#it’s been a while since I’ve done head canons

[everything-redacted-and-others]

Angel head-canons😇

TW: abuse, death

————

•Angel blasts music in their headphones and dances around the house while cleaning/doing chores/ etc..

•David will always yell something like “ANGEL, I SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO HEAR NIKI MINAJ HALF WAY ACROSS THE HOUSE!”

•Angel has nicknames for the whole pack, example Sam's is “old man” and Milo’s is “mile low”.

•Angel’s mom died when they where only about 7

(that leads me to my second conclusion)

•when Angel was a kid their dad was abusive and wouldn’t allow them to use eat the “normal” foods unless he cooked it himself, and that’s why Angel can’t cook very well.

(Angst is over)

•Angel always plays with the kids in the pack at pack meetings and other events, and they also bring them snacks and little treats etc..

•Angel likes to bite. Sometimes David will be doing normal things around the house like cleaning, cooking, etc.. and Angel will just come up behind him and bite his neck or arm, something like that.

(This leads me to my second conclusion)

•one time Angel bit David too hard and his arm started bleeding, it was only on one small spot but they felt so bad and kept apologizing over and over again even tho David kept telling them it was ok. They didn’t bite him for a while after that.

•Angel’s favorite sweet/bake good, is cupcakes. And when David is in a good mood or wants to do something sweet for them he will bake them cupcakes.

•Angel and Asher are besties (it’s already canon but idc) and when they met they immediately clicked and hit it off, David thought it was annoying how loud they where being at the pack meeting tho.

•Angel likes to bake but they can’t cook. They make the best sweets and baked things.

•Angel loves singing in the shower, David will come home and just hear “I SAID CERTIFIED FREAK, 7 DAYS A WEEK, WET ASS PUSSY MAKE THAT PULLOUT GAME WEAK” being yelled in the shower and he just sighs and shakes his head but he secretly thinks it’s cute.

•they love doja cat, Niki manaj, cardi b, and the weekend.

•I HAVE SAID THIS ONCE AND I’LL SAY IT AGAIN- Angel is NOT short David is just huge. They’re about 5’8 or 5’7 and they’re curvy

(that brings me to my second conclusion)

•David loves their curves and will worship their body when they feel down or insecure about it. And he also loves sliding his hands up and down their body when they both cuddle

————

this has probably gotten too long lol-

#Redacted angel #redacted david #redacted davey/angel #it’s been a while since I’ve done head canons #Imma start doin them more

[gojonanami]

❝ 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐌𝐄𝐀𝐍𝐒 𝐓𝐎 𝐒𝐀𝐘 𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃𝐁𝐘𝐄 ❞

❝ I CAN'T BREATHE WITHOUT YOU, BUT I HAVE TO... ❞

✧ pairing: satoru gojo x f!reader (canon / multi au)

✧ summary: "would we love each other in every life?" it's the question you asked satoru the night before his battle, and he replied that, of course you would. but did that promise create a curse -- or were you both always cursed to begin with when it came to love?

✧ warnings: 18+, nsfw, smut, jjk manga spoilers (236 spoilers), multiple lives, assassin!reader x duke!gojo, actor!gojo x singer!reader, prince!gojo x knight!reader, model!gojo x photographer!reader, oral (f!receiving) in a car, semi-public, making out in public, pantyhose ripping, canon compliant except towards the end, angsty, but also bittersweet / implied happy ending

✧ wc: 6,589

“Do you think we would be together in another life?” you ask, not thinking much of the question, as your fingers draw lazy circles against his bare chest, your head resting right between his shoulder and chest. 

Satoru chuckles, vibration against your skin, “Of course we would, sweetheart,” his arms curl around you, tugging you higher, as he gazes up at you, “you think I could live any lifetime without you?” He murmurs, his lips finding yours, “I know we’d find each other, time and time again,” 

“How do you know?” your fingers brush against his cheek, shaking as he presses his cheek into your palm, a smile pulling at his lips. 

“Because, I love you,” he kisses you again, sweet lips gliding against yours, his breath warming your lips as he parts. 

“You did say love is a curse,” you give a small smile, and he presses his forehead to yours. 

“Then I’d want you to curse me — in every life.” 

“I swear on my life,” you press the dagger to his throat, blade digging into his formerly  perfect porcelain skin, drawing scarlet to the surface, “I’ll kill you, Satoru Gojo,” 

“I’m flattered to be a target of the infamous blueblood assassin,” his cerulean eyes glinted like stars in the candlelight, flames flickering across his eyes like burning comets, “but I didn’t think you would announce yourself as you did — what if I called for my guards?” 

You scoff, fingers flexing against the hilt of your dagger, “Then you would be dead before you uttered even a single sound and do you think I left your guards to chance? All of that schooling to be a duke and you haven’t learned a single thing have you?” 

“And what have I done to end up as your target?” he hums — as you bit back a sigh stuck in your throat — you preferred your marks to be much less chatty, but all he had was his mouth you supposed, “you only target the rich and the corrupt — and while I may fit the former, I do not fit the latter,” 

“You’re certainly sure of yourself,” and he’s unfazed by your reply, as his eyes wander the only thing visible of your expression — your eyes. 

“Since you have not stated my crime, I can only assume that I’ve committed none, and the infamous assassin whose morals could not be compromised have been,” and your grip wavers a moment, and he takes advantage of your hesitance to disarm you, and pin you to a nearby chaise all before the clatter of your blade hitting the marble floor, “and now what’s an assassin’s price who has done all of this for no reward?” 

“How do you know I’ve done this for no reward?” you squirm in his grip, but it’s ironclad, and you know all too well he could have broken from your grasp at any point, but he had chosen not to — your heartbeat roars in your ears as one question repeats again and again stuck between  beats — why? “I very well may have taken a payment you don’t know of — you act as if you know of me,” 

“Because I do,” the heir replies with a simple smile, “I have followed your work for a long time, and I found myself fascinated with what you do — and why you do it,” 

“Honored to have caught your attention,” you say in mock reverence, your arm beginning to ache, “now do you plan to call your guards?” 

“Didn’t know you were so eager to die,” he stares still, as you turn your head away from his piercing gaze, “shouldn’t you keep your eyes on your target or now your captor?” 

“Do you ever shut up?” You mumble as you flinch as you squirm under his grip, sleeve riding up ever so slightly — and then he sees it. His eyes narrow, as his hand grasps at your wrist now, “hey! Don’t—“ 

In a moment his fingers nearly rip the fabric of your tunic to tug your sleeve up —  angry red cuts and purple bruises litter your arm. Your breath catches as his eyes stare for several moments before sliding back to you — no longer a placid pool but a raging ocean. 

“Who did this to you?” he says quietly, and you’re blinking, nearly slack jawed, as you try to rip your arms away, but he won’t let you, “who is it? Is it the same person who told you to kill me?” 

“Stop—“ 

“Is it the same person who’s taken someone important to you?” and you grit your teeth in silence, “is it the little orphan you adopted? Yuji?” 

And your eyes snap to his, “How do you know this? Who are you?” 

His lips curl,  “You told me yourself, I’m Satoru Gojo,” and his fingers brush your cheek, “it’s a shame you don’t remember where we first met — because I never forgot,” 

You furrow your brow, “What are you talking about? I think I’d remember you. You’re…” you jerk your head, eyes looking him up and down — lingering on his white hair and eyes, “distinct,” 

“Well what if I had black hair and green eyes, would you remember then?” And he whispers your name in your ear, and you pause, “the fireworks were nothing compared to you,” 

And your breath catches — “You? But—“ 

“I had snuck out, had a disguise and everything, and I had planned to explore the festival alone but who do I find but you?” His grip on you loosens only to pull you a little closer, “the girl who had stolen two steamed buns and pinned me with part of the blame, making me run after you—“ 

“You didn’t have to run—“ and he snorted. 

“Well, it was that or get caught sneaking out — so I chose the lesser of two evils,” you can’t help it, your fingers trace the curve of his jaw to the back of his ear, “are you seeing if I’m defective?” And you find it. 

“No, he—“ you stop yourself, “you had gotten a small cut right behind your ear, it was deep enough that it would have left a scar behind,” and he had gotten a small cut from one of the soldiers who had grabbed them, bucking him with his sword, before you wrenched him out of there. The two of you spent the rest of the night eating food and sneaking around guards. And then finally climbing up on a rooftop to watch the fireworks. 

“How did you—“ 

“One of my father’s advisers found me later that night, in exchange for never sneaking out again without telling him, he said he would keep tabs on you,” 

You have no words, but one left — “why?” 

“I don’t know,” he shook his head, “maybe it was because I’ve been surrounded by nothing but my family’s yes-men, and you were the one person who treated me like a person, maybe it was the fact that day was the only day I actually had fun,” and he glances at you, “or maybe it was because I was drawn to you,” 

And you snort a little, “Do you believe in that fates nonsense they fed all of us as kids?” 

“I think fate is a very real thing, and I think it’s up to us to seize it,” he releases you, holding your hand before bending to press the barest brush of his lips against the back of your hand, “so, will you seize it or continue to evade your fate?” 

“We’ll never be able to evade the press if you do this,” you whisper, as he presses you against a wall of a secluded pillar of whatever place they had chosen to have this awards show, “and our teams will definitely chew us out if we don’t make an—ah,” you gasp, as his teeth nip at your neck, “Satoru, don’t leave a mark,” 

“Sorry, sweetheart,” he licks his lips, as he leans up, his normally messy white locks combed and parted to the side, his lips kiss bitten red from the liplock he had you in for the last ten minutes, and his white suit slightly ruffled and pressed against you, “you taste so sweet,” his thumb runs down your puffy lips, “and the desserts tonight sucked,” 

You chuckle, your fingers toying with the hair resting against his undercut, “Think you would have been pleased with receiving the award for best actor, is that not enough Mr. Gojo?” 

“The only thing that pleases me is my gorgeous wife’s singing and,” his lips find yours in a desperate kiss, and you could taste the fruity mocktail he had earlier on his lips, “and her moans when she’s under me,” his hand slides under your dress, dragging over your pantyhose clad thighs, “do you think anyone would notice if you came back without these?” 

“Yes, I do,” you gasp as he tugs at the delicate fabric, “Toru, we shouldn’t—” but your pleas are half-hearted, as his lips drift to press butterfly kisses up your jaw, “you deserve me insane,” 

“I know,” he chuckles, “that’s why you love me,” and you hum, your noses brushing before you meet lips again, “I love you so much,” 

Your fingers cup his cheek, as he leaned into your touch, “I love you too — don’t you want to enjoy all the accolades, the interviews, the congratulations? You won such a big award, Toru, I want you to celebrate,” 

“I am celebrating,” he grins, tilting his head, “I’m surprised at you, princess — and you’re the smart one between the two of us,” he teases, as he turns his head to kiss your palm, “in an entire ballroom full of people in there and all the places in the world, there’s no one place I rather be with than here with you.” 

“How did I end up stuck with you?” you grumbled, your armor weighing on you heavier than other days, as you stood in front of your prince — the little sun of this kingdom and the future king, the man you were sworn to protect for the rest of your earthly days, and your best friend, for better for worse, “if the fates have written it, I must have done something horrid in a past life,” 

“Do you really believe in that garbage?” Satoru raises an eyebrow, as he places his sword down from practice, waiving off his training partner, as he wipes off his sweat with a towel offered by a maid, “You know that stuff they fed to us so we wouldn’t throw tantrums during classes — so we didn’t turn into slugs for our next life,” 

“Why turn into one when you are one already?” you smirk, and he rolls his eyes, as he runs his hand through his hair. 

“Has a slug ever looked this good before?” and you roll your eyes. 

“Think your ego is going to be so large by the time you become king, your crown won’t sit atop your head correctly,” you sigh, rising to your feet, “now we must get you cleaned and dressed, you have a meeting with the—” 

“I actually cleared my schedule for the rest of the day,” and you blink, frowning. 

“His Majesty will not—” 

“His Majesty will be fine — old man hasn’t kicked the bucket over the last fifty things I’ve done — I doubt this will be more than a ten minute lecture on decorum, fifteen if I decide to poke the bear,” he throws you a grin, as he pulls on a fresh shirt, “come, I have something to show you,” 

“Show me?” you repeat, before his hand finds yours — his hands are smooth despite the constant swordplay and practice he put in — he supposed he owed that to the royal staff, tending to his looks as much as they did his health. The same could not be said about yours — riddled with cuts and calluses alike. Your cheeks burned as your unkempt hand held his — “your highness, this is—” 

“‘Your Highness?’” he repeats, throwing you a smirk over his shoulder, “when have you ever called me that?” 

The appearance of holding your hand as he pulled you down several hallways through the palace was beginning to attract the attention of several gawking onlookers. Your cheeks burn — and you’re not sure if it's from the stares, his words, or the fact he was still holding your hand as you both arrive outside his chambers. But you can’t stop him — but you never could stop him when it came to this, could you? It reminded you of the times he dragged you through the gardens, wanting to show you the rabbits’ hidey hole he had found in the corner of the royal gardens. 

“Well I was made an official royal guard and appointed as your personal guard yesterday so I thought a little professionalism—” he unlocks his door, turning to look at you, a smile pulling at his lips. 

“There’s no need for decorum between us, now is there?” his fingers find a stray strand of your hair, and presses his lips to it, as he opens his door. You glance inside to find a lovely decorated cake and a present wrapped perfectly on the table, “Happy birthday, sweetheart,” 

“What—but—” and your mind realizes the date, “how did you—” 

“You think I’d ever forget your birthday?” he tilts his head, as your eyes slide to him, “it’s the day we met,” 

It was — the day you were brought from your home with your father who had been the king’s royal guard for many years, you were brought to be the prince’s — but you didn’t know you would find more than that in him. 

“I didn’t know you did this for your personal staff,” you teased, a smile pulling at the corners of your mouth, “I certainly can’t imagine what they would think of you inviting a woman to your room for it,” 

“Well, you are my personal guard, you’re here to personally guard me against anything, right?” and this was the nature of your relationship wasn’t it? Teasing and goading — toeing that line of proprietary before one of you eased off. 

“It seems like I need to guard you only against yourself, your highness,” 

“Satoru,” he corrects, his eyes sliding to you, as he says your name with a softness that you wished he wouldn’t, “you had no issue calling me that before,” 

“We were only friends then, I’m your guard now—“ 

“Do you kiss all your friends?” And your cheeks flare, as your gaze refuses to meet his. 

“That was—a mistake,” you whisper the last two words, “we can’t do this—“ 

“Why not?” You turn away, your eyes sliding to the cake, a frown pulling on your lips. 

“Because you have a duty to your people and I have a duty to you,” and his fingers find your shoulder gently, giving you leave to pull away — but you can’t, you couldn’t. 

“My only duty I desire is the one to you—I love my people, but I can’t be the king they deserve if you’re not the one beside me,” your gaze still cast downward, “I will cast away any responsibility, if I could have a chance with you, sweetheart—“ 

“The king has discussed your engagement with me,” you murmur, “he told me he plans to have you engaged with a princess from a neighboring—“ And his arm is wrapping around your waist, pulling you closer — your gaze lost in the endless blue skies of his eyes, “we can’t—“ 

“I’ll find a way,” and you scoff. 

“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” you mutter, and his warm palm slides against your cheek. 

“This isn’t me promising to find a unicorn when we were five, Princess,” and you chuckle at the thought of his child self trudging into the woods with carrots in hand and what he thought was fairy dust (it was ladies’ finishing powder), “I swear that we’ll be together,” and he reaches into his pocket, and holds a small box, opening it to reveal a beautiful infinity pendant, “and this is my promise,” 

You bite your lip, staring at the silver glinting in the sunlight trickling in from the windows, “Satoru—“ 

“Finally giving in?” And you sigh. 

“How can you be sure we’ll be together?” He chuckles, as he gently turns you, making you face the mirror in his room as he places the necklace delicately around your neck, his fingers brushing against the skin of your neck before he clasps it. His arms slowly slide around your middle as he meets your gaze in your reflection, lips curling. 

His lips press a sweet kiss to your cheek, “Because I know I’d choose you, again and again.” 

“Why did they choose him as my model again?” You groaned as you looked at the list, tossing it back on your desk, “he’s so impossible to work with—“ 

“The shoots are finished quick—“ your boss replies gruffly, as he stands with his hands in his pockets, “and he said he’d only shoot with you. Said he likes your work and you’re the only one who can ‘capture the real him,’ some crap like that,” he shrugs. 

“Yaga, I can’t keep dealing with this man, can’t he shoot with anyone else?” 

He sighs, scratching the back of his head, “Look, the magazine we’re working with chose him as the model, and he said he would only do the shoot if you did it,” 

You sigh, leaning on your palm, elbow against your desk. “you’re not giving me a choice are you?” 

And no, he wasn’t. 

Because now you were at the studio for the sight of the shoot, getting everything ready that you could before your model arrived. You made sure his preferred makeup artist and hairstylist were available, you picked out his favorite snacks, got his preferred lighting (to be adjusted when he was on set), and had your cameras adjusted for his light sensitivity. 

All of which reduced the amount of time you had to spend with this man — but not even the most divine snacks would stop him from running his mouth. 

“Sweetheart,” you turned to see him, “miss me?” 

“When pigs fly, maybe,” but your words don’t faze him, a mock pout on his lips, “why do you request me to do your shoots, Gojo?” 

“Because it’s the only way you’ll see me,” and you sigh, as you continue to adjust your camera again, “you still haven’t given me a chance—“ 

“I gave you one chance, wasn’t that enough?” Before you turn to him, “look, I’m here because I have to be. I want to shoot — get in and get out and not have to—“ 

“One chance to talk to you — please, even if you don’t believe me or forgive me—“ 

“Fine,” you shake your head, frustrated, “go finish the shoot and we can talk for five minutes after,” and maybe he would stop forcing you into this situation. 

Satoru Gojo was the top wanted model by all the agencies — agencies were looking to snipe him and others were looking to have exclusive deals with him — whether it was photography businesses or brands. 

You couldn’t blame them, as you adjusted your lights and took a few test shots — he was gorgeous, even by model standards. From his skin to his body to his attitude, it was effortless for him. Even a bad angle or bad lighting did very little to detract from his flawless look. 

The chiseled cut of his jaw put statues to shame, his eyes shone brighter than the shiniest gemstones, his charm the envy of the love goddess herself, and his smile was enough to change hearts and minds alike. 

The shoots always look little time — the part that took the most time was choosing the best shots — you’d love to take one bad picture of him. Even for yourself — but that had proved impossible. Even deprived of sleep in the hours of the early morning, he was perfect. 

Perfect — except for his loyalty, you supposed. 

How had it gone so wrong so fast? And how did you let yourself become so carried away that you thought you were different from the others he bedded? 

And the shoot was over in a moment, and just like he said, Satoru was by your side as you begin to break down the equipment, as the other staff filed out, “can we talk now?” 

“If you have to,” you would give him an ear, but it didn’t mean you’d give him anything else.

“I never cheated on you—“ 

“Bullshit,” you reply, as you pick up the tripod you set up,  “I guess you didn’t the full five minutes,” 

“No, I didn’t—what you saw—“ 

“I saw you kissing another girl all over social media—“

“You saw me with Suguru,” he sighs, “and we weren’t kissing — we were hugging. You thought it was kissing from the angle of the picture, and before I could explain, you had blocked me on everything,”

You pause, “Suguru?” You repeat, as you pull out your phone and pull up the picture — black hair, hair half up, and they could have been hugging. And Satoru pulls out his own phone and shows you a selfie he took that same day, the meta data matching, “oh, oh fuck,” 

“Was that an apology? Not familiar with those coming out of your mouth so—“ 

“Satoru, I’m so sorry,” you murmur, “I saw the pictures and I heard the rumors and I assumed the worst of you,” you run your fingers through your hair, “even though I knew you better than that,” 

“You did, but I understand why you thought that,” he shrugged, “we had only been seeing each other for a month, but it meant something to me,” his voice softens.

“To me too,” you shake your head, “I’m so sorry, Satoru. I don’t know how to make it up to you,” 

“I know,” he smiles, “have dinner with me,” 

You blink. “why?”

“What do you mean, sweetheart? Everyone eats dinner, it’s a—“ 

“Satoru,” you sigh, “I didn’t believe you, I didn’t trust you, how can you forgive me like that? How could you want to be with someone like that?” 

“Well, you made a mistake — you forgave me for the other mistakes I made during our time together, and if I hadn’t let my team convince me that my fake reputation as a playboy would help sell my image — maybe we wouldn’t have been in this mess to begin with,” his fingers brush against yours, “besides, I want to believe in second chances — because I’d want to believe you’d give me one too,” 

Your fingers intertwine with his, “Even when I don’t deserve it?” 

And he lifts your hand to his lips, blue eyes glinting like an ocean dabbled in sunlight, “All the more for you make up for, right?”

This wasn’t right. No. No. 

“Satoru, Toru, please,” your fingers cupped his face, your fingers smeared with his blood as Maki pulled gou away, “no, no!” You don’t remember screaming, but you know you did because your throat was raw, your tears streaming down your face as your hands shook, staring at the dried blood on your fingers. 

He promised you he would win. He promised you he would come back. He promised you a life, a family, a home — something beyond jujutsu. 

And now you were left with nothing but that. 

“I’ll come back,” he had murmured in your ear the night before, his fingers tracing your cheek, “there’s no way I won’t. Have you ever seen me lose?” 

You give a small chuckle, “You just got trapped in a box for almost twenty days?” And he pouts, as he tilts your head up, fingers sliding against your cheek. 

“It was a one time fluke, sweetheart,” and his lips grazing your lips, “and I’m here now aren’t I?” you hum, “and I’ll always be there,” 

“In every life?” He smiles. 

“In every one.” 

In every one — except this one.  

“One would think you’re helpless, if you pout like that,” you teased, as you crawl into bed beside him, a smile on your lips, as he tugs you steadfast into his arms, “it’s only been a few minutes,” 

“It felt like a lifetime,” he presses a kiss to your head, “Is he asleep?” And you nod, a sigh on your lips as you settle into bed.

“After about twenty minutes of arguing, he passed out while I was telling him a story. He’s still not accustomed to this mansion,” neither were you — you had spent a few nights lying awake after jerking from the clutches of sleep — the paranoia still rampant in your mind. But those thoughts were a little farther now as you lie against his chest, heart thrumming under your body — the very heart you were meant to stop, and a chuckle escapes your lips. 

“What is it?” He raises an eyebrow, and you shake your head. 

“Why did you help me?” You draw circles on his chest, “you had every reason not to,” your fingers traced a line across his neck, “I even held a knife to your neck,” 

“And that was very attractive,” and you roll your eyes, “what? I like a woman who takes charge,” 

“Oh I know,” you chuckle, your lips pressing sweet kisses to his neck, “but I still don’t understand — you had every reason to distrust me, we barely knew each other, and yet—“ 

“You were still the girl I fell in love with that night,” he murmurs, “I just knew you were something special and when I saw what you were doing — trying to uproot corruption, I knew I was right. And I knew I had to make you my duchess,” 

“Well I’m not your wife yet,” you tease, the words barely out of your mouth before he’s got you pinned under him, “Toru—“ 

“Now, I told you I was going to seize my fate when I saw it,” and he kisses you, stealing every thought from your mind and every breath from your body, his touch filling you with warmth in return, “and I see it right in front of me,” 

“And what does it look like?” you smile against his lips, as he leans down to kiss you again. 

“Bright.” 

“Is it just me or do these paparazzi lights get brighter and brighter each time?” you rub your eyes as the two of you slide into your car for the night, the driver setting off towards your home. 

“I don’t know, I was too busy being blinded by my gorgeous wife,” and Satoru’s hands are all but under your dress, sliding up and down your sides, before one cups your cheek, “did i mention how incredible you look, sweetheart?” 

You hum, “about a million times,” your fingers slide against his shoulders until he’s practically lying on top of you against these leather seats. 

“That’s a million times too little — you look incredible, sweetheart. This dress was made for you,” and his lips taste as sweet as his words, your fingers sliding into his snowy locks while his slide against your bare thighs, “and I can’t wait to take it off when we get home,” 

“You’re going to take it off now if your hands slide any further up,” he draws a shiver from you as his hands do just that, daring further up your thighs, “Toru—“ 

“Don’t worry, the partition is up and it’s just you and me, sweetheart,” and he’s sinking to his knees on the floor, as his hands slide up your dress, “just keep your voice down, don’t want anyone hearing my wife, do we?” And his lips are grazing your inner thigh, his smirk against your skin, “good thing I relieved you of those pantyhose, huh?” 

“Toru,” you whined, as his fingers parted your thighs, and he could see your all too soaked panties, a damp patch and the fabric nearly translucent while it clung to your clit, “please—“ 

“So needy — and now that mouth of yours is being as honest as this one,” his lithe fingers tug aside the crotch of your panties to expose your cunt, “all this f’me? Been like this since our make out earlier? Surprised I didn’t see your cum drip down your legs,” 

And his words make you squirm, “Satoru, I swear to god—“ and his lips kiss your clit, as two fingers tease at your entrance, gathering your pre on his fingertips. 

“You don’t have to call me god, Princess — just Satoru is fine,” he murmurs as his lips close around your clit, as his fingers work inside your walls, a delicious stretch that draws a pretty gasp from your lips, your head falling back against the leather headrest. 

The sounds of the squelch of your cunt and the slurping of his lips against your clit rang in your ears — your fingernails digging into the seat as your other hand clamped over your lips. 

“That’s it, just like that, Princess,” his tongue darts out to  drag circles around your clit, while his fingers find the spot that makes you see stars. 

“I’m—“ you manage, before you’re cumming around his fingers and lips, your toes curling as you do, head back against the headrest. Your eyes find him to see him looking all too perfect even ruffled, as his lips were glossy with your release, tongue darting out to clean it, before he licked his fingers one by one. 

“And you were worried about the paparazzi noticing your missing pantyhose,” he murmurs, pressing a kiss to your lips, letting you taste yourself on his tongue, a smirk against your mouth, “let’s hope no one saw that,” 

And there’s a sharp rap on the window, “Sir and madam? We’ve arrived,” and his lips quirk, as he adjusts your clothes, cleaning your smudged lipstick with his thumb, as you reach up to wipe his lips where the lipstick had gone. 

“Shall we celebrate my win properly?” He opens the door and slides out of the car, holding out his hand for yours.

“As we always do?” And your fingers find his, as he presses his lips to the back of your palm. 

“Always, Princess.” 

“Are you ready yet, Princess?” Your Prince’s arms slid around your waist, his lips already at your neck, as his ocean blues met your gaze in the mirror, “how lucky is our kingdom to have such a lovely future queen? And how much luckier am I to have her as my wife?” 

“We do not know if the people will approve of me still, Toru,” you murmur, eyes shying away from his, your fingers finding the infinity around your neck, “you promised me forever, but will they grant it to us?” 

“Do you have such little faith, sweetheart, in your future husband?” His fingers find your chin, tilting it upwards to meet your gaze, “I’ve already done the impossible — I charmed you over the last two decades haven’t I?” 

“More like wore me down,” and he pinches your cheek, before he presses a kiss to the affronted skin, “re-defined the long game,” and he kisses your nose, “and stole my heart and soul while I wasn’t looking,” 

“I never steal,” he smiles that same smile that was emblazoned in your memory all those years ago, when he emerged from the woods with not a unicorn, but a baby fawn he had frightened from very same thicket, “I only take what was given to me,” he smiles, “and you willingly handed over your heart the moment you let me into your life,” 

“What was I thinking?” you murmur, cupping his cheek, “now I’ll have to deal with the politics of a kingdom for the rest of my days,” 

His lips curl widely, as his lips find yours, a heat that simmers into passion and then into simple love, “I promise, in exchange, I’ll spend the rest of my days making you the happiest you’ve ever been,” 

“The happiest, huh?” you murmur, foreheads pressed together, “that’s a tall order, so you think you can do it?” 

“I know I can,” he smiles, his arms pulling you impossibly closer, “because I’ll never trying to make you happy, Princess.” 

“You’re far too happy with this arrangement,” you say through the door, arms crossed as you pressed your back against it, “I don’t want to come out,” 

“You agreed to this, c’mon sweetheart, you’ve taken countless pictures of me—“ 

“You’re a model — it’s literally your job,” you glare at him through the door, “I’m behind the camera — not in front of it,” 

“But you’re just as beautiful in front of it as you are behind it,” and you can hear his pout through the door, “if you really don’t want to, sweetheart, I won’t make you—“ 

And the door opens, your lips curled in a pout as you emerge in a cerulean gown — the same color as his eyes, the very same that widened upon seeing you. 

“Was this necessary?” you squirm in place, as he bites his lip, eyes raking over you, “Toru—“ 

And he’s in front of you in an instant, his arms winding aaaaaaaaround your waist, “I want to kiss you so badly, but I’ll mess up your makeup,” your breath catches, so his finger brushes against your lips and presses it to his own lips, a little of your lipstick sticking to his lips. 

“Toru,” and his lips quirk at the nickname, “why do you want to take pictures of me?” 

“Because, I want pictures of you that are just for me,” he gently takes your hand, pressing a kiss to your wrist, “because I’ll never have this moment with you again, but I’ll have these pictures with you,” 

“And when do I get pictures that are of you and just for me?” And he presses a kiss to your head. 

“Anytime you want,” he murmurs, “we have all the time in the world, don’t we?” 

Time — that was the one thing Satoru Gojo always lacked. It felt as if his whole life was an hourglass, waiting for the sand to run out — and the one time it came close, blood seeping like sand through his neck, he was able to turn it on its head, until time was on his side agai.  

He wasn’t sure if time was on his side now.  

He could only see the winter sky above — flecks of white he could think were snow but never be sure if that was his vision going blurry. He couldn’t feel anything — but he heard the all too distant squelch of his blood against the ground, the sounds of footsteps, the feeling of his body being lifted, a smile still on his face.

He was going home — the one person who always made his world right side up — the only person who could catch the sand that slipped between his fingers and hold it between warm palms. He forced his body to keep running — to keep going, the flow of cursed energy may have come from the stomach and his brain may be able to power his reversed curse technique — but that didn’t compare to his will to make it home — make it to you. 

“Toru! Satoru!” he couldn’t will his eyes to open, only managing the barest flutter of his eyelids, “it’s okay, Shoko’s got you, I got you,” you murmur, a soft brush that must but your lips. 

Love was always the most twisted curse of them all — and he knew it had always been a curse to love him. Anyone drawn into his orbit seemed only doomed to fall around him — whether it was by their choice, his choice, or fate’s choice. 

Fate. That was a word he never had put a lot of stock into. Suguru always said there was a certain order to things — sorcerers were made to defend humans, and that was our duty. He had replied that fate was an excuse for people too afraid to challenge the status quo. 

Maybe Suguru took that too seriously. 

When Suguru defected — Satoru knew something had to change — he couldn’t let others go even when they had that blue spring. The time that he had stayed frozen in — even as everyone else left, he still lived in those moments, and so he barely lived in the present at all. 

Not until you had shattered his self made prison. 

And it wasn’t without difficulty. 

He told you so many times that it was dangerous to love him, it was foolish to love a person like him with a constant target on their back because inevitably the target would shift to you. And he didn’t want to live in a world without you — but he could choose to, as long as you were the one who would live. 

But you were steadfast in your love, roots cracking through concrete until he was covered in your ivy, entangled so deep that there was no escape—because one look from you had stolen his reservations out from under him. Because loving you was as simple as breathing — it just was. 

“I would want you to curse me — in every life.” 

That’s what he told you the night before this battle — because he knew if he didn’t make it in this life, maybe he could be with you in the rest of them. But how many days would it take until you couldn’t remember the sound of his laugh, the smile on his lips, the way his face looked — because he always feared the same about outliving you. He would only want to outlive you, if only because he didn’t want you to have to bear the pain of outliving him. 

Love was twisted, he thought — as your lips brushed his, he could hear you whisper sweet nothings, falling on deaf ears, but heard all the same — once one found it, they cannot live without it — until they have to. 

His eyes flutter open, and he sees the blurry image of your face, scarlet smeared on your face, as his hand shakily lifted to your cheek, “I love you, sweetheart,” he manages barely a whisper, “I’ll see you again, I promise.”

Maybe he did curse you in the end — because your souls were bound together in existence — to fall into each other’s orbit and live together happily in every lifetime—

Your fingers gently shut his eyes closed, as tears streamed from your own — except in this one. 

“Is it really a curse to meet you again?” you had murmured that early morning, as dawn peaked over Tokyo, and his lips brushed against yours, “sounds like a blessing,” 

“You know that blessings often wear disguises — and words like that always carry a price—” but his lips curl, “but if the price is to meet you and fall in love again and again, I suppose I could pay it.” 

“‘Suppose?’” you repeat, and he laughs at your immediate pout. 

He kisses away your pout, as you slowly melt into his kiss, “Y’know I’d pay any price to fall in love with you again, sweetheart”

You smile, “Just stay with me in this one, that would be enough.” 

Did other lives matter when this was the only one he had fallen for you in this life? He wanted to stay with you here — in this moment, in this time — he wanted you in every life — not just all the others. 

And he vowed that he would— his fingers twitched— 

He would love you in this life too. 

✧ a/n: i hope you guys enjoy this one!! i had a lot of fun writing it. it might not be everyone's cup of tea but hey, i enjoyed it. although i questioned my writing ability a lot while writing it lmao

✧ taglist: @gojolova4eva, @xxemmarldxx, @gojolvrr34, @lilbrubby, @jaixxxsc, @hatsunemitskislobotomy, @elaemae, @gojonegs, @captain-shittykawa, @sillyrabbitreads, @akumicchi, @satorustorm, @equikaz, @imaginativeghorl, , @dhoranbolt, @strawmariee, @catsgomurp, @that-goth-bisexual, @fushitoru, @dazailover1900

#sab [mlist] #satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo smut #gojo satoru smut #satoru gojo fanfiction #jjk x reader #jjk smut #jjk fanfiction #gojo x reader #gojo x you #satoru gojo x you #gojo smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen smut #jujutsu kaisen x you #gojo satoru fanfiction #gojo satoru x reader

[yandere-writer-momo]

Author’s note: I am stuck in a slump so I’m going to write a guilty pleasure of mine… the body swap trope except this time, with a twist. And of course with the one that got away trope. I adore it so very much like black cherry ice-cream.

Yandere Head Canons:

The Husband Swap

Yandere Shapeshifter x Married Fem Elf Reader x Neglectful Drow Husband

TW: yandere content!! Mentions of smut, dubcon, tentacles, monster fucking, size kink, manipulation, voyeurism, oral, and unhealthy relationship.

Art from Veil Manga

You had been married to your husband, Nikolai Sokolov, for many years. An arranged marriage set up amongst your people as a peace treaty… you, a high elf, wed to a drow, dark elf. And Nikolai was often cold to you… despite how often you attempted to bond with him.

Nikolai refused to eat any of the food you made and he constantly brushed aside your attempts to get to know him. He cared little for this arranged relationship and treated you as if you were some mere commoner, a fact that only made your heart sting.

Nikolai would occasionally share a bed with you, but it was often out of fulfilling his needs. He cared little for your pleasure and only cared to satiate his own.

One day, Nikolai bought you a servant just to get you to leave him alone (outside of sex). A shapeshifter.

A magic collar was bound tightly around their silver neck as a preventative to their ability to shift. They were now powerless and subservient. A trait that most shapeshifters didn’t have since they were quite sly by nature. You wondered what this creature had done to have been reduced to a servant…

Their name was Lev Snegur and they were close in age to you and Nikolai. The shapeshifter was somewhat masculine looking with sharp features and pitch black eyes. A genderless species that never uttered a sound, what wonderful company to have.

You often tried to engage in small talk with them, but they remained as silent as the depth of night. Not a peep left their lips to ever give you input. It unnerved you.

You were very sweet to them and even offered to share meals, but they only stared at you. Talking to Lev was like talking to a brick wall that nodded at times. Lev was an incredibly good listener.

Lev’s company did little to satiate the ache in your heart and the all consuming loneliness. You were so isolated in this empty home filled with bitterness. And you started to accept that you’d never find any warmth with him. Nor would you find solace in your silent servant’s company.

Occasionally you’d wake up covered in a slight sweat, a puddle of dampness below you. The room would always feel of sex, yet you hardly had any of that… but you were always a bit sore between your legs when you’d wake up on mornings like this. Had you been having wet dreams due to your consistent loneliness? Or was there something foul at play?

So it was a surprise when Nikolai bounced into your room like a puppy one morning. His arms wrapped around your side while he inhaled your scent. What on earth was he doing?

“Nikolai?” Nikolai placed a finger on your lips, a mischievous look in his crimson eyes.

“Shh, I have a surprise for you!” Nikolai gave you a bright grin that made you do a double take. You’ve never seen your grumpy husband smile in his entire life. This had to be a dream… you gave yourself a pinch and hissed at the pain you inflicted on your poor arm. Nope. Not a dream.

Nikolai lead you out of the room to where a grand meal was set before you consisting of all of your favorite delicacies. You had no idea your husband even knew you adored such food…

“Do you like it?” His face was hopeful as he took your hand in his. “I’ve come to a realization that you genuinely care for me… so I will treat you better.”

And from that day forth, Nikolai was more attentive than he ever had been. He insisted you should move into his room and he often cuddled with you… it was so odd. This entire situation was bizarre, almost as if this was another person and not your husband.

It was when Nikolai went down on you for the first time that your mind truly began to believe he was another man. When did he learn how to please you and why did he eat you out like a man starved? This wasn’t your husband… this was an imposter.

When ‘Nikolai’ made love to you, he felt bigger. You swore he was nearly two to three inches than he used to be, which made your stomach protrude like you had a baby bump. And his hands ardently grasped at every bit of your body as he could.

It wasn’t too uncommon for you to find your husband sniffing your hair like some sort of animal. You were so scared…

The longer you spent time with ‘Nikolai,’ the more paranoid you became. There were less and less drows around now and your servant was missing… you were starting to become afraid.

But you never were able to get much time to think about it too much since ‘Nikolai’ was always dutifully by your side. There was never any time to ask questions… until tonight. You decided to ask him… for you feared you’d fall off the deep end into insanity if you didn’t.

“Where’s Lev?” You softly asked Nikolai whose fingers paused their dance over your scalp. His crimson eyes glanced over to your face.

“And why do you care so much about a shifter when your husband is here?” Nikolai asked in a bitter tone, but you could see a bit of excitement in his eye. And it made your heart pulse in your brain.

“Well, I miss Lev.” You softly whispered. It wasn’t a complete lie. You did miss your servant who always listened to you, but you preferred his silent company over the overbearing presence of your changed husband.

“Hmm… well, we can go see him if you’d like.” Nikolai rose up from the bed and wrapped a black robe over his bare chest. “He’s in the dungeon.”

You were a bit shocked by your husband’s words. “What do you mean? Lev never did anything wrong-“

“My wife is too kind for her own good.” Nikolai held your chin to pause you from rambling on even more. His eyes were filled with so much emotion, it froze you in place. “It’s what I love most about you.”

You gulped and averted your gaze, your cheeks felt hot.

Lev lead you down the hallway and down the winding stairs to the dungeon, his hand gently held yours. You felt dread creep up into your stomach the closer you went to the dingy dungeon. Your nerves felt as if they were on fire…

And the sight before you terrified you to your core, the angled corpse of Nikolai laid sprawled out on the brick flooring. His lifeless eyes turned toward the door and his mouth agape in a horrific scream forever frozen on his rotting face.

You tried to flee but your ‘Nikolai’ began to shift, slender hands now held you firmly in place while your captor’s face slowly morphed into the bewitching creature named Lev.

“It didn’t take much to overpower him. Your husband was too cocky to notice I figured out how to disarm the collar.” Lev’s voice made your blood run cold from how raspy it was. His voice low and monotonous despite the various emotions that hid beneath the surface of his eyes. “To whack him over the back of the head with a sword hilt and drag him down here. It was child’s play really.”

“Are you going to kill me too?” You whimpered when his grip tightened around your arms. His face filled with concern.

“Kill you? Nonsense, I’d never kill my wife!” Lev began to pepper your face with numerous kisses while his arms snaked around your waist. “I mean it when I say I love you, I love you more than that bastard ever could.”

You try to protest, but you feel something slimy wrap around your legs and give them a squeeze. Your eyes are wide in terror at the black tendrils that snaked around your plush thighs. What on earth?!

“And I can certainly fuck you better than he ever could… I can show you things no other monster could ever show you, so won’t you indulge me? I promise I’ll blow your mind.”

#female reader #yandere fic #yandere imagine #yandere #yandere dilf #obsessive yandere #yandere x willing reader #yandere x you #yandere x reader #obsessive love #yandere obsession #yandere oc #yandere original character #yandere males #yandere male #yandere concept #yandere husband #yandere imagines #yandere headcanons #yandere blog #yandere stories #yandere content #husband swap #body swap #yandere monster #yandere monster x reader #monster fucker #monster smut #tentacles #yandere horror

[jgracie]

SAID HE LIKES CRAZY GIRLS! — PERCY + DAUGHTER OF ERIS

masterlist | rules

❝ Could you write headcanons for Percy Jackson x Daughter of Eris reader? ❞ — anon

in which percy dates a daughter of eris

pairing percy jackson x eris!reader

warnings percy gets hurt + in the infirmary for a bit

on the radio . . . crazy girls (toopoor)

an i can't remember if the stolls getting supplies thing is canon or something i read in a fanfic once and made canon in my head but if its the latter and ur the one who came up with it lmk so i can credit you!

Honestly, Percy was scared of you at first. He couldn’t help it, considering his first meeting with your mom was when she was competing with her siblings for darkest child. That did not leave a very good first impression

The rumours didn’t help either. All the other campers avoided you like the plague, not wanting to be anywhere near the child of discord out of fear

All except two: Connor and Travis Stoll, sons of Hermes. Your mom worked for their dad’s company, the Hermes Express, and while others cowered in fear at the chaos surrounding you, they admired it

After you helped them with their prank on the Aphrodite cabin, inspired by your mother’s golden apple, they decided to take you under their wing and hire you

You see, Connor and Travis were in charge of buying supplies from the outside world and bringing them into camp, since they’re two of the few demigods in camp who could drive. As the number of demigods increased, they realised they needed a third person to help them out, and who better than Eris’ daughter? 

Usually, you’d go in pairs for safety reasons. However, both Connor and Travis had gotten sick one day, leaving you alone

“What’re you guys doing? I’ve been waiting for you at Thalia’s tree for ages,” you said, huffing as you sat on the edge of one of the beds in the Hermes cabin, feeling a wave of nostalgia wash over you as you looked around the cabin you called home for years until they built one for your mother.

Travis coughed, and that’s when you really took a good look at them. Both their noses were bright red and their eyes were watery, “sorry Y/N, we can’t go with you today,” he said before blowing his nose.

“Oh, okay, we can go some other day then, when you two are feeling better,” you smiled. As you were about to walk out, you heard Connor mumble a faint, “nooo,” stopping you in your tracks.

Turning around, you watched as he laboriously got out of bed and took slow strides towards you. Putting your hands in his, he said, “you have to go. You have to continue our legacy. Besides, Will says the medicine we need ran out. You need to save us before it's too late!”

You blinked, unsure if he was joking or not. To you, he just seemed to have the common cold, “you’re not dying, Connor,” you began, “but really, I can’t go alone, I’ve never done this on my own before!”

Suddenly, you heard the door of the cabin open, and in walked Percy Jackson. He was good friends with the Stolls, having spent a couple nights in the Hermes cabin himself, and wanted to check on them after hearing they were sick

“Perfect! Percy can go with you!” Connor said, and that was that.

The car ride was awkward, to say the least. There you were, daughter of strife herself, driving to a nearby general store with the great Percy Jackson in the passenger seat

You were already a pretty reckless driver to begin with, always going as fast as the speed limit would allow, but with him at your side, you were worse. The more nervous you got, the more rash you became. 

You couldn’t help it though, having always thought Percy was a little cute, keeping your distance simply because you knew you’d never get a chance with him. Unlike all the other people part of the Percy fanclub, you were realistic. Why would he go for you when he could easily have some charming daughter of Aphrodite?

Eventually, you got to the store, and the two of you got out of the car (much to Percy’s delight, he was fighting the urge to vomit but didn’t want to embarrass himself in front of a pretty girl)

As soon as you entered, you felt a feeling of dread wash over you. Percy turned to look at you, and you immediately knew it wasn’t just you. He was feeling it too

You pointed to the right, silently telling him that’s where you were going to patrol, and he headed for the left. The place was eerily empty and quiet, but everything seemed fine on your end. You were about to yell out Percy’s name, when you heard him scream in pain

You ran to where he was, ripping your bracelet off and preparing for combat. The bracelet, a gift from your mother, turned into a beautiful stygian iron spear

In front of you was a Chimera. As soon as it laid its eyes on you, it forgot all about Percy, deciding you were much worthier prey. That’s what you wanted

Although the Chimera’s poison was infecting Percy’s body, he couldn’t help but admire the way you effortlessly moved with your spear, giving the Chimera a run for its money. As the battle got more heated, you seemed to get stronger, the chaos of it all fueling you.

Swiftly, you killed the Chimera, not bothering to watch it disintegrate as you were too worried about Percy

The materials you went out to get were long forgotten and you drove as quickly as you possibly could, desperate to get back to camp before it was too late for him. You’d given Percy some of the ambrosia you kept in the car for emergencies, but he needed proper treatment

You burst into the infirmary and watched as everyone stopped what they were doing. Setting Percy down on a nearby cot, you quickly explained the situation to Will and left, not wanting to be around anymore

It didn’t take much for you to go back though, all you could think about was Percy. You had to check on him. Every day, when campers called it a night and headed for their cabins, you hid yourself in the shadows and made your way to the infirmary

This happened for three nights until Percy woke up on the fourth

“Hey,” you heard a faint voice say. Immediately, you yanked your hand away from Percy’s, your face heating up. He smiled at you, his sea-green eyes twinkling in the dark

“Thanks for saving me back there, I don’t know what I would’ve done without you,” he continued, “you looked really cool with that spear. I could never use Riptide like that,"

Much to your own surprise, you replied, “I could help you, if you want. Swords and spears aren’t too different.” 

Once Percy was deemed healthy, you began your training. At first, you’d just spar, the only words spoken between you being tips you’d give him, but soon enough, you started talking about other things

Percy realised people were wrong about you. Sure, your mother really scared him, but you weren’t her. You didn’t like chaos that caused others pain, you just liked to have a little fun from time-to-time, playing pranks and teasing others

He also realised he liked you. Really liked you. In the past, he would’ve taken his time with asking you out, replaying all the possible scenarios that could happen in his head, but after literally going through Tartarus and back, Percy couldn’t leave things unsaid anymore. So, he asked you out immediately

And that’s the story of how you two began dating

Percy is your #1 defender. He dismantles all the stereotypes people have spread about you and is willing to fight anyone who speaks a single word against you

He introduces you to his friends, and although they’re hesitant at first, they begin warming up to you and soon enough they become your friends too. Next thing you know, the rest of camp becomes accustomed to you as well

Percy couldn’t be happier! You’re the apple of his eye and he loved seeing you light up as you helped around the infirmary (Will had asked you to after realising as daughter of chaos, you could take it away, giving campers some peace of mind as they were being healed)

You two are SUCH a fun couple. You remind Percy of how much fun he used to have as a troublemaker before war stripped him of all enjoyment, so he starts helping you with the pranks you pull on people

He also continues to get supplies with you. The Stolls barely leave camp anymore because as soon as one of them offers to go with you, he’s silenced by the sound of Percy revving up the car

You also make out a lot and everywhere. Being Eris’ daughter, you can’t help but love the thrill of potentially getting caught, and Percy doesn’t mind because he gets to kiss you so it's a win-win situation

Being your boyfriend didn't exclude Percy from your tricks. You would play pranks on him too, though to a lesser degree than what you’d do to others

Your favourites are the subtle ones. Stuff like replacing his camp t-shirt with one a size too small and waiting for him to notice 

“Babe,” Percy said, entering your cabin. Putting your bookmark - a polaroid picture of you and him - in your book, you set it aside and couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of Percy.

His hair, once black with a grey streak, was now bright blue. The streak stayed, but you didn’t mind, your job was done. “Do you like it?” You asked, grinning

Percy crossed his arms, holding back a chuckle as he stared at your smiling face. Walking over to your dresser, you opened a drawer and pulled out a small bottle which you threw at him

“This should get rid of it,” you told him. You’d never pull something like that without being sure it was reversible, you knew how it could affect a person’s self-esteem. Percy smiled at your thoughtfulness. He couldn’t believe you were his.

#percy jackson x reader #percy jackson x you #percy jackson x y/n #percy jackson #percy jackson x fem reader #pjo #pjo x reader #percy jackson fanfic #percy jackson headcannons #percy jackson x eris reader #percy jackson x daughter of eris #eris pjo #children of eris #daughter of eris #cynwrites

[anemptypuddingcup]

Tricking you.

Trafalgar Law x Female Reader.

April Fools’ Smut Fic.

I never gave detail on how I depict Trafalgar but I see him with tanned skin and with vitiligo from the lead disease he had. (I’m not that far but I know he had that disease. I hope I’m right on this- I head-canon that he had permanent skin changes from it- hence the vitiligo).

Tbh- I also headcanon that when Law switches people’s souls, that person gains the body’s common habits.

Contains: GUYS- IT’S SOMETHING DIFFERENT- Misuse of devil fruit in the very beginning. Reader and Law soul swapped. Reader is in Law’s body. Law is in Reader’s body (They obviously still have their original voices). Law and Reader experiening each others body habits. (Like how Reader loves sucking Law off and Law enjoys filling Reader up.) Law is still the dom (sorta-) even if he’s in your body. Reader’s doing all the fucking. Oral. (Reader receiving in Law’s body.) Leg Glider to Missionary. Ik it gets confusing at some points but beat with me alright? It’s something different. I must I’ve been in a mood or sum bc GODDAMN-

“Room.”

“Shambles.”

You groan out lowly and open your eyes, your eyesight extremely different than it was before. You tried to roll over onto your side but you feel something restricting your movement- something tight around your both your wrists and ankles.

You groan out irritably but the sound of your voice suddenly causes you to freeze.

Your voice wasn’t yours.

And your body wasn’t yours.

Peering down at your body with wide eyes, you notice a male physique with tanned skin and vitiligo alongside significant tattoos that were vividly familiar in your eyes.

“Finally you’re awake, I thought I was gonna be alone tonight…” Your head shoots up at the sound of your voice fading into the bedroom. You look over in the direction you hear your voice and you eyes widens as you see your body walking towards you. “Wh-What?” You say, a bit shocked to see your naked body standing before your eyes without looking into a mirror.

“Aww, still a little sleepy?” She asked you, tilting her head to you while you sat there in genuine confusion and shock. “How in hell…” You asked yourself quietly, staring into your own eyes while she walks over to the bed. Her hand cups you face, feeling along your facial features and staring into…someone else’s eyes while you stared back into your own.

“I swapped our bodies, wasn’t that obvious baby girl? It’s me, Law.” He snickered, slowly climbing onto the bed and softly placing his body onto yours. “Traffy!? So- Fuck, you goddamn fool.” You groaned out before chuckling, throwing your head back in relief as you finally understood what was going on. Law giggles to himself before full on laughing, happy that his little trick had gotten you all shaken up.

“Funny April fools prank isn’t it? I’ve never done it with you so of course it startled you.” Law continued chuckling, his hand combing through your hair while you gave him a little pout in response. “I thought I was kidnapped and formed into something else, don’t scare me like that…” You pouted to him, your eyes trailing down your body you were in as you admired Law’s physique which happened to be yours.

Law unties your wrists and ankles and you look down at your hands which were now larger than Law’s himself. You look down at Law who smiles up at you before pushing you down onto the pillows.

“Well, I wanted to try somethin’ different. I’m sure you’re fine with it too since you’ve been wondering what it would be like in my body~” Law says, his hands sliding up and feeling along his body he was in while he lets out a shaky little gasp.

You watched as he groped his breasts and mewled out at the sensation of his fingertips against the soft mounds before he bit his lip seductively. His hips softly grinds his bare pussy against your bulge within your briefs, a heavy gasp leaving your lip as you unconsciously begin to grind your hips up against him. He could already feel you growing hard within your briefs which makes him reach his hand out and grab the hem of your briefs.

He slowly pulls them off and you gasp out shakily as you watched your cock pop up and out into the air. “I know you wanna try something different anyway, so let’s just enjoy it while it lasts, okay?~” Law whispers to you, his body slowly lying down onto his tummy while he stared down at your cock. You nodded softly to him and bit your lip, a little nervous yet excited to try something different with Law.

Law looks up into your eyes and chuckles mischievously, his hand reaching out to your length and grabbing your shaft a bit tightly. The sudden touch makes you moan out before you shuddered against him, your handing moving up to your mouth out of shyness and slight nervousness.

“Don’t be shy ________-Ya. For now, I own your body and you own mine. I want you to do whatever comes out on impulse. Pull on my hair, grab my hips…do whatever you want to do.” He says to you, trying to give you a bit more confidence on being in his body. You sigh out and nodded to him, staring down into his eyes while you watched him press his lips to your tip.

You mewl out as you watched him lick a stripe up your shaft, a groan leaving him as wraps his lips around your length before bobbing his head. You let out little moans and groans of ecstasy as you watched him suck your cock, his hands reaching up and grabbing your hips while you pressed your hand to his head.

He gags a bit and a few tears begin running down his face as he continued to try and take your cock deep down his throat. You hiss out and throw your head back before groaning out shakily, your eyes already rolling up as you enjoyed his mouth taking in your cock. He begins bobbing his head up and down a bit more, a few moans occasionally leaving him as he sucked your cock so diligently.

“Ah~ Oh fuck~ T-Traffy~” You gasp out, your fingers combing through his longer and pretty strands as your cock began to twitch against his tongue. He hums out and smiles to you as he felt your cock twitching in his mouth, his hands fondling and playing with your balls while he slowly removed his lips to speak with a little pop.

“You’re gonna cum aren’t you?~ Cmon then~ Paint my tongue with your jizz~” He hisses out to you, his tongue flicking and sliding along your sensitive tip. You mewl out as begin bucking your hips a bit, your voice growing loud while you felt yourself getting hot and bothered.

“I-I’m going to~ P-Please keep sucking my cock like that Traffy~” You whined to him, your begging making him giggle a bit. “I didn’t think I’d picture myself saying that…” He laughed, his hand beginning to stroke your shaft while he wrapped his lips back around your length. You whine and gasped out to him shakily as you felt your cock yearning to burst, your balls tightening within one of Law’s hands

“Cumming!- C-Cumming!~ Fuck! M’cumming!~” You grit you teeth and your eyes rolled up to the back of your skull as you grip Law’s strands tightly, yanking him farther onto your shaft and making him gag suddenly from taking to much of your length dow his throat. His eyes widens and waters as you cum down his throat so quickly yet easily, the salty and slightly bitter taste enveloping his tongue and throat.

His groans melted into moans as he drinks and gulps down your seed, your flavor overpowering his tongue while his body shudders from the flavor. He groans out shakily as his brows furled tightly, his eyes rolling up as his orgasm hits him hard like a brick. His pussy gushes while his nails clawed at your hips, his throat tightening and still swallowing around your length while you whined out in sweetened pleasure.

“God~ Fuck, I came so much~” You whined out, your body still trembling while you slowly pulled Law’s mouth from your length. He gasps out and inhales deeply before coughing just a bit, his eyes looking up into yours before he smiles up at you. You could see just a little bit of seed spilling past his lips and you chuckled a bit.

“Sorry Traffy…” You apologized to him, your hand combing through his strand while you rubbed his head. He mewls out and sticks out his tongue to you, showing that he had swallowed everything to you which makes you smile. “Ooh~ Good boy~ You swallowed up all of my cum deep down your throat~” You mewled to him, patting your thighs and motioning for him to get up into your lap.

He obeys and crawls onto your lap, his cunt soaking and drenched with his own cum and slick as he sat there on your bare thigh. “Is this how your body always feels when I’m cumming down your throat? I enjoyed that way too much than I was supposed to…” Law asked you, peppering a smooch to your lips before he looked deep into your eyes.

You blushed and nodded in response to his question, your eyes looking away from him out of slight embarrassment. “It always feels so good when you cum down my throat~ I’m guessing you enjoyed it too?” You asked him, a little snicker falling after. “Yeah…I did, I love fucking your throat but you’re too sweet to be that mean huh?” He teased you, his hand playing with the scruff beneath your chin while his other hand traced at your tattoos.

“W-Well…I don’t want my throat being sore in the morning when we switch back.” You huffed, crossing your arms while Law spreads his legs open to you. Law lies back onto the bed and into his side before he wiggles his hips a bit, urging you to come and get a good grab on him and his hips. “Well? Come on! I wanna see how this feel~ I wanna know how your body feels when you’re getting fucked by my cock.” He says, smiling to you while you stared down at him.

You chuckle nervously and gulped before scooting closer to him and getting down onto your knees. Your thumbs spreads his pussy open and a mewl leaves him while he watched you stare down at your own pussy. “I’ve never seen it from this angle…” You whisper to yourself, your fingers toying at his clit while you observed his slit from this different angle. Law shudders and huffs out heavily, his tongue trailing across his lips while he watched you play with his pussy and thighs.

“O-Oi! Eyes up here, quit starin’ and ogling your own pussy and fuck it already!” Law snapped at you before groaning out impatiently, his tone making you giggle at his desperation. “If you wanna know how my pussy feels then I’ll show you~” You drool out onto his slit and rub the natural lubricant out into his pussy before pressing your tip up against his entrance.

He stared down and mewls out softly while he watched you lift one of his legs into you shoulder. Your tip kissed his entrance and you slowly begin to slide into his cunt, a slightly pain groan leaving him as you did. You hiss and moan out shakily, enjoying the feeling of his velvety walls sucking your cock in.

“H-Holy fuck~ Y-Your dick is s-so fuckin’ big~” Law mewls out, his hands gripping the quilt beneath both of your bodies. “Ah~ Y-You mean your dick T-Traffy~ T-That’s how I feel every time you enter me~” You explained, your moans all light as you continued to slowly thrust into him.

Your grip on his leg tightens and you thrusted yourself deep inside of his cunt, a loud moan spilling out of his lips as a groan spilled from yours. “B-Big~ S-So big!~” He groans out to you. You huff out and thrust hard into his cunt making him moan out suddenly and shakily as he felt you bottom out inside of him without warning.

“F-Fuck! Oh fuck!~ S-So deep~” He moans loudly, his body trembling beneath you while he shut his eyes tightly. You begin thrusting into him rather fast, his pussy producing squelching noises and sucking your cock in rather deep. “Fuck~ Your pussy feels so fucking good~ I love how warm and sticky it is inside~” You huff out shakily, a whine spilling out past your lips as your thrusts began to grow sloppy and unrhythmic.

Law couldn’t help but to moan out and melt beneath your body, his hands clawing at the quilt while his face scrunches up with ecstasy. “Ohh fuck~ Your dick is so fuckin’ deep inside of my pussy~ Your cock is grinding against my g-spot so good~ I-I see how y-you feel now!~” Law mewls out, his eyes staring into yours while you huff out heavily to him.

Your body pushes up against his and your knees dig deep into the mattress while the bed begins to rock heavily and frantically from your haphazard thrusts. Law didn’t mind it at all, even if your thrusts were rather uneven and sloppy, he still enjoyed the feeling of your cock sliding in and out of his cunt and kissing his g-spot.

It was a rather different yet sensational feeling.

“I-I didn’t know my pussy felt this good to you~” You mewl out shakily, your arms wrapping around his body while your nails begins to scratch at his back.

“Ah~ O-Of course it does, I-I didn’t expect my cock to do this much damage to your cunt~ Yet here we are…and it feels so fucking good~” Law hums our, wrapping his arms and legs around your body while gasping out to you.

Your hands held on tight to Law’s hips as you thrust into his cunt just a bit faster, a gasp leaving you as you felt your cock twitching within Law’s warmth. His pussy sucked you in deep, pulling you in and not wanting to let go of you. You groaned out as your brows furled, your thrusts growing a bit sloppier as you struggled to stay in sync as if you already were beforehand.

“Fuck~ T-Traffy I-I’m c-close again~” You whimpered to him, biting your bottom lip as your nails clawed at his hips. Law mewls out before pressing his lips against yours, giving you a sloppy yet deep and needy kiss. “Cum baby~ Fill up my fucking pussy~” Law hisses, his arms pulling you closer to him while his pussy tightens and clings around your shaft.

You gasp out and shut your eyes, your breathes deep and heavy as you finally feel yourself ready to release. “Oh god~ Fuck! Fuck Traffy!~” You hold on tight to his body as you trembled against him, your cock releasing your seed deep inside of his pussy. Law moans out rather loud and angelically as his body shudders hard against yours before he squirts and gushes out around your length.

“Ooooh fuck~ Oh fuck~” Law moans out shakily, his hands trembling against your shoulders as he presses his lips against yours once again. You hum out and kissed him lovingly before pulling away, a laugh falling after as you stared into his teary eyes.

“Are you okay Traffy?” You asked him, your hand playing at his soft skin while he lied there breathing heavily. “Y-Yeah…I’m fine. Fuck why did that feel so good…? Y-Your orgasms are so fucking amazing…” He heaved out shakily to you, his arms wrapping around you as he grew indecisive with his decision or rather- fought with your body’s habit of holding on to him.

“I felt good too Traffy…I’m just assuming that you can handle yours better than mine?” You asked, staring at him and rubbing against your skin. “I-I can’t always handle them but fuck your body had to have been pent up or something.” Law sighs out, lying down and cuddling up against you.

You pulled him close and groaned out, your hand reaching out waffling with his. “Um…Traffy?” You called out to him, quirking a brow to him and watching as he turned over his shoulder to look at you. “Hmm? What is it?” He asked, rolling over to face you before cracking a smile. You cleared your throat before groping at one of his breasts, causing him to mewl out suddenly.

“How’re we supposed to change back you idiot?” You asked him, pouting to him. He sighs out before curling up into your embrace. “I’ll tell you in the morning…I’m sleepy baby…” He sighs out sleepily, relaxing against your body. You sighed out before giving him a final goodnight kiss before you slowly lied back and closed your eyes.

☆☆☆.

You groan out as your eyes slowly opening, the sight of your body before you making you smirk a bit before you slowly sit up. You hiss out suddenly as you felt arousal near your crotch and you look down to see your cock perked up and hard. You groan out suddenly and turn over to Law, pressing your hand against his soft shoulder before softly shaking him.

“Traffy…Traffy!”

“Hmm? Mmgh…What?” He calls out to you groggily, his eyes slowly opening to peek at you who was still in his body from the last night.

“I-I’m hard- W-What am I supposed to do?” You asked him, a bit of a worried tone singed deep into your voice. Law slowly sits up before sighing out, his eyes trailing down to your hard cock before he sighs out and crawls down in between your legs.

You stared down at him as your face grew a deep shade of red, a heavy sigh leaving you as you watched him begin to jerk your cock. He peppers a kiss to your tip which makes you gasp out before you cover your mouth, your face scrunching up from the sudden pleasure and increase in body temperature.

“Let’s go at it one more time before I teach you how to switch back~ I wanna feel your dick in my pussy again~”

#APRIL FOOLS GUYS- #stfu I know I’m late🫵🏾👁️👁️ #puddingcupimagines #puddingcupfics #dividers -> cafekitsune #one piece #one piece smut #one piece fluff #op smut #op fluff #one piece x female reader #one piece trafalgar law #op trafalgar law #trafalgar law smut #trafalgar law fluff #trafalgar d water law #trafalgar law x reader

[queenofallimagines]

Blue lock NSFW HCs

A/n: so since I’ve let this anime take over my life completely I feel I’m overqualified to give better hcs and since I don’t have a specific scenario in this is general headcanons💕 (pls request blue lock I have brainworms)

Blue lock:

- off the bat isagi telling us he has a thigh fetish is so real it me he keeps his hands on your thigh at all times

- Really one hand on the steering wheel the other just barely in your pants fingering you

- They all kinda got that sauce in ‘em yk?

- Isagi can say “pretty thing” or “sweetness” in that low ass voice and it will have you on your knees

- NAGI CALLING YOU PRETTY

- Idk WHERE that shit came form but every fic he just calls you pretty and that’s def canon that man is 6”3 so hear me out

- This big ass man who’s usually lazy and barely paying attention putting in that work on you, keeping you pressed into the bed with his full body weight

- Mumbling in your ear in his monotone voice that’s just one octave lover

- “Cmon pretty, gunna come f’me?” he’s looking at you with his egoist eyes

- Will have you in between him and Reo

- Sorry but that’s just as canon as bachira and isagi it’s gunna happen at LEAST once

- Seishiro can run with the best of them w that ego too like he says he’s a pacifist but he’s squared up first on someone like 4 times😭

- He Probably offhandedly mentions something about you in convo with Reo and you’re done for

- They’re like gaming or something and you walk into the room

- “I’ll prove it- hey come here for a sec” and now all of a sudden you’re seated in between his delicious thighs being fingered open by nagi in front of Reo like he’s giving a tutorial😭

- I see y’all’s saying Reo would do that for inexperienced nagi but I raise you that Reo only has casual flings and has been intimate with nagi so he’s not used to their duo being a trio

- Nagi spreading your legs keeping them wide open for Reo to see everything while he leans over your shoulder and makes sure he’s focused on what he’s doing

- Something something good with his givers because gamer

- He’s working you open with his huge fingers almost unbothered by the fact that your squirming and grabbing at his arm

- Reo is a little flustered but he’s def paying attention

- They’re acting like they’re talking about the weather like you not gushing all over his fingers

- Makes you cum like three times this way before he says “Reo is pretty good with his tongue, can he have a taste too?”

- Nagi and his crazy stamina will not let you rest!

- RIN! My beloved baby boy!

- He’s a FREAK like freaky NASTY and mean about it too!

- Little slow on the uptake but once you really start learning about each other he’s working out all his frustrations on you

- Not very emotive but he’s blunt so he will make his feelings perfectly clear

- Brat tamer by default bc you push his buttons

- “Keep that same energy when I get you alone”

- Fucks you in the locker rooms

- Likes you wearing his jersey while he does it

- Had hella pictures and videos of it too that you don’t remember him taking😭

- Keep him company on his long away games💕

- Everyone knows he’s having good sex bc he has scratch marks all over his back and dares someone to say shit about them

- Since like every single one of his dispositions is bc of Sae you have to be patient with him

- The itoshi issue is that they will have conflicts in their head, decide what YOU are gunna say and make choices silently based off that

- Like bitch if you don’t TALK TO ME??

- Rin will not start the convo and avoid you in a fight bc in his mind he fucked up and you never want to see him again but like did I say that??

- You gotta go to him and be like say what the fuck you’re thinking :/

- Both the itoshi brothers are rough

- Rin will use his insane stamina to fuck you right to sleep like he’s trying to watch a game stop playing w him

- Probably end up fucking you with or in-front of isagi

- One thing about Rin Itoshi is that he has something to prove always

- Sae and shidou you already know lmao

- My favs?? Come the fuck ON they have nasty ass sex daily

- Sae count your fucking days bc imma best your ass 😐

- However,,, the dynamic between him and Ryusei is too tasty to ignore

- Sae and his butt fetish will usually do anal if you’re taking both of them at once

- His dick is really pretty you and shidou have full length discussions about it and he is TIRED

- Sae likes to think he has you two on a leash and for the most part he kinda does

- But you might as well be on demon time too bc once you and Ryusei tag them

- Him??

- The great cold and calculated Sae Itoshi the gem of Japan will be a whiny little Bitch

- Likes to piss you off so you’ll be rough with him and Shidou right there with you

- You’re both fed up with his shit so you decide to punish him

- You edging him while Ryu fucks him mercilessly

- Imagine you’re riding him reverse cowgirl and shidou is fucking him so hard and deep he can’t breathe

- You two doing that whole outwardly ignoring him kissing while he wants you to pay attention to him clawing at your lower back and hips

- Moaning out “sorry” and babbling nonsense

- Cums a lot and it’s thick in consistency

- Whimpers when you and shidou taste him on each other and he can’t kiss either of you

- Tears steaming down his face while he struggles to keep his eyes from rolling back and can barely even say what he wants because he’s moaning so much

- Aftercare is so cute bc you both clean him up and give him as many kisses as he wants

- That really fixes his attitude LMAO

- Isagi can get pretty try mean too you trigger that ego and he’s just as ruthless as he is in the field

- “You think I’m gunna let you cum after you spent all day on my nerves? Be serious”

- He’s big on eye contact

- Will sit back in a chair and stare at you as he makes you ride him with no help

- “Go on, you wanted it, ain’t you?”

- Spanks you hard

- Chigiri hyoma is HUNG

- like oh my god pretty face huge dick

- People paint him as like corset when he’s like really mild mannered and mean? Lmao his egoist profile even says he’s mean

- He’s blunt and says exactly what he means

- If “okay?? AND??” Was a person😭

- Will get choked up if you kiss the scar on his knee when you go down on him

- “Cmon you can take more than that can’t you?”

- He can go fast but likes going slow and deep

- Really savor the moment

- Wants to feel every second of you going up and down his dick

- Meanie!!

- “You’re creaming around me already and I’ve barely made it all the way in”

- Preps you really good before hand too that’s like mandatory even if you’re ready he’s going to have you cum on his tongue or fingers first

- Gets pussy drunk a lot and ends up fucking himself into overstimulation

- Liked his hair pulled on

- Barou? Whew the king definitely deserves that title!

- A big fan of slow and deep like Chigiri

- Will make you face him as he fucks up into you

- “Quit wining and take it, you’re the one who kept begging for me to fuck you all day”

- Will clean the sheets fully after sex like lmao he’s changing the whole bed

- Let’s see hiori too! People like to say the self proclaimed “ultra sadist” as like just a bottom all the time

- He’s more mean and doesn’t care about it

- “Ow! That kinda hurt!”

- “Hm? Good”

- Big fan of face fucking

- Shidou alone is very baby

- I’m his defense lawyer yall like he’s an aquifer taste so you can not like him

- But that’s your fault and a skill issue💅🏿✨

- He’s the unhinged very soon of isagi very emotionally intelligent and can read a room

- He simply does not CARE about others

- Very ‘if people are going to isolate me then I’ll push them away’ vibes

- Like he rly has a connection w the whole cast minus rin and kunigami

- If he hadn’t took a kick at isagi him and bachira would be besties!🥺

- They understand the same type of loneliness

- Back to the horny

- He will split you open on his cock any time of the day

- He’s very god at anatomy and chemistry like look at how tf he talks

- HES LITERALLY A STRAIGHT A STUDENT!

- Has a breeding kink in canon

- “If you keep my cum inside you for the whole game I’ll eat it out of you when we win”

- Cock bastard also

- Rin def walked in on you two once and it haunts him

- Seeing your face utterly fucked out not caring that you’re both locking eyes while shidou who’s blissfully unaware keeps bullying his fat cock into you against the lockers🤭

- He can’t look you in the face for like a month lol

- Chigiri like pegging and kunigami can suck dick rly well

- Don’t ask me how ik I just KNOW Mr. Bisexual representation has had a relationship with a guy who he was intimate with

- Bachira likes to paint your face white

- Loved seeing you with his cum on your face

- Won’t tell you he’s close when you suck him off on purpose sometimes

- “Oops, my bad! You do look pretty like this tho☺️” be so the fuck fr

#x black reader #blue lock #blue lock x reader #bllk x you #bllk #bllk smut #blue lock x black!reader #my writing #isagi yoichi #blue lock isagi #isagi smut #rin itoshi #rin itoshi x reader #rin itoshi smut #nagi seishiro #nagi x reader #nagi seishiro smut #reo mikage #reo x reader #bllk reo #bllk rin #sae itoshi #bachira meguru #meguru smut #bachira meguru smut #bllk bachira #barou shouei #shidou ryusei

[kaisfruit]

Hello love! I love your posts so much and I was wondering if I could request a Cole smut one shot? I mean, I saw your head canons and you said you could go on for longer, girl please do!??

Starved | Cole x Fem!Reader

A/N; I DONT KNOW U TWO, BUT U TWO ANONS MWAH !!! I LOVE U GUYS! i wanted to go so in depth w cole cuz i am unbelievably attrracted to that man i aint afraid to admit it. also, neither of yall specified BUT! im going w fem!reader since u both came from the fem!reader hcs <3

warnings; nsfw under the cut <3, cunnilingus, size kink, pussy drunk cole, unprotected p in v (pls wrap it b4 u tap it yall), probably some typos/grammar mistakes cuz i am way too scared to ask anyone to read this beforehand, and uhh i think that's it!

word count; 4.4k (i may have gotten a bit carried away im sorry yall)

Dinner was a favorite time amongst the ninja. It was time to unwind, to have fun, and enjoy each other's company. You had been chatting idly to Lloyd, who sat to your right, for a majority of the time. He was a bit quieter compared to some of the others (full shade to Jay, Kai, Cole, and Nya) and it seemed as if the mundane practice of just a normal conversation was a great relaxer for the green ninja, so he was definitely one of your preferred dinner companions. That didn’t mean there wasn’t chaos going on around you guys. Jay, who was to your left, seemed to be in a full shouting argument with Kai who sat directly across from the blue ninja. The topic of their angry musings was unknown to you, but Lloyd kept making commentary on it every now and again which you would happily add onto.

Across from you sat Cole, then to his left was Nya, and the head of the table was occupied by Zane while opposite him on the other end sat Pixal. Zane seemed content to exist in the company of all of you, only chiming in when he felt like it was needed, but he and Nya were definitely whispering jokes to each other every now again between bites of their food. Pixal, you noticed, was actually jokingly joining in on Kai and Jay’s argument. She would add in one point that was completely absurd and it would cause the other two to blow up again. That robot could be devious when she really wanted to be.

Then there was Cole. You were surprised that he wasn’t also a part of the argument, but you suppose the topic of…maybe devil worship? You weren’t sure, but still, whatever it was didn’t seem to interest the earth ninja. To be fair, you knew the other was prone to getting entranced into whatever he was eating at the moment and Zane had done wonderfully with tonight’s dinner (as he always did) so it was understandable really. 

“And, yeah, I don’t know. I just don’t really understand why I’ve always got to be doing something.” Lloyd finished his story up and you nodded along, having listened intently the entire time. 

“I don’t know either man,” you shrugged as you took a sip of your water, “your shit is always getting rocked one way or another.” That caused a slight snort of amusement to exit the green ninja. “I mean, I would’ve already changed my government name and gone into hiding if I were in your shoes.”

Lloyd let out a sigh. “That’s the dream. I don’t know if I could do all of that. Couldn’t leave you guys behind at all. That’d suck big time. Ninjago should just get its shit together so we can have some slice of life anime lives.” You nodded enthusiastically at that idea.

“Ooo yeah. And then we could have like fun drama like…what outfit am I going to wear tomorrow or oh no my hair is so bad!” 

“Yes! You’re getting it.” Lloyd grinned. “I think I should get a cat.” His mind wandered constantly, so you were only slightly jarred by the sudden conversation change. “I’ve heard that their purrs do some sort of healing and I could for sure use some of that.”

“I think we’d all like having a cat around.” You added on. “They’re sort of independent, so it would be a good pet for our lifestyle.”

Lloyd was about to respond to you, y’know how conversations work, when all of a sudden Jay slammed his palms onto the table as the “argument” had escalated. It caused the table to shake and before you could stop it your water glass had fallen down and drenched your shirt. You let out a loud gasp which quickly caught the attention of everyone.

“Oh my God, [name], I’m so sorry!” Jay began profusely apologizing, scrambling about the table to find some napkins. Kai was howling with laughter just happy to not be the one who fucked something up. Lloyd was a bit in shock, Zane and Nya had both gotten up to grab some towels from the kitchen with Pixal not far behind, and Cole seemed to be frozen. You were too caught up in the water seeping through your clothes to notice, but the ninja sat opposite you seemed to have his eyes locked onto you, his body tense.

“Jay, it’s fine.” You quickly reassured as you stood up, Cole’s eyes following the movement carefully, “I’ll just go get changed. It’s no big deal.” You tried giving the blue ninja a comforting smile, but you could tell the guilt was already eating him alive and it’d be hard to get him out of that state for a while. You’d try again later, you decided.

Letting those who had left to the kitchen know where you were going, you made your way to your room with your arms held awkwardly in the air so that the weird feeling of the wet fabric wouldn’t be sticking to your skin too bad. Before you could forget, you made a quick stop by the bathroom in order to grab a towel from the cabinet.

Finally having made it to your room, you were quick to tug your shirt off and throw it somewhere on the floor. A sigh of relief left your lips as you began to dry off your top half with the previously acquired towel. With a frown, you removed your bra as well since the water had made it to that garment too and once you were sure your skin felt dry you dropped the towel onto your bed and you made your way to your closet.

You were bent over getting into your dresser looking for a new bra when you heard a knock on the door.

“Who is it?” You called over your shoulder, still digging around in the dresser. 

“Uhhh Cole! Is it okay if I come in?”

“I’m sort of changing right now!”

“I won’t look!”

You huffed out a laugh at that. It was sort of indecent to let him in when you were like that, but he did promise not to look. But what if he did? That thought caused your cheeks to heat up a bit. To be completely honest, you were almost entirely head over heels for the earth ninja. The only reason you didn’t choose to spend every dinner chatting to him is because you knew part of you would slip up and embarrass yourself in one way or another. Not to say he didn’t do his fair share of embarrassing himself, but you found that endearing. He’d probably think you were weird and off putting if you were to just slip up randomly. 

“Fiiinneeee!” You agreed against your better judgment. “No peeking!”

You could hear a chuckle rumble from the man as the faint sound of the door clicking open hit your ears. Chancing a glance behind you, you smiled fondly at the sight of Cole with his hands over his eyes as he shut the door behind him. He stood completely still after that too scared to make his way to a place to sit with him completely blind like that.

“Soooo, what’s up?” You finally asked, trying to not get irritated at the fact that you couldn’t seem to find another bra in your dresser.

“I just wanted to check in on you.” Cole answered, his voice strained. “I’ll gladly beat Jay up for you. Swear.” That had you giggling.

“You’d beat Jay up over anything.” You rolled your eyes. “You’re just looking for an excuse to.”

“Nuh uh.”

“You can take a seat, y’know.” You changed the topic, about damn near close to giving up and just going braless (you wouldn’t actually. It sounded comfortable, but you didn’t want to expose yourself like that.)

Cole cleared his throat slightly. “No way! I’d totally bump into like a shelf or something!! All of your shit would be broken and then I’d have to beat myself up after beating up Jay!”

Another laugh escaped you at that. Was all of it made funnier by the fact that it was Cole? Maybe. Afterwards, you went silent as your mind began racing. This could be your chance? Would he think it’s weird?

“Hey, I,” you bit your lip in a pause, “I don’t mind if you open your eyes…” You finally spoke, getting ready to just laugh it off like it was just a joke. What a prankster you are!

Cole seemed to go oddly silent after you said that and you were sweating bullets. The tension that filled the room was suffocating. Quickly, you snapped up with your back still to Cole. That action was followed by the sound of footsteps almost as if the other ninja had begun walking closer.

You were about ready to apologize profusely when Cole’s low voice broke the silence, “can I ask you something, [name]?”

“Anything…” You murmured, still facing the other way.

“Can I…” There was a pause, an eerily similar pause to the one you had earlier. He was hesitant as he seemed to be fighting some inner battle.

Without thinking, you quickly turned around not caring about your current topless situation and you pulled Cole down in order to plant a fierce kiss to his lips. You were about to apologize for your impulsivity and how you should’ve asked first and not assumed, but Cole’s hands came to rest on your waist and he let out a low groan as he melted into the kiss.

You weren’t small by any means, but it was making your knees weak at the feeling of his hands just absolutely dwarfing your waist. Those hands pulled you closer to where your chest was pressed against him and the feeling of the bulge in his pants against your hips caused you to gasp which he took advantage of and slipped his tongue into your mouth. You let out a small whine at the action, but quickly reciprocated even if you let him have control of the kiss.

Eventually, the need for air arose and you reluctantly parted with him, a string of saliva connecting the two of you. His eyes searched yours, as if something in your gaze held the answer to every question he had ever asked, as his hands slowly wandered to the area beneath your ass. After a bit of panting between the two of you, the kiss quickly resumed and he lifted you up easily causing your stomach to do flips. You wrapped both of your legs around his back and took appreciation in the new angle as it was much easier than having him lean down as much as he was.

The kiss broke as his lips began trailing downward. A shiver ran down your spine at the sensation of his lips on your neck and your breath hitched as he lightly nipped and sucked at the skin there.

“You’re gorgeous…” He breathed against your neck.

Between your harsh intakes of breath, you eventually got out, “Cole, I need you.” Which caused another low groan to escape him.

“You don’t know how many times I’ve thought about hearing that come from your lips.” Cole had begun walking over to your bed and gently sat you down atop it as he crawled on top of you. He had barely even done anything, but you already felt like your brain was turning into mush. The sight of his body hovering over yours is something you’ve only ever dreamed about and you subconsciously rubbed your thighs together. That movement caught his attention, but he had to pace himself. Make sure everything was alright with you. You were operating at hyperspeed, however, and began reaching to the hem of his shirt. That didn’t go unnoticed by him either and he was quick to yank the material up and over his head. He flung the shirt onto the floor of your room as you laid there, stunned, at the sight of his body.

Cole was, well you knew he was big, but he was beefy. Clearly, he was muscular, but he had some chubbiness going for him as well and, God, you don’t know if you’ve ever needed anyone more. He was perfect. You started to sit up so that you could absolutely just feel him up, but he didn’t let you get up. Instead, he ran his hands down your stomach towards your shorts. You looked at him confused and he just leaned in close, his breath fanning across your ear.

“I want to make this about you.” His hands had successfully unbuttoned and zipped down your shorts. “Call me selfish, but I need to make you feel good. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t treat you like the finest piece of cake in the damn bakery?” To many, that’d be a cause for laughter, but knowing Cole, that meant everything. He slowly pulled away from your ear and you couldn’t help but look at him with the purest look of adoration after that. Even in a situation as intimate as this, he still managed to get the butterflies in your stomach to go haywire.

Cole slowly slid your shorts down your legs and off of your body. They probably ended up somewhere near where his shirt did. His eyes were transfixed at the wet spot that had formed on your underwear and he found himself subconsciously licking his lips. You, on the other hand, were staring at him with anticipation wondering what his next move would be. Gingerly, his hands came to rest on your waist and you shivered. His thumbs hooked into the last garment you had on, but he paused to look up at you. His eyes were searching yours once more.

“Is this okay?” He finally asked, his voice soft. Your enthusiastic nod put him into action and he quickly slid your panties off of your legs.

Cole could’ve sworn he was fucking salivating at the sight of your core fully exposed to him. He placed his hands underneath your knees and used that position to spread your legs open for ease of access. Knowing he still had his pants on, you were curious to what his current plan was until your eyes widened as you watched his head lower to rest between your thighs. Your face was flushed red and you could feel yourself trembling slightly. What he was about to do was just so…intimate? It felt more like a once the relationship has officially started activity, but it seems he wasn’t even kidding when he said he’d treat you like cake. Was he trying to ruin you for anyone else? (As if you’d want anyone else.)

The breath was knocked out of you as he took one small lick of you. You could’ve sworn you heard a noise escape him as well, but you weren’t given time to even think as he instantly dove back in. He had started eating you out like a man starved. His tongue moved along your pussy masterfully, making careful movements along your clit which caused punctuated whines to escape your mouth. You couldn’t help but reach a hand down to rest on the back of his head which he seemed to enjoy. Cole then made his tongue flatten out in order to lap up as much of your juices as possible. As if this wasn’t enough to get his fill, his tongue finally plunged into your hole and a gasp left your lips that slowly morphed into a low moan. This man was eating you up and you’re pretty sure your mind was completely gone by this point. What was your name? Who cares? Cole was giving you pleasure you had never experienced before and that’s literally all that mattered at this point. If your head wasn’t so far up in the clouds, you probably would’ve noticed that Cole was grinding up against the bed as he ate you out. 

Your grip tightened in Cole’s hair and a moan left his lips which seemed to vibrate along your cunt. 

“C-Cole–” His name was but a mere whimper along your lips and it only encouraged him to move his mouth against you faster. You felt the knot in your stomach twist up as your peak approached. You were practically grinding up against his tongue which Cole enjoyed immensely. He could not get enough and it rewarded him as you practically exploded all over his tongue. He was licking up as much of your climax as he could as you were still shaking in post-orgasmic bliss. Your vision felt blurry at the continued stimulation that carried you down from your high and you were faintly aware of the moans and whimpers making their way out of your throat.

Honestly, you had expected him to stop, but even one orgasm wasn’t enough to satisfy him. Cole was still lost in the taste of your pussy. You felt a bit of pain flare up at the overstimulation and you were trying to gently pull at his hair.

“Cole,” you whimpered, “h…hurts.” That fell on deaf ears as he just continued on. You thought he hadn’t heard you, but a shit eating look was sent your way and you knew he was trying to work you up. 

“Just one more.” He growled along your folds as he moved up to suck on your clit which caused a jolt to travel through your body. It seems as if he had enough of your trembles as his arms came up to rest on your thighs. The position still keeping your legs spread, but his strength kept your lower half still as he continued his ‘feast’. Your moans and whines had definitely picked up in pace at this moment as the pain began to border on pleasure.

Your second orgasm came much faster.

He licked it up just as enthusiastically as he did the first time. You think he probably would’ve tried to keep going for a third time if you didn’t forcefully pull him up this time. There was a sheen of your slick that shined around Cole’s mouth and you looked away slightly in embarrassment. Cole, meanwhile, was licking around his mouth trying to get whatever he had missed. 

Your chest rose and fell rapidly as you attempted to catch your breath after all of that. The shifting of Cole’s body was what finally caught your attention. The ninja was moving himself from above your body to your side and it looked as if he was moving to lay down next to you. All signs of lethargy left your body as you quickly sat up and rested a hand on his chest. Cole stared at you with a tilt of his head, the confusion bubbling within him evident.

“What about you?” You asked, still breathing a bit heavy.

“What about me?” Cole replied a bit dumbly.

“You know…” You muttered, a tad bit embarrassed, but you rested a hand over his painfully hard bulge in his pants. The feeling caused him to shiver and he looked down, realization dawning on him.

“Oh, it’s okay.” He said, picking your hand up and removing it from his crotch. “I said I just wanted to take care of you, right?”

“Yeah you did,” you started, “but I said I need you, didn’t I?” Cole nodded slowly, but a small frown was still on his face.

“Aren’t you tired?”

A sigh left your mouth. “A little, BUT.” You emphasized, noticing how he had opened his mouth to speak after you said that. “God damnit Cole. No way am I going to finally get you into my bed just to have you not dick me down. I don’t care how sensitive I am, I need you to fuck me.” You could barely believe what you had just said, but it got the job done. Albeit a bit slowly.

“...Are you sure? I don’t wanna hurt you…”

“I have never been more fucking sure in my life.”

Seeing as he wasn’t moving, you lunged over to him to begin slipping his basketball shorts down. Noticing your haste, Cole finally started taking initiative. If it’s what you wanted then he just had to give it. With a better method, Cole slipped off his shorts and boxers off together in one swift motion. And, boy, did he not disappoint. EVERY part of him was big, you had just found out. Saliva pooled up in your mouth at the sight of his cock as you couldn’t take your size off of it. If you weren’t so needy, you probably would’ve taken him into your mouth right then and there, but Cole already had a hand on your shoulder forcing you to lay back down as he positioned himself right above you again.

Your pussy was definitely still slick from the mix of your own arousal and Cole’s saliva and he ran a finger between your folds before shoving it into you. His tongue hadn’t been as thick as his finger, but it still wasn’t much to adjust to. The second finger proved to be more filling and your breath was once again escaping in huffs. 

It took a bit until Cole had either thought you ready or just gotten impatient, but he pulled his fingers out of you and lined his dick up with your entrance. A pause. You were about ready to complain until the breath was taken swiftly from your lungs as he slowly pushed in. As he slid in further and further, the more your breaths turned into short moans. It felt as if he filled absolutely every part of you and it was addicting. The stretch hurt, but it was so deliciously overpowered by the pleasure of him finally being inside you. Though, Cole still didn’t even attempt to move until you gave him the go ahead.

From there, he started at a slow but deep pace. It was a sensual experience. Above you, Cole was letting out little huffs and groans at the feeling of your walls around his member. He could explode right then and there if he wanted to. But, he continued at this pace of almost completely removing himself from your hole before pushing balls deep back in. It was excruciating.

“F..fa…faster.” You panted at him. And who would he be if he denied you this request?

The sound of skin slapping skin echoed around the room as Cole slowly began picking up the pace. His hips were pistoning in and out of you at a rapid pace, and you think you finally understood the phrasing of “being fucked stupid.”

Every push in had you moaning loudly. It was either moans or a broken moan of Cole’s name which made him go in a bit harder every time you did that. His head hung low until it was resting in the crook of your neck. The groans and low moans that were leaving the man only turned you on more and you about screamed his name when he bit into your neck. There were no thoughts of anyone here at the monastery hearing you two, as far as you cared, you and Cole were the only people in Ninjago at this point. All of your senses seemed to be completely filled by the man anyways.

The feeling of his licking, sucking, and biting along your neck combined with his rough abuse of your pussy brought you close to your third climax of the night which might be a record for you.

“C-Cole, I’m-I’m close.” You whined, your voice barely audible over the sound of him fucking you.

“God, me too.” He moaned against your neck. Cole was determined to not let go until you had, so he reached a hand down to start playing with your clit as he continued fucking into you. That absolutely sent you over the edge and you screamed as you came all over Cole’s cock. He continued thrusting into you throughout your orgasm which only made it feel that much better. His hips began stuttering in their movements and he was quick to pull himself out of the vice grip your pussy had on him. Cole wrapped a hand around his cock and jerked himself off the rest of the way until his cum started landing on your stomach. He let out tiny grunts as he fucked into his hand a bit before letting go.

You made sure he was looking at you when you scooped up some of his release and licked it off your fingers. He really had to save that image for the next time he masterbated.

Before he even allowed himself to lay down next to you, Cole carefully got up and reached for the towel you had used earlier to dry yourself off and used it to wipe his release off of your stomach, a small ‘sorry’ leaving his mouth as he did so. He was cute. 

Finally, his body dropped harshly at your side and you giggled tiredly at him. Cole rolled over to look at you and you held your arms open, a silent question for him to come cuddle you. 

His strong arms wrapped around your body and you rested your head on his chest, listening to his calming heartbeat. Cole found where your covers started and threw them over the both of you which only made you snuggle in even closer to him.

You two sat there in silence for so long, just catching your breaths, that you nearly fell asleep.

“Hey, [name].” You startled at the sound of his voice. A non-committal ‘hm?’ is what you hummed in response and he just rested his nose on the top of your head in your hair. “Do you want to go on a date with me?”

A content sigh left your lips and you sleepily looked up, causing him to remove his head from its place. “Of course, Cole.” One of your hands slipped out from under the covers and cradled one of his cheeks. You leaned up and placed a gentle kiss on the other cheek. 

“Now, let’s get some sleep. We can talk about the details later.” You said through a yawn and he just smiled at you fondly. You both returned to your previous positions and slowly drifted off, and for once, neither of you felt fear or dread for what was to come in the future.

#ninjago #ninjago x reader #ninjago fanfiction #cole x reader #cole brookstone #cole brookstone x reader

[bellswlw]

modern!ellie williams headcanons

i’ve literally been SITTING on these since april so… i might make a pt 2 who knows but i need to get something out. also cw for fem presenting reader, kindaaaa smut mentions but no full scenes. i think that’s all enjoy<33

ellie definitely talks in her sleep. most of the time is basically incoherent slurring, but sometimes if you get lucky enough to wake up to it, you can hear her having full blown conversations, hand gestures and all. “here. take it, here.” she says, her voice coated thickly with a rasp and her hand held out in front of her. she’s pretending to hold something in her hand, shaking it when whoever doesn’t take what she’s offering. you clasp a hand over your mouth to stop the laugher from bubbling over. but she catches you then, her hand immediately forming into a straight point and saying, “don’t laugh.” and your eyes widen in shock only for ellie to slouch against the mattress with a small huff. she’s fallen asleep again.

i like to imagine ellie cutting off her skinny jeans into shorts in the summer. like taking her knife and just fucking cutting them clean off while she’s still wearing them. and after she’s done she finally looks up at you asking, “they even?” and you have to laugh because… no. her right pant leg was significantly shorter than the left, resulting in her having to slowly, bit by bit trim off more fabric until she had accidentally went from wearing shorts that fell below her knee to ones that rode up the middle of her thigh. she scoffed, trying to tug at the phantom fabric “shit, they’re too short,” and she adjusted them on her, trying to get comfortable in her new clothes and waiting for a response. she looks up at you, and you can’t even draw your eyes away from her thighs. you’d never ever seen ellie i’m something like this, so it was a treat for you. eventually you speak, “i like ’em” and ellie smirks at you before taking a step closer, whispering under her breath, “course you do.”

ellie would do anything for you. including, going with you to your nail appointments and getting her nails done to match yours. although, she kept hers short, with a clear base and small black flames curling under the top coat. she sits patient and quietly for you to be done, watching you scrunch your nose at her and saying “can you itch, please?” and you’d tip your head toward her before a gentle finger swiped away the small tingle. driving home after lunch, she would grip the steering wheel lightly, her fingers still slightly spread apart not being used to the feeling of polish. “you sure it’s dry? it feels heavy.” and she looks over at you before you ask for her hand to check. “ellie, it’s been two hours. i think you’re good.” and you ran the pad of your finger over each finger, she was set. (let’s also not forget how her cheeks flush as she slips her thumb into your mouth and seeing the design disappear and send a flood of wetness straight through her when you release it with a moan)

ellie kissing your thighs before going down on you. that’s it. it’s canon i know it.

she also definitelyyy would have absolutely no self control seeing how good your ass looks in your best jeans, watching as you’re doing something super domestic like loading the dishwasher or switching the laundry… or even simply bending over to grab something you dropped before she slides a finger under the thin strap of your thong and snaps it against your skin. you’d straighten up immediately, letting a gasp fill your lungs before your mouth falls in a hard line. and of course she’d look away, pretending she didn’t do anything with a smirk glued to her face.

i totally headcanon ellie having a red iphone. and she definitely doesn't have a case on it but yet still gets upset every time she drops it and a new crack chips away at her screen somehow dodging her camera

oh and she is a fucking nerd when it comes to comic-con, like in the best way possible. you tag along with her as she walks from booth to booth, nearly dragging you behind her with a single hand. like she wears a lanyard (not around her neck, but strung through one of her jean loops beside her karabiner with her car keys) and everything, collecting new pins with nearly every stop. you stand silent beside her as she talks to someone on the other side of the booth, seeing her grinning from ear to ear when she finds out that one of her favorite characters has an entire spin off series. she turns to look at you for a moment like she couldn’t believe it, and you smile at her before she scrambles to look up the series title on her phone. and as much as it might not be your thing, you just cant deny you don’t get some enjoyment out of it when you see how happy she is when the two of you are finally back in the car. “that, was fucking awesome.” and she sighs in her seat before asking you what you want to eat.

if she’s sitting next to you and not really paying that much attention, your hand will squeeze lovingly on her thigh and it makes her jolt a little, her eyes finding yours to see your smirking at the sudden twitch of her leg. “jeez, be gentle yeah?” and then she’s focusing her attention back to what was before, trying not to think about how later on she’d be wanting to feel the back of yours against hers when she’s drilling her strap into you ass up.

she’s always going “oh yeah?” or “that so, huh?” always egging you on, trying to find your eyes when you look away and feel the heat flood your skin. such a casual dominance about it. wanting to challenge her and be put back in your place with a simple question… one you can’t even answer without lying.

ellie loves tv girl and deftones like… don’t tell me she doesn’t bc your a liar and a fraud— give me money. she loves them. end of story.

#the last of us #ellie tlou2 #bellswlw #inbox ! #ellie williams #ellie tlou #ellie williams tlou #modern!ellie williams #ellie headcanons #ellie williams x reader

[steddieas-shegoes]

hiii not sure if you’re still taking requests but

no upside down au where teen single dad steve approaches eddie after hellfire bc every parenting stuff keeps mentioning how reading to babies is super important for their development but his dyslexia makes reading so hard let alone be expressive w it too and the kids keep mentioning how eddie is amazing on dnd. eddie is skeptical cause how come no ones has heard of king steve’s one year old ? but he accepts when steve offers paying but after seeing steve w his baby and understanding how he changed he refuses the money and cue them slowly falling in love and becoming a family <333

Sorry this took *checks watch* like 9 months to finish! I kinda took some creative turns, but it's done!

read on ao3

rated t | 5,182 words | no cw | tags: mostly fluff, single parent steve, not canon compliant, mutual pining, getting together, love confessions

📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚

Early August 1985

“Steve, it’s not like he’s gonna fuckin’ bite, dude,” Dustin said from the passenger seat.

“Language.”

“She’s not even awake,” Dustin whisper yelled. “I promise he’s cool. The worst he’ll say is no. It’s not like he’s gonna bully you.”

“No one else knows I’m asking him this, right?” Steve was suddenly worried that all the kids knew about Steve’s learning disability and they’d think he was actually stupid and-

“No, it’s just me. But if you don’t hurry up and go in before everyone else gets here, they’ll find out.”

Steve glanced in the backseat, smiling to himself at his sleeping daughter. She’d been out for nearly the entire drive from his house to Dustin’s to the high school, so she’d probably be waking up within the next 20 minutes and she’d be ready to stretch her legs.

She was a squirmy thing from the moment she figured out how to scoot around the floor, and it only got worse when she learned to walk at 11 months. The only time she was still and staying out of trouble was when she was asleep.

“If she starts crying, just sit back there with her. She just likes having company,” Steve reminded him as he unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Yep. I’ve literally babysat for you before. I can handle her for 5 minutes.”

“Attitude.” Steve shook his head and opened the door, getting out and only closing the door most of the way so it wouldn’t wake her up.

Eddie always showed up 30 minutes early for Hellfire Club to set up according to Dustin. He took this club very seriously, even as a third year senior. He kept it running all summer so that incoming freshmen would have time to get acquainted with his style of DMing or whatever.

Steve respected the dedication, though he couldn’t help but wonder if maybe that dedication were put into his homework, he would’ve graduated in May with Steve.

But Steve couldn’t actually judge. Not with the fact that he was pretty close to not graduating himself. He had a pretty good reason, but still.

The auditorium door closed loudly behind him, making him jump and clench his jaw painfully.

“Door’s broken. You gotta hold it while it closes so it doesn’t slam,” a voice said from the door to the backstage area.

Steve squinted through the semi-darkness and felt his stomach turn. Eddie.

“I guess it’s been a while since I’ve had to open it. Figured they would have fixed it by now,” Steve replied, walking closer to the guy he needed to talk to.

“No shit! Is that King Steve? In the flesh?” Eddie’s dramatics were endearing, even if it was slightly annoying that he pulled out the stupid high school nickname he’d lost well before he graduated.

“Yeah,” Steve sighed. This wasn’t gonna go well.

“Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but none of your precious kiddos have made it yet. It’s still early.”

Steve nodded. “One of them’s sitting in my car in the parking lot. Um, Henderson? He’s an incoming freshman.”

“Ah. Dustin’s got a place in Hellfire if you’re worried. I don’t turn anyone away who wants to be here.”

“No, no, that’s not it.” Steve needed to just spit it out. “He said you’re like, great at storytelling or whatever. Like you’re the best DM he’s ever seen and he knows I could use those skills for something.”

“Oh? What could Steve Harrington need DM skills for?”

“My daughter.”

The silence following his confession was louder than the door slamming only a minute ago.

He probably could’ve revealed his motives a little better, work up to the fact that he even had a daughter maybe. Very few people actually knew, and he had to keep it that way until he could leave his parent’s house.

“Your…daughter.”

“Yes. She’s just turned one and the doctors said reading to her is like, super important for learning words and helping her learn how to have an imagination and stuff. And I do read to her!” Steve suddenly felt worried that Eddie would think he was a bad parent. “I try to. But I’m, well, Nancy says it’s dyslexia? So words are kinda hard and it gives me a headache if I try to read for more than a few minutes and I’m so busy focusing on the words I don’t think I’m making it very fun for her-“

“Woah. Steve. Slow down.” Eddie braced his hand on Steve’s shoulder and squeezed. “I didn’t even know you had a daughter. Does anyone know you have a daughter?”

“The kids do, yeah. My parents do because they kinda helped cover it all up and made sure I still graduated so I didn’t embarrass them or whatever.” Steve looked down at the floor, shoving his hands in his pockets. He didn’t really want to go through the whole thing with this guy. “Robin Buckley knows? She’s my best friend. The Byers and Wheelers, Hopper. Some teachers know but were sworn to secrecy.”

“Huh.”

Steve looked up to see Eddie stepping closer to him, soft smile on his face.

“So what do you need me for exactly?”

“Dustin said you’re really good at telling stories and I figured maybe you would be willing to read to her? Not every day, like I can work with your schedule or whatever. Evening would be best for me, but it’s not really a big deal if it has to be other times. She comes to work with me so if it had to be during the day, you could sit in the office or something, I dunno.” Steve shrugged. He hated asking for help. But Dustin insisted Eddie was actually a good guy and would keep his secret. No one who saw her at work assumed Steve Harrington was a single parent at 18. That would just be absurd. “I just don’t want her to miss out.”

Eddie’s hand drifted down his arm, holding his hand for a moment before he stepped back.

“My schedule is kinda random. But I’m sure we can work something out.”

Steve’s shoulders fell as his body relaxed. “Yeah? I can pay you. Not much. My parents mostly cut me off.” Steve was scrambling. “I can give you gas money and stuff for having to come to us. And like, food? I can cook.”

Eddie’s eyes were intense, watching his every move, making him nervous.

“How ‘bout a free trial? I’ll do it for a couple weeks and then we can see about payment.”

Steve nodded eagerly. “Yeah, yeah. Cool.” Jesus, he was embarrassing. What happened to his charm? “Would you be able to start soon?”

“Normally, I’d say I can come by after Hellfire, but I have an…appointment right after tonight. I can come by tomorrow?”

Steve smiled. “Tomorrow’s good. I work until five.”

“I can be at your house by seven.”

“Great! I have plenty of books. Right now, she’s really into Old Macdonald, but I think it’s just because it sorta sounds like her name and we get to make silly noises,” Steve smiled to himself, not seeing the way Eddie was smiling too. “I think she’ll probably like whatever you read to her, though.”

“What’s her name?”

“Mackenzie. Robin read it in a book and said it meant fire-born or something? It sounded cool. We call her Mac or Kenzie for short so she hears Macdonald and thinks we’re giving her another nickname,” Steve laughed. “Anyway, I better get back to the car. If she’s awake and Dustin has to deal with her crying for too long, he gets an attitude.”

“Mackenzie. I like it.” Eddie nodded once. “See you tomorrow, Stevie.”

Steve agreed and waved, turning around to leave. By the time he realized Eddie’s nickname for him, Eddie was already backstage.

****

Steve was nervous.

He nearly burnt the chicken he was cooking for dinner just from getting distracted by thoughts of Eddie being in his home.

He didn’t even know why. Maybe it was the fact that he’d always thought Eddie was kinda rough around the edges and was surprised he’d agreed so easily. Maybe it was bringing someone new into the small group he’d had around for a couple years. Maybe it was the way Eddie’s hand on his shoulder seemed to leave a permanent mark despite being one of the softest touches he’d felt from another adult in a while.

Mackenzie was in her high chair already, eating some of the noodles he’d made as a side. She’d been practicing using a fork, so quite a few had fallen on the floor, but Steve still smiled and told her she did a great job any time she managed to get one to her mouth.

The doorbell rang and Steve felt his heart stop.

“Daddy!” Mackenzie squealed when the bell rang. She knew that usually meant Hopper was here. Everyone else just came inside on their own. “Hop!”

“No, baby, not Hop. Not tonight. It’s my friend, Eddie. He’s gonna tell you a fun story, okay?” Steve ran his hands through her hair as he walked by to get the door.

When he opened the door, Eddie was standing there with a handful of books, a box of crayons, and what looked like a hairbow.

“I’m here to entertain the princess!” Eddie exclaimed. “Lead me to her highness!”

Steve couldn’t hide the grin on his face if he wanted to. “She’s currently trying to stab noodles to death. I’m sure you’ll be entertained.”

“Ah, they must have wronged her. I’ll assist,” Eddie made his way past Steve, walking towards the kitchen.

Steve knew he’d been to a couple of the parties he threw to sell, but had no idea he remembered the layout of his house. Maybe he had one of those picture minds.

As Steve entered the kitchen, he noticed that Eddie had set down the pile of books on the counter before he sat down in front of Mackenzie.

There were a few books he recognized: an ABC book that he was pretty sure he’d had when he was a kid but had since lost, a book of fairy tales with Rapunzel on the cover, something by Beatrix Potter, and a couple of coloring books that featured princesses and dragons and horses.

“She isn’t really old enough to color, is she?” Steve asked, interrupting what must have been a very amusing conversation of mostly babbling. “I don’t have any coloring stuff.”

“Coloring with skill? No. She definitely doesn’t have the motor skills to color in the lines or even use the right colors for the right things. But it does help her learn how to hold a crayon. My uncle couldn’t really afford much when I was a baby, so for every Christmas until I was in school he would get me new crayons and coloring books. I don’t really remember how I did, but I do remember having fun.” Eddie turned back to Mackenzie. “And sometimes it’s fun to just make a mess, right?”

Mackenzie clapped her hands together, sending the toddler fork she’d been using to the floor with a noodle attached to it. Steve wordlessly grabbed one of her spoons from the drawer and gave it to her, kissing the top of her head before he knelt down to pick up the fork.

Eddie watched silently, something soft about the way he didn’t interrupt anything even though he could’ve kept talking.

“I made chicken and pasta. It’s probably not my best work, but I made enough for you if you haven’t eaten yet,” Steve offered as he walked to the stove to start plating the food for himself.

“I wouldn’t turn it down. Wayne’s not exactly known for serving five star meals,” Eddie joked. “He believes in the power of fried bologna and cheese sandwiches with a bag of chips.”

Steve grimaced. “Okay, well I made enough for you to bring home some leftovers too.”

“You don’t have to-”

“You’re taking home leftovers.”

Steve turned to see Eddie’s widened eyes and open mouth that slowly formed into a smile.

“I guess I’m taking home some leftovers.” He turned to Mackenzie and tickled her neck. “Your daddy is pushy isn’t he?”

Steve blushed, but continued making up a plate for Eddie.

As they sat and ate, Eddie talked about all of his favorite books for little kids, and how he remembered sneaking into the library after school for years because he knew he didn’t wanna go home. He talked about the first time a teacher wrote a positive letter home, an English teacher who said his fictional essay was the best in the class and he should consider writing as a career. He even talked about his plans for the school year campaigns, but made Steve swear not to mention anything to the kids.

“I’ll know if you tell them,” Eddie winked.

Steve believed him.

When they were done, Steve grabbed Mackenzie from her chair.

“I’m gonna give her a quick bath if you wanna bring all that stuff to her room. Second floor, third door on the right. It’s a little messy right now. Someone decided to pull all her toys from her box yesterday and I haven’t had time to clean it up,” Steve tickled Mackenzie’s side, making her giggle and turn her head into his shoulder.

“You need me to clean this up?” Eddie asked, gesturing to the table.

“Nah, I’ll do it while you read to her.”

Despite his efforts, bath time was never truly quick. Mackenzie loved to splash around and play with her toys, and if he tried to wash her hair too quickly, she would be grumpy for the rest of the night. He definitely didn’t want that for Eddie.

He set a timer for 10 minutes and tried to explain to a very excited Mackenzie that when the timer went off, it would be time to wash her hair and get out.

“You wanna have time to play with Eddie, so we can’t play for too long in the water.”

She didn’t seem to pay any attention to him, already too busy making her rubber duck fight with her mermaid Barbie.

He observed while she played, bringing in the rubber car she liked to pretend to drive on the side of the tub.

When the timer went off, she let him wash her hair without a fuss, and he quickly wrapped her up in a towel to get her into pajamas.

Eddie was waiting in her room when he got there, coloring books spread out on the floor. He smiled up at them from where he sat, legs crossed, hands in his lap.

“Squeaky clean?” He asked, waving at Mackenzie.

“Definitely lacking noodles in places noodles shouldn’t be at least,” Steve said, making his way to her changing table to get her dressed. “She must be pretty excited about you being here. Usually bath time takes at least 30 minutes and I have to bribe her with chocolate milk to get out.”

“She knows we’re gonna have a lot of fun. I think I’m gonna read Goodnight Moon first. That’s one of my favorites.”

“She’ll love that,” he said as he buttoned the snaps of her onesie.

As soon as he set her on the floor next to Eddie, she reached for a coloring book with a mermaid on it.

“Daddy! Muh!”

“Yeah, baby, it’s a mermaid! Just like your doll in the bath.” Steve pointed to the fish next to the mermaid. “And that’s a fish. Fish swim in the ocean.”

He felt Eddie’s eyes on him while he pointed to some other sea creatures and told Mackenzie what they were.

Eventually, he looked over at Eddie, blushing at the soft smile on his face. “What?”

“You’re a really good dad, Steve.”

“Oh. Uh. Thanks,” Steve felt heat flood his body.

It’s not that no one had ever said that to him. Robin had told him plenty of times, Joyce had whispered it to him when no one else was paying attention, even Hopper had given him a handshake and said he was doing a good job once. But hearing it from Eddie, in this situation, when he’d been feeling like such a failure lately, was enough to make him want to cry.

He had to get out of this room.

“I should go clean up and leave you to it.”

“Sure, yeah. We’ll be right here.”

Steve booked it out of the room, rushing down the stairs to try to get busy with cleaning before his brain settled on crying over a compliment.

But the table was cleared. The high chair was wiped down. When he turned to the sink, the dishes were stacked up to dry in the rack. The counters were wiped, the dish towel had been put back on the handle of the oven to dry, and leftovers had been put in a container to finish cooling down.

Steve let the tears fall.

Fuck it, if Eddie was going to be this nice, he could have a little cry.

He walked quietly to the bathroom to put all the bath toys in the basket, but stopped outside Mackenzie’s bedroom when he heard giggling.

He’d closed the door halfway, just so she wouldn’t get too distracted if he walked by the room, but he couldn’t help looking in.

He felt like crying again when he saw Mackenzie sitting on Eddie’s lap, pointing at something in the book.

“Where’s the moon?” Eddie asked.

“Moo!” Mackenzie said, smacking at a place in the book.

“There’s the moon! Good job, little one.” Mackenzie leaned back against Eddie’s chest. “And where’s the…toys?”

She pointed again, but slightly less enthusiastically. Steve could see her energy dropping quickly.

He watched as Eddie told her she did a good job again and then continued reading.

Her eyes drooped more with every page. Eddie’s voice got closer to a whisper with every sentence.

Steve fell just a little bit more with every second that passed.

*****

October 1985

Eddie came every day. Despite the fact that Steve insisted he didn’t need to, that he didn’t want to ruin his schedule, Eddie showed up like clockwork at seven every single evening.

Steve learned to expect him, always made enough dinner for all of them to enjoy before Mackenzie had her bath and then got to read with Steve.

Every night, Eddie would clean up while she took a bath, and every night, he’d let her pick a page to color while he read something to her, switching to a bedtime story when she started crawling into his lap.

Steve would watch them often, laying down on the carpet and smiling as he listened to Eddie use different voices for characters, asking her questions so she was involved, and whispering when she started to drift off.

Other times, he’d try to get something done he’d been putting off, like cleaning the bathroom or folding laundry.

Eddie never accepted payment.

Steve tried bringing it up once school started, certain that this time spent here could’ve been better spent on homework or a part-time job that paid better than what Steve could offer. Eddie just shook his head and insisted that other than Hellfire every Thursday, he would be there for free.

They got to know each other over dinner, and Steve found that he was right to have butterflies every time Eddie smiled at him, every time he would touch his hand as he walked by to say hi to Mackenzie.

“Halloween costume ideas?” Eddie asked with his mouth full. Steve had given up long ago on trying to get him to wait until he was done chewing. It wasn’t that big of a deal. “What did this little miss go as last year?”

“Oh. She was a bumblebee.” Steve smiled at the memory. “Cutest costume I saw all night.”

“I bet.” Eddie took a sip of his water. “And you?”

“Oh, I didn’t dress up.”

“What? Why not?” Eddie sounded genuinely upset.

“Just got away from me, I guess? By the time I thought about it, nothing good was left at the store,” Steve shrugged, unbothered. He’d never been that into Halloween. His focus was making sure Mackenzie had fun.

“And no one offered to help you make something?” Eddie was no longer eating and Mackenzie had turned her attention to him when his tone became serious.

“I didn’t ask.”

“But no one offered.” Eddie stood up and walked over to his backpack. “Okay, we’ve gotta plan. Did you already pick something for her?”

He came back holding a notebook and a pencil, brows set in a straight line. Steve had never seen him look so serious.

“I had a few ideas, but I wanted to let her pick something at the store,” Steve said.

“Lay them on me.”

They discussed costumes for the next 30 minutes, but after only 10, Mackenzie whined to get out of her chair. Eddie wordlessly stood up and picked her up, setting her in his lap and letting her poke and prod at him and his notebook.

Steve watched them both, accepting for the first time that this wasn’t just a crush that was gonna go away.

He’d fallen completely head over heels for Eddie, and he had no clue what to do about it.

*****

November 1985

Steve was the only one who had space to host Thanksgiving.

He became manic a week before, realizing that his work schedule would not allow him to have much time to clean unless he did it at night. The problem was that he would get a migraine if he didn’t sleep.

“So let’s work on it together. I can come right after school. Cancel Hellfire this week,” Eddie offered.

“But you already won’t have it next week because of Thanksgiving. I can’t ask you to-”

“You’re not asking. I’m offering. If I’m gonna be eating here, I should probably help clean up at least.”

So they worked on a little at a time.

Eddie wasn’t always helpful, getting distracted by some of the smallest things. But his company was appreciated all the same.

“You could invite Wayne, ya know,” Steve offered while he dusted the shelves in the living room. “Plenty of room and food.”

“Thanks, but he always works Thanksgiving day for the double pay. We usually do something the day after,” Eddie answered while he cleaned up all of Mackenzie’s toys.

“If he decides not to work, just let him know.”

“Will do, Stevie.”

He didn’t just help clean, he helped him do the shopping, too.

“I know it’s way harder with a baby, so if you give me a list, I can handle the shopping,” Eddie said while Steve plated their dinners.

“You don’t-”

“Have to, I know. But I can and will.” Eddie’s hand brushed against Steve’s lower back. “Let me help.”

Steve could barely resist the shiver that took over his entire body.

“Okay. Sure.”

Some of the brands were wrong, and he forgot the apples for the apple pie, but Steve still felt immense relief knowing that he had someone to help.

And without it, Thanksgiving would’ve been a disaster.

It was still a bit of a mess, but that was mostly because the kid’s table turned into a food fight that Max started and Mackenzie, of course, continued, until everyone was involved.

But the picture Jonathan took would get framed and hang up near the fireplace in the living room anyway.

******

December 1985

“I cannot believe you waited until Christmas Eve to wrap gifts. That’s not what parents actually do, is it?” Eddie asked as he fought with the tape dispenser for the fifth time in less than an hour.

“I don’t know if I’m the best judge of what parents do. Mine weren’t around much and probably didn’t even wrap my gifts themselves.” Steve took the tape from him, pulled some loose from the roll, and handed it back. “But I kinda always pictured it like this.”

Robin made him swear he’d talk to Eddie about his feelings before the end of the year. The end of the year was soon, real soon.

What better shot did he have than while Mackenzie was asleep and they were wrapping presents together?

“You pictured last minute wrapping with bribed help in your living room?” Eddie asked, amusement in his tone.

“Not exactly,” Steve huffed out a laugh. “More like spoiling my kid with someone I care about.”

Steve watched Eddie’s hands freeze against the clothes box full of new finger puppets they’d both gotten her. He looked over and felt his stomach swoop as Eddie’s eyes found his.

“Stevie-” Eddie set the box down and turned to face Steve.

“Wait, I just. Before you break my heart, hear me out.” Steve already felt his world shrinking, his heart rabbiting in his chest at the thought of losing Eddie entirely. “I’ve spent a lot of time with you for months. Like, more than almost anyone else. I’ve watched you with Kenzie, and how much she loves you and always asks for ‘Ed’ even when it’s way before when you’re gonna be here. You make me smile and laugh and that’s not always easy to do these days. You helped me when you didn’t have to, when you had absolutely no reason to trust that King Steve was a better person. You’re there for all the other kids even though you’re trying to get through school for real this time. I didn’t really plan a big speech, sorry. This is just rambling, I’m doing what Robin does.”

“It’s okay,” Eddie placed his hand on the side of Steve’s neck. “I get what you’re saying.”

“You do?”

“I think so.” Eddie stepped in closer. “But I think you might just be lonely.”

It stung. It wasn’t inaccurate, but it still hurt to think Eddie thought so little of him.

“I think I know how I feel.”

Eddie’s hand dropped from his neck and he took a step back. “I don’t wanna argue, Stevie. I just think you might need to separate yourself from the situation. I’m just always around, ya know?”

“You’re always around because I want you around!” Steve was just a bit too loud, but he knew Mackenzie was a heavy sleeper. “When you aren’t here, I check the clock to know when you will be. I get excited to leave work now because I’m not coming home to do the same thing I always did before. I get to see you and hear about your day and talk to you about mine and see you with my daughter, who probably loves you as much as I do.”

“You…love me?”

“Yes. I do. And I promise it’s okay if you don’t feel the same. I still want you here, reading to Kenzie. But I know how I feel. I know why I feel the way I do. You can’t tell me how to feel.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to.” Eddie sighed. “I’m just kinda surprised. Didn’t expect you to be into guys, let alone me. I’m not exactly good boyfriend material. Or stepparent material, either.”

“Oh, fuck that. You’re more her other parent than her mom ever was. She gave her to me the moment she had her and wished me luck before her entire family moved across the country.” Steve felt tears in his eyes. “I trust you. I want you around. I love you.”

Eddie swallowed, eyes pointed towards the carpet.

A minute passed, two. It was rapidly approaching awkward when finally Eddie spoke.

“But I’m so bad at wrapping presents.”

Steve snorted, but felt relief wash over him. “I can do the wrapping. This Christmas, next Christmas, as many Christmases as you’ll stay.”

“All of them?”

“Sounds good to me.” Steve leaned in slowly, let his hands grasp at the front of Eddie’s shirt to pull him closer. “How many Christmases do kids usually believe in Santa?”

“I dunno. I stopped believing when I caught my dad stealing the two presents under our tree when I was four.” Eddie let his hands fall to Steve’s hips. “But something tells me the little princess will be a believer for a while. Better get used to me ripping holes in the paper and using too much tape.”

“Think I can handle it.”

Every time Steve had pictured kissing Eddie before this, he’d thought it would be like any other first kiss, maybe a little awkward since it was his first with a guy.

Instead, it was soft, sweet, slow, perfect. He’d kissed a lot of girls in high school, had kissed them well. Not all of them were great, but even a less than good kiss was still decent.

This was more than any other kiss he’d ever had.

Eddie held him like he would never let go, like this kiss would last forever.

It couldn’t, but that’s how it felt.

When they finally pulled apart, Steve rested his head on Eddie’s shoulder.

“You wanna stay tonight? We can both do the Santa gifts with Kenzie before all the kids bother us,” Steve asked.

“I should call Wayne. I told him I’d be home by midnight.”

“He can come over in the morning, too,” Steve said. “If you want.”

“Are you sure you’re ready for Wayne? He can be a little…gruff.”

“I’m not worried,” Steve kissed Eddie’s cheek. “Hopper’s basically my dad. Plus, Mac’s got a way of breaking the tough old men down.”

“Bets?”

Steve pulled away and started wrapping another present before he got too distracted. “I give it ten minutes.”

“Oh, how generous. I’m giving it five.”

They both laughed as Eddie decided he’d be more help putting already wrapped presents in her stocking and under the tree and making sure everything was put away when Steve was done.

And for the first time, Eddie stayed the night, holding Steve against his chest while they slept.

They both cried when Mackenzie opened her presents excitedly. She was too little to do it herself last year, so seeing her tear through the paper and find joy in throwing it around the room was like a dream come true for Steve.

Eddie admitted he felt like he was intruding for some of it, but Steve quickly reminded him that he was the first person she toddled over to with her new set of princess books and said “Ed, read.”

She sat in his lap right then, even though she still had quite a few presents to open, and he read every single book to her, making her giggle with his high-pitched voices for the princesses and silly accent for the prince.

By the time the kids were coming through the front door, Steve was rushing to shush them, pointing at the couch where Eddie was passed out with Mackenzie curled up against his side.

Steve was never happier than in this moment.

Until the next one, and the one after that.

#steddie #steve harrington #eddie munson #stranger things #anon request #fluff #domestic fluff #single parent steve harrington #getting together #love confessions

[justagalwhowrites]

Stitches: Part of For You - A Collection of Requests Benefitting Palestine

Joel comes into the clinic after getting hurt on the job. A non-canon one shot set in the Lavender universe.

^Gif not representative of reader's appearance, just here for the vibes.

Event Terms: Commissioners could choose to donate between $15 and $50 via Ko-Fi for one fic of 1-2k words to be written by April 1, 2024. Payment due after completion of the fic. Donation with a match by the author to be paid to PCRF on April 2, 2024 in honor of Pedro Pascal's birthday ❤️ Commissioners had the option to choose to keep a fic private and all fics may not be shared here.

Pairing: Joel Miller x Female Reader from Lavender, QZ era

Warnings: Brief description of injury. Angst. Smut (P in V sex). No use of Y/N, Minors DNI 18+ only.

Length: 4k

A/N: Sooooo this one got a little away from me (shocking, I know.) I can't promise all of this collection will be this long but apparently I really missed Joel and Doc. Written for @suzmagine after she requested QZ era Joel and Doc with angst and smut :)

For You Masterlist | Main Masterlist

Sunday, September 20, 2015 

“I’ve got one more for you,” Marta hovered outside the patient room, a file folder in her hands. 

You groaned. 

“Another one?” You asked. “Shouldn’t we be done for the day by now? Shouldn’t we have been done for the day an hour ago?” 

“I’m not any happier about this than you are,” she replied. “I’m the one who’s been pulling double duty all day because Andrew’s out…” 

“And I’m the one who’s had twice the patient load because the entire QZ has the flu,” you sighed before you pinched the bridge of your nose. This wasn’t helping either of you. “Alright, just… Please tell me this is the last one.” 

“Last one,” she said. “Doors are locked.” 

“Speakeasy after this?” You asked, opening the folder. 

“I would but Brian and I are going to a friend’s place tonight,” she smiled, almost sheepishly. “Sorry.” 

“It’s alright,” you sighed. “I just need to get a life….” You glanced down at the intake notes. Just stitches and antibiotics, on order from FEDRA. “This looks basic, why don’t you head on out. I can finish up here.” 

“Really?” She asked. You just nodded and she squealed a little. “Thank you so much!” 

You tried to not be jealous of the fact that she had a life to go home to. In all reality, you shouldn’t be upset about staying late at work. It’s not like you had anything else going on. Once Tommy left the QZ and Andrew and Jess started spending more time just the two of them while she was down for the count because of her pregnancy, you pretty much spent your time not at work at home, doing a lot of nothing. 

“I need a hobby,” you muttered to yourself before making your way down to the exam room where your last patient was waiting for you. 

You knocked once on the door and gave the patient a moment to answer before you opened it, reviewing the intake notes as you did.  

“Hi there,” you said, looking up from the file. “I’m….” 

Your voice trailed off. Joel was sitting there, perched on the end of the exam table, his eyes ranging over you. 

“Don’t think you need to introduce yourself, Kid,” he said, giving you a wry half smile. 

You looked back at the file. In the name field was just J.M. - FEDRA. You frowned and looked back at him. 

“FEDRA sent you in?” You set the file down on the counter before going to wash your hands. “Why, did you pick a fight with a guard?” 

“No,” he quirked his jaw. “Just some equipment on sewer duty.” 

“Lucky you,” you said, pulling your chair up beside the table. You sat down, closer to him than you’d been since you’d been almost blown up before Tommy left the QZ. “Well, I’m sure you’d rather see anybody else but I’m afraid there’s something going around and I’m the only doctor who’s here right now. Since you’re here on FEDRA orders, I can’t really let you leave and come back another time…” 

“S’fine,” he cut you off. “It’s not… I don’t mind. That it’s you, I mean.” 

“Oh,” you said, a little taken aback. You tried to hide it as you pulled on your gloves. “Well that’s… good. Why don’t take off your shirt, looks like the injury is on your stomach?” 

“Yeah,” he said, unbuttoning his top. “They put a bandage on me there but said I’d need stitches and shit to keep it from gettin’ infected.” 

“Yeah, I feel like dying from an infection that doesn’t turn people into monsters in this day and age is a bit of a raw deal.” 

Joel snorted and shrugged out of the shirt. You saw a bandage, stained with blood, near his belly button. You winced a little, even though you’d seen so much of Joel’s blood at this point you thought you should be used to it. But it never got any easier, knowing he was putting himself at risk, knowing he was in pain. 

Blood was a good distraction, though, when you thought about it. Joel without his shirt had always been a weak spot for you. Blood was one way to keep you from focusing on things you shouldn’t. Like the fact that his chest was broad and firm and you knew just what it would be to rest your head against him there and listen to the steady thrum of his heart as you fell asleep. 

“I’m going to remove the bandage, OK?” You said, looking up at him through your eyelashes. You watched the bob of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed. He just gave you a single nod and you pulled down the bundle of gauze and tape to expose a jagged cut that dipped into the muscle of his abdomen. You hissed a little in sympathetic pain. “What’d you do, Joel?” 

“Had to jump to dodge an out of control truck,” he said. “Ended up landin’ on something sharp. Hurt like a bitch but… had worse.” 

“Had worse is a damn low bar for you,” you said, gingerly examining the wound. “Good news is, this is even cleaner than I expected. Actually, you’re cleaner than I expected, you don’t smell like you were on sewer duty.” 

“Yeah, well, figured patchin’ me up wouldn’t do much if I was covered in shit,” he said, voice beaten down by the misery that was QZ life. It was a tone you knew well. “Showered before I came.” 

You nodded slowly. 

“I’ll numb you up and get this all closed,” you said, sitting back from him. “Go ahead and lie back for me while I get set up.” 

You gathered what you needed and came back to find Joel flat on the table, his hands folded over the base of his chest. The cracked face of the watch glinted in the florescent light and you tried not to think about how his arms looked bare. You hadn’t seen his arms bare in so long. 

You cleared your throat and pulled the chair back up alongside him and changed gloves. 

“Small poke,” you said as you injected the local anesthetic. He grunted but stayed still. You gave it a few minutes to kick in before you gently prodded the wound. “Feel that?” 

“No,” he said. 

You nodded and set to work, flushing out the wound and aligning his damaged skin to stitch it closed. 

“So,” you said after the silence was heavy in the room. “How’ve you been since Tommy left?” 

His body tensed a little. 

“Fine,” he said gruffly. “Just a bit quiet around the apartment.” 

You nodded slowly, focusing on your stitching. 

“I hope you’re not just sitting in there all alone,” you said, half teasing half serious. “Even you need social contact now and then.” 

“M’fine.” 

There was something in his tone that made you feel like he was not, in fact, fine. As much as you tried to forget, you carried so much of the intimacies of Joel Miller within you. How he looked when his face was relaxed in sleep, how he felt when he held you like you were the only thing he had left in the world, how he sounded when he was in pain. He sounded that way now. 

“Are you?” You asked, lifting your eyes from his stomach to look up his body to his face. His head was raised just enough to look back at you. 

“Not your damn business what I am or what I’m not,” he snapped, lowering his head back to the exam table. “Leave it.”

“I’m just…” you paused as you finished the last stitch. “I worry about you sometimes is all. I know you don’t have a lot of people, Joel, and…” 

“I’m not your fuckin’ problem,” he bit out, sitting up so fast that you shocked back from him. “I don’t need you pokin’ around my life and fuckin’ it up anymore than you already have so just leave it, alright!” 

“Alright,” you said quietly, tears pinching at the back of your throat. 

“You done sewin’ me shut?” He snapped. You nodded, still trying to resist the urge to cry. “Good.” 

He snatched his shirt up and stalked out of the room, not even stopping to put it on. 

You took a deep, shaky breath, staring at the place where Joel had just been. You tried not to think about how, for just a few minutes, there had been a quiet intimacy there like there had been with him before. How he felt comfortable and safe beside you, where you could run your fingers over his skin and see where his hair was starting to gray. 

You gave yourself a few minutes to calm down before you started cleaning up, trying to focus on getting home so you could curl up in a ball in your bed where you were warm and safe, even if you were alone. You were starting to clear the tray of tools when you realized the syringe of penicillin was still there, shiny and full. 

You’d never given him the antibiotics. 

“Shit,” you muttered, voice wet. 

You set it aside and finished cleaning up before grabbing a bottle of pain killers and an oral course of antibiotics and setting out to Joel’s place. 

He answered quickly, all but ripping the door open and looking surprised to find you there when he did. 

“What do you want,” he snapped. 

“You still need antibiotics,” you said quietly, fighting to not flinch back from him. You held up the small bag with the syringe, bandages and pills inside. “You left before I could give them to you.” 

He quirked his jaw but stepped aside, opening the door wide enough for you to come in. You set the bag down on the table and started taking off your coat. 

“Didn’t say you could fuckin’ stay,” Joel said, voice still sharp. 

“I figured you’d want me having full range of motion with my arms when I’m sticking you with a needle,” you said harshly before closing your eyes for a moment, forcing yourself to calm down. “I need to get at the wound again so… shirt off.” 

He ground his teeth but obeyed, pulling the shirt off. You sat down at the table and got the syringe ready and he stood beside you there and you had the strangest urge to kiss his stomach. You pressed your lips together instead. 

“If you didn’t run off this would probably hurt less,” you said. “But the anesthetic might be wearing off already so… small pinch.” 

You pressed the syringe into his skin and pushed down on the plunger. He flinched once and that was it. 

“Just going to bandage you up,” you said, not waiting for a response. 

“Why’d you come here,” Joel asked as you taped the bandage over his damaged skin. You looked up at him, frowning. His eyes were on yours, deep and warm and chocolate brown. 

“You needed…” 

“Don’t give me that,” he cut you off. “You could have fuckin’ left it, told you enough times that I don’t want shit to do with you now so why are you really here? Not like FEDRA was gonna come and check and make sure I was on their ordered drugs so what is it?” 

“Do you really think I’d just let something happen to you?” You asked quietly. “You might not care if I live or die anymore but I care about you. I’m always going to care about you.” 

You didn’t wait for.a response. You looked back to his stomach and finished taping the bandage in place before taking the pills out and setting them on table before getting up and pulling your jacket back on.

“Instructions are on the bottles,” you said. “Take all the antibiotics, every last one, I don’t care if you’re feeling well and your cut is magically healed, still take them. Change out the bandages every 24 hours for the first few days, come by the clinic if there’s a lot of blood or discomfort. Pain medication as needed. I’m sure you’ll just sell whatever’s left…” 

You grabbed the now empty bag off the table and turned to go to the door but Joel’s hand closed around your wrist, pulling you back around. You frowned, looking at where he was touching you before looking back to him. 

“Joel…” 

“You really think I don’t care about you?” He asked, voice heated. “You really think I don’t give a shit? Hm?” 

You shrank back from him as much as you could while he held you in place, his grip on you tight. 

“Joel…” you said again but he cut you off. 

“You think I don’t care if you live or die?” It took you a moment to realize that he didn’t sound angry. He sounded… hurt? Offended? Both? “Jesus…” 

“You’re hurting me, Joel.” 

He scowled but dropped your wrist. 

“After everything I’ve done,” he snapped. “After everything we’ve been through, you think I don’t fuckin’ care?” 

“Why would I think you care?” You tried to sound mad but you just sounded hurt, your voice quivering. “All you’ve done for years now is tell me how I hurt you, how you wish you’d never met me, how you don’t want to see me again! Even when you’ve done something that you say is for me or because of me you act like your obligated to me in some way but you’re not and I wish you’d just leave me alone! I can’t keep doing this with you, I’m so tired of being your burden, Joel!” 

You tried to turn to go but his hands were on you again but on your shoulders this time, his fingers digging into your flesh there. His eyes searched yours for half a moment before he pulled you sharply to him, his hands flying from your shoulders to your face to tilt your head to just the right angle, gripping you tight and desperate, before his lips crashed into your own. 

It took you a second to fully understand what was happening but your body responded before your mind. It might have been years since you last kissed Joel but your lips knew his. They conformed to his like the familiar ground they were, giving to the hot press of him as he licked into your mouth. 

You moaned and wrapped your arms around his waist, forgetting, for a moment, that he was injured. He hissed in pain and you tried to pull back but his grip on you grew tighter, fingertips pressing into your skull. Your body curved against his and you were suddenly acutely aware that he was shirtless, that you could feel his skin on yours if you could just take your own shirt off, too. 

His hold on you eventually loosened and he pulled back from you, the brown of his iris almost entirely swallowed by his pupil now as he panted for breath. His thumbs traced the arch of your cheekbones. 

“I care,” he said, voice hungry and low. “I care more about you than about any other person left on this godforsaken planet…” 

“Joel…” you were breathless, heat and tension pooling at your core. 

“And I’m tired of tryin’ to stay away from you.” 

He pulled you back against him, gently that time. His lips were soft on yours, his tongue tracing the seam of you until you opened for him. You could properly taste him now, the mint of his toothpaste and the bitter tang of liquor and the familiar flavor of his skin. You drank it up, needing it like water. His hands left your face, sliding down your body to your waist. He pulled at your shirt, separating from you just enough to pull it up and over your head, taking a moment to look down at your body, an expression of almost reverence on his face as he panted for breath. 

Joel tugged you toward him again, his mouth quickly finding yours, as he unhooked your bra. He slid that off your body, too, and cradled you to him. 

You moaned into his mouth, you couldn’t help it, as your arms went around his neck. His skin was everywhere, so soft and so warm and just like you remembered. He felt so good against you, like home, and the ache of missing him flared to life inside your chest, sharp and cruel. 

Part of you knew you should put a stop to this now, before it went any further. He was only going to push you away again, just like he had after Boston. It was only going to hollow you out and leave you feeling more desperately alone than ever. 

But you couldn’t resist him. You’d missed him too much over the years, he was too much a part of you to ever dream of pushing him away. You needed this. You needed him. 

You let him guide you toward the couch, his fingers prying at the button of your jeans before pushing those and your underwear down your body, too. You stepped out of them and your shoes together before Joel gently lowered you, completely bared to him, to the rough, aging fabric of the couch. You watched as he stood over you, your eyes wide, as he opened his own pants, freeing his cock and swiping his thumb over his leaking tip before stroking himself in long, slow strokes. 

“Tell me you want this,” his voice trembled. “We can stop right now…” 

“I need you,” you cut him off with a needy whisper. “Please.” 

He didn’t need any more prompting. He shoved his pants and underwear down before he nudged your legs apart and settled between them. He gripped the root of his thick, heavy cock and trailed his tip over your leaking slit, moaning as he did. 

“Missed this wet little pussy,” he notched his head at your entrance before thrusting halfway inside you with a short, sharp stroke. You gasped at the stretch of him, your back arching and fingers scrambling at the tattered upholstery. “Fuck, still so fuckin’ tight. Gotta be fuckin’ dripping for me or I’d never get inside you…” 

He pulled back just a little, his thumb finding your clit and pressing into you there, working you in a slow circle. He thrust back into you, a little further this time. 

“You get this soft and hot and wet for anyone else?” He asked, a possessive edge to his voice as his eyes ranged over your naked body. “Or you save that just for me?” 

“Just for you,” you didn’t care that you sounded desperate and pathetic. You just needed him inside of you, filling you totally. “It’s all for you, I’ve always been all for you.” 

“You all mine, Baby?” He asked, pulling back and thrusting deeper. “This little pussy all mine?” 

“Yes,” you rocked your hips up against him but he pressed down on you, holding you in place and making you whimper. “Fuck, please…” 

“How about the rest of you?” He asked, his hand leaving your clit as he lowered himself onto you. His skin was on yours, the plush swell of his stomach against you, his chest tight to your own. His hand came up to brush your hair back and cradle the crown of your head, his thumb tracing over you there. His eyes searched yours and, for the first time in years, you saw the Joel you’d fallen in love with so long ago. The quiet strength of him, the gentle care, the fierce love, the raw and aching whole of him there with nothing holding him back. “Want all of you, want that so much more than your perfect fuckin’ pussy…” 

“Joel…” 

“Say you’re mine,” he thrust deeper and you keened at the feel of him inside you, so close to having all of him within you where you’d known he belonged from the first time you’d taken him into yourself. “Tell me I’m not gonna lose you.” 

“You’re not going to lose me,” you breathed. “I promise, you can’t lose me.” 

He pulled back a little and you whimpered at the loss. 

“Say you’ll let me protect you,” he thrust in, almost to the root this time, and held himself there. Your channel tightened around him. 

“Joel,” you were having a hard time remembering how to say anything but his name, that single word the most vital one you’d ever known. “Please…” 

“Tell me,” he ground himself against you, his skin on your clit, his cock pressing into your most sensitive places. “Let me take care of you, protect you. Say it.” 

“You can protect me,” your hands found their way to his shoulders, nails digging into his skin there. “You can take care of me, I promise…” 

“Let me love you,” he pulled back again but it was his words and not how he was moving inside you that made you gasp. “Say it. Tell me I can love you, that it’s safe to love you.” 

You reached up and gently traced his hairline before threading your fingers through his curls, your eyes on his. 

“I haven’t been the one stopping you from loving me,” you whispered. 

“I never stopped,” he rocked himself part way into you again before pulling back. “Always loved you, always. But I need it to be safe, I can’t love you without it destroyin’ me if it’s not. Please, baby. Tell me. Tell me I can love you.” 

“You can love me, Joel,” you said softly. “It’s safe. I’m safe.” 

He kissed you, his mouth claiming yours and he pressed all the way inside you then, making your back arch and legs go tight around his hips. You moaned against his lips as he held himself deep within you for a moment before pulling back again. 

It might have been years but your body knew Joel’s. You knew just how to take him and he knew just how to make you come, his hips grinding down into you when he was fully seated inside of your tight channel, making his cock tease your most tender places while his hips worked your clit. He fucked you deep and hard and greedy, like he couldn’t get enough of you, like he wanted to lay claim to all of you. 

The tight band of pleasure inside of you wound tighter and tighter until it snapped when he was pressed deep, your walls fluttering over him. He moaned against your lips and fucked you through it, never slowing, never letting up, making it so your orgasm never really subsided. It just rolled into building the next one until he pulled his desperate and needy mouth from yours. 

“Not gonna last, Baby,” he ground himself deeper, as if to make his point. “Where -” 

“Inside me,” you panted. “I need to feel you, please don’t leave, please, inside me, please…” 

He kissed you again, fucking you a little harder and faster, driving the band of pleasure tighter and higher until you felt him press deep and pulse inside you, triggering your next orgasm. 

You came with him, your pussy rippling over him as he throbbed, emptying himself into you. 

His body went slack for a moment before he propped himself up on his elbows, his eyes returning to their normal color. They looked over your face for a moment before locking onto your own and you had a moment of fear that the walls would go up again. That the cold, disconnected Joel who had taken over since he’d come to the QZ would be back. But his eyes stayed soft and open and warm, his large palm still cradling the top of your head. 

“Tell me you meant all that,” you whispered even though you were afraid of what the answer was. 

“Oh, Baby.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to your forehead before trailing his nose over your own. “I meant every word. I promise.” 

You smiled, looking into Joel’s eyes and realizing that, even though you were still stuck inside the QZ, you were right where you belonged. 

#fanfic #joel miller x female reader #joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller x oc #lavender #smut fic #For You

[nevadancitizen]

-> (I'VE BEEN) DREAMING OF YOU

synopsis: könig comes into your reality.

word count: 1.2k

characters: könig, player! reader

trigger warnings: mention of canon-typical violence, maybe slightly obsessive könig oops lol

notes: self-aware cod au belongs to @puff0o0 , inspired by @simp4konig // i moved for college lol hopefully i'll be able to upload(?) more often + salf-aware aus are really my thing huh. my jam if you will

It had been a week since König figured out he wasn’t real. 

At least, that’s what he approximated it to be. Time was tricky if he actually tried to count the seconds and minutes and hours. 

But when he stepped off the helicopter and trudged back into base, he knew he would at least have some sense of relief. Some sense of… realness, even though he knew he only existed through the wires of ethernet cables, or maybe even something as primitive as a CD.

König knew his boots tracked in mud and blood and maybe even guts, but he didn’t care. Everything would be wiped clean and be put on a new plate tomorrow for… he guessed they would be called the players, to eat. 

He shut the door to his quarters behind him and leaned against it, closing his eyes and sighing. He desperately wished he could tell someone, anyone, about what he had witnessed – what he knew to be true. 

He felt crazy. He felt blessed. He felt like a conspiracy theorist that was just re-inventing the idea that the whole world is a simulation – because it is! People re-invented ideas all the time, but there was nothing shameful in it. But if the rest of humanity (and for all he knew, humanity could only be KorTac and Specgru) oohed and aahed and said, “God, we live in a simulation? I’ve never heard that one before!” just to make him feel good, nothing would ever get done. But it still stung to know such a heavenly being existed and to keep such a huge secret. 

Of course he was talking about you, thinking about you. When did he not think of you, actually?

He felt almost hollow without you. Like you had given him warmth with your control – a raging bonfire he could only observe from a distance, but still felt the full heat of: as in, an actual heat in his chest whenever he felt his control slipping away, replaced with the security that came with being in your presence. And König didn’t hate it. Not at all. 

He didn’t even bother to shrug off his work equipment before he threw himself onto his bed. He turned over and swaddled himself with his blanket to try and emulate your warmth. It did nothing. 

It was a while before he fell asleep. And he had the strangest dream…

He was in your room. He had only caught glances of it, but here he was, tangled in your blankets and in your bed. 

And there you were. Sitting at your desk, typing away at your laptop. Your back was to him, but he could tell it was you. Even at this distance, you were so warm. 

You were wearing the big, chunky headphones you always wore when you played. He could hear quiet thumping bass coming from them. It was the only sound he could hear aside from your quick keystrokes. 

König slowly untangled himself from your blankets – he still had his boots on, the ones that had mud and blood and maybe even guts. Then he realized he had all of his work equipment on. 

He stood and surveyed his surroundings. Everything in your room was so… you. (Obviously. It was your room.)

His eyes snapped back to you when you took off your headphones. You pressed a button on the side to pause your music and then set them down. You stretched your arms above your head and let out a quiet groan as you leaned back. 

You looked so soft. So cute. Nothing like what König had seen through the screen. You had been slightly bitcrushed and pixelated, but now…

The warmth that blossomed in his chest was like no other. It spread out into his limbs, almost making him weak in the knees. His eyelids fluttered, but he forced them open to look at you, take in more of you. 

He tried to say your name softly, as to not startle you, but it came out choked and loud and awkward. His voice even cracked. 

You were so scared you nearly punched a hole through your monitor. You stood and turned, immediately grabbing a pair of scissors that were on your desk. 

Your hand shook as you pointed the pair of scissors at König. “T… take off the hood!”

König kept his feet planted firmly on the ground, even bending at the knee a little to be less threatening. He puts up his hands in a surrendering manner. “Schatz, no, it’s me. It’s König.”

“Shut up!” you barked. “I’m not – no way am I being killed or robbed or whatever by someone in cosplay!” Your eyes flit over his body, spotting a knife on his utility belt. “And give me your knife. Try anything and I’m – I’ll…” you glanced down at the pair of scissors (which you can’t really stab him with). “I’ll snip your dick off!” 

It honestly takes a bit of effort on König’s part not to laugh. Still, he slowly, carefully took the knife out of its holster and offered it to you, the blade pointed towards his chest. “Please, be careful.”

“I know how to handle knives,” you snapped. You put the pair of scissors back on your desk and took to pointing König’s knife at him. You took a tentative step closer, your jaw set. You reached a shaking hand out towards König’s face. “Don’t… move.”

"Mein Leibling.” König breathed out the words. “What are you doing?”

“The mask,” you said. “I’m taking it off. Then I’m calling the police.”

König just looked at you with wide eyes, his blue-grey eyes stark against his eyeblack. His eyebrows creased as he looked down at you, but said nothing. 

And then, König felt a blossoming warmth as his face was exposed for the first time in what felt like forever. 

His eyes fluttered shut as he felt your eyes rove over his face. Under the hood wasn’t a face: nothing except for his eyes, eyebrows, and a little bit of the surrounding skin. The rest of it was unloaded textures, a checkerboard of black and bright purple. 

“Schatz…” 

“König…”

König’s eyes opened as you said his name. You didn’t notice before, but his eyes were detailed, told a story. This wasn’t the king of the battlefield – this was König. Here, he wasn’t a killer, wasn’t someone who saws someone’s head off with a dull plastic knife and doesn’t even blink when the blood spurts out. He wasn’t the long-shot-drop-pop one-bullet-wonder. He was a man. 

König gently reached up and took your wrist and pulled your hand away from his hood. It fell back into place, covering up his checkerboard face. 

He looked down at you, his eyebrows still furrowed. He didn’t say anything. He couldn’t. 

“You’re…” you sighed – not disappointedly, but more surprised. “You’re actually him. You’re König.”

“I am,” König said simply. 

“Schatz,” you said. “What does that mean?”

König smiled down at you, even though he didn’t have a mouth. His eyes crinkled at the outsides. “Treasure.”

He gently let go of your wrist, his hand traveling up your arm until it came to your shoulder. His fingers brushed against your jaw, the rough texture of his gloves making you tense just the slightest bit. 

He whispers softly, like he’s afraid of you hearing his voice. “My treasured player.”

#riptide writes 🌊 #call of duty 🪖 #self aware cod au 🎮 #sacod au #self-aware cod au #mw2 x reader #modern warfare 2 x reader #modern warfare ii x reader #modern warfare 2 x you #modern warfare ii x you #modern warfare 2 x y/n #modern warfare ii x y/n #cod x reader #cod x you #cod x y/n #mw2 x you #mw2 x y/n #call of duty x reader #call of duty x you #call of duty x y/n #könig x you #konig x reader #konig x y/n #konig x you #könig cod #könig x reader #könig call of duty #könig fanfiction #konig #könig x y/n

[spideesenses]

hey, idrk wether ur doing requests at the minute, but if you are, i need some sugar daddy!miguel because im dying over here with not a single drop to suffice 😞 i need him to spoil me ☺️

i am absolutely open to requests🥰

Sugar Daddy!Miguel head canons

NSFW. MDNI!

miguel definitely has a worship & praise kink. he loves seeing you dripped out in extravagant attire that he bought for you, adorned with diamonds around your neck. he makes it known that he loves what you’re wearing, complimenting you every chance he gets. he wears you on his arm so proudly as if he has the most stunning date (and he does) and he can’t wait to rip everything off of you

↳ “oh come on cariño,” miguel mumbles from in between your thighs as your fingers thread through his hair. “you look so pretty when you cum for me, you don’t wanna give daddy another?”

there’s very few times he tells you no & when he does, it ends up with you pouting, “but daddy! don’t you think we’d look so cute with matching?” you’d been referring to matching cartier rings. miguel was never a jewelry type - maybe a gold chain around his neck for the holidays, but he left the jewelry to you. it complimented your skin so well, especially with the body scrub you’d used, leaving shimmers of glitter?

he’s surprisingly better at keeping himself restrained when he’s feeling needy, especially in public. it’s usually you feeling him up at after parties and begging him for any sort of attention. he’d keep you at his side, hand at your waist before murmuring in your ear, “behave mi vida and i promise you, you’ll have everything you want and more.” and you knew he was good for his promises

he talks you through your orgasms. “i know baby, i know” & “it’s okay, i’ve got you. daddy’s here” & “you’re so good for me, i’m so proud of you” while you’re trembling around him

cockwarming becomes more frequent because you get needy while he’s working. how could you not be needy when this gorgeous hunk of a man is in front of you? messy, tousled hair, glasses, the first two buttons on his white button up undone, exposing his chest with his tie loosely strung around his shoulder.

↳ “if you distract me away from filling this report out, daddy’s taking it out of your allowance,” he hisses as you slowly slide down onto his cock. you whimper as he fills you to the brim, causing him to curse under his breath. he does play with you a little bit, dragging his hands up and down your body, noting how you bounce in his lap needily.

when you talk back to him or speaking to him without manners, he grabs your tongue with his fingers. “try saying that again. oh? you’re done with your tantrum? you wanna try asking daddy nicely this time?”

he loooves shopping with you. when it comes to fashion, he’s very plain when it comes to himself…but when it comes to you? he loves coming with you to reset your wardrobe for the season and listening to you talk about how you saw this on the runway to a fashion event he had taken you to.

you never noticed it but he does up your allowance by a grand for every lingerie photo you send to him. he was quite surprised when you asked him to pick a number between 1-10. he was lucky to have a “go big or go home” mindset because he received 10 very revealing photos right before a meeting.

you always try color-coordinate with him when it comes to going to events with him, but his wardrobe’s full of neutrals. you did save your allowance on getting him a pastel wardrobe of valentino suits tailored to him so he could match you more often. he was very surprised by this gesture since he’s usually the one that likes to show you off, but this small gesture made him realize how proud you were to have him on your arm as well. needless to say, he did pay you back. and ever since then, you two are usually the “it” couple when it comes to social outings.

him fucking you over his desk after he’s finished a big project? you’re bent over his desk as he’s pounding you from behind, fingers in your mouth. him letting you pick out a designer bag afterwards since he was a bit rough and selfish.

he has a thing for your feet in heels paired with anklets. yeah, he dropped a couple hundred for your manicure and pedicure, so of course your toes look great. but something about your legs thrown over his shoulder as he rails you, heels and anklet digging into his skin made him feral.

aftercare consists of a romantic lit bath in the bathtub that has jets. he purchased these bath bombs from dubai that has 24 karat gold in them that he always makes sure he has on deck for his royal highness

#miguel o’hara smut #miguel o’hara x reader #alia writes #miguel o'hara x you #miguel smut

[inkpot909]

Jealousy Headcanons: Duwang Gang

↳ Characters included are Josuke Higashikata, Okuyasu Nijimura, Koichi Hirose, and Rohan Kishibe. Gender neutral Reader with they/them pronouns. Hinted to take place after the death of Yoshikage Kira.

A/n: What a beautiful duwang! Real talk, I’ve been wanting to write a headcanon list for this group for a long time, now. Bless these boys, none of them (except for Koichi) know what they’re doing. I really hope y’all enjoy. <3

Warning(s): Canon-typical violence and swearing.

Josuke Higashikata

-> The Silent

The immediate feeling that washes over Josuke after realizing he’s become jealous is guilt.

If he has the luxury of being alone, he’ll pace around his bedroom while entertaining a lengthy argument with himself. It takes everything in him not to raise a hand up to his mouth and press a nail or two between clenched teeth. There’s a game of tug of war occurring inside his head and he’s nothing if not a slave to fully investing himself in the conflict.

If he isn’t alone, and especially if he’s with you, there is seemingly no dent made in his chill persona. Not a single person around him would be able to tell the internal conflict running through his mind. Not even you.

His usually relaxed thoughts are disrupted with an ocean of insecurity. “What if” questions plaguing him and internally souring his mood.

It’s a foreign feeling for him to experience. Especially considering you tend to bring out a very proud side of his personality. Ever since he started going out with you, everyday life has only gotten brighter.

And although he’d never be caught mentioning it out loud, there’s a part of him that’s mindful of the fact that usually he’s the one others grow jealous of.

He’s running in mental circles, a back and forth. Agonizing over just the idea of being jealous between taking the brunt of his emotions all at once.

All while he says absolutely nothing on the matter.

He may end up distancing himself for a day or two depending on just how lost in his own head he gets. He doesn’t seek out your company, and that’ll be the only telltale sign of how he’s truly feeling.

Even then, whenever you do see him, nothing appears to be wrong. He’ll smile at you all the same. His tone is cheerful as ever, and there’s no falter present in his laugh.

Because he can’t help but be ashamed for feeling this way, he’ll do anything in his power to make sure you don’t notice. He’ll continue to play the part of your never bothered, always cheery boyfriend.

He will only bring up his dilemma to Koichi.

Being involved in a relationship himself, Josuke figures he would best understand his point of view. He does his best to hear him out (he did go to him, after all), but Koichi telling him that it’s unhealthy to internalize how he’s feeling isn’t going to get Josuke to budge.

Josuke knows you’re loyal. He does trust you... so how could he possibly compromise that trust by mentioning something as silly as jealousy? Being open and honest is usually his go to. He tells you everything. But this...? There’s a little voice in his head telling him not to. And not even sound advice from a close friend can get him to stop listening.

If you’re observant enough to catch onto him avoiding you while simultaneously greeting you as if nothing’s wrong, bringing it up bluntly will finally force him to open his damn mouth.

He’s nervous; more nervous than he’s ever been around you in the past. It doesn’t take long before the word vomit starts pooling from his mouth, littered between a plethora of apologies. His eyes never meet yours until he’s done talking, hands continuously picking and pulling at one another.

Believe it or not, talking it through with you actually helps! Who knew? Certainly not Josuke.

After that first incident, dealing with his jealousy becomes a lot more manageable. Although it doesn’t happen often, it still does happen.

And he’s still not inclined to make a scene if he can help it.

Josuke’s opinion of guys who freak out on their partner or anyone who they feel threated by- even by the loosest stretch of the imagination -is very low. He will certainly talk to you about it, but in private and merely to express his emotions rather than to criticize you in any way.

The only real exception to this, is if someone’s actively hitting on you and repeatedly not taking the hint. How he approaches the situation largely depends on you.

If you’re not afraid of confrontation, he’s going to be at your side with a smug expression on his face the entire time. Your ability to stand up for yourself can make him melt on the spot. He lets you go at it, watching you with a smile brimming with puppy love. He just cannot help but fawn over how cool you are.

Once you’ve made your point, he’ll happily back you up lightheartedly. Even to the point of mocking the person who dared to ignore every “no” you threw their way. People like that deserve to get knocked down a peg, and Josuke’s eager to help.

If you’re more meek in approaching these situations, and tend to shoot Josuke glances pleading for his aid, he’s happy to help. It feeds into his ego a bit, honestly.

He’ll make a point to wrap an arm around you, throwing his best intimidating side-eye to the person daring to make you feel uncomfortable. Hell, he’ll even puff out his chest a little too.

Once again, he’s not above insulting them. His words are vicious and more than a little rude. He is a delinquent, after all.

Josuke isn’t a really fan of getting violent in these situations, though. The only reason he would get to that point is if the other person grows violent first and he needs to defend himself.

If they take it that far, they’re asking for it in his book. He doesn’t feel any need to use Crazy Diamond against something so trivial, more than a little confident in his own strength.

That said, if the flirtatious bastard is enough to make you really upset, he will use his stand to rearrange their appearance in an attempt to make you laugh. Yeah, it’s a bit twisted, but his youthful mischievousness is likely to earn him a smile from you.

That said, if someone flirts with you and tries to brush him off by dissing his hair- all cards are off the table. Openly flirting with you in front of him and dissing his hair? That person must have a death wish.

You may want to look away.

Okuyasu Nijimura

-> The Emotional

Unlike his best friend, Okuyasu wears his heart on his sleeve at all times.

Expressing emotions, even negative or embarassing ones, is not something he shies away from. No, not even in public.

When he first confessed his feelings to you, he was certainly more than a little shy. But when you gladly reciprocated, you’re positive the entirety of Morioh shook with his joyous response.

It’s because of this that Okuyasu experiencing jealousy is quite the roller-coaster of emotion. If he’s jealous, everyone and their mother will likely know.

His immediate response is confusion.

Not over how he’s feeling per se, but instead over what to do about it. Painfully aware of his own intellegence, he’ll agonize over how he should respond. Jealousy is rather complicated in his opinion, and his biggest concern is accidentally pushing you away via his reaction.

He is decisive, though, so it’s not something he’s going to mull it over for very long.

And if you’re right beside him, the likelihood of you diffusing his jealousy right in that very moment is quite high. So, although it’s not uncommon for him to be jealous, he’s quick to let it go.

In most cases, that’s where the story ends.

Sometimes, though, if the feeling is strong enough or if you’re not able to talk with him, it’ll go a bit further.

In those instances, the emotion that follows his confusion is anger. More accurately, it’s defensiveness masked with a display of frustration.

It’s written all over his face, eyebrows furrowing and eyes turning sharp. The delivery of his words are rather harsh and unfiltered (well, more than usual).

This anger won’t ever be directed at you, though. Okuyasu cares about you far too much.

If he can’t direct it at a specific individual that’s (according to him) the source of his jealousy, he’ll instead grow angry with himself. Mainly because his jealousy stems from an insecure belief that he’s not good enough for you.

If he gets this upset, it’s best to leave him to let out his frustrations before going to speak with him on the matter. Hell, Josuke is a better support for Okuyasu when he’s dealing with the bulk of his emotions.

Not much time is needed; no more than a day. And because he respects you greatly, if you give him that tiny- yet definitely needed -space, he’ll gladly hear you out with a fresher mindset.

Okuyasu is almost always going to be soothed by your affirmations.

Sweet words about how you’re with him because you want to be, and that nothing so small could form a wedge between the two of you, is very reassuring for him.

Jealousy is going to be more of a prevalent hurtle for the both of you to work on at the beginning of the relationship. He was still getting used to the idea that you really do like him as more than just a friend. It’s sweet, sure, but the insecurity is something the two of you work on together.

As time passes, and he digests the fact that you’re not going to leave him for the first person that flirtatiously glances your way, he cools off a lot. In fact, he starts having a hard time taking the people who hit on you seriously.

Namely, he’s going to laugh at any poor bastard trying to make a move on you. Because “Ha! Get a move on, loser! Can’t you see their taken?”

His mocking may not be as well-thought out as Josuke’s, but they can cut just as deep. And his delivery is almost always sure to bring a smile to your face. Okuyasu is always proud when he’s the cause of your glee.

That said, getting defensive is still a knee-jerk reaction at times. It only applies if someone doesn’t want to take “no” as an answer.

Doesn’t matter how capable you are in defending yourself, if someone pushes it, he’s quickly going to follow it up with threats. Partially out of affectionate protectiveness, and also in part because he likes to think of himself as your knight in shining armor.

He tries to be as suave as he can while threatening a stranger with a fist to the face. One second he’s throwing insults, the next he’s giving you a smile along with a cheeky wink.

As far as he’s concerned, someone messing with his boyfriend/girlfriend better be prepared for a pair of knuckles meeting harshly with their jaw.

Okuyasu’s like an angry dog barking loudly at anyone getting too close. Least you know no one will ever dare to mess with you for very long.

Koichi Hirose

-> The Logical

Out of everyone in the Duwang gang, Koichi is the least susceptible to jealousy. Actually, scratch that. He’s the least susceptible to jealousy in all of Morioh.

Especially after developing Echoes act 3, his thought process just doesn’t leave a lot of room for doubts in both you and himself.

If someone’s attempting to flirt with you, he’s more likely to grow annoyed rather than jealous.

He’ll throw them an unamused glance, eyebrow raised as if daring them to continue further. He’ll turn back to you, mentioning loudly enough for them to hear how obnoxious he finds their behavior to be. Returning the favor with a smile almost always does the trick, often prompting them to give up.

If they don’t, and press further, Koichi is prone to suggesting that the two of you go somewhere else. He never returns any animosity thrown towards him, not letting it get to him much. Yeah, they may be hurling low-hanging insults towards him, but he’s the one with you on his arm.

His casualness in those situations is so consistent to the point where Josuke and Okuyasu each comment on how they don’t understand it.

When a situation arises where they know they’d be jealous, the two just cannot wrap their head around how calm he is. Koichi merely laughs them off, almost finding their confusion to be amusing.

Koichi’s grown a lot, and he just can’t find it within himself to give into insecurities he considers unnecessary. All that, in his mind, should really be left in the past.

Adding to his confidence, is you yourself.

Koichi adores you, and would honestly trust you with his life. So why would he ever grow jealous of an old friend? What on earth could some random person at a party provide you in a short, two minute conversation that would warrant any defensiveness? Why would he feel threatened by a coworker? It’s not like he can tell you to avoid them.

In fact, he’s very aware of the fact that he can't tell you what to do in general. Or rather, he simply won’t. It’s not in his nature to be controlling or hover over you like that.

Not because you’ve brought it up or it's ever been an issue in the past. It’s simply because... that’s not a real relationship in his eyes. He’s not bossy or pushy- you started dating him because that was your decision at the end of the day. And that alone is enough proof to him that being jealous really isn’t worth it.

Now, if by some miracle he does grow jealous, it’s not going to last very long. Again, Koichi is just too levelheaded.

He is going to grow downcast, saddened by his own perspective of the situation. This is because he’ll only get to the point of jealousy if he believes you’ve returned someone’s advances- whether it was by word of mouth or something he saw with his own two eyes.

And because you care for him as earnestly as he does for you, his jealousy likely occurs due to an honest misunderstanding.

Koichi will approach you on the matter himself, and will do so calmly. Even if he saw something, he doesn’t want to become more upset before he hears what you have to say. After all, you’ve never disappointed him before.

Because of his strong trust in you, after he details his perspective on the matter, he asks that you explain your side of the situation to him.

Koichi’s demeanor is very controlled and polite, hiding a certain degree of genuine worry. He listens with baited breath, internally praying that he simply misread what happened.

And to his relief, that’s all it ever ends up being.

Just like that, the both of you are quickly back to normal. Worries evaporate from within his mind, and he’s back to his usual sweet self.

Genuinely the best boyfriend here, no contest.

Rohan Kishibe

-> The Denier

Oh, boy.

First thing’s first, it should be noted that The Great Rohan Kishibe does not grow jealous. It’s not even a question, and honestly, expecting him to explain such a thing is an insult. Men and women alike fawn over him; anyone would be lucky to have him. You’re lucky to have him.

And to his credit, Rohan really doesn’t grow jealous very often.

His confidence in himself may cross the line into narcissism, but it doesn’t lead him to give into jealousy very often.

Like Koichi, he knows that if you’re with him, it’s because you truly care. Even more so, considering Rohan knows (if only slightly) that he’s not the easiest person to be around.

Nope! He certainly doesn’t become jealous very often… not never, like he’s worked so hard to have you believe.

For Rohan to become jealous requires specific circumstances. Some random person approaching you at a party or bar isn’t going to pose much of a threat to his ego.

On the contrary, it feeds into his ego.

You’re a beautiful individual; it’s no question as to why others would try and approach you. But, of course, you always turn them away seeing as you’re already his.

In those instances, he’s as dismissive as Koichi, coupled with a tongue as sharp as Josuke’s. Rolling his eyes, wrapping an arm around you, straight up ignoring the person trying to talk to you, kissing you out of the blue- he’s got every weapon in his arsenal equipped to ensure you’re left alone.

If it gets to the point where you’re growing visibly nervous or uncomfortable, Rohan’s words are the nastiest you’ve ever seen. But the display isn’t necessarily out of jealousy, as it is out of shock and frustration that they’d persist. He’s not going to let anyone speak to you in such a way.

But when it pertains to an old friend, the one you were talking about meeting up with for a week straight... now that’s what makes his chest tighten.

Rohan’s going to be in a bad mood because of it, but it’s not too distinct from his usual behavior. No, he’s just a little more quiet than normal. And by the time you cheerfully tell him about seeing this friend of yours, he thinks he may go nuts.

Rohan’s immediate response is to completely shut himself out from everyone, while simultaneously denying any thought he has over being jealous in the first place.

The time he spends locked inside his office is insanely alarming.

At first, you question whether or not you should even say anything about it. Yes, you’re obviously concerned for his health, but Rohan falls into his exaggerated version of workaholic-mode from time to time. And you know him well enough to understand he requires a very careful approach to be pulled out of it.

No, what really warns you that something’s wrong, is that even Koichi asks you if Rohan is doing okay.

His concern takes you aback, and only makes your heart sink further when Josuke (of all people) speaks up about it as well. He’s a lot more reserved about showing any worry, but it’s enough to let you know that something is fundamentally off.

Prodding Rohan for an explanation is going to take a good while.

He’s so unused to feeling jealousy in any capacity that he outright refuses to even admit it to himself.

No, he just needs to work and not interact with anyone. Why? Because he has to; don’t question him. There’s so much he needs to do. You’re far too busy with your old friend in town to pay him any mind anyway.

And that’s exactly the sentiment you finally manage to pull from him.

He spits it out it with crossed arms, not once meeting your gaze. But it’s a mistake (in his mind), because it gets the cogs turning in your mind.

You end up realizing Rohan’s jealous before he does.

Affirmations that you love him is a must, and don’t even bring up the fact that he grew jealous- it would only continue to stir the pot. You know Rohan well, confident in how you choose your words when talking to him about it.

He refuses to give you any indication that he's listening, of course, but one brief glance your way cracks his hardened outer shell.

The look on your face... it initiates this weird sinking feeling deep inside his gut. Just thinking of could halt his movements.

Yes, realistically, he could just use his stand to check whether or not his concern is warranted.

But, for one thing, he’s already promised you he wouldn't do that to you. Setting boundaries is extremely important to Rohan, so he respects the ones you set in return. So much so that the thought of using Heaven’s Door on you doesn’t cross his mind once.

And that look on your face, soft and melancholy upon the realization that he’s been doubting you... he honestly doesn’t need to use his stand to know he's severely misread your relationship with your old friend.

His own ability to recognize how poorly he misunderstood the situation is something he figures he’ll have to unpack at a later time. In that moment, he was just relieved. He told you, rather stubbornly, that he supposes he was wrong. In own his weird, twisted way, that was how he apologized.

In short, being with you is a humbling experience for a person like Rohan and this instance of becoming jealous is certainly a part of that.

Weirdly enough, to his internal surprise, it’s ultimately a pleasurable development. Not like he’d ever tell you, though.

With the passage of time, he even lets you tease him over it. The two of you playfully go back and forth, bringing up times where you both got so jealous. It’s all in good fun, his confidence in your feelings for him stronger than ever.

In reality, him having a bit of humor about it is a clear sign that he’s growing into the relationship more and more. And him being able to be more transparent around you makes it easier for him to talk to you in the future if he gets that jealous again.

There’s still room for growth, but such things are almost always a gradual process for someone like Rohan.

That said, only you’re allowed to make any sort of teasing remarks about the whole ordeal. Anyone else isn’t worthy of doing so.

#johnny’s work #jjba #jojo’s bizarre adventure #josuke higashikata x reader #okuyasu nijimura x reader #koichi hirose x reader #rohan kishibe x reader #diamond is unbreakable #diu #manga #anime #headcanons #jealousy #gender neutral reader #fluff #sfw #part 4 jojo #writing #fanfiction

[dashielldeveron]

soulmate trope | shigaraki tomura

Shigaraki’s route of soulmate trope.

"post-canon shigaraki? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 4 january 2024!"

yeah. thank god. gives us time to write our own endings. and obviously i will be wrong about some things. i recommend you read at least one other route, preferably dabi’s, before reading this one. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to around chapter 390-411ish, based on language used by others to describe shigaraki and his trauma. bodily consequences to his trauma (some things are intended to read as AFO having forced an ED on shigaraki, but this is not made definitive). sexual content. stalking. gore (in a game). reader is experiencing a type of gifted kid burnout.

~28k

There’s a hentai book lying on your bed.

You’ve never seen it before.

Flipping through it, you winced at the positions the large-titted, ponytailed woman was manhandled into, and though you were frankly impressed that she managed to wear such intricate lingerie underneath her everyday business attire, the protagonist only just got home from work; let her decompress for, like, ten minutes before railing her against the window, please.

Whom did you know who would read volume four of something called GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK?

Unfortunately, you were burdened with knowledge about your friends’ sexual habits, and some of them, therefore, were already ruled out: Shinsou only read erotica because he preferred his own imagination to any images hentai or live-action could provide, and Monoma only read hentai in which the woman’s eyes had hearts in them to let the reader know she’s enjoying it—not to mention Monoma wouldn’t buy a hard copy of it, let alone a story that didn’t have more plot and character development to it. There wasn’t enough drool for Sero to be interested, and the male protagonist wasn’t enough of a twink for Kaminari to project onto, so whose was this?

Moreover, who the fuck would come all the way back to your old school’s campus to break into your room to leave it on your bed? (Shinsou would be your best bet for that part, but whenever he finished a patrol nowadays, he went directly to sleep, and his and Monoma’s flat was across town.)

You cat, Dango, jumped onto the bed, slithering up next to you and bumping her head on your elbow affectionately.

“Is this yours?” you asked her, and she sniffed the book before climbing into your lap.

You tossed the book aside to pet your cat with both hands, and you resolved not to think about it any longer, even though the cringy way the mangaka depicted the female orgasm was burnt onto your brain.

***

Hopping to put your heel back into a ballet flat, you held the phone between your ear and shoulder while you struggled towards the lift. “I’ve got to cancel on you, Ochaco,” you said, flipping the back of your blazer collar down and adjusting the lapels, “I’m, fuck—I’m not gonna be able to make it this evening, so just go without me.”

Uraraka sighed on her end. “Okay. I know a lot of us were excited to see you after so long—there’s a card Tsu’s made us all to sign, and everything—but we’ll manage. ‘Spose we’ll just have a routine night at the bar and reschedule when you can make it. I miss you,” she said, “and I’m pretty sure I can say the same for everyone.”

The elevator door slid open, and you entered. “All of you are so clingy. I’ve only been away from the agency for around two months, and you know where to find me.” You mashed the button for the ground floor. “In fact, it’s embarrassingly easy to access me.”

“Well, we’re very busy,” said Uraraka, “People are very eager to conscript us for missions, even if they really could be done by the police. U.A. alumni have somehow upticked in their popularity even more since we graduated—”

“Ochaco, I know. I was there. Allow me to weep for your success. I am playing the world’s tiniest violin.” You shifted your bag’s full weight onto your shoulder and exited into the commons. “But listen. I’ve got to go; I’m running late this morning. I couldn’t find my pantyhose even though I laid them out last night, and they weren’t in any of my cat’s usual hiding places. I had to turn my flat upside down and still never found them.” The outside doors slid open when you approached, and the harsh, morning wind upset your hair on impact. “Give everyone my love, O. Tell Todoroki to smile in his next interview.” Eyes darting across your surroundings for any witnesses, you shrank in on yourself and bit the inside of your cheek. “And tell everyone I’m sorry, okay?”

By the time you arrived at U.A.’s administration building, the wind had been joined by a light drizzle that would probably morph into a storm within the hour, a prediction compounded by a plethora of faculty umbrellas in and beside the stand by the sliding doors. The front office was gloriously vacant, though, so you were able to slip behind the front desk without someone rebuking you for being—you shook the computer mouse to wake it up, the clock popping up in the corner—seventeen minutes late.

(You’d graduated with the rest of the class six months ago, and you’d founded the all-girls agency uptown, with most of the women in the graduating class joining to form an instant powerhouse of the industry.

Founding an agency appealed to a good deal of graduates, but you were the only one to go the distance: you were the one to actually make the calls, fill out the paperwork, get aggravating shit done, and by the time to move into the building, it had pleased you to no end that Midoriya had asked you for help on kickstarting his own.

And then two months ago, you’d pulled off, frankly, what was supposed to be an impossible rescue. For the first time, you were getting enormous amounts of attention, from civilians, from press, from other heroes—and you were being followed, never having more than a moment to yourself—always being watched, either from well-wishers or nay-sayers—and sometimes, the analytical critic, eager to point out your faults in the rescue mission to try to drag you out of the hero scene.

You hated yourself for this, but they won.

Too many expectations. All sinking down on you, as if no other hero existed while the light shone in your direction. [And you hated yourself for even daring to consider this—what reprehensible audacity, but—but was this how All Might had felt?]

You’d had something next door to a panic attack when a convenience store, a regular stop in your weekly routine, filmed your reaction to how they’d auctioned off your signed receipt for over nine hundred thousand yen. Breaking their cameras, Shinsou had to escort you out of there in a rush and call Aizawa for help.

Sobbing into Shinsou’s phone on the soggy concrete of a darkened alleyway, you did something you never fathomed you’d ever do, something you could never see any of your friends ever doing, something that seemed as alien and unthinkable as sticking your hand into a pit of needles: you begged Aizawa to get you out of the hero business.

You’ve been handled with care and relocated into a surprising covert secretarial job in the U.A. admin, Nezu’s logic was that you’d adjust to one person needing you at a time, say, over email or at the desk, and if you only answered the phone with only a shortened version of your name, then no intruding civilian would be the wiser.

The job was easy, anyway. Paid well for what it was, but perhaps that was simply standard for U.A. Nowhere nearly as well paying or exciting as working as a hero, but you were adjusting into mundanity. Some days had stretches of hours in which you didn’t interact with anyone, sitting at the front desk without a task, and you even had a few days in which you’d gone in, piddled around at the desk for your whole shift without seeing another soul, and gone home.

Your friends were always so busy. The two times you’ve been able to meet with them contained nothing but conversation about hero work, or else everything was somehow tangentially related to it, and you found yourself unable to contribute to the conversation. Both times, you’d left early, a little overstimulated, leaving Shinsou to make your excuses.

And Shinsou, bless him. Not avoiding you on purpose. In fact, you knew he’d drop almost anything for you to hang out, but you knew his schedule and how little rest he got. So, it was more of a self-imposed boundary on your side, taking into account that he needed sleep more than he needed to spend time with you.

So, yes, some of it was directly your fault, but you were achingly, astonishingly lonely, with an ever-lowering threshold for tolerance of outside stimulation, ultimately feeling like you didn’t belong here.)

Pens aligned. Coaster. Check the school email for—good, no emails. No voicemail. Get out your planner and write your hours in it to look busy. Hey, your water bottle’s nearing empty; maybe you could go fill it or even waste time brewing coffee. But where’s your work mug? You probably left it on the cleaning rack next to the office sink. You should go check.

“Hey,” said Aizawa out of nowhere, ignoring how you jumped out of your own skin, “Good morning. Are you doing a specific job at the moment?”

You gripped the arms of your swivel chair to ground yourself. Is this a test? “I was about to take a moment to make some coffee,” you said, because never let someone in a position of authority know that you were doing jackshit, “Is there something I can help you with, Aizawa-sensei?”

Frowning, he dipped his chin into his capture weapon, still tucked closely to his neck to shield him from the wind, and he shifted his weight to one leg, his fingers tapping in a ripple on the reception desk. “You don’t have to call me that anymore.”

“I’m gonna,” you said, “How can I help?”

Please don’t need anything. Please don’t need anythi—

“Permission has just cleared for me to assign you a long-term task.”

Shit, you thought, internally wincing at how he used the term task and not mission, as if you’d be plunged into the ice-cold water of a panic attack at the word. The kid gloves that everyone handled you with somehow both ingratiated and insulted you.

“You’ll be paid for it,” Aizawa continued, “and it’s low stakes interaction, not even face-to-face. It’s all online.” Aizawa clasped his hands on the desk and hunched over the top of it, the ends of his scarf trailing down onto your keyboard. “You’ll recall moving some boxes into room 310.”

“Of course.” Early in your first month back at U.A., you’d helped clean out and move some boxes into 310 in the same hall that housed Aizawa, Eri, and now you—you’d unofficially dubbed it as U.A.’s drawer to shove social rejects. “Is someone about to move in?”

“He’s been moved in for a while,” said Aizawa, pulling his capture weapon away from his neck, “Keep all of this quiet. You’re allowed to know because I’ve advocated for you, because I trust in you and in your ability to do this well.” Aizawa paused, the silence dragging on much longer than usual. His eyes glazed over, as if considering how to phrase his next proposal.

You waved your hand, prompting him to continue.

His eyes focused again. “The new person is a ward of the school, but All Might and I are his primary—caretakers isn’t quite the right term, and nor is supervisors, so perhaps it’s better to—”

“No, I get it,” you said, “This person is an adult, but they’re not quite independent. Go on.”

Aizawa paused, brow furrowed just slightly as he scrutinised you again, but he nodded slowly after a moment. “I’ll allow him to introduce himself to you. He doesn’t need me to set up expectations. What’s important for you to know, regarding your own participation, is that he’s very new to the hero scene and is receiving his hero training later in life than usual. He won’t be attending class but will be trained personally by select U.A. faculty, mostly All Might, Nezu, and me.”

“Is he officially a student?”

 “On paper.” Something strange passed across Aizawa’s face, but you couldn’t name it. “Where you come in is his socialisation. He’s spent most of his life in disciplinary isolation. Because of the adults raising him, his instincts trend towards distrust and animosity.”

So, Aizawa wanted you spend time with him until he was no longer bad with people, like spending time with feral cats at animal shelters until they’re ready to be adopted. “So, he’s distrustful. Hostile. Angry,” you said, scratching the side of your head, “Is he—do you think he’ll bring up bad stuff I’ve done to use it against me?”

“He doesn’t know who you are, aside from someone trusted by U.A. with hero experience,” said Aizawa, shaking his head, “and you can choose what information you give him.”

“Does he,” you said, sucking in through your teeth, “Does this guy know about how you’re going about this? I think—wouldn’t he be insulted if he knew about how you’re socialising him like an animal?”

Aizawa looked over his shoulder at the empty office, but he bent farther over the desk and spoke softly, anyway. “Recently, when I was training him at night, he expressed that he never knows what to do when someone wants to talk to him after mission, whether it’s successful or not. He froze entirely when a senior citizen thanked him last week, and that’s when we decided something tactile needed to be done. Since he’s grown used to me, you’re the solution.”

Okay. A volatile man, someone who couldn’t go to U.A. at the average age but for whom Aizawa, Nezu, and All Might were making an exception, even going so far as to personally take him out at night to practise hero work.

Hm. Fishy.

But if the good, good men who took care of you wanted you take care of another misplaced person, then you’re going to do it to the best of your ability.

“I hope I can live up to your expectations,” you said, making a note in your planner, “What am I doing?”

“I need you to learn how to play a video game,” said Aizawa, “and I need you to be absolute shit at it.”

***

For you to help some loser with socialisation, he would be teaching you how to play some janky, twenty-five-year-old MMORPG called Cipherstone—and not even the current, polished version of it; you had to sign up for an account on the version preserving the game exactly as it was in 2007. Nostalgia reasons, apparently.

You nudged Dango out aside to check your bedside clock. The discord call would start in five minutes, and you were making your Cipherstone account, completely unable to come up with a suitable username.

“Don’t connect it to your other online accounts or your actual identity,” Aizawa had said that morning.

Dango’s tiny prance across your stomach was not helping, and you couldn’t use Dango in your username, because if someone knew about your cat (and hopefully no one did, because cats were not allowed in the dorms), then a Dango username could be linked back to the real you. You plopped your head back on your pillow, knocking against the headboard. What’s something that couldn’t be traced back to you? Slumping, you let your head fall to the side and sulked.

The hentai book peeked out from underneath a jacket on your dirty clothes chair.

GinsengTea

That username is unavailable.

Well. You couldn’t use your birthdate as added numbers. You kept typing.

GinsengTea69

That username is unavailable.

You’re not about to try Lustful Ballsack. Maybe if you put aside your secretarial propensity for being correct for a moment.

GinzengTea

Username available!

Oh, thank God. You sorted out your password and started customising your character, though you couldn’t do much with the negative six billion pixels you were dealing with, and oh, is that the noise discord makes for a call? You plugged in your earbuds and clicked the answer button.

“Hello?” you asked into the microphone on your earbud cord, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture of a rotund, cartoon mouse. Username Tenkopeito. Looks like he ran into the same spelling trouble you did.

“Greetings and salutations,” he said, his tinny, rasping, just-got-out-of-bed, gruff-from-lack-of-use voice striking you with about fifty psychic damage, “I am Aizawa-sensei’s pupil, here to teach you about the intricacies of Cipherstone. It will be my pleasure—”

“Cut that shit out,” you said, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture: actually, that mouse was so round because it had just swallowed an enormous piece of konpeito whole, with the little star spikes jutting out underneath its fur. “No one talks like that. You sound fake as fuck.”

“I see,” he said after a beat, tone deflating to sound resigned (and though he’d relaxed, it somehow sounded as if talking this way took more effort, like it physically strained his vocal cords). “Am I not supposed to be nice?”

“You weren’t exactly being nice. You were using a customer service voice—which is being polite, not nice. Not even kind. Politeness is usually some sort of put-on affectation of niceness, forced for the situation. I understand if that’s what you think you need to do when you talk to people as a hero, but in hero work, since the stakes are high, you need to be genuine, or at least sound like you are.” Dango crawled across your stomach again, but you lifted her off before she could settle into a loaf on your keyboard. “In the field, it’s often hard to be kind because of how involved you get as a hero; being kind takes effort and drains you emotionally. Kindness implies there’s some sort of reciprocity, some sort of ongoing relationship. You can choose to be kind if you want, but it may wear on you in the long run. What will probably be healthiest for you, on your side, is if you aim to be nice, meaning being honest in a gentle way, framing situations positively but realistically for listeners. The public doesn’t want to be lied to and told everything’s fine, but telling them the harshness of reality doesn’t go over well. Kills morale.”

“Holy shit.” He was scratching something close to his microphone—it must be a fairly good mic, since you could deduce short fingernails against a dry surface. “That’s…a lot.”

“It is. But you can do it. All it takes is practise, and that’s what I’m here for,” you said, moving Dango from your keyboard again, “And I didn’t mean to overwhelm you with all of that; it just came out—I, uh, I happen to know a lot about the way heroes present themselves.” Swallowing thickly, you ran your tongue over your lower lip. “Why don’t we begin with what you were saying before? But in the actual way you talk, please. You need to be comfortable in your own voice.”

His mic picked up the distant noise of slurping through a straw, against what sounded like the bottom of a metal cup, which clinked when he set it back down. “Have you played Cipherstone before?”

“Total newcomer. Though I’ve seen some screenshots in memes.”

“Cool,” he said in a way that was clear it was not cool, “I can’t add you to my in-game friends list until you get off Tutorial Island. Share your screen with me until then.”

All right. You can be bad at this. You can be so bad at this. “What’s a screen?” Not that bad, idiot! “I mean,” you said, fumbling, “How do I share my screen with you?”

The scratching grew louder. “Bottom left. Screen button. Right click. Share option.”

“Ah.” You should probably lure him into thinking you’re competent while there was a literal tutorial onscreen so that he would be more frustrated with you later. “Gotcha.”

For a few seconds after your avatar popped onscreen for the first time, nothing came through but the 8-bit tutorial music. “Is that what you look like in real life?” he finally asked.

“No,” you said, not exactly lying. The character had her hair down in her face (which you wouldn’t normally do when you were on patrol, since it could get in the way of physical hero work), and, hoping to endear yourself to this weirdo, you’d chosen the sluttiest shirt: while none of the horrible pixelated options showed any boob whatsoever, the poor rendering still managed to convey that the top was off-shoulder. Again, not great for hero work. “In real life, I’ve much, much more panache.”

Another silence, during which you assumed he was looking up the word. “So, you click on the screen to go where you want to walk, on either the overall game interface or in the mini-map in the corner. Your destination will show up—”

“Wait, what should I call you, screwboy?”

“—as a red flag,” he said, frown audible, his rasping voice screeching to a stop the way brakes are slowly applied to the wheels of a train. “Not screwboy.”

“I’m not calling you by your handle. Not only is it cringe, but you won’t have to answer to it anywhere else in your life. If you don’t want to give me your name, that’s fine. I could call you by your hero name, if you like; it’d help you get used to answering to it. But no, I’m not calling you your username,” you said, shoulders slacking once Dango finally settled in a ball at your hip, “Especially since you couldn’t even get the correct spelling of Ten Konpeito.”

“It’s—it’s not supposed to say that,” he said, sputtering with a groan coming in at the end, “It’s a play on my name, and including the n makes it harder to say aloud. I think these things through; I have to be aware of my public image and branding now; that’s the whole point of this stupid—my name is Tenko, you asshole.”

“Oh, you’re gonna call civilians asshole?” You clicked your tongue. “Bad. Bad and evil. Speaking from experience, people don’t like that.”

“Just fu—just click on the map.”

“Fine. But you can’t fool me with your medieval, point-and-click game,” you said, clicking to pick up a fishing net, “Incidentally, the oldest known fishing net is the net of Antrea, crafted of willow and dating back to 8300 B.C.”

Tenko paused. “What would be the socially expected response to that?”

Your avatar fished for shrimps. “Oh, usually people yell at me. Get mad for bringing up total non sequiturs. My friend Bakugou is fond of telling me that I’m a collection of those bottle caps with facts printed on the inside.”

“Would…would you like me to get angry? Am I supposed to? I was under the impression I was supposed to curb my anger. To be nice.”

Your inventory filled with shrimps.

“You only need one shrimp,” said Tenko.

“You’ll thank me when we have food later,” you said, continuing to fish for shrimps.

“It’s the tutorial,” he said, frown creeping into his voice, “You won’t keep any resources from it. You should go chop the tree down to light a fire.”

“Well, hell. I want my shrimps.” You clicked away from the fishing spot and onto a tree. “Nothing’s happening.”

Tenko cleared his throat. “You need to talk to the woodcutting tutor first. She’ll give you an axe.”

“I thought this game had magic,” you said, guiding Dango’s head away from blocking the screen, “Can’t I just get logs with magic?”

“No, it’s—you must want me to get angry. As a test.” Scratching. “Magic comes later. Not for getting logs.”

You interpreted that as a sign to make the rest of the tutorial go smoothly. You followed the instructions for a few silent minutes, proving to him that you could read, and when you reached the end of the tutorial, a wizard teleported you to the crossroads of a town centre.

“Ah,” you said, genuinely surprised as other players’ avatars, decked out in what must be high-level gear, dashed past, “I don’t know where I am.”

“You can turn your screen-sharing off now.” Tenko typed on what sounded like a mechanical keyboard. “I’m over here. I’ve got—by the fountain—white hair, all black clothes. I’m not—there you are.”

Dozens of other players were running past the two of you, the only bare, new players in the area. Tenko’s pixelated avatar waved at you. Cheeky bitch. He’s so poorly animated and so very 2007 that it gave no indication what he could look like in real life. But he’s chosen to have a black t-shirt as his default, so he has to be a slut.

You resisted the urge to ask to feel his pixelated bicep. “You don’t have any equipment. I thought you’ve played Cipherstone before?”

“My main account is max-ed out. I started a new account to grow at the same rate as you. Before anything else, notice where we are,” said Tenko, “We’re in the centre of the city of Renfield. Get familiar with it. Think of it as home. It’s where you’ll always come back to when you get lost.”

It’s a barely animated town centre, with a short path up the stairs to a castle door and a few market stalls split between fountains.

“I have no idea what that means, Tenko.”

“It means that—that,” Tenko said, and stopped.

You couldn’t stop grinning, biting at your lower lip to keep from laughing—he’d let out a flustered huff, sounding a little strangled, because you’d said his name for the first time—and, judging by how long this delicious silence was dragging on, Tenko was probably his given name, not the family name. Beautiful, really, that a guy his age (however old he was, but he’s at least the same as you, since he couldn’t attend U.A. at the usual time) could get this nervous over a woman calling him by his name.

Tenko recovered in a way that showed he didn’t: “It means that you are always able to cast one spell, regardless of magic level,” he said in a rush, “It is a homing spell that teleports you back to this spot, so even if you get lost, you can always get back to Renfield. You can teleport other ways, too, but that’s for another time, and I need a cup of coffee.” He inhaled sharply.

It's only the first day, so you should go easy on him. Let his moment of awkwardness go.

However, Aizawa gave you a mission.

Excuse you, a task.

“Do you plan on getting flustered every time a civilian calls you by name?” you asked, petting between Dango’s ears, “Or are you planning on avoiding as much publicity as possible by being an underground hero like Aizawa?”

“I don’t—they’re not going to—it’s different with you. I can already tell,” said Tenko (you froze, fingers curled into Dango’s fur), “because I’m going to have some sort of working relationship with you. I assume you’re here to stay.”

Putting it that way made your heartbeat throb around your ears. You decided you could ask directly. “Tenko’s your first name, then?”

“Yeah.” He must have covered his hand with his mouth, muffling his voice at first. “But people usually—people have been calling me something else.”

“Then I can call you something else, if you like,” you said, getting back to petting Dango behind her ears and resolving to treat him with the same tenderness—he must need it, since no one in his life knows him well enough to call him by his given name.

“No, I think you should,” he said a bit too quickly, “Call me that. Tenko. I’m tired of that other stuff. Click on something to keep from logging out, by the way. There’s a timer.” Mechanical typing noises. “No, Aizawa-sensei wants me to be better. Of all things, I need to learn to respond to my real name.”

You squinted at your screen, as if the methodical rise and fall of his avatar’s chest could betray how he was feeling. Something had to have happened to this guy to make him feel this way about such a basic part of his identity, to make other people avoid his real name so universally. Aizawa couldn’t’ve have assigned you this task just to socialise him; something else was unfolding here. How did you enter the equation? If you’re supposed to guide someone who’s also lost their direction in life, you’re a hell of a bad candidate.

But what if you fuck up Aizawa’s plan, whatever it was?

Your recent history is riddled with things going downhill. What if you somehow screwed over Tenko? You’d be dragging someone else down with you, down to…the beginning again, a humiliating re-start, back at your fucking school, when the rest of your friends were out living the dream you’d all crafted together, the dream that apparently could go on without you in it.

Well. Enough of that. Distract yourself. Distract Tenko, too. “Got it. I want a hat.”

“What?”

“I want a hat,” you said, clicking the space around the fountain for your avatar to walk, “My head is cold. How do we get a hat? Hats. You should get one, too.”

“Hats. Very well,” said Tenko, clicking to face you across the shitty fountain, “Do you want one that’s purely decorative or one that has some sort of stats? Decorative ones we can get within a minute, with good RNG, by killing goblins across the bridge. There’s a low chance we could get a low-tier wizard’s hat doing that, too.”

“Then it will be a pleasure killing goblins with you, Tenko.”

“Mm,” he said at the back of his throat, “First, we’ll need to obtain some sort of weapons, since bare-handed punching them will take forever. We could either talk to the melee tutor to get a temporary sword or start wi—actually, we should talk to the melee tutor. Melee will probably be the easiest fighting style for you right now, and it’ll be the simplest, since you won’t have to worry about running out of ammunition or runes.”

“Sure,” you said, leaning back in bed, “Do we go starboard or port?”

“You can just call them east and west, y’know. And we go north.”

To be obstinate, you clicked the opposite direction that Tenkopeito was going, and the moment you ran offscreen, Tenko spoke in a low, grumbling voice into his microphone. “No, don’t run away from me. Come back here.”

The rumble in his voice shot warmth straight to your lower stomach, the nature of the encounter between the two of you changing in a second. Your avatar kept running to her destination, your hand frozen and hovering above the tracking pad. You blinked, your throat drying. Snapping back into it, you ran back to Tenko, who seemed unaware of what he just did to you—and he almost negated your arousal in the way he kept talking about sword upgrades and something called RNG.

Uh.

“—now, it’ll take about ten minutes, but it’ll seem like two hours of hard labour. Follow me across the bridge. Follow—there’s a follow mechanic, if you’ll right-click on me.”

Oh, you’ll right-click him, all right. You needed to know more about Tenko—why you’ve been paired off, what Aizawa’s planning for him, what—a tinge of shame soured at the back of your tongue, because what currently gripped you were minutiae: more about him, what he looks like, what he likes, what he does for fun, if you’re…the sort of person he’d get along with in real life, if you hadn’t been forced together.

God, get over yourself. You spend two months away from men your age, and now, you’re thirsting over someone you don’t even know because he said one hot thing. You needed to be socialised—no, stop. This isn’t about you. Stop thinking about what his hands would feel like on you, what he’d sound like grunting into your ear as he ground against you—

“You’ve been quiet for a minute,” said Tenko, slashing the first goblin, “Are you all right?”

A very heroic question when you haven’t been thinking too heroically. The thought of his voice muttering against your neck still grasped you tightly. “I’m having—technical difficulties.”

***

Poking your head outside of your dorm/apartment door, you scanned the hallway for witnesses. You gripped the handle of Dango’s carrier, still hidden behind the door inside your dorm, and you nodded back at her when she meowed at you.

“I know, baby,” you said, listening for footsteps, “We’ll be outside soon enough. Gotta check for people, though.”

Okay, nothing coming. You shifted Dango’s carrier out of your dorm and pulled out your key, sticking it in the lock at the same time as a door opened down the hall.

Too fast—you had to prod her carrier back inside, your foot stuck in the crack between wall and door, just as—as Midoriya strode down the hall. Keys jangling. Civilian clothes (a Froppy hoodie, in fact).

“Oh, hello!” Midoriya only seemed to notice you once you were struggling to close the door despite the carrier being the way, and hopefully you thrust it fully inside swiftly enough for him not to catch the flash of burgundy. He trotted up to you, hands in the pockets of his worn cargo pants. “I didn’t think you’d be around. Do you not have work today?”

Dango meowed mournfully through the door, and you stepped in front of it. “It’s my lunch break. I’m going for a walk.”

Midoriya nodded, and he glanced over his shoulder back to the room he’d left. “Gotcha, gotcha. Good weather for it, especially after that storm earlier this week.” easy smile stretched across his face as he faced you again, but his gaze weighed down on you, as if the number one hero’s attention magnified your failures in comparison to his rise to the top—and the fact that he didn’t mean to pressure you only exacerbated the feeling.

“Uh,” you said, stuffing your keys in your backpack and setting it on the ground, as if you’re not waiting to go back inside, “May I ask what you’re doing here? Don’t you have better—aren’t you busy?”

Chuckling, Midoriya scratched the back of his neck (and oh, in that laughter, he was hiding something). “I make time. I’m just visiting,” he said, jerking his head back towards the end of the hall, “A friend. I want to take care to see him regularly. I didn’t know you lived on the same hall.”

“If you can call it living,” you said, and for some reason, Midoriya frowned, took a step closer to you, and said your name under his breath, eyes fucking wide and too damn concerned for your comfort. Fuck, you only meant to make a self-depredating joke, not make the situation serious. 

“You—you know that you can reach out to us. I mean that. If you’re scared you’re gonna burden any of us—”

You’d squatted down to go through your bag, just to have something to do, to have an excuse to not look him in the eyes. If you were going to cry—which you were not!—then the number one hero’s not going to get to witness it.

“—then reach out to me, at least. I’ve got time, or else I can make it.” Midoriya was kneeling next to you, and you kept your eyes on the inside of your backpack. “If it makes you feel less like you’re bothering any of us, I could check in with you when I come see my friend. I’d already be on campus. I wouldn’t be going out of my way.” He sighed to fill the space when you didn’t answer. “What are you looking for?”

“I can’t find my planner,” you invented, and, acting like you were upset, you zipped your backpack again. “I think I need to go back inside to locate it.”

He shifted his jaw, and he glanced down at your bag and back at you. “Come with me to the vending machines, at least?”

The new symbol of peace, asking to spend time with you. You didn’t deserve it, so you shook your head. “I don’t have much time left in my break. I think I’d better let you go.”

Shifting his jaw, Midoriya tilted his head at you, his eyes glinting. “All right,” he said slowly, “You know yourself better than anyone else. Do what you need to. Rest up.” He started walking backwards towards the stairs. “And I want to see you more—we all do. I’ll see you the next time I come around. Maybe the three of us could hang out?”

“Sure,” you said, shoving your key in the lock to let a thrashing Dango out of her misery.

***

“The church. It’s the one with the altar icon in the minimap.”

You clicked enough so that your avatar would backtrack. “How am I supposed to know that’s the church? Is that icon supposed to be an altar? It looks nothing like an altar. It looks more like a steaming cup of tea.”

“That’s fair,” said Tenko into his headset, “but this is the easiest quest in the game. How are you having this much trouble with it?”

“Oh, stop that,” you said, reaching his character in front of the priest, “It’s intuitive to you because you’ve been playing this for years. Do we kill this guy?”

“What? No. He’s going to give us each the key to a dungeon underneath the church.”

“How can he give us both a key if there’s only one?” You clicked through the dialogue with the priest, and a key appeared in your inventory. “Also, how accurate is this dungeon? Because if this is a broadly medieval game, then the dungeons will be closer to underground bathrooms rather than, like, creepy and wet with shackles and bones. That was popularised by Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.”

“How the hell do you know that,” Tenko asked flatly, “Ne—never mind. It doesn’t matter. Follow me to the trapdoor outside.”

You did, and it was locked. “Are we allowed to do this?” you asked, clicking on the key and then the lock, “Will we get arrested for trespassing?”

“Wha—no. No, we’re supposed to in order to progress the quest. In fact, our characters do a frankly criminal amount of breaking and entering throughout the game and never get checked for it. Hey, don’t go down there without me.”

Your character had only just gone down the trapdoor, prompting a blackout loading screen, but you popped back up to the surface before you could get a good look around. Your character stood next to Tenko’s, still next to the trapdoor. “What’s the holdup? I thought the only step was to use the key on the door. Did I skip something?”

“No, I—huh,” said Tenko, cutting himself off with a tinge of frustration creeping into his voice, “I lost the key.”

Raising a brow, you tilted your head. “What? How’d you lose it?”

“I don’t know. It was in my inventory one minute, and now it’s not. I didn’t touch it.” His mic picked up light scratching. “You’re not supposed to be able to lose the key, but I guess I can go back to the priest to get another. You wait—”

“Hold up,” you said, brow furrowed, “I have it. It’s in my inventory.”

“The hell? Are you sure it’s not just your own key?”

“Positive. I have two of them now. Same key, right next to each other. Want me to share my screen?”

“No, I—I believe you.” Tenko took a moment. “I’m not familiar with this sort of glitch, where an item from one player’s inventory randomly transfers to another’s. This doesn’t even happen, in my experience, but maybe it’s because this is one of the earliest quests coded into the game. It’s twenty-five-year-old code at this point, and it might have glitched because we’re both trying to perform the same quest actions on the same game tick.”

“Sure,” you said, “So, what do I do? Do I drop the key for you to pick up, or?”

“It disappears if you drop it. Trade me. Right-click, trade option.”

Once the key was traded, the two of you went down the trapdoor and wove your way back into the underground headquarters of a low-level cult, vacant for the moment but with evidence of rituals on the walls and floors, particularly in front of their bloodstained altar.

“Okay, we’re in their headquarters,” you said, making your character walk up the aisle, “What now? Priest guy didn’t give us any instructions.”

His avatar followed you and sat on the only programmed-to-be-sittable seat in the pew, his black cape (that he stole from a highwayman’s corpse) folding under his legs. “Actually, he did. You just clicked through his dialogue.”

“Because you’re here to tell me what to do, Quest Man.”

“Click on the—” Tenko heaved an enormous sigh, microphone sparking. “You figure it out. What’s clickable in this room? What has examine text?”

You hovered your mouse over most of the room, and nothing popped up with the examine option, except for something on the altar. “It’s this weird-looking, severed hand, isn’t it? This thing standing up on a slice of wrist by itself?” Your character walked nearer to it, fingers splayed widely enough to hold an in-game apple. “Weirdest ring-holder I’ve ever seen.”

When Tenko didn’t say anything, you glanced towards his character, but he was still sitting on the pew.

“Is this whole quest a pun? Because it’s one of the easiest quests, so they’re giving us a lot of guidance, so it’s like they’re holding our hands to get it through?”

That broke his silence: he scoffed into the mic. “I doubt it,” he said, “You need to grab the hand for the quest to keep going.”

“Fine,” you said, clicking the hand, and the instant your avatar touched it, a zombie spawned from the altar and began to attack you. “Dude! Did you know that thing was gonna jump me?” you asked, clicking away a few spaces but turning around to stab at it with your stupid bronze dagger, “And you just sat there? You could’ve warned me.”

“I did, and the priest did, and the duke who gave us this quest did. That’s why we went and baked all those pies in your inventory, yeah? For you to eat during this fight?”

Your character kept missing hits. “Yeah, but—like! I didn’t know the fight would be now.”

“Hey, relax.” Tenko’s voice sounded muffled, like his mouth was smushed as his fist dug into his cheek. “It’s only a level 12, and you’re level 9. Not too big of a difference. With your armour and weapon, you out-level it.”

The miss sound effect spoke for itself.

“You’ll kill it eventually. You won’t always hit zeroes, so it’ll pass.”

Though your character dealt her first damage, you frowned. “That’s…that’s actually really good advice, Tenko. The stuff you just said would work well if you were trying to calm someone down—reminding people of reality and emphasising perseverance over luck or natural talent are some of the better ways to encourage people.”

“Is that so,” he asked flatly, trying to put off a yawn and failing, “I haven’t—I wasn’t thinking about hero work. Just thinking about the game.”

“Well, it was nice,” you said, “and it seemed like it came naturally. Mind if I ask if something caused it?”

He yawned again, but he must have leant away from the mic so that you wouldn’t hear anything besides the initial inhale. “Nothing special happened today, but I’m too tired to get irritated. Therapy took a lot out of me today.”

Therapy. Therapy. Okay, so he’s got an official diagnosis somewhere. The word today implies that it’s a regular thing, and for some reason, this session was more intense. Intense emotionally? Physically? What kind of therapy? Well, they offered cognitive behavioural therapy on campus, but considering his non-traditional student status, his might be outsourced. Plus, if you, a former hero but technically a civilian, are being implemented into his care plan without being informed directly—

“You usually don’t go this long without saying some inane non sequitur,” said Tenko, that same, strange scratching picking up on the mic, “Snap out of it. You’re gonna get killed by the easiest quest boss in the game.”

Making an undignified noise, you shook yourself and spam-clicked on a cherry pie for your character to eat until she was healed completely, and then you clicked on the zombie to attack again.

“Why’d you pause when I said therapy? Surprised I’d go? Think that sort of thing is below me?”

“Of course not,” you said, trying to seem like you were focused on the fight so that he wouldn’t get nervous about sharing personal information, “Therapy good. Therapy great. Everyone needs to go to therapy.” Since he appeared to be taking this casually, you could probably ask after the type without it seeming too intrusive. “What kind? CBT? That’s what—”

“You think U.A. would arrange for me to get my cock and balls tortured? That wouldn’t qualify as therapy for me, certainly, and there’s no way that U.A. would pay for—”

“Not fucking cock-and-ball torture, you muppet; cognitive behavioural therapy. The sitting-down-with-therapist-to-talk-about-your-trauma-and-restructuring-the-way-you-think-through-practise type. You fuckin’ pervert,” you said, grinning at his avatar onscreen.

“Good to know. I didn’t know the name for it.”

“It’s good that you made this mistake with me instead of with Aizawa-sensei.”

“He’s probably more inclined towards bondage. Congratulations on killing your first boss,” said Tenko, and you blinked in surprise at your character: you’d defeated the zombie while staring at him. It fell to the ground, dropping bones and some sort of arrows.

“Take those. Check to see if they’re iron or steel. All right, equip them in your ammo slot for now so that they don’t take up an inventory space.”

You did so. “Why didn’t it attack me with the arrows if it were holding them?”

“There’s no logic to it besides that arrows are on its drop table. It’s coded to attack by punching you in the face, which doesn’t involve arrows.”

“Sure. Now, let’s get out of the cult basement; I wanna bake more pies until we can make apple ones. Did you know that the first record of fruit pies was around 1600? That means these fruit pies are anachronistic, since this game pitches itself as medieval.”

“Is that…” The hesitance had you beaming, daring him to actually ask it. “Is that not medieval?”

“Tenko, get your head out of your ass. For reference, 1600 is arguably the year the Azuchi-Momoyama period ended and the Edo period began. The game frames itself as medieval European, and 1600 is hard Renaissance-slash-Early-Modern. That’s Shakespeare times, screwboy.”

Only silence on your headphones. Character still on the pew. You made your character walk over to his to perform the curtsy emote, and in real life, you frowned. “Did I go too far there? Bit too annoying? I’m really sorry if I’m bothering you with this sort of thing; my friends say that I—”

“Nothing’s wrong. I needed a moment,” came Tenko’s voice, quiet and steady, “I could hear you smiling, and it was—it was good.”

Inhaling sharply, you pressed a fist to your mouth. Great. Fucking fabulous. Goddammit, you hadn’t aimed for it to go this way, but were you now the one getting flustered at something as simple as—

“Do most people consider a long pause in conversation rude? Did I fuck up with that?”

“No! No, of course not,” you were saying, trying to recover but still startled at how he was able to flip the vibe of your conversations in so few words, words that seemed so casual to him but grabbed you by the throat/cunt, “Especially since you followed-up with a check-in of how it might be strange; a lot of times, people will be comforted by checking to see if something’s okay with them personally…”

Frowning, you trailed off when another avatar entered the cult’s sanctuary and strode up the aisle. You hovered over the new guy’s stupid frog mask to see his username was Venomothman.

“Fucking great,” grumbled Tenko, “Here comes someone else to break our immersion. Ignore him. I’ll go ahead and fight the zombie so that we can get out of here.”

“The zombie’s dead. You don’t have to fight him,” you said, as Venomothman sat directly on top of Tenkopeito, with both avatars glitching as they took up the same space on the pew.

Tenko made some sort of noise in the back of his throat. “No, I have to kill it, too. It’s like each of us is the only one doing the quest, so in your version, the evil has been defeated, but in my version—it’s this thing called an instance—”

Venomothman: wow a couple questing together

Venomothman: bet ur one guy on two accounts

Venomothman: roleplaying that he can get a gf

The new guy’s in-text chat appeared in yellow font above his avatar’s frog-faced head, and somehow, the boggly, green eyes made his words more irritating.

Venomothman: leave the basement sometimes ya incel

“Some people are assholes recreationally,” said Tenko, making his avatar stand to go to the altar as the clatter of mechanical typing came through the mic, “Let me get rid of this fucking scumba—wait.”

 Venomothman: ur doing too much work to stare at pixelated ass

“Would it be correct for a hero to insult someone online?”

You shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “Eh. You’re not on duty, and you’re not under any persona connected with your public branding. I would say go for it, but since you’re trying to be better with people, you may want to practise.”

Venomothman: somehow this is even more pathetic than never knowing the touch of a woman at all

“Then I’ll shut him down. The shit-talking isn’t bothering me so much as his breaking our immersion in the game,” said Tenko, grabbing the hand on the altar to start his instance of the fight, “I’m trying to cultivate a particular experience for you, and he’s a fucker who won’t stop yapping. Give me a second.”

Venomothman: is this what does it for you??

Venomothman: why no response

Venomothman: hard to type with one hand, isn’t it, ******* shithead

You laughed through your nose. “Cipherstone censors the word fuck?”

“It censors fuck; it censors cunt,” said Tenko, avatar casting a weak air spell at the zombie, slowly, slowly draining its health, “Everything else is fair game.”

“Will it censor variations of cunt? Like, if I typed in cuntbag? Or—actually, let’s find that out later,” you said, tapping the buttons on your earbud cord to turn up the volume, “Let’s practise navigating difficult social interactions. What’s our goal here in this conversation? Is it to continue to engage?”

“No.” His spell missed, and the zombie landed a hit on his character, prompting him to eat half of a pie. “It’s to close the interaction. Therefore, I need to say something concise that invites no response, right? I’m assuming that a simple fuck off is unacceptable.”

“You’re getting better at this, y’know?”

“Is that condescension I detect?”

“Only a little.” You slumped back against your headboard and reached for the bottle of water on your bedside table. “Actually—no. No condescension. Genuinely, Tenko, you’re picking up on this stuff easily, and it’s impressive. You’ll be able to walk little old ladies across the street with style and flair in no time.” 

“Hilarious,” he said, voice restrained and tight at the mention of his name (too easy—he gives himself away aurally so freely; who knows what you could read off of him when you had a visual?), “I’m sure no one wants me touching them. Can I—hm.” He sounded like he was pressing his fist against his face somehow. “Why you keep bothering to compliment me? Most people bitch down to me like I’ve spat my own cum in their coffee.”

“Wha—how about because you deserve to be complimented? Listen,” you said, electing to brush over his vivid simile, “Silent admiration rots. By keeping in appreciation or gratitude, you’re not doing anyone any good. Kind regards are meant to be shared. Like, now, if I held back any positive thoughts concerning your growth, then you might not feel encouraged to keep going.”

“Like I’m gonna go around fucking complimenting ev—”

“I’m not saying you have to,” you said, “but consider trying it more often. See if anything turns out better. And be sure to be sincere about it—obviously.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Just consider it. So. What has he told us about himself based on how he’s insulted you?”

“He’s so low-level that it looks like he just created his account. His stats are even lower than ours,” said Tenko, speaking more quickly now that it was a subject he was more comfortable with, unequipping his wand to punch the zombie instead, “But he’s gone out of his way to get the frog mask.”

“His words, Tenko,” you said, unscrewing the cap and doing your fucking darndest to pinch your mouth from smiling at his slight hitch when you said his name, “I’m trying to get you to notice on whom he looks down and what that means for his personal social status.”

“Right,” he said a bit too quickly, a bit of a break in his voice on the word, “He’s debasing me for—oh, you’re brilliant. How the hell do you notice these things? He’s using basement dweller as insult, meaning he considers himself above that. Leave it to me.”

You muted yourself briefly to glug down water; you didn’t know how sensitive the mic was on your earbuds, but considering that you could catch onto Tenko’s occasional rustling of what sounded like plastic bags on his side or typing on his mechanical keyboard, as he was right now, you would prefer not to be emitting the same.

Tenkopeito: Your mom wishes you would come out of your room to talk with the rest of the family more often

You spluttered into your water bottle as the yellow text appeared above his head, and you unmuted yourself. “That is not what I meant for you to—”

“Was I being mean?” The mic caught the creak of Tenko’s chair as he leant back in it, and you could picture him defensive and pouting as he crossed his arms (and it struck you that you couldn’t imagine his face. Grimacing, you bit the inside of your cheek). “I wasn’t being rude. I could be so much crueller, but I thought this would be more of a devastating blow. Living on the same floor as your family isn’t the same as living in the basement, so I’m acknowledging his level of social power while still demeaning—”

Venomothman: i mean you right

Venomothman: lmao how tf did you know it was me

“I think we should log out,” you said, wiping the water off of your chin with the back of your hand and setting the bottle back on the bedside table.

Over Tenko’s microphone, you heard the shrill pitch of a custom ringtone and a startled but violent shuffle at the noise. “Hold on. I’m getting a call,” he said, voice coming through at a distance, as if he’d knocked his mic aside.

“Oh? Who is it?”

It took him a minute, but Tenko eventually replied, “A friend.”

That must be a damn good microphone, because you could still pick up on Tenko’s side of the conversation a few feet away. “Yes, hello?” he asked, a bit more brusquely than you’d heard him before.

“Oh. I didn’t,” he was saying, “How was I supposed to know that you’d—yes, that’s her. The one working with Aizawa-sensei.”

Very nice, you were thinking, as you unlocked your own phone to check your messages. Very good for him to have friends. Not that you would’ve pegged him as the absolute loner type, because he proved to be adaptable and quick on his feet, but since Aizawa’d recruited you for interpersonal help, you’d considered that he may not have friends. So, good on him for having at least one friend, it seemed, who cared enough to create an account on some stupid video game solely to annoy him.

“—cool of you to make an account to hang out with me. Stop fucking laughing; I am trying to be kind to you, shitstain. Okay. I don’t know. I haven’t been in contact with him in the past two days. I’ve been busy. Let me check.” Tenko leant back towards the mic to address you. “Do we have a schedule for the rest of the week? For instance, are we doing this again on Thursday?”

“I thought we were,” you said, scanning your room for your planner so that you could check your calendar, “Did something come up?”

“It’s not imperative that I go,” Tenko was saying into your ear, while you picked up your laptop to walk over to your U.A.-issued desk, “but another friend who’s been out of town will finally be back then. We might hang out.”

“Psh, go with your friends,” you said, delighted that he had more than one (fighting envy that it was so easy for them to meet up), “We can do this another time.”

“Understood,” Tenko said and backed away from the mic.

Venomothman: so have you sucked his dick yet

Tenko’s incensed shout of “Touya!” had you turning down the volume.

Venomothman: not to be the world’s worst wingman, but my dude is packing. and goes commando all the time.

Venomothman: and i would know. “i” sometimes “did” our “laundry”

You: what’s with all those quotation marks

Venomothman: and do you know the last time it was sucked? never

(Fucking hell. This Touya was walking you back into forbidden territory: the sexualisation of Tenko. After that first session, when you’d been turned on by his confident, rumbling voice as he’d given you an order, you’d felt guilty for sexualising him for the rest of the night. It was as if instead of friend-zoning him, you’d sex-zoned him, only able to see him as a sexual person/object. For the sake of your mission task, that felt unfair.

Or maybe you weren’t even sexualising him. Maybe your brain was appropriately interpreting what he’d done as sexual.

Whatever. Something in your gut was begging you not to see Tenko only through romantic or sexual lenses right now, and you couldn’t explain why.

And talking about Tenko’s apparently massive dick was not helping.)

Tenkopeito: Touya if you don’t ******* shut up I am going to tear off your other arm

Venomothman: no need, boss man

You heard Tenko sigh and say into his phone, sounding exhausted, “I’m not your boss anymore, Touya.”

Venomothman: no need, douchebag

***

Draped over the side of your bed, you dangled a shoelace in front of the gap in an attempt to coax Dango out from underneath. “Dango, sweetie,” you said, whipping the shoelace to the side, “Come out here so that I can look you in the eyes. Where is my planner, you whore?”

At a firm knock on your door, you shot up, dropping the lace. “Never mind,” you said, sliding off the bed, “Stay hidden.”

You opened your door on Aizawa, bare arm raised in mid-knock, wisps of hair plastered to his forehead by dried sweat, and a sweatshirt tied around his waist. He took two seconds to look over you before saying, “Get dressed. Civilian clothes. You have three minutes.”

Throwing on yesterday’s outfit, you rushed to follow Aizawa out of the dorm and off campus, nearly stepping on his heels while he wove through night pedestrians, pulling on his own sweatshirt to minimise skin contact once the crowd thickened.

You flipped up your coat collar to sneak a glance over your shoulder. “Is this a test?”

Aizawa combed his fingers back through his hair, gaze straight ahead. “Not for you.”

“Right.” You stepped more lightly, naturally falling back into patrol patterns: noting exits (narrow alleyways favouring the left side, underground into the subway station), checking vantage points (upper-storey windows in the resident buildings, non-industrial rooftops), honing in on light sources (yellow- and LED-tinted streetlamps, ambience from open businesses) and physical presence (close enough to brush shoulders with passerby [putting you on edge, because the slightest touch could be pivotal]). You had to consciously unclench your jaw, body flooded with stress it hadn’t felt in months. Swiping at the inner corner of your eye, you asked, “Does it have anything to do with the guy in the black hoodie and face mask following us?”

Aizawa laughed through his nose, once. “All right, then. What’s that ice cream place you and Shinsou went to all the time? Take us there.”

Bewildered, you changed directions to head towards Nekozawa’s, with Aizawa placing a hand on your shoulder to slow your pace, and by the time you pushed open Nekozawa’s glass door to the glowing, pink parlour, you were prepared to hold it open for your follower in the face mask. You watched his broad back as he ordered some ungodly, radioactive-blue ice cream with gummy bears before retreating to a table outside despite the dropping temperature, and Aizawa gestured you forward so that he could pay for the three of you.

Holding your ice cream, you hesitated at the door, swaying underneath the seasonal cat decorations dangling from the ceiling.

“Go on,” said Aizawa, retrieving the U.A. card from his wallet, “I’ve got to make a phone call, so don’t wait up. Don’t be too harsh on him; we’re here because he did a good job in the field today. Tailing you was extra practise.”

Nodding, you nudged open the door, bracing yourself at the cold, night air, and let it drift shut behind you as you approached the table, the farthest one from the pink lights.

Hood pulled up, Tenko bent over his blue monstrosity, face mask hanging by a loop over his left ear. Scuffing your boots on the concrete to announce your presence, you sat across from him, setting your cup on the cast iron before swinging your leg over the bench. You managed a cursory glance over what appeared to be a sketchbook before he closed it, and once he’d stowed it away, he swopped his spoon to his dominant hand to keep eating.

“You draw, Tenko?” To make him feel more comfortable, you kept your gaze towards Aizawa inside on the phone. “Do you think you’re any good?”

“Not yet. But I’m gonna be,” he said, clicking his pen and clenching it in his left hand, “I’ve got all these fucking artist’s gloves, so I might as well put ‘em to use.”

“Very nice,” you said, nodding, closing your eyes as you dipped your spoon into your ice cream, “But as a reminder, you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. I love doing stuff I’m absolute shit at. It reminds me of medieval bestiaries. They didn’t know shit about animals, but, boy howdy, did they have fun illustrating them. Did you know a weasel used to be called a polecat?”

Tenko huffed, his face mask fluttering. “It really is you.”

“Of course it is,” you said, beaming, and for the first time, you looked at him.

Tension flooded your teacup of a body and overflowed into the saucer and onto the floor. Heightened by the cold, a vein on the back of your hand strained and pulsed visibly, and, jaw locking, you lunged over the tabletop to grab him by the shoulders, shaking him.

“What the hell is wrong with you‽” You climbed over the table, pushed his ice cream out of the way (he shot out a hand to save it from toppling off the table, and he ripped off his face mask to set it aside before it fell to the ground), and planted your foot on his thigh and your elbows on his chest, caging him in as you forced him flat on the bench. “Why the fuck are you using your real name in your fucking Cipherstone username, you fucking moron‽ People could fucking track you!”

The man who had been Shigaraki Tomura eyed your fists in his hoodie and then his cup of ice cream. “You didn’t have a problem with it before.”

“I—” This idiot! “I didn’t know it was you. There are a lot of Tenkos.”

“Then there’s my logic,” he said, hands dangling by his sides, making no attempt to touch you—you didn’t know if you appreciated it or not. “I thought you knew who I was.”

“No, I fucking—I would have given you advice that was more specific to you, over the spiel I was giving interns.” Releasing your grip on his hoodie, you sat back up and scooted over on the tabletop. Though you wanted to keep holding him, to hug him after all he’s been through, he probably wouldn’t want that. “I’m—sorry about tackling you. I, uh—fuck,” you said, and, grimacing, you slid his ice cream back to him and reached across for your own, pretending with everything you’ve got that it was perfectly normal that you were sitting on a table next to Shigaraki Tomura, who’s been teaching you to play a video game, who’s apparently living at the end of the hall, who’s decorated his door with Eri’s silver tinsel for Christmas, who’s banned from drinking caffeine, who could rest his fucking head on your thigh if he wanted. Normal. Yeah.

“Again, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep doing that,” he said, fishing out a gummy bear like you hadn’t lunged at him, “Your reaction was reasonable.”

“It—it wasn’t, really,” you said, laughing nervously, “I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, no one knows what—what happened to you. Afterwards. It was really unclear.”

“It was that way on purpose,” said Tenko, “It was thought to be better to emphasise the total destruction of All for One instead of whatever happened to his leftovers.” He shifted a bear to his back molars to bite into the frozen gummy better. “Nezu-sensei decided it was better to keep it muddled for now.”

Muddled was a good way to put it. There’d been so much chaos at the end of the war that so much never was accounted for. You’d think that the location of Shigaraki’s body would be high on the list, but satisfaction was found simply in the splintered, spectacular remains of AFO. Shigaraki’s name wasn’t cleared, per se, but in the aftermath, Midoriya especially stressed that yes, Shigaraki committed atrocities, but he’d been abused, groomed, and literally bodily possessed by AFO to think that way. Didn’t excuse him, but wasn’t entirely his fault.

The locations of the other PLF members—well, the core of the League, really—were public, if not vague. Spinner was in the States at a rehab that specialised in heteromorph trauma; Toga was at a local women’s facility called Sakura Grove, and Dabi was living with his family—he must have been that Touya on the phone, holy shit.

So, here he was, sitting on the bench at the same ice cream parlour you visited with the same friends who fought him, hunched over in oversized, black clothes you suspected were Aizawa’s, broad shoulders and faded scars out of place in the pink lights, white hair pulled back in a blunt ponytail with his bangs flopping over his forehead, seemingly unbothered by the toe of your boot pressing against his denim-covered thigh.

God. He’s scratched at his neck so much that it looks like he’s been beheaded with a blunt axe.

Tenko’s eyes flickered up to you, their colour deepening to crimson in the tinted lights. “So. You’ve got questions.”

“Are you okay?”

Tenko swallowed with effort, scowling. “Don’t start with a hard one.”

“Right,” you said, throat drying, “Who knows you’re staying at U.A.?”

“Faculty and staff. My therapist. The police force. The ramen shop Aizawa-sensei and I go to. The intensive rehab I was at before. The top of the hero commission. Touya, Touya’s father, Spinner, Toga. Eri and Midoriya,” he said, tongue swiping over his lower lip, “You.”

Somehow both fewer and more than you’d figured. “What exactly…is the situation? Aizawa-sensei was vague.”

“Officially, I’m like Eri: a ward of U.A. My old rehab thought I was good enough to live off their campus, so I’m back here, where I can be watched by people capable enough to bring me down if I go crazy again,” he said, brow furrowed as he traced the side of his cup with his spoon, “I should resent that, but it’s not like I have anywhere else to go, especially somewhere as comfortable as this. This is fucking stupid to say aloud, but fucking—fuckin’ All Might is the closest thing I have to family now, along with Midoriya.”

“I’m not following.”

“My grandma was the holder of One for All before All Might had it.” He pointed at you with his spoon. “So you can make the connection from there. But it’s stupid; I’m stupid—” He was shaking his head and staring into his lap. “—because it’s like I have a brother in Midoriya and a goddamn father in All Might—and then Aizawa-sensei’s acting like a dad, too, to me and Eri, and Nezu-sensei? Nezu-sensei is so fucking cool,” said Tenko, dragging his hand down his face, “He’s got a driver’s license! I don’t even have one of those. And he can type fucking 210 words per minute with those little rat paws, and I’m still getting used to using all five fingers, fuck.”

Cute. You scraped the bottom of your cup. “Hey, I think you type well.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why it takes me so long to reply in the in-game chat function. Why I prefer communicating over voice call. Learning new habits, and shit.” Tenko stabbed his ice cream with his spoon. “Nezu-sensei has arranged for me to train as an aftermath-clean-up hero. I had been—” His fingers on one hand circled the thumb of the other. “—in discussion with him in rehab about what I could do, and we decided I could consistently help when there’s collapsed buildings after attacks; I could dust the wreckage so that we could find hostages or make it easier to clean up and rebuild, and Aizawa-sensei and All Might-sensei have been working with me to control what parts of what I touch gets dusted so that I could create pitfall traps for holding criminals. It’s…going. It’s going,” he said, curling his lips in his mouth to moisten them, and with narrowed, determined eyes, he took another bite of ice cream, the blue staining the inside of his lips.

“Tenko, that’s a really cool application of your quirk. I hope you can find more,” you said, tilting your head and smiling down at him, “but—I have to ask—aren’t you tired?”

Tenko rolled his eyes. “Of course. You’re part of the group ensuring I don’t have caffeine.”

“No, I mean,” you said, shaking your head, “I mean, you don’t have to be perceived as useful. You’re—you’re just fine if you wanted to rest. You’re worthwhile just as you, not as—as a job, as a, I don’t know, a redeemed hero or anything. You can just be Tenko.”

“I know. My therapist keeps reminding me. But one of the most vivid memories I have from when I was living in that house,” said Tenko, sneering, “is that I desperately wanted to be a hero and that I would pretend to be one a lot. While I’m aware that I can never atone for what I’ve done, if I did nothing but rest, I’d be alone with my thoughts. And with what I’m learning to do, as a hero, someday, someone might…need me. Need my help. I imagine that’s a good feeling.”

You sat back, leaning on your hands, the cast-iron pattern cutting into your palms, to survey him. “You’re very much re-writing my first impressions of you as my gaming buddy and as the post-war Shigaraki. You’re surprisingly well-adjusted.”

He snorted. “I shouldn’t think it’s surprising. I’ve had almost a year and a half in intensive rehab, and I’m still in therapy every day.” He started listing on his fingers, starting with his thumb. “I’m on antidepressants; I know where my next meal’s coming from and when I’ll get it; I consistently have a safe roof over my head, and I know my friends are getting that, too. I have mentors who care for me as a human person instead of as a tool. I get to stay in contact with my friends and get to make new ones,” he said, nodding curtly at you before quickly looking away, “I’m fucking away from that sadistic fuckface. He’s goddamn dead and burned away to nothing. That’s the main thing. Everything else is a bonus.”

Tenko sighed, bangs fluttering with the movement, his shoulders straining as he leaned onto both his elbows on the table. He sighed again and scooped the last gummy bear out of his cup, and you let the silence carry on while you finished eating.

“Long phone call,” Tenko said eventually.

An increasingly grumpy Aizawa was leaning against the glittery wall inside, phone between his ear and shoulder, and furiously scraping the inside of his ice cream cup.

“Yeah,” you said, “but it’s been good talking to you, Tenko. I really appreciate you telling me all of this.”

“I would’ve talked about it sooner, but I figured you knew who I was and didn’t want to address it,” said Tenko, tapping his fingers one by one on the table.

Pulling the collar of your coat closer to your neck, you frowned, hesitating on how to phrase it. You watched your breath cloud in the night air before settling on, “There’s an off-switch?”

Brow pinching very slightly, Tenko followed your gaze to his hand, with all five fingers coming to rest on the cast iron, and he tapped all five of them on it for emphasis. “Yeah. There always has been. All for One kept it from me. Power of belief kept me jittery and alert my whole life.”

“So long as you thought you’d destroy anything you touched, you would?”

He nodded. “That bitch.”

“Agreed. We should kill him.”

And Tenko laughed. Just for a moment, barely making any noise, but he smiled with his teeth, grin stretching across his face as he looked away and eventually closing his lips, the smile lingering for a few more precious seconds.

***

You closed your laptop to answer the phone at work, clearing your throat to ready your receptionist voice before you picked up. “U.A. University Administration; how may I help you?”

“I need you to fucking murder me,” Tenko spat through the phone, angry and panicked, “I need you to rip out my bones and suck out my guts through a straw. He fucking let me hold onto them, and I’ve fucking gone and lost such a fucking iconic piece of—”

“Tenko, please, take a breath,” you said, relaxing your customer service mode but clutching the phone to your ear, and after catching the eye of the woman with jars of strawberry preserves waiting to see Nezu, you slumped over in your seat so that she couldn’t see you over the desk’s overhang. “Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix it. Are you alone? Is everyone else busy? Do you need to come sit with me?”

“I—fuck,” he said, and you heard some deliberately slow breathing, but his voice still had an irate, twitchy edge afterwards. “During our practise patrol last night, Aizawa-sensei was talking about support equipment for me. I’d never given it much thought, because it’s always been just me and my hands. He leant me his Eraser Goggles for me to think about for my—and I don’t know where they fucking are,” he said, inhaling sharply on the last word, “I’d left them on my desk, but I’d taken them up to the roof to sketch them, and then I’d brought them back to my dorm—”

“And Aizawa-sensei must have swung by to pick them up since then,” you said, pushing yourself back to slide in your swivel chair to the back of the reception desk, “because he was here at the beginning of my shift to print something off, and the goggles are on top of the printer. Relax, Tenko.”

“Hooooooly fuck, you’re kidding,” said Tenko, audibly deflating, and you smiled to yourself as you slid their band around your wrist.

You kicked yourself back up to the front. “You’re okay. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I’ll bring them by at the end of my shift.” You sat up straight, and the strawberry preserves woman was shooting a concerned look in your direction. “I’m at work, though, so I think we’d better end the call soon. Anything else you need?”

Tenko hummed into the phone. “Not really. You can’t be that busy.”

You smiled again, feeling—feeling domestic, as if he were your boyfriend calling you during work hours. How strange, Shigaraki Tomura. How interesting. “Would you believe I was grinding in Cipherstone when you called?”

“And you don’t call yourself a gamer,” he said, clearing his throat multiple times, “What skills?”

“Woodcutting and firemaking,” you said, opening your laptop again, “Are you feeling under the weather? Your voice had a bit of a rasp there.” Sounded like his old voice for a moment.

“Further cementing that Aizawa-sensei’s right to be worried about you. He says your brain’s going haywire analysing any detail work you can get, because you’re not out in the field anymore,” said Tenko, clearing his throat again (?), “Am I your new project?”

“Tell me what’s wrong, lest I pick up some damn throat lozenges for you before I come home,” you said, and a voice in the back of your head screamed that that threat was extremely cosy and intimate, especially since you’re claiming both of you have a home in the same place—which, sure, you both lived on the same hallway, but so did Aizawa and Eri, and please shut up; Shimura Tenko needs a friend, not a lover right now. Besides, that stupid hallway wasn’t really home for either of you but was more like a temporary holding cell.

“Fine. I’ve been throwing up all morning.”

“Thank you,” you said, electing not to make a pregnancy joke, “Do you need to see Recovery Girl?”

“No, I’m used to it, and I’ve already talked to her about it. I threw up a lot out of anxiety and stress when I was growing up with All for One, and now I’m throwing up because my body can’t handle the amount of food it’s getting regularly, which is fucking ridiculous, since it’s still less than a normal person’s version of three meals a day.”

What. The fuck. How can he casually drop details of deep trauma like it’s nothing? How could AFO let a child keep vomiting out of stress for years and years and never interfere? Well. Yeah, he could. You supposed that Shigaraki’s voice, as you first heard it as the USJ incident, was the ultimate result of that heavy strain on his throat for years. Explains some things about his teeth back then, too.

God. If AFO weren’t dead, you’d strangle him. Keeping a child physically weak because he’d be easier to mould. It was known that AFO had been psychologically manipulating Shigaraki, but now that you thought about it, manipulating his physical growth would have served AFO, too, since he was planning to move into Shigaraki’s body.

And what did this guy do now that he’s got bodily autonomy? Oh. Just. Play some video games. Talk with his friends. Try out some new hobbies. Make crafts with Eri.

It’s a shame AFO didn’t have a grave, because you’d be skiving off work to drown it in acid.

“My stomach is killing me,” said Tenko, “I’ve got to hang up to drink something and go to sleep. Knock on my door when you get home. I want to start a new quest as soon as you finish work.”

Home. He’d said it, too. He probably didn’t mean it in the same, domestic way that you’d been entertaining, but it made your heart swell. “Okay, Tenko. See you then.”

***

His therapist had assigned him homework: go on a planned, public outing with a peer, and stay out for at least an hour.

It wasn’t exactly a picnic you were packing, you kept telling yourself, scooting behind Tenko to get to the spice cabinet in the dorm kitchen, because that’d be too close to a date rather than homework. But the two of you packed a meal to take, with Eri sitting on the kitchen counter while she nibbled at rabbit-cut apple slices, and she held the thermos of decaf tea in her lap until it was time to stow it away.

After a short train ride and a quiet walk through midtown, Tenko stopped you in front of the back gate to what appeared to be a restored, historical estate, judging by the golden shachihoko shibi on each corner of polished hip-and-gable rooftops of the extensively aristocratic—mansion? palace?—that you could make out in across the distance of its sprawling grounds, the immediacy of which was the excessively well-kept, traditional garden that you and Tenko were breaking into.

“Is this legal?” you asked as Tenko reached through the grate to unlatch the doorway.

“I have an in with the gardener,” he said, sweeping the gate open for you and gesturing brusquely for you to enter.

“No, that wasn’t a joke,” you said, taking the few steps inside, finding yourself planted onto a polished, level stepping stone, and staring down a squeaky clean tsukubai despite the thin layer of frost over the water’s surface as the whole bowl began to freeze, “You can’t be doing anything even vaguely illegal, Tenko.”

When you said his name, he closed his eyes, pausing for just a hair in his relatching the gate, before facing you and shifting the strap of his bag farther up his shoulder. “Prude. Yes, we have permission from the owner.”

He kept looking back over his shoulder at you as he led you through the gardens, hopping across stepping stones to pass over a carefully shaped brook that led to a tiny waterfall near stone lanterns, weaving through trellises with the wintry shells of wisteria vines and shaped evergreens. He tutted and rolled his eyes when you stopped at the waterlily-coated koi pond, its fish swimming and flicking their tails in the artificially heated water (for some, odd reason, what appeared to be a compact duck coop had been constructed near the pond’s edge, its wood new and un-bleached by the sun like the rest of garden décor). You’d been about to ask about it when Tenko had jumped out of his skin at the sound of a deer scare, bamboo tapping stone.

“Stop laughing,” Tenko said, cheeks burning (and you tried not to take too much pleasure in that, but you couldn’t help it).

“Oh, a sensitive boy, a delicate boy,” you said, grinning as you hopped onto the same stone as him, cool, clouding breaths mixing together in the proximity, and you yourself could feel heat rise to your face. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Good traits to have, actually. Means you’re feeling secure and comfortable in your surroundings, if you’re off-set that easily.” Feeling bold—it was the cold; it was how the proximity already flustered him; it was how his hands were full because of the bag; it was—whatever—you reached for his silly All Might scarf and re-tied the front, fluffing it up to cover more of his neck.

You made the mistake of making eye contact: full of caution, his eyes kept darting from your hands to your face, searching for something, his lips parted, otherwise completely fucking frozen.

Were you making him uncomfortable? You stilled, your fingers still in the fringe of his scarf, tension tightening in your chest and jaw (clenching).

Tenko noticed. And—and to this day, you can’t believe he fucking did this—he ran his tongue over his lower lip and lifted his chin, exposing more of his neck to you. He then was suddenly very interested in the koi pond, the ruddiness spreading from his cheeks to his ears.

Throat dry, you gave his scarf a final tug and patted it (?) to show (??) a job well done (???). “Yeah,” you said, smoothly, like a smooth person, like someone who adjusts scarves of hot, in-process-of-reformation villains on the regular, “Where are we going?”

Tenko spun on his heel and strode away, muttering what sounded like, “Right into my grave.”

You pretended not to hear it and let him lead you to the only building unattached to the main house: a small, traditional teahouse that had a recent addition to it in the back. The creak of the bamboo engawa when you climbed onto it was muffled underneath the bright pealing of windchimes strung across the covered porch. Tenko was already kneeling at the tearoom’s sunken fireplace inside, its handle carved into a fish, fiery as its kindling, and was unpacking the travel teacups from the bag as you closed the door behind you, shutting out the cold, enveloped by the comfortable heat trapped inside by the cushioned walls.

Tenko must have arranged for this space to have been prepared for you. A kotatsu with floor cushions was tucked near the fireplace, pre-heated, with two further space heaters in the unoccupied corners, cords trailing into what must be a hallway linking the traditional and modern rooms, the latter of which was shut off from view. Beside a red-tinted wooden dresser stood an oddly empty tokonoma, and instead of a scroll or painting, amidst bits of pieces of scotch tape hastily half-torn off the back was a shittily cut-out, paper heart.

Shaking your head, you took a step towards Tenko, and the floor chirped at you, freezing you in place.

“Yeah, I don’t know why they do that,” said Tenko, pushing on his knees to stand, “They just do.”

“These must be nightingale floors,” you said, crossing to the kotatsu, a bird under each step, “The chirping’s caused by the way the nails rub against the v-shaped clamps holding the floor together. Have you been to Nijō Castle in Kyoto? These are in the hallway—supposedly used as a security measure, but who knows.”

“You need a hobby.” Tenko ripped the paper heart from the back of the tokonoma, crumpling it in his fist. A shred of it remained under the scrap of tape on the wall, which he bent towards to scrape off with a blunt fingernail.

“I have several,” you said, easing down onto a cushion and unfolding your legs underneath the kotatsu blanket, the luxurious heat swaddling your legs and hips. You fought the urge to curl up underneath it entirely.

“How many of them involve getting your ass thrashed by me in Cipherstone?” Tenko retrieved the bag from the sunken fireplace before returning to the kotatsu, and he sat on your left, resting the bag between the two of you.

You took the thermos of decaf tea when he handed it to you. “Tenko, you’ve been playing that game for years, and I just began. Of course my ass is gonna be thrashed by—you know how the game works. You have all of this previous information about the game that I don’t have.”

Tenko scoffed and slid your teacup across the kotatsu’s surface.  “As if I could conceal any information from you. You’re too…eh.” He waved it off, shaking his head.

“I’m too what?” You unscrewed the thermos lid, and steam surged upwards, rising to caress the planes of your face.

“It’s been unfair of Aizawa-sensei to make me tail you,” said Tenko, leaning your way, all five fingers curled around his own teacup as he stretched across the tabletop. “I’d have a chance of success if it were anyone else.”

“I’ll give you that,” you said, pouring steaming, amber tea with slices of yuzu into Tenko’s cup, “You’re getting quite good at it, not that you were bad in the first place. But yeah, it’s a bit mean of him to test your tracking skills on me.” He’d never said to stop, so you poured until liquid almost overflowed at the rim.

He gasped at the heat but nudged his teacup back to his place at the table, unable to hold it in his palm anymore. “I think I would’ve preferred working with Hound Dog-sensei for that. He’s less detail-oriented. I could win, if it weren’t you.” Jutting out his lower lip, Tenko glared down at his tea for a moment before slumping in his seat to slurp at the tea without picking it up.

“Don’t feel bad about it. It was literally and actually my focus for hero work, profiling and detail shit and being aware of my surroundings. Information stuff. Infiltration stuff.” Setting the thermos on the far corner, you cupped your hands loosely around your teacup, appreciating the warmth and getting cosier by the minute.

Tenko was rooting through the bag for the other thermoses, full of sukiyaki for each of you. “It’s clear you’ve worked hard to hone your skills. Were you this talented as a student?”

You accepted the new thermos, fingers clenching tightly around it. “Uh. I think I may have been better back then. More focused. More passionate, anyway. I had to think about it really hard back then, make conscious decisions to notice things, and now I think I do it instinctively. I think I’m slipping because of that.”

“Hm,” said Tenko, tongue rubbing over his teeth behind closed lips, and he opened his mouth to say something but shut it, instead twisting off the cap to his soup thermos. He took the first sip of sukiyaki broth and—and was absolutely beautiful (you couldn’t make sense of it beyond that; he was a mess of details that you couldn’t fit together into a larger picture that made any sense: white eyelashes light against his cheeks as they fluttered shut, face muscles relaxed, scars overlapping with laugh lines, cracked lips becoming moistened by the soup, both hands cupped around his thermos like a child, no strain to his posture, baggy hoodie swallowing him up, kotatsu blanket yanked up to his hips to cover his crossed legs, scar on the corner of his mouth delicately shifting with his baffled smirk when he caught you staring, a strange pink rising to the tips of his ears). “What?”

Uh. Hm. You pinched the bridge of your nose and then moved to rub your eyelids. “What were you going to say about me?” you asked, and you withdrew your hand from your face to raise the soup thermos to your lips, taking a mouthful of noodles and the sweet, salty broth.

Tenko shook his head. “I’m trying to avoid thoughts that fall back into my old habits.”

“Try me,” you said, holding his gaze when he met it, “I won’t tell.”

Weary, he broke eye contact, and he fixated on fishing out a certain slice of green onion. “We needed someone like you back then.”

Back then? When he—oh.

Back in the League.

Though you attempted to hide your grin by taking a sip of sukiyaki, you caught his eyes flicker to it. “You would’ve taken me? You would’ve let me in?”

“Would you have joined?” he shot back, a bit too quickly.

“No,” you said, rolling your shoulders and settling down farther underneath the kotatsu, “Never. But since you shared something you shouldn’t’ve, I’ll do the same.” You set your thermos down to rub your eyes again—God, you couldn’t look at him for too long, lest your intrusive thoughts hand you your ass. “I thought about it. About joining you.”

You dragged your hand down your face, peeking between your fingers at a muted clink. Tenko was staring at you, something fucking unreadable in his scrounched eyes, and both hands lay five-fingered and flat on the kotatsu, steam from his open thermos fluffing up hair on one side of his head. “You’re not serious. You wouldn’t have.”

“Not in the way you think,” you said, tilting your head back, “but I often thought, in the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation Raid, what I could’ve done, if I’d known what I know now. And as the rest of the war was unfolding, I only wanted it more.”

Tenko blinked, slowly. “Tell me what you would’ve done.”

“Oh, you would’ve hated me, down to the dregs of my very soul,” you said, shifting to sit on your knees, “I would’ve started after your fight with Re-Destro, after the PLF was established. When you were letting allllllllll those heroes in, the sidekicks, the nobodies, anyone who seemed like they were with the cause. I would’ve infiltrated. Slipped in without notice. Hawks did, with the Commission, but I would’ve been going in as a free agent.”

“No one notices a U.A. student slide in between the masses. Re-Destro’s lackeys wouldn’t notice you at the door like I would. You get in,” Tenko said, taking his thermos in hand again but still engrossed in you, “What then?”

“There was a short period of time between the PLF establishment and your procedure, right? Around a month? That’s when I go. I worm my way into the good graces of some of the nine lieutenants—I’ve decided my pipeline would’ve been Geten to Toga to you. You’d just come out of an enormous battle, with Re-Destro and that city and Gigantomachia for a whole month. I heard you were bandaged up, on crutches, that you’d lost fingers that you regrew in that regeneration tank,” you said, eyes on his hands, one in a fist in his lap and the other around his thermos, five fingers pressing onto the grip but the pinkie finger hitched farther up than the rest, “That you’d given a speech and made your appearances regardless. That you’d pushed yourself to your limit and then broke yourself a little more. And you would’ve loathed me, because I would’ve come in, earned my way to your side, and I would’ve put my hand on your shoulder, slid it up your neck to cup your cheek to ask Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to rest?” You smiled and huffed, shoving it down, and though his hard stare should’ve pinned you to your seat, you pushed on the corner of the kotatsu to edge yourself over to his side, a knee on his cushion. “I like to think that you’ve sighed, sulked a bit, reluctant to admit anything was wrong at all, because back then, you had no use for moonlight. But I would’ve made you look at me, taken you to a bed, made you lie down until your eyes fluttered shut and the tension swept through your body and left. And you would rest,” you said, finding yourself leaning over him very slightly, knees touching his, just enough so that he leant backwards just a fraction, “I would’ve made that month so soft for you. I would’ve taken care of you, when nobody was fucking paying attention to you in the way that they should’ve. I fucking—I wanted it.” You gripped the front of his hoodie, fist grasping more fabric than necessary to shake him. “I wanted it. I wanted to care for you. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know. And you were fucking alone, in an unfamiliar place, and it kills me to think about that.”

You ducked your head to wipe your watery eyes on your sleeve, taking a breath—and realising what you were doing. You loosened your grip, but before you could pull away, Tenko was cat-like quick to grab your sleeve—why won’t he touch you?

“I wouldn’t have accepted your help,” he said, quiet, controlled, holding you down with his eyes, hand shifting to curve under your sleeved wrist, signalling that you could escape at any time, “That was after the worst month of my life, fighting Machia, and I wouldn’t have accepted it. I had too much to do. I would’ve shaken you off.”

“No, you wouldn’t’ve.”

“I would’ve,” he said, a bare finger, featherlight, skimming over the tender, bare skin of the underside of your wrist (oh, wow), “I wouldn’t trust that easily in that short of a time. You’d have met me, and that’d be it. If you’d persisted, I would’ve ripped you to shreds and tossed you aside.”

“Tenko,” you said, both relief and tightness blooming from your wrist, “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

The hallway shoji slammed open, somehow rattling as it slid in its tracks and shook the walls, and you and Tenko scrambled apart, with you jolting backwards on your hands, grappling for your seat cushion, and Tenko banging his thermos on the kotatsu, hastily wrestling with keeping it upright as he flung his body to the side.

“Hey, fuck you, Touya,” Tenko spluttered out, elbowing himself upright as—as fucking Dabi strode inside, hands in the deep pockets of his black sweatpants. “You said you’d stay in the main house.”

“Don’t mind me,” said Touya, cool as you please, raising both of his hands in defence, “I had to ensure you’re not fucking in my bed.”

“What is—” Tenko clambered to his feet to cross to him, chirping with each stomp, and whisper-shouting once he’d corralled Touya into a far corner. “I said we’d hang out later today, Touya. You swore you’d stay inside and watch Naruto this afternoon.”

The polite thing to do would be to appear fascinated by the tea. You returned to your cushion and poured yourself another cup.

“Yeah, but I’ve been told I’ve got shit to do later. I’ve got to go to this fuckin’—fuckin’ family stuff. I don’t wanna get into it,” said Touya, at full volume, “and I wanted to check that your girl was real. Y’know, she looks nothing like someone who’d have GinzengTea as her username. Have you given it to her already?”

“Shut the fuck up. I was just about to do that, if you hadn’t interrupted, cockhead.”

“Cool,” he said, a bird-note as he shifted his weight, “I wanna see what she thinks.”

“Hell, no—”

“I helped pick ‘em out. Let me watch and have an ohagi, and I’ll leave,” said Touya, chirping towards you before he finished the sentence, and Tenko followed him, muttering under his breath.

Touya sat on the bare tatami next to you, joints cracking as he yanked the kotatsu blanket up his legs, shooting you a small salute and a concerningly charming smile. “Hey,” he said, tilting his head, eyes half-lidded, smile stretching to show more of his even, white teeth, “I’ve seen you before, yeah? When was the last time you laid eyes on me?”

Tenko pelted him in the chest with a plastic-wrapped ohagi, cutting off the ooze of charisma. “Show-off,” he said, nudging another sweetened rice ball your way.

You nodded but didn’t move to unwrap it, since you were still working on your sukiyaki. “I’m surprised you remember, Touya,” you said, the name feeling strange on your tongue, “It must’ve been years since I elbowed you in the tit.”

Eyes lighting the fuck up, you snapped towards Tenko when he laughed into his plastic wrap: still not loud, still not making any vocalisation with it, but releasing a heavy, sharp burst of air with a wide, open grin. He hunched over to hide more of it, using both hands to unwrap his ohagi—and in the moment he realised he’d been unwrapping it with only his pointer fingers and thumbs, he dropped the rest of his fingers onto the rice ball, still smirking to himself.

Biting your lip in your own smile, you turned back to Touya (you caught his moment of mild alarm at how thrilled you were when Tenko laughed—or maybe it was alarm at Tenko laughing at all—but Touya relaxed his eyebrows and shut his mouth the second you faced him again). “God, yeah, it must have been before that last battle that we’d met in a fight, and I’d gotten close enough to hit you, and…” You shook your head. “Actually, I don’t wanna talk about that stuff. It’s not who we are now.”

“That’s fine.” Touya nodded towards Tenko and took a bite of his ohagi. “Shimura, don’t you have something to give her?”

Shimura. That was his last name, you supposed, but wasn’t it odd that Tenko called Touya by his given name and that Touya called Tenko by his family name? Tenko didn’t make you call him Shimura. Well, you supposed that there’s only one Shimura now, and because of the number of Todorokis, it paid to be specific—

“Here.” Tenko set a flat box in front of you, flipping the buckle of his bag back over. “I was going to give it to you with more formality, but since this bastard showed up, I’m doing it like this.”

Biting the inside of your cheek, brow furrowed, you unpacked a pair of pale blue headphones, soft to the touch with a mesh headband so that your head wouldn’t ache.

“Noise-cancelling,” Tenko said, gabbling, frowning very slightly, “Rechargeable. There’s a detachable microphone so it can function as a headset. I wanted to do something good for you.” His eyes darted towards Touya, and they dropped to his ohagi’s bulging filling, seeping out onto the plastic wrap. “You need them, anyway. I’ve been sick of hearing you through those shitty earbuds; their sound is terrible, and when you said you’d lost your only pair—which I don’t fucking understand how you can lose those things, because they just fucking show up in my shit all the time, like a goddamn plague—I thought you needed something quality—just to make it easier on my end, obviously, so that I don’t have to tell you to yell into that shitty, built-in micropho—”

“Tenko,” you said, reaching over to place your tea-hot hand over the back of his, fingers curving with his along ohagi’s edge, “Thank you so much. I adore them. I’m really grateful that you would think of me.”

Tenko froze, the same as he had when you’d adjusted his scarf. Unable to look you in the eye, like a prey animal, stiff, shoulders tense, colour rushing up his neck to his face and ears again—but this time, he lifted his hand just a hair from his ohagi to press back into your palm, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Hoo, boy,” said Touya, startling the both of you when he slammed his hands on the kotatsu to push himself up, “I’ve had enough. I’ve had my little snack. I’m leaving.” Once on his feet, he stretched, pressing his hands to his lower back and arching it, grunting.

“Good fucking riddance, cocksucker,” said Tenko, rising and grabbing Touya by the elbow to haul him to the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Touya, dragging his feet, chirping slurred and confused by his movement, and when Tenko had him at the wall, trying to shove him out, Touya, smirking under your watch, whispered something to Tenko while forcing something into his palm. Touya ducked out as Tenko looked at what he’d accepted and, letting out a yelp, dusted whatever it was before he hurried back to the kotatsu.

(When you left the teahouse half an hour later, you discovered that he’d decayed only the wrapper and not the condom itself.)

***

“One moment, please. Nezu-sensei is in a meeting right now, but he’ll be out momentarily. Please take a number—yes, the ticket puncher when you first came in,” you said to yet another impatient and pissed client in the admin waiting room, packed to the gills with parents, press, vendors, potential sponsors, and, for some reason, Mt. Lady’s entire representative team. “By the door. If you’ll take a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.”

God, you could punt Nezu for this. Not that there was anything wrong with establishing a new, annual event for U.A.—a cherry blossom garden-set, competitive scavenger hunt coming up in the spring—but because of his casual comment that it would rise to the same importance as the Sports Festival, you were swamped with those eager to invest early. Unable to take a break, you had to work with your head bowed, desperately hoping none of these people recognised you and your failure, when all you wanted was to reply to Tenko’s messages on Cipherstone that morning.

Tenkopeito: You’ll like the next quest. You can pet a dog in it

Tenkopeito: Come over to my room this evening so that we can talk in person

Was he intending to speak with innuendo or with such sincerity that it cut right through you? Moreover, was he aware he was even doing it? Based on what you’ve observed, Tenko had no idea what he was doing to you, nor did he know how hard you were trying not to act on your attraction, though you weren’t even doing a great job of suppressing it.

It’s strange: Tenko evoked some strange, unnameable emotion in you like nothing else. You wanted to coddle him; you wanted to play stupid video games with him; you wanted to sweep his hair out of his eyes, and though you kept telling yourself that you didn’t, you wanted him to tell you how to touch yourself, how to touch him. You brushed it off. Another time. Perhaps never.

“Oh, hi!” Former pro-hero Ragdoll squealed your family name, making you jump in your seat. “It is you. I couldn’t tell from farther back in the line.” Fuck, Ragdoll would recognise you, since she and the rest of the Wild, Wild Pussycats trained Class A, and she specifically spent time with you on your tracking skills because of her Search quirk.

Don’t cause a scene. “Hello, Shiretoko,” you said, doing your best not to let your face be seen from over the reception desk’s overhang, “It’s good to see you. How can I help?”

When she beamed, she was as bright as ever. “Oh! The Pussycats want to offer our services for the scavenger hunt! We wanna get back into charity and civilian events now that we’re back from our mission for—but wait, you know all about that!” You didn’t. But her cheerful voice carried, and people were already turning towards Ragdoll, part of a hero team ranked in the top thirty. “I wanna hear more about what you’ve been up to! Since you left the hero business, no one’s known where you’ve been! Gosh, have you been behind this dreary old desk the whole time?” Ragdoll leant over the overhang, flicking at a loose strand of your hair. “I thought you were sent out on missions out of the country! Like, really important, top-secret stuff. It’s weird seeing you in an office, especially since I consider you a mini me. Why are you back at your alma mater? Did your agency not want you anymore?”

She wasn’t meaning to be cruel. Her loud, blunt sincerity, though, drew the attention of onlookers, and their flashes of recognition, subsequent judgment, and turning away made your chest tight. “I needed a break. That’s all.”

A thin, blonde woman in a burgundy overcoat leaning against the wall immediately next to the reception had been evaluating you, scanning you from top to bottom during the exchange. She didn’t bother hiding her curiosity, and when you shakily handled the rest of the conversation with Ragdoll, she turned to the short, softly featured man beside her. “You know her?” She hadn’t even tried to quiet her voice; it jolted you from Ragdoll, but you steeled yourself and continued printing off a schedule for her—and from the depths of your brain came the woman’s identity: Uwabami, the snake hero, one who usually flaunted her celebrity status but currently dressed down, without her hair snakes (a rattlesnake, a yellow king cobra, and a Japanese rat snake, which—shut up! You don’t need this information right now! Can you be fucking sane, please?).

Her sidekick—no, an intern, a student at U.A., some fuckin’ twink in the year below you, name escaping you at the moment—had some iota of tact when he looked you over, slanting his body away, as if he weren’t staring. “Yes,” he said, trying not to let you hear, “She’s my former senpai and nothing more to me. We didn’t run in the same circles. She’s the one who made that rescue a few months back, the one that got a lot of online backlash.”

“No, seriously,” Ragdoll was saying, “Why are you back at U.A.? Don’t you have somewhere else to go?”

“My—” People behind Ragdoll in line were listening. Trying not to show it. Your throat ran dry, and you couldn’t think of a lie or a pleasant half-truth. “My flat was compromised. My address was leaked, and eventually, people were—look, Shiretoko,” you said, forcing the words out of your mouth, “I really don’t want to talk about this. Here’s the printed schedule. I’ll talk to you later.”

You slid the paper across the counter, and she took it, waving goodbye and still beaming.

“Is this what happens when a hero career doesn’t work out? They just shove you back where someone will take you? At any old office desk?” that fucking twink was asking Uwabami, “I can’t—it honestly scares me to think I could lose myself and be misplaced like that. It’s wasting talent, don’t you think?”

“How can I help you?” you asked the next person in line through gritted teeth.

When Uwabami lowered her sunglasses to glance over them, you inhaled sharply and swung your swivel chair so that you wouldn’t see her. “I don’t know about that. Maybe this dreadful administration office is where she’s meant to be.”

Biting his lip, he shifted his jaw and crossed his arms, slumping against the wall. “You’ll always have a place for me, right, Uwabami? I don’t want this to happen to me.”

“Yes, I can print you out a copy of the same schedule. If you’ll allow me a moment to print.”

“Of course, Kakeru,” Uwabami said, ignorant of how you were gripping a pencil so tightly that it could snap any second, “You’ll never be left behind.” But then she fucking stared you down, deliberately holding eye contact while you were at the printer, and she said, “You’ll never need a place to hide. I’ll make sure you don’t fail.”

“Hey, how about you shut up?” you hissed, ripping the printer-warm schedule from the tray and storming back to your current client to shove it into their hands. “Aren’t Japanese rat snakes supposed to be in hibernation this time of year, anyway?”

***

Someone in Mt. Lady’s group recorded it. Someone posted it.

wizardjenkins11: jesus christ who knew u.a. had its own island of misfit toys

emotionalsupportdynamightsweat: nice to see that she kept her snark, but what is she doing back at school?? don’t heroes have some sort of paperwork component to their work. why isn’t she still at an agency

blood-is-thiccer: lol ua’s the only one who’d take the bitch. she’s being rude as hell to an actual pro hero. lameass quirk anyway and ass flat as hell lmao she fucken deserved that guy lighting her mailbox on fire

LynchianTiddies: You’re encouraging domestic terrorism???

blood-is-thiccer: that’s not domestic terrorism

LynchianTiddies: Then what, pray fucking tell, is it??

blood-is-thiccer: wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism

XylemPhloemBuckaroo: no but I get what that guy was saying about wasting talent tho. Out of everyone in that class a, she’s the only one not topping the fucking hero charts rn. She’s the only one who’s left hero work. What makes her weaker than the rest of her classmates? What happened to her to make her like this?

koiboi69: wouldn’t you quit if people were camping outside your house/work/grocerystore? And also FUCK, man, there’s no fucking need to say she’s fucking weak. that’s kicking her while she’s down

XylemPhloemBuckaroo: I’m not kicking her while she’s down. I’m stating facts and asking reasonable questions.

koiboi69: bro wouldn’t YOU feel down if you’d didn’t have a home to go back to??? going back to u.a. is like admitting defeat, like you couldn’t handle it on your own and need protection

mawatadaddysgorl: i love seeing updates on her bc it makes me feel so good about what i’m doing with my life

***

Uraraka and Shinsou texted you but couldn’t call, let alone come from across town. Aizawa was AWOL, and Dango was hiding under your bed, so you, blotchy-faced and damp, were crumpled on the floor outside of room 310, eating vending machine bullshit and waiting for Tenko to return home.

Exactly all the insecurities you’d been stuffing down for months and months, brought out to air in front of everyone. Instead of doomscrolling, you locked your phone and slid it across the hallway carpet, burying your face in your hands and stomach lurching to the thought that you might soon be plastered everywhere in sight, again. Another round of intensive laying low loomed on the horizon, especially now that your location was made public. Your little secretary job was good enough, and relocating elsewhere on campus would lead to more job training, which would be a bitch.

Where was Tenko? You needed him here to say something irreverent and vindictive. Something unhinged. Or you needed him to hold you, pull you into his lap, and bitch about the whole thing while watching a movie. Tenko had messaged you to come by after work, so why wasn’t he…?

The staircase door hissed open, Tenko pushing it with his back, reusable grocery bags on his arms, and—and wearing a cape? Who the fuck wears a cape casu—oh shit he’s in his hero costume.

You’d heard that he had one, designed by the same company that’d made Midoriya’s and Shouto’s, and the similarities were clear: a boxy sort of design due to thick fabric that still somehow hugged his chest, a minimalist utility belt, and sturdy, knee-capping boots, positively flaming scarlet in contrast to the dark greys of the rest of his jumpsuit. The most obvious connection with another hero, though, made your chest throb: his cloak fastened with the same clasp his grandmother’s had. His dust-blocking respirator lay around his neck for the moment, but what was most embarrassing for you was how your brain fucking wheezed like a boiling kettle at his bare arms, biceps bulging, every fucking inch of skin down to his fingertips completely on display like a goddamn slut.

Whore behaviour. Whore behaviour! You had to duck your head when he squatted next to you, because oh, now you could see the stretch marks on his upper arms, because he’d gotten large way too quickly to be healthy, and smell his fading Old Spice and sweat from being out on what must have been an emergency call, and he was setting his grocery bags aside, reaching out to graze your shoulder, and wow, he’d been complaining about how he didn’t have abs yet despite working out five days a week now that his stamina had increased, but that fabric clung to his lower abdomen, looking very, very flat.

Initially pinching the fabric of your sweater, he shifted his jaw and laid his hand on your shoulder. “Who am I dusting?”

“God, Tenko,” you said, trying to look anywhere but his arms, or his abdomen, or his fucking lips, but he was leaning so much over you that he occupied most of your line of vision, and the only way to avoid seeing anything besides wisps of white hair was to gaze at the popcorned ceiling. “You’re not supposed to do that anymore.”

“Oh, yeah? Who am I dusting?” He squeezed your shoulder, stretching his thumb out to rub at your collarbone.

“Unless you can dust everyone in the country, I don’t think decay will help.”

Tenko clicked his tongue. “I have been explicitly told not to do that,” he said, shifting to sit on his knees, “I have—” He dug into a grocery bag for a moment. “—this for you. You like this shit, right?” Tenko pressed a bottle of pink lemonade into your hands.

“Fucking. Fuck. I do,” you said, passing the condensation-coated bottle from one hand to another, chest tightening, blinking to keep the water levels low, “Thank you. You didn’t have to get me this.”

“I know that,” he said with a dismissive wave, and he paused, fists in his lap. “Would it help if I gave you a hug?”

(What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the—)

“Yeah,” you said calmly, like a calm person, and when Tenko opened his (muscular) arms, you crawled into them, wrapping your own around his back to rest between his shoulder blades. You rested your chin in a fold of his cape, cheek pressing against the side of his respirator, and you frowned as his embrace tightened, pulling you closer in a sloppy, unpractised sort of way, grounded by the steady rise and fall of his very solid chest.

(This felt…affectionate. Romantic, even.

But Shigaraki Tomura didn’t do romance, and you don’t—you’re not—you wouldn’t dream of being conceited enough to read someone’s perhaps thoughtless actions as flirtation, because why would someone be flirting with you? No one did that in general, and being U.A.’s humiliating problem child exacerbated the fact.

Moreover, why would the man who was Shigaraki Tomura, in the middle of his rehabilitation and re-discovery of self, even in the microscopic chance that he had the mental energy to experience romantic feelings, aim that romantic impulse towards you? It would make more sense if he liked someone he’d known for a while, like Touya or Spinner or Toga, and if his romantic feelings leant towards recuperative trauma-bonding, wouldn’t it be more apt to feel for someone at his rehab? His therapist, maybe? He’d idolised Aizawa before he’d met him, and even that would make more sense than latching onto someone as late in the process as you.

He’d gotten flustered when you’d tied his scarf, and Touya’s played terrible wingman. But still. You couldn’t know. You can’t read into this, even though reading into things had been your job, because—because no one would want you. You’ll have to…You’ll have to gather more evidence. You couldn’t be certain.)

Tenko hummed, chin digging into your shoulder, blowing strands of your hair out of his face. “I calmed a kid down earlier by hugging her. Is this working for you?”

(…oh.)

You sniffled and hid your mouth in his cape so that he couldn’t catch your pout. “That’s—that’s good that a kid allowed you to comfort her. What happened?”

“Pipes broke in an old apartment building in the Takoba district. The third floor collapsed under the pressure, and it trapped families in part of the building. I was called out to dust the rubble trapping them,” Tenko said, tapping his fingers high on your back in a ripple, “and they had me dust some other walls to help start the repairs. It was cool. And this one little girl who’d gotten out before the rest of her family was really nervous, and she was sticking to me, holding onto my cape. I was telling her that everything was gonna be okay, like you’ve taught me, and when I asked how she was doing, this fuckin’ kid extended her arms to me. So, I fucking hugged her. Picked her up so she could see what was happening better. It was weird, but it felt good.” Tenko sighed. “I hate how it wants me to be kind more.”

And fuck, fuck, that’s the last straw to this horrible day, and you’re crying, silently, controlling your breathing to keep Tenko from finding out, because goddammit, this idiot bastard man was surprisingly easy to love.

You buried your face fully in his shoulder, hoping he couldn’t feel any wetness through his costume, and you and Tenko sat in the quiet of the hallway for a minute, interrupted only by the A/C kicking in.

Tenko tried to part the two of you enough to look you in the face, but you doubled down, curling your fingers into the fabric of his jumpsuit and keeping your head bowed. Scoffing, he sat upright, making you follow his movements to stay hidden. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong yet?”

“Forget all that shit I’ve taught you,” you said, grumbling to his tits now that he’d changed positions, hating how stopped up you sounded already, “It doesn’t matter what you fucking do in the public’s eye, because there’s always gonna be someone who hates you. You can’t please everyone, so just fucking be yourself. That’s funnier, anyway.”

“Did you psychoanalyse some press member’s pathetic sex life, or something? Deduce an affair based on the way he knots his tie? Announce the state of his dick to the whole room because of the length of his pants?”

“Fuck off, Tenko. I’m not some pretentious-ass Sherlock Holmes bitch,” you said, pursing your lips and instinctively pulling back to glare at him—

And the moment you did, Tenko cupped your face in his hands, soft at the palm and strongly calloused along his fingers, keeping you facing towards him no matter how hard you tried to jerk away, struggling to stay upright. “You are crying.”

“No, I’m not,” you said, just as a falling tear touched his thumb. As you adjusted to his grip, your hands fell to his thighs, pressing against them in fists.

“Hm. Well, you don’t have to tell me,” he said, eyes on another tear trailing down the other cheek, “but you’re joining me to watch a movie with Eri. I got snacks on the way home.”

You sighed, taking in how big his hands were and how much of your face they encompassed, trying to memorise their feeling until they were snatched away forever. “I thought we were gonna start a new quest tonight. I was excited.”

Tenko balked and shifted into a sceptical grin. “You wanted to play Ciperstone tonight?” he asked, both thumbs rubbing your cheekbones and moving to swipe underneath your eyes.

You sighed again, shoulders heaving as Tenko released your face to flick tears off of his hand. “I didn’t want to be myself for a few hours.”

Tenko pushed on his knees to stand. “That’s actually related to what I originally wanted to talk to you about. Furthering the working-with-others mission,” he said, and he extended his hand to help you up. “What do you know about Dungeons and Dragons?”

***

“God fucking dammit!” Tenko slammed his palm to his forehead and leant back to balance on the kitchen chair’s back legs and then combed his fingers back through his hair, upsetting some strands from his ponytail. Groaning, he crooked his face your way, smushed his face against the chair back, and pointed towards his forehead, where a red splot was forming. “Hit me as hard as you can.”

“Being bludgeoned won’t change the fact that you rolled a three,” you said, nodding towards his d20, “I ignore his whining and continue to drain the fig tree to charge my spell.”

Behind the DM screen, Shinsou rolled his own dice, and once his eyebrows had shot up to his hairline, he turned to Midoriya. “I need you to roll two d12s and a d4.”

Tenko bolted upright, hastily sweeping his bangs out of his face. “Wait, what does Midoriya have to do with it? He’s across the fucking grove! He’s engaged in close-ranged combat.”

You turned away from Shinsou’s sly grin and towards Tenko, mouth nearly a straight line, yanking another cluster of grapes from the communal bowl, and shoving two grapes in his mouth. He pinched at his lower lip as he chewed, twisting and peeling at dead skin, frowning as he focused on his character sheet, scanning it for some sort of information he was forgetting and absentmindedly raising his knee to his chest, the heel of his foot propped on the seat of his chair (thank God his jeans were from Best Jeanist’s Moulded to Your Ass line: the denim strained with his muscles. Your eye twitched). In this particular morning, with the five of you squared off at Aizawa’s kitchen table, papers and dice strewn among grocery store bakery cinnamon rolls and coffee cups (Tenko’s was full of gatorade instead of coffee, much to his chagrin), as Tenko was throwing grapes into Touya’s mouth while Shinsou did math, the narwhal house slippers dangling off Tenko’s feet, it struck you that Shigaraki Tomura had become just some guy. One who went for walks to clear his head, who spent hours failing to do a kickflip on Present Mic’s skateboard, who used emoticons over emojis, who got nervous in fast food drive-throughs, who collected hero merch (of Aizawa fervently and Present Mic against his will), who was losing his sensitivity to foods like leeks and onions, a man who was growing more and more exquisitely mundane.

And goddamn, he’s clever and perceptive and patient and cheeky in a devastatingly attractive way, and he’s flustered easily, eager to do a thing correctly, and utterly, totally captivating in his endless discoveries of what it means to be alive.

You timed it so that the shudder and shock crossing his face could pass as response to Shinsou’s description of how Tenko’s enchanted crossbow bolt missed the Spirit Realm Necromancer entirely, instead sinking into the sacred Grand Oak and instantly shattering the tree as if it were glass, its elaborate root system holding up the floating grove splintering into thousands of tiny shards, the ground beneath your party’s feet crumbling at the slightest suggestion of the shifting of weight. But really he curled in his lips with a furrowed brow and stuttering breath when you reached underneath the table to graze the back of his hand, and when he forced himself to relax, shoulders slackening, frown fading, Tenko spread his fingers to cover more of his denim-clad thigh, which you took as a timid sort of consent. Biting the inside of your cheek, you eased your palm over the back of Tenko’s hand, lacing your fingers through his and going through the motions of reacting to Shinsou’s shattered earth. Neither of you looked at each other while Midoriya’s character suffered the Necromancer’s spell to increase gravity, each movement of Midoriya’s bulky, steel armour accelerating the fall of the floating grove. By the time each of you had had enough turns to land on solid ground, preserving little of the sacred grove but all surviving, Tenko finally squeezed your fingers back, curling his own to grip them more firmly, keeping your hand pinned to his thigh, steeling himself, sitting up straight, and proposing getting close enough to the Necromancer to drive a crossbow bolt directly into his skull.

Midoriya was already muttering to himself over the effectiveness of the action while Shinsou worked, and Touya irreverently flicked his dice at Tenko, chugging coffee with his other hand. “You plunge the bolt by hand into the Necromancer’s head,” said Shinsou, “but with your strength debuff still in effect, you only nick him.”

“I try stabbing it through his ear.”

“It goes through,” said Shinsou, nodding and running his hand back through his hair, which sprung back into place, “It doesn’t pierce the neocortex, so he can still summon another—“

“I stomp him to death with my hooves,” said Touya, picking at his teeth and running his tongue over the spot.

The rest of you turned to him slowly in various states of incredulity.

“You don’t have hooves, Touya,” you said, tilting your head at the same time Tenko rubbed his thumb over yours, prompting your breath to hitch and a strange warmth to travel through your body, making you feel dizzy.

Touya grimaced and reached for a cinnamon roll. “I take off my leather breeches and boots to reveal my hooves. I have been a satyr masquerading as a human this whole time.” He leant forward on his elbow, glaring at Shinsou and gesturing with his cinnamon roll. “I stomp him. To death. With my hooves.”

Tenko sneered, his teeth cutting into his lower lip, but he merely opened his mouth and closed it, poking his tongue into his cheek. “I suppose maiming a party member wouldn’t coincide with my character’s chaotic good alignment,” he said, heaving a huge sigh to—oh, that cunning rat bastard—to conceal how he flipped his hand over in yours to touch palms, weaving your fingers back together and squeezing again, planting them back on his upper leg, massaging between your knuckles with his thumb.

“What’d you just roll?”

“Nineteen,” said Touya, casting Shinsou a slice of his most charming smile.

Midoriya let out a little laugh as Shinsou bitterly plopped his head on his fist. “Fuck you, Touya. Congratulations. You clomp over to the Necromancer and stomp all over him. Stompy stomp stomp stompy stomp. It’s difficult to watch at the insane speed you’re going, so no one stops you from doing such a good job pounding him that he’s ground into dust. Bits of him drift away in the wind.”

Here Midoriya winced. “Weren’t we supposed to retrieve the soul crystal embedded in his gauntlet? We can’t get our reward from that Silver Age dragon rider if we don’t have it.”

“Correct,” said Shinsou, glancing down at his notes, “It has been stomped to smithereens. You can’t even make out what parts of the pile of dust were once flesh.”

Ready to bolt, Touya was getting up from the table and holding up his hands in defence, but before Midoriya could start a speech that would have been more apt for the number one hero to use on patrol rather than during a DND game, the door to Aizawa’s flat opened, and in he walked, covering his yawn with the back of his hand. He halted at the sight of the five of you around his kitchen table, taking in the scattered papers and remnants of breakfast before settling on your DM. “Shinsou,” Aizawa began, disappointment outweighing the exhaustion in his voice.

“You’re the only one with a table that could fit all of us,” Shinsou said, spinning in his chair to face him, “This dormitory doesn’t have a good common area like the student ones do. Would you really prefer us to—”

“We can find you a table; there’s plenty on campus.” Aizawa lifted his goggles over his head to set them on the counter. “Is this why Monoma kept slowing me down during patrol?”

“No,” you and Shinsou said, while Tenko said, “Yes.”

Aizawa actually smiled as he unwound his capture weapon from around his neck. “Look who’s the only one telling the truth.”

“Why would I lie to you, sensei?”

Touya smacked Tenko on the arm. “Suck-up.”

“You promise?” Tenko shot back, nose wrinkling with his grin.

“This coffee had better be amazing, because it’s the only thing keeping me from kicking you all out right now,” said Aizawa, rubbing a dry eye with the heel of his palm, other hand outstretched for someone to pass him a mug.

Tenko’s thumb bent inward to swipe the inside of your palm, a silent protest while he drank from his stupid little mug of gatorade, and when he noticed what was at the bottom, he flinched. It must have been Touya who’d put your dice in Tenko’s cup.

***

Following the video of you insulting Uwabami, you’re garnering an unnerving amount of attention again, but it’s clearly someone different than last time. Whoever your stalker(s) was this time around, they were careless and unsubtle—and this confidence to be careless left you jumping at the slightest sound when you were alone.

Furthermore, you legitimately couldn’t deduce your stalker’s motivations, because no clear message linked his actions. At first, you chalked it up to the dorm’s shitty dryer eating your bright blue thong, but when you couldn’t find your lip balm or trolley pass or eventually your favourite sweater, you concluded that something else was at play here, further cemented by more and more tiny things going missing—things that, if you were stalking someone, you would’ve selected as small enough not to miss.

But bizarrely, your stalker left shit of his own lying about. A phone charger appeared underneath your pillow; loose change and a travel pack of alcoholic wipes showed up in your bathroom sink. Hello Kitty band-aids, a hair clip that looked like one of Rumi’s ears, deep-moisturising hand cream, a tiny lizard keychain with a white hamburglar mask drawn on. You couldn’t wrap your head around it. What could your stalker be trying to say besides he could access your personal space with ease? Hoarding it all in the drawer with the GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK hentai, you were struck with the notion that this may have been going on even before the video.

God, you missed when this school felt more like home instead of a holding cell, back when Shinsou and Uraraka and the rest were all still living together with you, when you could simply turn the corner to the common area to demand who took your laundry detergent and get an answer immediately (you also missed taking Aoyama’s bougie food, though you suspected that towards the end he was buying extra specifically for you). You sent an email to Aizawa about the potential break in security, and he promised to monitor the situation, though there was no evidence of physical entry.

Evidence. It’s been on your mind.

Sure, Tenko’s done stuff that could be read as romantic: how he plops your hand onto his head to demand you play with his hair, how he hovers whenever Touya stands too closely to you, how he gets upset on your behalf when people glare at you in public.

(Tenko grabbed your elbow, breaking your focus on the clothing rank. “We’re going.”

“But we haven’t found you a red coat yet.”

He lifted the hangers from your arm and slid them back onto the rack, despite belonging elsewhere. “Don’t care. I don’t like the way the cashier’s looking at you,” he said, jerking his head their direction, and when you tilted your head to glance at them over his shoulder, Tenko tapped your chin twice, guiding you to look back at him. “You shouldn’t have to be on guard when I’m with you.”)

If you were reading into it—and you were—Tenko was being so careful with talking about the pro-hero scene around you that it was almost as if he’d gotten a mission task from Aizawa to distract you from anything that might make you feel bad about yourself.

(“I hear you’re causing a lot of paperwork for my old man,” said Touya, pulling out another floor cushion from the storage space in the teahouse wall, “He hates that you’ve had to dust so many structures near his agency. He’s a decrepit creature of habit, and now that his commute is different, he’s—”

“Hey, Touya, tell us what flower bulbs you planted this winter,” Tenko said abruptly, clamping the lid on the pot hanging over the sunken fireplace, “Tell us what your garden’ll look like in spring.”

You shut your book, even though you’d just opened it. “Wait, are you saying that Touya is the one who keeps this garden? That’s—”

“You like it, sweetheart?” Touya dropped his cushion next to yours, ignoring the way Tenko was glaring daggers into his back. “Think it’s impressive?”

“Holy shit; I thought we were in the back of some professionally restored historical site the first time we came here,” you said, smiling at how Tenko’s petulant stomps to his seat chirruped, even when he scooted his own cushion towards yours (adorable; you’d think he didn’t like you giving attention to anyone else).

“Well,” said Touya, propping his hands on the kotatsu so that he could get a better view of Tenko, “With enormous pride and a huge erection, I’m pleased to announce that this garden is all my hard work.”

“Stop that,” barked Tenko, jabbing a finger towards Touya, “Stop bringing up your cock.”

“I could talk about yours, if you want. His monster cock is excruciatingly leaky and so shaped.”

Groaning, Tenko clonked his forehead on the kotatsu’s tabletop before Touya could say anything else, arm still outstretched. He peeked out from underneath his bangs towards you, tension leaving his body at your burst of laughter.)

He’s also taken your comment about silent admiration to heart. Over the discord call (through very comfortable headphones), you’d made a dumb joke about not being able to play for long, and he’d shut up immediately. When you’d confessed to lying and hoping you’d scared him, he’d replied seriously: “I want to protect my time with you. I don’t like it being taken away. I feel better when you’re with me.”

You’d frozen in the middle of weaving bowstrings while his character continued stringing them onto bows. You’d never have gotten that sort of remark at the beginning of your relationship. Tenko must genuinely be listening to you.

Anyway. You decided in the event that Tenko was collecting evidence, too, that you would leave him some.

The first time you’d been in his room had been for a specific purpose, which was to help him rub in his new facial scar moisturiser (not to take them away, or anything, because Tenko wanted to keep them, claiming he wouldn’t recognise himself in the mirror if he didn’t have his scars—and you thought they were devastatingly attractive, anyway—but just to keep them hydrated enough not to itch), but now you were here just to spend time in the same space. You were reading on his bed (oh, hohoho, his bed), and Tenko was drawing in his sketchbook on his couch by the window. With his mouth pinched in concentration, he squinted down at his paper, swiping away eraser shavings with his artist-gloved hand.

Drawing by natural light. Tenko was in room 310 because of its wide windows. It had been his one request when U.A. was placing him.

AFO had deliberately raised him in a bedroom without windows. You’d kill him if he weren’t already dead.

Thankfully, AFO’s influence was absent from Tenko’s dorm: Naruto sheets from Touya, an old Nintendo DS on his bedside table with Nintendogs in the cartridge slot, Present Mic’s skateboard propped against the coatrack that held only a black hoodie, unfolded but clean laundry in a basket next to a dresser with prescription bottles atop it, a mirror that served more as a bulletin board of Eraserhead merch than as a way to check his reflection, red shoes by the doorway, books borrowed from everyone from All Might to Shinsou to the ramen delivery guy strewn across the room, on shelves, his computer desk, his rug. The thing Tenko’d had to explain to you was a therapist-assigned painting hanging over his desk: he’d painted a murky, purple-blue, abstract sort of thing, and you were strangely touched when he’d explained it was Kurogiri (and now that you were looking, among his bulletin board of Eraserhead, a few drawings of Loud Cloud were mixed in).

There’s a lot of people in Tenko’s life who care about him now, and you’re happy to be one of them. Setting your book aside, you got up to sit next to him on the couch.

He paused when you sank into the cushion next to—well, no, you were basically sharing the same cushion, especially since he unfolded his legs from underneath him so that you could get closer. You scooted over so that your shoulders touched (scandalous) and looked over his drawings.

He’s drawing your DND characters. While his sketches aren’t exactly good, you can clearly tell who’s supposed to be whom, and they’re fun to look at, so that’s all that matters. At the centre is your character, Ginseng—you named it after your Cipherstone account because why not—in the process of spell-charging. Your character relies on the traditional ritual of tea ceremonies, from the growing of the tealeaves to serving it, summoning whatever tools you needed, like the table and dishware, and if an enemy got caught by the conventions of politeness of the tea ceremony, they were trapped in it until they’d drunk their teacup dry. Tenko had drawn her early in the spell-charging process, with branches of tealeaves sprouting from underneath her skin, with her harvesting them from her forearm. It’s rather flattering, the way her determined expression lit up her face.

Next to Ginseng was Tenko’s character, Peito, also lifted from his Cipherstone character. He was sitting on the same log as Ginseng in the middle of camp, backs touching while he cut feathers as the first step in the fletching process. His carved-willow quiver leant against his knee-high boot, red even in a fictional universe. Peito’s hands were bare, five fingers pressed against his knife and arrows.

Further back in the camp (really just towards the top of the paper, since Tenko wasn’t good at foreshortening yet), Midoriya’s character, Jackrabbit, was holding up two hangers, one with his steel and the other with sleek, black leather armour. A nice touch, really, since Midoriya had swopped Jackrabbit’s primary armour to the more lightweight leather since the shattered grove incident, and wow, you could even tell it was leather based on the pencil strokes.

Seated nearby, Touya’s character, Granddaddy Slapkins, roared with laughter at him. His shoes lay next to him, his hooves out. For some reason, he’s not holding his pet duck; he’s instead cradling what looks like your character’s wild shape, a cat with the same chocolate-point markings as your real cat (your character’s shapeshifted form was just Dango, but Tenko didn’t know that. He still didn’t know Dango existed, because cats were still illegal in the dorms, and Tenko, that little brown-nosing shit, would probably tell Aizawa about her. Cute how he’s only a suck-up to Aizawa, though).

Your favourite detail, though, was how his character was smiling. Unabashedly. As if it were a no-brainer, as if doing anything else made no sense at all.

With a stab of affection, you nuzzled into Tenko’s shoulder, resting your chin there while he sketched loops of chainmail onto Granddaddy Slapkins’s shirt, and a shiver racked through him.

“Oh, are you cold?” you asked, sitting back up and heading over towards the bed, “Let me get your blanket.”

“Wha—no, I—sure,” said Tenko, setting his pencil on his sketchbook and the whole thing on the arm of the couch, eyes half-lidded as you returned with his throw blanket.

And without thinking, you moved on impulse, as if all higher orders of cognition had checked out for the night, because you behaved like you did in your head whenever you thought about Tenko: casually, intimately, and domestically. You wrapped the blanket around yourself and knelt on the sofa before swinging a knee over his lap, and you snuggled into his chest, clutching his shirt and nosing at his neck.

Your eyes snapped open.

(What the fuck?

If this had been a planned attack, then it would’ve been a thing of brilliance: casual, seeming to meet a physical need [heating a chill] in the name of physical closeness. But you fucked it. This wasn’t planned, and thus you don’t have a way out of it without otherwise betraying your romantically-motivated interior.

Thank fuck he’s frozen up, too. But how do you get out of this? God, you really shouldn’t be teaching him how to navigate interpersonal relationships when you get yourself into shit like this.)

You swallowed thickly, pulse pounding in your ears.

“I need your advice.” Tenko’s chest barely rose when he took his first breath since you climbed onto his lap. “What would be the socially expected response to this?”

“Uh. That depends on if you’re into it or not,” you said, forcing yourself to sit back in his lap to give him some space, “If you dislike it, then it’s to get me to get off of you, and if you welcome it, then, uh. Anything else.”

Tenko unclenched his fists at his sides and—a pause, shifting his jaw—he let his hands rest at a barely-there touch on your hips, dragging them upwards to your waist, applying enough pressure there for you to feel all ten fingertips through your shirt. “Is this,” he said, wetting his lower lip, and he couldn’t continue, instead swallowing saliva.

Gathering your nerve, you wove your hand through his hair to scratch at his scalp in the way he’d liked when you’d played with his hair, and at the familiarity, Tenko huffed, shutting his eyes tightly and pressing his forehead to yours in a rush, almost knocking them together. He took another breath, heat washing over your face, and you slid your other up hand to cup his cheek.

Tenko shivered again, and he clamped his hand over yours to keep it there. “Are you sure this is what you mean to do?”

He seemed receptive enough to it, but you couldn’t be certain. “Yeah,” you said, “If I’m reading it right.”

“But it makes no sense. I’ve got to be reading it wrong,” Tenko was saying, frowning, “No one would willingly like me—”

“For fuck’s sake, Tenko—”

Practically slapping your other hand to his cheek, you kissed him, pulling him closer, one of his hands still over yours with the other now gripping your waist as if he’d never let you go. Tenko grunted into it, surging forward to keep his rough lips (sticky from his freshly applied pineapple-beeswax chapstick) seared to yours. You felt, more than heard, his miniscule whimper at the back of his throat when he opened his mouth, sliding his tongue into yours, and you could hardly keep kissing him for smiling. But he needed a breath before you did, so you broke it, sensing he wouldn’t do it out of wanting to keep you nearby.

Panting, Tenko tried and failed to push your hair behind your ear in an attempt to be suave. “Now, I perceived that as romantic.”

“It was romantic, you muppet,” you said, thumping his chest with the back of your hand.

“Good.” He cleared this throat. “Cool. Excellent,” he said, shifting underneath you (with difficulty, under the constricting denim of his Moulded to Your Ass jeans), “I want it to be, when it comes to you.”

“Thank God, I really want that, too,” you said, sighing, “but, like, I really don’t know if it’s ethical to pursue a romance this early into your recovery—”

“The fuck is wrong with you? I want it. I want you.” Frustrated, Tenko grabbed your hips in an iron grip and ground up into you, slowly, and that tight-ass denim let you feel precisely where in the drag of his hips his cock touched you, letting you feel the shift in pressure at his tip, down his shaft, to the first curve of his balls. “I thought I was alone. I thought no one else would ever be able to understand me, having fallen from what I was raised to be. Fallen,” he said, spitting, “Such a nasty word for what we’re actually doing: we’ve been reborn together. We get to build our lives back up together. We get another chance at it. I wanna spend mine with you.”

He strained his neck upwards to kiss you again, insistent, moving with confidence when he took your lower lip into his mouth but only nibbling on it once, despite being posed to bite down with vigour.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else thinks of you and what anyone else thinks of me. I—”

“That’s not true,” you said, your turn to catch your breath, “You care so much about what Aizawa-sensei—”

“You know what I mean,” he said, shaking his head, hair falling out of his loose ponytail, “You think of me as me, and that’s all that matters. If you’re really that fucking worried about me getting into a relationship too early, go talk to my therapist. She says you’re good for me. A good influence, anyway.”

“Holy shit,” you said, mostly in reaction to how Tenko started trailing frantic, dry kisses down your neck, and, realising you should probably be doing something back, you rolled your hips, feeling awfully warm under the blanket.

He bucked back up into you, more out of desperation to keep you close over a need for friction but still giving you a taste of what it would be like to have him thrusting into you. “Fuck,” he said, almost grumbling, “I’d say fuck being ethical about it, because I’ve wanted you for a long time. I got hard when you shook me by the shoulders outside of that ice cream shop; I thought my soul was gonna leave my body when you adjusted my scarf. Hell, I—” He cut himself off, grinning in a way that, back before you knew him, you might have described as maniacal. “I wanted you back during the war. I saw you fucking elbow Touya during that battle, and the way you made him crumple to the ground was so fucking sexy. And you recovered from when he swiped at you so easily; you slipped around his attacks like it was fucking second nature. I thought it’d be cool to have you by my side, having you—” He realised what he was saying, and he relaxed, smile fading into a curious, pensive sort of look while he brought his thumb to your kiss-swollen lips. “And now I get to.”

You kissed the pad of his thumb, blinking slowly.

“So. Yeah,” he said, dropping his hand to your shoulder as he broke eye contact, a little red, “I think it’d be cool to be with you, even if we have to be careful.”

“That’s the thing, Tenko,” you said, biting the inside of your cheek as you gathered your thoughts, “I’m scared, because while I know that we should, because that’d be safe, I don’t want to be careful. Since I’ve quit being a hero, every single thing about how I’ve been living has left me feeling empty and alone, because it’s like I’m wandering through limbo. Everything screams that whatever I’m doing now is temporary, that it’ll pass, that I don’t truly belong in this situation, because I’ll find what I’m supposed to be doing later and my real home is somewhere down the line, but—fuck.” You rubbed your eye with your fist. “You, Tenko. You don’t feel temporary. You feel forever.”

Underneath you, Tenko stretched to pop a crick in his back, and he tilted his head to lie on the back of the couch. His ponytail had come loose, and his hair splayed against the fabric as he stared at you, one hand idly rubbing at your waist.

“Well. You’ve got to belong somewhere,” he said eventually, and he tapped all five fingers onto your thigh. “It could be with me.”

***

Dango was missing.

Incredible how the best evening of your life preceded the worst day you’ve had in years. You called out of work and spent hours scouring the dorm and then campus. A gruelling, miserable sort of day, anyway, grey and rainy and cold, and the campus was swarmed with people setting up for the scavenger hunt event later this month, populating the area with non-U.A. personnel and construction. Your cat was out in that mess, and you didn’t even know where to search first. It’s loud, scary, and wet, so Dango would most likely be hiding and not come when she’s called.

Had Dango escaped your flat? Had your stalker stolen her? Had she been confiscated by U.A.?

You couldn’t call any faculty for help; they’d get onto you for having an illegal cat on campus—and Hound Dog, the one who’d be the most help, might just scare her to death. Too early in the morning to call any of your friends, and you doubted they’d alter their busy schedules to help you out of a situation you should be able to fix yourself. But damn it, how come your own tracking skills only worked on people?

You shook yourself, coming out of your spiral the best you could, and you were close to hyperventilating. You sat down on a curb.

You found yourself calling Tenko, despite it being too early in the day for him to be out of training, filling with dread about never seeing your cat again and having to clear out her stuff from your room. Pulling your soaked jacket closer, you wiped at your nose and waited at the dial tone.

“Hey, I thought you couldn’t call during work. Miss me that much?”

The second you heard his strangely chipper voice, you started crying into the speaker.

He inhaled sharply, tone shifting. “Tell me who the fuck I’m stomping to death with my hooves.”

Ducking your head, you managed a smile but continued to fucking sob. “You don’t—don’t have to kill anyone, Ten—Tenko. I’ve f—fucked up.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I’m on cam—campus,” you said, unable to speak for a full sentence without having to cut yourself off to keep bawling, ugly and loud and getting snottier by the minute, “It’s my fucking fault that I haven’t been ta—taking my stupid sta—stalker seriously, and I should’ve reported it, but—but I—goddammit!” The rain picked up again, coming down in rapid, fat drops, and, shielding your eyes, you rubbed your phone screen on your sleeve, not that it did much. “Sor—sorry. Rain got heavier.”

“Where on campus?”

“No, Te—Tenko, I’ll get up. I’m coming to you,” you said, sniffling and pushing on your knees to stand, wet and hungry and ready to crawl into your sock drawer to sleep for days. “I—I’m just so fucking pissed at myself, because my cat is fucking lost, and I could’ve sto—stopped it if I hadn’t been so secreti—tive.” Hands shaking, you yanked your soaked hood over your head and trudged towards your dormitory, and you kicked gravel, rocks scattering over the path, before losing your footing on it and nearly falling. Fuck this.

“You have a cat,” said Tenko, losing his fervent. “What’s it look like?”

“Beautiful.”

“I need more than that.”

“She fucking—I based Ginseng’s cat form on her, okay? She’s this enormously fluffy thing, mostly whitish with a brown face and legs, and it makes her look like she’s wearing a mask and thigh-high socks like God’s sluttiest little jester,” you said, knocking on your dorm’s mailboxes for luck out of habit as you passed them, “And you can’t tell Aizawa-sensei about her, because if she’s taken away the moment I find her, then I—”

“I have her,” said Tenko, “She’s in my dorm with me.”

You ran the rest of the way to his room, panting and absolutely disgusting by the time you got there, and when Tenko opened his door, there was Dango, loafing on the back of the couch and watching raindrops race down the window.

“What the fuck,” you said, dropping your wet coat and toeing off your shoes, “How the hell did she get in here?”

Tenko shrugged and hung your coat next to his hoodie. “Can she open locked doors?”

“I hope to fuck she can’t,” you said, and you rounded the couch to wrap your arms around that dear little loaf, and Dango jumped off the couch to crawl underneath it before you could fully hug her. “Oh, good. She’s fine. Acting like normal.” You sat on the couch’s arm, adrenaline evaporating to render you boneless.

“She was in my room when I came back from training. We ended early today, since Aizawa-sensei has something.” Tenko stooped to yank two bottles of gatorade from their plastic rings and headed towards the sofa to offer one to you. “She didn’t seem upset or hurt. She’s been sitting there, napping on and off.”

You accepted it and twisted off the cap. “So, who put my cat in your room?”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know,” you said, taking a shallow sip, careful not to overwhelm your agitated stomach, “They’d have to know about Dango in the first place, and I suppose my stalker would, since they’ve theoretically been breaking into my room.”

Tenko paused mid-sip, and he hastened to swallow. “Someone’s been breaking into your room?”

“Yeah,” you said, easing down the arm of the couch and onto its cushions, “I think. There’s no physical sign of entry, but my shit keeps going missing, and stuff that’s not mine keeps showing up. Let me tell you, I need some of that shit they’ve stolen; it’s hard to replace—”

Tenko touched your lips with three of his fingertips to quiet you, and he gestured for you to stay put while he scrambled over to his closet, where he stood on his toes to retrieve a wicker basket from the top shelf. He dropped the thing into your lap. “Are any of these yours?”

All of it was, missing things you blamed on everything from Dango to your stalker to your own forgetfulness: your favourite sweater, your trolley pass, lip balm, your shitty earbuds, your good pantyhose, your planner, your d10, and, among many smaller things, even that bright blue thong you’d lost in the wash (Well. It’s better to find your thong with your new boyfriend over finding them returned to your dorm coated in your stalker’s cum, you supposed).

“I was losing my goddamn mind,” Tenko was saying, “Stuff kept showing up. I thought it was a test at first—”

“I don’t have a stalker,” you said, absentmindedly rubbing the fabric of your thong between your fingers, “Your shit has been—you read that GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK shit? Tenko.”

“Oh, you have that?” Tenko scratched the back of his neck, but not in his self-harm way; it reminded you of Shinsou’s nervous habit more than anything. “Haven’t you read it? Isn’t that what you were naming your characters after?”

“Ah, ha, ha. Moving on. What is important, though, is why and how this is happening to us.”

“Yeah, I don’t…”

The two of you spitballed for a while, long enough for the both of you to finish your bottles of gatorade and for Tenko to start another, and neither of you came up with anything substantial.

“Hell with it,” said Tenko, standing to stretch, his movement disturbing Dango from her nap in his basket of clean laundry, “Let’s go ask Aizawa-sensei.”

Aizawa was not pleased when he discovered the both of you waiting in his kitchen, but he listened to the story, and when you were done, he stepped out of the room to make a phone call. When he came back, he looked even more exhausted than when he’d first come in.

“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Sakura Grove,” said Aizawa, wincing when his bones creaked as he sat in his chair, “Tenko, do you remember villain in-fighting within the PLF? In particular, I’m asking if you remember breathing in a pink dust cloud. It would’ve been in Deika City, in the month between your fight with Re-Destro and your body modification surgery. If our sources are accurate, you would’ve been with Touya.”

Tenko scrunched up his face. “Why would I have been—hm.” Frowning, he reached into the bag of popcorn you’d commandeered from Aizawa’s cupboards. “I know what you’re talking about. They were only letting me eat healthy stuff in the week before I went under. Touya was taking me to scrounge for something salty and shitty for me, because I couldn’t take it anymore. He started hitting on someone he thought was a waitress, and she—this is why I remember it—she compared the width of her hand to his thigh and said no thanks.”

“That’s Ito,” said Aizawa, sighing and crossing his arms, settling his chin into his capture weapon, “When did she use her quirk?”

“She shoved her hand on Touya’s face when he opened his stupid mouth again, and he passed out with swarming, pink particles floating around his head. She turned to me—and she must not have recognised Touya, but she knew me, because her face lit the fuck up. She never touched me, but I remember having to sneeze.”

“She never told you what her quirk did?”

“I woke back up in the PLF headquarters. I assumed whoever picked me up had killed her and that her death negated any effects.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why? What does it do?”

Aizawa let out a soft laugh, muffled through his capture weapon, and he jerked his head in your direction. “You tell him,” he said, snatching the bag of popcorn and heading towards his bedroom.

***

He’d been nervous about wearing a suit. They reminded him of AFO.

But you’d strayed away from dark colours and too much structure, so his light greyish-blue suit jacket stayed unbuttoned even as you leant across to the passenger seat to adjust his All Might tie for him (a Put Your Hands Up Radio tie had been offered, but Tenko had already closed his fist around the striped tie Midoriya would loan him). Part of his bangs had been pinned back to show off his annoyingly handsome face, especially in how his sharp, red eyes observed caught every movement of your terrible attempt to tie the tie based on the pictures Aizawa had sent you.

“We’re not gonna be late, are we?” Tenko drawled out, the corner of his mouth quirking upward, hand resting on the car ceiling as he angled his chest towards you.

“Shush; we are in the parking lot,” you said, looping the larger end. Or were you supposed to be looping the smaller one? “Besides, the world won’t end if we’re a few minutes late to my class’s annual reunion.”

A flimsy excuse for a party, one made because hero agencies needed some sort of named event as an excuse to dismiss your friends en masse. But it was spring again, and they were coming out of the winter blues, and they wanted to see you again, so, hey, why don’t we work something in around your schedule? If you can’t come to this date, then we’ll reschedule it until you can.

And, like. They knew. They knew Tenko was your soulmate. You suspected they all wanted to see what he was like now, too, because no one but Shinsou, Midoriya, and, apparently, Bakugou had known.

You undid the loose knot and tried again. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” he said, scrutinising the tacky balloons and streamers swaying in the night breeze outside of the otherwise intimidatingly elegant venue, “but those kids might be.”

“Those kids happen to be friends my age,” you said, “and I’m barely younger than you are. They know you’re coming. You’re fine.”

Tenko sucked in through his teeth, tapping the roof of the car one finger at a time. “The last time they saw me was as a thing. An object of destruction.”

“Well, they’ll definitely see you as a human person when I spill how you designed a unicorn DND character for Eri.” You pulled the fabric taut but kept it from lying closely to his neck (a boy didn’t like feeling constrained). “You know what? This tie is as good as it’s gonna get.”

He ducked his chin to examine its knot. “It’s shit.”

“It adds to your devil-may-care, reformed-bad-boy sort of charm,” you said, giving the tie a final smooth-down and poorly suppressing your smile when you felt his muscles through his shirt. “Mathematically, there are only 85 ways to tie a standard tie knot. I don’t believe we’ve reached any of them.”

“How do you know these things? You’re unbeliev—” Tenko jerked his face out of view of the window as Aoyama and Kouda, gesturing wildly, strode past the car and into the venue. “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat, “I know I don’t care and that you don’t care, but other people will. Your reputation is gonna plummet right into its grave if we’re out in the open together.”

You shook your head, letting your smile show. “So, I fucked part of a rescue job almost a year ago. So what. So I’m dating my soulmate. Am I supposed to do otherwise? Honestly, Tenko,” you said, curling loose strands of hair behind his ear, letting your fingers linger around his cheek and neck (he leant into the touch), “I don’t care. I would’ve chosen you even without the soulmate bond. You’re too endearing to pass by. You’re too…babygirl.”

Tenko had been guiding your hand to his mouth, and he snorted before it got there, warm air scattering in a short burst. “Don’t call me that,” he said, pressing his lips to the centre of your palm and waiting until you met his gaze to retract them.

A different warmth shot to your lower stomach, but you had to keep pressing, for the sake of the bit. “Oh, then what should I—darling? Honey? Pookie bear?”

He scoffed and nipped at your pinkie. “None of those are good.”

“Tenko.”

He breathed in, shoulders rising, eyes fluttering shut. Taking a moment to kiss the tiny bite mark on your finger. “Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes in a slow blink, catlike, “Feels good. Feels—like coming home.”

Beaming, you reached down to lace his fingers through yours. All five of them squeezed back. “Then let’s go.”

soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare

#bnha #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki/reader #shigaraki imagine #shigaraki fic #mha #shigaraki headcanons #shigaraki fanfiction #shigaraki fanfic #soulmates #soulmate au #soulmate #dash it all

[kitspindles]

I’m in no way bashing on people who have already finished TSatS and say they hate it, are disappointed, etc., because I myself have not gone past chapter seven. My friend let me read some today, but I won’t have my own copy until Thursday, so maybe my opinions will change. I will say, however, that if you read 400+ pages in less than a day, maybe give yourself some time to process the entire plot first?

In any case, I can’t help but wonder how many people went into this book expecting one version of Nico and Will, only to be hit with something else entirely. And I mean like... expecting the fandom’s versions of these two, rather than what canon has previously shown us up until this book.

It’s my personal opinion that the PJO fandom’s worse enemy is their own mischaracterization of the characters at times. And I don’t mean like little head canons and stuff. Everyone has done those at some point. There’s usually no harm in those. I’m talking about people who created their own versions of Nico and Will and have been running with these visions for years through different fan fictions and what-not online.

For years we’ve known basically nothing about Will aside from the fact that he’s sarcastic, likes Star Wars, his mom is a country singer, he can glow in the dark, and he’s better at healing than fighting. (And he has questionable fashion choice at times). Like, that’s all we’ve had since his initial introduction in The Last Olympian over a decade ago. Everything else? Online and fan speculation. And again, there is nothing wrong with that! I just feel like a lot of people went into this book holding onto their own pre-conceived visions of what Will Solace was and ended up disappointed the authors made him... different? But not really different, because he didn’t have a lot of in-depth personality or backstory before this.

Me personally? Yeah, I’m not that far into the book yet but I’m loving how Will is portrayed so far. He’s still sarcastic, but he’s shown his fair share of level-headedness as well as frustrations just within the first couple chapters. He is in no way the overly-optimistic sunshine-y boy who only exists to help Nico that the fandom has portrayed him to be all these years. His character arc is already headed in a way deeper direction (more on that when I finish the book). The whole bit where Will had coffee spilled on him and spent the next couple paragraphs in the scene trying to be unbothered while actually giving off “This is fine” fire dog energies? I loved that.

As for Nico, can I just say I adore how he’s written in this book? Aside from his PoV in Blood of Olympus, this is the first time he’s had his own narration. And it’s actually about him and more in-depth than previous times. I’ve heard people say that he’s “out of character,” and while I can see a little of what they’re all saying, I just want to know... what version of Nico have you all been reading? Did I miss something?

Up until this book, what exactly did we know about Nico? That he’s displaced in time, his sister and mother are both dead (and he feels alone), he harbored repressed gay feelings from his upbringing as a Catholic guy in 1940s Italy, and he’s been through the ringer more than once (so, trauma, basically). Oh, and he’s a bit of a nerd (Mythomagic and knowing all kinds of ancient creatures). That’s... about it. Everything has been speculation and projection from fans.

In previous books he’s always been portrayed from first- or third-person point of view (usually from people who don’t know him well and just think he’s “creepy”), leading to the idea that he’s distant and low-empathy based on some interactions he’s had with demigods who weren’t thrilled to be around him, during a time of great pressure. But he’s not exactly uncaring. He’s been shown to care a lot, actually (Bianca, Hestia, Bob, everything he’s done for Percy, his friendship with Reyna, Hazel, etc.)

But what about when he was ten? He was an excitable, curious kid who liked to have fun. And what did we see briefly in Trials of Apollo (before Jason died, at least)? We saw some of that energy return, particularly in The Hidden Oracle.

So, yeah, I’m personally thrilled to see him making cringe-y jokes and have some self-deprecating humor. It’s very “#OnBrand” for a traumatized teenager who’s just trying to cope and live life without any godly wars forcing him this way and that. Can we really say it’s “out of character” if we’ve never seen more than one side of Nico? (The under pressure side, from other character’s PoVs, in books not about him where he’s basically been a side character?) I’m just glad to see him cracking jokes, laughing, and acting more like a normal kid.

Now, is this book different from Rick’s other ones? Uh, yeah. I won’t say it’s not. But it’s not bad. It’s supposed to be different. It has slightly different intentions than the other books (re: explicitly working through trauma and relationship bumps). Also, it’s co-written. Co-written books always read slightly off from the original author’s work, but dam if it isn’t hard to meld writing styles and copy another author’s particular voice. But I think Mark did a very good job at imitating Rick’s style (again, from what I’ve read so far).

Will I change my mind on all this the farther I get into the book? Maybe. There’s a lot to read and take in. All I’m saying is don’t let the negative reviews warp your opinion of the book if you haven’t read it yet and are on the fence if you should or not. Wait for the PDF to drop, or for a library copy, and read and see for yourself.

#nico di angelo #will solace #the sun and the star #tsats #tsats preview #tsats predictions #pjo fandom #pjo hoo toa #rick riordan #mark oshiro #rrverse #riordanverse #riordan universe #Read Riordan #my stuff

[slut4thebroken]

Assorted characters x stalker!reader hcs

For some reason I’ve been obsessed with stalker!reader ideas. Like for any of my current hyperfixation crushes lol. So here are some unofficial head canons I guess

(Jason Todd, Jonathan Crane, Jackson Rippner, Spencer Reid, Stiles Stilinski, Bucky Barnes)

Jason Todd - You met him one day on the street. Some guy was being a dick and not taking no for an answer. When he started yelling, Jason intervened. And you’ve been in love with him ever since. You know that he obviously loves you too, that’s why he was so kind to you that day— that’s why he leaves his blinds open and let’s you watch him change after taking a shower. That’s why he was “careless” enough to let you find out his alter ego. Why else would he have trusted you so much to share that secret with you if he wasn’t in love with you too?

Jonathan Crane - Along the same lines as Jason. But you’re a student in his class. Everyday you sit in the front, your chin resting on your hand as you stare at him, mesmerized by his smooth voice and pretty face. You like the reaction you get when he makes eye contact and you don’t look away— he stumbles over his words and forces his gaze somewhere else while clearing his throat. His day to day life wasn’t particularly exciting, he spent most of his time on campus or at Arkham. But the one night he deviated from his usual schedule, you got all giddy and followed him eagerly. That’s how you found out your professor was the infamous Scarecrow. After learning that, you wondered if he’d ever want to test his fear toxin on you, leaving you a writhing mess for him.

Jackson Rippner - (I actually started a one shot with this plot lmao) You don’t know how a professional terrorist who stalks people for a living didn’t realize you were following him. It’s not like you’re very good at it. But you watched him watch other people, swooning when he became particularly violent on an assignment. You wondered how he’d react when he found out. Would he be flattered— impressed? Would he try to kill you? Or maybe— and this was your preferred option— he’d fuck you instead, making fun of you for being so desperate that you resorted to stalking him. He seemed like the kind of man who would enjoy degrading and humiliating you and you couldn’t wait for when that would finally happen.

Spencer Reid - Your genius professor with an IQ of 187 and three phds was entirely fascinating to you. You read anything and everything about him, including all of the cases he’s worked and any interviews he’s done. Once that wasn’t enough, you started following him around. He was so intriguing and captivating— the way he just ordered a coffee and handed the barista the money had you swooning. The first time you followed him, he had noticed you— made eye contact with you— so you made sure to be more careful. On days where he wasn’t teaching because he was away helping the BAU, you were incredibly bored and almost depressed. You missed seeing him every single day.

Stiles Stilinski - Stalking him was how you found out literally all of his friends secrets. You liked watching him talk animatedly to Scott from across the library, getting scolded by the librarian several times before being asked to leave. You liked watching him by himself, the way he fidgets with anything he can get his hands on and struggles to focus on whatever task he’s trying to complete, it’s endearing. What you didn’t like, however, was how he looks at Lydia. Every single time, you have to physical restrain yourself from walking over and bashing her head in, telling her to back the fuck off and leave him alone. Especially because she usually ends up making him sad. If he were with you, you’d always make him feel loved and appreciated. You wouldn’t act like some spoiled, airheaded tease (not the internalized misogyny lol).

Bucky Barnes - Stalking Bucky was one of the hardest things you’ve ever done. He’s so in tune with his surroundings, knows when there’s a threat before anyone else does. He also knows when he’s being followed. So you resorted to casual stalking— going to the gym when he’s there, sitting in the living room when he’s there, arguing with Sam about what to watch. You also liked watching him through the security cameras in the tower. It wasn’t as good as the real thing, but you could see the true, genuine Bucky. Not the Bucky he pretends to be around everyone else. This was the Bucky who likes romcoms, listens to music, does his best to cook, walks around in just sweatpants, not worrying about having to hide the gruesome scarring on his shoulder at the base of his metal arm— or any other scars for that matter. He has a lot of them and you ached to kiss every single one and tell him that you still think he’s incredibly handsome and pretty.

Part 2 with their reactions when they find out lol?

#stalker!reader #headcanons #jason todd #jason todd x reader #jonathan crane x reader #jonathan crane #jackson rippner x reader #jackson rippner #spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #stiles stilinksi x reader #stiles stilinski #bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes #i’m so in love #i need all of them