet, right?” he quietly answers I haven’t and something within him relents.

Everyone in class 1-A knew at least how to cook at a respectable level for humans. This was a level that Shōto was also roughly almost at, but everyone always ragged on him for his lack of culinary flair. Now, Shōto has finally found a kindred spirit in his green-haired neighbor, who suggests a local yatai just two blocks down.

Midoriya fails to hide his laugh when he meets Shōto downstairs, and Shōto immediately recognizes why. They’re matching from hanten to face mask, and Midoriya pushes up his glasses and wraps the pale green cotton closer around himself.

“A hat?” Midoriya gestures to his cap as they make their way to warm food.

Shōto’s tucked his hair within, leaving his nape bare to the biting breeze. The upper half of his face can’t be seen from the shadow cast by the visor; the white cotton hides the rest. It’s shameful—it can’t be helped—that he feels more comfortable like this. He feels the back of his neck burn. He tugs his mask down to answer, glancing over at Midoriya.

“I don’t want to be recognized.”

“But you’ve covered everything,” Midoriya protests earnestly. “Your eyes...” And then he trails off, awkwardly, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows his words down.

Shōto wants to know what he was going to say. “My eyes?”

You have nice eyes.

Abruptly, Shōto tugs up his mask, clearing his throat. They both come to a stop.

What does that even mean…? How does a person have nice eyes? Or, as an amendment, how does a person like Shōto have nice eyes? It’s unspoken by probably everyone who knows him: you have Endeavor’s gaze. And with that scar, how could he say that? Midoriya wears glasses, doesn’t he?

”We’ve arrived,” Midoriya announces softly, like he didn’t expect a reply, and lifts the plastic curtain for him.

Shōto bends down to enter the small space curtained off by the stall, and Midoriya follows.

Shōto hasn’t eaten cold soba since almost getting irreparably chilled. He contemplates the appropriateness of cold soba in the winter, and it’s never stopped him before, but Midoriya, obviously a frequent patron, orders a hot and inviting ramen, so Shōto follows suit.

Midoriya takes a spoon in hand to recover broth from his bowl. “I never got to thank you, by the way.”

Shōto glances over. He doesn’t know what Midoriya is thanking him for, but it’s like second nature to lower the tea cup from his lips and say, “No need.” He starts drinking from his cup again, only to choke at Midoriya’s next words.

“You used your fire for me,” Midoriya insists. “That means a lot.”

He had panicked in that quick second; it was a knee-jerk move, and now that he thinks about it, he could’ve thrown up an ice wall that would have been just as, if not more, effective. The villain he set aflame is still being treated for third-degree burns. The only parts of him that weren’t savagely scorched were his augmented limbs.

“I’ve thought about…training with it,” Shōto states reluctantly. He needs to, if he wants to get stronger, and if he wants to control it.

“That’s wonderful!” Midoriya enthuses, eyes lighting up behind his circular frames. “But—if you don’t mind me asking—you won’t get burned by it, will you? I suppose it must increase your body temperature.”

“I haven’t used it enough to notice any similar effects to the ice,” he says slowly. “Though I imagine using both would finally normalize the consequences of only using one.”

Bitterly, he thinks it’s another reminder of what Endeavor has made him into, forcing him to rely on fire to not cripple himself—but this thought stops dead in its tracks when Midoriya makes direct eye contact with him—he goes still—and that’s when he realizes he’s somehow taken his cap off over the course of their on-and-off conversation.

“It must be hard to control after you generate the flames,” Midoriya muses, “considering emission and then separation from the creator…unless you can still control it from afar?”

“I should try that,” Shōto hums thoughtfully. “But if it’s anything like the ice, I doubt it.” He pauses. “You’re very keen, Midoriya.”

“O-Oh, not at all,” Midoriya quickly denies. “I’ve just—since I was a child, I’ve always loved watching heroes work and analyzing their quirks in battle. It’s really amazing, what people do with their gifts.” His voice is so heartfelt, so in admiration as he seems to recall every single hero that he’s witnessed. “You too, Todoroki-kun. It’s obvious that you’ve worked hard.”

Rather than talent, rather than being born like this, he means, unlike everyone else who is quick to unknowingly brush off his cruel training with their assumptions. Midoriya continues to surprise Shōto—first, with words, and then with meanings. And this is the second time he’s complimented Shōto today. Shōto doesn’t even know what to do with that.

“I’ll need to work harder with the fire,” Shōto sighs. Then he turns fully to face Midoriya. He came here for one reason only, after all, so he leans in close and speaks in a lower, quieter tone. “Let’s start with the questioning then.”

Midoriya nods, following suit. “Of course.”

“The protocol,” Shōto explains, “is that I ask you questions and you answer them as forthrightly as possible.” Midoriya nods in understanding. “What tipped you off that you needed to evacuate everyone?”

“There was an explosion,” Midoriya answers. “I looked outside of my window and saw that it glanced off the side of the building.”

“Who caused the explosion?”

“The guy with the black fire. He shot his flames with so much condensed force that the air pressure was enough to make a dent.”

“What was your evacuation procedure?”

“I went to every door and told them there was danger. Then I told them to go to the nearest shelter. A lot of them complied immediately because they heard the explosion too.”

And you stayed, Shōto bites back. You didn’t follow your own directions.

“Who was that kid with you?”

Midoriya’s eyes brighten in recognition. “His name is Kōta,” Midoriya explains. “His guardian wasn’t home. When I got to the fourth floor, he insisted on helping me, so we split up knocking on doors on all the floors from third to first.”

“You ended up on the sixth floor at the end,” Shōto says, puzzled. “Why did you go back up there? Why did you take him with you?”

“It would have been safer if he stayed with me instead of running away alone—” Midoriya pauses. He looks embarrassed. “And I thought—well. No one else lives on the sixth floor except for us. Initially, I assumed you were at work, but then—I thought that you might have still been inside. Um. Recovering. So I—I ran back upstairs with Kōta.”

Hearing this, Shōto is infinitely glad that he made it in time then. At the same time, his mouth goes dry and he wants to scold Midoriya for his recklessness. How could he have thought that Shōto was still recovering? How could he have gone back upstairs like that?

Well, Shōto prides himself on composure. “And then you saw the villain.”

Midoriya hums. “I wondered how he got up there so quickly. Or how he got up there at all. He wasn’t on the stairs—the only way he could’ve was if he had scaled the building or…” Midoriya trails off, eyes widening, “…or if he warped.”

Shōto’s eyes narrow contemplatively. “Interesting,” he says. “What makes you think he warped? Aside from the physical improbability?”

“There was a black mist,” Midoriya answers. “Visually it was different from the flames. It wasn’t from that guy’s quirk.” He places his hand in his chin. “If I had to guess, a warping quirk. It wasn’t until I’d knocked on your door that I noticed he appeared.”

It would also explain then why he vanished the moment Shōto disintegrated his shield.

“There was a big explosion when I got there,” Shōto says. “The flames shot out of the top like a bomb went off. What even happened?”

Midoriya averts his gaze to the street outside of the plastic curtain. Shōto can’t read his expression now, but then Midoriya turns back to him and replies, “I…threw my shoes at him. He blasted them upwards.”

That was needlessly dangerous and stupidly brave. Shōto wonders how Midoriya managed to keep calm like that, considering how precarious the situation seemed when Shōto arrived. He does not think about what would have happened if he had not gotten there in time. At all. And there’s still one thing that’s bothering him—

“And downstairs,” when he heard that kid scream Midoriya’s name, “what happened there?”

“The guy downstairs suddenly appeared too. With the same black mist.”

“The kid yelled your name,” Shōto says slowly.

Midoriya blinks at him, not understanding. Shōto stares back silently.

“He was caught by surprise. I ran faster.” Midoriya looks like he’s wracking his memories for the next detail. And then he smiles. “And then you came and saved us a second time, Todoroki-kun.”

Softer, he adds, “With your fire. You saved us.”

This is too close. For comfort. Shōto draws back from the small pocket of space inhabited between them.

“Those are all of the questions I had,” he concludes, a little too quickly. “Thank you. The agency,” —Iida— “may call on you to ask more questions after I’ve submitted a formal report.”

“Of course,” Midoriya says easily, leaning back as well, and the warmth from their co-existence in that one moment disperses into the streets as Shōto replaces the cap on his head and lifts the curtain.

But it doesn’t all leave:

“Thanks for eating dinner with me, Todoroki-kun.”

He gets back late. Late enough that he immediately remembers everything that he needed to finish before tonight. Midoriya bid him farewell at his own door, but it didn’t feel like a goodbye at all. Shōto wonders how the hell Midoriya managed to get him out for so long and so late.

Anyway, submitting a formal report for his (informal) interrogation could probably be wrapped up within thirty minutes, but all of his worldly desires have become getting into bed. So, instead, he texts Iida that he’s completed the questioning and that he’ll submit a writeup tomorrow.

To his surprise, Iida not only is awake at this time, but Shōto immediately receives an incoming call.

“Todoroki-kun,” Iida says. “Good evening.”

It’s midnight. Still, he responds in kind. “Good evening,” Shōto says warily.

“We need an unbiased party to conduct the questioning. I’m afraid you need to ask him to come in to the office.”

He had a feeling it was this. “I’m unbiased. I barely know him.”

“And yet you’ve come to trust him so quickly,” Iida retorts.

Even as a child, Shōto has never been able to lie, always forthright. He opens his mouth to deny it, but his throat closes up because he has no words to offer.

This is when he realizes that whatever this is has spiraled out of his control. Fuck. When did that happen?

“He’s avoided questioning for an entire week.”

That’s—that couldn’t be helped. Shōto will only say this—not because he is defending Midoriya, but because Iida should know. “He was at his mom’s following the attack. She was worried.”

“I called you thrice,” his partner (one of the few people in this world who still use the word thrice) continues, ignoring him. “You were out quite late.”

“Adults are allowed to be out late.”

“But it’s uncharacteristic of you, Todoroki-kun.”

…Of course it is. His time at U.A. was marked by lonely nights in his own room or quiet training. Iida must mean that then. The fact that Shōto lacked the ability to seek human contact outside of class and training, the fact that he never readily approached any of the others until their second year. And Iida must also mean about his house—situation—and even after they relocated to the dorms, the lingering phantom desire to be alone.

“Were you with him?”

“It’s not a crime,” Shōto says, tone flat, even as it dawns on him.

He doesn’t know what’s worse, the fact that Iida’s probably right and he’s actually, somehow, come to trust his neighbor, almost blindly, or the fact that Iida sounds worried and that thing in his voice is pity.

“You must consider this man as a friend then,” Iida says, and Shōto barely chokes out a no. This is a conversation that Shōto does not want to be having, about having friends—not when he doesn’t even know what they are, what this acquaintance situation is. “I don’t know what his character is, or who he seems to be, but—”

“Iida—”

“Just remember that to a supervillain, everything and everyone,” Iida warns him, “is fair game.”

#9k #bnha fic #tododeku #writing #au!!!#also crossposted on ao3

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