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[locobastaaa]

the notebook theory (tsukishima kei x reader)

masterlist | ao3

Pairing: Tsukishima Kei x Reader

Summary: Kei has a cynical and jaded outlook on love. When his friend Tadashi figures out that Kei has feelings for you, Kei isn’t sure how to react. After all, love is not something he does but rather, something that happens to him.

"There’s a notebook that Kei likes on his desk. No matter what he does, nothing is good enough to put a permanent mark into the thing. Even if he used a pencil, Kei feels like the evidence of the mark would still be there even after erasing it, a molecular change that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Kei calls it the notebook theory.

He thinks that might be what’s happening to him. A molecular change, imperceivable to someone not looking at him under a microscope. It’s like his DNA is being rewritten and stitched together with bright pink yarn. He feels himself steadily come apart and come together. It’s uncomfortable, like trying to dream when he has a fever. Kei is nearly certain that you’re the reason."

Content Warnings:  fem!reader (gender neutral pronouns), no real manga spoilers, slow burn, one-sided pining, angst, mentions of divorce and broken homes, toxic relationship (kei's parents), smut, fingering, oral (f!receiving and m!receiving), pinching, mentions of mark making, overstimulation (m!receiving), multiple orgasms, hair-pulling

Word Count: 24.8k

A/N: i know i spent forever working on this but it's finally done and while i have a lot of thoughts about it, idk rly what to say. anyway, here's my first attempt at a tsukishima long fic. also i already know that im not beating the tsukkiyama allegations, okay? i tried and failed to beat them okay i just think there is no way to put them in a situation without it being a little homoerotic bc.. they r them okay? anyway, i hope u enjoy and would love to hear ur thoughts <3

The morning comes without warning. Kei thinks he’s read that somewhere, though he’s just sure just where he saw it. He also thinks that whoever said that is right. Morning is always a harsh assault and never as gentle as people describe it to be. 

Kei’s room, the one he rents at university, faces toward the east. In the mornings, when the sun peeks over the horizon, it shines directly into his room and onto his bed before creeping across the light wood floors. His blinds, as useful as they are, always let some through the cracks and the light cuts the ground like butter to a knife. Kei doesn’t think it feels half as romantic as it sounds. 

The light works better than his alarm. No matter how set he is on sleeping in, he never fails to wake up as soon as those slats of light make their way across his bedspread. It wakes him like fever and he’s never quite as comfortable as he felt falling asleep. This morning is no different. 

He rises like he always has, running a hand over his blonde hair and dragging it down his face after sitting up. Then, he stands once in an attempt to gather his bearings before sitting right back down on the edge of the bed. He fights the lingering remnants of sleep, feeling the ray of sunlight beat down on his back. Then, he reaches towards his glasses on the nightstand and slides them up the bridge of his long nose before standing up again once and for all. 

Yamaguchi lives in the other room. His best friend since high school, perhaps his only real friend. They’d miraculously attended the same college and decided to room together, though his other friends from his youth aren’t too far. The arrangement managed to make it all the way until their fourth and final year. Living with each other has become par for the course. 

Tadashi wakes up later than Kei does on most days, except for Tuesdays and Thursdays. On those days, he has an 8 am and is usually in the kitchen before Kei has even stood up for the first time. Today is a Wednesday, so Yamaguchi is asleep in his room. The morning light doesn’t wake him the same way it does Kei. His room faces west, so it isn’t until the mid-afternoon, when Tadashi is chased from his room by the afternoon rays and heat, that he notices the sun on its blinding conquest across the sky. 

Kei’s room is clean and neat. There’s no clutter, no collection of items that don’t have a proper place. Everything is itemized and stored exactly where he intends for them to be. His floor is void of stray clothes, of socks he’d discarded the night before, his nightstand is bare and his desk is surprisingly empty save for one notebook sitting in its center. It’s a room that he could leave at any time, despite living here for nearly two years. If Kei chose to do so, he could pack his things and be gone in a day. 

Yamaguchi’s room is different. It’s lived in and well worn. There’s clutter on the floor, socks and pants he’d taken and tossed away to be dealt with later. Certain things don’t have a place and end up living on semi-crowded surfaces filled with things he likes to put down as quickly as he’d picked them up. Kei envies that way of living. A non-temporary way. He envies the rug in Yamaguchi’s room and the way he fills the space with himself. Kei thinks that even after they’re long gone, future tenants would still be able to feel Tadashi’s presence. 

To say that Kei is cynical would be accurate. He tends to lean more towards paranoia in his own strange way. He keeps things in order to quell the anxiety in it. Things stay where they are meant to be. As a result, he’s earned himself somewhat of an uptight attitude that makes Kei feel more awkward than relaxed even when he’s in his own spaces. Not that he minds it. 

Tadashi’s dish from last night is sitting next to the sink. Kei moves around it as he fixes a tea, making an effort not to drag his feet across the floor because he hates the scuffing sound. Every now and then, the glass of his mug will clink against the cheap kitchen tile and Kei will cringe in some paranoid worry that it will wake his friend. 

As he gathers his things to leave the quiet apartment, Kei wonders where his cynicism comes from. He’s sure he could pinpoint it if he tried. His parents divorce, his previous experiences with dating that have left him jaded, the holes that wore even in his most sturdy of sweaters. Inconsequential nothings that piled up until Kei had developed an undeniably cautious outlook on the world. To him, all of these things are the same. Like the morning, they’re intrusive and unsightly, but none is less important than the other. 

Kei does have things he likes. Art, for one. He likes paintings, sculptures, little pieces of history, and all of the things people make with their hands that he could never do. Kei is hopeless at crafts. His fingers are lithe and long, but they’re clumsy and hard to control. Despite his need for order, Kei has trouble controlling his urges. The subtle twitches of his fingers always mess up whatever it is he’s trying to craft. 

He likes writing best of all, specifically curatorial writing. It’s easy for him to pick which pieces belong together and how to organize them in a space, it suits his talent for compartmentalizing. Kei gets to tell a story that way, be it historical or artistic, sometimes both. The essays that his classmates find tedious, he finds relaxing despite the stress. For him, writing about art and history is a pleasure much like sipping tea that is the perfect temperature, unintrusive and natural. 

By the time he arrives at the library, it’s nearly 9 am. He works better here, in the quiet section at a table hidden by three tall shelves of books. It’s almost never occupied and there are hardly ever people seated in the immediate area. Kei doesn’t go out of his way to avoid others, but he finds that if he doesn’t approach people, they often won’t approach him. He prefers things this way, it makes the good and bad people easier to weed out. 

From this spot in the library, Kei can see where you usually set up shop for the day. You arrive after him by about 45 minutes and he convinces himself that it is always coincidental. 

Strictly speaking, you’re Tadashi’s friend, not his. You’ve known each other for a little under a year and have been by the apartment a few times, but yours and his conversations are limited entirely to pleasantries. How are you? What are you working on? We’re graduating soon, huh? Casual conversation that Kei can weasel his way out of at any time. Like his room, it’s impermanent. 

Kei has had the idea that nothing stays stuck in his head since middle school. The house he lived in when his parents were together, weekdays with his mother and weekends with his father, graduating seniors, the apartment he lives in now. To Kei, all of it is so temporary that he finds it difficult to get attached to it, not that he’s devoid of emotion. He quite loves the little things he has, but his grip on them is loose and half-hearted. Whatever leaves, Kei thinks is meant to leave, so he makes no effort to hold on. 

It’s probably unfair to think of you that way, but Kei can’t really help it. He can’t change what he is. Besides, it’s not as if he doesn’t have a reason to think so. He’s often approached by people for his looks, people who want to get close because they think he’s tall and handsome, people who collect others like trophies. He’s not heartless, so he’s been hurt more than a few times. Kei thinks he owes it to himself to be cautious, not that you’ve done anything to earn that type of subtle hostility. 

“Thought you might be here,” someone’s hand lands on his shoulder. 

“Shit,” he groans, “is it that late already?” 

Kei glances down at the watch on his wrist, reading the time as just past 10:45 am. He’s been here for an hour and 45 minutes and hasn’t gotten anything done. Tadashi pulls the chair next to him out and sits down, resting his chin on his hand. 

“Spacing out?” 

“A little,” Kei responds, tapping his pen against the table and turning back toward his book. 

“Got something due?” 

“Yeah, on Friday,” he exhales. “Haven’t started it yet though. You?” 

“Nah,” Tadashi smiles. “I’m just chasing you around.” 

“You’re like a girl with a crush.” 

Tadashi shrugs and lets out a good natured laugh. It’s a little too loud for this part of the library, but Kei lets it slide, smiling with his friend. 

Tadashi is the opposite of him, he thinks. He smiles often and says exactly what’s on his mind when it crosses it, even if it's a little mean. Tadashi used to be a follower, but in his final year of high school and university years, grew into someone befitting of his somewhat sunny and sarcastic personality. Thoughts and words come easily to him and he has no trouble vocalizing his joy or his disappointment. 

Yamaguchi has freckles covering the entirety of his body. Kei knows this because he’s seen far more of Tadashi than he thinks he should have. His skin is tawny and warm like him. Kei finds himself looking at the ones on his hands as Yamaguchi begins to write in his notebook. Kei can’t read his handwriting because it’s terrible and he doesn’t much feel like working on his own project, so he watches his friend’s hand mark the page. Then, his gaze slinks across the library to you. 

You’ve got your head down and look like you’re falling asleep despite it only being 11 in the morning. Your hand moves lazily across your computer keypad. By the time Kei realizes that you’ve spotted him staring, it’s too late to look away. His gaze was too intentional, so he smiles at you instead, nodding his head a little. 

You smile and wave, standing from where you sit and collecting your things. They fill up your arms because you don’t bother to put them in your bag, making your way clumsily across the room and setting your stuff down across from him. 

“Hi, Tsukishima,” you smile. “Hi, Tadashi.” 

You use his friend’s given name and Kei feels a pang of jealousy hit his chest. 

“How long have you been here? I didn’t see you,” you ask, settling into the seat across from Kei. 

“I just got here,” Tadashi smiles, looking up from his notes. “He’s been here for a while though.” 

Tadashi motions towards him. 

“Aw, why didn’t you say hi?” 

“You seemed busy,” Kei lies. 

You pout, filling your mouth with air. “Next time just come say hi, ‘kay?” 

“Sure,” Kei nods. 

Tadashi tosses him a sideways glance and Kei shrugs it off. He’s not interested in being teased this morning, though when is he ever. 

Kei doesn’t like the way you make him feel. When you’re around, he becomes prickly. It sets Kei on edge in a way that he hates. His world, previously so rigid and organized, quickly begins to feel cluttered and structureless. 

You make his heart pound. You make it hammer against his chest so hard that he can feel it in his ears and behind his eyes. It goes all the way down to his already-hard-to-control fingertips and the tops of his thighs. A previously pastel colored world goes vibrantly candy-colored like it’s been plunged in saturating liquid. He nevers knows how to hold himself, never knows how to act natural. What does it mean to act natural, anyway? How should he rest his hands on the desk? Would it be weird to lace them together? Does he look as stiff as he feels? It’s entirely possible that he is suffering a massive heart attack. 

You whisper across the table to Tadashi, leaning forward and laughing at something he’s written in his notebook. You can read his handwriting, something Kei is equally jealous about as he is angry. Kei just watches your conversation, unable to really listen into it on account of the stroke that he thinks he’s having. 

The three of you stay like this for a while, earning the occasional irritated whisper or dirty look from some of the more studious people in the library. Kei pretends to ignore them, remaining quiet throughout the duration of your study session with Tadashi. His quiet corner is invaded and painted bright pink with your presence and he doesn’t know whether to feel giddy or irrationally angry. Maybe it’s both. 

“Crap, is that the time?” Tadashi exclaims, hunching over himself when someone nearby shushes him. “I’ve got class across campus in 10 minutes.” 

He hurriedly collects his things. Tadashi does it so fast, in fact, that Kei hardly has time to beg him not to leave him alone with you. So he just watches as Tadashi throws his things clumsily into his bag and tosses it over his shoulder. 

“Bye, ___,” he says in a rushed whisper. “I’ll see you at home, Kei!” 

“Sure,” is all that Kei can muster. His voice cracks when he says it and he immediately avoids looking at you and stares at nothing in particular in his textbook. 

It’s quiet for a while. Kei pretends to busy himself by glancing between his textbook and his computer and you sit with your head bowed as you take notes on a lecture you’re listening to through the single earbud in your right ear. Then, you tap the end of your pen lightly on Kei’s notebook to get his attention. 

It’s only been about 10 minutes since Tadashi left, but the library now feels like an entirely different place. His heart pounds as he struggles to keep a straight face. 

When he looks up, you’re looking at him with a tilted head. Your expression is soft and unintrusive, friendly but a bit guarded. You smile softly at him. 

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” You ask gently. It doesn’t sound accusatory, but rather a casual statement tinged with friendliness. 

“Huh?” Blood rushes into his ears. 

“I just kinda get the impression that you’re uncomfortable around me,” you say. “Am I wrong?” 

“Uh, no- it’s not that I don’t like you.” 

He’s quick to correct you and he feels heat rush to his cheeks. 

“Then what?” you question lightly. There’s no ulterior motive behind your smile, Kei can tell, but your openness makes him uneasy. 

“I dunno,” he calms himself a little. “I don’t really know how to act around you, I guess.” 

You laugh, leaning back into your chair. “Is that all?” 

“Well, yeah…” he feels awkward and his palms are sweaty. He drops them below the table to wipe them. “You’re Tadashi’s friend and I’m pretty different from him so I just…” He trails off, shrugging his shoulders.

“I was worried you hated me,” you smile, chuckling to yourself. 

“That’s definitely not it,” he loosens a little, smiling lightly despite the thudding of his heart. It slows down steadily. 

“I’m your friend too, ya know?” 

“That so?” 

“Well, yeah,” you shrug and lean all the way back, crossing your arms. “I just kinda figured that we would be.” 

“Friends?” His tongue feels heavy in his mouth. His word placement is awkward. 

“Duh,” you laugh a little. “You know, you don’t have to speak formally with me.” 

“That’s just the way I am,” he huffs at being read. 

“Well, you can drop them with me. I don’t mind.” 

“Tall order,” he snorts. 

You tilt your head to the side. “Did you just make a joke?” 

“Uh, yeah…” 

“Funny,” you smile. “What are you studying?” 

“It’s not really studying…” he says, glancing down at the near empty document. “I’m supposed to be writing an essay I have due on Friday. Not going well.” 

He looks up at you through his lashes. You’re leaning forward across the table now, your chin angled upward as you try and peek at what’s on his screen. He turns it so that you can see better. 

“Baroque art?” You read aloud. “Oh yeah, Tadashi mentioned that you’re an art history major. Do you draw too?” 

“No,” he scoffs. “I’m hopeless at it, but I like art. It’s nice to look at.” 

“Huh, you look like you’d be good at drawing,” you say. 

“What’s that mean?” 

“I dunno, like a manga author or something,” you shrug. “You’ve got nice hands too. Like an artist.” 

“Manga?” He laughs a little, trying to play off the color he feels rushing to his face from the compliment. 

“Yeah, you look like the manga type.” 

“Is it the glasses?” He raises an eyebrow. 

“Maybe,” you laugh. 

Kei looks down at his hands. They’re big, like the rest of him, and his knuckles are thin. He’s hyper-aware of them now that you’ve complimented them. He studies them briefly, following the barely visible veins up the back of them, following the line of his fingers to his nails. They’re trimmed and somewhat well kept, save for the spots that he tends to bite at when he lays in bed at night. His hands look nothing like Tadashi’s. Tadashi’s fingers are thick and his nails are short on account of him biting them. Kei wonders if you prefer them to his. 

—

There’s a notebook that Kei likes on his desk. It’s only a bit bigger than his fist—a little thing, really—and it’s completely blank. Kei’s never written anything down in it, nothing has ever really been worth sullying the thing. It’s got brown fabric binding and a semi-thick cover. It’s malleable, but not so flimsy that he’d need a desk to write in it. 

Kei’s not too sure why he bought it in the first place. Maybe he liked the size of it, small enough to fit in his pocket, but not so small as to be ridiculous. It’s practical, much like he is. He’s considered turning it into a daily planner and putting to-do lists in it, but Kei isn’t much of a list guy, it’s Tadashi that likes making lists. Nothing has ever really felt like it suits the book. He’s considered journaling in it, but his life is one big routine and he doesn’t think there’s anything worth writing about. 

No matter what he does, nothing is good enough to put a permanent mark into the thing. Even if he used a pencil, Kei feels like the evidence of the mark would still be there even after erasing it, a molecular change that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Kei calls it the notebook theory. 

He thinks that might be what’s happening to him. A molecular change, imperceivable to someone not looking at him under a microscope. It’s like his DNA is being rewritten and stitched together with bright pink yarn. He feels himself steadily come apart and come together. It’s uncomfortable, like trying to dream when he has a fever. 

Kei is nearly certain that you’re the reason, not that he’s about to admit to anyone else that he likes you. Tadashi managed to weasel it out of him, though he didn’t really have to ask. In fact, it was less of an admittance to Kei than it was confirmation of his own feelings. If Tadashi can tell that he likes you, then he must. 

People seem to know things about Kei before he even knows them himself. At least, that’s how it seems. He’s always confronted with his own feelings by other people, not that they’re really ever wrong, but it seems everyone catches onto what he’s feeling rather quickly. He’s not too sure why that is, maybe he’s just obvious and hasn’t realized it. 

Come to think of it, when Tadashi had confronted Kei about his feelings for you, he’d been deeply annoying about it. Kei couldn’t even try to deny it because Tadashi had come out with his guns blazing, cornering him in the living room and throwing facts about you at him until his face was beet red with embarrassment. Then, with a serious frown on his face, he’d simply stated you like them and that was the end of it. Kei couldn’t even deny it. Even he knew that it read plainly in his expression. 

To be frank, it sucks being told in plain speech how he feels about someone. Whenever that happens, it makes Kei feel like he’ll never be able to keep another secret in his life. Sometimes, he wishes that he was able to make the decision to tell someone else on his own, but even Kei knows that that is a little beyond him. Kei can think the feelings just fine, but when it comes to speaking them aloud, he seems to have a padlock around his throat. 

Tadashi knows this about him and if it weren’t for him, Kei would have agonized far longer and far worse over certain situations of emotional turmoil. Most of the time, Tadashi gets it without needing to ask or say anything. It’s nice to have someone understand him in that way, even if it does mean he can’t keep a secret to save his life. 

Feelings lately make Kei a little angry. He’s always known that he’s had somewhat of a sour personality. Kei doesn’t need to be told that he’s smug to know that he is. He’s snarky and usually touchy, picky about the people that he hangs out with. It’s not really a secret that Kei is a hard person to get along with, but lately, he feels like it’s been worse. 

Maybe it’s because this is new territory to him. As conceited as it sounds, Kei has never liked someone first. It’s not because he doesn’t think anyone is worthy, but rather, because there are very few people he doesn’t find grating. Despite how he seems, Kei is incredibly sensitive about things, so naturally, it’s easier to get on his nerves. 

He’s dated before, though not for long, and all of his relationships have started the same way. Kei is approached by them, usually on the premise of looks, and he accepts. He’s not sure why he does. Sometimes it’s because he thinks they’re pretty, other times it’s because the romantic in him hopes that it will actually work out. It never has. 

Most of the time, Kei turns out to be different than they expected. He’s too touchy, too sarcastic, too awkward in his way of trying to love. To Kei, it has always felt like it’s ended just as he was beginning to develop real feelings. 

If he’s being honest, it’s given him a twisted inferiority complex. He’s worried that somehow, on a fundamental level, he’s not enough. Sometimes, it even goes so far as for Kei to think that he’s just generally disappointing. He tries not to be. Kei wants to be relied on. He wants to be someone his friends can go to when they need something sturdy. 

Despite his personality, Kei considers himself sturdy. Well, maybe stubborn is a better word. Kei considers himself stubborn enough to be made sturdy. He’s just a little awkward. That’s all. People seem to mistake that for being unreliable. It’s a peeve of Kei’s. 

Tadashi isn’t like that. Tadashi is bright and warm, reliable in every sense of the word. Kei actually looks up to him a lot, not that he’d ever say anything like that to his face. Sure, Tadashi’s not perfect, but at least people rely on him. At least Kei relies on him. 

Tadashi is more easy going than Kei is. He has an easier time going with the flow, which makes him more personable. Kei thinks that Tadashi is the closest thing that he’s had to a better half. In truth, without Tadashi around, Kei isn’t exactly sure what would have become of him. 

It’s pointless thinking about these sorts of things though. Kei realized a long time ago that thinking about being better won’t automatically make him better. This is just the way he is and Kei’s learned to accept that, whatever it means. Still, none of this changes the fact that he likes you. 

Kei could mull over thought after thought and he doesn’t think it would have any effect on the fact that he’s definitely developed a crush. He’s positive it will go away. In fact, he’s not even sure if it’s real. Maybe Kei is just jealous of you the same way he’s jealous of Tadashi. You’re bright and warm like he is. You and Tadashi are cut from the same cloth, so maybe that’s why the two of you get along so well. 

In all honesty, Kei wishes he could be a little more like Tadashi for that reason. Maybe if he were more like Tadashi, he’d have the courage to fully accept these new and uncertain feelings for what they are. But he doesn’t have that kind of courage, not right now at least. He doesn’t have the courage to solidify and lean into his feelings. Kei doesn’t want to risk what little comfort and security he has. If the relationship between you both is a blank page, Kei doesn’t have anything important to write. What if it ruins the paper? What if when he erases it, it changes the thing on a molecular level for the worse? The notebook theory. 

— 

Despite everything, Kei is rather self-aware. At least in his own head he is. Kei knows that when he pretends he doesn’t like you, he really ends up liking you more. He knows that he’s touchy, that he’s awkward, that he comes across more crass than he intends to. Kei is clumsy, not stupid. That doesn’t mean that he has to acknowledge it. 

You’ve been coming around more often since the conversation Kei had with you in the library. Maybe you’re more comfortable now knowing that he doesn’t hate you, so you’re happier to join Tadashi in their shared apartment. 

Kei feels bad about making you think that he hates you. Actually, he feels really bad about it. Like, astronomically bad about it. Embarrassingly enough, it actually keeps him up at night. So he goes out of his way to be a little nicer to you. The only other person he’s ever done that for is Tadashi. 

He greets you properly when you pass, despite the flare up of a medical condition he’s yet to fully diagnose brought on by your presence. He asks you questions about your studies, partially because he is genuinely curious and partially because he doesn’t want you to hate him. He thinks he’d die if you hated him. Kei’s being brave in his own way. It’s little, but he’s doing it. 

As a result, the two of you have grown a little closer. Kei has your phone number now, though he rarely has any reason to text you. Typing out a message to you makes him nervous. It makes him red in the face when you’re not even there. Somehow, having your phone number feels vulnerable to him, like he has access to you whenever he wants and you him. It means that if you wanted, you could make him nervous without even being nearby. That’s a lot for Kei to think about. 

Kei sees you in the library sometimes too, but he never takes the initiative to speak to you. You always come up to him first, clumsily gathering your things the way you did the day you and him sorted out your friendship and plopping them down in front of him. 

Sometimes, you both go several hours without saying anything to each other. Other times, you’ll chat away about something while leaning forward on the desk and Kei has to pretend that he’s not wildly nervous at your proximity. You’re so friendly. So genuinely warm that Kei can physically feel it when you talk. Despite his nerves, Kei would describe you as comfortable. You’re a comfortable person to him, as alarming as that is. 

His crush is out of hand. It scares him, not that he’s actively thought about that. What started as him noticing you has quickly ballooned into him being painfully aware of you at all times. He kind of feels bad about it. You don’t seem to think that he’s anything more than a friend and it makes Kei feel bad that he thinks of you as anything but that. He doesn’t want you to be just a crush to him. Kei wants you to be like Tadashi, someone he can rely on and be comfortable with. He almost feels like he’s reversed what’s been done to him his whole life, like somehow he’s only become your friend because he wants something more. 

Truth is though, he doesn’t want anything more. Kei wants to stay exactly where he is. He doesn’t want his crush to develop any further. He doesn’t want to confess, he wants to forget. Even now, sitting on a couch in the library, he wants to imagine he doesn’t feel anything at all for you.  

“Hey, are you okay?” You tilt your head at him. 

“Huh? Me?” He questions. “Yeah, I’m fine.” 

“You seem a little distracted,” you smile. “You’ve been staring at your computer for like… 10 minutes with this blank look on your face.” 

“You’ve been staring at me for 10 minutes?” He raises an eyebrow, trying to play off the embarrassment of being caught like that. 

“Not staring at you,” you huff, “but I definitely noticed.” 

“Ha, creep,” he tilts his head up a little, blowing air out of his nose. 

“You’re twisted, you know?” 

“Whatever,” he shrugs his shoulders and looks back at his computer screen. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees you shake your head and smile before looking down at your work. 

Tadashi has said the same exact thing to him before. In highschool, after Kei had made a joke about his teammate Hinata’s height, Tadashi had given him a look and snorted that he’s so twisted. He’s been hearing that sort of thing his entire life. 

“Hey, are you cool if I skip out of here early?” You ask a few moments later. 

“Oh, yeah sure. I don’t mind,” he nods, hiding his disappointment. “I didn’t realize that we had like… set times to be here.” 

You laugh lightly. “Well, we don’t, but we tend to come and go at the same time, no? I kinda look forward to it.” 

Kei envies your honesty. You’re so honest all of the time. You say what you feel when it pops into your head. He wishes he could be like that, maybe then he would be able to say that he does too. Instead, he just nods and swallows his heart back down. You smile at him again and then gather your things. 

“You’ll be home on Friday night, right?” 

“Uhm, yeah? Why?” 

“Tadashi invited me and a few friends over, did he tell you?” 

“I think he mentioned it.” Kei has actually been thinking about it for the last couple days. 

“Good, I’ll see you, right?” 

“Yeah, you will.” 

“Great, talk to you later then!” You smile and with that, you walk away. 

You sounded so certain in that statement. Talk to you later. You said it like it was inevitable. Thinking about that, Kei can’t help but watch you go. He even likes looking at the back of you, though he wishes he could see your face too. It feels worse to be walked away from than walked towards. 

Kei can’t tell anymore if what he feels is romance or jealousy. It’s probably both. It’s probably some mix of the two that he can’t quite sort out. He wishes it weren’t that way. Kei gets the feeling that he might be ruined. 

So he just watched you leave the library. Someone is waiting for you at the top of the stairwell. Kei can tell they’re a guy and despite the reluctance of his feelings, his stomach drops anyway when you nudge his shoulder with yours and loop your arm around his. That’s something you haven’t done to Kei before. Touch him. You touch this other person so easily. It makes Kei jealous. 

It makes sense that you might be seeing someone, that there might be someone else. After all, you’re you. Desirable. You look up at the stranger, leaning on him, smiling and flashing your teeth. Yeah, it makes sense. 

Turns out, it’s easier to pretend that he doesn’t feel anything when he thinks you’re interested in someone else. He likes to think it will save him the time of wondering. 

—

Kei has cleaned his room approximately four times today. Sure, it’s overboard, but every time he goes into it, he notices something else that needs to be spruced up. Like a pot with a leak, there is always something that he seemed to miss the last time he went through and cleaned up. 

It’s not like you’ll be in his room tonight anyway, but you will be in his apartment and that’s close enough to his room that he, for whatever reason, needs to make it so spotless that it looks like a set. Kei knows though, that even when you’re here, he’ll be wondering if there’s something else that he missed beyond the closed door and he’ll think about it incessantly. 

He’s been avoiding the thought of him liking you. Instead, Kei cleans and cleans and then cleans some more for good measure. It’s not like he has any sort of claim on you and he knows that it’s stupid to feel jealous over one interaction he witnessed by chance, but his mind is running away with him. Was that person your boyfriend? Has he been begrudgingly pining over a taken person all these months? Do you think that he’s creepy because of it? 

He doesn’t get to be upset over the idea that you’re seeing someone else. Why wouldn’t you be? Kei’s done absolutely nothing to indicate his interest in you (or lack thereof), besides maybe telling you that he doesn’t hate you. He has no right to feel the way he does, but he spirals anyway. His insecurities, the ones that gnaw at him in the hours before he falls asleep, play in a constant loop in his head. His unreliability, his unpleasant personality, his cynicism, the baggage he carries with him like a badge. All of it piles up one by one. 

Kei feels like a kid again, losing himself over such a simple interaction, over something so miniscule that it might not even be considered anything at all. There are a plethora of reasons for his feeling like this and Kei thinks he could draw one of his issues out of a hat and it would still somehow address the situation at hand, but all he really feels is hurt and he doesn’t want to explain it away. Kei finds that liking someone hurts. It hurts more than it feels good and the uncertainty chews at his patience and leaves it razor thin. It’s not your fault, nor is it the person Kei’s convinced himself you’re seeing, but he needs someone to blame and it can’t be himself. 

The idea of you relying on someone else makes him nauseous. He’d never considered the thought before, that you find him as unreliable as others do. Kei wants to be relied on, most of all by you, and that fact makes him upset. He’s afraid of what you think of him and without the confidence to accept his feelings, it threatens to crush him. 

Kei’s got this itch over it, so he tries to distract himself. Cleaning his space to prepare for you helps him delude himself that he doesn’t quite like you at all. It’s not your fault. He’s just confused, like his parents were when they married each other. It hurts. Like they were when they had him to try and fix their marriage, which had started to fall apart even when Akiteru was an only child. He’s confused. He’s jealous over your ability to live the way Kei has always wanted to. That’s all this is. Nothing more and nothing less. He feels like he’s being split in two, stretched thin between two modes of thinking. 

Kei glances over his shoulder and into his room one last time. He’s forgotten to wipe the mirror. He goes back in and the cycle starts itself over. 

—

He’s not proud of his behavior. Kei thinks only a seriously huge asshole would be proud of the kind of behavior he displayed tonight. He regrets it immensely, though some part of him is begrudgingly holding onto the idea that maybe he was right to be so short tempered. Of course, that’s a lunatic’s idea. 

Tadashi is standing by the apartment door, mumbling something to you behind it. Over Tadashi’s shoulder, he sees you shake your head and in response, Tadashi gives a small bow before shutting the door to the shared apartment. Then, Tadashi turns and walks towards him. 

Kei doesn’t want to look at him, but Tadashi, for some reason, commands his gaze. 

“Is there a reason you were such a huge cunt tonight?” Tadashi sort of spits the words. They land at Kei’s feet and roll around before settling. 

“What are you talking about? I was normal,” he answers, though the statement sounds like a lie the moment it leaves his lips. 

“Bullshit,” Tadashi says. “You were being an asshole the second they walked through the door and you’ve been one to me all day.” 

Kei scoffs, his cheeks burning, “I’ve just been tired, dude. Besides, what does it matter? You’re closer to all of them than I am.”

“What? You’re tired so you just get to be a huge asshole?” 

“No,” Kei responds. 

“So then what was that?” 

Kei doesn’t really know. He doesn’t know what prompted him to act so cold or make such snide comments. It’s true, he’d been in a bad mood all day and he knows that Tadashi has borne the brunt of his misplaced emotions, but even Kei is confused as to why he’d acted the way he did. Still though, there is a part of him that knows that it was connected to his spiraling and what he saw in the library. He’d sound insane if he said it out loud, like somehow his growth was stunted in the third grade, but Kei is sure it had something to do with liking you and the hurt that comes with it. 

It’s not as if he’d been outwardly mean, but he had been cold. There are parts of himself that Kei doesn’t want you to see, sections of his personality that he ropes off from you because despite not liking you, he wants you to see the best in him. Tonight, he managed to somehow show off the worst. 

It started with the noise when everyone had arrived. You, Hinata, Kageyama, Tanaka, Kiyoko, and Yachi had all piled into the apartment in one large group. Kei’d been sitting on the couch and the sound of the door startled him right off the bat. He assumed that by the time they all had rounded the corner into the living room, his face was already sour, because everyone had greeted him cautiously. 

It’s no surprise that everyone was so loud. Kei has known this particular group for many years and they, having all gone to school or work nearby, pile into his apartment often for events like these. You were really the only new factor in all of it and while Kei is known as a touchy person, he certainly was more touchy than usual tonight. 

You’d been trying to talk to him all evening and Kei, in a desperate attempt to avoid whatever lingering feelings he had for you, had been shutting you down at every turn. Thinking back on it, he’s endlessly embarrassed. You didn’t deserve that. You’d been nothing but kind to him and there Kei was holding a grudge over you for something he had no right to be angry about whatsoever. He had been holding a grudge over something that he’d learned later that evening that wasn’t even true. 

Kei thinks that what Tadashi is referring to, was deliberately picking a fight with Tanaka. Kei and Tanaka have never been particularly close. Even in high school, his boisterous and somewhat obnoxious personality has always rubbed Kei the wrong way. Despite that, Tanaka has somehow managed to maintain a connection to him through university and the two of them have established a tentative but honest friendship. 

You had been sitting on the arm of the couch beside Tanaka, leaning over him to look at something he was showing you on his phone. Then, you laughed a little too hard and Kei felt that familiar sense of injustice rise to his throat, thick and heavy. It’s an ugly feeling, the kind that makes Kei feel sick when he’s in bed late at night. Bile rose in his throat in the form of harsh words. Jealousy in the form of the verbal venom Kei excels at. 

For Kei, Tanaka was an easy target, someone he could poke at and get a satisfying rise out of. In the moment, the rise he’d gotten from Tanaka by making snide comments about the volume of his voice and his particular obsession with pretty girls had been exactly that, satisfying. 

He’d picked a small fight. Nothing physical, but just enough to get him irritated. Kei’s not proud of it, but he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t done it deliberately. After all, Tanaka has never been the type to be the bigger person and turn his nose up. 

Sometimes, when Kei is experiencing emotions he’d rather not deal with, he decides to obsess over one single thing. Usually, it’s cleaning or schoolwork. Tonight, it happened to be the volume of Tanaka’s voice, which he knows was a shitty thing to do. Despite wanting to be reliable, Kei can’t help but feel that he was endlessly immature, lashing out at someone completely unrelated to the situation just because he could. 

Tadashi pulls him from his thoughts. 

“I thought you liked them, dude,” his voice is even, letting up on the anger. 

“Who?” Kei plays dumb. 

Tadashi responds with your name and Kei stiffens slightly. “I thought you guys had gotten closer. What happened?” 

“Nothing happened,” Kei says. It’s the truth. Absolutely nothing happened. Kei had spiraled all on his own. 

“Why did you ignore them then?” 

“I didn’t ignore them,” Kei says. Again, it’s not a lie. He may have shut conversations down and been a little cold, but Kei couldn’t ignore you if he tried, it’s sort of the whole problem he’s dealing with now. 

“Maybe, but you were cold. Like… needlessly.” 

“I was fucking normal, Tadashi. You should know me well enough by now to know that,” Kei spits. 

“That’s the problem though, isn’t it? I know you and I know that shit wasn’t normal. You’re twisted, but you’re not an outright asshole, Kei. What’s going on?” 

“I was normal, Tadashi. Just because I didn’t bounce around or get rowdy, doesn’t mean that something is wrong,” Kei answers. 

“Yeah, but you were like… majorly fucking weird, Kei. You were being an asshole. Don’t you like them? Don’t you want to be nice to them?” 

“I don’t.” 

“You don’t want to be nice to them?” Tadashi scoffs, rolling his eyes. 

“No, not that. I don’t like them like that anymore,” Kei lies. 

“Oh please, that’s such horseshit,” Tadashi laughs bitterly. 

“Get off my ass, Tadashi. I don’t fucking feel that way about them anymore,” Kei insists. 

“Did something happen?” 

“No, literally nothing happened! Why does something have to happen? I just don’t like them,” Kei feels himself getting indignant. Tadashi doesn’t deserve this either, but he seems to be indiscriminate with his poor behavior tonight. 

Tadashi looks at Kei for a moment, studying him and calculating all of the things only Tadashi could know about him. Kei tries to hide it. 

“Jesus, Kei, you’ve got to stop doing this shit,” Tadashi touches his hand to his forehead. 

“Doing what?” 

“Getting all in your head about every single connection you’ve ever had with a person,” Tadashi raises his voice. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” 

“It means I’ve seen you do this a million times! You start to really feel something for a person and then you fucking back away like a dog with its tail between its legs!” 

“I don’t do that!” 

“Yes, you do! You sabotage yourself until the other person is forced to do something about it!” Tadashi exhales. 

“I’ve never done that deliberately! What does someone else’s actions have to do with me?” 

“It doesn’t have to do with you,” Tadashi says, “It has to do with your parents.” 

The wind is knocked out of Kei, air sucked from his lungs. He furrows his eyebrows at Tadashi, his mouth slightly open. 

“I’m right, aren’t I?” Tadashi pushes, angry and trying to make him listen. “Not every relationship is like your parents’, Kei.” 

Tadashi knows he’s stepped over the line the moment he says it. If it hadn’t registered before, it registers clearly on his face now, regret settling over Tadashi’s usually bright features. Kei gapes at him for a moment, running through his thoughts and trying to pick out one that best verbalizes what it is he feels. Kei comes up empty. 

“Shit-” Tadashi starts towards him. “Kei, I’m sorry I didn’t mean that. I’m just pissed off I didn’t mean to-” 

Kei pushes past him. “Tadashi, I know you mean well, but don’t try to tell me about my fucking parents.” 

Tadashi doesn’t try to stop him when Kei flings the front door open and walks outside.

—

Kei remembers it like it was yesterday. He remembers all of it. 

He can clearly recall the way shattered glass looked on the marble tiles of his childhood home. White porcelain, broken up into multitudes by his mother and father. They never laid hands on each other, but everything else in the house was fair game. Kei’s lost count of the amount of broken glass dishes and picture frames he’d swept from the floor. 

Kei’s parents had always been on and off in their affection for each other. One minute, they were deeply in love and the next, they were at each other’s throats. Neither of them were bad people, but they made each other bad people. The two of them brought out the worst in each other, maybe on account of knowing the other so well. 

Akiteru was an accident. His brother knows this because when his parents argued, they never let him forget it. In their spats, leverage was whatever they could get their hands on, and that just happened to be Akiteru and the unfortunate circumstances of an accidental pregnancy. 

His parents got married at 19, thinking that they’d be able to handle a child, that their marriage was anything but rushed. They convinced themselves that it was love, when the reality was that Akiteru came because they were too young and stupid to prevent it. At least, that’s what Kei and Akiteru had settled on in the evenings after the yelling had died down and they were left to make sense of it in their shared bedroom. 

They had Kei to fix the marriage. Kei knows this because, like Akiteru, his father’s marital “solution” in the form of a second child was constant leverage to his mother. Kei grew up asking Akiteru why his mother and father even had children in the first place. 

Their relationship was rocky and unstable, predictable and toxic. They, like Kei, would do things to get rises out of each other. They’d make digs, do things to get under the other’s skin. They did it for attention, for affection, or out of loathing for the person they’d decided to make their life partner. When things settled, they got bored. His parents often mistakened calmness for complacency in their relationship. His parents loved each other, but they hated each other just as much, and it was he and Akiteru who paid the price. 

They got divorced when he was fourteen and any chance of Kei having a normal family went to the courthouse with the divorce papers. Akiteru was 20 at the time and managed to avoid the brunt of the custody battle. Kei still gets unexplainably angry with Akiteru for leaving him alone, though he knows that it’s not his fault. The only way Kei could make sense of it was through blame and it was easier to blame Akiteru for lying about volleyball or leaving him alone than it was to blame himself. Both Kei’s father and mother tried for full custody, not because they loved him that much, but because they knew that it would destroy the other. In the end, Kei spent his weekdays with his mother because she lived closer to his school, and weekends with his father just because. 

It happens all the time. People grow together, then grow apart, and grow to loathe each other. Kei watched it happen to his parents, he watched it happen to his friends, he watched it happen to himself with his own reflection. That’s just the way it goes. 

The air outside of his apartment is cool and breezy. He can feel the wind through his sweater, cutting through the gaps in the stitching and into his skin. Kei feels like he can think a little better out here, sitting on the short concrete wall with his back to the apartment building. He stares at his feet, outstretched in front of him. He's still wearing his house slippers. 

Kei did this once when he was younger. The fight that night had been particularly bad and his parents had resulted to throwing things across their bedroom. Kei could hear picture frames shatter through two walls and he wondered which memories they’d decided to trash. A particularly loud shout had sent Kei out of the front door and onto the curb in front of the house. 

He remembers crying, staring at his house slippers on the pavement, afraid because he could hear the shouting even from the lawn. Akiteru had come out to get him, sitting down beside him on the curb and putting his arm around him. 

“Are mom and dad gonna get divorced?” Kei had asked through sniffles. 

“Divorced? No, no,” Akiteru answered. “It’s just a rough patch. It happens to all couples. Mommy and Daddy will be fine.” 

“It’s normal?” Kei sniffled. 

Akiteru paused for a moment. Looking back, Kei realizes that Akiteru was debating on whether or not to lie to protect him. Kei wishes he hadn’t. 

“Yeah, it’s normal.” 

Normal. Kei realizes that he doesn’t exactly know what a normal relationship looks like. He is his parents' son. What they had in them, he has in him. Kei knows that those habits, the digs, the sour statements, the passive aggressiveness, are all things he’s picked up from watching them. Some role models they were. 

He needs to apologize to Tadashi. He may have overstepped, but Kei knows that he’d been an asshole tonight. He’ll need to apologize to Tanaka as well. And to you, which is perhaps the scariest part of this. He wants to apologize for his behavior, but apologizing means that he has to admit that he’d acted the way his parents did, out of jealousy and a pull for attention. Yup, he’s his parents’ son alright. 

Kei tilts his head up toward the sky. Only half of it is visible, the other half blocked by the three story apartment complex directly behind him. It’s a clear night, but he can’t see any stars and the moon is nowhere to be found. Kei wonders when the morning will come. It’s a few hours off, but he thinks about how the sky will look when the sun begins to rise. 

“Kei,” a familiar voice calls from in front of him. 

You’re a few feet away, your hands clasped in front of you. 

“Thought you went home,” he says. 

“Yeah well, I had intended to,” you start, “but you seemed off and I felt weird going back without checking on you. Can I sit?” 

Kei shrugs his shoulders, mortified and angry at being caught like this. He appreciates the thought, but you’re the last person he wants to see right now. It just means he needs to face his shortcomings sooner. 

“Are you okay?” 

“I’m fine,” Kei answers automatically. 

“Just decided on some fresh air?” You smile a little and Kei blows air out of his nose. 

“Yup, that’s exactly it.” 

You sit next to him with your legs outstretched the same way his are, your hands are laced together in front of you, hanging down between your thighs. Kei doesn’t make an effort to say anything and neither do you. Instead, he just trains his head back up towards the sky and attempts to collect his thoughts, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose. 

Strangely, tonight he doesn’t feel nervous. Maybe it’s because he doesn’t have the energy to. Maybe he’s too preoccupied with being sorry to pay any mind to the heart palpitations he gets when you’re around. Maybe it’s because even though he showed you the worst of him tonight, you still came back. It’s a small hope, but it’s there. 

“Hey,” your voice comes quietly, “I don’t know what’s going on, but if you need- I mean- if you want to talk about it, I’m a pretty good ear.” 

Kei nods a little. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, “about tonight.” 

“I didn’t come here for an apology, you know?” You exhale a little. 

“Yeah, but you deserve one,” he says. “I was pretty shitty to you.” 

“Yeah, you were,” you agree, catching Kei off guard, “but it happens to all of us. Sometimes we feel things and just can’t keep them inside, you know?” 

“Yeah,” he agrees, swallowing down his shame. 

There’s another long silence. You don’t move to touch him or talk to him, instead, you provide steady company. Kei, as strange as it is, is comforted by your presence. 

“I fought with Tadashi,” Kei says after a few minutes. 

“Today?” 

“Yeah, tonight. After everyone left,” he says. “I deserved it though. I’ve been pretty shitty to him all day.” 

You hum, leaning back on your hands. 

“I did the same shit in high school too, you know?” Kei starts. “We’ve uhm- we’ve known each other for a while, the group that was over tonight. Around the end of middle school some shit happened and I uh- I took out a lot of what I was feeling on Tadashi and the others, but mostly Tadashi because he was the only one who knew.” 

Kei isn’t sure why he’s telling you this. Maybe Tadashi was right. Maybe this is another attempt at self sabotage. 

“You bullied him?” You ask, a little surprised. 

Kei shakes his head. “No, but I wasn’t very nice either. Anyone could tell you that. I thought I was past it, though,” he admits, a little defeated. 

“Did you ever apologize?” 

Kei looks up at you in surprise. Your eyes are full of something, curiosity, maybe pity. 

“For what you did in school?” 

He nods. “Countless times, and not just to Tadashi either, to everyone.” 

“You know, stuff like this happens,” you say. “When I was little, I used to hate sharing. Toys, food, friends. I’d hate it when my friends were friends with other people. It made me insecure and I’d get mad at them for it. I grew out of it, but sometimes I still get that way and I have to apologize later.” 

Kei laughs. It’s strikingly similar to what’s happening now, not that you’d have any way of knowing. 

“I can’t imagine you doing that,” he says. 

“I’m serious,” you say. “I still get weird over it sometimes.” 

Kei shakes his head a little, smiling. 

“All that I’m saying is that sometimes we slip up, that’s all. It’s normal,” you continue. “Not that I’m condoning it. Just saying that it doesn’t make you a horrible person. It makes you human.” 

“Thanks,” he says softly. 

“No problem,” you respond. 

“So why’d you fight with him tonight?” 

“He was angry with me because I was an asshole,” Kei shrugs.

“And you’re mad that he called you out?” You give a quiet and somewhat incredulous laugh. 

Kei shakes his head. “No, I’m angry about what he said after.” 

“What’d he say?” 

Kei debates on telling you. He doesn’t want to make himself out to be a victim. After all, Tadashi meant no harm, even if his comment did exactly that. 

“The argument kind of switched subjects,” Kei tiptoes around the fact that the subject was you. “He brought up a bad habit of mine and I got defensive.” 

“Okay,” you say, waiting for him to say more. 

“Remember when I said that something happened at the end of middle school and only Tadashi knew about it?” When you nod, Kei continues. “My parents got divorced. They were a bad match and it was messy. He brought it up.” 

You nod again, your eyes wide. 

“He didn’t mean any harm, I know that,” Kei inhales. “But uh- that stuff kind of sticks with you. Well, it’s stuck with me and I didn’t like having it used to explain my behaviors, even if he was right. I’m not deflecting or anything though. I know I was the problem tonight.” 

“Sure,” you say. “I’m sorry about your parents.” 

Kei shrugs. “It’s in the past. They’re both remarried now with new kids.” 

The last sentence leaves Kei with a sour taste in his mouth. His parents are good people, but after his childhood, he doesn’t think they have any business having more children. Maybe they’re capable of being good for them, but Kei doesn’t like to imagine that. It makes him feel like their marriage wasn’t the problem, but he and Akiteru were. 

“You say that like they got a new pet,” you smile a little. “Are you still in touch with them?” 

“Yeah,” he says. “I visit whenever I go back home, though they’re really not too far from here.” 

“That’s good of you.” 

“Well, they are my parents,” Kei says plainly. 

You’re the only other person he’s divulged this to by choice and your reactions, understanding and level-headed, make him feel better. It’s like getting a weight off of his chest. This is the worst of him. This little bit of information, his history of being unable to fully confront his feelings, of taking anger out on others when he was young, is where his problems originate. 

“Yeah, but you’re allowed to feel what you feel about it,” you say. “My mom died when I was eleven. Texting and driving. I’m still angry at her for it.” 

“I’m sorry,” he says. 

You shrug and offer him a wry smile. “It’s in the past, but I’m still angry even though I shouldn’t be.” 

“At her?” 

“Yeah,” you nod. “She made a stupid mistake that we’re constantly warned about and left my dad and me behind. I was so angry with her, still am. I love her though, perceived faults and all.” 

Kei thinks about whether or not he loves his parents. He thinks he does, even if he resents them. Kei can’t imagine what he’d do without them. Even though his childhood had few emotional comforts, he still can’t think about a world where he doesn’t visit home to have his mother’s cooking. That’s a world that you live in. 

“That’s hard.” It’s all Kei can think to offer. 

“It was,” you say. “Got easier though as soon as I started accepting things. Now I just miss her more than I hate her.”

Another bout of silence follows this. It must be close to two in the morning and he’s been outside so long that he can no longer feel the tip of his nose. 

“Anyway, about tonight,” you say, “it’s not a crime to feel what you feel, but if you need help, that’s what we’re here for. It’s easier to accept feelings and get hurt than to ignore them, don’t you think?” 

“Yeah,” Kei says, looking to face you. “Thank you.” 

You’re so pretty. It’s striking. The curvature and angles of your face, the gentle look in your eyes, softened by the conversation. Kei finds himself thinking that despite not wanting to face you a few hours earlier, he’s grateful that you showed up. You’re good in ways that Kei can hardly fathom. 

“You should go inside. Tadashi is probably wondering where you are,” you say, standing up. “Plus,” you pinch the tip of his nose between your middle and pointer knuckles, “your nose looks like a cherry tomato.”

“Rude,” he says, startled by the sudden touch. 

“Payback,” you shrug your shoulders and Kei rolls his eyes. 

“Do you need me to walk you home?” Kei offers, a bit nervous about you walking home on your own. 

“I’d love to take you up on that, but you seem tired and I don’t live very far,” you respond. “I’ll call you when I get home though, okay? Since you’re so worried.” 

Kei laughs a little and then nods, standing up. “Yeah, I am.” 

His honesty surprises even him, but you just tilt your head and give him a small smile. 

“I’ll see you on Monday,” you say. “Thanks for the apology” 

“Anytime.”

“I hope not,” you laugh and Kei follows suit. 

You begin to turn on your heel, giving a small wave. 

Kei doesn’t know what overcomes him, but he calls out your name and reaches for your wrist. Before he has a moment to think about what he’s doing, he pulls you to his chest in a hug. You stiffen and then relax in his grip, wrapping your arms around him. Your body is warmer than his, sending heat through the gaps in his sweater. 

“You can call even if it’s not to tell me you got home safe,” he says. “If you want to.” 

You squeeze him around the middle. “Okay, I will.” 

When Kei lets go, he finds that his face is burning. The cold has been replaced by a flush of blood, making his vision a little syrupy.

“Thanks for coming back,” he says. “Get home safe.” 

“Of course,” you sound a little dazed, wearing an expression that Kei thinks might match his. “And I will.” 

Then, you smile at him, flashing your teeth and giving him a wave. You hold up your phone and point to it. 

“Expect a call!” 

Kei nods and raises his arm to wave goodbye.

He stands and watches your figure as you walk down the sidewalk and turn the corner. When you’re out of sight, he lingers by the door to his building, just in case you decide to come back. You don’t come back, but Kei lingers anyway, considering the conversation. 

He goes inside, intent on apologizing to Tadashi. When he opens the door to his apartment, the lights are still on in the living room and Tadashi gets up from the couch and walks quickly down the hall to him.

“Kei, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to-” 

“Don’t worry,” Kei says. “I know. I’m sorry about tonight too. And for treating you like that today. And for high school.” 

“High school?” Tadashi says, confused. “Why are you bringing up high school?” 

“Just wanted to apologize again.” 

Kei can feel his eyes drooping, exhaustion creeping into his body and replacing the elated feeling he had moments before. 

“I didn’t mean to bring your parents into it. How you like someone is none of my business,” Tadashi says. “I was out of line.” 

“So was I,” Kei admits through a tired sigh. “I shouldn’t have acted that way. I’ll apologize to the others in the morning.” 

Tadashi narrows his eyes a little and nods. Kei, besieged by that sleepy late night feeling, moves towards his bedroom. 

“Hey, Kei,” his voice comes out a little louder this time. “You’re being surprisingly easy-going. Are we good?” 

Kei scoffs a little, rubbing his eyes. “I just had some time to think, that’s all. And yeah, we’re good.” 

“Okay, are you good?” 

“Yeah, I am,” Kei says. 

Before he closes the door to his room, he furrows his eyebrows and makes a firm decision. 

“By the way,” Tadashi turns to him, cocking his head to the side in response. “I lied. I do like them.” 

“Could have guessed as much,” he responds, laughing a little. “See you in the morning.” 

“Yup, see you in the morning.” 

Kei shuts the door to his room. It clicks into place quietly. His room is spotless. It looks like a room that could be easily emptied at any time. He sighs, stepping into it and laying down on his bed. His phone is on the comforter next to him, lying face up. 

When it lights up, it illuminates the ceiling above him and he answers the phone without needing to check who's calling. 

“Hello?” 

“Hey, I got home safe,” he hears your keys clink against something and then the sound of a door shutting. Then, he hears the sound of you laying down on your bed. He imagines you’re lying the same way he is. 

“Good, I’m glad,” he says. “No trouble?” 

“No trouble at all,” you say. He can hear your smile. 

“Thanks again for coming back tonight,” he says, turning over onto his side and letting the phone rest on the bed in front of his face. 

“Of course,” you say.

He doesn’t know what else to say. His nerves have caught up to him and your voice through the speaker sounds so close, like you’re whispering directly into his ear. 

“Okay, well I’m going to go to bed,” Kei starts. 

“Kei?” you say. 

“Yeah?” 

“I’m gonna take you up on your offer. About calling you. Just wanted you to know.” 

“Okay,” he swallows. 

“I feel a lot closer to you.”

“Yeah, me too.” 

“Goodnight, Kei,” you practically whisper. 

“Goodnight,” he responds, lowering his voice the same way you did. You hang up the phone and the call ends. 

He blinks at his phone for a moment before standing up and getting ready for bed. Kei goes through the motions while thinking about how the evening got here. He’d been certain before it began that he no longer liked you, that he was confused. Now, he’s certain of the opposite. 

He decides that he’ll like you for real this time. Even if he’s afraid of hurting himself, of hurting you.

Kei lays down in his bed and faces the ceiling. He thinks about his parents, about your mother, about you. The cadence of your voice, the slight tremor in it. He thinks about your expressions, understanding and unintrusive. He thinks about your history, the anger you’d admitted to him and the grace you’d given him in his own circumstances. 

He dreams of braids, like DNA. Coils of pink yarn woven together in an intricate pattern. A molecular change not visible to the naked eye. Morning comes like liquid gold, spilling across his bedspread in slats through the window.

—

Kei’s apologies go smoothly. Tadashi’s friends—his friends—are good people. They know him better than most and field his awkward, stumbling apology with steady hands. 

He’d explained his sour mood in as little detail as possible, deliberately omitting his feelings for you while doing so, and he made a special effort to apologize to Tanaka. He’s easygoing and quick to forget, but Kei knows that even after accepting the apology, Tanaka will lord it over his head for a week or two. Tanaka thinks those kinds of things are funny and Kei won’t try to tell him otherwise. 

You do take Kei up on his offer. You call him twice a week now. Sometimes it’s to tell him something relevant to him, other times, you just whisper into the phone that you just felt like talking. Either way, it’s not good for his heart. Kei thinks that at this rate, it might just give out. 

There are a lot of things that Kei could say about liking you. It makes his days a little brighter. When he remembers that he has someone he cares about like that, he feels a surge of excitement for no particular reason. He finds that he looks forward to seeing you and goes out of his way to do so, more than he did before he was willing to admit it. 

He’s noticed the way you eat, like every bite of food is even better than the last. He’s noticed that you wipe the condensation off of your cups before each sip. He’s noticed that when you’re studying, you’ll pull at the collar of your shirt absentmindedly and then become frustrated when it is stretched out of place. Kei likes all of these things about you. 

Kei has also found that liking someone hurts. It hurts worse than he thought it would. Insecurity weaves its way into even the most minor of interactions. He’s self conscious almost all of the time, adjusting his hair, clothing, glasses right down to minor details. As of late, Kei appears more put together than he ever has, but the reality is that he’s probably the least put together he’s ever been. 

When you’re around, Kei is awkward and clumsy. He drops things, trips over nothing, loses control over his lanky limbs and overshoots things. He feels like a teenager again, not that he’s that far off from one. 

Still, one thing overshadows all of this. Kei is so comfortable around you, so peaceful despite the nerves and insecurity, that he’s able to forget about the worst of it. Forgetting about the worst of things is not something Kei is particularly good at. He’s cynical by nature. You help to ease the burden of it. 

The coffee shop he’s visiting with you today is quiet. The room is decorated with dark oak wood and the tables are accented by the rings of the trees the wood was cut from. The early spring light filters in at angles through the windows letting out onto the street. It falls across your notebooks and the knuckles of your hand, wrapped evenly around a black pen. 

You’d brought him here to study instead of going to the library and Kei can’t help but think that it feels like a date. His tea sits half-finished in a mug beside his laptop, beginning to cool to room temperature. Your coffee sits by your unoccupied hand and every now and then, you’ll reach to take a sip of the warm beverage without even glancing up. 

Kei has spent so much time watching you today, that he’s hardly gotten any work done. His computer is open on a document with a paragraph of writing about nudity in the classical period, which he hasn’t touched in about 10 minutes. He’s been clicking blankly around the page, adding spaces and then deleting them and then glancing up over the edge of the screen to look at the way you purse your lips when you’re focused. 

“You’d get a lot more done if you stopped staring,” you say, not looking up from your notebook. 

Kei chokes on his exhale. “What?” 

You laugh a little, looking up at him through your lashes. God, you’re pretty. 

“The document?” You chuckle. “You’re not fooling anyone by clicking around randomly like that.” 

“Oh,” Kei furrows his eyebrows and shakes his head a little. “Yeah, just can’t seem to focus.” 

“What’s the paper on?” You set down your pen and cross your arms on the table. 

“It’s not really a paper,” he says. “It’s a visual analysis on the Aphrodite of Knidos.” 

“Is that the one without the arms?” 

“No, but they come from the same family of statues,” Kei smiles a little. 

You hum a bit. “Do you like it?” 

“Like, do I think the statue’s pretty?” Kei closes the screen of his laptop to see you better. “Yeah, I do. Learning about the history of it is a bit depressing though.” 

“Why?” 

“Well, Aphrodite was one of the most powerful Greek gods, right?” He says, and you nod your head and roll your eyes because you know that already. “But this statue group intrudes on a private moment of hers. She’s trying to cover up her body, probably just before or after a bath. It’s meant to be humiliating.” 

You tilt your head. “Sounds more interesting than molecular structures at least.” 

Kei laughs a little. “Yeah, I think it’s just a bit more interesting.” 

“Why did you choose to study art history?” You question, leaning forward on your elbows. 

Kei feels awkward at receiving the question. He doesn’t like talking about himself much, let alone his passions. They tend to get away from him. 

“Probably because I’m no good at art,” he smiles a little. 

“Such a shame, what with your artist’s hands and all,” you reach across the table and tap his knuckle. 

Kei feels the color rise to his cheeks. 

“You’re no good at art, so you study art history instead?” You press for more. 

“Yeah,” he says. “I like things that people make with their hands. There’s a lot of human expression in ancient art, good and bad. Gives a bit more context into who we were before.” 

You lean back in the chair, grinning at him. Kei bites the inside of his cheek and tries not to notice the slope of your neck. 

“Why are you studying molecular bio?” He changes the subject. 

You shrug your shoulders. “I want a good cushy job that makes me a lot of money.” 

Kei watches the corners of your lips curl up. 

“Plus,” you continue, “I wanted to show off a little bit.” 

“So you put yourself through four years of torture?” He raises an eyebrow. 

“Yup, I’m a huge masochist,” you grin. 

“You STEM kids are unbearable, you know?” Kei snorts. 

“But you like me anyway, yeah?” 

Kei nods, heat creeping up his neck, and watches you return to your work. 

It’s true, he does like you anyway. Kei likes you so much, in fact, that it frightens him. Well, the idea of liking someone has always frightened Kei, whether he’s noticed it or not. Commitment, or lack thereof, make Kei nervous in the same way heights do. He feels like he could lose his footing at any moment. 

That’s probably why he doesn’t want to do anything in particular about his feelings. Kei is content with just feeling them. He’s content to just be able to like you in his own way, even if nothing ever comes of it. He probably shouldn’t do anything about them, considering the back and forth battle he’s waged in his mind over the last few months. He’s too indecisive to do anything but like you, and even that feels herculean to accept. 

Not that liking you is a hard thing to do. You’re easy to like. It’s easy for him to picture touching you. It’s easy for Kei to imagine late night conversations and little intimacies shared over damp pillows. You’re easy to talk to, floating through conversations and navigating conflict with a sure step, something Kei can’t do. It’s not hard to find things to admire. 

Kei imagines what it would be like to be with you. He imagines the feel of your hands in his, how you might look spread beneath him, the inside of your thighs pressing against his hips. He imagines how his glasses might fog up with your breath and slip down the bridge of his nose. What do you taste like? What do you feel like? 

A little alarm bell sounds in his head. This is a dangerous line of thought, a greedy one. Kei doesn’t think he can handle greed, not when it comes to you. He got a taste of it that day when he saw you leave with someone else and again the following Friday. Kei doesn’t mix well with it, with wanting. Still, he wants. 

—

It’s a breezy day. It cuts the growing humidity as the beginning of May creeps on. This is no doubt one of the best times of year, though Kei prefers the fall or winter. Still, even with the slightly sticky air, his walk to class is pleasant. He’d even venture to say that it’s good. 

Light filters through the trees, blooming with their spring flowers, and in the distance he can see a familiar row of cherry blossoms just beginning to bloom. As he approaches them, he finds himself admiring their delicate petals, wondering just how brief their bloom will be before they come cascading down. One tree among the pink rows has yet to open its flowers. The buds sit on their branches, shades of green and gray. A late bloomer. This tree will no doubt flower once the other petals have fallen, and when it does, it’ll become the most eye-catching thing on the street. 

Kei admires it for a moment, standing below the thing and looking up through its twisting branches. It’s so small, much smaller than the rest of its counterparts, and its branches don’t look too full of yet-to-bloom buds either. 

There was a tree like this outside of Kei’s childhood home, the one his family lived in together when it was whole. It would always bloom a week after the others and every year he would worry that it never would. Of course, he kept this fear to himself, but he often watched it from his bedroom window when Akiteru was out. He’d press his face against the glass and pray for the flowers to come so that it didn’t get left behind. Sure enough though, it would bloom without fail and leave scattered pink petals across his yard and doorstep. Kei wonders if this tree in front of him will do the same. 

“Thinking about changing your major to plant sciences, Kei?” 

He jumps, started by your voice and your proximity. 

“Jesus,” Kei turns, “you need a bell or something.” 

“You’re the one standing in public staring at a tree with no flowers on it,” you laugh a little. 

Kei shrugs his shoulders, not really willing to give an explanation for the train of thought he was just on. 

“Where’re you headed?” he questions. 

“Dropping off an assignment,” you smile lightly, “wanna come with me?” 

“I can’t. I’ve got a class in 15.” 

“Fifteen minutes is fifteen minutes,” you shrug. “We’ll make it.” 

“We?” Kei raises an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, you come with me to drop off my paper and then I drop you off at class. It’s a win-win.” 

“Sounds like I’m just doing a lot of extra walking,” Kei snorts. 

“Yeah, but you get to do it with me so it’ll be more fun.” 

Kei folds and goes with you to drop off your assignment. It’s an essay assigned by an old-fashioned professor who doesn’t like electronic submissions. You comment off-handedly on what a waste of paper it is and Kei nods, just happy to hear about it. 

It’s strange. Kei is normally very tied to his routine. It keeps him sane, helps him to organize his thoughts and feelings into neat compartments. For Kei, an orderly life is an orderly mind. Somehow though, you ask him to deviate from that and he’s more than willing, eager even, to oblige you. Better yet, he does it without feeling off-kilter. Well, without feeling as off-kilter about his daily life. When it comes to you, Kei is about as stable as a pogo stick. 

The walk to your professor's office is only a few minutes from his classroom, just a few buildings over, but by the time you both arrive there, Kei’s palms are sweating. He resorts to shoving them in his pockets and wiping them on the inside of his pants, mortified at the idea of accidentally touching you like this. 

“Hey, about tonight,” you start after dropping the paper off with a quick bow. 

You’re supposed to come over. It’s the first time you and Kei have agreed to hang out at one of your places alone and Kei has been compartmentalizing his nerves so harshly that he’d almost forgotten about it entirely. Maybe that explains his easy-going mood. 

“Yeah?” 

“So, Tadashi may have mentioned it in front of the others,” you give him a sheepish grin, “and they may have asked to come and I definitely told them ‘the more the merrier’.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Kei’s a little disappointed. “So they’re coming too?” 

“Yeah, is that okay?” You furrow your eyebrows. 

Kei can’t very well come out and say that it isn’t, because his reason for thinking that is entirely about monopolizing your time. Kei says he doesn’t want to do anything about these feelings, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t indulge just a little into the foreign feeling of accepting that he’s ‘in like’. 

“Yeah sure, why wouldn’t it be?” 

You raise an eyebrow at him and Kei misses the message entirely. 

“I dunno, you’re not really a fan of bigger groups right?” 

“Not really,” Kei shrugs, “but I’ve known them for a while so it doesn’t count.” 

You nod your head and then smile. “Great! Now, where is your class?” 

“Social Sciences,” Kei glances down at the brown watch on his wrist. “In about… four minutes.” 

“Wanna run? Can’t be late, can you?” 

Kei does not want to run. He runs anyway. You’re faster than he is and your step is louder. The soles of your shoes thump on the floor with every step you take and your whole body lurches forward with each bound. When you reach the end of the hallway his class is in, Kei is completely winded. Considering that he plays volleyball as a hobby, he should really be in better shape. He attributes his lack of breath to your presence. Maybe he’d been holding it while watching you run. 

You glance into his full classroom, giving him a relieved look upon seeing that the professor has not begun her lecture yet. Then, you bounce twice on the tips of your toes and start jogging in the other direction. 

“Have a good class!” You call. 

“What’s the rush?” he questions. 

“I’ve got class now too, dummy. Just wanted to hang out with you for a few more minutes.” Then, you turn and run off, your bag bouncing against the side of your leg as you round a corner and fly down a set of stairs. 

That’s the thing about you that Kei can’t get enough of. When Kei takes a step back, when he resigns himself to being okay with just a chance meeting and a brief hello, you take a step forward. Whatever Kei lacks, you make up for tenfold. Your outstretched hand makes him greedier. It makes Kei want more than he’s ever wanted before. He goes to class starved for something that isn’t food, a feeling Kei hasn’t experienced often, let alone leaned into. He lets himself feel the hunger. 

—

Day melts away to a cool evening, still slightly wet, but like the dampness before rain. The air loses its warm touch, creeping into something chillier. Kei opens his bedroom window to let the air in. He likes the smell of cool nights. He wants his room to smell like it when he sleeps tonight. 

“Sorry that I spilled the beans about tonight,” Tadashi leans in the doorway of his room. 

“It’s not like that,” Kei rolls his eyes, already irritated with the implication that whatever you and Kei had organized was anything more than two friends hanging out. 

“Sure it isn’t,” he laughs. 

“I’m serious dude,” Kei fights the urge to throw something soft at him. 

“You wanted to hang out with them alone, right?” Tadashi tilts his head. His dark hair falls to the side and around his neck. 

“I just said it wasn’t like that!” 

Tadashi gives an even laugh. “You’re the one making it dirty, Tsukki, not me.” 

Heat floods Kei’s face, painting it red. 

“Caught ya,” Tadashi smiles. 

“When the hell are you moving out?” Kei grumbles and Tadashi gives another good natured laugh. 

“Not until you do. You’re stuck with me.” 

“Not if I kill you,” Kei doesn’t smile when he says this. 

Tadashi barks a laugh. “So what changed?” 

“What do you mean?” 

“I mean with you. You seem a little more upbeat lately,” Tadashi says. “Nothing like the sad sack from a few months ago.” 

“I was kidding before but now I’m serious. I really will kill you.” 

Tadashi shakes his head a little but doesn’t say anything, intruding on Kei’s space until he gives an answer. 

“I just got tired of it, that’s all,” Kei says evenly, though it’s a little hard to admit. 

“Tired of what?” 

“Pretending,” he says plainly, glancing up at Tadashi in the doorway. 

“Because of them?” 

“No,” he starts. “Maybe. I don’t know. Can you leave now?” 

Tadashi shakes his head. “Too curious to leave.” 

“I don’t have an answer for you,” Kei grumbles. “I got tired of pretending I didn’t want them.” 

“Not like you were very good at pretending,” Tadashi laughs and Kei tosses him a sharp look. 

He raises his hands defensively, tucking his chin downwards and laughing lightly. “Okay, fine. I’m gone now.” 

“They’ll be here in an hour or so, by the way,” Kei adds and Tadashi gives a little hum to confirm that he’s heard him as he leaves the room. 

Kei glances around his room. The floor is bare, save for a small mat by the side of his bed to keep the shock of warm feet on a cold floor in the morning away. That notebook, dear to him as it is, still sits on the desk. It’s empty, but Kei likes the look of it. 

The hour before you and his friends are meant to arrive goes by so slowly that Kei worries that he’s gotten the day wrong. He incessantly checks his watch. It’s a brown leather watch with a square face. Thin and somewhat old fashioned, Kei prefers it to pulling his phone out to check the time. His Dad has one like it, almost matching. It had been given to him as a gift at his high school graduation and Kei had accepted it begrudgingly. He’d not been on good terms with his parents then and having them both in the same space for his graduation day was more trouble than it was worth. Still, he wears the watch almost daily. Despite having the impression that his parents never really cared about him, it was a fine gift for him and the brown strap suits his light skin tone in the same way it suits his father’s. 

He walks to the mirror in his room, hanging on the wall beside his nightstand, and peers into it. Kei’s curly hair is somewhat unruly. It’s hard to manage, especially in the warmer months when his waves turn into frizzy curls that he can’t seem to keep down. It’s gotten longer, coming down to just above the bottom of his ears at the back and curls upwards in licks of thick blond. 

Kei fiddles with it for a moment, tucking it behind his ears and then deciding to pull it forward. He could put gel in it to help calm it down, but he hates the greasy look of it and he’s never been one to primp and preen. He adjusts his glasses on his nose, square frames in a tortoiseshell pattern. They look expensive, though they’re only a cheap pair that he’d found at the drug store and had the lenses replaced. 

He looks normal. Kei looks like himself, if not a bit flushed in the face from his nerves. His reflection is one he is oddly unfamiliar with, despite it being his throughout his entire life. At some point during high school, he’d stopped recognizing the man in the mirror as Kei and started viewing him as a separate entity. Kei Two, a version of him that can make a home out of a space and find things to write in his notebook. Kei Two’s family is still whole and unbroken, and he likes to imagine that he’s a little more friendly than the real-world version. He looks away from the mirror, content today with being the original. 

Kei is in the living room and around the corner when the front door latch clicks open and is followed by a symphony of raucous voices. He takes a sharp inhale, unsure of why this feels so different from the hundreds of other times you’ve all piled into his living room. 

“Where’s Kei?” He hears you call, dragging out the syllable of his name in a soft hum. 

That’s why. It’s because this time, you’ve come here to see him specifically. You’re not here to see Tadashi or by chance, you’re here because you’d made plans to see Kei. That’s what makes it different. 

You round the corner and Kei is hit full force in the chest with his emotions and his nerves. It happens all at once, keeping the air from his lungs. You’re smiling, beaming even, and Kei thinks that maybe it’s because you can hear the hammer of his heart against his chest. 

“Hi,” you breathe, plopping down next to him on the couch. 

“Hey,” he chokes out. 

Kei chides himself for his nerves. He’d been doing better about getting weird around you, but today he feels closer to blowing up than he ever has. 

Hinata, Kageyama, Yachi, and Noya make their way into the kitchen, each one clapping Tadashi on the back as they do. They beeline for their fridge, opening the door and flooding the floor with artificial white light as they pull out enough beers and sodas to supply a small army. Kei wonders why he and Tadashi ever bought so many of them. Kei hardly drinks, but he supposes that Tadashi just likes to host. 

“Tanaka and Kiyoko?” Tadashi questions as he makes his way into the living room with the group. His beer cracks open with a satisfying pop. 

“Date night,” Noya says, sinking into one of the arm chairs situated around the coffee table. “So annoying.”

He groans about Kiyoko, someone he’s all but worshiped since high school. 

“You’re just mad it isn’t you,” Kageyama quips, giving a somewhat mean grin. 

“Not true,” Noya argues. “I am the happiest person in the world for them! But now they go on dates and I can’t come. It’s like I lost a bro.” 

“You’re so overreacting,” Yachi adds, her lips forming around high pitched syllables. “They’re here most of the time.” 

“Yeah, most but not all,” Noya pouts. 

“Give the same energy to Daichi, Suga, and Asahi next time, kay?” Tadashi laughs. 

Their friend group is a large one, consisting of most (if not all) of their highschool volleyball team. While Hinata, Kageyama, and Yachi are the same age as Kei and Tadashi, Tanaka and Noya are a year older, and Kiyoko is two. Daichi, Asahi, and Suga all went to universities outside of Sendai, meaning they hardly ever see them. All in all, the rest of the group is pretty bummed about it. Kei just finds that he misses having Daichi around to reel everyone in. Now that he’s gone, that job has somehow gone to Tadashi, who is more of an enabler than anything else. 

“They’re different and you know it,” Noya frowns, opening his open beer with a hiss through his teeth. 

You lean to the side, bumping your shoulder against Kei’s. 

“Who’re Daichi, Suga, and Asahi?” You ask softly. 

“You’ve never met?” Kei furrows his eyebrows and you shrug. 

“Maybe, but if I have it was only once or twice.” 

“They’re friends from our volleyball team in highschool, but they’re two years older.” 

“Okay, so one year older than me?” 

Kei blinks a few times. “You’re a year older than me?” 

“Yeah?” You laugh a little like it’s obvious. 

“But aren’t you a fourth year?” He furrows his eyebrows. 

“I took a year off before starting college,” you shrug your shoulders. “Thought that I had to get my sillies out.” 

“Your sillies?” Kei laughs a little. 

“Yeah,” you smile, “and I had to save up some money. It makes the world go ‘round, you know?” 

“What are you guys whispering about?” Tadashi gives Kei a wry grin over the top of his beer can. 

It’s only then that Kei realizes the way you both are leaning into each other. He’s tilting his head down to hear you better and you’re leaning forward. It gives off the impression of two people conspiring, of closeness that Kei hadn’t even realized had crept up on him. 

“I was asking who Daichi, Suga, and Asahi are,” you shrug off the moment, leaning back in the chair. 

This prompts a chorus of disbelief, everyone jumping in to describe them to you. Kei takes it as a moment to breathe, inhaling and exhaling. He can feel your thigh against his, just barely there and bleeding warmth through the fabric of his jeans. 

They delve into stories about nationals, little details that Kei had forgotten a long time ago. Every now and then, someone will bring up Kei’s more-than-sour personality and he will feel the need to hide the embarrassment on his cheeks. Even though you know about it, it’s still mortifying for Kei to hear. He wants you to see the best in him, but any hopes he had of you forgetting are quickly washed away as someone brings up Kei’s relentless prodding of Kageyama’s easily pushed buttons. 

You laugh along with them like you were there, amused to hear stories about your college friends in their high school years. Kei finds himself thinking that you fit very well into this scene. 

Still though, despite the fun he’s having, Kei’s battery begins to run out quickly and after a long game of cards, he gets up to take a quick break in the kitchen. It’s not that he wants the night to end, but rather that he just needs a minute to himself and uses the idea of more snacks as an excuse for it. 

He reaches into a cabinet, pulling out a half-finished bag of chips and setting them on the counter. They’re clipped with a bright red chip-clip from the grocery store and Kei thinks that because of that, they shouldn’t have gone stale yet. If it were the peak of summer, Kei might think twice, but this time of year, they should be fine.

Then, he bends down to get a large white mixing bowl from a lower cabinet. Their plates and bowls are kept in various different cabinets, though the only reason they stay somewhat organized is because of Kei. 

“Done already?” You lean your hip against the counter. 

“With what?” Kei struggles to keep his eyes from following the line of your body. 

“Hanging out,” you smile lightly. 

“Not really,” he says. “Just needed a minute and decided to get more snacks.” 

“Wanna go sit outside for a bit then?” 

Kei glances into the living room where the group chatters away. He’d hate to be stopped on the way. 

“Relax,” you laugh. “They’re so caught up they won’t even notice that we’re gone.” 

Kei furrows his eyebrows and then shrugs, swallowing his heart down with the spit that has pooled in his mouth. He follows you out of the front door, shutting it with a quiet click and heading down the steps of the complex and to the concrete wall lining the shrubbery outside. It’s the same place you’d come back to talk to him at all those weeks ago, though he is in considerably better spirits than he was then. 

It’s a cool night, the gentle heat of the day completely burned off to make way for a crisp breeze. He inhales, wishing that he had brought a drink to fiddle with and sip on to distract him from his nerves. 

You sit beside him, leaning back on your palms with your legs outstretched in front of you. Your hand is only a few inches from his and Kei sucks in a breath when he accidentally touches it while he gets comfortable. You only offer him a little smile in response. 

“Sorry again about bringing the troops here,” you speak first. 

“That’s really okay,” he says. “Contrary to popular belief, I actually really like them.” 

You snort. “I hope so.” 

Kei inhales louder than he intends to and when you look at him like he’s going to say something, he just holds his breath and shakes his head. The air only leaves him when you finally look away. 

“Kind of a bummer though,” you start, “I was kinda excited about just hanging out with you.” 

Kei’s breath catches in his throat. He swallows to move the metaphorical blockage. 

“We hang out all the time though,” he says like it’s enough. Of course it’s not enough. 

“Guess so,” you smile a little, though Kei can hear the distinct turn of disappointment in your voice. 

“You know,” he starts, already embarrassed at what he’s going to admit. “I wanted to be your friend for a while.” 

“Oh yeah?” you smile, opening up again and turning towards him. “Why?” 

Kei shrugs, resisting the urge to shut down completely. It’s embarrassing admitting to someone that you wanted to know them before you actually knew them. 

“You kind of reminded me of Tadashi,” he says. “And you both got along so well.” 

“Tadashi? I’m nothing like Tadashi,” you laugh, shaking your head. 

“What? No, you two are so similar,” Kei insists, lacing his fingers together. 

“What about us is so similar?” 

“Well, you’re both sociable and warm and…” Kei trails off. He can’t really think of anything else. You look at him with an expectant look in your eyes. 

“See?” 

Kei realizes that the two of you are not similar at all. Your warmth is where the similarity stops. He’d been likening you to Tadashi this entire time, not because the two of you are similar, but because you make him feel similar to the way Tadashi does. Safe and comfortable, though with the added addition of deeply awkward. He realizes that without the safety net of you being like Tadashi, he’s never had any ability to deny his feelings and with that they rage full force around the corner and slam into his chest like a heavy blow. 

“We’re nothing like each other,” you laugh and lean back against your palms. “Though, it would be cool to be like Tadashi.” 

Kei experiences the sudden realization that he doesn’t want you to be like Tadashi. Kei wants you to be like him. He wants you to be greedy and want him the same way he wants you. He wants you to be able to keep up with his turns and his moods, something he didn’t realize he wanted in the first place. If you’re like Kei, then Kei doesn’t have to be afraid of showing you the worst. You’ll have already seen it. If you’re like Kei and he loves you, then what is stopping you from loving him? 

“Even if you’re not like Tadashi, that’s fine.” His cheeks burn. 

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah, I like you all the same,” he admits quietly. 

“The same? As Tadashi?” You purse your lips a little. “I thought I was a little different. Was I wrong?” 

Kei wants to kiss you. Kei wants to kiss you so badly that his mouth has gone dry and his lips feel like they’ve separated from his body. Anything he’d thought about not wanting anything with you flies out of the window with your proximity. You’re so close to him. Close enough that if he leaned a little to the right, his shoulder would be against yours. You’re so close and you’re looking at him like you’re waiting for something, implying that somehow you’re different from Tadashi. Implying that you want him to like you differently than the way he likes his platonic friend. 

“No, you’re different,” he says, taking the bait you’ve laid in front of him. His heart pounds and he can’t look at you. He thinks he’ll kiss you if he does. 

“Am I?” 

Kei can hear the smile in your voice. It makes what you’re saying sound honeyed and curved. 

“Yeah, you are.”

“How so?” 

Kei finally raises his head to look at you. You’re grinning, leaning towards him like you’re watching a show. He feels the way his nerves rise into his throat, pressing against the very back of his tongue. He doesn’t know how to answer or what to say. Well, he does know what to say, he just doesn’t think he can. Kei is good at thinking about emotions, but when it comes time to speak them outloud, it seems that he’s still got a padlock around his throat. So he does what any logical person would do. 

Kei leans forward, pushing against his screaming nerves and trying to ignore the tremble in his hands, and kisses you. It’s awkward and his teeth click against yours before his lips fully settle against your mouth. He feels the breath you draw in, like surprise and relief mixed together, and he finds that he does the same. 

He can see the way your eyes flutter closed through his barely open ones and he realizes that your lips are so warm. He screws his eyes shut when you dip your head forward to move your lips against his. Yours are so warm and soft, like satin. A kiss has never felt like this to Kei before and he finds that he wants to catalog every single one of your reactions. Maybe that’s what he could write in the notebook. Maybe he could write down every single thing that you do that leaves him winded and wanting more. 

Neither of you reach for the other, but he can feel the knuckle of your pinky against his as you slowly kiss each other, tilting your heads side to side. There’s hunger within him, the need to take more than what he’s receiving and a greed he isn’t quite familiar with, but there’s also romance. It’s like a spell that’s yet to be broken, fed by the click of your mouths as they move together. Kei sighs, flooded with the relief of this kind of physical affection, of being honest with himself at how much he likes it. Kei loves the feel of your mouth. He loves the way your lips and tongue feel and he loves that they’re all that he can feel right now. 

The kiss lasts longer than Kei thought it would and by the time he pulls away, you’re both steadily panting and attempting to keep your breathing even. He wants to do it again. He wants it so badly that it makes his chest swell. He wants to do that with you forever, but he swallows down the desire. It’s a temporary fix, but it’s enough for him to choke out what it is he wants to say next. 

“I think I’m in really hot water,” he squeaks. 

“What do you mean?” You breathe out, the playfulness from a few moments earlier long behind you. 

“I think I want you way more than I thought I did,” he admits quietly, the first out loud admittance of his feelings to you. 

You smile a little before speaking. “I think it’s only hot water if the other person doesn’t feel the same way.” 

Your face is still so close to his. “Yeah?” 

It comes out a bit desperate, like he needs reassurance. Kei does. He’s so afraid that he thinks he could die. Afraid of the spell breaking, afraid of losing whatever moment this is and being forced to return to his one-sided pining, afraid that you don’t feel the same way.

Your face moves closer to him, breath trembling lightly. “Yeah.” 

You kiss him again, pressing your lips against his lightly before parting them. He’s so overwhelmed and so immediately lost in it. Kei feels the way your tongue teases the inside of his mouth and it makes him feel like a teenager again, swelling with desires and emotions that he can’t name. You move your hand over his, placing it lightly on top of his, and he reacts by lacing your fingers together and pushing forward more. 

Kei wants to touch you so badly, to reach up and hold your face, to touch your waist and your legs and your chest. He wants to do it all, to feel you right here under the cover of night, but he doesn’t. Instead, he kisses you and stews in the desire, letting it swell in his chest as he listens to the clicking of your mouths. You kiss him so slowly, moving your mouth at a languid pace. It drives him crazy. He doesn’t think he’ll ever get enough of this.

“We should go back inside, I think,” you break away, your bottom lip shiny with a sheen of spit. “The others might think something’s up and Tanaka isn’t exactly good with discretion.”

Kei automatically reaches up to swipe it with his thumb. He doesn’t know where this affection comes from, where the possessive action found its origins, but he finds that he likes the way it feels to be able to do it in the first place. 

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” Kei responds, though he would have been happy to continue sitting out here with you, kissing you silly. 

You stand first, dusting off the back of your legs and waiting for Kei to follow suit. When he does, you reach quickly for his hand, giving it a quick squeeze before walking in front of him. 

Kei is not sure how he should act when he goes inside. He’s tense all over, desperate to pick up where the two of you left off, and unsure if his face betrays that thought. 

“Where’d you guys go?” Tadashi asks as Kei closes the door behind him. 

In the time you’d both been gone, the living room has been transformed into something nearly unrecognizable. Empty beer cans are strewn about the tables and the blankets and pillows from the couches are now haphazardly laying around beside the couch or over people’s bodies. Then again, maybe the room always looked like this and he was just too busy thinking about how close you were to him. 

Kei doesn’t know what to say. Why had they gone outside in the first place? He’s not even sure that he remembers. 

“I wanted a cigarette and I made Kei come with me,” you answer evenly. “Why? You jealous?” 

“Of inhaling second-hand smoke? No, thanks.” Tadashi laughs, but he tosses Kei a sideways glance. Tadashi knows him well enough to know that Kei wouldn’t voluntarily stand outside with a smoker unless he was particularly fond of them. 

“Aw, man, I thought you quit?” Hinata pipes up, tilting his head. 

“I did, hot stuff,” you respond, sitting down on the couch. “Don’t worry. I won’t smoke anymore.” 

Hinata huffs and Kei takes the opportunity to sit down next to you. 

His thigh is pressed against yours, warmth seeping through his pants and into his skin. Kei feels like he could explode. You’re so close to him again, closer than before, and he can’t stop replaying the kiss in his head. He’s desperate for it, fidgety with his desire. He keeps thinking about the hot press of your mouth and the languid motion of your tongue. All he can imagine is the few points of contact between you both, mouth and hands, and how badly he wanted it to be more. He needs it. 

You touch him a few times throughout the night and the tension is so palpable that Kei is convinced he can see it. It’s like there is a rope pulled taut between the two of you. If he doesn’t stick his ground, he’ll go flying towards you, grabbing and touching and taking in the way he’s desperate to now. 

After an hour, his friends begin to grow restless. Their faces are flushed with alcohol and the things they’d been amusing themselves with are no longer enough stimulation. 

“Hey, we’re going out to the bars. Who’s coming?” Hinata speaks up. 

A chorus of agreement rings out, but the last thing Kei wants to do is go out.

“I think I’ll probably stay back and start cleaning,” he says somewhat disdainfully. “It’s a mess in here,” Kei tosses you a small glance. It’s unintentional but he’s glad for it because Kei is hoping that you’ll stay back with him, that you both can pick up where you left off. 

“I’ll stay and help too. I’ve got an early morning tomorrow anyway,” you smile and Hinata pouts. 

“You guys are so boring,” he protests. “Leave the mess for tomorrow and come out with us.” 

“I’ll pass, pipsqueak,” Kei scoffs. 

“Fine, but don’t complain to me when you’re full of regret tomorrow,” he points a finger at Kei and then moves it over to you. “And you’re too nice for your own good.” 

“Do you hear that?” You say, beginning to usher the group to the door. “I think it’s the sound of the bar and all that alcohol calling to you guys.” 

“You guys are so full of shit-” Kageyama starts, speaking up for the first time in a while, but Kei just waves him out. 

“Yeah yeah, let the grown ups clean while you guys have fun. We’ll see you tomorrow.” 

The rope is so taut between you both that it’s unbearable and by the time the door closes, you are spinning around on your heel toward Kei. 

“We’re not cleaning, right?” 

Kei shakes his head and starts towards you. The tension breaks when his hands find your hips and he hungrily leans down to press his mouth against yours. 

This kiss is different from the first, desperate and full of desire. It’s fast and your mouths move together quickly as he starts to walk you back towards his bedroom, his hands eagerly roaming up and down your hips. Vaguely, he acknowledges that his glasses have been moved out of place, but he pays it no mind as you turn the knob to his bedroom door with your back to it. 

There’s an urgency to his movements. Kei feels it in his chest, this desperate desire to be closer, to consume everything that you’ve laid out in the palm of his hand. You stumble backwards into his room and Kei catches your shifted weight with a hand around your waist. His other hand comes up to cup your cheek, feeling the warm skin on your jaw and neck. His fingers tremble where they touch you, half out of desperate need and half out of the nerves that threaten to spill from his mouth. His lips though, are occupied with yours, clicking together, all tongue and teeth. 

Kei kisses sloppily down your jaw, his lips smearing across your cheek and dipping down below your ear. He sucks a trail there, unsure if he’s leaving marks, all the way down to your collarbone. Every part of you tastes better than he’d expected it to and with every push he delivers, you pull. 

You make small sounds, little pants and groans that make Kei’s hair stand on end with wanting. Your voice, so familiar and fond to him, spills out in small, breath-like bursts that make Kei want to coax more out of you. Kei’s never been one to want this way, but right now, it’s all that he feels. So much tension and impulse that he feels like he can hardly control himself. 

You reach blindly behind you for the bed and Kei guides you down, placing his hand on one side of you as you sit. Then, without disconnecting your lips, he guides you up toward the wall. 

He feels the cool tips of your fingers at the hem of his shirt, pulling downward and then upward to get him to take it off. Kei obliges you, leaning back on his knees and pulling it off over the top of his head. You eye him for a moment, the two of you slowing down enough as the urgency settles into something heavy and lingering. 

Kei leans forward again, one of his hands reaching for your hip. He slips his fingers underneath the hem of your shirt, sliding his long fingers up your stomach as he kisses you again. You’re so soft and he can feel the way your chest heaves against his palm. His touch is feather light and he slides it up evenly until it reaches just below your breast. When you nod, Kei moves it up over your bra and he feels you shudder. Kei does the same, overwhelmed by your pliability. 

He can feel the goosebumps that have raised on your skin, little pinpricks of skin that indicate that some part of you feels good. When Kei squeezes your breast, you gasp into his moan and he groans his response, letting you bite at his bottom lip. 

He feels you suck at his lips and swipe your tongue along the ridge of his mouth. When he opens it to let you in, he’s overtaken by the warmth of the soft muscle. He groans, tilting his head down to kiss you deeper, letting the taste of you spread over his mouth. It’s hot and your breath fans across his face. 

Kei hands drift from your breasts along the sides of your body. He feels the heave of your breath there against your warm skin, his palms resting on your waist. You raise your knees, the sides of them pressing against Kei’s hips. He shifts downwards slowly, dragging his mouth along your skin, past the cloth of your shirt. 

His hands make their way from your waist to your hips as he dips lower. Kei takes off his glasses, already fogged up and in the way. When he meets your eyes, you nod your permission and Kei slips between your legs, his flat palms moving to spread your thighs. 

You’re so warm and soft, so pliable in a way that Kei can’t articulate. It makes his mouth water with his desperation and he’s grown hard against the bedspread beneath him. 

“Touch me,” you breathe out. 

Kei nods into your stomach, looping his fingers around our waistband, and pulls down your pants. Your panties come with it and it’s with a slight wave of regret that he realizes he won’t get to see the way you stick to them. 

When he sees you, his heart leaps into his throat. His eagerness and his nerves catch up to him and he lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. You shudder when the air hits your exposed cunt, an unintentional side effect of Kei’s nerves that has him grinding down against the bedspread. 

He slides his palm to rest over your center. It’s warm and sticky, wet beyond what Kei had imagined and he gingerly presses a finger between your folds. You gasp, mouth falling open above him. Then, he slides his finger into you to the first knuckle, curling up. Kei goes deeper on the second pump, curling his whole finger inside of you and feeling the way you tighten around him. 

You arch your back up off the bed and Kei groans and rolls his eyes, resting his head on the inside of your exposed thigh. He curls his fingers in you, watching the way they coat with your pleasure. His eyebrows are knit together, like he’s asking whether you like how he touches you or not, and you seem to pick up on his insecurity, nodding your head before letting it tip back against Kei’s pillows. 

Kei thinks your expression is incredible. Your eyebrows pull up in the center, pretty face twisted and mouth slightly open in an expression of undeniable pleasure. Kei’s stomach winds at the look of it and he ruts his hips against the mattress to quell the growing ache of need. His fingers, which curl at a slow and even pace inside of you, are warm with your enjoyment. It leaks between his knuckles, sliding down the back of his hand like a slow moving syrup. He wonders whether you have more to give and how you taste, his gaze slinking from your face to the place just above where his fingers disappear. 

He lowers his mouth to you without thinking, curious and needing the taste of it. Sure enough, you have more to give. Your voice comes quickly, a small gasp that is stifled by the back of your hand when he sucks sharply on your clit. Your hips push forward against his hands and then you arch up off the mattress with a small cry. Kei wonders if you’ve cum. He wonders if he’s sent you over the edge, but if he has, you’re taking all of it so well that he doesn’t dare stop. 

The taste of you spreads on his tongue, tangy and warm. You invade his senses violently, like you are gripping his throat. Kei holds his mouth to you, pressing the length of his cock into the mattress and moving his hips like he plans to fuck it. 

He moves his free hand down your thigh and onto the inside of your leg. Your skin is so soft. It’s so vulnerable, something easily pierced and bled. Kei’s pointer finger rubs gentle circles there, feeling the slight pull of the soft skin with his fingers, so thin that it almost feels like tissue paper. He’s sure that with a little pressure, you would bruise. 

The thought surprises him. He works his tongue across your clit and his fingers against that gummy spot inside of you, but his mind drifts to the softness of your inner thigh, the way it would be so easy to leave a spot that might hurt later when you press on it, remind you of exactly where he was. Then, Kei pinches you on the inside of your thigh and when you cry out, tightening around his fingers with a tapered moan, he pinches you again, harder this time. 

You whimper slightly, like you like it. No, you sound like you love it and Kei finds himself holding back a choked moan as he tries not to cum prematurely. He pinches along the inside of your legs and around the back. Not too much. Only when he feels like it. Only when he wants to hear what kind of sounds you’ll make. 

“K-Kei wait, wait,” you pant, grabbing him by his tufts of blonde hair. It hurts. He doesn’t think you mean to hurt him, but it doesn’t matter. He likes it and he twitches in his pants. 

“Huh?” He hums, detaching from your clit and slowing the movement of his fingers to a halt. Your legs shake around his handiwork. “You okay?” 

“I’ll cum if you keep going like that,” you breathe, screwing your eyes shut like you’re still on the edge. “Drag it out for me, yeah?” 

Kei furrows his eyebrows and sucks in a sharp breath.

“Cum if you want to.” He tilts his head down to reattach his lips. 

“Not yet,” you tug at his hair. “I like chasing it.” 

Kei stares at you, unblinking and awestruck. Your chest heaves and despite the pleasure on your face, you look uncomfortable as your orgasm slips away from you. Kei likes that look on your face and he finds himself growing greedy. 

“Come here,” you coax him onto the mattress. 

Kei watches as you slip your hands into the waistband of his jeans and pull them down, leaving him on his back with his tented boxers exposed. You crawl down his body and settle between his legs with your arms between his thighs. He shudders when you run your hands up them and he briefly sees his boxers jump. 

You smile, pressing your mouth to him through his boxers. Kei can’t stifle the groan that escapes him and heat floods his face when you raise your eyebrows in response. 

“You don’t have to,” he says through gritted teeth as you slip the waistband of his boxers down. 

“But I want to,” you mumble, taking him in your hand and placing a kiss on the side of his dick. 

Kei’s head falls back against the pillow and he swears under his breath when he feels the warmth of your mouth close around the tip of him. He jerks his head up to see, awestruck by the way your lips look around the head of his cock. 

For some reason, Kei is already so sensitive. He feels everything, and when you swipe the tip of your tongue along his slit as you bob your head, he makes a noise he didn’t think he could make. His fingers knot themselves in the bed sheets, white knuckled and trembling while you bob your head over him. 

Your mouth is so warm and wet. It’s a little messy, dripping down the length of him and onto his balls. Kei feels the warmth, the heat of you. He can still taste you on his tongue. Kei can still feel the stickiness left behind from your arousal on his mouth. The combination of you between his legs and the taste of you on his tongue is overwhelming. 

Kei can feel his orgasm growing in his lower stomach, turning over until he’s bringing his long fingers to your head in an effort to steady himself. There’s nothing he can do but give in, watching you through damp eyes as you watch his expression. 

It’s embarrassing how quickly he cums. It doesn’t take long and he teeters on the edge for a few moments before fully cresting over. Kei can’t help the way he lifts his hips from the mattress, his voice caught in his throat as it hooks on a high pitched groan. His voice cracks and he feels the way his cum collects on your tongue and across the tip of his dick in your mouth. 

“Fuck,” he mutters, red faced and panting, “I didn’t mean to- I didn’t mean to finish so quickly, you’re just-” 

“It’s fine,” you come up, your eyes glassed over and lust-filled. “I like making you feel good.” 

“Yeah but-” 

“No buts,” you crawl over him and straddle his waist. Kei winces when your weight briefly nudges his cock. “There’s still fun to be had. Can I kiss you?” 

He nods and you lean down to do as you’d asked. Your tongue moves slowly against his, less desperate this time, like you’re trying to work him down and back up again. You place your hands on his chest, settling your weight down so that your bare cunt is pressed against his sensitive cock. Kei thinks he might die. 

He brings his hands to your waist, the fatigue creeping from his bones as he digs the pads of his fingers into your fleshy sides. You draw in a breath when he does and it makes Kein feel like he’s tipping sideways with arousal. Everything that you do, right down to the involuntary twitch of your hips or eyebrows, is sexy. 

Kei turns you over, growing hard between your legs again, and gently pins you to the mattress. He kisses you for a moment longer, his lips working clumsily across yours before he pulls away to catch his breath and find his bearings. 

You chase him with your mouth, tilting your head up to kiss him. Kei feels his chest swell with arousal and his cock strains almost painfully against his pants as he peers at you. You’re so pretty. Everything about you is so pretty. On his chest, he can feel your fingers, splayed over his pecks, across his collarbone, and grazing the side of his neck. He leans closer, loving the pressure of your body and the desperation that pours from your skin. 

Kei kisses you again. He kisses you the way he wanted to outside, dipping his tongue into your mouth with a desperation that he can taste. You take control back, reaching between the two of you, and Kei shifts himself upward instinctually to give you access to him. He feels your fingers fumble for him and there’s a pause in which Kei doesn’t know what to do. He wonders if this might be the part of him that you like. The awkward part, the one that doesn’t know what to do. Kei’s thoughts are interrupted by the feeling of your hand wrapping around him and tugging upward. 

His head drops and a low groan escapes his lips before he can even think to stop it. Kei’d almost forgotten his sensitivity, how desperately he wants to be touched, how overwhelming it feels. He shivers, looking down at where your hand wraps around him and pumps. When he looks back up, he finds that you’re looking at his face, your eyes glassed over and observant as you commit all of his expressions to memory. 

“What?” he says, letting out a shuddering breath and the slight overstimulation. 

“Your face is red,” you reach up with your free hand to run your thumb along his cheek. 

Kei huffs, dropping his head and you fiddle with something between the two of you.

“No,” you pick his chin up. “I like it. It’s cute.” 

You tighten your grip around him and Kei feels his expression twist, a new rush of heat and desire flooding his belly as he realizes you’re sliding a condom onto him. Then, you guide the tip of him between your legs and he feels the wet press of your entrance against him. 

“Christ,” he groans. 

You smile slightly, shifting your hips a little and then placing your hands on his shoulders. Kei pushes forward slowly, his thighs twitching. It takes everything he has to keep from cumming again and every muscle in his body screams with a desire to let go. 

Kei is so overwhelmed, partially because you feel so good, but also because there is some part of him that knows this feels different. Kei feels different about you, about being intimate with you, than he has with anyone else. There’s something alive in him, something with its own mind. Something greedy and vulnerable that stirs when your face is this close to him, when he’s buried all the way in you to the base of his cock. Emotional and sensitive, Kei feels it kick. 

His first instinct is to run. Agreeing to let himself like you, to let himself do something about it, was not agreeing to letting something live inside of him. Kei’s first thought when he registers the difference is to cut it off and suffocate it so that it stops thumping against his chest. He’d grown so used to the hollow feeling that the feeling of living emotion makes him nervous, it puts him on edge. But when he pulls out a few inches and fucks back into you, the anxiety dispels into insurmountable pleasure. A pleasure Kei can’t describe, something fulfilling and whole. 

He picks up his pace, letting himself do what he wants while you grip his shoulders with blunted nails. He likes the expression you wear. Truthfully, he likes all of your expressions, but this one is new. Pressure and pleasure, a newness to the feel of him inside of you that you can’t quite keep from your eyes or lips. He kisses you as if he could taste it, slipping his tongue between your lips. 

“I really like you,” you mumble against his mouth, breath hot as it fans across his cheeks. 

Kei’s heart hammers and his hips stutter a little. 

“Me too,” he chokes, trying to think about volleyball to stave off a second orgasm. All that comes to mind though, is you. 

“Are you close again?” you breathe, voice laden with pleasure. 

“I have been since we started,” Kei admits. 

“Cum then,” you say softly, reaching behind his head to pull his mouth back to yours. Kei likes the control you exhibit. He groans his approval.

“You first,” he mutters.

There’s this possessive part of Kei that wants to watch you fall apart on him. He wants to see it, to watch you feel good too and commit it to memory so that he can always keep it. He thinks it’s a pride thing, something attached to his desire to succeed, to his reliability. Maybe though, it’s just because he thinks it’ll look hot. 

He reaches down and lifts one of your legs up by the back of your knee, pressing it down to give himself better access. You whine and Kei feels the way you clench down around him, your fingers knitting into the hair at the back of his neck. It hurts in a good way. 

Kei slips his hand between you, rubbing circles on your clit to get you there faster. Frankly, he doesn’t know how much longer he can last like this, staring down at your face while it twists with pleasure. You’re so attractive to him. Everything about you is sexy. It makes Kei a little crazy. 

He listens as your breathing quickens, as your voice wavers further. He feels the way your cunt begins to flutter faster, pulsing around him until you attempt to cry out and warn him. Then, you clamp down around him, arching your hips up off the mattress and pulling at his hair. Kei moves his head with you, relishing in the way you tug and scratch. 

He builds up to his orgasm so fast that it hurts. There’s pressure and then the mounting feeling of nearing the top, and then the peak and crash. He cums so hard that it hurts, pushing his cock as far as it will go into you and feeling the warm spill of his cum in the condom. He moans a long, drawn out sound that you mimic, his fingers knitting into the pillow behind you and his head dropping so that his lips sit near your neck.

He lets out a shaky breath, letting himself sit inside of you for a moment. You turn his head towards yours and kiss him. It’s gentle. A smooth and languid kiss that neither of you moves to deepen. Your lips move against each other and Kei closes his eyes to savor the taste. 

You tap his shoulder and Kei rolls over onto the bed beside you, snapping the condom off with a small wince and tying it up in a quick motion. He places it in the trash bin beside the bed. When he turns over, you’re already moving to slip under his arm, resting your head on his chest. 

There’s a passing moment of silence, not unlike the ones you both have fallen into before and you sigh lightly against his exposed chest. Kei follows suit, watching the way you move with his breath. 

His skin is sticky against yours and Kei can vaguely register the smell of sweat in the room. He doesn’t know how long it’s been since everyone left, nor does he know when they’ll be back, but he estimates that it won’t be more than an hour. Kei briefly wishes that he could pause time so that he can stay here with you, just like this. 

“I’m not good at this kind of stuff,” Kei admits quietly. 

“What stuff?” You ask, tracing your finger along the ridges of his lean abdomen. 

“Liking people,” he says. “Dating.” 

You give a small laugh. “No offense, Kei, but I could tell that from the moment I met you.” 

“Shit, seriously?” 

“Duh,” you breathe out. “It’s a little charming to me, though. I like that part of you.” 

So it’s true. You like the parts of Kei that he’s always worried were the worst of him. 

“Huh,” he says. “Could you tell?” 

“That you like me?” You ask, shifting your head to look at him. “Yeah, it was obvious after we established that you didn’t hate me. I always noticed you staring in the library.” 

“Really? I thought I was being a little slick with that,” Kei feels heat and color flood his face. 

You let out a good-natured laugh. “People can always tell when someone’s staring, Kei. It’s like a sixth sense.” 

“Good to know. Hindsight is 20/20 and all.” 

Another bout of silence follows. 

“You can keep staring though,” you say, “if you want to. And calling.”

“Okay,” Kei responds, “I didn’t really plan on stopping.” 

“Ha, freaky,” you laugh a little and Kei reaches up to flick the side of your head. “Wanna start going out?” 

Kei thinks about this for a moment. He thinks about being able to hold your hand, brush hair out of your face, watch movies on the couch and fix your breakfast the next morning. Then he thinks about not being able to do those things. 

“I think I’d be a little upset if we didn’t,” he admits. 

“Good,” you say. “Me too.” 

He’s fighting off sleep. His eyelids are heavy and he tries to blink away the shroud of rest that’s falling over him. Kei knows you’re fighting it too. Your breathing goes in and out of that familiar breathing that comes with sleep. Kei likes the way it sounds coming from you, restful and quiet. 

“We should… really get up to clean just a little,” he mumbles. 

“Five more minutes,” you say softly, your voice heavy and laden with drowsiness. 

“Okay,” he says. 

It’s just five more minutes. Kei fights sleep to hear you breathe like this a little longer. 

—

There’s a period after which Kei doesn’t know what to do with himself. Like the awkward start to a new hobby or passion, Kei finds himself enthralled with his budding relationship while simultaneously stumbling continuously along the way. You’re gracious with him though, letting him make mistakes and fumble until he finds his footing. 

It’s all very awkward for him, very new. He finds that it’s easier to just do the nice things he wants to do for you than to agonize over it and slowly, he begins to grow comfortable in the relationship that took you both so long to begin. 

At first, only Tadashi knew about you both. Kei thought that there was no point in hiding it from him, since you were over at the apartment all the time. Of course, Tadashi somehow already knew. That’s how it usually goes anyway, and Kei is relieved to find that his internal change did not trigger some global shift that would turn his life upside down. Everything is normal, save for the fact that Kei now tries to love without hindrance. 

Kei discovers that he’s possessive. That’s a new trait of his that he didn’t know belonged to him. Before you, before Kei had found something he so desperately wanted to keep, he’d been rather detached. Possessiveness was rare because Kei hardly ever got attached enough to want. Now though, he wants so badly that it hurts. You lean into it. Kei suspects that you like it when he wards off people who hit on you, when he pouts a little because he wants to be close to you, when he gets a little jealous. Kei doesn’t really mind it either. After all, despite his possessiveness, he never feels insecure. The both of you make sure of that. 

This sunny period with you, the one Kei worried would only last a week, drifts easily from one month into two and before he knows it, it’s been five. Kei had worried about that fundamental change. The one imperceivable to the human eye. He’d worried that slowly, it would begin to spoil what is so good between the two of you. 

“Kei,” you snap him out of it, placing a hand on his shoulder, “you okay?” 

He sets down his cup of tea, barely touched. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” 

“Don’t tell me you’re getting cold feet?” You give him a wry smile. “This was your idea, after all.” 

“Yeah, well it was a pretty shit idea actually,” he breathes, “My parents aren’t exactly easy.” 

“You want to cancel?” You ask, your eyebrows pulling up in a clumsy attempt to hide your disappointment. Kei can see right through it.

“No,” he shakes his head. “I want you to meet them. I just don’t want you to meet them.” 

The truth of it is that Kei would like to cancel. In an ideal world, one where the sun rises on the opposite side of his bedroom window, he’d forget the whole thing and take you out to get dinner and see a movie. Things would be simpler that way, less uncomfortable for the both of you. But as uncomfortable as it is, Kei wants you to be a part of their lives too. You’re too important to not introduce to his parents and Kei can’t see it any other way, though he’d like to. 

You snort. “What does that even mean?” 

Kei gives you a pointed and somewhat irritated look. 

“Okay, sorry,” you raise your hands defensively and walk over to place them on his shoulders. “I know you’re worried, but I think it’s going to be okay. I’m excited.” 

Kei huffs out a laugh, unable to vocalize his nerves in their totality. “Excited to meet my dysfunctional, divorced parents that kind of hate each other?” 

“Yup. I’m excited to meet the people who raised you.” 

Kei smiles a little. “You should meet Akiteru, then,” It’s an exaggeration, but for some reason the prospect of seeing both of his parents together has him feeling a little more bitter than usual, even if it was his idea. 

You give him a little grin through narrowed eyes. There’s an understanding that passes from you to him, like you’re acknowledging that you haven’t forgotten what he’d told you nearly six months ago. Kei feels the tension in his shoulders relax a little. 

His parents are already at the restaurant when he arrives. It’s a swanky Italian place. The kind you go to on birthdays or for anniversaries, where the pasta dishes are things like lobster mushroom ravioli or truffle oil fettucini in tiny portions. Kei made sure to book somewhere that his parents would have trouble making a scene in, not that they ever had much of a mind for decorum when they were married. He’s surprised to find them chatting cordially when you both arrive. 

“Kei,” his mother stands from the table and crosses to give him a hug. He pats her back gently.

“Hi Mom,” Kei responds and she gives him a small smile. 

Kei’s dad adjusts the lapel of his suit, the same one he’s had for years, and reaches to give him a hug around one shoulder. 

“Guys,” he inhales, “This is my partner, _____.” 

You grin at Kei and then introduce yourself formally to his parents. Kei watches in awe as you blend right in, like you’ve known them for many years. He sits down while trying to keep the nerves from his face. 

“We’re so happy to meet you,” his mother starts, “Kei’s never introduced us to any of his partners before.” 

“I’m the first?” You smile a little, raising an eyebrow at Kei as if to tease him. 

“There really haven’t been that many to begin with,” Kei grumbles as if that somehow makes it better. 

You laugh again and the ball of conversation begins rolling. His mother tells you how pretty you are and his father nods a quieter approval. They talk about his university’s graduation ceremony, which they attended separately, as if they were together the entire time and then ask about your major, if you graduated with him, where you plan on going. You tell them what you want to do and that you want to go wherever Kei goes. He marvels at how smoothly the evening moves onward.

There are moments where the tension in his family becomes obvious. Little swells or comments that bring up a sour or shameful memory that cannot be ignored. Moments when the air thickens and it feels like the hammer is about to come down. It never does though. The tension, rather than snapping, simply fades away. 

He’d expected everything to blow up for some reason. Kei had expected that, like his childhood, the restaurant dishes would end up smashed on the floor. The glassware always ended up broken in the house, why shouldn’t they be broken here to shatter the illusion of things being good? He braces himself for a ball that never drops.

It takes him until the ride home, after a successful dinner, to realize that the dishes haven’t been smashed in years. Not since he was fourteen and his parents fought for custody. Not since his mother got remarried to her now husband almost 6 years ago and his father met his new wife. Kei wonders why he still feels like he lives in that house. The one his parents were at their worst in. Why can’t he feel like he lives in the apartment he rents with Tadashi? 

“I think that went well,” you say softly on the drive back. 

Kei nods his agreement. “I think so too.” 

You don’t bring up the fact that they didn’t fight, or that they spoke about their new kids with each other as if they were old friends. You don’t accuse Kei of being wrong, of being paranoid even though he most definitely was. 

“I’m glad that I got to meet them,” you say. “You look so much like your mom.” 

“Really?” Kei asks. 

“Yeah, you’ve got her eyes and her nose,” you smile a little. “It makes you two look similar.” 

“Huh,” he says. “I never really gave that much thought.” 

Kei turns the idea that he has his mother’s face over in his head. He’d spent so much time dreading that he was like them on the inside, that he never paused to consider the outside. So much of his life has been spent worrying that he’s just like them. That he breaks the plates and lashes out and acts cruelly even when he’s trying to love. But he has his mother’s eyes and for some reason that unsettles him. It’s like evidence. 

“You don’t really act like them though,” you say as if on cue. “You’re a little gentler.” 

“Me? Gentle?” Kei scoffs. 

“Yeah!” you say. “I mean, sure you’re prickly, but there’s a goodness to you that’s really obvious if you look.” 

Goodness. What a strange word to use to describe someone. Kei thinks that if there’s any goodness in him, if there’s anything that hasn’t been tainted by his parents’ sour personalities, it’s from Akiteru. Kei likes to believe that whatever good he got was from him. No matter how strained his relationship with him might be now, Kei is certain of that. 

“That’s a relief,” he admits in a flat tone. 

After a long pause, he speaks again. “Thanks.” 

“For what?” You laugh. 

“Bearing with me… and with them,” he says. “Couldn’t have been easy.” 

“It was easy,” you say. “Because I wanted to meet them. And I care about you.” 

Kei feels color rise to his cheeks. He turns to look in the sideview mirrors as he pulls the car into a parking spot in his apartment complex’s garage. 

“You say that stuff so easily,” he huffs. 

“What? That I care about you?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Well, I do,” you laugh a little.

Kei’s face grows hotter and he distracts himself by putting the car into park and taking the key out of the ignition. 

“Me too,” he says quietly, waiting for you to catch up so that he can take your hand in his. “Sorry that I don’t say it a lot.” 

“Not to be rude,” you say, “but even if you never said it at all, it would be obvious. You’re kind of a sucker.” 

Kei supposes that that’s true and he gives a small laugh before nudging your shoulder with his. The parking garage is humid and stuffy, but he holds your hand in it anyway. 

—

You’re half asleep in bed beside him and your breathing comes in even sweeps the way it does just before you fall asleep. Kei listens to it for a moment, admiring the sound of it and the way your chest feels expanding against his. 

He thinks about dinner, about how good it feels to have introduced you. How real it makes this relationship feel despite the uneasiness surrounding his familial situation. Kei thinks about his parents. He thinks about their inability to be good for each other. He thinks about the worst of them, something he’s familiar with, before thinking about the best of them. Kei imagines the way their faces looked at dinner, talking about the children they’re raising properly. They’re good people, they just made each other bad. Molecular shifts that changed them for the worst. The notebook theory in its most frightening form. But they were good too. 

Kei thinks about loving you. His reluctance to do so originally isn’t quite beyond him yet. He’s unsure, in fact, if he’ll ever really get past the fear of the fall, the fear of becoming what his parents made each other. But he also thinks about his promise to love you for real. Love is not something that Kei does. He knows now that it's something that happens to him, like it happened to his parents. They loved each other once, even if it made them so blind that they couldn’t see just how bad it made them. 

Kei still resents the fact that he was born to fix a marriage that never would have worked in the first place. He resents being a fix rather than a gift, but at the very least, his existence is proof that his parents cared enough about their family to try. Even if it was misguided, at least they tried even a little. 

In the quiet after of an emotionally charged evening, loving you seems like an easier task for him now. It’s not hard to love you. What’s hard, Kei thinks, is not hurting you. He carries a lot of baggage that, for a long while, felt like too much. Kei thinks he can manage if it’s for you. He’ll bear the brunt of it. He’ll put in the work. 

Yes, Kei is his parents’ son, but he’s also Tadashi’s friend, Akiteru’s brother, the person who loves you. He doesn’t live in the house with a bin full of shards and no glassware anymore. 

“Are you awake?” He whispers across the pillow. 

“Mhm,” you hum, pushing your cheek into his arm.

“Let’s move in together,” he says. 

You tense against him and slowly attempt to blink away sleep. “Are you sure?” 

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he responds. “I want to live with you.” 

“Okay then,” you smile a little. “Let’s do it.” 

—

In the fall, when his lease with Tadashi ends and his friend gives him a tearful, yet somewhat silly goodbye, Kei moves into your new shared apartment. Two small rooms in a modest part of town, a shared kitchen and living room, one bathroom, a mismatch of furniture from both of your old places, and an empty fridge. The first night is spent eating take out on the floor with you in front of a TV with no proper stand. Kei has never been happier. 

And in the morning, when the sun comes through the slats of his window, broken up into gentle dots by the orange-leaved trees outside, Kei rises slowly. He rises gently. Kei doesn’t want to wake you, not before he’s made breakfast. He pads out to the kitchen, where boxes are strewn about, half unpacked, and grabs the little brown notebook from the box it’s been temporarily living in. In it, he writes a grocery list full of the things you like. It’s a good enough reason, a good enough change. 

The notebook theory. 

[locobastaaa]

That ONE thing one piece men do that make you wanna just

Characters: x fem reader

A/N: its 5 in the morning and im feeling silly

C/W: craxk post, swearing

Luffy: doesn't wash his hands like... ever he prolly has like fucking hand Syphilis.

Zoro: leaves weights EVERYWHERE, their not even in reasonable places he'll go to do smth while still holding his weights put it down and "loose" it. You have a notepad of everywhere you have found a weight so-far.

Fridge

Shower??

IN the washing machine

Bed

Under the sink

Kid: will come in after working in his workshop all day covered in grease n shit and just flop down on your fresh clean sheets.

Killer: will roll over crush you and kill you in your sleep ❤️.

Law: he just up and forgets you live with him. like he'll be walking through y'all's house see you and be like "oh hey what are you doing here" and you just give him the most deadass look of "mother fucker I live with you."

Shanks: has bigger tits than you 😡

Buggy: will hear everything as you saying smth about his nose like you could come home and be like "hey buggy im home" and hell get up and be like "did you just call me a big stinky slut with a red nose"

Ace: will wipe shit on you constantly like oh what he got mud on his hand fucking apparently your back makes a good fucking wash cloth

Corazon: nothn the mans perfect... to perfect...... your issue with Corazon is that he's too perfect.

Crocodile: just fucking sandstorms away when he doesn't want to do smth. "Hey croc could you grab me a drink of.." *sandstorms away*

Doflamingo: Is a hoe

Mihawk: man scares the shit out of you. You'll walk into y'all's room and he'll be sitting and reading in silence and just be like "hello" makes you jump so bad the whore doesn't even apologise either.

Marco: will just fly away randomly

Katakuri: has just picked you up off the ground turned and put you down out of his way. What? Your in the fridge getting a snack? Nope 🤗 your ass is now being picked up and moved out of katakuris way.

[locobastaaa]

On the 13th was my fav boy's bday!! Barry / Jun from Pokemon, here is a redraw i made from an old piece of mine

#barry #barry pokemon #pearl #pokemon #pokemon pearl #happy birthday #jun #jun pokemon #pokemon diamond and pearl

[locobastaaa]

HaughtyShipping hints

Solo vine a defender una pareja que me encanta y que es infravalorada. La gente tiende a decir que Pearl odia a Platinum por que no es como es Diamond con ella, comparando los hints de Haughty con los de Commoner. Está claro que no es lo mismo. Diamond y Pearl son como el día y la noche. En mi opinión, los dos están enamorados de Platinum. Solo que a Diamond le dio un flechazo, y Pearl fue con el tiempo. Ambas parejas tienen hints por parte de ellos dos. En mi opinión Platinum no los ve como nada mas que amigos.

Pearl es un mandón, las cosas son así. Manda a los demás y no le guste que le digan lo que tiene que hacer (En eso se parece algo a ella). Por eso no soportaba a Platinum al principio.

Pero eso cambia cuando Platinum empieza a combatir en gimnasios. Pearl es quien le hace un plan de entrenamiento y aunque Diamond también ayuda en los entrenamientos, muchas veces es solo Pearl quien la ayuda. Se ve entusiasmado y feliz de que ella este usando el plan de entrenamiento que el mismo preparó y siempre va a ayudarla a entrenar. Él mismo dice sentir debilidad por ese tipo de personas.

Platinum es la dex holder más fuerte. Ganó todas las medallas, los concursos y el frente de batalla de Shinnoh. Además todos sus Pokemon tienen el Pokerus. Pearl fue quien la entrenó. Cada vez que llegaban a un gimnasio nuevo, el preparaba un nuevo plan de entrenamiento para ella. Y la observaba mientras entrenaba.

En su primer combate de gimnasio ella estaba muy nerviosa. El hizo todo lo posible por animarla y hacer que se centrara. (A su manera, claro.) Siguió haciéndolo en la mayoría de gimnasios que ella retó.

También hay una escena que comparte con CommonerShipping puesto que paso lo mismo pero en distintas escenas.

Cuando Pearl grita a Platinum es por que está preocupado. El es así, también le grita a Dia y es su mejor amigo desde hace años.

Si en la escena de la bicicleta, Platinum hubiera dicho que no sabía montar, hubiera quedado así:

Pearl: No me digas que no se montar.

Platinum: Es cierto, no se.

Pearl: Deja que te ayude.

Pero Platinum es muy orgullosa y no quiere admitir que no sabe montar. Y eso a Pearl le frustra por que sabe que no puede y quiere ayudar.

De hecho un poco mas adelante…

Cuando Platinum deja de ser orgullosa con el, el deja de ser así con ella.

Ahora explicare una de mis escenas favoritas con esta pareja. Muchos dicen que Commoner es genial por que Diamond se quedó mirándola la primera vez que la vio pensando que era una princesa. ¿Y por que ese mismo momento con Pearl no está tan bien visto? Él también piensa que ella es como de la nobleza, y ambos lo pensaron antes de saber quién era ella en realidad. No veo la diferencia.

Y estos son los hints mas notables de que Pearl no odia a Platinum. No la soportaba al principio pero eso fue cambiando enseguida, cuando el vio su determinación. 

Y ya dije que escribí esto porque detesto como la mayoría de mis parejas favoritas pasan desapercibidas por otras. No me pasaría eso si no sintiera debilidad por las que a nadie le gustan.

También aclarar que no tengo nada en contra de CommonerShipping. Solo prefiero el Haughty, y sus fans no son los arenosos que critican a las parejas “en contra” de la suya.

[locobastaaa]

HAIKYUU: Mejores y Peores compas de PORRO!

Personajes: Kuroo, Tendou, Akaashi, Sugawara, Daichi, Iwaizumi, Kenma, Bokuto, Hinata, Asahi, Yamaguchi, Ushijima, Oikawa, Lev, Tsukishima, Atsumu, Kageyama

Me saco el lado argento y ecribo un headcanon q me surgio hace bastante

Tw: consumo de marihuana, algunos vomitan, chiste de deportar a Lev, son MAYORES en este fic!! (no consuman si son menores)

Mejores

1- Kuroo (ree chill arma increible y te cuenta historias y datos re interesantes, te deja apoyarte en su pecho mientras te abraza y hablan, toman pepsi fria y comen papas)

2- Tendou (muchos contactos de dealers, arma bastante bien y le agarra alto viaje mistico, le copa ver pelis flasheras bajo el efecto pero no entiende nada ni puede seguir la trama, lo babea un toque asiq menos puntos x eso, un cago de risa si lo juntas con Kuroo. Lo posee su chef interior y te intenta de hacer comida y esta god)

3- Akaashi (si no le da un brote psicótico pobre pibe esta en la suya y se pone profundo/sentimental y bastante cariñoso. Se abre de la nada y cuenta de sus problemas, basicamente todo lo q sobrepiensa lo dice en voz alta, se le borra el filtro)

4- Suga (se pone profundo y se re suelta, tal vez se nos queda dormido, le gustan los savorizados de eucalipto/lavanda, no sabe armar igual)

5- Daichi (afloja el culo fruncido y te cagas de risa, tira de la nada el comentario mas shockeante del mundo, no se acuerda de nada el dia siguiente y si se acuerda lo niega rotundamentepa)

6- Iwa (arma decente pero le agarra rapido la mano, bastante chill, no para de hablar mal de Oikawa pero se caga de risa y le gusta salir a boludear x los supers)

7- Kenma (suuper tranqui medio q le da nauseas pero no dice nada y al toque se le van, se rie a veces en voz baja pero no sabes de que, medio cagaso pero es re lindo asiq lo perdonamos, se pega la siesta de su vida casi llaman a una ambulancia xq parecia q no respiraba al dia siguiente

Peores

1-Bokuto (se pone insoportable bajate de la heladera pendejo pelotudo, no para de hablar y de reírse y se intenta hacer amigo de tu viejo con la baranda a marihuana q maneja de pedo no lo saco cagando)

2- Hinata (si no muere instantáneamente termina vomitando todo solo con el olor, lo MATO, le pega al toque y fuertisimo pobre nene)

3- Asahi (le agarra un derrame no lo vemos mas, multiplicador de depresion)

4- Yamaguchi (vomita todo flaco hiciste 2 pitadas, después se pone q llorar xq le da culpa)

5- Ushijima (no se como lo convencieron a q fume pero muy mal viaje, no entiende nada, se olvida q mide 3 metros y va tirando cosas sin querer, flashea entrenamiento en medio del viaje astral y se empieza a sentir mal de la panza, no le gusta la experiencia y no quiere hacerlo nunca más, medio q los gaslightea sin querer a los otros para q se sientan mal cuando consumen)

6- Oikawa (no para de llorar callenlo, se te tira encima pero no calcula q es pesadisimo y te aplasta, ya en el piso con vos abajo sin respirar se queda dormido y moris afixiado)

7- Tsukishima (se hace el agrandado y desp se pone del orto, mas irritable de lo normal, desp se niega a compartir colchon)

8- Atsumu (cerra el ORTO, se le infla la cabeza del choto e intenta chamuyarse a ser q se mueva, mi vieja esta casada y te triplica en edad loco para de tirarle onda te voy a asesinar)

9- Kageyama (la re mal viaja pero esta callado asiq no me quejo, se levanta una vez en toda la noche para ir al 'baño' y caldea hasta el techo)

10- Lev (otro q es insoportable, no para de cantar y gritar, te tenes q contener de darle vuelta la cabeza de una piña posta no se calla y te hace un headlock en forma de cariño pero te apreta la cabeza y te duele pero cuando le decis como esta cantando a todo pulmon no te escucha, Kenma lo hace recapacitar de el pedazo de grito q le pega, lo deja llorando. Es del tipo que dice cada 10 segundos 'estoy re ido locooo' si ya se Lev te voy a deportar).

#haikyuu #kozume kenma #kuroo tetsurou #hinata shouyou #tsukishima kei #kageyama tobio #sawamura daichi #sugawara koushi #tendou satori #ushijima wakatoshi #akaashi keiji #bokuto koutarou #lev haiba #miya atsumu #oikawa tooru #yamaguchi tadashi #asahi azumane #iwaizumi hajime #haikyuu x reader #silly goofy mood #español #argentina #marihuana

[locobastaaa]

Happy New year!!

[locobastaaa]

teaching ranpo a lesson : ̗̀➛

RANPO EDOGAWA x f!reader

contents. dubcon, dom! reader, submissive!ranpo, tit sucking, bratty!ranpo, dry humping, panty fucking, ranpo tastes his own cum, pet names (reader calls ranpo “good boy” and “sweetheart”), reader jerks ranpo off, he eats reader out, praise

wc. 6.2k

a/n. okay but i wish tumblr didn’t remove my italics whenever i paste my fanfictions from another tab?? when is tumblr gonna start showing me the word count so i don’t have to write on other apps? so, just imagine the italics are there.

"Come in!" Ranpo called out when he heard a knocking on his door, and a pleasant surprise came his way when he discovered that it was you peeping your head through the entrance. "Oh, what a nice surprise!"

You shot him a cold glare before making your way into his room, slamming a pile of documents onto his messy table. You disliked Ranpo, so you didn't want to attempt making conversation, but he seemed eager to chat. Ranpo couldn't help but notice the chill in the air, but he brushed it off- as he always did, his eyes glinting with curiosity as he leaned over the table, examining the documents you'd brought.

"This is it?"

"Yep. All twenty cases that Kunikida has assigned to you." You muttered, crossing your arms as you watched him lean against his desk. "You have half an hour to solve them all before we get to close the cases."

"Half an hour, you say?" Ranpo chuckled softly, a glint of amusement in his eyes. "Very well then, let's see what we've got here." He began flipping through the papers, his mind already racing with potential theories and connections.

Watching as he eagerly dove into his responsibility, you turned to leave him to his work. However, before you could even face the door, he grabbed you by the wrist, a little dissapointed that you thought to go so soon.

"You're leaving already?" He frowned, pulling you back. "I was hoping you'd get to see my genius mind at work as I solve all of these mysteries."

"I don't have time to watch you solve these cases, Edogawa. And you know I'd much rather do anything else than stay anyway." You rolled your eyes, scoffing as you snatched your hand away. He scrunched his nose a little, irritated how you'd insist on calling him Edogawa instead of Ranpo.

"Still calling me Edogawa, huh? After we've known each other for so long." He pouted slightly, but his eyes twinkled with amusement. "Well, maybe I should try something else to catch your attention."

"Try all you want. I'm leaving." You let out a displeased snort.

"Alright, let me give this a shot." He interrupted your path towards the door, still holding your gaze. "I'll admit, you're one tough nut to crack... What exactly is it that you don't like about spending time with me?"

You arched a brow. "The master detective asking me a question?" You shrivelled your nose. "Now, I can't tell if that's rhetorical."

"It's not." He grinned, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "So, tell me, what's the matter with me?"

"God, you really are a piece of fucking work." You finally turned back to face him fully, pinching thr bridge of your nose as you prepared yourself for the rant of a lifetime- since he had been so kind as to ask you himself.

"Okay, first of all: You're a narcissist. You think the entire world revolves around you and that your ability is the best. You're lazy and irritating, you leach off of other people, and you refuse to do any work that doesn't interest you. And not only that, but you get kind people like Atsushi and Kenji to go out and run errands for you because you know they're too nice to say no."

His eyes widened at first, but his lips curved in amusement before he shrugged.

"Well, I'll admit to a little bit of narcissism. And maybe a touch of laziness. But I like to say that these kinds of things are what make me me!" He boasted, completely unaffected by your remarks.

Your eye twitched at his unfazement. "It's clear that nobody's ever taught you a lesson up until now, Edogawa. I would've thought that the boss would shape you up to be a decent person, but you're still the same, old egotist."

"Well, I'm sorry if I don't fit into your idea of a 'decent person.' But maybe there's something about me that you haven't quite figured out yet." He leaned closer, his voice lowering. "I don't need to be taught any lessons."

You saw how he attempted to take control of the situation, but you just lifted yourself up and walked over to him, backing him up slightly as you let out through gritted teeth:

"If it were up to me, I wouldn't let you walk around all high and mighty like the boss does" You had leaned so close to him that you were backing him into his bed.

"Oh really?" He challenged, his eyes glinting with mischief. "And what exactly would you do to make me stop, hmm? Torture me? The boss would have you kicked out in no time."

"You see, unlike you, I'm reliant on my strength outside of my ability." You pressed your palm against his chest and pushed him down onto his bed so you stood above him, your eyes glaring down at him. "And even if I wasn't, I wouldn't have the lip to talk back to people stronger than me."

"You're not stronger than me. You might have some physical strength, but your mind is weak. It's obvious that you've never encountered anyone like me before."

"Oh, I've encountered hundreds of narcissists like you in the past. The only issue with you is that I work with you." You flicked the button of his hoodie so it would fall off, leaving him in his button-up, tie, and vest. You pulled on his tie and leaned down so that his face was forced inches from yours. "What's a strong mind if you can't comprehend simple shit like shutting the fuck up?"

"I'm the one who decides what to shut up about." Ranpo grinned, his face inches from yours. His voice betrayed an unexpected level of arousal beneath his bravado. "And I'll never shut up, if that goes against what you want from me."

You loosened your grip around the end of his tie so your finger could hook around the top of it instead, pulling the tie off him.

"You're a brat, you know that?" You lifted your knee up to the side of his bed so that you started to straddle him- An action that caught Ranpo completely off guard because of how completely out-of-character it seemed for you to do, considering your rocky history with the cocky detective. His face flushed red as he glanced up at you, his pupils dilated and his jaw hung open just a little.

"What are you doing—?"

"It's obvious that no one's taught you how to behave before, and since everyone at the agency seems reluctant to, I guess I could fill that role." You glared down at him from the seat on his lap. "You're going to listen to me, and I'm going to turn you into a humble, hardworking, and kind detective."

"You're lying if you think that's possible," Ranpo snorted with a grin, his face flushed with excitement beneath your aggressive stare. Despite his protests, he couldn't help but be intrigued by the fact that you were actually willing to do something like this to the person you hated most.

"It is possible, Edogawa." You hummed. "And I know I can't hurt you physically, so I can torture you in some other ways." Your hands moved down to unzip the fly of his pants.

"Other ways?" Ranpo groaned, his face flushed red as he felt you unzip his pants and touch him through his underwear. "You... you're not actually planning to—?"

"Sh." You ordered. "If you want to ask me any questions, you need to say my name first. And be polite." You fished his erection out of his pants, which only grew harder by the second.

Ranpo's eyes widened, his heart racing in anticipation and fear, but he kept a fidgety smirk on his lips as he attempted to keep his composure.

"Oh, I have no questions. Just enjoying the show."

"Still quite the brat." You commented as you began to stroke the length of his cock, slowly sending shivers through his nervous system.

"Hah... well, aren't you just confident?" Ranpo teased, his breath hitching as he arched into your touch, his cock twitching eagerly. "If you wanted me this badly, you could've just asked. My door is always open."

Suddenly, your movements slowed down immensely, and your thumb swept over the tip of his cock, which caused a jolt. You glared at him with a deadpan stare, but kept stroking at a rate that was starting to get irritatingly slow. Ranpo couldn't help but growl in frustration as you teased him mercilessly, his hands clenching into fists beneath you, his breath hitching uncontrollably.

"Damn, stop it..."

"Stop what?" You asked innocently, swiping the collection of precum that emerged from his slit down to the base of his shaft, making it easier for you to stroke.

"God—" Ranpo's voice cracked as you swiped the precum, his body jerking slightly from the unexpected sensation. "You're not making this easy..."

"I wasn't planning to." You said coldly, leaning down to gather saliva in your mouth before spitting down at his cock to lubricate it more for your hands.

"Fuck..." Ranpo hissed out, his hips jerking upwards involuntarily into your hand, seeking more contact even as he tried to maintain his dominance. "Come on, let's stop playing games now. Stop teasing me..."

"Not with that attitude." You huffed, starting to speed up more at a steadier pace now.

"You... you have no idea what you're doing to me..."

"Oh, I feel like I know exactly what I'm doing... Does it feel good, Edogawa?" You asked in a babyish tone, like some sort of mockery. To that, his face contorted, a mix of humiliation and intense arousal. "Aww, what? Does little Edogawa like being the dominant one?"

"No— I mean... damn it, stop teasing me, already..." Ranpo groaned, his body trembling with the effort to maintain his composure as you teased him relentlessly.

"You're gonna have to ask a lot nicer than that if you want something. Have you no manners?" You went to grab him by the base of his chin by your left hand as your right hand slowly moved up and down his length again.

Ranpo gritted his teeth, his breath coming in quick, ragged moments through his nostrils.

"Stop teasing me... Please." He added, as if he were a a bratty toddler being asked to do something he really didn't want to do.

"That was a good start." You nodded approvingly. "Unfortunately, you can't undo bad manners with one good deed. I'm going to train politeness into your brain by fucking you until you can't take it."

"Don't be stupid. You can't train politeness" He spat back, a mix of fear and excitement coursing through him as you spoke; his hips arched up slightly, offering himself to you once more.

"Me? Stupid? But I can. Look at how you're arching for me right now." Your left hand began to travel down from his neck down to his shirt and vest so you could undo the buttons.

"Stop the attempts now... you're not getting me to submit like this." His heart raced as your hand continued to undo his clothes, revealing more skin.

"What do you mean? It's working." You hummed as you carelessly tossed his vest to the side, leaving him just in his unbuttoned shirt, which revealed his chest that panted uncontrollably.

"I'm not gonna give in so eas—ily." He gulped between his word as the pleasure hit him suddenly. His cock twitched in your hand, leaking pre-cum in anticipation.

"You will. And once we're done, I'm going to be the only member of the detective agency you'll listen to completely. You'll bend over backwards for me and you'll have the upmost respect for me." You stated as a matter of factly. "As for everyone else: You're going to treat them all with the respect and kindness they deserve and you're going to pick up your weight at the Detective Agency."

He seemed amused at your assertiveness, but his heart pounded relentlessly. "No one can control me like that. You're being dumb." He wanted desperately to pull away and give himself a moment to reassert his dominance to take control, but his body betrayed him, responding to your touch and words.

"You will." You pushed him back so his back laid completely on his bed, with you still sat comfortable on his lap. "And we'll start with tabletop manners. If you want something, you say 'please'. When you get it, you say 'thank you'."

"How do you expect me to apply that here?" Ranpo murmured, feeling both humiliated and aroused by your dominance, his body trembled slightly as fet your weight on his thighs.

"Easy. Like this:" You retracted your hand again, leaving him without touch for a moment. Once you had pulled your hand away, he felt a shaky breath leave his lips- Which was much less embarrassing than the whine he had suppressed. "You want me to continue?" You questioned coyly.

The man's jaw just ticked, and he looked back at you with the most unimpressed stare of the century. "Obviously..."

"Ah, ah, ah." You immediately tutted, shaking your head. "That's not what I just taught you. Try again."

You could see Ranpo'a eye twitch at your command, which made it all the more amusing for you when he finally let out a large sigh.

"Yes..." He whispered, hating himself for it but unable to resist. "...Please."

"Loud and clear. I didn't quite get that."

He felt like he was close to giving in, his cock throbbing in anticipation of your touch.

"Yes, I would like you to continue please." He said, his voice barely above a whisper.

"Good boy." You teased with a delicate smirk, but one that could barely be seen through your glare.

Upon hearing such a sentence, Ranpo's eyes immediately widened at your praise, and his cock throbbed even more before you even touched it again. He squirmed a bit, his body aching for you to touch him. He knew he was being pathetic, but he couldn't help it. He was hopelessly obsessed with you. His face blushed brightly when you had praised him like that, and it was like such a reward was enough for him.

"I'm no genius like you, but I can understand you love being praised." You hummed sweetly with a stone-cold expression as your hand met his cock again to stroke. "I'm no monster, so I'll praise you when you do something good. That's our deal."

Ranpo gasped softly, his eyes rolling back into his head as your touch sent shivers down his spine. He couldn't believe how much he craved this from you, even though he knew it was wrong. His mind was a mess of desire and submission.

"When you do something wrong, you apologise and say that it won't happen again." You continued reciting the rules.

Ranpo nodded slowly, his eyes still rolling back into his head. "I...I understand." He said, knowing that he was giving in to you entirely. His heart ached as he realized how much he wanted to be owned by you, his hands needing grasped onto your thighs as he yearned to touch you. However, when you felt him on your thighs, you paused again, making him whimper at the lack of sensation.

"I don't remember recall saying that you could touch me. And I also don't remember you asking."

His face turned red.

"S-sorry...I just...I can't help it...I needed to—" He sounded desperate and filthy, his need for you was becoming more and more obvious as time went on. He cleared his throat. "...I'm sorry. It won't happen again." His hands retreated.

"What did I say you should do when you want something?" You queried. Ranpo swallowed hard, his heart racing

"A-Ask...I'm supposed to ask." He trembled, his mind a jumbled mess of desire and submission. He wanted you to take control again, but he also knew that he shouldn't give in to these urges.

"Good. So ask nicely." You offered. You realised how easy it was to get him to listen when your hands were around his cock.

"P-please...can I touch you?" He asked, his voice trembling.

"Touch me where?" Your brown arched.

"Your thighs... Please." He was practically begging now, his submissive side completely exposed.

"Of course. I can even take my tights off if that would make it nicer for you. Do you want that?" Your unoccupied hand went to stroke his chin, his eyes filled with need and desire.

"Y-yes, please...I want you to take your tights off."

You leaned your palms against the bed and hovered over him for a moment so you could pull your tights off your legs. He bit his lower lip nervously, his heart racing in anticipation as he made eye contact with you above him. Having your chest so close to his causes Ranpo's eyes to widen, but he knew that this was all for a greater cause, so he didn't dare to move. Once your tights were discarded of to leave your thighs bare, you sat back on his lap.

"There. Now what do you say?"

Ranpo looked up at you, his eyes glued to your thighs, which were now bare and exposed. His breathing was ragged, and his heart was racing. He could feel himself getting harder, aching for you.

"...Thank you..."

"Well done." You felt Ranpo began to knead at the softness of your skin at the same time you stroked him.

He moaned softly into the touch, his hands moving up and down your thighs, feeling the warmth and softness of your skin beneath his fingertips.

"M-more... I need more." He panted, his voice filled with desire and submission.

"Need more what?"

"More... of this." He said between gasps, his hands moving higher up on your thighs, brushing against the sensitive skin just below your waistline. "I want to touch more of you... Please."

"Like what, Edogawa?" You seemed bored with his lack of clarification.

Ranpo swallowed hard, his heart pounding in anticipation. His gaze flickered down to your hand, still stroking him gently.

"Your... chest." He croaked, his voice barely audible above the sound of his heavy breathing.

"My chest?" Your eyebrows raised a little, amused by his plea. "But do you deserve it?"

"I..." He cleared his throat, his body shivering slightly from the anticipation and excitement. His eyes filled with determination and submission.

"Do you think you deserve my chest?" You asked him directly now, watching as he trembled.

"Yes, I do. Please... I need you. I crave it. Please—" He begged.

"You don't need it. You want it." You corrected him.

"I... Yes, I want it. Please, give me what I want." He groaned, his body arching towards you, seeking out the connection he desired so desperately.

Your lips teased into a smile. "How about this: We do a little exercise to show appreciation to all of your coworkers. If you can say one nice thing about all of them, I'll let you hold my tits."

"A-alright..." He gulped, knowing that this would be difficult for him, as he wasn't the most expressive person when it came to compliments. But the challenge seemed fair- for the reward, anyway. "Umm... I guess Junichiro has a cool ability..."

"Ah- Stop there." You shook your head. "You need to sound more confident about your compliments. None of that 'I guess' shit."

"Y-yes, sorry." He swallowed thickly, trying to find the right words. "...Junichiro's ability is really unique and serves as a perfect defence for our team..." He let out a long, shaky sigh as he could still feel your hands wrapped around his dick. "A-And Dazai's intellect is incredible... It's almost matches mine." The final comment made your movements stop, which caused him to wince.

"No snarky comments either."

"S-sorry... I couldn't help it. I just want to hold you—"

"Not until you give all of your coworkers compliments. Say them. Now." You demanded.

"—'M sorry...! Uh..." He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to think of something nice to say about each person. You listened as he continued to spew out more words of kindness, growing more whiny and helpless as he went on.

"...And Kunikida is great at handling the more technical aspects of investigations. He helps keep the whole team on track and ensures we don't miss anything. I really appreciate his contributions..." He could feel himself growing increasingly desperate as he spoke.

"Well done! Now was that so hard?" Your lips pulled into a kind smile as your palm ran down his cheek, which was flushed with a glowing pink colour.

His cheeks felt hot as he let out a shaky breath, feeling oddly relieved. "T-th-thank you... I-It's wasn't so hard..." he stammered, his heart racing as he anticipated what would happen next.

"Now. I'll hold my end of the bargain. Sit up." You pulled him over so you could read the other end of the bed. You rested your back against his pillows, allowing him to settle himself between your legs. "If you want to get a taste of my tits, you'll need to take off my shirt yourself."

His face was flushed and his hands were shaking, but he leaned over and gently pulled the hem of your shirt up over your chest, exposing your breasts to him. With a simple flick, he had unclasped your bra and discarded it carefully to the side as to not cast it too far away. His breathing was quick and shallow as he stared down at your bare chest, his hands trembling as he tentatively reached out towards your right tit, hesitating. He paused, not sure if he should go further. 

"M-May I touch?"

"You may."

With a mix of excitement and nervousness, he gently cupped your breast, his fingers trembling against your warm skin as his thumb swept over your nipple, his fingers exploring every inch of your soft skin. His eyes were locked onto the fat of your chest, and your eyes darkened at how eager he stared at your chest- the wat he fondles your breasts while licking his lips.

"M-May I taste now, please?" he asked softly, his voice barely above a whisper.

"You may."

With a small moan of delight, Ranpo finally gave in to his desires and lowered his head towards your chest. His warm breath fanned across your sensitive nipple as he took it between his lips, sucking softly at first before beginning to tease it with his tongue. The way he dragged his tongue across you made it seem like he was trying to make out with your breast- He was so desperate to have it in his mouth. The delicate touch of his tongue sent butterflies through your stomach, and the small moaning noises emanating from his throat only served to heighten the intense sexual tension in the air.

As he leaned in closer, you could feel how his cock pressed between your thighs and up against your clothed cunt. As he sucked on your tit, he was pushing his tip up aright against you- Almost involuntarily, like he didn't even realise. Feeling the warmth and wetness that spread across his tongue, Ranpo couldn't help but become more assertive. His hands roamed up your body, seeking out your breasts, pinching and rolling the nipples in time with his mouth's movements. His cock pressed against you even more as he leaned forward.

But you held your hand against Ranpo's chest to push him away, and he whimpered as he lost connection with your nipple.

"Are you getting too excited, Ranpo?" You questioned, gesturing down to his leaking cock. "It seems like you're pressing up against me way too much."

His eyes flickered up to meet yours, filled with a mix of desire and defiance. He swallowed hard, his cock twitching against your thigh as he pulled back slightly, but not entirely.

"I... I can't help it.” He said softly, in an almost apologetic tone.

"It's like you're using getting to taste me as an excuse to get yourself off down there too." You let out a deep breath. "I told you, if you want something, you need to ask."

Ranpo felt a blush spread across his cheeks and neck as you called him out, his heart racing as he stared down at his erection. His cock throbbed again, as if eager to fill the void between them.

"I... I want to be inside you, please…”

"Well, after that, I don't think you deserve it." You huffed, to which Ranpo's eyes widened in shock and disappointment; there was still an undeniable spark of determination within them.

"Please! Please, don't do this..."

"How about another exercise then?" You suggested, causing his eyes to light up at the opportunity.

"Yes, another exercise...!" Ranpo breathed out in relief, his mind already racing with potential scenarios. He could feel himself growing even harder against his will. "What would you like me to do?"

"I want you to tell me how smart Dazai is... Without complimenting yourself in the process." You offered, watching how his eye twitched.

He bit his lip, thinking for a moment. There was no way he could take the opportunity to praise someone he knew he was smarter than, but he had to find a way to prove his independence.

"Dazai is... extremely intelligent.”

"Is that it?" You scoffed

"I don't know what the stakes are! I don’t know what I'm getting in return..." He grumbled.

"Good boys don’t ask for something in return. But, if you can compliment Dazai. I'll let you dry hump me and fuck my panties. That's all you get." You offered, but that still seemed enough to satiate his neediness. He seemed to hesitate at first, frustrated at his inability to resist praising Dazai but determined to find a way out.

"He is incredibly intelligent and... cunning." He added, knowing that even with his compliment, it would still be clear who was smarter.

"You can be nicer than that." You told him with another shrivel of your nose.

Feeling the heat between you two intensify, Ranpo let out a small groan of desire. He took a deep breath and tried to ignore the intense throbbing he felt between his own legs. Contrary to popular belief, it probably would kill him to compliment someone else- but the reward was too sweet for him to care.

"Dazai is... Incredibly intelligent- An underrated source of intellect for the team. He may not show it often, but his strategic thinking is one that has saved our asses on numerous occasions.” He said it all with a grumble, not even looking you in the eye- But you were satisfied, nevertheless.

"Well said." You smirked. "Okay. Now you can take off everything you need, except for my panties."

With a mix of excitement and nervousness, Ranpo began to undress you, pulling your skirt off. He crawled further towards you, his eyes fixated on your panties as he reached out to touch them, his tongue wetting his lips as he realised his great achievement..

He steadily pressed his tip against your panties, the precum already leaving a wet patch on the cloth. He couldn't stand that the fact that he couldn't feel your pussy instead, but the panties would have to do. So, with a soft moan, Ranpo began to grind against your underwear, his cock begging for more as he felt your wetness against him, all while his other hand slid up your leg to trace soft circles around your inner thigh. He let out a low moan of pleasure as his hips moved back and forth against your panties with more force, feeling the head of his cock rub against your fabric, on the edge of what he desperately craved.

"F-Fuck..!" He almost instinctively whimpered out. Even you couldn't help but let out soft whines as Ranpo's tip just about bumped your clit through your panties- An action which only caused Ranpo more motivation. Feeling the warmth emanating from your body, Ranpo's determination only intensified. His hand gripped your thigh tighter, digging into your soft skin as he continued his relentless assault on your pant-clad sex.

"Does that feel good, huh?" You asked, panting heavily.

Heaving as he continued to pleasure himself through your panties, Ranpo nodded whilst gnawing on his bottom lip, his eyes narrowed down at the space below between you in concentration.

"I... I can't take it anymore... let me..." He pleaded, pushing against your panties with his cock. "Please-"

"Please what?" You glared at him, narrowing your eyes at his desperately blushing face, which had beads of sweat dripping down his cheeks.

He groaned in frustration, his cock poking at your panties as he panted heavily.

"Please let me have you... I need... I need... Ngh~!" Ranpo stammered swiftly. "Oh, god- Please! I'll do anything—"'

You seemed amused by his begging, all while he was still thrusting his cock against your panties.

"You ‘need me'? What do you mean by that?"

"I... I need you, okay? —Fuck! I want you!" He confessed- backtracking when he heard his own mistake, hips moving faster and harder as he pleaded for release. "I just... can't handle this anymore..."

"You want to cum, is that it?" She chuckled, brushing her finger against his chin.

"Yes, yes, please... I can't hold it much longer..." He whimpered as he continued to grind against your panties, his hips pistoning up and down in desperate need.

“God, please, let me cum… I don’t even care what I have to do this time…”

"My, my, aren't you desperate." You cackled at him, teeth sinking into your lip as you attempted to suppress your own moans at the tension. He hadn’t been bumping at your clit so much anymore, rather sloppily thrusted against your clothed hole instead, but the warmth in the action was enough to cause you to sweat.

"You cum when I say it's okay for you to cum."

Ranpo cried out, his eyes closed as he moved faster, tears threatening to fall from his lids as his hips slammed against your panties, need coiling inside him.

"Fuck, it's too much... I can't—"

"If I let you cum, will you be a good boy tomorrow at the agency?" You asked him simply, seeing how messed up and blushy his face became. "You're gonna be nice to your coworkers and you're not going to be lazy?"

Ranpo panted heavily, his eyes glossed over in lust as he nodded hurriedly.

“Yes, yes of course... just... just let me cum... please..." He pleaded.

"What did I say about speaking more clearly?" You demanded. He inhaled sharply with another thick swallow, gyrating his hips as he pleaded for you.

“I'll be a good boy tomorrow! No more laziness, I'll be so good! Please�� I’ll be on my best behaviour, just for you— Fuck!”

You smirked.

"…Okay, you can cum then." You hummed, seeing how his tired eyes lit up with the permission.

With a loud, shuddering whine, Ranpo finally reaches his peak, his fingers digging into your thighs as he found release. With a shaky arch of his own back, his seed spurted between your legs, painting your panties with his essence.

"God, you're so messy." You sighed.

"I'm sorry... I can't help it... you're just too..." He gulped, his eyes roll back, revealing his submission even in his post-orgasmic state.

"Well, since I was so nice and let you cum." You grabbed a fistful of his hair and forced his head down a little so he was forced to look up into your eyes. "It's your turn to make me cum."

Ranpo couldn’t help but blush at your touch when your hand grabbed a bunch of is hairs, his body still trembling from the aftershocks of his orgasm- but finding a new source of pleasure all the same. He whimpered softly, unable to meet your gaze as he was so fixated on your panties and how his own seed coated the fabric.

"C-Can I..?"

"I expect you to." You said darkly. "Eat up. And get a taste of your own mess before you do.”

He was reluctant, but did as you commander him to, tentatively reaching out to lick at your panties, his face flushed with embarrassment and submission. As he tastes his own seed, his face contorted a little at the taste, but his body tingled with pleasure, an unavoidable moan escaping him.

As his tongue dragged across the cloth of your underwear, he latched his teeth onto the edge of your panties, pulling them down slowly. When he had torn them down completely, it revealed your swollen, wet folds to his greedy gaze. The man looked up at you guiltily, his face burning red as his cock twitches in anticipation, leaking more pre-cum as he sees your panties still clinging to your thighs.

"Don't be shy now." You said, assisting him to fully remove your panties as you kicked them off to the side to reveal your glistening cunt. "I thought you wanted to taste me."

He nodded silently, leaning forward to taste you properly. He took a large strip between your legs using his tongue, tasting your sweet nectar as he starts to lap at your folds, his mouth exploring every inch of your wetness.

"That's it..." You shuddered as you felt his tongue inside you, finally feeling your own sense of pleasure. Ranpo’s heart raced with excitement when he sensed your enjoyment and he continued his assault on your sensitive flesh, pushing his face deeper into your folds, seeking to please you even more.

"F-Fuck... God, you use your tongue so well." You chuckle softly through your gentle moans. "See what happens when you use that mouth for better things rather than pissing people off?"

He hummed in agreement, his tongue continuing to wedge itself between your folds. With a groan, he licked harder, drawing your walls upwards, seeking to reach your throbbing center.

"You're gonna eat me out until I cum, aren't you sweetheart?" You grin, hands finding his way to his hair to run your fingers through the strands before stopping to grab a handful of it again.

"Mhm..." He moaned, his fingers twitching with desire. His tongue darted out, swirling around your clit, making you shudder as he brought you closer and closer to the edge. You had treated him so well that night, and he fully intended to return the favour.

—

The next day at the agency, Ranpo kept his side of the promise. For the first time— Possibly ever, Ranpo wasn't glued to his office desk anymore shoving treats down his mouth, instead, he was walking around and offering his assistance to anybody who looked like they needed it. It amused you to see him frantically searching for work to do while you were working on your own thing at your desk, pretending not to see his efforts, but you were glad that your intimate act with him didn’t go to waste.

"Would you look at that! I've never seen Ranpo so diligent!" Dazai commented to Kunikida, who was as equally surprised by the sight of the rare happening.

During the mesmerising scene, Kenji had happened to pass by Ranpo, which made him feel like he had been granted a glorious opportunity by the gods above. His eyes lighting up, the taller, brunette stopped Kenji in his tracks- Whom of which had been two boxes of files, tapping him on his shoulder with an awkward smile.

"Hey, Kenji, do you need help carrying that?" Ranpo queried with a hopeful gaze, to which Kenji stared blankly, blinking a few times.

"...It's a little heavy." He said softly with gentle beamed smile, trying not to offend him.

"Don't worry about it!" Ranpo reassured him, holding out his arms. "Where do you need me to take it?"

Upon seeing his eagerness, Kenji's eyes sparkled exponentially and he went to drop the boxes in his grasp.

"To the boss's office!"

Ranpo immediately felt like the weight was going to crush his arms when the heavy boxes had been dropped onto them. He struggled for a moment to hold them up, but eventually found his method to keep himself standing without feeling like his arms were going to break. After the wave of accomplishment had washed over him, he frantically looked over to you to see if you had been watching him with a hopeful smile— Which you had, of course, but your head was tilted down as to not let him know that you had.

"Maybe he's finally learnt that he has responsibilities at this agency." Kunikida suggested, staring as Ranpo uncomfortably waddled out of the office, the boxes threatening to break his fingers.

"I wonder what could've made him suddenly realise that though, considering he had never lifted a finger to help before." Dazai's eyes narrowed.

[locobastaaa]

This Garden You've Grown ⋆˚✿˖° Part Two

A continuation of part one. After your first meeting, The Duke of Meropide could not get you out of his head; so he decided it was time to make you his.

Wriothesley x fem!reader || mutual pining, romance

Eeeeek thank you all so much for your sweet comments about part one ♡ I am thrilled to deliver you a part two ♡ enjoy my darlings ♡

A long, comfortable sigh rumbled from Wriothesley's chest as you carded your fingers through his hair, humming a tune to some distant lullaby while he rested his head on your lap.

Your fingernails felt heavenly on his scalp, almost making his eyes roll back from your soothing touch; he'd never experienced anything like it. There was no better cure for the toll his brutal work day took on his mind and body than this. All of the tension built up in his well-toned muscles released at the mere ghosting of your fingertips over them. Although you both were lying on the ground in the open fields of Fontaine, resting here felt like sleeping on a cloud. He could get lost in this feeling, lost in you.

The world seemed to buzz around the both of you, it's colors soft and the sun's warmth so gentle. You made this place heaven.

His longing gaze was fixated on your eyes; the first part of you he'd come to adore. They were so kind, and so cute. The way they widened when you were surprised or glittered when you're excited, even when they'd get all droopy like a puppy's when you were dissapointed---he couldn't get enough of it. Each expression made him want to pinch your pink cheeks and chuckle. Though, with the way you were looking at him now, he could melt.

He'd never seen this expression on you before; your eyes were half-lidded and amorous, enchanting him as you continued to pet his hair---looking down at him like you wanted something.

You spoke, but your voice was a blur; though that didn't keep him from nodding anyway. There was no request you could make that he would refuse.

The sultry smile that pulled your pouty lips into a sacharrine curve made him weak; he felt his skin grow hot under your attention---no doubt red from the tips of his ears to his burly chest. His heart thundered as you began to lean down, your beautiful hand moving from his hair to cup his cheek and upturn his face to you. He returned your touch with one of his large hands covering the small one that held his cheek, leaning into your heavenly touch. He watched you all the way down 'til your lips were mere centimeters from his own; he could smell your sweet breath from here. He wondered how you tasted as he closed his eyes---about to find out. He felt the first brush of your soft lips against his own...

Before the loud blare of his alarm clock had him jolting out of his perfect dream.

He had been sleeping so deeply, when he woke, he didn't recognize his own bedchambers.

He groaned and scrubbed his hands down his face, reaching over to clamp a hand down harshly onto the off switch.

"Thanks a lot.", he muttered, like it was the clock's fault you were taken away.

You were right about that lavender---ever since he'd put it by his bedside like you'd instructed, he'd been sleeping much more deeply...though, an unexpected symptom of the sleep aid you gave him was vivid dreams.

Vivid dreams about you.

He'd been seeing you every night in his sleep; always meeting you back in that field, always ending up tangled up with you, holding you, kissing you, running his hands over every inch of soft skin you'd give him. Drinking you in like you were the most intoxicating liquor. He couldn't get enough.

Every morning, he'd wake up sorely dissapointed, wishing he could stay in dreamland with you for five more minutes---but duty calls.

Though he'd get on with his brutal work day, the thought of you would swim around his mind and steal his attention when he needed it most. He'd find himself reading and re-reading the same paragraph of some dull report as his thoughts would keep drifting off back to you. How, after one meeting, was he so bewitched?

It's because you were perfect, that's how. You were perfect, desperately so, for him.

Both the guards and prisioners of Meropide alike would rubber-neck their Duke as he strode by them in the halls; his pink-dusted cheeks and smirk giving away that he was beyond smitten---but with who?

Gossip and theories about the Duke's secret lover spread through the fortress like wildfire. Everyone wanted to know who it was; they'd grasp at any information they could and run with it.

"I heard it's one of the guards!" "Well I heard it's someone from the overworld!" "Sigewinne said he'd gone up on a summon last week, maybe he actually went up to see his sweetheart!" "Maybe Meropide will have a duchess!" "You think they'll throw the wedding here?"

This was the hottest story Meropide had seen in a decade, the Duke was lucky the steambird hadn't come a 'knockin, and the whole time, he remained blissfully unaware---a clear example of how you were a debilitating distraction.

He was dying to see you again, but he couldn't just take off from work; the only reason he was able to meet you in the first place was a summon he'd had to answer at the courthouse and an impromptu patrol around the grounds of the city while he was on his way.

He would write to you, but in the flurry of emotions meeting you had flooded him with, he forgot to get your name. A mistake he'd been kicking himself for ever since he'd parted from you.

At least he knew where to find you---if he'd ever get the chance.

He explored every break in his schedule, schemed up any reason to take another trip up to the overworld, but with the influx of prisoners funelling in and the shortage on fortress staff to manage them all, there was no way he was leaving his post anytime soon.

Fortunately, he didn't have to.

It was a particularly gloomy day in Meropide as Wriothesley walked the halls with dark circles under his eyes and a grimace on his face. It had been a few weeks since he'd set your lavender out next to his bed, and by this morning, it's smell had depleted entirely and the sprigs had wilted. No matter how hard he tried to preserve them, the flowers simply weren't made to survive without the sun. The loss of his sleep-aid in turn became the loss of you, the familiar smell no longer there to cart him off to that special piece of heaven in his mind where you existed. Last night was the first in a long time that he did not dream of you, and his rest had suffered for it.

The prisoners and guards whispered about "trouble in paradise", but were quickly silenced by his attention snapping in their direction---their duke having returned to his normal, vigilant state.

Tensions were high in the fortress as it's administratior was falling apart.

When his lunch break finally rolled around, he stumbled into his office grouchy, dischevelled, and groggy. All he wanted to do was take a much-needed nap while waiting for the heavily caffinated tea he ordered to arrive. He felt like his tie was suffocating him so he loosened it, unbuttoning the top couple buttons of his collar as well to give him a little more breathing room before folding over onto the mahogany surface of his desk with a thud and letting out a deep, tired sigh.

...this short moment of respite was quickly interrupted, however, by a soft knock on his door.

"Not. Now.", his voice was that of a big bad wolf's as he all but growled at the disturbance, a clear warning that he is not to be further disrupted.

However, the small, sweet voice that responded from the other side of the door had his eyes snapping wide open.

"...Sir Wriothesley?"

He recognized that voice.

For a moment, he thought he'd been dreaming---having only heard that voice in his head for the longest time.

Another knock.

"...Wriothesley?"

He's not dreaming.

He quickly righted himself; straightening his desk, smoothing out his prieviously rumpled hair and clearing his throat before responding.

"Come in."

His door slowly opened before you peeked your cute little head inside--his heart seized at the image.

There they were: your glimmering puppy eyes, your plushy lips, your beaming smile. All he'd been dreaming about for weeks was right there in front of him.

He stood to greet you; with a flick of his fingers, he gestured for you to come in. He was surprised, however, by your hesitancy. You stepped in politely, the smile on your face nervous and your cheeks pink. He ajudicated your expression for a moment, wondering what had you so startled.

...then he noticed your eyes flicking from his own down to his chest and back up again.

He realized, mortified, that he forgot to straighten his tie.

His hands twitched up to fix it, but it was much too late, you'd already seen everything. However, despite your initial surprise, you looked happy to see him.

You flitted right up to his desk with the sweetest look on your face; his heart drummed in his chest at the sight.

"Good afternoon!", you sang.

"...Good afternoon.", he sighed. Seeing you here was like taking a breath of fresh air---something rare in a fortress so deep within the sea. "What brings you to Meropide?".

"Well...I came to see you."

He tried his best to hide his delight, but his stony exterior quickly crumbled in your presence; he couldn't surpress the grin that grew on his face.

"Oh really now?" his sharp canines shone in his crooked smile as he leaned over you, bracing himself on his desk to get a good look at your beautiful face. You unconciously brought a hand over your heart to steady it---like it would leap out of your chest if you failed to hold it back.

You'd never seen a smile like his before, it was dreamy.

It took you a second to find your words before you set down your whicker gardening basket on his desk.

In it sat little containers of strawberries, blueberries, mini cucumbers, and the cherry tomatoes he liked, as well as two small bundles of lavender---one fresh, one dried.

His eyes were wide as you laughed shyly, "...I won't get in trouble for giving these to you, will I?".

You knew he told you not to give the things you grow on the city's land to the public, but did he count as the public? And if he did...could you push that line just the teeniest bit?

You weren't sure if he'd accept your gift, but you couldn't help bringing it to him anyway. Since the day you met, you'd been thinking about him every time you'd gone out to your garden; wondering if he'd really kept the lavender you gave him, musing about whether or not it was helping him sleep, daydreaming about him and wondering if he was thinking of you too...

He was.

"...you picked these for me?"

You nodded, fiddling with your fingers exictedly.

“…Thank you.”, he looked down at the basket and picked up a sprig of lavender, bringing it up to his nose for a sniff. He sighed contentedly. “You came at the perfect time. Mine just lost its scent last night.”.

"Oh, did it?", you point at the dry bunch you'd tied together for him with a little black ribbon, "These should keep their scent for a while...though I know the fresh ones smell sweeter."

"That smile is so cute.", he thought. He couldn't get enough of your blushing cheeks, the sweet, sheepish upturn of your lips, the way you couldn't quite look him in the eye. He needed that smile, needed you, and now that you were here, now that you'd come to him, he wasn't going to let you leave. Not without the promise of your return.

"...I know you've already done so much, but could I make a request?"

Your head tilted and lips formed a darling pout in curiousity, proving to him that yes, you could get cuter. "What is it?".

"...if I asked you to start a garden down here as well, would you?"

Your eyes lit up like fireworks, giving him exactly what we wanted to see.

"Yes, of course!", you nearly squealed, the heart in your chest felt like it was moments from bursting.

His wolfish grin broadened now, hugrier; if you were a lamb you'd be terrified, but your human heart was thrilled by his satisfaction. He's caught you, to both of your delight. The lamb happily entering the wolf's den, where she will gleefully stay.

"Then I'll make the arrangements.", he purred, the rumble making your heart skip; you weren't sure you could actually work in Meropide without your poor heart giving out on you from prolonged proximity to this man you were already dying for, but you sure as hell would try.

༻❦༺

It's like your presence alone mimicked the sunshine that otherwise hid itself from the underworld.

Everyone noticed it; your smile brought light to any room you entered, enchanting not only the guards, but the inmates as well. Even on Meropide's wost days, your kindness rid the fortress of doom and gloom---the way you adressed everyone as not only an equal, but a friend, the way you'd show care to everyone alike, even strangers, and not to mention, how the fruits of your labor changed the welfare meals from dull grub to colorful and flavorful masterpieces. Wriothesley was reluctant to share your work with anyone other than himself, but what other excuse would he have for starting a garden in the underworld, if not to feed the residents? It's not like he could advertise that it was just a way of keeping you close (though everyone was already fully aware of his intentions. The smirk on his face everytime he entered a room with you in it had all in proximity sharing knowing glances.).

Your cheer brightened any dreary day as you flitted through the expansive halls to the office of your duke, intent on sharing the results of any project you started or to ask for his council on your plans, to his great pleasure. He showered you with praise not many who drew the duke's gaze would recieve; you were precious to him and everyone knew it, adding fuel to the bonfire that was the gossip around Wriothesley's love-life.

You'd spend long hours in Meropide, from the early morning before the sun rose to long after darkness covered the sky and the stars shone in reflections of the water's ripples. By the time you'd arrive at your home above at the end of your day, it would only be a few hours before you'd make the trek back down. Wriothesley worried about you, telling you that he didn't want you staying so long and losing sleep, but every time he'd try to send you home, heeding your promises of "just five more minutes", "I'll wrap up soon!", he'd always return to find you still at work with that pretty smile on your face. He just couldn't bring himself to shoo you away. The final straw was the morning he'd entered his office after a good night's sleep, only to find you passed out on his couch. He thought about threatening to banish you if you continued to work yourself to death, but that would just be a cruel punishment for him too. The alternative he thought up was much kinder, having his staff set up a room in the fortress for you; complete with a big, soft bed and dozens of plushy blankets and pillows to ensure you rest well. He would not accept your mounds of thank-you's, assuring you that it was only his duty to care for you just as you care for the people of this fortress, himself especially.

It wasn't long before the subjects of Meropide began addressing you as "duchess", a mistake you'd flusteredely correct and one Wriothesley would neglect to, the insinuation bringing the slightest upturn to his lips. New residents were especially prone to this blunder, simply assuming that you and their duke were married; and who could blame them? The puppy eyes both of you gave each other while the other's back was turned was more than enough reason for them to come to the conclusion that you two were deeply in love with one another, and you were...though neither of you could bring yourselves to confess.

"Not yet...", Wriothesely thought as he watched your hands with soft eyes while they expertly worked in the soil---kept safe and clean by the pretty pink gardening gloves he'd gifted you.

"...Not yet.", you thought while dreamily listening to the low rumble of his voice that made your heart skip and knees grow weak as he gave you advice on the next plants he'd like to see you grow, distracting you from actually absorbing the information. He was more than happy to repeat it for you, keeping you in his office for just a few minutes more...keeping you close for just a few moments more.

Thanks to you, Wriothesley had been sleeping better than ever, though he had no use for dreams now; what helped him shut his eyes every night, what woke him with a beating heart in his chest and a blissful smile on his face was knowing that you'd be with him when he got out of bed.

You were right there, whenever he needed you, whenever he wanted more of you, you were always there.

The day he'd finally make you his was steadily approaching; the feelings you stirred in him beginning to overflow. His gaze on you as he watched you work became ever more longing, no longer bothering to look away once you met his eyes--making your heart flutter as you hastily looked away. His touches became more needy; what were once featherlight brushes against your hand as you stood next to him and talked about your garden became a possessive hold, interlacing his large fingers with yours. The soft words of praise he would speak to your labor became ardent words of affirmation that a believer in an archon might say kneeling before their alter---musings about you, not a gardener in Meropide, but a woman loved:

"You warm this Fortress more than any blazing fire could."

"Although it aches me to keep a beautiful thing like you from the sun, I couldn't bring myself to let you leave the darkness without me."

"I'm lucky to have met you. Sometimes I can't believe you're real; maybe your lavender has made my dreams too vivid. If that's the case, I'd never want to wake again."

Neither of you could bring yourselves to say it, say you wanted the other---truly, deeply wanted. It had just gone on too long, this period of stasis you both shared was one neither of you would risk ending with three meaningful words:

I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.

At a certain point, you stopped correcting the residents of Meropide when they called you "duchess".

At a certain point, Wriothesley stopped holding back his desire to touch you, feel you; slipping his arms around your waist and pulling you into his chest from behind as you both looked on at the garden that had tethered you together---grown roots within both of you that tangled with one another into knots that would never be undone.

All that he had left to do was kiss you.

It wasn't at all grand, it was just another moment between you two, one that you wordlessly fell into step together like every moment before. Just a quick good-morning meeting in his office, like you had every day. Just an update on what you will be working on in your garden today. And just as you were about to turn and go, a decisive hand he combed through your hair to bring you to him, a soft kiss that had both of your hearts thundering like a steam engine down a track, and then a moment of shared breath and coupled smiles before you both parted and got on with your day.

You were his and he was yours.

You belonged to him, to Meropide, to the entirety of his underworld.

He belonged to you, your garden, and the fruits of life born from your care and affection.

And never again will the space between land and ocean seperate you.

[locobastaaa]

Your current Ace fics have me craving domestic bliss! Could you do an ace x fem!reader where their baby is getting vaccines and poor ace is just falling apart and Marco and reader are trying to comfort the baby and ace

OH Domestic bliss indeed. This is a great comfort moment in the midst of all the angst. Characters: Ace x fem reader Cw: vaccinations, needles, and clinics. Total word count: 1.3k

Crybaby

“Ace, please-”

“I’m just saying she doesn’t look good!” He argued. “We can always hold off another day! What if the vaccines just make her body exhausted and she gets more sick?”

You rolled your eyes. “That’s not how vaccines work.”

“I’m just looking out for her!”

You shot him a look as the two of you entered into the clinic. “Rogue is fine, Ace. Just behave, or I’ll ask Marco about your vaccine updates too.”

Ace’s eyes got wide and he nodded, keeping his mouth shut as the two of you walked into the small waiting room. You knew it was unfair to threaten him with vaccinations. He was terrified of needles. But this was going to be hard enough with one crybaby. You didn’t need two of them. 

“Marco!” you called back to him. “We’re here!”

“Come on back!” he called, and the three of you went back to the small examination room. 

Marco’s eyes lit up when you walked in holding your baby. 

“There she is,” he cooed, reaching out to take her from you. “How is my little princess?”

“She didn’t sleep great last night,” you admitted, handing her off easily. “She’s been pretty fussy the past few days.”

Marco held Rogue up, making faces and funny sounds to get her laughing. She instantly obliged, giggling and shrieking with joy. 

You smiled watching the two play together. “You’re so good with her,” you said. “How do you do it?”

“It’s the hair,” Ace joked, still standing in the doorway. He refused to come in any further than that. 

You laughed at his cheap shot and beckoned him over to you. You knew clinics were scary for Ace, but this was Marco. He was one of the most trustworthy people on the ship. 

Ace came reluctantly, and you interlaced your fingers with his to give him support. You could feel him relax just a bit, which made you feel a bit better. 

“Alright,” Marco said, finally bringing Rogue back down onto his lap. “6 month check up, right? And vaccinations. Anything else?”

“Check to see if she’s sick first-” Ace started, but quickly grew quiet when you squeezed his hand. 

“Right, right,” Marco said, pulling out his stethoscope. “Mom, I’m gonna have you take the baby back if that’s okay. I think she’ll respond best if she’s in your hands.”

“Sure,” you said, unclasping your hand from Ace’s and reaching for Rogue. You scooped her up and blew a raspberry at her, causing her to erupt into a fit of giggles. 

“Ah, she likes that, huh?” Marco grinned. 

“It’s her new favorite thing.” You sat on the cold examination table and plopped Rogue in your lap. 

Ace was still awkwardly standing in the middle of the room where you had left him. You beckoned him over once again, but this time he looked around nervously, refusing to join you. 

“Ace,” you said gently. “It’s going to be okay.”

“I think maybe we should wait on the vaccinations,” Ace said, looking at Rogue with a concerned gaze. 

“She’ll be okay,” you said, waving your hand again to try and get him to join you. 

“She probably won’t even feel it,” Marco agreed. “The cold stethoscope will be more jarring for her than the vaccines.”

“I just think-”

“Ace.” Your voice wasn’t hostile, but it was stern. The two of you had talked about this. You lived on a giant ship in the middle of the sea with hundreds of other pirates. Rogue needed her vaccines. 

“One day isn’t going to make a big difference,” Ace argued. 

“Exactly,” you said back. “Which is why we’re doing them today.”

Marco watched the two of you with an amused look. It was clear to him you both had had this discussion several times already. 

“Why don’t we do the exam first, just to make sure everything is okay,” Marco offered. 

Ace seemed to be okay with that, and finally joined you all at the exam table. 

Marco put his stethoscope up over his ears and held the other part out as you raised Rogue’s shirt. He tickled her stomach a few times to get her smiling, and you could see Ace relax a little bit in the corner of your eye. 

Ace was always at such ease when Rogue was smiling. His emotions seemed to be an amplified version of whatever she was feeling. When she couldn’t sleep well, he tossed and turned in your bed. Whenever she cried, it took him hours to calm down. He was so in tune to your all’s daughter that you were almost jealous. 

“Do you want to listen?” Marco asked, looking to Ace.

“Me?” Ace asked. “Oh..oh no, I couldn’t.”

“Go ahead.” Marco handed off the stethoscope to his fellow commander, and you saw Ace actually smile for the first time today as he listened to his daughter’s heartbeat. 

“Now we’re going to check her ears, nose, and throat.” Marco took back his stethoscope and pulled out another piece of equipment, showing Ace how it worked and allowing him to look when he could. 

“Just about everything looks good,” Marco said, rolling back to his desk on his stool to make some notes. 

“Just about?” you and Ace asked in synchronicity. Your grip involuntarily tightened around your daughter, concerned by Marco’s words.

“She’s got a minor ear infection.” Marco grabbed a small container from a cabinet and rolled back to you. “Put two drops of this in her left ear every morning and every night for a week. It’s nothing to be concerned about, I promise.”

You nodded and took the ear medication, but Ace looked like he was going to be sick. 

“What if it gets worse?” He asked. You could hear his breathing start to grow more rapid. 

“Then come see me, man.” Marco laughed and patted Ace on the shoulder. “You guys know your kid, and you know you can come see me anytime. But it’s minor. It would probably go away on its own, but we want to keep the little princess as comfortable as possible, right?”

“Right,” Ace agreed, but you could see his mind was racing with worst-case scenarios already. 

“Now for the not-so-fun part,” Marco said, opening a drawer and grabbing three containers and three needles. He smiled at your child in your lap. “Ready, Roguey?”

Ace looked panicked. “Marco, if she’s sick-”

“Won’t harm her at all,” Marco hummed, opening the sterile packaging and filling the needle with the first vaccination. 

“But if she’s already in pain-”

You reached your hand out and grabbed Ace’s, holding it tightly. He finally resigned himself to being the minority in this argument, and grew quiet. 

“Roguey, Roguey,” Marco sang, poking at her body with his finger and making her giggle. He continued to give her funny faces and sing to her, and then quickly slid the needle under her skin and pushed the vaccine into her system. 

Rogue stiffened in your lap for a moment, and you braced yourself for her tears, but Marco continued to sing and poke at her body, and she quickly forgot about whatever strange sensation she had just felt. 

Marco administered the second and third vaccine in a very similar way, keeping her so occupied she wasn’t even sure what had happened. When it was all over, he placed a hot pink bandage across her arm and nodded in satisfaction. 

“You’re girl is a total badass,” Marco said. “Normally the kids start crying by the second one, but look at that. No tears here.”

“I think Ace is crying enough for both of them,” you grumbled, but you gave his hand a reassuring squeeze. 

Ace hastily wiped his tears from his eyes and shook his head. “I’m not crying!” he said, though his voice was watery. “She did so well! I’m proud, that’s all.”

“Yeah well,” Marco winked at Rogue, a big smile on his face. “That’s what happens when you have two badass parents.”

[locobastaaa]

home run - inumaki toge

word count: 5.5k warnings: swearing, idk anything about baseball so it’s mostly made up <3 (also i accidentally right-hand-dominant-coded the reader i’m srry) summary: toge helps coach you on how to play baseball before the big game for the exchange event.  you can’t stop flirting with each other.  (unestablished relationship!) a/n: remember when i said this edit had me in a chokehold well i wrote this forever ago for myself and the toge loving bbies :) ___

Seguir leyendo

[locobastaaa]

omg you’re back?! and you’re doing prompts?! this feels like christmas!!

can you do 28 with inumaki?? but also maybe if you’re listening to something nice 25, i’d like to know what song inspires the drabble (:

25: Kiss Inspired By A Song (stargirl interlude - lana del rey) 28: First Kiss ___

you don’t know why you think to ask such a personal question, especially to someone who can’t express his answer very easily- not that it’s his fault- but the thought creeps in your mind like a parasite and you just know it won’t go away until you have his answer.

“have you ever kissed anyone?”

at first toge thinks you’re only asking this question to distract him, because his focus shifts away from crossing the finish line on rainbow road, his thumb stilling on the joystick of the pink remote and his eyes are on yours.  simultaneously, you’re passing his character and claiming first place for yourself, a victorious smile on your face, until you see his perplexed gaze.

in your brief silence, you catch the change in song on your shared playlist.  you can’t help but nod your head along as your current favorite melody begins.

he’s raising a brow at you, the slight frown on his face making you realize your suspicious timing.

“that wasn’t on purpose!” 

you try to explain yourself, but toge’s not sure he believes you.  you had to have known such a sudden and personal question was going to throw him off his game.  you and toge certainly spent a lot of time together, often playing mariokart or smash bros, but even outside of your free time you were a duo.  he was your favorite person to train with- maki was too rough and that made her a better match for panda, and yuuta barely even went to this school anymore- and you seemed quite comfortable with his odd way of communicating.

still, as close of friends as you were, you’d never really talked about these sorts of things with one another.

“okay, i’m sorry,” you apologize when his gaze remains unrelentingly upset.  “i wasn’t trying to distract you.  i just got curious” 

the first question on his mind is the obvious, why? what had gone on in your head to make you wonder such a thing? did you assume he had? but his thoughts derail quick as a more pressing question pops up.

have you ever kissed anyone?

you’d never really talked about any romantic interests before- neither of you had, hence his initial surprise with your question- so toge wasn’t sure he could safely assume you had kissed anyone.  that said, you were a pretty girl with a warm personality, if you wanted a kiss from someone, he was certain you would have gotten it by now.  

and now he wondered what kind of person you would look for to be potentially kissed by.

surely he’s blushing in front of you now with how off track his thought process had become, and he wishes he’d worn his uniform instead of the tee shirt and sweats he sported because at least then he’d have a collar to hide behind.

“so… have you?” you ask, impatient to know the answer, and you sound like it too.

you have toge absolutely bewildered by your anticipation for his response.  what impression had he made to make you think he could have kissed anyone? it was sort of hard to get to that step when you couldn’t even talk, after all.

“bonito flakes”

his voice is quiet as he shakes his head for good measure.

“really?” you ask in surprise.

his brows are furrowed as he tilts his head you, silently asking what you’re trying to imply, before his cryptic words question you.

“mustard leaf?”

“i dunno,” you shrug, setting your controller down now that your game had finished.  “i guess i just wondered.  you’ve never talked about it before” 

toge laughs, and it comes out more like a scoff.  you understand him somehow.  he’s amused that you thought about such a thing.  but then he’s smiling at you, quirking an eyebrow as he seems to shoot the question back at you.

“what?” you feign misunderstanding, even though you both know perfectly well that you know exactly what he’s asking.

it’s obvious in the way your cheeks turn pink and you pick up your controller again so your fingers can fiddle with it.  despite being sat on opposite ends of the bed- with toge leaning against the headboard and you at the foot of the mattress- his bed suddenly feels small.  the whole room suddenly feels small.

you’re anxious, you both realize.  although toge finds more interest in it than you do.

“mustard leaf?” he questions you and you curse yourself for getting to know him so well that you understand he’s repeating your question back to you with those two words.

when you turn to look away toge scrambles to straighten his posture, suddenly very invested in your answer.  he’s grinning excitedly, his eyes wide with amusement.

“salmon cod roe!” he demands through bubbling laughter, and despite your embarrassment, you give in, because he’s just so adorably curious, and he’s your friend, right? he wouldn’t judge you, would he?”

“no!” you cry out, covering your face as you fall back onto the bed.  

you kick your feet in the air in childish frustration.  your face is burning from the admission, but you suppose you brought it on yourself, seeing as you asked him first.

toge’s laughter is silenced as he watches you throw your arms to your sides and let out a huff.  he gives you a comforting smile.

“salmon” he tries to communicate to you that it’s okay, that he doesn’t judge you, but you frown back at him.

“don’t you think it’s a little embarrassing?” you ask, your eyes staying on him to gauge his honest reaction.  “or down right humiliating?” you mutter bitterly.

“bonito flakes” he mutters back in mock offense, but you seem to ignore him.

“it’s not like i haven’t tried,” you say to the ceiling, and it leaves a bitter feeling in toge’s chest.  “but the options aren’t exactly… numerous,” you mumble the last part.  “i think if i asked, maki would kiss me,” you think aloud, before turning your head to look at toge again.  “but i’m too scared to ask,” you whisper, as if she could hear you from her dorm across the hall.

toge chuckles at your wide eyes, and smiles at you again.  your worry about something so silly was funny to him.  you’d clearly had this on your mind for a while to consider kissing one of your friends- the scariest one of your friends, too.

he reaches behind him to grab the little whiteboard on his night stand, uncapping the magnetic dry erase marker so he could scribble on it.

why maki?

you shrug back after reading it, folding your hands over your stomach.

“figured she’d kill me if i asked yuuta.  figured you’d say no” you reply.

he blinks back at you, but you’re turning to look at the ceiling again, humming along as your song comes to an end, so you don’t see the way your answer stuns him.

of course he wouldn’t say no! is his initial thought, but the way it crosses his mind so loud and certain has his heart stuttering in his chest.  did he want to kiss you? he’d never really thought about it before, he’d never really thought of it as an option.  your friendship meant a lot to him, more than he could express, whiteboard or not, he couldn’t do anything to jeopardize it.  but of course if you asked him, he’d say yes.  he’s certain of it.

in the name of being a good friend, of course…

“mustard leaf?”

you hum curiously back at him, tilting your face his way again to watch as he scrawled across the board again.  the marker squeaks softly as he tries to write as quickly as he can while still keeping his handwriting legible.

when he lifts the board for you to read, your eyes follow each letter slowly, carefully.

why do you think i’d say no?

the insinuation behind the question has you opening and closing your mouth a few times, struggling to find the words.  you’re beginning to fluster, and toge can see it in the way your fingers tangle and untangle themselves where they rest over your stomach.

“i- i don’t know,” you stammer, your eyes landing on his only briefly before you grow too shy to hold his stare.  “figured you’d think it was a dumb thing to worry about,” you say, and there’s some truth to your words.

the rest of the truth would have been admitting that kissing toge had been on your mind for some time now.  a long time.

“but i just- i just want to get it out of the way, you know?” you sigh, your eyes falling shut.  “that way, in the future, when there’s someone i- i really want to kiss…” you grow quiet as you realize you’re really only embarrassing yourself further.  you sigh again.  “i just don’t want to be humiliated by kissing someone badly” 

it’s quiet for a minute, long enough that you peek over at toge, just to make sure he was still there.  he nods at you in understanding.  maybe he didn’t share this anxiety, he didn’t feel any sort of rush to get his first kiss out of the way, but kissing someone wasn’t exactly on his realistic bucket list.

your song ends, and soon the familiar echoed strumming of guitar makes it’s way to your ears with delight by you- another one of your favorites.  lana del rey’s angelic voice follows shortly after.

he holds your stare for a moment before deciding to take a leap of faith, and then he’s writing on his board again.  you keep your focus on him this time, watching the way he bites his lip as he writes, and how he re-reads his words a few times before he finally presents the board to you again.

if you want to ask, i’ll say yes.

as soon as you finish reading it, your eyes shoot back up to his, quickly trying to make sure he wasn’t joking, that he wasn’t going to burst out into laughter and tease you for jumping on the first offer of a kiss you could get.

when you find that he’s smiling at you, so kindly you could just melt, you sit up right away.

“really?” you mumble out, just to be sure he’s not pulling your leg.

toge wipes the board clean before scribbling on it again.  you move quickly to peek over at it while he doodles two stick figures with their faces pressed together and a big MUAH written above them.  you giggle at the cute drawing, and he beams at you.

he caps the marker and sticks the magnet to the board before setting it aside, giving you his full attention.

you’re right across from him now, and you move your legs to get more comfortable, sitting criss cross.  the exhale you let out is a little shaky, but you give him a hopeful look.

“promise not to tell anyone if it’s bad?” you ask him quietly.

toge wants to laugh, because there’s not a chance that your plump looking lips could ever bestow a bad kiss, but he doesn’t.  he wants you to feel perfectly comfortable.

“salmon” he says with an affirmative nod.

you nod back, eyes flickering between his apprehensively, before falling to his lips.

you’d looked at toge’s mouth many times before.  it was easy to get distracted by the markings, sure, but they were a good cover for you to let your mind wander to curiosities you had- such as if his soft lips felt as soft as they looked.

“tuna” he tells you, raising his hand to cover your eyes.  you chuckle nervously, but follow the command and let your eyes fall shut.

toge can’t help but admire you for just a moment.  he feels an excitement bubble up in his chest at the prospect of kissing you.  his heart was suddenly beating very fast, and he had to bite back a smile as his eyes wandered your pretty face.

what kind of good deed did he do in a past life to earn such luck in getting to kiss someone so perfect? 

maybe he was a little too ready to kiss you.

his fingers touched the underside of your jawline delicately.  the action was so new and intimate he nervously watched your calm expression, praying you wouldn’t flinch.  you didn’t.  the corner of your lips tilted into the smallest of smiles, and as he slid the rest of his hand against the rest of your jaw, you tilted your chin up, bringing your face just the slightest bit more towards his.

he followed the movement, his nose brushing against yours carefully, and he found his own eyes falling shut on their own accord, a soft sigh escaping his lips as a wave of exhilaration washes over him.

when you don’t instantly feel his lips on yours, you prod your nose against his in a small, gentle movement.  he smirks at the action, intrigued by your impatience, and he wonders if you’d meant to do it or if your anticipation was getting the better of you.

but he doesn’t spend any more time stalling, and leans in the rest of the way to connect your lips.

you’re a little slow to react, stunned by the new sensation.  but it only takes a few seconds of getting used to the feeling of having someone else’s mouth on yours for you to fall into it, naturally, and you kiss him as if you’d kissed him a thousand times before.

he feels your hands tremble as you rest them against his arms, the pads of your fingers barely pressing into his skin.  your lips move over his curiously, enjoying the velvety sensation of his soft mouth.  it was even softer than you could have imagined, you thought in a cloudy daze.

the gentle but alluring beat of the song seems to synchronize with the fast paced beating of your heart, and the distant cooing of lana’s harmonizing has you feeling all the more six feet off the ground.

but i love it, i love it, starboy… 

when you do part, it takes a moment for your eyes to flutter open.  your mouth is still parted, and you find yourself fixing your gaze on toge’s lips, as though amazed by them, before your eyes peer up at his.  an amused smile stretches over your face, your eyes positively twinkling at him.

he knows he should probably move back a little further, you’re still inches apart and his hand is still on your face, but toge stays put, just to bask in the warm feeling for a little longer.

you’re not rushing to move away, either.

“is it always gonna feel like that?” you whisper, your dazzling smile demanding all of his attention.

he could tell you that sure, it could if you wanted to.  but he decides that you don’t need to go finding that out for yourself, that if you want it to always feel like that, then you’ll just have to stick to kissing him whenever it is you so please.

so with a cocky smile and bright eyes, he shakes his head at you.  and when he pulls you in for another kiss, your eyes flutter shut and you meet him halfway with a newfound eagerness for kissing your best friend. ___

a/n: i adore this song and just thought it'd be the best to makeout to yaknow? hope you enjoyed <3

xoxo ~ jordie

[locobastaaa]

★ ⎯⎯ ꒰ ❛❛ɪ ᴡᴀɴɴᴀ ᴛᴇʟʟ ʏᴏᴜ, ʙᴜᴛ ɪ'ᴍ ꜱᴜᴘᴇʀ ꜱʜʏ.❜❜ ꒱

:: e. ranpo, e. a. poe.

✰ CLUELESS, BUT TRYING.

like everything else, he underestimated just how difficult going from friends to lovers with someone could be. his way of confirming that this was, indeed, love was when he demanded you go out to a café with him; which should already speak volumes, considering the young man’s horrible sense of direction. nevertheless, his delivery — well, to you — was nothing short of adorable. the way he unintentionally shoved a bouquet of sunflowers into your chest at the door, the way his lips twitched and parted when he let you feed him cake, the color on his cheeks matching the ripe strawberry on your fork to a t. the way his eyes cracked open in an attempt to seem more attractive, only to end up averting them in embarrassment (because how are you the only person he can’t make constant eye contact with?) as he tilted his head away from you with a small frown, swinging his feet back and forth underneath the table. but when he finally got the words out — “i think i love you” — your heart knocked noisily, once, twice, against your ribs. his green eyes, half-closed, that looked like stars, hand-picked from the sky. a hand that felt like nothing short of home in yours. a meek smile that, miraculously, revealed a small dimple in his right cheek — something you hadn’t been quite close enough to notice before. and everything in that moment felt like it was just for the two of you. he knew your answer already, naturally: ranpo was a smart enough to see clear as day how you felt, so, as nervous as he was, he expected a yes. but it was so much more than that. you couldn’t put what you felt into three simple letters, because when ranpo edogawa told you he loved you, the biggest question you had to ask yourself was why you had never realized you loved him first.

✰ NERVOUS, BUT DETERMINED.

if poe was any one thing, it was shy. for the longest time, his only friend was a raccoon, so when he met you, he didn’t know how to act. what was he supposed to say to someone who told him they supported him unconditionally? to someone who cheered for him and spent time with him and cherished him? having a friend came new to him — it was easier to be friends with karl, because karl couldn’t talk. it was with time that he realized the reason you stirred his heart so feverishly was because, for better or for worse, he’d fallen in love. and suddenly, he couldn’t talk to you without blushing pink, without stammering over his words, without having his eyes (and thank every god in existence that they were hidden beneath his hair) wander down to your lips, to your hands. poor poe didn’t know how to tell you he loved you without imagining a scenario in which you hated him. but he knew that he cherished you and that he loved you, so if you rejected him, well… he’d be alright. it was in a quiet park that the words left his lips — “i’m love with you”, just like that, soft and sweet and adorably nervous — where only you, the swaying ginkgo leaves, and the clouds in the sky could hear. it makes sense to you why he was staring so much, you understand. but, no, in reality, you would never actually be able to comprehend just how poe sees you. in his eyes, you are his safe place, like the beauty that hid beneath the dusted cover of an old book. blush rose to your cheeks, made your fingers curl into fists around the fabric of your sweater. you faced him. poe faces you back, with his eyes — visible, pretty — on you. and on that park bench, when you reached over and embraced your best friend, it was your lover that embraced you back.

[locobastaaa]

Number One ( Edgar Allan Poe x f! Reader )

Bungou Stray Dogs

Tw: suggestive, anxiety, self loathing

☆☆☆☆☆

What brought you to his place in such a hurry was a question you didn't have the answer to. Maybe it was because you sensed something was wrong, it was some kind of special ability by now, like you could taste his distress even though you were miles away.

And not much to your surprise, that's how you found him, distressed, curled into himself like a kitten looking for warmth, Karl resting on his head as his own way to comfort the sulking man. Papers were scattered everywhere surrounding his frame, balled up along some open books. The mess made you frown in anxiety, but you pushed your thoughts aside to walk towards him in silence, crouching down to his eye level.

"Poe" you announced your presence first before touching him, even though you knew he would be startled, giving you keys to his house didn't mean he expected you every time you visited.

His screech doesn't have a reaction out of you, you just wait for him to calm down from the scare while you look at him, still on the floor.

His bangs cover his eyes as per usual, but the bags under them are so wide you can see them peak under his chocolate locks.

"(Y/n)..." he whispers, letting you wrap your arms around his head without any complaint, secretly thanking you for your warm presence.

"Are you frustrated by the outcomes of your work?" You guessed, correctly it seemed by the slumping of his shoulders, his hands traveling up your back before fisting your shirt.

Karl jumped down of Poe's head as soon as he saw his owner maneuvering your body to sit on his lap, giving you a fleeting glance and a pur before exiting the room through the crack of the door you left un-closed, you nod at the retrieving animal before shifting your gaze back to the man under you, sighing when you felt his hands shift from your upper back to your armpits.

"I bet you'll get it next time, you're an amazing author, Poe, such a brilliant mind".

You let him do whatever he wanted, clearly in some need of physical comfort and praise, holding your breath as soon as his fingers brushed over your side boobs.

He looked up at you with such a sad expression, one he knew you wouldn't be able to say no to. It's not like this hasn't happened before, but every time as soon as he was about to begin showing you how much he needed you, he stilled his fingers.

"Do with me as you please, Poe"

Poe whined as though given permission, immediately out of breath as he palmed your breasts through your clothes and intently sought the best way to squeeze. He tangled himself up in your body like a man who needed it to live. At the same time, you could sense his nervous adjustments on you speaking volumes of his shy nature.

"Such a good detective, so pretty and smart" you breathed out, trying to compose yourself as he played with your tits, his face hiding on the crook of your neck

"Praise me more- please" Poe sounded desperate for your approval, his usually deep and honey like voice had gone up a few registers, even though you told him a thousand times before that he was the best of the best , he still needed reassurance, because in times like this, where nothing went right, when his mind plays tricks against him, convincing him he wasn't good enough, he needed an external voice, he needed you to tell him otherwise, and you did, for as many times as he wished. Because it was true, to you, he was your number one in everything.

#edgar allan poe x reader #edgar allan poe #poe bsd x reader #ranpo x reader #bungou stray dogs #bungou stray dogs poe #bsd #bsd poe #bsd edgar allan poe #bsd karl #bsd x reader #smut #bsd smut

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