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cherryatnight · 1 year ago

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sunflowers

pairing: bakugou katuski x f! reader contains: enemies to lovers, fluff, mutual pining status: standalone, one-shot, completed wc: 17840

note: canon-compliant but i bend it; early childhood and then up to season 3. also cross-posted to ao3.

summary: there you stand at the beginning of the world, with you and your sunflowers; your lovely liar's smile.

The first time you meet Bakugou Katsuki, you are six-turning-seven, and you remember it well. Not just because it’s the first day of school, or even that it’s your birthday. Rather, you remember it because of him, and though you think you would rather die than admit it, there is some part of you⏤ a more rational part⏤ that can temper itself down to acknowledge the fact.

You remember it well, because that morning, your mother makes sure to doll you up extra pretty. She dons you in a frilled dress like it is your armor, taking extra care with your hair, its bows, and she does: so much that there is an extra skip to your step as you walk. You don’t just feel pretty, you know you are; a work of art atop a work of art. But you still make sure to say your thank yous to all the unfamiliar faces that compliment you with gummy smiles and a not-so-quiet, conspiratorial grin. “It’s my birthday!”

You remember the way your cheeks hurt from forcing the wideness of it, the way you think it has started to sound like a mantra. You remember smiling, nonetheless, at his friend, as he wishes you a happy birthday! in return⏤ you are smiling at his friend, and not him.

You remember it well, because the first time you ever meet him, he looks you up and down, clad in your careful curls and prettiest dress⏤ and dares to call you ugly.

If you were anyone else, you might’ve taken the words like a physical blow. Already, your new friends are tensing for the inevitable confrontation. “You can’t just say that to her,” Sueko says, her eyes already narrowing in a glare.

“And who the hell are you, extra?” The crimson-eyed boy scowls right back.

The other girl wilts a bit, but her glare remains set.

You decide, right there and then, that she is your new best friend.

You smile. If you were anyone else, you might’ve taken the words like a physical blow. But you don’t just feel pretty, you know you are; a work of art atop a work of art. So you only give him your kindest smile, because your mother told you to play nice in the morning, as she brushed out your hair. You make sure to give him a once over, glancing down, and then up.

“It’s okay!” Your eyes curve, ingratiatingly polite; ingratiatingly sweet. “Some people are just born blind. And stupid.”

“HAH?” His reaction is exactly what you hoped for, and it’s almost too easy. “WHO THE HELL ARE YOU CALLING⏤”

The slight quirk of your mouth is amused, but you only turn, pointedly, to your new best friend. “Any chance you’re free this weekend? Let’s hang out.”

She stutters an answer, eyes darting between you, and the blond you know is seething behind you, if the glare he’s practically boring into the back of your head means anything.

You tilt your head to the side. A little inquiry, a little push. “So?”

Hands slam down on your desk, cutting out her squeaked yes. You jump a little at the sound, your eyes widening⏤ both a little bit at the sound, and how close his face suddenly is. All of a sudden, you’re glad you didn’t call him ugly right back⏤ it would have sounded petty, after all, and almost certainly would have bit you right in the foot, considering how this crimson-eyed boy is so clearly not.

“I’m talking to you.” Well. You think, he’d probably be a great deal prettier if wasn’t glaring down at you, face contorted in what seems like half snarl, half scowl.

His friend adds, a little bit placatingly. “Bakugou-san’s not stupid. He’s really smart, actually, always been top of the class. He’s really cool!”

You note the way the class eyes him, the way the blond’s eyeing the door. He grunts. “I also have twenty-twenty vision.” His chin raises, arrogance in the set of his features, a bit calmer at the praise, but also a touch quieter, almost a bit wary.

The door opens. He glances back, just as a man walks in, old enough that you assume that he is your teacher.

It takes effort to keep the shit-eating grin from spreading across your features. “Are you sure?” You ask instead, completely straight-faced. ( You should really consider acting, you think. You’re practically a genius! ) You simper, a hand covering your mouth. “Could’ve fooled me.”

It’s almost too easy, you think, the way he explodes, literally.

“YOU WANNA FIGHT, EXTRA?” Miniature blasts pepper the table, and you might have thought it intimidating, if it’s not for the way your sensei is stalking over, looking almost as murderous as the boy himself. “I’LL KILL YOU!”

You coo a little, fearless with the backing of your newfound supporter. “You’re really scary. That’s illegal, you know.”

He opens his mouth. But then⏤ “Bakugou. Seeing as it’s the first day, you won’t be getting detention.” His mouth closes mutely. You grin a little at the way he’s being pulled away from your desk, fingers still clutching at the edges of it⏤ by the scruff of his collar, and somewhat like a dog, you think.

His eyes flash, a little bit angry, a little bit dangerous. He points one grubby finger in your direction. “She started it!”

The sensei also pins you with a stern look. “The next time this happens, the both of you’ll be staying after class to clean, as detention. Am I clear?”

You gape at both of them. It’s half genuine, half not. You think this verdict is a little unfair. The boy grins, smug.

A complaint is on the tip of your tongue, then you see the sensei’s expression: deadpan, tired, and unsympathetic. You sober up, frowning a little.

“Okay. Sorry, sensei. I’ll try.”

The crimson-eyed boy is still glaring at you, a little victorious, a little smug, but with a gleam in his eyes. This is war, they seem to say, silent and from across the room.

Little does he know, it has been, ever since the moment he decides to look you up and own, clad in your careful curls and prettiest dress⏤ and calls you ugly.

You blow him a kiss.

He jolts. The face he makes is obviously a frown of disgust.

The sensei straightens. You smile ingratiatingly, turning away.

This is war, his eyes seem to promise, and really, you can’t help but agree.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Your revenge is served not even three days later, on a Saturday evening, and you think it is the sweetest thing you have ever tasted.

You have your father to thank for it, actually. The boy, whose name you learn is Bakugou Katsuki, is something of a mini celebrity at your school.

This means that the surface level things are easy to find⏤ he has anger issues, an explosive Quirk, and is smart, consistently at the top of the class. ( You frown a little when they tell you. These are all things you already know, and the only new information⏤ he likes spicy food⏤ isn’t helpful in the slightest. ) But this also means that, knowing his temper, there are very few willing to actively take your side, and much more openly against you. You are the new girl, the outlier, and though he can’t quite make you an outcast⏤ you and your horde of girl-followers ( bought with your mother’s fashion, your father’s wallet, and your pure, sunny disposition )⏤ he has enough friends, or rather sycophants, that will ignore you in the hallways, or mutter names at you.

The boy in question doesn’t, though.

He storms up to your desk the second day. You are chatting with your friends, as he slams his hands on the desk and snarls: “Fight me.”

Catching your pencil just before it falls, you frown up with him. “What ever happened to: hi, hello, how are you?”

“Hi, hello, how are you.” He sneers. “Scared?”

“No, and my answer is no.”

His scowl deepens. “So you are scared.”

“I’m a healer.” You lift your chin in outrage, affronted. “I’m not violent.”

“Nah. You’re just an extra.”

Internally, you seethe. First ugly, and now an extra. You have never been called such things in your life. You open your mouth, a retort on the tip of your tongue.

The sensei walks in.

It dies in your throat, Bakugou’s face splits into a shit-eating grin. He turns away, head held high; arrogant and condescending, having won this encounter by a mile.

Wrath boils in your ears, but you tamp it down, expressionless. Your pencils are carefully aligned, your notebook opened with just a little more force than necessary. Internally, you promise yourself, he’ll get what’s coming to him. You will make sure of it.

You get your chance soon enough on a Saturday evening, dolled up again in a dress your mother painstakingly picked out for you, your hair pressed into careful curls. Your father had told you: your family had been invited to dinner by a friend he’d met at work, and that they have a son in the same grade as you, in the same school.

You had shrugged. So long as there’s a chance their son would be willing to join your Anti-Bakugou Society ( consisting only of you at the moment ), you don’t particularly mind.

“Play nice,” Your mother reminds you now, as you stand before the door; your father knocking on it. There is a bouquet of sunflowers clutched in your hands, matching the color of your dress, and you only scrunch your nose up a little at her.

“I’m always nice.”

Your mother doesn’t get a chance to respond, because then there’s a⏤ Katsuki, get the door!⏤ along with an answering⏤ “SHUT UP, OLD HAG! I’M GETTING IT!”⏤ and then, you blink.

The name sounds rather familiar. The voice, too.

The door opens. You stare, wide-eyed, as a head of blond hair enters your vision, familiar and crimson-eyed.

He’s just as stunned as you are, as you watch, with no small amount of delight, as he takes one look at you, and then the sunflowers you hold in your hands, and sneezes.

Christmas has come early, you think. “Katsuki! This is your house?” You step a little closer, a sickly sweet grin on your face.

He dodges the sweep of your bouquet. A pity, you think, but you are successful: he only sneezes all the harder.

You raise an eyebrow. “Are you… by any chance allergic to sunflowers?”

Your mother gasps, tearing the bouquet from your hands. She had been the one to pick them out.

He doesn’t need to respond for you to know the answer: as soon as they’re taken away from his immediate vicinity, his sneezes lessen.

Your mother had been the one to pick them out, and you had disliked the way they looked. But you decide, there and in the moment, that they are your favorite flower.

He straightens. His nose is still red, and there is murder in his eyes. “Why the hell are you here?”

His mother sweeps in, pinching him by the ear. “You will not address our guests that way.” She hisses, before looking up at the three of you, apologetic. “I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to teach him manners, I swear⏤”

“No worries at all, Bakugou-san.” Your mother says, correcting herself at the other woman’s oh, just call me Mitsuki! She pinches your ear in turn. “This one is much the same. A righteous demon, she is.” You narrow your eyes a little at her.

The blonde laughs, and the way she ruffles her son’s hair is terribly fond. “That’s just part of their charm, I suppose.”

He hisses up at her. She hisses right back.

You love her, you think.

“Oh, where are my manners!” She straightens, blinking. “Please come in. Masaru’s in the kitchen, just setting up⏤”

Your parents walk in first, complimenting the decor. Mitsuki beams at them, and down at you. “Masaru tells me the two of you go to the same school,” She says. “Have the two of you met before?”

You say: “Yes!” at the same time he gives a flat, but resounding, “No.”

He glares daggers into the side of your head. You grin. “We’re in the same class, and he’s my best friend!” You exclaim, the lie rolling easily off your tongue.

“No the fuck I’m not.”

“Language, Katsuki!” Mitsuki reaches for his ear again, her face the picture of delight. “I’m so happy you’re finally making friends!”

“WE’RE NOT FRIENDS!”

She gasps, affronted, looking like she wants to tear him a new one. You smile. Your parents look on, utterly lost. “It’s okay, Mitsuki-san. That’s just how Katsuki-kun shows his love. I don’t mind.”

“Oh, you angel.” And from the look on her face, one might have thought she truly believed it. She whips around to glare at her son. He glares back. “I don’t know how she puts up with you, but you’d better treat her well.” You grin at him from behind, terribly smug, and terribly victorious.

She turns around, and your smile is pretty again, pleasant and soft.

Mitsuki coos at you. You think the dichotomy between the way she talks to the both of you is like heaven and earth. “Come over to our house more often. I’d love to have you over anytime!”

“HAH? WHAT⏤”

“We wouldn’t want to trouble you, Mitsuki-san.” Your mother says, assertively. She is shooting you the look, the one that means she knows what you’re up to.

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all!” She dismisses the statement with a wave of her hand. “Katsuki has few enough friends as it is.”

Your father laughs, ever the mediator. “We’ll have to invite you over next time as well. We live just down the street.” He brightens. “Actually, seeing as they’re classmates, they could maybe walk together in the mornings?”

Your mother’s grip tightens around his arm.

There is a wicked grin on your face. “I’d love that!”

The boy in question doesn’t even get the chance to protest, because Mitsuki’s already chirping. “It’s settled, then!”

You think: it doesn’t even matter if he emerges victorious in all the encounters you have after this, because when the adults turn, you get to stick your tongue out at him.

The look on his face is so quietly violent, so blatantly murderous, as you wave your still sunflower-smeared hands in his face, that you think you will remember the sweetness of this victory for the rest of your life.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Your relationship does not change in the slightest after that.

Mitsuki invites you over to her house once a week, and your parents do the same. The adults do their own thing, and you do yours: trying your best to annoy the daylights out of your newfound nemesis, and he only does the same to you. You’ll make fun of his All Might merchandise, the ones displayed proudly in his room, and he’ll make fun of your Recovery Girl ones, the ones you have so painstakingly collected⏤ she’s not nearly as popular of a Hero. He’ll sneer: “So that’s why you used to kiss everyone you healed?”

You’ll sneer right back, cringing internally at the reminder of that phase, though you are still Recovery Girl’s number one fan. “My Quirk’s literally activated through touch. You’d be lucky if I poked you with a ten-foot pole, let alone heal you with a kiss.”

He’ll make a face. “Eugh. You wish, idiot. I’d never want to kiss an extra like you.”

The two of you have learned to act relatively civil with adults in the house. You smile up at him, sickly sweet. “Yeah. This extra is an idiot, and she definitely didn’t score higher than you on the last history test.”

By one point, but still.

He snorts, though you can tell the reminder irks him. “That’s only ‘cause you sucked up to sensei like, three classes in a row.”

You sniff in derision. “I did not.” Sure, it’s true: you’d definitely been a little more active in class, and answered more questions than usual, but you’d studied for it! You’d studied a lot!

He sneers back. “Did too.”

You have learned to imitate the murderous glare he likes to level you with, and the first time you mimic it, you grin a little as his eyes widen, stunned.

The two of you are civil for the most part, though, at each other’s houses. His mother would tear him a new one if she heard him acting anything but⏤ ( she has )⏤ and you think you like his parents too much to ruin your relationship over something as trivial as this.

School is a different story, however, as are your walks in the mornings. “Shut the fuck up,” He’ll snarl at you.

“But Katsuki-kun!” You’ll coo right back, using the tone you know he hates. “I haven’t even started talking yet!”

He’ll scowl at you. You’ll simper right back. He’ll speed up, and you do not slow, nor do you attempt to match his pace, because you know: if you slow, he will too. Always keeping that same distance, and if you speed up⏤ well, you’d tried that once. And you’d kept pace with him for all of two seconds, before he’d sped up in turn, until the both of you were practically sprinting to school.

You lose, of course. You have never run a day in your life.

( You start training right after. )

You make fun of the things he likes, and he of yours. You flop on his bed, making sure to crinkle his carefully-pressed sheets, forcing him to his desk during one of your so-called ‘hangouts’ and ‘study sessions’⏤ Mitsuki’s words, not either of yours, but there are textbooks in front of the both of you, so that is good enough. You study harder than you ever have before, and rub every one of your small victories in his face, and he studies like a demon in return⏤ ( even though he’s never needed to study in his life )⏤ until the both of you are neck and neck, with perfect grades in every subject. You buy everything sunflower-colored, sunflower-shaped, and tack sunflower stickers onto every surface you can see, pinning some cute ones to your backpack.

( Your mother picked out the flowers, but you are the one that held them, and you were also the one to decide, there and then, that these were your favorite flowers in the world. )

You make fun of the things he likes, and he of yours. You see his face more often than anything else, and he calls you an idiot when you tell him about the fictional boys you think are cute. Well, you don’t care. You tell him about them anyways, because you are bored and Kuroo-kun looked particularly stunning in the episode the other day⏤ only because you are bored and there is nothing else to do, or so you tell yourself. You find: you do not regret lying the first day and calling him your best friend, because even if you are not even friends⏤ you don’t think you are, at least, because he has never confirmed it, even if he does seem somewhat tolerant of you; punches your pseudo-stalker in the face for you, and carries you piggyback on the way home, crying all the while.

“You’re ruining my shirt,” He grouses. “Stop crying. I’m literally more injured than you are.”

You sniff. “I’m not kissing you better.”

He snarls. “Come anywhere near me with your mouth and I’ll blow your face off.”

“You want it so bad it makes you look stupid.” You tell him, and he tenses beneath you, but you only press your cheek to his neck, and think, heal.

The pain of the bruises lances through you, and you feel the way he relaxes.

You droop. “Onwards, steed.”

“I will literally drop you.”

“I just healed you. I’m tired.”

“No one fucking asked you to.”

He doesn’t make good on his promise, though, and eventually, you sigh a little into his neck.

“What.”

“Nothing.”

“What, dumbass.”

You hum, a little absentminded. “You’re going to UA, right?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“Oh, I was thinking of applying for the healer understudy openings.” You shrug. “Dunno if I can get in, though.”

“You will.” His certainty surprises you.

You smile. “Didn’t know you believed in me so much, Katsuki-kun.” Your head flops back onto his shoulder. “Will you still walk with me in the mornings, then?”

“After school, too. Even if you don’t get in.”

You shift to blink up at him in surprise.

He clicks his tongue. You don’t think you’ve ever seen him look this uncomfortable.

“Who the fuck else’s gonna punch shitty stalkers for you?”

You don’t think you’ve ever felt like this before, like the sun cresting upon the horizon, lighting up like a dawn inside your chest. You laugh at the feel of it. “Are you sure you woke up on the right side of the bed today? Besides, you don’t even know where I’d be going.” You reach up to pinch him on the cheek.

He jerks away, the look on his face disgusted.

“Then I’ll teach you to fight.”

You make fun of the things he likes, and he of yours. You find: you do not regret lying the first day and calling him your best friend, because even if you are not even friends⏤ he is tolerant of you, he punches your pseudo-stalker for you, he walks with you before school, and he walks with you after. He lets you flop on his bed, lets you push him to the desk, wrinkles his nose at you when you tell him about a boy that was cute, and calls your friends dumb when you tell him about something they said that was funny. You weasel his birthday out of Mitsuki, and get him that All Might merch you know he’ll like. There’s some Recovery Girl merch left on your windowsill the day of yours. He laughs when you try a bite of his food for the first time and cough instantly after, your face aflame. What the hell is this? You hiss, and he grins, telling you it’s real food, and that you’re just weak. He never calls you his friend, but he believes in you and your dream, and promises to walk you to and from school anyways, even if you do not attend the same one.

( That’s just how Katsuki-kun shows his love, you tell Mitsuki-san, once upon a time, and though you are not sure if it is love, you think: you do not mind it. )

This is how your relationship is, and how it remains, until the end of the second last year of middle school, right before the both of you enter UA.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You are asleep at your desk when you are jumpscared awake.

“UA? That national school? Isn’t their acceptance rate really low?” Someone in your class is asking.

“That’s exactly why you guys are just extras!” You roll your eyes as the ash-blond jumps straight atop his desk. “I aced the mock test! I’m the only one at this school who could possibly get into UA. I’ll definitely surpass All Might and become the top hero!”

This is not the first time you’ve heard this tirade. Sueko nudges you, quietly. “Hey. Didn’t you say you were applying for one of their healer slots?”

“Oh, yeah.” The sensei glances down at his list. “Midoriya wanted to go to UA as well, right? And someone else…” You tense.

The class bursts into uproarious laughter, and it seems you are temporarily saved.

“Huh? Midoriya? No way! You can’t get into the Hero course by just studying!”

The green-haired boy stammers. “Th-they got rid of the rule! There’s just no precedent…”

You roll your eyes at the sound of familiar explosions. “Huh? Deku! You’re below the rejects! You’re quirkless! How can you even stand in the same ring as me?”

“No, wait! Kacchan! It’s not like I’m trying to compete with you or anything! Believe me!” He falters “It’s just that it’s been my goal ever since I was little! I won’t know unless I try…”

“What do you mean, unless you try? You’re Quirkless!”

You slam your textbook down with a little more force than usual, and the whole class turns to you in surprise. “He has a dream that he dares to try for,” you say, coolly and careful. “Isn’t that enough?”

“And what the hell would you know about that?”

Disbelief rushes through you, and you turn to look him squarely in the eye. The class tenses, and his own eyes widen. It has been a while since you’ve challenged him like this directly, whether in school or otherwise.

Sueko pipes up, unhelpfully, from beside you, as if he wouldn’t know. “She’s also applying for UA.”

You don’t get the chance to glare at her, because your sensei continues the thought. “Oh, yes, that’s right! You were the last student applying to UA! The healer routes are notoriously difficult⏤ how’s that coming along?”

“Ah, I applied to some hospitals for volunteering, but I don’t know if they accept middle-schoolers,” You laugh.

Your sensei nods, in support, but also a little condescendingly. “Well, it’s also a very difficult path, so don’t beat yourself up about it too much, yeah?”

The smile on your face feels a little bit painful, a little bit stretched.

You are distracted for the rest of that day. So out of it, in fact, that when the sensei calls upon you, his favorite student, you take all of five seconds to respond⏤ blinking, first, then glancing up, with a: “Sorry, what was the question?” You are so out of it that you bump your hip into your own desk as you move past for lunch, wincing at the twinge of it, and you are so out of it that you forget your pencil case when you leave after class, and have to go back to get it.

“Believe that you’ll be born with a Quirk in your next life, and take a last chance dive off the roof!”

You know that voice. You pause. But then, the blast of familiar explosions.

Before your hands, the door slams open.

You don’t know what you were expecting. Bakugou and Midoriya both, obviously, and you suppose you should have known his two lackeys would have been there, too. They turn from their face-off, and your glare is sharp and terrible. “So what if he’s Quirkless?” You snap, storming over to grab the green-haired boy by the wrist. “At least he has a dream. At least he dares to try. That’s more than I can say for the two of you.”

“Stay out of this,” The blond snarls, a warning.

You are not entirely a good person. You lie as you please, wielding the power of your mother’s fashion, your father’s wallet, and do things entirely for your own amusement, uncaring of the aftermath. You know Midoriya, or rather, you know of him, and how he is a frequent target of Bakugou’s scathing remarks. At first, you had assumed he’d just been one of the people that disliked you, but it had become increasingly evident that he was just one of the people that didn’t dare to brave the blond’s wrath. And you are not entirely a good person, because you just didn’t care. Not to talk to him, not to stand up for him, not if he hadn’t even tried to for you.

You are not entirely a good person yourself, but even so, you know that there are lines that should not be crossed.

You lift your chin, and say, quietly. “Apologize.”

“Hah?” He tilts his head. “And why the hell should I? Why the hell are you defending him?”

You feel incredulous. “What does that have anything to do with it?” You don’t see the way his eyes flicker down to where you are holding the green-haired boy, by his wrist. “There are things that you should never, ever, say to a person.” His eyes narrow, but there’s an irrational anger within you, a disbelief. “You’re literally trying to become a Hero. How can you, an applicant of UA, who hopes to become one of the best heroes in the world, tell someone to kill themselves, and not think there’s anything wrong with it?”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?” Little explosions are escaping his hands, in the uncontrolled way they do when he’s furious and unaware of them.

You think Midoriya makes a pained sound, what with the way your hands are clenching, angry and white. Heal. A sting pulses through you, and you drop his wrist, but your eyes are flashing. “You’re being an ass. Apologize.”

“You don’t tell me what to do.”

You lift your chin. “If you value our friendship in the slightest, then yes, I do.” The vehemence of your words stuns you a bit, and the blond recoils, as if he has been physically struck.

You think you have won, for all of a moment, and then he scoffs.

“Yeah, right. What friendship? The one you lied to my mom about and said that we had? That friendship? The one that doesn’t exist? Won’t exist?”

His sneer is not harsh, but the breath that leaves you is shaky.

You do not hear his next words.

( You make fun of the things he likes, and he of yours. You flop on his bed, making sure to crinkle his carefully-pressed sheets, forcing him to his desk during one of your so-called ‘hangouts’ and ‘study sessions’⏤ Mitsuki’s words, not either of yours, but there are textbooks in front of the both of you, so that is good enough. You study harder than you ever have before, and rub every one of your small victories in his face, and he studies like a demon in return⏤ ( even though he’s never needed to study in his life )⏤ until the both of you are neck and neck, with perfect grades in every subject. You buy everything sunflower-colored, sunflower-shaped, and tack sunflower stickers onto every surface you can see, pinning some cute ones to your backpack. You make fun of the things he likes, and he of yours. You see his face more often than anything else, and he calls you an idiot when you tell him about the fictional boys you think are cute. Well, you don’t care. You tell him about them anyways, because you are bored and Kuroo-kun looked particularly nice in the episode the other day⏤ only because you are bored and there is nothing else to do, or so you tell yourself. You find: you do not regret lying the first day and calling him your best friend, because even if you are not even friends⏤ you don’t think you are, at least, because he has never confirmed it, even if he does seem somewhat tolerant of you; punches your pseudo-stalker in the face for you, and carries you piggyback on the way home, crying all the while. You make fun of the things he likes, and he of yours. You find: you do not regret lying the first day and calling him your best friend, because even if you are not even friends⏤ he is tolerant of you, he punches your pseudo-stalker for you, he walks with you before school, and he walks with you after. He lets you flop on his bed, lets you push him to the desk, wrinkles his nose at you when you tell him about a boy that was cute, and calls your friends dumb when you tell him about something they said that was funny. You weasel his birthday out of Mitsuki, and get him that All Might merch you know he’ll like, and there’s some Recovery Girl merch left on your windowsill the day of yours. He laughs when you try a bite of his food for the first time and cough instantly after, your face aflame. What the hell is this? You hiss, and he grins, telling you it’s real food, and that you’re just weak. He never calls you his friend, but he believes in you and your dream, and promises to walk you to and from school anyways, even if you do not attend the same one. )

This is how Katsuki-kun shows his love, you say to Mitsuki-san once upon a time, but now, you know, because you have learned to read between the lines of his words; to understand him: that this is just how he treats liars who worm their way into his world, and how he tolerates them.

Your lip wobbles. There is a lump in your throat. But you will not cry for him, nor will you plead. Play nice, your mother chastises you once upon a time, because you are a willful child, vindictive in both your action and your speech, and petty enough to hold onto your grudges. She chastises you once upon a time, because you do not particularly care to cater to the feelings of those around you unless you feel like it; do not care to stand up for a boy who has done nothing to you, just because he has done nothing for you.

You are petty, yes. Vindictive, too. You may not be that much of a good person, and you are not without your own feelings, hypocritical as that may be. But you are trying, and you are genuine, or at least as much as you can be, as much as you ever have, and he⏤ he has just thrown all of that in your face.

“Fine, then.” You smile, and you are unfeeling as you lie. “I’ve never thought of you as a friend, either. Don’t talk to me again.”

The door slams behind you.

You do not hear his next words, so you do not hear him mean: not while you choose him, and not me.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Katsuki is six-turning seven the first time he meets you.

It is the first day of school. You are seated at your desk, a crowd of adoring sycophants around you. “Happy birthday! You look really pretty today,” His friend says from beside him, and he looks you up and down. You are wearing a sky-blue dress, with your hair pressed into careful curls.

His cheeks warm. He thinks you’re the prettiest girl he’s ever seen, but he only grunts, looking away to the side. “Dunno. She looks pretty ugly to me.”

“You can’t just say that to her,” Your friend hisses. He doesn’t know her face.

He scowls at her. “And who the heck are you, extra?”

She wilts under the force of his glare, and he feels a little better, as if satisfied.

“It’s okay!” You smile. He blinks. Maybe he should call you ugly more often.

And then you call him stupid. And blind.

And the rest is history.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

The results of your hospital volunteer application are sent back the next week, and the first thing you think of, somewhat bitterly, is that at least now, you have a proper excuse for skipping out on your weekly dinners.

You have already skipped out on the first, pretending you feel sick.

Your phone is still silent. You have not talked to him since that day, not even to check up on him when you see the news, though your fingers itch to. You think of sunflowers: how you didn’t even like them, until him. You think of how your bag now feels empty without its signature pins, how you have thrown every scrap of yellow clothing into a pile in your closet, your sunflower-themed charms and notebooks tucked away.

Proof of life comes from your mother, and you do not turn on your phone.

You break your silence two days later, pushing your vegetables somewhat morosely around your plate. “My volunteer application was accepted. They’re letting me intern at the hospital.”

Your father beams. “That’s great news! You should’ve told us earlier! Honey, we have to eat out to celebrate! Oh, I need to tell Masaru⏤”

“I won’t be going to weekly dinners for the rest of the summer,” You cut in. Your mother’s chopsticks pause midair.

Your father blinks at you. “Surely the hospital isn’t making its interns work that much.”

“Well, I’m applying to UA.” You shrug. That much is true, but it’s also just so you can fill in your hours, work yourself down to the bone. “I’d like as much experience as possible.”

Your mother is watching you carefully.

Your father clears his throat. “Well, don’t work yourself too hard.” He says, jokingly, as he dishes another helping of food upon your plate. “You tell us if they’re giving you any trouble, alright?”

You force yourself to smile back. “‘Course, dad.”

( Your mother asks you, a week later, when you arrive home from your internship. “Are you still friends with him?” She has asked you a similar question once, years ago and late in the evening, at the end of the dinner party, your father drunken and half-leaning on her shoulder.

You give her the same answer you did then, and in the same way. Cheery, and without a hint of hesitation. “Nope!”

She is watching you carefully.

You excuse yourself, and she does not ask you about it again. )

It feels like the days never end, and yet summer passes by before you can blink. You banish all thoughts of blond hair and crimson eyes entirely from your mind, and truthfully, you do not have the mind to think of him much, anyways. You steal the pain of your patients and make it your own, smiling at the brightness of their faces as you heal one, then two, then several more. It tires you terribly so, and between your time at the hospital and pre-studying for the UA exams, you’re so fatigued each night that you fall asleep before your head even hits the pillow. You don’t even have the time to meet up with your friends. And before you know it, the last year of middle school is upon you, as are the start of your applications.

It is a whirlwind of things to do, so much that you feel you do not have the time to breathe, or even think. Katsuki’s been placed in a different class from yours, which comes as a relief in more ways than one⏤ firstly, that you don’t have to see him, and secondly, because you can let your grades fall just a little, and still come out as top of your class. Between your intern shifts, your mindless studying, the applications, the tests and quizzes and preparing endlessly for interviews, the thoughts of anything else vanish entirely from your mind. You do not feel the emptiness of your afternoons, nor much of your mornings.

About two months in, Midoriya Izuku is the one to seek you out.

There is a spoonful of rice halfway to your mouth, a textbook in your other hand. You notice him when a shadow falls over it, blotting the light out. You glance up, drawling. “Yes?”

“Can I… talk to you for a moment?” He ventures, nervously, a tray gripped in his hands.

You eye him a little strangely.

You haven’t seen him since four months ago⏤ you haven’t really been paying much attention, and even the reminder sets your walls of iron slamming up. He’d been shorter then, you think, and significantly more hesitant. The boy from back then would never have even dared think about approaching you like this.

He flusters. “I-I just! Another time is also okay, or if you don’t want to, that’s also okay⏤”

There he is, you think, a touch amused. “Can it be said here?”

Beside you, Sueko’s jaw drops. You can feel the stares of your friends boring into the side of your face.

“Y-yes?”

“Then make it quick.” You flip the page of your textbook.

He hesitates. “Is it really okay…? For me to sit here?”

Your eyebrow arches, high. “Since when have you been unable to sit where you like?”

Mutely, he sets his tray down, and sits.

You only flip another page. “You can either eat or talk.” You say, conversationally. “Lunch won’t last all day.”

Obediently, he takes a spoonful of rice, and swallows. “I just… wanted to thank you.” He begins.

You know exactly what he is talking about, and your throat tightens. ( You think of your backpack, how empty it feels, but your refusal to tack on your sunflower pins anyway. ) You shrug. “No need to thank me. I didn’t do it for you.”

“Even so,” Midoriya perks up a bit. “N-no one’s ever stood up for me like that before, and especially not to Kacchan… I-I’m really grateful, either way!”

You snort a little. Never would you have thought Midoriya Izuku, of all people, would stand here one day, thanking you.

“I think you’re a really good person,” He says to you, a little bit hesitant. It jolts you a bit, the genuine honesty of his tone, but what you are not prepared for is what comes after. “And I know Kacchan does, too.”

Your spoon stops halfway to your mouth.

“He still cares about you,” Midoriya says, a touch softer. Your friends are not looking at you, but you can still feel the weight of their gazes, their ears.

You say as you set your spoon down. “If you want to be friends with me, then you will never speak of him again.”

Midoriya watches you carefully, notes the finality in your tone. His gaze rises to a point above your shoulder.

He flinches.

He does not speak of what he sees, or of this conversation, ever again.

You do not turn, and you do not ask.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

The week of UA acceptances arrive, and you await your own with bated breath.

Your father laughs as you run out exactly at eight every morning to check, before he finally deigns to tell you that the postman usually delivers to your house around twelve. “I knew that!” You say, and he laughs at the obvious lie.

You stick your tongue out at him, but you still sneak out the next day at the same time, just in case.

But as it turns out, the postman is late. You know this, because Midoriya texts you late in the evening, after dinnertime, with his signature All Might emoji and a brief: check your mailbox!!!!!

You stop, your heart in your throat. You don’t think you are breathing.

He’s still typing, spamming your text messages with a thousand All Might emojis, each of them more despairing than the last. You do not know what this means. And then, you see his next message: I got in!!!!!

It turns out that you are not, in fact, breathing.

You feel like you are holding your breath the whole time you’re fumbling through your mailbox, dropping random letters haphazardly onto your doorstep. That one looks like it’s important, you think, distantly, and it gets dropped somewhere onto the growing pile at your right, scanning them all for a familiar logo, and⏤ you see it at the very bottom of the pile.

You thumb it open with shaking hands. Congratulations, it reads, and you scream.

( You think for one moment of sunflowers, how you can imagine exactly how he’d react, hear exactly what he’d say. )

Your father pokes his head around the corner. “I heard screaming. Everything alright?”

Your mother is smiling. “Mitsuki just called. Katsuki’s in.”

Your father is looking at you with wide eyes. You are grinning, there are tears in your eyes, and you are wordless in your delight.

Your mother laughs, soft. “I suppose two congratulations are in order.”

“Midoriya also made it, so make that three.” You correct, grinning.

Your father whoops. “THAT’S MY GIRL!” For the first time in almost a year, you feel light as a feather, like the world is spread wide before you, and you are a young god before it, your wings wide and at the ready.

For the first time in almost a year, you think, for one moment of sunflowers, how you can imagine exactly how he’d react, hear exactly what he’d say. You think of reaching for your phone⏤ ( and if you did, you’d see his icon that you’d purposefully wiped blank bubbling )⏤ but you don’t. You think of a boy with blond hair and crimson eyes that you have not looked at in almost a year, how you’ll brush past him in the halls, surrounded by your gaggle of friends, your uniform and makeup, your armor, and try not to note how he’s grown taller. For the first time in over a year, you think of him, and your heart does not feel like an empty cavity in your chest; you do not feel so hollow, nor do you ache.

Your heart only squeezes, a little tight, but.

You think you will be fine.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You are delusional. You are not, in fact, fine.

You are standing in front of the classroom door. It spells the code of your class: 1A, in bold lettering, proportions inhumanly large. You are three minutes late, but it’s really not your fault⏤ you’d simply fangirled so hard over the fact that you’re finally getting to meet your idol in person last night that you’d barely gotten any sleep, and your mother had had to haul you practically out of bed and out the door, throughout the whole of your alarm.

You slide open the door. Instantly, you’re met with a sea of faces, and you steel yourself⏤ but then.

For the first time in over a year, you see him, and all of a sudden, you are painfully aware of the lack of yellow on your figure; your backpack entirely empty of its signature sunflower pins.

The smile is frozen on your face, and he looks just as shocked as you feel.

A voice drawls at your side. “You must be the healer,” You are glad for the distraction; the source a scraggly-haired man halfway through removing himself from a sleeping bag. Your sensei, you deduce. “You’re late.”

“Sorry, sensei!” You bow. “I overslept because I was fangirling too hard over meeting Recovery Girl today! I promise it won’t happen again!”

A wave of soft laughter ripples through the class, and over the din, you hear a⏤ she’s kinda cute!⏤ at the same time as a⏤ oh, I love her already.

“If I get hurt, will I get to see you?” A voice calls, and you turn to see a boy⏤ blond, and your heart stutters for a moment, but his shade isn’t ash, it’s golden. He’s grinning cheekily up at you.

“No flirting in my class.” Your sensei warns. “But yes, seeing as she’s 1A’s healer understudy.” He turns to you. “Recovery Girl’s waiting for you in her office. You know where it is?”

You nod cheerily. “Sir, yes, sir!”

“Good.” You turn at the obvious dismissal, shooting a wave at your green-haired friend as you do.

You leave the classroom with your shoulders set, your chin tilted high, your outfit your armor, and your makeup your helm.

You pretend like you do not feel the crimson glare that seems like it’s trying to pierce through the back of your neck.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Recovery Girl likes you, and you feel as if you are floating for the whole of a day. Not even meeting Bakugou’s gaze the next morning can knock you from it, nor can the grape-haired boy’s leering from across the room. You can’t really dwell on them for long, either, not with the crowd of people aggregating by your desk. You blink up a little, surprised.

It’s not like you’ve made an effort to dress up especially pretty today, and you don’t think you’ve come off as incessantly nice. You are not the you from first grade anymore⏤ you don’t just think yourself pretty, you know you are⏤ but are confident enough in your own skin that you have stopped putting on airs; have allowed yourself to be as cold and sarcastic and dry as you want. Most of your girl-followers⏤ ( the ones you buy with your mother’s fashion, your father’s wallet, and your pure, sunny disposition )⏤ have only seen glimpses of you like this, and you can count on one hand the people outside of your parents who know you as you are.

Sueko, Midoriya, and of course, him.

You do not dwell on it for long. You are confident in your own skin, and though you would like some more friends, you do not wish to temper yourself to gain them.

You smile a little at the question the purple-haired boy asks, disliking the way his eyes are lingering at your chest. “You’re all welcome to drop by the clinic anytime you like. It’s what we’re here for, after all. Though, if you want a kiss to make you feel better,”

You pause a little bit for dramatic effect watching the eyes of several boys brighten just a bit.

“You’ll have to go to Recovery Girl.”

Your straight face is very well-practiced, but you do not hide the small quirk of your mouth as you watch their souls die.

An arm slings around your shoulder, its pink-skinned, pink-haired owner grinning at you. “I think we’re going to be best friends, you and I.”

You remember thinking the same thing about a different girl, when you are six-turning seven, and you hear the same genuinity behind it.

( You are clad in your outfit like armor, your makeup a helm. Today, you are exactly as cold and sarcastic and dry as you like, because you are confident in your own skin, and you do not temper yourself in the slightest. )

You smile up at her. “I think I’d like that!”

Her grin widens, but then, an older Hero walks in⏤ Cementoss, you think. You have made an effort to memorize the roster. “To your seats, everyone.” He calls.

You take out your notebook, neatly arranging your pens. New year, new you. You don’t have as many shifts at the hospital anymore⏤ you don’t need the experience exactly, as you’re sure UA will look good enough on your resume, but it can’t hurt. Besides, you enjoy working there anyways; the older nurses who help you out with a kind smile, the doctors who are almost always willing to answer a question. But the lessened shifts allow you to breathe, just a little, to settle back into a healthier routine; one no longer so bogged down by your thoughts.

Math transitions quickly into English. You think you prefer Cementoss’s teaching style just a little, even if Present Mic is more energetic⏤ a little bit too loud for your tastes, you think. The material is basic, seeing as it’s the unofficial first day of class, and though you’ve already pre-studied most of the content, you end up writing most of it down, anyways.

Lunchtime arrives. You balance your tray on your hands, walking side-by-side with Mina. Midoriya waves at you from his table, surrounded by an assortment of friends, and you nod back. “Let’s sit there!” The pink-haired girl points excitedly at a particular table.

You see several boys from your class, some more familiar than the rest. A head of ash blonde, crimson eyes that glance up to meet your own.

“Midoriya wanted me to sit with him today,” You say, a touch apologetic. “You’re welcome to join us, if you’d like?”

Her eyes widen a bit, and you note the glance, the observance. Her own smile is your mirror, just as apologetic, and just as assertive. “Maybe another time,” She says.

She knows what she wants, and she’s not afraid to say it. You like that about her.

You incline your head, eyelid pulling down in a wink. “Do let me know which one you like,”

She only laughs at you, her answering grin somewhat sly.

All Might steps into the room after lunch, and though you’ve never been one of his particularly die-hard fans⏤ you think of your sunflowers, how you make fun of the things he likes, and he of yours⏤ you can admit that in person, he stands a legend in real life. You are just a little starstruck, you think, as he smiles at you, and says⏤ “Do try to keep your injuries to a minimum, though not to worry! Our healer team will be here to assist you!”

You find yourself grinning a little as you respond, “Nothing fatal, though. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything about anyone bringing a dead person back to life.”

He booms a laugh. “Naturally! You are all Heroes! You should refrain from using lethal power whenever possible!”

He speaks too soon. The first teams are called up, and the matchup is almost comical.

Bakugou will be fine. You know this. You are not worried for him in the slightest⏤ not that you would, you tell yourself, a touch sardonically.

No. What you worry for is the state of your Quirkless friend, and you are right to worry. Bakugou seems almost angrier than you’ve ever seen him, and that’s saying a lot, considering how good you are⏤ how good you used to be, you correct yourself⏤ at getting on his nerves, though Midoriya seems to be holding up very well.

Your friend has grown, you think. He is not at all the same person he was over a year ago in that classroom.

But you are right to worry, because All Might is shouting into his microphone. “Young Bakugou, stop! Are you trying to kill him?”

No, you think, immediately, instinctively. You know Bakugou is many things, but he is not that. Never that.

You feel the force of that explosion from here. “This is supposed to be a class!” One of your classmates, red-haired and red-eyed, is saying. “You have to stop him!”

“He knows what he’s doing.” You find yourself saying. Somewhat cold, somewhat callous. There are eyes on you, surprised.

You shrug.

You don’t really know why you say it, either.

“Young Bakugou, the next time you use that, I’ll stop the fight, and your team will lose. To attack on such a large scale inside is inviting the destruction of the very stronghold you are supposed to be protecting. That is a foolish plan for both heroes and villains, and you will lose a lot of points!”

You don’t need to look at him to feel his teeth gnash in anger, but you still watch the screen, anyways.

Their clash is violent. You remember saying, once, that you dislike violence because you are a healer. But that is not entirely true, you think: you see the passion in their every movement, even as your green-haired friend receives the brunt of the beating, the callous elegance of it. The careful calculations, the years of training that you have walked alongside most of to witness.

“This looks bad!” One of the classmates from before seems to shout. “Sensei!”

You don’t dislike violence just because you are a healer. What you have always disliked is the senseless brutality of it, the cruelty of its aftermath. Not because you have to deal with it, but because sometimes, you can’t.

You look to All Might. He seems to be struggling with something.

“So long as it is not fatal,” Your voice is soft, but no less firm. “I can heal it.”

His mouth tightens, but you see his decision made in that moment.

You turn your attention back to the screen just in time to see Midoriya’s Quirk. Your eyes widen. It’s so sudden, so powerful, that you almost miss it; the blast entirely different from Bakugou’s own. So he was not Quirkless after all, you think, but all thought of that vanishes when you see the aftermath.

All Might is turning for you, but you are already running.

You see the two you are unfamiliar with first. “How is she?” You ask the blue-haired boy who stands upright.

“I’m fine!” She gasps out. “Just nauseous! But Deku⏤”

You hear the nickname, and you think you look a little strangely at her for it. You don’t dwell on it very long, though, because you’re already slipping past.

Then, you see him, and though your heart stutters a little in your chest⏤ ( your bag, empty of its sunflowers )⏤ you still look him in the eye. You are professional. “Are you hurt?” You ask, because he is standing there, still gaping, a little open-mouthed.

He turns that look upon you, and his eyes widen.

The eye contact feels slightly unsettling. You look away first. “Well. If you are, you can let me know.”

You kneel at the green-haired boy’s side.

A hand stops you, just as you reach out. They’re a little bit bigger than what you’re used to, a little bit more callused. “Wait,” He says, voice raspy, and you tense a little: both at the familiar and unfamiliar touch, and because it’s been so long since you’ve heard his voice. “You don’t have to⏤” He scowls, cursing. “Recovery Girl.”

You blink up at him, a little confused.

But then you see his eyes dart towards your arm, and then the green-haired boy’s, lying prone on the ground.

“I am a healer. It’s what I do.”

“That’s not what I⏤” He curses again under his breath. “The damn nerd will be fine. Does he even know about your Quirk?”

“Why would that even matter?” You are confused, and you shove his arm away. Your friend is still hurt, and he is keeping you from your job. Why do you even care? You want to say.

You bite your tongue, and think: heal.

Midoriya blinks awake halfway through. Your arm is covered in purple contusions, and he gasps, jerking away. “You⏤ your arm!”

They fade within seconds. You only reach again for it, feeling the crimson gaze burning into the side of your face, as you’re sure the rest of the class is too, from their camera screens hundreds of meters away. You stare straight ahead, and think, heal, even as your arm ripples in agony again, painted and purple.

You steal your patient’s pain, and you feel all of it, but you don’t show a thing. Because you are a healer, and that’s what you do.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You are a healer, and that’s what you do, but the next day, Aizawa-sensei still admonishes you for it.

“Your records are very impressive,” He tells you first, and you straighten. You figure: he is likely a man notorious for his lack of praise, so you might as well lap it up while you can. “However, just because you have a very high pain tolerance, does not mean you do not feel pain. Am I correct?”

“Yes, sensei.” You dip your head.

“The lot of you hear that, right?” He addresses the rest of the class. “She’s a healer, and she can heal almost anything, save those who are already dead. That’s very impressive, and it’s very rare. Don’t let her become your crutch. She will not always be there, and though she might say she doesn’t mind your burden, others will. Whether it’s yourself, your fellow Pro Heroes, or the civilians you are trying to save.”

There is murmured assent from the class.

He turns back to you. “Heroism is also about knowing when to step back and let others handle the situation. It is okay to share your burdens,” He tells you.

You blink a little, surprised at the comments that are not really criticism at all. “I am a healer,” You state. “It’s what I do.”

He sighs. “You’re just as stubborn as your mentor,” He says.

You smile at this, chirping. “Thank you!”

“That was not a compliment.”

You sink into your chair a little sheepishly, but it’s like a sun has been lit in your chest, because you take it as one anyways, and you are grinning.

Lunchtime is a little strange today, for more reasons than one. Mina invites you again, but she doesn’t protest your decision, a knowing glint in her eye. But she doesn’t mention a thing, and you are grateful for it.

Midoriya is sitting with the same people as yesterday, and he beams, delighted, as you slide into the seat beside him. Iida and Uraraka nod at you from across the table, and you nod back.

Surprisingly, it’s the red-and-white haired boy across from you⏤ Todoroki, who breaks the silence. “My father says he would like to meet you.”

You blink. That’s certainly not what you were expecting. “Endeavour, right?”

He nods, his face deadpan. “Please decline.”

You choke a little bit on the bite of food that has just entered your mouth. Midoriya slides you a napkin.

You cough around it. “Wow, Todoroki-san. You really dislike me that much?”

He shoots you a strange look. “Not at all. Why do you ask?”

You’re a little confused. “Oh, that was a joke.”

“Apologies. I have never been very good with jokes.”

“Nothing to apologize for, and I was planning on declining, anyways. I’m going to intern under Recovery Girl for the rest of my life!”

“I will communicate that to him, then.”

Midoriya coughs lightly from your other side. You elbow him.

Uraraka giggles, but whatever she is going to say is cut off by the sound of the alarm. There has been a level three security breach, you hear.

“Trespassing,” You hear someone clarify.

You stare at the horde of gray-uniformed students crowding the hallway. You have never been a huge fan of crowds, especially ones as tightly-packed as this. Besides, you think, a touch dryly, that if there were an intruder, walking headfirst into a mosh pit like this would probably be the best way to get yourself caught up in a mass murder.

But you don’t get to voice any of these concerns, because then Uraraka is tugging at your wrist. “If we don’t get ourselves in there now, we’re never going to get our way out! Come on!”

You fall, weightless, and are carried away upon the sea.

It’s horrible. Internally, you curse the girl, and almost don’t even feel bad about it because yes, she’s like the sweetest person you’ve ever known, but she’s also reason you’re in the midst of a thousand wayward bodies right now, wrinkling your nose at the reek, and practically fighting for your life to keep your head above the throng. You are a healer, you think, a little despairingly, as you elbow someone so harshly that your own limb twinges. You are fighting a desperate battle, but nonetheless a losing one⏤ at least you are, until hands lift you by the waist and carry you forth; your savior cutting his way through the crowd with ease.

Your back hits the wall, and gratitude is on the tip of your tongue as you look up, but then you see him: ash-blond, and glaring at you with crimson eyes. “The hell were you thinking?” He hisses. “You don’t even like crowds.”

You hate the familiarity in the way he says it, as if he still knows you, and you hate the way he cages you in against the wall, his body larger than you have known, but how it still feels the same, pressed up against yours.

( You think of your sunflowers, how your bag feels strangely empty without them. )

It is the nearest he has been to you in well over a year. You hate the way he smells, like burnt caramel, and you hate the way your cheeks warm.

You want to say: neither do you, and you want to ask him why he even bothered to try and save you. You know he doesn't like you, not even in the slightest, not this liar who has wormed their way into his world; this liar that he tolerates. You think of a thousand witty remarks, ones that used to make his eyes light, the curl of his scowl somewhat harsh, but no less familiar, of giving voice to your outrage, to your feelings, and simply storming past.

You choose none of the above.

You still your features, the picture of calm, set the steel of your shoulders, and stare straight at a point above his shoulder. “Why do you even care?”

You do not look at him, so you don’t see the way he recoils, ever-slightly. The expression he levels you, half-bewildered, half-disbelieving, the rest a complicated mix of emotions even he could not decipher himself.

You don't see the way he opens his mouth, because then Iida is there and shouting.

You see your chance, and you don’t wait for his answer. You weren’t expecting one, anyways.

He doesn’t even have the time to reach for you, before you slip past, and are gone.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You stand before the mouth of USJ, your heart in your throat.

You barely notice the weight of the device upon your wrist; a monitor that connects you to all the ones distributed amongst the class, because there are villains down there, you think, a little dumbfoundedly. Real villains, like the type you see in movies, and you feel almost ridiculous, out of place, as if someone will smack you upside the head and tell you: wake up! and that you are not in a story. And you are not, because you pinch yourself, and yes, this is real life.

You have never seen a villain yourself before, because you are a healer, and have only ever dealt with the aftermath of what they have done. You know the damage, the pain, the torture it can inflict upon a soul; the way sometimes, no one can ever fully heal them afterwards, not even you. So though you are a little wide-eyed, your thoughts blank, when the mist wraps around you, you don’t even think.

You lunge.

Crimson eyes widen, and he catches you, just one second before you fall into darkness as one.

You try not to think about the way his body feels against yours, how he is cradling you, the way his hand automatically wraps around the back of your head. You feel the impact in your bones, though he bears the brunt of it. Automatically, you reach up, and think, heal, but you don’t have the time to do much else, because then his eyes widen, and he’s shoving you away.

“STAY THERE!” Distantly, you think he is roaring at you, and another time, you might have protested that you could defend yourself. But the shock of it all is still settling in⏤ ( these are real villains, you think dazedly, and this is real life )⏤ and you are a healer, right now, you are nothing more than a civilian.

In the aftermath, you still stand, dazed. Bakugou and another red-haired guy from your class are panting, smoke curling from your familiar ash-blond’s figure, and you register, like the world is separated from you by a film: it’s over.

“Oi.” There are palms cupping your face, and you blink a little, startled, as crimson eyes boring into yours. “You hurt anywhere?”

No, you think, a little too stunned to speak; the harshness of his tone at odds with the gentle manner of his touch. But then you see a hint of blood trickling down the side of his cheek.

As if on instinct, you reach out for him. He jerks away.

Wow, you think, the lump rising to your throat instantly. You had not known he hated you this much, to the point that he is unwilling of even your touch.

“I am a healer,” You say, your throat somewhat tight. ( You think of sunflowers, your bag that is empty, your closet and its piled-up yellow. ) “You are hurt, and I am simply repaying a favor.”

You sense that he is watching you carefully, but your eyes do not rise to meet his gaze. You simply steal his pain, and you barely feel a thing⏤ even if his injuries were not so light, you think you are too numb to, anyways.

You move past, and he does not reach for you. The red-haired classmate⏤ Kirishima, you recognize, grins at you, saying that he is unharmed. He offers to escort you back to the front, but then, your wristband is beeping, a location upon it.

You straighten. You are still afraid, you recognize, but there is someone out there that needs help, and this is simply another obstacle you must overcome. You will not always be in your hospital, tending to those that manage to get themselves wheeled in⏤ and though there is fear in you, there is also an equal determination.

“There are people who need healing,” You say, and that is all you need to.

You are a healer, but that does not mean you are any less brave.

You are a healer, and this is what you do.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You ask Aizawa, two days later, if he would be willing to teach you self defense.

( You remember a boy, back from what feels like eons ago. You, on his back, the sun in your chest as he offers to walk you both to and from school. You don’t even know where I’m going, you tease, and he only scoffs at you. Then I’ll teach you how to fight.

You think of your sunflowers, and your bag, empty of them.

Your throat tightens, and you make your decision. )

He looks a little surprised, and asks you if you are sure. He warns you that he will not be a lenient teacher, but you have seen how this man dove headfirst into danger to save his students; seen his kindnesses that are masked in the form of tough love.

You also know he likes you, at least a little bit. If he hadn’t, he would not have complimented you like that on the third day, would not have had the hint of fondness in his tone as he drawled, that wasn’t a compliment.

And even if he doesn’t, you know he will be at least a little lenient.

You had been the one to heal him, after all.

You are wrong.

You hate running. Always have. You started training, years ago, but that had been entirely out of spite, and in the wake of it⏤ ( your bag, empty of sunflowers )⏤ you had stopped. You hate running, always have, and you have no time, you’d told yourself, nor the energy⏤ but really, you hate it because it reminds you of him.

Now, you hate it for a different reason. You hate it because Aizawa pushes you, hard, until your lungs are gasping for air, your knees and legs trembling⏤ you think, somewhat sourly, that none of your healings had ever prepared you for this. You have healed all manner of wounds, cured a variety of diseases, but that does not change the fact even back when you were running, you had not put everything you had into it, and that now, you are trembling, bones soft, muscles even more so, somewhat like a deer.

You heal fast, though, you always have. You would not have been able to heal without it⏤ Aizawa knows this, which is why he pushes you hard. “If you hadn’t been so dedicated to medicine,” He tells you, “I would’ve told you to go the Hero route instead.”

You shrug. The thought has never occurred to you. Your mother is a doctor, and as soon as your Quirk had developed, you had never thought about anything else. But you don’t get a chance to voice it, or even to thank him, because then he’s hauling you up by the arm.

“Break’s over,” He informs you, a signature shit-eating grin on his face. You think you’re beginning to hate the sight of it. “Back to running.”

You sigh, before dutifully acquiescing.

Schoolwork is easier, at least, though between your sparse shifts at the hospital and Aizawa’s daily after-school training, you are pretty much spent. You don’t even register Mina chatting excitedly beside you about the upcoming UA sports festival that Aizawa has just announced⏤ you only think, a little despairingly; more work.

You glance up at your pink-haired friend’s surprised exclamation, and you see: a crowd of people, so many that from your vantage point, it seems like it’s the intruder incident all over again. A scoff, vaguely familiar⏤ “They’re obviously scoping out the competition, small fries. We’re the group that made it out of the villain attack.” Someone protests, telling him to play nice⏤ no, you think. This is him being nice. “Out of my way, extras!”

“I came to see what the famous Class 1-A is like, but you all seem pretty arrogant. Are all the students in the Hero courses like this?”

You see: a head of purple hair, mussed, and you think⏤ wow, he could be Aizawa if your sensei’s hair was shorter, purple, and he were using his Quirk.

“Seeing something like this makes me disillusioned. There are quite a few people who enrolled in general studies or other courses because they didn’t make it into the Hero course. Did you know that?”

You didn’t, but he only continues.

“The school has left those of us a chance. And based on the results of the sports festival, they’ll consider our transfer into the Hero course, and vice versa. Scoping out the competition?” He scoffs. “I, at least, came to say that even if you’re in the Hero course, if you get too carried away, I’ll sweep your feet out from under you.” His eyes flash, chin raised high. “Consider it a declaration of war.”

You sigh a little internally at the theatrics. “Excuse me, coming through.” You call. You ignore the way the ash-blond tenses a little as you walk up beside him, and you smile politely at the crowd; your uniform your armor, and your makeup your helm. You can do damage control just fine. “I’m class 1-A’s healer, so I don’t have a bone to pick with you really, but,” You cock your head. “All we did was fight off and survive a villain attack. I’m not sure how that’s arrogance. Have any of us gone out of our way to bother you?”

You are sure your classmates haven’t, because though you have not known them long, you are observant enough to tell that they are good and entirely dedicated to the path of Heroism. And you are right: he is wordless in the face of your diplomatic tone, the maturity of it all.

But then⏤ a laugh, somewhat mocking. You think you recognize the voice, and you do: it’s class 1-B’s understudy, standing in the middle of the crowd. You have not talked to her much, thinking her quiet, but it seems that really, she just dislikes you.

“That’s so rich of you to say,” She says, with a scoff. “Sucking up to Recovery Girl all the time, parading around like you own the place, all because you went viral and people started calling you The Best Healer of our Generation.”

You blink⏤ you remember Sueko mentioning it once, you think, after one of your co-workers, one of the older interns had started making videos of you, with your consent. You had not put much thought behind it, and you hadn’t the time to, between your many hours and the boneless weariness that had been so constant in your life after.

“Get off your high horse,” She snarls, a vehement finality to it, as she scans you, up, and then down.

You don’t know what to say, because honestly, you had never thought of yourself that way; had not thought of any others thinking of you that way. There are cries of outrage from behind you, you hear, distantly, as if you are underwater, but you are still stuck on the way she scans you. As if you are less than what you are, reduced to the painted trim of your nails, the makeup on your face, less than what you are and undeserving. As if it does not matter that you go to the hospital more often than not, your features clear, your hair pulled up, and lose yourself in your work; the agony of your patients, healing them and then some more until your bones ache with the ghost of their pain and you drop dead to your pillow, your phone turned off.

You are silent not because you are hurt, exactly⏤ you do not know this girl, and she does not know you⏤ but because you are so stunned. You don’t know what to say, because you have never thought yourself reduced to just this, less than what you are and undeserving. Distantly, you hear the cries of outrage, you feel yourself, adrift amidst an ocean, your hands clenching. You don’t know how to start, or what to even say.

But he does.

“She doesn’t use social media,” He starts, and yes, you don’t, but how does he know? “It obviously wasn’t even her recording the videos, you fuckwit, and it says in the account biography that it’s owned and run by a friend.”

You are staring at him, your heart held like hope in your throat. ( You think of your sunflowers. ) You don’t understand why he is saying this, why he is stepping in for you. ( You remember making fun of the things he likes, and he of yours. You remember finding that you do not regret lying the first day and calling him your best friend, because even if you are not even friends⏤ he is tolerant of you, he punches your pseudo-stalker for you, he walks with you before school, and he walks with you after. He never calls himself your friend, but he believes in you and your dream, and promises to walk you to and from school anyways, even if you do not attend the same one. )

He does not look at you, nor does he pause, and though there is anger in his voice, you think he is holding himself back. “High horse?” He laughs sardonically. “Get off yours. She’s already ten times the healer, hell, the Hero, you’ll ever be.”

( He doesn’t call himself your friend, but he still stands up for you. )

You don’t know what sort of expression you’re making, but it has to be ugly, something complicated, not exactly bewilderment nor gratitude or simply hope but some combination of them all; like something in between.

“And what would you know? What are you, her guard dog?” She snarks back.

And finally, you find your voice.

“He does what he likes.”

You are still watching him, and you see the way his hands clench, and then unclench.

( You think very briefly of your sunflowers, and you think that you will always miss them. You can heal any wound on this earth, save the fatal ones, but you cannot heal the hole he has carved into your heart; not the one from this boy who knows you, every facet, both the good and the bad. You have never needed to hide the unsavory parts of yourself from him; after all, your very relationship was built upon a lie. You think a part of you has always loved him for it, will always love him for it⏤ this boy who is not your friend, has never been your friend, but still knows you, stands up for you, and believes in you, in all of you. And, you think, even if he does not care for you, there will always be a part of you that always cares for him. )

You turn to level her with a cool stare.

“He’s right,” You say. “I don’t use social media, and before you call me a liar, just listen.” You add, as her mouth opens.

( Your mother is a doctor, and when your Quirk develops, you know you want to go the same route. You have never even considered anything else; never even thought of being a Hero, until your sensei tells you that he might’ve pushed you for it, had you not already been so dedicated to the path.

And you will not pretend like you have been good every step of the way⏤ you are not that much of a good person. Your mother tells you to play nice, because you are a willful child, vindictive in both your action and your speech, and petty enough to hold onto your grudges. You are not that much of a good person, you have never particularly cared to cater to the feelings of those around you unless you feel like it; do not care to stand up for a boy who has done nothing to you, just because he has done nothing for you.

You are grown now, better now, you know, but some elements of you still remain. You still wear your outfits like your armor, though it is not your hair but your makeup that is now your helm, you take time with your appearance and you take care of it every morning. Your volunteering at the hospital was not born entirely out of unselfish intention⏤ firstly because your mother said it was what you should do, and second because you thought the experience would look good, especially since you were applying to UA. But⏤ )

“I don’t know why you applied to UA, but I know why I did.” You say, simply. “It was because I wanted to become a healer, and this is one of the best places in the world to do it.” You straighten, jerking a finger at the ash-blond beside you. “We all went through the same application process. Take him, for example. He’s arrogant, he’s loud, and he always gets on your nerves. But that doesn’t make him any less passionate, or any less of a Hero. It doesn’t matter, because if you’re determined enough, strong enough, you’ll eventually rise to the top.”

You are the center of attention, but you have never been so aware of a singular set of eyes, burning straight into you.

You continue. “I don’t know who you are, or what you want to be, but that goes for the rest of you, too.” You jerk your thumb back to your classroom. “There’s a green-haired boy in there that everyone thought was Quirkless, including himself. But he had a dream that he dared to try for, and look where he is now.”

You look at your fellow intern, the class 1-B one.

“I don’t use social media for a variety of reasons, haven’t for a long while, and I won’t pretend like all of them were good. But ever since I started volunteering at the hospital, whenever I think about it, I think: every second I spend scrolling the internet could be another life lost. Someone I didn’t save, something I didn’t learn that could’ve helped someone in the future.” Your shoulders are set, and you lift your chin high. “You can think I’m a liar all you want, but I would hope, as a healer, you would be at least able to understand this.”

She is mute, and you look at the rest of the crowd, wearing your outfit like armor, your makeup, your helm.

You raise one eyebrow. “Anything else?”

Silence is your only answer, and you shrug.

“See you around, I guess.”

The crowd parts mutely before you, but then your wrist is clasped in a hand⏤ you think, very briefly, of sunflowers, but then you turn, and it is Mina grinning up at you, several others from your class in tow. “You’re so fucking cool,” She tells you, bright and genuine.

You are not that much of a good person, never have been, and, you think, you are not entirely sure if you ever will be. You will never be entirely unselfish, free of your precociousness, your pettiness, your occasional lying habits, and all the other thousand-and-one flaws you could find in yourself, if you really tried.

But you are growing. You are the same you that you were before, and you are also different.

You grin at her. “I know I am,” You say.

You are not that much of a good person, but you are growing, just as much the person you were before, as you are someone new.

You are a healer, you are yourself; this is who you are, and this is what you do.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

His mother calls him out on his sulking, barely a week in.

“Did something happen between the two of you?” She frowns, and his heart clenches painfully in his chest.

“S’fine,” He snarls. “Keep your damn nose out of my business, old hag.”

For once, his mother does not take him up on the challenge⏤ he almost wishes she would. He’s been itching for a fight, to get it out of his system somehow, but she’s always been able to read him⏤ just like you.

Mitsuki waves the phone in her hand. “Her father said she won’t be joining us for weekly dinners anymore⏤ she’s started volunteering at the hospital, and just won’t have time.” She states, plainly, and without judgment. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you, or if you’re still friends, but you were probably a little shit like usual, so get off your ass and go apologize.”

Apologize. That damned word. He hates it. And he’s considered it, but then he remembers: you, your face, the way it had crumpled, and then the way you’d sneered, don’t talk to me again.

He has always been able to tell your lies from your truths, and it stunned him in the moment, because it had not seemed like so much of a lie.

And it’s not. He sees the truth of it, a week later, when you skip out on your weekly dinners, accept your volunteer position, and cut the whole of him from your life, just like that. He sees the truth of it, on the first day of school, as he waits by your intersection and is almost late because you aren’t there, as he scans his class for your face and finds you absent, when you pass him in the halls and don’t even bother to look up. He sees the truth of it two months later, when that damned nerd stands at your table, a tray in his hands, and you allow him to sit. His heart is in his throat, clenching around something painful, there is smoke rising from his hands⏤ Deku looks up instinctively, flinching, and you do not even bother to turn.

( You and your sunflowers, the way you smile like the sun when you find out he is allergic, and go out of your way to plaster sunflower-themed things all over yourself, and he’s not quite sure if they are your favorite flower, or you do it just because you hate him. But then he gets to know you, slowly and over the years, a thousand-and-one forced interactions until he finds, one day, that he is not reacting so sharply to your barbs, uncaring that you flop onto his bed and muss up the sheets, unminding of your chatter, your studious, stupidly competitive nature, the way your eyebrows knit a little when you focus on a more difficult concept, or how you’re grinning as you annoy him, rambling about anything and everything; your fictional crushes.

You say you want to be a healer, and the first thing he thinks is: that’s stupid, why not a Hero?⏤ but your eyes are determined as you say it, there is a fire in them, and he sees that bleed into the way you do things; the way you act. You never call him your friend⏤ you have, once, very clearly a lie⏤ but he punches your pseudo-stalker for you, promises to walk you to and from school, even if he does not know which one you might go to, promises to teach you how to fight. It’s stupid, he knows it is, the way he tenses when you joke that you want him to kiss you so bad because he’s imagining it. And then the guilt after, when you press your cheek softly into the curve of his nape, feeling the dried-out tracks of your tears, the way you shudder as you steal his pain⏤ barely-there, but he feels it, anyway. )

He looks at you, properly, fork crumpling in his hand. “Yo. You’re staring.” One of his friends nudges him, gently, and he forces himself to look away.

( You, the sunflowers you bedazzle yourself in, your bag absent of them, and the way you never wear anything yellow ever again. )

He’s angry at you, at first. It’s unfair, he thinks, the way you seem to carve him completely out of your life, with all the practiced precision of a surgeon, that he spends almost all his time thinking about you, and that you do not do the same for him. You don’t want to talk to him, you’ve made that abundantly clear, and that’s fine⏤ he has his pride, and he is not going to beg you to stay. Not when you chose the nerd over him.

But then you stand in the doorway. You look like you did the first day, clear-eyed, but older. Your eyes widen when they catch sight of him, ever-slight, but he’s never missed a single expression on your face, and he does not miss it now. All of a sudden, he wants to talk to you so badly that it hurts⏤ he sees the bags under your eyes and wants to tell you to sleep, the bone-weariness with which you carry yourself, your step absent of skip.

But then, your gaze drops. He sees your bag, absent of its sunflowers.

He feels as if his gut were a stone, heavy and damning.

He remembers: you have never once thought of him as a friend, and he will not beg you to. He will respect your space, your wishes.

And yet. You stand by the entrance, the day of that first class, fierce and silhouetted by the sun. Are you hurt? You ask him, and it feels as if he were floating, stuck in a dream.

He takes too long to respond, and you give him a once-over, clearly discerning he is fine. You kneel by the damn nerd’s side, and he feels the absence of your attention like a physical thing, but even that is secondary to the horror he feels when you reach the other boy; his arm painfully bruised and almost a terror to look at.

He wants to say: you don’t have to do this, you don’t have to hurt yourself. There are other healers in the building, and don’t you have a mentor? You raved about Recovery Girl all the time, there’s no reason you should be taking his pain for yourself. And the nerd will be fine⏤ anger clenches at him, then, because if the nerd knows about your Quirk and still allows you to hurt yourself for him⏤ “Why does that even matter?” You ask him, and he hears the ghost of what you don’t say: why do you even care?

He does. Of course he does. He always has, even when you giggle to yourself about something so blatantly stupid, even when you are an entire pain in his ass.

But then he thinks of you, your bag empty of sunflowers, the way you have not worn yellow since.

His arm drops back to his side, and he says nothing more to you, just as you’d like.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You have always disliked crowds, but so has he.

He is watching you when it happens, sees you lingering hesitantly by the exit. You’ll be smart about it, he’s sure⏤ he’s hotheaded, yes, but that doesn’t mean he’s stupid or blind. But then⏤ brown-haired cheeks tugs you by the wrist, forcing you into the throng, and he thinks: what the fuck?

He knows it’s stupid, and that you won’t thank him for it, but he dives after you, anyway.

He forces his way towards you, watching as you elbow someone particularly hard with a surge of pride, before he’s holding you and marching away, towards the wall, towards free space, trying not to think about how you feel in his arms, how you feel with the whole of you pressed against him. He needs to say something, anything to distract himself, so what he says is: “What the hell were you thinking? You don’t even like crowds.”

Your cheeks are a little flushed, and you are staring at him. He feels his own warm in turn, and he feels like a kid again, heart like a sun in his chest.

Your features still. Your mouth flattens, and you are cold as you say what you did not only a day before. “Why do you even care?” You ask.

He does. Of course he does.

But you do not ask this question in hopes of an answer. Your gaze slides past, and then you go with it, refusing to give him even the time to reach for you.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

When the mist envelops him, the first thing he turns towards is you.

His eyes widen⏤ you are already in the air, lunging at him, and he barely has the mind, the presence of thought to catch you. You fall as one, and his gut lurches⏤ he wraps himself around you, shielding your vitals, your head from harm, and gladly takes the brunt of the impact. He has all of a second to check up on you, to feel you pressed against him, know that you are safe, before he catches sight of more villains behind. “STAY THERE.” He shoves you into a corner, setting his back to you⏤ and when they are done, you have not moved an inch.

He sees the daze of your eyes, the shock, and cups your cheeks anyways, trying to ground you. “Oi,” He says, harsh, but also soft. “You hurt anywhere?”

You blink up at him, and then at the red he barely feels sliding down the side of his cheek.

He jerks away. He doesn’t want you to touch him, not to heal him⏤ he’s strong, he’s fine, he can deal with it, he doesn’t need you to steal his pain. Not when it’ll hurt you.

“I am a healer,” You say, and his heart clenches again at the sound of your voice, and again when you tell him: “You are hurt, and I am simply repaying a favor.”

He hears the steel in your voice, lets you touch him.

He would give anything to curl into your touch, even if for the rest of your life, your relationship is just like this: he, the dog, and your favors, the bone. He wants it, so long as you will keep on touching him like this, and yet he also doesn’t want it, because he cannot bear to be the one causing you such pain.

He is angry beyond words when the extra starts laying into you like she does, and you simply stand there, bearing the brunt of it all.

He’s watched the videos, seen every single one. Seen how hard you work inside of them⏤ the comments talk about how beautiful you are, but all he can think of is the tired pallor of your face⏤ but what’s more is that he knows how hard you work outside, too, and who is this girl to even talk about you like that, when she doesn’t know what it’s like to take the pain of another, and make it into your own? His tone of delivery is quiet, no less than lethal, and he speaks with every ounce of pride he has in you and the person that you are.

You are watching him, he thinks, and he thinks, somewhat dizzily, that this is it. You’ll chew him out in front of the crowd, call him out on his bullshit, tell him to stop speaking about you, speaking for you, that you hate him, that he’s stupid, anything and everything of the above.

But you do not.

You only rise, and he thinks that you are not at all the girl he has known before. Some parts of you are the same, entirely unchanged, but you have grown⏤ so much that it takes his breath away. You have always been coolly elegant in your deliveries when you mean it, but this⏤

He thinks: it is okay if you never want to talk to him, if you don’t care one bit. It is okay if you choose never to wear yellow again, your bag remaining empty of its sunflowers, it is okay if you carve him entirely from your life.

He will respect your wishes, and watch from the sidelines, basking in the radiance of you: the healer, the girl, and simply everything that you are.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You should not be here.

You feel terribly out of place in this darkened room, with a crowd of familiar villains before you, disoriented and groggy.

If it were not for the ash-blond by your side, you think you might’ve started hyperventilating. You are quiet as you wake. You notice: his hands are bound, but yours are not⏤ they know you are a healer, you think, and they do not fear you.

You feel, rather than see, crimson eyes slide to yours. You blink up at him.

And then, his eyes flicker up.

You see the resolve set firmly onto his face. You know him, likely more than he does himself, which is why you know what he will say.

He says: “I’ll listen. I’ll consider working with you, so long as you make sure to leave her out of it.”

No. The word clangs into you with a force, a viciousness. You jolt upwards, so fast your head spins⏤ no. You know he won’t. He is a Hero to the core, and you know this, because you have decided early on that you will remain a step behind him always, even if he does not care at all for you, there and ready to steal away your pain. You have decided: you will see him live out all of his days, full of glory and entirely unscathed, victorious, and you will not watch him burn his life away like this, tucked away in a corner of this world, quietly and without a sound.

He lies to protect you, and you decide there and then that it isn’t worth it. You know him, have spent a thousand and one days getting to know him, just as you know that his bluff will be called before long, because though Bakugou Katsuki is many things, you have always known him to be a terrible liar.

You aren’t, though.

You straighten, and rasp. “No, he won’t.”

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

He watches you straighten, watches you drawl, and he feels a terror like ice creeping up to his throat.

Your lips are pulled into your liar’s smile, soft and lovely under the candlelight, but then⏤ “Katsuki’s going to be a Hero,” You tell them, and his heart stutters because when was the last time you actually called him by his name?

“Shut the fuck up,” He tells you.

You ignore him.

“Trust me when I say, this guy’s like, the biggest All Might fan you’ll ever see. Well, actually, maybe not the biggest⏤ Midoriya’s collection is insanely impressive, but you get the point. Did you really see his actions at the Sports Festival and think that was your opening?”

You stand, a smirk on your face, and he wants to tell you to shut the hell up again, to just stop talking, but⏤ you turn, you flash him a grin, and it’s like he’s six again and seeing you for the first time. You see him, in a way no one else ever has, in a way that assuages all the criticism he’s seen since, narrowing his world down to these things: you, and your unwavering confidence in him. Your lips are pulled into your liar’s smile, you are scared and terrified and pretty much everything in between, but he hears your words, hears your truth.

“Newsflash, losers. He’s wanted to be a Hero ever since he was a kid, and nothing’s ever going to change that.”

His heart swells so tight he thinks it’s going to burst. You, in this moment, like you still care, that he’s not alone in this, and that he cares for you more than anything else in the world, loves you more than you will ever know.

You do not need to say anything else, because there is a knock on the door⏤ pizza delivery, someone calls, and then the door opens; All Might in the flesh. The heroes⏤ and then you are scrambling for him, your fingers fumbling with the knots, but he simply jerks his hands apart, tearing the fabric, and reaches for yours.

You still a little, surprised, flinching back a bit, but his heart is singing⏤ you care, he thinks, somewhat dumbly, like a mantra bouncing around inside his head. He barely registers the rest of it⏤ he emerges by the ruins of a building, your hand still in his, piloting the both of you around the villains who try to keep you. Shitty Hair, calling down at him from the fucking sky⏤ what the fuck? but then he’s calling for you, and then there is you: looping your arms around his neck, knowing, instinctively, what he means.

His chest warms like the sun, ethereal and glorious.

You blast together into the night. His hand lands upon another one, similarly callused, and then he’s curling his other around you, latching you to him. Your head is settled in the crook of his neck, and you don’t protest it in the slightest, only untangling yourself once you land.

You don’t reach for his hand once you do, but that’s okay. His heart is singing.

He snarls at the others in his usual manner, and you assert yourself with your own. He follows you as you walk, a step behind. The others leave you at the police station, their own parents plenty concerned, and he doesn’t mind it in the slightest⏤ he gets to walk you home, after all.

You are silent as he does. He walks a step behind, and does not prod you.

You stop. He does, too. Your hands ball up into fists. He watches, waiting.

Finally, you whisper. “Why the hell’d you do it?”

That is not at all what he’s expecting you to say.

“Hah?” He’s never been good with his words, always more combative than means. Particularly with you. Especially with you. “Cause I wanted to, dumbass. The hell do you want me to say?”

You whip around and slug him instantly, punching him square in the gut.

He barely bends from the force of it. You clutch your fist, teary and glaring.

“Fuck you,” You hiss. “Fuck you, Katsuki. You don’t just get to pretend like you care when you want to, whenever it suits you! You don’t get to⏤”

He’s stunned into silence. He’s the one that’s pretending like he cares about you?

Your mouth opens and closes, so angry that you cannot quite find the words. “You don’t get to just fucking try and sacrifice yourself for me! What the fuck!”

He steps closer, disbelief lighting a second sun in his chest.

You lash out. “Stay away from me!”

He catches it in his hand, and you try to fucking headbutt him. He dodges that, too, and then he’s pulling you into him, as tight as his heart feels.

You stiffen. Frankly, he doesn’t give a shit, not when he’s figured out how you really feel.

“I’m sorry,” He rasps into your ear. “I care for you. I’ve liked you since we were fucking six, and you shoved your stupid fucking sunflowers in my face. I was angry. I’m sorry. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you, if you’ll have me.”

You do not move. Do not breathe, and for all of a second, he thinks: this is it.

And then, you crumple.

He can count the number of times he’s seen you cry on one hand, but you weep into his shoulder now, a year’s worth of repressed emotions wrung out of you in an instant. You melt into him so perfectly he feels as if he was made for you, the weight of you so perfect and familiar in his arms. “You’re so fucking stupid,” He thinks you are saying though it’s somewhat unintelligible, between your sobs and the way your voice is muffled from being pressed into his chest.

He chuffs in your ear. “Feel free to add blind and ugly to the list, if you’d like.”

You laugh, broken and teary, but then your arms rise, and you are wrapping them around him.

He thinks: it’s okay if the world ends right then and there, so long as he gets to hold you; just like this; just then and there; just for a moment longer.

( He thinks of you and your sunflowers, your liar’s smile. How your face had lit up in absolute delight at the sound of his first sneeze, and how you’d stepped forward to thrust it further into his face, a wicked grin on yours all the while. How you lie your way into weekly dinners, and he’s furious, swearing he won’t talk to his parents for the whole of a month⏤ but then you’re there, in his room and making fun of his figurines.

You say, somewhat disinterestedly, that you think you remember a new All Might one on the market. He caves, and his vow lasts only a week.

He thinks of you and your sunflowers, your liar’s smile. How he had always hated the sight of them before you; a young god faced with his one mortal weakness, but as time went on, he learned how he did not quite mind the look of them on you. He thinks of you and your sunflowers, your liar’s smile; soft and lovely under the candlelight, scared and shaking and terrified but still believing wholly in him, just as he does you.

He thinks he has loved you since forever. )

Absent-mindedly, he presses his mouth to your hair.

And in the light of the dawn, pink-streaked and painting you awash in sunflower yellow, you look up at him, and smile.

bc i need to rant about this fic: afterword

2K notes · View notes

cherryatnight · 1 year ago

Text

𝒟𝑅𝐼𝐹𝒯𝐼𝒩’ 𝒩 𝒦𝐼𝒮𝒮𝐼𝒩’.

✧｡˚ eren’s over just being your best friend.

𝒲𝒜𝑅𝒩𝐼𝒩𝒢𝒮 𓇼 8.7k fem!reader, lowercase intended, girly girl reader, friends who rlly like each other, smoking, drifting, fluffy scenes, eren is super soft for reader, dirty talk, unprotected sex, car festivities, kissing, neck biting, bits of roughness, choking, ass hits, cunnilingus, daddy kink, pet names ex. ꒰ baby, pretty, luv. ꒱ , praise, sub/dom, thicq!reader, goofy loving cutesy shit, minors do not interact! comments & reblogs are appreciated.

"i'm outside."

why is that text always terrifying to receive? it's the quickest way to make your heart fall to your ass in milliseconds. you can't help but roll your eyes and suck your teeth because he's too early, or maybe you were too late. it's only nine thirty so you're confused why he's here already. dropping the puffy makeup brush in your hand, you stand up from your brightly lit royal vanity with intricate carvings in the pearl-toned wood. slipping your painted white toes into a pair of hot pink teddy bear slides to make your way out of your bedroom and towards the front door for this asshole.

eren gets smacked in the face with your prettiness the minute you open your door, smelling like marshmallows and looking like a fucking bratz doll. your beauty stuns him every time. the six-foot-three man before you rests his weight against the wall on the outside, one arm stretched above as he leans over you with a wicked smile on his deadly gorgeous face. he's wearing a white graphic tee with pink graffiti spray painted on reading killer alongside a lavender nissan 350z. it's old merch connie was testing for his line. he also makes eren's shirts for his auto shop.

eren's also attired in black slim jeans and beat up 550 new balances, his signature racing shoes. his silver chain on his neck dangling as he kisses your forehead, the move so slick. you've noticed he liked to touch you a lot, give little indications of affection. kissing your hand, your cheek, your face overall. he grabbed your ass a lot, and it's so excessive you have to give him a hard swat and a death glare to actually make him stop.

"hello, eren," the way you say it has annoyance laced in it. turning away from him and walking away with that salacious sway your hips have. eren tongues his inner cheek, chuckling as he enters your home and shuts the door. he forgets how quick you walk, literally speed walking to your room since by the time he gets there you're already back on your powdered white tufted ottoman doing your makeup. riiverdance by beyoncé plays softly from the small speaker you kept on your windowsill so the music travels better.

"damn, i can't get no kiss? you fussy with me already." eren remarks, looking below him to see the fluffy black cat brushing up against his leg, scooping her up with one hand and petting her as he takes a seat on your bed.

"no. . aht aht! outside clothes, off the bed!" you're snapping your fingers at him as if he's your cat, eren swiftly raising his ass off your bed, blinking slow.

"where am i supposed to sit, woman?"

"the floor like always."

"tryna get cat hair on my shit," eren sucks his teeth, sinking down to the ground and groaning when your cat scrambles to get out of his hold, never liked being touched for long periods of time.

"you literally decided to pick her up knowing you're wearing white. that's your fault."

you were right but he couldn't resist holding her. that's his daughter. he's not giving you the satisfaction of being right though. manspreading, eren cocks his head to the side to watch you closely. you can see his entire reflection in your mirror, quickly glancing his way and ignoring the way he slowly licks his lips and knocks his legs in and out, unbeknownst to you, to chill his dick.

"so fuckin' gorgeous," eren smiles, those bright white teeth making you wanna fold immediately. eren loved watching you do your makeup. eyes softening for you. he found it so mesmerizing. you surely didn't need it but it made you happy so it makes him happy. "you wearin' that white on your waterline like i like. that jus' f'me?"

you pucker your lips. "mhm, nah. i just like it. i do nothing for your gratification."

"ouch," eren holds his tatted hand to his chest, shock overcoming his features. "keep hurtin' my feelings like that 'n your ass won't have a ride tonight. or no food."

that last line alarms you more than anything. one thing you didn't play about, and he knows this especially. . . is your hunger. you honestly haven't eaten much all day. working a shift at the hospital and only having a salad on your break wasn't filling at all. you all talked in your group chat about how saturday's the perfect day to go drifting tonight and grab some chinese at your favorite restaurant in town. your check hadn't hit yet but eren being him since he likes you so damn much offered to pay for you. you declined, as usual, but he didn't give a fuck about what you said, you were coming either way. to be honest, he missed your little sweet ass. a lot. you've been working mostly overnight shifts, being a SPT wasn't for the weak. and he's been busy at the shop fixing and selling cars. your days apart, aside from texting and facetiming made him want to be in your presence. he felt complete with you. you had to know that.

"if you gonna play with me about my food then ima just head to bed right now and starve," you basically threaten him. eren hated when you don't eat enough, makes dumb jokes about how you'll 'lose those thick ass hips of yours.' the boy will make it his mission to grab you something quick. he's your food and weed dealer. also your personal chauffeur, absolutely loving when you're his passenger princess.

"don't be fuckin’ dramatic, brat. i'm playin'. you know i got you," he stands back to his feet to come by you, pressing his midsection to your backside, where you can also feel the outline of his dick, trying your best to ignore the way it makes your face heat up. teasingly, he starts sliding his warm hands over your shoulders and down to your waist. cautiously, you eye him, having a hot wave of panic hit you when he begins tickling your left side. your most sensitive side, mind you. you screech and twist your body into a curling position trying to escape his attack.

"eren! get the fuck off me, bro!" he's laughing hard at your attempt to twist and yank away from his grasp, screeching and biting his arm which he flinches from and moves away.

“oww, fuckin’ gremlin,” he hisses dramatically, as if you’d stabbed him. “next time smile when you see me at that fuckin' door. gimme a 'hey, daddy' with it, too. it'll make my dick jump."

"your dick jumps for me enough."

eren’s eyes meets yours in the reflection of your vanity mirror. he shrugs nonchalantly, a devilish grin spreading across his face.

“well,” he begins, dragging the word out as he takes a step closer to you again. “you wanna see it?”

you roll your eyes, his voice dropping lower, becoming more intense as he continues. “know you wanna see it again.”

“says who?” you raise your brow, testing him.

by again, he means accidentally when he was showering at your place and forgot to grab his boxers before he went inside your bathroom, thinking you were sleep when you were in fact up reading on your phone. wanting to laugh at the memory of him turning red in the face and trying his best to shield his dick with his hands. making a snide comment about how badly you wanted to stare at it.

“you heard me,” he states simply, his gaze never leaving yours in the mirror. he's leaning directly over you, forehead nearly touching yours. his presence is overwhelming, filling the small room with his raw masculinity. this is a regular thing by the way. his constant teasing. waiting for you to let up.

“okay, daddy,” you grin mischievously.

“mhm,” he kisses his teeth, and at the same moment his phone vibrates in his pocket. eren fishes for it, checking a text from connie.

"connie’s outside, you done?”

“you rushing me now? i don’t like this rennie tonight,” you tsk, shaking your finger like a disappointment mother. standing to your feet, you brush out the curls in your head by running your fingertips through them.

you do look so pretty tonight. wearing an oversized pink greenbay packers jersey with a flowy white mini skirt, eren watching as you enter your walk in closet to fish for some white socks to scrunch at your ankle, and the same pair of sneakers he currently wore. my little twin.

“sorry, i’ll be on my best behavior.”

you smile, standing on your tiptoes and pinching his cheek, eren liking the view a bit too much, trying to fight the urge to grab your hips and pull you close. “such a good boy. now, let’s go!”

“wait, i want a kiss, wife,” eren smiled, trying to lean in before you pull away and shove your hand in his face.

“leave me alone, pervert!”

connie’s goal tonight was to show off the enhancements he added to his neon green scion frs, the car humming outside of your house when you go to say hello to him. he mentions that he’s going to swing by to pick up his girlfriend before he meets the two of you there. she didn’t live too far so he was able to make it before you two did, eren always having to make a mental note not to drive like a dickhead when you’re in the car. knowing your nerves are bad. they’ve gotten slightly better though since you’re with him all the time.

you loved drift meet up’s because it was a free car show to see all the cool ass cars, most of the models popular in japan. men and women in groups drinking and bumping music as they interact. it’s illegal as hell where you live but sometimes everyone’s able to get away with it if they don’t act too much like jackasses. this spot was mostly secluded from open roads or police.

eren walks alongside you, his arm loosely draped around your shoulders as you both make your way to the forefront where cars currently span in action. his car wasn’t parked too far, planning on performing a show himself in a little. the adrenaline pumping through the crowd as drivers send their vehicles skidding around corners and spinning donuts in the dirt your favorite, and his. connie arrives not too long after, eren going up to talk to him before you’re locked in, excited for him.

“i need to teach you how to drift one of these days. i gotta see your pretty ass behind a nissan 240sx or sum,” he says, pulling you closer into his side so you can hear him over the noise.

“that’s specific,” you laugh, looking up at him while chewing your gum, rocking with him.

eren grins down at you, his hand tightening slightly around your shoulder as he pulls you closer to him. “what can i say? i have a type.”

“you sure do,” your voice trails off, focused on connie’s loud car screeching and swinging before the crowd around you. cheers vibrating your ears like a concert. the feeling like a movie. you don’t notice that eren keeps his eyes on you the whole time, admiring you as you jump, clap, and scream from excitement. pulling your phone out to record your friend.

removing yourself from his arm, you notice the cars currently in the circle beginning to depart and make way for others. “con’s!”

eren shakes his head as he watches you bolt towards connie’s car, jumping up and down like a kid, bending low to give him a high five. “that was fucking awesome!”

“yeah, fuck with me!” he continues to slap his palm with yours. you look over to his girlfriend in the passenger seat, reaching over to twinkle fingers.

“hey girly!” luna smiles, tucking her long dark hair behind her ear since it blew everywhere from the wind.

“hiii!” you giggle.

“shit was good, i taught you well,” eren approaches, their heavy hands interacting, shaking before snapping their fingers.

“yea, whatever. you always want full credit, asshole,” connie sucks his teeth.

“oh my god, we should totally drift each other!” luna suggests. connie whips his head in her direction.

“wha—who said you driving my car?” connie blinks, flabbergasted.

luna goes to hit his arm playfully. “cabrona, i meant she can get in the car with eren and yall do yall lil’ thingy thing.”

“oooo, yayyy!” you approve instantly, clapping your hands together and turning to eren with puppy eyes. “oh, please?! i wanna shotgun!”

“be my guest, sweetheart. but don’t try to hang your head out the window again like a damn dog, or else,” his voice drops low, a warning lacing his words as he gives you a knowing look.

“mhm, i make no promises,” you wink, racing towards his car.

connie laughs at eren’s strained face, his friend knowing deep down he loved it. connie knew a lot you didn’t know. like the fact that eren’s madly in love with you, and has been ever since freshman year of high school. it’s not secret to anyone, really. as eren approaches his parked car you bounced impatiently beside, he opens the passenger door for you, gesturing for you to climb in before walking over to the driver's seat. the interior of his black r34 gtr is pristine, everything from the leather seats to the carbon fiber accents shining under the sunlight. you loved when he picked you up just to take you for a ride. he works on cars practically all day given he owns an auto shop, detailing and adding enhancements being his daily thing.

he’s getting his hands dirty and his mind fried from mechanical work. he customized this car to make it his own, his name written in japanese on the right corner of front window, a front spoiler splitter, apexi gt specthe which makes his exhaust sound like fucking gunshots, which terrifies you. on top of detailing the body of the car with giant dragons painted silver on either side of the vehicle. standing out to the crowd uniquely.

eren makes his way inside of the vehicle, big hands gripping the steering wheel as he adjusts his legs in his seat, your eyes locking there momentarily before he inserts his key into the ignition, firing up the extremely loud engine. an anxious smile shows on your face once you see everyone yelling over the power of his car, having been in it a million times, you still hated the sound, triggering your sensory overload. but, you loved the thrill. swallowing, you turn to him, balling up his shirt on his hip to grab his attention.

“promise me you’ll be safe,” you look up at him, worried.

a soft smile tugs at his lips as he sees the concern in your eyes. he reaches out, brushing a stray curl of hair from your face with his thumb. “don't worry, princess. i'll take care of both you and my baby here.”

“i’m trusting you,” you whisper, biting your lip. “don’t hit anybody, i don’t need you going to jail. and please don’t hit connie, because he will kill you if you fuck up his car.”

eren smirks, his hand dropping from your face to gently cradle the back of your neck. his grip is firm yet tender. “now why’d i risk traumatizing my girl like that?”

you suck your teeth and pull away from him, crossing your arms. he only sets his hand on your thigh now, and you let him. “aren’t you going to start driving?”

eren laughs heartily, his hand tightening around your thigh as he does. he revs the engine, feeling the power beneath them rumble in anticipation. his eyes flash dangerously in the dim light of the cars. “promise me something, too?”

“what?”

“we’ll finish playing mommy and daddy when we get home?” he grins.

“oh please, you know you can’t handle me,” you tease. such a bad habit you two have. joking too damn much. but by this point, from his end especially, you’re aware none of it is a joke.

eren raised a brow, feeling threatened. “oh, i can’t?”

“nope. and you’re too scared to admit it,” you taunt, fluttering a kiss in his direction.

“mhm,” eren kisses his teeth, he gives a curt nod, as if making a mental note. “ima hold you to that.”

“drive the damn car, eren.”

ignoring the warmth in your chest from his flirting, he finally shifts the car into gear. with a roar of the engine, he accelerates onto the street, leaving behind a cloud of smoke. malice at the palace by BONES is bumping through the stereo system as eren expertly maneuvers his car around the road, each turn and drift executed with precision. the sound of the engine reverberating through the car sends a rush of adrenaline through him. you hated to admit how fucking good he looked right now, your hand gripping onto his bicep as you giggle each time he executes a perfect drift, tires screeching, watching connie’s car across from his spin around each other. part of him hopes to impress you. and clearly he has by the huge smile on your face. you’re like a kid in a candy shop, eyes lit up.

“i’m doing it!” you yell, eren watching as you climb up on your seat, skirt rising from the wind blowing, your ass hanging out making his eyes go wide.

“꒰♡꒱, sit your ass down.”

“woo!” it’s too late, now you’re banging the palm of your hand on the outside of the door, staring at others who hollered back at you, your curls flying in the wind. the people screaming and cheering louder the more you raised your upper body outside of the window, being sure to secure yourself. eren’s hand instinctively clutch onto your ankle.

“goddamit,” he groans, but couldn’t help the feeling in his heart from your pure laughter. you’re enjoying yourself, that makes him happy. but your safety is important. given that, he slows down just enough so that it feels safe for you not to jolt and fall out of the car. despite your reckless act, he couldn’t help but marvel at how fearless you truly are.

connie’s car slides vertically next to eren’s, taking your chance to reach out and graze your fingers with luna’s as she leans her body outside of the window like you do, the two of you screaming like fans of your favorite superstar. the adrenaline pumping through your veins is exhilarating.

eren’s hitting on the brakes, causing the tires to yell and the car to skid sideways. with a swift move of his foot on the gas pedal, eren launches his car into a perfect 360-degree spin. the car gracefully arcs around its axis before smoothly coming back onto its original trajectory, all done. the world outside blurs into a whirlwind of colors and shapes as you scream into the wind, lowering your body to take your seat in your original position.

“that was sooo fun!” the sound you make is the cutest, giggling and bouncing your legs, full of energy now. he adores the glint in your eyes, but he also couldn’t hide the upset on his face.

“i’m sure. next time, listen to me when i say don’t hang your body halfway out the fucking car. you’ve never done that before, what if you flew out?” the sudden change in his tone takes you aback.

“i can take care of myself,” you retort, your defiant words making him clench his jaw.

“not saying you can’t. i’m telling you don’t be so fuckin’ reckless,” his hand moves from the steering wheel to smooth down his face, keeping himself calm, despite the current situation being anything but serene. he doesn’t mean to ruin your mood. surely didn’t want to cause an argument. he just needed you to understand where he was coming from. “don’t die trying to show off.”

“don’t die trying to protect me.”

“꒰♡꒱ . . cut that big girl shit, seriously.”

“aren’t we meeting our friends to get food? let’s go.”

connie did mention they’d be grabbing food right after, eren clenching his jaw and pulling his attention away from you. he tries not to keep you at these events for too long, sometimes things get rowdy and guns are drawn and he wouldn’t allow either of you to be around that. shifting his car back into drive, he pulls away from the scene to trail behind connie. you hated the current silence of the car, picking up your phone to distract yourself from any conversation. as you pull up next to your group, onyankopon popping up a minute after, eren kills the engine and opens his door with ease. he rounds the car, opening the door for you. you give a quiet ‘thanks’ before speed walking away to luna. eren sighs deeply, sucking his teeth and locking his car, pulling a puff bar from his pocket and leaning against his vehicle to calm himself for a minute.

“you okay? you look sad?” luna frowns as she holds your hand, ready to cross the street to enter the chinese restaurant.

you make an awkward expression, not really wanting to make it a big deal. “nothing, i’m just hungry! also kind of have a headache from the whiplash.”

glancing beside you, you see eren approaching onyankopon, shoving his keys into his pocket while simultaneously colliding their hands for a handshake, hearing the small ‘yo, wassup’ from the pair before you turn your head away, luna pulling you along with her. the five of you find a booth inside of the almost empty restaurant given its close to closing, being one o’clock in the morning and all. you take the time to catch up with luna since she’s been busy with esthetician classes and try your best to avoid eren . . even if he’s sitting directly next to you. this act can only go for so long before the two of you catch glances repeatedly, still making little interactions with the group together if you had to. you didn’t want everyone knowing that you two had a small fight. was it really a fight? you were fine, at least that’s what you liked to tell yourself.

time passes and onyankopon is the first to leave, mentioning he has to get up early for work and saying his goodbyes. that leaves luna and connie to cuddle up next to one another in the booth, your eyes studying the way his arm is draped around her shoulder while he listens intently on everything she says, bopping her nose with his finger as she giggles cutely. you smile faintly, looking down at the food you’re playing with at this point with your chopsticks.

eren glances at you as he finishes his plate, a finger pressed to his temple as he leans his elbow on the table. you feel his glare, turning his way to see what he wanted. his eyes holding a certain intensity that only you seem to understand. “come take a ride with me.”

you continue to fiddle with your chopsticks, swallowing air. “where are we going?”

“i need to talk to you about something.”

you’ve dreaded this. unsure of what was going to come from him when you two were alone. you’re not sure if he’s still mad about earlier, his reaction when luna brought up your car moment laced with irritation, like he wanted nothing to do with it. honestly, there was nothing more to talk about. he knows you don’t like confrontation, so you hoped he wouldn’t make an entire conversation about why he feels the way he does. a simple apology should’ve sufficed. the anxiety is pumping through you now, wanting to groan from his seriousness. one thing you’ve learned about eren was that he was big on communication. if something bothered him or he felt like certain things needed to be talked about, he’d take that chance to fix it. when he’s serious about something, it gave you goosebumps.

his gaze lingers on yours, the flickering candlelight on the table casting an enchanting glow on his features. you swallow, nodding. “okay.”

“we’re gonna go,” you grab the couples attention across the booth, connie and luna sitting up the moment you and eren stand.

“awe, okay boo! it was nice seeing y’all,” luna waves to both of you. eren’s patting his pocket for his keys, pulling out his wallet to set cash on the table for the both of you.

eren smiles. “you too, love. i’ll see you tomorrow, con.”

“bet, see you. y’all be safe.”

the car shifts into gear and pulls out onto the quiet street, the sound of heavy wind encasing the vehicle the only thing you could hear, blurring out the world. eren drove possibly fifteen minutes to a spot only the two of you go to. it’s secluded, parked under a giant tree in a grass field high on a hill that overlooked the city night. it’s surely a romantic destination. the two of you go here whenever you need to rant about life or just escape. it’s been your spot since high school. the slow melody of rnb fills the interior, creating an intimate atmosphere. the two of you sit for a moment, eren fishing for his puff bar to take a few passes before you finally say something.

“can i?” you ask, voice an almost hushed whisper. gesturing towards the object.

“yeah,” he’s handing it your way, clearing his throat before leaning back into his seat, smoothing both hands down his thighs before adjusting comfortably, closing his eyes momentarily.

eren takes a deep breath, running his fingers through his hair. “lemme start by saying i’m not mad at you.”

you blink, shifting your body so all of your attention is on him so he feels important. you tend to stare off into nothingness during these moments.

“yes, are you stubborn as fuck and it pisses me off at times? absolutely. you know when it comes to you, shit like that makes me anxious. i have that urge to protect you, and it’s always been like that. so don’t think i’m being immature by wanting to care for your safety. i know you’re grown, and you carry yourself well. but sometimes i need for you to just listen when i get gut feelings about shit.”

“i know, and i apologize,” you reply almost instantly, the thought being on your mind the entire dinner, but unable to let the words pass. “i do appreciate how you care for me. i was just having fun and didn’t want my mood to be ruined. it was dangerous, anything could’ve happened.”

despite his uncertainty, there's no denying the sincerity in his gaze; a raw vulnerability that contrasts sharply against his usual confident demeanor. struggling to say what’s really on his mind at the moment. “you still have that bad habit of never wanting to be corrected.”

“yeah,” you lower your head to your thighs, fiddling with the fabric of your skirt. “still working on it. i tend to be too aggressive when i want to be right.”

“i’m glad you understand. but, that’s not what i wanted to talk to you about.”

you look up. “what is it? did something happen?”

eren takes another deep breath, steeling himself for what he's about to reveal. his gaze never leaving yours as he prepares to lay his heart bare. “look . . i’m g’na be straightforward with you. i don’t need you to take this as something that has to be figured out immediately. i’ll give you the time and space you need to think on it if you’re feeling the opposite. but. .”

his cheeks flush slightly under your scrutinizing stare. it’s clear that whatever he's about to say is far from easy for him. he’s scaring you. “me and you, we been close since kids. i have love for you for life, but i need you to know that it’s been hard just being your friend. my emotions are consuming me, and being around you all the time is only making it more difficult. i see myself being with you, being in love with you. . for a long time now.”

the confession hangs heavy in the air between you both; raw and vulnerable, yet undeniably true. his heart pounds loudly in his chest as he waits for your reaction, bracing himself for either acceptance or rejection. either way, he’d stand by what he felt. and if you didn’t feel the same, it would hurt, but he would respect your boundaries. you’re unsure why you’re not . . surprised? he’s always been extremely affectionate with you, much more than a best friend should be. wasn’t necessarily fond of seeing you with other men or hearing about who you slept with. you told each other everything. had sleepovers. shared beds, and at times when you fell asleep before him, he’d brush a finger along your cheek and admired your beauty.

"my dream is to get you that big ass loft you want with the tall glass windows that overlook the city. decorate it how you want, be my pretty fuckin housewife that gets to stay home and do whatever you want. shit, start your own business. i'll pay for it all. i'll take care of you. i want you to myself, always. never wanna leave you. wanna get your name tatted on me. kiss you all day. cuddle, watch your favorite movies and shitty supernatural tv shows. run you bubble baths 'n fuck you real good every time i come home. buy you that wolf gray kia k5 with pink interior you've been wantin'. send you on vacations. buy you all the sanrio plushies in the fuckin' world. want you to be mine, ꒰♡꒱."

" eren. . . "

"i'll even learn how to cook for you, princess. 'n you know i'm bad as fuck at that shit," eren chuckles, raking his fingers through your hair. you laugh with him, tears in your eyes. "but i'll learn for you so i can always make you some authentic udon ramen or birria tacos, all that good shit you love. cause you're my girl 'n you deserve it all."

eren's hands move to rest on your hips, pulling you closer to him. his fingers trace small circles on your skin, sending shivers down your spine. his touch is gentle yet possessive. a tangible manifestation of the love he's been harboring for you. each stroke of his fingertips against your body feels like an exploration, a journey into the depths of your being that only he has access to.

“talk to me,” he bites his lip, lips nearly brushing your own, unable to help the pure attraction towards you. it’s stronger than ever right now.

“i feel the same way,” you lean in, moaning from his touch, his hands on you all the time, though somehow now they make you weaker. “i just didn’t want to ruin our friendship.”

eren’s breath hitches, a combination of shock and relief consuming him. “why the fuck would you think that?”

your shoulders shrug shyly. “i don’t know,” your voice drags quietly. “sometimes shit like that doesn’t work for everybody. and we have a great friendship. i didn’t want us being together to fuck up the vibe.”

“we not everyone,” he states, brushing a curl from your pretty face. “and we act like we date anyways. wouldn’t be no different.”

you recepriocate the act, brushing a few brown strands of hair that fell in front of his face, locking eyes before your lips press against his in feverish kiss. his tongue parts your lips, exploring the warm cavern of your mouth with a passionate intensity. his hands roam freely over your body now, one tracing delicate patterns on your lower back while the other slips beneath your shirt to feel the warmth of your skin underneath. every touch is filled with desire and longing, a testament to the depth of his feelings for you. the heat in your face blows higher, as if the ache to kiss him was a distant dream. to finally taste him was something you hadn’t known you needed. both of your hearts are pounding in your chests, every beat echoing the intensity of your feelings for each other.

“you have no idea,” he whispers huskily, pecking your lips. you moan, body melting into his touch. you could slip through his fingers like puddy, this center console blocking you. “how much i want you.”

“show me then.”

eren’s eyes darken with desire. his hands slide down to grip your ass, climbing over the console to reach for the recliner on your seat, your flushed face heating up from the close proximity, his hair brush along the apples of your cheek, his smell intoxicating. you giggle when he goes to remove the headrest of the chair, banging his hand into the seat so it’s completely flat and you’re resting on your back. eren hovers completely over you, bringing his body to the passenger side, squeaking when you feel his hardness brush against your clit, a clear indication of just how much he wants you. taking your lip between his teeth, he gives it a playful nip before trailing hot kisses down your neck, going to capture your lips in another hot kiss, rolling his hips into yours making you gasp. you trail your hands underneath his black shirt, hands sliding up his broad backside.

“i need you,” you whimper, knees disconnecting to spread yourself for him, scooting higher up the seat. your desperation makes his control slip further.

“fuck,” he murmurs, voice thick with desire, tracing along the curve of your waist before dipping lower to tease at the hemline of your skirt. “you’re making it hard for me to keep my shit together.”

“lick me up,” you whimper, pushing your hips down so your core presses against the bulge in his jeans, eren keeping down the moan in his throat, studying you. your thumbs slip into the band of your skirt, trying to indicate that you wanted them off. “please, m’dripping.”

“fuck,” he whispers again, this newfound sense of lust you had enrapturing him. “anything for you, baby.”

his hands slip beneath your skirt to explore the softness of your thighs, smoothing over your ass as you raise your hips so it’s easier for him to pull off your skirt, his mouth watering at the bare sight of you wearing no panties. you’d slipped off your sneakers, the balls of your feet digging into his shoulder blades as he pushes you further up the chair for both of your comfortability, craning his neck between the plush of your heated thighs. he breathes in your scent, moaning into a kiss he places on your inner thigh.

“c’mon—ah!” your breath is taken from you for your impatience, eren’s mouth circling around your clit for a quick feel before he’s lowering his tongue to taste all of you. locking his eyes with yours as you thread your fingers through his hair to push away, deciding to remove the hair tie from around your wrist to tie his hair onto the back of his head.

the taste of you on his lips drives him wild, craving this for years on end. eren groans from the sweet taste you leave on his fat tongue, his breath fanning over your sensitive flesh sending jolts of pleasure coursing through your body. eren growls in approval at your submission, his fingers digging into your hips as he pulls you closer to his mouth, swallowing down your clit, sucking on your pussy to hear you make those pretty noises he’s only heard once in his life. accidentally, of course. maybe catching you fucking yourself coming up the stairs without your knowledge, wanting to surprise you with food while the two of you studied for finals. he’s always kept that to himself, knowing you’d be extremely embarrassed by it. of course, he didn’t know it’s because you couldn’t stop thinking about what he wore in p.e; a black deftones muscle tank he cut as a crop top with gray sweatpants, his hair pulled into a manbun with his skin glistening in sweat from the insane weather out. dark ink around his skin making your mind run rapid.

he releases his mouth momentarily, popping off your clit lewdly to murmur, “you are fuckin’ drippin’.”

your back arches into his embrace, craning your neck as you rock against his face, eren grinning wickedly at your muffled sound, his tongue delving deeper into your folds. he laps at your entrance, thriving for every drop. his hands move to spread your legs wider apart, giving him better access to feast on your needy cunt. you hum in ecstasy, the sensation from the metal ball of his tongue piercing flicking your clit, using it to tease and torment you. his dark eyes watching you like prey, squirming and gasping from every suck.

“fuck, baby,” he moans. “you’re so sensitive.”

his hands move to cradle your ass cheeks as he pushes your ass up to fuck his face better, pussy glistening under the moonlight. his tongue continues it’s relentless assault, curling and connecting his tongue with your aching cunt feverishly while suctioning his lips around your swollen clit. your hands stretch to grip onto the door handle, moaning when his hand goes to smack the back of your thigh. eren growls at your helpless moans, his tongue delving deeper into your slick folds, slithering inside of you to prep you. his hands pinning your legs wide allows him unrestricted access to your throbbing cunt.

“wet n’ pretty ass pussy, baby. so, so pretty. jus’ like you, right?” he groans against you, increasing the pressure on his tongue, thrusting it in and out of you rhythmically. his free hand moves to play with your clit, rolling the sensitive nub under his thumb as he devours your pussy.

without waiting for a response, he resumes his ministrations, his tongue plunging back into your dripping cunny while one hand continues to toy with your clit. his actions intensify as he listens to your desperate whimpers. his tongue laps at your slit greedily, drinking down every drop of your sweetness, thumb working overtime on your clit, rubbing up and down mercilessly.

“stick your fingers in me,” you whine, the brokenness in your tone only making his dick harder. he’d rather shove his dick in you, but he wouldn’t deny what you pleaded for.

eren chuckles darkly at your plea, and within a second, his ring and index fingers are slipping inside of you, eren curling them upwards, searching for that sweet spot deep within your pussy.

“like this?” he sputters against your clit, your juices encapsulating him. your inner thighs tremble from the switch up, biting your lip and nodding. “fuck you up real good? ‘till you cream on me?”

“y-yesss, f-fuck,” your sobs overtake you, his tongue continuing it’s relentless assault on your sensitive bud, licking and sucking it into oblivion. eren hums in agreement, his fingers pumping in and out of your soaked cunt. he watches his fingers pump harder into your quivering cunt with furrowed brows, mumbling expletives to himself in fascination, your cunny squelching and sinking them in each time they threatened to pull out.

“ima sink my dick in your shit, fuck. i’m too fucking hard for you,” he groans against your clit, pace quickening, the combination of his fingers fucking into you while his tongue circles around your clit pushing you closer to the edge.

“keep fucking me, baby. fuckin’ love your tongue.”

eren loves your cries so much it’s hurting his dick bad, his fingers pumping harder into your twitching cunt, begging for you to cum. you’re drenching his fingers. he removes them when he notices your hand is cupping underneath his jaw, pulling his face in deeper and swaying your hips, the balled up expression on your face reading all he needed to know. you stretch your legs high, clamping your thighs shut and wrapping your arms underneath the curve of your knees to angle them towards your chest. eren licks his lips before sinking his tongue deep into you, thrusting his tongue like he’d use his dick.

making a noise of approval, you grip onto his hair while maintaining your position, yanking his head back and forth, screaming as his face clashes with your pussy, tongue fucking you open until you finally cum. your tummy caves in, lifting your head to press into your knees as you catch your breath, streaming out praises of ‘yes, yes yes, baby,’ as he continues to fuck you on his tongue, uncaring of you drenching his nose and chin.

while you take time to recuperate, eren’s leaning his head up to clean his face with the back of his hand, licking off the remainder as he reaches down to unbutton his jeans, slipping them down to his thighs and giving his dick a few slow strokes, the sight of it, thick and long, glistening with precum is enough to make anyone drool. eren holds onto it teasingly, keeping it just out of reach as he watches your reaction. “knew you wanted to see it again.”

you cover your face. “shut up.”

with a lustful gleam in his eyes, he lines the throbbing tip against your wet slit, sliding it up and down to gather your arousal before he’s grabbing the back of your neck to look into your eyes, heavy body hovering over yours, trying his best not to lean all of his weight onto you. granted, that’s exactly what you wanted, to be suffocated under him. feel weak, submissive.

“tell me you’re okay.”

you nod, eyes slowly closing, unable to keep focus. “yes, m’okay. it’s okay.”

the feeling of being sheathed within your tight pussy makes him shudder, removing his hand from your neck to balance his body by gripping onto either side of the leather seat after locking your legs flat. you reach for the recliner to level the seat up a little more, eren kissing your forehead. you drag your body lower so it’s easier for him to move, shivering from the full feeling he gives you, and that’s only half of him.

“fuck,” he gasps, grinding into you slowly so you’ll adjust. you swivel your hips, teeth biting into your lip as you stare at the sharp cut of his jawline, emerald eyes clamped shut. “that’s it.”

with each heavy thrust, eren can’t help the animalistic groans emitting from him, the deep baritone of his voice making your clit pulsate harder as he fucks himself deeper into you. your skin clapping as he pounds into you hard, hitting your spot and making you cry for him. he wheezes within the crevice of your neck, both of your moans colliding within the small enclosure, vibrating over the music flowing from his speakers. he’s fucking you faster with each thrust.

“s’so good, f-fuck,” the wind gets taken from you with every harsh pound, grunting beneath him and taking it all. he felt so fucking good, you couldn’t believe you waited this long just to let him fuck you. too many opportunities missed. for good and wrongs reasons though.

“that’s it, you’re such a good girl,” his mouth gives you a chaste, sloppy kiss to your pouty lips. everything he does makes you want to cum. heavier and stronger than the last. he’s a fucking trip.

“i’m your good girl?” your bottom lip is pulled into your mouth, teeth baring as you smile drunkenly.

“ ‘course you are,” he kisses you again, prolonging it this time, your body slipping lower giving him the chance to fuck you even deeper, stretching you open and stuffing you full. you can feel him all in your tummy, your brows furrowed. “better than that. you’re my baby.”

“i’m your baby?” the drag out of a whiny tone as you grip onto his chin to keep his eyes on yours has the man before you crumbling.

eren practically whines from the way you speak to him, molding your frame into his seat from the strength he fucked you with, listening to your pussy cry for him. “you’re my baby.”

“my pussy loves you,” you move with him, your tight cunt squeezing him, feeling that warmth build up in your stomach.

“it does, huh. tell me how much, love.”

“loves it so fucking much, daddy.”

“that’s what i wanted to hear,” he hisses, groaning and fucking you faster, straightening his legs so he gets a get angle, hitting into you with all his weight. “oh god, baby. you feel so fuckin’ good.”

“yeah, daddy?” you whimper, biting your lip.

“yes, babydoll,” eren groans in agreement, cursing to himself as he slips his dick out, the two of you gasping from the disconnect, eren lifting himself from you. “bend over.”

you use the seat to turn yourself around, hiking yourself further up to give his big body space to settle behind you. you keep your thighs pressed together, shifting your ass back against him and arching your back low. you jump when he lands a heavy swat to your ass, hissing as his fingertips grip your flesh and bounce your ass back, mesmerized by how it moves. he draws his hips back, flexing his dick to make it jump into the right position to easily slide within your wet opening, the angle allowing him to hit deeper within your pussy than before.

“unh, sshit,” eren moans, hands grabbing either side of your hips and tugs you back, your ass clapping amongst his toned abdomen. your forehead is connected with the seat, mouth agape as you feel the swell of him slip in and out of you, eyes scrolling to the back of your skull.

“sshit, you’re so deep, ah!”

his thrusts become more forceful, hitting even deeper within your pussy. with every stroke, he feels himself getting closer to release. eren growls, his canines grazing your skin as he leans in to bite your neck, your filthy whine only serving to heighten his arousal. he continues to thrust hard into you, each movement sending you both closer to breakage.

“g’na cum, baby,” eren whimpers, rolling his waist into you, that pressure in his lower abdomen threatening to break.

“noo, don’t cum yet,” you whine, shaking your head pleadingly. “n-not there yet.”

“i won’t. won’t cum yet, baby,” he hisses in response. “wanna wait for daddy? so we can cum together?”

“mmnh, wanna cum with you, baby,” your head nods drunkenly, sightly blurry. your body aches from the lack of space in the car, but it felt so good to be overpowered by him. drilling his dick into you harder.

“take it f’me, ꒰♡꒱.”

“i’m taking it, baby. for you.”

“moan f’me,” his lips get closer to your ear, eren’s eyes squeezing tight, jaw wide as he fucks your pussy open.

“m-moaning for you, babyy-ah!”

“fuck it back f’me, act like you wanna get fucked,” eren growls in pleasure, his thrusts continuing despite having already climaxed.

“i’ll fuck it for you, fuck it for you,” you’re straight up sobbing now, rolling your ass back to meet his rough strokes, dripping down your inner thighs. you’d never been fucked this good before in your life. could have possibly been the chemistry, or the longing for him. “ooo-mnmg, i feel it.”

eren smirks, his hands moving to encircle your throat. his grip tightens slightly, cutting off your air supply, his clothed chest on your back and the coldness from his silver chain tickling your flesh. “eren, ima cum again. k-keep it there.”

your body shudders beneath him, waves of pleasure crashing as you feel your orgasm breaks through you, pussy clenching tightly around his cock and whimpering vehemently in his face, sobbing from your inability to withhold your orgasm as well as the overwhelming way he fucked you.

“ren,” you weep, reaching your hand behind yourself to try to push his hips away. but he doesn’t budge. eren grips your wrist to bend it still behind your back, slowing his movements the last motive.

“you came without me, baby. bad girl,” he tightens his grip on your wrist, giving an open mouthed kissed over the side of your face.

a small cry fell from your lips. "s-sorry. fuck, rennie . . please.”

"please, what?” he grits his teeth, the shortest hairs in front sticking to his forehead while the others threaten to fall loose from the small bun on the back of his head. the silver bracelets on his wrist clanking as he yanks you back to meet his aggressive thrusts.

"please, eren—s-slow. i’m sensitive.”

"that's not my name. what's my fuckin’ my name, ꒰♡꒱?" he grunts dominantly, pressing a harsh kiss to your temple, knowing what you need.

"s-shit—daddy, please!”

despite your pleas, he keeps fucking you mercilessly, his cock sliding in and out of your wet pussy with ease. the sensation of being buried within you is too intoxicating for him to stop.

“jus’ a little more, baby. please take it a lil more,” his hand lands heavily on your ass, slowing his thrusts a bit for your sake and to feel your pussy constrict and beg to swallow him deeper as he shifts his hips slightly back, the tip of his dick kissing your entrance before he’s shoving it back in. circling his hips, ass flexing and becoming apart of you, pushing him towards another climax.

“ooo, you fuckin’ me so good.”

“ ‘cause it’s you, ‘cause i love you.”

with a final powerful thrust, eren buries himself deep inside you. his cock twitches within your pussy, reaching in between to pull his dick out just in time, spurting his cum directly on your backside. your scream is deafening, covering your mouth and grinding your ass back as you cum again, unsure how that’s fucking possible. your body betrayed you, acting as if you’ve never been fucked in your whole life. but, truth be told, you’ve never gotten fucked that deep, or that good.

“fuck!” eren’s tone is deep, stroking his dick while his other hand held your ass, thrusting into his hand to draw out every ounce of cum you wanted out of him. eren nearly collapses onto you, panting heavily as he recovers from his orgasm, slowly softening but knowing he can go another round. maybe at your house this time.

he kisses your neck softly. “are you okay, love?”

you nod, heaving, mouth dry. trying to regain your vision. “y-yeah. m’good.”

before rolling off of you, he gives you another kiss before he’s climbing back into the drivers seat to pull his pants back up, fishing for a wipe inside of his center console.

you’re laying on your stomach now, cheek resting on your arms as you catch your breath, eren smiling down at you, kissing your spine as he wipes up his mess. “so pretty, baby.”

that makes you weaker than anything he’d just done to you, hiding your face within your arms, still looking at his gorgeous face. he loves you so much, it’s always been clear. you hate how long it’s taken you to realize that.

“i don’t have to think on it,” you suddenly say, eren staring intensely. your lips curve into a smile. “i know i love you too. for a while now.”

the sparkle in his eyes makes your heart absolutely melt. “for real?”

you nod. “yeah. my dream is to get you that big ass loft you want with the tall glass windows that overlook the city. decorate it how you want, be my pretty fuckin housewif—”

“shut. the. fuck. up,” eren sounds out, smushing your lips together so you wouldn’t see the redness in his face. of course you’d mock him. you giggle into his mouth, squeaking when he goes to tickle your hip, eren laughing when you turn to hit his arm.

“seriously, eren, i hate that shit!”

“blah, blah, blah. love you too.”

6K notes · View notes

cherryatnight · 1 year ago

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sincerely yours | season two

↳ gojou satoru x f!reader

— series masterlist

summary. when a twist of fate led their marriage to the path of a quintessential tragic romance, two past lovers go through another series of experiences on love, heartbreak, identity, illness, and trauma along the road to a happily ever after.

genre. heavy angst, amnesia, ceo au, 18+

word count. 103k and counting.

taglist. closed

fic warnings. ooc, profanity, illnesses, toxic relationships, cyberbullying, classism, mentions of abortion, cheating, explicit smut, mentions of suicide (or attempts thereof), mentions of depression + more to be updated. please read with proper discretion. this is a work of fiction. all characters are written to portray roles that are necessary to the plot and are in no way a reflection of their canon counterparts.

general masterlist + playlist + gallery + side stories + ko-fi

prequel + one + two + three + four + five + six + seven + eight + nine + ten + eleven + twelve + thirteen + fourteen + fifteen + epilogue

status: slow updates

6K notes · View notes

cherryatnight · 1 year ago

Text

soulmate trope | shinsou

Shinsou’s route of soulmate trope.

this one is for the touch-starved girlies who are scared of intimacy and scared of people leaving warnings: female reader has a very specific view of sex and intimacy: that someone sleeping with her and then leaving her would fucking ruin her psyche forever. so she's a big-ass, kissless virgin for nasty evil plot reasons. sexual intimacy and abandonment/commitment are major themes. pseudo-sex work, with shinsou's hobby/side-job. shinsou and reader toss around the term bitch as a playful insult. this version of reader is fairly insecure and anxious about being loved and lovable—but so is shinsou.

~29k

Kirishima had his tongue in Mina’s mouth.

Well, more accurately, sometimes it was in her mouth. He was visibly licking at her lips and around her mouth fairly often, letting saliva drool down both of their faces—Mina’s shirt had a damp spot near the neck. Their kissing skills seemed sloppy at best and fucking disgusting at average, making loud squelches, splorches, and suction noises, overall sounding very wet and a bit like walking through ankle-deep, thick mud in rubber rainboots. Their moans, too, didn’t sound very sensual—more like there’s someone in the next room sampling someone haunted museum sound effects with some overlapping Yoko Ono texture.

Kirishima’s hands cupped Mina’s boobs, his fingers stiff and just, like, holding them. Not playing with her nipples through her shirt, or anything, but the way he occasionally squeezed them must have felt good, since Mina moaned more loudly when he did so. He’d moan the loudest when she pulled at his hair, knocking the back of his head against the refrigerator door.

You ducked back around the kitchen corner, grimacing as you sank to the floor to clutch your knees to your chest. This wasn’t the first time they were blocking the fridge, but you’d learnt there was nothing to do but kill time until they finished. Stealing some of Aoyama’s posh bubble-pop ice cream would have to wait.

***

“No, thank you,” you said to Monoma over your shoulder, pushing open the main door to Class A’s dorm, “You taught me stuff about my quirk today. I really value your fresh eyes on my old shit. Next time we train together, I’d like—Jesus fucking Christ.”

Yaoyorozu and Jirou were dry humping on the commons couch, with Yaoyorozu in Jirou’s lap with her hands in Jirou’s hair, tilting her head back enough to lick up her neck, right over the spot where her half of the soulmate tattoo lay.

Grimacing (you heard it in his voice and by his sucking in through his teeth; you’d covered your eyes and shied away), Monoma stooped to pick up Yaoyorozu’s shirt to slingshot it back towards them. “Get a room.”

***

All you’d wanted was to find the closet where they keep the lightbulbs.

Instead, you opened the door on Midoriya kneeling, Uraraka’s leg over his shoulder, audibly slurping, while she, skirt hiked up around her waist, ground against his face.

You shut the door again. Your dorm could stand being dark for a few more hours.

***

“I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to peel off my skin. No, actually, I’m going to eject my skellington from my body so that I can just be a lump of organs and skin. And then I can rest on the carpet in a pile,” you said, frowning into your ice cream, cheek propped on your fist, “Why can’t they all, like, give some sort of warning?”

“Not everyone carries a sock to put over every doorknob,” said a grinning Shinsou from across the table, licking around the side of his mint chocolate chip cone, “And c’mon, the U.A. dorm rooms are not sexy, and the walls are thin.”

Some sprinkles fell off of your ice cream when you gestured loosely. “Don’t I know it. I share a wall with Hagakure, and she and Ojiro are fucking constantly. He makes her get off on his tail a lot—I guess kind of like thigh riding?”

“You can’t do anything about it when they’re fucking in the privacy of their own dorms.” Shinsou bit directly into his ice cream and chewed, like a maniac.

“And apparently, she really like when he tickles her clit with the tip of his tail? I am burdened with knowledge,” you said, sighing, and you ate a mournful spoonful.

Shinsou swallowed thickly. “Does it lessen your opinion of them?”

“No. I’m glad they’re happy,” you said, “I’ve listened to their yearning over the years, so I know it’s such a relief for them for this quirk intervention to get feelings out, along with the assurance of permanent romance and stability. Hashtag get some, I guess. I’m just—the influx of soulmates and their PDA is highly inconvenient for navigating my everyday life.”

“You sound like you’ve put thought into it.” Shinsou smirked, tongue flattening as he licked over the top of his scoop (and turning slightly green). “Just inconvenient?”

You shot him a look and fished around in your paper cup for more sprinkles. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Are you sure you’re not jealous?” asked Shinsou, the shop’s A/C kicking in and blowing through his hair—he pursed his lips and scooted his metal chair out of the way of the vent. “Since, y’know, you don’t appear to have a soulmate. You ready to tell me yet? Why’re you so nervous?”

Yikes. You’d been avoiding that.

“Are you not marked physically? Or do you have one on your boobs—”

You sighed overdramatically and sank down in your chair until your ass practically hung off of it. “I have a soulmark, and it’s not in an embarrassing place. Relatively normal, actually. It’s on my back, so it took me a while to notice it.”

Shinsou bit into the cone and crunched loudly. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.

“You’re not seeing it. No one’s ever gonna see it.”

“No one? You’re confident. You think your soulmate won’t ever want to take you from behind?” His tongue flicked out to swipe at a melted drop on his lips.

“Oh, my God.” You buried your face in your hands. “God, the thought of someone I don’t even know having sex with me—I don’t wanna think about it. But that’s not what I meant. I was being facetious; I meant that my words are pretty embarrassing.”

Shinsou slumped down in his seat at that, but nowhere near as far as you. “Oh? First words?”

“I assume. It’s a sentence, anyway.” You sat up, stabbing your spoon into your ice cream. “I—I’ll tell you, since I don’t want anyone—seeing me, and I know you’ll bug me about it, but it’s—”

“Just spit it out. Rip off the bandage.”

Cringing, you held up your hands in defence. “Don’t kill me, but I also don’t remember who said them to me?”

“Oh, you’re joking,” said Shinsou, his face lighting the fuck up, “That’s fucking hilarious, if it’s true. And how do you know they’ve already been said to you? How do you know they aren’t still to come?”

“I don’t know. I just…feel it in my heart of hearts that I have already heard these words, but I can’t for the life of me remember who said them,” you said, and you bent to riffle through your bag for your phone, “I keep a list of everyone who’s not paired off in my notes app, and I’m trying to remember the situations in which I first met them—”

“You’re stalling,” said Shinsou, grinning as he popped the last of the cone into his mouth, “Tell me what it says.”

Wincing, you set your bag aside. “Don’t make fun of me,” you said, biting your lip and scrunching your eyes shut, “but, uh. It reads, Looks like the ice princess finally decided to grace us with her presence.” At his silence, you cracked an eye open.

Shinsou’s eyes had glazed over, but he shook himself and spoke. “Don’t know why you’re embarrassed. That’s fucking hot.” He grabbed your used napkins to toss them in the garbage. “Think it’s an enemies-to-lovers type relationship? Just kidding,” he said at your pained expression, “But I see what you mean about those already being said to you. Weren’t you seen as sort of a cold, uptight bitch when we first started attending U.A.?”

“An easy misinterpretation,” you said, scraping at the bottom of your cup, “People thought my being shy and not talking to people was being a bitch, but I was just nervous that I was around so many people my age who seemed so much more in tune with their quirks that I was.”

“So, that gives you a time frame for when you met your soulmate. And,” he said, holding up a finger, “that lets you know that you met your soulmate in a group with other people, unless they speak in the royal we for some reason. It also sounds like you were late to a scheduled event. You remember doing anything like that freshman year?”

“Look, all I remember about the first three months of freshman year is being overwhelmed by how cool everyone was. That time is a blur to me, and before now, I’ve been grateful for that. Aizawa-sensei really put us through the wringer. I was meeting literally everyone I currently hang out with during that time, though, so that’s not helpful.” You gave your empty container to Shinsou when he held out his hand, and he threw it away for you. “How’s your search going? You gonna share your details?”

“I’ve got a name,” he said, cool as you please, chair clanking as he sat back down, “but I’m not sharing. It’s not yours, if you’re concerned.” His nose scrunched as he grinned, poking your arm. “It’s someone out of reach, and I’ve come to terms with that. I’m doing pretty well on my own. You ready to leave?”

Nodding, you slung your bag over your arm. “I envy you. You’re brave. Me—I’m dreading the thought of the pain we’ll feel if we don’t find our soulmates. Shouldn’t we be feeling it already?”

Shinsou held the shop door open for you. “It hasn’t been that long, and when it happens, I’ll manage. I’ll be more worried about you, you crybaby.”

“If it gets too excruciating, I’ll just have you brainwash me to not feel it, right?” you stuck out your tongue, walking backwards as he caught up to you.

His countenance darkened. “Stop that. You know I’m never gonna use my quirk on you. I don’t wanna do that to you.”

“But Hitoshi,” you said, dragging out the last syllable, “Imagine how productive I could be if you made me study, or how fucking relaxed I could be for once, if you told me to; my brain could be fucking calm for once—”

“Never. And that’s final,” said Shinsou, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets as he jogged to your side, “You keep trying to convince me, and y’know, the definition of insanity is—”

“Fudge off, you fuck,” you said, smiling, “I guess I can keep trying to empty my brain on my own. Gosh, it must be nice to be able to not freak out and overanalyse things constantly, and you’d think you’d want someone willing to train your quirk on. I mean, I’m here, and I want it.”

“Keep dreaming,” said Shinsou, gently shoulder-checking you, “So, got any ideas about how to get Hagakure and Ojiro to shut up?”

***

Since Midnight was working with Tainted Love at a women’s rehabilitation centre, she was able to confiscate some of Tainted Love’s team’s notes on her quirk. It had a lot to do with math and probability, but the nub and gist of what interested you was that while soulmates typically breathed in the same pink cloud, they didn’t have to.

Which brought a new factor to your soulmate search: maybe it was someone outside of U.A., someone who breathed in her quirk before she was captured.

But while you were at first reassured by more information, you were also now perpetually on edge. Though all of her victims had reported, what if someone didn’t even know they breathed it in? Plus, your request for the list of victims was still being processed and supposed to have around four thousand people on it, and you might not even get it due to privacy laws.

At least someone was finding all this funny: Shinsou laughed but listened to your frazzled thoughts, and he opened his dorm room to you whenever Hagakure’s moans became too pornographic.

***

Everybody’s fucking. Everybody.

Everywhere you went, you walked in on someone sucking face. You couldn’t drop a pen in class without noticing that someone’s getting fingered.

You bounced a tennis ball against Shinsou’s dorm room ceiling. “Why is everyone focused on the physical? Why isn’t anyone into the goddamn romance and intimacy of it all? If you’ve been fated to know and love someone for the rest of your life, living out the mundanities and revelling in the unfolding of a relationship, then why the hell is everyone focused on physical pleasure?”

Shinsou didn’t even look up from his phone. “Spoken like the world’s biggest virgin.”

“Hey!” The ball fell onto the floor. “So what. Just because I haven’t experienced that sort of thing doesn’t mean I can’t understand its value but still want something more.” You slinked your top half off his bed to grasp for the tennis ball, fingertips grazing it, not wanting to get up. “I get the appeal of sex. I get it. But I would be more interested in the intimacy of knowing someone and being known.”

Shinsou waved a dismissive hand. “I know. Zoom in on our friendship.” He locked his phone and set it on his bedside table. “But for someone who says she doesn’t want sex, you’re one touch-starved little bitch. You’re doing it to yourself, not letting anyone touch you casually. I hazard to guess you’re putting too much value on the physicality of a future relationship that might not even exist.”

Only your feet were still on the bed as you strained to catch the rolling ball. “I touch you.”

“You put your head on my shoulder. Sometimes,” he said, getting off the bed, “and you occasionally let me touch your arms for comedic effect and emphasis.” He picked up the tennis ball and took it back to the bed, and you scrambled back to get all the way on it.

“Listen, I don’t know where everyone’s been,” you said, taking the ball back after he tossed it against the ceiling himself once, “Especially now that everyone might have bodily fluids on their hands. You, I know you wash your hands. I know where you’ve been. You train with Aizawa-sensei and come back to this room. You should get a plant, or something, to keep you company. It might encourage you to raise the blinds for once.”

“Excuse you. I also spend time with a cat Kouda’s hooked up for me,” he said pointedly, “Her name’s Dango, and she loves me. You could say I’m drowning in pussy.”

“I could not say,” you said, rubbing the ball’s highlighter-yellow fuzz as you lay back in his bed, legs dangling off the edge, “Big sigh. I guess you’re right about my putting too much stock in being physical with my soulmate, instead of with someone now. I think—I don’t wanna be vulnerable in that way in front of someone who might leave? If someone saw me naked and then ghosted me, I think I’d strangle myself. Or him. There’d be someone walking around with that information on me, and he could tell anyone. I can’t have that. He’d have to die.”

“Well, you’ve already seen a bunch of our friends naked on accident—”

“Not up close. Besides, it wasn’t my goal to see them like that, and I wasn’t absorbing details. I can’t tell you who’s got moles in weird places.”

Shinsou hunched over, grinning toothily in your face. “You’re waiting to lose your virginity to your soulmate, aren’t you?”

Pouting, you flipped over to face away from him. “Shut uuuuup. I know I’m embarrassing, but I can’t talk myself out of it.”

“Wait, hey.” The bedding rustled as he got adjusted himself, getting closer to you. “If I’ve gone too far, I’m sorry. There is no fucking shame in waiting. It’s in character for you, how you’re scared about vulnerability and how you value being intimate and romantic. I can’t make fun of you for that, genuinely.” He sat next to you, back against the wall, and he nudged your shoulder. “I’m a bit lost, though. I get the part where you’re a virgin overwhelmed by the sudden sexual atmosphere at U.A., but I fail to see the problem when you’re planning to lose your virginity to your soulmate, and odds are, you’ll meet him soon.” He paused. “Or you’ve already met him.”

Glancing over your shoulder with a sour expression, you grabbed the blue-pineappled throw blanket folded at the end of his bed and hid under it.

Instead of yanking it off, Shinsou lifted the blanket’s edge to join you underneath it, his pale skin tinged with blue in the dampened light. “C’mon,” he said, leaning over you to get a look at your face (and you tugged at the blanket to cover you more), “I’ve heard you say worse. If you don’t wanna share, that’s cool, but I can’t help if you don’t tell me what’s going through your head.”

Shinsou tilted his head to the side and grinned his stupid crooked grin that you were not immune to: it’s one of his expressions that made you feel at ease, like you could trust this idiot man with anything. (Which you could, but you didn’t like being reminded.)

Forcing yourself, you spoke in a small voice. “What if my soulmate wants sex immediately? I’m—I’m not ready for that. I’d have to work up to it, and what if he doesn’t have the patience?”

Shinsou laughed and brought his hand up to cover his mouth when he let out a snort. “Sounds like a shitty soulmate to me, then, if he doesn’t respect your boundaries. Any man can wait it out. We’ve don’t have two hands for nothing,” he said, wiggling his fingers.

“Thanks, I guess.” You pulled the blanket off of your heads and sat up slowly. “But I worry. What if I’m too much of a sick, touch-starved weirdo who freaks out over every single touch for my soulmate to like me?”

“Your soulmate will love you.”

“But what if he gets irritated at how much I freak out or flinch at everything?”

“You’re overthinking it. He’ll adjust, and you’ll learn, if that’s what you want.” Shinsou picked up the tennis ball and threw it against the ceiling again. “If he doesn’t, then he doesn’t deserve you, and I’ll destroy him.”

“Okay,” you said, deflating. You moved to rest your head on his shoulder, but the instant your temple grazed his sweater, you shot back up, eyes bulging. “What if he wants me to give him the most egregious head when I’m not—”

“All right. Fine,” he said, brow furrowed, and he shifted on the bed to kneel in front of you, staring right into your eyes. “Let’s entertain your fucking insane thoughts. Let’s say your soulmate does want to fuck you immediately. What do you want to do now about it? Can you do anything besides worry?”

You shrank back, biting the inside of your cheek. “I don’t know. I don’t know! I guess…somehow get…used to casual touching, but once again, 1) what if my tester person leaves, and 1a) it would be mean to ask someone to not feel things for me and touch me, and 2) I don’t want to burden anyone with—”

“Fuck.” The way he said it was crisp and full of reluctance, punctuated by the tennis ball hitting the ceiling. “Okay. I’ve kept something from you. Something pretty big. I can use it to help you.”

You blinked. “Are you saying you have a dildo to lend me? I think I have to refuse.”

“I haven’t been going on dates.” Shinsou shuffled about to lean back on his pillow, crossing his arms behind his head (huh, that Sailor Mercury t-shirt was really tight around his bicep. Has it always been?). “You’ve seen me go out to teach people how to dom.”

“What?” You caught the tennis ball when he threw it at an odd angle. “You’ve been—who’s asked you to—”

“A fair amount of people, actually.” He sucked in through his teeth. “Won’t tell you details, of course, because part of the payment and contract includes a non-disclosure agreement. But people you know have wanted to learn how to dom or just experience being dommed, and I happen to be the perfect person to ask.” He shrugged and gestured loosely. “All I’ll say is that some people—people you know and don’t—have come to me for help with stuff like shibari and dirty talk. Or how to do anything, really, because of, quotation from client, ‘being a useless lesbian,’ unquote.”

So that’s how he can afford all those video games and imported books. Sneak. “You’re telling me—”

“That I can help you get used to physical intimacy, professionally,” said Shinsou, propping one leg over the other, twirling his socked foot in the air, “However far you want to go. However you want.”

(So those jokes about perfect dom Shinsou during girls’ nights had an inkling of truth in them? You may have to throttle some of your friends.)

You hesitated. “Hitoshi, you are my best friend—”

“Therefore, we already have an established relationship based on trust and respect, and I’m not leaving you. Not ever. I value our friendship too much. I won’t screw you over. Tear out my fucking vocal cords if I ever do.” He ran his hand back through his hair, flattening it, but it fluffed back up anyway. “I’m already unbearably fond of you, so I’m not gonna be cruel about it. It just so happens that I have the resources and skills that you’re interested in, and we’re not gonna end our friendship anytime soon. I might be a good solution for your problem—though, I have to admit, I don’t really think you have one.”

“And,” you said quietly, tossing the ball back and forth between your hands, “you don’t think my soulmate would think less of me for being touched by someone else?”

Wincing, Shinsou said, “Purity culture has chewed you up and spat you out. I’m not telling you to compromise your morals and lose your virginity to someone who’s not your soulmate, but I am saying that even if you do, it’s okay, and—and I’m just not saying that because I wanna fuck you. I’m saying that it’s okay if you experiment for what you want later with other people now. It doesn’t devalue you.” He clicked his tongue. “And nobody’s dick is good enough to alter your worth fundamentally. Anyone who says otherwise can’t find the clitoris.”

You managed a laugh at that, and you crawled up to lie next to Shinsou. He flipped his onigiri-patterned pillow over so that the cool side would face up, and he scooted it over for you to rest on, too.

“Let me continue to entertain your overthinking: even in the slim chance that your soulmate is a fuckshit who thinks less of you because you’ve fooled around before,” said Shinsou, tilting his head on the pillow to face you, “that fact will hold less and less weight the more he gets to know you. You’d be so easy to fall in love with.”

Sighing, you bit your lip. “You really think so?”

“I know so,” said Shinsou, staring at the ceiling again and folding his hands on his chest, “Hell, I wish you were my soulmate. It’d make things easy, don’t you think?” He managed a quick glance towards you before returning upwards. “We already know each other so well, and you wouldn’t have to worry about being vulnerable around someone new. You’d just have me.”

“Please, Hitoshi, there’s nothing just about you. You’re so fucking lovely,” you said, imitating his position and laying your hands on your stomach, following his gaze to the lazy swing of the ceiling fan pull. “Would you—would you be grossed out by seeing me?”

“Never. I wouldn’t offer if I didn’t want to do it.” Shinsou twiddled his thumbs and knocked his socked foot against yours. “If it makes you feel safer, I’ll do anything to help.”

“People pay you for sessions, right? How much would I pay you?”

“What?” Raising a brow, Shinsou flipped on his side to face you. “You wouldn’t. I’m offering. Other people came to me, but I’m the one approaching you. I’m not gonna make you give me money for this.”

“But,” you said, shaking your head, “what do you get out of this, besides endless dirt on me?”

“I get to see my best friend be comfortable in her own skin. I haven’t seen that much at all, in all the time we’ve known each other,” he said, and he reached for his phone on the bedside table. “Consider it, at least. I won’t mind in the slightest if you want to or not. It’s only a way I could help quell your anxiety.”

***

YOU

all right, you schmuck

YOU

i’ve slept on it

YOU

i think i want to do it. i can rescind that at any time though

HITOSHI 💜🍡

of course

HITOSHI 💜🍡

how much time do you need?

YOU

uh. guess i’m ready whenever you are.

YOU

my dorm or yours? or somewhere else????

HITOSHI 💜🍡

I bet you’ll feel the most comfortable in your own bed

HITOSHI 💜🍡

if you’ll allow me an hour to prepare, I’ll be over soon

***

What does one wear to get dommed?

Revealing clothing? Underwear? Anything at all?

A brisk knock on your door, way too quickly, but you braced yourself and opened the door on a serious Shinsou, clad in all black (jeans and a turtleneck), hair mussed up a bit more than usual, and carrying a duffel bag. He tilted his head as he looked up and down your body, the corner of his mouth twitching up in a smile at your loose, cat-patterned loungewear.

“May I come in?”

You stepped aside, and he strode inside, noting the lit candle (against dorm rules, but he’s no snitch) and cherry blossom lamp, and set his duffel on the desk. As you trudged in behind him, playing with your fingers idly, he pulled out your desk chair, spun it around, and straddled it, propping his folded arms across the back.

“Let’s talk,” he said, gesturing for you to sit on your bed, “I custom build my routine for each client. What I have in mind specifically for you is drastically different from anything I’ve ever done: it’s much gentler, slower—” He held your gaze, wide and serious, and wetted his lips. “—and intimate. I will walk you through every step, and you have the power to veto anything I propose. You have all the control here. I will never be disappointed in your decisions. You are not in danger.” He gripped his opposite elbow, knuckles whitening. “I want you to know that what we do does not have to be inherently sexual. Our goal is to increase your tolerance for physical contact, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” you said, your fists clenched in your lap, “To feel at ease when people I trust touch me…I’d like to have some shred of chill by the time my soulmate comes around.”

You hoped Shinsou wouldn’t start by making you suck his dick. Judging by the way he was sitting and the bulge in his jeans, he must have a huge fucking cock (weird to think about your best friend’s genitals). Opening your mouth that wide wouldn’t feel comfortable, and you’ve already been chewing gum today, soreness already imminent.

(What’s in his bag? Is it all condoms? [That’s a lot of condoms…])

“First off,” he said, raising a finger (but for some reason he’s raised his pinkie finger to indicate one instead of his index finger, and then you’re noticing the length of just his pinkie finger and imagining how far it could go down your throat), “I’m not gonna fuck you. That’s your soulmate’s job, as you’ve established. What else are you specifically saving for your soulmate?”

Shinsou’s mouth twitched into a smirk when he noticed your narrowed eyes followed the loose gesture of his pinkie finger, and with a roll of his eyes, he returned his pinkie to his fist and raised his index finger, which had your shoulders slackening as you slumped back onto your bed, leaning back against your hands with your neck tilted back, arched at the ceiling so that you didn’t have to look him in the face.

“I’ve got, uh, reservations about the…” You shifted your weight so that you could gesture vaguely with your hands. “Mouths and hands directly on my cunt sort of thing.”

Shinsou let out a low whistle, and at that you had to break from the ceiling to see his expression: he was fucking grinning and shaking his head, his eyes a bit glassy as he scanned your own expression. “Using some crude terms, aren’t we? For a virgin.”

“Oh, come on. I’m a virgin, not ignorant,” you said, crossing your arms over your stomach and hunching over a bit to hide, “Do you want me to be clinical? I can say vagina and vulva and stuff all the time if you want me to, but cunt, at least, blurs the specificity and makes it simpler—”

“No, no, you’re good. You can sit back up; no need to hide.” Shinsou flicked that index finger in a gesture that lifted from your knees to your head, and you unfurled, pissed that he’d picked up on your body language like that—but, you supposed, that’s what he’s here for. “I was simply surprised you didn’t go for pussy. Do you want me to avoid using that term?”

“Uh.” He’s being. Thorough. Thoughtful. Why didn’t anyone else ever treat you like this? Some of your friends have such an unholy combination of words in their vocabulary that barrage you with psychic damage, and no one’s ever asked or noticed if you’ve been uncomfortable. “I think—I think if you use it sporadically, it’ll be fine.”

“All right,” said Shinsou, nodding, “So, no direct contact of my mouth or hands on your cunt.”

God, he can’t turn off teasing you for one minute? “Yeah. Though I can rescind that. I’m hoping that I might be comfortable enough down the line, but right now, I’m not.”

“Of course. I’m proud of you for recognising a boundary, even if it’s temporary. We’ll only go there if you decide you’re ready.” He blinked slowly, like a cat in a sunbeam. “Anything else only for your soulmate?”

In a bunch of stories you’ve read about hook-ups or friends-with-benefits situations, the people don’t always allow kissing, because that implies romantic feelings. You didn’t know precisely due to your lack of experience, but maybe that holds a grain of truth?

“Okay. There’s another thing I’m not sure about at the moment but is subject to change,” you said, and there’s no fucking way you’re going to look at him while you said this, so you became very invested in pulling at a hangnail, “I don’t know about—how I feel about kissing. You. On the mouth. Because what if I’m the super susceptible kind of virgin who attaches herself to the first person who shows her affection, and I fall in fucking love with you?”

“Hm. That sounds less about kissing and more about this whole situation in general,” Shinsou said with a grunt, over the sounds of his pushing up from the chair and taking the two steps to stand in front of you. “Hey. Look at me?”

He’s got nice shoes. He didn’t take them off at the door, but considering they’re scuffed, black doc martens, they may be part of his getting into character as a dom. Huh, they made his feet look long and narrow; what kind of insane socks must he be wearing under—

“I’m gonna use one hand to touch your face. Is that okay? Nod, if—thank you,” said Shinsou, and his right palm cupped your cheek, his long fingers grazing wisps of your hair and thumb over your cheekbone, and he tilted your face up to look at him.

Wincing, you averted your eyes from his, but he tapped your cheek with his thumb. “Nuh-uh. Look at me, sweet—thank you,” he said, once you made yourself do it (and it was hard, harder than it had ever been whenever you’d shot him side-eye when he pulled a crap move in a co-op video game, harder than glancing towards him in class to see if he’d gotten your joke, and it left a stone sitting in your stomach, one whose full weight you didn’t care to discover). Part of not looking him in the eye was bracing yourself for his usual reprimand of you’re overthinking, but it never came. “Let’s entertain the thought of your falling in love with me,” said Shinsou with far too much ease, his lips remaining parted at the end of that heavy sentence, “Isn’t that good? Because it means that whatever part of me you fell for, you know that that’s something you want in your soulmate. It tells you more about yourself and what kind of love you want.”

Your jaw dropped on impulse, and his grin widened as he stroked your cheekbone.

“Think about your favourite characters in books and movies. Aren’t there patterns of traits in them that you’d want in your soulmate? Falling in love, in all of these frequent iterations, is just a way to learn about what you like in a partner. I know you like Prince Zuko—”

“Hitoshi,” you said, abruptly very aware of the warmth of his palm as you tried to move your face underneath it, “Are you telling me to treat you like that? Like someone disposable? Like someone who isn’t real?”

“The way you talk about Zuko does not indicate that you know he’s a goddamn cartoon,” said Shinsou, “Or, more specifically, his hands—”

“Hitoshi,” you said, screwing your face up in a pout while leaning into his hand (holy shit, leaning into his touch, a pseudo-depending on him to keep you upright—something about allowing the dependence mixed with the warmth of his scarred hands [very slight, calloused dents where he wound his capture weapon as default] had you feeling lightheaded—and then you felt stupid, because you were feeling lightheaded over a goddamn touch to your face that’s not even that delicate), “I’m not treating you like that. For you, that sounds—” You huffed, and you worked up the strength to look him in the eyes again. “—so lonely.”

Breaking the eye contact himself, Shinsou sighed, and he moved to slide his hand off of your face—but you clamped your own hand over it, first an actual clamping-type move, to get him to stay, and then lessening the pressure, to let him know he can take it off, if he really wants. “Sorry,” you said, tapping your finger on the back of his hand, “I like this. It’s easy. I can handle it, I think.”

Nodding, Shinsou kept his hand on your cheek as he grappled behind him for the chair again, and this time, he sat in it properly, with his knee grazing one of yours. “Listen. I’m used to people projecting feelings onto me. They get wrapped up in the heat of the moment, and once the scene is over, they know they don’t actually like me romantically. Post-nut clarity, y’know. So, if you want to,” said Shinsou, rubbing his thumb over your cheek and grasping one of your hands with his free one, “If you have any inclination to project feelings on me, if it does anything to make you feel more at ease, then please, do it. I want you to get to know you better.”

Project feelings. Not truly feeling them. And if you did happen to fall in love with him, then it’s only a passing thing to get to know what you want in your soulmate.

Shinsou seemed so certain that he was unlovable, and that stone in your gut burbled mournfully in stomach acid. You’d respect his decision to hide his soulmark’s name, but should he ever let it slip, you’re going to find his soulmate to prove him wrong as soon as possible.

“Okay,” you said, nodding firmly and looking him in the eyes.

“Okay? You sure? Right, then,” said Shinsou, and he sat back in his chair, relishing in how you visibly grieved at the loss of his touch, and crossed his arms loosely. “Any other boundaries, hard or otherwise?”

You took a moment. “The stomach-tummy area is personal.”

“You’re insecure about it?”

“Hey—”

He waved a dismissive hand at you. “I knew that already, but it’s good to have verbal confirmation. I’ve seen the rate at which you bare that part of you, even in the light of peer pressure. Just means I know an area to lavish affection upon, when or if we get there.”

Groaning, you fell back on your bed, the heels of your palms digging into your eyes. “You’re insane for noticing that. You’re insane for noticing that. How—”

“Being aware of my environment is part of what a stealth-route hero like me has to do, sweet—” Shinsou cut himself off and frowned. “How do you feel about terms of endearment?”

“Not Jack Nicholson’s best work.”

“You piece of shit,” said Shinsou with a laugh, yanking on your duvet to make your ass fall off the edge of the bed, “I meant. I meant if you were okay with pet names, like sweetheart or baby or anything.”

You scrambled to get your ass fully back on the bed, pulling the duvet with you. “I don’t know how I’d respond if you called me anything; it’s not really a sexy word—”

“You are in for a world of trouble one day,” Shinsou said, tossing the corner of the blanket over your head (you swatted at it), “Because now I can be honest about how you behave: you’re a goddamn brat, y’know?”

“Oh, come off of it, Hitoshi; with the way we tease each other, it’s like you’ve trained me to be this way,” you said, laughing a bit as you tucked your duvet in again, but when you caught Shinsou’s eye, for some reason, his expression had completely stiffened. It only lasted for a moment, though, and he recovered in a flash.

“Well,” he drawled out, “I figured that using terms of endearment would add another layer to teasing you, and judging by how hard you’re avoiding answering me seriously, you’d like that. Wouldn’t you, sweetness?”

“I’ll kill you,” you said, hating every fibre in your being as you’d, on reflex, tensed up, halting any movement, and flushed, heat flooding your face and neck, when he’d called you that. How old are you? Old enough not to get fucking flustered at being called—

“As if you could.” He clicked his tongue. “Are any terms off-limits?”

“You can probably think up something absurd or nasty that I wouldn’t consider,” you said, “Sticking to the classics would probably be the safest.”

“All right. Anything else you think of later, as a boundary, you let me know immediately. Now, listen: unless otherwise instructed, you’re free to touch me in any way you want. I may direct you away from something, should I think you’re not ready for it.” He raised his index finger again, and he made a big show of raising a second finger from his fist. “And finally, two. This is a hard, non-negotiable rule for you: I’m not going to use my quirk on you. Ever.”

You collapsed on your bed again with a disgruntled groan. “What else is new?”

Shinsou shook his head. “I don’t want you getting the impression that just because we’re in a session that I’m going to do that to you.”

You sat up and snapped your head towards him. “You said it’s a rule for me. Do you use your quirk on other people who get you to dom them? Because, if so, I call bitch.”

Biting the inside of his cheek, Shinsou hunched over to rest his elbows on his knees. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. They ask me to, and! And,” he said, holding up his hand to stop you from protesting, “It’s nothing but a session. They’re paying me for a good time, and that’s it. But you—you’re doing this as—as something akin to therapy, I guess. I’m just a step on your journey to being intimate with your soulmate—someone you’ll be with for the rest of your life. That’s a long time to be without my quirk, if you get too used to it, in the context of being intimate. If you end up needing to be brainwashed to be vulnerable, then it’ll only stunt the physical part of your relationship with your soulmate.”

“Fuck you for making sense,” you said, mirroring his hunched-over position and nudging his knee with yours, “And as for real-life reasons for not using it? Because you’re an ass?”

Shinsou’s eyes narrowed and glinted in the cherry-blossom light. “Because imagine,” he said, reaching towards your face again (pausing a moment to ensure you were okay with it, and after you nodded, he continued) to lift your chin with nothing but his curved index finger underneath it, “if I could finally control the biggest brat in my life, and what’s more, she wants me to? Much too addicting. I wouldn’t get anything done. I’ve got to become a hero after all this; I can’t spend all my time taking care of my prettiest little girl.”

When he dropped your chin, you stayed tilted up, in the same position he left you in, throat exposed and blinking profusely as you tried to process what he’d said. Your mouth was very, very dry.

Uh.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” said Shinsou, and you jolted from your stance to see his hand clapped over his mouth, brow furrowed with the tips of his ears reddening, shoulders curved in as he slumped.

It’s about time he showed he could get flustered, too, because you’ve already embarrassed yourself just with conversation and a few touches to your face. But what the hell was he getting like that over?

Shinsou dragged his hand down his chin and formed it into a fist in his lap. “Do you know if you’re into proper Dom/Sub dynamics? Do you know if that’s something you’d like to explore? Because with the way you stayed there for me,” said Shinsou, inching towards you, his chest heaving at his steadying breath, “you could be someone’s perfect little sub someday.”

“I think so. I think I am,” you said in a small voice, “I think that’s something I might want to be—hold the fuck up. Did I manage to turn you on?”

After the tiniest moment of shrinking under your smug smile, Shinsou puffed out his chest as he sat up, rolling his shoulders back. “It’s to be expected in a session, since it’s a sexual context.”

“Oh, my God, I did it. I turned someone on. Holy shit,” you said, running your fingers back through your hair, “I think I have to call Mina. I finally did it.”

Shinsou scoffed. “Please, it wouldn’t be the first time you’ve—”

“Oh?” You froze, your hand almost to your phone on your bedside table. “Say more right now? Who do you know who’s been—”

“We’ve discussed boundaries enough for this first session, since it’s not that invasive. Let’s get to the heart of the session,” said Shinsou, standing to reach around for his duffel bag, and, after unzipping it, he handed his laptop to you. “Pick out a movie.”

You tilted your head as Shinsou trudged back to your door to untie his doc martens. “Excuse me?”

“I should already be logged in. Check my bookmarks bar for streaming sites,” he called from your door.

Shrugging to yourself, you slipped his laptop from his Put Your Hands Up Radio sleeve (leftover merch that wouldn’t sell; you had one as well) and opened it to search for a movie, automatically shifting over on your bed to the spot where you sat when the two of you watched something and blindly reaching for your throw blanket.

“Now, did I tell you to do that?” asked Shinsou as he rounded the corner again to see you settling into the usual routine, and after retrieving some water bottles from his duffel, he stood by your bedside table, where he put the water while bouncing on the balls of his feet (plain black socks. He is taking this seriously). “I’m not your friend right now, sweetheart; I’m your dom.” The same hand cupped your same cheek as earlier, and he briefly ran his thumb over your cheekbone before returning his hand to behind his back. “All I did was tell you to pick out a movie, and while I’m pleased you can extrapolate from incomplete information, it’s not what I want you doing right now. Sit back where you were.”

Holding your breath, you scooted back to the middle of the bed, where you’d been sitting on the edge, computer in your lap. What have you gotten yourself into? Was this what your best friend was really like? Has he had some sort of issue with your movie nights up until now?

Shinsou sat at the head of the bed, but he took up the whole space instead of sitting in his normal spot. He held out his hand for the laptop, and he placed it, cracked open, on your bedside table, moving your phone out of the way.

And then he fucking spread his legs.

“C’mon, sweet girl, sit back against me,” he said, patting a thigh with one hand and extending the other towards you, “I know you can do it. Come here.”

I know you can do it felt condescending here. Of course you can do it. It’s nothing but sitting between his legs instead of next to him. Very simple. Mind-bogglingly simple. So, it felt patronising and unnecessary that he would pull out that line for something so easy, this early in the game.

That didn’t mean you didn’t like it.

This was his idea of a first session? You were so pathetic that he felt the need for you to practise sitting between a man’s legs? Shut the fuck up.

Penis. You might touch a rascally ol’ penis, even if it’s through layers and layers of fabric. Inch resting.

You’ve never been fucking held. What if you cry, or something?

Which, oh, yikes, oof, makes your second point make a bit of sense.

Steeling yourself, you crawled the two feet towards him, but you hesitated before turning around: he’d parted his legs ever wider while you’d crawled back, so none of him was touching you at the moment, giving you still a chance to back out before it began.

“If it helps,” he said, tired eyes half-lidded, “think of me as your soulmate.”

Swallowing, you managed to nod just barely, and you turned.

At first, you’d tried to have some space between you and Shinsou, but he’d helped position you, guiding you with his large hands on your hips to have your ass snug against his pelvis (and yeah, the penis was there), hips framed by his inner thighs (since when have his thighs been bigger than yours? And his were all muscle), and he slid his hands up to your waist and ribcage to keep your back pressed against his chest. Once he had you all pressed against him the way he liked, Shinsou set his chin on your shoulder, startling you, but he petted away your alarm at your waist, a gruntled huff of hot air at your ear while he grounded you.

“You can tell me at any time if you get too stiff or want to change to a different position, but you’re staying in my arms tonight,” said Shinsou, untangling one arm from around your waist to reach for the laptop, “I thought cuddling would be a good start for you—full-bodied vulnerability, but you don’t necessarily have to look me in the eyes for it, and you can feel safe knowing I’ve got you. You’re held; you’re not in any danger.”

He placed the laptop on your knees. “Now, knowing your sense of humour, you’ve picked out Terms of Endearment.” Instead, he opened it to the title screen for a Zuko-centric episode of The Last Airbender. “All right, that’s fair.” You heard him laughing through his nose behind you before returning his chin to your shoulder.

Initially, you couldn’t concentrate on Zuko’s rippling pectorals for once in your life, because there was a man holding you and his dick was right there. Not, like, hard or anything, but it was present, just something extra to press against your ass. Eventually, it became less about the cock and more about being held, which was fucking intoxicating and warm and made you feel so small and safe, and that was out of the ordinary for you. The small huffs of Shinsou’s laughter in your ear through his occasional commentary (really kind of him to talk through a movie, like he normally did, instead of staying in dom mode, you thought. Helped you relax).

But even the movie night had to be cut short. Five minutes into the third episode, you’d finally cosied into his arms—dare you say, feeling like you could handle this thing called cuddling—when Ojiro and Hagakure started going at it next door. Hardly a full minute had elapsed between their clamouring down the hallway, the slamming shut of her door, and what sounded like a kabedon and something immediately plunging into Hagakure, based on her moans. Probably fingers.

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I hope they were fooling around in public beforehand, so she’s at least gotten some prep,” you said, as Shinsou shut the laptop.

“We’ll continue this another time,” said Shinsou, setting it aside, and he, moving to kneel, guided your hips forward to turn you around to face him. “Was this okay?”

You shot him a double thumbs-up. “Excellent first step. New but safe, facilitated by a variation of something we’re already used to.”

“Something we’re already used to,” he repeated under his breath, for some reason, barely audible over Ojiro’s tail thwacking the shared wall. He reached for both his laptop sleeve and a water bottle for you, and he started packing his stuff away.

You twisted off the cap to break the seal. “Are we gonna do something different next time?”

“I think we’re going to do this a couple more times so that being held is no longer a sort of event in your mind, adding some minor variety so that you don’t get overwhelmed, before we move onto something completely different.”

Wiping water off of your mouth with the back of your hand, you bit your lip. “You’re being so kind to me. So patient. Considerate.”

He shot you a look from where he was zipping up his duffel. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Well,” you said, holding the bottle in both hands, “Don’t most of your clients, like, choke on your cock within fifteen minutes of starting?”

His back was to you as he fiddled with a side pocket, and it took him a beat to reply. “Believe it when I tell you that I am delighted you’re letting me walk at your own pace.”

***

You were completing the world’s most pathetic checklist.

Holding hands? Check.

Cuddling? Check.

Spooning cuddling? Check.

Being able to look a man in the eyes while he tenderly cupped your face with both hands and told you nice things about you? Check—though that one took a lot out of you.

Were you embarrassing? Maybe a bit, but you couldn’t talk yourself out of being who you were, and Shinsou didn’t seem to want to, either.

You allowed yourself to curl up into yourself in the café booth, hiding yourself in the back while you propped your forehead against the exposed brick of the back wall. Lately, Shinsou had been directing you away from hiding your body and making yourself smaller when you felt ashamed, and damn it, you understood how he was trying to be helpful, but sometimes you just didn’t want to be perceived.

This session was the first public outing—a practise date, he’d called it. Practise for showing small, safe gestures of affection out in public. He’d dressed up in another all-black outfit again, as usual, because he’d emphasised that he had to get in character, to get out of “Best Friend Shinsou” mode. He’d even made a hype playlist, but he refused to show it to you yet.

He’d picked a café that you’d never been to so that you wouldn’t have to worry about the staff at your regular places judging you, and once again, you’re struck by how kind Shinsou was. If he were this level of considerate with all of his clients, no wonder they kept coming back to him. To be able to stop worrying, to leave it all to someone who took such pains to ensure your comfort and safety, who made your decisions for you—it’s goddamn inebriating.

Huh, it’s taking him a while to get menus. You tapped your fingernails in a ripple on the table where he’d parked you. Where was he? Twisting around, you scanned the open café area but recognised no one. How do you lose someone with purple troll hair?

Oh, he was rounding the corner of the dessert case, coming out of the hallway with the bathrooms, and he…he was talking to someone you’d never seen before, way shorter than he was with pastel pink hair and enormously puffy, white earrings. Even from the back corner booth, the way her face lit up as she spoke to him charmed you.

Shinsou was smiling, too, a pensive sort of wryness crossing his face as he snatched two menus from the basket up front, his brow furrowing when he had to shake a sticky third one off. Her elegant face pinched up when Shinsou unstuck the remaining two, and he gestured towards the booth where you were sitting. Oh, the fabric on this chair was absolutely fascinating, all of a sudden, and you kept plucking at it until Shinsou’s doc martens appeared in your view.

“I apologise for taking so long,” said Shinsou, sliding in next to you instead of across from you like a normal person, and he offered a menu.

You took it, rubbing the tacky plastic film. “It’s fine. Why sit next to me? It’s a booth, not the Last Supper.”

“It’s so we can hold hands, you muppet,” said Shinsou, and he promptly laced his fingers between yours and rested your hands on the table between you. As he laid the menu flat on the table, he returned the pink-haired woman’s wave as she exited the café, squeezing your hand as he did so.

“Care to enlighten me?” You scanned the drinks section, honing in on the coffee.

He flipped over the menu. “I can tell you she went by Mawata, with me. Not giving you the family name, mind. Signed the contract.”

Who would pay that much for a café au lait? Bougie. Perhaps even pretentious. “I see.”

“She recognised the getup and assumed I was in a session. I didn’t want to betray your trust, so I told her I was on a date. Which isn’t far from the truth.”

“I see,” you said, this time more strangled.

“Do you know what you want to order yet?”

“Almost.”

“Good,” he said, releasing your hand and scooting closer to you, “because we’re going to try doing something a step further. I—”

“Fucking go for it,” you said, peeking at the other side of the menu.

Shinsou faltered. “Are you sure?”

“You’ve kept me safe so far,” you said, shooting him a smile, “I trust—”

Mawata was bursting back into the café, the bell on the door ringing rather violently, and rushing back to your booth, her puffy earrings swaying erratically. Shinsou turned himself towards you, taking up space and shielding you the best he could by the time she skidded to a stop at your table, her kitten heels leaving a scuff on the tile.

“When can I hire you again?” she asked, breathless, “I’m assuming she knows.” She didn’t even spare a glance towards you.

Bracing himself, Shinsou turned his head in her direction, still hovering over you. “Now’s not exactly the best time.”

Mawata fidgeted with her purse strap. “I know I’m being rude, but holy shit. I can’t stop thinking about you. I’ll be rude if it means I get to see you again. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I can’t let you go now that there’s a chance again. Even if I have to pay you, I have to have you in my life. There’s no consistent way to contact you, so it feels like fate that I met you today.”

While Mawata rambled, Shinsou turned towards you, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed, and, wincing, he shot you an apologetic look, eyebrows raised. You didn’t know what was coming, but you nodded. Running his tongue over his lower lip, he mouthed thank you, and for a brief moment, as he turned back to her, you caught a hardened expression you’ve never seen on your best friend.

“Mawata,” he said, stone cold and callous and chilling, “It sounds like you’ve broken one of my rules.”

She flinched, the movement shuddering through her whole body and bobbling her earrings, and she dropped her gaze to the floor, her head bowed and fists tight on her purse strap. A choked whimper escaped her as she took a shaky, shallow breath.

The distressing, empty space in which Shinsou waited for her to answer caused you to tense up behind him, and without looking back, he fucking skimmed his fingers over your thigh, cool as you please, until he could place his spread palm across it. Lightly, at first, a barely-there touch, but—you had to give him some sort of signal, so you grazed your thumb over the back of his hand—after he had your approval, he let the full weight of his hand rest on your thigh, gently tapping his fingers on the fabric of your jeans.

Good. Considerate, attentive Shinsou was still there, underneath whoever the fuck he was being now.

Her choppy, straight bangs shielded her eyes as she kept her head down. “I—I’m not sure what you mean, sir.”

Sir?! Sir?!

That’s fucking Hitoshi. Hitoshi, who talks in a high-pitched voice to cats and encourages Eri to decorate his face with stickers. Hitoshi, who can’t always remember to take the tin foil off of his leftovers before putting them in the microwave. Hitoshi, your best friend, who’s got his goddamn hand on your thigh.

(Hand cover…so much…of thigh. Big hand. Big hand good. Big hand safe. Big hand hold you.)

([Good God, woman, pull yourself together. It’s just a hand on your thigh.])

(But there is nothing just about Shinsou, is there?)

Shaking his head, Shinsou clicked his tongue. “And I’m sure you do. I want you to say what rule you’ve broken—and I know which one you have; you can’t hide from me. I’ve been in your brain; I know how you think. I want you to admit it. And I want you to tell me what you’re doing wrong now because of it. If you can’t even say it, I no longer know you.” He lifted his chin as he stared her down, and even from behind, you can tell that he’s giving her that cold glare that made anyone shatter—you’ve only seen it in training, and it’s never been used against you. “You know what you signed. Say it.”

“I—I’ve developed feelings for you,” she managed to say.

“And?”

“And that means, by contract, I can’t see you again.”

“And?”

“And!” Mawata inhaled sharply, shifting her jaw as she raised her head to look him in the eye and chickened out, instead focusing on the table. “And by approaching you in public with another client, you’re gonna fucking blacklist me with the others across the fucking city. But sir, you said you were on a date, and I didn’t know you did that now, and I want that—”

“Not quite. I’m not out with a client,” Shinsou said evenly, squeezing your thigh under the table, “I’m out with my girlfriend. Which is a greater transgression on your part, wouldn’t you say? We’re done here.” Shinsou nodded once and gave a dismissive wave, and she bolted out of the shop.

Shinsou turned to you, expression soft, posture crumpling, and hands lifting to cup your face, and he babbled apologetically. “Baby, I’m so sorry you had to see that. Mawata’s violated contract before by badgering Kaminari for my personal number, but that doesn’t immediately blacklist her; it got her put on a probation list. I’m sorry. I tried to get rid of her the best I could at first, but it didn’t work, and I’m so fucking sorry you had to see me like that. I would never treat you like that, sweetheart; you mean too much to me. Please believe me when I say that what you saw was just a continuation of the dynamic established between Mawata and me and that I would never—” He cut himself off and rested his forehead against yours. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for it to turn out like this.”

Hello! I would like to address girlfriend. Are we going to do that?

(Well, you figured, in the moment in which you cracked your eyes open to watch Shinsou’s unfairly long eyelashes flutter against his cheeks, that using girlfriend was a firm way to establish that Mawata was not wanted there.

Plus, he had said earlier that he hadn’t revealed you were a pseudo-client, so it may have been a confidentiality thing. Even though you never signed anything. That’s Shinsou for you, being a step ahead in caring for you.)

“Hitoshi, it’s fine,” you said, placing your hands over his and bringing them down into your lap, “I get it. You did what you had to. Yes, you scared me a bit, but some part of it was also hot. You let me know you were still there.”

Shinsou pulled back to garner your expression, and, after seeing something that he evidently liked, he bent to put his forehead on your shoulder. “So, the hand on your thigh was good?”

“Very. I appreciate that you did it through clothes for this first try. Not as startling.” Since Shinsou has been so good to you, you bolstered enough courage to comfort him back: you tentatively raised a hand to run it through his hair, scratching at the base of his skull, and the man fucking groaned, snuggling down into your shoulder and getting as close as he could to your neck without going past your collar (you hadn’t gotten to neck stuff yet, which, as you noted it, may be the dumbest fucking thing about yourself). “She mentioned others? I’m assuming other hired doms?”

“More or less,” said Shinsou, his voice grumbling, “I don’t really see much of them. Mostly at the start, when I was learning how to do BDSM stuff myself. Making sure what I was doing was safe. Helped me with legal stuff. I don’t wanna be sued or arrested for any of this, y’know.”

“Don’t tell me Aizawa-sensei’s involved. You can just look at that fucker and tell he’s into tying people up and brat-taming.”

“All right,” said Shinsou with a muffled laugh, “I won’t tell you.”

“Holy shit. That’s our professor—”

“No, c’mon, keep scratching. Go on. Let’s see what I can tell you,” said Shinsou, “He’s never been one of the employees proper, but he has provided some educational materials—yes, on shibari. Thank God someone else is now burdened with this information.”

“Think he was affected from the soulmate quirk?”

“If he does, his soulmate’s in for it,” said Shinsou, whining a bit when you moved away from the base of his skull, and he plopped your hand back there to keep scratching. “He fucking needs someone to take care of. And to take care of him. Fuck, he’s a mess.” He sighed into your shirt. “Speaking of, I’ve got an escort mission with him and the rest of the stealth-focused group in about a week, so we won’t be able to have a proper session. Odds are, I’ll be prepping with the rest of the students, so we won’t see much of each other at all.”

“Remind me who’s studying stealth?”

“Bakugou and Aoyama. Oh, and Todoroki’s been shoved in our group, since he’s hopeless at PR, according to Kayama-sensei. Don’t know how that’ll affect our current group dynamic, but I look forward to working with him. Midoriya can’t say enough good things about him.” Shinsou dragged himself away from your shoulder. “So, I’m sorry we won’t be seeing each other as much. I’ll text you when I can.”

“I’ve got stuff with Present Mic to work on. It’s fine. That just means I get to hang out with Dango instead of you, right?”

“Stop bragging,” he said, and he pointed at the menu as he stood. “Time to tell me your first and second choices for your order. I’ll get the second one, so you can try some of it.”

“Wow, someone’s a slave to routine,” you said, indicating what you wanted, “If I hadn’t seen your performance just then, I’d say that your dom persona is the same as typical Hitoshi.”

His eyes glinted strangely as he smirked and gathered the menus to put them away. “Is it?”

***

HITOSHI 💜🍡

bakugou is bitching about the quality of aoyama’s trail mix

HITOSHI 💜🍡

says it’s shit

HITOSHI 💜🍡

he’s made us trail mix that he considers good. we have spent a considerable amount of this mission prep meeting debating what qualifies good trail mix.

HITOSHI 💜🍡

bakugou, I mean

YOU

idk man i thought aoyama’s trail mix was pretty fucken tasty

HITOSHI 💜🍡

why am I not surprised you’re the one who ate most of it last night

HITOSHI 💜🍡

if they ask where it went, I won’t tell

***

The day of Shinsou’s escort mission, you were out shopping for a plant for him. “I mean, you’re extremely attentive with people and cats,” you were saying, your phone tucked between your ear and shoulder as you checked the price on the bottom of a zinnia starter, “but something tells me you will forget a plant is real.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, jackass,” came Shinsou’s voice over the phone, “I could keep up with something like a succulent. Or bamboo. I bet bamboo would fucking thrive in my dorm.”

“Bamboo requires frequent watering and heavy sunlight, actually,” you said, moving on to non-flowering plants, “So that thing would fucking die the instant it crosses your threshold.”

“Distressing things to hear,” said Shinsou, and you heard Aizawa’s voice and Shinsou’s distant response. “Gotcha. Listen, I’ve got to go. The plane’s scheduled to land in five minutes, so I’ve got to focus. Talk to you later?”

“Of course. Good luck!”

“Thanks. You, too, with the plant. Bye,” he said, but he didn’t hang up. You figured he meant to and just didn’t. Your thumb hovered the end call button, but when you strained to hear Aizawa’s and Bakugou’s voices and Shinsou’s closer replies through the phone, you elected to stay on the call.

Putting it on speaker and into your front pocket, you wandered through the garden section moving into the sheltered area as thunder rumbled, fingering at the textures of leaves, and admiring colours. Having him on speaker like this, even if it were just mission talk, felt like he was here with you, and you haven’t hung out with him in over a week—and now with the frequency of both friend hangouts and soulmate-prep sessions, his absence left you with an emptiness, an ache curling into your gut that pinched at your insides. This morning, you’d awoken feeling like you’d been kicked in the chest, so that’s why you risked calling him, even though he was out on a mission, and when you heard his voice, the ache disappeared.

None of these succulents were bitchy enough.

You covered your mouth as you laughed: what if you got him a fake plant and never told him?

You meandered inside as the rain picked up. Talk about radio signals scrambling came through as you debated the merits of a fake blossom on a fake cactus, and you turned the volume down in case you gave away confidential information to the few other losers in a home improvement store this early in the day. It’s a good thing you did, because otherwise, the sound of the airport explosion would’ve scared someone other than you out of your skin.

You ran back outside where you could yell, even though you might not be heard over the pouring rain. “Hitoshi?! ’Toshi, are you there? Say anything! Please!” He never responded to you, but you could hear yelling—not from him, but from Aizawa, from Bakugou, from Aoyama—and heavy cracking and crumbling you couldn’t tell if it were from a building collapsing or thunder rolling.

God, he’s not going to respond, is he? He didn’t know he’s still on a call—but you can track his location, right? Oh, my—fucking.

Staying on the call on your way back to U.A., you sent Shinsou’s location to Present Mic as soon as you could, saying you were headed back. Mic shot back a thumbs-up, since he couldn’t interrupt your call, said you should go give keep tracking with campus security, and that the location has been the biggest help so far in finding the team. They’re buried underneath airport rubble, and your connection with Shinsou’s phone is the only clue they have. Even if his phone isn’t buried—and it probably isn’t, since it has signal—it’s their best chance so far of being found.

The ride back to U.A. had you jolting at any little outside stimulus (and you had to keep apologising to people on the train for not having headphones), but all you could do once you reached security was keep listening. Ages and ages and ages of faint sirens, pelting rain, and shifting wreckage, with you crying so much that one of the security workers felt bad enough for you that they bought you a drink from a vending machine.

And then—as you’re screwing the lid onto your empty bottle—the crunching of footsteps. A distant, “Oh, sweet,” and the grappling of his leather glove around his phone. But something in your gut told you to keep silent. To keep this to yourself. Glancing over your shoulder to the final, straggling security worker at the far computer, you borrowed a pair of earbuds and hid your phone.

Shinsou must have put his phone in his pocket (the one on the side of his chest, based on how close his voice sounded) without looking at the screen, because the call kept going.

“No, say that again,” came Shinsou’s voice, exasperation prevalent, “What happened while they were underground?”

“Bakugou, Aoyama, and Todoroki were all affected by Serendipity’s quirk, but they’ve worked their way out of it,” said Aizawa, more gruffly than usual, or perhaps that was just the thunderstorm interfering with the sound coming through. “Listen. Don’t ask them for details and just be glad you’d been confined elsewhere. But we’ve got to peel Bakugou off Serendipity’s back before he breaks it and get her to Sakura Grove now.”

The relief at their voices triggered exhaustion, and you slumped in your seat, head down on the desk. God, you’ll take all this bullshit about travelling and escorting to this sakura place or whatever. It’s good to hear him talk. You’d listen in forever, so long as he was there. You couldn’t bring yourself to talk. Something in your gut screamed for you not to.

Actual, informative dialogue picked up when they’d apparently arrived at this Sakura Grove place, rushing through security to find Midnight and the team prepared to control Serendipity. You managed to smile at the sound of all of their boots clacking against tile. Lots of running, it seemed, even before they split up.

Shinsou was the one to find Midnight and frantically updated her, all out of breath. “—and Aizawa-sensei’s got her contained in the main waiting room, but he can’t keep her for much longer—”

“Listen,” Midnight interrupted, “I can’t have Ito and Serendipity be in the same room. Watch her while I take care of this. She can’t do anything more to you, so—” Her voice grew faint.

And at last, silence again.

Eventually, a woman’s voice came over the speaker. “Nice tits.”

“I’d prefer if you didn’t stare at my chest,” said Shinsou, and you fucking laughed under your breath, shoulders heaving. You folded your arm to use as a pillow on the desk and smiled loosely as you listened in.

“Who are you? She said Ito, but that doesn’t tell me anything.”

“Yet what she said told me so much.”

Shinsou paused. “What d’you mean?”

“That I can’t do anything more to you. Tells me you’ve met me before. Inhaled my quirk.”

Shinsou took a deep breath, as if to remember. “You broke into U.A.” Heavy exhale. “You ruined my goddamn life.”

“Want to sit down and talk? They’ve set up a lovely sitting room here, really. Seems a shame not to put that great ass to use.”

“Please stop objectifying me,” said Shinsou, sighing (and you could picture him running his hand back through his hair, with it bouncing back instantly), “Fine. Fine, I’ll talk. I know someone who likes having information. I’ve got to kill time, anyway.”

Shuffling. The creak of a chair.

“Why don’t you start with how I’ve ruined your life?”

“Take a fucking look at this.” The sounds of velcro and thick fabric being adjusted, and then silence.

“Okay,” said Ito slowly, “It’s a name.”

“It’s my fucking name, jerkass. Do you have any idea how much sleep I’ve lost over it? How am I supposed to deal with this? Am I doomed to be alone? Am I supposed to cry while jerking off for the rest of my life? Is that what the love I have amounts to? Because—and not that I would fucking want this, but even if there were another Shinsou Hitoshi, it probably wouldn’t be spelled with the same kanji, so fuck with that, if you will.”

More fabric shuffling, as Ito spoke. “I bet it would be difficult to find another Shinsou written as chastity and honest.��

“Yeah, my parents are insane. Bet they’d be disappointed in me, if they knew what I was doing concerning chastity and honesty. Has your quirk created something like this before? Is there a way to fix me?” Shinsou’s voice cracked.

“Well, let’s backtrack. There may not be anything to fix.”

“So, you have seen this before?”

“No, but I’d like to cover all my bases,” said Ito, “How bad is the pain? Are you at the level where you pass out yet?”

A beat. “What pain?” Another. “Stop staring at my tits. Pecs.”

“This is funny. You’re funny.” You could hear the smile in Ito’s voice. “Good thing I like funny. I crave funny. Did you know I have no contact with the outside world except through letters?”

“I don’t like where this is going.”

“They keep packets of cheese crackers somewhere in one of these drawers. Will you help me find some?”

Shuffling. Wooden drawers opening and shutting. Crinkling of plastic.

“You’re not feeling the pain because you’ve already met your soulmate,” said Ito through a mouthful of cheese cracker, “If you hadn’t met them, you’d be in fuckin’ agony. All achy, and shit.”

“I can hardly see how I could avoid meeting myself.”

“Okay, cut the bullshit, smartass. My quirk doesn’t work like that, unless you’re attracted to yourself.”

The sound of chewing, up close and personal. “God, no. I hate myself.”

“Then you have a soulmate, and you’ve met them. Easy as that.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” said Shinsou.

“Oh, get fucked. You’re a young hero affected by my quirk, who has associations with Midnight, and you haven’t read my team’s notes on my quirk? You’re not employing all your resources,” said Ito, crunching.

“Someone who read it told me pertinent details,” Shinsou protested.

“Not pertinent to you, it appears. Not that it matters how my quirk works, I suppose. Just be assured that you have a soulmate who’s not you, and you’ve met them. Since you’re not feeling any pain at all, it sounds like they’ve accepted you in some way. Acknowledged you with some sign of affection. Depending on how obvious they are, you may be an idiot.”

“Fuck,” came Shinsou’s whisper, “I’ve been in some…situations recently. There are a number of candidates.” Crinkling of plastic and chewing. “But I still don’t get how my own name as a soulmark works.”

“Bitch, you’re overthinking.”

And Shinsou laughed. Hard. Hearing it made up for all the distress you’ve been under today. His laugh always sounded a bit higher than his speaking voice, like it hasn’t been through as much or like it’s well-rested.

“Got a preference for who it is?” Ito asked.

Shinsou swallowed thickly. “Yeah.”

“Perfect. Then we can start from there. I can help you find out who it is, by process of elimination.”

“Hey, give me your trash.” Footsteps, there and back again, and the sinking back into the cushy chair. “Why would you help me? You’re a villain, and I’m a trainee-hero you just met.”

“Whatever is going on with you is pathetic and hilarious, and like I said, I like funny. What’s more, I like conclusions to stories,” she said, “and yours, I feel, is going to be marvellously, gloriously stupid. I wanna hear it when it happens.”

Shifting in his seat. “You can get letters? All right.” More shifting. “But what if my soulmark is broken, and I don’t have an ending?”

“Okay, then I’ll take payment now.”

“I think I want to back out—”

“Relax, asshole. I’ll help you,” said Ito, “All you have to do is describe what body part on a woman you prefer.”

“That’s all?”

A beat. “You look like a feet guy.”

“I do fucking not.”

“You’ve got the mouth for it.”

It sounded like Shinsou pushed himself up out of his chair. “Y’know, I think I can live without your help.”

“My dude, I have already established that I am desperate for humour in my life, and even from our brief interaction, you have revealed yourself to be wonderful to tease. Sorry for accusing you of being a foot fetishist. Didn’t mean it. Sit back down?”

A pause. He must have sat and chosen his words carefully. “You usually shield your chest or genitals when someone’s threatening you when you’re physically vulnerable, yeah? What’s left unprotected, though…I like to take advantage of the vulnerability of an exposed neck. Sensual and intimate. Satisfying. I’m betting—kissing the back of it, even when she expects is, is going to make her jump out of her skin. I can’t fucking wait. Hey, don’t look at me like that.”

“Something’s wrong with you. Really.”

“I happen to be—normal. Normal and well-adjusted.”

“You’re into necks and not into choking?” Ito tutted. “Even with your BDSM hero costume?”

“Choking is when something’s caught inside your throat. Technically, what people have taken to doing in bed is a type of strangulation.”

“Way to bring the conversation down, fusspot.”

“I did what you asked and answered honestly,” said Shinsou, “I think we should skip the rest of the part in which you make fun of me and proceed to where you actually help.”

“Sure. First, we’ll need an airtight container.” Another pause.

Shinsou made a frustrated noise. “If you’re really that desperate to stare at men’s tits, my friend Bakugou is in the lobby, and his are way bigger than mine.”

“No, it’s—I get that you’re all posh, since you’re a U.A. student, but I’m assuming even a hero’s BDSM costume isn’t supposed to glow in the chest area. Or at least, only one side of it.”

“What are you—oh, shit, that’s my—”

The call ended.

***

What were you supposed to do? Pretend you weren’t on the phone, obviously, but moreover, how could you possibly help Shinsou find his soulmate when his soulmark was his own name?

Monoma was no help solving anything, but at least he was good company when everyone else was making out (you missed when people played video games in public instead of dry-humping). He and you were caring for Eri that afternoon, since Aizawa, Shinsou, and the rest had to go in for documentation.

Eri pressed a pawprint sticker (from that cat café Aizawa frequented) onto your cheek. “They’re in love,” she said.

“Who?” Monoma asked from his place on the floor, lying down with his legs straight up to rest against the couch.

“Konpeito and Dango,” she said, pointing to the two cats cuddling together on the middle couch cushion, “See how they’re yin and yang?” From above, she was right, ish. Konpeito and Dango certainly had the swish-shapes fitting together in a circle, if not the entirely correct colourings.

“I’m glad they finally went to sleep,” you said, choosing a coffee mug sticker for Eri to put on you next.

Eri nodded gravely. “If Dad-sensei finds the pottery pieces in the trash, I’ll tell him a shark did it. I don’t want him to make Konpeito move out.”

Monoma caught your eye and stifled a laugh, but you didn’t know if it were for Dad-sensei or the shark. “Eri,” he said, checking his phone for the time, “Do you know what’s going on with the room at the end of the hall?”

Frowning, Eri pursed her lips. “Dad-sensei lives there. Is something wrong with it?”

“I should’ve been more specific; I apologise. I meant the empty that been used for storage so far, on the other side where no one goes,” said Monoma, stowing his phone in his pocket, “Room 310, I think. It’s okay if you don’t know, Eri.”

“Oh,” said Eri, peeling off the coffee mug sticker, “I don’t know much. Dad-sensei and All Might-sensei have been talking about it sometimes.” She smoothed it out across the inside of your forearm. “I think someone like me is going to move into that room, but not for a long, long time from now. I hope they like cats. Can I see your words again?”

Monoma shared a sympathetic look with you and became busy with bothering the cats, allowing you the space to stretch the neck of your shirt down far enough to the middle of your left shoulder blade for Eri to read your soulmark.

“Ice princess,” she said, bafflement creeping in, “That doesn’t sound like you.”

“I know, kiddo,” you said, “but I used to be a bit mean. It used to fit me.”

“When?”

“When I first started going to U.A.,” you said, “Before the first sports festival, especially. Even though I was shy, I remember being very protective of the few friends I’d made in 1-A at that point. Maybe I had a bad day and was mean about it. Mean about the way I was protecting my friends, or something. I don’t really know, Eri. I don’t know what my soulmark means.”

“Can I copy it? I want to practise writing ice princess.” At your consent, she told you to wait while she got some paper, and you waited more while she carefully copied down the kanji for that part of your soulmark. She presented the paper to you when she was done.

Cute. Adorable. Her basic penmanship made your confusing, harsh words into something endearing. Except. “Hey, Eri, I think you’ve written the kanji for forever here, instead of ice. See how you’ve put two little strokes at the top? Ice only has one.”

“Oh! Thank you very much. The handwriting on your back is all squished, so it’s hard to see all the strokes.” She corrected her kanji on the sheet at the same time that Monoma’s head snapped towards yours, both pairs of eyes bulging (clown to clown communication).

Handwriting.

Eri carefully copied the corrected kanji again and stopped to admire her writing. “Even if you don’t understand it, I still think it’s good.” She wrote her name at the bottom and turned the paper around to show the both of you. “Do I get a soulmate someday?”

You hid your sorrow, and Monoma answered for you. “I hope to God you don’t.”

***

Instead of breaking off towards Class B’s dormitory after dinner, like he normally did, Monoma followed you up the stairs of Class A’s dorm.

“Ah, ha, who are you going to see? Shinsou and I have a movie night,” you said, lying about the session you were going to his room for, “so you must have made a friend.”

“Hilarious. A lie and an attempt at a blow to my ego,” said Monoma, stuffing his hands in his pockets, as he trotted up the stairs behind you, “No, I’m attending Shinsou’s little session, the same as you are.”

“Fuck it all to hell,” you said, halting on the top step, “Did everyone know about that except for me?”

“Chill, I learnt about it two days ago when Shinsou asked for my help. Keep going; he’ll explain it when we get there,” said Monoma, passing you to hold the stairway door open.

Shinsou was waiting for the both of you. He opened his door before you could knock twice and ushered you in. You expected Monoma to make some comment about Shinsou’s clothes (you think he’s got outfits on rotation, but since a fair chunk of his wardrobe is black, anyway, it’s hard to tell) or his serious vibes, but Monoma didn’t say a word or make any condescending expressions. For once, it seemed, he was quiet and subdued, hands in his pockets and standing behind you, waiting.

“Monoma’s here to help,” said Shinsou, stepping forward to curl his long fingers into your hair, scratching gently at your scalp (your eyes fluttered shut, and you struggled to keep them from crossing and rolling back; you have definitely been denying yourself the simple pleasure of someone playing with your hair: safe but immensely satisfying), “If you don’t want him here, or if you don’t want him to see a thing you do, he’s out of here before anything can happen. Either way, he’s sworn to secrecy about this entire ordeal. He owes me, and I’m paying him. And I know you already feel fairly comfortable around him. He’s on his better-than-best behaviour.”

“I trust you,” you said, and Shinsou pulled this strange move where he lifted his hands just barely while he was still cupping your head to scratch it, and you rose to your tiptoes to follow him—the move, paired with his blunt nails on your scalp, had you feeling lightheaded, and you’ve only been here for about a minute (calm the fuck down, babe). “If you think Monoma will help me grow, then I’ll do it. Within reason.”

“All right. You can back out at any time, remember? Okay. Monoma, you first. On the bed.”

On the bed? Are you sure, Shinsou?

Monoma peeled off his TinTin socks and climbed onto Shinsou’s bed to sit at the head of it, and he contorted himself to pull his phone out of his back pocket to set it on the bedside table.

“Go on, then,” Shinsou said softly, prodding your lower back, “Sit between his legs. Just like you’ve done for me.”

Oof. Someone other than Shinsou? I mean. You guessed if it had to be someone other than Shinsou, you’d be the most comfortable around Monoma, but still. It’s as if there’s a heightened layer of friendship with you and Shinsou; it’s different than the relationship you have with Monoma and the relationships with other guys. Somehow, this felt weird.

“Okay, boss,” you said as a joke, and you watched Monoma for any of his many micro-expressions for a shred of disdain or judgment, as if he would tease you for calling Shinsou a title in a sensual/sexual context, even as a joke, but Monoma’s face was placid. No outward signs of malice. Instead, he made room for you between his legs, silent and languid all the way.

“Hee hoo ha,” you said instead of actually laughing, a knee on the mattress. “I suppose you’re aware that this is, like, second base for me. For the state I’m in. I’m fuckin’ calling you Neito from now on, now that you’re witnessing me being a slut.”

There’s no snide comment. Eyes-half lidded, Monoma calmly nodded, resting his hands on his thighs. “If that’s what you want.”

Oh, holy shit. Shinsou must have talked to him about how sensitive/delicate you were about this situation. Either that, or the pay is just that good.

Worried, you glanced back at Shinsou, but he just gestured with a loose flick of his fingers for you to keep going. So, you found yourself easing into a different man’s arms, and it’s instantly a list of comparisons: thighs still framing your pelvis but nowhere nearly as thick or long as Shinsou’s (and that tracked with what Monoma’s told you about how he wants a twink gymnast’s physique for his manoeuvrability in battle, along with Shinsou’s having seven centimetres on Monoma height-wise), somehow colder than Shinsou, not giving off as much body heat, his chin not fitting as well into the divot on your shoulder as Shinsou’s did—but his arms slid around your waist the same way Shinsou’s did, down to the positioning of what hand overlapped on top—Shinsou must have given specific instructions.

You figured that you don’t feel as safe as you feel when Shinsou’s holding you because Shinsou was bigger than you: bigger in presence, really, over physicality—though certain parts of him were objectively bigger, like how fucking long his fingers were and the overall size of his hands. Monoma, though, didn’t give as much of a large presence, but Monoma had said before that being unimposing and nimble worked better for him strategically. Either way.

Wow, yeah, Monoma really was holding you just like Shinsou did, without space between your legs and his, with his arms snugly around the upper curve of your waist, and his mouth pressed—but not puckered or kissing (a polite boy)—to your shoulder, on the shirt collar as close to the bare skin of your neck as possible without touching it.

“Fishy,” you said, glaring at Shinsou while tapping Monoma’s hand at your waist.

“I’m glad you noticed. Good detail work,” said Shinsou as he stowed away the Put Your Hands Up Radio laptop sleeve, and he crawled onto his bed.

As Shinsou pulled up a movie, you panicked and snapped your head back to look at Monoma. “Hey, are you okay with this? I don’t wanna impose on you if—”

“I’m fine,” said Monoma, blinking slowly, “I haven’t been told everything, because that’s your business, but I can garner that this is very important to you. And since you’re comfortable around me—though I don’t think anyone will ever lower your walls like Shinsou does—I knew I could do this for you. If it were anyone else besides me, you wouldn’t be as comfortable. Worry about me if you want, but it’ll be misplaced.”

You faced the front again and grimaced. “You two are acting fucking insane.”

Shinsou looked away from the screen for a moment. “No, baby,” he said, tapping the top of your foot, “We’re being careful. You deserve to be handled delicately.”

You didn’t know if it were his usage of baby or the skin-to-skin touch on your bare foot that made you jolt. Probably both.

(Because while you’ve been getting used to Shinsou touching you, it’s all been very face-waist-shoulders-arms. His hands haven’t gone below your stomach or to your boobs. So, yeah, while it was just your foot, he hasn’t been around that area yet. Startling.)

“If you say so,” you muttered, and you pressed back against Monoma, as if hiding from Shinsou’s comment—and, to be fair, the careful attention to you felt unusual, especially now that it was someone beyond Shinsou. “What are you going to do? Why have you got Monoma—”

You cut yourself off with a sharp inhale, chest tight and shoulders tense, when Shinsou placed his hands on your knees, and he said, “I want you to get used to a man between your legs.” Carefully watching your expression, Shinsou slowly parted your legs, keeping his hands near your knees and low on your thighs, and he crawled up to lie on his stomach between them, resting, for a moment, on his elbows, propping him upright on either side of your hips.

And you were fucking panicking. You’d steeled your expression the best you could, since Shinsou was watching, but you broke and couldn’t control it; your visible facial distress, you supposed, was hardly the giveaway when you were already stiff and tense, heart pounding, one hand gripping Monoma’s wrist so tightly his bones might grind together, pressing back into him while subtly backing away from Shinsou.

When Shinsou (pausing briefly but continuing, more cautiously, when you didn’t say anything) moved to wrap his arms around your hips and settled down against you to rest his head on your stomach, your breathing picked up, and your chest started heaving.

(C’mon, baby, it’s just a guy’s presence between your thighs. He’s not even touching you in a sexual way. He’s just there. You’ve even got the security of an extra friend, grounding you by touching you in a familiar way. Neither of these people [you weren’t even thinking of them as someone who might see you as a romantic or sexual target, but just as people] has ever done anything sincerely malevolent to you. By all accounts, you should be safe.

It shouldn’t be anything. It really shouldn’t be affecting you this much. Right?

[But when purity culture has been gnawing at you for a lifetime, it can be a lot just to spread your legs, let alone have someone between them.]

Damn Shinsou for being right.)

And Shinsou was peeling himself away from your stomach, reaching up to hold your face, to comfort you, to assure you it’s all right; he can move; you can do this another time or not at all, but it’s not really working. You kept squirming between both of them, unsure if you truly wanted to get away or be touched in a different way or anything at all: your brain had resorted to irrational anxiety.

In the back of your head, a reasonable voice noted that both of them were taking good care of you and that it made no sense for you to be writhing about like this (why weren’t you saying anything?!), but that voice never got loud enough for you to obey.

“Stay with me, sweetheart; stay here,” Shinsou was saying, moving back into a kneeling position to avoid physical contact with you where he could (but with the scant space, he could hardly avoid touching your thighs), shifting to hold only one of your hands, which he grasped desperately. “I’m gonna walk you through a grounding exercise, okay? And then when you’re ready, we can talk.”

Behind you, Monoma had been keeping a neutral presence, erasing himself when he couldn’t imitate Shinsou, and while he’d retracted his arms from around you so that you could escape, you were still trying to hide, almost, by retreating back against him. You caught it out of the corner of your eye but didn’t process the meaning until later: Monoma subtly manoeuvred his foot to graze Shinsou’s bare ankle.

And Monoma’s voice blended with Shinsou’s, warm breath ghosting over your ear. “Are you listening? You with us? Do you need us to go?”

You didn’t have any answers, and it was killing you. “I don’t know.”

It’d barely left your mouth before Monoma spoke. “Relax.”

Your brain emptied.

As if it unhinged itself from a latch and now hung loosely.

Into a comfortable, distant trance.

Body going limp. Muscles losing tension, as if you’d submerged yourself up to your chin in a hot bath. As if the tight spring that’s been coiled underneath your ribcage your whole life has now been reshaped by the touch of a forge you haven’t known, the hot, bright, molten metal oozing before it’s moulded into a gentler form. Your eyes fluttered closed, feeling a faint throbbing in the roof of your mouth.

You weren’t thinking, and it felt good.

You were barely able to hang onto even that observation, and therefore, you later had grace for yourself for not understanding what was happening between Shinsou and Monoma at the moment. In your floating, weightless distance, you absorbed the conversation but didn’t process it until much, much later.

You couldn’t be worried about their argument when you’d been told to relax, so the last hint of concern flew out of you before Shinsou ripped Monoma off of you and onto the floor. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Shinsou was whisper-shouting, his splayed hand pinning Monoma to the rug, “What the fuck? She’s never felt my quirk before; I’ve sworn I’d never use it on her, because it’d be—what the fuck is wrong with you, man? You said you’d fucking do what I said.”

Monoma was scrambling out from under Shinsou’s grip, and he let him go. “Fuck it, you never—you never told me that.”

“I didn’t think I’d have to? Jesus Christ, Monoma—”

“You saw her.” Monoma scowled and crossed his arms, plopping himself down in the desk chair. “I could feel her freaking out before you could see it, and it’s fucking heartbreaking, y’know? I didn’t—I felt fucking sorry for her and wanted her to be okay. That’s not a goddamn crime.”

“You forced her. You took away her agency and fucking forced—”

“Have you taken a look at her lately?” Monoma jerked his head in your direction. “Heard her talk about her soulmark? About her life recently? She’s only getting more stressed the longer this goes on. I want her to be able to relax, and I saw that I could give that to her.”

Shinsou paused, pinching his lower lip between his thumb and index finger.

Monoma went on. “Listen, I’m sorry. And I’ll apologise to her once she comes back down, but honestly, I think she deserves the time away from this. I know she’s your girl, but she’s my friend, too, and I want her to have some shred of peace.”

Shinsou frowned. “Don’t say that. She’s not—she can’t be my girl; she’s got a soulmate out there.”

Scoffing, Monoma waved a dismissive hand. “Shut up. You were fucking showing off earlier when you were scratching her head. How you made her follow your hands when you lifted them. That’s some infatuated shit right there.” He ran his tongue over his lower lip. “You teach her to do that?”

Shinsou tentatively sat next to you on the bed—and you, floating somewhere distant, still registered his weight sinking into the mattress and his hand near your face without touching it. “I hope not,” he said, brow furrowed, “I…I generally enjoy being a bad influence, but in her case, I’m terrified that I actually am.” He raised his hand to cup your face, but he withdrew, fingers hesitantly curling into his palm. “I don’t want her to change to please me or anyone else.”

At this point, your vision started to black out, spots creeping in at your periphery. You have no recollection of what you did next, but considering how both Monoma and Shinsou avoided your gaze when you asked about it later, you must’ve actually done what they said. You apparently took his hand in both of yours to play with his long fingers and said in a slightly slurred voice, “You sound nervous. Don’t be nervous.” And you promptly stuck his first two fingers in your mouth, taking them as far back as you could go and sucking.

An alarmed Shinsou, mindful of your teeth, removed them as quickly as he could, but neither he nor Monoma could erase their looks of shock before you dozed off.

***

You’d woken up nine hours later, with Shinsou asleep on the floor next to the bed and Monoma sleeping upright in the chair, arms crossed. They’d stumbled over each other in their apologies, but since you were feeling more well-rested than you have for the last ten years, you couldn’t bring yourself to be truly mad. Irritated, sure, but that’s inevitable.

You nibbled on the thumbprint cookies Monoma had made for you in the interim while they both empathically apologised, over and over and over. You still weren’t all the way there, but it was on purpose this time.

Because Shinsou’s quirk had felt absolutely fucking fantastic. And he’s been keeping it from you.

You’re confused, really, because if it’s got that mind-numbing pleasure tint to it, why’s he doling it out to others but not you? He’s said recently that he didn’t want you to get dependent on it, but that’s…that’s only an excuse he’s given since the soulmate incident. Otherwise, he just hasn’t, with no explanation. Has he leaked a clue somewhere along the way?

Nevertheless. His quirk had sponge-dabbed at your brain, washing and making it new while you were under its control. Your mind has felt cluttered and cramped for years, and his quirk ushered in spring cleaning, opening windows and letting in light.

Oh, no.

***

YOU

i found your so-called dom hype playlist. you didn’t even make it private!!!

YOU

why is it just the naruto soundtrack over and over again

HITOSHI 💜🍡

it makes me feel powerful :(

***

Though your gut was urging you to stay, you wanted nothing more than to go home.

Classes 3-A and 3-B had an undercover mission in four days, with all of you sectioned off into teams for quashing PLF bases spread across the country. One of the base locations was a high-end club, and those who were assigned there (Asui and Todoroki) had never been to a club before, a group of you were at a club tonight to help them get used to the environment.

Still early in the night, you had been among the few who hadn’t the courage to go dance first thing, so you had volunteered to guard bags and coats at the enormous table you’d commandeered towards the back, away from the music, close to the bar, and now with mismatched chairs shoved closely to make enough space.

Shinsou was only just now finally getting back from the crowded bar, his beer and your pink lemonade in hand, with Ojiro in tow, babbling and gesturing wildly.

You moved your bag so that Shinsou could sink into the blue leather loveseat next to you, and he nodded towards you, staying engaged in Ojiro’s conversation. Oh, yikes, Hagakure was there, too; you just didn’t see her—she’s strategically wearing something nearly translucent.

Thumbing at the condensation, you stared into your glass, cloud-shaped ice bobbing in pink, when Hagakure (presumably) grabbed Ojiro’s face to kiss him, and his tongue appeared to be inside her mouth. Shinsou glanced towards you, checking in, and when you made a mild, furtive look of oof, he leaned in towards you.

(“A club? We should go,” Shinsou had said, nudging your shoulder with his, “I want you to practise a greater level of casual touching while in public.”

“But we’ll be with our classmates this time,” you’d said, slumping down onto the picnic blanket you’d spread out on the roof of Class B’s dorm, “They’ll notice.”

Shinsou had flicked a straw wrapper into your hair. “Sure. And then it won’t be such an abrupt surprise when you do it with your soulmate.”

You’d rolled away from him, taking some of the picnic blanket with you. “But what if they see me be vulnerable?”

“I’ll keep that from happening. You have the perfect cop-out, too: you can always claim you were drunk.”

You’d peeled one of the heels of your palms from your eyes. “I…guess. I guess.”

“Anything you want to do to me is fine,” Shinsou had said, tearing the blanket away from you and smoothing it out again, “But I want you to start thinking about something else we’ll try soon. I’m giving you the choice of what to do, since it’ll be a bit more intense.”

“Intense?”

“Ah.” Giving up, Shinsou had shaken his head and had lain down next to you. “I misspoke. Intimate would’ve probably been better.”

You’d sighed and flipped towards him. “Lay it on me.”

Shinsou had counted off on his fingers, starting with his pinkie to irritate you. “Skinny dipping. I’d ensure no one could walk in on us, and I wouldn’t look at you, if you didn’t want me to. We could play strip poker or variations thereof—and once again, we could play it in some way that I wouldn’t be able to see you if you didn’t want, but you’d get used to being—being less clothed in the presence of a man.”

“That’s assuming I’d lose.”

Shinsou had cracked a smile. “So it is. Or I could undress you, and I—I could wear a blindfold, or something, if you didn’t—”

“Do you have one handy?”

Shinsou had propped his chin on his fist. “Do you even have to ask?”

“Any other options?”

Here Shinsou had looked away, instead staring into the night sky. “I—I was considering, if you’d let me, touching your boobs as an option, but that felt like a level more intense than the others. More personal. And I’ve concluded you aren’t there yet. Or at the point at which you could try sitting on my lap to get me hard.”

“Hitoshi, you’re insane. You’re going at it from too many angles.”

“Nah,” Shinsou had said, tilting his head towards you, “I want you to be comfortable, however we do this.”)

Shinsou’s hot breath unfurled down your neck as he whispered, “Use me. In any way you want.”

You smacked him in the chest, and he winced, clutching the spot as he grinned at you. “That’s fair,” he said.

For a while, the back table housed only Hagakure, probably grinding on Ojiro’s lap, Ojiro, whose tail shot straight up and stayed there, and you and Shinsou, smushed together on the leather loveseat, talking in hushed tones, starting with when he was going to return your copy of Fire and Hemlock and somehow ending up at which pokemon the top pro-heroes would eat.

When the others settled around the table in a break from dancing, you low-key mourned the loss of the privacy you’d had with Shinsou; it had been kind of cool that in this deafening, crowded place that you and Shinsou had had a moment alone, even with a couple actively making out beside you. No one else could fit on the loveseat, but even with enough space elsewhere, some soulmate-bound couples still overlapped, like how Mina and Kirishima were squished together in one chintz armchair and how Jirou had her legs splayed over Yaoyorozu’s lap in the next folding chair over.

You zoned out for a while—everyone else was talking at once, anyway, so that gave you leave to consider if Hawks would have a preferred evolution of Pigeot to deep-fry. But you were snapped back into reality when Aoyama suggested that the group should play truth or dare.

“Fuck no,” said Sero, slapping a hand over Kaminari’s mouth, “How old are we? Where are we? Get your head out of your ass.”

“And we’ve otherwise been working our asses off doing the boring prep for this mission, Sero, and we’re supposed to be having fun tonight, anyway,” said Mina, her tongue darting out to lick the salt around the rim of her glass, “I think we should.”

“I don’t want—look, it always goes the same way,” said Sero, and he let his hand fall from Kaminari’s mouth but still gripped his shoulder in a tight threat. “It’s either you get dared to perform some fuckin’ gross or sexual act, or you have to tell everyone who you like. We’ve moved past primary school, so I’m not—”

“Then we just change the base rules.” Kaminari didn’t bother dodging Sero’s thwack to his head. “We make it sort of reversed. Where truth is the more dangerous one to pick, and dare is extremely low stakes. There’s super personal shit that no one needs to know that I’m dying to know about some of you.” Kaminari lowered his heart-shaped glasses and stared pointedly across the table at Iida, Uraraka, you, and Shinsou in turn.

Kaminari’s proposal assuaged most issues the table had, so it came down to you and Shinsou as the ones still not wanting to play.

“Too dangerous,” said Shinsou, leaning back with his arms folded behind his head, “There are things that are my business only.”

“Yeah,” you said, sucking in through your teeth, “I’m not—I’m not into this. Plus, I’m really tired already, and, like, if we have to play something, can’t we think of a better game to play? This is—this is so fucking cliché.”

“Never mind,” Shinsou said quickly, giving you a strange look and letting his arms fall to his lap as he sat up straight, “I desperately want to play truth or dare. In fact, I demand it.”

Laughing, Kaminari reached over the table for Midoriya’s drained beer bottle (having to wrestle it from his grasp) and cleared out a space for it in the middle of the table, while you shrunk down in your seat, wishing you’d brought a book. Because—the bottle was spun—it could keep landing on the same person, meaning more focus could be on a single person than in a turn-based version of the game.

With the bottle landing first on Todoroki, Kaminari pulled no punches once truth was chosen: “Of your three closest friends, would you fuck any of them?”

Contrary to everyone else, Todoroki hardly reacted, instead his brow furrowing in thought. “I’m so fortunate to have so many friends,” he said carefully, “I’m not quite certain who would consider themselves closest to me.”

Uraraka grinned. “Well, who would you consider the closest?”

“Gracious,” said Todoroki, blinking, “I’m very lucky. My friends are so good to me. I—”

“Is he dodging the question or genuinely being weird about it?” Kirishima asked.

“Oh,” said Todoroki, “Well. My answer would be yes, I suppose. It would be wonderful that they’d believe themselves close enough to me to consider asking.”

“You fascinate me,” said Mina, reaching over to pat him on the head, “I want to study you like a bug in a jar.”

“You wouldn’t initiate?” Sero asked over Todoroki’s spinning the bottle, and Todoroki shook his head. “Valid.”

When it landed on Uraraka, she chose dare. “Hm,” said Todoroki, “Low stakes. I…You are dared to rest your head on Midoriya’s shoulder.”

Nearly in his lap, Uraraka was already almost doing that, anyway, so she complied.

From then on, you wanted to melt into the cracks in the floor and evaporate, even though the bottle hadn’t landed on you. All of the questions weren’t being phrased in a way that could fit someone like you—all questions assumed everyone’s had sex already, that everyone has some sort of sordid, sexual history, and good God, it sounded like everyone present did, to an extent (except for, perhaps, Todoroki, whose answers only spurred more questions). Even if their only sexual partner were their soulmate, the picture was painted that everyone was doing what you considered, to put it mildly, risky.

The most bizarre place Kaminari has jerked off was in a sewer, while he was staking out a suspect, with Pro-Hero Manual not far down the path. Midoriya’s favourite sex positions had to be looked up by the rest of the table, so for a delightful moment while Midoriya glowed beet red, everyone else hunched over their phones. Mina has given head in the recording booth for Put Your Hands Up Radio (“Everything was turned off, guys—except for Eijiro.”). Jirou would rather orgasm during oral rather than actual intercourse, and out of on a beach, a plane, or in the bathroom of a high-end restaurant, Yaoyorozu would prefer to have sex on a beach, because—she added unnecessarily—she’ll never have sex on a plane or bathroom again. After hearing that Kaminari would kill to muzzle someone, you concluded that you may be living in a different reality than the rest of your friends, and then the bottle pointed towards you.

You didn’t want to play. You didn’t want to admit anything. You didn’t even know what they’d get out of you—besides the fact that you’re a big-ass virgin, you supposed, and that would only open the floor to an awkward soulmate explanation. “Dare,” you said, sighing.

Narrowing his eyes, Kaminari tilted his head. The only other dares so far had been Uraraka’s head-resting and Sero to hold hands with Iida, which they were still doing, hands on the table between their drinks (Iida had made them swop seats so that his dominant hand could be free). “Riiiiight. I dare you to sit in Shinsou’s lap.”

Do what.

Shinsou turned towards you, brow furrowed with a quirk of the corner of his mouth to check if you were okay with it, if you were comfortable, and you sighed again, your shoulders heaving. “I guess,” you said, and you started to shift over but halted mid-movement. “Sit in lap how? Sideways? Straddling? Other way I don’t know?”

Eyes flicking around the table before settling back on you, Shinsou opened his arms and said, “Sideways is fine. I’ll help you—and don’t worry; you’re not bothering me.”

Holding your breath under everyone’s gaze, you climbed into his lap, crawling across his legs and then flipping, your ass mostly on one of his thighs while your legs draped across his other leg and into your old seat, and—holy fuck, Shinsou’s thighs were so thick that you sat a little taller than he did; you could put your chin on top of his head if you really wanted to, oh, my God. What the fuck. Shinsou must have seen the incredulity in your expression, because he guided one of your arms around his shoulders, to fit more comfortably in the space, while he wrapped an arm around your hips to stabilise you, fingers lightly pressing at a belt loop of your jeans, and with his other hand, he held yours in your own lap.

Jesus fucking Christ. You’re not going to make it out alive.

You needed time to process this, but you were denied it; you had to ask a question to Uraraka, since the bottle had landed on her again, and so you popped out what the table groaned to be the lamest question of the night: “Who’s in your ideal celebrity threesome?”

“Huh.” Uraraka steepled her fingers together. “Togashi Yoshihiro, in his prime…and Hawks.”

Kirishima screwed up his face. “Who the hell is Togashi—”

“He’s the mangaka for Hunter x Hunter,” said Todoroki pointedly, before closing his lips around the straw in his mostly drained strawberry daquiri and making a strident suction sound against the glass.

Kirishima screwed up his face more. “I get that writing a shounen manga can be manly, but why else would you choose specifically—”

“Because he pulled Takeuchi Naoko, the mangaka for Sailor Moon, even with his filthy apartment, poor fashion choices, bad posture, and questionable hygiene. The dick must be insane, in a rat-boy sort of way,” Uraraka was saying, running her hands through Midoriya’s hair, “Plus, he’ll feel insecure in comparison to perpetually charismatic Hawks, so there will be some sort of pathetic, competitive air to the sexual encounter.”

And then Uraraka was spinning the bottle, thank God, so any involvement with you ended. Shinsou—he could probably hear your fucking heartbeat going crazy from being paid attention from everyone else in a sexual context—rubbed his thumb over the back of your hand, softly smiling up at you to calm you down, and something inside you caved. You had the impulse to curl into him, to close your eyes and press your mouth to his hairline, to ignore the rest of the group until it was time to go (Shinsou would keep you safe), but you couldn’t obey it, because the bottle pointed towards…you and Shinsou.

Squeezing your hand, Shinsou steeled himself (thighs flexing underneath you) and said, “That’s me. I don’t believe I’m in any position to complete a dare at the moment, so. Truth.”

“Oh, fabulous,” said Uraraka, clapping her hands once, “There’s so much I’ve been waiting to get out of you. What’s the most pertinent…hm.”

“Want some help?” asked Mina, leaning over Kirishima’s bicep and the armrest, holding her drink at a hazardous angle (Kirishima lifted it out of her hand to set it on the table when Mina leant further away).

After Mina had whispered in Uraraka’s ear for a minute, Uraraka returned her attention to Shinsou, biting the inside of her cheek to conceal her delight but practically beaming regardless. “What’s the most you’ve ever made someone come in one night?”

Shinsou’s eyebrows shot upward, his tongue flicking over his lower lip (and you tensed up. The hand at your hip squeezed it gently). “One night? Fourteen.”

“What the fuck.”

“That can’t be true. You’re fucking making that up.”

“With toys? With your quirk, right?”

“No quirk. Not really,” said Shinsou, bowing his head slightly, and he bit his lower lip, his teeth showing for a second when his lip curled in. “I happen to be very, very, very good with my mouth.”

Silence. In it, Shinsou briefly released your hand to spin the bottle himself, and he took it again as the bottle turned, threading his fingers through yours. Blankly, he bumped his forehead against your shoulder, like a cat, before a tired, half-grin stretched across his face. You returned it, fighting the urge to play with his hair.

But then your luck ran out for the next year or so. Perhaps your whole lifetime. For some reason, the bottle kept landing on you and/or Shinsou, and he kept speaking up to save you from answering. The relief and gratitude that flooded you each time Shinsou covered for you only made you wish you could do something for him, too—you could rent his favourite Everest documentary from the library again, get those bizarre sour jawbreakers from the Mom ’n’ Pop gas station in his home district…lie with him in your bed…play with his hair before he puts the mousse in…

What was his favourite position to give oral?

“Kneeling,” Shinsou said so quickly it was a bit startling, and he shifted underneath you, sitting forward. “Kneeling, with them on the edge of their seat, legs spread a bit too widely than what they’re comfortable with for them so that they feel exposed. They can’t touch me unless I let them, and I won’t. They have to ask permission to look.”

Okay, bucko, a follow-up of how you like to receive oral?

“I don’t, generally,” said Shinsou, tilting his head, “because if it’s about me, then my partner isn’t getting as much pleasure as they should be getting. But if they insist, it’s however they want to.”

No, idiot, this isn’t about your partners. This is about you.

“Fuck you. I have to be lying down, or close to it, because my knees tend to buckle if I come from oral.”

If your partner were going to send you a video, what could they do to make it turn you on the most?

“Oh, huh.” Shinsou shifted so that he could scratch the back of his head, and you moved your arm out of the way for the gesture. “First of all, I wouldn’t want my partner to send me anything like that. No nudes, or anything. Because that’s private. That’s intimate. That could get leaked or hacked, and really, her body would be for my eyes only,” said Shinsou, his eyes half-lidded, “In addition, odds are that any video wouldn’t live up to the real thing, so I wouldn’t want it. Just makes the ache worse. Besides, I’m the only one allowed to tease.”

You’re ridiculous. Fine, if the video would never be shared with anyone else, guaranteed, and it lived up to seeing them in person, what would that look like?

“Just my partner saying that she loves me, preferably after she’s just woken up. Sorry to disappoint, if you were expecting something kinkier.”

Spit or swallow?

“Offended that you have to ask.”

You were growing antsy—antsy on the cusp of hyperaware and jittery. Something about the night had gone stale, like you were at a high altitude without enough oxygen. Something about the way some people were reacting—Jirou’s controlled, stone-cold expression (pinched brows and shifting jaw to hint that it took focus to stay that way) paired with Yaoyorozu’s letting her hair down to hide her red-tipped ears, Mina’s constant, excited whispers alternating between Kirishima and Uraraka, Midoriya’s seeming lack of surprise to Shinsou’s answers while he peeled the label off of his fresh bottle. Were they acting like this because they wanted to contain themselves hearing it for the first time, or have any of them—any of them witnessed any of it? Shinsou had said that people you knew had enlisted him to dom for them, and…you didn’t know. Something about it didn’t feel right. Yes, these were your friends, and you loved them, but something about their seeing a part of Shinsou that you haven’t got under your skin. Your friends may love Shinsou, but you love him more.

“Hey, babe,” Shinsou said under his breath, while the bottle spun again, “I need you to let up a little, okay? You’re getting a little too tight.”

You looked down at Shinsou and shook yourself; you’d unconsciously been constricting your arm around the back of his neck, pulling his face near your boobs. You relaxed your arm for him to lean back.

“I also—” He set his hand on your knee, stilling it (how long have you been jostling it?). “—need you to stop fidgeting, if you don’t mind.”

The bottle was slowing, but Kaminari missed it entirely to stare over his martini glass at Shinsou’s mouth. With a glint of pale pink club lighting flashing over Kaminari as his eyes dropped to Shinsou’s chest, you were pierced with an icicle-cold awareness of the bulge under your thigh you’ve been too nervous to acknowledge, and a full-bodied shiver swept through you.

You pulled away from Shinsou, frowning down at him. “I do mind, actually. Come with me somewhere?”

“Of course,” said Shinsou, and he helped you off of his lap, ignoring the bottle and the protests of your friends. You couldn’t look back at him, lest you lose your nerve, but you grabbed his hand and led him through the club, shoes sticking on the beer-soaked floor, weaving through dancers and bar patrons until you ended up in some empty, mildewed corridor with one flickering, fluorescent light.

You spun on your heel, grit grinding under your shoe. You had no plan, but what came out of your mouth, pulled from somewhere deep in your gut, sounded right. “I need you to bite me.”

Shinsou blinked in time with the light flickering. “I’m sorry?”

“A love bite. A hickey, or whatever,” you said, and, taking his hands, you placed them on your own shoulders and made him push you against the wall, with the crackly dust under peeling wallpaper shook onto your sleeve even from the slight impact. “The next step you wanted me to think about. I choose this.”

“Oh.” Glowering towards the floor, Shinsou stuck his hands in his pockets, his mind somewhere else, but he recovered, face softening, and took a step closer to you. “All right,” he said cautiously, fiddling with his jacket zipper, “Is there—where do you want it?”

You were about to say the top of your left boob, since the low cut of your shirt allowed it, but an intrusive thought struck you, bringing to the surface the memory of Shinsou’s voice over the phone: I like to take advantage of the vulnerability of an exposed neck.

When you raised a finger over the pulse point on your neck, Shinsou froze, stilling all movement. Even the rise and fall of his chest halted for a moment. After a long beat, he snapped out of his distant haze, his Adam’s apple dipping as he swallowed. “Got it. I can do that.”

When Shinsou put his hands on your waist, you understood why people fight wars over people like him. Light and hesitant at first, his hands fell into their full weight at your silent encouragement, encompassing so much more of you than you’d thought, steadying you against the wall and back in reality. Drumming his fingers on your waist, Shinsou ducked his head, shot you a sliver of a smile, and pressed his lips to your neck.

His lips were cold. But Shinsou always ran cold, you told yourself, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that this dry, close-mouthed kiss to your neck was—oh. His lips parted (smoothly and a bit stickily; you’d seen him re-apply his coconut-pear beeswax chapstick at the bar), pressing more fervently against your neck as his tongue made the first sweep over your skin. He curved the tip of his tongue for the second lap, spreading more saliva over the spot, and at his first suck, your hands flew up to grip his biceps. You felt his mouth curl into a smirk and his quiet hum, and you, mildly embarrassed, slid your hands from his arms up around his neck, one of them sliding into his hair to press him further into your neck—he broke off to laugh under his breath, a heated huff brushing over the wet spot on your neck.

“You okay?” he asked, adjusting hold on your waist, one hand easing down to the small of your back and inching upwards between your shirt and your coat, his whole, flattened hand weighing down and warming you.

“I’m fine,” you said, keeping his head tucked in your neck so that he couldn’t see whatever embarrassing face you were making, “Keep going?”

“I’m gonna have to use my teeth now. Just a warning,” said Shinsou, and at your tap on the back of his head, he returned his mouth to your neck and sucked.

You inhaled sharply and gripped the back of his collar, crumpling it, while his tongue laved over the spot between sucks, hot and cold, pressure and release, and Shinsou pulled you tightly against him, his jacket zipper cool through the fabric of your shirt. He was lightly nibbling, gentle and barely there, between harsh sucks, the spot aching and raw, and he bared more of his teeth, letting the length of a few brush against you as an alert—and he sank his teeth into your skin, sucking, lips smushed to the tenderer wet insides.

“Holy shit, Hitoshi.”

When he pulled back, Shinsou licked his lips, his eyes glued to the spot on your neck. He swiped the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “Looks good.”

“That fucking hurt.” Releasing him, you ran your fingers over the spot, unable to tell any different aside from moisture and the slightest swell.

Shinsou raised an eyebrow and stuffed his hands in his pockets again. “It is a bite. Bites tend to—”

“Oh, shut up.” You fussed with the collars of your shirt and coat, wanting to frame the bite. “Help me out?”

Shinsou’s crooked grin returned. “You want it on display?” He adjusted your lapels for you. “Someone’s cheeky. Don’t tell me you were—”

“Don’t say it, fucker,” you said, deliberately averting your gaze to stare at the fluorescent light.

It took you the whole process of Shinsou arranging your shirt and coat, the shared grins, the navigating back through the sweaty throng, leading him by the hand, his cool one in yours, beat to some bubble-pop song pulsing in your ears and chest, and plopping back onto the loveseat at the group table to realise two things: one, that he’d been himself throughout that whole thing. He’d been joking, reacting like your friend instead of your dom. Like Hitoshi instead of that Shinsou you didn’t know. The dom persona had slipped away in a flash, or it hadn’t even entered the equation. So quick a transition, from what he’d been showing to the group to how he behaved around you. Had he noticed? Was it intentional?

And two: you really wanted to mark him back.

***

You dangled your legs off of 3-B’s dormitory roof, full of self-loathing and nervous energy. Stressed enough to fight the urge to exfoliate with a cheese grater all the way down to the bone.

The hickey had worked. No one had said a word about you or Shinsou the rest of the game. In fact, as soon as you got back, the game ended within a turn. Kaminari had opened his mouth, probably to ask where you’d been, but his eyes fell to your neck, and he shut his mouth, turning his attention to Sero and clamping his hand over Sero’s and Iida’s. The rest of your friends had behaved similarly, acting like nothing was wrong. It’d given you immense satisfaction, and you’d grinned into your refill of pink lemonade; you hadn’t noticed until the end of the night that Shinsou’s arm had been around you, resting in a divot in the leather on the back of the loveseat, running behind your shoulders. Felt good to be special.

Gritting your teeth, you clenched the edge of the roof, knuckles showing. Why it felt so good—you didn’t want to put it into words. If you did, that made it real.

Instead, you’d recruited Monoma to help you in a last-ditch effort to find your soulmate. You’ve been going through your old shit from freshman year, trying to find any record of someone calling you an ice princess. Or a bitch, or something along those lines. Since Monoma’s better at tech stuff, he’s been combing through everyone’s social media dated from the first semester at U.A., searching for any pictures of you or anything that could be vague-posting. You’ve even bothered Aizawa for the old seating chart and records of some of the earliest group exercises, though those weren’t appearing fruitful, either.

Mirio was watching Eri today, so Monoma and you were camping out on B’s rooftop, spreading out the blanket you and Shinsou usually used, with your laptops and old notebooks strewn across it. Monoma was currently taking a short break to make popcorn, so he’d be back in a few minutes.

It wasn’t enough. But you’ve involved another person, so you might as well see it through—but you wanted to quit looking. Fuck it if your memory were faulty and that you couldn’t remember who said your words to you. They didn’t matter.

(Fuck, no, don’t allow yourself to put it into words.)

([You can’t stop what’s already happening. You can’t kill a thought once it’s made its home in your head.])

(Yeah, so shut the fuck up. Don’t think it. Distract yourself. Keep searching for your—)

([—soulmate, whom you didn’t care to meet, because you had feelings for somebody else.])

***

YOU

hey y’know that page where ua students can submit anonymous confessions???

YOU

i found me in a post. in freshman year and everything

YOU

says that i’m a “frigid bitch who needs to pull the column outta [my] ass”

MONOMA 🔇🎭

oh lolololol don’t worry about that one

YOU

???

MONOMA 🔇🎭

I submitted that lol

YOU

drop your location right now so that i can come rip you to shreds

***

Once you acknowledged them, your feelings peeled you like a grape. No, more like—more like someone’s scraping away the outside of a pineapple with their fingernails, juice occasionally getting through, but mostly just a mess of spikes and sticky fingers, with the conclusion that it would’ve been easier to smash the damn thing.

Bad. Bad feeling. Evil, even. Shinsou trusted you, as a friend, and you’ve gone and put him in the romance zone. You’ve put him in a category he wouldn’t want to be in. Bad and evil and diabolical. Life-ruining. Relationship-ruining. You might lose him, and that would snap you in half like a raw carrot.

“Baby, you’re just staring at the bell peppers,” said Shinsou, leaning on the shopping cart, jolting you out of your reverie, “Pick two and c’mon. Everyone else has left the produce section; they’re over towards seafood.”

“Th—thanks,” you said, shakily accepting the plastic bag Shinsou handed you, but you made no move towards the bell peppers. “Why don’t you catch up? I can finish here.” And maybe process your thoughts enough to make a decision.

Shinsou smiled, standing upright to stretch his arms above his head. “Nah. What else do we need over here? I can get it for you.” Good God. His shirt rode up just enough to reveal a dark, violet line of hair trailing upwards, a soft line suggesting abs framing it, a thick waistband of a popular brand of boxers peeking out of his plaid pants. Stomach as salvation. Your eyes bulged and glazed over, but you shook yourself out of it.

“Uh,” you said intelligently, “Potatoes. Those mad small ones.” You made a circle with your middle finger and thumb as a measure. “Around this size.”

“Gotcha,” said Shinsou, already spinning around to scan the produce, “They come in purple; is it cool if we use those?”

“Of course,” you said, miles away somewhere, freezing and back in bed underneath a nest of blankets, with Shinsou tucked in next to you, his arms around you with his mouth to the back of your neck.

Oh, you’re fucked fucked.

You normally took normal bell peppers and normally put them into the plastic bag, like a normal person, and twisted it normally to seal them in, setting the bag in the toddler seat of the cart in a normal way. You’re good. You’re fine.

(How do you act around him? Is this how you typically behave around Shinsou?)

You have questions about his behaviour, too. Because you’ve looked back on your sessions with him, and the further they’ve gone along, the less stern the dom act has been. He’s been more and more like how he normally behaves around you, just with the addition of physical contact. Have you been making him be a poor dom, because he’s so used to you? He might not even realise that he’s slipping. Subconsciously, his behaviour has made it feel real to you, instead of as a service he does professionally, because he’s just been…himself.

You’re breaking that rule he establishes with other clients, which was not to develop feelings. He didn’t have this rule with you, but he’ll probably stop the sessions if he finds out.

You wanted Shinsou, just as he was. Yes, the dom persona was hot, but it was essentially just a door into your true feelings and wanting to touch him for real. If his dom act were slipping in your sessions, you’ll take it—it’s probably the closest you’ll ever have to being truly intimate and romantic with him without ruining your friendship.

Your heart skittered at the sight of Shinsou returning to the cart, bag of tiny, purple potatoes large enough to share with the class heaved in both arms, and you joined in his laughter at the pathetic, tinny noise he’d made lugging the bag into the cart. Shinsou commandeered pushing the cart from you, edging you off of the handle, but when you wouldn’t let up, he kissed your cheek. Frozen, you let him take the cart from you, and he hastily proceeded towards seafood, not looking back.

To keep the sessions going, you’d have to pretend you’re still looking for your soulmate.

The sessions could occur more frequently if you pretended the game of truth or dare made you feel like you’re falling behind.

***

“You’re an idiot.”

“Thanks, Neito. Care to offer any solutions?”

“No,” Monoma said, bending back over his laptop, “but I’ll start searching for other Shinsou Hitoshis so that you can kick their asses.”

You gestured for him to keep it down, jerking your head in Eri’s direction. She was watching Monoma’s Japanese-dubbed, extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, holding her unicorn-kitten doll in her lap, sitting atop the booster seat cushion for her spot on Aizawa’s couch. “If Aizawa-sensei hears Eri swearing, he’ll blame us.”

“Not my—” He cut himself off, wincing. “You’re right. I’ll keep the cursing to a minimum. But if you murder any other Shinsou Hitoshis that exist, then, de facto, he’ll no longer have a soulmate, and you can get with him.”

You sighed, sinking into one of Aizawa’s worn armchairs. “I’m not gonna resort to violence.”

Pursing his lips, Monoma shut his laptop for dramatic effect. “But you’ll resort to compromising your morals and fucking him.”

“Keep quiet,” you said, swatting at Monoma and missing, “I’m not gonna—how else am I—”

“I just don’t think you should.”

“I’m not gonna have—have sex with…”

Monoma sucked in through his teeth, reaching into his bag of trail mix. “You’re not emotionally ready,” he said, shaking his head, “If you added sex to the stuff you’re going through right now, you’d explode.”

“I know that,” you said, slumping down in your seat. You shot a mournful look towards Monoma, and you held out your hand for trail mix. “I…I don’t wanna have sex at this point in my life. I just don’t think it’s—I want to do it eventually, yeah. But not right now. I’m tired.”

He tilted the bag into your hand, shaking some out. “I understand. Why don’t you say fuck the soulmate shit and be with Shinsou regardless?”

“I don’t wanna take any shred of happiness from him,” you said, crunching, “If he has a chance at happiness with his soulmate, he deserves it.” You swallowed thickly. “I’m guilty as hell for wasting his time like this, but I admit that I’m selfish. I want him all to myself.” You picked through the mix you had in your palm. “I feel horrible about it,” you said softly, “but if I want to keep his attention in these sessions, I think I have to up the ante, at least a little.”

Grimacing, Monoma shoved his hand in the bag of trail mix. “Who put that in your head?”

***

YOU

want to try sexting????

HITOSHI 💜🍡

no <3

***

Against Monoma’s advice, you were going to make a move on Shinsou under the false pretences of soulmate preparation. Which, you supposed, wasn’t too different from what you’d been doing, but now you were deceiving him.

Shinsou could always notice when you were nervous or insincere in person, so you resolved to do it over the phone. Building up the courage to call him took half an hour of staring at your phone, face down on your bedspread, the whole decision-making process taking longer than usual, because the person you’d usually consult for advice was the very person you were going to call.

When you finally unlocked your phone and pressed the call button on his contact, your fingers darted to turn on the speaker, and you tossed your phone towards the foot of your bed, skibbling backwards away from it as if it were a slippery lizard you’d found in your sheets.

Six trills of the dial tone later, Shinsou answered, fumbling his phone, by the sound of it, and out of breath. “Hello?”

God, his panting reverberating throughout your dorm room made your heart race, and you needed to be in control for what you’re about to say. You scrambled to pick up your phone to switch off the speaker and hold it to your ear. “Hi, Hitoshi.”

“Yeah, hi.” With his rumbly, winded voice low in your ear, it was as if he were standing next to you, instead of near a busy street, judging by the rush of cars passing in the background and the skid of tires. “What’s up?”

Okay. You are strong and brave, and you can do this. You can and will be this ridiculous man’s personal whore in the name of love. “Hitoshi,” you said, letting a whine creep into your voice, “When are you coming home? I need you.” Hopefully, he couldn’t hear your cringe when you said those things.

You could, however, hear his frown when he spoke. “I,” he said, pausing, and you could easily picture the crease between his eyebrows, “I’ll be home soon. I’m out on my bike. What’s the matter? Are you hurt?”

“A little. I don’t know quite what’s wrong with me, but I really, really miss you, so much, and I need you to come home now so that I—fuck.” You took a slow, controlled breath, and when you came back down, words that weren’t your own spilled out of your mouth, pulled from somewhere deep inside you—as if they were a surfacing whale carcass from the Mariana Trench of your stomach (the loose script Monoma had helped you draft lay forgotten). “’Toshi, I’ll be real with you. I need something in my mouth. I need your strong hands spreading my thighs. I need your mouth on my boobs, licking and sucking up until you can bite the side of my neck. I need to watch you touch yourself, to see how you make yourself feel good and learn how I can do the same. It’s a side of you I don’t know. It’s a side you haven’t let me in. I need to know what all you’re capable of, because I know you’re capable of teaching me, of corrupting me, and I’ve never wanted anything more.”

Three cars honked in quick succession in the background while Shinsou stayed silent. “Who put you up to this.”

“Nobody. No one can tell me what I want. And I want all of you.”

“Bullshit. That’s fucking bullshit. Tell me who’s been pressuring you to have sex. You wouldn’t want this with me otherwise.” Shinsou wasn’t panting anymore. His voice was stony and flat.

“Is it that hard to believe that I want you of my own volition?” you asked, and you covered yourself with your throw blanket, burrowing out of sight, even though he’s halfway across town. “Are you saying I’m not capable of making this decision?”

“No,” Shinsou said, “I simply don’t think you would. It’s—it doesn’t line up with what I know about you.”

That’s fine. That’s why you have a fake motive. “I’m tired of being so far behind the rest of our friends. It makes me feel so small and immature, hearing them talk about things I haven’t experienced, and the game we played at the club proved how far beyond me they are.” You swopped your phone to your other ear so that you could lie down on your preferred side, and you snuggled into one of your stuffed animals. “I—I don’t want my soulmate to be embarrassed by me or unsatisfied with what I can do. I just want to be good enough. You’re my lifeline, Hitoshi. You can give me what I can’t give myself.”

“Fuck off with that. Soulmates aren’t—hold on. My helmet’s getting in the way.” Rustling and the click of a strap, and Shinsou’s voice came in more clearly—and he overenunciated each syllable, signalling that he was growing livid. “Soulmates aren’t all about sex. Life isn’t all about sex. I’ve been holding back the entire time we’ve been dealing with this soulmate shit, because telling you what I really think only bounces the fuck off your stubborn ass: I honestly think what you’ve been doing with me in the name of your soulmate is fuckin’ psychotic. Everyone lives a different timeline; there’s no standard for when a so-called life event is supposed to happen, if it happens at all,” said Shinsou, “You can graduate university at 90 and have your first kiss at 45 and learn to ride a bike when you’re 23. It’s fine if you never check all the boxes. You’ve never been behind. You are your own, on your own path, at your own pace. So, please, don’t rush into love, baby.”

Baby. He called you baby. He’d done it before, but now, you craved it. You cherished it. You could pretend it was real. “If you really thought it was a bad idea,” you said, eyes fluttering shut, entertaining the thought of Shinsou being there with you, spooning you and calling you baby softly in your ear, “why—why did you go along with it? Why did you offer?”

Shinsou huffed into the phone, and the sound was familiar enough for you to picture his expression as he did it: pursed lips, scrunched nose, dark eyes. “Because otherwise, you might have gone to someone who might hurt you. Because when some people hear that there’s a virgin in a vulnerable position, depending on them, they can lose sight of the person in front of them, instead fetishizing the corruption of virginity, because—because do you know how much the idea of teaching a virgin how to love you and only you drips with sexuality? People go crazy, sweetheart. Virginity can—it can attract the wrong people, and it can repulse the wrong people. You shouldn’t be with anyone who sees something like that as a problem.”

God, he’s so nice. He’s so compassionate. You were arguing with Shinsou over, essentially, his decision to be kind to you. What a dependable fucker. Why can’t he be your soulmate? “So, you’ve been holding back from telling me all of this. Anything else you’ve been holding back? Any other information, or—or in how you’ve been touching me. Are you one of those virginity fetishists, Hitoshi? Have you wanted to touch more of me?”

“I’m not reducing you to a fetish, clearly, and—and you belong to someone else,” said Shinsou, sounding like he was gritting his teeth, “If I were your soulmate, then I would allow myself to want more from you. But I’d only do it if you wanted it—for real, not whatever you’re doing now—because I’m not a selfish bitch.” Each word sounded like it had to fished out of his stomach with a barbed hook. “I can fucking wait for you, because I wouldn’t ever want you to be fucking scared around me for any reason, and I’ll keep waiting. I don’t mind. You’ve got the rest of your goddamn life for all of this.”

Welp. Shinsou was more upset than you meant for him to be, but perhaps this conversation would frustrate him enough to kiss and suck at your neck during a movie when he returned. “Then come home and touch me, Hitoshi. Fucking do it. I want you to. Stop holding back.”

“No. No, I won’t. I—something’s up with you. You’re not acting like yourself, and—and it’s pissing me off. You don’t know what you’re asking for, and you can’t really mean it. You’d never want me. You’re being a goddamn brat,” he said, and you could picture him running a hand back through his hair, mouth twitching, scowling, “Is that what this is? Does my precious baby girl wanna be punished? Seems like you want something drastic. I can give you that. Listen up: I’m about halfway through my bike route. Go to my room. In my bedside table, there’s a toy I’ve chosen for you. Originally, it was gonna be used months down the line, but since someone can’t watch that bratty mouth of hers—when I get back to the school, I’d better find you fucking yourself with it.”

“Wait, what?” You snapped upright, the blanket pooling around your waist.

“You heard me, you lying little minx. I’m not going to lift a finger for this punishment. You’re doing it all by yourself.”

What the fuck. “Why are you being so mean?”

“Why? Are you getting wet?” Shinsou scoffed into the speaker. “Key’s in the usual place. Get to it,” Shinsou said, and he hung up.

Numbly, you lowered your phone to your lap, staring as the screen returned to your home wallpaper.

Uh. That’s. That’s a bit more extreme than kissing your neck. You supposed…you supposed that you should do what he said, lest he get even angrier.

You went to his dorm. The fake cactus you’d given him rested on the windowsill, bathed in sunlight, and after a quick check to the soil—moist—you permitted yourself a smile. You dropped it when you opened the top drawer of his bedside table, but you hid the toy under your shirt and dashed back to your room before you or anyone else could get a good look at it.

Locking the door behind you, you pulled the toy out from underneath your shirt. New in the package, so that alleviated any worries about sabotage. You cut it open, and silicone cock dropped into your lap. It’s a pale blue, almost translucent thing, and it’s five and a half inches, according to the packaging. For a moment, you were insulted at the size, because didn’t Shinsou think you could take something bigger? But then you remembered that you and what pussy would be taking it, so. That’s fair. There doesn’t seem to be anything special about it—no suction or vibration or anything. Just a fake dick.

How do you even prepare for this? You changed out of your pants into a semi-short skirt, deciding you still wanted to be somewhat covered, and you tossed your underwear to the foot of your bed. While you were laying down a towel, you briefly considered if you should put on that virgin English song by Madonna. Not English English, but—wait, was Madonna from England? Or another English-speaking country?

You’ve masturbated before, of course; you’re not an idiot, but you’ve never—you sighed, cringing at the five and a half inches—taken something this long or wide inside you (which aspect would be more trouble?). Lying on your bed atop the towel, you held the dildo up to the light, blue specks of glitter shining through. You parted your legs and rubbed the tip through your folds, completely bone-dry, feeling inadequate and ashamed that you couldn’t get turned on, worried about Shinsou and what was going through his mind, and Madonna was from America, from a place called Bay City in the state of Michigan but was raised around Detroit, and you couldn’t focus on getting aroused or anything, so though you were circling your clit, it wasn’t doing anything for you, and the tip of the dildo could barely make it inside you, not even passing the first ring of muscle. Using the head, you gathered what slickness you could, even teasing and prodding your clit with the rubbery material before trying to work the head past the first, tense ring, but the stretch of it burned, entrance strained and stinging, while your feet slid against the towel and blanket, trying to give you extra traction to get it in—and it slipped out of you entirely, the head bouncing as it flopped to lie flat on the towel between your legs. Jaw clenched and eyes watering, you were flooded with a hot rush of embarrassment. If you can’t take this, how would you ever take Shinsou’s cock?

Time passed without your noticing, but it felt like no time at all before you could feel yourself drying out, even though you were never that wet to begin with. Collapsing back and staring at the ceiling, you took a deep breath and smoothed down your skirt, wanting nothing more than to go back to before you made the phone call, but you’ve dug your own bed, so now you have to grave/lie in it.

But you couldn’t get it inside you.

You fished the dildo out from underneath you, and to your surprise, the cockhead had turned a light lilac at the wet heat between your legs, and it was slowly fading back into blue. Okay. You got it. Another phone call would further your cause. Dread building, you called him again, and he picked up after a single ring, quiet. “Hitoshi?”

“Yeah?”

A short reprieve of relief passed through you at his calm inflection, but it left when you braced yourself for what you had to say. “I—” Goddammit, steam would be coming out of your ears if you grew the tiniest iota more embarrassed. “I can’t get it in.”

Though only a few painful, prolonged seconds elapsed, the silence that followed felt long enough for you to have listened to Madonna’s entire discography. Eventually, a careful, resigned-sounding Shinsou said, “Would you like me to give you instructions over the phone, or do you want me to come over?”

You nodded, even though he couldn’t see, and said in a small voice, “I think you should come over.”

“Right,” he said, “Give me three minutes.”

Two minutes later, you were opening your door for him. Freshly showered with damp, partially fluffed hair (he must not have put in his mousse yet), Shinsou rushed to hug you before you could lift your hand off the doorknob, his muscular, still wet-warm arms wrapping around you with great fervent, pinning your own arms to your sides, and he tucked his chin into the crook of your neck, mouth half on your shirt and half on your skin.

“Oh, baby,” he said, his nose scrunching against you while he smushed you against him, getting your own shirt damp, “You don’t have to do any of this. I’m so, so sorry. I was inexcusably angry, and I didn’t—I leant into hard dom mode because I froze up and didn’t know how to react, and being a hard dom comes easily for me. You didn’t have to—I was terrified. I’m sorry.”

“No, I—I wanted to be good for you. I wanted to be so good,” you said, and Shinsou pulled back enough to look at you, his hands on your waist (!!!), and he gasped softly when he caught your drying tear lines. “Because I was being unfair to you. Being a brat. Pushing you.” You sniffed, closing your eyes as Shinsou cupped your face, his thumb brushing away a fresh tear. Two more ran down your face before you managed to get out, “Help me make it fit?”

Shinsou avoided your eyes by moving to your bed while retrieving the small, squeeze bottle of lube from his back pocket. You winced when he picked up the dildo, since the head was still slick and purple, and he twisted it around, looking it over, while he sat on your bed against the wall, legs outstretched across your bed. “I see you didn’t get very far.”

“Shut up; it’s dried off,” you said, one knee on your bed, wrinkling the towel, “And so what if I’ve got a tiny vagina. It means you can indulge in any size kink shit you have going on with your massive, monster dong.”

“Don’t fucking say it like that,” Shinsou said, laughing a bit but refusing to meet your eyes, and he patted his thigh for you to sit. “You probably didn’t warm yourself up well enough.”

Good. Good. So far, it had been unfolding comfortably, like an average hangout, ish, but when you swung your leg over Shinsou’s lap to straddle him, everything became much realer. Heavier. Both of you tensed up, with you hovering above his lap, really, instead of putting your weight on it, and when your skirt rose up a hair, you flattened it back down. “Warm me up, then.”

The shock in Shinsou’s widened eyes reflected your own. Where had that come from? “I don’t think I should,” he said, his fists bunched in your bedding.

“Hitoshi,” you said, shifting farther up his hips but still hovering, “I want you to be the one to stretch me out.” You did a very good impression of a completely calm, normal person as you held up the dildo. “Should I—should I lick it first, or something? To make it easier?”

Shinsou made a noise that sounded like a combination of coughing and choking. “No, uh. Natural—natural lubrication. Would be best. First,” he was saying as you guided his cold, trembling hands to your thighs, “Let’s. Let’s try that. First. If that’s okay.” His touch was so light that you barely felt it, so you pressed down on his hands, his fingertips indenting in your skin, and you nodded, letting him know it was okay. Watchful for your approval, he hesitantly smoothed long strokes down your thighs.

“That’s fine. It’s—it’s what I called you over for,” you said, losing brain cells when you noticed how much of your thighs Shinsou’s large hands could hold, “Touch me? I trust you.”

“Okay. Okay. I’ll.” He swallowed visibly, spit audible. “I’ll keep your skirt down so that you don’t have to show me anything; you’ll be safe. I won’t—I won’t take advantage of you. You’re safe with me. Why don’t you—” He cleared his throat. “Why don’t you put your hands on my shoulders to steady yourself?”

Going a step further, you wrapped your arms around his neck and leant in, holding him close, shoving your nose in his neck, getting struck with some sort of fruity scent (pears?), and arching up as an afterthought to give him better access, your skirt riding up to reveal just the slightest curve of your ass.

Shinsou rubbed your thighs twice more, the second time allowing his fingertips to dip under the edge of your skirt before running back down your thighs. He then slowly drew his shaking hands up in parallel all the way up to your hips, his fingertips pressing into the swell of your ass and his thumbs sliding into the line where your thighs met your—

“Holy shit,” said Shinsou, snapping his hands back as if he’d been scalded, “You’re—you’re not wearing anything.”

You clenched around nothing at the crack in his voice. You were about to ask him if he typically wore his underwear while masturbating, but you found that you couldn’t get your mouth to work.

“Hold on,” Shinsou was saying, and you leant back, dragging your arms from around his neck to rest on his shoulders, “I need a minute.” He closed his eyes, pressing his thumb and index fingers against them, biting his lip, clonking his head back against the wall.

Saliva building in your mouth and thighs about to give out, you eased your weight onto Shinsou’s lap—and his breath hitched the moment your bare cunt pushed against his cock, achingly hard and bulging in his sweats.

“Good Lord, have mercy,” said Shinsou, opening his eyes to half-lidded and dragging his hand down his face, a flash of alarm reaching his eyes when his hips involuntarily bucked up into yours (probably at the wet gush that had dripped onto him). The movement had shot arousal from your clit all the way up to the back of your throat, so you tried to roll your hips against him, mimicking his motions. Shinsou stopped you, his hands shooting to your thighs to still them. “No, you don’t—you don’t have to do that,” he said, breathing hard, “I am honoured you’d even let me touch you.”

Honoured? You scowled when Shinsou buried his face in his hands, because you’ve had enough of his casual comments here and there that he’s not worthwhile. That he’s not worth loving. That no one would ever want him. Ha, as if it were possible you couldn’t want him. Shinsou has always looked at you with a tenderness that ached. He knew you and valued you and saw you, just as you truly were, and didn’t ask for anything more. How could you ever love anyone else?

From this angle, the sag of his sleeve revealed the final syllable of his name written on his wrist.

So, you fucking did it. You grabbed his wrists to move his hands out of the way and kissed Shinsou. It was probably a bad, desperate kiss, since you didn’t know what you were doing (probably too firm?), but the way Shinsou sighed into it made up for the wave of insecurity. The moment when his shoulders slackened, you celebrated in your head, relishing how his cold, coconut-pear lips were just warming up, but Shinsou shuddered and pulled away, pushing at your shoulders.

“What are you doing? Weren’t you saving that for your soulmate?” asked Shinsou, spluttering and panicked, “It’s just me. You wasted it on me.”

“I didn’t waste it. There is nothing just about you, Hitoshi. Listen, I—I don’t want things to change, but at the same time, I do. I’ve decided I don’t fucking care about my stupid, fucking soulmate. I don’t fuck with him. I want you.” You removed his hands from your shoulders to grasp both of them, closing some of the distance he’d creating by scooting nearer to him—cracking a smile at the way his dick twitched when you inadvertently grinded on him. “I think I always have. You are lovable and witty and kind; you look at me and handle me with gentleness to the extreme. I will never connect with anyone like the way we do. No one is like you, Hitoshi.”

His hair was fluffing back up, and based on his expression, if you didn’t know any better, you’d think he was being electrocuted. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

“My soulmate is probably a bastard, anyway,” you said, jerking your head to the side, “and your soulmate—I can’t stand the thought of losing you. I want to be the closest to you forever, or as long as you’ll have me. It terrifies me that someone else could get between us. I want you to take all my firsts; I want you to be the only one who ever touches me—”

“Fuckin’ hell,” Shinsou was saying, muffled behind the fist he’d brought to his mouth, the tips of his ears flaming red, “Baby, please don’t say things like that to me. You’ll give me hope.”

You shook your head. “I’m sorry for ruining our friendship like this, but I’m in love with you. I love you. I always have, without even knowing. And I always fucking will, even if some bastard soulmate shows up someday. I choose you. You’re what I want, every day for the rest of my life, and I wanna be yours.”

Shinsou sighed, shoulders heaving as he embraced you, holding you tightly. “Don’t worry about ruining our friendship; I did that already. I got caught in my own damn capture weapon the day Tainted Love attacked. I could’ve stopped her if I hadn’t. I could’ve prevented all of this. We could have kept going, keeping a tender distance, so neither of us would be…burdened.”

“Fuck you and your conception of being a burden—”

“And I have a hunch who your soulmate is,” said Shinsou, deflated as he pulled away.

You blinked. “You what?”

“I’m evil and sinister and foul for keeping it from you. But I—I talked to Tainted Love. Got some help. I think I know.”

“I don’t need to know,” you said, lifting your hand to hold his cheek, and his eyes fluttered shut, his light purple lashes contrasting against his skin.

Shinsou leant into your palm, looking like the world had been taken off his shoulders, but he furrowed his brow and opened his eyes, his jaw shifting. “I’m not going to tell you how I feel until you know who it is.”

“Hitoshi,” you said, grinning weakly, “I’m pretty sure I already know how you feel.”

Shinsou took your hand, sliding it off his face and held it palm up, and he traced over the lines with his middle and ring fingers. “I don’t think I should tell you until you know your soulmate.”

“Fine, then. Enlighten me.”

“You sure? I’m evil and sinister and foul,” Shinsou said again, dodging when you moved to flick his forehead for debasing himself, “and I’m about to get even worse.” He ran his tongue over his lower lip, eyes flicking to yours. “There’s one way to figure it out for certain. Do you trust me?”

“I tried to impale myself on a fake cock for you. What do you think?”

Shinsou laughed, finally, easing into his crooked grin, turning a sad sort of bittersweet at the last second. “Remember the first time we met.”

It’s as if a ghostly hand was penetrating your mind, tracing back and back and back, through filing cabinets of memories, farther back than you could’ve reached yourself, exhuming parts of your past you’d forgotten that flashed by in hazy slideshows of photographs as it thumbed through manilla folders. When the hand appeared to startle in revelation, it slithered a shoddy file from its misplaced location, shoved sideways along the drawer vaguely labelled to be first semester, freshman year. When the hand was joined by its pair, you realised they were your own, and when you opened the file, you were plunged into the memory, set to relive it exactly.

God, you’re going to be late. You’re never late, and this way, Aizawa was going to get a bad impression of you and your standards. It’s not your fault that this follow-up to the Sports Festival was scheduled at the ass-crack of dawn, but—and you sucked in the morning air through your teeth, pulling your collar up to protect you from the wind—it was, admittedly, your fault that you’d stayed up late with Asui and Jirou. It’d been like a sleepover, almost, and you were loving the people your classmates were turning out to be.

What was this meeting for, anyway? All of the Sports Festival participants were invited, so it must be some sort of practical evaluation of your performances. Maybe how you can improve. But why did it have to be before school? Aizawa was crazy.

You skidded to a stop in front of the gym and swung open the door, and it creaked so loudly that fucking everybody stopped what they were doing to stare at you. Smiling nervously, you took a step inside.

Yamada shot you finger guns from his place atop a lump in a yellow sleeping bag. “WAY TO MAKE AN ENTRANCE! YOU’RE SO LATE, AND WE COULDN’T START WITHOUT YOU, SINCE WE’RE REVIEWING THE EVENTS IN ORDER! WE HAD TO GO AROUND AND SHARE FUN FACTS ABOUT OURSELVES!”

“I’m so sorry.” Any excuse you would’ve made wouldn’t’ve made up for your classmates’ suffering, so you didn’t offer one.

You scrambled to the back of the group, hunching in on yourself, and as soon as you found a place, you heard a scoff.

“Looks like the ice princess finally decided to grace us with her presence.”

Your jaw dropped, and you turned to face some purple, troll-haired bitch with bags under his eyes. Ah. You knew this guy. He’d scoped out Class A before the Sports Festival and insulted your new friends to their faces. That sort of jackassery would not be tolerated by you, so you’d adopted a rather cold, defensive front to anyone outside of Class A for the time being, presuming they felt the same. Oh, yes, you remembered this guy, above all others shunning your class.

You scowled back, the corner of your mouth twitching, and you spoke with disdain. “Shinsou Hitoshi.”

He opened his mouth to retort, but both of you snapped towards the front when Yamada clapped and began yelling again.

You were ripped out of the memory by the softest orgasm you’ve ever had, gentle and washing through your body like a bathtub overflowing; you found yourself held snugly by Shinsou’s arms, clutching you to his chest, while your hips grinded against him, arousal seeping out of you and soaking the fabric over his pulsing cock.

Gasping, you kissed the side of his neck, and he shuddered. “Hitoshi.”

“You’re back?” Shinsou raised a hand from your lower back to stroke your hair, pulling away to smile at you. “You were under for a while,” he said, and he slowly, deliberately, rolled his hips into yours. “Seems like you had a good time. Started grinding on me all by yourself. I tried to stop you, but you—” He broke off, grinning and shaking his head. “You moved to suck at my neck, and I fucking shattered.” He tapped a spot, spit reflecting in the light.

“There’s no mark, if that’s what you’re wondering,” you said, and you slumped against him. “Thank fucking God. I’m so glad that it’s you. I wanted it to be you. I was ready for it to not be, but I’m so fucking relieved.”

“Excellent,” said Shinsou, lifting your chin by tapping the underside of it, “because I love you so fucking much.” Cradling the back of your head, Shinsou pulled you into a fervent kiss, desperate and firm as you’d been at first, but softening when you parted your lips a little, and the subsequent slide of his tongue against yours made your head buzz with pleasure, doubling when he let out a needy groan.

“Oh, my God, you’re fucking perfect,” you said, breaking off to breathe, and he chuckled, resting his head in the crook of your neck, inhaling deeply and pressing his lips to your bare skin there. “Wait. You used your quirk on me. I don’t know what you’re on about, Hitoshi; it felt incredible.”

“That would be the orgasm you just rode out on my thigh, sweetheart,” he said, nuzzling into you, cold and hot at the same time.

“No, it was something different, too, something I felt when Neito used your quirk on me. It feels—it felt like you were holding me, unbearably fond and full of compassion.”

Shinsou blinked, his eyelashes brushing against your neck. “Well. I’ve never heard my quirk described as something affectionate. If it’s like that way for you, then I’m glad.” He took a deep breath, the exhale fanning over you, and he pressed his lips to your neck, letting them linger, softly puckered, before speaking again.“I’m so fucking glad I don’t have to dance around my feelings anymore with the dumbass teaching sessions. I’m out of practise, anyway, since I stopped doing them for anyone else a long time ago; you caught me being evil, right? When I allowed myself to be me instead of the dom I moulded myself into.”

“I noticed,” you said, bringing a hand up to scratch the base of his scalp, and he fucking moaned. After a brief pause, you continued, feeling powerful and loved. “But good. Good. I was—I was scared of going further, but I didn’t know how else to keep you acting all romantical with me. I don’t wanna have sex with you. Yet. I’m not ready.”

“I know,” he said, and you felt his grin as he pressed a light kiss to your neck, once, twice. “I don’t wanna have sex with you, too.”

“How romantic.”

“You know what I meant,” he grumbled, blowing cold air over the slight wet spots he’d left, and you shivered with a laugh. “I will wait however long you need to. I’m in no rush.” He propped his head sideways on your shoulder, looking up at you. “To be honest, I know I wouldn’t last, even if we did. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna come the moment I touch your sweet cunt.”

“How romantic,” you deadpanned again, Shinsou’s huff tickling you, and your fingers curled into his soft hair. “But yeah. I love you. And now—now we can be sincere about it. Real. We don’t have to hold back anymore.” You gently guided Shinsou up so that you could cup his face and smile at him, lips close enough to suggest another kiss. “You can love me with everything you’ve got.”

Face framed by your hands, Shinsou looked like he was in the clouds. “That I can do.”

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

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