#I have definitely experienced shifts as a cat before

[dashielldeveron]

soulmate trope | shigaraki tomura

Shigaraki’s route of soulmate trope.

"post-canon shigaraki? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 4 january 2024!"

yeah. thank god. gives us time to write our own endings. and obviously i will be wrong about some things. i recommend you read at least one other route, preferably dabi’s, before reading this one. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to around chapter 390-411ish, based on language used by others to describe shigaraki and his trauma. bodily consequences to his trauma (some things are intended to read as AFO having forced an ED on shigaraki, but this is not made definitive). sexual content. stalking. gore (in a game). reader is experiencing a type of gifted kid burnout.

~28k

There’s a hentai book lying on your bed.

You’ve never seen it before.

Flipping through it, you winced at the positions the large-titted, ponytailed woman was manhandled into, and though you were frankly impressed that she managed to wear such intricate lingerie underneath her everyday business attire, the protagonist only just got home from work; let her decompress for, like, ten minutes before railing her against the window, please.

Whom did you know who would read volume four of something called GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK?

Unfortunately, you were burdened with knowledge about your friends’ sexual habits, and some of them, therefore, were already ruled out: Shinsou only read erotica because he preferred his own imagination to any images hentai or live-action could provide, and Monoma only read hentai in which the woman’s eyes had hearts in them to let the reader know she’s enjoying it—not to mention Monoma wouldn’t buy a hard copy of it, let alone a story that didn’t have more plot and character development to it. There wasn’t enough drool for Sero to be interested, and the male protagonist wasn’t enough of a twink for Kaminari to project onto, so whose was this?

Moreover, who the fuck would come all the way back to your old school’s campus to break into your room to leave it on your bed? (Shinsou would be your best bet for that part, but whenever he finished a patrol nowadays, he went directly to sleep, and his and Monoma’s flat was across town.)

You cat, Dango, jumped onto the bed, slithering up next to you and bumping her head on your elbow affectionately.

“Is this yours?” you asked her, and she sniffed the book before climbing into your lap.

You tossed the book aside to pet your cat with both hands, and you resolved not to think about it any longer, even though the cringy way the mangaka depicted the female orgasm was burnt onto your brain.

***

Hopping to put your heel back into a ballet flat, you held the phone between your ear and shoulder while you struggled towards the lift. “I’ve got to cancel on you, Ochaco,” you said, flipping the back of your blazer collar down and adjusting the lapels, “I’m, fuck—I’m not gonna be able to make it this evening, so just go without me.”

Uraraka sighed on her end. “Okay. I know a lot of us were excited to see you after so long—there’s a card Tsu’s made us all to sign, and everything—but we’ll manage. ‘Spose we’ll just have a routine night at the bar and reschedule when you can make it. I miss you,” she said, “and I’m pretty sure I can say the same for everyone.”

The elevator door slid open, and you entered. “All of you are so clingy. I’ve only been away from the agency for around two months, and you know where to find me.” You mashed the button for the ground floor. “In fact, it’s embarrassingly easy to access me.”

“Well, we’re very busy,” said Uraraka, “People are very eager to conscript us for missions, even if they really could be done by the police. U.A. alumni have somehow upticked in their popularity even more since we graduated—”

“Ochaco, I know. I was there. Allow me to weep for your success. I am playing the world’s tiniest violin.” You shifted your bag’s full weight onto your shoulder and exited into the commons. “But listen. I’ve got to go; I’m running late this morning. I couldn’t find my pantyhose even though I laid them out last night, and they weren’t in any of my cat’s usual hiding places. I had to turn my flat upside down and still never found them.” The outside doors slid open when you approached, and the harsh, morning wind upset your hair on impact. “Give everyone my love, O. Tell Todoroki to smile in his next interview.” Eyes darting across your surroundings for any witnesses, you shrank in on yourself and bit the inside of your cheek. “And tell everyone I’m sorry, okay?”

By the time you arrived at U.A.’s administration building, the wind had been joined by a light drizzle that would probably morph into a storm within the hour, a prediction compounded by a plethora of faculty umbrellas in and beside the stand by the sliding doors. The front office was gloriously vacant, though, so you were able to slip behind the front desk without someone rebuking you for being—you shook the computer mouse to wake it up, the clock popping up in the corner—seventeen minutes late.

(You’d graduated with the rest of the class six months ago, and you’d founded the all-girls agency uptown, with most of the women in the graduating class joining to form an instant powerhouse of the industry.

Founding an agency appealed to a good deal of graduates, but you were the only one to go the distance: you were the one to actually make the calls, fill out the paperwork, get aggravating shit done, and by the time to move into the building, it had pleased you to no end that Midoriya had asked you for help on kickstarting his own.

And then two months ago, you’d pulled off, frankly, what was supposed to be an impossible rescue. For the first time, you were getting enormous amounts of attention, from civilians, from press, from other heroes—and you were being followed, never having more than a moment to yourself—always being watched, either from well-wishers or nay-sayers—and sometimes, the analytical critic, eager to point out your faults in the rescue mission to try to drag you out of the hero scene.

You hated yourself for this, but they won.

Too many expectations. All sinking down on you, as if no other hero existed while the light shone in your direction. [And you hated yourself for even daring to consider this—what reprehensible audacity, but—but was this how All Might had felt?]

You’d had something next door to a panic attack when a convenience store, a regular stop in your weekly routine, filmed your reaction to how they’d auctioned off your signed receipt for over nine hundred thousand yen. Breaking their cameras, Shinsou had to escort you out of there in a rush and call Aizawa for help.

Sobbing into Shinsou’s phone on the soggy concrete of a darkened alleyway, you did something you never fathomed you’d ever do, something you could never see any of your friends ever doing, something that seemed as alien and unthinkable as sticking your hand into a pit of needles: you begged Aizawa to get you out of the hero business.

You’ve been handled with care and relocated into a surprising covert secretarial job in the U.A. admin, Nezu’s logic was that you’d adjust to one person needing you at a time, say, over email or at the desk, and if you only answered the phone with only a shortened version of your name, then no intruding civilian would be the wiser.

The job was easy, anyway. Paid well for what it was, but perhaps that was simply standard for U.A. Nowhere nearly as well paying or exciting as working as a hero, but you were adjusting into mundanity. Some days had stretches of hours in which you didn’t interact with anyone, sitting at the front desk without a task, and you even had a few days in which you’d gone in, piddled around at the desk for your whole shift without seeing another soul, and gone home.

Your friends were always so busy. The two times you’ve been able to meet with them contained nothing but conversation about hero work, or else everything was somehow tangentially related to it, and you found yourself unable to contribute to the conversation. Both times, you’d left early, a little overstimulated, leaving Shinsou to make your excuses.

And Shinsou, bless him. Not avoiding you on purpose. In fact, you knew he’d drop almost anything for you to hang out, but you knew his schedule and how little rest he got. So, it was more of a self-imposed boundary on your side, taking into account that he needed sleep more than he needed to spend time with you.

So, yes, some of it was directly your fault, but you were achingly, astonishingly lonely, with an ever-lowering threshold for tolerance of outside stimulation, ultimately feeling like you didn’t belong here.)

Pens aligned. Coaster. Check the school email for—good, no emails. No voicemail. Get out your planner and write your hours in it to look busy. Hey, your water bottle’s nearing empty; maybe you could go fill it or even waste time brewing coffee. But where’s your work mug? You probably left it on the cleaning rack next to the office sink. You should go check.

“Hey,” said Aizawa out of nowhere, ignoring how you jumped out of your own skin, “Good morning. Are you doing a specific job at the moment?”

You gripped the arms of your swivel chair to ground yourself. Is this a test? “I was about to take a moment to make some coffee,” you said, because never let someone in a position of authority know that you were doing jackshit, “Is there something I can help you with, Aizawa-sensei?”

Frowning, he dipped his chin into his capture weapon, still tucked closely to his neck to shield him from the wind, and he shifted his weight to one leg, his fingers tapping in a ripple on the reception desk. “You don’t have to call me that anymore.”

“I’m gonna,” you said, “How can I help?”

Please don’t need anything. Please don’t need anythi—

“Permission has just cleared for me to assign you a long-term task.”

Shit, you thought, internally wincing at how he used the term task and not mission, as if you’d be plunged into the ice-cold water of a panic attack at the word. The kid gloves that everyone handled you with somehow both ingratiated and insulted you.

“You’ll be paid for it,” Aizawa continued, “and it’s low stakes interaction, not even face-to-face. It’s all online.” Aizawa clasped his hands on the desk and hunched over the top of it, the ends of his scarf trailing down onto your keyboard. “You’ll recall moving some boxes into room 310.”

“Of course.” Early in your first month back at U.A., you’d helped clean out and move some boxes into 310 in the same hall that housed Aizawa, Eri, and now you—you’d unofficially dubbed it as U.A.’s drawer to shove social rejects. “Is someone about to move in?”

“He’s been moved in for a while,” said Aizawa, pulling his capture weapon away from his neck, “Keep all of this quiet. You’re allowed to know because I’ve advocated for you, because I trust in you and in your ability to do this well.” Aizawa paused, the silence dragging on much longer than usual. His eyes glazed over, as if considering how to phrase his next proposal.

You waved your hand, prompting him to continue.

His eyes focused again. “The new person is a ward of the school, but All Might and I are his primary—caretakers isn’t quite the right term, and nor is supervisors, so perhaps it’s better to—”

“No, I get it,” you said, “This person is an adult, but they’re not quite independent. Go on.”

Aizawa paused, brow furrowed just slightly as he scrutinised you again, but he nodded slowly after a moment. “I’ll allow him to introduce himself to you. He doesn’t need me to set up expectations. What’s important for you to know, regarding your own participation, is that he’s very new to the hero scene and is receiving his hero training later in life than usual. He won’t be attending class but will be trained personally by select U.A. faculty, mostly All Might, Nezu, and me.”

“Is he officially a student?”

 “On paper.” Something strange passed across Aizawa’s face, but you couldn’t name it. “Where you come in is his socialisation. He’s spent most of his life in disciplinary isolation. Because of the adults raising him, his instincts trend towards distrust and animosity.”

So, Aizawa wanted you spend time with him until he was no longer bad with people, like spending time with feral cats at animal shelters until they’re ready to be adopted. “So, he’s distrustful. Hostile. Angry,” you said, scratching the side of your head, “Is he—do you think he’ll bring up bad stuff I’ve done to use it against me?”

“He doesn’t know who you are, aside from someone trusted by U.A. with hero experience,” said Aizawa, shaking his head, “and you can choose what information you give him.”

“Does he,” you said, sucking in through your teeth, “Does this guy know about how you’re going about this? I think—wouldn’t he be insulted if he knew about how you’re socialising him like an animal?”

Aizawa looked over his shoulder at the empty office, but he bent farther over the desk and spoke softly, anyway. “Recently, when I was training him at night, he expressed that he never knows what to do when someone wants to talk to him after mission, whether it’s successful or not. He froze entirely when a senior citizen thanked him last week, and that’s when we decided something tactile needed to be done. Since he’s grown used to me, you’re the solution.”

Okay. A volatile man, someone who couldn’t go to U.A. at the average age but for whom Aizawa, Nezu, and All Might were making an exception, even going so far as to personally take him out at night to practise hero work.

Hm. Fishy.

But if the good, good men who took care of you wanted you take care of another misplaced person, then you’re going to do it to the best of your ability.

“I hope I can live up to your expectations,” you said, making a note in your planner, “What am I doing?”

“I need you to learn how to play a video game,” said Aizawa, “and I need you to be absolute shit at it.”

***

For you to help some loser with socialisation, he would be teaching you how to play some janky, twenty-five-year-old MMORPG called Cipherstone—and not even the current, polished version of it; you had to sign up for an account on the version preserving the game exactly as it was in 2007. Nostalgia reasons, apparently.

You nudged Dango out aside to check your bedside clock. The discord call would start in five minutes, and you were making your Cipherstone account, completely unable to come up with a suitable username.

“Don’t connect it to your other online accounts or your actual identity,” Aizawa had said that morning.

Dango’s tiny prance across your stomach was not helping, and you couldn’t use Dango in your username, because if someone knew about your cat (and hopefully no one did, because cats were not allowed in the dorms), then a Dango username could be linked back to the real you. You plopped your head back on your pillow, knocking against the headboard. What’s something that couldn’t be traced back to you? Slumping, you let your head fall to the side and sulked.

The hentai book peeked out from underneath a jacket on your dirty clothes chair.

GinsengTea

That username is unavailable.

Well. You couldn’t use your birthdate as added numbers. You kept typing.

GinsengTea69

That username is unavailable.

You’re not about to try Lustful Ballsack. Maybe if you put aside your secretarial propensity for being correct for a moment.

GinzengTea

Username available!

Oh, thank God. You sorted out your password and started customising your character, though you couldn’t do much with the negative six billion pixels you were dealing with, and oh, is that the noise discord makes for a call? You plugged in your earbuds and clicked the answer button.

“Hello?” you asked into the microphone on your earbud cord, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture of a rotund, cartoon mouse. Username Tenkopeito. Looks like he ran into the same spelling trouble you did.

“Greetings and salutations,” he said, his tinny, rasping, just-got-out-of-bed, gruff-from-lack-of-use voice striking you with about fifty psychic damage, “I am Aizawa-sensei’s pupil, here to teach you about the intricacies of Cipherstone. It will be my pleasure—”

“Cut that shit out,” you said, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture: actually, that mouse was so round because it had just swallowed an enormous piece of konpeito whole, with the little star spikes jutting out underneath its fur. “No one talks like that. You sound fake as fuck.”

“I see,” he said after a beat, tone deflating to sound resigned (and though he’d relaxed, it somehow sounded as if talking this way took more effort, like it physically strained his vocal cords). “Am I not supposed to be nice?”

“You weren’t exactly being nice. You were using a customer service voice—which is being polite, not nice. Not even kind. Politeness is usually some sort of put-on affectation of niceness, forced for the situation. I understand if that’s what you think you need to do when you talk to people as a hero, but in hero work, since the stakes are high, you need to be genuine, or at least sound like you are.” Dango crawled across your stomach again, but you lifted her off before she could settle into a loaf on your keyboard. “In the field, it’s often hard to be kind because of how involved you get as a hero; being kind takes effort and drains you emotionally. Kindness implies there’s some sort of reciprocity, some sort of ongoing relationship. You can choose to be kind if you want, but it may wear on you in the long run. What will probably be healthiest for you, on your side, is if you aim to be nice, meaning being honest in a gentle way, framing situations positively but realistically for listeners. The public doesn’t want to be lied to and told everything’s fine, but telling them the harshness of reality doesn’t go over well. Kills morale.”

“Holy shit.” He was scratching something close to his microphone—it must be a fairly good mic, since you could deduce short fingernails against a dry surface. “That’s…a lot.”

“It is. But you can do it. All it takes is practise, and that’s what I’m here for,” you said, moving Dango from your keyboard again, “And I didn’t mean to overwhelm you with all of that; it just came out—I, uh, I happen to know a lot about the way heroes present themselves.” Swallowing thickly, you ran your tongue over your lower lip. “Why don’t we begin with what you were saying before? But in the actual way you talk, please. You need to be comfortable in your own voice.”

His mic picked up the distant noise of slurping through a straw, against what sounded like the bottom of a metal cup, which clinked when he set it back down. “Have you played Cipherstone before?”

“Total newcomer. Though I’ve seen some screenshots in memes.”

“Cool,” he said in a way that was clear it was not cool, “I can’t add you to my in-game friends list until you get off Tutorial Island. Share your screen with me until then.”

All right. You can be bad at this. You can be so bad at this. “What’s a screen?” Not that bad, idiot! “I mean,” you said, fumbling, “How do I share my screen with you?”

The scratching grew louder. “Bottom left. Screen button. Right click. Share option.”

“Ah.” You should probably lure him into thinking you’re competent while there was a literal tutorial onscreen so that he would be more frustrated with you later. “Gotcha.”

For a few seconds after your avatar popped onscreen for the first time, nothing came through but the 8-bit tutorial music. “Is that what you look like in real life?” he finally asked.

“No,” you said, not exactly lying. The character had her hair down in her face (which you wouldn’t normally do when you were on patrol, since it could get in the way of physical hero work), and, hoping to endear yourself to this weirdo, you’d chosen the sluttiest shirt: while none of the horrible pixelated options showed any boob whatsoever, the poor rendering still managed to convey that the top was off-shoulder. Again, not great for hero work. “In real life, I’ve much, much more panache.”

Another silence, during which you assumed he was looking up the word. “So, you click on the screen to go where you want to walk, on either the overall game interface or in the mini-map in the corner. Your destination will show up—”

“Wait, what should I call you, screwboy?”

“—as a red flag,” he said, frown audible, his rasping voice screeching to a stop the way brakes are slowly applied to the wheels of a train. “Not screwboy.”

“I’m not calling you by your handle. Not only is it cringe, but you won’t have to answer to it anywhere else in your life. If you don’t want to give me your name, that’s fine. I could call you by your hero name, if you like; it’d help you get used to answering to it. But no, I’m not calling you your username,” you said, shoulders slacking once Dango finally settled in a ball at your hip, “Especially since you couldn’t even get the correct spelling of Ten Konpeito.”

“It’s—it’s not supposed to say that,” he said, sputtering with a groan coming in at the end, “It’s a play on my name, and including the n makes it harder to say aloud. I think these things through; I have to be aware of my public image and branding now; that’s the whole point of this stupid—my name is Tenko, you asshole.”

“Oh, you’re gonna call civilians asshole?” You clicked your tongue. “Bad. Bad and evil. Speaking from experience, people don’t like that.”

“Just fu—just click on the map.”

“Fine. But you can’t fool me with your medieval, point-and-click game,” you said, clicking to pick up a fishing net, “Incidentally, the oldest known fishing net is the net of Antrea, crafted of willow and dating back to 8300 B.C.”

Tenko paused. “What would be the socially expected response to that?”

Your avatar fished for shrimps. “Oh, usually people yell at me. Get mad for bringing up total non sequiturs. My friend Bakugou is fond of telling me that I’m a collection of those bottle caps with facts printed on the inside.”

“Would…would you like me to get angry? Am I supposed to? I was under the impression I was supposed to curb my anger. To be nice.”

Your inventory filled with shrimps.

“You only need one shrimp,” said Tenko.

“You’ll thank me when we have food later,” you said, continuing to fish for shrimps.

“It’s the tutorial,” he said, frown creeping into his voice, “You won’t keep any resources from it. You should go chop the tree down to light a fire.”

“Well, hell. I want my shrimps.” You clicked away from the fishing spot and onto a tree. “Nothing’s happening.”

Tenko cleared his throat. “You need to talk to the woodcutting tutor first. She’ll give you an axe.”

“I thought this game had magic,” you said, guiding Dango’s head away from blocking the screen, “Can’t I just get logs with magic?”

“No, it’s—you must want me to get angry. As a test.” Scratching. “Magic comes later. Not for getting logs.”

You interpreted that as a sign to make the rest of the tutorial go smoothly. You followed the instructions for a few silent minutes, proving to him that you could read, and when you reached the end of the tutorial, a wizard teleported you to the crossroads of a town centre.

“Ah,” you said, genuinely surprised as other players’ avatars, decked out in what must be high-level gear, dashed past, “I don’t know where I am.”

“You can turn your screen-sharing off now.” Tenko typed on what sounded like a mechanical keyboard. “I’m over here. I’ve got—by the fountain—white hair, all black clothes. I’m not—there you are.”

Dozens of other players were running past the two of you, the only bare, new players in the area. Tenko’s pixelated avatar waved at you. Cheeky bitch. He’s so poorly animated and so very 2007 that it gave no indication what he could look like in real life. But he’s chosen to have a black t-shirt as his default, so he has to be a slut.

You resisted the urge to ask to feel his pixelated bicep. “You don’t have any equipment. I thought you’ve played Cipherstone before?”

“My main account is max-ed out. I started a new account to grow at the same rate as you. Before anything else, notice where we are,” said Tenko, “We’re in the centre of the city of Renfield. Get familiar with it. Think of it as home. It’s where you’ll always come back to when you get lost.”

It’s a barely animated town centre, with a short path up the stairs to a castle door and a few market stalls split between fountains.

“I have no idea what that means, Tenko.”

“It means that—that,” Tenko said, and stopped.

You couldn’t stop grinning, biting at your lower lip to keep from laughing—he’d let out a flustered huff, sounding a little strangled, because you’d said his name for the first time—and, judging by how long this delicious silence was dragging on, Tenko was probably his given name, not the family name. Beautiful, really, that a guy his age (however old he was, but he’s at least the same as you, since he couldn’t attend U.A. at the usual time) could get this nervous over a woman calling him by his name.

Tenko recovered in a way that showed he didn’t: “It means that you are always able to cast one spell, regardless of magic level,” he said in a rush, “It is a homing spell that teleports you back to this spot, so even if you get lost, you can always get back to Renfield. You can teleport other ways, too, but that’s for another time, and I need a cup of coffee.” He inhaled sharply.

It's only the first day, so you should go easy on him. Let his moment of awkwardness go.

However, Aizawa gave you a mission.

Excuse you, a task.

“Do you plan on getting flustered every time a civilian calls you by name?” you asked, petting between Dango’s ears, “Or are you planning on avoiding as much publicity as possible by being an underground hero like Aizawa?”

“I don’t—they’re not going to—it’s different with you. I can already tell,” said Tenko (you froze, fingers curled into Dango’s fur), “because I’m going to have some sort of working relationship with you. I assume you’re here to stay.”

Putting it that way made your heartbeat throb around your ears. You decided you could ask directly. “Tenko’s your first name, then?”

“Yeah.” He must have covered his hand with his mouth, muffling his voice at first. “But people usually—people have been calling me something else.”

“Then I can call you something else, if you like,” you said, getting back to petting Dango behind her ears and resolving to treat him with the same tenderness—he must need it, since no one in his life knows him well enough to call him by his given name.

“No, I think you should,” he said a bit too quickly, “Call me that. Tenko. I’m tired of that other stuff. Click on something to keep from logging out, by the way. There’s a timer.” Mechanical typing noises. “No, Aizawa-sensei wants me to be better. Of all things, I need to learn to respond to my real name.”

You squinted at your screen, as if the methodical rise and fall of his avatar’s chest could betray how he was feeling. Something had to have happened to this guy to make him feel this way about such a basic part of his identity, to make other people avoid his real name so universally. Aizawa couldn’t’ve have assigned you this task just to socialise him; something else was unfolding here. How did you enter the equation? If you’re supposed to guide someone who’s also lost their direction in life, you’re a hell of a bad candidate.

But what if you fuck up Aizawa’s plan, whatever it was?

Your recent history is riddled with things going downhill. What if you somehow screwed over Tenko? You’d be dragging someone else down with you, down to…the beginning again, a humiliating re-start, back at your fucking school, when the rest of your friends were out living the dream you’d all crafted together, the dream that apparently could go on without you in it.

Well. Enough of that. Distract yourself. Distract Tenko, too. “Got it. I want a hat.”

“What?”

“I want a hat,” you said, clicking the space around the fountain for your avatar to walk, “My head is cold. How do we get a hat? Hats. You should get one, too.”

“Hats. Very well,” said Tenko, clicking to face you across the shitty fountain, “Do you want one that’s purely decorative or one that has some sort of stats? Decorative ones we can get within a minute, with good RNG, by killing goblins across the bridge. There’s a low chance we could get a low-tier wizard’s hat doing that, too.”

“Then it will be a pleasure killing goblins with you, Tenko.”

“Mm,” he said at the back of his throat, “First, we’ll need to obtain some sort of weapons, since bare-handed punching them will take forever. We could either talk to the melee tutor to get a temporary sword or start wi—actually, we should talk to the melee tutor. Melee will probably be the easiest fighting style for you right now, and it’ll be the simplest, since you won’t have to worry about running out of ammunition or runes.”

“Sure,” you said, leaning back in bed, “Do we go starboard or port?”

“You can just call them east and west, y’know. And we go north.”

To be obstinate, you clicked the opposite direction that Tenkopeito was going, and the moment you ran offscreen, Tenko spoke in a low, grumbling voice into his microphone. “No, don’t run away from me. Come back here.”

The rumble in his voice shot warmth straight to your lower stomach, the nature of the encounter between the two of you changing in a second. Your avatar kept running to her destination, your hand frozen and hovering above the tracking pad. You blinked, your throat drying. Snapping back into it, you ran back to Tenko, who seemed unaware of what he just did to you—and he almost negated your arousal in the way he kept talking about sword upgrades and something called RNG.

Uh.

“—now, it’ll take about ten minutes, but it’ll seem like two hours of hard labour. Follow me across the bridge. Follow—there’s a follow mechanic, if you’ll right-click on me.”

Oh, you’ll right-click him, all right. You needed to know more about Tenko—why you’ve been paired off, what Aizawa’s planning for him, what—a tinge of shame soured at the back of your tongue, because what currently gripped you were minutiae: more about him, what he looks like, what he likes, what he does for fun, if you’re…the sort of person he’d get along with in real life, if you hadn’t been forced together.

God, get over yourself. You spend two months away from men your age, and now, you’re thirsting over someone you don’t even know because he said one hot thing. You needed to be socialised—no, stop. This isn’t about you. Stop thinking about what his hands would feel like on you, what he’d sound like grunting into your ear as he ground against you—

“You’ve been quiet for a minute,” said Tenko, slashing the first goblin, “Are you all right?”

A very heroic question when you haven’t been thinking too heroically. The thought of his voice muttering against your neck still grasped you tightly. “I’m having—technical difficulties.”

***

Poking your head outside of your dorm/apartment door, you scanned the hallway for witnesses. You gripped the handle of Dango’s carrier, still hidden behind the door inside your dorm, and you nodded back at her when she meowed at you.

“I know, baby,” you said, listening for footsteps, “We’ll be outside soon enough. Gotta check for people, though.”

Okay, nothing coming. You shifted Dango’s carrier out of your dorm and pulled out your key, sticking it in the lock at the same time as a door opened down the hall.

Too fast—you had to prod her carrier back inside, your foot stuck in the crack between wall and door, just as—as Midoriya strode down the hall. Keys jangling. Civilian clothes (a Froppy hoodie, in fact).

“Oh, hello!” Midoriya only seemed to notice you once you were struggling to close the door despite the carrier being the way, and hopefully you thrust it fully inside swiftly enough for him not to catch the flash of burgundy. He trotted up to you, hands in the pockets of his worn cargo pants. “I didn’t think you’d be around. Do you not have work today?”

Dango meowed mournfully through the door, and you stepped in front of it. “It’s my lunch break. I’m going for a walk.”

Midoriya nodded, and he glanced over his shoulder back to the room he’d left. “Gotcha, gotcha. Good weather for it, especially after that storm earlier this week.” easy smile stretched across his face as he faced you again, but his gaze weighed down on you, as if the number one hero’s attention magnified your failures in comparison to his rise to the top—and the fact that he didn’t mean to pressure you only exacerbated the feeling.

“Uh,” you said, stuffing your keys in your backpack and setting it on the ground, as if you’re not waiting to go back inside, “May I ask what you’re doing here? Don’t you have better—aren’t you busy?”

Chuckling, Midoriya scratched the back of his neck (and oh, in that laughter, he was hiding something). “I make time. I’m just visiting,” he said, jerking his head back towards the end of the hall, “A friend. I want to take care to see him regularly. I didn’t know you lived on the same hall.”

“If you can call it living,” you said, and for some reason, Midoriya frowned, took a step closer to you, and said your name under his breath, eyes fucking wide and too damn concerned for your comfort. Fuck, you only meant to make a self-depredating joke, not make the situation serious. 

“You—you know that you can reach out to us. I mean that. If you’re scared you’re gonna burden any of us—”

You’d squatted down to go through your bag, just to have something to do, to have an excuse to not look him in the eyes. If you were going to cry—which you were not!—then the number one hero’s not going to get to witness it.

“—then reach out to me, at least. I’ve got time, or else I can make it.” Midoriya was kneeling next to you, and you kept your eyes on the inside of your backpack. “If it makes you feel less like you’re bothering any of us, I could check in with you when I come see my friend. I’d already be on campus. I wouldn’t be going out of my way.” He sighed to fill the space when you didn’t answer. “What are you looking for?”

“I can’t find my planner,” you invented, and, acting like you were upset, you zipped your backpack again. “I think I need to go back inside to locate it.”

He shifted his jaw, and he glanced down at your bag and back at you. “Come with me to the vending machines, at least?”

The new symbol of peace, asking to spend time with you. You didn’t deserve it, so you shook your head. “I don’t have much time left in my break. I think I’d better let you go.”

Shifting his jaw, Midoriya tilted his head at you, his eyes glinting. “All right,” he said slowly, “You know yourself better than anyone else. Do what you need to. Rest up.” He started walking backwards towards the stairs. “And I want to see you more—we all do. I’ll see you the next time I come around. Maybe the three of us could hang out?”

“Sure,” you said, shoving your key in the lock to let a thrashing Dango out of her misery.

***

“The church. It’s the one with the altar icon in the minimap.”

You clicked enough so that your avatar would backtrack. “How am I supposed to know that’s the church? Is that icon supposed to be an altar? It looks nothing like an altar. It looks more like a steaming cup of tea.”

“That’s fair,” said Tenko into his headset, “but this is the easiest quest in the game. How are you having this much trouble with it?”

“Oh, stop that,” you said, reaching his character in front of the priest, “It’s intuitive to you because you’ve been playing this for years. Do we kill this guy?”

“What? No. He’s going to give us each the key to a dungeon underneath the church.”

“How can he give us both a key if there’s only one?” You clicked through the dialogue with the priest, and a key appeared in your inventory. “Also, how accurate is this dungeon? Because if this is a broadly medieval game, then the dungeons will be closer to underground bathrooms rather than, like, creepy and wet with shackles and bones. That was popularised by Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.”

“How the hell do you know that,” Tenko asked flatly, “Ne—never mind. It doesn’t matter. Follow me to the trapdoor outside.”

You did, and it was locked. “Are we allowed to do this?” you asked, clicking on the key and then the lock, “Will we get arrested for trespassing?”

“Wha—no. No, we’re supposed to in order to progress the quest. In fact, our characters do a frankly criminal amount of breaking and entering throughout the game and never get checked for it. Hey, don’t go down there without me.”

Your character had only just gone down the trapdoor, prompting a blackout loading screen, but you popped back up to the surface before you could get a good look around. Your character stood next to Tenko’s, still next to the trapdoor. “What’s the holdup? I thought the only step was to use the key on the door. Did I skip something?”

“No, I—huh,” said Tenko, cutting himself off with a tinge of frustration creeping into his voice, “I lost the key.”

Raising a brow, you tilted your head. “What? How’d you lose it?”

“I don’t know. It was in my inventory one minute, and now it’s not. I didn’t touch it.” His mic picked up light scratching. “You’re not supposed to be able to lose the key, but I guess I can go back to the priest to get another. You wait—”

“Hold up,” you said, brow furrowed, “I have it. It’s in my inventory.”

“The hell? Are you sure it’s not just your own key?”

“Positive. I have two of them now. Same key, right next to each other. Want me to share my screen?”

“No, I—I believe you.” Tenko took a moment. “I’m not familiar with this sort of glitch, where an item from one player’s inventory randomly transfers to another’s. This doesn’t even happen, in my experience, but maybe it’s because this is one of the earliest quests coded into the game. It’s twenty-five-year-old code at this point, and it might have glitched because we’re both trying to perform the same quest actions on the same game tick.”

“Sure,” you said, “So, what do I do? Do I drop the key for you to pick up, or?”

“It disappears if you drop it. Trade me. Right-click, trade option.”

Once the key was traded, the two of you went down the trapdoor and wove your way back into the underground headquarters of a low-level cult, vacant for the moment but with evidence of rituals on the walls and floors, particularly in front of their bloodstained altar.

“Okay, we’re in their headquarters,” you said, making your character walk up the aisle, “What now? Priest guy didn’t give us any instructions.”

His avatar followed you and sat on the only programmed-to-be-sittable seat in the pew, his black cape (that he stole from a highwayman’s corpse) folding under his legs. “Actually, he did. You just clicked through his dialogue.”

“Because you’re here to tell me what to do, Quest Man.”

“Click on the—” Tenko heaved an enormous sigh, microphone sparking. “You figure it out. What’s clickable in this room? What has examine text?”

You hovered your mouse over most of the room, and nothing popped up with the examine option, except for something on the altar. “It’s this weird-looking, severed hand, isn’t it? This thing standing up on a slice of wrist by itself?” Your character walked nearer to it, fingers splayed widely enough to hold an in-game apple. “Weirdest ring-holder I’ve ever seen.”

When Tenko didn’t say anything, you glanced towards his character, but he was still sitting on the pew.

“Is this whole quest a pun? Because it’s one of the easiest quests, so they’re giving us a lot of guidance, so it’s like they’re holding our hands to get it through?”

That broke his silence: he scoffed into the mic. “I doubt it,” he said, “You need to grab the hand for the quest to keep going.”

“Fine,” you said, clicking the hand, and the instant your avatar touched it, a zombie spawned from the altar and began to attack you. “Dude! Did you know that thing was gonna jump me?” you asked, clicking away a few spaces but turning around to stab at it with your stupid bronze dagger, “And you just sat there? You could’ve warned me.”

“I did, and the priest did, and the duke who gave us this quest did. That’s why we went and baked all those pies in your inventory, yeah? For you to eat during this fight?”

Your character kept missing hits. “Yeah, but—like! I didn’t know the fight would be now.”

“Hey, relax.” Tenko’s voice sounded muffled, like his mouth was smushed as his fist dug into his cheek. “It’s only a level 12, and you’re level 9. Not too big of a difference. With your armour and weapon, you out-level it.”

The miss sound effect spoke for itself.

“You’ll kill it eventually. You won’t always hit zeroes, so it’ll pass.”

Though your character dealt her first damage, you frowned. “That’s…that’s actually really good advice, Tenko. The stuff you just said would work well if you were trying to calm someone down—reminding people of reality and emphasising perseverance over luck or natural talent are some of the better ways to encourage people.”

“Is that so,” he asked flatly, trying to put off a yawn and failing, “I haven’t—I wasn’t thinking about hero work. Just thinking about the game.”

“Well, it was nice,” you said, “and it seemed like it came naturally. Mind if I ask if something caused it?”

He yawned again, but he must have leant away from the mic so that you wouldn’t hear anything besides the initial inhale. “Nothing special happened today, but I’m too tired to get irritated. Therapy took a lot out of me today.”

Therapy. Therapy. Okay, so he’s got an official diagnosis somewhere. The word today implies that it’s a regular thing, and for some reason, this session was more intense. Intense emotionally? Physically? What kind of therapy? Well, they offered cognitive behavioural therapy on campus, but considering his non-traditional student status, his might be outsourced. Plus, if you, a former hero but technically a civilian, are being implemented into his care plan without being informed directly—

“You usually don’t go this long without saying some inane non sequitur,” said Tenko, that same, strange scratching picking up on the mic, “Snap out of it. You’re gonna get killed by the easiest quest boss in the game.”

Making an undignified noise, you shook yourself and spam-clicked on a cherry pie for your character to eat until she was healed completely, and then you clicked on the zombie to attack again.

“Why’d you pause when I said therapy? Surprised I’d go? Think that sort of thing is below me?”

“Of course not,” you said, trying to seem like you were focused on the fight so that he wouldn’t get nervous about sharing personal information, “Therapy good. Therapy great. Everyone needs to go to therapy.” Since he appeared to be taking this casually, you could probably ask after the type without it seeming too intrusive. “What kind? CBT? That’s what—”

“You think U.A. would arrange for me to get my cock and balls tortured? That wouldn’t qualify as therapy for me, certainly, and there’s no way that U.A. would pay for—”

“Not fucking cock-and-ball torture, you muppet; cognitive behavioural therapy. The sitting-down-with-therapist-to-talk-about-your-trauma-and-restructuring-the-way-you-think-through-practise type. You fuckin’ pervert,” you said, grinning at his avatar onscreen.

“Good to know. I didn’t know the name for it.”

“It’s good that you made this mistake with me instead of with Aizawa-sensei.”

“He’s probably more inclined towards bondage. Congratulations on killing your first boss,” said Tenko, and you blinked in surprise at your character: you’d defeated the zombie while staring at him. It fell to the ground, dropping bones and some sort of arrows.

“Take those. Check to see if they’re iron or steel. All right, equip them in your ammo slot for now so that they don’t take up an inventory space.”

You did so. “Why didn’t it attack me with the arrows if it were holding them?”

“There’s no logic to it besides that arrows are on its drop table. It’s coded to attack by punching you in the face, which doesn’t involve arrows.”

“Sure. Now, let’s get out of the cult basement; I wanna bake more pies until we can make apple ones. Did you know that the first record of fruit pies was around 1600? That means these fruit pies are anachronistic, since this game pitches itself as medieval.”

“Is that…” The hesitance had you beaming, daring him to actually ask it. “Is that not medieval?”

“Tenko, get your head out of your ass. For reference, 1600 is arguably the year the Azuchi-Momoyama period ended and the Edo period began. The game frames itself as medieval European, and 1600 is hard Renaissance-slash-Early-Modern. That’s Shakespeare times, screwboy.”

Only silence on your headphones. Character still on the pew. You made your character walk over to his to perform the curtsy emote, and in real life, you frowned. “Did I go too far there? Bit too annoying? I’m really sorry if I’m bothering you with this sort of thing; my friends say that I—”

“Nothing’s wrong. I needed a moment,” came Tenko’s voice, quiet and steady, “I could hear you smiling, and it was—it was good.”

Inhaling sharply, you pressed a fist to your mouth. Great. Fucking fabulous. Goddammit, you hadn’t aimed for it to go this way, but were you now the one getting flustered at something as simple as—

“Do most people consider a long pause in conversation rude? Did I fuck up with that?”

“No! No, of course not,” you were saying, trying to recover but still startled at how he was able to flip the vibe of your conversations in so few words, words that seemed so casual to him but grabbed you by the throat/cunt, “Especially since you followed-up with a check-in of how it might be strange; a lot of times, people will be comforted by checking to see if something’s okay with them personally…”

Frowning, you trailed off when another avatar entered the cult’s sanctuary and strode up the aisle. You hovered over the new guy’s stupid frog mask to see his username was Venomothman.

“Fucking great,” grumbled Tenko, “Here comes someone else to break our immersion. Ignore him. I’ll go ahead and fight the zombie so that we can get out of here.”

“The zombie’s dead. You don’t have to fight him,” you said, as Venomothman sat directly on top of Tenkopeito, with both avatars glitching as they took up the same space on the pew.

Tenko made some sort of noise in the back of his throat. “No, I have to kill it, too. It’s like each of us is the only one doing the quest, so in your version, the evil has been defeated, but in my version—it’s this thing called an instance—”

Venomothman: wow a couple questing together

Venomothman: bet ur one guy on two accounts

Venomothman: roleplaying that he can get a gf

The new guy’s in-text chat appeared in yellow font above his avatar’s frog-faced head, and somehow, the boggly, green eyes made his words more irritating.

Venomothman: leave the basement sometimes ya incel

“Some people are assholes recreationally,” said Tenko, making his avatar stand to go to the altar as the clatter of mechanical typing came through the mic, “Let me get rid of this fucking scumba—wait.”

 Venomothman: ur doing too much work to stare at pixelated ass

“Would it be correct for a hero to insult someone online?”

You shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “Eh. You’re not on duty, and you’re not under any persona connected with your public branding. I would say go for it, but since you’re trying to be better with people, you may want to practise.”

Venomothman: somehow this is even more pathetic than never knowing the touch of a woman at all

“Then I’ll shut him down. The shit-talking isn’t bothering me so much as his breaking our immersion in the game,” said Tenko, grabbing the hand on the altar to start his instance of the fight, “I’m trying to cultivate a particular experience for you, and he’s a fucker who won’t stop yapping. Give me a second.”

Venomothman: is this what does it for you??

Venomothman: why no response

Venomothman: hard to type with one hand, isn’t it, ******* shithead

You laughed through your nose. “Cipherstone censors the word fuck?”

“It censors fuck; it censors cunt,” said Tenko, avatar casting a weak air spell at the zombie, slowly, slowly draining its health, “Everything else is fair game.”

“Will it censor variations of cunt? Like, if I typed in cuntbag? Or—actually, let’s find that out later,” you said, tapping the buttons on your earbud cord to turn up the volume, “Let’s practise navigating difficult social interactions. What’s our goal here in this conversation? Is it to continue to engage?”

“No.” His spell missed, and the zombie landed a hit on his character, prompting him to eat half of a pie. “It’s to close the interaction. Therefore, I need to say something concise that invites no response, right? I’m assuming that a simple fuck off is unacceptable.”

“You’re getting better at this, y’know?”

“Is that condescension I detect?”

“Only a little.” You slumped back against your headboard and reached for the bottle of water on your bedside table. “Actually—no. No condescension. Genuinely, Tenko, you’re picking up on this stuff easily, and it’s impressive. You’ll be able to walk little old ladies across the street with style and flair in no time.” 

“Hilarious,” he said, voice restrained and tight at the mention of his name (too easy—he gives himself away aurally so freely; who knows what you could read off of him when you had a visual?), “I’m sure no one wants me touching them. Can I—hm.” He sounded like he was pressing his fist against his face somehow. “Why you keep bothering to compliment me? Most people bitch down to me like I’ve spat my own cum in their coffee.”

“Wha—how about because you deserve to be complimented? Listen,” you said, electing to brush over his vivid simile, “Silent admiration rots. By keeping in appreciation or gratitude, you’re not doing anyone any good. Kind regards are meant to be shared. Like, now, if I held back any positive thoughts concerning your growth, then you might not feel encouraged to keep going.���

“Like I’m gonna go around fucking complimenting ev—”

“I’m not saying you have to,” you said, “but consider trying it more often. See if anything turns out better. And be sure to be sincere about it—obviously.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Just consider it. So. What has he told us about himself based on how he’s insulted you?”

“He’s so low-level that it looks like he just created his account. His stats are even lower than ours,” said Tenko, speaking more quickly now that it was a subject he was more comfortable with, unequipping his wand to punch the zombie instead, “But he’s gone out of his way to get the frog mask.”

“His words, Tenko,” you said, unscrewing the cap and doing your fucking darndest to pinch your mouth from smiling at his slight hitch when you said his name, “I’m trying to get you to notice on whom he looks down and what that means for his personal social status.”

“Right,” he said a bit too quickly, a bit of a break in his voice on the word, “He’s debasing me for—oh, you’re brilliant. How the hell do you notice these things? He’s using basement dweller as insult, meaning he considers himself above that. Leave it to me.”

You muted yourself briefly to glug down water; you didn’t know how sensitive the mic was on your earbuds, but considering that you could catch onto Tenko’s occasional rustling of what sounded like plastic bags on his side or typing on his mechanical keyboard, as he was right now, you would prefer not to be emitting the same.

Tenkopeito: Your mom wishes you would come out of your room to talk with the rest of the family more often

You spluttered into your water bottle as the yellow text appeared above his head, and you unmuted yourself. “That is not what I meant for you to—”

“Was I being mean?” The mic caught the creak of Tenko’s chair as he leant back in it, and you could picture him defensive and pouting as he crossed his arms (and it struck you that you couldn’t imagine his face. Grimacing, you bit the inside of your cheek). “I wasn’t being rude. I could be so much crueller, but I thought this would be more of a devastating blow. Living on the same floor as your family isn’t the same as living in the basement, so I’m acknowledging his level of social power while still demeaning—”

Venomothman: i mean you right

Venomothman: lmao how tf did you know it was me

“I think we should log out,” you said, wiping the water off of your chin with the back of your hand and setting the bottle back on the bedside table.

Over Tenko’s microphone, you heard the shrill pitch of a custom ringtone and a startled but violent shuffle at the noise. “Hold on. I’m getting a call,” he said, voice coming through at a distance, as if he’d knocked his mic aside.

“Oh? Who is it?”

It took him a minute, but Tenko eventually replied, “A friend.”

That must be a damn good microphone, because you could still pick up on Tenko’s side of the conversation a few feet away. “Yes, hello?” he asked, a bit more brusquely than you’d heard him before.

“Oh. I didn’t,” he was saying, “How was I supposed to know that you’d—yes, that’s her. The one working with Aizawa-sensei.”

Very nice, you were thinking, as you unlocked your own phone to check your messages. Very good for him to have friends. Not that you would’ve pegged him as the absolute loner type, because he proved to be adaptable and quick on his feet, but since Aizawa’d recruited you for interpersonal help, you’d considered that he may not have friends. So, good on him for having at least one friend, it seemed, who cared enough to create an account on some stupid video game solely to annoy him.

“—cool of you to make an account to hang out with me. Stop fucking laughing; I am trying to be kind to you, shitstain. Okay. I don’t know. I haven’t been in contact with him in the past two days. I’ve been busy. Let me check.” Tenko leant back towards the mic to address you. “Do we have a schedule for the rest of the week? For instance, are we doing this again on Thursday?”

“I thought we were,” you said, scanning your room for your planner so that you could check your calendar, “Did something come up?”

“It’s not imperative that I go,” Tenko was saying into your ear, while you picked up your laptop to walk over to your U.A.-issued desk, “but another friend who’s been out of town will finally be back then. We might hang out.”

“Psh, go with your friends,” you said, delighted that he had more than one (fighting envy that it was so easy for them to meet up), “We can do this another time.”

“Understood,” Tenko said and backed away from the mic.

Venomothman: so have you sucked his dick yet

Tenko’s incensed shout of “Touya!” had you turning down the volume.

Venomothman: not to be the world’s worst wingman, but my dude is packing. and goes commando all the time.

Venomothman: and i would know. “i” sometimes “did” our “laundry”

You: what’s with all those quotation marks

Venomothman: and do you know the last time it was sucked? never

(Fucking hell. This Touya was walking you back into forbidden territory: the sexualisation of Tenko. After that first session, when you’d been turned on by his confident, rumbling voice as he’d given you an order, you’d felt guilty for sexualising him for the rest of the night. It was as if instead of friend-zoning him, you’d sex-zoned him, only able to see him as a sexual person/object. For the sake of your mission task, that felt unfair.

Or maybe you weren’t even sexualising him. Maybe your brain was appropriately interpreting what he’d done as sexual.

Whatever. Something in your gut was begging you not to see Tenko only through romantic or sexual lenses right now, and you couldn’t explain why.

And talking about Tenko’s apparently massive dick was not helping.)

Tenkopeito: Touya if you don’t ******* shut up I am going to tear off your other arm

Venomothman: no need, boss man

You heard Tenko sigh and say into his phone, sounding exhausted, “I’m not your boss anymore, Touya.”

Venomothman: no need, douchebag

***

Draped over the side of your bed, you dangled a shoelace in front of the gap in an attempt to coax Dango out from underneath. “Dango, sweetie,” you said, whipping the shoelace to the side, “Come out here so that I can look you in the eyes. Where is my planner, you whore?”

At a firm knock on your door, you shot up, dropping the lace. “Never mind,” you said, sliding off the bed, “Stay hidden.”

You opened your door on Aizawa, bare arm raised in mid-knock, wisps of hair plastered to his forehead by dried sweat, and a sweatshirt tied around his waist. He took two seconds to look over you before saying, “Get dressed. Civilian clothes. You have three minutes.”

Throwing on yesterday’s outfit, you rushed to follow Aizawa out of the dorm and off campus, nearly stepping on his heels while he wove through night pedestrians, pulling on his own sweatshirt to minimise skin contact once the crowd thickened.

You flipped up your coat collar to sneak a glance over your shoulder. “Is this a test?”

Aizawa combed his fingers back through his hair, gaze straight ahead. “Not for you.”

“Right.” You stepped more lightly, naturally falling back into patrol patterns: noting exits (narrow alleyways favouring the left side, underground into the subway station), checking vantage points (upper-storey windows in the resident buildings, non-industrial rooftops), honing in on light sources (yellow- and LED-tinted streetlamps, ambience from open businesses) and physical presence (close enough to brush shoulders with passerby [putting you on edge, because the slightest touch could be pivotal]). You had to consciously unclench your jaw, body flooded with stress it hadn’t felt in months. Swiping at the inner corner of your eye, you asked, “Does it have anything to do with the guy in the black hoodie and face mask following us?”

Aizawa laughed through his nose, once. “All right, then. What’s that ice cream place you and Shinsou went to all the time? Take us there.”

Bewildered, you changed directions to head towards Nekozawa’s, with Aizawa placing a hand on your shoulder to slow your pace, and by the time you pushed open Nekozawa’s glass door to the glowing, pink parlour, you were prepared to hold it open for your follower in the face mask. You watched his broad back as he ordered some ungodly, radioactive-blue ice cream with gummy bears before retreating to a table outside despite the dropping temperature, and Aizawa gestured you forward so that he could pay for the three of you.

Holding your ice cream, you hesitated at the door, swaying underneath the seasonal cat decorations dangling from the ceiling.

“Go on,” said Aizawa, retrieving the U.A. card from his wallet, “I’ve got to make a phone call, so don’t wait up. Don’t be too harsh on him; we’re here because he did a good job in the field today. Tailing you was extra practise.”

Nodding, you nudged open the door, bracing yourself at the cold, night air, and let it drift shut behind you as you approached the table, the farthest one from the pink lights.

Hood pulled up, Tenko bent over his blue monstrosity, face mask hanging by a loop over his left ear. Scuffing your boots on the concrete to announce your presence, you sat across from him, setting your cup on the cast iron before swinging your leg over the bench. You managed a cursory glance over what appeared to be a sketchbook before he closed it, and once he’d stowed it away, he swopped his spoon to his dominant hand to keep eating.

“You draw, Tenko?” To make him feel more comfortable, you kept your gaze towards Aizawa inside on the phone. “Do you think you’re any good?”

“Not yet. But I’m gonna be,” he said, clicking his pen and clenching it in his left hand, “I’ve got all these fucking artist’s gloves, so I might as well put ‘em to use.”

“Very nice,” you said, nodding, closing your eyes as you dipped your spoon into your ice cream, “But as a reminder, you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. I love doing stuff I’m absolute shit at. It reminds me of medieval bestiaries. They didn’t know shit about animals, but, boy howdy, did they have fun illustrating them. Did you know a weasel used to be called a polecat?”

Tenko huffed, his face mask fluttering. “It really is you.”

“Of course it is,” you said, beaming, and for the first time, you looked at him.

Tension flooded your teacup of a body and overflowed into the saucer and onto the floor. Heightened by the cold, a vein on the back of your hand strained and pulsed visibly, and, jaw locking, you lunged over the tabletop to grab him by the shoulders, shaking him.

“What the hell is wrong with you‽” You climbed over the table, pushed his ice cream out of the way (he shot out a hand to save it from toppling off the table, and he ripped off his face mask to set it aside before it fell to the ground), and planted your foot on his thigh and your elbows on his chest, caging him in as you forced him flat on the bench. “Why the fuck are you using your real name in your fucking Cipherstone username, you fucking moron‽ People could fucking track you!”

The man who had been Shigaraki Tomura eyed your fists in his hoodie and then his cup of ice cream. “You didn’t have a problem with it before.”

“I—” This idiot! “I didn’t know it was you. There are a lot of Tenkos.”

“Then there’s my logic,” he said, hands dangling by his sides, making no attempt to touch you—you didn’t know if you appreciated it or not. “I thought you knew who I was.”

“No, I fucking—I would have given you advice that was more specific to you, over the spiel I was giving interns.” Releasing your grip on his hoodie, you sat back up and scooted over on the tabletop. Though you wanted to keep holding him, to hug him after all he’s been through, he probably wouldn’t want that. “I’m—sorry about tackling you. I, uh—fuck,” you said, and, grimacing, you slid his ice cream back to him and reached across for your own, pretending with everything you’ve got that it was perfectly normal that you were sitting on a table next to Shigaraki Tomura, who’s been teaching you to play a video game, who’s apparently living at the end of the hall, who’s decorated his door with Eri’s silver tinsel for Christmas, who’s banned from drinking caffeine, who could rest his fucking head on your thigh if he wanted. Normal. Yeah.

“Again, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep doing that,” he said, fishing out a gummy bear like you hadn’t lunged at him, “Your reaction was reasonable.”

“It—it wasn’t, really,” you said, laughing nervously, “I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, no one knows what—what happened to you. Afterwards. It was really unclear.”

“It was that way on purpose,” said Tenko, “It was thought to be better to emphasise the total destruction of All for One instead of whatever happened to his leftovers.” He shifted a bear to his back molars to bite into the frozen gummy better. “Nezu-sensei decided it was better to keep it muddled for now.”

Muddled was a good way to put it. There’d been so much chaos at the end of the war that so much never was accounted for. You’d think that the location of Shigaraki’s body would be high on the list, but satisfaction was found simply in the splintered, spectacular remains of AFO. Shigaraki’s name wasn’t cleared, per se, but in the aftermath, Midoriya especially stressed that yes, Shigaraki committed atrocities, but he’d been abused, groomed, and literally bodily possessed by AFO to think that way. Didn’t excuse him, but wasn’t entirely his fault.

The locations of the other PLF members—well, the core of the League, really—were public, if not vague. Spinner was in the States at a rehab that specialised in heteromorph trauma; Toga was at a local women’s facility called Sakura Grove, and Dabi was living with his family—he must have been that Touya on the phone, holy shit.

So, here he was, sitting on the bench at the same ice cream parlour you visited with the same friends who fought him, hunched over in oversized, black clothes you suspected were Aizawa’s, broad shoulders and faded scars out of place in the pink lights, white hair pulled back in a blunt ponytail with his bangs flopping over his forehead, seemingly unbothered by the toe of your boot pressing against his denim-covered thigh.

God. He’s scratched at his neck so much that it looks like he’s been beheaded with a blunt axe.

Tenko’s eyes flickered up to you, their colour deepening to crimson in the tinted lights. “So. You’ve got questions.”

“Are you okay?”

Tenko swallowed with effort, scowling. “Don’t start with a hard one.”

“Right,” you said, throat drying, “Who knows you’re staying at U.A.?”

“Faculty and staff. My therapist. The police force. The ramen shop Aizawa-sensei and I go to. The intensive rehab I was at before. The top of the hero commission. Touya, Touya’s father, Spinner, Toga. Eri and Midoriya,” he said, tongue swiping over his lower lip, “You.”

Somehow both fewer and more than you’d figured. “What exactly…is the situation? Aizawa-sensei was vague.”

“Officially, I’m like Eri: a ward of U.A. My old rehab thought I was good enough to live off their campus, so I’m back here, where I can be watched by people capable enough to bring me down if I go crazy again,” he said, brow furrowed as he traced the side of his cup with his spoon, “I should resent that, but it’s not like I have anywhere else to go, especially somewhere as comfortable as this. This is fucking stupid to say aloud, but fucking—fuckin’ All Might is the closest thing I have to family now, along with Midoriya.”

“I’m not following.”

“My grandma was the holder of One for All before All Might had it.” He pointed at you with his spoon. “So you can make the connection from there. But it’s stupid; I’m stupid—” He was shaking his head and staring into his lap. “—because it’s like I have a brother in Midoriya and a goddamn father in All Might—and then Aizawa-sensei’s acting like a dad, too, to me and Eri, and Nezu-sensei? Nezu-sensei is so fucking cool,” said Tenko, dragging his hand down his face, “He’s got a driver’s license! I don’t even have one of those. And he can type fucking 210 words per minute with those little rat paws, and I’m still getting used to using all five fingers, fuck.”

Cute. You scraped the bottom of your cup. “Hey, I think you type well.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why it takes me so long to reply in the in-game chat function. Why I prefer communicating over voice call. Learning new habits, and shit.” Tenko stabbed his ice cream with his spoon. “Nezu-sensei has arranged for me to train as an aftermath-clean-up hero. I had been—” His fingers on one hand circled the thumb of the other. “—in discussion with him in rehab about what I could do, and we decided I could consistently help when there’s collapsed buildings after attacks; I could dust the wreckage so that we could find hostages or make it easier to clean up and rebuild, and Aizawa-sensei and All Might-sensei have been working with me to control what parts of what I touch gets dusted so that I could create pitfall traps for holding criminals. It’s…going. It’s going,” he said, curling his lips in his mouth to moisten them, and with narrowed, determined eyes, he took another bite of ice cream, the blue staining the inside of his lips.

“Tenko, that’s a really cool application of your quirk. I hope you can find more,” you said, tilting your head and smiling down at him, “but—I have to ask—aren’t you tired?”

Tenko rolled his eyes. “Of course. You’re part of the group ensuring I don’t have caffeine.”

“No, I mean,” you said, shaking your head, “I mean, you don’t have to be perceived as useful. You’re—you’re just fine if you wanted to rest. You’re worthwhile just as you, not as—as a job, as a, I don’t know, a redeemed hero or anything. You can just be Tenko.”

“I know. My therapist keeps reminding me. But one of the most vivid memories I have from when I was living in that house,” said Tenko, sneering, “is that I desperately wanted to be a hero and that I would pretend to be one a lot. While I’m aware that I can never atone for what I’ve done, if I did nothing but rest, I’d be alone with my thoughts. And with what I’m learning to do, as a hero, someday, someone might…need me. Need my help. I imagine that’s a good feeling.”

You sat back, leaning on your hands, the cast-iron pattern cutting into your palms, to survey him. “You’re very much re-writing my first impressions of you as my gaming buddy and as the post-war Shigaraki. You’re surprisingly well-adjusted.”

He snorted. “I shouldn’t think it’s surprising. I’ve had almost a year and a half in intensive rehab, and I’m still in therapy every day.” He started listing on his fingers, starting with his thumb. “I’m on antidepressants; I know where my next meal’s coming from and when I’ll get it; I consistently have a safe roof over my head, and I know my friends are getting that, too. I have mentors who care for me as a human person instead of as a tool. I get to stay in contact with my friends and get to make new ones,” he said, nodding curtly at you before quickly looking away, “I’m fucking away from that sadistic fuckface. He’s goddamn dead and burned away to nothing. That’s the main thing. Everything else is a bonus.”

Tenko sighed, bangs fluttering with the movement, his shoulders straining as he leaned onto both his elbows on the table. He sighed again and scooped the last gummy bear out of his cup, and you let the silence carry on while you finished eating.

“Long phone call,” Tenko said eventually.

An increasingly grumpy Aizawa was leaning against the glittery wall inside, phone between his ear and shoulder, and furiously scraping the inside of his ice cream cup.

“Yeah,” you said, “but it’s been good talking to you, Tenko. I really appreciate you telling me all of this.”

“I would’ve talked about it sooner, but I figured you knew who I was and didn’t want to address it,” said Tenko, tapping his fingers one by one on the table.

Pulling the collar of your coat closer to your neck, you frowned, hesitating on how to phrase it. You watched your breath cloud in the night air before settling on, “There’s an off-switch?”

Brow pinching very slightly, Tenko followed your gaze to his hand, with all five fingers coming to rest on the cast iron, and he tapped all five of them on it for emphasis. “Yeah. There always has been. All for One kept it from me. Power of belief kept me jittery and alert my whole life.”

“So long as you thought you’d destroy anything you touched, you would?”

He nodded. “That bitch.”

“Agreed. We should kill him.”

And Tenko laughed. Just for a moment, barely making any noise, but he smiled with his teeth, grin stretching across his face as he looked away and eventually closing his lips, the smile lingering for a few more precious seconds.

***

You closed your laptop to answer the phone at work, clearing your throat to ready your receptionist voice before you picked up. “U.A. University Administration; how may I help you?”

“I need you to fucking murder me,” Tenko spat through the phone, angry and panicked, “I need you to rip out my bones and suck out my guts through a straw. He fucking let me hold onto them, and I’ve fucking gone and lost such a fucking iconic piece of—”

“Tenko, please, take a breath,” you said, relaxing your customer service mode but clutching the phone to your ear, and after catching the eye of the woman with jars of strawberry preserves waiting to see Nezu, you slumped over in your seat so that she couldn’t see you over the desk’s overhang. “Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix it. Are you alone? Is everyone else busy? Do you need to come sit with me?”

“I—fuck,” he said, and you heard some deliberately slow breathing, but his voice still had an irate, twitchy edge afterwards. “During our practise patrol last night, Aizawa-sensei was talking about support equipment for me. I’d never given it much thought, because it’s always been just me and my hands. He leant me his Eraser Goggles for me to think about for my—and I don’t know where they fucking are,” he said, inhaling sharply on the last word, “I’d left them on my desk, but I’d taken them up to the roof to sketch them, and then I’d brought them back to my dorm—”

“And Aizawa-sensei must have swung by to pick them up since then,” you said, pushing yourself back to slide in your swivel chair to the back of the reception desk, “because he was here at the beginning of my shift to print something off, and the goggles are on top of the printer. Relax, Tenko.”

“Hooooooly fuck, you’re kidding,” said Tenko, audibly deflating, and you smiled to yourself as you slid their band around your wrist.

You kicked yourself back up to the front. “You’re okay. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I’ll bring them by at the end of my shift.” You sat up straight, and the strawberry preserves woman was shooting a concerned look in your direction. “I’m at work, though, so I think we’d better end the call soon. Anything else you need?”

Tenko hummed into the phone. “Not really. You can’t be that busy.”

You smiled again, feeling—feeling domestic, as if he were your boyfriend calling you during work hours. How strange, Shigaraki Tomura. How interesting. “Would you believe I was grinding in Cipherstone when you called?”

“And you don’t call yourself a gamer,” he said, clearing his throat multiple times, “What skills?”

“Woodcutting and firemaking,” you said, opening your laptop again, “Are you feeling under the weather? Your voice had a bit of a rasp there.” Sounded like his old voice for a moment.

“Further cementing that Aizawa-sensei’s right to be worried about you. He says your brain’s going haywire analysing any detail work you can get, because you’re not out in the field anymore,” said Tenko, clearing his throat again (?), “Am I your new project?”

“Tell me what’s wrong, lest I pick up some damn throat lozenges for you before I come home,” you said, and a voice in the back of your head screamed that that threat was extremely cosy and intimate, especially since you’re claiming both of you have a home in the same place—which, sure, you both lived on the same hallway, but so did Aizawa and Eri, and please shut up; Shimura Tenko needs a friend, not a lover right now. Besides, that stupid hallway wasn’t really home for either of you but was more like a temporary holding cell.

“Fine. I’ve been throwing up all morning.”

“Thank you,” you said, electing not to make a pregnancy joke, “Do you need to see Recovery Girl?”

“No, I’m used to it, and I’ve already talked to her about it. I threw up a lot out of anxiety and stress when I was growing up with All for One, and now I’m throwing up because my body can’t handle the amount of food it’s getting regularly, which is fucking ridiculous, since it’s still less than a normal person’s version of three meals a day.”

What. The fuck. How can he casually drop details of deep trauma like it’s nothing? How could AFO let a child keep vomiting out of stress for years and years and never interfere? Well. Yeah, he could. You supposed that Shigaraki’s voice, as you first heard it as the USJ incident, was the ultimate result of that heavy strain on his throat for years. Explains some things about his teeth back then, too.

God. If AFO weren’t dead, you’d strangle him. Keeping a child physically weak because he’d be easier to mould. It was known that AFO had been psychologically manipulating Shigaraki, but now that you thought about it, manipulating his physical growth would have served AFO, too, since he was planning to move into Shigaraki’s body.

And what did this guy do now that he’s got bodily autonomy? Oh. Just. Play some video games. Talk with his friends. Try out some new hobbies. Make crafts with Eri.

It’s a shame AFO didn’t have a grave, because you’d be skiving off work to drown it in acid.

“My stomach is killing me,” said Tenko, “I’ve got to hang up to drink something and go to sleep. Knock on my door when you get home. I want to start a new quest as soon as you finish work.”

Home. He’d said it, too. He probably didn’t mean it in the same, domestic way that you’d been entertaining, but it made your heart swell. “Okay, Tenko. See you then.”

***

His therapist had assigned him homework: go on a planned, public outing with a peer, and stay out for at least an hour.

It wasn’t exactly a picnic you were packing, you kept telling yourself, scooting behind Tenko to get to the spice cabinet in the dorm kitchen, because that’d be too close to a date rather than homework. But the two of you packed a meal to take, with Eri sitting on the kitchen counter while she nibbled at rabbit-cut apple slices, and she held the thermos of decaf tea in her lap until it was time to stow it away.

After a short train ride and a quiet walk through midtown, Tenko stopped you in front of the back gate to what appeared to be a restored, historical estate, judging by the golden shachihoko shibi on each corner of polished hip-and-gable rooftops of the extensively aristocratic—mansion? palace?—that you could make out in across the distance of its sprawling grounds, the immediacy of which was the excessively well-kept, traditional garden that you and Tenko were breaking into.

“Is this legal?” you asked as Tenko reached through the grate to unlatch the doorway.

“I have an in with the gardener,” he said, sweeping the gate open for you and gesturing brusquely for you to enter.

“No, that wasn’t a joke,” you said, taking the few steps inside, finding yourself planted onto a polished, level stepping stone, and staring down a squeaky clean tsukubai despite the thin layer of frost over the water’s surface as the whole bowl began to freeze, “You can’t be doing anything even vaguely illegal, Tenko.”

When you said his name, he closed his eyes, pausing for just a hair in his relatching the gate, before facing you and shifting the strap of his bag farther up his shoulder. “Prude. Yes, we have permission from the owner.”

He kept looking back over his shoulder at you as he led you through the gardens, hopping across stepping stones to pass over a carefully shaped brook that led to a tiny waterfall near stone lanterns, weaving through trellises with the wintry shells of wisteria vines and shaped evergreens. He tutted and rolled his eyes when you stopped at the waterlily-coated koi pond, its fish swimming and flicking their tails in the artificially heated water (for some, odd reason, what appeared to be a compact duck coop had been constructed near the pond’s edge, its wood new and un-bleached by the sun like the rest of garden décor). You’d been about to ask about it when Tenko had jumped out of his skin at the sound of a deer scare, bamboo tapping stone.

“Stop laughing,” Tenko said, cheeks burning (and you tried not to take too much pleasure in that, but you couldn’t help it).

“Oh, a sensitive boy, a delicate boy,” you said, grinning as you hopped onto the same stone as him, cool, clouding breaths mixing together in the proximity, and you yourself could feel heat rise to your face. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Good traits to have, actually. Means you’re feeling secure and comfortable in your surroundings, if you’re off-set that easily.” Feeling bold—it was the cold; it was how the proximity already flustered him; it was how his hands were full because of the bag; it was—whatever—you reached for his silly All Might scarf and re-tied the front, fluffing it up to cover more of his neck.

You made the mistake of making eye contact: full of caution, his eyes kept darting from your hands to your face, searching for something, his lips parted, otherwise completely fucking frozen.

Were you making him uncomfortable? You stilled, your fingers still in the fringe of his scarf, tension tightening in your chest and jaw (clenching).

Tenko noticed. And—and to this day, you can’t believe he fucking did this—he ran his tongue over his lower lip and lifted his chin, exposing more of his neck to you. He then was suddenly very interested in the koi pond, the ruddiness spreading from his cheeks to his ears.

Throat dry, you gave his scarf a final tug and patted it (?) to show (??) a job well done (???). “Yeah,” you said, smoothly, like a smooth person, like someone who adjusts scarves of hot, in-process-of-reformation villains on the regular, “Where are we going?”

Tenko spun on his heel and strode away, muttering what sounded like, “Right into my grave.”

You pretended not to hear it and let him lead you to the only building unattached to the main house: a small, traditional teahouse that had a recent addition to it in the back. The creak of the bamboo engawa when you climbed onto it was muffled underneath the bright pealing of windchimes strung across the covered porch. Tenko was already kneeling at the tearoom’s sunken fireplace inside, its handle carved into a fish, fiery as its kindling, and was unpacking the travel teacups from the bag as you closed the door behind you, shutting out the cold, enveloped by the comfortable heat trapped inside by the cushioned walls.

Tenko must have arranged for this space to have been prepared for you. A kotatsu with floor cushions was tucked near the fireplace, pre-heated, with two further space heaters in the unoccupied corners, cords trailing into what must be a hallway linking the traditional and modern rooms, the latter of which was shut off from view. Beside a red-tinted wooden dresser stood an oddly empty tokonoma, and instead of a scroll or painting, amidst bits of pieces of scotch tape hastily half-torn off the back was a shittily cut-out, paper heart.

Shaking your head, you took a step towards Tenko, and the floor chirped at you, freezing you in place.

“Yeah, I don’t know why they do that,” said Tenko, pushing on his knees to stand, “They just do.”

“These must be nightingale floors,” you said, crossing to the kotatsu, a bird under each step, “The chirping’s caused by the way the nails rub against the v-shaped clamps holding the floor together. Have you been to Nijō Castle in Kyoto? These are in the hallway—supposedly used as a security measure, but who knows.”

“You need a hobby.” Tenko ripped the paper heart from the back of the tokonoma, crumpling it in his fist. A shred of it remained under the scrap of tape on the wall, which he bent towards to scrape off with a blunt fingernail.

“I have several,” you said, easing down onto a cushion and unfolding your legs underneath the kotatsu blanket, the luxurious heat swaddling your legs and hips. You fought the urge to curl up underneath it entirely.

“How many of them involve getting your ass thrashed by me in Cipherstone?” Tenko retrieved the bag from the sunken fireplace before returning to the kotatsu, and he sat on your left, resting the bag between the two of you.

You took the thermos of decaf tea when he handed it to you. “Tenko, you’ve been playing that game for years, and I just began. Of course my ass is gonna be thrashed by—you know how the game works. You have all of this previous information about the game that I don’t have.”

Tenko scoffed and slid your teacup across the kotatsu’s surface.  “As if I could conceal any information from you. You’re too…eh.” He waved it off, shaking his head.

“I’m too what?” You unscrewed the thermos lid, and steam surged upwards, rising to caress the planes of your face.

“It’s been unfair of Aizawa-sensei to make me tail you,” said Tenko, leaning your way, all five fingers curled around his own teacup as he stretched across the tabletop. “I’d have a chance of success if it were anyone else.”

“I’ll give you that,” you said, pouring steaming, amber tea with slices of yuzu into Tenko’s cup, “You’re getting quite good at it, not that you were bad in the first place. But yeah, it’s a bit mean of him to test your tracking skills on me.” He’d never said to stop, so you poured until liquid almost overflowed at the rim.

He gasped at the heat but nudged his teacup back to his place at the table, unable to hold it in his palm anymore. “I think I would’ve preferred working with Hound Dog-sensei for that. He’s less detail-oriented. I could win, if it weren’t you.” Jutting out his lower lip, Tenko glared down at his tea for a moment before slumping in his seat to slurp at the tea without picking it up.

“Don’t feel bad about it. It was literally and actually my focus for hero work, profiling and detail shit and being aware of my surroundings. Information stuff. Infiltration stuff.” Setting the thermos on the far corner, you cupped your hands loosely around your teacup, appreciating the warmth and getting cosier by the minute.

Tenko was rooting through the bag for the other thermoses, full of sukiyaki for each of you. “It’s clear you’ve worked hard to hone your skills. Were you this talented as a student?”

You accepted the new thermos, fingers clenching tightly around it. “Uh. I think I may have been better back then. More focused. More passionate, anyway. I had to think about it really hard back then, make conscious decisions to notice things, and now I think I do it instinctively. I think I’m slipping because of that.”

“Hm,” said Tenko, tongue rubbing over his teeth behind closed lips, and he opened his mouth to say something but shut it, instead twisting off the cap to his soup thermos. He took the first sip of sukiyaki broth and—and was absolutely beautiful (you couldn’t make sense of it beyond that; he was a mess of details that you couldn’t fit together into a larger picture that made any sense: white eyelashes light against his cheeks as they fluttered shut, face muscles relaxed, scars overlapping with laugh lines, cracked lips becoming moistened by the soup, both hands cupped around his thermos like a child, no strain to his posture, baggy hoodie swallowing him up, kotatsu blanket yanked up to his hips to cover his crossed legs, scar on the corner of his mouth delicately shifting with his baffled smirk when he caught you staring, a strange pink rising to the tips of his ears). “What?”

Uh. Hm. You pinched the bridge of your nose and then moved to rub your eyelids. “What were you going to say about me?” you asked, and you withdrew your hand from your face to raise the soup thermos to your lips, taking a mouthful of noodles and the sweet, salty broth.

Tenko shook his head. “I’m trying to avoid thoughts that fall back into my old habits.”

“Try me,” you said, holding his gaze when he met it, “I won’t tell.”

Weary, he broke eye contact, and he fixated on fishing out a certain slice of green onion. “We needed someone like you back then.”

Back then? When he—oh.

Back in the League.

Though you attempted to hide your grin by taking a sip of sukiyaki, you caught his eyes flicker to it. “You would’ve taken me? You would’ve let me in?”

“Would you have joined?” he shot back, a bit too quickly.

“No,” you said, rolling your shoulders and settling down farther underneath the kotatsu, “Never. But since you shared something you shouldn’t’ve, I’ll do the same.” You set your thermos down to rub your eyes again—God, you couldn’t look at him for too long, lest your intrusive thoughts hand you your ass. “I thought about it. About joining you.”

You dragged your hand down your face, peeking between your fingers at a muted clink. Tenko was staring at you, something fucking unreadable in his scrounched eyes, and both hands lay five-fingered and flat on the kotatsu, steam from his open thermos fluffing up hair on one side of his head. “You’re not serious. You wouldn’t have.”

“Not in the way you think,” you said, tilting your head back, “but I often thought, in the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation Raid, what I could’ve done, if I’d known what I know now. And as the rest of the war was unfolding, I only wanted it more.”

Tenko blinked, slowly. “Tell me what you would’ve done.”

“Oh, you would’ve hated me, down to the dregs of my very soul,” you said, shifting to sit on your knees, “I would’ve started after your fight with Re-Destro, after the PLF was established. When you were letting allllllllll those heroes in, the sidekicks, the nobodies, anyone who seemed like they were with the cause. I would’ve infiltrated. Slipped in without notice. Hawks did, with the Commission, but I would’ve been going in as a free agent.”

“No one notices a U.A. student slide in between the masses. Re-Destro’s lackeys wouldn’t notice you at the door like I would. You get in,” Tenko said, taking his thermos in hand again but still engrossed in you, “What then?”

“There was a short period of time between the PLF establishment and your procedure, right? Around a month? That’s when I go. I worm my way into the good graces of some of the nine lieutenants—I’ve decided my pipeline would’ve been Geten to Toga to you. You’d just come out of an enormous battle, with Re-Destro and that city and Gigantomachia for a whole month. I heard you were bandaged up, on crutches, that you’d lost fingers that you regrew in that regeneration tank,” you said, eyes on his hands, one in a fist in his lap and the other around his thermos, five fingers pressing onto the grip but the pinkie finger hitched farther up than the rest, “That you’d given a speech and made your appearances regardless. That you’d pushed yourself to your limit and then broke yourself a little more. And you would’ve loathed me, because I would’ve come in, earned my way to your side, and I would’ve put my hand on your shoulder, slid it up your neck to cup your cheek to ask Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to rest?” You smiled and huffed, shoving it down, and though his hard stare should’ve pinned you to your seat, you pushed on the corner of the kotatsu to edge yourself over to his side, a knee on his cushion. “I like to think that you’ve sighed, sulked a bit, reluctant to admit anything was wrong at all, because back then, you had no use for moonlight. But I would’ve made you look at me, taken you to a bed, made you lie down until your eyes fluttered shut and the tension swept through your body and left. And you would rest,” you said, finding yourself leaning over him very slightly, knees touching his, just enough so that he leant backwards just a fraction, “I would’ve made that month so soft for you. I would’ve taken care of you, when nobody was fucking paying attention to you in the way that they should’ve. I fucking—I wanted it.” You gripped the front of his hoodie, fist grasping more fabric than necessary to shake him. “I wanted it. I wanted to care for you. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know. And you were fucking alone, in an unfamiliar place, and it kills me to think about that.”

You ducked your head to wipe your watery eyes on your sleeve, taking a breath—and realising what you were doing. You loosened your grip, but before you could pull away, Tenko was cat-like quick to grab your sleeve—why won’t he touch you?

“I wouldn’t have accepted your help,” he said, quiet, controlled, holding you down with his eyes, hand shifting to curve under your sleeved wrist, signalling that you could escape at any time, “That was after the worst month of my life, fighting Machia, and I wouldn’t have accepted it. I had too much to do. I would’ve shaken you off.”

“No, you wouldn’t’ve.”

“I would’ve,” he said, a bare finger, featherlight, skimming over the tender, bare skin of the underside of your wrist (oh, wow), “I wouldn’t trust that easily in that short of a time. You’d have met me, and that’d be it. If you’d persisted, I would’ve ripped you to shreds and tossed you aside.”

“Tenko,” you said, both relief and tightness blooming from your wrist, “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

The hallway shoji slammed open, somehow rattling as it slid in its tracks and shook the walls, and you and Tenko scrambled apart, with you jolting backwards on your hands, grappling for your seat cushion, and Tenko banging his thermos on the kotatsu, hastily wrestling with keeping it upright as he flung his body to the side.

“Hey, fuck you, Touya,” Tenko spluttered out, elbowing himself upright as—as fucking Dabi strode inside, hands in the deep pockets of his black sweatpants. “You said you’d stay in the main house.”

“Don’t mind me,” said Touya, cool as you please, raising both of his hands in defence, “I had to ensure you’re not fucking in my bed.”

“What is—” Tenko clambered to his feet to cross to him, chirping with each stomp, and whisper-shouting once he’d corralled Touya into a far corner. “I said we’d hang out later today, Touya. You swore you’d stay inside and watch Naruto this afternoon.”

The polite thing to do would be to appear fascinated by the tea. You returned to your cushion and poured yourself another cup.

“Yeah, but I’ve been told I’ve got shit to do later. I’ve got to go to this fuckin’—fuckin’ family stuff. I don’t wanna get into it,” said Touya, at full volume, “and I wanted to check that your girl was real. Y’know, she looks nothing like someone who’d have GinzengTea as her username. Have you given it to her already?”

“Shut the fuck up. I was just about to do that, if you hadn’t interrupted, cockhead.”

“Cool,” he said, a bird-note as he shifted his weight, “I wanna see what she thinks.”

“Hell, no—”

“I helped pick ‘em out. Let me watch and have an ohagi, and I’ll leave,” said Touya, chirping towards you before he finished the sentence, and Tenko followed him, muttering under his breath.

Touya sat on the bare tatami next to you, joints cracking as he yanked the kotatsu blanket up his legs, shooting you a small salute and a concerningly charming smile. “Hey,” he said, tilting his head, eyes half-lidded, smile stretching to show more of his even, white teeth, “I’ve seen you before, yeah? When was the last time you laid eyes on me?”

Tenko pelted him in the chest with a plastic-wrapped ohagi, cutting off the ooze of charisma. “Show-off,” he said, nudging another sweetened rice ball your way.

You nodded but didn’t move to unwrap it, since you were still working on your sukiyaki. “I’m surprised you remember, Touya,” you said, the name feeling strange on your tongue, “It must’ve been years since I elbowed you in the tit.”

Eyes lighting the fuck up, you snapped towards Tenko when he laughed into his plastic wrap: still not loud, still not making any vocalisation with it, but releasing a heavy, sharp burst of air with a wide, open grin. He hunched over to hide more of it, using both hands to unwrap his ohagi—and in the moment he realised he’d been unwrapping it with only his pointer fingers and thumbs, he dropped the rest of his fingers onto the rice ball, still smirking to himself.

Biting your lip in your own smile, you turned back to Touya (you caught his moment of mild alarm at how thrilled you were when Tenko laughed—or maybe it was alarm at Tenko laughing at all—but Touya relaxed his eyebrows and shut his mouth the second you faced him again). “God, yeah, it must have been before that last battle that we’d met in a fight, and I’d gotten close enough to hit you, and…” You shook your head. “Actually, I don’t wanna talk about that stuff. It’s not who we are now.”

“That’s fine.” Touya nodded towards Tenko and took a bite of his ohagi. “Shimura, don’t you have something to give her?”

Shimura. That was his last name, you supposed, but wasn’t it odd that Tenko called Touya by his given name and that Touya called Tenko by his family name? Tenko didn’t make you call him Shimura. Well, you supposed that there’s only one Shimura now, and because of the number of Todorokis, it paid to be specific—

“Here.” Tenko set a flat box in front of you, flipping the buckle of his bag back over. “I was going to give it to you with more formality, but since this bastard showed up, I’m doing it like this.”

Biting the inside of your cheek, brow furrowed, you unpacked a pair of pale blue headphones, soft to the touch with a mesh headband so that your head wouldn’t ache.

“Noise-cancelling,” Tenko said, gabbling, frowning very slightly, “Rechargeable. There’s a detachable microphone so it can function as a headset. I wanted to do something good for you.” His eyes darted towards Touya, and they dropped to his ohagi’s bulging filling, seeping out onto the plastic wrap. “You need them, anyway. I’ve been sick of hearing you through those shitty earbuds; their sound is terrible, and when you said you’d lost your only pair—which I don’t fucking understand how you can lose those things, because they just fucking show up in my shit all the time, like a goddamn plague—I thought you needed something quality—just to make it easier on my end, obviously, so that I don’t have to tell you to yell into that shitty, built-in micropho—”

“Tenko,” you said, reaching over to place your tea-hot hand over the back of his, fingers curving with his along ohagi’s edge, “Thank you so much. I adore them. I’m really grateful that you would think of me.”

Tenko froze, the same as he had when you’d adjusted his scarf. Unable to look you in the eye, like a prey animal, stiff, shoulders tense, colour rushing up his neck to his face and ears again—but this time, he lifted his hand just a hair from his ohagi to press back into your palm, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Hoo, boy,” said Touya, startling the both of you when he slammed his hands on the kotatsu to push himself up, “I’ve had enough. I’ve had my little snack. I’m leaving.” Once on his feet, he stretched, pressing his hands to his lower back and arching it, grunting.

“Good fucking riddance, cocksucker,” said Tenko, rising and grabbing Touya by the elbow to haul him to the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Touya, dragging his feet, chirping slurred and confused by his movement, and when Tenko had him at the wall, trying to shove him out, Touya, smirking under your watch, whispered something to Tenko while forcing something into his palm. Touya ducked out as Tenko looked at what he’d accepted and, letting out a yelp, dusted whatever it was before he hurried back to the kotatsu.

(When you left the teahouse half an hour later, you discovered that he’d decayed only the wrapper and not the condom itself.)

***

“One moment, please. Nezu-sensei is in a meeting right now, but he’ll be out momentarily. Please take a number—yes, the ticket puncher when you first came in,” you said to yet another impatient and pissed client in the admin waiting room, packed to the gills with parents, press, vendors, potential sponsors, and, for some reason, Mt. Lady’s entire representative team. “By the door. If you’ll take a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.”

God, you could punt Nezu for this. Not that there was anything wrong with establishing a new, annual event for U.A.—a cherry blossom garden-set, competitive scavenger hunt coming up in the spring—but because of his casual comment that it would rise to the same importance as the Sports Festival, you were swamped with those eager to invest early. Unable to take a break, you had to work with your head bowed, desperately hoping none of these people recognised you and your failure, when all you wanted was to reply to Tenko’s messages on Cipherstone that morning.

Tenkopeito: You’ll like the next quest. You can pet a dog in it

Tenkopeito: Come over to my room this evening so that we can talk in person

Was he intending to speak with innuendo or with such sincerity that it cut right through you? Moreover, was he aware he was even doing it? Based on what you’ve observed, Tenko had no idea what he was doing to you, nor did he know how hard you were trying not to act on your attraction, though you weren’t even doing a great job of suppressing it.

It’s strange: Tenko evoked some strange, unnameable emotion in you like nothing else. You wanted to coddle him; you wanted to play stupid video games with him; you wanted to sweep his hair out of his eyes, and though you kept telling yourself that you didn’t, you wanted him to tell you how to touch yourself, how to touch him. You brushed it off. Another time. Perhaps never.

“Oh, hi!” Former pro-hero Ragdoll squealed your family name, making you jump in your seat. “It is you. I couldn’t tell from farther back in the line.” Fuck, Ragdoll would recognise you, since she and the rest of the Wild, Wild Pussycats trained Class A, and she specifically spent time with you on your tracking skills because of her Search quirk.

Don’t cause a scene. “Hello, Shiretoko,” you said, doing your best not to let your face be seen from over the reception desk’s overhang, “It’s good to see you. How can I help?”

When she beamed, she was as bright as ever. “Oh! The Pussycats want to offer our services for the scavenger hunt! We wanna get back into charity and civilian events now that we’re back from our mission for—but wait, you know all about that!” You didn’t. But her cheerful voice carried, and people were already turning towards Ragdoll, part of a hero team ranked in the top thirty. “I wanna hear more about what you’ve been up to! Since you left the hero business, no one’s known where you’ve been! Gosh, have you been behind this dreary old desk the whole time?” Ragdoll leant over the overhang, flicking at a loose strand of your hair. “I thought you were sent out on missions out of the country! Like, really important, top-secret stuff. It’s weird seeing you in an office, especially since I consider you a mini me. Why are you back at your alma mater? Did your agency not want you anymore?”

She wasn’t meaning to be cruel. Her loud, blunt sincerity, though, drew the attention of onlookers, and their flashes of recognition, subsequent judgment, and turning away made your chest tight. “I needed a break. That’s all.”

A thin, blonde woman in a burgundy overcoat leaning against the wall immediately next to the reception had been evaluating you, scanning you from top to bottom during the exchange. She didn’t bother hiding her curiosity, and when you shakily handled the rest of the conversation with Ragdoll, she turned to the short, softly featured man beside her. “You know her?” She hadn’t even tried to quiet her voice; it jolted you from Ragdoll, but you steeled yourself and continued printing off a schedule for her—and from the depths of your brain came the woman’s identity: Uwabami, the snake hero, one who usually flaunted her celebrity status but currently dressed down, without her hair snakes (a rattlesnake, a yellow king cobra, and a Japanese rat snake, which—shut up! You don’t need this information right now! Can you be fucking sane, please?).

Her sidekick—no, an intern, a student at U.A., some fuckin’ twink in the year below you, name escaping you at the moment—had some iota of tact when he looked you over, slanting his body away, as if he weren’t staring. “Yes,” he said, trying not to let you hear, “She’s my former senpai and nothing more to me. We didn’t run in the same circles. She’s the one who made that rescue a few months back, the one that got a lot of online backlash.”

“No, seriously,” Ragdoll was saying, “Why are you back at U.A.? Don’t you have somewhere else to go?”

“My—” People behind Ragdoll in line were listening. Trying not to show it. Your throat ran dry, and you couldn’t think of a lie or a pleasant half-truth. “My flat was compromised. My address was leaked, and eventually, people were—look, Shiretoko,” you said, forcing the words out of your mouth, “I really don’t want to talk about this. Here’s the printed schedule. I’ll talk to you later.”

You slid the paper across the counter, and she took it, waving goodbye and still beaming.

“Is this what happens when a hero career doesn’t work out? They just shove you back where someone will take you? At any old office desk?” that fucking twink was asking Uwabami, “I can’t—it honestly scares me to think I could lose myself and be misplaced like that. It’s wasting talent, don’t you think?”

“How can I help you?” you asked the next person in line through gritted teeth.

When Uwabami lowered her sunglasses to glance over them, you inhaled sharply and swung your swivel chair so that you wouldn’t see her. “I don’t know about that. Maybe this dreadful administration office is where she’s meant to be.”

Biting his lip, he shifted his jaw and crossed his arms, slumping against the wall. “You’ll always have a place for me, right, Uwabami? I don’t want this to happen to me.”

“Yes, I can print you out a copy of the same schedule. If you’ll allow me a moment to print.”

“Of course, Kakeru,” Uwabami said, ignorant of how you were gripping a pencil so tightly that it could snap any second, “You’ll never be left behind.” But then she fucking stared you down, deliberately holding eye contact while you were at the printer, and she said, “You’ll never need a place to hide. I’ll make sure you don’t fail.”

“Hey, how about you shut up?” you hissed, ripping the printer-warm schedule from the tray and storming back to your current client to shove it into their hands. “Aren’t Japanese rat snakes supposed to be in hibernation this time of year, anyway?”

***

Someone in Mt. Lady’s group recorded it. Someone posted it.

wizardjenkins11: jesus christ who knew u.a. had its own island of misfit toys

emotionalsupportdynamightsweat: nice to see that she kept her snark, but what is she doing back at school?? don’t heroes have some sort of paperwork component to their work. why isn’t she still at an agency

blood-is-thiccer: lol ua’s the only one who’d take the bitch. she’s being rude as hell to an actual pro hero. lameass quirk anyway and ass flat as hell lmao she fucken deserved that guy lighting her mailbox on fire

LynchianTiddies: You’re encouraging domestic terrorism???

blood-is-thiccer: that’s not domestic terrorism

LynchianTiddies: Then what, pray fucking tell, is it??

blood-is-thiccer: wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism

XylemPhloemBuckaroo: no but I get what that guy was saying about wasting talent tho. Out of everyone in that class a, she’s the only one not topping the fucking hero charts rn. She’s the only one who’s left hero work. What makes her weaker than the rest of her classmates? What happened to her to make her like this?

koiboi69: wouldn’t you quit if people were camping outside your house/work/grocerystore? And also FUCK, man, there’s no fucking need to say she’s fucking weak. that’s kicking her while she’s down

XylemPhloemBuckaroo: I’m not kicking her while she’s down. I’m stating facts and asking reasonable questions.

koiboi69: bro wouldn’t YOU feel down if you’d didn’t have a home to go back to??? going back to u.a. is like admitting defeat, like you couldn’t handle it on your own and need protection

mawatadaddysgorl: i love seeing updates on her bc it makes me feel so good about what i’m doing with my life

***

Uraraka and Shinsou texted you but couldn’t call, let alone come from across town. Aizawa was AWOL, and Dango was hiding under your bed, so you, blotchy-faced and damp, were crumpled on the floor outside of room 310, eating vending machine bullshit and waiting for Tenko to return home.

Exactly all the insecurities you’d been stuffing down for months and months, brought out to air in front of everyone. Instead of doomscrolling, you locked your phone and slid it across the hallway carpet, burying your face in your hands and stomach lurching to the thought that you might soon be plastered everywhere in sight, again. Another round of intensive laying low loomed on the horizon, especially now that your location was made public. Your little secretary job was good enough, and relocating elsewhere on campus would lead to more job training, which would be a bitch.

Where was Tenko? You needed him here to say something irreverent and vindictive. Something unhinged. Or you needed him to hold you, pull you into his lap, and bitch about the whole thing while watching a movie. Tenko had messaged you to come by after work, so why wasn’t he…?

The staircase door hissed open, Tenko pushing it with his back, reusable grocery bags on his arms, and—and wearing a cape? Who the fuck wears a cape casu—oh shit he’s in his hero costume.

You’d heard that he had one, designed by the same company that’d made Midoriya’s and Shouto’s, and the similarities were clear: a boxy sort of design due to thick fabric that still somehow hugged his chest, a minimalist utility belt, and sturdy, knee-capping boots, positively flaming scarlet in contrast to the dark greys of the rest of his jumpsuit. The most obvious connection with another hero, though, made your chest throb: his cloak fastened with the same clasp his grandmother’s had. His dust-blocking respirator lay around his neck for the moment, but what was most embarrassing for you was how your brain fucking wheezed like a boiling kettle at his bare arms, biceps bulging, every fucking inch of skin down to his fingertips completely on display like a goddamn slut.

Whore behaviour. Whore behaviour! You had to duck your head when he squatted next to you, because oh, now you could see the stretch marks on his upper arms, because he’d gotten large way too quickly to be healthy, and smell his fading Old Spice and sweat from being out on what must have been an emergency call, and he was setting his grocery bags aside, reaching out to graze your shoulder, and wow, he’d been complaining about how he didn’t have abs yet despite working out five days a week now that his stamina had increased, but that fabric clung to his lower abdomen, looking very, very flat.

Initially pinching the fabric of your sweater, he shifted his jaw and laid his hand on your shoulder. “Who am I dusting?”

“God, Tenko,” you said, trying to look anywhere but his arms, or his abdomen, or his fucking lips, but he was leaning so much over you that he occupied most of your line of vision, and the only way to avoid seeing anything besides wisps of white hair was to gaze at the popcorned ceiling. “You’re not supposed to do that anymore.”

“Oh, yeah? Who am I dusting?” He squeezed your shoulder, stretching his thumb out to rub at your collarbone.

“Unless you can dust everyone in the country, I don’t think decay will help.”

Tenko clicked his tongue. “I have been explicitly told not to do that,” he said, shifting to sit on his knees, “I have—” He dug into a grocery bag for a moment. “—this for you. You like this shit, right?” Tenko pressed a bottle of pink lemonade into your hands.

“Fucking. Fuck. I do,” you said, passing the condensation-coated bottle from one hand to another, chest tightening, blinking to keep the water levels low, “Thank you. You didn’t have to get me this.”

“I know that,” he said with a dismissive wave, and he paused, fists in his lap. “Would it help if I gave you a hug?”

(What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the—)

“Yeah,” you said calmly, like a calm person, and when Tenko opened his (muscular) arms, you crawled into them, wrapping your own around his back to rest between his shoulder blades. You rested your chin in a fold of his cape, cheek pressing against the side of his respirator, and you frowned as his embrace tightened, pulling you closer in a sloppy, unpractised sort of way, grounded by the steady rise and fall of his very solid chest.

(This felt…affectionate. Romantic, even.

But Shigaraki Tomura didn’t do romance, and you don’t—you’re not—you wouldn’t dream of being conceited enough to read someone’s perhaps thoughtless actions as flirtation, because why would someone be flirting with you? No one did that in general, and being U.A.’s humiliating problem child exacerbated the fact.

Moreover, why would the man who was Shigaraki Tomura, in the middle of his rehabilitation and re-discovery of self, even in the microscopic chance that he had the mental energy to experience romantic feelings, aim that romantic impulse towards you? It would make more sense if he liked someone he’d known for a while, like Touya or Spinner or Toga, and if his romantic feelings leant towards recuperative trauma-bonding, wouldn’t it be more apt to feel for someone at his rehab? His therapist, maybe? He’d idolised Aizawa before he’d met him, and even that would make more sense than latching onto someone as late in the process as you.

He’d gotten flustered when you’d tied his scarf, and Touya’s played terrible wingman. But still. You couldn’t know. You can’t read into this, even though reading into things had been your job, because—because no one would want you. You’ll have to…You’ll have to gather more evidence. You couldn’t be certain.)

Tenko hummed, chin digging into your shoulder, blowing strands of your hair out of his face. “I calmed a kid down earlier by hugging her. Is this working for you?”

(…oh.)

You sniffled and hid your mouth in his cape so that he couldn’t catch your pout. “That’s—that’s good that a kid allowed you to comfort her. What happened?”

“Pipes broke in an old apartment building in the Takoba district. The third floor collapsed under the pressure, and it trapped families in part of the building. I was called out to dust the rubble trapping them,” Tenko said, tapping his fingers high on your back in a ripple, “and they had me dust some other walls to help start the repairs. It was cool. And this one little girl who’d gotten out before the rest of her family was really nervous, and she was sticking to me, holding onto my cape. I was telling her that everything was gonna be okay, like you’ve taught me, and when I asked how she was doing, this fuckin’ kid extended her arms to me. So, I fucking hugged her. Picked her up so she could see what was happening better. It was weird, but it felt good.” Tenko sighed. “I hate how it wants me to be kind more.”

And fuck, fuck, that’s the last straw to this horrible day, and you’re crying, silently, controlling your breathing to keep Tenko from finding out, because goddammit, this idiot bastard man was surprisingly easy to love.

You buried your face fully in his shoulder, hoping he couldn’t feel any wetness through his costume, and you and Tenko sat in the quiet of the hallway for a minute, interrupted only by the A/C kicking in.

Tenko tried to part the two of you enough to look you in the face, but you doubled down, curling your fingers into the fabric of his jumpsuit and keeping your head bowed. Scoffing, he sat upright, making you follow his movements to stay hidden. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong yet?”

“Forget all that shit I’ve taught you,” you said, grumbling to his tits now that he’d changed positions, hating how stopped up you sounded already, “It doesn’t matter what you fucking do in the public’s eye, because there’s always gonna be someone who hates you. You can’t please everyone, so just fucking be yourself. That’s funnier, anyway.”

“Did you psychoanalyse some press member’s pathetic sex life, or something? Deduce an affair based on the way he knots his tie? Announce the state of his dick to the whole room because of the length of his pants?”

“Fuck off, Tenko. I’m not some pretentious-ass Sherlock Holmes bitch,” you said, pursing your lips and instinctively pulling back to glare at him—

And the moment you did, Tenko cupped your face in his hands, soft at the palm and strongly calloused along his fingers, keeping you facing towards him no matter how hard you tried to jerk away, struggling to stay upright. “You are crying.”

“No, I’m not,” you said, just as a falling tear touched his thumb. As you adjusted to his grip, your hands fell to his thighs, pressing against them in fists.

“Hm. Well, you don’t have to tell me,” he said, eyes on another tear trailing down the other cheek, “but you’re joining me to watch a movie with Eri. I got snacks on the way home.”

You sighed, taking in how big his hands were and how much of your face they encompassed, trying to memorise their feeling until they were snatched away forever. “I thought we were gonna start a new quest tonight. I was excited.”

Tenko balked and shifted into a sceptical grin. “You wanted to play Ciperstone tonight?” he asked, both thumbs rubbing your cheekbones and moving to swipe underneath your eyes.

You sighed again, shoulders heaving as Tenko released your face to flick tears off of his hand. “I didn’t want to be myself for a few hours.”

Tenko pushed on his knees to stand. “That’s actually related to what I originally wanted to talk to you about. Furthering the working-with-others mission,” he said, and he extended his hand to help you up. “What do you know about Dungeons and Dragons?”

***

“God fucking dammit!” Tenko slammed his palm to his forehead and leant back to balance on the kitchen chair’s back legs and then combed his fingers back through his hair, upsetting some strands from his ponytail. Groaning, he crooked his face your way, smushed his face against the chair back, and pointed towards his forehead, where a red splot was forming. “Hit me as hard as you can.”

“Being bludgeoned won’t change the fact that you rolled a three,” you said, nodding towards his d20, “I ignore his whining and continue to drain the fig tree to charge my spell.”

Behind the DM screen, Shinsou rolled his own dice, and once his eyebrows had shot up to his hairline, he turned to Midoriya. “I need you to roll two d12s and a d4.”

Tenko bolted upright, hastily sweeping his bangs out of his face. “Wait, what does Midoriya have to do with it? He’s across the fucking grove! He’s engaged in close-ranged combat.”

You turned away from Shinsou’s sly grin and towards Tenko, mouth nearly a straight line, yanking another cluster of grapes from the communal bowl, and shoving two grapes in his mouth. He pinched at his lower lip as he chewed, twisting and peeling at dead skin, frowning as he focused on his character sheet, scanning it for some sort of information he was forgetting and absentmindedly raising his knee to his chest, the heel of his foot propped on the seat of his chair (thank God his jeans were from Best Jeanist’s Moulded to Your Ass line: the denim strained with his muscles. Your eye twitched). In this particular morning, with the five of you squared off at Aizawa’s kitchen table, papers and dice strewn among grocery store bakery cinnamon rolls and coffee cups (Tenko’s was full of gatorade instead of coffee, much to his chagrin), as Tenko was throwing grapes into Touya’s mouth while Shinsou did math, the narwhal house slippers dangling off Tenko’s feet, it struck you that Shigaraki Tomura had become just some guy. One who went for walks to clear his head, who spent hours failing to do a kickflip on Present Mic’s skateboard, who used emoticons over emojis, who got nervous in fast food drive-throughs, who collected hero merch (of Aizawa fervently and Present Mic against his will), who was losing his sensitivity to foods like leeks and onions, a man who was growing more and more exquisitely mundane.

And goddamn, he’s clever and perceptive and patient and cheeky in a devastatingly attractive way, and he’s flustered easily, eager to do a thing correctly, and utterly, totally captivating in his endless discoveries of what it means to be alive.

You timed it so that the shudder and shock crossing his face could pass as response to Shinsou’s description of how Tenko’s enchanted crossbow bolt missed the Spirit Realm Necromancer entirely, instead sinking into the sacred Grand Oak and instantly shattering the tree as if it were glass, its elaborate root system holding up the floating grove splintering into thousands of tiny shards, the ground beneath your party’s feet crumbling at the slightest suggestion of the shifting of weight. But really he curled in his lips with a furrowed brow and stuttering breath when you reached underneath the table to graze the back of his hand, and when he forced himself to relax, shoulders slackening, frown fading, Tenko spread his fingers to cover more of his denim-clad thigh, which you took as a timid sort of consent. Biting the inside of your cheek, you eased your palm over the back of Tenko’s hand, lacing your fingers through his and going through the motions of reacting to Shinsou’s shattered earth. Neither of you looked at each other while Midoriya’s character suffered the Necromancer’s spell to increase gravity, each movement of Midoriya’s bulky, steel armour accelerating the fall of the floating grove. By the time each of you had had enough turns to land on solid ground, preserving little of the sacred grove but all surviving, Tenko finally squeezed your fingers back, curling his own to grip them more firmly, keeping your hand pinned to his thigh, steeling himself, sitting up straight, and proposing getting close enough to the Necromancer to drive a crossbow bolt directly into his skull.

Midoriya was already muttering to himself over the effectiveness of the action while Shinsou worked, and Touya irreverently flicked his dice at Tenko, chugging coffee with his other hand. “You plunge the bolt by hand into the Necromancer’s head,” said Shinsou, “but with your strength debuff still in effect, you only nick him.”

“I try stabbing it through his ear.”

“It goes through,” said Shinsou, nodding and running his hand back through his hair, which sprung back into place, “It doesn’t pierce the neocortex, so he can still summon another—“

“I stomp him to death with my hooves,” said Touya, picking at his teeth and running his tongue over the spot.

The rest of you turned to him slowly in various states of incredulity.

“You don’t have hooves, Touya,” you said, tilting your head at the same time Tenko rubbed his thumb over yours, prompting your breath to hitch and a strange warmth to travel through your body, making you feel dizzy.

Touya grimaced and reached for a cinnamon roll. “I take off my leather breeches and boots to reveal my hooves. I have been a satyr masquerading as a human this whole time.” He leant forward on his elbow, glaring at Shinsou and gesturing with his cinnamon roll. “I stomp him. To death. With my hooves.”

Tenko sneered, his teeth cutting into his lower lip, but he merely opened his mouth and closed it, poking his tongue into his cheek. “I suppose maiming a party member wouldn’t coincide with my character’s chaotic good alignment,” he said, heaving a huge sigh to—oh, that cunning rat bastard—to conceal how he flipped his hand over in yours to touch palms, weaving your fingers back together and squeezing again, planting them back on his upper leg, massaging between your knuckles with his thumb.

“What’d you just roll?”

“Nineteen,” said Touya, casting Shinsou a slice of his most charming smile.

Midoriya let out a little laugh as Shinsou bitterly plopped his head on his fist. “Fuck you, Touya. Congratulations. You clomp over to the Necromancer and stomp all over him. Stompy stomp stomp stompy stomp. It’s difficult to watch at the insane speed you’re going, so no one stops you from doing such a good job pounding him that he’s ground into dust. Bits of him drift away in the wind.”

Here Midoriya winced. “Weren’t we supposed to retrieve the soul crystal embedded in his gauntlet? We can’t get our reward from that Silver Age dragon rider if we don’t have it.”

“Correct,” said Shinsou, glancing down at his notes, “It has been stomped to smithereens. You can’t even make out what parts of the pile of dust were once flesh.”

Ready to bolt, Touya was getting up from the table and holding up his hands in defence, but before Midoriya could start a speech that would have been more apt for the number one hero to use on patrol rather than during a DND game, the door to Aizawa’s flat opened, and in he walked, covering his yawn with the back of his hand. He halted at the sight of the five of you around his kitchen table, taking in the scattered papers and remnants of breakfast before settling on your DM. “Shinsou,” Aizawa began, disappointment outweighing the exhaustion in his voice.

“You’re the only one with a table that could fit all of us,” Shinsou said, spinning in his chair to face him, “This dormitory doesn’t have a good common area like the student ones do. Would you really prefer us to—”

“We can find you a table; there’s plenty on campus.” Aizawa lifted his goggles over his head to set them on the counter. “Is this why Monoma kept slowing me down during patrol?”

“No,” you and Shinsou said, while Tenko said, “Yes.”

Aizawa actually smiled as he unwound his capture weapon from around his neck. “Look who’s the only one telling the truth.”

“Why would I lie to you, sensei?”

Touya smacked Tenko on the arm. “Suck-up.”

“You promise?” Tenko shot back, nose wrinkling with his grin.

“This coffee had better be amazing, because it’s the only thing keeping me from kicking you all out right now,” said Aizawa, rubbing a dry eye with the heel of his palm, other hand outstretched for someone to pass him a mug.

Tenko’s thumb bent inward to swipe the inside of your palm, a silent protest while he drank from his stupid little mug of gatorade, and when he noticed what was at the bottom, he flinched. It must have been Touya who’d put your dice in Tenko’s cup.

***

Following the video of you insulting Uwabami, you’re garnering an unnerving amount of attention again, but it’s clearly someone different than last time. Whoever your stalker(s) was this time around, they were careless and unsubtle—and this confidence to be careless left you jumping at the slightest sound when you were alone.

Furthermore, you legitimately couldn’t deduce your stalker’s motivations, because no clear message linked his actions. At first, you chalked it up to the dorm’s shitty dryer eating your bright blue thong, but when you couldn’t find your lip balm or trolley pass or eventually your favourite sweater, you concluded that something else was at play here, further cemented by more and more tiny things going missing—things that, if you were stalking someone, you would’ve selected as small enough not to miss.

But bizarrely, your stalker left shit of his own lying about. A phone charger appeared underneath your pillow; loose change and a travel pack of alcoholic wipes showed up in your bathroom sink. Hello Kitty band-aids, a hair clip that looked like one of Rumi’s ears, deep-moisturising hand cream, a tiny lizard keychain with a white hamburglar mask drawn on. You couldn’t wrap your head around it. What could your stalker be trying to say besides he could access your personal space with ease? Hoarding it all in the drawer with the GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK hentai, you were struck with the notion that this may have been going on even before the video.

God, you missed when this school felt more like home instead of a holding cell, back when Shinsou and Uraraka and the rest were all still living together with you, when you could simply turn the corner to the common area to demand who took your laundry detergent and get an answer immediately (you also missed taking Aoyama’s bougie food, though you suspected that towards the end he was buying extra specifically for you). You sent an email to Aizawa about the potential break in security, and he promised to monitor the situation, though there was no evidence of physical entry.

Evidence. It’s been on your mind.

Sure, Tenko’s done stuff that could be read as romantic: how he plops your hand onto his head to demand you play with his hair, how he hovers whenever Touya stands too closely to you, how he gets upset on your behalf when people glare at you in public.

(Tenko grabbed your elbow, breaking your focus on the clothing rank. “We’re going.”

“But we haven’t found you a red coat yet.”

He lifted the hangers from your arm and slid them back onto the rack, despite belonging elsewhere. “Don’t care. I don’t like the way the cashier’s looking at you,” he said, jerking his head their direction, and when you tilted your head to glance at them over his shoulder, Tenko tapped your chin twice, guiding you to look back at him. “You shouldn’t have to be on guard when I’m with you.”)

If you were reading into it—and you were—Tenko was being so careful with talking about the pro-hero scene around you that it was almost as if he’d gotten a mission task from Aizawa to distract you from anything that might make you feel bad about yourself.

(“I hear you’re causing a lot of paperwork for my old man,” said Touya, pulling out another floor cushion from the storage space in the teahouse wall, “He hates that you’ve had to dust so many structures near his agency. He’s a decrepit creature of habit, and now that his commute is different, he’s—”

“Hey, Touya, tell us what flower bulbs you planted this winter,” Tenko said abruptly, clamping the lid on the pot hanging over the sunken fireplace, “Tell us what your garden’ll look like in spring.”

You shut your book, even though you’d just opened it. “Wait, are you saying that Touya is the one who keeps this garden? That’s—”

“You like it, sweetheart?” Touya dropped his cushion next to yours, ignoring the way Tenko was glaring daggers into his back. “Think it’s impressive?”

“Holy shit; I thought we were in the back of some professionally restored historical site the first time we came here,” you said, smiling at how Tenko’s petulant stomps to his seat chirruped, even when he scooted his own cushion towards yours (adorable; you’d think he didn’t like you giving attention to anyone else).

“Well,” said Touya, propping his hands on the kotatsu so that he could get a better view of Tenko, “With enormous pride and a huge erection, I’m pleased to announce that this garden is all my hard work.”

“Stop that,” barked Tenko, jabbing a finger towards Touya, “Stop bringing up your cock.”

“I could talk about yours, if you want. His monster cock is excruciatingly leaky and so shaped.”

Groaning, Tenko clonked his forehead on the kotatsu’s tabletop before Touya could say anything else, arm still outstretched. He peeked out from underneath his bangs towards you, tension leaving his body at your burst of laughter.)

He’s also taken your comment about silent admiration to heart. Over the discord call (through very comfortable headphones), you’d made a dumb joke about not being able to play for long, and he’d shut up immediately. When you’d confessed to lying and hoping you’d scared him, he’d replied seriously: “I want to protect my time with you. I don’t like it being taken away. I feel better when you’re with me.”

You’d frozen in the middle of weaving bowstrings while his character continued stringing them onto bows. You’d never have gotten that sort of remark at the beginning of your relationship. Tenko must genuinely be listening to you.

Anyway. You decided in the event that Tenko was collecting evidence, too, that you would leave him some.

The first time you’d been in his room had been for a specific purpose, which was to help him rub in his new facial scar moisturiser (not to take them away, or anything, because Tenko wanted to keep them, claiming he wouldn’t recognise himself in the mirror if he didn’t have his scars—and you thought they were devastatingly attractive, anyway—but just to keep them hydrated enough not to itch), but now you were here just to spend time in the same space. You were reading on his bed (oh, hohoho, his bed), and Tenko was drawing in his sketchbook on his couch by the window. With his mouth pinched in concentration, he squinted down at his paper, swiping away eraser shavings with his artist-gloved hand.

Drawing by natural light. Tenko was in room 310 because of its wide windows. It had been his one request when U.A. was placing him.

AFO had deliberately raised him in a bedroom without windows. You’d kill him if he weren’t already dead.

Thankfully, AFO’s influence was absent from Tenko’s dorm: Naruto sheets from Touya, an old Nintendo DS on his bedside table with Nintendogs in the cartridge slot, Present Mic’s skateboard propped against the coatrack that held only a black hoodie, unfolded but clean laundry in a basket next to a dresser with prescription bottles atop it, a mirror that served more as a bulletin board of Eraserhead merch than as a way to check his reflection, red shoes by the doorway, books borrowed from everyone from All Might to Shinsou to the ramen delivery guy strewn across the room, on shelves, his computer desk, his rug. The thing Tenko’d had to explain to you was a therapist-assigned painting hanging over his desk: he’d painted a murky, purple-blue, abstract sort of thing, and you were strangely touched when he’d explained it was Kurogiri (and now that you were looking, among his bulletin board of Eraserhead, a few drawings of Loud Cloud were mixed in).

There’s a lot of people in Tenko’s life who care about him now, and you’re happy to be one of them. Setting your book aside, you got up to sit next to him on the couch.

He paused when you sank into the cushion next to—well, no, you were basically sharing the same cushion, especially since he unfolded his legs from underneath him so that you could get closer. You scooted over so that your shoulders touched (scandalous) and looked over his drawings.

He’s drawing your DND characters. While his sketches aren’t exactly good, you can clearly tell who’s supposed to be whom, and they’re fun to look at, so that’s all that matters. At the centre is your character, Ginseng—you named it after your Cipherstone account because why not—in the process of spell-charging. Your character relies on the traditional ritual of tea ceremonies, from the growing of the tealeaves to serving it, summoning whatever tools you needed, like the table and dishware, and if an enemy got caught by the conventions of politeness of the tea ceremony, they were trapped in it until they’d drunk their teacup dry. Tenko had drawn her early in the spell-charging process, with branches of tealeaves sprouting from underneath her skin, with her harvesting them from her forearm. It’s rather flattering, the way her determined expression lit up her face.

Next to Ginseng was Tenko’s character, Peito, also lifted from his Cipherstone character. He was sitting on the same log as Ginseng in the middle of camp, backs touching while he cut feathers as the first step in the fletching process. His carved-willow quiver leant against his knee-high boot, red even in a fictional universe. Peito’s hands were bare, five fingers pressed against his knife and arrows.

Further back in the camp (really just towards the top of the paper, since Tenko wasn’t good at foreshortening yet), Midoriya’s character, Jackrabbit, was holding up two hangers, one with his steel and the other with sleek, black leather armour. A nice touch, really, since Midoriya had swopped Jackrabbit’s primary armour to the more lightweight leather since the shattered grove incident, and wow, you could even tell it was leather based on the pencil strokes.

Seated nearby, Touya’s character, Granddaddy Slapkins, roared with laughter at him. His shoes lay next to him, his hooves out. For some reason, he’s not holding his pet duck; he’s instead cradling what looks like your character’s wild shape, a cat with the same chocolate-point markings as your real cat (your character’s shapeshifted form was just Dango, but Tenko didn’t know that. He still didn’t know Dango existed, because cats were still illegal in the dorms, and Tenko, that little brown-nosing shit, would probably tell Aizawa about her. Cute how he’s only a suck-up to Aizawa, though).

Your favourite detail, though, was how his character was smiling. Unabashedly. As if it were a no-brainer, as if doing anything else made no sense at all.

With a stab of affection, you nuzzled into Tenko’s shoulder, resting your chin there while he sketched loops of chainmail onto Granddaddy Slapkins’s shirt, and a shiver racked through him.

“Oh, are you cold?” you asked, sitting back up and heading over towards the bed, “Let me get your blanket.”

“Wha—no, I—sure,” said Tenko, setting his pencil on his sketchbook and the whole thing on the arm of the couch, eyes half-lidded as you returned with his throw blanket.

And without thinking, you moved on impulse, as if all higher orders of cognition had checked out for the night, because you behaved like you did in your head whenever you thought about Tenko: casually, intimately, and domestically. You wrapped the blanket around yourself and knelt on the sofa before swinging a knee over his lap, and you snuggled into his chest, clutching his shirt and nosing at his neck.

Your eyes snapped open.

(What the fuck?

If this had been a planned attack, then it would’ve been a thing of brilliance: casual, seeming to meet a physical need [heating a chill] in the name of physical closeness. But you fucked it. This wasn’t planned, and thus you don’t have a way out of it without otherwise betraying your romantically-motivated interior.

Thank fuck he’s frozen up, too. But how do you get out of this? God, you really shouldn’t be teaching him how to navigate interpersonal relationships when you get yourself into shit like this.)

You swallowed thickly, pulse pounding in your ears.

“I need your advice.” Tenko’s chest barely rose when he took his first breath since you climbed onto his lap. “What would be the socially expected response to this?”

“Uh. That depends on if you’re into it or not,” you said, forcing yourself to sit back in his lap to give him some space, “If you dislike it, then it’s to get me to get off of you, and if you welcome it, then, uh. Anything else.”

Tenko unclenched his fists at his sides and—a pause, shifting his jaw—he let his hands rest at a barely-there touch on your hips, dragging them upwards to your waist, applying enough pressure there for you to feel all ten fingertips through your shirt. “Is this,” he said, wetting his lower lip, and he couldn’t continue, instead swallowing saliva.

Gathering your nerve, you wove your hand through his hair to scratch at his scalp in the way he’d liked when you’d played with his hair, and at the familiarity, Tenko huffed, shutting his eyes tightly and pressing his forehead to yours in a rush, almost knocking them together. He took another breath, heat washing over your face, and you slid your other up hand to cup his cheek.

Tenko shivered again, and he clamped his hand over yours to keep it there. “Are you sure this is what you mean to do?”

He seemed receptive enough to it, but you couldn’t be certain. “Yeah,” you said, “If I’m reading it right.”

“But it makes no sense. I’ve got to be reading it wrong,” Tenko was saying, frowning, “No one would willingly like me—”

“For fuck’s sake, Tenko—”

Practically slapping your other hand to his cheek, you kissed him, pulling him closer, one of his hands still over yours with the other now gripping your waist as if he’d never let you go. Tenko grunted into it, surging forward to keep his rough lips (sticky from his freshly applied pineapple-beeswax chapstick) seared to yours. You felt, more than heard, his miniscule whimper at the back of his throat when he opened his mouth, sliding his tongue into yours, and you could hardly keep kissing him for smiling. But he needed a breath before you did, so you broke it, sensing he wouldn’t do it out of wanting to keep you nearby.

Panting, Tenko tried and failed to push your hair behind your ear in an attempt to be suave. “Now, I perceived that as romantic.”

“It was romantic, you muppet,” you said, thumping his chest with the back of your hand.

“Good.” He cleared this throat. “Cool. Excellent,” he said, shifting underneath you (with difficulty, under the constricting denim of his Moulded to Your Ass jeans), “I want it to be, when it comes to you.”

“Thank God, I really want that, too,” you said, sighing, “but, like, I really don’t know if it’s ethical to pursue a romance this early into your recovery—”

“The fuck is wrong with you? I want it. I want you.” Frustrated, Tenko grabbed your hips in an iron grip and ground up into you, slowly, and that tight-ass denim let you feel precisely where in the drag of his hips his cock touched you, letting you feel the shift in pressure at his tip, down his shaft, to the first curve of his balls. “I thought I was alone. I thought no one else would ever be able to understand me, having fallen from what I was raised to be. Fallen,” he said, spitting, “Such a nasty word for what we’re actually doing: we’ve been reborn together. We get to build our lives back up together. We get another chance at it. I wanna spend mine with you.”

He strained his neck upwards to kiss you again, insistent, moving with confidence when he took your lower lip into his mouth but only nibbling on it once, despite being posed to bite down with vigour.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else thinks of you and what anyone else thinks of me. I—”

“That’s not true,” you said, your turn to catch your breath, “You care so much about what Aizawa-sensei—”

“You know what I mean,” he said, shaking his head, hair falling out of his loose ponytail, “You think of me as me, and that’s all that matters. If you’re really that fucking worried about me getting into a relationship too early, go talk to my therapist. She says you’re good for me. A good influence, anyway.”

“Holy shit,” you said, mostly in reaction to how Tenko started trailing frantic, dry kisses down your neck, and, realising you should probably be doing something back, you rolled your hips, feeling awfully warm under the blanket.

He bucked back up into you, more out of desperation to keep you close over a need for friction but still giving you a taste of what it would be like to have him thrusting into you. “Fuck,” he said, almost grumbling, “I’d say fuck being ethical about it, because I’ve wanted you for a long time. I got hard when you shook me by the shoulders outside of that ice cream shop; I thought my soul was gonna leave my body when you adjusted my scarf. Hell, I—” He cut himself off, grinning in a way that, back before you knew him, you might have described as maniacal. “I wanted you back during the war. I saw you fucking elbow Touya during that battle, and the way you made him crumple to the ground was so fucking sexy. And you recovered from when he swiped at you so easily; you slipped around his attacks like it was fucking second nature. I thought it’d be cool to have you by my side, having you—” He realised what he was saying, and he relaxed, smile fading into a curious, pensive sort of look while he brought his thumb to your kiss-swollen lips. “And now I get to.”

You kissed the pad of his thumb, blinking slowly.

“So. Yeah,” he said, dropping his hand to your shoulder as he broke eye contact, a little red, “I think it’d be cool to be with you, even if we have to be careful.”

“That’s the thing, Tenko,” you said, biting the inside of your cheek as you gathered your thoughts, “I’m scared, because while I know that we should, because that’d be safe, I don’t want to be careful. Since I’ve quit being a hero, every single thing about how I’ve been living has left me feeling empty and alone, because it’s like I’m wandering through limbo. Everything screams that whatever I’m doing now is temporary, that it’ll pass, that I don’t truly belong in this situation, because I’ll find what I’m supposed to be doing later and my real home is somewhere down the line, but—fuck.” You rubbed your eye with your fist. “You, Tenko. You don’t feel temporary. You feel forever.”

Underneath you, Tenko stretched to pop a crick in his back, and he tilted his head to lie on the back of the couch. His ponytail had come loose, and his hair splayed against the fabric as he stared at you, one hand idly rubbing at your waist.

“Well. You’ve got to belong somewhere,” he said eventually, and he tapped all five fingers onto your thigh. “It could be with me.”

***

Dango was missing.

Incredible how the best evening of your life preceded the worst day you’ve had in years. You called out of work and spent hours scouring the dorm and then campus. A gruelling, miserable sort of day, anyway, grey and rainy and cold, and the campus was swarmed with people setting up for the scavenger hunt event later this month, populating the area with non-U.A. personnel and construction. Your cat was out in that mess, and you didn’t even know where to search first. It’s loud, scary, and wet, so Dango would most likely be hiding and not come when she’s called.

Had Dango escaped your flat? Had your stalker stolen her? Had she been confiscated by U.A.?

You couldn’t call any faculty for help; they’d get onto you for having an illegal cat on campus—and Hound Dog, the one who’d be the most help, might just scare her to death. Too early in the morning to call any of your friends, and you doubted they’d alter their busy schedules to help you out of a situation you should be able to fix yourself. But damn it, how come your own tracking skills only worked on people?

You shook yourself, coming out of your spiral the best you could, and you were close to hyperventilating. You sat down on a curb.

You found yourself calling Tenko, despite it being too early in the day for him to be out of training, filling with dread about never seeing your cat again and having to clear out her stuff from your room. Pulling your soaked jacket closer, you wiped at your nose and waited at the dial tone.

“Hey, I thought you couldn’t call during work. Miss me that much?”

The second you heard his strangely chipper voice, you started crying into the speaker.

He inhaled sharply, tone shifting. “Tell me who the fuck I’m stomping to death with my hooves.”

Ducking your head, you managed a smile but continued to fucking sob. “You don’t—don’t have to kill anyone, Ten—Tenko. I’ve f—fucked up.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I’m on cam—campus,” you said, unable to speak for a full sentence without having to cut yourself off to keep bawling, ugly and loud and getting snottier by the minute, “It’s my fucking fault that I haven’t been ta—taking my stupid sta—stalker seriously, and I should’ve reported it, but—but I—goddammit!” The rain picked up again, coming down in rapid, fat drops, and, shielding your eyes, you rubbed your phone screen on your sleeve, not that it did much. “Sor—sorry. Rain got heavier.”

“Where on campus?”

“No, Te—Tenko, I’ll get up. I’m coming to you,” you said, sniffling and pushing on your knees to stand, wet and hungry and ready to crawl into your sock drawer to sleep for days. “I—I’m just so fucking pissed at myself, because my cat is fucking lost, and I could’ve sto—stopped it if I hadn’t been so secreti—tive.” Hands shaking, you yanked your soaked hood over your head and trudged towards your dormitory, and you kicked gravel, rocks scattering over the path, before losing your footing on it and nearly falling. Fuck this.

“You have a cat,” said Tenko, losing his fervent. “What’s it look like?”

“Beautiful.”

“I need more than that.”

“She fucking—I based Ginseng’s cat form on her, okay? She’s this enormously fluffy thing, mostly whitish with a brown face and legs, and it makes her look like she’s wearing a mask and thigh-high socks like God’s sluttiest little jester,” you said, knocking on your dorm’s mailboxes for luck out of habit as you passed them, “And you can’t tell Aizawa-sensei about her, because if she’s taken away the moment I find her, then I—”

“I have her,” said Tenko, “She’s in my dorm with me.”

You ran the rest of the way to his room, panting and absolutely disgusting by the time you got there, and when Tenko opened his door, there was Dango, loafing on the back of the couch and watching raindrops race down the window.

“What the fuck,” you said, dropping your wet coat and toeing off your shoes, “How the hell did she get in here?”

Tenko shrugged and hung your coat next to his hoodie. “Can she open locked doors?”

“I hope to fuck she can’t,” you said, and you rounded the couch to wrap your arms around that dear little loaf, and Dango jumped off the couch to crawl underneath it before you could fully hug her. “Oh, good. She’s fine. Acting like normal.” You sat on the couch’s arm, adrenaline evaporating to render you boneless.

“She was in my room when I came back from training. We ended early today, since Aizawa-sensei has something.” Tenko stooped to yank two bottles of gatorade from their plastic rings and headed towards the sofa to offer one to you. “She didn’t seem upset or hurt. She’s been sitting there, napping on and off.”

You accepted it and twisted off the cap. “So, who put my cat in your room?”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know,” you said, taking a shallow sip, careful not to overwhelm your agitated stomach, “They’d have to know about Dango in the first place, and I suppose my stalker would, since they’ve theoretically been breaking into my room.”

Tenko paused mid-sip, and he hastened to swallow. “Someone’s been breaking into your room?”

“Yeah,” you said, easing down the arm of the couch and onto its cushions, “I think. There’s no physical sign of entry, but my shit keeps going missing, and stuff that’s not mine keeps showing up. Let me tell you, I need some of that shit they’ve stolen; it’s hard to replace—”

Tenko touched your lips with three of his fingertips to quiet you, and he gestured for you to stay put while he scrambled over to his closet, where he stood on his toes to retrieve a wicker basket from the top shelf. He dropped the thing into your lap. “Are any of these yours?”

All of it was, missing things you blamed on everything from Dango to your stalker to your own forgetfulness: your favourite sweater, your trolley pass, lip balm, your shitty earbuds, your good pantyhose, your planner, your d10, and, among many smaller things, even that bright blue thong you’d lost in the wash (Well. It’s better to find your thong with your new boyfriend over finding them returned to your dorm coated in your stalker’s cum, you supposed).

“I was losing my goddamn mind,” Tenko was saying, “Stuff kept showing up. I thought it was a test at first—”

“I don’t have a stalker,” you said, absentmindedly rubbing the fabric of your thong between your fingers, “Your shit has been—you read that GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK shit? Tenko.”

“Oh, you have that?” Tenko scratched the back of his neck, but not in his self-harm way; it reminded you of Shinsou’s nervous habit more than anything. “Haven’t you read it? Isn’t that what you were naming your characters after?”

“Ah, ha, ha. Moving on. What is important, though, is why and how this is happening to us.”

“Yeah, I don’t…”

The two of you spitballed for a while, long enough for the both of you to finish your bottles of gatorade and for Tenko to start another, and neither of you came up with anything substantial.

“Hell with it,” said Tenko, standing to stretch, his movement disturbing Dango from her nap in his basket of clean laundry, “Let’s go ask Aizawa-sensei.”

Aizawa was not pleased when he discovered the both of you waiting in his kitchen, but he listened to the story, and when you were done, he stepped out of the room to make a phone call. When he came back, he looked even more exhausted than when he’d first come in.

“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Sakura Grove,” said Aizawa, wincing when his bones creaked as he sat in his chair, “Tenko, do you remember villain in-fighting within the PLF? In particular, I’m asking if you remember breathing in a pink dust cloud. It would’ve been in Deika City, in the month between your fight with Re-Destro and your body modification surgery. If our sources are accurate, you would’ve been with Touya.”

Tenko scrunched up his face. “Why would I have been—hm.” Frowning, he reached into the bag of popcorn you’d commandeered from Aizawa’s cupboards. “I know what you’re talking about. They were only letting me eat healthy stuff in the week before I went under. Touya was taking me to scrounge for something salty and shitty for me, because I couldn’t take it anymore. He started hitting on someone he thought was a waitress, and she—this is why I remember it—she compared the width of her hand to his thigh and said no thanks.”

“That’s Ito,” said Aizawa, sighing and crossing his arms, settling his chin into his capture weapon, “When did she use her quirk?”

“She shoved her hand on Touya’s face when he opened his stupid mouth again, and he passed out with swarming, pink particles floating around his head. She turned to me—and she must not have recognised Touya, but she knew me, because her face lit the fuck up. She never touched me, but I remember having to sneeze.”

“She never told you what her quirk did?”

“I woke back up in the PLF headquarters. I assumed whoever picked me up had killed her and that her death negated any effects.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why? What does it do?”

Aizawa let out a soft laugh, muffled through his capture weapon, and he jerked his head in your direction. “You tell him,” he said, snatching the bag of popcorn and heading towards his bedroom.

***

He’d been nervous about wearing a suit. They reminded him of AFO.

But you’d strayed away from dark colours and too much structure, so his light greyish-blue suit jacket stayed unbuttoned even as you leant across to the passenger seat to adjust his All Might tie for him (a Put Your Hands Up Radio tie had been offered, but Tenko had already closed his fist around the striped tie Midoriya would loan him). Part of his bangs had been pinned back to show off his annoyingly handsome face, especially in how his sharp, red eyes observed caught every movement of your terrible attempt to tie the tie based on the pictures Aizawa had sent you.

“We’re not gonna be late, are we?” Tenko drawled out, the corner of his mouth quirking upward, hand resting on the car ceiling as he angled his chest towards you.

“Shush; we are in the parking lot,” you said, looping the larger end. Or were you supposed to be looping the smaller one? “Besides, the world won’t end if we’re a few minutes late to my class’s annual reunion.”

A flimsy excuse for a party, one made because hero agencies needed some sort of named event as an excuse to dismiss your friends en masse. But it was spring again, and they were coming out of the winter blues, and they wanted to see you again, so, hey, why don’t we work something in around your schedule? If you can’t come to this date, then we’ll reschedule it until you can.

And, like. They knew. They knew Tenko was your soulmate. You suspected they all wanted to see what he was like now, too, because no one but Shinsou, Midoriya, and, apparently, Bakugou had known.

You undid the loose knot and tried again. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” he said, scrutinising the tacky balloons and streamers swaying in the night breeze outside of the otherwise intimidatingly elegant venue, “but those kids might be.”

“Those kids happen to be friends my age,” you said, “and I’m barely younger than you are. They know you’re coming. You’re fine.”

Tenko sucked in through his teeth, tapping the roof of the car one finger at a time. “The last time they saw me was as a thing. An object of destruction.”

“Well, they’ll definitely see you as a human person when I spill how you designed a unicorn DND character for Eri.” You pulled the fabric taut but kept it from lying closely to his neck (a boy didn’t like feeling constrained). “You know what? This tie is as good as it’s gonna get.”

He ducked his chin to examine its knot. “It’s shit.”

“It adds to your devil-may-care, reformed-bad-boy sort of charm,” you said, giving the tie a final smooth-down and poorly suppressing your smile when you felt his muscles through his shirt. “Mathematically, there are only 85 ways to tie a standard tie knot. I don’t believe we’ve reached any of them.”

“How do you know these things? You’re unbeliev—” Tenko jerked his face out of view of the window as Aoyama and Kouda, gesturing wildly, strode past the car and into the venue. “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat, “I know I don’t care and that you don’t care, but other people will. Your reputation is gonna plummet right into its grave if we’re out in the open together.”

You shook your head, letting your smile show. “So, I fucked part of a rescue job almost a year ago. So what. So I’m dating my soulmate. Am I supposed to do otherwise? Honestly, Tenko,” you said, curling loose strands of hair behind his ear, letting your fingers linger around his cheek and neck (he leant into the touch), “I don’t care. I would’ve chosen you even without the soulmate bond. You’re too endearing to pass by. You’re too…babygirl.”

Tenko had been guiding your hand to his mouth, and he snorted before it got there, warm air scattering in a short burst. “Don’t call me that,” he said, pressing his lips to the centre of your palm and waiting until you met his gaze to retract them.

A different warmth shot to your lower stomach, but you had to keep pressing, for the sake of the bit. “Oh, then what should I—darling? Honey? Pookie bear?”

He scoffed and nipped at your pinkie. “None of those are good.”

“Tenko.”

He breathed in, shoulders rising, eyes fluttering shut. Taking a moment to kiss the tiny bite mark on your finger. “Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes in a slow blink, catlike, “Feels good. Feels—like coming home.”

Beaming, you reached down to lace his fingers through yours. All five of them squeezed back. “Then let’s go.”

soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare

#bnha #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki/reader #shigaraki imagine #shigaraki fic #mha #shigaraki headcanons #shigaraki fanfiction #shigaraki fanfic #soulmates #soulmate au #soulmate #dash it all

[toki-hotel]

2008 Bill Kaulitz Relationship Headcannons

AN: I’m a new writer but requests and feedback is definitely welcome :)

Warnings: smut 18+, mentions of reader wearing makeup

SFW

He is actually very shy. It will take him a while to come out of his shell. This can be seen when he starts to tease you directly, making jokes that are personal to you,  like he does with his band mates and brother. Will call you out on your bad habits or embarrassing moments. But he laughs with you not at you...for the most part.

Bill loves junk food. He will whine about how he’s hungry and craves something. Won’t stop pouting until he gets it. This means random trips to the nearest gas station or grocery store. Will beg the tour managers to make a pit stop at fast food places on the way to the next venue or interview.

His feelings for you develop gradually, he needs to form a connection with someone before considering the relationship. In his friendship with you, these small feelings made him anxious because he doesn’t know how to deal with them. Over time they grow stronger and he can’t hide it anymore. He has serious heart eyes for you, and its obvious to everybody.

If you’re a playful person than you guys will get into so much trouble. Playing pranks on other band members. You’re always trying to scare George but it’s IMPOSSIBLE. Bill comes up with plans where one of you guys hides and the other tries to distract him, you’ll jump out and scream but George is just like...what are you doing? He will roll is eyes at you and leave the room.

If you’re more chill then this man decides YOU are his target. He will tease you with Gustav at his side the entire time. Throws wads of paper at you until you snap. Will try to sit on your lap whenever you’re not paying attention to him. He loves to get reactions out of you. His favourite is when you give in and pretend to be mad at him. chase him around and pretend to hit him or tickle him. Bill will literally giggle like a child and have the biggest grin on his face.

He likes to be tall. If you’re short then he will definitely mock you. Holds stuff above your head and laughs while you jump. Bill is 6′4 so idk if any of the readers would be that height, but if you are as tall or are wearing heels he is not happy about it lol. He will literally go and change his shoes so that he can be taller.

NSFW

Now because he has to form a connection to someone before progressing into a relationship, he isn’t the most experienced. Bill is a little bit shy about it and will cover it up with dirty jokes. He’s definitely made out with others though, lets not forget how many fans he has, so he is a great kisser.

He loves kissing! Making out with you is his favourite thing ever and the messier the better. His tongue piercing is so fun to him, he loves to tease you with it by running it up your neck. 

He loves it when your lipstick smears all over him. Bill wants you guys to look like a mess by the end of it. This means messy hair and makeup smeared everywhere, mascara running down your guys’ faces.

He’s sub leaning. THERE I SAID IT. Have you guys seen the chokers he wears? Going back to the teasing you part, he also loves to do it in bed. Will give you little touches here and there, or give you the look. You can recognize it from a mile away. Plays with his tongue ring, or sticks his tongue out at you. He will push you until he gets a reaction, again it’s his favourite.

Once you’re alone and call him out on it, he pulls the innocent act. Tell him the punishment you plan for him and he switches up so quick. Bill’s cat eyes shift to puppy dog ones. Sounds so sweet when he says ‘please’. Will get on his knees and cling to your waist. He just wanted you so bad he ‘couldn’t help himself’.

Edging him is the best and worst punishment for him. He’s happy to have your attention, but he can also be very greedy, he just wants to have you so bad. He will bring himself to tears so quickly, but its okay because he’s pretty when he cries and he loves how he feels after. Its cathartic. The release of pent up energy makes him feel so much better.

AN: Plz request stuff! I’ll write for other band members and modern versions too.

#bill kaulitz #tokio hotel #bill kaulitz x reader #bill kaulitz smut #tokio hotel x reader #tokio hotel smut #bill kaulitz headcannons

[popponn]

some what if and a passing humor.

characters: isagi, chigiri, sae, shidou, aiku, kaiser.

notes: the amount of time and fun i spend on this is something. writing aiku and shidou for the first time feels funny. nonetheless, i hope i get everyone okay. warning: yeah the question is 'what if we ever broke up' like that song ; a fluff, some more comedic than others ; shidou is shidou, but still a fluff; minor swearing.

you truly didn’t meant anything by it. dare you say, it even actually came from a place of fondness, actually. you watched your boyfriend on your side and thought, “ah, I might not be able to live without him anymore.”

how serious that statement was—you didn’t really want to examine it when the atmosphere was this light. that was probably why without much rhyme or reason, you asked him, “hey, what if i ever break up with you?”

isagi

yoichi’s first response to that was chocking on his bottled mineral water in a manner that was less handsome and more comical. you immediately jolted towards him and patted his back as he hacked out rough coughs. it took sometime for it to calm down, but even afterwards panic was still clearly swirling in his eyes.

gone was the calculative striker and the crybaby yocchan who hadn’t emerge since he was 4 nearly made a come back. with the two of you still pressed side by side on the sofa, yoichi immediately asked you why in the world are you asking that. he didn’t say it, but anyone with half a brain would figure out that his brain was working overtime at the moment. did he do something? did he forget something? did he fuck up something?

the moment you answered it was a mere passing thought of what if and assured him that you really had no intention of doing that for anytime soon—which in total took almost 10 minutes—it was after all that yoichi could finally breath normally. with an exhaustion that he only experienced after a full 90 minutes of intense match, yoichi slouched against the sofa. he genuinely looked like he was so stressed he would cry and you seriously felt bad. as an apology, you hugged him and leaned his head against your shoulder.

“I’m okay. It’s just…” Yoichi tried to assure you, before pausing for a moment and heaved out a heavy sigh. Burying his head on your shoulder as he wrapped his hands tighter around you, he admitted, “…actually, yeah, I totally panicked just then.”

“I’m seriously sorry. Just forget it, okay? It’s just a question after all,” you said again, combing through his locks in attempt to cheer him up.

Yoichi laughed pitifully. He shifted for a few times, trying to find a more comfortable position to cuddle you. As he attempted the impromptu cuddle session, Yoichi finally continued, “…just a question, yeah?”

When you nodded and the two of you settled with you laying on his chest, your legs intertwining with each other’s, Yoichi finally gave you an answer, full of determination and sincerity. “Definitely will try to win you back. I’m not giving up on you so easily. I know in a way that’s pretty selfish but, yeah, I will definitely make you happy—but, seriously, don’t try to do that!” Yoichi insisted as you laughed at the lame ending of his bold proclamation.

chigiri

hyoma looked so offended you genuinely thought he would throw the hairdryer in his hand to your face. thankfully and unsurprisingly, he didn’t. instead, he put it down with a terrifying calmness and suddenly there was a hyoma face in front of you with an intense stare trained on you. if this was a drama, it would be romantic, maybe, but honestly in reality it felt like having a thug was threatening you.

you nervously supplied that it was just a question and pushed his face away with a finger on his nose. hyoma’s glare didn’t falter even as he distanced his face away from you. with sharp gaze still staring straight at you, hyoma demanded what did you mean by just a question. yet again, you noted how this felt like entering a duel with an angry big cat—it was terrifying. then you saw how his eyes sparkled differently under the bedroom light and it hit you that you might had done a mistake.

panicking, you threw yourself towards him and hugged him as tightly as you could, blurting out an apology. hyoma didn’t move for another few seconds, his hands slowly sneaking up crawling up from your hips before it rest snugly, wrapped around your waist. he took your face in his hands, wordlessly asking for you to look at him. it was then you saw how his face rested in a pissed pout resembling an angry child.

“Don’t joke like that again. The hell is that question for?” Hyoma asked with a harsh tone, the polar opposite to the hands that gently pinched your cheeks.

“Sowry, Hwoma,” you apologized all whilst accepting his bullying. Hyoma’s expression didn’t budge, conflicts written all over his face.

“I seriously will be pissed if we break up, by the way. So don’t you dare,” he added petulantly. “I said that I promise that I will give you the best of everything. If you just suddenly walked away—”

You smiled at his words, feeling his affection through his coarse wordings and weak stretches on your cheeks. Seeing your smile, Hyoma pushed his forehead against yours again, “I’m serious. Ugh. Seriously, you piss me off sometimes. I will step on your feet next time you pull this sort of shit again.”

sae

sae made a face that reminded you of cats in videos when they got a cheese thrown into their face. and it stayed like that for around ten seconds. eyes wide, mouth in a straight line, while horror and shock etched itself there. then, he recovered and the sour face he made immediately made you wonder if maybe it was time to apologize already.

but before you could say anything, sae made a bitch face that was somehow both pissed off and taunting. it was pretty amazing to see in action, while genuinely pissing off and scarring you off at the same time. his position didn’t even change—his head was still propped with one hand while his legs were still propped up on your lap as if he was some expensive pet who owned the place—and he still stayed silent, yet somehow you knew he was calling you names no proper human should probably ever say. especially to their partner. but, then again, sae indeed sometimes came up with some of the weirdest things through his wording alone.

it took you a few minutes to crack before you finally looked away. without seeing, you knew sae’s eyes just stared at you even flatter—which was amazing, considering how flat his usual stare already was. then another minute passed, you remembered how stubborn sae could get when you realized that the stare you refused to meet won’t wane just like how his legs suddenly were immovable boulders on your thighs. Thankfully and unfortunately, sae decided that your spirit was damaged enough for him to finally speak.

“That joke was shitass,” Sae commented, clearly holding back. You genuinely wondered if these last few minutes were spent by him trying to tame his unholy, uncultured wild words into simply ‘shitass’.

You took a glance towards him, meeting his gaze from the corner of your eyes. You gulped apologetically, “…I’m sorry.”

“Also, wouldn’t it be you who would probably do something if we break up?” Sae asked in a tone most people used to point something out. You wanted to rebut him, saying that it was not an answer. But taking into consideration how his personality is and how this staring contest seemed to be tearing your morale into shreds, you simply nodded weakly with a swallowed pathetic whimper of a bullied koi fish in a cat mouth.

And turned out, it still wasn’t enough and Sae’s silent stare was still flat enough to make you want to cry. But before you could wail like a child for real, he suddenly sighed and got up. Then a hand was in front of you, his palm inviting you to take it, “We will walk around for a bit. I need some air.”

shidou

you really didn’t know what you expect when ryusei walked wordlessly towards the nightstand and took out four suspicious little packs. you definitely did felt torn between finally ending him there and then or just smile in the way possums pretend to die. put it simply, suddenly maybe breaking up with him didn’t sound like a terrible idea. maybe he really was after your body only.

then, when you tiredly voiced these outs, ryusei was suddenly wrapped around you like a koala baby with bright eyes as he whined to you about how you shouldn’t say that. in his very shidou ryusei way, where words like explosions and such were used. by the time he said ‘firework hottie’—or something—you decided to tune him out, despite your reluctant amusement, and just quietly explained that it was a joke.

turned out, that was a trigger was him to immediately switched out his cuter side, let you go, and went back to his usual countenance. the packs returned to your sight once again and you threw a pillow to his face. ryusei laughed and while he didn’t avoid said pillow, he did indeed came back with a revenge through a pair of warms wrapped around your waist. this time, you half expected him to continue on laughing whilst trying to push the protection to your hand, but a few seconds passed and his expression grew somber.

“But, then doesn’t it mean it wasn’t mean to be? In case things did ended up boring between both of us,” Ryusei gestured between the two of you with a lax flair that was only accentuated by him lying on his side. “Though, I can just make it explode between the two of us again, you get it?”

You stayed silent for a minute. You considered translating his words in your brain, before deciding not today, “No. I don’t.”

Ryusei sighed, before nuzzling his face to your stomach, “Gee—you are boring sometimes, Babe—”

With no hesitation you immediately trashed around and tried to get him off you. Ryusei didn’t budge, but not without getting a knee straight to his face. Still, it didn’t stopped him from wrestling to both stop you and get you lying down beside him, snickering somehow, “Ow—Come on, I know you get me! Like, can’t you feel it between us? This sort of thing won’t go down that easily. If it did, either you and me will spark it back on like nothing happened and you know it, right? My pleasure to do it as many time as you want though.”

aiku

in a manner that only a man with at least three pages long of shitty dating and commitment issue history could do, oliver let out a rueful chuckle. he leaned back against his seat and looked up without much change in his expression. it was at this moment you were reminded of the fact that your boyfriend that by, probably, miraculous feats decided to put his commitment in you, was one mysterious motherfucker who hides many things behind easy smiles and friendly mannerism.

you debated whether you should push him to answer you or just laugh the question off as a thoughtless impulsive thought being voiced out. though, before you decided on anything, oliver beat you to it with a teasing joke of his own. without any gravity in it, he mused out loud if this was the day you finally decided that he is a man unworthy of someone like you.

you replied back that it would only be possible if he was unserious like any of his previous relationship. then, that joke died down at the last syllable when you saw how he just smiled at you, not quipping out any other jokes. for a moment, you froze and genuinely thought that you misunderstood the nature of your relationship. thankfully, oliver seemed to catch whatever your face made and smile widely as he stood up, walking over to your seat with just a few strides.

“Then,” Oliver began, with a tone of finality. “I suppose that’s not happening anytime soon, hm?”

You, who just nearly arrived on a conclusion that would made this exchange not funny and light, still froze in your seat. It was only after Oliver crouched down before you, resting his hands on your knees that you could blink again, “…I…uh.”

Oliver, still with many sides you would have to discover, stared at you looked at you with a gaze you couldn’t exactly comprehend. His voice was still smooth and his, as he said, “Though, just in case you need a reference, don’t do that, ‘kay?”

It wasn’t long, as it only lasted for a mere second. Yet, undeniably, Oliver made a face that was soft, odd, and unfamiliar. It felt like a new thing—one that he trusted to you since some times ago, yet you realized just now. In a way, describing it was a bit impossible, but seeing it felt like an answer to everything all of sudden. Then, time moved on and a grin that was more usual with his rhythm showed up again, as crooked as how it usually is, “Like, come on, you have to admit I’m a catch, right? Plus, look at us—we are totally some teenagers’ dream love story right now. Me who—yeah, yeah, ouch. I won’t continue, no need to pull my hair—ha ha!”

kaiser

michael’s eyebrows seemed to be confused between furrowing out of irritation or raising up to his wide ass forehead out of amusement. but as the two you continued walking amidst the crowd, his lips decided it for him and curved itself into a smug smirk that was the textbook definition of annoying. in a heartbeat, you regretted asking him.

without stopping neither his nor your steps, michael brought his face closer to you with a grin that grew softer and somehow more teasing in the process. and while his visual was pleasing, the moment he launched into a spiel of how you would never be able to leave someone of his caliber. that if anything you would be the one left behind.

when your face soured at his wording, an almost uncatchable flash of seriousness entered his tone. he raised an eyebrow at you one last time, before tightening his finger around yours and pulled you closer to his side slowly. in a tone that was too prideful and composed, as though he didn’t just try to get a rise out of you, michael muttered out a quick comment on how it got more crowded. you noticed while it did, it wasn’t by much that it warranted the two of you being glued side by side. whilst you decided to not point it out, you nudged at him to just answer your random question.

Once again, Michael scoffed, his attention landing on you through his glance, “Again? Didn’t I say that if anything—”

“I heard you the first time. I just want to hear your answer,” you cut him off simply, not taking the bait this time.

Michael turned to stare at your face intensely at that. It was a bit unnerving, with how terrifying his eyes could get, but out of trust on his spatial awareness to get the two of you out of crashes and in the name of curiosity for a trivial question—you stared back. “…seriously? You really are something sometimes.” And as the two of you neared the ending of the crowded sidewalk, Michael finally relented and answered with a heavy sigh.

“As if I would let you leave that easily,” Michael turned his gaze back to the front as the two of you continued to walk. Through his bangs, you couldn’t quite catch his expression. The tone he was using did made you feel bad though. As he continued to talk, you made a note to also firmly hold his hands and do something nice for him later. “I will show you how fucking shit your decision was and then you will crawl back to me. I will make fun of you and get you back if you are entertaining enough. There you go, my answer. Now, will you just act cute and say sweeter stuff?”

#bllk #bllk imagines #blue lock #bllk x reader #blue lock fluff #bluelock x reader #blue lock scenarios #blue lock x reader #bllk fluff #bllk headcanons #blue lock headcanons #bluelock #blue lock imagines #bllk scenarios #isagi yoichi #chigiri hyoma #itoshi sae #michael kaiser #oliver aiku #shidou ryusei #isagi x reader #chigiri x reader #sae x reader #shidou x reader #aiku x reader #kaiser x reader #kaiser is funny because he gives me high blood pressure but he is good and interesting #isagi is just loml my boy my everything #want to put r/i/n and r/e/o but that is sure fire to yeah uh issues so sweeties :((( bye:(((

[jellyfishloveletterghosts]

Baby Did You Come Back Wrong

Back on my necromancer Steve bullshit with the came back wrong trope this time.

Warnings: Reanimated Billy Hargrove, Neil Hargrove dying, blood drinking.

Baby Did You Come Back Wrong (I’ll Love You Anyway)

Steve is half asleep on the couch, covered in dirty but too tired from the night's activities to trudge upstairs to the bathroom for a much needed shower. He is dozing more than sleeping, amped up and the memory of what Billy had looked like when they cracked open his grave is haunting him. So every time he gets close to sleep there is that memory twisted in a nightmare where it did not work, where Steve was not able to work life back into him.

 The phone goes off, the ring loud in the quiet of the house, echoing off the walls shrilly. He thinks about ignoring it, about dragging the pillow over his head and pretending he really is sleeping. Deliberates so long it stops, quiet surrounding him once more, almost louder than before in it’s nothing ness.

 He jumps when the phone starts up again, nearly falling off the couch with it. He gets up by the second ring and trudges to the wall phone in the kitchen, leaning against the door frame as he picks it up. “Hello?”

 "I think Billy came back wrong." Max whisper shouts from the other end. Steve blinks a few times at the wall and shakes his head. He was a little off when he came back, a little more quiet, more reserved. He experienced a traumatic death. It would be stranger if he came back completely fine.

"No, he came back perfect." Skin shifting from drawn taunt gray to plump with collagen and that golden tan that is just part of Billy’s genetics. His hair that had been brittle was bouncy again, lush golden curls framing his face, hanging down to his shoulders. No black veins or black goo as Steve worked magic to fill in the holes of his body with borrowed flesh. He came back healed but full of scars littering his body and Steve is sure they litter his psyche as well. 

 "Steve!” There is panic in her voice drawing him out of the memory of Billy’s blue eyes going from glassy to bright and shining, staring up at Steve with clarity as he offered a hand to help him out of his grave. Max lowers her voice again, nearly gritting out the words. “He definitely came back wrong."

 Steve sighs, rubs a hand through his hair and then grimaces as he looks at the dirt under his nails. Starts rubbing his thumb nail under the nail on his index finger trying to work the dirty away. "Max, he just has to get used to being back." Steve cannot imagine it, not really. He has never died, only had near death experiences courtesy of the upside down. He doubts even those experiences come close to actually dying.

 "He killed Neil!" Max shouts again making him jump, nail slipping and digging hard under his other nail. It hurts, makes him hiss like a disgruntled cat.

 "Oh…” Steve knows he should care that Billy killed Neil, knows it should be a big deal. He does not care though, from what he knows it is probably justified. Billy deserves some revenge on the one monster still around to take it. “From what I understand he probably deserved it." Besides, he could have attacked anyone, could have lashed out at Steve or Max in the graveyard, or fled and gone after some random passerby. He didn’t so either Neil instigated or at least Billy knows who is and is not the enemy. So not a big problem even if a dead body is inconvenient, Steve already knows the location of a recently vacated gravy.

 Max is not as reasonable and understanding as Steve yelling in his ear again. "STEVE!” He sighs tiredly and knows even if he could manage to sleep he will not be getting the chance anytime soon. “Billy is hunched over Neil licking the blood from the ground." 

 Oh! That is worthy of alarm. "I'm on my way." Steve’s own voice is the loud one this time, hanging up before way is even full out of his mouth. 

 Fuck Steve hopes this is not going to be a thing. He does not think he has the heart to put Billy back in the grave if it comes to it. He needs to make sure it never comes to that.

TBC ??? Maybe

#harringrove #jellyghostfic #fanfiction #st fic #necromancer steve harrington #reanimated billy hargrove #billy hargrove x steve harrington #if you like this it would be great if you rebloged it

[thebigoblin]

you could be the one that i love

as promised! sheriff finds out about sterek tag won the poll, so here is the fic! this was so fun to write, i might do this next weekend too <3

title from "Message In A Bottle" by Taylor Swift.

now posted on ao3!

He's thinking about last night, and how amazing and perfect it was, when he walks through the front door of his home. He's smiling, fond and breathless, because what he experienced last night? It was straight out of a fairytale. Once-in-a-lifetime, truly world changing, adorable.

He's so lost in thought, so completely gone on those strong hands and dazzling smiles, those perfect bunny teeth, that he doesn't hear his name being called. Doesn't even realize he's not alone in his home until he's being tapped on his head, a double-drum beat he's hated and loved, in equal measures, since he was four and went to the barber for his first ever hair cut that he remembers.

"Da-ad! Daddio! Didn't realize you were off shift," he says, flustered and panicked. What if he asks why he's smiling like this? Normally, when he's zoned out, he's usually also hyperfocused on a thing. This, though? This is highly unusual. And his dad's a cop — he's the goddamn Sheriff. He'll be suspicious.

His dad looks at him, eyes squinted, looks him up and down. "Don't look dressed to impress," he mutters, more to himself than to him, but Stiles makes a noise of protest. He's dressed decently! His dad seems to think otherwise though. "You look like you had a fight with a cat, Stiles. That t-shirt is older than you are, why do you insist on wearing it?"

"Because it's comfy! I'll have you know, I have slept in this even when I did not have my pillow, and you know I can't sleep without it."

His dad puts up his hands in surrender. "Alright, alright. Then what were you smiling about? You clearly aren't coming back from a date."

"Hey! I could be," he isn't. Still, he has feelings and words hurt, okay?

"Dressed like that?" His dad snorts, and okay, actions hurt too! "Sure, kiddo."

"Well, my choice in a date clearly wouldn't be a snob like you, so it wouldn't matter to them if I'm dressed like this or in a suit." he shoots back, and realizes his mistake just as he's faced with his dad's full-tilt grin.

"Oh? A snob? Then I guess I imagined you having a crush on one Lydia Martin all these years."

Stiles has no out, and he knows this, his dad knows this, and they both know he's done lying at this point. Sure, there was a time when Stiles would have run circles with his words and confused his dad, but ever since the werewolf secret was revealed the Stilinski men have made a pact to always be honest with each other. Or, at least, not actively lie.

Omitting certain details though? That's fine.

So, Stiles confesses:

"Actually, dad, I did have a date."

"Bingo!"

"But it wasn't before me coming home." He scratches his neck, suddenly shy. He can feel his cheeks heating up, the memories of last night once again rushing through his mind.

"I take it was good, whenever it was. But wait, where were this afternoon then?"

"Oh, dad, don't ask. It was a terrible day, I tell you! Erica and Lydia wouldn't leave me alone until I told them every. Single. Detail."

His dad raises an eyebrow. His voice is stern as he speaks. "Young man, you're seventeen. I know you think having sex is the pinnacle of teenage—"

"No! No, no, no!" Now he's blushing for an entirely different reason. "No, definitely not! De- date and I definitely didn't have sex last night." Oh god, kill him now. "It was just a dinner and movie date and it was cliché but... Dad, it was so good."

His dad smiles. Asks him if he's had dinner yet, and when he says no, tells him to tell him everything over dinner.

"Not everything," he clarifies quickly, "Just parts you're comfortable sharing with me."

Stiles loves him so much. He hugs his dad, tells him so, and starts to do just as he was asked to — he heats his dinner up, his dad having already cooked and eaten, and then both of them settle on the dining table chairs.

Stiles tells him things.

How much he loved how his date came to pick him up from Lydia's, because she was the one who dressed him. His dad laughs at that part, and Stiles points his fork at him, trying to shut him up, but only succeeds in joining in on the laughter fest.

How much he loved the flowers he got, and how his date was a gentleman all night long. Opened all the doors for him, pulled out his chair at the restaurant, and even let him eat off of his plate. Didn't even tell him to shut up when he kept babbling at the cinema.

"I'm going to pause you here and ask — you're dating a guy?"

"Not dating dating, since this was our first date, but... yeah." His dad knows he's bisexual, has known for a while, but this is the first person Stiles is dating ever and it's a guy.

He waits for his dad's reaction.

"You want to go on a second date with him?"

Stiles blows out a breath. Toys with his food a bit. The only thing he doesn't want to do in this moment is grin like a lunatic.

But he fails.

His dad holds his gaze and tells him, "Any person who makes you this happy, they get my approval."

"Dad," Stiles says, overcome with emotions. "Thank you."

"Always, kiddo. Your happiness is what matters to me. That being said, you need to do your laundry, and I'm going to go sleep. Night."

"Oh, come on! We were having a moment, and you totally ruined it!" He yells at his dad's back, which is shaking with laughter.

He yells good night, then thinks of his dad's reaction when he learns his date was Derek.

*

"I want to tell my dad."

This is their fifth date.

They're in a coffee shop a few towns over, just looking at each other, talking about this and that. About what Stiles wants to do after he completes his senior year, what Derek's plans were and what he ended up doing. It's a quiet environment, not many patrons here besides them, and they are in their own little bubble here.

Which pops rather loudly as Derek looks at him with the widest eyes he's ever seen.

Stiles tries not to laugh. He really, really does.

He ends up laughing, the other patrons and the waitstaff looking over at them at the sound.

"Are you scared? Of my poor ol' dad?"

"Your dad who is the Sheriff!" Derek hisses, trying to not let more attention come over them. "And I'm dating his underage son. Stiles! This is not funny."

"I'm sorry," he isn't, "But the Alpha of Beacon Hills is scared of an old man? That is funny as hell, Der."

"Stiles!"

"Darling," he tries to calm himself down, and looking into Derek's eyes has that effect on him, "It's okay. We don't have to tell him yet. It's just an idea, okay? We can wait until you're ready."

Derek takes a moment to process and reply. "Didn't you say he approves of your boyfriend?"

"My boyfriend who he probably thinks is my age, or like, maybe two or three years older. Not six."

Derek takes one look at him, at the hickey he's marked on his neck, and shakes his head rather aggressively. "No."

Stiles laughs and keeps laughing, until Derek shuts him up with a kiss.

*

The police station is nearly empty when he enters. It makes sense; it's lunch time and recently there hasn't been anything big. Which is good, really good.

It means he gets to finish his last year in school in peace, and he doesn't have to worry about his dad working himself to death.

It's a good time in Beacon Hills.

Stiles thinks so, right until the moment he's on his fifth bite of burger and his dad's staring down his own.

"You know, son, one day you are gonna have to make your boyfriend meet me."

Stiles chokes on his burger.

"If you can't eat the rest of it, maybe I can—"

"It's not healthy for you!" He shouts when he's feeling okay, and then, "Also, I could have died right now. Were you not worried?"

"I've seen you trip on air and gracefully fight off a rogue werewolf, Stiles."

"And?"

His dad just rolls his eyes, picks up his own healthy burger, smells it, and puts it down. "Smells nasty,"

"Good for your health," he sing-songs. And then, "It's only been a month, dad, jeez! Let us live a little. Plus, he's scared of you-" Fuck. His dad is looking at him weird.

"He's scared of me?"

"I mean, you're the Sheriff, so." He shrugs. It's totally a valid reason to be scared.

"Hmm. And there is no other reason?"

"Nope, not at all!"

"Right."

Stiles stuffs the rest of his burger into his mouth to avoid further questioning. His dad sighs, clearly thinking he's raised an animal, and attempts to eat his own lunch.

By the time he's done, he's licking his fingers.

"Told you it tastes better than it smells."

His dad meticulously wipes his mouth, his fingers with napkins. Stiles is drinking his banana smoothie.

"And I told you I want to meet the boy who has got you so chipper."

Stiles ends up snorting the smoothie out his nose.

"Oh, lord."

His dad is clearly questioning Stiles' existence. At this point, Stiles is doing the same.

*

His dad doesn't leave the issue, and after continuous requests — orders, more like — Stiles breaks down in front of Derek.

Derek, the pure, innocent soul whose color leaves him the moment Stiles tells him of his dad's demands.

"I need to create a will." Is what Derek answers with.

Stiles agrees, and adds, "Erica will be a good Alpha, I think."

They both hold each other, then, fearing the worst.

*

Stiles tries to soften the blow by providing his dad with unhealthy food for three days straight.

Three is his limit.

"Derek, I'm sorry, but I can't do this any longer."

Derek accepts his fate rather bravely. Eyes steeled with determination, he walks into the Stilinski home, and Stiles follows, once again rehearsing the speech in his mind.

Dad, I know this isn't what you were expecting. But this is my boyfriend. Derek Hale. Yes, I know he's 23 and I'm 17, but dad. I like him so much. And he likes me that much back. We are good together. You know I have been happy, and dad, Derek has been too. You know because I know you have seen him around. Dad—

Turns out, he need not have prepared the speech.

Because his dad? Is kind of an asshole.

The very first thing he sees when he enters the living room is Derek's back, because he's frozen in the middle of the room, eyes locked on—

The banner.

That reads WELCOME DEREK HALE.

"You knew." He looks at his dad, who is smiling smugly.

"Yes."

"How?"

"I think you are forgetting, kiddo, but I'm a cop."

"But you- the steaks! Dad!"

His dad doesn't even have the decency to fake remorse.

"Come on, Der, we are leaving."

He tugs on Derek's hand, makes him move back out the door. Derek follows, but only after saying:

"Thank you for not killing me!"

"You're welcome, son!" His dad yells back.

The son sends a warmth through Stiles' entire being, the easy acceptance of Derek into their little unit of family a welcome gift. When Stiles looks at Derek, he sees his boyfriend reflecting the same emotions.

*

Later that same night, his dad calls to tell him this —

"Stiles, I love you, kiddo. And I want you to be happy. And I guess your happiness is with Derek. It was hard to digest at first, but then I saw you both at the bookstore." Stiles remembers that day — it was their second date. "I knew you were dating someone, a boy, and I connected that information with what I saw, and I came up with my son dating an older boy. It angered me, concerned me. But then I saw past that, because I saw how he was with you and you with him.

It was like watching the past. I won't call this young love, because clearly this is more than that. I'm not sure how you would feel about this years down the line, if it will even be true, but I have a conviction that a decade from now, maybe even sooner, I won't be calling my son and his boyfriend, but my sons. My son, and his husband."

Stiles has tears in his eyes, but it is okay, because Derek does too. And from the way his dad's voice cracks, so does he.

"I love you, Stiles."

"Love you, dad. So much."

His dad hangs up the call, and Stiles buries himself into Derek's chest.

"Your father is a good man," Derek tells him, and Stiles nods. "I won't let him down. I won't let you down."

"I know."

Stiles tilts his head, and Derek tilts his, and they kiss, a gentle, soft kiss that conveys the conviction of his dad's words, and their hope of its truth.

(It's true. His dad even recounts this tale at the wedding reception — how he knew and he played on Stiles' fear to eat unhealthy food for three days straight.

Everyone laughs, and then Stiles has to suffer as his husband — husband! — gangs up on him with his dad.

It's the best day of Stiles' life).

#sterek #derek hale #stiles stilinski #sheriff stilinski #whenwordsmakesense #*sterek fic recs #sh.writesonmain #if there is any mistake — know that this was written b/w 1 and 2am.

[thatcanadianfangirl]

JJ Maybank// Healing Takes Time Pt.2

JJ Maybank X Jade (Booker) Routledge

Plot: When Jade is all alone at the chateau falling asleep on the hottest night of the year she hears a loud noise that makes her skin crawl. She discovers JJ on the sofa after what seems like a run-in with the kooks again. With some reluctance he allows his best friend's Twin to patch him up. Falling apart in her clutch that night she discovers that the clash he experienced earlier was something deeper than just some lousy rich boy. He returns to her every time it occurs, he never talks and always leaves before Jade stirs away. That is until one day he does.

Word Count: 4.7k+

Disclaimer: Brother's bestfriend, slow burn, talks of domestic abuse, and mentions of underage drinking. minor writing errors even though this is edited.

{Part One}

----

The excruciating heat from the summer sun had made sleep too uncomfortable to keep. Sweat began to latch onto every inch of my body like a second skin. I felt drowsy as my mind began pulling to the front again.

The empty space beside me still radiated warmth from the boy who occupied it last night. A strange feeling of lost overwhelmed me at the knowledge of JJ escaping while I was unconscious. But there also was a foreign and very pleasant emotion starting to plant its-self.

What the fuck is happening to me?

With a cat nap stretch I grasps the most ancient iPhone I've laid eyes on, but it was $500 dollars cheaper than a brand new one, I shouldn't be complaining. Three hours before my shift at the Pelican Yacht Club and another hour ahead of my alarm. Unfortunately there's no chance of me passing out again with the temperatures so high today.

With a heavy heart I scoured the house just incase JJ decided to relocate himself. Every room was completely vacant and there was no sign of life anywhere. John B still appeared to on hiatus and the concern began fluttering. That kid better have the decency to send me a text soon.

After a hot shower I still felt mentally exhausted from the night I had with JJ. It shattered my heart to see him that vulnerable, that broken. I want that prick to drown himself six-hundred feet under the sea. Jay wasn't anything close to perfect but he definitely didn't deserve to be beaten by the one person who was suppose to protect him.

I hoped that blonde boy didn't escape back home to that sorry excuse of a man he was forced to call dad. My throat tightened and it was hard to contain the burning tears.

I took my time preparing myself. I wasn't a fan of your every day kook but with the pay my promotion brought just about made up for it.

Capturing my Jeep keys, I made my way out of the Chateau and through the porch. The yard was Pogue-less and the Twinkie was not in her original spot. Where the hell was my brother? Although my day would go a lot more seamless if I knew where he was. I'm still passive-aggressive towards him for leaving me in that damned place alone.

With the spare time and extra cash I had I was able to grab a bite to eat and hit up the gas station. I really needed to get mobile minutes and fill up the Jeep for the rest of the week.

----

I was relived to be sitting at the reception desk in the cool air conditioned building. Watching a few others from the cut maintaining and fuel up various boats out on the docks. A job I had last year and frankly didn't miss for a single second. Taking this job serious was the best decision I've made in my entire life.

Through the glass door I could see a familiar SUV pulling up front. I spotted Kiara, another friend of my twin brother. She rounded the rear and started for the front doors. I consider Kie a friend of mine as well, she often pulled me along with them. Always mentioning how nice it was to have another girl around to balance out that intoxication masculine energy.

"Good evening, Miss Carrera. Is there anything I help you with today?" I announced in my service voice once she walked through the doors. She flashed me a mischievous grin and I swore I could giggle at the sight.

Kiara wore a vibrant and suitable outfit for the hot weather. She always had such a fun style making me yearn for a body I didn't have. I loved my curves but the hope for Kiara donating to my empty closet was almost comparable. It was hard to find cute discounted or thrifted clothing in my size.

"Yes, Miss Routledge I need the Carrera's Princess y72 fueled and prepped for an evening trip to the mainland." She held an elegant tone and straighten her posture as she addressed me.

I forced a laugh down and continued to play along with our ruse. "Not a problem, It'll be ready for 3:00pm. How does that sound?"

"That simply will not do." She shook her head and both of her front braids followed. "Did you not hear me? I said evening trip." I almost chocked sensing how much she struggled to keep the kook behavior.

"My apologies Miss Carrera. How does 5:00pm sound instead." I offered,

"Yes, why couldn't you just get it right the first time?" she pawed the air in displeasure.

It took two seconds before we fell into a fit of laughter so hard it began to hurt. Her dark skin starting to turn pink as she gasped for air and it only made me laugh harder.

The clearing of ones voice had me swallowing down the ounce of happiness I had today. Fear washed over me as I spotted my boss Pike, standing a few feet away. Arms crossed over his lean chest as he analyzed the scene before him.

"Sorry, sir." I croaked.

He approached the reception desk and leaned his body weight against it. With firm green eyes he stared me down. At the tense anticipation I prepared myself for a scolding. A small one, but a scolding nonetheless.

Glancing at Kiara I could have sworn her eyes almost rolled out of their sockets. I opened my mouth to investigate my punishment but nothing came out.

"Loosen up kid." He breaks into humorous smile. "You dedicated so much to this company and as long as you're doing your job I don't care who comes to visit you during your shift." He shrugs nonchalantly.

The sword above my head vanished into thin air and my lungs began filling back up with oxygen again. "You have no idea how good it feels to hear you say that. I was worried you were fed up with me." I say with a smile of appreciation.

"I could never be, just keep up the good work." He replies with a wink and a too friendly smile as he began retreating.

"As always." I speak over my shoulder watching his tall frame disappear behind the pristine blue wall. My presentable mannerism fleeting my being once my attention clung onto Kiara again.

"Now what were you going to ask me before you almost got me fired." I sassed and gave her a lighthearted glare.

She scoffs dramatically and says "If anything I pushed you closer to the manager position. Pike really seems to be impressed with your work ethic." Kiara's face softened and I couldn't help the proud smile spreading onto my lips at the adoration swirling in her brown eyes.

"Maybe," I shrug. "But it's a tinsey bit fetched considering I'm part-time for ten months out of the year." I say knowing this might be it for me.

"You'll get there, I promise." She says it like she too understood the hardships of living on the cut. As if she had to take bread from the clearance shelf and store it in the freezer. Or fill five dollar condition half way when it was a quarter way empty.

I could taste the bitterness trying to over take this tender moment I was sharing with Kie. I despised myself for every comparing my life against hers. Sure it was unfortunate I born into poverty, but it wasn't her fault she had all these advantages in life.

"I'll hold you to it." I tease lassoing back that buoyant atmosphere we held minutes ago.

"Good." She nods. Her heart is too big for this world.

"Now when do you get off work?" She asks innocently twirling one of her braids with her finger, "I think Seven, why? What do you have planned for tonight?" I asked cautiously. Last time she asked me this I got alcohol poisoning from a 'little' kegger as she put it. Those few days I've spent in the hospital wasn't exactly my idea of a good time.

"Don't worry it's nothing too crazy. We're going surfing tonight and I wanted you to come. I know you cant resist a good wave or two. Plus you can show us some of those tricks we can never get down."

My eyes caught movement through the glass doors again. Leaning against Kie's vehicle was none other than JJ himself. My breathe caught in my throat at seeing him for the first time since last night. He was wearing John's clothes telling me he hasn't gone home yet. His blonde hair was no longer matted in sweat and was now looking perfect again.

His eye looked swollen and I cursed that boy for not fetching something from the ice box. His sewn eyebrow was starting to purple. Despite his face, I found the guy so unbelievably attractive.

Kiara noticed my glance was lingering a little too long past her shoulder and trailed my gaze.

Shit!

She's about to discover that her best friend is the only one in a mile radius and blow the entire thing out of the water.

"Was that sew up job yours?"

"No, I haven't seen JJ since last week." I lied and instantly regretted it, Kiara knew I say him two days ago in my backyard. Circling the fire, roasting marshmallows and having a few light drinks.

A knowing glint sparkled in her eyes and she nodded her head. "Right." She finally says dragging the word on for decades. I shook my head in agreement but feeling guilty that I knew she knew I was lying through my damn teeth.

I had no clue why I was trying to keep the patch up job I did on JJ's face under wraps. I've done it a million times and none of them thought it was scandalous before, I've never shoved it under a rock before either. I didn't plan on hiding it, but I wanted to keep that vulnerable moment to myself. I'm not confident on who was aware of his fathers abuse and I wasn't going to crumble the sliver of trust he has with me.

"So whose all going to be there?" I asked reminding myself to wash my sins away later.

"The usually, John B, Pope, Sarah, me and...Jayj." She left Jay's name for last and I fucking knew it was trap, but I still looked past her and at the golden boy again. This will be at the top of the stupidest shit I've done and it's a long list. It didn't take a rocket scientist to understand he was avoiding eye contact with me. Understandable and yet it still pinched.

'I'll be ready by 7:30." I said not really having the energy for it, but I needed to get rid of her before she had the chance to question my odd behavior towards him.

Kie was quiet for a minute reading into my soul. "Okay. Not a minute later." Kiara finally declares starting to walk backwards, towards the automatic doors. The knowing glint that I was holding something back was still evident in her eyes.

I smile in agreement trying desperately to lock down the wariness that wanted to combust.

"I'll see you tonight, Surf Queen."

----

I'm completely wiped as I pull my green 1995 jeep Cherokee right beside the Twinkie. Cutting the engine I guided the stick shift into first gear and yanked the hand brake all the way up securing its parking spot.

Jumping out I winched as my feet hit the ground and the aching in my bones rattled up. The sight of my brother finally home had me forgetting all about the rage I was holding for him. He was surrounded by his friends, sharing the cheapest case of liquor Maybank could get his hands on and having the best time. My heart glowed at his found family. I

I stayed there awhile watching them before I announced my arrival. I admired the way they all could get lost in one another's company and not hear the loud engine of my jeep approaching.

I'm so drained from my shift, But I already promised Kie I'd tag along. I wasn't prepared to struck a crack into another friendship. The more time I spent with Kie the more I seen her as a real friend. And as much as I hated it, it was time to slip that mask on again.

"Holy shit Is that my twin brother as I live and breathe." I spoke loudly capturing everyone's attention. Almost all of them cheered for my appearance and it nearly felt like I was one of them.

If I wasn't the glorious JB's twin sister I wouldn't try so hard to distance myself. I'm my own person and I wanted to make it clear I was separate from my brother. I'm nothing like him or our father dropping everything to search for long forgotten treasure. It's extremely hard being a twin but it was absolutely brutal being a Routledge twin. Especially for one who didn't have her own circle of friend and trying to hijack one of his. Maybe I needed an animal companion or a boyfriend, probably both.

"Jade! I was wondering when you'd get your little butt down here." Pope hollers over with a giant welcoming grin. "I missed you too, Pope." I chuckled at his enthusiasm and returned a warm smile that didn't take up too much energy.

Pope is definitely someone you could hangout with after a long day of work and talk about the mysteries of the universe. He was loyal like the rest of them were and is always the one to knock sense into anyone who needed it.

Forcing my body onto the porch I engulfed John into a bone crushing embrace. He returned it and I clung on tighter to him. Being in his grasp felt like a warm bed and a home cooked meal. Coos and awes could be heard from the Pogues behind us murmuring something about sibling love.

"Please don't ever leave me in this house alone ever again. If you do I will sink a knife in all four tires on the Twinkie." I croaked into his chest.

Letting go me he grabbed each of my shoulders, "Did something happen last night?" He bursts out frantically, concern etched into his facial features.

on instinct my eyes drifted from his and focused on the blonde boy. It was only for a split second but JB caught it and looked back. I could skin myself alive if that were ever possible. Jay still refused to look at me and shrugged at what I assumed is an accusatory glare. His posture was lose as if he wasn't sporting my stitches on his eyebrow.

"I left the front door open." I started distracting him from his locked gaze, "A deer must've wandered in. It spooked me pretty bad." I said the first tale that floated into my brain.

"were you harmed?" John follows even the doubt swam in his eyes.

"No I-I managed to scare it out of the house." I stuttered,

"Well that explains why my floorboard was popped and the bat left in the hallway." JB notes humorously and that's when it dawned on me that I forgot about the damned bat.

How could I forgot? Oh right! There was a certain broken blonde boy crying in my arms last night.

"Yeah." I say guilty and nod my head weakly.

"I'm just glad you're okay." He says, petting my hair comfortably and I fought the urge to ask him why he cared, he's never here and I needed him in the long moments I thought someone broke in. But this wasn't the time to bring up how he's been a shitty brother lately. I wanted to savour this memory with him where he finally bothered care about me and I believed him.

"Let me get this straight." Pope says breaking the heartfelt aura. "Last night. You almost bashed a deer's brains in?" He finishes with a serious tone. It was so absurd that I struggled to keep a composed face.

"That's such a Routledge thing to do." Sarah comments, It almost caused me to shut down and call it day. I never confided in her about the twin conversation so I shouldn't be reacting to her comment the way I was.

"It's a very Jade thing to do in a dire situation." Kiara makes an effort to over shine her comment. She understood just how much I battled to accept that me and John were so much a like in too many ways to deny.

I gave her a grateful smile, thankful for her words. She tipped her head in acknowledgment "I'll be out in ten. I still need to grab my board from the shed." I mumbled heading into the house.

"Of course, take your time." Kiara replies gently,

"Me and JJ, are going to pack your board onto the Jeep for you." JB calls before I hear him barrel off the steps and almost trip and fumble to the ground. John is a good brother don't get me wrong but I missed him being around all the time.

I understood his determination to pick up dad's treasure map where he left off, it has been weeks since his disappearance. I miss the old guy like I lost every too, but I didn't ignore our situation to chase after a ghost ship. I'm the only one keeping us above water and I needed him to realize how much I craved for him to be my brother again. He's the only family I have left.

------------

Three vehicles and six boards later we arrived at the beach. Kiara and JJ in her SUV, me and Pope in my Jeep, the Greenie, and lastly Sarah and John in the Twinkie.

Strangely enough the beach was so scare we could all park together near the sand. It's hitting the golden hour an absolute stunning even to catch a few wave, so gorgeous that it wounded my soul to see it deserted

I knew pope was giving me an odd look as the others started uphauling their boards while I stayed in my seat. I admired the view I was able to experience in this point in time, absolutely breath taking. Ever since the day I rode my very first wave with the help of a certain golden retriever boy. I could hear the ocean wailing for me like a lost soulmate in the wind.

It has been a long time my first love.

"There everyone goes, leaving us behind..." Pope trails longingly,

I roll my eyes and shake my head at his dramatics. "All of you are always go go go, or too wrapped up in each other to just stop, and really enjoy the scenery around you that this earth has given us."

Being here with them gave me a knew found sense of home, like I wasn't just here living this life alone. I think it's time I let these pogues wiggle their way into being there for me. It'll take some time for me to allow them and get more comfortable with being in their presence more. But I'm willing to try for myself, for John, for the Pogues.

Pope is quiet weighing in my spoken thoughts, "You're right I really need to appreciate it a lot more, but right now isn't the time. It seems we're holding everyone up."

I whipped my head fast enough for it to strain and begin to throb in pain. A few feet away I spotted Kie with her board tucked under her one arm and resting against her hip. An expecting look displayed onto her soft features, behind her Sarah and John were beckoning me forward.

JJ was already at the shore line, the high tides crashing into his ankles. He stuck his gaze to the front of the Greenie. Wearing John's bright red shirt that had a white lobster on the chest confirming my suspicion of further injury. Jay was comfortable with his muscular build and it was unusual to find him sporting a shirt while surfing. He must be hiding from the others as well knowing they'd raise havoc at the new found information.

was I bad person for wanting him to really see me? look at me and acknowledge the night we shared? I knew the pain he faced and the time he needed to numb his trauma over. Maybe when he looked at me he was reliving it all again in a rush of conflicted emotion.

One look was all I craved. Just a tiny glance into those storming blue eyes.

"Are you ready?" Pope asks, gentle hopefulness danced in his dark brown eyes. It dawned on me then like a bucket of ice. They had thought I was going to leave like I've done a few times before. This time was different because I truly wanted to be here with them.

"Yeah, I'm ready, Pope." I say grateful for his patience,

Unclasping our boards, Pope jogged alongside me catching up with the rest of them. Soon he fell into step with John B, both of them rush towards their blonde counter part. Kiara and Sarah flanked me and it almost felt like they knew everything that happened last night. Waiting for me to spill but there was not a single thing to share. Nothing happened and I seemed to be reading into it too much.

"Are you okay? You seemed to be hesitating?" Kie asks as we reached the ocean kneeling onto our boards and paddling out. Entering the water gave me this soft security and had woken my sleeping muscles.

"Yeah." I said contently, "I was admiring how beautiful the ocean appeared in the golden hour."

"I love how you can just get lost in the nature around you. Finding the beauty in smallest of things," Sarah notes,

I shrug, " I was taught to appreciate what I was given." It wasn't a jab at their pedigree. It was more of we're different and that's not a terrible thing. They both hum understanding my words weren't malicious.

I felt complete in this moment, smiling at the both of them I could feel my mask breaking into pieces letting my true thoughts be known. It was a radiating feeling.

Looking behind me, the shore in the distance. I could sense we were at the perfect location to catch a few good waves. The others did too and halted their paddling and sat up onto their boards.

All six us stared at the wall of waves building and crashing just a few yards away. Rocking our boards once it rode out and reached past us.

"I love your bikini." Kie says, I look down at the old fading teal bikini. I got it at a thrift store two years ago and a few sizes too small. "You say that every time and you know damn well this is the only one I got." I say playfully and Kiara smiles giving me a wink.

Sarah shrugs, "Kie's right its so cute, but we should all go shopping for new ones. Like a girls day, god know we need it." She says poking her glance past us and we follow her gaze to see the boys barking at each other in deep tones and hyping themselves up.

We burst out laughing at how ridiculous they were being. Snapping their heads towards our laughter they glare teasingly, "What?!" They shout in unison, "What are you guys doing?" Kiara askes, "It looks very intimate." Sarah calls after.

It warmed my heart to JJ enjoying himself considering what he's been through in the last twenty-four hours. It nicked to know he could never be like that with me ever again.

"Our masculine chant." JB states,

"We need to level out the feminine vibe." Jay retorts aiming his words at me. I was stunned to say the least. It bent my heart and I swore that was the last time I ever helped him. it must've been written on my face because John reaches over and smacks him upside the head.

I coughed to over my laugh, but I couldn't help but feel like a fucking out cast again. Maybe letting them in wasn't the best idea.

"I didn't know your masculinity was so fragile, Jay." I spat,

"It's not!" He shot back desperately

"I'm catching the first wave." I blankly said, paddling for the wave. Behind me I could hear John giving JJ shit for treating me like some Kook whose fucking with his feelings.

My body took control catching the wave like I've done many times before. Everything with JJ and John forgotten like none of it happened and I was completely content with that. The adrenaline raced into my blood as I rode the wave with such perfect ease.

After padding back to my spot beside Kiara and Sarah, JJ went next. It was easy to detect that our surfing styles were similar. I would've loved that I replicated his style to the tee a year ago, but now it made me sick to my stomach.

"I've never noticed how you and JJ have the same style." Sarah comments and Kiara's attention snapped to me, I shrugged "JJ Taught me how to surf."

Sarah gave an amused look, "Really? I would've thought John B did." Kie laughs and I shook my head, "Nope." I popped the 'p' "The jackass was too busy laughing at me while I drowned."

"I was not!" John B yelled over catching our conversation,

"Keep telling yourself that buddy." Kie calls returning her attention back to our triangle. Pope snickers and John B squints his eyes at him," I would've taught her but Jayj was the better teacher."

"beside if John did teach me, I wouldn't be able to land a few of my tricks." I shrug,

"What happened between the two of you?' Sarah asks the one question I was dreading, But her eyes were hopeful and I truly wanted to be close friends with her.

"I'm wondering the same thing. We use to be good friends when we were younger, then one day he pulled away. Stopped hanging out with me and never shared anything with me. It was very cold turkey and so fucking strange."

"I'm sorry, that must've been confusing." She replies and I brush it off.

"Nothing I can do now." I say flatly. Noticing Kiara has been quiet I trailed my glace to her, a weak smile spread across her face and I could've sworn I saw guilt swirling in her brown eyes. She must know something that I didn't and I had the urge to dig deeper.

We stayed there for two more hours, surfing and showing off our technique. The sun was ready to disappear over the horizon and god was it gorgeous but it was time to bring it in.

Dragging our bodies near the shore I walked between the girls again. after a successful day session on the waves I felt emotionally and mentally full and healthy. It was as if the ocean had the ability to revive me.

"Are both of you still down to go bikini shopping?" Sarah askes,

"Yeah absolutely, Jade what about you?" Kie replies looking at me expectantly.

"Operation feminine energy is a go!" I shout to the rising moon. Both of them celebrate like they won a marathon, I join them and somehow feel like I'm apart of something outside of being a Routledge twin.

Ahead of us the boys give us weird looks and I couldn't careless, but the lingering glance from JJ had me conflicted. In his storm blue eyes I saw a flicker of regret and I found it hard to breathe.

I held a façade for Kiara and Sarah, but I felt utterly lost when it came to that boy. Carrying our boards back to the vehicles I tried to focus on our new found girl squad.

--

Pat two took so long because I changed quite a bit from the original piece and added over 1k words. I definitely restrained myself from writing more JJ it's just not time for them yet.

Part two took so long because I wanted to write more JJ, but it's not for it yet.

This is very slow burn and I truly wanted to write about what living on the cut was really like.

Thank you so much for reading It means the worlds you decided to read something I wrote. I love you.

#outerbanks season 1 #outerbanks season 2 #outerbanks season 3 #obx jj #obx netflix #obx3 #obx fic #outer banks fanfiction #outerbanks jj #jj mayback imagine #jj maybank fics #jj maybank #john b routledge sister #john b routledge imagine #john b routledge #sarah cameron #kiara obx #kiara carrera #pope heyward #jiara obx #rudy pankow #thatcanadianfangirl #healing takes time jj maybank

[satancopilotsmytardis]

Chapter 4! Yay!

Oop, was only a matter of time before something like this happens, I suppose. Interesting though that Shigaraki didn't smell aroused until things became physical.

Dabi has a problem, lol. He did not expect for that to happen. Too bad he will never be able to get rid of that image again. I hope it doesn't take too long for them to talk though, reading this feels even more voyeristic than any of your other fics. Probably because we're kind of experiencing this from Dabi's POV.

Oh, Dabi is down bad. He did not realize it before, I'm assuming, but he definitely is.

The fact that Compress enters the apartment by picking the lock is very funny. They get over it pretty fast, lol. Well, if you're living with other people, sometimes you just have to deal.

And Dabi only eats because he doesn't want Shigaraki to worry. He feels so bad for what he did and he's so scared that he will have to leave when he finally has a home with people that care for him. He feels like he ruined it.

Oh, this reminds me of the fact that, if Dabi stays a cat for long enough, he will forget that he used to be human. He'll attempt that, won't he? He'll erase a part of himself just to make the League happy. Because Onigiri will stay but Dabi will be dead. Called it.

Wait wait wait wait. What happened with Muscular?? (Good to know he didn't get accepted though, maybe even died, depending on how mean he was to Onigiri)

Oh, AfO wants to get rid of Onigiri. I bet he thinks he's distracting for Shigaraki. Setting Moonfish on him is a good move, though it won't endear him to Tomura.

Cat instincts! It's kind of cute how his immediate reaction is to run towards Tomura. But Dabi is hurt and he already said he can't shift while bleeding. He hasn't shifted in a while, this might become seriously dangerous to him. If he takes too long with healing, he might lose himself.

Dabi is hurt, might actively be dying, and he's still worried about Tomura. Tomura's worry hurts worse. Tomura kneeling in glass shards is wrong. Dabi is willing to give up everything for Tomura. His revenge. His freedom. His mind. His life. Everything.

"Okay. Dabi will stay alive for that. He can't let Duster down like he has everyone else who's cared about him." Ouch??? What the fuck??? Banger line, but oooof.

I'm really, really glad that Shigaraki has the League in this one and that they are as close as they are. I don't think he'd have been able to bring himself to eat otherwise, not when the kitchen surely makes him think of his cat.

Toga is totally trying to get Shigaraki and Keiro together. At the same time, Dabi finally acknowledges his jealousy! Though he represses it, like he does with all inconvenient human emotions.

Ooooh, Shigaraki snaps at AfO! Yesss! God, this is amazing to read. He's completely right about what he says, too.

Yes, Dabi, AfO does actually want Shigaraki isolated badly enough to put a hit on his cat. Because while Omigiri is a cat, he's also the reason Shigaraki is becoming more considerate. Shigaraki is calmer now. He's thinking for himself and talking back and pushing for things to go his way and AfO hates that. He can't control Tomura like that.

Shigaraki calls in Stain to help them train because none of the others are as good with blades! And he's setting up fail-saves in case things go south with AfO. I love that. It's becoming more and more obvious that he's so much more confident than he was at that point in canon and he deserves it more than anything.

Lol, Stain is going to train the two people out of the League who are his biggest fans. Well, outside of Dabi, who would never act that foolishly, lol.

I see what you mean with sibling energy. Shigaraki wants to impress Stain, wants his approval, even if he would never admit it. And they bicker!!

Okay, the talking buttons are cute as fuck. Dabi finally accepts that he loves Tomura.

Shigaraki's realization comes so much earlier here! Yes!! Keep your people safe!!! I like that Shigaraki has someone to trust in now. Sure, he trusts the League, but he's also their leader. He doesn't have the same amount of responsibility for Stain. Stain is a more experienced villain who doesn't want to use and manipulate Shigaraki and it's good for Tomura to have someone like that in his life.

Stain moves in as a catsitter! Very amusing.

Oh, Stain knows. This will be interesting. Does Stain know Shifters exist, or does he think Dabi has a shapeshifting quirk? It would be cool if Stain is a shifter and can help Dabi out, since he never had anyone help him with that part of himself.

Thanks for the chapter! I'm excited to see where this goes next.

Thank you so much for this comment!!!! This chapter was definitely a beefy boi!

Dabi is really Going Through It in this one trying to deal with his emotions, but we all know that boy has so many emotions he can barely contain himself lol

And AFO being so ice cold to just kill Shigaraki's cat felt so in-character. Muscular took some damage but he did survive his encounter with Shig unlike Moonfish.

Stain is gonna be a good influence on Shigaraki even if they have to kill each other to make it happen. And I guess he'll be something to Dabi as well...

Thank you again for commenting! 🖤

#tanco speaks #ask #asks

[catt-nuevenor]

Baldur's Gate 3 - Writing

Right, yes. I am a writer, time to put all the pretty screenshots aside and talk about the writing. Still going to sneak a screenshot or two in, but I will try and remain focused on the task at hand.

Spoilers for BG3, BG1 and BG2, visual and textual. The games are best experienced knowing as little as possible going in, so I highly recommend you do that if you plan to or are playing.

Considering just how long the game is and how much story is pack into it, it would be foolish of me to try and condense my thoughts on it down into an itty bitty tumblr post. So, we're going to pick out a few elements and overview their structure, progression, and impact.

These are my opinions, not fact, they are also from a 1 and a half playthrough perspective with far too many additional hours spent in early access, and I'm a good bean who gets physically squirmy with 'evil' choices. In other words, I'm not going to have seen everything. With all that in mind, let's dive in.

As the character who has probably changed the least from early access through to full release (so is therefore the most linear developed character in my head), let's talk about Shadowheart.

When I first came across Shadowheart I was reminded of Sebille from Larian's previous game Divinity Original Sin 2. The comparison didn't hold up long, but its undertones were always there, just under the surface.

Quick catchup for clarity, in DOS2 Sebille is a classic Femme Fatale character. She is openly seductive, dangerous, and introduces herself to your character by sticking a needle in your neck. First impressions very important and all that. After you strike something of an uneasy alliance with her, involving agreement to murder someone, or several someones, her approach to you shifts. She takes nearly every opportunity she can to physically touch you, the first being as you approach her first 'target' she walks up behind you and places her hand to the small of your back. A definite seductive action. It's not your shoulder, not your arm, certainly not your hand, all platonic or affectionate, but the intimate sensitive position of the small of your back. It's a great set up for the breakthrough you get with that character a short while later. You reach for her hand to comfort her, and she recoils bodily. If you apologise, she does the same and compares herself to, "A cat that has known too much unkindness." And so the two sides of Sebille begin to be revealed. (Highly recommend DOS2 by the by)

In my opinion, Shadowheart begins the game with the ambition of being like the initial side of Sebille. I hope you all paid attention to the spoiler section. Considering Shadowheart's parental figure, or at least the only one she initially remembers, this should come as little surprise to the informed player.

She wants to be cold, but appealing, she wants to be able to draw people in, use and discard them, she wants to be ruthless and detached and to be able to use other's weaknesses to get what she needs out of them. Take the moment where she demands to know what the main character thinks about Rafael before she will give them her own opinion. My read on this is that she is trying to use techniques she was taught back 'home'. Find out what facade will fit the best with her current companions. Ideally, if she were successful at the Femme Fatale archetype, she would twist her own feelings to compliment or manipulate the Main Character's. But here is where some of the first cracks show through. She can't twist her opinions, her own morality breaks out.

It's difficult to know at the beginning how genuine her care for the Main Character is. I think of the moment you free Lae'zel from her cage:

"She sees your kindness as weakness. Don't let her take advantage."

Now, with hindsight, she's probably right. Lae'zel doesn't have a brilliant opinion on kind acts. But, one could argue there's a little self projection going on there. It is possible that 'mother' superior said the same to her at some point? Less 'be careful', more 'kindness is weakness, take advantage of it'.

It's interesting to think that Viconia had 40 years of trying, and possibly failing, to beat the kindness out of Shadowheart, yet it's only when she is out from under her control, forced to rely on others, that her personality 'locks in'. If you are kind, above nearly all other things, kind to others, kind to children, kind to animals, Shadowheart softens. She opens up, reveals more, even if you disagree with her beliefs.

Second playthrough my main character is a priest of Eilistraee, the chaotic good drow goddess, who has on multiple occasions had 'disagreements' with Shar, and is allied with Selûne and Mystra, among others. On paper, Shadowheart should hate that character on principle, possibly try to murder them if no Selûnite is available. Yet, she does not. So long as she is not antagonised about her faith, Shadowheart is willing to let the eternal war her own goddess seeks to perpetuate lie.

"A cat that has known too much unkindness."

I keep coming back to that line. I think is sums Shadowheart up, despite it being written for another character. If you coax her out of her shell, if you are gentle and understanding, and do not admonish her for her occasional lashing out, show her that she can relax around you, that you won't punish her for miss-stepping or misspeaking, she uncoils. But if you meet her hostility with the same, or encourage her into hostility against others, she'll draw further into herself, remain hissing and spitting in her corner.

"The fate you seal is your own. To be a Dark Justiciar is to turn your heart from everything but loss. You will know no love, no joy - only servitude."

I just did a little Wiki digging to see what the alternate routes through this scene are, since it's mid-morning here on a workday and I'm not loading up Baldur's Gate 3 before 5pm, I would never get anything done otherwise. It's interesting that many folks seem to have found that you need to convince Shadowheart to do the right thing here.

When I first played this through, I did the same, persuaded her. Due to a muck up on my part and some serious save backtracking, I had to do this section again with the same playthrough, and I quicksaved before the dialogue began and decided to see what would happen if I let things just play out. If Umrae (the Main Character) trusted Shadowheart to do the right thing.

She chose, without input on the Main Character's part, to release the Nightsong. It stunned me, it really did. And I realised that all those little kindnesses had led her up to that decision, that she'd been allowed to show her softer side with the Main Character and the others, and even in the Shadowfell, even in the heart of Shar's domain, she clung to her gentler side without explicit encouragement.

"They trained you well, trained you hard. Chiselled away any part of you that did not fit their plan. They made you forget."

Trusting Shadowheart brings to the table self-motivated development. Later in the playthrough, once we'd kicked Viconia around for a far longer battle than it should have been due to me being seriously under-leveled, I had the opportunity to give the reigns to Shadowheart again.

Shadowheart chose to spare her tormentor.

In hindsight, upon exploring the rest of the cloister, I was very tempted to go back to an old save and have a word with Viconia myself, nostalgia for the old games be damned. But it felt right to respect Shadowheart's decision instead.

In that vein, the conclusion of Selûnite Shadowheart's story can feel a little hollow initially.

The options:

Her parents die, she is free from Shar.

Her parents live, Shar can (and will) torment her for the rest of her life.

I am a wee bit annoyed at Larian for the framing of Shadowheart's final scene at Selûne's statue. If her parents are alive, they get to hug and comfort her. If her parents are dead, she stands alone and sobs, and even in the Main Character has a close or romantic relationship with her, they stand like a statue in the background. Let us give the poor woman a damn hug!

EDIT: You can now give Shadowheart a hug! Thank you Larian!

Because otherwise it can feel like Shadowheart is choosing between having support but never-ending torment, or peace and utter isolation. Imagine how differently that scene would feel if not only the Main Character could hug and support her, but if others, like Karlach, or Gale, or Wyll, or heck even Jaheira and Minsc, could all pile in and remind her that hell no she's not alone.

"Embrace loss."

Personally, I chose to follow her parents' wishes.

I've seen it argued that this is letting Shar win, that Shadowheart is forced to, 'Embrace Loss'. But I'd like to dispute that, if I may. As you're approaching the House of Loss in act 3, you come across a woman on the bridge. She's confused and doesn't seem to remember why she's there, who she is, or why she remembers the words to a lullaby but not who she sung it to. It doesn't take much to fill in a tragic story in place of what the mirror has taken.

This is the loss Shar preaches.

What Shadowheart begins to experience after her parents die isn't this dizzy blank nothing, it's grief.

You've all heard me exposit on grief and its difficult, painful journey many, many times before, so I won't rehash the same here.

Shar doesn't 'win' if Shadowheart loses her parents. She'd only win if Shadowheart chose to deal with her grief by taking what memories she has of them and giving them up to the mirror.

If you take her to the temple in Baldur's Gate, after everything goes down with Shar (perhaps this also happens before, I haven't checked), and get her to interact with the shrine to Selûne, the goddess welcomes her. It's a scrap of narration, and a blessing if you make an offering, but it feels complete to take her there after the House of Loss.

The seduction of Shar is that she conflates absence with relief, that grief is something to be discarded, thrown away, that silence is peaceful rather than quiet.

Early Access screenshot. Dialogue remains the same, I think.

"Most fear the dark, like children, because in darkness they see their fears reflected. But Shar teaches us to step beyond fear. Beyond loss. In darkness we do not hide - we act."

I've had few more rewarding experiences in a story to walk beside a character who goes from that.

Through little glimpses of sweetness like this:

To this:

Anyway, I think that's enough for now.

Not sure how much analysis went on there, I think I more just gushed. We could have a look at a single scene if you'd all like, if I have an appropriate save or can zip to the point in question in another playthrough.

Kudos if you got to the end, this has definitely got to be up there with my longest post.

#BG3 #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 spoilers #long reads #bg3 screenshots #Shadowheart

[anonymousbeefriendfanfics]

Trick or Treat with Casimir? 🎃👻

You have been... Treated!

Trick or treat here! Please come again, there's plenty of treats to go around!

Casimir has no clue what Halloween is, poor thing. There's a good chance he might be familiar with a similar concept of some variety, but Halloween as we know it? Not a clue.

So, of course, when you explain it to him, he's very curious and excited to learn more! He wants to know everything. I hope you like Halloween, because now he's looking at you like you're an expert with that adorable glimmer in his eyes he gets when he's excited, so buckle up!

You're gonna end up giving him the Full Halloween Treatment. It begins, of course, after your lecture on what exactly Halloween is, with decorating! It's time to leave a very impatient Casimir for an hour or so while you run to the nearest dollar/discount store and raid their Halloween section for all sorts of goodies. And oh, if you thought he was excited before? The way his eyes light up when you come in with your arms overflowing with bags is nothing short of delightful.

You've brought him everything you could find and think of. You have colorful lights in the shapes of pumpkins and cats and bats (plus a string of regular orange lights for him to potentially destroy while trying to figure out how they work), you've got all sorts of decorations, you've got pumpkins! And beyond all of that, you've also grabbed some other supplies, 'cause it's time to get crafty!

With your guidance and assistance, you carve a pumpkin or three together, because what's a classic Halloween without a jack-o'-lantern? This is actually one of the older traditions, so Casimir might be somewhat familiar with carving large vegetables and putting a candle inside of them, but even so, he definitely hasn't had a chance to do it in ages. He loves working with his hands, so he definitely enjoys the chance to make something with you, and after a bit of a learning curve, his pumpkin-carving skills are simply incredible. He's got a knack for intricate details and remarkably steady hands with all the time he spends working on clocks. The little flickering LED candle light you pop in the pumpkin fascinates him, too.

Speaking of making things, back to crafts! You've gotten all of those DIY fall craft kits you could get your hands on, because he obviously never experienced them as a kid. You guide him through painting and glueing and decorating all sorts of things, from little scarecrows to mini foam pumpkins and paper bats and all sorts of things! He's never been happier. I think Casimir would absolutely adore making things with those he loves, especially his very favorite person~

After all of the crafting festivities are done, it's time for other traditions. You tell him about Trick-or-treating, and while you can't exactly take him out to experience it, you help him put together a costume (or perhaps the House provides them for you both, if you ask nicely?) I think he would love dressing up - it's unusual, and he might feel a touch awkward at first, but he'll get over it soon enough and enjoy himself. I'm not sure what he'd be - a werewolf is a bit too mean, but Vampire Casimir? Sign me up! You definitely eat candy together too, even if he doesn't quite get the trick-or-treating fun.

If you ask very very nicely and do some extra chores, the House might just be willing to put on a haunted house for you! It configures itself into a little maze with dim lighting and a spooky atmosphere, has random 'monsters' pop out at you randomly, accompanied by the growls and screams you might expect! Casimir doesn't let go of your hand the entire time, partially because he's more scared than he wants to let on, partially because he wants to protect you - and partially to ground himself so he doesn't lose control of his emotions and shift accidentally.

I don't think he would like scary movies, though. He's fascinated by the way they work, sure, but... I feel like he would prefer more lighthearted films. Maybe a little spooky, but nothing too scary - in addition to not liking the gore and murder of it all because it reminds him of being a 'monster' himself, he's always paranoid that he'll get too spooked by a jump scare and lose control.

All in all though Casimir quickly becomes obsessed with Halloween, and you've never seen him so delighted!

Writing Masterlist 🐝 Requests Open!  Tag List 🐝 

#beefriend-writes #beefriend trick or treat #monster manor #monster manor casimir #casimir gevaudan #fictif mm casimir

[quirkless-accident]

Atlas

Hi, I'm alive I've been chipping away at this bigger project and trying to shift my hyperfixation back to Danny Phantom because I have kinda been missing writing. I don't have a lot of free time between my apprenticeship and my part time job but I'll try my best to catch up on the requests in my inbox. In the meantime I made you some food (and if you see any typos, no you dont)(it's almost 1am I am not proof reading this bullshit) -----

Dating Hitoshi was the easiest thing in the world for Danny. They just clicked, and could spend hours doing everything and nothing at all. It was going better than either of them had expected it too, and part of that was due to agreeing to make time for one another early on in their relationship. Between school and internships, and graduation right around the corner, they were both incredibly busy. Making time for each other provided not only a chance rest and catch their breath before they continued on with their busy schedules.

So every Thursday when they got done with training they went on a date. Sometimes it was the movies, and sometimes it was a walk through the park or a trip to Hitoshi's favorite cat café. Once it was Danny's favorite arcade where he had his ass handed to him in DDR, and other times it was in one of their dorms, idly enjoying each other's quiet company.

Today was a trip to the mall, with little Eri in tow because Aizawa was pulled away to work last second to help catch an escaped villain, but didn't want to ruin their date night. Especially since he had been a strong advocate of said date night from the start.

And it was going great.

Or, at least, it had been.

There hadn't been a lot of time to react. The earth shook harder than anything either of them had ever experienced. Earthquakes weren't uncommon, but this one was strong and earth shattering-literally.

Hitoshi wastes no time in getting Eri into his arms as he sprints for the exit. Danny is right behind him, practically stepping on him as he helps the occasional person back to their feet.

Another shockwave, worse than the last, rips through the ground, knocking them off their feet. Danny is the first to recover, stumbling his way towards Hitoshi and Eri.

Huge pieces of debris are raining down on them, and there's a rather large rock that pegs Hitoshi in the back of the head. He drops fast and hard, but before Danny can even bend down to check on him, the ceiling caves in completely.

It's a strange feeling to be engulfed in a sudden darkness. The sounds of people's panicked cries are muffled by the concrete surrounding them, and the air is suddenly still. But Danny can't pay attention to any of that.

How can he when he's too busy holding up the building?

It had been an instinctual reaction. He was right on top of Hitoshi, who was unconscious, and Eri, who was still a child, helpless and relying on her big, strong brothers to keep her safe.

Danny allowed the white rings to wash over him, changing him into Phantom. The soft glow he naturally gave off illuminated part of the cavern Danny had accidentally created when he caught the ceiling.

It wasn't a huge space. Maybe four feet high, and enough space for nine other civilians to be trapped with them, packed like sardines. Some were awake and scared, others in a daze, and two who were unconscious.

And all of their lives were suddenly in Danny's shaking hands.

His arms and legs were already starting to burn. He could last, he knew he could. He had to.

There was no other option.

He was in a squat, holding the debris up on his back with his arms spread out as support. He breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth, trying to focus on anything but the pain in his limbs and spine.

Right. First, status.

Three unconscious, five awake, three dazed and probably heavily concussed. He himself definitely had bruised ribs, and-yeah, he bit his tongue. The bitter taste of his own ectoplasm was quickly filling his mouth, so he turned his head to the side and spit it out. Don't think about the pain, don't think about how if you fail, everyone-including Hitoshi and Eri-will die. Don't think about how long it might take to realize they're under here let alone how long it'll take them to get out.

Get out. Could he get them out?

He couldn't turn the debris intangible. The structure was too unstable, too unpredictable, and he didn't need anybody getting any more injured than they already were. He couldn't turn the victims intangible. There were too many of them, and too many were too injured to properly move anyway.

Ice was also probably a bad idea. There wasn't a lot of space for any kind of support system, and not only would the ice not hold up under this weight, but it would probably give everybody but him hypothermia or something. Big ice moves out in the open where the cold could spread out where it needed too was one thing, but to do it in such a tight, enclosed space? Not an option.

His shields, too, would probably shatter under the weight. Not like he wouldn't be straining with that, either.

He didn't have any other powers he could use. Not any that were strong enough without hurting anybody inside.

The ceiling came down with more weight, shoving Danny down a couple inches. He groaned in pain, ducking his head to his chest and he forced his legs to move up, regaining a few of the inches lost.

"Danny?"

Danny's head snapped back up. Eri was looking at him with wide, worried eyes as she looked him up and down.

"Hey, what's up Er-Bear?" He asked, hoping the nickname would sooth her. She and Danny had both been sick six months ago, and in a glorious haze of cherry flavored cough medicine, had decided to watch every single Care Bears movie in one sitting before promptly passing out for twelve hours. The nickname had stuck, and she only lets Danny call her that.

God, what he wouldn't give to be watching Care Bears with Eri again right now.

He tried his best to keep his voice even and calm, but even to his own ears it sounded strained with the effort of holding up the building.

"Are you okay?" She asked. "You're bleeding a lot."

Danny gave her a quizzical look, unable to say anything with the breath stuck in his throat from the effort he was giving out. She pointed to his stomach, and Danny looked down.

Oh.

How had he not felt it?

There was a piece of rebar sticking out of the left side of his abdomen, bright green ectoplasm lazily dripping from the end to the floor.

He was both lucky and unlucky in this situation. Lucky, because ectoplasm was slower and thicker than blood, thus he wasn't going to lose it as fast. But unlucky because he couldn't fucking move, because he was holding up a fucking building.

It would have to stay there.

If he got an infection he was going to be pissed.

"Oh, I'm perfectly fine, Er-Bear," he told her. He pulled at his core and relished in the brief comfort the coldness gave him, focusing on the wound in his side. The ice creeped from the inside out, effectively plugging the hole, though it wouldn't do much good when he'd need to remove himself from it later. But this, this would give Eri a small comfort, and it would help him last a bit longer. Bleeding out isn't exactly a good thing when doing hero work.

Eri spends too much time with Deku. That is to say, she's smart. Quick as a whip and sees right through it, but it's an olive branch that she takes with all the care an eight year old can.

"Hey!" One of the civilians from the back calls out. Danny tries to look at them, but his glow only goes so far. He can barely make out Eri, who's right in front of him. "Can you get us out of here?" She asks.

"No-Not-at the moment," Danny grits out. His whole body is shaking with effort now. How long has it been? How much longer will it be?

"Well, you're a hero, aren't you?"

Danny knows it's the panic. Knows it's the worry. He understands not knowing for certain if he'll make it long enough to see the end of a bad situation.

But for the love of the Ancients, he has never wanted to drop a building more on someone than in that moment.

There's a sharp slap of skin on skin, and a whined out protest.

"Can't you see he's the only reason we're even still breathing right now?" Another stranger says. She sounds younger than the other one.

"Hey-no-just calm down," Danny says through a shaky breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. "Are you injured?"

"Nothing but a couple scrapes and bruises from us," the younger one answers. Danny nods. In through the nose, out through the mouth.

"Hey, Eri," he says after a few moments of tense silence.

"Everything okay?" She asks, in the same way Yamada does sometimes when he can sense something is wrong.

"Just perfect, Er-Bear," he answers. "But I can't-I can't remember the words to a song. Do you think you could help me out?"

She nods quickly, and he hums the tune as best as he can. She picks it up quickly and starts to sing it to him.

It's a welcome distraction. It's something for Eri to focus on, instead of worrying about him or Hitoshi. It's something for the civilians to focus on so they stop talking to him. It's something for Danny to focus on, to distract him from the pain.

The ground shakes again. It's not as powerful as before, but it's enough for Danny to sink a few inches.

He isn't able to regain them back, but he digs his heels in and holds steady, not letting the space become smaller.

"Keep singing, Eri," Danny gently instructs. "The words are really important to me."

"Okay."

-----

Hitoshi startles with a choked off gasp that turns into a coughing fit. But when he finally calms down enough, and looks past the blinding pain in his skull, he makes out the off-tune singing of Eri.

"Oh, you should sing the one from that cartoon you like," he hears Danny say.

"Neko Neko Weekend?" Eri asks.

"Yeah, sure."

Danny's voice sounds strained and breathy. If he has a reaction to Hitoshi turning to face him, he doesn't show it. Or rather, can't show it. His head is dipped down, chin almost touching his chest. He's in a deep squat with a huge weight on his back with nothing but his aura and his ectoplasm to light up the space they're in.

The space.

The earthquake.

The building collapsing.

Oh.

Hitoshi looks at Danny, body shaking with the strain, sweat dripping down his face. He's got one eye closed because of the ectoplasm that's leaking into it from the big gash on his forehead. There's something sticking out of his stomach, held together by ice.

Hitoshi looks at Danny.

He sees Atlas.

Hitoshi quickly pulls out his phone, fumbling for a moment before trying to turn it on. When nothing happens, he runs his hands along the screen and seems. It's shattered to hell and back. Lucky to be in one piece, probably.

"Danny," Hitoshi says, keeping his voice low for his own sake. His head is throbbing, and the dim light coming from Danny is hurting his eyes. "Danny, do you have your phone?"

"Belt," Danny says, short and clipped. He hasn't looked up, but Hitoshi can hear the relief in his voice. "Left side."

Hitoshi is careful moving around the small space, where the only sounds are Danny's shaky but consistent breathing, and Eri singing herself to death. He fumbles a little, but manages to pull it out without an issue, and other than a small crack in the top, it's in perfect working condition. He quickly dials his dad's number.

"-nny?" Aizawa's worried voice filters through, broken up and full of static. "Where-ou okay?"

"Dad," Hitoshi breaths a sigh of relief. "There was an Earthquake and we're at the mall just outside a store near the exit. We're trapped under some debris."

"Status," Aizawa says. He's using his on-duty voice, and it kicks Hitoshi's brain into hero-mode. He rattles off what he sees or what the civilian in the back tells him, as well as his own injuries. And because he knows Danny is going to downplay his injuries, he goes into what's probably boderlining on too much detail.

"Is Danny awake?" His dad asks.

"He's holding up the ceiling," Hitoshi responds. The glow is a little bit brighter now, Danny's body a little bit shakier.

"What." Aizawa says, and it sounds monotone but Hitoshi can hear the disbelief in his voice.

"He's the only reason we're all okay," he says. "But it's been-" he pulls the phone back to look at the time and sucks in a sharp breath. Fuck. "It's been nearly forty minutes, Dad."

"I'm fine," Danny grits out. "Speaker phone."

Hitoshi obliges as he gives Danny a look.

"I'm fine," Danny repeats, sounding completely not fine.

"You're doing great, Danny. We've got a rescue crew digging as we speak. -scaped villain's doing. He's back in custody. Just need you to hold on a little longer, okay?"

"That's the plan," Danny grits out. The weight shifts above him, and he sucks in a sharp, painful breath as the rebar running him through also shifts. It's a couple centimeters at most but it's enough to distract Danny from the conversation at hand.

"How long?" Hitoshi asks, an edge to his voice.

"Eight minutes," Aizawa answers, and damn it, it doesn't look like Danny has ten minutes.

The cavern shakes and Danny sinks further into the ground. His thighs are parallel with the ground now, trembling.

"Make it five," he demands, his voice bordering on desperate.

"Stay on the line," Aizawa tells them.

"Er-Bear," Danny says after a moment. "What's your favorite song? Can you sing that one next?"

Hitoshi is confused for a moment. Singing? Now? But then he sees Danny's eyes closing, focusing on the sound of Eri's voice as he pushes up. Can hear him shakily breathing close in time with the rhythm of an eight year old. And none of the civilians are panicking.

Danny needs this as much as everybody else in the cavern does. Probably more so.

The song is about three minutes long, and Danny is quick to ask her to sing it again. "There might have been a few missed words or something, Er-Bear," he tells her. "Need to sing it one more time just in case."

And, oh. It's not just a distraction from the pain. Not just a tool to help pace his breathing so he doesn't hyperventilate while holding up a building. Eri's song has become a timer.

Those that are awake appear to catch on pretty quickly, and they're moving in anticipation of their rescue being there.

Half way through the song, the weight above them shifts. Danny is forced to one knee, slamming it down in the ground so hard Hitoshi can hear it crack. There are panicked gasps coming from those that are awake, but Eri is so focused on her song that she barely even stumbles. And, oh. The singing is a way to keep Eri calm as well. The last thing they need is for her to lose control.

When Eri is almost to the end, the back of the cavern where the civilians are opens up. The light that filters in is hazy and dim, but it illuminates their situation well.

The light makes Hitoshi light headed, and his head is hurting so bad he doesn't even realize the civilians and Eri have been pulled free until there are calloused hands gripping his arm and have pulling him to the exit. The cavern is so low now he has to crawl along his stomach, but at least he's alive. At least Eri and the others made it.

Hopefully Danny will too.

------

Shouta sees to it personally that he gets his fucking kids out.

Eri crawls to him without any prompt. Hitoshi is looking a little dazed, and like he might throw up at any second. He takes a bit longer.

And Danny? Well, it's a work in progress.

He doesn't seem to realize help has finally come. His eyes are closed, and his breathing is carefully regulated, as shaky as it is. His whole body is trembling, and holy fuck, Shouta is still coming to terms with the fact that his son's boyfriend caught a building.

"Danny, hey," Shouta says, keeping his voice steady and calm. Danny opens his eyes, but doesn't bring his head up.

"There's not enough space for the paramedics," he explains. "I'm gonna carry you out, but you have to turn us intangible, okay?"

"P-people?" He asks, and it sounds like it's taking an unimaginable amount of effort to do so.

"All safe. Alive and accounted for. You did good kid. Now I'm gonna hold onto you, and on the count of three you'll turn us intangible, okay?"

Danny grunts in acknowledgement, and Shouta moves to his side, one arm around his side and the other behind his legs, waiting to scoop him up.

"Okay, ready? Three, two, one."

Nothing happens. Danny has used his powers on him enough times for him to know how it feels. But there's no icy-water-down-his-spine feeling. He tightens his grip on Danny.

"Kid, you gotta let go," he says.

"Scared," Danny grunts.

"I know. I know, but it'll be okay. Do you trust me?"

He doesn't answer. Not verbally, anyway. But Shouta feels the cold in his veins, and his shoulder goes through the rocks. Shouta scoops Danny up, and the building falls on them, through them, engulfing them in an unnatural darkness.

"We're okay, kid," Shouta tells him. "Just hold on a little longer for me. Can you do that?"

Danny manages one nod, clutching onto Shouta tightly. His whole body is shaking as he comes down from his adrenaline high, and now that the rebar is out of his stomach it's starting to sluggishly bleed between the cracks in the ice.

It's only a few seconds longer, and then they're hitting the open air.

"Danny, we're safe. We're out. You can let go now."

And Danny must have really taken that trust comment to heart, because there's no hesitation this time. His powers leak out of Shouta in an instant, and the white rings appear around his waist, turning him from Phantom to Fenton.

He quickly hands Danny over to the paramedics, and climbs into the car with them as they take him to the hospital.

-------------

When Danny wakes up, he can't move his body.

His arms and legs are the heaviest things in the world. But he does manage to get his eyes open, barely.

He's in a hospital bed. There's an IV in one arm and a clasp on his finger. The room is pretty standard, with the exception of the excessive amount of get well soon gifts he has surround him. Flowers of all sorts, cards in a neat stack, balloons fucking everywhere and three huge stuffed animals sitting in the corner. The only light coming in is from the streetlights outside, but other than that it's dark.

He turns his head to one side, and nearly passes out from exhaustion. Sitting in one of the chairs is Jazz, seeping soundly. She's got a book in her lap with her thumb in between the pages. It's a children's book, which makes sense since Eri is asleep in the chair next to her, leaning over the arm rest. Danny can picture it in his head like a movie. Eri leaning over, trying to get a good look at the pictures as Jazz reads, before passing out. Jazz following soon after.

He turns his head the other way, and his heart nearly stops.

Aizawa is sitting on the large windowsill, one leg crossed over the other with his face ducked into his scarf as he sleeps. In the chair by his arm is Yamada, hair down, head tilted back, and snoring softly.

And then Hitoshi.

He's asleep at Danny's side. There are bandages wrapped around his head and a couple bruises around his face but he looks otherwise okay. He's facing Danny, snoring lightly, and holding his hand.

Danny squeezes there interlocked fingers, and Hitoshi jolts awake.

He looks confused for a moment before his eyes fall on Danny, and his body sags with relief.

"Hi," he says quietly.

"Hey," Danny croaks out, but he doesn't get the chance to say anything more before sleep pulls at him again.

The last thing he registers before falling completely under is the reassuring squeeze Hitoshi gives him.

#danny fenton #danny phantom #hitoshi shinso #shouta aizawa #eraserhead #mha #bnha #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #tw: gore

[rrhodes25]

So this is different from normal for me, but in celebration of the end of the spooky season, I wrote a small horror story. It's nothing crazy, mainly for practice writing prose, but I figured I'd share. It was written on my phone's notes app, so definitely nothing fancy lol.

It's also dinosaur themed, because I am a predictable person

The Bull - Horned Horror

"Jefferson? Jefferson do you copy?"

The radio's sharp volume pierced the previously silent room. The space was small and disorderly, but intended to be comfortable. Simple furniture was contrasted with a great deal of decor as well as valuables, along with a non - zero amount of garbage. It was a ranger post, in Forbes State Forest in Pennsylvania. Not the largest nor most heavily funded of state forests, but still a beautiful scene. The ranger in charge of this area, and this post, was dozing at his desk when the radio blared. Jefferson Hyles awoke slowly, groaning as he realized how much longer his shift would be. A string a drool connected his chin to the desk as he shook himself awake. He rubbed the gunk from his eyes, taking a deep breathe of the stale air as he picked up the radio and answered the call.

"Could... Could you repeat that for me, sir?"

An exasperated sign came from the other end.

"I said, I just received a report about a missing person in your sector. Teenager. Apparently the kid ran away from his friends due to some bet and never came back."

The news had Jefferson slightly more roused but not terribly concerned. People get lost in the forest all the time, especially teenagers and college students who've been out drinking. It was important to bring the kid back, especially before his parents got wind of it, but these events were practically routine.

"His name is Tyler Jones, and his last known location is close to your post. Go out there and find the kid, quickly." "Yes sir. Moving out now."

Jefferson rose to his feet and prepared his things. Despite his supervisor's instructions, he didn't move with extreme haste. These woods were safe, the kid would find nothing dangerous if Jefferson took an extra moment to wake up a bit more. He dusted some crumbs off of his shirt and took note of a small stain on his pantleg. Shrugging to himself he decided not to fuss about it. The kid won't care if he's a little disorderly; he'll just be happy to have a way out of the forest. He grabbed his belt, with his sidearm and maps of the sector as well as the keys to his truck. Clipping the radio to his belt, he steps into the crisp autumnal air. The trees around him all shimmering with brilliant colors, the leaves being complimented by the now setting sun in the distance. Jefferson huffed. He'd have to be quick. Searching would become all the more difficult when the sun went down. Perhaps he should have moved more quickly after all.

Jefferson's old truck chugged to life, spitting and coughing like an old cat before settling into an uneven hum. Jefferson tossed his pack containing his various survival equipment into the back seat before setting off down the rough path. With dusk now settling over the park's ancient trees, the headlights of the truck were hardly enough to provide visibility. He'd have to submit a request for new lights. He'd been meaning to do that for a while. Jefferson made the brisk trip to the location pinpointed to him by the supervisor and killed the power in his truck. He didn't grab his pack, but did remember his flashlight. Jefferson's truck was such an outdated model that he had to lock it manually. After sorting himself out, he scanned his surroundings for the first time.

Jefferson was standing before one of the most secluded trailheads in the whole forest, one that was only recommended for experienced hikers. He grumbled to himself as he began to make the trek. The most distasteful part of his job was this kind of call. A stupid kid doing stupid things in a secluded place. And yet, Jefferson couldn't remain frustrated. Part of him felt sympathy for the kid, his friends did leave him here. Another part of him felt a sense of uneasiness the further down the trail he went. He began to call out.

"Tyler! Tyler Jones! You out here, kid?" No response. The woods were quiet. Only the occasional cricket would break the silence.

"Tyler! You ain't in trouble kid, I'm just trying to get you home!" Still, nothing. Jefferson continued forward. He began to sweep his flashlight back and forth, trying to spot any signs of the kid. A dropped phone, tracks, anything at all. For nearly ten minutes there was nothing. Even the crickets seemed to go quiet. Jefferson's uneasiness grew. He was about to call out again, but he saw something, just out of the beam of the flashlight. One of the trees off to his left, tall and thin, was damaged. Nine or ten feet up the trunk, a patch of the tree's bark was worn away. Not just worn away, like the tree was dying, but it was clearly broken, scraped off. It was as if a giant bear had come along and scratched it's back against the tree. But Jefferson couldn't think of a bear that tall, especially not any in this area. He was becoming more and more aware of his situation, alone deep in the forest, a place where he usually finds himself at his most comfortable. Jefferson grabbed his radio and attempted to call his supervisor for a report.

"Sir, I'm on the path where the kid supposedly went, and I've not found any signs of him. There's something els-" The radio cut out. Jefferson had forgotten to charge it before leaving. He'd have cell service back at his post, but not out here. He cursed to himself, wondering what the hell he was supposed to do. It was at that moment when he saw it. A patch of bushes to his right. They were parted, in a way that suggested someone had gone through them. He also, finally, found some tracks. The prints of sneakers going off into the forest. Jefferson begins to move when he hears something rustling in the trees behind him. In his tense state he whirls around to see... nothing. Nothing at all. After a brief sign of relief, he continues.

Jefferson follows the disjointed path of the kid for a little while. Calling it a path is rather generous, it is more so a line of disrupted foliage and the occasional footprint. What he begins to notice after some time is deeply concerning. The distance between the footprints is such that the kid was running, and running fast. Why would he be sprinting through the woods so far from where he was dropped by his friends? This sets Jefferson's mind alflame. Was the kid running from something? Is his safety truly in jeopardy? As he begins to move through an area of thicker brush he begins to call out once more.

"Tyler! Tyler Jones! Are you out there? Are you hurt-" Jefferson comes to a sudden stop. His breathe catches deep in his throat. As he cleared out the last of the shrubbery blocking his path, he sees something he never wishes to find. A body. A young man, sprawled out on the ground, limbs in such a position as to suggest he tumbled to the ground. However, that is not what rendered Jefferson speechless. The culprit of that is the massive wound in the teenager's midsection. His entire gut was torn apart, with a variety of mutilated organs spilling out onto the leaf - covered forest floor. Jefferson could hardly stomach it. It looked as if something had bit into his body, demolishing any tissue in the way. He looked around at the area. Many of the smaller plants seemed to have been trampled, as if an elephant had charged through the area. Multiple trees around the body had similar damage to their trunks as the one near the path. Jefferson then saw something that his mind could hardly process. On the other side of the body, were footprints. But not footprints belonging to the kid. These footprints looked like a birds, but larger than any birds he had ever seen, by a huge margin.

"What in the hell-" Jefferson muttered to himself before hearing it again. The rustling behind him. Before he could even turn this time, a second sound followed the first. A deep and rumbling series of sounds that seemed to be clicks and hums, again like a massive bird. Jefferson carefully turned himself and as his flashlight pointed to the spot where the noises were coming from, he found himself face to face with the impossible.

The animal was huge, crouched down to be nearly eye level with him. It's skin was leathery and pebbled with scales. It's head was large but stout, it's mouth just open enough to reveal jagged and sharp teeth. The eyes of the creature glowed in the light of the flashlight, and atop them sat horns like a bull's. Jefferson had found himself standing before a dinosaur. A real, flesh and blood dinosaur, and it had killed the kid. The blood still dripped from its maw, and the smell was overpowering. The creature was almost ten feet away from him, and began to take another step forward. It's birdlike foot made contact silently with the forest floor, something that should be impossible for an animal so large. Jefferson couldn't breathe, couldn't think, as the creature grew closer. As it came no more than a foot from his face, a single thought rang out in the flurry of terror: run. And so he did. He slammed his flashlight into the creature's nose before turning on his heels and dashing back down the path he had come from. The dinosaur bellowed and took a step or two back, shaking it's head back and forth from the impact. Jefferson glanced behind him just in time to see the creature not beginning to chase him, but run off into the cover of the trees off to it's right. It moved incredibly quickly, with a nimblness that should not be possible. Jefferson continued to run.

He ran and he ran, occasionally hearing rustling in the trees that told him with complete certainty that he had not left the animal behind. Finally, he saw his truck in the distance. He was almost to safety. It was then that the creature burst from the trees to his left with a thundering bellow and slammed its head into Jefferson's shoulder. He went flying nearly ten feet into a nearby tree. The pain was immediate and intense, he certainly dislocated his shoulder and shattered ribs, if not worse. His vision was blurred as he desperately grabbed for his sidearm and as he finally took hold of it and pointed it up, the creature was upon him. Jefferson fired and managed to stun the creature for a moment. He couldn't hold the weapon any longer, the pain was too great. He could see his own blood begining to pool under him. His breathe heaved as he tried to stand but failed. He helplessly looked back at the creature, whose eyes were now turned to him. Seeing them for the first time without the glare from the flashlight was haunting. They were bright orange, and bore down on him with terrible intelligence. The creature lunged forward and bit into Jefferson's stomach. He cried out in pain, it was so intense he could barely keep himself awake. The last thing Jefferson Hyles saw was his guts spilling out onto the floor of the forest he had called home for so long, and the animal that spilled them devouring him before he could die.

#dinosaur #horror #short story #dinosaur horror #carnotaurus #palaeoblr #writing #writers on tumblr #writeblr #horror story

[cchapsticck]

This is so belated but Happy Birthday @bettiebloodshed! They gave me a prompt a while back and and I wanted it to be for your birthday birthday but. You know how I get.

---

It was funny before; when the cult leader allegations were more of an implication than an outright condemnation, and then, honestly, it was kind of funny after when he was Actually The Prince Of Darkness Apparently that he was born on the longest day of the year. Prince of Darkness born on the day with the least amount of darkness. 

Amazing. 

Failing upward since birth. 

Anyway, that said, he spends his first birthday as the undead under too much daylight still laid up Good Samaritan Bloomington, still sticky with skin grafts and trying not to itch at his stitches - both hands being once again available for his use - mourning the partial loss of at least 3 of his tattoos, bored out of his mind, and a kind of miserable that he’s still not sure he’s managed to scrub off him yet. 

Wayne kept making those drives up to Bloomington like he wasn’t missing shifts on the regular and running his sick time into the red but Wayne still comes that June, when he’s finally out of his fun little coma, like they’re gonna do anything. Like he can stand and support his own weight for more than minutes at a time, like he’s still not bleeding into his bedsheets now that he’s moving around at all. 

But he does, doesn’t say that’s why. Wayne’s not necessarily a festive guy but it’s not that he doesn’t care a whole hell of a lot so he shows up and they both know why and they don’t say much about that. Feels a little fragile. Made it another year but like. Just fuckin’ barely, asshole. 

So All That Shit is still a little too close to feel like doing much beyond watching daytime soaps on the pink wavy picture’d 10” TV bolted to the wall, eating saltless hospital cafeteria food in irregular silence. Wayne sneaks him a shitty black coffee that makes him feel like there are knives in his guts an hour later from the machine in the lounge but it definitely feels worth lying to the nurse later, and brings him one of his books from the house that survived the collapse. He doesn’t look at which one. Not sure he can stand it, knowing where it came from.

It's not awful, all things considered. 

When he was a kid, living with Wayne, he wasn’t so much a birthday guy. Didn’t have a lot of friends growing up, too weirdkid for that. And the date of note being in the armpit of June and the window unit AC at the trailer doing its damndest at doing not much at all making the house inhospitable for human life even on full blast - even if he had the friends to make a whole typical thing of it he wasn’t so much in the position to host. (Story of his adult life too honestly ha ha fucking ha) Not unless anyone cared to deal with a not insignificant selection of sweaty pre-teens in the already a little cramped for two single wide for a few hours at a time - and having now experienced that in, at least, an adjacent capacity since being released from the hospital and various criminal investigations he wouldn’t retroactively wish that on Wayne. 

Anyway he’s never been much of an outside cat but Wayne used to take him out to Yellowood or Hoosier or Interlake just to get out of the house and they’d get up to what the fuck ever. He’d hop out of Wayne’s old Chevy, roll his ankle in the gravel parking lot at a trailhead tripping over his own ass running full tilt out of there and just. Release the beast. 

Honestly it was probably like letting the dog run around the yard off leash until it tires itself out, for Wayne. Only with like. A 13 year old human. 

He’d jump in weed tangled, freezing cold lakes too murky to see the bottom of, he’d get bit to shit by mosquitos running through long grass with burrs all stuck in his socks and shoelaces, waste a shitload of bait sitting on a bulwark at a reservoir while Wayne fished and he threw hotdog chunks at turtles. 

They’d drive back just as the sun starts to go down, stop at whatever roadside diner they find first on the surface roads eat burgers and undercooked, limp, fries and whatever desert special the place has - places like those always have one - while Eddie would rip the paper napkins and straw wrappers into little shreds and dumping 6 little plastic containers of creamer and however many packets of sugar he could pinch between his fingers from the cramped little dish on the table into his essentially white, by that point, annual cup of coffee (as his stimulants problem started early, apparently) while he’d tell Wayne about whatever book he was reading at great incoherent length and Wayne smoked in the corner booth. Always a corner booth. Get back for Forest Hills after dark, his adolescent ass valiantly trying to fight off sleep out on the porch with the fireflies and crickets and Wayne’s last silent cigarette of the night. That was just. Kind of always how it went for them. Just him and Wayne and another year.  

So Steve doesn’t know any of this, so far as he knows. 

But Steve’s wailing on the goddam horn out front at the unholiest hour of 7am and he’s just standing on his stoop and gives him the universal arms out stretched what the fuck, people live here jackass look and Steve just gives a him winning smile and the finger out the open driver’s side window. 

Fucker. 

He’s got nowhere to be and no one to notice if he’s gone and Steve didn’t say what they were doing, just that it was gonna be a long drive and he was picking him up early. 

And it's not, like, Steve doesn’t know. Like he knows what day it is. He knows what this is about. 

And it's cute and all, whatever it is, he just figured he wouldn’t be 22 and not-dead and doing this kind of shit. Like the cutsey-surprise-make a day of it-whatever. Like there’s diminishing returns with getting older and the days that denote it - old enough to drive, old enough to die in a war, old enough to vote, old enough to drink, end of list, exciting birthdays over - not that he’s got a lot of room to talk re: time spent maturely, considering his hobbies largely consisting of a very elaborate game of pretend but like you grow out of this particular kind of thing eventually, right? Just like, one day you’re gonna stop feeling no different than you did when you were 17, right? Like some threshold of adulthood achieved surely exists, and there’s some point when you know you’ve crossed it? 

Right?

But Steve’s got a plan and he’s not really the greatest at keeping things to himself, transparent and careless to a very measurable fault, as evidenced by the paper grocery bag sitting on the floor of the passenger side. Top wide open, something soft and pale wadded up in there barely obscuring six of something else, and Steve sort of hurriedly going, like, shit don’t look in the bag once he negotiates his legs around the obstacle on the floor of Steve’s car. 

And, like, sure, he’s kind of a dick before the hour of 11 am but he has at least a shred of a capacity for restraint so he just rolls his eyes a little and shoves the bag further up the floor under the dashboard and something glass clinks together in there and keeps his shittier thoughts to himself about how precisely bad Steve is at his little birthday subterfuge since Steve’s bothered to even like. Give a shit. 

“So is this an official kidnapping or do I get to know where we’re going?”

“This is, at best, a consensual kidnapping.” Steve says, a little distracted, arm around the back of Eddie’s seat fingers kind of tapping against the leather headrest as he waits, the heat of his wrist inches from Eddie neck, absolutely blistering with proximity - twisted at the waist to look out the back windshield as he backs out of the little square of gravel out front of the trailer and he tries not to feel like a giggling maniac about it. Like, he’s never had a deep well of dignity but Christ Almighty. 

Steve throws the BMW into drive with a fully unnecessary flourish, car kinda clunks into gear with the lack of finesse in the showmanship of it all, and Steve kinda swings around to look at him all excited about fuckin’ something, arm still behind the passenger headrest. “And no.”

He’s so fuckin’ smug. Actually, y’know what? Actually, fuck this guy. He doesn’t really love having shit held over his head and Steve thinks this is really cute and Eddie’s not gonna let him just have that for free, even if it's been exactly whatever this is for months now. Him and Steve and their weird flirting to cope they’ve been doing now that the life or death adrenaline has worn off. 

He can fuck all the way off at 7 in the goddamn morning so he just digs through Steve’s glove box through the like - fuck, only like 3 tapes in there, what the fuck. Born to Run. Rumors. And huh. Parallel Lines. 

Smart money’s that’s Buckley’s. 

“Looking for something?” Steve asks all conversationally, not really looking at whatever state he’s making of the glove compartment as he turns on to 69 North. 

“Yeah, music.” because he’s gotta be a dick about something.

“Okay. No? Shotgun does not pick the music?” He is appalled, his sensibilities assailed, his most holiest of held beliefs blasphemed. “Who raised you?”

Eddie flips the compartment closed, it catches with an instant and satisfying click. Not like his van. His van, his shitheap van. You kind of have to slam it closed a couple times, hard enough until it sticks. Which is an arbitrary number of slams. Just until it goes. For a split second he feels like Steve’s showing off then he reminds himself he’s insane. 

“Not the wolves that raised you, apparently.” Steve laughs, it's dry and it’s skeptical, but he laughs “Shotgun absolutely picks the music. Shotgun is Sentinel, man. Shotgun’s watching traffic, shotgun’s calling out shit in the road, shotgun is distraction proof. Shotgun’s Navigator, shotgun knows the exits, shotgun’s on the maps, shotgun is destination oriented. Shotgun is getting us there. Shotgun is the Gatekeeper, shotgun is keeping the driver free of distraction, shotgun is running interference from the backseat fuckery. Shotgun is indispensable. Shotgun is doing so much for you, the least they can have is a pick of the fuckin’ music, man.”

“Yeah but I’m driving.” it comes out of Steve all unimpressed and that’s final and also obvious but also Steve’s just fucking laughing at him now, and honestly he can’t imagine why. Not a joke. 

“Steven, they let 16 year olds drive cars, whose responsibility is really greater here?” and to punctuate the moment he jams Rumors right into the deck. Like checkmate. The defense rests. Take that.

Guess it wasn’t rewound before it got tossed into the compartment because it picks up in the middle of Songbird, Christine McVie and the softest-soft rock piano so sweetly proclaiming some avian conspiracy that:

Like they know the score And I love you, I love you, I love you

And that sort of hangs weirdly in the sudden silence of the cab because Steve’s not laughing anymore he’s just biting his lip looking straight ahead into the Sunday morning church traffic because he’s maybe embarrassed, maybe being caught out at some arbitrary point in the album, like it's anything more than a coincidence, or its shock that Eddie’s considers this music at all. 

He could make up less and less plausible expositions for the look on Steve’s face all goddamn day but instead he just pulls and pushes the door lock up and down like a clunky loud asshole until The Chain saves them both from themselves and whatever emotional complication Fleetwood Mac committed to audio engineered eternity.

He hums along a bit (metal gods may ye be merciful upon his hellbound soul but, like. C’mon) punctuated by idle stunted small talk (how’s Wayne doing? - fine - how’s running your dork game again going? - clandestinely organized in various local basements but also fine) until he ends up falling asleep with his head against the window for the better part of the ride. It is, after all, well outside his personal hours of operation. The fact that he’s made it even this long is commendable. Everyone clap.

For the better part of the drive and despite his whole manifesto on the responsibilities of shotgun, apparently, Steve doesn’t wake him up, just lets him sleep and subsequently wake up on his own with a cramp in his neck, shoved down low into the passenger side with a numb hand shoved between the seat and the door, and the vibration of the wheels against pavement resonating in his teeth. So, whatever little surprise Steve’s got that takes 4 hours to drive to gets to remain a surprise after all because he wakes up disoriented and sore and all there is to see out the window is the high noon sunshine through some green trees surrounding some rumbly, chewed up, lineless, backroad and The Carpenters playing low on the radio. 

“What part of the kidnapping are we on?” He manages to get out, his tongue thick in his mouth and his skull still vibrating minutely off the window, after indulging in seconds of being unseen, unnoticed, to just watch Steve look to the road ahead, restlessly fidgeting with the stitching on the wheel. Exactly where he left him.

Steve flashes him a look - quick - to him and then back to the road - like he hadn’t expected him to be awake so soon. Like he’s been checking in and just missed. Like maybe he’s surprised, or he was caught out at. Something.

“Dismemberment.” Is what he says instead of whatever soft thing seemed to be behind his teeth. 

Eddie hums at him, still a little groggy. Cool. 

“Oh you can just, uh, cut on the dotted lines.” he says, shoving himself up the seat a bit, kicking whatever is glass and clinking at his feet with a mumbled shit as he gestures towards his chest and sides, vaguely. “Pre-portioned.”

“Or you could just ask ‘Are we there yet?’ like a regular person.” Like Steve didn’t just commit to the bit, like, instantly. 

But anyway, he absolutely will not be doing that.

“Thought I’d spare you the flashbacks - afternoon amongst peers and all.”

“Gee thanks.”  

“Don’t mention it.”

Steve snorts, smiles a little, looking straight ahead to the raggedy backroad while Eddie’s still kind of crammed between the shoulder of the seat and the passenger door. Steve’s sunglasses are pushed up on top of his head, the front of his hair sticking up in all directions over and under the frames, brushing against the upholstered headliner of the BMW.  It’s not cute. 

He’s so fucking fucked.

“I won’t.” 

Shithead.

So eventually they park, they get out of the car, and Steve’s looking at him expectantly, presentationally, like he’s supposed to know what he’s looking at. And what he’s looking at is mostly the sand logged scrubby low reeds edging the cracked, sun warped asphalt he’s parked on. He snatches Steve’s coolguy wayfarers off his head, in part to spare himself his ongoing private humiliation of whatever’s going on in his chest and brain watching Steve squint into the sunlight and, in similar not unrelated part, to spare himself from the reflection off all the sand blasting his eyes into little shrunken raisins. 

Steve doesn’t even fight him. Doesn’t even bitch at him a little. Just pulls the bag out off the passenger side floor, didn’t even ask him to grab it when he got out - circled the car to pick it up like he was going to get the door for him. Like he forgot who he was with for a minute. And the something-glass clinks together again in the bag. It's bright. The sound. The sun. Whatever. Something inside him cracks a little. 

There’s a path that goes down, a steep decline that seems to just drop off into nothing from where he stands. Grey bleached wood slats with sand and tufts of spiky grass oozing up between the boards and pooled in the knotholes and Steve kind of gives him an after you kind of hand/arm gesture like there’s something just waiting for him just out of sight.

And there is. Sort of. In the way that it would have been there whether they were standing at the crest of this hill or not is waiting for anything. Something he sort of guessed at. Had enough of the information to guess at. 

He has this kind of puzzle pieced memory of being in elementary school, like third or fourth grade - the pre-Wayne times - and there was this whole week or month or whatever of lessons that were just kind of about the place they were, the place they were all growing up. And y’know, it’s like, industry and shit, its invention and innovation. Gary, Chicago, Dearborn. Capitalists’ wet dreams sold to third graders. And the rest of it was lakes, like why wouldn’t it be? What else is there? 

Some of it was industry, again, things ingenuity learned to make on the lake and the feats of it. Some of it was science, how cold, how deep, how old. Some of it was spooky shit, ghost ships and storms and whatever Gordon Lightfoot had going on about lakes that don’t give up their dead. But he remembers a story - because of course that’s the part that stuck with him - a story that isn’t really his to tell about loss and love and weathering the storm of grief and the passage of time to wait forever that made the dunes. 

And it kind of does. Have a kind of forever, that is, and a going on forever. The lake is there, a steep slope from where they stand at the crumbling edge of the asphalt down right into the water but the reedy clumps of greenery get fewer and farther between and every direction he looks up that lakeshore edge is rolling hills with sharp and soft edges, millions of years of grains of sand and the sun beating down. 

There are a few people up the beach, sliding down the hills of sand, standing in the surf, digging around in the muck for sea glass or shells or beach garbage or who knows - not close enough to make out any kind of meaningful detail. And so they are, for the most part, alone. And the sun beats down on them and the sand and the lake the same. 

He skids down the dune, shoes filling with sand as he tries to look like he’s any kind of control over the descent. Like all present parties don’t have a pretty good grasp on exactly what control looks like to him in various applications. Not like Steve and his casual confidence he just gets to, like. Have. Apparently. 

Steve whose ex swim team lifeguard years never really seemed all that distant - in surprising and nightmareish contexts the last few years; how strong a swimmer are you? bottom of a lake strong enough? not sure if he remembered how hard it really is to administer CPR but apparently it came back to him, if his own bruised ribs were any indication. 

Anyway he does eat shit about two thirds the way down, ass right into the sand and skids a few feet down, and he’s never been so glad to be one of those jeans all summer morons because his shoes are flooded and tight around his feet with the sand pouring in and he knows he’d be in a similar situation elsewhere less dignified were it not for the barrier and he’s suffered enough indignity in the last 27 seconds, thanks. 

And also anyway Steve holds a hand out to him, one foot braced up the hill to keep balance, the brown paper bag from the car balanced on his hip, where the bare, soft, skin above the inside of his knee is right near Eddie’s shoulder and he isn’t even looking, he’s looking out to the lake but he knows - knows it's not the embarrassment that’s making his face burn. He knows. 

“Seems like the kidnapping is going great, like, congrats man, I’ll break my legs on my own at this rate.” 

And Steve gives him this amused look with his outstretched hand that for sure isn’t denial or anything resembling dismissing any of the embarrassment he might be feeling about the situation. The fall. The proximity. Whichever. 

Sometimes he thinks Steve likes watching him squirm. It's not like he’s ever been like. Subtle. About anything. At any point in his life but probably about this specifically. So even if Steve’s entirely clueless, it's at least, apparently, fun for him. Something about it. It, whatever this is. Whatever it's been since he came back to life and they don’t talk about.

Anyway he takes Steve’s hand and it’s warm and it's broad and he already knew that because he’s thought a lot about it. 

He wins the remaining battle with gravity and momentum and sits to dump his shoes off and see if there’s any saving his socks from grit filled sensory nightmares in a few hours time and he’s pretty sure he’s already out of luck there with even the most cursory of assessments while Steve digs this white folded thing out of the paper bag. And as he sort of shakes it out he sees its scalloped edges, the eyelet delicately embroidered around the edges, the yellowing cream color of it all, and it occurs to him this is a tablecloth. An old one. 

Steve seems to notice that he’s sort of taken stock of what Steve’s laying out and how, if one were so inclined to take a lot of Steve Harrington at face value, it almost looks like his affluent upbringing has him so out of touch that these are the choices he made with confidence about beachside protocol so he clears the air with a;

“Biggest thing I could find in the house.” 

“Seems uh. Heirloom adjacent.”

Steve just shrugs and rolls his eyes. Like that means anything at all. 

There was a time he could, and maybe still can sort of, imagine Steve in one of those white pristine lake houses. The kind people go Up North for, the sweaters over shoulders, shoes without socks kind, catama-whatever sailboat-with-extra-steps dickheads. The country club Cape Cod wannabes of Midwestern lakefront property. The places that aren’t here. 

People don’t really live in the dunes, sand too high and malleable to put foundations down. Millions of years of shifting pushed out anything beyond the temporary, everything but themselves. And he thinks that, remembers that thought, and then has it instantly obliterated while Steve lays out what is almost certainly an antique that holds value to fuckin’ someone, digs the corners in with his bare feet - can’t even be bothered to treat it gently or with anything resembling differential respect - so he doesn’t get sand in his asscrack and just rolls his eyes about it.

Huh.

Steve reaches for the bag, something glass clinks together again, and he pulls something out, kind of clutched in his fist and because Eddie’s still mostly preoccupied with his socks because if he looks directly at Steve he might as well be looking directly at the sun he doesn’t really see Steve coming, hitting him in the arm with something solid but inconsequentially heavy. 

He looks up.

It's some trashy dimestore pulp paperback. Second hand. The cover sort of water warped and still damp from the company it’s been keeping in the paper bag. The binding is cracked and creased whited out on the edges where the printing has worn thin, pages yellowed and dogeared. The cover art is in that overly sexed painterly style meant to appeal to a very particular audience that he doesn’t as neatly fit into as one might assume. Devices of Archeron in yellowed white text across the top in some curly serif font meant to denote the medieval-adjacent legitimacy of whatever fantasy schlock is contained between its covers. 

It’s got these swirling green clouds revealing the shape of black eyes and a skeletal void of a nose, that yellowgreen lighting shoots through like a scar behind where, in the foreground, the overly muscular ostensibly sweaty looking one-would-assume hero of the novel stands. Feet apart, shoulder width, standing in power, dark shoulder length hair blown to one side in a presumed illustrative invisible breeze. Spear and shield in hand as he looks into the far distance off the cover into the realm of reality.

“It's not much, but it reminded me of you.” Steve says softly with no amount of shame. Like saying it out loud is embarrassing enough. Like thinking of him at all is embarrassing. Which it probably objectively is and Steve’s done it anyway and there’s physical proof now.

His skin feels all tight and tingly and he knows it’s not just the sunburn he definitely has. 

But it's funny that Steve says it isn’t much. Like he hadn’t driven for 4 hours while Eddie slept against the window, like he hadn’t made the trip, like he isn’t prepared to spend a whole 17 hours in his company because he had the time or made the time, like that alone isn’t anything and this little bargain bin find is the only something Steve has to offer. 

Fucking.

Fuck.

“I thought about, like, drawing a bandana on it but I can’t draw for shit so…” is what Steve says when Eddie realizes he hasn’t said dick or shit for way too long and this is actually Steve’s nerves talking.

“Shit, man.” is what Eddie says which is actually his own nerves talking. “Fuck, thanks.” 

“It probably sucks.” is what Steve says, not that he’s necessarily a connoisseur of the genre, but he’s also probably not wrong. 

“Here’s hoping!” and he actually means it. 

There’s no shade, not until the sun goes down and the dunes are behind them and the lake in front and the sun still rises in the east. So that’s just a geopositional loss for them. The longest day of the year in broad, cloudless, daylight and Steve pulls still sort of cold gas station sandwiches, fetched while Eddie slept uninterrupted against the window in some parking lot somewhere, apparently, and room temperature beer in the noisy glass bottles. Made the trip all the way from Hawkins for the occasion as the apparent primary concern, their sweaty lack of refrigeration clearly a misstep as Steve kind of grimaces at the soggy, drooping labels. 

And they sit in the sun and he can feel his skin peeling off in the future. It's different from feeling his skin peel off in the past. Having, now, a certain. Uh. Perspective. On that.

Having not been informed of their destination he did not come properly prepared for lakefront activities but dignity has no power here when he’s stripping down to his boxers and making a break for the shallows, sitting in the chilly shallow water - Lake Michigan is never really warm - to escape some of the brutality of the heat even with the sun dipping lower. Cross legged on the sandy bottom, Steve across from him better prepared and opening the beer with his keys, all muscle memory of Cool Guy of yore as he squints into the sun reflected off the lake. Like he’s thinking. 

And what he comes up with is:

“Did we ever. Talk? At school?” 

He knows what he means. He doesn’t mean talk and maybe doesn’t feel good enough or past it enough to call the spade a spade. Like he’s hoping for the best but expecting the worst. It's the growing pains. The getting older and thinking about other versions of yourself and who they were and who they did. Maybe it's just the spirit of the season, for Steve. 

“There he is, there’s old King Steve! This guy thinks I’ve cataloged every interaction I’ve ever had with him.” reaching through the water to snap his knuckles against Steve’s knee. His skin is slick under the water, the hair on his knee rasps against his knuckles and Steve is warm even in the cold water.

And he says it like a joke, because it is, a little. Mostly. Steve chokes on his beer a little, drools down his chin while he mumbles a fuck you through his messy indignity. Almost like Steve had been ready to be properly serious and penitent about whatever answer he was going to come up with and the joke startled the tension out of him. 

Like, he doesn’t actually want Steve to feel like shit about this, to be shamed for a momentary resurgence in self importance, or feel shamed for the answer they already both know, he knows he doesn’t actually mean it like that. 

But, y’know, despite the answer, it's also not a completely insane question to ask. The answer isn’t a hard and fast how the hell should I know. Steve Harrington had, and maybe still has but matters less, a reputation. A Hawkins Institution Of A Certain Age. Like, you could have been disdainful and disinterested as humanly possible - and oh boy he sure did try to hit that particular metric - but the pipeline of gossip and social worth isn’t something you just get to opt out of. Not when Steve Harrington’s got a reputation, and there on the other undesirable end of that particular spectrum is Eddie Munson’s reputation. So like, yeah. They. Interacted. 

Like maybe a little bit in a punching down way, like in an easy target way because that’s how order’s maintained. But mostly in a there is no conceivable common ground way. A way that mostly just had them existing in proximity to each other like two like poles of a magnet constantly shoving each other apart. There is no possible adhesion. Rulers of their own social orders. It is a law of nature. They cannot and will not make contact unless enacted upon by incredible force.

(Fuck.)

He’s got one clear memory of Steve before the identical maimings and end of the world averting, and they don’t talk in it. 

Sold weed to Carol Whats-Her-Ass in the driveway of some suburban house party because she clearly thought flirting might get her a deal over Hagan’s typical noxious personality - like the hair around the finger twirl big blink blink babydoll eyes fake as hell pretty girl attention surely has mileage with the insufferable dork virgin. (He let her think it worked. They always think it works.) Steve was there, looking bored leaning on the same BMW that’s baking in the sun just out of sight, Hagan just hanging off his shoulder, already trashed. And at the end of it Eddie says, all shitty to them “don’t do anything I wouldn’t do” and Carol throws her head back and crows with laughter at the implication, while Hagan gives him the finger over his retreating shoulder and Steve doesn’t say anything at all. 

“We talk now.” is what he says instead of, ultimately, answering Steve’s question.

Steve snorts, unimpressed. Knows he’s been deflected. 

“Sure.” 

“Look. It. Doesn’t really matter, man.” he doesn’t say the now. It dosen’t matter now. 

It's suffocating how All That Shit hangs over everything, colors every way they all interact with each other and the world. And probably will forever. The way they all don’t trust any of it, that nothing can possibly be the way they remember when all of their memories up to that point of particular damnation were always incomplete. Just a corner of a whole picture. And the frame’s all zoomed out now. Too far, honestly. He’ll look at a lake and he’ll always see, at least a little bit, a crumpled body crashing through the blackened surface and feel the pressure of water on his ears swimming towards something he doesn’t understand but knows now is death in his mindseye. And it's not all that hard to see that Steve’s made whatever version of that is true for him into a whole redemption road trip he’s put himself on. He’s started to see it a lot, how Steve’s always apologizing for something, even when he isn’t saying sorry. It's with Wheeler, it's with Byers, it's with Mad Max, it's with Robin and now, sometimes - it's him too. 

And it's always like, things are okay, Steve’s doing okay he’s like. Happy or having a good time or something and he’ll realize it - aware that life goes on even when it shouldn’t - and then need to twist that little knife he’s left in himself. Bring it all back. All this shit he hasn’t let go of. Like he can’t trust it's all over. So, he feels like now, with the sun beating down on them in a moment of ostensible celebration, that he has something to apologize for.

“I think I remember hearing about you more than I remember you.” Steve says, like he’s still got a few bones to pick with this dead horse but then he’ll be on his way. “Which is weird…” and like, y’know, the joke tells itself. Weird that I didn’t remember you then, what with how loud and annoying you are just like everyone’s said. Weird that I didn’t remember you when you were such an unrepentant unhumbled jackass. Weird that I didn’t remember you when I would watch you die later. “…’cause I don’t really remember anything anyone ever said about you either.”

And it's not over, not for him anyway. The shit Steve’s talking about but not saying. Maybe the supernatural and unexplained aren’t opening rifts through his late stage childhood home anymore but he’s still not well liked by the town he can’t leave. He was one thing to a nebulous Them for a long time, and that was a thing he was used to being - embraced being, if he’s honest with himself, which he hasn’t loved being lately but alas. 

But this new thing is worse. It's not something he wants, but it's not something he has any power to refuse. 

Long story short, skipping the pity party part (which he would be entitled to, honestly, it's his party and he can - quote - be a miserable little piece of shit if he wants to); people have always said things about him, had their opinions, and maybe it's worse now, but it's always been pretty much the same. 

“Well then let me fill you in: I’m bad news. Headline bad news.”

“Sure, but I like you.” 

Sure, like he agrees. But, like it doesn’t matter. 

He fucking cackles. Spooks some seagulls loitering around for the hope of leftovers tossed their way. 

“How unfortunate for you.”

“Not really.” he doesn’t even hesitate.

And he can’t take this, he can’t even try. What’s he gonna do? Smile right in Steve’s face about it? Blush? Look fucking touched? Fuck right off. So instead of anything productive or honest he just bolts. He flops backwards, bare back and upper shoulders making a cold, stinging, slap against the softly rolling waves in their little kiddy pool area of the lake. Pushes the air out of his lungs and sinks slowly to the bottom, but he keeps his eyes open, even though the sand he kicked up from his histrionics clouds the water hanging just inches above his upturned face. He can see the sun, an abstract and constantly moving yellowwhite and the little wrinkles the shape of it. Can see his hair floating in front of his face just as his chest starts to burn from keeping his gut and his lungs sucked in. 

And like. He knows. He knows how close Steve’s knees are to his own, he knows that Steve’s probably leaning forward to look down at Eddie’s retreat - he can feel the cold hover of his shadow over his chest even if he can’t see Steve from his perspective from across their little aquatic embarrassment buffer. 

He knows if he sits up exactly where he will be and exactly where Steve will be and his eyes are starting to sting from the sand in the water and his heart is starting to seize from the lack of oxygen and he’s died and wanted to be dead again and he’s been patched back together with foreign parts and he’s lasted another year past his expiration date and he just keeps coming back to the lake - any lake - and maybe that’s a sign, maybe that says something about something but there are little black floaters in his vision now and he knows that Steve’s always been exactly where he expects him, in his memories where they don’t talk exactly where he expects him, standing at the end of the world shoulder to shoulder exactly where he expects him, sitting in his car outside his uncle’s trailer just like he said he would be, leaning over him at the cold bottom of the lake maybe exactly where he expects him and his ears are ringing and he flings himself upright. 

There’s air, cold, and flooding back into his collapsing lungs and there’s water in his ears and his hair clings to his face, his neck, like the weeds they’ve been brushing away as they float to shore in the waves and with his hands outstretched like Karloff off the slab, like the Creature from the lagoon and his hands find Steve right where he knew he would be, his hands find his hair and his mouth finds his skin warm and dry from the sun and the sand when misses a little because he’s dizzy and maybe that’s the lack of air or maybe it’s exactly this now. 

Steve lets out this, soft, indignant grunt. Which, even in the euphoria of oxygen returning to his brain he has the brainwaves to concede that he’s earned that. His vision is swimming and he feels wrung out and boneless and he feels Steve’s teeth against his closed mouth - he’s smiling, he realizes in a daze. Smiling against his closed lips. Steve’s hand finds his wet tangled hair, sightlessly, plastered to his cheeks and neck with the cold lake water - drags them away with a firm press of his blunt fingers against his cheek, through stubble and scar tissue to clear the way, pushes his chin up into him instead, noses the juncture of his cheek and presses an open mouthed kiss to his jaw. Eddie shivers.

He’s never been to the ocean before, never really been farther than a state or two in either direction, and despite the fact that The Lakes fall within that geographical range he somehow hasn’t done this either. So he’s got nothing to compare it to necessarily but there is something arresting about something so big. 

He has seen and looked into a hellish forever. Red skies and ashen rain and a ruination that stretches for all of reality. The water here stretches to the horizon, a grey blue and points of light out to a cloudless sun bright sky. There is color here. There is green water and lavender sky and yellow sand and an orange sun and Steve’s pink mouth and another year in full color. 

#honestly I could keep picking at this for weeks but I didn't want to be That Guy about a birthday gift and cut myself off #thanks for being absolutely unhinged about all of this with me #lets go be freaks in the woods again real soon #steddie #steddie fic #steve x eddie #prompts #my whole midwestern ass hanging out here i'll be honest #fic: head line

[galexis-void]

"Something Sweeter"

A/N: First fic! This took me a while but I hope anyone who reads likes it! Just a heads up - the characters in this story might be very out of character here. Even so, try to enjoy the story anyway!

Summary: Kevin is cornered by a pair of very familiar villainous faces... but they're not after his blood this time.

Trigger warnings: mentions of death, restraint, intense tickling (I think? I don't know where the line is between intense and not), spoilers for Spooky Month (I'm pretty sure on this one)

Credit goes to @eunchancorner and their anonymous askers for the idea!

(fic below the cut)

     Kevin glanced back at his watch in exasperation. Why did he keep coming back to a job he hated? It wasn’t like this was the only place he could work in town.

     That familiar ringing made him sigh automatically. “Can I help you?” he questioned unenthusiastically. He could already imagine what they were going to say. He mentally braced himself for someone to start chirping at him for something he couldn’t control.

     But his imagination wasn’t big enough to predict what the answer was. “Actually, I think ya can.”

     Kevin’s thoughts were a mix of confusion and disbelief, with just a dash of fear. He knew that voice… but there was no way… He raised his eyes from his watch.

     And his breath caught in his throat, his pulse increasing as he finally got a good view of the speaker - he wore a red sweater and a devil mask, and was grinning sickeningly from ear to ear.

     That was bad enough, but once Kevin saw who the devil was accompanied by, the feeling of dread he was experiencing only increased tenfold. Clutched under Bob’s arm was another horribly familiar face - a child-sized doll with ragged brown hair, blue overalls, and the same disturbing smile as the devil.

     Kevin finally came to his senses and stumbled backwards, knocking a box of gummy worms off the shelf. Just ONE of those two would’ve been too much, but clearly the universe hated him.

     “What’s wrong?” Dexter sneered. “Aren’t you happy to see us?”

     “I think the cat’s got his tongue,” Bob replied mockingly. “But we can fix that.”

     Kevin scrambled to his feet, desperately searching for a way out. He was so frazzled he didn’t remember the back door, and somehow thought running AROUND his unwelcome guests was a good idea. He was pretty fast when he wanted to be.

     He waited until Bob almost reached the counter, then took off. But he’d misjudged how far away he needed to be, and ended up right next to the serial killer - close enough for the latter to grab his collar. “Bad choice, candy man,” the killer chuckled.

     Kevin’s momentum was cut off by Bob grabbing his shirt, and he was flung backwards - right into the murderer’s arms. He didn’t even have a chance to catch his breath before he was in a tight hold - Bob was definitely stronger than he looked.

     Kevin tried to squirm away, thrashing and elbowing wherever he could reach, trying to get Bob to release him. Unfortunately, the killer seemed unbothered by his attacks, if anything they only seemed to amuse him. “You’re just makin’ things worse for yourself.”

     “Then lemme go!!”

     “Keep hittin’ me like that, and it’s not gonna happen.”

     Dexter, who was sitting on the counter, dropped to the floor and moved toward the door to get a better look at Kevin. “Hah! You’re a squirmy one. Whole lotta good that’s gonna do, though. Hold him down, would you, Bob?”

     The devil crouched and sat, dragging Kevin down with him and laying him out in a reclined sitting position. Bob shifted his grip from Kevin’s midsection, forcing him to lift his arms and exposing his torso. Dexter approached, their evil grin switching to a sly one. “This should be fun.”

     “Don’t forget the tool,” Bob reminded him.

     “Oh yeah, I did forget. Hold on…” they withdrew a thin black stick from one of their pockets and continued their slow advance. It didn’t look like a weapon, but it didn’t look friendly either.

     It had taken a few minutes, but somehow Kevin hadn’t registered until now that neither of his assailants were armed. Last time he’d seen either of these two was with knives and a serious bloodlust. If they wanted him dead, he’d be dead.

    But then what were they doing?

     Dexter was now standing to Kevin’s right, fiddling with the tool. Bob’s grip tightened ever so slightly, still keeping Kevin from moving but not enough to hurt him. “L-listen, you really don’t need to do this. I mean, there’s a bunch of candy on the shelf there. You don’t need my permission, do you, Mr. Velseb?”

     Bob laughed, sending a shiver down Kevin's spine. “Appealing to my sweet tooth won’t work this time. You’re right that I don’t need your permission, but we’re after something a little… sweeter.”

     Dexter nodded. “Yeah, murder’s getting pretty old. We’re trying something a little different, something infinitely more entertaining.”

     That sounded bad. Kevin couldn’t bear the thought of whatever torturous process they were about to put him through - he could only hope it was quick. He turned his head to the side and squeezed his eyes shut, letting out a small squeak of fear.

     But instead of pain, he felt a light buzzing sensation on his side. He squeaked in surprise, before opening his eyes, right in time to see Dexter tase his side with the tool. “Damn it, this isn’t working…”

     Kevin tried to ask what was going on, but was immediately silenced by Dexter jabbing the tool into his side again. “Quit it!”

     “I think the settings are too low,” Bob observed.

     Irritated, Dexter fiddled with the tool before it visibly crackled with a pale yellow light. “There we go. This should work.”

     They poked it into Kevin’s side again, and the cashier let out a squeal. It still didn’t hurt, no - it was much worse than that.

     It tickled.

     “I SAID Q-QUIT IT!!” he shrieked.

     The two villains shared a laugh. “Sounds like it’s working, huh?” Dexter snickered.

     Every shock sent ticklish jolts through the poor candyman’s body. It was strongest at his midsection, where the tool made contact, but managed to travel all the way up to his head and down to his feet. It wasn’t even that intense - it was… actually kind of…

     He wasn’t able to finish this thought before Dexter jabbed the tool into his ribs, eliciting another squeal. “Enjoying yourself, Kev?”

     The nickname made Kevin’s brain stop for a second. First they waltzed in here with obvious hostile intent, and now one of them was being all chummy with him? To be fair, they were using some kind of odd tickle device against him - not something you’d expect from a pair of psychos.

     “Try one of the other settings!” Bob encouraged. His energy was similar to that of a child.

     Dexter pressed a button on the base of the stick, and a multitude of large, very soft looking feathers expanded from the opposite tip. The tool now strongly resembled a feather duster, and looked far less threatening.

     Well, as a weapon, it was less threatening. As a tickle device, it was even scarier than before.

     And what was worse was that Bob was now lifting up Kevin's shirt - not all the way, but just enough to expose his quivering midsection.

     “Hold him tight, Bob. We don’t need him getting away now.”

     “Relax. He ain’t goin’ anywhere.”

     This was going to suck.

     The feathers didn’t even make contact before Kevin started giggling hysterically. Dexter hadn’t even moved that much, and he was already losing his mind. “Plehehease!!”

     “I haven’t even touched you!” Dexter laughed. “Are you just that ticklish?”

     “He must be,” Bob mused. “Well, ya better give the boy what he wants.”

     Good god… just hearing that made Kevin want to blush. Could Bob read minds? Under normal circumstances he’d consider that ridiculous, but based on the things he’d witnessed…

     …he couldn’t finish that thought either before those way-too-soft-to-be-legal feathers finally made contact, and he let out an embarrassing squeal. How could something so simple completely break him?!

     “Don’t ruin your voice, now,” he heard Bob say to him. “We wouldn’t want to stop hearing that lovely laugh ya got, hey?”

     His… lovely laugh? Was this for real? They liked his laugh?? He didn’t know whether to be flattered or more embarrassed. He’d had a few people compliment his looks, and some even tried to pick him up, but never once had they commented on his laugh.

     Dexter continued brushing the feathered end back and forth over the patch of pink skin, sending the poor cashier into absolute hysterics. Those stupidly soft feathers were going to be the death of him.

     Or maybe not, since Bob had just dug his claws into his ribs. He’d been so focused on the feathers that he hadn’t noticed the serial killer changing the position of his arms. Before, he’d been holding Kevin’s arms with his own, but now Kevin’s arms were above his head, held together at the wrist and the killer’s other hand was now free. “A-AAAAAHAAHAHAHA!”

     “Take it easy, you’ll blow out his voice!” Dexter chided the larger man.

     “Calm down. I know what I’m doin’.”

     He certainly did, too - somehow he knew which rib spots were the worst. His hand spidered down the left set of ribs, even pausing at certain intervals and then poking between them, as if he were counting. But the worst was when he found that sweet spot just underneath the ribs…

     “You know what I’ve noticed?” Dexter questioned, briefly lifting the feather duster from the cashier’s blushing stomach. “This guy was pretty resistant when we first came in here, but once the tickles started, he stopped fighting. Did you catch that, Bob?”

     Oh no.

     “I did,” his accomplice chuckled. “And I think I know what you’re thinking.”

     OH NO.

     Dexter tilted his head, now gazing upward and directly into Kevin’s watering eyes. “Not once did you ask us to stop, either, even after you realized what was happening. And that makes me think that you like this!”

     Kevin tried to lie, but he cut himself off with another shriek as Bob blew a raspberry into the sweet spot under his ribs. Who was he trying to fool? They knew the truth already. They’d been mercilessly wrecking him for the last fifteen minutes or so…

     …and he’d loved every second of it.

     A few more minutes passed, and they finally allowed him a chance to catch his breath. Bob still didn’t let him go, but he’d been considerate enough to remove his hands from Kevin’s ribs. “Haaah… haha… that was…”

     After a minute or so, Bob said, “Alright, that’s more than enough time. Let’s get back to tickling, shall we?”

     Wait… they weren’t done?!

Dexter tucked the tool back into their pocket. “Don’t hog him, alright? I want a piece too.”

     “You spent a good while getting him, and you say I’m hoggin’ him?”

     During this short altercation, Bob’s hands had found a new place on Kevin’s sides, though his claws were long enough to reach over onto his captive’s stomach. He lightly drummed his fingers against Kevin’s midsection, causing Kevin to squirm from the anticipation. Whatever they were planning, he was… actually looking forward to it. Sort of. A little. Maybe. Definitely.

     Dexter was now seated in his lap, glancing expectantly at Bob. It didn’t take long for the killer to transition from drumming to scribbling, and he had Kevin cackling in seconds. This sensation was quickly doubled by Dexter poking different spots on Kevin’s exposed midsection, varying from his sides to those ridiculously sensitive rib spots, and a couple times venturing dangerously close to his navel. Good god, if they were to go after his navel, he may actually go insane.

     Eventually Bob seemed to grow bored, and moved his hands back to Kevin’s sides. Thankfully that spot wasn’t nearly as bad as his stomach, but it was still pretty bad. Even before any tickles could happen he was already squirming - he must look silly, trying to wriggle away like he was. Unfortunately Bob had a tight enough grip to disallow him from escaping.

     “Hmm… since you work at the candy store, it makes sense why your laugh is so sweet…” Bob mused to himself. “In fact, your laugh really is sweeter than any candy I’ve ever had.”

     “Ain't that the truth,” Dexter agreed.

     At this point Kevin was at a complete loss for words - both because of the sudden behavior shift between these two crazies, and also because his laughter destroyed any chance of him forming coherent sentences. Then again, it wasn’t like he had much to say. He would never admit he liked being tickled, not even to people he liked.

     After what felt like hours, the villains finally released Kevin, leaving him a panting, giggling mess on the floor. “You think we went too far?” Dexter asked their companion.

     “If we did, he would’ve been completely broken. He looks fine to me.”

     Dexter gave the flustered candyman a once-over. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. This was fun.”

     “I agree. If I may, I say we come back here sometime and give him some more.”

     “Oh, hell yeah. I think he’s had enough for now, but I am definitely coming back. I want another chance to use this.” They brandished the tool in Kevin’s direction.

     Bob laughed. “Don’t you go anywhere, candyman. We’ll be back.”

     And with that, they left the store, chattering to each other about the experience. And even though Kevin was still too breathless to speak, he couldn’t help but wonder if they were serious about coming back for another round of tickling. And if they were…

     …he knew he’d be waiting for it.

-END-

#spooky month tickle #spooky month tickles #sm tickle #sm tickles #spooky month #tickle blog #tickle story #tickle fanfic #spooky month kevin #spooky month bob velseb #spooky month dexter #bob velseb #dexterfella #sm kevin #sm bob velseb #sm dexter

[very-much-asleep]

I’ve been thinking about L’s monster speech recently, and I’ve always wondered about something: the fandom has basically unanimously agreed that Light is the ‘lying monster’ mentioned who ‘devours’ L/ brings about L’s defeat, and I definitely do agree with that because it does describe him, but I also think that a lot of people are overlooking L calling himself that monster, and how he’d be defeated by it.

Which brings me to my main point (although it’s more an absentminded speculation but bear with me for a moment); is L himself partly to blame for his downfall? As said before, he admits that he’s the type of monster who is capable of devouring him, and it just made me think about the things he’s done over the series that line up with the description that could have led to giving himself a disadvantage, sort of.

For example, the ‘not having understanding of a human heart’ line could be seen as L’s lack of charisma that ultimately made the Task Force always swing towards Light’s effortlessly charming excuses than L’s blunt, sometimes even callous way of phrasing things. I saw someone talking about this in more detail on another post, and it ultimately says that had L been more charismatic (or ‘had a better understanding of the human heart’, for the sake of drawing links to the speech), people may have been more willing to listen to him about Light’s identity as Kira.

‘They eat though they’ve never experienced hunger’ is an interesting one, and this could very well be a stretch here, but I thought maybe it could refer to his profession: the ‘eating’ in this case being catching criminals, and the ‘hunger’ the sense of justice that drives most detectives that L largely lacks, viewing cases instead as games that pique his interest and not some huge wrongs that have to be righted because of the fact that they’re, well, wrong.

(Of course, he seems to express having some sense of justice on a few occasions, but that’s a discussion for another day which I might focus more on in my ‘how kind is L’ essay that I’d like to say is currently in the works but then I’d be lying…)

I can’t really think of anything particularly downfall-inducing in the academics part, but the last line—‘they seek friendship even though they do not know how to love’—is one I have some comments on.

So, L calls Light his ‘first friend’. It’s confirmed by the creator of the series that he’s lying when he says this, but that only makes it more interesting because it fits the ‘doesn’t know how to love’ aspect more closely. What I think is true is that L saw Light as someone of a high enough intellect to play all these complicated mind-games with, which could be his equivalent of ‘seeking friendship’ but never really feeling any genuine connection.

I interpreted the flaw with this one as L being so caught up in his intricate web of mind-games with Light and intent on having a personal victory over Kira that these priorities became more important or at least more interesting for him than cutting straight to the point and getting the evidence needed to convict him. Of course, I’m not saying that L wasn’t trying to do that, but it’s more the cat-and-mouse, testing-the-waters way he began doing this that potentially took more time than it could’ve done had L been solely focused on just catching Kira and that being the end of it.

What I’m trying to say is that maybe L’s slightly-shifting focus from catching Kira to tripping Kira up is partly what caused his downfall, and that the ‘monster’ that ‘devoured’ him is as much himself as it was Light; or, if that’s a bit of an exaggeration, at least he’s somewhat responsible.

(That doesn’t stop me from loathing Light for playing dirty to kill him off, though.)

#take all this with a grain of salt because it’s more speculation than coherent and organised thoughts #I might be speaking nonsense but I thought it was an interesting route of the monster speech to explore #even if it’s not the intended meaning #death note #l lawliet #death note meta #sleep’s collection ➝ analyses #sort of

[el-is-away]

Breaking into ur askbox like that gif of a cat breaking through a wall

Anyway ask game

Deli: Future, Hate, Midnight, Wound

The Hunter: Fear, Hunt (ha)

Sawyl: Mask, Alone

Wanted to throw in some more but there's already a lot hhhh

thank u!! i scritch you like the cat breaking through a wall you are

Delicon

future: What's the worst possible future for your OC? Are they taking steps to avoid that outcome? Are they even aware it's a possibility?

i guess that would be fully succumbing to his want for power. that would mean him continuing to search for people (or monsters) to please, maybe even continuing on his devotion to jormag and not finding something else to do with his life, continuing being a midless zealot. i guess now a normal life, a partner and a job kind of ground him a little bit, so it helps to not think about such stuff. he is complely aware of his violent beginnings and hopes to not go on that path again.

hate: What does your OC hate? Why? How do they act towards the object of their hatred?

nowdays deli mostly hates long shifts and nosy customers djkgjf. but in general, he hates traitors and things, that remind him of his past. he tries to such people and things them at all costs.

midnight: What keeps your OC up at night? Do they have nightmares? Fears? Anxieties? What do they do in the small hours of the morning when they should be sleeping?

visions of past. echoes of a long lost spirit that haunted him. his violent outbursts at gwynne, back in gyala. he is afraid of becoming a monster to deal with. he doesn't think of it often, but when he does, he gets really solemn and just freezes for a while, staring into space. dreadful for him, really. so instead he keeps busy :)

wound: How does your OC handle being wounded? Are their wounds mostly physical? Mental? Emotional? What's the worst wound your OC has ever experienced?

he takes physical wounds like a champ. it barely bothers him anymore, esp since his skin (bark?) has become a bit tougher with years of being frozen. he has emotional and mental wounds - betrayal in the past, hardships, outbursts at loved ones. but he tries to keep it all shoved deep inside, ignore it. worst wound? he literally got impaled once and lived through it just out of pure spite that was coursing through his posessed body at the time

The Solemn Hunter

fear: What is your OC's greatest fear? What do they do when confronted with it? Are they open with their fear, or do they hide it away?

meeting brother once more and still being not good enough for him. confronted, he will just be angry, maybe even violent, but out of fear of knowing the truth. he is definitely a hider of all kinds, you will never see him being genuine and sharing whats bothering him.

hunt: Who or what is your OC hunted by? A person, a feeling, a past mistake? Is your OC able to let their guard down, or are they constantly alert?

a person. still, brother; they were separated because of how much pryman didn't approve of their path of violent beginning. hunter is brittle, unchangable, so he is still riding that violence train to this day, to some extent. even if for a better cause. he is always on alert, cause hes a killeeeeeeerrrrrrr. :)

"Sneaky Oranges" Sawyl

mask: Does your OC wear a mask, literally or figuratively? What goes on beneath it? Is there anyone in their life who gets to see who they are under the mask?

no! literally, no. he is as obscene as is. its his nature to be pompous, full of himself, get under people's skin. he loves all of it. the attention, both negative and positive, it fuels him. but he has a softer side; a side, that he shows to his lovers once in a while. a romantic, poetic side, that bards have.

alone: How does your OC deal with loneliness? Have they ever been completely alone before? How do they act when there's no one around to see them?

he deals with it just fine, but prefers to be in company most of the time. by his nature he is a social butterfly, so being all by himself is just a bummer. but sometimes it's needed: only alone he reaches a truly philosophical mood, where he can write masterpieces.

#oc #gw2 #sawyl #the solemn hunter #delicon strix #ask game

[chimeclan-tales]

Tales of the Departed

The Old Clans

Unsure how much they’ll be used in the future, but for Year 1, they definitely affect the founders’ backstories and upbringings!

When playing on these save files, I was sticking close to canon Warriors rules/dynamics and the game’s base mechanics. So…

1. Battles and Wars are a big part of these clans

This is what they are raised with. Killing in battle is not looked down upon. Killing during other times, like while someone is asleep? Okay, that’s punishable.

Was it always like this? No idea. But this specific difference in morality will end up dictating a lot of their fates.

2. Stories are a huge part of their culture.

The glory of battles, the warnings about traitors. The clans know these tales by heart.

It’s also emphasized because… StarClan cats fade based on “age” (the 250 moons in clan gen), not based on being remembered or not.

So cats will want to be in those tales. That is the only way they can live on.

3. Trust in StarClan. They are always correct.

The most “experienced” and basically in-charge cats are those who have been dead the longest. I mean, you can see everything as a ghost. To spend moons observing, maybe even helping, the living through their woes and joys… It must mean something right?

IrisClan

Put a heavy emphasis on honor

Always keep your promises

Always face your enemy

Follows dynasty systems

But a cat can challenge the leader. Nobody else can interfere, and one cat must always die.

If successful, the dynasty shifts to the bloodline of the new leader.

Main territory: the forest

Camp is decorated with flowers!

DuskClan

Emphasize survival: strength and stealth

Don’t mind underhanded battle moves or ambushes

Yes, you can run if it means you live.

Yes, cause a landslide if it means your clan wins the war.

The mountains, their home territory, can be rough

Closest to the Moonstone

Hence, they consider themselves closest to StarClan

Still, not everyone can simply visit the Moonstone

Vigils for the dead are longer and more elaborate than the other clans. They offer prey (even during cruel moons), the procession to the burial site, and the decorating of the grave.

SerpentClan

One of the more easy-going clans because of quick access to water and plentiful prey

Have festivals/rituals based on the tales

During cruel moons, the nearby twoleg place does give them food, too. Whether a SerpentClan cat accepts it is up to them.

Considered an oddity in the territory for being open to kittypets and rogues joining.

In reality, the clan demands a lot from these outsiders

Have to pass a series of trials before joining

Not allowed to be out of camp alone for their first few moons

They and their kin need to constantly prove themselves

StarClan

Cats fade based on how long they’ve been dead (250 moons = gone)

Because of the nature of the living clans, they tend to group with their clanmates. They’d also rather guide their former clan than the others.

There’s a higher order that determines who enters StarClan. No one knows who these are, but they’re more objective / don’t exactly follow the code

Honestly, it’s as weird and finicky as the main series. Like. Ashfurs get into StarClan often. Probably due to the lack of cat purrgatory

Most cats who broke minor parts of the code (ex. interclan/healer relationships) end up in StarClan but are looked down upon. Some are even chased away into the Dark Forest

During / After the Journey

Windcurl’s group was the biggest. There were others that tried to stay / move someplace else, but no one knows what happened.

The StarClan and Dark Forest cats would split based on the groups above

Some, especially the ones around the longest, would stay out of sheer pride. Trying to hold their old home together.

#i was gonna post this alongside Fogtail’s Challenge but homework ass #ima be real it’s 2am here #i feel like im forgetting something but oh well #chimeclan #clangen #clan generator #warrior cats #clan gen #lore