#the only regrets i have are no sheep

[tony-andonuts]

I think ive decided to go to my dads funeral in a dress, despite his super conservative mentees. He'd likely expect it from me and luckily his side of the fam are all faggots and trannies but ughhhhh i am dreading it. Also I know I'm expected to come up with a eulogy and a roast segment, along with talking to others but I can't and won't. (On a semi-non-seious note the eulogy i cant do bc yknow. And the roast because im too cutthroat and would start drama lmao)

Probably obvious that I've never attended a funeral for someone I actually knew but this shit fucking sucks, no one should have to be prepared for their own parent's funeral at 21

(And no one should have to get neglected by the healthcare system to the point of death but oh well it already happened)

#i haaate being negative when drunk #but it has been on my mind #i also have other social expectations and ig someones mad at me for not keeping in touch with my recently unestranged siblings #but like wtf do you expect me to do when my own dad died quickly by the hand of the medical system and im recovering from surgery/- #preparing to go back to work???? #im literally back for three days before his service; and then straight back to work #i know my familial regret will create consequences but also literally fucking none of them reach out to us #we are the black sheep of the family and no one wants to make the effort to care for us #once everyone else is over my dads death theyre gonna ditch us without consequences #but my ass will suffer if i dont talk to anyone #ok wow a lot spilled. gonna go jack off or interact with nice things or something. none of this is my fault and theres only so much i can do #sorry for long tags #i will not be an angry drunk. i am a dumb/happy drunk (/mantra) #tony speaks #tony vents #this post is rat proof

[boxofbonesfic]

Title: Monster

Kinktober Masterlist

Pairing: Orc!Bucky x Sacrifice!Reader

Kink: Teratophilia (Monsterfucking)

Summary: You draw the devil’s coin in the village lottery, you will buy another season of peace for your people—but you don’t want peace.

Warnings: 18+ Only, Dark Fantasy, Monsterfucking, References to past violence, References to past murder, Witch Burning, Forced Marriage, Dubious Consent, Violence, Revenge, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Darkfic, Dark Fanfiction

A/N: as a note, this story does NOT share a universe with my other Orc story, Brave. this is another version of Orc!Bucky that i cooked up for kinktober. speaking of which, i hope you all enjoy the first installment of my 2023 kinktober ficlets and drabbles! mind the warnings, and enjoy!

Your wedding day dawns bleak and cold. The snows have come early this year, snuffing out the brief, brittle green of summer with icy finality, blanketing the hills in thick layers of white.

Your death day.

“Up with you.” You aren’t asleep, but Thera rips the blanket from you anyway. “Come. It’s time you prepare for your... husband.” There is no pity anywhere on her wrinkled face as she grimaces at you, her eyes dark with disgust. “Witch.” She mutters the last part like a curse you aren’t meant to hear. You do, though, and you bare  your teeth at Thera like an animal in response. You are satisfied when fear settles over her features, her rheumy eyes widening. 

“If I were a witch,” you hiss, “You would not stand whole before me, Thera Truthspeaker.” This time it is her name that burns in the ear like acid. “You would lay at my feet in pieces.”

She slaps you for the threat, and you taste blood in your mouth as your head jerks painfully. Thera grasps your chin, and you turn dazed eyes toward the old priestess.

“You speak with as foul a tongue as your mother,” she spits.

“Pity you couldn’t burn mine out of me like you did her.” At this, she looks regretful, cutting her eyes at you angrily.

“Lucky for you Demon King likes his brides whole.” She squeezes until you grunt with pain. “And unspoiled.” She tosses your head to the side before standing away from your cot before brushing her hands down her long, thick robes as though wiping your taint from them. “Save your venom, little snake. It is by my grace you were not put to the torch two seasons ago with your witch mother.”

You almost wish they had, instead of forcing the scarred coin into your hand. At least you can serve the light like this, the priest had said, his grim face illuminated by the firelight. You have not forgotten the way your mother’s body burned bright, her head turned heavenward, her mouth open in silent scream as the flames leapt from her blackened lips.

At least you can serve some good when he comes.

Despite her age, Thera’s grip is strong as she forces you up out of the narrow cot. The stone floor of the chapel is like ice on your bare feet as you stumble after her. There is an old metal basin in the chapel’s meager kitchen, and Thera instructs you to strip before ushering you into the steaming water. You hiss at the burn, but it’s the warmest you’ve been in weeks. Months, more-like. She scrubs your skin raw with rough fingers, and tears through your hair with the comb until your scalp stings. When you wince, Thera cracks her open palm against the back of your skull.

“Be still!” Your ears ring from the force of her blow. “This is an honor—a great privilege you have been afforded, though you are tainted and unworthy.” 

The laugh that bubbles from your chest is bitter. “This is not your pulpit, Truthspeaker, and I am not your sheep.” 

Thera paints the symbols for fertility and prosperity on your damp shoulders in perfumed oil before rubbing them into your skin. She combs the oil through your hair, too, braiding gold thread into it as she pins it up away from your face. As she is closing the bridal robe around your shoulders, the door flies open.

The priest practically falls through it, his face shining with sweat despite the temperature. The charcoal around his wide, fear-bright eyes runs dark on his pale skin, like dark tears tracking down his gaunt cheeks. His terror is catching, your own heart pounding against your ribs. 

“He comes! The Demon King comes! He rides for the village!” Thera glances at you, her thin lips curving into a cruel smile. 

“And his bride waits.”

—

You have seen a bride taken, once. You were young, six seasons, perhaps? Seven? You saw the Demon King ride away with her, her long, black veil whipping behind her in the icy wind.

Mother had told you not to go, not to watch—It’s barbaric, my love, we needn’t take part—but you couldn’t help yourself. She is lucky, she is blessed, the townspeople murmured amongst themselves as they watched her go. Chosen. She’d drawn the coin from the bag, the same pitted, pocked metal that the priest had forced into your trembling hands as you’d watched your mother burn.

Life for life.

The rope bites into your wrists as you tug uselessly at your bindings. Your breath leaves your lips in frantic clouds of white as you pull and pull. Your only victory is the creak of the rope as it tightens. Your teeth chatter as you stare into the fog. It rolls out between the trunks of the bare trees like tendrils, creeping along the snow-covered ground until it fills the air, obscuring light and sound until all around you is dim as twilight.

“Your bride awaits you,” the priest’s muffled voice trembles. “Take her and honor our agreement, as it has been, and as it shall be.”

For a long time there is no answer from the thick, swirling fog. You count each second, your aching arms stretched above you, the rough wood of the post digging into your back through your cloak. The cold eats away at your bones as you shiver. It’s not snowing any more, but the loose drift blows up into your face as the wind rips at you. The priest’s voice trembles as he begins again.

“Take her and honor our—”

“Silence.”

 The voice vibrates powerfully in your very marrow, in your head and all around. He is near. You can barely see a foot in front of you, and now you are glad for it, glad you cannot see the face of your death. The mist swells, roiling angrily around you as your skin prickles with his closeness. You know not what the Dark King looks like, but you know what you have heard murmured in the dark corners of ale-soaked taverns and in the pews of every chapel of the Holy Light—he is darkness, he is devil made flesh and set upon the children of light so that they might know fear. 

That the price of flesh paid by your people is all that keeps him from loosing his terrible fury upon the valley—

But you do not yet know you believe.

You are afraid, that much you can tell from the thundering of your heart and the staccato sound of your own breath. You cannot see him, but you know he circles you, like a wolf, just behind the curtain of smoke and mist. The silence is deafening, and for a moment you wonder grimly what the Truthspeakers will do with you if the Devil himself does not take you—

“I accept this offering.”

 He steps sideways out of nowhere, the air simply parting like a curtain to reveal him. The Orc regards you silently, watching your breath cloud the air and disappear. He reaches for you and you flinch, but he doesn’t touch you. Instead, he pulls at the ropes. The priest knotted them tightly around the post, but when the Orc pulls lightly, it comes away easily, as if undone by his touch. 

His face is more human than you expected, fierce blue eyes set above chiseled cheekbones. His tusks poke out from beneath his bottom lip, but only barely, more evident as he grimaces. You wonder if he is displeased with you, as he looks you over, and you flinch when he reaches out with one massive, gloved hand. He grasps your chin firmly, turning your head this way and that before sighing. 

“Come.” 

 This time, his voice does not echo through the clearing as if spoken by a dozen men. He reaches for you again, this time drawing the dark veil down over your face. His horse is as large and dark as he is, and the great beast paws the ground as you near, and you see your own fearful face reflected in its strange red eyes. He chuckles at your reluctance.

“Afraid, little bride?”

You are. Truly afraid. Of him. Of the village. Of the way forward, wherever it led. But you would not be like Thera, like the cowering priests in their chapel. Your fear would not rule you. 

You grasp the reins and fit a foot into the stirrup. 

“I am afraid.” Swinging your leg up, you climb into the saddle. “And I am more than fear.” He smiles, the sharp, white points of his teeth gleaming as his lips part.

“Good.” He steps up behind you, and your face flushes with heat as he fits you against his front. 

“What are you called?” He hesitates, and you wonder whether or not he will tell you the truth.

“James.”

—

The sun is low in the sky by the time you see the encampment, nestled in the dark, snowy hills like a glowing ember. You tense as you see it, going rigid in the saddle.

“I did not know you came to collect your bride price with an army.” You reply, and behind you James chuckles. 

“How else would I make sure it was paid?” 

You feel small and alone as you ride into camp, your veil still pulled low over your eyes. The sounds of music and conversation die as the king approaches, the garrison watching with curious apprehension. The pack parts for you, people stepping away from James’ horse with a respectful bow. He is King here, of that there could be no doubt. A great fire blazes at the heart off the encampment, and James rides close enough to feel its heat before dismounting. He holds out his hand to you with a thin smile. 

“Come, little wife. Lay aside your fear and let us know your fate.” You return his grim smile with one of your own. 

I suppose I always knew it would end in fire.

You take his hand, and James helps you down. For a moment, there is no sound other than the roar of the flames and the shrill whistle of the icy wind. 

“She is small.” The voice is heavy with age, and rife with irritation. “It will not be her.” You turn to see the stooped Orc step out from the crowd of onlookers. She leans heavily on the staff she carries, the top adorned with an assortment of feathers and tiny, white bones. James does not look away from you. 

“The fire will tell.” 

He pushes your bridal robe from your shoulders, undoing the tie around your waist. The cloth falls to the ground, leaving you naked. You are not cold, though, not this close to the fire. The veil he leaves on, and the fabric whispers against your bare ankles. The old Orc hobbles closer, peering at you with her one good eye. 

“You know what to do.” 

You do—you step into the fire. It burns—burns hotter than anything you have ever known—

But there is no pain. You open your eyes. All around you is light, beautiful, glorious light. You lift an arm, and flames dance along your skin, leaving trails of radiant heat. You raise your arms above your head with a shout. They should have burnt me in the village. You imagine the streets burning bright with your flames. 

Something is changed in you, something opened, something broken free, something you’d never even known was caged inside you. You are the fire, it is you—

The old Orc slams the staff against the ground with a sound like thunder,  and the flames cool to embers as you drop your arms, panting. You are giddy with power, your heart beating in your chest as fiercely as the flames. 

“Fire-sign.” She draws symbols on your face in red ichor, and matching ones on James. Her scarred mouth twists into a smile as she pulls the veil from you. “Burn brightly.”  

James gathers you in his arms, lifting you with ease. He makes for one of the tents, pushing aside the heavy canvas hanging over the opening. James spills you unceremoniously onto the furs by the small fire, ripping at his clothes as he sets upon you with his hungry hands and mouth.

“Knew it would be you,” he mumbles as he lowers his mouth to yours. “Could smell the smoke on your skin.” 

Gods you burn as he kisses you. You are no longer standing in the fire but you feel it in your veins still, like it’s part of you. Your head swims as though you’d drunk your share of mead, James’ touch only adding to the dizzying rush of sensation. He kneels down between your legs, his eyes dark as he drags them down your writhing body. He licks his lips.

“My fire-sign.” He cups your cunt with one massive hand, trailing a thick finger along your slit. From the bits of hushed gossip you’d overheard from the older women in the village, wifely duties were to be penitently endured, you were to feel pain and discomfort, not this, this—

Fire.

James parts your thighs until they are wide enough to accommodate him, and he bends low. The whites of his eyes barely visible as he stares at your slick center. 

“What better wedding gift?” He says lowly, tugging your hips roughly forward until you can feel his breath on your cunt. 

You lick your lips. “And what is mine?” You ask, and James laughs. You keen as he licks a long, hot stripe up your soaked slit. 

“What would you ask of me?”

“Burn the village.” There are two voices coming from your throat when you speak. There is you, the you you know, the you you have always been—

And there is the fire. 

The thing of smoke and passion and rage in your skin now, too. 

“Leave nothing standing.”

James lowers his head to your sticky core, and wraps his arms around your thighs anchoring you to his face as he feasts. His tongue slides hungrily through your slick folds, and your eyes fly open a your hips roll of their own accord. You come apart then, shuddering and whining, but he doesn’t stop. Your hands tangle in his dark hair, pulling at his ceremonial braids as he tastes you till you’re dizzy. James finally relinquishes his hold, and when he rises his chin is wet with your pleasure. 

“You wish me to wage war, little wife?” He asks, reaching between your bodies to palm his cock. You can’t look away. “To spend fire and blood for you?”

You nod. 

“For that, I will require more than a marriage of convenience,” he replies, and you shiver as he taps the head of his cock against you with a slick, sticky noise. You whimper as he circles one of your nipples with his thumb. “I want more than just your body, understand, little bride?” His hand spans half the length of your belly it’s so big, and you stare wide eyed down at his cock. 

“I will have all of you.” James growls down at you. “Not part.” You whine as he pushes against you, the blunt head of his cock pressing inside with a pop.  Your lips fall open, a strangled moan escaping them. James’ claws dig into your hip, and he utters a curse. You’re already so full of him, you don’t know how more can fit, but James works his hips against yours, rutting shamelessly against you until you swear you’re choking on him. 

The ache is so sweet it brings tears to your eyes. 

“Y-yes!” 

He draws out, leaving you almost empty before filling you with a hard thrust. James moans low in his throat, his head falling back. He cups your face with one hand, dragging his thumb across your lips. You rake your fingers over his muscled chest and he grits his teeth, driving into you harder, curling over you as he presses your knees against your chest. 

Your breaths escape you in choked little mewls, your fingers digging into his shoulders as he drowns you in pleasure again, and the fire in your veins swells, consuming you. Behind him, the fire blazes more brightly than ever before, and  James looses a low growl, his cock pulsing inside of you.

“Then you will have war, little queen,” he says, nosing down the side of your jaw. He nips at your throat, hard enough to bruise.

You smile. 

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x female reader #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky barnes fanfiction #bucky barnes fic #bucky x you #bucky x y/n #bucky x reader #bucky x female reader #sebastian stan #sebastian stan fandom #boxofbonesfic #boxofbones #kinktober #kinktober 2023 #kinktober week 1

[pinkie-pop]

"Do Paimons Dream of Floating Sheep?"

Mondstadt: Part I Part II Part III Part IV

Based on this

Featuring: Gender-Neutral Reader, Paimon! Reader, Yandere Genshin Impact, Aether, Albedo, Eula, Diluc, Kaeya, Lisa, Venti

Word count: 1.7k

Synopsis: Being dragged into the world of your favorite video game is hardly your idea of a relaxing Saturday, and being dragged into the world of your favorite game, taking over the role of mascot even less so. Unfortunately, it seems fate has no interest in what you consider to be a normal day, and it will do anything to replace your idea of normal entirely.

Includes: Blackmail, imprisonment, drugging, injury, kidnapping, nonconsensual kiss, suicide

Note: This is the final installment.

This is only your guess, but it seems the futures that the Archive shows you are only possibilities. It's your own choices that dictate which, if any, become true. In that way, they’re similar to the hangout quests in the original game. Unfortunately, the Archive doesn't tell you what choices you have to make in order to get your desired ending. You flip through more threads of fate. 

•~•~•~•~•~•

“It’s quite simple, [Name]. All you have to do is take my hand, and we can put this whole thing behind us.” You look down at Kaeya’s outstretched hand, a bead of sweat rolling down your back. You thought he was your friend.

That was before he had you jailed for false charges. You gaze up at him in resentment, spitting on the hand he offered you. 

“Now, now,” he says, wiping his hand with a handkerchief. “There’s no need to throw a temper tantrum. I know this situation isn’t ideal, but can you really blame me for getting a bit impatient? You’ve been playing hard to get for so long now I was really starting to get the impression that you weren’t interested.” It’s amazing just how close to the truth he can get while still being delusional. “Think about it,” he says, turning around and leaving you in your cell. Alone, again.

•~•~•~•~•~•

You take an uncomfortable sip of your tea, not missing the careful way that Lisa examines you as you do. She’s been watching you carefully for a while now. Maybe if you were smarter, you would have asked about it.

It’s a little too late for regrets now, though. You can already feel the drug take its effects.

The edges of your vision go fuzzy until Lisa is the only thing in focus. You feel your mind floating away as you fawn over her, with her reciprocating just as much. You give yourself to the feeling, loving how you no longer need to think, how you no longer need to focus on anything that wasn’t her. 

How could you ever have thought of resisting her? Of trying to run away from her and her loving embrace? 

You must have been out of your mind.

•~•~•~•~•~•

The chain clinks rhythmically as Aether tugs you along, his fingers interlaced with yours. Sometimes, you wonder what the point of the bindings are, if he’s just just going to hold your hand anyway, but you dare not voice these thoughts of yours, too afraid of his reaction.

Aether has been…eractic, recently. His mood swings are out of control, and it’s all you can do to avoid setting him off, walking on eggshells like your life depends on it—which it sort of does. He would never hurt you, he says, but the bruises on your arms tell a different story.

He would never hurt you, he says, except for all the times he has.

What a gentleman, right?

•~•~•~•~•~•

Eula doesn’t say anything as she slides a ring onto your finger. An old family heirloom, she had told you earlier. It had just been sitting around, collecting dust, when she found it and thought of you. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a pretty trinket from a friend. That’s all. 

She didn’t tell you that the ring had thorns.

They face backward, making the ring easy to slip on but excruciating to take off. A simple sign of her affection for you. Pretty on the outside but suffocating within. Eula was not nearly as subtle as she liked to think, but even so, you play along. 

She’s easier to deal with when she’s not being honest.

•~•~•~•~•~•

You wake up with a searing headache. You don’t quite know how you got in this situation, all you remember is taking a midnight stroll, feeling something heavy hit your head, and then, nothing. You’re blindfolded, but you can still tell some things from your other senses. Like how you’re currently tied up on a bed.

You think you’ve been kidnapped. But by who? Who would do such a thing, and why to you? You don’t have money to ransom, you’ve got no grudges with anyone, you don’t have anything that a kidnapper would want. The idea that maybe they’re targeting you to get to Aether crosses your mind, but if that were the case, why would they place you on a bed? Why use silk for your bindings instead of harsh ropes or chains?

It doesn’t make sense.

“Ah, you’re awake.” You perk up immediately. You know that voice, it’s Diluc! Is he here to rescue you? But, wait…what was that he said? ‘You’re awake,’ it’s almost like…he already knew about your situation. 

It’s almost like…he was the one who put you in it. But that can’t be right.

Can it?

•~•~•~•~•~•

Your feet ache. A side effect of the surgery, Albedo tells you. You can’t believe him. You said you were leaving to Liyue once, and the next thing you know, he’s put you under anesthesia and severed your Achilles tendons. Maybe you should be more horrified about this, but right now all you can feel is annoyance. Perhaps you’ve already grown used to Albedo and his possessive tendencies.

Perhaps you’re simply banking on your ability to fly. Sure, it’s true that you’ve never flown since that day, but that doesn’t mean you’ve suddenly forgotten how to. It’ll be easy. All you have to do is get over your paralyzing fear of heights, bypass the cabin locks Albedo installed, find an opportunity to get away, survive the sheer cold of Dragonspine, and then you’re home free.

…

Or, maybe you’d be better off adjusting to a life of captivity.

•~•~•~•~•~•

“Close your eyes,” Venti says in his usual boyish, cheerful tone. As if the two of you were simply playing. As if he doesn’t have you cornered in an alley, his hands locking yours in place.

You close your eyes. Instantly, you feel his lips on yours, again. His lips move against yours in a careful rhythm, almost like the songs he used to play for you. Peaceful times like that feel so far away. Now, your relationship is coded only in violence, only in him taking, taking what doesn’t belong to him. His grip on your arm tightens as he squeezes, the message clear. You kiss back, disgusted by how easily you give in to his whims. 

It takes all the will and self-restraint you have not to try and push him off—you already know such an attempt would fail, anyway. After all, you’re only human. And a human has no chance of winning a fight against a god.

So much for the city of freedom.

•~•~•~•~•~•

Okay, the idea of being in the world of your favorite video game was fun at first, but this is too much. You can't do this. You need a way out.

But…how do you find an exit when you've never even seen the entrance?

You flip through more pages of the Archive. You scroll through information on weapons, characters, and items. You read about local specialties, character ascension materials, and enemy mobs. None of it helps. You find nothing.

You keep searching. 

You find nothing. 

You look again.

Nothing. Again. Again. Again.

The world seems to fade in and out of existence as you search until it finally melts away completely. Your vision goes fuzzy, with black splotches blocking the light, but only for a moment. When you open your eyes, you realize that you are no longer in the dungeon. You are in an infinite white that stretches out for as far as you can see. The only thing besides you is the Archive.

You look through it for a final time.

You find something. Finally. Finally, you find something. A plain white envelope falls out from between the pages. You aren’t sure how you missed it before.

Carefully, you tear open the envelope with the conveniently provided letter opener and read its contents. You don't like what you find. 

Experiment Number 0000, 

I hope that this letter finds you well, though I know that it will not have. If you were well, you would never have seen this letter in the first place. If you have found this letter, it means that things have already gone sideways or are about to. I am sure you are reading this hoping for answers. To find this letter is to have already doomed yourself. The moment you opened the book and started reading you tore open the fabrics of reality. Timelines are like strings, and your actions have molded them into a mangled knot. I do not quite know how you have found yourself in such a bizarre situation, only that you have.

I suppose I owe you an explanation, don’t I?

This book—the Archive, as you call it—is not a book at all. It is more like a ledger. What you have found, 0000, is not the future but instead a collection of the past. 

This is not your first life. 

My colleagues and I have been experimenting with eternal life and reincarnation. We tested on animals first, but nothing can ever truly replace a real, living human. I tried to stop them, believe me, I did. But I am just as powerless in the situation as you are. I could do nothing to stop their cruelty. The only thing I could do—the only thing I can do, is to write this letter, and to hope that it reaches you. Enclosed is a tool that will aid in your escape.

I am sorry, 0000. This will be your last life.

Sincerely, 

0001.

As you read through the letter, flashes of memories return to you. You remember events that have never happened in this life. You remember dying, living, killing. You remeber being kidnapped, bludgeoned, abused. You remeber being loved, cared for, and killed. You remeber everything. All these lives that you’ve lived…they must all total to well over a hundred years. You’ve had enough. You’ve lived for far too long and seen far too many things. 

You need a way out.

You look down at the letter opener in your hands. No, wait, it’s not a letter opener.

It’s a dagger.

You have no other choice. Anything to escape this hell.

And just like that, you plunge the dagger into your heart.

Taglist: @shadowkitty-me @probablynoposts @kissyhalik @persephone-kore-law @neverending-animelove @crxscnt @teravolting @resident-cryptid @esthelily @shellofthewall @dilucragnidvr @altheq0 @wegottastayfocus @jellothefool @c0l1fl0r @francisnyx @imma-just-chill @fantasyhopperhea @iamapotatoe @utahimechan @undecidingfate @saltystudentdefender @vee-love @ayameei @shadowkitty-me @fantasyhopperhea @c4xcocoa @yarabutterfly @mitsukashi @dreamlessnight @ayameei @yuan1819 @dreamsenternally @sfinksv @nyx-u @swagbucksjester @candycxndy @leshugasworld-blog

#yandere genshin x reader #yandere genshin #yandere genshin impact #genshin impact sagau #sagau x reader #genshin sagau #sagau #yandere aether #yandere albedo #yandere eula #yandere diluc #yandere kaeya #yandere lisa #yandere venti

[llamagoddessofficial]

Hey, how would the siren guys react to a whale shark mc? Heheee, :0 (whale shark face) fella

HEEEE

Sans: Since whale sharks are filter feeders, she's technically a mermaid!

I imagine that a whale shark Mc is incredibly chill and relaxed. She's very big, very beautiful, and very friendly... adult whale sharks don't really have anything to fear, so she's easygoing and sweet-natured with pretty much everyone.

She thinks he's handsome, and very smart. Orca would only pose a realistic threat to her if they approached in a big group, but he's alone- she's not even slightly worried. She asks him about life as a predator, his adventures around the world, she dreams of seeing the poles but she's not built for staying in cold water. He entertains her with stories of the arctic.

... Sans isn't used to encountering mermaids who aren't terrified of him. He isn't used to encountering sirens who aren't terrified of him. She talks to him like he's a normal person, engages with him... it actually makes him less insane and murderous, as it's the first time he's been treated like a person since his pod died. He naturally becomes deeply attached to her... she's delighted he wants to keep her company and she welcomes his presence. They're 'best friends' that travel around together. It's good that she's a filter feeder, because though he'd absolutely kill for her, he has no need to.

Red: Red loves a big beautiful lady. This is one of the fundamental laws of the universe. The bigger the better- and she's literally the biggest shark out there. What's not to love? He's head over heels. His only regret is that they can't seriously play fight, because she could probably snap him in half. That's hot- but it would be inappropriate in public.

She loves his attention. Sure, Sans is handsome, but... well, Red is literally the ideal by shark standards. Being a filter feeder doesn't make her resistant to his scars, his teeth, his charms. She giggles when he calls her majestic, she flushes when he says he'd like to sightsee coral reefs with her. But she doesn't really take his flirting seriously. She thinks he'd want a girlfriend who's more aggressive, an apex like him- someone with more 'bite'. She's seen how feisty female tiger sharks are. She's not like that.

Sans is absolutely seething that this asshole is trying to steal his girlfriend. They're regularly at each other's throats when her back is turned. It's very easy for her to break up their fights, though, since she physically overpowers them both.

Skull: Pretty similar to Sans, in respect to Mc being sweet and friendly has the dual effect of calming him down but also driving him kinda wild for her. Whale sharks do occasionally make dives to deeper water, so it makes sense their paths would cross.

He's enraptured. She's like a big, friendly angel, her pattern is literally rays of sun. He wants to be near to someone who isn't afraid of him. He's a little heartbroken he can't bring her food gifts, since they don't eat the same way, but pebbles still work. And he's deeply impressed by how much plankton/krill she can eat in one go.

Though the difference between them isn't as intense as it is with leaf sheep Mc, she's still a very pelagic creature, and he's a very NOT pelagic creature. She's fascinated by his completely alien, deep-sea biology. Lots of her being delighted by his light shows.

#llamagines #siren sanses #mc breaks up a fight between red and sans by grabbing their arms and literally pulling them apart #red makes everything worse by saying “harder” #days since sans has tried to tear out red's liver: 0

[normspellsman]

I Believe You

pairing: lo’ak x older sister!reader

genre: angstish, fluff, & comfort (from reader to lo’ak)

word count: 1.7k+

warning(s): sad!lo’ak, mentions of jake scolding + punishing lo’ak, lo’ak crying, reader being the best big sis fr, lo’ak is a total big sister boy, cursing, & sibling bonding

request details: here!

taglist: @aonungsmate @dearstell @goodiesinthecloset21 @optimisticblazetrash @thatonegirlwiththebeanie367 @minkyungseokie @liyahsocorro @universal-s1ut @amortencjja @arminsgfloll @blushhpeachh @sweetirilly @iwannahaveaprettyaesthetic @bambisposts-blogs (requested the plot! <3)

word bank: toruk makto — rider of last shadow, tawtute — human; sky person, & tulkun — whale like creature residing in awa’atlu

note: was originally titled “my baby bro” but then i came up with this plot & trashed my original idea bc i felt like i could write this better & actually have motivation to write this :).

Lo’ak is known for getting in trouble. Either his loud mouth or actions, mostly both, got him into scuffles with his parents. This time was no different.

He had bonded with Payakan, a tulkun who was outcasted for something that any other being would do when forced to see their Mother be killed in front of them. In Lo’ak’s eyes, Payakan’s actions were driven by his sadness and were justifiable to a point. He knew how much the creature regretted the lives lost that day. If the same thing were to happen to him, Lo’ak would react the same way.

He felt understood by Payakan. They both had a significant physical difference from the rest of their species, making them feel isolated and alone in the large planet of Pandora. Made them feel judged and ridiculed for being different from the rest.

Not even thirty minutes prior, Lo’ak got chewed out by his Father, scolding him for talking back to the Olo’eyktan and doing something he, yet again, shouldn’t be doing. His Father never failed to make him feel like the black sheep of the family even though they are more alike than he’d hoped. It sucked. It really did. He just wanted people to see him. See all of him, even the messed up and alien parts of him.

One person only came to mind when he thought about people seeing and accepting him for who he is. You.

You were the eldest daughter of the Sully family. The token child. The perfect image of what a Na’vi should look like. The one that carried the burden of being Tsahìk or Olo’eykte one day. The one who, despite all the push back, saw Lo’ak for who he is.

You absolutely adored Lo’ak when you were younger, only being around the age of four when he was born. You refused to let your parents pry him away from your tiny arms when you held him way longer than you should’ve. You loved holding him and talking to him in the baby voice your Father always did to you and your other siblings, gently running a small finger down the flat bridge of his nose. You loved singing him to sleep or rocking him whenever he began to fuss, dropping everything to come and comfort your baby brother. And even though he is all grown up and is ‘too cool’ for your affections, you still give it to him anyway.

Not like the teen boy would ever admit it, but he loves whenever you’d rub his back when he didn’t feel good, rebraid his hair when it outgrew the current braids, hug him a little too long after a scouting mission, and especially when you’d pat the empty side of your mat for him to lay down on, comforting him with your warm embrace as he dozed off into a peaceful slumber. When he was younger, he was much more greedy with your attention and affections, pouting to you whenever you gave Neteyam or Kiri an extra kiss goodnight or fussing when you didn’t say your usual goodbye before heading off to train for the day. Lo’ak was practically attached to your hip throughout his adolescence years, clinging to your leg wherever you went. There was always a different connection you and Lo’ak had compared to your other siblings. It was something special and was hard to explain. You just understood one another, no matter how either of you looked or what you went through.

“What’s wrong, baby bro?” Your voice asked, concern laced in your voice.

Of course you knew what was wrong. You practically heard the whole thing from the other side of the island. It didn’t take long for Tuk to inform you of what happened when you arrived home either, sadness written on her face as she told you the story and how they haven’t seen Lo’ak since then.

You found him minutes after your interaction with Tuktirey. He was sitting on the beach, staring off into the horizon as the waves lazily lapped at his feet, legs brought up to his chest as his chin rested on his scarred knees.

“Nothing,” Lo’ak mumbled, eyes stuck on the eclipsing sun. He refused to look weak in front of others, not wanting to ruin his image as Toruk Makto’s second son, especially if it was someone he looked up to.

You hummed in response, not believing his statement. Lo’ak was unbelievably stubborn, something he got from your Mother. It was a good trait to have at times, but it made it harder to break down the boys walls when they needed breaking. Too stubborn for his own good, you thought, settling yourself next to your brother.

“Sure, and the sky is green,” you replied, smirking at your stupid joke. But Lo’ak only rolled his eyes and huffed your way, bringing his knees closer to his chest.

You always tried to crack a joke or two to make him feel better. It worked at times, usually when he was younger. You hadn’t tried this method in a while, too caught up with running away from your home clan and trying to fit into the Metkayina’s way of life. You hadn’t been able to comfort Lo’ak the past times he got scolded by your Father. Something that you felt sorry for and regretted. You were the eldest Sully child. You felt the need to comfort all of your siblings whenever they needed it. You felt awful for not being there for your youngest brother when he desperately needed it.

“I think what you did back there was stupid,” you started, your words causing Lo’ak’s ears to pin themselves to the sides of his head, “Talking back to the Olo’eyktan was really stupid. Especially in front of the Tsahìk. I mean, she scares the absolute shit out of me.”.

Your words seemed to have an effect on Lo’ak as you heard a small sniffle come from him, signaling that he was going to cry or already was. Your heart dropped at that fact, urging yourself to finish your thoughts.

“But, I think it was also brave,” you add on, turning your head to face Lo’ak, watching his reactions, “I don’t think I could ever do what you did. I’d probably shit my pants before speaking to Tonowari like that. You truly have bigger balls than me, little brother. I also think that it was sick that you bonded with a tulkun. I mean, that’s gotta be like, a record or something! First Omatikaya to ever bond with a tulkun.”.

And before Lo’ak could even utter a word, you wrapped up your thoughts with a final, “Has a nice ring to it: Lo’ak, the Tulkun Rider.”.

Fat tears run down the expanse of Lo’ak’s cheeks, rolling down the skin and onto his neck and chest. He felt so frustrated with his parents and how no one was listening to him about Payakan. How no one cared about what he saw or what he felt when he bonded with the creature. He saw what he saw and felt what he felt. He knew out of any of them the truth about what happened and how much regret Payakan carried around. It wasn’t fair. None of it was.

You gently placed a hand onto your brothers shaking shoulder, bringing him in closer towards your body so he could lean into you. Your four-fingered hand came to grasp his five-fingered hand, thumb rubbing the back of his hand in comfort.

“I’m really sorry that I wasn’t there for you before to comfort you. I should’ve been there for you when you needed me,” you whisper, the hand on his shoulder moving to his head to play with his grown out braids. I’ll have to convince him to let me rebraid them, you thought to yourself, knowing that it won’t take much for him to agree to your request.

“I’m sorry that Dad yelled at you and made you feel the way that you feel. He’s always so harsh on you. It’s not fair,” you added, soothing down his hair as his cries quieted down and softened. “He treats us like soldiers instead of children. He seems to be stuck in his tawtute ways recently,” you continued, shaking your head at the realization.

“For what it’s worth, Lo’ak. I believe you,” you said, causing him to pull away from your figure and to stare up at you in shock.

“You do?” He asked, ears perking back up in interest.

You merely nod, smiling down at your brother, “You’ll have to take me to meet Payakan one day, baby bro.”.

Lo’ak brightly grinned at your words, jumping up to hug you. “You’ll love him, sis! I’ve already told him all about you,” he commented, excitement evident in his voice.

“All good things I hope,” you laugh out, embracing Lo’ak.

Lo’ak only hummed and nodded in response, suddenly tired from all of the crying he did. He reached up a fist to rub his eye, ears flickering back as he did so. You knew he was tired. You could see it all over his face.

“Turn around,” you whispered, gesturing for your brother to turn his body around so his back would be facing you. He obeyed your order, sitting crossed legged as his tail wrapped around his waist and slightly curled at the end, anticipating your next move.

Once you put your fingers in his hair and began to slowly unbraid each braid one by one, a smile creeped onto Lo’ak’s face as he relaxed against your swift and gentle fingers. He missed the times where you would willingly rebraid his hair for him and put beads in his hair that matched the ones in yours. It was nice to have you do something that comforted him when he was child again. It was nice to have you comfort him. It was nice to have you as an older sister.

As time passed and the sky got darker, Neytiri had begun to look for her two missing children, stumbling upon them on the shoreline seated next to each other as they whispered and giggled amongst one another. The Mother of five smiled at the sight before her, heart swelling at the interaction. She knew of the kind of connection you shared, knowing that it ran deep and beyond her understanding as a Mother. She knew that no matter what, you’ll always have each other. Yeah, she thought, he’ll be just fine.

#avatar #atwow imagines #avatar imagine #avatar: the way of water #atwow x reader #avatar x reader #atwow #atwow x you #angst #lo’ak sully x reader #lo’ak imagine #lo’ak x sister!reader #lo’ak sully x you #lo’ak x y/n #lo’ak x reader #lo’ak fluff #lo’ak angst #lo’ak x you #lo’ak sully

[xeeroo08]

Astro Observations 《1》

Disclaimer : I am not a professional astrologer. This post is only for fun and it is solely based on my observations and experiences. So, please take it with a grain of salt.

♠️ Taurus Mars 🤝 Anger issues. It's either a disaster or unhealthy suppression. No in between.

♠️ Mars-Neptune placements have some wide imagination when it comes to steamy stuff. It be going on in their heads 24/7! Also they might get frequent wet dreams. Infact on a side note they are quite looking forward to it when they go to sleep.

♣️ Mars in 4th house went through a lot of family trauma in childhood. It could be anything like daily arguments, abusive household, domestic violence etc.

♠️ Sagittarius venus and their frequent crushes. If influenced by Scorpio could be secretive as hell.

♠️ Jupiter–Saturn negatively aspected could indicate a hard academic life in the beginning but once you work on it, you will succeed with flying colors. My friend has her jupiter squaring saturn and she was always at the bottom in her class. But once she decided to put her mind into it, she became one of the toppers in our school.

♣️ Venus at 0° has no idea where to began with love. They want it but are clueless about what they actually want.

♠️ Sagittarius people love freedom. Speaking from personal experience, you don't want to tie them down by any means. Like Sagittarius moon hates being emotionally tied down by some melodrama. Don't even think about manipulating them they will run away know right away. Sagittarius venus hates being controlled in a relationship.

♣️ Virgo sun might tease their partner now and then after their night together just to see their reaction. You better blush🔪

♣️ Someone mentioned in their post that having jupiter in 2nd house in solar return chart could indicate buying a lot of books. It's true! I had it last year in my chart and omg I bought so many books in one year! Also I never faced any shortage of money that year so later when I calculated the expense, I was surprised. It's also funny because whenever I felt like, okay I want this book, in the next few days I would have it in my hands by some means. I was obsessed with books. Let it be study material or novels. I still have many novels that I bought last year but haven't read yet. Lol no regrets tho, I love books 📚

♠️ Moon conjuct pluto 🤝 love-hate relationship with their mothers. It's like— I can't live without you. The next moment—but if I die it will be only because of you. And it goes both the ways. I have this and trust me it hurts on a subconscious level.

♣️ Asteroid Actor conjuct moon could mean that when you act, you act flawlessly. No one could tell if you are acting or not. Emotions are always on point. It comes very natural to these people. If underdeveloped, could make sly manipulators, like a wolf under sheep's skin.

♠️ Scorpio MC people always have a strict control over their public image. They are not said to be mysterious just like that. You might think you have them figured out but there is always something going on in their lives which is unknown to the public. And if they don't want you to know about it, you will never know either.

♣️ Pluto in 11th house/Sagittarius/Aquarius could mean that you might have a wide variety of friends all over the world, through online or even through mutuals. But for some of you these people just come along and go. Or maybe you are the one who gets distant for some reason. They still remain good friends though, it's just that the sudden closure is gone. Plus they don't reveal every single secret to their friends. They know later it won't matter.

♣️ Venus conjuct/ Sextile/trine Mercury gives a very pleasant voice. These people should try applying in music industry.

♠️ Asteroid Skip in natal chart could indicate what all things you missed or neglected in your life. For example, in 6th house you could have neglected your health a lot to the point later it backfired. Or in Capricorn it could indicate that you skipped working.

♣️ Jupiter–AC people are very sharp minded. Especially if it's conjuction. They know how to turn the situation in their favour. They are also very versatile in nature, which makes them very well liked by people. Basically the All rounder placement.

♠️ Asteroid Scientia positively aspecting Jupiter/Sun/moon could mean you work good in science fields. Whereas if it's negatively aspected you might face a little difficulty in dealing with science majors and need more effors to put in. I have jupiter square scientia and I know exactly what I am talking about.

♣️ Asteroid Academia in 11th house/Aquarius could indicate changing many schools, colleges throughout your life or living in a hostel.

♠️ Aries risings are the most restless beings alive. They can't sit still for two minutes to save their lives! These people are very competitive when it comes to athletics, as for academics, they are okay with being average. Two of the people that I know who have this rising sign won gold medals during their school lives in sports competitions.

♣️ Mars conjuct MC or Mars in 10th house people are very dedicated and driven when it comes to their profession. They pursue their career with full potential.

#astrology #asteroid scientia #jupiter squar saturn #astro observations #zodiac signs #moon-pluto #moon conjuct pluto #aries rising #scorpio mc #asteroid skip #asteroid academia #Mars-Neptune #sagittarius venus #taurus mars #solar return #Asteroid actor

[safely-in-vhagars-belly]

Daddy dearest (Rhaenyra/Harwin Daughter x Darkish Daemon Targaryen) (READER OR OC)

🔷Summary: You are Rhaenyra's and Harwin's daughter and you just proposed to Aemond, your stepdaddys worst enemy.

WORDCOUNT: 2159

🔷Author's note: This was a request, this is my first Daemon fic so i hope i did him justice without turning him into a carebear or a scary pookie.

🔷Warnings: Oc/reader is a brat, reader has clear empathy issues, reader has a daddy kink (liiiiiterallly) targcest!, dark!daemon, smut, p in v, fucking, desk fucking, choking, slut-shaming, high-treason, cheating, (daemon) slight gore, and dom/sub themes.

There is something about Targaryens that makes them a little more dangerous than other families. You have always known that. But there is something about you that makes you a little more dangerous than most Targaryens. 

Like a dragon, you wish to be close to the fire, letting it consume your everything while you hiss at your pain. You always enjoyed creating drama and orchestrating plots. You have been good at it. 

So, when your one-eyed uncle, Aemond Targaryen one day writes a sobby letter where he confesses his love and devotion to you, regrets killing your little brother, and vows that he will love you from the end of his days, it is not the prospect of peace that makes you happy. It is the prospect of war.

You write back, of course you do. You appeal to Aemond’s pride, his titles, his ‘’beauty’’ and most of all: His ego. You assume that the two of you will be married soon, should your mother wish it. Everything to avoid the war.

You happily brush your hair, thinking of all the good things that will hopefully happen to your family now. You love wearing your hair on a side-braid, the way Visenya wore hers.

You have just finished preparing for the day to come when your stepfather, Daemon Targaryen barges into your rooms. You don’t bow or greet him, instead you just smirk at his furious expression and red worked up cheeks. You fold your hands on your back and raise your chin with an innocent smirk. ‘’You seem upset.’’ You speak, your voice cheerful.

Daemon hands you an opened letter. You briefly scan the words and sigh, noticing the familiar awfully nauseating perfect handwriting of Aemond Targaryen. He brags to Daemon about ‘’Seducing’’ you and that you ‘’soon will be pregnant with child.’’ Inwardly, you roll your eyes, but you did suspect that Aemond would write Daemon about his ‘’conquest’’ of you. Of course he would. That is why you picked Aemond in the first place. He thinks you are being conquered but in reality he is a pawn in a plot he has no clue of. He is as a sheep being lured in the wolf’s den, unaware he is about to be slaughtered.

But you don’t let Daemon see your disgust at this, kinslayer waving his win in his rival’s face.  Daemon is very worried for your safety. ‘’Are you insane, courting him? Have you forgotten what that child murderer did to our family?’’ As much as you miss Lucerys, you won’t kill yourself or others for his dead chewed up corpse. Luc would want everyone to get along and to make peace, not war. Which is why he died, as it is a very foolish way of handling enemies. You feel indifferent about his loss. You miss a bit, but you won’t trade a limb back for him.

You hand him the letter back. ‘’Yes. I am betrothed. Aren’t you happy for me?’’ It is almost funny how quickly his emotions change from utter rage and murder, to disappointment, to heartbreak and finally how all his emotion die and only a mask remains.

He becomes silent. The only thing you hear is the betrayal of your own heart beating. ‘’With Aemond?’’ He asks, now a bit calmer than previously. ‘’You know you can get much better.’’ He says. You don’t know who he refers to.

You roll your eyes. ‘’No, with Aegon. Of course with Aemond!’ You know he hates it when you roll your eyes.

‘’What the fuck do you mean with ‘’of course’’?’’’You giggle inwardly.

You blink rapidly, innocently.

‘’Daddy dearest, don’t cuss please. It’s very peasant-like. Aren’t you happy I’m finally engaged? You tried so hard to find a good suitor for me.’’ You grin.

‘’Your mother and I should choose your suitor! Have you thought about any of us during these games with Aemond?’’ More than he would ever know. 

You sigh, lying easily.

‘’I will be honest, you haven’t both been on my mind very much.’’

You need a final push. You are so close. ‘’Daddy dearest, me and Aemond are meant to be. Soon I’ll carry his babies for him and make him a father when I polish his creepy sapphire eye for him while he breeds me as if I am livestock. You either adjust-’’ That is pushing it too far, part of you just knows it. You can see when you cross a line and you just did that. You see a reflection of danger and insanity in the eyes of Daemon, the man you’ve yearned for so long. 

He grabs you violently by the throat, and you squeak pathetically when he drags you with him. Daemon has lost his patience with you and drags you with him as if you are a toy. ‘’Not another word. No one is breeding you. Not him at least.’’ With a push you are on your back, on your writing desk. Daemon throws several of your books and your quills on the ground, bending you under him. You pretend to groan but your lips are curled up in a smile, when he removes your smallclothes, pulling them down and exposing your body to him. 

His big hands grab each of your asscheeks when you hiss in anticipation. He releases his anger on your poor behind but you can’t say that you mind. If anything, you love it. You wait for Daemon to finish his spanking before turning on your desk, revealing your other entrance to him. A glistering wet and needy entrance. ‘’Aemond rides the biggest dragon. Do you think his cock is the biggest too? I read something about men with funny noses-’’ You will never finish the sentence.

Your head is smashed down and you finally feel Daemon’s experienced hands touch your so eager cunt. You whimper, weak and softly when he takes a stance behind you, and you clench yourself when you hear the sound of his belt being removed. ‘’You want a man to breed you, you horny little slut? You want to be fucked and owned as a whore? Fine with me.’’ He groans in your ear when spitting in your face. You recoil in brief disgust before your legs are spread wide and open and his cock is forced deep inside of you, causing you to grunt against the wood of the desk. Daemon yanks you up by your arms, fucking you without speaking. You become a little light in the head as pleasure mixes inside of you, and you can’t believe it's finally happening. His cock feels good to have inside of you and once again you clench, needy as a whore.

Daemon grins in your ear when noticing your little cries and gasps of pleasure. ‘’You wish to be bred, little girl? You wish for your Kepa to make you his little whore?’’ He grins, using his Valyrian accent for that one word. You become even more aroused because of that and moan, weakly. Daemon sinks in back inside of you, pulling you up so he can fuck you when you lay on your desk. Your wooden deks cracks of the movements as Daemon takes your maidenhead on it, not giving a fuck for your sore museles or your begs. 

‘’Daemon…’’

You are close to your heights. There are days just like these when you touch yourself, imagining it was him all along. And now he is, taking you as his spoils and fucking you the way a conquerer takes his spoils. You beg. ‘’Daemon..’’ You are spanked another time, this time on your cunny that is brutally fucked at the same time. You cry out in pain and glare at Daemon who simply smirks back at you, before dragging his nails into your skin, forcing you back on his cock for another good, but painful ride. You become used to the pain, and to the feeling of having a man inside of you. It is better than everything you ever did to yourself. ‘’Kepa, please…’’ You beg, pathetically. 

Your stepfather has no mercy for you, grinning as if you are his enemy and this is your end. ‘’You are a little greedy whore. I won’t finish you off. The only one who comes is me, little Princess. Your Kepa will put a child inside your belly, perhaps that will teach you some respect.’’ He vows, riling you up against his cock until you nearly come.

You become even more aroused, fighting your desires and the urge to ride his cock. ‘’What if I’m not with child?’’ You ask, knowing you will like the answer very much.

Daemon pauses, the cock half inside of you, taunting you, torturing you. ‘’Then I simply must return and fuck you the way a dog fucks his bitch until you are, won’t I?’’ He breaths out, before taking you again on the desk. You are taken now quicker, faster and can barely keep up. Your cries become louder and freer and Daemon needs to wrap his free hand around your mouth to silence you when his cock fucks your body sore. The thrusts become rougher and more dominate and Daemon hits you again, and again and again on your ass when fucking you sore and likely very bloody. Yet you cry in approval, beg without words and plead for more by slowly grinding back against his body.

You see a determination that is very arousing in his eyes. He grabs your hips, impales you with his cock, all the way in and fucks you harshly and more animalstic than before. You lose count of how many he times he fucks you, but when he is finished, you can hear him grunt and you know his cum is inside your body right now. You remain on the desk, frozen, half undressed, and needy and naked.

Daemon grabs you by your throat once more, moving you to your bed. He throws you on it, grabbing a pillow. You protest but are turned on your stomach. He presses your face in the pillow so your cries can’t be heard and whispers in your ear. ‘’You’re going to become such a marvelous little mother for my son, Princess. Yes you will.’’ He murmurs against your belly. You whimper wordlessly.

His cock finds your body again and is pushed all the way in, when he kisses your hair and fucks you gently this time. ‘’Come for Kapa. Show me what a pretty obedient slave you can be for me.’’He whispers. You feel it build as he fucks you harder and harder and as your eyes close you cry out in the pillow he forces you on your mouth, soaking it in the process when Daemon fucks you when you scatter around him, breaking into million of pieces. 

Satisfied with your state, Daemon removes the pillow and looks at your wet, but bloodied cunny. ‘’Such a good slut for Kepa.’’ He tells you with a smirk. You pant still in denial that that happened. He pats your belly next. You lean in and want to kiss him. ‘’Kepa..’’

But he pulls away, disgusted all of a sudden and angry. ‘’You will write to Aemond today. You will invite him to an inn somewhere close and you will seduce him. I want him to think mine child is his. I want to be there, when you reveal to him you played him and I want to see his pathetic little mind break at the betrayal you and me pulled on him.’’ He grins. You nod, absently. 

‘’What if I don’t want to fuck Aemond?’’ You have seen the man and he seems very boring in the sheets, almost as boring as he is in the streets.

Daemon grabs you by your throat, choking you and you gasp, but you feel a different connection to him now. He seeded and sored you. He made you his in a way and you are now his little princess. ‘’Did I fuck your brains out, little dumb princess?’’ He groans out. 

You are shocked as you gasp for air, worried it ends there for you. ‘’K-Kepa…’’

He sighs at your stupidity. ‘’You will fuck Aemond, you’ll be a needy little slut for him and fuck the shrimp he calls a cock, and you’ll pretend your baby is his.’’ What does that even accomplish?

‘’But we don’t know yet if I am even pregnant!’ You whisper distraught by the idea of bedding your uncle.

Daemon smirks. ‘’One of these days, you will be. I have had a taste of you, princess and I will be back. Your mother is not cutting it for me anymore. She is the love of my life, but love only does so much.’’ He speaks, petting your cheeks when you silently cry. 

‘’Go make Aemond happy. Then we will destroy him. Together.’’ He promises you, with a kiss on your lips.

A/N

Aemond, thinking he has a pure valyrian woman waiting for him that will help him destory daemon:

HE HAS NO IDEA-

Yeah this was fun! Actually a lot of fun. I hope you guys liked it!!!

If you did be sure to let me knoww xxxx

#hotd #hotd fanfiction #hotd fanfic #hotd smut #aemond targaryen #Dark daemon targaryen x reader #dark daemon targaryen x oc #dark daemon #daemon targaryen x oc #daemon targaryen x reader #dark fantasy #darkfantasy #house of the dragon fanfiction #house of the dragon #fantasy

[murdockparker]

Roses and Regrets Part 2

Anthony Bridgerton x Reader

Summary: What a pleasant life it is, to be a widow with no obligations. Getting new dresses, making unlikely friends, what a treat.

Word Count: 3.9k

Rating: 18+!!! MINORS DNI (I will haunt you)

Warnings: female masturbation, yearning, Reader decidedly hates Anthony (what's new??) , maybe a bit of angst

A/N: oops my hands slipped and this is what happened. sorry bout that, bruv!

first part - next part

—

“You should have seen him, Meg.”

Her lady’s maid nodded along to Lady Barlow’s rant, having heard the interaction in nauseam since she returned from the park. From his appearance to his demeanor—Meg assumed she might as well have been there. Carefully, she continued to remove the pins from the dowager viscountess’ hair, the very same that she had placed in the morning. 

“I am sure Lord Bridgerton was certainly unagreeable,” Meg droned, accidentally snagging her lady’s hair. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“You know, you don’t have to do all that, I am a perfectly capable woman,” (Y/N) laughed, looking at her maid in the mirror. “And he was, unagreeable, if you must know.”

“He is alway unagreeable,” Meg said, exasperated. “My lady, please take no offense, but I think this talk of Lord Bridgerton must cease.”

“You do not have to ask me twice,” (Y/N) snorted. “I wish for nothing more than to stop speaking about that oaf.”

Meg blinked. “Right. Of course.”

“You… you do not believe me?”

“I believe you believe it to be true,” Meg carefully stated, hands by her sides. “We have a good friendship, ma’am, and I am ever grateful that you allow me to speak my mind—”

“So speak it,” (Y/N) said, voice tittering on a giggle. “I shall not take offense, I swear it.”

“You have done nothing but speak of Lord Bridgerton since you arrived from your visit to the park,” Meg began, choosing her words carefully. “Save for when you had your meals, hard to speak over soup and the like. I, for one, am exhausted hearing about it. Perhaps a respite from the topic?”

“Imagine how I feel,” (Y/N) finally laughed. “That man makes me insane.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I pray whenever he marries—oh that poor woman—I hope she can teach him some manners.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Perhaps I should send him a book on it? Manners, I mean.”

“Good idea, ma’am.”

“Meg, you are not hearing me.”

“Oh I am hearing you,” Meg nodded. “I am just choosing not to listen.”

She bit her lip, eyeing her friend’s faraway glance. Glassy, almost. “Perhaps… I suppose I should drop the topic for now?”

“It is late,” Meg shook her head, nearly dropping out of a trance. “I have mending to attend to, if you do not mind.”

“You hate the mending.”

“Picking and choosing my battles, ma’am,” Meg smiled politely. 

“Admirable,” (Y/N) said. “I suppose it is late…”

“Might I fetch you some more tea before you retire?” She set the last pin down amongst the vanity. Covered in expensive oils and products, it’s a wonder that anyone could find anything at all on the surface. Thank God Meg knew the contents like the back of her hand.

“No… I fear it will keep me up all night, but thank you, truly,” (Y/N) said. 

“Goodnight, my lady.”

And then, she was alone. 

Snuffing her candle, she hopped into her bed. Thankfully she never shared this one with Lord Barlow—that was reserved in the wing across the estate—leaving this bed untouched by such a soiled man. It was pleasantly plush and covered in endless pillows, she wondered if the royal princesses slept in beds as nice as this one—nicer, probably. More pillows, if she had to wager.

Sheets pulled up to her chin, eyes focused on the ceiling, she tried to chase sleep. Her mother had taught her a trick when she was young, imagining rabbits chasing around the room and counting those—perhaps it was sheep? Regardless, she tried counting. She only made it to twenty nine before flipping onto her side, exasperated by the count. 

Sleep never came.

The covers melted off of her body in an instant, floating over to her door to ensure it was locked. Quietly, oh-so quietly, she turned the latch. No need for the staff to interrupt her… sleep. She hardly had to turn to such matters, but when exhaustion cycled her brain and not her body, leaving her tossing and turning all night, she really had no other choice. 

No other choice, she reminded herself. 

She laid on top of the covers this time, rabbits and sheep all but forgotten.

If there was to be one positive of marrying, it was the sheer fact that she was able to fully understand her body as a woman. While the marital act itself was entirely loathsome—a chore with Lord Barlow that happened infrequently during their marriage to try for an heir—the act of doing it alone? 

Why the idea alone just got her heart pounding. 

She never had anyone to teach her these things, her mother passed before her marriage, so there was no ‘wedding night talk’. Everything that Lady Barlow had learned was from her sheer will and determination—a chase for something she never quite knew she was racing towards. Her husband? He had never been any help. A few grunts and thrusts before he would spend himself inside, collapsing on top of her for the night. 

She refused to give her late husband much thought—not when her hands were on her breasts, one slinking lower to touch a more delicate area. 

No. She needed to focus her thinking on something else. Something to get the job done, send her to sleep sooner than later. 

The gentleman. The faceless one that she imagined in place of her own hands. It usually sped things along if she focused on a generally well-looking fellow and how he’d touch her instead of just chasing her own feelings with her fingertips. Saved her wrists a lot of pain too—occasionally she felt like she was back practicing her penmanship, writing lines all day with her governess—the ache was fairly similar. Although, one pain caused a higher embarrassment than the other.

Decidedly happy with her diversion of thought, she made quick work on the bottom of her nightdress and pulled it up to her stomach. (Y/N) had never the need to sleep with drawers, feeling a dress was more than enough. Besides, it gave her easy access on nights like tonight. Her fingers danced with her lower lips, already damp with arousal. 

She sighed at the first contact, the pure ecstasy of running her fingertips across her glistening folds. In her mind, he was doing this to her, the nameless man who wanted nothing more than to give her what she needed. With slow and tantalizing circles, she teased her clit, gasps leaving her lips involuntarily, her eyes rolling shut before she could even think. Her non-dominant hand continued to grasp at her breast, squeezing and rolling the flesh until she was utterly mindless. 

The climb was thrilling, it was suffocating and all encompassing. How she dreamed she could experience this with someone, feel this pleasure with another, both giving and taking exactly what the other needed. She groaned again, feeling herself getting closer to the edge, her circles faster now, the gentleman making good work on her neglected center. 

“Gods,” (Y/N) cried, trying her very best to keep her voice down. She didn’t need Meg inquiring about her, not when she was so worked up and so, so close.

And then… the fall. Everything was white and her heart felt like it was bound to beat out of her chest.     

Brown eyes.

As she fell into a peaceful slumber, for no reason in particular, she decided her faceless gentleman had brown eyes. 

—

Breaking her fast was usually rewarding, the chefs at Barlow Estate were some of the most talented in the ton—of course, only in her humble opinion, not that she had much to compare it to. When she first married Lord Barlow, having such fulfilling meals first thing in morning was almost worth marrying such an oaf. Almost.

“Did you have a good sleep, ma’am?” A butler asked, taking (Y/N)’s empty plate, replacing it with one full of fresh cut fruit.

“Oh!” Her face flushed. “Y-yes, James, of course. I always have a pleasant sleep.”

“You look well rested, ma’am,” he nodded.

“My lady,” Meg spoke up, gaining the attention of Lady Barlow from her fruit. “You have an appointment at the modiste early this afternoon.”

“I don’t recall making an appointment,” (Y/N) held her hand still, half of an apple tight in her grasp.

“I made the appointment, ma’am,” Meg said. “You are in need of new dresses—” 

“Is there something wrong with the way I dress?”

“Of course not,” Meg said quickly, her face growing slightly pink. “It is just, since the late Lord Barlow passed you have been in mourning attire—blacks, blues, the entire dreary ensemble. I figured it would be best to get dresses that suited more the colors of the season.”

“I am unsure if you noticed,” (Y/N) said, taking a small bite of her apple. She chewed it quickly. “But my dress today is green.”

“I did notice,” Meg nodded politely. “It is a lovely color, but perhaps a lighter blue would be nice? A purple?”

“Perhaps you should listen to her, ma’am,” James interjected. “The family account has not been used since after your wedding and the mourning attire—”

“And I can use that money elsewhere,” (Y/N) raised her brow. “I’m sure the new viscount will be pleased I am not blowing his money so frivolously, I do not see the need for new dresses.”

Meg sighed, giving James a trying look. He shrugged. “Humor me. Just one dress.”

“Fine. One dress."

Somehow, between the carriage ride to the modiste and the tailoring of a beautiful purple display piece, Lady (Y/N) Barlow was talked into three new dresses. A sharp pinprick to her left leg brought her back to her senses. 

“Oh! Lady Barlow, I do apologize,” Madame Delacroix said. “You must keep still as I pin your hems."

“I will try my best,” (Y/N) smiled, glancing down at the woman working hard on her new dress. “How fortunate the display dress you had fits so well.”

“Oui, how fortunate,” Madame Delacroix nodded. “A few pins and stitches and it will be perfect. And this color is very flattering—I am certain the men of the ton will turn their heads at this.”

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. “I have no need to turn heads, Madame,” (Y/N) said curtly. “I am simply just refreshing my wardrobe.”

“Oh, no one has the need to turn heads, save for the young ladies,” Madame Delacroix giggled, it sounded almost fake, forced. “But my work will do that regardless, so do expect that Lady Barlow.”

“Joy,” (Y/N) sighed, tilting her head at her reflection. While it hadn’t been an extraordinarily long time since she debuted—a shake over three years at the most—she was no longer the young girl from her first season. Her curves have filled out, her features more defined, so this particular cut was suiting her just fine. Madame Delacroix was the best modiste for a reason, knowing just how to make the ladies of the ton sparkle.

The front door swung open, a sea of blue flooding in the entryway. “Ah, Lady Bridgerton, I shall be with you in a moment!” Madame Delacroix called out.

(Y/N) froze at the mere mention of the Bridgerton name.

“Take your time, Madame,” Lady Bridgerton cooed, practically shoving a book of fabrics in her daughter’s face. Eloise, (Y/N) recalls, the second eldest daughter of the brood. It was her first season. “We’ll be patient.”

“Shall I pull another dress, Lady Barlow?”

“No,” (Y/N) shook her head wildly. “I rather think I am finished for this afternoon. Please add the dresses to my account—”

“Lady Barlow,” Lady Bridgerton said kindly. “How lovely it is to see you.”

Fuck.

“Lady Bridgerton,” (Y/N) curtsied, feeling far too proper. “Likewise.”

“What a lovely color that is on you,” she said, eying the girl up and down. “I take it you are out of mourning then, yes?”

“Have been since the Danbury Ball,” (Y/N) nodded. “But I gather Lady Whistledown has already made that public knowledge.” 

Lady Bridgerton's cheeks flushed, like a child with their hand caught in the biscuit jar. “I cannot say that I find myself reading that gossip rag often, but—”

“Oh Mother,” Eloise groaned, looking up at the ceiling in frustration. “You read Whistledown just as often as I.”

“I do not blame you, Lady Bridgerton,” (Y/N) quickly added. The older woman’s shoulders relaxed. “For the many months I was in mourning and not socializing, Whistledown was my way I could keep up with everything. I very much would like to thank her, should I ever get the opportunity.”

“Yes, well,” Lady Bridgerton cleared her throat. “In any case, if you happen to be free tomorrow afternoon, would you like to join me for tea?”

“Tea?”

“I remember how it felt when—” she stopped herself, eyes becoming glassy. “Becoming a widow so suddenly is difficult. I would like to bestow my wisdom upon you if you’d allow it.”

“You are not quite old enough to be bestowing wisdom,” (Y/N) laughed lightly.

“I beg to differ,” Eloise mumbled.

“Flattery, Lady Barlow, will get you everywhere,” Lady Bridgerton smiled, elbowing her daughter lightly. “And you already have the invite, no need to lay it on so thick.”

“That is very kind of you, but—”

“So, shall we say noon tomorrow?”

The Bridgertons, as Lady Barlow gathered, were a difficult lot to say no to.

“Noon. Sounds perfect.”

—

It felt odd, being in the drawing room of Bridgerton House. She only ever had the fleeting thought that she’d ever sit here the once—ages ago during her first season. Now? Now she was sitting and drinking tea with Lady Bridgerton as if nothing was wrong in the world.

“You have a lovely home,” (Y/N) said, holding her teacup a little tighter than she should. 

“Thank you,” Lady Bridgerton said voice full of appreciation. “Tell me, Lady Barlow, how is your family?”

“My family?”

“Oh, forgive me for asking,” Lady Bridgerton clarified. “I just had realized that I know very little about you, you were only in the season for such a short time before you married. I figured your family was a good place to start.”

“No, no,” (Y/N) put the cup down. “I understand. Seeing as everyone knows about your family,” Lady Bridgerton chuckled at that, “I should only fill in some blank spaces, I suppose.”

The elder dowager nodded her head, tipping her cup at the younger widow to continue.

“No family, I’m afraid,” (Y/N) said, her voice wavering on sad. “Mother passed a few years before my debut, Father just last year. No siblings, so… just me I’m afraid.”

“Goodness,” Lady Bridgerton pressed a hand to her heart. “Your father and husband in the same year? I am truly sorry for your losses.”

“My mother was the true loss,” she said honestly, her voice practically lifting. “Kindest soul to grace this Earth, I mourn her every day. The others? I do not doubt anyone has missed them.”

“Lord Barlow,” Lady Bridgerton dropped a spoonful of sugar into her cup. “He was an odious man. When I had heard he had taken another wife—it was quite the story around the ton. I was beside myself.”

“I happen to be number three,” (Y/N) said matter-of-factly. “Number One and Two both died in childbirth, trying to give that man his beloved heir. Never worked out, and I cannot say I am crestfallen I never came to be with child, either. The new Lord Barlow is quite well suited for the role regardless, I am told, so I suppose it has worked out for the best.”

“Yes,” Lady Bridgerton had a small smile against her lips, “I can imagine so.”

“Does your son,” (Y/N) coughed, correcting herself, “Lord Bridgerton, does he know I am here for tea?”

“Oh my son is not always privy to my social calendar,” the older woman winked. “He is probably out galavanting and trying to find a wife.”

“A wife?”

“Oh, yes,” Lady Bridgerton nearly beamed. “Lord Bridgerton is finally looking to marry—even after all these years of begging him. Something just clicked last season, I suppose. Perhaps Daphne, the duchess, marrying finally gave him the right idea?”

(Y/N) nodded politely. “I’m sure you’re thrilled.”

“I only wish for the best for all eight of my children,” she nodded, “so seeing him look to marry makes me ever hopeful.” 

“Mhm,” (Y/N) sank into more of her cup, polishing it off.

The grand clock ticked away. 

“I apologize if this all makes you uncomfortable Lady Barlow,” Lady Bridgerton started. “It is just… when Edmund passed, I had my family and wonderful friends to support me. I figured, perhaps, having another friend would not be the worst thing?”

“Lady Bridgerton, you are very kind for checking in with me, and I very much appreciate this tea,” (Y/N) said honestly. She felt like she could jump out of her skin with anxiety, but tried her very best to keep it under control. “But… as you had alluded, it is no secret that Lord Barlow and I were not a love match. There is no need—”

“Being a widow is hard,” Lady Bridgerton cut her off. “It is rotten work and you feel like a shell of yourself, only having a title such as ours because of who we married and not in our own right. Tell me, do you plan on remarrying?”

“No.”

“No?”

“I am quite content with my life,” (Y/N) said thoughtfully. “Widows have all the freedom in the world, I am allowed many opportunities because of it—far more than when I was simply a little thing on the Marriage Mart.”

“I suppose that would be… correct,” Lady Bridgerton treaded lightly. “However, do you not wish for a family? The support of another?”

“It is not that I do not wish for a family,” (Y/N) said truthfully. “I am sure part of me does, but it is more the matter of everything that comes with it.”

“I could never imagine going about life alone,” Lady Bridgerton said. “After Edmund… I am just grateful my children were here to keep me sane, grounded, even.”

“Children can be a blessing…”

“But children,” Lady Bridgerton added quickly, “they are not for everyone. I hope you find happiness in whatever you need.”

“Thank you,” the young viscountess said sincerely. “You have such a wonderful life, Lady Bridgerton.”

“Violet,” she corrected. “Please, call me Violet.”

“Oh,” (Y/N)’s cheeks darkened. “Violet, then.”

“We are friends now, after all,” Violet smiled kindly, the kind of smile only a mother possessed. She waved for the tea to be replaced, a butler practically rushed to fulfill the viscountess’ request. “More tea?”

“I would love some more,” (Y/N) said, feeling lighter than air. Perhaps having a friend was a good step forward, a leap into the right direction.

The door to the drawing room slammed open.

“Mother, I just received our balance from the modiste and—”

Much like he owned the place—and in a way, he did—Lord Bridgerton took command of the less-than-quaint room and had all eye on him. His own eyes—his brown eyes—were trained solely on the widow sitting beside his mother, his mouth agape.

“Oh Anthony, you cannot just barge in here,” Violet scolded, “we have a guest.”

“I see that,” he seethed, shoving his hands behind his back in faux-decorum. “Lady Barlow.”

“Lord Bridgerton,” she nodded stiffly, not bothering to raise from her seat.

He ignored her, turning swiftly to his mother instead. “May I have a word alone with our guest, Mother?”

Feeling the tension in the room rise, Violet sighed, giving into her son’s request. “I believe I should check on the governess, anyhow,” Violet said, rising from her seated position. “Behave.”

Anthony brushed his mother’s whispered warning off, tilting his head to the staff, all leaving the room at his command. The door had barely clicked shut before he stepped forward. “Since when are you friends with my mother?”

“Since when do you care about who I spend my time with?”

“Since that company is my mother,” he said cooly. “I would have thought you were just so turned off by the Bridgerton name that you would ignore all of my family—”

“She is a nice woman,” (Y/N) rose, crossing her arms. “How you managed to turn out the way you have despite that is beyond me.”

“You are in my home,” Anthony pointed. “You insult my character and you dare try to befriend my mother?”

“Dare?” She laughed. “Am I not allowed to have friends?”

“Not with my mother,” he stepped towards her. 

“Your mother,” she smiled forcefully, “Violet, has been nothing but kind to me today. She was merely looking out for me—offered me some good advice.”

“Advice?” He laughed. “On what planet could someone many years your senior offer you helpful advice?”

“You could not settle with just insulting me, so you had to insult your own mother? She is not yet elderly—”

“Yet she is older than you,” he corrected, his cheeks pink from his mistake. “Do you not have friends your own age?”

“Do you not have something better to do?”

He huffed, squeezing his wrist in restraint. “I came here to speak with my mother—”

“Yet you shooed her out of the room and decided to speak to me instead,” she countered, stepping closer. “To insult me? To threaten me? Whichever, I suppose, I will never understand. I decided to take tea with Lady Bridgerton because she offered it—offered advice on being a widow, something you have already known about me.”

“I wouldn’t wish for her to hear our conversation, besides, her advice could not have been that helpful,” Anthony snorted. “My parents were in love, her trials of being a widow pales in comparison to your situation—”

“The one in which I also lost a husband? The sole definition of being a widow?” She said, her arms tight against her chest. “That situation?”

The grand clock—that damned grand clock—chimed in the uncomfortable silence, a new hour beginning.

“I may not have loved Lord Barlow,” she admitted. “He may not even have been a friend to me, but I still am a lady who has lost her husband—a lady who has so much as lost her way in this fucked world, a world where a woman cannot simply be without one. Your mother was simply being kind.”

“I did not mean…” Anthony’s posture softened, even just a bit, words caught in his throat.

“But you did,” she pointed. “If you hadn’t meant it, you wouldn’t have said it. My, Lord Bridgerton, you certainly have a way with words, much like you always have, it seems.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She looked at the clock. “I must take my leave. I am expected to be back home soon, the estate certainly cannot run itself, seeing as my husband,” she nearly spat the word, “has left it to my care. What a thoughtful man he was.”

“I—Lady Barlow,” Anthony started, unsure of where he was going with it. “Please accept my apologies.”

“Keep them,” she smiled. “They are nearly as useless as you are. Excuse me.” Lady Barlow opened the door with haste, nodding to the staff members who were waiting outside. Her lady’s maid, Meg, followed only a few steps behind her, her attention caught on the wounded viscount in blue.

Anthony practically dissolved into the arm chair, unsure of what to do next. He had half a mind to go to his study to drink, to pour over the invoices that had him enter this room in the first place. His interactions with Lady Barlow usually left him buzzing, his blood boiling and his ego only partially wounded. How he was left feeling so defeated was beyond him.

“A way with words?” He mumbled to himself. “I never wish to understand that woman.”

Yet, a part of him nearly screamed the opposite.

How peculiar.  

—

Roses and Regrets Tag List:

@creative-heart , @sunshineangel-reads

want to be added to my taglist? comment below!

#anthony bridgerton #bridgerton #bridgerton x reader #anthony bridgerton x reader #bridgerton imagines #x reader #oopsies #didn't expect to write some steamy bits already in chapter 2 but oh well!! reader is pent up i guess

[i-will-cry-you-a-river]

Based on this post

The Proud Immortal Demon Way was a clusterfuck. Master Airplane was a fucking hack of an author who should never ever be allowed to write papapa. The characters were complete idiots, so blind and stupid and Shen Yuan suspected the close proximity to the abundance of aphrodisiacs was to be blamed for the lack of intelligence points. The plot was nonexistent, the fantastic flora and fauna was forgotten for more pointless papapa. However!

However…

Shen Yuan had to admit. The fanarts and fan merch did not do justice to the beauties residing in the universe.

That hack of an author could not write porn. But his characters really were peerless beauties. One would think if the beauty standards were this high that everyone was a peerless beauty, they should be considered as normal.

One would think it wrong. If he could, he would take back his comments on this specific topic; their beauties really were peerless.

One, like the blooming peach blossom, charming and deceptively sweet; another like the oak tree, tall and reliable; and another like the prettiest blue iris, knowledgeable and lovely. It was a disaster.

Back then it was only the blackened protagonist and his life sized body pillow that made him go through a sexuality crisis. As a shut-in, the people he met with never really made him feel warm under the collar, so being gay was only a theoretical experience for him, only having crushes on fictional people. Now, on the other hand, it was a completely different experience.

He couldn't even step outside of his bedroom without feeling like an emotional wreck. The minute he does that-

“This discipline made breakfast for Shizun!”

The radiant halo of the protagonist blinded him day after day; his precious white lotus is just the cutest and purest, fluffiest sheep ever. Shen Yuan can see the future Emperor in him, the husband of hundreds of pretty flowers, but he was still just his 17 years old discipline, so filial and full of wonder.

Ah, Binghe, such a good boy for this master…

“This master is thankful. Go along now, your shijie is waiting for you,” Shen Qingqiu waved his fan. His little white lotus pouted as if Shen Qingqiu would believe he wasn't excited to spend time with his future wife. He encouraged the two of them to spend time together, and he was certain that the sweet and touching young love bloomed under his careful watch. He was like a fairy godmother…

[-10 protagonist satisfaction points]

Shen Qingqiu sighed behind his open fan. Luo Binghe started to become a homebody, which, as a past homebody himself, knew was a slippery slope and even with all the lost points, he had to make sure his white sheep left the bamboo house. Staying home was great, but when you were the future Emperor of the Three Realms, defeater of countless monsters and husband of a triple digits harem, you just had to learn how to be open to new experiences. Sorry, Binghe…

“Yes, Shizun! This discipline will leave now.” Luo Binghe bows, and it takes everything not to touch and pat his fluffy head.

“Good. This master expects excellence from his disciples.”

“Yes, Shizun. This discipline understands and will do everything to exceed Shizun’s expectations.”

Such a filial discipline! Such a sweet white lotus! This one is truly a scum villain to do what he needs to do.

[Host is-]

I know I know! You don't have to remind me![(⁠ب⁠_⁠ب⁠)]

Shen Qingqiu sighed, hiding his shame and regret behind his mask. He really was just a scum villain.

With a conscious decision to not think about the future, he ate his breakfast instead, noting the protagonist’s amazing cooking powers. He would miss this after Luo Binghe gets married and starts to cook for his wives instead.

Maybe the guy he finds for himself will be good at cooking… nothing compared to the protagonist, of course, but nobody can be compared to him. That would be unfair for his potential partner.

However, even though he'd been Shen Qingqiu for three years, he hasn't yet found anybody for himself. He tried to flirt, he tried to see who might be gay other than him - statistically, there should be SOMEONE, right?! -, but no results.

The Sect Leader immediately brother-zoned Shen Qingqiu through his and the original good's past bond, which was quite unfair in Shen Yuan's opinion. Yue Qingyuan was a fine specimen of a man. Strong and reliable, just the kindest man Shen Qingqiu ever met. He was the perfect man, THE husband material. Yet, the original good has been so cold to him, cruelly causing his death, even though they were like brothers. Shen Yuan wouldn't have minded the Sect Leader as his husband; someone loyal and powerful, someone who could protect him from his blackened lotus. So unfair…

His Liu-shidi, the prettiest man alive, was so straight, only the protagonist was straighter than him. Shen Qingqiu was honestly sad for him; all the women in PiDW belonged to the Emperor. He was quite tempted to find a way to punch Airplane Shooting Towards Sky in his face for making Liu Qingge straight. Look. Shen Yuan was a weak, weak man; if Liu Qingge would show the slightest inclination to be at least bi-curious, he would be all over his shidi in a heartbeat. That man, honestly… it was no wonder the author killed him before the plot. Liu Qingge was typically the Second Male Lead, who was the boyfriend of all readers. (He definitely would have been Shen Yuan's fictional boyfriend, that's for sure. Maybe if he would have stayed alive in the novel, Shen Yuan wouldn't have minded the lack of plot that much. Liu Qingge would have definitely made the whole thing a thousand times better just by being alive. Like he did it now. The best times of the week were when his shidi visited him to spar or to cleanse his meridians.)

Shen Qingqiu had high hopes for Mu Qingfang. The doctor was quite queer in the sense of being weird. He hoped he was queer as in gay as well. However, the only time Shen Qingqiu tried to flirt with him, resulted in a two day stay at Cang Qiong mountain under constant supervision. That was a quite humiliating result, if he could say so.

Shen Qingqiu bit back a groan. No matter; that was just the peak lords he kept close contact with. He had the whole universe to find that one (1) gay person who would be happy to spend that depressingly short amount of time with him until he was still alive. He might have only five years to live, before he would become a human stick, but he would NOT die as a virgin disaster gay. He would remain a disaster gay forever, but he would lose his virginity before his death, damnit!

Now, volunteer, where are you?

Here they are

#shen yuan #shen qingqiu #svsss #svsss fanfiction #sy transmigrated after realizing he is gay au #luo binghe #liu qingge #yue qingyuan #mu qingfang #sqq's harem #bingqiu #liushen #mushen #yueshen

[bloodyjuls-blog]

Im gonna fight for both of us

P4

So here we go with part 4, sorry it takes me too long but I'm working and hate work haha...

When Alexia entered the hospital she had no idea what she would find there, in one hand, she could find y/n awake but with some tiny injuries (it was what she wished) but what she found was a nurse informing her that they needed someone to give consent to perform an emergency surgery because y/n's accident is a serious life threatening emergency and Alexia knew well, the only person who could do that was your sister, she had the obligation to call her and inform her, she didn't bother to call your parents because she knew that you were not the most beloved daughter in that family, moreover, she knew that they wouldn't even miss you if you died, because she heard many conversations with them in which they clearly told you that you were a failure.

While Lilah, your sister, gave the authorization over the phone, the doctors explained to Alexia what had happened to y/n. First, when they arrived at the hospital y/n went into cardiac arrest due to the impact, then doing a general sweep they found cervical and spinal injuries that compromise her mobility, hence the emergency surgery. What worries them the most is the injury of her brain, apparently it has a severe inflammation and they are concerned that when she wakes up (if she does) she will have compromised her cognitive functions such as speaking, moving, remembering things, most likely she will have memory loss.

When her sister arrived at the hospital she was furious, how was it possible that y/n was drinking again and doing these things as irresponsible. Alexia got angry and said a few things to her.

"Look, I don't think that looking for blames is the solution, what I think is that we should support each other without blaming in favor of y/n not dying, because I swear that if she dies I am going with her, you don't understand the things she was going through, and being honest neither did I, and if looking for blames then blame me because I was the one insisting" Alexia said. "Insist on what, what did you say Alexia" says y/n's sister "I insisted so much on the idea of starting a family, having children, that without those things I couldn't continue with her, that all this time was lost, but I swear it's not like that, it hurts me a lot to know that probably the only thing she heard from me was that while she's always being the loveliest person she is told me that for her the family was me and she didn't need children while she was with me, you don't know how much I regret it." Says Alexia crying and Lilah just approached and hugged her. At the end of the day their relationship is very close. "Ale calm down a little and come let's sit down, I think I understand why y/n is like this with the family thing and maybe when y/n wakes up it will kill me because it's something she didn't want you to know" lilah says calmly. They settled into the waiting room chairs.

"Since she was very little, my sister has always been the black sheep, the daughter that nobody wanted, the girl that when she had the opportunity to left home she did and never came back, you know Alexia when my sister left I was very sad but as an older sister I always saw the mistreatment and never said anything, she stopped going to so many events, so many Christmas reunions, so many birthdays or things like that because she simply knew that they didn't want her, they didn't show it love of support, the only thing that accompanied her in her gray days and well not so gray, was her bottle of whiskey, what can you ask from a teenager who has social pressure for what she does and no support or family that can tuck her in and tell her that everything will be okay" says the sister between soft tears. "I didn't know that, I thought that since she was also getting along with you..." Ale said remembering the phone calls from your parents.

"Of course Ale, you more than anyone knows that she is not one of those people who scream her problems and plead for help, she didn't want you to see her as something weird, that's why she gets along so well with your family, she found love in you, to feel loved, tucked in by someone, valued, no matter what and luckily your family is just like you, if you see the relationship my parents have with me and have with her you would surely get angry because you and I know what is y/n and how important it is to have her in our lives, Ale I'm not going to lie to you, a while ago I also thought that my sister wanted to be a mother because you know mate, look at how she treats the children, they have a very special relationship, very nice, she is a pure soul, but all her life she has seen examples of how not to be parents, how my mother ignored her and her things, Alexia the fact that my parents are not here is not new, when that 17 year old girl in her peak career broke her cruciate ligament, nobody was there for her, not even to give her a bottle of water, and because of that and more things is that y/n is super strong and every thing she sets in her mind to do she achieves it. For many years it was just her against the world and she has lived many blows without saying a word, so if she gets out of here you will understand that it will be very difficult, she will need a lot of support because according to what I have been told, her injuries are serious, probably the only thing that keeps her alive is football and she won't can do that anymore" says Lilah calmer. "I swear Lilah when y/n gets out of here things will be different, I would have liked to have this same talk but with her and avoid this bump in our road but life gives some people a lot and others very little, I swear I will be in her way as long as she lets me, that girl deserves nothing but good things and I believe that all the people she has given her love have let her down in a certain way, but just like you, I also want to do well, did you know that at home I have the ring to propose to her? I swear that without it I can't live" says Alexia more calm and confident. "I'm glad to hear that Ale, you two do each other good, please don't lose that, you're all would be miserable for life and that's not what you're all deserve." Lilah said as she gave Alexia a hug.

Hours later

"Relatives of y/n y/l" says the receptionist on the OR floor. "We are" say Lilah and Alexia at the same time. "The doctor is cleaning up but he's on his way here to report his relative" says the girl stoically. "Thank you very much" they both say in unison.

Once in the study room with the doctor....

"Well, I must say that it was a very complicated surgery because we found internal injuries that we couldn't see in the x-ray and that compromised her health, I am not lying when I say that she went into cardiac arrest at least three times and that worries us a lot because it means that her heart is weak. About her cervical injuries I am afraid that only when she wakes up we will be able to know if she has sensitivity in her legs and if she will be able to walk again, but I must admit that because of the blows her spinal cord has been affected, I want to be very realistic with you, if we manage to have a satisfactory recovery it will be very difficult for her to return to her profession, because the high impact can cause definitive injuries, now my colleagues are monitoring her brain signals because in the resonance we saw very few but we can guarantee that there is no brain death, but any sequels will be determined once she wakes up, at the moment she is not in coma but she was not awake either, we have implemented a method of sedation a little strong but I insist she is not in coma, so now later when the entrance to her relatives is authorized you're all can talk to her, in this state she can listen hope so. Of course, the view that you are going to find is very strong, because she is connected to many tubes and intravenous lines, also her external injuries are a little strong and her foot has an external fixator because there was a fracture of the tibia and fibula". Says the doctor super calm but forceful.

"thank you very much doctor, the fact that she is still alive is because of your effort, let's hope that the evolution is positive, sure it is" says Lilah calm and Alexia super scared because she doesn't understand anything. "Well Ale, y/n is not well and there are strong changes coming in her life and the only thing we have left to do is be by her side to make it as bearable as possible, I am not so much worried about her physical injuries but mental then we must make sure that when she gets out of here she gets psychological attention, and have faith that she will get out of this because she is a super strong person, she always has been and this will be just a very fat bump for her, are you ready to see her" Lilah says optimistic. "I don't know, I just know that if I will always be even if she doesn't want me to, it will be hard for me to see her like this but that's okay" Alexia says forcefully. Alexia's phone starts ringing, it's Ana and Leah on joint call.

"Hi girls."

"Hi Alexia, what happened to y/n, did you find her" says Ana worried.

"Girls, y/n was involved in an accident and it's serious" says Alexia with her voice cracking remembering the anguish experienced a few hours ago.

"How???? What do you mean accident and serious????, my goodness" says Leah in dismay.

"Yes girls, apparently her car overturned at high speed on Tibidabo and her injuries are serious, she probably won't be able to play football anymore" "if you want to come I'm sure y/n would really appreciate it" says Ale sadly.

"I'm already looking at flights to Barcelona, I just can't believe it, what a downer girls, I'm so sad" says Leah in tears.

"Ale tells me which hospital you are, I'm on my way" says Ana in a hurry.

"We are in the one near Tibidabo" "now I'm sending you the location, I'm going to hang up, I'm going to go in to see my baby" and Alexia hung up.

Before entering the room Alexia calls the team managers to discuss what happened and they tell her not to worry that everything is going to be fine and that she can take all the time in the world to be with y/n.

Lilah takes Alexia's hand and asks her if she is ready to go in to which Ale nods not so sure....

When they enter the first thing they see is y/n lying on the bed with many tubes everywhere, one coming out of her mouth, IV in her arms, one in her leg and the fixator in her ankle adding the bandage on her head (because nothing can be seen from her spine but that's where her surgery was) a tube coming out of her side, Alexia's heart breaks in little pieces to see her like this, the love of her life lying on a bed fighting for her life....

"Ale, talk to her and hold her hand, so she could feel you are here, with her, while I go make some calls" "Ok" alexia says.

"Hello my love, I know that the last time I spoke to you I didn't say very nice things but I want you to know that they're not true, I was very angry with you, it is that you are a stubborn honey, why don't you tell me your things, my life you are going to be very well. You are going to recover and although everything will be very different I am going to be with your sister and you all the way, you are going to be well, healthy, strong and laughing at life as always, I am sad to see you like this, I don't like to see that you are having a bad time, I only ask you to fight and stay here with me, don't go without me, I love you so much, all the girls are worried, even Leah is coming from London later and Ana is on her way, I'm sure that when they see me they will want to tear my head off for being stubborn, and you should know that I don't mind not having children but as long as I have you, nothing happens. .. We will buy the little house on the beach that we want so much and we will be very happy my love, I cannot do without you, you are my life, you have always been my life, I love you, very much and I will not leave here and go home without you. I love you too much, you can't imagine how much..." Alexia says through tears as she comes over and gives you a little kiss on your uninjured cheek. She arranges the chair next to you and doesn't let go of your hand, trying to give you some human warmth in that cold room. And she falls asleep for a while to the sound of the monitors lulling her to sleep.

#woso #fc barcelona femeni #lionesses #fcb femeni #woso x reader #woso imagines #alexia putellas x reader #leah williamson imagine #alexia putellas one shot #alexia putellas imagine #leah williamson x reader

[dashielldeveron]

soulmate trope | dabi

Dabi’s route of soulmate trope.

"post-canon dabi? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 30 july 2023!" to you. i know he's doing just fine. and obviously i will be wrong about some things. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to chapter 390: specifically about touya's body but vaguely about ~all of that~. sexual content. food mention/discussion. injury descriptions (burns) that aren't reader's. weeb slander. a note: part of the plot revolves around...analysing anime. i use hunter x hunter here, and if you are not into that, i have, to the best of my knowledge, included neither spoilers (aside from early story arc names) nor information that cannot be understood via context clues. additionally, there is a brief pokemon metaphor that also can hopefully be understood with context clues as well.

~27.7k

You’re being watched.

Or rather, you had the eerily intense inkling that you were being watched, or as if you were some sort of recently awakened sleeper agent—as if you were somehow the key to someone’s spying into U.A., even though the most secretive thing going on right now in 3-A’s common area was that Hagakure’s facial features were somewhat revealed by the drying face mask.

“Jirou,” you said, bookmarking your place, “Would you mind checking for—I don’t know, any kind of outside surveillance devices in here?”

Jirou bit the stem of the carnation she’d been about to weave into Yaoyorozu’s hair and shifted all the strands of the braid into one hand, and she tilted her head to jab the arm of the couch with her earjack. After a few moments, she unsheathed it, the hole in the couch sealing itself, and shook her head. “Nothing out of the ordinary. What’s up?”

Furrowing your brow, you shoved your book between the cushion and arm of your chair. “I’m not sure. It’s—I have this weird feeling that someone’s looking at me. Or through me, really. Both? I don’t know how to describe it, but it feels like someone else is seeing what I’m seeing.”

“Do your eyes hurt, ribbit?” Asui asked from her spot on the floor, where she was sorting her m&ms by colour.

“No. More like I’m hyperaware of them,” you said, “But I can’t shake the feeling that someone’s watching all of this because of me.”

“What’s there to watch? It’s nothing but a Girls and Todoroki Night. There’s nothing worth seeing and or any big secrets being spilled. Well, spoilers for the New Year’s episode of Kamisama Kiss, but it’s been out for years already,” said Mina, gesturing towards the television, and Uraraka snatched Mina’s hand out of the air and laid it flat on the coffee table again, because she’s not done painting her nails, damn it. Mina sighed dreamily at the sheep whose wool fluffed enough to take up the entire screen. “What I wouldn’t give for my hair to have that much volume.”

“I guess you’re right,” you said, settling down into your chair, pulling Shinsou’s blue-pineappled blanket up to your neck (he was out on his bike, so he wasn’t attending this Girls and Todoroki Night [Shinsou and Todoroki were the only boys allowed, since their presence wasn’t obtrusive or contrary to the vibe. Additionally, Shinsou thought it was funnier if his name weren’t included in the title of these events]). “Y’know, in the manga, the New Year avatar isn’t a sheep. It’s a dragon.”

Mina blew on her hands as Uraraka rebottled the nail polish brush. “Whaaaaat?

“It was changed to a sheep to align with the year the episode was released,” said Todoroki, his thumb and index finger pinching his lower lip with his eyes glued to the screen, “I understand the change on a narrative scale, but I believe the dragon had more of a character arc than the sheep. The dragon didn’t think it was as appealing as other years’ avatars, and it had to learn to accept itself and accept others’ love for it. It was rooted in misunderstanding.”

For some reason, when you looked at Todoroki, you were doused with regret. Sharp and cold, followed by a splash of something more muddled: envy, maybe? Gratitude?

These…these feelings weren’t yours.

***

“I can’t believe I missed a Girls and Todoroki Night,” said Shinsou, grinning, his legs dangling off the dorm’s kitchen counter, “but alas! The night was calling, and I had to go out in it.”

“We will not spoil Kamisama Kiss for you,” said Todoroki. He was crouched in front of the oven, hands clasped as he stared through the tinted window at the browning potato wedges. “You will have to watch that episode on your own.”

“You should really read the manga,” you were saying as you scanned the inside of the refrigerator, looking for anything that might go well with the potatoes—ah, Aoyama’s got some bougie-looking sauce. Savoury, by the looks of it. “It goes farther than the anime covers, and it’s so sweet. The worldbuilding gets better, too.” You took out the bottle and gave it an experimental shake.

“Really?” Shinsou wrinkled his nose. “I don’t know; that villain guy isn’t very fun. Feels like too much time is wasted on him.”

Todoroki’s head snapped towards Shinsou at the same time you slammed the refrigerator shut. “No,” the both of you said at the same time, and you continued. “The anime hasn’t been quite as accurate in tone regarding that character, but he’s really wonderful, eventually. You really feel for what happened to him and for his past relationship to the main characters. Simple but effective job of deconstructing his villainy and granting him humanity.”

“Huh.” Shinsou propped his cheek on his fist, his ankle resting on his opposite knee. “I wonder how much nuance I’m missing because I’m only watching the anime.”

For a second, you felt as groggy as if you’d just woken up, your eyes focusing a bit more precisely, blurring the kitchen tiles for a moment before re-focusing, and it crept in again: the feeling that someone was watching you, that someone else was here.

“Hey, Shinsou, Todoroki,” you said, blinking several times, Aoyama’s brown sauce clutched in both hands, “Do my eyes look any different?”

Both of them looked you over. Shinsou shook his head. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’ve got—” You nodded towards Todoroki. “I have that same feeling from last night. Like someone’s watching. But Jirou said nothing was wrong.” Shrugging, you tossed the sauce to Shinsou and sat in front of the oven with Todoroki. “I guess Kamisama Kiss must bring out the voyeur in me. Or being voyeur-ed. Watched.” You crossed your legs at the same time Todoroki jolted because of a crushed peppercorn popping in the oven. “Maybe we should start reading manga alongside the anime so that we can judge how accurate they are. See how much character nuance is lost or preserved.”

Todoroki’s eyes bulged. “You have no idea how much that appeals to me. I desperately need to discuss the differences between the Hunter x Hunter 1999 anime, the 2011 anime, and the manga. Sero refuses to watch the 1999 version.”

Amusement. Condescension. Bubbling to the top of your consciousness.

Distinctly not yours.

Why would you be feeling these things in the face of something that sounded so wonderfully, uselessly pedantic? A project like Todoroki’s just proposed sounded like an absolutely ideal waste of time that would allow you to be more accurate than the vast majority of people when it came to plot, lore, and characterisation. Why would emotions you’d associate with making fun of someone pop up now? You didn’t want to make fun of Todoroki; you were enthusiastic about joining him in this pointless endeavour.

The timer on Shinsou’s phone blared, and he tapped it off, patting his pockets (?) for the oven mitt, which he spotted on the counter next to him. “Why would Sero refuse to watch the older version?”

Todoroki helped you stand and guided the both of you away from the oven. “To be fair, in the 1999 anime, the animators did take liberties with panel composition and brought in new angles and lines sporadically. Colours are also odd and inaccurate, and those are corrected, for the most part, in the 2011 version. More of the manga is covered, and the animation is smoother in the 2011 version as well.”

Why did you feel the distant sensation of laughing? Nothing about this has been funny, per se, but the…what was going on?

“Okay, I’ll bite,” you said, strangely heavy and hyperaware and surveying the tray of steaming potato wedges as Shinsou shuffled it to the stove, “I’ll do it with you, all this manga accuracy checking.”

“Me, too,” said Shinsou, shaking the over mitt off, “My suggestion is that we keep it to just the three of us, to prevent exhausting arguments, like we’d have in a big group the size of Girls and Todoroki Nights.”

“I can lend you the first few volumes,” said Todoroki, opening a cabinet to search for Aoyama’s sauce bowls, “After that, I have a link to high-quality scans I can send you.”

“Sounds perfect,” you said, reaching for a potato wedge that did not sizzle and screech as much as the others, “Should we watch the first episode tomorrow night?” When you retracted your hand at the burn, you felt your own pain and someone else’s sense of nostalgia.

***

You’d already been on the precipice of falling asleep during Present Mic’s lesson, but when a concentrated shot of fatigue pierced you, you set down your pen and reluctantly resolved to get the subsequent notes from Iida. God, couldn’t this wait until you were out of class? No one needed to see how terrible your own notes were. No one needed to see your drawings in the margins.

Burying your face in your hands, you dug the heels of your palms into your eyes, rubbing them as the lethargy kicked in, and you braced yourself for the uncanny sensation of being your own worst voyeur.

When you opened them, after the lightheaded dots blinked away, you weren’t in the classroom, instead entrenched in darkness. Well, wait—you groped around on your desk: physically, you still were upright in your desk at U.A., able to grasp your pen, set it down, able to faintly hear Present Mic, as if he’s in the next room over.

Blindly, you tapped Mina’s desk behind you, turning your head over your shoulder. “Do my eyes look weird to you?”

“No. Should they?” she whispered back—or maybe she said it at a normal volume, and the classroom had been so far removed the distance silenced her.

Biting the inside of your cheek, you faced the front again. Looks like you have to figure this out yourself, or else you’ll be sitting in pitch black for who knows how long.

A minute passed. Your eyes adjusted to the darkness, shapes appearing—you’re inside. In a room with the lights off. Sideways, for some reason. One of the shapes was so rigidly rectangular that it had to be a shoji divider, and you were just trying to estimate its size when all of your mental facilities halted at a loud, rumbling groan.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” a scratchy, masculine voice said, “Must be my turn, huh?”

He flipped over, and barely cracked venetian blinds behind dark curtains just barely illuminated part of the scene: you were seeing this sideways because he was lying in bed, an out-of-place, opulent, Western-style bed in what you assumed was an Eastern-style room, judging what you could make out of traditional wallpaper and tatami flooring.

“Well, you’re not getting anything out of me,” he said, reaching for one of the many strewn pillows and hugging it—you lost half of your sight when his face sank into it (too dark for you to get a good look at his hands or arms), “Sucks for you, but I’m going back to sleep. Don’t care how curious you are. Not sharin’ anything with someone who can’t cook potato wedges right.”

No, get up. Get up. Say more right now. Who was he? It’s—it’s the middle of the day, anyhow; what is he doing asleep?

“Hah. You’re angry with me.” His laugh sounded more like a hiss, somehow. “Get used to it.”

He shut his eyes. After about a minute, the darkness faded, and Present Mic’s voice hit you at full volume, and you winced, clamping a hand down on your notes when the classroom came into view.

***

“You are not dropping out of school the semester you’re supposed to graduate,” said Aizawa, pinching the bridge of his nose, elbow digging into the puffy leather chair by Nezu’s desk.

“From my perspective, it does not appear you are a liability to U.A.’s security.” Nezu steepled his paws together, his pink toe beans preventing him from pressing them completely flat. “Simply seeing through each other’s eyes and feeling some of his emotions are no cause for the drastic security measures you are proposing. I believe that so long as you have some sort of indicator that either situation is happening, faculty can prepare for your temporary debility.”

“Don’t even think about abusing it to get out of class,” said Aizawa, propping his chin on his fist.

“You think I would? Shocked! Shocked and offended,” you said, “I’m gonna be in class; I don’t trust anyone else’s notes. I want my own interpretations of lectures.” You slumped down in your seat, tilting your head back to stare at the ceiling. “Principal Nezu, do you have an idea of why this is happening to me?”

“I do.” Nezu opened the top drawer in his desk to retrieve a stack of yellow-green papers, torn from a legal pad and crimped because of whatever was spilled on it. “Recovery Girl and Midnight have been analysing the results of Tainted Love’s quirk for some time now. The female rehabilitation centre with which Midnight works, Sakura Grove, has uncovered evidence of two other incidents that caused a soulmate bond with similar qualities to form.”

“What? No,” you said, letting a whine creep into your voice, “That means my soulmate’s a jerk. He was rude to me. He insulted my potato wedge recipe.”

Aizawa raised an eyebrow, the corner of his mouth twitching upward as he crossed his arms. “You can’t expect there to be love at first sight, can you? Love is a choice. You work at it every day. You have to keep choosing it.”

“Yaoyorozu and Jirou were already dating when they got assigned soulmates,” you said, listing on your fingers, “Midoriya and Uraraka had been pining after each other for years—”

Aizawa scowled. “Stop that.”

“So, do you want me to report anything? Do you want me to duck out of class when he—checks in?”

“If you feel unsafe, let us know. Otherwise, it is of my opinion that you will be just fine,” said Nezu, and he reached for his paw-sized coffee cup to remove the melting stroopwaffle cookie off the top. “Report what you perceive as dangerous, but you deserve privacy. When you decide on your signal that the bond is active, please send an email to faculty members. Whether or not you inform your peers is at your discretion.”

***

So, of course, you told everyone.

Meaning no one batted an eye the next time the soulmate bond activated, which was in class. Feeling the exhaustion and the slight buzz from your soulmate popping in to watch through you, you made the phone call symbol, grabbed a marker from the whiteboard, and headed out into the hall, no questions asked.

“Hey,” you were saying, shoving your forearm against the concrete-block wall and popping the marker cap off with your mouth, “Good to hear from you. Didn’t know I could see through you, too. Excited to see how we’ll deal with that. This is my phone number.” You scrawled it across your arm, along with your given name above it. “If you can’t memorise it now, that’s fine. I’ll write it down next time, too, so you could prepare to have something nearby to record it with. I look forward to getting to know you.”

No strong emotions on his part. But he was there.

“Okay,” you said, and you turned to sink down against the wall to sit in the deserted hallway. “Some basic stuff: I’m a student at U.A., in my last year. I’m in that—uh, I’m in the class that’s gotten into a bit of trouble over the past few years. Midoriya, Bakugou, and all of them, if you watch the news. I’ve just ducked out of class with everyone.” You kept looking at your arm so that he could memorise it. “I don’t really wanna talk about my quirk, since that seems like such a boring, capital-A adult question, but I can tell you about it later, if you really want to know. Oh! I do not suck at making potato wedges. It was just a recipe that none of us had made before, and they were fine. They were good. I—”

And he’s gone, link severed.

Crossing your arms, you slumped against the wall. Did he choose to end it? Could he? He didn’t seem very receptive, so you wouldn’t put it past him.

***

You woke up from a nap watching through him play a video game, some non-discernible, first-person shooter. Again in the dark, but perhaps not in the same room. The windows weren’t open enough to let in enough light to tell.

Your soulmate never acknowledged you were there by gesture or word. Just played his stupid fucking game. You were trying to send him foul vibes of frustration and indignation, but he ignored you.

After a mere six minutes of the world’s worst Let’s Play, you decided you could be a little bitch as well.

***

“Oh! He’s here. Excuse me,” you said to Shinsou and Jirou, making the phone call gesture as you pushed yourself up from the lunch table, “I’ll be back in a moment. Please guard my gummies from Monoma.”

A flash of curiosity, finally, from your soulmate as he got the image of Shinsou and Jirou smirking to themselves and waving you off.

Once you were alone outside in the courtyard, you pulled out and unfolded the piece of pink construction paper, at this point every inch covered by doodles of flowers and increasingly shitty bulbasaurs. You tapped at the writing in the centre. “This is called a telephone number,” you said, “This one belongs to me. If you dial this number into a phone to call it, you will reach me. Then, we could have a conversation and arrange to meet up, instead of this unreliable, one-sided bond.”

You flattened your hand to smooth out the creases, halting midway when it struck you. “I’ve just realised you may be confused by this situation. Don’t worry; I am as well. But be assured, due to a quirk incident, we’ve been assigned soulmates. Yeah, I know they’re fake, but with this villain Tainted Love’s quirk, soulmates are real.”

He evidently was feeling like he wanted to walk straight into the ocean.

“I’m assuming you’re not a U.A. student, so—do you remember breathing in some sort of pink dust? Within about the past—I don’t know, two and a half years? That’s how long Tainted Love was active. She only got arrested about a month or so ago.” You couldn’t garner anything from him except for exasperation, so you continued. “And not, like, snorting a line of pink dust. It would’ve been in a dust cloud. A bit like fog. You would’ve noticed it.”

Staring at your phone number the whole time, you allowed him silence to think. Whatever he was feeling was very subdued, so you couldn’t really surmise what it was, but ten seconds before the bond broke, a livid, fiery ire consumed your whole body in the heat of recognition.

***

Shinsou, Todoroki, and you were all crowded around a laptop in Shinsou’s dorm to watch the beginning episodes of Hunter x Hunter the next time your soulmate spoke to you. He’d gone a couple of times ignoring you in silence, once outside on a walk during the day on a path uptown you didn’t recognise, and the other on some rooftop while playing on his phone and watching a meteor shower. Completely disregarding your attempts to give him your number or talk to him in real time.

It just figured that he bothered to spare you any information when you were trying to see what the next phase of the Hunter Exam was, so Todoroki and Shinsou paused the show for you and waited. With a stab of affection for your friends, you moved to the corner, waiting for your soulmate to say something.

And he was. Your soulmate knew more combinations of swear words and general filth than you’ve ever cared to consider, and you were almost impressed with the creativity of his vulgarity. Outside under the night sky, he was furiously ripping open some medium-sized, cardboard box as he stomped towards a carefully cultivated, lilypad-covered, manmade pond towards the back of a highly organised, traditional garden.

Eventually, non-profanity was added. “Goddamn fucking shit-ass fish and goddamn fucking shit-ass crusty motherfucking doctor can’t take care of his own goddamn fucking pet project.” Tips of his house slippers stopping at the pond only by way of running into the stone wall, he stumbled, growling in frustration, before regaining his balance and yanking out the plastic bag inside the remnants of the box. “Wants a goddamn gift for fucking Mom but can’t be arsed to do it him-fucking-self. Deserves every fish fucked into his respiratory system, clogging up his arteries to give himself a goddamn heart attack. And then I can’t be blamed for—” The plastic stretched, and he ended up tearing it in half above the water, pieces falling atop waterlilies. “Shit on a cuntbag. What the fuck. I don’t deserve this.”

He stretched to reach the waterlilies, cupping his hands to sweep the fish food off and into the water. And—the moonlight struck the gently rippling water, enough for you to see a flash of an orange koi tail break the surface tension, but not enough to see whatever was going on with his hands—not that he was doing anything strange with them (just picking shreds of plastic out of the water), but they somehow were strange. They moved stiffly and had some sort of bumps on them, but—does this guy live in darkness? You couldn’t tell anything about what his hands looked like aside from the shadowed bumps, which could be anything.

“I deserve a lot, but I sure as hell don’t deserve this.” He rounded the pond and punched a few buttons on a small, hidden, monitor, checking the pH of the pool and water levels. “Not my fucking job. Not my fucking job. Why do they think—why am I the one to do this shit. How come I can get in trouble with my fucking brother for him not taking care of his project.” He swatted at his wet bathrobe sleeve, pissed, and shook out some of the water. “Hey, you. I know you’re there.”

Back in the dorm, you jolted in your seat. In the distance, you could hear Shinsou ask what was wrong. “Nothing,” you said, sounding distant yourself, “He acknowledged me is all. Hasn’t done that for a while, so it felt like a fourth wall break.”

Your soulmate sat down on the edge of the pond, glaring out at the rest of the garden (wisteria heavy, vines swaying in the night wind). “Are you hot?”

You’d never wanted to be able to transfer direct words or actions to him so much, because he needed to be strangled.

“I’m not kidding.” He crossed his arms, covered by a dark bathrobe, sticking his hands in his armpits. “Are you hot? I don’t like the idea of being connected to some hideous fuckwad.”

Never mind. Now you have never wanted to be—

“This quirk shit isn’t gonna last long, but if you’re hot, you need to get on my dick before it goes away. I wanna see how it looks giving me a blowjob from your perspective.”

Kill. Destroy. Maim. Eviscerate, even.

“Ooh, watch out. We’ve got an uptight, prudish bitch over here,” he said, and he laughed—again, sounding more like a hiss than anything else. “Well, then. If you’re not gonna put out, then I’ve got no use for you. Don’t need anyone, especially not some goddamn lunatic who claims to be my soulmate. Too many people are interfering in my life, anyway. And to be honest, it seems like you’re dumb and irritating. I don’t like people like you.”

Maybe you’re soulmates because you’re destined to kill him on sight. Your soul, calling out for his to suffer extreme violence. He’d deserve it.

May all his potato wedges burn.

***

Monoma was at the next Hunter x Hunter anime viewing, because he’d been dying to know why you were wearing an actual and literal clown costume, wig and enormous foam nose included.

“I’m liking the new hero outfit,” Monoma said, flipping his hair back with a flourish, “but why are you wearing it during our off-hours?”

“Shove off,” you said, grinning as Shinsou tossed you a pillow to hold, “Did you bring your peach gummies?”

“I did,” said Monoma, sitting next to you on Todoroki’s tatami mats, and he pulled a massive bag of white peach gummies from inside his jacket, handing it to you to open. “May I ask if it’s seriously part of your new uniform, or—”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Monoma,” you said, ripping open the bag at the notch, “I’m making a point.”

“Her soulmate,” Shinsou supplied, pulling up the next episode, “He wants to know what she looks like. So, she’s been dressing up in horrible, gawdy shit so that he can never really tell, even around mirrors.”

“He’s pissed,” you said, beaming, digging into the bag and popping a gummy into your mouth, “He wants me to stop playing around, but he was mean to me. Mean to me, unprovoked, and in a way that wasn’t hot. Tomorrow, I’m wearing a sheet and running around like a ghost. I will say nothing to him but boo.”

“I suppose that explains the influx of regular face masks you’ve taken to wearing during class.” Monoma scoffed, his incredulous, open mouth stretching into a grin. “You are impossible. If your humourless soulmate is worth his salt, then he should at least value the effort you’re putting into it.”

“Sero has sent me a message,” interrupted Todoroki, thumb swiping his phone screen, “He says that he has changed his mind and would like to join us. He’s started rereading the series and likes it more this time around.” Todoroki looked up and around his room, lips pursed. “There is not much space for five people. It is getter harder to see the laptop.”

***

The five of you started the Heaven’s Arena arc of Hunter x Hunter in Aizawa’s dorm apartment, seeing as he had the best television setup: for one, having an actual television instead of simply relying on his computer. His sound system held up, too, though you suspected Present Mic had something to do with that, instead of Aizawa’s own preferences.

You, Shinsou, Todoroki, Monoma, and Sero were scattered across Aizawa’s living room, all cosied under blankets and pillows and pointed towards his wall-mounted television, sitting on his cat-hair covered couch and armchairs, mugs and snacks on his coffee table, socked feet loose, and house slippers at the edge of the shag rug. The cats, Dango and Konpeito, chose to snuggle up towards Todoroki and you (beat that, Shinsou!), so you were careful not to disturb them from their slumber on your lap. No sudden movements, even when the tired dizziness of your bitch soulmate faded in.

“Spoilers for Hunter x Hunter, I suppose, even though it’s been out for decades,” you said under your breath, raising your hand to signal to the others that your soulmate was looking in. At your movement, Dango raised her head from her cocoon in your lap to yawn, her face nearly turning inside out, and she flinched, her pupils dilating, at the creak of the door.

Laden with groceries, Aizawa stepped into his own apartment, his brow furrowing at the sight of his students in his living room. “You have ten seconds to tell me what you’re doing here.”

“The fuck?” Sero whipped his head towards Shinsou and back at Aizawa. “Shinsou told us you were okay with it.”

“I said that he wouldn’t mind, which he can’t if he doesn’t catch us,” said Shinsou, bracing himself when Aizawa tugged at his capture weapon around his neck, “It’s my fault, Aizawa-sensei. Please don’t get angry at anyone else.”

Your soulmate seemed pleased that you were getting in trouble. Bastard.

Aizawa set his cloth bags on his kitchen counter, the insides shifting with the weight of the groceries. “Is this appropriate for Eri to watch?”

“Well, in general—”

A character onscreen chose that moment to seductively moan another character’s name, over and over again.

Aizawa winced, scrunching his eyes shut tightly. “Turn that shit off. Find another place to watch it.” Shaking his head, he unbagged the first of his groceries. “Shinsou, never bring anyone, including yourself, into my personal space again with express permission.”

“Damn it,” you said, reaching for the remote. You pressed the power button, watching the screen fade from the vibrant colours of Heaven’s Arena to black, with Aizawa’s living room reflecting back at you. Forlornly, you scratched the back of Dango’s neck, watching her mirrored reaction, before you realised what you were doing: giving your bitch-ass soulmate a clear view of your bare face. Eyes bulging, you gasped and bent over to hide your face, with Dango scurrying away at being disturbed.

The connection cut at the faint suggestion of intrigue.

***

YOU

hey i know we said we’d keep it small but. i think midoriya would really enjoy the battle analysis that the hxh characters are doing

YOU

bc they be doing some QUICK analytic work based on their opponents’ personalities

TODOROKI 💅🎏

Midoriya has been asking more questions than usual during our sparring sessions.

SERO 🧃🍊

ffs why isn’t he already in the group? should’ve thought of him

SHINSOU 💜🍡

want me to add him?

YOU

would that be okay, todoroki?

TODOROKI 💅🎏

There’s more than enough room at our new venue. We should invite him.

SHINSOU 💜🍡

why don’t you text him then? it’s at your place

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Midoriya CANNOT sit next to me

MONOMA 🔇🎭

I’d like to hear the onscreen dialogue instead of whatever he’s saying under his breath

MONOMA 🔇🎭

He CANNOT shut up

YOU

WHOMST won’t shut up??????

SERO 🧃🍊

don’t worry no one will sit next to you

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Good

MONOMA 🔇🎭

Wait

TODOROKI 💅🎏

Midoriya can attend! He’ll be a little late today, but I think we should wait for him, since it’s his first time joining us.

Startled by the waiter, you put your phone down on your notebook and accepted your coffee graciously. You shifted your laptop and notebook over so that you could cup the mug in front of you, its warmth seeping through the sides, and you took a tentative slurp. Interesting. You’ll finish it, but you won’t order this again.

You were killing time that Saturday by getting ahead on your work for Put Your Hands Up Radio: editing and fact-checking news segments that Yamada would read between songs towards the evening. Electing to get some sunshine on your skin before hunkering down with the group again to analyse some anime, you’d chosen to edit the articles outside at a café you’d discovered recently, one at which you hadn’t decided on a regular order yet and were shopping around the menu each time you came. Plus, if you’d stayed on campus, no doubt Shinsou or Monoma would’ve found you to distract you.

The café’s patio with scorching, cast-iron furniture and haphazard parasol installation led to most of its customers sitting inside, but that meant you had space to think, even with the hot groves of your seat imprinting patterns into your skin.

Your soulmate was probably being rude because he was scared, or perhaps he didn’t believe that Tainted Love’s quirk was legitimate. You’d have to assure him that it was, as you’d run through Nezu’s report with Midnight and Recovery Girl, fact-checking that. Either way. Some frustrated guy—living at home, apparently, and pissed about it—was paired out of the blue with some student at U.A. He might be scared that you were a creep.

Tainted Love’s team’s notes on her quirk that Midnight had confiscated explained that each soulmate bond, somehow, was moulded around the pair’s personalities and would fulfil a lifelong need. A lot of responsibility, it seemed, but if it were true—and other pairs proved it true—you would fulfil it naturally, and so would he.

So, even though your soulmate had been rude, you’d give him a chance. The soulmate bond existed for a reason. Plus, he might be a real-life tsundere, and wouldn’t that be fun to crack? To be the only one a rude, evil person was soft for was the ideal, wasn’t it? Someone so naturally cruel and heartless but learning to be kind for you—

Get a hold of yourself. He’s a real guy who will be in your life forever, not just someone you can throw away, like a celebrity/pro-hero crush. Treat him seriously.

“I’m…being serious,” you said to yourself, pouting into your coffee. You hunched in your seat to drink from the mug without lifting it, and you slorped away the neck of the latte art swan the barista had so carefully poured. “He’s probably not even be a sexy sort of cold-hearted. He’s just a type of bitchiness I haven’t learnt how to handle yet.”

Those boys in the anime analysis group? You could play their types of bitchiness like the world’s smallest fiddle. They were all so easy to handle (especially Monoma because of his predictability; Todoroki gave you the most trouble due to his complete non sequiturs), and it was fun bouncing off the petty parts of their personalities. Your soulmate spun things differently, but you’d learn his inclinations in time. If not, it’s not worth your time trying to “fix” someone who has no redeeming vulnerability.

You sighed. Now that you’ve lost your editing groove, you might as well do some last-minute reading before watching the next few episodes tonight. Closing your laptop, you reached down into your bag to get the next volume of Todoroki’s manga, and your vision blurred over, dizziness incoming. Well, at least you’re sitting down.

You held the manga volume in your lap and waited for your soulmate’s line of sight to appear. If he were in a darkened room yet again, you could buy yourself a little treat. The café’s display case had some sort of new chess square that you’d been eyeing. And—shit, sunlight was coming through. No little treat for you.

Well, maybe you’ll get one, anyway. You slumped farther down in your seat, blinking as dappled, sunlight-covered pavement and an empty terrace outside a business across a busy street came into view—your soulmate jumped back off the road when a car whooshed by, and after that, he jaywalked, horns blaring in his wake.

He did a little hop to get on the opposite sidewalk, hands in his pockets, and peered past the iron fence into the window of the shop—a packed coffee shop; maybe you could at least learn his coffee order, because then you’d have some shred of information about him. But no, he unlatched the iron gate and wove his way through the cast-iron patio chairs and tables, and—

You’re staring right at you: sitting, legs crossed, not taking up space, stuff spread out over your table, and he’s gaining on you. You flinched, watched yourself flinch, and your gaze darted around until you were able to meet his (your) eyes (your head making minor, nervous movements you wouldn’t have noticed if you hadn’t seen them), expression cautious, curling in on yourself on impulse. When you saw how, through an outsider, that made you look small, you made the effort to sit up and roll your shoulders back, elbows on the table. You watched yourself recoil at the heat of the iron, and you had to use his perspective to know where your notebook was so that you could rest your arms on it.

He brushed past your table’s open chair, instead yanking the table by the edge away from your lap so that he could stand closer to you and grabbing your face. He first cupped your jaw with his whole hand, pale skin and leather of a fingerless glove cold to the touch, and then, when he seemed sure you weren’t going to protest (his vision turned slightly to the left—he must have tilted his head), he narrowed his grip in little jerks of his hand, sliding erratically from gripping your jaw to just tilting your chin upwards towards him. He turned your head to the left and to the right before returning to centre to stare you down (you’d been pliant under his control, because the doubling of you watching you do things was throwing off your senses of balance and direction).

“Not as hard as you fucking made it out to be, huh?” His thumb rubbed over your chin. His nail was cracked. “Now, are you gonna stop acting like a little bitch, or are we gonna keep playing your stupid game?”

“First of all,” you said, fascinated by the way your lips curled in under your teeth to shape the consonants, and judging by where your soulmate was looking, he was, too. “It’s not an act. I am a little bitch.”

“No more of that hiding shit.” He tapped your cheek a little harder than he needed to with his middle two fingers. “Don’t know why you’d wanna hide this, anyway.”

You wouldn’t’ve said you winced at his rough touch, but you noticed enough of an aggravated microexpression around your eyes that you could tell you didn’t like it. “You’re doing the same. Hiding what you look like from me.”

“And I’m gonna keep doing it. You get nothing. There is no us. Soulmates don’t exist, and even if some hack fraud’s quirk has paired us off, I don’t need anybody, least of all you.”

“Well, maybe you don’t need anyone,” you said, your eyes dipping to see more of his hand (hot damn, we forgot we can’t see through our own eyes that quickly?) and then raising them to look directly into your soulmate’s—hyperaware of the way your eyelashes fluttered against your skin, of the slight pinch of your eyebrows, of the way the sun struck your cheeks, “but you could want someone.”

A sliver of a cool breeze wove its way through the patio, some of your hair swaying with it.

“I won’t pressure you to do anything you don’t want,” you said, lying, “but at the very least, we could communicate enough for this to be easy for us. Please let me give you my phone number, and please save it this time.”

His thumb inched up to press into your lower lip.

“Please,” you said, eyes dark but slightly glassy, letting your tongue tap the tip of his thumb, so lightly wetting it that it was as if you hadn’t touched it at all.

Your soulmate tilted his head again, lurching to the side as he shifted his weight to lean on the table. He knocked your pen onto the ground, and when you made the slightest movement to grab it, he pressed his thumb harder against you to still you, and he shook his head.

Your throat ran dry. Your (his) eyes honed in on the bead of sweat dripping down it and into your blouse. “Give me your name, then. A name, if you hate me that much.”

“It’s Touya,” he grumbled, and he closed his eyes in the moment before he kissed you, cold lips open before even touching yours (both rough, but his lower lip was much rougher for some reason). Blind, you startled back at the initial touch, but he held your chin firmly near his, sliding his gloved hand to your cheek as his tongue did into your mouth, pressing against the roof of your mouth and along your gums, alternating pressure where he pleased, not seeming to care what you did with your tongue—not that you were doing much at all due to surprise, but you at least had the mind to press your lips back, because while yes, his style was unorthodox, it still felt good. He laughed through his nose, once, when you slid your tongue against his, but when you raised a hand to cup his cheek, he pulled away before you could do more than graze him.

“Touya,” you said, and now that he was looking at you again, you—well, you looked kissed out, leaning towards him to chase that feeling, to encourage him to touch you again, and you looked fucking hot (the hell? It took a lot for you to think of yourself that way, and today hadn’t even been a good day for you, but now, freshly kissed, saying your soulmate’s name, you found yourself thinking you were pretty. Uh. Could this be what he was thinking instead of you? You couldn’t tell; it felt like it was coming from somewhere deep in your gut). “Touya. Let me write—”

You watched yourself grapple for your pen for a while. He huffed, crossed his arms, and bothered to look down where your pen was for you, and when he did, you finally grabbed it.

“Touya,” you said, uncapping the pen and hovering over your notebook, and you paused after the first stroke. “Touya spelled like that Todoroki Touya who released that Endeavor video during the war?”

The ink bled through the sheet of paper from being pressed in one spot for too long.

“Yeah,” he said eventually, voice rasping, “Spelled just like his.”

“Okay,” you said, bending over your paper and writing based on muscle memory, and under his name, you wrote your phone number for him again, with your name written beneath it, just to hammer it in. You ripped the page out of your notebook with some difficulty before passing it to him.

Touya scanned it and rubbed his thumb over your name, the leather of his fingerless glove catching on the uneven tear.

Cute. Nerd. “Do the gloves have something to do with your quirk?”

“What? No,” he said, crumpling the paper and stowing it in his pocket, and he kept his hands there, hiding them, “I don’t have a quirk.”

Okay, so Touya spoke in a rush and concealed evidence. Sounds like a lie. Monoma took that route on occasion, so the obvious thing for you to say was “Oh, so you wear them because of Naruto? Do you run like him, too?”

“Fuck off,” he spat, and you watched yourself grin: you’ve got him. “As if I had time to be a fuckin’ otaku.”

“Good to know,” you said, “So, all the manga re-analysis I’ve been doing with my friends is new to you? I hope you’re not planning on reading or watching any of the works that we’re covering, then. Unless you wanted to read along with us?”

“I don’t need that shit to scorch my brain.” For some reason, he winced, scrunching his eyes shut for a moment, and you waited in the dark for him.

“You have enough going on?”

He pried his eyes open, blinking blearily at you, still grinning, still smug. “Yeah,” he said, and he dug his left hand out to stare at the back of it, leather shining in the sunlight while he wiggled his fingers. He bent across the table to grab your coffee, fingers spidering over the rim to grip it, and he brought it to his mouth. “This is fucking awful; what’s wrong with you?” he asked after an audible swallow.

“It’s not my usual order.” Closing your notebook, you crossed your arms, staring down at you and feeling more and more like you’re in a dream. “You can either tell me what your quirk is, because I know you’re lying, or you could stay? For coffee? I’ll buy you something better.”

(You would have asked what’s up with his appearance that he didn’t want you to see or feel, but considering how early in your first official meeting it was, the question may be too insensitive, especially if he were born with it.)

Touya glanced over his shoulder, saw something you couldn’t, and set your mug on the iron table with a quiet clink. “I’ve got to go,” he said, and he spun around, taking the first step away.

You slammed a hand on the table purely on guesswork based on where he left your mug, and the sound of shaking iron and tinkling porcelain resounded, distant when you heard it through his ears, yet feeling the vibrations travel through your own arms. “Tell me your goddamn quirk, you daft fucker.”

Touya paused, and he turned back to you. “That’s more like it.” He sat on your table, at the place over your lap, and he reached out towards your face. You saw yourself lean back, eyes wide, but he simply dug his fingers into your hair at your hairline, scratching your scalp and digging his nails in enough to hear the movement.

(You saw yourself frown the moment you noticed his skin was colder than the glove.)

“Barking at me like that is how information is usually torn out of me. Makes me feel at home,” he said, a bit too cheerfully for your liking, “You can be trained to be a bitch towards me yet.”

“Touya,” you said, raising your head to embolden more of his touch, “Who’s—who’s been treating you like that? You don’t deserve it.”

“Shut up.” Touya laid his hand flat atop your head, the weight of it pushing down on you. “Sure, I lied. Said I didn’t have a quirk. Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.” Your tongue swiped over your lower lip, and Touya’s gaze darted to it. “I want any scrap of you I can get. Everything I’ve already learnt I’ve filed away in my heart: your name, the way you speak, your hatred of your brother’s fish and living at home—”

The hand on your hand slipped to slap over your mouth. “Jesus Christ, stop noticing things about me. Freak. Goddamn.” Touya lifted his hand off of you, and based on his perspective, he ran it through his own hair. “So that you don’t go making your own intrusive observations, I’ll tell you about my quirk: I effectively don’t have one anymore. I used it a lot, and it fucked me up. So, for my own self-preservation, which I’ve been told I should value, I can’t use it anymore. Good enough for you?”

“Great enough for me,” you said, “I’ll take care not to talk about my quirk or hero course stuff too much. I don’t want you to feel left out.”

“Holy shit,” said Touya, and he broke eye contact with you to stare at his boots (scuffed, black, but new, so the scuffing must be intentional), blinking rapidly before pressing—probably—his thumb and forefinger against his eyelids.

Something was deeply wrong with this man. You needed him to kiss you again. You opened your mouth to ask him to, but wooziness and your dry throat called; the ripped page of your notebook you’d been staring at dripped back into your own perspective at a glacial pace. You heard the scuffle of his shuffling off the iron table and the grit of his boot against the concrete, and when you grappled for him in the dark, your hand clenched around nothing.

You rubbed your eyes until the vertigo passed, and when you opened them, Touya was gone.

***

Later that afternoon, you were scrolling through your phone on the end cushion of one of Todoroki’s couches in the living room in a poor effort not to gawk at everything. You expected some of it could be excused, since it’s your first time at his house, but good God, rich people were insane. This was the biggest, traditionally-styled building (estate?) you’ve been in since you toured a castle preserved from the Edo period—but it was apt, you supposed, since Endeavor had been acting as a sort of daimyo of his own.

Dormer gables. Hip-and-gable roofs, with golden shachihoko shibi cupping the corners—though instead of the customary sea monsters, if your eyes weren’t deceiving you, they appeared to be made for flame-swimming instead of in water. A recessed entryway, its wooden flooring tiles hand-cut in tiny designs to make you aware of the space, with brand-new guest slippers already provided before you could ask. Todoroki’s house (estate?) screamed business, or at the very least, don’t touch anything.

At least the living room in which you sat stiffly had a touch of clear modernity—and so it seemed that the inner rooms actually revealed that they were living in the modern age, but the barrier of traditional architecture to get to actual living space heaved a hyperawareness of outsider onto your shoulders.

Todoroki himself, bless him, moved around like the elegant austerity didn’t even occur to him. Waiting for Midoriya with the rest of you, he’d helped everyone spread out their notes and manga over the short table and floor, gathering blankets for everyone when it occurred to him that not everyone’s body tolerated temperature like he did (since the house was kept oddly cold), and, instead of offering tea, like he’d said his sister would expect him to do, he provided a peculiar but pleasant combination of snacks: cheap-ass cup noodles, strawberry chardonnay-flavoured cheese on soup crackers, old mooncakes that had been in the fridge for a month but he declared were still good, and gummy worms for Monoma.

The bitch even bought everyone a fancy little drink according to personal preferences—and no one had even requested them or informed him what to get, but he’d gotten everything right, regardless (you suspected he’d asked Shinsou for help).

“Thank you,” you said, turning over in your hands the poshest bottle of pink lemonade you’ve ever seen, “You’re a very gracious host, Todoroki.”

He slurped his own caramel frappe. “I’m very excited to have so many friends over at once.”

“Of course,” you said, your weight jostling on the couch cushion as Todoroki sat next to you, “I can’t believe we didn’t think of going off-campus to watch this shit earlier. There’s way more privacy here.”

“Our doors are always open nowadays,” he said, and when Sero tapped Todoroki on his shoulder to help open another package of cheese, he held up a finger to pause your conversation.

Smiling softly, you twisted off the bottlecap of your lemonade, holding it up to your nose to inhale that pressurised burst of lemon scent, and—oh, hey, you felt a little lightheaded as you did so. Two times in one day? That’s new. At least it was from your perspective this time, so you didn’t have to worry about knocking anyone’s drink over.

“Hey,” you said, snuggling down into the couch, your palm atop the opening of your drink (when Monoma shot you a questioning look with the phone call hand signal, you nodded, and he relaxed and leaned towards you, his teeth cutting into his lower lip as he grinned). “Funny how we keep meeting like this, yeah?” you asked, feeling soft and full of love for this fucker, and you reached towards the coffee table to set down your drink and grab a flower-shaped mooncake. “I guess I can stop hiding from my reflection now, sweet boy.” You made eye contact with yourself in the reflection of the Torodokis’ enormous flatscreen, and you held your mooncake up in a toast before biting into it. “Hope you’re well. You seemed stressed earlier. I’m currently—”

Your phone rang in your lap, and you narrowed your eyes at the unknown number before answering it. “Hello?”

“Where the hell are you right now?”

“Wow,” you said, chewing, “No greeting, even? No mention of how much that you miss my voice or my lips now that you’ve—”

“Just tell me where the fuck you are,” said Touya, at the same time that Monoma’s eyebrows shot to his hairline at the kissing implication, and he thumped Shinsou in the chest for him to look up from his phone.

“Does it matter?”

“I told you my quirk shit when I didn’t want to, so fucking tell me,” said Touya, sounding muffled and, again, like he stood near traffic.

Swallowing mooncake in a rush and choking a bit, you cleared your throat and said, “Fine. I don’t know why it matters that much to you, but I’m at a friend’s house. Our anime analysis group has gotten too big for the dorms, so we’re trying out his place.”

You had to ensure the call hadn’t dropped due to his long response time. “What friend?” he asked.

You raised a brow, though he couldn’t see you. “I doubt you would know—shit!”

Struggling to tear the plastic covering the cheese, Todoroki had accidentally slammed his elbow into your collarbone.

“Geez.” You winced at Todoroki and rubbed the spot. “No, no, I’m fine,” you said when he reached towards your collarbone, his fingertips already icing over, “You may want to go get a knife to open that, though.”

Nodding soberly, Todoroki lowered his thawing hand and rose from the couch, tossing the cheese to himself. “I’ll do that. Anyone need anything from the kitchen while I’m up?”

While the others answered, you spoke into your phone again, hand on your chest. “Sorry about that. I guess if you paid attention to the news last year, you’d know him: one of Endeavor’s kids, Todoroki Shouto.”

The soulmate connection started to trickle away, but Touya stayed on the phone. “Do you not have any other friends who have a place?” Plastic crinkled on his end, along with a car horn in the background. “Hell, the library downtown rents out portable TVs—”

“Why should I be at another friend’s house?” Touya wouldn’t be able to see the reflection of your self-satisfied smirk now, but surely he could hear it in your voice. “Jealous that I’m at the house of another man?”

Touya gagged into the speaker. “Someone’s full of herself. Don’t wait up for me,” he said, and he hung up.

You pulled your phone away from your ear, pouting at the call screen before creating a new contact.

“You didn’t tell us you’d met your soulmate,” said Shinsou.

“It only happened this afternoon,” you said, saving his number under Touya 🐠🚷 (the fish for the koi pond he hated, and the no pedestrians sign for his apparent propensity to jaywalk), “and I’m not sure what to make of him. I was hoping to form my own opinion before telling all of you.”

Todoroki perked up and tilted his ear skyward at the sound of the front door opening. “I’ll get it,” he said, standing, “I bet that’s my brother. He’s back four hours late from physical therapy; I hope everything’s okay.”

Your eye twitched.

(Todoroki had warned everyone before coming over that his family would probably be in and out. Less so Fuyumi and Natsuo, because Fuyumi had recently moved in with her significant other and Natsuo had his own place near campus, but more of his parents and Dabi. Well. Touya, now, but you had your own Touya to worry about.

You’d met Dabi. Twice, during freshman year. When he’d been a villain, instead of whatever was happening with him in recovery. Rather formulative experiences for you, ones you only permitted yourself to think about in the hollowness of lonely nights—but you didn’t need those memories anymore, because you had your Touya now.

Remember? You have your own Touya. You don’t need another.)

“Do you want me to carry that for you?”

Todoroki’s voice trailed behind boot scuffing and a sliding door, and in Dabi/Touya shuffled—hoodie yanked up (layered over a longer coat?), strings pulled firmly around his face, plastic bags from the convenience store down the street on his wrist, very determinedly staring at the floor as he strode past behind the couch instead of at the four of you strewn across his living room, ducking into the kitchen as soon as possible.

You’d barely seen him for five seconds, and your heart was going to beat out of your chest. Or maybe that was just the bruise forming on your collarbone.

Todoroki nodded after his brother, standing behind your place at the couch. “There’s no ceremonial introduction, I assume. That’s my brother, Touya. You’ve all,” said Todoroki, scratching the back of his neck, “met him before. But! If you’re nervous, we will not be seeing much of him. He doesn’t spend much time in the main house; he lives in the old-fashioned teahouse towards the back of the garden. Privacy, you know, even though we’ve got to keep him close.” Todoroki wetted his lips as he looked towards the emptied shrine on the far wall. “He shouldn’t be any trouble, but I may have to zip out on occasion to help him. Not all of his skin grafts are taking.”

The doorbell rang, and Todoroki started towards it. “That must be Midoriya. Sero, would you please pull up the next episode?”

When Todoroki stepped into the entryway to greet him, you couldn’t suppress your curiosity. “I’m gonna go pour this over ice,” you said, gesturing with your pink lemonade bottle, “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Shinsou—the only one whom you’ve told about what happened with Dabi back then—shot you a crooked grin, but he distracted Monoma from noticing exactly what you were doing while you sneaked away down the hall.

His back was to you. Water flowed out of the kitchen faucet while he yanked his hoodie over his head and tossed it over the back of a chair, and he did the same with a longer, black coat—similar in shape to the coat he’d worn as a villain but not the same one. Maybe he’d grown accustomed to having the weight of it on his body, so what he wore now was a type of security blanket. While he ran a spoon under the faucet, he fumbled behind himself for his plastic, convenience store bag and fished out a pudding cup.

Backtracking a little, you purposely made your footsteps audible so that you wouldn’t startle him, and you entered the kitchen, shaking your lemonade for more noise to alert him of your presence.

His white brows pinched when he saw you, and he hastily shut the water off and scooted off to the edge of the counter while he put his stuff away, his movements rigid and close to his chest.

“Hi,” you said (oh, my God, you were talking to Dabi; holy shit), “Where do the cups live?”

Dabi blinked slowly, unable to look at you, and he peeled the lid off of his pudding cup. He glanced towards the door and back towards his stuff on the table, and he pointed towards a cabinet, his finger returning to his fist in a rush to get back what he was doing.

“Thank you,” you said, opening the one he’d pointed to. Oh. Fancy. Lots of choices. “I hope we’re not bothering you. We can—we can always leave, if you need us to. Or you could join us, if you like.” You turned around in time to see the flat of his tongue lick pudding off of the lid, stitches showing at the back of his tongue, and in the moment where he ducked his head, the tiny, unblemished part of his skin near the corners of his eyes blazing pink, your brain short-circuited.

(Dabi had been your first kiss.

During freshman year, in the week of that first round of internships, you’d been planted in Hosu City, around the time Stain closed his fist around the public consciousness. On a night patrol, your mentor had slipped into a restaurant that the yakuza frequented and stationed you in a nearby alley to watch for other yakuza incoming from the employees’ entrance.

An official sidekick had caught up with you—late forties, spandex, unrecognisable. You’d been terse in your replies, since he’d been essentially blowing your cover, but he couldn’t take a hint.

It’d only occurred to you that he’d been hitting on you when he’d propped an arm on the brick wall above your head to dominate your personal space, and an all-consuming dread had erupted in your stomach when he’d said, moving to take your chin in hand, “You know, you remind me a lot of my daughter.”

Before he’d been able to touch you, something rabid and ravenous about the size of a labrador had tackled him to the ground, the force knocking him almost two whole meters away, and the thing ripped into the sidekick’s chest, blood spewing—and somehow having the sense to cover his mouth to stifle the shouts.

In the moment you’d moved to get a better look at what was, in retrospect, a nomu, another figure had stepped between you and the sidekick, his own arm resting on the wall to keep you from getting closer.

“Hey,” Dabi had said, an easy grin stretching across his face, “Don’t you worry your pretty little head about anything. Just testing some shit out for someone. So long as you don’t go making any noise, I’ll let you walk away.”

Dabi hadn’t made his villain debut back then, but even so, it hadn’t seemed like it was just testing something out for someone; this guy had seemed his own brand of dangerous. Your gaze had started to creep towards the source of crunching, but he’d tapped your cheek, making you look at him. “Nuh-uh. Keep your eyes on me. If you don’t know anything, I don’t have to kill you, do I?”

“I, I’m—” You’d steeled yourself somewhat, your hands clenching into fists at your sides. “I’m not just gonna let you kill a hero while I stand here.”

Again, Dabi had stopped you before you could take a full step, this time by gripping your jaw, letting it rest in his palm while his fingers dug into your cheeks. “Can’t call him a hero. Was comparing you to his daughter—didn’t you hear? And it looked like he was gonna assault you. Some guys aren’t meant to be fathers.” His syrupy gaze had fallen to your neck, and he’d squeezed your face. “Jesus, your heart is beating like crazy.”

“I don’t normally calm myself down to the sounds of someone getting maimed,” you’d said, blood splattering in the air behind him, “Oh! Fuck.” You’d scrunched your eyes shut and curled in on yourself, trying to block out the sound of bones snapping.

“Some hero you are.”

“Yeah, yeah,” you’d said, “You’re more of one than I am, tonight. Thanks—?”

“Dabi,” he’d said, and at the time, it had just been a name. When you’d pried open your eyes, he’d been smiling, mouth closed, head tilted at being called a hero. You’d smiled back, but at an enormously strident crack from behind him, you’d had a full-body jolt. “Fucking hell, calm down,” he’d said, his arm sliding from the wall to your upper arm, “For once, you’re safe with me.” Seeing you try to look over his shoulder again, Dabi had dragged you forward by the jaw to kiss you, closed-mouthed but hot, leaning into you, his mouth overwhelming you with hardly any effort on his end, and he’d kept kissing you, stroking your cheek with the back of his hand, until the nomu slinked into silence.

Dabi had broken off when the nomu scuttled farther down the alley. “Right.” He’d taken a deep breath. “You gonna tell anyone about me?”

You’d shaken your head, confused as to why he seemed more concerned about descriptions of him rather than descriptions of the murder. But he’d been nice to you. Had given you a hell of a first kiss. “I can say someone in the yakuza killed him.”

He’d roughly patted your cheek and dropped away from you, stowing his hands in the deep pockets of his coat. “His death isn’t worth reporting, but I’ll take it.” He’d spun on his heel, raising a lazy hand in a wave as he disappeared into the night. “You’d better hope you never see me again.”)

And now, here he was, hunched over shitty gas station snacks in his family kitchen, a spoon hanging out of his mouth while he stowed things away. His naturally white hair showed now, and…he seemed terribly shy. Dabi, shy. Fucking ridiculous. But, you supposed, there’s guilt and shame around, uh, doing what he did. And—and his body was horribly, horribly mangled and mottled. He might not think anyone should look at him.

Todoroki (Shouto, you supposed you should think of him as, since Dabi was a Todoroki, too) had mentioned not all of Dabi’s skin grafts were taking. It was obvious. He’d burnt up during the war, and while you’d heard Recovery Girl and Eri had worked on him, despite outside protests that he wasn’t worth it, he still was very clearly cobbled together.

He still had a lot of staples, though faded stitches filled in new gaps, and those that remained had been replaced with medical-grade staples that wouldn’t get infected. Patches of successful grafts left a waning diamond pattern, particularly around his neck. Very little purple, overall, but going by the scars, you could still tell where it had been. Based on his appearance, he shouldn’t be alive, let alone able to walk around.

But he scooted with such speed out of your way when you got ice out of the freezer. “But really, you could stick around with us, if you wanted to. No pressure, though, if you want to be alone.” Calmly. You were calmly popping ice out of a tray and letting them clatter into your glass. “We’re watching Hunter x Hunter right now, if you’re interested. Have you read or watched it before, either the 1999 or 2011 version? Do you have a favourite character?”

Dabi clutched his snacks and discarded clothes to his chest, almost at the door, with his eyes darting all around the kitchen except on you.

Yeah. Must be shy. You were one of the U.A. students who fought in the war, after all, even though you didn’t personally fight him in the end. Probably feels guilty about the whole thing. Shy could be refreshing, after those bitches in the living room and your cunning soulmate.

Finally, tentatively, Dabi shifted his belongings to his right arm, and he raised his left to pat his throat, swallowing so that his Adam’s apple bobbed.

“Oh,” you said, ice melting in your hand, “I’m sorry. Are you on vocal rest? Vocal cords messed up somehow?”

After a moment, Dabi nodded. He edged towards the hallway.

“Okay. I hope you feel better soon,” you said, and you poured your lemonade over the ice. “I’ve kept you long enough. Please go rest; I hope we don’t disturb you further.”

Before you finished, he’d already skibbled off, his house shoes slipping on the wood.

***

(The second time you’d met Dabi hadn’t been as hands-on, but it’d still left an odd impression.

It’d been in an urban jungle-type battle, after knowing his involvement the League but before his backstory reveal, and you and some classmates had been fighting a handful of PLF-aligned villains.

You’d slithered underneath a lean-to created by a partially collapsed building to catch your breath, along with shielding yourself from an explosion Bakugou had been building up. You hadn’t even known Dabi was in the group you were chasing, but he’d slinked underneath the same, protective ruins as you had, barely slipping underneath the cover before Bakugou’s explosion had shaken it.

Dabi had braced himself on the crumbling entrance, scrunching his face away from the explosion, and once it’d stopped, he’d noticed you were barely two paces away from him, sweat dribbling down your face the same as it’d been down his.

You still didn’t know if his startled, constipated expression had been of recognition or simple surprise to see someone else taking cover under something that could collapse and kill them. He’d taken in your U.A. gym uniform—your personal hero costume had been in repairs that week—and there’d been a couple of heavy seconds where neither of you had done anything besides pant and let sweat drip onto the rubble.

He'd slipped out first, since he’d been blocking the entrance, and you’d left soon after. You hadn’t been five steps out of the lean-to before someone on the PLF side had destroyed it, and in the privacy of your heart, you liked to think that Dabi had waited until you were out to raze it.)

***

You made it a habit to call Touya whenever the soulmate bond activated. Though he never initiated a call, he answered most of yours. What else was he going to do, if it were on your side, besides sit there in the dark? He continued to be hold information about himself like a miser clutching coins, but you found it refreshing to have a charismatic grouch of a pseudo-pen pal.

You’d closed the door of a library study room behind you as you called him this time, setting your stack of books on the table.

“You’re finally reading something besides manga? I thought your brain was gonna rot,” he said upon picking up.

You slung the strap of your purse over a chair. “No greeting? No admittance of missing the melodious sound of my voice?”

“Why in the hell would I do that,” he said over the screech of pulling out your chair.

“Because you missed the melodious sound of my voice?” You pulled out your notebook, flipped it to a new page, and fossicked around for a pen. Clicking the one you found, you reached for the first book in your stack, a rudimentary sign language dictionary, and you jotted down a list of common words as they came to you, such as thank you, help, and, of course, the all-important cat.

Touya clicked his tongue. “Are you seriously gonna make me study with you?”

You made the final stroke in the word pudding. “I don’t expect you to absorb the information. If you rather I read manga, I can go to that section for a while. Pick out a shoujo.”

“Get fucked with that otaku shit,” said Touya, and—he must have had his phone on speaker, because a couple of people were speaking to each other nearby about what must be the latest Assassins’ Creed, and the sound changed after some scrapes, with Touya sounding closer. “Why study sign language?”

“There’s someone in my life who recently became unable to talk all of the time,” you said, “and I’d like to help give him some way to communicate.”

“Just text him,” said Touya, “Well—never mind. Who’d wanna text you, anyway?”

“Sometimes, people put away their phones, Touya. Have you heard of it?” You drew a line down the half of your paper to make a new column, one sorting the words in groups—places, family members, requests, and the like.

“What are you getting out of it?” Touya must have scratched somewhere on his face, the sound coming over the phone. “You makin’ fun of him? Making him feel bad? If he wants to talk to you, he can just write shit down.”

“I think he might hate it because of how slow it is. And what if I luck out, and he knows sign already? Then half of my work is done for me,” you said, listing off all of the terms for family members, “Text-to-speech may be okay, but I don’t know. Still slow.”

“He probably doesn’t even want to talk to you,” said Touya, “let alone learn something for you. That’s a lot to ask for someone you ain’t fuckin’.”

You hummed and ignored him. You titled a new column Body, and the first word under it was burns. Followed by healing, surgery, hands, skin, hurt, and rest. For the first time in a while, Touya’s emotions were strong enough for you to feel, but you couldn’t name them. More like some pitiful, fearful soup, if anything, and other stuff you couldn’t put your finger on.

His voice still came in confidently derisive, though. “What kind of fucked up guy are you spreading your legs for, since those are what you’re writing down for his body? Seems like you’d be better off as a cocksleeve for someone else actually capable of fucking you.”

“Oh, rude! Rude!” Scowling, you set down your pen. “That’s rude to both me and him. I’m not talking to you anymore. Enjoy studying, asshole.” You flipped to a random page in the dictionary and started memorising, a bit too pissed to be productive for real, and you kept it up—if Touya were going to be here, then he’s not learning productive sign language, either. Try using marble and mare in everyday conversation, jackass.

Later, you caught yourself zoning out while staring at an entry, only shaking yourself out of it when Touya grumbled under his breath for you to turn the page already.

***

Todoroki paused the episode when the pizza arrived.

Moaning way too sensually, Kaminari stretched his arms above his head and arched his back. “My electricity is cooler than Killua’s, right? I have more swag than him?”

“No.”

“In your dreams.”

“Yikes.”

“Wrong,” said Shinsou, pelting him in the face with a popcorn kernel.

Kaminari picked it up off the floor and ate it mournfully. “I’m getting beaten by a fictional twelve year old.”

“I’m going to the bathroom,” you announced, pushing yourself up from your seat between Shinsou and Monoma (which was just as well, since they were comparing scans of the current manga chapter over your lap), and you set off with the intention going to the farthest bathroom to increase your chances of bumping into Dabi.

No such luck, even though you deliberately stomped your slippers as loudly as you could to try to draw him out. Sighing, you backtracked to a tiny bathroom you’ve used before, one that wasn’t as intimidatingly wealthy as the rest of the house and therefore actually felt like it was meant to be used, and you opened the creaking door onto an exhausted, shirtless Dabi trying to rub some sort of cream on the back of his neck, a massive jar open on the sink, blood seeping down his biceps at the strain around his staples.

Both of you froze. He took a quick glance to the gobs of cream on his hands and managed to kick the door shut from his seat on the closed toilet, but your foot caught in the door, which struck your nose and cheekbone, with you yelping and clutching the area.

“Sorry! I’m sorry,” you said through the crack in the door, shakily dragging your bruised foot out of it, “I didn’t know anyone was even in this side of the house. Are you okay? No, wait, sorry again—you’re bleeding; of course you’re not okay. I’m sorry.” You checked your nose for bleeding of your own, but nothing leaked out of your nose. “Can I—may I help with whatever you’re doing?”

No answer. But he hadn’t shut the door.

“Fine,” you said, and you spoke into the crack, only able to make out the granite on the near side of the sink. “I don’t know what’s going on with you nowadays, but I hope you’re doing okay. Or that you’ll be okay soon, at least. I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been through, and I’m sorry you had to go through it. But I can grasp, I think, that having a bunch of your brother’s friends over can be intimidating and isolating. If nothing else, I’d like to get to know you better—or you could just get to know me better, if you don’t feel like sharing—so that having all of us over isn’t as terrible. I’m sorry we’re bursting into your life when you’re working out a lot of stuff in recovery—”

Dabi yanked open the door, brow furrowed, and instead of looking at you, he clamped his slimy hands on the sink and stood on his toes to arch towards the mirror, opening his mouth wide to breathe hot air onto it, teeth bared, as if he were roaring. In its fleeting fog, he traced out kanji, streaked with lotion and hidden by his left hand as he wrote, and he blew over it a final time before stepping back and jabbing at the message.

Stop apologising.

“Ah—oh,” you said, while Dabi squatted and rooted through the cabinet under the sink, “Okay. I’ll try. Thank you for saying so.” How do you talk to someone who was formerly 1) an S-tier villain and, more importantly, 2) your longest-running crush?

Dabi plopped a meagre first-aid kit on the counter and pointed to the source of bleeding on one of his arms, the inside bicep where two staples had come loose.

“I don’t know shit about first-aid,” you said, reaching for the kit anyway, “I know you have to keep pressure on it, and stuff, but—”

And so the first time Dabi looked you in the eyes was to shoot you an incredulous, suspicious glare that accompanied his snatching the kit back from you, clutching it out of your reach. Relaxing once it was in his hands, he hesitated a moment, shifting his jaw, before nudging the open jar of lotion with his knuckle, reverting to his fixed gaze on his feet.

“I can do that,” you said, heart racing, “You wanna—why don’t you sit back down?”

Not lotion, you noted, as Dabi pulled out disinfectant wipes and a roll of gauze near its end, burn cream. Aw. You dipped your first three fingers into it (heavy, roll-around slimy, like holding a frog) and hoped to God that your soulmate didn’t tune in during this. Touya didn’t like a lot of things you did, but he’d probably loathe your gawking over the scarred back of someone who wasn’t him.

Yeah, Touya would probably hate how you would hone in, laser-sharp, each time Dabi’s muscles flexed as he wrapped his wound, how the space between his shoulder blades with the tiny dent along his spine (well, his spine indented at the top of his back, where he was broader and still held muscle, and poked out towards his lower back as he bent over) held your focus far too long to be impersonal—and you got to touch it. You kept the contact to your fingertips, because as much as you wanted to flatten your hands to feel every moving tendon, you didn’t want to scare him. He’s probably not used to outside touch, and you shouldn’t come on too strongly, especially when someone else’s soul was fucking bound to yours.

But as your fingers smoothed over the marks around his shoulders where burns used to be, skin cold to the touch, as Dabi turned his head to the side just barely so that he could watch you out of his periphery, you found it hard to remind yourself that you already had a Touya. Can’t have two.

“I know it’s none of my business, but, uh, if you’re on vocal rest this often, I could—I could help you learn some sign language?” You scratched underneath your eye in a nervous gesture and smeared some of the burn cream on your cheek. “Nothing intensive. Only simple, everyday stuff, like—well. I don’t know what frequents your vocabulary. You don’t have to, but I’m offering. Just in case.”

In the mirror, Dabi halted in tying the gauze to glare up at you, his lip curling up in flash of a sneer.

“Okay, that’s cool. That’s fine. I can—I can leave a sign language book with your brother, if you—if you ever change your mind.” You nodded, just to have some sort of reaction he could see, and he tucked away the disinfectant wipes and tossed the empty roll of gauze into the trash bin. “Hey,” you said, noting how he’d only bled at his left arm, which was covered with mottled patches of skin, staples, and stitches, along with the faint diamond-pattern of skin grafts, while his right arm needed no medical attention, pale and unblemished without any sign of damage, “What’s up with—if you’re comfortable with sharing, why doesn’t your right arm have any scars? Was Recovery Girl able to heal that more effectively, or something?”

Holding your gaze in the mirror, Dabi raised his eyebrows, nearly vanishing under the drooping, white spikes of his hair, and he reached over with his left hand to rub his thumb over his right shoulder and curving down into his armpit.

He actually laughed (a laugh through his nose, yes, and one without the humming sort of vocalisation usually accompanying a laugh through a nose, but a laugh nevertheless) at how hard you jumped when he popped off what was apparently a prosthetic.

***

“If you hate gardening this much, why keep doing it?” you asked, once again trapped in Touya’s perspective late at night while he tended to a traditional, Japanese garden. You lay flat on your back in bed, hands and phone resting on your chest (laptop closed to the side. Your essay was due at eight o’clock in the morning. Would Present Mic accept late work due to soulmate interference?).

“Lots of dumb fucking reasons that all fold in together,” said Touya, shovelling gravel out of a wheelbarrow and into the man-made brook he was trying to shape, “One: my stupid fucking family has decided that doing this earthy shit would calm me down. Zen gardening, or whatever.”

“Oh, do you have issues controlling your anger, Touya?”

“Stop that. Two.” Gravel pittered off the shovel blade, falling into the trickling water with a series of tiny plops. “One of my brothers brought up how Mom always liked the garden but was stopped from taking care of it herself, and since I did some shit to—it’s not like I could’ve helped it; they were keeping stuff from her, too. Anyway, Mom’s fucking sad nowadays. Better, but sad.” Touya sank the shovel into the gravel to lean on it, tracking the flow of the water for a moment, twisting through the previous path currently being overtaken by moss and fallen stone. “And my brother thinks the garden being fancy again will make our mom happy, especially if I’m the one to do it. Dick. Saying if we hired people to do it, it wouldn’t be the same. Started with just the damn fish, but now the whole fucking thing’s my job. It’s fucking shit. It’s blackmail and family obligation and rent all at once. It’s a fuckin’ nasty trick.”

Touya dug into the wheelbarrow again. “And my fa—that guy had the nerve to suggest that I needed something to do during the day. As if I’m not busy enough.”

“During the day? Touya, I’ve only seen you garden at night.”

“Because it’s too damn hot outside all the time. And I don’t want anyone watching me. I’m no one’s business. But I bet they’d like staring out of a window at me, while I break my fucking body again moving all of these shitty rocks and shaping Mom’s fucking evergreens.” He shovelled with deep malice. “Did you fucking know that there’s goddamn symbolism in these shitty gardens? That you can’t just put things anywhere without it meaning something? Somehow ponds are supposed to be oceans. Rocks are supposed to be mountains. Forced perspective shit, paired with tenets of Zen and Shinto, and it’s the pettiest, most unnecessary bullshit I’ve ever had to deal with, and I dealt with a friend’s abominable driving for years. Never got any better at it, even though I got fucking motion sick.”

He knelt, and when two, fat glops of Touya’s sweat dripped onto the stone at the impact, you rather enjoyed the gentle wafting about your dorm room at the blades of your ceiling fan.

He must have felt your appreciation. “Stop that. I’m making a point. Look at this shit,” he said, gesturing to the brook and then up at the three-quarter moon, “I’ve gotta change the course of the water, because it’s better to face towards the moon to capture its reflection, and I’ve gotta make it somehow cascade or waterfall at some point over there.” He pointed far across the garden towards a flickering pair of stone lanterns. “How am I supposed to do that? I can’t even make it flow through gravel right. I might have to move some of the stepping stones again. I fucking hate those things. They’re too heavy for one person, and I’ve already had to rearrange them because some of them weren’t fucking weathered or natural-looking enough.”

“Sure. Death to aesthetics,” you said, blindly feeling around for a pack of gum you kept in your bedside table, “I’d come help you if I could, but somebody—”

“You’re not getting a location out of me, princess.”

You paused, hand on the knob of the first drawer, and a wide, smug smile broke across your face (Princess, Touya? You’re gonna call me princess? You sure you don’t care about me?).

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything!”

“I could feel it,” said Touya, flexing his fingers on his knees, “so shut up.”

Gloved hands clenched into fists, he glared at the brook, the gravel, up at the moon, and back into the water.

“You know, it looks like if you moved most of the gravel to one side, the water might flow the direction you need it to.”

“Who’s the one busting their ass here, me or you?” But he plunged his hands into the water, grabbed heaping fistfuls of rocks, and patted them onto the far side of the stone bed.

“Touya,” you said, feeling around in your drawer for the pack of gum, “Take your gloves off! You’re gonna ruin the leather.”

“Like I care.” He dragged more gravel underwater. “If I took ’em off, you’d see my hands.”

“Come off of it, Touya. I bet they’re perfectly fine,” you said, successfully grabbing gum and sliding your drawer shut, “Hands are often the most attractive part of a man.”

He paused, water flowing around his arms up to his elbows (he wouldn’t roll up his sleeves, either. Stubborn boy. He must hate whatever’s going on with him). “Not the dick?” He sounded like he was grinning.

“Not always. Some of them look like sad, sea creatures,” you said, unwrapping your gum into your phone’s speaker to annoy him, “It takes talent to have a pretty cock. Hands, however, can easily be lusted over because of what they’re capable of. Or what you know they’ve done.”

(Hee hoo hah, like burn down a city. You’re so normal about it.)

“Not how they look?”

“Appearance can help, but it’s not the whole cow,” you said, chewing while the flavour faded fast.

Touya scoffed, his fingers sinking into gravel. “You makin’ fun of me?”

What? “Of course not. Why?”

“Don’t say shit like that to get on my good side. I’m more than aware I ain’t got anything besides my shitty personality goin’ for me.” He cleared his throat. “That sign language guy got anything I don’t?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You sure seem obsessed with him,” said Touya, leaning more deeply into the water, soaking his hoodie even more, “even though he sounds pathetic. You tryin’ to fix him to make yourself look good?”

“Of course not. I know no one can fix anyone else. He has to choose to do that himself,” you said, “Not that there’s anything about him that merits fixing.”

Laughing (oh? hot), Touya scooped a handful of gravel out of the wheelbarrow to add it to the far side. “Yeah, you’re fucking obsessed with him. Am I not your soulmate?”

You rolled your eyes, even though he couldn’t see it (and…you…couldn’t see it). “You haven’t given me anything to obsess over, unless you want me to research gardening tips or how to breed carp.”

“I would love for you to be obsessed with breeding, sweet—”

“Oh, my God, you have to ease into that sort of thing, Touya.”

He pulled his hands out of the brook, drenched sleeves gushing water back into it. “D’you want me to start with how much I wanna suck on your perfect tits?”

“Touya,” you said carefully, shoving the gum to one cheek, “Is everything okay? You’re acting—strange.”

“What do you—”

“Where’s the blind hatred for me? Where’s the disdain?”

Sitting back on his knees, Touya shoved his leather-wet-dripping hands into the damp, double pocket of his hoodie with a muted slosh. “You think I hate you?”

“You’re that rude to people you don’t hate?”

Water seeped through the pocket and through his jeans, visibly darker in the moonlight and soaking his thighs. “Fuck off. I mean—what I mean is that I’m not used to people like you. Who don’t talk like me. Who aren’t mean to me back. Or who don’t seem to want anything from me. Didn’t know you really thought I was rude.”

You screwed up your face. “Who have you been hanging out with? What the hell is wrong with you? Spend time with people who like you, please?”

“No one likes me—”

“Get your head out of your ass, edgelord,” you said, sitting up in bed and holding the phone up to your mouth, “Newsflash, dipshit, it sounds like lots of people like you. Your brother, who wants to help you make your mom happy, in an easy, physical way that you’re more than capable of. Your mom, who sounds like she’s happier now that you’re back in her life. The rest of your goddamn family, who want you close by so that they can help you if you ever fucking accepted it. Your stupid friends who are into Assassins’ Creed.”

“Stop fucking noticing things about—”

“And me. I like you, dipshit. Get over yourself. You’re digging yourself your own lonely, self-deprecating hole, where I guess you’re at your most comfortable. But tonight alone you’ve shown in your garden that you fucking hate digging holes. They mean unnecessary work.”

Inhaling sharply, you threw your phone into the bedspread, but all that came through was a distant deer scare, bamboo hitting rock.

“Since when do you like me?” he asked, pushing on his knees to stand.

The artificial-yellow light from your lamp starting creeping in around the rim of your vision, blotting out parts of Touya’s silhouette in the moonlight. “I talk to you, don’t I? I wouldn’t even acknowledge the bond if I weren’t open to—we’ve been hanging out. You didn’t know?”

“Like I would know what that looks like,” said Touya, the walls of your room coming into view while Touya pulled his own phone out of his inner pocket, tapping the screen to see how long the call has lasted, “Like I would know how someone like you would behave when they like me.”

“Stay on the goddamn phone,” you said in the moment his thumb hovered over the end call button, the last thing you made out before fully sinking back into your dorm room, “If you don’t know what I—well, what does your love look like, Touya? What do you do when you like someone?”

“Sexually? Romantically?”

“Not necessarily,” you said, pissed to have the connection severed and sliding off of the bed to turn off the lights, “Just when you care for someone at all.”

“Gimme a minute,” came Touya’s voice, and after you flipped the lights and the ceiling fan off, you wandered over to your window, switched your phone off speaker, and held it to your ear as you stared up at the same moon Touya was under, and you waited.

“Right, I don’t know for sure,” he said after a while (but it sounded like he’d stopped dealing with the gravel to think about it), “but this is the only thing that’s coming to mind. Before I was living at home again, me and some friends didn’t have consistent sources of food. Don’t interrupt to say you’re sorry. But. So, whenever I’d, uh, buy stuff. From a store. I’d make sure I got some sort of snack for whoever I was with, even though we were all too proud to ask for shit. Didn’t really think about doing it on purpose. But I guess I did.”

“You are deliciously, delightfully, tender as fuck,” you said, clenching a fist over your heart, your boob jostling with the fervent impact (and it pleased you knowing that Touya would’ve laughed if he’d seen), and you kept talking over his sounds of disapproval. “And I am gonna cook for you. I am going to set you a table so vast that you’re gonna be eating off it for a long, long time. You’re never gonna be fucking hungry ever again, Touya.”

When he didn’t answer, you worried you said the wrong thing, but you stayed on the line, listening. Two minutes later, he hung up, and you could have sworn he cut off in the middle of a wet sniffle.

***

What can you cook? What were you good at cooking that actually constituted a filling meal?

Start small, you supposed.

Fuyumi kept the Todoroki kitchen much more well-stocked than the kitchen to which you had access, and so, with welcome permission, you headed over to the estate earlier than the scheduled viewing time to prepare, with Shinsou and Todoroki hanging out in the kitchen with you.

“Jirou says she can attend,” said Todoroki, thumb swiping across his phone screen, “Turns out her tipping point was stating the merits of studying Melody’s music powers. She’s asking if Yaoyorozu may attend as well?”

“It’s your house.” Shinsou was folding his napkin into an origami frog. “If there’s a need for excuses, you can always say Yao might like—I forget his name, but he’s that character in the Phantom Troupe whose hair looks like a mop? She might like analysing how his power lets him copy anything, even though it doesn’t have the same limitations like her quirk.”

“I will mention that,” said Todoroki, nodding sagely.

The plan was simple: with a captive audience of anime nerds, you could get feedback on your cooking until it was good enough for Touya (a small part of you still cringed thinking about how he reacted to your potato wedges). You would lure your friends into a state of complacency with your smaller dishes—baked goods, and the like—until there was no escape when you served them something more filling, like soups.

Today, you were making teeny little lemon ricotta pancakes (the recipe called for them to be regular-sized, but if you made them around the size of a potato chip, it would be more accessible to eat with fingers in the living room) that gave you the air of being fancy but were actually mindless to make, it turned out, and right now, you were stirring the stewing blueberry syrup that you’d decided would be a dipping sauce rather than drizzled over—the Todorokis had an excess of white furniture, and you would like to be invited to use their kitchen again.

“I think,” you said, once the syrup was behaving like syrup when you let it dribble out of the ladle back into the pot, “I’m gonna take some to your brother. I don’t want him feeling left out, if he comes through. He’s home right now, yeah?”

“He’s in his teahouse. It’s towards the back of the garden.” Todoroki got up from the table. “Do you want me to show you?”

“I’m sure I can find it, since it’s the only building not connected to the main one,” you said, but you did accept his help finding a tray and sauce cup for the syrup, and once it was set, you picked up the tray and strode with purpose towards the garden.

Walking through its seemingly-natural landscape while balancing food and liquids proved to be miraculously easy. Their hired gardeners must be doing insane upkeep to ensure its deliberate, natural-but-not cosiness. You made a mental note to ask Touya what some of the structures symbolised, like the recurring patterns of three rocks of different heights close together. He’d know, reluctantly, since he did stuff like this, and you considered his work to be superior to this, anyway.

In the blistering sun, you had to narrow your eyes to slits, regretting that both of your hands were full so that you couldn’t shield them from the light, and you found a gated, stone path to the teahouse. Clearly, it had once been slightly dilapidated but had since been worked on; another room had been latched on to the side to double its size, judging by the change in architecture styles, and the roof reflected sunlight a little too well for its polished, stone tiles to be less than a year old.

Bracing the tray, you took the steep step onto the neatly swept, bamboo engawa running around the edge of the teahouse, and you—was the door around to the side? Around the left side of the original part of the tearoom, two shoji panels had been spread to let in sunlight upon an empty room with an actual fucking sunken hearth, unlit, with one of the same fire-fish as on the estate’s roofs for the crank’s lever. Behind what would have been the seat of honour stood a dishevelled tokonoma, devoid of scrolls or incense burners but instead housing an unzipped backpack atop a long coat, its sleeves trailing onto the floor outside the tokonoma, with sticky notes taped to its inner wall. A red-tinted wood dresser had been pushed into the corner, tissues and hand sanitiser atop it and a single stack of books propped next to it.

A pair of boots was tucked inside the open shoji. Maybe he’s asleep.

At your first step inside, you jolted so hard you had to struggle to hold onto the tray—the floor had chirped at you. Dead ringer for a bird call. Tentatively, you took another step, and it chirped again, this time with a bit of a wheeze, more artificial-sounding.

You jumped and stumbled again at another wall sliding open, giving the impression that a flock of birds had flown inside, and Dabi poked his head through the gap (you could make out the gleaming pause screen of a gaming system in the newer room behind him). His face had relaxed when he’d seen it was you, but it pinched into a strange, unnameable expression when he saw what you were carrying.

“Hi,” you said, holding out the tray, “I’ve made too many snacks for the anime group today, so I thought you might like some? I can take it away, if you don’t want any.”

Since he probably didn’t know the amount of people attending nowadays, he probably didn’t recognise your lie. Dabi held up a finger for you to wait while he exhumed a short table and two floor seats from storage in the walls, and he waited for you to sit before he did, slowly, crossing his legs on the cushion, his joints creaking.

“They’re little lemon ricotta pancakes. Todo—Shouto told me you didn’t have any food allergies, so it should be fine. That’s blueberry syrup,” you said when he pointed at it. “I’m—I guess you could say I’m practising recipes for cooking for someone else. If you don’t like it, please let me know. I’ll make it better next time.”

Dabi fiddled with two of the tiny pancakes before selecting one, inspecting it in the sunlight, and dipping it into the syrup (you went a little crazy when it dripped onto his tongue stitches, but you managed to suppress it). As he chewed and swallowed loudly, Dabi’s eyes bulged, brow furrowed, and he, panicked, fumbled around for probably his phone, patting the pockets on his jeans. Hands pausing after slapping the empty pockets on his ass, he sprung up, grabbed a pen off of the dresser, and snatched a sticky note off of the inner wall of the tokonoma. He returned to the table and knelt half on the seat, scribbling furiously, and when he pushed the sticky note to you, under a crossed-out potting soil, sledgehammer, he’d written fuck you marry me NOW.

There’s a moment in which you forgot, a moment in which you laugh, head tilted back, flooded with endorphins at your long-time, pseudo-celebrity crush liking something you made to even joke about being in a relationship with you. You opened your mouth to make some joke about how you’d like to go on a few dates first, to have some sort of courtship, but you stopped at the first word: “Touya.” You cut yourself off, brow pinched. You can’t have two.

Not that…not that Dabi/Touya could ever genuinely like you, who fought against him and now witnessed his debasement, but in the far-flung chance that he could, you should clarify about your Touya.

“Touya,” you said again, this time sober and grim, hands folded on your lap, “I know you were only joking, but I was in a quirk-related incident a while ago, and it assigned me a soulmate. So, even if you could like me, I’ve got someone waiting. Presumptuous of me to say, I know, but. I want to treat you with kindness and not make you wonder, in the case it arises. Funnily enough, his name is Touya, too—”

Your phone rang loudly in your back pocket (you kept it on loud nowadays so you could easily feel around for Touya’s call, but it’d led you to awkward moments like this, too). Dabi scowled when you brought it out to silence it and dipped another pancake in the syrup, letting it absorb what it could to tinge it purple.

“It’s him, actually. Odd timing.” Lying flat in your palm, your phone flashed an incoming call from Touya. Leaning across the table, Dabi grabbed it out of your hands to answer it, put it on speaker, and lay it in the centre of the table while he ate his soggy pancake, shaking his head when you moved to undo all of that.

“Hey,” came a tinny, raspy voice that was very much not your Touya’s, “You’re the soulmate, right?”

Dabi shouldn’t have to hear this. Before you could tap the speaker button again, Dabi swatted your hand out of the way, gesturing for you to answer.

“Uh, yeah,” you said, shifting in your seat, “Who are you? Where’s—”

“Tell Touya he left his phone at my place the next time you see through him.” A repetitive, techno instrumental played in the background (video game music?). “At Shiiiiiiiimura’s place. Yeah.”

“I can do that, Shimura,” you said, unsure if you should hold out the vowel as long as he did, and perhaps you can take advantage of the situation for a brief moment, because Dabi was staring at your phone with a constipated sort of expression as he listened. “I can’t control when the bond activates, but I’ll let him know. Do you know what sort of food he likes?”

Shimura barked out a laugh, filling the room in a wide, cleansing way you wouldn’t expect from someone with his scratchy voice. “I heard your potato wedges are shit.”

You sputtered, “He didn’t even have any—”

Dabi ended the call, frowning, shaking his head, and tipping your phone off the table to gently bounce twice when it hit the tatami. He held up a tiny pancake and made a show of looking at it, at you, and back at it, and he shot you an aggressive thumbs-up.

***

Uraraka spent an entire patrol gushing about how she would fuck the author of Hunter x Hunter if she could, so she showed up to the next get-together, along with Asui, whom everyone already thought would be friends with the story’s protagonist if he were real. When you Aoyama caught you in the act of stealing one of his posh cookbooks, you explained the situation to him, and so he tagged along to taste what you were cooking, along with supplying some of the fancier ingredients you wouldn’t’ve known how to obtain. Then you’d asked Sato for advice on how to make the swirl in a strawberry swirl loaf not go to shit, and then the group had spent a few hours discussing the good relationships with animals that Hunters are inherently supposed to have, so Kouda was summoned for his opinions.

The long of short of it was that there were many more spectators than necessary to when Dabi strode into the viewing room, drenched in sweat from his walk back home, to pelt the back of your head with a two-pack of Sakeru cheese. As you rubbed the back of your head, pulling the cold plastic from between your shirt collar and skin, he at least had the decency to drop the single-wrapped fish bread into your lap.

“Hey, Touya,” you said, grabbing his hand before he could skitter away as usual (his wide eyes couldn’t decide to look at both of your hands or at your face), “I’ve set aside slices of both strawberry swirl bread and garlic bread for you in the kitchen. I recommend heating the garlic bread up so the cheese gets all melty again, but it’s good at room temperature, too. Thank you, by the way. For these.”

Nodding hastily, Dabi tore his hand away from your in two, spasming jerks, and he slithered into the kitchen.

Though the rest were watching the show, Shinsou was turned towards you, his head tilted with an incredulous sort of smile. You stuck your tongue out at him and crinkled open the cheese.

Dabi returned with both slices on a paper towel and stood behind you at the couch for a minute, watching the episode. Shifting his weight, he pulled out his phone. “This is garbage,” came a droning, text-to-speech voice from behind.

He stood behind the couch for three more episodes.

***

Through another moonlit, soulmate connection, Touya was failing to prod stray ducks out of the koi pond with the skimmer.

“They’re tenacious little bastards,” you said, sitting on the counter of the dorm kitchen and praying to God that the oven timer wouldn’t go off while you couldn’t see.

“Why. Won’t they. Move.” Touya nudged a duck with the flat of the skimmer, its width as long as the entire duck, and the duck kept gabbing to its friends. “I have no idea if ducks upset the chemical balance of the water enough to kill koi; I’ve never seen them in here before ten minutes ago. Goddamn.” He waved the skimmer over the water’s surface, filtering some debris, and he flipped it onto a duck, who remained vexingly apathetic at the new source of wet. “Tonight was gonna be easy; I was only gonna put up windchimes; I was gonna get to go to bed early. Now I—no, no, no, don’t—!”

One duck bit at the skimmer net, and having pierced it, the duck led the rest of them to the centre of the pond, where the skimmer couldn’t reach, no matter how Touya strained.

“I fucking hate birds,” said Touya, slamming the skimmer on the ground, “and I fucking hate fish. They’re not even good when they’re alive.” Seeming to have a change of heart, Touya picked the skimmer up and took care to lean it against the stone wall of the pond. “Tell me something good, won’t you?”

Does that imply you don’t have to work on any fish dishes? “You’ll be thrilled to hear that my little anime analysis group is almost through the Hunter x Hunter anime, probably. We got to the end of the 1999 version last night.”

Touya sat and splayed his legs on the koi pond stone, watching the moon’s reflection ripple as koi tails broke surface tension. “That’ll only make your process more streamlined, since you’re not watching two episodes covering the same chapters in conjunction anymore. The Chimera Ant arc takes forever, though. You’re not almost done.”

Groping around for your oven mitts, you smiled. “How do you know that, Touya? Thought you hated—”

“What are you going to watch next?”

Stupid boy. Shy boy. “Well, Sero is pushing for Pokémon since there’s so much of it.”

“God, no,” said Touya, leaning back on his hands, “Iconic, yeah. Fun, not really, because in the games, you’re the one getting to battle and bond with the things. It’s not fun to watch someone else get to do it.”

“I can rely on you for negative reviews of everything.” Oven mitt? Oven mitt. Now, where’s its pair? “You want a pokémon, Touya? Which ones?”

“You are such a fucking child—”

“You want a pikachu, don’t you?”

“Hell, no,” Touya spat, “None of that cliché shit. Pikachu isn’t even that good. I—” Cutting himself off, he hunched forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his gloved hands together. “You’ll shit on me for it. Forget I said anything.”

“Should I let you make fun of me first?” You slipped on the other mitt. “I’m cliché as hell. My top choice is either a certain starter or an eevolution.”

“No, I—”

“All right. How about you tell me your favourite as a kid and the one you would choose now?”

“You’re pushy as hell. When I was a kid, I wanted a Ninetales. I was—my mom had read enough for me to know about traditional kitsune,” said Touya, and he ducked his head to stare between his legs (crotch unfortunately hidden in shadow), “and Ninetales is immune to fire. It can use it and not burn up, and it’s not affected by outside fire attacks.”

The memory of rubbing burn cream across Dabi’s shoulders and how delicate his skin looked surfaced. You wouldn’t wish that on anyone. “You scared of being burned, Touya?”

Touya kicked the stone beneath his boot, scuffing it. “Just seems like it’d be neat.”

“Perfectly reasonable,” you said, wrapping your muppet-y, mitted hands around the oven handle in preparation for whenever it would go off, “and a perfectly logical pokémon to latch onto. It’s fairly popular. I don’t see how I’m supposed to make fun of you for that.”

“Sure.” Touya bent farther to re-tie his bootlaces. “I like my current choice for a dumb as hell reason, though. Shiiiiiiiimura,” said Touya, yanking the laces tightly (and he dragged out Shimura’s name, too. Was that the proper pronunciation?), “was trying to hype us up for something stupid we had to do that some of our friends were scared of. Shimura’s teacher—’scuse me, abusive fucking manipulative shithead of an adoptive father—wanted him to make a speech to show leadership, or some bullshit. Instead, Shimura pulled out his phone and showed us someone’s video of playing one of the early Pokémon games, for the battle at the end to win the game. And to defeat the last boss’s toughest Dragonite, the player used this…this fuckin’ weak-ass, all-around insignificant pokémon picked up from the beginning of the game, and it fuckin’ won. It won against the toughest opponent, and—and Shimura was saying, oh, the Venomoth is us, and we can win against our big-ass enemy, oh, ho, ho—”

“Excuse me. A Venomoth? You only use them temporarily at the beginning of the game, when you don’t have anything cool yet. They fucking suck.”

“See, you’re making fun of me. I’m not going to say anything else.” Touya leant back on his hands again, this time crossing his legs to prop his ankle on his opposite knee.

“No, I’m—I’m sorry. Sorry. First impressions. But you’re convincing me. Go on. I’m listening.”

Touya flicked water towards the ducks. “Are you gonna keep insulting—”

“I won’t! I won’t,” you said, sliding off the kitchen counter to stand directly in front of the oven, “So, Venomoths. I hear they’re fantastic.”

Touya rolled his eyes, and it was cute, you thought, how you had to follow the motion, seeing the moon at the upwards roll and back at its reflection in the pond. “Yeah. I bet Shimura’s forgotten all about it, but it stuck with me. Not immediately—at the time it was stupid, and to be fair, it’s still stupid. But now that I’m back here, living at home, it’s—it’s stupid. It’s, like, if that stupid fucking bug can defeat a goddamn dragon, then I can tend the garden. I can keep that stupid tsukubai clean. I can hang out with my brother. I can fucking—” He cut himself off again, this time striking the water hard enough to splash one of the ducks (it quacked at him with disdain and simply swam a couple of centimetres away).

“Do what, Touya?” The oven timer started beeping, and you tensed. “Hold on; don’t say anything. Don’t say—I have to concentrate; I’m getting stuff out of an oven.”

Touya stirred the pondwater with his ring and middle fingers while you blindly approximated the logistics of getting the tray out of the oven, and by standing at the oven’s side inside of reaching into it from the front, you were eventually able to remove the tray and rest it on the counter above it—you’re not going to bother feeling around for the pot holders.

When you sighed in relief once you’d closed the oven again, Touya asked, “What are you cooking?”

“Strawberry cheesecake muffins,” you said, frowning in the tray’s general direction, “They’re supposed to have a marbling effect, and I’m supposed to be putting on some sort of streusel-type sugar on top right now, but I’m not gonna risk it. I hope they’re done. You have to trust the recipe’s bake time with cheesecakes exactly, so I’m hoping it’s the same for—”

“I am gonna make you come so hard,” Touya was saying in a strained sort of way as he ran his hands down his face, “I am gonna fuck you so hard that you leave in a permanent dent in my mattress. I am gonna hold you and kiss the back of your neck and make you cry out as you gush around my fingers. You’re—you’re so fucking per—I am gonna take care of you back.”

“Cool.” Right, so bake the muffins again at some point. “Do you have any food allergies?”

“I’m allergic to you not saying anything hot in response to what I just said.”

Sure, Touya. “I’m also gonna make you this really sexy tomato soup with what the recipe calls a grilled cheese top. It’s got cheesy bread cut into chunks that coat the surface so that you can’t even see the red, and it melts into the soup—”

“Stop, I can only get so hard—”

“Show me your cock, then.”

“No,” said Touya, deliberately looking at a trio of fish convening near the pond’s surface, their o-shaped mouths blorbing and blobbing underneath the water towards Touya’s waving fingers, “I meant—well, first, you are gonna make that soup, pl—please—but I meant that—I mean.” He twirled his finger under the water, and the koi were fascinated. One of them kissed his finger. You were feeling a similar impulse—and perhaps that’s what prompted Touya to continue. “I came the first time someone stuck their tongue in my mouth.”

It occurred to you that anyone could be walking by the dorm kitchen to overhear. Now that the muffins were out of the oven, you elected to turn off the speaker setting to hold you phone to your ear. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I was sixteen and insane with hormones, and it hadn’t been long since I’d woken up from—well. When someone kissed me with tongue for the first time, I came in my pants. Taken completely by surprise that someone was even kissing me, that someone could even want me when I look like—and then that. We were outside, on a public bridge, during the day. I haven’t seen that fucker since.”

You had been contemplating whether it’d be worth fumbling around for a knife to ease the muffins out of the tray, but all cogs stopped at Touya’s story. “Why are you telling me this?”

“So you’ll tell me something back. I already told you some embarrassing shit about pokémon and shit, so you have to embarrass yourself back. You’re the one who brought up cocks, anyway. So—so you have to share something back,” said Touya, allowing a fish to rub up against his hand in a pseudo-sort of petting it, “Something about when you were young and stupid.”

“And preferably sexual, right? I know what you’re about, you shy, baby boy.”

“Ffffffuck that.I ain’t shy—”

“You won’t show me your face, Touya. You’re scared for me to see it. Shy boy.”

Touya scratched along the side of the koi like it wanted, and another nudged the back of his hand to be scratched, too. “Fuck off.”

“I’ve only told one other person about my first kiss,” you said, moving to sit on the counter again, “Wanna hear that story?”

“Fine,” said Touya, and he pulled his hand out of the pond, flicking water off his fingers and into the open, mournful mouths of the koi he’d been petting. “You had better be about to tell me about seeing through me at that coffee shop.”

“Come off of it, Touya; isn’t it better for me to have outside experience and still choose you regardless? My first kiss was way before that,” you said, hoping how pleased you were at his mild possessiveness was being transferred to his side of the bond, “and I didn’t even know the guy’s name at the time. And it was—it could’ve turned really bad, really quickly. Because my first kiss was with Dabi, before he made his villain debut.”

“Do—huh?” Touya shook his head, causing you to wince and steady yourself at the dizziness. “Beg pardon? Beg your fucking pardon? I didn’t—know that that Dabi guy went around kissing people.”

“He did at least once. It was back in freshman year, and I was out at night during my hero internship.” Getting comfortable on the kitchen counter, you crossed your legs and leant against the cabinets to support your back, exhaustion kicking in. “Some older sidekick hit on me in what was an exceedingly creepy way—he made it pseudo-incestuous by saying I reminded him of his daughter. In retrospect, the interaction could have gone much, much worse, if Dabi hadn’t inadvertently rescued me—scratch that, it may have been intentional, looking back, because he’d said stuff about the sidekick being a shitty father, and now he’s, uh, let us know about his own dad.”

It took Touya a moment. At least he wasn’t shaking his head anymore. “Are you saying Dabi burnt some guy to death in front of you, and you still kissed him?”

You sucked in through your teeth. “Not exactly. I didn’t know it at the time, but he was testing out a nomu, and that ripped the other guy to pieces. And—this is gonna sound wild—I think Dabi may have kissed me to comfort me? I know it was a distraction from the gore and from getting a good look at the nomu, but I think he may have also done it to calm me down. It was—oddly sweet.”

Touya gripped the edge of the stone wall, his fingers dipping into water (but not deep enough to remoisten his leather gloves) and koi swarming. “What did the nomu look like?”

Even though you couldn’t see it, you held your phone away from your ear for a second to shoot it an incredulous look. “Wha—Touya, weren’t you going to ask if he were a good kisser, or something?”

His knuckles popped when he clenched his fingers and asked flatly, “Was he a good—”

“You’re better.”

“Thanks,” he said, not sounding like he cared about that at all, letting a koi drag his hand into the water by biting his finger, “What did the nomu look like?”

“God, I don’t fucking know. That wasn’t important to me. I, uh—it was around the size of a good-sized dog, like a golden retriever or a lab. I don’t—I guess it walked on all fours,” you said, wondering why the fuck—oh, the dizziness must not have come only from Touya shaking his head, because it’s sweeping over you again, waves emanating from the bond. “Now that I’ve seen other nomu, I can recognise that its head looked whacky because its brain was exposed, and I think its skin was more green-tinged than the others who had that navy-black colour going on. Honestly, Touya, I wasn’t—”

Through the phone came such a strident, alarming crack that you halted mid-sentence to listen for it again. It’d come from Touya’s side, clearly, but nothing in his line of vision betrayed its source, although—and you would not have noticed this if you hadn’t been scanning his environment for any hint—something that looked like split glass frosted the inside of Touya’s fist before he unclenched his hand a second later, any illusion of something there melting into the water.

But something was wrong. “Touya?”

“You still see that Dabi guy when you watch anime at Shouto’s house, yeah? Stay on the line,” he said, darkness of the bond fading drabbling at the edges of his vision from your perspective.

“I am,” you said, uncrossing your legs, “I do.”

“What do you think of him? Ugly fucker, isn’t he?” Touya fell still as a duck approached him as it navigated through the water lilies, and Touya’s outstretching his hand to its head was the last thing you saw before the bond gave out. “Still as pathetic as he was in the war? Think he should be in prison?”

“Negative reviews of people, negative reviews of television, negative reviews of potato wedges—so cool, bro. Now say something true and beautiful.”

“Answer me, damn it.” A disgruntled quack.

“You’d better not be strangling that duck.”

“You think so little of me? Do you want me to put the duck on the phone?”

“I don’t think it could sit comfortably,” you said, pushing yourself off the counter and walking to the knife drawer now that you could see, “I see Dabi every once in a while when I’m at Todoroki’s house. He’s shy. I don’t mind. It’s not my place to assume anything, but. I don’t think he’s doing okay, since it seems like he’s spent a good part of his life wanting someone to look at him, to pay attention, and now he’s getting that in a way he probably didn’t anticipate, and I want him to be okay. I think I’d like to help him get there, if he’d let me. But I know I’m nobody important to him, and that’s fine.”

“Sounds a lot like pity,” said Touya, and when you made a noise of protest, he kept going. “Or maybe you’re fucked up enough that you like him? From when he kissed you?”

You couldn’t exactly tell your soulmate that you’ve been suppressing naïve, celebrity-crush-type feelings for someone else. “Well,” you said, grimacing as you slid knife edge between a muffin and the tray and started to remove it, “He’s very babygirl-coded.”

***

TOUYA 🐠🚷

looked it up. definition of babygirl does NOT help

TOUYA 🐠🚷

incidentally

TOUYA 🐠🚷

what should a guy wear to impress someone

YOU

a guy? or you specifically?

YOU

because i am, of course about to suggest the golden standard of rolling up thy sleeves to thy elbows, but you won’t even showing your fucken hands asldkjfa;

TOUYA 🐠🚷

gloves necessary.

TOUYA 🐠🚷

but think formal. formal setting.

YOU

why are YOU going to a formal event?

TOUYA 🐠🚷

have to. blackmail/family obligation/rent.

TOUYA 🐠🚷

open to suggestions. about style more than brand, because if I go too expensive, my dad will think I’m making him pay a lot as sabotage.

YOU

and here i was about to recommend that you go skinny-dipping in a vat of liquid gold

TOUYA 🐠🚷

you just wanna see my cock, don’t cha

YOU

what makes you think I’D be invited to some shitty formal event

TOUYA 🐠🚷

I’m betting you’d hear about it on the news

YOU

i think i’d be more interested in what food is provided

TOUYA 🐠🚷

…

TOUYA 🐠🚷

no, I shan’t say

YOU

is this a cum joke

TOUYA 🐠🚷

but seriously. what should I wear. assume I will do something awful and evil and that you will see the outfit on the news when I get arrested.

YOU

touya, how would i recognise you. idk what YOU even look like. not that it matters, i guess. all that matters is that you wear something that fits you well. you don’t need to impress me; you’ve already won me over

TOUYA 🐠🚷

i what

TOUYA 🐠🚷

wait what do you MEAN it doesn’t matter

YOU

does it help get it through your thick head if i tell you that you are also babygirl-coded? perhaps not even coded but genuinely babygirl??

TOUYA 🐠🚷

it does not.

***

Adjusting your lace shawl, you gripped Shouto’s arm as the both of you furtively sneaked away from the hordes of pro-heroes, industry workers, and flashing press to slink back to the enormous table of hors d'oeuvres to see how many of them you could pack into your purse and his strategically planned inner coat pocket, sewn into the inside of his lapel for the occasion.

When Shouto had invited you to this ghastly awards ceremony for Endeavor, he’d claimed his motivation was that so he could talk to you about how the 2011 Hunter x Hunter anime was wrapping up, since he (flatterer!) said you had the best interpretations of certain characters, unlike some of your classmates, and Shouto tempted you with how you could stake out whatever posh food they had for you to try to recreate later. So, you’d dug out the dress you’d only worn to All Might’s official retirement party and agreed to attend.

Those present were a strange conglomeration of people, since the public opinion of Endeavor has been odd and tenuous lately. Essentially, the handful of attendees you knew were busy ingratiating themselves to people you’ve never seen before but they evidently were acquainted with, so those with whom you could hold an actual conversation with were scattered and few.

However, you didn’t even need to bring a book, because once you and Shouto had settled at a back table with both of your plates stacked with the most variety you could fit on them, he deadass pulled out his anime analysis notebook, which was starting to resemble Midoriya’s quirk analysis notebooks in terms of extensiveness and insanity, with lines crossing several pages to connect ideas. As you discussed where the two of you thought the characters were going, you had your own notebook—a new one, this one for recipes, and whenever either of you thought one of the appetizers was interesting, you wrote it down.

You were chewing on what Shouto had informed you was a water chestnut when the chair on your other side was pulled out with a screech against the tile, and Todoroki Touya plopped into it, his legs hardly having the time to spread before swiping a piece of candied salmon from your plate. The instant he bit down into it, his nose scrunched up.

“It’s fish, Touya,” said Shouto, dipping his own crudité in a tiny bowl of raspberry vinaigrette, and he passed his napkin to him. Touya spat the salmon into it, bunched it up, and edged it underneath the edge of your plate.

On your list, you wrote no fish! at the top, but before you even lifted your pen from the paper, you froze. The list wasn’t for this Touya; it was for your Touya. You crosshatched it out, trying to remember if your Touya had ever said anything about liking fish. He’d said he hadn’t, right? He didn’t like them alive, at the very least.

Shouto chomped down harshly, the crunch of raw celery distinct even through his closed mouth. “What brings you over here, Touya?”

He already had the text-to-speech function pulled up on his phone, and he held a parmesan palmier between his teeth as he typed. “People were asking Natsuo and Fuyumi about what they’re doing with their lives. It was only a matter of time before they got to me. Don’t wanna hear anyone else describe the nothing I’m doing. At least I know you guys are too busy talking about nerd crap to shit on me.”

“Oh, sweet boy,” you said, pursing your lips, “You’re in recovery. That’s enough. You don’t have to do anything to be worthwhile.” Wait. Fuck. You don’t talk to this Touya this way. Reel it back.

Crumbs fell from his mouth to the tablecloth. “The hell is wrong with you?” he typed.

Yeah, reel it way back. You elected not to respond, instead biting with difficulty into a brie/fig/prosciutto crostini and not being able to taste any of it.

“Would you like to discuss some so-called nerd crap with us?” Shouto arranged his notebook father across the table to be more in the middle of the three of you. “I know it’s been a while since you read Hunter x Hunter, but it’s been on hiatus so long that there’s not much new information that you need to know.”

“Hey,” you said, rushing to swallow, “You’ve read this before? How come you haven’t been sitting in to watch stuff with us?”

Touya shot Shouto a dark look, tongued a chunk of palmier into his cheek, and furiously typed on his phone. “I’m not interested in that shit anymore. It’s for kids.”

Shouto looked taken aback. “This is news to me. Do I have permission to take your manga volumes out of the house, then?”

“Fuck you,” Touya had already typed while Shouto was talking.

You bit back a smile. You’ve been borrowing a former, major villain’s manga? Cute. “But if you read it a while back, that means you’ve had more time to think about the characters,” you said, resting your elbow on the back of your chair as you shifted to face him, “Most of us are absorbing the story for the first time. It’d be cool to hear what you think.”

That parmesan palmier had looked good. Trusting this Touya on his taste, you wrote it on your list to investigate later, while he typed his response.

His expression fell flat enough to match the robotic tone. “Do you just want to hear me project my daddy and mommy issues onto the characters in the Zoldyck family?”

“No, Touya,” you said, laughing, “You have valuable things to say across the board, and I want to listen.” You almost nudged his knee with yours, but you had to stop yourself, something dark swirling in your chest. This wasn’t your Touya. You’re not allowed to.

His eyes flicked down towards the movement, but he didn’t comment. Shifting his jaw, he slipped off his white tuxedo jacket to drape it over the back of his chair, and for some reason, his gaze kept darting to you while he rolled the sleeves of his button-down up to his elbows, but he tried to give the appearance of being very focused on whatever skewered meat and pineapple was on the rim of your plate.

You were frowning. Fuck this. Fuck him. Touya was probably one of those guys who knew their effect on women, so he would know about the rolling-sleeves-to-elbows move. And fucking hell, was it effective for him, because the way he’s lost a lot of weight but was currently gaining it back made the tendons in his forearms much more noticeable when they tensed and strained, and the asymmetry of the burns and scars up his left arm in comparison to the smoothness of his prosthetic right only made him even more horribly, horribly attractive, and you were pissed about it, only getting more furious as he wrapped his tongue around the base of the first pineapple chunk and used his teeth to maneuver it off of the stolen skewer, hooded eyes staring you down. This Touya can act like a fucking slut, sure, but your Touya won’t even show you his goddamn hands.

“Hey, watch out.” You scratched your forehead in an attempt to conceal how enraged you were. “I’ve already had one of those. That lump at the end is an overly-breaded coconut shrimp. So—fish—be careful,” you finished lamely.

Touya’s hands and mouth were full with the skewer. Unable to type on his phone, he shifted the skewer to his left hand, flattened his right, and tapped his left wrist with it—the JSL sign for thank you.

You nodded and didn’t think anything of it for a moment, but when it hit you, you seized up and stared at him, chest swelling, proud and confused and frozen. Getting a little lightheaded, actually, but oh, God, who wouldn’t at the sight of Todoroki Touya, quiet and subdued but still suave as fuck, sitting so close to you in a freshly dishevelled white tuxedo that fit like it was custom-made for him, smelling so, so good and smiling with his perfect teeth (how are they that good when he was with the League for so long?), leaning towards you to steal your food and showing that he’d been paying attention to you, that he’d taken the JSL book you’d left with Shouto, that he’d thought about you when you’ve been apart and cared enough to try to learn something new with you, and you were going to kiss him; he deserved it; you were going to grab that stupidly adorable face and—no, that lightheadedness was also stemming from the soulmate bond activating.

Nausea swept through you for more than one reason. If your Touya discovered you were fighting the urge to kiss someone else, let alone the other Touya, then—you didn’t know. You didn’t know how you’d ever recover. Please let this be from your perspective, so he can’t feel your feelings, please.

“I have to go,” you said, pushing up on the table to stand, not even bothering to flash Shouto the soulmate hand signal. You had to get away. No matter if it were from your perspective or his, distance would help you suppress your fucking shameful crush on your friend’s older brother.

Good God, you were crossing the streams, you noted and fumed as you escaped onto a vacant alcove. Because they have the same goddamn name, your brain has been conflating the two of them. Shut up. You’re only allowed to have one Touya. Two would be greedy and dismissive of the soulmate bond in the first place.

Vertigo struck you so severely that you had to brace yourself against the nearest column, but you swopped to the balcony railing because you could grasp it and put most of your weight on it, and because your brain was swimming, you hand to get on your knees to wait for it to pass. “No, you can’t,” you said, trying your hardest to push thought of that Touya out of your head in case your Touya could feel them, “You can’t—that one doesn’t need to be in a romantic relationship right now. He’s working on himself. It’d fuck him up.” And ohhhh, you left your phone at the table, so you couldn’t call your Touya, and fuck, you didn’t want him to feel confused or betrayed because you weren’t calling him—

“Whose future are you deciding, here?”

Your Touya. He was here?

You opened your eyes to the sight of the balcony and the garden below, thank fuck. Okay, you could work with this. You could work with this; he’s not supposed to be able to feel—

His voice came from close behind you, as if he were leaning on another side of the column. “What’s got you feeling this guilty?”

Holy shit holy shit, has the bond evolved? Can feelings be felt from both sides regardless of perspective? “Hey, Touya.”

“Don’t turn around,” he said, even though you’d made no movement to.

“Can you see?”

“Only through you, angel. Otherwise, I’m in the dark.” With the sounds of clothes shifting, Touya must have crouched behind you, joints cracking. A fingerless-gloved hand brushed down your arm, and he moved your lace shawl out of the way to stroke your bare skin. Your mind was already going haywire at your betrayal, and his cold, gentle touch was not helping. “What’s wrong, hm?” He adjusted himself again behind you so that he could wrap his other arm around your waist, pulling you back into him, and his cool, rough lips pressed against the curve of your neck as he rested his head there.

You were going to cry. You’ll do it. For real, this time.

“Did that Todoroki Touya guy bother you? I saw him sitting at your table.”

God, no, he brought up whom you were trying to avoid, and you cringed, hating yourself as Touya’s hand sank down your arms to entwine his fingers with yours, rumpled shirtsleeves grazing your bare skin and leather gloves curbing the maximal skin-to-skin contact.

“He’s so fucked up that I wouldn’t be surprised if you hated him,” Touya was saying into your ear, “I could grind him into a pulp for you. He’d deserve it, wouldn’t he, for what he did to everyone? And I was burning up with jealousy from across the room; someone as pretty as you shouldn’t have such a hideous thing by your side.”

You made a noise from the back of your throat. You didn’t know, and you especially didn’t need the one person you were trying to hide your internal conflict from while you were actively trying to work out the internal conflict. First things first, you supposed. “Touya’s not fucking ugly.”

Your Touya snorted against your neck, hot air washing down the hollow of your throat. “I forgot how twisted you are. But there’s no way you could actually like him, right?”

“I can’t,” you said, releasing the balcony to clench your fists on your knees, “I can’t like him. He needs to discover who he is as an individual before he finds out how he functions in a relationship. He doesn’t need romance—or me, at this point in his life.”

“Interesting,” he said, more clearly now that his mouth wasn’t muffled against your skin, “Sounds like you think something’s wrong with him. Like he’s not whole. And isn’t he broken? You’d have to be, if you pulled the shit he did, burning cities to the ground and murdering—”

“Shut up,” you said, hunching in on yourself, “You’re don’t know. You’re believing what other people have told you about him. You’re just—you’re just like people who talk about that nerd shit you hate without checking the source material. They’ll talk about certain characters in terms of false narratives they’ve crafted, and they’ll talk about them for so long that the false information becomes conflated with the characters, with everyone thinking the wrong stuff is real. I—fuck.” You winced, but he was listening, his free hand winding around your neck to adjust the migrant clasp on your necklace to the back of your throat. “I know my ideas of Touya stem from propaganda, but I want to learn about him from him. Just based on what I’ve seen, there’s so much out there that’s wrong—it’s even subconsciously perpetuated in his own home, since the shrine where his family mourned him is still there. And I hate it. I hate it, because he seems so lovable, but so are you, and I hate myself because I want to love only you, because you’re my soulmate, and I’m so, so, so goddamn terrified that you’re gonna reject me and leave me alone forever now that I’ve betrayed you. By feeling stuff for someone else.”

You were crying. You were crying, nose stopping up, and Touya kissed your throat, over the clasp of your necklace. “Rejection’s a bitch. I know that,” he said under his breath, “So, I’m not gonna do that to you, even if…” He trailed off, instead latching his mouth to your neck again, letting his tongue flick over your skin once, as if it were an afterthought. “You really like him?”

“I’m scared that I do,” you said, taking a corner of your shawl to daub at your tears.

“The only thing to do is feel it out, I guess.” Touya settled at last, shifting weight and moving his legs so that they’d be on either side of you, and his left arm joined the other around your waist to hold you close. “Or let it die, if you want. The soulmate bond doesn’t matter in the end. You don’t have to love him or me.”

“But Touya,” you said, sniffing, dying to look back at him but restraining yourself, “I do.”

***

Later that night, you were researching how to make little cheese balls that were shaped like pumpkins like they’d had at the awards ceremony when you felt the familiar wooziness. Funny. It’s not often that the bond activates twice in one day. You closed your laptop and set your notebook aside, waiting for the slow, drowsy fade into Touya’s eyes.

Tonight, it’s a jarring, instantaneous slam into his perspective, and you felt like you’d been knocked about in the baggage rack of a train. You threw out your hands to balance yourself, even though you hadn’t been physically moved, and the queasiness made it hard to concentrate, blackness blotting at the edges of your periphery.

But the darkness of Touya’s bedroom wasn’t helping, with only partially drawn curtains letting in moonlight, and—and oh, my God, he’s flat on his back in bed, tousled bedsheets, cock out, and it’s so pretty, unfairly pretty, thick as hell but thicker at the head than the base, blushing deep pink, leaking onto the faint lines of re-developing abs and a vaguely red trail of hair, and—

The hand touching it has skin grafts.

“—ugh, darlin’, fuck, you know what I’m gonna—gonna do to you, angel?” Touya was muttering to himself, too caught up to realise you were there. “You don’t—you don’t know what you do to me.”

You’d registered his pubic hair as vaguely red because, now that you were staring, only the very tips of the untouched hair trailing down his stomach were red, with what he’d probably shaved at some point lower on his body snowy against whatever unburnt skin could still grow hair. He’s gripping himself at an angle that doesn’t make him rub against a strand of load-bearing staples on his upper thigh (did someone say load?), connecting a stretch of familiarly burned skin to a healing graft, diamond-speckled and twitching with his cock the closer he drew to orgasm (from the back of your mind surfaced a questioning thought of if he’d advocated for healing his hands first, since staples would hinder smooth masturbation). His prosthetic arm lay unattached at his side.

“Hahh, I wanna,” said Touya, drawing in a ragged breath, “wanna make a mess outta you, y’always too put together, too fuckin’ pretty for y’own damn good, fuck.” He rubbed his thumb over his tip, the skin there giving everso slightly at the pressure, with another bead of precum swelling before it dripped onto his stomach. “Gonna find wha—whatever I can do to make you fuckin’ whine, and I’m gonna, hah, follow that sound for the rest of my goddamn life, and, oh—fuck, fuck, how, how sweet you’d feel wrapped around me, how much I don’t fuckin’ deserve—”

He cut himself off to take a deep, stuttering breath, and you saw the gates of heaven in the way his chest surged forward when he arched his back, lines of burns and scars carved into his skin like a roadmap. And Touya moaned for you, and you didn’t know how much you’d needed to hear both Touyas do that until now, but before he could finish the first syllable of your name, you were lurched out of the bond and back into your room, just as abruptly as it had begun.

Your hands were shaking as you tied your shoelaces, aware of the leak into your underwear when you bent over, and you dashed to the nearest train depot, navigating in fervent, distant buzz all the way to the Todoroki estate. You must have appeared sufficiently crazy, because the only vacant seats on the train were next to you.

(In your heart of hearts, you had known.

If you’d put it into words, consciously, where both Touyas overlapped, it would’ve been too hard to bear if they’d been different people, which was, regardless, the most logical situation. Getting excited for your soulmate to be your former crush and then being disappointed when it wasn’t him felt like a betrayal to your soulmate. You hadn’t wanted to set yourself up for disappointment or betrayal, because you shouldn’t feel guilt when you look at your soulmate. Someone who holds your heart in his hand should never be second best to you. Touya’s had enough of not being enough in his life.

Surely the random chance of a stranger’s quirk wouldn’t be so kind to give you whom you’ve been wanting. You haven’t allowed yourself to hope.)

You didn’t even go in the front door. You clambered over the garden wall and berated yourself for not recognising Touya’s garden earlier, even though you’ve usually been around the kitchen and living room when you’re here. It took you longer than it could’ve to get to his teahouse, because you were deliberately staying on the garden path instead of walking on his hard work, but you didn’t even take off your shoes at the entrance, the nightingale floors chirping out in the night as you surged towards his bedroom door.

Touya lay facing the window in his very Western bed that took up most of the room—and much of his bedroom was like that, with his modern belongings scattered across other outdated furnishings, clean but cluttered, thought it startled you to open the door onto a Naruto poster taped in the space designated for a hanging scroll.

You only had time to absorb poster and lived-in before you saw the face of God in how Touya stretched and groaned in bed, arching his back and holding it until his back popped (a little too fixated on his moonlit nipples, like seeing them would fix you, flip you back to your factory settings). “Natsuo,” he said, coming out of his groan, eyes scrunched shut, “Don’t say you’re here to make me re-hang the windchimes. I spent all day tracking how air flows through the garden.”

You sat at the foot of his bed, mattress dipping slightly, still in your coat and shoes and hesitant to spread dirt, but the need to be near Touya, even if it were through blankets, consumed you. Hands folded behind his head, Touya cracked open an eye at the weight, and he froze.

You hadn’t prepared any confession on the train. You’d been too focused on the memory of his thighs. So, what garbled nonsense that came out of your mouth was “I figured your dick would be pierced.”

Touya appeared to snap back into reality, and he sat up in bed, pulling the blankets up to cover more of his bare chest (mourning for his nipples. Inconsolable about it, even) and quite obviously tried so hard to be chill (the way his leg started jiggling underneath the covers and how he wouldn’t look you in the eyes for more than a couple of seconds gave him away, though). “Is that what they say about me?”

You folded your hands in your lap, bent over for a swift escape in case he wanted you to leave “Jirou conjectures that you have a Jacob’s ladder.”

“Just what I need. More holes in my body.” He ran his tongue over his lower lip—much more scarred than the upper one, clarifying some things about kissing him. “Don’t know how to take that a bunch of kids who resent me talk about the state of my dick. You a part of that crowd?”

“I was shown a picture of what was advertised to be a very realistic dildo,” you said, scooting your ass farther back onto the bed now that he wasn’t going to send you away, “It had many, many piercings. It wasn’t as thick, if that makes you feel better.”

“It does not,” said Touya, brow pinched. He brought his legs up to hug them to his chest, but he must have changed his mind, instead just letting them block your view of him, hiding behind the cover of the lumpy comforter.

You waited for him to elaborate. His tuxedo was thrown over a wicker trunk, bowtie tossed onto a kotatsu, even though it wasn’t cold enough outside, with his gaming controller next to it and an open can of black tea. Two floor seats were haphazardly tucked underneath the kotatsu’s blanket, the one facing the TV flatter and duller than the one nearer the door. His only bookshelf had the illusion that it was constantly being added to, with the first shelf arranged neatly and the rest completely shoved together, the lowest one still mostly empty—your sign language book lay horizontally on it.

He should’ve said something by now, right? Antsy, you shifted your weight, staring down at your shoes. To have something to do, you slowly took them off, lining them up with Touya’s house slippers (with seahorses on them?) next to the bed, and you swallowed your pride to break the ice. “I’m glad it’s you, by the way. Very glad.”

Touya grunted and draped an arm over his knees. “Did you know?”

“I will be generous and say not really,” you said, shuffling off your coat to hang on the bedpost, “I didn’t permit myself to make the connections.”

“Eh.” He shrugged with one shoulder—the left one, the natural one. He’d reattached his prosthetic in the meantime. “There are around one hundred Touyas in Japan, according to the last census.”

“Sounds like a prepared statistic,” you said, holding back that the name frequency has probably plummeted in the last few years, “I’m serious, though. I wanted my Touya—soulmate, you, Touya—to be Todoroki Touya. So badly.”

He covered his mouth, thumbing at his lower lip and simply staring at you. In the moonlight, his eyes were as fucking bright blue as—well. As his flames. More things were clicking into place.

“Really, Touya,” you said, desperate for him to believe you, “I liked you as the stranger in the alley, and I liked you as Dabi, and when my soulmate seemed to share some traits with the other Touya in my life, I didn’t give myself permission to think about it. Because I was growing fond of the you that spoke to me, that I was getting to know, and while my feelings for the other you were being rekindled, too, I wanted to love the soulmate you more, because it's become fucking evident to me that I was made to love you, even without this soulmate stuff. You’ve been scattered throughout my life, anyway. It just happened to speed things up, since it forced you to talk to me. Otherwise, you’d probably still be at the point where you’re the brooding-older-brother figure who isolates himself in his room when his brother’s friends are over.”

Touya was frowning, but you waited it out entirely this time. “You saw…all that,” he eventually said, gesturing down himself, “and you still want me?”

Biting back a smile, you lifted your knees to the bed, moving slowly to gauge his reaction before getting closer to him. “I saw you decapitate someone, and I still want you.”

“You’re insane,” said Touya, tensing up as you neared him but twitching into a nervous grin, eyes falling to your boobs, away to the window, and back to your face.

“Correct,” you said, and you knelt next to him, taking all of your restraint to keep from reaching out the final few centimetres to run your hands down his chest. “Don’t you need someone a little insane, though?”

The comforter fell a few inches down his chest, and you throat ran dry at the long line of fading stitches and staples.

You raised a quivering hand to his face, and it’s strange: both of you flinched in the moment your fingertips felt the tiniest bit of body heat emanating from his cheek, and it’s strange: it’s the first time you’ve felt any heat come from Touya at all, and it’s strange: you could see yourself so clearly waking up next to him every day, putting your chin on his shoulder while he picked out fruits at the grocery store, feeding the koi late at night together while you lured the ducks away, watching his eyes soften in the same way both when he sinks his teeth into something you’ve baked and his cock deep into you while he cradled you closely to his chest, but at the moment, it might be too much for you—and perhaps Touya as well, judging by the nearly incomprehensible, jumbled sort of expression—if you even touched his face.

Perhaps the prospect of romance was too much for him at this point in his life. The last thing Touya should be feeling about that was guilt.

“I don’t mind being on the backburner while you figure things out,” you said, returning your hand to your lap and trying very hard not to look at his nipples, “I’ll wait for whatever you need to do. I’ll—”

“No,” said Touya, shaking himself out of whatever spiralling dive he’d been leaning into, “Hell, no. No fucking—” He snatched the hand you’d almost touched him with and clenched it hard, smushing your fingers together (startled by the physical contact, even though he’d initiated it), and after a flash of frustration at his prosthetic arm, he passed your hand to his left. “You’re fucking sticking around. You—you don’t just look at me; you see me, in such a different fucking way than anyone else, and you did it immedia—it took my family so long to look, and you—you’ve been watching. Been paying attention. It’s all I’ve ever—” He frowned, rolling his tongue along the inside of his cheek. “It’s good to have you around while I dig myself out of this hole,” he said, squeezing your hand harder but glaring outside through the window, “I wish I had known you sooner.”

“I’m here now, and I want to get to know you better. I want to hear more about you, things that are true,” you said, “and don’t start with anything self-deprecating, Touya. The next time the bond lets you see through me, I’m gonna show you what you look like through my eyes. And I’m not lying to you when I say you are so very, very pretty.”

Grunting, Touya fidgeted in bed, the covers slipping down to his stomach, drawing your hand closer to him, with your body leaning in to follow his pull. “Shit,” he said, “Don’t say shit like that right now.”

“Touya, I am gonna tell you how gorgeous you are until you believe it, and that starts now.”

“Not tha—well, yes, that, but I—” He sucked in through his teeth (also sucking in through a tiny hollow in his cheek caused by a loose staple, with a faint, wheezing whistle) and threaded his fingers through yours, pulling your hands towards his shoulder so that you loomed over his chest, “I have a hell of a refractory period now. It’s fuckin’ hard for me to get hard a lot, and you saw me; I just—” Inhaling sharply, he jerked his hand away from yours and frantically started wiping it on the blankets.  The new skin around the tips of his ears bloomed pink. “I haven’t washed my hands.”

“Touya,” you said, “Like I care.” You took the hand he was trying to hide in the folds of the blanket and licked up his palm, holding eye contact and relishing the way the blush spread to the untouched skin around the corners of his eyes. “I want all of you. Both sides you’ve shown me, and more. So long as it’s real. So long as it’s you.”

“All right. First step is getting on top of me,” said Touya, and, palm wet, he took your hand again, and he tugged on it, guiding you into his lap, other hand sliding down the thigh you swung over him. “Makes it easier to talk, y’know. To look at you.”

“Oh? Are we starting with your tragic backstory? If you’re taking requests,” you said, sliding your hand up and over his shoulder to run your fingers over his collarbone (jutting out from under both burnt and new skin), “then I’d like to hear your perspective of when you first kissed me.”

Touya lift his prosthetic hand to your cheek, just as cold and strong as his real one, and he placed his thumb at the corner of your lower lip, tip breaking the seal of your lips to press in just barely. “Actually, I think we’ll start with this pretty mouth of yours.”

***

Iida was shouting and gesturing from the living room that you only had fifteen minutes before the episode viewing was scheduled to start, and Shinsou shut him up by reminding him that Tokoyami had to pick up Ojiro and Hagakure from the floristry across town and that they’d start watching whenever they started watching, so chill out, Iida. Go help Mina pick the bugles out of her hair, or something.

You and Touya crouched together in front of the oven, staring through the glass at the rows of potato wedges—the recipe he claims his mother made when he was five, but surely a woman as sensible as Todoroki Rei wouldn’t put that much fucking cayenne pepper or paprika or chili sauce or—listen, it was a lot.

“C’mon, pretty boy, tell me something else true about you,” you said, nudging his shoulder with yours while you made eye contact with him in the oven’s reflection.

“Hm,” he said, scratching the underside of his chin with a bare hand (the gloves lay folded back on the teahouse dresser), “I hate fish.”

(Here you sighed dramatically, because you obviously already knew this. His loathing was intensified at the moment, though, because he’d had to get up and leave you in the middle of the night last night because the koi pond monitor was blaring at a stupid clog in the filter.)

“Tastes fuckin’ gross dead. Bitch to take care of livin’.”

You pushed on your knees to stand, and you held out a hand to help him up. “Enough with the negativity, dickhead. Tell me more about what you like.”

“Besides you?” He took your hand and grinned, putting all his weight into it as you strained to lift him, and when the oven timer beeped and you’d shot a few choice words his way, he had mercy and stood up by himself. He grabbed the oven mitts and tossed them to you, and while you removed the tray from the oven, he ran his hand through the sharp, white spikes of his hair, inadvertently wiping specks of paprika into it.

You set the tray on a cooling rack. “C’mon, Touya. No need to be so cheesy.”

“I can be worse,” he said, winding his arms around your waist before you could even take off the oven mitts, cradling you close to him, no room in between, and he propped his chin on your shoulder. “I can even incorporate—you call me cheesy; you’re the one who called me pretty boy not a minute ago.”

Blindly, you raised a hand to run it back through Touya’s soft, soft hair, and you gently bumped your cheek against his. “I am not being cheesy by simply stating the truth. You’re gorgeous, Touya.”

“Bet I’d look even better throbbing inside you.”

“Please follow a logical flow in conversation like the rest of us,” you said, and when you couldn’t grasp the spatula you were reaching for, Touya grabbed it for you, scraping up some of the first row, having to release you during the process.

Leaning on the counter to face him, you flinched at the heat before pinching a potato wedge between the tips of your fingers, but Touya held one like it was completely cool. It had almost touched his tongue before he paused and waited for your reaction to his recipe.

His potato wedges were bad. Too crunchy on top because of the odd broil time and not-fully-ground peppercorns and too soggy and soft underneath, especially in the part where it’d stuck to the tin foil and peeled off, and the combination of spices didn’t quite mesh together well. With a sliver of quiet triumph, you swallowed a bite of potato wedge decidedly worse than the ones you made.

But Touya was looking at you, eyes brimming with hope despite his otherwise carefully cultivated cool exterior, watching, waiting for you—and it was Touya, after all; Touya was the one who cooked these—made them for you, deliberately, on purpose—and so that made what words were about to come out of your mouth true and beautiful.

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

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

[scoonsalicious]

Unwanted: Chapter 22, Untold - Pt. 3

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Avenger!Fem!Reader

Summary: When your FWB relationship with your best friend Bucky Barnes turns into something more, you couldn’t be happier. That is, however, until a new Avenger sets her sights on your super soldier and he inadvertently breaks your heart. You take on a mission you might not be prepared for to put some distance between the two of you and open yourself up to past traumas. Too bad the only one who can help you heal is the one person you can no longer trust.

Warnings: (For this part only; see Story Masterlist for general Warnings) Language, Pocket committing humourous and harmless crime, me not knowing how police stations work.

Word Count: 972

Previously On...: You and Tony tried to sheer some sheep. Now it looks like the cops are headed your way.

A/N: Listen, I am too proud of the headline that Tony makes up. Too proud. Also, at the very end, they say the things for the first time! XD

NOTE! The tag list is a fickle bitch, so I'm not really going to be dealing with it anymore. If you want to be notified when new story parts drop, please follow @scoonsaliciousupdates

Banner By: The absolutely amazing @mrsbuckybarnes1917!

Thank you to all those who have been reading; if you like what you've read, likes, comments, and reblogs give me life, and I truly appreciate them, and you!

Taglist: (Sadly, tag list is closed; Tumblr will not let me add anyone new. If you want to be notified when I update, please Follow me for Notifications!) @jmeelee @cazellen @mrsbuckybarnes1917 @blackhawkfanatic @buckybarnessimpp @hayjat @capswife @itsteambarnes @marygoddessofmischief @sebastians-love @learisa @lethallyprotected @rabbitrabbit12321 @buckybarnesandmarvel @fanfictiongirl77 @calwitch @fantasyfootballchampion @selella @jackiehollanderr @wintercrows @sashaisready @missvelvetsstuff @angelbabyyy99 @keylimebeag @maybefoxysouls @vicmc624 @j23r23 @wintercrows @crist1216 @cjand10 @pattiemac1@les-sel @dottirose @winterslove1917 @harperkenobi @ivet4 @casey1-2007 @mrsevans90 @steeph-aniie @bean-bean2000 @beanbagbitch @peachiestevie @wintrsoldrluvr @shadowzena43

Tumblr will not let me directly tag the following: @marcswife21 @erelierraceala @jupiter-107 @doublejeon @hiqhkey @unaxv @brookeleclerc

“How many times do I have to tell you,” you told the officer who was questioning you, “we weren’t trying to steal the sheep, we were just trying to shear them.” You and Tony had been brought to the local police station and informed you were both going to be charged with trespassing, attempted theft, and criminal mischief. They’d separated the two of you, and you were doing your damned best to make sure that they at least dropped the attempted theft charge. “I demand to see the criminal statute that makes that illegal,” you said.

The officer rubbed his face with his hand. You’d been at this for awhile now, and it was obvious he regretted getting stuck with you.

The door to the interrogation room swung open, and another cop stuck his head in. “Jones,” he said, addressing the officer, “her lawyer’s here. We gotta cut her loose.” Lawyer? You didn’t have a lawyer. You couldn’t fucking afford a lawyer.

The other cop motioned for you to exit the interrogation room, which you did happily, and quickly, not wanting to spend another minute more in there than you had to. In the lobby, you saw Tony quietly speaking to a gray-haired gentleman. 

“Ah, (Y/N),” he said when he saw you approach. “This is my attorney, Mr. Mitchell. He’s going to be representing the both of us over this little misunderstanding.”

You shook hands with the lawyer, but said “I’m sorry, but I won’t be able to utilize your services, Mr. Mitchell. I’m pretty sure they have to provide me with an attorney, as I most certainly cannot afford one.”

Tony scoffed at that. “Please. I got you into this, the least I can do is make sure you’ve got legal counsel.”

His words took you aback. You were so unaccustomed to having someone do something kind for you (even if, technically, the entire endeavor had been his idea) without expecting something in return.

“I’m not going to sleep with you in exchange for a lawyer, Tony,” you said.

Tony looked offended. “No offense, but you’re way too young for me. Besides, I don’t need to get girls a lawyer to get them to sleep with me, thank you very much.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Mr. Mitchell said with an awkward cough, “I need to speak to the desk sergeant about finalizing your bail. The older man walked off, leaving you and Tony alone.

“Sorry about that,” you murmured. “I guess I’m just not used to people doing nice things for me without wanting something in exchange.”

Tony studied you. “You strike me as a girl who’s had to grow up pretty quickly,” he said. His voice wasn’t pitying, but it was sad. You just shrugged.

“Well,” he said after a moment, “the press will have a field day with this. I can see the headline now: ‘From Billionaire to Baaaaad Boy: Playful Playboy Arrested in Woolly Misadventure’.”

You snorted at that. “I can make sure they never hear about it,” you said.

Tony cocked his head at you. “Oh, you can, can you?” he asked.

You glanced over to where the precinct’s receptionist sat at her computer. “Can you cause a distraction? Get her away from that terminal for about five minutes?”

Tony brought a hand to his chin. “Like taking candy from a baby,” he said. He sauntered up to the receptionist and slammed his hand down on the counter, causing her to jump.

“Excuse me!” he shouted at her. “I demand to speak to your superior officer! I have never been treated so disrespectfully in my life!”

The receptionist blanched. “I’m sorry sir, but if you have a complaint, you can fill out–”

“DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” Tony shouted. “I demand you take me to your superior officer this instant, or I will have your job!”

The poor woman was frazzled as she led Tony back into the bowels of the precinct. As soon as they were out of sight, you ran around the counter to the terminal. It was only a matter of moments before you were able to locate the files for you and Tony, and with a few quick keystrokes, you had deleted them as though they never existed. 

You quickly checked the pile of paper files waiting to be sorted, locating the case files for both you and Tony. Checking to make sure the receptionist and Tony weren’t yet on their way back, you stuffed them down into the very bottom of the public trash can before running back to stand exactly where Tony had left you.

In a few more moments, Tony and Mr. Mitchell came out from the back of the station together. 

“Well, that was quite fortuitous,” Mr. Mitchell said. “It appears that there was some sort of computer error and your charges were erased from the system.” You avoided Tony’s glance at you as Mr. Mitchell continued. “The desk sergeant has agreed to contact me once they’ve re-entered the information from the paper files. For now, you’re both free to go. Tony,” he shook Stark’s hand, “always a pleasure. And Ms. (Y/L/N),” you shook his offered hand. “It was lovely to meet you.”

“You, too, Mr. Mitchell,” you said. “And thank you so much.”

You and Tony followed the lawyer out, and as Tony started the Audi to begin your drive back to Boston, he turned to look at you.

“So, Kiddo,” he said, having learned you were just nineteen from your police intake, “how would you like a job?”

You stared at him, eyes wide. “Are you serious?” you asked. There was no way he was serious. An offer like this could change the trajectory of your entire life.

“Like a heart attack,” he said.

You grinned at him. “When do I start, Boss?”

<- Previous Part / Next Part ->

#bucky barnes x reader #bucky barnes x you #bucky barnes x y/n #bucky x you #bucky x reader #bucky fanfic #bucky barnes #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky x female reader #bucky barnes fic #bucky barnes fanfiction #james bucky buchanan barnes #james buchanan barnes #mcu bucky barnes #james barnes

[creative-frequency]

More Astarion brainrot, cause why not? One day I'll start posting the whole thing. Maybe.

“Speaking of magic,” Astarion begins and you can sense what’s coming. “I heard you prepared quite the polymorphic spectacle today.”

You roll your eyes.

“I’m so sad I missed it,” he teases.

“Sure I can turn you into a sheep–” a yawn cuts your sentence, “–tomorrow.”

It was not the first Wild Magic catastrophe on your journeys and likely would not be the last either. Only this time the whole party of four – Lae’zel, Shadowheart, Gale and yourself – were within the danger zone.

“I’d say the first watch after a day of exploring is a fitting punishment,” Astarion muses.

“Hells, I’m so tired already,” you grumble, rubbing your eyes. The campfire flames are so bright they almost hurt to look at.

“Sorry, darling. I can’t stay, I have my own needs to attend to,” Astarion says and spins on his heels, ready to leave you alone to tend to the camp.

“If I let you drink from me, will you take the watch?” you slip.

Astarion stops in the middle of his spin. He turns back to meet your serious look, unable to believe his pointy ears. “What an interesting offer.”

“Isn’t that what you’ve wanted to do ever since I stumbled upon your secret?” you ask, feeling nervous and already regretting your boldness.

Astarion can’t exactly deny your words, but he still takes his wins wherever he can.

“What would dear Wyll say if he knew you were even suggesting such debauchery, hmm?” Astarion teases you, but you can see his eyes flash with anticipation and the sudden tension in his posture.

Oh, how he has been waiting to hear those words from your lips.

He could have bitten anyone since he realised that Cazador’s old orders, which prohibited him from drinking blood without his Master’s explicit permission, no longer bound him. But the wait made this moment just so much sweeter.

You scoot over to leave room on the fallen tree trunk for Astarion to sit down. “Wyll doesn’t really have a say in this, does he?” you reply.

“Of course, dear. What happens in camp, stays in camp.”

Contradictions and Other Counter-Measures Ch. 1

#astarion x reader #astarion x you #astarion fanfic #astarion #baldur's gate 3 fanfiction #bg3 fanfiction #excerpt #contradictions and other counter measures

[starchaserwrites]

@jegulus-microfic / february 11: map / word count: 755 cw:implied sexual content

The situation is this, in two days it's the wedding of his two best friends IN THE WORLD, which is wonderful and James is so excited for them after all they had to go through to get to this moment. He honestly loves them from the bottom of his heart, but maybe he would love them more if they hadn't decided to have the wedding IN THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING NOTHING. When they decided to have it in France since Sirius and his brother lived there with their uncle from the moment they ran away from their parents' house, the idea sounded sensational, but upon discovering the great little detail that it would be in a small rural village with zero signs in English, James slowly began to panic a little.

And here he is now, without a map since his phone lost all signal and internet access and subsequently ran out of battery, stuck in an old unheated rental car on a dirt road waiting for an endless flock of sheep to cross and not knowing a lick of French apart from "Bonjour" which won't help in this situation. Oh, and it's now pouring. Fantastic.

And you see, of course James has already considered going out and shooing the sheep out of the way, but contemplating he doesn't know where he's going, that wouldn't be good for the sheep who are probably just trying to get back to their pen, or anyone else. That's the only reason, of course it's not because he's afraid of the sheep. Definitely it isn't. 

When the daylight was almost completely gone and James was resigned to die waiting there (why do they need so many sheep in such a small town), a tapping on his window made him jump out of surprise at the thought that the sheep had finally agreed to hasten his death. A horse and its rider were standing by his window, but in order to see his face James had to roll down the pane and poke his head slightly out of the window.

"Vous avez besoin d'aide?" 

James had never regretted not speaking French as much as he did at this moment. The man on the horse looked like something straight out of a "Horse and Rider" magazine, but hotter. With his shiny black boots, wet shirt clinging to his body highlighting his strong arms and abs, and black curls accompanied by the most stunning pair of silver eyes James had ever seen in his life. So what if he wants this god to fold him in half? Sue him.

"Sorry, I don't speak French," James said sadly, putting an end to his fantasy.

"No problem, I just asked if you needed any help." replied the man on horseback in such a fluent way catching him off guard, but with a divinely thick accent. Fantasy resumed.

Oh, a deity had definitely decided to come down from Olympus to personally help James.

Later, inside the castle that Reg called home, and insisted on taking him because, and quoting him, "it's dangerous to drive around here so late at night, lots of wild animals", James emerged from the shower with only a towel wrapped around his hips, not expecting the silver-eyed man to be waiting for him with clean, dry clothes in the room. 

Nothing could have prepared him for the heat he felt as he was scanned up and down by that hungry gaze. So in a moment of enlightenment he remembered the only French phrase he knew.

"Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?"

"God, if you weren't so hot I'd be feeling so much cringe right now."

James's prayers of being folded in half were answered that night.

The next morning, he awoke to feel the warmth on his right side move and Sirius's horrified screams.

Hold on. Rewind. 

Sirius? So he was able to find the address in the end?

"Really James? My baby brother? And this is why you weren't answering your phone? We thought you were dead!"

Oh, so it is “Reg” as in Regulus. Wow.

“I died and went to heaven.” 

And in the blink of an eye Sirius was on top of him trying to throttle him.

In the end, all the necessary explanations were given. Sirius wasn't happy at first to learn that Regulus and James could become more than a one-night stand, but he eventually accepted it and the wedding went off without a hitch.

James had never been so grateful for a flock of sheep before.

#i got carried away #jegulus #james potter #regulus black #james x regulus #starchaser #sunseeker #marauders #jegulus microfic #len writes

[soursvgar]

How would you meet them if they were human? ♡

A/N: this idea was laying in my drafts for awhile, i haven't been around much lately so i don't know if it's been done before, but i sort of combined my ideas of what job would they have as humans and how would mc meet them if they were humans, i hope you all enjoy! ♡

Demon brothers x gender neutral reader ; fluff

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

ෆ ━ Lucifer ━ ෆ

Terribly confused, you wander through the seemingly unending hallways of your new institution. You could swear you've walked through those same corridors for the third time in the past hour, merely searching for your next class - whoever handed you those dated maps has got to find a more suitable job because you are officially lost. Contemplating to just cut class altogether and give up on the whole freshman fiasco, you set camp on a misplaced bench, figuring nobody is coming to your aid at this point.

"Well, what do we have here, a lost sheep?" The voice is deep and tender, carrying what's left of your attention span to it. You notice the tall figure's tailored outfit, worried at the possible misconception at first, before you decide you are too tired to care whether he believes you, or assumes a different reason for your absence. "Come on, tell me where you have to get to and I'll guide you to it. You're not the first student I've found lost in these halls." He stretches his hand towards you with a smile, and suddenly, all of your worries seem to fade.

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

ෆ ━ Mammon ━ ෆ

The crisp air slither through the gaps in your garment, making you shudder and tighten the scarf around your neck; if there's anything you desire in this chilly early morning, it’s a hot cup of coffee to hold snug between your fingers. Not being welcomed by your name upon your arrival causes you to peek behind the counter to spot a new barista brushing back his silver hair in frustration, brows furrowing as he helplessly scrubs off a stain while trying to memorize a costumer's complicated order.

"It was medium decaf soy latte, extra shot of cream and two vanilla pumps. They order it every morning, don't worry, you'll get used to it." You approach with a chuckle; the latter responds with a sigh of relief as he frantically notes down your words. "It's a shame ya don't work here instead, my boss is extremely unhelpful-" His sentence is cut short when his eyes meet yours, lingering for a moment with his lips shaped into a perfect 'o'. "I-I'm Mammon, I'm actually a model but I work here part time- could I get your order, with your name and- your number too, maybe?"

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

ෆ ━ Leviathan ━ ෆ

You have been forging your hobby for quite a while now- gaming had been a passion of yours since a young age, and as the years passed you've grown better and better. The time has finally come for you to enter a professional competition, but once you pick up the courage to register, your connection fails you. Frustrated, you make your way towards the nearest internet cafe, praying your confident remains by the time you arrive.

Once seated, you take a glimpse at your neighbor's screen as you recognize the familiar colors, and your guess is indeed correct- he is signing up to the same competition as you. Your gaze shifts to the figure frantically typing and a pink hue spreads across your cheeks at the scenery, you did not expect him to look this cute. "Um- Excuse me..." you immediately regret the spark of courage that flushed through you, because now his eyes are on you, and you swear your voice is about to break. However, the latter is quicker to respond. "Are y-you talking to- to me?" he questions, looking around to make sure the two of you are the only ones inhibiting the cafe at this hour, his appearance just as sheepish as yours. "Y-Yes, I see you're registering to the same competition as me." you mutter bashfully, lowering your eyes as the contact was spreading fire to your cheeks. "I was wondering... if you'd want to be my teammate?"

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

ෆ ━ Satan ━ ෆ

As an avid book reader, you couldn't be more excited about your favorite author going on a book tour for his new release. His identity was kept a secret, and his appearance in events was scarce- many people claimed to have met him, but none had any evidence to back it up; You were determined to be a different case. However, disappointment is not late to follow as you are met with a cancellation notice, and a staff on the author's behalf shows up to market the book instead. Disheartened, you trudge through the library's halls to divert your mind off of your despondency, fingers lightly brushing over the hard covers as you walk past the shelves.

"I heard he never comes to his own events, very unprofessional, if you're asking me." You pause when a stranger address you, looking up to see blonde locks peeking through a hat. "His books are not even that good, honestly." the male shrugs before returning to the book in his hands. "Well, I'll have you know he's actually my favorite author. If he chooses not to reveal his identity, that's his right to do so." You reply, astonished by the sheer nerve and disrespect. "Hm, can I see that? Maybe I should give it a second look, since you think it's so good." He closes the book in his grasp and gestures towards the one in yours, scribbling something inside as you hand it to him before taking his leave. Confused, you open the cover to inspect the inscription. "I'm happy to hear you enjoyed my book; here's my phone number- give me a call sometimes so we can chat. -S."

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

ෆ ━ Asmodeus ━ ෆ

You've always had a pull towards art and design, and your recent form of artistic expression is manifested through your nails- you've been enjoying coloring and decorating them with little drawings. However, the workload of your day to day life had been burdening your creative spirit, making you feel like you require a nudge in the right direction. With the recommendation of the internet, you decide to visit a trending independent nail salon and hopefully catch some inspiration while you get your nails done.

"Come here! Sit down, beautiful." Cheerfully, you are greeted by an angelic looking artist, his luscious pink curls outlining his flawless features, leaving you mesmerized enough to forget your own introduction. As your appointment progress, he lets you in on his secret gig as a junior fashion designer to advertise his brand, but also because he has the talent of picking a fresh face out of a crowd- or so he tells you, with a wink. In return, you share your own artistic endeavors, watching as he curiously tunes in, clearly wanting to hear more. "Just to be clear, I don't click like that with all of my clients." He offers a whimsical expression, but his nervousness shows through his stiff body language. "I really enjoyed talking to you, how about we see each other again, after hours?"

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

ෆ ━ Beelzebub ━ ෆ

"You deserve it." Failing to convince yourself, you take an anxious glimpse at your bank balance. For some time now, your friends had tried to convince you to accompany them to the hottest new place in town- an exclusive gourmet dining experience, drinks included, but the prices were keeping you at bay. A long, exhausting week was all it took to finally drive you to make a decision, though, stepping inside alone has you feeling a bit under dressed for the occasion, and your antsy attitude doesn't slip from the servers’ eyes.

"My name is Beel, I'll be your waiter today." A handsome redhead greets the group, eyes seemingly stalling on you for a just a promptous second. At first you thought you are misreading a mild coaxing towards a big tip, but around the third free entrée you assume the accidental brushes while delivering your food were, in fact, quite intentional. You decide to try out your luck, conveniently forgetting your coat on the chair when it's time to head out. As you return, your waiter is waiting where you left him, your coat hanging on his arm and his chiseled face graced with an expectant expression. "So, I'm actually also an aspiring chef- when I'm not waiting tables. Those extra dishes I let you sample were off menu, and my own doing. Would you like to maybe... meet up sometimes, and try some more of my cooking, just the two of us?"

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*

ෆ ━ Belphegor ━ ෆ

It was a rare occurrence for you to experience a day where you had no responsibilities to attend to, and simultaneously, said day brought upon it not a single cloud in the sky and a sun that shines exceptionally bright. The urge to take a walk outside and feel the graze of nature over your skin is unavoidable, leading you to find yourself alone in the nearest park, enjoying a cherished moment of relaxation. Hearing a sudden purr, your eyes are met with the slanted pupils of a stray cat and your body acts on its own as you lean down to pet it. The feline refuses, and instead, meows at you before it trails off in a different direction, stopping once as if it grants you permission to follow.

"Ah, there you are, I was looking all over for you." Confused, your gaze follows the voice as you watch the cat being picked up into an embrace. "And you made a friend?" Now intended at you, you blink as a warm pair of arms brush against you, offering you the animal cuddled within their hold. "I'm Belphegor, by the way. I volunteer at the local cat shelter because they let me take naps at work." The stranger chuckles. "And I believe my cat had just chosen you." Looking around, you notice several cats perched at the man's feet, basking in the sun and enjoying the warm weather. "If you want, you're more than welcome to join us on our little-" He pauses, smiling shyly. "Cat nap..."

#obey me #obey me shall we date #omswd #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me belphegor #obey me beelzebub #obey me mc #obey me scenarios #obey me imagines #obey me headcanons

[fuckmeyer]

Jasper as a character is so interesting because he ends up a Confederate because he can't actually empathise with the slaves and because he simply accepts cruelty around him, and then when he becomes a vampire he literally can't ignore others suffering because it hurts him, but even decades after he becomes a Vegetarian he still can't get a hang of it partially because he still can't see humans as *people*. Idk there's smth to be said about him becoming a vampire because of his own cruelty and then being eternally in horrific pain because of said cruelty that fucks.

Jasper's whole life is a curse & i love to see it

here we have a Confederate supposedly so empathetic that he acquired a "gift"... yet not so empathetic as to recognize he was fighting for the enslavement of an entire race. despite seeing the consequences of slavery literally every day. now, the man who spent his last human days denying the humanity in others is forced to spend his immortal life being slapped in the face with their emotions. forever. hueeueueueu-

yeah, i would call that "gift" a curse, actually.

if Twilight weren't a horror story, we might see a discussion between Jasper/Bella about how immortality forces you to confront the darker side of your nature (e.g. "there will come a day when the societal beliefs imbued unto you leaves you standing on the wrong side of history"), & Jasper's journey with finding love & humanity. OR, y'know, he could've just had ONE (1) line where he says "yeah i'm not proud of my service." simply, if Twilight weren't a horror, Jasper could see the error of his ways & change for the better.

HOWEVER. Twilight vampires are "mentally frozen" when they turn, so Jasper is likely still a racist who does not regret his service. no matter how many times he is confronted with his cruelty, he won't change. meaning whatever life he chooses, his gift dooms him.

wow! eternal curse!

we see evidence of this frozen mental state in his decision to go vegetarian. he doesn't switch bc he feels bad about killing humans:

"I could feel everything my prey was feeling. And I lived their emotions as I killed them. [...] You've experienced the way I can manipulate the emotions around myself, Bella, but I wonder if you realize how the feelings in a room affect me." (Eclipse, Ch 13)

note the dehumanizing term "prey" & the focus on himself. he laments not that the human lives he's taking have value but that their dying moments harsh his vibe.

the irony! trapped as an empath while never possessing the ability to be an empath! CURSE CURSE C-

herein lies a bigger, juicier curse: Jasper is, himself, (hot take) enslaved in the sense that he will never know freedom, philosophically speaking, due to the choices he made in life. the series tries to paint him as a master tactician & competent leader; fanon often paints him as a free-thinking amoral black sheep. in reality, he simply obeys the commands of higher authorities & abides by their worldview regardless of how toxic it is to himself or others.

in the beginning, he had María.

he entered the Southern Vampire Wars not by his own volition but stayed because he was content not having a choice. however one feels about María, the fact of the matter is 1) as a newborn he was stronger, bigger, & faster than her & could have run away or overpowered her, 2) had the "gift" to identify emotions & could KNOW when/if she was malicious or manipulating him, & 3) could have escaped by influencing her emotions to make her disinterested in him. at any time in the 100 years they were together, he could have left. he talks about never knowing a life outside the war & discovering "options I'd never dreamed I had." ok???? run 100 miles in any direction & you would have seen a life outside of war. BOI-

instead, he took comfort in being submissive & adopting someone else's ideology. not only did it remind him of his past, but it meant he had no need to reflect on his actions or beliefs. he prefers others dictate his worldview & order him around even if it means being unhappy. he only left because he was going to be assassinated, & even then, it wasn't until someone else told him another life was possible that he "realized" another life was possible.

notably, the period where he's most free— living with Peter & Charlotte— is his rock-bottom where "the depression got worse." but, again, not because he realized the value of human life: "I was so wearied by killing [...] even mere humans."

then he meets Alice.

Alice, who has visions of being vegetarian & converts him so they can live with the Cullens. Alice, who dictates how her family should live their lives to the point where she manipulates them. Alice, who goes so far as to dress the Cullens, who orders Jasper to wait in the car while she & Bella go shopping, who Jasper refers to as "truly [...] one frightening little monster" because for all his experience she can still beat him in combat.

his eternal soulmate is authority.

despite being unhappy with his vegetarian life, as it makes him feel weak & coddled & a liability to everyone around him, he follows the lifestyle because Alice tells him to.

then there's the Volturi, another authoritative body. "We owe the Volturi for our present way of life," says acclaimed bootlicker Jasper Hale, who in the same moment shudders at the atrocities they committed, yet strangely sees no other way for a governing body to keep the peace... so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

but, since Carlisle outranks the Volturi as an authoritative figure in that he more closely aligns with Jasper's new worldview, Jasper sees no problem deposing the vampiric governing body if it means his sister-in-law of like 2 months can keep her demonic spawn. so i guess we don't really owe the Volturi that much

to his credit, we see glimmers of him questioning his leaders: 1) his decision to leave Maria, 2) his considering switching diets to defeat Victoria, & 3) going against the Volturi. but, again, these decisions are all just a result of his self-preservation & submitting to the higher authority du jour.

in the end, he has the perfect storm of conditions that would allow him to escape the prison he's created, to find freedom & to love humanity unconditionally... but he won't. Jasper's ultimate curse is that regardless of whether he realizes the enslavement of his own self, he will never leave his cage because it's cozy & easy & allows him to never think for himself.

AAAANYWAY Jasper's life sucks & he's trapped in an eternal prison of his own making. lol

#twilight #twilight renaissance #the twilight saga #jasper hale #twilight meta #twilight headcanon #you're right there really is something to be said about jasper the shitfuck confederate ending up in this situation!!! #like it would be tragic if it wasn't so comedic and if he didn't display a modicum of self-awareness!!!! #you make a great point about how he accepts cruelty his whole life and even when he's unable to ignore it he just is forced to accept it fo #ever #the absolute *chefs kiss* curse. smeyer coudlnt have written a better curse if she tried #in fact i do believe ALL the cullen gifts are actually curses in their own way #and it's so delicious to think about it that way #god i just love thinking about twilight as a horror #you're right riote- It Fucks #thanks for sending this my way! #cheers~