#sometimes it’s helpful though. it’s nice to be able to read fix it fics and then intentionally live a lie | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bluebeary-jay · 7 months

Text

Be still my foolish heart (don't ruin this on me)

Neighbor!Joel Miller x f!Reader

Summary: you and Joel have been neighbors for a while but despite your mutual interest in one another, you never crossed this line. until, after one tense situation, Joel slips up (based on this wonderful request!)

Tags: friends to lovers, love confessions, fluff and angst, Joel is your sexy neighbor you shamelessly drool over, also his toolbelt is an important character in the fic (don't judge me)

Warnings: angst, 'nice guy' alert 🙄, attempted assault (stopped by Joel), some nsfw content but not actual smut (yar girl is gettin there 😌)

Word count: 6.2K

A/N: hiiii my darlings!! sorry for the wait, i know it's been a long time but life was crazy. here's sth i've been workin for a looong time and honestly i stared at it for so long i no longer know if i'm proud of it or not 🙈 anyway, i really hope you guys will like it and as always, happy reading!! 💕

“I really don’t know how to thank you, Joel. This is incredible.”

Joel watched, slightly embarrassed, as you walked around the table with a wide, bright smile. You gripped one of the legs – the one that was previously crookedly attached and broke down when you put something heavier on the counter – and tested its stability. After a successful inspection you looked up at him.

“You’re a lifesaver.”

“Nah, nothin’ of the sort.” He waved his hand, feeling a big lump in his throat when you directed that pretty smile of yours at him. “M’just glad I could help.”

“You didn’t have to fix this, too, though.” You brushed the edge of the table which Joel sanded so you wouldn’t get a splinter from the rough surface. His eyes followed your fingertips before he coughed.

“Didn’t want you to hurt yourself. This side was practically smashed up, after all…”

“Still, I didn’t even need to ask you.” You shook your head in thoughts before glancing at him with gratitude. “Thanks again.”

“You really gotta stop thankin’ me.” Joel started to gather his things into the toolbox and wiped his palms on his pants (certainly not because they were slick with sweat). “It was a piece of cake.”

“But, you know.” You tilted your head to the left and right, scrunching your nose playfully, and it was so fucking adorable that Joel thought his heart was going to give out. “You already fixed the sink in my kitchen, that hole in the wall, my door, and now my table… Are you sure I’m not leeching off your generosity?”

A half-smile found its place on Joel’s face, and he shook his head with a chuckle. “M’sure. It’s only fair since we’re neighbors, sweet girl.”

Sweet girl.

Joel never knew if he wasn’t crossing the line by calling you that. You never gave any sign of discomfort or disgust when he did, but he also recognized that regardless of your reaction, he should stop. He couldn’t deny that his old heart harbored an embarrassingly big crush on you – after all, you were the most beautiful girl he had ever laid his eyes on – but it wasn’t right to think about you in that way.

If he only knew that every time he let those words of endearment slip, your heart started to do crazy somersaults.

Joel Miller was an extremely handsome man, there was no denying that. And with his deep drawl, the salt-and-pepper hair, the warm, brown eyes and that dangerous smirk he sometimes sent in your direction… it was no wonder you fell for him.

It also didn’t help that he was so kind, always ready and eager to help you with the smallest inconvenience. Sometimes it made you want to smash something in your house yourself, just to have an excuse for him to come over again and for you to be able to watch him work.

But you weren’t that desperate, yet. Yet.

Your daydreaming was rudely interrupted by a series of knocks on your front door. Both your heads snapped in the direction of the sound, but when you recognized the familiar pattern of it, your mood dampened in an instant.

Joel noticed the change in your expression, of course, and immediately stood up, leaving the toolbox on the floor.

“What is it?” he asked with a hint of alert in his gruff voice, but you shook your head.

“It’s nothing. Don’t go yet, okay? I’ll be right back.”

You exited the room before he could ask another question, and Joel furrowed his brows. He stayed rooted in spot, listening to your heavy step as you walked to the door and opened it. And then… he heard a male voice that started to say something to you.

Joel couldn’t help but grind his teeth as he finished gathering his stuff, ready to go back home. It was the second time that some man came to visit you while you had him over, and the bitterness he felt in his mouth was even more noticeable than on the previous occasion.

He knew you were quite popular in Jackson, especially with boys your age. There was always someone offering to buy you a drink or dance whenever you went out with your friends, and once Joel had to even step in when two drunk guys kept pestering you. But as much as it pained him, some of those men who showed genuine interest in you were quite nice. And good-looking.

And a lot younger than him.

He knew very well that he was too old for you. He knew that he shouldn’t fantasize about sharing a life with you, and that thinking of any form of intimacy between you and him was making him a big old creep, but no matter how many times he swore to himself it’ll be the last, he could not stop. You were just so beautiful, so sweet and so nice…

He saw your smiling face when he went to bed late at night, and imagined your body beside him when he woke up early in the morning. He looked at your house on his way to work and wondered if you were eating breakfast already, taking a shower or still sleeping peacefully amidst the many blankets he saw once on your bed. He felt a rush of energy and endorphins every time you knocked on his door, asking him to help you with something, and it only enhanced his already existent protectiveness toward you.

Suddenly, Joel heard a raised male voice from the porch, which instantly got his guard up. He quickly followed the sound, and upon rounding the corner he saw you trying to close the door on Jack, a boy he recognized but never talked to. He saw him a couple of times at the bar, though he wasn’t one of those bothering you and never seemed to give anyone any trouble.

Still, you looked really uncomfortable, so when your and Joel’s eyes met, he nodded reassuringly and took his place in front of you.

“Is somethin’ the matter?” he asked dryly. The sight of him took Jack aback and he opened his mouth, looking lost for a good moment. Joel raised his eyebrows, and the young man cleared his throat.

“Nothing at all. We were just chattin’.” Then Jack looked over Joel’s shoulder at you, completely ignoring the other man. “What the fuck is Miller doing in your house, anyway?”

You stammered, but Joel kept his cool, leaning against the doorframe casually. Jack was tall and well-built, but still smaller than Joel, and he made use of this fact to intimidate the boy to the extreme.

“Mr Miller is helpin’ her with the sink that needs fixin’,” Joel answered instead with a pang of irritation. “And you’re kinda interruptin’.” Jack didn’t move, and Joel clenched his jaw. “Scurry. Now.”

The boy huffed, murmuring something under his breath before he bid you a grudging adieu. Joel shut the door behind him with more force than he intended and took a second to calm his breathing before turning back to you.

“Sorry if that was too harsh–”

“No, don’t apologize.” You sighed tiredly and went to the living room, plopping down on the couch. “It’s okay. Maybe he’ll back off a little.”

Joel bit the inside of his cheek, wondering if he should ask the question that was gnawing at him mercilessly.

“Are…” he started, and you lifted your head. “I mean, are you two…”

“No!” you quickly answered, blushing a little to Joel’s surprise. “No, no, nothing of the sort. He asked me out and I told him I’m not interested, but he still tries to…” You waved your arm in the direction when he saw the youngster last. “I don’t know, convince me?”

Joel sat down next to you, clasping his hands together. “Well… if he ever gives you any trouble, you lemme know, alrigh’?”

A small smile spread across your face when you tilted your head to look at him.

“Thanks. I appreciate it.” Then a playful glint appeared in your eyes, and your smile turned mischievous. “...Mr Miller.”

A breathless laugh escaped Joel, and he dragged his hand over his face, praying that he managed to stifle a groan wanting to escape his chest. He shook his head to regain some clarity, but could still feel all the blood in his body rushing down. It didn’t help that your couch was too small, and your knees were touching – though Joel couldn’t tell if it happened when he sat down or a little bit later.

Fuck.

“Shut up,” he just murmured, not looking at you in fear you’ll see what your words did to him. “I tried to make him leave quicker.”

“And he did. And I think you deserve a reward for your help.”

You stood up and for a second Joel panicked. A reward, you said.

He couldn’t help the images that flooded his brain in that moment – of you on your knees in front of him, or bent over the table he just fixed. His eyes went to your thighs, and his own flexed involuntary when he envisioned how you’d feel underneath him, what sweet sounds he could coax out of you, how soft your skin would be in those places you kept covered…

But then you walked past him, and he snapped out of the naughty daydreams.

“Wh-where are you goin’?” he asked, his voice strained, and you looked over your shoulder with an oblivious smile.

“I made a cake this morning. I’m gonna bring you a piece, yeah?”

You didn’t wait for an answer, and just left the room with pep in your step.

Joel groaned and let his head fall back, covering the redness of his cheeks with his hands.

Idiot.

Almost two weeks have passed since the last time you asked for his help with something, and surprisingly, Joel was okay with that. After that embarrassment he experienced in his own mind, he told himself that it would be prudent to distance himself from you for a little bit. At least until he could act normally around you.

He still thought about you constantly, that he couldn’t help. Every time he saw you in town he instantly felt lighter, but so very often you were accompanied by another man – and no matter if you seemed comfortable with the attention or not, Joel always had this urge to come over and protect you from any unwanted suitors.

He was being ridiculous, he knew that. You didn’t like him the way he liked you, and even if he somehow grew a pair and told you about his feelings, a pretty and young girl like you would never be interested in someone who could be her father’s age.

The thought of you thinking of him as a father figure churned up his guts, making him feel sick. Jesus Christ.

But it still did nothing to weaken his infatuation, and when you finally knocked on his door again, asking if he could fix the rack in your room, he didn’t even hesitate before agreeing.

So here you both were. Joel, looking at the problem at hand, and you, looking at (none-the-wiser) Joel.

“S’nothin’ big,” he finally said after some examination. “I’ll replace the shelf and reaffix it to the wall better. Shouldn’t take long.”

You nodded, but truthfully you were only half-listening. The sight of Joel in your bedroom was far too distracting.

It’s been so long since Joel was a guest in your house – well, only a couple of weeks tops – but you missed seeing him in your private space. Though one could say, he never truly left with how often you thought about him.

So maybe that’s why you were so shameless with your staring.

His broad shoulders were to die for, and you bit your lip absentmindedly as your eyes wandered across his muscular back and forearms, usually hidden under the sleeves. You knew you shouldn’t be ogling your neighbor who was nice enough to lend you a helping hand whenever you needed, but… well, a little admiring wouldn’t hurt anyone, right?

And there was a lot to admire.

“You listenin’ to me?”

The brutal wake-up call of his voice pulled you out of your thoughts, making you blush wildly and your body hot with embarrassment at being caught staring.

Okay, maybe it would hurt someone.

“Y-yeah,” you stuttered, feeling your whole neck heating up rapidly. “Uh-huh. I understand.”

Joel’s lips stretched into a lopsided smile, and he turned to face you fully.

“I asked if you have some nails in the house,” he repeated, not breaking eye contact. If you allowed yourself to be delusional, you’d say his voice sounded almost… flirtatious. But that was probably only your head telling you what you wanted to hear.

“Yeah…” you breathed distractedly, but then shook your head quickly. “I mean, no. No, I don’t.”

Joel smirked, stepping closer to you and making you swallow heavily. Your gaze once again dropped to his strong arms, down to his big hands and… fuck. He had his thumbs hooked in his tool belt, already hanging low on his waist, and it made him look so ridiculously hot.

Lord have mercy.

“What got ya so distracted, sweet girl?”

Have fuckin’ mercy.

“Nothing!” you said, a bit louder than you intended, crossing your arms over your chest to do something with this splitting tension in your body. “I was just looking at… the shelf.”

Joel’s eyebrows shot upright. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he didn’t believe you. “The shelf,” he repeated blankly, and you nodded, trying to appear calm despite feeling like you were going to burst into flames if he kept looking at you like that. But then Joel chuckled, and his eyes turned as warm as always. “M’only teasin’. Stop lookin’ so scared.”

“I’m not–” you started, but your lips also spread into a grin when you saw his genuine smile. “God, you’re insufferable. Will you fix it or not?”

“So demandin’,” Joel mused, shaking his head and walking out of the room. “I’m gonna go get the nails from my house. Be right back.”

You whispered under your breath something he didn’t hear, but it made him smile to himself nonetheless.

It was so easy to slip back into this playful banter with you, Joel thought as he made his way back home. Maybe things between you two won’t be as awkward anymore (though he was aware all this awkwardness was his fault), and he could go back to being your friend.

No matter that he wished he could be something more. No, it wasn’t right to think that way. What you two had was enough.

Still, as he looked for those damn nails, he couldn’t get out of his mind the way that adorable blush spread across your face. And how your eyes lingered on his figure when he looked at you. But no, surely he was only imagining things.

…right?

Joel sighed, closing the door behind him and going back toward your house, his thoughts already on the best way to fix that shelf of yours and maybe stabilize it a bit more, because by the look of how it hung on the wall, it was only a matter of time until he’ll have to visit again.

Or maybe he’ll leave it be. Only to have an extra excuse to see you sooner rather than later.

He rolled his eyes at his own musings, but the train of his thoughts abruptly stopped when he saw your front door slightly opened. He slowed down, wondering if you went after him… but no, there was no sign of you anywhere, and he was pretty sure he closed it on his way out.

And then he heard a faint sound of glass shattering.

Joel’s mind went completely blank. In a blink of an eye he stormed into the house, his survival instincts formed over the last twenty years kicking in and screaming for him to find you, to make sure you’re safe and unharmed.

But your bedroom was empty and when Jeol yelled your name, no one answered him. You were within the safe walls of Jackson, and there was no way the infected or raiders could ambush you, but still Joel felt an icy wave of panic washing over him, his mind providing him with terrible scenarios that would explain the open door and your silence.

Then a small thud reverberated from the other room, and Joel’s legs carried him there without a second thought.

He slammed the door open, and his eyes immediately locked on the man holding you against the wall. Your assaulter – that fucking kid, Jack – had one hand covering your mouth, the other forearm pinning your shoulders to the wall. His knee was between your legs and Joel could see you standing on your tippy toes, trying to pull away as far as possible.

Joel’s hands were itching to get rid of the threat that guy was for you, but first his gaze involuntarily shifted to your face – and his heart clenched painfully when he noticed your terrified expression and tears streaming down your cheeks.

The blinding rage in Joel’s veins almost charred him from the inside out and he felt like he was about to explode from the fury seething inside of him. In two long strides he ran towards Jack and all but threw him off of you, stepping to the side to act as a shield between you and him.

“You just signed your death sentence, kid,” he growled and punched the other man in the face when he tried to get up. You screamed behind him, but Joel ignored it, the need to beat the living daylights out of this little shit almost overwhelming his senses.

“What the fuck is your problem?!” Jack yelled from the floor, holding a hand in front of his face. “You broke me fucking nose, man!”

It was true, the blood was flowing freely from the already swelling nose, but it didn’t feel like enough. Joel had to utilize every fiber of his willpower to keep himself from venting his wrath on this kid. He knew damn well it wouldn’t end well for either of them – Jackson had hard laws when it came to violence.

“You deserve a lot worse,” Joel gritted his teeth and motioned with his head towards the exit. “Now get out.”

“She wanted it!” Jack shouted, as if he hoped that his explanations would make the situation any better. He wiped the blood flowing from his nose, glaring at you angrily. “Stupid bitch,” he snarled, “can’t make up her mind. Didn’t I do enough for you?! I was nice, always helped you–”

“Get the fuck out of here before I break your jaw,” Joel cut in, clenching his fists and taking a step forward. The young fucker seemed to size him up for a couple of seconds, probably wondering if starting a fight was worth it, but eventually spluttered contemptuously.

“Fine,” he snarled, and then looked below Joel’s arm at you. “I wouldn’t want to catch somethin’ from you, either way, if you’re already fucking this old geezer.”

Your face, and also Joel’s, grew hot – but while yours was red from embarrassment and shame, his was burning from barely concealed rage.

“OUT!!” he shouted, his thundering and powerful voice making both you and Jack flinch. His face was twisted in fury and the other man must’ve realized that staying here longer would only mean worse for him, because he scrambled to his feet and ran out without another word.

The front door slammed shut behind him, and for a few seconds a heavy silence hung in the air.

Joel took a steadying breath, trying to restore his cool, but he felt himself shaking from rage. If he didn’t come back in time… if he was a minute late, he didn’t want to think what that bastard would’ve done to you.

Trying to shut down the intrusive thoughts, Joel turned around and knelt by where you were still seated on the ground. He couldn’t will the tension in his body to lessen, and his muscles and tendons were so taut that he thought they were going to snap. But he forced his hands to unclench before he gently cupped your face.

“Did he hurt you?” he asked quietly, his brows knitted in worry. You shook your head, but your eyes were filled with tears, and it felt like something was ripping Joel’s chest apart.

“He pushed me. And I… the glass.”

You lifted your hand and Joel winced when he saw a shard of green glass – from the flower vase which previously stood on the table – embedded in your palm. A trickle of blood was running down your wrist, but he presumed there would be much more once he took it out.

“It’s alright, sweet girl. I’ll take care of it.” I’ll take care of you. “Let’s go to the kitchen so I can patch you up, ‘kay?”

You nodded, letting him pull you to your feet.

Once you made your way there and you instructed him on where some bandages and disinfectant were, Joel gently grabbed your waist and hoisted you up onto the table, seemingly without any problem at all. You blushed when you felt his touch, for a moment forgetting about the pain piercing your palm, but the gravity of what you just experienced crept up on you again soon enough.

Joel noticed your silence as he carefully removed the shard and bandaged your hand. He didn’t want to imagine what exactly happened when he was gone, but it was obvious it shook you quite strongly. So when he saw tears welling in your eyes, he threw all caution to the wind and wrapped his arms tightly around you.

Not one ounce of regret had time to haze his mind over, because you instantly clung to him, too, letting out a shaky exhale. Joel hugged you tightly, letting go of all the tension and fear in his body. He was never this close to you before, and he allowed himself to indulge in the warmth of your body and the feeling of your arms around him, reminding him that you’re okay, that you’re with him now. He breathed in your scent, hiding his nose in the crown of your head and pressing his lips to your hair, hoping to calm you down.

“It’s alright, baby. I’m here, you’re safe now.”

You tensed, but Joel just held you closer, not realizing he said something wrong. He planted a soft kiss on your hairline, sighing when you started moving your hands up and down his back soothingly. Despite standing up, Joel felt relaxed like never before, like he could fall asleep right here and now.

That is, until you spoke up.

“What did you say?”

…shit.

Joel opened his mouth, then closed it almost immediately. His eyes raced wildly across the room, trying to think of what to say, but he didn’t let go of you. There might’ve been a selfish reason behind his inaction, but mostly he didn’t want you to see his flustered face.

“Nothin’,” he answered after a pregnant and rather uncomfortable pause, and cleared his throat. “You don’t wanna… t’was nothin’ important.”

Maybe you really didn’t hear him. It would have saved him a lot of trouble and embarrassment, and probably another two weeks of his life of avoiding you. But judging by the silence in the room, he wasn’t so lucky.

“Did you…” You swallowed before finishing softly, “call me ‘baby’?”

Joel cringed, closing his eyes tightly, and prayed for some higher power to smite him off the surface of the Earth. But again – luck wasn’t on his side.

The silence prolonged, and you finally grew impatient. You pulled away, looking up to scan his face. “Joel?”

“I’m sorry, it… slipped out,” he mumbled, all red and not meeting your eyes. That was a shame, because if he did find the courage to look at you, he would notice a small smile forming on your face as you regarded him.

“So I heard you correctly?” you asked again, and he sighed heavily, running his hand over his face and rubbing his eyes.

“Yes, yes you did. M’really sorry, I wasn’t thinkin’. I just tried to comfort you and– fuck,” he whispered to himself, lowering his hand but still not looking in your direction. “I, I don’t want ya to feel uncomfortable. I’m sorry, I can go…”

“No.” Your uninjured hand shot out and grabbed his shirt before you could process what you were doing. Joel glanced down at your fist clutching the material, and then back up into your wide eyes. “Please, no. Stay.”

His lips parted slightly at your request and unexplained (at least from his perspective) hope filling your gaze. He looked so adorable that you had never wanted to kiss him more than right now.

“Come closer,” you pleaded, barely louder than a whisper.

Joel obliged, letting your hand guide him. You gently pulled him to you, so that he was almost standing between your legs, and your fingers loosened their hold, now smoothing over the material of his shirt.

You took a deep breath and leaned forward, bracing your weight on his chest. Joel looked puzzled by your behavior, but when he realized what you were doing, he stopped you gently by putting his own hand on your shoulder.

“No,” he whispered, his voice full of pain, but steady. “Don’t do that. You… you’re in a state of shock.”

“I know what I want,” you spoke equally quietly, staring at him with nothing but pure genuineness and need in your eyes. “And I want you, Joel.”

“Please, ba–” he cut himself off before he could finish this word. It pained him deeply to reject you, but he knew that if he let you kiss him, you’d regret it later. And that he wouldn’t be able to survive. “I’m sorry, sweet girl, but it wouldn’t be right. I don’t wanna be takin’ advantage of you.”

Your face fell in confusion and disappointment, but you didn’t let him go even when he put a light pressure on your hand.

“You never..” you gulped, searching his face, “thought about it? About… me, in that way?”

Christ, what was he supposed to say to that? He wouldn’t be able to lie to you, not if you kept looking at him with those innocent and full of desire eyes of yours.

“Don’t ask me.” Joel closed his eyes, the muscle in his cheek pulsing when he felt your touch on the side of his face. “Please, don’t ask me.”

“Because I have,” you continued in a sudden rush of courage. “I think about you constantly, and about us. Every time I invite you over or see you in the town working... And I’m only saying all that, because I thought maybe… maybe you felt it, too. I think you do.” Joel didn’t answer, and you looked up at him with determination you didn’t really feel. “Tell me.”

Joel clenched his jaw, exhaling heavily, but didn’t pull away. He weighed the options in his mind while you waited patiently, and finally, his resolve cracked under your hopeful gaze.

“I think about you,” he began slowly, earnestly, “every night. Every fuckin’ night and day, sweetheart.” His voice was raspy, but that drawl of his so soft and delicious to your ears. “But I shouldn’t. You and I both know that.”

He still hasn’t looked your way. You tried to lean to the side to fit in his field of vision, but Joel turned away even more, attempting to take a step back. You grabbed his shirt again before he could do that, and he didn’t fight you.

“Why not?” you whispered, transfixed on his handsome features.

“‘Cause you deserve better. I’m way too old for you,” he answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, like you should know it already. “You have so many admirers who are probably much more fit for you, and it would be… it is so wrong that I’m lettin’ those thoughts linger.”

“I don’t want any of them, though.” Joel finally locked eyes with you, but still seemed conflicted. You slowly let go of his clothes and reached for his hands, then guided them to your cheeks. You saw his throat bob nervously when you placed them there and brushed his knuckles with your thumbs. “Look, it’s hard for me to open up, but… I really like you. Really.”

Joel swallowed heavily, his face contorted in pain – as if your words were wounding not only his soul, but his very flesh. Then the pressure on your cheeks became a little stronger, and he tentatively swiped his thumbs under your eyes in a loving manner. Your heart fluttered like a hummingbird’s wings as he slowly scanned your face for any sign of hesitancy, then let his eyelids drop and pressed his forehead to yours. You lifted your chin slightly, nudging his nose with the tip of yours.

“Call me that again,” you whispered pleadingly. His wooden, earthly scent was enveloping all your senses, making you feel so very calm and safe. You’d gladly lose yourself in him. “Please.”

Joel instantly knew what you meant. His resolve was wavering and his body giving in, but the doubt was still there in his mind. The fear that he was somehow reading you wrong.

“Don’t beg me, sweet girl.” His breath was on your lips, beckoning you even closer. “M’too weak for that.”

“Please,” you repeated more urgently, and when he didn’t move, you turned your head and pressed your lips to the inside of his wrist tenderly. “Joel.”

He cursed softly. It appeared that the tension between you both was getting to him, too, and Joel was losing the battle he fought with himself. He lowered his lips to the edge of your jaw, his pupils blown wide and eyelids heavy, almost as if he was under a spell. You whimpered when he withdrew one of his hands on your cheeks, but the loss was quickly replaced by relief when he moved it to the small of your back, pulling you closer and flush against his body.

“You sure about this?” he murmured lowly, making you shiver against him. His nose traveled along your jaw and the column of your neck, then back up until his lips brushed the shell of your ear. “I don’t want ya to regret it.”

“I won’t,” you promised. “Please, baby.”

Your plea sent a shiver down his spine. Joel couldn’t hold back anymore, didn’t want to. It was clear you wanted him, and he never was a strong enough man to deny you anything.

Your eyes met, and Joel took a second to get his heart under control. You were so beautiful, and your skin so soft under his touch… He tilted your chin up, barely able to comprehend that all of it was really happening, that it was you who put his hands on yourself. And you wanted him to kiss you.

For fuck’s sake, you begged him to.

All the remaining traces of his self-control evaporated in a heartbeat, and he pulled you in, pressing your body closer before bringing his lips to yours, locking them in a soft kiss.

His mouth molded perfectly to yours, causing you to sigh with relief at the gentle caress. You felt heat pooling in your stomach, and you were glad for sitting down because your weak knees would surely buckle under you in different circumstances. The intensity of the kiss gradually grew until it became so heated that you had to grab a fistful of Joel’s hair on the nape of his neck for support.

At one point, Joel pried your lips away, searching your eyes with concern. You worried that he was having second thoughts, but the longer he looked at you, the more his own irises darkened with lust and insatiable hunger, making your face burn like it was on fire. His clear want and the knowledge that you were the cause of it made you feel powerful, but somehow at the same time completely naked under his gaze.

Without any warning, he dived back in, his wide palm enveloping one side of your face while he tangled the other hand in your hair. He tugged on it, probably a little rougher than he intended, eliciting a needy moan from your chest. You instantly felt embarrassed about your response, but when you tried to pull away, Joel practically growled, not letting you turn away.

“S’alright, baby,” he rasped, trailing hot kisses down your neck, making your breath hitch in your throat. “Keep makin’ those pretty sounds for me.”

You felt dizzy. Like he could make you melt from the tone of his voice alone.

Having his lips on yours felt better than you have ever imagined, and so perfect that you never wanted this moment to end. But one thought kept nagging at you, making it harder and harder to focus, and finally after some time Joel softly drew away. He sent you a soft, almost shy smile.

“What is it, sweetheart? Not havin’ second thoughts, I hope?”

It hit you in that moment that it wasn’t the first time he looked at you with so much warmth and affection in his eyes. You just never noticed before that he always looked at you this way.

“No, no,” you hurried to reassure him. “Just something… Something I wanted to do for a while.”

He raised his eyebrows playfully. “Somethin’ other than kissin’ your handsome neighbor?”

You clicked your tongue at his unexpected cockiness.

“Not exactly.” Your answer only made him more intrigued, and you grinned. “Indulge me and take a step back.”

Joel squinted suspiciously, but eventually humored you. You bit your lip, feeling giddy at finally having a chance to do something you thought about every time this infuriatingly handsome man was in your house.

His eyes followed the tip of your tongue when it ran across your bottom lip… and you took this moment to hook your thumbs on his tool belt and yank him forward.

Your lips connected again, though it was far from perfect – your teeth clashed together and your noses collided, causing you both to yelp in small pain and discomfort, but you didn’t let go of him. Your joy from this silliness lasted only a couple of seconds, though, because before long Joel started to laugh uncontrollably.

You huffed and tried to kiss him again, but he withdrew out of your reach, wrapping his arms around your waist with a big, goofy smile.

“Get back here.”

“What the hell was that, sweetheart?”

His eyes crinkled in amusement and you felt a bit foolish from what you just did. You turned your gaze down, but Joel lifted your chin with his fingertip, and you couldn’t help but smile, too, when you saw how happy he looked.

“It looked more romantic in my head,” you murmured with an awkward chuckle. “I actually wanted to do it the first time I saw you with that belt on.”

“S’that so?” Joel asked and kissed you briefly again, this time with a hint of hunger he was keeping at bay until now. “You like seein’ me in it?”

“I really, really do,” you whispered, hiding your face in his chest. “I don’t know why, but it look so fucking hot on you…”

“My dirty baby,” Joel purred into your hair. The bright grin on his face only grew when he heard you groaning in embarrassment. “Gimme a kiss.”

You didn’t move, not wanting to face him, so Joel opted to nuzzle the sensitive skin of your neck with his nose. “You’re adorable, y’know that? Don’t get all shy on me now, babygirl.”

A deep sigh escaped your chest and the tension in your shoulders lessened. Joel smirked into the crook of your neck, still planting soft kisses on your skin. His lower back was starting to ache from the position, but there wasn’t anywhere else he’d rather be.

And then all the discomfort in his body was put in the shade when you moaned quietly, pressing yourself against him more and wrapping your arms around Joel’s neck.

“Do you wanna get back to my room?” you asked after a while, and Joel hummed into your skin, now littered with love bites his lips and teeth left in their wake.

“You want me to fix that shelf of yours?” he teased back, making you snort.

“Just wanna cuddle with you. If that’s okay.” You nuzzled into his neck, and added quietly. “I can still feel his touch on me. And I only wanna feel you.”

Though Joel would be more than okay with that, by the sounds you were making and the look you were giving him, he doubted that’s all you’ll be doing. Still, his back hurt like hell and he almost let out a relieved groan at the thought of laying down.

“If you want me, baby. If you want me, then I’m all yours.”

Not a week has passed, and Joel had to get his toolbox out again – this time to fix your broken bed.

Though now he knew exactly what caused the damage.

#joel miller x reader #joel miller #pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #the last of us #joel miller fluff #i played with perspective a bit in this one as you can probably tell #joel miller x you #joel tlou #the last of us fanfiction #joel miller fanfiction

1K notes · View notes

irb-pascalito-99 · 1 month

Text

Catch Me If You Can

Pairing: Joel Miller x f!reader

Word Count: 2.4k

Rating: 18+ MDNI

Warnings: Smut, teasing, unprotected p in v, come play

Summary: Joel’s girl can’t stop staring at him while he’s fixing the table they broke.

A/N: This is an excerpt from Chapter Thirteen of my fic Always an Angel, Never a God. To read more of this pairing visit a03.

I lean back and watch the muscles in Joel’s back flex as he drills new bolts into the table. Beads of sweat roll down his arms and create dark patches on his t-shirt. I crawl toward him and kiss his neck as he puts the drill down.

“I think you should do this with your shirt off,” I mumble against his skin.

My hands slide underneath his shirt, trailing up his stomach and chest. Joel chuckles. He leans back slightly to give me better access.

I grab the hem of his t-shirt and pull it over his head. He lifts his arms as I do. Joel allows me a couple more kisses before he starts to work on the table again.

I chew on my bottom lip while I watch him. Joel doesn’t have defined abs or the form of a bodybuilder, but there’s no mistaking he has muscles. His arms and back flex as he picks up another table leg to screw into place.

I offered help when he started, but he wouldn’t allow it. Now, he focuses on the task at hand. His eyebrows crease as he bolts the leg into place. He shakes it firmly to assure it is strong before moving on to the next one. He looks over his shoulder to see me still staring at the definition in his arms and back.

“Careful now, I’ll start thinkin’ you only want me for my body,” he jokes with a wink in my direction.

“I like you for more than your body,” I lean back against a nearby wall while Joel searches for the bolts for the next leg.

“Oh really, like what?” He asks. I roll my eyes at his obvious attempt for compliments, but happily play into it.

“Well, turns out you’re good at making furniture,” I joke. He laughs and shakes his head before screwing in the next bolts.

I could think of a million reasons why I like Joel. He’s unbelievably generous. He’s smart, but he doesn’t rub your face in it. He’s amazing with Sarah, and so understanding with Ellie. He’s the kind of man who fucks you so hard against a table it breaks, and then spends the next afternoon putting it back together again. When he pauses with the drill again I continue with an honest answer to his question.

“You make me feel safe,” I say. He puts the drill down and turns his full attention to me. “I don’t have to pretend to be anyone else. I can fall apart a little around you. You make me feel safe.”

I keep my eyes on the ground. I don’t want to see Joel’s reaction to my statement. I don’t want to know if it’s too much too soon. We sit in silence until he picks up the drill again.

“You make me feel safe too,” He says. I lift my eyes from the floor. He fumbles with the screws in his hands. “I’ve been focused on Sarah for so long. It’s nice to be able to let go a little sometimes, have somethin’ for myself you know?”

My heart flutters at the notion of being something he holds for himself, that I could be as important to him as he is to me. I know Joel loves deeply, and Sarah will always be the biggest thing in his life, but I hadn’t thought of how lonely it must have been for him over these last several years.

Obviously Sarah’s mom leaving had left a hole in their family, but Joel lost more than a co-parent. He lost a partner, a wife. He’s never talked about her in a romantic sense. He hasn’t mentioned her at all since the hospital. I haven’t wanted to push him into opening up, but something about this conversation feels different. It feels as though he’s offering me something here.

“Did you have that with Annie?” I ask. Joel’s shoulders tense, and I fear I may have misread things. “Was it ever just easy?”

Joel focuses on drilling the screws into the final leg before he answers me. My heart thumps in anxiety. I shouldn’t have pushed. The weekend was going so well. Why did I have to push my luck?

“I guess it was for a minute there, when we were just young kids livin’ our lives,” He examines his work, shaking the table legs again as he continues explaining. He doesn’t look at me while he talks. “She got pregnant so early into our relationship though, so it didn’t stay like that for long.”

I debate on leaving it like that. Joel is clearly uncomfortable, but I want to know him better. I hardly know his past at all.

“Why? What happened?” I ask.

Joel rubs his face and then wipes his hands on his jeans. He doesn’t shy away from the topic, but I can tell he wants the conversation to be over. From what I can tell after conversations with Tommy and Sarah, Joel doesn’t talk about Annie with anyone these days. I find that strange coming from a man who’s been so adamant that I open myself up to others.

“It was just a lot of pressure,” Joel grabs one end of the table and turns it back over to stand on it’s legs. “Neither of us knew what we wanted or how to handle it. Our parents were furious. We thought marriage was the best answer but neither of us were ready for it. It was a giant dose of real world issues shoved into our teenage romance, so no it wasn’t ready for long.”

“Tommy mentioned you guys were on your own with all that.” I respond. Joel turns to me with a slightly angered look on his face.

“It’s not Tommy’s place to be sharing that,” he says. I shrink back into the wall slightly. Joel’s anger immediately dissipates after seeing my reaction. “Sorry it’s just, a part of my life I don’t want you to have to deal with.”

I try not to be angry that he chooses to hide that part of his life from me, but I find myself wondering why he doesn’t think he can trust me with it. He seems so keen on knowing my secrets and holding my darkness. I wish he’d let me do the same for him.

He doesn’t give me any more room to press him on the topic, choosing instead to bring the energy in the room back up. He picks me up and carries me over to the table. I squeal and kick my legs in the air, caught off guard by suddenly being thrown over Joel’s shoulder.

When he sets me down he places me on the finished table and stands between my parted knees. He places his hands on the surface of the table bracketing my hips. His lips come forward to meet mine, pulling me in for a deep kiss when he shakes the table roughly again. It stays firm on the ground, no creaking or concerns that it might collapse.

“Now that’s a proper table,” he says with a grin. He pulls me in for another kiss, immediately deepening it and bringing me closer to the edge of the table. As the kiss gets more heated I push him away. “What?”

“We are not fucking on the table again Miller, you just fixed it.” Joel’s big brown eyes morph into a sad pleading expression, but I refuse to cave. Instead I shake my head and cross my arms.

“Oh come on,” He kisses my neck, biting down enough to leave a mark on the skin.

“Joel” I moan and throw my head back. When he moves to the other side of my neck I shake my head to clear it and crawl across the table to the other side.

He stands with his hands still on the table. I grin at him while he gives me a grumpy look on the other side of the wood.

“Not on the table,” I say cheekily.

When he starts to round the corner toward me I run off in the opposite direction, heading for the stairs. I giggle as I hear him start to run after me. I’m halfway up the stairs when I feel his hands grip my waist and pull me off my feet. I kick my feet in the air and squeal.

Joel places my knees on the ground. I grab the edge of the steps in front of me and gasp when he grabs the waistband of my leggings and underwear, pulling both down my thighs. The material gathers at my knees as he fumbles with his belt.

“Joel,” I whine. The tension pulls in my center so much it almost hurts. I can feel the center of my thighs becoming slick as my wetness drips down the inside.

“I know baby. I know, I’ll make it feel better.” Joel yanks his own pants down enough that his cock springs out.

His hard length presses against my back causing me to moan as I press back into him. What started out as playful banter has turned into overwhelming need. Joel runs his fingers along my folds, groaning loudly when he realizes how wet I am.

“Oh darlin’, you need it bad huh?” He mumbles huskily into my ear. I nod my head, pushing myself back against him again.

He chuckles in response as he brings his hand back to his cock. He pushes his length through my folds slowly. I push my body back into his hoping that he’ll begin to fill me. I let out a hiss when the head of his member brushes against my clit before he pulls back again.

After a couple thrusts his cock notches at my throbbing entrance. I’m panting as I wait for him to press forward, on the verge of tears from anticipation. He kisses my shoulder while he pushes just the tip inside and freezes again.

“Please, please, please, plea-” I beg, cut short from the delicious stretch of his cock inside me. I throw my head back on his shoulder as he thrusts forward. His hands grip my hips to hold me still while I tremble around him.

Once he’s filled me to the brim he pauses to let me adjust. My pussy flutters around his pulsing length. I could probably come just from this, but he soon retreats and slams his hips back into mine. He keeps his pace slow, but his thrusts hard and deep. Each one pushes the breath out of my lungs.

“Fuck, Joel.” I moan as he thrusts in again. “It feels so good, you feel so good inside me.”

“Yeah?” He pants. His hands slip on my hips as he struggles to maintain his grip through the combined sweat of our bodies. Words are becoming increasingly more difficult as the pleasure builds so I nod my head in response.

I feel my core tighten and clench around Joel’s cock. He groans and starts to thrust harder and slightly faster. His hand slips around my front to start making small circular motions on my clit. The coil inside me starts to tighten even more, causing me to lurch forward on the stairs.

I rest my forehead on the stairs as I call out for Joel, no longer aware or in control of what I’m saying. Whatever it is, it spurs him on more. My fingers pull at the threads of the carpet on the stairs, undoubtedly pulling chunks out as well, while Joel’s fingers speed and supply more pressure. Something snaps inside me. I scream as I let go. Joel grunts as my pussy throbs around him, and continues working me through my climax.

When I come down my body sags against the harsh angles of the stairs. The only thing keeping my hips from the ground is Joel’s hand wrapped around my waist. I can tell he’s close. His thrusts become sloppier as he moans louder with each one. I feel him pulse inside me and he grunts.

He quickly pulls out and turns my body around on the stairs. Joel’s hands grab the front of the shirt I’m wearing, his shirt I stole off the bedroom floor this morning, and yank it open. Buttons clatter along the walls and railing of the stairs as they fly away.

With my chest and stomach exposed to the open air, Joel brings his hand to his cock. He pulls it rapidly. I watch him through hooded eyes while he moans. His eyes wander over my figure splayed out in front of him. Once he looks up to see my face he lets go with a loud growl. His seed decorates my body in ribbons, continuing to pump his length until he has no more left to give.

He grabs the wall with one hand and the railing with another as he breathes heavily with his head hung. I commit the sight to memory, certain that this is what all the greatest painters in history saw when they decided to capture the beauty of man.

His breathing begins to slow down when he opens his eyes again. He brings them up to me and remains frozen as I trail one hand down to the mess he’s left on my skin. I collect his spend on my fingers and lock eyes with him as I bring it up to my mouth and suck my fingers dry. He looks about ready to collapse from the sight alone.

When I pull my fingers from my lips he leans down and kisses me gently. His tongue licks along my bottom lip before slipping inside my mouth. As he pulls away a string of saliva connects us and then splits, seeking in the coarse hairs of his beard.

He stands up first, pulling his pants back up, and then helps me back to my feet. Joel pulls my leggings and underwear back up for me as I wobble on my legs. I keep my grip on the railing so I don’t fall. Over half the buttons on the shirt I was wearing are now hidden in the carpet of the stairs, so it remains open while I attempt to climb back up the stairs. Joel lets me try for a minute before picking me up and carrying me to bed for a nap.

To read more visit a03.

#pedro pascal #smut #fanfic #joel miller #joel miller smut #a03 fanfic #a03 writer #joel smut #tlou hbo #joel tlou #joel miller x original character #joel miller x oc #joel miller x reader #wip #pedrostories #pedro pascal smut #pedro pascal fanfiction

508 notes · View notes

pluviophile-imagines · 2 years

Text

Sleeping in the Garden: Part I

in which bakugo katsuki is your next door neighbor, and he’s just gotten custody of two girls he’s far too young and far too inexperienced to be a father for—but he’s bakugo katsuki, so he’s damn well going to do it anyway

bakugo katsuki x fem!reader

wc: 21.5k genre: pro hero au, neighbor au, single dad au, slow burn, kidfic type: longfic (6 parts) reader: fem (she/her pronouns, fem terms, neutral clothing) part warnings: children (7&16 years old), parent illness/death, discussions of toxic relationships (pre-fic), discussions of age gap (pre-fic; 20 & 34) note: this is the first part of my submission to the @mybigbangacademia big bang! this was an incredible opportunity, absolutely full to the brim with such talented writers and authors, and i for one can’t wait to check them all out! i’d also like to give a quick thanks to @phen0l and @sipsteainanxiety for their incredible beta work ♥️ this fic is a real work from the heart, something i’ve been working on for over a year now, so i hope you all enjoy!

masterlist || part ii ⟹

You sit at your kitchen counter to do your work. It’s not exactly ideal; you can’t see them, and you’re certain your back will ache in the morning as punishment for using the tall bar chair for an hour and a half, but you make it work. The minutes pass, the girls continue to work on their assignments and help each other out when needed. It isn’t until a text chime blares out that you turn around and realize how long it’s been.

Ayame is looking down at her phone, reading the text with her arms still preoccupied with academics.

“Did your father get back to you?” you ask.

“He’s not my father,” Ayame snaps immediately, head snapping over to fix you with a fierce glare. “Despite what he and everyone else thinks, he is not my dad, so don’t call him that.”

You raise your hands in surrender, palms out. “Peace. Understood. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

She seems to startle at that—her glare doesn’t pause but her brow furrows further in confusion and when she speaks it’s muttered more than angry. “Yeah. You shouldn’t’ve.”

“But I need to know he knows where you are.”

“He does,” she grumbles. “He’s stuck in traffic, he’ll be here soon.”

Your next door neighbor is the number two pro hero.

It’s a nice neighborhood—admittedly most of the inhabitants are getting on in years, and at times can be unbearably wealthy, but you’re not about to complain when you inherited your half of the duplex already paid off by your grandparents. It’s an unusual western-style house, connected on one side to a reflected twin, with three floors, three bedrooms (though you’ve converted one into an office), two (and a half) baths, and a shared rooftop terrace with the remains of planter boxes and a run-down little greenhouse that your grandfather once used to grow food; a nice place, something you’d never have been able to afford if you hadn’t come into it by luck.

The leftmost wall is shared with none other than the Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight, though contrary to what the name might suggest he’s actually a pretty okay neighbor. That is to say: an almost entirely absent one.

You don’t see the man very much. Hero work, you presume, keeps him more than busy; when he’s home there’s always a shiny, clearly expensive sports car in the driveway (you have no clue what kind but it looks like something a car nut would drool over) and you definitely see it gone more than not. The older ladies like to coo at him when he shows up—sometimes with another tall, built hero in tow, often with groceries in arm. You’ve only talked to him a few times but he remembers your name, and he gives a brusque little nod of acknowledgement whenever you wave at him in greeting. He’s not exactly known in the news as the friendliest type but you’re never felt entirely unwelcome when you’ve gone over to let him know that you’ll be on vacation for a week, or that you’re expecting a handyman to stop by to fix your sink. And that’s just about all the friendliness one inherently needs from a neighbor, so you’re content with the whole relationship.

That kind of goes out the window when the girls show up, because you’re too meddling for your own good and nobody, not even (or perhaps especially) an incredibly busy top hero, is prepared to suddenly take on two children without warning.

You’re not one to keep up with hero gossip—not one to pour through those magazines filled with blurry photos taken from a distance, speculating about which pros are dating which models and how long they last in bed—but since you’ve moved in next door to Mister Number Two you’ve kept half an ear out for stories involving him.

It’s not as if you’re prying, really, because the whole damn country has been unable to shut up about it since the day Dynamight went into a hospital and came out with an elementary schooler in arm and a teenager trailing behind. Your own grandmother called you a day afterwards to ask if you’d met them. And more importantly you’re there—you work from home and you share an entire wall (and a porch and a roof) with them, so it’s really only natural for you to take notice.

It’s only been two weeks, and things are showing no sign of dying down. You don’t know their names or their ages or even how Dynamight is really related to them—it’s all been conjecture, from what you can tell, and either way you figure it’s none of your business—but it’s impossible not to have noticed the younger’s red eyes. They’re stark in contrast to the other’s dark brown, and they match perfectly with those of the very man they’re living with. The conclusion is less of a jump and more of a modest step.

Today, when you lock up your door behind you with Tadeo on his leash for his afternoon walk, you find that they’re standing at the top of Bakugo’s front stoop. The younger sits pouting on the top step with her head propped in her hands and the elder leans back against the railing with an angry expression, phone held up to her ear as she speaks rapidly into it. You don’t entirely want to impose or assume, nor do you want to seem unapproachable, so as you pass the pair of them you give a little smile and a friendly bow of the head in greeting.

The little one perks up slightly, responding in kind. The older one glances at you, but is solidly preoccupied.

“I’m Riko!” says the girl. “Your dog is cute!”

You give her your own name. “I live next door. It’s nice to meet you. Tadeo is cute, isn’t he?”

Riko nods excitedly. When she opens her mouth to speak again, however, the older girl behind her lets out a huff that startles her into turning around. At the same time, Tadeo yanks you along, eager to continue his walk; and while Riko looks disappointed to see you go, her companion distracts her quickly by bending down to hand her the phone and, you’re fairly sure, giving her some kind of order for what to say into it.

You pay it little mind. In fact it’s dashed from your thoughts quickly as you allow your dog—surprisingly strong for how little and old he is—to lead you down the road, determined to sniff at a fire hydrant and then a telephone pole and then a mailbox. The neighborhood streets are familiar. It’s the very start of spring so the early flowers are beginning to break through the soil and the weather is nicely brisk but not too cold, and you let Tadeo dictate your route according to his own graying canine whims.

Soon enough, though, you’re approaching your house the way you’d left. Thirty minutes have passed—a longer walk than typical, but it seemed Tadeo needed it and it was a pleasant enough day that you hadn’t minded—and that’s why you’re mildly concerned when you come up to the building to find Dynamight’s two mystery wards still hovering on his front porch. Riko perks up once again at your reappearance, pulling her head out of her hands.

“Ayame,” you hear her hiss, turning around to tug at the other girl’s pleated skirt, “Ayame she’s back.”

Ayame looks up from her phone, looking terse and annoyed, and glances down at Riko before zeroing in on you.

“Hey!” she calls out. “Can my sister pet your dog?”

You smile, pausing right in front of the stairs. “Yeah, sure thing. He’s friendly. And old, so don’t let his excitement fool you—he’s about to go in and take a nap until dinner.”

The girl races down the steps like a bullet, falling to her knees on the sidewalk right in front of your dog and reaching out to pet his face. Tadeo responds in kind, hindquarters swaying frantically to keep up with his tail and barking excitedly as he puts his front paws up on her knees to get closer.

“Riko!” Ayame scolds immediately. She puts away her phone and comes down the steps herself to stand over her sister with hands on her hips. “Don’t just sit on the ground like that, you’ll get dirty.”

Riko only laughs as your dog licks at her face. Ayame’s nose wrinkles in distaste. You can’t help but smile at the pair.

“He’s so cute,” Riko coos. She looks up at you with a grin—there’s a gap where she’s missing a tooth in the bottom row. “My dad says dogs are messy and too much work and so we’re not allowed to get one unless we’ll be taking care of it.”

“That’s a reasonable rule to set.”

“My dad’s a hero so he’s really busy.” Her attention is back on Tadeo. “But I think he’d like a dog anyway.”

“You think?”

“Mhm.” She nods. Her hair is pulled up into a pair of pigtails, tied by two sparkly pink bows, and it sways back and forth with the motion of her head. “He always goes on runs and he keeps asking Ayame if she wants to join him. I think he gets lonely.”

“He is not asking me to come with him because he’s lonely,” Ayame mutters.

“But if we get a dog he’ll just take it and you can stay behind!”

“Yeah, maybe.” It’s absent-minded, a little dismissive; she’s returned her attention back to her phone, clearly wanting to drop the topic and equally clearly disagreeing though she doesn’t outright say so.

“I don’t think staring at your phone is going to make daddy come home any sooner,” Riko says matter-of-factly. Then she leans forward to whisper to you, in that loud way little kids do when they don’t understand how to be quiet yet, “Ayame forgot her key.”

“Which wouldn’t be a problem,” Ayame snaps, “if he would answer his phone! Or act like the guardian he’s supposed to be!”

Her tapping is furious as her thumbs fly in a flurry across her screen. When she puts the phone to her ear, she shoves her free hand in her pocket and glares off in the distance as she waits.

“He’s just—ugh.” She huffs and shoves the phone into her pocket; you’re pretty sure it had immediately gone to voicemail. “He turns off his phone when he’s on patrol so the only way to contact him is his earpiece and his secretary says this isn’t an emergency.”

“Well, it’s not!” chirps Riko. You’re pretty sure it wouldn’t be received well if you agreed.

Ayame just huffs again, this one a bit more growled. She bites her cheek, glaring off at the distance for a moment—surely cursing Bakugo out in her head silently—before letting her eyes roll back, heaving a big sigh, and then turning her attention to you curiously.

“You live next door, right?”

“Yes. I’ve been meaning to come introduce myself, but I didn’t want to intrude. I’m glad to have the chance today—even if the circumstances are less than ideal.”

“That’s an understatement,” Ayame grumbles under her breath, but she holds back the eye roll that you can tell has been building up and instead gives you a short bow of introduction, stating her name.

You give her your own in turn. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Now we don’t have to keep calling you Miss Sunny.” She snickers a little, not entirely cruelly but certainly with the kind of vaguely derisive tone only a teenager can manage. You don’t take it to heart.

“Miss Sunny?”

“‘cause of the sunflowers!” Riko pipes up from where she’s still doting upon Tadeo. He’s relishing the attention, rolling around on the street with his tail valiantly putting up an effort to keep wagging despite being pressed into the pavement. Looking up at you and beaming, she points over at the meticulously kept flower boxes you’ve managed to fit along your stoop and down the sides of the stairs, filling up every available space in front of your house. And the balcony above, the leaves lush and full and spilling out down the railing.

The boxes are painted with bright, pretty sunflowers. You can see how they made the connection.

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Sunflowers are one of my favorites, actually,” you tell them. “I can’t grow them year-round but when they’re in season I keep as much as I can. And when they’re not, well. I supplement.”

“Did you paint them?” Riko asks in awe.

“My mother did, actually, when I first put them in.”

“She’s a really good painter.”

“They’re just sunflowers, Riko,” Ayame says.

Riko pouts at her. “But they’re nice.”

“Anyone could do it.”

“No, I bet you couldn’t!”

“Uh, yeah, I could.”

“No you couldn’t.”

“Yeah, I could.”

“Then do it.” Riko finally stands from where she’s been petting Tadeo to fix her sister with a baby-cheeked glare and put her hands on her hips.

“We can’t get inside our house, Riko. Where are you expecting me to find paints?”

As if on cue, before you can decide whether to intervene or not, Ayame’s phone begins to ring again from her back pocket. She answers with such speed you might think it was her quirk. The conversation is short, barely a few sentences exchanged, and when she hangs back up she’s somehow notably more agitated.

“He has to stay out longer,” she says, now so angry she’s moved past shouting and turned monotonous. Or, perhaps, moved past the anger stage of grief and launched straight to depression. “It’ll be another hour and a half, Riko, I dunno what to do.”

The statement gives way to another huff. She glares down at her phone like that’ll somehow make it light up with a response saying he’s five minutes away.

“Ayame,” you say kindly, and her head snaps up immediately to look at you. “Do you want to wait for your father at my house?”

For a moment, more anger flashes across her face. She blinks it away, frowning, then glancing over at Riko not for advice but rather to check-in. “Are you sure? I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“It’d be irresponsible of me to let you two stay out here when I live right next door and can let you in. C’mon, or Tadeo will get impatient.”

She nods. Riko jumps up, following you closely as you lead them both up the front stoop. Tadeo leads the charge, excited to return and have his dinner. He scratches at the base of the door as you pull out your key to open it, and he sprints in with you tripping behind him the moment it opens; Ayame and Riko follow after you. You find your large guest slippers easily, and your smaller guest slippers with much more difficulty—you don’t have children over particularly often, admittedly—but soon enough you’ve pulled off Tadeo’s harness and leash to hang up and are leading them further into the house.

“Here, make yourselves comfortable.” You gesture to your dining room table. “I’m sure you both have work to do, I can help if you need. Do you want any food?”

They both shake their heads, though Riko hesitates and waits for Ayame to respond first. You choose not to check a second time with her.

Soon enough the girls are sitting around your dining table. Riko has her homework pulled out, and so does Ayame, but Ayame’s work is long forgotten as she’s sidled over next to her younger sister and is bent over the younger’s work, helping her. From your kitchen, where you’re fetching yourself a glass of water, it makes a sweet sight.

“Ayame,” you realize suddenly, “you should text your father and let him know you’re here.”

She glances up at you. Again that anger passes across her face like a shadow, but when she speaks it’s calm. “Oh. Yeah. Probably a good idea.”

You watch as she slides herself back over to where her things are, including her phone. Her work is organized cleanly, papers and notebooks stacked by subject with only a few on the table while most remain in her bag. In contrast, Riko’s side is a mess; she has fewer papers but despite that has more supplies. Three pencil cases, all different shades of light pink with varying baby animals on them, have been opened and half their contents strewn about the table and even the floor. Despite this, she’s dutifully working on a writing assignment, face scrunched up and tongue poking out the corner of her mouth in concentration.

Ayame is looking down at her phone, reading the text with her arms still preoccupied with academics.

“Did your father get back to you?” you ask.

“He’s not my father,” Ayame snaps immediately, head snapping over to fix you with a fierce glare. “Despite what he and everyone else thinks, he is not my dad, so don’t call him that.”

You raise your hands in surrender, palms out. “Peace. Understood. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

She seems to startle at that—her glare doesn’t pause but her brow furrows further in confusion and when she speaks it’s muttered more than angry. “Yeah. You shouldn’t’ve.”

“But I need to know he knows where you are.”

“He does,” she grumbles. “He’s stuck in traffic, he’ll be here soon.”

“Thank you! Okay,” you nod, making up your mind about how to proceed. “Okay, let’s pack up now so you’re both ready to head out when he arrives. We can watch some TV or something.”

Riko perks up at the mention of TV. She’s already packing up her things before Ayame can agree; it takes them both little time at all to gather everything and fit it all back into their school bags. Soon enough they’re both seated on the couch with a brightly colored hero cartoon playing on the screen.

Ayame is on her phone; Riko is enraptured by the television. You have work to do still, so you sit at the table facing the kids with your laptop before you.

Soon enough Ayame is standing, announcing that “Uncle’s home!” mere moments before a harsh knock raps on your door. Both the girls follow you as you head to the door and open.

Bakugo is there. He’s scowling—though admittedly, you’ve often wondered if that’s the only facial expression he’s capable of. He’s gruff when he greets you, gruff when he greets the girls, and gruff when he tells them it’s time to go.

“Y’have fun?” he asks, seemingly to Riko, though his eyes end up on Ayame as he says it.

“Yeah!” Riko bounds up to him, already in her outdoor shoes. “Miss Sunny’s great!”

The grunt he gives in return is pleased. “Good. Comin’ home with me, though, right? No fuss?”

She shakes her head, pigtails flying across her face with the notion. “Nuh-uh!”

He nods at the bright pink bag in her hand. “Y’want me to carry that, kid?”

Her expression falls. She clutches it closer, face scrunching up, and stares up at him with a look that isn’t quite suspicious or accusatory but certainly doesn’t seem inclined to take his offer.

The low puff of air he lets out is something like a sigh, perhaps disappointed, though you don’t think it’s quite at her. He lowers himself to her height—lower, crouched down with arms braced on his knees to look her in the eye. When he speaks it’s startlingly placating.

“Ya don’t gotta say yes. Was just tryin’ to be nice, yeah? C’mon. I’ll walk you in. You can carry it.”

Then he rises to his feet, and holds out his hand, and Riko’s hesitance disappears as she takes it. In fact she’s beaming. She doesn’t look back as she follows him over to his door.

Ayame hovers in the entryway, leaning through the open door watching Bakugo lead Riko into his house. Once they’re out of sight, she turns to you.

Her eyes are cast downward, a little to the side. She seems to rock on the balls of her feet slightly, almost as a comfort, and is clearly working up the nerve to say something. You wait, letting her take her time.

“I, uh. Earlier, when you called Uncle my dad…”

“No worries,” you assure her. “I shouldn’t have assumed, and I’m sure you get it a lot and I know it’s been a stressful day, so really. It’s fine. If anything, I’m sorry.”

“Nobody’s ever… apologized before,” she mutters. “Not for real, anyway. It’s always—like, they all start saying uncle all rude and condescending like I’m not well aware they’re still calling him my father in their heads. But you apologized and you haven’t called him that since, so… I dunno. I ‘preciate it, I guess. It feels like you’re the first person who’s really listened to me in a while.”

You give her a quiet smile. “I’m sorry, that sounds difficult to have to go through.”

“I just said you were the best one to respond, y’don’t gotta apologize more…”

“But I upset you,” you counter. “I do regret it.”

“Right.” Her shoulders heave, not really a shrug. “Well. I better go off then. Thank you for helping us.”

“You’re always welcome.”

She turns and heads to her own door. You wait for her to get inside, too, before you shut your own and make your way back to your office. You have a little more work to get done before you can start making dinner.

Not five minutes later, however, you hear a knock on your door again.

Bakugo is standing there when you open it, fist raised to knock a second time. He lowers it immediately, letting it fall to his side aimlessly.

“Did Riko forget something?” you ask, thinking back to the messy array of writing implements and assorted school supplies—all glittery or pink or shimmering—that she’d strewn about your living room, certain she must have misplaced one or two beneath a pillow or a rug.

“Hah?” His brow furrows at the question. “No. What, did you find somethin’?”

“No.” You snort a laugh. “Why’d you come back, then?”

“I wanted to thank you.”

It’s gruff, low, said without meeting your eye.

“For letting them in? No worries. I couldn’t just let them wait around out there for you.”

His eyes narrow. When he speaks the tone is defensive, the words slightly growling. “We‘ve been looking for some new sidekicks to pick up the slack so I won’t be working so late anymore, but it’s a process ‘n we’ve only just started.”

“Whoa, hey, I’m not judging you here. You’re a busy man. I get it,” you rush to say. He’s still glaring at you a little, and admittedly it’s probably one of the most intimidating glares you’ve ever been on the receiving end of. “I get it, really. It’s been sudden. They’re great kids, I was happy to have them over for an hour or two. The company was nice, actually. It’s usually just me and the dog during the week.”

The words soothe him. Or maybe he realizes he’d been overreacting—either way, his shoulders relax and the tension eases. Though he doesn’t quite seem like he’s no longer glaring, you’re coming to realize that perhaps he never does look very relaxed. At least you’re no longer feeling like he’s attempting to send you flying back into your home with a single, very intense glare.

“They’re welcome any time,” you continue. Steer away from need and help, you decide. And anything too critical. “If they want.”

He grunts in what you decide is appreciation. Better, then, than the other attempt. Could be even more coherent, if you tried at it a bit—but you’ve already made the appeal to Ayame, so you suppose she can pass along what you told her. In the meantime you choose to change the subject.

“Hey, do you mind if I ask… why’d Riko respond like that when you offered to carry her things?”

You’re not sure he’ll tell you, really. But he surprises you. He sighs, long-suffering and annoyed, and says, “Ayame told her I’d take all their things when they moved in with me. She hasn’t quite stopped believing it.”

There’s an attempt made at biting back your laughter. It’s a failed attempt, but an attempt nonetheless. Your stifled giggles earn you another glare, but this one seems less serious.

“Don’t fuckin’ laugh.”

“I’m not laughing,” you lie through stuttered puffs.

“It ain’t funny.”

“It’s kinda funny.”

He rolls his eyes. “You ‘n fuckin’ soy sauce face…” he mutters, and you don’t know who soy sauce face might be but he sounds like he has a good sense of humor. “Don’t go laughin’ in front of Ayame, it’ll only encourage her.”

“I promise I won’t laugh in front of Ayame.” You do mean that—you really don’t want to encourage her.

“Good,” he grunts, then pauses momentarily. “You said it was just you and the mutt during the week?”

“Over the work week I don’t get many visitors—I mean, I’m single, no roommate. My family lives about an hour away by train, not a trip anyone’d wanna make on a work day. My friends have careers.” You pause after that spiel, realizing finally what he likely meant by the question. “I work from home. Have an office here.”

His brow furrows. “The fuck do you do, then? As a career”

“I’m an accountant,” you reply easily, getting used to his mannerisms. “Freelance. Clients are mostly small businesses, a few tiny companies. Most of my work’s done in my office. So, yeah, here pretty much all day, save for the occasional in-person meeting. Those only happen a few times a year.”

“So, what, just some fuckin’ hermit?” It’s not entirely derisive, the way he says it. More just surprise, a little curiosity.

“I have friends, Bakugo. I go out for drinks, the occasional girls’ trip. I visit my family and they visit me. Perfectly healthy, I promise. Not a hermit.”

He grumbles at that, but clearly you’ve convinced him that you’re annoyed by the implication, because he mumbles out a, “sorry,” afterwards and sounds genuinely apologetic.

“It’s fine. Nothing wrong with making sure. I’m just offering for if you need it. I’m sure you have plenty of options, but. If you think of me. I gave Ayame my phone number; you should have it already, from when I first moved in, yeah?”

Nodding at first, he pauses, and then frowns. “Actually…”

“What, you lost it?”

He looks a little sheepish, somehow. Still surly and cross, but apologetic. “I got a new phone. Lost all my contacts. Was about a month ago. If you’d’ve texted me I’d’a figured it out, but…”

“No worries.” You reach into your pocket and take out your phone. It takes a moment to find his contact—the pair of you really haven’t spoken beyond the initial exchanging of numbers and one incident where Tadeo had gotten loose and Bakugo had found him for you—but you send off a quick text once you do, and are filled with amusement when his own back pocket immediately plays the sound of an explosion.

He doesn’t acknowledge it, so you don’t either. You wonder if he even knows how funny that is (endearing, even, if you were to be bold) or if he thinks it’s completely normal. What he does is pull out that phone (which looks downright tiny in those huge hands… it’s the same model as your own, your mind is left spinning a little) and, clearly, add you to his contacts once more.

“Perfect. We’re all set, then? Just text me if you need me. Yeah?”

A nod, a low grunt of approval; his phone is back in his pocket quickly, and then he’s turning to go. You shut your door right as he opens his own.

The next time you see him afterwards is a week later; he’s locking his door on his way out of his house, you’re on your way in from your morning walk with Tadeo.

“Bakugo!” you call out as you make your way up the front stoop.

He turns to you as he pockets his keys, gives a curt nod and a low rumble of your own name. “Mornin’.”

“This is great timing, actually. I needed to talk to you.” Pausing, you take a moment to take in his attire and recall that it’s a Tuesday and he’s almost certainly headed off to work. “I promise it won’t take long.”

He raises an eyebrow, not exactly kindly but not altogether brushing you off. “Spit it out.”

You shift the leash in your hand to the other one. The process tugs Tadeo over to your other side, crossing in between you and Bakugo, and it draws Bakugo’s attention to your dog, who pauses briefly to sit and beg at his feet. To your surprise it works—your neighbor squats down, raising a hand to scratch at Tadeo’s ears. He looks at him for a moment, and that stern look softens just a bit.

Then you remember what he’d just said. “I was thinking about starting a garden,” you say quickly.

Bakugo pauses, looking up at you and then rising to his feet to regard you fully. “A garden?”

He seems to be sneering, and you bristle.

“Yeah, my grandfather had one back when he and my grandmother lived here—”

“The fuck’re you telling me for?” he interrupts. This time you recoil, pursing your lips.

“It’d be up on the roof, which we share,” you say slowly. “Wouldn’t it be rude of me not to check with you first?”

You might add that you hadn’t bothered to ask when you’d made your little flower garden in the front—it’s on your side entirely—so you haven’t exactly made a habit of asking him about unimportant things, but that scowl softens a little, replaced by a slightly furrowed brow and a seemingly sheepish breaking of eye contact as his eyes dart to the side.

“Do what’cha want. I don’t care.”

You nod. “Okay. Thank you. And if Ayame and Riko—or you, I suppose—want to help out at all, I’m sure I’ll need it.”

At mention of the girls, he finally seems to register exactly what you’re saying. He nods finally, expression relaxing, and though you almost feel it’s too little too late you’re pleasantly surprised—and appreciative—when he apologizes.

“Sorry. That’d be good for ‘em. Real good for ‘em. Thanks for reachin’ out.” He pauses, seems to hesitate, then clears his throat and tells you, “Their mom had a gardening quirk, y’know. They’ve both got ‘em too. I dunno if they told you.”

You blink. “No… I didn’t know. It’ll be a team project, then. If they’re interested, anyway.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll let ‘em know.” He’s nodding, clearly having convinced himself. “When’re you gonna start?”

“Mmm, next week. It’s still a little early to start planting but I’ll probably head up to clear out the space and make planter boxes this weekend. You’re welcome to join for that but it’ll be tedious stuff. Next week I’ll start planting, though.” You purse your lips. “The greenhouse is too broken down, I’ll have to completely remake it, but we shouldn’t need it for a while yet so I suppose I can put that off…”

You trail off, realizing that you’re thinking aloud and rambling at Bakugo far more than he cares about. But when you turn your attention back to him, from where you’d been staring absently off to the distance, you find that he’s regarding you with an amused look.

“That what that mess up there is? A greenhouse?”

Frowning, your response is indignant. “My grandfather built that ‘mess’ himself, I’ll have you know.”

“Not very well, clearly, seein’ as it collapsed like that.”

Your jaw drops. Coming from someone else, you might interpret his words as teasing—but he’s so blunt, and gruff, and his expression hardly shifts to indicate that he’s anything but serious, so you blink at him in almost shock.

That makes him tense. “What?”

“Was that a joke? I didn’t know you were capable of humor.”

“Hah? I’m funny as fuck.”

“Mmm. Very.” You purse your lips, playing at disinterest, but the smile tugging at them does you no favors. “Making fun of something my grandfather poured his heart and soul into… very funny. You’re a real upstanding hero.”

“That damn greenhouse fell down weeks after he made it, ‘n when I offered to fix it up he refused every time. Stubborn old man insisted he’d get ‘round to it. Never did. Obviously.”

“You offered to help?” you ask in shock.

He raises an eyebrow at you, clearly indignant. “I worked on that garden for months after his back gave out. Your grandmother wouldn’t stop nagging me when I missed too many days, said he got restless and wouldn’t leave ‘er alone. ‘course he only ever watched me by then, but I get it. ‘n she fed me in return, always reminded me of that when I slacked off.”

Bakugo had moved into the house next door during the five year stint between graduating university and your grandparents moving out that you spent living in an ever-changing series of small apartments further in the city. You’ve known that he’d had a good relationship with them, but you hadn’t known that he’d helped with the garden at all.

They ask you about him, fairly often in fact, though you’ve never been able to give them the detailed report of his current status that they always want. You’ve always thought that at least part of them giving you the house had been some convoluted attempt at setting the pair of you up together. Perhaps that’s why he’s always kept his distance. Perhaps it’s your other theory—that he just likes old folks. Or maybe he just makes more of an effort to be there for them. Considering his heroic choice of career, it’d make sense if he felt obligated. But it’s undeniable that he’s always reached out more to the elderly in the neighborhood over the younger corporate executives and trust fund kids who otherwise populate it—understandable, frankly, considering how unbearable the latter kind of person tends to be even in the best of circumstances.

Though, you admit, you’ve also lucked into your own property through inheritance. Perhaps you shouldn’t be so quick to separate yourself.

“They ask after you, you know,” you tell him in an effort to break the silence that’s fallen over the pair of you as you’d ruminated.

“Don’t s’ppose you had much to tell ‘em.” He chuckles, then pauses. “‘til Riko ‘n Ayame showed up, anyway.”

“Trust me, I didn’t have to tell them about the girls. Grandma called me the moment she saw them on the news.”

Anger crosses his face when you say that. You tense when you see it, wracking your mind in an attempt to figure out why he might be suddenly pissed at you, but when he growls out, “fuckin’ paparazzi, damn shitty gossip magazines, waste of fuckin’ space,” you realize it’s about the fact that you mentioned the news.

“Oh. That’s… an understandable response. To that photo.” You hadn’t quite put that together, but it does make sense. Dynamight has always been known to be especially private regarding his personal life and even antagonistic towards the press; he has an infamously bad attitude towards reporters out in the field and is rarely interviewed, and when he bothers it’s always abundantly clear that his manager has forced him to. “Really intrusive, actually.”

“No fuckin’ right to take photos of my fuckin’ kids when their damn mother just fuckin’ died.” The scowl on his face is heavy, and you’re very happy that it’s not directed at you. “Wish I could blow up every damn copy of it.”

“Yeah… yeah, I get that. I guess it’s lucky that others haven’t been spread around…” Or their names, you think. Names and ages and life stories—none of that is out there, which is frankly surprising, but good.

“Luck’s got nothin’ to do with it. My team knows how to stop that shit before it spreads.”

“I’m sure it doesn’t hurt to have the threat of number two hero Dynamight coming after you to stop it, too.” You shoot him a grin.

He doesn’t return it. The topic at hand, you think, bothers him far more than he’s even letting on; now he’s silent, and you hover awkwardly, not entirely sure how to continue the conversation. It isn’t unbearable exactly, but considering you’re holding him up from going to work you decide the silence is better off broken.

“Hey,” you say, “I’ve been meaning to ask, actually, and because you mentioned them earlier I might as well. What are their quirks?”

“The girls’?”

“Yeah. They haven’t told me—well, I never asked them, anyway. You said they were related to gardening?”

“Riko’s is called Boom Bloom. She can speed up the growth of flowering plants ‘n when they bloom they’ll explode. Ayame’s is similar—’s called Bloominescence, hers glow. Takes a lot out of ‘em, though. Can’t do it often.” He pauses for a moment. Then he adds, “I expected ‘em to be real filthy tree-hugger types when I learned. Figured there’d be fuckin’ flowers everywhere. Thought the petals ‘n leaves’d get all over the damn place. Thank fuck they ain’t like that, think I’d go insane.”

You bite your lip. “Sounds like something you’d hate.”

He snorts. “Let that be a warning, then, yeah? Don’t go trackin’ dirt around my place. If ya turn ‘em into that shit I’ll never let ‘em visit you again, y’hear?”

“Loud and clear, Dynamight, sir!”

You get another snort of laughter for the dig. But then he falls silent, looking at you pensively. That crimson stare regards you as you twist the leash in your hand a few times, a nervous tick. The way he’s looking makes you feel a little raw—like he’s taking you in, pulling you apart, seeing what makes you tick. And the silence is heavy, palpable.

“What about you?” he breaks it suddenly.

“Hm?” You know, and you stiffen despite yourself. You know what he’s asking, and you only have two options: the truth, or evasion. You’re giving him one last chance not to ask. He doesn’t take it.

“Your quirk. You haven’t told me what it is.”

It’s not an altogether unexpected question, not when you’ve just asked about the girls’ quirks, but it’s one that you hesitate answering nonetheless. And you could refuse to—it’s personal, though not technically rude most people understand when you choose not to say.

But you don’t really want to, not the least because the man before you is a pro hero who could most certainly look it up on his own time; if he’s going to cut whatever this relationship is brewing into short because of your answer here, then you’d rather know now than months down the line.

So you roll your shoulders back, look him in the eye, and tell him you’re quirkless.

Dynamight isn’t known for being the most understanding of pro heroes. In fact what he’s known for is a certain level of ruthlessness; a resolve to win fights while on duty and a lack of patience for anyone who he butts heads with, professionally or otherwise. Where no.1 hero Deku is considered the modern Symbol of Peace—all charismatic smiles and diplomacy, having learned well from his late mentor the great All Might—the man you’ve just informed of your quirklessness is colloquially called the Symbol of Victory, and weakness is hardly something you’d assume him to be particularly accepting of. Despite your logic telling you it’s ridiculous to be concerned, there’s a little nagging worry in your mind that he’ll turn away, get in his car, and drive to his agency and you’ll never talk to him or his girls again.

But Bakugo doesn’t do that. He hardly reacts at all, in fact. Instead he nods, purses his lips as if in thought, and grunts out, “a’ight. Good to know.”

Somehow he’s managed to give the best possible response. You have to give him credit; you never would have assumed that from the interactions you’ve been having with him all week.

“I can garden despite that, though,” you assure him with a smile. “In fact I can’t say it has a single effect on my gardening ability whatsoever.”

“Mmm.” He grunts. “And carpentry? Can you rebuild that fuckin’ mess of a greenhouse up on that roof?”

“Well, I’ll have you know it isn’t my quirklessness that makes my carpentry skills suck. It’s a lack of practice. And there’s no better time to start than the present.”

Bakugo wrinkles his nose, brow furrowing in tandem. “Don’t fuckin’ think I want you to practice with a big ass structure made of glass that my girls’re gonna be goin’ into.”

“Mmm that’s understandable, I suppose. Maybe you should find me a good carpenter to help me out, hm? Since you’re so—”

Before you can finish the sentence, Tadeo begins to bark frenziedly, lunging at the end of his leash and tugging you towards your front door. You stumble that way for half a step, unprepared for the sudden attack, before you manage to steel yourself and brace against his forceful jerking.

Bakugo, however, takes that as his cue to leave.

“‘m runnin’ late already,” he tells you. “Don’t build that greenhouse without supervision, I won’t have it collapsin’ on my fuckin’ girls.”

Then he nods in farewell and then turns to walk away, off towards that sleek, flashy car sitting parked waiting to take him into the city where his countless sidekicks and managing staffers and support technicians await his return to work.

You turn back to your front door and let Tadeo drag you inside.

The roof, when you first go up, is a mess.

You’d expected it. You’d experienced it first-hand before, even; you’ve often gone up with intent to clean it since you’d inherited the home and moved in, yet it’s always been too looming of a task to tackle on a whim and a mere weekend of time.

But there’s nothing quite like outside pressure to make you buckle down and take on such a challenge, and doing something for other people is precisely the pressure you apparently needed. It takes you a little longer than a weekend—in fact, in the week between you beginning the project and the roof being ready for planting, you spend most of your long, agonizing meetings with your laptop set carelessly on the concrete floor amongst the dirt and rotting wood, and a bluetooth headset in your ear as you advise your various clients about their finances.

It’s a good process. Mind and body moving, allowing for each to operate at a better capacity. You barely realize that you’re making progress on the roof until your daily alarm goes off alerting you of Riko and Ayame’s potential arrival, and then it’s a mad dash to get down to your house and shower off all the dirt and grime accumulated by your efforts. You often return up there the following morning, when the wind is biting cold and nipping at your cheeks and ears, to admire your handiwork with a new eye.

There’s an end in sight, eventually; by the time most of the old planter boxes are gone and you’ve reclaimed what you can of the greenhouse Bakugo had once called a mess to pile up in the corner for what will eventually become your own, it’s Friday, and you’re ready to start making new ones.

You’d created a plan weeks ago, complete with growth times and when to plant so that you’ll be able to harvest throughout the spring and summer and on into autumn. Now you take the time to design the layout, easy to see now that the space has been cleared out, and spend a day assembling salvaged wood and new supplies—helpfully brought up for you the evening before by, you’re informed but not present to witness, a small team of Bakugo’s pro hero friends—into the calculated sizes, shoving them into the designated spots, then filling them with soil.

The plants you choose to take on for the first year are simple, relatively easy to care for; carrots and zucchini, tomatoes and chard, cucumbers and potatoes. You’ll add more as time goes on, expanding and improving, especially if Ayame or Riko (or, ideally, both) take to it enough to reliably help you.

They both certainly enjoy it enough that first weekend to show up the second day early in the morning. Ayame has more of an attention span than Riko, naturally; Riko will help for a good fifteen or so minutes at a time, then wander off to do her own thing. That’s solid, you think, for a seven year old.

They help you out more than you anticipated; a few hours every weekend, in Ayame’s case at least, and in Riko’s often passing the time with you after school when she’s done with homework. For the first couple weeks after your initial meeting, they’re around more often than you entirely expect (though you’re happy about it, to be honest).

Ayame has her key past that first day. You doubt she’ll make that mistake again. But it’s hardly fair, in your opinion, to expect her to take care of Riko in Bakugo’s absence—especially when you’re around and more than capable. So they both spend much of their time at your place during the hours before dinner that he isn’t around.

He hadn’t been lying that first day. Once the new sidekicks are hired, he’s back long before dinner, often right when they’re getting home from school, far more consistently, and it becomes less frequent for the girls to stop by out of need for an adult; Ayame is more than capable of being in charge for the hour or so between their arrival home and Bakugo’s, but you always keep an ear out and often end up answering the door to one or both of the girls at some point during the day.

Riko takes, almost immediately, to paying visits to your door and no further just to stand outside and talk to you; Ayame stops by as well, though she’s far more abashed and taciturn about it, and tends to come in entirely with the excuse that she wants a quiet place to study. You enjoy both forms of visitation. There’s no shortage of occasions where Bakugo is unexpectedly required to stay later or go back in after returning home, however. You’ll get yourself a text on those days, curt and straight to the point and a bit crass—though you wouldn’t expect anything else—asking you to let them in, though more often than not the knock comes before the request and they’re already settled.

Ayame soon joins an after-school club, however. She’s cagey about what it’s for but it has her staying later at her high school three days a week, which leaves Riko with nobody to watch her on the occasions her father cannot.

You’re the natural pick to fill that role. And you like it. What you’d said that day still stands, the break from your typical workday is appreciated. Riko is good company for the hour or two she tends to spend with you. You’ll make her something light to eat and help with her schoolwork for much of it, then take a break and do something else for the rest of the time. Sometimes she wants to watch TV—there’s a show she adores, a cartoon called Twinklestar after the titular character who is, naturally, a pro hero and princess of a deserted human colony on Mars—but sometimes you can get her to garden with you, or help out with things around the house.

That’s what you’re doing now.

Ayame is still at school, at her mystery club. Riko has been with you for nearly an hour now. After an episode of Twinklestar, you’d convinced her to come join you outside while you hang up a suncatcher that a friend had sent you while overseas, and she’s been entertaining herself with a little keyring game that she’d found squirreled away in some drawer in your house. You’re not really sure where you got it, or when—it’s probably a holdover from your uni days, there’d been times when you’d hoarded such little pockets of joy and played them under your desk during lulls in lectures; low on brain power and high on dopamine—but it’s age appropriate and she’s been well absorbed while you work, so you’re not going to complain.

Your biggest worry now, frankly, is the very real chance that Bakugo will arrive home and witness you in your currently failing attempts to set up the suncatcher. You’ve brought out a step stool, and you’re perched at the top of it, hammer in hand as you stand on your tiptoes to put the nail in place and pound it in as a peg to hang the decoration. You’re just barely too short. Really what you ought to do is go back in and retrieve the taller step stool from the kitchen, or the ladder that you keep folded up under your stairs, but somehow that feels like admitting defeat.

Instead you balance precariously atop the one you first brought out, tapping at the nail far too lightly so as not to knock yourself off balance and hoping to whatever might be listening that your dour, captious neighbor doesn’t arrive home to lecture you about setting a good example for his daughter and not doing something so needlessly dangerous. He’d probably startle you—for how big the man is, he’s annoyingly quiet when he wants to be. Then it’d be his fault if you fell, really. For scaring you. Some hero he’d be.

Of course that’s when your foot slips. It’s only fair. Punishment from the universe for getting angry at something Bakugo hadn’t even done yet, a swat on the back of the hand.

And it’s your fault, really; hardly even a slip so much as your ankle rolling and your legs being thrown from under you. Though the stepstool you’re perched upon is small, your life flashes before your eyes; you imagine dashing your head on the concrete steps, breaking an arm or a leg at the very least, already trying to figure out how you’ll call an ambulance and what you’ll do with Riko—send her across the way to stay with Ms. Rose or Ms. Tulip for the remaining few minutes before Bakugo comes home? You certainly wouldn’t bring her to the hospital—when, rather than slamming into the hard ground, you’re suddenly caught by a pair of big arms.

It’s effortless. They hold your weight without struggle, having found purchase on your form with practiced ease. You’re left reeling, wide-eyed, and unable to do much beyond staying limp within them in an attempt to reorient yourself.

“Whoa, there!” your savior says good-naturedly. He doesn’t hold you any longer than necessary, placing you down on your own two feet before you can even fully register what had happened. “You okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” Still a little dazed—understandably so, you should think—you shake your head in an attempt to clear it as you regard him.

The man who’d caught you is someone you really ought to recognize immediately, though in your defense you’re a little too busy thanking everything that you haven’t fallen and busted your head open (or at least broken a limb) to register his face until he sets you down.

He’s absolutely massive, towering well over you and boasting an equally impressive width, with a mane of bright red hair and a warm grin exposing a mouthful of sharp teeth. Another point in your defense for not recognizing him: he’s out of uniform, dressed in casual clothes, and you are not nearly versed enough in pro heroes to recognize even the top ten without those brightly colored and intricately decorated hero costumes.

It’s Red Riot, sturdy and robust, not even batting an eye as he subtly inspects you for injury. You brush yourself off a little self-consciously.

Up where she’s been hovering near the door, Riko squeals in excitement. Your attentions are both pulled to her as she darts down the stoop and flies past you, making a beeline for Riot. His face lights up as she approaches.

The moment she’s close enough, he grabs her from the ground and swings her up, pulling excited giggles from her lips as he sets her up on his shoulders. “How’s it going, kiddo? Being good for your sister?”

“Ayame isn’t here,” Riko whines a little, pouting, and though he can’t possibly hear her at all the evidence is plain in her voice. “She’s joined a club after school.”

“Really, now?” Riot is even better than you, you realize; he sounds even more interested than you do without even a hint of condescension. He’s always been known for how well he works with kids—even you’ve heard that—and it’s evident in full force as he interacts with Riko. “What club?”

Riko wrinkles her nose. You watch as she rests her elbow on his head and braces her chin in the palm of that hand, pouting, in a pose reminiscent of a grouchy adult lost in thought.

“She won’t tell me.”

“Oh?” Riot laughs good-naturedly. “Well, everyone gets to have their secrets. I’m sure you have yours.”

“I don’t,” Riko says flatly, in a tone so confident and annoyed that it makes both you and Riot burst into laughter. Luckily she takes it as a compliment; grinning wide, even joining in on the laughter though you doubt she quite knows what’s amusing.

“You must be the neighbor, yeah?” Turning his attention to you, Riot says your name, and at your nod, he gives a quick bow, Riko still perched on his shoulders and giggling wildly as she holds onto his neck. He does most of the work, keeping a hand on her legs to ensure she won’t fall even as his head bears most of her weight. “Kirishima Eijirou. Red Riot.”

“Pleasure to meet you.”

“Bakugo had to stay behind at work, something came up. He asked me to come relieve you of duty.”

“How valiant of you.”

“Just doin’ my job as a hero, ma’am. And, uh, hey.” He gives you a warm smile now, softer than the victorious smirks after won fights and beaming grins during awards ceremonies that you’ve always seen in the press. You think you might be a little flattered to be receiving it. “In case he hasn’t said it himself, thank you for helping Bakugo out. You’ve been a lifesaver more than you know. He really appreciates it, though I’m sure it might be hard to tell.”

You snort. Clearly he knows his friend well. “He’s said it, actually, but I’ll say again that it’s no problem. We have fun. Right, Riko?”

“Yeah!” Riko cheers with hands thrown up in the air carelessly, prompting Kirishima to again grab her legs to keep her stable before she can fall the impressive distance to the ground.

“Good to hear it!” he gives back the same energy, even uses his hands to kick her feet against his chest, drawing out more giggles from her. When he says more, though, it’s aimed directly at you, voice amiable. “What were you doing up on that death trap, anyway?”

“It’s just a step stool…”

“How can I help?” he clarifies. The corners of his eyes wrinkle a little as he smiles at you.

You gesture back at the mess behind you. You’re not even sure where the hammer went, you’ll have to go searching before you go back in, but it’s okay; you’d managed to get the nail in deep enough that it’s in no danger of falling, so it’s mostly the unhung suncatcher lying in a heap on the stoop that draw Kirishima’s eye.

He whistles at the sight. “Pretty.”

It does look pretty lying there, crystalline prisms tied together with fishing line. It’ll look even nicer hanging up where the morning sun will catch it and cast rainbows across your front doorway. You think that’ll be a nice way to start the day, out on your porch after you’ve walked the dog, laptop in hand to begin working.

“It’s a Prism Prison.” Riko bends down and leans over so that her mouth is right near Kirishima’s head, and speaks in a stage whisper, eyes wide like she’s telling him a secret.

“Like from Twinklestar?” he asks without missing a beat, and with just the right amount of awe in his tone.

“Uh-huh!”

“Does it have any villains in it?”

“Yeah, yeah! Miss Serpent and Gunk Guy and Novagleam!”

“Novagleam?” Twinklestar’s greatest nemesis—her evil clone, created by a mad scientist, determined to hunt her down and steal her quirk for herself. It’s wildly endearing that Red Riot recognizes the character immediately. “Well, then, we’d better set it up, huh? Otherwise the villains might escape!”

Riko gives a horrified gasp. “Oh, no! We gotta, we gotta!”

She starts squirming around from her perch; Kirishima’s grip tightens on her legs as he chuckles and approaches. A nod from you to the suncatcher takes you a moment to decipher, but as he gets to the first step you realize he intends to help Riko put it up herself and is asking you to hand it up. You dart up ahead of him and by the time you’ve retrieved it he’s moved the step stool and had his hand held out.

Handing it over, you watch as he passes it up to Riko, and with how tall he is—and, therefore, how high up she is on his shoulders—it’s no struggle for her to hook it onto the nail you’d put in mere minutes ago.

She cheers when it settles, and Kirishima whoops in turn, stepping back enough to make sure she won’t hit the very thing they’ve just hung up as he finally sets her down.

“There,” he says. “Now we’re all safe, yeah?”

He casts his gaze over to you, and gives a subtle nod at the step stool to let you know exactly what he’s really saying. It makes your face heat up a little—embarrassed, but only slightly, at the mess of an introduction and his apparent self-assigned duty to make sure it won’t happen again. Maybe you shouldn’t befriend any more pro heroes.

“All right,” he says assuredly, turning over to Bakugo’s door and fiddling with the knob, clearly to open it. “Riko, Daddy wants me to bring ya back to his work to have dinner in the city, we’ll stop by on the way and pick up Ayame from school. Why don’t’cha head on inside and grab somethin’ to play with for the ride? I’ll be right with you to help you pick.”

Riko, like all little kids, jumps at the prospect of visiting her father’s workplace. Squealing, she bursts into the house just as Kirishima pushes the door open and you hear the sound of her footsteps as she sprints up the stairs to her room. You stifle a laugh. She’s probably already dumped all her toys out of her toy chest and is sifting through all the options on the floor.

“Bakugo’ll have your head if he comes home and her room’s a disaster,” you tell him when he turns back to you.

“Ah, but he’ll clean it up anyway, and he likes taking care of things. I’ll be doing him a favor if I leave him a mess.”

You recall, distantly, what you’ve heard of their history together; that they’d been in the same class at UA along with a record-breaking number of other top heroes. Unprecedented, you remember all the reporters saying, even back when they were all first breaking out onto the scene at eighteen and nineteen and twenty. A monster generation of pros, all coming off a war in their first year, trained by All Might himself.

Living right next to you. Helping you put up your suncatcher. Dropping little bombs about the quiet interworkings of their friends’ minds, learned from years of camaraderie.

Best not to ruminate on that too much.

“Don’t think he’d take too kindly to you spilling his secrets, either,” you tease.

“He’ll forgive me.” Kirishima waves it off. He leans against the frame of Bakugo’s front door, one big hand around the edge of the door and swinging it absent-mindedly. “We should exchange numbers, by the way. Odds of this happening again are pretty high, would be good to be able to text you so you can tell Riko what’s happening.”

“Ah! Yeah, sure.”

“Gimme your phone, I’ll call myself.”

You reach into your back pocket to retrieve it and unlock it to hand it over without question. That hand that’d been swinging the door around abandons it, letting it close on him without so much as a jolt to his body, and reaches out to take the device from your outstretched grasp. He looks down at it, finding the phone app easily.

“How’s the garden treating you, by the way?” he asks conversationally as he types in his number.

“Hm?”

“The garden,” he repeats, glancing up. His thumb presses the call button and you hear his back pocket begin to chime with a ringtone. “I helped bring up supplies a few weeks ago, how’s it going?”

“Oh! Thank you! I would’ve struggled getting all that up there without you guys, you helped a lot. It’s going well! Things’ve been sprouting and some are beginning to blossom, we’re gonna plant for the summer sometime soon. I could probably give you some if you want. You like zucchini?”

“I will adore any homegrown vegetables, dead serious.”

He certainly sounds dead serious. You smile. “Perfect answer. I’ll have Bakugo bring you some of the next harvest.”

Grinning, those sharp teeth on full display, he hands back your phone and you take it. “I look forward to it.”

Where Riko’s visits tend to be requested by Bakugo and done mostly out of necessity (no less welcome, though, of course), Ayame’s occur during much the opposite times. Often she’ll stay behind after he comes and picks up Riko, claiming that she works better at your place. She’ll also show up at your front door later in the afternoon, backpack slung over her shoulder, complaining about her house being too loud with Riko watching shows or Bakugo helping with her homework. You invite her in every time.

Then she joins that club, and for three days a week she doesn’t come home until after Bakugo has. Her visits drop in frequency at first. Then after the first two weeks they increase; she’s compensating, you think. If you didn’t know any better you’d say she missed you. She’d never tell you that, though.

There’s a concept known as parallel play—two toddlers playing adjacent to each other, not quite interacting with one another but undeniably playing together. Ayame’s visits remind you of it. She’ll unpack her bag onto your dining room table and set to work silently while you do your own work, typically on your laptop sitting at the couch or across the table from her or up at the counter bar in your kitchen. You’ll venture into your office to take phone calls, or excuse yourself to the back terrace, but you tend to stay on the main floor with her.

At first she rarely holds more than a few conversations with you, and they’re often little more than you offering food or help with schoolwork and her turning you down. By the time she joins her club she becomes a little more talkative—often about her work, sometimes about her day. The latter you tend to have to probe for.

You ask if she wants to stay for dinner every time. She’s yet to accept. As the weeks go by, however, she grows more hesitant to reject the offer; soon enough, you think, she might just do it.

Today she’s been particularly quiet. It’s been three weeks since she joined the club; even you can’t tell how much she’s enjoying it and how much she’s merely done it to get the adults in her life off her back. You’re pretty sure she likes it okay.

Her teachers, you know, had been pressuring her to join an extracurricular. There’d been leniency for the first few months of the semester, a general understanding of and sympathy for her situation (it’s hardly easy to transfer to a new school so suddenly, let alone as a result of one’s mother passing and being forced to move away from one’s childhood home to live with a man you’ve never met before) allowing her some time to breathe, but life doesn’t stand still no matter how much one feels it ought to. Teenagers might be distinctly lacking in forethought, but Ayame has enough sense to give in on certain matters.

You haven’t pushed her to tell you about what she’s doing. You know she’s wary of you, worried you’ll go running to Bakugo immediately, and you can respect that. Frankly you’re also just not as interested as he and Riko are—you figure if it’s something embarrassing then you’d just feel bad if you wheedled it out of her, and it isn’t as if you think she’s doing something wrong.

So you haven’t so much as mentioned that Riko keeps asking you about it, even if you find it amusing. Ayame, however, is notably more suspicious than thankful.

“You haven’t asked me about my club,” she says as you sit down across from her after making yourself tea. She’s been working for nearly two hours with you; you’d just had to step out to take a call. “Why not?”

You shrug. “If you wanna keep something a secret that’s your right, I’m not gonna try to pry it out of you.”

“Oh…” The tension in her shoulders eases a little, defensive posture loosening as she sits up straighter. “Thank you. I thought for sure you’d be curious.”

“Well, I’m not not curious,” you clarify. “But my curiosity doesn’t trump your comfort. I’m okay never knowing if you never want me to.”

She doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that. She stares at you, mouth slightly agape, but doesn’t say anything; instead, after a few moments and with a light dusting of pink across the bridge of her nose, her head snaps downward and she returns her attention to the papers before her.

You do the same. It’s silent for some time, a few minutes, as the pair of you work sitting across the table from each other. But then Ayame speaks, suddenly, voice wavering a little with hesitance and bashfulness and unable to meet your eye fully.

“It’s cooking,” she says. You look up from your laptop and raise a brow, silently asking her to clarify. She does. “The club I joined. I wanted to join the cooking club at my old school but… I never had the chance to. I always had to watch Riko.”

“Ah.” You nod in understanding. “I’m glad you have the chance now. It’s an important skill to learn.”

“Don’t tell Uncle,” she demands curtly. “Or Riko, because she’ll tell Uncle.”

Now you lower your laptop, just slightly. Her shoulders tense from the motion. You ask anyway, though you know it’s at the prospect of the question you’re about to pose.

“I won’t, I promise. But… can I ask why not?”

For a moment, you wonder if she’ll answer at all, or if she’ll stubbornly ignore the question and remain silent for the rest of the visit as she has so many of the other times you’ve pushed for explanations like this. She surprises you instead by sighing, and tapping her pencil rapidly against the table, and then answering.

“Because he’ll get pissy.” It’s sullen, and she obstinately refuses to look up from her work, but she responds. You give a warm smile of encouragement, and she sighs again. “He’s, like, really particular about cooking, okay? But if he knew I wanted to learn from someone else he’d get all… y’know. Pissy. ‘Cause he cares or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” you repeat, not entirely mocking but rather in agreement. “Is he bad?”

“At cooking? No. He’s good. Really good.”

“So..?”

“So that’s the problem. It’s intimidating being in the kitchen with him and not knowing, like, how to cut things or what temperature to cook at. He’s always judging, and yelling at me when I mess up.” She hunkers down where she’s seated, crossing her arms. Her next words are quieter, and you might call them petulant if they weren’t clearly laced with hurt. “He never yells at Riko when she makes a mess…”

You wish you could comfort her more. Maybe Bakugo does yell at her, and maybe he doesn’t yell at Riko, but in your experience even his normal voice sounds irritated and you’d probably wager a guess that she’s misinterpreting, and whether or not that’s the case it certainly doesn’t help the way she feels about it. So you take a different approach.

“It’s very mature of you to find an alternative way to learn, then. You must care about this a lot.”

It works. She perks up at the praise.

“Mom was always busy… she never had the time to help me learn. Or cook much at all, anyway. But I’ve always wanted to know.” It’s the first time you’ve heard her talk about her mother, you realize. Her tone is melancholy, a little wistful. She swallows, shakes her head, and adds, “And—and when I go visit Grandmother, I’d like to have some skills beforehand, so that I can focus on learning the recipes and not the basics.”

“Well, your secret’s safe with me. And…” you hesitate, not entirely sure how she’ll take it, but say it anyway. “I’m willing to teach you some things, too, if you want.”

Her head snaps up to you, eyes wide with excitement. “Really?”

“Of course! You’re always welcome, and I’m always making something.”

“Thank you!”

“In fact,” you start, “do you wanna help me cut strawberries?”

“Like… right now?’

“Yeah. I’m making a strawberry shortcake later this afternoon.” You look down at where she still has schoolwork scattered across the table. “Oh, if you have to keep working that’s okay. We can do it another time, too—”

“No!” she exclaims, already jumping to her feet. “I’m okay. I wanna help! But I do have to go back soon, Uncle’s gonna be making dinner soon and he’ll probably want me home so I can make sure Riko doesn’t interrupt him.”

Nodding, you stand up after her. “Understood. We’ll be quick, then. But not too quick, because we’ll be cutting things, and I’m pretty sure if I send you back to Bakugo with fewer fingers than you had when you showed up then I’ll get arrested or something.”

The joke gets you a little laugh. You think it might be pity, but you don’t really mind.

The strawberries are in the fridge. You direct Ayame to get out two cutting boards as you rinse them, dropping them into a paper towel lined bowl and setting them down in between the two cutting boards she’s laid out on the counter.

“Knives are in the knife block next to the sink,” you command her next. “You want a small one, a paring knife, not a really big one.”

She nods. It’s not until she’s pulled out an older one that you realize the one she ought to be using isn’t in the block at all—you’d used it this morning and cleaned it by hand, so it’s on the drying rack where you’d put it to let it air dry,

“Mmm, sorry, not that one.” You reach over to take the knife from the drying rack and slide it over on the counter for her to use. “This one’s sharper. Safer.”

Ayame’s brow furrows. “Wouldn’t that be more dangerous?”

“The opposite, actually. A dull knife can still cut you easily, but you’ll struggle more with cutting what you want to cut, so accidents are more likely. A sharp knife, however, will cut things far easier, and do what you want it to do with less force.”

“I see…”

“Now. Let me cut one.” You pull out a strawberry, one big enough for her to see what you do with it. “Pull off the leaves, throw those out. Then we cut it in half, put the flat side on the board, and cut out the center white part with the stem. Other half, and now we’re done.”

You hold up the cutting board to show her more clearly what you’ve done. Then you pick up both pieces and drop them into the bowl you’ve set up in between the pair of you.

“Now you try.”

“Okay,” Ayame says, clearly more to herself than to you. She pulls the leaves off, then holds out her knife and begins to follow your lead, cutting the fruit in half before setting the flat side down. “Cut out the center.”

“Careful, don’t point the blade at your fingers like that. You could slip really easily and chop off part of them instead of the strawberry.” You reach out slowly, trying hard not to startle her, and move the knife and her fingers into a far more safe position. “There, see how your fingers’ll be out of the way even if the knife slips?”

She nods. “Yeah… Okay, yeah. Lemme try again.”

She does it perfectly the second time around. You tell her as much, watching as she swells up with pride, and then turn to your own cutting board to take your half of the strawberries and start hacking through them. She doesn’t need any more help past what you give to her at the start; you’re still faster by leagues, certainly, but it’s to be expected. You’ve had far more practice.

Soon enough you’re finishing not just your own portion, but half of Ayame’s that you stole as well. She’s nearing the end of what’s left in her bowl; in fact, just as she finishes the last one, her phone lights up. You pause in your own work, glancing over as she checks the message.

“It’s from Uncle,” she says, attention fixated on the phone screen. “He wants me to go help Riko with her homework while he works on dinner.”

“Then you’d better head back over.”

She looks up to meet your eye. She seems hesitant—a little dejected. “Yeah. I’ll, uh… I’ll help clean up? I’m sure it can wait a few minutes…”

“No need, you were already helping me by cutting. I’ll bring over some of the shortcake when I’m done with it, sounds good?” You wink at her. “The best part of cooking is getting to eat the fruit of your labor, we wouldn’t want you to miss out.”

“Okay.” She’s smiling now, nodding at you, clearly excited by the prospect.

“And if you like it, I could send you the recipe. It’s fairly easy, good for beginners.”

“Yeah! Definitely! See you after dinner, then.”

With that promise, she’s heading for the door, pausing only momentarily to nab a cut strawberry to pop in her mouth as she’s leaving.

Spring gives way to summer. Your days are occupied with the garden and with work; the end of the semester draws near for the girls, Ayame is busy preparing for exams which, ironically, means you’re seeing more of her. She studies late with you now, staying for dinner on occasion, and she even helps you make it sometimes, finally confident enough after weeks attending her cooking club to allow herself more freedom in the kitchen.

You find it surprisingly nice. There’s a certain kind of pride that comes with aiding her, helping her along and cheering alongside her when she does it properly for the first time. And with seeing her become more and more comfortable cooking, and by extension with you.

That isn’t to say she’s entirely open. She still locks up sometimes, goes quiet when you say something that reminds her of her mother or pry a little too hard. On very sparse occasions she’s had to leave and go back home—you look on the bright side when that happens, that she’s comfortable enough at Bakugo’s (or, perhaps more accurately, with Riko) that it’s a place she can go to calm down when she’s feeling too much.

Riko, meanwhile, eagerly awaits summer break. She’s made countless friends at her new school, and she talks at length about every one, excitedly telling you about how they’ll see each other every day while school’s out and play when they don’t have to do schoolwork. She’s expressing a bit more interest in the garden, too, after a day where her teachers explained how good for the environment household gardens are.

In the last remaining weeks of the first semester, a large plant appears in a pot in the corner of the roof.

You certainly didn’t plant it, nor did you bring up the pot or the soil or anything else. But it’s meticulously cared for, large and thriving, and though you don’t mess with it too much you do pay enough attention to notice when it begins to flower and then, slowly, bear fruit.

It’s a pepper plant. Not a bell pepper, certainly—hot peppers. Thai chili peppers, you’re fairly certain; they’re the right size and, as they continue to grow, your little inspections begin to leave your fingers feeling itchy with the telltale sensation of capsaicin.

Where before you thought it might have been Ayame’s pet project, the realization of what they are has you assuming a new culprit. And that assumption is proven correct a few days into the girls’ summer break.

Now that the weather is sweltering, and the midday sun is borderline unbearable, you shift your gardening time to after dinner when the sun is lowering. Of course that does very little for the bugs, and it leaves you with fading light, but you prefer it over the heat.

Bakugo apparently does too. Or perhaps he just doesn’t have the time otherwise. Either way, when you climb up the metal steps to access the roof, you find him crouched over the mysterious pepper plant.

For a moment, you watch. He’s solidly occupied by it, with his own set of supplies at his feet and his attention solely on the plant. You can’t quite see what he’s doing, but he’s definitely looking at the peppers; you get small glimpses of his face and he looks, you think, strikingly serene.

The missing scowl almost throws you for a loop. You’d have thought it’d be permanent by now, but clearly it isn’t.

And you’ve had enough of your creeping. You clear your throat, walking up onto the roof to catch his attention. “Lovely evening for gardening, huh?”

He looks up. The serene expression is gone; you almost wish you could bring it back yourself.

“I was wondering what that plant was,” you say, undeterred by his silence. “Should’ve figured it was yours. Dunno why Ayame would be growing chili peppers.”

“I’ve had it for years, actually.”

His voice, when he finally speaks, is nice to hear, even if it’s gravelly and curtt. You cock your head at the admission.

“Really? Kept it indoors?”

“Balconies, mostly. The terrace for a bit. Too shady, though. Full sun up here’s better.”

“It seems to like it.”

“Yeah…” Bakugo looks back down at it, clearly proud. “Been usin’ this plant forever. You like spice?”

You shrug. “Normal amount.” Then your eyes narrow as you give him a side-eye. “Something tells me my normal is different from your normal, though.”

He snorts. “Probably. S’okay, just means we won’t be competin’ too bad for these things.”

“True enough, I suppose. How long have you had it?”

“‘bout a year. Give or take. Longer than I’ve had this house, that’s for damn sure. Lugged it all the way to the back terrace when I first showed up, dirt ‘n all.”

“You take good care of it.”

He puffs at the compliment, just slightly. Not much.

“‘Course I fuckin’ do.” He stands, rolling out his shoulders and loosening himself up from squatting for what you’re sure is a long while. Meanwhile you pick a spot and kneel next to it, pulling out tools and other supplies from the tote you use to bring it all up. “I better head back down before the girls drive each other insane. Enjoy your gardening.”

“Mmm. I will.”

He goes to head down the stairs, but pauses, turning back momentarily to look at you. “Oh, one more thing.”

“Yeah?” You lean back to look at him, just in time to see his eyes jump up from what you’re pretty sure is the spot under your legs. You look down, where your thighs are taut from your position and bulging where the tiny shorts you have on are pressing into the skin, and move them to check beneath. “What were you looking at?”

When you find nothing, you return your gaze to him, and he’s pointedly looking away; it’s difficult to tell in the fading light but you think he might be a bit pink.

“Nothin’,” he mutters, barely audible from how far away you are.

“But—”

“Nothin’!” he says again, louder, as he raises a hand to rub down his face in exasperation. “Just—forget it. Didn’t see shit. Wasn’t even what I wanted to tell ya.”

“Okay…” you draw out the word in confusion. “What did you want to tell me?”

“We’ll, uh. We’ll be taking a trip to see my parents next weekend.” He’s flustered, you realize; voice gruff as always but less assured than normal, stumbling over his words just slightly. It’s endearing, though you’re still perplexed by what brought it on. He clears his throat. “Just… y’know, figured you should know.”

“Oh? Have fun.”

“We’ll be back ‘round Tuesday.” His attention snaps over to the pepper plant. “Peppers should be ready to harvest ‘round then… ‘ll be able to grab the early ones ‘n the late ones, but go ‘head ‘n nab the rest if I’m gone.”

“Sure thing.”

“Don’t let ‘em go to waste.”

“I make no promises except that I’ll try.”

“‘kay, y’got me there. Night, then.” He pauses, a little frown, eyes off in the distance as, despite saying goodnight, he still hovers. That red gaze darts back to you. “Don’t stay up too long.”

“I won’t.” You raise an eyebrow. “Don’t fall on your way down.”

This time he huffs out a bit of laughter. And rolls his eyes, taking the hint as he turns to really leave. “Fuckin’ won’t. No nagging needed.”

Before you can retort that he’d nagged you first, he’s gone, and you stare a little dazedly at the place he’d just disappeared. Had he been dawdling to keep talking to you? You couldn’t tell.

Shaking your head, you turn back to your plants. No use lingering on it.

Ayame shows up at your door unannounced one Tuesday morning directly after they return from their trip to Bakugo’s parents’. You find her leaning up against the side of your house, right next to the door, as you return from your walk with Tadeo’s leash in hand.

She greets Tadeo eagerly, though that’s easily overshadowed by his own frenzy. His tail wags so enthusiastically that his whole butt shakes, and he attempts to jump on her once—she puts a stop to that by pushing his paws off her thighs and giving him a stern “no” before bending down to his height to pat his head.

“Good boy,” she coos to him, then looks up at you without letting up from her affection. “Morning.”

“Morning! You’re here early.”

She’s dressed fashionably, in distressed jean shorts with fishnets beneath and a ripped-up black t-shirt with a skull on it. The bright pink band on her wrist might ruin the aesthetic, but she makes it work; Riko gave it to her. At your words she stands to look at you fully.

“I know, I…” She frowns, looking away and shoving her hands into the pockets of her shorts. “I dunno. I needed to talk, I guess? And you were… my first thought? So here I am?”

“Here you are,” you repeat. “You’re always welcome to talk with me, whenever you want to. Come inside, I’ll make you some tea.”

“Thanks.” The tension in her shoulders eases at your words. She follows you quietly when you open your door and gesture for her to join you. You haven’t set out your guest slippers for her—this visit, after all, is unexpected—but she’s seen you take them out enough times that she finds them with little prompt before you can finish taking Tadeo’s harness off. He sprints off to wait by his food bowl the moment he’s free.

“Have you had breakfast?” you ask as you walk into the kitchen. “I usually make mine now.”

“Um… no, but I’ll be making breakfast with everyone this morning. Uncle’s up but we’re waiting on Riko, she’ll probably wake up in an hour or so. Thanks, though.”

You nod in acceptance. “Let’s just have some tea, then. Let me know if you change your mind, though; we have time and I have plenty of food.”

The first thing to do is feed Tadeo—you direct Ayame to do that, turning your own attention to brewing a pot of green tea for both of you as she scoops kibble into his bowl. Predictably, he sets about devouring it as soon as it hits the metal, and without you asking her to, Ayame has already removed the water bowl from the raised tray to dump and refill it.

It’s quiet as you prepare the tea. You decide that if she wanted to talk now, she’d have initiated it; instead she leans herself back against the countertop and watches as you pad about the kitchen. She might not be eating with you but you take the chance to start the rice for your own breakfast, rinsing it and turning the cooker on while the water comes to temperature.

Once the tea is steeping, however, you send her to sit at your dining table; she seems a little stiff still, but better. Hopefully even more so as she gets more comfortable. You join her quickly.

Sliding her cup of tea over the table and hugging your own as you sit down, you give her a warm smile. “All right, what’s up? Is this about your trip?”

She’s been stressing about it, you know. Worried that Bakugo’s parents will reject her.

“No. It’s—” Ayame cuts herself off with a sigh. Shoulders tense, she stares down at the steaming cup in her hands with a strange look on her face. “It’s a boy.”

“Oh?”

Her nose wrinkles. “If you’re gonna be weird I’m not gonna talk to you.”

“I won’t be weird, promise. You sound like you’re very conflicted.”

“Hayao’s his name. He’s the first guy who’s ever been interested in me and he’s, like… I dunno. One of the cutest guys at school. All my friends were so jealous when he asked for my phone number.”

“Yeah? Sounds flattering that he was interested.”

“It was. Is! I mean, he really is cute… They say he was on the hero track in junior high, but his parents refused to let him do something that dangerous. And he’s pretty smart. He asked me to help him study for our literature exam at the end of the semester, which is how I knew he was, like, into me? Because he didn’t really need the help, yanno? Which was cute. And—yeah, flattering. He asked me out on the last day of the semester, right before break. I thought it’d be nice, getting to go on dates and stuff when school’s out. But…” She trails off. Her gaze falls to her tea before her, and she traces the rim dejectedly with the pad of a finger.

“But?”

“But, I dunno. It’s just not really working? He kinda ignores me whenever we hang out as a group and his friends kinda laugh when I try to talk to him. And he lets other girls hang around him all the time—people don’t really know we’re, like, together, so I don’t blame them but I mean he should tell them right? I dunno. I feel kinda sick when I see him now, or when I might see him, or when he texts me. Like my stomach drops and I almost wanna throw up? My friends say it’s probably butterflies but I really don’t think it is. I think it’s anxiety? I dunno.”

“I see.” You nod sagely. “We do not like this boy. Message received.”

“No, it’s—” She cuts herself off with a huff and her eyes cut to the side. Still cradling her teacup, her knuckles go white with a self-soothing grip. “The truth is I don’t think he really likes me.”

“Oh.”

“Like…” Ayame’s shoulders slump. “My friends are like ‘just go along with it, you’ve never been asked out before’ but I’m miserable. All he wants to do is talk about school and Dynamight.”

That makes you pause. You hadn’t quite thought about it, but it makes sense in hindsight—people wanting to get to know her and Riko because of their connection to the number two hero. Especially stupid, shallow teenage boys with no understanding of how much that might sting.

“Well… okay. Firstly, I have to say I disagree with your friends here. No guy is worth feeling miserable for.” You pause, and she snorts, but doesn’t disagree. So you continue. “Do you wanna work out what you think you should do? Or just vent, because I’m here either way.”

“I… dunno what I can do.”

“Well, you could always break up with him, no shame in that. Or,” you add quickly when she opens her mouth, “you could talk to him about it, communicate what’s wrong. If he’s the kind of boy you should stick it out for, he’ll be receptive to that.”

She’s silent for a moment, staring dejectedly into her tea before her. You let her think, process your words, while you sip on your own and watch as Tadeo, done with his breakfast, waddles over to his favorite armchair and hauls himself up to settle in for the morning.

Then you turn your attention back to your visitor.

“What’re you thinking?”

“I…” She sighs. “I don’t know if he’ll be receptive.”

“You never will unless you try.” You take a sip of your tea and give yourself a moment to arrange your thoughts. When you can order them into the right sentences to get across what you want to say, you lean in, lacing your fingers together on the table in front of you. “Look, Ayame, relationships are hard. They take work, even when it’s the right person. I’m not going to tell you if this boy is right or wrong, you’re the only person who can decide that. But no matter what, none of your choices here are going to be easy.”

Ayame squirms in her seat. That, clearly, had been the wrong way to go about it. You can practically see her shutting down at the prospect. A new approach, then—you lean back instead, bracing yourself on the floor with your arms and looking across the table at her.

“You know, the first guy who ever expressed interest in me was the school delinquent when I was a second year. Real cute—though he’d take issue with that description—very charming, got in a fight for me. I liked him a lot, I really did. But..” You let it linger, hoping to create intrigue.

It works; she looks up at you, tilting her head in question. “But?”

“I wasn’t ready.”

She ruminates on that for a moment. Her face is pensive, her gaze unfocused. “How’d you figure that out?”

“I melted down two days after he first asked me out and my mom had to break up with him for me on my phone while I was crying my eyes out on our living room floor.”

Ayame gives a burst of laughter, then covers her mouth. You shake your head and laugh, too.

“It’s okay to laugh, it’s funny. Really!” you insist when she shakes her head in disbelief. “She read the text out loud and I was wailing, absolutely bawling, rolling around on the floor begging her not to and then begging her to just send the message. I swear, that woman had so much patience for me…”

“How’d your dad react?”

The question, admittedly, takes you aback. You tilt your head, trying to gauge Ayame’s intent—it’s an odd jump to make, you think, but she’s looking a little expectant and you realize she’s fishing. You haven’t talked to her about your father before. So you decide to be candid.

“I don’t have one, actually. Had a stepdad for a bit when I was really young but he left… when I was about Riko’s age, maybe a bit younger. Then it was just me and my mom—at least, until I got accepted to university and my grandparents offered to put me through it.” You smile softly, hoping to get across your affection instead of letting Ayame feel awkward or ashamed for asking. It only kind of works.

“Oh.” She deflates a bit. “Sorry, I didn’t realize…”

“It’s okay, it’s not something I try to hide. And you didn’t know either way. Besides,” you gesture between the two of you, “we gotta stick together, yeah?”

If you weren’t looking for it, you might have missed the way her lips quirk up slightly at your declaration. “Yeah.”

“Good. So I wasn’t ready—that was my point. Who knows what would’ve happened if I’d tried to force it; maybe I would’ve been miserable and come to resent him, and he didn’t deserve that. The way it worked out was better for both of us.”

“How?” She sounds a little desperate. You think you understand. It must be hard to believe that her situation can work out. Maybe that’s right—maybe this specific boy really can’t—but that doesn’t mean it’s permanent.

“How’d it work out? Kenzou and I stayed friends—well,” you hold up your hands to do air quotes, “‘friends,’ because admittedly we were both still pining—until graduation when I kissed him and we started going out for real. And that lasted a good long while the second time around. I don’t regret taking a little longer to date him, because it meant that when I was ready it was a much more successful experience. And trust me, if a boy really likes you, he won’t care.”

“You mean he’ll wait for me?”

You tilt your head. It’s more difficult than you anticipated, walking the line between encouragement and setting her expectations too high.

“If he likes you,” you settle upon saying, because it’s safe. Safer than telling her this boy will wait for her; you honestly doubt that, from what she’s been telling you. “And if he’s the kind of person who’s satisfied with that. But if he doesn’t, it’s not your fault. There’ll be other boys who do like you and who are the kind of person who’ll wait for you, if needed.”

“I guess.”

“Just trust me on this. It’s true.”

“I… okay.”

She doesn’t believe you, that much is obvious. It’s never going to be easy to convince a teenager that life continues after high school—never going to be easy to convince them that what’s before them right now might not be the ultimate happiness they think it is. Maybe you should have just told her that he’s a jerk and she shouldn’t waste her time.

But no, it means more if she comes to that conclusion herself. All you can do is finish your cup of tea and hope she takes what you’ve said to heart.

“How’d he get in a fight for you,” Ayame asks suddenly.

“Who, Kenzou? My high school boyfriend?” You chuckle. “Teenagers tend to be a lot more subtle than younger kids, but I still got picked on a lot for being quirkless. He caught some boys stealing my stuff—one of them was levitating it up above me so I couldn’t reach it—and stepped in.”

“And beat them up?” She’s excited now, a little starry-eyed at the concept.

“Oh, soundly. Used his quirk to overpower them—he was a hero prospect, too, once upon a time, though he’s always been too critical of the hero system to become one, even back then. ‘Course quirk usage got him in a world of trouble with administration, but… he always said it was worth it to meet me. I learned later on that he’d liked me for a while, actually, just didn’t know how to approach me.”

“Wow, that’s… so romantic. I wish a guy would do something like that for me…” A sigh, wistful, and you’re reminded that the girl before you has never had a relationship before. She deserves a first boyfriend like your own, you think. “I can’t believe you’re not still together.”

You snort. “Well, our lives just diverged. We’re still friends! He visits me whenever he’s back in Japan.”

“Back in Japan?” The awestruck tone has returned tenfold. “Where does he go?”

“Oh, all over the place. To tell you the truth I hardly know what he does. Something about quirk research, it’s all a little over my head honestly. But he comes back about twice a year to see his family and stops by when he has the chance. I’m sure you’ll see him someday.”

Just as you finish the sentence, in the kitchen behind you, your rice maker gives a little chime to indicate it’s done. You pause to look back at it, and—prompted by the music—Ayame glances at the clock on your wall.

Her eyes widen as she takes in the time. “Oh! I should probably go back, Riko should be up now.”

She jumps up from her seated position, careful not to rattle the teacups on the table. You follow after her, albeit more slowly, as she removes the house slippers (you should get a pair just for her, you think; Riko, too) to change back into her shoes.

“Thank you!” she says as she opens the door to go, turning back to give you a small bow that makes you grin from where you hover just inside. “I don’t know if I’ll break up with him… but your advice helped. I’ll see you this weekend? For the garden?”

“This weekend,” you assure her, and with that she runs off to catch her train.

The following morning, as you return from your daily walk with Tadeo, you find your neighbors (plus one) gathered at the front stoop.

The addition is a teenage boy. A little taller than Ayame, dressed in the most unremarkable teenage boy outfit you think you’ve ever seen, he hovers near her and seemingly refuses to take his attention away from Bakugo, who he’s intently talking to. Riko stands at her father’s side, hand in his, while Ayame is turned away with her arms crossed over her chest and a frown gracing her lips.

Riko is the one who notices you, turning and waving with her free hand as she tugs at the other one to get Bakugo’s attention.

“Miss Sunny! Miss Sunny!”

You give a little wave, gesturing for her to return her attention to her father, and intend to pass on by without issue. Unfortunately Tadeo has different plans.

He goes certifiably insane as you try to pass, barking up a storm and managing to tug so hard against his leash that you stumble (a true feat of strength, considering how small and how old he is) towards the group of four at the front of the steps. You do your best to reel him in but he’s making a beeline straight for Ayame’s visitor and before you can manage to pull him back towards you to pick him up, he reaches the boy’s legs.

The kid (what was his name? Hayato?) yelps, leaping back and almost cowering behind Ayame. She seems unimpressed—the whole family does, and you almost feel sorry for him considering he now has the number two pro hero, a seven year old, and his own high school sweetheart staring at him in varying levels of disdain. You hadn’t even known Riko could look that bored.

Tadeo seems largely unfazed by the sudden movement. He attempts to out-maneuver and bypass Ayame’s body but she’s faster, head whipping down from where she’d been staring down her nose at her friend to bend over and snatch up your dog swiftly and gently.

He’s still yapping up a storm when she hands him off to you with a troubled expression.

“Sorry about that,” you say cheerily. “He’s usually so chill. Dunno what’s up with him today.”

The kid (Hayao, you remember suddenly. You’d been close enough) side-eyes Bakugo, stepping forward slightly and opening his mouth to speak when your neighbor beats him to it.

“Nah, s’fine.” He gives a dismissing wave of his hand. “Mutt’s so old I doubt he even has teeth left to bite with.”

“Yeah,” Hayao rushes to agree. “It’s okay.”

“Yeah?” Tadeo makes a particularly valiant struggle in your arms, wiggling around. You might be playing up how hard it is to keep hold of him, if only to watch the boy’s eyes land on your dog and widen as he hesitantly takes a step back. “Don’t worry, I got him.”

“Well it doesn’t matter,” Ayame cuts in, “because we gotta go or we’ll be late.”

Hayao’s attention is pulled from the dog as she grabs him by the wrist and begins tugging him away down the road. He stumbles after her; before they can get far, however, Riko darts forward to intercept.

She gives the teen a hug, wrapping arms around his waist and looking up with a bright grin to say, “Bye-bye!”

He seems to startle from it. He’s stiff as he stares down at her with wide, baffled eyes and clearly has no clue what to do with his hands as he holds them both out wildly. “Uh, yeah, bye.” Then he looks up at her father with a strikingly nervous expression. “Good to—to meet you, Mr. Bakugo—Mr. Dynamight, sir.”

Ayame pulls her sister off him, hissing something like stop being weird before grabbing Hayao’s hand again and pulling him down the road all the more insistently. Riko is entirely unaffected as she stands with suspiciously innocent posture and waves as they head off.

She comes bounding up to where you’re hovering next to Bakugo with Tadeo still in your arms. You set the dog down as Ayame and Hayao disappear over the hill, and Riko sidles up next to her father.

“Did he notice?” he asks, still looking down the road.

“No, daddy,” she says sweetly, giggling like it’s the funniest joke she’s ever made. You glance down at her to find that she’s not-so-subtly trying to shove something into Bakugo’s hand.

“Nothing less from my best fuckin’ sidekick,” he responds gruffly as he takes whatever she’s trying to give him. You can only gape as he turns to you—no, your dog—and bends down to offer Tadeo the mystery item.

It’s a dog treat. You remember a jar full of them always on the kitchen counter back when your grandparents still lived in your current home. You’d asked them where they bought the things, because they looked fancy as hell and Tadeo always seemed to adore them—still does, clearly, judging by the way he barks and his whole lower half shakes with the force of his tail wagging—but you’d never gotten a straight answer. Now you think you might have found it.

“Played your part well, too, mutt.” It’s surprisingly affectionate—for Bakugo, anyway. He gives Tadeo a pat on the head as the dog snarfs down the gift; you haven’t yet overcome your shock when he stands.

“What the fuck,” you’re saying before you can stop yourself. “Is that why he was being weird?”

“Used to love those things. Made ‘em for him all the time.” Bakugo stands to his full height before turning to his daughter. “Ready to go, bug?”

“Whoa, whoa, no you can’t just leave after that, I need an explanation.”

Bakugo doesn’t answer you at first; he lifts Riko with ease, resting her on his hip. She’s still acting incredibly self-satisfied.

“My dad asked me to put a dog treat in Hayao’s pocket,” she tells you smugly.

Her father frowns, turning to her and raising his free hand to press a finger to his lips and shush her playfully. “We agreed not to tell anyone. Secret mission, yeah?”

She pouts at the reprimand. You interrupt, slightly annoyed.

“Why, exactly?”

“He’s not really interested in Ayame,” he tells you hotly, though you get the feeling the anger isn’t directed at you. “Punk’s just some fuckin’ hero fan. Wanted to meet me, weasel his way into my good graces or some shit. If I told Ayame directly she’d just get pissed off at me. Trusts the mutt, though, so figured I’d use that.”

The explanation surprises you, just a little. Frankly you hadn’t thought he’d paid enough attention—not to Ayame’s emotional state but to her boyfriend himself and his unsaid intentions behind asking her out—to have come to such a conclusion. Ayame almost certainly hadn’t told him as she’d told you, so it had to have been his own observations and his own conclusion from them. You wonder, briefly, if you ought to tell him about the conversation yesterday morning, but decide not to. It feels like a breach of trust somehow, and even if she doesn’t feel comfortable talking to her guardian about things you’d rather not make her feel like she can’t trust you, either.

Riko, however, has a different plan. Perched against Bakugo’s hip, she squirms, calling for the attention of both of you.

“Ayame told me Miss Sunny told her to break up with him,” she informs the both of you proudly.

Bakugo’s head snaps back to you. You shrug. “She came to ask for my advice yesterday morning.”

“That’s why she was stompin’ around so early? Thought she had a school thing.”

“Don’t you get up that early?”

“I don’t stomp.”

Biting your lip, you meet Riko’s eye and widen your own comically until she giggles. “Somehow I doubt that.”

“I don’t,” he insists, sounding indignant.

“He does!” Riko interjects. “He stomps all around and wakes us up when we’re sleeping even though we’re all the way upstairs.”

You raise an eyebrow and meet Bakugo’s gaze. It doesn’t even require words—he narrows his eyes in response and turns Riko away from you.

“Don’t manipulate my daughter. She’s only sayin’ that ‘cause you laughed.”

“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

“Playin’ dumb doesn’t suit you.” You watch his jaw tighten with his words, and it makes a smile pull at your lips. It’s never less than amusing, the way he takes things so seriously.

“Still in the dark here,” you respond, voice sing-songing. “I’ve thought up my fine, by the way.”

“Your fine?”

“Yes. My fine. Well, Tadeo’s, I suppose.”

“For what?” Bakugo sounds incredulous.

“For his participation in your plan,” you chirp in response. “You used my dog, you have to give him something in return.”

“We gave him a treat!” Riko pipes up helpfully in response.

“Ah, true, but he played a vital role, no? Wouldn’t you say he ought to get more?”

“Hmmm…” she purses her lips, mimicking someone thinking hard, before nodding enthusiastically. “Yeah! He should get all the treats he can have!”

“I agree.” You nod with her before returning your attention to her father. “So, in order to provide him with as many treats as he deserves, the fine is you telling me where to get those, because I could never get a straight answer out of my grandparents…”

His scowl deepens. He opens his mouth, and you can tell already that he’s going to brush you off. Sorry, bud, you’re already telling Tadeo in your head, because you’re never going to learn where his favorite treats come from.

Riko, however, has different intentions.

“Oh! Oh! I know!”

“Riko—” Bakugo starts, but she’s already saying it.

“Daddy makes them! He makes them from scratch! I helped him yesterday, he asked me to help knead the dough, but I wasn’t allowed to help put them in the oven because the pans are too heavy and it’s too hot and I might burn myself.”

Against your will, your jaw drops a little. When, you wonder, will this man stop surprising you—making dog treats from scratch for your grandparents’ elderly dog? You’d never have guessed. Your mind recalls the jar of them from a year ago, full to the brim every time you’d stop by, and wonder how much baking he’d had to do to keep it that way.

“Oh,” is all you can say in response. “So it’s not some… crazy expensive boutique.”

Standing before you, he looks embarrassed; a little sheepish. “Nah. Was gonna give you the rest of the batch tonight, actually. Wouldn’t want ‘em to go to waste.”

“How much?”

He shrugs. Riko bobs with the motion, giggling excitedly. “‘bout thirty. Not a ton.”

You nod. “Okay. Okay, how’s this. If Tadeo did his job properly, and Ayame comes back single… you’ll take a day and make five batches. If he didn’t, we just get the leftovers.”

“Deal,” he barks. Riko cheers. Tadeo, not to be outdone, barks as well.

That afternoon you don’t see them—you have a call with a client that lasts well into the afternoon, and on Fridays Bakugo always makes sure to come home early to make and eat dinner as a family. It’s sweet, you think; your mother used to do the same, though on a less consistent schedule. The perks of owning one’s own agency and being one’s own boss, and not having to be subject to the ever-changing requirements of the service industry as your mother had been.

In the evening, however, Ayame and Riko wander up while you’re working on the garden. It’s been thriving; you’ve had to wage a small war with blossom end rot on your beefsteak tomatoes lately, but other than that you haven’t had any pressing issues, and everything else you’ve harvested has been on time and good quality. With summer coming to a close, and the weather beginning to cool, you’ve begun the process of planting for autumn and winter harvests.

Riko finds a spot near the stairs and sits herself down on the concrete before one of the dilapidated flower boxes you’ve yet to clean up, filled with overflowing weeds and stubborn herbs. Her hair is plaited now, two long braids down her back tied with little pink bows at the end—it had been down this morning, and you get the feeling her sister might be behind the style change.

“Uncle’s finishing up dinner,” Ayame tells you as she approaches, and you nod.

“Well, you two are more than welcome out here while you wait, if he says it’s okay.”

“My dad’s a really good cook,” Riko says from behind you.

“Is he now?”

You can’t see, but you can hear how vigorously she’s nodding from the sound of her voice. “Yeah, yeah! He says his daddy taught him.”

“Your grandpa?”

“Yeah! He’s a really good cook, too. He made us food when we went to visit him last weekend.”

“Really? What’d he make?”

Riko regales you with all the food Bakugo’s father made the three of them over the two days of their visit. She lists off all the dishes, then starts on the ingredients—with extensive help from her sister, who corrects her when she mispronounces things or gets lost in her train of thought.

“I got to practice cooking a little,” Ayame adds to you quietly while Riko is talking, smiling excitedly. “Uncle’s mother didn’t let him in the kitchen while I was there, so his father helped me, and let me help him some.”

“Was it fun?”

“Yeah. It was.”

“Did you learn some stuff?”

“He showed me how to make tonkatsu. Said I was a natural, actually.” She sounds proud as she tells you, perhaps a little bashful. “I wanna visit again soon. Uncle said we might go back for a weekend when school starts back up, I think I’d actually be really excited for it.”

It’s then that you realize Riko has stopped talking. You raise a finger to quiet Ayame, who pauses immediately.

“Riko? You wanna keep talking?”

She doesn’t answer. You turn around, only slightly concerned, but find her attention completely gone. She’s turned away from you, having scooted even closer to the busted flower box, and she’s put herself to work on her own form of unstructured gardening as she pulls up weeds and pushes the dirt around into piles. It isn’t impossible to get her to focus and do real gardening with you, but it’s hardly worth it for the minor upkeep you’re doing tonight, so you turn back around and drop the conversation to let her play.

With Riko solidly lost to the infinite possibilities of her imagination and the planter box, you’re left with Ayame, who stands across from you. Beckoning her down to join you in your work is easy; a quiet gesture with your head and she’s kneeling with you, pulling from her pockets gloves that she’d taken from the pile near the stairs.

You hardly have to direct her on what to do. She’s already weeding with you, meticulously plucking unknown stems from amongst the shoots of your late-blooming carrots and radishes and onions.

“It sounds like it was a productive trip for you, too, then,” you tell her.

She nods. “Yeah. It was really nice. Uncle’s parents are great, they were real nice to me. I appreciated it. His mom took me to her work on Monday, actually. She’s a fashion designer. She took me to lunch, too, and we talked. It was… fun.”

“That’s great!” Not that you’d thought it likely for Bakugo’s parents to react poorly, it’s still good to hear that they’d welcomed Ayame readily.

She doesn’t seem to want to keep talking, though. She lets the conversation die down, and you let her, the pair of you focusing on the work before you in silence. Though there’s a more pressing discussion to be had.

Once the pair of you seem to get into a groove, you broach the topic. “So did you do it?”

“Do what?” Ayame blinks at you, and you push down the urge to tell her that she’s not nearly good enough at lying to convince you.

“Break up with him,” you decide to say instead.

“Oh… yeah. I wasn’t really sure this morning—I mean, I wanted to but I didn’t want to? So I wasn’t going to? But…” She moves to kneel next to you, not even bothering with gloves as she digs her hands into the dirt. “Tadeo’s freakout this morning made me change my mind.”

That throws you for a loop. Somehow you hadn’t been expecting it—somehow you’d thought it’d have been your talk with her, if anything. Maybe you should give Bakugo more credit.

“Your talk helped a lot too!” Ayame rushes to add. “I just… well, you told me to choose and I was still unsure. But, like, dogs are really good judges of character, you know? And Hayao… really didn’t like Tadeo, either. He kept talking about him on our way to school. And I don’t wanna be with a guy like that. So I told him we were through when we showed up. Which was probably not a good plan, I probably should have done it after school so he could have the weekend to, like, process or whatever. But I can’t take it back now, I guess.”

“Hey, look at it this way: if you’d waited then you’d have spent the day fretting, and that’s worse than what he got. Plus you might’ve overthought things and not gone through with it. Good on you for getting it over with.”

She doesn’t seem like she believes you; she nods absently, keeps her attention fixed on the work before her. You decide to go for a different approach.

“How’d he take it?”

Ayame makes a face.

You chuckle quietly. “That bad, huh?”

“He was awful. Told me I was a bad girlfriend anyway. Said I was all distant, I guess? Like, we were dating for two weeks. He really can’t judge that. And—and if I was that bad, why didn’t he break up with me first? Would’ve saved me the trouble…”

“How’re you feeling, though?”

“Uh, good, honestly?” She shoves her hands in her pockets, then seems to realize just how dirty they are and removes them, instead moving to brush them off over the seeds she’d just planted. “I mean, all things considered. Also I’m not supposed to know but Riko told me Uncle got me purin from my favorite bistro to cheer me up, so. Great? I guess?”

“Food solves all of life’s woes,” you tell her sagely, and she huffs a laugh. “Really, though, I’m proud of you. Breakups are hard on everyone involved, including the one who does it. It’s a difficult decision to make, but I think you made the right one.”

Again she makes a face, this one even more exaggerated. “Don’t be weird.”

“I’m not being weird! I just think you made a mature choice and I’m proud of you!”

“Yeah, okay.” Despite the dismissive tone, her next words are clearly genuine as she sidles up next to you. “Thanks for the advice, weirdo.”

“You’re always welcome.” You nudge her softly, drawing a smile from her surly face with ease. “I’m just glad it helped.”

She nods. The pair of you fall silent for a moment, you returning your attention to the seeds you’ve just planted and her simply squatting next to you watching you work.

Then a voice calls out her name.

“Ayame!”

You both startle, whipping about to find Bakugo standing at the top of the stairs, arms crossed. Though his face is stern, he doesn’t seem angry—no more so than typical, anyway—and the call of her name hadn’t been particularly irate either.

“Set the table,” he orders, then turns to go back down before Ayame has even acknowledged him.

She huffs audibly, and mumbles a snippy response under her breath even as she stands to do as he asked. “Couldn’t even say please? Like living with a drill sergeant.”

Despite yourself, and the knowledge that laughing will only encourage her, you snort in amusement. Luckily he couldn’t have heard either her comment or your reaction—Ayame does, though, and you catch a hint of a smile as she walks over to the stairs where Bakugo waits.

He lets her go down first, then follows, though not before locking eyes with Riko and telling her to behave for you—and then giving you a curt nod before ducking down.

Riko is entirely occupied with her broken-down planter box. It’s funny, you think (adorable, even) how much she enjoys the dirt, when her other primary loves have always been pastel pink and sparkles. Considering her quirk, though—and her mother’s—it makes sense. You suppose you ought to be happy she’s not using it to explode half your garden. Instead, she’s tearing up the weeds from the dirt and using them to make what you’re fairly certain are dolls; little stick figures with arms and legs made of stems and flowers as heads, which she’s moving around in piles of dirt. If you asked, you’re certain each pile would have a convoluted, highly detailed story behind it, explanations for what structures they are and what the different dolls are doing within them. You choose to leave her alone.

Instead you focus your attention back on gardening. While the conversation with Ayame had, obviously, been important to have, you hadn’t actually gotten much work done during it; too busy talking.

So you take the time now to actually garden. There’s mulch to be added, leaves to trim back, plants to water. You tentatively have hope that you’ve fixed the blossom end rot that had been plaguing your tomatoes, though it’s a bit too early to be fully certain of it.

You get to the eggplant, however, and realize that while you hadn’t anticipated it, it’s ready for harvest. You’d brought up the right tools to do it, a pair of shears, but they’re not on your person—they’re over in the pile of supplies you’ve left near the top of the stairs.

Now, you could go get them yourself. But there’s a certain child in the vicinity that you’d like to get to help out at least a little.

“Riko, sweetie,” you call out, “there’s a pair of shears over there that I need. Could you hand them to me? The orange ones?” You reach out your palm and wait for her.

But it’s not an eight year old’s hand that gives you the shears. The hand that reaches out is far too large—larger than your own, even, hardened with rough work and attached to a massive forearm that also couldn’t belong to a little girl. You yelp in shock, yanking your hand back and dropping the tool in the process.

Bakugo grumbles as he stoops to pick it up and you’re left reeling with your hand pressed flush against your chest where your heart hammers rapidly beneath your ribs.

“It’s just me, dumbass.” He holds the packet of seeds out for you again, scowling all the while.

“I didn’t know you were still up here, prick.” There’s a number of more obscene insults you might have employed if not for Riko still hovering in the vicinity, but unlike her father you refuse to encourage that kind of language from her. It doesn’t escape him; his eyes crinkle and his mouth twitches in what must be him holding back laughter. Your own eyes narrow as you stare at him. There are more pressing matters either way—such as how he in all his pro hero muscle managed to climb back up the metal staircase to the roof without making a sound. It’s worth asking. “How are you so quiet when you’re that big?”

“Trade secret.”

The only response you have to give to that answer is a low hum—not quite dismissive, but certainly unamused. You make an attempt to turn your attention back to the box before you, seeds in hand, but Bakugo doesn’t stay quiet for long.

“Riko,” he says suddenly, drawing the girl’s attention from her little floral dolls. “Go help your sister set the table.”

She pouts a little, but with a stern look from her father she’s quickly tossing the handmade doll in her hand to the side, rising to her feet, and darting off back towards the top of the stairs where, you realize, Ayame hovers and is clearly waiting for her—she must have come back up with Bakugo, you think. On her way over, Riko pauses briefly near Bakugo to stand up on her tip-toes and pull him down so that she can press a kiss to his cheek. You smile a little at the sight, at how he caves to her tugging so easily, and at how Ayame beckons her to lead her down the stairs—they’re steep, a little rickety, and you’re glad that Ayame is making Riko go first to ensure she stays safe. They disappear down, the metallic sound of their feet tapping on the iron rungs fading as they descend.

And then you realize that Bakugo is still standing before you, watching you as if waiting for something.

“Is there… a reason you’ve stayed? Need to tell me something?” you ask, but he remains stubbornly silent, still scowling, not quite meeting your eye. You sigh quietly, this time turning away from him entirely to focus on the dirt before you, and mutter under your breath, “Okay. Nice chat.”

There’s a kind of tension in the air. You can’t quite place what it is, but you can feel his stare on your back like the midday sun, and you have a funny feeling that if you were to turn around he’d be wearing an expression on his face like he’d smelled something funny. The only thing you can do, you decide, is continue until he eventually says what he wants to say or gives up and leaves. Luckily you don’t have to wait nearly as long as you feared.

“Was wonderin’ if you wanted to join us for dinner,” he says after a few minutes. You pause in your work.

“Huh?”

“Dinner,” he repeats. “You got plans or d’you wanna eat with us?”

Now you stand fully, staring at him with your mouth a little slack. “Oh! I’d, uh—I’d love to! I was hoping to finish planting tonight, though.”

“How much?”

“What?”

He rolls his eyes at you. “How much planting, dumbass. How much time.”

“Um, well, like half an hour if I’m doing it—”

“Then I’ll help.” Bakugo nods decisively. “Food can wait ten minutes.”

Arrogant—for reducing the time to one third by virtue of his help—you might say teasingly if you weren’t half in shock. Instead you nod silently, mouth a little slack, and gesture towards the pile of supplies at the edge of your planter boxes before lowering yourself again to return to your previous task. In your peripheral, you can see him retrieve what you can only assume is gloves and perhaps a trowel before he returns to your position.

Crouching down next to you, he sets to work by your side.

It’s silent for a while. He doesn’t seek direction nearly as much as you had expected; that’s a pleasant surprise, not needing to handhold him through helping you. The other pleasant surprise is that the quiet between you two isn’t awkward. It’s comfortable, easy. There’s no air of awkwardness lingering, or any hovering inability to speak. That’s proven, if anything, by Bakugo breaking it quite suddenly halfway through the work.

“She broke up with him.”

You pause. Ayame, surely, hadn’t informed him; that leaves only one option. “Riko told you?”

He grumbles inaudibly towards the dirt in front of him, and you suppress a laugh. It doesn’t work; he shoots you a glare that has no heat.

“Shaddup,” he barks at you with a scoff. “Ayame told you herself, then?”

“I think she likes me more than you,” you tell him smugly, earning yourself a second scoff, this one louder.

“Y’don’t gotta rub it in. Riko tells me everything, anyway.”

“Mmm. Smart, getting the little one in your pocket. They do teach you some good tricks at those hero schools, huh?”

The huff you get this time is certainly laughter. He nudges you with his shoulder—just like Ayame had done, you note with silent amusement and perhaps an equal amount of affection, though admittedly this one leaves an ache beneath your skin that she certainly hadn’t managed—and doesn’t budge a millimeter when you return the gesture.

“You still owe Tadeo a month’s worth of those treats, though.”

“Hah?”

“Your little scheme worked, that was what finally convinced her. I can’t take all the credit. Though,” you add, pretending to think carefully, “he is my dog, so I think I get half credit for that trick anyway—”

“Absolutely fuckin’ not,” he interrupts. “Riko was my assistant, if anyone gets half credit it’s her.”

That gets you to burst into laughter. He says it so seriously; as if he were genuinely offended you hadn’t given his daughter the recognition she deserved.

“Okay,” you say through your peals of laughter, “okay, that’s true. But I really do have to hand it to you. It was smart. Maybe smarter than my own approach.”

“Nah, you told ‘er what she needed to learn. She needed that, too. And she ain’t gonna fuckin’ hear it from me, even if I’m right.” He pauses, then rolls his eyes and huffs angrily. “Scratch that, ‘specially if I’m right. She listens to you more.”

It isn’t as if you can refute that. Though, to be fair to him, his ability to bond with Ayame is weighed down to an extent you’ll never have. Even if you don’t know every detail, that much is abundantly clear.

“She’ll come around,” you say finally, and though you can’t possibly guarantee it you’re pretty sure it’s the truth. “Eventually.”

And he grunts, a tentative agreement. You both fall back into that comfortable silence.

Ayame and Riko have to venture back up to fetch the pair of you, lost as the pair of you become in working together. You haven’t become so absorbed in gardening with another person, you realize, since your grandfather’s health had grown so poor he’d been unable to maintain the prosperous garden you’d been accustomed to while attending university. It isn’t until Ayame’s voice calls your name, and Riko calls for her father, that you realize how dark it’s become.

The feeling that blooms in your chest as you watch Bakugo pluck Riko from the roof and swing her into his arms to carry her inside, as you gesture for Ayame to go down ahead of you and follow behind as she tells you what they made for dinner, is a little odd but warm. You think maybe you’d like for this to be your new normal.

1K notes · View notes

yanteetle · 11 months

Note

I’ve had this fic idea burning a hole in my brain for the last month and I think you’d appreciate it. (Disclaimer that this scenario is Yandere!Donnie while the rest of his brothers are not yandere.)

Donnie slams his head onto his desk in dismay, shoving the phone away.

Stupid, stupid stupid!

He knows that when he had first met Y/N at April’s school, he had been using his cloaking broach to disguise as a human, but he had been trying to confess the truth!

if only Y/N hadn’t been asked out by their crush, causing him to move up his plans.

He had tried to ambush them in turtle form at their apartment, but they had managed to wrench themselves free from his grasp and escape.

Not his finest moment.

And now, he had just received a text from them:

I’m really sorry I didn’t come to our meet up, Donnie. There was this horrible turtle mutant! It tried to grab me! I only just got away. What kind of monster would try to do that to someone anyways?! I hope I never see that thing again!

This was it. All of his plans- gone.

Y/N hated him.

They must belong to him. They may not like it, but he knows what’s good for them better than they do.

Unfortunately, them hating his true self was a problem that would be almost impossible to work around.

Donnie hears a knocking at his lab door.

“Go away!” He yells, irritated at the interruption.

With a flash of blue, Leo does the exact opposite, portaling into the room.

“You called for your favourite brother?” He sings.

“Leo, now is not the time, I’m dealing with some serious problems with what I’m working on!”

“Awww, poor genius.” Leo says, patting him on the shoulder only to be swatted away.

“I’m sure that whatever’s not working out the way you planned, you can fix it. You’re always making fixes for your other projects, so just work your Donatello magic for this one!” He reassures.

Donnie sits up in shock.

“That’s right! When things don’t work out the way I want, I make a fix! Why shouldn’t this be any different?!”

“I’m glad to see that my wise words have helped you once again!” Leo smirks.

“Yeah, yeah yeah, you’re so helpful. Now get out, I need to start working on this.”

”So bossy! As you insist, bro!” Leo falls backwards into another portal, vanishing with a flash of blue.

Under his breath, Donnie mutters,

“You’re just broken right now, my dear. Don’t worry, though, I’ll fix you as soon as I can so you’ll understand what I already know:

You belong to me.”

oh my god the scream I scrumpt when I first read this. CHEFS ABSOLUTE KISS. ARE YOU KIDDING ME THIS IS AMAZING!! Q&^@*($!#$89??? I adore how you wrote this and the way you incorporated Leo into the writing, it feels so natural and sick and I the insanity Donnie is experiencing is SO ARGH- <333 And how you portrayed his frustration too?? It's so perfect and I had such an easy time imagining his voice saying the words too! It's really hard to have that in ROttmnt writing sometimes, so it's really precious when you're able to do it well! <33

I know I postponed writing this for an unreasonable amount of time, but you deserved to know that this is precious and that if you ever write for Rottmnt, I'd love too see more of your work, okay? Please have a nice day and take care!! <33 More people need to see this, so I'm adding extra tags for this one! :DD

#teets blockables #yandere rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #random asks <3 #yandere rottmnt #yanteetles tellings #yandere #obsessive yanderes #rise tmnt #rottmnt x reader

133 notes · View notes

pochapal · 10 months

Note

32! Do you like HS^2?

i...genuinely do! i think sometimes there's a half-conception that based on the mere premise of my fics that i don't like postcanon all that much (omelette route was misconstrued as an epilogues fix-it fic in certain circles and pickle route is still sometimes seen as a "better version" of hs^2) even though everything i write is in direct conversation with and comes from a place of admiration for hs^2/the epilogues.

with hs^2 in particular i think it had some really electric ideas that we only got to see the very first brushstrokes of (thinking most pertinently here about whatever was going to go down on deltritus that we never saw) that, if they'd been able to get off the ground, probably would have eclipsed the epilogues as the most interesting part of homestuck. from the bits we saw the meat timeline stuff was definitely the weakest. outside of the jade/altcallie possession chapter a lot of that half of the story was fairly unsurprising character-driven extrapolation of the same angst we departed the epilogues with - and i largely agree with @hms-no-fun that some kind of timeskip here would have helped it feel a little less repetitive (although arguably there might have been? three years definitely passed with dirk et al but it was very up in the air as to how long it had been for the pursuit spaceship crew). i get why that never happened - both meat and candy were being told in tandem and candy ended on a buildup to an immediate conflict that needed to be followed in real time versus meat's meandering slingshot towards something more nebulous, so for the sake of structural symmetry that limited things a little.

i think i'm more amenable to a lot of hs^2's storytelling decisions because i wholly and entirely loved the epilogues from the getgo and it was so good to see that theme/tone be carried through to a more "traditional" mspa space, even if i wonder if the comic form damaged the story more than it helped it. i remember a lot of people getting weirdly mad whenever we'd get an extended prose scene instead of visual panels despite hs^2 being a continuation of the text-based epilogues. then again, the mainstream hs fandom as a whole fucking sucked when it came to postcanon and that's even more evident in how they've collectively memoryholed the whole thing so talking about audience reception is maybe not the most useful thing to talk about here lmao. idk i think people forget that homestuck is largely a story about people who suck and then who get better from sucking. it's just that nobody really likes it when that lens is turned inward onto the alphas/betas who outside of a small handful of exceptions in canon never really had any ethical issues that caused problems for them and others so i personally think it was very interesting and refreshing to explore how the kids' complacency wrt their baggage and trauma allowed them and their world to backslide so disastrously! roxy lalonde enabling jane's fascist ascension is fascinating storytelling actually! (side note: read through shadowed eyes)

hs^2's original characterwork is probably where the story shines the most. the fucked up dynamics between the theseus crew was super fun to read because there's honestly nothing more enjoyable than Supremely Divorced people deciding that makes them irredeemably evil now. the egbert gender stuff was really nice! i particularly enjoyed how, even though it came after the june egbert renaissance, it still managed to be its own unique take on egbert's gender arc that i think really encapsulated the originality driving the project. also forever shoutout to the candy kids my beloved candy kids my children who i will die for - for me in particular hs^2 was a fun time because i was developing my own versions of harry/vrissy/tav for pickle route in parallel to hs^2 and it was so enjoyable seeing all the overlaps and divergences with each upd8. also yiffy fucking rules on every level and even though she never got to be more than a promise she sure was one hell of a promise.

that said i do not think it's that surprising that hs^2 ultimately died before its time. the conditions of the story paired with the most demoralising and vicious iteration of the fandom meant the odds were stacked against it in a big way. you can particularly see the strain of that starting to manifest in the final ~6 months worth of upd8s where people were leaving/being pushed out of the project and every part of hs^2 was a completely hostile environment and the quality of the art and storytelling began to get a little shaky - which i can't really blame them for all things considered! it's hard to want to make the best version of a story possible when the overwhelming reception is a bunch of sanctimonious redditbrained weirdos screaming that you're evil and foul for making characters in a piece of fiction do unexpected and surprising things and also being sympathetic to trans women. there were of course issues with the production conditions of hs^2 that would have probably led to some sort of reckoning at some point, but it's very obvious that the traumatic pressure cooker of a fanbase that wanted nothing more than the death of this project and the ruination of everyone that worked on it threw this whole thing off the rails much faster. despite that, you still have to infinitely admire the team for daring to make something challenging and original in a sphere dominated by people who are content to regurgitate the same babybrained 2013 content ad infinitum - for just a brief moment, homestuck was truly allowed to be the literary masterpiece it's been all along. now people just treat it as more fandomslop to consume and that's perhaps the biggest shame of all.

in the end i think hs^2's legacy is best felt in the places haunted by its premature absence. i'm talking about the comic itself of course but also other spaces and people and projects. stuff that really engaged with the meaty thematic frameworks being thrown up in postcanon that now no longer have a mirror to talk back to - stuff like pesterquest and godfeels and the aforementioned through shadowed eyes that all massively are in conversation with the deeper artistic and philosophical principles underpinning this era of homestuck. if anything else hs^2 will continue to serve as a useful prerequisite for getting into some of the best stuff homestuck fans have ever made. we might never see what could have been, but at least the torch is still being carried by people who care.

#spaceengineerjulia #homestuck asks #homestuck^2 #long post #i had more opinions on this than i'd previously thought lmao

98 notes · View notes

kinglivv · 1 year

Text

Seventy Years

Missy x Reader

Summary: Missy and the reader used to run together, wreaking havoc across the universe. But since Missy’s entrapment in the vault, they haven’t had an ounce of contact…

Warnings: Swearing, generally threatening behaviour from both parties

A/N: I haven’t posted a fic in a year and half, but today I sat down and forced myself to write after Missy popped up in a dream of mine very briefly. I’m not sure if there’s still even an audience for it, and my writing skills are a bit rusty as well as my Doctor Who knowledge. Enjoy!

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuck.

This was bad.

You grab the TARDIS leaver for what must be the hundredth time and slam it down to no avail. The ship creaks slightly, but as you desperately press buttons and turn knobs, it doesn’t budge. Why, why, why had you never got the Doctor to teach you how to fly it properly?

Catching your breath, you slump against the console, it’s edge digging into your lower back as you stare at the wall blankly, racking your brain for a solution. Psychic link? No - you hadn’t done that in years and you weren’t in the mood for a migraine. Search for a manual? No - you’d spend days just searching for it. Ask the ship nicely? Definitely no - she was a bitch.

There was simply no one but the Doctor who knew how to fly the TARDIS, and when the Doctor was stranded on another planet in another time zone, there wasn’t a whole lot you could do to get back to him.

And then another idea spawns. It makes your guts twist and your stomach crawl and you grit your teeth. You were smart, even for a human, and you knew there was really no other solution.

—-

“Missy?”

There’s silence from the other side of the door and you almost turn back. This is a bad idea.

“Missy?”

“This is an unusual place to find you, dear,”

The Glasgow accent cuts through tension like an ice pick, so clear, crisp and steady, just as it’s always been. You swallow.

“I need your help.”

More silence. And then the voice is right there on the other side, so close.

“Ah. Should have known you’d only come down here if you wanted something.”

“The Doctor’s on Mars,” you power on, squeezing your eyes shut and pretending you’re speaking to anyone but her, “sometime in the 1800s. There’s Ice Warriors and Victorians, and I was in the TARDIS and it just - it just dematerialised and it won’t go back to him. I don’t know what to do.”

There’s a pause as she contemplates your predicament. You haven’t uttered the question, but she knows exactly what you’re asking.

“Have taken any readings?” She finally asks.

“Yes,” a hurried hand pulls out the piece of paper you’d scrawled over, “Eye of harmony’s at 260 degrees Celsius. Oils at 350. Pressure’s at 7.”

“Good girl,” you can hear a smile in her voice and your cheeks flare up.

“So do you know what’s wrong with it?” You almost snap.

“You’re not gonna be able to fix it, I’ll tell you that much,”

“So what do I do?”

“You let me out.”

—

The vault doors open with a hiss and there she stands, silhouetted in the dim blue light and cutting the most dashing figure. There’s a tap tap tap of her heels as she approaches you, a smug smile on her face. She’s changed since you last saw her, maybe seventy years ago now. Her make-up’s softer, her hair less tamed, and her smile is somewhat half hearted. The mania’s still there though, in the whites of her eyes and down the line of her cheek bone.

She reaches you and takes a brief glance around the hallway. It’s the most she’s seen of Bristol since her entrapment in the vault. And then there’s a click and she looks down in time to see a handcuff slotting around her wrist. The other side is on yours. She looks to your other hand and sees a… pencil and she grins. She’d taught you decades ago just how easy it was to kill a Timelord with even the smallest of sharp objects - just one nip at the back of the neck and they’re forced into their next regeneration. The sight of it in your hand makes her heart flutter and her stomach sink.

“I see how it is,” she fakes the bravado and you see right through it.

Without a word, you give the chain a yank and she follows you silently.

—-

“No funny business,” you instruct her as you approach the TARDIS console, although you know it’s a useless sentiment. She could pull the leaver and shove you into a black hole within seconds if she so pleased. But she’d allowed you the luxury of obediently walking up to the Doctor’s office without so much as a word, save for the moment when she’d grabbed your hand as someone passed by you in an effort to hide the handcuffs. Your heart had caught in your throat and you’d hoped she couldn’t feel it hammering away.

Now, stood in the TARDIS, she looks at you with an eyebrow raised.

“As if I’d ever!” She mocks offense. “Mars 1810, you said?”

“Yes,” you reply, and your arm is forced to move with her as she reaches for different buttons. You’re uncomfortably close. “Coordinates 29487 by 74,” you say unprompted when her hands hover over the keyboard expectantly, and it makes your stomach twist with how easily you fall back into this routine after seventy years of virtually no contact. Memories surface of you decades ago, pressed up against her as you whisper all the places you wanted her to take you.

She types in the coordinates and twists a vast variation of knobs and presses buttons you’d never had thought needed pressing. Just before she pulls the leaver, you say “Wait.” and pull the monitor over, double checking she’s taking you exactly where she’s promised. You neglect to notice how she’s looking at you.

“You really don’t believe I’ve changed,” her shoulders have slumped slightly and you glance at her.

“Is that supposed to make me feel something?” you say passively, attention shifting back to the monitor.

Missy’s jaw clenches.

“Seventy years,” she states.

“Seventy years is nothing compared to the hundreds you’ve spent wreacking havoc.”

“I seem to remember you were present for quite a bit of that,” she retorts, “you could have visited me at any point. I know you’ve been living in Bristol,l.”

You ignore the thinly veiled accusation and scroll through the monitor. She was right though. You’d been here this whole time, posing as a student (you’d acquired almost thirty degrees in your decades spent here with the Doctor) and living a normal human life, avoiding the Mistress and waiting for her to change.

And then she yanks the cuffs and you’re dragged into her with an “oof!”

“You know what I think it is,” she hisses, “I think you like to pretend we’re different, like those years we spent together didn’t happen.”

“Missy, stop!” You struggle against her but she holds you fast.

“Does it never occur to you that I might be trying? And that your ignoring me for seventy years might be having a detrimental impact on that?“

“I wanted to know if you’re serious about this,” you snap back, the threat leaking into your voice and there you are, she almost wants to smile with glee. You were never really scared, least of all of her and you still had that bite in you. “Me and you are no good for each other if you’re really going cold turkey from being bad. Civilisations have burned because we’ve egged each other on, and the fact is that you can’t get better when I’m in the picture. Not when you could persuade me to break you out, or teach me how to force the Doctor into his next regeneration. We’re not good for each other and that’s a well known fact - I’ve not been avoiding you, I’ve been waiting.”

Missy’s face softens in surprise and you wonder if maybe you’ve gone to far. Maybe she’ll really sling you into a black hole now. Her mouth opens but before she can say anything, you’ve snapped off the cuffs and yanked the lever down. The TARDIS wheezes and you storm off to stand at the doors and wait whilst she’s left to pilot to a safe position on Mars.

—

You’re in trouble with the Doctor, you’re well aware. You’d apologised profusely when he’d stepped on board and his ever expressive eyebrows had knotted so deeply in her direction. There was a silence as he’d quickly dropped a shaking Bill home, and now he’d stepped out to drop Nardole off in his office - they had been out there a while and where presumably having an argument about the current predicament.

Missy however, sits unbothered by it all, tucked into a little alcove off one of the upper walkways circling the console room. She’s reading a book on TARDIS maintenance.

She glances up when you sit down opposite in the alcove.

“You’re right,” you announce, “and I’m sorry.”

Usually she’d retort with an “I’m always right!”, but today she just watches you, waiting, her cheekbones hollow in the soft light of the TARDIS, her eyes so blue. It occurs to you that you haven’t really seen her in a long time. Sure, the Doctor had occasionally showed you a photo of her, updated you on her progress, but this is the first time you’d really looked at her since you’d gone cold turkey from your friendship.

“I’m sorry I haven’t visited you,” you say, “and I should have. I guess I’ve just been… scared. And after I went so long without seeing you it was just easier to pretend none of it never happened.”

She nods, gaze shifting to the pillar in the centre of the TARDIS. “I am trying,” she confesses, “some days are better than others, but in whole… I think I really am trying,”

“I know you are.”

You lean over and press a kiss to her lips. A proper one, and it strikes you how familiar it is, how easily you fall back into your old pattern. You’re made for each other really, in body, mind and soul and you hold her jaw as she kisses back eagerly, not daring to move her hands from her book, frozen in the moment.

And then the door swings open - the Doctor’s definitely seen it, and the Doctor’s definitely not happy, but you turn away from Missy and push past him. A new chapter seems to be beginning.

(Will add my old taglist when i can find it)

#doctor who #the master #missy x reader #missy #gomez!master #michelle gomez #madam satan #the twelfth doctor #nardole #bill potts #peter capaldi #gender neutral reader #reader insert #doctor who fic #the vault #empress of mars #ice warriors

102 notes · View notes

lalaithquetzallicaresi · 2 months

Text

A Sandman Urban Myth

I was re-reading @arialerendeair's "Hopefully" series (which, if there's anyone who hasn't read it, you all should go do that right now!). I absolutely love it, and afterwards I couldn't get this idea out of my head. Not, I wouldn't call it a continuation of Aria's fic, just an insane idea, a sort-of Urban Myth that might come to be in the future in her verse:

There's a place in the South of London, near the river, called "The New Inn" (though if you ask anyone, it's not new at all. Some claim it's been there for at least a few decades, others, centuries... while there are even those who'll insist the Inn has simply Always been there. The place is managed by a very... peculiar group. They claim to all be family, though very few have any physical similarities among them. And yet, despite it very much being a pub, most regulars claim that they feel as if they were visiting an old friend's home when they're there. An old, well-loved home, the kind they used to only be able to think of when remembering their early childhoods. But that's not all. Aside from the official bartender, there are two people who usually help. One will always make your drink, blind, before you ever ask it of them; the other will make you a drink of them, and even if it's not what you planned on ordering, it will always be what, deep down, you truly wanted. In the kitchen there's a young woman who's not the cook, but claims she loves learning to cook new dishes, usually pies and cakes and pastries, that use fresh fruit and vegetables. Her dishes are never on the menu, but she'll always share them with whoever is around, and her food will make you feel a peace most will insist can only be found in the afterlife. In a corner in the back of the room, away from the fireplace and the windows, there's always a woman seated. She's almost always by herself, drinking cold coffee and saying nothing. But if you're having a bad day (or a bad week, or a bad month!) you can sit with her, and she'll listen to you. She'll give you the chance to vent all your grief, and your pain and your anger. Won't give you any false platitudes, or lies, and won't judge you. And when you're finished, when you're ready to move on, she'll smile at you, just a small smile, barely there at all, and you'll feel relief... It's an old place, so of course things break sometimes, but that's okay. Because there's this huge mountain of a man who's always there when something needs to be fixed... or when someone needs a hug. And this girl who's always running all around the place, giggling and saying all sorts of things, but she never bothers anyone. It's... nice, to see that there's still some delight in the world. Even when things seem so crazy. And then there's the owners. They always sit together in the same table by the fireplace. Always talking among themselves, like they're in their own little world. Until someone approaches them, a child, or a yound student, or an aspiring artist. All sorts of people will aproach them, looking for help of some kind, asking questions, or sometimes just needing a kind word, and they'll always get it. The owners never seem to mind the interrupt, seem to even thrive on talking to others, on listening to their stories, on helping them out. Some say it's like they can almost make dreams come true... No one knows just how long The New Inn has been there, or the people there, some say it's been forever. But well, that's just a myth, right? In any case, I hope they always will be...

So... am I insane or what? Aria, I hope you don't mind this little piece of insanity. I just couldn't help myself. I love your fics so much!!!

P.S. "Hopefully" can be found right here: https://archiveofourown.org/series/3178776

#urban fantasy #sort-of urban myth #sandman #the sandman #does this count as fanfiction or as a not-fanfic?#the endless #dreamling

16 notes · View notes

gendervapor14 · 5 months

Note

I've read a lot of your stories (and liked them a lot) so I'm wondering how you plan out longer fics? I feel like I want to add to the Corazon pile but I don't really know where to start

anon.... [steps closer and kisses you on the head] thank you. i had an entire work shift to think about this and i still haven't come up with a clear answer 😅 but i will certainly offer all the help and advice i can!!

starting is my favorite part!! you need some sort of idea. doesn't have to be anything crazy. (i'm sure you have plenty!) for instance, the idea that inspired me to write 01746 was "i want rosinante to have a proper backstory." for two fights for freedom, the idea was "i want cora and bell-mere to live and have a nice family together". i think vaguer ideas are more likely to lead to larger stories, but as i'm sure you've seen, i tend to write a lot (a decent portion of my multichaps were supposed to be oneshots) but regardless of length, every good story starts with the desire to put an idea out there, and i get the feeling you've got that part covered!

in terms of physically writing, this is where things get a little tricky. bigger stories tend to involve planning. personally, i'm a pantser. my natural writing process involves no planning. nowadays i do a ton of planning, but that's because i've taken on a ton of hours at work, so i don't have the time to sit around and experiment with my writing anymore. if i want a story to go a certain direction, i need to have some sort of guideline to keep me on track with time. so consider how much free time you have. if you have a lot, you might not have to worry too much about outlining or making mistakes, because you'll have plenty of time to fool around and fix things.

(also worth noting it IS just fanfiction, and the post button is not setting your words in stone. i've edited plenty of things after posting, made some major edits too! that's always okay. it's just fanfiction :) i've never had a reader get upset about me tweaking previous chapters.)

in terms of guidelines or no guidelines, it depends on you and your story! like i said, i write by the seat of my pants, so guidelines tend to confuse me. maybe you're similar. or maybe you LOVE a guideline! outlines are good because they're flexible. even if it's a simple breakdown of some basic plot points you think would be neat. for two fights for freedom, i have an outline that lists every chapter and every scene within every chapter. pretty detailed. took a long time to make it though, and i'm constantly tweaking it. for 01746, i used a physical whiteboard with random notes and diagrams, but there wasn't any structural planning until probably the last ten chapters. with 01746, canon provided a lot of substance for me, where with two fights for freedom, almost the entire story is my own, extremely canon divergent, so it's more weight for me to bear. your need for an outline or notes may depend on how much weight you can carry to make the story cohesive.

NOW don't let any of that scare you!! usually when i begin a big multichap, i don't start with an outline. i just write something. i try my idea out, if that makes sense. sometimes what i start writing becomes chapter one, or maybe it'll become part of the summary, or maybe it'll be the plot twist in chapter seventy-two. in the beginning, it doesn't matter what comes out of your hands. get cozy with your idea and let it fill you with excitement and inspiration. you can worry about organization afterwards.

sorry if this was a bit indecipherable or unclear 😅 with every story i write, i try something new! fanfic writing for me is a great way to hone my skills and experiment, so i don't have a scientific method quite yet. i just try to learn about myself as much as possible and have fun along the way! and i hope you're able to do the same!!

i'm around if you ever need more help! you can always DM or shoot me another ask, i don't mind at all! i really flung a lot of words at you here so feel free to narrow me down to a more specific concern whenever. i wish you great luck on your projects 🍀 this world always needs more added to the cora pile ♥ and feel free to hmu if you do end up posting something!! i'd love to check it out 👀

#genrambles #writing advice #never thought i'd use that tag #fanfiction writer #thank you for the ask!!

8 notes · View notes

monstersinthecosmos · 5 months

Note

for the fic asks bc you deserve to be dicking around all day 😭

💘 Is there any posted fic you want to rework/re-edit/ re-write?

🍉 in what ways has writing helped you process trauma and/or navigate through your own life?

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

(writing asks!)

💘 Is there any posted fic you want to rework/re-edit/ re-write?

bruh all of them lol. Every fic I've posted before 2022 makes me feel so ashamed and every day that goes by where I haven't made time to rewrite them makes me feel fucking nauseous lol

🍉 in what ways has writing helped you process trauma and/or navigate through your own life?

OKAY SO LIKE not to make everything about Anne Rice except that she like influenced me/corrupted me at a young age but I remember one time she phrase IWTV as a "conversation about grief" and it really made me think differently about like using stories to HAVE CONVERSATIONS with myself? Another author who was huge for me as a teen was Francesca Lia Block and one time in a workshop she suggested to like, identify things you don't like about yourself and turn them into characters?

I don't think I set out to start fics and go "I will process this feeling in myself" on purpose but I think like having control over the entire narrative gives us so many opportunities to just like spill words and feelings and ideas and it's so cathartic.

Something in particular though like all my pre-2020 VC fics I was like channeling a lot of my frustrations with myself into Armand (for example, time blindness!) and I used to just think they were character deficits of mine, but then like during 2020 when I was learning about ADHD/AuDHD it was like eye opening to go back to that and realize it was just like neurodivergent stuff that I was struggling with and I didn't know it. But it was nice to put those struggles into a character and remove them from myself so that I could like be a little more objective and have empathy and be kinder to myself because I was able to be kind to someone else. (Even if that someone was Armand, who is not real. LOL)

🎈describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? does it change?

Ummmmmmm I think it changes occasionally as I try to learn things or curb bad habits? And sometimes I realize I do something too much and I get sick of it and try to evolve? I don't try to sculpt a style on purpose, it kinda just happens as it happens. I do try to like match a character's VOICE for the POV I'm writing, so like that can alter the style here and there. But I know like what works for me and what I like as a reader so I think there's sort of a natural cadence I hear in my mind when I read and write and it might evolve all the time when I read things. Like sometimes I'll read a book and it changes my cadence for a while because it influences me. So I think it does change, but I don't do it on purpose, and I hope there's at least some consistency in my work where you can still tell it's me. :)

8 notes · View notes

theunfortunateplace · 11 months

Text

Say you love me (Neteyam X OC!Na’vi) Chapter 10

Photo cred @cinetrix

(I know I said this Chapter wasn't going to be posted till the 28th but I got carried away and ended up getting lost in writing so hopefully you enjoy <;3)

Read On AO3 Previous Chapter Next Chapter

pairing(Neteyam X Original Metkayina Female Character)

Synopsis: follow Luaewe as her world literally gets turned upside down with new na’vi joining her village. Never having to face many obstacles besides finding her way back home. How will she be able to handle the constant jealousy she's faced with and an unwanted love triangle.

Disclaimer: All characters in this fic have been aged up for the convenience of storytelling and to match the aging system up with both Pandora and Earth

AGES OC Luaewe-22 Neteyam-23 Kiri-23 Lo'ak-21 Tuktirey-10 Ao'nung-23 Tsireya-21

I sorted out the various different weaving material as I sat with the weavers. There were not a lot helping today seeing as how most of the requests have been met.

But once again I got stuck with mending the warriors' garments and fixing the blankets. That’s another request that will start coming in soon. Blankets…then shawls sometimes we even get long skirts different from the one Tsahìk wears though.

“ Lìamu tsahìk needs you come quick!” Someone yelled from outside the weaving mauri. My attention was drawn to Lìamu looking around frantically trying to figure out what her next move would be. She was another skilled weaver in our clan recently gave birth to a beautiful girl but her mate was well….. no good I’ll leave it at that.

She looked over at me “ Luaewae can you please watch Neawut till I get back…she’s already eaten so she will be fine.. no one else is here and I can-“ she said frantically I nodded my head and quickly put the material down gesturing for her to hand the baby over.

She looked as if she were about to cry when she passed her over. She ran out before I could even ask if she was ok.

I look down at the curious baby who started to coo. I didn’t have much experience with children this little only the ones around Tuks age but it can’t be that hard right?

“ do you think I can get some work done while you hang out with me?” She looked at me as if she were trying to understand my words big after all she’s just a baby. I turned around briefly and grabbed the one of the several baby slings and wrapped her on me. “ I hope I am doing this right”

“ it looks about right.” I looked up to see one of the elders walking in. She smiled and sat down where Lìamu sat.” Go I’ll do this till Lìamu comes back. The baby needs sun they shouldn’t be cooped up in here.” She shooed me away and I gave her a slight smile.

She shooed me again and I finally got up. It’s not like I couldn’t do the work I could but I guess since I’m left with the responsibility of Neawut for a while I should tend to her needs. I looked down to see if she was ok only to find her sucking on her fingers.

“ what do you say are you up for an adventure Neawut?” I lightly pat her bottom and begin to rub her back. What does one even do with a baby?

Maybe sitting by the shore would be fine? She was just born so I don’t think she can swim.

I didn’t have to go far to find just the right spot. Nice shade, decent space from the water, not too crowded. I sat down and carefully unwrapped the sling and placed her in my lap. She looked around while I sat there looking at her, but I soon felt a pair of eyes on me that weren’t hers.

“ wow, so your a mother and mateless I’m not surprised.” I looked up being drawn out of my thoughts. It was that stank breath man who rudely bumped into me last month. “ what do you want fish breath?” he scoffed and smirked his eyes trailed my body as if I were a piece of meat or something but then they landed on Neawut. He smirked

“ nothing just surprised to see someone put one in you no man would want someone who doesn’t know how to talk to people.” What is this dude’s deal like I don’t even know you and you’re out here spewing all these accusations. You’re a grown ass man acting like this? Who raised you?

“ listen I don’t know who you are but I’m only going to say this once leave me alone!” I hissed as I carefully lifted Neawut up, getting ready to leave.

“ that little hiss doesn’t scare me..and where do you think you’re going?” I gasp feeling my kuru yanked on. “ I’m not done talking to you!”

“YOU DO NOT TOUCH ME!” I slapped his hand away and backed away.

“ what’s going on here?” A deep familiar voice shouted I looked over to see Neteyam rushing out of the water, brows furrowed ready to pounce on the man.

“ we were just having a friendly conversation no need-“ he stalked closer to the guy “ leave!”

“You want me to leave?” Neteyam clenched his jaw. “ can you not hear? I said LEAVE!”

He scoffed and crossed his arms. “ oh I see what’s going on here..you get mr tough Guy to act as your mate because no one will fuck yo-“

Neteyam swung and punched him in the face. The sound of the impact startled Neawut causing her to cry. I cursed under my breath as tried to soothe her I began walking away and rocking her “ I told you to leave and you didn’t listen… next time I see you near her don’t expect me to hold back.” Neteyam looked back at me worried by the distant cries.

He hurriedly walked to me and placed his hand on my back. “ is she ok?” He asked eyes filled with nothing but worry.

“ yeah… I think she was just startled.” She wasn’t settling down. Maybe I should have just stayed inside with her then all of this could have been avo- “ let me.” He said gesturing for me to hand her over. I raised a brow and carefully did.

He placed her carefully against his chest and began to hum. With seconds she calmed down.

My mouth practically fell open! what is he the baby whisperer? We found another spot nearby the center where the clan come together to eat.

He sat down smoothly and propped his back up against the tree that provided us shade. He continued to hum while rubbing her back.

She was so tiny balled up in his chest I smiled as she let out the cutest little yawn. “ you’re a pro at this!” I said quietly but loud enough for him to hear. I moved closer and light moved the thin hair from her face.

“ I’m sure I would have lost my mind if I didn’t figure something out when I had to watch my siblings.” He chuckled.

“ what were you humming to her?” He looked over to me and smiled.

“ it’s a song our clan sings to their babies…but my moms version is fool proof never fails to put a baby to sleep.”

I looked down to see if he was correct and he was she was knocked out, mouth wide open.

“ your mate will be blessed.” He smirked. “ so you mean you will be?”

I groaned making him chuckle. “ we do not know what the future holds .” He nodded his head while smiling nonchalantly.

“ that may be true but I have a feeling you’ll be in mine….along with our many children.” My eyes grew I swear if he wasn’t holding Neawut I would have slapped him.

“ and who said I want to have your babies!” He snickered and playfully bumped my shoulder. “Plus you’ll be back in your old clan and I would be left to raise them. I don't want that.”

“ mm neither do I wherever my mate is I will be” what if his mate is back at the home he left “ you don’t want to go back?”

“ maybe… it’s nice here.. I do miss home but wherever my mate is I will be. So if she is here which she is I will be here.” He looked back down to the baby sleeping on his chest cracking a smile as he gently rubbed her back. “ do you want kids?” He looked up at me waiting for my answer.

But truthfully I never thought of it especially with what happened all those years ago. “ maybe…up until a couple months ago I was sure I would be alone forever…” I looked up and gave him a warm smile. “ but if it is with you then I wouldn’t mind.”

I watched as his eyes widened he was shocked to hear what I said but it was the truth “ you know when you say stuff like that you make it very hard for me to not kiss you.” I chuckled and rolled my eyes. I leaned over and grabbed his chin planting a light kiss on his lips.

I pulled away smirking and carefully placed Neawut on my chest I’m sure Lìamu would be back by now. His eyes followed as I stood up.

“Are we still on for tonight?” I asked before bringing Neawut back. He nodded and smirked. He stood up alongside me and warped his arm around me “Of course I’ll come and get you.” I nodded my head and before leaving he placed a kiss on my forehead

I probably shouldn’t be slipping away from my night task which was just finishing three baskets. But this was the only night he would be free before he joined the warriors.

A month had passed by so fast since he officially asked to court me. Day after day he kept his promise, showing that he would make a great mate, and the image of him looking down smiling at the Neawut as she slept kept playing in my head.

I fixed my hair for the last time settling with two simple braids to hold back the curls that would constantly fall in my face.

“ look at my beautiful daughter.” I turned back while still messing with my hair. I couldn’t help but smile while seeing her clutch her chest. “ here.” I raised a brow as she shoved something in my pouch that wrapped around my waist.

I quickly looked into it and gasped. “SA’NOK! I-I can not believe you would give me such thing!” She chuckled and smirked at me.

“ I was young once Luaewae just protect yourself”

It was a condom I’m literally lost for words….it’s not like we haven’t had the talk before and we are both adults but gosh

“ I- Neteyam isn’t like that.”

“Good then I won’t have to have the talk with him.”she winked at me and gestured to look behind me.

My cheeks instantly heated up seeing Neteyam standing there dressed in his old clans clothes. “ hello Sa’nok.” My mother smiled and nodded her head while gently pushing me.

“ why does it feel like you are trying to get rid of me!” She chuckled and stopped. “ because I am now go! The night is young.” She patted both of shoulders causing Neteyam to grab my hand gently.

We said quick goodbyes and parted ways.

“ So what are we doing tonight?” I asked while looking up at him. He hummed as we continued to walk further away from the populated part of the island.

“ I’m going to take you for a ride as for the rest you’ll know when it happens.” I groaned playfully making him laugh.

I gasped rather loudly as we took off. I wanted to scream like last time but I didn’t want to scare the clan.

I grabbed the arm that was wrapped around my waist tightly for support. “ open your eyes pretty girl.” My eyes sprung open.

The view was just as beautiful as the day everything was illuminated the feeling of his soft lips on my cheek pulled me out of my thoughts “Gosh.” It’s even more beautiful up here.. he let out a deep chuckle

“What is that?” I watched as he fiddled with the human technology when he suddenly looked up at me. “It's a speaker, it connects to this.” He held up a grey device and plugged it into the thing he called a speaker.

“They used it back on earth but norm he can’t live without music so that’s what I know this thing to do the most.”

Who’s norm was that a human friend from back home? “He's constantly getting the new music. He tried explaining it but it never made sense to me…..anyways I made sure to tell him to put the songs I liked on here and some that he recommended before I left.”

I nodded. He clapped his hands hearing a sound come from the speaker. I guess he got it working. It was similar to the music we play during celebrations. I couldn’t understand the people singing but they sounded nice. He stood up and pulled me towards him gently as his feet started to move in a rhythmic motion.

I wrapped my arms around his neck as my hips matched the pace of the song. His arm snaked around my waist pulling me closer meeting the roll of his hips.

“ I don’t think I could do this again.” He said while being one hand up to caress my face. The worry started to slowly climb. Was he talking about courting with-

“Get out of your head Ma Oare I meant being away from you this long.” I hissed causing him to chuckle.

“You shouldn’t have jumped to conclusion.” I rolled my eyes, “you should have started with that you had me worried.”

“ I would be a fool to let you go…. But I’m serious. I felt like I was going mad.”

I raised a brow. “ mad? Do you need to see Tsahìk?” I joked, making him smirk. I unlinked my arms and turned around, and let my back rest against his chest. I continued to sway my hips against him without missing a beat.

It was almost as if the slowed sensual music took over his hands and slid down to my hips causing a shuddered breath to leave my mouth. “ We haven't been apart for long.” I finally managed to get out.

“Yes, but we haven’t had our nights...” He dipped his face into the crevice of my neck letting his teeth graze my flesh.

“Mmm, but your training is important.” I chuckled at the annoyed groan he let out. “I can’t just give it all up and spend my days with you?”

I scoffed. “So you want me to mate with another?” He hissed and abruptly turned me around gripping my chin. “You have jokes, huh?” I smirked.

“Who else is supposed to entertain you?” He looked away shaking his head. I brought my hand up to his cheek causing him to look back with dangerous eyes, but not the ones you run from the ones that pull you in.

“You make me crazy you know that.” He said lowering his head he rubbed his thumb against my cheek slowly. If he was thinking what I was then there’s no harm in saying it right?

“Do it.” I didn’t intend for it to come out that sultry but it did. He smirked, tilting his head slightly. “You don’t know what you’re asking for.”

But I do. I want him to devour me. He ran his thumb across my lips and before I could protest against his previous words.

feeling the satisfaction of his lips dancing with mine…. Slowly getting more aggressive as the seconds passed.

He cupped my ass with both of his hands “Jump.” He muttered against my lips I pulled away linking my arms around his neck. He caught me without hesitation. I didn’t waste a second getting my lips back on his.

I felt my back press against the wall in the cave. The cold temperature not even cooling down the heated embrace.

But something was growing between us trying to pry us apart. I gasped feeling it press against my clothed clit. I dug my nails into his shoulder I needed him I couldn’t wait.

He dipped his face into the crevice of my neck sucking on the flesh. I slid my fingers up the back of his head, biting my lip trying to hold back my moans. But that all went to shit once he nibbled on my ear. “ ‘teyam please,” I whined, making him let out a deep chuckle.

He ground his hips against me making me let out an airy moan. “See what you do to me?” He growled against my ear.

“ I want it.” I tried reaching down to his bulge but he slammed his lips back into me. “ soon…it’s all yours once the ceremony is done.” He said in between kisses, “All mine?”

How could a man make me lose control like this? I don’t even want to know what it would be like if he fucked me…who am I kidding? Fuck me till there are no more thoughts in my head. “All yours Ma Oare my pretty girl.” I bit my lip trying to hold back my pout. He slowly lowered me down. He caressed my face one last time before walking over to turn the music off.

“Come, let's watch the movie I brought.” I groaned making him chuckle.

“It's not like the last one you might like it now come.” I sighed and gave in to his words. I sat down on the blanket and tossed the other one around my body as I waited for him to put on the movie.

Soon enough he joined me with his hand resting on my hip as I laid my head on his toned arm.

But I couldn’t focus on the movie nor do I think could he. By the way, he was massaging circles into my hips and ever so often palming my ass, it was safe to say he was distracted. And so was I his large bulge in his loincloth pulled me away from the people on the screen.

I bit my lip getting a mischievous idea to help him. I slid my hand over his thigh making his breath hitch and eyes jolt down to me. I positioned myself on his lap looking straight into his lust-filled eyes, “ ‘teyam.”

He placed his hands around my hips cupping my ass. “Let me help you.” I ground down on him slowly making curses leave his mouth. He squeezed my cheeks trying to hold me still while his hips bucked into “You don’t know when to stop do ya?” I smirked and slid my hand down to palm his hardened bulge.

“ I see no harm in what I’m doing.” I chuckled and he shook his head in disbelief. “Keep teasing me and I’ll have you pinned to this floor faster than you can call your ilu.” He gripped the back of my neck forcing my head closer to him.

I bit my lip at the right hold he had around me. I wonder how that big hand would feel around my neck as he pounded into me? “That doesn’t sound like a bad idea.” I palmed him harder as I looked him in the eyes. He let out a spew of curses.

“It's a very bad idea. Eywa wouldn’t be too happy if I mated with you before the ceremony.” I groaned and rolled my hips down onto him which only resulted in a sharp slap to my rear.

To any regular person, the impact would have made them stop but it only riled me up. He scoffed and furrowed his brows as I counted to seduce him. “You're not being very good tonight, pretty girl.” I bit my lip and tucked my face into the crevice of his neck.

“ I want you…. I want you so bad ma’teyam.” I whined a sniffle escaped me causing him to gently lift my face up. His thumb gently wiped away the tears and only the looks of confusion and worry could be found on his face.

He placed his hand on my forehead and pulled back cursing. I pouted and stuck my face back into his neck.

“ Luaewe I have to get you back-“ I bit down on his shoulder. Not hard enough to draw blood but enough to say I didn’t want to move. “ bite me all you want pretty girl but I need to bring you home…..you're going into heat.”

Heat? Is this why I was acting this way?

“But I want to stay here with you,” I muttered against him I felt him kiss the side of my face and he let out a sigh.

“ I’ll come back for this later.” He said as he stood up making sure to hold me.

“ I wasn’t supposed to come for another week maybe it’s not-“

“It is your scent is getting stronger.” He cut me off with a tone I couldn’t decipher. “The last thing I want is to mate you while you are like this and when my ceremony has not happened, “I have a cond-“

He scoffed “You think that measly little thing will stop my cum from seeping into you or stop the urge to push my knot into you?” He said in a frustrated tone. “ I’m doing this because I care about you and don’t want you to regret anything...” He said while looking down at me as we sat on his ikran, “Now try and sleep... you’ll need all the energy you can get.”

Previous Chapter Next Chapter

#avatar #avatar fanfiction #avatar oc #avatar 2 #avatar the way of water #neteyam #avatar smut #avatar way of water #slow burn #atwow neteyam #atwow smut

21 notes · View notes

sequinsmile-x · 1 year

Text

All's Fair - Chapter 5

Emily and Aaron have loved each other since they were children. War might be the thing that finally brings them together, but it could also be the thing that tears them apart forever.

A Hotchniss AU, set in 1917 and beyond.

-x-

Thank you so much for the love for this fic. It means so much more than I can put into words!!

Please let me know what you think of this chapter <3

Special shout out to @cloudlessly-light who, when I said I thought this chapter was going to get away from me, was able to correctly guess how many words it was going to be haha

-x-

Words: 6.5k

A list of warnings and tags can be found on the Series Master List

Read over on Ao3, or below the cut

Emily,

I love you. I can’t think of a better way to say after the telegram I just received. I love you, and Mae, so much.

I’m so proud of you, and so relieved you’re ok. If what I’ve felt worrying about you is only a fraction of how you have felt since I left then I think I’ll be apologising for the rest of our lives.

I wish I could be there, I wish I could meet her and hold you both. I only hope that one day, if we’re lucky enough, I can be there with you every step of the way.

All my love,

Aaron

___

Aaron,

I know Mother had Rossi send you a telegram, but I also wanted to write. Mae is right next to me, fast asleep as if she’s the one who’s had a tiring day!! Although I suppose being born isn’t easy.

She looks so much like you. I know she’s only a few hours old, and babies don’t really look like anyone, but all I can think about when I look at her is you.

I do think she’ll end up cursed with my nose though.

I wish you were here. You not being here is familiar to me now, and missing you has become part of my daily life, but I haven’t felt it this sharply in quite some time.

I need you to see her. So that, if the worst ever happens, I can tell her that you met.

Stay safe.

All our love,

Emily and Mae

___

Aaron,

I just received your letter, and I imagine you just got mine. Maybe one day letters will be instant or at least take less time to arrive.

Mae is 4 weeks old now. She’s grown so much already. She only really sleeps if she’s in my arms. She eats constantly, or at least it feels that way. Mother says I spoil her, but I don’t see how it’s possible to love someone too much.

She knows I hate that you can’t see Mae, so Mother organised for a photographer to come to the house. It was nice of her, but of course, in typical Elizabeth fashion, she did manage to comment on the outfit I chose for myself (my old clothes feel like they’ll never fit again!) and for Mae.

I’ve put a photo of the two of us in this letter. I hope it helps remind you of what you have waiting here.

All our Love,

Emily and Mae

___

April 1918

“I don’t understand why I have to go.”

Elizabeth sighs, watching her daughter as she paces back and forth with her own daughter in her arms.

“Because it’s the start of the social season, Emily. Surely you remember what that means.”

Emily smiles politely, her eyes fixed on Mae in her arms, the three-month-old refusing to settle for her nap. Her stubborn streak was obvious already, something she had inherited from both of her parents.

“What I remember is you hiding me away last year so I didn’t embarrass you any more than I already had.”

“Because you’d just eloped, even though your engagement to another man was meant to be announced just a few weeks later.”

Emily sighs, clenching her teeth tightly to stop herself from responding, not wanting to start an argument.

It was hard to believe it had been a year since she and Aaron got married. Life looked so different now, and sometimes it felt like Mae was the only proof it had ever happened. If she didn’t exist, tangible evidence of their love for each other, Emily was sure their night together would feel like a dream. The memory of his touch was just out of reach. She longed to remember how it felt to simply hold his hand.

It had been a little too long since she’d heard from him. Panic tingling through her veins in a way she desperately tries to ignore whenever she thinks about it. She’d re-read the letters she already had from him more times than she could count. The paper worn thin on the first couple, almost torn at the edges from where she had unfolded and refolded them so many times. She knew them by heart. His words now, the things they’d barely had the chance to say to each other's faces, were as familiar to her as he was.

There were days when she felt as fragile as the paper that held their story. Easily fryable, tearing apart at the edges in a way she should have known only Aaron was capable of doing to her. On other days she felt strong, made of steel as she forged her way forward for her and her daughter, determined to make a good life for her little girl, even if she never got to have her father as part of it.

Every day that passed without a letter, a gentle shake of Dave’s head as he brought her mother the mail in the morning, she feels herself get more anxious. More familiar with the thought that maybe he’d never make it back at all.

Emily clears her throat, trying to rid herself of all the things she knew she couldn’t afford to feel.

“And what about Mae, who’s going to look after her whilst I’m downstairs at a party?”

“Well since you refused to hire a nanny,” Elizabeth says, her raised eyebrow the closest she’d come to expressing her feelings on the matter, “I spoke to JJ, and she agreed to sit in here with her whilst you are downstairs.”

Emily looks down at Mae, smiling softly when she sees the baby is now fast asleep. JJ was one of the only people she’d trust her daughter with completely, and Elizabeth knew that.

“Ok,” Emily says, looking up at her mother, “I’ll go.”

___

Emily remembered clearly the first time she’d had to go to one of these events. Her mother had finally deemed her old enough to go, no longer worried that she’d be too young, or cause embarrassment. It was the first time she’d felt like she was on display.

She was eleven.

She had been introduced to people she now saw frequently, members of her mother’s inner circle that had never done anything other than make her feel trapped. She’d spent the whole night wishing she’d been allowed to run around the estate with Aaron and Sean like she used to be able to, staying out until long after the sun had disappeared over the horizon, coming home with grass stains on her clothes that her mother hated.

She finds herself missing Aaron now for completely different reasons. He’d never been to one of her mother’s parties, and part of her wanted to bring him to one. To stand in the corner with him and watch him watch this, a part of her life he’d never fully understood because he was always standing on the edge of it, watching from outside.

She knows if he makes it back, he’d be part of it now. Standing by her side as her husband, the support she’d always needed but had never been sure how to ask for.

She stands at the edge of the party, her back practically against the wall as she nurses a small glass of wine. It felt wrong, watching everyone dance and laugh as if there wasn’t a war raging on elsewhere. She knew she wasn’t the only person who had someone out there. A lot of the men she’d grown up with were in France too, their parents in the room with her, a tightness in their expressions that she could relate to.

It felt like she was being watched. An item of curiosity that she hadn’t felt like the very first time when she was a young girl. People would smile politely at her before turning away, clearly talking about her choices. The husband no one had ever met. The baby who was sleeping soundly upstairs.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you, Emily Prentiss.”

She looks up, the accent immediately making her tense. She locks eyes with the man she should have married, the one her mother still made comments about as if she didn’t know exactly what he was like.

“Ian, it has been a long time,” she replies tightly, her society smile spreading across her face, “And it’s Hotchner now. Has been for a little while.”

“Of course,” he says, his smile letting her know that he’d purposely got her name wrong. He looks her up and down, his eyes lingering in a way that makes her feel uncomfortable, but she doesn’t show it. Not wanting to give him the satisfaction. “Didn’t you have a baby recently?”

“I did,” she replies, taking a sip of her wine, “She’s three months old.”

He hums, looking her up and down again before his eyes meet hers, something about the icy blueness of them makes her recoil, her back pressing further into the wall.

“It’s a shame we never got a chance to be together,” he says, smirking, “We could have been great,” he leans in and kisses her cheek, his breath skipping across her skin making her clench her teeth, his hand briefly at her waist, “If you ever get bored of that husband of yours, or if he never makes it back,” he says, pulling back, his smirk wider, “You know where to find me.”

She feels a fire in her belly, her grip on her drink tightening to the point she’s surprised the glass doesn’t break in her hand. Disgust flows through her veins, spreading through her whole body and she knows from how Ian smiles at her she doesn’t hide it either, her face giving away exactly how she feels.

“You are such-”

“Emily.”

She turns, cut off from her insult by her mother, who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. She blows out a short sharp breath, her fake smile plastered back on her face as she turns to look at her. She doesn’t think she’s ever been more grateful to see her, or for her timing.

“Yes, Mother?”

“I need to borrow you for a moment,” she says, looking between Emily and Ian, “I am so sorry to whisk her away, Ian. It’s important.”

“No problem, Elizabeth,” he says, leaning in to kiss her cheek too, smiling as he pulls back, “I think we were done here anyway.”

Emily glares at him but lets herself get led away by her mother, away from the ballroom where the party was being held. She feels less tense the further away they get, the sound of the revellers and the music fading as they make it towards her mother’s office.

“God, I cannot believe that is the man you wanted me to marry. He is awful,” she complains, shivering as she thinks of his hand on her waist, his foul breath on her skin. She frowns when she realises they’ve come to a stop, her mother standing outside of her office, an expression on her face that Emily cannot read, “What’s going on?”

“There’s someone here who wants to speak to you,” Elizabeth says, clearing her throat in a poor attempt to hide a smile, “It couldn’t wait until the end of the party.” Emily frowns, her confusion only deepening further as her mother steps away, “I should get back, and leave you to it.”

Emily watches her walk away, her gaze fixed on her mother until she disappears from sight. She looks back at the office door and stares at it for a moment, before opening it.

She freezes, her hand still tight around the door handle as the person in the room turns to look at her.

He was skinnier. Some of the strength she had always admired was gone, obvious even through his green uniform. Their eyes meet and she feels like all the air has been sucked out of the room.

“Aaron?”

___

It felt like a lifetime had passed since he’d last been here.

The year that had elapsed in between both the shortest and the longest of his life. When he arrives at the front door, the sound of a party echoing outwards from within, he feels a sense of anger he hadn’t anticipated.

Life went on, he knew that. The sun carried on rising despite everything he’d seen, everything he’d lived through since he was last here, but it felt wrong. Life was carrying on as normal as if men weren’t dying in droves on another continent. He blows out a steady breath as he knocks on the door. It’s answered immediately, a person he doesn’t recognise looking him up and down.

“This is a private event,” he snaps, eyeing Aaron’s uniform with suspicion.

“I used to work here,�� he says, shaking his head at himself for that being the first thing he’d said, “I’m married to the daughter of the lady of the house.”

The man narrows his eyes even further, before closing the door. Aaron sighs, rubbing the bridge of his nose as he thinks of his choices. He knew which room was Emily’s and he wasn’t above trying to sneak into the main house.

The door is opened again and he’s face to face with Elizabeth, her eyes wide with the closest thing to shock he’d ever seen her express. She’s dressed up, and has clearly been pulled from the party she was hosting to confirm his identity.

“Aaron.” She says, looking him up and down, and he doesn’t miss the fact this is the first time they’ve interacted since she became his mother-in-law, “I think you’d better come in. We have a lot to talk about.”

___

Emily can’t take her eyes off him. She can’t move, can’t blink. Worried that the slightest shift will make him disappear.

“What…” she drifts off, unable to formulate her thoughts, the words stuck in her throat as she continues to stare at him. Her vision becomes blurry, tears falling onto her cheeks and she finally releases her grip from the door handle, covering her mouth with her hand.

“Hi sweetheart,” he says, grateful when the door closes behind her, leaving them, for the first time in too long, alone. He takes the opportunity to look at her, to take in how beautiful she is. His memory had done her a disservice, as it always had when he tried to picture her, and the photo he kept in his pocket didn’t come close to showing how captivating she was. She looked tired, something he was sure had to do with their daughter he was yet to meet.

“What are you doing here?” She chokes out. She stops just a couple of paces in front of him, her hand stopping in mid-air as she stops herself from touching him, still not entirely sure this was real. That he wouldn’t disappear in a puff of smoke.

“I had some leave. I spent most of it getting here, and will spend the rest of it getting back,” he explains, his hands twitching to reach out for her, to hold her like he had dreamt of for a year, but he knows he needs to take it at her pace, “I just had to see you. Both of you.”

“How long are you here?” She asks, the sound of the party just down the hall muffled, as if it was miles away, her entire focus on here. On him.

“Two days at most,” he replies, hating the way her face falls, the way he can already see the grief gathering in her eyes.

“It’s a hell of a long way to come for two days,” she says, her eyes searching his face as she takes one step closer, still not touching him.

“You and Mae are worth it.”

She’s not sure if it’s the sentiment, or the fact it’s the first time she’s ever heard him say their daughter’s name, but that’s what breaks her. She closes the gap between them and buries her face in his chest, wrapping her arms tightly around him as he pulls her closer. He smells different, the soap he’s used clearly a cheap one that the army supply on masse, and now she’s hugging him she can feel that he’s skinnier, that whatever he’s eating out there isn’t enough, especially when she considers what he’s doing. She makes a mental note to ask Dave to get the cook to make whatever Aaron wants whilst he’s here.

“I missed you so much,” she says, her face still pressed against his scratchy uniform, not sure how she can let go now she’s holding him.

“I missed you too,” he replies, leaning down and kissing the top of her head, comforted by the familiar scent of her soap, something that he had fallen in love with years ago.

“It’s been so long since I got a letter,” she says, pulling back to look at him but making no attempt to move out of his arms, “I thought…” she can’t put it into words, doesn’t want to say what she’d assumed.

He finally leans down and kisses her, his lips familiar against hers, and she grasps at the lapels of his jacket, holding him close.

“I have a letter for you, I thought I’d hand deliver it,” he mutters, kissing her again and she pulls back, her eyebrows pulled together indignantly as she narrows her eyes at him. She uses one of the hands buried in wool to lightly slap his chest.

“You ass,” she says, kissing him despite her words, her forehead pressing into his before she pulls back, “I was worried.”

“I’m sorry,” he replies, one of his hands cupping her cheek, holding her in place, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she kisses him once more before she pulls away, one of her hands seeking out his, not wanting to lose their connection even for a moment, “Come on, there’s someone you’ve got to meet.”

___

Emily is, as ever, grateful for JJ’s discretion. She looks shocked as Aaron follows Emily into her room, but doesn’t make any comment apart from explaining Mae had slept since she had gone downstairs before she leaves.

Aaron smiles tightly at the other woman, his usual politeness nowhere to be found, no consideration for the woman who used to be his colleague, as all of his focus is on his wife and daughter. As soon as they are alone, the bedroom door closing softly behind JJ, Aaron finds his voice, once again surprised at the first thing he says.

“I thought your room was on the other side of the house.”

Emily turns to look at him, a soft smile on her face, “It was,” she says squeezing his hand in hers, “Mother moved me here. Said its ‘more fitting for a married woman,’” she says, rolling her eyes, “But it has an adjoining room for Mae,” she adds, tilting her head towards the door that leads to it, “Which is nice when she cries in the middle of the night, it means she’s never too far away.”

She steps towards him and presses her lips to his cheek, desperate to re-familiarise herself with as much of him as possible, all too aware that yet again she had very little time to do so.

“Are you ready?” She asks softly, squeezing his hand as he nods.

“I think so.”

She smiles and gently tugs him towards Mae’s room, pushing the adjoining door open before she flicks on the light. Emily wouldn’t be able to explain her own nervousness even if she wanted to, butterflies in her stomach and her heart pounding in her ears as she prepares to introduce the two people who mean the most to her to each other.

She wonders if she would have felt this way if he’d been here when Mae was born. If the nervous excitement would have been the same, or if the relief she’d felt at Mae’s safe arrival would have overridden it all.

She hopes one day, if they are lucky, that she’d find out.

Emily smiles as she sees Mae shifting around, sharp movements in her limbs as she grunts, a sign that she had only just woken up, probably to the sound of the short conversation they’d had with JJ. She disconnects from Aaron, letting go of his hand for the first time since she’d held it downstairs, and reaches into the bassinet to pick up Mae, the familiar weight of her daughter in her arms a comfort she hadn’t known she’d needed.

“Hi sweet girl,” she says, well aware of Aaron’s gaze fixed on them, the back of her neck burning with it.” She kisses the top of Mae’s head and turns to face Aaron, making sure the baby was facing him too, so he could see them both, “There’s someone here to meet you.”

For once, she doesn’t berate herself for the crack in her voice, for the tears that press at the back of her eyes. The shock of finally seeing Aaron, of having what she’s wanted for so long, finally settling in.

Aaron feels like he’s rooted to the ground. His body not moving as he simply stares at the two of them together, held in place by love and so many things he can’t put a name to. Mae was beautiful. Everything about her reminded him of Emily, as if Mae was a tiny version of her mother, right down to the slope of her nose and the small dimples in her cheeks. The tiny photo Emily had sent hadn’t done her justice, and he knew even if it had she would have changed so much since then anyway.

“Em…she’s…”

She smiles at him and makes the decision to move towards him. She encourages him to put his arms out and places Mae in his embrace. She places one hand on Aaron’s arm and the other supports Mae’s head.

“Aaron, this is Mae,” she says, a sound somewhere between a chuckle and a sob catching in her throat as she rests her head on Aaron’s shoulder, not able to tear her eyes off of their daughter in his arms. A sight she’d dreamt of for months, “Mae, this is your daddy.”

Emily feels a tear drop onto the top of her head, and looks up to see tracks on Aaron’s cheeks, his eyes shining. She reaches up, wiping at his skin before wrapping both of her arms around one of his, her head back against his shoulder.

“She’s beautiful,” he says, his voice tight, “She looks just like you,” he lifts her up, pressing a kiss to his daughter’s head, “She smells like you.”

“I use my soap on her too,” Emily hums, turning her head just enough to press a kiss against his clothed shoulder, “I’ve always thought she looks just like you.”

“I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one,” he says, looking away from his daughter for just long enough to kiss the top of Emily’s head. He looks back at Mae, desperately trying to remember everything he can about her, smiling as she puts her fist in her mouth, “You did get one thing right though.”

“What’s that?” She asks, reaching out and grabbing Mae’s hand, knowing it was almost time to feed her.

“She definitely has your nose.”

___

She allows herself, for a little while, to believe it was real. That he was back for good. That this was her life now.

She just wanted one day with him that wasn’t tinged with sadness, with the reality that he wasn’t hers to keep, at least not for now, so she gives it to herself.

They wake up early, woken by a cranky Mae demanding her first meal of the day before they head down for breakfast themselves. Elizabeth raises her eyebrow at Aaron but says nothing else about his reappearance. It’s only later, when they are walking the grounds just the two of them and Mae, that he tells her about his conversation with her mother the night before. How she wasn’t as mad as he’d expected, her fury somewhat diminished by her love for her granddaughter.

The day passes too quickly for Emily’s liking. A taste of what could be, what should be, as he helps her with Mae. She doesn’t miss the sadness that crosses his face whenever the baby cries when she’s with him, quietening immediately in Emily’s arms when he passes her over.

After they’ve put her to bed, slowly backing out of her room so they don’t wake her again, Emily kisses him as soon as the adjoining door to their room is closed. She loops her arms around his neck, taking every opportunity to be as close to him as possible.

“She doesn’t cry because she hates you, you know,” Emily says, trying to smile reassuringly at him, “I talk about you all the time,” she strokes her fingers through his hair as he places his hands on her hips, “She just…”

“Doesn’t know me,” he finishes for her, shaking his head at himself, “And I’ve got no one to blame but myself.”

“Aaron-”

“My daughter doesn’t know who I am, Em,” he says, cutting over her, “She’s 12 weeks old, and she’s known me for a day.”

“Honey,” she says, making him look at her, “She’s a baby. She only figured out how to smile a few weeks ago,” she swallows thickly, pushing down her own feelings about it all for now, “When you come back for good, things will be different.”

It’s the closest either of them has come all day to address their reality. They had no idea how long he’d be gone for. It could be months. Another year.

Forever.

She leans forward to kiss him, wanting to change the direction of her thoughts, of their conversation. Wanting nothing more than to end their day as they had lived it - together.

“We don’t have to,” he says as he pulls away, and it makes her smile, makes her think of their wedding night, how she knows he meant it then too. They hadn’t had the chance last night. Both of them far too tired to do anything other than literally sleep together. They’d curled up around each other, and had woken up in the exact same position, their hands still intertwined.

She steps onto her tiptoes, eliminating the height difference between them, and kisses him fiercely. Her hands run up the back of his neck and she digs her fingers into his hair, holding him close as she licks at the seam of his lips, grateful when he responds immediately, pulling her even closer.

She pants as she pulls her lips from his, her forehead against his as she tries to make her breathing even again.

“Aaron, please,” she says, stamping another kiss against his lips, “I want to.”

He nods, his grip on her hips tightening slightly as his forehead knocks against hers.

“I want to too,” he replies, one of his hands stroking up her back, “I just…” he drifts off, unsure how to put it into words, how to explain himself. He sighs, “Last time, I left you here alone, pregnant. And…”

She hears what he hasn’t said, how he doesn’t think it’s fair to do that to her again. She pulls back to look at him, her hands drifting to his cheeks, holding him in place as she makes him look at her.

“I don’t care about that,” she says, her eyes boring into his, “Besides, the doctor said it’s unlikely I can get pregnant whilst I’m still feeding Mae, and even if it does happen…” she swallows thickly, the thought of going through all of that alone, again, almost too much to bear, “If it does happen then it happens,” she shrugs half-heartedly, “I will take of much as you as I can get.”

He stares at her for a second, considering what she’s said, before he nods, surging forward and kissing her as if they had never stopped. They shed their clothes quickly, material falling to the floor without fanfare, their need for each other getting more desperate by the second. It’s only when she’s naked, laying on the bed, that she feels self-conscious, his gaze fixed on her as he looks at her intently.

“I know I look different,” she says, pressing one of her hands to her stomach. Her skin was still looser than it used to be, and her hips were wider. There were thin pink lines that were slowly turning silver across her abdomen, signs of where her skin had been stretched almost to its limit when Mae was still inside of her, “I know it’s not-”

“You’re beautiful,” he says, cutting her off, pressing a kiss to her lips to stop her from saying anything else, before he moves downwards, worshipping her skin bit by bit before he gets to her stomach. His touch becomes even more reverent, his fingers and his lips mapping her out again as he had on their wedding night, re-learning all of her hills and valleys, “I wish I could have seen you,” he mutters against her skin.

“I was massive,” she comments, not missing the breathlessness of her voice.

“You still would have been gorgeous,” he says, travelling further down her body, his hands tracing her thighs, gently pushing them apart as he kneels in front of the bed.

She sits up, her elbows on the bed as she looks at him, her cheeks flushing with embarrassment as he looks at her, his eyes fixed between her legs.

“What are you doing?” She asks, and he looks up at her, making no move to get up off the floor.

“Do you trust me?” He asks in response, still not giving her an answer, a fire in his eyes that threatens to engulf them both.

“Yes,” she answers simply because it’s true. There’s no one she trusts more.

Before she knows what was happening, his focus has shifted again, his hands holding her thighs apart as he licks through her, making them moan simultaneously, her at the feeling of it, of every nerve in her body feeling like it was alight, and him at the taste of her.

“Oh my God,” she moans, her elbows giving out as she lays back down, her hands fisting in the bedspread as he carries on, his grip on her thighs getting tighter as he explores her in this new way, “Please don’t stop.”

He takes her apart, slowly and methodically as if he had thought of nothing else in the year that they had been apart. Pleasure rushes through her in a way she didn’t know it could, and it takes her a second to remember to breathe, her body shaking as she comes back down. She blinks, clearing her vision, and feels the dip of the bed next to her. She looks at him, breathing heavily as he smiles at her.

“You ok?” He asks, and she nods, clearing her throat.

“Yes. More than ok. Where the hell did you learn about that?” She asks, reaching up and pulling him down for a kiss.

“France,” he mutters, shifting them so he’s laying on top of her, both of them groaning as he notches over her. She raises an eyebrow at him, her curiosity slowly getting the better of him, “It’s a bunch of men sitting in a dug-out trench in the ground sweetheart, we talk about sex.”

“Oh,” she says, hooking one of her legs around him, bringing him impossibly closer. She doesn’t want to talk about France, about the reality that he’d start his long journey back the following morning. And she knows he doesn’t too, “Well…we’re definitely doing that again at some point.”

He smiles at her and leans down to kiss her, one of his hands sneaking between them, his finger briefly dragging over her before he guides himself into her, both of them groaning as he pushes forward.

It was overwhelming, the feeling of her around him better than he remembered. The fleeting time they’d had together when they got married was never enough. He buries his face in her collarbone, whispering praise against her skin as she shifts her hips up into him, a silent request to move that he is happy to oblige.

They move together, his hand reaching for hers, linking their fingers next to her head on the bed as they build each other up. The only sound in the room is them, and quiet gasps of each other’s names whispered against skin. He can sense she’s close, can feel it in how she’s grasping at him, in how she says his name, so he reaches between them, his finger swiping over her until they tip over the edge together.

He lays on top of her until he gets his breath back, and moves to roll off of her, but she stops him. Her still shaky legs hooked around him, and her arms tight around his back.

“Em-”

“Not yet,” she says, and he looks down at her, sadness sparking in his chest at the unshed tears in her eyes. “Not yet.” She repeats, and he nods, leaning down to kiss her, hoping he can get across everything he can’t find the words for. How much he loves her. How much he didn’t want to leave.

How much he missed her already, even though he was right here with her.

“Ok sweetheart, not yet.”

___

He wakes up alone.

At first, he doesn’t notice. His heart racing as he sits up suddenly, heaving deep breaths into his lungs. It takes him a moment to realise where he is, that he’s home. He’s safe.

It’s the silence he finds the strangest, the total opposite of what he was now used to. The complete lack of sound was louder than he knew it could be.

He rubs his eyes as they adjust to the low light of the room, and he looks over to the adjoining door to Mae’s nursery and sees it’s slightly open, light streaming into the main bedroom around it. He gets up, stretching as he walks towards the door. As he gets closer he hears quiet singing, Emily’s voice soft as it travels through the air.

“The little stars were the herring fish

That lived in that beautiful sea —

“Now cast your nets wherever you wish —

Never afeard are we”

Aaron opens the door, smiling as he’s met with the sight of Emily sitting down, Mae against her chest. She’s rubbing the baby’s back, her lips against the top of her head as she sings.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard that lullaby,” he says, his smile widening as she looks up at him, her own smile sleepy.

“It’s one my dad used to sing to me,” she replies, “I think she likes it. Want to come sit with us?”

She doesn’t need to ask twice, moving across the room quickly, she stands just long enough for him to slip in behind her in the chair. He wraps his arms around her as she settles against him. He feels the last bits of tension caused by his nightmare fading away at having his girls in his arms.

“Is she ok?” He asks, looking down at Mae and watching as her eyes flutter shut, her long lashes casting shadows on her cheeks.

“She’s fine,” Emily assures him, tilting her head to look at him, “She needed feeding, and she always likes to cuddle afterwards,” she smiles, looking back at Mae, “I like it too. Are you ok? I didn’t wake you up did I?”

“No,” he says, holding her a little tighter, “You didn’t. I…dreamt about something.”

She reads between the lines, not needing any other information to know it was a nightmare, that he was trying to play it down for her.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“I don’t know how to. Everything over there is so…awful. Some of the men dying are just kids,” he shakes his head, chuckling bitterly, “Boys. And I don’t know how to tell you. You and her are so untouched by it,” he says, reaching out to touch Mae’s head, his fingers gentle against her soft hair, “I don’t want to bring it here too”

“We’re not untouched by it. I know it’s not the same. But my life is on pause, Aaron. I’m sat here waiting for you to come back, or for a telegram telling me you’ll never come back. I had our little girl alone. You weren’t there waiting to meet her,” she says, her eyes meeting his. She sees the sadness on his face, the guilt he’s barely covered up the entire time he’s been here, and she sighs. She takes one of her hands out from under Mae and reaches out for him, tangling their fingers together, “It’s not your fault, but I’m not untouched by it.”

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I know you’re not,” he kisses the side of her head, “The thing is I can’t even wish I hadn’t gone. Because if I hadn’t, I don’t think we’d be here.”

She hums in agreement. She’d had the same thought many times over the last year, she was well aware that his decision to sign up for the army had been the push they’d needed.

“You’re right. I’d be married to Ian,” she looks down at Mae, realising she had now fallen asleep. “And she wouldn’t exist,” she looks at Aaron and kisses him, “She’s asleep, if you want we can go back to bed?”

He nods, kissing her again before she stands, well-practised at holding the baby as she moved around, and she sets her back down into the bassinet without disturbing her. Aaron leans down and kisses Mae’s head before he loops his arm around his wife, leading her back into their room.

They both knew the countdown was on, that their time left together was limited. Hours would soon tick down into minutes, then seconds.

They didn’t want to waste any of it.

___

She doesn’t let him out of her sight until he has to leave. Even then, she stands by the front door with Mae in her arms, her eyes fixed on the car her mother had organised for him until he completely disappears from view.

Somehow, it feels worse than the first time she had to let him go. The sweet taste of their life together that she’d had for a couple of days turning bitter as he gets further away from her.

Mae cries out in her arms, and Emily looks at her, adjusting her hold on her daughter as she turns into the house.

“Come on, sweet girl,” she says, raising her up a little so she can kiss her head, “It’s almost time for you to eat.”

When she gets back to their room, she finds a letter propped up against their wedding photo, his familiar scrawl across the envelope spelling out both her and Mae’s names.

Next to it is a small vase. A bunch of freshly picked daisies staring back at her, seeming all too bright for the heaviness in her heart.

-x-

Tag list:

@ssa-sparks, @lukeclvez, @lyds102, @glockleveledatyourcrotch, @hotchnissenthusiast, @danadeservesadrink, @ssamorganhotchner, @emilyprentissisgod, @notagentprentiss, @freesiasandfics, @emilyshotchniss, @thecharmingart, @paulitalblond, @hancydrewfan, @camille093, @whitecrossgirl, @moonlight-2-6, @rawr-jess, @florenceremingtonthethird, @jareauswife, @ms-black-a, @beebeelank, @aubreyprc, @zipzapboingg, @psychopath-at-heart, @criminalmindsgonewrong, @fionaloover, @kinqslcys, @prentissinred, @ccmattis22, @denvivale317, @thrindis, @hotchsguccitie, @cmfouatslota77, @alexblakegf, @aliensaurusrex, @prentissxhotch, @emobabeyy, @victoiregranger, @stormyweatherth, @wanderingdreamer009, @ssablackbird, @luhconh, @lex13cm

Join my tag list here!

#hotchniss #hotchniss fanfiction #hotchniss fanfic #aaron hotchner x emily prentiss #aaron x emily #aaron hotchner fanfiction #emily prentiss fanfiction #hotch x prentiss #hotchniss au

30 notes · View notes