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tendousbxtch · 3 years

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-> TENDOU x GN!READER

content. fluff & angst. wc. 3.6k

warnings. food. tendou having emotions. not read over.

summary. tendou wasn't surprised that he was treated the same at the culinary school in France. but you were a whole other matter.

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting to find in French, but it certainly hadn’t been this.

Tendou Satori had learned in his childhood that he was an abnormality, something unappealing to see or even be around. He’d been told, even, that he was a monster. So he believed it. He grew into it. He decided that — well, if everyone was so sure that his differences made him a monster, then he would be a monster. He earned a title that was slightly more glorifying, the ‘Guess Monster’. But it meant nothing as high school grew to a close. The connections he formed, aside from one with someone who didn’t seem to care this way or that whether he was in his life, easily broke off.

And now he was on the other side of the world. He had no idea why. He’d spent a month or so practicing some French without true intentions of coming here, and he’d sent an application into a culinary school there as an inside joke with himself. It seemed like the most obscure thing he could think of, just right for him. He was used to doing the first thing that came to mind. He’d been known for his crazy instincts in volleyball and it wasn’t a wonder that they’d carried over into his everyday life.

On the other side of the world, in a classroom with words of a language he barely knew all over the walls and teachers that didn’t pause for him, in a school that he’d gotten into purely due to luck, and sitting on his desk, with pink frills and a lavish greetings card entirely in his home language from an unknown writer, was a paper bag with chocolates. They weren’t just any chocolates — they were clearly handcrafted, in the careful and unmistakeable shape of three-legged mice with ram horns. Perhaps it was an ancient mythical French creature.

But when you appeared at his desk and slowly explained them to him in your distorted, obviously unpracticed Japanese, telling him to enjoy them and read the card if he got a chance because you’d spent awhile working on it, he realized he hadn’t been mistaken. They really were just the most obscure animals you seemed to be able to think of. He liked you for it.

“Is it cute?” you asked him, making a face to suggest that you weren’t sure whether you’d worded it right. “It’s cute, yeah?”

He gently took one out, smiling like an eight-year old with a toy. “It’s awesome. I like them.”

You looked at him quizzically. You really must be new to Japanese. Well, he was in your country, so he might as well attempt his knowledge. “Les chocolats… j’adore.”

You beamed, your whole body lifting as you took a breath. You must be trying to remember the Japanese words you’d practiced. “Welcome to our country. I hope we have a good year. Please take care of me.”

“Merci.” He opened his mouth to say more, but he found that he couldn’t come up with any more words of your language. It was funny, the way you’d learned more Japanese to speak to a foreigner than he had himself before traveling to the country. Endearing, though.

He’d never had someone learn his language for him. And not just the speech, but the action, too — something so completely obscure and yet quite possibly the coolest thing he could genuinely think of.

He shouldn’t let himself get too attached to you, you and your heavily accented Japanese and pauses you spent to smile at him and the way you continued to try to talk to him despite the language barrier.

He shouldn’t get too attached to you, but you were the reason he grew more motivated to learn how to speak French.

Tendou wasn’t in France to learn. He was excited about being in a new culture and all that, but his main goal was to get that certificate at the end of these four years so that he could go anywhere he wished. He was smart enough to generally catch on to what was going on in each class, and if he did something wrong, he’d just try something else until he got it right.

The process of not getting attached to you didn’t go so well, because ever since the first week, the two of you became inseparable. And in being inseparable with a student such as yourself, somehow so familiar despite barely knowing each other yet, he found it hard not to slowly let down his walls.

It was so nice to have someone like you.

You helped him learn French. You helped him adjust to the different ways of the culture, and you seemed not a bit deterred by his personality. He never held back in Japan, but somehow he was more inclined to here, because he wanted to make a good impression. The strangest part was, he found that no matter how he acted around you, you’d smile or go along with it as if you’d thought of it yourself. Like you got him. And having someone finally click with him was something he’d never experienced before, and he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

By now, it was your second year, and he was easily fluent in French as you were becoming in Japanese. The two of you were hanging out in your dorm, laughing over one of your classes.

“It’s so easy to piss off Mme. Cambier. She got mad at me once — have I told about this? — I handed in the wrong essay.” You snorted at his expression. “No, no, I swear, I didn’t mean to give her that one. I had been in a rush that morning, that’s all.”

“So you grabbed the essay on your fascination with chocolate milk powder,” he finished, nodding. “I must say, it’s a rather admirable deed. If I was Mme. Cambier I would have much preferred to read that over the history of hunting in America.”

You raised your hand to your mouth in giddy shock. “Oh, I forgot about that time. So, I did it twice.”

“Different essay?”

“Different assignment. Same essay.”

Tendou put one hand out, remembering. “Didn’t she write something on it the first time?”

You opened your mouth during your own recollection.“Yep. She just added onto her note the second time. Holy cow, how did I forget that.”

“I remember that time I accidentally drank from her coffee.”

“Satori. You did not do that accidentally. Don’t even try to lie about that.”

He grinned. “You’re right.”

“You don’t deny it?”

“What can I say. Caffeine withdrawal does a lot to a person, makes them someone unrecognizable.”

“I feel like you’d be very likely to do that whether you were suffering a caffeine addiction or not.”

“You got me there.”

“I got you.”

“You got.”

“I.”

“You.”

The two of you went quiet for a moment, and then burst into very 1am-esque laughter.

Moments like these — he’d never had this kind of friendship with anyone. Not in high school, not even with Semi Eita or Ushijima Wakatoshi or the rest of his team. There hadn’t been a single person that didn’t send him looks of confusion, or openly question his behaviour.

First, they called him a monster. And then, they criticized him for giving up on trying to shed the title when he decided to live up to it?

But you were different.

It had been over a year, and he still didn’t know whether to be excited by this or incredibly terrified. It was too late now not to get attached, but he still had a chance to make sure he acted right around you.

Being loud and chaotic and weird and everything he was good at had seemed like the right behaviour judging from your reactions. But when the nineteen-year-old ex-monster failed a class and asked why, he remembered who he was.

“You’re scary, Satori,” the teacher had told him. A long nose, glasses that seemed to go unused sitting at the tip. Dull, bulging eyes. A naturally downturned mouth. He’d been unlikeable from the beginning of the semester, but Tendou wasn’t taking this class to make best friends with the teachers, so it didn’t really matter.

It was strange to have people call him by his first name. Even if it was normal in this culture. And even if he had adjusted mostly to it. He still told people to use his surname if they could remember. A polite way to say that it was strange to be called anything else.

Tendou learned that French people were just as capable of bad manners as Japanese people, though maybe in a different way.

“You’re scary and you make the other students uncomfortable. You’re too loud.”

“So, you’re just gonna fail me?”

“Well, I’m afraid so, Satori.”

“Maybe it’s just a specific kind of students that you have in here. Not everyone is scared of me, you know, sir. Y/N—”

“Y/N was hell on Earth. I kicked her out on the first day, she was utterly useless and couldn’t understand instructions. Maybe it’s been hard to keep you here because you remind me of her.”

How could they even hire someone like this to work at a university? But — well, he was probably right. All those people before had had perfect reason to call him a monster before, right? He hadn’t changed much, really.

Why hadn’t you told him you were kicked out of this class?

“You can’t become a chef if nobody likes you,” the teacher was explaining as if he’d been telling him this the whole semester. “Be realistic. You have to learn some social skills.”

“You have to learn some ‘social skills’, Monsieur—”

“And that’s why I’m failing you. Not a drop of respect for your professors. I used to be a well-known chef, you know. I can’t believe you’d dare to talk like this to me.”

Tendou went quiet. And then he smiled. Then, laughter bubbled out of his chest and echoed throughout the class hall. He wasn’t laughing at the professor. Nor himself, he’d learned by now there was no point in trying to change himself.

He was laughing at the irony. The cruel irony of being told he wasn’t good enough by a teacher that embodied the very flaws Tendou was being accused of. And once again, Tendou had two choices. To be angry about his helplessness, or to embrace it.

And Tendou would be damned if he let anger become his drive.

—

Oh, but of course you would notice. You were too close to him now not to notice.

Tendou, had he been in a better mood, would probably be marveling at the fact that he even had someone in his life that would notice that something was off. But the fact that something was off and was making it incredibly hard for him to focus on anything seemed to be evident to you and you didn’t hesitate to bring it up as soon as you became worried.

An evening that would usually be filled with laughter and chatter was silent.

Tendou didn’t sulk. But you did, and he’d said something he didn’t mean. Oh, he hadn’t meant a letter of it. French could be such an ugly language. It was no different from Japanese.

“If you weren’t such a freak,” he’d snapped, “you wouldn’t hang around me, Y/N. Why are you bothering to, hm? Pity? I don’t need a freak’s pity.”

He sat, watching his words sink in.

He’d meant to call himself a freak. He always called himself a freak. He didn’t see himself as a human being at this point. He was used to being the monster in the room. He was so tired of it, but he was accustomed to it.

And he got the feeling that you were the same.

You sat in front of him, eyes burning like glowing embers. You didn’t open your mouth, instead pressing it into a thin line. Finally — finally — you said something.

“You don’t mean that, ‘Tori. Something’s happened, hasn’t it? Something’s going on.”

Tendou’s heart dropped at the sound of your voice, quiet, clearly afraid. He bit his lip. He wanted to cry. Tendou didn’t cry, ever. But he wanted you so badly to feel safe again.

He loved you so much it hurt. It wasn’t fair, that you cared about him. He didn’t care in what way it was that you cared about him. It was so — and he knew now — it was frightening. Someone cared. About him. About his feelings. Someone was looking past his behaviour to find out why. Because they cared.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I know,” you replied.

You knew.

Tendou felt like doing something. He felt like he was on top of the world, or falling off it. He needed to do something insane. ”Hey, Y/N. Can you shave my hair for me?”

You cleared your throat, the beginning of a smirk on your lips. “All of it?”

He curled his lips up a bit, fixing you with half-lidded eyes that normally had so much confidence, but tonight it was clear to you that they had a desire for anything. “All of it. The Tendou Satori before you shall be no more. Oh, and I don’t want to see until we’re doing.”

You smiled. “Got it. ‘Kay, meet you back here in fifteen minutes.”

He paused to look you right in the eyes with a dead serious expression you rarely saw. “Thank you.”

You nodded, leaving the room to prepare.

—

It took longer than either of you anticipated, and yet, somehow, not long enough. Tendou didn’t exactly have short hair to begin with, and, you thought to yourself, it was a shame that the first time you’d get to really run your hands through it would be to cut it all off. It was soft. Fluffy. Made you sort of want to giggle, despite the remaining feeling at the back of your mind that everything was not alright and right now the two of you should be talking about whatever was going on with him, not returning to your usual late night antics.

Tendou was thinking much the same thing, that having you run your hands through his hair was something he’d miss even if it had only happened once. He tried not to think about why the feeling made his heart speed up. It’d probably ruin everything if he let himself worry about it.

“Are you sure?” you’d said, poising the scissors. “It’ll take awhile to grow back.”

“I don’t intend to grow it back any time soon,” he’d replied. “I wanna be a new Tendou, you know?”

“Right. One new Tendou, coming right up.”

As he heard the scissors clip and the weight leaving his head, he took a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me you got kicked out of a class?”

You froze. “Oh. How’d you find out about that?”

“It’s not important.”

You hesitated, and then quietly continued. “I didn’t want to disappoint you, I guess.”

He started to shake his head, and you put your hand on top to remind him not to. “No, you couldn’t. Please, you couldn’t disappoint me if you accidentally slept with the King of France.”

“What does that even mean?”

“Dunno. But why did you get kicked out in the first place?”

A half-smile was in your voice. “He didn’t like my creativity.”

Tendou paused at this.

That’s really what was beautiful about you. You didn’t waste time doing things right when you could do them differently, when you could discover something. You should have been the one doing to a foreign country for school. You were taking out the razor now, plugging it in. “Hey, are you going by a tutorial or anything?”

“Nope.”

He smiled. “Sick. That’s my Y/N.”

He heard a buzzing sound in response, and pressure on his head. And then you did it, you shaved off his hair. It took several minutes for you to be satisfied with your work, and when you finally turned it off you both soaked in the silence.

“So, what happened, Satori?” you finally asked.

“Got failed ‘cause he said I was a freak.”

“You mean the teacher that—”

“Yeah.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It’s fine. I’ve been called a freak plenty of times before. I’m different, and all that. I was even the ‘Guess Monster’ on my volleyball team. Blocker.”

“You’ve mentioned that. I didn’t realize the nickname was …”

“It’s not me anymore, though. I’m new Tendou.”

“You’re… hey, pass me the mirror off of the table, ‘kay?”

Tendou picked it up and held it so that he could see his front reflection. He instantly smiled. He looked weird and it felt great. He should have done this long ago.

He caught your eye in the mirror. The two of you stared at each other for a few seconds, and then you raised another mirror so that he could see the back of his head. It wasn’t perfectly even. There were some parts it was more closely cut than others, and you’d missed a small area by his neck.

But it was perfect.

“Thanks,” he told you. “This was great. I’m glad you agreed to do this for me.”

“No problem, Tendou,” you replied, smiling. You realized that he couldn’t see your smile, the mirror in his hands facing your mirror. You reached over his back to adjust his mirror so that he could see your face. There, you stopped, your face hooked over his shoulder.

It was nice to be close to him like this, you thought.

It was nice to have you close to him like this, he thought.

He reached up and took your hand from the mirror into his own, not doing much more than holding it gently. It was smaller than his long, slender fingers. Your hand was absolutely beautiful.

He was scared of messing things up. So afraid. But it was late at night and at this very moment, he was fearless, lifting the back of your hand to his lips. You didn’t move, watching for a second, before wrapping your other arm loosely around him and turning your face into his neck. You stayed like that, hugging from behind as he sat, frozen facing forward. Around you, rather unglamorously, was his hair.

You stood straight again and softly apologized — in Japanese. It almost made Tendou wonder whether you’d been thinking in Japanese while you’d been close to him like that — it almost made him wonder whether you were trying in every way you could to relate and think like him. It almost made him wonder whether you wanted to understand every piece of him the way he did you.

The two of you cleaned up, getting a kick out of the mess. It hadn’t been a part of your plans for this evening, but then, as he observed, when did the two of you ever make plans that you’d actually follow through with?

This seemed to apply to his plans to leave a few minutes later, grabbing his stuff and apologizing again for what he’d said earlier that night. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m sorry I said that. I didn’t mean any of it, you know that, right?”

You chuckled. “Well, I am a bit of a freak. But what’s the use in going through life without being a bit of a freak, right?”

He agreed, feeling his chest swell. You had to be his soulmate, he thought absentmindedly, if you saw life that way. “Okay, I’ll talk to you tomorrow, my chocolatier-barber friend.”

“Wait, Satori,” you said, reaching out to him before he stepped out your door. “I just wanted to … I don’t exactly know what that teacher told you, or any of the details truly about what you’ve been through in your childhood, but I want you to know that I don’t think you’re a monster. I think you’re a really great guy, you know? Me, I’m definitely a little insane, but you’re just… you, you know? I love you for that.”

Tendou’s eyes flashed into yours, trying to understand what you meant by that.

“I meant, I love… I—”

Ten times as strong, the fearless urge overtook him, and he reached his hands for your arms, gently moving the tips of his fingers up as his eyes flickered from your mouth to your eyes, and to your mouth again. “Love, like, it would be okay with you if I kissed you?”

“If—”

“May I?”

“Yes.”

He pressed his lips to yours softly, his fingertips on your arms sending chills all over you. He kissed you gently, moving his lips against yours as if he could barely believe you were truly there and he didn’t want to mess it up.

Your hands found their way to his jaw, then his neck, and the back of his head. It felt weird, but fantastic. You found yourself giggling against him, and he pressed his forehead against yours, laughing too. “So then. New Tendou? Yay or nay?”

You reached up with one hand to his jaw, tilting his face this way and that as if inspecting it. He smiled endlessly at you. You were so beautiful. He was entirely yours in this moment, and he didn’t mind it a bit.

“I say…. drumroll please…” You rolled your tongue, giving him a knowing look. “The former.”

“Hehe, Y/N, did I ever tell you that chocolate is my favourite taste in the world?”

“Oh yeah?”

“Second to you, of course,” he finished with a dramatic gesture and a wiggle of his eyebrows.

You snorted. “Oh, we’re doing this, hm?”

“You think you can beat me at bad pickup lines?”

“Oh yeah. Try me.”

“You know what, Y/N?” he said. “I just might. I just might.”

AN: i don't know what this was. it was midnight. i'm tired. pls ignore how nothing makes sense and how the plot does not exist

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