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anniesocsandgeneralstore · 3 years

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@littlemixand1direction asked: I'm not sure if you are taking requests right now, but I would love to read a chapter where Rick takes her to the army reunion as mentioned in the wedding chapter

If I Go Universe - 165th's Reunion Special (Rick Flag x OC)

Summary: Rick's old army unit is having a reunion and he brings Delphia along with him. But he had kinda forgotten how all his old army buddies are a bunch of little shits.

Pairing: Rick Flag x OC (Delphia Holman)

Word Count: 3230

Warnings: language, rick flag being one soft man, slight jealous!rick, suggestive language, universe crossover woops

Timeline: December 2016 (been together 3 months at this point)

if i go masterlist

A/N: Fuck it! My universe now! Welcome to the If I Go Universe, Triple Frontier boys! And I know the gif is technically an air force dress uniform and not green beret...but it serves the same purpose of making my pussy pop (??? I'm so sorry)

Delphia had been to Miami one other time with Waller on a business trip. She didn’t get to see much of it then, and she wondered, as Rick pulled into the convention center parking lot, how much of it she was going to see this time. A weekend excursion for his old Army company’s reunion didn’t leave much room for sightseeing. Especially when the whole thing was kicking off with a huge dinner, speeches, and mingling at some boring convention center ballroom.

“Thanks for comin’ with me,” Rick sighed as he put the car in park.

She looked over at him with a smile. He looked good. Really good. Dress code was dress uniforms and black tie for guests. Which meant Rick was wearing his green beret uniform, bedecked with polished medals and fresh from the dry cleaners — not a stain or wrinkle in sight. And Delphia was wearing a satin bodycon dress in a dark shade of blue, high heels, and hair curled and all. Rick almost hadn’t let her leave the hotel room in it, wanting instead to just leave it on the floor. But she worked hard to look this good — and so did he.

“Of course,” she said, “That’s what girlfriends are for.”

As she got out of the car, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Rick’s cheeks pink. A shy sort of smile tugging at the corners of his mouth before he followed. The kind of bashfulness that comes when you’ve only been dating for three months. For some people, maybe not long enough to be accompanying their significant other on a weekend trip for a reunion.

But Delphia could feel it. Down in her bones. That Rick Flag was it for her. There was no need for second chances, or plan b’s, or new romances. She got it right on the first try with him and there was no way in hell that she was letting him go.

At the welcome desk, they were given a packet with Rick’s name stickered to the front. Filled with a list of speakers, seminars they could attend, a list of good local restaurants, and an itinerary for the weekend.

“Wow, you guys don’t mess around,” Delphia commented as she flicked through it all.

“We’re ex-military,” Rick explained, hand on the small of her back to guide her into the ballroom while she continued to glance through all the papers, “We live and die by a schedule.”

“At least the few hours they have scheduled for the beach sounds fun.” She closed the folder and smiled up at him.

God, he was so glad she came. He couldn’t imagine going to this thing by himself. In fact, if she hadn’t spotted the invitation on his kitchen counter and asked him about it, he probably wouldn’t even be there right now. Rick blanched when she showed it to him — mouth open and ready to give some excuse about why he couldn’t go. Even though he had plenty of forewarning and vacation days to use. But then the way she smiled at him, held out the invitation and told him to go, it was the only and last bit of convincing he needed. Then she offhandedly mentioned she had some vacation days to use. Then she told him she bought a new dress. And suddenly he was buying two airplane tickets instead of one with her arms dangling over his shoulders. He liked it. He liked to know that she squeezed his hand tight during takeoff. That she loved to people watch in airports. That she saved her tiny bag of pretzels for food emergencies and had about twenty of them already in her carry-on. That she liked the window seat best and would point out funny shaped clouds.

He liked it and it would take a while for him to admit to himself that he loved it. That he loved her.

The ballroom was average, but it was already pretty full of men in their shining dress uniforms and their partners. Rick steered them over to the seating chart board and quickly scanned the list of names.

“Ah, shit,” he huffed when he spotted their names.

“What?” Delphia asked as she squinted at the list.

“We’re sittin’ with the fuckin’ Delta Force — table twelve.”

“And what’s so bad about sitting with them?” she whispered as they walked towards the table, eyeing the few men who were already seated there.

“Cause they’re a bunch of fuckin’ idiots,” he muttered into her ear, but then he was pulling away with a smile and an outstretched hand, “Catfish! Miller! How ya been?”

A man with messy hair and a scruffy beard who looked uncomfortable in his dress uniform stood from his seat first with a smile. He took Rick’s hand and forced him into one of those back-slapping embraces that Delphia didn’t really understand. The man didn’t look anything like a catfish. He had wispy facial hair sure, but nothing like those long whiskers the fish possessed. If anything, he was ruggedly handsome with that crook in his nose and those soft brown eyes. Then a man whose blond hair was cut in a severe military style and the brightest blue eyes Delphia had ever seen came up to Rick and gave him a bone crushing hug. Or maybe he was Catfish? He didn’t really look like one either.

“Flag, holy shit,” Catfish said with a bright smile that made his eyes crinkle, “Didn’t think you’d make it to this thing.”

“Oh, or do we have to call you Colonel Flag now?” Miller asked with a smirk.

“If you ever get yourself thrown in Belle Reve Penetentary, yeah,” Rick chuckled.

“Jesus, still can’t believe you took that gig.” Catfish shook his head, arms crossed.

Rick shrugged. “Pays well. Keeps me busy.”

“Not busy enough!” another voice chimed in.

Delphia watched, an amused smile on her face, as a tall, brown haired man with a beard came up behind Rick and clamped his hands down on his shoulders — roughly giving them a shake.

“Tom!” Rick explained once he turned and saw who it was. “How’s it goin’?”

“Good, good,” Tom laughed as he straightened out his jacket.

“You got two little girls now, right?”

“Yeah, not so little anymore though. Almost teenagers now.”

“Shit,” Rick said with a shake of his head, “We’re gettin’ fuckin’ old.”

“Tell me about it — this is the fifteen year reunion. Fifteen years since we were all measly little privates,” Miller said.

Delphia set down her clutch and the packet at her chair, content to just grab the dinner menu and look it over while the men talked. She liked it. Liked to know that old stories still made him laugh with his head thrown back. Liked to know that his handshake was firm and sincere in every way. Liked to know that he still cared deeply about these man who hadn’t been on his team for fifteen years.

She liked it and it would take her awhile to admit that she loved it. That she loved him.

“Flag, you gonna introduce us to your girl or what?” Tom asked with a finger pointed at Delphia.

Rick turned to look at her. Shit. He had nearly forgotten she was there. But she didn’t look mad sitting there in her assigned seat. She looked content, happy even, blue eyes shining as she watched him catch up with his old army buddies. He motioned for her to stand up as he moved over to her.

“Fellas, this is my girlfriend — Delphia Holman.”

He noticed out of the corner of his eye, as she shook hands with Miller first, that she was blushing something fierce. Was that the first time he had introduced her to anyone as his girlfriend? It was. And it made his insides feel all warm like he was drinking whiskey.

“Nice to meet you boys,” she told them all, finally understanding who Catfish was.

“So — how’d you two meet?” Will asked with a smile.

“Er, work actually.” Delphia glanced up at Rick with a smile.

“Wait, you’re not — ?” Frankie questioned cautiously with a furrowed brow.

Delphia knew what he was insinuating, and so was Rick. They gave each other a look. Well, yes. Technically she was. But no one was supposed to know that except people with extremely high clearance in ARGUS. She was Waller’s secret weapon and Waller liked to keep it that way — secret.

So Delphia lied. “No, no. I’m executive assistant to the big boss. Met Rick when the program started three years ago.”

Now there was one lie she was actually good at telling. One she had had her entire life to practice.

“Wow so you guys have been together a long time, huh?”

“Oh, uh — “ Rick rubbed at the back of neck like he always did when he was embarrassed. “We’ve only been together about three months.”

“Aw, little Ricky couldn’t find the balls to ask out the girl,” Will laughed teasingly, “Typical. Ya know, there was this one time back in o-eight — “

“Don’t tell that story,” Rick ordered.

“Oh, no, please do!” Delphia chimed in, looking up at Rick with an open mouthed smile and wiggling brows.

But he was saved by their old commanding officer taking up the mic, causing the speakers to boom loudly, and telling everyone to take their seats. Delphia gave the other boys a wink and a nod, saying she would remind them to tell her later, as they all sat down. Rick chuckled as he took his place beside her. Thankful that she was taking his old friends' jests in kind.

She leaned in close to his side as they listened to the opening speech. Something about camaraderie, dedication, and how all of their blood ran red, white, and blue. Her hand snuck unto his knee and gave it a gentle squeeze every few minutes. Not to grab his attention, just some sort of internal impulse that she had no control over. His arm was draped across the back of her chair, fingers tapping at the skin of her shoulder. And when he tugged at the strap of her dress she gave his knee a particularly hard squeeze. She glanced over at him with a knowing smirk, and when he winked at her she couldn’t help but roll her eyes. Rick wasn’t sure that his blood ran red, white, and blue anymore. He was pretty sure that it ran bright red for Delphia Holman.

Their old commander said something about tables being dismissed to go get food at the buffet by the wait staff and then he was gone. There was a round of applause. Then the chatter picked back up and suddenly the ballroom was abuzz again with laughter and old stories.

“Where’s Pope?” Rick asked as he leaned closer to the men on the other side of the round table, “Figured he’d be here by now.”

“He fuckin’ better show up,” Frankie grumbled, “He’s the one who made us come to this thing.”

After a few minutes their table was dismissed for food. Typical buffet fair with chicken and prime rib cut on a hot slab. Rick got two of each meat and Delphia could only shake her head. They ate the food back at their table over tales from the 165th’s glory days. Delphia listened closely and laughed when it was appropriate, and really, she couldn’t help but watch Rick the entire time. The way his eyes lit up was electric. And she wondered, as she listened to him recount the details of the time they squished him between two mattresses and took turns jumping on him from the top bunk, if he missed this. The companionship and trust that came with being a unit like this. She knew he liked leading the Task Force, even enjoyed the company of some of his teammates, but she also understood that it was nothing like this. These men would die for one another, and Rick hadn’t known anything like that for a long time.

As the night wore on and people began to get up from their tables to do some more mingling, Delphia remembered the open bar out in the lobby.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Rick before excusing herself from the table.

It was less loud in the lobby. Only a few people stood at the bar, sipping on drinks and talking quietly amongst themselves. Delphia stepped up and waved down the bartender.

“What can I get ya?” he asked.

“Moscow Mule, please.” She smiled kindly at the young man.

“One Moscow Mule comin’ up.”

She watched her drink get made for a moment. That was, until she felt someone slide in next to her at the bar. For a split second she thought it was Rick, about to good naturedly chastise her for not asking if he wanted anything. But the figure standing beside her was too short and not broad enough to be her boyfriend. Delphia looked over at the uniformed man beside her. Dark hair, handsome she could admit, wearing a captain’s uniform — neatly pressed with his tie only a little crooked.

“No uniform,” he said as he surveyed the backbar, then he leaned one arm on the bar top as he turned to face her, “So who’re you here with?”

“Boyfriend,” Delphia replied.

“Mm, damn. That’s unfortunate.”

She snorted out a laugh. “Why’s that unfortunate?”

“Cause you’re probably way out of his league.”

Ah. She saw what was going on here. He was trying to flirt with her. And sure, if she were single his whole shtick would definitely work on her. He was good looking with kind eyes and a bit of stubble. But she wasn’t single and was extremely happy that way. With Rick. But wouldn’t it be fun to play along for a moment and have a funny story to laugh at with Rick later?

So she asked with raised brows, turning her body to face him, “Oh, am I?”

“Yeah.” He gestured at her. “I mean — look at you.”

“So whose league am I in then?” She looked around the room for effect.

“Well…” he slid closer to her, eyes hooded and a look on his face like he had already won the prize.

Her drink came first. Bartender pushing the copper mug towards her with an awkward expression on his face. Then she felt it. His presence was hot and heavy at her back. She didn’t even have to look to know it was him. He loomed behind her like some mythical guardian, warding away trespassers. His hand curled around her hip, fingers digging into her soft flesh hard. And she watched, an amused smirk visible over the lip of her drink, as the man before her shrank and shriveled in fear.

“Pope,” Rick grunted.

“Flag,” the man gulped.

“Oh, so you’re Pope!” Delphia leaned back into Rick’s chest, felt all those medals dig into the skin of her shoulder. “You better go say hi to your friends — they’re starting to worry you won’t show up.”

She had never seen a man scurry away before. But she was pretty sure that was what Pope was doing as he left the bar to enter the ballroom. Delphia chuckled as she turned to look up at Rick. But those giggles quickly died in her throat when she saw the look on his face. He was seething. Hazel eyes still narrowed in the direction Pope took off in, a vein popped out on his neck. She set down her drink and pressed her thumb into that vein, her fingers curling around to scratch the back of his neck.

He finally looked down at her then. A bit of that rage fading from his eyes.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she soothed him quietly, “He’s gone — and definitely knows that I’m with you.”

Rick only grunted in response.

The rest of the night went on as usual. A few more men gave speeches. Rick introduced Delphia to his old army chaplain, who told the ridiculous story about how skinny private Flag put a live snake in his bunk as a prank.

There was something in the air, though, something different and tense. Delphia could sense it. Sense it in the way Rick would barely even touch her. His smile never quite met his eyes. And it only became worse when they got back in the car to go to the hotel. Not a word was spoken between them — made even more intense by the fact that both of them were too stubborn to turn on the radio. She hadn’t memorized his ticks for when something was bothering him yet. But the way he gripped the steering wheel till his knuckles turned white and the tick in his jaw were good indicators. She wondered if she did something wrong but couldn’t think of a thing.

Only the thump of their feet as they walked down the hotel hallway filled the quiet. Delphia had the key card in her clutch. She pulled it out and opened the door, Rick following close behind.

But once the door was closed Rick was on her in an instant — slamming her back against the door with an audible thud.

“Rick!” she exclaimed in surprise.

Her mythical guardian was wrapped around her, hiding her from the world. One leg hitched between her own, head bent towards her exposed throat. Her chest still heaved from the shock of his sudden move. Her back stung from being pressed against the door so harshly.

“You’re mine,” he growled against her pulse point, speaking the words into her very bloodstream.

It made her breath hitch in her throat. But those words weren’t for her. They were for him. A reminder. A plea. Please don’t take her away from me. He listened to her gasp and whine as he sucked mark after mark into her skin. Felt her move against his thigh — her fingers tangled in his hair and pushing his beret to the floor. Since he joined the army, nothing was for him. It was for his country, his fellow man, his righteous sense of duty, the greater good. Every part of him was devoted to it. He was willing to die and bleed for it. But it never gave anything back. All it did was take and take and take. Nothing has ever been for Rick Flag except her. Except Delphia Holman who gave and gave and gave. She was all for him, wanted to be for him. Not just another thing he was willing to bleed and die for — but something he was willing to live for — love for.

So when he saw an old friend flirting with the only person who had ever been for him, it wasn’t anger or jealousy that course through his veins. It was fear. Fear that he would lose her. And, God, he doesn’t want to lose her.

“You’re mine,” he repeated as his fingers dove beneath the hem of her skirt.

Delphia pressed her thumb into that vein, wrapped her fingers around to scratch at his neck. Her blue eyes connected with his hazel ones, fierce and loving and wild.

“I’m yours, baby,” she told him, “I’m always yours.”

Taglist (if you would like to be tagged in future installments just let me know): @bbygrgu @a-reader-and-a-writer @slayerx147 @xoxabs88xox @kasey-puff @witchygagirl @the-pink-petite-princess @blooo0ooop @woodlandmouth @csigeoblue @rexorangecouny @h-hxgirl @thisisthewayrose @blondiekook @darkestbeforethedawn16 @runic-belova @weallhaveadestiny @oopsiedoopsie23 @nerdgrrlramblings @ocfairygodmother

#rick flag #colonel rick flag #rick flag imagine #rick flag x oc #rick flag x delphia holman #suicide squad #suicide squad imagine #suicide squad fanfiction #suicide squad fanfic #suidice squad fic #rick flag fanfiction #rick flag fanfic #rick flag fic #joel kinnaman #joel kinnaman imagine #dceu oc #dceu imagine #dceu fic #ocappreciation

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shivada-jade · 3 years

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codename: vind

older sibling!reader

characters: diluc, kaeya ➡ mentions: adelinde, crepus, la signora warning(s): alcohol consumption, swearing, and because for some reason, older siblings tend to be shorter than younger siblings. iDK WHY but ugh, yeah you're shorter than diluc and kaeya bc you're the older sibling. ik, i hate it too

like, i wanna be a tall 6'2 woman

diluc's 5'10 so u can still be tall in the story.. just not 5'11 😢 sorry over 5'10 folks

➡ WRITTEN BEFORE 2.1 so uhh :D

notes: platonic w diluc and kaeya, duh bc ur the older sibling. sibling love!!! sibling love !! woop woop !

"Dad, I'm home!" You bellow out to the house, waving a polite hello to Adelinde who looked shocked to see you. You kick off your shoes and slide your way to the long table in the living room, swiftly grabbing an apple before heading upstairs.

Your hands graze the railings and make your way up to find your dad. Upon reaching the last flight of steps, you were suspicious with how the place was very quiet. Granted, your younger brothers are now adults, but it still felt too quiet. Maybe you expected to see your brothers playing a game of chess, maybe bickering and fencing. You were hoping to see your family after being away.

You were a part of the Fatui under the Mondstadt branch. It was and at the same time wasn't a choice to be roped into the Fatui. You got roped into the wrong group of friends and found yourself blackmailed by the infamous group.

You didn't want to join. You didn't want any of it. You've been disconnected from the world. Wiped out from the face of Earth. No one gave information to you, you couldn't learn anything about what's happening currently. The most you could do was send letters, but even those were difficult to send out. You had to do it in secrecy or you'd be in trouble.

Love, the better sibling,

[Y/N]

Or another common send off is:

Please write back soon,

[Y/N]

And your family never failed to send back letters. They asked what you're doing, where you are and how are you, still you never told them your occupation, fearful of what they would think and where your loyalties lie, so you told them you were working under an adventurer.

It's for the greater good. You remember trying to convince yourself.

You're a horrible person.

You were sixteen then. Your younger brothers were twelve. It's been 10 long years since you last saw them, and 6 years since you last received a letter back. You miss them dearly. You often wondered what sorts of adventures they did without you.

But why are you wondering about this? You knew what they did: you knew everything that happened.

You're living under a heavy burden.

"Dad?" You call out again. Maids and wine makers look aghast when they see you, and they're on the verge of fainting when you call out to your father.

Stop the act.

It's strange how the letters were suddenly cut off. The last letter you received was from Kaeya, telling you how you needed to come home straight away. You tried to, but the Fatui prevented you from doing so. A lady called La Signora supervised you directly to make sure you didn't leave.

You know...

Adelinde brushes the dust off her uniform and hurries up the stairs to catch up to you, "Dear, is that you [Y/N?]"

"Did you forget me that easily? I'm offended Miss Adelinde," you chided, but the teasing look in your eyes give Adelinde relief to know you aren't actually offended. "Miss, where's dad?"

You're sickening.

Adelinde takes one look at you and squeezes your shoulders with a smile, "I'm afraid that's not for me to say. Master Diluc should be able to-"

"Oh, where's Diluc and Kaeya?" You ponder, and the corners of your lips curl upwards. "Those two were always attached to the hip. Where are they now? Horseback riding at the vineyard? Ha! I-"

You glance at Adelinde's watery eyes and stop your babbling. "What's wrong Miss Adelinde?" You reach for her hands on your shoulders and hold them. "Ah, has father been making you work too hard? I can request him to lessen your load."

Adelinde shakes her head no. "You don't have a clue, do you? Oh," she sighs. "Please, rest yourself by the fireplace. I'll prepare tea for you." She rests her hands back at her side and scurries to the kitchen.

You frown, unsure why she's jumpy, but you follow her request and sit by the fireplace. The crackle of the fire contrasts the tense air you feel when maids brush past you, offering tea Adelinde made. You thank them, gently blowing on the drink.

After taking a sip, you place it down with a pinky to lessen the noise it makes on the table. You hear the door open, and the choruses of maids greeting someone.

"Welcome home, Master Diluc," you hear and other voices saying, "We've prepared a meal for you and your sibling, would you like to rest yourself?"

You peek from your chair, he obviously hadn't realized you yet.

Diluc's lips make a thin line and shrugs off his jacket, "Why is Kaeya visiting. Isn't he supposed to do his knightly duties?"

You have no clue why he says it like that. The venom in his voice sends a shiver down your spine. You decide this is your cue to give him a warm welcome. You stand from your seat, and open your arms in a grand gesture and waltz to your brother. "Diluc! It's been a while huh?"

You clearly see him tense hearing your voice. His head snapped to your direction with his mouth parted. The maids respectively take their leave, bowing before they do so.

Diluc looks you up and down, still not believing you're there, like you're just his imagination. His hand slowly reaches out to you as if you're a dream.

Your feet lead you closer and you grasp him tightly in an embrace.

He freezes, but slowly relaxes in your hug, reluctantly bringing up his own arms to wrap around you. You feel his grip tightening, and you feel his shake out silent sobs. His face buries in your neck, letting tears fall on your clothes.

You soothe his back, and press a kiss on his hair. "I'm home, Diluc."

He trembles, pushing himself away to look at you clearly. Why hadn't you come home earlier? He wanted to vent, he wanted to yell, shout, he wanted to know how much he missed you in your absence.

He clears his throat and coughs in his fist. "You should have told me about your arrival," he adjusts the gloves on his hands, and looks to the floor like he did when he admitted he accidentally broke your toy when you were 10.

After these years, he still looks up to you as his older sibling. Not a thing has changed.

But you couldn't help but notice one thing. You knew Diluc and Kaeya had matured, you knew they would grow taller, but shit, now Diluc's taller than you.

"I sent a letter a month ago," you began. "It should have been sent to your office in the Favonius Headquarters? That's where I send my mail after you told me about your promotion to Cavalry Captain."

You squish his cheeks with both your hands. "Because I know you're a workaholic and only respond to letters that mean business, so that's where I sent it off to. You never write back, neither does Kaeya," you pause, thinking for a moment. "Neither does dad. Tell me he hasn't gotten sick that he couldn't respond to my letters."

Diluc lifts your hands off his face and frowns. He doesn't know how to break the news to you- not when you look so excited to be home and tell of your adventures to your family, so he asks, "Did you eat yet?"

You note the frown on his face. "'What's got you grumpy," you prod. "I need to find dad first. Told him in the first letter I gave him, I'd give the first gem I find."

Diluc watches you leave him to go to Crepus' room on the second floor. He hears the thuds on the floor and the opening of the door, but does nothing to stop you. You left with a smile, and you come back confused.

"Why is dad's room empty?"

How cruel.

...

Kaeya hums, passing by Flora's shop and purchasing a Calla Lily for the sake of it. He is well aware of the Fatui that stand by corners. Whispers of the wind give him intel, and so does alcohol apparently. He leans on a wall right outside Angel's Share, watching two Fatui members drink some of the tavern's strongest alcohol, imported from Snezhnaya.

"That damn," the one with the red and black mask hiccups, lifting a mug with foam overflowing. "Damn brat's gonna snitch on us to the Knights- *hiCC* boss lady wou- *HicC* would have our heads!"

Thankfully, their more responsible Fatui friend takes the mug and switches it with their drink, water. "You're the one who let Vindicta out of your sight when you know their frequencies to escape. This is all on you, buckaroo."

One of the Fatui escaped? How peculiar.

Kaeya hums, in steady strides he shows himself to the Fatui and takes a seat from another table and sits in front of the two. "My, my, my. If it isn't the wonderful Fatui," he divuldges. He twirls his Calla Lily around his fingers, amused with the Fatui's reactions.

Their mouths drop, knowing who he is and they hastily clean themselves up by sitting straight and wiping away the alcohol from their faces. "Good evening, sir."

"Evening to you too," he places the flower behind the person's ear, flustering them. "Well? Drink up. Everything you order will be on me."

The Fatui look at each other, skeptical with Kaeya's kindness, but the drunken one accepts the offer. Kaeya celebrates in the inside as he slowly gains Fatui intel.

Though, the second Fatui whom he dubbed the "Responsible One," took a while for them to take a sip. Turns out, they couldn't handle alcohol, that's why they avoided drinking it.

"So, my dear friends," he slides a coin on the table and stares both of them down. "A mora for your thoughts? I couldn't help but notice the tense of your shoulders when you first arrived here."

Responsible One raises their mug drunkenly, and gives a pointed look, "You... you know too much. How?..." They stare at their friend and whisper shout, "Don't tell him about Vind or-" They fail to continue their sentence and pass out on the table.

Kaeya feigns a surprised face and looks at Fatui number 2, "Who exactly is Vind? I'm sure you don't mean the storm watcher up at the cliff." He coats his voice with sugar, and it seems Fatui friend fell for his kindness.

"The damn brat," they spit out before hiccupping again. "Recruited them, fed them, saw potential, gave a home, and they escaped."

Kaeya nods and pushes another bottle of wine to the Fatui's direction, urging them to continue.

"Was supposed to be one of the Agents to spy on the *hiCc* to spy on the Ragnvindr family, because *HicC* Vind was one of the best there is. They were about to be promoted Harbinger after an assignment *hiCCUpp* but then Big Boss Lady said 'End the Ragnvindr legacy,' Vindicta left without a word. They escaped."

The Fatui downs another bottle of wine. "But judging from Boss Lady's reaction, Vind did the job: killed him and placed the blame on the Knights."

The Calvary Captain knits his brows and places his hands in front of him. It laced themselves and he watches the Fatui person empty out his wine.

"I'd be careful of what you say if I were you." His lone eye glints dangerously.

"End the legacy?" Kaeya frowns. "Can I ask..." He couldn't ask why or the Fatui would stop talking to him. "Can I ask when your beloved spy did their job?"

The Fatui waves a hand, "Six years ago. After they killed that damn aristocrat's father, they tried escaping. Big Boss supervised them under their watch. 'Potential' the Harbingers always say, but I don't see the potential in them if they don't have loyalties under the Fatui. A wild card, really."

They lay their cheek on the table. The temperature drops quite dangerously. Kaeya's diamond eye glints with coldness before it turns back to warmth.

"Rumours have it," the Fatui sighs, playing with his empty mug. "The training Vindicta went through is rougher, so we were hoping they would tie their loyalties to us. We let them explore once, and they escaped under my watch. Maybe it was their assignment to leave, maybe it's not, because Boss Lady was okay with it, she said 'Vindicta will always return in our hands.' when they first escaped, and surely enough they do return. But either way, I'm fucked for letting them go missing the third time of the week."

Kaeya laughs with no soul and quickly ends the lovely 'conversation.' He pushes himself from the table and stands, "Thank you for chatting with me, it's been interesting." He tucks in the chair and glances at the two Fatui dozing, or close to dozing off.

He swiftly turns away, scoffing when he's out of sight from people. Vindicta is a dangerous card. Not even the Fatui know where their loyalties side.

Vindicta. How peculiar indeed.

One of the best Fatui, which probably meant they were payed well with respect and mora, but why are they labeled as an escapee when they always return? With someone as dangerous as a Harbinger, who do they side with- the Fatui or something else?

Kaeya has a lot of questions.

...

Diluc sits on a cushioned chair and hunches over, resting his chin on his hands, thinking.

Always thinking.

The once lit fireplace is soaked with water he splashed over. The scent of burnt wood wafts nearby. The light chatter of maids go through one ear and leave the other.

How long had it been since he last saw you?

Eternity is his answer. It's been eternity since he last saw you.

He lets out a long sigh, throwing his head back and running a hand through his untied locks.

Too much thinking for today. Diluc groans in frustration and sits back up. He turns his head slightly, seeing you in the corner of his eyes taking out boxes of things you owned from 10 years before.

It doesn't make sense to him. Why come back so suddenly after years of not seeing you? Though, you claim you sent him letters, he never got them because he closed himself off from the Knights.

"Diluc," you set down a small picture of a family portrait you took out from hiding behind many books.

You are taking this oddly well.

You're taking this too well, in fact.

This raises a red flag for Diluc. He told you the fall out of your family, how he quit the Knights, but still you're going around the place like nothing had happened.

Don't you feel any rage? Or even sadness?

He sees too many red flags and hates it- from the way you can hide things like Kaeya so easily, to the way you just suddenly appear back in his life. It feels weird. It's not easy to let someone that in quick, yet you're still his role model, so it's okay, right?

He's always looked up to you when he was younger. You never were at a loss of words and stood up for him. You were the person he can turn to when something wrong happens, but what were you doing for yourself to be gone for so long? Adventuring Teyvat could not have taken ten whole years. Where did you even stay?

"Diluc," you crouch in front of him and talk to him as if he were six again. "I'm okay, okay?"

Diluc takes a shaky breath and sits up straight. His posture resembling a king's. "I have an idea, and I would like you to help me."

You look at him in awe. The realization settles in: Diluc has grown, and you're still stuck trying to make up the past.

"And what do I help you with?"

"Finding who's responsible for father's death."

notes: had this in my drafts for a long time and i was like "wait where was i going with this..." until BAM i have the idea again so im gonna continue it

(part 2)

#genshin impact x reader #genshin x reader #diluc x reader #kaeya x reader

100 notes · View notes

today-only-happens-once · 3 years

Text

clarity

Word count: 5463

Summary: Hakoda had been hearing rumors about the Fire Lord's son for years. That doesn't mean he is ready when the truth finally comes to light... especially when the truth only confirms the worst. Companion piece to “out of focus” but can be read separately.

Warnings: injury/burns, angst, some mentions of trauma and PTSD, canonical child abuse/mutilation, Sokka gets angry protective and yells a little, blink-and-you-miss-it mention of nausea, please let me know if I missed anything.

A/N: Turns out, I really wanted to explore Hakoda’s POV of the events in “out of focus”. So much so that not only did I write this, but’s longer than the original. Woops. Hope you enjoy it!

Read on AO3.

...

His son is good at many things, Hakoda thinks, but his poker face is not one of them.

He’d had never been particularly good at it, if Hakoda is being honest. He’d usually been able to tell with one glance when Sokka was at fault for something breaking and would blame Katara, and Kya had been even better at reading the micro-expressions of their son. Sokka is older now—and in more ways that Hakoda is comfortable with, he carries those extra years around like a weight on his shoulders—but he still hasn’t quite mastered the art of subtlety. It was something he’d need to work on if he wanted to be chief of the Southern Water Tribe one day.

Sokka shifts in his seat across from him, his brows pinched slightly in evident annoyance. Hakoda sees the shared glance between his son and the Fire Lord. Zuko’s mouth twitches in something like amusement.

“I want immediate release of all war prisoners,” the Earth Kingdom ambassador, Bashi, beside Sokka demands.

Hakoda inclines his head. “I second that. I have men in those prisons that haven’t seen their family in a decade.”

Hakoda couldn’t imagine what that would be like. Two years apart from his children had caused him to feel like he’d already missed out on so much of their lives. The idea of going five times that without any news from the outside… Suffice it to say that Hakoda did not envy those men.

“Of course,” the Fire Lord says, but his voice is nearly swallowed by the loud demand down the table, “Absolutely not!”

The hard glare that Fire Lord Zuko sends down the table at the Fire Nation Admiral makes Hakoda grateful that he is not on the receiving end of it. “Admiral, people who were arrested as prisoners of war have no need to remain so after the war has ended.” Zuko meets Hakoda’s gaze, the heat in his glare lifting at the redirection of attention. “I’ll draft that mandate tonight and will ensure its circulation as soon as possible.”

The Fire Lord—dressed in the traditional royal robes and his hair pulled into a top knot—is a stark contrast to the first time Hakoda had met him back in Boiling Rock. At the time, Zuko had been Fire Nation public enemy number 2 behind Aang. The tattered red tunic of Fire Nation prison uniforms had hung off his thin, borderline-malnourished frame. He looks better now, a little. Zuko is still lean, but not quite as gaunt as he’d looked in the Fire Nation prison. Hakoda’s biggest concern when it came to the Fire Lord’s well-being these days was the dark circles around his eyes that, though he tries to hide it, indicate too many sleepless nights.

“This is an outrage!” The admiral slams his fist against the table, leaping to his feet.

Hakoda feels his jaw clench in frustration. He has little patience for men who try to assert themselves through aggression and yelling rather than calm rationality. Even so, it doesn’t surprise him, exactly. Hakoda had been around long enough to know that Fire Nation men had long been taught there was power through anger, and to wield it as they see fit.

Zuko rises to meet his feet, slowly and deliberately. “Admiral--”

“Where is the justice for the Fire Nation families whose sons and daughters were slaughtered by those criminals?”

Hakoda presses his hands together to keep them from curling into fists. Did the Admiral not realize just how many Fire Nation soldiers walked free after slaughtering innocent people, let alone soldiers? Even the person who killed Kya--

“Admiral.”

“I remember a time when you cared about Fire Nation soldiers! And it’s hard to believe you’ve forgotten, seeing as you ought to be reminded every time you so much as look in the mirror--”

Hakoda frowns. The comment rings vague bells in his head, though he can’t remember why…

“Enough!” Zuko snaps sharply. “You will watch your tongue or you will be escorted out. You approach insubordination.”

“You are a child,” the admiral says, spitting the word child like it disgusts him, “though one that ought to know a thing or two about insubordination, given your father’s attempts to brand you with a permanent reminder of its consequences--”

“Warriors!”

“Then again, he always was twice the leader you never will be. Long live the Phoenix King!”

Sokka is suddenly on his feet. “Zuko—!”

“Sokka—!”

Hakoda leaps up just as the admiral punches a fireball at the space between his son and the Fire Lord. His heart jumps to his throat, but Zuko is fast. He shoves Sokka’s shoulder down with one hand and dispels the fireball with the other. Hakoda leaps over his chair as he sees the glint of his son’s boomerang hook through the air.

The admiral’s gaze locks onto him for a moment and Hakoda instinctively ducks, diving underneath a bolt of scorching flames. He feels the ground tremble, hears the roar of dying flames above him. Hakoda risks a glance towards his son just in time to see Zuko step in front of him, bending the burst of flames to split on either side of them, rather than hit Sokka straight on.

The door ricochets open. Two Kyoshi Warriors spill into the room, and in a flurry of quick strikes, the admiral drops to the floor. Limp.

Bashi unbinds his feet with the bending from earlier—it’s only now that Hakoda realizes that tremble in the ground a moment ago had been earthbending—and the admiral hurls insults at Zuko as he’s dragged unceremoniously through the doors.

The silence that follows echoes in the room.

Hakoda takes a quick, calculating sweep of the room. Kovrik, the Northern Water Tribe ambassador, is wide-eyed but appears unharmed. Bashi is panting but standing upright. Sokka is hidden behind Zuko who shifts awkwardly in the silence.

He clears his throat. “Apologies for the, uh, disruption. It won’t happen again.” He looks, for all the world, genuinely apologetic. Embarrassed, even.

Which is foolish, Hakoda thinks. Zuko couldn’t reasonably be expected to have weeded out all of the Ozai sympathizers in a month. Ozai may have been one person but there was an entire ideology and system that allowed his tyranny in the first place. A sixteen-year-old couldn’t be asked to single-handedly dismantle it all, and certainly not so quickly.

“It’s not your fault, Fire Lord Zuko,” he tells him.

“I appreciate that, Chief Hakoda,” Zuko says. Behind him, Sokka sucks in a breath through his teeth and Hakoda feels his chest twinge in concern. He had fought in a war long enough to hear the pain laced through the noise. Zuko turns around to look at him, then turns back around sharply to address the room. “We will adjourn the meeting for today. We will reconvene tomorrow.”

Zuko hides it well, Hakoda thinks, but there’s an urgency to his words hidden behind a carefully constructed mask of stoicism that leaves no room for doubt in Hakoda’s mind. Sokka is hurt.

“But Fire Lord Zuko—”

“I think we could all use a breather, Kovrik,” Hakoda jumps in, not eager for another argument to break out. “Coming back tomorrow with a clear head is a good decision.” Besides, the sooner he can clear the room of other people, the sooner he could check on Sokka who Zuko was—almost protectively—keeping from view.

“Yes,” Kovrick acquiesces, though Hakoda can tell he’s still not pleased. “Yes, I suppose that’s fair.”

Zuko nods his appreciation. Kovrik, Bashi, and the few other dignitaries that had been in the room bustle out the door. Hakoda waits until it’s latched shut behind them before he turns his full attention towards his son. Zuko has already turned his full attention to him, saying something in a low voice.

Hakoda can sees the clench of his son’s jaw and the slight wince as he places his hand in Zuko’s. Hakoda steps up behind the Fire Lord, peering over his shoulder. His chest tightens a little in sympathy when he sees the blistering, angry red skin on the back of his son’s hand.

“Do you have anything that can help?” he asks of the Fire Lord, frowning. He thinks briefly of calling Kovrik back in before he remembers that the Northern Water Tribe’s men, even when benders, didn’t typically learn its healing abilities.

“Yes, sir,” Zuko replies, not taking his gaze from Sokka’s hand as if he could heal it by staring at it hard enough. “Though it’s not quite as immediate as waterbending healers. But it should help with the pain and prevent infection. Follow me.”

Hakoda follows as Zuko guides Sokka by the elbow out the door of the meeting room and through a network of hallways. There’s something almost jarring about it to Hakoda. The image of the Fire Lord leading his Water Tribe son through the palace to get him help, rather than as a prisoner, has a part of Hakoda’s mind reeling. Sokka’s blue clothing stands out against the dark reds and blacks that adorn the walls and pillars around them.

How quickly times had changed.

Hakoda thinks back to the conversation in the meeting a few moments ago as he watches the back of Zuko’s head, moving quickly down the corridor with Sokka in tow. Rumors and propaganda about the Fire Nation, and especially about its leader, flew quickly amongst the ranks of soldiers in the war. It had been difficult to know fact from fiction, especially as it related to the royal family.

A year ago—the memory comes crystal clear to Hakoda now—one of the men on his crew named Horrak had told him what he’d been certain was an exaggerated, hyperbolic story. Something about the Fire Lord and his thirteen-year-old son. On Tui and La, I swear it’s true. Heard it from the mouth of a Fire Nation soldier myself who was actually there.

He’s a tyrant and cruel, Hakoda had said, rolling his eyes because the idea was just… incomprehensible, but there’s no way Ozai would do that to his own flesh and blood. He’s too proud of his bloodline anyway.

Zuko glances over his shoulder at Sokka, and Hakoda sees the angry scar across half of his face. The words of the admiral in the meeting whisper in the back of Hakoda’s mind in a way that makes his stomach turn. Your father’s attempts to brand you… Hakoda had thought that surely, surely, even Ozai had a line in the sand when it came to his own family.

He’s less confident of that now.

Zuko says something to two of the guards stationed at the set of double doors that Hakoda doesn’t quite catch, and then slips through the door. Hakoda follows close behind.

“Wait here,” Zuko says, and then vanishes through a door on the far side of the room.

Hakoda glances around the room. It was a bedroom, but Hakoda had a hard time believing it was Zuko’s. It seemed too simple of a room to belong to the Fire Lord. Then again, Zuko had been full of surprises from the very first time Hakoda had met him.

He looks to his son, noticing the tight grimace to his face and the very slight sway and grabs the chair beside the bed to get his son to sit before he falls face first into the floor.

“You had good reflexes in there,” Hakoda says. He’d dealt enough with injured Water Tribesmen to know that distraction was usually the best way to help them deal with the pain of a burn. He had no doubt that his son was no exception to that.

“Lots of practice,” Sokka replies, obediently taking a seat. He hisses out another breath as his grip around the arms of the chair stretches the skin across the back of his hand. He swears under his breath.

“Easy,” Hakoda says softly, bracing a hand on his son’s back.

The comment from his son makes his chest twist, but he can’t very well deny it. His son had seen more combat in the past year than he’d hoped he’d have to in his lifetime. Hakoda knows that it was an unreasonable expectation for his son to somehow be the exception to generations of pain. It wasn’t that he didn’t think Sokka would be able to handle the fight—Sokka always been able to hold his own—but could you blame a father for wanting to spare his son the experience of waking up from nightmares, haunted by the people he couldn’t save?

Hakoda dealt with that enough for the both of them.

“Wish Katara was here,” Sokka says.

“I know,” Hakoda tells him. “Unfortunately, I don’t think she’s coming to Caldera for a while. She’s still in Ba Sing Se with Aang.” She and Aang were working on their own negotiations of reparations and treatises. Caldera was only one location of many that were in the middle of such conversations.

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sokka sighs. “Her magic water comes in handy, though… Get it? Hand-y?”

Hakoda snorts. That’s the kind of joke he used to make to get Kya to smile.

The door across the room opens again. Zuko emerges with his arms wrapped around a giant tub of water, several vials and rags gripped in his hands. He’d also pulled his hair out of the top knot so that it falls into his face, shaggy and unbrushed. It makes him look younger somehow.

Spirits, he really is only sixteen, isn’t he?

The Fire Lord seems to be studiously avoiding both his and his son’s gaze as he crosses back to him and sets the washbasin at Sokka’s feet. The realization twists uncomfortably in Hakoda’s stomach.

“Can I see your hand?” Zuko says in what is perhaps the softest voice Hakoda has ever heard come from the teen’s mouth.

Sokka blinks. “Yeah. Sure.”

Hakoda crosses his arms over his chest and watches as Zuko examines his son’s hand. The Fire Lord handles it with care, mindful of the injury even as he inspects closely. His brow is furrowed in concentration and there’s a long beat of silence. Sokka is almost uncharacteristically quiet, but Hakoda doesn’t miss the very slight way his shoulders seem to ease. There’s a familiarity between them, Hakoda realizes, and it makes him wonder in the back of his mind if maybe this wasn’t the first time they helped each other.

“I don’t think it’ll have permanent damage,” Zuko says eventually. “But I still need to treat it so it doesn’t get infected. It… might hurt a little. But then it should feel better.”

Hakoda sees his son swallow. “No permanent damage. That’s good.” He nods, evidently steeling himself. “Okay.”

Zuko looks for a moment like he’s about to say something else, but seems to change his mind. Instead, he busies himself with wringing a cloth in the basin of water, into which he had emptied the contents of the vials. Hakoda’s gaze flickers again to the scar on his face and wonders if he might be so intimately familiar with the care of burns from his own experience.

Hakoda wonders if there was someone else to help him and teach him. Perhaps that uncle that he and Sokka had mentioned. Iroh, Hakoda thinks his name is, though that would mean the uncle was General Iroh, as in the Dragon of the West. That seemed unlikely to the chief. No way this “wise old guy” who apparently spent his free time giving advice and making tea was also the same person who laid siege to Ba Sing Se for six-hundred days.

He watches Zuko press the rag gingerly to the back of Sokka’s hand and Sokka yelps, yanking his hand back.

“I’m sorry,” Zuko says immediately with a bit of a grimace. “This part is painful, but it’ll stop hurting in a minute.”

Hakoda listens to the strained breathing of his son, taking a step towards him before Sokka manages, “Right. Right, sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Zuko tells him. “I know it hurts.”

Hakoda watches from behind Sokka as his son places his hand back in Zuko’s, who slowly but gingerly presses the rag back to his hand. There’s a casual intimacy to the way that Sokka willingly gives over his injury to the Fire Lord. An assured immediacy to Sokka’s movement combined with the extraordinarily careful way in which Zuko handles it that surprises him. He’d known, intellectually, that his children had become close with the Fire Lord. But the moments in which Hakoda got to be witness to that friendship sometimes still caught him off guard, even all these months later.

It even folded into the way they fought beside each other. Hakoda had gotten very fleeting glimpses of it back in Boiling Rock, but he’d seen it more clearly in the meeting room a few minutes ago. They watched each other’s back, protecting one another without getting in each other’s way, like it was a rehearsed dance. Hakoda had watched the way Zuko stepped in front of flames to protect his son and had seen the way Sokka had timed his boomerang through to ensure the next fireball directed at Zuko would be kicked wide.

For a long moment, the only sound heard in the room is the quiet splash of water as Zuko submerges the rag again and wrings it out. Hakoda glances at the Fire Lord’s face and wonders if Zuko had always had a habit of facing flames head-on.

“What did the admiral mean,” Sokka blurts out suddenly, breaking the silence, “when he talked about insubordination?”

Hakoda’s lips press into a thin line, his gaze flickering briefly to his son before flitting back to Zuko. Zuko’s eyes had gone wide, the rag in his hand frozen half-out of the bowl. He blinks. “What--uh. I, uh.” Hakoda sees his hand clench around the rag and the way he takes a careful, intentional breath. “When I was younger, I spoke out at a meeting.”

Zuko busies himself back to tending to Sokka’s hand. Hakoda, however, feels something sink like an anchor in his stomach. He goes very, very still.

“After the stuff at Ba Sing Se? When you went home?” Sokka asks, and Hakoda realizes that he hasn’t heard the same rumors he had. Rumors that were at least a little bit true, but surely not all of it. Surely--

“No, I uh.” Zuko coughs a bit. “Before that. Before… yeah. Earlier.”

“What happened?”

Hakoda stays quiet but he keeps his eyes on Zuko, who looks for all the world like a wild snow leopard caribou that had been cornered. His shoulders tense and Hakoda wonders, very briefly, if he might make a run for it. His jaw clenches, and he shifts to the balls of his feet.

Zuko doesn’t run.

Instead, he seems to focus even more on the administrations he’s giving to Sokka’s injury, as if healing something else might be able to protect him from his own old wounds coming under scrutiny.

“My uncle allowed me to attend a war meeting,” Zuko begins after a long beat as he wraps a fresh bandage around Sokka’s hand, “where they were talking about some battle strategies to use against an Earth Kingdom battalion. There was a general that wanted our newest fleet to serve as a distraction while we mounted an attack from the rear.”

Hakoda feels for a moment like he’s standing on cracking ice. He heard about that attack. The few members of that battalion spoke of how victorious they’d felt, decimating an entire fleet of rookie Fire Nation soldiers only to be attacked from the rear. Hakoda had spoken two years ago with one of the Earth Kingdom soldiers that had escaped, had listened as she recounted the bloodbath it had been.

They must have known, she’d been saying with a haunted, far-away look to her eyes, that we’d win against a bunch of newbie soldiers. It was like they were served up as goat-dogs for slaughter. Just a… distraction. Ozai doesn’t even care about his own people.

That conversation had been two years ago. Which meant—

“That’s not fair,” Sokka says. “Your newest recruits? They’d be slaughtered by an experienced battalion like that.” Hakoda feels a brief flicker of pride through the growing tightness in his chest. His son is far smarter than he gave himself credit for.

“Exactly,” Zuko sighs, bitterness dripping from his voice like venom. “And that’s what I told them. I wasn’t thinking. I just… yelled at him.” Zuko secures the end of the bandage to Sokka’s palm slowly, as if reluctant to be done with the process. “My father didn’t… take it well. I was challenged to an Agni Kai, and I thought I would be facing the general in it, so I accepted.”

The steadily growing tightness in Hakoda’s chest snaps around his lungs like a steel band. So even the worst rumors—the ones he’d been certain couldn’t possibly be true, not about that, not even Ozai—had been true. And it was all because he tried to save people’s lives.

Hakoda does not have a weak stomach, but it rolls with the lead weight of realization.

Zuko still doesn’t look at either one of them. Unable to keep his attention on helping Sokka’s injury, he turns his attention instead to gathering the basin of water and the empty vials and used rags. Something to keep his hands—his attention—busy. Hakoda had seen some of the men he fought with do the same thing when talking about stories they mostly tried to forget.

“No…” Sokka says in a low voice, and Hakoda knows from the horror in his voice that his son is starting to put the pieces together too.

“It wasn’t the general,” Zuko confirms, his voice quiet and heavy in the silence around them. “It was my father.”

“You faced your father in an Agni Kai?” Sokka asks.

“Not exactly. I…” Zuko stares down at the bowl, his gold gaze looking a thousand miles away. “I couldn’t fight my own father. Instead, I begged him for forgiveness. I was met with a fist full of flames.” Zuko waves a hand towards his face.

I begged him for forgiveness.

Hakoda thinks of the version Horrack had told him. I heard the kid was kneeling in front of him when it happened—

“He--” Sokka also sounds at a loss of words, his voice choking off.

“I was banished after that,” Zuko continues and his voice is hollow in a way that ricochets like shrapnel. Hakoda watches him meet his son’s gaze. “I was told to bring the Avatar back and all would be forgiven, or to not come back at all. That was before you and your sister woke Aang up from the iceberg.”

He hears what Zuko won’t say. It was before there’d been confirmation that the Avatar was still around at all. He’d been banished from his home and told to chase a ghost. It was an impossible task. Ozai didn’t want his son to come home at all, Hakoda realizes. And from the tight way Zuko swallows, he’s pretty sure Zuko knows it too.

Hakoda clenches his grip into a fist to mask the tremble to his hands. Zuko had done the right thing at that meeting—had tried to spare lives—and had still asked for forgiveness. Begged for it. And Ozai had lit his hand on fire and… and… painfully mutilated his own son and then kicked him out, telling him to chase a legend. In some ways, Hakoda thinks, it was crueler than telling him not to come back at all.

Zuko is sixteen. But he is still a child, though saddled with the weight of righting a century of conflict on his back. And Hakoda knows that the Agni Kai had been three years ago.

“How old were you?” Sokka asks tightly.

Spirits above, he was only—

“Thirteen,” Zuko says, and Hakoda sighs, shutting his eyes against the confirmation.

“Thir--” Sokka cuts himself off, his voice strained. “Thirteen. Tui and La, when I was thirteen--” he breaks off again.

Hakoda knows what Sokka is thinking about. Sokka was thirteen when he’d left to join the war effort. He’d tried so hard to keep Sokka as safe as he could. Protect his childhood from being stolen more than the war and the loss of his mother already had. He’d seen the stubborn set to Sokka’s jaw when he’d chased after him onto the ship gangplank, and Hakoda knew that Sokka was just as protective as he was. He’d asked him to look out for the village, for Katara.

Hakoda would have done anything in the world to keep Sokka safe. He still felt that way, despite all the ways that Sokka had proven he could hold his own. He couldn’t help it. He wouldn’t want to. Sokka was his boy. Not so little anymore, not so innocent. He’d seen and been through too much, and Hakoda had missed most of it. But he’d tried. He’d tried to keep him safe for as long as he could manage.

At thirteen, Zuko had been hurt by a person he’d loved and then thrown out into the world with barely a second thought. The Fire Nation had robbed him, too, of so much. Too much.

Sokka takes a sudden step towards him and Zuko visibly tenses as if expecting a blow. Sokka freezes in place. “Zuko…”

Zuko shakes his head quickly, and there’s a small part of Hakoda that uncoils when he sees the way Zuko’s gaze doesn’t look quite so distant anymore. “Anyway. That’s--that’s what the admiral was talking about.”

“You…” Sokka sounds close to tears. “You were his kid.”

“Yeah, well.” Zuko looks at Sokka again. “He spent most of my life wishing I wasn’t.”

Hakoda’s jaw tenses. He looks at Zuko who looks, for all the world, like a sixteen-year-old kid, with his shaggy hair falling into his face and in Fire Lord clothes that are maybe just a touch too big for him. At thirteen—barely a teenager—he’d spoken up out of an intense desire to keep more people safe. To save lives. In Hakoda’s eyes, Zuko was a hero. Just for that.

How anyone could look at him and not be proud was far beyond Hakoda.

“Zuko,” he says, and Zuko’s gaze flashes over to him almost like he’d forgotten Hakoda was there in the first place. “I… hope you understand that you didn’t deserve that.”

The words fall short of what he wants to say, of what he means. But they feel important to him. Zuko deserved better from his nation and especially from his own father. Hakoda doesn’t know very much about the former royal family, but he doesn’t get the impression that Zuko heard that a lot. And if nobody else was going to make sure Zuko knows that he deserves better, Hakoda will at least try.

Something softens a little in Zuko’s gaze. “I know, sir,” he says. “It… I didn’t at first. It took me a long time to understand that it was wrong of my father to do that. But I know that now.”

Hakoda inclines his head. It is a small mercy against the tremendous pain the kid carries on his back, but it’s something. And as far as Hakoda is concerned, it’s not a small thing, either.

“Where is he?” Sokka demands in a near growl.

Zuko blinks, looking far more surprised by Sokka’s outrage than Hakoda is. “Where’s who?”

“Ozai.”

“Sokka, what are you going to do? Fight him?” Zuko looks completely bewildered. “He already lost.”

“Against Aang, not against—did Aang even know?”

“Um, I guess I don’t know. I never told him. I… never told any of you.”

“Yeah--and what’s that about, huh?” Sokka takes a step forward. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

Hakoda takes a step towards his son. “Sokka,” he warns.

He wants to explain to him that sometimes things are hard to talk about. Spirits know there were things Hakoda had seen in his days involved in the war that he didn’t want to talk about and hoped he never would have to. He wanted to explain that events like that, things that linger on the edges of your nightmares and follow in lock-step with your shadow, had a nasty habit of strangling in your throat so that the words don’t come. That it is easier to carry those things close to your chest rather than lay them bare for the world to see.

But Sokka is fuming and cuts his father off. “What, did you think we wouldn’t care? That it wouldn’t matter?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Zuko hurls back at him, waving a hand towards the bedroom window. “My father already lost to the Avatar, Sokka. The war is over. The fighting is over. Aang took his bending. And that—I don’t know about you, but that’s the best, most justified end to his legacy I can think of.”

There’s a long, heavy moment of silence. Hakoda watches the way his son’s shoulders heave with angry breaths, his non-injured hand curled into a fist. Sokka had always been fiercely, desperately protective. It runs in the family, Hakoda thinks idly. But this wasn’t something Sokka could protect Zuko from. The damage had already been done.

Hakoda thinks, perhaps, that such a truth only makes it harder for his son to deal with.

“Wherever he is,” Sokka growls, “I hope he rots. He deserves worse.”

Zuko blinks, his eyes wide. Hakoda wonders briefly if Zuko has ever had someone be angry on his behalf, rather than angry with him.

Sokka evidently doesn’t understand his surprise. “Don’t tell me you disagree—”

“No,” Zuko says quickly. “I just… nothing.” He offers the barest hint of a smile at Sokka. The reminder of the familiarity between them relaxes some of the tightness in Hakoda’s chest just a fraction.

There’s a long beat as Hakoda hears his son suck in a deep, slow breath. Zuko’s gaze falls from Sokka’s, drifting back to the basin of water beside him. Zuko’s fingers twitch at his side. He looks suddenly uncomfortable, Hakoda thinks. Nervous, almost.

“Thank you for helping Sokka’s hand, Firelord Zuko,” Hakoda says suddenly, and maybe it’s a foolish way to convey to him that this didn’t change their opinion of him. At least, not for Hakoda… and from his surge of protective anger, he’s pretty sure the same goes for his son. Zuko was still Zuko. And if maybe he made sure to call him Fire Lord as a quiet reminder that Hakoda did not think him less of a leader either, then maybe that was okay too.

Hakoda sees the slightly pink tinge to Zuko’s cheeks as he meets Hakoda’s gaze. But he reads the understanding in those gold eyes as well. “Oh. Uh, of course, sir. And… just Zuko is fine.” Thank you, is the unspoken words that flit across the teen’s gold eyes.

Hakoda smiles a little, inclining his head. “Understood.” He turns his attention then to his son. ”I should draft a letter to Bato tonight to update him on the treaty. Will you be okay without me?”

Sokka rolls his eyes, but the corner of his mouth is tilted up in a half-smile. “Yeah, dad. I think I can manage.”

Hakoda gives Sokka’s shoulder one last squeeze and a nod to Zuko before he ducks out of the room to give them both a moment to talk more. He closes the door behind him, pausing long enough to take a breath.

Generations of conflict had been ended a few months ago by a bunch of kids with too much weight on their shoulders and too many shadows clinging to their edges. But at their heart, they were good people trying to do good things. Spirits know they all had plenty of reasons to be otherwise. War had a nasty habit of bringing out the worst in people, of demanding sacrifices to who you are. It could latch onto the darkest parts of you and pull until it was all that remained. He’s grateful that the group of kids that ended the Hundred Year War managed to keep the best of themselves despite everything, and that they continued to do so.

Hakoda had learned a long time ago that goodness is a choice. And he’s grateful that the world was in the hands of people like his kids, like Aang, like Zuko. Kids who, despite everything and all the ways people tried to pull their darkness out of them, continued to make that choice.

#atla #zuko #avatar the last airbender #atla fanfiction #hakoda #zuko fanfiction #hakoda fanfiction #injury #argument #child abuse #mutilation #please heed warnings #ptsd #trauma

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erinhysh · 3 years

Text

𝗥𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗶𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗮 𝗧𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗱 / 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 1

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Content Warning!

Severe Malnutrition.

Season : Autumn

Location : Park

Leo : Funfufu~n ♪

Wahaha! The inspiration is springing up!

My body is in great shape today, my hands are creating a masterpiece…☆

After all, I AM a genius! Wait no, maybe even God!? Geez, I’m imitating Shu like this…. ♪

Mika laying down on the floor

Leo : Hee… is that a dead person!?

Ee, what, no is he only unconscious?

(Mmh.. his body is warm, and his heart is still beating when I touched it…..)

(It means he’s still alive, right? But the breathing is really shallow and unstable~, the rhythm is really strange too!)

(Oh, this is an emergency! Call an ambulance!)

(Aah, but I don’t have a phone, I don’t have a wallet either! I have nothing except talent!)

(That’s enough for me though, Wahaha!)

(But this isn’t the time to be laughing.. M~mh, what should I do?)

(For now, I can carry him to school since its near the park..)

(Yeah, I can carry him to the infirmary! If someone passes by, I can borrow their phone to call an ambulance!)

(Yep, let’s go with that!)

Hey, I’m gonna carry you to the infirmary for the time being

You don’t have any visible injuries… So I think it’s fine to move you around a bit

You might feel slightly uncomfortable, but it’s unavoidable!

Let’s go~ Woop!

Leo Struggling to carry Mika

H– he’s heavy! No, it’s probably just the effects of living a hikikomori [1] life making my muscles weak

Even after returning, everyone in Knights will still be the ones carrying heavy things

Mika : Mmh….. Oshi-san, I’m sorry….?

Leo : Mmh? Are you sleeping or something! Or are you up already? Honestly~ if you’re up, I want you to walk on your own!

You’re wearing the school uniform, so you’re also a Yumenosaki High student right? You’re a high school student for sure!

Be sure to stand up and walk on your own then!

Aa, he fell asleep again… Guu, he’s really a handful to take care of!

Can’t be helped, I guess I’ll have to carry him

I haven’t really used this much strength, my muscles are being worked up after a long time

Let’s go!

Uuu, step by step~!

(…But, he’s really light for someone his height)

(Maybe I’m not strong, that’s why he’s heavy…. But it feels like just skin and bones, or is it because he fainted?)

(Is he filled with cotton instead of organs?)

(Mmmh, I feel like I’ve se~en him somewhere before? Who though?)

(Forget it! I mean, I’m wasting calories on my thoughts!)

(Hurry up! He might die if you keep being this slow)

Location : School Infirmary

Adonis : We’ve arrived at the infirmary

Leo : Mh! Thanks, I’m glad you took my place carrying the unconscious kid for me!

I feel like I’d fall unconscious too if I carried him all by myself

I’m really grateful~, and sorry were you suppose to do your club activity? You look really scary but you’re actually really nice, Rei’s kid ♪

Adonis : My name is Adonis Otogari, not Rei’s Kid. Have you forgotten about my name, Tsukinaga-senpai?

Leo : Is that so? Sorry sorry! I’m not interested in remembering names

But your name is really nice, Adonis based on the Greek myth right?[2]

The tears of a Goddess who’s mingled with his blood, and produced anemones!

The story alters a lot!

Aa, more inspiration is springing!

Let’s dedicate this song with gratitude so you won’t ever forget your name, let’s name it “Adonis” ~♪

Adonis Ignoring Leo and laying Mika down on the bed

Adonis : This is fine, for the time being. You can rest nicely on this soft bed

Leo : Mmh! One case is settled!

Gosh, I’m really impatient, my lifespan has been shortened down! Even with a free live, I don’t think I can live long!

….This looks like he’s been like this. How did he fell unconscious, really? Do you know anything about this Adonis?

Adonis : I don’t know myself, but it seems like he has fell unconscious multiple times. He refuses to eat, and also seems malnourished and anemic

In other words, eating meat might solve the problem. I happened to brought a kebab with me, so I’ll give it to him when he wakes up

Do you also want to eat, Tsukinaga-senpai? Eat meat

Leo : Ah, I’ve seen this in some countries! It really does smell like this~, do you always carry food with you?

Adonis : It was a coincidence. I was running for the track and field club activity….

I was hit with the smell of meat, and it turns out I was standing in front of a kebab stand near the school

The stands here are the best, I even know the owner

It’s not the best to put something in your stomach while running, but I was asked to sample a new product….

I failed and gave into trying the food

Besides, it was really delicious so I went to grab my wallet and bought more….. I really am weak

Leo : But isn’t it okay? Abstinence just a shortcut to enlightenment, but humans should basically be able to eat and do whatever they want!

I like that one better ~♪

Hikikomori means severe social withdrawal with no outside contact at all.

It’s Basically a story about a guy named Adonis and the Goddess Aphrodite. They’re lovers, but Adonis got mauled by a wild boar one day. He died in Aphrodite’s hands, and her tears mingled with his blood and it created a flower known as anemone

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Translations: Erin

#ensemble stars #leo tsukinaga #mika kagehira #tsumugi aoba #adonis otogari #enstars translations #Scout! Teddy Bear #enstars

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tonystarkbingo · 2 years

Text

SCRAP SPOTLIGHT!

Care for a few AU's?

Tossed in the box by: Dracusfyre!

“Sir…uh, sir, you can’t have a sword in here,” the barista said nervously, sidling up to Tony’s table. Woops. Tony fluttered his fingers against the table top before he turned to look up at the barista. “What sword?” Tony said innocently. He glanced over his shoulder at the apparently empty scabbard there. “This is just the scabbard for my sword. I’m a cosplayer and I do Renn Faires, so I’m just trying to get used to wearing it.” “Oh.” The barista frowned, staring at the scabbard where he could have sworn that there had been a sword there, gleaming gold and chased with red. Tony smiled brightly as the barista retreated in confusion and returned to his coffee, inhaling the fragrant steam. He loved what they had done with coffee in this century; the discovery of coffee was definitely a milestone in human history, but what they did with it these days was pure art. He took a long sip, letting the warmth, the sugar, and the caffeine suffuse his limbs. It had been a long night and an early morning, and he could tell that his shoulders and back were already getting stiff and sore. But on the plus side, that was one less basilisk running around hurting people. After another sip, he set the cup down with a happy sigh, and met the gaze of a man across the coffee shop who was staring at him wide-eyed. Tony gave him a cheery grin and a wave, because hey, the man was cute, which he apparently took as an invitation to come over. “Well hello,” Tony said, nudging out a chair for him to sit down. “Hi.” Now the man seemed nervous, for all that he was eager to get over here. He glanced around furtively and scooted his chair closer to the table. “Do you, uh, recognize me?” Ah, shit. Tony kept his smile plastered on his face even as he searched his memory. Did he already seduce on this handsome fellow once before? He did look a little familiar. “I always remember a pretty face, but names often escape me. Can you forgive me?” “My name is Bucky. You rescued me once, a few years ago,” the man said. “From a…” at this the man’s voice dropped. “From a hydra.” Tony felt the blood drain from his face. He remembered now; this man had been in uniform last time Tony saw him, with much shorter hair, and had been halfway across the planet. A squad of Army Rangers had run across the same hydra that Tony had been hunting, and it had taken all of Tony’s considerable skill to defeat it before it could kill anyone else. This man had been bitten by the hydra, and even though his teammates had rushed him to medical, Tony had given him up for dead and not bothered to try to wipe his memory. Because no one survived a hydra’s venom. Like, no one. Ever. Except apparently, this guy. Tony blinked at him for a long time, aware that the silence was lasting for way too long. “It’s good to see you doing well,” Tony managed finally. “Mind if we walk and talk?” He could find out how, exactly, this guy survived a hydra’s venom and then it was time for some long-overdue mind magic, because Tony hadn’t survived for this long by letting people remember him.

Tossed in the box by: Archi!

Stony High School AU: "Why are you so adamant that he doesn't like you in that way?!" "Because he's Steve! The cutest guy in our year! The guy every girl has been in love with since like fifth grade or something!"

Tossed in the box by: Magica!

Black Jewels AU, Tony (either fem or male) made the offering to the darkness and received a Black jewel, but prefers only using his/her base Red and so is constantly under-estimated/looked down on.

Tossed in the box by: SomeSortofItalianRoast!

an early cap bb idea that didn't go anywhere involved steve getting forced into helping me at my job (I was a testing coordinator at the time), with a bit of an urban fantasy/horror twist to it

the only plot point i'd come up with was the unnamed testing coordinator threatening to make steve sort paper clips with his boots...... and things like that something, something, plot, mind stone (maybe?) , urban fantasy, etc.... - everything going on involves attempts to get steve to unlock his mythical powers via frustration: safer than being struck by lightning at the exact same time one is hit by a bus

Want to see the rest of the prompts? Click here to see the GDoc!

#tonystarkbingo #tsb box of scraps #scrap spotlight #fandom event

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jupiterswlrd · 2 years

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ADONAI

ꜱɪɴ ᴄᴀɴ ʙᴇ ᴀɴʏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ᴅɪꜱᴛʀᴀᴄᴛꜱ ᴜꜱ ᴏɴ ᴏᴜʀ ᴊᴏᴜʀɴᴇʏ ᴛᴏ ᴛʜᴇ ꜰɪɴᴀʟ ᴡʜᴏʟᴇɴᴇꜱꜱ ꜰᴏᴜɴᴅ ɪɴ ᴀɴᴅ ᴡɪᴛʜ ɢᴏᴅ. ʙᴜᴛ ᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ɪꜱ ɴᴏᴛ ᴊᴜꜱᴛ ᴀɴ ɪɴᴠɪᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ᴏʀ ᴀ ᴄᴀʟʟ ᴛᴏ ᴡᴀʟᴋ ᴀᴡᴀʏ ꜰʀᴏᴍ ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀᴛʜ ᴛʜᴀᴛ ʟᴇᴀᴅꜱ ᴛᴏᴡᴀʀᴅ ɢᴏᴅ; ᴛᴇᴍᴘᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ ɪꜱ ᴀʟꜱᴏ ᴀɴ ɪɴᴄɪᴛᴇᴍᴇɴᴛ ᴏʀ ᴀɴ "ɪɴᴠɪᴛᴀᴛɪᴏ"

I∀NOᗡ∀

his mocha brown skin melting into mine, the scent of expensive cologne intoxicating me taking every bit of free will i had left and giving it all to him. i was apart of him, souls bonded by sin and discord only together for the sheer reason of rebellion. jesus christ temptation was a bitch.

////////

i woke up, darkness filling up my vision and my glasses nowhere in sight. i flipped on the light disappointment filling my body when i realized there would be no light coming on. "forgot to pay the bill AGAIN" i mumbled in exhaustion. my dad had to be the most physically present deadbeat in existence.

i was tired of getting dressed in the dark, praying that a little sunlight peeked through the windows of my room so i could at least see the color of the pants i was gonna wear. it was my first day of school and i refused to be embarrassed. it's not like we were broke my father just couldn't be bothered. my phone rang, the irritating default iPhone alarm letting me know it was time to wake up. '10 minutes late as per usual' i kissed my teeth and threw on my robe.

i went to the bathroom, confused about how i was supposed to do my makeup. "he just had to do this today huh?" i sighed slamming my hands on the counter. the lights "magically" turning on. "how convenient" i shoved the toothbrush in my mouth already overthinking about how the day was finna go. as i was getting ready for the day i turned on my favorite radio show, it was a little ghetto but they always were so open-minded and funny. you can't beat that.

"welcome back to the green! live from greenwood park, chicago illinois we coming to you live!!"

i did a silent "woop woop" in my head, i hated living in greenwood but if anybody else asked you would have thought the mayor of greenwood was my mother herself. you see, earlier this summer i made the wise decision to move from one shitty parent to another, packing up my "hood rat" ways and moving to the suburbs. which was filled to the brim with affluent black people who had been in jack and jill since birth and dined with people like the obamas just for funsies.

i was the black sheep of my neighborhood, which wasn't a surprise. i stick out like a sore thumb everywhere i go. even though these were "my people", i wasn't like them. sure i speak "proper" when i want to, but i think i'm just too on edge for them. my crazy piercings and crazy colored hair automatically make me stand out. i wasn't one of those "too white for the black kids, too black for the white kids" bitches though. i just accepted the fact that i ain't fit in and moved on, no need to make a whole college essay about it.

i threw on my lashes and left out the house, anticipating a long and awkward bus ride. many people seeing "friends" they somehow forgot about during the summer. 'superficial.' i thought to myself. crazy how some friendships are sheerly circumstantial. I got out my airpods and put them in; drowning out the birds who decided that if they were up everybody had to be up too. i took a deep breath in, it was a rainy morning and the smell was familiar. the air smelled so much clearer without the toxins of a nearby city. maybe i could get used to this.

4 hours later

"nay-aw-meh?" my prayer teacher called out to me making me roll my eyes. "it's said how it's spelled. naomi...it's literally in the bible" i mumbled that last part taking a seat in the back. going to a christen college prep school, had to be the worst idea my father had. 'it'll look soooo good on a college application.' his voice rang in my head making me mentally scoff. yes, it was the first day but school was never my thing anyway. normality, uniformity, and sticking to the basics was never something i was interested in.

a boy with pink-colored dreads walked in, he had glasses on and a uniform of course. he was finer than wine. the only red flag he had was carrying a trapper keeper. "they let you keep that eyebrow piercing in?" the boy spoke up making me jump a bit waking me up out of my thoughts. "um yeah? am i not supposed to have them?" i asked cursing myself for deciding to get 20 new piercings before school started. "oh i mean, they just prudes. i was surprised they white asses ain't giving you a hard time. you know?" i hummed in response, now overthinking every decision i've made up until now. "my name nehmiah" he held out his hand for me to shake. oddly traditional. most boys my age would have me dap them up. "naomi" i shook it smiling.

"you know after the first week, imma start skipping this class" he leaned back in his chair, pulling his hood up and sighing. "why?" i asked ignoring the teacher explaining the syllabus. "everything about this is bullshit, plus i'm like...an atheist." i nodded slowly.

"don't tell me you're one of those overly christian girls, don't tell me i gotta cut this friendship short"

FRIENDSHIP??

"oh no. im one of those third eye crystal 333 bitches" i joked watching him snicker, he had such a pretty smile. "we should skip together, there's a fye ass raising canes down the street" he gave me his phone to put my number in. i snapped a quick pic making sure i looked good as hell, putting my number in.

i gave him back his phone also handing him mine to put his in. "do i gotta call you mimi? i feel like everybody call you that" i rolled my eyes at him. "just call me nayo then" he gave me back my phone, i stared at the picture smiling a bit to my self.

"them carti ass emojis" i said hoping he'd get the joke. "me and bro just alike" he pointed to his hair and i just blinked.

"i mean it's not red—"

"you get the point."

the bell rang and i waved bye to nehmiah, sort of excited to text him as soon as i got home. he was cute and had a surface level personality. i had a kindergarten style crush on this boy, there was no denying it.

#fiction #fanfiction #blacklove #books #biblical #blackgirlsrock #black girl writing #ambw #ambw moodboard #ambwimagines #books and literature

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silverblood5 · 2 years

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Gus and Willow Week 2021 Day 1 Hexside

I wanted to do something for Gus and Willow Week. I'm not sure if I'll be able to do the whole week since I'm really busy right now, but I have plans for a couple.

Characters: Willow, Gus, Boscha, Amity

Wordcount: 1087

Summary: How Willow Park met Augustus Porter.

Warnings for bullying and a very slight amount of blood.

@guswillowweek

Willow placed her books in her locker with the air of a person who’d had a far too long day. She’d failed the latest Abomination test, in front of her whole class no less, and the ‘half a witch Willow’ comments had been especially worse since then. Though she was used to failing, this one hit her pretty hard, because it was worth half her grade this semester, and she’d promised her parents she’d do well this time.

They really wanted her to do well in this class, but no matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t do it. Willow hated letting her dads down, and she didn’t think she could bare another disappointed speech from them when word of her failure reached home.

Willow’s thoughts were cut off sharply when something hard hit the back of her head. She cried out as the force pushed her head into her locker door, a sharp pain ran across her forehead and her glasses were knocked off her face.

She immediately ducked down to grab them, ignoring the sounds of mocking laughter and hoping she could get away before they picked up the ball again. The grudgby ball that caused her so much pain was bouncing innocently next to her. The beats of it speeding up as it lost momentum felt to Willow like it was matching her heartbeat as yellow-clad legs came into view.

“Woops. My bad.” Boscha leaned down to pick up the ball, not sounding apologetic in the slightest. “I should really watch where I throw this thing. But it’s good to know my throw’s still good. Packs a pretty good punch don’t you think, half a witch?”

Willow didn’t look up at the condescending question, preferring to fix the arm of her glasses and stare at the cracked lens. She ignored the sting of tears in her eyes as she tried to think of something to say. But the words dried up along with her throat when a new voice spoke up.

“Just leave her alone Boscha. You know she’s not worth it.” The voice sounded bored and indifferent, like she truly couldn’t care what was happening and thought Willow wasn’t worth the fuss. If Willow were being honest, it hurt worse than the double impact on either side of her head. She looked up then, but Amity was already walking away, followed by her laughing friends.

She stared a little longer, hoping Amity would sense her looking and turn around.

But she never did.

She never looked back.

Alone in the hallway, Willow finally let a tear fall. She looked down at the broken glasses, hoping her parents wouldn’t be too upset about having to replace them. This was the third pair in as many months, and on top of failing that test…

Her breath hitched, the frustration and despair of the day catching up with her. With shaking hands, she put the glasses back on, feeling them sit wonkily on her face as she slowly rose to her feet.

Focus on the positives, Willow. She chanted in her head.

It was lunch now, so she didn’t have a class, and she packed her own lunch, so she could go wherever she wanted to be alone for the next half hour.

Forcing herself to take a calming breath, Willow ran through the list of places she knew of where she could be alone on school grounds.

Her thought process was halted by a soft clearing of the throat, and something white in the corner of her eye.

“Excuse me?” Willow turned at the quiet voice, seeing a short brown skinned boy with dark brown hair and dark grey eyes. He was wearing the Illusion track uniform and looked a good couple of years younger than her. The boy had an apologetic, yet concerned look on his face, and was holding out a tissue. “You’re bleeding.”

Willow blinked, taking a while to process his words, but when she did, she raised a hand to the throbbing part of her head. She winced as her fingers landed right on an already swelling bump and pulled back her hand to see a shine blood on her fingertips. She took the tissue from the boy, thanking him softly, and pressed it to her forehead.

“Do you need to go to the nurse?” He asked her.

Willow shook her head softly, “No, it’s just a cut. I’ll be fine.” She pulled her lunch from her locker, wanting to do something, and not knowing how to keep up the conversation. She looked back at the boy, seeing a hesitant look on his face, and decided she should end the conversation.

“Thank you again, but I should get goi-“

“Where were you going to eat?” He blurted out. Willow stared at him a moment, and he gave a sheepish smile before speaking again, a little slower. “Sorry. I mean, I saw those girls heading to the cafeteria, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want to be near them right now. So, I’m just wondering if you have a place in mind to go or if you want to come with me. I have a secret spot no one else will go to.”

Willow contemplated letting him know she had her own stash of secret places, but she was touched by his friendly offer and didn’t want to dismiss him. “What kind of place?”

He beamed at her question, and immediately started explaining. “I’m in a club called the Human Appreciation Society, or HAS for short. We have our own classroom we can use, and since I’m the president, I can use it whenever I want.” He finished proudly, and Willow smiled at his enthusiasm. “I usually go there for lunch, since I don’t have any friends. You can come with me if you want. I promise no one will bother you there.”

Willow smiled at his sincerity, lowering the tissue to see that the bleeding had stopped, and nodded at him. “I’d like that. On one condition.”

He tilted his head at her curiously, “What’s that?”

She switched the tissue to her other hand with her lunch and held it out to him. “That I be your friend. I’m Willow, by the way.”

The boy smiled so widely, she wondered if his cheeks hurt. He grabbed her hand and shook it with so much enthusiasm, Willow had to laugh.

“Yes! Yes, I’d love that! It’s lovely to meet you, new friend. My name’s Augustus.”

“Lovely to meet you too, Augustus.”

#toh #the owl house #toh willow #willow park #toh gus #gus porter #augustus porter #toh amity #toh boscha #hexside #guswillowweek2021 #tw bullying

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kettle-on · 3 years

Text

(Oh woops, this is a lot longer than it was supposed to be, but I got carried away. Still not super happy with it, but I figured I'd post it sooner than later, before I changed my mind completely!)

Monty Python and the Barbados Fic

Eric x Michael x OFC

Chapter 4

attn: @jessm78 @coincidence-ithinknots-blog

Evenings at Heron Bay were lively, silly, rowdy, and populous. The Pythons had decided they would have guests to dinner every night, and surprisingly this proved not too difficult. Apparently Barbados was hopping with friendly famous faces at this time of year.

Mick Jagger continued his regular visits with Jerry on his arm, and one or two pairs of glamorous mystery Misters and Misses. It was revealed through many rounds of Charades that the Rolling Stone had an extraordinary talent for both miming and deciphering interpretive dance. His rendition of “the eruption of Mt Vesuvius” was met with roaring applause, and his “Sex Pistols” brought the evening to an un-toppable peak.

Things would take a turn, however, when an entirely sober Graham introduced a favourite game of his called “Poor Pussy” in which the chosen “pussy” approaches guests and, through meowing and distinctly feline behaviour, must make the guest laugh whilst they attempt to pet pussy’s head and say with a straight face three times: “poor pussy.” When one does laugh, they become the new “pussy.” This last rule changed quickly when it arose that multiple “pussies” had taken over the room, and hardly a word could be spoken from the guests through their laughter.

Perhaps the most uncommon news, however, came from casual chat. A visiting Keith Moon explained his plans for a new house in Malibu, anxious for acres of privacy and leaving behind his celebrity neighbours. Jagger the Charades king told of all-night New York City parties, to which Graham countered: “At least in London, one has the good sense to wrap up before sitting down to breakfast.”

Y/N was sure that, had she been keeping a list, she’d have been privy to the business of every star in modern comedy and rock and roll.

The next morning came too early once again, but Y/N was this time drawn to the bedroom window. From here she could see the team of gardeners hired to keep Heron Bay looking lush and groomed. She couldn’t help but feel that with each day that passed she was floating further and further away from what she remembered normal life to be like.

Not wanting to disturb a sleeping Eric, she made her way to the morning room that looked out to the curved courtyard. At one end of the room was a large painted screen of columns in some beautiful ancient scene. Each table surface in this room was topped with a floral arrangement, antique candlesticks, and photographs of visitors and houseguests. Decades of beautiful faces and elegant dresses, men in uniform, and posed portraits looked back at her from their frames.

What was this world? she had long wondered. Painted screens, stone pediments, beaches, house staff, tennis courts, and private ponds. Marriages, affairs, and cover-ups. Churchill, the Duke of Edinburgh, Lord and Lady Something of Somewhere Unpronounceable, and movie stars and rock n roll gods. And who was she in all of this?

From the near distance, she heard puffs of exertion and approaching steps. Michael had committed himself to continuing his disciplined daily morning jog and here he was returning.

“Ah,” he panted, “Morning.”

“Good morning. Nice run?”

“Well,” puff, “it’s not Holloway, but it’ll do.”

When he caught his breath, he noticed her uneasiness. With a smiling face and a tone he’d learned from his mother, he suggested:

“Tea?” --

It was much later that night that Y/N found herself again wandering the corridors alone. The afternoon had passed with a visit from Eric’s friend Ricky Fataar with whom he’d made The Rutles the previous year, and his wife, Heron Bay’s proprietress Penelope Tree. The couple had dropped in for what they called a “business luncheon,” and extended an invitation to the Python household out for a “business dinner.” The two Terrys and Eric accepted, (the Terrys hoping they might throw in a bit of “money talk” regarding their upcoming film budget) and by the time the day’s activities had come to a close, the outward dinner guests had yet to return.

In the rare quiet of the late-night, Y/N knocked on the door to the room where Michael was staying, and a friendly hum invited her into the room. A single lamp lit up the walls and floor, and a Michael in repose who was making edits to his well-kept journal.

“Do I recall correctly you said you’d brought a small library with you?” asked Y/N from the door.

“I did, indeed!” he responded, setting his journal on one of the nightstands next to the bed. “What’s the matter – can’t sleep?”

Y/N shook her head with an apologetic smirk.

“I see, and what sort of thing are you after?”

“Something, uh... gentle, I suppose. Something to escape.”

“Escape? From here? A tropical island and you’d like to escape – now that’s puzzling.” He drew back the thin blanket that covered his lower half, and swung his mostly bare legs over the side of the mattress.

“No, no,” she started, “Just something to, y’know, get out of my head for a bit.”

“Mm, is there something troubling you?” Michael eyed the three stacks of books casually adorning a side table, and inspected the choices of titles.

“Just feeling a little…” Y/N searched for a believable excuse, “homesick.”

He was not convinced. Putting his book task on pause he raised his eyebrows, requesting her further explanation. Y/N both appreciated and hated this look. Michael, though the gentlest and kindest of the troupe, would not let anything go unexplained or hidden for long, and his generosity and patience invited her to open up.

“I’m not really sure what I’m doing here,” she confessed. “I feel like I’m just getting in the way, y’know? You’re all working hard on what I’m certain will be a brilliant film, and what am I here for?”

“You’re on holiday,” he declared with what he hoped was an assuring smile.

“A holiday from what? What do I even do?” She felt the agitation rising in her voice. “It’s like I just exist day in and day out with no purpose or point. No goals and no…”

Michael’s stare was intense and he waited for her to continue.

“…future.” Her voice dropped to almost a whisper when she noticed she’d drawn his undivided attention. A quiet Michael was a rare thing, and the silence stilled the air between them.

“So, I thought... maybe a… a book might help,” she attempted, but Michael was already smoothing down the bedspread, offering a space beside him which she gratefully filled.

“Is this what it’s like being famous?” she asked heavily, taking a seat. “Always surrounded by extremely talented, important people, and constantly comparing your own worth and accomplishments?”

“I suppose it is, yes. Sometimes.” Michael was usually very good at telling the truth in a palatable way.

Nevertheless, this acknowledgement only supported her anxiety. Her face fell and she closed her eyes, sensing exhaustion was on its way. She silently prayed for one of Michael’s rambling speeches, and he intuitively delivered.

“But it doesn’t have to be,” he began. “None of this comes with the expectation that you’ve earned your right to enjoy things. You don’t need to have won a Nobel Prize or sold a million records to deserve fine cutlery. But when you’re well-known, everybody wants to know you and bring you lovely things, whether or not you think you deserve them. When that happens, I think what helps is to recognize what’s there for you, and appreciate that there are all these things you can access if you’d like to. What’s important to remember is that you have options, and lots of good ones, too.

“And as far as goals and a future, well… I can’t tell you that. All I can tell you is that you’re already building a future just by living. And learning, and asking questions, and thinking, and wondering, and loving, and caring.”

Y/N had stayed quiet. The past few weeks of indulgence, creativity, and celebrity drama had left her feeling in a way excluded, and far away from herself. It wasn’t something she found she could explain to Eric without seeming ungrateful.

Michael continued:

“So right now, you’re on holiday somewhere you’ve never been, and learning how the other half lives. And what am I doing? Well at the moment I’m enjoying a few weeks on a beautiful island, with marvelous weather, with my wonderful friends. Together, we’re finishing up a script for a film which, if all goes well, we’ll be making later this year. That’s my job, and it keeps me working, but I’ve got the rest of my hours and days, too, and that’s when I’m living. That’s when life happens, you see, in the in-between time.

Y/N had secured a point of focus on the floor, and found it fitting that Michael’s was one of the few rooms in the building with wooden floorboards instead of the palatial stone. In this room she could be almost anywhere in the world, and at this moment she was happy to be somewhere closer to home.

“There’s no rush,” Michael added, noting her half-daze. “Life is short, but... there’s so much of it. You can stop and start and chop and change as many times as you like. It’s all life,” he slowed his pace, carefully observing her softened expression, “and it’s all yours.”

Y/N leaned back onto her elbows and contemplated her bare knees.

“I don’t think I’ve heard that one before,” she mused. “Hm. I’ve got a lot of time to fill, haven’t I?”

Michael gave a warm hum of agreement and joined her sideways, propping his head on an elbow, attentive as ever.

“And what are you going to fill it with first?” he asked.

This prospect was suddenly overwhelming, and it showed in her eyes. She took a breath and decided to choose levity for a change.

“I could work on this tan, I guess,” she playfully suggested, kicking a leg up and indicating her knees, “What do you think?”

“Very nice,” he approved. In fact, he had long admired her knees, and was grateful to the January Barbados weather for getting them out of trousers and wool tights. The previous summer at many a pub garden evening, he’d envied Eric’s long fingers resting atop Y/N’s knees, giving an occasional squeeze, and more than once catching sight of a slow glide up a thigh, disappearing under a skirt hem.

“Looks like you’re off to a good start there,” he said, allowing himself an extra-long, fully permissible eyeing up of her legs.

“And you?” she asked, “What’s next in the in-between time?”

“Well, I thought I might see what life by the ocean is like. I don’t see it very often. They’ve got waterskiing down at the bay - I might give that a go. I doubt I’ll be any good, but at least then I can say I’ve done it. Obviously a very valuable skill in London. I can see it: there I am, shooting across the lakes of Hampstead Heath. Or better still, an aquatic commute! I could start off from Blackfriars in the morning, and be in Molesey by tea-time, how’s that?”

Y/N laughed, tired from the day but grateful for Michael’s silliness. She liked this. Why couldn’t Mike be around more often? Or could she have a mini-Mike to keep in her purse and take out for impromptu pep-talks and compliments, please?

“I wonder,” he said carefully when her laughter died down. “Rather than in the way, do you think perhaps you might be feeling a bit overlooked?”

This caught her off guard. Overlooked? She never felt ignored or unappreciated. On the contrary, Eric’s attention and gestures of love came in spades. But what was it for? What really did she have to offer? She hardly expected to stand out next to her accomplished and celebrated partner and his career, nor did she wish to dull his accomplishments or stifle him. Stability would be very nice, but so too would making a name for herself be. So what did she want – life or recognition?

“Maybe,” she finally said in a small voice, too tired now to analyze any further.

How fragile she now seemed to Michael. She had opened her heart to him, and the sense of duty and the care with which he held it felt so natural. He wished he could hold it for a little longer.

Stroking kind fingers down her forearm, he took her hand, willing her out of her trance. With a closed-eyed focus on her hand, he drew her knuckles to his lips.

“So I’ve got options,” Y/N re-stated.

“Mhmm,” sounded Michael, whose lips were still appreciating her fingers.

“And I’m building a life every day,” she continued.

"Every day,” he repeated, his thumb now taking over addressing her knuckles.

“And mine is no less important than anyone else’s?”

She knew the answer, but the question brought their eyes to meet, and he held her gaze with tenderness.

“I think anyone who meets you feels lucky that they did. I know I do.”

Y/N felt whatever was left of her distress dissolve with a heavy breath. She had been heard, and she knew with certainty that her cares were safe with him.

Slowly, she wrapped her arms around his torso, and he enveloped her shoulders with a tight grip. His voice was low in her ear:

“You know, if it was a book you were after, I rather thought you’d have asked Terry.”

Y/N wasn’t going to bother mustering the energy to protest or to come up with a nonsense reason why she’d chosen to see Michael. She was here now, and she was perfectly content with it.

“I’m very glad you didn’t,” he confessed, and having exhausted all words, he began a slow exploration of her neck, starting with nuzzling the delicate space beneath her ear. Sensing no resistance, and hearing her approving sigh, he continued down to her shoulder, leaving soft, open-mouthed kisses as he went.

He was kind and patient and open, Y/N remembered as she felt herself giving over to the moment’s tenderness, her curiosity duelling with her fatigue.

With restrained eagerness, he moved along the underside of her jaw before,

“Stop stop,” she hushed.

She was fighting with her enjoyment, but this was not a good time to discover feelings. All she wanted now was comfort and sleep. She looked at her kindred Michael half-apologetically, and he shifted aside, making a space for her to lie down and sleep. He reached over to switch off the bedside lamp, and gently pulled the sheet up to cover their spooning bodies.

Out on the patio under the moonlight, Eric lay on a lounge chair, gazing into the sky and contemplating several things: Ricky and Penelope’s marriage, Mick and Jerry’s affair, and the concept of unfaithfulness. And the very nature of frivolity, and luxury, and everything he learned from the swinging sixties of liberation and self-indulgence. And, unexpectedly, Michael.

He wriggled in his spot, unable to relax. I need to write this, he thought. He worked most things out through writing, and now he would turn to his typewriter, get his musings out on paper, and try to make some sort of sense of his brain soup.

#cinnamon levels of spice #Mike Palin chatterbox #monty python fanfic #eric x michael x reader #eric idle fanfic #michael palin fanfic #barbados fic #jenny's writing

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kathaariawrites · 4 years

Text

Nights in Cádiz - Armando Salazar x Reader (Chapter 2)

So my writer’s block is finally down and I could finally finish the second chapter. I will be uploading three more works tomorrow so can I get a woop woop? Thanks.

Gravity. That was the first thing you noticed, as if you were at the bottom of the ocean but quickly being pulled up. You could not breathe but then, out of seemingly nowhere, you could breathe and see that you were aboard a ruined ship, the darkened hull burnt to a crisp and rough under your feet as you wandered through. The waves rolled in the background but other than that you could hear nothing but a creaking sound from below you.

It was a bit surreal, to be honest. It felt very real, as if you were there or had been there for long periods of time and you could’ve easily believed in a kidnapping scenario were it not for the fact you looked down and your night robe stared back at you. No one seemed to be on board with you except for a figure standing at the ship’s helm. From your point of view you could make out what was supposed to be a ruined uniform, as black and burnt as the rest of the ship.

Caution be damned, you thought, your curiosity getting the best of you as you approached with low, calculated steps. Whoever it was, it was obviously a man, broad shoulders and tall figure even if he seemed to be a little hunched. A captain, from the looks of it.

“Señor?”

The figure turned to you, its eyes widened in surprise and a gasp left you. “Capitán Salazar?”

He seemed puzzled, staring at you and measuring you up. In the blink of an eye his figure approached, a sound of some sort of cane and his steps following. “Señorita…what are you doing here?”

Through your shock you realized it was his cursed form that stood in front of you staring you down, hair floating as if underwater and a piece of his head missing on the left side. “I...I do not know, Armando, I woke here just now. Where…”

“The Mary...the ship. I have this dream every night since our curse was broken. I just stand here until I wake up.”

“So...this is the triangle?”, to which he replied with a subtle nod. “Why are you still cursed here?”

He sighed then and took a few steps back, turning his back to you. “Not completely. I do not feel the rage I did back then, or the pain. I am alive, but at the same time I am not.” His brow furrowed then, looking back at you. “You should leave. This is no place for you, even if it is but a dream.”

“A lovely point”, you replied, “if it was not for the fact that I do not wake up whenever I wish to.”

He chuckled, “Argumentative tonight, eh? Quite different from dinner.”

You rolled your eyes, taking advantage of the fact he could not see your lack of manners at that moment and walked to him, sitting on the railing. He reached for you, trying to pull you down but you chuckled and avoided his hand.

“Get down. Where are your manners, [Y/N]?”

“I am in your dream, Armando, I do not need to have manners.”

It was a bit overwhelming to Salazar. He was used to this dream, to the scenario and the long waiting periods alone until he woke up in the real world and life went on. Having you here was a completely different story and he had no idea what to do with you, let alone in such revealing clothes. Clothes that were not supposed to be seen by anyone outside of a bedroom.

“[Y/N], por favor. Vas a matarme, mujer.”

You laughed at that, holding his hand. “Armando, I am not going to fall. The ship is not moving.”

He stared at both of your hands joined at the railing. Armando Salazar was not, by all means, a sentimental man but the fact you sought his touch, leaving manners and judgements aside, warmed his heart a bit. It was the third or fourth night of him being at his friend’s home and each passing day you got closer, actively seeking him for walks and conversation. You took him to the city, bought him fruits and even accompanied him, your dad and Guillermo on their trip to the hearing at the Armada’s headquarters.

He was not used to it. It had been a long time since a lady had any sort of interest in him, let alone one that was not purely carnal and, as rusty as he was on his own manners, he could tell you enjoyed being around. Your father and Guillermo did as well, which earned him a few comments that would make a sailor feel embarrassed. It was not proper, he thought, to have a lady such as yourself tagging along all the time; and yet the fact he enjoyed it just as much was terrifying. Armando was used to rough handling, that was the life the Armada brought him and the one he grew up into, be it from his own years sailing or from the previous years as his dad was much the same.

You looked up, frowning at the lack of sensations and stars. It was not cold but neither was it warm; there was no wind blowing, no stars above, no moon but you could still see everything around you; you could feel the rough wood of the ship but it didn’t smell like it had been burnt. Was this how he felt when he was dead? How they all felt? “Are you going to tell me?”

The captain’s gruesome head turned to you then, doing the little tilt it usually did when he was confused or puzzled by something. “Tell you what?”

“How you died. How you got like this. How you came back. I could not attend the hearing but I wonder how it was to be trapped for so long.”

A sigh left his lips then, a frown set on his face. “[Y/N], you were not supposed to be here, to see me like this, and for the life of me I do not know how you ended up here. It was a pirate, a young boy, he...he took everything from me. I died here, we all did, it was our house for the past 25 years and the toll it took on all of us can’t be named. I was another man back then…”

You noticed the conflict on his eyes, how tormented he seemed to be to relive all that was in his past and raised a hand. “Do not. I can see it pains you.” You jumped down from the railing and touched his shoulder in a gentle, calming gesture. “You can tell me when, and if, you feel comfortable about it one day. I am happy you returned, that is enough for me.”

Armando’s eyes took another light then, one of gratitude. He put his own hand on top of yours and squeezed it, nodding. “Gracias.”

You stood together like that, occasionally making little jokes or small conversations until you felt the same pull than before and the next time your eyes opened you were staring at your ceiling. Your maid walked in not long after, helping you get dressed to move on with your day and if you smirked at Salazar when you met him at the table for breakfast, it was no one’s business.

Spanish translations:

Señor = Sir

[Y/N], por favor. Vas a matarme, mujer. = [Y/N], please. You’re going to kill me, woman.

Gracias = Thank you.

#captain salazar #armando salazar #captain salazar x reader #captain salazar x you #armando salazar x reader #armando salazar x you #potc #potc fanfiction #potc imagine #pirates of the caribbean #pirates of the caribbean fanfiction #pirates of the caribbean imagine #dmtnt #potc dmtnt

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wafflefries13 · 4 years

Text

Walk Me Home

Woop woop! Finally got this one done. I think it got away from me a little there, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out.

Pairing: Katsuki Bakugo x Reader

Summary: While trying to avoid a potential stalker, you and a certain hard-headed boy make a deal to keep you safe on the way home.

Genre: Fluff, suspense

Warnings: Slight language, references to being stalked, depiction of kidnapping

As always, I love feed back. Thanks for reading! <3

You were racing the drops of condensation dripping down the frosted cooler glass. Personally, you thought the one on the far left was going to win. The center had been in the lead, but it crashed into a glop of drops and was forced to a sudden halt. The middle left gained a sudden lead by dropping down through an empty space. It veered suddenly and crashed into the far left, both of them stopping dead.

Well, so much for that.

That was the fifth race you’d monitored this hour. You’d spent the previous hour walking around the aisles of the convenience store you were holed up in, rotating the chip bags, soda bottles, and cans so that all the labels faced outward. The hour before that you spent memorizing the employee cleaning manual kept under the sink in the customer bathroom. And the hour before that you had spent tirelessly counting every ceiling and floor tile (Ceiling = 237, Floor = 422.) You were kind of surprised the worker behind the register hadn't said anything by this point. His feet were kicked up on the counter, and you were pretty sure he hadn’t looked up from his magazine since you came in.

It was dark outside by now, the street lights the only way to see where you were going. It had been early evening when you had first rushed in. Abandoning your condensation drop race, you sneaked a look out the wide windows that lined the front of the store. There, half-way hidden in the shadows of the large tree, silhouetted by the street lamp light. You jerked back, heart jumping up 100 beats per minute. God, you hoped he hadn’t seen you. But he had to know you were in here. So why hadn’t he come in? Why hadn’t he left?

You felt sick. You were going to be sick.

The door chimed as they slid open. Your fight or flight response kicked into overdrive

(Definitely flight). You ducked behind a display of dill pickle flavored chips. Oh, God. Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. Did you jinx yourself? Did he see you looking out and take that as an invitation? If he tried to do something, would the cashier help you? Would he even think something was wrong? Would he call a hero?

“Hey,” A voice broke you out of your panicked internal monologue. “The hell are you doing down there?”

Wait. You knew that gruff, irreverent voice.

“Bakugo?”

You and Bakugo were in the same class at UA. You weren’t sure he actually knew your name, though, much less that you sat a few seats away from each other.

You looked up from your crouch behind the chips display at his confused and slightly annoyed looking vermilion eyes. Well, his default state was slightly annoyed, so maybe that second part didn’t mean much. He had one hand in his pocket, the other loosely holding a bottle of cola by the neck.

“Umm,” you said, flustered. “I dropped a 500 yen coin. So, you know, don’t want to lose that. And, hey! These chips are 500 yen, too! So if I find it I can get a bag!” You nervously laughed, still not standing.

He narrowed his eyes at you, furrowing his eyebrows. Letting your self-consciousness take over, you slowly stood, rubbing your arm awkwardly and not meeting his gaze. Your eyes nervously darted to the large window, trying to see past the glare of the store lights.

“The hell are you looking at?” Bakugo said, lazily turning his head to look out.

“Don’t!” You said without thinking. You grabbed his uniform shirt sleeve and pulled him toward you, if only to get his attention away from looking outside.

He jerked back away from you, bringing up his arm as a barrier between you, as if you could ever do anything to hurt him. “Hah? What the hell?”

You looked away, wringing your hands together. “Sorry, I just… Can-can you do me a favor?” He raised an eyebrow at you. “Outside, across the street, there’s a big oak tree next to the street light. Is there… Is there someone still standing there?”

His glare turned less harsh. He rotated his neck and shoulders as if he was stretching his muscles, sneaking a glance through the window. He hummed low in his throat and turned back to you. “Yeah, there’s some creep there. Can’t make them out too well. You know that guy?”

You pressed your lips, slinking farther to the back of the store and away from the view of the window. “It’s nothing. I can deal with it later. Sorry to bother you.”

“Jeez,” Bakugo huffed, not buying it for a second. He followed your retreat, looming over you as your back hit the cold window door of the fridge. “You’re really bad at lying, aren’t you? What, is he some ex you’re trying to avoid? Owe someone money?” He smirked at his joke, but his face turned serious again when he saw your concerned and fearful expression.

“The truth is,” you started in a whisper. “I have a stalker. That guy out there has been following me for a few weeks. Usually it’s from school to work, but today he was waiting till I got done with my shift. I-I didn’t want him to know where I live, so I started taking all these back streets to try and lose him. I thought he’d just get bored or something, but he was always just behind me. So I came in here. Maybe if I Just waited here for a while he’d get bored and leave, but he’s been standing out there, waiting for me, for hours now, and I just want to go home and forget all about this but if I step outside…”

You weren’t sure when you started crying. All you knew was that at some point you couldn’t keep it in any more and everything started pouring out. You started hiccuping with the effort to keep back tears and making a scene, the heels of your hands digging into your eyes. Bakugo awkwardly rubbed the back of his head and looked away.

“Jeez,” he said under his breath. “I never know what to do when girls cry. Uh, hang in there?” He patted your shoulder, bringing his hand back when you flinched from his touch. “Have you, like, tried calling the police?”

“Of course I have. They said they can't do anything because he hasn’t actually done anything illegal. And it’s not like I can get a restraining order or something because I don’t know who he is.” You sniffed.

“Huh. Well. You want me to go kick his ass?”

Your brain took a second to process his response, then you burst out in a fit of giggles. He smiled back, more like a self-satisfied smirk. You tried to gulp down a breath, laughing becoming frenzied as the stress of the situation finally overwhelmed you. Then, as suddenly as you started, you stopped as an idea slammed into you.

“Actually, maybe you could do that.” Bakugo quirked his brow at you. “No, not literally. I mean, well, you’re scary looking-“

“Hey!”

“And I was just thinking that maybe if someone was with me - if you were with me - when I walked home, then he wouldn’t think he could, I don’t know, take advantage of the situation?”

“You want me to be your bodyguard?”

“I mean, when you put it like that…” You fiddled with your hands again.

You stood in silence, the only sound the buzzing of the fluorescent lights above you and the hum of the drinks fringes behind you.

Bakugo shoved his drink in your hands. “Pay for this for me. I’m gonna grab some instant noodles and boa buns too. You know how to get home from here?”

You blinked up at him, twisting the bottle anxiously in your hands. “If we get to the train station, then I know where to go from there.”

He jerked his head to the front. “Great, let’s hurry it up. I want to get home too, you know.”

You blinked. “Wait, really?”

“Yes, really. Move your ass.”

You followed closely behind him, paying for the snacks at the counter. You hesitated when the doors to the convenience store slide open, standing half-way out. The street light hit your eyes differently out here, blinding you to the already dark shadows. Was that a twitch of movement? A hidden figure in the mess of shapes cast by the trees?

Bakugo’s grip on your wrist shocked you out of your grim hyperactive imagination like a bucket of ice water. His mouth was pulled into a frown, but he gently pulled you out of the doorway. He let you go as you walked out of the light of the store. You desperately wanted him not to.

It didn’t take long before you heard a third set of footsteps join yours and Bakugo’s. You inched closer to him, arms brushing together. Seemingly unconcerned, Bakugo munched on a boa bun.

“Hey,” He said. The abruptness of it in the otherwise silent night made you jump. “Didn’t you win the 50 meter dash in the sports festival last year?”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Cool. This should be easy, then.”

He whipped around, chucking the boa bun directly at the man following you. You heard a sound of surprise. Bakugo grabbed your hand and took off in the other direction. Your feet pounded against the sidewalk, knees high in a way that you would have considered indecent in your uniform skirt if you weren’t already terrified. Your heart pounded in your ears as he led you down turn after turn, block after block. After the length of several 50 meter dashes, he let go of your hand, Both of your long strides slowing down as you came to a stop in the glow of the train station’s entrance. You bent over, hands steadying yourself on your thighs. Next to you, Bakugo stretched backward, pulling his arms back to ease the muscles.

“Well, that wasn’t too terrible, huh?” He said with a smirk.

You gave a breathy laugh. Standing up, you searched the dark around you for any signs of human disturbance. You pushed your hair out of your face, sweat sticking to your forehead from your impromptu marathon.

“Sorry you had to sacrifice your bun.”

He shrugged. “You‘ll just owe one. You know where to go from here?”

The two of you started down the road back to your house. You tried to fill the space between you with small talk. Bakugo would grunt in response every once and a while. You tried to ignore the feeling that he was getting annoyed with you. But whenever you would trail off, he’d snap at you to continue your line of thought.

You weren’t sure what time it was when you finally got home, just that it was late. The windows were dark and you fumbled with your key. Bakugo skeptically observed your house.

“You’re not home alone, right?” He asked.

“I am, actually. My parents work for a pretty new company, so they’re out of the city a lot for business trips.”

“Hah?” He sounded indignant, like you personally offended him. “They left you alone with this creep around?”

“I mean, I haven’t really told them.” You pressed your lips, trying not to meet his furious glare. “They already just deal with a lot. And I already told you what the police said. I just don’t want to worry them, you know?”

He tapped your forehead with his knuckles. “Idiot. Parents are supposed to worry, that’s what they’re there for.” He glowered as his cell phone rang. Fishing it out of his pocket, he mumbled, “Speak of the devil.” He held up a hand in goodbye. You waved a little before dropping in to a bow of gratitude. You could hear him arguing with the person on the other end of the line.

You triple checked all the locks on your windows and doors, turning on all the lights. You drew the curtains in tight, not looking too deeply into the dark outside. But you were home now, you were safe behind these familiar walls. And besides, that guy didn’t know where you lived, right?

~~~

You were still half asleep at your desk in school the next day. You hadn’t slept well last night, jerking back awake at the slightest irregular noise. You were becoming a wreck. You weren’t sure exactly how much more of this you could take. After you had woken up for the n-th time last night, you had typed out a text to your mom, explaining what was happening back home. Agonizing over the text, you ended up deleting it.

You started nodding off. You could just rest your eyes for a second, right? It was a passing period, so you had some time.

A stack of textbooks slammed down on your desk. You shrieked, throwing yourself back. You would have fallen back if someone didn’t catch your chair.

“Whoa, hang on there, (Y/N)!” Kirishima caught your chair and set you back upright. Bakugo drummed his fingers on the textbooks he had just stopped your heart with.

“Thought you were going to bed after I left last night,” He said.

“Ooh, left last night?” Mina said, sliding over. “Is there something we need to know?”

“Lay off, Pinkie!”

“No, it’s no big deal, really!” You tried to salvage the situation, waving your hands in front of you. “We just walked home in the same direction is all.”

“Walking home together?” Sero said, leaning back in his chair. “That’s a pretty big leap in your relationship, don’t you think, Bakugo?”

“I said to lay off, you damn extras!”

The small group started playfully arguing with each other. It didn’t feel at all serious, especially since every one but Bakugo was laughing and joking against his threats.

“Can’t anyone have a private conversation around here?” Bakugo said angrily. He stomped away, turning back at the door. “Well, aren’t you coming?” Realizing he was talking to you, you quickly excused yourself and hurried after him.

Bakugo was leaning out an open window, the autumn wind tossing his hair. Not sure exactly what you say, you bowed a little. “Thanks again for last night.”

“Do you have any clubs after school?” Bakugo asked, ignoring your gratitude.

You blinked.”No, I don’t. I have to head to work after the final bell.”

“And how far is that from here?”

“Not very. It’s a Japanese sweets cafe that opened nearby. I’ve seen some people with our school’s uniform there, so I guess it’s pretty popular here.”

“And how long’s your shift?”

“From 4 to 6:30 on school days, 8 to 4 on the weekends. But, um, why?”

He scoffed, knocking your forehead with his knuckle like he had the night before. “Idiot. Obviously because I’m gonna make sure you get to work and home okay. You said that weirdo followed you from school to work. So we’ll walk there together then back to your place. At least till your parents get back in town, because you’re definitely telling them, you got it?”

You could feel yourself blushing hard. “Yeah, sure, of course! That’s really kind of you, actually. Thank you!”

Bakugo waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t take it personally or anything. I just don’t want to be watching the news and hear your dumbass got kidnapped or some bullshit like that.”

You weren’t really sure how to respond to that, so you just twirled a lock of hair around your finger. “Still, I really appreciate it. It’s really heroic of you!”

Bakugo whipped his head away, but you were almost sure you caught his cheeks turning pink. “Tch, whatever. Don’t think too hard about it. And I still expect payment! You better be ready to cough up some of those sweets from your job!”

~~~

“So, (Y/N),” Your coworker, Matsu, said while elbowing you good-naturedly. “Who’s your friend you brought in today?” She winked and nodded her head at a small table set on the patio of your workplace.

Bakugo was studying, gnawing at the end of his pen. He’d planted himself there after the two of you left school. He’d kept on a steady diet of sweets since your shift started, and you started getting worried about what your paycheck at the end of the month would look like. Once again, you talked the whole way through your walk with only interspersed responses from the blond. But you felt much more comfortable chatting this time, less like you were bothering him. Although you knew he would never admit it, you had a feeling that Bakugo could really be kind under all that ego and anger.

You started placing chick-shaped meika hiyoko in a tray in the display case. “Bakugo is a friend from school. Well, I think you’d call him a friend, anyway. He’s just waiting for my shift to end to walk me home.”

You didn’t like the self-satisfied look that came over Matsu’s face. “Ooh, walking you home, huh?”

“Oh, stop coming up with ridiculous ideas! He’s just…” You trailed off. How exactly were you meant to explain your situation?

You were saved from responding with a knock on the window. Bakugo mouthed an order of Shingen Momo. You quickly excused yourself despite Matsu’s teasing protests.

Bakugo had a healthy stack of plates from previous sweets stacked next to his text book. You tried mentally adding a tally of how much his little feast was going to cost you. You set the plate down and looked over his shoulder at what he was studying.

“Wow,” You commented. “That looks really difficult. Did I miss something in class today?”

“No,” He said. “I’m studying for college entrance exams.”

“Oh, right. You want to get into that famous hero college, right? I guess they have to be pretty tough. I heard Izuku in our class wants to go there, too.”

Bakugo snapped the pencil he was holding. “That damn Deku! Always trying to take my ideas! Who does he think he is, trying to be a hero, huh?! No one even knew he had a Quirk until recently! He pretty much breaks every bone in his body when he uses it! How’s a loser like that meant to be a hero?!”

You were a little shocked. You didn’t think you’d ever seen Bakugo this suddenly passionate about anything. Yet, despite his negative ramblings, he came across as admiring the boy with green hair in your class, talking about Izuku’s training schedule and how strong he had gotten since they knew each other in middle school. You couldn’t help but giggle at his sudden uproar. Hearing you, Bakugo cut himself off, quickly glancing away.

He fished another pencil out of his bag and re-focused on his text book. “That creep is still here.” Your mouth went dry as all frivolity seeped from your body. Bakugo stealthy pointed the end of his pencil to a garden store across the street. “He’s been walking in and out of stores this whole time. He’s hiding out there now. Definitely keeping an eye out.”

You gulped hard. “What should we do?”

“Well, first, you can bring me another momiji manju. Then, go back to work. Let me know when your shift ends. You guys have a back door, right? We can go through that, cut through the big inside shopping center.” He pulled out his phone and opened an app. “I looked it up. There’s another train station near here. It goes right to the one near your house. We’ll jump on there.”

You expected your heartbeat to slow down now that there was a solution to the probable danger. But instead it kept speeding up as you thought of the work Bakugo had put into researching his escape plan.

“Wow,” You breathed. “I guess you really are my hero, huh?”

Bakugo bristled, turning his face away before you could see it turning red (although the tips of his ears were practically a cherry color by now), and shoved an empty plate at you. “Momiji manju! And make sure it’s hot this time!”

~~~

“He’s still behind us.”

Your stalker was more cautious this time. He was making more of an effort to go unnoticed, ducking in and out of shops, getting lost in the crowd, but still keeping an uncomfortably close distance.

Bakugo clicked his teeth. “This guy doesn't know when to quit. You’re sure he doesn’t know where you live, right?”

“I’ve never seen him around. But…” You let the thought hang between the two of you like a dark cloud.

Bakugo seemed to be contemplating something for a second. Clenching and unclenching his fists, his hand shot forward to tightly grip onto yours. You started a little at his sudden aggressive hand holding, but flexed your fingers to intertwine with his. Bakugo cleared his throat, looking away.

“You’re not-“ You could have sworn you heard his voice crack, not that you would ever admit it. Bakugo cleared his throat and started again. “You’re not scared of heights, are you?”

“Not really. Why?”

Faster than you could keep up with, Bakugo pulled you closer. His other arm swept down, scooping you up under your knees and holding you to his chest. He took two large steps before kicking off a vending machine on the side of the street. You wrapped your arms around his neck as he took off his support from your back, pointing his hand palm down and releasing a blast. The explosion rocked through your ears as the two of you were propelled upward. A scream died in your throat. Just before you landed on the roof of a store neighboring the street you were just walking along, he released another explosion which propelled you even higher and further.

“I thought you said you weren’t afraid of heights,” Bakugo said with a laugh in his voice. “Open your eyes.”

You didn’t really notice how tightly you had clenched your eyes until he told you to open them. You had your head buried in the crook of his neck, the scent of caramelized sugar and smoke overwhelming your senses. You cracked open one eye just as Bakugo launched you both high in the air. You lost your breath, gazing in wonder at the sight before you. The sky was ablaze with red, oranges, and purples as the sun set. A band of stars was just twinkling into existence at the very top of the sky. The town below you looked just like a train-set model, tiny and delicate and perfect. Your stomach dropped as you plummeted back down. You laughed, yelling, clutching to him tighter. He tightened his hold around waist, smirk widening into a genuine heartfelt smile.

You both stumbled a bit, coming to a rocky landing in your neighborhood. There weren’t any more commercial buildings around, so you thought the residents would be grateful that they wouldn’t have to deal with shoe prints on their roofs. The air around you was crisp with the scent of melting sugar. You were lost to a giggle fit, holding your stomach as you tried to get a hold of yourself.

“You think he saw that coming?” Bakugo asked with a sideways grin.

“This is worth all the momiji manju in the world if we get to do that again!”

Bakugo’s chest swelled with pride as he brushed off invisible dirt. “Hah, what I tell you? It’s going to take a lot more than some creep in a black hoodie to get one over on Bakugo Katsuki.”

You clapped for him. “Full marks, Mr. Future-Number-One-Hero.” He ducked his head, looking away bashfully. You started walking in the direction of your house. “How did you even come up with that idea?”

“Rockets. I figure you have to get some pretty powerful force to shoot something that high up. And considering my Quirk is the most powerful force out there, well, it was a cinch.”

“So is that going to be your hero name, then? Rocket Man?”

He scowled. “No way! My hero name’s gonna be something way cooler! Like, like,” For someone who had dedicated his whole life to becoming a hero, you thought it was a little cute that he had left off some of the more practical aspects, like what he would be called. He snapped his fingers. “What about Lord Explosion?!”

You tried to bite back a laugh. You failed. “It’s a little obvious, don’t you think?”

“Alright then. What about King Murder?”

“Well, it’s certainly direct.”

“Wait, I’ve got it! Lord Explosion Murder!”

You stopped trying to hide your laughter. “Perfect. I can see it on all the T-shirts now.”

He pouted, no doubt trying to look menacing. “Alright, what’s your great idea?”

You hummed in thought. “What about Ground Zero? That’s what you call the middle of a major disaster. You know, like an explosion? It’s kind of metaphorical, thematic, and way more marketable than having the word ‘murder’ in your title.”

Bakugo looked down, eyebrows furrowed. “Damn. That is good.” He gave you a sideways look. “What’s your Quirk, anyway?”

You fiddled with your fingers. “It’s nothing too fancy. Nothing heroic or strong like yours, I mean.” You pressed your lips together and whistled. Instead of a normal sharp note, however, you replicated a perfect Asian Koel call. Not a second later, you heard a reply from a nearby park. Altering your call al title, a small brown bird with white speckles and red eyes flew down and landed on the back of your hand. You alternated with a few more calls, a Pacific Swift, Gray Nightjar, Kentish Plover, and Japanese Sparrowhawk. One by one, the birds would respond and come to perch on your hand or shoulder, the plover taking a dignified seat on your head. The sparrowhawk squaked at Bakugo when he tried to poke it.

“I can recreate any birdsong if I hear it once,” You explained. The Koel cooed as you pet under its chin. “I can kind of understand them, too. Not in a Dr. Dolittle way or anything, more just the general idea of what they’re trying to communicate. Danger, hungry, food here, that kind of thing.”

“Must be fun in the spring.”

“Ugh, you have no idea. It’s impossible to sleep in.”

“Maybe they’re just trying to chat you up.” Bakugo created a little explosion in his hand. The birds squaked in protest and flew away. “Little bastards. Don’t birds have noises to let other birds know not to mooch on their territory?”

“You mean a song? And what do you have to defend anyway?”

He slung an arm around your shoulders, pulling you close again. “Birds mate for life or some shit, right? They need to know you’re not available.”

Your heart definitely didn’t skip a beat. Definitely.

~~~

One of the last things you expected the next morning was to find Bakugo waiting impatiently at your front door. “What am I supposed to do if you just don’t show up for class, huh?” He declared with a haughty attitude. “You’ll make me feel guilty.” He came in, slugging off his shoes at the doorway and collapsing on the couch in the living room. “Let me know when you’re done with breakfast then we can leave.”

“Oh,” You said. “I, uh, don’t usually eat breakfast. I try to get to school early, so…”

Bakugo furrowed his eyebrows. “Seriously? It’s the first thing in the morning. How are you supposed to have energy for the rest of the day?” He put on a begrudging air as he marched to the kitchen. He started pulling out pans and rummaging through the fridge and pantry. “Geez, you have nothing here! What, your parents didn’t leave any grocery money when they abandoned you here? Well don’t just stand there. Go finish getting ready. I’ll get something together by the time you’re done.”

Unsure about leaving him alone in your kitchen, but in no position to refuse him, you headed back to your bathroom to try and make it look like you had been getting a decent night's sleep for the past week.

Slugging your backpack over your shoulder, you came back downstairs to the smell of warm waffles. How Bakugo had managed to make a giant stack of fluffy waffles in the few minutes you were gone was beyond you.

“Shouldn’t we eat on the go?” You asked when he set down a plate on the table.

He tapped the long handle of the spatula against his shoulder. “You have way too many unhealthy habits. You don’t ask for help, you don’t eat breakfast. What am I going to do with you?” He pushed you down into a chair and took a seat in the one next to you, angrily stabbing the top waffle and taking a massive bite out of it before it even made it to his plate. “Eating on the go messes with your digestion. If you want to be helpful, start making a grocery list. You don’t work today, right? We’ll go to the store after school. I don’t need the stress of having you pass out from hunger on top of everything else.”

You stared at him as he wolfed down his breakfast. When he noticed you still haven’t taken anything, he shoved the plate to you. Taking a waffle, you couldn’t help but have a large smile spread across your face.

“You really are nice, aren’t you, Bakugo?”

He choked on his waffle. He refused to look at you for the rest of the morning.

~~~

Bakugo had been walking you to and from home for three weeks now. People at school had definitely started to notice. Especially after he started to drag you to eat lunch with him and his friends, lunches that he had made for you. You started showing off your Quirk a little more. Your favorite was calling down crows, bribing him with shinny pins and glass gems. You especially got a kick out of Denki freaking out when the birds mimicking human speech.

Without really noticing, you had slowly stopped being so nervous. You didn’t triple check your windows and doors at night, you weren’t always looking over your shoulder, you didn’t flinch when the chime over the door at work sounded.

You had also been growing significantly closer to Bakugo. You didn’t think it was at all possible for someone so rough to have such a sweet side. Sure, everything kind he did was still smothered in his devil may care attitude, but you came to learn that his abrupt remarks and aggressive personality was just a top layer. Bakugo knew what he wanted in life and was never subtle about sharing his thoughts. But his own emotions still came as an annoying mystery to him. He would intertwine his fingers with yours, declaiming with a blush and avoiding your eyes that he just wanted just wanted to make sure you wouldn’t get lost or snatched away from him. He made sure you started eating well, something you had all but dropped due to stress. He would pull you into the kitchen with him, having you help him making breakfast and your bento lunches.

There was one situation where sitting on the patio of the sweet shop you worked at. Your boss had noticed his frequent stays and had recruited him to help test new recipes. Not to mention this helped ease the impact on your pay check.

Munching on a new flavor of melon pan, you two chatted under the warm sun. Giggling at some remark he made, you froze when you felt his fingers brush your face. Suddenly, Bakugo was less than a breath away from you. He brushed a lock of hair out of your face, tucking it behind your ear. His hand dropped down to your chin, eyes falling to your lips. Your heart started stuttering, breath coming out in shallow gasps. He brushed his thumb over your bottom lip.

Bakugo looked up, searching your face. You let your eyes flutter closed, leaning forward.

You both must have jumped three feet in the air with the interrupting squawk. A crow perched on your head, beak darting forward to peck at the melon pan forgotten in Bakugo’s hand. Bakugo yelled at the bird, waving it away and yelling obscenities at it. But that didn’t stop him from tearing off a chunk of the sweet bread and throwing it to him.

You both kept the blushes for the rest of the day.

~~~

You knew that nothing this good could last forever.

It started out like any other new-normal day. You were walking home from work with Bakugo. It was late autumn now, the days getting shorter and nights longer. The sun had already completely set as you strolled down the street. You didn’t notice something was wrong immediately. But then your stomach started to turn into knots. You shuffled closer to Bakugo who seemed to be noticing that something was amiss, too. You kept telling yourself that you were being paranoid. Nothing had happened for so long now, why would something suddenly happen now?

And then you heard the sparrow start singing. It was high pitched and panicked. A few swept down, fluttering in front of the two of you before cascading back up to their tree. You knew that sound. It meant danger.

You latched yourself to Bakugo’s side. “Bakugo,” You whispered. “Something’s wrong.”

He wrapped his arm around you. “Yeah, I noticed. Stay close, okay?”

You were afraid that you were practically tripping over his feet. But you didn’t want to move away. Every muscle tense, you looked over your shoulder. He was walking behind the street lights, staying out of the majority of the light. The street lights just barley illuminated his dark clothes, his hunched figure, determinately marching at a steady pace. Was he holding something? Did he just speed up? Was he-?

Bakugo stopped suddenly. You stumbled a bit, clutching his arm to get your balance again. “Bakugo?”

He whipped around. “Hey! Asshole!” He turned to you, hesitating for only a second before cradling your face, maybe a little more aggressively than he should have, rattled by nerves, and kissed you. It wasn’t extremely romantic, your teeth clashed for a moment, his fingers burying in your hair. He dropped one of his hands to your hip, pulling you closer and angling his head. The kiss was desperate, urgent, trying to communicate feelings and thoughts that it would have been difficult to vocalize. Your eyes fluttered closed. You pressed back up into him, one hand resting on his shoulder and the other tangerine in his mess of spiky blond hair.

The seconds stretched on for what seemed like minutes, but when you pulled away it felt like it was over all too fast. You tried to regain your breath, slightly panting. He looked into your eyes with an intensity and softness you had never seen from him, all his layers peeled back to show a soft and caring core.

His face suddenly hardened. He pulled you into him, turning his face to look back at your stalker, who you had almost completely forgotten about during your kiss.

“She’s not interested!” He shouted. “She’s got a boyfriend! Get it through your thick skull! And if I ever find out you’re nothing my girlfriend again, I’ll kill you, got it?!”

You looked at your stalker straight on from the first time. He was this dark shadow that cut through the street lamps lights. He was shaking, with nerves you hoped, but more likely with rage. But at least, standing in front of you, with someone strong at your side, he looked so much more human. This wasn’t a shadow with fangs and claws. Just a person. Sure, an unhinged person who had been following you, but you had back up. A whole team of support both emotionally and physically.

The stalker didn’t say anything, just stared at the two of you. He looked like he was going to come to you, to fight, to scream. But he just turned, marching away, back into the dark.

~~~

“Do you think he’s actually done?” You asked. You were back at your house, nervously chopping leeks for lunch in the coming week.

“Damn better be,” Bakugo said. He reclined on the couch, flipping through a magazine.

“I guess that means you don’t have to walk me home any more then,” You said, leadingly.

You smirked when you heard him slam the magazine back on the coffee table. “Like hell! You’re my girlfriend, aren’t you? I can walk you home whenever I damn well feel like it! Or, you know, if you want me to, I mean. You still want me to, right?”

You tried to press down your grin as you walked back into the living room, sitting down next to him. “So, you were serious about that? You’re my boyfriend now?”

He scowled. “I don’t say anything you mean. You’re mine now, got it?”

You smiled and kissed his check. “Only if that means you’re mine, too.”

He blushed up to his ears, pressing his face to the top of your head. “Sure.”

~~~

An hour later, there was a knock on the door.

Bakugo left just a little while ago, and since then you had taken a shower, changing into your pajamas. Coming down stairs to check the locks and lights one last time, you saw Bakugo’s laying across the back of the couch. You picked it up, rubbing your thumb over the collar. You’d have to give it back to him at school tomorrow. You smiled fondly, thinking of what he’d try to say to justify him forgetting something.

And then someone knocked at the door.

You started a little. You put a hand to your chest to calm your beating heart. It must have been Bakugo. You supposed Bakugo had realized he had misplaced his jacket and come back. Well, you didn’t mind seeing him again, you supposed.

Practically skipping to the front door, you opened the door with a smile. You barely had the door cracked when it slammed open, cracking against the wall, the knob indenting in the soft drywall. You shrieked and fell back, landing hard on your butt. Before you could regain your bearings, a heavy weight pressed down on you.

Your eyes bulged open. A man in all black was on top of you, knee pressing into your chest, one hand securely applying pressure to your throat and the other pressing a too sweet smelling rag against your nose and mouth. The bottom of his face was covered by a black bandana, but his eyes were wide and blood shot. He was muttering something to himself, or maybe you? But the blood rushing to your ears blocked out any cognizant thought.

Your hands flew around, slapping and shoving, trying to jab your thumbs into the soft tissues of his eyes, clawing at his cheeks. But nothing seemed to bother him too much. And then things started getting fuzzy at the edges. The spiked fear in your head started swirling around. Your limbs felt heavy and stopped responding to your commands. Then everything fell, and the dark pulled you in with an ice cold grip.

~~~

You weren’t sure how much time had passed when you woke up. It was dark, so dark you almost thought you were blindfolded. You were curled up in an uncomfortable ball, something fibrous was shoved in your mouth. You tried to poke it out with your dry tongue, but it didn't budge. Your hands were fastened behind you with plastic zip ties. You flexed your fingers, coming to grasp the thin but strong metal bars behind you. You tried to stretch out your legs, but your bare feet came into contact with more of these bars. Trying to sit up, you could only manage an awkward hunch as a roof of bars thunked against your head. A cage. You were in a dog cage. You were tied up in a dog cage in the dark.

You tried to kick against the bars, but you couldn’t build up much force with so little space. All it did was shake the cage in an awful rattle. You stopped when you heard footsteps. You shuffled on your side to the back of the cage, which wasn’t saying much with how little room there was any way.

The door to the room the cage was in opened. You squinted against the sudden light, temporarily blinded. Blinking up at the figure of your capture, You felt the blood in your veins turn to ice. Your ears rang with the sudden surge of adrenaline and every muscle in your body told you to get ready to run.

Your capture, your stalker, stood like a horrible stain, silhouetted in the light. He pulled back the hood on his jacket, beaming down at you. This is the first time you had seen his face up close. Did you know him? You think he might have come into the shop once or twice. But you couldn’t think of any time you would have talked to him.

He smiled like a kid in a candy store. It made you ill. “You’re awake!” He said. His voice was chipped, strained from years of smoke. The reek of it hung on his clothes and wafted through the room. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I know it’s small and uncomfortable. But I had to make sure, you know? You get it, right? I had to speed everything up, see? I just-” He balled his hands into fists. Suddenly, he slammed down on his knees in front of you. Your shriek was cut off by the gag in your mouth. “I had to get you away from him! The way he was all over you, touching you, grabbing you, k-k-kissing you!” He slammed his fists on the cage, making it shudder. He saw your wide eyes, your trembling. He lowered his voice, leaning down to look closer at you. “I’m sorry. I know it wasn’t your fault. He was taking advantage of you, right? But it’s okay, I have you now! And don’t worry, we’ll get out of here soon. There’s this place, way out in the mountains. We’ll be safe there. I have a room, just for you. A little palace for the perfect little doll…”

He tried to reach through the bars and touch your face. You screamed through your gag, trying to kick away his hand. He jerked back, surprised. He got angry in a flash. Slamming his fist against the bars again, he got up, muttering to himself about how this would all be solved once he could get you out of the city, how that damn boy had tried to poison you against him.

Oh god. Oh god, oh god, oh god. You had to get out. You had to get out! You squirmed against your bonds, but only succeeded in having them cut deeper into your flesh.

You felt a chill in the room. You squinted, trying to see through the dark. You noticed a blackout curtain taped around a window. One corner fluttered away. The window must have been slightly opened. If you could just get your gag out…

You chewed at the dense fabric. Bits were coming off in your mouth, getting stuck between your teeth. Working your jaw until it felt like it was about to fall off, you finally managed to work it loose enough to shove it from your mouth with your tongue. Pressing your lips together, you let out a pitiful excuse for a whistle. You swallowed hard, willing saliva back into your mouth. Once more, you whistled, the sound transforming into a Russet Sparrow call. You thought you heard a faint reply from outside, but couldn’t be sure with every one of your nerves rattled and frayed.

You ran your fingers along the bottom edge of the cage. Along the back side, where the bars met the hard metal floor, there was a small lip of metal, something that had been welded wrong in the cage’s construction. Maneuvering your bound wrists, you started to saw at the zip ties with that jutting piece of metal.

~~~

He’d forgotten his damn jacket.

Bakugo was on his way home after leaving your place. Halfway there, he suddenly realized he felt a lot colder than he had when walking to your house. He supposed he could always turn around and pick it up now. It would give him another excuse to see you. But his old hag would probably just get angry at him if he showed up later than normal. Still, maybe he could just use the later hour as an excuse and stay at your house for the night. Sleeping on the couch, of course! But he did wonder what you looked like first thing in the morning…

Feathers flung in his face. Bakugo jerked back, swiping at the air in front of him. A couple of those small birds you would chirp at was frantically flying circles above him. One dive bombed him again, chirping nervously and fast.

“Beat it, dumb birds!” He whacked at them again. Stupid jelous birds.

Then he noticed their patterns. Sure, they would dive down at him, but then they would shoot up and fly back in the direction of your house, circling back to him. It was almost like they wanted him to go back there…

Bakugo broke out in a cold sprint. His feet pounded the pavement as the birds flew leading the way. He was panting by the time he reached your street, more out of the rising dread in his chest than actual exhaustion.

Reaching the front gate to your house, he froze. The door was wide open. He launched himself inside, yelling your name. His coat lay in a crumpled heap just inside the entrance. Underneath it was a strange rag. Picking it up, Bakugo felt that it was slightly wet. He brought it to his face and sniffed, jerking it back when the sickly sweet smell hit his nose. Chloroform.

His mide connected the dots in a flash. He yelled angrily and punched the wall, the drywall caving it without his notice. He dropped the rag and headed back outside.

He saw the birds chittering in a tree branch. “Hey!” He yelled at them. “You know where she is, right? She sent you to tell me. Take me to her!” At the back of his mind, Bakugo felt like an idiot for yelling at birds in the middle of the night. A sense of relief overwhelmed him when the birds chirped again and purposefully flew away, darting back to him to make sure he was following.

~~~

You couldn’t tell if you were making any headway with the zipties. Did they feel looser or was that your imagination? Or perhaps you were just losing feeling in your hands from the cutoff of blood flow. But you couldn’t stop. You couldn’t stop the one thing that might help yourself.

With a sound that to you mimicked a thunder clap, one of the zipties snapped. You almost sobbed in relief as you brought your hands to your front and rubbed your wrists. You tugged on the other plastic tie around your wrist, but it was still stubbornly strong. You’d have to cut it off with a knife or something.

A knife! You needed something to protect yourself with. There was no way of knowing if your bird distress call had actually reached anyone. You needed to take care of yourself, get outside, get to a phone or a police station or a hero or something. You knew you had a slim chance of taking on your attacker in a one-to-one fight. He had at least a foot and a hundred pounds on you, not to mention whatever his Quirk might be.

You fumbled around in the dark, trying to find the latch for the cage. Swiping randomly, your fingers clutched around the pull handle for the door. You tried to yank to open but it wouldn’t budge. Feeling around, you clutched a heavy padlock firmly attached to the handle. Of course your stalker would have taken extra precautions, and you didn’t think you could break the lock with a thin piece of metal.

No sooner had hopelessness started to creep back into your mind than you heard the door to the room click open. You threw yourself back against the far side of the cage, shoving the gag back in your mouth and putting your arms behind you as if they were still tied.

Your stalker peeked in, smiling widely like he had a wonderful surprise for you. “We’re almost ready,” He said, giddily. “I can get you ready to move now. You’re just going to have to sleep for a little longer, okay? By the time you wake up, everything will be fixed!”

You watched in disgusted horror as he took out another rag, licking it to soaking with his saliva. Was that what he had pressed against your mouth and nose back at your house? Did he have some sort of chloroform-saliva Quirk? If you weren’t going to be sick before, you definitely were now.

But then he fished out a key from the pocket of his ill-fitting sweatpants. His hands shook as he tried to fit the key in the lock of the cage. You still had the element of surprise on him. You pictured your plan of attack. When he opened the cage door to grab you, you’d kick him. Then, while distracted, you’d claw at his face, bite him if you had to. You didn’t need to beat him, you just needed to distract and disorientate him enough to make it out of the room. You could close the door behind you. Maybe there was something near you could barricade it with. Then just sprint as fast as you could to the door. He made it sound like you were still in the city, in a residential district as the very least. You could run next door, hide in someone's backyard, pound on their door until they let you in to call the police.

Just as he fit the key into the lock, there was a loud sound from outside the room. It sounded like it came from downstairs, banging. Your stalker glowered, ripping the key from the lock. He tossed it on a desk in the room, slamming the door behind him as he marched out to deal with the intrusion.

You were barely able to fit your hand through the bars, much less reach the key. You took a steadying breath before starting to whistle the sparrow song again. You heard a faint reply from outside. You whistled more frantically, a sharp song that indicated danger. You could just barley make out a lump pushing against the blackout curtains covering the window. A tiny tan bird head popped up from the corner of the curtain. You could have cried. Quieting your whistle, you nodded your head at the desk with the key. The little bird fluttered its wings, hopping around the room. It probably didn’t have the best night vision either.

You heard banging coming from downstairs. There was a roar of something you quickly recognized as an explosion. Bakugo? Your message had reached him! And now he was fighting your attacker by himself. You had hoped he would call the police or a hero or something. Honestly, you thought to yourself, you should have seen this coming.

The sparrow found the desk. It pushed the key off with its beak. The key was about the same size as the sparrow. It had a little trouble carrying the key over to you. It dropped it just within reach of your index finger to pull it into the cage. Using two fingers to hold the key, the most you could fit between the bars, you jammed the key into the lock and twisted it. You had never been so happy to hear a click before.

You slammed the cage door open, causing the bird to flutter away in surprise. You stretched your aching muscles as you unfolded yourself from the cage. Whipping your head around, you tried to find some sort of weapon you could use to help Bakugo. Seeing nothing in the small room, you opened the door just enough to peak out. As silently as you could, your legs still half asleep from being stuck in a cramp position, you snuck out into the hall.

Downstairs, you heard Bakugo yell. The little sparrow dove down the staircase and you followed. You saw Bakugo and your attacker grappling in the living room which was crowded with moving boxes. Your stalker had his teeth sunken in to Bakugo’s arm. His arm fell limply to his side as numbness seemed to spread to that whole part of his body.

Frantically looking around, you saw a half-packed lamp sticking out of one of the boxes. You heaved it up, the weight reassuring in your hands.

Bakugo spotted you over your stalker’s shoulder. “(Y/N)!” He barked out. “Run!”

Just as your attacker turned around, you surged forward with the lamp held aloft. With a scream, you brought it down on his head with all the strength you could muster in your addled limbs. He crumpled to the floor like wet cardboard. Blood began to leak from his skull. You dropped the lamp, the feeling on impact still drumming through your fingers.

“(Y/N)!” Bakugo called again. He stumbled to you, his left side already half paralized by your stalker’s Quirk infused bite. “Are you okay? Did he hurt you? Did he touch you? I told you to run, idiot! How did he get inside your house?” Before he had a chance to breathe, much less answer his questions, his left leg gave out on him. You caught him, halfway holding him up.

“I’ll tell you everything when we get to the police, okay?” You said in a frazzled voice. He tried to haul himself up to standing, but he might as well have been standing on a broken ankle.

Bakugo told you where the front door was. You half dragged him through the house to get outside. Just as you opened the front door, you felt something hard and heavy plow into the small of your back. You went flying forward, dropping Bakugo who landed with a grunting thud.

“(Y/N)!” You heard from behind you. You pushed yourself up, looking behind you. Your stalker, face now red with dripping blood and wild eyes, stumbled towards the two of you. “Don’t you see what he’s doing? He’s trying to poison you against me! He’s going to take you away from me! Unless… He already has! He’s corrupted you!” He lifted his leg to kick Bakugo in the stomach. Bakugo lifted his good arm and released an explosion aimed at the stalker’s stomach. The second man yelled in pain and was blasted backwards.

Bakugo shoved himself up, propping himself up on his good knee and maneuvered his way in front of you. “This time, listen to me and go,” He said sternly.

“Bakugo!” You protested.

He looked over his shoulder at you and smirked. “Hey, I’m your hero, right? That means I got to protect you, even if I get hurt.”

Your stalker roared, thrashing as he picked himself off the ground. The place where Bakugo’s explosion had caught him ripped his oversized hoodie, revealing his belly and chest that now had burns. He roared again and started charging to you.

You gripped Bakugo’s good shoulder, pulling him back. You threw yourself in front of him, spreading your arms wide and closing your eyes tight.

Just when you were expecting a blow from your stalker, you heard an annoyed and surprised grunt from him instead. Opening your eyes, you saw the deranged man tangled in ribbons of white cloth. He snapped and tried to lash out at it, but the more he struggled the tighter it became.

A man appeared behind him, seeming to melt out of the shadows. He tugged the white cloth so it snapped tight around your stalker, pinning his arms and legs so he fell over unbalanced. The man controlling the cloth was dressed in all black, goggles over his eyes and a mess of black hair. He pulled his goggles up, revealing extremely tired looking eyes. He quirked an eyebrow at the two of you.

“Isn’t it past your bedtime by now?”

~~~

The next half hour was a rush of commotion. The hero, Eraserhead, who had secured your stalker called for an ambulance and the police. As soon as the red and blue lights were visible, he left, leaving your stalker tied and gagged against a street lamp. You barely had time to thank him while Bakugo grumbled about not needing saving behind you.

The paramedics gave Bakugo an injection to counteract the poison from your stalker’s Quirk. The police quickly took him away as he shouted obscenities, making promises that he’d come back to you, that he’d save you. You tried to take some comfort in the officer’s promise that the man would never see the outside of a jail cell again.

You sat in the back of the ambulance, a heavy blanket around your shoulders. You had just finished giving your statement to the police. The neighbors surrounding the house you were trapped in had come outside to see what the commotion was all about. You felt pinned by a million unasked questions, unsaid accusations, prying eyes. You were going to be sick.

“Hey.” You looked up. Bakugo stood in front of you, rubbing feeling back into his previously paralized arm. He jerked his head to the side slightly. You scooted over and he sat next to you, pulling the blanket over his shoulders too. “So,” he said.

“So,” You echoed.

“The police called my parents,” He said after a moment of silence. “Mom’s coming to pick us up. She said she can bring some extra clothes for you to change into, if you want. Dad’s making up the guest room.”

“What?”

He gave you a sideways look. “What, you think I’m letting you stay alone in that house after what happened tonight? You think I’m an idiot or something?” He put his arm around your waist, pulling you into his side. He spoke into your hair. “You’re staying with me and my folks until your parents get back. Then I’m going to chew them out for leaving you alone for so long, and maybe then we’ll see if you can go back there.”

You giggled at his statement, half out of frazzled nerves and half out of love of his protective nature. You curled your fingers into his t-shirt, resting your head against his shoulder. “That sounds nice,” You mumbled, exhaustion and worn out adrenaline finally taking hold of your body. “It sure would make walking home easier.” Just before slipping under, you leaned up and kissed his cheek. “My hero.”

He pressed a kiss on the top of your sleeping head. “Always.”

#fanfic #bnha fanfiction #fluff #bakugo x reader #reader insert #bakugou katsuki x reader

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glassworkspiderlilies · 4 years

Text

like wildfire, windblown

Kimetsu no Yaiba | Kochou Shinobu, Tomioka Giyu | AO3 Summary: They can pretend that this moment is tender, that they are not drawn to each other’s pain, that they aren’t going to use each other for comfort, that this isn’t going to spiral out of control until they cannot get out of it even if they want to. —Giyu, Shinobu, and when times are bad for thinking. Notes: woops, almost forgot to post this here! some longer notes on ao3, but ultimately i wanted this to be like...more morally awful than it is LOL. Edit: belatedly adding on that I rated this M on ao3 for what I can only describe as like...overtly implied sex. it’s there, but distinctly non-explicit, haha.

Some things are damned to erupt like wildfire,

windblown, like wild lupine, like wings, one after

another leaving the stone-hole in the greenhouse glass.

Peak bloom, a brood of blue before firebrand.

And though it is late in the season, the bathers, also,

obey. One after another, they breathe in and butterfly

the surface: mimic white, harvester, spot-celled sister,

fed by the spring, the water beneath is cold.

— Temper, by Beth Bachmann.

Her head jerks up at the snap of a twig, and her shoulders are no less tense when he walks out of the foliage. She knows who he is, of course, and knows that the snap had been a warning, since he would never do such a thing by accident.

“The others are looking for you,” he says, and she glares at him. Tear tracks are drying on her cheeks, and she must look a wreck with red, puffy eyes. She didn’t want to be seen like this, and she’s also furious that he found her. She’d thought she’d been careful.

“If you were smart enough, you’d know that I didn’t want to be found,” she snaps, and he has the audacity to look surprised, though it is just a slight widening of his blue, blue eyes.

“I waited until you were done,” he says after a pause, not meeting her gaze now.

She laughs, harsh and grating, her throat raw from crying. Her irritation grows, because that means he’d found her while she was sobbing and stood there for who knows how long.

“Am I supposed to be appreciative?” she says, an edge of hysteria creeping into her voice. No, she has to keep it together. Kanae may be newly dead, but Shinobu is newly a Pillar now, and her sister—well, she’d tell her to smile.

He doesn’t say anything, and she stalks over to him, pushing him with both hands. He doesn’t move; he’s taller and bigger and this only infuriates her more. She keeps trying to shove him until she’s just hitting him, and he lets her have at it for a while. Eventually he seems to have enough when he catches her wrists, and she lets out another sob, caught between sorrow and fury.

“Time cannot be unwound,” he says finally. “Be furious. Say it’s unforgivable. A pure, strong anger…let it become an unshakeable driving force such that your limbs can’t be moved. Frail resolutions will not save you, nor will it defeat your enemy—your sister’s enemy.”

She snarls at him then. How dare he, how dare he presume to know her feelings, how dare he invoke Kanae like that?

“You talk big, Tomioka-san,” she spits, pulling at her wrists, but he doesn’t let go. “You talk so high and mighty for someone who keeps setting himself apart! Is it so great, to be capable of so much? Does it feel good to think yourself better than everyone else?!”

He flinches, then, and the force of it is enough to give her pause. But she’s still angry, she wants to hurt, and so she keeps pushing.

“It must be nice, to be so good at the Breath you wield,” she taunts, “How easy must be, to save people! A hero, you are, swooping in, protecting the innocents, leaving no one behind—”

“That isn’t me,” he cuts in, his eyes flashing. He’s caught between pain and anger himself, and Shinobu is glad for it. But it’s not enough.

“Quit pretending to be modest now,” she snarls, “Isn’t it what you wanted? Surviving the Final Selection must have been a piece of cake—!”

“It wasn’t me!” he yells, and Shinobu jerks back at the uncharacteristic outburst, but he still holds her wrists fast. He seems to have forgotten he’s holding them, and his grip is starting to hurt, but she doesn’t notice, right now. Giyu’s eyes go wide, then flat, and his lips twist into something bitter. “That person—wasn’t me. I’m not the same as you guys. I only survived the Final Selection because Sabito saved me. I hid the entire time. I didn’t kill a single demon. I’m not, I’m not a real Pillar. Sabito was better at the sword, better at the Breath of Water, better at being a Demon Slayer. But he’s not the one who survived. Because he saved a worthless life like mine.”

Shinobu stares at him, tears beginning to trickle down her cheeks again.

“Kanae died in my arms,” she says after a long pause, her voice shaking. Now that she’s dragged this out of him, she feels like she has to offer something in return. “And do you know what her last words were? She told me she wanted me to live the life of a normal girl, and then—when I made her describe the demon that killed her, she told me, but…even though she didn’t finish what she was saying…she didn’t believe I could do it. She wanted me to abandon everything we did and promised to do, to grow older and get married like a normal girl because she didn’t think I could kill that demon and avenge her or our parents. Not on my own. “

Her breathing is erratic as she tries to calm down, but his breathing is erratic too, having some of his worst memories torn out of him.

“So we’re the same,” Giyu says, tone heavy, and she sob-laughs again. He catches on quick, despite their tales being different.

“So we’re the same,” she agrees, and looks up at him to meet his gaze. “…I’m sorry, I...went too far.”

He shrugs, but she can see both sorrow and relief in his eyes. She knows the feeling. After a moment, he seems to realize that he is still gripping her wrists, and lets go of them with a light gasp. She’s bruising, and she curses her frailty in this regard.

“I’m…sorry,” he says, a little frantic, and the corners of her lip quirk up—it’s the second time they’ve repeated each other’s words in succession.

He goes to move back, but she’s the one who grabs his wrist this time.

“No. Stay,” she says, and leans her forehead against his chest. “Just…stay.”

He does. She closes her stinging eyes and rests for a while. Giyu stands stiffly, but she draws out the moment, exhausted, and eventually, with nothing else to do, he rests his chin on her head.

It is a quiet moment, and they can pretend that it is tender, that they are not drawn to each other’s pain, that they aren’t going to use each other for comfort, that this isn’t going to spiral out of control until they cannot get out of it even if they want to.

II.

One sweltering summer night, when Shinobu cannot sleep, she goes out for a walk. It is more a patrol, because she doesn’t go anywhere without her sword, anymore, but she is at least not dressed in her uniform. Even Kanae’s haori is at home, and truth be told, Shinobu feels odd, in regular clothing that isn’t Demon Slayer issue. It feels like she is playing at being a common, normal girl.

She laughs to herself. Aside from her sword, she’s got the knives in her shoes and hairpins dipped in poison—there are other monsters out there aside from demons, and she must defend against them, as well, with more common weaponry. This is about as normal as she’ll get.

But it’s difficult, when such a thing was Kanae’s dying wish. There’s no going back and she hardly thinks Kanae will fault her for not following it, but sometimes, in the deep dark hours of the night, she can’t help but wonder if she could—should—try. What was life like, before her parents were killed? What would it be like if they hadn’t been? Girls from families like hers had marriage talks when they came of age; Kanae was nearly ready to enter that world until tragedy struck.

In truth, Shinobu cannot fathom what a normal life would consist of—what on earth would she fill her days with? And above all, how could she live under a man’s thumb?

Why would Kanae want such a thing for her?

Shinobu clicks her tongue and shakes her head, as if she can dislodge her tumultuous thoughts that way. She looks up for a moment, the moon bright and stars littering the sky, before jumping onto the roofs of the houses. Aimlessly, she begins to run, flipping and fluttering through the air as if she were on a training course.

The movement distracts her, but so much so that she realizes too late that there is someone sitting on one of the roofs. Startled, she jumps to avoid a collision, but she misjudges the distance and is in danger of plummeting into the space between houses. As she falls, though, she sees hands reach for hers and she stretches to grab them, knowing help when she sees it—they swing her around, and she lands almost gracefully, skirts swirling around her legs.

Her eyes widen as she looks up to see who saved her.

“Tomioka-san,” she says, surprise evident in her tone.

“Kochou,” he says, just as surprised.

“What are you doing here?” she blurts, baffled by his presence. It’s quite late, and she doesn’t exactly know where she is, so why on earth would he be here?

He blinks at her.

“I live here,” he says slowly.

“Oh! Do you?” she says out of embarrassment.

They both notice they’re still holding hands, and they both drop them at the same time.

“Yes,” he says. “What are you doing here?”

“I was…taking a walk. Just…trying to clear my head,” she says, unsure of how to explain herself.

The side of his lips quirk up ever so slightly.

“A walk?” He asks, and something about his tone and the way he’s questioning lets her know that it’s not actually a question.

She looks back up again, and with some mortification she realizes that he’d been watching her, for who knows how long, as she was doing acrobatics in the air.

“I—you—” She stutters, and now his eyes crinkle at the edges too. She’s never seen him smile, and he isn’t, not really, but it’s close, and at her expense, and she doesn’t know how to feel about that.

“I was curious as to who it might be. The movements looked familiar, but I didn’t know what to expect,” he says by way of explanation, with a slight shrug. “You look different.”

She might be blushing, but she’s trying very hard not to. Either way, she’ll never know the results.

“A walk,” she confirms adamantly. The amusement remains on his face. “What were you doing on the roof, anyway?”

“Thinking,” he responds, and the almost-smile fades away, his expression darkening.

Ah. She knows, with sudden clarity, what he might be thinking of, or about. It’s those hours of the night, and she knows how unkind they can be.

“It’s a bad time for that,” she murmurs, and he looks sharply at her. She does not shy away, and stares back.

He holds her gaze for a while until some tension drops from his shoulders and he looks up at the moon. She does too, and they stand in silence for a while.

“…Would you like some tea?” Giyu asks eventually, and she looks at him in mild surprise.

He’s seeking her company. But then again, she really shouldn’t be surprised. They’ve dragged each other’s wounds out into the open once already, there’s no going back after that.

It’s late, they’re awake, and neither of them wants to be alone with their thoughts.

So Shinobu says “yes, please,” and drops from the roof with him, following him inside.

It’s a small place, and sparse, containing only the necessities. He goes to the refrigerator, pouring two cups of cold barley tea. Shinobu accepts hers graciously and sips at it, unsure of what to do now that she’s here. They lean against opposite sides of the wall near the window, still close enough to talk, but they stand in silence, looking out at the sky again. But it seems like Giyu is in a talkative mood tonight, and so it’s he who initiates the conversation.

“May I speak?” he asks, and Shinobu turns to him. He’s not looking at her, his eyes downcast, and so she matches his seriousness.

“Yes, of course,” she says.

But he hesitates, drinking from his cup to extend the silence for a bit longer. His body is tense, his expression stressed, but she waits patiently for him to continue. She tore something out of him he hadn’t wanted to say last time—this time, she’ll give him the choice.

“Have you ever thought about quitting the Demon Slaying Corps?”

It rushes it out him in a breath, his voice defeated, and she almost drops her drink. He’s not looking at her, but her silence seems to unnerve him, and so he glances back. She must look incredulous, because he turns away, the vulnerability in his eyes shuttering closed—

“Wait,” she says, the word coming out of her like she’s gasping for air. “I just—I didn’t think….that you would have too.”

He turns back to her again, and he doesn’t look—hopeful, but it’s a wary, sad sort of relief, that someone else has thought the same unfortunate thing.

The question and answer sits heavy between them.

“It would be irresponsible. There are still things that have to be done. But I was never supposed to be here. I was never supposed to be the one to survive. But I’m still here.”

Giyu’s eyes are blank and faraway, and Shinobu pushes off the wall and steps closer to him to draw his attention to her.

“I told you that my sister’s dying wish was for me to be a normal girl,” she says. “I think, sometimes, about giving it all up and trying. I don’t think it would have worked. But maybe I should be trying harder. But I’m still here.”

He stares at her.

“I’m sure you could do it, if you wanted to,” he says. It’s not the right thing to say, and bitter laughter bubbles up in her chest. But she knows why he says it, because he still believes himself lesser, somehow.

She waves a hand dismissively, but he doesn’t seem to want to let the matter go.

“If you became a Pillar, I’m sure you could do just as well otherwise,” he says absently. “But it would be a shame. You developed your own Breath. You made your own place. You’re even in charge of the healing for the Corps. If you left, you would certainly be missed.”

Shinobu stares at him with wide eyes—it sounds like praise, and she didn’t know he paid this kind of attention to her.

“You’re worthy of being a Pillar,” he continues. “So you should stay. Maybe it is I that should be trying to live a normal life. There are others who can be the Water Pillar, and do it better. Ah.”

Her head snaps to him—that tone, that realization, she doesn’t like where it’s going. He continues before she has a chance to speak, and she grips her own arms and begins to tremble, letting him get the words out though she feels an awful sense of foreboding.

“I held onto the place because I thought I had to hold it. If I don’t—then someone is free to step into it.”

“Don’t!”

She drops the cup, the remainder of its contents splashing over his floor, tackling him. He stumbles, dropping his own cup, and she cups his face, squeezing his cheeks together.

“Don’t,” she repeats, and his eyes widen at her expression.

“I’ve just—been thinking—”

“Stop thinking,” she hisses, “It’s a bad time for thinking.”

He looks at curiously.

“You said that earlier,” he murmurs, and his gaze darts away from her, then back, seeing as she’s occupying his field of vision. “But you can’t just—”

She kisses him. It’s harsh and desperate and she doesn’t know what she’s doing, but she’s afraid for him. They’re friends, or something like it, and she hadn’t realized how possessive she’d become since Kanae’s death. She doesn’t want to lose him, she doesn’t want to lose anything anymore. The demons still take, and she becomes angrier for each thing she continues to lose. But here, where he is in her grasp and solid underneath her, she wants to keep him—no, she’s going to keep him.

He goes still from shock, but she digs her fingers into his hair and he leans in, his returning kiss gentle. It’s too gentle, and the tears prick at the corners of her eyes. He slides his hands around her and his touch is gentle too, but he presses her into him like he’s rediscovering what touch means. He might be, she realizes. He’s been alone for a long time. A traitor tear slides down her cheeks and he pulls back with concern when he notices, but she wipes it away with the back of her hand.

“No,” she whispers, “It’s not that. Keep going.”

He brushes her hair behind her ear, searching for something in her eyes.

“Stay?” he asks, after a moment, and she laughs. She’s seen him kill demons—it’s elegant, and beautiful, but merciless. One would not think him a kind man at first glance, but now—his touch, his words, his expression, they’re all gentle. She’s the unkind one, here.

“Yes,” she responds, and leans into another kiss.

They don’t really know what they’re doing—when Giyu’s hands work their way beneath her kimono, she pauses to consider the sensation. When she splays her own hands on the bare planes of his chest, she can feel him trembling under her touch. None of it is fear—fear, they are used to. But this is unfamiliar ground; bodies that they aren’t cleaving or stabbing are unfamiliar ground.

It’s doesn’t matter. They learn together; she arches her back when he presses a kiss to the base of her throat, he rumbles low when she drags her nails across his collarbones. Shinobu is fascinated—she has the potential advantage of anatomical study, and so as she explores his body half-academically, the expressions and sounds that Giyu makes a wonder. This stoic man, opening underneath her like a butterfly’s wings—and the look he gives her as she traces a line down his chest…

She smiles, and something about it kindles something in Giyu; his kiss is hungrier, and so are his hands. It’s the hunger she wants, destruction imminent in a very different way. But despite it all, they are quiet in the act—such a thing is their modus operandi, after all—the disruption in the night air only soft pants that quicken until they are short gasps, the sound of skin against skin, then the exhale of breath in a sigh that sounds like surrender.

She’s still there when he wakes. Somehow, he hadn’t expected this. She is curled towards him, and he reaches out a hand to touch her face before he retracts it, afraid that he will wake her. Her face is soft in sleep, her hair unbound and splayed over the pillow. It’s nearly dawn, the skies still dark, but lightening.

Giyu feels…fine. Content, unburdened. A part of him recognizes that normally, he’d be worried—fraught, even, with self-loathing thinking that last night was a mistake, that Shinobu deserved better, that he’d taken advantage of what she started out of selfishness. But he feels content, unburdened. Shinobu had made it very clear what her intentions were, and had it been merely impulse, she would have stopped before it had gone as far as it did.

It’s trust, really, that he isn’t beating himself up over this—in Shinobu, if not himself.

Still. He wonders how she feels about this. She is young, and unmarried, and though the Demon Slayer Corps creates its own sense of morality, it is undeniable that certain standards are prevalent outside of it, and even sometimes in. And she’d talked last night about being a normal girl. Has he ruined her chances, if it’s something she ever truly wants to pursue?

He has to ask. He will ask.

He’s scared to ask.

Delicately, he brushes a lock of hair from her face, traces the curve of her cheek. When she doesn’t stir, he grows a little bolder and cups her cheek with his palm. He studies her, memorizes what she looks like in this moment, then pulls away.

Giyu turns, half-rising in order to get out of the bed. But before he has a chance to do so, he feels an arm drape over his side, and then a soft body press against his.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Shinobu says into his ear, her voice throaty from sleep.

“Were you awake the whole time?” he says, a slight flush rising in his cheeks. He feels her smile against his neck.

“Not the whole time,” she says. “You were thinking.”

He turns to her, though he can’t quite see her face. But he feels her chest against him, her breath tickling his neck.

“It’s not quite a bad time for thinking,” he says, looking at the window, at the sun beginning to rise.

“No,” she murmurs, “But I’m not sure I like what you were.”

She pulls him back beneath the blankets, and he relents without protest.

“Are you running away?” She asks, and the question holds no accusation.

“No,” he says. Pauses. “Yes. I…I don’t know.” He pauses again. “Was it a mistake?”

“It wasn’t to me. If it wasn’t to you, then it wasn’t.”

He nods once, and she smiles, lifting a hand to trace the curve of his cheek, this time. But she doesn’t stop there, moving down to his jaw, his throat, down his chest. He pulls her close, then rolls her over so that she is on her back as he leans over her. He kisses the corner of her mouth, her neck, the dip of her collarbones, the space between her breasts.

Their movements are less frantic, now—slower, more languid. As the sun crawls higher in the sky and their breathing becomes more labored, the sounds of their joining are an echo of triumph.

III.

They spend Sabito’s death anniversary in bed, where she puts her mouth on him and doesn’t let him think beyond her touch, her body, her scent, and the only word that she lets pass his lips is her name.

They spent Kanae’s death anniversary in bed, where he traces patterns on her body with the lightest of touches so that she’s already shivering when he dips his head between her thighs.

More often they are at Giyu’s small house, since he lives alone and in an area of people who know him simply as a neighbor as opposed to the owner of an estate. Sometimes they are at Shinobu’s when it is late at night and the rest of her household is asleep.

It has been many years since Sabito’s death, but Giyu spends the anniversary either alone and struggling with dark thoughts, or throwing himself into the most grueling mission he can take as a distraction. Kanae’s death is more recent, and Shinobu cannot stop replaying the moment in her head when she finds her sister, thinking she is okay from her back profile, only to have her turn to show the blood all over her front before she collapses. Giyu has become more numb to the pain over the years, but the thought that he shouldn’t be the one alive, that he’s more or less a dead man walking, is persistent. Shinobu’s pain is still fresh, and sometimes the loss of her kind, talented sister is so overwhelming that she cannot bring herself to move.

Neither of them know if losing themselves in each other instead of honoring the dead is better. But surely it must be better than wanting to die.

They don't talk about what's between them. It's a partnership; they know they're using each other and that they're both okay with it. It doesn't affect anything else; they go about their daily lives, unencumbered by the other. There are no stolen glances, no coincidental brushes of the hand, no meaningful words. It's fine like this.

But.

They do, inevitably, become attuned. Giyu may be famously inscrutable, but Shinobu knows when he's fed up or tired by the hold of his shoulders, the degree of stiffness to his posture. Shinobu never seems like she's in a bad mood, but Giyu knows when she is by the way her eyes crease, and the angle to her smile. They become very familiar with each other's bodies, both in and out of the bedroom.

The rest of the Pillars don't notice anything different—for the most part.

Mitsuri is keen about this kind of thing, and she watches furtively to confirm her suspicions with her fist pressed to her chest, her emotions about to burst. But she can't ask, surely she can't—shouldn't—ask. It's not her place to just bring up of her own accord. But she's glad that Shinobu's smile is less shadowed, and that Giyu's countenance is just a touch softer.

Kyojuro can sense that there is a slight difference in his two fellow Demon Slayers, but he questions it no further, only taking note of things when he's faced with them. He thinks that compared to how they were before, this is better. Tengen is similar; he recognizes a slight difference, though that's all the attention he chooses to pay to it.

Regardless—it doesn't affect anything, nor should it. It's simple give and take. If anything, they're fighting a little better, their movements less reckless and desperate.

But it isn't without its own problems.

The problem is when they wake up in the morning and Giyu smiles faintly at her in greeting when he opens his eyes and realizes she's been watching him. Her breath catches in her throat and a flutter of panic rises in her—this is not a smile he shows anyone else, it is not a smile he's ever had cause to show anyone else, but here she is, and here he is, and she wants to trap the warmth of that smile in between her hands.

The problem is when Shinobu turns to laugh at him, hair trailing over her bare shoulder, and Giyu savors the sound of it like a refreshing summer drink. It makes him want to kiss the corner of her mouth, the hollow of her throat, the inside of her wrist; it makes him want to catch ahold of her, as if she is a mirage, because she's not here to stay. Lately, when she leaves, or when he has to, he finds himself wishing for another moment, hoping for another murmur, another hum.

It's betrayal—to themselves, if not the other. There are boundaries that have been set. There are parameters that need to be followed.

In the space of the bedroom, they can pretend that this is only ever going to be what they want it to be, and nothing else.

Two conversations happen in the spring, when the cherry blossoms are in full bloom.

The first: Shinobu is over at Mitsuri's for tea, something they haven't been able to do lately because they've been so busy. They're having one of Mitsuri's favorites: pancakes with butter and lots of honey, and black tea. Shinobu cuts up her food neatly, and Mitsuri is steadily eating her way through her second stack, all the while staring at Shinobu with huge, round puppy eyes.

Shinobu knows she's watching, but gives her friend a chance to initiate. When it drags on too long, Shinobu pops a piece of pancake into her mouth and finally meets Mitsuri's pale green eyes.

“You may ask, you know,” she says, amused.

“May I really?!” Mitsuri exclaims, her voice pitched high with excitement, then coughs, adjusting her tone to a more polite one. “I mean, may I really?”

Shinobu nods. Mitsuri drinks some tea, then stares at Shinobu with a more sober gaze, though her eyes are still twinkling.

“Are you happy, Shinobu-chan?”

Shinobu flinches at the question, then goes absolutely still. Mitsuri looks at her with concern but doesn't apologize, and eats another pancake to give the Insect Pillar time to respond.

“I...don't know. I might...be afraid that I am,” Shinobu says, her voice wavering ever so slightly. “Isn't that stupid?”

The Love Pillar shakes her head vehemently.

“It's scary sometimes, to know that you are,” Mitsuri says, stirring her tea. “I mean, I know this is different, but—I'm really happy right now, you know? Pretending to be who I wasn't before made me so miserable, but now I have Oyakata-sama and the Pillars and the whole rest of the Corps. I can use my strength to help people, and I can spend time like this having fun with you, with all the pancakes and tea I want! I wasn't able to do this before, you know? And I absolutely, absolutely don't want to lose it. But there's always a chance that I will, because...that's how things are, aren't they? And I don't like to think about it. So that's why I think that if you're happy now, you should absolutely focus on it as much as you can. Because you deserve it. And because...nothing is certain.”

Mitsuri's expression is downcast at the last bit, and he drains the remainder of her tea. She also seems a bit embarrassed to have spoken so much, but her lip protrudes stubbornly, as if daring Shinobu to contradict her.

Shinobu blinks and chuckles a little, reaching over to refill Mitsuri’s teacup. She gazes at the other Pillar fondly, and Mitsuri puffs out her cheeks.

“What?” she says, and Shinobu smiles wider.

“Nothing,” she replies innocently. “I was just thinking how much I like you.”

She can practically see the steam rising from Mitsuri’s head, and she smothers another laugh.

“Well, I like you too Shinobu-chan. And that’s why I think you should be happy, whatever it takes.”

Do you have time for happiness?

The dark and ugly thoughts reach up from behind, and Shinobu stares at Mitsuri as she tries to organize her mind.

You swore to get your revenge. Are you abandoning it? Did Kanae only mean that much to you, that you can go off and live your life without her? Kanae, who protected you when you were so weak? Do you have time for happiness when even now you only amount to so much? Do you deserve happiness?

“Shinobu-chan. Being happy isn’t wrong. In fact, it’s more important now than ever.”

Mitsuri’s voice is as serious as she’s ever heard it, and Shinobu’s eyes flicker to hers again.

“Mitsuri-san. Are you happy?”

“I am! Because after all, aren’t there still things worth living for?”

Shinobu stares, and takes a deep breath. The cherry blossom petals flutter over the table. The pancakes are sweet, the tea is wonderfully brewed, and she is in the company of a very good friend. And these are not the only moments she appreciates.

“Yes. You’re right,” she says, and Mitsuri smiles.

“Shinobu-chan. Are you happy?”

She gives the Love Pillar an uncertain smile.

“I might be,” she says slowly. “And—I think I’d like to be.”

Mitsuri nods and looks satisfied with the answer. She puts another pancake onto Shinobu’s plate, and there is a momentary silence as both girls work on their food. Once Shinobu has eaten half a second pancake and Mitsuri has eaten another stack, she props up her elbows and puts her chin in her hands and stares at Shinobu again.

“Okay,” she says, “Now tell me everything about you and Tomioka-san.”

Shinobu has to laugh at this normalcy, and complies. Mostly, anyway. Some secrets are still hers to keep.

The second: The truth is, there are a few times when Giyu has left Shinobu’s household that he has been seen. That person has never made a fuss nor initiated any conversation, merely bowed in greeting and walked away. Though he’s thought about telling Shinobu, it slips his mind because the interaction has been so…negligible. The manner in which it’s happened is so normal, so insignificant, that it hardly even registers as something “bad.” It feels like any other time, greeting an acquaintance from afar, not having time or not wanting to initiate conversation, walking away.

That changes in spring, on a cloudy night.

Giyu is leaving the Butterfly Mansion as he has done many times before. He doesn't startle when he is spoken to, suddenly, though the voice does surprise him.

“Do you love her?”

He turns his head to see Shinobu's tsuguko leaning against the wall, melting into the shadows. He wracks his brain for her name—ah, Tsuyuri Kanao, he remembers.

“Excuse me?” He asks, stalling for time, as he inclines his head in greeting.

Kanao smiles faintly and inclines her head as well, but she does not repeat her question. She waits expectantly, and Giyu looks up at the sky for a moment before he sighs.

“I don't know,” he says honestly, and Kanao nods at this answer. He raises an eyebrow at this easy acceptance.

Before he can say anything else, however, Kanao holds out her hand, and Giyu sees the small coin on her palm before she takes it and flips it high into the air. She catches it deftly on the back of her hand, even with the lack of light, and lifts her other hand just enough for her to see the outcome. Giyu waits for an explanation, but none comes, and starts to walk away before he speaks to stop her.

“Will you not show me?” he asks, and Kanao gives him another faint smile as she turns back to him.

There's a pause as she considers her words, tilting her head a little.

“This result is merely for my own satisfaction,” she says, “Your answer...you will have to find yourself.”

He raises an eyebrow; there's familiarity in the way she speaks. She's Shinobu's student, indeed.

“How inscrutable,” he says.

“The words are derived from my master,” Kanao says. “She said they were derived from yours.”

Giyu can imagine Shinobu's smirk and laugh here—if they had come from his own words, hadn't he just called himself inscrutable? He sighs, then looks at Kanao. She stares back, her face expressionless. He sees no distaste or hatred, no judgement. Somehow, he had expected some.

“You do not...disapprove?” he asks before he can stop himself. He wants to groan at the childishness of the question, that he poses it at all, especially since the girl is younger than him and Shinobu, for goodness’ sake.

Kanao tilts her head, blinking at him.

“It is not my place to approve or disapprove,” she says solemnly. “I love my sister, and I trust her.”

“As you do not trust me,” Giyu says, picking up the implication. But Kanao's eyes widen marginally, and she blinks again.

“I don't think that's the case,” she says, furrowing her brows. “I don't distrust you.”

“That does not mean you trust me.”

She considers this, looking conflicted.

“Perhaps not. But I don't distrust you.”

Giyu doesn't know what he's looking for from her—he's stressing her out, he can tell, though he doesn't mean to—but she's Shinobu's sister. He'd had his opinion of Tsutako's husband-to-be when they were alive (that opinion had improved with time), and he's not desperate, per se, for an opinion from Kanao, but he does want one, strangely enough.

This half-opinion is—excruciating. He thinks he'd rather have Kanao dislike him—it would make more sense. Her disapproval would shame him, and the shame would keep him within bounds.

“The coin is for me,” Kanao says slowly, “What's between you and Shinobu-nee-san is for you, and her.” She speaks the words as if she is trying very hard to convey her meaning after failing the first time. “It is not my place to interfere, but nor do I have a desire to. It's—” She frowns here, struggling with what she wants to say. “The answer is yours,” she says finally, wilting a little at the inadequacy.

Giyu blinks at her, then, after a moment, reaches up a hand and places it on her head.

“Okay,” he says, slowly, as if considering it. “Okay. Thank you.”

Kanao blinks up at him, then nods her head. He removes his hand, and she bows before walking back into the estate proper.

He comes away from the conversation—not ashamed, unfortunately. If anything, quite the opposite. He doesn't fully understand what Kanao was trying to say, but what she did say, he is turning over in his head. The answer is his, and Shinobu's, and that—that is how things are.

He opens and closes his hand, flexing out his fingers. There are choices he has to make, decisions he has to come to for himself. Shinobu's will be hers, his will be his, and together will be theirs, if there will be a together. But Giyu must set his own terms; there needs to be an answer.

Okay. Okay.

It's raining, the next time they are together. She comes to his house drenched, her thoughts clouded; her skin is ice cold as they peel each sodden layer off of her, but her kisses are hot and demanding and idly he thinks he likes it when she takes control, though he is eager enough to provide warmth of his own as she slips her hands beneath his clothes and they press their bodies together.

It's still raining when they wake, the window still open; Shinobu moves first, halfway out from underneath the blanket and ready to dress and leave. Giyu catches her wrist before she can fully untangle herself, his touch light, but sure.

“Stay,” he says, voice still rough from sleep.

She looks back at him, her heartbeat quickening at his expression. Half-lidded from sleep, but soft, and open, and vulnerable. He does not mean just for this moment, for this day. He's made his decision. Shinobu must make hers.

Are you happy, Shinobu-chan? Mitsuri's voice rings in her head. I think you should be happy, whatever it takes.

She bends down to kiss him.

“Okay.” Shinobu murmurs.

She slides back underneath the blankets, goosebumps raised on her skin from the chill of the air. Giyu puts an arm around her waist, and she presses her body flush against his, soaking in his warmth. She touches him, languid, slow; he brings the heat in her body alive again underneath the blankets.

The rainfall drowns out their breathing. In here, in this small house, small room, there is no one but the two of them. Moving together, their minds are blank save for thoughts of the other, almost as though there are no barriers, as if they cannot tell where one ends and the other begins.

Outside, no one is the wiser; the world continues to turn, with or without them.

#giyushino #kimetsu no yaiba #kochou shinobu #tomioka giyu #fanfiction #got tired and irritated holding onto this and tweaking minor things so *FUCKIN THROWS IT OUT THERE*#the first section is really the only part i still like after editing haha #also is overtly implied an oxymoron. like idk how else to describe the spice here LOL

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