#or if my thinking technique/decision making technique is strange and not the normal way

[the-cinnamon-snail]

I seriously need to know if anyone else has delegates in their brain

[joltrify]

experimentations ft. the Artpop queen herself

Silly little (not so little) unrelated HC I developed later under the cut

₊˚ ‿︵‿︵‿︵୨୧ · · ♡ · · ୨୧‿︵‿︵‿︵ ˚₊

🎀- HC that EVE's most normal hobby - when not occupied with other things - is repainting dolls 🎀- Like in a blue moon you can catch her at the hobby lobby in mom jeans and a cardigan just looking for materials

★- In her down time (which is a bit rare these days) Nadia'll pick those ball-jointed Barbie/Bratz/MH dolls and give them a complete makeover ☆- While she's making them she's fervently thinking 'I will love you in a way that no one else EVER has' and she treats them all that way ★- She'll repaint them in the most unconventional ways possible but they're still gorgeous; a perfect reflection of her studio artwork on a body that isn't her own ☆- Sometimes if she's low on fabrics, instead of making a full-sized mockup of her exhibition fits she'll use her dolls to test the outfit design and make a mini version of the fit with small pieces of the final material ★- She's got this HUGE shelf on her pad that's got these fashion icon dolls displayed with their name and inspiration on a little plaque ☆- Whenever something significant happens and she doesn't want to paint, she'll hold onto the feeling, good or bad, and jot down an idea for a new doll's look ★- and she DOES truly love each of them - though she may have had to learn to love one in particular

🎀- She picked up the hobby in college (before she met Zuke) but didn't really think anything of it 🌸- It was just a means to practice different makeup looks and pencil techniques without sculpting something - and it was fun! She liked having a cute little gal at the end of the process 🎀- When she came up with the idea of using the dolls as models, she created a doll of herself but made the decision to make its skin completely white 🌸- When Nadia met Zuke, she sort of put the hobby aside to focus on her other art mediums, but she looked at the doll of herself and felt comfortable enough to repaint the right side pink (and she laughed a bit to herself looking at the final result, because it looked... Cute! Just like her other gorgeous dolls...) 🎀- After Rapturica, she didn't feel the need to create a doll based on her feelings as she didn't feel as hurt as she expected, but she did find it really, REALLY hard to look at the doll of herself, so she hid it away... 🎀- she picked up repainting again later but went in HARD - they began to look more artsy and alien, just like her other art pieces 🌸- After graduating she didn't really have time to repaint dolls and focused on creating other arts/music again, only occasionally using them to test outfits (but never the one of herself) 🎀- After the events of NSR though, she picked it up again as a form of self-care. It's something she doesn't have to create for the public eye, and she's rekindled the joy of creating a strange little gal and loving them despite their bizarre quirks. 🌸- ... I think she feels a bit more comfortable looking at the doll of herself now, too.

★- She's probably still got doll repaint videos up on her channel from her college days, hehe. ☆- (She's debating whether or not to make a mini exhibition about the concept of dolls.* Likely not, as she doesn't want to taint the tranquility of the act, but she still likes the idea. It's better to not mix work art with home art, anyway.) (* (How they can reflect their caretaker, they exhibit both confidence and vulnerability, they can be broken and discarded but repaired, they're still images that can be moved in a 3d space however you desire, they rely on a person to actually be 'real' ykyk that kind of thing. the symbolism of dolls.)

The doodle I made in the 3rd picture (above the cut) is inspired by those really pretty doll repaints... I think that that look in particular is one that she tested on a doll first... pre-ugly cry, that is.

Thanks for reading my very silly idea... decorated the bullets with Bows and stars because I felt like it, haha. Have a lovely day~🌸

[no-droids]

Out of a Trillion

gif credit: @bestintheparsec​

Part Fifteen of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 12.6K

Warnings: uhhhh so there is a bit of SMUT in this one, not too much and I imagine if you’ve made it this far then that won’t be too big of a deal LMFAOOO uh some ANGST and my attempt at HURT/COMFORT and also violence/blood/injury description, so look out for that!

A/N: I started writing this before the season finale aired and I know we all want a bit of goodness and softness after it, but hopefully this will be okay!  I’ll start working on the next part tonight

***

Everything changes and yet somehow nothing does.  

From that point on, it’s like… like you’re both just suspended in this perpetual state of wondering, waiting for the other shoe to drop.  You know he said it’s up to you, but what the fuck?  Look whenever you want?  That’s way too much fucking pressure, he’s out of his mind.  You’re not equipped to handle that, who does he think you are?  Someone that can just… decide things?

And it’s not like you’re afraid of the commitment, or that you don’t want to look.  You do, but every single time a moment comes, it just never… feels right.  You don’t know what you’re waiting for, what feeling or meaning you’re expecting to magically present itself to you, but you can’t shake the idea that there should be more to it than just randomly deciding to open your eyes at some point, shouldn’t there?  Din said there was no ceremony, nothing fancy, and he gave you permission to look because he said he’s not allowed to ask outright, whatever that means.  It’s a standing offer because you guess he isn’t allowed to prompt it for some reason, but unfortunately, that leaves you in just about the shittiest position possible.  Now everything falls to you—initiation, execution, and consequence—and Maker knows you’ve never been that great making decisions under pressure.

But you do want to look.  Sort of.

Sort of.  Because… well, this probably won’t make that much sense, but you’re afraid.  Mostly for him.  What if he’s making a mistake?  It sounds stupid, but you’re afraid of what this means for him, the sheer perpetuity of this decision he’s now expecting you to make for the both of you.  This isn’t your creed, not yet, and you feel like there’s still so much to learn.  Not only about the Mandalorians and his culture, but about him.  To know is to love, and so you’ve taken to asking any nonsensical question you can think of whenever he’s around.  Though you weren’t expecting it at first, you’ve learned that he’ll always give you some sort of an answer.  Some of the highlights include:

“How old are you?”  (“I don’t know.  Probably mid-forties, but there’s no way to tell anymore.”)

“You don’t know your birthday?”  (No, I… think it was in the winter.”)

“What’s your last name?”  (“Djarin.”)

“Do you have any freckles?  Or moles, or birthmarks?”  (“No, none that I’ve ever noticed.”)

“Do you cut your own hair?”  (“Yes, but it’s been awhile.”)

“Do you have dimples?”  (“I don’t smile in mirrors.”)

“Are your earlobes attached or detached?”  (“What kind of question is that?”)

And so forth.

He also gives you so many fucking opportunities to look.  One right after the other.  You used to think Din was incredibly trusting with how often and voluntarily he decided to take his helmet off around you—he didn’t wait a single day once he first felt your hands on his skin to take it off in your presence.  You remember being blown away by his unexpected willingness to part with it after hearing so many tales of the Mandalorians from Kuill; stunned by the ever-present ability to just open your eyes at any moment and that’s all it would ever take.  One simple movement—life-altering, and so easy.

Now you find it nearly impossible, muscle memory just won’t allow it to happen naturally.  And yet somehow, avoiding it is like stepping around land mines.  He doesn’t trick you—he doesn’t set it up, he doesn’t surprise you or anything, but he’s… less careful.  When the kid is awake, Din acts normal—he walks around fully armored, he goes on hunts and returns a few days later with a quarry, teaches you more self-defense techniques in the cleared out hull while the kid watches and giggles at your pain from the safety of his floating crib.  But when the baby goes to sleep, he’s taken to lounging with the helmet off.  He only used to remove it to eat, sleep, or… do other things with you, but he never used to take it off just… because.  Now he does.  Now he’s less careful about darkness, less strict about how much light he allows to touch him.

Now he shares every single meal he can with you, sitting just off to the side so you’ll never see him on accident but providing the free exercise thereof should you ever decide to seek it out purposefully.  Now he interrupts you in the middle of your complaining about the bruises on your knuckles just to lift the rim of his helmet the slightest bit, lean down and give you a quick kiss, and then lower it back into position again before you can even catch a glimpse of the lips you only recognize by touch.  Now he keeps the light on when he goes to take a shower, he leaves the door cracked.

It’s starting to give you heart palpitations, you swear.  At one point, he lets you to see the entire back of his head and it nearly launches you into a fucking crisis.

It’s the middle of the night and he just got up from bed to use the restroom.  He’s quiet enough not to wake you on the way over, but then across the hull and with his back to you, Din flicks the light on in the small bathroom without closing the door.  Immediately rousing you after being so accustomed to the pitch blackness, you lift your head from the warmth of your shared pillow just enough to blearily make out the sight of him leaning a hand up against the wall and dropping his head down, and it takes you a second to realize that it’s actually him.

Soft, dark brown locks ending at his collar but somehow looking longer than you ever imagined when you’ve run your fingers through them.  Cascading in shaggy, natural curls—tall, broad shouldered and trim waisted, naked as the day he was born.  Your heart starts to squeeze in your chest and it just never stops, and for the second time in your life, you feel like he woke you up in the middle of the night just to show you one of the most beautiful things the universe ever decided to hide.  There are trillions of people in this galaxy and how many of them have ever seen a sight that would compare?  He’s just a man, you don’t think a single person would bat an eye.  But to you, he’s… his own monument.  Constructed in honor of everything dazzling that happens to lie just underneath something else.  A breathtaking view, even from this angle, that could only ever mean something to you.

Would you ever be able to know him?  No, that’s not phrased right.  What you mean is that… over the course of all your time together, you remember thinking that if he ever took his helmet off, he could walk right by you and you’d never be able to tell the difference.  He could be anybody.  There are trillions of people in this galaxy and how many of them have the same features?  Brown hair, brown eyes, sunkissed skin that only one person is allowed to kiss, not even the sun.  Would you ever be able to know him?

Staring at his back in the blissful silence of hyperspace and feeling like the Maker himself is letting you in on one of his proudest secrets, some wild thought suddenly occurs to you that… you think you would.  Somehow.

You can’t explain it and you’d never be able to prove it, but you feel like if you lined up every single person in this galaxy shoulder to shoulder, all however many trillions of them there are, then you could walk the entire length of it and somehow come to a stop right where he’s standing.  Every single time.  You feel like you could do it in the pitch black.  You could do it with your eyes closed.

And, he must just be so gorgeous.  Maybe not in a traditional sense (or maybe in one, you’d have no way of knowing), but mostly in just… the rawest sense imaginable.  Not like how symmetry and straight lines are gorgeous, but how a mountain is gorgeous.  Rocky, dangerous, steep, the product of constant conflict between two immovable sides.  He’s got scars littering his body, one of which you remember giving him yourself with a cauterizer on his lower back.  He holds himself like his shoulders could tell their own story if anyone ever asked them; built to endure, weighed down and made strong with a collection of burdens he chooses to strap to them, steel or otherwise.

You don’t want to close your eyes once Din slowly turns around to look at you, but it happens anyways and you’ve never been so disappointed in your own cowardice.

But then, in a way, it could just be your own self-preservation instincts taking over.  No matter how stunning and life changing the spectacle would be, why would anyone ever stare directly at a supernova?  For so long, you’ve told yourself that his face is something you shouldn’t ever see on principle, but in a way, you suppose it’s fair he put this decision on you because he always has, even from the very beginning.  He trusted you to keep your eyes closed for months on end and you never had a problem with it, so why is it so hard to open them now that he’s given you permission?

A couple weeks of that, and you start to worry that you’re unintentionally rejecting him.

It’s the last fucking thing you want, but how can you avoid it?  Din is… different, he notices.  He’s made a living off of finding things that inherently don’t want to be found—he knows all too well what secrecy looks and sounds like, he’s quick and observant and you don’t stand a single fucking chance against him in all the years of his practice.

But strangely, for as often as you feel like you can figure out what he’s thinking without ever seeing his face—realizing what his intentions are ahead of time and not feeling slighted when he phrases things a certain way or just chooses not to speak at all—you never truly realized how much that extended back to you.

He knows you, too.  He told you so.

For some reason, you didn’t even consider the possibility of it working just as well the other way around.  That you could choose to stay silent, and he’d know why.  You feel like the mystery of him just eclipses you in every single way that you don’t consider even yourself much of anything, much less something else to be contemplated and understood.  While you wouldn’t necessarily qualify the conflict as not being ready to commit, he seems more than willing to respect it regardless and nothing about the way he treats you or interacts with you changes.  Normally you��d say it’s like he forgot the whole thing ever happened, but it’s almost the exact opposite.  Like he was just naturally expecting it from you.

Are you truly so predictable, you wonder?  He said you’d say no.  Was he right?  You’re not saying no, you just… can’t remember the word for yes right now.  It’s right there on the tip of your tongue and the harder you work for it, the more frustrated you become with your own inability to find it.

But, instead of waiting, you think Din just decides to continue the conversation with the promise to come back to you when you finally figure it out.

Sometimes, especially when he’s gone, you find yourself thinking about what moment you’d choose, if you could.  Since you can never seem to find the right one naturally, how would it all go if you could construct everything yourself?  Where would it be?  Naboo?  No, that’s too cheesy.  One thing you and Din both have in common is your practicality, your respective propensities for wanting to tackle one thing at a time and not needing frills attached to something in order to find a deep connection to it, a personal value to it.  You weren’t even bothered when he didn’t claim you as a girlfriend to Peli, that’s how reasonable you used to be about labels.  Now you’re your own antithesis, trying to conjure meaning where there isn’t any just so you don’t feel like you’re the one who’s ripping it away.  You want this decision to feel as permanent as it is.  You want it to be a happy thing, something that happens when you’re both so in love that you can’t bear to have metal separating you any longer.

You think… you’ll just know it when the time comes.

***

“I have to leave,” comes Din’s hushed voice through the darkness, and even though it’s the first thing either of you have said in hours, it sounds frustrated.  Like it’s been bothering him for awhile and he’s just now finally telling you.  “I… fuck, I can’t stay here, I should’ve left a long time ago.”

You whine softly into the pitch black, turning your head into the pillow and curling your fingers into his hair.  “But it’s still so early…”

“It’s mid-afternoon,” he groans back, dropping his forehead down against your skin and breathing hot air along it.  “We’ve been parked here for hours, I don’t know how you can sleep so long.”

“I’m not sleeping,” you pout, before gently dragging your nails down his scalp and feeling his whole body shudder with it.  “Earlier I was.”

“Mhm,” he murmurs, leaning down to give you one last long, slow kiss.  You sigh when his tongue comes out and glides soft and hot against your lips, tightening your grip on his hair.

But soon he pulls away, lifting the covers from over his head and pushing up from between your spread legs.  “This one shouldn’t take long,” he gruffs, planting both palms next to your head and kissing you once more in the darkness, dipping his tongue into your mouth this time.  You moan softly and taste yourself on him, moving to wrap your arms around his broad shoulders, but he breaks the kiss and leans back before you can, preemptively avoiding the possibility of getting lost in it.  “I’ll be back around dawn.”

You’ve known it was coming for hours now, so you’re able to play it off way better this time around.  “Okay,” you breathe softly, dragging your palms up his bare chest as he lifts himself tall over your body.  The slight disappointment underneath is so masterfully hidden, you’re almost positive you’re going to get away with it.  “Be safe.  Please.”

But then… well.  Bounty hunter.

Din pauses for a moment like that in between your open legs, letting you slowly slide your hands down his ribs and over the lines of his stomach.  You wait for him to move, find his clothes so you can get around and make some food, wake the kid up from his nap in an hour or so.  Can’t stay in bed all day, no matter how much you wish you could.

Only, he still hasn’t moved and you start to become concerned.  “Din?”

But then he suddenly groans like he just can’t help it, grabbing both of your spread legs and easily lifting them up.  You make a sound of confusion as he maneuvers them until they’re pressed together and draped over one of his shoulders, and then his hips drop and push forward to slide himself thick and perfect into your blazing hot cunt.

Still drenched and swollen from cumming in his mouth so many times earlier, you gasp and he just groans louder, a ragged thing scraping out of his throat while you struggle through blind and unexpected euphoria to reach him.  But you can’t—Din hugs your legs tight to his chest and settles in just like this, turning his head to drag soft lips and a hot tongue over your ankle before he starts fucking you.  Right up against your g-spot, with your whole lower body in the way and preventing you from slowing him down.

You just have to clap both hands over your mouth just to keep quiet since you can’t reach him.  You feel his teeth sink into the meat of your calf, hips pistoning far beyond your reach and it feels so fucking good that you almost don’t hear his gritted words against your skin.

“I have to go,” he groans, repeating it over and over until his voice begins to pull tight and it just sounds like a plea.  “I have to go, I have to go, I h—have to… h-have to go, I have to, I have to, I have…”

*** 

When Din finally steps foot out of the ship, fumbling with his rifle and cursing quietly through the modulator, it’s the middle of the night some twelve hours later.

***

Steady…

Steady………

Fire.

—and… you blink as bark splinters.

Did you…?  You look down at the blaster in your hand and then back to the ginormous charred tree trunk for a few seconds, wondering if you’re just seeing shit.

No, it’s real.  You actually fucking did it.  You…

… hit the target.

All of a sudden, your ecstatic giggle echoes loudly throughout the foresty autumn wonderland around you, reds and oranges and yellows crunching under your feet while you start to dance.

“Hey!  See that, bug!?”  You call out, shoving the blaster into your waistband and shimmying up to your enthralled audience of one, who just so happens to be smiling as wide as you are as he’s scooped up into your arms.  “I hit the target, I hit the target,” you sing, beginning to sway the baby back and forth as he squeals, laughing while you bounce him.  “No demon powers necessary, little man!  I figured it out, I just have to use one hand instead of two.  You can retire now, you’re the right age for—”

A twig snaps in the distance somewhere to your left, and you quickly spin around while reaching for the blaster behind your back.

Except all you see is a blue Twi’lek standing out amongst all the fall foliage, his hands cuffed behind his back and stumbling a few steps at a time while a considerably taller suit of beskar shoves him forward.  You relax and immediately turn to look down at the ground, trying to bite your lip so you don’t smile too hard while they both approach.  You did it���finally, you did it, you’re on top of the fucking universe right now.

You wait for them to pass by and move up the open metal ramp to the carbonite chamber, but then Din apparently decides to pause when he’s directly behind you, yanking the quarry to a sudden halt.  

You know you should probably turn around to address them, but you can’t hide the happiness from your expression, it’s way too obvious.  Though, after a moment, you decide to shyly turn to face the two men while continuing to bounce the baby in your arms, hoping that his and your matching expressions of excitement aren’t too terribly inappropriate right now.

Din looks from you to the splintered bark on the tree, and then back to you again, before slowly tilting the helmet up in a way that feels… proud of you.

“Congratulations,” he finally says, and you can hear the genuine smile hidden in the modulated drawl.

“Thank you,” you beam up at him, feeling the blood rush to your cheeks.  “Was pretty awesome.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” he tells you, and you don’t know why, but the tone of his voice makes you go so warm.  It’s not like he’s openly flirting with you, but coupled with your giddiness and sounding like that in front of a bounty he caught in record time, it just makes your heart fucking throb for him.

“It’s alright,” you murmur, shuffling your feet through the crunchy leaves below and trying to play it as cool as possible.  You have company.  “I’ll be able to do it again.”

“Let’s see it, then.”  He tips the helmet over at the tree, and you look between him and the unfamiliar quarry for a second, not used to Din just… ignoring their existence entirely for you.  It’s not like the Twi’lek has said anything or inserted himself into the situation at all, but still.  Din has one hand latched onto the cuffs behind his back to prevent him from booking it, but other than that, it’s like he’s pretending he’s not even there.

“Uh…”  You immediately feel yourself get nervous.  “I can… try.”

He nods one single time in silent encouragement, and you slowly turn to face the tree once more.  The kid stays cradled in your arm while you reach for the blaster in your waistband, removing it and using your longest finger to flick the safety off with a practiced fluidity.  Then, extending it out in front of you and taking advantage of your newfound strategy of only firing with one hand, you line up the sight and pull the trigger.

You wish you could say it hits.  It would be so fucking cool and impressive if you hit the target like that, wouldn’t it?  But it doesn’t hit.  It misses, like usual.  Miserably.  And then an amused snort comes from behind you.

“Right stormtrooper, you are—” you hear an unfamiliar accent begin to snark, but the rest of it turns into a garbled howl the second Din jerks his elbow back to slam it in his face.

You whip around just in time to see a cascade of blood pouring down blue lips and sharp teeth—holy fuck.  You gasp and take a step backwards with the kid, not horrified by the sudden display of violence (not after Din spent an hour teaching you how to do that, too) but not quite expecting it at that moment, either.  But then, well… that’s the second time he broke a quarry’s nose for addressing you with disrespect.  There was that other one he choked, you’re pretty sure—though you can’t remember exactly what initiated that.

Din yanks the bounty up the ramp without another word, leaving both you and the kid there to process while he shoves him through the hull and towards the carbonite chamber none too kindly.  However, by the time he seals the quarry to his fate and eventually makes his way back to you, you just… 

Fuck, you feel so stupid.

You shouldn’t even bother, what’s the point?  All that practice and nothing to show for it.  If you can’t even hit a stationary target with the pressure of others watching, what makes you think you’ll have any hope at all in a situation where you actually need to shoot?  Are they gonna stand still for you?  Are they gonna be as wide as a fucking treetrunk?  You’re horribly embarrassed, so downtrodden in the face of a cruel taunt that you don’t even want to look at Din when he steps in front of you.

“Hey, just try it again,” he says without delay, but the damage has already been done.  It’s not his fault, you’re just… not the kind of person who is meant to shoot a blaster, maybe.  

“Ah… it’s alright,” you look out and smile sadly at the line of trees surrounding you, wondering how it’s possible that you only managed to hit one of them this whole time.  You don’t see it, but Din quickly touches the tips of his fingers to the side of his helmet twice before you look back at him.  “I hit it earlier.  I did, I promise.  You can see the mark if you look.”

His glove reaches out to brush your hair back, so unbelievably gentle after using the same arm to shatter bone just a few minutes ago.  “I know you did.  It was a perfect shot, you hit dead center.  I see it.”

“I did it with one hand, that’s why I tried the thing,” you mumble stupidly, looking down at your feet.  Dumb.  Dumb.

A strand of your hair is tucked behind your ear.  “Wish I was here.”

You glance over at him, feeling your expression suddenly go soft with a wave of affection.  It stops all the harsh criticisms, halting your negativity in its tracks and replacing it with just… soft, abstract things.  Mostly just warm, nonsensical fluff, but one clear and resounding thought breaking through.  You wish he was here, too.

“Maybe I’ll get good at it eventually,” you sigh, slowly handing him the blaster with the barrel pointed down and away from both of you.  Din carefully takes it from you, tucking it away somewhere on his utility belt while you gaze out at the designated target and victorious char mark decorating it.  “Or hopefully just okay at it at some point.  I guess I just need to practice more, right?”

“That’s right,” he tells you warmly, catching your free wrist.  “Try using this one when you do.”  And then a lightweight piece of metal is gently pushed into your empty hand.

Your expression furrows while you quickly look down at it, and—

You go utterly still at the gift, not even knowing what to think.

The first thing that you notice is the craftsmanship.  Brilliant, structurally flawless, the perfect size to fit your hand.  You don’t recognize the specific kind of metal that was used—definitely not beskar—but you think it might be constructed from the same material as Din’s old armor.  Dull silver, but with reflective chrome filigree accents around the handle, trigger, and safety.  It’s uniquely constructed and unlike any weapon you’ve ever seen before—no hard lines or edges, just a soft fluidity to the design that’s so aesthetically pleasing, it doesn’t really even resemble a blaster at all.

You can feel the visor silently studying your reaction while you continue marveling, noticing something new every time you look.  The safety is towards the back of the chamber, just like he said it’d be.  The sight is electronic, and you examine the way it’s built directly into the barrel.

Are those extra magnets on the inside?  Is this able to micro-adjust the plasma release for the best shot?  Holy stars, it must have cost a fortune.

“Din, this is…” you can’t decide where you want to look—the gorgeous crafting, the custom design, or him.  Standing so close to you, not saying a word while you search for the right ones.  “It’s so beautiful, I…”

“Was made for you,” he murmurs.  “Had to be.”

You look back down at the blaster to stop your eyes from tearing up.  He didn’t have to do this.  This is so… sweet, such a lovely thing to do.  Don’t cry, don’t cry—

“What is this?” You ask breathlessly instead, rotating the gun until he can see the symbol branded on the handle.  You recognize that it’s his signet, but you never bothered to ask him what it’s called, you never saw it as your place.  It’s an animal of some sort, one with a giant spike attached to its skull, and you’re glad you’ve never come face to face with one.

“It’s a mudhorn,” he answers quietly.  “They’re… dangerous animals.  Fiercely protective, preferring solitude.  The kid saved me from one a few days after I met him.  It’s… the mark of my clan.”

How fitting, you think, and an honor.  Perfect for him, and a bone-deep reminder of your two favorite people in the galaxy on your hip wherever you go.

“Thank you,” you tell him, hoping the sincerity in your voice sounds anywhere close to how you feel.  You haven’t even had it in your hand for longer than a minute and it’s already your prized position, the most important thing you’ve ever called yours.

Din nods and takes a small step back.  “Now hit the target.”

Feeling invigorated and renewed in every single way, you keep the kid tucked firmly in one arm while raising your blaster with the other.  The safety clicks off and your back straightens, chin lifting until something about the angle feels… right.  The trigger moves easily under your fingertip, and there’s almost no kickback considering how light the weapon is.  What you’re not expecting is the pure white beam of plasma shooting out of the barrel—unlike any blaster you’ve ever seen before—but then the immediate sight of it hitting the tree dead center sends a roar of triumph through your ears.  Fuck yes.

“Look at that!”  Din calls out over the kid’s happy squeal, and there’s nothing you can do to stop your loud whoop of victory.  Even though you know it only hit with the addition of those extra magnets to correct your terrible aim, that still feels so good—you feel so fucking powerful and dangerous.  You glance over to Din with a wide smile, but then his arm extends out towards the trunk directly next to the one with charred bark.  “Hit that one.”

You automatically swing the blaster in that direction and shoot.  A few pieces of wood split on impact and send sharp bits flying as soon as the bright white beam collides with it.

“That one,” Din tells you, and then bark splinters a half second later.  “That one.”  Bark splinters.  “That one, that one, that one—” hit, hit, hit, white plasma flying through the air and bark splintering in rapid succession.

He stops and spins around, pointing to a tree at the very edge of the clearing.  “That one?”

It’s furthest away but the trunk’s diameter is enormous.  As you lift the blaster, you know you’re likely to get it easily with this sophisticated weapon, even across the considerable distance.  So instead, feeling like nothing at all can touch you right now and wanting to see how smart the aim mechanism is, you raise up a few degrees higher before pulling the trigger.  Pale plasma launches from the barrel, and then one of the tree’s most prominent branches comes creaking and crashing to the ground right where you split it.

You’re beaming by the time Din turns back to you, the most excited you’ve ever been with your own progress.  He holds there for a moment while you lower your blaster and wait for him to speak, both of you looking at each other and not moving, until suddenly you hear his voice coming back to you.

Hit the target and I’ll marry you.

One of Din’s hands slowly comes up to the edge of his helmet, but before you can even process the implication behind the gesture, you’re immediately looking down at the crunchy leaves under your feet and clearing your throat.

There’s a beat of silence where you stare down at the dead foliage and wonder why the fuck you just did that.  Right in front of him, right to his face, too startled at how quickly you were being confronted with the possibility that you responded in an equally startled way.  It was instinctual, automatic and entirely out of your control, but that doesn’t mean you don’t want to take it back.

But… you can’t take it back.  That’s the way things are, and after a few moments, you hear his boots begin to cross the distance to you.

“Come on,” Din murmurs gently through the modulator, carefully taking the blaster from your hand and clicking the safety back on again.  “We have to get going.  The fifth quarry is far.  Three day trip through hyperspace.”

He doesn’t sound upset or disappointed by your unintentional rejection, thank the Maker.  You want to explain yourself somehow, but it appears it isn’t necessary in the slightest.  His arm wraps around your lower back and he leads both you and the baby back up the open ramp of the Crest, squeezing you close enough to his side that you have to learn how to walk in a different way to stop yourself from tripping over his boots.

The helmet turns and presses to the top of your head while you focus on moving straight.  “Proud of you,” Din murmurs quietly, and your chest fills with enough air that you’d be worried about floating away if he wasn’t latched onto you so tightly.

He eventually releases you and walks over to the armory, pressing a button to unlock the doors while you hold the kid and watch him start to remove the multitude of weapons strapped to his body.

Maybe… maybe this isn’t the right time, but something brave surges up inside you.  After receiving the most precious gift imaginable from him, hitting all those targets and hearing him say that he’s proud of you, you’re buzzing with just enough energy that for better or worse, it makes you open your mouth and ask.

“Could I… come with you this time?”

Din nearly jerks upright and looks over at you immediately, but he takes a while in responding.  You hope he sees it in your eyes.  You hope he sees just how much you don’t want to be stuck here again when this is possibly the one time you’d be able to tag along.  It’s a bullshit quarry, one he could do in his sleep, and you’ve been getting increasingly restless while stuck on this ship.

When Din eventually does respond… well, judging from his shift in tone, you’re assuming he was just shocked at the question and didn’t take any of that time to actually consider his answer.

“No.”  Short.  Unfeeling, and not sorry about it in the slightest, before turning back to return the blasters you were using previously to the armory as if you said nothing at all.

Okay…  Um.  Not great, not what you wanted to hear, but maybe if you explain yourself better, he’ll listen.

“I just… I’m the only reason you have to get this quarry in the first place.”  Your voice is quiet, trying to let go of some of the concerns you’ve kept to yourself over the past two weeks.  Your fingers fiddle idly with the kid’s little woolen sack as he hangs out in your arms, wanting to plead your case but feeling slightly nervous now.  “You were out having a crazy expensive blaster made for me while I shook hands with Karga and agreed that you’d take more work for less pay.  I hate that I did that.”

“You had no choice,” Din mutters, turning around and striding past you while pressing a button on his vambrace to close the Crest’s ramp.  “My fault for being late.”  And… for as warm and comforting as his voice sounded earlier, it now just sounds… dismissive.  Aloof.  Half-listening, not really wanting to talk but forcing himself to.

“Well this time, I thought maybe… I might be able to help?  Maybe?”  Maker, you feel yourself going quieter the more he walks around the hull and ignores you.  “Karga said it was just a missing person, not even a criminal…”

“Karga says a lot of things,” he grunts with his back to you, voice completely monotone through the modulator.

Come on, speak up.  You’ve lacked a backbone for so long, you’ll never get what you want unless you say it out loud and let it be known.  You take a deep breath and straighten your shoulders, trying to put a little bit of spine into it.  “I can be useful.  I can fight now, I’ve been working on my—” 

“You think I’m telling you no because I don’t think you’re capable?”  He suddenly whips around, voice ringing sharp and challenging throughout the hull while you freeze.  You don’t move but everything about you suddenly feels like it shrinks.

“I-I didn’t—” But he cuts you off, taking a step forward.

“I know you can fight, a Mandalorian taught you how.  I know you’re useful, I know it’s just a missing person, and I know you hate it when I leave.”  He pins you with his eyes through the visor, his tone harder than you think you’ve ever heard it before.  “No.  Your job is to stay here, on this ship, with my son, where it is safe, and my job is to go get the quarry.  Quit asking.  I’m not telling you again.”

The baby makes a tiny little distressed sound in your arms and you blink a few times up at the cold metal, feeling all the good feelings from before just… drain out of you.

Okay, that’s fine.  Uh.  You… the cockpit is behind you, you’ll go up there and fly then.  No reason, just… he should get going.

“Okay, yeah,” you nod and tell the wall over his shoulder brace in immediate agreement, before abruptly spinning around and grabbing the ladder.  Din doesn’t move a single fucking muscle while you try to find your way up to the cockpit with the baby held to your chest and a dead stone sitting heavy inside of it, hoping your face doesn’t show the vulnerability you feel wanting to take over as you retreat.  Get to the cockpit first, get to the cockpit first, get to the—

“Sweet girl, I…” you barely hear murmured through the helmet from the floor, soft enough to sound slightly shocked, but you scramble into the cockpit and shut the door behind you before he can say anything else.

***

Silence didn't used to feel like this.

At first it was eerie, unnatural and stifling when you spent years in a wide open desert, wind swirling and dust pelting.  It suffocated you the first few times you jumped into hyperspace, a phenomena you read all about and considered mathematically fascinating before ever experiencing for yourself.  It was… foreign and strange, but you began to value it more and more as time passed.

Then, you started to get to know him and silence just became comforting.  Something you could bask in, knowing it was a comfort to him.  A choice he made because it just fit him best.  You felt safe in it, you felt like you didn’t have to be anything else but you.  You never had to break it just to avoid awkwardness, you became… closer to it, until you learned to fall in love with it.

But only when he was with you and it was his silence.  Not… everything else’s.  Now it’s haunting again.  Now the sheer lack of sound through hyperspace is a stranger to you, and the distortion of light surrounding the cockpit feels less about the sheer magnificence of manipulating space time and more about the fundamental disconnect it causes.  Gorgeous, but at its core, a severance.  Ripping the fabric of the universe apart, tearing a wound in it.

It’s been a few hours and nothing exceptional has happened since your conversation in the hull.  

You’ll admit that you’re a sensitive person, and because of that, you’ve always had a problem knowing if you were right or wrong when someone comes at you with a hard enough will.  You second-guess yourself, it’s one of your worst traits, and you feel like trying to squash that tendency without knowing the limit is partially to blame for why you’re holed up in this cockpit with the kid.  You’re quiet but in a different way from Din.  When he doesn’t speak, it’s because most of the time, he’s sure of himself and doesn’t need to.  When you don’t speak, it’s because most of the time, you’re insecure and don’t want to.

After being left alone with your thoughts for this long, you’re starting to realize that… he was right.  What were you thinking, wanting to tag along?  Wanting to hang out while he risks his life for this occupation, you probably sounded so fucking ignorant.  Maybe… maybe he didn’t have to say it like that, but his point is still very valid and you’re not sure if you’re really justified in hiding like this anymore.

The way he said… your job, though.  That still stings a bit.  This hasn’t felt like an actual job in a very long time.  Was that just an expression, or did he mean it literally?  You’re stuck on it, you’ve just been going over this for hours in your head, trying to figure out if you should be the one to apologize or not—or if this is just you overreacting from the start and no apologies will be necessary at all.

“Sorry you got stuck with me, kid,” you mutter sadly to the baby, watching him fiddle with his favorite metal ball in your lap.  He makes a little gurgle, purring in that weirdly adorable little way of his and it somehow feels like a reassurance directed to you that he’s just fine the way he is.

Maker, you haven’t heard anything from the hull in a fucking eternity; it’s like Din turned into a ghost, hasn’t even made a single footstep that you could hear since you last left him standing there.  You remember performing a quick flight check as soon as you got up here, lifting off as fast as you could and hoping the thrusters would rumble loud enough to cover your series of pitifully shallow sniffles at being yelled at unexpectedly by a very large and intimidating man, not really crying but not really able to breathe normal either.  The little monster was able to wiggle himself around in your lap as you were trying to punch in the correct coordinates for the fifth quarry with rapidly blinking, watery eyes, and then proceeded to give your belly the smallest hug you think you’ve ever been given and pretty much break your heart with it.

Lovely little boy, so sweet when he wants to be.  He’s sat with you this whole time, he even tried giving you his metal ball to play with but ultimately decided to keep it to himself when he realized you aren’t nearly as fascinated by it as he is.  You know it’s probably getting late for him, and you’ve been weighing the idea of handing him over to his father so he can at least get a good night’s sleep somewhere that isn’t your arms.  There’s no blankets in here, just your lap.

“I think I gotta go take you to your dad soon, tiny.  He’s probably missing you,” you tell him, trying to keep quiet enough that you won’t disturb Din in the hull.  There’s a good chance he’s already asleep.  “I think… he might still be mad at me.  Maybe you can give him the big eyes, soften him up a little?”

Right on cue, his enormous eyes start to droop closed, and you let out a tired sigh of exasperation.  That’s not gonna work, come on.  They gotta be open, booger.

You watch him slowly drift to sleep, his ears relaxing until they too start to droop, but when you try to take the ball from him and set it down on the console, his eyes immediately pop back open and the toy slips from your fingertips.  It levitates right back into his tiny hands as you watch, and then he closes his eyes once more while tightly cuddling the thing he loves most to his body.

Unbelievable.

He’s a child, and yet he’s…

“How are you so strong?”  You ask him, unable to even fathom.  “You’re the smallest, most helpless little thing I’ve ever seen and you’ve got such… strength.  You defy the universe for a piece of metal.”

He doesn’t hear you, you think he’s asleep again.  It’s just as well, you figure.  He needs to go sleep in his crib, it’s time.  You scoop him up and make sure the little ball stays tucked snugly in his arms, before finally standing up and stumbling over to the door on numb legs.

Only, when it slides open, you quickly stop short.

Because there, sitting on the floor and resting his helmet against the corner of this small little platform leading to the ladder, is the Mandalorian.

So much closer than you expected him to be.  So big, crammed into such a tiny place.  You didn’t hear his footsteps climbing the ladder, and you would’ve noticed it during the hours you’ve spent in the suffocatingly muted quiet of hyperspace.  He can be silent but not when absolutely nothing else exists and he’s got a thousand fucking pounds of steel weighing him down at any moment in time.  You took off almost immediately once you barricaded yourself inside the cockpit, so has he… did he follow you up in those last few seconds, right after you shut the door?  The ones when you were sniffling like a child and trying desperately to turn the thrusters on before you let the tears come?

His head lifts and his back straightens as you’re looking down at him with his sleeping son cradled in your arms, your eyes slightly redder than they should be.  You’re a mess and… he’s been here this whole time?

“Could you hear me in there?”  You whisper in sudden mortification, but Din just keeps gazing up at you through the impenetrable metal visor.  A complete mystery again.  Unreadable—he could be anyone.

When he doesn’t answer you, your heart twists with the possibility that he’s still upset with you, and you quickly turn to the ladder to figure out the best way to get down without jostling the baby.

“I’m sorry.”  His voice stops you dead in your tracks.  It’s so soft, nearly flipping in and out of the modulator from the lack of volume, the most cautious sounding thing you’ve ever heard coming through the filter.  “I… hurt your feelings.  I’m sorry.”

And…  Maker, if anybody else had said it.  If literally anybody else had said it, you know it would’ve sounded like the most sarcastic, dickish remark in such a delicate moment.  But, you also remember him telling you once that you were tenderhearted.  That the galaxy would never be as kind to you as you are to it.  This… comes out sounding like he’s trying to change that.

It comes out sounding like he’s trying to use his voice to hold you because he doesn’t think you want to be touched right now.  Like… like he’s doing everything he can to be as careful as possible here because you think he might be attempting to do something he’s never done before.  Apologize for saying something he didn’t mean.

“You don’t have to,” you quickly tell him.  He’s not good with words and apologies are difficult enough to phrase for normal people, you don’t want him to fret over it if that’s what this is.  “It’s okay, I know you’re not… you don’t have to.  It was stupid of me to ask.”

“It wasn’t,” he instantly counters, his voice finally seeming to find the floor when it was just hovering before.  Not loud—still gentle, still making sure the kid doesn’t wake up and you’re not frightened away, but a bit more grounded this time.  “It wasn’t… what I wanted to hear, and I didn’t take it well.  Not stupid.”

“It was stupid,” you return amicably, looking down at your feet.  “That’s not my… job, like you said.”

Din suddenly hangs his helmet down to his chest, pressing his gloves to the part that curves over his forehead and rubbing it.  “Shit.  I didn’t mean—”

“You were right,” you acknowledge, having spent the past few hours coming to the understanding that it’s the hard truth and he just phrased it poorly.  “I’m not… built for it, I’d only get in your way.  I barely just managed to shoot stationary targets with a blaster today, and that’s only with that aim corrector built into the barrel.  I’m here to be helpful, not—”

“What are you saying?”  He suddenly lifts the beskar to study you, sounding genuinely confused.  “What aim corrector?”

That… makes you pause.

“The, uh…”  Now you’re confused.  “The one that adjusts the plasma release on the gun you gave me.”

He doesn’t move an inch or say a single thing to you in response and you awkwardly shuffle your feet for a second, everything so quiet that you can hear every little snore that goes in and out of the kid’s tiny button nose.

You blink at him after way too long of that, not knowing why he still hasn’t said anything.  “There’s an electronic sight and like a bazillion extra magnets packed into the barrel, Din, what else could—”

“Sweet girl, that’s… that’s for the Philithiorium,” Din breathes out, like he’s absolutely blown away by you right now.  “That gas is less stable than normal canisters, it takes more magnets to focus the white beam without overheating the metal.”

You stare at him, not truly processing.  He’s saying that… you made all those shots today without any help at all?  By yourself?

Your eyebrows furrow and you blink a few times, but then his slow, heavy sigh echoes throughout the metal walls with disappointment… and you don’t think it’s directed towards you.

“You’re just… always so unsure of yourself.”  He sounds genuinely distraught as his helmet tips down to look at the ground.  “I made that worse today.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you quickly shake your head, your chest already beginning to loosen slightly by just being around him, hearing his voice, seeing the metal glint under the fluorescent light overhead when he’s in such a vulnerable position on the floor.  “It’s okay, let’s just… pretend neither of us said anything at all, okay?”

“Is that what you really want?”  He asks you after a moment of quiet, and for some reason, you hear something in your mind tell you that his arms look so nice right now, don’t they?  You could fit right there, perfect and safe again.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” you smile at him, feeling a bit of the ache trapped inside you continue to work itself out little by little.  You’ll be back to normal soon, it’s fine.

“No, I mean… do you really want to come with me?”  Din asks you, the words sounding cautious.  Confused, like he truly never expected the proposition from you at all.  “Or… do you just not want me to go?”

Oof, what a fucking question.

Why would he ask this?  It’s not pointed; it’s the softest, gentlest inquiry you’ve ever been posed.  Maybe in other circumstances, you’d say that him leaving doesn’t have anything to do with it, but… you’re certain that internally, it absolutely does have at least something to do with it and he was just able to know it before you did.  Which is probably why his sharp words seemed all the more cutting earlier.  It hurt because he said the truth first, verbalized a very deep insecurity you’ve been trying to hide from him and threw it right in your face when shutting you down.

Though, if it worked differently and you were the one who had to be away while he stayed here, you’d like to think you’d handle it way better than how it is now.  At least you’d have a real mission to focus on, new things to see and experiences to have.  You just feel… confined sometimes.

You take a deep breath and figure you’ll use sitting down as an excuse to think for a second.  There’s practically no room but you find it in the back of the cockpit near the doorframe anyways, doing your best to keep the kid level while you slowly lower yourself to the ground near him.  Not touching him, but close.

“I just… I lived my whole life stuck in one spot, wanting to see the galaxy,” you finally admit to him, staring at his chestplate but seeing the helmet tilt slightly in your peripheral.  “Sometimes it’s just… hard to see the galaxy and still be stuck in one spot, I guess.”

“…You want an adventure,” Din proposes quietly, and though there’s not a single hint of mockery in his voice, you suddenly feel like it’s really fucking dumb when he phrases it like that.  What are you, an eight year old?  Wanting to go on an adventure, see things you’ve never seen without any concept for real life?  Credits?  Time?  Resources?

You shrug a shoulder to make it seem like it’s no big deal.  Why is he even entertaining this right now?  “It’s stupid, I kn—”

“Like on Naboo,” he goes on, ignoring your harsh self-criticism, not allowing you the ability to even get it out once he heard the first couple words.  “Going through the forest, seeing that waterfall.  Someplace to find for yourself.  Explore.  Experience.”

You… you want it so badly that you think your eyes might tear up just hearing the words coming out of his mouth when he says them like that.  Like he… just inherently understands.  He knows.

He knows you.  He’s not good with words and yet he found the single most succinct way to put what you thought was a complex yearning without even trying.  You can’t even answer him, he hit the target dead on and you’re left with nothing to say that wouldn’t just be a miserable lie.

“Okay,” Din says after a moment, giving you a small nod.

You’re lost now.  “…Okay?”

“You’re never going on a hunt with me,” he tells you very seriously, no room for arguing.  “Ever.  And not because you can’t handle it, understand?”  He inhales, quickly adding on to his response before you’re able to analyze it the way you want to.  “But if you want an adventure, then… I can try and find a way to give you one.”

Stars.  He’s… too kind.  You somehow feel like it’s more than you deserve.  You were honestly hoping to just shadow him on a hunt, watch him work and stay well out of the way when he needs you to.  Helping if you think you’d be of any help; an extra set of eyes and hands.  You would’ve been fine even if he didn’t apologize for raising his voice at you, he doesn’t have to do this for you.

“Thank you,” you say for the third time today, feeling like each one has somehow multiplied in sincerity.

“It can’t be right now,” he quickly tells you, apologetic but earnest about it.  “I have to find the quarry, and I’m supposed to meet with Karga again in a week.”

You never did let him know about the other part of the deal you made with Karga, you admit.  Four pucks, no hassling, no hard time constraints.  That’s what you shook on, but you just never found a way to bring it up to Din.  Especially since you’ve been so preoccupied with hiding your growing disappointment from him whenever he has to go.

“If…” you pause, wondering the best way to phrase this.  Yikes, this is a toughie.  “Um.  If Karga… I don’t know, hypothetically, if Karga decided to loosen the time constraints back to the way they were before the Corellian bounty, would you… still need to meet with him again in a week?”

You don’t think he even bothers shuffling through all those words.  “Say what you mean.  Please.”

“That was part of the deal I struck with him,” you quickly explain.  “You can hunt on your own timetable again and he’ll keep giving you four pucks like before, no more or less after this one extra quarry.  It’s like a… replacement of sorts, for the one I kept you from getting the time before.  If credits aren’t an issue, you can take more than a week.  But only if you want to, you don’t have to.  It’s just there and you should know, that’s all.”

He takes his time responding, lifting his helmet just the slightest bit in… surprise?  Maybe?

“You never told me you did that,” Din finally murmurs.

“Ah.  Well.”  You look down at the sleeping kid in your arms.  “I didn’t want you to think I was trying to… keep you here.”

It genuinely is a struggle for you, and you think he’s just now realizing that.  As much as you know he gets frustrated with you for always wanting him to be here when he physically can’t be, you think it’s only now that he’s truly realizing the lengths you go to in order to stomp that part of you down whenever you feel it threatening to come up.  You allowed him to leave every single time without telling him he could stay, knowing that all that was left for you was babysitting and target practice for days on end.

“Will you come over here?”  Din finally asks, and the tone of his voice just punches you in the chest.  So soft, so distressed from having you so close yet so far from him and just… full of a quiet hope, like he’s fully expecting you to say no.

“Will we fit?”  You whisper after a moment, even quieter.

He doesn’t answer, he just reaches for you.  You do your best to scoot over to him without waking the kid, and then Din pulls you the rest of the way once he has a grip.  You go right into his arms, laying sideways across his lap and supported by his steel embrace.

Oh, it’s not comfortable but you’ve also never been more fucking comfortable.  One of his knees lifts and allows you to rest your back against it without worrying about falling over sideways and down the ladder to the hull, thank the Maker.  The beskar pauldron over his shoulder digs into your cheek, but Din immediately pushes an arm up to nudge his helmet off and make it better for both of you.  Your face automatically fits into the crook of his neck while he sets the beskar on the bend of his knee, and then he silently cradles you while you do the same to his little boy… who does the same to his favorite metal ball.

“Ni tar’tayl su,” he murmurs into your hair, the one phrase in Mando’a you do recognize, especially with how beautiful and elegant it sounds rolling off his tongue.  “Forgive me.  Ni ceta.”

You sigh your contentment and melt into him, well aware that you’d still be more comfortable in bed.  But when you’re pressed hard against his chest like this and the baby is fast asleep in your arms, you get to feel both of them breathing.  Din’s right lung is probably bigger than the kid’s whole entire body, but you like the radically different cycles they go through.  You think you count six full breaths coming from the brown sack in your palms for every one of Din’s and two of yours.  It creates the most beautiful little symphony that sometimes gets a little off track, but always finds its way back around again.

“How do you say…”  You ask, feeling his hand slowly move down the curve of your spine, mindless and hypnotic.  It catches the edge of your shirt and goes underneath, and even though it’s not his bare hand and there’s no skin to skin, it still feels so good.  Not sexual or sensual even, just… a comfort to you.  “In Mando’a, how do you say… out of a trillion?”

Din’s breaths pause for just a second, his portion of the synchronized rhythm faltering.  Soon it starts back up, and his head turns to press his lips against your hair.

“I don’t think there’s a word for it,” he admits, gently brushing a thumb across the baby’s forehead while he snoozes.  “There could be, but I don’t know it.  I’d use… out of a million million millions.  Dayn alanyc bal alanyc bal alanyci.”

Your eyes begin to drift closed, exhausted from keeping them open after shedding a few tears earlier.  Your first fight and you’re already completely in love with him again after a handful of hours of sulking and one conversation.  How is that possible?  You’re normally a very forgiving person and it wouldn’t have taken much to make you feel better, you just never expected him to… actually want it from you that badly, care enough about it to get on the floor and ask.

Din doesn’t move the entire night through.  You assumed he’d make everyone get up at some point and move to the hull, but he doesn’t.  You fall asleep against his chest, comforted by the silence once again.

***

The next morning, Din quietly climbs into the cockpit while you’re humming in the shower.  You’re too busy basking in the indoor rainfall to feel the ship pull out of hyperspace, and then jump back into it a few moments after.

***

“How long do you think you’ll be this time?”  You ask two days later, sitting on the extended flattop of Din’s old cot and swinging your legs back and forth.  The baby is currently sitting on your lap and trying to roll the metal ball down your knee so you’ll kick it in the air, you think, because he keeps dropping it at different moments and forcing you to stop moving your legs to prevent accidentally denting a wall.  Every time the ball clatters to the floor, he makes a sad sound and it immediately lifts back up into his tiny hands for another try.

Heavy boots clang against the metal floor as Din drops down from the ladder, having just landed the Crest on the surface of whatever planet you’re on.  “I’m not leaving yet.”

“Oh…”  You blink, surprised.  “Okay.”

“I wanted to do some more training with you first, if that’s okay.  You can say no if you want, but maybe not,” Din drawls, striding over to the armory and opening it.  He carefully removes your blaster from the front shelf, speaking with his back to you.  “You’re going to run.”

“Um.”  You take a moment to glance around the enclosed hull, before turning to look back at him with your eyebrows raised.  “What, like… in place?”

Din sighs and closes the armory before leaning back against the doors, rubbing the face of the helmet in exasperation.  “From me, sweet girl.”

Your legs stop swinging, and the baby grumbles and slaps three fingers against your knee.  “What?”

“We’re on Sanctuary II,” he explains, turning to grab his black bag from one of the storage shelves.  He unzips it and reaches back into one of the larger pockets on his utility belt, before grabbing a handful of credits and stuffing them inside.  “It’s a moon, the New Republic occupied it years ago and made it a safe world for refugees and orphans of the Empire.  You’ll have your blaster, some credits, a communicator, and a day head start.  You’re going to run from me.  Show me how much you’ve learned.”

Is… he for real?

Right now?  You don’t even know how to respond, you’re too surprised.  Even when Din approaches and carefully trades the kid for your blaster, setting the bag down next to you on the metal bed, you still haven’t answered him.

“If you want?”  He asks after a moment, and you quickly jerk your head into a nod and jump off the raised platform, almost knocking into him with your sudden excitement.

“Okay!  Fuck yeah,” you grin, but Din shakes his head.

“Rules,” he says seriously, and you quickly do your best to frown, trying to compose your thrilled expression to match his tone.  “One.  This is a safe world, but things can always happen.  You have a blaster now, but it’s for emergencies only.  Do not shoot me with it.  Do you understand?”  You nod, but Din reaches forward to grab your elbow.  “Out loud, please.  For me.”

“I will not shoot you with this blaster,” you vow obediently, carefully cradling the precious firearm in your hands.

“Do not shoot me,” he repeats while pointing a leather finger at you.  “Do not… shoot at me.  Near me.  Around me.  No, just—don’t shoot.  Unless I am… very far away.  Okay?”

Well, he didn’t have to phrase it like that.  You frown, but acquiesce regardless.  “I will only resort to blastering if it’s an emergency and you are not around.”

He nods a thank you for putting it into better words.  “Second rule.  Since you don’t have a ship, I won’t either.  We’re on foot.  I don’t doubt you can hotwire a piece of junk to do what you need it to do, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t.  Good?”

Entirely accurate and entirely fair.  “Good.”

“Three,” he says.  “I’ll have the kid with me, which is both good and bad news for you.  Good news is he’ll slow me down, bad news is I can’t promise he won’t also try to intervene at some point if you’re serious about putting up a decent fight.  What I can promise is that I won’t encourage it.”

“Reassuring,” you nod.  “Also not really a rule.  Please continue.”

“Four.”  He pauses for a second.  “I think I’m wanted by the New Republic.”

You nearly jerk back.  “What?”

“I can’t confirm it and I’m not proud of it,” Din quickly tells you, probably the vaguest possible explanation he could provide.  “I’m only telling you so that you’ll know your advantage and find a way to exploit it.  I can’t be seen by any officers, or they might arrest me.”

Is he fucking serious?  “I don’t want you to be arrested, Din, I—”

“I won’t be,” he assures you.  “They owe me one, I just don’t want to cash in yet.  Trust me.”

You… do.  Insanely, and against every logical thought flittering through your head, you do.  If you were ever going to bet money that someone would be able to navigate a safe world on foot without being caught by the numerous officers scattered across the surface, then you’d put all your credits on Din Djarin.  It… also shouldn’t really surprise you at all that the people seeking his incarceration also owe him a favor, should it?  It actually sounds right on par for him.  “Okay.”

“Fifth, and this one is important, so listen up,” he continues gruffly.  “You check in with me tonight over the e-comm, alright?  I don’t care where you are or how safe this planet is, if you don’t check in, I’ll come find you before the sun rises.  Say you understand me.”

“I understand you,” you tell him, your heart beginning to pound in your chest at the reality of this actually happening.  “I’ll check in tonight.”

“And if,” he goes on, “by some miracle, you manage to make it more than a full day, you check in with me tomorrow night, too.  Say it.”

“I will check in with you every single night for the full five days it’ll take you to find me,” you assert, the adrenaline starting to make you brash and giddy.  

Din tilts his helmet at you sternly.  It is a very, very stern tilt.  “Okay.  New plan, forget everything I just said.”

Your expression furrows.  “What’s the new plan?”

“That is the new plan,” he says, dead serious.  “Us.  Not doing this.”

“Oh, come on,” you grin cheekily up at him, poking his chestplate.  “I’m just giving you some motivation to find me quicker, that’s all.”

Din stares down at you, and… yeesh.  Tough crowd.

“Tell you what,” he finally grunts, sounding incredibly unamused with your jesting.  “If you can last that long with only a day head start, I’ll let you come with me to collect the fifth quarry.  You can even cuff the bastard yourself.”

You know it’s just because he’s rightly confident in his own deadly skill, but hearing him propose the possibility still shoots a thrill down your spine.  “Oh ho, you are gonna regret saying that, shiny,” you beam up at him, starting to hop back and forth on each foot with excitement.

“But if I’m able to find you, you can’t ask me ever again,” he finishes shortly, and you immediately go still in front of him.

“What?”

“If I’m able to find you in five days, I don’t want to hear about you coming with me on a hunt and you can’t ever ask me not to go on one,” Din tells you, his voice rough and gravelly through the modulator.  Not mean or harsh, but firm.  “From now on, it’ll be off-limits.”

You… take a moment, not knowing if you should feel scolded or not.  When you don’t immediately say anything in response, he sighs and turns the helmet away from you.

“Leaving is hard enough as it is,” he mutters, looking at the ground.  “Hearing you ask… makes it impossible.”

You slowly lower your gaze to the floor as well, feeling your heart constrict tight in your chest.  There’s a real pull under his voice, telling you that information even though it sounds like he doesn’t really want to admit it out loud.  It… really is a struggle for him too, then.  You understand.

“Okay,” you nod.  There’s not a single part of you that actually thinks you’ll be able to stay hidden from him for five days while stuck on foot, so this is essentially a given.  You’re not thrilled about the idea, but you’re going to do your best to respect it nonetheless, especially if he cares enough to put off hunting and allow you this experience for yourself.  It’s a better compromise than you ever imagined, and you’ll do everything you can to hold up your side of the bargain.

Din clears his throat and straightens his spine, turning the visor until it faces you head on once more.  “Final rule.  I reserve the right to break any rule we just agreed to, or any fucking rule in this galaxy to keep you safe.  Good?”

Your cheeks flush with heat, your stomach suddenly filling with butterflies.  He doesn’t do that.  Din says what he says or he doesn’t say anything at all, there’s no… taking things back, he’s already breaking his own code.

“What happened to The Way says no take-backs?”  You ask quietly.

“This is my way,” he answers you.  Quick, not even taking a moment to think about it, before pulling out a fancy looking wristwatch thing and clipping it on you himself.  “This is your communicator.  It takes more power than the one you have now but it’ll reach a further distance.  I have one just like it, they’re locked into the same frequency and timesynced together, and the batteries need to be charged every three days.  If you make it that long, I’ll remind you.”  Din grabs the bag while you slide your arm into it, helping you hook it around your shoulder with one hand while he cradles the kid in his other.  Your heart is pounding now, pumping with adrenaline as he pulls you towards the middle of the hull and then wraps an arm around you.

“Hey,” he murmurs, pulling you tight to him and pressing the helmet to the crown of your head.  His voice is barely a whisper through the modulator.  “Gar darasuum.”  For an eternity.

You find some way to wrap your arms around him, even with your blaster in your hand and the kid hanging out in his dad’s other arm.

“Dayn alanyc, bal alanyc, bal alanyci,” you murmur dutifully against the beskar chestplate, knowing your accent is probably butchering the words but hoping they still carry the same sentiment.

And then you’re squeeeeeezed hard enough to get a little air out of you, before you’re let go and he turns around, pressing a button on his vambrace so the ramp begins to lower.

It’s bright outside but not too bright, and everything is warm and gentle and breezy, right in the middle of a lush plain.  You inhale the fresh air into your lungs, looking out across the wide open field, having no fucking clue this is where your day would be leading when you woke up this morning.  Oh Maker, it’s gorgeous here.  Not like Naboo, where every single thing is picturesque and fit for an e-card, but in a soft, understated kind of way.  The sky is a canvas of swirling pastel clouds, pale pinks and yellows and blues, and the communicator on your wrist lets you know that it’s just after noon here.

You take one single step down the ramp, before immediately stopping and turning around to bite your lip at him.

“How am I… how am I supposed to outrun you?”  You ask, already clueless.  “You’re too good, better than me at everything.”

“That’s not true,” Din reminds you sternly, grabbing your hand at your side.  “You already know who’s after you, that’s an advantage nobody else has ever had against me.  You know how I think.  I don’t know how, but sometimes it’s like you can…”  He slowly shakes his head.  “See me.  Through the metal.”

“But… but that works both ways,” you point out, breathless at hearing him say that but needing to focus right now.  “You know me, too—you’ll know exactly where I—”

He shakes his head again, but quickly this time.  “Remember what I told you a long time ago?  What your best weapon is?”

You… do not.  He told you so many things, and you’re assuming every single one of them is going to come into play during this endeavor if you want to outlast.  You’re going to have to think back and remember all of them individually, find the time to figure out your best plan of action based on the remarkably little you know about how he hunts.

“You’re smart, remember?”  Din murmurs, squeezing your fingers.  “Your mind works differently, it sees things in ways I’ll never be able to, not even with this helmet.  So…”  He shrugs a shoulder like it’s the simplest thing in the galaxy.  “Don’t try to outrun, okay?  Just try to outsmart.”

You give him a nod after a moment, still not really sure about it, before giving his hand one last squeeze in return and eventually letting go.  

Outsmart.  Outsmart him, use what you know about him to be the most elusive quarry he’s ever hunted down.

As you make your way down the ramp, you’re already thinking.  His helmet tracks footprints, that’s a thing you know.  You’ll have to find someone to trade shoes with, then—yours aren’t too beat up, maybe you can find a local who’d appreciate a better pair.  Are you going to a city?  Would there be one in walking distance?  The wilderness won’t work, you’ll be too exposed and it would make you an easy target for either him or wild animals.  The weather seems clear here though, and you don’t think you’ll need to worry about rain or snow, but if—

“Oh—but when you do see me,” Din decides to add when your feet finally touch the grass, and you pause once more to turn around and look at him.  He stays quiet for a second, studying you through the helmet for too long.  Like the anticipation is getting to him already.

You bite your lip back at him and adjust the bag on your shoulder, tummy swirling with nerves and excitement.  He tilts the visor up, gazing down at you from the hull with the kid tucked in his arms.

“Try to outrun,” he says gruffly, before turning back into the ship and letting the ramp slowly close behind him.

[marvelmaniac715]

A random au idea came to me about a month ago that I started to write but couldn’t quite get off of its feet. The basic premise is: Human Chucky and Tiffany, Doll Glen/da. I’ve decided to rewrite it, and I’m not going to say anymore…

————————————————————-

If you’d told Chucky sixteen years ago that he would be sitting down with his doll wife and doll child/children and gently explaining to said doll child/children that the voodoo pregnancy that was meant to give them a new body didn’t work, he would have called you mad and then slashed your throat for daring to talk to him. Yet, here he was, trying his best to comfort a now sobbing Glen whose dream of having a proper family was beginning to shatter. 

“There there, it’s okay kid. Nothing to get too upset about, besides, being human is way overrated.”

That didn’t help. If anything, the sobs got louder as a result. Tiffany (never able to cope with children crying) decided to offer up the two options that could fix their predicament as soon as possible.

“Sweetface, you have two options here. We could either try again and risk Jennifer finding out about us, or we could have your daddy and I transfer our souls into human bodies whilst you and Glenda…”

The final words of her sentence didn’t need to be said. Glen immediately understood, and so did Glenda, despite their slight refusal to accept the proposed option. Glen sniffed and blinked back a fresh stream of tears with a decisive nod.

“Okay, we’re both happy with the second option, let’s do it.”

————————————————————-

The difference between a small cage and a mansion was staggering. Once Chucky, Tiffany and the twins had settled into their new home (and bodies, in the adults’ case) the matter of the twins’ bedroom was immediately and thoroughly considered. Once Glen accidentally let slip that they and Glenda had lived in a cage before, Chucky and Tiffany were determined to give their children the biggest and bestest bedroom they could. Did they get strange looks from store employees when they ordered a custom canopied four poster bed in a toddler size? Of course they did. Did it matter though? Of course not.

Glen and Glenda had separate closets depending on who had control of the body each day, and they even had different sets of toys so that they didn’t feel forced to share like they had in their first home. Life was strange, but interesting at the same time. It was strange because Chucky and Tiffany had no idea how doll anatomy really worked, so they couldn’t just feed Glen and Glenda normally sized human food portions because there was a possibility that the food wouldn’t be digested, and they couldn’t set up play dates because most kids screamed or tried to steal Glen/da.

Chucky and Tiffany decided that it was important that the twins had a proper education, but they couldn’t make it obvious that they were escorting their children around art galleries and museums and not just a doll, so in situations like that, they had to get creative…

————————————————————-

There was a very odd couple in the gallery. All of the tourists and tour guides saw a woman who resembled Jennifer Tilly (was it Jennifer Tilly? It was hard to tell, she had blonde hair) and a pale man with shoulder length dark hair walking arm in arm around the various exhibits, pointing out different art techniques (courtesy of the man) and fun facts (courtesy of the very enthusiastic woman) to… a red headed doll.

The way they were doing this was almost as if they were talking to their child and not an inanimate object. They refused to put the doll down, and one tour guide could’ve sworn that he heard the man mumble to the doll when it was in his arms:

“Kids, I know that you think it looks silly, but I really think we should’ve brought the stroller with us, because we could’ve brought the hood down over your heads to disguise you instead of looking like maniacs. Besides, my arms are getting tired here.”

But when the man caught him staring, he glared at him as if he were the crazy one and snapped:

“Hey buddy, why don’t you mind your own fuckin’ business, alright?”

And then the doll blinked.

When the now very frightened tour guide described what he’d seen to family and friends, nobody believed him.

————————————————————-

Aside from museum and art gallery trips, Glen and Glenda’s education comprised of Chucky teaching them from textbooks he’d bought online. Except, he wasn’t a very dedicated teacher, and both Glen and Glenda ended up teaching themselves a lot of the time. If they asked their father for help on a particular question, he would scratch his head, chew on a pencil and then play a stunning game of word association that usually went along the lines of:

“Math is a subject studied at school, which rhymes with cool… cool is another word for cold, which is the temperature that ice cream is best served at. Wanna go get ice cream?”

Do you take Glen/da for a fool? Of course, they always went for ice cream.

————————————————————-

Whilst trips to museums and ice cream stands was fun, Glen and Glenda longed for a proper education with kids their own age. So one day, Glen got their parents’ attention at the breakfast table whilst their father was cutting up the four bite sized pieces of toast that the twins were allowed in order to ‘test their digestive system’ and said quite seriously:

“Mummy, daddy, we’d like to go to school.”

The response they received was a confused:

“What?”

When Glen elaborated on behalf of themself and their twin, their mother said:

“But honey, your daddy does a great job teaching you, doesn’t he?”

Rather than let Glen respond, Chucky shrugged sheepishly and said:

“The kids might benefit from an actual teacher. Did you forget that I didn’t actually finish school? That’s how little I actually care about it.”

And so it was agreed. Glen and Glenda would be snuck into the closest elementary school every day from nine till three.

————————————————————-

“Glenda! You shouldn’t be doing that, it’s naughty! Chucky- Chucky, get in here! Glenda’s been misbehaving.”

“Uh, Tiff, what exactly are we disciplinin’ here?”

“Glenda said the f word.”

“And? You and I do that all the time, what’s the harm?”

“It’s not socially acceptable for children to swear Charles?”

“If we go out in public the kids pretend to be a normal doll, and they’re both really good at it. Who’s gonna know or care if our Glenda has a potty mouth?”

“I mean, I guess you’re right…”

“Besides, our idea of a date night was to murder people, who are we to take the moral high ground?”

————————————————————-

Xavier had proudly ran his antique store for fifty years. The eighty-seven-year-old had many loyal customers, and he took pride in his work, especially his specialty subject - restoring dolls. This particular area of expertise had brought many interesting people and delightful children to his store over the years, but his last day of doing business would certainly prove to be his most… interesting.

It had started off so well, with only a few well known locals coming to to catch up and only one confused tourist wandering in in search of a bathroom. But around midday, a blonde woman and a dark haired man stumbled into Xavier’s store whilst gently cradling a red haired doll with a dislocated arm. The man was arguing with the woman as he quietly hissed:

“You said you could find a doctor.”

The woman angrily snapped back in a whisper:

“No, I said that I could find someone that could help. And I did, so I don’t know why you’re mad at me.”

The man replied with a bitter:

“Great, make our children feel like objects, that’s wonderful parenting. Perhaps tomorrow we can place them as an item for auction-‘

He stopped when he looked up and realised that Xavier had been staring at them throughout this exchange. The man awkwardly smiled and nodded, nudging the woman next to him who flushed bright pink when she realised what was happening. In an instant, the couple had rushed up to Xavier’s counter before carefully placing the doll down in front of him as the man asked with a terrifying intensity in his eyes and voice:

“Can you fix them- it, I mean?”

Ever the professional despite his confusion, Xavier nodded and fixed his ‘customer service’ smile to his face as he picked up the doll and examined it with great care.

“Of course, this little man will be right as rain in no time.”

Whilst relieved, the man and woman’s faces hardened as the woman politely explained:

“Our children- doll- happens to be non-binary. They/them pronouns.”

In confirmation, the man nodded before placing a reassuring hand on the doll’s forehead and pushing its hair back. Xavier just nodded and got to work, quickly popping the doll’s arm back into place despite the man and woman’s interferences and fierce warnings of ‘be careful!’

After five minutes, which felt much longer due to the couple’s hovering, Xavier finished his task, and handed the doll back to the man and woman who immediately enveloped it in a grateful hug. In response, the doll… breathed. Yes, it let out a shaky breath and lifted it’s plastic arms to wrap around the man and woman who were fussing over the newly fixed arm. 

The man suddenly remembered where he was and whispered urgently in the doll’s ear. Then, the doll fell still as if nothing had happened. Xavier felt faint, and as soon as the couple gave him money and walked out of the store, he collapsed onto the ground.

He didn’t pass away, but, at the urging of his family, he decided to retire and pass his store down to his eldest son who had been preparing to take over the family business for years.

[electrasev5nwrites]

Ninja Daily: Vapors 39

"As baffling as it is, you were admitted with critically low levels of oxygen in your blood. That caused the nose bleed, but it wouldn't have caused the broken blood vessel in your eyes. It could contribute to that of course, those with high blood pressure or are taking blood-thinning medications have an increased chance of bursting a vessel. Despite looking like something out of a nightmare, luckily the condition is not serious at all. It's just a sign of strain, usually from something like coughing or vomiting. Were you doing either of those things?"

When the girl shook her head, the Hokage rolled her eyes. "Of course not. Well, either way you were recuperating by the time you dragged your skinny self to the nonemergency room and startled that poor receptionist. It wouldn't have taken much longer for normal respiration to have restored your oxygen levels if you hadn't been panicking. What were you doing, by the way?"

"MumBleMumblE".

"What was that?" Tsunade cupped her hand around an ear, smiling rather wickedly now that she knew there was some dirt. "I didn't quite hear you."

"Sealing experiments, trying to figure out the Hiraishin," she mumbled slightly below the hearing range for humans. Tsunade must have been a dog or something, because her face twitched.

"You've got to be kidding me."

Aiko shook her head, meekly. It had been stupid to keep her project under wraps. It was just… it would have been so humiliating to have tried and failed. If she had told anyone and then been unable to make the high-level, personalized seal to perform it, she would have felt like they were judging her. Like she was just a stupid child who had aspirations above her abilities.

Now she seemed like a stupid child who didn't know when to share dangerous experiments with someone who could supervise the process.

"Uzumaki will be the death of me." Tsunade tossed the clipboard onto the end of the bed as if she didn't have enough energy to care anymore. "You will be released tomorrow morning. At that time, you will report directly to my office and demonstrate this skill for me. Have you told anyone that you were attempting to learn that?"

Aiko shook her head silently, mildly ashamed of that. But not enough that she would tell anyone if she'd had another chance. She had to swallow before speaking. "No. Jiraiya gave me notes from an old student, and his notations and process of re-inventing it were all included. I used parts of those notes as a reference this last month, and I really wanted to try my hand at it."

Something strange wavered in Tsunade's eyes. That made sense—the Hiraishin would be a sentimental topic for her. It had been invented by her grand-uncle, and the last user had been the student who broke her teammate's heart by dying young. The Hiraishin hadn't saved him. But it was still a powerful tool. The Hokage sighed. "That was a bad decision, but it serves our purposes well. Keep it that way."

After she was left alone, Aiko had a lot of time to think about what had gone wrong. As that was also tinged with what had gone spectacularly right, she wasn't entirely depressed.

Now that she wasn't being questioned, she had time to realize just how pleased she was with herself for making the Hiraishin work. She'd never admit to that feeling out loud. It would be highly inappropriate to be anything less than demure and humble, especially since she hadn't really had to work as hard as she should have for the technique. She had been able to basically crib from Minato's notes and avoid the problems he had in tailoring the technique and had been able to use his changes as a model. The actual elemental changes had been inspired by the conversion seal Jiraiya had designed for her.

Really, very little of the seal was her own original research. Of course, all of those resources would have been useless if she hadn't happened to be a cerebral individual with much more education than any of her peers. Having access to even a basic education from a world that thought in a totally different way gave her twice as much material to use as reference points where someone like Jiraiya would have to come up with ideas that were entirely new to the Elemental Countries on their own.

But hey, it was still really cool.

'The whole 'passing out and bleeding from my face' thing was slightly less cool, though,' she acknowledged in the safety of her own head. The symptoms Tsunade had described fit in with her theory that the Hiraishin involved displacement of air and other molecules, however. She must not have been engaging in perfect displacement, either through inexperience or distraction as she had gotten excited and light-headed.

'Come to think of it, being light-headed might help explain why I was giddy and less rational,' she realized. 'So perhaps the physiological reaction to the Hiraishin seals wasn't entirely a side-effect of the justu so much as that I was …doing it badly.'

Well. That was embarrassing.

This would require some experimentation. Either it was a problem of learning her limit—how many times and what distance she could use the Hiraishin without negative repercussions—or it was a problem of perfecting the technique.

In either case, it was thoroughly possible to acclimatize oneself to function more effectively with lower oxygen levels. That was how people in high elevation lived, after all. Whether this was an irritation she would need to work around permanently or one that she could eventually fix through better control of her technique, gradually repeated exposure would help make the symptoms less severe.

When she met with Tsunade the next morning, she was actually ushered into a conference room she had never seen before. The table was loaded with what appeared to be breakfast and her entire notes from the past month and a half. She took a seat without prompting and rolled a pear in her palm consideringly. Tsunade didn't seem to care one way or the other. She was cutting up some sort of rolled egg concoction and staring blearily into the depths of her coffee.

The fruit was sweet and juicy, wetting her lips when she bit into it. Aiko closed her eyes to enjoy it better.

"I don't suppose the light of day makes what you told me yesterday make more sense?"

She opened her eyes unwillingly to gauge Tsunade's expression. Her voice had sounded so tired. It was strange. "I'm not sure what you mean," she confessed.

The older woman gave a deep sigh. Tsunade unfolded a blank piece of paper and pushed a bottle of ink across the table. "Demonstrate."

So she did, easily inking the seal she had made three times just yesterday. The Hokage tugged it out of her grip and examined it closely, closing one eye to squint at some of the sigils. When she seemed satisfied, the paper was tucked into a folder. Then she picked out another piece of paper from the same folder and set it on the table.

"Uzu… Aiko.." She propped her chin up on her palm. "Look at this, and tell me what you see."

Confused, Aiko took the paper. Her eyes widened.

"It's my official statistics report."

She hadn't actually seen it before. She eagerly ran her gaze over the page, cataloguing the information Konoha had collected on her. The skills breakdown was particularly interesting.

Ninjutsu 2

Taijutsu 2.5

Genjutsu 1.5

Intelligence 4.5

Strength 2

Speed 3.5

Stamina 2.5

Hand Seals 4

Which gave her a total of… 22.5 out of 40. That was actually really respectable. Wasn't Kakashi-shishou's score something in the mid-thirties?

"That paper has not been adjusted to account for either your chakra chains or the Hiraishin, as they would skew the data. Do you see the problem, Uzumaki?" She didn't wait for an answer. "When I look at this sheet, I see a damn good Chuunin or a respectable Jounin who would excel in certain roles. And that is a major problem."

Well, that wasn't what she'd expected.

"You're already known for those chains that skew your otherwise lackluster ninjutsu scores disproportionately high, but the Hiraishin is in a completely different league. Aiko." Tsunade caught her chin and tilted it up. Aiko was so close that she breathed in the other woman's heady floral perfume.

She couldn't look away, not even if her chin had been released. Up close, those amber eyes were strikingly intense.

"You are not anywhere near the level you need to be in order to deal with the type of opponents you will draw using the Hiraishin. Your skills are skewed towards the training you've had as a tracker type."

Aiko couldn't deny that. Although she had worked on her own to master the few ninjutsu shishou had given her and to make her taijutsu high Chuunin levels, shishou had been the one to work her hard on speed and endurance. She could track down damn near any runner.

"So far, you have been compensating for your relatively small and underpowered ninjutsu collection with your intellect. That's a good tool. But spitting a little lightning isn't going to put down the type of shinobi who want to take a swing at a Konoha nin using Hiraishin. I don't think you understand what everyone else thinks of that technique. It is internationally reviled. Everyone will want you dead. "

She swallowed, hard. Then she averted her eyes as best as she could without tugging her face away from Tsunade's grip.

Though she couldn't see it, she could hear the sigh that whooshed out of the older woman. "Listen to me, girl. You do not have the hitting power, either in taijutsu or in ninjutsu to take down S-class ninja who will flock to kill you. I'm sure you can see your weakest points as well as I can. Some of them are more crucial than others. For example, you can survive without being able to cast genjutsu, since you can break them well, but you are pitifully weak in the physical sense. Isn't that why your arm was broken on your last mission?"

Embarrassment turned her face red with heat. She had been stupid. If she had stopped to think, she would have known that using Hiraishin would make her a target. It was probably actually the specific reason behind the decision to hide the twins' parentage. Every Academy student knew that Minato had ripped through entire armies with the Thunder God technique. Rock would want her dead quickly.

"I see you understand." Tsunade released her, turning her face to the side to avoid Aiko's eyes. She cleared her throat. "I had been planning to send you to Sand in a week, you know."

Aiko lifted her head, interested despite herself. Why Sand?

As if the Hokage had heard her thoughts, Tsunade continued, "It doesn't matter, unless you're taking the mission, which we will see about after a re-evaluation. Uzumaki, I absolutely forbid you to use or speak of the Hiraishin until such a time as I clear it, unless it is an absolute emergency. Hatake is out of the village, and will be for weeks. That's a problem for you."

'I didn't know shishou was gone…' It hadn't been that long since she'd seen him last, after all. 'Then again, it's probably an ANBU thing again,' she realized. That would explain why he hadn't told her he was leaving town.

"I'm giving you a two week cram period before I consider you for any missions, Uzumaki. If I were you, I would find a short-term mentor in either ninjutsu or taijutsu. Two weeks won't make you an S-class shinobi, but that might be enough for you to build muscle mass and work out some of the kinks in your taijutsu. I thoroughly expect to hear you've been on the training grounds at least eight hours a day. When Hatake is back, ask him for an upper class jutsu or two. Understood?"

She nodded silently. It made sense.

"I think it's time I told you something." Tsunade tapped her fingers on the table. "Didn't you think it was strange that Jiraiya, a man you barely knew, would entrust you with notes from a former student with the Hiraishin in them?" She watched the girl carefully. She'd half-expected this outcome, but she was still a little surprised to see the girl shake her head. Tsunade narrowed her eyes, cataloguing the tiny tells the girl was giving off. It was easy to see that Aiko was mildly uncomfortable—her gaze wandered away from making eye contact, and her pulse jumped in her neck. But at least she knew she couldn't lie to the Hokage.

"You knew," she said slowly. Aiko nodded.

Tsunade closed her eyes. "I see. Did Hatake tell you?"

"No. But it's obvious, isn't it? Naruto looks exactly like the Fourth Hokage. It's amazing that he hasn't noticed."

A good, truthful answer, but that wasn't everything. "Do you have any questions?" At the negative reply, she sighed. "Fine, then. Get out. I have a meeting coming up."

"Gai-senpai?"

The man turned in unison with his apprentice, eyebrows raising impossibly high. They'd hardly spoken before, after all, and she had never been the one to initiate more than pleasantries. Aiko gave a short bow to break eye contact.

"I was hoping to ask if I could train with you while Kakashi-shishou is out on a long mission. My taijutsu needs work, and I know that your taijutsu abilities outstrip even shishou's."

Shishou might actually be cranky with her for this, she knew during that first workout while Gai beat the absolute crap out of her and shouted cheerful encouragements. She wasn't entirely certain if the older men had a very strange friendship or if Gai really did just butt in on Kakashi-shishou's life. Either way, it wasn't really her place to intervene or use that connection to her advantage.

But the Hokage had been right. She needed to bring her other skills up to at least A-class in order to survive being known for an S-class skill. Solid B-class taijutsu would get her killed in a heartbeat. And Aiko wasn't completely blind to her shishou's faults as a teacher. He didn't seem to know how to teach some things. Being a literal genius at the shinobi arts didn't necessarily translate into being a good teacher of them, after all. That was why people like Iruka and Ebisu were so valued.

Gai was a little disconcerting to work with, however. He had the most formidable force of personality she'd ever encountered, topping even Naruto. The experience reminded her of times when she'd walked too close to a civilian teenager boy who'd apparently bathed in his cologne and the smell felt like a solid wall, burning her eyes and nose. The cologne wasn't bad, it was just too much for the human senses to properly compute, so her brain sort of flopped helplessly and tried to shut out the excess stimuli.

She did genuinely like him, however. He actually reminded her of a Daoist monk. He didn't care at all for convention or reputation, and it was impossible to forget the philosophy he articulated whenever someone seemed to be flagging (or when they were doing well, or before practice…). A man who cared about worldly things would not be caught dead in that jumpsuit. If you switched out mentions of "youth" for "the way", it'd be a perfect fit.

'Would it be sacrilegious to try to rewrite a sacred text?'

Aiko definitely did not have perfect recall and enough specific memories to reproduce the 'Classic of the Way of Power' in a state anywhere like it must have been when she'd read it, but she remembered some of the metaphor and meaning. Something is better than nothing, right?

She had to abandon that train of thought when Gai grabbed her wrist and sternly shook his head at her. "You are thinking too much! All your being must be focused on hitting the post."

Aiko valiantly resisted groaning, glancing down at her bleeding hands. She'd been set to doing this as soon as she was too shaky to meet Lee's blows in the second spar of the day.

This wasn't a training regimen Kakashi proscribed to, as far as she knew. Hitting posts was so old fashioned! Kunoichi and ninjutsu specialists rarely needed to callus their hands the same way that taijutsu specialists did. In fact, the roughened hands could be a detriment for her fingers' flexibility or the ability to blend in as a civilian cover.

But it would improve her physical strength, one of her lowest skill scores. And she could hardly turn her nose up at the training Gai offered when she had asked him.

The neat pile of books and notes on her low table painted a confusing picture that didn't entirely mesh with the quiet, professional girl she had spoken to earlier that day.

Shizune had gone out drinking with a few ANBU friends, leaving Tsunade and Tonton at the mansion alone. Tonton was sleeping, snorting and kicking at the soft, circular rug designated for his use.

If she could just stop mulling over her inconclusive analysis, Tsunade would have been sleeping as well. She had more than enough on her plate to be thinking about something as minor as this. But something just wasn't right about Uzumaki Aiko. Or at least, she didn't know exactly how to pick apart how the oddities about the girl tugged at her attention. The notes from Uzumaki had been impressive enough. She'd expected that—both Anko and Jiraiya had noted separately that she had significant natural ability. That was practically her inheritance, however, so it hadn't been entirely surprising until she'd actually parsed through just what was so strange about the notes that bothered her.

They were methodical, perhaps too methodical to have come from a teenager. It had taken Tsunade a while to analyze the pattern Aiko seemed to utilize, and it definitely wasn't how she would have been taught to experiment with fuinjutsu. Tsunade had never even heard of someone recommending the system of testing that Aiko used. It was full of odd words like 'controls' and 'blind' that didn't make any sense in context. Why would Aiko think to refer to unaltered seals as 'controls'? What was 'blind' about not knowing which seal she was testing? That was better described as 'just plain stupid'. At least, she had thought so until she realized that there was sound logic behind each of those choices and other strange ones throughout the notes. It was a completely foreign way of thinking about seals, and the girl had apparently dreamed it all up on her own so nonchalantly that it didn't even occur to her to explain what her terms meant.

Aiko had been noted by her primary teacher, one Umino Iruka, as having high intelligence, an independent personality, and a tendency to get bored and distracted during class when the material was too easy which seemed to manifest as doodling and writing in a diary. Judging by that, Sensei's choice to place her with Hatake made perfect sense. They had a lot in common, aside from the diary bit.

But those reports hadn't indicated intelligence anywhere near this level. Which meant either that Umino was incompetent, or the girl had been downplaying her mental capabilities.

Tsunade had tested that by showing the girl the statistics with her adjusted intelligence score and not commenting on it to see if Aiko would think it odd. 4.5 was unreasonably high for a teenager, after all. Intelligence didn't just measure natural mental proclivities, but how well they had been developed and honed. Either the girl had an enormous ego, or she'd had no reason to think the elevated score was unusual.

Judging by the books Yamanaka Inoichi had borrowed from his daughter to show her, it was the latter. He'd been impressed when little Ino claimed that the books were written by her friend. He'd been mildly alarmed when he'd realized just how many of those books there were. That was the work of years of writing. Tsunade had flipped through a couple herself and was easily able to see what had so alarmed Inoichi. They were obviously not the work of an adolescent psyche, and the writing project must have started when the girl was still in the Academy.

It was no surprise that her teacher had noted she was bored, Tsunade realized. The girl had to be a genius on Hatake's level to have been this articulate at such a young age. When a prodigy cropped up in their ranks, (and a real prodigy, not just a genius like that Nara boy or how they'd gauged Aiko to be) they wouldn't be left to languish in the Academy. It was a waste of resources. Tsunade wasn't certain if she thought the girl had been benefitted or damaged by slipping through the cracks for so long.

That, combined with what little she had managed to conclude of the girl's personality in person, did constitute something of a picture. Aiko had taken criticism well, proving that although she had to be at least a little overconfident (trying an S class fuinjutsu without guidance proved that bit) she wasn't arrogant and prideful. She hadn't balked at a superior giving her unpleasant advice.

The analysis was even stranger in juxtaposition to her brother. Tsunade was definitely fonder of Naruto. Unlike his sister, he was an open book with big dreams and a strong emotional intelligence. He was empathetic and sensitive to others, and almost had a sixth sense for cutting to the quick of their deepest fears. Naruto was a true inheritor of the Will of Fire, and if Tsunade had anything to do with it, he would be her successor to the position of Hokage when he was strong enough. It was almost unthinkable that he would fail to become an excellent shinobi, despite his lackluster academic performance. He had a strong drive to succeed.

'I wish I knew what was motivating his sister,' Tsunade frowned. The only reasons she could think of for a child to hide their intelligence would be related to avoiding excess responsibility and danger through premature promotions. But the way that Aiko worked spoke of a strong work ethic, which just didn't fit with the other information. Was it just an attempt to impress her sensei? It had been noted more than once that Aiko idolized Hatake. If that wasn't a hint that Aiko was a poor judge of character, Tsunade didn't know what was. He was a good shinobi, but a very broken person.

Personally, Tsunade thought it was adorable that he'd finally found someone more socially inept to mentor. She rubbed at tired eyes and made a mental note to have those books returned to Ino in the morning with orders not to let Aiko know they had been out of her hands. There would be no point in letting her know that others were poking around, after all.

As much as high level shinobi were often highly secretive and private people, Tsunade didn't like to have shinobi rapidly rising through the ranks that she couldn't sum up at a glance. Unknown elements complicated her ability to assign the right person to the right tasks.

Tonton cracked an eye open and sleepily got to his feet, snuffling quietly as he trailed behind Tsunade to her bedroom.

"I bet Shizune is closing down the bar," Tsunade muttered to the pig. He crawled up onto his little bed and collapsed. She let herself smile at the sight—a tired piggy was adorable—and tossed her green haori onto the chair beside her bed, fingers tugging on the obi securing her gray top.

She could worry about that later. Sleep was more important right now.

[elonaackerman]

Why the Ackertalk must happen: An analysis of Mikasa and Levi relationship.

1) Their meeting

So we all know Mikasa hated Levi in the first place, since he beat Eren violently during the trial. If Armin didn’t stop her, she probably would have attacked him. Instead, because of our favorite blondie holding her back, she just gave to her future captain a death glare. And what is so amazing is that he actually noticed it, and you can see how intrigued he was by Mikasa at that moment.

Since he is praised as humanity strongest, it surprises him that a cadet shows no fear looking at him like if she wanted to kill him and was sure to be capable to do it. And if it wasn’t already very obvious that Mikasa catched Levi’s mind, the name of the chapter finishes the job: « still can’t see » in English, and « made me o mirenai » in japanese. I think the English translation is not on point, because if you look at the french translation, it could be translated as: « an unbearable stare ». The meaning is completely different and gives a lot of weight to Mikasa’s look and how Levi felt about it. It places their interaction and meeting at the center of the chapter. It’s not something you do for characters who do not have a particular storyline together, especially when the main character’s fate is also part of the chapter.

2) The Female Titan

Here comes what is usually refereed as the key moment which started the rivamika ship: the rescue of Mikasa by Levi in the forest. First of all, Levi grabbed Mikasa’s waist, and we won’t lie, it was cute.

BUT what comes after this is even more interesting, because I think Levi recognized Mikasa since the start, even if he couldn’t remember where he saw her in the first place. If you look at his eyes, you can see how shocked he is to see Mikasa in such a situation: I think that’s the moment where Levi started to see himself in her, because she behaved exactly like him years ago when a titan took the lives of Isabel and Farlan: recklessly and with rage. Then, Mikasa acts very agressively towards Levi, and doesn’t show him the respect a cadet normally has for a superior.

That’s how Levi definitely recognizes her: the girl who seems to hate him and who is disrespectful towards the hierarchy is also the one who wanted to slap him at the trial despite him being the strongest human soldier. Levi redeems her, and looks at Mikasa very strangely, silently, his gaze lost in the vague: Mikasa seems to ask herself what he is doing and is shocked by his behavior, because he doesn’t stop staring at her but doesn’t say a word. I still ask myself what he was thinking in that moment. It’s a very mysterious scene. I mean, YES Levi always looks at Mikasa silently in a lot of panels (that’s also cool for the fandom, of course), but this time, Isayama focused several big panels on this single silent interaction, as if Levi was analysing Mikasa on such a deep way that it made her uncomfortable. And the way that he then stop the eye contact with a sort of frustration in the eyes is also very questionable. It intrigues me very much.

After that very tense moment, Levi explains his plan to Mikasa, and reminds her that she must obey to his orders. For the first time, Levi and Mikasa cooperate and show how deadly their Ackerman duo is. Also, Mikasa recognizes Levi strenght, saying the titan’s blood doesn’t even touch his skin since he is incredibly fast. She looked at him with a great attention, observed his technique and acknowledged him. When she fights Annie later in Sina, she will copy his famous « spinning » technique.

From that moment, Mikasa’s perception of Levi totally changed.

After slicing Annie, Levi also saved Mikasa again and broke his ankle. What a great episode to be a rivamika shipper.

3) Season 2: BLANK

I will go quickly on season 2: because of his injury, Levi can’t fight. Mikasa felt guilty for that. When Eren is kidnapped, she tells Armin she is not confident to take him back because this time, Levi isn’t with her. It shows how she values him but also how she likes to fight with him, since she feels stronger by his side. And that’s a great thing knowing that Mikasa said she was stronger than everyone else in the first episodes (and she was right). She finally found an equal.

4) Season 3: THE RIVAMIKA HOLY GRAAL

A] An incredible relationship evolution

So here comes my favorite season, not just for the rivamika, of course, but it’s still the one which provided us more and more moments between our two favorite Ackermans. This season shows Mikasa becoming Levi’s right arm, and not just on a fighting level. Especially in the manga, we can see how much Mikasa’s opinion is important for Levi, it doesn’t seem like she is one of his soldiers but his partner. Of course, Levi has always treated Mikasa in a special way, but it’s more obvious in season 3:

(Here is Levi adressing violently to Historia to make her understand something, and then Levi adressing himself to Eren also to make him realize something, but justifying his words to Mikasa: her opinion and her feelings matter for him. Nobody can denie he acts in an unique way towards this girl)

In a panel, Mikasa looks at Levi with a disappointed look because he said something about a plan implying Eren that didn’t please her. It seems like she is waiting for him to say something in answer to her reaction. Almost as if she felt sort of betrayed after them cooperating for so long. Does she think she has some power over him ?

Now, on Levi’s side: he knows that Mikasa will listen to him, because as she said it herself, she wants to follow her captain’s decisions. It’s very obvious in the anime when he stops her from running after Eren TWO TIMES !!

This season also shows Mikasa caring and sort of apologizing for Levi’s leg wound, which proves that she clearly doesn’t hate him anymore.

B] The Ackerman link

Now comes the very important part of the whole Ackerman plot. With Kenny being introduced, we learn that Ackermans are a bloodline that couldn’t be controlled by the Fritz king because of their ability to resist to memory manipulation: that’s why their clan was persecuted.

Levi soon finds out that he is an Ackerman, just like Mikasa, the gloomy girl he knows so well. And it’s a big deal, not just for the story, but for Levi himself. I am sure, as I already said, that he sees himself in Mikasa since the start: it seems like he doesn’t want her to make the same mistakes as he did. Like I showed it, he is very gentle with her, always checks if she is okay, calms her down everytime. Levi always felt a deep connection to her. Since he now knows that he is an Ackerman, he probably feels even more close and identical to her. However, he doesn’t tell Mikasa that they are part of the same bloodline.

However, he talks about their awakening with her, and everybody is surprised to hear their discussion. Mikasa is sharing her trauma, and she doesn’t seem to hesitate to do it: at this point of the story, she feels comfortable with Levi and she trusts him.

While they speak, it’s almost as if they forgot the others: they are looking at each other eye to eye, and their little talk is very mysterious and sort of intimate. At that moment, Levi established a link that cannot be cut. Mikasa and him are the last survivors of their clan, and they are mirrors, even if he is the only one to know it. (Well, Armin sort of noticed it too, immediately associating Mikasa and Levi in S1, and mistaking Levi and Mikasa the first time the group met the captain-chibi, but it was only about their fighting abilities, not abour their other similarities)

Guess what comes now: THE EPIC ACKERBOWL

So, if a lot of people think the ackerbowl wasted the relationship building of Levi and Mikasa, I think it just showed us how closer they grew during this season.

First of all, Mikasa doesn’t attack Levi because she wants to (as she did in season 1) but because she NEEDS to in order to save Armin. She isn’t happy to do that, and even says « please » to Levi when she could have just insult him or blame him like she used to do: they are not real ennemies, just two people in a great emotional distress wanting to save their closer friends.

It’s also impressive to see how dangerous Ackermans are: together, they are unstoppable, but as opponents, they are so equal that it is scary.

Another important thing: Levi isn’t mad as a normal person with a blade on his throat would be against Mikasa, he still tries to talk to her LIKE WOW that girl just attacked you but you still don’t hate her ? That’s because Levi cares for her, and that’s canon. The fact that she is an Ackerman probably leads him to be more attached to her. And of course, that’s an obvious parallel of his confrontation with Erwin in No regrets. Can we also say how sad and shocked Levi was when he saw Mikasa in tears ? He was really shaken by this sight.

5)Now, what about the Ackertalk ?

Like I said, Levi kept his Ackerman status and his link to Mikasa to himself. I think that, knowing how Mikasa is attached to her loved ones, to the ones she calls « family », he didn’t want to make her suffer by growing closer if he must die later, especially when he was only focused on killing Zeke.

But as the last two survivors of the Ackerman clan, Levi and Mikasa MUST talk about their legacy, their relationship and also their similarities. This post is nearly anime only but what I can tell you is that the Ackertalk still didn’t happen in the manga and probably won’t: that’s the biggest waste ever.

Mikasa and Levi are now both in difficult situations towards their Ackerbond with Eren and Erwin. Mikasa clearly needs Levi’s advices and support (I made another post about Levi’s character development, he is freeing himself alone from the ackerbond, and his ackerbond to Erwin was never toxic like Mikasa’s one to Eren was, in my opinion at least, so Mikasa needs him more than he needs her on the emotional/spirit level. On the fighting level however, Mikasa is now the one carrying him). Anyway, she needs to realize how powerful she actually is regarding how Eren treated her, because she lost her confidence in herself and in her autonomy (I don’t think Eren meant what he said, but still, Mikasa is now thinking she is some kind of slave and doesn’t go through any development). And Levi is the only one who can make her understand that. Because he is like her, and he knows it.

And should I talk about how the distance between Levi and Mikasa in the manga is unnatural ? They barely talk, and when they do it’s blank on Mikasa’s side. After 80 chapters she said, suprise guys: « captain »: THANKS ISAYAMA ! I am about to haunt your future onsen you damn yokai-_- Either he completely forgot about the Ackerman plot line, either something happened between Mikasa and Levi that we are not aware of, and which would be shown in the next chapters, what would explain the tension there is between them.

I hope this article pleased you, english is not my mother tongue so please pardon me if I made mistakes in my writing. It was very complex to sum up all the rivamika logic in one post, because there is always more to say about them. I hope that, even if they do not become a couple, they will grow closer and support each other as the amazing duo they should be. Shingeki is nearly finished, and I must say I am really happy that I’ve been part of the rivamika fandom since the start, even if haters were hard to take sometimes, this ship and this fandom are incredible and made me grow on many levels. Rivamika will always be great, canon or not, as long as we fuel it with our passion ❤️

[cafeinthemoon]

Tobirama with s/o who’s secretly developing a new (and dangerous) jutsu 🌊

So this is the continuation of the anon request and Hashirama’s part was already posted (you can read it here). I posted it first because when I finished writing it I thought it was too long and it would be better if it remained as a separated post. But now we have the Second Grandpa dealing with his own s/o who’s developing a new and potentially dangerous jutsu. I hope you enjoy!

Fandom: Naruto | Tobirama Senju

Symbols:  💗 | ◽ | ▶▶

Warning:  longass post ahead

Having his own business to mind, of course Tobirama wouldn’t interfere in your activities unless he has a good reason for that

He knows you prefer to train by the evening/night to avoid the hot weather and intromissions, so that he never does an interrogatory or try to keep you at home, things he would normally do in case you’re going on a dangerous mission or if he thinks you are hiding something from him

And that’s why you know that you couldn’t keep your secret for much longer when he starts doing this

“Are you sure you are carrying everything you need with you? Have you enough medicine in case you get hurt? Are you taking breaks during a session and another?”

It’s becoming harder to dismiss his suspicions worries as the days pass

Truth is that he has been noticing some changes in your mood

You’ve been more tired, more serious and more anxious these days, as if you had a problem in mind that you couldn’t just keep aside until you get it fixed

Besides, this is exactly your behavior when you are trying to overcome a specific difficulty during your training… or when you’re trying to develop a new technique

Tobirama knows that because he recognizes these traits in himself, and you’re always there to keep them under control, otherwise he would spend days without proper rest and meals, as well as sleepless nights. So it’s only natural that he does the same towards you

However he doesn’t take any attitude based on suspicions, so he waits until he gets some proof that you’re getting into danger

When you get home and the first thing he sees is the bruise you got on your shoulder, he recognizes it as the proof he’s been looking for

He doesn’t say a word about it, but you see it in his eyes: he’s worried and is preparing to do something about it. Right now he’s just trying to be fair by giving you time to speak for yourself, but you know, he’s going to act

Still, you’re determined to keep going: the jutsu is almost finished, you can’t just give up on it now

You keep thinking like this even during that night, when the physical damage is increased by the chakra’s consumption: at first you could hide some of the scratches and bruises you got, but now this is impossible

There’s just some little details to fix, and then the jutsu is complete

You are working on this right now, bruised, exhausted, but full of hope. Your hard work is finally going to pay off…

But you never see the last second

You sense something cutting the air close to you. You look at the object’s direction and find a kunai. But not just any kunai: this one has a seal wrapped around it. A seal you know well

Before you do anything, the environment around you suddenly changes and now you find yourself in a place away from the one where you were performing the technique

And you’re not alone: Tobirama is there holding you in his arms

You are almost running out of chakra, but the exhaustion doesn’t stop you to understand what happened: he followed you, found out what you’ve been up to and used his Hiraishin to stop you

After stopping you in time, he lets you there, goes catch the kunai and comes back to you in a flash

Right now, you’re numb: you’re unable to feel anger, fear, desperation or frustration. You can’t even think of arguing

You just let him take you back home using his jutsu

You don’t know what happened then. You have a vague memory of being carried to your bed and then passing out

When you wake up, it’s morning. You look around and find Tobirama looking through the window. He immediately turns to you when you try to sit on the bed

You’re still weak. You don’t want you, but you are forced to accept his help

He gives you an explanation you didn’t ask for

“You have lost almost all of your chakra. I used my kinjutsu to heal you as a first aid, and thanks to it you have a chance to recover. Despite that, you are not leaving this bed for some time”

Now you’re capable of some reaction, and your reaction is to ignore what he just said and try to stand up

Of course you fail and he catches you before you reach the floor. You try to dismiss him, saying you’re just going to get some water

“I can get it for you. Go back to bed”

“STOP THAT”

He falls silent and you fall back to your spot, because the effort you put into that scream was too much

You two stare at each other, and this time you’re the first to speak

“Why did you do that?”

Tobirama tries to avoid the question

“Y/n, we are not having this conversation. Not in your conditions”

“Yes, we are!”, you don’t scream, but just because you can’t and not because you don’t want to

You continue to speak between one sigh and another

“Do you have any idea of how hard I’ve been working to complete that technique? How many time and effort I’ve spent on it? How many nights I’ve needed to dedicate to it? I was almost finishing it! And you just screwed up everything in the last moment! That’s unforgivable!”

Since you chose to have this discussion, he’s now engaged on taking it to the end

“Unforgivable is to let you kill yourself and do nothing about it. What you call screwing up everything I call saving your life. Show some gratitude at least”

“How could I show gratitude when you interrupted my work?! Would you do it if I interrupted yours? Or are you going to try and convince me that your work is not that important?”

As the creator of countless techniques, that’s a sensitive spot for him and you know that

But this attempt to make him put himself in your shoes only gets him irritated

“A technique is not as important as someone’s life, y/n. You are an experienced ninja. You should know that!”

“Good! Now go and tell this to the ones on which you used your Edo Tensei!”

Tobirama stands up and for a second you see a strange bright in his red eyes. You never saw that before, but once you do it you know you’ve push it too far. You even think he’s going to kill you right now

But what he does is almost as serious as it, or so you think

“And for what reason you think I declared it a forbidden technique?! Think of it and you will see that it’s the same with the present case! It’s true that I completed Edo Tensei, but if I could undo this, I would. However in your case we still have a chance, so you are not going to finish this jutsu. I will seal it as a kinjutsu!”

Now you can’t believe you ears. He wants to seal your jutsu, for which you’ve worked so hard?! Who he thinks he is?!

“Tobirama! I created that jutsu! It is my jutsu, not yours! I don’t need to justify myself because of it if you won’t hear me, so once I get out of this bed it will be completed, whether you like it or not!”

Now his tone changed

“Y/n, you know what will happen if you insist on this”

But now you don’t give a damn

“I know what will happen if I stay here and let you take over everything. Right now I regret giving you permission to mark me with your seal. If I knew things would get to this point, I would never agree with such absurd”

You see the change in his expression and body language. However, it’s too late for him. Now you made up your mind and you’re not willing to change your decision

“If I can’t leave this bed for now, I will stay until I’m fully recovered. But once I get better, I’m leaving”

During your treatment (that extends for the next days), you barely talk. Tobirama refuses to say anything that slightly sounds as an apology, and so do you. You just talk when it’s necessary, like when you need a favor from him or when he asks if you’re feeling better

You do your best to get well soon and to be able to walk without help. The sooner you get better, the sooner you will leave. Tobirama notices your effort but keeps quiet about it. If you want to leave after the recovering time, then you will leave. He won’t stop you

One day, he enters the room and finds you on your feet, looking through the window

He closes the door without making a sound. He tries to stay composed, but it’s impossible to hide the nervousness in his eyes: you are leaving him today, and since you are as stubborn as him, there’s nothing he can do

When you turn your back on the window, you see he didn’t come with empty hands: he’s holding some scrolls that he puts beside the things you started to pack

You don’t need an explanation: you recognize the scrolls of your jutsu

You raise an eyebrow

“I thought you said you were going to seal my jutsu”

He doesn’t seem bothered by your tone

“I brought it here not only to give it back to you, but to propose an agreement”

An agreement, uh? You should have expected something like this. It is so like him

“I’m listening”

Tobirama explains that he has been studying your notes and thanks to it he came to understand the structure and nature of the technique. This is how he found the failure that resulted in the abnormal chakra consumption that almost killed you

His idea is basically this: he would help you to fix this weak point since you will continue to work on the jutsu. If it works, everything’s fine, otherwise the jutsu will be sealed

You are determined to have your technique back, so you accept the offer. However you state that it won’t make you stay. He agrees

You two start working as soon as you can

At first, your stubbornness and resentment get in your way, and it seems it’s not going to work. You’re still mad about the way he interrupted you before and can’t help thinking he’s doing the same now, and he thinks you’re being childish instead of focusing on what’s supposed to be the most important, the jutsu

You spend a long time arguing with each other over minimal stuff. Many times, you think of giving up and restarting everything without his help

But your pride doesn’t let you do that, and you keep trying

As the days pass, however, Tobirama observes your determination and his criticism diminishes. Apparently he starts to understand how this is important to you

You, on the other hand, see that his will to help you is not an excuse to make you give up as you first thought. Besides, you start to remember of his dedication when he was taking care of you even though knowing you were determined to leave him

It’s when things start to work

Now you both are willing to talk and to listen to each other, as well as to agree with each other. And when things don’t happen as expected, you don’t blame each other; instead, you try to find a solution together

And then there’s this time when you find yourselves stopping the work and talking as you haven’t done in a long time

You end up saying that when Tobirama stopped you from completing the jutsu, the thing that hurt you most was not the interruption, but he fact that he never asked you your reasons to create such technique, or why you were working alone on it

To you, being heard, understood was the least you expected from the person you love, and not having this was both painful and frustrating

Tobirama, on his turn, admits that this argument was similar to the ones you’ve had before because the source of the conflict was the same as in their case: the lack of clear communication

As much as he didn’t listen when you tried to speak and didn’t make an effort to understand your side, you ignored the fact that taking action towards what he sees as a problem is his way to show that he cares about you

Once you two make things clear, all the tension of the previous days slowly start to disappear. You don’t say proper apologies, and you don’t even need to: speaking your minds is your way to do it

He doesn’t ask if you’re still determined in leaving, neither you confirm your decision for now, but you have time to talk about it when you go back to the house

Well, you don’t exactly talk

You just unpack your things and never say a word about it again

[songofclarity]

Oooh, WRH/NMJ, either (1) the first moment WRH realized he had a Thing for NMJ or (2) arranged marriage AU with all the awkwardness that entails :)

Thank you for the prompt! Let's try the first moment Wen RuoHan realized he had a Thing for Nie MingJue~ I am weak for Wen RuoHan admiring Nie MingJue over something that never gets fully appreciated by anyone else, and having it happen during this occasion is just the cherry on top ❤

☀️

“It sounds like they’re preparing for war up ahead,” Wen Qing said. “Let’s turn back, Uncle.”

They walked the stone paths under the trees of the Unclean Realm with their fans fluttering in front of them. Although the day was sliding into evening, the searing heat had yet to follow suit. Yells and shouts and the ring of steel on steel grew louder as they moved along. They had passed plenty of closed doors and shut gates, nothing that would have prevented Wen RuoHan if he truly wanted to explore, but no one had stopped them strolling the open grounds which had led them to this place.

“Have you ever seen saber practice?” Wen RuoHan asked.

“Years ago when suddenly everyone had a saber for a week, but no one was shouting about it.”

“The Qinghe Nie are a fiercely prideful sect. This is how they welcome us to their discussion conferences.”

Wen Qing sighed. “Frighten us off, you mean?”

“Don't tell me some shouting has frightened you, A-Qing.”

There were few braver than she, however, and even the suggestion did not phase her. Only as they approached a stone arch and the sound of training grew louder did she show any sign of reluctance. “Where are we going?”

Wen RuoHan smiled. “We are taking a closer look.” There was very little reason to attend these conferences beyond seeing what the other sects were doing. Tradition ran deep, however, and methods rarely changed. He wasn’t expecting much, but it was Wen Qing’s first time in the Unclean Realm. A clever girl had grown up into a clever young woman, with fresh eyes that might notice what he himself did not.

Instead, she said, “Sect Leader Nie sent instructions we were to remain at our residence and the Sword Hall this week. It might be best not to push him at his first discussion conference.”

Upon taking the role of sect leader in the wake of his father's death, Nie MingJue had infamously avoided attending the discussion conferences held in Qishan, Lanling, Yunmeng, and Gusu. Only when hosting finally fell upon the Qinghe Nie in rotation did he finally relent to obligation.

Wen RuoHan couldn't blame him. Discussion conferences had become weary when Wen RuoHan had, over the years, lost interest in what his fellow leaders had to say. Their cultivation techniques crawled while all his life he had sought to run. Their management of the night hunts called for small, equal pieces for everyone to nibble upon, but it would be irresponsible of him to let his sect go hungry. And negligent of him to have traveled all this way and not stretch his legs.

“Some things never change,” Wen RuoHan said with some dry fondness as they came upon the training grounds. Dozens of young disciples in their dark, Qinghe Nie robes were paired off and in the midst of practice. Sunlight caught off the silver steel, adding flashes of light to an already aggressive display that looked, after several moments, like a dance.

The man overseeing the training stood taller than all the rest. With his robes hanging off the hips and tied at the waist, he struck a bold and handsome figure even with his eyes narrowed as the setting sun smiled on his face.

“I stand corrected,” Wen RuoHan said pleasantly, feeling the breeze off his fan more acutely. “The view has improved.”

Wen Qing frowned. For all her brilliance, weapons training for cultivation had rarely interested her as much as much as the wounds of the trainees. “The noise has not.”

Indeed, the man leading the lesson had a loud voice that would make meek disciples quiver. To Wen RuoHan’s agreement, the group at present were anything but meek as they all roared back wordlessly in affirmation to their trainer's command.

“Mind your balance!” the man shouted. “The next one who falls over will be standing on their hands and we’ll see if their feet can do better with a saber!”

“Now there is a cultivator who minds his training,” Wen RuoHan mused with a laugh. “We may have to borrow this one to ready our own for next year's conference.” Already decisions had been made to host events in Qishan along with the usual discussions. Horse racing, archery, and duels, plus poetry among others.

Wen Qing gave him a strange look. “That is Nie MingJue, Uncle. Sect Leader Nie.”

Wen RuoHan's smile froze, and then slowly fell. “Ah,” he said, shutting his fan with a soft clap, “he certainly looks nothing like his father.”

“And he's coming this way...”

“So he is. What shall we tell him?”

“...That we are going back to our rooms to have dinner. We look forward to the start of the conference in the morning.”

Wen RuoHan looked at her in surprise. “Are we now?”

“Yes.” And she had already turned away to leave.

“It would be rude of me to not greet our host now that he is here,” Wen RuoHan considered aloud as Nie MingJue walked straight through his fighting disciples to reach them on the most direct path.

Wen Qing hesitated.

“What is that expression, A-Qing?” He motioned her away with the closed fan. “If you do not want to speak with him, then go have the tea ready when I return.”

“...Yes, Uncle.”

She walked back down the path, scattering the shadows that had gathered there. He wasn't sure if she knew the way, but no doubt there would be plenty of volunteers to direct her, blessed as she was with her mother's beauty. Although, now that he thought about it, the Qinghe Nie were said to not be enchanted by beautiful things not made of steel.

“Sect Leader Wen.” Nie MingJue stood on the other side of the stone archway as if a barrier separated then. He glanced to where Wen Qing had gone before continuing, “What are you doing here alone?”

Nie MingJue certainly struck a fine figure up close with skin damp and golden from standing in the sun. Freckles scattered across his nose and cheeks and covered his ample shoulders. He still had his saber in hand, and while he had respectfully sheathed it in his approach, his grip was not relaxed. It was difficult to tell if it was heat radiating off of him or his anger.

Wen RuoHan smiled. “Alone? Do I not still have your Nie cultivators for company?” And he looked over to the small cluster of cultivators less than discreetly stalking him, keeping an eye on him from the shadows of the nearby trees and building from the first moment he had stepped foot in the Unclean Realm.

Nie MingJue was frowning when Wen RuoHan looked back to him. “Is there something you needed?”

Wen RuoHan opened his mouth, then closed it again. A tricky question. “To greet my host and wish him well.” Normally gifts were offered to new Sect Leaders, but Nie MingJue's rise was years ago. Wen RuoHan had not been informed of the past Sect Leader Nie's death until months later when the grieving period was through and the Qinghe Nie had resolutely shut their gates to outsiders for a time. Wen RuoHan looked to the fan in his hand and held it out to Nie MingJue. “These discussion conferences are deceptively long. Cool off and calm down, or you'll run yourself into the ground before the end.”

Nie MingJue's eyebrows pinched his brow--but he took the fan. Strong fingers curled over it, tighter and tighter until Wen RuoHan waited for it to get crushed beneath his fist.

Would a broken fan make up for a broken saber? The fan, however, meant little to him than some meager relief from the heat.

So he was surprised when Nie MingJue dropped his hand to his side with the fan still held tight. His expression was peculiar, as if he held a hundred words stuffed in his mouth and on his tongue. When he spoke his voice was taut with control.

“If you are unable to find your rooms, I can find someone to escort you.”

“Do you think I'm lost?”

“I gave instructions that everyone was to retire to their rooms when they arrived. Either you are lost or you are trespassing.”

Trespassing. Now there was an accusation Wen RuoHan had never heard of.

And yet an apology fluttered in and out of his thoughts, but it would be ingenuous at best. Wen Qing had warned him and he did not regret what he had seen or done. He was Sect Leader Wen, after all. He had been raised to apologize for nothing.

But he wasn’t out to make enemies. Discussion conferences lasted twice as long when everyone was trying to pick a fight. “A little bit of both,” he conceded lightly, although Nie MingJue looked none too pleased to hear it. “I will retire for the evening then. After seeing your management of the saber training, I am looking forward to your management of tomorrow’s discussion. Be sure not to lose your voice before then.”

[whump-town]

Kittens

I wrote something along these lines as an idea a while ago and I finished it now in-between breaks I’ve allowed myself between an essay I have to write. I figured it’s not my best but no one gets hurt and Hotch talks to a cat for the majority of it so it’s not that bad

The creaking of the old floorboards stops Hotch from going down the hall and checking to make sure Jack is up. He stands for a moment at the mouth of the hallway, listening to Jack curse and mumble under his breath. Most of which, he can’t hear but there are dips in Jack’s voice which allow for only certain words to float their way down to him.

“Where-- that little motherfu-- he’s going to-- shit, shit, shit--”

Hotch huffs a little laugh, a chuckle that makes no more than the whisper of a breath of noise leaving his mouth. Parenting doesn’t make much sense and Hotch is certain he’s probably supposed to say something to Jack about the cursing but to his credit, Jack hasn’t spoken like that in Hotch’s presence. Plus, it would make him a hypocrite to get too frustrated over it. He cursed at sixteen and he still does. He also smoked and got into all kinds of trouble and, as far as he knows, the most Jack gets into on a Saturday night is too many energy drinks and a new book.

As curious as Hotch is about whatever it is that Jack is fussing with, Hotch has to get breakfast ready. He turns and starts to walk to the kitchen. That’s where he’s headed when he sees something small and orange bolts ahead of him. Glancing over his shoulder, in the direction it had come from, Hotch finds nothing. Just the light peeking out from behind Jack’s door.

Hmm. Odd.

Hotch continues down the hall, looking around the floor as he goes. Trying to see what it was and where it went. Until he gets to the kitchen. “Oh,” Hotch raises an eyebrow at the kitten he finds sniffing the floor near the oven. A tiny orange kitten. He picks it up, observing it as he turns it around to inspect the tiny thing.

It looks up and him and gives a little irritated meow.

“You must be motherfucker,” Hotch says, rubbing a finger over its head. “I think Jack is looking for you.” Hotch smiles as the kitten purs, pushing its head under his finger for more. He indulges it and, he has to admit, the thing is cute. He doesn’t mind it. “Are you hungry?”

He goes to the fridge and inspects the findings… slim pickings. “Cats are lactose intolerant, right?” He looks down as the kitten squirms his arms. Rolling over it attacks his fingers but cradled to his chest it’s safe. “I don’t know anything about cats.” He’s never had any pets. Haley had an old dog named Bailey when they first got together. A border collie her father bought for her birthday years before from a farmer in town.

Growing up in the country he’d seen plenty of stray cats and dogs but he’d never had his own. There was a porch cat he used to feed bread to but his father scared it off and kicked it once. Hotch had looked so much like his father that the cat wouldn’t come to him anymore after that incident. That was probably for the best.

“Here,” Hotch finally settles. He pulls the almond milk out of the fridge, setting it on the counter. He adds the container of blueberries beside it. “I’m having oatmeal but I reckon you can probably have almond milk, right?” With a frown, he makes a mental note to ask Emily or Garcia about that. One of them is bound to know. For now, a little almond milk is probably fine. It doesn’t have milk in it but he wants to be certain.

Taking a bowl out of the cupboard, he hums and reaches over for the measuring cups. He’s been making oatmeal for years so he’s mastered the eyeballing it technique. However, the half-cup measuring cup is the perfect size for him to use as a bowl for the kitten.

“Has Jack got you any food?” he asks placing the kitten on the counter. He pours a little almond milk in the half-cup and smirks when the kitten takes to it immediately. “Well… you probably wouldn’t drink that if it wasn’t good for you, right?” Probably… well, maybe.

This feels exactly like when they brought Jack home. He and Haley had been terrified of every little thing. They were constantly calling someone about something. He can easily call Emily or Garcia but… he’s an adult, he can handle a kitten.

“Stay,” he orders stepping away from the counter to grab a pan. The kitten doesn’t move just stands contently where it is drinking the almond milk. Hotch gets the oatmeal going, keeping an eye on the kitten out of the corner of his eye. “You’re hungry,” he notes, with a tilt of his head. And when it looks up at him, almond milk all over its face, there’s no way he can deny how cute it is.

His oatmeal doesn’t take that long to make and distracted with watching the kitten it’s a nice easy pace. Bowl of oatmeal in his palm, angry kitten trying to escape from where it’s tucked between his chest and forearm, and the little cup of almond milk pinched between his fingers he sits down at the kitchen table. “What has he named you?” Hotch asks, settling it all down on the table. It occurs to him it could be a little strange to let the cat on the table but it is a cat so if it sticks around he assumes there will be lots of table sitting.

Hotch can’t remember what book Jack was reading last week-- which is chronologically his best guess at when his little friend here made its way into the house. With hindsight, he can recall Jack having been just a little more distant with him, secretive. Jack is also significant with his decisions so maybe Hotch should think more along the lines of Jack’s favorite books, not his most recent reads. Then again maybe Jack hasn’t named the cat or he chose something out of a song or a movie.

Looking up as he hears Jack’s door creak open, he scowls back down at his lap. The kitten having stretched up at his chest and bats at one of the buttons on his shirt. He taps its little paw warningly, just enough to jar it a little, and judging from the look he receives this little warning tapis nothing something it was expecting.

“Hey, dad.”

Hotch looks up and hums back, nothing unusual because he certainly isn’t going to give up the advantage he has right now. His son is a snarky little shit -- purely Emily’s doing -- and Hotch rarely gets moments where he comes out ahead of whatever jokes Jack (or Emily) can make at his expense.

Jack comes around and nods his head, timidly going about making himself some cereal. Hotch doesn’t comment on his son’s socks -- one is teal with bright, highlighters yellow bananas and the other is beige with pink polka dots. Hotch had given up on Jack and socks. Jack gets a little thrill out of this rebellion and Hotch should just be happy that it’s not worse.

The two of them really have nothing in common. Jack loves science and math (Hotch has to use a calculator for simple multiplication). Hotch prefers for each of his books to look like they have never even been read (Jack has so many sticky notes in his copy that Fahrenheit 451 that it looks silly). Jack refuses to carry around a planner and writes everything down on the back of his hand (Hotch has multiple planners and color codes things in delicate details).

“Oh.” Jack turns with his cereal in his hands and sees the kitten in his father’s lap. That bright orange over his black dress pants. Jack knew his father wouldn’t be mad -- he can count on one hand the number of times he has seen Hotch angry. Though, he knows what he’s done wasn’t the right course to take. He’s not so sure what to do now, he hadn’t planned this far ahead.

Hotch hums again, nodding his head.

Jack looks down at the floor and timidly takes his seat across from his father at the table. Tucking his legs underneath himself to avoid hitting Hotch’s much longer stretched-out legs. Normally, he wouldn’t think twice about hitting his dad’s legs but today he’s sensing he should probably consider his actions a little more. “Am in trouble?”

Hotch raises an eyebrow and looks away from the kitten to his Jack. He’s looking down at his cereal, playing with it so he can avoid looking at Hotch. Jack’s never really been in trouble. Hotch is a little too lenient at times but even Jessica is pretty bad for that. Even so, Jack has turned out pretty okay, he’s still a kid (16 isn’t that grown, despite that being the age Hotch’s father kicked him out at -- well sent him to boarding school but that was only after he spent a month couch surfing and sleeping in a shitty tent he stole).

“No.” It’s a cat and he’s not mad and Hotch doesn’t see just yet where he could make this a learning opportunity so… he’s not going to make it a big deal. It’s hard, in situations like these, to know where normal discipline comes into play. His own father would have beat him senseless or locked him out of the house for a week, maybe longer.

“Oh.”

Hotch frowns, “do you think you should be?” He doesn’t mean it to bait Jack, he means it honestly. There isn’t a right answer.

Jack shrugs, “I mean, I don’t know.” Jack is aware that his father isn’t like most dads but they’re in a unique situation, the two of them. “You should probably lecture me about something, right? I mean, I don’t think I’ll be sneaking in any more cats but that’s not as a result of any lecture. I certainly wouldn’t do it with a dog.”

So maybe not a lesson learned but still sounds like there’s no point acknowledged. “Okay,” Hotch reasons. It sounds fair. “Well, next time we talk this sort of thing over, okay? I respect you and your decisions and so I ask for your opinions on things, right? I need you to respect my opinions.”

Jack nods.

“So, any names?”

[chrolloctrl]

hello～! can i request for Adultrio who fell in love with fem crime hunter Reader? also have a nice day/evening💘

thank you for the request! i tried my best to make all of these different from each other, but i also tried to stay true to how the characters would sincerely react:) oh and sorry for the late post, school’s been tough :( but yknow it be like that

note(s)/warning(s): some mentions of blood and violence, but other than that nothing you wouldn’t see on hxh though

fandom(s)/character(s): hunter x hunter, adultrio, aka illumi, hisoka, and chrollo

for dialogue purposes, italics are you, and bold is the character :)

i l l u m i

since you’re a crime hunter and he is a literal trained assassin, the relationship is pretty much seemingly doomed for failure

however i imagine that you guys meet in an a very unexpected way

he’s on a mission to kill someone who had stolen from the zoldycks, and you’re on a mission to take out a thief

yeah it’s the same guy you got it

illumi gets there first and gets the job done

much to your dismay

you’re standing right behind him as he’s covered in blood over the body

all you say is “since when does the assassin do something morally correct?”

“when it benefits him.” he responds.

i think he recognizes you before you recognize him

“you’re y/n, right? crime hunter?”

“you could say that.”

“we aren’t so different you know..”

“we are incredibly different. i don’t kill for sport.”

“you still kill, though.”

you’re so pissed off because he kind of has a point

oh and that emotionless stupid little face of his pisses you off even more

it’s all love we know i love illumi

illumi’s bloodlust is out of control at this point, your interaction with him just increased that

“what are you going to do? kill me?”

“no. it doesn’t benefit me now does it?”

“what do you want from me illumi?”

“ a deal.”

somehow he ropes you into helping him on missions as long as it corresponds with your own morals

i think the moment he realizes he’s in love with you is when you explain morality to him

like obviously he has no idea wtf good morals are lmao

you act as his therapist in a way, comforting him about his past and telling him that his bad actions don’t make him a bad person, just a person who used to do bad things

sorry guys i love soft illumi, and i genuinely think he has the capability to be good

one day he breaks down after a mission, and he is so embarrassed that you’re the first person he shows his deep, buried emotions to

you just hold him and comfort him, telling him its not his fault

after that he doesn’t want to talk to you because he’s embarrassed

“i think emotions make you a better assassin.”

“how does that make sense?”

“makes you think twice.”

and now he knows why killua loves gon so much.

h i s o k a

we already know this bitch is obsessed with you

probably keeps tabs on you to see what you’re up to

every headline involving you “taking down another lowlife” catches his attention so fast

he wants a fight so bad

so he creates a plan

commit a crime so terribly that they HAVE to send you to take him out

just another amazing idea from hisoka!

so he figures out who you’re working for, and kills someone close to them, obviously leaving behind a trace so they have somewhat of an idea as to who he is, but still making it a hunt

he probably leaves a star and tear behind, something that only those who knew him would recognize

and so he watches you hunt him while he hunts you

you’re asking anyone and everyone if they recognize the star and tear, most people either having no clue, or recognizing it but keeping quiet about it in fear of what hisoka would do

eventually, someone says they know a person who draws a star and tear on their face — hisoka morrow

once hisoka hears that you know his name he is absolutely ecstatic, he probably reveals himself to you right after

“it has been so fun watching you search for me.”

“if you knew i was looking, why be a coward and hide?”

“there’s no fun if there’s no chase, darling.”

you guys battle it out, i imagine the fight is very close, but evidently you just can’t keep up with him

“you put up a beautiful fight…hmm, perhaps i’ll let you survive if you join me?”

out of breath and on the brink of death, he assumes you’re saying no

right as he goes for the finishing blow, you hold your hands up, and whisper through a mouth full of blood a small “i’ll do it.”

he has a huge grin on his face, so excited to have successfully “corrupted” you

sorry y’all added a little corruption kink in their my b

once he takes you to machi so she can heal you, you both go on ur little killing ppl missions together cos what else does hisoka do lol

he realizes he’s in love once you finish someone off, a crazed look in your eyes, smile on display, covered in blood.

“you’ve never looked as beautiful as you do now.”

you and hisoka’s love is weird. but it’s intense, and it is real. just not...normal.

you guys are crazy killers, but it works

he probably draws a star and tear on you just so u guys can match

after u.. murder people <3

yandere reader vibes sorry

c h r o l l o

for this, we are going to assume that you are the “weakest” link of the crime hunter agency

so they make you the bait

sorry i just want to cover all of our bases

you definitely have a lot of potential, you are just incredibly clumsy, and taking down the phantom troupe is something that requires plenty of people on the job

chrollo already knows you’re a crime hunter when he “runs into you” at a bar, as well as the fact that you aren’t working alone

but he entertains you, just because he’s bored lol

i can already picture you being caught off guard by how handsome chrollo is, because honestly im sorry who wouldn’t be

you kind of even forget you’re there on a job

but, when chrollo asks if you know about nen and what type of nen you use, you quickly remember why you’re there

you smile, “yes, i’m a specialist.”

he asks you to show him, but you decline

“i will lose it if i do.”

chrollo smirks, “smart girl.”

with that, you feel a sharp pain on the side closest to chrollo, and everything goes dark as you tumble into his arms

once you wake up, all the spiders surround you, chrollo in the center

“caught in the web.” you say, as chrollo’s eyes lighten up.

“precisely.”

“is there any way to escape a spider’s web?”

“prove to be worthy.”

there he went again, begging to see your nen so he could steal it

but just because you were thought to be the weakest link, didn’t mean it was true

“i mean, you’re looking at it right now.”

the troupe stares in confusion, and before chrollo can respond, one of the spiders falls to the ground, beheaded. (i can’t pick who so just pretend its ur least favorite <3)

the spiders stand there in shock

there were two of you.

the real you, free and unbounded, makes the clone disappear

“you said you were a specialist, but this seems to be a conjurer technique?”

“the speciality is that you can’t steal it. it isn’t exactly nen.”

this is the first time someone’s caught chrollo off guard, he has no idea what to do, i mean how did he know that this you wasn't a clone?

“now, i’ve heard once a leg is missing, there needs to be a replacement. what does the head think?”

you weren’t just a crime hunter, you were a double agent who wanted in on the phantom troupe

the moment chrollo realized your abilities weren’t nen, i think that’s when he fell in love

hear me out

he knows he’s going to be indebted to you forever

and we all know those books he reads...mf is a hopeless romantic who if in love, pretty much is absolutely obsessed

and boy is he obsessed already

of course, he is unable to steal it from you which is quite a drag

but, with you there, and your undiscovered abilities, the phantom troupe was basically unbeatable

something he wanted so badly

“welcome to the troupe number ___.” (once again i can’t decide who LOL you guys can pick)

you protect him and he protects you. 

if any of the troupe questions you and your decisions, he defends you so fast

eventually the troupe is referred to as “a spider with two heads”

kinda cute, kinda funky fresh name for thieves and murderers<3 at least u guys r passionately in love <3 

i hope this was good!! im kind of rusty so sorry :( im finishing up some other requests, and im thinking of crossposting a fic on here and on ao3, inspired by my dr strange/hxh hcs :) but requests are still open! guidelines right here  (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡ thank you to everyone who shows love to my posts!

[gallickingun]

welded hearts || b.k.

SUMMARY: You and Bakugou have to try and pick up the pieces after the incident with Awase, but neither of you are doing a very good job. It leads to distance and lies, and you’re not sure if there’s any way to save the fragments that remain of your shattered relationship. Especially when you find out that Bakugou has been tracking your every move.

Follows the events of Ensnare, an Awase x Reader x Bakugou fic written by @lady-bakuhoe​.

PAIRING: Pro Hero!Bakugou x Fem!Reader RATINGS: M/E+ WARNINGS: language, smut, slight violence, etc. WORD COUNT: 11.7k+

LINKS: ao3 | masterlist | mobile | writing tag

AUTHOR’S NOTE: after reading Jo’s fic, I immediately rushed to her inbox to foam at the mouth about what kind of angst would follow when Bakugou and Reader attempt to put back together what is left of their relationship, with Bakugou really not feeling like a man, and reader feeling absolutely suffocated, and this little fic was born. Also, this is my first time not tagging any blogs, I just need to start fresh. I hope everyone understands!

if you like this, feel free to request more HERE!

　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　

The strange combination of distance and suffocation make your head spin.

Nightmares plague your mind at night, leaving the opportunity for visions to run rampant through your sleep-deprived brain during the day. You spend the daylight hours looking over your shoulder, your forehead broken out into a constant sweat, and you spend the evenings wondering if you might have imagined the whole thing.

You wake up alone most of the time, no matter what phase of the night you are suffering through. The first few times you would go searching the house for him, wondering where his overactive body could have taken him this time. Most nights you found him at the kitchen table going over suit designs and contracts for more hero patrols and brand deals.

You’d ask him when he was coming back to bed only for those familiar vermilion eyes to pass you a blank stare and his dry voice to echo out, “Don’t worry about me. Go back to bed.”

And each night you’d listen.

You curl up beneath the covers, tugging the fabric to your chin, and stare at the wall. You attempt breathing exercises and grounding techniques, but that does not stop the shadowy figures you see in the hallway or the closet. Your imagination gets the better of you as it hallucinates the image of the culprit himself stood in your bathroom doorway, a smirk on his lips and a glint in his eyes.

“So fucking pretty,” his mouth snarls around the words, dark hair shining despite the dark. His teeth are pearlescent even in the dim moonlight filtering through your window, “Whose going to stop me? You?”

A shudder shakes your shoulders and when you blink, he’s gone, like a phantom escaped in the night. You rip your hands through your hair and tears drip down from your lids into your lap, staining the fabric of your pajama pants. Your hands shake in front of you, fingertips showing double the harder you try to concentrate.

His presence is akin to smoke billowing within your belly. The tendrils of his black cloud wrap around your spine, traveling up your torso until it sits in the base of your throat, suffocating you endlessly. Every day you spend breathing is another day fighting for relief from this monstrous thing in your chest.

Bakugou turns to much different means of coping.

At first it was sweet – him checking in on you. He would offer to come pick you up from work if you’d ever decided to leave anytime after seven, and if he was stuck on patrol or in meetings, he’d arrange a car to bring you home. When you go on your afternoon runs, he’d volunteer to go with you even though he’d done rigorous amounts of training at work.

The simplest ways he would show his sense of pride in protecting you would be to hover closely, his body within an arm’s length so he could snag you out of any bad situation if there ever were one. Still, even with his insatiable hovering tendencies, he would keep his own personal touch at bay.

At times when he would usually hold your hand or brush up against you, he stays at least three feet away. It’s as if he’s chosen to self-quarantine himself from you, deeming your affections as either insufficient or insufferable, which neither are good options to choose from.

Once it becomes overwhelming, you find yourself in too deep, too bitter. You try to reach out to him in the form of affection – brushing your palm over his hips as you pass him in the kitchen, trying to grab his hand when you’re walking together, and reaching out to touch his shoulders when he faces away from you the few nights he does end up in bed.

To shout out now would be hypocritical, as you have had a part in pushing him further from you, isolating his affectionate touches even further. Yet, the longer he keeps himself from brushing even his clothed thigh against you when he passes you by in the kitchen or at the grocery store, you wonder who is actually suffering from the lack of physical affection and who is merely existing.

Eventually he grows more suffocating.

Bakugou will not let you be out of his sight for longer than a few minutes at a time despite sitting opposite from you on every surface he can find. You have started to hide in the bathroom, proclaiming cramps or bad pork before skittering off to the bathroom with your phone clutched in the grasp of your fingers, if only to find some peace from his prying eyes for a few moments at a time.

He has never been so clingy before, and you know that it is laced with the trauma as a result of the Awase situation. However, this doesn’t make it any easier to stomach his lurking. On the other hand, it adds a stinging sensation at the irony of it all.

Bakugou wants to be completely involved in every facet of your life without even kissing you good morning when he hands you your coffee.

You knew that what had happened with Awase all those weeks ago had to have affected him, coloring his outlook on life no matter how bleak it had been before. With each passing day he grows closer to you, hands metaphorically wrapped around your throat, squeezing every last pound of air from your tongue. But still, you never imagined that he would take t his far.

And so, you lie through your teeth.

Yaoyorozu was invited to the grand opening of a bar in the plaza sector of the city, and she invites you and the other girls for a night out. You know that if Bakugou heard about you going on about visiting a bar and intending to drink, he’d say some new form of the word ‘no’ and persuade you with his big, round, crimson eyes to stay home.

There were too many safety hazards, after all. Especially if you are going to be drinking. Your senses would be impaired, and you would be much easier to take advantage of once you are two shows into the wind. And then Bakugou would casually remind you that Momo normally finds a guy and ditches you, thus forcing you into taking a cab ride home, which creates an entirely new set of problems.

Which is why, when you tell him why you won’t be home tonight, you lie, “It’s just a sleepover, like back in high school! Momo and Ochako wanted to get back together and I think Mina might even be coming too!”

Bakugou nods, looking over the top of his combat training manual, “Just let me know if you need me to come pick you up, alright?”

You nod, not daring to reach forward and try to brush your hand against his forearm, afraid he might recoil or redirect you. Instead you force a smile, nodding your head as you open the door, “Momo is picking me up, and she said she’d be fine with driving me back tomorrow, but I’ll let you know if anything changes.”

His posture visibly relaxes at the sentiment. It is maddening how one simple shift of his composure makes you want to barrel into him, to forget your entire night and attempt to curl up with him on the couch. It has been so long since you last felt his touch, even in a casual sense. The bar counter top acts like a prison, barring him from you as he isolates himself.

“Have fun,” he manages, eyes falling away from you.

And you’re glad, too. At least when he’s not looking at you, he can’t read your face for lies. Bakugou is like a human lie detector, able to sense any unease in your usually relaxed posture.

Of course he has no reason to disbelieve you – why would you lie to him in the first place? You have preyed on that trust, a thing you feel so despicable for even considering, the fib scraping against your teeth like nails on a chalkboard. You wince at his tone, unbelievably naïve, but the door stays open regardless of your conviction.

The lie rolls around in your belly like a parasite, preying on the poor decisions and leeching on your inhibitions. You feel it suffocating your throat as you blow a kiss his direction, telling him not to wait up as you readjust your backpack full of overnight accessories and a change of clothes that is slung over your right shoulder.

Bakugou smiles but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which only further feeds the parasitic being taken up a home in your stomach. It sits heavy on your tongue when you tell him goodnight, threatening to chew right through your cheek until it’s been bared to the whole world.

He nods, licking his lips as he watches you leave. You wave one last time as you shut the door, guilt eating you alive until you feel tears press against the backs of your eyelids. You swallow your conscience and head towards the car you recognize as Momo’s, the weight of your club clothes sitting heavy in your backpack. You cinch it closer to you, praying that Bakugou hasn’t somehow developed x-ray vision to be able to see through your bag.

And yet, a part of you wants him to come barreling down the stairwell to beg you to come back inside, back home. You want him to whisper your name like a prayer, his hands outstretched so you can reach forward to slot your knuckles between his.

At least in your hallucinations he still wants you.

--

Once you’re at the club bar, it doesn’t take long for you to find yourself in a drunken stupor.

“Listen,” you slur, pointing a finger into Momo’s ample chest, “I-I’m not sayin’ he’s gotta dick me down every night, b-but like-once?!”

You take a long drag of beer, swallowing the acidic liquid until it’s burning your throat. You slam your cup back down on the table top, pursing your lips as you take in a deep breath, “I mean it’s been months, guys. Months.”

“A-Are you serious?” Uraraka leans in closer to you, eyes widened, “N-Not since-”

“Nope,” you huff, slumping down in the booth seat. “I-I know that since the incident that things have been different, but it’s like he doesn’t even want me anymore.”

Momo reaches her arm around your shoulder, tucking you into her side, “I’m sure he just doesn’t know how to handle all of it, and he’s just trying to do his best.”

“Bakugou?” Mina laughs, bright eyes hidden behind her lids as she screws her face up into a giggle. She takes a sip of her beer, propping her feet on the nearest unoccupied table, and sighs, “Good luck with that one, babes. I don’t see things returning back to normal anytime soon, not with how damn stubborn he can be.”

The beginning of a fresh set of tears presses like a crater into the backs of your eyes, a pulsing headache drawing out a groan from your lips. You drop your forehead to the tabletop and relish at the cool surface opposing your heated flesh, “I-I know that normal isn’t exactly an option yet, but I would like to feel like I wasn’t so fucking alone in my own house, y’know? I mean, he’s right there and yet it’s like I’m there all by myself?”

Your phone buzzes from within your purse and there is a collective grouching that echoes from everyone at the table, sour expressions making it obvious the way they feel about your ringtone. Momo crosses her arms over her chest, “You do realize this is the seventeenth time he’s called you, right?”

You reach into your purse but her hand is on your wrist before you can snatch your phone. She shakes her head and Mina huffs through her nose, “Why can’t you just put that thing on silent? When is he going to stop bugging you?”

“Yeah?” Momo brushes her thumb against your forearm, “Didn’t you tell him you were coming out with us tonight?”

A bright red tinge sits hot on your cheeks, making your skin look flushed. Your friends understand your conflict then, sitting back from you in shame. Mina is the first to speak, “You lied?”

“I-well, I couldn’t just-” You rack your brain for the right words to say to defend yourself, sweat accumulating at the base of your back in droves. You want to run away, but there’s nowhere to go. If you head home now, Bakugou will most likely have a full rant ready for you as soon as you walk in the door.

“You can’t keep lying to him like this,” Momo presses her palm to your cheek, brushing away a tear before it can slip down your face, “You’re going to have to be honest with him eventually. He needs to back off, to let you live. There’s no reason he has to be attached to you like an umbilical cord all of the time.”

“His concern is kind of nice, though,” Jirou speaks up.

Your head snaps towards her and she shrugs, “All I’m saying is at least he’s trying to protect you. He’s not completely self-absorbed after all.”

Before you can try to refute her or defend him, your phone starts ringing once more. Your hand dives into your purse, pulling it from within and looking down at it like that might keep it from ringing any longer.

“I don’t understand!” You’re whining now, fresh saltine droplets settling in your lashes. You wipe at your face, “I-I don’t get why he won’t just leave me the hell alone. I told him exactly what I was doing tonight, exactly where I was going and who I was going to be with. I just-”

“Except you lied.”

You feel all of the heat leave your body, only frozen fingertips and an icy, rigid spine left behind.

You turn your head at the familiar baritone voice that cuts into you from behind, and your heart drops into your stomach. When you breathe, the parasitic thing living there begins to swallow your stomach whole, gnawing away at your most sensitive parts first.

You grit your teeth, forcing yourself to feel anger instead of shame, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“What, pray tell, the fuck are you doing here?!” Bakugou snaps, eyes a conflagration of brassy tones, pupils dilated to prove his anger, as if it weren’t so evident from his tone.

Mina goes to speak up when she sees you flinch, but you’re already being dragged out from the safety of the booth seat. Bakugou’s blunt nails are digging into your bicep and forearm like little spears, snagging you so you can’t get away. He yanks you into the hallway, your back pressed into the wall as he further infringes on your space with his closeness.

“You fuckin’ lied to me?”

His voice is held together by rage, begging to be broken apart as he lets the feelings seep through the cracks of his resolve. Bakugou’s jaw quivers as he grinds his teeth together, heaving breaths making his chest expand to brush against your own. It’s the closest thing you’ve felt to intimacy since that night in the alley – since he decided to pretend that you and your needs didn’t exist.

You want to start bubbling out another fib, foaming at the mouth with lies so smooth he’d have to believe them. Your brain is stumbling in attempt to keep up with his fast paced thinking. Every phrase you could possibly say to make this go down like honey instead of vinegar passes through your mind, but you know that this will sting no matter how long you put off trying to swallow it.

The intentions you have now, to make everything easier on him and spare his emotions, have been tainted by your conniving words from before. You weren’t preparing for a confessional in the middle of this hole-in-the-wall bar, but not every night goes exactly how you plan it.

The both of you understand that sentiment rather intimately.

Bakugou’s eyes are ablaze, vermilion bleeding to amber nearest his pupils. His jawline is flexed, nostrils flaring, and you know that laced within his anger is something akin to fright, fearfulness. Every single feature he possesses is pinched tightly, as if his body were wound like a coil, and he is going to snap at any moment.

And then, when your mouth bobs open and shut, and you can’t find the right lie to squeeze between your teeth, you begin putting the whole situational puzzle back together. Anger replaces the acrid taste in your mouth, cinders of fury settling on your tongue the more it all starts to make sense.

Your eyes meet his and he feels the shift, his grip on your arm lessening at the sight of your furious irises honing in on him. The reality that he is not as innocent as you would like to believe seeps into your skin, settling like sticky acid, and you itch religiously to get it off of you.

“How did you know that I was here?” you ask, voice eerily calm as your vision begins to blur at the edges. You gnaw on your lower lip, tilting your head to consider every falter in his expression, “I told you I was going to be at Yaoyorozu’s. You had no idea that-”

You can’t help the choking sound that comes from your throat next, gagging on your words as pure fury overwhelms your body. Your shoulders shudder under the strain of these destructive emotions as realization settles in. Even the fear in his own irises cannot stop the tumultuous build of vehemence that seeps through you like molten lava, crawling upwards through your veins until all you can see is red – blinding red.

You’re repeating your question when it appears he won’t answer you to speak the truth; eyebrows furrowed, forehead wrinkled. Your jawline pulsates with muscle tremors as you grit your teeth down fervently, a high-pitched whining sound echoing within your own skull at the action, “What did you do, Katsuki?”

It’s not a question, though, not this time.

Bakugou’s throat bobs and before he can give you some shitty, half-thought out excuse, you’re poking your finger into his chest, directly between the taut line of his pectorals, “Where is it?”

“Wh-What?” he manages to cough out, tongue bitten between his teeth.

You take a step back with each question of the location, chin wobbling in denial, “My bag? My phone? My car? Did you put it in me, Katsuki?”

The sound of his given name dripping like toxic acid from your tongue makes his heart constrict within the confines of his chest. The organ beats at a thunderous pace, so hard that he’s sure there is an outlined bruise in the shape of it if you were to peel his shirt back and look. Still, he knows better than to argue with you – knows even better than to try and deny it. You are a human lie detector when it comes to him. You know his mannerisms so well that you’re able to spot a stuttering breath from a mile off, even the smallest of hints to his dastardly secret-keeping seeming like bright white lights to you.

He has backed himself into a corner in trying to keep you safe, so he admits with his head hung low, “Your phone.”

A shuddering breath makes your chest collapse, jaw fallen slack at the confession. Your spirit was praying that he might have just found out from a friend, maybe Kirishima discovered that you were out with Momo and Mina and told him. But no, now he’s admitted to the crime and he knows that he’ll have to face the punishment.

You want to root around in your purse until you’ve found the offending object, but it’s not the time, at least not right now. He can’t take advantage of using it while you’re both still in the same location. You’ll have to handle it later.

“How long?” you ask, voice small.

Bakugou does not answer immediately. His eyes are downcast, unable to meet yours as his lower lip quivers just enough for you to make it out in the dim light of the bar. Your heart thrums at the sight of him so distraught, but you lock your knees and force your body to straighten your spine and steel your resolve.

You repeat the question, digging your fingertip into his skin until you are sure that you’ve drawn blood underneath the fabric of his black tank top.

He snaps, the blood vessels in his neck thudding against the tanned skin there, “Since Awase, when the fuck else do you think?”

And just like that, your entire body is thrown back in time. You are that helpless woman in that alleyway, your body used for the lustful gratification of someone else, thrown to the side like a plaything when he was through. You feel hands, lips, skin, all over you, torturing your body even now when you are awake. The ghost of his crooked touch makes your eyes water, thick droplets sticking to your lashes.

The sound of that villain’s name makes your ears burn and your tongue turn to sandpaper. A chill runs down your spine despite the massive blanket of heat in the room from all the bodies burning with alcohol and movement. Your head feels fuzzy, eyes unable to focus as you attempt to come back to this version of reality.

A single tear drips down your cheek, but Bakugou knows better than to try and wipe it away like he might if it were any other time.

“I-I can’t believe this,” you murmur, withdrawing your finger from him to cover your mouth with both hands. You blink slowly, turning your gaze from him to the floor, taking it all in with stride, attempting to breathe as evenly as possible while still processing everything unfolding in front of you.

Bakugou reaches up to touch your elbow, just enough contact to try and bring you back down to earth. Your eyes snap upward, meeting his vermilion gaze with an expression opposing your fiery wit from earlier. He’s never seen your body waver in such a way that would leave him to believe you to be weak, but now all he wants is to hold you between his arms, piecing you back together bone-by-bone, vessel-by-vessel.

You’re lost in the simplistic touch of him, the first you’ve felt in what you know to be weeks, but believe to be eons. He has been so distant from you that you almost forget why you are angry when he’s this close to you, suffocating your body in the best of ways. You can smell the telltale sign of his quirk, an ashen sweetness that you are sure you’ve become addicted to throughout the entirety of your relationship.

A breath bites through your lungs and you sharply cut your teeth into the inside of your cheek, trying to snap yourself out of your dazed stupor brought on by isolation. As you open your eyes again, you steel yourself, stepping up with brazen confidence to slap away his hand from your arm.

The burning flames licking at your throat turn to white-hot rage, “I don’t know what the hell your problem is, Katsuki, but this controlling me shit has got to stop.”

His eyes refocus on yours again, pupils swallowing those pretty red globes whole, fear riddling every bone in his fragile body, “Wh-What are you talking about?”

Now it is you who has backed him into a corner, his backside and shoulder pushing against the wall. He tries to reach out to stop you, to beg for your forgiveness, but the stony expression in your irises tells him that he needs to be still an listen no matter how many biting insults and wanton words sit on his tongue.

“You’re breathing down my neck, Bakugou,” you inhale a shuddering breath at the sound of his surname being forced through your teeth. Tears lick at the corner of your eyes, your fists shaking by your sides, “I can’t take a shit without you wondering why I’m gone for longer than three minutes. You’ve been so fucking controlling that I can’t even go out with my friends without you needing to make it a momentous occasion!”

“You lied to me, for fucks sake!” Bakugou presses into you, snarling around his words. “You expect me to just forget that? What else have you been lying about?”

Your teeth clatter against one another, rattling around in your head, “I had to! You’ve been this glass case of emotion lately! And you won’t even let me walk home alone! I feel like I have a damn shadow everywhere I go!”

“I’m trying to-”

A thought hits you then, mulling you over so powerfully that you stumble backward, putting distance between the two of you. Your gaze falters from him to the wall, unable to look him in the eyes as you utter the next few syllables, “You don’t trust me?”

Bakugou is quick to refute you, stepping forward to take you out of your haze, “Hell no, baby! Of course, I trust you.”

“You put a goddamn tracker on my phone!” you snap, muscles quivering beneath your skin as your entire body tenses at the statement. Tears settle in your lids, dripping down over your cheek when you force him off of you. “What the hell am I supposed to think?”

He reaches out and wraps you up in his arms forcefully, despite your thrashing and shoving. You tear into him with your words and your touch, trying to punch him even though your range of motion is rather limited. Bakugou puts his chin on the top of your head, bottling you up like liquid rage, holding you together as you try to fall apart.

Bakugou has one hand against the back of your head, hands tucked into the tresses of your hair to cradle your head into the curve of his neck. His other palm rubs up and down the length of your arm as he tries to calm you down from your frenzied state, the loud music and pulsing bodies in the background of the bar doing little to deter your heightened temper.

You gulp as you feel his mouth bury into the crown of your head, kisses sprinkled into your hair like little flowers, petals of kind words tucked against your scalp. Bakugou wants to take you by the hand and drag you home, to curl up with you for the first time since that horrible night in the alleyway, and whisper promises into your skin until he goes hoarse.

You tilt your head upward, face shining bright with tears, nose bumping into his chin, “The-Then why do you-”

Katsuki nudges his nose over yours, a shuddering breath making his lip tremble against the bow of your mouth. A snarling growl rips his throat wide open as every feral, primal instinct buried deep within him is unleashed, “Are you really that dense, dumbass?”

The insult takes you by surprise, facial expression souring as you roll your tongue against your teeth, attempting to swallow the acidic retort sitting on the tip of the muscle in your mouth. Bakugou watches you with a careful eye, making sure that you aren’t going to speak up before he tries to rephrase himself.

“Listen, I just-I…” The words are caught in his throat, raking into his esophagus like shards of glass. Bakugou hates being vulnerable, especially with you. It makes him feel raw, torn open, and uncomfortable. He wants to be the pillar of strength you believe him to be, and how can he prove that he’s worthy of your trust when he feels so weak?

And yet, with you standing in front of him with expectant eyes and shaking hands, he finds it within himself to say what has been plaguing his mind for weeks.

“This shitstorm happened to me too, y’know?”

He sounds so heartbreakingly honest that it makes your skin prickle. A chill tightens like a coil around your spine, spreading shards of ice throughout your veins until your whole body is burning from the frigid feeling, fingertips numb.

Bakugou’s mouth bobs open and shut before he tears a hand through his hair, the other never leaving your body, frustrated at the fact that he can’t think of the right things to say. He looks up at the ceiling, a breath expanding his chest so he’s flush with you.

“Every fucking time I close my eyes, I see that shit all over again.” The veins in his body are prominent as he stresses himself out by trying to speak, “I see you, helpless, because I fucked up and lost focus. I-I couldn’t do anything and you needed me an-”

He can’t force the words out, can’t muster them up from the back of his throat no matter how many times he licks at the inside of his mouth, desperately searching his own skin for the answers. The reality of what might come to fruition when he says his truth out loud is too much to bear, no matter how much he knows he has to have this conversation with you. This is not something you both can just move on from, not without addressing it in all of its ugliness first. He wills the words to come out, closing his eyes and breathing deep. And even still, his mind will not cal.

Katsuki is a raging sea and you are the rickety lifeboat caught in his violent storm.

You swirl in his vortex for a moment longer before prodding him, hand pressed flat against his chest. You brush your thumb over his collarbone, “Katsuki, come on, talk to me. Please.”

Bakugou’s hand flinches by his side and you wonder if he wants to reach out to touch you with the pads of his fingers; to use you like an anchor, weighing him down in the right in the right way to bring him back to the current version of reality.

“I’m right here,” you whisper, pushing him further, knowing what he’s trying to tell you, but needing to hear it from his own tongue.

You step into his space and crowd him into the tight expanse of the hallway, and he can’t draw his eyes away from you despite the shame he feels from the tears currently clouding his vision. Every naysayer in his life comes to him in that very moment, telling him that he’s weak and spineless, completely useless if he can’t do the simplest of tasks. They scream at him, clawing at his heart until he’s bleeding out tears, hands shuddering in pain.

All he wants is to see you smiling again; a genuine, shining smile. He wants to watch as your eyes light up when he kisses you, or when he touches you here and there, casually in passing. Bakugou misses the old kindling the two of you had before that fateful night all those weeks ago. There was a familiarity that now feels lost in translation, wafting somewhere between the space separating the both of you.

You’re begging him in his ear now, words lodged like knives into his heart, a new syllable signifying a new blade, “Why are you doing this, Katsuki? Please, tell me!”

That is the last one – the proverbial blade that shoves its way through is spine to split him in two. He can’t help the way his voice shatters when he finally breaks, falling forward on weak knees, “To fucking protect you! Goddammit!”

You take a short step backward, shuffling away from him at his sudden furious outburst, the change in volume startling you. Goosebumps pebble on your skin and you feel a wave of anxiety wash over you, settling in your stomach to eat away at your resolve, that same parasite from earlier flaring up all over again. You swallow the pent-up emotion in your throat, but Bakugou isn’t finished, not yet. Now that he’s finally been ripped open, he can’t stop the flow.

“Every night you’d get further and further away from me,” his hands are flexing at his sides, knuckles turning white, little crackling explosions lighting like a warning sign, “And I can’t fucking get over this shit, okay?!”

The familiar ashen sweetness lingers in the air at the bare minimum usage of his quirk, but it’s comforting in a way. You breathe it in and try to stave off any tears from stemming down your cheeks. It is his turn to crumble, to fall down at your feet and beg for you to help him repair the gaping wound in his chest.

As you watch him fall apart, it’s physically painful to witness the way his body quivers, every muscle coiled and ready to spring into use. His lower lip, full and pink, is wobbling while he tries to form coherent sentences. You’ve never wanted to reach out and touch him more, to calm him with a tender brush of your knuckles over his cheek, or a hand flattened onto the plane of his chest. But he is too far away from you now, distant in the worst way.

It’s like he’s a figurative bomb, building up and ready to detonate. Each passing moment only fills him with more gunpowder, stuffing his throat until he’s suffocating under the notion that he can’t save you. Has he ever been capable of keeping you from harm?

“I-I was weak,” his voice breaks and so does his façade, tears brimming in the ducts of his reddened lids, “I let that fucker get the best of me, and i-it cost you. You were hurt because I couldn’t protect you.”

Bakugou’s palms shudder at his sides, fingers curling around smoke. You want to step forward, to reassure him that he is the furthest thing from weak that you have ever seen, but he cowers from you when you get too close. He reminds you of a caged animal finally set free, unsure of where to step, how to breathe all of the fresh air at once. Almost as if he is withholding himself from you now that his confession has broken through the bars around his heart, echoed loud for you to hear.

“Throwing yourself into danger isn’t going to help,” you answer him, “and neither is suffocating me.”

The fire fueling your bones from earlier returns at the realization that he has been distancing himself from you on purpose. You assumed it had been a subconscious decision based on the trauma experienced from the encounter with Awase, but you never would have guessed he was actively choosing to ignore you, especially physically. And now, with his hands shaking at his sides, you are beginning to wonder if he feels the same pull that you do, the desire to let your palms search one another’s skin to find the answers to your innermost questions.

“The only thing I’m any good at is fighting!” Bakugou falls back against the wall, eyes downcast in defeat as his shoulders slump forward. He opens his palms in front of his body, flexing his fingers. “All I can do is work as hard as I possibly can to be the best. I have to be the best.”

He curls his fingers back to fists, fury coursing through his veins like fire, accumulating in his palms to a head, a bomb settled in the cracks and crevices of his skin. “All I can focus on right now is getting stronger, to be a hero that you can trust to keep you safe.”

When his eyes snap up to meet yours, there’s a flame burning deep in his vermilion irises that makes them look alight, the bright amber color in contrast to their usual hue. It frightens you slightly, sending a tremor down your spine until you are curling your toes.

Bakugou’s hands creak as he turns them to fists, knuckles turning white, “I’ll be the best, even if it kills me.”

The very permanent word involving mortality turns your knees to jelly, bones grinding against one another in a desperate attempt to keep yourself upright. Your throat closes, emotion billowing like smoke in your esophagus until it is pushing into every available space, effectively choking you where you stand.

“Y-You don’t have to be so, so,” you struggle to find the words, breath hard to come by as you gasp for air, “so-”

“So what?!” Bakugou’s voice is patronizing now as he grows defensive at your tone, taking a downward turn to the other side of kind. He grits his teeth and you allow yourself to see him for what he truly is in this moment – a frightened child, begging for a savior, or at least some solid ground. He grimaces, shaking his head, “I couldn’t protect you when I needed to. And if I can’t keep you safe, what else am I good for?”

Silence hangs between the two of you at the heaviness of his words, creating an even further distance as his words settle like embers on your heart.

You want to brush the cinders away, blowing the ash into the wind and along with it, the horrific memories from the past few weeks. His name sits on the tip of your tongue, scratching at the muscle and begging to be freed from the cage of your teeth. Your fingertips ache at your sides, keening towards him with the desire to find something to feel, some tactile version of reality to reaffirm that you have not lost everything. The heaviness in your feet keeps you from shuffling forward, tucking yourself into his body and promising him that you’ll never see him as anything short of incredible.

“See?” Bakugou’s voice shatters into another wave of jagged pieces with every longing look you give him, tossing his arms in the air to show his defeat, “And then you go and do shit like this, where you look at me like I put the fuckin’ sun in the sky every morning.”

He’s wheezing the words out now, manic movements jerking his arms and shoulders, praying that his palms might go off in the middle of this club so you both can get booted out and forced to go home. Maybe then he can break through the barrier of how he has been feeling to show you why he’s treated you like a child.

“How the hell am I supposed to live up to this pillar of greatness you’ve made me out to be? This perfect image of me you have in your mind is a lie,” Bakugou is begging you for an answer with his gestures. His hands reach towards you, never touching, eyebrows cocked upward as his eyes search your face for a secret message hidden beneath your skin. “You think that I can do no wrong, that I’ll always be your hero. And now that I’ve fucked that up, and you still look at me the same exact way, how am I supposed to live with that? With being a fraud?”

Bakugou blinks and two identical tear droplets seep over the corners of his lids, tracking down his cheeks as he gasps for air, “I-I can’t help it when you look at me like I have all the answers when I-I can’t even fuckin’ figure out how I-”

You cover him like sunlight, warm and safe. He feels your mouth against his, your hands on his face and chest and its like you’ve pulled him from where he was floating midair back down to the ground again. Bakugou’s body is flush between your torso and the wall, either side of him pressed into something. He is hot, too hot, like his body temperature has skyrocketed. Sweat trickles down his spine, sticking his shirt to his shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” you murmur as you part from him.

Your nose brushes against his, the bow of your lips still touching when you speak, “I haven’t been very considerate of you. I was too wrapped up in the way I was feeling that I didn’t stop to consider how it has been affecting you.”

You palm at his face, fingertips fawning over his cheek bones and brows and temples. Bakugou’s jaw is quivering, hands still dormant by his sides, flexed until his palms are splotched red with effort. You run your hand up from his chest to his shoulder, kneading the heel into his muscles to try and relax his body.

“Katsuki,” you call to him. “Look at me.”

And he listens.

The trail of your fingertips on his forearm feels like gasoline, trickling down his skin slowly but surely, making its way to his palms where his skin will act like a detonator. Bakugou grinds his teeth together as he tries to stay focused in on your face, the effort from it all makes the vein on his forehead protrude, thudding profusely beneath his skin.

“Take me home.”

--

The walk up the stairs to your door is tense, quiet.

Bakugou turns the key into the lock, the door opening with a gentle click. The two of you step inside, your bags strewn on the countertop and your shoes kicked off near the mat. Your hands wring in front of you as he faces away, the only visible thing being his backside.

“I don’t deserve you.”

The words take you by surprise, shaking you to your core. You stumble backward, hand clutched over your heart when it starts to sting, “Wh-Why do you think-”

“Do you know what it’s like to have people’s lives put into your hands, and then to fuck it all up?” Bakugou turns to look at you, hands glowing with the threat of his quirk, “To put the one person you care about more than fucking breathing into danger?”

His jaw quivers, “You didn’t see the look in your eyes when he was putting you through that shit. You were looking to me for help and I was fucking welded to a goddamn wall!”

You reach out to press your fingertip into the center of his palm, diffusing the built-up nitroglycerin in the crevices of his skin. Bakugou’s shoulders shudder, his eyes widening at your touch. You force a smile, but it does not reach your eyes, and he notices.

“Hey,” you call to him, your other hand drifting up to cup his cheek, trying to turn him towards you. “Stop that. Look at me.”

Bakugou’s eyes stop flitting around and focus on you, connecting your gazes. He looks frightened again, like a scared child. All you want is to hold him tight and put him back together again until he feels whole.

You push yourself up onto your toes, nudging your nose over his cheek slowly. You’re taken aback when you feel his hesitant touch dredge over your hip, thumb just beneath your top. It’s the most intimate feeling you’ve received from him in weeks, and it sends every atom of you on high alert. Your spine tingles as you stutter-step forward until you’re pressed into him.

Your breath hitches at his closeness, fanning out over him in a wave of heat that makes him shiver. You feel your heart ready to explode from within the confines of your chest, begging to be let free as it tries to claw its way out of your ribcage. You can’t look away from him, it’s like he’s turned into a magnet for your body.

As you graze over his chest with your other hand, the one against his cheek brushes up into his hair to card through the blonde strands. Your thumb catches against the stubble of his undercut just behind his pierced ears and it makes you smile, remembering the conversation where you coerced him into getting the new haircut in the first place. And now he can’t go a couple weeks without getting it shaped back up.

“Kiss me,” you plead, your touch like that of a siren, calling him deeper into the water, “please, Katsuki.”

In spite of him suffocating you mentally and situationally, you know that he’s been distant physically. It wasn’t hard to realize the shift in affections, especially since you’ve grown accustomed to his wayward glances and casual touches. Once he started to withdraw from you, you began to worry but your own anxiety wound so tightly around your body that it drowned out any other inhibitions that might have drawn you closer to asking questions. Bakugou has never been one to bare his emotions anyway.

Every morsel of him wants to dive headfirst into your waters, to drink you in through his nose and mouth until it is only the essence of you that remains. And yet there is something holding him back, like strings attached to his shoulders, forcing him to stay still.

It is that very look in your eyes right now that keeps him at bay. The reality that you’ve not tainted your view of him makes his stomach churn. You should hate him for letting Awase take advantage of you. You should want to slap him across the face and punch him in the gut. You should want to rip your fingers into his chest and slay him where he stands, cutting a gaping hole where his heart once was, filling it with a black ooze that might represent your disdain and disappointment.

Anything other than this overwhelming prideful look gleaming in your eyes that tells him he could do no wrong.

The sight of it brings tears to his eyes and he has to look away, the weight of it all too stifling as he attempts to breathe again. Bakugou struggles with oxygen, feeling lightheaded as you stand so near to him.

“Look at me,” you beg of him, your own voice sounding raw. You swallow every possible reticence you might have in this moment and focus all of your energy on him, “I love you, okay? There’s nothing you could do to change that, Katsuki. Nothing, so-”

You’re cut off mid-sentence by the familiar feel of his lips, warm and full against your mouth. He has captured you entirely, his hands on your face as he steps in closer to you. You shudder with tears at the sensation of him kissing you for the first time in weeks. A wash of warmth seeps through your body, starting at your head and curling around your spin until it has reached your toes. You feel lightheaded at it all, so wrapped up in him that you can’t focus on anything else.

Bakugou’s arms wrap around your shoulders, his body squatted in front of you to push himself closer into every crevice of available skin. You dip your hands beneath his top, the pads of your fingers mapping out the contours of his muscular frame.

“Fuck,” he murmurs between your teeth, your tongue catching the word by lapping against his gums.

His hands find your backside, squeezing the supple skin like his life depends on it. You moan, rolling your hips forward. Your mind is foggy, your entire being in a haze, at the passionate way his hands obsess over your body.

When he taps your hips with his thumbs, you know what it means. You leap upward, his forearms catching your thighs to wrap you around his waistline. You don’t break away from kissing him. You’re not sure after this if he might retreat back into himself, so you full well intend on milking him for all that he’s worth in every aspect of the word.

The next thing you feel is the cool sheets beneath your steaming backside, sweat making your shirt cling to your body. Your hand sifts through Bakugou’s hair and he nips at your lower lip, relishing in the way the moans fall freely from your tongue.

He sits back on his thighs, tugging his shirt over his head, when he mumbles, “Shirt. Off. Now.”

The momentary burst of authority makes your cunt clench beneath the lace of your underwear. Your eyes go wide, but you do not hesitate to pull the offending fabric from your upper half. Bakugou has settled between your thighs when you can finally see him again. He makes quick work of your bra, flinging the garment across the room carelessly before swooping in to begin sucking at your chest.

He tweaks one piqued nipple between his thumb and forefinger, the other side of you preoccupied with his mouth. You whine, bucking your hips upward. Even through the thick fabric of his jeans, you can make out the impression of his bulging erection. The thought of getting to feel his dick again makes you keen, reaching up to thread your hand into his hair, the other palm digging fingernails into the thick, corded muscle of his shoulders.

“Damn, Princess,” he murmurs as he releases your nipple with a pop. “Such a good girl for me.”

Your breath shudders out of your lungs, fanning over his hair to make the strands shake in the darkness of your bedroom. You wrap your legs around his midsection to try and grind yourself up into his clothed length.

Bakugou slips his hand beneath your shorts, unbuttoning them swiftly as his middle finger finds your clit immediately. You can’t help it when your whole body goes rigid, the once lost sensation of his hands on your lower half returning in a blinding wave of white-hot pleasure.

“Please, Katsuki,” you force yourself to look him in the eyes even though you think you’re seeing stars, “I just want you, please. I want you in me.”

He’s hesitant when he looks down at you, eyes stuttering over which of your features to focus on first. The tip of his middle finger is brushed up against your slick folds, not delving in just yet. Your chest is heaving, eyes clouded with the threat of tears while you palm at him, desperate for every inch of his skin to be mapped out beneath your fingerprints.

“You have me,” he whispers, cracking voice barely audible. He nods, slipping his finger slowly between the walls of your cunt, “You have me, baby.”

As he starts to coil his finger within you, the squelching sound of his digit and your pussy echoing off the walls, he looks you directly in the eyes. His free hand is near your head but you wish he’d touch you with it, your body insatiably itching for his next pass. You lick your lips and go to beg for him again, unwilling to sit through the torture of his fingers, but he stops you with a kiss.

“Let me do this, let me make you feel good.”

You are speechless, left only with a gaping mouth that is claimed by his tongue. He licks at your teeth and cheeks, whining for you to reciprocate while his finger still pumps in and out of you, knuckle dragging in a tantalizing way against your smooth walls. You hold him as tightly as you can by the neck, keeping him anchored to you, the fear of him running away from you again settling like a lead anchor in your belly.

It doesn’t take long for him to push you to the edge of your first orgasm. You’ve been denied of him for so long that you’re sure you could come undone under any circumstance at this point. But still, his thick digits curled up in the heat of you, coaxing forth the first white-hot wave of pleasure makes your body shudder.

“Katsuki,” you pant, rolling your hips in time with his finger’s thrusts.

The coil within your stomach starts to bunch up, so you clench around his finger. You whine, throwing your head back, jaw hung slack. Bakugou kisses up the column of your neck, “C’mon, baby, I know you can do it for me, yeah? You’re so pretty when you come apart.”

His encouragement is what throws you over the edge. You’ve missed the sound of his timbre coaching you into orgasm after orgasm. You cry out, your voice breaking, and your hips fall slack against the mattress as the pleasure digs into you. The silvery strands of your slick coat his fingers, but he doesn’t part from you until he’s sure that he’s lured every last whimper from your lips, every last wash of arousal from your hips.

You have him by the neck, digging your fingers in to pull him back towards your mouth for another drawn out kiss. Your nose and teeth clash, but it doesn’t matter because he’s here and he’s got his hands on you. The way your body sings at his caress does not go unnoticed by him, or rather he relishes in it, basking in the sound of your wanton moans and the reaction of your begging limbs.

“Please, Katsuki,” you’re grabbing for him as he pulls away. Your fingers desperately cling to his skin, digging in and forcing half-moon prints into the tanned flesh, “I need you, please.”

The words throw him back to those moments in the alleyway when your eyes screamed the phrase you’re speaking now. He was powerless to help you then, but he can be the one to save you now.

Bakugou stands to his feet and shuffles out of his pants, his cock throbbing between his thighs when he pulls away his briefs. You try to tug down your shorts but your body is so weak and you can’t force your brain to communicate with your extremities, so you end up pouting, hot tears clouding your eyes in frustration.

“Hey,” he nudges his nose over your cheek before kissing you long enough for you to forget about your predicament. Your body molds to his intentions, hands finding his undercut to sift through the short hair there, his skin providing you with some sense of calm despite the raging emotions thudding like thunder in your brain.

He gently tugs down your shorts, peeling them from your ankles before depositing them on the floor. Bakugou runs his hand down his cock, using his bead of pre-come and what remains of your arousal on his hand to lubricate the skin. You’re salivating at the sight of him, inflamed red cockhead ready to split your cunt wide open. You’ve missed the familiarity of him inside of you, and your body notices because despite just having a spectacular orgasm that should have put you to bed for some time, your pussy flutters as a new wave of slick trickles down to the sheets.

The tip of his cock opens your pussy up enough that you’re keening forward, pleading to take more of him with the canting of your hips. You whimper out beseeching words, eyes searching his face as your hands try to find purchase on his shoulders. He shakes his head, brushing his thumb over your cheek, “Hush, baby. I promise I’m gonna take care of you, okay?”

The duality of his words is not lost on you.

Your jaw hangs open slightly, eyes wide as you look up at him. Bakugou grips the headboard with one hand, the other guiding his cock into your heat. If you look close enough, you can see the threat of glassy tears washing over his pretty red irises, making them look like little jewels in the moonlight filtering through your bedroom windows.

“Katsuki,” you whimper his name like a prayer as he slowly sheaths himself between your folds. He grunts when the base of his cock meets the lips of your pussy, eyelids fluttering somewhere between open and shut at the sensation.

He drops his head, gritting his teeth, “Fuck, I missed you.”

A relieved, broken laugh shakes your throat, the smile left behind making Bakugou see stars. You palm at his chest, “I missed you too, so much.”

The two of you have still been together every day, even sleeping in the same bed, and yet you’ve been so distant it was heartbreaking. You feel the shards of your shattered heart slowly piecing back together with each thrust he throttles into you, his hips slamming into your thighs.

It’s intense, but somehow graceful. Bakugou is not just ramming his cock into you for the sake of doing it, but he’s proving to you with every stroke of him that he’s never leaving your side again. He’s gripping the headboard so hard that his nails are leaving scratches, but you’re more focused with the tantalizing snap of his hips, the drag of his cock and those prominent veins as they stimulate your pussy even further.

His jaw quivers, hands white knuckling as he clutches the headboard even harder, picking up his pace to start building that starburst in your belly. He’s unwilling to let his hands go near you now that he’s got himself sheathed completely.

He doesn’t deserve every part of you, not yet.

Bakugou’s chest twists as he realizes he hasn’t earned his honor back; he hasn’t won the prize of feeling your skin under the sensitive pads of his fingertips while he’s fucking into you with his aching cock.

His breath stutters, heart clenching within the confine of his ribs, at the sight of you, your irises focused on only him. Your pupils are blown wider with each thrust, black swallowing the color of your irises as you reach that peak subservient headspace. His hips move slow but with purpose, his cock pulsing within your walls as you clamp down on him.

Snapping his hips up into you, the heat of it all starts to overwhelm him and he can’t breathe. The mix of your warm skin and the absolute adoration held for him in your eyes is too stimulating once you tighten your cunt around him, trapping his dick in your heat.

“Fuck, baby,” he whimpers, stilling his hips as his nails screech against the headboard.

Your hands are on him in an instance, exploring his chest and shoulders. You lick your lips and force your ass to stay put on the bed, breathing heavy through your lips. You swallow and your throat bobs, only proving further to him how absolutely enamored with him you appear to be.

“Katsuki,” you whisper into the void, cheeks warming with a blush.

Bakugou shakes his head and with the ferocity that he’s gripping the headboard, he wonders if your nailbeds can bleed. He bites down harshly on his lower lip, listening to your pleading calls for a moment too long before responding, “I-I don’t-”

He can’t form coherent sentences, not when he’s buried to the hilt inside of you and you’re gazing up at him like he’s just gotten back from hanging the moon. He squints hard, eyes filling up with tears, “I can’t, fuck.”

“Hey,” your breathless voice catches him in midair, anchoring him back from the dull hallucination that he could never find his way back to you. You reach up to gently press your palm onto his cheek, the cooling touch of your hands doing enough to dispel some of the heat on his cheeks. You push away the sweaty locks of blonde hair sticking to his forehead so you can see his eyes in their full clarity.

Katsuki’s chin wobbles as he looks down at you, forcing his eyes to stay trained in on your face no matter how much he wants to look away. He still doesn’t believe he deserves that look you hold for him within your gaze; the way you tell him that he’s nothing short of a pillar of strength in your mind with a simple look is absolutely baffling.

“Hey,” you call again, tender tone striking a chord in his heart.

Your thumb brushes underneath his eyes, the height of his cheekbones, and you smile at his fragility. Bakugou’s eyes flit around to everything but you, overactive and unable to focus on you when you’re looking at him like he’s painted the stars in the night sky.

His conscience berates him as he lays with his cock buried deep into your pussy, his hips flush with yours, the doubt kicking him in the ribs to remind him that he must be nothing short of a piece of shit – how could he let you fall into someone else’s hands? How could he be so careless? How could he-

“Katsuki,” you rub your hands over his face once more, patiently pulling him from the recesses of his toiling mind, “Come back to me.”

Bakugou’s pupils dilate but somehow you manage to bring his attention back around to your face, connecting your gazes once more. You are struggling to maintain your composure between his cock pulsing within you and the lack of his hands on your skin, your body stimulated but still wanting, but you whimper the words, “Will you kiss me?”

In that simple sentence, Bakugou realizes that he could never truly run from you.

Tears drip down from his cheeks onto your neck, pooling at the little cavity created by your collarbones. You smile up at him, brushing at the droplets as they drip down from his eyelids, cradling his face as he makes the decision to start running back to you instead of sprinting away.

“I love you,” he chokes out the words before claiming your lips with his searing hot kiss.

Your hands dip into the curves of his hips, prodding him to move forward while your lips sink deeper into his. Bakugou groans at the sensation, eyes rolling behind his closed lids, and slowly his palms find your body.

It’s almost like the first time he touched you, his fingertips searching every inch of available skin as if it were new to him. He rolls his thumbs over your ribs, counting each one under his breath as he fucks into you slowly. You whimper when he bites your lower lip, your jaw slack as he starts a biting path of kisses down from your chin to your earlobe.

“Katsuki,” your toes curl when he bottoms out within you, the tip of his cock brushing that delicate, spongy spot at the back of your core. Your nails drag salaciously down his shoulders, drawing little beads of blood in their wake.

“Fuck,” he groans, biting down harshly on your neck. He chokes on a sob before licking and kissing your collarbones, “I love you.”

Bakugou is fucking into you steadily now, his hips slamming into you at just the right angle that the vein running along the underside of his dick drags against your folds. You clamp down on his cock when you feel it begin to twitch again, his cockhead brushing your cervix. He’s sniffling, breath catching at the sound, “I love you so goddamn much. I don’t fucking deserve you.”

He’s overcome with emotion but it only spurs him forward faster. His hips slam mercilessly into you, every rut telling you what he cannot coherently say with words. And you accept his wordless confessions with the tightness of your core, the openness of your eyes.

You respond in fervor, your lips singing his praises as you feel the beginnings of another orgasm curling into a hot fire in the pit of you. It’s like lava has dripped down every vein in your body, lighting your skin on fire with its proverbial heat. You whine, your back arching in the perfect way for his mouth to latch onto your pert nipple.

“Katsu’, please, fill me up,” you whimper, palming at his injured back, finding scars and wounds alike, “I want your come, won’t you come in me?”

He’s nodding around your nipple, affirming you non-verbally, but the gentle tug of his teeth makes you whine again. You are completely distraught with the pounding of his cock into your tight, wet heat, the obscene sounds reverberating off of the walls only to bounce back at you like an echo.

“So fuckin’ pretty, baby,” he grunts, hot tears mixing with the saliva that covers your breast, “such a good girl for me. Takin’ me so well. Gonna take this load?”

You can’t help the way you nod ferociously, pleading with him through both words and actions. You whine, a shuddering of your throat making the sound much more desperate than you intended, “Please, Katsuki. I just want you to stuff me full, I want to be full of you.”

The last time your cunt was full, it was with another man’s seed.

Thinking about it makes your tongue turn heavy and your stomach sour. You grit your teeth and the scent of ashen sweetness fills your nostrils, taking over every thought you’d had previously. You can’t linger your memories on the way something made you feel before, you will destroy your mind and your pride.

All you can focus on is scrubbing yourself clean with Katsuki.

He washes over you like a soothing balm, the heat of his body burning away any trace of anything else from any time before this moment now. Every one of your senses are overwhelmed by him – his body, his breath, his scent. You want to drown in him, only fulfilled through his means for the rest of your days, to dive headfirst into his pain and break through until it is only the two of you left.

You lick at him, the familiar taste of his skin settling on your tongue as you lap over flesh and bone. You beg for his hands to touch every inch of you with wanton moans falling from your lips, scrubbing away at the nightmares and replacing them with the fiery blonde with a quipping tongue to match his superpower. If you thought you might could handle it, you’d ask him to blast you with his quirk, to burn away what is left from before until there is only the now.

“I love you,” you whisper into the dark, “It’s only you, Katsuki. Always.”

Bakugou’s mouth is licking at your neck when you feel his hips still, the telltale sign of his release begging to be set free. You palm at his face, forcing him to look you in the eyes because you can’t hold it in anymore, the words making your chest swell until you think you might burst wide open, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He thrusts forward in time with your chanting, his lower lip quivering with desire as he pumps himself forward at a much faster pace. One of his thumbs reaches down to brush against your clit, stimulating you until you can’t speak in full sentences, let alone syllables. You grit your teeth together and beg for his load, “Fill me up, Katsuki.”

Your words mixed with the tone of your voice are what push him over the edge, the cusp of his release washing over the both of you. Bakugou’s hips stutter, sloppily fucking into you as he chases that blinding pleasure only you can provide him.

“Take it, Princess,” he murmurs into your lips as he claims you by painting your walls white, the final part of you that needed to be wiped clean.

Katsuki’s hands rest on either side of your head as he holds up his quivering body, spent from effort and emotion. You brush your thumb over the tear-stained parts of his face, clearing his skin of what remains from his vulnerable confessions, no evidence left behind. He can start anew, pretend that he never bared his soul to you only mere moments ago.

His eyes never leave you, drinking you in religiously as you blink slowly, irises soaking up every inch of your precious expression. Your pupils shrink enough for him to see the color of your irises clearly, tilting one of his hands upward so he can brush his thumb over the curve of your jaw. Your lids flutter closed at the tender sensation, losing yourself in the feel of his fingerprints.

When you blink your eyes open, you reach upward to tenderly cup his cheeks between the palms of your hands, “I need to tell you something.”

“Yeah?” he leans his head into your hand, nudging his nose over the swell of the heel. Your pulse thuds in his ears and he can tell that you’re nervous based on the pace.

Your voice is thick when you whisper the words that have always rang true in your heart, but you’ve never said aloud because they seemed so pointless. He hears them every day from citizens, begging him for autographs and screaming his name when they see him on patrol. You’ve been afraid that they would fall hollow on deaf ears, futile and empty. But your heart squeezes within your chest and you know that it doesn’t matter anymore. The two of you have learned how precious a few moments can be.

“You’re my hero, Katsuki.”

Your thumbs run back and forth over the skin of his cheeks, seeking out the heat and also providing him what you hope feels like comfort. His cock twitches within the walls of your aching cunt, mouth hung open slightly, just enough for you to see the pink of his tongue.

You nod, sniffling as tears press hot into the back of your eyelids, “You’ve always been my hero, no matter what. Nothing will change that.”

Bakugou kisses the inside of your palm before leaning forward to press his lips to yours. This kiss is slow, deliberate, as if he’s trying to communicate something between the volley of your tongues. You lean up and wrap your arm around his neck when he snakes his hands up the expanse of your back. He’s fully pressed into you now, your bodies flush with one another as he kisses you.

Secret words are passed back and forth from your throat to his, emotion swelling in your chest, begging to burst the longer he’s pressed into you. You curl your hand into his hair, anchoring him to you despite the growing heat billowing in the lack of space between your bodies. Bakugou licks at the seam of your lips and you let him in, you’ll always let him in, your hips rolling forward to meet him at every juncture of your bones.

And that’s how you fall asleep that night, entwined in such a way that neither of you can tell where one of you ends and the other begins.

　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　 ҉　

a/n: i hope you guys enjoyed it! drop me an ask if you did!! 

[flclarchives]

Amusing Himself to Death, an Akadot.com interview with Kazuya Tsurumaki (director of FLCL and assistant director of Evangelion) from around December 2001. In the article, Tsurumaki explains a few things about Evangelion, his mentality behind FLCL as a whole, and the meaning of the name ‘FLCL���.

Full article text is under the cut, or read the article in its original form [here].

Kazuya Tsurumaki was a relatively little-known animator when Hideki Anno selected him to work as the assistant director on Neon Genesis Evangelion. For the TV series, which became a smash hit in Japan and one of the touchstones of the current surge of interest in anime in the US, Tsuramaki served as the main storyboard artist as well as assistant director, and when Studio Gainax began production on a trio of Evangelion films Tsurumaki got his first directorial assignment.

As he tells the story, Anno came to him after Eva and announced that he was out of ideas and that it was up to Tsurumaki to dream up the next project because, "you are next." Tsurumaki let his imagination run wild, but by the time he had written a script, Anno - despite his declaration that he had no stories left to tell - was already several steps ahead of Tsurumaki and in pre-production for his next series, Kareshi Kanojo no Jijo, leaving Tsurumaki a chance to have complete and unsupervised creative control of his own series FLCL.

FLCL, referred to as "Fooly Cooly" (or "Furikuri" by its American fans), is unlike any anime series to come before it. Wild, maniacally fast-paced physical comedy; exaggerated, exuberant animation alternately pushing towards surrealist- as when mecha exuviate from a bump on young Naota's head - and deconstructionist - as when the animation literally stops and the story is told by a camera bouncing across a page of black and white manga art panels; and obsessively, often irrelevantly, referential to obscure Tokyo-pop bands and anime insider trivia; FLCL was hyperkinetic and disorienting, yet mesmerizing, almost transgressive, and undeniably original. It inspired enthusiastic admiration for Tsurumaki as a creator, even amongst the perhaps 90% of the series' fans who were absolutely baffled by much of it. One is tempted to refer to it as announcing the arrival of full blown post-modernism in animation, or perhaps as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable of the anime industry.

When Tsurumaki visited Baltimore to speak to American fans at the recent Otokon Convention, predictably, many of the questions were along the lines of, "Hi, I really loved FLCL [or Evangelion], but could you please explain this part of it to me?"

Tsurumaki answered all questions genially with a self-deprecating and often mischievous sense of humor. For example:

Why does Haruko hit Naota over the head with her guitar?

Kazuya Tsurumaki: Naota is trying to be a normal adult and she belts him to make him rethink his decision.

Why does Evangelion end violently, and somewhat unhappily?

KT: People are accustomed to sweet, contrived, happy endings. We wanted to broaden the genre, and show people an ugly, unhappy ending.

Why is the character of Shinji portrayed as he is?

KT: Shinji was modeled on director Hideki Anno. Shinji was summoned by his father to ride a robot, Anno was summoned by Gainax to direct an animation. Working on Nadia [Nadia: Secret of the Blue Water, one of Anno and Tsurumaki's earlier projects] he wondered if he still wanted to work like this. He thought that working on Eva could help him to change.

Is there any particular reason why so many Gainax series feature very anxious, unhappy young male protagonists with no parents?

KT: Yes, the directors at Gainax are all basically weak, insecure, bitter, young men. So are many anime fans. Many Japanese families, including my own, have workaholic fathers whose kids never get to see them. That may influence the shows I create.

Could you explain the mecha bursting from Naota's head in FLCL?

KT: I use a giant robot being created from the brain to represent FLCL coming from my brain. The robot ravages the town around him, and the more intensely I worked on FLCL the more I destroyed the peaceful atmosphere of Gainax.

Why doesn't FLCL follow one story?

KT: In the third episode Ninamori was almost a main character, a kid who, like Naota, has to act like an adult.  After episode three her problem was solved so we wrote her out.  She has many fans in Japan and we got plenty of letters about that decision.  For FLCL I wanted to portray the entire history of Gainax, and each episode has symbols of what happened behind the scenes on each of Gainax's shows.   Episode one has many elements of Karekano; episode two, a lot of Evangelion references, etc.

Where does the title FLCL come from?

KT: I got the idea from a CD in a music magazine with the title Fooly-Cooly.  I like the idea of titles that are shortened long English words. Pokémon for "Pocket-Monsters" for instance, and an old J-pop band called Brilliant Green that was known as "Brilly-Grilly."

Is there any reason why the extra scenes added to Eva for the video release were cut in the first place?  Did you think the story would mean something different with them intact?

KT: The scenes that were added to Eva for its video release aren't that important.  We added them as an apology for taking so long to get the video out.  Maybe they'll help people understand things, because the episodes were done under tough deadlines the first time around.

Can you explain the symbolism of the cross in Evangelion?

KT: There are a lot of giant robot shows in Japan, and we did want our story to have a religious theme to help distinguish us.   Because Christianity is an uncommon religion in Japan we thought it would be mysterious.  None of the staff who worked on Eva are Christians.  There is no actual Christian meaning to the show, we just thought the visual symbols of Christianity look cool.  If we had known the show would get distributed in the US and Europe we might have rethought that choice.

After the panel, Mr. Tsurumaki sat down to speak with Akadot.

Do you enjoy confusing people?

KT: I have a twisted sense of humor.  I'm an Omanu Jacku, a contrarian.  [Writer's note- Omanu Jacku is a folk character a bit like Puck, a mischief maker]

What do you see differently now that you're working as a director rather than only as a visual artist?

KT: As an animator I have only the art; as a director story is really big.  I still feel as an animator and I often have trouble putting the needs of the story first.

Did you intend from the start for FLCL to be as bizarre as it wound up?

KT: From the very start I wanted a different flavor.  To achieve this I had to re-train the animators to be as stylized as I wanted them to be because I wasn't drawing it.  I knew that not everyone would get it.  I deliberately selected very obscure J-pop culture and anime sub-culture jokes and references.  Because Eva was so somber I always intended to make FLCL outrageous and wacky.

Why the choice to break out of conventional animation and use manga pages? Was it at all a response to how many anime are using computers to achieve smoother and more realistic visuals?  Were you trying to go the opposite direction?

KT: I like manga, not only to read, but the visuals.  The pen drawings, the frame breakdowns and layouts . . . This is the first time I have used digital animation, and those bouncing manga shots wouldn't have been possible with cel animation.   Personally I'm not interested at all in using computers for realistic animation.  I'm impressed by it sometimes, but I'm interested in using computers to do what was once impossible, not to do smoother versions of what has already been done.  I want to be less realistic.

Has using digital animation techniques changed the way you work, or the way you feel about your work when you see it?  Does it still feel like it's yours if a computer did much of it?

KT: Before I got into digital animation I saw other shows that were using it and I felt that there was no feeling, it was empty.   As an animator, there's a sense of release when you draw a cel.  There's something there.  Working on FLCL, though, I learned that computers can do more, and, most of all, that they allow room for trial and error and revising, more freedom to experiment.  That is why I now feel that cel art cannot win against computers.  For actual animation everything is still drawn on paper.  That work hasn't changed.  It's the other stuff, the touchups, and coloring.  If we didn't use paper, maybe the feeling would change.

Earlier today you said that you were trying to broaden the genre by giving Eva a sad ending.  Does the sameness of much of today's anime bore you?

KT: First of all we didn't use a sad ending to annoy fans.  When they're upset, that really bothers us.  Personally, I think a happy ending is fine, but not if it is achieved too easily.  That's no good.

For all the fans that are confused at all, if you had to define in one sentence what FLCL is about, what would you say?

KT: FLCL is the story of boy meets girl.  For me it is also about how it's ok to feel stupid.  With Evangelion there was this feeling that you had better be smart to understand it, or even just to work on it. With FLCL I want to say that it's okay to feel stupid.

Even though it may be strange to us, do you have in your head a logic behind it?  Are you trying to portray a story that follows the logic of dreams, or is it supposed to make sense symbolically?

KT: I'd like you to think of FLCL as imagination being made physical and tangible, just as it is for me when I take whatever is in my head and draw it.

So what are you working on next?

KT: Right now Gainax has told me that they'll support anything I choose to create, but I'm having trouble coming up with any ideas.

Why is that?

KT: Releasing titles for market, I know I have to make something to please fans, but I'm not a mature enough person to accept that fact.  If I'm not amusing myself I can't do it.  I feel bad that fans have to put up with such behavior from me.  I apologize. 

[likeiwishiknew]

Azriel x Gwyn - The Ways of Old

Read on AO3 from the beginning 

The training was terrible. 

Not because it was tougher than anything Azriel or Cassian put them through. 

But because everyone did their best to ignore them.

No one wanted to spar, only throwing them irritated glances in passing and making backward comments. 

The fact that she was so glaringly on outsider likely did not help.

They were learning next to nothing. Azriel was not allowed to teach them here, only observe. That was the agreement. While she was here, she and Emerie were to play by the rules Devlon and the other leaders.

She and Emerie were allowed to watch the demonstrations for various techniques with everyone else. But other than that they were left to their own devices. Only sparring with each other.

Not that she did not enjoy honing her skills with Emerie, but it defeated the point of why they were here in the first place. 

Which was to prove that they were just as capable as any of the males here. To show these arrogant assholes that gender did not determine capability. Gwyn did not much care what they thought of her. But Emerie was was one of them, and they needed to treat her as such. Gwyn did not want to hear of any more instances of her sister having to deal with their mistreatment and ridicule.

Emerie was a warrior in her own right, had earned the title, and for not a single one of them, aside from Balthazar, to have the decency to give her a chance was outrageous. 

Gwyn wouldn’t dare to say they could compete with the seasoned warriors. 

Not yet. 

But level the playing field and she was confident they could perform as well as any of the young warriors here. 

Across the distance, she hears Devlon call for some sort of division. 

Looking that way, she found Azriel speaking to two younger males. She almost always made sure to keep track of where he was, even during her bouts with Emerie. But he must’ve slipped away at some point.

Devlon eyed the trio in question, suspiciously. Shortly after, the two unknown males begin walking their way. Gwyn meets Azriel’s gaze, across the distance. She quietly wonders what he is up to. 

Before she has any chance to ask, the males stand before her and Emerie. 

“Can we help you?” Emerie says, her arms crossed over her chest defensively. 

The two males share a look. 

“We thought you two could use a change of partners,” the taller of the two said, his eyes focused on Emerie. 

Gwyn shot Azriel a glare, certain this had everything to do with the fact that he’d spoken to the males. His meddling would get them nowhere. Honest respect could not be demanded, it had to be earned. Having him pressure others into accepting them was not the way.

He shrugged in response, making no attempt to look the least bit apologetic.

“My name is Zander,” the one closest to her said, before gesturing to his friend, “This is Tobias.” 

Gwyn eyed them both, sensing Emerie doing the same, “Why come now when you’ve been avoiding us for days?” 

“We haven’t been,” Zander defended. 

The lie seemed to come easy to him. 

Her disbelief must’ve been rather evident because the male felt the need to continue, “Devlon told us only to speak to you if you deigned to speak with us.” 

She did not like the sound of that. It had her thinking that Devlon made them out to be arrogant, putting the burden on them rather than voice his own obvious prejudice. 

Only a willful fool would believe his words. But people believed what they wanted to, what was easier. 

Tobias nodded, “He made it clear that there would be consequences for disobeying his order.” 

“So, why did you come over here?” Emerie questioned, her wings flaring slightly in irritation. 

“Because the Shadowsinger told us too,” Tobias admitted. He looked not the least bit put off by Emerie’s tone, which was a tad surprising. 

Gwyn wasn’t surprised to hear she was right though. 

She felt Emerie bristle beside her, “So you’re only deigning to speak to us because you were forced to.” 

“We were never against speaking to you,” Tobias corrected, tone remaining neutral. 

“Do you not fear Devlon threat?” Gwyn found herself asking, her question directed at them both. 

"The Shadowsinger is far more of something to fear,” Zander insisted, glancing over his shoulder at where Azriel still remained standing in the distance. 

A moment later, Zander’s returned his eyes to Gwyn, “But we know his word is good. He asked us to spar with you and made it clear he would handle any repercussions.”

Gwyn played Zander’s words back in her heard. Azriel had asked them. Not demanded or commanded. It was not much, but it was something. At least she knew now that the males had not to been forced to engage with them. 

“And it just so happens that we’re curious as to what you might have learned in all your training sessions with the General and the Spymaster,” he finished with an almost teasing smile. 

His good humor was infectious and almost had her smiling back. But she shoved it down. Gwyn would not be won over by the charm of a male who had not even had the courage to defy a ludicrous order from his superior. 

She turned to Emerie, the two of them having a silent exchange. While the circumstances were less than ideal, it would benefit them to practice against others aside from each other. To pick up new tricks and hone in on different tells. 

Emerie looked to agree.

“Alright,” her sister voiced, eyes meeting with the taller male standing in front of her, “Let’s see what you’ve got,” she challenged. 

Gwyn saw a spark of something in Tobias’ eyes. She could not tell if it were interest or the mere delight at being challenged, and she did not get much chance to consider because in no time at all he and Emerie were walking off. Far enough that she could not clearly make out the words exchanged between them. 

Decision made, she turned her focus back to Zander. Only to find him already waiting. 

“Ready?” he asked, challenge clear in his tone. 

In response, she got into a fighting stance. 

The male grinned and followed suit. 

“Until the first strike?” she asked, needing to establish how far they’d take things. 

Cassian and Azriel tended to take their fights much further until one was face down.

But that required a level of trust she did not have with the male in front of her. 

Thus, she was relieved when Zander nodded in agreement. 

On the third count, they launched into their attacks. Both managing to maneuver out of the path of each other’s strikes.

And so the dance began. 

Fists and kicks shooting outward but never landing. Their movements smooth and practiced. 

He was fast. His muscular but lean build working to his advantage. 

In between it all, Gwyn found herself questioning him, “Don’t you find it strange that the females that live among you do not train with you?”

Zander’s fist shot out and she narrowly avoided it. 

“Females have been allowed to train with us for a while now, they simply have chosen not to,” he said, all matter-of-fact, ducking beneath her flying fist. 

Gwyn shook her head as she pulled back, “There’s a big difference between being allowed and being welcomed.”

Those who had never been denied anything likely had no idea of the distinction. 

She witnessed Zander’s hesitation. He was uncertain, and so his defense was weak, “It’s the way it’s always been.”

Her fist shot out. He blocked it with his forearm. 

“Just because it’s always been that way doesn’t make it right,” she said with a swift kick. 

She aimed for his side, but he grabbed hold of her leg and shoved her back. 

It took a second for her to re-steady herself. 

“Do you have sister Zander?” she questioned, as they circled each other. 

He kept his eyes trained on her as he answered, “Two.”

“Younger or older?” 

“Younger,” he replied. 

She gave a short nod of acknowledgment.

“And how does it make you feel that once upon a time you might’ve had to watch as their wings were clipped?” 

Her words struck him, and she saw him grimace. The first real sign of regret she’d seen from him. 

“It was a terrible practice. I’m glad it was done away with it,” he admitted, and she could tell from the tone of his voice, from the look in his eyes, that he meant it.

She could not agree more. Gwyn only wished they’d done so sooner. So that Emerie could have known the joy of flying with her own set of wings. 

“And they did so only because the High Lord and General Cassian demanded it,” she pointed out, “Because, although it was a traditional practice, it was wrong and needed changing.”

She waited for him to speak up with some sort of excuse or defense. But instead, he merely nods in agreement. There might be hope for him yet.

“So you see, just because something has always been done does not make it right,” she declared, as she did, Gwyn ducked beneath the male’s swing and managed to land a blow directly in Zander’s gut. 

She cracked a bright smile. It was her win.

As promised, the male stepped back graciously admitting his defeat. Something Gwyn would admit she had not expected. 

He watched her carefully now. 

If she did not know any better she might even say he was eyeing her with appreciation. But it was a silly thought. One she quickly abandoned.

So focused on studying the male in front of her, Gwyn almost missed Azriel approaching.

Almost. 

Something always alerted her to his presence. She turned her gaze toward him. 

He approached with a look of pride on his face. 

At the same time he neared, Gwyn heard a set of retreating footsteps. Zander must’ve decided to head off, perhaps to join Emerie and Tobias. 

Azriel stopped narrowly a foot from her. 

“Careful, Gwyn people might think you’re trying to start a revolution here,” Azriel said.

Leave it to him to be able to overhear her conversation despite being well out of normal hearing range. Though she supposed he wasn’t the Night Court’s spymaster for nothing. Still, his comment got her thinking. 

She eyed him, “Would that be so bad?”

His gaze softened. His eyes growing almost wistful.

“No, I can’t say it would,” he remarked. 

Gwyn was just about to ask him a question when she detected another male presence at her back. Their sent was familiar, causing her to turn.

She found Balthazar standing behind there with a sizable bouquet of flowers. Scarlet Avens.

Gwyn looked up at the male in surprise. He had told her yesterday that he would be missing training today. 

His sister had not been feeling well, and he wanted to be close in case she needed him. 

“Amelia said you mentioned to her that you liked flowers,” he gave by way of explanation. 

She had said that. But it had been mostly an off-handed comment. One she hadn’t considered that the child would even remember. 

Gwyn stared at the bouquet, a bright riot of orange, and then back and him, “I’ve...no one had ever given me flowers before.” 

Balthazar's brows furrowed in confusion as he gazed down at her, before looking somewhere over her shoulder. 

“Really?” he asked, focus shifting back to her, looking genuinely shocked. 

She felt a bit embarrassed to admit it aloud, but it was too late to take it back.

Gwyn nodded in confirmation. She slowly reached to take them from his hands, their fingers brushing in the process, “Really.”

He let them go into her grasp. 

Balthazar briefly gazed between her and the flowers in her hands, “Do you like them?”

Gwyn smiled fondly at the bouquet, then, meeting his eyes once more, she nodded, “Yes.” 

He gave a single nod in return, “Then good.” 

She caught the sound of familiar footsteps. 

“No flowers for me?” Emerie said, coming up to beside Balthazar who glanced over at her questioningly. Based on her good mood, she must’ve landed the first blow as well. 

“Would you like some?” the male asked Emerie. 

“Pfft no,” she answered with a laugh, “Save your charm for Gwyn.” 

“Emerie!” she shouted, flushing with embarrassment now. 

“What?” her friend replied, “Balthazar doesn’t mind, right?” 

Balthazar turned his head toward the female at his side and shrugged, “I’ve grown used to her heckling.” 

Gwyn couldn’t help laugh at that, “You’re like siblings.”

“He’s the brother I never wanted,” Emerie remarked. 

Balthazar then shot Emerie some major side-eye, “The feeling is mutual. One sister is plenty.”

She laughed again at that. Her entire mood lifted. 

- - - 

Azriel remained silent, watching the entire exchange that took place before him. In those moments, he felt like an outsider. Only allowed to quietly observe as Gwyn’s eyes widened in surprise, as her expression brightened at the gift Balthazar had given. 

Her admission to having never before received flowers from anyone had him angry at himself for not thinking to do so. But at the same time, there had been no occasion for him to give Gwyn flowers. 

It wasn’t a holiday or her birthday, as far as he knew. And giving her gifts for no good reason would appear strange, would it not? 

Yet here was Balthazar giving her a gift for no reason at all. Except maybe that he wanted to.

Azriel could not explain why that made him feel so lousy. 

Had he missed something?

Was there something between them that he didn’t know about?

The thought had his stomach-turning. As the girls continued to talk amongst themselves, he made eye contact with Balthazar. 

“May I speak with you?” he said, so quiet the girls did not seem to notice. Too caught up in the own discussion about their individual fights. 

Gwyn had done well, despite the unnecessary chatter. She did not seem to realize it, but Azriel had seen the interest she’d piqued in Zander with her victory over him. 

But he would address one issue at a time. Balthazar was the one in front of him now. 

The other male stared at him for a long moment before nodding in response. He walked off and trusted that Balthazar to follow. They did not go too far, just far enough that they would not be overheard. 

“So what’s up?” Balthazar asked once they came to a stop. 

Crossing his arms over his chest, Azriel regarded. 

“Why did you give Gwyn flowers?” he asked, watching the other male’s expression.

His question appeared to surprise Balthazar, as the other male took to studying him and taking his sweet time before replying, “Because I saw them and thought she might like them.” 

Azriel narrowed his gaze, not quite believing it was that simple. 

To his credit, the other male was not the least bit intimidated. 

Balthazar shrugged not seeming to care at all that Azriel didn’t believe his words. 

“She’s stuck living in this camp filled with misogynistic assholes that no doubt do everything in their power to ruin her day,” he stated, “I wanted to give her something to brighten it up.” 

Azriel had those same thoughts. Every time he was forced to watch from the sidelines as she and Emerie showed up, day after day, only to be ignored by the others. Each day she awoke eager, hoping that things would be different, that her plan would work. That somehow the males would see how hard she and Emerie worked and would change their minds. 

But Azriel knew that those prejudices were ingrained in them. They would not be so easily changed if they could even be changed at all. Regardless, he was not sure it was worth the effort. Gwyn and Emerie shouldn’t have to prove their worth to anyone. 

He had all these thoughts yet not once did he think to bring her anything to cheer her up. 

But he had shown up. Everyday. 

Watched over her, observed, noted her strengths and weakness, and then went over them with her in the privacy of the cabin they currently shared. Offering her his advice and his ear. 

Was that the right-thinking?

Should he be doing something different? Should he have offered her comfort over critique? 

He had no idea. 

Azriel was used to acting on instinct, trusting his gut. 

Yet when it came to Gwyn he always worried about doing the wrong thing. Feared he would see her face fall as he had that night many months ago. 

They were in a good place. He wanted it to stay that way. 

“It always seems to work with my sister,” he heard Balthazar say, the other male’s voiced intruding in on his thoughts. 

He paused, “You give your sister flowers?”

Balthazar eyed him, “It sounds weird when you say it, but yes I do.” 

If Balthazar was simply treating Gwyn as he would his own sister, then perhaps, Azriel had nothing to worry about. Maybe, he was overthinking things.

“I get them for my niece sometimes too. Who, by the way, adores Gwyn.” 

He caught Balthazar smiling, a look he had never before seen on the male, “You might even say the flowers are a thank you gift.”

Azriel waited for him to continue. 

“For making my niece happy,” the male elaborated, “Amelia loved playing with Gwyn, loved the stories she had to tell.” 

Azriel could imagine that. Gwyn had probably read more than her fair share of stories in her short time. 

“When you care about someone you want to see them happy. At least, that’s just how I see it,” Balthazar spoke frankly. 

The other male’s words struck him. Balthazar was admitting he cared about Gwyn. Azriel couldn’t begrudge him that, but it did leave him with questions. 

“Do you love her?” he spoke in a low tone. 

“Who? Gwyn?” the male asked, sounding surprised. 

Azriel nodded.

Balthazar shook his head, “Shadowsinger, it ain’t that deep.”

Azriel waited, certain that wasn’t all it. 

“I like her sure, and maybe with time, it could turn into something more. She seems like she’d be easy to love. But that’s not where my head is at right now.”

He held in his sigh of relief. Though it might have been a bit premature. Because not a moment later, the other male’s eyes narrowed at him. 

“Is there a reason you’re asking me this?” Balthazar questioned. 

Azriel felt himself grow defensive, “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what is she to you?”

It was a question he should have anticipated. In fact, he had. And yet, he still wasn’t so sure of his answer. 

“I...” he hesitated, before going with the safe answer, “She’s a friend.”

The other male raised his brow, “You don’t sound like a concerned friend.”

When Azriel did not answer the other male shrugged it off. 

“Look, it’s none of my business what you’re feeling. But know that as a friend you can’t really stop me if I decide I want to pursue her.”

He tensed. 

“Are you saying you intend to?”

Balthazar glanced sideways at him, “That’s my business now, isn’t it?” 

Saying nothing else, the male stalked away. 

- - - 

Gwyn was arranging the flowers Balthazar had given her, into a vase she borrowed from Emerie, when Azriel finally returned. 

For some reason, he paused at the door. 

She turned her attention away from the bright blooms to meet his eye. 

“Welcome back,” she greeted. 

He stared at her a moment longer, only to nod in response. And though he'd technically said nothing, that in of itself spoke volumes. Azriel was not one for many words. But lately, he'd been spoken to her more and more. Spent time discussing with her about her day and relayed his own, all the things he did outside watching over her and Emerie's training.

Something was wrong. She’d already thought so when he’d randomly asked to speak to Balthazar earlier. The two were not close. Civil certainly but not particularly friendly. Azriel rarely bothered speaking to others unless there was a need. He had a distaste for most Illyrians, Rhys and Cassian being the main exceptions. 

“Is something wrong Azriel?” she worried. 

His face was calm, neutral, as it tended to be. But she detected tension radiating off of him. His shadows moved about erratically behind him as if trying to clue her in on whatever turmoil was going on inside him. She waited patiently for him to continue. Moments passed with neither of them saying anything. And she was beginning to think he would say nothing at all. He proved her wrong. 

“How do you feel about Balthazar?” he asked. 

She tilted her head somewhat curiously, “What you do mean?” 

“I mean he is a good male. So I was wondering what do you think of him?”

It wasn't that she did not understand his initial question. It was more so that she did not understand why he was asking. Still, she answered him honestly. 

“He was good and kind.” 

Like Azriel and Cassian were, which gave her hope for the Illyrian male population. Even Zander and Tobias had not been too bad. Azriel must've thought the same if he'd spent them to spar with her and Emerie.

Still, she was quite certain that was not the answer Azriel was looking for. There was something loaded about his question. 

“Why do you ask?” she inquired. Because it was clear he would not reveal his reasons himself, if at all.

He avoided meeting her gaze. 

“Nothing, he just feels like the sort of male any female would want.” 

Was he including her? 

She was not sure where this was even coming from. 

While Balthazar had given her flowers, she did not think they had any special meaning behind them. She’d assumed it was a thank you gift for watching over Amelia the other day. Not that Gwyn needed to be given anything to do so, she adored the little one.

But from the look on Azriel’s face, he was serious. It had her chest aching in response. 

“Has he said something to you?” she asked, before adding, “Are you saying you want me to give him a chance?

Although she’d asked, Gwyn was already dreading his answer. Because if he said yes...

“No. That’s not what I’m saying,” he immediately answered and for an instant, she felt a glimmer of hope.

Until he continued. 

“But if that’s what you want I won’t stand in your way.” 

Him saying that. It hurt more than it should. Gwyn should be used to it by now. His rejection shouldn’t hurt so much anymore. Her eyes fell closed briefly in response as she collected herself. 

“You deserve happiness, Gwyn. You deserve to get everything you could ever want.” 

Except you. 

As soon as the thought crossed her mind, she chased it away. She’d already decided to accept that they could only ever be friends. Thinking otherwise would only turn her bitter, and she refused to spoil the friendship they had. 

Their eyes met again, but she did not trust her voice not to give her away. 

And so, she said nothing.  

- - -

Notes: I know we’re all a mixed bag with the recent news about the TV show, but I’m just over hearing trying to enjoy some peace as I live in my fantasy world of Azriel and Gwyn happiness. So cheers to that! 

- - - 

@azrielsshadowsdanceforgwyn @bittermuire @ofstarsanddreams @corrdolium

@brucexselina @inejjg @rhysmoira @gwynnight @fairytamy @bluegold08 @amandapearls @highqueentaey @lioness-says @chosenfamily-valkyriequeens​ @princessofmerchants-reads @cantkeepmyeyesoffofyou-x

@my-fan-side @spookylightkidranch @velaaaris @keramzinskies @itswrongsong @mirubyjane

@lovelywordsandwine @ladygwynriel @parisakamali @mirubyai

[arsenicpanda]

So, I was tagged by the lovely @sullypants for this meme, like, two weeks ago, but I’m really bad at perceiving and measuring time, so I’m doing it now instead orz.

How many works do you have on AO3?

Five, one of which is a literal drabble, an exact 100 words, and ymmv on whether it should be its own fic.

What’s your total AO3 word count?

23,447, which is way more than I expected and and like almost a third of which is just chapter three of (ain’t it good to know) you’ve got a friend.

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

So, like, back in the day, I wrote self-insert Sailor Moon fanfiction (I know, I know), but the only stuff that’s still up is Final Fantasy VII fic (including one on FFN that hasn’t been taken down solely because someone favorited it and, as someone who always gets bummed when a favorite fic vanishes, it’s forever up as a result) and Riverdale fic.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Broseph, I only have five fics up on AO3, but here’s the order anyway, from most to least:

(day)dreams can come true

wet dreams may come

(ain't it good to know) you've got a friend

Cancelled Plans

The Looming Fog and Other Strange Happenings

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I do my best to, but, uh, I’m not great at it in terms of timeliness (I’ve certainly got some that have been sitting waiting for a response for months, and I’ll get to them eventually, I promise).  I’d like to think I’m pretty good at responding with substance though, when I finally get around to it.  Like, if you name a specific part you like, I will give you too much insight into that part.

What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Well, (ain’t it good to know) you’ve got a friend was originally going to have a very angsty ending, but a.) I changed that after a discussion with my friend and b.) it’s not finished anyway lol.  So, I guess wet dreams may come?  Like, I end it with a reference to that scene in End of Evangelion (because I had the opportunity for a parallel and it also shows Jughead’s opinion of himself, even though his actions are harmless, whereas Shinji’s...well.), and that’s pretty angsty, yeah?

What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

I mean, only three of them have endings, so (day)dreams come true, probably, because its ending is just very sweet (the third fic with an ending, Cancelled Plans, has a comedic end, so it doesn’t really qualify in the first place).

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you’ve written?

Not normally, but I have written a mashup with the Lovecraft mythos, specifically as seen in the Arkham Horror boardgame; it’s The Looming Fog and Other Strange Happenings, and it is by default the craziest one I’ve written.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Nope.  I fly pretty under the radar.

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Yup.  When you include incomplete/unpublished stuff, probably like 40-50% of stuff I write will contain some kind of smut because I find it sexy, fun, and intimate, and I’d say it’s...explicit?  I’m prone to writing dirty talk, mainly, because I will forever love writing dialogue and think in terms of it; also, the fics I’ve published (and like two other incomplete fics that haven’t been published) skirt around portraying the actual act of sex from the POV of the ones having sex.  Idk, that part’s really hard for me (no pun intended).

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t think so. 

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope, and I probably never will because I’m bad at finishing things, and I wouldn’t want to have the pressure/guilt of working with another person and dragging down the completion of the fic.

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Lelouch/Shirley from Code Geass, 10000% THE otp, closely followed by Izaya/Namie from Durarara!!.

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I’d really love to finish both my WIPs, but, uh, I doubt that will ever happen (I’m still completely stuck on the chapters that need finishing, and it doesn’t help that I have other fics taking up more space in my brain).

What’s your writing strengths?

I like to think I’m good at dialogue because I generally think in dialouge, but ymmv.

What’s your writing weaknesses?

Description and introspection, tbh, basically anything other than dialogue.  It’s just not how I think, so it often is something I have to fill in.  I generally have a solid picture in my head of what, exactly, is happening, but getting it down in words in a way that isn’t awkward af is v challenging for me.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I think you should avoid it if you can.  I think it’s best to adhere to Megatokyo’s strategy of putting any dialogue in another language in brackets (either [] or <>) to show that it’s in another language; you still get the meaning, with no footnotes, and you don’t have to hunt down a native speaker and ask them to help write the dialogue correctly in another language or make the decision over whether to include end/foot notes with the translations.  I do allow for some foreign language terms in dialogue, but then I think I mainly allow that in Naruto fic, and it’s mainly grandfathered in from years of fandom.  Like, it’d be super weird to see a fic talk about techniques and not jutsu, y’know?  And is there anything more awkward than an “upperclassmen” in place of “senpai”?

What’s the first fandom you wrote for?

Sailor Moon, but the first non-self insert stuff was Final Fantasy VII.

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

I think (day)dreams come true is the best fic I’ve written, hands down.  It has the strongest emotional core and emotional progression.  I also just really like the ending.  But there are also a few lines and moments in other fics that I’m really pleased with; for example, the lunch conversation in chapter three of (ain’t it good to know) you’ve got a friend is one of my absolute favorite things I’ve written.

And that’s it.  Ok, uh, tagging (god, I’m so bad at tagging people, and idek who’s done this, so apologies for if you’ve already finished) @gettingjuggiewithit @imreallyloveleee @satelliteinasupernova @heartunsettledsoul and anyone else who wants to do this

[ateezmakemeweep]

sk8erboi!yeosang x ballerina!reader 

word count: 10k

angst, fluff, smut (tw: implications of an eating disorder)

whoever made the executive decision to put a skatepark directly across the street from a dance studio really should've put more thought into just how poorly that would've gone. 

because ever since its grand opening four months ago, you've been losing your mind. you remember when the only sound coming through the large studio window was birds chirping or the faint sound of an ice cream truck or the occasional barks of dogs greeting each other.

but now. now it's the constant racket of wheels rolling on concrete, boards flipping and clattering off the large, graffitied ramps and, of course, the obnoxious quarrels and curses coming from the group of punks you always have the displeasure of seeing (and more so hearing) every monday, wednesday and friday.

"i'm gonna kill them, i swear i'm gonna kill them one day," you complain to your friend as you untie the ribbons of your ballet shoes, "i've had enough of them!"

the sound of her snort has you whipping your head to the side, eyes squinted and eyebrow raised. "what was that laugh for?"

"oh, c'mon, you've been saying this shit for months, y/n," she says while rubbing her bruised, battered feet, "have you even spoken to them?"

"god no," you say, the disgust so evident in your voice, it's like she asked if you'd make out with them.

"well, maybe you should!" she chirps, jumping up and walking over to the windowsill. "they're really ho...nice, really nice."

"oh jesus christ," you grumble, sneering at the girl whose chin is perched on her hand like she's admiring works of art outside the window. "have you talked to them?"

"a few times," she says and you roll your eyes at the breathy, dreamy tone in her voice.

"don't tell me you like one of them."

"of course not," she says, neck craning back to shoot you a wink, "maybe just like three of them."

"oh my, god! i'm leaving." and leave you do, with her laugh echoing through the studio as she shouts that she'll see you at the next practice.

once you're outside, you peer up to see her head is still outside the second-story window staring dreamily across the street and you can't help but shout up at her. a smirk makes its way on your face when she at least has the decency to jump away and hide in embarrassment before seeing it was you.

"not nice, y/n!"

you shake your head as you make your way across the street, popping in your headphones so you can go over the routine in your head over and over and over again until your ears start bleeding and brain turns to mush.

it had been your mom's idea to stick you in dance the second you learned how to walk, wanting to see her daughter follow in her footsteps in the form of pink tutus and glittery makeup and first place trophies from competitions.

but you quickly realized dance was more than that. that it brought sense of stability and purpose you so desperately craved, a work ethic that made you want to master the art of ballet. 

because even though it makes your feet ache and bleed and you'll spend the rest of the night screaming into an ice bucket, you really have come to love it. it serves as a stress reliever for when schoolwork or your mom's nagging becomes too much.

you're only a minute and 20 seconds into the song, the pirouette techniques you've rehearsed for hours beginning to plague your mind, when a skateboard flying through the air misses your face by just a few inches.

you rip out your earbuds, classical music blaring out of them as you snap your head to the board that nearly knocked you out. a figure running past you snatches it up, about to turn and run passed you again with the quietest of hums; rage fills through you because not even an apology?

"yeah, i'm fine, thanks," and you're even a little thrown off by how how biting and sarcastic your voice sounds. 

the figure turns to look at you, a smirk threatening to cover his face as he looks you up and down in your pink leotard under white shorts and sneakers.

"my bad."

"yeah, no kidding. you could've knocked me out."

he rolls his eyes, tucking the skateboard under his arm and advancing toward you a bit more. a black hat is placed backwards on his head, your eyes narrowing at the holes in his baggy long-sleeved shirt and scuffed up vans.

"it was an accident," he says, tone calm and relaxed, "and maybe if your mozart wasn't so damn loud, you would've heard me shout."

a scoff leaves your mouth, leaning on one foot as your arms cross over your chest.

"it isn't mozart," you snap, annoyed by how calm and teasingly he's looking at you. "and you'd think you'd be a little bit better since you're here all the time. isn't the board supposed to stay under your feet?"

a laugh bubbles out of his mouth and you're gonna pretend it's the ugliest thing you've ever heard, not a nice deep boy chuckle that would normally make your heart flutter.

"you a stalker or something?"

a annoyed sigh leaves your mouth as you roll your eyes because this guy is unbelievable.

"as if. you and your annoying little posse make it really hard to concentrate during practice with those stupid deathtrap boards."

his neck cranes around you ever so slightly to survey the studio, the brick building with a large white window overlooking the picturesque town. he had figured it was a dance studio, after seeing girls walk in and out with buns and leotards and bags detailed with ballet shoes.

"ah, so you're one of those prissy dancers i take?" his head nodding across the street.

your mouth drops open at his statement only causing the smirk on his face to widen; you have half the mind to smack him with your bag.

"we're not prissy! i bet it takes a lot more skill and pain tolerance than balancing on that-"

"stupid deathtrap board? yeah, you're probably right," he says before turning his head and taking another step closer to you. "but you have to admit we look a lot cooler. where's your little tutu, constanze?"

your eyebrows pinch in confusion, giving him a strange look because who the hell is constanze?

"what are you even talking- you know what, who cares," you huff, irritation flooding through you the more you humor him with a conversation. you pop your headphones back in to start over your song, throwing him one last sneer with squinted eyes. "try to keep the board on the floor next time."

"wear a tutu next time!"

but he knows you definitely don't hear him because you just continue to walk straight, your head moving in circles and arms making subtle movements side to side. he smiles to himself watching you ‘dance’ until you turn the corner before hopping on his board and skating back into the park.

and it's the same way he skates up to you two days later as you wait to cross the street, your pink bag thrown over your shoulder as hear the familiar sound of wheels on concrete that causes your blood to boil.

"constanze, where is your tutu?" his voice whines and you look to the side to see the obnoxious boy from a few days ago now wearing a beanie.

"why are you calling me that?" you ask with an annoyed tone.

"you mean to tell me a priss like yourself doesn't know who constanze is?"

"stop calling me that! you don't see me calling you a punk."

again, that deep chuckle leaves his mouth and you wish it didn't sound so nice. wish he wasn't so carefree and calm when you can't help but feel so incredibly irritated by him.

"a punk? really?"

"yeah, really."

"what makes me a punk? the fact that i skateboard?"

your foot bounces impatiently on the concrete waiting for the walking man to appear on screen, eager to get far far away from this headache of a boy.

"amongst other....attributes."

"oh?" he hums, leaning his head against the dirty metal pole and you wanna cringe thinking about how many germs are on it. "you don't even know me, though.”

"but i know your type," you spit, now turning your body to look at him, "i know i've heard your obnoxious cursing and screaming for the past four months. and i know you call me names when you don't even know me."

"oh, but i know your type as well constanze. so stiff and rigid and orderly, i bet it's killing you that i'm on this germ infested pole right now."

your eyes widen for a split second because can he hear my thoughts? before you shake them out and squint your eyes at him.

"what's wrong with liking routine? sorry we all can't just skate off into the sunset and do ollies all day."

"oh, ollies?" he says, voice teasing and eyebrows raised like you've genuinely impressed him. "now how do you know about those?"

your cheeks warm at his tone and you praise the gods above when you see the white man signal to cross the street. you quickly turn, hitting his stomach with your bag and rushing across the street.

"come by when you’re done if you wanna learn how to do an ollie, constanze!"

you resist the urge to throw your middle finger up when he calls after you, pulling open the door and stomping up the stairs muttering under your breath.

"why the hell does he keep calling me constanze," you grumble, "and who does he think he is assuming he can just-"

"oh my gosh!" your friend squeals as she runs up to you, "what were you doing talking to yeosang!"

your body stiffens at the name, yeosang, and despite never meeting anyone else with it, you're convinced it's only reserved for annoying punks.

"how do you know his name?" you ask, walking over to plop down and take off your shoes, "he nearly knocked me unconscious with his stupid skateboard the other day!"

"oh?" she squeaks, "and you talked again today?!"

her excitement causes you to sneer at her, shaking your head because "you sound way too happy about this."

as you put on your toe cap and spacer, you listen to her mule on and on about how cool the boys look flying through the air and how hot their scars probably are and you could seriously throw up when she starts to talk about one of the boys and his skilled technique.

"what do you even know about skateboarding techniques?" you chirp; she had never seemed interested in it before.

"i don't know, there's like ollies or something, right? that's basic stuff. i'll go over and be like oooh your ollies are just so impressive-"

"i am so embarrassed, please stop talking."

she throws her head back with a giggle, plopping down in front of you to tie up your ribbons and begins to, thankfully, talk about one of the parts of the dance she's been struggling with.

but after the next two and a half hours of practice, feet bleeding and throbbing in pain, it's safe to say not a single one of you are having any more issues.

"they hurt so bad," you whine the second your shoe is off, squeezing and rubbing at your abused toes.

"that extra time was rough," your friend says, laid out flat on her back with her eyes closed.

you both just sit there for a few minutes, hoping that the throbbing in your feet will simmer so your trip home won't be spent limping and suppressing groans. but no such luck because the second you say goodbye and walk down the stairs, you wanna die.

you make your way across the street, headphones in but no music blaring because you can't even think about dancing right now. but you can absolutely think about murdering who you now know as yeosang when a very familiar looking skateboard rolls out the park gate and runs into your ankle.

"you're kidding," you snap, kicking the board roughly so it falls on it's side, "you did that on purpose!"

"i didn't, i promise," he says, "but since i caught you...can i teach you an ollie now? i've been waiting for you."

"well you waited for nothing, i'm not interested."

"c'mon, a skillful ballerina like yourself will pick it up in no time."

you roll your eyes at the sarcasm in his tone and you'd step on his skateboard if your feet weren't aching.

"i don't think i wanna learn from someone who can't seem to keep his feet on the board."

"well, then you'll just have to see how good i am," he hums lowly, flipping his skateboard over with his foot and kicking it up so he grabs it with his hand.

"wow, you can catch it," you say dryly and a smile covers his face as lets out a scoff.

"not that, wiseass, there's a competition on friday. come."

you feel your eyebrows shoot up in surprise before you squint at him suspiciously. why on earth would he be inviting you?

"and why would on earth would i do that?" you echo.

"to see me, silly constanze. and let me prove that i can teach you."

you ignore his use of the mysterious name despite the irritation flooding through you, simply rolling your eyes as you shake your head.

"not a chance, i don't feel like getting rendered unconscious. and i don't even wanna learn."

"but your friend's are coming too," he says and your eyebrow raises again because that's news to you; but then you think he may be using that as bate for your interest.

"they would never," you spit, as if they don't fawn over them constantly before and after practice. and the smirk on his face is like he knows it, too, all smug and teasing and you think it's about time to get the hell away from him.

"i'm leaving," you bluntly state, "good luck on friday. you'll need it." you hear him laugh as you turn around coldly, taking three steps before you hear

"i won't, i'll have you there."

"no you won't!" you shout before starting your music and trying not to focus on your aching feet.

"because you wouldn't!" your friend whines to you after your friday practice, "that's why i had to spring it on you, like, right now, in this very moment."

and damn yeosang who was very much correct when he said your friends were going to the competition because the second your teacher left, she ran up to you with puppy eyes and a small smile begging you to join her.

"everyone else is going, you don't need me!"

"but you're my best friend, y/n, i want you there," she whines before looking side to side and whispering, "i want you to meet wooyoung."

"who the hell is-"

her hand covers your mouth before you can get the name out, her eyes bulging and you feel your eyebrows furrowed in confusion.

"don't talk so loud," she whispers, "i don't want everyone knowing i like him."

"something tells me you make it very obvious," you say the second she removes her hand from your mouth.

"ugh, see, that's why i need you there!" she says while perking up, "so you can stop me from becoming an obvious, flustered mess. what if i blurt out about ollies to him."

your cheeks heat at the memory of yeosang's teasing and you let out an annoyed huff. because you know she won't stop until you say yes and she is one of your best friends and you truthfully just want her to stop looking at you with her borderline creepy puppy eyes.

"fine," you huff out, "but you're buying us food after."

"yay, yay, yay, yay! okay, deal, perfect, let's change!"

and with that, she runs off into the hallway to change and you know with absolute certainty it probably took her an hour to pick it out. like how nearly an hour later, you're sitting on the uncomfortably hard bench with far too many people shouting and whooping like this is the damn super bowl.

you look at your friend in annoyance who's just bouncing in her seat excitedly, her eyes roaming the boys lined up near the ramps until you see them light up.

"there he is!" she whisper-yells to you and you crane your neck to look at the group.

"which one?"

"the hot one! with the dark hair, in the red plaid. next to- omg, he's next to your man."

"shut your mouth," you mumble but you can't even lie that he's looking extra good today, sporting a burgundy beanie with black jeans and matching converse. he really looks like the embodiment of a skater boy, the most unfortunate tragedy being how annoying he is the second he opens his mouth.

his eyes graze the onlookers and you watch him do a double take when he sees you not only in the crowd but looking his way, a wide smirk covering his face as he waves at you. you shake your head, pointing to the girl next to you and squinting your eyes.

he squints his own back at you, nodding his head sarcastically before throwing you a wink and walking off with wooyoung to the top of the ramp.

an annoyed huff leaves your mouth, turning your head to see the dreamy look in your friend's eye. "okay mrs. obvious, calm it down," you hiss lowly, suppressing a laugh when she shakes out of your lust-induced gaze.

"who's obvious? obvious about what? their love and affection for wooyoung? nope, not me."

you can't help the laugh that rings out of your mouth now, pushing her lightly before someone welcoming guests and announcing the events into a loudspeaker cause to smirk at your friend.

"they're kidding with this loudspeaker, right?"

"sh! it's a sporting event."

and like a sporting event it was, the crowd cheering during their favorite skaters or "oohing" at the rare occasion when one would wipe out. and even you have to admit this was exciting to watch. how freely they throw themselves into the air, how smoothly they'll land on the moving boards and flip their bodies in ways that truly look like it should end in disaster.

when the voice on the speaker booms "kang yeosang" the cheers pierce your ears and you look around in surprise at the clapping and wooing crowd. they get considerably louder when he appears at the top of the ramp and you snap your head back around to see him craning his neck side to side before plopping his board down and adjusting his two feet.

you watch his fluid movements the second he starts, balanced and sharp as he dips down and then flings himself all different ways and soars into the air.

you find yourself flinching when he takes a particularly steep turn or deep dive, feeling shocked and impressed when he lands it each and every time. you don't even realize how much time has passed until he's done, standing back on the ledge holding his board up and shaking it side to side as his chest heaves in and out.

the audience is clapping, yourself included and you see him point out into the crowd before stepping off just as the name "jung wooyoung" is called out. the figure next to you jumps up, her squeals piercing your ear and successfully doing the job of snapping you back to reality. 

you halt your clapping hands, tugging her down by the arm with a chastising tone.

"you're so embarrassing, stop it," you say through gritted teeth but she only shrugs you off, wiggling in her seat happily as her eyes zone in on the boy. you watch too and if you realize you're not quite as interested in watching him, you'll never admit it.

"congratulations, wooyoung!" you friend squeals when you find him and a group of boys towards the front entrance of the park afterward, "you were amazing!"

a big smile covers his face upon seeing her and you'd be lying if you said it didn't make your heart soar; perhaps he likes her as much as he likes him...

"thank you babe," he says and you try not to scrunch your nose at the term of endearment.

"i was so scared when you-"

"and look who decided to show up, after all," you hear a teasing voice say from behind you. you spin around and roll your eyes at the boy skating up to you holding a first place trophy.

"by force and harassment, don't flatter yourself," you say, eyes roaming the metal in his hand and he smirks.

"told you i was good."

you purse your lips to the side because you can't deny it now, after watching him and genuinely being impressed.

"well pardon me for my hesitance after you flung that deathtrap at me not once but twice."

"only a deathtrap if you don't know what you're doing," he say, rolling the board under his feet, "which is why we gotta schedule your lesson now."

a shocked look crosses your face, eyebrow raised skeptically. "oh, i didn't realize you were so booked and busy."

a cocky smile crosses his face as he cooly responds, "well didn't you hear all those cheers for me? i have a lot of fans."

your face pinches into one of disgust because you had realized majority of the yells were those of females.

"well, then let's not waste a highly anticipated lesson on someone who doesn't want one in the first place."

he hops off the board, sauntering towards you and turning his head to you.

"but i insist," he says, that signature smirk crossing his face, "it's the least i can do for my good luck cha-"

"ay, yeosang! let's go!" wooyoung yelps before eyeing you and a smile covers his face.

"you must be y/n! are you coming with us? i'm wooyoung, if you didn't know." 

you turn your neck to the side to see your friend with a big smile on her face and you don't think her body's stopped wiggling since you guys got here. she nods her head frantically, failing her hands in a 'come on!' motion and you plaster on the fakest smile you can muster.

"sure, thank you for inviting me," you say through gritted teeth, meeting the boy’s gaze before snapping back to your friend mouthing the words 'you owe me.' you watch the two take off, his arm thrown happily around her shoulder as she observes his second place trophy in fascination.

"you wanna see mine?" yeosang quips, holding his out in excitement but you can only roll your eyes. you side-eye a group of girls lingering next to you, pretending to plan for their next event or look at their phones when you know damn well they're trying to sneak a peak at the kang yeosang.

"i think there's others far more interested," you quip before turning around to catch up with your friend; you hear the familiar sound of a board clattering against the ground and rolling after you seconds later.

the four of you end up walking to a nearby diner, 50s inspired with red leather booths, a black and white checkered floor and elvis presley currently singing through the speakers about a devil in disguise. you were given the spot next to yeosang, listening to him and wooyoung banter back and forth about their performance.

"maybe if you didn't almost eat shit, you'd have this!" yeosang teases, patting the trophy next to him while taking a sip from his chocolate shake. 

smug and cocky from his win, it felt really good to see wooyoung put the end of his paper wrapper in his straw and blow it towards yeosang; but it felt even better when some excess of his vanilla shake went with it, promptly splattering all over the boy's face.

and yeosang really wishes he could've gotten mad but your soft giggle of a laugh just left him cursing playfully at wooyoung, wiping his face with a napkin before the waitress places your food down.

he wishes he heard you laugh more often.

you pick at your salad with your fork, letting out a quiet sigh as you smell the salty fries and burgers wafting around you. but you know the wrath of your dance instructor and most importantly, your mother, would not be worth the taste of any food.

yeosang watches you from the side of his eye pick at your meal, finishing just his burger before promptly shoving his plate next to you.

"eat."

you turn your head to look at him with hard eyes and furrowed eyebrows.

"what?"

"eat," he says, pushing his own plate until it hits your arm. but you only shove it away with your elbow, sticking your fork through a piece of lettuce and popping it in your mouth.

"i have my own food, but thanks."

an annoyed huff leaves his mouth, eyeing you seriously and you turn away from his gaze so the unfamiliar feeling of nervousness doesn't creep up on you. and then, as you open your mouth to eat another piece of lettuce, you feel the saltiness of a french fry graze your lip.

you knock your head to the side but he only follows, placing it further into your mouth. you chew the food and resist the urge to groan out in pleasure because it's been so long since you ate food like this.

but you're taught to use food as fuel, the fuel being in protein and greens and fruit and healthy fats; you know for a fact the amount of salt on this potato would not be mom approved.

"yeosang," you growl and he raises an eyebrow at you.

"constanze."

you hear the faint confused voice of your friend sitting across from you, "did you tell him that was your name, y/n?"

"no," you growl, side eyeing the boy who's holding out another french fry with a stern look, "he insists on calling me that and i don't know why."

"what an odd name for him to- wait, mozart! his wife's name was constanze!"

you fully turn to stare at the boy whose mouth is now quirked up into the biggest smirk on his face.

"it appears you're not the real priss of your group, y/n. now that is shocking."

"you are so dumb, why do you even know that," you hiss at him, smacking his arm lightly and ignoring how nice his voice sounds saying your real name, "and i wasn't even listening to mozart!"

his laugh rings through the air and you huff before attempting to turn back to your food. but his pushy, annoying, obnoxious self shoves his plate to you again and you'd scream at him if you weren't in a public setting.

"you really are such a-"

"i can't sit here and watch you pick at your food any longer," he tells you and you're surprised to hear his voice laced with the smallest hint of concern, "just eat some fries."

you meet his gaze and see they’re surprisingly soft, no hint of his usual teasing or judgment, and you sigh before snatching one up and putting it in your mouth.

"happy?"

"very," he says, smiling down at you and you ignore the way it makes your heart feel light and fluttery when your eyes occasionally meet.

but that light and fluttery feeling quickly fades away by monday. because when your mom said she’d pick you up from practice for once, you knew she had to have ulterior motives.

"hi, mom," you chirp the second you get in the car and she smiles softy at you. but there's a forced, stiffness about it.

"i checked your log before," she says before even a greeting and your face immediately drops; she makes you keep a log of your weight and hours put into practice every week.

"two pounds, y/n?" she asks and you just knew you shouldn't have put that in there. "what's that about?"

your swallow nervously, shame running through you as you tuck your head into your chin; perhaps you had ended up finishing all of yeosang's fries.

"i'm not yelling at you, dear, i just...what is that about? you know gaining weight isn't good for-"

"i know, mom," you snap, irritation running through you at the fact she thinks dear is gonna lessen the blow, "but it's only two pounds. i probably just burned it off at this practice."

"i hope so," she hums, staring up at the building and smiling softly in remoteness. "you have to work hard, every second, mind and body. you remember that, right? but especially what you put in your body and what you put-"

"on the floor mom, yeah, i know."

she lets you sit in silence for a few moments, making no attempt to put the car into drive and you look up at her curiously. 

and then there's something in her gaze, in the way she didn't tell you to put your seatbelt on or make any moves to put back on the sunglasses perched on her head that you just know what she's about to suggest. 

so before she can, before she can hurt your feelings and spirit anymore, you say the words she's thinking.

"i'll walk home," you say shortly, open the door and slamming it after you jump out, “work off some calories.”

"that's a good idea, y/n," she says before trying to soften her own guilt and be a good mother, "but are you sure? your feet must be in pai-"

"i'm sure, see you at home," you say, tears pricking behind your eyes and you quickly walk to the crosswalk so if they do happen to fall, she doesn't see. you wait for the walking man, hearing the sound of your car driving off and it's like you don't have any strength in your body.

in an effort to not completely break down in public, you walk around to the side of the building where you sometimes have outdoor practices when it's especially nice out in the spring. you open the squeaky gate and plop down against the wall, bringing your knees up and burying your head in your arms to cry just for a second.

cry because your feet and body are always in pain, cry because you're deprived of flavorful food and have forced yourself to pretend it's because you like it, cry because your mom, the person you do all of this shit for, just called you out and made you feel so incredibly shitty for gaining two pounds on your already slightly underweight body.

"y/n?" you hear and your head snaps up, hand moving to wipe your wet face quickly; but you know he already saw what was happening.

"please not now, yeosang," you beg, voice wobbly and wet and you close your eyes when you hear the squeaky gate open.

"what's wrong?" he asks, kneeling down in front of you and turning his head to the side questioningly. 

you hesitantly meet his gaze and a frown immediately covers your face when you see his eyes roaming over you with true, real concern. and you don't know if it’s that or the dozens of other factors but it causes the tears to leak from your eyes again, face crumbling before you quickly bury them back in your legs.

"please leave me alone," you cry out quietly.

"i can't do that, y/n," he says and you feel his warm hand graze your bare leg after a few moments, his thumb gently rubbing over your skin and you don't even try to fight it. 

because you think you need the slightest bit of comfort and affection right now, even if it’s him. and he does just that the whole time without uttering a word, plopping down on his butt after the squatting position burns his legs.

you look up after you feel like you've drained all your sad and frustrated and pain-ridden sobs out and he pouts after seeing your red, tear-stained eyes and puffy cheeks.

"will you tell me what's wrong if i ask again?" he asks softly, bringing his hand from your knee to your face to wipe at the excess tears under your eyes.

"no," you squeak and he swallows the lump in his throat but nods his head regardless.

"okay."

you bite your lip when you feel it start to tremble again, maybe at his understanding, and his eyes immediately move down to your lip, swallowing again when he notices the tremor.

"was that...can you at least tell me...was that your mom?" he asks, moving to wipe the tears off the other side before retracting his hand.

you sniffle, leaning your head back against the brick and nodded your head silently.

"yes, that was my...lovely mother," you say and you can't help the bitterness in your tone.

he nods his head understandingly, still roaming your puffy eyes and sad face as he finds himself saying, "parents suck."

a small humorless chuckle leaves your mouth as you nod your head against the wall, lips pursed to the side as you bite the inside of your cheek.

you two sit there silently for who knows how long, long enough for the ice cream truck to make its rounds around the park three times and then for most of the chatter coming from it to simmer. your eyes had been grazing each other ever so often, but most of the time missing each other.

because when you would look at him, you saw him staring off outside the gate absentmindley, like he was reliving some kind of memories.

and when he would look at you, you were watching your finger trace the concrete underneath you and his stomach sank at the thought that you were practicing parts of your routine.

so that's what urges him to get up abruptly, causing you to look up to see him holding his hand out to you.

"come with me?" he asks and you look at it warily before meeting his gaze.

"where?"

"just come," he says pleadingly and you find yourself sighing before taking his hand. he pulls you up gently, interlocking your fingers and you supposed you shouldn't have been surprised when he starts dragging you across the street into the park.

"are you kidding, yeosang," you say but the usual snark in your voice is empty; you just don't have the energy.

he walks you over to his board laying on it's side, kicking it up with his foot and moving so you're standing right in the middle of it.

"get on."

"i don't wanna," you whine, "what makes you think i wanna do this after having an emotional breakdown?”

"just try," he says, "and if you hate it, you can smack me over the head with the deathtrap. payback, right?"

a smile tugs at your lips so you drop your head, looking over the scuffed up board and taking a breath before looking up at him again.

"i'm holding you to that."

and with that, you step onto it hesitantly. one foot, then the other. you shudder slightly, a squeal leaving your mouth as your hands shoot out to grab onto him. a chuckle leaves his mouth at your tight grip and hesitant face.

"that was good," he says and you squint your eyes at him challengingly.

"i can't wait to knock you out."

he attempts to cover his laugh with one of his hands but you quickly reach out and grab it, an appalled look on your face.

"well, don't let me fall!"

"i won't," he says, "let's go slowly."

"i don't think that's a-" a little yelp echoes through the park when he slowly starts walking.

"you're fine, you drama queen," he mutters and a scoff leaves your mouth, "just get used to the board under your feet."

and you do as he says, grounding yourself on the board and familiarizing yourself with the slightly wobbly feeling under your feet. you loop around the park once, your screeches and his laughs echoing during the few instances he let go of your hands.

"alright, get off," he says, both hands still in yours when you get down slowly.

"that was a great lesson, glad we did it," you say sarcastically but he only rolls his eyes, moving his hands down to your hips and turning you to face the front of the board.

"not quite done yet," he says and the way his breath fans against your ear has you biting your lip because whoa, has his voice always been so deep and nice? "put one foot on the board, leave the other one on the ground and just travel slowly."

you huff as you put your feet in the positions, his hands on either side of you but not touching you. you begin to slowly move, your foot on the ground slowly stepping forward; it's slow and basic but you're doing it.

"this really is skateboarding for dummies," you say and he lets out a chuckle.

"alright then mrs ollie, let's see you put your traveling foot on the board."

you roll your eyes at him before stepping three times and then bringing both feet up onto the board. but you quickly wobble, his arm wrapping around your waist before you have the chance to fall off.

"see what happens when you get cocky," he mumbles and you elbow his stomach lightly.

"shut up, i should make you do a grande jeté."

"okay but we're skateboarding right now, not learning french."

you nearly fall off the board again from the sheer power of your laugh, your head leaning to side as it lands on his shoulder.

"oh my, gosh, it's a ballet jump!" you squeal and you only realize how close you are to him when you hear his chuckle right by your ear. you pick yourself up and stay on the board, flustered by your closeness but before you can even dwell on it, his hands are off of you.

"let's try again."

you practice and practice and practice until you're able to fully push off and stay steady on the board.

"yeosang! look! i'm doing it!" you squeal happily and he smiles, humoring you by clapping his hands together for the 8th time.

"you'll be doing an ollie in no time," he teases and you squint at him before getting off the board, turning it around, and charging towards him.

he chuckles seeing you flying toward him, moving to the side and grabbing you by the waist when you pass him on the board.

"ah, stop it!" you screech but your giggling ringing through the air says otherwise. he plops you down in front of him, the sun about to set as the town around you turns quiet. it's like you two are the only ones out right now, with squeals and smiles and laughs filling the park.

"so, am i a good teacher or what?" he asks, eyes teasing as they look at you.

"you're okay," you drag out, smiling softly when he squints his eyes at you. "i mean, good for a first place winner i guess."

his eyes move to your lips for a second, his heart warming at the smile broad on your face and small giggles leaving it.

"you should laugh more," he says and your smile dims ever so slightly as you stare at him blankly. "it's really... it's nice."

his voice is so quiet and soft, it's reminding you of how he comforted you just a few hours ago. you bite your lip ever so slightly, shy eyes meeting his before you advert them down to your sneakers.

"i guess i have only yelled at you..." you say quietly but the guilty amusement in your tone causes him to chuckle lightly. he lifts your face with his pointer finger, his soft smile making your heart warm and constrict like it did at the diner.

"the yelling is fine too," he says, "but i definitely prefer your laugh." you scrunch your nose up at him when his finger bops it softly, turning your head to the side as you roll your eyes playfully.

the quietness between you two is back, not an awkward or tense silence. just a calm, peaceful silence thats making something in you feel so... settled and content. like the last few hours were able to wipe all of your negative feelings from after practice away.

"thank you," you find yourself saying quietly, "i...i was so upset before but you really..you really helped me then and even with this, so..." you fumble over your words, your eyes switching from his to the park behind him back to him as you say, "thank you, yeosang."

he's never heard your voice so quiet and unsure and he thinks he might be crazy for feeling the urge to kiss you right now. the air feels thick and charged and buzzing between you both, all lingering gazes and soft smiles. but he still doesn't. doesn't think it's the right time or place and can't properly gauge if that's something you'd even want right now.

but he does lift his hand to your hair, tucking the slightly sweaty strand behind your ear as he smiles down at you softly. "you're welcome, y/n."

and without much protest, you're back in the park friday after practice watching wooyoung help your friend on the skateboard like yeosang did with you just a few nights ago. your heart warms at the memory, his gazes and soft, warm touches and the way you see how he's nothing like the obnoxious punk you first accused him of being.

you sit on the bench with your legs crossed, watching him show a group of young boys (and to your pleasant surprise, three girls) the safest way to attempt to ride down the railing of the three-stair drop in the park. 

you watch as the kids look at him in amazement, clapping their hands and whooping every time he lands it. he watches them attempt it with a guarded gaze, his eyes flicking to you every so often and you either nod your head at him or wave at him with your fingers and a small smile on your face.

your smile drops a few moments later, however, when you watch his skateboard wobble on the rail, promptly sending him flying off as he lands right on his shoulder. you shout his name in surprise, making your way into the circle of kids surrounding him and bending down to look at him.

luckily, he was wearing a helmet for once and there's only the slightest presence of a pained sneer on his face.

"jesus! are you okay?" you ask and soon enough, you see the huge gash start to ooze blood.

"i'm fine," he grunts out, "see what i did there kids? definitely don't do that!"

"does anyone have a tissue or napkin?" you ask and a little girl with long hair tied in a ponytail fishes one out of her pocket. "thank you."

you hold the tissue to his shoulder, cringing when you see how deep it is as you help him to his feet. he snaps off his helmet, twisting his neck to the side and you hear a crack.

"oh my, god please tell me your neck is okay," you breathe out in a panic, "neck injures can be potentially-"

"i'm fine, y/n," he says and you could smack him if he wasn't already bleeding at the amusement in his tone.

"you're bleeding through this pretty damn quickly for someone who's fine," you snap, holding the red tissue, "come with me."

you drag him across the street and up into the dance studio, plopping him down on one of the folding chairs before hurrying into the back office where your instructor keeps the first-aid kit. you quickly get to work, apologizing softly when you dab at his wounds with alcohol before smoothing over an antiseptic cream and large band-aid.

"are you hurt anywhere else?" you ask and he shakes his head, leaning back on the chair and tapping his arm lightly.

"all good now, thanks to nurse y/n."

you roll your eyes at him, throwing the wrapper of the band-aid at him before sauntering back into the office. you come out a few moments later to see him in front of the mirror, his hand running over the bar before he stands in front of the window. he can hear the bustling of the boards and wheels on concrete, smiling when the kids land a trick and cheer in unison.

"see, we hear all your punk nonsense," you say teasingly and he turns around with a smirk on his face.

"punk nonsense that you're a part of now."

"oh please, i can barely turn around on the deathtrap," you say as you walk up to him, catching both of your appearances in the mirror and it's a little surreal that he's here with you right now.

you had convinced yourself you hated him the second you saw him, heard him, not even knowing him but having an irrational dislike flood through you just at the sound of his wheels on the sidewalk. and now you can't tear your gaze away, swallowing nervously because you think you might like him a little bit and you have to get out of here.

he turns and his eyes meet yours through the mirror, smiling when he notices the pink blush covering your cheeks.

"we should go ba-"

"now wait a minute," he interrupts, grabbing your hand the second you try to walk off, "aren't you gonna teach me how to dance."

he pulls you further into him and you swallow the nervous lump in your throat. why are you all the sudden so nervous and warm?

"you can't when you're injured," you say, rubbing over his band-aid and inhaling sharply at his warm, exposed skin.

"i am not injured, y/n," he says teasingly, "come on. show me a little something."

you squint your eyes at him, cursing your heart that's starting to pick up and you let out a huff.

"do that french shit."

and because you're completely under his spell, you shake your head to lessen the laugh rumbling through your chest and proceed to walk over to the other side of the room.

"move back, i don't wanna hit you."

you take a deep breath and position your feet on the ground, extending your arms into fourth position before raising your leg and taking a deep breath. then, like you're basically permanently ingrained to do, you leap into the air. your other leg quickly follows, both of them now in a full, airborne split before landing securely on your feet and into the finishing position.

you take a breath before turning to yeosang who's looking at you with his mouth in a small o, surprise and admiration in his eyes.

"that was...i was...you're amazing."

a humorless laugh leaves your mouth, rolling your eyes at him as you shake your head.

"that's a simple ballet jump," you tell him and he looks at you with a hint of disbelief.

"nothing about that looked simple."

"that's because you're a measly skater boy," you tease, walking up to him and poking his chest lightly.

a small chuckle leaves his mouth, grabbing your hand before you can take it back and intertwining your fingers. "you did tell me early on that ballet takes a lot more skill."

a guilty smile makes its way on your face and he smirks upon seeing it. "it's okay, perhaps you were right."

"no," you say softly as you shake your head, "watching you fling yourself into the air made me nervous and impressed even when i hated you."

his eyebrow raises ever so slightly, his hand tightening in yours as the other one makes its way to your face. "yeah?" he muses, moving over your cheek gently, "and now you what? like me?"

your mouth snaps shut and you feel your cheeks grow red. you hadn't even meant to...confess like that but you're just feeling so...overwhelmed and warm and surrounded by him for some reason.

maybe because he's in your space, where your mind was secretly already plagued by him. 

or maybe because there's something about seeing both of your reflections in the mirror, seeing how his eyes rake over your face and body and how you look standing pressed up to him, how you now look with him bending down and bringing his face closer to yours.

"i...i didn't...i-"

"i hope so," he mumbles lowly, his hand moving to tuck your hair behind your ear so he can whisper, "because i think i like you."

you let out a breathy exhale, the feel of his body pressed up against yours and his hot breath in your ear causing you to shudder against him. he takes your strangled breaths as confirmation back, his chest warming and a smile on his face; but he wants the words from you.

he hums lowly in your ear and it causes you to press yourself just a little bit more into him as you mumble, "i like you too."

he pulls back to see your flushed face and roaming eyes, adams apple bobbing as he tries his best to control his fast approaching arousal. but when your gaze meets his lips, it all goes out the window. the hand grasping yours moves to your face, both now cupping your cheeks softly and as his brings his lips down.

but before they graze over your mouth, he mumbles a deep "can i kiss you?" and it's all the motivation you need to pull him into you.

your lips collide and part on one another, your hand reaching to brush through the back of his hair as he slips his tongue in your mouth. you stumble around the floor for no other reason than your need to kiss and tongue ever part of each other's mouth is overwhelming the both of you, teenage hormones and pent up frustrations and emotions being poured into one another.

you feel yeosang move you until your back hits the bar, his hands running down your body until his hands land on your hips. he squeezes them softly, breaking the kiss to get air before his wet lips meet your neck.

"i wanted to kiss you when i first met you," he mumbles against your skin, "but only because you were such a brat. had so much shit pent up, didn't you?"

you bite your lip to hold back a moan, his voice and words quickly sending sparks through your body. you hadn't expected him to be like this during....

"but i have you quiet now, it seems," he says and you feel his smile against your skin. "i saw you watching us in the mirror."

your eyes widen and cheeks flame even more; you were hoping he wouldn't notice but you were kind of openly gawking.

"i-i'm sorry," you say and you're not exactly sure why you're even apologizing, "i don't know, i just....like seeing you. us."

he presses his hips further into you, finally letting a moan escape you at the feel of his bulge against you. you grind yourself further into him and he hisses, gripping your hips roughly before dragging you back towards the middle on the furthest side of the mirror, strategically away from the window.

"can i try something," he mumbles as he moves to stand behind you, "i want you to watch."

"i..o-okay."

"if you want me to stop, say the word."

and with that, your eyes bulge and wetness pools as you watch him run his hand along the side of your body. his hand grazes over the side of your boob, moving to palm you until your nipple hardens under his touch and he slips into your shirt. he groans quietly in your ear when he feels your skin against his hand and you throw your head back onto his shoulder.

"yeosang," you mumble but then he quickly removes it and you let out a tiny groan.

"eyes in the mirror or i'm not doing anything."

he wishes he could kiss the pout off your face when you look back up, glossy eyes meeting his in the mirror as you cock your head to the side. "more, please."

and more he does, his hand back in your shirt tweaking at your nipple before he quickly starts work on the other one. he continues to hum in your ear, praising you when your moans echo throughout the studio and you push back onto his growing bulge.

but it's when his hand snakes between your thighs and you have to watch as he rubs over you that you really start to lose it, cry out his name and feel your legs start to wobble as you see the way his hand strokes you over and over and over again.

"yeosang, please," you whine and his smile at you through the mirror is nearly sadistic, so far off from the fun, teasing, cool-tempered boy you've come to know.

"please what, baby?" and your stomach swoops because that's the first time you've heard those words leave his deep voice.

"i...i don't know, just..." your eyes roll back and the second he sees they’re not focused on the mirror, he pulls his hand away.

"yeosang!" you whine, your eyes popping open immediately and craning your neck to look back at him. but he bumps his hips into the back of yours, holding you against his body so you don't fall forward as he grabs the waistband of your shorts.

"you know the rules, you priss," he bites and you can't believe how quickly that name changed from irritation in your veins to wet arousal pooling in your underwear.

"i'm sorry," you whine and it's all he needs to dip his hand into your shorts, sinking his hand down to rub the wet patch on your underwear and you moan out at the feeling.

"you're so wet, baby," he muses in your ear, "this is all for me, yeah?"

"yes," you moan out and you're so tempted to close your eyes at how good it feels.

"you've been so good for me lately," he hums, slipping passed your thong and hissing himself when he feels your wet arousal on his fingers, "but i have to make sure you keep being good."

"yes," you moan out again and your knees nearly buckle when you feel him brush his finger across your clit. "oh my, god." your breathy whines fill the room and it's enough for him to quicken his pace, flicking and toying at your clit while one hand holds your waist because he feels your legs shaking in front of him.

"yeosang, oh..oh, my-" a loud moan leaves your mouth and your head dips back for a second before you quickly fling it forward, eyes half open as you watch him his hand move in your shorts and his mouth by your ear.

"you feel good, baby? like seeing me with my hand in this pretty pussy?"

"yes," you moan out, "yes, yes, yes." and you moan it like a mantra. a mantra that only gets louder when he pushes his finger into your tight hole, moving in and out and making you feel full as he rubs over your clit until a tightening in your lower half has your legs vigorously shaking under you.

"yeosang! fuck fuck, fuck! i think i'm gonna-"

and before you can get it out, your eyes shut and moans leave your mouth as you come apart from his fingers, your eyes desperately trying to stay open just in case his rules still apply and he takes away the best, most intense orgasm you've ever felt in your life. 

your legs are shaking and you would've collapsed right on your knees if yeosang hadn't tightened the arm around your waist, holding you flush against him and even in the middle of an orgasm, the feeling of his hard cock against you has you wanting to do more.

only the sound of your harsh breathing can be heard in the room after a few moments so he pulls his hand out and guides you around to plop you down in the chair a few feet away. you stretch your legs out, leaning your head back and holding your hair away from your sweaty neck. 

he smiles at the sight of seeing you fucked out from just his fingers, resisting the urge to make you watch him taste your arousal; but he thinks that may be a little too much for you right now; he also needs to calm down the raging boner in his pants.

your head flings back up a few moments later, vision a bit hazy and your legs tingling but the smile on your face almost immediate.

"hey there, baby," he says and your smile widens because you hope that name is here to stay. "so the ballerina has a mirror kink, after all."

a choked laugh leaves your mouth, embarrassment flooding through you as you cover your hands over your red face.

"stop," you whine, "i....i guess we just confirmed that one," you mumble and you hear his chuckle fill the room as he bends down. he places his hand on your exposed knees, kissing both of them before squeezing softly.

"you good?"

"i'm great," you assure before looking at his face, "but wait...don't you need to...?"

"i'm good," he tells you, his soft smile an indication he's telling the absolute truth, "i think i wanna take you on a date before we do that again."

warmth and excited butterflies run through your stomach and chest, a small, sweet smile covering your face.

"really?" and he can't help but laugh at the sweet, almost disbelief in your voice.

"what the hell, did you miss the part where i said i liked you?"

you purse your lips to the side, shrugging your shoulders teasingly.

"i don't know...a lot did just happen," you say, "like i found out about my mirror kink."

a snort leaves his mouth, looking back and waving at you through the glass with a wink.

"we got tons of time to find out more of your kinks," he promises, "but for now. a date. how's tomorrow?"

"tomorrow's great," you say and he stretches up to place a chaste kiss on your lips before pulling away and admiring your smiley, pink-tinted face. he watches as you look back at the mirror, your eyes lowering until another embarrassed laugh bubbles out of your mouth.

"what?" he asks, humor in his tone.

"i just...i don't know how i'm ever gonna look at this mirror the same."

[shineonyoucrazyyandere]

So like, maybe a Yan!Yoshikage Kira who somehow can't bring himself to kill his s/o, so he just keeps them for himself insted?

I’m so sorry for the radio silence, I haven’t really been in the groove to write as of late. I went for the angle of an attempted look of self discovery of his twisted obsession. Uh besides the hand fetish! Anyway I hope I wasn’t rusty with writing this...

Yandere! Yoshikage Kira unable to bring himself to kill his s/o

     It should’ve been a simple task to throw another person’s life away for the possession of their hands. Not once before had he had a single ounce of remorse as his victims mouths opened agape in terror of disintegrating into thin air. Destroying everything except a single piece, akin to cutting an object out of a picture and burning the rest.

 Ending everything was all too easy with Killer Queen, yet he couldn’t will himself to detonate the bomb. Such an ironic thing for a man who wanted to keep his normal life in tact, to lose himself in a person who should’ve been another casualty. Hesitation wasn’t something Kira Yoshikage was very familiar with, if something kept him from sleeping at night he would dispose of that obstacle.

 The blond bit down on his lower lip impulsively, quickly drawing blood from his current state of mind. Your unconscious form lying on his bed, mocking him for his failure into committing another murder. He strode over, after distancing himself temporarily to regain some semblance of composure. The man’s blue eyes immediately fell onto your gorgeous hands. Your fingernails perfectly cut and polished with a clear coat, and skin smoother than velveteen.

  The male recalled seeing these pair of hands of yours stirring a cup of coffee, in one of the cafe’s closer to the heart of Morioh. He had just glanced your way with a small smile on your lips, your eyes firmly concentrated on the hot concoction within your grasp. At the time his immediate interest in your hands was like any other. He just had to get you alone, and promptly finish you off and take what he desired most of your body.

   He had hid himself beyond your peripheral vision, making sure to keep eye contact at a minimum while amongst the crowd. Waiting for an opportunity to pounce and snatch his reward unsuspected. However there was an unexpected bump when one of your high heels snapped, he was unable to approach as a worker rushed to assist you immediately.

  The way you had gasped in that moment had caught him off guard, even distracting him enough from the drivel that spewed out of the employee’s lips. His eyes adverted quickly to your hands, seeing just a few scrapes on your otherwise perfect hands. A flaw on otherwise lavish flesh, but it wasn’t that unsightly.

  You hailed a cab shortly after these events arose, leaving a bitter taste in the serial killer’s mouth. He had no opening to get close to you, it bothered him considerably as he would normally corner a person easily. But it’s not like he could anticipate such an event happening unfortunately.

   There was discomfort swelling beneath his cool demeanor, surely you’d come back around. He was certain of that even with a small hiccup like this one.

 The following few days hit the man hard, as he aimlessly tried to keep his schedule organized as usual. The hands of women around him began picking at the dark desires in his head. Yet he found no motivation to go after any of them, even if they were conveniently by their lonesome. It was strange and frustrating, he couldn’t seem to settle for some reason. He felt as if he was seeking something more luxurious to his tastes. Yet no one he spotted could fit that criteria.

He started comparing their hands to yours he just happened to get a glimpse of. Sure some were moisturized like yours, but their technique wasn’t comparable to yours. Your hands looked different to touch than of those around him. The thoughts of you were becoming invasive to the serial killer. He had to find you and do something about this disturbance that was flowing through his mind. You had thrown out his sense of normalcy even for his darker thoughts.

   The thirty three year old tracked down the cafe you had visited that fateful day for his lunch the following day. However he saw no sign of you within the vicinity. He also did this after work if he could help it, with the additional distance thrown in his search area it practically became a new routine.

  You were the only one that had changed his way of life drastically like this.

The day he did spot you however was a welcome one, he found himself quickly tailing you. Seeking to finally end this tedious game that had tested his own patience.

 On the other side of things, you were content while walking home. After several days of letting your ankle heal after that incident you were happy to return home once again from a long day of work. Your eyes decided to wander, longingly gazing at your surroundings, apartment complexes, and homes alike.

“I’m so happy to be out again, it’s nice to be outside of four walls of my bedroom...” You sighed to yourself wistfully

 A cool breeze hits your face refreshingly, and just for a moment you decide to shut your eyes in bliss.

Only to open them in a panic upon a grip on your shoulder, but the familiar voice of a coworker quickly puts you at ease.

 As if a bitter twist of fate had occurred, there was evident frustration written on Yoshikage Kira’s face. He had thought it would’ve been a good time to strike, but then a woman unfamiliar to himself just happened to step out from another street. He could care less about her in this instance, so he should be able to simply eliminate her quickly before getting to you.

 Yet he found it difficult to approach, he had confidence in Killer Queen but something underlying in his mind was telling him to wait. Conversation, between you and them he would usually not care about. But he was listening more to your end of the conversation. A bag was exchanged from their hands to yours.

 Once separating the blond went on the move, not before doing away with the obstacle that had been your coworker first. As they practically vanish into dust, there’s not a single thought about taking her hands for himself. Something he could easily do and return to a normal life as soon as possible. He didn’t settle for hers however, he refused to for some reason. His issue would only be resolved when he could approach you.

     The sooner he got rid of you, the sooner he wouldn’t have to worry about the image of you, surely. The odd sensations arising in his chest surely would fizzle on their own. It seemed almost too easy to approach you from behind, just one touch and you’d be done for.

   At least that’s how it would typically turn out in theory. 

His stand Killer Queen poises itself to take another life, however not without slight hesitance. As Kira himself thinks of the waste it would be if you were to rot away. There were little options of replacements comparable to you that Kira could easily get away with. This wasn’t quite right to him, it was utter nonsense to his murderous capabilities.     ‘Tch how inconvenient’ He thinks to himself

Killer Queen no longer reaches out to make you into a living bomb, it’s cat like eyes presenting the same expression as its master. 

 A quick witted decision later he decides to interfere with the bag you were currently handling. A small explosion you were unable to hear, incinerated the handles, the bag quickly fell to the ground spilling its contents. You moved quickly to try and keep everything from dispersing until abruptly noticing a man who was fairly close to your proximity.    Your eyes had a little fright in them as the blond leisurely picked up what appeared to be a bottle of hand soap before looking down at your crouched form. 

“Pardon, me I couldn’t help but notice your bag’s handles broke...may I help you?”

  The sheer hesitance written all over your face was to be expected especially with how quickly he had approached you after being so close.    “uhm...sure” You nod ““it would be very kind of you sir”

 His pace is once again composed unlike seconds ago with his hesitance. It was such a strange feeling just being relaxed around you. Still there was an unrelenting fervor to do something, anything really to go back to normalcy.

At least somewhat anyway...

  That was what had lead him to knock you out behind your back. Keeping you against your will right in his own home. 

  All to sort out his turmoil with you as of right now.

 Letting go of your hand, Kira simply stares at you while watching over your body.  “Why do you fascinate me so much....to keep you alive?” He mumbles to himself

  “But I suppose we can both learn why as you start your permanent stay...”

 He taps his fingers softly on the nearby nightstand, looking at the clock.

“For now I best prepare dinner, before I can ponder anything more with you y/n”