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#not MY blueberry boy but Whatever....

maria-ruta · 8 months

Note

can you talk more about the species Blueberry is? I know you talked a little about their mouths and stuff but what about their little head nubs? (btw hope you're doing okay)

an interesting question, thank you!

when we started playing this sci-fi themed dnd-like game (it was called Scum and Vilainy I think?) our DM said that the world is based on "Endless Space 2" computer game. So we could choose any kind of species from there (but the human Empire is the one ruling over most territories of space, so being bounty hunter AND a xenos is extra tricky and dangerous but HAHA of course I wanted to choose an alien lol)

I picked Lumeris species

and to be honest I don't know anything about their biology or whatever (like what are those little antenas for?? idk)

the only info I found is about their very clan-based society (that society that Berry escaped and ran away. also bc he didn't want to get arrange married).

But me and my DM headcanoned/homebrewed some facts ourselves hahah

Like for example, I looked at pictures from the game and was like HMMM okay so most cis males have mustaches, bald heads and 4 antlets, and cis females have seaweed-like hair and 2 antlets? ok

(that big mamma might be trans? good for her good for her!)

Of course its a very lame design thing when female characters MuSt LoOk fUcKabLe for avarge male player, but eh. I just decided to use it for my character design, so that's why Blueberry has shaved head, for example

I also added little fin ears bc I'm weak, sorry, I want cute lil ears haha

some other headcanons/homebrew facts we made:

Lumeris give birth to their kids like some sharks do, instead of laying eggs

their healthy body tempriture is a little lower than human's

blood is bluieshly green

they still have little gills (idk where... probably on the sides of neck) so they can breathe under water, but not for long, bc gills are pretty reduced, bc lumeris been living on land for too long now. A trained lumeris probably could stay underwater for 20-30 minutes? Blueberry's maximum is 10-15 minutes

there are lumeris species that are like angler fish - their antenas are able to glow

we decided lumeris have one dick, not two XD

thats it, idk what else X) I never played the game itself lol

#Blueberry #lumeris #endless space 2 #TO BE HONEST the alien that looks very humanoid is a lame idea and no way alen from other planet would look like human so much #but eh whatever - im glad to have this cute lil fish boy #my ocs #my oc #ask #asks #thank you

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ddejavvu · 2 years

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don't mind me i'm just thinking about how Eddie Munson would SO pretend to be someone you know if you come up to him in a store or so and whisper to him how this guy has been creeping you out for ages 'n he would take to his role so well 😭 i need to shift dimensions I need to be with this guy

i'd commit unspeakable horrors to be his girlfriend

You almost feel bad practically tackling the man from behind. All he was doing was grabbing a can of soup off of the shelf, and you made him your impromptu best friend.

He lurches forward at the contact, and turns to look at you with fire in his eyes. You're absolutely certain he's going to scold you, but he sizes you up at his eyes soften slightly. He raises one eyebrow, a silent 'what the fuck do you want?' and you ramble breathlessly.

"Please pretend you're my friend," You whisper, the squeaky wheels of the cart you're dreading the owner of coming towards you down the aisle, "He's following me and I don't know what to do."

He doesn't even blink. His face doesn't shift in the slightest, and for a quick moment you're unsure whether he heard you at all. But his arm curls around your own, and he spins you to face the soups.

"-so I was thinking chicken and stars, but R2-D2 absolutely kills as a noodle," He drawls, ringed fingers gesturing vaguely at each can that he names, "'S whatever you want, babe."

You hear your supermarket stalker's wheels squeak to a stop at the end of the aisle, and you don't dare turn to see his face. You'd prefer never to see it again, a reminder of the lewd comment he'd made in the produce section about melons.

"Star Wars," You decide, plucking the can off of the shelf and handing it to him, "Uh, thank you."

"Now we need," He squints at his list, tongue poking out of his mouth and sticking to his upper lip, "Ritz crackers, and chicken for tomorrow night."

He mimes looking for the crackers, noticing the man standing at the end of the aisle, waiting.

"Oh, sorry," He lifts the back wheels of the cart with the handle, scooting it sideways so that the man can pass, though you both know he doesn't want to, "Were we in your way? Go ahead, we're gonna be here for a while."

The man stares at you, you can feel it. But your new best friend sets a hand gently, politely on the small of your back, leading you around him and sandwiching you between the aisle and him. He holds the list out in front of you, "Babe, can you tell what that says? Can't even read my own writing," He laughs good-naturedly, "I think it says 'blueberries'?"

"Or blub errands," You try deciphering his messy scrawl, weight lifting from your shoulders as the man finally decides to move, crossing your path and bumping the wheel of your new cart as he does.

"Definitely blub errands," The boy beside you snickers, glancing at the reflective panel of the aisle beside him to watch for when the man finally turns a corner, "Some nice improv, babe."

You're not sure why he's still using the nickname, the man is out of earshot. But you're too relieved to care, physically relaxing as your shoulders slump.

"Oh my god," You let out a much bigger breath than you intend to, almost dizzying yourself, "Thank you so much. I just- he was always there and I didn't know what to do! I'm sorry I almost knocked you over," You turn sheepish, eyeing his ankle that you're fairly certain he'd twisted in the meetup, "Are you okay?"

"You're fine," He waves off your apology, rolling the ankle in question with a cheeky grin, "I'm tough."

"You look it," You eye him up and down, a silver chain dangling from his belt that's almost covered by a leather jacket, "Do you have, like, a really big tattoo of a heart with a knife through it on your arm? Bonus points if it says mom."

He laughs incredulously, shrugging the shoulder of his jacket off to prove you wrong, "Uh, no, but thanks for the idea."

You let out a laugh, something that seems impossible considering how scared you just were, but one that comes naturally. The boy you'd found seems to be the type you'd go for both in and out of a life-threatening scenario, and you're starting to wonder if you'll get this lucky with any real relationships you're in.

"Well, listen," He stuffs the list in his pocket, a scrap of the paper sticking out, "I've only got a few more things. If you want, we can check out together," He motions towards the hand-held basket you're holding, "'Cause I don't think that guy's gone. I'd offer you a ride home," He reaches a hand up to scratch aimlessly at the nape of his neck, "But I drive a van, and I think me asking you to get into it would be creepier than anything that guy did."

"It's okay!" You assure him, a light laugh escaping you at his earnestness, "I'm sure I'll be fine driving home. But seriously, thank you," You smile at him, clutching the handles of your basket tighter in an effort not to hug him, "I really appreciate this."

"Anytime, babe." There's that nickname again, paired with the grin you'd seen before, "Now come walk with me, you're helping me find the blub errands."

#eddie munson #eddie munson x reader #eddie munson imagine #eddie munson scenario #eddie munson oneshot #eddie munson one-shot #eddie munson one shot #eddie munson headcanon #eddie munson headcanons #eddie munson hc #eddie munson hcs #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fanfic #eddie munson fic #eddie munson blurb #eddie munson drabble #eddie munson dialogue #eddie munson fluff #eddie munson x reader fanfiction

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douceurrrr · 1 year

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in which shuji notices your different flavors of chapstick for each day of the week.

strawberry. is what you started with for Monday and every monday after you get ready for school you would apply it to your lips with a smack of your lips. anna's mom usually pick you up along with maya,shuji,anna, and sam. your parent/s would take you to school but you like being around your friends.

soon enough you realized Ms.kone had made it to your house so you made your way out the house after saying a good bye to your parent/s. once you got to the car you opened the door to see shuji smile at you, went he looks at you the way he does it makes you feel like he's the only one in the car. "hey shuj." you smile sitting next to him, closing the door.

"hey baby." he says before leaning down to kiss you. he kissed you long than usual, trying to decipher the taste of your chapstick. once he finally broke away he kiss lingered like he didn't really want to pull away. "strawberry?" shuji questioned.

"mmhm." you replied trying not to blush. everyone in the car watched the interaction. maya gaged but anna smiled dreamily.

"are you sure? I think I need a another taste just so I can know for sure." shuji teased but you weren't buying it, knowing what he was trying to do. "whatever." you rolled your eyes as shuji leaned back down connecting his lips with yours.

cherry. is what you apply on Tuesdays. for some reason school was closed that day which made you so happy. at this point you were laying on your stomach in the bed, swaying you feet back and forth playing with the phone cord around your finger as you talked to shuji.

"I bet you're on the bed with your feet swaying back and forth, huh?" he chuckled in the phone. and that you were.

"shut up." you whined.

"but I would rather have you do that on my bed, come over." he says. you applied your cherry chapstick and within seconds you were there.

you ringed the doorbell and in a couple of seconds the door opened to reveal shuji in a basketball jersey and some baggy pants. "hey shuj." you smiled and walked in the house after he closed the door and shuji close behind you. shuji didn't reply he just instantly pressed his lips against yours. "mhm cherry this time?" he says licking his lips.

"yep." you replied. shuji then began to stare at your lips, getting an urge to taste your cherry covered lips again, so he did. "okay slow down cowboy, we have the rest of the day ahead of us." you said while making your way to his room.

he just shook his head and followed you.

blueberry. now blueberry is your favorite. it was wednesday and you were in class that you shared with shuji. shuji didn't kiss you that morning because he wanted to wait to see what flavor you picked this time. you sat next to shuji who was just staring at you (well more like admiring). you soon felt like someone was staring at you so you look over to see shuji staring at you, you smile bashfully then looked away.

after that class shuji had went with his friend group he usually goes with and so did you. after a couple of minutes you heard some boys call maya ugis which you knew meant ugliest girl in school. you walked over to them. "maya we're getting your brother, come on." you told, grabbing maya's hand in anger.

once you reached shuji he was with his group of friends and then he noticed you coming over with maya and anna. "hey babe, what's going on?" he says seeing you in a angry state. "some boys have been really mean to maya." you said cross your arms to your chest.

"look I'm not going to beat up a 7th grader but I can teach her a couple of words." shuji says. after shuji said a couple of things maya and anna went off to give the boys a piece of her mind.

"you're such a good big brother." you flirted, putting your hands on shuji's shoulders. he smiled and kissed you. "I knew it would be blueberry." he smirked.

you rolled your eyes and shoved him playfully.

watermelon. well watermelon was your second favorite but it's still a favorite. it was friday eve and you couldn't wait for the week to be done. on wednesdays you have a half day which means school ends early. it was lunchtime and you obviously sat next to shuji and some more friends.

"okay so don't tell me.. banana?" shuji says trying to guess the chapstick you picked this time. "nope." you replied with a giggle.

after many failed attempts he gave up. "okay was what is it?" he huffed. "why don't you kiss for yourself." you said, puckering your lips. he happily complied and kissed you with his hand on the side of your jaw. "guys not at lunch." he's friend groaned so he flipped him off while kissing you.

"watermelon." he says with a droopy smile.

well it's sad to say that you did wear any chapstick this day. it was friday and you ran a little late to school so you skipped you daily routine of putting chapstick on. well after school that day you went over to shuji's house nervous because you didn't know how he'll react to you have not chapstick on but you braced yourself.

"hey shuj." you say was in the room where he plays his video games and sat next to him on the floor. "hey ladybug." he says before pecking you in the lips, you cringed because you knew he would notice. "no chapstick today, huh?" he pouted.

"sorry but you know I was running late to school this mor-" you paused when you noticed a sweet taste on your lips. vanilla?

"wait shuj, kiss me again right quick." you said getting his attention. shuji just pecks you again and you licking your lips. "are you wearing my vanilla chapstick?" you questioned, smirking.

"oh yeah you left it here, remember?" he says, eyes glued to the screen but looks over at you every five seconds. you smile at his antics and kissed him on the cheek making him smirk, knowing what he did.

#woc #black!reader #pen15 x reader #pen15 shuji #shuji ishii peters x fem!reader #shuji hanma x reader #pen15 #fanfic #Hulu #pen15 hulu

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beababoobies · 3 months

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hiii :3 i saw you were askin for some sallyface requests, and i happen to be obsessed so. i am here ‼️‼️‼️🗣️🗣️

could you pretty please write a sal x gender neutral/fem (whichever you want!) reader, where sal mentions that he hasn’t had his first kiss yet so reader offers to be his?? super fluffy, maybe a first time seeing him w/out his prosthetic sprinkled in there, a bit of hurt/comfort? TY TY TY teehee 🫶🏼🤎🤎🤎

Hello my lovely! I will be using a gender neutral reader for this as my last req. was a fem reader! I hope you don't mind & I loved writing this!

First Kiss - Sal Fisher x GN!Reader

words: 0.9k

You were sitting on your apartment balcony with Sal, playing a couple card games to pass the time. Chatting then and now as you played, but mostly you doing the talking. Sal wasn't much of a Talker, but he was a lovely listener, which is exactly one of the things you loved so much about the soft blueberry haired boy. One of.

Some of the other many things you liked about him included, but not limited to, his pale skin littered with small red scarred-out patches, his fluffy orange Maine Coon, Gizmo, who would always come up and lay himself across your torso whenever you were laying on his living room floor, his piercingly blue fake eye and his greyed out real one, and the way he always knew what was wrong, how to help you, and what you needed. He wasn't a talker, no, but he was an observer.

Speaking of observing, you may or may not have been staring down at your hand of cards for the past minute or two while you thought about it in silence. He had just sat there, looking across at you silently while you lose yourself in your thoughts. You perked up with a sigh, placing a card on the pile.

"Sorry." You muttered quietly, taking a deep breath of the outside air, piercing your lips together as you let your eyes scan between your hand and the balcony floor, trying to decipher if Sal had swapped anything while you were lost in thought. "Have you ever been in a relationship? Like.. a romantic one?" He asks quietly, scanning over his hand a couple times, then his eyes went to yours, then, you swore, for a split second, to your lips, and back to the pile of cards, where he carefully placed a queen of hearts.

"Yeah, I suppose. Not very serious ones, didn't mean as much as I would've wanted them to." You respond, sighing out the last part of the sentence, looking up at him as you forfeit a card. "What about you?" you asked with a tilt of your head, trying to read his expression through his mask like you usually did. When his eyes weren't looking one way or another, it was completely impossible to discern what he may be thinking.

"Me? No. People have told me their friends fancied me as a joke before, though." He says flatly, taking another card from the pile and immediately discarding it. Looking away from his hand and properly up at you, leaning back a bit. You swallow thickly as you scan over the cards laid across the wood of your balcony, turning your attention from the game to him as well, nearly jumping out of your skin when you realize he was looking right back at you.

"No First kiss, then?" You ask with a curious tilt of your head, quietly waiting for an answer as you played with the cards in your hands, still keeping eye contact, but it was his turn to look away. He didn't say anything, just embarrasingly nodding to the floor. You nodded back in understanding, before blushing, swallowing whatever guilty you had left about this situation.

“you know, if you, just wanted to um, get it out of the way, I wouldn’t mind helping you out.” You say, admittedly a bit shakily as you force yourself to look at him in the eyes again. He doesn’t respond for a good minute, staring at the card pile, before nodding slowly, not saying a word, or even looking up at you.

“Y-You’re gonna have to take off the mask, Sal.” You mutter softly, watching his hands make their way to the back of his head, hearing a small ‘click’ sound, watching him take the mask off. You probably looked stupid, sitting there just looking at him, blush spread across your cheeks. He didn’t look up for a while, but when he did, he had tears in his eyes.

“please don’t just stare like that.” He said, and the tiny crack in his voice as he spoke all so softly completely broke your heart as you leaned in, cupping his soft pale face in your hand, eyes trailing around the long strawberry scars on his face, breath hitching softly. “‘M sorry.” You mumble out quietly watching as his eye travels all over your expression anxiously, the other glass one staring straight back at you. “You’re just so pretty..” you mumble out, and before you knew it, his lips were on yours.

Kissing you like his life depended on it, almost desperate but so lovingly, his scarred upper lip pushing up against your full lips, your hands going to tangle in his hair, accidentally almost pushing him over as you climbed closer to him, kissing the boy you knew loved you back so dearly. You finally broke away for fresh air, breathing heavily as you held onto his shoulders, taking a moment before looking back at him.

“holy shit.” He muttered softly, hands on your waist as he looked up at you with wide eyes, trying to slow his own heartbeat and breathing, before leaning in and giving you a soft kiss on the cheek, pressing his forehead up against yours. “Why did it take me that long to kiss you?” He breathes out, and you chuckle softly, and he chuckles, and you’re both laughing so sweetly, and you’re in the arms of the boy you love so much. The arms of the boy who loves you more.

~~~~

sorry this was on the shorter side! I got my nails done for the first time and.. typing hard. :( but I hope you enjoyed and ur username is so cute teehee <;3

#sal fisher #sally face x reader #sal fisher x reader #sal fisher x y/n #sally face #sally fisher

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konigsblog · 7 months

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i’m so warmed by all the pregnancy stuff with the farmers 🫣🤭 if you’re up to it! literally anything surrounding that, it’s so soft to read tbf. your writing is always so good, hits every time but the way you write pregnancy just hits different 🩷🩷

— thank you!! i'm glad you enjoy them, it makes me feel more confident in my writing and i appreciate you for saying such sweet things ! 🎀 i wasn't sure if you wanted smut, but this was rotting my mind !

⭒༉‧₊˚. kid headcannons with farmer!MW2 🌾🧺🐄

farmer!price has mainly sons. little boys always helping out on the farm, gasping when the pigs begin squealing and the birds make their call. takes such good care of them, and you as well. the boys love their mother; running up to you while covered in mud, overalls coated in brown sludge, giving in and hugging them tightly.

simon is a with the farmer concept is hard. i can't imagine it, i can imagine him working down in the bar down in the village, you joining along, or being his little housewife. wearing long dresses, and coming to him with your toddler boy and girl, giving them some sweets so they'll be alright and talking with your confident, funny husband.

(trying with the farmer!simon concept) who smokes a lot and always stinks of tobacco after a hard day. his little boy and older daughter (2 year difference between them) giggling with eachother, watching as she protects him. he's so proud of her and always makes time to help with her homework after breaking his back taking care of the carrots and cabbages.

farmer!soap who has 2 daughters. they're his princesses, and he'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe. walking with them, hand in hand, sent down to the village for fruits and vegetables by their mother. helping you make some blueberry pie for your husband after a long day. his daughters falling asleep at the dinner table with blueberry pie all over their faces.

farmer!gaz who has daughters. he treats them like angels, and appreciates when they help with the animals. i imagine his daughters to enjoy helping on the farm when they're a teenager; taking care of chickens and bringing back eggs, or getting hay on their jeans and t-shirt. spends a lot of time with them and they all appreciate his work.

farmer!könig has only daughters, i can't imagine him with daughters, at all. has a lot of daughters, perhaps 5, or maybe a pair of twins. they're so cute when they're toddlers; falling asleep on their daddy's lap, and getting their faces messy with cheesecake after dinner.

he's an amazing dad, and loves reading to them before bedtime. has an album of photos of them from their younger ages, and sometimes fell asleep on the rocking chair when they were newborns and woke up crying.

farmer!alejandro has daughters too, no son's for him. he definitely treats them like princesses and loves how sweet they are. makes funny jokes, and is very overprotective of them. oh, his daughter wants to go down to the village? no matter if she's a teenager, she's not going alone. if she waits for him, he'll buy her a ice-cream and allows her to help with the cows despite his constant scolding for asking! don't worry, he'll handle it.

farmer!rodolfo who has 1 daughter (i'm sorry, i can barely imagine half of these characters with son's!!) he lets her help on the farm and always appreciates her help. doesn't want to force her, but allows her to clean the pigs and take the eggs back to the house for her mother to use. when she was a baby, he'd kiss her every night and sit on a rocking chair beside the fireplace, lulling her to sleep and teaching spanish to her in her older years.

farmer!graves who has 3 sons, and his youngest, a daughter. they all look like him when he was younger; 3 replicas. his daughter has gorgeous, soft blonde hair and his blue, silverish eyes. not only does he treat her like a princess, he refuses to allow her to work on the farm.

— encourages his son's to help him on the farm, while she plays with barbie dolls on the porch and eats any freshly baked cookies her mother made. her brother's are around 9, and a pair of twins, 8 when she's 3. a sweetheart who has a pure, giving heart and always makes her father little cards or paper people using his old newspapers.

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raz-writes-the-thing · 3 months

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HELLOOO i recently gained a david tennant hyperfixation and can i just say you are most likely half the reason why /lh i love your writing and headcanons so so so much, you have such a lovely way of writing that just clicks in my brain just right 🫶

specifically the relationship hc’s have been on loop on my head, and i’ve finally worked up the courage to ask if you’d be willing to elaborate a bit on some subby 10th doctor hcs?? totally fine if not, and whatever you feel like writing!! either way just wanted to say i absolutely adore your writing and can’t wait for anything u write next!!!

Just for this sweet message? Absolutely! This is such a lovely compliment and having my writing skills be so highly regarded even if just by potentially one or two people, it's a very high honour <3

Anywho, on to the HCs!

Subby Tenth Doctor x GN!Reader 18+ only / requests are open

DW: @nyxiethesimp @quickslvxrr @midnight--raine @blueberry-sunshines @stevekempscocktails @go-bonkers-go-foolish @peytonpenguin37 @yeethaw13 @complimentary-breadbasket @thekirbishow @stilestotherescue @madspads @catlynharper@merrilark @jaziona92 @yeehawbrothers @mochabonesblog @iguirisu @thegen3sisark @wereallbrokenangels @florduarte @pansexual-imp (send an ask to be added to a tag list!)

Subby Ten is super clingy. He likes to be touching you or on you pretty much all the time. There's just something about that intimate physical contact that clicks right for him.

On that point, when he's subby, he loves to be the little spoon. He loves to feel you wrapped up around him. He also loves it when you jerk him off when he's the little spoon as well. If you wake up before him and tease him when he's all sleepy and precious- oh, he's yours. He will spill into your hand faster than you can sing the alphabet.

He's a huge fan of praise and being ordered around. He spends so much of his days being in charge and needing to protect people from all manner of things that he likes to just let go sometimes and let others take the reins.

This means he's really not very bratty. He just likes to be good and be called a good boy. That's all he wants lmao

He finds it hard to listen when he's buried inside you. You have to tell him whether he can finish or not, and if you say no- be prepared to grab him by the jaw and make him listen. He likes it though- makes him whimper so pretty for you.

He loves it when you go down on him too. Making him feel so good but not letting him have any control over his own pleasure.

"O-hoh, yes- that- that spot, please-" when you lick up his shaft or trail the veins.

Need I even start on the Doctor and pulling on his hair? Safe to say- he's a fan

Just imagine having him kneeling before you, playing with himself while you yank on his hair and tell him how fast or how slow or where to touch himself.

After sex, the Doctor absolutely loves to snuggle up and cuddle while watching or listening to some kind of sci-fi or science documentary with the light from a nearby sun sifting through the window of the TARDIS. Some people like to listen to music- he likes to listen to facts about Tesla Coils and stuff.

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kairismess · 4 months

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❝THE SMELL OF BLUEBERRY PIE.❞

🏐 genre: fluff ~~~ ✒️ word count: 1,000 💭 summary: kageyama is a sucker for your pastries, and to have you give him a delicious treat made by you on his special day after school, in front of the rest of the first years... you make him want to melt and squeeze your cheeks out of embarrassment. 🫐 happy birthday to tobio kageyama my son !!

'dammit, i'm hungry,' thought the setter as he walked home with the rest of the first years on the team. kageyama was stuck in his own head, thinking of what to eat as an after school snack this time around. it wasn't that he usually thought about these things too often, rather, he felt like he wanted to change something up about today because... today was his birthday.

he didn't tell anybody on the team, much less hinata, who'd make a big fuss over him finally being the same age as them all and being teased for being the baby of their ensemble. surprisingly, yamaguchi had suggested they all go to this nice little hole in the wall cafe that kageyama frequented often, only when he met you, since your parents owned the place and you worked there part time to help them out.

"hey, kageyama, doesn't your partner work the—" "another word, and i'm gonna slap the orange out of your hair, dumbass hinata." kageyama seethed as he glared down at the short tangerine haired boy, which he understood clearly and backed off, hiding behind yamaguchi and tsukishima, who honestly couldn't be bothered if the two of them began brawling and tearing each others' heads off.

as the group stepped into the cafe, they were greeted by the smells of assorted baked goods, snacks, and drinks... especially the scent of blueberries that wafted in the air. the sound of hurried foosteps and the clanging of assorted pans and pots rang in the kitchen in the back, and out came you, ready to take the customers' orders... your boyfriend's order for tonight.

"a-ah, tobio! and friends... wh-what can i get for you all tonight?" you asked in a sweet voice as you glanced over at kageyama, who caught your gaze at him, making his face flush in embarrassment and shyness and turn away from you, mumbling out he'd take whatever, and you were determined to make that "whatever" he ordered something spectacular for him for his special day.

after you had served the others' orders, you smiled at kageyama and whispered in his ear, "i have a surprise for you tonight, tobio." your whisper sent shivers up his spine, he always got flustered and ticklish by the ears whenever you did that, he kinda wished you'd do more often, though. "a... surprise?" he echoed, confused and a little anxious, but your little giggle and nod reassured him somehow.

after a little while, you came back with a cloche in your hands and revealed your surprise for your dearest: a blueberry pie that was freshly decorated, everything made by hand. it was difficult to make and took you almost two days to piece everything together, but you were more than happy to see how it turned out, even happier at the sight of kageyama's eyes shine while he blushed at the fact you went out of your way to make something so adorable and thoughtful for your little blueberry boy.

hinata and yamaguchi praised your culinary skills, while tsukishima teased kageyama for not being able to look you in the eye because of how flustered he was. "it's rude not to thank someone for a gift. what, is the king too proud to say thank you?" tsukishima jabbed, with kageyama immediately taking your hands in his, and in a loud, shaky voice and with a red face that made him look like a breed between a tomato and blueberry, kageyama thanked you from the bottom of his heart, all his voice coming from the depths of his lungs as he looked you in the eye, so shy and thankful for your gift.

you blinked and chuckled, smiling up at him sweetly. "anything for my tobio, i made it blueberries because... they reminded me of you. i hope you like it, love." you uttered, kissing his cheek, effectively freezing him in place as his face got hotter and he started to look more and more like a tomato because of how much of an effect your kindness and sweetness had on him.

needless to say, kageyama ate up the pie with happily and full of gratitude; hinata was annoyed he only got one serving, begging for you to please make him one for his birthday, with kageyama snapping at him that hinata was too shameless to ask you for such a thing when you went out of your way to make him one he didn't need to ask for. yamaguchi meanwhile praised you after tasting a slice of the pie, trying to mediate the squabble between kageyama and hinata at the same time, while tsukishima listened to music on his headphones and silently enjoyed his slice of pie, nodding in approval.

kageyama leaned over and whispered in your ear, now, while having his toned arm wrapped around your waist a little possessively. "hey... thank you, so much, love, for this. you're too sweet for me, you and this pie, but... you bring the right amount of sweetness in my life, the right amount of sweetness i need to keep going. thank you, love." kageyama awkwardly murmured to you in a low, husky voice, making you smile like a dork and get all bashful and shy, brushing off his compliments as he wrapped his arms around you, burying his face in the crook of your neck, trying to convince you that you're the best partner and pie maker there ever was, not caring if the others stared and made fun of you two, he'd beat them up tomorrow and whip them into shape during practice.

sure, the pie you made him was the most filling treat he's ever had... but you're the only treat with the sweetness he needs to find the goodness of his everyday life, you fill him up with so much love and joy, more than what he knows what to do with, and he couldn't be any more grateful than he is now that he has you, his beloved.

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abilouwrites · 7 months

Text

THE MOVE IN

Jamie Drysdale

Mah lil pookie wookie

“And you’re sure they’d be all right with me staying with you for the month?” I ask nervously as Jamie smoothly shifts gears and toggles the clutch. My apartment had grown a water leak and a mold infestation because of that leak so I’d been forced to move out. While my parents live in California; they aren’t stationed in Anaheim but in San Francisco. Almost a 12 hour drive away.

I’d offered to rent out a hotel room but Jamie hearing of my dilemma and being my boyfriend was nearly upset at the fact I was going to a hotel before asking to stay with him, “I’m sure; the guys love you. And they all understand that situation. Least from what they’ve told me” he looks at me and smiles before turning his attention back to the road.

“I just don’t want to encroach on guy time” I admit, I hear him sigh gently and move his hand to pat my thigh before going back to keeping his hand on the stick.

We pull up to his shared home with a few of the guys on the team, those who weren’t living with their girlfriends or wives. Jamie takes my bags from the trunk of the car, “Jesus how do you have so much stuff” he grunts; he sees my concerned expression and immediately cuts in with, "no oh sweet thing I'm joking" He looks at me sympathetically and drops my bags gently so he can wrap me into a soft kiss.

I breathe a sigh of relief as I help him carry my things into his room, “ah Drysdales wife is here” Trevor teases as he steps out of the kitchen.

I smile softly at him and wrap him into a soft hug, “I brought my recipe book if y’all want me to make waffles” I tell him and he excitedly grins at me.

“Jams whatcha eatinn” Trevor asks as he leans on Jamie’s shoulder; he bats his eyes at him. Obviously asking for a bite of whatever his friend was eating for a late home packed brunch.

“Oh uh. Y/n made me some blueberry waffles.. you want?” Jamie guiltily offers half of his waffle to his friend who easily scarfs the half down. Trevor’s eyes widen and he nods in approval.

“You need to marry her. And have a lot of babies. Mostly. Wife her up because if you don’t. I will” Trevor says; almost instantaneously. Jamie simply stares at him, almost astonished at Trevor’s confession.

“Trev— I’ve only been dating her for maybe a uh year?”

“Marriage”

“If Jamie doesnt marry you. I will” Trevor admits winking at Jamie.

The weeks pass as they always do, it’s weird waking up to someone else. Jamie’s arms wrap around my waist his thumb toying with the band of my panties. Somehow it’s so comforting being able to wake up next to him. I roll onto his stomach throughout the night. His hands go from resting on my butt to sliding underneath my tank top and resting on my shoulder blades.

“G’mornin” I’m the first to rise and Jamie always rolls over tucking his head against my chest, my hands slide up and tangle themselves into his thick brown hair.

“I don’t wanna wake up” He groans wrapping himself around me and anchoring me down into the plush bedding.

“I know baby, but I promised the team I would make breakfast for everyone. You can sleep a bit more” I tell him wiggling out from underneath him but still tucking him back into bed and placing a kiss onto his forehead.

It’s about ten in the morning when the boys and their significant others start arriving. The house fills with chatter and the clinking of utensils as I serve the eggs and bacon and pancakes.

Jamie comes down, rubbing his eyes and quickly finding me flipping the pancakes in the pan. He groans softly resting his head on my shoulder and sliding up behind me and rubbing my stomach underneath my shirt, “I can’t sleep without you” he whispers in my ear.

“You want some coffee?” I offer him my little mug.

“Yeah” He sighs against my skin taking my mug and drinking it, “I’m gonna go see the guys”

About a month later my apartment is ready but Jamie’s being weird about me moving back in, “somethings going on” I fish around as I start packing my things back up

“I guess” he shrugs reaching for my hand, “Instead of going back to your apartment.. what if. We buy a house, or an apartment. And officially move in together” he asks

“Really?”

“Yeah. I wanna marry you. Not right now but eventually”

“Seriously?”

“Yes”

🎉🎉

#hockey #nhl #anaheim ducks #trevor zegras #jamie drysdale #jamie drysdale fic #jamie drysdale x reader #jamiedrysdale x reader #nhl blurb #nhl fanfiction

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callsign-rogueone · 1 month

Text

faking it - s.h.

Sawyer Henrick x healer!reader When Sawyer's friends hear that an infantry guy has been bothering you, they suggest an unconventional way to get him to leave you alone. words: 1.7k 🏷: Iron Flame spoilers in future chapters, feminine healer reader who was childhood friends with Sawyer (no pronouns used here, but future chapters will use she/her), mentions of needles (one immunization), mentions of harassment from an original character, Sawyer has a huge crush on you, and his entire squad ships it, fake-dating trope. here begins the story of Sawyer and Peach! I hope y’all like her 🥺

You fight the urge to yawn as you continue to restock the bandages and straighten things up for the day — you didn’t sleep well, and you’ve never been a fan of the early mornings that the war college requires.

It could be worse, you tell yourself. You could still be working nights like you did your first year. That was even more exhausting.

There’s a soft knock on the doorframe. “Is Cadet Lowen working today?”

Your classmate bristles, drawing herself up to her full height, but it isn’t very intimidating— she’s even smaller than Violet. “Who’s asking?”

You laugh, setting the box down and smoothing out the creases in your pale blue robes. “It’s okay, Sarah. He’s a friend.”

He gives her a disarming smile, but she still eyes him with suspicion for a few seconds before she disappears into the other room.

You instantly start checking him over for injury, but it’s too hard to see anything under all that black fabric and leather.

He smiles. “I’m fine. I just came to give you this. I don’t know if they’re still your favorite, but…”

You take the small paper bag he’s holding, that cute little concerned frown quickly turning into a grin as you see the blueberry muffin inside — just like your mom used to make. “Thank you. What’s the occasion?”

“No occasion. Just making sure you’re taking care of yourself,” he answers, blushing. There’s a moment of silence before he starts to bail out. “I know you’ve been busy, let me get out of your hair-”

You don’t want him to leave.

“Did you get your flu shot yet?” you interrupt.

He laughs at your spontaneity. “I did not,” he answers truthfully.

You put the bag down, moving to go wash your hands. “Sit.”

“I brought you the perfect muffin, and you still want to stick me with a needle?” he asks.

You raise an eyebrow at him. “It’s for your own good, and the good of the quadrant. Unless you can’t take a little pinch…”

He straightens up a bit, scoffing. “Of course I can.”

You smile. You know exactly how to get these army boys in line. Pride is the biggest motivator they’ve got; they’re always eager to prove that they can handle whatever task at hand.

“Your full name and date of birth please, sir?” you ask, picking up a clipboard.

He knows you know it, but he humors you anyway — it’s cute seeing you in nurse mode. “Sawyer Henrick, July 15th, 612.”

You write it down as he unbuttons his shirt, pulling one arm out of its sleeve.

Your heart races at the glimpse of the rider’s relic spanning his back; a swath of bright red contrasting with his pale skin. You certainly don’t remember him being this strong, either — all that crazy shit they make riders do has paid off, you suppose.

You take a moment longer than appropriate to get the tension out of the muscle before making the injection and smoothing a bandage over the skin. “All done.”

“Do I get a sticker?” he asks, clearly joking.

You rip your eyes away as he does the buttons back up, turning to wash your hands again. “Fresh out, sorry. I’ll give you a rain check.”

You need to get him the hell out of here before your classmates start asking questions, and before he melts the rest of your brain. “Thank you for the muffin.”

“Thank you for the flu shot.”

You can’t help but smile at him. “I really missed you, you know. I’m glad our paths crossed again.”

“I missed you too, peach.” There’s a pause as he works up the courage. “Do you want to come to town with me and my squadmates on Saturday? They all really liked you.”

While the land-nav exercise hadn’t gone according to plan at all, you’d still enjoyed your time with them. “I’d like that.”

“Alright,” he says with that shy smile you’ve missed so much. “Meet you at the front gates around three?”

“Sounds like a plan. Now scoot,” you prod gently. “I’m sure everyone is wondering where you ran off to.”

He glances at the clock — he’s definitely going to be late for battle brief, but the scolding from Dain will be worth every minute.

He gives you one last soft smile before he leaves, one you’ll be thinking about all day.

------------------------------------------------------------

Sure enough, he finds you waiting outside at three o’clock sharp.

It’s been years since he’s seen you in civilian clothes. You look exactly how he remembers you, only somehow even more beautiful. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, he supposes.

You’ve swapped out the healers’ robes for something more fitted and more seasonally appropriate, a new pair of denim pants and a sleeveless light purple tunic. You’d even let your hair down for the occasion, leaving it out of the usual no-nonsense style you’re required to wear during your shifts.

Him and his friends are all dressed in their usual solid black. “I guess I didn’t get the memo,” you jest.

Violet smiles. “Don’t worry. It’s nice to see some color every now and then.”

You bring a hand up to swat away a fly, and Rhiannon’s eyes widen. “You guys are allowed to paint your nails?”

“There’s all kinds of rules about what colors and how long they can be, but yeah. I do them every Sunday afternoon. It makes me feel pretty, even with those terrible robes on,” you laugh.

Sawyer pushes down a remark about how you’re always pretty, clearing his throat instead. “Everyone ready?”

There’s a chorus of agreement from the squad.

It isn’t long before you’re all sitting around a table at the tavern, laughing over stories from your years at the school. “And then I told her that if she wanted to act like that, she should-”

The door opens, the small bell hung on it jingling. Everyone watches you fall silent, pressing your lips together and shrinking yourself as small as you can until the group of infantry passes. They head off to the bartop, out of sight, and you finally let out the breath you’d been holding.

“Are you okay? You look like a sheep that just saw a riot of dragons walk by,” Ridoc says, but there’s no humor in his tone.

You shift in your seat for a moment, uncomfortable, but the way your new friends are all looking at you with genuine concern has you admitting the truth.

“I stitched up the blond — James — a month ago, and now he thinks we’re soulmates or something. He keeps showing up at the infirmary with his friends, asking me on dates, and I keep turning him down, but he won’t take no for an answer. I’ve considered faking my own death just to get him to leave me alone,” you joke, but it’s obvious that you don’t find it funny. “It’s starting to freak me out.”

Violet frowns. “Have you talked to Nolon about it?”

“I have, but we can’t refuse care to anyone, so we’ve just been saying I’m busy and having the other girls deal with him, but they shouldn’t have to do that. I’ve tried everything. He just doesn’t seem to understand that I’m not interested.”

“Maybe not everything,” Rhiannon offers.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, those kind of guys won’t listen to you, but they will listen to another dude. They need to see another guy on your arm, because they don’t respect you as a person, but they will respect another man’s claim to you.”

Everyone looks at her, quizzical.

“I’m not saying it’s right,” she says, putting her hands up in defense, “I’m just saying it’s true. Get yourself a boyfriend, or a fake one, even, and he’ll back off, guaranteed.”

You chew your lip, pensive. “That might work. But I’ve been too focused on studying to go on any dates. I don’t know anyone who would be willing to…”

“Look to your left,” Ridoc offers dryly, taking a sip of his drink.

You glance over at Sawyer. Are they really suggesting…?

“It’s a logical choice,” Violet adds, shrugging. “You two already know everything about each other.”

You can’t quite read the look on his face, but it’s clear from his reddened cheeks that he’s uncomfortable. You shake your head quickly. “I couldn’t make you do that.”

“You wouldn’t be making me do anything. I’d be helping you, because I care about you, and because that guy’s a fucking creep.”

You’ve never heard him sound so firm before.

Your gaze drifts back to the bartop, where James is still sitting with his friends, several empty glasses in front of them. You’ve never seen him drunk before, but you know it can’t be pretty.

He laughs, too loudly, likely at some crude joke his friend had made, clapping the other boy on the back.

You wince, sinking deeper into the worn upholstery and praying they don’t see you, but you stick out in the crowd of riders and infantry — you’re the only person in the room who isn’t wearing all black, save for the bartenders.

“Breathe,” Sawyer coaxes, laying a hand on your knee beneath the table. It simultaneously soothes your anxiety and gives you butterflies, a feeling you can’t really describe.

You take a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Sorry,” you manage, offering them a weak smile. “Didn’t mean to kill the mood.”

“Don’t apologize,” Ridoc says gently. “you’re one of us now, and we look out for our own.”

“He’s right,” Sawyer adds. “I promise I will do everything I can to get this guy gone, but I don’t want to cross any boundaries. We don’t have to do anything you’re uncomfortable with. You’ll be one hundred percent in control here, okay?”

You nod, entranced by the softness in his eyes as he looks over at you. “Okay,” you agree quietly.

“Attagirl,” he praises, tucking a lock of hair behind your ear.

You think your heart might give out.

“That’s actually really believable,” Violet comments with a soft smile, snapping you out of your train of thought and reminding you that you have an audience.

You tear your eyes away from Sawyers’, picking your drink back up. He moves his hand from your leg, resting his arm on the back of your chair as the conversation resumes, Ridoc bringing everyone back into a light mood again with another terrible joke.

This could work, you decide, but it could also go horribly, terribly wrong.

#fourth wing #fourth wing x reader #sawyer henrick #sawyer henrick x reader #Sawyer and Peach #mine

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caelesjjk · 2 years

Text

blueberry haze | jjk

⟶title: blueberry haze

⟶ au: strangers to lovers

⟶ trope: one night stand

⟶ pairing: drummer!jungkook x f. reader

⟶ rating: 18+

⟶ genre: smut

⟶wc: 6.6k

⟶warnings: little bit of dom!jk, mentions of drug use (marijuana), smut in the forms of: some breath play, choking, oral ( m & f receiving), lots of praise, some bondage type things, touch denial, unprotected sex (don’t do this, be smart)

⟶ summary: he had been eye fucking you from the stage all night. but you never expected anything to come of it. but when you run into the beautiful blue haired drummer after the show, you decide to let him show you some of his other talents.

⟶ authors note: this was supposed to be a quick little thing but you see where that’s ended up lol. This is some very self indulgent smut yall, not much plot for real. But it’s blueberry koo, and he’s my fav. Hope you enjoy, and as always send the feedback my way!

What was his deal?

The ridiculously good looking, blue haired drummer on stage was looking right at you. And he had been most of the night. You couldn’t help but stare back at him, it was impossible not to.

“He’s eye fucking you.” Your friend said into your ear as the band came back on stage for their finale.

“Is not.” But you knew he was. He was looking at you again already as he sat down on the stool behind his drum kit.

Big, veiny biceps gripped the drumsticks in his hands, slinging them around between his fingers effortlessly. You watched as he pushed the blue hair off of his forehead once more before the song started and he became immersed in the music. He was a sight to see.

“Whatever you say.” Your friend teased and you elbowed her side in hopes of making her shut up while you enjoyed the last song of the night.

Any small ounce of hope you had that the sexy drummer was going to pull you backstage after the show was quickly doused when the lights came on and the venue staff was ushering everyone outside. You wanted to punch yourself for even thinking it was a possibility. He was somewhat famous. He could have whoever he wanted, why on earth would he want you?

“I’m far too tired for any parties.” You tell your friend who has been tirelessly trying to convince you to go to the bars downtown. “You should call Mina or Cher, I’m sure they’re already there.” She pouts but finally agrees to let you head home to sulk.

You pull your jacket a little tighter around your body as you walk past some shops and restaurants. They’re all mostly closed at this point in the night, but some of the displays in the windows are comforting to see.

Dexters Diner comes into view just up ahead, the yellow lights on top flicker in and out as you get closer to the small building. You could suddenly smell coffee drifting into your nostrils, and without a second thought, your hand is on the door handle of the diner, pulling it open.

There’s hardly anyone inside. A few tables of rowdy drunks from the bars and a few night shift workers having their first meal of the day. You smile at the older woman behind the front counter who’s wearing a pikachu tshirt and her hair in braids.

“What’ll it be, sweetheart?” She says as you sit down on one of the stools.

“Coffee. And maybe one of those cinnamon rolls from the case, please?” You take off your coat when she nods and heads off to gather your order.

This is just what you needed to wind down. And in most cases coffee would do the opposite, but you know the warmth of it will make you sleepy in no time.

You smile again when she sets down the chipped coffee cup and oversized cinnamon roll in front of you. The two things together smell like absolute heaven. You breathe it all in once more before picking up the cinnamon roll and bringing it to your mouth for the biggest bite you can manage.

“What are the odds?” A voice says behind you, making you freeze mid-bite. You turn around, cinnamon roll still in your mouth to face the voice.

Oh no. Please no.

Blue haired drummer boy is standing right in front of you in all his beautiful glory.

“H-hi.” You mumble, realizing you have the huge cinnamon roll in your mouth, your eyes shoot open wide and you quickly scramble to turn back and sit the pastry on its plate and wipe your mouth.

“You’re adorable.” He says, his hand gently touching your shoulder and turning you back around to face him. “Didn’t think I was going to see you again.”

“Here I am.” You say stupidly, internally facepalming.

“Here you are.” He smiles and tilts his head curiously. “I’m Jungkook. What’s your name, cinnamon roll?”

“It’s _____. Nice to meet you, Jungkook.” You can’t believe this is actually happening.

“How’s the coffee?” He asks, sitting down on the stool next to you.

“Good I think. I haven’t actually drank it yet.” You turn back to face the counter, taking the coffee cup in your hands.

“Don’t let me stop you.” Jungkook slides his leather jacket off his shoulders, revealing a clean white shirt underneath, the sleeve of tattoos looking so stark against the white of the shirt.

You weren’t sure what you were expecting when you started talking to rockstar Jungkook, but it wasn’t this. The conversation was flowing so nicely. He was surprisingly funny and full of all kinds of useless facts. The kind that were so ridiculous that they were interesting. He seemed sweet surprisingly…sweet.

“Did you know it takes 700 grapes to make just one bottle of wine?” Jungkook says, popping a grape into his mouth from the fruit bowl he had ordered.

“You don’t say?” You start to laugh, but then feel one of Jungkook's feet rub against yours. Was he playing footsie with you?

You take the hint, crossing your legs and letting your foot glide up the side of his calf. You can tell he’s pretending not to notice, but the tattooed hand that was resting on the countertop is now ghosting over your own calf.

“Did you know a group of bunnies is called a fluffle?” Jungkook lets just his finger tips softly run over your knee.

“That doesn’t seem true.” It barely comes out a whisper. Your thighs squeeze together as he continues his touches.

“Do you want to get out of here?” He asks after he notices the change in your voice. You look at him blankly for a moment before responding.

“Y-yeah. I mean sure, what do you have in mind?” You sit down your coffee cup with a shaky hand. Jungkook stands up from his seat, then leans down to cage you against the counter, his mouth coming to your ear.

“Each and every thought I’ve had about you since the moment I saw you in the crowd tonight, have been completely improper. And I would very much like to take you to my hotel room so I can show you what I’ve been thinking.” His words melt into your skin and find their way directly between your legs where they start a burning need.

“Okay.” Is all you can manage to say, eyes fluttering closed when you feel his tongue brush the shell of your ear.

“Good girl.” Jungkook whispers in your ear, thousands of goosebumps blanketing your skin in an instant. “Let me grab my stuff and we can head out.”

The jeans he’s wearing must have been painted on and he could not possibly be wearing any underwear with them, which was breath stealing all on its own.

“Jesus Christ.” You don’t mean to say it out loud, but of course he heard you.

“Like what you see?” He wiggles his eyebrows suggestively and you can’t help the ridiculous giggle that escapes you.

“I’ve had worse views.” You try to play it cool, taking another drink of the coffee that was lukewarm at this point. Jungkook laughs, then pulls his sweaty blue hair up into a messy bun on the back of his head. It should not be legal to be this hot.

“Come on then pretty girl, I’ve got other views to show you.” He quickly puts on his jacket and offers you his hand. You let him help you up and into your jacket as well.

There’s a sleek black car waiting around the backside of the diner and the two of you slide into the back seat. You aren’t sure what to do, so you reach for your seatbelt.

“What are you doing?” Jungkook reaches across you to stop your hand, suddenly in your space.

“Buckling my seatbelt? You know…safety.” You let him take your hand off of the seatbelt while he laughs.

“You’re adorable.” His eyes hold yours while his hand slips onto your thigh, gripping it tightly so that he can then slide you across the leather seat and closer to him. “But I have other ideas for the ride home.” You hope he doesn’t see how harshly you have to swallow, your throat feeling so tight.

“What ideas?” You let one of your hands rest on his thigh, touching the frayed strings of the tears in his jeans.

“First things first.” Jungkook places his pointer finger beneath your chin and lifts your face up to look at him. “Can I kiss you?”

Your cheeks heat up immediately. He’s so unexpected. He radiates that cocky rockstar vibe, but he’s also sweet enough to ask permission before he kisses you. The whiplash might be your undoing.

“Yes.” You instinctively lean forward and he meets you halfway with that angelic smile of his on his face.

His lips are too soft. Too perfect. But they mold to yours and steal the breath from your lungs. His presence engulfs you and takes over all of your senses. Right now, there’s nothing else but Jungkook.

Coffee flavored tongue swipes against your lips and you want to taste it again so badly, dipping your tongue into his mouth until he hums in satisfaction. His tattooed hand slides up your arm and onto your shoulder until it reaches your neck, his thumb sliding up and down the column of your throat.

“Tell me something, pretty girl.” His mouth stays close to yours, lips still brushing as he speaks. “How do you feel about my hand around your throat?” His words take you aback for a moment until you realize what it is he wants to do.

“I’m okay with it.” You wrap a hand around his wrist and move his fingers into place at your throat.

“You’re not so innocent, are you baby?” Jungkook smiles wickedly and swallows your reply with his mouth. Kissing you roughly, noses and lips smashing against the others, tongues licking sloppily.

Jungkook applies a bit of pressure with his hand on your throat, testing to see how much you like. It doesn’t hurt, it feels amazing. You take his wrist again pushing harder and with more pressure, his fingers tightening and gripping the skin.

“More.” You whine into his kisses until he pulls back to look into your eyes.

“You’re getting me so hard right now.” You chance a look down at his denim covered crotch, eyeing the plentiful bulge forming there.

Of course his dick was huge, there couldn’t be any flaws with this man.

Jungkook begins tightening his hand again but doesn’t kiss you again. He wants to watch your face while he controls whether you take a breath or not. You swallow, barely able to get the saliva down your throat before your eyes start to roll to the back of your head. Jungkook moans and removes his hand, his mouth immediately devouring yours as you take in a long breath.

“You’re going to be so much fun.” Jungkook kisses down your neck, paying attention to the spots where his fingers just were. “Did I hurt you?”

“No.” You answered too quickly, but he seems to find it amusing, smiling and pressing a kiss to your lips once more.

Your pussy is absolutely dripping. You can feel the stickiness between your legs and it’s almost embarrassing how wet you are after just a little breath play. What was going to happen once he was inside you? You shiver at the thought.

The car comes to a stop around the back of one of the nicest hotels in town. You’ve never stayed here, but you know this is where important people stay all the time. You start to feel the nerves creep back in at how famous Jungkook might actually be.

Jungkook opens the car door and starts to get out but notices that you haven’t moved to do the same.

“You know, I can have the driver take you home. We can stop right now.” He slides back into the car and brings your face around to look at him. “Because if you come upstairs I’m going to ruin you. I won’t stop until I’m convinced you’ve been so thoroughly fucked that you think of me every time you even think about being with another man.”

You take a deep breath, eyes fluttering shut when he presses a feather light kiss to your jaw.

“I don’t want to stop.” You’re barely able to muster out the words.

“Good girl.” He laces his tattooed fingers through yours and helps you out of the car. You expect him to let go of your hand as you walk inside, but he doesn’t. He holds your hand until you reach the elevator.

Once inside and the doors have sealed shut, Jungkook pushes you against the mirrored wall. You gasp out loud when his hips roll against yours, the hard outline of his cock more prominent than before.

“So fucking hard.” Another harsh roll of his hips, almost lifting your feet off the ground. Your breathing is rapid and uneven, the anticipation absolutely killing you. “Tell me how wet you are, baby. Please.” The words pour into your ear, all warm and inviting.

“Soaked.” You manage to croak out. Jungkook groans and slowly rolls his hips so that his cock rubs against your clit that was begging to be touched.

Just as you’re about to beg him to touch you, the elevator dings and the doors slide open to the floor jungkook had selected. You suddenly realize that anyone could see the two of you and you start to move out of his hold. But he has other ideas.

Jungkook grabs beneath your thighs and hoists them around his waist, making you squeal in the process. He walks out of the elevator with you in his arms towards his hotel room at the end of the hall.

“Jungkook…put me down.” Your eyes shoot open wide when you notice an older couple walking towards you. “Jungkook!” You gently push against his chest but he doesn’t let go.

“You think they care if I’m holding you? They were probably crazy back in their day.” Jungkook squeezes the globes of your ass in each hand as you pass the older couple, they don’t seem to care but you still feel blush rush to your cheeks. “Should we ask them if they want to watch?” He wiggles his eye brows and you smack his chest.

“No way! Are you crazy?” You half laugh.

“Not into sharing? That’s cool pretty girl, you don’t have to share me with anyone.” Jungkook props you up against the hotel room door while he digs for the key card in his pocket.

“You can put me down.” You say again.

“Hmm. No.” He finds the card and opens the door, lifting you higher in his arms before he carries you into the room. You roll your eyes, but let him continue to do it.

You look around at the room when he finally sets you down in front of the unmade bed. There were two open suitcases in front of the window, clothes scattered about. Some empty beer bottles and ash trays sat untouched on the night stand on one side of the bed. Typical hotel room of a traveling rockstar.

What wasn’t so typical though, were the comic books laying around in the rumpled blankets on the bed. You tilt your head with curiosity and pick one up, gently flipping through some of the pages.

“You like to read comics?” You ask Jungkook, who has started trying to shove things into his suitcases.

“From time to time. Something to keep my mind busy on tour.” He shrugs a little as he roughly moves the suitcases around. You smile to yourself and sit the comic back down before turning to sit down on the edge of the bed.

“You don’t need to do that.” Referring to him trying to clean up the mess in the room. Jungkook seems to listen, stretching his arms above his head before coming to stand in front of you where you sit on the bed.

“I need a shower. How about you, pretty girl?” His tattooed hand gently wraps around the back of your neck as he bends at the waist to be face to face with you.

“You want me to shower with you?” You realize how stupid it was to ask, but it was too late to take it back now. Jungkook laughs quietly.

“Amongst other things.” He smiles, lips the perfect color of pink, silver hoop pierced through the corner. “For example…” His hand slides up and around to your face, cupping your cheek and ghosting his thumb over your jaw. “I’d like to see your lips wrapped around my cock…fuck, that would be a sight to see.” He pulls his bottom lip between his teeth and groans under his breath.

Jungkook stands up straight, but keeps his hand cupping your jaw, watching you as you think about what to do next. You keep your eyes on his for a moment, but then almost on their own, your hands find his denim clad thighs. You rub up the front of them a few times, but not touching his crotch that was getting harder by the moment.

“Be good, baby. Don’t tease me.” Jungkook sighs, thumbing at your bottom lip.

You take the opportunity to wrap your lips around his thumb instead, keeping your hands on his thighs. You suck his digit softly at first, tongue licking the length of it. You’re practically drooling around his thumb in anticipation of having his much bigger cock in your mouth.

Your hands move up his thighs to the button and zipper of his jeans, undoing them both. When you bring your eyes down to his waist, you can see that your earlier assumption of Jungkook not wearing any underwear was indeed correct. Fuck, he was too hot.

Just as you’re about to pull his jeans off of his hips, he stops you, and instead leans back over to kiss you roughly.

“What’s wrong?” You ask when your lips part from his with a wet smacking noise.

“Shower first. I’ve been sweaty, baby.” He kisses you again, almost making you fall back against the mattress with its force. He makes you absolutely dizzy with lust. “Come with me?”

“You want to shower before sex?” You ask.

“We can take one afterwards too, if you want.” He smiles and helps you up off of the bed.

You follow Jungkook to the bathroom, stupidly nervous. He was going to see you naked one way or another, why did this feel so strangely intimate? Too intimate for a one night stand.

There’s an ashtray with some half smoked joints sitting on the bathroom counter, along with some hair products and skin care type things. You’re almost too distracted to notice Jungkook pulling his shirt over his head.

“Do you smoke?” He asks.

“I have…it’s been awhile.” You watch as Jungkook picks up one of the joints and puts it between his lips.

“Nothing better than a shower joint. Except maybe a shower beer.” He laughs and digs for a lighter in his pocket. Once he’s retrieved it, he lights the joint and takes a very long drag.

“Can you smoke in here?” You ask, knowing you must sound so cringey for asking. Jungkook merely shrugs his shoulders and holds the joint up to your lips.

“It’s blueberry haze. One of the best strands I’ve had.” Jungkook lets you take the joint, then casually shoves his jeans down to his ankles, stepping out of the denim and kicking them to the corner.

“Blueberry haze, you say?” Your words are distracted by his naked form. Broad chest and big arms. Tiny waist and…really big dick confirmed.

“Give it a try, pretty girl.” Jungkook watches as your eyes make their way back to his face, blinking so adorably.

You refocus your thoughts long enough to bring the joint to your lips and take a drag. The smoke fills your lungs and makes you cough, immediately handing it back to Jungkook, who rubs your back soothingly while you catch your breath.

“That’s…kind of strong.” You struggle to get the words out.

“You’re not naked enough.” Jungkook touches the hem of your shirt at your hip.

“Being naked helps with smoking weed?” You raise a questioning eyebrow, already beginning to feel it’s effects.

“I like to think so.” Jungkook slowly drags your shirt up and over your head, being delightfully met with the sight of your bare chest. “I’d love to have my mouth all over these.” Your shirt is long forgotten and so is your shyness.

“Why don’t you?” You take a step up closer to him, barely hearing the groaning noise he makes.

“Get these off.” He sticks his pointer finger just inside the waistband of your jeans, pulling at the material until it softly snaps back against your skin. You obey far too willingly, the blueberry haze in your mind making you feel extremely pliant.

You remove your jeans and underwear in a quick motion, kicking away the clothing and immediately reaching for Jungkooks skin, touching his shoulders and meeting his eyes with yours.

“You kind of look like a blueberry…a beautiful blueberry.” You giggle, fingers toying with the strands of his blue hair. Jungkook giggles too, big arms wrapping around your waist.

“You’re so fucking cute.” He kisses you a few times, then moves your body back towards the shower door. “Let’s get you wet.” He whispers into your mouth. You want to tell him that you’re already dripping wet between your thighs, but instead you step into the steamy shower with him right behind you, closing the smoky glass door.

The hot water immediately hits your skin and makes your muscles relax. You almost forget for a moment that a beautiful man is also in here with you, until his hands are on your hips and turning you around to face him.

“Don’t you need to get cleaned up?” You ask, Jungkook's hands sliding up your wet skin to cup your breasts in his hands. You whimper, not realizing how desperate you were to be touched.

“Mmm, I do.” His thumbs flick over your nipples, and then his touch is gone, making your eyes shoot open.

Jungkook is taking another drag from the joint, breathing it in deeply and holding it in his lungs. He grabs the back of your head, fingers gripping your wet hair and pressing his mouth onto yours. You feel the smoke slowly creep from his mouth into yours. You breathe it in like he wants you to, then let it out through your nose so that you can keep kissing him.

“I think…I think you should get cleaned up…quickly.” You say between kisses and strokes of his tongue.

“Tell me what you need, baby.” Jungkooks mouth travels from your lips to your jaw, nipping with his teeth as he goes.

“Can I show you?” The high you’re on is making you feel so bold.

“Please.” He pecks your lips and pulls away from you, he knows what you want.

You put a hand to his chest between his very defined pecks, sliding it between the muscles and down over the hard planes of his stomach until you reach his cock, hot and hard in your hand. You watch his face for any dislike, but he only put his hand over yours and makes you tighten your grip.

You don’t want to waste time, you want to hear him fall apart with his cock down your throat. You lean forward and lick one of his nipples, sucking it gently. Jungkook lets his head fall back against the shower wall, pulling his pierced lip between his teeth.

You lick up some water drops on your way down his body. His perfectly sculpted body that you most certainly take note of, gently getting to your knees in front of him, looking up to meet his eyes one more time before opening your mouth to take his cock inside.

Jungkook hisses through his teeth when you start to suck. Gently at first, short, shallow motions as you bob your head. You look up to see the muscles of his stomach tighten over and over the deeper you take him. It’s when you add your tongue that he really starts to make noise above you.

“That’s so good, baby. Keep going, just like that.” Jungkook touches your jaw and your cheek his fingers, wiping a stray tear away with his thumb.

You let him start to move his hips and thrust into your mouth and throat. You gag a couple of times, but you don’t want him to stop. The pretty moans and whimpers he’s making are too perfect to stop, so you dig your nails into the backs of his thighs and hold on for dear life when he starts move faster.

“Oh fuck, you’re gonna make me cum.” Jungkook smoothed back your hair and brought your face up so he could see your eyes. The eye contact seems to do him in. “Shit, shit, baby. Gonna cum…” He throws his head back in a long drawn out groan just as hot spurts of cum start to fill your throat.

You close your eyes and take everything that he gives you, slowing the motions of your head bobbing until he’s done, lazily licking the tip of his cock until he stops you.

“Was that okay?” You look up at him innocently, knowing that he’s wrecked at the moment.

“You’re fucking perfect.” His head is back against the shower wall as he laughs quietly.

You start to feel the ache in your knees, quickly wiping your mouth with your hand before you feel Jungkook wrap an arm around your waist to help you up. He smiles, then grabs some soap from the shelf behind you and scrubs himself clean with it, all you can seem to do is stand there in awe.

The desperation to be touched was becoming almost unbearable, but you try to keep your composure, letting Jungkook turn off the water and hand you a white fully hotel towel to dry off with. You both quickly take another drag from the slow burning joint on the counter, then move back into the bedroom area.

Jungkook has his white towel ties low on his slender hips. He’s walking around the room as if he’s looking for something and you aren’t sure what it could possibly be.

“Did you lose something?” You ask, taking a few steps closer to him.

“I had a necktie that I wore to dinner last night…” He tosses some things around in his suitcases.

“What do you need a necktie for?” The words left your mouth before your brain could catch up. But it suddenly dawns on you what he might be wanting to do with the necktie. “Oh…”

“Are you comfortable with that?” Jungkook gets down on his knees in front of the bed, flipping up the blankets and bed skirt to look beneath it.

“It would be…new, for me.” You tighten your hold on the towel wrapped around your body.

“All you have to do is tell me to stop, and I will. No questions asked, if you don’t like it.” Jungkook reaches under the bed and pulls out a red necktie. “Found it.”

“Yeah…I can try it.” You nibble on your bottom lip and nervously cross the rest of the space to the bed.

“So good for me.” Jungkook closes any remaining space between the two of you and kisses your waiting lips. His kiss draws out all the nerves and turns them into lust. “Lay down with your hands above your head, wrists crossed.” The smallest bit of authority in his voice makes your pussy ache in such a delicious way. “And get rid of this.” He undoes the loose knot of your towel and lets it fall to the ground around your ankles.

You let him gently touch your bare hip before he’s moving to the other side of the bed. He watches intently as you climb onto the oversized bed, laying your head on the fluffed pillows with your arms above your head and wrists crossed, just as he asked.

“I’m ready.” You release a long breath, eyes coming back to Jungkook, whose eyes are shamelessly roaming your naked body.

“I can’t stop thinking about your mouth.” Jungkook says, wrapping and unwrapping the silky red material around his knuckles. “But I’m ready to have a taste of you.”

You shiver, watching as Jungkook kneels up onto the bed, raising his hand above your body and letting the silk tie just barely ghost over your skin. He starts at your ankle, moving it up your calf, over both thighs and purposely avoiding the ache between your legs.

“Please hurry up, Jungkook.” Your body arches away from the mattress when the silky material brushes over one of your nipples.

“You’re a needy little thing, aren’t you?” Jungkook coos, having mercy and wrapping your wrists up into the tie, attaching it to the headboard. “If you want me to fuck you, you’re going to have to be patient.”

You can barely take your eyes away from the sight of his naked body, until his mouth is suddenly on you. His mouth and tongue are having absolutely no mercy on your breasts and nipples. He groans each time he pulls a bud between his lips. The tie around your wrists is a torture you didn’t know that you needed.

“Jungkook…” You moan his name and he absolutely adores the sound of it. So much so, that he takes mercy and moves his body down the bed and settles between your thighs, his mouth quickly buried between them. “Oh fuck…” You pull at the binding, wishing your hands could lace into the blue strands of hair bobbing between your legs.

The mercy you thought you were receiving before is long gone. Jungkook is relentless with his tongue and lips. Long strokes of his tongue offset by quick sucks to your clit. It’s absolutely maddening.

You’re pulling at the tie so hard that you know you’ll have bruises on your skin in the morning. But the thought of it quickly passes when you feel Jungkook bury his mouth in your pussy, his nose brushing your clit as he moves his head back and forth in quick succession. You manage to look down between your legs just in time to meet his lust filled eyes, seeing him devouring you sends you over the edge hard and fast.

White flashes pop in and out of your vision as your body tries to recover from the insane orgasm you just experienced. Jungkook hums low in his chest as he licks up everything you’ve given him, kissing the insides of both your thighs as he stands up from the bed to look down at you.

“Do you think that you deserve my cock?” Jungkook stands at the end of the bed, tattooed hand wrapped around his cock, stroking it lazily.

“I’ve been good, haven’t I?” You pant and squirm against the satin sheets, hands and arms still above your head. He watches your face carefully.

“The things I want to do to you…” He bites into his bottom lip as he continues to touch himself in front of you. “But I have to get my cock inside that pretty pussy of yours before I explode.”

Your chest heaved up and down at the thought of him finally fucking you. You were so desperate that you knew you would do anything he asked of you.

“Can you please untie me now?” You needed to touch his body…his skin…his muscles….feel his hair. All of it.

“Look what you do to me, pretty girl.” He ignores your request, making you whine at the lack of attention to what you wanted, but also at the way he’s spreading pre-cum up and down the length of his cock.

“I want you so badly, Jungkook. Please.” You move your hips up as he climbs back onto the bed and kneels between your open legs. His eyes saunter down your body until they get to your pussy, big hands pushing your thighs further apart so he can get a better look.

“You’re so wet. Thinking about my cock made you drip like this?” He scoots closer, the head of his cock so close to where you want it. You pull at the tie on your wrists again.

“Untie me…please.” You beg again.

“Here’s what I’m going to do.” Jungkook ignores you again, making you want to cry. “I’m going to give you what you want. I’m going fuck you hard and fast. And I want you to tell me how good it makes you feel. Make sure the people in the room next door know how badly you wanted my cock.” Jungkook kisses your stomach and then your hip. It’s so gentle compared to the way he then reaches down and roughly grabs the globes of your ass, lining you up with his cock just the way he wants you.

“Please…” You can’t bear it anymore, the build up has been so intense you can feel tears start to leak from the corners of your eyes.

“Be loud for me.” Jungkook doesn’t wait anymore, he impales you on his cock, easily sliding inside with how wet you’ve become. But you still feel the ache of the stretch as you try to accommodate all of him at once.

You moan loudly, just the way he wanted. Pulling at your binds and cursing yourself over and over for agreeing to be tied up. Jungkook keeps his hands on your hips as he starts his ruthless pace.

You can feel sweat forming on your forehead already as your stomach begins to tighten with another orgasm. His perfect cock finds that spot inside you with ease and abuses it over and over again.

“Untie me…god Jungkook please…please.” Your face is wet with tears from pleasure as well as frustration.

“You’ve been so good, haven’t you? I think I can do that.” He bends down to kiss your mouth, something he hadn’t done for what seemed like hours. While he kisses you, he moves one hand from your hip to the red silky tie on your wrists and pulls the knot free.

As soon as you feel it loosen, you rip your hands away from the head board and dig them into his blueberry colored hair, pulling him closer and kissing him deeper. Jungkook smiles at the desperation. He loves it in fact.

You move your hands down and let your nails dig slightly into his skin as he continues to piston his hips against yours. Jungkook groans at the feeling.

“Come here.” He practically growls, sitting up on his knees and bringing you with him. Your arms wrap around his neck and your legs wrap around his waist, putting you in a somewhat riding position. Jungkook is able to fuck up into while on his knees, but keep you close. “You’re so fucking perfect.” His mouth is sloppy as it moves along your neck and collarbones.

“I’m going to cum again…you’re so deep.” Your mouth finds his, kissing him and breathing him in.

“You don’t need my permission, I want you to cream my cock. I want all of it.” Jungkook leans back on his hands, making the angle of his hips hit you even deeper than before. Your hands grip at his shoulders and hold on for dear life as he fucks you through another mind shattering orgasm. “You’re squeezing me so tight baby.” Jungkook's voice breaks off in a moan as you clench around him over and over.

“Please cum, Jungkook. I need it.” Your body feels boneless, but you can feel how close Jungkook is starting to get to his own end. “You’re fucking me so well…but I need you to come.”

“Your pussy feels too good…gonna cum.” Jungkook buries his face in your neck and buries his cock as deep as he can get as he finishes inside you. You feel warmth full you up and drip down your thighs as his thrusts come to a halt.

You both stay still for a moment, sweaty skin against sweaty skin. Your fingers mindlessly playing with the hair at the nape of his neck.

“You’re okay?” He finally asks, bringing his face out of your neck to look at you.

“I’m great.” You laugh quietly. Jungkook smiles, then reaches behind his neck for your hands, bringing them around so he can look at your wrists.

“Does it hurt? They look like they might bruise…” His thumbs gently brush over your skin.

“I think I’ll be okay. It doesn’t hurt now.” You watch him bring your wrists to his lips, pressing kisses up down each one.

“Do you want to sleep here?” He asks, softly lifting you from his lap and letting his softening cock fall from inside you, he looks at you concerned when you whimper.

“I can just…I can go home.” You scoot back on the mattress when Jungkook stands up from the bed. You didn’t want to overstay. You wouldn’t ever see him again, there wasn’t much point in staying.

“Are you sure? I can have my car take you home in the morning…or now. Whatever you prefer.” He then disappears into the bathroom and brings back a washcloth for you to clean up with.

“I’ll just get dressed.” You awkwardly clean up with the washcloth before heading to the bathroom to put it in the hamper and find your clothes.

You dress in a daze, but once you’re ready you back out into the room to find Jungkook in a pair of underwear sitting on the corner of the bed with his phone to his ear. You rub your hands on your thighs while you wait for him to finish.

“My driver is ready to take you home.” He pushes his blue hair back and tosses his phone onto the night stand.

“Thanks.” You continue to stand there without a clue what to do or say. “I’ll just…go.” You point at the door and start walking towards it.

“Wait!” Jungkook says just as you turn the handle. “At least leave me your number? If you’d be interested in seeing me next time I’m in town?” He grabs his phone again and crosses the room to stand with you. You wish you could stop the smile on your face.

“Sure.” You tap your number into his phone and hand it back. “See you around, Jungkook.” You kiss his cheek, but that is apparently not what he had in mind.

Jungkook grabs your chin in his tattooed hand and kisses you on the lips. It’s a kiss that tries to trick you into thinking that maybe he’s actually serious about seeing you again one day. It feels too complex.

“Goodnight, Y/N. I’d like it if you texted me when you made it home.” He pecks your lips once more, then releases your chin and takes a step back.

“Yeah, I can do that. Goodnight, Jungkook.” You open the door and step into the hallway, looking back just once more to see him smile down at the floor before the door closes.

#btsdreamcourt #btsgoldnet #btscreatorscorner #bangtansorciere #btshoneyhive #ksmutclub #btswritersclub #bangtanarmynet #clubzerooclock #52hertz #bts fic #bts smut #jungkook smut #bangtan fanfic #bts #jungkook #btscarnivalnet

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pumpkin-cake · 1 year

Text

Midnight Rain

(part one of ??)

~part two~

tyler galpin x gn!reader

summary - you meet a boy working at a coffee shop, and he doesn’t seem to particularly care that you’re an outcast

tw - cursing

no spoilers for WEDNESDAY, but in future parts there will be

Your own school bag seemed like a huge iron weight as you pulled yourself into Weathervane, the small local cafe in Jericho. Tired eyes squinted as you adjusted to the light inside the room, and you rubbed your eyes to help. It was a dreary day outside, and the aesthetic of the pleasant coffee shop was very…loud. Not that it necessarily bothered you! You were just used to dark rooms, considering Nevermore wasn’t exactly the most colorful place.

You approached the counter, glancing at the words scrawled on the chalkboard behind the worker, who gave you a nod of acknowledgement as he worked on the coffee of a nearby customer. Maybe you would get something different today. A cold brew? Nah, it was windy out. You wanted something warm. Cozy. To match the aesthetic of the shop. Maybe it would actually give you motivation to do your schoolwork. Eventually the boy called out the name of the person who ordered the coffee, handed it to them and walked over to where you were.

“Hey there, what can I get for you today?” He asked, getting his hand ready to input your order on the register thing.

“Um…can I have a medium hot latte?” You slowly asked, not having much time to prepare your order.

“Yeah! What flavor?”

Shit, you forgot that part. Shit shit, what one? Your eyes darted to the chalkboard with panic, almost forgetting that your life didn’t depend on how quick you chose vanilla, caramel, matcha, chai or mocha. The awkward silence felt so loud as the barista awaited your answer.

“I personally like the caramel lattes.” He suddenly said, coughing awkwardly when he saw your look of slight confusion. “I mean- if you were having trouble deciding. Obviously pick whatever you’d like.”

“No no, caramel sounds great, thank you.” You quickly said, relieved that he gave you something to work with instead.

“Great great, would you like whip cream on that?”

“Yes please!”

“Alright, got it. Anything else for you today?”

“Hmm…what sort of scones do you have?” You asked, eyes glancing to the glass case displaying delicious looking pastries.

“Scones? We just have blueberry and chocolate.”

“I’d love a chocolate scone. Toasted, please.” You smiled warmly.

“Toasted chocolate scone…” he mumbled and put it in, and you watched the numbers quickly add together. “Got it! Anything else for you today?”

“No, that’s all!”

“Alright! Your total is gonna be-”

“Excuse me!”

A loud, obnoxious sounding voice interrupted the barista, and the same person he gave the previous coffee to walked up to the counter. The woman held the cup in her hand, her hip jutted out sassily to the side.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, let me finish taking this person’s order and I’ll be right with you.” He flashed a nervous smile, like he already knew how this interaction was going to go down.

“This was supposed to be iced.” She said bluntly, ignoring what the barista literally just said. “I need a refund and a new drink.” She held out the cup, a sneer on her face as she stared at the boy.

He looked like he wanted to argue or just tell her to screw off, but he took the cup anyway and then paused.

“Ma’am, this cup is empty.” He stated, eyebrows furrowing.

“So?” She scoffed.

“Wh…there probably wasn’t something wrong with it if you still drank it all.” He said, visibly confused.

“Listen, the customer is always right, so just make me another drink. Free of charge, of course.” She snapped, admiring her nails.

His jaw seemed to clench, but he tossed the cup into the trash.

“I’ll get right on that after I finish helping this customer.”

“This…weirdo can wait a couple minutes. I’d like my drink now please.”

You knew you shouldn’t have worn your uniform out in Jericho. You’d just been in such a rush. Although, this woman was being quite rude to both the barista and now you. She hadn’t even said please. You wanted your damn drink so you could work on your homework.

“Excuse me,” you interrupted. “I was here first. He said he was going to finish helping me, so you are going to sit your ass down in a seat and wait patiently after you so rudely demanded he just stop whatever he was doing and make you a drink.”

The woman’s eyes were like saucers as she stared at you, like she was astonished at the audacity you possessed to even talk to her.

“Besides,” you added, turning fully so your body was facing her. “I’m a weirdo, right? You have no clue what I can do, miss. So either sit down or leave.”

Her face turned stark white, clutching at her purse in shock. She fumbled for words, but nothing coherent came out as she scurried out of Weathervane.

You turned back to the barista, who seemed almost impressed.

“Thanks.” He chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “She comes in all the time. Orders the same thing every single time and comes back insisting she ordered something else.”

“That has to be annoying.” You shook your head in disapproval of the woman, getting out your wallet. “Anyway, what’s my total?”

“Oh! Right.” He glanced at the register screen and back to you, reciting how much you owed. You swiped your card, typed in your PIN, and let it go through.

“Alright, your order will be out soon.” He said with a kind smile, grabbing a cup. “For here or to go?”

“Here.”

“Gotcha! I’ll have it out to you.” He said with a nod, starting to make your order. As he did so, you fished a 5 dollar bill out of your pocket, dropping it in the tip jar. The boy seemed nice, and he definitely didn’t seem to deserve some random woman demanding things of him and the staff all the time. You found a comfortable booth near a window and unpacked your things, sighing. School had never really come easy to you. It sucked having so much to do and not feeling like there was an easy way to do it. You tried tutoring, but all the teachers seemed to get frustrated with you.

You knocked out your best subjects first. Might as well get them out of the way as soon as you could so you could start the subjects actually giving you trouble. And once you did…it definitely was not fun.

All the characters on the paper seemed to scatter, you could hardly even focus. You could read the instructions and could read your notes, but it just felt like fuzz in your head. Why couldn’t you understand? You felt stupid sitting there staring at the work, pencil still in your hand. You almost felt like crying. You could feel your throat tighten and the tears well.

You were pulled out of your own head by the soft ‘clunk’ of a coffee cup on a plate being placed on the table, along with a plate of two chocolate scones. There stood the barista of course.

“Oh- um- sorry.” You quickly wiped your eyes and held up the plate with scones. “I only asked for one.”

“I know.” He said, eyebrows knitting in concern, probably at the sight of you visibly upset. “On the house. As thanks for driving off that woman.” He offered a small smile.

“Oh.” You breathed out, tears threatening to spill out again from the kindness given to you by someone who really didn’t have to show any. “Thank you so much.”

“It’s nothing, really.” He shrugged, his eyes darting to the paper in front of you. “Trouble with school?”

“Oh- this? Just some assignments and stuff I need to be doing. Feel like I’ve just been staring at the instructions for ten minutes.” You admitted, taking a bite of the warm scone.

“I might be able to help. I get decent grades.” He shrugged. “May I?” He gestured to the seat across from you, earning a playful scoff from you.

“Don’t you have to work?”

He looked over to the counter, and then to the glass door.

“I don’t see any customers.” He hummed.

Well, who were you to deny help when offered?

“Go ahead then.” You said, sliding your homework over to the now smiling boy as he sat across from you. He took the paper and hunched over just a bit to read it.

“Okay…what is it you don’t understand?” He asked you, his eyes meeting yours.

“I dunno…all of it..?”

“Okay, okay. Do you have notes or anything like that?” He asked, and you handed him your notes. He scanned the notes and slowly nodded. “Got it. Can I see your pencil?”

You handed him the pencil, lifting the cup of coffee to your lips and taking a long drink. The warmth of the latte spread through your body, and you relaxed.

“Try looking at it this way.” He slid the paper back to you after doing his own alterations. You didn’t expect very much, but your mind ran with it. Your eyes widened and you quickly grabbed the pencil from his hand and started jotting down your thoughts as to what you figured was right. The way he put it just…made sense. It worked.

“Oh my god, I get it now!” You exclaimed, looking at the boy with pure excitement. “You have no clue how hard I’ve been struggling with this! I can’t believe it! Thank you so much!” You grinned, and the boy grinned right back, flashing his pearly whites. You quickly started to complete the assignment.

“I’m glad I could make it make sense for you.” He smiled warmly.

“Yes, thank you so much. You’ve made this so much easier for me. I’ve had teachers try to explain it but they end up just telling me to figure it out.” You explained, eating some of one of the chocolate scones.

“Hm, sounds like Nevermore needs to hire better teachers.” He chuckled. “That sounds like a pain to deal with. Some people just learn differently is all.”

“I’m glad there are people who understand.” You smiled, finishing up your assignment. “Might need you to tutor me.” You joked, packing away your finished homework.

“I mean, for the person who drove away the Karen…” he trailed off.

“Oh, that really wasn’t that big of a deal. Everyone here doesn’t like people like me because they don’t know us and are scared of what we can do. It’s easy to drive them off.” You hummed, finishing a scone. “You’re cool. I didn’t mind getting her off your case.”

“You weren’t actually going to like…hurt her, right?”

“Of course not!”

“Gotcha, cool. Cool.” He chuckled, like he was relieved. Just then, someone walked in through the door. You were almost disappointed. This boy was really sweet.

“I guess you have to get back to work, huh?” You said, watching as he stood up.

“Yup. Sadly.” He shrugged. “Will you be here for a while?”

“Probably. Don’t really feel like going back and sitting in my dorm.” You said, getting out a notebook that thankfully wasn’t for school.

“Well…I wouldn’t mind actually tutoring you if you needed it.” He smiled, before going back behind the counter and taking the person’s order.

Well, holy shit. A cute boy just offered to tutor you. A cute boy who gave you a free chocolate scone. You smiled to yourself and opened your notebook, drinking the warm caramel latte while you took out your pen and put it to the paper.

Finishing your drink and second scone, you went ahead and packed up all your things, except your pen. You pulled out a napkin from the dispenser at the end of the table and scribbled something on it before taking the two plates and cup up to the counter.

“Here you are. I wasn’t sure whether to just leave it there or what.” You chuckled, and he smiled.

“I would have gotten it for you, but thank you anyway.” He smiled, taking them and putting them in a sink behind him. “You heading out?”

“Before I do…can I get the name of my maybe-future tutor?” You questioned sheepishly.

That grin of his made you swear your heart just did a flip.

“Tyler. Tyler Galpin.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Tyler.” You said, before sliding the napkin across the counter. “I’ll see you around.” You waved before exiting the shop, incredibly pleased with your time there.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~☕️~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tyler couldn’t believe what he saw when he looked at the writing on the napkin. He just got a cute person’s number without even asking.

Text me!

555-555-5555

Sincerely, (Y/n)

He quickly put the contact in his phone. The way your eyes shone when he explained that question to you was brighter than the sun. He was snapped out of his thoughts by a woman with red hair and glasses walking into the shop. He shoved the note in his pocket and got back to work, thinking of the odd Nevermore kid as he made the customer’s matcha latte.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~☕️~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

#wednesday #wednesday addams #tyler galpin #nevermore #tyler galpin x reader #gn!reader #tyler galpin x you #xavier thorpe #enid sinclair

873 notes · View notes

diabolicalacid · 2 years

Text

— ENDLESS NUMBERED DAYS

pairing : wakatoshi ushijima x gn!reader

wc : 22.3k

genre : angst to fluff

summary : wakatoshi loves you. this, he realises only when somebody else threatens to take your heart away from his own.

music : beth / rest by bon iver

©️diabolicalacid 2022.

wakatoshi let’s the volleyball flee from the grip of his fingers when he hears coach suzaku blow the whistle. suzaku walks closer to the bleachers, swaying his hand in the air to summon all the team members. just like that, practice comes to an end. the adlers catapult the volleyballs in their hand, and they land on the floor, scattering all over the place. everyone huddles around coach suzaku to receive an ending note.

“good job today, boys.” suzaku compliments his athletes, yelling at the top of his lungs to make sure all the players gathered around him hear him loud and clear. this earns him all smiles and the members start mumbling amongst themselves, extending compliments to each other.

while his teammates surround the coach, wakatoshi is farther off from the scene. he puts the volleyballs scattered around the gym into the basket, aiding the janitor in their job, while also listening in on what suzaku has to say to the team.

“take a day off tomorrow, boys.” banjō suzaku puts forth the suggestion he discussed with his assistant coach, and although he says it for their own benefit, he only collects a dozen of gloomy faces pouting at him. he sighs, debating, “you know i’m only saying this for your own good.”

a few feet away from the scene, wakatoshi hums in agreement with the coach, tossing the final volleyball into the basket before jogging towards the bleachers to unite with his teammates circling around the coach.

“you should listen to this old man once in a while.” suzaku chuckles, sprouting laughter from his team. he tosses his whistle to ikari, who stands in the sidelines, nodding at his superior’s words. romero interrupts the glee, stating, “but we always listen to you, coach.” he chuckles sheepishly, shrugging at suzaku, and wakatoshi drones in assent to his teammate’s statement as he looks back on his very particular regime.

he never disobeys the coach. whatever banjō suzaku insists on, wakatoshi does it better than what’s expected from him, and he believes that’s a part of the reason why he’s one of the best wing spikers in japan. there are days when suzaku asks him not to show up to the practice, and although he does want to come and wear himself out, wakatoshi denies himself the liberty to do so, knowing that between the two of them, suzaku has a better idea about what’s best for him. so when he proposes another day off, wakatoshi doesn’t mind spending it in the comfort of the four walls of his bare high rise apartment.

“and yet, despite my demand, i’ll still walk in on hoshiumi and kageyama practicing serves tomorrow morning.” suzaku taunts, eyeing the blueberry haired setter and the gray haired spiker who scratch the back of their necks, guilty of their crimes, steering clear of eye contact with the coach.

“we appreciate the day off, coach.” romero says, throwing his arms around kageyama and hoshiumi, pulling them closer to himself as he thrusts their backs, making them bow down to the coach in a promise, “you won’t be here tomorrow, will you?” he raises his brow at them, and they nod, conferring to his orders, “we won’t.” they say in unison, although everyone around knows they’ll still drive to the gym early in the morning to do some practice. suzaku only sighs, aware of the fact that he’s going to have to argue with them to send them home the very next morning.

“neither will you be here, romero and hirugami.” suzaku warns, goggling them, knowing all too well that following kageyama and hoshiumi, the next most notorious are these two who have a slightly better, but still a foul track record of disobeying him.

“i’ll spend the day with my son.” romero shrugs, proposing a fair enough counter argument to support his absence from the scene the next day, looking at hirugami from the corner of his eye, expressing his doubts, “but i’m not so sure about hirugami.” at his statement, fukuro nudges him, glowering, while everyone just giggles, excluding wakatoshi, who stands at the back, waiting for your email to arrive, checking his cellphone every now and then between the conversation he isn’t really a part of.

“alright, now, that’s enough.” coach heckles their laughter, wagging his hand in the air as he calls for his daughter to bring out the water bottles, commanding, “take a break, have your water and freshen up before you leave.” everybody nods, again, except wakatoshi, who stares at the blank notification column, drawing his phone into his pocket as he walks off to reach for his belongings.

the practice for adlers ends at exactly fifty six minutes past eight with the moon already risen up to its position in the night sky. after a day full of three versus three games, wakatoshi rests with his quotidian stoic expression, knees leaning against the edge of the wooden bench. he places his cellphone on the wooden platform and opens his duffel bag to pick out the necessities. he wipes his face with a towel, drawing out deep breaths as result of the exhaustion, still waiting on your text as peeks at his phone every two seconds or so.

suzaku’s daughter, the manager of the team, rushes in through the door of the gym with bottles in her hand, and begins distributing them, one player at a time. wakatoshi reaches out for his own bottle, bowing down to her in gratitude. she smiles before she moves on to offer a bottle to kageyama.

wakatoshi’s cellphone placed on the bench clanks against the old wood, voicing a somber humdrum, vibrating, because he had switched it to silent earlier to respect practice hours. the laconic tone that comes off is a witness to the arrival of a mail. his face brims with happiness, a soft smile etching onto his lips when he reads your e-mail address lit up on his screen, proceeding to hunch down to grab the cellphone.

wakatoshi, like most around him know, is a rather dry texter, a man of few words, someone who prefers to keep his affairs to himself. everyone who texts him knows not to expect much of a reply, or anything at all. he never really bothers looking at the notifications his phone receives, or answering the catalogue of unread messages on his device. they always end up unread, decaying at the bottom of his screen.

but every time he receives something from your end, wakatoshi smiles. slightly wider, slightly more fervently than he does on other occasions. every time your name shows up on his phone screen, he can’t help but rush to respond quickly, disagreeing to make you wait, and because you know his schedule, you never text or call during practice hours, making it even more convenient for him.

right now, you aren’t here in tokyo. you’re miles away on the other side of the world in an unfamiliar but fancied western land, while he’s in japan, participating in the only thing he really looks forward to other than you, volleyball.

the day before you left for your vacation, you showed up at his apartment with dinner, through the course of which you told him you would be writing mails to him, offering him an insight on your adventures in the states. wakatoshi, a simple man who loves volleyball, but also loves you just as much, promised you that he would read your mails and reply to those in due time. he couldn’t resist your puppy eyes and the excitement glistening within them.

he lifts his cellphone off the wooden bench to take a look at the latest addition to the list of mails he has received from you over the course of your trip. he’s pretty sure it’s inscribed with words of adoration for the foreign land. the streets of new york are pretty, he knows now because he read about it from you. the wax figures in madame tussauds look realistic and they’re even taller than him, making you look like a dwarf next to them. he knows now because he read it in the fourth mail he received. the times square is always bustling with a crowd of expectant people and while you were there, you almost got lost in the wave of citizens. he knows now because he read it in the second mail he received.

all of this. all the emails, the texts, the calls he receives from you, they never make him frown like texts and calls from most people do. wakatoshi isn’t big on the conversation part. he prefers to be by himself, hardly ever participating in conversations, but when it comes to you, it’s different. he wants to talk, laugh, cry, and he doesn’t mind it. not one bit. because it’s you. it’s you and you’re his best friend. you’re the one he grew up with. it’s always been him and you against the world. his buff body and rough exterior has a soft spot for you to rest and rejoice in.

while he’s in tokyo and you’re in the states, he always looks forward to learn more about your adventures in the foreign land. he cannot see you from here, but he knows your eyes shine the brightest as you write to him, looking back on your day, accounting everything you did. he thinks he knows you enough to know your expression must’ve lit up with immense joy as you walked on the streets amidst the chaotic hustle and bustle of the haughty crowd, ceasing your saunter at a new spot every two minutes to snap another picture to add to your skilfully kept and aesthetic instagram feed.

sometimes when he reads your emails, he wonders if you love the food there as much as you love the ramyeon his okaasan makes. he knows that you’re happy, laughing, but he wonders if it’s as much as you do with him when you stay over at his place. he wonders if you want him to be there as well. you never mentioned it in your emails before, but he wonders if there’s a part of you that wants him there to share the joy with you. but you’re with your significant other, so probably not.

all those pictures and attachments you send him end up preserved in his photo gallery under an album booked just for you. he hasn’t told you yet, but so far, he has managed to hold onto every single picture of you that you’ve sent him since you were sixteen. he’s running out of storage, struggling to accommodate more, but you’ll never know that. you’ll never know he loves you that much because neither does he really. he thinks this is how all best friends love each other.

usually you’re a ceaseless chatter box with no switch to tune you off. you’re annoying. always talking. but he loves to listen to you talk, no matter what time of the day it is, no matter how worn out he is from practice. there’s a certain kind of solace in the sound of your voice that wakatoshi has never felt before. when he looks at you happy, at your highest, his heart smiles at the sight and the face that’s almost always bleak, changes into a happier, more content version of itself.

wakatoshi feels a particular way when he’s around you but he can never put it into words. he can never quite elucidate exactly what his emotions are. but he knows his desire to see you happy every single moment of your life is strong. there are so many words in the vocabulary, but he cannot group any of those to explain what goes on inside his head when he thinks of you. he knows he cares about you, but he cares about tendo too. he knows he loves you, but he loves tendo too, except tendo doesn’t make him feel the way you do. wakatoshi just thinks it’s because he has known you for longer than he has known tendo.

he doesn’t want to think of this as love, so he doesn’t think of it much at all. this is just him being a good, caring best friend. there’s nothing more to it. someone like wakatoshi ushijima doesn’t have the time to fall in love. he thinks love is for those who have a lot of time on their hands and he isn’t one of those people.

wakatoshi isn’t exactly the quintessential type of a person when it comes to the expression of how he feels in the true sense. sure, he knows when he’s happy, he tends to smile. when he’s sad, he prefers to be with you or to be by himself. mostly with you though. but he doesn’t know what it’s like to express his feelings beyond that. with that bleak expression sitting on his face all the time, there isn’t much someone can conclude when they look at him.

to express himself without bounds, he’ll have to come to terms with the web of human emotions inside his head and his heart. for someone like wakatoshi, some things are better left ignored, so he never really puts in effort to think about his feelings. he prefers to start his day with a morning run and end it with a cup of hot water. there isn’t time to wonder about what actually lies beyond the usual happy and sad. he just lets it go every time the thought irks him. as long as you’re around him, he knows he’ll be happy and that has been enough for him so far.

for as long as he can recall, his life has revolved around and been all about volleyball. he was just six when his father started inculcating the essence of the sport inside of him and before he knew it, wakatoshi had fallen in love with it. then he grew up, got scouted by the adlers and ended up in a team full of hot headed men determined to do their best on the court. beyond this, wakatoshi only knew about the other things in life because he spent time with you and tendo.

you told him about your favourite manga once and he ended up walking three miles to buy it for himself. when he flipped through the pages, he didn’t really understand what you loved about the story so much, but he thought it was mostly because the main character was a good looking dude in his early twenties. what fascinated wakatoshi instead of the story were the advertisements by the sponsors.

you talked to him about your love for photography over a cup of tea and a plate of tiramisu one winter morning. you took him to the park to try out your new camera. three days later, wakatoshi had his own and started snapping moments around him. that’s how he ended picking up on a hobby. something to do other than just spiking volleyballs on a court. if it wasn’t for you, he probably wouldn’t have touched a camera in his life.

between volleyball, advertisements in the manga, photography and brand endorsements, he never really took out the time to think about his feelings. so other than the fact that your presence makes him happy and your absence makes him sad, he’s a mystery even for himself.

his deliberate ignorance regarding his emotions never rattled him quite like before this. in fact, he was alright being known as a man of few words and emotions. wakatoshi, before this, was content knowing bare minimum about what he felt about the people around him. for his brain, the only classifications grouping the people around him are— friends, family, good people, bad people, tolerable people. beyond this, he never thinks a lot. he cares about his friends and family, respects the good people around him, and convinces himself it’s better not to pay mind to the bad crowd.

but as he reads through your recent email, word after word, line after line, paragraph after paragraph, he wonders if he was a fool to not comprehend how he felt about the people around him, or at least what he felt about you. he thinks he should’ve pondered over what comes beyond happy and sad. he knows he loves you but now he doubts if it’s anything like what he loves tendo, or if it’s more than that.

wakatoshi thinks he loves you, but it’s nothing like he loves tendo. he thinks his love for you is rooted deeper than his love for tendo is, and he should’ve realised this earlier when he had enough time because now, he simply doesn’t and you’re in love with someone else.

his heart sinks to the bottom of his abdomen when he reads the final paragraphs. his stomach churns due to an uneasy feeling created by the pesky mix of digestive juices and hormones. his body feels warped in a sundry of troublesome emotions. he doesn’t know what these emotions are, and he doesn’t know if there are textbook definitions that fit to explain those. even if there are, for someone like him, for someone who never looked beyond happy and sad, looking for those definitions sounds impossible as ever.

the only feeling he can decently comprehend is that of bitterness. the kind of sensation his buds feel after eating kale or drinking a cup of strong coffee, but this time around, the feeling doesn’t stay merely confined to the epithelium of his tongue, and it doesn’t leave welts of its taste at the back of his throat, rather, it engulfs his body as a whole. all one hundred ninety two centimeters of wakatoshi ushijima.

ideally, he thinks, he’s supposed to be happy that his childhood best friend is getting married to the love of their life, someone they’ve spent the last two years dating and falling in love with. so he wonders if something is terribly wrong with him when the smile dissipates off his face as he reads your revelation. something inside of him must be twisted because all he really feels is pure, unsullied dread at the thought of watching you marry someone who isn’t him.

(one new mail, august 13)

to : [email protected]

from : [email protected]

toshi, hello from my side of the world. it’s not the thirteenth for me as i write this to you and neither is it for you. i know there’s still three hours to twelve, but happy birthday!

i cannot believe you’re turning twenty eight, toshi. i remember it like it was yesterday when you were a whole foot shorter, a little more chubbier and ten times more adorable. you’re still just as adorable but i don’t think i’ll ever get over the seven year old toshi who was four centimeters shorter than me and loved to play volleyball even then.

and of course i remember your kitten plushy that you had separation anxiety for. i remember we lost it once and you wouldn’t stop crying until okaasan found it behind my bed. what was its name again? bisco, was it? i don’t recall that well, but i hope you still have the plushy somewhere. perhaps in the box we kept all our old things in. i think that box is somewhere in your closet, so maybe you should look for bisco. i’ll be upset if i don’t get to see a twenty six year old wakatoshi with bisco the cat.

time goes by fast, toshi. this much i know because only yesterday we were seventeen, graduating highschool and today we’re in our mid twenties doing our own thing. even when you choose to spend your time cautiously, there’s never enough of it to live all the moments in their full glory. but i was lucky enough to spend the best moments of my life with you and tendo by my side.

when i look back on the years we grew together, there are many moments i want to relive. but more so, there are so many moments i want to experience for the first time all over again. but i know it’s just a fickle dream. we’re grown ups now. you have your priorities and so do i.

you know me. you know i have no friends other than tendo and you. but that never bothered me. i never felt the need to make new friends because you were enough and so was tendo. the two of you made me feel whole and so i never had to worry about being the odd one with no friends. i think, toshi, without you my life would’ve been hell.

let me be a sap just for today. forgive me for ruining the mood but my best friend in the whole wide world is turning twenty six and i get to be a little nostalgic about our best and worst moments together. so don’t judge me tonight. then again, you never do.

toshi, i know i say this a lot. like a lot. and even tendo finds it annoying. but i love you. i love you so much. and i don’t regret the fights we’ve had, the laughs we’ve had and the cries we’ve had because they’ve all contributed to who i’m today. and i’m grateful. i know i say i would pick belgian chocolate over you in a heartbeat, but today, i want to confess that that’s a big fat lie, and i love you enough to give up on the chocolate if you asked me to. it’s been us against the world for more than twenty years now and i want you to promise me twenty more years of that, and twenty more. and make it a pinky promise because we never break those.

let me get sappy today. no writing about what i visited and no pictures from the tour. this is just me writing to you on your twenty eighth birthday because i love you. of course i’ll attach a picture of the cake i bought in honour of your birthday. we came across a cute bakery on our way to the hotel and haruko suggested i should get a cake since it’s your birthday. haruko often asks about you, and i tell them you’re doing well. today, they’re sending you regards too.

do you remember how we met? i do, i still do. i’m not one to remember much from my childhood, but this particular memory never really dazed off. just so you know, i still haven’t forgiven you for that day. our first impression of each other was foul but isn’t it funny how far we’ve come since then. twenty years is a long time to know someone and i’m glad it was you i’ve known for so long rather than anyone else. i know i say the same thing every year when the number of candles on your cake graduates by one, but thank you for letting me say this all over again.

i’m sorry i can’t be there right now even though i want to. this will be the first time i’m not there on your birthday and i can’t help but feel like i’ll be missing out on so much. but more importantly, you won’t have any fun by yourself which makes me even sadder. but when i come back next week, we’re celebrating. i’ll force you to do it. we can invite the adlers too. but i’d prefer to be alone with you.

but here’s the thing, toshi, i think when i return, i’ll return with a ring on my finger. i think haruko took this trip with me to pop the question. i was looking for my sunscreen in their bag when i saw a box of ring. i know this is supposed to be your birthday greeting but i’m over the moon right now. okaasan will be so happy when she hears about this. she’s been nagging me about marriage for quite some time now. toshi, i’m finally getting married! we’ll celebrate that too when i come back. so wait for me.

i love you so much and i miss you even more. i’ll try calling you tomorrow so look out for that. have a great birthday, toshi. don’t overwork yourself just for a day and treat yourself even though i’ll do it much better when i come back.

much love, your yn.

he should be happy for you. ideally, wakatoshi should be over the moon that his childhood best friend might tie the knot once they return from their vacation, but the truth is, the smile on his face is only crumpling by the second at the thought of that. the very thought of your name along with haruko’s name, engaged and married in the same sentence induces a nauseating reflex at the base of his throat, making him choke, leaving him at a loss of words.

there’s a sudden urge to throw up, scream out loud for the world to hear until his lungs give up, to run to someplace only he knows the location of, to fall apart on the wooden floorboards of the gym, because really, there isn’t much wakatoshi can do following your revelation. if there’s anything that puts him to ease right now, it’s the fact that haruko still hasn’t asked for your hand in marriage, and although he knows it’s bound to happen by the end of the week, the thought that the day is still away puts him at certain ease.

the urge to lash out exists, but he cannot get himself to do much because he isn’t coded or programmed to understand his emotions well enough to express himself. and so, despite the mixture of desperate emotions that swirls within his belly, jumps to the base of his throat, forces a way out of his mouth, wakatoshi is quick enough to push it back and put on his usual bleak expression as he stares at his phone.

if this were a poor set by kageyama or a lazy spike by hoshiumi, he would have some criticism and technique to offer, supplementing to their correction. but he isn’t in the middle of a volleyball practice, rather, he’s stuck in the quagmire of human emotions, which just so happens to be an uncharted territory for him. he has no map to navigate his way out of this, nor does he have someone he can talk to.

wakatoshi is alone, all by himself in the middle of a hopeless, unfamiliar maze. coming to think of it, he does have tendo, who’s reliable enough when it comes to things like this, but perhaps the issue isn’t the absence of someone who would understand, it’s that wakatoshi himself doesn’t know how to talk about the things that bother him. he isn’t much of talker to begin with and this situation isn’t very ordinary either.

he wonders where he needs to go from here. perhaps he should start by calling you up to congratulate you on your possible engagement, but if he does that, he knows he won’t be able to take it and he might end up saying things that are better off unsaid. the easier way out is to pretend he didn’t get to read your email because he was busy filming a sponsorship, but that’ll most likely hurt your feelings, so that leaves him with no option but to reply.

he begins to draft a mail back to you but stops in the tracks when he thinks about it a moment longer. for the first time in your relationship, wakatoshi decides to be selfish, discarding the draft, and pushes his phone into his pocket. this solution where he hurts you doesn’t sit right with him, but there isn’t much he can do to help the situation, considering it hurt him just as much. he doesn’t plan on never replying to you. maybe he just needs a day or two before he can get to it.

romero notices the wrinkles taking a visible form on wakatoshi’s forehead when he looks into the gym from his position next to the door, only to spot his teammate still in place, still not ready to head home. while everyone else is already at the door or out of it, wakatoshi is engrossed in the dimly lit screen of his cellphone. his face speaks of no expression, and romero wonders the kind of distress he’s in that has left him detached from the world.

he knows talking to wakatoshi will make no difference whatsoever. he’ll just ask his teammate to brush off the worry and there isn’t a way romero will be able to coerce any explanation out of wakatoshi, so he decides to leave his teammate alone with his thoughts as he walks out of the gym.

romero would’ve preferred telling his teammate that he had someone he could lean on, but he knows wakatoshi wouldn’t. he isn’t the kind of person who prefers for people to share his burden when he can do it quite well all by himself.

plus wakatoshi is someone who maintains a formal relationship with his teammates. he never takes a part in informal conversations that the team members have. unless it’s talking about a game or coming up with strategies, he shows no interest, often observing from the sidelines with nothing to offer. arbitrary conversations don’t mean anything to him. he simply ignores, takes part in a completely different activity or leaves the rest of the team to indulge in their stochastic conversations.

“ushijima san, don’t you want to go home?” kageyama asks, standing at the door, sipping on a carton of strawberry flavored milk. next to him, hoshiumi looks at his teammate with expectant eyes, impatient to head home. kageyama’s voice tugs wakatoshi’s attention off his screen and he looks up to spot the setter and short spiker eyeing him.

“i’ll be right there.” he informs, waving at the two. there isn’t much flavour to his speech. there’s only the neutrality that defines his essence. kageyama nods at the confirmation, turning back to sip on his milk while scrolling through his social media. hoshiumi on the other hand, has something else to say.

“don’t take much longer, ushijima san, i’m hungry.” hoshiumi warns, rubbing his belly in an attempt to act out his starving nature in the true sense. kageyama looks at the spiker from the corner of his eyes, annoyed, but decides not to say much and goes back to his conversation with hinata.

“i won’t take much longer. go ahead, i’ll be right there.” wakatoshi reassures, pushing his teammates to get a head start. hoshiumi throws his arms around kageyama, forcing him to hunch down, pulling him out of the gym. kageyama’s neck almost snaps in two and he glowers at his teammate, giving him the side eye as they walk away.

wakatoshi proceeds to place his belongings into the duffel bag in front of him. he takes a hold of his phone again, stares at your email for a brief while before switching it off, unwilling to pen down a reply addressed to you. usually he writes back within an hour or two, but today, he wants to let it go. he thinks he wants to learn to let you go. he tosses his bag around his shoulders and sprints out of the gym, paving way to catch up with his teammates.

the ride home isn’t silent. kageyama and hoshiumi don’t know when to shut up. their conversation always keeps him company. wakatoshi, however, is silent himself. his teammates indulge in a conversation, and while he doesn’t wish to be a part of it, he offers some input from time to time. he keeps listening to their endless tittle tattle and anecdotes that are casually thrown in intermittently, but provide a false sense of comfort to his aching soul. he just wants to reach home, lie down and wipe your twenty five year old existence from his memory, even if it’s just for the night.

he isn’t upset with you. that’s not it. rather, his anger is aimed at himself, and as a self defense mechanism, his mind wants him to hate you instead, but truly, he doesn’t think he has a bone in his body that could hate you. it’s easier to put the blame on you than to hate himself, but he cannot really bring himself to hate you, so he hates himself.

you’ll return next week and his apartment is the first place you’ll visit when you come back. so he finds it quite difficult when he thinks of the fact that he’s going to have to feign being okay when he comes to face you. you’re most likely to return with a ring bracing your finger and wakatoshi doesn’t know how he’s supposed to face you knowing you’re no longer his to claim. you were never really his to begin with. he never gave you the chance to love him, but that doesn’t mean knowing that makes this hurt less.

right now, while he’s staring out of window, listening in on a conversation about sneakers versus crocs, wakatoshi hates all the moments he could’ve had with you but decided to bail out on. it’s not that he didn’t get to spend time with you, but the thing is, all the time he spent with you seems futile if it was never enough to make him realise the true nature of his feelings for you.

he knows he hurt you by declining your offers over and over again, and there isn’t any excuse he wants to offer to defend himself. just because you never said it, doesn’t mean you were okay with it, and all these years, wakatoshi never thought about his negligence much, but now, now that it’s a little too late, he can’t help but regret all the times he said no to you.

you’re in your freshman year of college when your roommate marin comes up with a full proof plan to join a sorority. for the first few days you don’t think it’s a good idea by any means, and you’re irresolute to take up the offer. by the end of your first month at college, marin somehow convinces you to tag along for the recruitment process. both marin and you get in without much effort, piquing the interest of the leader and her side chicks at the first meeting itself.

you aren’t the one to socialise. for as long as you can recall, wakatoshi and satori are the only close friends you’ve had. sure, marin is a friend too but you don’t think your relationship goes beyond sharing a room and sharing a major. plus you’re well aware she would rather mingle with people at an event than keep you company in a quiet corner.

so when you get invited to an imposing event organised by your sorority, you decide to leave your spare invitation on wakatoshi’s desk, hoping he’ll show up and you won’t have to attend the party sulking alone in a corner, pining to move out. wakatoshi returns from practice and finds the invitation perched on his desk. he does read and give it a thought but as the lassitude from volleyball practice catches up to him, he ultimately tosses the invitation into the bin with the thought that you’ll understand his actions.

you wait for wakatoshi outside the venue. he’s never not punctual, that much you know after you’ve watched him to do everything on time since he was seven. so you ring up his digits to enquire about his whereabouts. a part of you already knows he isn’t on his way to the venue in the first place, but a part of you agrees to offer him the benefit of doubt.

“toshi, aren’t you coming?” you inquire, delving for some information about his whereabouts, twirling your fingers with the metal strap of your sling as you sway in a tone of anxiety.

“not really, i’m not in the mood right now.” he informs you, shrugging, sounding so tired that you almost feel guilty for tossing him an invite in the first place.

“that’s okay, toshi. take care.” you sigh, reassuring him, smiling, although he can’t really see it through the phone. you understand wakatoshi is tired from volleyball practice, so you don’t feel like you need to hold a grudge against him for this.

“i’m sorry about this, yn.” he apologises and it’s one of the many you’ve heard over the years whenever he wants to cancel a plan. “you have fun though.” he chuckles, hoping to encourage you to have a good time at a party where you don’t really know anyone. you know it’s going to be a long night and no fun, but you still nod your head at his words, humming, breathing out, “bye, toshi.” you say before you cut off the call to move inside.

you walk into the venue, grab a drink from the table and beeline your way to a cozy corner you find next to the giant stairs. you spend the rest of the night sipping on the same glass of mock tail from time to time, espying the people around, rethinking your decision of tagging along with marin to the recruitment ceremony.

rain pours in buckets, the cloudburst is certainly heavy. thunder roars along, and you don’t find it in yourself to head to bed alone. marin isn’t around tonight. she’s out with her boyfriend. except when she left, the skies were clear and you didn’t predict the possibility of rainfall. although the weather isn’t really reliable these days, who would’ve thought it would rain cats and dogs following over twenty hours of clear skies.

you feel alone tonight. the sound of thunder makes your muscles twitch in fear, the loneliness clouding over your head in the dim lights of your dorm. you vie for a company on a night like this when you can’t afford to look for peace within yourself, so you call up the only person you can really rely on in times like these. wakatoshi. it takes him a while to answer the phone. actually, you have to call him up twice before he finally answers the third time around.

“toshi, hey.” your voice quivers, fading beneath the sound of the lightning strike that flashes across the black night sky. wakatoshi doesn’t notice this while his attention is fixed on kageyama who waits at a distance, looking at him with desperate eyes to make another set to the spiker.

“hey, yn.” he greets you, signalling his fellow player to wait for a moment before they can proceed with practice. “do you need anything?” he questions, hoping it’s nothing serious and something you can resolve on your own. it’s not that he doesn’t want to help you out, but the adrenaline rush right now is phenomenal and he doesn’t want to let go the opportunity to practice while it’s still on.

“can you come over?” you ask him, sighing at the sight of the downpour outside, moving in closer to the window to observe the night sky, waiting for wakatoshi to tell you that he’ll be there in ten.

“right now?” he questions, unsure of giving you a positive reply. “i don’t think that’s really possible.” he denies your request, although it’s with a heavy heart and he feels the guilt gnawing at his edges, it’s still selfish. but he thinks you’ll be fine. “i’m busy.” he informs, and though he doesn’t say it, though there’s no mention of the sport, you know he’s at the gym playing volleyball. you can hear hoshiumi and kageyama chatting in the backdrop, plus you know there’s only one thing that keeps wakatoshi busy, and it’s volleyball.

“it’s okay, i understand.” you sigh, smiling at yourself in pity as you move closer to your bed, hoping the loneliness won’t make it difficult for you to sleep tonight. you cut the call and get into your bed only to spend the rest of the night in fear of the thunder and with the loneliness heckling the peace of your mind.

the next morning, taking a bite from your plate stacked with four pancakes, you question wakatoshi about the night before, “so, what were you busy with?” you know he was busy with volleyball, but you still want to hear him admit it himself. he looks up from his own plate, clearing his throat before answering, or rather confessing, “i was with kageyama.”

“playing volleyball, i suppose.” you say, sternly, pretending to make a guess despite knowing already, sighing, your expression changing into a sour one, but you don’t let him notice as you look up with a neutral face.

“yea, that.” he admits, sipping the orange juice and you stare at him with the same neutral look, waiting for him to look you in the eyes. when he finally does, you admit to something too. “i wasn’t able to sleep last night.” you tell him, chuckling sarcastically, gyrating your neck to the side to avoid his gaze, prompting that you’re disappointed in him. “i was alone.” you tell him, nodding, recalling just how difficult it was for you without him or marin there, when he knew just how afraid you are of the rain and thunder but still prioritised volleyball over you.

“i’m sorry, i didn’t know.” he drops his fork into the plate, extending his hand to find yours on the table. he takes it in his, but you draw away from his touch, expressing your disfavour regarding his actions. wakatoshi takes his hand back and proceeds to pick up the fork to eat again.

you clear your plate from the table, walking away from him to put the left over pancakes in the refrigerator. he sighs, regret blemishing his existence as you leave your place to head out to work without giving him any instructions regarding the things around the house or waving him a goodbye.

“so the next game is on the upcoming friday?” you ask kageyama once again in order to confirm if you heard it right the first time around when he told you about it. you were curious when wakatoshi was playing next and when you asked him two days ago, he skipped over the question eloquently, ignoring your concern.

“yes, the next game is on friday, yn.” he sighs, looking up from the documents he’s busy reading through and signing, as he purses his lips, offering you a reconfirmation regarding the date of the game. you smile at him with gratitude, going back to type his updates stats in the official records.

that night, sitting next to wakatoshi on his couch, you pop a question about what you learnt from kageyama, “why didn’t you tell me you had a game on friday?”

“huh?” he looks up from the manga he’s reading, or rather the advertisements, and the gesture on his face is enough for you to understand he didn’t manage to catch the question you asked him.

“the game. why didn’t you tell me about it?” you repeat, this time, raising your brows at him, demanding an answer. he puts the manga on the coffee table, turning to face you as he tells you, “oh about that. i forgot.”

“you forgot?” you sigh in disbelief, falling short of words to come up with. he just forgot to tell you about an upcoming game. that doesn’t bother you as much, but you really like showing up to his games to support him. so to say that you’re a little hurt would be right, but still, you ask him, “can i come to the game?”

“i don’t think you should.” he shrugs, turning down your request to attend his game, instantly changing the expression on your face. the smile on your face as you asked him about it fades off to turn upside down. you look down into your phone, continuing to scroll through your social media. “it’ll wear you off.” he reasons with you, considering that attending a game after work will only tire you off, making it difficult for you to start the next day on a peaceful note.

“then i won’t.” you nod, frown on your face, attention taken off wakatoshi, but he doesn’t even notice. he picks the manga off the coffee table and continues reading it, while you don’t make any effort to continue the conversation.

you never understand what’s with him when he asks you not to attend his games. you don’t know if it’s because he’s embarrassed about it, but then again he loves volleyball so that’s not it. satori always tells you wakatoshi thinks his skills still aren’t not good enough for you to be losing energy over.

you don’t get it, really, you think he’s a great player. you’ve been to his games before. you’ve seen him on the court. not that you understand much about the sport to draw apt judgement, but everyone says he’s the ace so you don’t see why he would think he isn’t doing a good enough job for you to watch.

whatever it is, one of these days, you want to attend one of his games without showing up unannounced. you wonder when wakatoshi will finally invite you to one of his games. you sure hope its for one of the games before he reaches the age of retirement in his early thirties.

on a chilly winter morning, obaasan tells you crafting a thousand paper cranes brings one good luck. you aren’t the kind who believes in such superstitions. if this were a conversation on any other occasion, you would pretend to agree with her and ultimately end up disbelieving whatever she had to say. but with wakatoshi’s first game as a part of a professional volleyball team coming up, you can’t help but give her words a benefit of doubt.

“so, obaasan, exactly how do you make a paper crane?” you ask her, clammy palms stroking the silk fabric of your new clothes as you sit across her, legs folded, attention undivided, on the tatami mats arranged around the coffee table.

“it’s simple.” she tells you, reassuringly, drawing the cup of green tea away from her lips, placing it on the coaster before she tears a piece of newspaper big enough to turn into a crane.

obaasan teaches you how to craft a paper crane over the next two hours. ideally, it shouldn’t take so long, but creativity isn’t your strongest virtue, and it takes a few tries before you get the folds of the paper crane right. you don’t know if a thousand paper cranes will bring him any luck, but you hope wakatoshi will still win the first game he’s going to be a part of.

you walk to the shop close to your house, nervous figure trying to quell its anxiety, hands dripping with sweat, daubing the strap of your sling bag, worried about a game you aren’t even a part of, to buy origami paper to make wakatoshi a thousand paper cranes over the course of the night.

the first few cranes you craft end up looking a little out of place, wobbly, out of character. but with every new crane that takes shape, it looks better than the last. you craft the final paper crane at six minutes past five in the morning, when obaasan comes in with a cup of tea for you, smiling when she looks at the cranes scattered around your bedroom waiting to be escorted to their final destination. she doesn’t know what the reason is, but looking at the cranes still makes her heart swell, wondering what’s so special about the occasion you’ve built them up for.

the day before his first match, you go over to wakatoshi’s place at nine in the morning, a little while after he leaves for practice, asking his okaasan if she would so kindly allow you to place your creations in his bedroom. she lets you in and you arrange the cranes around his bedroom. she watches you do so from the door, not questioning your actions but she still ponders how her son will receive it. a bunch of paper crafts scattered around his bedroom, swaying to the beat of the soft winds, wakatoshi is more likely to be bemused than thankful about it.

that night, after he returns from practice, wakatoshi finds himself in a difficult situation, more or less perplexed, surrounded by a bunch of paper cranes in his bedroom, unaware of their origins. you didn’t really tell him what you were planning to do, so he’s pretty much clueless about it. he probably thinks okaasan did it. he walks out of the bedroom, pacing to her room, questioning her, “what’s with the paper cranes?”

“oh those?” she looks up from the shopping magazine she’s flipping through, adjusting her glasses as she tells him, “yn bought those over.”

“oh, i see.” wakatoshi walks back into his room, still unsure of the paper cranes or the reasons for their origin. he doesn’t know that the paper cranes are supposed to bring him luck, so he collects them one at a time, placing them into a big enough polythene bag, and the bag finds a way next to the trash sitting outside the back door.

“so, where are my paper cranes?” you ask him, walking into his room the next morning to meet him before he goes off for the big game, descrying the sight in front of you that’s devoid of the little things you stayed up making.

“those?” he shuffles through his duffel bag, making last minute additions, then looks up to face you to offer you an explanation, “i threw them off.”

his words bite the edges of your heart as they fall into the space separating you. you spent all your night crafting those cranes only for him to throw them off without considering the sentiment behind your efforts. but despite the sour feeling gurgling at the back of your throat, you smile at him, although irately, saying, “they were a good luck charm, wakatoshi.”

“you know i don’t believe in that stuff, yn.” he sighs, feeling a little bad about disregarding your efforts. you want to tell him you’re hurt. you want to tell him you stayed up all night making those just for him to have a great game. but you restrict yourself, proceeding to help him pack his stuff before he gets late to reach the gym for a final practice before the game.

there are many things he regrets now, but most of all, he thinks the larger chunk of his regret stems from his ignorance towards his emotions and his ignorance towards his feelings for you. so more than anything else, he regrets not loving you, and not just like he loves tendo, but a lot more than that.

wakatoshi enters his bedroom. he puts his duffel bag on the king sized bed that almost always smells of lavender, smells of you, because you spend most of your free time in his bedroom, snuggled up in his soft cushions. when the smell of your lavender perfume lurks around his nose, he wishes his thoughts and memories had a button that could turn them off, at least for a while, because thinking about you isn’t doing him a favour right now.

you’ve been away for more than a month now, but his bed, his room, his apartment still reeks of your flowery scent. it’s just another crushing reminder of how often you hang out with him and spend all your time being his number one supporter, not only uplifting him as an athlete, but also pushing him to be a better person.

his apartment is something he signed the formal documents and the cheque for, but in true sense, it’s more a shared apartment between the two of you. whether he’s around or not doesn’t matter. your presence around his place isn’t affected by his absence. you’re there whenever your schedule allows you to be, experimenting new recipes in his kitchen or napping underneath the soft covers of his bed after a long day at work. whatever it is, wakatoshi has nothing against it. he has a soft spot for you, after all.

he flumps on to the left side of his bed, slumping into the soft cushion resting against the headboard. he lets a sigh escape his lips, uneasiness burgeoning with every passing moment, heart sinking deeper following every successive breath. wakatoshi wonders if you were here next to him, would he dare to kiss you. he wonders if he would have it in him to confess. and he knows you’re in love with shimada haruko, and they’re a good person. they give you enough love, enough happiness, he knows that, and he also knows it would be wrong to make move on you now, but he still wonders if it has a chance to work out somehow.

it’s second nature for him to occupy the left side of the bed because you always occupy the right whenever you come over. over the years he has known you, he has grown habitual to sleeping on the left, because you spend most of your nights sleeping on the right next to him. now that he looks back on it, he wonders if there’s any reason why he never realised he loved you when you were right next to him every moment of his life.

he scoots to the right side of the bed, feeling the soft fabric of the coverings against his calloused hands that years of playing volleyball have gifted him. your scent lingers in the folds of his sheet and he can smell it clearly without much effort, the scent of the expensive perfume he gifted you on your birthday. the scent is so strong, it’s almost as if wakatoshi hasn’t put the sheets for a wash in a while, or perhaps the amount of detergent he uses isn’t gracious enough. his sheets stench of nostalgia and they remind him of you.

tonight, he wants to forget your existence. just for a brief while, even if it accounts only for a second or two, he doesn’t want to regret not loving you while he still had the time to. it’s only been an hour or two since he started walking down this maze of feelings and realization, but the weight of a broken heart has already become difficult for him to bear. he thinks spiking volleyballs all day long is easier than carrying the weight of a broken heart. so, just momentarily, he wants the only love of his life to be volleyball all over again. because in this moment he knows he can never not love you after today. the platonic ties that bound the two of you together so far have been dismantled to atomic snippets.

usually, when your smell diffuses around his monochrome, dull apartment, wakatoshi likes it because it gives his place a more vibrant vibe but he doesn’t like it anymore. he wants his apartment to smell exactly what it looks like. simple, plain and boring. the only things that stand out and catch one’s eye are the things tendou and you purchased for his apartment on your countless trips to the mall.

every touch against the soft fabric on your side of the bed reminds him of what your skin felt like brushing past his, and that never really soaked him in a peculiar feeling of sorts. wakatoshi met you when he was six and he has known you ever since. your touch isn’t a foreign feeling. if anything, it’s a lot like home. but tonight, he feels like he’s always been a stranger to it.

everything around his apartment bears a memory associated with you. every article sitting around the place has a telltale regarding how it ended up in the place he calls his home. wakatoshi is a simple man with no knowledge of design and tendou and you thought he shouldn’t partake in designing his own apartment. it was you who obtained and bought most of the things that are now a part of his home. from the utensils to the blankets to the bedding to the sanitary products, everything was your contribution while wakatoshi only carried the heavy boxes in and out of the door. tendou wasn’t much help while he was still in france, but he did send some things wakatoshi could use to decorate his place.

a vague smile whittles wakatoshi’s agitated expression when he looks back on the days that were filled with sunshine, happiness and love. nostalgia is certainly a wonderful feeling when it brings up the good memories, and he had never experienced it before this moment. his first experience could’ve been under better circumstances, but despite the odd situation around him, looking back on the memories he packed with you still feels good to his heart. like a cup of warm tea on a rainy evening.

wakatoshi isn’t elated at the thought of having to give you up to someone else who’s as good as a stranger to him. he has met haruko before and he knows they’re a good person, at least they seem like on the outside, but that’s as far as their interaction goes. from what he knows, haruko is involved in real estate and often busy, so they never really showed up to dinners wakatoshi and you invited them on. but he knows they’re not a bad person by any means because whenever you talk about them, you always do it with a wide grin leaning across your lips and that’s indication enough for him to trust haruko.

but even as his heart aches at the thought of losing you, he can’t help but smile a little as he looks back on your time together. he knows you’ll still be here. you’ll still be right next to him, but you won’t be his to keep. then again, only he’s to blame. so he stays there, looking back on the memories for a brief while until he remembers he needs to reply to your mail. he knows he said he wouldn’t do it, but leaving you hanging wouldn’t be right either. after all, you aren’t the one to blame for his heartbreak, only he is.

wakatoshi stares at the screen in front of him for six minutes, until he finally holds the power button to light the screen up. on the lockscreen is an old picture of him and you that tendou took in secret. he observes it for a moment or two. you look the same, more or less, other than the fact that you’re a little thinner now, a little more tired, thanks to your job and kuroo’s exemplary talent as an efficient boss. wakatoshi views himself, realising he looks a little older now. his face looks more mature, body a little more toned from his regime.

the picture is from when you were nineteen, taken on the day he got scouted by the adlers and you went out to celebrate the achievement. you’re standing under the cherry blossoms, giggling at something while a smile is pinned on his face as his arm takes you by the waist. when wakatoshi remembers the conversation you were having, there isn’t much to recall except the bad joke you cracked and laughed at yourself, still warranting a smile from his end, but it still warms his heart. and he wonders if he was in love even when he was nineteen and more dedicated to volleyball, and if you were in love too, but just like him, you never really got the chance to say it.

he still can’t put a pin on the feeling that roves around his veins when he thinks about you. maybe it really is love and maybe he has always known love. it’s always been around him in the little things you’ve done for him or in the things he has done for you. it’s always been around in the time you’ve spent together, whether in silence or while indulging in something productive. love has always been around wakatoshi but he was never vigilant in the slightest to notice it’s tight lipped presence.

he thinks he has been in love with you for the longest time now but his ignorance is what held him off ever realising that the love existed inside his heart. it’s okay, really, because some people just aren’t built to converse with their hearts and wakatoshi spent his teens preaching the thought that love wasn’t for people with bigger dreams. people like him who strived for more than just a person to spend their lives with. but tonight, he wants to understand his heart and he wants to ask it if it’s really love that he feels or if it’s just something irrelevant that showed up on a whim. deep deep down he knows the answer to it, but if there’s even the slightest chance that it’s not love, he wants it to be true.

for once, he needs to recognise what love is and he needs to train himself to accept its existence if that’s what it really, truly is. he needs to train himself to hold on to it while letting you go on the opposite end of the stick. wakatoshi just needs to make peace with his feelings so that he can face you when you return, so that he can anchor his thoughts deep into his stomach, prohibiting them from ever stepping out. he just needs to accept the love and let you go, but really it isn’t that easy, so he drops his phone to side, deciding one last time that he doesn’t want to write back, not tonight. maybe tomorrow, under the new beams of the same, old sun, he might.

he peeks out of the glass window, descrying the raindrops that descend down in the dead silence of the night. he was so caught up in his own thoughts, the arrival of rain never made it to the field of his perception until just now. in his monochrome bedroom, sitting on the sheets that stink of the memories of you, wakatoshi finds the answer he’s been looking for. this isn’t just something he started feeling on a whim.

love has always been there with him and around him. this love held him close when the world let him down. at eighteen when his mother urged him to quit volleyball, this love encouraged him to fight back for his passion. this love cried along with him when he wanted to fall apart. after losing to karasuno at seventeen, only this love saw him crying while the rest of his team thought he was unfazed by the defeat. this love also built him up, one piece at a time, making sure the pieces put in place don’t crash to the ground even at the stroke of the strongest winds.

he knows now that what he feels for you is love and it’s not something that stemmed up recently. it has always been around, lurking in the corners, waiting for its presence to be noticed. he’s in love with you but you’re in love with somebody new. so he needs to let you go. but love is arresting. it’s captivating, bizarre, comely, unsettling, terrifying, spine tingling, intoxicating, all at once. so he doesn’t know how to let you go. the addiction brought along with the intoxication by love is being made known to him, and if this is what true love in its most raw form feels like, he wishes he had known it a tad bit earlier.

but despite the newfound love and the hesitance to let you go, he’s still somewhat ready to let you go without ever confessing, because if you’re going to be happy spending a lifetime with haruko, he doesn’t mind giving up on you.

wakatoshi paces up to the spare closet in his bedroom, casting its door wide open. he enters inside, squatting down to scrimmage through the mess on the floor, looking for the brown cardboard box packed with articles from your past neither of you had the heart to get rid of. keeping the box was your idea. there were pictures he never knew were taken that you persevered, toys that meant more than what they looked like, letters exchanged on several occasions, pieces of clothing only his hands would fit into now. more or less, it was a waste of space but he’s glad you chose to keep those things safe and trusted him with it.

he finds the said box hiding in a corner, covered by his shiratorizawa jersey and although he cleans the spare closet every now and then, he still finds dust bunnies resting on the box when he takes off the jersey. he doesn’t recall the last time he opened the box but he’s pretty sure it’s been more than an year now. he has been busy with volleyball, but more importantly, when there’s you who can remind him of everything with your chatter, he never felt the need to revisit old memories through some articles preserved in a box.

wakatoshi scoops the box into his hands, folding his legs to place it in his lap. he scurries the dust off the surface, flinching when a dust bunny finds its way in the peripheral of his nostrils. he opens the box and the first thing he comes across is bisco the cat, who he was certain wasn’t there in the box last time around. he lifts the cat, chuckling as he remembers it’s mention in your recent mail, putting it to the side, noting to hand it to you later on for whatever reason you need it for.

underneath bisco is a shrivelled photograph of a seven year old wakatoshi next to a six year old yn. arms crossed, cheeks puffed, necks turned to the opposite sides, taken after a fight over what game to play. his hand reaches out to lift the picture you tried so hard to preserve but somehow time still ended up finding a way to wither it’s beauty away, but wakatoshi knows the essence lives on. you’re both smeared in dust and he recalls the fight wasn’t over a game, rather it was because he stumbled upon you, quite literally, making the two of you fall to the ground, ruining your clothes in the process.

wakatoshi chuckles at the picture and at the memory it casts a light upon as he balances himself on his way up to his feet. he walks out of the closet to take a seat on his bed, sinking back into to heap of pillows lining the duvet with the box still in his possession, a soft gaze admiring the photograph in hand, and a wide grin still locked into his face.

the sun is halfway down, merging with the coastline, flickering orange red in the evening sky. your otosan sits on the wooden bench, reading a business magazine he picked up from the shelves of a convenience store on your way to the park. meanwhile, a few feet away from him, you stand in a queue, waiting for your turn on the swing.

you balance on your tip toes, leaning to your side, neck bending outwards to look out for the number of kids lined up before you. you count four kids standing in front of you, tapping your feet in impatience. you’re no good with calculations, but the number of kids waiting for their turn in front of you makes it obvious that it’s going to be a while before you get to play on the swing.

wakatoshi enters the park, one hand locked with his otosan’s, while the other holds a volleyball. however, despite the urge to play volleyball, the swing set is the first attraction that catches his attention, and he sprints in its way, letting his hand off otosan’s grip. unaware that you’re a part of the queue, he takes a spot in front of you, cutting it, but you don’t notice it instantly.

you’re distracted by a blue butterfly fluttering around you, giggles brimming in the space surrounding you every time your fingers graze its delicate wings and it changes the trajectory of its flight. the butterfly fleets far off. you notice a fifth figure occupying the space in front of you, while you remember counting only four. instead of the little girl who stood right in front of you two minutes ago, there stands a boy around your age, a bit shorter than you. olive hair, broad stature, volleyball in hand. you realise he broke the queue while you were distracted playing with the butterfly, adding another ten minutes before you can take the swing. there’s a possibility you won’t be able to take a turn at all because it’s getting late, and it won’t be long before otosan drags you back home.

“you’re in the way.” you state, tapping his shoulder, cheeks puffed, eyes narrowed, and fists clenched to your sides.

the boy in front of you pays you no mind. he isn’t aware your words are meant for him to listen to, and to him, the light tap on his shoulder is just a leaf falling from the tree over your heads. he stands idly, waiting for his turn on the swing, further aggravating your frustration, compelling you to resort to violence.

you don’t actually hit him, instead, you tap his shoulder, heavily this time around and thrice, stomping your feet, agitated, raising your voice, “hey, you’re in the way!”

before he can turn around, you yell again, “you’re in the way.” this time, you push against his shoulder, demanding his attention, reducing him to his knees in the process.

he lands on his knees, making a loud sound as he hits the ground. it doesn’t seem to bother you that you have potentially wounded someone and your otosan might not find it very kind of you. what matters to you is that he’s in your way and he ought to move behind so that you can take your turn on the swing. you stare at him, eyes still narrowed, arms crossed and a frown besmirching your face.

“ouch, you hurt me.” he complains, looking at you, then at his knee that is lightly scraped from the impact. the palm of his right hand appears scratched as well. he blows air onto his knees and his palm, attempting to pacify the burning sensation. when you look at the sight in front you, you certainly feel guilty about it, and it makes you want to throw in an apology, but you stand your ground, repeating, “you cut the line.”

“you’re in the way.” you state, confusing him furthermore. he doesn’t really understand why you pushed him in the first place, and now something about him being in your way makes not sense to him whatsoever.

“what was that for?” he asks upfront, supporting himself up on his feet. he dusts his clothes to free them from the pelts of the soil, then takes two steps closer to you, almost making your lose your balance at how intimidating the kid in front of you looks.

“you cut the line, and papa says it’s a bad thing to do.” you tell him, scoffing at him, explaining him the mistake he made and why he deserved to be thrown to the ground at your hands. the boy in front of you scoffs right back, viewing your take on the situation as mere stupidity, and before he can say anything more, his otosan rushes in to stop your fight when his attention is arrested by the two of you fighting in the middle of the ground.

his otosan bows down to you, apologising on his behalf, while the kid only glares at you throughout the course of his otosan’s words. they walk away from you, and you’re glad you get to use the swing at least once before you need to head home. you tell your otosan about your encounter with the boy, and he asks you to apologise whenever you come across him the next time. you come across the same kid in the sandbox the very next week. instead of starting a fight, you apologise for your actions from the previous week as per your otosan’s request.

before you know it, wakatoshi ushijima becomes your best friend, and you become attached by the hip. the memory of your first interaction becomes something you laugh over from time to time, a legendary tale you preach to everyone who asks you how you happened to meet wakatoshi in the first place.

wakatoshi chuckles as he looks back on the silly memory of the first time his paths crossed your own. it’s funny, he thinks, because at seven, you don’t know what the people you meet will mean to you a few years down the line. so when he was a kid himself, he would try to hold onto most people he met, but everyone walked away because he was incompetent when it came to making them stay. you, however, stuck to him for a long long time. for him, it was very kind of you to have a friendship with him without expecting much in return. although he tried to give back as much as he took from you, he knows he failed on multiple occasions.

his fingers run along the photograph sitting in his hold, snapped about nineteen years ago. it’s beguiling to him how the two of you managed to stay friends this long despite the circumstances ending up knotty sometimes. the mutual understanding, however, made it easier to get through the tough times. lucky is the only word he can use to describe himself. although he has always put in his best efforts, hitting the jackpot when it comes to his career seems mere luck to him at times. having you in his life seems luck to him too, and more than once he has thought that he doesn’t deserve to have you. he really lucked out meeting you on a warm summer evening at his favourite park in the city.

he scatters the various photographs, articles and toys on his bed sheet, each one having their own story to tell. from bisco the cat, to the photograph that was taken on a random day in middle school, to the sweater left in the box— each one has a brief telltale associated with it, and if he were to recall all of those, he would have to spend a lifetime doing so. but somehow, it won’t take him so long either, because he remembers each story down to the littlest of its details and that to him, is truly special, and so are you.

you stand next to wakatoshi, receiving the warmth his body radiates. the two of you wait for the arrival of your chaotic best friend in front of his favourite restaurant in miyagi. christmas eve every year only means having a dinner with wakatoshi and satori. your good old trio meets up every year when satori flies back from france, handing over the ownership of his chocolate shop to his trusted employees, only to spend some time with his best friends.

you don’t know if either of them looks forward to spend the night with you, but your doubts are swept off when you sit through the night, chatting with satori, and wakatoshi, despite his strife to do it, still contributes a few words here and there. they spend the night with you, keeping you company on your favourite holiday, and while you and satori forget about it under the influence of some alcohol, wakatoshi makes sure you click a picture before the night ends. the picture ends up on your lock screen, only to be renewed the following year.

wakatoshi continues reading the book he received from you on his birthday this year. pride and prejudice. it wasn’t much of a gift really, but you learned that your best friend picked up a habit of reading books from time to time from his team captain, and when you browsed through his list, you ended up finding the name of the book he wanted to try out first. coming to think of it, while you were scavenging through the shelves looking for the book, you couldn’t shake off the similarities you saw between himself and darcy.

darcy is socially awkward, terrible at being lovey dovey, quite the arrogant man. pretty much everything wakatoshi is, other than arrogant of course. your wakatoshi is sweet. he’s kind and compassionate. almost easy to fall in love with once you tear off the exterior to look at the real person beneath it. you know this because you were in love too. at sixteen, wakatoshi was everything you wanted. but your feelings faded off once you realised there’s little to no chance he will ever look at you the same way.

your gaze sides to fix itself on wakatoshi. the wrinkles on his forehead deepening with every passing second are an obvious indicative that he’s in too deep, reading the book with utmost dedication, unfazed by the vibrant atmosphere encompassing your bodies. people are out with their families, the streets are full of individuals dressed in white and red, children walk around with candies in their hands, and matching decorations hang by the trees lining the roadside. while all of it garners your attention, it somehow manages to dodge that of wakatoshi.

you think of disrupting wakatoshi’s obedience, but choose not to when you notice that satori is late and your plan of action should be to contact him instead of disturbing wakatoshi’s leisurely reading. you open your sling bag to take out the cellphone to check in with satori who was supposed to arrive ten minutes ago. you text him and he tells you he’ll be there in twenty, which only prompts a frown to etch into your face.

white icicles begin trudging down, one falling on your head, and your attention drifts to the sky to take notice of the snowfall. you suppose this is what the beauty of the season is in tokyo. although you like nothing about snow sitting on top of your head, it still looks beautiful when matched with the enthusiasm of christmas.

wakatoshi takes off his scarf and quickly wraps it around your neck. it takes you by surprise and you turn around to face him, cheeks blotted red, something inside you urging you to ask him something you’ve held in for so long. you know wakatoshi thinks of love as something only fools indulge him. for him, if there’s anything in this world that deserves time and efforts, it’s volleyball. people communicate with their own species to form connections, he does so with volleyball to experience a new kind of hormonal rush that takes him by surprise each time around. you cannot be so sure because you’ve never heard it coming out of his mouth, but you know what he thinks. more or less. his actions speak enough.

but over the years that you’ve known him, you’ve wondered what his view on love is really like. if it’s exactly what you think it is, or if there’s something more he feels about it. something he hides even from you. so you begin your questionnaire, entering the territory of his thoughts with a soft approach, “toshi, isn’t it beautiful out tonight?” it’s a conversation starter, not what you intend to ask. in fact, miles away from your intended query.

“hmm.” he hums in agreement, eyes still scrutinising the book in hand. a snowflake finds it’s path to land on his cheek, making him flinch when he senses the cold mulling on his skin. you stretch out your hand to wipe the cold liquid off his cheek, luring his attention off pride and prejudice, and he finally comes to face you.

“finally, after all this time, my toshi finally looks at me, not at elizabeth.” you taunt him, chuckling as you take the book off his hands to tap it against his skull, teasing him about his newfound passion. “i’m certainly prettier, aren’t i?” you wiggle your brows, leaving him a little uneasy with your question that is only meant to poke fun at him, but he takes it seriously, confessing, “well, in my opinion, if we compare the two of you,—“ he’s stopped in his tracks by you.

“i only asked for fun, toshi. you don’t actually have to analyse our characters for real.” you sigh, dabbing his forehead, laughing at his cluelessness and he smiles sheepishly at you, rubbing his hand against the back of his neck in visible embarrassment.

“so toshi, i was wondering—“ you take in a deep breath, having found an opening to finally cast your intended question. his attention is on you now and the book is in your hand, making it less likely for him to get distracted by its presence. you continue, staggering through your words, only confusing him along the way, but he doesn’t think much of it, “can i ask you something?” instead of the question, you end up asking for his permission instead.

“sure, why not.” he shrugs, throwing an arm around you to pull you closer as he looks down to match your gaze, “you know you can ask me anything, right?” his gesture leaves you by surprise but you cozy up to him, thinking there’s no harm while it’s so cold outside.

“yea, i know.” you nod, mustering the courage to spill out your question, breathing out one last time before you finally do it, “what do you think about love, toshi?” you don’t know where your nervousness comes from. it’s just a simple question, yet you stumble around your words as you ask it. a part of you is terrified about his reply, knowing it will only disregard the feeling. but there isn’t any reason for it to disappoint you. if wakatoshi thinks love is stupid, it shouldn’t bother you. so you wonder why anxiety jumps around your stomach instead.

“huh?” wakatoshi hears your question as you stutter through it. while you’re nervous asking it, the question shakes the ground beneath his feet as well. the thing is, coming from you, the question doesn’t even sound awkward to begin with, and honestly he knows he can answer it if he needs to, but when he’s never spent any time thinking about what love means to him, he doesn’t know how to answer it.

luckily for him, before he has to reply to you, satori’s unexpected arrival relieves his tension, and unluckily for you, his arrival only means you have to suppress your curiosity for the time being, burying it deep within yourself until another opening shows up for you to ask wakatoshi about it. you know it will be a while before you get to open up the conversation with your best friend again, but you’re willing to hold your horses until then.

“let’s go in, you guys.” you suggest, taking satori and wakatoshi by their hands to enter the restaurant. wakatoshi nods and quickly follows your lead, having already forgotten about your conversation from earlier. satori releases his hand from your hold to invade the space between wakatoshi and you, coercing you to give up on wakatoshi’s hand as tendo makes space for himself between the two of you. he throws his arms around the two you, dragging you to your reserved seats in a playful manner.

the cold wind brushes past his cheeks, making him shiver. wakatoshi tugs his overcoat closer to his body to retain some warmth. he waits for you at the exit of the international airport, peeking at his embellished wristwatch every now and then to look up the time. your flight was supposed to make a landing around half past eight. it’s been an hour and a half since and you should be out by now, but he detects no sign of you around, guessing you got caught up with something.

he doesn’t want to be here receiving you after you’ve been away for more than a month. the truth is, he would much rather be at his place right now, catching on some sleep, where he doesn’t have to face you. he doesn’t know what to say to you when he sees you walk out with a ring on your finger. although he had slightly more than a week to think about it, he chose to not give it much thought, because one, he had volleyball practice, and two, he couldn’t stop thinking about his feelings for you.

wakatoshi doesn’t know what he’ll choose to say to you after he sees you for the first time in months. perhaps a hello would be most appropriate, followed by a ‘how have you been’, but the relationship between the two of you isn’t so formal for him to begin a conversation like that. the thing is, he wouldn’t have pitched in to receive you at the airport if it wasn’t for your call regarding haruko’s decision to extend their stay in the states. when you called him up two days ago to inform about your situation, he impulsively offered you a ride home and backing out of it now, moments before you walk out of the airport won’t suit his morals.

you walk out, pushing your trolley onward, drifting your vision back and forth between the crowd waiting for their loved ones, and you finally spot wakatoshi standing a little farther from the mess. he’s already looking your way, a soft smile bracing his face as he waits for you to return to him. you smile right back at him, a poor imitation of the emotion, but it’s still convincing. you put your hand up in the air to wave a hello at him as you pave your way to close the distance between the two of you.

you look at wakatoshi for the first time in two months. not that you haven’t been seeing his face on video calls, but in person, it’s a different thing altogether. you notice nothing about him has changed. he’s the same old wakatoshi you know, but you also know something is different this time around. looking at him doesn’t feel the way it usually does. usually, wakatoshi is your best friend. today, looking at him blurs the labels. when he looks at you for the first time in months, the first thing that demands his attention is the ring finger of your left hand. his eyes notice the lack of a ring. heart sighs in something alike relief. vocal cords strum in curiosity to question the absence of it.

there isn’t a ring around your finger. not even a makeshift band to confirm your engagement, and wakatoshi ponders if haruko chose not to pop the question for whatever reason there was. curiosity floods his veins, vouching for a chance to spill beyond the vessels, but he holds back, deciding not to ask you regarding it. when the time is right, you’ll open and he’ll come to know.

“hey there, stranger.” you purse your lips, sighing as you inch a little closer to him, seeing him in person for the first time in two months. you put your arms around his back to pull him into a hug, and he steps forward too, the smile curving on his lips widens as he takes a brief look you, noticing the change, before falling into your embrace.

your hair is slightly longer now, a little unruly, and he knows you’ll get it in shape within the next few days. you’ve grown thinner, which confirms that you didn’t like the food there as much as you like the food his okaasan prepares for you. you look more tired than you usually do after coming home from work, which he thinks is obvious since you’ve been touring for days, and that requires a lot more movement than your stationary office job does.

“hey there.” he whispers into your ear. you feel his arms slithering around your waist. wakatoshi rubs his temple against your shoulder, holding you close to himself. he certainly missed you, there isn’t a doubt about that, and you feel at peace, wrapped in his arms, so close to him. the scent of a foreign perfume lingers around you, something he concludes you picked up from the stores in the states.

“let’s go home now.” you say to him, pulling yourself away from his hold as you walk behind the trolley holding your luggage, lowering its handle with a force to get it to move, preparing to make your way towards his car. wakatoshi nods, knocking some visible creases off his coat as he prepares himself to help you to his car.

the truth is, wakatoshi expected a more vibrant conversation. he expected you to chirp about everything you did and didn’t do over the last two months. he expected you to look a little more excited to see him after so long, but all he can see is someone who doesn’t want to be around him for longer that they already have, someone who just wants to withdraw into their own company, and he wonders what changed in the time you weren’t here next to him, or what went wrong in the states.

he silently nudges your away from the trolley, taking it under his own control and you let him, removing your purse from the upper compartment to hold it in your own possession. he begins walking towards his car and you follow, lightly clutching onto his overcoat, taking watchful steps to follow his trail, coated in the certain warmth he always gives off.

he opens the door to his car, letting you inside to take your spot in the passenger seat. he notices you enter his car quietly, minding each step that you take, shunning the noise your usual movements would make under any other circumstances. wakatoshi now knows for sure that something went wrong while you were in the states. you aren’t anywhere close to how he knows your personality, and it’s growing more obvious every passing minute. he should’ve guessed it earlier when you failed to write to him last week, or when you failed to contact him for almost a week and a half.

he was ignorant, mostly thinking about his feelings for you, letting himself feel jealous that you were busy spending quality time with haruko since it’s your love language. now, he doesn’t know much about love languages or the concept behind their origins or extensions, but he knows exactly what yours is because you told him once, randomly dropping it between some conversation, and he tends to remember everything about you verbatim.

it’s quite hilarious to him, mostly just stupid that he never thought of his exceeding admiration and attention towards you as anything more than a normal friendship. sure, for wakatoshi, love was something only fools with a lot of time on their hands indulged in, but even then, even with that belief, he wonders if he was so stupid that he couldn’t see the signs that lingered right around him. but that doesn’t matter now. what matters is that you aren’t okay.

“so, you got engaged, huh?” wakatoshi asks you, much in hesitance to pop the question in the first place, unaware of the words that flee the space between his lips. this isn’t what he intended to ask you, but the curiosity swirling through his blood caught up before he could conjure the words to enquire about your well being. you hear him loud and clear but you don’t really know how to explain it to him, so you ignore his doubt.

you turn around in your seat, closing your eyes, pretending to be in deep slumber although it’s only been two minutes since you entered the car, denying to answer his question. you’re aware you were the one who gave him a heads up about the engagement in the first place, so it’s quite obvious he’s curious about it now that you’re back in town, except, haruko didn’t pop the question at all, and what happened between the two of you instead was a break up. so while you appreciate wakatoshi’s obvious excitement on the matter, you also don’t know how to tell him the truth.

no, you aren’t scared of the outcome. if anything, if there’s one person who won’t judge you, it’s him, and knowing the gentle giant that he is, he’ll only show his support to you, helping you through the hard time. but things aren’t quite as simple as they seem when your supposed fiancé broke up with you, winding their words in certain allegations regarding the relationship between wakatoshi and you during your final conversation. so you have no clue whatsoever about how the upcoming conversation between your best friend and yourself is supposed to begin or end.

“i guess you’re already asleep, yn.” he sighs, looking at your curled up figure from the corner of his eye. he turns the key in the ignition as his second hand approaches close to your own. he takes a hold of your hand, rubbing his fingers against it, swishing circles against your knuckles as you feel the engine revving. before he starts steps on the accelerator, he ruffles your hair, saying, “take some rest now that you’re back in tokyo.”

heat creeps up to pool at your cheeks and all these years, the touch that felt so familiar and friendly, suddenly feels foreign and suffocating. you almost choke on your anxiety as his rough hands stroke yours smothered in baby lotion. you hold no grudge against him by any means, but wakatoshi’s hand so close to yours feels like a crime in this moment. not because haruko was under the impression that you’ve always had a thing for your best friend, but because maybe they were right. maybe you’ve always had a thing for him, but you wonder if he’s been just as invested too.

“sleep well.” from the corner of your eye, you can see the small smile that approaches his lips as he pats your head before taking off his hand to hold the steering wheel to start driving.

“mhm.” you hum, shifting in your seat, completely closing your eyelids this time around, when wakatoshi stops the car in its tracks, warranting a few honks from the other cars waiting in line to exit the airport, to grab his jacket from the backseat to put it on you.

he places it over your chest. it smells of expensive perfume and the protein powder he takes twice a day, but more than all that, it smells an awful lot like home. it smells so much like his apartment and as someone who spends most of their time lingering around his space, his jacket certainly reminds you of your safe place. when he puts it on your sleeping figure, there’s an apetite to push it aside but your gut lets it’s dissipate on its own. this isn’t the first time he’s offering you his jacket, but after haruko’s words hit you like a storm the week before, his jacket no longer feels as welcoming as it used to.

but coming to think of it, wakatoshi and everything about him, you think, has always been someplace you never wanted to leave once you took a spot in. you wonder why you never realised it before haruko spoke to you about it. you wonder what made you think everything you did with him was only restricted to go as far as a platonic sentiment. perhaps, haruko was right in the end. you’ve always had a thing or two for ushijima wakatoshi and haruko’s words were just a push for you to discover those feelings.

you were in love at sixteen, but you thought the moment you decided to fall out of love with wakatoshi, you really did. you branched out, started dating people, ended up meeting haruko at twenty five, fell in love with them (or so you thought), wanted to spend a lifetime with them, but perhaps the love you had for wakatoshi was never unseen to those around you. if there was anyone who was blind to it’s patent presence, it has always been wakatoshi and you.

you walk into your bedroom. wakatoshi follows in your steps, treading behind with a part of your luggage occupying his hands. the air around the two of you has been filled with an eerie awkwardness since you returned, and the silence you’ve caulked in between isn’t helping either, but he still does what he has to, and you let him, while no words are exchanged and eye contact is restricted to brief moments.

he places your luggage in a corner and approaches the bedroom door, thinking the only right thing to do next would be to leave you in your own space. you don’t really look like you want to talk to him at all. his presence only seems to stem your bother more and more everytime his eyes arrest your own but you turn away. that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still curious about the whole thing. heck, he wants to know what’s keeping you on the edge ever since you returned and he wants to help you get through it, but he’s also a respectful fellow, so he decides to offer you some time on your own to think things through.

when the time is right, he knows, you’ll tell him everything like you always do. assured of the fact, he begins walking out of your bedroom, only leaving behind half a smile and a vague goodbye in the space between the two of you, when he feels some weight lightly dragging his tee downwards. wakatoshi turns his neck around to see you tugging onto his shirt with your eyes scrutinising your feet, circumventing his soft gaze searching for your own.

when you notice he’s looking in your direction, you let his tee slip off from the hold of your fingers. you step back, finally looking up to capture his gaze, tears starting to border your eyelids. “stay with me.” you whisper, and at any other time of day he wouldn’t have been able to hear your low voice, but in the dead silence you’ve whipped up between the two of you, he hears it loud and clear. in response, he takes two steps closer to you, entering inside your room from its periphery, where you stopped him earlier.

you have no idea about the stimulus that irks your tear glands to secret their fluid, and frankly speaking, as he looks at your eyes in the dim lighting, neither does he, curiosity still nibbling at his edges.

all you know is that you don’t want to be alone with your thoughts tonight. all he knows is that he doesn’t want to leave you by yourself tonight, while you’re insisting him to stay by your side. the very next moment, he pulls you into a hug, nuzzling against your neck. you stand there with a loss of response, letting him take control while you only let your arms brace his back. the dim light so long didn’t allow him to see your tears properly, still doubting if you were actually crying, but your whimpering audio alerts him, confirming suspicion, and he embraces your figure even tighter. “it’s okay, yn, i’m here.” he reassures you, pulling out to find the view of your eyes to wipe the teardrops streaming down.

he’s here in front of you, and more than a blessing, his presence around you tonight feels like a curse. it’s not that you don’t want him yo around you, but the wound from your break up is still fresh and when wakatoshi is the very reason for it, his presence around you feels a little uncomfortable. but despite that, you don’t want him to leave either. you wonder what haruko would think if you confessed to wakatoshi and got together right away. so you smother that thought for the night, only walking in closer to him to seek a shelter.

wakatoshi spends the night in your bed, occupying the right side of the bed while you take on the left. there isn’t much contact through the night. you both lie on the cushion, backs touching each other, neither of you finding the atmosphere comfortable enough to fall asleep. you don’t know when it occurs, but sometime through the middle of night, your eyes close and you drift off.

wakatoshi stays next to you until the sun rises to the top of the sky and the birds begin chirping. he leaves your side, getting off the bed at sixteen minutes past five to drive back home to start another day. he makes you some breakfast. eggs, toast and a strawberry smoothie. he leaves you a note as well, asking you to contact him once you start your day. there’s a lot he wants to talk to you about, and he writes at the end of the note, “i can’t wait to talk you again.”

you wake up, thanks to a car honking loudly on the street across your window, at twenty four minutes past ten. you notice wakatoshi’s absence, but once you look for the time, it makes sense that he left long before you woke up. you walk into your kitchen once you brush your teeth and wash your tired face. you find his note on the island, drawing out a smile from your end, and you take your breakfast out of the refrigerator to heat it up.

despite his kindest request to you, wakatoshi doesn’t hear from you for eight days. somewhere through the span of the week kageyama notices him slacking off his best game. although it’s nothing apparent, an observant player like him can easily point out the little changes he notices in his wing spikers. so on the eighth night since wakatoshi last saw you, kageyama sends you a text.

you walk into the gymnasium, hands occupied with a basket full of food for wakatoshi’s teammates. you take a spot next to the door, waiting for someone to take notice of your arrival, preferably wakatoshi himself, but that’s highly unlikely. it’s not that you haven’t met his teammates before for it to be fiddly for you, but he’s the person you know the best, so interacting with him first makes it easier for you to mingle with the rest.

the first one to notice your presence near the door is coach suzaku, and somehow, he’s always the first one to do so. you suppose the players are just too engrossed in practice for them to ever take notice of your quiet steps entering the gymnasium, plus your presence isn’t that loud either, so it’s highly unlikely one of the players will look your way before the coach does. suzaku offers you a soft smile, gesturing with his hands for you to come closer. you take light steps to close the distance between him and you, to stand right next to him, wary that you don’t interrupt the practice before the coach calls for a break.

“boys, time for a break.” he announces, blowing his whistle, snatching the attention of everyone on court. his players look his way, skeptical of how break time arrived fifteen minutes earlier than when it usually does on a friday afternoon. next to him, they spot you, smiling at them with food in your hand, and their faces shunned with doubt quickly turn into all smiles as the prepare to rush towards you.

wakatoshi is the last one to halt his practice and look in your direction, and seeing you at the gymnasium after eight long days of having no conversation with you slightly irritates him. first, you choose to cut all contact, and despite him respecting your choice to do so, you don’t attempt reconnecting at all. then, you show up at practice with food for his teammates instead of meeting him in private. he knows you’re here to talk to him, not his teammates, so he wonders why you didn’t bother to call him over at your place instead of putting in the effort to cook for his teammates. needless to say, wakatoshi is hurt at your actions, but he still drops the ball to the floor and walks your way along with his teammates.

“yn, you’re back!” hoshiumi yells, excited to see you for the first time in two months. he dashes your way, nudging suzaku to empty your hands, and pulls you into a tight hug, confessing, “i missed you so much.” he smiles, slightly towering you, and you return it as well before you step back from his hold.

“ushijima san wouldn’t tell us if you were back. he kept dodging the question.” he complains, frowning at his senior. the thing is, wakatoshi didn’t tell anyone that you returned after you cut contact, and although he did it to respect your privacy, it seems his teammates are taking it the wrong way now that they know you’re back in town.

you notice the concern appearing on your best friend’s face, and before he can step in to defend himself, you do it for him, clarifying, “i asked him not to.”

“i was tired, you know, and toshi only did it because i asked him to.” you tell them all, and it appears that they understand your reasons. wakatoshi smiles at you, his eyes speaking of gratitude and you want to smile back at him, but something inside of you doesn’t let you do so, so you only look at him with a bleak expression on your face. at which, the smile on his face dissipates into the thin air between the two of you that reeks of tension now.

the awkward moment between the two of you is interjected by romero, who walks up to take your hand in his as he thanks you for the food, “oh my, yn.” he sighs, expression changing into something utterly melodramatic, “i missed your cooking so much.” everyone around him laughs at his exaggeration on the matter, but really, he did miss your cooking. that’s not a lie.

romero and his family in particular are really fond of your cooking, so watching him enact just how desperate he was to have something made by you again, allows you to burst into a musical giggle, jailing all of wakatoshi’s attention. all week long, he spent his days thinking of you, thinking of what he did wrong, thinking of what could be bothering you, and now that you’re here in front of him, he cannot talk to you because his teammates keep asking for your attention one after the other. that lights up a distressed expression on his face. suzaku notices and when he follows wakatoshi’s gaze, it only lands on you surrounded by his teammates, and it’s as if he’s asking to be noticed. suzaku sighs, summoning everyone to head out for lunch.

“alright, boys, let’s quickly have some food.” suzaku insists, peeking his watch to realise they need to get back to practice with a game right around the corner. “don’t eat too much.” he warns, walking towards the exit to go to the canteen. “i’m warning you.” suzaku walks out and everyone on the team except for wakatoshi follows him. you trail behind as well, but you’re stopped in your tracks by wakatoshi, who takes you by the hand.

you turn around to look at him with an exasperated expression splashed across his face and you sigh, knowing that you’re about to face the music. what you’ve spent the last eight days avoiding is what stands before you and there’s no running off this time around. “what is it, toshi?” you question, withdrawing your hand from his hold, stepping away from him to take a seat on the bleachers. you voice fades away, urging him to follow your vocals.

wakatoshi follows you to your seat before he practically yells at you, “what do mean by that, yn?” towards the end, he lowers his volume when he notices his loud voice left you startled and a little scared. from your seat, you stare at him in surprise, having known him as this silent, closed off boy. so watching his outburst, even though it’s just momentary, tends to strike fear inside of you.

“you can’t just ask that after ignoring me for eight days straight, yn.�� he reasons with you, and a part of you agrees that you’re the one to blame. but you also think you deserved to have some time to yourself in order to think things through. wakatoshi had no idea and still has none about what happened between haruko and you in the states. ignoring him won’t make it go away, plus you know you have to face your feelings for him some day or the other, and it’s only hurting him while you choose to ignore their existence.

“i—“ you look for a beginning to put your explanation into words, but only meet a dead end when the words you’re looking for clog at your pharynx instead of ever coming out. wakatoshi notices you’re struggling, so he makes it easier for you, taking a seat next to you.

his hand finds yours, and he asks you, rubbing your hand to soothe your anxiety, “where have you been?” instead of getting right to the point, he wants to ease it for you, but despite his efforts, your courage only withers away, and you withdraw your hand. he notices the uneasiness between the two of you that he never thought could ever take shape.

“meet me for dinner, toshi.” you tell him, pursing your lips, looking at him with the most vague smile sinking into your lips. you want to tell him everything right in this moment. right now. but you’re holding back. you don’t know if a gymnasium is some place to confess your feelings. at the same time, you don’t find it in yourself to come clean to him at forty two minutes past twelve on a friday afternoon in late august, so you decide to call him over and tell him what you really feel in private without anyone else around.

the plan wasn’t to extend the confession, but you definitely didn’t think this through before showing up to his practice. you didn’t think you would end up calling him for dinner tonight instead of getting things done in the afternoon itself, but well, at least you took a step ahead instead of staying stagnant at the same point where you’ve been lurking for the past few days.

“okay, alright.” he nods at your request, relieved that if not right now, he’ll at least find out the truth later on. he understands that you might not feel like talking about certain things at his practice, so he agrees to meet you later on, happy that he will get an explanation for your actions recently. he hasn’t tried contacting haruko, solely to respect your boundaries, but he’s guilty enough to admit that his fingers have scrolled past their contact information more than ten times over the last eight days.

“so, why did you show up to practice today?” he enquires, although there’s nothing unusual about it, but seeing you appear at his practice after eight days of no contact was more or less a surprise to him. he didn’t expect break time to be fifteen minutes earlier, more so, he didn’t expect you to be here. before this, whenever you’ve come over for whatever reason, he has always known about it beforehand, but today, your arrival was strange even for him.

“kageyama told me you’ve been and i quote, slacking off a lot recently, so i should come and cheer you up at practice.” you shrug, telling him a part of the reason why you showed up, confessing half the truth. it’s not like it wasn’t to offer him an explanation, but now that you’ve chickened out, might as well make your appearance an ode to his teammate’s kind request to you.

he feels embarrassed about it. he knows kageyama is a competent sportsman, but for him to take notice of the smallest changes in wakatoshi’s gameplay says a lot about him. his cheeks turn red and wakatoshi turns his head to the side, embarrassed about the same. you notice this and you’re quick to put your hand over his to offer some reassurance.

“you don’t have to be embarrassed, toshi.” you reassure him, patting his knuckles before withdrawing your hand and standing to your feet. “i’m your best friend, i’ve seen you at your worse.” you tell him in order to pacify his concern, walking away from him towards the exit.

“see me tonight.” you remind him of your plans, waving his way before you walk out of the gymnasium. wakatoshi leaves his seat, making his way to the canteen to catch up with his teammates, wondering what the upcoming conversation tonight holds for him.

wakatoshi walks into your apartment, opening the door using the spare keys you gave him just in case you misplace your own. the lights are turned off and the darkness that envelopes him when he walks into your living room is indication enough that you’re probably passed out in your bed. in your defence, it’s half past ten already and you’re one to sleep early. it’s not like he expected you to be at his service, but there’s no way he’s getting any explanation tonight.

still, he moves closer to the switchboard to turn the lights on, placing the champagne bottle busying his hands onto your coffee table. he surmises you cooked something tonight before you headed to bed, so he walks into your kitchen to grab some food for himself, only to find more darkness and clean countertops with no leftover food, let alone some freshly cooked food.

wakatoshi sighs at the sight in front of him. his first thought is to cook some food for himself before he heads in to sleep next to you, but as soon as he stretches his shoulder to take hold of some spices from an cabinet packed over his head, the exhaustion from practice shines through when a muscle twitches, and he discards the idea. wakatoshi generally sticks to having home cooked food to maintain a diet, but tonight he decides the only viable option left is to order take out, so he rings up the closest noodle place to order a serving of miso ramen and yakisoba.

he leaves the kitchen with a flute glass in his hand to take a seat on your coach. he turns on the television to find one of the replays of his old match playing on the national television. he takes interest in looking back on one of his games as an amateur as he pours himself a glass of champagne. he sips on the expensive drink, sinking back into the couch, criticizing his own skills on the court from when he was twenty one. a novice at professional volleyball.

the sound of something playing on your television so late into the night forces you to wake up. you walk into the living room to find wakatoshi resting on your couch, quaffing champagne while he watches an old game. you hate to admit, but you forgot you called him over. you recall coming home from his practice and heading straight to bed, promising yourself that you’ll wake up in the evening to cook food for the two of you. you sigh at your own stupidity, walking closer to him to take a seat right next to him.

he doesn’t realise you’ve woken up until he feels some weight shift in the space next to him. you lean onto his shoulder and wakatoshi cranes his neck to the side to see you resting your head on him. “hey there.” he whispers, breathing out as he squirms to place the flute glass on the table without disturbing your comfort. you help him by getting off his shoulder to grab the glass yourself to put it away.

“i’m sorry.” you say to him, shrugging, looking at him looking at you dazed like the light drinker that he is. “i forgot you were coming over.” you purse your lips, admitting you totally forgot about your plans for tonight, and ironically you were the one warning him not to forget about it before you left his company.

“it’s okay.” he shrugs at you, unfazed by your forgetfulness, pulling you back closer to him. you place your head on his shoulder again, sighing as the two of you stare at the screen in front of you for seven minutes until wakatoshi tells you, “i ordered some take out for us.”

“i figured you didn’t have food either.” he says, grabbing the remote to turn the television off. in the silence that disperses around the two of you, heavy thoughts clog your mind. wakatoshi. haruko. your feelings. everything that has had you on edge for the past week and a half starts weighing down on you and you squirm next to him, sighing as the weight of all those thoughts drags your sanity down.

this is something you always do. there’s nothing strange about wakatoshi and you ordering takeout and having dinner late into the night, but following haruko’s words to you, everything about this insignificant gesture makes you feel burdened. you know you’re going to have to come clean to him tonight, but just like this afternoon, the words you’re looking for clog at the base of your throat, and what comes out instead is, “why?” you ask, taking your head off his shoulder, shifting in your position to meet his gaze instead.

“what do you mean why?” he asks, perplexed, taken aback by your question. he notices the water pooling at your eyes, and he moves forward to wipe it off for you but you do so yourself even before he can, thinking you’re doing a great job hiding your confused emotions.

“why did you order take out?” you question again, this time elaborating on it and he looks at you with the most addled expression he can possibly put on.

“but we always do so when neither of us wants to cook.” he reminds you, attesting to the credibility of his gesture, prompting you that there’s nothing new to this. if anything, it’s a tradition despite his strict diet and you’ve done it so many times before, it no longer feels like a cheat to him.

“but it’s different now, wakatoshi.” you confess, eyes moving away from his to stare at your fingers fiddling with each other. by the end of your said sentence, your voice falters off, and his name comes out only as a soft whisper, brushing past his curiosity.

wakatoshi doesn’t understand what you’re trying to prove. he’s still just as perplexed as he was two minutes ago. your words are legible but they make no sense to him. he doesn’t know what about ordering take out tonight is so different than how it has always been. he agrees that facing you has been difficult for him since you came back, but doesn’t mean things between the two of you have altered drastically. you’re still his best friend and this is still very normal, or so he thinks.

“what are you talking about, yn?” he questions the claim you’re trying to make, leaning forward into the space in front of him, hands supported by his thighs as he turns his back to the side to look at you, while you’re still staring at your hands, avoiding his expectant gaze.

“we’re not friends, toshi.” you tell him, words faltering off radar as they come out, confusing him furthermore, but he listens in a silence that’s haunted by his own fumbling feelings instead of interjecting you. “we haven’t been for the longest time, i think.” you state and stop speaking, and after two minutes of awkward silence that’s only interrupted by the chirping of the cuckoo clock at eleven, he asks you, still searching for your gaze, “what do you mean?” at this point, wakatoshi begins to put pieces of the puzzle together but he’s humbled by his lack of experience, so he doesn’t jump to conclusions. instead, he gives you a heads up, vouching for you to resume.

“haruko told me that i never really loved them.” you begin, sighing as you force the clogged words to come out as they can, staggering through your sentences, looking for wakatoshi’s understanding, “they told me it’s always been you.” wakatoshi gulps at your words, things becoming clearer by the second. he provides reassurance when he hums, allowing you to proceed without being smothered by your nervousness.

“and the truth is, toshi, i like you, and i liked you even when we were sixteen.” you confess, voice breaking apart between words, tears gathering at the corner of your eyes as you continue, and wakatoshi isn’t surprised in the least, at least he doesn’t show it, but a part of him sighs in happiness when he hears you say it. you continue, “but then when it became clear that you wanted nothing to do with anything other than volleyball, i decided to date other people to take my mind off you.”

you pause, finally meeting his gaze as you wait for him to say something, but instead, he takes your trembling hands to envelope them in the warmth, blinking at you to reassure you to continue with what you’re trying to tell him. you breathe out, offering him a smile that speaks of gratitude for his understanding on the matter. you sigh, nodding to yourself before you resume speaking, “i met haruko after several failed attempts at dating and they made me happy. i finally thought i no longer needed to be stuck on you.”

“but i think haruko saw through me quite well. just because i was in love with them, or so i thought, didn’t mean i didn’t look at you the same way i did at sixteen.” you declare, pitch falling into the unknown as you approach the end, still looking into his eyes, and he does nothing about it. he only smiles at you, nodding in reassurance, and you think this is going easier than you thought it would.

“and i think what they said is right. i really really like you, toshi.” you let the words fall out, painting your cheeks crimson red and he feels the heat muddle at his own cheeks too. for a moment, the two of you look away in obvious embarrassment, but you swallow your fear, saying, “when i realised, i wanted to run away from the truth, which is why i ignored you.” you face him again.

“but the thing is, i don’t think i can do that to you or to myself.” you don’t have anything more to say, so you release your hands from his hold to lean back into the cushion of the sofa, feeling like the weight has been lifted off your shoulders, sighing in some kind of victory, having finally overcome your fear. but you think you had nothing to worry about in the first place because wakatoshi seemed to be unbothered by all of it, but he’s yet to make a statement about it, which still concerns you.

“then what about the ring?” of all the things he should say in response to it, wakatoshi decides to ask about the ring you mentioned in your email and you chuckle, thinking you’ve lost the fight, thinking there’s no part of him that likes you back, no part of him that’s happy about this. you think he’s asking about the ring because he wanted you to marry haruko to get rid of you. talk about your eleven pm brain. so you sigh, crouching forward to narrate yet another story, “the ring was a fake.”

“it was for their niece who wanted a ring similar to her mom’s engagement ring.” you tell him, shrugging, and he giggles at the story, only exciting a frown from your end. “what’s there to laugh about?” you ask him, twitching your lips into a grimace.

“nothing, it’s just that—“ before he can finish, he’s interrupted by the door bell. you jump out of your seat, assuming it’s the delivery guy bringing the take out wakatoshi ordered earlier.

“i’ll pay for it.” you state, grabbing your wallet on your way to the door, and wakatoshi nods, knowing convincing you otherwise will be a futile effort.

you return to your seat with the paper bag in your hand. wakatoshi takes it off your possession, putting it on the table next to the champagne bottle. for a good ninety seconds, neither of you speak or attempt to open the take out that’s beginning to get cold. wakatoshi looks at you from the corner of his eye from time to time, and you’re staring at the take out in front of you, waiting for it to be opened, but you’re holding yourself back. there isn’t tension hanging by the air between the two of you, instead, it feels even more calmer than it usually does. but you’re waiting for him to address the elephant in the room. before you eat, you want to know his thoughts regarding the situation. you don’t have to say it for him to realise. wakatoshi swallows his nervousness, finding your gaze. you blink at him, reassuring him just like he did for you, prompting him to take the stage.

“tendo told me i liked you when we were nineteen.” he tells you and you look at him with a surprised look on your face, startled at his words. he resumes when he finds your gaze still looking down on him with the same softness from before, “but i told him that wasn’t possible. i kept denying for the longest time, and every time tendo would tell me, i would brush it off.”

“but recently, i realised i’ve liked you all along. i’m sorry it wasn’t sooner.” he ends his note with an apology and you nod at him, telling him silently that you forgive him although he has nothing to apologize about.

for wakatoshi, world beyond volleyball was nothing but a blur. love was something only people with a lot of time on their hands indulged in. for him, the volleyball court was where he needed to outperform himself. human emotions could’ve waited. for wakatoshi, your presence was the luckiest thing to have ever happened to him, but at the same time, coming to terms with tendo’s words was something he never discovered enough courage for, so he let those words drift astray from himself.

he apologised because he knows he hurt you somewhere along the way. somewhere between trying to make time for you and neglecting you without notice, there’s enough hurt wakatoshi left for you to scrimmage through, and although you will never hold him accountable for it, he thinks it’s only right for him to step up to apologise now. better late than never.

but having known him since you were six, having seen him dedicate the entirety of his existence to volleyball, you never expected him to realise his mistakes in the first place, let alone apologise to you. coming to think of it, you never thought of those as wrongdoings to begin with, but still, when you hear an apology dripping off his lips, you’re taken aback just as much as you were when you heard him say he likes you back. but you decide not to extend the conversation further, knowing there’s nowhere to go beyond your respective confessions.

“so,” you begin, eyeing him expectantly, “what now?”

“we eat the take out.” he shrugs at you, reaching out for the paper bag to open it to empty its contents. you rush to the kitchen to grab two plates and some cutlery while he puts the two containers next to his flute glass, pouring some champagne into it. you return, offering him the steel ware to serve the dinner.

“i meant to ask what about our feelings?” you repeat your question, stressing on it this time around. he looks at you, one brow raised, “you act like you didn’t want to eat the take out the moment it arrived.” you hum at his words, lightly chuckling in agreement. sure, you were desperate to eat, but really, you meant to ask about your feelings before that.

“but i meant what i asked.” you tell him, pressing on your curiosity, sighing, as you take the plate of miso ramen he offers you.

“we’ll talk about it later.” he reassures you, taking a spoonful of noodles into his mouth, sounding distorted, “we have time for that.”

“do we?” you question the credibility of his words, “do we really have enough time?” your skepticism irks him to laugh, but with food in his mouth, he holds back.

“yn, i meant after we’re finished eating.” he sighs at you, consuming the bolus in his mouth before laughing at how clueless and dramatic you sounded to him only a minute ago. you purse your lips, embarrassed, with cheeks slightly red as you slurp the noodles dripping with soup.

“i’m so stupid.” you state, chuckling at yourself, following in wakatoshi’s footsteps to release a short laugh.

“you’re not. i think you’re just surprised, that’s all.” he reassures you, taking the flute in his hand to gulp a few sips of champagne.

“since when do you know so much about things like these?” you ask him, eyebrows raised, taken aback by his words in response to your statement.

“since i decided to give it a thought instead of just thinking about volleyball.” he confesses, shrugging at you, offering you his glass of champagne.

you accept his offering, telling him, “i think i like you better like this, toshi.” you take a few sips from his glass before returning it to him to finish off your ramen.

“i’m glad you do.“ his lips break into the widest grin they’ve known as he looks at the leftover noodles in his plate, barely accounting for another bite or two.

you let a few minutes pass in silence while you watch wakatoshi finish his yakisoba, alternating it with a few sips of champagne. the champagne bottle is half empty, which makes it even clearer that none of his words were a fluke tonight. wakatoshi ushijima really likes you. he really likes you and although it’s hard to digest, the truth is right in front of you.

he takes the last bite of his noodles, then places the plate aside to wipe his hands and lips using tissue papers. you waste no time walking up to him as soon as he puts the plate to the side, climbing onto his lap, whispering to him, as you feel your pulse throbbing against your veins, bringing your lips a centimetre further from his, “can i?” he nods, feeling the warm air escaping your lips against his own, and you let yourself kiss him. you hate to admit it, but he tastes like champagne and bell peppers, neither of the flavours you particularly fancy, but wakatoshi also tastes like love, so you let it slide, kissing him once more after you part lips for a mere second.

“wakatoshi, i don’t think i like you.” a heavy breath escapes your lips, brushing past his philtrum, you words instilling fear. “i love you.” you confess, blurry words fall around as you withdraw from a third kiss, hands still cupping his cheeks, breathing out loud, confessing the only thought swarming your mind, and instead of saying anything in reply to it, he lets his lips clash into your own for a fourth time, letting the flavours of miso powder and champagne mix again, and although it isn’t exactly the best thing he’s ever tasted, he’s fine with it, he thinks, as the littlest tinge of adrenaline begins to disperse around his blood.

“i love you too, yn.” he says it back, pulling you in closer, thrusting your waist nearer to his abdomen. your hands slide off his cheeks to seek the support of his body as he pulls your own closer to him and you toggle off balance in the process. your hands land on his shoulder and you can sense the rhythm of his heavy breaths with how close you are to him. he kisses your neck, and you squirm when you feel the ticklish sensation his lips leave behind as they trail along your skin.

“take me out, wakatoshi.” you whisper in his ear, voice interjected by heavy breaths that land on his head at the expense of the pleasure amassing within you in the moment, while he continues exploring the area beneath your ears, soft kisses pecking your skin.

“take me out, i said.” you raise your voice, instating your demand once again, taking his face into the palm of your hand to plant another kiss on his lips.

“okay.” he nods, accepting your orders as he lifts you up only to drop you on the cushion of your couch before he lets himself land on top you.

“take me out on a date tomorrow.” you repeat, heavy breaths escaping your lips when you feel wakatoshi’s lips beginning to explore your abdomen, and your body quivers at his touch, trembling to the rhythm of the kisses he leaves behind.

“i’ll take you out on a date tomorrow.” he nods at you, a gracious smile stretching his lips apart as his gaze, overflowing with love peers at you, like he’s the happiest man alive right now with you at the dispense of his arms. you smile back at him, a little restless with all the hormones rushing around your veins two fold, pulling his face closer to your own.

#haikyuu anime #haikyuu manga #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x y/n #haikyuu x you #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu angst #haikyuu fanfiction #ushijima x you #ushijima x reader #ushijima x y/n #hq ushijima

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arowrath · 23 days

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following me simulator (in the reverse order it should be for readability sorry)

773,439 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 08:27am

good MORNINg dashboard. time for another day i am not ready but i will do it

#text #happyt thursday treat thursday

3 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 10:02am

to do today. psych quiz , work on zines, Remember to eat, dont die

#text #to do list tag

4 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 10:37am

my life is so beautiful (boy whos at the library voice)

#text

14 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 11:13am

GO TO HERE

#text #Spotify

9 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 11:22am

all right well why dont u listen to the waves crash against the shore for a while and maybe you’ll calm down . can you let the beauty of the world overtake you for just one fucking second

#text

31,798 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 12:05pm

everyone on here needs to stop laughing about how "adopting pets from a shelter is for losers" and "those animals should be hunted for sport instead" its reprehensible on so many levels. First of all

#text #discourse

27 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 12:32pm

answer my questions boy

#text #polls

126 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 01:14pm

mcr5 summer 2024. mark my words

#text #mcr5

8 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 01:49pm

shaking and trembling and looking at you with fear in my eyes etc . did anyone else notice its scary

#text #scaredposting

39 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 02:43pm

ooh my godfdddd guys . just had an f slur moment so insane i literally cant come backfrom this one they have to kill me they have to kill me.

#text #I HATE BEING BISEXUAL THIS IS SO HUMBLING . #i would literally. WHATEVER

19 notes

aropride Follow 🔁 mychemmutal1 Follow April 5th 2024, 04:12pm

[gerard image]

#i miss you baby girl please call me i love you

12,971 notes

aropride Follow 🔁 normalaestheticblog Follow April 5th 2024, 04:23pm

[picture of a big clunky computer with some wires exposed or something]

#MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE. need her carnally #💾

7,122 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 06:37pm

just had the best pbj sandwich ever if you even care

#i love you pbj sandwich #text

4 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 06:58pm

i am goign to rip this title ix coordinator LIMB FROM LIMB !!!!!!!!

#text #WHO ELSE UP HAVING THEIR CIVIL RIGHTS VIOLATED LOLLLL #the negligence is crazy Lol . giys should i sue . i could literally fucking sue right now . oh my god . jesus christ #neg #🗒️

11 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 07:14pm

its like no one even cares about frozen 2013 anymore

#text

2 notes

aropride Follow 🔁 mychemmutual2 Follow April 5th 2024, 07:19pm

[gerard image]

#i miss her thighs i mean her music #PLEASE VOME BACKKKKKKK

1,939 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 08:12pm

judt went to the store and almost got hit by a fucking car coming back Like actually

#text #HAPPY THURSDAY I GUESS . WHATEVER

12 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 08:15pm

no but literally like. im NEVER gonna give you up. NEVER gonna let you down NEVER gonna tell a lie and HURT YOU..!!!!!!!!

#text #/ly

6 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 08:31pm

edibles time i deserve a little treat to be FREAKING honest

#text #weedposting

2 notes

aropride Follow April 5th 2024, 09:48pm

The edible has turned me bisexual once more.

#text #I NEED THEM IN A WAY THAT'S CONCERNING TO THE QUEER RIGHTS MOVEMENT

#text #fakeposting #about me

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diordrysdale · 2 years

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after dark ⋆ andy barber (part 2)

dark!neighbor!andy barber x camgirl!reader

word count ⋆ 1.1k+

warnings ⋆ smut! minors dni, virtual sex/livestream, cheating, sexual use of a popsicle, age gap (reader in their 20s, andy in his late 40s) daddy kink, masturbation (f), degradation kink, mention of spanking, VERY SLIGHT mention of cnc play (you’ll see).

authors note ⋆ you all will definitely see andy’s dark side next chapter <3

don’t forget to give me some love, reblogs and likes are very much appreciated.

PART 1

3 days earlier

“you just need to feed sprinkles three times a day, and that’s pretty much it.”

your best friend, lila, handed you her family’s cat as she rushed to gather more of her belongings and tossed them into her luggage.

“the guest room is all yours, make yourself at home!” you followed behind her as she scrambled down the stairs at the sound of her mother calling out for her.

“if our house is still intact when we come back, you’ll get paid,” lila rolled her eyes at her mother as she hugged you goodbye.

“come on, tony! we’re gonna miss the flight!” the eighteen year old boy waved goodbye to his best friend and next door neighbor, jacob barber.

“keys are on the counter top, help yourself to whatever’s in the fridge. love you, bye!”

present day

andy huffed as he scrubbed at the dishes, listening to his wife chat loudly on the phone while the television was blaring whatever brain-rotting reality show was trending at the moment.

he tilted his wrist to reveal the time on the apple-watch, 7:03p.m.

it was torture having to wait.

“andrew! go water the plants next door, cindy and the kids aren’t home— carol, stop!” laurie continued laughed on the phone with her friends, forcing andy to count to ten before drying his hands, although the simple act gave him a flashback.

sucking on a popsicle in nothing but your light pink lingerie, you told 60.8k of your loyal subscribers how your day went, how you were terrible bored during a job interview and could only picture yourself spreading your legs for the employer, begging him for the job as he slaps your pussy with his rough belt.

“I’m not sure if I got the job, but at least I have all of you,” you lean back into your cloud-shaped, getting comfortable in the bed you got to call yours for two weeks.

barber543 donated $250.00!

barber543: stop pouting, you make me wanna fuck that slutty mouth of yours til you’re begging me not to

your [e/c] eyes lit up at the familiar user, giddiness running through your veins as you hook your panties to the side with one hand.

“barber543, I did promise a surprise, didn’t I?” You whisper as your other hand moved the blueberry-flavored popsicle towards your sex, moving through your folds before tapping your clit.

“you choose what I call you.” sliding the cold treat inside your cunt, you whimpered at the feeling, heart racing at the notifications of subscribers screen-recording.

barber543: greedy little girl, say mr. barber

“m-mr. barber,” andy shuddered at your breathy words, “don’t fuck me with the popsicle, please.”

barber543: you better fucking take it if you want my cock, you don’t deserve it

“ah- pleaseplease, ‘s too cold-“ your words contrast against how quick you began fucking your cunt with the popsicle, clenching it around it so delicately.

barber543: harder.

“mr. barber, m’ gonna cum, feels too good-“ you choked on your words as your free hand zeroed relentlessly on your numbing clit, back arching as your hand flew out to clutch your bedsheet, leaving half of the blueberry treat in your pulsing cunt.

barber543: wish I could bend you over and slap your ass raw for cumming without my permission.

“don’t punish me, daddy,” your fucked out glance was priceless, removing the popsicle from your center and licked the tip with a breathless giggle.

andy shook his head with a idiotic grin as if he actually was face to face with the angel that you were— or pretended to be.

andy wiped his cum-tainted hand on spare napkin, before something caught his eye.

kneelforhansen donated $3000.00!

kneelforhansen: I’d love to have you for myself. direct message me if you’re interested, kitten.

andy despised the glimmer in your eyes— a look he wanted to believe only belonged to him.

“oh my, thank you,” andy could tell your soft voice was entirely genuine, and he was about to raise the amount, but he remembered than any purchased higher than a thousand would send an alert to his and laurie’s joint email account.

“you’ve made my night, mister.”

andy scowled at the memory— even if a billion people watched your stream, he liked to think you two were simply having a skype-sex session or whatever the younger people used now for video chatting.

facetime?

“hold on- andrew! the plants!” laurie shrilled, waving her hands as she pressed her phone between her ear and her shoulder.

“fucking hell.” andy mumbled, slamming a drawer into place as he made his way out of the house, glancing towards his right and analyzed the garden.

suddenly, he saw purple lights go on in one of the rooms on the second floor.

if cindy’s daughter is still home, why is he doing their chores?

he shoved his hands into his jeans, opting not to water their stupid roses and stupid hortensias and stupid—

his childish thoughts were interrupted by a sweet maserati revving carelessly into the driveway.

he’d be humiliated to admit his jaw dropped at the sight of a celebrity walking about 10 feet away.

devin peters, movie star.

“I’m outside, baby.” he sang into his phone, most likely sending a voice chat as he leaned against the goddess of a car.

the front door swung open, revealing a girl with nothing but a oversized shirt and pink panties, [h/c] hair and beaming [e/c] andy couldn’t mix up.

there was no way.

“there she is.” devin reached out his arms, engulfing you in a needy hug, guiding your legs around his narrow waist.

no. no.

“my pretty girl. how’s my kitten been?” the movie star began walking blindly to the house, mind racing on how many ways he could utterly destroy you.

“oh, crap, that’s lila’s neighbor. hold on,” you wiggled yourself away, shyly making your way towards the older man who was three seconds away from passing out from shock.

“im sure Cindy must’ve told you to take care of these flowers, but I’m house-sitting for a couple weeks. I can manage, mister…”

“barber. mr. barber.”

your eyes widen as your head spun for a split second due to the unquestionable coincidence.

no way.

┗━•❃°•°❀°•°❃•━┛

PART 3

a/n; this is my multiverse: lloyd hansen, andy barber & devin peters

(devin peters is chris evans’ cameo character in the movie don’t look up, just a reminder :)

#kali writes !#andy barber #andy barber x female reader #andy barber x reader smut #andy barber fluff #andy barber x reader #chris evans x female reader #chris evans #chris evans smut #chris evans x reader #andy barber smut

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cdbabymp3 · 1 month

Text

yap sesh with jules time

tldr ; new slushy vlog debrief and being extremely sad on a sunday night

y'all i hate myself for it but tell me why that brief 0.3 second clip of hamzah vaping in the new vlog got me acting up rn....that big ass cloud of smoke flying past his pretty face LIKE BOY COME OVER AND SHOTGUN THAT BLUEBERRY VAPE INTO MY MOUTH !! anyway. also having weird confusing feelings about martin bc why was his face card lowkey giving in this vid.... never been attracted to him but i see edits and im like .... hold on ..... 🤔... yes he was giving ozempic spiderman FINE WHATEVER but he's got a little something to him idk. mandy knows what's up. maybe im insane or maybe there are some martin biases out there who are nodding their heads while reading this. maybe i'll make a low effort edit of him and it will convince you guys. maybe it won't. who knows! in other news, need to be hamzah's trip sitter while he's on shrooms bc he's so cute and clueless. and y'all saw the way he kept closing his eyes and taking deep breaths ... yeah need asap thanks 🩷 the way he didn't know who he was dressed up as was KILLING ME bc how do u not know when you ordered the damn costume??? my anime nerd ass was cringing at him calling himself literally 4 wrong character names. silly boy it's okay i still love him. AND MARTIN WITH THE TIMBS GOODBYE 😭 THE WAY THEY LOOKED BRAND NEW TOO I WAS CRYING. i know his ass ordered those off the amazon storefront.

on a personal note 🧌 i'm having friend issues rn and this is the only place i can't rant abt it without someone using my words against me 🤗 currently in an awkward text standstill with my friend of 10 years and i'm genuinely so lost on what to do. the friendship has gotten so toxic to the point where i fear how she takes my tone bc im worried she'll confront me. like no joke im afraid of her so i always give in and take the blame for everything. it's time to move on ik but i hate confrontation (especially over text) and im so bad at ending friendships. idk i just feel so bad bc this is the 5th friendship thats fallen through and im starting to think im just not cut out for long-term friendships?? i always get in these situations where i make myself small so that the friend can stay happy being in control which is so fucked up and i'm tiredddddd of it omfg. but yeah all of this shit is making me lose hope in having friends in general like maybe this is it for me. im being dramatic i need to end this post wow.

#yap sesh w jules ^o^#hamzahthefantastic #hamzahthefantastic x reader #slushy noobz

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