#BUT i really want to do a little vday fic too

[mizu-nights]

♬ now playing: "white day"

-> returning the love your s/o gave you !

affiliated with @virtualbookstore ★

★ — chars ; an , mafuyu , rui , toya

★ — notes ; MIZU-NIGHTS HAS OFFICIALLY COMEBACK!!!! i just wanted to write two fics (still writing the other) to finally FINALLY get out of this writers block ^_^ VERY VERY HAPPY TO WRITE AGAIN AFTER SO LONG missed it sm ueueue... decided to use chars that i wasn't able to write for during vday event, so it still counts as the white day theme <3 first time writing for mafuyu, so i hope it isn't TOO ooc !!?!?

★ — warnings ; none

★ — requested by ; none

★ — taglist ; @nogenderbee (an and rui !!), @mintchocaur (mafuyu!!), @akitosheart (an and toya!!), @toyaswif3y (toya!!), @asherenjoysart (rui!!)

★ shiraishi an :

"oh? honey, what's this?"

an was surprised, but also very pleased with the sudden gift! she went all out the month prior—boxes of chocolate, a bouquet of your favorite flowers, as well as a sweet little handwritten letter about how much she appreciates you!

whether you bought her a gift or you made it yourself, she appreciates it nonetheless! it was from her beloved s/o after all, why wouldn't she?

expect a lot of kisses from her as a thank you. and maybe another gift or two... knock some sense into her that you're doing this as an act of gratitude for her earlier gifts.

★ asahina mafuyu :

the warmth your actions gave her... they can't be described with simple words. it was a soft and gentle, like a candlelight in a cozy, rainy evening where you simply read a book.

"mm... thank you, [name.]"

don't mind her dry response, she's really happy inside. in fact, if you look closer at her, you might even see a small, yet genuine smile on mafuyu's face!

mafuyu wants to experience new things, so as a way to show her appreciation for whatever you got her, she plants a quick, but loving kiss on the cheek. small steps, but adorable ones.

★ kamishiro rui :

"hmm? you have something for me in return, dearest?"

really, really flattered. rui isn't used to being on the receiving end of gifts, so the fact it's from you makes his heart flutter.

knowing rui, he also went a little overboard when it came to your valentines gift. it'd be a romantic one, with a robot playing a lovely melody in the background as he took you out on a quiet date.

so, regardless of how big and small your gift for him is, it's appreciated and will always be an important memory for him.

★ aoyagi toya :

toya is rather simple when it comes to gift giving. considering how talented he is at claw games, he took you for an arcade date last month and got you one of those big stuffed toys that take forever to get because of how many tickets you need. he even carried it for you going home as well!

... which leads to you wanting to impress him with this date by getting him one too. however, you just went with one of the claw machine plushies rather than a big one.

and it was... so difficult. the claw just would not work! it was definitely jammed, right!? these have to be rigged!

by the end of the day, toya was the one who had to get it since you basically rage-quitted from it. but that just made you feel even more guilty because it was for him, and he had to get it himself...

"don't worry about it, love. i know you were supposed to get it for me, and i really do appreciate the effort you put in for me."

... that was reassuring. toya even gave you a small kiss on the forehead for it. maybe this date wasn't that much of a disaster after all.

#virtualnetwork #pjsk x reader #project sekai x reader #an shiraishi x reader #an shiraishi #mafuyu asahina x reader #mafuyu asahina #rui kamishiro x reader #rui kamishiro #toya aoyagi x reader #toya aoyagi #★ — you are my literature

[theold-ultraviolence]

*chanting*

Valentine's day ficlet fest!

Valentine's day ficlet fest!

Hi friend!

I was wondering if you could write a smutty Aemond fic with the plot of either Secret admirers Or love confession, to Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode (great music selection btw!).

P.S. thank you for doing this. V-day usually makes me sad, but I’m really looking forward to this ♥️♥️

Words Are Very Uneccessary • Aemond Targaryen x reader • 18+

summary:Your dearest friend has always been quiet, but never with you...unless he was in pain. NSFW Warning: there is nothing explicit and sex is only alluded to but to be on the safe side: allusion to public sex and cheating (?) not on Aemond though.  // Song prompt: Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode + vday prompts: love confessions, secret admirers.  •2023 Vday ficlet fest masterlist

Words like violence

Break the silence

Leading up to the spring dance, Aemond had been inexplicably silent with you all week. 

Your dearest friend has always been quiet, but never with you – unless he was in pain, or merely preferred to communicate with you through timid gestures and faint touches. 

Now, you kindly excuse yourself from the arms of the young lord that was to become your betrothed and with whom you’d been dancing all evening, heading straight to Aemond’s own sanctuary within the walls of the Red Keep. 

Come crashing in

Into my little world

You find him hidden among stacks of books, sat by the fire in the library. The room is so quiet that the sound of your heels seem to resound way louder than the actual strength of your step. 

His profile looks sharper, highlighted by the auburn color of the flames – its cracking sound more audible than normal, even more so than your beating heart. 

You don’t utter a single vowel, for fear of crashing into his little world, slicing through his safe haven of silence with words sharper than Aemond’s own blade. 

Painful to me

Pierce right through me

Can't you understand?

Either he isn’t aware of your existence or he’s ignoring you, but it hurts just the same. Feels like your heart is breaking agonizingly slow, cracking loudly piece by piece, seconds from shattering to the ground with a deafening clang. 

You gather up your courage and finally speak. 

“Aemond?” 

Still, his eye remains glued to his book – not even humming in acknowledgement. 

Finally you decide to end this game, striding to him and closing the book on his lap – Aemond immediately rises to his feet with flaring nostrils and a murderous gaze, mere inches from your face. 

Only you’re not scared of him.

You stand your ground, lifting your head high and matching the potency of his gaze. 

“What is it!?” you demand. “Why haven’t you spoken to me all week? What have I done to you, Aemond!?” 

Your words come out like vicious growls you hadn’t intended, and upon seeing his lips quiver, you tentatively rest your palm on the unscarred side of his face.

“My dearest friend, why won’t you talk to me?” 

He looks down for an eternal moment, with furrowed brows and forced inhales of breath, before he gives in. 

“You’re betrothed now. It’s too late.” He shakes his head, placing his hand atop yours where it rests on his cheek, before moving to place a timid kiss along the deep love lines of your palm. 

“It’s not.” You whisper. “Not yet. No vows have been spoken yet. And even so…”

You gather his hands in yours, giving them a tight squeeze before leaving them to frame his face instead, and lean closer to where the tips of your noses almost touch.  

“Vows are spoken to be broken…it is you that I want, Aemond. It is you whom I love.” 

You wrap your arms around him, fully leaning your body against him and walking him backwards until his shoulders are cushioned against a stack of books. His arms envelop you tightly, hands getting itchy and anxious to grip your skin.

“All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here in my arms…” You whisper right into his ear.

He flips your bodies over so that you're now supported by the bookshelf, hiking up your legs, prompting you to snake around him – cling to him as he gathers up the skirt of your dress to grind against your core in a desperate plea for you to see how much you affect him. 

How much he wants you.

For you to understand, without the need to talk. That while his feelings are intense, words are trivial to describe them.

So intense, he’ll gladly face the wrath of the Seven. He’ll dare become a sacrilegious man if that’s what it takes for you to see that words are unneccessary to express what you incite in him.

Neither speak, save for the language of his hard thrusts, deep inside of you in a frantic pace; your sighs and moans, like confession between the two of you. Silence has never been this loud and rapturous. 

And tomorrow you might worry about the consequences, but for now, words can only do harm. Except for Aemond’s last exhale after reaching his peak, as it drips down your leg like a sealing of fate. 

He breaks the silence by quietly echoing your own words back to you, 

“All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here in my arms.” 

A/N: Besties!!! thank you so much for requesting this!! (also the gif usage is TOP TIER lol). I wish you a happy valentine's day, and sending you lots of hugs in thanks for participating in my ficlet fest! hope this was worth the wait, x

#aemond targaryen #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond targaryen x you #aemond targaryen fanfiction #aemond targaryen smut #reader insert #fanfiction #hotd #house of the dragon #ewan mitchell #vday ficlet fest #my writing

[coffeebanana]

20 questions for Fic Writers

Omg it took me ages to get to this but better late than never! Thanks for the tags @rosie-b, @monpetitchattriste, @lesbitorte, @kasienda and @celestialtitania!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Um. 107*... It's possible that I have a problem 😂

(*one is on anon. more on that later adfdsd)

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

801,972!!! (fun fact i was just below 800k the first time i got tagged in this game so i was like "oh well i'm posting a new chapter tomorrow...i'll do this game after that so i can pass that milestone!" and then i posted the chapter but it took me close to a week to do this ahaha)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

mostly just ml. i have a few spop fics too but i don't really write for that fandom anymore. or at least not right now.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Gah. okay. I'm going to answer this honestly but to do that I first need to explain that my most kudoed fic is on anon because I'm annoyed it's my most kudoed fic aksjfbksdb. Like. It's only so popular because there's a bit of lila salt? and really the fic isn't about that but i don't really write that kind of thing anymore and i don't want ppl coming to my profile and sorting by kudos and seeing that first. There are other things i'd do a lot differently in that fic now too ahaha.

Break a Leg

Cards Against Ladybug's Identity

Ladybug And The Tramp Stamp

Imaginary Friends

The Sun Will Rise Again

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do!! I reply to pretty much every comment--unless it's particularly rude/rubs me the wrong way. I know commenting takes time and I appreciate the effort ppl put into it so I like to give my thanks back!

6. What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Probably Every Teardrop is a Waterfall. Although I think Girl Is A Gun is a strong contender too?

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Uh...well, most of my fics have happy or at least hopeful endings. I don't think I can narrow this down to just a few haha.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I don't think I've ever gotten hate? Definitely some comments that aren't super nice but nothing too bad. (now i've probably gone and jinxed it 😂)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

um. a little tiny bit but not enough to have a particular kind LOL. i've only posted it once so far. but i also have Entangled, which will have smut in the next chapter--and that's angsty smut. which i suppose would be my brand of smut if i ever write any more

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

i haven't! i entertained the idea of an ml/spop crossover a couple years ago but i don't have any interest in it anymore. oh and i ALSO had an idea for a marigami spyxfamily crossover. but i don't know if i'll ever get around to that

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of! (*knocks on forehead since no wood is nearby*)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

no, but that would be super cool!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

i have not! a few times i've planned to write things with other ppl but nothing that ever really made it to the writing stage ahaha. although the littlebug vday zine is a collab in the form of a series--not exactly co-written but similar vibes

14. What's your all-time favourite ship?

to write for, definitely the love square. and then catradora is so special to me because it got me back into writing and also i started IDing as a lesbian in part because i binged spop.

aside from that i can't really decide because like. there are so many shows i've seen and books i've read and ships i've loved for so many different reasons asdfbk. and then i have OC ships that only live in my head but that i love to play with sometimes before i fall asleep at night. so please don't make me choose!!

15. What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

uh. i would say none of them? because it's only when i completely lose interest in a fic that i lose the belief i'll finish it. and that's only happened with maybe two of my wips i can think of?

16. What are your writing strengths?

Depicting emotions! And using the setting to do that by establishing the mood/tone/etc...

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

i guess like...self-doubt? not that i'm awful with it. in general i think i'm pretty good that way. but it's my biggest barrier to writing when i have periods where i get in my head about my writing, and it can make me overthink and not know if i LIKE my writing. and i think my writing is at its best when i'm having fun with it (which is probably true of most ppl), so...

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

i think it makes sense when the characters are actually speaking that language for a short time but aren't speaking it for most of the fic? like i have one ml AU set in new york so they're speaking english for most of it and i used french for the first couple lines that were french (and weaved the translations into the narrative). so that's the only time i do that personally--aside for maybe one word lines like bonjour--but as a reader it doesn't usually bother me when i see it used other ways

19. First fandom you wrote for?

ahaha the Vampire Academy book series. and NO you won't find those fics anywhere, even though they are still out there somewhere

20. Favourite fic you've ever written?

currently Say Something. and i very much wish i could finish writing it, but it'll happen when it happens!

I think most people I would have tagged have probably been tagged by this point...likely more than once 😂. So whoever else wants to play should do so!!

#tag game #long post

[carnal-lnstinct]

for the writers ask: 💖 ✨🫘 🦷 ?

💖 What is your primary writing goal for this year?

Finish DWD and Delicate.

✨What's one area of your writing that you think needs the least amount of improvement?

I like to ramble set up a story as if I can come back to it for more, so I guess the length of a fic? xD

🫘 Spill the beans. What's a new project you're doing this year?

More holiday events! If I space them out right. Bringing back Scourge of the Stars and Smutember, and I will be doing Kinkmas and something special for Spring season that's a little similar to VDay Event ♥ It's early in the year so if any other events come up, I may try them out if I like them. Also, I was inspired by actually chatting with some friends before about what I write it made me want to open up more about my writing process and things I wanna do with fanfics. But I couldn't really find any group chats I trusted at a glance or find anything for dbz fic writers (specifically spicy content 👀 but not entirely the premise). I really wanted to take the loneliness out of the writing process and create a space for other dbz writers to have the same. Somewhere to come together and chat, be weird together, bounce ideas, simp and gush over dbz f/o's, share their updates, writing events and fics to help boost traffic to their stories and generally support each other! But I am old and know nothing of discord anymore! so it's a "project" but very much still an idea. It was something I enjoyed in my RP groups that I really miss a lot and hope to find in others who share my love for reading and writing dbz fics ♥

🦷 Is there a chapter, scene, or WIP you're dreading to write (but is necessary to your plot)? Share a snippet or tell us about it!

So a looong time ago, I started working on a FINAL final chapter for Conton City Lockdown to play around with the soulmates/destiny trope and it got pushed deep, deep down in the WIP barrel. I said I would come back to and finish. But it got lengthy with JUST dialogue and now I kinda don't wanna fill in the blanks uwu so idk what to do with it but I don't wanna give it up either. Here is a Snippet w/ some context. The CCH essentially doesn't believe in destiny (despite literally being the one to save all of history), but she starts to ♥

TP: "Could you see yourself doing anything else with your life now? The Time patrol does kind of take over."

Goku: "I guess not anymore. Not knowing what I know now, anyways." "It makes me think a lot about the first time I saw you."

TP: "Stopping Mira? That was a pretty big win for the Time Patrol with your help."

Goku: "It was." "But that wasn't the first time I saw you."

TP: "..What?"

Goku: "Don't you remember? You fell out of the sky." "It was a miracle you came when you did. Ol' Raditz was really giving me and Piccolo a hard time, he really had us thinking on our toes and nothing we hit him with seemed to work. It looked like we were really done for. But then you suddenly appeared." "You saved me." "But I guess we undid that when Piccolo shot me."

TP, surprised: "..My special mission.." "My first time patrol for Supreme Kai of Time was to save you?"

Goku: "Really? That's pretty awesome!" "The first time Supreme Kai of Time came to me for help, she was sending me to help you with Mira. Isn't that something?"

TP: "Holy shit.."

Goku: “Yeah, I didn’t really remember too much about you until I saw you again. All I had was this vague memory of a strong warrior who helped me and Piccolo. I could remember your strength but nothing else. I wanted to see them again.” “Then I finally found you, fighting again, way stronger than you were back then. It all came clear. Knowing that we both had become stronger since then made me excited!”

WRITER GOAL ASK LIST FOR A NEW YEAR 🎉

#♚ ;; [ asks ]

[hadererer]

...

#debating #finishing that hanbrough animal shelter au #or write a stanpat vday ficlet #on one hand the animal shelter fic is super cute #BUT i really want to do a little vday fic too #and stanpat's vday would be hella romantic

[golbrocklovely]

tattoo smile // colby brock

A/N: first off, sorry this took forever for me to post. i ended up writing half of it and then falling asleep for a nap. then when i woke up i had to make dinner real quick. so fun fact, this idea came to me bc i used to give ppl tattoos back in elementary school with glitter gel pens and i thought it would be cute as a fic with colby. also, i’ve noticed colby allows ppl to draw on him and honestly... i kinda want to too??? anyway, hope you enjoy this ! happy late vday !

prompt: one drunk night, you ask colby if you can color in his tattoos. he says yes. cuteness ensues. || (non-gender specific) reader x colby

trigger warning: the absolute fluffist, maybe cursing??? but probs not, also a lot of soft touches

word count: 1511

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

"Can I color in your tattoos?"

It was a simple question, one that slipped from your lips before you had even fully formed the thought. Hanging out with Sam, Colby, and Kat all night had been super fun. Kat wanted to have a wine night, and all of you were down to drink and just chill in the Trap House. You guys had drank enough to be tipsy, for the night to feel hazy. Colby was wearing his infamous black tank top, showing off all of his tattoos, some newer than others. You stared at them all night, commenting occasionally on them.

You noticed that none of them really had any color to them, aside from shading and some white detailing. When you were a kid, you remembered giving your friends gel pen tattoos, and how fun it was to color those tattoos in later with markers or the pens themselves. So now, glancing down at Colby's arm, all you could think about was coloring him in like a coloring book.

Colby stopped his conversation with Sam, gazing over at you confused. "What did you say?"

A heat rushed over your face, embarrassed by having to repeat your words. "I said... could I... color in your tattoos?"

"With what?" Colby asked calmly.

"Um... I don't..." You stuttered, unable to finish your sentence.

"Sam has some markers upstairs in his room!" Kat exclaimed brightly.

Sam nodded. "Yeah, I used them for a video one time. They've been sitting there in my drawer since."

"I'll go get them." Kat beamed, rushing out of her seat with her wine glass still in hand.

You stared wide-eyed at the floor, unable to pick your head up. Why were you so embarrassed? Maybe it was the fact you didn't mean to say that to Colby. Maybe it was the fact that now you would have to be super close to him to do the coloring, and on top of it, you would have to touch him. Or it could be the fact that he hasn't even said yes to this happening and all you could think is how weird he thinks you are.

Kat came back down the stairs, smacking the pack of markers on the counter and sliding them over to you. The Crayola markers looked up at you, the yellow box making your heartbeat pick up.

What the hell was in this wine?

"Have fun." Kat winked, whispering into your ear.

Damn her for knowing about your crush on Colby, and damn her for knowing about Sam's markers.

And fuck Sam for having markers.

Colby hadn't stopped looking at you, or at least having his head in your direction; you hadn't met his eyes yet, still uncomfortable about this whole ordeal. He cleared his throat, causing you to finally look up at him.

He smiled sweetly, his dimples appearing and making your heart race. He lightly placing his arm in front of you, turning back to Sam and continuing where they had left off.

You quickly reached into the box and pulled out a blue marker. You grabbed his forearm softly, and began to trace his water droplet wrist tattoo. You went slow at first, going over each line with blue. You didn't want to color this one in, deciding only to outline. Colby flicked his wrist inward, making you almost mess up the tracing.

"Keep your hand down." You mumbled towards him, lightly holding his hand down with yours.

Holding Colby's hand, you felt the blush come back to your face. His palm was soft, his fingertips being a little callus; probably from all the years of being in band and exploring. His skin was warm, warmer than yours; making your skin feel hot.

You moved down to his next tattoo: the two skulls.

That one was one of your favorites. His friendship with Sam was always something you were a fan of, especially now that you were close to both of them. This tattoo representing both being together through life and death almost made you want to cry from the sheer sweetness of it.

The stars had to be yellow, so you took that marker from the box and did them quickly. You pulled out the black and outlined the skulls, deciding that they would look better in grey than black. You took the grey marker out.

Kat laughed suddenly. "Why are you drinking your wine like that?

You gazed up at Colby; his left hand was gripping his wine glass uncomfortably. You snorted when his eyes made contact with yours. You dropped the marker and it slowly rolled over to Colby.

"I wanted a drink but Y/N's still coloring my arm!" He shouted jokingly, matching Kat's loud laugh.

"If you wanted to drink, you could have told me to stop for a second." You replied.

He bit his lip, turning to you. "Okay... I need a drink."

You let go of his arm, allowing him to take his wine glass correctly and take a big swig from it. He then placed his glass on the counter, followed by his arm.

Your eyes met for a moment, and he smirked, handing the grey marker to you. Your fingers brushed each other’s as you slid it from him. You looked away, unable to help the butterflies that flew in your stomach.

Where were you again?

Right. Grey marker. You filled in the skulls, feeling Colby's arm flex under your hand as he laughed at something Sam said.

"What should I color the wings?" You muttered out loud.

Colby leaned into you. "What did you say?"

"I don't know what to color the wings." You stated.

Colby gazed over the markers. "Um... pink."

"Pink?" You questioned.

"Yeah. Do pink." He repeated, giving you a soft smile.

You returned the smile, going into the box and grabbing pink. You lightly went over the wings, Colby now watching you color his arm. When you looked up at him, you realized how close to your face he was. You gazed away quickly, not needing him to see you blush for a third time. After you finished the wings, Colby dragged his arm away slowly until you nodded. He picked up his wine glass again and drank the rest quickly.

He stretched out his arm, shaking it a bit.

You cocked your head to the side. "Is your arm cramping?"

"Yeah, it's just because it's at an odd angle. It's fine." Colby admitted.

You shook your head. "No, I'll get closer."

Shimmying your chair close to Colby, you placed his arm in your lap. You took the red marker and colored in his heart tattoo. Colby's hand lightly cupped the side of your thigh, running his thumb back and forth over your skin slowly. You prayed he couldn't feel the goosebumps he was causing. After finishing the heart, you colored the scythe’s handle in with brown, choosing to leave the blade colorless. You went back down to the heart and filled in the lock and chain with grey. Then to finish it off, you did a gradient of red, orange, and yellow in the flame.

“Your tattoos on the back of your arm… I’m gonna leave out.” You mentioned.

“Why?” He inquired, raising an eyebrow.

“First off, I can’t really fill them in since one’s shattered glass and the other is a black wolf. Second, if I do them, you won’t be able to see if you got all of the marker off when you shower.” You informed him.

Colby sat there, staring into space, contemplating your words. Finally, he spoke, “Thank God you’re smart.”

You giggled. “Exactly.”

He gave your thigh a little squeeze, squinting his eyes at you playfully. You felt your heart jolt at his expression, taking a ragged breath inward.

The last tattoo you colored: the hourglass. You colored one side in yellow, and the other side in purple, two complementary colors.

You grabbed the black marker and decided to draw one final tattoo at the curve of his shoulder. Two little dots for eyes, and a half circle.

Colby peeked down at your creation, humming. “Cute. Just like you.”

“I’m all done.” You responded, ignoring his words.

He twisted his arm around, bringing his forearm close to him so he could take in your coloring.

“Honestly, this is so dope. Thanks, Y/N.” Colby marveled.

You lowered your head bashfully. “No problem.”

“What do I owe you?” He joked.

“Uh… draw something on me.” You grinned.

Colby winced. “Oh no, you don’t want that.”

“Why?” You argued.

“I suck at drawing. Ask Sam.” He explained.

You chuckled. “It doesn’t have to be big or crazy. Just do something simple.”

He thought for a second, scrunching up his face. Then he relaxed, grabbing the black marker you had in your hand. He took your other hand in his, and lightly drew a smile, matching the one on his shoulder.

Then he brought your hand to his lips and kissed your knuckle softly.

“There.” Colby whispered, his eyes meeting yours again.

And the butterflies came back.

#colby brock #colby brock x reader #colby brock fanfic #colby brock fic #colby brock fanfiction #colby brock fluff #colby brock one shot #colby brock oneshot

[jjungkookislife]

OMGGGGGGGGGGG

Words cannot express how much I enjoyed finding Ho ho home, and the DRABBLES YAAAAAAAS.

I wish I had found your work on the holiday season, but better later than never, right? Hahaha. This Domestic Jimin dropping off Ana (and getting out of the car while raining!), going to super market and actually knowing what is needed is super extra cute and, lets admit it, HOT AF. Im going delulu for this man.

I also want to point out that I love how in the whole story, she is never addressed as y/n, or any other common term. Doll and "Jimin says your name" just hits different to me. Sometimes while I read and I get to the "y/n" part, I get distracted and my bubble breaks, does this makes sense? Lol.

Im sooooooo looking forward to read more about this couple 💕 How was their Valentine's day? How do they manage to meet when she gets to start working again? Is this Jimin (playfully) jealous/possessive? What are his interests? Ahhhh, Jimin come be our teacheeer~ (and viceversa, I loved how he is so interested in getting to know her).

Whatever your plans are, thank you for sharing this story, it was such a sweet treat and very special. May you enjoy your weekend!

This ask made me so happy! I could talk about ho-ho-home Jimin allllll day 😭😭😭

I love the drabbles, but I thought I was doing too many so I stopped 😭 I love when they go to the grocery store! It’s so domestic and it’s one of my favorite things to do with my husband so i had to make Jimin a total domestic sweetheart 💖💖

I’ve been trying so hard to not use Y/n as much just because I know it takes from the story sometimes. There’s nothing wrong with using Y/n or anything, I just thought for this fic Doll would work well 😊 Jimin’s always had heart eyes for oc so it all came together pretty well! Fun fact, there was one Y/N in the fic before my final draft lol it happens at the beginning when Jimin says bye. It was supposed to be “bye, Y/N!” But it just seemed out of place when it was the only time it was used.

I had plans to write a drabble for Vday but I was stressing over getting Hobi’s fic out in time so I didn’t write anything but now I’m ✨inspired✨

Valentine’s Day: I feel like Jimin would take it seriously like super serious. I’m talking breakfast for all his favorite girls because he’ll be damned if he excludes your mother and Ana from the festivities. He’d get your mother a bouquet of flowers and a gift certificate for a spa because she definitely needs some time to relax, he’d get Ana a huge stuffed bear and tons of candy and anything she had an interest in while out shopping would be wrapped up in her room. For you, he’d give you flowers, candy, make you dinner at his place and take you dancing. Then he’d spend all night kissing you.

Work for oc: unfortunately she doesn’t get to work from home like Jimin 😭 which sucks ‘cause she’s gotta be in an office every weekday. However, Jimin drops her off every other day and picks her up and oc loves not having to drive so it’s a win-win. Sometimes Jimin and Ana will pack a lunch for oc, leaving little notes of encouragement and jokes, etc.

Jimin isn’t the type to be jealous, at least not in a way the oc notices. Like he’s confident enough to know oc only wants him so other guys flirting with her (and failing) make him laugh. He’s possessive in bed sometimes, “you’re mine, who do you belong to,” etc but he knows you’re your own person and would never try to treat you like a possession.

Ah, i think Jimin would be really into being outdoors, playing sports, hiking, etc and oc is not here for it lmao she likes being at home with the ac on if it’s hot. Jimin plays basketball often with his friends and oc will show up with a cooler, a beach chair, an umbrella, sunglasses and sunblock on her nose. Sometimes Ana will tag along and the three of them will have a picnic after his game with all his friends that absolutely adore the both of you!

Thank you so much! 💖 I absolutely love talking about Jimin and this made me so happy! I’m sorry it got so long lol I hope you have a wonderful weekend 😊💖💜

#ho ho home asks #ho ho home!jimin

[lemonlushff-iy]

History Lesson in how OLR came to be...

A year ago, @clearwillow, @dawnrider, and @keichanz had just finished what would be known as the spontaneous Vday “hot off” of 2020, and it was decided that white day was going to just be a repeat of what we had just done...only we wanted everyone to participate and it was going to be open to all, and you could do whatever you wanted. Tease us. Post completed pieces. What have you. 

Shortly after, I fell into a VERY bad depression. I’m not shy about it. I’m not shy about my feelings or saying I’m hurt. I think people should be able to say that, and have it not be taboo. So I’m open about it. I wasn’t well. I felt inadequate. Like what I wrote was terrible. Like people within the fandom ONLY liked me because I was there for them 24/7 hyping up their work and singing their praises. I was the fandom hype girl. It felt like none of my friendships were REAL. 

And I’d been ok with that. 

Until I wasn’t. 

And a year ago today...I decided that I wanted to work past those feelings. I’d been struggling with them for about two days at this point, and I’d been looking at Carra’s pixiv and was completely CAPTIVATED by her work. Specifically, New Moon Ride, which has since been colorized. I was nervous and so low...I’d removed myself almost entirely from discord and tumblr, but I really wanted to participate in White Day, and I had this...idea in my head about this girl returning home and having a fling with a cattle rancher. I wanted it to be like Sweet Home Alabama (which is an Easter Egg for those of you on Patreon, and something to look for for those who aren’t).

Needless to say...

My depression made me miss the mark on that...

But I very nervously went to Carra who was this FANDOM GOD and asked “Hey...Would it be ok if I did this?” Needless to say...She said yes, and in doing so...She gave me this AMAZING gift. 

It was supposed to be a one shot just for White Day. I’d INTENDED for it to be a PWOP. The depression got the best of me though, and that...Clearly didn’t happen. Instead I started pouring all of these feelings I had inside of me into this story instead...And it’s become one of the greatest gifts of my life. It’s my emotional support fic. It takes all the bad and painful away from me. And I WISH that what I’d been feeling a year ago was the end of it, but it was only the beginning of it...And One Last Ride has been there for me for all of it. 

Providing me with an outlet for all of the feelings I’ve had. It’s allowed me to deal with a LOT. Drama. Friendships that died and times when I was shut out. Feelings regarding my own late father. General depression. 

One Last Ride has become deeply meaningful and a piece of my SOUL.

So...Thank you Carra for this AMAZING gift you’ve given me. You never knew when you drew that photo what you were about to unleash...But...I’m OH so very glad you did...

And in the spirit of how I started One Last Ride a year ago...

I offer you ALL a piece of post canon smut. It’s just a ficlet because...I just FINALLY finished the FIRST ACTUAL smut in One Last Ride (nearly a year later) and wanted to save my bandwidth for MORE smut...Can ya blame me?

And now, a short fic...

“Inuyasha...she could hear…” Kagome weakly protested, trying to push her husband away from her. 

“She won’t notice,” he soothed, continuing to suckle at her pulse point. “She’s watching that thing with the talking animals.”

“That narrows it down,” she gasped, feeling his tongue burn a path up the column of her neck. 

“I turned on the tv and she pointed. I weren’t about to ask questions,” he growled, pushing his hips into the swell of her ass, allowing her to feel the hardness between his legs. “‘Sides. I’m still cold from building that damn igloo with her. I need my sexy wife to warm me up.”

Yes...but they had been so cute. She loved watching the two of them play together. And watching him bite the inside of his cheek to keep from swearing when it kept collapsing. She knew that even though it hadn’t worked, he was going to go back out there tonight and figure out how to build Moroha her igloo. Even if it took him until 3 am, he was going to surprise his princess with one in the morning, no matter what. 

And she loved that about him.

“Giving her a shower didn’t do the trick?”

“Please,” he snorted. “All it did was leave me soaked. And all I wanna do is make you wet,” he murmured, slipping a hand under her shirt and laying his palm against the soft, relatively flat skin of her stomach. 

“Yash…”

“She won’t hear,” he promised, his hands coming to cup her breasts over the lace of her bra. “Washer and dryer will be too loud and she will be too distracted…”

“But what about the cookies...”

“We still have ten minutes.”

“And when she tries to take them out of the oven on her own? She has a little too much of you in her, you know,” Kagome replied dryly as his fingers found the tip of her nipple. The pad of his thumb gently brushed against her sensitive skin, making her bite the inside of her cheek.

“Better make it eight then...”

“That sure of yourself,” she challenged, his gentle ministrations to her body was making it hard for her to continue to resist him. 

“I know you, woman…” he growled as he reached out to find the doorknob of the laundry room, and swiveled the lock into place. 

Good. 

No interrupting daughters. 

“I know what makes you wet,” he continued, pulling the lace cups of her bra down before lifting the wire frames up and away from her breasts to rest above them on her chest. He felt their weight in his palms, tweaking her nipples and making her head fall back onto his shoulder. 

“D-do you now,” she breathed as he found the lobe of her ear, pulling it between his fangs and suckling on it. 

“I think I do, Kags,” he smirked, one of his palms sliding down her rib cage and over the soft, silvery lines of her stomach to the band of her pants. He felt her freeze in his arms as his palms connected with those lines, and he kissed her that much harder.

She hated those lines. She’d done everything she could when she was pregnant to avoid them, but they came anyways, despite her efforts. She thought they made her ugly. 

He thought they made her sexier. 

“Stop it,” he reprimanded, kissing her jaw lovingly. He knew what that look meant. She was thinking about them again. How her body had changed since giving him the most precious gift in his life. He hated when she did that. “You’re beautiful. Fucking sexy as hell. I’ll tell you that every damn day ‘till I die. I wouldn't change a thing about you.”

“Yash,” she breathed, turning her head and allowing him to capture her lips in a sweet, loving kiss. He was so good with words...but his lips were even better at this. He had a way of reaffirming everything he said with his hands. His touch. His body. 

The only sounds that could be heard in the small space of their laundry room, were the sounds of the dryer turning and spinning the wet clothes inside, and their heavy breathing. The sounds of their lips moving wetly against one another as he showered her with affection. Showed her how much he loved her. Expressed his need for her and her body. 

Her hands slowly wound their way into his hair, finding his ears. She rubbed them between her finger tips, starting at the base and slowly working her way towards the fuzzy tips. He moaned against her lips and lifted her shirt, lowering his head to her soft breasts. His tongue found her nipples and she felt him swirl it around her sensitive flesh as his hands worked the band of her panties and leggings down her legs. 

“Yash,” she moaned, his name clawing its way out of her throat against her will. 

“Shhh...You need to keep it down, Darling,” he reprimanded, pulling away from her trembling form as he worked one of her feet out the bottom of the mess of clothing. “You don’t want her to hear.”

“I thought you said she wouldn’t be able to hear,” She replied, panic beginning to bloom in the pit of her stomach. Oh god...They hadn’t had any situations with Moroha yet, but she didn’t want to explain this to her daughter yet either. 

“She can’t,” he soothed, the velvety tone of his voice slowly calming her as he lifted her leg over his shoulder, kissing her thigh. “But you can’t start getting loud neither. No screaming, remember? Anyone would be able to hear that. Demon blood or not.”

Her cheeks turned bright red at the reminder of just how loud she could be, and then red from the feeling of his tongue slipping between her lips. He zeroed in on her clit, and her nails scraped against his scalp. Soft little moans of pleasure crawled out of the back of her throat. 

He used them as a guide as he slipped his fingers inside. Watched the trembling of her abdomen. The heaving of her breasts as she tried to steady her breathing. 

And then she was gnashing her bottom lip, her face twisting and eyes screwing shut as her orgasm swept through her body. He held her, let her ride his face as she came - let her pull his hair and whimper his name against the palm of her hand. 

When she’d finished, he pulled away from her and lowered his sweatpants and boxer briefs, allowing them to pool at his ankles as his hardness sprang free. 

Fuck, he was so hard. 

And she was so ready for him.

“Should have a few more minutes still,” he commented, turning her around against the washing machine. She lifted her leg, his hands coming to softly grip her delicate flesh in his palms and support her. 

“Should?”

“I’ll hear when the timer goes off, don’t worry,” he soothed, lining the head of his cock up with her entrance. He slowly sank inside, his head falling to her shoulder, and kissed her neck. “God Kags…”

“Mmm…” she agreed, her head rolling back onto his shoulder as his fangs scraped against her pulse point. 

He slowly thrust into her, his hips gaining in speed and setting a vigorous pace as he took her from behind. He sought out all the places he knew she loved, and his fingers brushed through the patch of curls at the apex of her thighs to locate her clit. The tips of his fingers swirled around it as he continued to work her from behind until the coil that had been tightening in her snapped. 

The hand that had been holding her hip, guiding hers into his, released it to slap over her lips as he nervously glanced at the door. 

“Shhh...Kags…” he grunted, his eyes screwing shut. He couldn’t take much more…

He was almost there…

“Cum for me, Yash,” she begged, lowering his hand so her words wouldn't be muffled. 

“Kags…”

What was all he needed. He tumbled, over the edge of the abyss, allowing his orgasm to sweep through him as he spilled himself inside her. 

“Yash,” she soothed, feeling his body go limp against hers. “What got into you today,” she throatily chuckled, and he rubbed his forehead against her shoulder blade. 

“Nothing,” he sighed, burying his face into her neck and inhaling deeply as his cock slipped out from between her folds. 

“Liar,” she teased, watching as he dropped to his knees to use his tongue and mouth to clean up the mess he’d made in her. “You normally keep it in your pants until she’s sleeping.”

Catching him red handed, was she?

He couldn’t lie. It wouldn’t get him anywhere. 

“I want another one, Kags.”

“Another one?” she pressed, her brow furrowing in confusion, and he nervously nodded his head. 

“Another baby. She’s getting older...And this house is too big for just the three of us...and I miss it. Having a baby around. And she wants a sibling too. All her friends have one. And I...I...I dunno...I just...Do.”

His words were so sweet. So soft and tender. 

“Yash…”

“Don’t say no just yet,” he pleaded, pulling his sweatpants up as he stood. “Promise me you’ll think about it...And...And please don’t be mad...It’s been on ma mind a while, but you ain’t even ovulating now. But thinking about another one and how much fun we had trying ta get Mo...Well…”

So that was why. It all made sense now. 

“I promise I’ll think about it Yash,” she grinned, pulling her leggings back up her legs and adjusting herself within the cups of her bra as the timer went off in the kitchen. 

“Mommy? Daddy?”

“That’s our cue,” he sighed, relief washing over him as he pulled away from her and slipped out of the laundry room. 

She’d think about it. It weren’t a yes...but he didn’t need one right now. That could come later. 

Right now, he just wanted her to think about the possibility of adding another one to their happily ever after. 

And it was a pretty damn sweet happily ever after, if he did say so himself.

#inuyasha fanfiction #inuyasha fanfic #inuyashafanfic #inuyasha #inukag #DAMNIT CARRA #Ode to Carra #Clearwillow #rancher #cattle rancher #western #romance #angst #one last ride #lemonlushff

[plaidbooks]

Hey. Could I please request something fluffy with Sonny? Sonny, reader and their toddler bonding ... honestly i have no plot whatsoever. Lol I just want Daddy!Sonny🥺 thanks💕

Glimpses (A Glimpse of the Future part 5.5)

A/N: I fucking love Papa!Sonny, and I need him. This fic made me want children...but only if Sonny’s the dad/my husband. This is kind of a spiritual successor to A Glimpse of the Future, but can be read as a standalone (I just love the name Rosa for his daughter, okay?). It also covers the Cuddling square in the VDay Bingo. Hope you enjoy, and thank for requesting @amorestevens <3

This is day 1 of the bingo, hurray! I was asked to do fluff instead of angst, but i make no more promises for any other story!

Tags: none, just fluff

Words: 1389

Taglist: @witches-unruly-heart @beccabarba @thatesqcrush @itsjustmyfantasyroom @stardust-fray @permanentlydizzy @infiniteoddball @ben-c-group-therapy @glowingmess @whimsicallymad @lv7867 @storiesofsvu @cycat4077 @barbasimp @alwaysachorusgirl @crowleysqueenofhell @reading--mermaid @averyhotchner @mrsrafaelbarba @detective-giggles

On days he worked, Sonny was lovely, gently waking you before he got in the shower so that you could get up and get some things done in the peace and quiet before your two-year-old awoke. But on his days off, Sonny was a godsend. He took care not to disturb the bed as he got up, letting you get a few extra moments of sleep. The only thing that would awaken you was the smell of coffee, food, and the deep fear that you had overslept. But by the time you’d come padding into the kitchen, Sonny would be just putting the finishing touches on breakfast, serving you as you wrapped your arms around his waist, kissing his cheek. And while you’d eat, he’d get Rosa out of bed, carrying her to the kitchen for milk and her own breakfast. Only then would he feed himself.

Today started out like that, with you happily in love with your husband, watching him wash dishes while sneaking bites of food. Normally, you did the dishes, but he was very particular about his stainless-steel knives, and you’d given up arguing about it. So instead, you fed your daughter, making sure she got more in her mouth than around it.

Since becoming an ADA, Sonny now had weekends almost always off. Almost. Which is why you were taking full advantage of it. It was a beautiful day outside, and you were determined to drag him with you to the park, to let Rosa play on the little play structure there.

“Isn’t she too small for that?” Sonny had asked, wary.

You chuckled—he was “cool Uncle Sonny,” who let the kids do whatever they wanted normally. But Rosa was his one and only child, and he kept her on a pedestal. The first night you had brought her home, Sonny didn’t sleep, instead watching her all night, making sure she was okay. You knew what kind of parent he was going to be when in his sleep-deprived state, he cried about not being able to nurse Rosa.

“She’s fine, babe—I’ve taken her there before. Besides, look at her! She’s got your height,” you replied, gesturing at her. It was true; while Rosa looked like you—besides her bright, blue eyes—she was already big for her age. She was going to be tall when she grew up.

“Y-yeah, but—”

“She’s fine, Dom,” you smiled at him. “I promise.”

 ***********

Once Sonny was able to let her go, he learned that you were right; Rosa was fine on the play structure. Though, she fell once, and you thought Sonny would have a heart attack. You had to grab his arm to stop him from rushing over to her. And when she had sprung back up, laughing and running around again, Sonny had let out a sigh, relaxing next to you.

“You’re going to be the dad that sits in the kindergarten class with her cause you refuse to leave her, aren’t you?” you asked, elbowing his ribs.

“Hey, I worry. My job…” he trailed off, eyes locked on his daughter.

You squeezed his arm. “I know, Dom, I know. But you can’t stifle her, either.”

“I-I know…there was just this case recently…. Never mind; I don’t want to think about it.” Sonny shuddered slightly, and you squeezed his arm again.

As you left the park, you each had one of Rosa’s hands, and she walked in between you two. Sonny would count down from three, and you’d both swing her forward, lifting her off her feet, making her squeal with laughter.  Eventually, she got bored with that, though, squirming out of your hand and going to Sonny.

“Dada, up!” she commanded, and Sonny laughed, lifting her and planting her on the back of his neck, legs dangling on his chest. You grinned at the two of them, heart full.

 ***********

“And this can’t wait until Monday? Or at least tomorrow?” Sonny said angrily into his phone. He was pacing in the kitchen and you were doing dishes, Rosa playing with her toys in the living room, cartoons on. You glanced at him just as he sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Fine, I’ll be right there,” Sonny said though gritted teeth before hanging up.

“What’s wrong?” you asked. You had just finished dinner—it was rare for Sonny to be called in this late.

“Liv needs a warrant tonight. I gotta run to the office real quick, then try and find a judge willing to sign off on it on a Saturday night,” he explained, heading out of the kitchen towards the bedroom. There was no time to get into a full suit, so he was opting for a button-up and blazer over his day-off jeans. He tried to be stealthy, to not let Rosa see, but it was too late.

“Dada?” she asked as he headed for the front door. Sonny froze in his tracks, glancing at you for help.

You walked over to Rosa, saying gently, “Daddy has to go to work really quick. He’ll be right back—”

“No!” Rosa said angrily, stomping her foot.

You sighed. “Rosa, we’ve talked about this; Daddy sometimes gets called into work. He has an important job and has to—”

“No! Dada stay!” she reiterated, crossing her arms. Then the tears came, and she wailed loudly.

You looked over at Sonny, who hadn’t moved a muscle; he was normally gone before this. “Why are you still here? Go; hurry back. She’ll calm down,” you tried, but now Sonny had tears in his eyes.

“D-does she do this every time I leave?” he asked softly, his voice barely audible over Rosa’s screams.

“Not every time, but often enough,” you confessed. You never told him, because you were afraid of this kind of reaction. “Just…go, babe. It’s only going to be worse if you drag it out.”

But instead of turning and leaving, Sonny pulled out his phone. “Yeah Liv? Family emergency; call another ADA. Sorry.” And then he hung up, shrugging out of his blazer and hanging it up before coming over to Rosa. He squatted down in front of her, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. Daddy’s staying home for the night, okay? No more crying,” he cooed to her, bouncing her gently.

Rosa sobbed for a little while longer, her arms wrapped around his neck. You gave him a soft smile. “You realize you’re just encouraging her; now she’ll cry whenever you leave to try and stop you,” you muttered.

“And if I see it, she has a pretty good chance of succeeding,” Sonny whispered back, kissing the side of her head.

 *************

The three of you ended up cuddling on the couch, under the giant blanket Sonny’s ma made for  your first Christmas together. Sonny had his arm around your shoulders, pulling you against his side. Your head was on his shoulder, his head on yours. Rosa was tucked between you both, your hand stroking her back lovingly.

When you were pretty sure Rosa had finally drifted off, you said softly, “I wanted to tell you this tomorrow, but I can’t keep it secret anymore.” Sonny lifted his head from yours, furrowing his brow as he looked at you in confusion. “I’m pregnant, Dom.”

A wide grin broke across his face. “Really? When did you find out? How far along are you?”

You opened your mouth to respond when Rosa shifted. “Mama, what’s preg…mat?”

Your cheeks warmed as you glanced at Sonny. He chuckled. “That’s all you, doll,” he murmured.

You shot him a playful glare. “Uh, Rosa, it means you might have a little brother or sister soon.”

She was quiet for a long time, and you thought she might have fallen asleep. Finally, she whispered, “I wish I had a little sister to play with.”

The smile Sonny had was blinding, and he pulled you both closer. “We’ll just have to wait and see, my little Rose.” Sonny kissed the top of her head, then pulled you in for a gentle kiss. This was the best ending to a perfect day, a family day. You hoped that you could have more of them soon, especially with baby number two on the way. You nuzzled your face closer against Sonny, heart full of love.

#sonny carisi x reader #thatesqcrushvdaybingo #law and order svu #law and order svu fanfic #fanfic #I love papa!sonny #amorestevens

[writer1]

Valentine Surprise

This was requested by anonymous

Request: I wish you would write a fic where Fox plans a special evening for his s/o on vday 🌹

Warnings: None.

Fox runs around your apartment, trying to get everything ready. Today is valentines day so he decided to surprise you with a romantic evening, but it’s not going how he wants it to.

He’s been trying to cook you your favorite dinner for an hour, but he’s already burnt it to a crisp and had to try again. Fox is getting really frustrated, he checks the time and realizes that you’re going to be home from work in about half an hour

“Kriff!” He yells in frustration, Fox sighs and gives up on the dinner, he won’t be able to finish it in time even if he could get himself to stop burning it. He grabs the phone, ordering food from your favorite takeout place. He then runs out of the kitchen, heading to the living room, he’s already gotten it ready for your night. 

Fox bought you a bouquet of your favorite flowers and a box of your favorite chocolates, he arranged them nicely on the table with a very cheesy valentines day card in the front. He really hopes you like it even if he does have to order takeout.

He also has your favorite Holo-movie in the player, ready to watch at a moment’s notice.  This is his first valentine’s day with you, and he wants it to be absolutely perfect. You’ve been together for almost a year, the both of you met a few days after valentines day.

Fox hears the door open. “Hey, Fox! I’m home!” He walks over to the door, pulling you into a soft kiss. You hum against him as he pulls you into the living room gently, still deep in the kiss.You pull away to see the flowers and chocolate on the table, you turn to Fox.

“Oh Fox, you didn’t have to get me anything.” Fox smiles, pressing a kiss against your forehead. “Yeah I did, you deserve everything, Cyar’ika.” Your heart misses a beat as Fox kisses you again, deepening it more than the first one.

“Do I smell something burning?” You ask, noticing a little bit of a smoky smell in the air after you pull away, Fox rubs the back of his neck in embarrassment. “I tried to cook you dinner, Sweetheart. But it didn’t turn out too well, I did order us takeout. Sorry.” 

You smile, pecking Fox’s lips. “You don’t have to be sorry, it’s the thought that counts Fox. Thanks for trying, I’ll teach you how to cook without burning the food later, okay?” Fox nods, he feels so relieved that you aren’t upset. 

You both jump when you hear a knock at the door. “That must be the takeout, I’ll go get the door. Why don’t you change into somethin comfier Cyare?” You nod, and Fox lets go of you. You walk to your room, changing into some comfier clothes. You walk back out to Fox laying out the food at the table, you smile and walk over to sit beside him. 

You press a kiss to his cheek. “Thanks Fox, you didn’t have to do all this for me! I didn’t get you anything” You tell him, chuckling when you read the cheesy card he got you. You do feel bad that you didn’t get Fox anything, you’ve just been so busy that you forgot that valentine's day was this week.

“It’s fine, Cyare. It makes me happy to do these things for you, now let’s eat, I’m starving.” You chuckle and you both start eating, you still can’t believe that Fox did all this for you. You’re the only one besides his brother’s who gets to see him this sweet and playful, you cherish every moment of having him in your life.

You both finish eating. “Do you want to watch a holo-movie, Cyare? I have your favorite one already in the player.” You nod as Fox get’s it started, then he goes to your room. 

You wonder where he’s going until Fox comes out with one of your comforters, he brings it over to the couch, sitting down and pulling you over to him. He wraps the comforter around the two of you, pulling you close, you lay your head on his chest as you watch the movie, happy to have a man like Fox in your life.

Your eyes flutter close and you just listen to the movie, after a little while of this you fall asleep. Fox chuckles once he notices,picking you up and carrying you to your room, he gently lays you in bed and covers you up, he then leaves and cleans everything from today up before going back to your room and laying down beside you. 

Fox wraps his arms around you, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Happy valentines day, Cyare.” You hum. “Happy valentines day Fox. I love you and thanks.” Fox smiles sleepily. “No thanks necessary, Cyar’ika. I love you too.” You both fall asleep after that, this being the best valentines day you’ve ever had.

Taglist: @ahsokatano-thetogruta @lightning-wolffe @captainrexisboo

#commander fox #commander fox x reader #my writing #star wars clone wars #valentines day #fluffy #very fluffy #Fox doesn't know how to cook

[meitanteisachi]

My Kacchako reading list

My personal shortlist of the most unforgettable Kacchako fics I’ve read and currently reading, as well as planning to read! These are just those I can name at the top of my head so I probably might have missed some and will add later on once I remember. Most are rated M/E (because I am a sucker for Kacchako smut bahaAHHAA)

HAVE READ / ONESHOT / COMPLETE

A Little Bit Closer by mignonettes (a Ground Zero...dildo?!) A Softer World Prompt 46 by i-masshiro (kchk as exes. They never really got over each other) A Sweet Surprise by ohmytheon (Ochako bakes Bakugou a birthday cake) Again by corinnemaree (After Bakugo gives Ocha her first kiss, she just cant get enough) All Work and No Play by mignonettes (one of the hottest kchk smuts imo) Angel and Demon by EmeraldWaves (Ochako is a tease) Apricity by i-masshiro (Christmas kchk; honesty hour for our babies, very cute) As If to Say by calamansifresh (can’t get enough of a straightforward Bakugo. fluff!) As We Minimize the Space by calamansifresh (Ochako’s obsession: touching Bakugo. hot smut) Quiet by IchigoKacchan (twitter thread turned Ao3, HOT) Bakudonis by Ichigo_Kacchan (1-A drooling over shirtless Bakugo) Benign Masochism by windigop (Stripper Bkg. That’s it. I’m sold) Best Birthday Ever by crystymre (A twitter thread full of fluff and everything nice uwu) Biting the Bullet by MockingbirdSoul (one of the BEST kchk sexual tension fics EVAR) Conflict Resolution by Colorslander (Bakugo is bad at feelings, yes) Delivery Incoming by mignonettes (drunk Bakugo loves his girlfriend so much. VERY CUTE) Drinks series by BlueTee (ahh!! drunk kchk!! isso!! cute!!! AHH) Fight Night by ohmytheon (Ochako: *breaks Bakugo’s nose* Bakugo: im so turned on rn) First Date Etiquette by Methoxyethane (smut and humor are /chefs kiss/) Fleeting Emotions by EmeraldWaves (series of oneshots! includes tdmm and kmjr! fave is #4) Fragile by Virtually Forgotten (another series of oneshots! fluff/angst/smut i’m in love) Fuck or Die: Bakugo birthday edition by Italian_Lily (lust quirk and coming 7 times omg) Fuck or Die by mignonettes (twitter thread; ochako hit by a quirk that makes ya horny)  Gentle Hands by corinnemaree (it takes a while for Bakugo to process that Ocha kissed him) Girl of His Dreams by NamiSwaannn (Bakugo has very /vivid/ dreams abt Ochako) good together by tusslee (kchk sext this is so hot asjdkhaf) Hero Analysis and Application by SakuraDrops93 (slow-burn kchk wholesome content, except for chapter 28, ish) Hot Lavender Latte by calamansifresh (coffee shop AU! cute and wholesome and fluffy) How’s The Weather by crystymre (how the ending is written is the BEST) I Don’t Care by SakuraDrops93 (MY. MOST. FAVORITE. NON-SMUT kchk oneshot) I Don’t Compete by crystymre (kchk pro-hero AU. hot and sweet and cute) If Heartbreak by i-masshiro (if you don’t want to have your heart broken, DONT READ THIS. </3) Irresistible by ElanaDrex (lust quirk again, but dayum this hot) Kill, Fuck, Marry by stillfly94 (twitter thread; we love an angry dork Bakugo) Late Night Sweets by jarynw02 (so cute omg! Bakugo soft only for Chako) Misfit Love by Ichigo_Kacchan (Bakugo bought a new desk and Ochako didnt like it. yet) Morning Dew by calamansifresh (we need kchk morning sex in our lives) No One Else by thesweetestnerd (again, Ochako being a hot tease) Not Afraid by omytheon (Spin the bottle. Bakugo to kiss Ochako, then it gets complicated) once bitten by wonduhhwoman/still.fly (vampire ochako oneshot. help, this is too hot.) one juicy peach by still.fly (the first kcck i’ve read. it’s hot and beautiful ;_; sweet bakugo) Partition by Ichigo_Kacchan (based on Beyonce’s Partition, Kacchako multitasks in limo) [Prompt]Sweet Surprise Vday KCCK by italian_lily (Bakugo helps Ochako make cake) Protect and Kill by ohmytheon (AU, Ocha is FBI agent and Baku is assassin) quality time by still.fly (kcck as roommates. fluff!) Quarantine Thread by Megadoodle (soooo cute!!!) Quiet Time by ohmytheon (Deku overhears kcck on the top bunk doing...things) say it and i’m yours by yaomomochi (aquarium date!!!) Sparks by ohmytheon (secret relationship + blind date) Stress Relief by Italian_lily (exactly how I would picture a kchk sparring smut scene tbh) Suds ‘n’ Sweat by mignonettes (kcck in laundry and ya know what happens) Summer Hoodies by mythica magic (Ochako in Bakugo’s sweater hrrrmm) Take a Break by ohmytheon (pro-hero Kchk doing it in the workplace to relieve stress) The Dark Web by ohmytheon (another hot kchk sexual tension comin’ right up!!!) The feeling that isn’t entirely unpleasant by mysterious intentions (fluffy HS kchk!) The Final Countdown by ohmytheon (New Year’s countdown, first kiss, pure kchk fluff <3) The Five Times It’s Fake and the One Time It Isn’t by mignonettes (fake dating AU!) thought that i was dreaming by lianhuawu (kchk post AFO-fight. sweet huhu) Un Pour Tous by mignonettes (coffee shop AU, fluff!) VIP Pass by HikoCassidy (oooh a drummer Bakugo) warm light on a winter’s day by wonduhhwoman (soulmates kchk, stuck in cabin for winter) Worthy by Tharros (drunk Ochako again + sweet “friend” Bakugo) Yes or No is Not a Trick Question by silv3rbloodalch3mist (ANOTHER. FAVORITE. Honest Bakugo is hot) Yours, If You Wanted by calamansifresh (bakugo and his hidden crush mehehe)

CURRENTLY READING / ONGOING

Aquating Training Session by BeMore (happens before camping arc; w/ tdmm!) Boyfriend-Girlfriend Things by silv3rbloodalch3mist (ahh another one from a fave author!) Little Do You Know by fullondisclosure (soulmates with a twist!) Make it wit chu by Ichigo_Kacchan (a One night stand/FwB Kacchako) Mr. Brightside by SakuraDrops93 (MY. MOST. FAVORITE! RECENTLY UPDATED AHH) Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell by Ms_Chunks (very long but very good asdhajf kchk quirk dynamic) floaty ‘splodey fic series by ishkabibble_bafflegab (every fic in this series is /hearteyes/) Hot Cocoa & Chill by FrenchK (uwu i’m soft) Seeing Double by knifekirby (Fantasy AU! I’m in love with this!) The Reaper by thevoidyouknow (kchk roommates, virgin ocha and horny bakugo) (Touch Me) Kill Each Other Slowly by corinnemaree (vampire!bkg) there is something wrong with uravity by onlyfm (again with the horny quirk. yes) We Can Never Be Friends by crystymre (reading this on twitter it’s so fun and hot omg) why don’t you say so by frazzledazzle (all dialogue; all interesting drabbles! love this!) You Lost by NanaHachikoSan (this is just hot dirty hahaha)

TO READ

A Different Perspective by house_of_pixels actuality by still.fly Among a Crowd of Faces by miraimisu Bakugou Katsuki is Going to Become A Friendly Guy Even if it Kills Him by pisces-royalty Blanket Pals by miraimisu Clocks and Blades by Pomoon Closer by Ichigo_Kacchan downplay it by seconddaysea Fall by crystymre Finding Our Normal by theGingerTrekie Floating Embers by megwritesfanfiction Grounded by ElenaDrex He Who Always Left First by miraimisu Hot-headed by MoofyKitten In Hindsight by infantblue  It’s Just Training by LaMuerta It’s Our Secret, Angel Face by thesweetestnerd Kacchako Week 2019 entries by BlueTee Lie for Me by lovecassia Limerence by KarmaHope Make Me Forget by Chio Saki Midnight Terrain by stillfly94 No One Knows by Ichigo_Kacchan Noblesse Oblige by EmeraldWaves & Superevey On the Rainbow Road by ohmytheon One Day at a Time by jarynw02 Out of the Town by jarynw02 Popcorn for Breakfast by Ichigo_Kacchan [Prompt]Glimpse into the Future by italian_lily Something New by megwritesfanfiction The Boys Start the War and the Girls Get Even by crystymre The Heist by katschako The Need Inside You by ohmytheon the shape of your words by nascence The Wonderful World of Jealousy by ohmytheon These Stones We Skip by miraimisu With the Touch of My Staff by miraimisu

If you can recommend me some (I’m pretty sure there are a lot of beautiful Kacchako fics out there I might’ve missed bc srsly this fandom has SO MANY talented writers), feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll be more than happy to add them here

#bnha #kacchako #fanfic #shortlist #fanfic masterlist

[alarriefantasy]

hi, my pet rabbit just died so i’ve been pretty down. i don’t cope well if this type of stuff; i bottle it up cause i’m uncomfortable talking about it with anyone. do you have any feel good happy fics. that’s just a lot of fluff and happiness please? thank you

Darling, I am sending you the biggest virtual hug I can!!!!! I know how it feels, I lost my dog last year who was 16, and it was the most devastating heartbreak I had felt in a long time. Our pets become our family, which means it’s equally hard to let them go.  

With that being said, there are great fluffy fics throughout all those sections below, even the VDay ones have none VDay stories that are just lots of fluff. But, I’ll add some more recent fluff fics below, too! I really hope this helps :) <3 

Domestic Fluff

First Time Fluff

Valentines Day Part 1   and Part 2

                                              Fluff Fic Rec

Stealing Flowers by lululawrence

Words: 4k

Or the one where Louis pines after the Sexy Stranger on the Subway and almost asks him out. That's when the strange posters start showing up around Brooklyn.

I think I'm falling (I'm falling for you) by Only_angel_28

Words: 6k

Louis is a disaster gay on a skateboard. Harry is a beautiful, quirky stranger on a bicycle. Their first encounter really makes a splash.

Yahoo! by musketrois (B_kate)

Words: 6k

I think I’m in love with my roommate???? Harry typed into the question box.

Oh, shit. Love? Did he love Louis? This question was already turning out different than he originally planned. He continued typing before delving into that thought process.

or Harry turns to the Internet for romantic advice.

I Wanna Bring You Home by AFangirlFantasy

Words: 7k

Or, an au where Louis pathetically pines over Harry, and Harry may or may not give him what he wants.

happiness comes in on tiptoe by scagnetism

Words: 9k

There is a supermodel standing at Louis’ door. He suddenly feels extremely insecure about his unwashed hair and clothes that have seen better days. He’s sure his mouth has fallen open, but there is a supermodel standing on his doorstep.

Or, the AU where Louis is new to the neighborhood and Harry is the angel living next door.

Home Is Wherever I'm With You by twoshipstiedup

Words: 10k

Louis attempts to meet a random hookup on an ordinary Wednesday night.

He goes home with Harry instead.

Featuring match making friends and the triumphant return of the flower crown.

You come in waves (we crash and we roll) by rainbowslovehl 

Words: 11k

Three times Louis makes a fool of himself in front of Harry and one time he doesn't.

Kiss From A Rose by lovelarry10

Words: 15k

Harry is the quiet one in the office no one ever notices. Until Louis does, that is. When notes start appearing on Harry’s desk, he ponders who is behind the kind words, oblivious to Louis’ attempts to get his attention...

You Are My Sunshine by lovelarry10

Words: 17k

Charlie is a happy little boy, he smiles and waves at everyone around him, making Louis the proudest dad. Charlie’s spark of personality and a well timed hello brings a stranger into his and Louis’ lives when they least expect it...

Absolutely Smitten by MyEnglishRose

Words: 20k

Or. Louis is walking his dog. Harry is walking his cat. Leashes get tangled, and feelings too.

The Goat Guy of Bethlehem by lululawrence

Words: 25k

Or every year, Harry and his family attend a church festival called Bethlehem. Harry's freshman year of high school Bethlehem expands, bringing in new vendors, including one that just might change everything for Harry. But first, he has to see if Anne and Robin are willing to part with him for the price of a few goats.

A Road To Something Better by taggiecb

Words: 25k

Louis Tomlinson, famous romance novelist, has just had the rug pulled out from under his feet when his boyfriend leaves him without notice. What's the most appropriate response to this? Move a thousand miles away and seclude himself in a tiny lake town, of course. But nothing is as he expects it to be in the very best way, especially not the handsome mayor of McAll, Idaho.

lavender dreams by larrystylinsonkink

Words: 77k

Louis is an outgoing person that goes to school for educational psychology and Harry is a biology major who happen to run into each other... a lot.

to lure a hummingbird (you had me moonstruck) by justlikelouis

Words: 81k

Or: An enemies-to-lovers fic where Harry and Louis are neighbours who are forced to get along due to the inconvenience (or convenience) of a broken elevator.

knock knock, i love you by beautlouis

Words: 86k

[Harry and Louis get kicked out of a statistics exam for passing a knock knock joke note, and subsequently fall in love. Harry's a virgin, there's a cat, a hot cocoa date, a lot of sex, even more knock knock jokes, and everything is lovely and happy.]

♡ credit to the owner of the manip

♡ past themed recs here

#ask

[verfound]

FIC: Stolen Moments When You’re Mine (MLB/Lukanette, LBSC VDay 2020)

Title: “Stolen Moments When You’re Mine”

Author: Veritas Found

Rating: M / PG-16 / Older Teen

Characters/Pairings: Luka Couffaine, Marinette Dupain-Cheng; Luka Couffaine/Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Summary: Marinette likes Luka.  She can admit that now.  And she really likes kissing Luka – she can also admit that.  And she knows he likes her, too.  And all the kissing.  She’s just not quite ready for everyone to accuse her of using him as a rebound or a ploy to make Adrien jealous yet.  Really, she’s not ready to share him at all.

Author’s Notes/Warnings: …so, uh.  Hey, @semi-slaughtomatic.  Remember about a month ago when I posted that thing about flustered Mari wanting to bite Luka’s neck and you asked if I was in your brain?  ;P  GUESS WHO’S YOUR SECRET ADMIRER!  :D There are so many gratuitous makeouts ahead of you, girl.  Hope this is rubbable enough!  ;D <3  (This is for the Lovebugs & Snakecharmers Valentine’s exchange, and it’s really nothing but thinly-veiled plot to facilitate makeouts. PWP without the porn?  I was a little worried about the ages, but I work at a middle school and y’all after some of the things I’ve heard our seventh & eighth graders say the past few weeks I’m not worried At All.) 

The Prompts:

Luka and Marinette getting together/trying to keep their relationship secret because Marinette doesn’t really want any "what about Adrien!?!" judgement from people because she quite frankly is over him. Luka and Marinette both fail miserable at trying to hide their affections for each other around other people (Luka is getting a hilarious kick out of Marinette's elaborate planning but it's okay cause secret make-outs are kind of hot).

Luka dressing in a different outfit (although punk still is very fashionable about it) and Marinette's brain self-implodes (pre-relationship shenanigans maybe?)

 “Stolen Moments When You’re Mine”

When Marinette had gone to the Liberty that sunny Wednesday afternoon near the end of the school year, it had not been with the intention of finding out how good a kisser Luka Couffaine was.  That part had been a complete accident.

(A happy accident, but an accident all the same.)

She had actually gone for Juleka, who had been out with Rose at the time. She had been returning some items she had mended for her (a few tunics and a dress), and she had had every intention – once she’d realized her friend wasn’t home – to leave the bag with the Captain and be on her merry way.  It was almost summer, the weather was gorgeous, and she was Ladybug – she had better things to do than wait around (potentially for hours) for Juleka to come home from a date.  Of course, then the Captain had told her to just leave the bag in Juleka’s cabin, and then Luka had been on his bed working on a song, and then they’d started talking, and the next thing either of them knew she had crawled into his lap and was kissing the ever-loving daylights out of him.

#lovebugs & snakecharmers #lbsc valentine's 2020 #miraculous ladybug #lukanette #luka couffaine #marinette dupain-cheng #fanfic #ml fanfic #ver fic #gift fic #semi-slaughtomatic #all the makeouts #secret relationship #secret boyfriend #slight alya salt #until there isn't #ooooh also I just found a cut bit in my drafts #I'll post it later #It's the dance scene #C:

[emmerrr]

heyyyy if you wanna write a pynch vday fic, how about one where they're like... both trying to be sneaky about planning sth for valentines day and so both think the other has forgotten about it and they're both like ://// but it all uhh works out in the end?? x

what a top notch suggestion, absoLUTELY i can write that 💕💕 (uhh heads up this got kinda long, i’ll put it on ao3 too and reblog with a link later)

-

Adam sat alone in a corner booth of Nino’s, History notes open on the table before him. He’d written VALENTINE’S DAY?? in the margin, underlined three times. He frowned at the words, wondering why he was fixating on them, and turned his head to stare listlessly out of the window instead.

Blue was there working, but she’d been too busy to come and say hello so far, simply offering him a harried wave when she spotted him walk in, pointing him towards the table he was now seated at. The other staff at Nino’s never bothered them anymore, knowing Blue would cover their table. Adam had heard them being referred to as “Blue’s Boys” on more than one occasion.

He was currently the only one there, having beaten Henry and Gansey out of the school gates. He assumed they’d got held up by a traffic light or two, and Ronan had further to drive than the rest of them so would likely arrive last anyway.

Thinking of Ronan immediately returned Adam’s thoughts to the words written in his notes and he scowled at the parking lot. On the surface, Valentine’s Day didn’t seem like it would be Ronan’s thing. Adam wasn’t even particularly sure it was his thing. But the fact remained that Valentine’s Day was a week away, and Adam didn’t know what, if anything, he was expected to do for it.

He tried to think back to previous years and remembered receiving an anonymous card from someone back in the seventh grade; a generic heart-shaped thing that simply said ‘Will you be my Valentine? x’ inside. He was fairly certain the sender was a girl in his English class who had never said a word to him but blushed every time she caught his eye. Adam didn’t see how he was supposed to answer whether or not he’d be her Valentine if she never told him she had sent it. And of course, she never owned up, and he didn’t want to suggest it was her in case he was wrong, and he didn’t actually want to be her Valentine anyway. So it was never mentioned again.

The difference here was that Ronan was his actual boyfriend. Didn’t that mean that they were each other’s Valentines by default, then?

Adam didn’t know. He’d never navigated Valentine’s Day before. Not like this.

He was so lost in his own thoughts that he didn’t hear Henry and Gansey approach until they were right there.

“Oh, History notes,” Henry exclaimed. “Can I borrow them?”

Adam turned his head to see Henry already sliding the notebook towards him. “Your notes are always make more sense than mi—” Henry cut himself off, eyes widening at something on the page. Too late Adam remembered the VALENTINE’S DAY?? in the margin and slapped his hand over it, snatching back his notebook.

Henry was grinning at him. “Big plans?”

“No,” Adam muttered. “No plans at all.” He stuffed the notebook into his messenger bag.

Gansey had slid into the booth opposite Adam and watched the exchange with raised eyebrows. “What have I missed?”

“Nothing, apparently,” Henry said easily. Adam was grateful that Henry clearly wasn’t going to push it (at least not with an audience), but reasoned he could perhaps use some advice.

“So,” he started. “Valentine’s Day. Thoughts?”

“I’m glad you asked, Parrish,” Gansey said. “It was originally a Western Christian feast day honouring a couple of early saints called Valentinius—”

“Yes, thank you, Captain Wikipedia,” Henry cut in. “I’m not entirely sure that’s what he meant.”

A jug of Iced Tea was plonked onto the table without ceremony and they all looked up to Blue Sargent as she handed out glasses.

“It’s a dumb holiday invented by Hallmark to sell more cards,” she said, obviously having heard the tail-end of the conversation.

“Well, obviously there’s that too,” Gansey said, beaming at her. 

Adam sighed. They were all monumentally unhelpful. 

“Why the interest, Adam?” Blue asked, a knowing glint in her eye.

“I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “I’m just…okay, with Ronan, do I just treat it like any other day? Do I get him a card? Will he think it’s stupid? Do I think it’s stupid?”

There was a short silence as the three of them blinked back at him, and then Blue carefully said, “Do you think it’s stupid?” 

Adam wasn’t sure how to answer that. The truth was that he sort of did think it was stupid, but he also thought he wanted to acknowledge it anyway. He thought doing nothing at all kind of made him look like an asshole.

In the end, it all circled back to Ronan, and whether he would care. Did he have anything planned? Was he having an internal crisis over it as well?

In lieu of an answer, Adam shrugged again.

“Speak of the devil,” Henry said, and nodded towards the entrance.

Ronan, dressed all in black (of course), had just stepped inside. He scanned the restaurant without turning his head but when he spotted Adam, his shoulders relaxed, and he smiled just a little.

Adam didn’t think he’d ever get tired of seeing that.

“Oh god, you two are the worst,” Blue scoffed as Ronan started to make his way over.

“What?” Adam said without looking at her.

“You know exactly what, Adam Parrish. You and Ronan with the googly eyes. Jesus Christ, you’re in public. Tone it down.”

“You tone it down,” Ronan said jovially, hip-checking Blue as he drew level. “What are we talking about?”

“The origins of Valentine’s Day,” Gansey said delicately.

Ronan snorted derisively. “Valentine’s Day,” he said with as much scorn as he could muster, “is capitalistic bullshit invented to sell cards and flowers and chocolate.”

“Hey man, that’s exactly what I said,” Blue said, sounding pleased, and she and Ronan fist-bumped. Adam rolled his eyes. They really were two sides of the same coin.

“You’re in my seat, Cheng,” Ronan said.

“Sit by Gansey, I was here first.”

Ronan shrugged. “Fair’s fair.” He stepped up onto the seat and over Henry and squeezed into the spot between him and Adam.

“Ronan Lynch,” Gansey hissed. “You’ll get us kicked out!”

“Calm down, Dick, no one noticed,” Ronan said. He had both arms stretched out across the back of the booth, and Adam and Henry were both leaning into him a little thanks to the lack of space.

“This is cozy,” Henry said cheerfully.

It was Blue’s turn to roll her eyes and she pulled her little notepad out of her apron pocket. “Alright, I have to actually do my job now, what do you want? Gansey, I’m assuming you want your usual half-avocado monstrosity?”

“You’re a millennial, Blue, you’re supposed to like avocados.”

Her disgusted expression was answer enough. The rest of them rattled off their food order and then Blue went off to put it through.

“Doesn’t anyone want to come and sit by me?” Gansey asked. “It’s lonely over here.”

“Oh, don’t pull that face, Gansey, you’re making me sad,” Henry said, swapping sides. He scooched right the way over to Gansey and draped an arm around his shoulder before sighing loftily. “It’s hard being this popular.”

“But someone has to do it,” Adam said drily, earning him a quicksilver smile.

“And I do it so well.”

Ronan was stopping at Adam’s for the night, but they had each come to Nino’s in their own cars so separated in the parking lot to drive over to St Agnes in a convoy.

Ronan was already peeling out of the lot by the time Adam reached his shitbox, and he was held up further by Henry calling his name. He turned and Henry jogged over, Gansey nowhere to be seen and most likely still inside saying goodbye to Blue.

“Oh, sorry,” Adam said. “You wanted my History notes, right?”

“No, that’s not — well, yeah, actually, thank you,” he said, taking them when Adam handed them over. “I actually came over here to give you some unsolicited advice.”

“About the Valentine’s Day thing?”

“That’s the one.”

Adam shrugged. “It’s not entirely unsolicited. But anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. You heard him.”

“Yeah, I heard him. Sounds like posturing to me.”

Adam tilted his head to the side. “You think?” Ronan certainly was prone to posturing.

“Sure. I mean, I have no doubt that he really does think Valentine’s Day is what he said in there, but I wouldn’t let that put you off doing something, if you wanted to.” Henry waited for a response, and when Adam didn’t offer one, he prompted, “You do want to, don’t you?”

Adam smiled wryly. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only if you know what to look for,” Henry said, but before Adam could think on that too much, he continued. “Look, I don’t know Ronan as well as you do, but even from the outside, it’s clear how he feels about you.”

Feeling himself blush, Adam immediately looked down at the ground. He did know how Ronan felt about him. It was often whispered to him in the middle of the night when it felt like they were the only two people in the world. It just took him off guard to hear it so plainly from someone else.

“Think about it, Adam. Regardless of how Ronan personally feels about what Valentine’s Day stands for, do you really think he’s going to let a day when he’s practically green-lit to be as obnoxious as possible about you just pass him by?” Henry shook his head. “Not the Ronan Lynch I know.”

Well, when it was put that way. “Did he say something to you? Do you know something?”

“Not a thing,” Henry said, and Adam believed him. “It’s just an observation and an educated guess.”

“Huh,” Adam said thoughtfully. He pulled his car keys out of his pocket and tossed them in the air, catching them again, ideas already forming in his head. If Ronan was going to be obnoxious, Adam could be obnoxious too. “Thanks, Henry. I’ll see you tomorrow. Don’t lose my notes.”

“I will try my level best.”

Adam gave himself three rules for Ronan’s Valentine’s gift:

1) It had to be heartfelt.

2) It also had to be in good humour and not take itself too seriously.

3) It had to be cheap.

He was too sensible to spend money he didn’t have on some arbitrary gift Ronan wouldn’t appreciate. Not to mention that Ronan was impossible enough to buy for as it was; firstly he was rich enough to buy himself pretty much anything he might want, and secondly he could literally manifest his dreams. It was going to make future birthdays and Christmas’s an absolute nightmare.

(But what a wonderful problem to have.)

What it all basically meant was that Adam had to go homemade, and given that he had school and work (and Ronan) to work around, he didn’t have a whole lot of time to do it.

He borrowed Gansey’s laptop during lunch-break on Monday at Aglionby and made Ronan a mix-CD of the cheesiest love songs he could think of. It featured such classics as You Make My Dreams by Hall & Oates, Heaven by Bryan Adams, True by Spandau Ballet, and many, many more. It wasn’t even remotely Ronan’s kind of music which made it funny, but as embarrassing as some of the songs might have been, they did actually somewhat echo Adam’s own feelings. He got to be a sap in the guise of it being a joke, and Ronan would get a kick out of it.

Obviously, he also added the Murder Squash Song for good measure.

Next up was a card. He could have bought one — his budget would have allowed it — but all the store ones were godawful and Adam couldn’t even imagine giving one of them to Ronan ironically.

Luckily he had an ace up his sleeve.

The first time that Ronan had stayed over at Adam’s after they were together in the very early days of their relationship, Adam had woken up to a frozen Ronan with a handful of strangely lovely flowers, the exact shade of blue as Adam’s eyes.

Adam had kept them in a cheap vase on the windowsill until they died, but unbeknownst to Ronan, he’d also taken one and pressed it to make a little print; his own private memento.

He was obviously keeping the original for himself, but he took it into the school library a couple of days before Valentine’s Day and scanned it, printing it out on some high quality photo card he’d ‘acquired’ from one of the Art rooms.

Once the ink was dry, he folded it down the middle as carefully as possible and put it inside his heaviest textbook to keep it folded and flat until he got it home.

He spent longer than probably necessary trying to decide what to write, but in the end, he went with:

Ronan,

I think maybe it was always you. I think it always will be. Happy Valentine’s Day (gross).

Love, Adam x

He didn’t have a nice envelope to put it in, so it had to go in a bigger manila one that Adam still had lying around. He slipped both the card and the CD inside, and wrote Ronan’s name in capitals on the outside.

He looked at his offering. It somehow didn’t seem enough.

Valentine’s Day was on Thursday, so on Wednesday— after school but before a shift at Boyd’s— Adam found himself in the kitchen of 300 Fox Way. He’d bought everything he needed to make chocolate brownies before he’d realised he didn’t have a tin in which to cook them in. He was also severely lacking in several other kitchen utensils, to be honest. One panicked phone-call to Blue later, and he had everything he needed and a helping hand.

Well, ‘helping’ was a strong word.

“Why brownies?” Blue asked from where she sat perched on the kitchen table.

“Because brownies are the best,” Adam said, frowning at the recipe he had printed out.

“Alright, can’t argue with that,” Blue said reasonably.

Adam was aware of her watching him while he slowly got out everything he needed and started weighing out ingredients. He felt unreasonably nervous about it, even though he knew that provided he followed the recipe, everything would be fine. Baking was a science, after all, and Adam was good at science.

But looking at it all now with Blue scrutinising his every move, he felt flustered and unmoored.

“I thought you were going to help,” he said pointedly.

“I am helping. I’m supervising,” Blue said.

Adam smiled at that. “I see. Are you the kind of supervisor who can grease this tin for me?”

“I suppose so,” Blue said loftily as she launched herself off the table.

Blue started chattering away after that which helped Adam calm down and focus on what he was doing, and it didn’t take long to make the mixture after that. Adam tilted the pan while Blue used a wooden spoon to scrape the mixture out and into the brownie tin.

After that, they just had to put it in the oven and wait.

Blue brewed up some of Maura’s least offensive tea as they sat and waited, and Adam finally asked what he’d been dying to all week.

“Do you know if Ronan has anything planned?”

Blue smiled and shook her head. “Honestly, Adam, I have absolutely no idea. He hasn’t said a word. I’ve barely seen him though, and never really without you there.” She shrugged. “If he’s got a plan he’s keeping it close to his chest.”

Adam nodded; he’d assumed as much. “I just want to know if I’m doing too much, or not doing enough? I dunno, it’s stupid. It’s only Valentine’s Day.”

“Yeah, but it’s your first Valentine’s Day together,” Blue said, not unkindly. “I get it.”

“What are you and Gansey doing?” 

“I made him a card and found him a couple of ‘slovenly’ t-shirts at the thrift store. I’m gonna hazard a guess that he’s getting me flowers, and he told me to keep the evening free so he’s probably taking me somewhere. Wherever it is, it better not be expensive.”

Adam grinned. “Maybe it’s Nino’s.”

“God, don’t even joke, I’d murder him. Again.”

He started to laugh, and after a couple of seconds Blue joined in. When it died down, Blue put her hand on his arm.

“Don’t overthink it, Adam. Ronan will love whatever you give him, because you’re the one it’s coming from. It’s not about the gifts you get or the meal you have or how much money you spend. I think it’s more about the gesture. That’s what’ll mean the most to Ronan.”

Adam managed a small smile. “I hope you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right.” Blue opened a drawer and gasped, then pulled out a heart-shaped cookie cutter. “Oh my God, Adam, you have to.”

She held out the cookie-cutter towards him and he took it, sighing. “Really?”

“Yes! This way, they’ll all be exactly the same size and I get to eat all the cut-offs. Y’know, as my fee for helping.”

And that’s how Adam ended up with nine perfect little heart-shaped brownies.

Adam didn’t see Ronan that night, thanks to finishing late at Boyd’s and then having homework after. 

When he woke up in the morning, he was hit by the realisation that he and Ronan hadn’t even arranged to see each other that day at all.

He half expected Ronan to show up at St Agnes unannounced with a bouquet of dream flowers and some donuts or something. But that didn’t happen, and Adam slowly packed his messenger bag for school, remembering to include the Tupperware of Valentine’s brownies and the envelope with its enclosed card and CD.

He wasn’t sure when he’d be able to give them to Ronan, but it was better to be prepared.

Adam walked down to his car, scanning the parking lot and the street to see if there was any sign of a shark-nosed BMW. But there was nothing, and there was nothing on the way to school, and Adam made it all the way through to lunch without seeing or hearing from Ronan.

Obviously, he had no phone, and Ronan hated his own phone. But Gansey had a phone, and Ronan could have got in touch that way if he had felt so inclined.

Adam didn’t know what he’d been expecting; that Ronan would show up at the Aglionby gates with a boombox over his head blasting out Lionel Richie songs? That he’d get back to his car after school and find out his favourite hooligan had broken in and left him a giant teddy bear and a box of chocolates?

It all seemed stupid now, and Valentine’s Day was stupid, and Adam was irritated that he’d let the pressures of the day get to him. It didn’t matter. It was a meaningless day.

So why did he feel so deflated?

At the end of the day, he caved and asked to borrow Gansey’s phone.

First, he sent a text that said: it’s adam, i’m about to call you so answer the phone

He gave it a minute until he’d seen that Ronan had read the message, and then pressed the call button.

“Parrish,” Ronan said in lieu of a hello.

All at once, like always, Adam was happy to hear Ronan’s voice. And yet he still couldn’t quite shake his irritation, even though the one who’d got his hopes up was himself.

“Hey,” he replied. “Listen, were you planning on coming over tonight?”

“Nope.” It was a little difficult to tell, but Adam thought Ronan’s tone was just a little off. “You come here.”

Adam sighed. “Ronan, I have school tomorrow so I wouldn’t even be able to stay that late. Can’t you just come here?”

There was a long pause. “Opal wants to see you.”

“So bring her with you.”

“Are you kidding, Parrish, she’s filthy. She’ll mess up the interior.”

The BMW wasn’t exactly spotless inside so this seemed a flimsy excuse. Adam started to wonder whether Ronan even wanted to see him at all.

“If you don’t want to see me today that’s fine,” he said, tone clipped.

“I didn’t say that,” Ronan said, tone just as clipped.

It felt like they were heading for a fight. Adam didn’t want to fight. He wanted to give Ronan the stupid sentimental CD he’d made. He wanted Ronan to make fun of him for the brownies. He wanted a hug.

Adam was abruptly exhausted, and it didn’t matter that he’d gone to the effort and Ronan hadn’t. He just wanted to see him.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m gonna go home and shower but then I’ll head over to you.”

“Okay, good. See you in a bit,” Ronan said, and hung up.

The sun was down by the time Adam pulled up at the Barns. The heating in Adam’s car was dodgy enough on a good today, and today wasn’t a good day. It had barely come on, so his hands were like ice as he got out of the car.

He walked straight in when he got there and made his way to the kitchen. He hovered in the doorway; Ronan’s back was to him, a tea towel strewn over one shoulder, straining pasta over the sink.

Adam rapped his knuckles against the door-frame and Ronan turned around.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” Adam replied. “You cooked?”

Ronan shrugged. “It’s just spaghetti.” He gestured to Adam’s messenger bag. “You brought homework with you?”

All that was in the bag was the Valentine’s gifts for Ronan, and he shook his head. “Nope.”

“Okay,” Ronan said with another shrug. “Sit. Let’s eat, I’m starving.”

Adam pulled himself a chair out, and it scraped against the floor noisily in the otherwise quiet. He waited for Ronan to finish serving up and then asked, “Where’s Opal?”

“No idea. Haven’t seen her since this afternoon.”

Adam took a bite of his food. It was good. “I thought you said she wanted to see me.”

“She always wants to see you,” Ronan said smoothly. “I’m sure she’ll turn up when she spots your car.”

They finished eating in near silence, Adam waiting for Ronan to say something— anything— to acknowledge the day. But he didn’t, and the longer the silence dragged, the harder it seemed to break it.

Adam started towards the sink to do the washing up afterwards, but Ronan stopped him with a hand on his arm.

“Just leave it, Parrish.”

“But—”

“Leave them. I’ll do them in the morning.” 

Adam sighed, uncomfortable in the tension. He didn’t know what to do now. Did Ronan just want him to leave? And if so, why had he told him to come in the first place?

“Look, do you know what day it is?” Adam asked, unable to take it any longer.

“It’s Thursday,” Ronan said, chin jutted out, arms crossed. Adam glared; Ronan clearly knew exactly what day it was.

“Okay, great,” Adam said tiredly. He opened his bag and pulled out the Tupperware and the envelope. “Happy Valentine’s Day, I guess.”

He put them on the table and stepped away, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. He watched Ronan’s face, the expression on which had softened immediately. He looked to Adam, stricken.

“Parrish, I—”

“It’s fine, Ronan, just open them.”

Ronan snapped his mouth shut, and pulled the envelope over to him. Adam immediately felt self-conscious about his meagre homemade gifts.

“It’s not much,” he said quickly.

Ronan’s only response to this was a slight furrow in his brow. Then he took the CD out, quirking a smile at Adam’s inscription: LYNCH’S CHEESY LOVE SONG SINGALONG. It was surrounded by lots of hand drawn love-hearts that Adam now thought seemed excessive.

Ronan looked up and raised an eyebrow at Adam, a half-smirk on his face. “No track-list, Parrish?”

“It’s a surprise,” Adam said, smiling weakly, but relieved. “You’ll have to play it to find out.”

“I’ll do that,” he said with a sage nod. He put the CD down and reached for the Tupperware, pulling the lid off and tossing it aside. He looked inside and snorted. “You’ve really stuck with a theme here, huh, Parrish?”

“Hey, Valentine’s Day is all about the hearts, apparently. And to be fair, the heart-shaped brownies are Blue’s fault. She found a cookie-cutter and insisted.”

“She knew about this?” Ronan said.

“Yeah, she helped me make them.”

“That little sneak...” Ronan trailed off and let out a sharp laugh. “I asked her if she knew whether or not you were doing something, and she swore blind she had no idea.”

Adam thought about asking why Ronan had even wanted to know, but instead he pointed at the envelope. “There’s a card in there, as well.”

“In here?” Ronan turned the envelope upside down and the card slipped out into his hand. Adam watched as he took in the flower on the front, smiled a little, then did a double-take, glancing at Adam. “Hold on. Is this what I think it is?”

Adam rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. I, uh, I pressed one, before they all died. I wanted to keep it, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Ronan said, something akin to awe in his voice. “I dream about them all the time.” He opened the card and read what Adam had written there, then dropped his face into his hands. 

“Parrish...” he mumbled. “I feel like a fucking asshole.”

Adam went over and gently pulled the card out of Ronan’s hand, sitting down on Ronan’s lap. Ronan’s arms circled his waist automatically and he tucked his face into Adam’s neck.

“You are a fucking asshole, Lynch. I love you anyway.”

Ronan grumbled something incoherently against Adam’s skin, and Adam smiled. “What was that?”

Ronan lifted his head so he could be heard. “I said I love you right back.”

“Good,” Adam said.

“I thought you’d forgotten. And I didn’t...I didn’t want a big deal, and this day is a fucking joke or whatever, but you didn’t mention anything. And I even thought you might borrow Gansey’s phone and like, text me or something this morning? But then you didn’t and when you finally called me you sounded annoyed and I didn’t know why, and I didn’t even think you wanted to come over. So then you finally got here and you seemed mad, and so I was mad and...I’m sorry. I was here thinking you didn’t give a shit and you made stuff for me?” He hung his head, penitent. “I love my gifts. These lame brownies smell great. I’m fucking sorry, Parrish.”

“Hey.” Adam cupped Ronan’s head in his hands. “It’s fine that you didn’t get me anything. Honestly I think I just let this whole day get into my head as having to mean something when it doesn’t. I don’t need a special day to let you know how I feel. And I’m sorry if I seemed mad. I just didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t mean to make it weird.”

He leaned in and kissed Ronan briefly. “And Lynch, you cooked for me. You made me a whole meal. I’m pretty sure we’re even.” He kissed him again, until Ronan pulled back and covered Adam’s hands with his own.

“Um...you should come with me,” Ronan said, and he almost sounded sheepish.

They stood up and Ronan swiped the mix CD off the table and shoved it in the pocket of his hoodie, before taking Adam’s hand and leading him out the back door.

Confused but intrigued, Adam followed closely behind, clutching tight to Ronan’s fingers. It was cold outside and neither of them had their coats on, which Adam was about to point out when they walked around the corner of the nearest barn and he was rendered speechless by the sight before him.

In the middle of the grass was a small gazebo tent, the base of which was covered in luxurious looking blankets. There was a laptop in the middle of the floor, hooked up to a projector which was pointing at the outer-wall of the barn. A precarious tower of DVDs was piled up next to the laptop; Adam couldn’t see the titles from here but imagined Ronan had assembled a variety of choices. There was a big thermos, contents unknown (coffee? Hot chocolate?), and various other treats; big bags of marshmallows and Hershey’s Kisses and Reese’s Mini Peanut-Butter Cups.

And everywhere, there was light. Ronan’s twinkling little dream lights, some in jars under the gazebo, others hanging in the air, changing colour, like little fireflies.

“Ronan,” Adam finally managed hoarsely. “What the fuck?”

Ronan smirked. “You thought I hadn’t done anything.”

“Uh, yeah, because you let me think that!” Adam said. He was struggling to process how cosy and romantic it all looked. Let it never be said that Ronan Lynch wasn’t an absolute sap.

“I didn’t let you think anything, you jumped to that conclusion all on your own.”

Adam scowled. “Now I feel like a fucking asshole.”

“Don’t,” Ronan said, pressing a kiss to Adam’s temple. “Anyway, this is nothing.”

“It is so far from nothing,” Adam said. He stepped forward and took a turn around, taking everything in as he walked in a slow circle, stopping when he was facing Ronan again. “I thought Valentine’s Day was capitalistic bullshit?”

“Oh, it is,” Ronan said happily. “But for one, I didn’t spend a penny. And two, a whole day where I can spoil you as much as I want to and you don’t get to complain about it? Sign me the fuck up for that.”

Adam burst out laughing. “You’ve just reminded me of something Henry said.”

“What did he say?”

“I told him that I wasn’t sure whether or not you’d do anything because we hadn’t talked about it, and he said, and I quote: ‘do you really think he’s going to let a day when he’s practically green-lit to be as obnoxious as possible about you just pass him by?’”

Ronan was grinning now. “Cheng’s pretty smart.” 

“Yeah,” Adam said. He caught one of the floating lights in his hand and then let it go again. “Just for the record, I think your dreaming abilities give you an unfair advantage when it comes to stuff like this.”

“Excuse you, Parrish, the only thing I dreamt up was the blankets because they’re heated. Oh, and the projector. And the gazebo. But that’s it.”

“‘That’s it’, he says.” Adam rolled his eyes, then accusingly added, “You dreamt up the lights.”

“Well, yeah, but not for this. I already had those. And the food was stuff I already had in the house, and the DVDs are ones I already own. I didn’t want to go overboard.”

Adam stared. “You are ridiculous,” he said, shaking his head. “Come here.”

Ronan went, without question or hesitation, and Adam wrapped his arms around his neck.

“This is the sweetest thing anybody’s ever done for me,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

“Thank you,” Ronan whispered, kissing a line up Adam’s neck and across his face, the tip of his nose, his forehead, “for the brownies, for what you wrote in the card...Jesus, Adam. It’s the same for me. You know that, right? It’s always you.”  

Adam squeezed tighter, feeling dangerously overcome. He breathed in the familiar, comforting smell of Ronan, and then released his grip. “And for the CD, obviously,” he said.

“Of course,” Ronan said, and smiled sharply. “Speaking of...” He pulled it out of his pocket and walked over to his laptop. “I’ll let you pick a movie in a bit, but first, I wanna listen to my present.”

He popped the CD into the drive and pressed a couple of buttons on the mouse, and a moment later the opening track started to play: I Wanna Dance With Somebody by Whitney Houston.

Ronan laughed, once, soundlessly, then came back over to Adam and held his hand out. 

“Well?” he said when Adam didn’t move. “Are you dancing?”

Adam grinned. “Are you asking?”

“I’m asking.”

“Then I’m dancing.” He took Ronan’s hand and together they swayed, far too slowly for a song this upbeat, but Ronan didn’t seem to mind, and Adam certainly didn’t.

They didn’t speak while they were dancing, both perhaps a little shaken at the near-miss of an argument, both relieved they hadn’t let it get that far. Both content to be in each other’s company, away from prying eyes and expectations.

It was still early days. They were still learning how to do this, navigating firsts and futures and each other, but they were both quick studies, and Adam couldn’t think of anything more worthwhile than building a foundation— and a life— with Ronan.

There were trickier days to come, but for now, they’d survived their first Valentine’s Day as a couple. As they lay curled together in a blanket watching The Princess Bride projected onto the side of a barn, Adam thought he’d have to mark this one down as a win.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Parrish,” Ronan whispered into Adam’s hair.

“Ugh,” Adam said, and kissed him. “Happy Thursday.”

#the raven cycle #pynch #tumblr prompts #lesbianparrish #adamparrishes #trc

[ouijaban]

a super super late vday exchange fic for ulquihime vday exchange!!! here you go @uenieri​, i sincerely hope you like it!!!

The silence was deafening as Orihime stared out the window, pale hands curled around the bars obscuring her view of Hueco Mundo’s starless sky. She couldn’t tell whether it was morning or night –– she’d lost much of her sense of time over the past several months, and it hardly mattered anyways. Thus far, she’d only been permitted to leave her cell to meet with Aizen and take care of her basic hygiene needs.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she wished, inexplicably, that she could still follow the passage of time. As it were, the days bled into one another, dripping into endless nightfall that bit by bit wore away at the resolve deep in her heart. Orihime knew she had to stay strong –– for Kurosaki-kun, and everyone else waiting at home –– but looking into the depths of that empty desert, despair rocketed through her veins.

A knock sounded at the door. Orihime didn’t turn to look, but she knew who had come by the twist of the doorknob, by the tapping of his shoes against the floor.

“Ulquiorra-kun,” she said, fingers tightening against the cool metal. “Hello.”

He didn’t say anything, and Orihime suddenly feared that she had guessed incorrectly, that whoever was lurking behind her was not the familiar figure of her jailer. She looked over her shoulder, cautious, and strange relief pooled in her fingertips when she saw him standing there, hands shoved in his pockets.

“Woman,” he said tonelessly, dipping his head in acknowledgement. “Aizen-sama has ordered that I take you for a turn down the halls. He worries after your health and how it could potentially affect your capabilities.”

“That’s very kind of him,” said Orihime, a hint of sarcasm creeping into her voice as she turned back to the window. While she knew blatantly disrespecting Aizen in front of his loyal servant would inevitably invite punishment, she couldn’t help but wonder whether Ulquiorra actually cared enough to respond to her petty provocations.

“Yes,” said Ulquiorra, stepping forward to lay a hand on her shoulder. It wasn’t harsh, but his grip was firm, and the frigidity of his skin soaked through the fabric of her uniform.

Orihime shivered, and leaned back into the touch. She hadn’t felt such direct contact in what felt like an eternity, and the feel of his hand on her body was so comforting she pushed away all thoughts of betrayal festering in her mind.

Ulquiorra’s hold tightened slightly, squeezing, before he released her shoulder. “Aizen-sama’s orders were immediate,” he said as he strode towards the door. “I suggest you follow, or I will have to use force to ensure your cooperation.”

Orihime took a shuddering breath, head hanging, and let her hands fall to her sides. After a second’s pause, she took off after him, barely slipping through the heavy doors. They slammed shut behind them, the sound of the lock clicking shut reverberating in the still hallway.

Ulquiorra was a few paces ahead of her, and though Orihime knew he must have heard her, he didn’t stop to wait.

“Hold on, Ulquiorra-kun!” she cried as he turned a corner, heading off into parts of Las Noches she had never seen before. “I––I don’t know where to go!”

Scurrying forwards into the dark, she yelped when she bumped into something solid. She reached out to determine what she’d stumbled upon, and an embarrassed flush settled on her cheeks when she grasped cold hands with her own. Ulquiorra had obviously stopped to wait, and Orihime, like a moron, had run right into him.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, jerking her hands back. “I didn’t––I had no idea that you…”

Ulquiorra grabbed her wrist, and pulled her closer. “I believe there has been a malfunction,” he said green eyes bright even in the unlit corridor. “The lights should be on at this hour.”

“And, um… what hour would that be, exactly?” asked Orihime, heart racing at her proximity to Ulquiorra’s chest. They were so close now that if she took a single step towards him, she would be essentially wrapped in his arms.

Ulquiorra shot her a look, and Orihime thought she could see a flick of curiosity in his expression. “Five in the evening,” he said. “Do you not have a means of determining what time it is, woman?”

Orihime shook her head, embarrassed. “No,” she admitted, staring down at her long nails. “I have no clock in my room and outside it’s always nighttime, so… I’ve never had to.”

“I will ask Aizen-sama to put one in place, then,” said Ulquiorra with finality, relinquishing his hold on her wrist and sliding his hands back into his pockets. “Now come. I do not want to waste more of my time on this than is required.”

Orihime’s cheeks burned. Here she was, imposing her own desires and problems on Ulquiorra, who probably wanted nothing more than to see her dead and gone. There was something so upsetting about her helpless selfishness – she had to reach out and ask because Aizen didn’t give her anything, hardly let her do anything more than sit in her dingy cell and languish away until her friends swept in to rescue her. “Sorry, Ulquiorra-kun,” she said, wrapping her arms around her middle. “I’ll stop now.”

Ulquiorra, ignoring her apology, said, “Grab onto my sleeve, woman. Aizen-sama would be displeased were anything to happen to you, and prior experience shows that your coordination is lacking.”

Cheeks darkening even further, Orihime reached out to hold onto the fabric at his elbow. It was cold, but being near him wasn’t unpleasant –– it was comforting and exciting to be so close to someone again, even if that person was her captor.

They walked, Ulquiorra in front and Orihime trailing behind, until they happened upon an illuminated section of the castle. She could hear the faint rustlings of life (or, she wondered as they progressed, would it really be life if everyone was technically dead?) emanating from below, and dread crept through her. If there were really so many people there – if there were enemies lurking around every corner – how would Ichigo and everyone fare? Could they really single handedly defeat the force of Las Noches? “You seem discontent, woman,” said Ulquiorra, breaking the tense silence that had fallen between them. “Is our fortress displeasing? Would you like to voice your complaints to Aizen-sama?”

Orihime bit her lip, and dipped her head in opposition. “No, Ulquiorra-kun,” she began softly, running her fingers over the seam of the fabric at his elbow. “It’s just... All this fighting, the war always going on here. Doesn’t it bother you?”

Ulquiorra seemed to consider this for a few seconds, eyes drifting to the high, arched ceilings of Las Noches. “No,” he finally answered, taking a sharp turn around a corner to progress down the path Aizen had prescribed. “The other Espada and I were created with one sole aim: to defend Las Noches and follow the orders of its leader. I feel no longing for a different world as you do; this is the world I was intended to live in, and it is likely the world I will die in, too.”

Letting her eyes slide shut, Orihime squeezed the fabric of his uniform, pulling it taut towards her. “Would you change it, though?” she asked, splotches of color dancing in her field of vision as she closed her eyes tighter and tighter. “If you had the opportunity, I mean. Would you want to be… freed from that responsibility?”

There was a moment of silence, then: “Perhaps. But we have little time for hypotheticals, woman. Aizen-sama awaits our arrival.”

+

The walk to the jail cell was cold. Orihime shivered against the thin material of her school uniform, goosebumps spreading like wildfire down her exposed arms. She hadn’t anticipated that she would have to go so far. Mayuri’s directions had been vague at best and deliberately misleading at worst. Turn the right, he’d said with a wide, uncontained grin, and he’ll be straight ahead.

Straight ahead, as it turned out, had not even begun to cover the distance she’d travelled. It had been at least a mile since the last jail cell she’d passed, and three miles before then was the door to the isolated, high security containment centers hidden in the heart of Seireitei.

After a few more minutes of walking, the door Mayuri had described – red, plastered with signs warning visitors to stay away – came into view. Heart stuttering in her chest, Orihime took off running in its direction, ignoring the unpleasant squelch of her shoes against the damp floor.

Fingers closing around the doorknob, Orihime twisted open the imposing door and stepped into the room, greeted immediately by the sight of thick, grey bars. Beyond them, she thought she could see a figure in the darkness out of the corner of her eye. And that was all the hope she needed.

“Ulquiorra-kun?” called out Orihime into the mist, cupping her hands around her mouth to project her voice. “Are you here?”

There was a rustling and then, out of depths of the murky cell and into the light stepped Ulquiorra. He wasn’t wearing his uniform, not anymore. Clad in simple white robes tied with a belt around his slender waist, he looked like any other denizen of Soul Society. Or perhaps he could have, had he not been imprisoned.

“Woman,” he said, voice tinged with uncharacteristic surprise. “So you have come, after all.”

“Yes,” replied Orihime, stepping forwards to wrap her fingers around the cool metal bars. “Sorry it took so long. I meant to come earlier, but there were so many complications and rules surrounding the whole process that it took me weeks to get permission, let alone to actually make the journey. Please forgive me for the wait.”

“I had thought you would visit initially,” he said in lieu of response. “I was informed by many of your compatriots that it was you who brought me back to life, though I had assumed that your power was used without having been told.”

“I did,” admitted Orihime, lips curling into a disappointed frown. “It took me… some time, to come back. Kurosaki-kun was involved in fights and Kuchiki-san and the rest of them were too, so I couldn’t help you right away.”

Ulquiorra’s expression didn’t budge, and somehow Orihime felt that he understood that there had been more than scheduling problems behind the wait between his death and reconstruction. “No matter,” he said evenly. “I suspect your shinigami was not pleased by your decision, especially after the allegations of betrayal that Aizen-sama spread before your disappearance.”

The only sound permeating their bubble was dripping water, landing on the cement with a satisfying plink. They were so quiet Orihime thought that her companion might have heard her heart beating in her chest, racing as she considered what to say next.

“It doesn’t matter what Kurosaki-kun thought,” said Orihime, after a second’s pause. Her firsts were curled into tight balls at her sides, and she saw Ulquiorra’s eyes flicking to them right before she started to speak again. “I… I can make decisions for myself. I chose to heal you because it was my power and my responsibility, Ulquiorra-kun. No one –– not even my closest friends –– can take that away from me.”

“You’ve grown,” remarked Ulquiorra, coming closer to the line of bars between them. He didn’t reach out to touch as Orihime had done, but there was something exploratory in his eyes, something that indicated that he wanted to. “The woman I knew would not have made such a brazen statement. Why is it, exactly, that you’ve changed so much? Have you and the shinigami consummated your relationship?”

Though she was flushing to the tips of her ears, Orihime stayed firm. “It’s Inoue Orihime, not ‘woman,’” she corrected, anxiety pulling at her fingertips. “And… no. There is no relationship between Kurosaki-kun and I. Not like that.”

Stepping forwards again, hands curled around the bars so that his white knuckles faced Orihime, Ulquiorra said, “No? But I thought he was your first love, woman. Humans do tend to place emphasis on firsts.”

“He might have been my first love,” said Orihime, brushing the tip of her warm nose against his hand. “But, Ulquiorra-kun? He most certainly won’t be my last.”

#Ulquiorra Schiffer #Ulquihime #Orihime Inoue #bleach #fanfic #ulquihimevdayexchange #my fic

[lilacflamesss]

Shattered (Chapter 11)

Smutty Ayahina College AU

Summary: Hinami tries to deal with her sorrows through seeking Ayato out. Ayato can never turn away the girl he loves far more than he should. Two people with unrequited feelings, dealing with them in very different ways. Human AU. (13.4k words)

Warning: This fic contains unhealthy coping mechanisms, heavy sexual content, and plenty of problematic/ dubious things which I absolutely do not condone at all. This is a work of fiction that takes on a more mature, physical take on Ayahina’s relationship as opposed to the typical conventional one. Please feel free not to read this fic if it’s not your cup of tea! Additional trigger warning for stillbirth since this is an add-on to the previous chapters and infidelity.

A/N: I’m really sleepy so I’m not going to say much. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter! Please do reblog this and feel free to leave some comments!

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 3.5 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 4.5 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Vday Side Chapter | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 (Final)

Preview

Ayato doesn’t deserve a sheep like her. The accident must be the Gods’ reminder to her. Never again should she have the cheek to think that they’re meant to be. Never again should she try to fool him with her half-assed feelings.

She lies in bed, curling up to herself and for the first time since the start of the day, she cries. Her eyes have teared up a lot in the past few hours, but right now, she’s a mess of tears and screams. She buries her face in her pillow and shouts. She yells out her frustrations, her hatred, her anger, her despair and her fear. Everything comes out— curses, apologies, pleas, prayers. She wants all this to end right now. She’s so exhausted. She never thought things would get this bad and she still doesn’t know how bad Ayato’s condition is. For all she knows, he might not even be around tomorrow. He might not even be alive now; maybe Kaneki called to say that he died. The thought makes her scream even more. Her chest hurts. It feels like there is an invisible claw grabbing her, digging its long fingernails right into her heart.

She hopes he’s okay. She wants nothing more than him being well and alive right now. She doesn’t even want to think about him gone, but she knows that no matter what, he is gone to her. She shouldn’t go back to him anymore— or even to Kaneki and Touka since they might just lead her back to him. She needs to go back to the time before she and Ayato became friends, back to her first two years of high school, when even though she saw him in class every day, she never talked to him and he never really meant anything to her except for being that random soccer guy who everyone is really into for some reason.

She hears a knock on the door but pays no mind to it. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. She knows that some people might genuinely worry about her. Everyone knows that she and Ayato are close. Her friends must be worried about her. But she really doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with anyone right now.

There’s a part of her that’s also worried. These people might be carrying bad news. Maybe they’re trying to tell her about something. Maybe they’re here to call her to his deathbed— he might go anytime, so you don’t want to miss this, do you Hinami? But she doesn’t want to know about such news. Maybe oblivion is better. Even if he’s dying right now, she can pretend he’s still healthy and well— it doesn’t hurt as much.

Before she fell asleep, it felt like she was going to end up spending the whole of that night waiting-- first, it was Kaneki and now, it is Ayato. Touka’s not even sure if Ayato is planning on returning or if he is going back to his own apartment. Since it’s raining, she assumes it would be the latter but lately, it’s hard to predict what Ayato is thinking. She doesn’t want him to be trapped outside in the heavy rain if he happens to come back so she had decided to keep waiting in the living room. Yet, even after hours, he still isn’t back yet.

Her eyelids are drooping even as she tries to focus on whatever there is on the television. She doesn’t even know what she’s watching. One moment, it’s a movie and in the next, she realises it’s a nature documentary. She dozes off occasionally but finds herself jumping awake whenever she hears anything loud and sudden. Eventually, she starts wondering if she should just give up. She turns off the television and picks up her phone. She had already dropped Ayato a few messages but it seems like he hasn’t read any of them yet. A part of her wonders if he and Hinami are together right now and if they might be doing something yet again.

Touka sighs, slumping down on the couch. She wants to believe that they’re okay but she knows that they are far from that. Ayato might pretend everything is okay when he’s with her but she knows her brother better than he thinks she does. She’s sure that he spends most of his free time moping in his room rather than do anything productive. She doesn’t blame him; it’s not easy getting over someone you really love, especially if it’s been for a really long time. She’s not sure how Hinami’s taking all this either. She had looked pretty bothered when Touka had asked him to go along with her just now. She didn’t want to make Hinami needlessly awkward but she’s heard the stories from Kaneki about people who walk alone out in the streets at such late hours of the night. It is better to be safe than sorry.

It bothers Touka because she can no longer tell Hinami’s feelings. Initially, she had felt nothing from the girl. It had looked like Ayato was merely a toy to her. But her perception of Hinami has slowly begun to change. It changed when she had her honest conversation with Hinami at the swings. She questioned back then if Hinami really felt nothing for Ayato-- she gets far too worked up over him for someone who has no feelings for him. It’s the same thing right now-- if she really doesn’t have feelings for Ayato, why all this awkwardness? Why does she look at him as if she has something buried deep down inside of her?

The phone rings and Touka groans, getting up and walking towards it. It’s 4 am by now and she doesn’t know who’d be calling at such an hour. Ayato would normally call her on her handphone instead.

She picks the phone up. “Hello?”

“Hello, is this the home of Kirishima Ayato?” The voice on the other end sounds deep and stern.

“Yes, he’s my brother, but he’s out now,” she replies.

“Yes, Ma’am. We called to inform you of something. Your brother’s been in an accident.”

There’s a moment of silence after those words are said. Touka freezes. Those words made no sense to her.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Your brother, Ma’am,” the person on the other ends says. “He’s been in a car accident and was brought here to Kanou General Hospital.”

“My brother has been in an accident?” she repeats. Her mind tries to keep it together, to keep herself in the moment, but she can’t. She feels herself moving away, going back to that day. Ayato in the middle of the road. A truck. Tyres screeching. A horn. A loud bang. Him bleeding on the floor. She chokes, almost doubling over.

The woman on the other end of the phone continues to speak and it takes almost all of Touka’s willpower to listen and focus on what’s she saying-- he’s fine, he’s not dead, just some bruises, he’s there now. Touka can’t wait. She knows she’s can’t. They might say he’s okay but she isn’t going to be able to rest until she actually sees him. The moment the woman gives her the ward number, she slams the phone down and grabs her car keys.

She should wake Kaneki up and tell him what happened. But she’s too worried. Her heart is beating too fast. The longer she wastes, the crazier she’s going to get. Kaneki can stay at home with Ichika. They’ll be fine. It’s Ayato she’s worried about now. It’s Ayato that’s not okay. As she drives to the hospital, she tries to stay calm, knowing that panicking will only make things worse. She needs to at least make sure that she ends up safely in the hospital as well. But her mind is in shambles and it feels like she’s thinking about a thousand and one things at once. What happened? What did Ayato do? Is he really okay? Why was he out there? Was he alone? What about Hinami? What happened to her? The woman hadn’t mentioned a single thing about Hinami.

She reaches the hospital but doesn’t bother to park her car right. Even though she’s wearing simply her home clothes, she doesn’t look out of place in there at all. Everyone’s frantic or worrying about something and the atmosphere doesn’t help to calm her nerves at all. She remembers the room number the woman had told her over the phone. The moment she finds the directions to it, Touka rushes towards it.

Please be okay. Please be okay.

She might have Kaneki and Ichika now. Ayato isn’t her only family anymore, not like the last time he’d been in a hospital for an accident. But even then, she can’t lose him. She can’t lose anyone anymore. He’s still her younger brother and she can’t imagine the pain of losing him— she doesn’t want to.

When she arrives at the room, she sees a doctor standing by the door, talking to a couple of nurses. It takes a moment but she recognises the doctor immediately-- Nishino Kimi, the girlfriend of one of her close friends.

Kimi looks over and her eyes widen a little. “I thought Kirishima sounded familiar. Is he your brother?” she asks.

“Yes,” Touka says, gasping for breath as she speaks. “How is he? How is Ayato?”

Kimi smiles. “He’s okay. He hit his head quite badly and got a concussion from that. Other than that, there’s a couple of bruises here and there. He has a cut on his arm. He did mention his leg is hurting but there’s nothing wrong with it when I checked it. I might have to run some more tests.”

“His leg?” Touka murmurs. She tries to peek into the room but there’s nothing much she can see from aside except for the edge of the bed. Even if Kimi tells her he’s okay, it feels like she can’t rest unless she sees him for herself.

“His left leg,” Kimi says. “It says in his records that he once injured it very badly. I figured we’d keep an eye on him for a bit so I’ll have him here for a few days.”

“Oh, okay, yeah sure. Can I see him now?”

Kimi nods towards the room. “Go ahead. He’s in there.”

“Okay, thank you so much,” Touka says and before she gets any sort of reply from her, she’s pushing past her and entering the room.

Ayato’s lying on the bed with his back turned towards her. Kimi closes the door behind her, leaving the two siblings alone in the small room. She knows Ayato well enough to know that he’s not asleep right now and that he’s very much awake but he doesn’t acknowledge her presence in the room at all, not even when she walks up to him and runs her hand through his hair.

“Ayato,” she says softly.

“I’m fine. Leave me alone,” he grumbles. He pulls the blanket up to his face and curls his body up even more.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know,” he says quickly.

“You were supposed to be with Hinami, weren’t you? Where is she?”

“She’s okay. This happened when I was on my way home,” he replies and before Touka can say anything, he continues, “I want to sleep now, Sis. Good night.”

“Sure, go to sleep,” Touka murmurs. She’s desperate to know what exactly happened and to rip the blanket off him so she knows exactly how badly he’s hurt. But Ayato does sound very tired and given what had happened in the past, she hadn’t expected anything else. She walks to the other side of the bed so that he’s facing her right now and pulls a chair up to sit by his bedside. Ayato has his eyes closed but she’s still sure he’s awake. With his head buried in the pillow and the blanket pulled up to his face, she can’t see much aside from the small bandage on his forehead under his bangs. She remains silent but reaches for him, taking one of his hands in hers and holding it tightly. A couple of heartbeats pass before she feels his grip tightening as well and even though she can’t see it clearly, she can tell he’s relaxing a little.

She leans forward, resting her head on his bed as well. “I’m here Ayato. Big Sister is here.”

When she wakes up, it’s already bright outside. It must be midday by now, or close to it at least. Hinami opens her eyes, squinting at the sunlight streaming in from the window, before turning around and burying her face into the pillow. She’s so tired. She feels like going back to sleep again.

It takes a moment for her to remember where she is right now and how she had ended up there. She’s in Ayato’s apartment, in his bedroom, on his bed. That’s nothing new to her, but being in that place alone? That is new. She doesn’t ever recall being alone in this place for longer than ten minutes. The only other time when he had left without her, she had run after him.

She’s alone but she doesn’t feel lonely. His blankets and pillows smell just like him. Being wrapped up on his bed feels like she’s being enveloped by his arms, snuggled up against him like she had been doing every night up till two months ago. Or maybe she is lonely. Substituting him with blankets and pillows sounds exactly like something a lonely person would do. He’d probably call her an idiot if he ever finds out; she has to make sure he never finds out about this.

She wonders when had it been since she had started craving for him this hard. It feels new to her, but maybe it isn’t. Maybe she had always felt this way but had never noticed since he’s always right there beside her. Or maybe it is new. Maybe it’s something that came out just yesterday when Kaneki had planted the idea into her head and her Kaneki-worshipping mind had immediately jumped to accept whatever he had said. Ayato has a point. It might not definitely be the case, but she can’t rule it out as a possibility. Whatever she said to Ayato yesterday was entirely unfair. She shouldn’t have done it; she should have kept it to herself until she’s very sure of it. He had told her to think about it and she supposes now’s a good time to do so. He’ll be coming back soon and she’ll have her answer out by then.

She turns to lie flat on her back, looking upwards at the blue ceiling. Kaneki had been so sure of it. Ayato had been so sure that she’s mistaken. She wonders what Touka thinks about it. It would be nice if she can talk to her again. Maybe Touka might be able to sort things out better. But she also knows that Touka doesn’t know her as well as Kaneki does, but Kaneki doesn’t know her as well as Ayato does. Would that make Ayato right?

She shakes her head. No. Ayato might be wrong. He has his own beliefs and he’s stubborn when it comes to them. If he had convinced himself that she doesn’t love him, even standing on top of a building and professing it to him in front of the world might not change his mind.

She can’t rely on anyone. She just needed to make her own judgement. She supposes that she’s relied on people enough at this point.

Rolling about in Ayato’s bed is nice but she supposes getting some coffee might help her think better as well. She gets out of bed and enters the kitchen, only to stop at the soft, but clear buzzing noise she hears. She looks around and spots Ayato’s phone on the kitchen counter. He must have placed it there where he was smoking last night and forgotten to take it along with him since he had left in a rush after their argument.

Hinami ignores it initially, going to make coffee for herself, but the phone continues to buzz. Ayato’s a pretty popular guy but she doesn’t recall his phone ever being this busy. She wonders if there’s an emergency that someone needs Ayato to attend to or something; maybe it’s better to check. She picks the phone up and takes a look at the screen. There’s a bunch of different messages which she chooses not to read, but there are also 20 missed calls from Rio.

Hinami stiffens at the name. She knows Ayato and Rio are close and Ayato had told her that there’s nothing between them, but the rumours mentioned by Tomoe still surface in her mind. In this one month, anything could have happened. Things could be changed; feelings could be changed. For all she knows, the reason he turned her down was that he might have moved on.

The phone starts vibrating again and Rio’s name appears on the screen. She knows she shouldn’t do it. She knows that she should be respecting Ayato’s privacy. She should leave the phone be Ayato gets back. He should be getting back soon. It’s already way past noon. But even when she knows all of that, her hands move on their own accord, picking up the call and moving the phone to her ears.

“Hey! You finally picked up! Is everything okay?” At the other end of the line, Rio speaks with an urgent, worried voice. He’s talking so quickly that Hinami can barely make out the words he’s saying, especially amidst his hard pants. “Your sister called me but I didn’t pick up till morning and I got caught up in something so it took me awhile. I’m on my way to the hospital right now. Are you okay? Everyone’s really worried. You should reply to their messages when you feel like it, okay?”

Hinami remains silent, her mind spinning from what she’s heard. None of this makes any sense. Hospital? Why is Rio going to the hospital? Why is he telling Ayato about this? What’s going on and why did it seem to make everyone worried? She knows she can simply ask Rio about everything but the words were failing her.

“Hey, are you there?” Rio asks. Hinami still chooses not to say anything. There’s silence for a long while before Rio sighs and continues speaking. “It’s fine. You don’t have to say anything. The accident must have been hard, huh? I’m almost there. We can talk more then if you want to. See you.” He hangs up right there, leaving Hinami with a bigger headache.

Accident? What accident?

She takes another look at the phone but this time, she scrolls through the notifications and reads the messages. A voice in her head is screaming at her to respect his privacy but it’s too faint now for her to give it any attention. She skims through the text she sees, picking out the important bits— Miza, Naki, their group, Rio, the soccer guys from high school, an accident, hospital, worries, visiting. It doesn’t take long for her to piece everything together from what she’s read and heard from the call.

Her knees go weak and she chokes up, dropping his phone in the process. Shit, no. She needs to hold herself together, but she can’t. She can’t believe what she’s seeing. There’s no way.

Ayato got into an accident last night— after he left; after she chased him away. Touka had called Rio and he had told everyone else. They’re all messaging Ayato asking how he is and everyone’s really worried. But he can’t reply to any of them, not when the phone isn’t with him right now.

Hinami freezes, her eyes widening at another thought. The last time this happened, he had almost died and had gone into a coma for months. Maybe it happened again. Maybe something worse happened.

She doesn’t even want to consider what happened, but she knows she needs to find out. If something happened to him on his way home from the apartment, the only person who can be blamed is her. It is her fault. If he dies right now, it is because she didn’t stop him and because she had made such a big fuss and had made things too awkward for him to stay with her. If he had stayed with her, they’d both be here right now. If he dies, she can’t think of anything else aside for the fact that it would have been just as good as her sending him to his death.

She rushes back to the room for her phone. If Touka informed Rio, she must have done the same for her— or at least Kaneki would have. She scrambles to turn it on and waits for the messages to load up. She waits and waits, staring at the screen for minutes. But no matter how much she waits, there isn’t a message at all.

It seems like they didn’t want her to know at all.

He doesn’t sleep well that night. Every time he closes his eyes, he’s jolted awake really quickly from the images that flash through his mind and the sounds that ring through his ears. It doesn’t feel like he’s slept at all. He’s so exhausted, his body hurts everywhere and his leg throbs continuously.

But he knows that he’s sleeping. One moment he opens his eyes, Touka is still there holding his hand. The next, she’s standing and she’s on the phone. After that, he doesn’t see her but he hears her talking to Kaneki behind him. The next moment, his uncle is there with Ichika as well. He must be falling asleep and waking up at intervals.

“You should eat something.”

This time, it’s Kaneki who’s there and it doesn’t seem like there’s anyone else. Kaneki is sitting on the chair Touka was sitting in the beginning. He has a book in his hands and he speaks without looking up.

Ayato sits up, ignoring the screamings of his body. Looking down at himself, he realises he’s not that badly hurt at all. He has bandages on him but he knows that beyond cuts and bruises there are no other injuries. He didn’t break anything this time. His leg is still hurting but when Ayato lifts the blanket of it, he sees that it’s not badly twisted or anything, just bandaged and a little swollen. He moves it and realises that he can move it and surprisingly, there aren’t any sharp pains that shoot through it like the last time.

“You’re fine,” Kaneki says. “Your injuries are not bad at all. You only gave everyone a huge scare, yourself included.”

Kaneki is smiling at him now, a weak but very concerned smile. Ayato looks around the room. It’s only the two of them now. He doesn’t see Touka anywhere.

“Where’s Touka?” he asked.

“Touka’s been here since the accident so I told her to get some sleep at home. She brought Ichika along. Yomo went back to the cafe,” Kaneki says.

“Oh.” He wants to say more; he knows he should say something at least— an apology or at least show some gratitude for them making the time to keep him accompany. But his mind is reeling and his voice is failing him. He doesn’t know what to say to Kaneki. He doesn’t even know what’s going on. It still feels like everything is a mess right now. Everything had happened so fast, just like it did before. One moment he’s okay and the next, he’s not. One moment he’s walking back to his apartment and the next, he’s in the hospital.  

“We told your friends already. Touka called Rio and he’d inform everyone else,” Kaneki says. “But… about Hinami…” Kaneki hesitates, looking up at him with a grimace and although Kaneki didn’t say anything he knows Kaneki is asking him about her.

“She’s at my apartment. She’s safe,” he says slowly.

“Okay, sure. Do you want us to tell her or do you want to do it yourself?” Kaneki asks.

The thought of informing Hinami hadn’t crossed his mind. Hinami had barely crossed his mind. She should still be at his apartment if she hadn’t already left. He hopes she isn’t waiting for him. He doesn’t know when he’d get back. If she is waiting, he supposes he should come up with an excuse. He doesn’t know how “I got into a car accident and couldn’t come home for a few days” would work on her.

It’s strange how distant he feels with everything that had happened. In his sleep, it had kept coming back to haunt him. Maybe he’s used up all fear he had in him in his dreams. Right now he feels empty, drained. He feels like a spectator watching everything unfold.  

“Ayato?” Kaneki calls out softly. “Do you want me to call her instead?”

“You haven’t called her yet? You told Rio about it.”

“We don’t know what happened between you and Hinami so we didn’t want to be too hasty. You were fine so Touka thought she’d leave it up to you if you want us to tell Hinami about what happened,” Kaneki explains. When Ayato doesn’t say anything, Kaneki sighs and continues talking instead, sitting forward in his seat to move closer to him. “Look, Ayato, I don’t know if I’m thinking too much into this and it’s totally fine if you don’t want to talk about it, but did something happen between you and Hinami last night? The time of the accident… I know you went to walk Hinami back home but the accident happened about two hours after you left our home. It’s too late and I really want to know why exactly you were walking in the middle of the heavy rain by yourself.”

He thinks for a moment, running himself through the events of the previous night. He feels his heart beating faster and he calms himself down by trying to avoid the incident entirely. It’s fine if he pretends it never happened right. Maybe he should imagine that he slipped and fell in the rain instead— that would help. He remembers everything that had happened and the events that had led up to him walking out of that door— Hinami’s words and Kaneki’s part in all of that. He had been angry— so angry— but he’d also been stupid and he realised that, didn’t he? That’s why he stopped; that’s why he was in that very spot when the car came skidding towards the sidewalk.

He was going to go back to her. He was going to apologise, to talk. But he wasn’t allowed to do it. It’s as if the world was stopping him from going-- as if it was telling him that he and Hinami were meant to be apart.

He forces the lump down his throat. “We went to the dorms but they’ve been closed so I walked Hinami back to my apartment and started coming back home when it started raining. That’s why I was late.” He’s lying through his teeth and he knows that Kaneki out of all people can tell. He’s a cop. He’s used to dealing with liars. He can read people like a book and know when they’re being untruthful. This lie is useless.

“Ayato,” Kaneki says, a little more sternly this time. “What happened?”

He wants to scream at Kaneki. He isn’t one of Kaneki’s criminals. He isn’t in an interrogation right now. He has no reason to abide by it and tell him every single thing that had happened. Kaneki has no business in his life. Just because he married his sister doesn’t give him the right to pry into every single nook and cranny of Ayato’s life. He hates this. He hates this situation. He hates Kaneki. He hates everything.

“Look, Ayato, I’m worried about Hinami too. I remember saying some very weird stuff to her last night and I have no idea if it contributed to all this. If you don’t want to talk right now, that’s fine, but please don’t lie to me,” Kaneki continues.

He feels a little guilty. Ayato knows that Kaneki has his best interest at heart. Kaneki’s always like that, taking things up that he really shouldn’t need to and helping them out when it’s none of his business. It was Kaneki who had paid for Ayato’s hospital bills and Arata’s funeral expenses a few years ago even though he and Touka were not married yet. He’s always like that and Ayato knows he should be thankful— he is thankful. But it pisses him off as well. All of it was his mess; he fucked up big time. It should be him who’s paying for and dealing with it. But instead, it’s Kaneki. It’s always Kaneki.

“I’m sorry for causing trouble for you again,” Ayato murmurs.

Kaneki shakes his head. “It’s not like that at all.”

“All of this is none of your business. You don’t have to get involved. You never had to. But because you did, things had been easy on me and it’s not fair,” Ayato continues. “You should just leave me alone. Just let me deal with all this. This is my problem, not yours. Don’t pay for this. I will.”

“How? You barely get enough to cover your rent from your part-time job,” Kaneki says.

“I’ll deal with it,” Ayato snaps.

“No, no you’re not,” Kaneki argues, raising his voice a little. “Touka and I are not leaving you alone in this. We’re not going to leave you in anything. You’re part of the family, Ayato.”

“We’re not family—”

“We are,” Kaneki interrupts. “We’re family and family helps one another, okay?”

“This is… All this is…” Ayato stops, breathing hard, his hands gripping the edges of the blanket tightly. He’s mad. He’s just so mad at everything right now— at Hinami who had said all those stuff, at the stupid driver for running into him last night, at the rain which caused the accident, at Touka for getting him to walk Hinami back, at Kaneki for always helping him and at himself, for being so useless at the face of everything that life throws at him, for always needing someone and having to rely on people.

“You know, my father died when I was very young and my mother and I struggled a lot. She died a little after that because of how much she worked. We had a lot of debts to pay and my aunt also kept asking for more money. Mom just worked and worked and in the end, I suffered a lot from it,” Kaneki says. “It’s never good to be in a position where you always need money. A part of me always wanted Mom to stop giving Aunt money because we had none ourselves. I could never understand why Mom would do it. But I see you now and I see how you and Touka are. I’m not like my Mom. I have money. I have money but before you and Touka, after Hinami moved out, I had no family. It was lonely. But I met Touka and things started getting better. I want to protect this, Ayato, and that includes you. It won’t be the same without you. Trust me, those years showed us enough.”

“I’ll still be there even if you let me pay my own bills,” Ayato grumbles. He doesn’t want to look at Kaneki right now. He doesn’t want to know the kind of expression Kaneki has on his face.

“You know, I have every reason to hate you,” Kaneki continues, “ and sometimes, I wonder how the hell you even are related to Touka. But if not for you, I will do all this for Touka. She will fall apart if something happens to you and I will not let that happen.”

“My sister is not weak,” Ayato snaps. “She’ll be fine.”

“She’s not weak, you’re right. But she’ll still fall apart. Her strength will help her pull herself together again, that I am very sure of. But she will still be hurt and I don’t want that to happen as much as I can.”

“What does that have to do with my bills?” Ayato grumbles. He lies back down on the bed, pulls the blanket over his body and turns away from Kaneki.

“I want you to accept my help, to let me help you, for your sister’s sake. Ayato, please.”

For Touka’s sake… Ayato glances at his hand— the very hand Touka had held onto last night and had helped him through his nightmares. She must have rushed here the moment she found out what happened to him. They must have woken her up. She must have been tired. But she still came.

“If it would give Touka a peace of mind, then fine.”

He hears Kaneki’s grunt of approval behind and he closes his eyes. He falls asleep surprisingly fast, but the images appear again. He’s in the sidewalk again. Kaneki is there now for some reason. He’s pushing him to the middle of the road. There’s a truck on one side and the car on the other. He’s trapped. His ears are overwhelmed with the screeching of tires. He closes his eyes and he wants to scream. But his voice is stuck in his throat. He can’t say anything. He can’t do anything. He opens his eyes and looks towards the sidewalk. Kaneki isn’t there anymore. It’s Hinami, looking at him with a big frown, eyes streaming with tears mouthing some words.

He doesn’t see anything else afterwards.

Ayato opens his eyes and he’s back in the hospital, still on the same bed. He’s stuffy. Everything around him feels like it’s burning. His body is wet and sticky; his clothes are drenched in his sweat. Hinami was in his dream and he’s sure she was saying something to him. He frowns at the ceiling, taking a moment to collect his thoughts and recall what she had said.

I’m sorry.

She has nothing to be sorry about.

This is all my fault.

It’s not. She asked him to stay. He chose to leave.

He’s glad Touka and Kaneki hadn’t told her about this. Maybe Hinami not knowing would be a better idea. He’d get out of the hospital and go and see her after that. He’ll just pull some act about being really pissed off or something and then he’d apologize to her. It would be better than having her needlessly worry about all this.

He turns his head to the side. Kaneki is still there, but he had dozed off. Beside Kaneki, he sees another face, flipping lazily through the book Kaneki was reading just now. It’s Rio. It confuses him for a moment what Rio is doing here, but then he remembers Kaneki mentioning that Touka had called Rio over.

“Rio?”

Rio’s head snaps up at the sound of Ayato’s voice and he jumps to his feet, leaning over and smiling widely. “You’re okay. Thank god.”

“Yeah. I guess.” Ayato tries to sit up and Rio immediately offers him a hand, just as he always used to do in the past when he’d gotten injured during soccer.

“Sorry I was late. I had soccer training,” Rio explains. “I didn’t check my phone till after and I saw Touka’s messages and missed calls so I called her immediately. You gave me such a fright, you know. You didn’t even say anything on the phone just now.”

“The phone?” Ayato mumbles dumbly.

“Yeah, when I was on the way just now, remember?” Rio says, laughing a little.

Now that he thinks about it, he hadn’t checked his phone at all. It’s the last thing one would think of after getting into the second car accident of his life. Ayato glances over at the two tables he has beside his bed. He doesn’t see his phone anywhere. His clothes are neatly folded and placed on one of them but he can’t find any of his other belongings with him. He might have left it at home. He doesn’t recall taking it along with him when he left.

“I… left my phone at home,” Ayato says, looking around again. Maybe he missed a spot. But it doesn’t seem like it’s anywhere.

“Really? That’s weird. I was really sure one of my calls got picked up,” Rio says. “Was it someone else, then?”

“It’s at my apartment so…” Ayato says slowly, letting himself collect his thoughts. “It’s Hinami.”

“Hinami?”

“Yeah, I told her she can stay over since it was late and the rain was heavy,” Ayato says.

She knows.

He had wanted to keep it a secret from her. He needs to talk to her.

“Give me your phone,” he says to Rio immediately and before Rio can even question him, he’s reaching into his pockets and pulling the phone out. Rio watches him, partly annoyed, as he dials his own number and waits for a call. The ringtone goes on and on but there’s no answer at all. He tries again but to no avail. He tries the landline and gets nothing as well. Hinami might have left already. He tries Hinami’s phone number as well, but that doesn’t work out either. She doesn’t pick up.

“She’s not picking up,” he complains.

“Yeah, that’s because I don’t know her that well, Ayato, and I don’t have her number so there’s no way she’s going to pick up some call from a random stranger,” Rio points out.

Rio’s right and Ayato knows that. He looks around and his eyes fall on Kaneki, who’s still sleeping at the chair beside the bed. Maybe if it’s Kaneki, Hinami will answer.

“Kaneki!” he shouts.

Kaneki jumps at Ayato’s loud voice and wakes up immediately, rubbing his eyes sleepily. “Ayato? What is it?”

“I need you to call Hinami now,” he says urgently.

“Huh?”

“Just do it,” Ayato snaps.

“Okay okay, calm down,” Kaneki grumbles. He pulls his phone out and starts to call her. The moment he sees Hinami’s name on the screen, Ayato reaches out and grabs the phone from Kaneki’s hands.

Hinami answers almost immediately. “I’m so sorry, Big Brother, this is all my fault. I’m so sorry.”

“Hina—”

“Ayato ran out because of the things I said to him. I messed up again. I’m so sorry. I can’t do this anymore,” she continues, not giving him a chance to speak at all. “I keep hurting him no matter what I do. I’m just not right for Ayato. You’re wrong about it all. You’re wrong, Big Brother! I’m sorry I should never have come into his life. I don’t think my feelings for him are real either.”

“Wait—”

She really must not be listening or she’d have been able to tell the difference in the voice. But she continues speaking, thinking he’s Kaneki. “I can’t face Ayato anymore. Even if he doesn’t blame me, I know this is my fault. I can’t bring myself to see him anymore. Please tell him how sorry I am and that I wish him all the best. I will see you soon. Goodbye.” With that, she cuts the line. Just like that.

The silence that follows drags on for a long time. Both Kaneki and Rio watch him without saying a thing until Kaneki reaches forward and grabs the phone of out Ayato’s hands.

“She hung up already,” he says bitterly.

“Yeah, she did,” Ayato murmurs.

“What did she say?” Rio asks.

“She said…” Ayato pauses, thinking back. She said a lot of things. She said everything that he thought she would say. Everything went like he thought it would. It’s bad. He needed to stop her; he needed to tell her it isn’t his fault. But he didn’t. She didn’t give him a chance to.

Kaneki groans as he watches the blank expression on Ayato’s face and dials Hinami’s number himself. Ayato looks over, only to see the call cut almost immediately after.

“She turned off her phone,” Kaneki says.

He hadn’t gotten a chance to say anything to her yet and at this rate, he doesn’t think he will. Hinami won’t give him a chance to say anything; she’s not going to talk to him on the phone. But Ayato knows he can’t just sit by and leave everything be. He needs to clear everything up with her. Hinami can’t blame herself. It isn’t her fault.

It hurts to move but he forces himself to, sliding off the bed and getting to his feet. His left ankle screams in protest but he knows he has to ignore it.

“Wait. What are you doing?” Rio asks, grabbing his shoulders and trying to push him back to the bed.

“I need to go and see her,” Ayato insists. He tries to push Rio off him but it’s hard to fight against a fit person when you’re injured and had been spending the past twelve hours or so in bed.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Ayato, you need to rest,” Rio says.

“I need to settle this,” he argues.

“No, you don’t!” Rio snaps. “I’ve been telling you since Day One that this whole thing is a bad idea but you’ve never listened to me. You don’t have to go to her now. Whatever it is, you can wait till you’re better.”

“No!”

“Stay down, Ayato!”

It’s useless. He knows Rio isn’t going to budge. He turns to Kaneki, who frowns and shakes his head. “No, Ayato. I’m with Rio on this. If anything happens to you, Touka will kill me.”

“It’s just this once, Kaneki. Please let me go,” he says. Ayato has never pleaded with Kaneki before. This is a first, but if he has to resort to begging, he would as well. He knows that keeping silent about this is wrong. He needs to clear up the misunderstanding as soon as he can. He needs to let her know she’s wrong.

“Ayato, I can’t.”

“I need to do this, Kaneki. Please. For Hinami,” he whispers. He’s never been this sincere with Kaneki. It’s always been the opposite. He never wants to rely on Kaneki. Ayato had just made it clear to him how he hates having to accept Kaneki’s help. But right now he doesn’t have any other choice and he knows Kaneki is able to tell just how desperate he is from the way he’s begging right now. If he has to fall on his knees, he would.

After a long moment of silence, Kaneki closes his eyes and sighs. “Fine. Just this once, and make it back as quick as you can.”

Ayato blinks in disbelief. He really did want Kaneki to agree but he hadn’t thought Kaneki would actually give in. Rio seems annoyed but Kaneki doesn’t notice it-- or if he does, he doesn’t bother to acknowledge it. Instead, Kaneki goes over to take Ayato’s clothes and toss them to him.

“Rio and I will distract the nurses. You try to make it out in five minutes and I want you back as soon as possible,” Kaneki instructs. “Don’t exert yourself.”

Ayato doesn’t think Touka could have married anyone better.

She decides that barricading herself in her room is probably a good idea. After the incident with Ayato’s phone, Hinami had run out of the apartment and all the way back to her dorm. She isn’t in the mood to talk to anyone right now. She doesn’t want to have anything to do with anyone. She wants to be alone. Miza and Tomoe drop by but she ignores both of them. They’re probably here to talk to her about Ayato, especially since she hadn’t returned their calls or replied their messages either. She gets a call from a new number as well and she supposes it has to be Rio. He’s probably calling to inform her about what happened. But she already has everything figured out from Ayato’s phone. She doesn’t need them telling her.

She feels terrible enough and no one else needs to know about it. Or so she thinks.

A short while after the call from the number she assumes is Rio, she receives another one. This time, she rushes to pick it up. It’s Kaneki. She picks up already knowing what he is going to say, which she still doesn’t want to hear. She picks up for a whole different reason. She picks up because she needs to say something instead. It’s Kaneki who had given her all those ideas. It’s Kaneki who had prompted her to start that conversation with Ayato. She knows it’s not Kaneki’s fault everything happened— it’s hers— but she wants Kaneki to know the truth. He is wrong. She isn’t fit for Ayato. She doesn’t love Ayato. They’re not meant to be. They’re not good for each other. She shouldn’t be with him at all.

The moment she picks up, she starts talking. The words flow out of her mouth like a heavy torrent. She barely has any idea what she’s saying. She can’t be bothered. She speaks and speaks, letting her heart guide her through the words and emotions. She pours everything out, not giving him a chance to say anything. When she’s exhausted of things to say, she hangs up immediately, turns her phone off and tosses it away. She doesn’t want to talk to Kaneki. She knows what he’ll say in response. He’ll tell her she’s wrong and that it’s not her fault. He’d ask her to go and see Ayato. Maybe he might blame himself for even telling Hinami all those weird things, but he’ll insist that those things are true. He might convince her again that she’s in love with Ayato. He might convince her to go back to Ayato. Hinami knows how weak she is. She knows how pathetic she is. Ayato is right. She can’t think for herself. If she gave Kaneki the chance to say that she’s wrong and that she should go to Ayato, her stupid mind might have believed it and done just that.

Ayato doesn’t deserve a sheep like her. The accident must be the Gods’ reminder to her. Never again should she have the cheek to think that they’re meant to be. Never again should she try to fool him with her half-assed feelings.

She lies in bed, curling up to herself and for the first time since the start of the day, she cries. Her eyes have teared up a lot in the past few hours, but right now, she’s a mess of tears and screams. She buries her face in her pillow and shouts. She yells out her frustrations, her hatred, her anger, her despair and her fear. Everything comes out— curses, apologies, pleas, prayers. She wants all this to end right now. She’s so exhausted. She never thought things would get this bad and she still doesn’t know how bad Ayato’s condition is. For all she knows, he might not even be around tomorrow. He might not even be alive now; maybe Kaneki called to say that he died. The thought makes her scream even more. Her chest hurts. It feels like there is an invisible claw grabbing her, digging its long fingernails right into her heart.

She hopes he’s okay. She wants nothing more than him being well and alive right now. She doesn’t even want to think about him gone, but she knows that no matter what, he is gone to her. She shouldn’t go back to him anymore— or even to Kaneki and Touka since they might just lead her back to him. She needs to go back to the time before she and Ayato became friends, back to her first two years of high school, when even though she saw him in class every day, she never talked to him and he never really meant anything to her except for being that random soccer guy who everyone is really into for some reason.

She hears a knock on the door but pays no mind to it. She doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. She knows that some people might genuinely worry about her. Everyone knows that she and Ayato are close. Her friends must be worried about her. But she really doesn’t have the mental capacity to deal with anyone right now.

There’s a part of her that’s also worried. These people might be carrying bad news. Maybe they’re trying to tell her about something. Maybe they’re here to call her to his deathbed— he might go anytime, so you don’t want to miss this, do you Hinami? But she doesn’t want to know about such news. Maybe oblivion is better. Even if he’s dying right now, she can pretend he’s still healthy and well— it doesn’t hurt as much.

There’s a knock again. “Hinami? Are you in there?”

Hinami freezes, recognising the voice immediately. What is he doing here? Is this her imagination playing tricks on her?

“Hinami, it’s me. It’s Ayato. I really need to talk to you.”

It is his voice. She’d recognise that voice anywhere. If he’s here right now, does this mean he’s okay? Had he gotten discharged? She gets up immediately, rushing to the door and reaching for the doorknob, only to stop right before opening the door for him. Isn’t it too soon for him to be out? No matter what, hospitals would keep him for at least a day, right? How can he be outside? Her mind wanders through many countless possibilities, even the absurd ones. What if it’s someone else pretending to be him? What if it’s someone else but she’s hearing his voice out of desperation? What if that is his ghost here to bid farewell to her before he moves on to the afterlife? The third one, no matter how ridiculous, makes her choke up.

“Hinami, I can see your shadow again, you know,” he sighs. “Please. Don’t ignore me.”

“I’m not ignoring you,” she whispers. She hurriedly wipes her eyes with her sleeves and opens the door.

Ayato stands before her, but she has to pinch herself to believe that this is real and that this isn’t a dream. He’s breathing hard, slumped against the door frames, eyes narrowed as he watches her with his typical annoyed expression. Neither of them says anything, not even as Hinami reaches forward and runs the tip of her finger down along his cheek— the left side, which wasn’t bandaged. He’s real. He’s here. It’s really him. He’s alive. She studies him carefully, eyes focusing on every small bruise that she could find and the various areas of him which are bandaged. She wonders how many injuries he has under his clothes and how bad they actually are. His face doesn’t look bad, but she can see that his right arm is still bleeding. He’s clutching it with his other hand, but the bandaged is clearly soaked with wet blood.

“Your… hand…” she says, nodding towards it.

Ayato looks down at it and grimaces. “Yeah, I think I might have reopened the wound or something when I was running here. I went to my place and you weren’t there so I came all the way here.”

“You were running— No, whatever, come in.” No matter what the situation is right now, she can’t have him standing at the doorway. She should at least let him sit down. She’s not such a heartless person that she’s going to put him through that sort of pain. She watches, trying not to react much, as he struggles to kick off his shoes and walk in. As Ayato limps into her room, she knows she’s made the right decision letting him in but she’s sure Ayato has done something stupid.

“What are you doing here?” she asks as she gently pushes him to sit on the bed. She pulls his hand away from the bleeding bandages and observes it carefully. She doesn’t have any first aid in her room but she has some towels she supposes he could use for now.

“I needed to see you,” he says. She remains silent as she’s talking the towels, giving herself time to think through what he’s saying.

“Did they let you out of the hospital already?” Hinami asks. She sits beside him and presses the towel against the bloody bandage, letting it soak up some of the moisture. “You still look very bad to me. Where else does it hurt?”

“My ankle but they said it was nothing too bad,” he says looking down at his bandaged foot. He winces as he moves it. Hinami can tell despite the bandage that it probably hurts a lot. It’s not bleeding but it looked a little swollen-- much bigger than his other foot.

She realises that he hadn’t answered her first question and turns to look at him. “They discharged you already? When you’re like this?”

He grimaces. “Hinami, there’s something I need to tell you.”

He’s avoiding her question again and that gives her the answer-- he hasn’t been discharged and he probably snuck out of the hospital to come here. Her throat feels dry, clenching up in her attempts at holding in her frustration. Just why is he like this? He left the hospital despite being injured like this to come and see her.

“Kaneki called you just now and you picked up, right?” Ayato continues speaking, either completely oblivious to her silence or blatantly ignorant of it. She nods and he frowns, sighing. “It wasn’t Kaneki who called you. It was me.”

Hinami freezes. Her mind immediately goes back to the call, trying her best to remember what she had said, but she can’t remember a single thing. She had just spewed out whatever came to her lips. Her brain hadn’t been functioning. Thinking it was Kaneki, she had said a bunch of stuff and had been completely open and honest with him. Even though she can’t remember what exactly she said, she knows for sure that those are words not meant for Ayato’s ears. But while she has no idea what they are now, Ayato does.

“Please ignore that call,” Hinami says immediately, trying her best to remain as composed as she can. She gets up and walks over to her table to pick up her phone. “You shouldn’t be here. I’ll call Big Brother to come and pick you up.”

“Don’t,” he hisses.

“I’m calling him.” She’s right about to call him when she notices Ayato beside her, reaching over and snatching the phone out of her hands. She turns to him, annoyed, holding her hand out and staring at him instructively. He simply frowns back at her, holding the phone behind him, still breathing hard.

“You shouldn’t be here, Ayato,” she argues. She considers reaching over to take it. He’s hurt so she might be able to successfully take it away from him. But she can see his bleeding arm from the corner of his eyes. She might hurt him more in the process. She’s done enough of that; she can’t hurt him more-- she shouldn’t.

“We need to talk,” he says.

“We can talk when you’re better,” she says, though she has no intention to. She doesn’t have any plans to have anything to do with him at all. It’s not that hard. They’re in their final year of college when the next semester starts. She doesn’t think they’ll see each other much. It’s not that hard to avoid him since she knows his usual hangout places. At most, she’ll have to find somewhere else to stay which is not that hard at all.

“No, we need to talk now,” he insists, grabbing onto her arm with his uninjured hand. “I can’t have you going on thinking those things you said.”

“What things? I can’t remember,” she grumbles. She’s tired and exhausted and continuously seeing how injured he is right now isn’t helping her mood. He’s like this because of her. She knows he’s going to try to talk her into thinking otherwise but she doesn’t see how this can be anyone else’s fault.

“All those things you said, Hinami. They’re wrong. They’re scary. They hurt,” he whispers. They hurt. Of course, they hurt him. That’s all she’s ever done to him and all she’s ever going to do. “You’re not at fault Hinami so don’t ever say stupid things like how you can’t show your face to me.”

“Did I say that?” she wonders bitterly. “I’m not in the mood to have this discussion right now. Please let me call Kaneki.”

“It’s not your fault,” Ayato insists.

“Ayato, stop.”

“No, listen to me. It isn’t your fault at all, okay? You didn’t do anything. You asked me to stay,” he hisses. He’s gritting his teeth as he speaks, trying to pass it off as his annoyance but Hinami can tell that’s not the case. He’s in pain right now. He’s perspiring so much. The colour is being drained from his face. He needs to be at the hospital right now. He needs rest.

“Ayato now’s not the time for this. Give me the phone,” Hinami instructs, holding her hand out. She takes a step towards him and he takes a step back, wincing. She glances down. His leg is trembling. “Ayato, at least sit down.”

“Not until you listen to what I have to say.”

“You need to calm down. You’re getting worked up and it’s not healthy for you right now,” she says. Another step forward and he takes another one back. Maybe if she keeps walking closer, he’d walk back to the bed and she can push him to sit at least.

“It’s not your fault. Don’t cut things off between us because of this.” She’s still moving forward and he’s still backing away. She sees the bed right behind him and reaches out, pushing him lightly. Ayato stumbles backwards, falling to a sitting position and dropping her phone. He groans in pain and taking this slight moment of distraction, she snatches the phone and rushes to call Kaneki. Ayato watches her in disbelief, his eyes wide.

“Wait, Hinami, don’t call,” he snaps, but by the time he’s said it, she’s already on the phone and she can hear Kaneki picking up.

“Big Brother, Ayato’s in a bad condition right now. Could you come to the dorms and pick him up? Don’t let him leave the hospital again please,” she says.

“Hinami? Did something happen?” Kaneki asks, confused but also worried.

“He’s just in a lot of pain.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

She hangs up and tosses the phone on the bed. Ayato is frowning at her now and she can tell he’s really angry, though she doesn’t think he has any reason to be. She supposes she can entertain him a little.

“We have ten minutes,” she informs him.

“It’s not like you’re going to listen to me, are you?” Ayato mutters.

“I’ll hear what you have to say at least,” she offers.

“I just needed to see you after all that you said. I want you to know that nothing is your fault, but talking to you now I realise I cannot convince you. You’re too stubborn,” he complains.

“I shouldn’t have made things awkward in the first place. From the beginning I should have asked you to stay when the rain was so heavy,” she says.

“You did.”

“Not at first,” she points out.

“You didn’t put me at the sidewalk, you know,” he says, clearing his throat a little. “I shouldn’t have been so stubborn. I should have just dealt with everything and control myself a little. I got too angry.”

“You’re right. You got too angry, because of the things I did and said,” she says. “Ayato even if you try to convince me that it isn’t my fault that this happened, you cannot convince me that all this pain we’re going through is not the culmination of that stupid arrangement we had.”

“It’s hard to think that us fucking since two years ago led to my accident,” Ayato grumbles.

“But it did. If we had stayed friends, none of this would ever have happened. If we never got acquainted in the first place--”

“Maybe I might have killed myself over depression after my father died,” Ayato cut in. “You saved me Hinami; you gave me hope. I already told you that. Don’t give me the we-should-never-have-met bullshit right now. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me.”

She doesn’t know how she can accept those words. She can’t be the best thing that happened to him, not when she has reduced him to the state he is right now. He would have been better off without her. This time, she’s going to make sure she can’t fuck things up for him anymore.

“Then will you do something for me?” she asks in a small voice. She’s asked him this so many times and as always, he looks up at her, eyes wide, slightly wary but mostly curious.

He nods. “Yes, anything for you.” His voice is a whisper as he says it, just as it always sounds, mainly because he always knows that he’s going to regret it-- that what Hinami says is not going to be something good for him. But he always does it anyway, because he always wants to make her happy.

If she’s in love with him, which she is not-- she has to keep telling herself she’s not or she might just believe it-- she thinks this is the part of him she’ll love the most. He’s so dedicated and loyal to her. Whatever he does, he does it for her best interest. When he left last night, she’s sure it’s because she made it seem like she was uncomfortable when they first got there. She was. She really was. If it wasn’t for that conversation they had, she would have continued to feel that way. In fact, she only saw him in the kitchen because she felt too awkward that she wanted to leave his place. Ayato knew all that, which is why he left. He wanted to make her feel better so he left. He was only concerned about her so it didn’t bother him that he had to leave.

He’s always done things for her sake, but she’s never been able to do things for him the same way. He had gone on about the studying thing but Hinami knows that’s nothing. He thinks it’s big but it’s simply his warped senses talking. There was nothing special about what she did for him-- nothing at all.

But right now, she’s going to save him for good.

“You were right, Ayato. I don’t love you,” she says. It pains her to say this more than she thinks it ever would. But she holds her head high and stands firmly by her words-- the feelings aren’t natural and they’re because of what Kaneki had said.

There isn’t a change in his expression. That statement must not have been a shock to him, which is understandable since he didn’t believe her in the first place. He must be relieved now to know that he’s right and to know that he didn’t make the wrong decision by believing her.

Hinami gets to her knees in front of him. Ayato seems confused as he watches her but he doesn’t say anything, not even when she places her hand on his knee, rubbing it slightly.

“Will you please forget me?” she asks.

“Huh?”

“Nothing you say can change my mind about my feelings. I know what I want and I do not want you in my life anymore,” she says.

Now, she sees the pain in his eyes. He shakes his head immediately, grabbing her hand with his. “No, you listen to me. You don’t have to punish yourself for this accident.”

He’s wrong. She does.

“Being with you is going to hurt me more,” she says. “Everyday I will think of this and never will we move on from it.”

“But… but…” He tries to argue back but his voice is failing him. He shakes his head again, frowning, probably thinking deeply. “There has to be a way.”

“Will you respect my wishes, Ayato?” she asks.

“You don’t have to put it that way--”

“Will you?”

“I…” He hesitates, looking away from her, refusing to make the promise. “I was going to come back to you. I thought it didn’t matter anymore. Your feelings… I couldn’t be bothered about it. I thought if that’s what you believe that so be it. It doesn’t matter how you came to the conclusion. I couldn’t care anymore if Kaneki planted it in your head. When walking away, I realised we should have talked things out more calmly, about your feelings especially.”

“You were right. I don’t love you. There’s nothing to talk,” she says. Her throat clenches and she chokes as she speaks. She doesn’t know why it feels like she’s doing something terribly wrong by saying this. She feels a stab to her heart the first time she did it and she feels it again now. She wonders if it means that maybe she might be wrong about it and she’s jumping into conclusions after everything that happened, but she immediately discards the thought. She doesn’t want any of this anymore. She wants to move on; she wants both of them to move on.

He looks at her and smiles. He hadn’t smiled in a while, especially not to her. This smile is void of pain. This smile is true and genuine. This is the smile she thought she’d see when she confessed to him the previous night. This is what she had wanted to see.

“If that’s the case, why does it sound like it hurts you to say that?” he asks.

“Even if it hurts me, it is the truth that we’re not good for each other and we should not be together. We need to--”

There’s a knock on the door that cuts her off and she sighs in relief. She opens the door quickly, letting Kaneki in. Ayato looks horrified. Clearly their conversation is being cut short as well; clearly, he’s not going to get what he wants. Hinami feels a little bad about it but she knows this is for the best. She has let him say what he wants to and she has given him a reply.

Hinami remains silent as Kaneki looks disapprovingly at Ayato, nagging about his recklessness as he helps Ayato to his feet and starts to help him out. He gives Hinami a nod as he walks out the door while Ayato stares at her, a silent plea passing between them.

One more time.

She can’t give this a second chance. She can’t give herself a second chance.

She shakes her head, holding onto the door as she watches them leave. When they’re out, she closes it, only after murmuring a final farewell to the both of them. She stands by the door, envisioning them passing through the dorm’s hallways, down the elevator and out the building to Kaneki’s car. The further they go, it feels like more of her gets sucked away from herself.

She doesn’t want to see Ayato anymore. It’s for his own good. But even then, tears stream down her eyes. They continue falling out of the corner of her eyes as she picks up her phone, turns it off and removes the tiny SIM card she has inside before tossing it into the bin. She stares at it for a moment. Then, her knees give away and she collapses. Her eyelids are heavy again. The tears are falling out rapidly. She’s crying again.

She can still turn back. She can take that card, put it back into her phone, call Kaneki and ask him to let her talk to Ayato. It’s still possible. It’s not a lost cause yet. Maybe she can imagine that her love for him is real. That might lessen the pain, right?

Hinami shakes her head. She reaches into the bin and picks up the small card. Without giving herself time to doubt her next decision, she snaps it into two.

She’s going to need a new number.

His injuries look worse than they actually are. In actual fact, they’re not that bad at all. But his little expedition had worsened a couple of them and he ended up staying in the hospital much longer than he initially had to. Kaneki was wrong; Touka did not kill him when she found out what happened, though she was right on the verge of it.

Even then, aside from the cut on his arm and his ankle which took a longer time to heal, it’s in a matter of days that Ayato notices his strength returning. His body is scarred a little, his limp has gotten a little worse than before-- thought the doctor assures him that it will get better and he’d revert to his pre-second accident self in a matter of time-- and it takes him a long time before he stops jumping everytime he hears the screeching of tires. But given everything that happened, he thinks he’s okay.

The only thing that didn’t come out of this unscathed is his relationship with Hinami, who pulled a complete disappearing act on him. When he got back his phone, he left her probably close to a hundred texts. Every time he called her, he gets the notice that the number is unavailable. He tries it with Touka, Kaneki, Rio, Miza and Naki, borrowing their phones to text and call her. Everyone got the same result. It’s like Hinami has her phone permanently switched off.

Two weeks after the accident, he heads over to her dorm, only to find that she had vacated it. Tomoe and Miza who live beside her hadn’t known about any of it at all either. She had left without telling either of them. But he continues to give her space and time. He’ll see her in school. They’ll talk then.

And he does. It’s about a few weeks into class when he happens to see her in a walkway. They make eye contact and the moment this happens, Hinami turns around and hurries off. He chases after her, calling her and trying to catch up but right as he’s so close, she slips into the women’s washroom. He could wait for her and he tries to, but the walkway is small and crowded and waiting outside of the women’s washroom for someone who ran away from him is just plain disgusting. Instead, he leaves. He supposes he could lie in wait for her somewhere else like the main entrance but since he doesn’t know where she’s staying now, he can’t guess where she’d come out from. He could alternate and spend a day waiting at each entrance but again, he knows better than to be a creep.

As much as it pains him and as much as he knows that all of this is as a result of a misunderstanding on Hinami’s part, he knows he has to respect her space and decisions too. He can’t force her anymore. He doesn’t want her to suffer from being with him anymore. If there’s anything that made sense from what she had said to him two weeks ago, it was that their relationship is the root cause of all their pain.

It’s weird and ironic. It had been him who had been adamant on ending everything initially. But now he’s running after her like a dog would its owner. Ayato doesn’t even know what he wants to do when he reaches her. When he manages to catch her and turn her to face him, what will be the words he’s going to say to her? It’s not your fault? You did nothing wrong? He laughs at those options. He has already said them to her. He’s never going to be changing her mind on them.

One semester passes and he doesn’t get to talk to her. He’s convinced at this point that she has changed her number. He had seen her with her phone one time. He was standing at a distance and she had not noticed him. He called her but the line was still unavailable. He supposed that maybe she must have had his number blocked. It’s easy to confirm this. All he needed to do was borrow someone’s phone while pretending that his died and he had to make an urgent call. When he did this, he realised that her number is still unavailable although Hinami was happily using her phone a distance away. She couldn’t have blocked this random person as well. The chances are likely. She must have changed her number.

Tomoe might know a thing or two about what’s going on but asking her gives him nothing, though it’s not like he expected something either. Tomoe is clearly going to be on Hinami’s side here.

He sees her less in their final semester and he fails again at getting a chance to talk to her. He still doesn’t know where she’s staying right now. He never manages to get his hands on her new number. She still runs away whenever she sees him, but he gives up on chasing her. He’s confused. He’s hurt. Hinami thinks she might have hurt him before, but he doesn’t think that can compare to what he’s feeling right now. He rather gets hit by ten cars than have her ignore him so openly like that (he takes back the statement the moment it surfaces in his mind though-- he’s good with what he has).

No one tells him anything but he has a feeling burning deep in his gut that graduation would be his final chance at setting things right. Somehow it feels like, after that, he’s never going to see her again.

He’s right, but he’s wrong as well.

He doesn’t see Hinami after graduation. He doesn’t see her during graduation as well. He hears from people that she called in sick all of a sudden so she can’t make it. Whether that’s true or not, he realises he missed his final chance.

After that, no matter how hard he looks, he doesn’t see her again. He could rely on Kaneki for help again but he stops himself. This has nothing to do with Kaneki. This is something he can do on his own, for himself. He will find her and he will tell her what he wants to tell her.

A year in, and he’s pretty stable now. Ayato did what Hinami suggested. He got a job at a reporting agency, writing short commentaries in the sports column. It’s more fun than he thought it would be. He gets to go to most of Rio’s games and he doesn’t miss anything. He gets to write about anything his best friend does as well. He realises he’s better at it that he thought he would be. He never really liked reading and writing, but maybe writing about sports is not too bad. It’s fun.

Two years in, he tries to move on. He has made no progress in his Hinami hunt at all. He realises he doesn’t know anything about her aside from her relationship with Kaneki and him. He knows Hinami was on a scholarship but he never knew what it was for. Maybe if he did, he would have some leads, but right now, he has nothing to go on.

He goes on with life blindly. He goes to work, hangs out with Rio, drinks with Miza and Naki and spends quality time with his family. He moved back home and he spends most of his free time playing around with his niece. Ichika gets excited whenever he teaches her soccer. She seems talented at it as well and she spends a lot of time happily kicking balls around the house, much to her father’s chagrin whenever he hears the smashing of yet another vase.

Three years in and he tells himself that he needs to move on. It’s not like he swore himself to a life of celibacy. How he went a year without having sex and merely relying on jacking himself off is beyond him, but maybe keeping himself busy with work and Hinami hunting had helped. He starts dating this one girl but it doesn’t work out. He dates another one and it doesn’t work out either. Third time’s a charm, they say, and Ayato gives it one more go, only for this too to end in failure. He simply can’t forget Hinami at all.

When dates fail to satisfy him, he opts for something else. If he can’t fall in love, he can still fuck others. Sex is sex no matter who it is. Or so he thinks. He sleeps with a few people-- he tries to ignore the similarities between them like their brown hair, their short and small stature or their gentle voice-- but something feels wrong. The sex feels empty and boring, even though he’s actually feeling really good. Something is missing and even though he knows what that is, he refuses to admit it.

Four years in and he’s slowly starting to forget her, which is ironic because love is all around him right now. Naki and Miza are engaged. It happened after Miza found out she’s pregnant. Rio finally finds himself someone, but he refuses to tell Ayato anything about that person. They met online apparently. Hooguro has a girlfriend too. Ayato never thought that guy would ever take any relationship seriously but apparently, this one is different.

Touka gets pregnant again. This time, he tries to be there for her and to support her, even though he’s making plans to move out to his own apartment. When he does move, Touka, Kaneki, Ichika and Yomo (who was dragged along by Touka) help out. Ichika gets really excited by her uncle’s new place. She especially loves one room in particular. When she looks out the window, she can see the playground in the park and it makes her very excited. Ayato uses that one as his guest room, mainly for Ichika to sleep in when her parents decide to come and stay over in his place. They set it up mainly to her tastes as well-- a pink room with apple-patterned wallpapers. It’s cute, though it doesn’t match the whole theme to the house. Touka had laughed when she saw it.

Touka’s weekly visits to the cemetery stop for a moment as she gets too big to travel around much but Ayato continues doing so. Occasionally, he drops by Hinami’s parents’ graves. He’d accompanied Hinami there once before so he remembered the location. Going to the cemetery without Touka gives him the confidence to take a peek. He doesn’t know how Touka would react seeing him there; he had managed to convince her and Kaneki that he had forgotten and gotten over Hinami completely. While he supposes he is moving towards forgetting her, he knows he’s still far from it.

The graves give me a clue to Hinami’s whereabouts. He knows that no matter what she feels about him, she’d continue visiting her parents. But as he continues to visit them every week, he realises that no one else had come. There aren’t flowers; Hinami always leaves flowers behind. He wonders if she had left town. If that’s the case, he has no chance of finding her.

He thinks of Hinami the most when he’s in his apartment, alone. It’s bigger than his previous one and it looks so much better. It’s clean. The fridge is well stocked. He has room for bigger tanks for his fish. The furniture is new and they did not come with the place. Everything is to his taste. But he has no one to share all of this with. He tries his hand at bringing girls home again. But just like before, the sex keeps feeling empty. Eventually, it starts to feel like a chore. He craves for contact and companionship but even then, he can’t find any that satisfy him.

In the fifth year, he tells himself to give up. He openly declares to himself that he isn’t going to look for her. He discards the oath he had told Hinami a long time ago. He will find someone else. He will settle down. He will start a family. He doesn’t know where Hinami is anymore. He doesn’t even know if she’s alive. Life is so transient. Youth doesn’t guarantee anything. He knows this better than anyone.

He should not wait anymore. She should not seek her out anymore. He has to find someone else.

Touka’s delivery is a safe one this time. He’s there when it happens, holding Ichika outside and entertaining her along with her granduncle. It’s a boy this time. As Ayato watches Kaneki and Touka with both their son and daughter now, he wonders how nice it would be to have one of his own as well. He’s already in his mid-twenties now. He’s pretty stable careerwise. He’s not advancing fast, but neither is he at any risk of a sudden retrenchment. A family isn’t ideal but it’s not an unattainable fantasy either.

Of course, he has to find someone to start a family with. Ayato sighs at this thought. He’s not too desperate for one, but he supposes he has it pretty high up in his future plans now. It weird. He actually has plans for the future. The Ayato of the past never did; he just went with the flow.

Hinami has changed him in many ways he realises. Some for the better and some for the worse. But he realises one more thing as he sits and contemplates his future. If he’s ever going to get married and have children-- that’s a big if-- he can’t do it with Hinami absent. He cannot imagine a wedding without Hinami. Even if she’s not on the altar with him, she has to be present there, just like Kaneki, Touka and everyone else who are really important to him. She’s someone very important to him and that goes far beyond simple romantic interest. Sometimes, there’s more to relationships with other than romance. He knows that. He wants Hinami to know that.

They don’t have to be in love. They can still be friends. He wants to tell her that, but he can’t do it without finding her.

He supposes he just can’t give up in his search just yet. He sighs. After all of his progress, it looks like he had slipped and fallen back down to the first square.

This is going to be a long year.

A/N: Again, I am not going to say anything since I’m really sleepy and I’ll leave my comments for tomorrow. Only one more chapter to go guys!  Once again, please please do reblog if you like this! It’ll really help me out. Feel free to leave comments in the tags/ reblogs/ replies or through asks!

#tg #tokyo ghoul #ayahina #kirishima ayato #fueguchi hinami #far writes stuff #my fic: shattered