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friendly neighborhood spiderman - fushiguro megumi

word count: 25k i need a lobomy warnings: swearing, men making reader uncomfortable, some blood n bruises summary: besides being morally gray, megumi has never crossed any personal boundaries while protecting the city disguised as the spiderman. that is, until it comes to her. a thorn in his side, a plague to his mind, and a skip in his heart. wait, what?

notes: SPIDERMAN AU! rivals to unknown friends to unknown lovers to..??

___

With great power comes great responsibility…

To that, Fushiguro Megumi said; no shit.

Living a double life wasn’t always the easiest thing in the world, but the justice part came to him naturally. He didn’t like to call his abilities superpowers, there was something too childish about it, but since gaining them, Megumi had known there was some kind of reason.

Maybe it was because he had a stronger sense of right and wrong than most of the people he knew. His peers at the college he attended seemed to have more interest in alcohol poisoning than anything else, so he supposed it made sense that if a radioactive spider bit had to give someone powers… it might as well have been him.

Besides, he was kind of a loner, so it wasn’t hard to hide his double life. Every day he followed the same routine.

Wake up early to work out and do a quick patrol of the city, try to get to his classes on time, study in between lectures, study through lunch, and then as soon as his last class of the day was over he was off to swing through the city and keep an eye on things.

There had been an uptick in crime in Tokyo lately, and Megumi hadn’t quite put his finger on why. It had never been the safest city in Japan, but since taking on this role it seemed like criminals everywhere were crawling out of the cracks and shadows to challenge him. Not that anything had proven to be too challenging for The Spiderman… petty criminals made it easy.

“Late again, Fushiguro”

There were, however, challenges that Megumi faced.

(y/n) swiveled around in her seat just as he’d sat down behind her. To think he’d patted himself on the back for only being three minutes late today. He should’ve known she was counting down the minutes to rub it in his face.

Resting her elbows on the back of her seat so she could smirk at him, she plops her chin on her fists and eyes him curiously. Megumi can’t even be bothered to roll his eyes, he’d grown too tired of the same banter every day.

If she couldn’t take his place at the top of the class, (y/l/n) (y/n) would have to find some other way to antagonize Megumi- and she took that job all too seriously. Unfortunately their class schedules were almost identical, seeing as they were both enrolled in as many accelerated courses as they could be, so Megumi spent most of his day in her vicinity. And hell, she never let him forget it.

When he barely even looks at her, (y/n) turns back around in her seat, seemingly already prepping her notebook for her notes of the day. She’s probably one of those girls that makes every page pretty and aesthetically pleasing, Megumi finds himself frowning at his own train of thought. He only had seven more hours of putting up with her competitive attitude, and then he’d be free and far from it.

Nothing cleared his mind like swinging around the city. She couldn’t possibly plague him once he was in his suit. He tried to tell himself that through the rest of class, everytime her hand shot up in the air and she bragged her way through perfect, textbook answers.

It was no doubt that she’d be successful after graduation. Megumi would rather die than admit it out loud, but he wouldn’t be surprised in the least if she ended up a millionaire- billionaire- with how well studied and determined she was to win. If she put half the effort into her future career that she did just by bothering him, she’ll probably earn herself some title of youngest most successful woman.

Hopefully by then she’ll be too busy to bother him anymore. Although Megumi assumes that by the time graduation rolls around, he’ll never see her again.

She was probably counting down the days until then, too. ___

Megumi spent his lunches alone.

This didn’t really bother him. He didn’t have much interest in making friends, and never put much effort into it. He liked to think he was kind, but he knew he wasn’t the most approachable guy in the world. If he was honest, he kind of liked it that way. So long as he kept his clothes dark, his face expressionless, and his hair untamed, then he seemed to ward people off. No one approached his usual small table in the corner of the lunchroom unless they needed to borrow one of the extra empty chairs. Even then, people seemed nervous to ask, and more often than not someone would scurry over and take one without a word, rushing it back to their table before Megumi could say something untoward.

The way he dressed himself wasn’t the only thing keeping people away. His reputation might have something to do with it as well…

But that fight wasn’t his fault. Not necessarily. So what if someone got sent to the hospital? Megumi was a believer in consequences being served… and if no one else was going to deliver, then he supposed it came down to him to do the right thing. This was before the spider bite, before Spiderman, so his strong sense of justice had nowhere to be channeled.

To Megumi, all that mattered was the guy learned his lesson. And by the way, he did live. He just had to spend a week in Intensive Care to pull through, is all.

Unapproachable was an understatement when it came to Megumi.

Maybe that’s why he found (y/n) all the more obnoxious.

He minds his business during his lunch hour- although he’d argue that he minds his business all the time. Sitting in the corner with headphones large enough to make the point clear that he didn’t want to be bothered, his nose was always stuck in a book. He’d eat with one hand and scribble in his notebooks with the other. Even if he could afford a laptop he didn’t want to use one. His time was better utilized if he could study and eat simultaneously.

The corner of his eye twitches when he catches a glimpse of her in his peripheral. He hates that the hair on the back of his neck stands up when she shows up, all of his nerves tingling like a warning. His grimace is obvious as he finds her walking through the cafe with the little lunch box he knew was perfectly organized in multiple compartments. She probably didn’t let any of her food touch.

She’s stopped on her mission to get to her table of know-it-all friends, and Megumi shouldn’t care that some guy called her over to his table to talk to her, it’s a bit of a boring scene, honestly. He should get back to his studying now, but for some reason he’s compelled to watch from the back of the room as (y/n) drags her feet over to the guy’s table.

Megumi doesn’t recognize him, or really any of his surrounding friends, but by the looks of it they seemed like the kind of guys that wouldn’t have gotten into the classes he’s taking.

A year ago Megumi wouldn’t have been able to hear their conversation, not from across the busy cafe where a hundred other conversations are happening, but now he finds it easy to tune out all the other noise and eavesdrop on (y/n) and this frat boy.

“You always walk by without saying hello. You tryin’ to hurt my feelings, princess?” The frat boy feigns heartbreak, holding his hand to his chest all the while grinning at her.

“Hello”

(y/n’s) reply is rigid. She sounds as bored as Megumi feels watching her. He almost scoffs at himself for even paying this much attention. Clearly his little warning sense was misfiring, because nothing of interest is playing out here. He was starting to consider this a waste of his heightened abilities.

“Awe, c’mon now gorgeous, you can do better than that,” Fratboy clicks his tongue in mockery. “Why don’t you come sit?”

“I’m sitting with my friends”

Once again, her tone is as flat and dry as could be. Megumi starts to wonder what Fratboy even wants with her. Besides her personality being insufferable, she clearly isn’t interested in whatever he’s offering. How many hints can this guy possibly miss?

“Rain check?” Fratboy asks hopefully. It could almost be endearing if it wasn’t for the slimy grin he wore. Megumi hated to think it, but (y/n) outranked this guy on every scale.

“Yeah. Maybe” (y/n’s) voice falls to a mumble before she turns and walks away, this time at a faster pace than before.

As she finds her place at her table, she glances over her shoulder, feeling the prickle of someone’s eyes following her. Megumi’s senses are one step ahead, and he’s quick to drop his head to focus back on his studies again. He’d already lost five minutes to watch a pointless interaction, he didn’t need to lose more time by facing her evil eye if she’d caught him staring at her.

Idiot, he thinks as he takes a more aggressive bite of his food than necessary. Getting behind on schedule for (y/n) of all people.

He pushes the whole thing as far from his mind as he can as he gets back to work. ___

Tokyo had been rather quiet this evening. Not that Megumi was complaining. It was refreshing to see the streets peaceful, even this late into the night.

Eleven o’clock might not be the ideal dinner time for your average person, but for Spiderman, it was the norm. And Megumi liked having a quiet night where he could have a quick street food dinner at the skyline overlooking the whole city. It was peaceful up there. With all the stars out, a perfect breeze coming in, and without the noise of pedestrians out and about down on the streets, Megumi could positively say this was his secret piece of heaven.

Most things about his life were a secret- but this especially he held this place close.

As expected there wasn’t a single pesky thought of school on his mind. Like the sky, it was clear and peaceful.

At least it was, until he was mid-bite of his sandwich and he caught sight of something sketchy in his peripheral.

The familiar sensation of the hair on the back of his neck prickling rises when he turns to watch the scene unfold. An unmarked car with blackout windows pulling up behind one of the many small 24-7 convenience stores and a few men with various clown masks getting out of it. He huffs in annoyance, already swinging down and dumping the remainder of his perfectly good sandwich in the trash.

When were these idiots going to learn that robbing a convenience store was never worth it? He wonders as he lands on the roof of the building the men had just gone into. He finds there’s only one guy left in the car, the getaway driver he’s sure. Pulling his mask over his face he’s swift and silent in webbing up the door handles and tires of the car. He wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Just as silently, he drops to the ground, and enters the store.

It’s not the first time Spiderman has made an appearance during a stick up. And Megumi’s sure it won’t be his last, seeing as no one ever learns.

“Well if it isn’t Spiderboy” One of the three clowns, Megumi assumes the ringleader, taunts him with a laugh. He cocks his gun and aims it at him, but Megumi’s not the slightest bit threatened by a gun. Typical, he thinks.

He barely acknowledges the silent threat at all, instead scoping out the store quickly.

There’s one man behind the counter, his hands raised and shaking. It appears he hasn’t handed over any money yet, which is good. It makes for a quicker and cleaner exit for Megumi.

A couple is cowering behind the first aisle of snacks, trying to peek over the shelves without being seen- they’re not doing a very good job, but with Spiderman here now Megumi figures they’ve assumed their safety is guaranteed. They aren’t wrong.

And then there was a girl in the very back, two aisles behind the couple, and apparently far less brave as well. She’s crouched all the way to the ground, her hands clasped tightly over the back of her neck as if this was a tornado drill and not a robbery. At least her head is down, Megumi thinks. It’s not often he comes across civilians with a decent sense of self preservation.

“Did you hear me, Spiderboy-?” The ringleader’s second taunt is barely finished before there’s two webs flying at him. One aimed for the barrel of his gun, covering his mask, gluing it straight to his face and muffling his mouth.

“Yeah yeah, I fuckin’ heard you,” Megumi grumbles. Criminals loved to call him all sorts of names, he figured it comes with the job, but man did it get old.

There’s two other clowns, lackeys, he supposes. These types hardly worked alone these days. Megumi always wondered if they thought being in numbers would protect them from Spiderman. Again, they never learn.

It takes him all of five seconds to web up their weapons as well. Some glued to their hands and chest, rendering them useless, others so tied up in the sticky string that they couldn’t move any limbs if they tried.

“You think you can go around playing hero and people will respect you for it?” One of the lackeys snarls when Megumi tears the mask from his face. He does the same for the other, but the second clown seems too afraid to speak. Good. “People ‘round here don’t give a shit, Spiderboy. You think they’ll thank you? Heh? You think they’ll throw you a nice parade and chant your name?”

Megumi rolls his eyes, patting down his pockets in search of any identifiable information. Like he presumed, he finds a phone and wallet. Sometimes it felt like these guys weren’t even trying to get away with their crimes.

Paying the lackey clown no mind, he turns over his shoulder and motions to the couple behind the shelf. They raise their heads a little further, eyes wide and seemingly surprised Spiderman was addressing them.

“It’s safe to go,” He tells them with a wave of his hand. “Go straight to the police station to report this”

Does he have faith they’ll listen? No, he assumes they’ll be likely to go home. Megumi doesn’t care much. The police weren’t exactly his allies. But if he was going to do their jobs for them, he was going to have to at least act like he was playing by their rules.

“Playing nice with the cops, tch,” The loudmouth lackey continues on. “When they show up, they’ll take you before they take any of us- mmph!”

“Much better,” Megumi sighs when his webbing does just the trick to shut the guy up. Will he suffocate with it covering his mouth? Of course not, “Breathe through your nose,” He grumbles when the lackey’s face starts to take on a blue hue. ��Fucking idiots, you’re all the fucking same” He sighs, dropping the guy’s phone and open wallet on the ground before him, making sure it’s on perfect display for when the cops arrive.

“Th-thank you, Spiderman,” The shopkeeper behind the counter finally begins to lower his hands. It appears he’s still shaking, but Megumi’s sure it’s the adrenaline rush he’s coming down from. He’ll be fine in no time. Especially once the police arrive and whisk these guys away. “I- I don’t know how I can repay you”

“It was nothing” Megumi replies, monotone as ever, but it’s the truth. The whole ordeal was over in the matter of three minutes. A robbery had barely begun when he’d shown up and shut it down.

The shopkeeper looks startled by the less-than-friendly attitude of his savior, but he doesn’t say a word, just picks up his phone to dial up the police.

Megumi’s on the move heading out of the store, ready to make himself scarce before law enforcement shows up, but of course he can’t leave just yet.

“Hey,” He calls towards the last civilian in the shop, the girl crouched on the ground, still covering herself. “Hey,” He calls again when she doesn’t react, taking a few steps towards her. “You’re good to go now,” He says, but even still, she doesn’t move.

It takes a tap on her shoulder for her to startle, finally uncovering the back of her head and looking up at him. She stays on the ground, but now Megumi’s stunned to silence as well as he stares back at her.

(y/n)? He’s grateful for his mask for the millionth time but in a whole new way now. What the hell was she doing out here in the middle of the night?

She doesn’t say anything as she stares up at him with wide eyes. He can’t tell if she’s still in shock, but the longer he waits for her to say something, she doesn’t.

“Are you… alright?”

It’s a normal question to ask, he probably says it a hundred times a night, making sure no one’s left hurt or afraid. But this time, asking her, it felt foreign coming out of his mouth. He’s never been put in a position to… care… about her wellbeing before. But now’s as good a time as any, seeing as she’s still got her knees to her chest and a shell shocked look on her face.

“You’re- you’re Spiderman” Is the first thing she says, her voice barely above a whisper. Megumi could roll his eyes, but he’s too busy waiting for her to get up and get moving.

“And you’re not sitting around here all night, c’mon” He beckons her upwards, and to his surprise she takes it as an offer to grab his hand, and he finds himself pulling her up to her feet.

“You’re a lot taller than I thought you’d be” She mumbles, and if she could see his face she’d watch a look of puzzlement befall him.

“Get that a lot” He mutters, making an obvious motion to eye the hand that she still has gripping his gloved one.

“Oh, sorry,” She’s still quiet, quieter than he’s ever heard her speak before, and it’s starting to intrigue him.

Was she this afraid of a pesky little robbery? He wondered, looking her up and down. She wasn’t trembling, she showed little to no sign of distress at all. For a girl that had nearly gone full armadillo just a few minutes ago, she didn’t seem all that afraid.

“I’m just- uh-” She clears her throat, and Megumi thinks it’s the first time he’s ever heard her stammer, or misspeak at all. “I’m a big fan” She finishes, her quiet voice sounding more shy now than anything else.

Wait, what!?

“A fan?” Megumi repeats in disbelief, and (y/n) smiles softly as she nods her head.

“You don’t get that a lot too?” She asks, inching towards speaking at a normal volume.

This is the part where he leaves, and he knows it. The authorities were bound to be close now, and it’d give him more trouble if he was still around when they got here. He couldn’t be wasting his time, especially on her.

But he lingers there for a second longer anyways. There was an undeniably curiosity creeping under his skin. Never would he have pegged (y/l/n) (y/n), regular goody-goody, as a Spiderman fan. It had him wondering if there was more to her than met the eye.

Maybe she was… a normal person…? Could it be true?

Flashing lights interrupted his thoughts, his head swiveling to see approaching red and blue

“Fuck!” He cursed, and behind him (y/n) covered her mouth to stifle her giggle. Jeez, did she expect some squeaky clean guy to be under the mask? “You’re fine, right?” He asks her, already stepping away to make his escape.

(y/n) nods her head, still giving him an awestruck look. It makes his face feel hot under his mask. Could she really be this enamored with Spiderman? So much so she’s rendered speechless.

“Right- well- maybe stop shopping in the middle of the night and you find yourself in these situations” He tries to be serious, but she grins as she nods back at him in agreement.

“I’ll try my best, Spiderman”

With that he’s out the door and swinging off just before the cops round the corner to the building. He’d just narrowly missed them, but that was the closest he’d come to getting spotted by them in quite a while. Until then, he’d done a good job making a clean getaway.

He huffs and tugs his mask off of his head when he finds a fire escape distant enough to rest at. Of all the crimes he’s interrupted, that was definitely one for the books. And it had nothing to do with the tacky clown masks or shitty execution.

His chest felt tight, an odd feeling creeping into his bones.

Shit. He still hadn’t had a proper dinner. ___

Megumi’s exhausted the next morning when he strolls into class. He’s five minutes late today, but he tells himself that ten is his limit so he’s still doing just fine. He never gets a second glance from the professor anyways- with his grades? His professor wouldn’t care if he didn’t show up to class at all.

(y/n), however, cares very much about Megumi’s punctuality.

“Who taught you to be so disrespectful of other people’s time, Fushiguro?” She mocks a pout at him, already turned around in her seat to bother him as usual.

Megumi gives her a bored look, maintaining eye contact as he opens his notebook to a fresh page. (y/n) raises a brow impatiently, waiting for some kind of response, but Megumi remains silent. This is fitting for him, he rarely engages in her banter these days, but his silence feels different today. Something about the way he looks at her makes her feel like he’s sizing her up, or something.

“What?” The word comes out in a mumble, her brows furrowing as he meets his inquisitive stare with a confused glare.

Megumi purses his lips, shakes his head, taps the eraser of his pencil rhythmically against his notebook.

“Nothing”

It’s all he has to say, and for once (y/n) doesn’t have a snarky remark. She just gives him a weird look and faces forward in her seat again. Maybe he’d caught her off guard by actually speaking to her, even if it was just one word, it’s more than he’s given in a while. Pretty much since the spider bite. Engaging in petty arguments seemed pointless after that.

As he takes notes on the lecture of the day, he can’t help but be drawn to the back of (y/n’s) head. He didn’t like the idea of giving her any of his attention, but his thoughts were drifting out of his control, and he couldn’t stop replaying last night in his mind. The way she looked at him, smiled at him, like he was her hero. And now today he was reduced to the dirt under her perfectly clean shoe. It was like he had a secret about her now. There might not be a way for him to dangle it over her head openly… but he knew, and for now, that was enough.

By the time class ended, Megumi already had his bag packed up, and he was the first out the door. If he got to the next lesson before her, he could claim a seat in the back where she wouldn’t dare be caught sitting. Maybe then he wouldn’t get so distracted.

Even with his heightened senses however, he doesn’t notice the way (y/n) watches him book it out of the classroom, a knot between her brows at his odd behavior. Because since when has Fushiguro Megumi rushed to class? ___

It’s hard not to notice Megumi is avoiding her more than usual. She shared almost every class with him, besides one art course she took, (y/n) saw him every hour of the day. It also helped that being the top two of their class they were always seated somewhere near the front, and closer to each other than either one of them would like.

It doesn’t bother her that Megumi’s been sitting in the back of the class with the other slackers. She couldn’t care less if he decided not to come to class at all- in fact it would be wonderful for her. If his grades slipped just a little bit she could take his spot as top student, a position that was rightfully hers seeing as she was punctual and present in every class. Unlike Megumi, who hardly participated unless asked to, and acted like he couldn’t care less about his status.

She always wondered if he truly didn’t care about his ranking. He certainly acted like he didn’t, rolling his eyes at her comments if he wasn’t ignoring her completely. But was it just an act?

(y/n) made it an effort not to think any more about Fushiguro Megumi than she had to. But sometimes he made that difficult for her. Like now, when he’s sitting in the back of the class with his blocky headphones on. She can’t help but peek over her shoulder at him, eyeing the way he actively took notes from what was on the whiteboard at the front of the class. But how well could he learn if he wasn’t even listening?

He catches her staring not a second later, his bored blue eyes landing on hers and holding her stare. His expression is unchanging, completely neutral as he stares back at her, but it still feels intense. (y/n’s) quick to shoot her eyes forward and begin scribbling messy words in her otherwise neatly kept notebook. Was it just intense because he’d caught her staring right at him? Her face feels warm, her heartbeat kicks into an anxious pattern.

Clearly, whatever his issue was, she needed to just ignore it completely. He seemed to do just fine doing the same, maybe it was time for her to take a page out of his book and give him the same treatment.

Still, her eyes catch him in every hallway, every class, every moment he’s around, she spots and scans him as if there’s going to be some hint as to what brought on his change in behavior. ___

A couple of peaceful weeks were well appreciated, but Megumi must’ve taken them for granted, because tonight was a rough one.

He could enjoy a good fight, he’d grown up a fighter, so it all came naturally to him. Right hook, dodge, web, kick, swing- there were just a few extra steps to his hand-to-hand that came from the spider bite’s abilities. To him, that made the act of fighting all the more fun. He wasn’t afraid to admit he got a certain rush out of beating someone up. When it was justified, there wasn’t a feeling like it.

Getting beat up, however, sucked.

Maybe the guy was on steroids, maybe the adrenaline got to his head and his fight or flight kicked into high gear, Megumi wasn’t sure what his deal was, but he certainly took a beating before finally knocking the petty handbag thief out and getting him webbed up for the cops to take care of.

It wasn’t till he got away and found an alley secluded enough that he was able to check his injuries. He didn’t have to take his mask off to know his head had taken most of the damage. He could taste the blood of his split lip, and feel the hot throbbing behind his eye.

Great. Going to class with a black eye won’t draw any attention.

With a groan he leaned back into the brick of one of the surrounding buildings, trying to even out his labored breathing. It wouldn’t be a surprise if he found his torso littered with black and blue, too. As much as it hurt, Megumi was more irritated than anything. Hiding injuries was the worst part of his secret double life. College kids always wanted to hear the gnarly stories behind visible cuts and bruises. Megumi only hoped his shitty reputation would be enough to keep people away.

He couldn’t sit around for long, there was still a city that needed patrolling, so Megumi kicked off the wall and took a few deep, harsh breaths as he left the alley, ready to go for a swing around the next few blocks to make sure everything was as it should be. Quiet. It was almost one in the morning, most people should be turned in for the night by now.

Just as he reaches the sidewalk and before he can fly off into the air, however, he’s met by a not-quite-stranger.

(y/n) almost runs right into him, speed walking down the sidewalk with her head down, clearly on a mission. Had he stepped out a second later she might’ve crashed into him, but it’s hard for her to not notice the six foot tall man in a head to toe black suit.

For half a second she looks alarmed- rightfully so, a strange man just came out of an alley, if she had half a mind she’d turn and run without thinking. But as expected, Megumi finds she has no sense of self preservation as she looks at the block in her path with a grin.

“You again” She greets him like she knows him now. (She does know him, but she doesn’t know she knows him, you know?) And her smile is so genuinely bright that Megumi starts to feel sick.

“Again,” He sighs, the groan in his voice not going unnoticed. “Didn’t I tell you not to walk around alone this late at night?” His voice still sounds weird, and it’s shortly after that (y/n) notices his hand hovering over his ribcage.

“Did you get hurt, or something?” She ignores him completely, all the while putting her phone in her pocket to give him her full attention.

“I’m Spiderman, I don’t get hurt” Megumi argues, but the wince in his voice is obvious, and (y/n) somehow sees right through it.

“Okay… well… even Spiderman has to go to urgent care sometimes, right?” She tries to be lighthearted, but her smile is wavering now, concern seeping into her features.

Megumi can barely stand to look at her. What is she doing? Staring at him like that, like she knows him, like she cares about him. Can’t she just go the fuck home where it’s safe and more importantly: away from him?

“Tch, I don’t think so” He mutters.

(y/n) frowns.

“Spoken like a true idiot man,” She scolds. Jeez, last time they crossed paths like this she’d said she was a fan, now this? “What is it with you guys and your reputations, huh? You’re not any stronger for toughing out an injury without help, you know”

“I’ll keep that in mind, mom” Megumi argues back. She scoffs, but it turns into a small laugh shortly after.

“You could at least put ice on it, you know” She says, stepping past him and continuing on her way down the sidewalk. Megumi tosses his head back to silently curse at the sky.

“Did I not make myself clear that you should go home?” He calls after her.

“Ice is this way” Is all (y/n) says, and all she has to say to get him to groan at nothing in particular and follow after her.

It’s a good thing it’s so late at night, there’s no one to see Spiderman walking around with some random girl. Surely the papers would have a hay day if even a photo was snapped… he doesn’t even want to think about what kind of headlines they’d come up with.

“I can buy my own ice” He tells her after a minute of walking in silence.

“I know,” (y/n) shrugs. “But so far it seems like you’re letting me hang out with you, so I’ve gotta enjoy it just a little bit longer”

“We’re not hanging out,” Megumi replies dryly. “You’re refusing to go home when it’s the middle of the night and I’m…” He trails off, not wanting to say what he’s thinking, but he doesn’t have to.

“Awe, Spidey’s lookin’ out for me?” She’s smiling at him again, holding her hands behind her back as she looks up at him. “You starting to like me?”

“You’re starting to bother me,” Megumi quips back, but it’s followed by a chuckle he can’t help, and it only seems to endear (y/n) further. “I don’t usually give people follow up warnings,” He mutters with a shake of his head. “What’re you doing out this late, anyways?” He asks before he can help it. “Don’t you have, like, school, or something?” It’s difficult to act like he doesn’t know she spends her nights studying herself to death.

“Maybe I’m going to a party” (y/n) shrugs.

“Tch, no you’re not”

“How do you know?”

“Not dressed like that” Megumi comments, making a point to look her up and down.

(y/n) huffs, but there’s no denying the evidence right in front of them both. She’s wearing leggings that were at least a couple years old, and a large sweatshirt that was teetering the line of well loved and ratty.

“Okay, well, maybe this time I’m not” She says, and Megumi bites back a smile. He’s pretty sure that a girl like (y/l/n) (y/n) has never stepped foot in a house party. And he knows because he hasn’t, either.

“Still not an answer” He reminds her.

“I was going to pick up some energy drinks,” (y/n) finally admits. “It’s a short walk from my apartment to the corner store, I do it all the time. Even without Spiderman watching over me”

He chuckles at that, wondering just how many times she’s made the walk, no matter how short, in the middle of the night. Couldn’t she just get them before she goes home for the day?

“And you just have to go in the middle of the night?” He scolds her, but she doesn’t seem too affected by it.

“That’s when I need them the most” She replies with a shrug.

“You always drink energy drinks that late?”

“What, you worried about me or something?” She fires back, a curious look on her face. “Y’know, I haven’t heard much about you talking to people”

“I don’t”

“You’re talking to me” She points out matter of factly, a tone of hers that Megumi was already far too familiar with.

“You’re kind of leaving me no choice”

(y/n’s) quiet for a moment, and it seems like she’s contemplating something, but whatever it is she doesn’t let him in on, instead smiling and turning her attention to the sidewalk as they walk.

Megumi ducks into the alley next to the convenience store when (y/n) goes in. He’s unceremonious as he drops himself to the ground, sighing in relief to be off of his feet. His hand presses into his ribcage at a weak attempt to relieve the pain as he twists to try and find a comfortable position to sit in. He doesn’t want (y/n) to come back and see him in any sort of pain- it wasn’t a good look for Spiderman to show any sign of weakness.

She’s quick to return, a plastic bag in one hand and a frozen bag of vegetables in the other. Even behind the mask she must understand that he’s pulling a face at her, because she huffs in annoyance.

“They didn’t have ice” She explains, inviting herself to squat down next to him and offer up the vegetables.

“No no, you’re not sitting here,” Megumi bites back a whine when he sits upright in an attempt to urge her to leave. “You need to go back home”

“And miss a personal Q&A with Spiderman?” She replies, a small smile on her face when he finally snatches the vegetables out of her hand. He grumbles a string of incoherent curses as he rests it over where the bruising feels the worst.

“That’s not happening” He mutters.

“This is why I never hear about you talking to people,” (y/n) sighs. “You’re boring”

“I’m not boring,” He argues. “I just don’t have anything to say”

“Well, you could start by thanking me for the veggies” (y/n) replies, tilting her head at him.

Megumi glares at her from behind his mask. He didn’t need to reminder of her insufferable personality. But… watching her smile so softly at him, like she would love nothing more than a thank you from Spiderman… maybe it’s just because he’s injured, but Megumi caves.

“Thank you” It comes out from behind his teeth, and she must know it, but Megumi swears he sees stars in her eyes.

“You’re welcome, Spiderman,” She murmurs back.

It comes out so genuine, so sweet, that there’s a pang in Megumi’s heart. He doesn’t think any of the bruising spread so far up his chest, but it must’ve for him to feel such an odd sensation.

“I have to ask… cause I probably won’t see you again…” Her eyes land on the way his hand tenses and presses the frozen vegetables further against himself. “Why do you do it?”

When he doesn’t answer, she blinks at him, moving her head just enough to tell him that she really wanted him to say something.

Megumi figures she won’t leave him alone if he doesn’t say anything, so he goes with the truth.

“It’s the right thing to do”

He shrugs lamely, and it takes a second for her to react at all. At first it’s a furrow of her brows and a knowing smile, as if he just had to have an answer better than that. But she didn’t know him as well as she liked to think, because she didn’t know Megumi.

When he has nothing else to say, her expression slowly softens, and she hums thoughtfully.

“That’s it, huh?” She muses. “You’re just… a good guy?”

Just a guy, Megumi mentally corrects. He might have heightened abilities, and a better sense of right and wrong than those around him, but he’s never considered himself a hero. Just a guy trying to make things right, trying to keep people safe.

“Guess I try to be” His answer is as lame as his movements.

If he were a superhero, he’d need some help with PR, but somehow, this makes him all the more special to (y/n). She brightens, leans in closer and sets her hand over his, where he’s still holding the cold vegetables.

“Can I tell you something, Spiderman?”

Hasn’t she been talking to him this whole time? If it wouldn’t hurt, Megumi would laugh. Instead he just nods his head and waits for her to continue.

“I want to be a journalist because of you,”

What? Megumi’s face warps into shock at the confession. He didn’t know what he was expecting, but it wasn’t that. She was on track to be a graduate of the sciences, whichever one she ended up choosing anyways. He always saw her becoming some wealthy astro-physist or some shit. She wanted to give up all of her work in those programs to… write?

“An investigative journalist,” She corrects. “I want to write about the things that matter, and- and I want to be honest, you know? I want people to read my articles and know they’re being handed the truth. There’s not a lot of that around these days…” She trails off.

She didn’t have to tell him about the light Spiderman was painted in. Let’s just say him and Megumi would share the popularity rankings… except no one was raising pitchforks and torches in Megumi’s direction.

“You want to do that ‘cause of me?” Megumi asks, curiosity getting the best of him.

(y/n) nods, trying to bite back her smile but it was still as clear as day.

“I’ll write my first article about you,” She promises, and Megumi’s eyes widen at her sincerity. “If you’ll let me”

“Well you’re not getting an interview” He says, only half joking. (y/n) laughs quietly.

For a moment, he gets that glimpse into her again. The same one he felt the night of the convenience store robbery. There was something in her eye he’d never seen before. Something soft, and real. It dawns on him that he very well may be the only person she’s told about this dream of hers. He wants to ask, but it feels wrong, like he’s prying for something.

“I won’t need one,” She tells him. “Can’t have the people knowing I know you”

“You don’t know me” Megumi replies, maybe too quickly, but he can’t help it.

He tilts his head at her as she gazes at him with too much fondness. Was his reminder that he’s a stranger to her not enough? Sure, she could trust him because he was Spiderman, her safety wasn’t compromised, but that didn’t mean she needed to go confiding in him like this.

Besides, the look she was giving him was making him feel hot, like he was about to break into a sweat.

“I don’t know…” She murmurs thoughtfully. “I just have this feeling… like I do”

That has him leaping into panic mode. That was it, this was done. If he saw her again while he was in this suit, he was going to turn and swing the other direction. She couldn’t be saying things like that, she couldn’t be trying to put the pieces together in her mind. If she were to figure him out, he’d be done for. She put a lot of trust in him tonight, but could he trust her for even a minute? Megumi wasn’t sure, and he didn’t care to find out.

As far as he was concerned, this was the last time he was going to talk to her. He was right to avoid her after the first time- it should have been the last time, but it was too late for that now.

“You should go” He says, pushing himself to stand even through grunts of pain. She looks at him with worry, brows knitted and lips in a frown as she follows him up to her feet.

“Wait,”

She calls to stop him, despite having nothing else to say to him. Well, there were a million things she wanted to say to him, but none of that felt appropriate now. She didn’t really expect him to stand there and hear her out, but he is, and now her mouth is running dry and she’s standing before him frozen. He radiates impatience, without having to say a single word.

“I… I didn’t thank you,” She stammers out. It’s unlike her, but it can’t be helped. She’s always had a little fan-crush on Spiderman since he made his appearance on the news, but after actually being around him that seemed to blossom into a very real crush, even if she’s never seen his face. She can feel a blush heating up her face when she speaks. “For the other night, with- with the robbery,” She clarifies, even though she didn’t have to. “So… thank you”

Megumi hesitates a moment longer, almost expecting her to say something else. She looks like she wants to, her face is growing pink and her hands have begun fiddling with the bag of her energy drinks. But she remains quiet.

He gives her a nod, before handing over the bag of vegetables. (y/n) laughs under her breath as she takes it. It’s lost all of it’s cold, merely a room temperature bag of carrots and peas by now. She’s not sure what she’s supposed to do with it, but she supposes it wouldn’t look good for Spiderman to swing around with it.

“You’re welcome,” He tells her, and it sounds like the most earnest thing he’s had to say to her. He’s always come across as blunt, something (y/n) was surprised by when they first met, but now it’s a blessing. She knows that he means it. “Get home. Don’t make me have to tell you again, alright?”

To Megumi, this is a goodbye. He doesn’t intend to see her again, not like this. It was… interesting, while it lasted, but it could never actually last. It needed to be over before things could get any worse… or she could get any closer to figuring out his identity.

“I’ll try my best, Spiderman”

It’s the same thing she’d left him with before. She wonders if he catches it. With that, Megumi shoots a web and swings off into the night, his black suit blending easily into the night sky.

He did. ___

(y/n) was always punctual, to everything, not just class. But today she found herself in her favorite seat a whole ten minutes early. She hadn’t meant to show up before the professor, but she just couldn’t contain her energy today. She’d woken up before her alarm, got showered, dressed and dolled up in record time, ate a small breakfast on her walk to school, and now here she was. Full of energy as if it wasn’t eight in the morning. Call it waking up on the right side of the bed…

… or having an interesting night that she couldn’t get out of her head.

Never in her wildest dreams did she think that she’d run into Spiderman again. The first time was a little embarrassing, she’d come close to being called a victim, but the second time just happened by chance. It had her heart racing, her face warming, her lips smiling- hell, she was giddy.

He wasn’t anything like she’d thought he’d be, but that just made him all the more enticing to her. He was blunt, maybe even a little crass for a masked hero, but every interaction she’d had with him drew her in more.

She’d meant what she said about getting into journalism, she’d even been looking into transferring her credits next year, even if it meant starting over in a completely new program. Last night, she’d spent her time in bed staring at the ceiling and replaying events in her mind. When she wasn’t doing that, she was mentally writing her first article about The Spiderman.

The Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman had a nice ring to it, she thought. Although she had a feeling that he would laugh at the title of Friendly. Or maybe roll his eyes. It was hard to tell with the mask.

Before she knew it, she found herself doodling said mask at the corner of a fresh page in her notebook. She lifted her pen instantly, surprised at just how zoned out she’d become. There were never doodles in her notebooks. They were perfectly kept, clean, organized, conside, and without any extra graffiti.

She supposes this doodle can stay, though… she had done a rather good job at drawing it, it would be a pity if it went to waste…

Students begin to file into the class and setting up their laptops and notebooks at the desks surrounding her. Without any friends in this class there’s no one for her to talk to, or share the story of her night with.

Then again, she’s not sure she wants to tell anyone about her run in with Spiderman. She hadn’t mentioned it before… although that was because she didn’t need anyone fussing over her being out so late and putting her safety in jeopardy. This time was different, but still…

It felt more special if she kept it to herself.

Today, Megumi comes to class twelve minutes late. She eyes the clock above the doorway just as he ducks in to check the time, but her eyes just as quickly dart back to his figure. It’s hard not to, with the dark purple shiner standing out against the pale skin of his face.

Her eyes flit around the room, just to see if anyone else noticed the state of their late arrival, but every other student seemed too wrapped up in the lesson, and their professor was too deep in his lecture to give Megumi the slightest of attention. To everyone else, Megumi was late as usual. As (y/n) looked at him again, she had an inkling he was the only one who noticed his black eye.

He knew he was going to draw attention, clearly, seeing as his hoodie was up over his unruly hair and his head was down. But he must’ve sensed (y/n’s) eyes on him, because when he looked up it was directly at her.

He was moving to the back of the class again, probably to take that corner desk with the graphite engravings all over it. It would be alarming if she were to say anything to him, although she’s not even sure what she would say. Asking him if he was alright felt weird, and it’s not like she could just shout ‘what the fuck!?’ in the middle of class.

All she could do was stare at him as he took his seat, pull out his notebook, and begin notetaking as usual, as if nothing was out of the ordinary. She’s completely turned around in her seat now, still watching him, even though she was missing valuable points of the lesson now. It was hard to pull her attention away- it was weird that no one else seemed to notice him at all.

Where could he have possibly gotten that from? She frowned, despite Megumi ignoring her completely. She was sure that she would’ve heard about him getting into another fight on campus- last time she was getting texts about it while she was reading all the tweets about it. Fights were hot news around here, and if Megumi was involved in a second one, she surely couldn’t have missed it.

Right?

Finally, his eyes catch hers. She doesn’t turn away from him like she had in the past, she holds his stare, trying to communicate with him in silence.

It’s obvious to him, she’s looking at him with that same worried face she’d worn last night. She just didn’t know she was worried about the same person. He raises his eyebrows at her expectantly, as though asking ‘what?’. As though nothing were out of the ordinary at all.

Her lips curl into a frown, almost a pout, and Megumi has half a mind to flip her off to get her to leave him alone. Even in silence, even from opposite sides of the room, she seems to find some way to get under his skin.

He doesn’t, though. Just holds her stare for a minute longer before putting all of his attention into his notetaking.

Megumi told himself that he was done with her, and he was going to be true to his word. Whether he was in the suit or not, he couldn’t have anything to do with (y/l/n) (y/n). Being around her just made things feel… complicated. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but he didn’t want to. He just wanted the feeling to go away.

She sits turned around in her seat even once he’s clearly begun to ignore her again. He can feel her eyes on him, see her watching him out of his peripheral vision as if she was going to figure him out through her stare alone.

He was only pretty sure that she couldn’t.

Eventually she turns around in her seat, but the bouncing of her leg is driving him insane even from across the class. It was like all he could hear- the faint tap of her shoe tapping the linoleum floor. It was louder than the lecture, than the squeak of the marker on the whiteboard, or the students smacking their gum or tapping their desks. His ears focused on it for the remainder of class, effectively ruining his note taking ability.

He’s out of his seat once class is over, snatching his things and not bothering to put them in his bag as he bolts for the door. There’s an itch in his mind telling him to distance himself from (y/n) as fast as he can. The inkling was right, because he doesn’t make it far in the hall before his name is being called.

“Fushiguro!”

A few surrounding students glance in her direction, some even snicker in passing. Megumi wasn’t someone anyone chased after, and certainly never a girl. If this were still high school, his sister would ooh and ahh at him before skipping away, plotting to tease him for it later. But this wasn’t high school, and when he turned around to face (y/n), anyone who was watching made themselves scarce fast.

He doesn’t say anything as she approaches him, the strap of her messenger bag held tight in both hands against her chest.

She opens her mouth, ready to make a smartass comment, but it comes out awkward, not quite right.

“Late to class again cause of a fight, or something?” Even her scoff comes out wrong, sounding like a nervous laugh, strangled and weird. She shifts her weight between her feet.

Megumi’s silent for a long few seconds. Every one that passes feels like eternity, and (y/n) deflates a little more under his stare.

“Sure” He shakes his head, not caring what she wanted to assume about him. If she wanted to think he was that kind of guy, all the better. Spiderman didn’t get into fights before going to class, so the further he could separate himself from him in her mind, the better.

She frowns at his answer, and it looks like she’s actually upset when she stares directly at his dark eye. It looks pretty bad, he knows that. The swelling he could take care of, but the dark purple was another thing. Right now though, he’s more concerned about the way she seems to worry.

“Seriously, Fuhiguro,” She says quietly, hoping to get through to him.

She’s not sure what it is that came over her, but something about seeing him walk into class looking like this made her heart lurch in her chest.

“What happened? Who did that?”

“I fell,” He says dryly, earning a short glare from her. He sighs, shutting his eyes to mask his annoyance before it got the best of him. “Sorry I don’t have an interesting story for you- can I go to class now?”

“Suddenly Mr Punctual?” She snaps back, crossing her arms over her chest. Megumi huffs, shakes his head, uncaring toward her attitude.

“Whatever” He starts to turn away, but she catches him off guard when she rushes to block his path again.

Megumi actually startles when she budges in front of him, having to step back to remove her from his personal space. His wide eyes land on hers, annoyance furrowing his brows as he stares down at her. She’s defiantly raising her chin towards him, eyes narrowed and everything.

“I’m actually asking, you know,” She tells him. “Because no one else is walking around with black eyes-”

“Who cares?” Megumi tries to step out of her way, but she slides in front of him again. The traffic in the hallway is thinning, they would both be late for their next class if she kept this up. “Don’t you have a class to be early for?” He hopes that’s enough to get her to back off.

“I don’t care,” She says with enough assurance that Megumi’s actually surprised. He figured being late to class would throw her into a full breakdown. “Why are you being such a dick about this?”

He scoffs, a bitter smile tugging on his lips, only making him wince as it tears the healing wound.

“Why are you?” He fires back.

“Because,” She says it with such certainty, only to fall short with the rest of her reason. She didn’t know exactly why she felt like someone needed to check in on him, but she knew that she did, and maybe she was the only one who noticed anything was wrong in the first place. “Because… because it’s the right thing to do”

Megumi freezes up at that. All of his muscles go rigid, his jaw tightens, and his eyes flicker over her features rapidly, trying to find any crack in her sincerity. Was she seriously throwing his words back at him right now? Just because of a black eye?

Meanwhile (y/n) feels good about her answer. She’d picked it up from a man she admired so much and it felt right. There was no real reason, just a feeling. She had no idea what emotional turmoil she was putting him through right now.

“(y/n), seriously…” Megumi shakes his head at her. He steps to the side again, but doesn’t leave right away. Her eyes follow his, waiting for him to continue. He hates that she looks so genuinely worried about him. Hates the way it makes his heart race and his fingers tremble. He has to force words out of his throat. “Leave me alone”

Her face falls, but he’s quick to leave once he says it, and this time, she doesn’t chase after him again. ___

In the rest of their classes, she doesn’t try to talk to him again, and does her best not to look his way. Megumi’s relieved… he thinks. It’s for the best that everything returns to normal. Whatever compelled her to reach out to him today was clearly Spiderman’s doing, and he couldn’t have that. Things couldn’t change. His feelings of distaste towards her couldn’t change. He couldn’t start feeling… differently.

With his hood on and his headphones blasting music enough to drown out the noise of the cafe, Megumi tries to catch up on what he’d missed during his first lecture, which was the entirety of his first lecture. Luckily his professor tended to drone on word for word from the textbook, and he could catch up by reading.

Unluckily, it doesn’t take much for him to get sidetracked from his studies. He wants to kick himself when something compels him to look up, only to find (y/n) at Fratboy’s table again.

This again, he tells himself, certain he’ll go right back to his textbook. But he doesn’t move. His focus stays entirely on the table of jocks, without a shred of discretion, to make things worse.

“Not today” (y/n’s) saying when he tunes into the conversation. Does this guy always ask her to sit at his table for lunch? Is he that oblivious? Megumi chews on the inside of his cheek. You’d think he’d try to avoid the idiot jock stereotype a little better.

“C’mon princess, it’s never ‘today’. Why don’t you just say yes to ‘tomorrow’, hm?” Fratboy leans out of his seat, reaching his hand out towards her. (y/n) takes a step backwards, but he’s faster, snatching her by the wrist and pulling her towards the table again.

Megumi bristles, watching the situation with the eyes of a hawk. If looks could kill, this would’ve been enough to get Fratboy’s hand off of her. Even if he wasn’t hurting you, it was unwanted, that much was clear just by watching her body language.

“I really don’t feel that way about you,” (y/n) snaps, tugging her arm to get herself out of his grasp. He doesn’t release right away, and Megumi almost gets to his feet, but with a second tug he lets go of her, and (y/n) takes a large step back, keeping both arms close to her body in case he tries to reach for her again. “Leave me alone” She barks at him, turning to walk away.

If Fratboy says something else to her, Megumi misses it. His focus is dialed up to one hundred, and as soon as (y/n) separated herself from him, Megumi hadn’t paid a second glance to Fratboy at all. He wonders how long she’d felt his watchful eyes before she actually turned towards him. Her eyes skirt around the cafe for a second, trying to find where the prickling feeling of being watched was coming from, and it doesn’t take long for her to find him. Her bitter expression softens when she spots him, an odd feeling replacing the discomfort of being talked down to and manhandled.

Maybe because as soon as Fratboy follows her line of sight and sees Megumi’s hard stare set in his direction, he turns towards his table again and quickly engages himself with his friends, not bothering (y/n) with even a second glance. She watches this unfold, before looking back at Megumi again, curiously. Despite her being left alone now, he’s still staring at her, maybe waiting to see that she’ll get to her table without being bothered again, she’s not sure.

Either way, she grows still under his direct gaze. She didn’t know how to describe it, but she’s sure she’s never had anyone look at her like that. With an otherwise neutral expression, there was so much anger behind Megumi’s eyes that if she didn’t know better, she might be just as afraid as Fratboy. However something told her not to be, something told her that the anger wasn’t directed towards her. It takes a great deal of effort for her to turn her back on him and head towards her table, but even as she walks away she can’t help but glance back at him again. He’s already returned to his book by then, but her intrigue doesn’t end there. She spends the rest of her lunch in near silence while surrounded by her friends, her thoughts too busy for her to keep up with meaningless chit chat and gossip.

That night (y/n) wanders the sidewalk between her apartment and the convenience store up and down until her feet are too tired to carry her anymore. She walks the familiar path, back and forth, over and over, between the hours of ten and two, her eyes fixed on the sky, peeking down alleyways, her fingers crossed, her heart racing. Nothing comes of her walk. She returns home with a sense of disappointment, and a will to try it again. ___

Megumi’s growing tired of this game of hers. He’s not sure why she insists on doing this every night, it had been four nights now and she had nothing to show for it, so why was she still out there pacing the sidewalk like a maniac?

It took all of his energy to patrol the streets and keep an eye on one particular sidewalk- one particular girl. He was one guy. Did she really think this was safe for either of them? He very well could be missing a crime happening two blocks over because he’s too busy checking in on where she’s chosen to wander. Did she really think this was enough to capture his attention?

Well, it had caught his attention, seeing as every other five minutes he was swinging back in this direction to make sure she was still alive down there.

Was she trying to learn a lesson the hard way? Megumi spent his time watching her with bitterness. She was smarter than this, he knew it, so what the hell was she thinking?

Deep down he’d already confirmed his worries, but he’d hoped that she’d give this stunt up eventually. He still saw her around school, even if she’d stopped bothering him, he could see the toll that staying up like this was taking on her. She always had an energy drink or a coffee on her desk, and Megumi doesn’t think he’s ever seen her look so disheveled. It had him wondering if this was starting to impact her grades, too.

This is why he shouldn’t have spoken with her the last time. He should’ve swung off in the opposite direction. Because now she was on his mind, she had him worrying, swinging all around the block she was pacing while trying to keep an eye on the rest of the city- it was exhausting for him, too.

He shouldn’t be sitting here worrying about her sleep, or her grades. His bottom line should be safety. And she was safe. So why couldn’t he just leave her be?

With a groan he stops his swinging to land on one of the surrounding buildings. He rips his mask off his head, groaning through his irritation before raking his hands through his already messy hair. She was driving him crazy, and he was sure that she knew it too. This little back and forth walk of hers, she was taunting him with it.

Throwing himself down to sit on the edge of the building, Megumi peers over his knees to check on her yet again. She’s slowed her pace, which hopefully means she’s getting tired and will return to her apartment soon.

With a huff, he props his head in his hand, wondering what he was going to do about this. It wasn’t as easy to make her hate Spiderman as it was to make her hate Megumi. Hell, it might not be a bad idea to just reveal his identity to her, she’d probably want to forget about Spiderman all together, then.

Of course, that was a stupid idea, but Megumi was fresh out of good ones.

When he lifts his head again, compelled by some invisible force to check just one more time that she was alright, he’d looked just in time. He barely had the time to pull his mask back on his head before he was leaping off the building and swinging down towards her, half flying and half falling through the air as fast as he could to get to her before whatever figure lurking around the corner could.

Shit, shit, shit.

It happens so fast, she’s lucky she didn’t pee herself from the whole thing. She’d just reached the end of her pace, about to turn around and wander the other direction when she finally saw a very unsettling figure come around the corner. With disheveled clothing and a stagger that sent up warning flags of intoxication, (y/n) instantly stopped in her tracks, and started to shuffle backwards.

He never said a word to her, but from looks alone she got the feeling of what he was thinking. Nothing good.

However before she could get herself to start running, someone else came into view.

There’s barely a second for her to show her relief when Spiderman shows up, seemingly out of nowhere. She’s not sure his feet even touched the ground before he had an arm around her and was swinging off again. He doesn’t have to tell her to hold on, she just clings, with all her might, she winds her arms around his neck and keeps her knees locked on either side of his hips.

The sensation of swinging through the air is not the one she always dreamed of enjoying- the wind is harsh, whipping her hair around all directions and snapping against her face unpleasantly. Even with her face buried against her savior’s chest, the cold air nips at her.

Even once he’s clearly landed, it takes some prompting for her to let go of him, and open her eyes.

When she does, she barely gets to open her mouth before he’s laying into her, and she should’ve seen it coming, but she can’t help but deflate.

“What the hell were you thinking!?”

He’s yelling, and at first she wonders if he’s worried about people seeing, but a quick glance at her surroundings and she realizes they’re on the roof of a building. No one would be hearing them here.

“Were you seriously trying to get yourself into trouble? Because you were about this close to it,” He raises his pinched fingers for emphasis, but gives her no time to answer. “You better not have done something so stupid just cause of me-”

“I didn’t- well- well I didn’t necessarily” (y/n) tries to explain, but the words just aren’t coming as fast as her mouth is moving and she’s left gaping at him.

Megumi was not putting up with it. What did he have to do to get it through her head?

“I can’t be spending my nights keeping an eye on just you because you feel like putting yourself in harm’s way for a fucking rush,” He snaps. “You pull shit like that again (y/n) and I’m not going to be there next time, you understand?”

Her mouth shuts. She nods her head.

“Jesus Christ,” Megumi puts his hands to his head, turning and walking off as if they weren’t stranded on top of a building.

Well, (y/n) was stranded. Spiderman had the means of getting himself anywhere.

She wants to follow him, but instinct tells her to stay put while he paces and continues to scold her.

“You’re goddamn lucky I was there, you know that?” He’s not even looking at her, but she nods her head again anyways. She knows. “I should really go back there and beat the shit out of that guy” He starts to mutter to himself, going on incoherently, and (y/n’s) blood starts to run cold.

“He- I mean, he didn’t do anything” She mumbles, her voice hardly above a whisper, but he seems to hear her just fine, stopping in his tracks and turning his head towards her.

“Are you serious?”

Her mouth opens and closes a few times before any words come out.

“It’s not like he… he said anything, or did anything to me” She clarifies. Spiderman’s mask is incapable of expression, but she had a feeling the man behind it was glaring at her. She could feel that familiar prickle of a harsh stare.

It’s silent for a long moment before he finally turns completely towards her and walks back in her direction. She keeps her feet firmly planted, willing herself not to back away or cower, but having him come stand so close to her had her throat closing up. He towered over her so much she had to lean her head back to look up at his mask.�� If he was going to yell, she was bound to flinch.

“You have no idea what he was capable of doing,” He doesn’t yell. In fact his voice is so eerily low she almost shivers. “If you want to gamble your life on some drunken lowlife’s imagination, that’s your business,” He adds, and she blinks away the tears welling up in her eyes as the gravity of the situation really sunk in with his words. “But at least have the decency to do it far away from me. Because if it were up to me I’d go back there and kill that guy right now”

She blinks a few more times, but still, a tear slips down her cheek.

“I-I’m sorry,” She whispers shakily, the lump in her throat growing hotter when she tries to speak. “I didn’t- I wasn’t trying to- I-”

Megumi sighs as more tears begin to fall from her eyes. Her brain was playing catchup and it was clear she was too tired to handle any of this right now.

“It’s alright,” He says, but it’s obviously not enough to calm her down, so against his better judgment, he tries his hand at comforting her. “Hey, c’mon, you’re alright,” Reaching out to her, he hesitates before placing his hands on either side of he face, wiping her tears away on the soft material of gloves. “Breathe,” He instructs quietly, and waits as her shudders slowly morph into slow, heavy breaths. “There you go, that’s it. You’re alright,” He tries to remind her that where she is now, she’s safe. “You’re here”

It takes a few more deep breaths, but eventually he steers her clear of a full blown panic attack, and her heartbeat returns to a normal pace.

With one last deep breath, (y/n) closes her eyes on her exhale, and Megumi finally drops his hands from her head, sure that she isn't going to start back up again.

“I have trouble sleeping,” She tells him quietly, her eyes focused on the ground. “It started in high school, I uh… I’m kind of a nerd, I guess,” She admits. “My parents really cared about my grades and success and I guess I just… went with it. Started staying up through the night to study and get ahead the rest of my class and… never dropped the habit”

Megumi softens, although she’d never know it.

“That doesn’t sound so healthy,” He says quietly, not knowing what else to say. She scoffs, smiles bitterly, shakes her head back at him. “We should get you back home, yeah?”

Realizing what he meant, she looks back at him with a wince, and he can’t help the small chuckle at her reaction.

“It’ll be alright. I’ll take it easy, promise” He says, crossing his finger over his chest for emphasis.

“What, like I’m gonna find some way to sue Spiderman?” She mutters back.

He holds his arms out to her, carefully grabbing her by the forearms to loop them around his neck.

“Just hold on and keep your head down, it’ll be over before you know it”

Her face heats up when his arm comes around her back and he presses her even closer. She can’t stop her squeak of surprise before it comes out, and it must startle him, because he’s quick to ask her if she’s okay.

“Yeah I- I’m fine” She stammers back, feeling her blush grow hotter.

Megumi takes off without a warning, thinking it’ll be easier to rip it off like a bandaid than to count down before a jump. All of her limbs tighten around him, forgetting about modesty as soon as they’re in the air. She presses her face as far into his shoulder as she can to keep herself blinded from the surrounding area. Until now, she wouldn’t have said she was afraid of heights.

She’s at least able to give him her address, a shaky whisper in his ear before she’s buried into his shoulder again.

When he lands on her fire escape, he helps her to her feet, trying not to chuckle at how wobbly she is.

“Don’t get sick on the suit, you have no idea how much of a pain it is to dry clean this thing” He tries to lighten the mood, and is surprised that he’s successful in doing so, earning a small laugh from her.

“You say that to all the girls you swing home, Spidey?”

“Not a fan of the nickname. Or the insinuation” He’s back to his usual dry self in no time.

“Well you have to have a nickname, we’re friends now, aren’t we?”

He’s supposed to leave now. He should leave now. This was exactly what he was afraid of happening, her getting attached. That burden was only on her of course, there wasn’t a chance Megumi was going to get drawn in when it comes to her, not when he knew the consequences.

“Spideman already is a nickname” He mutters like it’s obvious.

(y/n) let’s out a breathless laugh, and tosses her messy windswept hair behind her shoulders.

Megumi hasn’t left yet, why isn’t he leaving?

“Well, then there must be some other name I could call you..?” She trails off with her question, stepping forward and eyeing him curiously.

Megumi’s frozen. Was she really suggesting he reveal himself to her? Obviously he couldn’t do that…

“I’d just like to thank you, again,” She says, a small smile on her lips as she takes another step forward.

If he’s not leaving, Megumi knows he most definitely needed to step away from her before she could press any closer. Carrying her to swing her home was one thing, that was closeness out of necessity, but this- this was too much, and he was freezing up.

“And, um, properly,” She adds in a soft murmur, her eyes flickering over his mask.

He briefly wonders what she’s looking for, but it’s quickly answered when she reaches up towards him, her fingers brushing the space between his mask and the rest of the suit. It’s fitted so well it’s nearly impossible for someone to find the disconnect between the two- unless of course you’re standing directly in front of him, which she was.

He doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word, but the gulp he swallows is visible to her with how close she is. The tips of her fingers barely slip under the material of his mask, they graze his skin in a touch featherlight yet searing hot.

Without any indication from him that she should stop, curiosity gets the best of her and she carefully begins to slide the mask upwards, her eyes excitedly watching the expanse of his now exposed neck. Almost as pale as the moonlight, she drank up the sight of his skin as if it was a completely new sight to her.

When she gets to his chin, his hand snatches her wrist. It’s a quick action, but surprisingly gentle. He barely grips her arm, his touch merely a warning.

“You shouldn’t” He says, the lump in his bobbing throat preventing him from saying anything more.

She looks up into the expanse of white that made for the compelling eyes of the mask. Wondering if she was making proper eye contact with him, she shakes her head reassuringly.

“I won’t go too much further,” She murmurs. Followed by an even softer, “Promise”

His better judgment clean out the window, Megumi lets go of her hand, and allows her to proceed.

Using both hands now, she bunched up the end of the material until she was able to gather it at his nose where it would stay put, leaving everything from his neck to the tip of his nose on display for her.

She smiles at him, almost knowingly, and it makes him nervous. Everything about this makes him nervous, this cold sweat she was putting him through was torture. Even more so when her fingers begin to softly trace over the exposed parts of his skin.

“I knew you were handsome” She whispers shyly, but her eyes glimmer with excitement.

Megumi chuckles, the corners of his lips barely quirking into a smile, prompting her to hover the pad of her thumb over them as well. She doesn’t quite touch his lips, too cautious of the healing cut over the bottom one.

“How could you know such a thing?” He mumbles, keeping his voice low out of worry that she’d recognize it without the muffle of his mask.

“I don’t know,” She giggles softly. “Your voice, maybe. And you’re tall”

“I don’t think you have very good standards” Megumi murmurs.

“I think it’s completely fair for a girl to have a little crush on the man who saved her,” She replies, face warming up from such a confession. To her delight, it gets another smile out of him. “Who knew you smiled so much under there?” She says before she could think twice about it. “I was starting to think you were that stoic, mysterious type”

“I could be” He mumbles, and he finds himself taking her hand before she could finally touch her fingers to his lips.

She’s more than enticed to, with how pink and alluring they were, she’d been dying to kiss them since she’d lifted his mask, and hoped he’d give her the chance, seeing as he hadn’t tried to cover the bottom half of his face just yet.

She’s never looked at him like this before. And to be fair, Megumi had never looked at her like this either. He’d had no idea how pretty she was, like this, with her eyes half lidded and half focused, staring intently at his lips, giving away all of her thoughts without having to voice them. Her long lashes seemed to grow heavier with every slow blink. She’s hardly looking up at him now, all of her attention on just one thing, and Megumi was starting to run out of reasons why he shouldn’t indulge her.

The hand that he’s not keeping away from him reaches out again, fingers skimming his jaw before curling around it with the softest touch. She doesn’t pull him with much force, but Megumi finds himself following her movements as she guides him down, closer to her height.

It wasn’t right to kiss her. It was actually the exact opposite of what he’d been trying to do here. How the hell did he wind up in this situation?

“Thank you, Spiderman” She whispers, her lips ghosting over his with every syllable.

Ah, fuck it.

His hand releases hers only to reach for the back of her head and pull her in the rest of the way, his lips capturing hers passionately. Not expecting him to make the first move, she’s delayed in reacting, her hands sliding around the back of his neck and kissing him back with just as much fervor.

So lost in the kiss and how softly his lips move over hers, she almost forgets about the minor detail that his identity is still a secret to her, but even if it crosses her mind, she doesn’t care.

Her fingers press into the small strip of skin exposed at the nape of his neck, and while she longs to dig them under the back of his mask and lift it off of his head, it's not out of a desire to expose his identity. It’s purely because she’d love to run her hands through his hair, followed by a curiosity of what that would feel like.

Was his hair long? Soft? Coarse? Was it shaggy? Was it shaved? The mystery of it all had her mind buzzing and her feet pushing her to the tips of her toes to meet his lips in one last kiss before he could pull away.

The final kiss is softer than the rest, so gentle and slow, it was the perfect first, and last, kiss.

Not that she could tell the difference, but Megumi had a hard time opening his eyes again when he pulled away. He didn’t move far, his hand still cupped around the back of her head, fingers tangled in her hair. A part of him hoped they’d be so knotted together that they wouldn’t ever have to leave this moment.

When he does find the courage to look at her, he’s mentally kicking himself.

Megumi’s sure that the reason the sky was so dull tonight was because all the stars were trapped in her eyes, now being gifted to him under her precious gaze. Her lips curled into a slightly swollen smile, her cheeks pink with color despite the sun being nowhere in sight, it was perfect, she was perfect, and he can’t believe he’s spent so long missing out on it.

Shit, shit, shit.

“You…” He starts, but he doesn’t know where he’s going. His head is in the clouds, beyond the clouds, he was completely unreachable. (y/n) giggles softly at how quickly he’d become tongue tied. “You should pursue the journalist thing, alright?”

Brows slightly drawn together from the seemingly random comment, she nods back at him in a small motion.

“You think?” She murmurs back, her hand squeezing his. It sends a wave of warmth through his arm and into his chest, and Megumi has to fight the urge to frown, because his mouth was still exposed.

Pulling his hand from hers, he touches it gently to her jaw, then her cheek. She leans into his touch, welcoming it completely. Her smile only grows upon feeling the warmth of his palm through his glove.

“I have a feeling that you’d succeed at anything you put your mind to,” He says, and it’s sort of cheesy, but it’s the absolute truth. Her lips part in surprise at the sudden seriousness in his tone, but she doesn’t say anything, just lets his words linger on her mind. “No more middle of the night walks, though, alright?” He says, shaking her head just a tiny bit to make sure it would get through her thick skull. “If you can’t sleep, just put something on tv, like a normal person”

Her hand raises to cover the back of his, cradling it against her face sweetly. Megumi thinks the sight will be ingrained in his memory for the rest of time.

“Then how will I see you again?” She says, only half teasing. Her eyes are wide and hopeful, and Megumi stalls by brushing his thumb over her cheekbone a few times.

“I’ll be around” He murmurs, nodding his head through his uncertainty. Was it a good idea to see her again?

(y/n) nods back at him, before letting his hand go and reaching for the bunched up material of his mask, pulling it back over his face.

It was hardly a good idea to see her this time, and she’d actually needed his help. Look where that had lead him.

“I hope so,” She mumbles, seemingly just as uncertain as he was.

He finally drops his hand from her head, fingers carefully detangling themselves from her hair so as not to irritate her head, or maybe he just needed to linger near her a little longer.

Who was he kidding. He was going to find himself in this position sooner or later, wasn’t he?

“I guess… you know where to find me,” She says, wrapping her arms around herself, even though it was a nice night with no breeze. She squeezes herself for comfort.

When did it start, exactly? Was it the little secrets she confided in? Or her worry when he’d shown up to class a few days ago with a black eye? Megumi struggled to pinpoint when things took a turn down the path of no return.

“If you change your mind on that interview…” She adds with a soft smile. She hopes he’s smiling back at her.

He is.

“I’ll know where to find you,” He repeats, hoisting himself onto the railing of her fire escape, and standing up on the thin bar with complete balance. He made it look easy. “Goodnight, (y/n)”

“Goodnight, Spiderman”

He took off then, completely silent as he leapt from the escape and swung off, nearly invisible in the darkness.

(y/n) couldn’t help but sit outside her window a little longer, replaying the events of her night yet again, and wondering just how he figured out her name. ___

Megumi had resigned to sitting in the back of all of his classes for the rest of the year.

It’s not a huge deal, he can learn fine from any seat in the class, and as he realizes this he comes to realize that there was never really a good reason why he chose to sit near (y/n) before. All of his complaints that she was an obnoxious bother had dissolved into… nothing. He chose to sit near her every day. Whether it was right behind her or two seats away, he couldn’t ignore the fact that he always chose to be near.

And now that he wasn’t, it was driving him crazy. He longed to be closer, to sit behind her again, maybe even right next to her. Had he really been so dense all this time?

Though their interactions had been swindling since he’d put more focus into Spiderman than he had in school, (y/n) hadn’t spoken a word to him since their argument in the hall, and that was almost two weeks ago now.

The last thing she’d said to him, she’d said to Spiderman, not Megumi. Still, he tries to keep the soft, precious way she’d bid him goodnight in his memory. He didn’t want to forget a single moment of the last time he’d spoken with her, not the things she said, not the way she touched his skin so delicately, and certainly not the kiss.

Megumi leans his chin into his hand now, fingers covering his mouth nonchalantly. However when he presses the pads of his fingertips against his lips, it’s not the same.

They caught eyes here and there, but that wasn’t the same either. He’d come into class late, she’d cast him a short glance, but it was always quickly returned to the front of the room. Not so much as a taunting glare was directed his way. It was safe to say he’d finally gotten her off his back… and he’s never felt like such an idiot.

It was worse outside of classes.

He’d spend his nights swinging around town, lazing through patrol, busting perps when they came around, but crime was dwindling by the day, it seemed. He liked to think that Spiderman was making a difference, but he’d been a little rough around the edges lately, and he knew deep down his reputation was morphing into a ruthless fighter.

Spiderman wasn’t just keeping peace, he was keeping criminals in fear. Not that Megumi was perturbed by this- for one, he’d long held that reputation already, so living with it as Spiderman felt no different. Secondly, the quiet nights were comforting.

The free time was starting to become a problem, though. He couldn’t stop himself from trying to visit her. He’d be aimlessly swinging and the next thing he knew he was on her block, near her building, almost approaching the very fire escape at her window where they’d last seen each other. It’s difficult to make himself turn around and swing the other way, especially on the clear nights when he can see her light is on, and he knows she’s awake.

She’d kept her promise, it seemed. He’d swing by often enough to notice the flicker of a tv screen, just close enough to know she was home and safe, but he tried not to linger too long. He didn’t want her seeing him checking in, and he definitely didn’t like the idea of sitting outside her window like a creep.

More than that, he feared that she’d be delighted to see him again.

It had been a week since that night on her fire escape- with the rescue, the kiss- and Megumi really tried to keep his distance. He indulged himself in passing by her window more times than he could count, but he was careful to keep himself hidden, so she would have no idea his watchful eye was never too far. If he kept this up, he hoped that she would forget about it altogether. That’s what would be for the best.

Sitting across the street perched on the roof of a building like it was the most natural place in the world to sit, Megumi dropped his chin in his hand as he stared longingly at the only lit up window in the apartment building across the street. At this point, he’d probably spent more time looking at that window than he had in his own home.

He didn’t want to forget about what happened. He didn’t want her to forget about what happened.

His mask crumpled in his other hand, he tore his gaze away from the window to stare down at it, cursing it mentally for giving him everything only to ruin it.

It wasn’t Spiderman’s fault, though. Megumi was just as much responsible for the rift he’d put between himself and (y/n), long before that damned spider bite. He’d always pushed her off, kept her at arm’s length or further, if he could help it. He was the one stubborn enough to never let anyone in. He was the one that pushed her into treating him with the same insufferable attitude he’d directed at her, way back then. So much could change within a year, he supposed that was true for everyone, but he couldn’t ward off the self pity that came over him, thinking he’d surely changed too much within a year.

At the feeling of the first raindrop hitting his exposed head, he sighed, running a hand through his hair to dry the following drops of water before pulling his mask over his head again. Of course it’s going to start raining on him when he’s sitting here feeling bad about himself.

He doesn’t intend to get any closer to her building, being right across the street already felt too close, but with the extra cover of the rain starting to pick up, Megumi thought maybe tonight he could get away with being just a little closer. Just close enough to make sure she was okay in there. He might not be able to do anything about her sleepless nights… but it couldn’t hurt to check, right? He would leave as soon as he was sure, and then he would try not to return.

He’s not stupid enough to climb directly onto her fire escape- but then again his being here was pretty stupid already so what was one more idiot move? Instead Megumi perches himself on the one above it, opting to hang over the bottom of it just enough that he could peek through the window.

To his surprise, even though her tv is on along with the rest of the lights in her room, (y/n) is nowhere in sight. He doesn’t think much of this at first, she very well could be in the bathroom, or the kitchen. But just as he tries to rationalize her disappearance, the hair on the back of his neck stands up, and in the next second her window was sliding open.

“Boo!”

Her whisper yell as she leans out the window and towards his dangling head is comparable to that of a child’s. Completely un-scary, and followed by a string of delighted giggles.

Megumi freezes, and he would’ve fallen right off the fire escape if his reflexes didn’t have him shooting out a web of safety to hang by. He’s still upside down, swinging in front of her, but (y/n) leans out further to steady his movement by his shoulders.

“Scared ya good, huh?” She muses. Her grin was a sight for sore eyes. “Serves you right, stalking a girl like that”

“I wouldn’t call it stalking”

“What would you call it then?”

Her hands are still pressed against his shoulders. Megumi’s not sure if it’s to keep him from swinging, or if she was keeping her own balance as she leaned the upper half of her body out her window.

“... is it a crime to visit people?”

“Usually when they’re trying to creep in through a window” She quips back. Her smile only seems to brighten the longer she looks at him- even if she did sort of just call him a creep.

“For the record I wasn’t trying to get in” He corrects, his own smile beginning to grow under his mask. He couldn’t deny how good it felt to see her like this again, to be able to talk to her, even just look at her.

“Just spy from the outside?”

“I don’t like the narrative you’re spinning,” Megumi scoffs. “What happened to honest journalism, hm?”

She giggles at that. The corners of her eyes crinkle as she gazes at him fondly. He liked this side of her banter- the playful side. It was fun.

“So you think you can honestly say you missed me, Spidey?” She asks in a voice made of pure sugar. It rots his teeth, melts his insides, and makes all his senses go fuzzy.

“I thought we weren’t going the nickname route” He deadpans, avoiding the question.

With her smile pursing to the corner of her lips, something about her demeanor changed then.

“It’s only fair, since you know my name,” Her tone is just as light, but her eyes are calculating, and Megumi knows he’s slipped up. And again just now, by not having a quick enough response. “And I’m certain I didn’t give it to you… so… how do you explain that one?”

“Did you think I wasn’t going to have an interest in figuring that out?” Megumi chuckles, hoping he could play it off.

(y/n) presses further out her window, far enough now that the rain starts to dampen her hair, but she appears to pay it no mind.

“I don’t like it when you’re cryptic, Spidey” She huffs.

Again, Megumi laughs.

“It sort of comes with the whole anonymity thing” He answers.

She tilts her head at him, as if she could study him even with the mask on. Megumi couldn’t deny the paralyzing effect it had on him.

“Why does it feel like you’re a stranger to me… but I’m not one to you?” She asks him slowly, as though still debating on asking him at all. “Why does it feel like you know me?”

“You do talk a lot”

Megumi’s grasping at straws now, but at least that gets a small laugh out of her. He hopes it’s enough of a distraction, hopes that she lets things go back to the way they were. He didn’t need her trying to put together the puzzle that was Spiderman, it couldn’t lead to anything good.

“You know what I mean,” She murmurs. She raises a hand off of his shoulder, reaching for the hem of his mask in a way that wasn’t supposed to feel familiar to him. “You think you’d ever tell me?” She asks as her fingers toy with the material’s edge.

“Who I am?” Megumi asks dumbly. Besides the raindrops slowly running down her face, there’s no change in her expression. There’s a glimmer of hope in her eye as her fingers slip under the mask, not quite lifting it yet, but holding it with the clear intention to do so.

The silence lingers until she has her answer, and Megumi thinks this might be the damning moment that he’s been trying to brace himself for. She’ll probably rip his mask right off, and then who knows how she’d react upon seeing it was him all this time. He knew he was faster than her, he could easily swing away before she could have the chance.

A nervous, breathless laugh breaks tension, and she gently peels the mask towards his chin.

“I guess I’ll just have to figure it out on my own, then” She muses playfully.

“An investigative journalist now, are we?” Megumi asks, but there’s no time for further banter when she’s got his mask bunched up at his nose and that’s all the further it needs to go before he’s meeting her lips in a wet kiss.

The rain was not a welcomed experience, it had (y/n) shivering and it was irritating Megumi’s now exposed nose. It made their kiss slippery and messy, and with him still being upside down it didn’t exactly make things any easier.

Neither of them cared.

All of (y/n’s) interests lied in kissing him and then kissing him again- she couldn’t help it, even if he outright refused to tell her his name, he kissed her like a dream.

Shaky, wet palms steadied on either side of his face, trying to pull him even closer. He follows her direction as best he can, but with his hands still occupied with the web to keep him from crashing onto her fire escape, Megumi’s left with his neck craned as far forward as he could push. If he hadn’t held onto the last scrap of his sanity he would’ve dropped down from the railing and crawled right through her window.

He was getting carried away.

“(y)- (y/n)-” Her name is whispered soft and broken into her lips, and she knows this is his way of ending whatever this is, but she can’t help but leave him with one last lingering kiss. He doesn’t push her away, doesn’t even go still against her kiss. He waits, all too patiently, until she has to lean back and catch her breath.

“You’re going to leave,” She says softly. It’s not a question, she already knows. He might think that he’s difficult to read, with his monotone comments and the mask that’s easy to hide behind, but he wasn’t as great of a mystery as he might think.

He frowns. It looks a little awkward upside down. (y/n) gives him a sad smile and carefully maneuvers his mask back into place. It doesn’t take long before she misses the small glimpse of his face that she was allowed to see.

“Why do I get the feeling that I’m not going to see you again?” She sighs.

The raindrops on her face could easily be mistaken for tears. Megumi slides his hand out of her hair to dry her face, and he can’t keep away the memory of him drying her actual tears.

“You will,” He assures her, but the nagging feeling doesn’t quite go away. “You just… might not know it”

A lump forms in Megumi’s throat when he says it, and it only grows when her eyes light up with intrigue.

“Is that a hint, Spiderman?” She muses, and he chuckles, shaking his head.

“Get some sleep” He encourages, already lifting himself onto the fire escape of her upstairs neighbor. Disobediently, she pushes herself further out her window to follow his movements.

“I will see you again?” She asks as she looks up at him, not minding the pelting of raindrops soaking through her clothes and hair.

Against his better judgment- as things always seem to be when it comes to her- Megumi nods his head. He doesn’t say a word before swinging away, knowing he’d overstayed his welcome by a longshot. Even without looking back, he can feel (y/n’s) eyes on him as she watches from her window.

And when he thinks about it, he can still feel her lips against his. ___

(y/n’s) not sure of the last time she walked into her 8am class and saw Megumi had gotten there before her. It stops her in her tracks, still in the doorway, staring at the boy hunched over his desk in the back of the class scribbling in his notebook at an alarming rate.

Wait… was he cram studying for their test today?

She scoffs, and he lifts his head to give her a bored glare. Of course he’d noticed her when she’d come in- he’d heard her coming from the hallway- but he wasn’t about to give her the reaction she wanted.

And it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep his expression hardened and neutral when it came to her, so Megumi had been trying to avoid looking at her completely.

Keyword, trying.

“Don’t tell me you actually didn’t study” She says, a knowing little grin tugging at the corners of her lips as she looks him up and down.

Megumi holds his blank stare for as much longer as he’s capable of before turning his attention back to his notebook, pen scrawling loudly yet again. (y/n’s) brows raise at the intensity at which he was writing, shocked that her assumptions seemed to be proven correct.

“Wow” She mumbles to herself, before walking straight to the back of the class.

Megumi tries to ignore her, she probably just wanted to click her tongue at him in disapproval before she’d go pick out her favorite seat and ignore him for the rest of the period. But she’s approaching so quickly and suddenly she’s leaning over his desk and he has half a mind to cover his work, as if there was any kind of damning evidence there.

She eyes the messy notes before glancing up at him, his gaze already set on her. For a moment it pins her in place, has her freezing up just as she had a moment ago, but the feeling melts before she could question the severity in his eyes.

“If you want to borrow my notes, you’ll have to ask” He tells her, his voice unwavering and devoid of any emotion. She rolls her eyes at the typical behavior.

“Unlike you, I cared enough to study last night” She replies, and she’s just about to turn on her heel when the unexpected happens, and Megumi actually has a response.

“That so?”

His change in tone irks her, and she can’t put her finger on why. But the tilt of intrigue matched with the way he smirks has her heating up.

Out of irritation, of course.

“Duh,” Her arms cross over her chest defensively. “I’ve been studying all week”

Even as Megumi resumes his note taking, his stupid smirk is still plastered on his face. If she was more inclined to violence, (y/n) would’ve wanted to smack it right off.

“I’m sure you have” He mumbles, watching out of his peripheral vision as her arms shoot down to her sides, hands balled into fists as she gasps and gapes at him. Clearly, she took offense to the comment, and he had to bite back the chuckle at it.

“What are you trying to say?” She snaps at him, but she’s not nearly as intimidating as she wants to be.

“Didn’t really say anything,” He replies, tone holding no emotion again. “You just started freaking out”

“I’m not freaking out,” Her eyes narrowed. “God, why do you have to be so-”

Before she can finish he looks up at her again, and again it’s like he’s stunned her with the way his gaze seems to pierce right through her. He looks pleased with himself, too, as if he was just dying to hear what she was going to come up with.

Peculiarly enough, her throat goes dry, and she can’t quite remember how she was going to finish that sentence. Megumi must figure her out, too, because his smirk almost resembles a smile now, and her heated skin was starting to become unbearable.

“So…?” Megumi repeats curiously, hoping to egg her into finishing her thought.

(y/n) huffs, shaking her head in her agitated defeat before turning around and marching towards her usual seat.

Megumi returns to his work with a smile on his face. Her preference for Spiderman might’ve been clear as day, but there was something satisfying about knowing one way or another, he had a knack for getting her worked up.z

___

Despite her hopes reaching impossible heights, (y/n) hadn’t gotten another visit from Spiderman in quite some time. It had been about two weeks now, and she hadn’t noticed even a shadow outside her bedroom window.

She gives him the benefit of the doubt, because for some reason unknown to her she’d grown to care for him enough to make every excuse necessary. He was doing important work out there, she’d tell herself while sitting at her window, longing eyes looking for any sign of life out in the sleeping city. It wasn’t like he had all the time in the world to spend on her.

Or while wandering the halls from class to class, while her eyes were trying to catch every stranger that walked passed, she hoped to find some flicker of familiarity in anyone. It might’ve been naive of her to think he could be as close to her as being another student at her school, but she couldn’t help herself. She couldn’t stop the ‘what ifs’ from plaguing her mind. She was so full of hope it was rotting her from the inside out.

Her focus was never quite all there. In class she’d mindlessly take notes, her attention shifting about the room, trying to catch the feeling of being watched, but she always came up empty handed. There were no eyes on her, she concluded after days of paranoid searching. It was just a placebo effect her mind had come up with in her hoping to find him.

As if she was just going to happen upon him as easily as looking at him and knowing.

It was the same even around her friends. The usual group she’d sit with at lunch had noticed her change in demeanor, but not knowing how to bring it up to her they tended to continue on conversing as if she wasn’t actively ignoring them as she searched the cafe.

“What are you looking for?” One of them had asked one day, a slight wince on their face when she startled and turned towards them again, as if she’d completely forgotten where she was.

“Oh, nothing,” Her reply was less than convincing. “Just spacing, I guess”

Maybe that part was sort of true, but it wasn’t a good enough excuse for anyone to take her seriously anyways. So she was left alone to barely pick at her lunch and scan the cafe with an undeniable skip in her heartbeat.

(y/n) was starting to think she was going crazy, but it was like an itch she couldn’t scratch. She just had a feeling that she was close, and to stop her from chasing that feeling would take a force her lunchtime friends weren’t able to muster up.

Her grades had yet to be affected, but her uptick in strange behavior wasn’t going unnoticed. Her participation had dipped dramatically, some of her classes actually dragging on in near silence as no other students filled the gaps of her incessant questions and comments. It was clear to her professors and peers that behind her wandering eyes was a void of class-related thoughts. Whatever was occupying her every passing minute, had nothing to do with her studies. But she maintained her perfect grade point average so effortlessly it was difficult to reprimand her for her lack of attention in each class.

Megumi had watched from the background as her sanity seemed to slip further and further. At first, it had been a bit amusing. He’d noticed right away, the way her eyes caught every guy walking into class, the way she seemed to pick each one apart with only her eyes. She must have been gauging whether or not she deemed every one of them capable of being Spiderman. It was hard not to smile to himself when she’d ultimately look away from each one, unconvinced.

One was too short, the next too tan, another just didn’t have the right vibe, Megumi wished he could read her thoughts as she scrutinized each passerby in silence. He was never too far from her, so it was easy to watch the hope radiating off of her as she tried to find the source of the eyes on her. Luckily for Megumi’s rapid senses, he was always facing another direction when her gaze flickered his way. Not that she ever quite looked at him the way she looked at the others. He could feel her eyes sweeping right past him, pausing on a boy sitting just a few seats to his left instead. But yet again she was facing away and trying to come up with someone else.

Megumi wondered why it was that she felt so sure Spiderman was in this very school with her. Tokyo was a heavily populated place, and he knew she was smarter than to assume he was this close to her all this time.

(Of course… he was… but how could she have any idea of that?)

With every passing day she seemed a little more dazed. Which was an interesting look on a know-it-all like her. Her interest in the world around her took a nosedive, and it was obvious to a watcher like Megumi. She looked like a gray spot surrounded by the bright yellow of her lunch table. She stuck out like a sore thumb in every class, finally having learned to pipe down and retreat in on herself. She didn’t look depressed, it was just clear as day that her interests were on anything but what was going on around her.

Again, he’s entertained by this for some time. There’s a swell of pride and something warm and new in his chest whenever he sees her so openly looking for him. Hopeful eyes scanning every crowd, every class, only to never properly focus on him. He should feel relief that he doesn’t seem to be even a passing possibility to her. Instead, all he feels is a few skips in his heartbeat knowing she thought he was someone worth searching for.

Well, Spiderman was someone worth searching for, at least.

But the entertainment drains fast when her preoccupied mind lands her crashing into someone in the cafe. A freezing cold iced coffee is dumped all over the front of her pretty blouse, ruining it instantaneously. Megumi happens to look up just as the incident takes place, the hair on the back of his neck standing up on alert and his eyes finding her in the crowd in a moment’s notice, just in time to watch her crash.

And just as she steps away from the person she’s crashed into, her focus shifted to her soaked and stained shirt, an unsettled feeling crawls over Megumi’s skin as he notices who it was she just so happened to run into.

The frat boy that had been bugging her not too long ago. The annoying guy, yeah, that one. Megumi was pretty damn sure this run in wasn’t as accidental as it looked, but he stayed seated at his empty table, with faux attention on the book in his hand.

His eyes hadn’t returned to the page since his little sixth sense had drawn them towards the whole situation. It’s upsetting that he isn’t surprised to see that when (y/n) hurries out of the cafe, Fratboy follows.

He huffs, shutting his book without marking it and tossing it haphazardly into his bag. He hadn’t even gotten to finish his lunch. Maybe he could sneak a few bites in his next class.

(y/n’s) trying not to tear up as she rushes into the empty corridor outside of the cafe. It wasn’t like her to cry over a stained shirt, but it was just so embarrassing to have to go the rest of her day with the obvious mark. Not to mention it was cold and wet and sticking to her skin and- jesus, of course it was soaked through enough that the black bra she wore was visible now.

Even as she pried the material forward off of her skin, she could still feel the sticky remnants of coffee underneath. It wasn’t like she had a spare outfit in her car, and she still had three classes left in her day. Was she really stuck in this wet shirt until then?

“Sorry princess, it was an accident, swear!”

And to make matters worse, it appears she’d been followed.

(y/n) can’t help the groan of frustration as she releases the material of her shirt, letting it stick to her torso again.

“It’s… it’s fine, it’s whatever” She grumbles, waving off the guy she recognized as the cafe bother, or so she coined in her mind, never having gotten his name during all the times he’d hit on her. There’s not much sincerity in her words, but she doesn’t need him lingering around while she tries to decide what to do.

“I did try to dodge ya, but you really weren’t looking where you were going,” He continues, despite her obvious disinterest in his entire presence. “Is there anything I can do?”

He comes closer and on instinct she backs away. Her expression alarmed and eyes cautious when he pressed closer anyways. It’s not that she thinks he’s going to hurt her, but she doesn’t want him any closer than arms’ length. Ten feet would be nice, but unless she wanted to draw more attention to herself by turning and booking it down the hall, arms’ length would have to do.

“No” She answers, as firm as she can get herself to be. To her, this is the part where he should walk away.

He looks apologetic as he steps forward again, but this time her step backward has her almost up against a wall, and now her senses are on high alert. Discomfort courses through her, a feeling worse than the cold coffee sticking to her skin.

“C’mon, I could at least help you get out of your-”

Fratboy doesn’t get a chance to finish his statement when a harsh grip lands on his shoulder and pries his body to move with ease. His initial reaction is to fight back against the force, but he doesn’t get to do that either, as he’s spun around and shoved into the wall.

Even the snarl on his expression disappears when it’s Fushiguro Megumi that presses in close and keeps him pinned to the wall. His bruising grip is replaced by his entire forearm caged against his collarbone, just barely pressing against his throat.

A yelp dies in the back of (y/n’s) throat as the whole thing happens in a matter of seconds. It’s as if she blinks and suddenly Megumi’s there prying this guy out of her personal space as if he was personally offended by the act.

“H-hey man, what the hell is your problem?” The waver in Fratboy’s voice is embarrassingly clear. Megumi would laugh if he was in a joking mood. He’s not.

His hard expression is terrifying up close. (y/n’s) standing just a few feet away and even she feels a slight shiver go down her spine.

“Pricks like you,” Megumi mutters, and Fratboy swallows a fat lump in his throat. “Skipping around like you’re hot shit and get to have anything you want. Pretentious pricks” He spits the last part out through clenched teeth.

All (y/n) can think about were the rumors from last year. The guy Megumi supposedly put in the hospital. Those rumors had been enough to have people steer clear from him. She didn’t even let herself get too close when pressing his buttons, even if intrigue plagued her mind.

“I didn’t- I didn’t do anything!” Fratboy tries to raise his voice, a pitiful attempt at puffing his chest and making him appear more of a fighter than he really was. His head swivels, wide eyes landing on (y/n), who was stuck frozen watching it all unfold. “Tell him!” He shouts at her, and she startles just a little. Not because she was afraid of the demand, but because as soon as it came out of his mouth, Megumi’s foot brought enough force to have the guy’s legs straighten up, which in turn kept him further back into the wall.

If Megumi could push the guy clean through the white painted brick, he’d be a bloody mess stuck inside of the concrete already.

“Don’t look at her,” The command comes out in a growl. Megumi didn’t need to raise his voice to sound tough. His brows are furrowed tight and low over his piercing eyes, which were half the force keeping Fratboy against this wall. “Humor me, prick,” Megumi asks, making sure his attention couldn’t be drawn back towards (y/n) a second time. “How come your shirt’s so pressed ‘n clean?”

The guy’s lip wobbles a bit before he manages a small “H-huh?”

“Your shirt,” Megumi’s voice is colder this time for having to repeat himself. “How come it’s so clean?”

“I- I- because I do my laundry?” He asks weakly.

Megumi rolls his eyes, letting them fall shut as his head tilts towards the high ceiling. This guy had to be joking.

“Wrong answer,” He huffs. “I’m gonna let you go, and you’re gonna go buy yourself another overpriced pretentious fucking coffee, got that?”

Fratboy’s brows furrow, but he nods his head shakily in response. Perhaps Megumi’s arm was pressed too hard against his chest, and he was finally out of air. Megumi could only hope.

“And you’re gonna take that coffee and dump it over your head”

“What!? I’m not-”

“So you’d rather take the beating?” Megumi asks before the guy could protest too much. His brows are raised, his interest genuinely piqued. He had no problem with either option. Having this prick walk around with a broken nose or an expensive shirt with a big brown coffee stain seemed like a win-win situation to him.

It’s clear that Fratboy remembers the last prick that pissed off Fushiguro Megumi, and he must remember that he wasn’t given options, because the back of his head defeatedly hits the wall behind him when he mutters out his choice.

Megumi gives him a solid nod, and he only pushes him a little bit when he drops his arm and steps back so he was free to leave.

Fratboy only takes a step and a half.

“Forgetting something?” Megumi barks, hard eyes freezing him in place before he could get close to re-entering the cafe.

Fratboy awkwardly maintains the eye contact, confusion clear in his features. Megumi jerks his head towards (y/n), who’s silence evidently hadn’t made her invisible to the two.

“Oh, s-sorry- I’m sorry”

It’s a weak ass apology, but Fratboy assumes it’s acceptable enough because when he rushes himself back into the cafe Megumi doesn’t stop him again. He gets a few odd stares as he gets in line for a coffee with apprehensive eyes and his hands anxiously buried in his pockets, but he keeps his head down the entire time.

“Wh- why did you do that?” (y/n’s) mumble is the only sound in the empty hallway. Her voice wants to stay stuck in her throat, but when it’s clear that Megumi isn’t going to give her an explanation- or say anything at all- she forces herself to ask.

His eyes fix on her, and an odd sensation settles over her. All the previous fear and anxiety melts away. She’d gone so rigid, her sense of fight or flight disappearing completely and keeping her stuck in place hoping she wasn’t going to be witness to a nasty fight. But she hadn’t expected that. Megumi’s intensity had been terrifying, even if it wasn’t directed at her, standing by and watching it had her throat closing up and her heart racing.

But he’d hardly even hurt the guy, just… humiliated him. Still, it was just as shocking to watch.

And now, being alone with him and trapped under his stare, what she feels isn’t fear. It’s… curiosity.

His eyes wander over her, reassuring himself that she was fine, maybe just a little shaken up by the whole thing. She was probably more embarrassed than anything. He could live with that, as long as she was safe. He just couldn’t have placed his trust in that frat prick.

“I don’t like assholes” Megumi answers, his voice as monotone as ever, as if he hadn’t just scared the shit out of that guy for her.

The lump in her throat grew hot as the realization struck her. He’d done all that for her?

“Well- well yeah, but…” Her brows furrow, her head shakes ever so slightly as she tries to put her thoughts to words. “But he didn’t do anything, just… was an asshole”

“You don’t know that” His reply was quick but his tone didn’t shift.

(y/n’s) eyes widen, the furrow in her brow smooths out, and she’s at a loss for words as she keeps staring at him.

You have no idea what he was capable of doing. Spiderman’s words repeat in her mind now as if he were standing right there saying them to her. It’s uncanny how similar his warning was to Megumi’s just now.

“He probably would’ve fucked off if I told him to” She makes a weak argument in an attempt to fill the overbearing silence.

Megumi doesn’t say anything, just beckons her to follow him as he takes off in quick strides down the hall. She should probably tell him to fuck off, but her curiosity gets the best of her, and she finds herself hurrying to catch up to him. He’s not walking all that fast, but his stride is significantly longer than hers, and she finds herself out of breath as they round the corner and he enters the first empty classroom they come across.

“Maybe next time you’ll learn the lesson and tell him to fuck off, then” Megumi grumbles, more to himself than to her, but she takes offense nonetheless.

“Well sorry I wasn’t expecting you to show up out of nowhere and threaten the guy” She mutters back.

Megumi scoffs before shrugging his backpack off his shoulder. (y/n) watches his every movement as he opens it up and digs around inside of it. She wants to ask what he was looking for, but her words are stuck in her throat again, and this time she can’t get them to come out.

“I didn’t threaten anybody, relax,” He tells her in a voice that could’ve been more comforting, but it was at least steady and sure. “It should make you feel better that he’s probably gone and made a fool of himself, now” He adds.

“Oh, thank you for that” She replies sarcastically.

“You’re welcome” Megumi replies in complete seriousness.

She opens her mouth, gaping at him, probably about to lay into him for taking her clear mockery as sincerity, but before she can he finally produces what he’d been looking for.

A tee shirt.

She blinks in dumbfounded silence as she stares at the plain black material in his hand. His brows are raised in an impatient expression, but she doesn’t take the offer right away.

He sighs. He’ll just have to do all the work, huh?

“Would you rather go the rest of the day in that?” He asks, nodding to the obvious mess of her shirt.

“It- it’s not that bad” She argues, her stubbornness forever getting in her own way.

“It’s going to reek of coffee”

“I happen to like the- the coffee bean scent-”

“It won’t be anything like that”

“It’s not even that wet anymore”

“I can see your whole bra now”

That does the trick in shutting her up, her head snapping downward to reassess the damage done. The groan she lets out morphs into a whine before she looks up at the balled up shirt in his hand. He vaguely stretches it towards her, and with a huff she snatches it right out of his hands.

As soon as he turns his back to her, busying himself with closing up his backpack, she’s peeling the ruined shirt over her head and quickly shrugging into the fresh tee shirt.

Besides the ridiculous proportion, she’s quick to notice the scent that clings to it. She dips her head once it’s covered her, trying to place a name to the smell of fresh laundry. Pine? Is this what pine smelled like? A part of her hated how good it smelled, how addicting it was to keep taking small sniffs.

“I’m… dressed” She says quietly when she’s gotten enough sniffs in and realizes that Megumi’s still just standing there.

When he turns, his eyes wander over figure not so subtly, but his expression is unchanging. Even if his brain is going haywire seeing her in his clothes. It’s just a tee shirt, but he takes a mental picture.

He realizes she must not wear black very often. It’s striking on her. It must be why his mouth has gone dry and he has to force himself to look her in the eye.

“Good?” He asks, already turning to leave the classroom.

She can’t believe he’s going to leave just like that. It felt like nothing had been resolved here- and if anything, she only had more questions. She doesn’t know what to say to make him stay, she’s not even sure he would stay if she asked him to. He didn’t exactly seem to have any interest in being around her… ever… but then why had he put himself through all this trouble? Her muddled mind was a mystery, but the puzzled look on her face gave Megumi enough of an inclination to linger for just a minute longer.

“What?” He sighs, but her confusion is still plastered on her face.

“I… I don’t know…” Her voice is barely a mumble. It doesn’t match the way her face tilts and shifts into something different. She takes a step closer to him, a bold and large one, putting herself far closer to him than she ever would’ve imagined doing before. She was supposed to keep a certain distance, Fushiguro Megumi had a reputation after all… but something was different.

This wasn’t the Fushiguro Megumi that she knew and despised. In fact, this was a completely new person. He was… familiar.

Megumi doesn’t step back when she draws in closer, but his neck leans backwards with apprehension, chin tilting lower to keep his eyes on her every movement. It’s not like she’s able to do anything, there’s no mask to be ripped off, no secret identity to be figured out just from her stare alone, and yet something makes a pit grow in his stomach when she gets too close for comfort.

He’s never been this close to her. Not without the wall of protection that was the Spiderman mask.

There’s nothing stopping him from walking away. There was no harm in leaving her stranded in a classroom. But something keeps him there anyways. Something keeps him waiting for her to explain herself.

Her eyes drop his gaze, but they don’t fall far. They land just a few inches lower, he can feel the prick of the daggers they stare against his lips. Subconsciously he licks over them to soothe the ache of their sudden dryness. Her look wanders just a little bit, but never too far. Mapping out his chin and jawline, quickly down his neck and then back up again to his lips.

“What the hell are you doing?” He finally finds his voice when she leans in a little closer. Not quite close enough to kiss him, but close enough that she could lean in if she wanted to.

(y/n) snaps out of it instantly, her eyes wide and her cheeks flushing when she looks at him properly again and realizes what she’d been doing.

Fushiguro Megumi? Spiderman? God, what was she thinking?

“N-nothing” She stammers out, and before he could call her out and further her embarrassment, she brushes past him to make a quick exit out of the room.

Megumi’s left alone, his own cheeks flaring up with heat, but he can’t pinpoint what exactly causes the blushing, and he doesn’t really want to stand around to figure out why. ___

Megumi doesn’t show up to the last few classes of the day. (y/n) notices.

Her fingers pinch at the hem of the tee shirt he’d given her, rolling the soft cotton over the pads of her fingers in contemplation. Her focus on uncovering Spiderman’s identity during class has dwindled, but she’s not paying any attention to her studies, either.

For the last few hours of her day, she replays the events of the day in her mind on fast forward and rewind, over and over, trying to find something she felt she missed.

When had Megumi followed her out of the cafe? Had he seen what happened? Why was he so angry? Why was he so kind to her? Why was he so…

It’s on the tip of her tongue, the timing of it all, the peculiarity of it all. She knew she just had to be missing something.

Her trip home is quicker than usual, her steps as fast paced as her racing mind. What was it? What was it that she wasn’t seeing?

It was so close she could feel it looming right over shoulders. ___

Never before had she sought out Fushiguro Megumi. But (y/n) couldn’t get the feeling to go away no matter how hard she tried, and she feared the only way out was through.

She didn’t want to confirm her assumptions without any proper evidence to base it all on, and she had a feeling that he was a pretty good liar, so she’d have to get creative with catching him. The best way to start, she figures, is by getting him alone.

It takes longer than she hopes. Megumi’s not an easy person to approach and he appears to like it that way. She stares him down when he comes in late to their first class, and his eyes catch hers for a moment longer than usual, but without a change in his expression it’s hard for her to get a good read on him. He takes his seat in the back of the class and she can’t get him to look at her again, no matter how many times she turns her gaze over her shoulder to steal another look at him.

After a few more classes with the same outcome, she supposes she’ll just have to wait until they break for lunch. He’s always sitting alone there, so she has her hopes up that it will be easier to sit down and prove it then.

But of course today is the day he’s not seated at his usual corner table all to himself. She waltzes into the cafe with nothing but confidence, and it’s ripped away from her when she sees that gloomy table empty. She lingers for a few minutes, hoping to catch him walking in later than the rest, but he never comes.

With her confidence boiled down to irritation, she storms out of the cafe on a mission to have this ended once and for all. She couldn’t possibly wait any longer, so one way or another, she was going to find and corner him.

The courtyard is empty at this time of day. The weather was cloudy and with the high chance of rain in the next hour, no one wanted to spend their free time eating lunch or studying out there.

Ever the outlier, that’s where she happened to find Fushiguro Megumi.

She’s not sure if she should grin or grimace when she approaches the tree he’s sitting under. He’s wearing his usual oversized headphones, and he’s got both his textbook and notebook opened. He was the perfect image of don’t bother me. (y/n) feels adrenaline coursing through her bloodstream as she rushes over to him.

It’s sort of strange. Just a few days ago she would duck her head and keep walking if she happened to cross his path. But it was like all of his intimidating qualities had just… disappeared. Despite the vibe he was trying to put off, he didn’t seem as unapproachable anymore. He didn’t seem as scary, although when she thinks about it long enough, (y/n) figures she’s probably the only person on this campus that interacted with him. Even if it was to antagonize him, she’d never seen anyone else speak to him.

A few days ago, he was Fushiguro Megumi, the boy with the bad reputation and even worse attitude. He was her academic rival, a thorn in her side that reminded her of faults just by existing. Today, she thinks he might just be the boy she’s been falling head over heels for. The one with careful words spoken by gentle lips. The first person in a long time that actually made her feel seen, and a feeling of being understood could work wonders on a stubborn heart.

“Hey!” She hollers, and Megumi jolts as he looks up to find her walking up to him. His expression scrunches up as he pulls his headphones down around his neck, and lowers his dual books.

“What do you want?” He asks, but the words aren’t nearly as harsh as he wants them to be.

She stops just before him, and invites herself to sit down beside his outstretched legs. He wants to tell her that he’s busy, that he’s studying out here alone because he wants peace and quiet, but he’s silent as she drops her backpack in front of her and opens it up.

“Thought you’d want this back” She says, pulling out a familiar black tee shirt. She hands it to him folded in a neat square. He almost laughs, knowing that when he’d offered it to her it had been a crumpled up ball.

“Right” He says, but before he takes it, she pulls it back towards herself, unfolding it. Megumi watches with furrowed brows. Was she not giving it back?

“I’ve just had this weird feeling lately,” She explains as she opens the shirt up completely. Megumi’s confused expression flickers between her and the shirt. “So I wanted to see something”

She starts bunching up the black material then, which Megumi watches with growing bewilderment. Why even fold it? What was this?

“Okay…?” His voice trails off when she looks up at him again, and the next thing he knows she’s leaning in close, holding his tee shirt up to his face. “What the- (y/n), what the hell are you doing?”

She ignores his questioning and the way he tries to swat her hands from getting any closer, but it doesn’t stop her from doing exactly what she aimed to do. Holding the black material up to cover half his face, from the bridge of his nose up, all that was left to see was his mouth down.

She couldn’t deny that it wasn’t a familiar sight, but it was hard to prove her theory on that alone, and she sighs.

“(y/n), this is annoying. And weird,” Megumi starts, his hands wrapping around her wrists in a careful hold, but enough to start to pull her and the tee shirt she was trying to blindfold him with away. “Can I have the shirt back or not- mmph!”

Just as he thinks he’s put a stop to her weird antics, she takes him by complete surprise when she darts forward and presses her lips against his. Megumi’s eyes go wide, although he’s still half hidden behind the shirt, he can’t help but keep them open as her soft lips move over his with familiar gentle passion. His confusion melts away the longer she holds the kiss, and by the time he thinks he should put a stop to it, it’s already too late. He’s connected the dots and so has she.

He sighs against her mouth, his fingers twitching around her wrists, unsure as to whether or not he should let her go or pull her in closer. (y/n) breaks away from the kiss just as she releases his shirt. They both let it drop to his lap, and she finally gets to see the whole picture.

His features have fallen to soft surprise as he gazes back at her, waiting for whatever was about to come. He doesn’t know if he should brace himself for something good or something bad, but he does his best to put his walls up anyways.

Her own eyes are wide with recognition, flickering between his own troubled eyes and the lips she’d just spontaneously kissed. Her tongue darts over her bottom lip thoughtfully, and for a second, Megumi thinks she’s going to give it a second try just to be sure. She doesn’t have to say anything right away for him to know exactly what she was thinking. She knew those lips. She knew that kiss. He’d gotten his cover blown over a kiss, of all things.

What he doesn’t expect is for (y/n) to let out a breathless laugh of delight, once the gears in her mind start to turn again. Her eyes are glimmering with an excitement she couldn’t contain.

“I told you I’d figure it out!” She keeps her voice hushed, which he can tell takes a great deal of effort.

“You always go around kissing random people?” He mumbles, thinking maybe he can play it off, maybe there was still a chance of gaslighting her into thinking he wasn’t the masked webslinger that had been slowly sparking up a romance with her.

There’s not even a small chance, though. (y/n) pulls her hands out of his gentle hold just to reach for his face, curiously skimming over his jaw, and then down his shoulders. His attempts at reaching for her hands again to stop her from practically running them all over him are weak, and it’s easy for her to ignore his clear attempts at stopping her.

“Wow, I almost can’t believe it,” She begins to mumble to herself, her eyes moving at rapid speeds as she puts the picture together in her mind. The lips she’d memorized in the hopes of finding them again, only to find they were on Megumi’s face, she lets out a delirious string of giggles. “I mean, it makes sense now, but it also doesn’t- why did you keep coming to see me?”

Megumi opens his mouth, but he doesn’t get a single word out before she’s throwing more questions at him.

“Did you seriously think I wouldn’t figure it out? I’m top of the class you know, and you’re not exactly great at hiding things-”

“Second to the top,” Megumi reminds her with a slight roll of his eyes. “And it took you quite a while, you know”

“Yeah, well, the secrecy thing was fun for a bit,” She argues. “But you barely tried to hide it. Coming into class looking like you got hit by a bus? What were you thinking?”

“That you hated my guts and didn’t care if I did get hit by a bus?” He replies with a smartass smile. Now it’s her turn to roll her eyes.

Her hands fall still against his collarbones, fingertips barely tapping against the base of his throat with her excitement.

“It was you this whole time…” She murmurs, but she doesn’t sound as disappointed as Megumi expects. Her gentle eyes feel piercing as they stare at him thoughtfully, as if this was the first time she was really seeing him. In a way, it sort of was. “Were you ever going to tell me?” She asks quietly, and this time she does wait for him to say something.

Megumi sighs, regarding her soft expression with thoughtfulness. There was no coming back from this now. She figured him out and he barely even tried to cover it up. That was a hard thing to do once she’d kissed him, though. She must’ve figured out his weakness, and happily used it against him.. Typical brat.

“I thought about it,” He says honestly. “Just didn’t seem like a good idea,”

The corners of her lips barely turn into a frown, and Megumi can’t help himself from reaching out to her, cradling her jaw in as light of a touch as he could bear. It was different now, feeling her warm skin against his without hiding in a suit, behind a mask. He knows she must feel it, too.

Everything was completely different now. She must be upset with him, right? She must at least be discouraged in finding out it had been him all along. Not someone with a better track record, maybe someone more attractive, or at least nice to her. He wonders if she had her hopes up for a specific person.

“Are you upset?” He asks. He doesn’t want to know all the answers to his questions, but he asks before he could shove down the curiosity and avoid it forever.

“Upset?” She repeats, brows furrowing momentarily with her confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Y’know,” He mumbles, long lashes flickering as his eyes fall to her lips for a moment. He looks at her again before continuing. “That it’s me. That it’s been me”

“Oh,” She hums, thinking for a second. “Well… did you mean it all?”

“Mean it all?” He repeats her now. “You mean while I was Spiderman?”

(y/n) nods in a small motion.

“Yeah… did you mean all the stuff you said… and did?” She adds the last part in an even quieter whisper than the rest, but the look in her eyes is so full of anticipation it speaks volumes over her voice.

“Yeah, of course,” Megumi answers without a shred of hesitation. “Of course I did,” He says it again, leaning forward with emphasis, his eyes never leaving hers. “(y/n), I didn’t want you finding out because I didn’t… I didn’t know that I would…” He trails off, his nerves starting to crawl up his throat for having to admit so many truths in one sitting. This one seemed to be harder than the rest. “I didn’t know I’d like you so much”

She laughs, breathless and sweet, humored by such an honest confession. It finally makes a real smile creep over his lips, relieved to see that her reaction was anything but negative. His heart skips a beat, and his thumb trembles as he reaches to stroke it over her cheekbone. He can’t help but want to pull her in closer, hold her properly, maybe even kiss her again. It should scare him, that she knew the truth now, that he was vulnerable to her now, but right now all he feels is a weight lifted off his chest, and the lingering taste of her chapstick on his lips.

“I definitely didn’t plan on liking you so much either,” She admits softly, her cheeks burning with color. Megumi can feel the heat in her skin when he presses the pad of his thumb further against her cheek. “Are you mad about it?”

“Mad?” He laughs, his smile becoming a full blown grin now as he leans in closer to her. Her fingers curl into the material of his shirt as he draws her in closer, too. Anticipation has her eyes flickering between his lips and the deep blue eyes that haven’t left hers since she’d kissed him. “Mad about what? Getting to know you? The real you? And falling for you?”

Her eyes grow wide as she stares back at him. For a guy that hid behind a mask for weeks, he sure got comfortable putting his cards on the table fast.

“No, I’m not mad about it,” He answers her properly, closing enough distance in between them that his nose prodded against hers. Her eyes fluttered shut before she could stop herself, her chin tilting forward to meet him the rest of the way. “I’ve wanted nothing more than to be with you, like this, for real, since you brought me that dumb bag of vegetables”

“It wasn’t dumb, there wasn’t ice” She argued. Her lips had just been brushing over his in the ghost of a kiss before she jerked away to argue some more. Ever so stubborn, he thinks with nothing but fondness for her.

Megumi doesn’t let her go far, pulling her right back in until her lips landed on his, and all further arguments died on her tongue. Her hands relaxed their hold on his shirt as her lips moved against his with muscle memory. Soft and so pliable, she melted right against him, leaning closer and closer until they were chest to chest, and Megumi moved his free arm to wrap around the dip in her back, keeping her tucked as close to him as he could without disconnecting their lips.

She finally gets to card her hands through his hair, scraping her nails over the nape of his neck before pushing the longer strands between her fingers. It becomes impossibly messier than usual, but Megumi only hums in delight as she messes it all up. He must’ve always wanted more, too.

Her fingers tangle in his hair and she doesn’t let up even when they part to catch their breath. Megumi stays close, his forehead resting against hers as he pants over her lips, leaving her still wanting more.

“You know I still have a million questions, right?” She murmurs, and Megumi can’t help but place the softest of kisses against her lips as she speaks, even if he was still breathless.

“I don’t feel like sitting and talking right now” He mumbles, chasing her lips for another kiss. She giggles, kissing him back but not nearly as long as he would’ve liked. Pulling away all too soon, she stares at him with wide eyes.

“I mean, how do the webs work?”

“(y/n), we have class in ten minutes, that’s not nearly enough time to get into it all,” He sighs, his hands smoothing over her hips and trying to draw her closer again. “Can’t we just enjoy this a little longer, and talk about all of that later?”

Huffing, (y/n) leans back in, and it makes Megumi smile if only for a moment. She stops short just before her lips could touch his.

“So… did Spiderman put that guy in a hospital last year?”

Megumi groans, dropping his head back against the trunk of the tree. She wasn’t going to let this go, and that reputation was going to follow him forever, it seemed.

“Alright. C’mon, we’re headed to class,” He prompted her to grab her things and stand with him, but she kept her hands in his hair too secure for him to want to stand up. “(y/n), I promise I’ll tell you whatever you want to know, later-”

“Let’s just skip class” She suggests, all too eagerly for a girl that bragged about being at the top of their class.

“Yeah, right,” Megumi scoffs, but when her expression doesn’t waver, his face falls and he stares at her bewildered. “You’re not serious…?”

“Why not?” She replies. “We can afford to miss a couple classes,” It’s not a bad argument, Megumi’s just shocked to hear her say it at all. “And.. I want to be the first one to get an exclusive interview with Spiderman” She giggles, and Megumi huffs, giving her a bored look.

“I’d rather go to class”

“And we can make out”

“... I guess some catching up isn’t a bad idea”

It takes them some time to gather their things and get going, only because (y/n) insisted on keeping her hands on him in one way or another, but even if Megumi pretended to be annoyed it wasn’t a believable performance. He kept her close with his arm wrapped firm around her as they made their way off campus quickly, hoping to beat the rain.

“You know, I’m thinking of calling you the Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman when I write about you,” (y/n) tells him on their walk to her apartment. “Has a nice ring to it”

Megumi laughs humorlessly.

“Not sure it paints a very accurate picture,” He tells her, brows raised as he watches her pout up at him. “But you’re kinda gonna be my publicist, so I guess I’ll take what I can get”

“Hey! I thought you said you were falling for me” (y/n) sasses back. Megumi bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling too hard. He tosses his arm around her shoulders, pulling her closer as they walk.

“That was off the record” He mumbles.

She beams up at him, he pulls her a little closer into his side, keeping an eye on her only from his peripheral vision. He couldn’t be getting too sappy with the way he looked at her now, he’d grown too used to having a mask to hide the dreamy look in his eye. Now though, it was completely on display for her to see.

(y/n) quite liked the view that she got now that he was mask-free. She’d always had her suspicions that Spiderman was handsome, and quite the victory it was to be proven right in that department. The stubborn, monotone, boy with a reputation part was just… an added bonus, she supposed.

She also supposed that she’d come with her own reputation now, too. With Megumi never far behind he took on a role akin to guard dog. She couldn’t deny she grew to like the feeling, melting at the protective way he kept close whether he had the mask on or not.

He had a certain responsibility to uphold when it came to keeping Tokyo safe, but he had a responsibility to those he loved, too.

___

xoxo ~ jordie

#i’m moved #fushiguro megumi x reader #megumi x reader #best fic #best thing i’ve ever read stawp

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vanshoe · 15 days

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trainer suguru and ice skater megumi quick sketches from the ice skater x hockey player AU!

saw someone commenting this idea on tktk and thought it would be cute to draw ❄️✨

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vanshoe · 18 days

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ᡣ𐭩 HE'S THE SERPENTINE, HE'S MY COLLAR!

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: you're finally back in yokohama after spending three years abroad dealing with mori's foreign business. the last person you want is to see dazai osamu, the wounds of his abrupt betrayal still too fresh for comfort. unfortunately, he decides to take matters into his own hands by showing up at your office in the middle of the night.

(wordcount: 7.1k; ņsfw; fem!reader; port mafia executive!reader, f!receiving oral, gunplay, knife play (ish), spitting, pussy drunk!dazai (as always), light choking, overstim, office sex, semi-public/public sex, unprotected sex, switch!dazai, switch!reader, undertones of angst (happy ending). lmk if anything is missing!)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: guys. GUYS. i had so much fun writing this, this is finally usurping in paper rings and picture frames as my fav fic that i've written. HAHAHH. i hope you guys like it too!!

You hear the door to your office swing open, and you press your lips together tightly, irritation swimming through your head as your grip tightens on the pen you’re using to fill out your paperwork. It’s already late—you’re tired and your head hurts, but you can’t leave the building until Akutagawa comes to hand you the report for his failed mission so you can pass it up to the boss. And you know that whichever subordinate this is, it’s definitely not Akutagawa because the boy would rather claw his own throat out than walk into your office without knocking.

Which means it’s some upstart new recruit who has no manners and is likely going to make your night worse. You think being away for so long did some real damage to your reputation—three years ago, the lower ranked mafiosos avoided your floor like the plague, they didn’t barge in like they owned the place, but then again, you also had a certain dark-haired executive (ex-executive now, you remind yourself bitterly) lurking around your floor constantly trying to get your attention, and if people weren’t nervous enough about you, they were definitely terrified of him.

“Five seconds to explain why you came into my office without knocking or I’m putting a bullet through your fucking skull,” you say, voice acerbic, not even bothering to look up, the fingers of your free hand closing around the gun you have holstered at your side.

“There’s a few too many cameras in the hall for my liking to stand out there and wait for you to open the door.”

The fact that he manages to dodge the bullet shot in his direction is testament to his skill, but you’ve known Dazai Osamu long enough to know that when he dodges to the side, nine times out of ten, he dodges left, so you drop your pen as soon as you pull the trigger and swipe the knife laying haphazardly on your desk, launching it in his direction. You watch as his eyes widen just a bit when it impales the wall right next to his ear, just barely nicking his skin—both a warning and a threat.

“My, my, bella, you’ve gotten faster the past few years,” Dazai grins, unperturbed, smile as reckless and lazy as the day he left four years ago as he plucks the knife from the wall. “I’ve missed you too.”

“What the hell are you doing here, Dazai?” you ask, voice cold and sharp as your finger rests against the trigger of your gun. “How did you get up here?”

“Security’s gotten lax since I’ve been gone, I guess,” Dazai shrugs, but his eyes dance with mirth as he makes his way over to your desk. “You should probably do something about that.”

“Dazai,” you say, keeping your voice low and trying to reign in your temper. There are no cameras in your office, but the hall leading here is littered with them, hidden ones that were recently installed that he wouldn’t know about, if any one of them caught his face and it’s reported to Mori… “You think I won’t drag your ass to Mori myself? What the fuck are you doing?”

You’d have to, or it would be your head on the line for betraying the Port Mafia—you know better than anyone the treatment that traitors get, considering you were the one that dealt with them up until you were sent abroad three years ago to handle Mori’s foreign politics.

“I don’t know, will you?” Dazai counters, head tilted to the side as he takes a seat on top of your desk next to you, a smile on his face that makes you think he knows something that you don’t.

“Maybe,” you answer, finger twitching on the trigger as you keep your gun pointed in his direction.

Dazai is completely unbothered, leaning down until his nose is nearly brushing yours, lips tugged up in an unbearable smirk.

“Then do it,” he challenges, and you glare at him, jaw tight and eyes hard. He reaches out, fingertips brushing your skin, and you feel like you’re on fire beneath his touch. You hate that your body still betrays you to him. “Don’t look at me like that, bella. I won’t even resist, I promise, as long as you promise to be the one to put a bullet through my skull, so your face can be the last thing I see. Ah, that would be a lovely death, wouldn’t it?”

“You’re a fucking freak, Dazai,” you spit out, but make no move to get up or grab your phone. “What is wrong with you?”

Dazai doesn’t respond, only winking at you. Instead, his gaze shifts to the side and his hand drops from your face to his lap again. You hate even more that you miss his touch immediately.

“You still have my couch,” Dazai notes to himself quietly, an odd tone to his voice as he stares at the dark couch in the far corner of your office, where he’d bundle himself up under blankets to avoid Chuuya, because Chuuya used to avoid your office like the plague when the three of you were younger.

“It’s my couch,” you say tightly, even though you know no one has touched it since Dazai left, and the ugly orange blanket he liked so much is still draped over the back of it, and it probably still smells like him. Your throat feels swollen, and you steel away your emotions and continue with, “I’ve hardly been back here since you left, anyway. What do you want, Dazai?”

“I heard you were finally back in Yokohama,” he says. “I wanted to see you.”

“Fuck off,” you say roughly. “So you decide to break into the main base of the Port Mafia and come all the way up to my office? You know where my apartment is, you could’ve shown up there. What do you really want?”

“It’s the truth,” Dazai says easily, and his dark eyes meet yours—both of them, you note, and wonder when he decided to shed the bandages that covered his right eye. “I was at your apartment for a bit, I got impatient and came here instead.”

He’s telling the truth.

Oh, you realize—the clogged feeling in your throat is coming back, you force it away again and lean back in your chair, looking away from him to turn your gaze to the window. It’s well past midnight already, the moon is high in the sky and the stars are glittering above. In the distance, you can see the Ferris Wheel of Cosmo World glowing a bright purple color and a string of flashing red and blue lights as the police chase after someone.

“Why?” you ask finally, breaking the heavy silence that had settled over the two of you.

“I told you,” Dazai says quietly, and your eyes turn back to him. He looks… happier, you can’t help but note. A sick part of you feels jealous—you’re not sure if you’re jealous because he’s free and you’re still stuck in this place, or if you’re jealous because he’s happier and he’s happier in a life without you. You think it might be the latter. “I miss you.”

“Don’t give me bullshit, Dazai,” you snap, still trying to push away all of the feelings you’ve repressed for so long. “Get out of here before you find yourself killed. I’m not going to turn you in, but I’m not saving you if you get caught.”

“It’s not bullshit,” Dazai tells you, voice sharp in a way that it only ever is when he’s starting to get annoyed. “I-”

A knock at your door cuts Dazai off mid-sentence. Both of you freeze, Dazai looks at you as if waiting to see what you’re going to do, and you can so easily finish this now, let whoever is at your door in and drag Dazai back down to the torture room where he belongs, but instead you find yourself reaching for him. Your hand intertwines with his hair roughly, and you revel a bit in the hiss that escapes his lips as you yank him off the desk and roll your chair backward, kicking the back of his knee so that he crumples to the ground and you can push him beneath your desk.

You lower your gun to your lap so you can keep it pointed at him and then glance down at him—he looks caught off-guard and disgruntled at being manhandled, but you think it's a bit funny how cramped he looks under there.

“Not a single word,” you warn before fixing your chair and raising your voice. “Come in.”

Akutagawa wastes no time stepping into your office, nodding his head in respect as he makes his way over to the chair on the opposite side of your desk, a bundle of papers in hand. He doesn’t hand you the pile right away and he looks uncharacteristically nervous, and you raise your eyebrows, wondering what the issue is.

“I am… unsure how to fill out some of the report,” Akutagawa says, unable to meet your eyes as he stares at the windows behind you. “The operation was… not a failure but not a success. The whole mission was in disarray, I do not know who was doing what at certain points.”

You stare at Akutagawa. “What do you want me to say to that?” you ask him, leaning back in your chair. “It’s your job to know that as the field officer for the mission. If you can’t handle that, Hirotsu will take back the position on the next major operation.”

Akutagawa bristles. “I can handle it,” he says, voice clipped. “This mission was just more chaotic than-”

“Than usual?” you ask idly, watching as he stiffens as your interruption. “This was child’s play, it’s unlike you to make excuses, Akutagawa.’

“I’m not making excuses,” he says immediately, “but…”

Akutagawa continues talking, but your attention is ripped away when you feel Dazai shift beneath the desk. You press your lips together tightly, stiffening as his hands rise to your thighs, spreading them a bit so he can settle between them. You glance down, he’s already peeking up at you, dark eyes glittering in a way that has you on edge.

Don’t you dare, you warn silently, but Dazai only takes it as further encouragement, pressing his lips to your clothed inner thigh, you can feel the warmth and wetness through your slacks. It takes all of your self-control to not inhale sharply when he starts trailing open-mouthed kisses up your thigh until his mouth is hovering right above your cunt.

You press the muzzle of your gun against his temple.

He smiles.

Your jaw clenches as he licks a long stripe between your legs through your slacks, making sure to press his tongue down hard over where your clit is hidden through your clothes. Akutagawa is still talking, oblivious to what’s happening beneath your desk as he airs his complaints about the mission. You could stop Dazai, place your foot on his shoulder and push him off of you, but you don’t, notably—you don’t want to acknowledge that though. You only vaguely hear Akutagawa’s issues, something about interference from a third party—the SDUP? What the hell were they doing there?— and Kajii blowing up an escape route.

“Give me the report,” you say, cutting him off mid-sentence, and holding out your hand. You’re grateful that your voice comes out steadier than you feel with Dazai trying to tongue fuck your through your pants.

As you lean forward to rip the papers from Akutagawa, you tense, feeling something sharp press against your inner thigh. Sitting back in your seat and glancing down, your eyes cut down to Dazai, who still has the knife you’d thrown at him and is using it to cut open your very expensive slacks.

You have half a mind to drive your foot into his face, but you refrain. If only barely.

It’s a miracle that you can keep your breath steady, because as Dazai cuts your pants, he kisses every inch of open skin that’s revealed to him. His lips are warm, wet, familiar—so familiar that your legs are instinctively spreading for him, giving him more room to work.

Your eyes scan the report but the words are just jumbled letters and not making any sense. Every time you try to understand, you feel Dazai’s teeth graze your thigh as he marks up your skin. You tense when you feel him bring the knife much closer to your cunt, to finish cutting off the material—you press the muzzle of your gun harder into the side of his head, warning him to be careful. You glance down only to see a hazy smile on his lips as he winks up at you, as if he’s drunk just off of the idea of what’s about to happen.

He works efficiently as always, freeing your lower body of your slacks and panties as quickly as possible, and he wastes no time burying his face between your legs. Your lashes flutter and the grip you have on your pen tightens dangerously, you think it might snap. Dazai’s tongue slides between your folds, lapping up the slick that had begun to pool—you know that if Akutagawa wasn’t sitting a few feet away, Dazai would be making a snide comment about how he knew you wanted him.

Dazai’s tongue flicks over your clit—you can feel him staring up at you, watching for every little reaction, the way your lip tightens as you bite back moans, the way your eyelids unconsciously start to slide shut, the way your breath is just a bit heavier than it usually is.

This is so dangerous, you think to yourself desperately. If Akutagawa of all people figures out that Dazai is here-

You nearly choke when Dazai shifts a bit underneath the desk to kneel at a better angle, grateful that Akutagawa seems to be too busy wallowing in his own mistakes to notice your struggle. Your gaze snaps down again, his eyes have fluttered shut as he buries his face deep into your cunt, nose pressed to your clit as he pushes his tongue into your hole and you can feel the way he lets out a silent, but shaky breath, barely holding back a moan.

You notice his free hand slide from where it was propped on your thigh down to his beige pants, fingers fumbling with the button as he desperately tries to slip his hand beneath his waistband to touch himself. You kick his wrist hard, using your foot to pin it against the side of your desk, watching him wince and withdraw his hand, looking up at you with those big brown eyes you can never say no to.

God, he’s pathetic, his lashes are wet and his cheeks are flushed, eyes glossed over with pleasure as he looks up at you and you know you’ll let go of his wrist if he looks at you like that any longer, so you turn your gaze back up to Akutagawa, who’s staring at his lap and waiting for you to finish the report.

“Get out,” you tell him, voice sharper than you intended. Akutagawa’s eyes snap up to you, brows furrowed in confusion. “Go, I’ll handle this.”

“But-”

“Your job is to take orders, not question them,” you bite out, watching frustration flash across the boy’s face as he rises to his feet. You’re not usually this harsh with the kid, but you’re not sure how much longer you’re going to last and Akutagawa cannot be in here when you cum. You can feel the heat pooling in your stomach and that familiar hazy feeling clouding your mind. “Out, Akutagawa.”

Akutagawa inhales sharply but nods, turning stiffly on his heel to leave your office. As soon as the door to your office clicks shut, Dazai is pushing the chair backwards until the back of it hits the windows behind you, shifting into a more comfortable position as he resumes fucking you with his tongue in earnest.

He moans into you, wanton and shameless, any restraint he had because of Akutagawa’s presence is long gone. While he was careful to not make noise before, now the sloppy sound of his tongue dragging in and out of your cunt drowns out any other noise in your office, he sucks and slurps, he’s so disgusting, like he can’t get enough of the taste of you, a man who’s been starved for years.

The knife clatters to the ground as he reaches up with both hands to grab your thighs, sliding them over his shoulders so he can push his tongue even deeper inside of you. Only sheer pride drives you to push away the creeping fog as Dazai’s tongue slides back up between your folds to draw figure eights around your clit.

“I should pull the fucking trigger, pulling this shit when he was in here,” you spit out, head falling back as a breathy noise escapes your parted lips when Dazai sucks gently at your clit. He moans again, as if the idea itself turns him on—it probably does, he’s always talked about wanting to die between your thighs. “You’re a fucking freak, Dazai.”

He lets out a puff of air, you can’t tell if it's a laugh or another moan, maybe a mixture of both, but he’s too focused on drowning in your cunt to respond. Four years without him and you’ve forgotten just how good Dazai is with his tongue, working your body as easily as he did when the two of you were eighteen and seeking each other out before meetings and between missions for a quick fuck. You hate it—you hate that he’s treating you as if nothing has changed and you hate even more that your body is this responsive to him.

Betrayal, you think, your own body betrays you for him. Again.

“Fuck,” you gasp the word out when Dazai rolls your clit between his teeth gently, sending a jolt through your body that throws you off just enough for that fog you’ve been fighting off to finally win. You choke over a moan, head pressed back against your desk chair, forearm coming up to press against your forehead as your eyes slide shut. Your free hand finally finds its place in his hair, tightening around his dark locks, he lets out a whimper against you, tongue flicking over your clit. “Like that. Just like that.”

You can hardly keep your head on straight as he traces letters around the sensitive bud, you try to figure out what he’s spelling but you’re too far gone. Your head is light and your chest is heaving. You’re barely able to bite back moans as your thighs tighten around his head, hips rocking against his face. You don’t even know if he can breathe, you don’t think you care, so close to the edge that your entire body is tingling and trembling; you don’t think he cares either from the way he’s moaning into you.

It takes one last suck, one last swirl around your clit, and you’re crying out his name, spots dotting your vision as your grip on his hair tightens, pushing his face impossibly deeper into you as you grind your hips against his face. God, it feels never-ending, a noise too close to a sob nearly escapes your lips as Dazai ardently laps up all of your cum, not letting a single drop go to waste. You can’t remember the last time you’ve cum this hard—with him, probably, you realize bitterly. None of the one-night stands you’ve had over the past few years have ever compared to him.

You’re still reeling even as you force yourself to straighten in your seat, not willing to let him know just how badly you’re thrown off by how intense your orgasm was. Your head is still spinning, vision still blurring, but you lift your leg and press your foot to Dazai’s shoulder, kicking him back and forcing him out from his position between your thighs.

He grunts, looking thoroughly disgruntled as he falls back on his ass, pouting up at you as he tries to catch his breath. He looks debauched, lips swollen and wet, your cum smeared on the lower half of his face. His cock is straining against his beige pants and his eyes are still glazed over; he’s looking up at you with an expression that’s nothing short of reverent.

God, he’s gorgeous.

You hate him.

You’ve missed him.

You shift in your seat and Dazai is lifting himself to his knees, immediately leaning closer, a hazy smile on his lips as he angles his face up and pointedly parts his lips, sticking his tongue out. You know what he wants and the heat that had been slowly dissipating returns with a vengeance, breath catching as you look down at him.

“You’re gross,” you tell him, watching the corner of his lips quirk up even as he keeps his tongue out and waiting.

You don’t deny him. You never can.

You shift forward, rising to your feet and reaching out to grab his chin, angling your face down. Your grip is too tight, it’ll leave bruises behind and you think that’s the least he deserves so you only tighten it a bit more as you lean over him. You don’t give him what he wants, not right away, letting the saliva gather on your tongue as you observe him, the way his pupils are blown wide and his chest is hardly rising and falling, as if he can’t even let himself breathe in anticipation.

Disgusting, you think again, but it’s fond this time, much to your displeasure.

You decide to put him out of his misery, letting the spit dribble from your mouth down to his. His eyes roll back as soon as it hits his tongue, and your hand slides from his chin to curl around his neck—not tight, just firm enough to feel the way his throat bobs as he swallows.

He lets out a shaky breath, eyes fluttering back open as he looks up at you, entirely blissed out. Your hand slides down more, curling around the ugly bolo tie he’s wearing in place of the black one you’re used to. You tug it hard, beckoning him to his feet; he acquiesces, albeit on shaky legs.

Immediately, his hands find your hips as he pushes you against your desk, spinning you around to face it before his hand presses between your shoulder blades, pushing you down to bend you over it. Your eyes widen at the sudden change in demeanor, something you’ll never be able to get used to no matter how many times you fuck him; it always caught you off guard back then, it still catches you off guard now. He pulls off the remnants of your destroyed slacks and immediately is grinding his bulge against your ass, a low moan spilling from his lips.

“How many people have you been with?” he suddenly asks, and you can hear him fumbling to unbutton his own pants. There’s an edge to his voice that you don’t like—something caught between jealousy and possessiveness, and you nearly want to scoff at it.

“What the fuck, Dazai?” you spit out, appalled and not expecting the question. “None of your damn business.”

You turn your head to the side to rest your cheek on the desk, looking back at him from the corner of your eye. His eyes are still a bit hazy but there’s a tight expression on his face, reminiscent of the one that would be directed toward you whenever he stumbled in on you entertaining anyone other than him years ago.

“Humor me,” he says, voice cold and eerily familiar. If you weren’t looking at him and if you couldn’t see the tan coat and bolo tie, you’d think you were talking to Dazai Osamu, Port Mafia Executive, and not Dazai Osamu, Detective.

“A lot,” you finally tell him, feeling the way he stiffens behind you. “I don’t keep count. You?”

You think he has some nerve asking when he’s probably slept around t-

“None.”

“Bullshit,” you snarl immediately. “How many? Don’t fucking lie to me, Dazai.”

“None,” he says again, gaze lifting from your back to meet yours, his eyes are dark—too dark, too still. Maybe he hasn’t changed as much as you assumed, because the way your chest swells with a confusing mixture of fear and arousal is far too familiar. “You’re the only one allowed to touch me.”

His gaze drags back down, with his pants unbuttoned, he lifts his free hand to caress the swell of your ass, a contemplative expression on his face as he stares down at you, his other hand still pinning you down to your desk. If your heart wasn’t thudding in your ears from sheer anticipation, you’d be irate over the fact that you were letting Dazai Osamu fuck you over your own desk in your own office, but you can’t bring yourself to care now.

“They never made you feel like this.” It’s a statement, not a question, and you want to scoff at his arrogance, but you can’t because he’s right. “They don’t know your body like I do.”

This time you do scoff. “You don’t know shit, Dazai. It’s been four years.”

Dazai’s eyes flicker back up to you, the way his lips curve up into a smile is dangerous.

“No?” he questions.

A challenge. You never back down from one, not from him.

“No.”

His smile sharpens.

“I know that after you cum for the first time,” he murmurs, rolling his hips forward. You bite back a moan when you feel the tip of his cock slip between your folds. “The second time comes right after.”

True to his words, your jaw falls slack and your entire body seizes as Dazai thrusts into you, splitting you right open on his cock. The moan he lets out is pornographic, and you wish you could see the way his head falls back and his eyes roll into his skull, but your own vision is white and you’re choking over a sob as you feel the familiar stretch of his cock against your walls.

“There you are.” Dazai has the nerve to let out a breathless laugh and another groan as he stills with his hips flush to your ass, feeling your walls spasm around him as you cum just from the feeling of him pushing inside of you. The hand he has placed between your shoulder blades slides up to curl around your throat. With a firm grip, he pulls you up so only your thighs are pressed against the edge of your desk, back flush to his chest as you gasp, reeling from the suddenness of your second orgasm. You can feel him smile as he nudges his nose against the side of your head, lips pressed to your ear. “The third time takes a bit after the second, but I’ll fuck you through it. Maybe a fourth too.”

“Dazai,” you gasp, eyes blown wide as your head falls back against his shoulder. You don’t know what you’re trying to say, maybe hold on, or wait, because you know you’ll embarrass yourself if he doesn’t give you a second to recover.

He hums in response, and the slow rolls of his hips, the drag of his cock against your walls, it has your head in the clouds, body trembling. Your lips part to speak but no words leave them, and right when you think you can finally force the words out, Dazai draws his hips back and snaps them back against yours hard. Your lips part in a silent moan, only the hand around your throat and the one pressed to your lower belly holds you up as Dazai fucks you at a brutal pace.

His face drops to the crook of your neck, he moans into your skin, teeth scraping hard as he kisses recklessly up and down every available inch. He’s going to leave marks, you realize, and that’s dangerous now that you’re back in Yokohama because you don’t need any of the other executives to get suspicious, but even if you wanted to tell him not to, you don’t think you’d be able to. Whatever little coherency you had left in your thought process does not translate when you try to speak, the only things leaving your lips being shaky moans and gasps of Dazai’s name.

“Made for me,” Dazai groans. His grip on your throat tightens just enough to make the air you breathe in shallow, your head feels light and you’re not sure if it’s because of his grip or if it’s the feeling of his cock bullying so deep into you that you can feel his tip pressing up against your cervix. “Waited so many years for this, feels even better than I remember, pussy’s made for me, isn’t it?”

Dazai babbles into your ear as he fucks you, tongue just as filthy and unbridled as the day he left. Shameless. He’s so shameless. Doesn’t even care that anyone could walk into your office and catch the two of you; doesn’t care that if anyone does, he’ll end up executed. He’s fucking you in a building full of people that want him dead and all he cares about is how your cunt feels wrapped around his cock.

Your breath hitches as Dazai shifts you to bend over just a little more, still keeping your back flush to his chest but fucking you at a new angle—one that nearly sends you spiraling over the edge for a third time.

“Gonna give me your third now?” he pants. His hand on your lower stomach slips down, lithe fingers dipping between your folds to search for your clit—your back arches against him when he finds it, a sob spilling from your lips, vision swimming with tears. Dazai laughs again, this one is strained, catching over a moan as your walls convulse around him. “Oh, fuck. Fuck, you’re so tight.”

Unconsciously, his grip on your throat tightens, cutting off even more air. You can hardly breathe, you can hardly think—each thrust of his hips has your head spinning, ripping the little air you can inhale right out of your lungs. The tip of his cock rubs against that spongy spot inside of you every time he snaps his hips against yours, the quick circles he rubs on your clit are electrifying.

Your cheeks are wet, breath ragged, vision spotty. One last thrust, one last circle, and you’re wrecked, sobbing out his name as your legs give out, only held up by the way he has your thighs pinned to your desk and his hand on your neck. You cum all over his cock so hard that you think you black out for a second, your mind fuzzy and pins and needles pricking all over your body.

Dazai doesn’t stop. He fucks you through your third orgasm, relishing in the way your body twitches and trembles, too sensitive for his touch.

“Your fourth will come quick,” he gasps. His pace is erratic now, chasing his own release. Your ears are ringing, heartbeat thudding in your ears, the wet, sloppy sound of his cock driving in and out of you resounding through your office. “I don’t think I’ll last for five. Shit, shit, I’m close.”

You have to force yourself to move. You want to see him when he finishes. Your hand wraps around his wrist, nails digging into his skin to try to get his attention. It takes all of your will power to push the two words from your lips: “Flip me.”

He does. Without any sort of hesitation, his hand drops from your throat to your waist. His cock slips out of you for a split second and your cunt aches at the loss, but Dazai is immediately pushing himself back into you as he hoists you up by the thighs, sitting you down on your desk and wrapping your legs around his waist.

Even through your blurry vision, Dazai is a fucking sight. His dark hair is matted to his forehead, pink lips swollen and wet, cheeks flushed. His eyes glazed over and half rolled back as he chases his high. God, he’s stunning. You’ve missed him. You’ve missed him.

You’re not thinking as you lift your hand to cup his cheek, sliding around to the back of his head to pull his face down to yours, moving on pure instinct. You drag him down to press your lips against his and Dazai is gone. The moment your lips touch his, he’s moaning into your mouth, hips stuttering against you as he spills his cum deep inside of you, and he’s right, because the moment you feel his cum filling you up, warm and thick, so much of it that you can feel it dribbling around his cock, the stickiness smearing against your thighs and ruining your desk, you’re pushed over the edge for the fourth time.

This one is weaker than the rest, not a single noise escapes you but your jaw goes slack and Dazai whimpers into your mouth when he feels your walls tightening around him again. But he takes advantage of your pliancy, pushing you back gently so that your back is flush to your desk. He follows you down, keeping his chest pressed to yours as he maps out your mouth with his tongue. He rolls his hips against yours, slow and deep, fucking his cum deeper into you as the two of you slowly come down from your highs. He slants his lips against yours to deepen the kiss, hand coming up to cup your cheek, his other sliding up and down one of your thighs.

It’s too intimate. You tell yourself that you only let it happen because you’re reeling from overstimulation but you know it's a lie.

You don’t even know how long you stay in that position with him. It could only be a few seconds, a few minutes, it could’ve been an hour for all you know, laying on your desk with him pressed on top of you, kissing you so passionately that it makes your head spin as much as the orgasms did.

Finally, you press your hand against his shoulder, signaling for him to get off of you. He does, albeit with a reluctant sigh. You stare up at the ceiling as Dazai shakily rebuttons his pants, making his way over to the closet where you still keep your spare clothes from when you have to stay over at the office to work.

What did you do?

You’re hyper aware of how swollen your lips are, of the marks littering your neck, of the cum dribbling out of your cunt, staining your desk.

If anyone finds out about this-

You don’t get to finish the thought, because Dazai comes back over to you. Neither of you speak as he takes a tissue to clean up his cum from your thighs and as it dribbles out of you, nor do you speak when he shifts you into a sitting position, helping you pull on a new pair of panties and a new pair of slacks.

He stands in front of you, dozens of indecipherable emotions rocketing across his face as his dark eyes search your expression for something. You don’t know what, and you don’t even want to look at him but you can’t draw your gaze away from him.

After what feels like forever, he finally speaks.

“I missed you,” he says, voice hoarse as he lifts a hand to cup your cheek.

You turn away from his touch, ignoring the hurt that flashes through his eyes.

“Why don’t you believe me? You think four years has changed how I feel about you? I thought you knew me better than that.”

“It’s been four years,” you say, and you hate that your voice wavers a bit. You blame it on still being hazy after your orgasm but you know it’s a weak excuse. You hate that he still has this effect on you after all these years. You hate that you always give into him, and you hate that you know you’ll never get enough of him. You want to hate him, but you can’t. “Knowing how to fuck me isn’t the same as knowing me as a person. I barely know you anymore. You barely know me. And it’s not like you were open with how you felt four years ago. So, forgive me if it’s a bit hard to believe, Dazai.”

“You wear the same perfume. You still shoot with your non-dominant hand for some god forsaken reason. Your lips still twitch whenever you get annoyed even though you do your best to stop it. You-”

“Stop.”

“You still talk to me like you hate me even though your eyes are all soft and you’re leaning in toward me.” Dazai doesn’t stop, and to your horror, he’s right—you had begun to lean in to him instinctively as he spoke. You try to shift away from him, but he follows, fingers grazing your cheek, chest brushing yours. You don’t pull away this time. “I still wear the same cologne you bought me for my sixteenth birthday because it reminds me of you—I spent two months trying to figure out where you bought it when it first ran out. I don’t carry a gun around as often, but when I do, I still try to do that stupid flipping trick you tried to teach me when we were seventeen—I still can’t do it, almost shot myself in the knee last time I tried.”

The laugh he lets out at the last sentence is hollow. He hesitates, as if he wants to continue but isn’t sure if he should. You can feel his blunt nails scraping gently against your skin, his palm warm against your cheek. You want to pull away but you’ve missed him, no matter how much you try to convince yourself otherwise, and you find yourself sinking into his touch. You’ve always questioned why Mori sent you away for so long, angry because you figured he thought you were weak when it comes to Dazai and he didn’t want to risk anything.

Only a few days back in Yokohama, and you’re already proving him right.

“I’m not the same person,” you tell him, something desperate edges at your tone. Desperate to convince him, or yourself, you’re not sure.

“I still love you,” he rasps, voice quiet as if he’s scared to admit it even to himself, and your heart is suddenly lodged in your throat as you stare up at him with wide eyes, the words he refused to tell you back when you were teens ringing through your head over and over again. “I’ve always loved you. Thought about you every day. I missed you so much.”

“I should hate you,” you say, swallowing thickly, unshed tears blurring your vision. “You didn’t even say goodbye. When Mori said you defected in the middle of a mission, I laughed in his face. Not because I didn’t think you’d never betray the Port Mafia, but because I didn’t think you’d ever leave me without saying anything.”

“If I said goodbye to you, I never would have left,” Dazai tells you quietly, the admission echoing in your years. “And I had to leave. I had to.”

“I should hate you,” you repeat, voice a bit weaker now, and you feel pathetic for falling apart like this in front of him. But it’s Dazai, he’s always had this effect over you. You suppose some things haven’t changed, because that certainly hasn’t.

“I know,” he murmurs.

You inhale deeply, shaking your head as you push yourself off your desk and straighten out your clothes, trying to get your head back on straight. You should’ve known better than to think you’d be able to come back to Yokohama and pretend that Dazai Osamu didn’t exist, for better or for worse, the two of you would always find your way back to each other. Mori was right to send you away, although you suppose the man is rarely wrong anyway.

Dazai doesn’t say anything, watching you with an unreadable expression as you search through the ruined piles of paper on your desk for the report that Akutagawa had handed you. Your eye twitches when you realize that it’s stained, realizing that you’re going to have to rewrite the whole thing because you can’t submit a cum-stained report to Mori.

Dazai snorts behind you, as if realizing your predicament. The look you give him is lethal, he silences himself quickly.

“Don’t get yourself killed on the way out,” you tell him, grabbing your black jacket off your chair and swinging it over your shoulders as you look back at him. “If you make it out of here alive, I’ll see you at my apartment later. Then we can talk.”

His face twists. “What? Wait, don’t leave me here,” he panics, nearly tripping over his feet and your desk chair to follow after you. “Help me sneak out.”

“You got in here yourself,” you say dismissively. “Get out yourself.”

The noise he lets out is pathetic. “You do hate me,” he accuses.

“No, I could never,” you admit quietly. His expression softens a bit, but you give him a sharp smile. “But I’m definitely not going to make things easy for you. Akutagawa is still out here prowling around. So is Chuuya, actually. Said he’d be at the office all night today. Good luck, you’re gonna need it.”

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vanshoe · 19 days

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quick sketch

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vanshoe · 19 days

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GOT WHAT YOU WANTED

summary: you're rafe's best friend—kelce and top's too, but there's always been something more between the two of you. neither of you will do anything about it. clearly, the solution is to become friends with benefits.

now spinning: too many nights by metro & future

word count: 11.5k

warning/tags: kook trio reader, using jj to make rafe jealous, mentions of drugs/partying, jealous/possessive rafe and reader, smut !, rafe deals coke. tysm to @zyafics for beta’ing & helping me so muchh & @inimamea for being so lovely and supportive. tysm to all the lovely anons who have been supporting and loving this concept from the start, i hope u all love this ♡ (but sorry in advance if u don’t)

truth be told, you didn’t like making rafe angry.

it wasn’t fun for you, like other things were—watching your boys play golf while you lounged in the cart with the cold drinks, picking out a pretty outfit for the day, crashing on the couch at tannyhill with your head in rafe’s lap and feet over kelce’s legs.

those were fun things. what you were doing now, with jj, was something borne of necessity. you’re not a mean girl. you find it tough to be mean to anyone except rafe, actually, and only because he dishes it back and you know his feelings aren’t really hurt, but right now you were being mean.

to jj that is.

you smile at the blond boy seated next to you, the golden glow of the bonfire casting its warmth onto both of you. you laugh at another joke he makes, but only half-hearted, taking another sip of the beer he’d gotten you from the keg.

jj’s funny, he’s sweet too. it’s not his fault you wish you were seated next to your best friend instead of him, drinking a strawberry seltzer from the case that rafe keeps in the back of his truck specially for you.

“so?” jj asks, and you turn from staring at your shoes to look up at him. he’s looking at you with a smile, a very charming smile that you could have a lot of fun with, except you’re starting to feel bad about toying with him like this.

“so?” you repeat back, softly. he leans in a little to hear you. you feel a little warm at the action, but it could just as easily be from the fire.

jj’s nice—and you’ve always liked nice, preferred it to almost anything. every boy you had ever introduced to your trio had been nice, though rafe hadn’t ever cared. he’d hated them from the moment he’d laid eyes on them. you wonder now when you let him seep into your mind like this, with every other thought about rafe rafe rafe. somewhere in between accepting jj’s invitation to come to the bonfire with him and getting jealous over the fact that rafe was seeing some random girl.

“you didn’t tell your other boy about this, did’ya?” you look up at jj with eyebrows knitted, puzzled.

“other.. boy?”

“cameron.” now you really flush—you certainly don’t want jj to think rafe is your other anything.

“no, no. we’re not dating. we’re just friends.”

“right, okay. you tell him about tonight?”

“no. it didn’t come up.”

“ah. got it.”

“why?” you ask, and before you can look around, jj stares into the distance, gesturing with his eyes to a blurry figure.

“nothin’. he’s just been starin’ at us since we sat down, so i figured, but-” you stand up, looking into the distance where rafe was. you can feel yourself turning green with envy, red with rage, watching him stand next to the same girl he’s been with, her looking at rafe while rafe looks at you.

you sit back down on the log, wrapping a hand around jj’s arm and pulling him down to sit beside you. from this angle, rafe can’t make out anything but your backs, and maybe the lack of any real distance between you and jj.

“sorry,” you say, sweetly, almost having regained your wrath the second you saw the two of them standing together. “he’s crazy.”

“s’okay. not news to me, princess.” jj takes a pause, and you chew your cheek, trying to decide how far you were willing to take this. “you okay?”

“yes. why wouldn’t i be?”

“well, uh, it doesn’t take a genius. even though, y’know, i am one, to know somethin’s up.” “no, jj, i promise, we’re ju-” “just friends, yeah, i got it. i mean, i don’t know what type of friends exactly, but uh, i like you. and i’ll like you even if he has a problem with it. so up to you, really.” you glance up at jj, who is being nicer to you right now than you deserve.

and you hate it, hate every second of it. you hate how rafe makes you feel, how angry and jealous you get, the fact that you even started talking to jj when in the back of your mind you knew it was because rafe would get upset over it.

but you also hate what rafe’s doing, the girl he’s with and the way he’s with her, the fact that he brought her here and still won’t stop shooting daggers into jj’s head. in short, you hate all of it.

you lean in, resting your head against jj’s shoulder.

“i’m sorry. i don’t know what’s going on with him. but, he’s here with a girl.”

“and you’re here with me.” jj wraps an arm around you.

“yes, but not because-well, i don’t know.” it feels stupid coming out, but if jj thinks that, he doesn’t show any signs of it.

“s’okay. don’t always have to know.” you keep your head on his shoulder, enjoying the warmth he brings. “by the way, he’s still watching.” you smile, though you can’t tell which boy elicited it. “i mean, not gonna complain if i get to be your boy toy for a little but, nice to know you care-” you giggle, pulling away to put your drink on the sandy ground.

“you’re telling me you don’t want a sugar mama?” he laughs at your words and you relish in it.

it could be picture perfect—waves crashing in the back, the fire flickering in front of you, stars sparkling above. jj keeps his hand on your cheek and leans in for a kiss, and you find yourself leaning too, when the voice of your best friend breaks the silence. you pull away from jj to look up at rafe standing behind you.

“hey. we’re goin’. c’mon.”

“rafe-” you start, but you get interrupted. jj stands, facing rafe.

“hey buddy, we’re a little busy. but uh, i’ll make sure she gets home safe-”

“guys-”

“wasn’t fuckin’ talkin’ to you, pogue-”

“tuck her into bed, and everything. don’t worry your little head ‘bout it-”

“m’gonna knock your little head out if you don’t get the fuck away from-” having heard enough, you drag rafe away by his arm, your pretty nails digging in harshly.

“what the fuck was that, rafe?” you ask, though you feel the bitterness coursing through your veins. how’s that fair—that he parades his girlfriend around you, at the club and here at the bonfire, but you can’t so much as spend a moment alone with jj.

whatever reservations you had just held about using jj to make rafe jealous seem to have gone far away. instead you’re just angry—he wants his own girlfriend and he wants you without a boyfriend too. you turn to look back at the boy you left behind at the fire. jj gives you a thumbs up.

“how many times do i have to fuckin’ tell you to-to stay away from that pogue-”

“he has a name,” you counter, so defensive because jj was being nice to you even when he didn’t have to be, helping you even with no gain for himself. “and you can’t order me around, okay? you brought a girl here but i can’t talk to jayj? how does that make any sense?”

“stop yellin’,” he barks, grabbing you by the arm now, and guiding you away.

“why? afraid someone might hear us? like your little girlfriend? where’d she go, by the way, i bet she’s missing you right about now-”

“shut up. shut it.” you don’t realize how far rafe’s dragged you until you shake out of his tight grip, standing next to his truck on the street.

“i’m sick of this rafe.” it comes out quieter than you intend, tears prickling up. you hate crying, especially infront of the boys but even more so infront of rafe. “i’m not stopping my life and boys that i wanna see, and relationships i want to have because you’re not okay with it. not when you have your own girlfriend. it’s not fair.”

“i don’t. i don’t have a girlfriend.” you roll your eyes, he watches it happen with a tight fist, jaw clenching.

“yes, you do.”

“no, i don’t.”

“you don’t?” you question, unbelieving. “you just.. walk around with the same girl for weeks. take her everywhere. but she’s not your girlfriend?” you’re snarky like always—you still don’t know if he likes it or not.

“no, she’s not.”

“bullshit. at least get your fucking story straight, rafe. that girl’s probably half in love with you-” “m’not dating her. and if it bothered you so much how come you didn’t say something, huh? you pull this shit with fuckin’ maybank instead?”

“i’m not pulling anything with jj.” you lie through your teeth, hoping rafe bites. “i-i like him.”

“no you fuckin’ don’t.”

“who are you to tell me-”

“you don’t like him. what you like is makin’ me fuckin’ angry. well, it worked. stay the fuck away from him. and get in the goddamn truck.”

you groan loudly, the noise almost a scream and filling the quiet street. but you comply, getting into the passenger seat and letting rafe drive you home—to your house, not tannyhill like every other night. when he pulls up to your house, you resist the urge to get out without saying anything at all.

“i’ll see you tomorrow, kid.” you sigh, looking back up at rafe.

“that’s it? you’ll see me tomorrow?”

“what else do you want me to say, huh?”

“are you just gonna ignore all of that? what the hell was that?”

“m’not ignoring anything-”

“so, i can’t see jj anymore. are you still seeing her? who am i allowed to date then? kelce? top? do you have a pre-approved list for me?”

“shut up.”

“rafe,” you sound serious, as serious as he’s ever heard you, shifting in your seat to look right at him. he looks back, his knuckles white on the steering wheel at the mention of you dating kelce or top or anyone. “i’m not gonna stay single forever. i know your alpha-male tendencies don’t agree with it, but girls have needs too. i want-”

“what? what do you want?”

“the possibility of getting laid without you screaming at every boy i talk to would be nice.”

“don’t talk like that.”

“rafe.”

exasperated, you unlock the door and climb out, not turning back to say goodnight. the last twelve hours seem like a blur, between texting jj and actually seeing him and rafe’s reaction to it. you’re not sure what kind of reaction you really wanted out of him, but you’re not happy with the one you got. you don’t know what, if anything, would have pleased you.

that night, you go to bed angry and wake up sad. jj texted you something but you can’t find the heart to look at his message yet.

you’re sure the boys have something planned for today, like they always do, but the idea of opening the groupchat to look at what they decided on makes you feel sick. so you stay home instead, showering off yesterday’s anger and wondering why rafe thinks you don’t deserve to have a boy in your life to fool around with, to date, to do anything with.

the answer, sharp and painful like the jagged end of a piece of glass, hovers in your mind. you try to push it away.

rafe’s wrong—like always. you really don’t like making him angry, like it even less that your routine is disrupted and that for the first time in a long time, you don’t want to see your best friends today. brushing your hair, the sound of your bedroom door opening snaps you out of your thoughts.

“c’mon kid. get dressed. top’s got tee time at two and we booked lunch before.” you turn to look at rafe but don’t budge. he takes a look at you—dressed in one of his old frat shirts and plaid shorts that barely peak out.

you look pretty all the time but it feels the worst, the hardest to deal with, when it’s just the two of you alone like this, none of the shit that you do for other people, for outside the house—the makeup, the hair, the nice clothes. when you’re pretty like this it’s just for him, since no one else gets to see you, no one but him. you probably didn’t even notice you were wearing one of his shirts—something that leaves him feeling more pleased than he should be. but like always, he’s not gonna tell you any of that.

“are you adding deaf to stupid?” he asks, and you roll your eyes, letting out an irritated huff.

“i’m not coming. go away.” you turn around on your vanity chair to face your mirror, continuing brushing your hair. rafe walks up behind you, staring at you in the mirror.

“c’mon. lunch is at the place you like. i’ll even talk to you when kelce and top are up.”

“is that your way of apologizing?”

“it’s not an apology.”

“of course it’s not. why would you say sorry? you probably don’t think you did anything wrong.”

“i didn’t.”

“mm-hm. when does rafe cameron ever do anything wrong?” you keep brushing your hair, staring at yourself in the mirror instead of at him. “psycho.”

rafe yanks the brush from your hand, spinning your chair around to face him. he boxes you in, his hands resting on the armrests. he’s too close to you, it makes his head spin. you wish he’d stop, you know he’s not going to. you watch with bated breath, wondering what’s coming next.

“i… didn’t mean to make you upset.” you keep staring up at rafe, blinking fast. “and i didn’t see it from your side. so, m’sorry. about that part. nothin’ else.” you can’t help the slow smile that grows on your face—rafe, apologizing, and to you of all people. you thought you’d never see the day.

“thanks rafe.”

“alright. get ready. truck’s still runnin’.” he pulls himself upright, freeing you of the restraint. you can hear the bass of the music in his car, the future song audible from your open window.

“that’s bad for the environment. and i didn’t say i forgave you.” snatching the hairbrush back, you resume your motions. you hear rafe groan and it’s hard to hold back the smile. maybe you did like making him angry.

“kid.”

“what? i heard your apology, and i don’t accept it. hope you girls have fun at golf-” rafe leans back in, holding your jaw shut between his fingers.

“do you ever shut up?” you shake your head from your position, though you can’t really move. “what’s it gonna take, huh? you want my permission to fuck ‘round? sleep with some, some fuckin’ nobody? some pogue? tough shit. you’re not gettin’ it.” he lets you go, and you rub your jaw tenderly.

“but you get to do it?”

“that’s different-”

“no it’s not! you’re just a dick. and sexist. who am i supposed to sleep with, then?” you shoot back.

“i don’t fuckin’ know, kid. me, i guess. at this point-”

“ha-ha funny. you’re an-” when you finally get up and look at him, he’s staring at you. “what?”

“yeah. that’s fine.” he shrugs, like he’s just decided something trivial, like what to order at lunch or which iron to use. “you can sleep with me.”

“excuse me?”

“yeah. yeah, it’s a good solution. that way you can stay the fuck away from maybank and any other asshole.”

“rafe. shut up.”

“think about it,” he says, and you fall silent to listen, though this is the worst idea you’ve ever heard in your life. “you get what you want. i get what i want. it works out.”

“how is being your pity-fuck remotely close to what i want?”

“sheesh, kid m’tryna help you right now. offerin’ you a solution-”

“rafe?” “yeah?”

“get out.” you walk over the door, swining it open and waiting for him to step out.

“just think ‘bout it,” rafe says, standing by the door but not leaving just yet. “alright?”

“goodbye, rafe.”

you listen to the sounds—him walking down the staircase, the front door closing, his truck taking off. after you’re sure he’s gone, you let out a breath you didn’t realize you’d been holding inside.

sleeping with rafe had been nothing more than a drunken thought that occasionally slipped into your mind when he’d be nice to you after some party. curling up next to him at tannyhill every other night certainly didn’t help, but that’s all it was—a thought, not reality.

then you wonder if it’s really such a bad idea. maybe if you just got out all of this pent up energy with rafe, and then worked on finding someone he actually approved of, it would be easier for both of you.

key word: maybe.

the idea that he’s still seeing that girl, the one he keeps denying is his girlfriend, makes you want to puke. he’d have to stop that, that would be part of your agreement.

maybe rafe’s right, maybe you both get what you want out of this, as messed up as it seems. it can’t be the worst idea in the world—kelce and top always joke the two of you are half a couple already.

you go to your closet to pick out an outfit for golf, hoping you weren’t about to ruin your friendship with your best friend.

.☘︎ ݁˖

rafe’s leaning against the bar at the club when you find him. you think he’s got a weird sixth sense, he always knows when you’re around, and he looks up before you’re even near him.

“i knew you wouldn’t pass on lunch. top owes me five bucks.”

“yeah. sure.” you put a hand on the counter to steady yourself—this is harder than you thought it would be. rafe takes a sip of his drink. you want to chastise him, tell him it’s only twelve-thirty and too early for drinking, but nothing comes out. your mouth feels dry and you almost want to chug the rest of his scotch. surprisingly, you refrain.

“what?” rafe asks, and you glance up at him, eyes locked.

“i thought about what you said this morning. what you offered.”

“and?” the bastard looks so smug. you should the slap the smirk off his face but you know what he’s thinking—proud of coming up with the idea himself, thinking he’s doing such a service.

“and.. better the devil you know and all that.” you wait for the other shoe to drop for a moment, for rafe to admit it was all a big prank and you fell for it, and now the boys owe him money or something.

“good. i agree. so should we get outta here, or what?”

“right now?” you question, eyes widening. “what about tee time?”

“you’re the only who’s so horny you’re on the verge of jumping pogues. m’just tryna help you-”

“shut up!”your face heats, looking around to make sure no one heard him. “by the way, between the two of us you’re the only one jumping pogues.”

“yeah, yeah. so not now, then?”

“a gentlemen as always, rafe. no, really, thank you, for showing me chivalry’s not dead.” you roll your eyes again, staring ahead at the bottles behind the bar. you don’t want to turn and look at rafe again, but you do.

“at this rate m’gonna have to show you what friends with benefits means too.”

“shut up.” it comes out like a hiss this time, narrowed eyes focusing in on your best friend and apparently, new fuck buddy.

“yeah, yeah. they’re at the table near the window.”

“thanks.” you walk in that direction, catching a glimpse of top and kelce, but your feet pause for a moment. you stay still, but glance back at rafe.

he’s not leaning against the bar anymore—he’s facing you, staring at you. blue eyes rake over your skin top to bottom, focusing on the pretty sandals and polished white toes, smooth lotioned skin, your short white skirt and tight golf shirt, with one too many buttons popped.

when you’re talking without ever shutting up, it’s hard for him to focus on anything but your glossy lips or long eyelashes fluttering when you roll your eyes. but now he’s taking it in—how easily you agreed to this little idea, how you talk a big game but you don’t seem as hesitant or upset as you were this morning.

you turn back and keep walking towards the table—rafe can tell you’re flushed. he’s fine with it, prefers it this way. anything’s better than you going on dates with strangers, showing them looks and emotions and other things that belong to him.

if you’re horny, all you had to do was tell him. downing the rest of his drink, he goes back to the table and like always, sits next to you.

kelce and top talk about the same old shit, until they focus their attention on you. you’re being quiet, not nearly as talkative or snippy as usual, and you haven’t said a word to rafe the whole time.

“and where’d you two go off to last night?” kelce asks, pointedly looking at rafe while he asks you the question.

“you guys know you left us stranded, right? we all came together. i mean i’m not saying self-absorbed but-” topper adds, but you cut him off.

“you’re really not one to talk about self-absorbed, are you top?” you shoot back, and kelce chokes on his water.

“easy,” rafe says, and normally you’d fire away something at him too, but this time you don’t. “we had somethin’ to take care of. but you got home didn’t you?”

“yes, but-” topper says, but rafe cuts him off again. you hold back a laugh.

“then shut up ‘bout it.”

“kelce’s mom had to pick us up. it was humiliating.” you snort into your lemonade, all four of you bursting into laughter. you turn to ask kelce a follow up question, and rafe’s staring at you while you laugh. something low in your stomach twists, like a butterfly trying to fly out and away.

when kelce and rafe start talking about the course today, topper leans in to say something to you.

“you’re getting mean. y’know that means you’re spending too much time with him.” you transfer your gaze from top to rafe, staring at the boy next to you.

the idea of what you would normally say floats through your head—something funny and earnest but still making top feel better, not saying sorry but making him laugh instead. nothing comes to mind.

“yeah. i guess i am.”

you sit through golf, reading your book in the cart while the boys play nine holes. your phone rings with a call from your parents about an hour in, and when you step away to take it, rafe follows you. the boys protest from the distance—it must have been his turn.

“you goin’ home?” rafe questions, and you jolt at the sound, not realizing he was right behind you.

“god. you scared me.” he doesn’t say anything, just keeps staring down at you. “yes, uh, mom wants me home for something.”

“you need a ride?”

“no, i drove here, remember?”

“oh. yeah. am i gonna see you tonight?” the words make you flush—stupidly, no matter how hard you try to fight it, knowing that they shouldn’t. the two of you are going to be terrible at this. “kid?”

“careful, rafe. you’re starting to sound like a boyfriend.” “yeah. and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

sucking in a breath, tearing your gaze away with pretty blue eyes that are looking at you like maybe that wouldn’t be the worst idea in the world, you’re at a loss for words again. before all of this drama, you could count the amount of times you had been rendered speechless by rafe with no hands—since it had never happened. still with nothing to say, you turn around and start to walk away. foot steps follow you.

“hey, hey. m’joking, it’s just.. a joke. how about i come over later? and we’ll talk about it.” you spin on your heels to face him.

“talk about it? talk about what?”

“our.. arrangement. y’know talk about it..” he tilts his head stupidly and you can’t decide if you want to slap him or kiss him. “..fuck about it.”

“okay! that’s it. bye, rafe.” storming away, you almost wish you hadn’t heard what he called out after you.

“bye, kid. i’ll see you later.”

.☘︎ ݁˖

at ten pm that night, freshly showered and somehow in another one of rafe’s shirts, you were back to where you were this morning—brushing your hair. rafe doesn’t knock on your door, just barges in.

“oh my god-”

“hello to you too.” he steps in, shutting the door behind him and taking a seat on your bed. you spin on your chair to face him.

“how the hell do you keep getting in here?”

“what? your mom let me in.”

“you didn’t even text-”

“i told you at the club. you have selective memory, kid.” he looks you over again. “nice shirt.”

“oh shut up.” you turn away for a moment, setting the hairbrush down, biting your cheek. “so?”

“so?” he repeats. he’s smiling, you can just tell.

“aren’t we gonna talk about our arrangement? that’s what you told me at the club-” you finish in a mocking voice.

“what else is there to talk about? you wanna get laid, i don’t wanna see you with random guys.”

“i still don’t understand what’s wrong with the guys that i-” rafe cuts you off, and he sounds angry.

“of course you don’t understand. you don’t have’t think about this shit, because i think about it for you. what’d you gonna do when some guy starts sleepin’ with you ‘cause me and top pissed him off once? or one of those pogues, huh? to get back at us? take some video of you and send it to everyone? brag and show it off to everyone?”

“oh.”

“exactly. so m’lookin’ out for you. this is better, trust me.” the thing rafe’s saying are making sense. you were on board anyways, but you feel better that there’s a real reason behind it.

“but what about that girl-” you ask, though you don’t know what kind of answer you’re expecting. rafe sighs.

“what about that girl?”

“are-are you gonna sleep with other people too?”

“no. m’too busy anyways. works out for both of us.”

“oh. okay. promise?”

“when have i ever lied to you?” you sigh, about to protest, when he finishes his sentence. “promise.” you feel strangely reassured, like this is a good idea.

“okay. thanks.” you dodge his gaze, playing with your manicured nails, pink this time.

“alright. get on the bed.”

“rafe-”

“what? i just said-”

“you’re not even gonna, like, take me out for dinner first?”

“who the hell d’you think paid for your lunch?”

“i don’t know.. kelce? he got lunch last week. should i go sleep with him next?”

“ha-ha. get on the bed.”

“ugh. you’re so crass. i don’t even know how you get any girls-”

“yeah, yeah. are you gonna shut up now or what?”

you can’t think of anything to say, so you finally follow his instructions, crawling into your bed and sitting up against your pillows to look at rafe.

you’ve see him naked before. he’s seen you naked before. with all the time you spent together on the druthers or at the beach, you should be used to seeing him like this. he yanks off his shirt, pulling it off with a fist in the back over his head.

the first sign that this idea wasn’t going to go as planned should have been now—feeling your breath catch in your throat at the sight in front of you. your best friend shirtless, getting closer to your bed. your eyes rake over tan, muscled skin and the silver chain glimmering around his neck. you don’t realize you moved, body sliding down and back flat against your mattress while rafe starts to lean across the bed, his hand planted next to your head.

rafe’s hovering over you. your breathing shakes for a moment, wondering if it would be this easy for him to do this with any other girl. you dismiss the thought when rafe leans in to kiss you, but it almost seems too wrong to let it happen.

“wait-” you move your head a little so your lips are away from rafe’s. “are you sure? you don’t think it’s gonna be weird?”

“stop bugging out, kid.” he says it low and quiet, and your entire body quivers from the sound.

“answer the question, asshole.” rafe laughs, his hot breath fanning across your cheek. you can’t help it, you laugh too, turning to look at him. you think he’ll be grinning like something’s funny, but your smile dies the second you lock eyes.

he’s not smiling, he looks as serious as you’ve ever seen him. he licks his lips, moving his eyes over your body, his shirt and your bare legs.

“you wearin’ anything under this?”

he moves one of his hands from your knee to your thigh, stroking the soft skin. you curl your leg automatically, head lifting to watch his hands and your entire body trembling under his touch—it’s hot and electric, making your heart beat faster and the hairs on your arm stand up. he looks up from your legs to your face, watches you shake your head to answer no.

“good girl.”

your head falls back onto the pillow when the words leave his mouth. a chuckle leaves his mouth, but still he’s not smiling, it’s more just a noise of pleasure than anything else. rafe sits up between your legs, hands grabbing onto both of your legs and stroking again. he makes his way all the way to your hips, fingers dancing over the waistband of your panties.

you think he’ll stop, maybe at least answer your earlier question, though you can’t remember what you had even asked him. he doesn’t, fingers swiftly hooking around the fabric and pulling them down your legs. you suck in another breath, angling your foot so they fall onto the bed while you keep your eyes locked on him.

“y’ready?” he asks, and you nod, though you’re not sure what you’re agreeing to. his hands go back to your thighs, pushing his t-shirt up to expose more skin. you tense up, but he keeps a palm on your knee. “relax.”

before you can anticipate anything else, he strokes your pussy, which is shamefully wet already, with two fingers, prodding the sensitive skin and gathering wetness. he does that laugh again, like he can’t believe what he’s looking at, and you try to shut your trembling thighs in embarassment, but rafe holds them open.

“rafe-” but before you can finish your sentence, two thick fingers plunge inside you, “oh my god—!”

“hah. good.” when he pushes his fingers out, just to slam them back in, your eyes roll all the way back, another loud moan emitting from your mouth, sounds he’s thought about a hundred times before but still can’t compare to the real thing. but of course, you don’t need to know any of that. “don’t get too loud. y’folks are downstairs, remember?”

you don’t seem to remember. when he picks up the pace, really just wanting to test you and see how much you could take, you start moaning even louder, sweet breathy sounds filling the room. they’re just for him, and normally he’d want you screaming, but he can’t arouse too much suspicious, or your parents won’t ever let him back in the house. his other hand, the one holding your legs open, moves to your mouth, clamping his palm over your lips to keep your noises quiet.

you must like it, you clench around his fingers and your walls flutter when he locks eyes with you, almost hunched over you to keep you quiet while still fucking his fingers—now three, though he didn’t realize when he’d added another—into you.

rafe’s hard, and he can’t remember the last time he was patient enough to wait to get his dick wet, but he likes you like this, not just shutting up for once, but eyes shut and face twisted with pleasure, whimpering into his hand, legs shaking in his grip while you’re wet around his fingers.

“rafe-” you mumble, the sound all muffled. “m’gonna, ohh-” he picks up the pace, shushing you while battering into your pussy, listening to the gasps and whimpers through his palm while you cum all over his hand.

limbs like jelly and throat dry, you lay there, catching your breath. your skin’s hot and flushed, and you stare at rafe while he stares at you.

“what?” you question, and it comes out quiet, soft, like you’ve done something you shouldn’t have. he’s thinking a couple of things, some of which have no business being in his head at all. do you always get this wet? who else has seen you like this? who’s gonna get to hear you moan the way you just did for him some day?

“nothin’.”

“oh. okay.” you sit up against your headboard, pulling your—his—shirt down to cover up a little. “well, thank you.”

“yeah. no problem.” for a second he hestiates—briefly concerned you want him to leave now. “well? come on.” you’re trying to sound like you always do, a little irritated at him, a little snarky. he can see through it this time.

“what?”

“get the condom. you’re the one who said we’re doing it today.” rafe watches for a second, wondering if he should laugh or yell at you, when you pull off his shirt. he stares at you, not moving, wondering why he thought this would be a good idea.

he’s seen you naked before, changing in the same room or when you two lost all boundaries and started walking into bathrooms while the other’s showering, but this seems different. propped against your headboard naked, with your cum on his fingers, asking him to get a condom. now that he’s seen you like this, he has a new life mission of making sure no one else ever gets to.

“god, you’re such a boy.”

“shut up.”

“you shut up. you talked such a big game and now you’re just staring at my boobs-” he moves quickly, fingers on your jaw, actually shutting you up.

“lie down.” biting your lip, you comply, sliding down so rafe was on top of you. “spread your legs.” you move to do so, but rafe uses his hands on your thighs to pull them apart before you can. you can’t look at his face, it almost feels too weird, so you decide to stare at his dick instead, watching him roll the condom on with a puzzled face.

“what?” he’s been looking at your face the whole time.

“nothing. if i had known you were this big i would’ve asked a while ago-” rafe starts laughing, a real one this time, and you burst into giggles too.

“stop-” and he gets closer to you, lining himself up with your wet cunt, “-making me laugh. shut up.”

“you’ve said shut up like thirty times but you won’t stop talking eithe-oh!” he pushes in all at once, and all the breath leaves your lungs. you gasp instead, toes curling, feeling incredibly full, the disbelief that you’re full of rafe quickly fading away.

you should have known he’d be good at this, good enough to actually get you to shut up. he starts a slow pace, thrusting in and out and you look up to see your best friend’s face contorted with pleasure, heavy breaths in your ears and the scent of his cologne overwhelming everything. his chain dangles on your neck, tickling you, and you try to permanently engrain the feeling into your memory.

you attempt to stay quiet, though the slam of the headboard against the wall is a dead giveaway. rafe pushes all the way out and then all the way back in with another slam, and there’s nothing you can do but take it, clamping your hand over your mouth now.

he manhandles your legs into place, pressing them to your chest while he continues the exhausting pace. you can’t discern anything but rafe’s quiet groans and heavy breaths. you’ve just cum but it doesn’t take long for that hot feeling to wind up again in your stomach, toes curling and eyes getting watery. your moans are still muffled, but the way rafe’s looking at you is only making them get louder.

your bottom lip must be bleeding from the way your teeth have been abusing it. rafe moves your hand out of the way and leans in for a hot kiss, his tongue in your mouth and swallowing all of your noises.

with a final oh god, oh god, oh god, moaned into rafe’s mouth, you cum hard around his dick, eyes pressing shut and stray tears falling down, rafe’s lips not leaving yours.

you don’t know why—but you wrap your arms around his neck, keeping the kiss going. rafe pulls away for a moment to breathe and you open your eyes, staring up at him through wet lashes, licking your swollen lips, while he looks back down at you.

he leans in for a final kiss, groaning into your mouth while he spills into the condom, still thrusting in and out of your sore pussy.

rafe rolls off of you, resting on your sheets beside you. you try to catch your breath.

“you didn’t last very long.”

“and how long did it take ya to cum all over my fingers?”

“oh, whatever. where’s my shirt?”

“it’s my shirt,” rafe says back, finding the discarded clothing on the ground and tossing it on your chest. you sit up, sliding his shirt back on. rafe’s standing, pulling on his shorts.

“are you leaving?” you ask, and you regret it the second it comes out, quiet and soft like you want him to stay.

you do want him to stay, but you don’t want him to know that you do. it all feels very complicated and your thighs are aching, your throat dry.

“no.” he sits back down next to you, swinging an arm over your shoulder like he always does. you lean into his chest.

“you kissed me,” you say quietly. you’re glad your face is pressed into his side, you don’t think you could handle looking at his face right now. “and you were quiet. i didn’t expect that.”

“your parents are downstairs, remember?”

“oh. i forgot.” you realize after that you don’t want him to know he fucked you so hard you forgot where you were and who was home.

“is kissing off limits?” rafe asks, and you almost choke processing the sentence. things you never thought rafe would say to you.”

“no.. it was nice.” you pause, listening to the silence of the room and the thud of rafe’s chest in your ear. you’re no expert—though you fear you’re about to become one—but it seems faster than normal. “you want ice cream? or cookies? i made some yesterday.”

“no, kid. it’s fine.” you chew your cheek nervously. you want rafe to want to stay, not just because you asked.

“you can go.. if you need to.” you look up at him and then look back down when he meets your eyes.

“why? got nowhere else to be.”

“oh. okay.”

“turn the tv on. we’ll watch your stupid movie”

“really?” your face lights up, grabbing the remote on your nightstand. you open up the blanket at the foot of the bed, covering both of you while you try to find you’ve got mail. you go back to your position and lean against rafe’s warm body, and he presses a kiss to your forehead. it’s not unusual, he’s done it before, but you don’t miss the fact that he’s decided to do it now. you try to push away the warm feeling blooming in your chest.

“don’t ever make a joke about sleeping with kelce or top again.”

.☘︎ ݁˖

your tired muscles wake up to the sun pouring into your bedroom. the light shines on rafe’s still-asleep figure, but you knew it wouldn’t wake him up, nothing ever does. you don’t remember falling asleep, barely remember anything after rafe showing up.

and the part where you slept with your best friend.

a guilt-trip dangles on the edge, about to take over, when you push it away and focus on the text messages on your phone instead.

top: rafe can’t believe u bailed on cod. u better be dead in a ditch somewhere

kelce: maybe princess finally killed him

top: stop hanging out without us

kelce: top lets just pull up next time

you laugh, and rafe stirs at the sound. you give his arm a shove.

“you ditched playing video games for me? i’m so flattered, rafey.”

“shut up.” he grumbles. “go back to bed. s’too early for this shit.”

“it’s nine in the morning. and i have pilates in an hour.”

rafe turns over, and you can’t deny it’s nice to have him in your bed for once—it seems like you’re always sleeping at tannyhill.

“didn’t get enough exercise last night? you need more?”

you fake a yawn, covering your mouth.

“exercise? what exercise? i don’t remember that. you mean the boring sex?”

rafe sits up, facing you. you choke back a laugh.

“you wanna say that again?”

“uhh-”

“in fact, why don’t you try and get up? ten bucks says you can’t even walk to the door.”

“i can’t believe the two of us even fit on this bed with your gigantic ego-”

“don’t see you walking. m’waiting.” you toss one of your throw pillows at him.

“get out!”

“alright. i’ll say good morning to your parents on my way-”

“okay! wait, stay.”

“s’what i thought.”

“some way to say good morning,” you mumble, scrolling through your other messages—a text from your other friends about a party tomorrow and a reminder for your pilates class.

“you woke me up.”

“oh whatever. i was just surprised you skipped a video game for this. but i guess most boys would.”

“there’s not much i wouldn’t skip for you.” you smile at rafe, misunderstanding him.

“that’s so nice. are you saying i’m a great lay?” he rolls his eyes.

“i’m trying to- shut up. what’d they say?” he picks up his phone.

about twenty minutes later, after checking the hallway (and that too on wobbly legs, just like the smug idiot had predicted) rafe leaves. like always, he says he’ll see you later.

you fall on your bed and dwell on the fact that rafe kissed you last night. it’s hard to focus on anything else, and with every passing second, you think this whole thing was a worse and worse idea.

but he doesn’t seem to think that way. he seemed fine. he’s better at the no-strings-attached thing than you, and you don’t think he would have suggested it if he didn’t think you could handle it.

with that thought lingering, you get dressed for pilates and hope it’s easier to walk before you see the boys again. you find out that it’s really not.

after your class, you check your phone, finding messages from top and kelce. game night and pizza at kelce’s house. you’re invited, of course, but you shoot them a message saying you’re staying home with your parents instead.

the second you press send, rafe’s contact photo lights up your screen.

“rafe?” you answer it without even waiting.

“what, not comin’ tonight? you always come.”

“oh, um-” you pace around your room, trying to think of a lie on your feet. “mom and dad wanted to stay in. you know. game night.” the words feel stupid, though you hope he’ll believe it.

“okay. you gonna swing ‘round after?”

“no, probably not. um, i’ll see you tomorrow?”

“yeah, tomorrow. have fun, kid.”

“you too. tell them i say hi.”

the rest of your day flies by and it’s not long before you’re curling up in bed with a tub of ice cream. your parents went out to dinner with some friends, while you contemplated what the hell you were doing with your own friends.

you four always had a standing date on saturday mornings in the summer—snacks and a spin on the boat. if you don’t go, it’s going to be incredibly obvious something was going on with you.

you call topper while you pack your boat bag—grabbing the necessities the boys always completely forget about; spray sunscreen, an extra baseball cap, a book for you when you inevitably get bored of listening to them talk.

“what’s up?” top says, and you’ve made your way into the kitchen, pulling out fruit to wash and cut.

“what time are we going on the boat? and i’m bringing strawberries and mangoes, is that fine?” topper is the pickiest when it comes to the fruit—kelce and rafe will eat whatever you bring.

“uh, i think noon. call rafe, we’re taking the druthers today.” crap. that’s what you were trying to avoid. it feels crazy the second you think it—trying to avoid rafe. you need to get it together. acting like some love sick girl over your best friend feels like the stupidest thing you’ve ever tried to do. he must bring it out in you. “do you have any of those oranges? the little ones?”

“i’ll bring ‘em. listen, i need to get ready, do you know the time? i’ll just meet you there.” your self-realization is going to have to wait for another day.

“noon, yeah. i’ll text it.”

“thanks top.”

you start an internal monologue on repeat—stop being weird about it. he’s still your best friend. be normal. he is not your boyfriend. you repeat it, but still pick out the prettiest bikini you own, yellow gingham and held together entirely by straps you’ve tied into pretty bows. you throw on one of the boys’ button-ups that’s ended up in your closet somehow on top.

walking onto the pier, you hesitate in front of the druthers. you don’t hear any of the boys, and though nothing’s stopped you from getting on and making yourself comfortable, you wait for a second.

it’s like he knows. rafe steps out from the bridge, and takes one look at you, eyes flicking up and down your body and taking in the yellow fabric that’s barely covering anything, before offering you his hand to get on.

“hey.”

“hey.” you look around. “nice weather.”

“yeah.”

“kelce and top running late? he told me noon.”

“those two are always late.” he’s staring at you, and this time it becomes clear, that he’s looking at you the way a boy who has been inside of you looks at you.

“i packed mangoes. you liked them last time.”

“yeah, i did.”

“i just hope they’re sweet.”

“yeah. they probably are. sweet.” rafe keeps looking, and you turn around to set your bag down. “listen, kid-”

“it’s a great day. good weather.”

“you already said that.”

“oh.”

“would you stop and look at me?”

“no, um,” you start, emptying out your bag onto one of the seats. “sorry, i’m busy.” you feel rafe grab your shoulder, turning you around. he’s not as rough as he could be, like he usually is.

“you okay?” he asks, and you feel stupid.

“i’m fine.. are you okay?”

“yeah. but you’re actin’ weird.”

“well yeah, rafe. we slept together. it’s weird.”

“you were on board-”

“i was. i am,” you clarify. surprising even to yourself, you think you still are. “doesn’t make it not weird. imagine if you and kelce slept together. wouldn’t it be weird?” rafe’s face twists into a mixture of disgust and concern. “okay. bad example. sorry.”

“yeah. m’just saying, i wanna make sure you’re okay. but i don’t regret it if that’s what you’re afraid of. and nothin’ has to change.” hearing him say it makes you feel better. you repeat the words, tasting the feel of it on your tongue.

“right. nothing’s changed. you’re still rafe. i’m still me.”

“it doesn’t have to happen again, if you don’t want it to.” you stare up at him with crossed arms.

“why are you being so nice about it?”

“jeez, kid. what, you-you want me to be a dick ‘bout it? sounds like you’d prefer that.”

“no, just. it’s weird when you’re nice.” you look at him for a second before the two of you start laughing. “y’know what i mean.”

“alright. i’ll stop being nice.”

“thank you. now where are these two? i wanna read my book.”

“probably still sleepin’. played until-” rafe keeps talking, but you realize you’re only half paying attention. he takes his shirt off, and at the very sight of his chain sparkling in the sun, you realize you’re no better than the girls who chase after him. “what?”

“hm?” a little dazed, you look up from his abs to his face.

“you’re starin’.”

“oh. you think we have enough time before they show up?”

“time for what?” rafe stares at you while you stare at him. “oh.”

turns out he thought you did have enough time. you end up with your cheek pressed against the tan sofa in the cabin, body folded with your head down and ass up. rafe’s slamming into you from behind, and though it’s only the second time with him, you think there’s no pleasure in the world comparable.

from this angle he feels even bigger than yesterday. you feel tighter, or maybe it’s just the way your cunt is sucking him in, he thinks, thrusting in and out with his hands grabbing the fat of your ass, watching it bounce with every one of his motions. he has an urge to untie your bikini top, just so he can look at the expanse of the bare skin of your back, but he knows you’ll fuss if he does. he settles for shoving the thin yellow fabric of your bottoms to the side, yanking it so hard that you’re scared it’ll rip.

“be—oh—careful,” you get out in between moans, louder than the first time and louder still than he thought you’d be. he likes it more than he should. you already came once, but he wants to see if he can get another out of you.

“shut up,” rafe groans, eyes fixated on your perky ass, the one he’s stared at in hundreds of short dresses and tiny skirts, bikinis that he shouldn’t let you wear and panties he gets an eyeful of when you’re asleep in his bed. “jus’ take it-”

you keep moaning against the couch, head shoved in to muffle what you can, but it’s when you look back at him, turning your head to watch rafe slam into you with wet, lustful eyes, tired from how hard he had just made you cum, that he really can’t take it, finishing hard and fast while you let out pretty mewls that are still ringing in his ear.

he pulls out, adjusting your bikini bottoms to cover you up, though there’s visible wetness staining them. your inner thighs are shiny where your juices glisten. rafe has to tear his eyes away, you keep your legs clamped shut.

“you okay?” he asks, trying to catch his breath. you don’t speak, just nod. “c’mon.” rafe offers you a hand, again, and you accept, following him outside and into the sun, even though you’re so tired you could fall asleep where you were.

“thanks.” you say, wiping your neck of the sweat that has collected there. he watches you do it. “sorry, i don’t have a tip or anything. how about some fruit instead? call it even?” “shut up, kid. m’not a hooker, you fuckin’ weirdo.”

“no, of course not,” you gasp, like you’d never suggest such a thing. “the correct term is escort, rafe. it’s all very american gigolo.”

“you watch too many movies.” but you still hear him laugh when the two of you step onto the deck.

“what’s so funny?” you hear top’s voice, freezing up. you catch rafe’s eye, before looking away

“nothin’, man-” rafe starts, but you start talking over him.

“just debatin’ how long it would take you idiots to get ready. got enough gel there, top?” rafe and kelce laugh while topper narrows his eyes at you.

your days are on the boat are always fun—the boys steer while you enjoy the breeze and the sun. you pass the fruit around and read your book—another romance beach read, of course. this one’s about two best friends falling in love. you can’t find the will to keep reading.

you tune in a conversation about a party tonight.

“are we going?” you ask, looking expectantly at the three boys in front of you.

“yeah. why wouldn’t we?” kelce says. you shift your gaze to rafe, who gestures to your thighs with his eyes. you clamp your legs shut, flushing.

“fun. what time?”

.☘︎ ݁˖

finding a little hard to walk straight after your little tryst on the boat, you switch your heeled sandals for a pair of sneakers for tonight. you smooth out your pretty blue dress in the back of top’s jeep. him and kelce are in the front, you and rafe in the back, pulling up to whichever family that was off-island’s mansion for the evening. the music was blaring, audible from even down the street, with two boys carring a keg into the house while top parked.

“are they celebrating something?” you question, staring at the crowds of people inside.

“yeah. the fact that it’s saturday night,” kelce answers, and you shove the back of his head from the backseat.

you hear rafe and top talking about something, though you can’t make it out. yesterday you thought, dreading when the boys swung by your house to get you, that it would be awkward to sit next to rafe and act like nothing had happened. surprisingly after the conversation this morning, you find that it’s not. he leaned over to open the door for you to get in, asked you how your class was, did the things he always did.

topper’s an idiot for boosting his wheels, and you’d told him as much when he showed you guys for the first time. getting down is a nightmare, even more in your sore state (which you are attributing to the pilates and not the boy sitting next to you right now).

you turn to look at rafe again but he’s not there, and instead you see him in your window, opening the door and offering you a hand to get down. rafe’s probably helped you down a dozen times. this feels different, you admit to yourself, holding onto his hand to get down and keenly aware of his other hand hovering around your waist.

inside, the party is in full swing, one corner by the windows with billows of smoke and a group of boys in another corner mixing drinks.

the four of you end up like always—divided into half on opposite ends of a painted pong table from someone’s old frat house. some girl top’s been talking to makes her way over, hanging off his arm before long. rafe watches you toss the white ball, your nose scrunching up in concentration. you cheer when it goes in, turning to hug kelce. you’ve only had two cups but you’re getting tipsy already, he can tell.

“top. top!” rafe shouts over the music, but he’s too busy talking to the girl to notice.

“man, he’s clearly busy,” kelce says with a laugh.

“i agree. looks like that one’s for you, rafe.” you look at him with a giddy smile, leaning forward on the table, palms pressed flat. he wishes you wouldn’t—he can see down the front of your dress from this angle. you cheer when rafe chugs the cup of cheap beer.

he should make the next one just to get back at you, but he doesn’t want you to get too drunk. instead he misses, the ball falling right into kelce’s hands.

if you were sober, you’d roll your eyes—you’d recognize that rafe missed on purpose. he’s better at this than all of you combined.

“give me five,” rafe says to top, casting one more glance back at you and kelce before walking towards a group of people on the couches and fishing something out of his pocket.

he’s gone, at most, ten minutes, and returns to find kelce missing. his place is taken by some brunette boy, who is currently trying to show you the best way to toss the ball. he’s standing awful close, a hand on your shoulder, his gaze on your exposed skin while you stare at the red cups.

“who the fuck is this?” rafe barks, though with the music blasting, only topper can hear him.

“i dunno, kelce ran off with that chick he’s been hooking up with-” the white ping pong ball lands in the red cup closest to rafe. he hopes he doesn’t look up to see something that’s gonna piss him off, but it’s dashed in seconds—you hugging the stranger in glee that you made another shot.

he swings around the table, shooting a glare at the boy while putting himself in between the two of you. he faces the boy first.

“get lost.” the boy tries to say something, but rafe interrupts before he can get a word out. “get. lost.” you watch him scramble away, rafe turning to face you.

“c’mon. we’re done with pong.”

“but i made the last one!”

“i said we’re done. y’lucky i don’t take your ass home.”

“we just got here. why would you take me home?” you question.

for all the big talk, all the jokes and banter and emotions you’re trying to bury, you still don’t understand the simple truth known to everyone that’s ever met you and rafe—he’s never going to be happy seeing you with any boy besides himself.

“what’s wrong?” you question softly, looking up at him with big, confused, drunk eyes, not snarky like he thought you might be.

“no. just.. stop talkin’ to strangers, s’all.”

“but he was nice!” you yell over the music, picking up another cup from the table and taking a sip. you hate beer, but they took top’s jeep and not rafe’s truck, so there’s no spiked seltzer here for you.

“no he wasn’t.” he takes the cup from your hand, pouring half the beer out into another cup before shoving it back in your hand.

“yeah he was! don’t you want that? the sooner i find a nice guy we can stop all of this, right?” you look at him earnestly, before chugging the rest of your beer.

“alright, you’re cut off.”

the rest of the night goes by the same as all the others—kelce and top into a competition to see who can get more drunk, you tipsy enough to talk loudly about anything that comes to mind and rafe scaring away any guy who stares at you for too long. you stare at rafe’s back when he goes to sell, watching a pretty girl touch his arm when he’s counting the cash she’s handed him.

you look away since you feel the beer coming back up, anger bubbling. you focus on topper, trying to follow along with his nonsensical conversation about his ex-girlfriend.

“don’t worry,” kelce says, and you turn your gaze on him, confused. “he didn’t even look at her.”

“what?” but his eyes aren’t on you, glancing behind you. you turn, though you shouldn’t, looking at rafe, two girls laughing at something while he opens the little white packet for them. glancing at kelce, and then at top, who is keeled over on the sofa, nursing a half-empty bottle of tequila just by himself, you walk over to where rafe is.

“wait, don’t-” kelce calls out after you, but you don’t listen.

“rafe, i think top’s ready to go. are you?” you interrupt his conversation with the two girls, and though you despise the fact that you’re doing this, you realize kelce was right. he wasn’t even looking at them. you gesture at your two other best friends on the couch, kelce trying to yank the bottle from top’s grip.

“yeah, kid. c’mon, this place is dead anyways.” you smile, though you shouldn’t let rafe see it. no, your smile is for the girls. you feel an unparalled joy when rafe swings his arm around you, guiding you back to the couch.

you shouldn’t look back, but you do. the girls look mad and you feel happy.

this is fucked—the very thought sobers you. you shouldn’t be happy that those girls think there’s something between you and rafe, but you are.

rafe manhandles topper into standing up, while kelce turns to talk to you. he’s drunk, and it comes out like a laugh. you smile, thinking he’s going to make some joke about top and tequila.

“you’re just as toxic as he is. hah. and i thought rafe was bad-”

“what?” you ask, but rafe cuts you off before you can figure out what kelce means.

“kelce, it’s your job to make sure he doesn’t puke in the back.”

“man, why am i always on top watch-”

in the car, you pick the music while rafe drives. you notice he keeps an eye out in the backseat, with top’s head half out the window and kelce texting on his phone.

“did you sell a lot?” you ask. you’ve never really mentioned it before, so rafe didn’t expect it tonight.

kelce’s words linger in your head. if you weren’t sober before he said that, you certainly are now.

“enough. why?”

“just wondering. i saw you before we left, that’s all.” you look at the road ahead, listening to the quiet tune of the bryson tiller song you’d put on.

“you saw me?”

“with the pretty girl throwing herself at you? hard not to see.” you regret the words as soon as they leave your mouth—you sound bitter and angry, two things you truly are, but you don’t want rafe to know already.

“what, you jealous, kid?”

“why would i be jealous? you’re not my boyfriend.” it comes out louder than you expected, trying to talk over top and kelce’s voices in the backseat.

“no, m’not.”

you bite your cheek and stare out the window.

“not to interrupt, or anything, but i think top’s gonna puke-” you jolt when rafe slams on the brakes.

tannyhill is fifteen minutes from where the party was, but it takes fifty minutes to get back. rafe pulled over twice to let topper puke on the side of the road, so it’s three am before the four of you get back.

you want to go home—the alcohol in your system and unfinished conversation with rafe have left you feeling queasy too, but it’s three in the morning. top and kelce are too drunk to drive you, and you don’t want to ask rafe.

you decide that you don’t want to be alone with rafe either, changing into one of the shirts you’d brought from home and stupidly looking down realizing it’s one of rafe’s. did you own a single t-shirt that wasn’t from his closet? where had all of your clothes gone?

grumpy that you’re in his clothes, upset that he had pretty much admitted he wasn’t your boyfriend, and riddled with the assumption that he meant he would never be your boyfriend, you collect a pillow and one of the blankets from his bed, walking out the door when you hear rafe’s voice saying your name.

“where the hell are you goin’?” facing him, you stare at your feet.

“the couch.”

“when have you ever slept on the couch here?”

“i’m starting something new.”

“get in bed before i drag you there.” you groan, thumping both feet on the ground before stalking into the room. rafe exhales loudly, loud enough that you hear it, before muttering something under his breath and following you inside, closing the door.

you sit on the bed, but before you can think about what you’ve done, you bunch up a pillow in your hand.

“you-” you throw the pillow at rafe, which misses him completely. “suck!” the second thuds against his chest, before falling on the ground. you huff from your position on the bed.

rafe picks up both pillows, dropping them on the bed.

“what the hell was that?”

“this whole thing was a mistake.”

“it’s been two days.”

“well i’m an emotional fuck!”

“yeah, i can tell.” you pick up the pillow again, whacking rafe’s side with it.

“ugh! you can’t just-” your hands falter, dropping next to you while you look up at rafe through wet eyes. “-just say that us sleeping together is a good idea because you don’t want me with any other guys. what the fuck am i supposed to do with that?”

“i don’t know! you’re the fuckin’ clueless one. what’d you think that means?”

“stop! just tell me! stop making me think, i’m so drunk and everything is mental gymastics with you-”

“well stop throwin’ my own pillows at me!”

“you suck, rafe. all of this and you can’t just tell me whether you like me or not?”

in hindsight, you don’t know where the question came from. maybe a small part of you that wasn’t willfully ignorant suspected a long time ago that the way rafe acts towards you is more than just overprotective friendship. you had buried the thought the second it emerged—rafe cameron doesn’t have girlfriends, doesn’t do relationships. the rafe that’s been your best friend was your best friend for that very reason, because you weren’t in love with him.

or at least you thought you weren’t in love with him. and at least, he thought you weren’t in love with him.

the truth, you’re beginning to realize, watching rafe grab the pillow you’re about to hit him with out of your hands and set it down, is that rafe only acts the way he does with you, and no one else. the drinks you like in the back of his car, his shirts in your closet, the bed you share and all the time you two spend alone. you thought it was a great friendship, and maybe it was. but all along there’s been something bubbling underneath the surface, the feeling in the pit of your stomach when he started talking to that girl, how angry you get when you see him with any girl that’s not you.

you thought rafe’s a dick for giving you such a hard time about any boy you try to talk to. he is a dick, but you’re the bitch that can’t stand seeing him with another girl.

and as the thoughts rush through your head, rafe looks at you in his bed, in his shirt, and realizes the answer to your question is that there’s no one in the world he likes more than you.

“you should have told me ‘bout the emotional fuck part.”

“you should have just confessed.”

“nah, not really my thing.” he sits down on the bed next to you, and you stare up at blue eyes that are looking at you, a smile on his lips. “this whole thing was a bad idea.”

“it’s been two days,” you mock.

“yeah, well, we tried it.”

“do you regret it?” you hold your breath for the moment of truth.

“c’mon kid. yeah, i do. ‘cause i’m not letting you out of my sight after this. you’re dating me or no one at all.”

“so if we break up-”

“straight to the convent for you. don’t worry, i’ll send you a care package. strawberry seltzer and those porno books-”

“shut up.”

“you shut up. and get the fuck into bed. it’s late.”

“you don’t want one last emotional fuck? on your last day as a single man?” you tease, crawling under the sheets. “learn how to read a clock. it’s past midnight.”

“oh. whatever, you know what i mean.”

“i guess i can be convinced-” he leans in for a kiss, and you hold your breath waiting for it, when there’s a sharp knock on the door.

“guys. sorry to interrupt whatever the hell this is, but i think top needs to get his stomach pumped.”

2K notes · View notes

vanshoe · 21 days

Text

i'd crawl home to her

pairing: hades!geto suguru x persephone f!reader

word count: 10.8k

about: the god of the underworld brings his most valued prize home at the risk of tearing the realm itself apart.

contents: cw dark content - kidnapping, possessive leaning on yandere behavior, stockholm syndrome to a degree, lore accordant misogyny (ugh i know). this is a retelling of the hades and persephone myth, it is not exact to the prior iterations - creative liberties, etc. reader is quite naive but has her own personality and genuinely cares for suguru. piv sex, reader is referred to with feminine pet names, virginity loss. zeus gojo, hecate shoko. weird happy ending bc ofc this is something EYE wrote.

notes: i was personally asked to repost this and figured finishing the story and posting it full length would be the best way. this is the full and final version of what was formerly known as crawling. thank you for reading and i hope you enjoy it.

floral divider is thanks to @/saradika

Earth’s sun rises with you, Suguru concludes on his fourteenth morning outside his bleak domicile.

Perched high above the meadow you tend every morning, the sun rising higher in the sky with every step you take across soft green grass, he watches. The backlight drenches you until you’re a mere silhouette, hard even for his superhuman vision to make out.

He doesn’t need the sunlight to do anything but glow across every curve and dip of you - his mind can easily paint the rest of the picture.

You live behind his eyes every time he closes them.

He luxuriates in the feeling of shutting them to imagine you while he’s in this form, something inhuman that may belong among your trees and your blossoms. Something unlike who he really is.

Opening his eyes as he hears branches creak beneath where he rests, he readies himself to swoop into the landing you are approaching.

Sighing with each step, the gentle sweep of the hem of your dress across your feet tethers you back to your reality. The grass tickles the bottoms of your bare feet and you squint as you peer into the distance ahead, unable to make out more than vague shapes of flora.

A golden cage with crawling vines along the bars is still a cage, one to which your mother holds the only key. You are reminded of this impenetrable truth with every muffled step that grows quicker as you notice something in your clearing.

A bird, larger than any you’ve ever seen, rests atop the grass with its wing twisted at an unnatural angle. The sight makes you gasp and you begin to sprint, filled with concern. The dryads haven’t yet arrived to tend the meadow with you - you’re alone.

You’re unprotected.

You’re his.

A pathetic caw leaves the large bird’s beak as you approach. The sound is strangled and makes your heart squeeze, mind immediately reeling imagining the suffering this animal must be going through.

Despite being kept under lock and key, this meadow is your domain and nothing will hurt as long as you are here. You vowed long ago to make this so.

You sink to your knees beside the bird. Suguru sees the tips of your fingers before he sees anything else, the beady eyes of the body he’s inhabiting keeping him from taking in too much of you at once.

“You poor thing,” you speak without a trace of irony or false sympathy. Your voice is more beautiful than any melody he has overheard the dryads cast into the sky and relief washes over him as the sound. “What’s happened to you?”

He caws again, the sound stronger this time and you smile. Perhaps he’s feeling better, you ponder as his shift away from you and shut. His soul shutters with anticipation as you lean over him.

This bird is unlike any wildlife you’ve ever tended to in your lands, large and inky in color. You are more accustomed to robins or the occasional duck, things as gentle as the life you lead. Ducks don’t even have claws, Suguru thinks as you stroke a pattern across his beak with your index finger, suddenly too aware of his own talons in this form.

Those same talons twitch and you frown, moving from his beak to gently petting his head.

“Are you in any pain?”

The concern you hold for Suguru makes him feel a bit hazy, your mind too precious and concerned with helping him to notice the rapidly browning grass surrounding the two of you.

He eventually kills everything he touches, smothering the light out of every last brightened corner in his life. It makes him feel guilty knowing you’ll just be one more light to extinguish but he can’t allow this to continue.

This want he has for you - the need growing into a pit as endless as the one he alone casts souls into.

You are his.

A soft gasp leaves you as the once injured wing of the bird you sit next to appears to be healed untouched. No longer bent and dangling, the strength returning as the bird lifts his head. Fear paralyzes you when you recognize something distinctly human in the darkened eyes that glance up in your direction.

This is no bird of your lands.

Adrenaline rushes but you stay, watching the bird twitch as he begins to transform into something inexplicable before your eyes. Feathers give way to hair, a beak to a face. You draw your fingers back as wings become hands but they’re captured quickly between cool fingers much larger than yours.

Fear blankets your mind and you gape at Suguru as he transforms into a man - nude, bare to the sunlight. You can make out every defined plane muscle and scar, the sight as terrifying as it is alluring. You know all too well who has trapped you between his talons.

“Why are you here?”

Despite the terror in your widened eyes, desire flickers within them. Suguru notices you do not flinch or stray as he reaches out and caresses your jaw with his fingertips in the same pattern you were gently etching across his beak.

“For you.”

Almost as if you are no longer in control of your own body, you melt into his touch and your eyes grow heavy. His large palm cups your cheek and he gently pinches the soft round between his index finger and thumb.

He wishes you’d come willingly but he can’t be certain and will not leave room for error.

Your eyes flutter shut gently, your body slackening as the magic he used to coerce you to sleep takes hold. Bundling you against his bare chest, a victorious smile crosses his handsome features.

You are his, wrapped in his embrace, and he holds you as delicately as a fragile newborn as the ground shakes beneath the two of you.

“Let’s return home,” he mutters down at you knowing there will be no response. Your breathing is steady, little puffs of air leaving your barely open lips. He presses his palm against your cheek, your throat, your chest.

He resists the urge to map you out knowing he’ll have plenty of time to do so as soon as the two of you have settled in the underworld.

The God above answered when your mother cried out to the heavens and Earth herself the first evening you did not return to your mother.

Your routine has been the same for many of your living years - trudging back to your family estate with muddy feet and eyes you have to force open to stay awake through the evening meal you used to share with her. Days spent beneath the sun turning to evenings withering beneath another light altogether.

Satoru set his cerulean gaze on the lands below, the verdant rolling hills of Demeter's domain, and he knew without a second thought the encroacher who had been there. Brown grass in the shape of footprints led straight to your clearing - where he knew Suguru trapped you.

His need had become insatiable, a fear they’d all kept to themselves for far too long.

Lounging across an ornate chaise in the social room of Demeter’s estate, Satoru eyes her home carefully. Everything here is so polished, so prim. It’s a wonder she has ever let you get your hands dirty at all, her little blossom ripe to be plucked straight from her stem.

“Go to him,” Demeter begs the god with teary eyes, his snowy hair framing his unnervingly handsome face. “Please make him return her to me.”

Satoru chuckles and lifts a chalice to his lips, the two legged land nymphs and servants that also serve the woman across from him tittering anxiously. They’re lucky to be witnessing the handsome god in front of them, they’ve all remarked several times over. He sips and lets the taste of the richest wine this world has to offer drench his taste buds before smacking his lips appreciatively.

A lazy grin crosses his features which infuriates your mother.

“You know I can’t do that, Demeter,” he holds the chalice out to the waiting hands of a servant who graciously accepts with a measured smile. “I’m as unwelcome in his domain as he is in mine.”

Suguru simultaneously watches the conversation through a looking glass hanging on the wall of his quarters and you as you sleep, an enchanted rest he created with a spell he has not yet decided when to break.

This transition will be easier for you if you rest, he decided when he concocted the plan to bring you here in the first place. He rips his gaze away from the glass before him and wistfully gazes at your little form. Your soft breaths, your little hums and yawns. The way you shift against him when he joins you at your side, looking for warmth he cannot give.

He balls his fists and returns to his watching.

“He kidnapped my daughter!” Your mother shouts, back of her hand pressed to her forehead as an unimpressed Satoru raises his brow unenthusiastically. “Do you have proof?”

Suguru can’t help but smirk, shaking his head at his old friend. He wishes things could’ve been different between them but Satoru belonged amongst the clouds, a god and friend to all. He finds himself exactly where he belongs - in the darkness below, the unknown depths at which mortal life ends and everything else begins.

His attention shifts as you do in his bed, little mutters spilling from your lips in a rapid enough pace he grows concerned and stands over the edge. His hair is so long it nearly graces the edge of the bundled blankets below him and he listens to your soft voice intently, as if nothing else matters. As if he weren’t just eavesdropping a mother’s desperate plea for the safe return of her child.

“Where am I?”

Suguru believes he can make out the words spilling from your lips and your eyes flutter open. He sinks to his knees beside you, a large hand cupping your cheek. He cannot tell if you are unafraid or just too unaware to shrink at his touch. I’ll take my chances, he thinks as he grabs your other hand with his free one.

“You’re home and safe, my treasure.”

Looking around the dimly lit room, your brow furrows and he softens at the sight. You delight him, in your soft and beautiful glory, and he wants you so badly it’s going to consume him. It already has.

Nodding at his words, your eyes begin to focus and you feel hands upon you. You aren’t sure how long you’ve been sleeping, it could be hours or months, but you feel rested and whole. Your fingers do not hurt nor are they blistered, your feet are warm and dry.

“Are you…him?”

You ask and Suguru leans further onto the bed until his chest is pressed against the blankets, his face resting against the bundle of them directly over your stomach and chest. He shakes his head gently, still cupping your face. He uses his hold to point your chin downward so that your eyes meet his.

“Who?”

A gentle sigh escapes you and you lean into his touch, head heavy with fatigue. You are still not completely aware of your surroundings but you can think back to the times as a child your mother warned you of a man who offered nothing but darkness.

“You are the light of this world, my child.” She would warn you as you sat upon her lap and let her brush and manipulate her hair into the style she liked best. “Don’t ever let darkness consume you. Do not let him reach you.”

You giggle softly and your sleepy gaze dances over the handsome face of the man next to you. Angular and sharp, yet something distinctly and indescribably boyish lives inside of his eyes. Perhaps it's an internal softness, a fondness for you, turning outward.

“The God of the Underworld,” you whisper and he feels your palm pressed against his where he holds your other hand. “You’re Suguru, aren’t you?”

For a moment, he wonders how far a lie could take him. He could keep you here in his quarters forever, never revealing himself as anything more than a concerned traveler that found you passed out in the meadow. He could lie. He could transform himself again just to eliminate all risk of you leaving.

He could chain you to the bed. He could keep you here, never to let the sun’s rays grace your skin again. He could pluck those beautiful butterfly wings straight from your soul and cage you.

Instead he shakes his head and offers a small smile.

“You’re right, it’s me.”

You laugh again, still groggy and he wonders silently what you find so funny until he hears the raised voice of your mother from the screen behind him once more.

“How could you even insinuate my daughter would leave with a beast like that?” She shouts, snotty sniffles punctuating her words. “A man so vile you cast him out yourself, Satoru, and yet you allow the most delicate thing on this planet to be sullied by his hand.”

Suguru shakes his head and turns his attention back to you, watching as you glance across the room to make sense of your surroundings. How are you so trusting?

“It’s a little dark here.”

He nods, eyeing the sconces on the walls for a moment before saying a name you can’t quite make out in your state. A servant enters the room and he asks that they turn a small knob on each of the fixtures and they do so with a nod, exiting as quickly as they entered the room. The light is still far dimmer than the sunlight you are used to but it helps you further examine the features of the man next to you.

“Thank you,” you whisper as your eyes flutter shut again, the magic taking its hold over you as Suguru grasps your hand tightly between his. He needs to break the spell completely but he will let you rest, he reasons as you gently fall back into a deep sleep. It pains him to break contact with you, letting go of your hand but keeping your cheek cupped in his palm until he feels satisfied.

Your mother continues to shout behind him. His interest is only piqued when Satoru speaks, turning his head to glance over his shoulder.

“I will see if I can speak with him, Demeter. You rest until then. Looks like you need it.”

Suguru freezes in place, wondering exactly what his old friend has planned. Perhaps it’s a deterrent from further outbursts from the goddess screeching at him. Reluctantly, he lets you go and rises to his feet and rushes toward the door where one of his most trusted servants is posted outside.

Pulling the door open, he peaks around the corner and the woman in waiting gazes at him expectantly.

“Yes, my lord?”

Suguru offers a measured glance, dark hair falling over his shoulder as he leans.

“Please prepare a raven, I have a letter to send.”

Things have been tense since your arrival and Demeter's angry cry to the other gods for your return. Even the lowest of his servants feels strange seeing a sunbeam trailing through the corridors, each of them surprised at how easily you seem to have taken to the human embodiment of darkness itself, although they’d never speak the thought aloud. It’s as if you’re hiding your fear of him, no alarm despite the fact he eyes you hungrily every time your back is turned.

“My lord?”

The unlucky servant currently standing in his proximity knew the look as soon as he saw it, glancing at the back of your head as if he could look directly through your skull and into your thoughts. The only wish of the God of the Underworld would be to find himself in your thoughts as you are in his.

Despite how easily he loses himself in observing you, Suguru’s brows raise as he shifts his attention from where you gather your skirt in your hands, carefully appraising his estate to the servant approaching him gingerly. Their posture is slumped with anxiety, shoulders rounded forward.

“You have a visitor.”

Raised brows furrow, the skin between pinching. Folding his arms over his chest, the god lets a sigh he’s unable to stifle escape and turns his back to you reluctantly. It’s not that he doesn’t trust you, it’s just that he would rather not leave any of this up to chance. He risked so much bringing you here - why would he leave anything up to chance when fate has deemed it so that you are to be together?

Glancing over his shoulder to where you stand, still curiously staring at the vines that crawl along the columns that make up the structure of the property. The sidelong glance shows him that you are still within an arm's reach and he turns his attention toward the servant.

“Who is it?”

The servant shakes their head and the pinched skin between his eyebrows further puckers as a frown crawls across his features. The words don’t have his usual bite, despite the frustration on his face, and the servant feels as though they can speak until they see you turn toward Geto’s back from over his shoulder.

“Excuse me, Lord Geto?”

Suguru’s attention is pulled away immediately when he hears your voice from a few feet away, your hands grazing the petals of flowers growing despite this unnatural habitat. The ground is dark and cold, no light to warm the soil, yet yellow daffodils spring through the near black dirt.

“What is it, my treasure?”

In an instant he is by your side, gazing down at the yellow petals that dot the otherwise dark ground. The servants hadn’t mentioned to him that flowers were beginning to bloom again, instead he noticed it now, watching you bend at the waist to grasp delicate yellow petals between your thumb and index finger.

“Have these always grown here?” Nodding his head at your question, his long hair fans against his chest and you gaze up at him through your lashes curiously. “Yes but it has been a long time since they’ve bloomed.”

Despite knowing he took you against your will, it’s difficult for you to find contempt for the man given how kindly he has treated you. He has given you a space to call your own and expects only your companionship in return. No tilling fields, no guarding the dryads, simply being allowed to exist for the first time in your life without paying a toll to do so.

This is a stark contrast to the life you were plucked from - working sunrise to sunset to appease your unappeasable mother.

If you miss your home, you haven’t told him so yet. The thought has crossed his mind that you are only playing to his sensibilities, trying to outsmart an old god with your clever youthful ways, but he sees the genuine warmth in your smile when it appears. Aimed at servants, even the damned begging for his forgiveness, your compassionate nature shines through.

Despite the fact this is not a place meant for one as beautiful as you, he only hopes there will come a time when you his home as a place the two of you are meant to share. The way you eye the daffodils only allows hope to grow inside of him, dark eyes drinking in the sight of you as you pluck the yellow flower from its stem and hold it in his direction with an uncertain smile.

“You won’t be able to keep her here for much longer, Suguru.”

Another voice draws his attention from you and he clenches his jaw, molars grinding together so roughly the joints begin to ache. Shoko, he thinks. Fuck. You stand and gasp, recognizing the woman yourself although you cannot begin to fathom what this visit could mean for you.

“Good to see you, old friend.” The Goddess of Magic pats his shoulder as she breezes past him to your side, chocolate colored hair parted to expose her face.

You can recall seeing it numerous times throughout your childhood, attending feasts at your mothers’ home on more than one occasion. She’s as beautiful as she is powerful and you can hardly hide your confusion wondering why she would be here, extending a hand in your direction.

Suguru looms from over your other shoulder, eyes practically blazing as he looks toward the scene unfolding in front of him. She’d come to take you and he simply would not allow it, stepping closer until he stands directly behind you and braces a hand on your shoulder.

“What business do you have here, Shoko?”

She laughs at his informality and shakes her head, grasping your hand for a moment before dropping it. Looking between them, you swallow thickly and she sighs watching your eyes immediately look upward at Suguru, looking for answers.

He looks back down at you in the way one may view a treasured pet. She realizes in that moment, as Satoru had warned her, his obsession had won and disrupted the careful balance of the heavens.

“My business is currently gazing up at you as if she’s afraid to look away, my lord.”

The words strike you between the ribs and you quickly avert your gaze, fixing it on the single flower in your hand. Anger practically pours off of Suguru as he looks over his shoulder at the servant still waiting and nods them over to where the three of you stand.

“Please return her to her quarters,” he commands and you scoff in protest. Eyes wide, you feel him gently push you in the direction of the servant. Without thinking, you press your heels into the ground you stand on and turn to face him.

“I believe I should be present to find out my own fate.”

The servant gasps bearing witness to your first act of defiance since your arrival. You wait for a flash of anger to cross the Lord of the Underworld’s face but it never comes, a fond smile the sight you see instead.

“Your fate has already been decided.” The finality in his tone makes you feel captured, mirroring the emotions that swirled through your mind on the day he took you. “You needn’t worry about all of this.”

Lifting his hand from your shoulder, he pets your hair gently before giving you another gentle push in the direction of the waiting servant. This time, you are too stunned to argue and you’re whisked away in an instant. Left only to glance over your shoulder at him, you feel hot tears spill out of the corners of your eyes but you find it difficult to explain why.

Geto’s gaze follows you until you are back inside of the estate and out of his view completely, the goddess staring at him expectantly in a means to end his lovesick antics. It’s beneath him to act like this, as if he’s a parched man and you are a cool stream.

“Are you aware that her mother is prepared to tip the realms upside down if it means she’ll be returned?”

Shoko doesn’t bother to hide the judgment dripping from every word and he rolls his eyes in response, arms folded over his chest. It’s always a treat to see her longtime friend act as if he were young again, petulantly sulking because his favorite toy needs to be put back in her box.

“Let her return, Suguru.”

He says nothing, his friend turning to him with an unimpressed glance.

“No young goddess is worth war. I assumed you would’ve figured that out by now.”

He decided long ago that you are worth ripping this realm apart for.

Weeks have passed since the last time you graced Suguru with your presence.

Shoko's visit created unexpected tension between the two of you and he wonders what he could have done to upset you enough that you have completely frozen him out while he takes long strides through the courtyard, eyes falling to the ground below him to see once blooming yellow flowers droop sadly.

They need you just as badly as he does.

"Please call for her again," he mutters to the servant that walks with their head pointed downward to his left. "Explain that is an order and no longer an invitation."

Suguru's discerning gaze doesn't leave the ground but he hears the footfalls that tell him his orders will be fulfilled without question, as expected.

Upon bringing you here, he decided he'd use the gentle approach with you. No reprimand, no demands, just gentle redirection and letting you come out of your shell at your own pace. Those first few weeks were blissful, you'd wait outside his chamber door until he arose to walk along the grounds with you. You refused to touch him, uncertain of where boundaries lie, but you remained curious enough that occasionally your arm would brush against his.

He'd have to claim other duties needed attending to get away from the near suffocating rush of blood from his head to his cock, length stiff and uncomfortable beneath his robes.

Part of him misses that feeling, the rush and flutter of what he has justified in his own mind as love. It certainly must be, he reasons, given the way he has miserably through his own kingdom for weeks while you've refused meals and visitors. Even damning has become uninteresting without the promise of the sun's radiant light across his face once the dirty work is done. You are his sun, his world, his everything.

Why don't you feel the same about him?

A sickening feeling settles in his gut as he wonders if you are communicating with your mother behind his back. Perhaps Shoko's visit brought you the means to do so, a plan to run and hide and stay away. His fist clenches at the thought and he clears his throat, an uncomfortable thickness coating his tongue. That is a possibility he will not, cannot, allow.

Footfalls draw his attention upward and he notices you walking alongside the servant he sent to fetch you. The look on your face is unreadable, you think, but he plucks you out like a ripe little pomegranate with little effort.

You're throwing a fit as a young goddess does. You're old enough to know better, an adult, but young enough not to care and looking the Lord of the Underworld in his face with a pout makes a feline smile spread across his face.

He's so handsome you almost stop in your tracks but you choose to avert your gaze instead, pretending dying vegetation has captured your attention for the first time in days. Suguru chuckles at your insolence, the dangerous man as unintimidated as one can be.

"She rises," he says flatly and he can almost see your shoulders deflate as you continue to refuse to meet his eyes. "Come, come. Let's discuss what's bothering you."

The servant leads you to his side before being dismissed with a wag of his head and you glance at him out of the corner of your eye.

He's everything you remembered seeing a few weeks ago but you cannot shake the way that his dismissal on the day of your goddess visitor upset you. You believed he saw you as more than a pawn, a person rather than a vague outline for his own desires, but you began to question his intentions that day and have ever since.

"Are you happy here?"

The question makes you turn your face toward him, pout falling. Never in your life have you been asked to consider your own happiness.

In your realm, your happiness is directly tied to how happy you make your mother. How hard you work, how harmonious your meadows are, how productive you can be. You struggle to recall the last time anyone besides the dryad, who you technically had and have dominion over, bothered to ask you about yourself.

The act leaves you speechless, his face pointed downward in your direction. You dare to glance up at him and the elegant slope of his nose, his dark eyes narrowed but radiating a warmth you never imagined a man enshrouded in such darkness down to the cape of hair caressing his shoulders would be capable of.

Moving closer to him, you let your arm brush against the sleeve of his robe and he attempts to keep his face stoic despite the sheer gift of your touch. He must keep his cards close to his chest in case you've found a way out - he cannot afford to spare any vulnerability.

"I think that I could be, my lord."

You're choosing your words carefully and he knows it. He watches as you swallow and your face twists, bottom lip quivering. Despite his better judgement he reaches out for you, cupping your soft cheeks between his cool hands. You don't attempt to dodge him or stray, meeting his eyes.

"If I wanted to be forced to meet demands, though, I would have already returned home."

He knows all too well the demands of which you speak, his years spent watching you from below giving him knowledge of the fact you've never been happy locked away while your mother holds the key to your freedom.

"I understand," he starts, dropping his grip on your face and bringing his hands to his sides. It's not that he does not wish to give you the freedom you desire, it's that he cannot do so and please his own desires as well. "Do you wish to return home?"

He asks and you shake your head quickly, firm in your decision to remain here despite things feeling uneasy with Suguru. Locking yourself in your room and spending all of your time alone is better than what awaits you above, the wrath of your mother promising you'll be working in the fields for the rest of your life.

"Lady Shoko promised me safe passage if I wanted to return but I would prefer to stay here if you will allow it."

That smile crosses his face once again and you can't help but mirror it, cheeks heating knowing it's meant for you. In the time the two of you have spent together you can't seem to recall a single time you've seen him smile, much less like that, at anyone else and it sends a swarm of butterflies drifting through your stomach and chest.

"Of course, my treasure," he reaches up to cup your face once again and you gingerly lean into the kind touch, cheek rubbing against the heel of his palm. "As I've told you, this is your home."

Your home. Not his domain, not a place he's graciously allowing you to take residence until he decides his plans for you.

Nodding between his hands, you offer a smile of your own that fades as his face suddenly turns serious.

"This is your home but all homes have rules," he reminds and you nod, eyes wide. His rules cannot be any more confining than the ones you previously dwelled under.

"You are not to contact Lady Shoko without informing me first, understood?"

Uncertainty dances across your face and he tightens his grip on your cheeks for a moment, dipping his head so that your noses nearly touch.

"It's for your safety only," he comforts, spurred on by the way your posture has tensed as you consider what he's saying. "We cannot trust she won't inform your mother and she won't drag you back with her by your hair."

Doubt falls away from your face at mention of your mother and it takes all of his willpower to keep himself from smirking at how quickly you give in at the mere mention of what you left in the first place. Nodding, you accept his words without question and he's reminded of why he's so terribly fond of you in the first place.

"I understand," you mutter, mirroring his previous words to you and the corner of his mouth lifts in a smirk as he dips his head low enough that your noses do touch this time, the tip of his brushing gently against yours.

"I'll pay any cost to keep you safe and that's why I had you sent away during my conversation with Lady Shoko," he apologizes and you believe he's earnest given the way he looks down through heavily lidded and lashed eyes. "I won't make that mistake again. You do deserve to decide your own fate."

He keeps the fact your fate has long been decided to himself, the illusion of choice more important than actually having choice itself. You smile sweetly, nodding between his palms, making your noses brush once again.

"Thank you, Lord Geto."

He shakes his head, backing away from you. The smile on your face dims with the loss of him so close and you send a message to your fingertips to stay at your side - you haven't been given permission to touch him as badly as you want to.

It's isn't the first time you've considered how he'd feel between your palms. Would he be cool to the touch, as his own hands are? Would he let you explore each divot and crease of his body, your eyes roving and your imagination doing the same? Would he allow you to kiss him, lips brushing against lips, noses brushing once again?

Heat you feel fearful of blooms in your gut and you look away, cheeks warm. You hope he can't tell what you're thinking as you wait for him to respond.

"Suguru," he corrects. "I'm always Suguru to you."

He swears he sees the yellow daffodils at his feet spring to life with the warmth of your gaze when you avert your eyes from him to the ground, girlish embarrassment keeping you from looking a god in the eye. Chuckling, he reaches for you again and pulls your face toward him, pressing his cool lips against your forehead.

You gasp and he drops his hand, squeezing yours that lies at your side before turning to leave but not before tossing another glance in your direction over his shoulder.

"Let's do this again soon. I've missed it terribly."

You nod a response, too shaken to speak.

"What do you bring before me?"

Suguru never looks more grand than when he sits on this throne of bone, the picture of repose with his legs spread wide enough that his robes fall between them. His arms rest on either side of the chair, generally, but right now he rests his chin between the thumb and finger of one hand watching while his servants bring forth another soul for his judgement.

You watch from your own spot in the crowd, flanked by guards, simultaneously curious and horrified at how easy this is for him. He is judgement and you simply get to witness the process of life created above being squandered down below due to its own misdeeds.

He has been doing it for a long, long time, you remind yourself if only to quell the way your stomach turns as he denies another lost soul passage.

The job he's performing isn't entirely unlike yours - the ability to bring forth life, even if it is just simple vegetation and flora, a gift you were born with. Flowers bloom where you walk, trees grow leaves to shield you from the sun. You're the sole reason little yellow daffodils have once again sprung up across the grounds, the servants marveling at life dwelling the halls of the otherwise dismal realm.

"My lady?"

Your eyes flit from where the man you are so enraptured by sits to your left, one of his servants kneeling at your side. You greet them with a smile and they shrink slightly, uncertain of how to react to the unweighted offering. A smile means something down here and usually it isn't anything good, a lesson you haven't yet had to learn given the way the Lord of the Underworld reciprocates the sunny glances you give him.

"Lord Geto has asked that you join him in his chambers momentarily."

That isn't what you were expecting to be told and it must show on your face, smile falling into a small "o" shape as you look down at your unimpressive robes. You took care to look nice today, of course, but you don't feel as though you should appear before him looking like this.

"I'll escort you," the servant offers and you nod, still uncertain of what will be happening behind the heavy, closed doors when he has you alone.

The two of you haven't truly been alone until this point. There's always a servant, a courier, a guest. You aren't sure one can ever be truly alone in a place like this that dwells with the damned but you rise to your feet anyway, bowing your head as you walk through the crowd and toward the corridor that leads to your destination.

His chambers are empty when you arrive but you are ushered through the doors anyway, jumping as they shut with a heavy slam behind you.

Just like that, you are left to your own devices.

The already cavernous space seems even larger when you're standing in it, eyes darting from the walls to the ceiling to the bed itself. You remember, vaguely, spending time there. You can almost recall the way the linens felt against your skin, cool and comforting. You know he touched you then, held your hands and your whimpering form if you'd wake up in the night disoriented and fearful.

It couldn't have been more than months ago but it feels like a lifetime, you're a different woman than you were the first time you rested beneath those sheets but you will always remember his kindness.

Gingerly, you step out of your spot and begin to pace around the room with your hands clasped behind your back. Your footsteps fade into background noise as you look around and wonder when he will join you, still feeling anxious about why he called you there in the first place.

Part of you hopes he will finally kiss you in the privacy of his chambers. That he'll finally do what you've felt he's on the precipice of doing for weeks, gentle brushes of your hand and his body against yours sending you reeling and running back to your own quarters to catch your breath.

Without noticing, your fingers flit to your lower lip and you rub it gently, imagining what it would be like to be kissed by a man for the first time. This is no mere man, though, this is a god.

You want to be kissed by a god.

Giddiness makes you giggle to yourself, your fingertips still rubbing an idle pattern across your lower lip as the door opens behind you. Dropping your hands to your sides, you turn toward the open doors with a smile as Suguru steps into the room.

He smiles at the sight of you too and your palms bead with sweat as he approaches you, towering a head above your own and tilts his head to the side.

"Do you remember the last time you were in here?"

Despite recalling the fuzzy outlines of what occurred during the weeks you were too tired to move just moments ago, you shake your head. You'd like to hear own retelling of the events if he'd be generous enough give it to you. He chuckles and brings his hands to your biceps, holding them gently.

"You slept for weeks," he reminds, smile still spread across his features. You don't have to know his own magic is the reason that you slept and he has no intention of informing you of such. "I sat by the bed and kept watch, I wanted to make sure personally no harm would come to you."

It's romantic, you think, the way that he cares for me.

It can't simply be the thrill of being away from home any longer that makes your stomach flutter in his presence. It isn't the forbidden fun of doing something you know your mother would hate, frolicking in a realm that doesn't belong to her at the side of a man with more power than you can imagine.

You are feeling something dangerously real and it emboldens you to bend your arms upward and grasp his wrists in your palms. His smile dims into a sultry smirk and you return it with a moon-eyed look of your own.

"I wish I remembered more about it," you mumble. His hands slide from your arms toward your face and he gently rests them on either side of your neck, thumbs resting on the delicate column of your throat.

"We have plenty of time to make memories you do remember in here," he offers and you giggle nervously. "That's not why I asked you here, though."

Your smile dims as you look at him curiously, hands still wrapped around his wrists. His smirk falls and his face becomes unreadable, eyes darkening.

"Do you believe me a monster after witnessing my work?"

Those words aren't what you were expecting to hear following his prior ones but you shake your head with urgency, tightening your hold on his wrists.

"Of course not, Suguru," you let his name slip past your lips and he squeezes the sides of your neck in response. Your eyes flutter and you stutter. "W-we all have jobs we must do even if they're ugly."

He nods once.

"I knew you'd understand."

Nothing further is elaborated but you don't mind, basking in his praise of you while watching him carefully. You look over his lips, his cheekbones, his dark eyebrows that seem knit together in concern.

"Is something the matter?"

Your voice is delicate when you ask, sweet a spring breeze it has been far too long he's felt caress his skin, and he chuckles darkly.

"I've been called away to meet with your mother and Lord Gojo."

Frozen, your eyes widen and he moves to soothe you, pulling you into his chest and pressing your cheek against his robes. Your arms fall to your sides but you move to wrap them around his waist instead, burying your face and inhaling the sharp, clean scent of him.

He smells nothing like the death you've experienced in the meadows, a bird or a faun, at times an unfortunate wanderer. He carries none of the smell of decay or ruin. Not of the rot of dead flowers, earthy and pungent enough you have to turn your head away to clear your nostrils.

Just clean, simple, pure. You inhale and savor.

"They haven't asked that you accompany me and I am making no plans to bring you."

This should concern her, he thinks. Your fate is once again being decided without your presence but you don't seem nearly as offended this time as you were the last.

"I'd rather stay here, if that's alright," you mumble against his chest and he squeezes you. This is the answer he desired, perhaps even expected, but it delights him. You made it there on your own without any gentle direction.

"Of course it is," his big hands rub your back as he soothes you. "I'll ensure you're taken care of while I'm away. You will want for nothing, I promise."

His assurances settle in your chest warmly and you unbury your face from his robes, looking up. Without thinking, you crane your neck as long as it will stretch and stand on your tip toes, pressing your lips against his chastely.

The last thing he expected was for you to be this bold but he presses his lips against yours in return nevertheless. The kiss is merely a peck, a rubbing of skin on skin instead of the tongue and teeth and saliva he'd love to share with you, but it's a message. Return home safe dances across his lips sure as your soft skin grazes them and he misses the feeling as soon as you step down, feet flat on the ground below.

Smiling down at you, he presses his lips against your forehead the same way he always does when he's about to take his leave and you deflate almost visibly knowing this means the two of you will be separated for an unknown amount of time.

"No harm will come to you nor will any decision be made without you present, understand?"

He's making a promise he can't keep yet you nod, eyes searching his face for any inkling of what could be coming.

"I must go immediately but I will return to you as soon as I'm able."

You sigh, the sound light as air, and he chuckles despite himself. Holding you for a moment longer, he kisses your forehead one final time before creating space between the two of you. You watch him head toward the door with a frown, lips still tingling with the touch of a god.

"You can stay here until I return," he mentions breezily as if the two of you are discussing meal plans and not the potential of violence that awaits him in the earthen realm. "These quarters are your own now."

You nod, looking around.

"I'll see you soon."

He exits the doors in a rush, muttering under his breath while shutting them tightly behind him. The small army he has requested to flank the doors while he's gone approaches him, standing at rest while they await their orders.

"She is not to leave this room except to take meals or explore the grounds. At least four of you must remain with her at all times."

The guards nod in unison at his orders knowing their options are obey or die and you stand blissfully unaware on the other side of the door of the fact you've just been locked into a cell until he can figure out how to keep you here permanently.

"We can't keep going this long between seeing one another, Suguru."

Geto hums unenthusiastically, stomping through the entry of your mother's sprawling estate while Lord Gojo joins him at his side, jovially sipping from the same chalice that has remained full for his entire stay on the grounds. He's certain the nymphs utterly dote on his old friend, tittering over his pretty eyes and hair, the same way everyone does.

"If it were up to me we would not meet at all, Satoru, but I appreciate your warm welcome."

Gojo clutches his chest with his free hand and cackles, tipping his head back as he matches Geto's pace with ease. The sunlight that pours into the open marble halls burns the darkened eyes of the man who was summoned here for no reason other than to be threatened and he finds his patience thinning with every word he is being forced to listen to.

"You wound me, old friend. Have you forgotten how much fun we used to have?"

Suguru snorts.

"Unfortunately, no."

They did have fun at one point in time before a war and their responsibilities turned a friendship into something uneasy - a constant power play between the man gifted with the divine dominion over everyone and everything and the man doomed to herd them after they've done their earthly wrongs. It hardly seemed fair but as you said, sometimes jobs must be done no matter how ugly they are.

"Well, if it's any consolation, I do not blame you for your misdeeds in regards to the young goddess. She is very pretty."

The mention of you makes Suguru bristle and the other god just shrugs, chuckling as he sips more wine and the two of them finally approach where your mother rests among her nymphs with her arms folded over her chest. If looks could kill, the Lord of the Underworld would surely find himself one of the damned.

"Nice of you to join us, Lord Geto. Finally able to carve enough time out of your schedule of torturing my daughter to show up?"

He offers a polite bow of his head, refusing to speak any further. A servant offers him wine and he refuses, raising a palm.

"So now you refuse an offering of wine? You truly have no sense, that's one thing about you that is perpetually true."

Satoru chuckles at his side, amused by your mother's undressing of the fellow god before her, and he recalls just how long all of you have known each other. Since you were young gods and goddesses, much like you who hasn't seemed to realize you are his captive and not his prize as he keeps insinuating.

"My demands are simple so I will not keep you for any longer than I must," your mother starts and Suguru's eyes flick upward to examine her. The two of you resemble each other enough that it's striking but you lack her venom, something he's grateful for having been bit by the snake more than once so to speak. "My daughter will be returned to me by next sunset and there will be no harm to you or your realm."

Finally, the man breaks his silence and he shakes his head with a chuckle, raven colored mane fanning around him with each movement.

"And if I refuse?"

Your mother chuckles in like, leaning forward in her sitting position. A man is smart enoguh to know when he's about to be bitten again so he takes a few steps backward.

For being a gentle Goddess of the Harvest, she sure is rotten.

"Then there will be repercussions."

He nods.

"She's happy where she's at. Come take her if you'd like to try."

Moving to turn on his heel and exit, he's stopped by a hand on his shoulder. He knows it belongs to Satoru and he sighs, tensing his shoulders to shrug him off to no avail.

"Now don't be hasty, Suguru. There is a lot at stake here."

The only thing he can think of is what's at stake being you. He could agree, send you back to this realm to pick and grow and dig until your fingers bleed. He could watch you as he has for all these years, cold and alone wondering when he'd have the opportunity to make you his own.

"If there's so much at stake, come claim what you desire so badly."

Satoru drops his hand and turns his head to look at Demeter, shrugging. His friend takes his leave, exiting through the corridor he just entered through

"There's your answer," he sniffs. "I did all I could."

If death himself is willing to die for you, there isn't much more than Satoru can do besides sit back and wonder what about you has become so enchanting to the man he'd risk it all for another taste of his little prisoner.

It has only been days since the last time you saw Suguru but you grow restless within his chambers despite the comfort they bring you.

You snuggle into his bedding, the familiar scent of him bringing only temporary ease to the pain in your heart his departure has brought, and wonder how his meeting is going but your mind drifts to things far less worrisome than if you'll be forced to return home or not.

Oddly enough, your mind settles on thinking about the man that Geto mentioned before his departure.

Lord Gojo is someone you've met a few times and you've always found him to be jovial if not a bit grating at times, flirting with the nymphs and servants without a care in the world despite his massive power. You take a moment to consider the differences between the two men, one wearing his power like a halo and the other like a noose.

You can't help but wonder if it's a difference in who they are in their hearts that led them to such opposing views of their power, perhaps even the world at large. You make a note to ask Suguru more when he returns, stretching your legs beneath the blankets over them with a frown.

The chamber doors open and you sit up, smiling as Suguru enters but your face falls noticing the droll look across his. You don't move to further cover yourself, allowing him see your bare flesh in person for the first time but the view doesn't spur the look off of his face.

"My treasure," he starts before sinking to his knees at the side of the bed. "You need to listen to everything I'm saying, okay?"

You remember this sight all too well, big hands capturing one of your own but you're grateful to be cognizant this time. He allows himself the luxury of one moment to look over you - your soft skin, your pebbled nipples topping perfect breasts, the delicate divot of your bellybutton - but the moment is fleeting as he meets your eyes and you understand the situation must be serious.

"I am willing to send the realm into disarray to keep you but I have to know that you want to be here with me and nowhere else."

Granting you a moment to think, he watches your face carefully for any sign of uncertainty. The faintest trace will mean that he failed, all of this was for nothing, but it hasn't appeared yet. You reach for his face, cupping his cheek in your small palm and he exhales, smiling serenely.

"Can you promise me freedom, Suguru?"

Pondering your words, fear seeps into his limbs but he decides to, for once, give you an honest answer. No deception, no hint of trickery despite how easy it would be for him to keep you here as his captive and not his lover. He could lock you away, post all the guards outside your door for all eternity and you'd never leave but he wants you to want him. To need him. To desire him.

"I cannot promise you freedom but I can promise you devotion like you've never experienced."

You nod and lean toward him, lips brushing against his once again. The intent is far less chaste than the first time, the heat you always feel stir inside of you when you look at him for just long enough sending fire through your limbs. Pulling away from his face for a moment, you smile and reach for his shoulders to pull him into the bed with you, to which he obliges. Kneeling above you, he searches your face and you brush his hair off of his face and over his shoulder.

"Then I promise you the same."

The confirmation he needs leaves your lips and he can hold back no longer, hungrily enveloping your lips in a kiss that you eagerly accept. It would take more time than you currently have to consider when you began to fall for this man who plucked you from your home and dropped you into a world not meant for you, so you simply choose to focus on the way his hands feel across your bare flesh.

They're as cold as you expected they'd be but it isn't unwelcome, deft fingers dancing along the underside of your soft breast while he dots your jaw and neck with sensual kisses that make your head feel the same way it does after you've enjoyed dandelion wine with the dryad back home - lighter than air and heavier than lead.

Groaning, he begins to rut his hips gently against your bare mound and you reach for the tie fastening his robes over his waist, fingers moving to untie the knot as quickly as you can. You don't expect to feel him pressed against you so quickly, the searing heat of his heavy cock sliding through your already slippery folds and catching on your sensitive clit in a way that makes you gasp.

"I-I've never done this before," you confess as if it's a sin, your stomach in your throat. He leaves his task of lavishing attention on your neck for a moment to meet your eyes, smiling in a way that makes your thighs clench around his torso.

"I'll take good care of you."

He will and he does, returning to kissing a path down your neck until he reaches your breasts, taking one pert nipple into his mouth with a lewd moan. The sound of him laving his tongue over the sensitive spot makes you arch your back, his cock still rubbing you just short of where you need him most and you whine. He releases your nipple from his mouth, the bud shining with his saliva, and cups your face.

"Patience. I'll make it worth your wait."

Switching to your opposite nipple, your back arches again, forcing more of your breast into his eager mouth. He loves seeing you already on the precipice of coming apart, fortunate to be the first and only man to ever see your lust heavy gaze.

You tear me apart, he thinks as he gazes up at you with your lashes resting against your cheek and your mouth open in a beautiful display just for him. Releasing your nipple, his hands trail down your torso and he moans, aloud, at the feeling of the hair covering your mound beneath his fingers. It's as luxurious as the rest of you and he promises on a day when less is at stake, he'll give you the attention you truly deserve. He'll bury his face in the thatch of hair and even lower, giving your cunt as many kisses as he wishes to give your pretty mouth, but with an uncertain future time is of the essence and he doesn't want to hesitate in claiming you.

Tentatively, he traces his finger along the seam of your pussy and you hiss at the teasing, canting your hips messily into his touch. This is true need, the sum of your want greater than any mishap that your clumsiness could cause, and he smirks against the top of your breast and watches your face contort in pleasure as he spreads your lips with his index finger and thumb of one hand, using his middle finger to rub methodical circles over your clit.

"Is that alright?"

He asks and all you can manage is a nod and a pant, walls flexing with each circle his finger turns over the engorged bud. Your head continues to swim and your eyes shut, your chin tipping toward the ceiling but he cannot allow you not to witness your own undoing. Using his free hand, he cups your chin gently and tips your face back down to give you a full glance at his sticky finger working its way to your entrance.

A squeak leaves you as he gently spreads the wetness seeping out of you from your cunt upward toward your clit, the slick feeling of his just his finger making your eyes roll backward in your head. This is nothing you've ever felt before but it's everything you've imagined, the gentle way he keeps kissing your breast as he finally works one finger into you making you moan. Open mouthed, hot faced, chest heaving - the exact noise he wants to hear you make for all eternity.

"Feels good?" He asks, dark eyes meeting yours as they open while he thumbs at your clit messily. Your walls constrict around his finger and it makes his already painfully swollen cock jump when he imagines how you'll feel wrapped around him like a glove.

Hips moving on their own, you try to match the pace of his finger plunging in and out of you but struggle and he takes control, hand dropping your chin and sliding down your torso to hold your hip. He helps you rock your hips gently, soft mumbles and moans leaving your lips and he knows what's about to happen before you do, cunt locking his finger inside of you.

"Oh Suguru," you pant, gnawing your lower lip and shutting your eyes tightly as you cum so hard your thighs shake with the force. He smiles against your breast and positions himself so that he's on his knees, hand that was just playing with your pussy running along his length to spread his silky pre-cum and your arousal along every inch.

Watching, your eyes widen when he slides his tip through your folds before positioning himself at your opening. He leans over your body, resting on his forearm and kisses you as he moves to enter. Blunt tip slipping inside of you, you gasp but only out of dizzying pleasure.

The noises encourage him to bury another inch, slowly giving himself over to every slick, warm part of you and you gasp in unison as he continues to bury himself deeper and deeper, finally bottoming out with a deep groan right above the shell of your ear.

"Mine," he whispers and you nod, chin resting against his shoulder as he buries his face in your neck.

There's surely no disputing it now as he begins to gently thrust, hips moving in a small, merciful rhythm.

"Yours," you whimper back, kissing the expanse of his shoulder blade between staccato moans. He feels too much, too big, too hot but you can't deny that it feels good, your walls flexing around his length as if you were made just for him.

The sensuality of the moment makes him realize he's coming close to his own orgasm and he reaches between your bodies to thumb at your clit, each touch making you squeeze around him tighter and tighter until you hold him in place once again, cumming for him twice and giving him unspoken permission to do the same.

He spills himself inside of you, the heat making you whine and he chuckles while trying to catch his breath.

"Still want to stay?" He asks, face still pressed into your neck and you nod, wrapping your tired legs around his waist to trap him against you.

A square piece of white sheet dotted with small spots of blood is dropped in front of your mother by a messenger sent from the Underworld courtesy of your beloved and she shakes with rage upon immediate understanding of the meaning of what's laying on the marble before her.

You are no longer her daughter, her prized little lamb, you belong to him.

The threat of war was just that - a threat.

Autumn and winter both passed without further questioning aside from a few additional visits from Shoko who has become your reluctant ally if not friend and confidante. She has kept you as informed as you need to be about the happenings above but, at your own request, keeps the rest to herself. You're blissfully unaware and fine with it.

Your mother's refusal to invade the Underworld with her own thin resources and Satoru's refusal to send any of his own troops after a now sullied goddess rendered all attempts to return you home as futile but you do return, on your own accord, to your meadow the day before you know your duties to bring forth the fertile season begin.

"And you're sure that you will be alright on your own?"

You nod, Suguru refusing to let go of your hand while Shoko watches him unamused. It's one thing to watch your friend fall in love, it's another to watch him behave like a lovesick child with no other choice.

"Let her go, Suguru. She has work to do."

He glares in the direction of the goddess who shrugs as if to say "it wasn't my choice" about your decision to return to fulfill your duties each spring. You know things cannot run without you here and he agreed knowing how much it means to you, letting you live barefoot in the sunlight for three months of the year.

His flowers stay in bloom even while you're gone, yellow painting his walk every morning while you're away.

"I'll see you soon, okay? Don't miss me too much."

Returning to your work came naturally, watching life spring forth from you as comforting as the sound of your own heartbeat and you can't hide your smile looking overhead to watch your very own protector in the form of a blackbird flying in wide circles above you.

"You think that's him?" A dryad asks innocently and you nod, gaze still fixed above despite your hands already working their magic on the yellow and brown grass below your feet.

"It is."

2K notes · View notes

vanshoe · 21 days

Text

strawberry sundays – poly stsg x gn!reader

vague descriptions/implied depressive episode, slight angst, comfort, established relationship, domestic

Geto feels you move first, maneuvering yourself from where both men have wrapped themselves around you, slipping from his arms with a care that, had he not been such a light sleeper –even more so these last few weeks–he might not have felt. On your other side, Satoru is deep in sleep. He can tell, from the deep breaths – quiet snores that the other man swears not to make. The sheets rustle quietly, and he mourns the loss of warmth but you tuck a pillow in your stead. He keeps his eyes closed and feels the faintest brush of fingers over his temple, and then you’re moving about your room.

He hears a door close and through the wall, the sound of the shower starting up reaches his ears, a muffled patter of water against the tiles. He cracks his eyes open then, when he hears the shower door open and close, peering over at the clock on the bedside table. Just a few minutes shy of 6 am. Satoru’s arm reaches over the pillow then, forehead creasing until he comes into contact with Geto’s arm, at which point he relaxes once more.

It’s been a tough few weeks on the both of them. There is something frustrating in being the strongest and yet being helpless to protect you from something like this. He knows his other half feels similarly. There’s silent worry in the tilt of Satoru’s mouth, a frown that has felt permanently etched onto him, and Suguru doesn’t quite know what to do with his hands these days.

You sleep a lot. Wake at odd hours, eat little to nothing, or whatever you can get your hands on, and then return to your bed. But they get the sense none of it is actually restful, bruised smudges beneath your eyes and a fog in your gaze when your paths actually do cross. Despite living in the same house, the three of you feel like passing ships.

Usually the sight of you in your shared bed makes something in his chest unfurl, warm and and soft. These days, it leaves a bitter taste in his mouth. More than once, he’s caught himself biting back the urge to shake you awake. Come back to me, he wills the words to bore through your skull, come back to us.

Tell me how to fix it.

The shower turns off after a while, and Suguru is still painfully awake. Sleep is hard for him to find, generally. Knowing his bed is empty of one of his lovers all but ensures he’ll remain awake. He shuts his eyes anyway, when the door opens and you return to the room, carrying the scent of your soap in a thick cloud.

He doesn’t mean to, but he feels the first stirrings of hope in his chest.

You pad around the room quietly, stepping into the closet. He can hear the clinking of hangers and soft fall of fabric to the carpeted floor. Some five minutes later, you don’t return back to bed like he hopes but rather leave the room.

He decides to give it ten minutes before he follows, rolling onto his back and reaching for his phone with the hand Satoru doesn’t have in a vice grip. The white haired man in question has since migrated to the centre of the bed, bypassing the pillow entirely to press his face into Geto’s neck.

Satoru is warm, the weight of him solid and grounding. He’d like to stay like this a little longer, but the time flashes on his phone back at him and Suguru follows in your footsteps, prying himself out from underneath his lover. He has none of your luck, though, and a noise of discontent leaves Satoru’s mouth. Blue eyes blink open and a frown tugs at the corner of his mouth.

“Go back to sleep.”

“Where y’goin’,” he grumbles, reaching for his shirt sleeve.

“Checking on something,” he murmurs, and something in his face must tip Satoru off, his own features shifting as he rises from the bed.

They find you in the kitchen, hair still wet and the first rays of morning light coming through the window. It paints you in pale gold, and Suguru stands in the hallway a moment longer, taking you in. Satoru pauses when he does, silent and flicking cerulean eyes to him.

Your hands shake a little as you make your breakfast, prying open a carton of strawberries with a slight squeak of plastic. The knife in your hands trembles a little, Suguru thinks it might be exhaustion. He’s moving forward before he knows it, and Satoru is close behind.

You flick tired eyes up as they approach, rounding the counter to flank your sides. Your smile is sleepy, still, but there’s less of that haze now and something in Suguru’s chest eases at the sight. He watches as Satoru, so tactile with the both of you generally, noses at your cheek affectionately and reaches around to steal a bit of cut fruit. He hangs off you, lanky frame crowding yours, but Suguru detects an undercurrent of hesitancy to it. He watches as he draws back and forth, as though he’s struggling not to make up for all the lost time in one minute, a hunger in his eyes to be as close as he can be after so much time away.

Suguru knows the feeling, longs to press into your side, fuse himself in the space below your heart so he’ll never be apart from you. But he holds himself back, letting himself kiss your temple and draw away before he gets too selfish. He gets on making breakfast alongside you, weaving in and out of pools of sunlight as he moves back and forth between the cupboards.

Satoru tugs you into his lap, when you three finally sit down to eat, demanding bites of your food too. Tribute, he says, and pouts when you reach behind to pinch his side playfully. You knock your legs against Suguru’s beneath the table, and he traps one between his. He keeps it there, at least until he’s finished eating, at which point he loosens his grip. He smiles when you make no move to take it back.

By the time your plates have been cleared and Satoru has corralled you off to the stupidly large couch in the living room, Suguru realises his chest is significantly lighter. The ball that had knotted itself in his lungs has slowly but surely untangled itself, and as he settles on your other side he takes a deep breath for the first time in weeks.

Suguru looks at you, the smudges beneath your eyes already a shade lighter, and a clarity in your eyes he wants to keep there forever. He asks you to forgive him for his selfishness, and presses his mouth to yours.

Sunrise spills into the room through the blinds, and the world begins to wake up outside. There is hope, he finds, in the light of the new morning.

i was cutting up strawberries for my breakfast yesterday, and this idea popped into my head.

3K notes · View notes

vanshoe · 21 days

Text

WON'T YOU LEND ME YOUR FAITH? | R. ITOSHI

❁ tags ; fem!reader (reader dresses femininely + is referred to as a girl / with she/her pronouns), reader is shorter than rin , strangers to friends to lovers, fluff, getting together, rin is soo teenage boy (and makes some annoying teen-boy comments), slow-burn, making out is as suggestive as this gets, stereotypical shoujo romance, usage of honorifics, coming of age

❁ wc ; 21.4k (insane. most insane thing ive ever seen)

❁ a/n ; i'm genuinely appalled by the length of this fic. how did that happen. what in the world. this fic is truly just. every single shoujou manga trope crammed into one okay. my silly little self indulgent romance !!!!

also this fic is sfw + takes place in their third of hs so im not gonna say mdni that's silly. however if you're a minor please do not follow me i post heinous dark content and this fic is a fluke in the timeline dskffjkfd

❁ synopsis ; the love story of a sensitive, stoic soccer player and an eccentric wannabe journalist

or that time you confess to itoshi rin, knowing he'll reject you, and asking to befriend him in spite of it.

“I like you,”

A breeze of wind passes.

“What?”

You confess to Itoshi Rin at the start of the Spring semester. On the school rooftop with your head down. Bent at a near ninety degrees as you hold out what looks like a love letter.

For a minute, he can’t do anything more than stare. He’s received countless confessions in highschool. Half of which he rejected immediately, not even stopping to hear the full extent of their feelings. Why would he? The lukewarm ideas of first love had never been of interest. Even before his fight with Sae, Rin was always focused on his goals.

After his second year of high school was spent in Bluelock, Rin has only returned for his third. He promised his parents he’d graduate properly, and Bluelock was off-season until Ego could fully prepare for the next stages.

And a lot has changed since then. But some parts of him, namely his feelings towards the idea of conventional relationships, haven't changed at all.

It’s only been a little less than three weeks since school had started, and by now he’s received more confessions than he can really remember. All of which he’s rejected coldly, and blankly, because Itoshi Rin has never been in the business of coddling anyone. Most of those girls he’s never even met. Knows nothing about them because they’re first or second years he’d never even spoken to.

Rin, however, does know you. You’ve been in his class in all 3 years of his highschool, and he’s seen you around more than once. You’re in the newspaper club, which he remembers because you covered their winning match back when Rin was a first year. He wouldn’t call you friends, but you’ve spoken to each other enough that he can remember your name with a little effort.

He also remembers you being sort of annoying. You’re one of those loud and earnest types that he can’t stand.

A year ago, Rin would’ve denied knowing you at all. But now that things with Sae have cleared up just a little - he’s not inclined to take his anger out on you. He knows you. Not well, but enough.

And if his reputation precedes him at all, then you know Rin too. You know that he’s never once gone out with a single girl in his 3 years of highschool and that most of the guys in all three grades consider him an arrogant jerk. You know that he mostly plays soccer alone during breaks and that he only really hangs out with one person.

Which means you must know that he doesn’t harbor any feelings for you. And that he’s going to reject your confession without thinking twice about it.

In the first place, he was just curious if you were stupid enough to do it. If you really called him up here for a roof-top confession. The fact that you were is what’s stifling him. Your words are familiar. He’s heard them so many times. But it’s baffling. It’s ridiculous.

You lift your head to face him. You’re still smiling, though there’s something more there that he can’t understand. He doesn’t do well with people like you begin with. He finds himself backing away when you jog up closer towards him.

He’s taller than you, he notices. You pick your head up to look at him and smile, toothy and at ease. You hold the letter up again and shove it towards him, though you don’t seem like you’re expecting him to take it. He stares at you.

“I like you,” You repeat, smooth and bubbly. He frowns.

“I don’t like you.”

He has expectations for this part. Normally he receives a saddened look like a dog whose tail he stepped on or a fit of crying (sometimes genuine, sometimes with the intent of guilt.) Sometimes he gets an awkward smile trying to seem unbothered by the whole situation.

You don’t falter though. You don’t even flinch at the words, cold as ice and steely. It throws him off.

“I know,” You say back, prying the letter away from him. You turn the other way, walking towards the metal grates and for a minute Rin wonders if you’re going to do something drastic. You don’t though, instead sticking your the paper in the air “That’s why I have a proposal,”

He stares, absolutely dumbfounded. You turn again towards him.

“I want to get to know you. And keep confessing to you,” You say first, and Rin immediately goes to reject you until you put your hands up “And I want you to keep rejecting me.”

He’s baffled. Really.

“What?”

“So I can gradually lose my feelings for you. Nothing that different on your end, honestly..”

It sounds annoying. It really does. If it were anyone else, under any other circumstance he would scoff and tell them to deal with their own shitty feelings alone just like everyone else. But there’s no hidden intention there. Rin’s always been good at sniffing that out. Your words are pure as can be.

Frustratingly simple and twice as sincere, no matter how confusing the whole thing is.

“Why should I?”

“We can be friends,” You reply like it’s the best deal he could ask for. “Isn’t that enough? Not like you really have any right now.”

He scoffs bitterly albeit he can’t counter you.

“Friendship is lukewarm. I don’t care about any of that stuff,”

“Lukewarm? Really? Then..think of it like I’ll be your shield. You hate when people socialize with you right? I’ll help you deal with it.”

That doesn’t sound too bad actually. On top of that, he’s kind of curious what your deal is. He rolls his eyes at you, turning to face the other way.

“Do whatever you want. It’s not like it matters.”

His response makes you beam. He hears you shout from the otherside of the yard, followed by the sound of your footsteps noisily thudding against the concrete as you try to catch up with him. He walks faster than you just to spite you for earlier, but he hears your last words through a huff of breath.

“Jeez, you’re fast. I’ll see you at lunch, be prepared!”

Somehow, he feels like he’s crossed paths with something he shouldn’t’ve.

You keep up with your end of the deal with Rin to the best of your ability.

The upsides of your arrangement is that the usual annoyances Rin has to deal with have decreased significantly in the time you’ve been hanging around him. You’re very good at using your speech to sway conversations one way or the other without upsetting the other party.

Normally, Rin’s rejections for different things leave a bitter taste in the air. He’s never been good at mincing his words for anyone and while it doesn’t affect him - the strange stares and whispers he gets are a little annoying to deal with. People always take his disinterest personally. Rin has always hated that. He was probably a little gentler about the denial before but still.

While other people are too stupid to pay it any mind, you’re clever at turning the tides your way. You always manage to completely divert their questions without making them feel uncomfortable. Rin has tried, many times, to actually break down how you’re doing it. He doesn’t think he’d ever be able to replicate it, no matter how much he studies you.

He’s reluctant to admit it, but really, your presence has significantly lowered the number of obstacles in his daily life and made him overall, less irritable.

Instead of many annoying things, there’s only you. Which is tolerable in comparison.

You also expect him to uphold his end of the deal. For the most part, this has just meant you inserting yourself into his usual activities. It started out small enough, mostly just you sitting with him during lunch. It draws too much attention to eat in the classroom so you both fuck off to the roof.

(You often joke about how romantic it is, reminiscing on your rejected first love with as much melodrama as you can muster.

Rin never laughs about it to your face, but he admits it’s funny. Your stupidity is mildly amusing, at least )

There, you eat lunch together. Rin learns you make yourself colorful bentos from time to time- though some days are much less elaborate than others. You like to unwind that way, your designated and nightly me-time. You work part-time, and you take care of your neighbors kids by helping them every morning and night.

Rin doesn’t ask you for more, not willing to deliberately show interest.

But you notice his curiosity for better or for worse and explain that she, the woman next door, used to make you dinner back when your parents were too busy. You have an older brother who's nearly twelve years your senior so you were alone for most of your childhood. She had children late, but they feel like your little siblings. So you help them in the mornings and in the evenings when you have time.

Rin learns you, funnily enough, have a sense of obligation towards other people that he can’t fully comprehend. He forgot there were people like that. In an environment like Bluelock that is so dead set on fostering ego, it’s easy to forget something so simple.

You haven’t confessed to him again since that time. Not like he’s expecting it, but given your personality he wonders why. He thought it’d be more of a daily occurence, something like a bit you did. But you never do. Even when at times, it’s so heavy in the atmosphere even he can tell you want too.

Admittedly, Rin wonders a lot more about you than he cares to. He wonders why you spend so much time with him when you have plenty of other friends who seem to cherish you. He wonders why you care so much about the dying club you're in. He wonders if this, in some strange way, stems from some kind of obligation.

He wonders, sometimes, what about him you could even like. It’s probably something stupid. You’d probably think long and hard before going on to say that you like him because he’s handsome or cool. Something shallow and meaningless.

He tells himself that when he starts thinking about it again.

Rin gets roped into cleaning the classroom with you.

He’s used to being paired with other people. But he’s never had to do with you before, even in the years prior. Or maybe he did. He doesn’t recall much of his first year.

Still, now that it’s already mid-May, Rin has never been on cleaning duty with you. He’s conscious of the sound of your name these days. It’s not something he’s happy about.

It’s a simple affair. Just 15 or 20 minutes. Nothing to talk about. Not really.

But, today you’re alone with him. Alone in an empty classroom with light pouring through the windows and reflecting off of the wooden desks. You’re busying yourself with wiping down the chalkboard, humming quietly. Rin has the broom and dust pan, slowly working himself towards the front of the room.

It’s mostly quiet. Just your humming. The soft thud of a dust pan, a gentle brush of the bristle.

Rin feels a crick in his neck, half-way done with the task at hand. He stares at you, off in the front. In your own little world as you fix everything up diligently without turning your head to look up at him even once.

The nape of your neck is visible from the way you’re standing. There’s a chain there. Do you wear a necklace under your uniform? He can see the slope of your shoulders. The light reflects on you.

It stops him dead in his tracks. All he can hear is the quiet. The soft humming of your voice. The thud of the dust pan, the woosh of an eraser. The gentle bristle of a broom. The sound of his own heartbeat, a little louder than it was a minute ago.

He shakes his head. He goes back to sweeping.

“Why do you look like that?”

You look depressed. For Rin, this expression on you is unusual. You do look sad sometimes. Somber, occasionally but the look you have on your face right now is down right harrowing. You’re staring blankly out into the open, sitting in the usual spot the two of you have lunch at. But you’ve hardly touched your food and your favorite juicebox (a lunchtime staple) doesn’t have a straw in it yet.

It’s freaking him out, quite frankly. He stares at you, waving a hand in front of your face until you click back into reality. You jump in your skin at the sight of him before taking a deep breath once you’ve realized who’s in front of you.

“Oh. It’s just you. Sorry,” You say, immediately going for your juice. See? “What did you say?”

He sighs, sitting down next to you with his own lunch. Nothing special, something his mom likes to pack when he’s at home - though he doesn’t often take it. He opens up his own tin, taking chopsticks out attached from the top.

“I asked why you looked like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like someone just died.”

You look at him morbidly, clasping your hands and leaning forward with your elbows on your knees.

“My midterm grades,” You say solemnly, voice wavering ever so slightly “They’re detestable. A shame to my bloodline.”

Rin looks at you plainly.

“Aren’t you an idiot to begin with?”

“Hey! I’ll have you know I’m average. Super average. But I scored even lower than usual and I’m concerned. I need to do well on the next one and on my entrance exams.”

Oh, right. Rin forgot since he has no plans to take any.

“Do you know what you want to do for college?” He asks, mostly out of obligation.

“I want to study journalism.” There’s a wispiness to your way of speaking. It gives the air a sentimental feel. “There’s a private university with a good program I want to get into but they’re kind of tough. So I have to focus and do well,”

“What subject are you struggling with?”

You deflate all over again.

“Chemistry and Classical Japanese,”

Rin does well in both subjects. He thinks it over, and decides he can consider this payback. That’s all it is. He’s never liked owing people for favors and while you say this much is enough - Rin can rest assured about your little deal if he’s actually been of use to you in return. He remains impassive as he takes a sip of water.

“Do you want me to help you study?”

You turn to him immediately, suddenly full of life. He doesn’t like the gleam in your eyes, an immediate regret settling in as he stares at you, eyes full of disdain. You don’t hesitate grabbing his hand, putting it to your forehead and bowing deeply as you face him. You’re like a fly that keeps buzzing around him.

“Are you serious? Really? Forreal? Do you mean it?”

“If you keep being a dipshit I’m going to take it back,”

You pull away, hands folded in your lap, going stone faced.

“I would be very grateful,” You say, hands clasped in front of your face. He rolls his eyes.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” He says bluntly, staring out into space “I just don’t want to owe you any favors.”

This you laugh at, leaning back on the wall behind you - with your legs stretched out.

“Don’t worry,” You reply, self-assured. “Somehow, you asking me to study with you so innocently really cements it in that you don’t have a shred of affection for me.”

Something in him stirs. He ignores it.

“Never in a million years.”

You laugh light-heartedly.

“You’re so cold to me, Itoshi-kun.”

“You still call me that.” He grimaces. You stare at him confused.

“How else would I call you?”

“When you use my last name it reminds me of my brother,”

“...Are you implying I should use your first name?”

Oh. Shit. That is what he sort of said, isn’t it?

“No,” He denies, somehow unable to come up with anything worthwhile “Don’t address me at all.”

“Eh? But that’s impossible? I can try but,”

Only an idiot like you would think to actually try. He shakes his head. It’s no good after all.

“Shut up,” He decides, because there’s not anything else he can think to say “We can study at the library.”

You’re quick to reject the proposal.

“We have to pick somewhere else. Like a cafe or something,” You say, not looking at him. You have your phone pulled up now, looking for places nearby. He’s lost again.

“What? Why? Isn’t it easier if it’s at school?”

You glance over at him wide-eyed, before suddenly smiling. It’s a knowing smile, almost like you feel sorry for him. He wants to ask why you look like that. It’s weirdly guarded and he hates that from you. He stares at you, trying to will you to explain yourself. You’re good at reading his thoughts, frustratingly enough, so he’s not accustomed to asking.

Which means your lack of answer is deliberate, and even with the pressure he’s putting on you, you don’t budge.

“Trust me on this one,” You voice light and airy. “It’s better if we find somewhere away from school, too. There’s still some time to look, so no rush.”

He lets it go because he doesn’t have any other choice. Lunch passes and you talk like everything's normal.

The question lingers in the back of his mind.

Rin spends most of his time between classes watching soccer. If he has some free time on his day off, he’ll look for a new movie to watch. There’s a new foreign film coming out from a director who he really likes and he’s just finished watching the trailer.

Thirsty, with nothing to do - he stands to his feet and briefly surveys the classroom. He wants a drink and there’s a vending machine down the hallway with a sports drink that tastes like..something.

His airpods are close to being dead so there’s no music as he makes his way. He’s not a fan of being forced to listen to the chatter of the general populace so it’s not that hard to ignore.

It catches his attention when he hears your name in passing before turning the corner of the hall. It stops him dead in his tracks, something tense left in the syllables after . He doesn’t know why he stopped, not exactly. He figured it’d be annoying if his presence caused a ruckus.

He’s used to people talking about you, though they usually describe you as a busybody. The Senpai who’s everywhere. A hand in every jar, or something like that. But there’s a tone to that, mild amusement - never malice, that Rin is more than accustomed to.

This is not that, he notices. He leans on the wall and listens. A group of girls. Some of the voices he recognizes. They’re from the third year classroom down the hall.

“It’s like, I don’t know,” Eto-san, he thinks. She’s come up to him before, more times than he can really count on one hand. Rin knows the type. Kind but not really. To the point it’s hard for anyone to call her out on it. “It’s weird how much she hangs around him. She’s not a bad girl or anything,”

The addition makes Rin’s eye twitch. Yeah. He’s very familiar with this type. He keeps listening. Another voice, but he has no idea who this one is.

“Really? But Senpai is pretty kind to me,”

“Mm, I guess so. I just wonder if it makes Itoshi-kun uncomfortable, you know? With pushy people like that, it doesn’t matter how blunt you are. I just worry about him a bit.”

If it wasn’t so annoying to listen in, Rin would laugh. He’s never understood girls. Especially not highschool ones. He doesn’t pay attention to that kind of social hierarchical shit to begin with, only forced to acknowledge it because other people do. None of it matters to him.

He does think back to what you said a week ago, about finding a place away from school to study. It clicks. You probably know they talk about you like this. Or you could surmise this outcome. Rin should expect that level of awareness from you. Sincere. Always attuned to everyone. Of course this is something you know but he doesn’t.

Why didn’t you tell him? That’s annoying. It’s nothing he couldn’t deal with knowing. He would’ve got it if you explained it earlier.

“Oh wow, you really care about him Eto-san,”

There’s a soft chuckle that makes Rin annoyed. Is he supposed to feel grateful? They’ve barely spoken to each other.

“It’s not like that. It must be hard since he missed second year, that’s all.”

With that, Rin decides to turn the corner.

He’s a little pleased at the reaction. How everyone goes into complete silence when he arrives. He spares her a glance as he moves towards the vending machines, clicking in the buttons. A generic sports drink comes tumbling out of the bottom, and Rin grabs it with deliberate slowness - drawing out the unease.

Eto-san gives him a blank stare before suddenly looking cheerful. She seems a little panicked, quickly trying to make conversation with him. The words don’t reach his ears as he stares down at her expressionlessly.

“Are you done?” He says, ice-cold. She stutters at that. Rin suppresses a smile.

“Oh, uhm, yeah. Sorry, were you busy?”

“Yeah,” He says back, completely apathetic.

He doesn’t plan on saying anymore in the first place. The little victories count.

It does feel like some kind of magic when he hears your voice from the other end of the hallway. You’re practically shouting it, and following is the sound of the hall monitors telling you off for running as you barrel toward him full speed. He can hear the thud of your sneakers all the way till they skid to a stop.

You’re out of breath, bent over your knees and messy as you put a hand up. Most times, he would be embarrassed. He’d even tell you off for being such an idiot. Right now, he finds the corners of his lips upturned as he stares at you from where you stand.

“Oh, hey guys. Sorry, I had some business with this guy. Oh, Fujita-chan, your hair is cute today! I like how it looks up on you,” You say, to the girl who was calling you kind just a minute ago “I hope he wasn’t too cruel to you. He’s actually afraid of women, it’s a generational curse. Every night he turns into a frog and—”

You shuffle in front him, arms stretched out like a shield. He sticks his leg out and kicks your shin. You yelp in pain.

“What the hell are you talking about? Shut up.”

“Ow, you strong bastard. You’re a soccer player, please be more conscious of your kicks. What if you shattered my shin? I know you’re loaded but it’s the principle of the thing, you know—”

“Stop talking or I’ll kick you a second time.”

You go silent immediately.

“Forgive me, Itoshi-sama. I’ve strayed from the path of righteousness. Alas, the people need you.” You say, turning around.

“Speak clearly.”

“Homeroom teacher wanted to double check with you about after graduation plans and told me to go get you.”

“Why you?”

“I was already walking around for the newspaper club.”

He nods, not needing any more explanation.

“H-hey, aren’t you acting too friendly with him?”

So she decided to speak. This makes you falter, just a little, and Rin detests the look of self-satisfaction on her face. He speaks this time. It’s not like he can’t fight any of his own battles.

“It’s fine,” He says, not bothering to think about it. He looks at you, as you stare back at him where he stands, wide-eyed. Idiot. “I don’t mind.”

You grin at him. Big and rounded and stupid, with all of your teeth like you’re giddy. If the hallway monitor wasn’t up your ass, he figures you’d be skipping about now. You usher him into the hall, back where he came from, waving them off.

“Be seeing you guys, then! Bye!”

And you’re off. It’s quiet until you’re both completely out of ear-shot. Before he can go any further you stand in front of him, hands behind your back with a dumb look on your face. He already knows what you’re going to say.

“Hey. I really like you a lot. Just now… my heart was fluttering. I thought I was hallucinating,”

“You’re a moron,”

“Ahhh, what should I do? I’m all hot under the collar. Is this what it’s like being a maiden in love? It’s great.”

“How can you say that knowing I’ve already rejected you?”

“It’s because you’ve rejected me, I can say that.”

And Rin doesn't really get it. He’s not sure he ever will.

But you seem happy enough. He decides against prying.

Somehow, you’ve ended up at Rin’s house.

He doesn’t know how it happened. Really.

He mentioned to his mother off-handedly that he needed to help someone study. He should’ve lied about it then, but coming off of running drills makes him pretty stupid. He uses most of his brain power when he trains. So in an altered state of mind due to dehydration, hunger and general exhaustion - he answered honestly instead of lying.

You’re helping someone study? Yes, they’re from my class.

Is it a boy or a girl? A girl. We’re friends.

You can’t study at the library? She doesn’t want to, so we’re trying to find somewhere else.

Why not invite her here, if her parents are okay with it? Her parent’s don’t really pay enough attention to be bothered.

Wait, what is he saying?

Rin doesn’t know how it happened. Really. Really. He tried pretty hard to reject his mothers advances about the situation but he’s never been one to upset her. The whole thing with Sae really tore her up so they both had a silent agreement to try and get along at home. And since Rin is still living at home for now, he tries harder to listen to her. Even so, he wasn’t planning on yielding for this one.

Rin is not immune to his mothers guilt. A long lecture about how her only sons never cared about anything but soccer and how she’s worried she’s never going to have grandchildren later, he finally gave in and gave you a call at his dinner table.

He was hoping you would come through and reject the offer. Say something stupid about how that’s dangerous territory for a young girl in love and let his mom down gently. He forgot about your whole thing about responsibility and being a nice girl who gets along well with adults.

And now, the door is ringing and Rin knows he’s going to open it to you. He mostly blames himself for not thinking ahead.

Rin opens the door on a Saturday afternoon and the first thing he thinks is that you��re not wearing your uniform.

You look…different. It’s weird. Your hair is styled in an unusual way, tied with something like ribbon. You’re wearing something flowy and loose but the neck is a little rounder than usual. There’s a necklace there, a heart-pendant with a chain. You have in...earrings.

Rin thinks vaguely that you look…something. He doesn’t know. But in his vision you’re like a troublesome and amorphous blob that yammers on about nothing. And right now you look…not like that.

“You’re dressed up.” Are the first words to come out of his mouth. You blink at him owlishly.

“Oh. Yeah. I wanted to make a good impression on your mom so I tried not to look sloppy.” You say sheepishly. He leans against the doorframe.

“She doesn’t care about stuff like that.”

“Well I do, okay? Now, can I come in?”

“The white slippers are for you.”

He steps aside and lets you in. You have perfect manners. He probably should’ve expected that. You take your shoes off neatly and place them on the rack the same way, slipping your feet into the slippers provided. Rin just watches, eyes tracing the curve of your neck.

“Where’s your mom?” You ask.

“In the kitchen making dinner. You’re staying for dinner right?”

You blink at him, surprised.

“I mean it’s not like I can’t.”

“She’d be upset if you didn’t.” He says noncommittally before walking you down to the kitchen.

His mother is right where he expects. He stands in the corner as you shuffle in watching on. She turns around to look at you, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Oh, my, you must be Rin’s friend? Such a lovely girl. Welcome! Welcome.”

To this, you bow your head as deep as it can go. The air around you feels serious. Rin scoffs internally. There’s a strange feeling in his chest that he can’t describe, seeing you bowing in front of his mom. An itch he can’t reach, locked tight around his ribs.

You give his mother your name first and she smiles like she’s absolutely delighted just hearing it.

“Thank you for having me. I brought some fruit with me as a gift, I hope that’s alright.”

His mom shoots him a look that Rin deflects by turning away, opening the plastic bag you’ve handed to her.

“Oh my! Aren’t these expensive fruits? Please thank your parents for me!”

“Oh no, don’t worry about that. I work part-time, so I paid for them myself. It was the least I could do. I’m grateful for the tutoring.”

You tense up, realizing that might’ve been an awkward thing to say. It isn’t. Even if it was, Rin’s mother has always been soft-hearted. His dad tells him they’re a lot alike but Rin doesn’t see it. Whatever it may be, Rin’s mom is too doting and too sociable to let you feel bad. Right now she seems emotional, an expression between empathy and pride. She reaches for you like it’s the most natural thing in the world, patting your head gently.

“How diligent. Thank you, then, for the fruit.”

Rin can’t see your face but it’s easy to picture.

“Of course. And pardon the intrusion! And uhm, thank you for having me for dinner.”

Clumsy. Rin thinks you’re clumsy. A flickering light. His mom laughs brightly and tells you not to worry. She leans in closer like she’s whispering but Rin can hear her loud and clear.

“Rin can be very brash but he’s a good boy, so thank you for being kind to him.”

He feels embarrassed. Even readies himself to intervene.

“He is very kind to me.”

Wait. What?

His mom smiles even brighter, and mouths something like ‘take care of her’ when you’re not looking. He wants to stop it before it starts. You’re not dating. You’re hardly even friends, you’re just here to study. Rin almost wants to shout it, but he’s stuck. Before he can do any of that, you’re turning around and smiling like you haven’t said anything strange.

What do you mean he’s kind to you? When his whole thing is rejecting you mercilessly? Being cruel?

What kind of person would ever describe him as kind?

He can’t find the words he wants to say, so he takes you to his room in silence.

You both make it to Rin’s room in one piece.

You’ve been studying now for about an hour. Given your personality, Rin was expecting more of a fuss. He thought you’d make some comment about being in a boys room and then fight off the actual studying like the plague.

Much to his surprise, you started studying with him right away. Rin tries his best to tutor you, though he does make fun of you in the process. But you’re a try-hard all the same, stopping only to ask questions and get clarification occasionally.

You’ve been focused that whole time, miraculously enough. Rin studies too, but only a bit, after deciding to study some recent matches instead.

( Every now and again, he’ll glance at you. Just to see if you’re stuck or still working. Each time, he gets caught up on the fact you’re not in your uniform and has to tear his eyes away. )

After a bout of silence, you yawn out loud, quietly shutting your workbook.

“I’ve finished all my practice problems for today,” You announce, before deciding to lay down on his floor “I’m beat.”

“I thought you were gonna give up before you started.” Rin admits. You frown at him.

“I was serious about needing tutoring. Thanks for all your help.”

“I already told you it’s fine. Is there anything else? Finals are next week.”

You shake your head.

“Mm, I don’t think so. One of the guys from the newspaper club helped me with math so I’ll be okay.”

…Huh?

“From the newspaper club?”

“Huh? Yeah. Murata-senpai. We’re in the same year. He’s a few months older so he insists on making me call him Senpai.”

“And he helped you with math?”

“Yeah. He was a delinquent like, all of first year but he really cleaned up his act. He’s actually really gentle.”

Rin frowns at that.

“Do people usually describe delinquents as gentle?”

You make a noise of indignance from where you’re laid on his floor.

“Hey. Murata-senpai is really nice, okay? And he is gentle, so I won’t tolerate your usual judginess.”

Rin rolls his eyes.

“How’d you even meet him?”

“Uh…I wanted to write a column about him, basically. He was helping in the garden last year and I kinda…stalked him. It sounds worse than it is. I just wanted to know what made him change.”

“So stalking people is pretty typical for you.”

You sit up and gape at him. Rin suppresses a laugh.

“Anyways. I eventually flagged him down for an interview. Apparently, he had a real scare with his granny getting sick and decided he needed to cut the shit. He’s a good guy. He joined the newspaper club after the interview,”

“After the interview…?”

You nod, leaning forward with your elbows on the table in front of you.

“Uh-huh. Said he was interested because of my passion or something. He’s been really nice to me ever since and helps me with all of the ideas I have.” You soften as you talk about it. Rin feels an ugly emotion in his chest “I’m worried about what will happen to the club after graduation, but Senpai is always encouraging me to make the most out of the time we still have. So I’m really thankful for him. That’s why you have to be nice.”

Rin is super annoyed. He doesn’t know why he’s so annoyed but he is. How do you not realize this guy likes you? He doesn’t know why he’s opening his mouth to tell you what’s so obvious. It’s not like it really matters. Rin doesn’t like you in the first place, so if he informs you that your beloved Murata-senpai has feelings for you - it’s no big deal.

In fact it might be better for everyone if you realize. He’s just frustrated by how clueless you can be sometimes.

“He’s interested in you,” Rin says, against his better judgment. It feels like the words are welling up in his throat “Your senpai or whatever.”

You blink at him stupidly. He wonders if you’re wearing mascara.

“Huh? I doubt that somehow. Senpai is kind to me but I think he sees me like a little sister.”

He scoffs at you.

“You would think that. Most guys aren’t just nice to girls they don’t like.”

“Not everyone is like you, yanno.” You say back without thinking twice. That’s not the point this time, he wants to say. And he’s right for this one. Anyone else with half of a brain would realize. You’re just… you. Which means you’re absolutely unaware of things pertaining to you. It’s the only reason he can think you’d deny something so obvious.

The only reason you could come to the house of a boy you liked just to study.

“Shut up. I’m saying this because you’re too much of a dumbass to put it together on your own. The guy definitely likes you.”

“I didn’t know you were a love guru,” You say sarcastically, sticking your tongue out at him. Childish. Annoying “It doesn’t matter if he does.”

“Why wouldn’t it matter?”

You give him an incredulous look.

“Unfortunately my heart is captured by an aloof sportsman.”

He doesn’t know why he feels relieved when you say that. He feels his heart all the way in his throat like he’s going to throw it up, even though his expression remains impassive.

“You already know I don’t like you, though. It’s a good opportunity, isn’t it? Don’t a lot of people move on that way.”

You shake your head.

“I’m not that sort of wishy-washy woman.” You reply, huffing your chest up and trying to ease the tension. You stop to shake your head, a small smile on your face. “You wouldn’t get it even if I explained.”

“It’s annoying when you do that,” Rin voices, not bothering to cut it any other way “You did that with the girls at school too. I’m never gonna get it if you don’t bother explaining it to me.”

You soften at this, then whisper.

“...Why do you care?” But it’s not said with any malice. It’s not said sadly either. Just curious. He freezes, but doesn’t let it show. He wants to ask himself the same question.

“I don’t. It’s just,” And he scoffs, not looking at your face “It’s a pain.”

You hum, not expecting more of an answer.

“I want to treasure my own feelings towards you,” You say, and something in Rin feels like it’s being set on fire. “It’s not just about having a boyfriend. If it was, then I’d consider Senpai's feelings.”

“...So it’s about me, specifically?”

“Yeah,” You say without offering any more explanation than that “It is. I like you.”

The words but why, linger in the air. You seem to be feeling merciful, as you lean back on your palms and stare up at his ceiling. You wear your heart outside of your body, more often than not. And he thinks that part of you is so hard to get used to.

“You’re really awkward. And aloof. And you don’t have any friends.”

“Is this some kind of revenge or…?”

“But. You’re also sensitive. The more I know you, the more I think you’re kind and well-meaning. You uh, remind me of a cat.”

He blinks.

“A cat?”

“A cat. Sometimes they want their own space. And sometimes they knock your water off your desk for fun. Plus they only really care about people in their own circle,”

“Again, is this—”

“Let me finish, jeez. They’re solitary creatures. But like when they accept you, they get comfortable. An’ nice . And they look out for you in their own way. To me you’re a lot like that.”

You give him a smile so warm it makes his back hot. So loud and so vibrant like it burst out of him at any minute.

“I’ve uh, always been interested in you. I watched you play in Bluelock too. I kept thinking to myself, there’s something about you. I want to know more, even if it’s just a little. Stuff like that.” You talk so quietly yet it’s all Rin can hear. All Rin can see in his vision is you. All Rin can think about is you. “I’ve always been interested in other peoples stories. So I thought, what a waste it would be, to throw away that feeling because of something like love or like. I thought, ‘What's your story, Itoshi Rin?’”

Rin doesn’t know what to say so he chooses to say nothing.

“When I confessed, I knew you would never like me. Because that’s just the sort of person everyone says you are. Still, what a waste, right? You miss all the shots you don’t take or whatever. So, I wanted to get to know you. I guess.”

“I don’t get it. I get what you’re like but it still doesn’t make any sense. There’s nothing special to know, is there?”

“Feeling that is special, don’t you think? That’s a special reason to me.”

He doesn’t follow. You laugh lightly.

“If I never became interested in Murata-senpai’s story, I would’ve never been his friend. If I gave up on trying to know you, just because you didn’t return to my one-sided feelings, then I would’ve never gotten to know you either. Don’t you think that’s a waste?”

Rin doesn’t know. He’s never really cared about it. He’s rejected so many confessions and never once thought enough about any of them in any depth. That part of you is foreign. He can chalk it up to a difference in character. He can’t understand wanting to know someone just because.

(Or maybe he can. He just hasn’t until now. Until this very moment, suspended in time. Where he wants to know what things make you the way you are.)

Some small, dark part of him wants to ask why. Over and over until his throat feels raw - long enough to understand it. Even as he grips onto that desire so tight, with such bruising force, the words sit in his mouth. They taste like iron. They taste like a bitten tongue. If you’ve watched him all this time, then you know. Being chosen. He’s never been confident in that. Rin wants to ask, why him?

What’s so special? Enough to keep talking to him? Enough to do any of this? Is getting to know people is always this difficult, he wonders. Does it always feel uncomfortable to be in proximity with someone?

In the end, he can’t bring himself to ask. He can’t even bear to examine it in himself, the sense of dread washing over him like sickness. He’s nauseous. And this time, there’s a residue of tension he’s finding increasingly difficult to ignore.

You come through again. He wonders if you can read his mind just like you do with all the nobodies at school.

“Rin-kun,” You say, your voice like the summer heat. “Getting to know you makes me feel like my feelings aren’t a waste. I’m happy getting to know you. I want to treasure that.”

What happens when you run out of things to know? The question is too heavy. He settles on a different one. He wants to understand it more. Just to put himself at ease.

“Isn’t being in the same room with someone who rejected you uncomfortable?”

“Maybe. But there’s a clear line for me and you, so it’s cool. In like, ten years, maybe someone will interview me about you. As your classmate and stuff. And I’ll go - ‘He’s actually a really nice guy. I actually had a crush on him.’ If I can say that, without being regretful, then that’ll be enough for me.”

“That’ll be enough for you? Really?”

“Really.”

“You’re so weird.” He says, unsure of what else he could possibly say. You giggle, and lay back down on his floor.

“I knew you’d say that.”

Summer comes.

It doesn’t occur to Rin how often he sees you in school until it all comes to a halt. He has your number, and you text him often - about unimportant and trivial shit that you think of. In that way, it doesn’t even really feel like you’ve separated.

But the sudden absence of your chattering in his life makes everything feel especially quiet. Summer is a boring time for Rin. It’s mostly the same. Practicing and playing and studying. On the few occasions he’s been out, it’s because some of the other Bluelock members are gathering and refuse to let him know even a breath of peace.

He’s seen Sae now, though they never really talk about anything. Sort of just look at each other and exchange enough words that their mom doesn’t cry before going back to their room. Sae will be gone before school starts back up again, so Rin isn’t all that worried about it.

It occurs to Rin for the first time that this summer will be the last of his highschool days. He’s never been sentimental about stuff like that - so he figures you’re to blame for these sudden thoughts.

Your summer has been a lot busier than his. He should probably expect this from you by now, but your surprisingly youthful social life always shocks him. You’ve been working part-time as usual. In that time though, you’ve also been to the beach and been on an overnight trip to Osaka with your newspaper club.

(Rin wasn’t happy to hear about this. He was relieved to know it was with a teacher and that you roomed with a girl. But still, not exactly his favorite of anecdotes for the summer.)

You’ve invited Rin more than once to come hang out with you, but he’s basically always declined. The group setting is troublesome, but being alone with you feels even worse somehow. It wouldn’t be a date, obviously, but it would be something. Something deliberate.

Rin doesn’t know if he can come see you in good faith for such a reason.

It’s another day spent doing his usual. Being technical, it’s a rest day, which means he’s only allowed to stretch. He has done his basics. Studied, messed around with his ball, responded to a barrage of texts from Bachira and Isagi. He played games for a while, checking out a new horror game before deciding it’d be best not to get too sucked in so he has something to play next time.

After all that, during a mid-August day while Rin sits on his couch and watches T.V., he receives a facetime call from you for the very first time. At first, he just lets it ring. But when it keeps ringing - he figures your persistence is going to continue unless he replies.

He looks around. No one's home, so he doesn’t need to go to his room. He swipes, and the call connects. The screen shows him, propped up against something with a full shot of your room. You’re turned away from the camera. Rin just stares.

“Oh, shit - did you actually pick up?”

“Should I hang up.”

“No! No, I just wasn’t expecting you. Don’t hang up. I need a guy's opinion.”

“What? What for?”

“I got in a fight with my brother about a dress I bought,” You say, exasperated, and Rin is surprised because you hardly see him. “I know he’s probably looking out for me but I don’t think we talk enough for him to be telling me how to dress.”

“He’s older than you, right? Maybe you should listen to him.”

“You’re the last person I want to hear that from. Either way, I’m not a kid. I’m already 18 and I’m going to college. It’s a cute dress! I feel like it’s fine.”

“So..why’d you call me again?”

“I’m gonna try it on and show you. Murata-senpai is busy.”

“You shouldn’t do that to a guy who likes you.” Rin deadpans. You laugh.

“Shut up. I really need an opinion. I wanted to wear it to go out today so if it’s actually too provocative then I have to change my outfit.”

“Where are you even going?”

“My friend needs to get a concealer, so probably the mall or something. After that I’ll go buy some stationary.”

“Alone? What about your friend?”

“She’s gonna go see her boyfriend.”

“Why can’t you just go with them? Or ask them to go with you”

“And third wheel? I’m good. I just need some stationary and then I’ll be home. Easy peasy. Anyway, what’s with the interrogation?”

“It’s not interrogation.” He insists. You’re offscreen so Rin can’t see you, but he can hear the sound of a zipper echo in the speakers. He’s also sure you’re rolling your eyes.

When you come on camera, the dress of the hour is on display. Rin’s first thought is to tell you to take it off. It is too provocative to him. The front is fine as is, but it’s nearly backless and it’s cut too high on your thighs. He’s never seen so much of your skin. Maybe that’s a given, since he didn’t go to the beach with you either.

You give him a quick spin, before patting the front down. You say something, but the words don’t register. It feels like his brain is full of cotton or something.

“So? Too much? I mean it’s backless but like. I don’t know, it’s kind of loose? And the sleeves are long. Neckline isn’t that bad, either.”

Rin just says what he thinks “You shouldn’t go out alone wearing it.”

You frown at him.

“That’s not helpful, Rin-kun.”

“It’s…fine. What time does your friend have to go?”

“Probably right after we’re done.”

He sighs.

“Tell her to go with her boyfriend early. I’ll come with you to get your stationary.”

“Wait, what? Did I hear that right? You’re coming to get me? After I’ve been hounding you to hang out? What’s with the change of heart?”

“I don’t have anything to do since it’s a rest day. You need stuff and I don’t think you should be out alone. Don’t read into it.”

“Kinda hard not too but I’m not gonna complain. Are you coming right now?”

“Yeah. Send me your address.”

Rin has no idea what impulse has brought him here.

That’s not entirely true. What brought him to your apartment towards the end of summer is impulse. He acted on nothing but impulse.

Rin, for better or for worse, finds that you’re clueless about yourself. The fact you were going to call Murata-senpai is already bothering him enough. That, along with the fact you wore the dress and didn’t think it was too short is troubling. It’s not that Rin wants to tell you what not to wear. He doesn’t have the right but you did ask.

Anyway, it’s a lot less agitating if you’re being accompanied while wearing it. Going alone in something like that, even if it’s the middle of summer, would be stupid.

Rin doesn’t make it a habit of worrying about the outfits of girls he doesn’t know. He does know you though. He thinks you’d be really annoying if something happened and you got upset about it. So, all he’s doing is preventing that outcome. It’s nothing more than that.

He knocks on your door as he shakes the thoughts out of his head, and he’s greeted by a man in his late twenties. It dawns on Rin that this is your brother. He really didn’t think this through.

Your brother is an imposing person. He’s a head taller than Rin with a gruff voice and a scar on his cheek. Rin stares at him blankly.

“Who are you?”

“Itoshi Rin. I’m here for—”

“Nii-san, tell Rin-kun to come inside and sit! I’m not done getting ready.”

Your brother glares at him.

“Who’s he? Your boyfriend? Is that why—”

You come stumbling out of your room, half-dressed and Rin immediately averts his eyes. This is the most uncomfortable experience of his life.

“He’s not my boyfriend. He already rejected me, so we’re just friends. Stop fussing and let him in, it’s hot out.”

“He rejected you?”

Rin should just leave.

“I already knew he was going to. Now move,”

Rin doesn’t enjoy being involved in your sibling quarrel. Suddenly, he feels a twinge of regret about some old Bluelock memories. He understands it now more than ever, gaining a little empathy.

Your brother moves out of the way. You’re standing in the hall, with a single stocking on and powder on your face he’s pretty sure is meant to be brushed. You grin at him.

“Sorry! I won’t be long, promise. You got here faster than I thought you would.”

Rin can feel a pair of eyes in the back of his skull.

“Uh. Yeah. I took the bus so it was quick.”

“It might be uncomfortable here. Do you wanna sit in my room instead? It’s colder but it’s kind of a mess—”

“He can sit here.” Your brother insists. Rin is never leaving his house again. You frown.

“Didn’t I already tell you we’re not dating? He’s not even interested in me, it’s not like anything is gonna happen.”

“It’s the principle of it.” Yeah. Definitely siblings.

“Whatever. If you make him uncomfortable, I’m gonna yell at you. Rin-kun, sorry. Do you need anything? Juice? Water?”

Your hospitality throws him off. You’re different at home.

“Uh. No. I’m okay.”

“Okay, then I’ll hurry and get dressed. Nii-san, please be civil.”

With that, you flounce back up to your room. Your brother is staring hard in Rin’s direction. He’s not intimidated. It’s just… so awkward it’s kind of unbearable for him. What do people usually do in this situation? Rin’s not exactly the sociable type.

“She confessed to you?”

Rin is startled.

“Uh. Yeah. In April.”

“And you’re friends?”

“She asked to be friends.”

Your brother looks distressed.

“I don’t understand that girl at all.”

Rin doesn't either.

“What’s she like in school?”

Rin stares. Oh. He’s that kind of older brother.

“Uh. Busy. She’s in the newspaper club so she’s always doing something. She has a lot of friends and gets along with our class.”

“I see…that’s good. I’m always worried about her. Our family has always been busy and I moved out when I was 18 so… we don’t see much of each other. She doesn’t talk about herself that much either.”

Rin nods absently. What circle of hell is this?

“She probably thinks I’m just being overprotective,” Bullseye “But I just worry she grew up too fast.”

Rin thinks if he were a different kind of guy, now would be the time he gives your older brother an encouraging heart to heart. The script is there. It’s just not how he honestly feels. Rin doesn’t take pleasure in defending you. But it’s hypocritical and a little ridiculous to hear it from him.

Some of it is leftover resentment from Sae. The rest is knowing you.

You did grow up too fast. From what he knows about teenage girls, they’re supposed to be…meaner. More hysterical. More inconsiderate. Less responsible and more in the moment. Messy. All teenagers are, really.

For all the ways you are clumsy and ridiculous, sometimes Rin thinks you’re too off-puttingly mature. It wouldn’t kill you to be more selfish. To be just a little less self-reliant. It’s not normal is it? To be so grateful for things you’re owed. It bothers him. Always has.

Rin knows what the script is. But it bothers him.

“If you know that then you don’t really have any right to intervene,” Rin says bluntly. “Suddenly acting protective and considerate when she grew up on her own is just going to feel stifling. Aren’t you just trying to make yourself feel better?”

He looks surprised by his answer. Hurt too.

“I guess that’s right,”

He frowns.

“If you actually care, just be honest. She’s not the type of person to turn someone away on a grudge.”

Before Rin can feel embarrassed about what he’s said, you come stumbling down the steps all dressed up. Your brother gives you a look.

“Do you need any money?”

You look at him confused then shake your head no.

“Okay. Stay safe and have fun.”

He turns to leave. You watch him go. Rin puts his hands in his pockets like he’s trying to wipe himself of it.

“Weird… anyways. Ready to go?”

“Yeah.”

Your outing goes well.

Outing. Not a date. No matter how many times people mistake you two for being on a date today - it was nothing more than an outing.

You start with stationary for the upcoming term, then you drag Rin to the mall because you need some more clothes. After that, you go into a bookstore to pick up some manga. Rin has fun there because he gets to pick out some new releases and you bond mutually over your tastes. Rin learns both like thrillers. You spend a lot of time together, reading over his shoulder.

It’s not a date. But it wasn’t bad. He’s so used to talking to you that the entire situation doesn’t feel uncomfortable at all. You’re funnier than he’s usually willing to give you credit for. Doing all that, plus train rides, makes it so you’re not home until sundown. You, however, refuse to end the night without having some kind of treat. After a lot of begging Rin to cheat on his meal plan, the two of you get ice-cream and you drag Rin to a local playground. Apparently you bring your neighbors' kids here sometimes.

Now he’s here. Sitting on swings with ice-cream and it is still not a date. Rin has no opinions on the day but you’re practically bursting at the seams with happiness. The dress you’re wearing is hiking up on your thigh from how you’re sitting. He was right to accompany you, by the way. The amount of creeps he’s had to stare down today alone is outright disgusting.

Rin takes a spoonful of ice-cream and lets it melt in his mouth. You let your feet hit the mulch beneath you as you lick the ice-cream carefully - trying desperately not to let it spill on your hand. He watches on in amusement. After you finally get a handle on it, you give him a small look.

“I had fun today,” You say sentimentally. Rin feels his stomach tie in knots “Thank you.”

He frowns.

“Gross. Stop that.”

“Aw, c’mon. You’re so edgy. Just admit you had fun! You had a fantastic and whimsical time.”

He gives you an unimpressed stare.

“Really? Nothing? You’re not feeling the flames of youthful joy in your loins at all?”

“Describing it like that is disgusting.”

“So you admit you know what it is.”

Rin wants to smile. Fuck, he hates you.

“...It wasn’t bad.”

You grin. You’re so annoying.

“Ladies and gents, we got an ‘it wasn’t bad’ from the ever soulless Itoshi Rin!”

Stupid. So stupid.

“It was more tolerable than hanging out with some of my other dipshit friends.”

You clasp a hand over your mouth dramatically.

“Oh…Oh wow… Do you want to try proposing next? The set-up is there. Perfect ambience.”

His face cracks into a begrudging smile.

“You’re insufferable.”

You suddenly go quiet. When Rin looks at you, you’re stunned

“Why’re you being weird?”

“No, sorry, I was just thinking I really like you,” You say, like it’s the easiest and most natural thing in the world “I’ve never seen you smile before. It’s nice.”

“...Your ability to say cringy shit like that so easily is astounding to me.”

“I don’t want to hear this from the guy who unironically uses lukewarm,” You say, biting into your ice-cream cone. Rin blushes. “Besides, nothing wrong with being cringe when you’re in love.”

“Freak.”

You give him a thumbs up.

“One of a kind.”

There’s a beat of silence. It’s comfortable. Rin eats his too, probably a little slower than he has to. Summer feels heavy in the air.

“You weren’t always like..an edgelord, right?”

Rin stares at you, perplexed by how sudden the question is.

“Where’d you hear that from?”

“Your mom after dinner. You already went upstairs. Said you had a nasty fight with your brother.”

He doesn’t say anything, posture stiffening at the mention of Sae.

“It’s not your business.”

“Hey. No need for the attitude. I’m curious as your number one fan.” You say, trying to back off as much as possible. Like he’s some kind of feral cat you’re trying to calm. “Don’t be mad, okay? You don’t have to talk about it.”

You try your best to be soothing and Rin softens

He is angry. Not at you. Not really. The mention of Sae just does that to him. And if anyone else even thought to bring it up - he’d probably tell them to go fuck themselves with nothing but bitter hatred.

With you, there’s not any of that. There’s a lingering sense of hesitance - an internal conflict, but not anger. Rin’s never enjoyed opening his heart to anyone.

Even so, he feels compelled to tell you, so he does.

“My brothers a dick,” Resentment seeps into his words “He came back from overseas and then basically insulted me for a minute straight. We were always meant to play soccer together but he went through something. He changed. We never talked about it,”

“What? He insulted you for no reason? That’s so weird. Did you always have a bad relationship?”

Rin sits with himself quietly.

“I don’t know if we have one now. We were close as kids. At least.”

“And he just… came back and started being an asshole to you? Seriously?”

Rin nods. There’s not much else to the story. Rin’s tried hard not to think about the situation itself. He only uses the feelings that stayed behind to make him better. To give him a reason to play - it’s motivation and nothing more. If he starts to view it too much like what it is, betrayal, he’s afraid everything inside of him will collapse.

“There’s probably more to it than that,” You conclude thoughtfully. Rin thinks the same “But still. You’re his baby brother. Even if he’s going through something…”

Rin scoffs “You sound like you’re worried about him.” It comes out more petulantly than he expects

“Not really. Not as much as I’m worried about you,” You counter, giving him a small smile. Rin feels his heart leap into his throat “I just figure, you know, maybe thinking about it like that would help. You were close right? Your mom said he used to dote on you,”

Rin nods. He feels his chest swell and tighten.

“Then…I bet it sucked. I bet it was hard. Or at least, it must’ve been lonely to go through that,” You say, frown deepening “Such a sudden change would be hard for anyone to deal with, I think. It’s okay if you feel like it’s unfair. His reasons aside.”

You sigh, suddenly, covering your hands with your face.

“What?” Rin asks. You shake your head.

“You poor thing. I wanna hug you to death you know. A good squeeze. I’m trying to refrain.” You say, stomping your feet just slightly. He feels a flush crawl up his neck, turning his head to look away.

“...It’s not like I’m stopping you.”

He doesn’t have the courage to look at you. Not as he says it, or after to steal a glance of what face you're making. Instead, he hears the metal of the chain and feels the warmth of your body. It’s a tight hug. You’re standing and he’s sitting, your arms around his neck, his face directly against your chest. He widens his eyes. He wants to yell at you for being a defenseless idiot, but the feeling of being hugged so tightly washes the words away. You’re soft…and warm. He’s never been hugged by someone who isn’t his mom or brother before, and he can’t remember the last time either thing happened to him. You pat his head.

Do you touch people like this often? So casually? Or is he special because you like him, he wants to ask. He wants to ask but doesn’t want to know the answer, pushing the feeling down as deep as he can make it go. He wraps his arms around you loosely, above your waist trying to be respectful.

But he leans into the warmth. Like it’s something that happens once in a lifetime.

“Hey, Rin.” You say, soft. He can feel the warmth of your breath against his hair.

“Hn.”

“I hope you kick your brother's ass in soccer.”

You sound teary. Weirdly, it makes Rin feel better.

“Yeah.”

School starts up again during September.

The autumn season welcomes warm colors, fallen leaves and the sort of cool weather that puts the summer uniforms back up on the hangers. Rin is listening to music when he spots you waiting for him at the gate, waving your hand at him. He has half a mind to ignore you, you’re so embarrassing.

But before he can pretend not to see, you’re jogging over to him. He has to stand so you don’t end up bumping into him. You walk like you were born backwards, two left feet with such little awareness of your surroundings it stresses Rin out.

He gives you a blank stare as you smile, securing your bag to your shoulder.

“Look what the cat dragged in,” You say warmly. Rin pauses to look at you. You look different somehow. Lately you always do, Rin wonders if you’ve picked up some weird shape-shifting in your time apart “Are you excited for the new semester, hm? Hmm?”

He keeps walking and you fall in step with him. You try but he’s too fast, so he slows just a little. He clicks his teeth, shaking his head, eyes taking in the view of the building in front him.

“Why would I be excited?”

You shrug.

“Because winter break is close? Because there’s fun leaves outside? Because it’s your birthday in 6 days?”

He stops dead in his tracks.

“What the hell? Why do you know that?”

“Your mom told me.” You say, skipping along happily to school like you didn’t just say something insane. His frown deepens.

“You have my moms number? You talk to my mom?”

“She loves me,” You say casually, turning only to look at him and stick your tongue out “And she’s nice. Get over it.”

With this, you rush into the building faster, giggling as you leave. Rin, frustrated, stomps after you.

Your time together at lunch continues into fall. It’s the third day of the term, September 6th and you’re sitting by his side. The two of you eat in casual silence now, falling into a regular routine. There’s something about the whole ordeal that makes Rin feel a little funny.

Friendship, as it stands, is still a lukewarm idea to him. But sprawled out next to you in a comfortable quiet isn’t the worst thing. The weather is cool enough to be nice and the daylight lasts for just the right amount of time to see sunset when he treks back home from practicing shooting into the net.

That kind of sentimental viewing of his surroundings is a bad habit he’s picked up from you. He can’t seem to shake it off. He’s tried at least, but Rin has been stopping to look at everything nowadays. The sun, the trees, the cars passing. Everything passes right by his life, slowly.

Eventually, eventually this whole thing will cease. You’ll never see Rin again and he’ll never see you - and you’ll part your separate ways. Thinking about that feels so stifling. But he figures since that’s the case, there’s probably not any harm in letting the time pass like this. As long as he’s still improving.

Your voice doesn’t catch him off-guard anymore, no matter how loud it is after a long bout of silence. You stuff something into your mouth, a tomato he thinks.

“Rin-kun,” You start, tilting your head to one-side “Are you doing anything for your birthday?”

“No.” He answers immediately because he never does. He hasn’t done much since Sae left home and now that he’s a third year and about to be 18, there’s even less of a desire to pull together a party and celebrate.

“What? Boo. That’s so lame.”

“Don’t be so childish.”

“I’m older than you, you dummy,” You say with such automation that Rin doesn’t even get the chance to process “You’re not even gonna have cake? Nothing?”

“My mom might but I don’t have any plans.”

“Your mom is so nice.”

“Stop.”

You frown at him but don’t say any more. You look like you have something on your mind. Probably something stupid, but Rin can’t help but wonder what’s making your brow crease so intensely.

“What?” He snips. You flick your eyes to him and shake your head.

“I just think it’s a waste,” You say simply, that tone of fondness seeping into it that Rin can’t get used to. “It’s such a big number, you know? A little cake and some show tunes or something would suffice.”

Rin scoffs.

“I don’t care about it. It’s pointless to me. Lukewarm” He says, before noticing your genuine sadness. He sighs a little to himself “Stop looking like a depressed mutt.”

“I’m not a dog.”

“I guess dogs are more well-trained.’

“Hey. Hey, what the hell do you mean by that?”

He ignores you.

“Anyway, stop worrying about it.”

You pout.

“Easier said than done.”.

Rin’s morning routine has been the exact same for two years.

He starts by opening the window, to let fresh air and sunlight come in through the glass. He feels like his room gets stale overnight and it wakes him up to taste the sun in the back of his mouth. He takes a deep breath of it, clearing out his lungs and blinking his eyes open.

After that he stretches. He unfurls a Bluelock brand yoga mat onto his carpeted floor and gets to his usual cycle. It’s integral for an athlete to keep their muscles stretched, functioning like a well-oiled machine. He has it down pat. He starts from the bottom up, stretching his legs and working up to his arms and shoulders. His legs always come first since he’s a striker, always focusing on the mobility of his calves and foot before he stretches out his thigh.

His core, then his chest and arms. When he’s done with all that - he practices yoga for fifteen minutes. Again with mobility but this time full body, like making sure each of his limbs work with each other without any stops. He’ll sit back down after those minutes are up to meditate for another fifteen - clear his mind of absolutely anything stuck in it. It’s the most peace he gets on any given day.

At the end, he sits with his feelings. Carefully, he undoes the wrapped clothed box around his heart and stares at it as it sits in his lap. Beating and raw and melancholy blue - so full of sadness and anger like it could burst at any minute. Revisiting his sadness and rage is a necessity. Sometimes it feels like only sadness. Only monochrome.

(He wonders if a day will come where that part of his routine is changed. If ever, he’ll unwrap his own heart only to see it pink or golden yellow or even a softer shade of red. He wonders if the colors ever change, or if time will fade them.)

All of this happens before he even brushes his teeth. The rest of his morning routine is keeping his room neat. He folds the comforter on his bed, puts any dirty clothes away, and gets dressed. He doesn’t really style his hair - it’s so pin straight after washing he normally just has to brush it to keep it nice.

After that he has breakfast, and checks through his bag. On days he has school he goes to school and comes back to practice. If he’s home alone - he picks one of many other things to do. He tends to practice closer to evening, taking a shower before he goes to sleep.

On the morning of Rin’s 18th birthday, he’s only really acutely aware of the date. His morning starts the exact same as it has everyday for nearly two years. Nothing to make him feel particularly different. When he looks in the mirror, he still sees his brother's face and when he looks at his heart it’s still a steely, melancholy blue.

When he comes down stairs, though - there’s a pair of shoes he doesn’t recognize. And there’s a humming traveling down the hall and always the way up towards him that he knows quite well.

He thinks, for a minute, he might still be dreaming. Why you would be in his house on a Saturday morning makes absolutely no sense otherwise.

He slips his feet into his gray slippers and treks into the living room, only to find you in view of the open kitchen. There’s a balloon attached to flowers and a spread of fruits on the table. Orange juice in a cold glass. You with his moms borrowed apron, humming contentedly as you bend over the stove.

Rin doesn’t know what the feeling is. He doesn’t know if he’s irritated or not. Just that it’s so overwhelming to see you in his kitchen, marching to the beat of your own drum like you always do.

“What the hell are you doing in my house?”

You startle when you hear his voice, whipping around to face him. Dramatically putting a hand on your chest - you shoot him an unfriendly glare.

“Well hello to you too.”

“Answer my question.” He demands. You click your teeth.

“Well, obviously I’m making breakfast. We’re celebrating your birthday.”

“Without telling me.”

You snap your fingers before giving him finger guns “Precisely. Genius deduction, Itoshi-sama.”

“What the fuck. Where are my parents.”

“They’re out on a day-trip! It’s a Saturday. They’ll be back here on Sunday afternoon. Read the note.”

“What were you gonna do if I had last minute plans?”

“You don’t though?” You say like knowing that is so obvious. He knows you asked but still “I guess I’d turn around and make my own breakfast. Give you your gift at school or something.”

“Why are you here?” He asks a little softer this time. With a little more emotion, just a touch. He never expects anyone to make a fuss about his birthday.

Rin doesn’t really ask for much. Certainly wouldn’t ask for this on his own accord. That’s a vain thing to do, right?

It occurs to Rin that this is the kind of birthday you do for someone you like. Someone you love. You’re always confessing your feelings to him. You only say it when you’re sure. It wasn’t like Rin didn’t know you had feelings for him, because the point of it all had been for you to try and get rid of them. Or honor them, or deal with them in whatever way you saw fit. Rin had agreed on a whim to help you with that. Your friendship had started with the very notion that you liked Itoshi Rin and he didn’t like you back. It’s not some secret.

When the light pours in through the windows and hits your back and for the first time - Rin understands what the fuss is about being in love is. He’s sure that this strange, grotesque warmth is the aftermath of being liked. He always thought it’d feel more simple. That he’d remain unmoved in the face of it because he was different.

It’s not like he’s unloved. He’s sure his parents love him. His brother did too. Still does, Rin thinks.

But it’s the first time someone has made their feelings so clear to him. Someone who isn’t supposed to love or like him. And even Rin, chronically apathetic, can’t bring himself to ignore the weight of knowing that. He stares at you, dumbstruck.

You’re still turned to him. There’s a cool tumbler of iced-coffee sitting on the counter that you sip, head tilted to one side.

“Well, I don’t know,” You start, a hand on your hip “It just felt like too much of a waste to do nothing on your birthday. But you’re not the kind of guy who likes big celebrations. So I thought maybe just hanging out would be more your speed.”

Rin swallows. “Seriously?”

“Seriously.”

“Bold thing to assume.”

You frown back.

“Well, I was gonna invite Isagi-kun—“

“Isagi? How do you know Isagi?”

“He saw me leaving your house ‘cause he was gonna visit. After we talked he followed me on Instagram. Anyway, I was gonna invite him and Bachira and all four of us could go to a movie,” You explain as you sigh and go back to the stove “But he said you’d probably just want to hang out with me.”

“…And he didn’t say anything else?”

“Well he asked if we were dating so I just told him the truth. Really nice guy, by the way.”

Rin’s going to hound Isagi next time they practice together.

“So. Now you’re here… doing what exactly?”

“Making you breakfast. I’ll make you ochazuke for lunch later. Haven’t decided on dinner, I thought I’d ask when you woke up. Your mom said you liked traditional breakfast but I didn’t think I’d be done by the time you woke up so there’s fruit.”

Sure enough, when Rin walks over to the other side of the table - there’s a half done spread of breakfast on the table. All the dining ware is set up neatly, the table arranged so well he feels guilty for not helping.

“You didn’t have to do all this for me.” Rin tsks, a frown on his expression as he stands next to you. He watches you pour egg into a square pan, slowly evening out the layers.

“I wanted to,” You reply, not thinking twice about it. “I enjoy cooking for people. It’s fun. I normally just do it to feed myself, so it’s nice to share.”

He closes his eyes.

“Thanks.”

He’s afraid to look over at you, the excitement radiating off of you. It makes him uncomfortable that something so simple could make you so happy.

“Can you repeat that?”

“Don’t start.”

“Rin-chan,” You coo, immediately making him so embarrassed he wants to hit you “You’re so docile today.”

“I’m gonna kill you.” He says, hitting your shoulder as light as he can.

“Woah…how romantic. Dying on the day you were born? Jeez. I’m swooning.”

He looks at you blankly.

“Stop being gross. Where did you even get that from?”

“Too many things to count,” You say with a snap. He shakes his head.

“Is there anything I can help with?”

“How diligent. It’s fine! It’s your birthday, right? Sit. Eat some fruit. Pick out what you wanna do. I rented some games and there’s some movies I had in mind too. Make your agenda. “

Rin laughs to himself, lightly.

“Isn’t that supposed to be your job?”

“Don’t be stingy! I’m already making breakfast.”

Rin rolls his eyes.

“Yeah. Whatever.”

You end up back in Rin’s room.

After a healthy discussion about what he would like to do - Rin landed on wanting to do both. He picked out a copy of Resident Evil to play until after lunch and then decided to binge a bunch of movies after.

You even agree to accompany him while he practices. There’s 24 hours in a day and the plans are nothing more than vague suggestions - but deep down, it makes Rin kind of…well whatever. It’s not a bad plan.

Currently, you’re sitting at the foot of Rin’s bed with your hands tight around the controller of his PS4. Rin feels a little bad for you. While you do okay with horror movies, the immersion of horror games seems to frighten you enough that your eyes are glued onto the screen. As such, Rin is trying his best not to startle you as you lean forward every so slightly. The leg of your pants is pushed up just barely. You’re dressed cozy, so it’s funny seeing your head shrink into your hoodie.

“Why the fuck would you set it hardcore if this BOTH of our first times playing,” You whine, turning yourself into the next room carefully on screen “I’m scared.”

“You’re such a wuss,” He scoffs, leaning back from where he’s sitting next to you on his bed. “We’re never gonna make any progress like this.”

You stomp your feet and Rin resists the urge to laugh.

“Shut up, it’s scary.”

He nudges your shoulder with his knee.

“Stop complaining. You got to pick the character and I got to pick the difficulty.”

“I deserve to lust after Leon after the shit I’m getting put through,”

Rin scoffs at your declaration. The irritation is softened when you walk into the backroom faced with a zombie - a short scream leaving your lips as you mash buttons and use your gun to kill it quickly. You manage to dodge as much damage as you can, obviously trying not to waste limited resources. Even so it takes damn near 7 bullets. Despite your cowardice, you’re pretty good at the game.

You loot the room for any possible supplies then leave. You turn the corner of the isle, a zombie filled gas station awaiting you. You manage to save bullets and stun the one closest to you before getting your shit completely rocked - quick to duck out. The first cut scene of the game comes next where you meet the other main character Claire. You gasp like you’ve been running, shoving the controller towards Rin.

“Your turn. Move, I wanna sit on your bed.”

“Why?”

“Cause it’s a weekend and I have a right to be lazy. Shoo. On the floor.”

“You’re getting way too comfortable in my house on my birthday.”

Rin, does, go sit on the floor where you were. Mostly because it’s a better position to play the game in. At least it has minimal back support. The cut scene plays in the background, nothing difficult as the main characters go to the next area - the police station and the technical start of the game. Rin hasn’t played the remake, but he did longingly watch some playthroughs while he was in Bluelock during its release.

He had never mentioned it to you, so he was shocked you knew enough about it to bring it over. He likes survival horror and he was always wanting to play it.

“Me and your mom are best friends so I practically live here anyways. Also shut-up and look.”

He does shut up, too invested in the story to be annoyed. The main characters get separated and Leon ends up in the streets.

For whatever reason, he’s conscious about proximity. Your knee next to his shoulder. You’re close enough to touch him casually and he’s wondering…hoping to know if you’re naive enough to do it without thinking. It feels like a stroke of luck, or maybe a form of mind-reading when you reach for his hair with your fingers. He wonders if you’re doing it on purpose. He thinks he should tell you to stop.

But when you ask “Is this okay?”

He can’t find the strength in himself to do it. He focuses on the scene in front of him, weaving through the cars to shake off a horde of zombies. Rin grabs the controls, immediately turning around to try and stun a group of zombies before turning into the gate so he can head to the station.

His heart is racing and his eyes almost feel cross from how much he’s focusing but it’s not exactly the game. The game isn’t even that scary, as much as it’s gory he thinks.

“I don’t care but,” He says through a breath, trying to sound like he means it and that he’s not so conscious of the way your pinky lingers on his nape “when’d you get so touchy?”

“I like touching you.” You reply, twirling a strand of hair around your fingers “Your hair is so silky and nice. I felt when I gave you a hug that one time and I kept thinking about it.”

Rin wants to say “Do you think about me that much?” but the words don’t come out how he wants.

“Do you touch everyone like this?”

You’re silent for a minute. It takes patience, effort - not to turn his head to see the look on your face. Though he probably knows it. He thinks he just wants affirmation from you.

“...No. Not really. I just like you.”

There’s a beat of silence - a pause designated for his rejection, the promise he made to you so many months ago. He knows what the script is. And he’s said it many times before. Not in a million years, right?

But he can’t bring himself to say it this time, so he doesn’t.

“Yeah. I know.”

___

Before Rin knows it, the day is coming to a close.

The entirety of it you spend together, with you faithfully stuck to him and without Rin feeling entirely suffocated. He isn’t sure why it’s so easy with you. Normally this much socialization would render him exhausted. Irritable at best and angry at worst. But he’s not. In fact even after his entire workout routine, he felt fine listening to you ramble. He didn’t need complete silence, but even when there were lulls and dips - it didn’t feel uncomfortable.

You didn’t get far in Resident Evil 2. Rin decides to cut it short since it’d definitely take a lot longer than all the time you had and there were movies he wanted to watch. When you whine about not being able to finish - he quietly told you to just come over next time and play it with him then.

He waited a year, so he can wait a little longer. Your face lit up idiotically, giddy with delight at the promise of next time. As promised, ochazuke was for lunch and after 30 minutes of digestion - he put it out of his mind as he did his daily drills. You joined him, insisting that you’d be fine doing nothing. Sat on the field with a book the entire time even though it was cold, tossing him his things whenever he took a break - smiling each time he talked to you.

(“You know you don’t actually need to stay with me the entire day.” He reminds you of this as he brings a bottle of water to lips, sweat dripping down the side of his head even in the cool weather. You turn your head up at him.

“When else am I gonna get to stick by your side all day? This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“You’re so good at being annoying it’s impressive,” He says, dropping his water bottle back down “Aren’t you bored?”

“Huh? No way. I have my fun book to keep me company and on top of that I get to see you play in the flesh.”

Oh, yeah. You mentioned watching him when he was in Bluelock. “Well, it’s not like a match. But I’m not gonna keep asking, so whatever.”

“Yes, yes - I understand. Now go, shoo.”)

Even though Rin practiced for his usually long amount of hours, you sat with him diligently - even stopping to cheer him on when you needed a break from reading or studying or whatever else you were doing.

Upon returning, he went to shower and you went to warm up in the kitchen. After he was redressed and clean, he joined you downstairs to order take-out and have dinner.

Finally, it’s after dinner and you’ve banished Rin to his room while you set something up downstairs. He’s mostly scrolling twitter, watching soccer highlights from the accounts he follows. He’s just about comfortable when you finally call him back down, which irritates him enough to click his teeth but not enough to bring it up to you.

After a long day, when Rin finally comes back down stairs, walking down into the hall and back into the living room - he can’t help but be surprised at the change in scenery. All the lights have been turned low, and everything looks different. You’ve taken to decorating a wall of his living room after some rearranging. A white sheet hanging up with something, and a plethora of fairy lights in stripes going down it in a nice pattern.

There’s a banner and it looks hand-made. It spells out happy birthday, rin in neat, thick blue letters on cut-out white shapes, attached along the back wall. On the table in front, there’s some decoration along with nice paper plates and plastic cutlery and a cake in the middle that’s nicer than he’s expecting.

You beam at him as he walks in. And you’re stupid enough to be wearing a birthday hat, giving him jazz hands as he enters.

“Happy birthday!”

On paper, Rin thinks it’s been something of a boring birthday. He did what he normally would do on a day off but you cooked for him twice. He spent most of it with you, even though it was a lot of nothing. A lot of being together like you were roommates or something. Maybe that's why he’s so reluctant to admit that this is making him feel something.

That the silly theatrics feel meaningful. It is thoughtful, isn’t it? Rin doesn’t think anyone in his entire life has done anything this thoughtful for him. Birthdays are birthdays, and they’ve never really been especially meaningful. He didn’t see the point in just celebrating the day of someone's birth. Certainly, he doesn’t think he’d have it in himself to do something like this for another person.

Rin stares at you. Wearing a stupid birthday hat and the most gleeful, idiotic smile he’s ever seen. All of this for a guy who’s rejected you, but you seem to cherish so much anyways. Apathetic and ungraceful as he is and always will be - he’s so overwhelmed he doesn’t know what to do. What a strange, unrecognizable feeling welling up inside of him. And not even one feeling, but so many so tangled with each other - he can’t see anything straight. His eyes aren’t drawn to the candlelight, or the moon, or the cake.

It’s like a sense of tunnel vision. Where all Rin can really look at is you. It’s happened before. How can anyone be like this, he wonders. Are there people born into the world so unselfishly? And if they are, why would he ever cross paths with them? How could someone so easy to love have any business loving him, in the first place?

Rin won’t ever understand you. He accepts that. He’ll never be able to understand this kind of person. Someone who shines even brighter than the sun.

But he’s not so stupid to not understand himself. He’s unable to say the words he’d promised to you all the way in April. Rin doesn’t like to lie.

He would be lying, that is, if you told him just one more time that you liked him. He’d be lying if it told you it’ll never happen. He’d be lying if he said he doesn’t like you. And it’s not just because you like him, because that never mattered to him in the first place.

Some people are made to be adored. Born special and bright like everything should revolve around them. Perhaps that kind of thing is only afforded to people without ego. With heart and character and charisma.

It doesn’t matter. What a stupid thing to realize on his birthday of all days.

“Rin-kun?”

He blinks.

“Where’d you hide all of this?”

You laugh at him, bubbly and delighted.

“I brought it in a tote and kept it in the kitchen. Mostly stuff from my house, and your mom helped with the cake and stuff. It’s nice right? I did a good job, no?”

Ah. He’s fucked.

“It looks okay.”

You frown, huffing and puffing “Just okay? C’mon, don’t be stingy.”

“Doesn’t begging for compliments defeat the purpose of them.”

“Not to me,”

Your frown deepens and Rin is starting to feel the rose colored glasses set in.

“It’s nice. It’s good.”

“So you like it? You’re happy? Delighted, even? Absolutely overjoyed by-”

“Cut it out or I’m going to send you home.”

“No,” You whine, tugging on his sleeves like you’re worried he really will “I want cake.”

“Then let’s cut the cake?”

“We can’t,” You put your arms up in a cross and Rin gives you a look of confusion. “I promised I’d get a good picture of you.”

“What? Promised who?”

“Your parents, mostly. But also, you should post on your Instagram a little more, no? You’re basically a famous player already, you should have the courtesy to feed your fans.”

Before he can do anything to protest, you usher Rin to sit on the other side of the table before you back with his phone. He stares at you but you only look at him expectantly. Still, he unlocks it and hands it to you. He gives you an irritated sigh (though he isn’t really irritated).

“This is stupid.”

“It’s a good thing to capture memories, you dummy. Now smile,” You say, holding up the camera after some angling “Or don’t. The people do love a good scowl.”

That makes him want to smile. He’s awkward in the photos but he does stay still for them, trying his best not to look ridiculous. You take a few, then pause to come up to the table and light the candles in front of him. He hears the camera shutter one more time before you look up at him over the edge.

“Ready to blow out your candles?”

“I guess.”

Before Rin can do anything about it, he listens to you sing happy birthday - poorly with too much enthusiasm. You’re tone deaf and passionate all at the same time - singing each word with a dramatic flair until you’re on the final word. You can’t clap because you’re recording but you do cheer as he burns the candles out. Once it’s over you stop recording, looking down and swiping through the pictures.

“They turned out good. You should post them.”

“...You’re done taking them?”

You tilt your head to one side.

“Yeah?”

“We didn’t get any together.”

Your eyes widen like he said something shocking.

“...You wanna take them together?”

He scoffs.

“We spent the whole day together.”

You flush, suddenly embarrassed and god.

“I just wasn’t expecting you to want that. I mean we’re friends but-”

“Shut up. And come here.”

So you do, phone still in hand as you mess with your appearance.

“Do you want to take it or do you want me to?”

“Oh, uh lemme just-” You go through a bunch of filters and find one before handing it to him, a nervous expression “You take it cause your arm is longer and you’re taller.”

Rin just nods. Takes the phone from you, and lets you pose a little before he takes the photo. He hands it back to you so you can see, and watches your eyes light up as you stare at it. Stupid.

“It came out nice.” You say. You save it onto his phone before handing it back to him. “Send it to me later?”

“Yeah.”

You give him another grin and Rin takes his phone from you, going through the pictures as he opens up Instagram. He guess it wouldn’t hurt to post. You leave his side, saying something about cutting the cake. But he isn’t looking, really.

He drafts a post as he waits for you. He likes the picture you took together best and decides to put it second. He never has any idea on how to caption these which is why he doesn’t want to post it in the first place. He glances at you, then sighs internally.

itoshirin._ posted for the first time in a while. posted 7 mins ago. liked by isagi_yoichi, bachiraaaaa, and others. itoshirin._ ; 09.09.2002. thanks for everything, stupid. isagi_yoichi commented: no way you’re getting a girlfriend before me. life is so unfair and cruel. isagi_yoichi commented: oh happy birthday btw bachiraaaaa commented: RIN-CHAN !!!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶ official_itoshisae: happy birthday. itoshirinsnumberonefan: WHO IS THAT?? yo_hiori: happy birthday!

“Rin, I cut the cake!”

He puts his phone on DND before taking a plate of cake from your hand.

The clock strikes two, and you’re still at Rin’s place.

After a long binge of horror movies, you’re both comfortably in each other's space - only inches away, talking about nothing. The movie ended a little over half an hour ago.

He’s still doing just that, listening to you chatter away next to his ear. The room is completely dark minus the soft glow of the T.V. which gives just enough light for Rin to gaze at your face. Your eyes are wide and sparkly, still, even though it seems like the tiredness is getting to you too.

Neither of you wants to stop talking. You’ve started discussing manga - particularly Rin's favorite manga.

“Ciguatera was interesting,” You say, hugging one of his pillows close to your chest. “I wasn’t sure what to expect.”

“I’m shocked you read it. Seriously. I thought you would’ve forgotten the minute after I told you.”

“Well, yeah. You recommended it, so obviously I wanted to at least try,” You say with a breathless laugh, turning over to face him. You’re facing each other, he realizes a second too late “You’re such a boy, by the way. Weekly young magazine? Really.”

“Shut up.” He says, with no real bite to his words “What were you expecting?”

“Dunno. Didn’t think you were interested in romance of all things. Especially cause Ogino’s kind of a loser.”

“There was other stuff in it.” He points out. You chuckle.

“Yeah. Way raunchier and darker than I thought. But it was mostly about romance. So, I was surprised to say the last.”

“What,” Rin starts, partially offended by the implication “Do you think I'm a soulless machine or something?”

“Well no,” You frown, shaking your head as you stare at him “But you’ve rejected every confession you’ve ever gotten, even from some of the prettiest girls in our entire grade. So I didn’t think you had any interest in that kinda thing.”

He scoffs.”You’re stupid.”

“You tell me all the time,” You point your fingers and place them under your chin. “Why did you reject them, by the way? Just trying to focus on soccer?”

He feels flush, explaining. Turning his gaze to the ceiling, he sighs.

“None of those people actually had feelings for me. It wasn’t meaningful in any way.”

“And you want it to be meaningful?”

“There’s no point being in a relationship with someone I don’t like and barely know. And who doesn’t really care to get to know me. I’m busy enough with soccer, and I don’t have time to entertain lukewarm relationships like that.”

“What an unexpectedly sentimental reason. How soft of you Rin-kun.”

“Shut up.”

There’s a pause of thoughtful silence where you hum and lay flat on your back, reaching your hand up towards the ceilings. Rin can’t do much more than look.

“You know. How I said I’ve been watching you since you were in Bluelock?”

“Yeah.”

“Y’know. I always thought you looked really sad back then. I might’ve been reading too much into it but,” You smile, corners of your lips upturned while you giggle “It’s like…weirdly relieving to see you like this.”

“Like what?”

“You’re like…just a boy,” You say wispy and delighted “A normal boy who reads shitty raunchy magazines and thinks about love. It’s comforting somehow. Makes me feel special. I really like you. A little more every day, it feels like.”

Another beat of silence. He thinks you can sense the hesitance of his rejection. There’s such a tangible shift in the atmosphere. If Rin stretches his hand out to touch it, he thinks he’d push through an impossible barrier and keep falling in it forever. He thinks it would swallow him.

He isn’t sure what it is. If it’s an act of bravery, or a sudden uptick in adrenaline, or if the exhaustion of a long day is finally starting to hit. Maybe it’s just these feelings that keep overwhelming him that make his body move. Something outside of his mind, nestled in his ribs, that has him inching closer to you.

He flips until he’s hovering over you. Your eyes widen and you stare at him. He stares back, like he almost can’t believe himself.

“Rin-kun?”

And he freezes. The confidence dissipates as soon as he finds it but now he’s above you, on top of you. You’re messy and flush from the day. Your mascara is smudged and your lipgloss is gone - leaving a faint sheen on your mouth that matches your skin. Your hoodie is rumpled around the shoulders - one of the sleeves pulled to your elbows. Rin really gets a look at you. Cognizant of the fact he spent all day with you. That’s why you look worn and sleepy and so unbelievably cute. So cute it annoys him. Irritates him half to death.

You open your mouth again, only to close it. It almost feels like he can hear your heart. Or maybe it’s his. It’s hard to know the difference.

“Is this a n-new kind of bullying?” You joke, trying to ease the tension. He frowns at you.

“Does it seem like I’m joking?”

Your eyes widen and you turn away. Rin wants to make you look.

“Well no but…” And you squirm a little “what are you doing?”

He doesn’t know, either.

“I don’t know.” He admits, and you laugh a little breathless and the tension is so thick Rin can’t swallow around it “I want to kiss you.” He blurts out. Awkward and uncharismatic and clumsy.

A bout of silence.

“...Am I going insane? Did you just say you want to kiss me?”

“I did.”

More silence.

“Why? Wouldn’t that make me your first kiss?”

“It would.”

“And isn’t that like… reserved for your special someone?”

“It is.”

“Rin-kun,” You breathe out, blinking in disbelief “Do you even know what you’re saying?”

“I do.”

You’re a little more serious this time. You put your hand on his shoulder. He feels like the Earth is gonna fall from under his feet.

“Stop messing with me.”

“I’m not.”

You frown.

“Do you really want to kiss me?”

“Yeah,” He can’t think “I do.”

You reach up for him. You’re more experienced with this kind of thing and it shows as you cup the nape of his neck. He doesn’t finch. He doesn’t look away from you either, as your thumb brushes under his eyes - the both of you so wrapped up in each other nothing matters. Rin would stay in this forever, if someone gave him the option.

“W-we have to talk about this afterwards, okay?”

“Okay.”

“I’m serious, Itoshi Rin. Because you can’t just—”

Your palm cups his cheek and he rubs against it instinctively. He sees your eyes widen and you swallow - a frown still etched into your features.

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Your voice goes as soft as a whisper.

“You’re so unfair.”

He almost laughs.

“Please kiss me.” He asks, so silently it almost goes unheard but he knows you hear it because your lips press into a thin line before you’re pulling Rin down towards you. Your lips are soft. And warm. And they taste faintly like whip-cream and the slight sour of strawberries and your hands are so gentle. Somehow he feels at ease even though he feels like he’s going to implode on himself from nerves.

Just a little deeper before you pull away and stare at him. Rin looks back, eyes jumping from your lips up to your eyes and back down to your lips. You open your mouth to say something. Mumbling his given name only for him to cut you off with another kiss, a little deeper this time. The way it shuts you up is so cute it almost makes him angry. How it muffles your words, tapers off into a noise of surprise and ends up just back at a kiss.

He’s never felt like this kind of thing was a viable option. Itoshi Rin is an antisocial, angry, and apathetic soccer protege and he has no time in the world for anything lukewarm. He’s rejected every confession he’s ever received in his life and always thought of relationships as something far off and disconnected to him in his entirety.

Perpetually unloveable but maybe not in such an angsty, vulnerable way. Like a law of the universe. A truth, like thinking of him, means to postulate that he is that way. A prerequisite to understanding him.

Rin doesn’t like things that are half-ass. Perhaps, part of the reason he likes you so much is because you’ve proved him wrong in such an utterly defeating way. The fact your very existence is by and large, the antithesis of this truth.

Itoshi Rin is not only loveable, but he is capable of loving. There is evidence of it, right underneath him now - with soft lashes and wet eyes and the brightest smile that could ever exist.

And it’s haunting for more reasons than one. But he likes how unyielding the revelation is. You’re worried he’ll want to avoid it, and he does. But he doesn’t think he could forever, even if he tried.

He’s confident if he made the attempt, you’d come barreling towards him once more. With all the confidence in the world. It makes him want to at least try to face it.

Which is why he’s kissing you a second, third, and fourth time. Which is why he’s looking at you in between, wide blue eyes transfixed on every part of your face. He’s trying to face what daunts him most, not like but love and the difference is more important as the days pass.

You pull away, finally - put a hand on his chest and stare.

“Rin-kun,” You whisper, uncertain of yourself which he hates. “I like you. I really like you.” And again, a little softer “And I want you to like me too,” Like that had been the biggest secret of all. Something you’d never told anyone, even once.

Rin can’t imagine it. Have you been holding in something like this all this time? He only realized a couple hours ago and it already feels like he’s going to rip apart at the seams.

“I do. I do like you.”

“Really? Forreal? Seriously? You’re not pulling my leg? Yanking my chain?”

He knocks his forehead against yours.

“Be quiet. How can you be this stupid in the middle of getting confessed to?”

You pout. Pout at him, all whiny. God.

“It doesn’t feel real to me.”

He laughs humorlessly. “It’s all a dream. You’ll forget it all in the morning.”

“Stop being mean to me.”

He has to be. If he’s not you’re going to see right through him.

“No,” He says instead “Stop being so ridiculous first.”

“An impossible ask to the world's most ridiculous girl.”

He smiles a little.

“That’s a good name for you. I’ll change your contact.”

“Nooo,” You say again, this time pulling him down for a hug. His eyes widened. And he’s unfair? “Be nice to your girlfriend.”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that. It flusters him too, admittedly. Before he can think of a counter, you yawn big and wide. Rin is still on top of you and neither of you have brushed your teeth. He was planning on putting you up in the guest room, but currently you’re clinging to him half-away. And he has no such plans of telling you to move.

“I’m so tired.”

Rin feels like he’s going to pass out, He mumbles.

“You can sleep.”

“Want you to sleep too.”

Rin closes his eyes. He couldn’t refuse even if he wanted to. You’ll have to talk about it in the morning.

“Okay.”

“Rin? Where’s your frie—oh!”

Rin stirs the minute his mom enters the room. It only takes him a minute to regain consciousness and by the time he’s awake - he’s already regretting not locking his door.

He continues to pretend to be asleep. He thinks you still are because you’re comfortably slotted in his arms. Rin is so embarrassed he wants to die. He hears his mom gasp, and then quietly shouts for his father to come to his room.

“What are you—oh.”

Rin is going to have the worst morning of his life whenever they leave. He remains still. He hears the shutter of a camera and grits his teeth all the way in the back of his jaw.

“Oh this will make a great wedding photo.”

His dad laughs a little to himself, ushering his mother out of the room “Don’t get carried away,”

When the door finally clicks, Rin opens his eyes and lets out a breath of relief. Much to his shock, he also feels you stir. His eyes widen when you turn to him, your face painted in utter mortification before you bury it in your hands. He stares at you as you groan, kicking your feet.

“Oh god I’m going to cry. How am I going to face her? Oh my god”

Rin scoffs a little at your dramatics. It calms him down in a strange way “She’s not gonna say anything to you. She’s probably only going to bully me about it.”

“I’ve forsaken you, mother-in-law”

Rin nudges your ribs, blush crawling up his face.

“Shut up.”

Up until three weeks ago, Rin didn’t take issue with the way you interacted at school.

You two have a pretty strict policy about it. Though you’re in the same class and you chat occasionally in the halls - you tend to avoid Rin where you can. Originally, this made sense. For the sake of his comfort and yours, the best choice was sneaking to the roof together to eat where you could remain mostly undisturbed.

As such, Rin has never been particularly consciousness of your presence in the classroom. For starters, you’re always somewhere. A busybody of the highest pedigree and always running errands - even if Rin were to try to talk to you he can only really find you 20 percent of the time. Secondly, unlike Rin, you have a handful of friends surrounding you. Rin has interacted with them very briefly but you (seemingly for his sake) try not to force him out of his comfort zone too much by making you all sit together. The most Rin has gotten from them is a single knowing smirk or glance.

And lastly, before three weeks ago, it would’ve been a big problem if people started getting onto either of you about a relationship that didn’t exist. That would've been all around awkward and uncomfortable and maybe would’ve deterred your future endeavors with other guys.

That was when you and Itoshi Rin were in fact not dating.

Three weeks into your relationship and nothing much has changed, though nowadays you come over to his house on weekends where you can. You’ve even been on one date after his dad (of all people) hounded him about never taking you on a proper one.

You text the same as you did before, and you call Rin a little more often. Usually for the purposes of rambling so much you tucker yourself out and fall asleep.

But at school, Rin only really sees you for the spare minutes of lunch and not much more than that. He’s never really thought about it before. It was never enough of an issue to warrant his intervention.

It’s not like he cares, okay?

But he’s more aware of it, now - frustratingly enough. You really don’t see each other often enough in school and you have many more guy friends than he had ever considered before. Every time he catches you and Murata-senpai trekking down the hall he feels his blood pressure rise.

You and Rin have both decided, though. Despite his posting of you, neither of you have confirmed the relationship. Rin is immune to the prying and you’re good at dodging it altogether. This is the agreement.

It is therefore very irrational of him to be thinking of speaking up at this current moment in time.

Despite your mutual decision to keep things as private as possible, Rin has heard nothing but gossip about the situation for weeks. Outside of the usual, direct kind of prying - there’s whispers and stares and all sorts of other things. Rin doesn’t care about it. He’s used to it, it’s part of the gig and the neo-egoist league made him near immune.

It’s all the things directed at you that make him seethe. Misplaced jealousy and the disappointed remarks of guys in class that make him feel like his blood pressure is rising. The latter is what’s making him most irritated now. How fucking long are these idiots going to talk about this?

“Dude, you had like three years to confess,” Some idiot, who’s name Rin doesn’t know is still yapping “If she’s actually dating Mr.Popular then it’s on you for fucking yourself over.”

The other idiot in question groans, and Rin forces his face to remain impassive as he listens. He tries to stop listening. More than once, actually. But they just keep going.

“I didn’t think he’d actually do it dude. Like there’s no way, right? He rejected every single girl who ever confessed to him. I thought she was safe. And now my highschool love is forever ruined.”

Like he ever stood a chance. How ridiculous.

Another one of the goons speaks up “Dunno. Neither of them have said anything right? You miss all of the shots you don’t take.”

“Are you saying I should just confess to her anyway? She got posted on his Instagram dude.”

A smirk appears on Extra Three’s face “No confirmation means fair game. Stop being pussy and do it.”

“You think I stand a chance against that dude?”

Rin can feel all three pairs' eyes hit him at once.

“Nah. Not a chance. But you could always wait till she’s all heartbroken and comfort her, right? Hook, line, and sinker.”

“I hear when girls are heartbroken they’re like way more likely to let you—”

With that, Rin stands to his feet. He’s seething. It’s ridiculous. It’s stupid. He should definitely just leave to go cool his head but he’s so fucking angry it’s hard to sit still and he has no other way of dealing with his feelings. So he walks towards the table slowly, eyes darkened and just barely holding it in

He knows this is a bad idea. He can feel the whole classroom look at him as he slams his hand down on the desk. But he doesn’t care. He’ll deal with it later.

“You’d be fucking lucky if my girlfriend ever looked your way.”

As soon as Rin says it, there's a thud at the door-way of the classroom. When he looks up you’re there with your eyes widened. Rin just looks back, impassive and immune to the sudden uproar of whispers.

He only clicks his teeth when you grab him by the sleeve of his uniform - cracking a small smile as he hears the faint words “Just give up dude.” as he leaves.

Up on the roof top, you’re shaking Rin by the shoulders - visibly distressed.

“Hey! What the hell was that?”

“What.” He offers, not willing to budge on the situation. In the first place he’s a little irritated by all of it. And he’s a little irritated by how much you’ve been enforcing the no-talking rule. Right now, it really feels like he can’t take it anymore.

You frown deeply, distress only growing as the time passes in uncomfortable silence. Rin doesn’t want to be civil about it. About it and about you and about those idiots.

“We had an agreement!” You say, grabbing him by the front of his shirt, though it’s weak. He stares down at you.

“So what?”

“Rin, we talked about this. Don’t be like this.”

“Like what.”

“Pissy and weird. You’re being weird and I don’t like it. It’s making me sad.”

“How am I being—”

Before Rin can proceed with his sentence, he catches a glimpse of your face in the midst of his tantrum. Sad like a puppy who got its tail stepped on and about ready to cry, he immediately seals his mouth in fear of making it worse.

“Why are you doing that?” He spits.

“Doing what?”

“Being all sad and pathetic. Does it really bother you that much if people know we’re dating?”

“It’s not like that.” You assure.

“Then what is it?” Rin prods, frustrated but not wanting to make things worse “Why is it such a big deal?”

There’s a bout of silence before you sigh.

“Rin, you’re a huge soccer player. The people you’re dating and stuff - it’s a big deal,”

Rin cuts you off.

“That’s what you were worried about? My career?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You’re stupid.”

“Hey! I’m seriously worried about it and then you go and—”

He gives you a frown. He forgets all too often you’re like this. He’s used to your silly and unserious way of talking, so it slips his mind that you’re actually a massively responsible person. You probably have a point about it, thinking of the consequences of your relationship through hell and back. With a detached sense of rationality - Rin can recognize that you’re probably thinking about more things than this. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so touchy of a subject.

Nothing’s changed on paper, but everything will eventually. It’s something to think about, admittedly.

Honestly Rin doesn’t care what strangers think. He’s blunt and unfriendly. Always has been, and will continue to be through the majority of his career he’s absolutely sure. Even outside of Bluelock, he has almost no regard for the opinions of other people and what concerns them. Maybe it’s irresponsible, but Rin isn’t playing soccer for the approval of the populace and nothing will ever change that.

“If I thought that was something I should worry about, we wouldn’t be dating.”

You look up at him.

“You should be worried about it.” You emphasize.

“I’m not. I don’t care what any of those people think.”

“Then why’d you go and say something?”

Rin seethes.

“They deserved it.”

Your hand reaches for his cheek. He pauses and takes a deep breath, staring at you. He leans into your touch instinctively, frustration eased by the sensation. You stare back.

“Okay. We’ll announce it officially later, then.”

“Do we even need to do that? If you tell three people, half of our grade’ll find out anyway.”

“Are you saying my friends gossip?”

He doesn’t reply to that. You pout at him and Rin fights the urge to kiss you. There’s a beat of silence as you give him a hug - the two of you on the same roof you always are. Rin doesn’t mind it, wrapping his arms loosely around your waist.

“You know, it’s gonna get busy for me soon.” You mumble. So this is what else you were worrying about. “And for you. I have my entrance exam and the school is in Tokyo. And you’re gonna go back to Bluelock and—”

“It’ll be fine.”

“I’m worried about it anyways.”

“About what?”

“I’ll see you less. What if you stop liking me randomly and I can’t even hunt you down about it?”

Rin huffs “You’re insane enough to find me,” He drops his chin on your shoulder “Plus you talk to my mom.”

“You’re gonna be so busy.”

“I’ll come see you when I’m not.”

“And you’re going to be surrounded by the human equivalent of siren women someday soon.”

“I don’t care about that.”

“But you might.”

“I haven’t in eighteen years, you moron.”

“I’m gonna miss you all the time.” You say, sniffly and Rin is so struck with a feeling of affection he almost falls “I already miss you all the time.”

He squeezes you a little tighter “It’ll be fine.”

“For you.”

Rin furrows his brow, pulling back to stare at you.

“Not for me,” Because Rin can begrudgingly admit he will miss you worse than this “Just in general. It’ll be fine. You almost made it a year without me.”

“But now I’m with you,” You reply easily, and softly and oh-so in love Rin wants to turn away “And I’m so happy and I want it be like this for a long time,”

“Just a long time? Not something stupid like a blossoming eternity?”

“I thought I’d scare you.”

“You did that in April.” He points out flatly. You hit him lightly but smile anyway.

“It’s a problem how much I like you.”

Rin likes you just as much. You’re probably too much of an idiot to realize and won’t for a long while. He takes a little comfort in, strangely.

“It’ll be fine. I’ll come see you.” He says again, because it’s the only thing he can think to say. He believes in it thoroughly. If Rin were a better, more candidly vulnerable person he thinks now he’d give the loving boyfriend speech. He almost wants to half-assedly try but can’t bring himself to get past the awkwardness. He hugs you tighter because it’s all he’s capable of, and hopes he can will it into you. The sincerity of his words, he wants so badly for them to reach you “Stop worrying so much.”

“Rin-kun,” You start, then pause to look up at him. His breath hitches “Rin. I love you. Really.”

He feels like he’s gonna be sick as he stares at you, eyes widened. You look the same as you always do. Unexpectant, terribly sincere, with your heart on your sleeve. The more Rin knows you, the more he thinks it can’t be easy to be so vulnerable all the time.

So you do it for him, and only him. And Rin is always going to be intolerable. Frustrating and impatient. But he wants to do it for you too, where he can. Rin wants you to know it’ll be fine because the fact that you’re standing here now is nothing short of a miracle. Nothing comes out right.

“Yeah.” He says, but he can’t get the rest of words out. And you laugh, and peek up at him through your lashes.

“And you love me too, don’t you?”

Rin grits his teeth. He wants to say no.

“I guess.”

“And we’re going to be just fine.” You repeat, hugging him tight. Rin hugs you back. He wants to say thank you. He wants to kiss you stupid and make fun of you at the same time. He wants you so much and so often he’s sure he’s lost his fucking mind.

But he agrees with you, at least. He nods. He holds you. He doesn’t like to lie, so he looks at you instead.

“Yeah. It’s gonna be fine.”

EPILOGUE ;

In Rin’s defense, he’s not trying to listen in on the conversions of your underclassmen.

For starters, the club door is cracked up and Rin only has one airpod fully charged. Secondly, it’s not like they’re being quiet. Rin’s pretty sure anyone with decent enough hearing could hear them from down the hall. Given that it’s the newspaper club, he’s sure that the conversation isn’t usually this interesting.

It’s just when he catches wind of your name while you’re nowhere to be found, he finds himself eavesdropping just a little. He leans back into the chair he’s sitting in, face tucked into his black mask and hat pulled neatly over his head.

“Guys, I’ve decided I’m going to confess to Boss no matter what.”

He must mean you. Rin often hears how some of the people in the club affectionately add danchou to the end of your name. Rin scoffs a little at the kids' confidence. It reminds him a little of highschool. Rin really think you’re at more of a risk than he is. Being a celebrity makes him naturally unattainable - more of a fixture than a person.

Everytime someone confesses to you though it’s sincere. From knowing you. And he gets it but it doesn’t keep him from scoffing and turning his nose up.

“It’d be a good idea to give up while you’re ahead.” Says another unnamed voice.

“Yeah Nakao-san. Do you even know who Senpai's boyfriend is?”

“N-no. But it doesn’t matter. Through the powerful of love I’ll—”

Before Rin gets a chance to listen anymore, he hears your voice call out for him. He snaps his head up to look at you. You’re dressed so professionally it’s hard to recognize you like that. Your hair is cut neat and styled professionally and you’re dressed in business casual. He’s relieved he brought shoes for you to change into.

You run up to him anyway, and Rin stands up to make sure you don’t stumble as you throw your arms around his neck. You’re closer in height with your heels on so he doesn’t have to bend down much at all to kiss you. He pulls down his mask quickly.

“Rin-tan, you’re here.” You say with a soft, breathless giggle “I missed youuu.”

“Missed you too,” He says, an arm squeezed around your waist “I have shoes for you in the car,”

You gasp, rubbing your cheek against his affectionately.

“You’re the best in the world. My feet are so sore.”

“Did the interview go well?” Rin asks. You pull away, moving your hair away from your eyes before nodding.

“Uh-huh. The women's rugby team captain is super chill and she interviews great so it went smoothly. I just need to drop the transcript off and then we can leave,” You say holding his hand. He squeezes your palms “Do you want to meet them? You don’t have to but a lot of them ask about you.”

Normally Rin would say no. But he’s feeling a little petty today, after all.

“Sure.”

You beam, your hand in his as you nudge the door open. The room goes silent, a bout of excited cheering following at your return. He’s relieved to see you’re still so well loved, a little reluctant to let go of your hand.

“Senpai, you’re back.”

“Yup, yup. I have the transcript and recording on this USB. Watch it and draft the article up tonight. When I come in tomorrow, we’ll go through editing and get it out by Monday.” You say, hand on hip before remembering his presence. You grab him and Rin follows “Oh, and guys - this is my boyfriend! Rin Itoshi.”

Most of them seem to know. Rin can sense the admiration but it’s respectful. He can tell that everyone is professionals in the field. Rin likes that. He bows politely.

“Nice to meet everyone,”

“Nice to meet you too, Itoshi-san.”

“Danchou…you’re dating Rin Itoshi…the famous soccer player Rin Itoshi?”

You giggle, looping your arm in Rin’s. He laughs internally. It’s the same kid who wanted to confess to you.

“Uh-huh. We’re highschool sweethearts! And today is our very special date night so don’t contact me for any reason until tomorrow morning at least. I’ll see you guys later.”

“Bye, senpai.”

“Have fun on your date.”

With that, you turn the corner and leave the room - immediately beginning to ramble about your day. Rin half-listens. He only pays complete attention when he hears your kouhais talking from down the hall.

“Told you to give up, dude.”

“Rin. Are you paying attention?”

He chuckles to himself.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

❁ a/n ; hello!! me again. first of alll, if you read through this whole fic, thank you so much. second of all i want to discuss a few things about this fic.

im usually pretty keen on localization for my fics where possible because i think it makes for a smoother reader experience - however the usage of honorifics was important to the atmosphere for this one so i'll hope it wasn't too awkward to read.

secondly, im nervous about rins characterization for this one so i hope it was alright. apologies for any errors its 5am and im soo tired.

this fic was mostly meant as an exploration of how i think rin would really benefit from being with someone eccentric and bubbly. the core of their relationship is that reader is an overall emotionally intelligent and honest person and how that has a huge influence on rin so i hope that growth came thru. once again thanks for reading and i hope u enjoyed. rbs and tags always appreciated!

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