#TEN OF THE BEST VOLUME 4

[retrocgads]

UK 1987

#UK1987 #COMPUTING WITH THE AMSTRAD #STRATEGY #ACTION #AMSTRAD #WHEEL SPIN #ICE FRONT #GUNPOWDER PLOT #GALACTIC INVADERS #ROLLABALL #FISHING #EGGSTATIC #CENTIPODS #DIAMOND DIGGER #HUNGRY SNAPPERS #MALTESE CROSS #AYO #AUTOMATRON #FUN FACTORS #OTHELLO #PARTY MACHINE #QUARTERS #ROULETTE #YAHTZEE #TEN OF THE BEST VOLUME 3 #TEN OF THE BEST VOLUME 4

[dashielldeveron]

soulmate trope | shigaraki tomura

Shigaraki’s route of soulmate trope.

"post-canon shigaraki? canon isn't even finished as of when this was posted on 4 january 2024!"

yeah. thank god. gives us time to write our own endings. and obviously i will be wrong about some things. i recommend you read at least one other route, preferably dabi’s, before reading this one. warnings: female reader. manga spoilers up to around chapter 390-411ish, based on language used by others to describe shigaraki and his trauma. bodily consequences to his trauma (some things are intended to read as AFO having forced an ED on shigaraki, but this is not made definitive). sexual content. stalking. gore (in a game). reader is experiencing a type of gifted kid burnout.

~28k

There’s a hentai book lying on your bed.

You’ve never seen it before.

Flipping through it, you winced at the positions the large-titted, ponytailed woman was manhandled into, and though you were frankly impressed that she managed to wear such intricate lingerie underneath her everyday business attire, the protagonist only just got home from work; let her decompress for, like, ten minutes before railing her against the window, please.

Whom did you know who would read volume four of something called GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK?

Unfortunately, you were burdened with knowledge about your friends’ sexual habits, and some of them, therefore, were already ruled out: Shinsou only read erotica because he preferred his own imagination to any images hentai or live-action could provide, and Monoma only read hentai in which the woman’s eyes had hearts in them to let the reader know she’s enjoying it—not to mention Monoma wouldn’t buy a hard copy of it, let alone a story that didn’t have more plot and character development to it. There wasn’t enough drool for Sero to be interested, and the male protagonist wasn’t enough of a twink for Kaminari to project onto, so whose was this?

Moreover, who the fuck would come all the way back to your old school’s campus to break into your room to leave it on your bed? (Shinsou would be your best bet for that part, but whenever he finished a patrol nowadays, he went directly to sleep, and his and Monoma’s flat was across town.)

You cat, Dango, jumped onto the bed, slithering up next to you and bumping her head on your elbow affectionately.

“Is this yours?” you asked her, and she sniffed the book before climbing into your lap.

You tossed the book aside to pet your cat with both hands, and you resolved not to think about it any longer, even though the cringy way the mangaka depicted the female orgasm was burnt onto your brain.

***

Hopping to put your heel back into a ballet flat, you held the phone between your ear and shoulder while you struggled towards the lift. “I’ve got to cancel on you, Ochaco,” you said, flipping the back of your blazer collar down and adjusting the lapels, “I’m, fuck—I’m not gonna be able to make it this evening, so just go without me.”

Uraraka sighed on her end. “Okay. I know a lot of us were excited to see you after so long—there’s a card Tsu’s made us all to sign, and everything—but we’ll manage. ‘Spose we’ll just have a routine night at the bar and reschedule when you can make it. I miss you,” she said, “and I’m pretty sure I can say the same for everyone.”

The elevator door slid open, and you entered. “All of you are so clingy. I’ve only been away from the agency for around two months, and you know where to find me.” You mashed the button for the ground floor. “In fact, it’s embarrassingly easy to access me.”

“Well, we’re very busy,” said Uraraka, “People are very eager to conscript us for missions, even if they really could be done by the police. U.A. alumni have somehow upticked in their popularity even more since we graduated—”

“Ochaco, I know. I was there. Allow me to weep for your success. I am playing the world’s tiniest violin.” You shifted your bag’s full weight onto your shoulder and exited into the commons. “But listen. I’ve got to go; I’m running late this morning. I couldn’t find my pantyhose even though I laid them out last night, and they weren’t in any of my cat’s usual hiding places. I had to turn my flat upside down and still never found them.” The outside doors slid open when you approached, and the harsh, morning wind upset your hair on impact. “Give everyone my love, O. Tell Todoroki to smile in his next interview.” Eyes darting across your surroundings for any witnesses, you shrank in on yourself and bit the inside of your cheek. “And tell everyone I’m sorry, okay?”

By the time you arrived at U.A.’s administration building, the wind had been joined by a light drizzle that would probably morph into a storm within the hour, a prediction compounded by a plethora of faculty umbrellas in and beside the stand by the sliding doors. The front office was gloriously vacant, though, so you were able to slip behind the front desk without someone rebuking you for being—you shook the computer mouse to wake it up, the clock popping up in the corner—seventeen minutes late.

(You’d graduated with the rest of the class six months ago, and you’d founded the all-girls agency uptown, with most of the women in the graduating class joining to form an instant powerhouse of the industry.

Founding an agency appealed to a good deal of graduates, but you were the only one to go the distance: you were the one to actually make the calls, fill out the paperwork, get aggravating shit done, and by the time to move into the building, it had pleased you to no end that Midoriya had asked you for help on kickstarting his own.

And then two months ago, you’d pulled off, frankly, what was supposed to be an impossible rescue. For the first time, you were getting enormous amounts of attention, from civilians, from press, from other heroes—and you were being followed, never having more than a moment to yourself—always being watched, either from well-wishers or nay-sayers—and sometimes, the analytical critic, eager to point out your faults in the rescue mission to try to drag you out of the hero scene.

You hated yourself for this, but they won.

Too many expectations. All sinking down on you, as if no other hero existed while the light shone in your direction. [And you hated yourself for even daring to consider this—what reprehensible audacity, but—but was this how All Might had felt?]

You’d had something next door to a panic attack when a convenience store, a regular stop in your weekly routine, filmed your reaction to how they’d auctioned off your signed receipt for over nine hundred thousand yen. Breaking their cameras, Shinsou had to escort you out of there in a rush and call Aizawa for help.

Sobbing into Shinsou’s phone on the soggy concrete of a darkened alleyway, you did something you never fathomed you’d ever do, something you could never see any of your friends ever doing, something that seemed as alien and unthinkable as sticking your hand into a pit of needles: you begged Aizawa to get you out of the hero business.

You’ve been handled with care and relocated into a surprising covert secretarial job in the U.A. admin, Nezu’s logic was that you’d adjust to one person needing you at a time, say, over email or at the desk, and if you only answered the phone with only a shortened version of your name, then no intruding civilian would be the wiser.

The job was easy, anyway. Paid well for what it was, but perhaps that was simply standard for U.A. Nowhere nearly as well paying or exciting as working as a hero, but you were adjusting into mundanity. Some days had stretches of hours in which you didn’t interact with anyone, sitting at the front desk without a task, and you even had a few days in which you’d gone in, piddled around at the desk for your whole shift without seeing another soul, and gone home.

Your friends were always so busy. The two times you’ve been able to meet with them contained nothing but conversation about hero work, or else everything was somehow tangentially related to it, and you found yourself unable to contribute to the conversation. Both times, you’d left early, a little overstimulated, leaving Shinsou to make your excuses.

And Shinsou, bless him. Not avoiding you on purpose. In fact, you knew he’d drop almost anything for you to hang out, but you knew his schedule and how little rest he got. So, it was more of a self-imposed boundary on your side, taking into account that he needed sleep more than he needed to spend time with you.

So, yes, some of it was directly your fault, but you were achingly, astonishingly lonely, with an ever-lowering threshold for tolerance of outside stimulation, ultimately feeling like you didn’t belong here.)

Pens aligned. Coaster. Check the school email for—good, no emails. No voicemail. Get out your planner and write your hours in it to look busy. Hey, your water bottle’s nearing empty; maybe you could go fill it or even waste time brewing coffee. But where’s your work mug? You probably left it on the cleaning rack next to the office sink. You should go check.

“Hey,” said Aizawa out of nowhere, ignoring how you jumped out of your own skin, “Good morning. Are you doing a specific job at the moment?”

You gripped the arms of your swivel chair to ground yourself. Is this a test? “I was about to take a moment to make some coffee,” you said, because never let someone in a position of authority know that you were doing jackshit, “Is there something I can help you with, Aizawa-sensei?”

Frowning, he dipped his chin into his capture weapon, still tucked closely to his neck to shield him from the wind, and he shifted his weight to one leg, his fingers tapping in a ripple on the reception desk. “You don’t have to call me that anymore.”

“I’m gonna,” you said, “How can I help?”

Please don’t need anything. Please don’t need anythi—

“Permission has just cleared for me to assign you a long-term task.”

Shit, you thought, internally wincing at how he used the term task and not mission, as if you’d be plunged into the ice-cold water of a panic attack at the word. The kid gloves that everyone handled you with somehow both ingratiated and insulted you.

“You’ll be paid for it,” Aizawa continued, “and it’s low stakes interaction, not even face-to-face. It’s all online.” Aizawa clasped his hands on the desk and hunched over the top of it, the ends of his scarf trailing down onto your keyboard. “You’ll recall moving some boxes into room 310.”

“Of course.” Early in your first month back at U.A., you’d helped clean out and move some boxes into 310 in the same hall that housed Aizawa, Eri, and now you—you’d unofficially dubbed it as U.A.’s drawer to shove social rejects. “Is someone about to move in?”

“He’s been moved in for a while,” said Aizawa, pulling his capture weapon away from his neck, “Keep all of this quiet. You’re allowed to know because I’ve advocated for you, because I trust in you and in your ability to do this well.” Aizawa paused, the silence dragging on much longer than usual. His eyes glazed over, as if considering how to phrase his next proposal.

You waved your hand, prompting him to continue.

His eyes focused again. “The new person is a ward of the school, but All Might and I are his primary—caretakers isn’t quite the right term, and nor is supervisors, so perhaps it’s better to—”

“No, I get it,” you said, “This person is an adult, but they’re not quite independent. Go on.”

Aizawa paused, brow furrowed just slightly as he scrutinised you again, but he nodded slowly after a moment. “I’ll allow him to introduce himself to you. He doesn’t need me to set up expectations. What’s important for you to know, regarding your own participation, is that he’s very new to the hero scene and is receiving his hero training later in life than usual. He won’t be attending class but will be trained personally by select U.A. faculty, mostly All Might, Nezu, and me.”

“Is he officially a student?”

 “On paper.” Something strange passed across Aizawa’s face, but you couldn’t name it. “Where you come in is his socialisation. He’s spent most of his life in disciplinary isolation. Because of the adults raising him, his instincts trend towards distrust and animosity.”

So, Aizawa wanted you spend time with him until he was no longer bad with people, like spending time with feral cats at animal shelters until they’re ready to be adopted. “So, he’s distrustful. Hostile. Angry,” you said, scratching the side of your head, “Is he—do you think he’ll bring up bad stuff I’ve done to use it against me?”

“He doesn’t know who you are, aside from someone trusted by U.A. with hero experience,” said Aizawa, shaking his head, “and you can choose what information you give him.”

“Does he,” you said, sucking in through your teeth, “Does this guy know about how you’re going about this? I think—wouldn’t he be insulted if he knew about how you’re socialising him like an animal?”

Aizawa looked over his shoulder at the empty office, but he bent farther over the desk and spoke softly, anyway. “Recently, when I was training him at night, he expressed that he never knows what to do when someone wants to talk to him after mission, whether it’s successful or not. He froze entirely when a senior citizen thanked him last week, and that’s when we decided something tactile needed to be done. Since he’s grown used to me, you’re the solution.”

Okay. A volatile man, someone who couldn’t go to U.A. at the average age but for whom Aizawa, Nezu, and All Might were making an exception, even going so far as to personally take him out at night to practise hero work.

Hm. Fishy.

But if the good, good men who took care of you wanted you take care of another misplaced person, then you’re going to do it to the best of your ability.

“I hope I can live up to your expectations,” you said, making a note in your planner, “What am I doing?”

“I need you to learn how to play a video game,” said Aizawa, “and I need you to be absolute shit at it.”

***

For you to help some loser with socialisation, he would be teaching you how to play some janky, twenty-five-year-old MMORPG called Cipherstone—and not even the current, polished version of it; you had to sign up for an account on the version preserving the game exactly as it was in 2007. Nostalgia reasons, apparently.

You nudged Dango out aside to check your bedside clock. The discord call would start in five minutes, and you were making your Cipherstone account, completely unable to come up with a suitable username.

“Don’t connect it to your other online accounts or your actual identity,” Aizawa had said that morning.

Dango’s tiny prance across your stomach was not helping, and you couldn’t use Dango in your username, because if someone knew about your cat (and hopefully no one did, because cats were not allowed in the dorms), then a Dango username could be linked back to the real you. You plopped your head back on your pillow, knocking against the headboard. What’s something that couldn’t be traced back to you? Slumping, you let your head fall to the side and sulked.

The hentai book peeked out from underneath a jacket on your dirty clothes chair.

GinsengTea

That username is unavailable.

Well. You couldn’t use your birthdate as added numbers. You kept typing.

GinsengTea69

That username is unavailable.

You’re not about to try Lustful Ballsack. Maybe if you put aside your secretarial propensity for being correct for a moment.

GinzengTea

Username available!

Oh, thank God. You sorted out your password and started customising your character, though you couldn’t do much with the negative six billion pixels you were dealing with, and oh, is that the noise discord makes for a call? You plugged in your earbuds and clicked the answer button.

“Hello?” you asked into the microphone on your earbud cord, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture of a rotund, cartoon mouse. Username Tenkopeito. Looks like he ran into the same spelling trouble you did.

“Greetings and salutations,” he said, his tinny, rasping, just-got-out-of-bed, gruff-from-lack-of-use voice striking you with about fifty psychic damage, “I am Aizawa-sensei’s pupil, here to teach you about the intricacies of Cipherstone. It will be my pleasure—”

“Cut that shit out,” you said, narrowing your eyes at his profile picture: actually, that mouse was so round because it had just swallowed an enormous piece of konpeito whole, with the little star spikes jutting out underneath its fur. “No one talks like that. You sound fake as fuck.”

“I see,” he said after a beat, tone deflating to sound resigned (and though he’d relaxed, it somehow sounded as if talking this way took more effort, like it physically strained his vocal cords). “Am I not supposed to be nice?”

“You weren’t exactly being nice. You were using a customer service voice—which is being polite, not nice. Not even kind. Politeness is usually some sort of put-on affectation of niceness, forced for the situation. I understand if that’s what you think you need to do when you talk to people as a hero, but in hero work, since the stakes are high, you need to be genuine, or at least sound like you are.” Dango crawled across your stomach again, but you lifted her off before she could settle into a loaf on your keyboard. “In the field, it’s often hard to be kind because of how involved you get as a hero; being kind takes effort and drains you emotionally. Kindness implies there’s some sort of reciprocity, some sort of ongoing relationship. You can choose to be kind if you want, but it may wear on you in the long run. What will probably be healthiest for you, on your side, is if you aim to be nice, meaning being honest in a gentle way, framing situations positively but realistically for listeners. The public doesn’t want to be lied to and told everything’s fine, but telling them the harshness of reality doesn’t go over well. Kills morale.”

“Holy shit.” He was scratching something close to his microphone—it must be a fairly good mic, since you could deduce short fingernails against a dry surface. “That’s…a lot.”

“It is. But you can do it. All it takes is practise, and that’s what I’m here for,” you said, moving Dango from your keyboard again, “And I didn’t mean to overwhelm you with all of that; it just came out—I, uh, I happen to know a lot about the way heroes present themselves.” Swallowing thickly, you ran your tongue over your lower lip. “Why don’t we begin with what you were saying before? But in the actual way you talk, please. You need to be comfortable in your own voice.”

His mic picked up the distant noise of slurping through a straw, against what sounded like the bottom of a metal cup, which clinked when he set it back down. “Have you played Cipherstone before?”

“Total newcomer. Though I’ve seen some screenshots in memes.”

“Cool,” he said in a way that was clear it was not cool, “I can’t add you to my in-game friends list until you get off Tutorial Island. Share your screen with me until then.”

All right. You can be bad at this. You can be so bad at this. “What’s a screen?” Not that bad, idiot! “I mean,” you said, fumbling, “How do I share my screen with you?”

The scratching grew louder. “Bottom left. Screen button. Right click. Share option.”

“Ah.” You should probably lure him into thinking you’re competent while there was a literal tutorial onscreen so that he would be more frustrated with you later. “Gotcha.”

For a few seconds after your avatar popped onscreen for the first time, nothing came through but the 8-bit tutorial music. “Is that what you look like in real life?” he finally asked.

“No,” you said, not exactly lying. The character had her hair down in her face (which you wouldn’t normally do when you were on patrol, since it could get in the way of physical hero work), and, hoping to endear yourself to this weirdo, you’d chosen the sluttiest shirt: while none of the horrible pixelated options showed any boob whatsoever, the poor rendering still managed to convey that the top was off-shoulder. Again, not great for hero work. “In real life, I’ve much, much more panache.”

Another silence, during which you assumed he was looking up the word. “So, you click on the screen to go where you want to walk, on either the overall game interface or in the mini-map in the corner. Your destination will show up—”

“Wait, what should I call you, screwboy?”

“—as a red flag,” he said, frown audible, his rasping voice screeching to a stop the way brakes are slowly applied to the wheels of a train. “Not screwboy.”

“I’m not calling you by your handle. Not only is it cringe, but you won’t have to answer to it anywhere else in your life. If you don’t want to give me your name, that’s fine. I could call you by your hero name, if you like; it’d help you get used to answering to it. But no, I’m not calling you your username,” you said, shoulders slacking once Dango finally settled in a ball at your hip, “Especially since you couldn’t even get the correct spelling of Ten Konpeito.”

“It’s—it’s not supposed to say that,” he said, sputtering with a groan coming in at the end, “It’s a play on my name, and including the n makes it harder to say aloud. I think these things through; I have to be aware of my public image and branding now; that’s the whole point of this stupid—my name is Tenko, you asshole.”

“Oh, you’re gonna call civilians asshole?” You clicked your tongue. “Bad. Bad and evil. Speaking from experience, people don’t like that.”

“Just fu—just click on the map.”

“Fine. But you can’t fool me with your medieval, point-and-click game,” you said, clicking to pick up a fishing net, “Incidentally, the oldest known fishing net is the net of Antrea, crafted of willow and dating back to 8300 B.C.”

Tenko paused. “What would be the socially expected response to that?”

Your avatar fished for shrimps. “Oh, usually people yell at me. Get mad for bringing up total non sequiturs. My friend Bakugou is fond of telling me that I’m a collection of those bottle caps with facts printed on the inside.”

“Would…would you like me to get angry? Am I supposed to? I was under the impression I was supposed to curb my anger. To be nice.”

Your inventory filled with shrimps.

“You only need one shrimp,” said Tenko.

“You’ll thank me when we have food later,” you said, continuing to fish for shrimps.

“It’s the tutorial,” he said, frown creeping into his voice, “You won’t keep any resources from it. You should go chop the tree down to light a fire.”

“Well, hell. I want my shrimps.” You clicked away from the fishing spot and onto a tree. “Nothing’s happening.”

Tenko cleared his throat. “You need to talk to the woodcutting tutor first. She’ll give you an axe.”

“I thought this game had magic,” you said, guiding Dango’s head away from blocking the screen, “Can’t I just get logs with magic?”

“No, it’s—you must want me to get angry. As a test.” Scratching. “Magic comes later. Not for getting logs.”

You interpreted that as a sign to make the rest of the tutorial go smoothly. You followed the instructions for a few silent minutes, proving to him that you could read, and when you reached the end of the tutorial, a wizard teleported you to the crossroads of a town centre.

“Ah,” you said, genuinely surprised as other players’ avatars, decked out in what must be high-level gear, dashed past, “I don’t know where I am.”

“You can turn your screen-sharing off now.” Tenko typed on what sounded like a mechanical keyboard. “I’m over here. I’ve got—by the fountain—white hair, all black clothes. I’m not—there you are.”

Dozens of other players were running past the two of you, the only bare, new players in the area. Tenko’s pixelated avatar waved at you. Cheeky bitch. He’s so poorly animated and so very 2007 that it gave no indication what he could look like in real life. But he’s chosen to have a black t-shirt as his default, so he has to be a slut.

You resisted the urge to ask to feel his pixelated bicep. “You don’t have any equipment. I thought you’ve played Cipherstone before?”

“My main account is max-ed out. I started a new account to grow at the same rate as you. Before anything else, notice where we are,” said Tenko, “We’re in the centre of the city of Renfield. Get familiar with it. Think of it as home. It’s where you’ll always come back to when you get lost.”

It’s a barely animated town centre, with a short path up the stairs to a castle door and a few market stalls split between fountains.

“I have no idea what that means, Tenko.”

“It means that—that,” Tenko said, and stopped.

You couldn’t stop grinning, biting at your lower lip to keep from laughing—he’d let out a flustered huff, sounding a little strangled, because you’d said his name for the first time—and, judging by how long this delicious silence was dragging on, Tenko was probably his given name, not the family name. Beautiful, really, that a guy his age (however old he was, but he’s at least the same as you, since he couldn’t attend U.A. at the usual time) could get this nervous over a woman calling him by his name.

Tenko recovered in a way that showed he didn’t: “It means that you are always able to cast one spell, regardless of magic level,” he said in a rush, “It is a homing spell that teleports you back to this spot, so even if you get lost, you can always get back to Renfield. You can teleport other ways, too, but that’s for another time, and I need a cup of coffee.” He inhaled sharply.

It's only the first day, so you should go easy on him. Let his moment of awkwardness go.

However, Aizawa gave you a mission.

Excuse you, a task.

“Do you plan on getting flustered every time a civilian calls you by name?” you asked, petting between Dango’s ears, “Or are you planning on avoiding as much publicity as possible by being an underground hero like Aizawa?”

“I don’t—they’re not going to—it’s different with you. I can already tell,” said Tenko (you froze, fingers curled into Dango’s fur), “because I’m going to have some sort of working relationship with you. I assume you’re here to stay.”

Putting it that way made your heartbeat throb around your ears. You decided you could ask directly. “Tenko’s your first name, then?”

“Yeah.” He must have covered his hand with his mouth, muffling his voice at first. “But people usually—people have been calling me something else.”

“Then I can call you something else, if you like,” you said, getting back to petting Dango behind her ears and resolving to treat him with the same tenderness—he must need it, since no one in his life knows him well enough to call him by his given name.

“No, I think you should,” he said a bit too quickly, “Call me that. Tenko. I’m tired of that other stuff. Click on something to keep from logging out, by the way. There’s a timer.” Mechanical typing noises. “No, Aizawa-sensei wants me to be better. Of all things, I need to learn to respond to my real name.”

You squinted at your screen, as if the methodical rise and fall of his avatar’s chest could betray how he was feeling. Something had to have happened to this guy to make him feel this way about such a basic part of his identity, to make other people avoid his real name so universally. Aizawa couldn’t’ve have assigned you this task just to socialise him; something else was unfolding here. How did you enter the equation? If you’re supposed to guide someone who’s also lost their direction in life, you’re a hell of a bad candidate.

But what if you fuck up Aizawa’s plan, whatever it was?

Your recent history is riddled with things going downhill. What if you somehow screwed over Tenko? You’d be dragging someone else down with you, down to…the beginning again, a humiliating re-start, back at your fucking school, when the rest of your friends were out living the dream you’d all crafted together, the dream that apparently could go on without you in it.

Well. Enough of that. Distract yourself. Distract Tenko, too. “Got it. I want a hat.”

“What?”

“I want a hat,” you said, clicking the space around the fountain for your avatar to walk, “My head is cold. How do we get a hat? Hats. You should get one, too.”

“Hats. Very well,” said Tenko, clicking to face you across the shitty fountain, “Do you want one that’s purely decorative or one that has some sort of stats? Decorative ones we can get within a minute, with good RNG, by killing goblins across the bridge. There’s a low chance we could get a low-tier wizard’s hat doing that, too.”

“Then it will be a pleasure killing goblins with you, Tenko.”

“Mm,” he said at the back of his throat, “First, we’ll need to obtain some sort of weapons, since bare-handed punching them will take forever. We could either talk to the melee tutor to get a temporary sword or start wi—actually, we should talk to the melee tutor. Melee will probably be the easiest fighting style for you right now, and it’ll be the simplest, since you won’t have to worry about running out of ammunition or runes.”

“Sure,” you said, leaning back in bed, “Do we go starboard or port?”

“You can just call them east and west, y’know. And we go north.”

To be obstinate, you clicked the opposite direction that Tenkopeito was going, and the moment you ran offscreen, Tenko spoke in a low, grumbling voice into his microphone. “No, don’t run away from me. Come back here.”

The rumble in his voice shot warmth straight to your lower stomach, the nature of the encounter between the two of you changing in a second. Your avatar kept running to her destination, your hand frozen and hovering above the tracking pad. You blinked, your throat drying. Snapping back into it, you ran back to Tenko, who seemed unaware of what he just did to you—and he almost negated your arousal in the way he kept talking about sword upgrades and something called RNG.

Uh.

“—now, it’ll take about ten minutes, but it’ll seem like two hours of hard labour. Follow me across the bridge. Follow—there’s a follow mechanic, if you’ll right-click on me.”

Oh, you’ll right-click him, all right. You needed to know more about Tenko—why you’ve been paired off, what Aizawa’s planning for him, what—a tinge of shame soured at the back of your tongue, because what currently gripped you were minutiae: more about him, what he looks like, what he likes, what he does for fun, if you’re…the sort of person he’d get along with in real life, if you hadn’t been forced together.

God, get over yourself. You spend two months away from men your age, and now, you’re thirsting over someone you don’t even know because he said one hot thing. You needed to be socialised—no, stop. This isn’t about you. Stop thinking about what his hands would feel like on you, what he’d sound like grunting into your ear as he ground against you—

“You’ve been quiet for a minute,” said Tenko, slashing the first goblin, “Are you all right?”

A very heroic question when you haven’t been thinking too heroically. The thought of his voice muttering against your neck still grasped you tightly. “I’m having—technical difficulties.”

***

Poking your head outside of your dorm/apartment door, you scanned the hallway for witnesses. You gripped the handle of Dango’s carrier, still hidden behind the door inside your dorm, and you nodded back at her when she meowed at you.

“I know, baby,” you said, listening for footsteps, “We’ll be outside soon enough. Gotta check for people, though.”

Okay, nothing coming. You shifted Dango’s carrier out of your dorm and pulled out your key, sticking it in the lock at the same time as a door opened down the hall.

Too fast—you had to prod her carrier back inside, your foot stuck in the crack between wall and door, just as—as Midoriya strode down the hall. Keys jangling. Civilian clothes (a Froppy hoodie, in fact).

“Oh, hello!” Midoriya only seemed to notice you once you were struggling to close the door despite the carrier being the way, and hopefully you thrust it fully inside swiftly enough for him not to catch the flash of burgundy. He trotted up to you, hands in the pockets of his worn cargo pants. “I didn’t think you’d be around. Do you not have work today?”

Dango meowed mournfully through the door, and you stepped in front of it. “It’s my lunch break. I’m going for a walk.”

Midoriya nodded, and he glanced over his shoulder back to the room he’d left. “Gotcha, gotcha. Good weather for it, especially after that storm earlier this week.” easy smile stretched across his face as he faced you again, but his gaze weighed down on you, as if the number one hero’s attention magnified your failures in comparison to his rise to the top—and the fact that he didn’t mean to pressure you only exacerbated the feeling.

“Uh,” you said, stuffing your keys in your backpack and setting it on the ground, as if you’re not waiting to go back inside, “May I ask what you’re doing here? Don’t you have better—aren’t you busy?”

Chuckling, Midoriya scratched the back of his neck (and oh, in that laughter, he was hiding something). “I make time. I’m just visiting,” he said, jerking his head back towards the end of the hall, “A friend. I want to take care to see him regularly. I didn’t know you lived on the same hall.”

“If you can call it living,” you said, and for some reason, Midoriya frowned, took a step closer to you, and said your name under his breath, eyes fucking wide and too damn concerned for your comfort. Fuck, you only meant to make a self-depredating joke, not make the situation serious. 

“You—you know that you can reach out to us. I mean that. If you’re scared you’re gonna burden any of us—”

You’d squatted down to go through your bag, just to have something to do, to have an excuse to not look him in the eyes. If you were going to cry—which you were not!—then the number one hero’s not going to get to witness it.

“—then reach out to me, at least. I’ve got time, or else I can make it.” Midoriya was kneeling next to you, and you kept your eyes on the inside of your backpack. “If it makes you feel less like you’re bothering any of us, I could check in with you when I come see my friend. I’d already be on campus. I wouldn’t be going out of my way.” He sighed to fill the space when you didn’t answer. “What are you looking for?”

“I can’t find my planner,” you invented, and, acting like you were upset, you zipped your backpack again. “I think I need to go back inside to locate it.”

He shifted his jaw, and he glanced down at your bag and back at you. “Come with me to the vending machines, at least?”

The new symbol of peace, asking to spend time with you. You didn’t deserve it, so you shook your head. “I don’t have much time left in my break. I think I’d better let you go.”

Shifting his jaw, Midoriya tilted his head at you, his eyes glinting. “All right,” he said slowly, “You know yourself better than anyone else. Do what you need to. Rest up.” He started walking backwards towards the stairs. “And I want to see you more—we all do. I’ll see you the next time I come around. Maybe the three of us could hang out?”

“Sure,” you said, shoving your key in the lock to let a thrashing Dango out of her misery.

***

“The church. It’s the one with the altar icon in the minimap.”

You clicked enough so that your avatar would backtrack. “How am I supposed to know that’s the church? Is that icon supposed to be an altar? It looks nothing like an altar. It looks more like a steaming cup of tea.”

“That’s fair,” said Tenko into his headset, “but this is the easiest quest in the game. How are you having this much trouble with it?”

“Oh, stop that,” you said, reaching his character in front of the priest, “It’s intuitive to you because you’ve been playing this for years. Do we kill this guy?”

“What? No. He’s going to give us each the key to a dungeon underneath the church.”

“How can he give us both a key if there’s only one?” You clicked through the dialogue with the priest, and a key appeared in your inventory. “Also, how accurate is this dungeon? Because if this is a broadly medieval game, then the dungeons will be closer to underground bathrooms rather than, like, creepy and wet with shackles and bones. That was popularised by Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe.”

“How the hell do you know that,” Tenko asked flatly, “Ne—never mind. It doesn’t matter. Follow me to the trapdoor outside.”

You did, and it was locked. “Are we allowed to do this?” you asked, clicking on the key and then the lock, “Will we get arrested for trespassing?”

“Wha—no. No, we’re supposed to in order to progress the quest. In fact, our characters do a frankly criminal amount of breaking and entering throughout the game and never get checked for it. Hey, don’t go down there without me.”

Your character had only just gone down the trapdoor, prompting a blackout loading screen, but you popped back up to the surface before you could get a good look around. Your character stood next to Tenko’s, still next to the trapdoor. “What’s the holdup? I thought the only step was to use the key on the door. Did I skip something?”

“No, I—huh,” said Tenko, cutting himself off with a tinge of frustration creeping into his voice, “I lost the key.”

Raising a brow, you tilted your head. “What? How’d you lose it?”

“I don’t know. It was in my inventory one minute, and now it’s not. I didn’t touch it.” His mic picked up light scratching. “You’re not supposed to be able to lose the key, but I guess I can go back to the priest to get another. You wait—”

“Hold up,” you said, brow furrowed, “I have it. It’s in my inventory.”

“The hell? Are you sure it’s not just your own key?”

“Positive. I have two of them now. Same key, right next to each other. Want me to share my screen?”

“No, I—I believe you.” Tenko took a moment. “I’m not familiar with this sort of glitch, where an item from one player’s inventory randomly transfers to another’s. This doesn’t even happen, in my experience, but maybe it’s because this is one of the earliest quests coded into the game. It’s twenty-five-year-old code at this point, and it might have glitched because we’re both trying to perform the same quest actions on the same game tick.”

“Sure,” you said, “So, what do I do? Do I drop the key for you to pick up, or?”

“It disappears if you drop it. Trade me. Right-click, trade option.”

Once the key was traded, the two of you went down the trapdoor and wove your way back into the underground headquarters of a low-level cult, vacant for the moment but with evidence of rituals on the walls and floors, particularly in front of their bloodstained altar.

“Okay, we’re in their headquarters,” you said, making your character walk up the aisle, “What now? Priest guy didn’t give us any instructions.”

His avatar followed you and sat on the only programmed-to-be-sittable seat in the pew, his black cape (that he stole from a highwayman’s corpse) folding under his legs. “Actually, he did. You just clicked through his dialogue.”

“Because you’re here to tell me what to do, Quest Man.”

“Click on the—” Tenko heaved an enormous sigh, microphone sparking. “You figure it out. What’s clickable in this room? What has examine text?”

You hovered your mouse over most of the room, and nothing popped up with the examine option, except for something on the altar. “It’s this weird-looking, severed hand, isn’t it? This thing standing up on a slice of wrist by itself?” Your character walked nearer to it, fingers splayed widely enough to hold an in-game apple. “Weirdest ring-holder I’ve ever seen.”

When Tenko didn’t say anything, you glanced towards his character, but he was still sitting on the pew.

“Is this whole quest a pun? Because it’s one of the easiest quests, so they’re giving us a lot of guidance, so it’s like they’re holding our hands to get it through?”

That broke his silence: he scoffed into the mic. “I doubt it,” he said, “You need to grab the hand for the quest to keep going.”

“Fine,” you said, clicking the hand, and the instant your avatar touched it, a zombie spawned from the altar and began to attack you. “Dude! Did you know that thing was gonna jump me?” you asked, clicking away a few spaces but turning around to stab at it with your stupid bronze dagger, “And you just sat there? You could’ve warned me.”

“I did, and the priest did, and the duke who gave us this quest did. That’s why we went and baked all those pies in your inventory, yeah? For you to eat during this fight?”

Your character kept missing hits. “Yeah, but—like! I didn’t know the fight would be now.”

“Hey, relax.” Tenko’s voice sounded muffled, like his mouth was smushed as his fist dug into his cheek. “It’s only a level 12, and you’re level 9. Not too big of a difference. With your armour and weapon, you out-level it.”

The miss sound effect spoke for itself.

“You’ll kill it eventually. You won’t always hit zeroes, so it’ll pass.”

Though your character dealt her first damage, you frowned. “That’s…that’s actually really good advice, Tenko. The stuff you just said would work well if you were trying to calm someone down—reminding people of reality and emphasising perseverance over luck or natural talent are some of the better ways to encourage people.”

“Is that so,” he asked flatly, trying to put off a yawn and failing, “I haven’t—I wasn’t thinking about hero work. Just thinking about the game.”

“Well, it was nice,” you said, “and it seemed like it came naturally. Mind if I ask if something caused it?”

He yawned again, but he must have leant away from the mic so that you wouldn’t hear anything besides the initial inhale. “Nothing special happened today, but I’m too tired to get irritated. Therapy took a lot out of me today.”

Therapy. Therapy. Okay, so he’s got an official diagnosis somewhere. The word today implies that it’s a regular thing, and for some reason, this session was more intense. Intense emotionally? Physically? What kind of therapy? Well, they offered cognitive behavioural therapy on campus, but considering his non-traditional student status, his might be outsourced. Plus, if you, a former hero but technically a civilian, are being implemented into his care plan without being informed directly—

“You usually don’t go this long without saying some inane non sequitur,” said Tenko, that same, strange scratching picking up on the mic, “Snap out of it. You’re gonna get killed by the easiest quest boss in the game.”

Making an undignified noise, you shook yourself and spam-clicked on a cherry pie for your character to eat until she was healed completely, and then you clicked on the zombie to attack again.

“Why’d you pause when I said therapy? Surprised I’d go? Think that sort of thing is below me?”

“Of course not,” you said, trying to seem like you were focused on the fight so that he wouldn’t get nervous about sharing personal information, “Therapy good. Therapy great. Everyone needs to go to therapy.” Since he appeared to be taking this casually, you could probably ask after the type without it seeming too intrusive. “What kind? CBT? That’s what—”

“You think U.A. would arrange for me to get my cock and balls tortured? That wouldn’t qualify as therapy for me, certainly, and there’s no way that U.A. would pay for—”

“Not fucking cock-and-ball torture, you muppet; cognitive behavioural therapy. The sitting-down-with-therapist-to-talk-about-your-trauma-and-restructuring-the-way-you-think-through-practise type. You fuckin’ pervert,” you said, grinning at his avatar onscreen.

“Good to know. I didn’t know the name for it.”

“It’s good that you made this mistake with me instead of with Aizawa-sensei.”

“He’s probably more inclined towards bondage. Congratulations on killing your first boss,” said Tenko, and you blinked in surprise at your character: you’d defeated the zombie while staring at him. It fell to the ground, dropping bones and some sort of arrows.

“Take those. Check to see if they’re iron or steel. All right, equip them in your ammo slot for now so that they don’t take up an inventory space.”

You did so. “Why didn’t it attack me with the arrows if it were holding them?”

“There’s no logic to it besides that arrows are on its drop table. It’s coded to attack by punching you in the face, which doesn’t involve arrows.”

“Sure. Now, let’s get out of the cult basement; I wanna bake more pies until we can make apple ones. Did you know that the first record of fruit pies was around 1600? That means these fruit pies are anachronistic, since this game pitches itself as medieval.”

“Is that…” The hesitance had you beaming, daring him to actually ask it. “Is that not medieval?”

“Tenko, get your head out of your ass. For reference, 1600 is arguably the year the Azuchi-Momoyama period ended and the Edo period began. The game frames itself as medieval European, and 1600 is hard Renaissance-slash-Early-Modern. That’s Shakespeare times, screwboy.”

Only silence on your headphones. Character still on the pew. You made your character walk over to his to perform the curtsy emote, and in real life, you frowned. “Did I go too far there? Bit too annoying? I’m really sorry if I’m bothering you with this sort of thing; my friends say that I—”

“Nothing’s wrong. I needed a moment,” came Tenko’s voice, quiet and steady, “I could hear you smiling, and it was—it was good.”

Inhaling sharply, you pressed a fist to your mouth. Great. Fucking fabulous. Goddammit, you hadn’t aimed for it to go this way, but were you now the one getting flustered at something as simple as—

“Do most people consider a long pause in conversation rude? Did I fuck up with that?”

“No! No, of course not,” you were saying, trying to recover but still startled at how he was able to flip the vibe of your conversations in so few words, words that seemed so casual to him but grabbed you by the throat/cunt, “Especially since you followed-up with a check-in of how it might be strange; a lot of times, people will be comforted by checking to see if something’s okay with them personally…”

Frowning, you trailed off when another avatar entered the cult’s sanctuary and strode up the aisle. You hovered over the new guy’s stupid frog mask to see his username was Venomothman.

“Fucking great,” grumbled Tenko, “Here comes someone else to break our immersion. Ignore him. I’ll go ahead and fight the zombie so that we can get out of here.”

“The zombie’s dead. You don’t have to fight him,” you said, as Venomothman sat directly on top of Tenkopeito, with both avatars glitching as they took up the same space on the pew.

Tenko made some sort of noise in the back of his throat. “No, I have to kill it, too. It’s like each of us is the only one doing the quest, so in your version, the evil has been defeated, but in my version—it’s this thing called an instance—”

Venomothman: wow a couple questing together

Venomothman: bet ur one guy on two accounts

Venomothman: roleplaying that he can get a gf

The new guy’s in-text chat appeared in yellow font above his avatar’s frog-faced head, and somehow, the boggly, green eyes made his words more irritating.

Venomothman: leave the basement sometimes ya incel

“Some people are assholes recreationally,” said Tenko, making his avatar stand to go to the altar as the clatter of mechanical typing came through the mic, “Let me get rid of this fucking scumba—wait.”

 Venomothman: ur doing too much work to stare at pixelated ass

“Would it be correct for a hero to insult someone online?”

You shrugged, even though he couldn’t see it. “Eh. You’re not on duty, and you’re not under any persona connected with your public branding. I would say go for it, but since you’re trying to be better with people, you may want to practise.”

Venomothman: somehow this is even more pathetic than never knowing the touch of a woman at all

“Then I’ll shut him down. The shit-talking isn’t bothering me so much as his breaking our immersion in the game,” said Tenko, grabbing the hand on the altar to start his instance of the fight, “I’m trying to cultivate a particular experience for you, and he’s a fucker who won’t stop yapping. Give me a second.”

Venomothman: is this what does it for you??

Venomothman: why no response

Venomothman: hard to type with one hand, isn’t it, ******* shithead

You laughed through your nose. “Cipherstone censors the word fuck?”

“It censors fuck; it censors cunt,” said Tenko, avatar casting a weak air spell at the zombie, slowly, slowly draining its health, “Everything else is fair game.”

“Will it censor variations of cunt? Like, if I typed in cuntbag? Or—actually, let’s find that out later,” you said, tapping the buttons on your earbud cord to turn up the volume, “Let’s practise navigating difficult social interactions. What’s our goal here in this conversation? Is it to continue to engage?”

“No.” His spell missed, and the zombie landed a hit on his character, prompting him to eat half of a pie. “It’s to close the interaction. Therefore, I need to say something concise that invites no response, right? I’m assuming that a simple fuck off is unacceptable.”

“You’re getting better at this, y’know?”

“Is that condescension I detect?”

“Only a little.” You slumped back against your headboard and reached for the bottle of water on your bedside table. “Actually—no. No condescension. Genuinely, Tenko, you’re picking up on this stuff easily, and it’s impressive. You’ll be able to walk little old ladies across the street with style and flair in no time.” 

“Hilarious,” he said, voice restrained and tight at the mention of his name (too easy—he gives himself away aurally so freely; who knows what you could read off of him when you had a visual?), “I’m sure no one wants me touching them. Can I—hm.” He sounded like he was pressing his fist against his face somehow. “Why you keep bothering to compliment me? Most people bitch down to me like I’ve spat my own cum in their coffee.”

“Wha—how about because you deserve to be complimented? Listen,” you said, electing to brush over his vivid simile, “Silent admiration rots. By keeping in appreciation or gratitude, you’re not doing anyone any good. Kind regards are meant to be shared. Like, now, if I held back any positive thoughts concerning your growth, then you might not feel encouraged to keep going.”

“Like I’m gonna go around fucking complimenting ev—”

“I’m not saying you have to,” you said, “but consider trying it more often. See if anything turns out better. And be sure to be sincere about it—obviously.”

“This is bullshit.”

“Just consider it. So. What has he told us about himself based on how he’s insulted you?”

“He’s so low-level that it looks like he just created his account. His stats are even lower than ours,” said Tenko, speaking more quickly now that it was a subject he was more comfortable with, unequipping his wand to punch the zombie instead, “But he’s gone out of his way to get the frog mask.”

“His words, Tenko,” you said, unscrewing the cap and doing your fucking darndest to pinch your mouth from smiling at his slight hitch when you said his name, “I’m trying to get you to notice on whom he looks down and what that means for his personal social status.”

“Right,” he said a bit too quickly, a bit of a break in his voice on the word, “He’s debasing me for—oh, you’re brilliant. How the hell do you notice these things? He’s using basement dweller as insult, meaning he considers himself above that. Leave it to me.”

You muted yourself briefly to glug down water; you didn’t know how sensitive the mic was on your earbuds, but considering that you could catch onto Tenko’s occasional rustling of what sounded like plastic bags on his side or typing on his mechanical keyboard, as he was right now, you would prefer not to be emitting the same.

Tenkopeito: Your mom wishes you would come out of your room to talk with the rest of the family more often

You spluttered into your water bottle as the yellow text appeared above his head, and you unmuted yourself. “That is not what I meant for you to—”

“Was I being mean?” The mic caught the creak of Tenko’s chair as he leant back in it, and you could picture him defensive and pouting as he crossed his arms (and it struck you that you couldn’t imagine his face. Grimacing, you bit the inside of your cheek). “I wasn’t being rude. I could be so much crueller, but I thought this would be more of a devastating blow. Living on the same floor as your family isn’t the same as living in the basement, so I’m acknowledging his level of social power while still demeaning—”

Venomothman: i mean you right

Venomothman: lmao how tf did you know it was me

“I think we should log out,” you said, wiping the water off of your chin with the back of your hand and setting the bottle back on the bedside table.

Over Tenko’s microphone, you heard the shrill pitch of a custom ringtone and a startled but violent shuffle at the noise. “Hold on. I’m getting a call,” he said, voice coming through at a distance, as if he’d knocked his mic aside.

“Oh? Who is it?”

It took him a minute, but Tenko eventually replied, “A friend.”

That must be a damn good microphone, because you could still pick up on Tenko’s side of the conversation a few feet away. “Yes, hello?” he asked, a bit more brusquely than you’d heard him before.

“Oh. I didn’t,” he was saying, “How was I supposed to know that you’d—yes, that’s her. The one working with Aizawa-sensei.”

Very nice, you were thinking, as you unlocked your own phone to check your messages. Very good for him to have friends. Not that you would’ve pegged him as the absolute loner type, because he proved to be adaptable and quick on his feet, but since Aizawa’d recruited you for interpersonal help, you’d considered that he may not have friends. So, good on him for having at least one friend, it seemed, who cared enough to create an account on some stupid video game solely to annoy him.

“—cool of you to make an account to hang out with me. Stop fucking laughing; I am trying to be kind to you, shitstain. Okay. I don’t know. I haven’t been in contact with him in the past two days. I’ve been busy. Let me check.” Tenko leant back towards the mic to address you. “Do we have a schedule for the rest of the week? For instance, are we doing this again on Thursday?”

“I thought we were,” you said, scanning your room for your planner so that you could check your calendar, “Did something come up?”

“It’s not imperative that I go,” Tenko was saying into your ear, while you picked up your laptop to walk over to your U.A.-issued desk, “but another friend who’s been out of town will finally be back then. We might hang out.”

“Psh, go with your friends,” you said, delighted that he had more than one (fighting envy that it was so easy for them to meet up), “We can do this another time.”

“Understood,” Tenko said and backed away from the mic.

Venomothman: so have you sucked his dick yet

Tenko’s incensed shout of “Touya!” had you turning down the volume.

Venomothman: not to be the world’s worst wingman, but my dude is packing. and goes commando all the time.

Venomothman: and i would know. “i” sometimes “did” our “laundry”

You: what’s with all those quotation marks

Venomothman: and do you know the last time it was sucked? never

(Fucking hell. This Touya was walking you back into forbidden territory: the sexualisation of Tenko. After that first session, when you’d been turned on by his confident, rumbling voice as he’d given you an order, you’d felt guilty for sexualising him for the rest of the night. It was as if instead of friend-zoning him, you’d sex-zoned him, only able to see him as a sexual person/object. For the sake of your mission task, that felt unfair.

Or maybe you weren’t even sexualising him. Maybe your brain was appropriately interpreting what he’d done as sexual.

Whatever. Something in your gut was begging you not to see Tenko only through romantic or sexual lenses right now, and you couldn’t explain why.

And talking about Tenko’s apparently massive dick was not helping.)

Tenkopeito: Touya if you don’t ******* shut up I am going to tear off your other arm

Venomothman: no need, boss man

You heard Tenko sigh and say into his phone, sounding exhausted, “I’m not your boss anymore, Touya.”

Venomothman: no need, douchebag

***

Draped over the side of your bed, you dangled a shoelace in front of the gap in an attempt to coax Dango out from underneath. “Dango, sweetie,” you said, whipping the shoelace to the side, “Come out here so that I can look you in the eyes. Where is my planner, you whore?”

At a firm knock on your door, you shot up, dropping the lace. “Never mind,” you said, sliding off the bed, “Stay hidden.”

You opened your door on Aizawa, bare arm raised in mid-knock, wisps of hair plastered to his forehead by dried sweat, and a sweatshirt tied around his waist. He took two seconds to look over you before saying, “Get dressed. Civilian clothes. You have three minutes.”

Throwing on yesterday’s outfit, you rushed to follow Aizawa out of the dorm and off campus, nearly stepping on his heels while he wove through night pedestrians, pulling on his own sweatshirt to minimise skin contact once the crowd thickened.

You flipped up your coat collar to sneak a glance over your shoulder. “Is this a test?”

Aizawa combed his fingers back through his hair, gaze straight ahead. “Not for you.”

“Right.” You stepped more lightly, naturally falling back into patrol patterns: noting exits (narrow alleyways favouring the left side, underground into the subway station), checking vantage points (upper-storey windows in the resident buildings, non-industrial rooftops), honing in on light sources (yellow- and LED-tinted streetlamps, ambience from open businesses) and physical presence (close enough to brush shoulders with passerby [putting you on edge, because the slightest touch could be pivotal]). You had to consciously unclench your jaw, body flooded with stress it hadn’t felt in months. Swiping at the inner corner of your eye, you asked, “Does it have anything to do with the guy in the black hoodie and face mask following us?”

Aizawa laughed through his nose, once. “All right, then. What’s that ice cream place you and Shinsou went to all the time? Take us there.”

Bewildered, you changed directions to head towards Nekozawa’s, with Aizawa placing a hand on your shoulder to slow your pace, and by the time you pushed open Nekozawa’s glass door to the glowing, pink parlour, you were prepared to hold it open for your follower in the face mask. You watched his broad back as he ordered some ungodly, radioactive-blue ice cream with gummy bears before retreating to a table outside despite the dropping temperature, and Aizawa gestured you forward so that he could pay for the three of you.

Holding your ice cream, you hesitated at the door, swaying underneath the seasonal cat decorations dangling from the ceiling.

“Go on,” said Aizawa, retrieving the U.A. card from his wallet, “I’ve got to make a phone call, so don’t wait up. Don’t be too harsh on him; we’re here because he did a good job in the field today. Tailing you was extra practise.”

Nodding, you nudged open the door, bracing yourself at the cold, night air, and let it drift shut behind you as you approached the table, the farthest one from the pink lights.

Hood pulled up, Tenko bent over his blue monstrosity, face mask hanging by a loop over his left ear. Scuffing your boots on the concrete to announce your presence, you sat across from him, setting your cup on the cast iron before swinging your leg over the bench. You managed a cursory glance over what appeared to be a sketchbook before he closed it, and once he’d stowed it away, he swopped his spoon to his dominant hand to keep eating.

“You draw, Tenko?” To make him feel more comfortable, you kept your gaze towards Aizawa inside on the phone. “Do you think you’re any good?”

“Not yet. But I’m gonna be,” he said, clicking his pen and clenching it in his left hand, “I’ve got all these fucking artist’s gloves, so I might as well put ‘em to use.”

“Very nice,” you said, nodding, closing your eyes as you dipped your spoon into your ice cream, “But as a reminder, you don’t have to be good at something to enjoy it. I love doing stuff I’m absolute shit at. It reminds me of medieval bestiaries. They didn’t know shit about animals, but, boy howdy, did they have fun illustrating them. Did you know a weasel used to be called a polecat?”

Tenko huffed, his face mask fluttering. “It really is you.”

“Of course it is,” you said, beaming, and for the first time, you looked at him.

Tension flooded your teacup of a body and overflowed into the saucer and onto the floor. Heightened by the cold, a vein on the back of your hand strained and pulsed visibly, and, jaw locking, you lunged over the tabletop to grab him by the shoulders, shaking him.

“What the hell is wrong with you‽” You climbed over the table, pushed his ice cream out of the way (he shot out a hand to save it from toppling off the table, and he ripped off his face mask to set it aside before it fell to the ground), and planted your foot on his thigh and your elbows on his chest, caging him in as you forced him flat on the bench. “Why the fuck are you using your real name in your fucking Cipherstone username, you fucking moron‽ People could fucking track you!”

The man who had been Shigaraki Tomura eyed your fists in his hoodie and then his cup of ice cream. “You didn’t have a problem with it before.”

“I—” This idiot! “I didn’t know it was you. There are a lot of Tenkos.”

“Then there’s my logic,” he said, hands dangling by his sides, making no attempt to touch you—you didn’t know if you appreciated it or not. “I thought you knew who I was.”

“No, I fucking—I would have given you advice that was more specific to you, over the spiel I was giving interns.” Releasing your grip on his hoodie, you sat back up and scooted over on the tabletop. Though you wanted to keep holding him, to hug him after all he’s been through, he probably wouldn’t want that. “I’m—sorry about tackling you. I, uh—fuck,” you said, and, grimacing, you slid his ice cream back to him and reached across for your own, pretending with everything you’ve got that it was perfectly normal that you were sitting on a table next to Shigaraki Tomura, who’s been teaching you to play a video game, who’s apparently living at the end of the hall, who’s decorated his door with Eri’s silver tinsel for Christmas, who’s banned from drinking caffeine, who could rest his fucking head on your thigh if he wanted. Normal. Yeah.

“Again, I’m sorry.”

“You don’t have to keep doing that,” he said, fishing out a gummy bear like you hadn’t lunged at him, “Your reaction was reasonable.”

“It—it wasn’t, really,” you said, laughing nervously, “I wasn’t expecting you. I mean, no one knows what—what happened to you. Afterwards. It was really unclear.”

“It was that way on purpose,” said Tenko, “It was thought to be better to emphasise the total destruction of All for One instead of whatever happened to his leftovers.” He shifted a bear to his back molars to bite into the frozen gummy better. “Nezu-sensei decided it was better to keep it muddled for now.”

Muddled was a good way to put it. There’d been so much chaos at the end of the war that so much never was accounted for. You’d think that the location of Shigaraki’s body would be high on the list, but satisfaction was found simply in the splintered, spectacular remains of AFO. Shigaraki’s name wasn’t cleared, per se, but in the aftermath, Midoriya especially stressed that yes, Shigaraki committed atrocities, but he’d been abused, groomed, and literally bodily possessed by AFO to think that way. Didn’t excuse him, but wasn’t entirely his fault.

The locations of the other PLF members—well, the core of the League, really—were public, if not vague. Spinner was in the States at a rehab that specialised in heteromorph trauma; Toga was at a local women’s facility called Sakura Grove, and Dabi was living with his family—he must have been that Touya on the phone, holy shit.

So, here he was, sitting on the bench at the same ice cream parlour you visited with the same friends who fought him, hunched over in oversized, black clothes you suspected were Aizawa’s, broad shoulders and faded scars out of place in the pink lights, white hair pulled back in a blunt ponytail with his bangs flopping over his forehead, seemingly unbothered by the toe of your boot pressing against his denim-covered thigh.

God. He’s scratched at his neck so much that it looks like he’s been beheaded with a blunt axe.

Tenko’s eyes flickered up to you, their colour deepening to crimson in the tinted lights. “So. You’ve got questions.”

“Are you okay?”

Tenko swallowed with effort, scowling. “Don’t start with a hard one.”

“Right,” you said, throat drying, “Who knows you’re staying at U.A.?”

“Faculty and staff. My therapist. The police force. The ramen shop Aizawa-sensei and I go to. The intensive rehab I was at before. The top of the hero commission. Touya, Touya’s father, Spinner, Toga. Eri and Midoriya,” he said, tongue swiping over his lower lip, “You.”

Somehow both fewer and more than you’d figured. “What exactly…is the situation? Aizawa-sensei was vague.”

“Officially, I’m like Eri: a ward of U.A. My old rehab thought I was good enough to live off their campus, so I’m back here, where I can be watched by people capable enough to bring me down if I go crazy again,” he said, brow furrowed as he traced the side of his cup with his spoon, “I should resent that, but it’s not like I have anywhere else to go, especially somewhere as comfortable as this. This is fucking stupid to say aloud, but fucking—fuckin’ All Might is the closest thing I have to family now, along with Midoriya.”

“I’m not following.”

“My grandma was the holder of One for All before All Might had it.” He pointed at you with his spoon. “So you can make the connection from there. But it’s stupid; I’m stupid—” He was shaking his head and staring into his lap. “—because it’s like I have a brother in Midoriya and a goddamn father in All Might—and then Aizawa-sensei’s acting like a dad, too, to me and Eri, and Nezu-sensei? Nezu-sensei is so fucking cool,” said Tenko, dragging his hand down his face, “He’s got a driver’s license! I don’t even have one of those. And he can type fucking 210 words per minute with those little rat paws, and I’m still getting used to using all five fingers, fuck.”

Cute. You scraped the bottom of your cup. “Hey, I think you type well.”

“Yeah, well, that’s why it takes me so long to reply in the in-game chat function. Why I prefer communicating over voice call. Learning new habits, and shit.” Tenko stabbed his ice cream with his spoon. “Nezu-sensei has arranged for me to train as an aftermath-clean-up hero. I had been—” His fingers on one hand circled the thumb of the other. “—in discussion with him in rehab about what I could do, and we decided I could consistently help when there’s collapsed buildings after attacks; I could dust the wreckage so that we could find hostages or make it easier to clean up and rebuild, and Aizawa-sensei and All Might-sensei have been working with me to control what parts of what I touch gets dusted so that I could create pitfall traps for holding criminals. It’s…going. It’s going,” he said, curling his lips in his mouth to moisten them, and with narrowed, determined eyes, he took another bite of ice cream, the blue staining the inside of his lips.

“Tenko, that’s a really cool application of your quirk. I hope you can find more,” you said, tilting your head and smiling down at him, “but—I have to ask—aren’t you tired?”

Tenko rolled his eyes. “Of course. You’re part of the group ensuring I don’t have caffeine.”

“No, I mean,” you said, shaking your head, “I mean, you don’t have to be perceived as useful. You’re—you’re just fine if you wanted to rest. You’re worthwhile just as you, not as—as a job, as a, I don’t know, a redeemed hero or anything. You can just be Tenko.”

“I know. My therapist keeps reminding me. But one of the most vivid memories I have from when I was living in that house,” said Tenko, sneering, “is that I desperately wanted to be a hero and that I would pretend to be one a lot. While I’m aware that I can never atone for what I’ve done, if I did nothing but rest, I’d be alone with my thoughts. And with what I’m learning to do, as a hero, someday, someone might…need me. Need my help. I imagine that’s a good feeling.”

You sat back, leaning on your hands, the cast-iron pattern cutting into your palms, to survey him. “You’re very much re-writing my first impressions of you as my gaming buddy and as the post-war Shigaraki. You’re surprisingly well-adjusted.”

He snorted. “I shouldn’t think it’s surprising. I’ve had almost a year and a half in intensive rehab, and I’m still in therapy every day.” He started listing on his fingers, starting with his thumb. “I’m on antidepressants; I know where my next meal’s coming from and when I’ll get it; I consistently have a safe roof over my head, and I know my friends are getting that, too. I have mentors who care for me as a human person instead of as a tool. I get to stay in contact with my friends and get to make new ones,” he said, nodding curtly at you before quickly looking away, “I’m fucking away from that sadistic fuckface. He’s goddamn dead and burned away to nothing. That’s the main thing. Everything else is a bonus.”

Tenko sighed, bangs fluttering with the movement, his shoulders straining as he leaned onto both his elbows on the table. He sighed again and scooped the last gummy bear out of his cup, and you let the silence carry on while you finished eating.

“Long phone call,” Tenko said eventually.

An increasingly grumpy Aizawa was leaning against the glittery wall inside, phone between his ear and shoulder, and furiously scraping the inside of his ice cream cup.

“Yeah,” you said, “but it’s been good talking to you, Tenko. I really appreciate you telling me all of this.”

“I would’ve talked about it sooner, but I figured you knew who I was and didn’t want to address it,” said Tenko, tapping his fingers one by one on the table.

Pulling the collar of your coat closer to your neck, you frowned, hesitating on how to phrase it. You watched your breath cloud in the night air before settling on, “There’s an off-switch?”

Brow pinching very slightly, Tenko followed your gaze to his hand, with all five fingers coming to rest on the cast iron, and he tapped all five of them on it for emphasis. “Yeah. There always has been. All for One kept it from me. Power of belief kept me jittery and alert my whole life.”

“So long as you thought you’d destroy anything you touched, you would?”

He nodded. “That bitch.”

“Agreed. We should kill him.”

And Tenko laughed. Just for a moment, barely making any noise, but he smiled with his teeth, grin stretching across his face as he looked away and eventually closing his lips, the smile lingering for a few more precious seconds.

***

You closed your laptop to answer the phone at work, clearing your throat to ready your receptionist voice before you picked up. “U.A. University Administration; how may I help you?”

“I need you to fucking murder me,” Tenko spat through the phone, angry and panicked, “I need you to rip out my bones and suck out my guts through a straw. He fucking let me hold onto them, and I’ve fucking gone and lost such a fucking iconic piece of—”

“Tenko, please, take a breath,” you said, relaxing your customer service mode but clutching the phone to your ear, and after catching the eye of the woman with jars of strawberry preserves waiting to see Nezu, you slumped over in your seat so that she couldn’t see you over the desk’s overhang. “Tell me what’s wrong. We can fix it. Are you alone? Is everyone else busy? Do you need to come sit with me?”

“I—fuck,” he said, and you heard some deliberately slow breathing, but his voice still had an irate, twitchy edge afterwards. “During our practise patrol last night, Aizawa-sensei was talking about support equipment for me. I’d never given it much thought, because it’s always been just me and my hands. He leant me his Eraser Goggles for me to think about for my—and I don’t know where they fucking are,” he said, inhaling sharply on the last word, “I’d left them on my desk, but I’d taken them up to the roof to sketch them, and then I’d brought them back to my dorm—”

“And Aizawa-sensei must have swung by to pick them up since then,” you said, pushing yourself back to slide in your swivel chair to the back of the reception desk, “because he was here at the beginning of my shift to print something off, and the goggles are on top of the printer. Relax, Tenko.”

“Hooooooly fuck, you’re kidding,” said Tenko, audibly deflating, and you smiled to yourself as you slid their band around your wrist.

You kicked yourself back up to the front. “You’re okay. You’re not gonna get in trouble. I’ll bring them by at the end of my shift.” You sat up straight, and the strawberry preserves woman was shooting a concerned look in your direction. “I’m at work, though, so I think we’d better end the call soon. Anything else you need?”

Tenko hummed into the phone. “Not really. You can’t be that busy.”

You smiled again, feeling—feeling domestic, as if he were your boyfriend calling you during work hours. How strange, Shigaraki Tomura. How interesting. “Would you believe I was grinding in Cipherstone when you called?”

“And you don’t call yourself a gamer,” he said, clearing his throat multiple times, “What skills?”

“Woodcutting and firemaking,” you said, opening your laptop again, “Are you feeling under the weather? Your voice had a bit of a rasp there.” Sounded like his old voice for a moment.

“Further cementing that Aizawa-sensei’s right to be worried about you. He says your brain’s going haywire analysing any detail work you can get, because you’re not out in the field anymore,” said Tenko, clearing his throat again (?), “Am I your new project?”

“Tell me what’s wrong, lest I pick up some damn throat lozenges for you before I come home,” you said, and a voice in the back of your head screamed that that threat was extremely cosy and intimate, especially since you’re claiming both of you have a home in the same place—which, sure, you both lived on the same hallway, but so did Aizawa and Eri, and please shut up; Shimura Tenko needs a friend, not a lover right now. Besides, that stupid hallway wasn’t really home for either of you but was more like a temporary holding cell.

“Fine. I’ve been throwing up all morning.”

“Thank you,” you said, electing not to make a pregnancy joke, “Do you need to see Recovery Girl?”

“No, I’m used to it, and I’ve already talked to her about it. I threw up a lot out of anxiety and stress when I was growing up with All for One, and now I’m throwing up because my body can’t handle the amount of food it’s getting regularly, which is fucking ridiculous, since it’s still less than a normal person’s version of three meals a day.”

What. The fuck. How can he casually drop details of deep trauma like it’s nothing? How could AFO let a child keep vomiting out of stress for years and years and never interfere? Well. Yeah, he could. You supposed that Shigaraki’s voice, as you first heard it as the USJ incident, was the ultimate result of that heavy strain on his throat for years. Explains some things about his teeth back then, too.

God. If AFO weren’t dead, you’d strangle him. Keeping a child physically weak because he’d be easier to mould. It was known that AFO had been psychologically manipulating Shigaraki, but now that you thought about it, manipulating his physical growth would have served AFO, too, since he was planning to move into Shigaraki’s body.

And what did this guy do now that he’s got bodily autonomy? Oh. Just. Play some video games. Talk with his friends. Try out some new hobbies. Make crafts with Eri.

It’s a shame AFO didn’t have a grave, because you’d be skiving off work to drown it in acid.

“My stomach is killing me,” said Tenko, “I’ve got to hang up to drink something and go to sleep. Knock on my door when you get home. I want to start a new quest as soon as you finish work.”

Home. He’d said it, too. He probably didn’t mean it in the same, domestic way that you’d been entertaining, but it made your heart swell. “Okay, Tenko. See you then.”

***

His therapist had assigned him homework: go on a planned, public outing with a peer, and stay out for at least an hour.

It wasn’t exactly a picnic you were packing, you kept telling yourself, scooting behind Tenko to get to the spice cabinet in the dorm kitchen, because that’d be too close to a date rather than homework. But the two of you packed a meal to take, with Eri sitting on the kitchen counter while she nibbled at rabbit-cut apple slices, and she held the thermos of decaf tea in her lap until it was time to stow it away.

After a short train ride and a quiet walk through midtown, Tenko stopped you in front of the back gate to what appeared to be a restored, historical estate, judging by the golden shachihoko shibi on each corner of polished hip-and-gable rooftops of the extensively aristocratic—mansion? palace?—that you could make out in across the distance of its sprawling grounds, the immediacy of which was the excessively well-kept, traditional garden that you and Tenko were breaking into.

“Is this legal?” you asked as Tenko reached through the grate to unlatch the doorway.

“I have an in with the gardener,” he said, sweeping the gate open for you and gesturing brusquely for you to enter.

“No, that wasn’t a joke,” you said, taking the few steps inside, finding yourself planted onto a polished, level stepping stone, and staring down a squeaky clean tsukubai despite the thin layer of frost over the water’s surface as the whole bowl began to freeze, “You can’t be doing anything even vaguely illegal, Tenko.”

When you said his name, he closed his eyes, pausing for just a hair in his relatching the gate, before facing you and shifting the strap of his bag farther up his shoulder. “Prude. Yes, we have permission from the owner.”

He kept looking back over his shoulder at you as he led you through the gardens, hopping across stepping stones to pass over a carefully shaped brook that led to a tiny waterfall near stone lanterns, weaving through trellises with the wintry shells of wisteria vines and shaped evergreens. He tutted and rolled his eyes when you stopped at the waterlily-coated koi pond, its fish swimming and flicking their tails in the artificially heated water (for some, odd reason, what appeared to be a compact duck coop had been constructed near the pond’s edge, its wood new and un-bleached by the sun like the rest of garden décor). You’d been about to ask about it when Tenko had jumped out of his skin at the sound of a deer scare, bamboo tapping stone.

“Stop laughing,” Tenko said, cheeks burning (and you tried not to take too much pleasure in that, but you couldn’t help it).

“Oh, a sensitive boy, a delicate boy,” you said, grinning as you hopped onto the same stone as him, cool, clouding breaths mixing together in the proximity, and you yourself could feel heat rise to your face. “Nothing to be ashamed of. Good traits to have, actually. Means you’re feeling secure and comfortable in your surroundings, if you’re off-set that easily.” Feeling bold—it was the cold; it was how the proximity already flustered him; it was how his hands were full because of the bag; it was—whatever—you reached for his silly All Might scarf and re-tied the front, fluffing it up to cover more of his neck.

You made the mistake of making eye contact: full of caution, his eyes kept darting from your hands to your face, searching for something, his lips parted, otherwise completely fucking frozen.

Were you making him uncomfortable? You stilled, your fingers still in the fringe of his scarf, tension tightening in your chest and jaw (clenching).

Tenko noticed. And—and to this day, you can’t believe he fucking did this—he ran his tongue over his lower lip and lifted his chin, exposing more of his neck to you. He then was suddenly very interested in the koi pond, the ruddiness spreading from his cheeks to his ears.

Throat dry, you gave his scarf a final tug and patted it (?) to show (??) a job well done (???). “Yeah,” you said, smoothly, like a smooth person, like someone who adjusts scarves of hot, in-process-of-reformation villains on the regular, “Where are we going?”

Tenko spun on his heel and strode away, muttering what sounded like, “Right into my grave.”

You pretended not to hear it and let him lead you to the only building unattached to the main house: a small, traditional teahouse that had a recent addition to it in the back. The creak of the bamboo engawa when you climbed onto it was muffled underneath the bright pealing of windchimes strung across the covered porch. Tenko was already kneeling at the tearoom’s sunken fireplace inside, its handle carved into a fish, fiery as its kindling, and was unpacking the travel teacups from the bag as you closed the door behind you, shutting out the cold, enveloped by the comfortable heat trapped inside by the cushioned walls.

Tenko must have arranged for this space to have been prepared for you. A kotatsu with floor cushions was tucked near the fireplace, pre-heated, with two further space heaters in the unoccupied corners, cords trailing into what must be a hallway linking the traditional and modern rooms, the latter of which was shut off from view. Beside a red-tinted wooden dresser stood an oddly empty tokonoma, and instead of a scroll or painting, amidst bits of pieces of scotch tape hastily half-torn off the back was a shittily cut-out, paper heart.

Shaking your head, you took a step towards Tenko, and the floor chirped at you, freezing you in place.

“Yeah, I don’t know why they do that,” said Tenko, pushing on his knees to stand, “They just do.”

“These must be nightingale floors,” you said, crossing to the kotatsu, a bird under each step, “The chirping’s caused by the way the nails rub against the v-shaped clamps holding the floor together. Have you been to Nijō Castle in Kyoto? These are in the hallway—supposedly used as a security measure, but who knows.”

“You need a hobby.” Tenko ripped the paper heart from the back of the tokonoma, crumpling it in his fist. A shred of it remained under the scrap of tape on the wall, which he bent towards to scrape off with a blunt fingernail.

“I have several,” you said, easing down onto a cushion and unfolding your legs underneath the kotatsu blanket, the luxurious heat swaddling your legs and hips. You fought the urge to curl up underneath it entirely.

“How many of them involve getting your ass thrashed by me in Cipherstone?” Tenko retrieved the bag from the sunken fireplace before returning to the kotatsu, and he sat on your left, resting the bag between the two of you.

You took the thermos of decaf tea when he handed it to you. “Tenko, you’ve been playing that game for years, and I just began. Of course my ass is gonna be thrashed by—you know how the game works. You have all of this previous information about the game that I don’t have.”

Tenko scoffed and slid your teacup across the kotatsu’s surface.  “As if I could conceal any information from you. You’re too…eh.” He waved it off, shaking his head.

“I’m too what?” You unscrewed the thermos lid, and steam surged upwards, rising to caress the planes of your face.

“It’s been unfair of Aizawa-sensei to make me tail you,” said Tenko, leaning your way, all five fingers curled around his own teacup as he stretched across the tabletop. “I’d have a chance of success if it were anyone else.”

“I’ll give you that,” you said, pouring steaming, amber tea with slices of yuzu into Tenko’s cup, “You’re getting quite good at it, not that you were bad in the first place. But yeah, it’s a bit mean of him to test your tracking skills on me.” He’d never said to stop, so you poured until liquid almost overflowed at the rim.

He gasped at the heat but nudged his teacup back to his place at the table, unable to hold it in his palm anymore. “I think I would’ve preferred working with Hound Dog-sensei for that. He’s less detail-oriented. I could win, if it weren’t you.” Jutting out his lower lip, Tenko glared down at his tea for a moment before slumping in his seat to slurp at the tea without picking it up.

“Don’t feel bad about it. It was literally and actually my focus for hero work, profiling and detail shit and being aware of my surroundings. Information stuff. Infiltration stuff.” Setting the thermos on the far corner, you cupped your hands loosely around your teacup, appreciating the warmth and getting cosier by the minute.

Tenko was rooting through the bag for the other thermoses, full of sukiyaki for each of you. “It’s clear you’ve worked hard to hone your skills. Were you this talented as a student?”

You accepted the new thermos, fingers clenching tightly around it. “Uh. I think I may have been better back then. More focused. More passionate, anyway. I had to think about it really hard back then, make conscious decisions to notice things, and now I think I do it instinctively. I think I’m slipping because of that.”

“Hm,” said Tenko, tongue rubbing over his teeth behind closed lips, and he opened his mouth to say something but shut it, instead twisting off the cap to his soup thermos. He took the first sip of sukiyaki broth and—and was absolutely beautiful (you couldn’t make sense of it beyond that; he was a mess of details that you couldn’t fit together into a larger picture that made any sense: white eyelashes light against his cheeks as they fluttered shut, face muscles relaxed, scars overlapping with laugh lines, cracked lips becoming moistened by the soup, both hands cupped around his thermos like a child, no strain to his posture, baggy hoodie swallowing him up, kotatsu blanket yanked up to his hips to cover his crossed legs, scar on the corner of his mouth delicately shifting with his baffled smirk when he caught you staring, a strange pink rising to the tips of his ears). “What?”

Uh. Hm. You pinched the bridge of your nose and then moved to rub your eyelids. “What were you going to say about me?” you asked, and you withdrew your hand from your face to raise the soup thermos to your lips, taking a mouthful of noodles and the sweet, salty broth.

Tenko shook his head. “I’m trying to avoid thoughts that fall back into my old habits.”

“Try me,” you said, holding his gaze when he met it, “I won’t tell.”

Weary, he broke eye contact, and he fixated on fishing out a certain slice of green onion. “We needed someone like you back then.”

Back then? When he—oh.

Back in the League.

Though you attempted to hide your grin by taking a sip of sukiyaki, you caught his eyes flicker to it. “You would’ve taken me? You would’ve let me in?”

“Would you have joined?” he shot back, a bit too quickly.

“No,” you said, rolling your shoulders and settling down farther underneath the kotatsu, “Never. But since you shared something you shouldn’t’ve, I’ll do the same.” You set your thermos down to rub your eyes again—God, you couldn’t look at him for too long, lest your intrusive thoughts hand you your ass. “I thought about it. About joining you.”

You dragged your hand down your face, peeking between your fingers at a muted clink. Tenko was staring at you, something fucking unreadable in his scrounched eyes, and both hands lay five-fingered and flat on the kotatsu, steam from his open thermos fluffing up hair on one side of his head. “You’re not serious. You wouldn’t have.”

“Not in the way you think,” you said, tilting your head back, “but I often thought, in the aftermath of the Paranormal Liberation Raid, what I could’ve done, if I’d known what I know now. And as the rest of the war was unfolding, I only wanted it more.”

Tenko blinked, slowly. “Tell me what you would’ve done.”

“Oh, you would’ve hated me, down to the dregs of my very soul,” you said, shifting to sit on your knees, “I would’ve started after your fight with Re-Destro, after the PLF was established. When you were letting allllllllll those heroes in, the sidekicks, the nobodies, anyone who seemed like they were with the cause. I would’ve infiltrated. Slipped in without notice. Hawks did, with the Commission, but I would’ve been going in as a free agent.”

“No one notices a U.A. student slide in between the masses. Re-Destro’s lackeys wouldn’t notice you at the door like I would. You get in,” Tenko said, taking his thermos in hand again but still engrossed in you, “What then?”

“There was a short period of time between the PLF establishment and your procedure, right? Around a month? That’s when I go. I worm my way into the good graces of some of the nine lieutenants—I’ve decided my pipeline would’ve been Geten to Toga to you. You’d just come out of an enormous battle, with Re-Destro and that city and Gigantomachia for a whole month. I heard you were bandaged up, on crutches, that you’d lost fingers that you regrew in that regeneration tank,” you said, eyes on his hands, one in a fist in his lap and the other around his thermos, five fingers pressing onto the grip but the pinkie finger hitched farther up than the rest, “That you’d given a speech and made your appearances regardless. That you’d pushed yourself to your limit and then broke yourself a little more. And you would’ve loathed me, because I would’ve come in, earned my way to your side, and I would’ve put my hand on your shoulder, slid it up your neck to cup your cheek to ask Aren’t you tired? Don’t you want to rest?” You smiled and huffed, shoving it down, and though his hard stare should’ve pinned you to your seat, you pushed on the corner of the kotatsu to edge yourself over to his side, a knee on his cushion. “I like to think that you’ve sighed, sulked a bit, reluctant to admit anything was wrong at all, because back then, you had no use for moonlight. But I would’ve made you look at me, taken you to a bed, made you lie down until your eyes fluttered shut and the tension swept through your body and left. And you would rest,” you said, finding yourself leaning over him very slightly, knees touching his, just enough so that he leant backwards just a fraction, “I would’ve made that month so soft for you. I would’ve taken care of you, when nobody was fucking paying attention to you in the way that they should’ve. I fucking—I wanted it.” You gripped the front of his hoodie, fist grasping more fabric than necessary to shake him. “I wanted it. I wanted to care for you. But I couldn’t. I didn’t know. And you were fucking alone, in an unfamiliar place, and it kills me to think about that.”

You ducked your head to wipe your watery eyes on your sleeve, taking a breath—and realising what you were doing. You loosened your grip, but before you could pull away, Tenko was cat-like quick to grab your sleeve—why won’t he touch you?

“I wouldn’t have accepted your help,” he said, quiet, controlled, holding you down with his eyes, hand shifting to curve under your sleeved wrist, signalling that you could escape at any time, “That was after the worst month of my life, fighting Machia, and I wouldn’t have accepted it. I had too much to do. I would’ve shaken you off.”

“No, you wouldn’t’ve.”

“I would’ve,” he said, a bare finger, featherlight, skimming over the tender, bare skin of the underside of your wrist (oh, wow), “I wouldn’t trust that easily in that short of a time. You’d have met me, and that’d be it. If you’d persisted, I would’ve ripped you to shreds and tossed you aside.”

“Tenko,” you said, both relief and tightness blooming from your wrist, “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

The hallway shoji slammed open, somehow rattling as it slid in its tracks and shook the walls, and you and Tenko scrambled apart, with you jolting backwards on your hands, grappling for your seat cushion, and Tenko banging his thermos on the kotatsu, hastily wrestling with keeping it upright as he flung his body to the side.

“Hey, fuck you, Touya,” Tenko spluttered out, elbowing himself upright as—as fucking Dabi strode inside, hands in the deep pockets of his black sweatpants. “You said you’d stay in the main house.”

“Don’t mind me,” said Touya, cool as you please, raising both of his hands in defence, “I had to ensure you’re not fucking in my bed.”

“What is—” Tenko clambered to his feet to cross to him, chirping with each stomp, and whisper-shouting once he’d corralled Touya into a far corner. “I said we’d hang out later today, Touya. You swore you’d stay inside and watch Naruto this afternoon.”

The polite thing to do would be to appear fascinated by the tea. You returned to your cushion and poured yourself another cup.

“Yeah, but I’ve been told I’ve got shit to do later. I’ve got to go to this fuckin’—fuckin’ family stuff. I don’t wanna get into it,” said Touya, at full volume, “and I wanted to check that your girl was real. Y’know, she looks nothing like someone who’d have GinzengTea as her username. Have you given it to her already?”

“Shut the fuck up. I was just about to do that, if you hadn’t interrupted, cockhead.”

“Cool,” he said, a bird-note as he shifted his weight, “I wanna see what she thinks.”

“Hell, no—”

“I helped pick ‘em out. Let me watch and have an ohagi, and I’ll leave,” said Touya, chirping towards you before he finished the sentence, and Tenko followed him, muttering under his breath.

Touya sat on the bare tatami next to you, joints cracking as he yanked the kotatsu blanket up his legs, shooting you a small salute and a concerningly charming smile. “Hey,” he said, tilting his head, eyes half-lidded, smile stretching to show more of his even, white teeth, “I’ve seen you before, yeah? When was the last time you laid eyes on me?”

Tenko pelted him in the chest with a plastic-wrapped ohagi, cutting off the ooze of charisma. “Show-off,” he said, nudging another sweetened rice ball your way.

You nodded but didn’t move to unwrap it, since you were still working on your sukiyaki. “I’m surprised you remember, Touya,” you said, the name feeling strange on your tongue, “It must’ve been years since I elbowed you in the tit.”

Eyes lighting the fuck up, you snapped towards Tenko when he laughed into his plastic wrap: still not loud, still not making any vocalisation with it, but releasing a heavy, sharp burst of air with a wide, open grin. He hunched over to hide more of it, using both hands to unwrap his ohagi—and in the moment he realised he’d been unwrapping it with only his pointer fingers and thumbs, he dropped the rest of his fingers onto the rice ball, still smirking to himself.

Biting your lip in your own smile, you turned back to Touya (you caught his moment of mild alarm at how thrilled you were when Tenko laughed—or maybe it was alarm at Tenko laughing at all—but Touya relaxed his eyebrows and shut his mouth the second you faced him again). “God, yeah, it must have been before that last battle that we’d met in a fight, and I’d gotten close enough to hit you, and…” You shook your head. “Actually, I don’t wanna talk about that stuff. It’s not who we are now.”

“That’s fine.” Touya nodded towards Tenko and took a bite of his ohagi. “Shimura, don’t you have something to give her?”

Shimura. That was his last name, you supposed, but wasn’t it odd that Tenko called Touya by his given name and that Touya called Tenko by his family name? Tenko didn’t make you call him Shimura. Well, you supposed that there’s only one Shimura now, and because of the number of Todorokis, it paid to be specific—

“Here.” Tenko set a flat box in front of you, flipping the buckle of his bag back over. “I was going to give it to you with more formality, but since this bastard showed up, I’m doing it like this.”

Biting the inside of your cheek, brow furrowed, you unpacked a pair of pale blue headphones, soft to the touch with a mesh headband so that your head wouldn’t ache.

“Noise-cancelling,” Tenko said, gabbling, frowning very slightly, “Rechargeable. There’s a detachable microphone so it can function as a headset. I wanted to do something good for you.” His eyes darted towards Touya, and they dropped to his ohagi’s bulging filling, seeping out onto the plastic wrap. “You need them, anyway. I’ve been sick of hearing you through those shitty earbuds; their sound is terrible, and when you said you’d lost your only pair—which I don’t fucking understand how you can lose those things, because they just fucking show up in my shit all the time, like a goddamn plague—I thought you needed something quality—just to make it easier on my end, obviously, so that I don’t have to tell you to yell into that shitty, built-in micropho—”

“Tenko,” you said, reaching over to place your tea-hot hand over the back of his, fingers curving with his along ohagi’s edge, “Thank you so much. I adore them. I’m really grateful that you would think of me.”

Tenko froze, the same as he had when you’d adjusted his scarf. Unable to look you in the eye, like a prey animal, stiff, shoulders tense, colour rushing up his neck to his face and ears again—but this time, he lifted his hand just a hair from his ohagi to press back into your palm, and the corner of his mouth twitched.

“Hoo, boy,” said Touya, startling the both of you when he slammed his hands on the kotatsu to push himself up, “I’ve had enough. I’ve had my little snack. I’m leaving.” Once on his feet, he stretched, pressing his hands to his lower back and arching it, grunting.

“Good fucking riddance, cocksucker,” said Tenko, rising and grabbing Touya by the elbow to haul him to the door.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Touya, dragging his feet, chirping slurred and confused by his movement, and when Tenko had him at the wall, trying to shove him out, Touya, smirking under your watch, whispered something to Tenko while forcing something into his palm. Touya ducked out as Tenko looked at what he’d accepted and, letting out a yelp, dusted whatever it was before he hurried back to the kotatsu.

(When you left the teahouse half an hour later, you discovered that he’d decayed only the wrapper and not the condom itself.)

***

“One moment, please. Nezu-sensei is in a meeting right now, but he’ll be out momentarily. Please take a number—yes, the ticket puncher when you first came in,” you said to yet another impatient and pissed client in the admin waiting room, packed to the gills with parents, press, vendors, potential sponsors, and, for some reason, Mt. Lady’s entire representative team. “By the door. If you’ll take a seat, we’ll be with you shortly.”

God, you could punt Nezu for this. Not that there was anything wrong with establishing a new, annual event for U.A.—a cherry blossom garden-set, competitive scavenger hunt coming up in the spring—but because of his casual comment that it would rise to the same importance as the Sports Festival, you were swamped with those eager to invest early. Unable to take a break, you had to work with your head bowed, desperately hoping none of these people recognised you and your failure, when all you wanted was to reply to Tenko’s messages on Cipherstone that morning.

Tenkopeito: You’ll like the next quest. You can pet a dog in it

Tenkopeito: Come over to my room this evening so that we can talk in person

Was he intending to speak with innuendo or with such sincerity that it cut right through you? Moreover, was he aware he was even doing it? Based on what you’ve observed, Tenko had no idea what he was doing to you, nor did he know how hard you were trying not to act on your attraction, though you weren’t even doing a great job of suppressing it.

It’s strange: Tenko evoked some strange, unnameable emotion in you like nothing else. You wanted to coddle him; you wanted to play stupid video games with him; you wanted to sweep his hair out of his eyes, and though you kept telling yourself that you didn’t, you wanted him to tell you how to touch yourself, how to touch him. You brushed it off. Another time. Perhaps never.

“Oh, hi!” Former pro-hero Ragdoll squealed your family name, making you jump in your seat. “It is you. I couldn’t tell from farther back in the line.” Fuck, Ragdoll would recognise you, since she and the rest of the Wild, Wild Pussycats trained Class A, and she specifically spent time with you on your tracking skills because of her Search quirk.

Don’t cause a scene. “Hello, Shiretoko,” you said, doing your best not to let your face be seen from over the reception desk’s overhang, “It’s good to see you. How can I help?”

When she beamed, she was as bright as ever. “Oh! The Pussycats want to offer our services for the scavenger hunt! We wanna get back into charity and civilian events now that we’re back from our mission for—but wait, you know all about that!” You didn’t. But her cheerful voice carried, and people were already turning towards Ragdoll, part of a hero team ranked in the top thirty. “I wanna hear more about what you’ve been up to! Since you left the hero business, no one’s known where you’ve been! Gosh, have you been behind this dreary old desk the whole time?” Ragdoll leant over the overhang, flicking at a loose strand of your hair. “I thought you were sent out on missions out of the country! Like, really important, top-secret stuff. It’s weird seeing you in an office, especially since I consider you a mini me. Why are you back at your alma mater? Did your agency not want you anymore?”

She wasn’t meaning to be cruel. Her loud, blunt sincerity, though, drew the attention of onlookers, and their flashes of recognition, subsequent judgment, and turning away made your chest tight. “I needed a break. That’s all.”

A thin, blonde woman in a burgundy overcoat leaning against the wall immediately next to the reception had been evaluating you, scanning you from top to bottom during the exchange. She didn’t bother hiding her curiosity, and when you shakily handled the rest of the conversation with Ragdoll, she turned to the short, softly featured man beside her. “You know her?” She hadn’t even tried to quiet her voice; it jolted you from Ragdoll, but you steeled yourself and continued printing off a schedule for her—and from the depths of your brain came the woman’s identity: Uwabami, the snake hero, one who usually flaunted her celebrity status but currently dressed down, without her hair snakes (a rattlesnake, a yellow king cobra, and a Japanese rat snake, which—shut up! You don’t need this information right now! Can you be fucking sane, please?).

Her sidekick—no, an intern, a student at U.A., some fuckin’ twink in the year below you, name escaping you at the moment—had some iota of tact when he looked you over, slanting his body away, as if he weren’t staring. “Yes,” he said, trying not to let you hear, “She’s my former senpai and nothing more to me. We didn’t run in the same circles. She’s the one who made that rescue a few months back, the one that got a lot of online backlash.”

“No, seriously,” Ragdoll was saying, “Why are you back at U.A.? Don’t you have somewhere else to go?”

“My—” People behind Ragdoll in line were listening. Trying not to show it. Your throat ran dry, and you couldn’t think of a lie or a pleasant half-truth. “My flat was compromised. My address was leaked, and eventually, people were—look, Shiretoko,” you said, forcing the words out of your mouth, “I really don’t want to talk about this. Here’s the printed schedule. I’ll talk to you later.”

You slid the paper across the counter, and she took it, waving goodbye and still beaming.

“Is this what happens when a hero career doesn’t work out? They just shove you back where someone will take you? At any old office desk?” that fucking twink was asking Uwabami, “I can’t—it honestly scares me to think I could lose myself and be misplaced like that. It’s wasting talent, don’t you think?”

“How can I help you?” you asked the next person in line through gritted teeth.

When Uwabami lowered her sunglasses to glance over them, you inhaled sharply and swung your swivel chair so that you wouldn’t see her. “I don’t know about that. Maybe this dreadful administration office is where she’s meant to be.”

Biting his lip, he shifted his jaw and crossed his arms, slumping against the wall. “You’ll always have a place for me, right, Uwabami? I don’t want this to happen to me.”

“Yes, I can print you out a copy of the same schedule. If you’ll allow me a moment to print.”

“Of course, Kakeru,” Uwabami said, ignorant of how you were gripping a pencil so tightly that it could snap any second, “You’ll never be left behind.” But then she fucking stared you down, deliberately holding eye contact while you were at the printer, and she said, “You’ll never need a place to hide. I’ll make sure you don’t fail.”

“Hey, how about you shut up?” you hissed, ripping the printer-warm schedule from the tray and storming back to your current client to shove it into their hands. “Aren’t Japanese rat snakes supposed to be in hibernation this time of year, anyway?”

***

Someone in Mt. Lady’s group recorded it. Someone posted it.

wizardjenkins11: jesus christ who knew u.a. had its own island of misfit toys

emotionalsupportdynamightsweat: nice to see that she kept her snark, but what is she doing back at school?? don’t heroes have some sort of paperwork component to their work. why isn’t she still at an agency

blood-is-thiccer: lol ua’s the only one who’d take the bitch. she’s being rude as hell to an actual pro hero. lameass quirk anyway and ass flat as hell lmao she fucken deserved that guy lighting her mailbox on fire

LynchianTiddies: You’re encouraging domestic terrorism???

blood-is-thiccer: that’s not domestic terrorism

LynchianTiddies: Then what, pray fucking tell, is it??

blood-is-thiccer: wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandalism

XylemPhloemBuckaroo: no but I get what that guy was saying about wasting talent tho. Out of everyone in that class a, she’s the only one not topping the fucking hero charts rn. She’s the only one who’s left hero work. What makes her weaker than the rest of her classmates? What happened to her to make her like this?

koiboi69: wouldn’t you quit if people were camping outside your house/work/grocerystore? And also FUCK, man, there’s no fucking need to say she’s fucking weak. that’s kicking her while she’s down

XylemPhloemBuckaroo: I’m not kicking her while she’s down. I’m stating facts and asking reasonable questions.

koiboi69: bro wouldn’t YOU feel down if you’d didn’t have a home to go back to??? going back to u.a. is like admitting defeat, like you couldn’t handle it on your own and need protection

mawatadaddysgorl: i love seeing updates on her bc it makes me feel so good about what i’m doing with my life

***

Uraraka and Shinsou texted you but couldn’t call, let alone come from across town. Aizawa was AWOL, and Dango was hiding under your bed, so you, blotchy-faced and damp, were crumpled on the floor outside of room 310, eating vending machine bullshit and waiting for Tenko to return home.

Exactly all the insecurities you’d been stuffing down for months and months, brought out to air in front of everyone. Instead of doomscrolling, you locked your phone and slid it across the hallway carpet, burying your face in your hands and stomach lurching to the thought that you might soon be plastered everywhere in sight, again. Another round of intensive laying low loomed on the horizon, especially now that your location was made public. Your little secretary job was good enough, and relocating elsewhere on campus would lead to more job training, which would be a bitch.

Where was Tenko? You needed him here to say something irreverent and vindictive. Something unhinged. Or you needed him to hold you, pull you into his lap, and bitch about the whole thing while watching a movie. Tenko had messaged you to come by after work, so why wasn’t he…?

The staircase door hissed open, Tenko pushing it with his back, reusable grocery bags on his arms, and—and wearing a cape? Who the fuck wears a cape casu—oh shit he’s in his hero costume.

You’d heard that he had one, designed by the same company that’d made Midoriya’s and Shouto’s, and the similarities were clear: a boxy sort of design due to thick fabric that still somehow hugged his chest, a minimalist utility belt, and sturdy, knee-capping boots, positively flaming scarlet in contrast to the dark greys of the rest of his jumpsuit. The most obvious connection with another hero, though, made your chest throb: his cloak fastened with the same clasp his grandmother’s had. His dust-blocking respirator lay around his neck for the moment, but what was most embarrassing for you was how your brain fucking wheezed like a boiling kettle at his bare arms, biceps bulging, every fucking inch of skin down to his fingertips completely on display like a goddamn slut.

Whore behaviour. Whore behaviour! You had to duck your head when he squatted next to you, because oh, now you could see the stretch marks on his upper arms, because he’d gotten large way too quickly to be healthy, and smell his fading Old Spice and sweat from being out on what must have been an emergency call, and he was setting his grocery bags aside, reaching out to graze your shoulder, and wow, he’d been complaining about how he didn’t have abs yet despite working out five days a week now that his stamina had increased, but that fabric clung to his lower abdomen, looking very, very flat.

Initially pinching the fabric of your sweater, he shifted his jaw and laid his hand on your shoulder. “Who am I dusting?”

“God, Tenko,” you said, trying to look anywhere but his arms, or his abdomen, or his fucking lips, but he was leaning so much over you that he occupied most of your line of vision, and the only way to avoid seeing anything besides wisps of white hair was to gaze at the popcorned ceiling. “You’re not supposed to do that anymore.”

“Oh, yeah? Who am I dusting?” He squeezed your shoulder, stretching his thumb out to rub at your collarbone.

“Unless you can dust everyone in the country, I don’t think decay will help.”

Tenko clicked his tongue. “I have been explicitly told not to do that,” he said, shifting to sit on his knees, “I have—” He dug into a grocery bag for a moment. “—this for you. You like this shit, right?” Tenko pressed a bottle of pink lemonade into your hands.

“Fucking. Fuck. I do,” you said, passing the condensation-coated bottle from one hand to another, chest tightening, blinking to keep the water levels low, “Thank you. You didn’t have to get me this.”

“I know that,” he said with a dismissive wave, and he paused, fists in his lap. “Would it help if I gave you a hug?”

(What the fuck what the fuck what the fuck what the—)

“Yeah,” you said calmly, like a calm person, and when Tenko opened his (muscular) arms, you crawled into them, wrapping your own around his back to rest between his shoulder blades. You rested your chin in a fold of his cape, cheek pressing against the side of his respirator, and you frowned as his embrace tightened, pulling you closer in a sloppy, unpractised sort of way, grounded by the steady rise and fall of his very solid chest.

(This felt…affectionate. Romantic, even.

But Shigaraki Tomura didn’t do romance, and you don’t—you’re not—you wouldn’t dream of being conceited enough to read someone’s perhaps thoughtless actions as flirtation, because why would someone be flirting with you? No one did that in general, and being U.A.’s humiliating problem child exacerbated the fact.

Moreover, why would the man who was Shigaraki Tomura, in the middle of his rehabilitation and re-discovery of self, even in the microscopic chance that he had the mental energy to experience romantic feelings, aim that romantic impulse towards you? It would make more sense if he liked someone he’d known for a while, like Touya or Spinner or Toga, and if his romantic feelings leant towards recuperative trauma-bonding, wouldn’t it be more apt to feel for someone at his rehab? His therapist, maybe? He’d idolised Aizawa before he’d met him, and even that would make more sense than latching onto someone as late in the process as you.

He’d gotten flustered when you’d tied his scarf, and Touya’s played terrible wingman. But still. You couldn’t know. You can’t read into this, even though reading into things had been your job, because—because no one would want you. You’ll have to…You’ll have to gather more evidence. You couldn’t be certain.)

Tenko hummed, chin digging into your shoulder, blowing strands of your hair out of his face. “I calmed a kid down earlier by hugging her. Is this working for you?”

(…oh.)

You sniffled and hid your mouth in his cape so that he couldn’t catch your pout. “That’s—that’s good that a kid allowed you to comfort her. What happened?”

“Pipes broke in an old apartment building in the Takoba district. The third floor collapsed under the pressure, and it trapped families in part of the building. I was called out to dust the rubble trapping them,” Tenko said, tapping his fingers high on your back in a ripple, “and they had me dust some other walls to help start the repairs. It was cool. And this one little girl who’d gotten out before the rest of her family was really nervous, and she was sticking to me, holding onto my cape. I was telling her that everything was gonna be okay, like you’ve taught me, and when I asked how she was doing, this fuckin’ kid extended her arms to me. So, I fucking hugged her. Picked her up so she could see what was happening better. It was weird, but it felt good.” Tenko sighed. “I hate how it wants me to be kind more.”

And fuck, fuck, that’s the last straw to this horrible day, and you’re crying, silently, controlling your breathing to keep Tenko from finding out, because goddammit, this idiot bastard man was surprisingly easy to love.

You buried your face fully in his shoulder, hoping he couldn’t feel any wetness through his costume, and you and Tenko sat in the quiet of the hallway for a minute, interrupted only by the A/C kicking in.

Tenko tried to part the two of you enough to look you in the face, but you doubled down, curling your fingers into the fabric of his jumpsuit and keeping your head bowed. Scoffing, he sat upright, making you follow his movements to stay hidden. “You gonna tell me what’s wrong yet?”

“Forget all that shit I’ve taught you,” you said, grumbling to his tits now that he’d changed positions, hating how stopped up you sounded already, “It doesn’t matter what you fucking do in the public’s eye, because there’s always gonna be someone who hates you. You can’t please everyone, so just fucking be yourself. That’s funnier, anyway.”

“Did you psychoanalyse some press member’s pathetic sex life, or something? Deduce an affair based on the way he knots his tie? Announce the state of his dick to the whole room because of the length of his pants?”

“Fuck off, Tenko. I’m not some pretentious-ass Sherlock Holmes bitch,” you said, pursing your lips and instinctively pulling back to glare at him—

And the moment you did, Tenko cupped your face in his hands, soft at the palm and strongly calloused along his fingers, keeping you facing towards him no matter how hard you tried to jerk away, struggling to stay upright. “You are crying.”

“No, I’m not,” you said, just as a falling tear touched his thumb. As you adjusted to his grip, your hands fell to his thighs, pressing against them in fists.

“Hm. Well, you don’t have to tell me,” he said, eyes on another tear trailing down the other cheek, “but you’re joining me to watch a movie with Eri. I got snacks on the way home.”

You sighed, taking in how big his hands were and how much of your face they encompassed, trying to memorise their feeling until they were snatched away forever. “I thought we were gonna start a new quest tonight. I was excited.”

Tenko balked and shifted into a sceptical grin. “You wanted to play Ciperstone tonight?” he asked, both thumbs rubbing your cheekbones and moving to swipe underneath your eyes.

You sighed again, shoulders heaving as Tenko released your face to flick tears off of his hand. “I didn’t want to be myself for a few hours.”

Tenko pushed on his knees to stand. “That’s actually related to what I originally wanted to talk to you about. Furthering the working-with-others mission,” he said, and he extended his hand to help you up. “What do you know about Dungeons and Dragons?”

***

“God fucking dammit!” Tenko slammed his palm to his forehead and leant back to balance on the kitchen chair’s back legs and then combed his fingers back through his hair, upsetting some strands from his ponytail. Groaning, he crooked his face your way, smushed his face against the chair back, and pointed towards his forehead, where a red splot was forming. “Hit me as hard as you can.”

“Being bludgeoned won’t change the fact that you rolled a three,” you said, nodding towards his d20, “I ignore his whining and continue to drain the fig tree to charge my spell.”

Behind the DM screen, Shinsou rolled his own dice, and once his eyebrows had shot up to his hairline, he turned to Midoriya. “I need you to roll two d12s and a d4.”

Tenko bolted upright, hastily sweeping his bangs out of his face. “Wait, what does Midoriya have to do with it? He’s across the fucking grove! He’s engaged in close-ranged combat.”

You turned away from Shinsou’s sly grin and towards Tenko, mouth nearly a straight line, yanking another cluster of grapes from the communal bowl, and shoving two grapes in his mouth. He pinched at his lower lip as he chewed, twisting and peeling at dead skin, frowning as he focused on his character sheet, scanning it for some sort of information he was forgetting and absentmindedly raising his knee to his chest, the heel of his foot propped on the seat of his chair (thank God his jeans were from Best Jeanist’s Moulded to Your Ass line: the denim strained with his muscles. Your eye twitched). In this particular morning, with the five of you squared off at Aizawa’s kitchen table, papers and dice strewn among grocery store bakery cinnamon rolls and coffee cups (Tenko’s was full of gatorade instead of coffee, much to his chagrin), as Tenko was throwing grapes into Touya’s mouth while Shinsou did math, the narwhal house slippers dangling off Tenko’s feet, it struck you that Shigaraki Tomura had become just some guy. One who went for walks to clear his head, who spent hours failing to do a kickflip on Present Mic’s skateboard, who used emoticons over emojis, who got nervous in fast food drive-throughs, who collected hero merch (of Aizawa fervently and Present Mic against his will), who was losing his sensitivity to foods like leeks and onions, a man who was growing more and more exquisitely mundane.

And goddamn, he’s clever and perceptive and patient and cheeky in a devastatingly attractive way, and he’s flustered easily, eager to do a thing correctly, and utterly, totally captivating in his endless discoveries of what it means to be alive.

You timed it so that the shudder and shock crossing his face could pass as response to Shinsou’s description of how Tenko’s enchanted crossbow bolt missed the Spirit Realm Necromancer entirely, instead sinking into the sacred Grand Oak and instantly shattering the tree as if it were glass, its elaborate root system holding up the floating grove splintering into thousands of tiny shards, the ground beneath your party’s feet crumbling at the slightest suggestion of the shifting of weight. But really he curled in his lips with a furrowed brow and stuttering breath when you reached underneath the table to graze the back of his hand, and when he forced himself to relax, shoulders slackening, frown fading, Tenko spread his fingers to cover more of his denim-clad thigh, which you took as a timid sort of consent. Biting the inside of your cheek, you eased your palm over the back of Tenko’s hand, lacing your fingers through his and going through the motions of reacting to Shinsou’s shattered earth. Neither of you looked at each other while Midoriya’s character suffered the Necromancer’s spell to increase gravity, each movement of Midoriya’s bulky, steel armour accelerating the fall of the floating grove. By the time each of you had had enough turns to land on solid ground, preserving little of the sacred grove but all surviving, Tenko finally squeezed your fingers back, curling his own to grip them more firmly, keeping your hand pinned to his thigh, steeling himself, sitting up straight, and proposing getting close enough to the Necromancer to drive a crossbow bolt directly into his skull.

Midoriya was already muttering to himself over the effectiveness of the action while Shinsou worked, and Touya irreverently flicked his dice at Tenko, chugging coffee with his other hand. “You plunge the bolt by hand into the Necromancer’s head,” said Shinsou, “but with your strength debuff still in effect, you only nick him.”

“I try stabbing it through his ear.”

“It goes through,” said Shinsou, nodding and running his hand back through his hair, which sprung back into place, “It doesn’t pierce the neocortex, so he can still summon another—“

“I stomp him to death with my hooves,” said Touya, picking at his teeth and running his tongue over the spot.

The rest of you turned to him slowly in various states of incredulity.

“You don’t have hooves, Touya,” you said, tilting your head at the same time Tenko rubbed his thumb over yours, prompting your breath to hitch and a strange warmth to travel through your body, making you feel dizzy.

Touya grimaced and reached for a cinnamon roll. “I take off my leather breeches and boots to reveal my hooves. I have been a satyr masquerading as a human this whole time.” He leant forward on his elbow, glaring at Shinsou and gesturing with his cinnamon roll. “I stomp him. To death. With my hooves.”

Tenko sneered, his teeth cutting into his lower lip, but he merely opened his mouth and closed it, poking his tongue into his cheek. “I suppose maiming a party member wouldn’t coincide with my character’s chaotic good alignment,” he said, heaving a huge sigh to—oh, that cunning rat bastard—to conceal how he flipped his hand over in yours to touch palms, weaving your fingers back together and squeezing again, planting them back on his upper leg, massaging between your knuckles with his thumb.

“What’d you just roll?”

“Nineteen,” said Touya, casting Shinsou a slice of his most charming smile.

Midoriya let out a little laugh as Shinsou bitterly plopped his head on his fist. “Fuck you, Touya. Congratulations. You clomp over to the Necromancer and stomp all over him. Stompy stomp stomp stompy stomp. It’s difficult to watch at the insane speed you’re going, so no one stops you from doing such a good job pounding him that he’s ground into dust. Bits of him drift away in the wind.”

Here Midoriya winced. “Weren’t we supposed to retrieve the soul crystal embedded in his gauntlet? We can’t get our reward from that Silver Age dragon rider if we don’t have it.”

“Correct,” said Shinsou, glancing down at his notes, “It has been stomped to smithereens. You can’t even make out what parts of the pile of dust were once flesh.”

Ready to bolt, Touya was getting up from the table and holding up his hands in defence, but before Midoriya could start a speech that would have been more apt for the number one hero to use on patrol rather than during a DND game, the door to Aizawa’s flat opened, and in he walked, covering his yawn with the back of his hand. He halted at the sight of the five of you around his kitchen table, taking in the scattered papers and remnants of breakfast before settling on your DM. “Shinsou,” Aizawa began, disappointment outweighing the exhaustion in his voice.

“You’re the only one with a table that could fit all of us,” Shinsou said, spinning in his chair to face him, “This dormitory doesn’t have a good common area like the student ones do. Would you really prefer us to—”

“We can find you a table; there’s plenty on campus.” Aizawa lifted his goggles over his head to set them on the counter. “Is this why Monoma kept slowing me down during patrol?”

“No,” you and Shinsou said, while Tenko said, “Yes.”

Aizawa actually smiled as he unwound his capture weapon from around his neck. “Look who’s the only one telling the truth.”

“Why would I lie to you, sensei?”

Touya smacked Tenko on the arm. “Suck-up.”

“You promise?” Tenko shot back, nose wrinkling with his grin.

“This coffee had better be amazing, because it’s the only thing keeping me from kicking you all out right now,” said Aizawa, rubbing a dry eye with the heel of his palm, other hand outstretched for someone to pass him a mug.

Tenko’s thumb bent inward to swipe the inside of your palm, a silent protest while he drank from his stupid little mug of gatorade, and when he noticed what was at the bottom, he flinched. It must have been Touya who’d put your dice in Tenko’s cup.

***

Following the video of you insulting Uwabami, you’re garnering an unnerving amount of attention again, but it’s clearly someone different than last time. Whoever your stalker(s) was this time around, they were careless and unsubtle—and this confidence to be careless left you jumping at the slightest sound when you were alone.

Furthermore, you legitimately couldn’t deduce your stalker’s motivations, because no clear message linked his actions. At first, you chalked it up to the dorm’s shitty dryer eating your bright blue thong, but when you couldn’t find your lip balm or trolley pass or eventually your favourite sweater, you concluded that something else was at play here, further cemented by more and more tiny things going missing—things that, if you were stalking someone, you would’ve selected as small enough not to miss.

But bizarrely, your stalker left shit of his own lying about. A phone charger appeared underneath your pillow; loose change and a travel pack of alcoholic wipes showed up in your bathroom sink. Hello Kitty band-aids, a hair clip that looked like one of Rumi’s ears, deep-moisturising hand cream, a tiny lizard keychain with a white hamburglar mask drawn on. You couldn’t wrap your head around it. What could your stalker be trying to say besides he could access your personal space with ease? Hoarding it all in the drawer with the GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK hentai, you were struck with the notion that this may have been going on even before the video.

God, you missed when this school felt more like home instead of a holding cell, back when Shinsou and Uraraka and the rest were all still living together with you, when you could simply turn the corner to the common area to demand who took your laundry detergent and get an answer immediately (you also missed taking Aoyama’s bougie food, though you suspected that towards the end he was buying extra specifically for you). You sent an email to Aizawa about the potential break in security, and he promised to monitor the situation, though there was no evidence of physical entry.

Evidence. It’s been on your mind.

Sure, Tenko’s done stuff that could be read as romantic: how he plops your hand onto his head to demand you play with his hair, how he hovers whenever Touya stands too closely to you, how he gets upset on your behalf when people glare at you in public.

(Tenko grabbed your elbow, breaking your focus on the clothing rank. “We’re going.”

“But we haven’t found you a red coat yet.”

He lifted the hangers from your arm and slid them back onto the rack, despite belonging elsewhere. “Don’t care. I don’t like the way the cashier’s looking at you,” he said, jerking his head their direction, and when you tilted your head to glance at them over his shoulder, Tenko tapped your chin twice, guiding you to look back at him. “You shouldn’t have to be on guard when I’m with you.”)

If you were reading into it—and you were—Tenko was being so careful with talking about the pro-hero scene around you that it was almost as if he’d gotten a mission task from Aizawa to distract you from anything that might make you feel bad about yourself.

(“I hear you’re causing a lot of paperwork for my old man,” said Touya, pulling out another floor cushion from the storage space in the teahouse wall, “He hates that you’ve had to dust so many structures near his agency. He’s a decrepit creature of habit, and now that his commute is different, he’s—”

“Hey, Touya, tell us what flower bulbs you planted this winter,” Tenko said abruptly, clamping the lid on the pot hanging over the sunken fireplace, “Tell us what your garden’ll look like in spring.”

You shut your book, even though you’d just opened it. “Wait, are you saying that Touya is the one who keeps this garden? That’s—”

“You like it, sweetheart?” Touya dropped his cushion next to yours, ignoring the way Tenko was glaring daggers into his back. “Think it’s impressive?”

“Holy shit; I thought we were in the back of some professionally restored historical site the first time we came here,” you said, smiling at how Tenko’s petulant stomps to his seat chirruped, even when he scooted his own cushion towards yours (adorable; you’d think he didn’t like you giving attention to anyone else).

“Well,” said Touya, propping his hands on the kotatsu so that he could get a better view of Tenko, “With enormous pride and a huge erection, I’m pleased to announce that this garden is all my hard work.”

“Stop that,” barked Tenko, jabbing a finger towards Touya, “Stop bringing up your cock.”

“I could talk about yours, if you want. His monster cock is excruciatingly leaky and so shaped.”

Groaning, Tenko clonked his forehead on the kotatsu’s tabletop before Touya could say anything else, arm still outstretched. He peeked out from underneath his bangs towards you, tension leaving his body at your burst of laughter.)

He’s also taken your comment about silent admiration to heart. Over the discord call (through very comfortable headphones), you’d made a dumb joke about not being able to play for long, and he’d shut up immediately. When you’d confessed to lying and hoping you’d scared him, he’d replied seriously: “I want to protect my time with you. I don’t like it being taken away. I feel better when you’re with me.”

You’d frozen in the middle of weaving bowstrings while his character continued stringing them onto bows. You’d never have gotten that sort of remark at the beginning of your relationship. Tenko must genuinely be listening to you.

Anyway. You decided in the event that Tenko was collecting evidence, too, that you would leave him some.

The first time you’d been in his room had been for a specific purpose, which was to help him rub in his new facial scar moisturiser (not to take them away, or anything, because Tenko wanted to keep them, claiming he wouldn’t recognise himself in the mirror if he didn’t have his scars—and you thought they were devastatingly attractive, anyway—but just to keep them hydrated enough not to itch), but now you were here just to spend time in the same space. You were reading on his bed (oh, hohoho, his bed), and Tenko was drawing in his sketchbook on his couch by the window. With his mouth pinched in concentration, he squinted down at his paper, swiping away eraser shavings with his artist-gloved hand.

Drawing by natural light. Tenko was in room 310 because of its wide windows. It had been his one request when U.A. was placing him.

AFO had deliberately raised him in a bedroom without windows. You’d kill him if he weren’t already dead.

Thankfully, AFO’s influence was absent from Tenko’s dorm: Naruto sheets from Touya, an old Nintendo DS on his bedside table with Nintendogs in the cartridge slot, Present Mic’s skateboard propped against the coatrack that held only a black hoodie, unfolded but clean laundry in a basket next to a dresser with prescription bottles atop it, a mirror that served more as a bulletin board of Eraserhead merch than as a way to check his reflection, red shoes by the doorway, books borrowed from everyone from All Might to Shinsou to the ramen delivery guy strewn across the room, on shelves, his computer desk, his rug. The thing Tenko’d had to explain to you was a therapist-assigned painting hanging over his desk: he’d painted a murky, purple-blue, abstract sort of thing, and you were strangely touched when he’d explained it was Kurogiri (and now that you were looking, among his bulletin board of Eraserhead, a few drawings of Loud Cloud were mixed in).

There’s a lot of people in Tenko’s life who care about him now, and you’re happy to be one of them. Setting your book aside, you got up to sit next to him on the couch.

He paused when you sank into the cushion next to—well, no, you were basically sharing the same cushion, especially since he unfolded his legs from underneath him so that you could get closer. You scooted over so that your shoulders touched (scandalous) and looked over his drawings.

He’s drawing your DND characters. While his sketches aren’t exactly good, you can clearly tell who’s supposed to be whom, and they’re fun to look at, so that’s all that matters. At the centre is your character, Ginseng—you named it after your Cipherstone account because why not—in the process of spell-charging. Your character relies on the traditional ritual of tea ceremonies, from the growing of the tealeaves to serving it, summoning whatever tools you needed, like the table and dishware, and if an enemy got caught by the conventions of politeness of the tea ceremony, they were trapped in it until they’d drunk their teacup dry. Tenko had drawn her early in the spell-charging process, with branches of tealeaves sprouting from underneath her skin, with her harvesting them from her forearm. It’s rather flattering, the way her determined expression lit up her face.

Next to Ginseng was Tenko’s character, Peito, also lifted from his Cipherstone character. He was sitting on the same log as Ginseng in the middle of camp, backs touching while he cut feathers as the first step in the fletching process. His carved-willow quiver leant against his knee-high boot, red even in a fictional universe. Peito’s hands were bare, five fingers pressed against his knife and arrows.

Further back in the camp (really just towards the top of the paper, since Tenko wasn’t good at foreshortening yet), Midoriya’s character, Jackrabbit, was holding up two hangers, one with his steel and the other with sleek, black leather armour. A nice touch, really, since Midoriya had swopped Jackrabbit’s primary armour to the more lightweight leather since the shattered grove incident, and wow, you could even tell it was leather based on the pencil strokes.

Seated nearby, Touya’s character, Granddaddy Slapkins, roared with laughter at him. His shoes lay next to him, his hooves out. For some reason, he’s not holding his pet duck; he’s instead cradling what looks like your character’s wild shape, a cat with the same chocolate-point markings as your real cat (your character’s shapeshifted form was just Dango, but Tenko didn’t know that. He still didn’t know Dango existed, because cats were still illegal in the dorms, and Tenko, that little brown-nosing shit, would probably tell Aizawa about her. Cute how he’s only a suck-up to Aizawa, though).

Your favourite detail, though, was how his character was smiling. Unabashedly. As if it were a no-brainer, as if doing anything else made no sense at all.

With a stab of affection, you nuzzled into Tenko’s shoulder, resting your chin there while he sketched loops of chainmail onto Granddaddy Slapkins’s shirt, and a shiver racked through him.

“Oh, are you cold?” you asked, sitting back up and heading over towards the bed, “Let me get your blanket.”

“Wha—no, I—sure,” said Tenko, setting his pencil on his sketchbook and the whole thing on the arm of the couch, eyes half-lidded as you returned with his throw blanket.

And without thinking, you moved on impulse, as if all higher orders of cognition had checked out for the night, because you behaved like you did in your head whenever you thought about Tenko: casually, intimately, and domestically. You wrapped the blanket around yourself and knelt on the sofa before swinging a knee over his lap, and you snuggled into his chest, clutching his shirt and nosing at his neck.

Your eyes snapped open.

(What the fuck?

If this had been a planned attack, then it would’ve been a thing of brilliance: casual, seeming to meet a physical need [heating a chill] in the name of physical closeness. But you fucked it. This wasn’t planned, and thus you don’t have a way out of it without otherwise betraying your romantically-motivated interior.

Thank fuck he’s frozen up, too. But how do you get out of this? God, you really shouldn’t be teaching him how to navigate interpersonal relationships when you get yourself into shit like this.)

You swallowed thickly, pulse pounding in your ears.

“I need your advice.” Tenko’s chest barely rose when he took his first breath since you climbed onto his lap. “What would be the socially expected response to this?”

“Uh. That depends on if you’re into it or not,” you said, forcing yourself to sit back in his lap to give him some space, “If you dislike it, then it’s to get me to get off of you, and if you welcome it, then, uh. Anything else.”

Tenko unclenched his fists at his sides and—a pause, shifting his jaw—he let his hands rest at a barely-there touch on your hips, dragging them upwards to your waist, applying enough pressure there for you to feel all ten fingertips through your shirt. “Is this,” he said, wetting his lower lip, and he couldn’t continue, instead swallowing saliva.

Gathering your nerve, you wove your hand through his hair to scratch at his scalp in the way he’d liked when you’d played with his hair, and at the familiarity, Tenko huffed, shutting his eyes tightly and pressing his forehead to yours in a rush, almost knocking them together. He took another breath, heat washing over your face, and you slid your other up hand to cup his cheek.

Tenko shivered again, and he clamped his hand over yours to keep it there. “Are you sure this is what you mean to do?”

He seemed receptive enough to it, but you couldn’t be certain. “Yeah,” you said, “If I’m reading it right.”

“But it makes no sense. I’ve got to be reading it wrong,” Tenko was saying, frowning, “No one would willingly like me—”

“For fuck’s sake, Tenko—”

Practically slapping your other hand to his cheek, you kissed him, pulling him closer, one of his hands still over yours with the other now gripping your waist as if he’d never let you go. Tenko grunted into it, surging forward to keep his rough lips (sticky from his freshly applied pineapple-beeswax chapstick) seared to yours. You felt, more than heard, his miniscule whimper at the back of his throat when he opened his mouth, sliding his tongue into yours, and you could hardly keep kissing him for smiling. But he needed a breath before you did, so you broke it, sensing he wouldn’t do it out of wanting to keep you nearby.

Panting, Tenko tried and failed to push your hair behind your ear in an attempt to be suave. “Now, I perceived that as romantic.”

“It was romantic, you muppet,” you said, thumping his chest with the back of your hand.

“Good.” He cleared this throat. “Cool. Excellent,” he said, shifting underneath you (with difficulty, under the constricting denim of his Moulded to Your Ass jeans), “I want it to be, when it comes to you.”

“Thank God, I really want that, too,” you said, sighing, “but, like, I really don’t know if it’s ethical to pursue a romance this early into your recovery—”

“The fuck is wrong with you? I want it. I want you.” Frustrated, Tenko grabbed your hips in an iron grip and ground up into you, slowly, and that tight-ass denim let you feel precisely where in the drag of his hips his cock touched you, letting you feel the shift in pressure at his tip, down his shaft, to the first curve of his balls. “I thought I was alone. I thought no one else would ever be able to understand me, having fallen from what I was raised to be. Fallen,” he said, spitting, “Such a nasty word for what we’re actually doing: we’ve been reborn together. We get to build our lives back up together. We get another chance at it. I wanna spend mine with you.”

He strained his neck upwards to kiss you again, insistent, moving with confidence when he took your lower lip into his mouth but only nibbling on it once, despite being posed to bite down with vigour.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass about what anyone else thinks of you and what anyone else thinks of me. I—”

“That’s not true,” you said, your turn to catch your breath, “You care so much about what Aizawa-sensei—”

“You know what I mean,” he said, shaking his head, hair falling out of his loose ponytail, “You think of me as me, and that’s all that matters. If you’re really that fucking worried about me getting into a relationship too early, go talk to my therapist. She says you’re good for me. A good influence, anyway.”

“Holy shit,” you said, mostly in reaction to how Tenko started trailing frantic, dry kisses down your neck, and, realising you should probably be doing something back, you rolled your hips, feeling awfully warm under the blanket.

He bucked back up into you, more out of desperation to keep you close over a need for friction but still giving you a taste of what it would be like to have him thrusting into you. “Fuck,” he said, almost grumbling, “I’d say fuck being ethical about it, because I’ve wanted you for a long time. I got hard when you shook me by the shoulders outside of that ice cream shop; I thought my soul was gonna leave my body when you adjusted my scarf. Hell, I—” He cut himself off, grinning in a way that, back before you knew him, you might have described as maniacal. “I wanted you back during the war. I saw you fucking elbow Touya during that battle, and the way you made him crumple to the ground was so fucking sexy. And you recovered from when he swiped at you so easily; you slipped around his attacks like it was fucking second nature. I thought it’d be cool to have you by my side, having you—” He realised what he was saying, and he relaxed, smile fading into a curious, pensive sort of look while he brought his thumb to your kiss-swollen lips. “And now I get to.”

You kissed the pad of his thumb, blinking slowly.

“So. Yeah,” he said, dropping his hand to your shoulder as he broke eye contact, a little red, “I think it’d be cool to be with you, even if we have to be careful.”

“That’s the thing, Tenko,” you said, biting the inside of your cheek as you gathered your thoughts, “I’m scared, because while I know that we should, because that’d be safe, I don’t want to be careful. Since I’ve quit being a hero, every single thing about how I’ve been living has left me feeling empty and alone, because it’s like I’m wandering through limbo. Everything screams that whatever I’m doing now is temporary, that it’ll pass, that I don’t truly belong in this situation, because I’ll find what I’m supposed to be doing later and my real home is somewhere down the line, but—fuck.” You rubbed your eye with your fist. “You, Tenko. You don’t feel temporary. You feel forever.”

Underneath you, Tenko stretched to pop a crick in his back, and he tilted his head to lie on the back of the couch. His ponytail had come loose, and his hair splayed against the fabric as he stared at you, one hand idly rubbing at your waist.

“Well. You’ve got to belong somewhere,” he said eventually, and he tapped all five fingers onto your thigh. “It could be with me.”

***

Dango was missing.

Incredible how the best evening of your life preceded the worst day you’ve had in years. You called out of work and spent hours scouring the dorm and then campus. A gruelling, miserable sort of day, anyway, grey and rainy and cold, and the campus was swarmed with people setting up for the scavenger hunt event later this month, populating the area with non-U.A. personnel and construction. Your cat was out in that mess, and you didn’t even know where to search first. It’s loud, scary, and wet, so Dango would most likely be hiding and not come when she’s called.

Had Dango escaped your flat? Had your stalker stolen her? Had she been confiscated by U.A.?

You couldn’t call any faculty for help; they’d get onto you for having an illegal cat on campus—and Hound Dog, the one who’d be the most help, might just scare her to death. Too early in the morning to call any of your friends, and you doubted they’d alter their busy schedules to help you out of a situation you should be able to fix yourself. But damn it, how come your own tracking skills only worked on people?

You shook yourself, coming out of your spiral the best you could, and you were close to hyperventilating. You sat down on a curb.

You found yourself calling Tenko, despite it being too early in the day for him to be out of training, filling with dread about never seeing your cat again and having to clear out her stuff from your room. Pulling your soaked jacket closer, you wiped at your nose and waited at the dial tone.

“Hey, I thought you couldn’t call during work. Miss me that much?”

The second you heard his strangely chipper voice, you started crying into the speaker.

He inhaled sharply, tone shifting. “Tell me who the fuck I’m stomping to death with my hooves.”

Ducking your head, you managed a smile but continued to fucking sob. “You don’t—don’t have to kill anyone, Ten—Tenko. I’ve f—fucked up.”

“What’s wrong? Where are you?”

“I’m on cam—campus,” you said, unable to speak for a full sentence without having to cut yourself off to keep bawling, ugly and loud and getting snottier by the minute, “It’s my fucking fault that I haven’t been ta—taking my stupid sta—stalker seriously, and I should’ve reported it, but—but I—goddammit!” The rain picked up again, coming down in rapid, fat drops, and, shielding your eyes, you rubbed your phone screen on your sleeve, not that it did much. “Sor—sorry. Rain got heavier.”

“Where on campus?”

“No, Te—Tenko, I’ll get up. I’m coming to you,” you said, sniffling and pushing on your knees to stand, wet and hungry and ready to crawl into your sock drawer to sleep for days. “I—I’m just so fucking pissed at myself, because my cat is fucking lost, and I could’ve sto—stopped it if I hadn’t been so secreti—tive.” Hands shaking, you yanked your soaked hood over your head and trudged towards your dormitory, and you kicked gravel, rocks scattering over the path, before losing your footing on it and nearly falling. Fuck this.

“You have a cat,” said Tenko, losing his fervent. “What’s it look like?”

“Beautiful.”

“I need more than that.”

“She fucking—I based Ginseng’s cat form on her, okay? She’s this enormously fluffy thing, mostly whitish with a brown face and legs, and it makes her look like she’s wearing a mask and thigh-high socks like God’s sluttiest little jester,” you said, knocking on your dorm’s mailboxes for luck out of habit as you passed them, “And you can’t tell Aizawa-sensei about her, because if she’s taken away the moment I find her, then I—”

“I have her,” said Tenko, “She’s in my dorm with me.”

You ran the rest of the way to his room, panting and absolutely disgusting by the time you got there, and when Tenko opened his door, there was Dango, loafing on the back of the couch and watching raindrops race down the window.

“What the fuck,” you said, dropping your wet coat and toeing off your shoes, “How the hell did she get in here?”

Tenko shrugged and hung your coat next to his hoodie. “Can she open locked doors?”

“I hope to fuck she can’t,” you said, and you rounded the couch to wrap your arms around that dear little loaf, and Dango jumped off the couch to crawl underneath it before you could fully hug her. “Oh, good. She’s fine. Acting like normal.” You sat on the couch’s arm, adrenaline evaporating to render you boneless.

“She was in my room when I came back from training. We ended early today, since Aizawa-sensei has something.” Tenko stooped to yank two bottles of gatorade from their plastic rings and headed towards the sofa to offer one to you. “She didn’t seem upset or hurt. She’s been sitting there, napping on and off.”

You accepted it and twisted off the cap. “So, who put my cat in your room?”

“Why would anyone do that?”

“I don’t know,” you said, taking a shallow sip, careful not to overwhelm your agitated stomach, “They’d have to know about Dango in the first place, and I suppose my stalker would, since they’ve theoretically been breaking into my room.”

Tenko paused mid-sip, and he hastened to swallow. “Someone’s been breaking into your room?”

“Yeah,” you said, easing down the arm of the couch and onto its cushions, “I think. There’s no physical sign of entry, but my shit keeps going missing, and stuff that’s not mine keeps showing up. Let me tell you, I need some of that shit they’ve stolen; it’s hard to replace—”

Tenko touched your lips with three of his fingertips to quiet you, and he gestured for you to stay put while he scrambled over to his closet, where he stood on his toes to retrieve a wicker basket from the top shelf. He dropped the thing into your lap. “Are any of these yours?”

All of it was, missing things you blamed on everything from Dango to your stalker to your own forgetfulness: your favourite sweater, your trolley pass, lip balm, your shitty earbuds, your good pantyhose, your planner, your d10, and, among many smaller things, even that bright blue thong you’d lost in the wash (Well. It’s better to find your thong with your new boyfriend over finding them returned to your dorm coated in your stalker’s cum, you supposed).

“I was losing my goddamn mind,” Tenko was saying, “Stuff kept showing up. I thought it was a test at first—”

“I don’t have a stalker,” you said, absentmindedly rubbing the fabric of your thong between your fingers, “Your shit has been—you read that GINSENG TEA X LUSTFUL BALLSACK shit? Tenko.”

“Oh, you have that?” Tenko scratched the back of his neck, but not in his self-harm way; it reminded you of Shinsou’s nervous habit more than anything. “Haven’t you read it? Isn’t that what you were naming your characters after?”

“Ah, ha, ha. Moving on. What is important, though, is why and how this is happening to us.”

“Yeah, I don’t…”

The two of you spitballed for a while, long enough for the both of you to finish your bottles of gatorade and for Tenko to start another, and neither of you came up with anything substantial.

“Hell with it,” said Tenko, standing to stretch, his movement disturbing Dango from her nap in his basket of clean laundry, “Let’s go ask Aizawa-sensei.”

Aizawa was not pleased when he discovered the both of you waiting in his kitchen, but he listened to the story, and when you were done, he stepped out of the room to make a phone call. When he came back, he looked even more exhausted than when he’d first come in.

“I’ve just gotten off the phone with Sakura Grove,” said Aizawa, wincing when his bones creaked as he sat in his chair, “Tenko, do you remember villain in-fighting within the PLF? In particular, I’m asking if you remember breathing in a pink dust cloud. It would’ve been in Deika City, in the month between your fight with Re-Destro and your body modification surgery. If our sources are accurate, you would’ve been with Touya.”

Tenko scrunched up his face. “Why would I have been—hm.” Frowning, he reached into the bag of popcorn you’d commandeered from Aizawa’s cupboards. “I know what you’re talking about. They were only letting me eat healthy stuff in the week before I went under. Touya was taking me to scrounge for something salty and shitty for me, because I couldn’t take it anymore. He started hitting on someone he thought was a waitress, and she—this is why I remember it—she compared the width of her hand to his thigh and said no thanks.”

“That’s Ito,” said Aizawa, sighing and crossing his arms, settling his chin into his capture weapon, “When did she use her quirk?”

“She shoved her hand on Touya’s face when he opened his stupid mouth again, and he passed out with swarming, pink particles floating around his head. She turned to me—and she must not have recognised Touya, but she knew me, because her face lit the fuck up. She never touched me, but I remember having to sneeze.”

“She never told you what her quirk did?”

“I woke back up in the PLF headquarters. I assumed whoever picked me up had killed her and that her death negated any effects.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why? What does it do?”

Aizawa let out a soft laugh, muffled through his capture weapon, and he jerked his head in your direction. “You tell him,” he said, snatching the bag of popcorn and heading towards his bedroom.

***

He’d been nervous about wearing a suit. They reminded him of AFO.

But you’d strayed away from dark colours and too much structure, so his light greyish-blue suit jacket stayed unbuttoned even as you leant across to the passenger seat to adjust his All Might tie for him (a Put Your Hands Up Radio tie had been offered, but Tenko had already closed his fist around the striped tie Midoriya would loan him). Part of his bangs had been pinned back to show off his annoyingly handsome face, especially in how his sharp, red eyes observed caught every movement of your terrible attempt to tie the tie based on the pictures Aizawa had sent you.

“We’re not gonna be late, are we?” Tenko drawled out, the corner of his mouth quirking upward, hand resting on the car ceiling as he angled his chest towards you.

“Shush; we are in the parking lot,” you said, looping the larger end. Or were you supposed to be looping the smaller one? “Besides, the world won’t end if we’re a few minutes late to my class’s annual reunion.”

A flimsy excuse for a party, one made because hero agencies needed some sort of named event as an excuse to dismiss your friends en masse. But it was spring again, and they were coming out of the winter blues, and they wanted to see you again, so, hey, why don’t we work something in around your schedule? If you can’t come to this date, then we’ll reschedule it until you can.

And, like. They knew. They knew Tenko was your soulmate. You suspected they all wanted to see what he was like now, too, because no one but Shinsou, Midoriya, and, apparently, Bakugou had known.

You undid the loose knot and tried again. “Are you nervous?”

“No,” he said, scrutinising the tacky balloons and streamers swaying in the night breeze outside of the otherwise intimidatingly elegant venue, “but those kids might be.”

“Those kids happen to be friends my age,” you said, “and I’m barely younger than you are. They know you’re coming. You’re fine.”

Tenko sucked in through his teeth, tapping the roof of the car one finger at a time. “The last time they saw me was as a thing. An object of destruction.”

“Well, they’ll definitely see you as a human person when I spill how you designed a unicorn DND character for Eri.” You pulled the fabric taut but kept it from lying closely to his neck (a boy didn’t like feeling constrained). “You know what? This tie is as good as it’s gonna get.”

He ducked his chin to examine its knot. “It’s shit.”

“It adds to your devil-may-care, reformed-bad-boy sort of charm,” you said, giving the tie a final smooth-down and poorly suppressing your smile when you felt his muscles through his shirt. “Mathematically, there are only 85 ways to tie a standard tie knot. I don’t believe we’ve reached any of them.”

“How do you know these things? You’re unbeliev—” Tenko jerked his face out of view of the window as Aoyama and Kouda, gesturing wildly, strode past the car and into the venue. “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat, “I know I don’t care and that you don’t care, but other people will. Your reputation is gonna plummet right into its grave if we’re out in the open together.”

You shook your head, letting your smile show. “So, I fucked part of a rescue job almost a year ago. So what. So I’m dating my soulmate. Am I supposed to do otherwise? Honestly, Tenko,” you said, curling loose strands of hair behind his ear, letting your fingers linger around his cheek and neck (he leant into the touch), “I don’t care. I would’ve chosen you even without the soulmate bond. You’re too endearing to pass by. You’re too…babygirl.”

Tenko had been guiding your hand to his mouth, and he snorted before it got there, warm air scattering in a short burst. “Don’t call me that,” he said, pressing his lips to the centre of your palm and waiting until you met his gaze to retract them.

A different warmth shot to your lower stomach, but you had to keep pressing, for the sake of the bit. “Oh, then what should I—darling? Honey? Pookie bear?”

He scoffed and nipped at your pinkie. “None of those are good.”

“Tenko.”

He breathed in, shoulders rising, eyes fluttering shut. Taking a moment to kiss the tiny bite mark on your finger. “Yeah,” he said, opening his eyes in a slow blink, catlike, “Feels good. Feels—like coming home.”

Beaming, you reached down to lace his fingers through yours. All five of them squeezed back. “Then let’s go.”

soulmate trope taglist: @bakugouspsycho, @pansexualproblemchild, @doonaandpjs, @sunsetevergreen, @the-coffee-is-on-fire, @liberace2, @ladymidnight77, @nonomesupposedto, @gooooomz, @kissmebakugou, @pachiibatt, @celestair, @tiredkittykat, @cheshireshiya, @90s-belladonna, @infjsnightmare

#bnha #shigaraki tomura #shigaraki x reader #shigaraki/reader #shigaraki imagine #shigaraki fic #mha #shigaraki headcanons #shigaraki fanfiction #shigaraki fanfic #soulmates #soulmate au #soulmate #dash it all

[illuminatedferret]

Back Hugs in Tian Guan Ci Fu:

1. Volume 2, "To Ascend is Human, to Fall Is Also Human", pg. 380

The Deputy State Preceptors hurriedly moved aside, and Mu Qing and Feng Xin didn't know whether to act. Seeing that everyone was avoiding him like he was poisonous vermin, the child was shaken and started thrashing even harder, biting and screaming with all his might. "I'm not! I'm not!! I'M NOT!!!" Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around his waist, encircling his small form. A voice came from above his head. "You're not. I know you're not. Don't cry, now. I know you're not." The young child pressed his lips closed tightly, grabbing on to the pair of snow-white sleeves around his waist with a desperate grip. He forced himself to hold back for a long time, but in the end, he couldn't. A stream of tears suddenly rolled down from that round black eye, and he burst out into sobs. Xie Lian embraced him from behind and reiterated with conviction, "It's not you. It's not your fault." Honghong-er whipped around, buried his face in Xie Lian's chest, and wailed.

2. Volume 6, "Cave of Ten Thousand Gods- Faces of the Ten Thousand Gods Revealed", pg. 78-79

Hua Cheng inclined his head slightly- it was like he wanted to glance back but was too afraid to look Xie Lian in the eye. Only the two streaks of blood on his cheek could be seen. "Your Highness, would you please... not tell me?" His voice cracked as he asked. "I'm sorry," Xie Lian said. "Something like this has to be made clear." Hua Cheng didn't need to breathe, but he still sucked in a deep breath. Although his face was awfully pale, he still smiled and replied courteously, "That's true. It's for the best." He was like a criminal on death row, waiting for his sentence. He closed his eye. Yet his eye didn't remain closed for long- soon it snapped open once more as a pair of arms suddenly circled him from behind and caught him in a forceful embrace. Xie Lian buried his face in Hua Cheng's back, but he didn't speak either. Though nothing was said, it was enough. It was a long time before Xie Lian felt the man he was hugging turn around. Hua Cheng fervently returned the embrace, engulfing Xie Lian in his arms.

3. Volume 6, "Warm Words of a Cold Ghost Beguile the Lost Child", pg. 203

And then, Xie Lian abruptly froze. White No-Face was hugging him. As Xie Lian tilted and fell to his knees in a slump, he had been captured by a pair of cold, powerful arms that pulled him into a lifeless embrace. At some point, White No-Face had sat down on the ground with him. "So sad, so sad," he murmured. "Your Highness, look. Look at what they've done to you." He whispered softly as he stroked Xie Lian's head, his hands gentle and full of pity. It was like he was petting a wounded puppy or his own gravely ill child on the brink of death. The smiling half of the crying-smiling mask was hidden in the darkness; the moonlight revealed only the half that was crying, looking like genuine tears of grief shed for Xie Lian. Xie Lian remained stiff and curled in on himself, moving no further. The man in white behind him raised his fingers to wipe the filthy mud from Xie Lian's face. He sensed a peculiar kind of loving compassion in the man's touch. Like the embrace of a close friend or a dear family member, it miraculously returned a bit of warmth to Xie Lian's shivering body. He never expected that this sinister creature would be the one to finally offer him compassion.

4. Volume 7, "Dominate Heaven and Earth, Divine Being Breaks Through the Kiln", pg. 19

Xie Lian stood on the giant's palm, one hand pressing the bamboo hat down on his head while the another blocked his face from the snowstorm. The stifling hot air was swept cleanly away, and Xie Lian took a deep breath of fresh, freezing air and shouted: "San Lang-!" The first syllable was still echoing in the air when a pair of arms pulled him into an embrace from behind. Xie Lian stiffened at first, but he relaxed when he looked down and saw red sleeves and silver vambraces circling his waist. A deep, forlorn voice came from above his ear. "...I was about to lose my mind!" Xie Lian hurried to turn around. He cupped his captor's cheeks with his hands and soothed him, "Don't... don't. I'm here... I'm out!" Hua Cheng stood before him. His raven hair was mussed, and there was a lost look in his eye. He gripped the cry-smiling mask Xie Lian hadn't been able to remove no matter how hard he tried, easily tore it off, and tossed it away.

Bonus: Volume 7, "Dominate Heaven and Earth, Divine Being Breaks Through the Kiln", pg. 29-30

Before Xie Lian could finish his thought, the three mountain spirits besieged them together. They surrounded the giant stone statue and pressed firmly inward, trying to crush the state to pieces. The divine state couldn't move a single limb, nor could Xie Lian. He poured all of his strength into getting the statue to push them back, but it didn't budge- and at that point, it was probably powerless to fight back! As he tried to think of another way to escape, he unconsciously took a step backward and bumped into a chest. When he looked back, Hua Cheng grasped his shoulders. "Fight freely! It'll be fine- none of them are a match for you. Nothing in this world can stop you!" His chest was the strongest backing in existence, and in an instant, Xie Lian was brimming with confidence. A refreshing current flowed through his body, and he struck back with all his might.

#tgcf #hua cheng #xie lian #tian guan ci fu #hualian #heaven officials blessing #tgcf meta #heaven official's blessing #illuspeaks #bai wuxiang #god this was a lot of typing #im pretty sure i didn't miss any #i thought mt tonglu opening was one too but it looks like it was a normal hug #the rest of the time theyre on the statue they dont hug #lmk though #tgcf spoilers #???? i suppose. dunno how to tag for donghua watchers

[greenerteacups]

Hi! Just wanted to say the latest chapter is lovely & amazing & sweet & had me smiling the whole time! I absolutely love your characterisation of everyone, especially Draco, so it was so so lovely to return to this world & to his thoughts!! with his best friend and crush at malfoy manor no less! All the yearning is already off to a great start hehe I am so excited for the rest of book 5!

Wanted to ask you how has it been for you to write this new book and volume? Has your writing process changed since when you’d first begun taking on a long form project like this?

& also are there any moments or surprises in this book that you’re especially excited about?

sending so much love & gratitude for you and your incredible works 💓

Thank you so much! This is really encouraging, I so appreciate it.

Inasmuch as I can use this metaphor without having kids myself, I sort of see each of the books as a different child. The first one flew out in basically a few weeks of very intensive writing, and it was a total dream — plot, pacing, symbolism, major beats, all fell into place basically without effort. The character stuff was the hardest, as I've written about before, but even then, the glorious part of writing beginnings is it's the most energy you'll ever have for a project, so the lows were pretty soft lows. Book 2, in contrast, I had to drag kicking and screaming by its ankle from under the bottommost mattress of my brain. It's one of my least favorite books (tone problem; COS has killer plot/setting/ingredients for a YA novel, but it's stuck in the doldrums of Harry Potter's well-documented Early-Installment Weirdness, before Cedric Diggory slams the gas and upshifts the whole series into its correct age bracket). More specifically, once I'd gone through and picked out everything in the book that happened because of Lucius, I didn't have a plot — hey alexa how do you rewrite Chamber of Secrets when We Got No Fucking Chamber Of Secrets — and oh by the way, even if you want to do a moody tone/political setup book, remember that your protagonists are still twelve, so if you go too dark or too intense, you'll risk torpedoing your readers' suspension of disbelief. Good luck, Charlie.

Book 3 felt the most like its own novel, if that makes sense? It's the last truly feel-good book of the series; it's a great stand-alone mystery novel with relatively low stakes. Plus you get a bunch of the big series icons: patronuses, dementors, werewolves, Hogsmeade, the Marauders' Map, and time turners arithmancy. It just felt like a good old-fashioned motherfucking romp of a mystery/adventure story, before any of the complex character work and major stakes of the late books come in.

Book 4 was the most fun I've had writing anything maybe ever. I don't even know what it was. Maybe the tournament arc, honestly? Love me a tournament arc. But in any case, I opened every new chapter feeling a tingle of excitement for what I was gonna get to do. Oh, and the romance started, finally, Jesus God (if it feels like a slow burn reading, just imagine what it felt like writing it, when everything takes ten times as long, and you have to figure out how to word the fucker.)

Book 5, in contrast, has felt much less like that tingle of "here we go!" and more like "oh, man, this is gonna be cool." Because this is the arc of the story that composed the original idea for Lionheart, literally years ago, and to be honest, I didn't think I'd get this far! If you'd asked me "do you know that it's going to take you 500,000 words of backstory before you can start writing that concept you're thinking about, and you're going to do it anyway?" I would have said: "absolutely not, strange mind-reader!" But like... I'm here! Finally! And it's... real now? Like, this isn't just a bunch of clips of scenes in my head anymore! That's rad!

That being said, it's definitely been slower than Book 4, because I kept switching back to my outline document to make sure that certain things were set up properly, and that I hadn't lost any of the plot threads or forgotten a minor beat that was vitally important for the story three chapters later. And I had a minor crisis about three months ago when I ripped out about 8 chapters in the first third of the book — basically everything from September to December — because I'd done a readthrough to check pacing (big mistake! never edit while drafting, that's satan talking) and realized I had a missing storyline. Like, there was a whole layer of the story that was just. Missing. Not there. And the existing text really couldn't fit another thread, so instead of taking weeks to pore through and try to sift out what I could save, I needed to factory reset and start over. And I didn't want to! I vividly remember sitting there with my head in my hands, trying not to weep, because I'd decimated 90,000 words of work in a single edit. But it had to be done. Because the story wasn't going to work. And now (hopefully) it will.

And of course, there's still that sense of excitement and exhilaration from before. Always. But whereas Book 4 felt like a delicious chocolate pudding, Book 5 is a medium-rare steak.

(Book 6, so far, is four shots of espresso and a whiskey chaser. FWIW.)

#greenteacup asks #lionheart #lionheart spoilers #dramione

[farfromstrange]

Helloooo, 💕💕💕💕

I had an idea for a fratt and reader fluff piece. They are stuck in the car on a road trip, Frank is driving (because is his truck), Matt is in the copilot seat and Reader is in the middle seat in the back.

She falls asleep and Matt asks Frank to stop the car. Frank asks him "Why?" and Matt says "Because I want to cuddle with her".

When Matt is in the back, Frank asks him "Ever wonder why she always falls asleep in the car?"

That's it, I leave the rest up to you 😘😘😘

Also I wanted to thank you again for doing my request about the teddy bear, it was the cutest like these two gentlemen 😍😍😍😍

I am so sorry for the wait, darling! I had a lot going on. I've honestly never written for Fratt or Frank before in my life, so this is my first. I tried my best, and I hope I did your request justice <3 I’m so happy the teddy bear request was to your liking, so I hope that it’s the same with this one. Sending you all the hugs and kisses, especially for these gifs!!

Ours | Matt Murdock x Frank Castle x Reader

Masterlist

Pairing: Matt Murdock x Frank Castle x F!Reader

Summary: You fall asleep in the car and the boys wonder why that always happens.

Warnings: Tooth-rotting fluff

Word Count: 2.6k

A/n: I have no idea if this is good enough or not, but...I tried? Let me know if you liked it and maybe I'll write more for Frank in the future. I don't know. Also, I have decided not to tag for this because I'm not sure how everyone on my tag list stands with Frank. Since this is a poly ship and not everyone is into that :) Just so you know that I didn’t forget you, I just know not everyone ships Fratt. This is the first fic in that direction I’ve ever written, and I’m a bit shy, but oh well…

The purr of the engine resonates through the cab of Frank's weathered truck as it speeds down the open highway, the asphalt stretching out before them like an endless ribbon. The moon stands high in the sky, the clock showing an even number of 4:00 am. The car is dark except for the light of the controls and the headlights reflecting off the puddles in the road.

At first, the radio had been playing a random 80s rock tune, but as soon as Matt slipped into the driver’s seat, he sneered at Frank, “Turn that off.”

In response, Frank turned up the volume even more. You told him before that it’s your favorite song, and you wanted to hear it.

“Fuck that!” he’d said. “Our girl wants to hear this. You wanna say no to our girl, Red?”

You smiled so innocently from the backseat, Matt could only sigh and cup his ears to try and keep the volume out. With his heightened senses, something as easy as that won’t even remotely work, but he tried.

Frank laughed out loud. “Told ya!” And then he sang along with you to whatever song came after that one, and Matt had to suffer through it.

The first ten minutes of this drive were torture, to say the least.

Matt accepted it for a while, but eventually decided he had enough and turned the radio off entirely, leaving the car in an eerie silence.

Now, you’re driving without music.

The gentle hum of the tires beneath you eventually lulls you into a peaceful daze. One second, you are lecturing Frank on why opening the car door and throwing Matt out of it while he was driving eighty miles per hour wasn’t such a good idea, the next you slowly start dozing off.

It doesn’t take long before the rhythmic vibrations of the car have you drifting off into a quiet slumber. The soft sounds of Matt and Frank's conversation turn into a distant murmur as your head nestles against the backrest. The gentle sway of the vehicle matches the cadence of your breaths, and soon you are lost in dreams.

Frank lifts his eyes off the road for a moment, looking at you through the rearview mirror. You don’t talk much, but every time the three of you come from a mission, the adrenaline runs high in your bloodstream and you become chatty. Ever since you went quiet, Frank has wondered whether or not you’ve fallen asleep, and he gets his proof when he looks at your sleeping form in the back.

Matt notices him shifting and he tilts his head slightly in your direction. The gentle rhythm of your heartbeat resonates in his ear, your breathing even, and your shirt brushes against your chest ever so slightly whenever it lifts to let some more oxygen into your lungs.

“She’s asleep,” he states.

“Yeah,” says Frank. He reaches back and cups your knee. You don’t move. “Dead fucking asleep, I’d say.”

Matt only shoots him a glare, his unfocused eyes landing on the point closest to where his voice is coming from. “Would you mind keeping both your hands on the steering wheel?”

Rolling his eyes, Frank straightens up. He wants to say something smart, but Matt has said more annoying things in the past. And when he looks at him, he can’t be mad because he looks so soft in the moonlight. It hits his dark curls just right, meeting the brown of his eyes and turning them slightly green, maybe even a little golden.

Matt Murdock is golden, Frank does not doubt that. More golden than you? No, but he is golden nonetheless. A golden retriever, you once called him, and you were onto something then.

Frank doesn’t like a lot of people, and while Matt can annoy the shit out of him, there’s something too good about him that makes it impossible for him to hate the man that’s sitting next to him, his red suit hugging his curves just right, the gloves that usually hug his thick fingers placed in his lap as he fidgets.

He’s aware that the relationship between you three is unconventional, but he couldn’t care less.

Matt frowns. “What?” he asks him.

Frank blinks. “Nothing.”

“Do I have something on my face?”

“Not yet,” he retorts.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I fucking said, Red. Exactly that.”

Once again, Matt only rolls his eyes. He leans back in his seat, head tilting even further to listen to you sleep. You sound so peaceful, your body slack with relaxation. You always sit in the middle so you can talk better to them, or hold his hand in the passenger seat. Whenever you’re alone with Frank, you are the passenger princess, but that changes as soon as Matt is involved. They sit in the front to protect you, that much is true, but Matt also gets sick easily in the back, so he always sits in the front. That doesn’t mean you don’t want to hold his hand every once in a while, so you recline in the backseat, always.

Matt reaches behind himself to cup your other thigh. You shift slightly, bucking into his touch as if seeking his comfort. Your heart skips a beat. With the moonlight hitting your face the same way it does him, Matt is sure you must look ethereal.

“She does,” Frank murmurs beside him.

He shoots him a confused glance, but Frank chuckles and adds, “You tend to think out loud when you’re turning into a needy mess. Ain’t my fault.”

A blush forms on Matt’s cheeks, and he instantly turns his head away. He forgets that Frank sees him better than anyone, probably. Not just in the literal sense but in a very deep, emotional way as well. They are so alike yet so different, and you only seem to tighten the bond they already shared from the beginning. With you, life is easier.

Matt slips his hand from your thigh back into his lap, and a mischievous smile spreads across his face. He leans over to Frank, his voice a low murmur. "Hey, could you do me a favor and pull over?" he asks, his hand already fidgeting with the seatbelt.

Frank's brows come together in confusion, so close they almost touch, and the slightest hint of frustration flickers in his eyes. "Why?" he asks back, his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

Matt's smile remains. "Because I want to cuddle with her," he confesses.

Frank's lips twitch into a half-smile as he glances at Matt. “You're such a fucking softie, you know that? It’s disgusting.”

Matt shrugs. "Well, she's asleep, and I don't want her to wake up all stiff and uncomfortable."

With a huff, Frank slows down and finds a spot on the side of the road where he can pull over. “You’re lucky your tits make great pillows,” he says as he pulls into the small lot.

He opens his mouth to protest, but one look at his armor makes him shut up. Frank isn’t entirely wrong.

The truck rumbles to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and Matt swiftly unfastens his seatbelt and moves to the backseat. He methodically makes his way forward by using his bare hands to find the door handle and then climbs back into the familiar interior.

Frank watches him through the rearview mirror, admiring how gracefully he moves, all just so he won’t disturb you. “You good back there?” he asks.

Matt nods. “Yeah, I’m fine. You can drive.”

Carefully, he slides in next to you, grabbing the blanket from the seat next to you. You must have been so tired, you forgot to make yourself comfortable. He wraps it around your form, tucking you in. The truck starts moving again, but he won’t let Frank’s driving distract him from taking care of what’s his.

Matt wraps an arm around your shoulders, pulling you closer to his side, and you snuggle against his chest. The steady beat of his heart creates a soothing melody that harmonizes with the gentle hum of the car's engine.

As Frank resumes driving, his eyes occasionally flickering to the rearview mirror, he can’t help but smile at the sight. He had seen many things in his life, but the simple tenderness of this moment was a reminder of the unexpected bond you have formed over the past few months, and it continues to fasten every single day. Whether it’s sharing a bed, sharing dinner, or taking down a bunch of gang members in an abandoned warehouse far away from your familiar Hell’s Kitchen, you always find a way to come out better together.

After a while, as the sun dips lower in the sky, casting long shadows over the road, Frank's curiosity gets the better of him. He glances over at Matt, who is running his fingers through the messy strands of your hair, and his voice is gruff but tinged with intrigue when he speaks. “Hey, Red,” Frank says, catching his attention. “Ever wonder why she always falls asleep in the car?”

Matt pouts. "I don’t know,” he answers honestly. “Maybe it's the steady rhythm, the feeling of movement. Makes her feel safe like she's being taken care of."

Frank nods thoughtfully, his grip firm on the steering wheel. "Yeah, maybe."

“Or maybe it’s us. She has this thing…” Matt shifts you slightly, and you curl even closer to him in your sleep. He chuckles. “She has this thing where her heartbeat skips whenever one of us is near, and then it slows when one of us touches her.”

“Slow down?” Frank cuts him off, a smirk on his lips. “Man, you sure about that?”

Matt kicks him. “Oh, shut up, Frank!” he says. “I didn’t mean it like that and you know it.”

“C’mon, you can’t blame me. I may not have your super senses, but I know her body inside-out. I know that her heartbeat doesn’t slow down when we touch her.”

“You don’t really know her heartbeat then,” his voice is barely above a whisper. He lowers his lips to your forehead. Your heart jumps again as if you know what he’s doing. “Whenever we’re being affectionate with her–not in a sexual way, mind you–she calms down. She’s always so on edge, but when we’re together like this, when we’re talking and driving and everything is a little less heavy, that’s when she sleeps best. I can’t describe it, but it’s…it shows me that she feels safe with us. With you.”

In an instant, Frank shuts his mouth. Matt’s words make sense, but they still hit him hard. He has a hard time believing that anyone would feel safe in his presence, that anyone would love him, but whenever he looks at you, he knows he’s often just overthinking because you do.

You love him, you love Matt, and you love what the three of you have. You feel safe. You come to him when you’re sad, and he can come to you when he feels the same. You open up to him and Matt, no one else. You let your guard down for him. He never thought he would feel this way again, and it’s often overwhelming to even exist with all the pain he’s carrying, but he’s not alone anymore.

“Can’t say I blame her,” Matt adds.

Damn him, Frank thinks. He doesn’t even have to say what he’s thinking; Matt always knows. He hears his heartbeat, he hears his breathing change, and he feels something switch in the atmosphere, and he instantly knows something isn’t right. Frank thinks too much, even though it doesn’t seem that way, and Matt is very susceptible to people thinking too much. And he’s attentive.

Frank huffs, his fists clenching around the steering wheel. “Fifteen minutes, Red,” he says. “I’ll drop you off at your place. Both of you. I think she’ll be more than happy to stay with your annoying ass tonight.”

“We’re all staying at my place,” he sounds so calm back there.

“Can’t. I’m busy.”

“Yes, you can, and no, you’re not. You don’t have a life outside of me and her, and your guns. We both know that.”

Yes, he can. And no, he’s not busy.

Frank shakes his head, but he doesn’t say anything else. Matt continues to stroke your hair, his attention both on you and the man in the driver’s seat. A small smile plays on his lips. He’s home right here. With you, with Frank, even if it’s an open road–He’s home wherever you are because that’s where his heart is.

The journey continues through the night, the road unwinding beneath the truck's wheels. The moon remains their silent companion.

Even in your sleep, you seem to sense the harmony of the moment, a soft sigh escaping your lips as you nuzzle closer into Matt's chest.

Frank's eyes flicker to the rearview mirror once more, catching sight of your peaceful face. He can't deny that there is a certain comfort in seeing you this way, your guard down and your worries temporarily silenced by tranquility. It's a rare sight, one that fills him with a sense of contentment he didn't anticipate.

Matt's focus remains on you, his fingers lightly brushing against your hair. He marvels at the vulnerability you exhibit in your sleep.

He tilts his head slightly. "Does she look as peaceful as she sounds?" he asks softly.

Frank grunts in agreement. "Yeah, she does," he says.

Matt smiles. "Good." The miles slip away. The open road ahead holds a unique kind of therapy, and the world outside seems to fade into insignificance, leaving only the here and now.

Matt's fingers trace patterns on your arm as he speaks again, his voice low and steady. "You know, I think that when we're in the car, it's like a sanctuary for her," he says, adding to his previous answer. "The movement, the sounds, they offer a sense of security she rarely finds anywhere else. She said her life wasn't pretty before we came along, and we can argue that it still is far from pretty all we want, but she loves us. That counts for something, Frank."

Frank contemplates, his lips pursing. "Security?" he questions. Of course, he would pick the part he didn’t emphasize.

“Yeah.” Matt sighs, then he nods. “She feels safe with us. It's more than just the physical presence—it's the emotional support we provide. We're her safe haven,” he says.

Frank's eyes flicker to Matt's profile, his lips twitching into a shit-eating grin. “You've thought this through, huh?” He chuckles. “That’s a new one.”

Gone is the doubtful Frank, leaving behind the teasing asshole he likes to be. And Matt eats it up every single time.

He rolls his eyes, something he should get paid for at this point, but the hint of a smile plays at the corners of his lips. "I've had a lot of time to think," says Matt. "I always think, especially about her. And you."

A small chuckle escapes Frank's throat, the sound almost incredulous. He's trying to play off the blush that is threatening to break out. Whenever Matt is being sweet, he does it with such precision, Frank wants to break out into hives. But in a good way.

“I'll be damned, Red,” he says, his voice edging on a mock. “Who knew you could be such a fucking philosopher and shit-eating romantic at the same time?”

Matt's lips turn into a full-fledged grin. "Well, we all have our talents," he says.

"Yeah, I guess we do," Frank agrees, his voice softer than usual, even bordering on a whisper.

As the road stretches ahead, the miles disappearing beneath the truck's wheels, Matt's fingers continue their gentle dance along your skin. His touch is a silent promise that he's always going to be there for you, no matter what, and the sense of safety makes you melt. His touch holds a magic power, and you're too weak to fight it.

Frank's eyes flicker to the road again. He's not one to openly express emotions, but he knows that this connection—the one forged between you, Matt, and himself—is something he wouldn't trade for anything in the world. He finally has a reason to live again, and he'd be damned to let it go. To let you go.

"You think she knows?" His question hangs in the air. He doesn't even have to say what he means for Matt to understand.

Matt's expression softens as he takes in the sight of your peaceful form. "I think she feels it," he answers. "She knows she's cared for. She’s knows we’re here for her. That we love her. Both of us."

It's a simple truth that Frank has come to realize over time—that you've found a home within their unconventional dynamic, and that the sanctuary of the car is just one representation of the security they offer you. You spend most of your time there, anyway.

And so, the miles roll on. With the open road stretching before you, and the soft embrace of sleep enveloping you, you continue your trek, each moment etching your story deeper into the tapestry of your lives.

#matt murdock x reader #matt murdock #daredevil #matt murdock fluff #matt murdock angst #frank castle #frank castle x reader #the punisher #matt murdock x frank castle #matt murdock x frank castle x you #fratt #lizzi writes #requests are closed

[50cal-fullauto-astarion]

My thing with writing König is trying to find the sweet spot balance point of like 3-4 different angles that are integral to the characterization I want to put out there.

I want him absolutely riddled with the kind of dangerous loser vibes that start the first day of kindergarten as almost an leprotic aura of Contaminated: Do Not Touch that everyone he comes into contact with wordlessly picks up on and carries for his entire life.

Just borderline violent othering that he struggles to fight, embrace, and figure out without ever getting a clear answer or mitigation method. He gets older and becomes a problem, a human toxic waste dump, and the avoidance is tinged with alarm. He figured out how to cover it, though, like he’s pulling on a patchwork person suit.

I’m a real boy, I’m like everyone else, nevermind the seams. Yeah, they’ll split the longer you’re around, but maybe this time—this time—I will have become an endeared thing and I will be understood instead of left.

Skin-splitting horniness, which is ha-ha on the surface, but Jesus Christ, it’s starvation, straight-up. Man is a fucking alien, he doesn’t get people, his veneer of normality is quick to shatter, and he just wants-wants-wants to be wanted. To be needed is a pipe dream. He’s like a dog taken away from mom and litter mates too soon—the need for closeness is set at so high a threshold it’ll never be met, never be fixed.

Fucking is a quick fix for this desperation. Bandaid over a bullet hole, finger in a cracked dam. Gets sharper teeth and longer claws the lower the fuel gauge is, and he’s been running on fumes for years. He’ll eat any scraps given to him at any table. Any even mildly kind word, any mote of attention, approval, or acceptance.

Even in his worst mind, he knows he’s not owed, he is not dying because he is not getting fucked or loved or befriended, but god fucking dammit, what he wouldn’t give for company to cut the bleakness, to not be fucking flinched at or eye-rolled. He wants to eat someone piecemeal as they eat him piecemeal, and the brutal symbolism of cannibalism is the best way he can understand the depth of this fragile-skinned desire.

A level of jaundiced, yellow-eyed sweatiness that pervades every aspect of his life. This is more difficult to describe. It’s literal sweat—from flop or exertion, it doesn’t matter—it’s also a state of being. It’s having not a flicker of volume control—indoor yelling or outdoor muttering. It’s being exhausted and anxious to the point of hysterical cry-laughing at hallucinations after 3-4 days sleepless. It’s saying the wrong fucking thing at the wrong fucking time and chasing yet another person off and wanting to kill himself for it.

It’s surviving on 4 hours of sleep and cigarettes and any kind of caffeine and below-board military amphetamines he can get his hands on for the last ten years because he feels like he’s wasting time. It’s getting smacked because his monstrosity of a body fucking hurts and being borderline greened-out makes it easier to go grocery shopping or to the gym or outside. It’s showering and then cutting his hair over the sink and not giving a fuck what it looks like as long as it’s not getting caught in his collars.

He doesn’t blink, he doesn’t sleep, he’s constantly spilling hyena-pitched stupid nervous laughter, and he bites when he’s overdone, and his teeth aren’t dull. He’s never threatened violence that he can’t overpay out on. He pulls on his face and his scars and that might as well be the same thing, gets sick to his stomach that they’re still numb and he can’t push into the pain he remembers from them. Sometimes he just moans and groans, shoves a hand up under his mask to cover his mouth like he’s going to hold back the tide of bile. He does this shit in front of people, and wants to die when he figures it out.

He likes killing people, he likes feeling powerful, he likes being seen when he’s the executioner, he likes being a scary nightmare. He doesn’t even know if he’d rather fight than fuck, but at least he’s good at it, and there’s undeniable imagery in driving a knife in between ribs over and over and over. He’s never not throbbing hard at exfil, and he’s never not sick to death with himself and his fantasies after he beats off the second he gets privacy.

Anyway I love him, he’s a sad sack.

#könig #konig cod #konig call of duty #call of duty #cod mwii #konig mw2 #call of duty mwii #könig cod #konig #Good enough #you won’t catch him with NONE of his shit diagnosed

[blankvort]

tangentially animal-related hcs 4 the mean girls crew bc i am now responsible for giving a goldfish daddy issues

cady

inexplicably allergic to dogs and always in the first four stages of grief about it. don’t @ me about the medical semantics i just want her to suffer a little

tried to get a job at petco the second she turned eighteen but learned of the above information in the most destructive job interview since janis’s application to be the local coffee shop’s cool gay barista (they were worried that she’d swear at fighter-jet-takeoff volumes if she touched hot coffee) (she did, but only because they started playing a shitty pop cover of one of damian’s fave show tunes) and came out of the building a puddle of mucous and tears

grossly fascinated by the grossest of primitive functions. her insta page is all dope and authentic until you find a selfie taken using the back camera 0.5x with the corpse of an effervescent snail and a bunch of reels telling you how to narrow down what bird species are destroying your garden by the splay of their shit

has a miniature aneurysm whenever movies get stuff wrong about animals. artistic liberties are granted to janis alone. like sure if she’s in the theater she’ll sit through the movie fisting popcorn down her throat but as soon as she gets out of there the entire mall becomes a soapbox for dissecting the bullshit sexual dimorphism of giving female animals eyeliner

thus while i know the headcanon of her loving the lion king is basically canon i think she’s absurdly secretive about it. like she’s burying her merchandise and blu-ray copies under her bed in the dead of night while secreting more sweat than should be possible. she could come out to her parents and elope to antarctica no problem but liking the lion king which implies that lighter manes = stronger lions is a death sentence

probably got banned from a bunch of zoos for interrupting field trips 

janis

had one of those angel/wolf/dragon/whatever hybrid phases as a kid like all good artists. did those like. not quite furry but not quite human animal art commissions on twitter for a while for the funnies but discovered a lucrative market and never turned back

does not know how to hold human or animal babies. like she’s good at taking care of them in terms of general physical and intellectual nourishment but that limp wrist is not supporting any necks properly

mercilessly makes fun of the whole “would you love me if i was a worm” trend. she doesn’t even love most humans what makes you think she has any answer for you regarding that other than that she’d turn you into a super deep art piece museums would purchase for exorbitant amounts

that being said she feels like a vivarium girlie to me. she’s nocturnal like a pillbug and post-canon constantly tries to convince the plastics that her pacman frog is poisonous

feeds her meticulously decorated ant farm gourmet meals every day. anyone else gets microwavable mac and cheese at best

this one probably won’t make sense unless you’re a jenny nicholson fan but she has a fake id for buying wine and turning the corks into those hallmark craft animal sculptures (and selling the open wine bottle to mrs george in back alleys)

damian

his grandma owns the most omnicidal chihuahua in the state of chicago. it’s how he learned to dance with such mental and physical dexterity. how else would he have survived visits to the nursing home

^ attempted to adopt the chihuahua’s children to have his own bruiser woods moment. turns out, even with his classically trained tenor voice, puppies and janis respond to the “drop it” command much the same way. that is to say they do not drop it and the puppies ran away with ninety nine per cent of his anastasia-inspired music box memorabilia

has a love-hate relationship with cats the musical. like memory is one of his top ten karaoke songs but he’s not going to admit it until he’s several fruity seltzers into the night. wishes all the actors in the movie had been replaced with real cats picked off the street before anything else was approved

played milky white in a scammy local production of into the woods and so so so embarrassed about it. he had to be on stilts the whole show

stuck a fish in regina’s backpack sometime in sophomore year but found karen feeding it and talking to it about her worst fears and greatest dreams felt too guilty to continue with the next phase of his plan (sticking a very hot picture of janis in regina’s backpack) (karen probably would’ve tried to talk to the photo too)

regina

musical specific but i think she didn’t Exactly do a matching animal costume with gretch and karen because 1) what can you dress up as when your friends are going as a cat and a mouse. cheese? 2) had cady not moved into the neighborhood, she’d have gone as a sexy lion to ease into the prospect of. you know. with shane oman but going as a sexy lion when your shiny new homoerotic frenemy has a lion pin on half her clothing isn’t quite a non-questionable choice

had a warrior cats phase she keeps under lock and key in the very depths of her closet. her closet is an iceberg of issues that goes shein -> homosexuality -> warrior cats and climate change is doing a number on it

fried a couple of janis’s ants alive with a magnifying glass sometime before middle school. she’s never flirted normally in her life

the bulk of janis’s furry commission clientele. she has so many emails for alternate accounts that she could get every american president ever suspended from twitter if national security let her. that’s including the dead ones

remember the nigh-rabid chihuahuas damian had. yeah she’s been raising those in secret for a few years now. mrs george doesn’t notice because regina hides them in her hair and extensions are, like, totally in or whatever

had a horse girl phase. all her drawings of horses came out like this meme tho. the art freaks nickname was born out of jealousy

gretchen

chose to be a sexy cat for halloween to match with karen because she has no sense of identity. also because she remembers regina’s warrior cats phase

actually a guinea pig person. i’ve never met a guinea pig person but she feels like one. they’re both in dire need of daily interaction and likely polyamorous

but also peri-canon gretchen could not keep a pet alive she’d spend every cent of the wieners fortune on buying the animal’s love

speaking of. her family bought a stable to fuel “her” horse girl phase. she just wanted to make regina happy and couldn’t stay on a saddle if there was an escalator that plopped her right on the horse

cares about the puppy bowl more than she cares about the superbowl

instinctively pets cute animals. if they bite her then she deserved it

karen

chose to be a sexy mouse for halloween because tom and jerry was having a media marathon and she’s into that sort of power dynamic

believes in unicorns more than she believes in horses. this is because she had a horse girl phase for the hottest of seconds before realizing that none of the ponies at the apache trail sale had horns and thought they had their horns cut off for aesthetic reasons

animals love her so much. survived a jellyfish attack because the jellyfish sensed she just wanted to pet something shiny and absolutely respected that. pests of all shapes and sizes evict themselves stat when karen says her mom doesn’t appreciate her hundred thousand dollar lotions being invaded by peril-bringing insects. strays follow her 24/7. gretchen is jealous (of the animals)

thinks tigers are very sick zebras

thinks blobfish are cuter when they’re all flesh putty out of their natural habitats but would also break into a zoo if she thought the animals were being mistreated

was banned from australia at the age of eight because she tried to have a sleepover in a kangaroo’s pouch

aaron

mean girls insta described him as a golden retriever so i’m also hcing him as being allergic to dogs <3 equality

becomes deeply fearful of all fauna after falling into a research rabbit hole for the sake of connecting with cady. what do you mean buffalo are some of the deadliest beasts on the planet and not just a type of chicken wing

kevin g

a preteen vsco girl in her granola advocacy era stuck in a teenage boy’s body. he has saved more turtles than any natucate volunteer by repurposing his rejected business cards to make a selfie stick long enough to stick him in the same selfie as gretchen wieners. the selfie stick has been in progress since daycare. he has also gone to the hospital more than any natucate volunteer do not trust this man with shop class equipment

#mean girls #cady heron #janis sarkisian #janis ‘imi’ike #damian hubbard #regina george #gretchen wieners #karen smith #karen shetty #aaron samuels #kevin gnapoor #kevin ganatri #these r so long for no reason #who wants goldfish pics btw

[chongoblog]

I wannna make a ranking of the songs in my own albums. So I’m gonna start with the most recent one: Lakitu’s Mixtape Volume 1 (give it a listen if you haven’t already)

From worst to best

36. Go Baby Go Stupid

35. Feeling Good

34. Gold!

33. What The Frappe?

32. Beach That Makes You Breakdance

31. Slick And Twisted

30. Peach That Makes You Old

29. Call Me Shirley

28. Skydance

27. Look At The Time

26. I Love Mondays

25. Metro Mushroom

24. Wrench Discourse

23. Arcade Mention

22. Boing!

21. That’s A Space Station

20. Intense Night Drive

19. Battle Mention

18. Road Where You Go

17. 78 Years Later

16. Maple Leaf Momentum

15. Triforce Jam

14. Multiball

13. Rainbow Rock

12. Plant Gang

11. Maple Leaf Melody

10. Amp’d Up

9. Across the Cosmos

8. wah.wav

7. Tonight

6. Sugar Headache

5. Yes, Capes!

4. OSHA Non-Compliant

3. Prismatic Path

2 Pleasant Day Drive

1. Greetings

So a few notes on this ranking. First of all, Go Baby Go Stupid is only at the bottom because I feel like I made it too long and repetitive, and I was going to say it’s the only miss of the album, but a lot of people still really love it and even said its their fave, so I guess this was the most consistently rad album. Another thing of note is that if you’d told me on launch day that Amp’d Up would eventually grow to be in the Top Ten I would’ve called you a liar.

Anyway hope you enjoyed. Might do this for more of my albums.

#album ranking #my stuff #long post

[tensmutdepot]

Dedication (part 1)

Pairing: Ten Lee x fem/afab!reader

Genre: idol au, slow-ish burn, acquaintances to friends to lovers, major fluff, eventual and abundant smut

Tags: incredibly self-indulgent; Ten is obsessed with Y/N (respectfully, with signs of flourishing mental health); NCT and WayV exist and Ten is in them; college party; alcohol; Y/N's friends are named after aespa members cuz I'm lazy; with guest stars Johnny, Jaehyun, Mark, and Haechan

Summary: Y/N is a creative writing student at a university in a major city. Ten is an idol from one of the most famous k-pop groups in the world. Can I make it anymore obvious?

Word Count: 7.9k

Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The vibrations from the booming bass of the music pulsated inside your chest, mingling with your heartbeat. You and your roommate, Karina, had pushed back all of the dining room furniture to create a makeshift dance floor. It wasn’t terribly often that the two of you entertained party guests, but it definitely wasn’t the first time either. You were both fourth-year college students in the area, and the home belonged to Karina’s father. Her father was quite wealthy, and not only that but he loved to spoil his daughter. So when you and Karina had decided to move out on your own while completing your studies, he made sure his daughter and her best friend were both well taken care of. 

The house wasn’t huge, but the main level had an incredibly open floor plan, so it was perfect for converting into a nightclub on a budget. The kitchen was transformed into a bar, the living room a lounge area. There were speakers set up to surround the dining area, which is where you found yourself now, letting your favorite party mix shake through you at top volume while you waited for people to arrive.

Karina was still upstairs getting ready. She didn’t typically take this long, but this time was different because her childhood friend, Jeong Yuno, more affectionately known as Jaehyun, would be attending. When she’d told you his name, you’d shrugged noncommittally, which didn’t seem to be the reaction she was expecting, although you had no idea as to why. You’d met plenty of her friends before. Why should this time be any different?

Your look was simple. You’d styled your hair in the quickest way you knew how while also managing to make it appear deceptively glamorous. Your make-up was simple, too, just some eyeliner, mascara, and lip gloss. Spritzing perfume on your neck and wrists, you nodded at yourself with approval in the mirror before you’d returned to your bedroom to get dressed.

Tight blue jeans covered your legs, accentuating your ass and calves, and you wore your favorite classic black top tucked into them. The look was completed by a pair of black converse. 

It wasn’t much, and it didn’t take long, but you felt good.

One of your conditions for agreeing to this party was that, as per usual, Karina act as the primary host of the event, and you be allowed to act as one of the crowd. However, one of Karina’s responding conditions was that you help out in the kitchen when liquor needed to be restocked from the stash the two of you kept in the basement. After accepting each other’s conditions, you shook on it, and Karina hopped in the shower.

It’d been a couple of hours since then, and people were meant to be arriving shortly.

As if summoned by your very thoughts, the doorbell rang. Your stomach turned with anxiety at the prospect of having to welcome them in Karina’s stead while she finished getting ready, but she saved you from such a terrible fate, rushing down the stairs as she applied her final layer of lip gloss and shouted, “I got it!” Tucking her lip gloss into the back pocket of her pants, she swung the door open, offering a vibrant greeting to your first guests. From what you could hear, it was Jaehyun and whoever he’d chosen to bring along that had arrived.

The sound of their overly chipper voices ringing from the foyer was your cue to get a drink, and you escaped to the kitchen, pouring yourself a vodka tonic. In general, you tended to prefer sweet drinks because you couldn’t stand the taste of alcohol, but there was something refreshing about vodka and tonic, something that allowed you to believe maybe what you were consuming was actually good for you. The denial, self-aware as it was, brought you a sense of comfort.

After several generous sips, the excited greetings died down in the other room, multiple sets of footsteps now travelling in your direction. You still weren’t quite ready to socialize, especially with new people, so you tipped your red solo cup back and drained it, tossing it in the waste bin under the sink, then started for the hallway in hopes of making it back to the dinette-turned-dancefloor before running into Karina’s guest of honor and his cohorts.

Unfortunately, you weren’t quite quick enough, bumping directly into one of said cohorts when you rounded the corner out of the kitchen. The stranger immediately caught you by the shoulders to help you keep your balance. Their hands were steady and strong. 

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry—”

“No, no, please, I wasn’t paying enough attention, it’s totally my…” Your words trailed off, your mind gone blank as you lifted your gaze to look at the man that you’d just collided with. A blush blazed across your cheeks, the heat of it spreading throughout your entire body, your bone marrow simmering.

You’d never seen someone so confusing. His face was pretty, so pretty you could hardly believe he was real. His features were soft and sharp all at once. His hair, pure black, was a good length, just hitting the back of his neck, although not shaggy or unkempt, and his layered bangs framed his face perfectly, the part in his hair just shy of center. You had the immediate and delirious urge to run your fingers through it. 

And if that bit of him wasn’t confusing enough, the rest of him was so much worse. His neck was long and pronounced, almost feminine if not for the obvious Adam's apple protruding from it. His shoulders were broad but not intimidating. His chest and arms were prominent in the fitted t-shirt he wore, and you could tell he was in good shape. With how lean he was, you figured he must be a swimmer or member of track and field at your university. Your mind couldn’t even conceive of the idea that he was a world-renowned dancer. 

It was like an updated version of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.” After knowing so many men who were too much of this, not enough of that, you’d discovered one that was just right. 

His lips, pink and petal-like and bow-shaped, spread into a smile — god, what a smile — and he chuckled lightly, yanking you out of your stupor, which had happened in the space of a single breath, the passage of time seeming to have slowed as you took him in. You were suddenly hyper aware of his hands, still gently holding your arms. You fought not to shiver. 

“Let’s just agree to share the blame on this one, yeah?” 

You laughed and nodded awkwardly, embarrassed at both your clumsiness and your gawking but doing your best not to show it. You needed to get out of there, to prevent any further humiliation on your part, and as if sensing this, your urge to flee, the beautiful man promptly released you from his grasp, allowing you to make your way through the small crowd in the doorway. A quick glance informed you that there were four other men present, each one of them also incredibly handsome, though none quite so handsome as the one you’d managed to carelessly barrel into. There was an itch in the back of your mind, a feeling that you recognized one or two of them, but you weren’t sure from where. And you certainly didn’t have the wherewithal to figure it out in that moment.

The warmth of your embarrassment merged with the warmth from the buzz of your first drink as you brushed past the small company of men currently smirking at you. Finding your favorite spot on the floor, some cheesy Dua Lipa song playing, you started to move, shaking off whatever it was that had just happened to you. As the minutes passed, the room filled with the rest of the party guests until you were surrounded by bodies, on the dancefloor, in the kitchen, in the living room. The party was an absolute smash. 

You moved around a bit, harmlessly flirting here and there, visiting with the few people from university you actually considered close enough acquaintances to warrant conversation, pouring yourself a couple more drinks, just enough to maintain your buzz without losing your sense. Throughout all of this, though, you noticed him, the beautiful man you’d crashed into. You couldn’t help but to notice him, his entire being demanded it of you.

He seemed to be everywhere that you were, always talking to someone, usually one of his comrades who’d witnessed your run-in earlier but sometimes others, people who always looked so thrilled to be in his presence. Still, in spite of this, they couldn’t quite capture his full attention. You knew this because he kept sparing glances at you each time you looked at him, even if he was in the middle of speaking, his train of thought clearly much more capable of navigating multiple tracks at once than yours was.

It became grounding for you to seek his eyes out in the crowd, a security blanket amidst the social anxiety. The dance floor acted as your unspoken home base, where you could always find him if you somehow misplaced one another, you somewhere in the middle, feeling the rhythm of the music, swaying your hips to it, and him standing at the edge, leaning against the wall and watching you. Complete strangers, the two of you, yet sharing in some strange psychological sanctuary together. You wondered if he would ever acknowledge it and approach you.

But at some point, he disappeared, and you couldn’t even find him out on the floor. Disappointment hollowed you out like an ice cream scoop to your insides. Which was just silly because, again, you were complete strangers. You knew absolutely nothing about him. 

Nothing except the perfect silhouette of his profile in the dim party lighting. Nothing except the sound of his laugh, floating over the din of the crowd whenever one of his friends said something especially funny. Nothing except the vibrance of his sweet smile, the quiet power in his posture, the slight upturn of his nose, the way his eyes shone with something open yet intimate when he gazed at you, like a secret only you were privy to. 

Maybe you knew everything you needed to.

Karina touched your shoulder, startling you where you stood in the kitchen, pretending to listen to some guy from your weekly chem lab tell a story about a minor celebrity he’d met a few weeks ago, which you truly couldn’t have cared less about. “Hey, Y/N, would you mind running down to the basement to get a fresh bottle of tequila? The people demand more shots!”

You shoved her shoulder playfully as you walked toward the door leading to the basement. “Anything for you, my liege,” you called back theatrically, your best friend’s pealing giggles echoing after you as you descended the stairs. Swinging around the banister at the bottom, humming to yourself, you made a beeline for the fridge that held the extra supply of liquor for just such occasions as these. 

When you opened the refrigerator, light poured out, illuminating the space, and you nearly jumped out of your skin as you realized you weren’t alone. On the other side of the room, sitting on the tattered old love seat, mindlessly scrolling through his phone, was your handsome stranger. He seemed to discover your presence at the same time as you discovered his, though he was significantly less alarmed than you were, probably because it was much more reasonable to expect someone to eventually join you in the basement than to expect someone might already be waiting for you in it, all alone, in the dark.

Your heart rate and breathing were slowly returning to normal as you gaped at him and said, “You lost?” 

He was smiling at you again, as if he was delighted to see you, which was unfair because you were trying to be irritated at him for frightening you. “What? Oh no, I just needed some air.” 

“So you decided to get it in a stuffy basement?” You cocked an eyebrow at him, tone dripping with sarcasm. 

“Hey, I didn’t say I needed the air to be fresh,” he shot back, his wit impressively quick.

You rolled your eyes. “Sure, I mean what’s all the fuss about fresh air, right? Breathing in air that’s mostly dust builds character.” 

He scoffed, masking his amusement with you, “Well, what about you then? What was so important you were willing to compromise your precious respiratory system by coming down here for it?”

Biting back a smile, you reached your hand into the open fridge, deliberately slow, and pulled out the bottle of Pueblo. “The powers that be, also known as my roommate, charged me with procuring this potion to pacify our esteemed guests.”

“Ahhh, I see.” He nodded in fond understanding. “And do you plan on partaking in this potion?” 

“Oh god, no!” You cringed, mind suddenly flooded with memories of past exploits fueled by tequila, memories from your freshman year, an exciting but reckless and at times regrettable period in your life. “Believe me, the last thing anyone needs is me getting drunk on tequila.”

His eyebrows hit his hairline. “And why is that?”

You scratched the back of your neck bashfully. “Uh, let’s just say that, when I drink tequila, I tend to make some questionable, arguably bad choices.”

“Define bad.” He was leaning forward, conspiratorially, as if he’d asked you to reveal the secrets of the universe.

“No, I don’t think I will,” you rebuffed plainly, no longer restraining your smile as it transformed into a smug grin, reveling in the opportunity to tease him.

His elbow was planted on the arm of the love seat now, chin sitting in his open palm as he gazed at you with something you couldn’t quite place, something that made your insides squirm. Sighing, he simply said, “Fair enough.” But his tone didn’t match his words. He wasn’t admitting defeat at your declining to elaborate, rather he was claiming a different kind of victory altogether, the specifics of which were a mystery to you.

Clearing your throat, the air in the room suddenly stifling, charged with electricity, you thought it best to make your escape and rejoin the party.  “Well, try not to deprive the other guests of your delightful company for too long, okay?”

You turned to climb back up the stairs but the man’s voice stopped you. “I’m Ten, by the way.”

Why was your heart racing? All he’d said was his own name. You swallowed thickly. “My name is Y/N,” you offered, barely more than a whisper.

“Pretty.” Just like you, he thought.

He was still smiling at you as you fled from him for the second time that evening. You scurried back into the kitchen and handed Karina the tequila, still reeling from the interaction you’d just had as she poured a round of shots for your guests. But before you could say anything to her about it, your best friend was bringing a separate matter to your attention. “Y/N, have you seen Ning? I invited her tonight, and she said she was gonna come, but I haven’t seen her yet. I’m worried about her, you know?” Your heart sank. Yes, you did know because you were worried, too. 

One of your closest friends from university, Ningning, had recently experienced an especially rough break-up. A couple of weeks ago, she’d walked in on her boyfriend of almost three years with another woman in their bed. After immediately throwing him out, she had called you and Karina to come over and sit with her as she broke down and cried. You’d held her in your arms, smoothing her hair and wiping her tears as Karina forced her to sip water and take deep breaths until the shooting pain in her heart settled into a dull, throbbing ache. 

Naturally, she’d been struggling to adjust to her new normal, her sleep schedule in shambles, GPA suffering, appetite nearly nonexistent. You’d both been doing all you could to try and help, reminding her to eat, hyping her up by telling her how beautiful she looked every chance you got, even going so far as doing assignments for her in the classes you shared. You loved her, and you knew she’d do the same if you were in her place. 

Hell, you had been in her place, your last break-up tragic in its own right. Karina had been your saving grace then, so you saw it as your responsibility to pay that forward with Ningning now. “I haven’t seen her, Kay, but I’ll see if I can track her down. Leave it to me, all right? You just focus on having fun.” You took her hand for a moment, squeezing it reassuringly, and she sighed, weary but accepting as you began your search, moving through the house and surveying each room in hopes of finding your friend.

It didn’t take you long. You asked yourself where you would’ve ended up if you’d gotten stuck at a party like this while still struggling with your break-up, and the answer brought you right to her, sitting on the big armchair in the corner of the living room where you and Karina usually sat up your Christmas tree each year, clinging desperately to a throw pillow like some sort of life line, knees tucked up to her chest as she watched the flurry of people around her with wide eyes. She looked so lost. You had to save her. 

Approaching her slowly, like she might get spooked and run off, you knelt down in front of her, a gentle hand landing lightly on her calf. “Ning?” She started, her eyes snapping to meet yours, her bottom lip trembling at the sight of you. The relief that came with your presence made her want to break down, but she knew she couldn’t in front of all your guests. “Hey, talk to me. How’re you doing?”

She let out a ragged breath. “Not great.”

“What do you need from me? How can I help?” you asked sincerely, ready to go to the ends of the earth if it would somehow help her smile again.

“I don’t know, Y/N. I just feel so… unattractive. In every way. I hate that there are so many people here to look at me without really seeing me, hate seeing them all effortlessly interacting with each other, finding interest in each other, hate watching all the public displays of affection. I’m lonely, but the thought of initiating a conversation with anyone here besides you or Kay in order to fix that makes me feel sick. I grew so dependent on him that I don’t even know how to connect with anyone on my own anymore, and I’m so scared of being rejected, or worse, being accepted only to be betrayed again.” 

The familiarity of the feeling behind her words struck a chord in you. “Hey, you made connections just fine before him, right? I’m living proof. It’s just gonna take time for you to figure out how again. You’ll get there. But for now, for this particular moment, what can I do to help? Do you want me to take you home?” Her brow creased as she considered your words, still a little too lost in her own mind to find her way forward. You could work with that. A smirk forming on your face, you pulled on her ankles, bringing her bent legs down in front of you, sliding your hands up and over her knees, creeping over her thighs toward the edge of her skirt. “Or do you want me to… take you home?” 

She blushed furiously. “Y/N, stop, people are staring!” But despite her protest, she smiled, and soon enough, the two of you dissolved into a fit of giggles. 

Unbeknownst to you, Ten had climbed out of the basement shortly after you, just missing you in the kitchen as you’d walked off to find Ningning, coming across his friends laughing it up at Karina’s childhood stories about Jaehyun instead. 

“No fucking way—” Haechan’s piercing voice filled up the whole space, holding its own against the soundwaves pouring in from the amps in the dining room. 

“I’m serious, Hyuck! Just before the song with his big solo in it, I turned to Yuno and told him a joke that made him laugh so hard he peed himself and ran off stage crying.” The other three boys, amused at their friend’s past misfortune, clapped their hands like well-rehearsed seals as Jaehyun scrubbed his hand over his face, his ears gone scarlet with embarrassment. “Oh, but it gets even better. The following Monday, when we were watching the tape from the choir concert in our music class, he got so flustered during the part of the video where he had his accident that he ended up peeing himself again.”

Ten joined Mark where he sat on the counter, adjacent to the counter housing the sink which Johnny, Jaehyun, and Haechan were currently leaning against. Karina was standing in the center of the kitchenette facing all of them as she recalled Jaehyun’s tragic tale.

“I’m honestly amazed he didn’t give up on singing altogether,” she concluded.

Clearing his throat, Jaehyun shot playful daggers at his childhood friend. “Why don’t we change the subject to something less mortifying for me?”

Mark jumped in, tapping Ten’s shoulder as his feet swung where they hung off the edge of the counter, “Like where you’ve been for the past half hour!”

“Yeah, I can’t believe you ditched us, dude.” Haechan was pouting at Ten, but Ten had grown impervious to the younger man’s methods, simply rolling his eyes in response.

Shrugging, he said, “I just needed some personal space, so I went down to the basement for a bit. That’s all.”

“Ah, then you must’ve bumped into Y/N again!” Karina turned her teasing on Ten now, referencing his run-in with you when the group of men had first arrived. 

But Ten just smiled softly at the mention of you. “Actually, I did bump into her. We had a nice little chat. Where’d she run off to?”

“She went looking for a friend of ours.” Karina whipped her head around, looking from room to room. She had a fairly good vantage point from the middle of the kitchen, able to act as a responsible host and keep an eye out for any funny business. Soon enough, she spotted you where you’d discovered Ningning. “There she is!” She pointed you out to Ten, but the others tracked the gesture as well and happened to look at you just as you were getting handsy with the heartbroken girl in front of you. 

Haechan, ever incapable of thinking before he speaks, especially when he’s been drinking, rubbed his eyes dramatically and blurted, “Whoa, what is happening there? Am I drunker than I realize or are they about to go at it?”

Johnny smacked the back of his younger friend’s head before turning to their host. “Sorry, we can’t take him anywhere—”

“Hey,” Haechan complained, “don’t act like you weren’t thinking the exact same thing, man.”

“Yes, but only you were dumb enough to actually say it, Hyuck.” Mark sighed, hanging his head in his hands.

Karina chuckled at the exchange. “Guys, it’s fine, really. But it’s nothing. They’re just friends. Ningning, the one in the armchair? She went through a cataclysmically bad break-up recently, and Y/N is simply trying to make her feel better.”

“Make her feel better by fucking her?”

“Bro—”

“No, Hyuck,” Karina broke in, impressively patient, “not by fucking her. Y/N does like girls—and boys, for that matter—but she’s not actually interested in sleeping with Ning. She’s just reminding her what it’s like to be seen as sexy by someone besides her ex. Y/N has this talent for making someone feel like they’re the only other person that exists, you know? Like she can see inside your mind, see all your worries and woes, and draw them from you like venom from a snake bite just by saying the right words, by smiling in a certain way. Believe me, she’s worked her magic on me more times than I can count, and it’s… something.”

As she said this, Haechan, Mark, Jaehyun, and Johnny watched you with renewed interest while you got up off the floor, encouraging Ningning to make room for you on the seat of the armchair with her. She did so gladly, and you rewarded her by wrapping her in your arms, allowing her to lean on your shoulder, your hand reaching up to run your fingers through her hair. The small audience you’d unknowingly gained the attention of couldn’t tell what you were saying, but they could see you start speaking to her, could tell that, whatever spell you were casting, it was slowly bringing her out of the despair which had possessed her up to this point of the evening. A smile found its way to her face and, in turn, to all of theirs.

Meanwhile, Ten’s blood was boiling. Karina had just explained that you and Ningning were only friends, nothing more, and he understood that, yet his blood was boiling at the sight of you touching her so intimately, so thoughtfully. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew it was because he wished it were him being graced by your touch. He knew it was because he wanted you. But he’d never felt this way before, not over anyone, let alone a stranger he’d met mere hours prior. What was going on with him?

He tried isolating his desire, distinguishing it from his envy. He tried to focus on it as he watched you. He was used to the feeling of wanting someone. He’d wanted plenty of people, and had succeeded in having most of them, too. But it was never like this. The last time he remembered wanting something this badly was when he decided to become a dancer. 

Yet, at the same time, he felt so completely unworthy of you, which was also foreign to him. It made his head spin, a strange concoction of confusion, rage, and longing churning in his heart. 

Maybe he’d had too much to drink. Maybe he just needed to fuck. Either way, he needed to do something about whatever he was experiencing, or he was going to lose his mind.

In the living room, you continued to comfort Ningning. “You are super hot, though, Ning. I hope you know that. You could have anyone here if you wanted to.”

She gave you an incredulous look. “Okay, that statement is already ludicrous, but when you consider the fact that five of the most famous dudes in the entire world just happen to be at this party, it’s even worse, you lying liar.”

Your brain short-circuited. “Wait, what? What are you talking about, Ning?”

Her jaw dropped. “Are you kidding? Y/N, do you seriously not know who any of those guys are?” Sweeping her hand through the air, she gestured toward the five men currently keeping your best friend company in the kitchen, the incredulity in her eyes now doubled. 

You shook your head calmly, but your heart rate was starting to pick up with the direction this conversation was taking. “Who are they?”

“They’re from NCT!” she practically shrieked. When you offered no reaction, she groaned in frustration. “Y/N, they’re a k-pop group. A really well known one at that. You honestly had no idea?” 

You’d never really been much into k-pop aside from the couple of songs that had managed to make it onto mainstream radio (although you did like them), so no, you truly hadn’t had any idea that the childhood friend your housemate had invited, as well as his friends who’d tagged along, were “famous.” 

It made sense to you now why Karina had signified to all the people she’d invited that this party was meant to be completely offline, even going so far as to make guests surrender their cellphones to her custody when they entered your home. She’d claimed it was because you all needed to stop investing so much in your online identities and learn to live in the moment, to actually enjoy all your experiences first hand instead of focusing on how they might be perceived by others. No one had questioned it because Karina was notorious for throwing great parties, and they didn’t want to miss out.

You really wished you’d been paying more attention when people had initially begun to arrive, though, because you were sure they must have been ready to strangle Karina for preventing them from being able to document this particular experience and share it on social media. 

But now, as you glanced up and locked eyes with Ten, your handsome stranger, you suddenly felt deeply embarrassed at your behavior. You couldn’t believe how you’d spoken to him, knowing the kind of people he probably had to deal with all the time. He must’ve thought you were an idiot, and hey, you couldn’t quite find it in yourself to blame him if that were the case.

Clearing your throat awkwardly, you turned your attention back to Ningning. “Okay, so, I need to go over there and apologize to one of them because I’m a fucking dumbass.” Her face twisted with shock at your admission. What could Y/N, of all people, have possibly done to upset one of them? “Are you gonna be all right if I leave you alone for a bit?”

“Oh no,” Ningning answered, “there’s no way I’m missing this. I’m coming with you.”

You gawked at her, affronted. Who knew all it took to break her out of her shell and distract her from her own misery was your public humiliation? She laughed–somewhat maniacally–and stood, taking you by the hand and dragging you toward the kitchen as you groaned in defeat. You tripped over your feet clumsily, your friend practically having thrown you into the proverbial lion’s den, all five men’s eyes on you immediately. “Uhhh, h-hi,” you stuttered, awkwardly waving at the spectators of your mortifying display.

One of them, the biggest and arguably most intimidating of the bunch, showed you mercy, reaching a hand out to steady you. “Hi, Y/N!” He must have registered your surprise at his having known your name because he quickly added, “Sorry, didn’t mean to spook you, your roomie was just telling us all about you right before you came over here.”

You shot subtle daggers at said roommate. “Was she now?” She just smiled smugly at you, clearly happy with herself. Shaking it off and resolving that your best friend could be properly dealt with later, you righted yourself and sought out the person you’d actually been intending to speak with. He was already looking at you when you locked in on him, his gaze intense as ever, hot enough to brand you. Was he doing it on purpose or did it come naturally? You had to figure it was the latter since the former would imply he had some sort of intentions where you were concerned, a concept you weren’t foolish enough to entertain for even a moment.

“Hey you,” he greeted, beating you to the punch. “Change your mind about the tequila?”

His callback to your earlier conversation made you smile, an embarrassingly shy laugh bubbling out of you and into the open air, the sound buzzing inside Ten’s brain, the most pleasant warmth spreading throughout his chest in response. “Not a chance,” you replied cheekily. 

“Shame,” he countered, smirking at you brazenly.

Everyone else was glancing between the two of you with varying levels of intrigue, Johnny wearing a knowing look, Karina and Ningning communicating with each other telepathically, and the other three men stuck on how cute you looked when you blushed. Neither you nor Ten detected any of this, too swept up in your third direct interaction of the evening, too engrossed by the genesis occurring inside you.

The moment was finally broken when a male voice cut through the silence, belonging to another of Ten’s friends, “So are you gonna introduce us or what, dude?” 

Ten glared at him but sighed in resignation, not willing to endure one of the younger man’s world famous tantrums right now. His voice deliberately monotone, he gestured lackadaisically and said, “Y/N, this is Haechan.” Haechan, you repeated internally, memorizing the information. He was obviously the youngest based on the way the others regarded him. The boy offered you a blinding smile, waving his hand emphatically. Ten snorted, adding, “Don’t worry, he grows on you.”

“Hey,” Haechan huffed, crossing his arms indignantly. It was absolutely adorable.

Ignoring him, Ten quickly moved on. “And this is Jaehyun. I’m sure Karina mentioned him to you.”

You grinned at Jaehyun, excited to have some advanced knowledge. “Is it okay if I call you Yuno like Kay does?”

He returned your grin and chuckled, the sound deep and rich, filled with bass. He both appeared and sounded like a prince from a storybook, and you would probably be more susceptible to his charms if you weren’t already so taken by Ten. “Sure, angel. You can call me whatever you feel like.”

Ten had never really felt like murdering Jaehyun before, usually reserving those kinds of urges for the likes of Haechan, but it took everything in him not to snap at that moment. He seriously needed to get his emotions or whatever the hell was happening with him in check.

“Wait, wait, then I want her to call me Hyuck instead of Haechan!” the adorable boy whined, his big brown eyes imploring you.

Before any of the other men had a chance to chastise him, you responded, “I can do that! It’s nice to meet you, Hyuck.”

The tallest one rolled his eyes and groaned. “Please, don’t encourage him. We’ll never hear the end of it.” You found it amusing how much they all behaved like brothers. It was clear they must have known each other for quite a long time, probably about as long as you and Karina had known each other if their heated yet ultimately playful exchanges were anything to go by. “I’m Johnny, by the way.” 

“And last but not least,” Ten interjected, “this is Mark.” He reached out and pinched the other man’s cheek, cooing at him lovingly.

Mark shoved Ten’s hand away. “Come on, man, not in front of the pretty girls!” His friends all just laughed at his distress, and he shook his head, exasperated. Cheeks flushed, he reached a polite hand out to shake yours. “It’s an honor to meet you, Y/N. And who’s your friend?”

Ningning squeaked from where she stood a few feet behind you, having assumed the handsome men would simply look right through her. Her reaction brought you to the decision that Mark was definitely your favorite of Ten’s friends so far. You smiled and pulled Ningning closer to you, wrapping your arm around her shoulders to bolster her. “This is Ningning!” She gave them a small wave but avoided eye contact like her life depended on it, looking absolutely anywhere in the kitchen other than at any of the men currently observing her.

“Not to throw Karina under the bus or anything, but when she pointed Y/N out to us, she also explained that Y/N was trying to cheer you up. She said you went through a pretty rough break-up recently,” Mark admitted, his voice tender. Ningning gasped quietly, meeting his sincere gaze. “I was really sorry to hear that.”

Johnny nodded solemnly. “So was I.”

“We all were,” Jaehyun assured her.

“I don’t know what happened, what the guy said or did, and I’m sure Y/N and Karina have told you this more than enough, but it will get better,” Haechan began, his wilier side giving way to something more genuine, something that told you there was more to him than most people probably gave him credit for. “Everything might feel shitty now, but there will come a time when the way you’re feeling now is nothing but a memory. You won’t be able to believe you ever wasted so much energy on that loser. You’ll smile more easily and laugh more freely. And it’ll be sooner than you think. I promise.” You were stunned to hear those words come from the youngest. You hoped he was just wise beyond his years and not speaking from personal experience, the thought of someone having broken the boy’s heart absolutely unacceptable to you.

Their kindness had managed to break the ice, thawing Ningning’s nerves. You heard her sniffle from where she stood still pressed against your side. “Thank you,” she said quietly, silence falling over your small company. 

“Hey, why don’t we play a game,” Johnny suggested, attempting to lighten the mood. “20 questions?” The rest of you either nodded or hummed your assent, more than ready to reignite the party. “Mark, why don’t you go first?”

The starry eyed boy’s mouth fell open in shock as he sputtered, “Uh, o-okay, I… I’m thinking of a person—”

“Justin Bieber.” Haechan cut him off, an impressively smug look on his face.

“Aw, come on!” Mark whined, hopping off the counter in a huff.

The boys began to bicker, Johnny attempting to mediate while Jaehyun, Karina, and Ningning looked on and laughed. You were endeared by the display, taking Mark’s now empty place on the counter and observing fondly as Johnny eventually managed to calm things back down and get Mark to pick a new subject for the others to guess, one that wasn’t quite so obvious. But just as he was about to begin, Ten pulled your attention away from the others, bumping his shoulder gently against yours and nodding toward Ningning.

“Is she doing okay?” he asked, his voice soft, eyes glimmering with genuine concern.

You sighed wearily, offering him a small yet reassuring smile as you gazed at your friend, watching her have real fun for the first time in weeks. “She’s… getting there. I’d say she’s about as okay as anyone can expect her to be at this point, you know? She thought she’d found her person. She had this whole vision of their future together, the life they would make, and that’s gone now. She’s mourning that, learning to live with the nostalgia for what might have been. It’s a haunting feeling.”

Ten’s eyebrows furrowed, the concern in his eyes magnifying. “You sound like you have some experience.”

“Unfortunately.” Your gaze fell to your hands, now nervously fidgeting with a loose thread on the side seam of your jeans. 

“So you believed you’d found the one?” 

You laughed, but there was no humor in it. “I did.” You wondered if Ten could see it, could see just how foolish and ashamed you felt at the thought of the person you once believed to be your perfect match.

“And what about now? Do you still believe you could? Do you still believe in soulmates?”

Your breath stopped, your racing thoughts skidding to an almost violent halt. You hadn’t been prepared for that question. You were so used to people asking you what happened, so used to recounting your own misery just to be met with empty platitudes or pity. This was the first time anyone had asked you anything like this, had been more interested in the state of your mind than they were in the gory details of what had devastated it. 

You stopped fidgeting and looked up at Ten, whose eyes were still trained on you, shining with a sensitivity you didn’t think most people were even capable of. 

For the first time, you considered it. You considered the condition of your faith in love after the trials you had faced. And once you did, you began to speak out loud thoughts that you were only just now conceiving. “I don’t know if I’d say I believe in soulmates. At least, not in the traditional sense. But I do believe that, at some point in each of our lives, we will meet the person, out of everyone we’re destined to encounter, who is best suited for us as a partner, as a lover. And it’s up to us to see it. A lot of people probably miss out on their greatest chance at true love because they’re too afraid of getting it wrong and ending up with a broken heart. It’s hard not to be afraid, though, especially when you actually have gotten it wrong before.”

Ten nodded perceptively. “So you’re afraid?”

“I mean, yeah, of course I am,” you admitted. “There’s a lot of people in the world, many of them incredibly magnetic and beautiful. How are you supposed to know which one is the one for you?”

He looked down at the counter where your hands had subconsciously moved closer to one another, your pinkies nearly touching, and smiled to himself. “You’ll know.”

Your eyes closed as you let his words soak through you. He sounded so sincere that it actually made you wonder if he could be right, if maybe there was still hope for you. You wanted to thank him, but weren’t sure how, which suddenly reminded you of why you’d walked over here with Ningning in the first place. Clearing your throat, you met his eyes and said, “I wanted to apologize to you.”

“For what?” he asked, confused.

“For how I spoke to you earlier. I… I didn’t know who you were. Ningning explained it to me, and I just… I didn’t want you to think I was some sort of crazed fan following you around.” You chewed your lip, once again too distracted by your own nerves to notice Ten tracking the movement with his eyes, practically hypnotized.

“You didn’t know who I was? At all?” he probed. You shook your head, and he gave you his brightest smile yet, butterflies stirring inside you at the sight. “So, this whole time, you’ve just been interacting with me as Ten, normal dude at a college party?”

“Yeah, that’s the long and short of it, I suppose,” you answered. 

Ten gave you an incredulous look. “Why would you ever apologize for treating me like a normal person?”

You shrugged awkwardly, unsure of how to handle yourself in Ten’s presence for about the millionth time that evening. “I don’t know. I just felt like I could have offended you in some way, and I never wanted that.”

He chuckled again, a sound you were beginning to grow quite fond of, and leaned closer to you, his breath tickling the skin of your neck. “What did you want then?”

You nearly choked, a blush blazing up your neck and across your cheeks. “I-I don’t know—“

“You say that a lot.”

You narrowed your eyes. “Well, there’s a lot I don’t know.”

“I find that hard to believe,” he said plainly, still smiling, driving you crazy.

Just as you were about to give him a piece of your mind, Haechan’s voice cut through and broke the illusion that you and Ten were alone rather than surrounded by a house full of people. “Y/N, it’s your turn.”

You’d forgotten about the game of 20 questions entirely. And as you were dragged back to reality, all at once, your mind began trying to process all that occurred in the last ten minutes.

It terrified you how easy it had felt to talk to Ten, how thoughtful and kind he seemed, how clever he was. The last time you’d felt even a fraction of the attraction you were feeling now, you’d ended up like Ningning. What should make you feel warm and fuzzy now filled you with a sense of dread, a wave of nausea passing over you. You’d been telling Ten the truth when you said you were afraid, now more than ever. 

Stepping down from your perch on the counter, you avoided eye contact with the man who seemed too good to be true as you addressed the small group, “Um, I actually think I might call it a night and turn in. I’m… I’m feeling pretty tired all of the sudden and kind of sick to my stomach, so I think I should get some rest.”

Karina immediately knew that something was off but also knew better than to question you. “Here, let me get you some water before you go.” She rushed to the cabinet, grabbing a glass and then moving to the sink, brushing Jaehyun aside so she could reach the faucet. 

You accepted the glass from her and offered a quiet thank you before taking a quick sip, the cool liquid running down your throat already beginning to soothe you. You could feel the eyes of all the men standing in the kitchen with you. “It was nice to meet all of you. Please, enjoy the rest of your night and get home safe, okay?”

“We will, Y/N. I hope you feel better,” Mark replied, giving you the most intense puppy dog eyes you’d ever seen.

“We all do,” Johnny interjected, Jaehyun and Haechan nodding in solidarity. “And it was nice to meet you, too.” 

You smiled shyly at each of them, then moved toward Ningning, wrapping her in a tight hug. “Have a good night, Ning. Text me when you get home, okay?” You pulled back and wagged your finger at her dramatically, making her giggle.

“Okay, mom,” she retorted, rolling her eyes. You scoffed and placed a smacking kiss on her cheek before turning back to the others and waving goodbye.

You had barely begun to walk out of the kitchen when Ten’s voice made you freeze in place, much like it had in the basement earlier that evening. “Sleep well, Y/N.” You turned to face him again and gathered the strength to meet his gaze. You were worried you’d find annoyance, disappointment, maybe even anger in his eyes, but they were still as soft as before, oh so soft. It confounded you completely. 

Clutching the glass of water in your hand for dear life, you heaved a sigh. “Good night, Ten.” And then you tucked tail and ran, bobbing and weaving through the throngs of people in the living room to get to the stairs that led up to your bedroom in record time. You closed the door, setting your water on the nightstand next to your bed, and flung yourself onto your duvet. 

Downstairs, still in the kitchen, Haechan gave Ten a pointed look and said, “Well, you fumbled that.”

The other three men groaned in unison, “Shut up, Hyuck.” 

The party didn’t last too much longer after that, and you were still awake by the time everyone had left, totally restless, your mind unable to quiet itself enough to let you rest. It only got worse when you heard Karina coming up the stairs to go to bed for the night. She wasn’t alone, and with a heavy heart, you realized that you recognized the other voice as they made their way to her room. It was Ten.

You convinced yourself that it didn’t matter, that you didn’t care, but your hands were shaking as you grabbed your airpods from your nightstand and placed them in your ears to not only drown out the sound of their laughter but also your own treacherous thoughts. Eventually, you finally fell asleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bonus:

A/N: And that's the first part, folks! I have several parts written, so you can expect the second part sooner rather than later. I hope you liked it! Let me know what you think of it so far :)

#ten lee x reader #ten lee fanfic #ten lee scenarios #ten lee imagines #nct ten x reader #wayv ten x reader #ten lee #nct #wayv #ten lee au #nct au #wayv au #nct fanfic #wayv fanfic #dedication #*original #series #idol au #idol!ten #college au

[destiny-aesthetics]

^ Communications to the Vanguard; Letter from the Stranger [Elisabeth "Elsie" Bray]

-----------------------------------------------------

Destiny 2 [Bungie] | Beyond Light [Collector's Edition]

ACCESS: RESTRICTED/REDACTED DECRYPTION KEY: ekeriPC6N$ spoof REP #: 121-EUROPA-BAN AGENT(S): CHA-319 SUBJ: Review of interdict on Europa landings. ASSOCIATIONS: Active interdict; Awoken, military commitments of; Bray, Clovis; Bray Tech; cryohazard; Deep Stone Crypt; Enceladus; Golden Age; Io; Jovians; Nine; Titan, moon of Saturn; Vex

1. Prior to the Taken War, the Reef maintained an interdict upon the poorly navigable Jovian moons. That interdict has failed, allowing Guardians to begin (politely put) "reclaiming" these satellites. The sixth moon, however, still falls under Vanguard interdict. To borrow an old adage: "All these worlds are yours, except Europa. Attempt no bounties there." 2. I have been asked to review this interdict's continued necessity. My first impression is that its Europan files are so heavily redacted as to encourage the very expeditions they are presumably meant to deter. Have you ever tried to tell a Hunter that they can't go somewhere AND can't know why? 3. Europa's surface is hazardous. Intense radiation mangles both flesh and machinery. Peak temperature at the poles never climbs more than 50 degrees above absolute zero; the equator reaches a balmy 110 above. This moon was never T-formed and has no proper atmosphere. Tidal stress tortures and crackles the surface, leading to frequent cryovolcanism. There are many ways to die on Europa, but we are speaking of Guardians here. Risk of death alone cannot justify a no-landings edict.

4. The subcrustal ocean is two to three times the volume of Earth's. Life exists down there, but we have forgotten how to reach it. Rumors of some vague abyssal connection to Titan and Enceladus are unsubstantiated, and in this agent's opinion, probably nonsense. So long as Guardians do not take up sport hunting, protection of native life is not grounds for an edict. 5. A heavily armed platform of Golden Age origin keeps station over the moon. It maneuvers using either Hall-effect electrical thrust or some kind of anchor in the Jovian magnetosphere. Ordinarily this would be worth investigating, but the files suggest that the platform is a rare example of an active and unpredictably hostile Golden Age defense asset. Approach at your own risk. (Interesting note-some suggest that jumpships of the Eon series are not as rapidly engaged - this matches what we know of their designer. Jumpships are rare and valuable, so best to keep a safe distance.) 6. Recent close flybys have imaged a Golden Age compound bearing the Bray Tech insignia built in the Europan ice. The same imagery captures thousands, if not tens of thousands, of hibernating or destroyed Vex. Unlike all other Vex presences on Venus, Mars, Mercury, Io, or Nessus, there is no sign of major construction. This suggests a Vex strike force, rather than a permanent presence. What did they want? We have fought Vex before, and early aggression against their designs has always proven critical. Their simple presence cannot justify an interdict.

7. Through negotiation and horse-trading with her superiors, Awoken Paladin Kamala Rior provided me with a device capable of sundry high-physics measurements I will not detail. It reveals that Europa is saturated and interpenetrated with dark matter loops. This is a sign of the interest and attention of the Nine. Their power and influence depend on the mass of nearby stellar bodies, and Europa falls within the sphere of Jupiter-as mighty a gravitational gatherer as anything outside the Sun itself. But even in this bastion of the Nine, Europa is a focus of particularly intense observation. We have often speculated that Xûr is a construct made from the repossessed body of a Jovian colonist… but there are no known records of colonies on Europa. So what draws the Nine here? Unclear. Their interests are opaque. In any case, the gaze of the Nine is no reason to prohibit Europa- Guardians have gone much further into their influence before. 8. No known signs of Ahamkara or other ontopathic predators occur on Europa. Perhaps there are wishing-sharks in the abyssal deep, but that is purely my fancy. No grounds for interdict here. 9. Europa is a traditional stopover for Fallen raiders tanking up on reaction mass. Mithrax, VIP #3987, relays vague reports of a taboo no-go area around the Golden Age station. This prohibition apparently goes beyond fear of its weapons and could be related to the Vex. There is allegedly "something that cannot be stolen from." Tantalizing, but not grounds for interdict. 10. Many Exos have fragmented memories concerning ice sheets and Jupiter in the sky. Europa would be a logical origin for those memories, especially given the presence of Bray Tech assets. This seems to militate towards an investigation.

11.The instruments Paladin Rior provided are extremely unreliable in the vicinity of Europa. I cannot determine whether this is a result of poor construction, my own inexpert use, or the presence of something aberrant. 12. This is hardly a well-vetted piece of intelligence, but something about the imagery and lore I've collected gives me an extremely bad feeling. Something is wrong here. 13. In conclusion, I cannot find strong strategic reasons to maintain the interdict on Europa. We lifted the interdict on the Moon not five years ago, resulting in a series of strategic key victories and intelligence findings… but also triggering the arrival of Oryx, an event that gave Ghaul his Light-suppressing technology and ultimately led to the awakening of the lunar intruder. Perhaps Europa will prove as consequential? We cannot shrink from new discoveries simply because they may lead to new challenges. Victory, after all, requires escalation.

I recommend LIFTING THE INTERDICT. MESSAGE ENDS [Recommendation refused on grounds of compartmentalized information. Unable to share; please trust that your analysis has not been ignored or discarded out of hand. Regrets - IKO/0061]

----------------------------------------------------- Guardian- This is an artifact of Darkness, and now I entrust it to you. Do not take this charge lightly. I have seen firsthand what its power an do Guardians who wield it… even to you. Like all new ground, it can prove treacherous to walk. Listen to your Little Light, and remember that you will live with choices forever. it you. My grandfather came to Europa before the Collapse to seek immortality. He thought he was chosen to lead humanity to the future. His experiments to this end were… hideous. Despite my qualms, collaborated with him. I accept my responsibility in full; I would have, know everything. "O nymph, in your orisons, be all my sins remember'd." You, nymph, but the principle holds, yes? We must know what he did with the power you now grasp. I have included a hard copy of the logs I've deciphered so far. Reader beware. My grandfather was worse than you know. Your stranger I remain, E

#destiny 2 #bungie #scans #BL CE

[ladykailitha]

Can Anybody See Me? Part 14

This part is longer than my usual so I hope it makes up for that evil cliffhanger from last time. Also, they were supposed to wait until the end of this thing to get together but they weren’t going to wait any longer.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12 Part 13

*

Eddie chewed on his nails as he waited in the van. He kept checking his watch every thirty seconds or so. He was starting to think that time was actively going backward. It shouldn’t be possible, but as he sat in the cold, looking up at the window, begging for it to come on, he was willing to believe anything was possible.

And then shouting started. He looked at his watch. It had only been eight minutes. He chewed on his lip. Steve had told him to wait fifteen minutes before storming the castle. But if he could hear the shouting from the streets, then the neighbors could probably hear it, too.

Eddie got out of his van and immediately discounted going straight up to Steve’s window. There weren’t any trellises or trees that he could climb in the front. He skirted around back and looked around. There was a glass enclosure that had a lower roof than the rest of the house. He of course tried the door first, but wasn’t surprised when he found it locked.

It wasn’t going to be that easy. He tried jumping up to see if he could catch the overhang on the “viewing room” or whatever the hell it was, but he couldn’t quite reach it.

He looked around and spotted a lounge chair. He dragged it over to the side of the house and climbed on it. Getting up on his tiptoes he was able to grabbed the roof and pull himself up.

Eddie checked his watch. It had been ten minutes since Steve entered the house, five minutes to go. The shouting wasn’t as loud from the back, but he could still hear it. It seemed to be only the one the voice. Mr Harrington’s.

He chewed his lip again and made his way back to the front of the house. He knew he should try the other windows, but figured that Steve’s would be the safest option, having been in it and he knew the layout.

Eddie tugged on the window and breathed a sigh of relief when it slid open. He jumped through and landed softly on his feet.

*

Steve took a deep breath and walked through that door, even though he wanted to run. He wanted to tell Eddie to take him home. Back to Forest Hills. Back to the trailer park. Back to Uncle Wayne. Back to safety.

But Steve wasn’t a coward. He had faced demogorgons, demodogs, and racist bastards. He itched to pull out the nail bat from the truck of his car. But going in as threat would only make his dad more riled up. He knew from experience that the best thing to do was to pretend to be as small as possible and hope he was ignored.

His dad came storming out of his office and he had been drinking.

Fuck.

It took every ounce of courage Steve had not to take a step back. Back to Eddie.

“Where have you been?” Mr Harrington snarled. “Do you have any idea what time it is, boy?!”

Steve gulped and knew looking at his watch would make things worse. “Before ten? I made sure to be home before curfew.” He actually had. Even though he didn’t know his parents were going to be home, he instinctively knew to be home before ten o’clock.

Mr Harrington looked at his watch and sneered. “Barely. It’s 9:57.”

Steve nodded, he bit down on his bottom lip to keep it from quivering.

“So where were you?” Mr Harrington asked again, tapping his foot impatiently.

“A couple of friends from my drama class has a band so I went to go see them,” Steve said. He forced his volume to be as normal as possible. Too loud and he was mouthing off, too low and he was being a sissy.

“Drama?” Mr Harrington growled. “Why the fuck are you in drama?”

Steve was starting to shake. “I told you. After that concussion I got pulled from the basketball and baseball teams...” He gulped as he watched his dad turn purple with rage.

“I thought that was some joke!” Mr Harrington said, his voice not quite to yelling, but loud.

“I wouldn’t joke about that, dad,” Steve said. “I got hurt really bad and had to quit. I’m still in swimming though. We both know that was the better sport. It’s where I got the most trophies.”

Mr Harrington took a step forward and hissed, spittle spraying from his mouth, “But basketball is where the scholarships are, you feckless moron.”

“I’m still working really hard,” Steve said, doing nothing about the slime that now decorated his face. He couldn’t move he was frozen to the spot.

“And now you gone thrown it all away!” Mr Harrington bellowed. “And for what? Do you know what the neighbors say?”

Steve shook his head, thinking of all the horrible things that the could have said. About Eddie. About Marty and Janice.

“You’ve been having parties out here every weekend!”

Steve’s head rocked back. He wasn’t sure the last time he had a party here. Well not one that the neighbors would notice.

“I–I haven’t,” he stammered. “I’ve had people come over for a movie once but that was weeks ago. I swear, Dad. I wouldn’t. You told me not. I haven’t.”

Mr Harrington got in his face. “You better not be lying to me, boy.”

“I wouldn’t!”

“I want you to drop this drama business right away,” Mr Harrington snarled. “Drama is for fags and queers. You fag or a queer, boy?!”

“I can’t,” Steve said, his whole body shaking. “Otherwise I won’t be able to graduate. Mrs Hall says that I need two electives to graduate. And she wouldn’t let me get out of pottery, so I doubt she’ll let me out drama.”

“What did you just say?” Mr Harrington shouted. “Did you just talk back to me? Did you!”

Steve shook his head. “I wouldn’t. I’m not. I’m just–”

“You’re just what?” Mr Harrington asked, grabbing Steve’s wrist. “Useless? Worthless? A disappointment?”

“Dad, please...” Steve pleaded. He didn’t know how long it had been since he walked in here, but he prayed to whatever god would listen to him that it had been fifteen minutes.

A movement above them caught his eye. The door to his bedroom creaked open and quickly shut. Steve’s breath caught in his chest. Eddie. Steve moved ever so subtly so that his dad’s back was to the stairs. Making sure his dad couldn’t see what was going on behind him.

“I’m not friends with Tommy and Carol anymore,” he blurted out when it looked as though his dad was about to turn around.

“What the hell did you just say?” Mr Harrington bellowed.

“Tommy started hanging out with this guy that transferred from California. Real trailer trash.” He sent a silent apology to Eddie. “He’s the one that gave me the concussion that caused me to be thrown off the team. He wanted the captain role for himself and did whatever it took to get it.”

Complete revisionist history. But nothing that wasn’t untrue.

“And you just let this fucker beat you?” Mr Harrington growled.

“Well, he’s three inches taller than I am and forty pounds heavier,” Steve said with a shrug. “It wasn’t from lack of trying.” Okay, it was from him trying not to kill Billy. Even if he privately thought the world would be better off without him.

Steve knew his strength. He knew he could tear Billy limb from limb. Quite literally. But demonic monsters from another dimension were different from human monsters. Less bodies to hide for a start.

“Get out of my sight!” Mr Harrington snarled after a moment.

Steve waited a beat to make sure his dad meant it before dashing up the stairs and into his room. He slammed the door shut and instantly Eddie’s arms were around him.

“Holy shit,” Eddie whispered. “I’m here, baby.”

Steve fell apart instantly, crying and shaking. Eddie led him over to the bed and laid him down, wrapping Steve up his embrace.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” he murmured, rubbing Steve’s back in small circles. And kept doing it until he could feel the other boy relax.

Once Steve had calmed down enough to stop crying. Eddie untangled himself.

“I’ll be right back, beautiful,” Eddie murmured. “I need to move my van, so you don’t get into more trouble, okay?”

Steve nodded.

It had only taken a couple of minutes to do just that but when he crawled back through the window, Steve was sound asleep. Eddie smiled down at him. He got under the covers and bullied Steve under them as well.

He was grateful that Wayne worked the night shift so that he wouldn’t worry when he didn’t come home.

And he drifted off to sleep, arms wrapped around the boy he loved.

*

Eddie had decided years ago that he hated alarm clocks. But no more so than he did today, because it forced Steve out of his grip to turn it off.

Steve turned back to snuggle in Eddie’s arms.

“Morning, baby,” Eddie murmured and kissed the top of Steve’s head.

“Why is it I sleep better when I’m with you?” Steve asked, honestly.

Eddie mock gasped in shock. “Are you calling me boring, Stevie?”

Steve laughed. “No, you are anything but that.”

Eddie pulled him closer and held tightly. “Honestly?” Steve nodded. “I think it’s because you feel like you’re safe with me.”

Steve sighed. “I think you’re right.” He was silent for a moment. “I decided to finish that comic I started. The one about my trauma?”

Eddie twisted his head to look down at him. “Yeah?”

Steve nodded. “I want you to read it when it’s done.”

Eddie kissed the top Steve’s head again. “I’d love to.”

“I love you.”

Eddie pulled back so that he could see into Steve’s eyes. They were shining with unshed tears, but the soft tender smile was like the sun coming out after a storm. He struggled to get his arms out to cup Steve’s cheeks. “I love you, too, sweetheart.”

He pulled Steve’s face to press their lips together. It was everything Eddie loved when kissing for the first time. Warm, gentle, sweet.

Steve sighed happily. This was the ending he had hoped for last night. He loved every second.

Finally they came up for breath, panting heavily as they pressed their foreheads together.

Steve looked over at his shoulder and cursed. “We’re going to be late for school!”

Eddie laughed but let Steve scramble to find something to wear. He did a sniff test a recoiled a bit. He usually showered after a show (well, practice really) because of how much he sweats when playing.

“Hey, Stevie,” he said, hopping off the bed with two bounces. “Can I take a quick shower? I smell awful.”

Steve nodded. “I don’t think I have anything you can wear, though.”

Eddie nodded back. “At least the sweat from my body will be gone.”

“Fair enough,” Steve said. “Feel free to use whatever you need in there.”

Eddie grinned and skipped into bathroom.

Steve got dressed quickly, not quite ready for Eddie to see him like that, yet. He then gathered his homework and shoved into his bag. He scratched his cheek as he thought for a moment. He grabbed the black sweater he had only worn for less than hour a couple days ago.

He stopped and frowned. Was it really only two days ago that Eddie came over to help him sleep? It seemed like a life time ago.

He shook his head and went to his closet. His mom had bought him a bunch of jeans completely forgetting that he had three sports where he used his legs. He couldn’t get the damn things over his thighs. But they might fit Eddie.

He chewed on his lip. He pulled out three of them and set them on his bed. They were all grey. Just varying shades. A light acid-washed pair, a grey untreated pair, and a pair like the ones he’d worn last night. Dark grey with black seams.

He knocked on the door to the bathroom. “Hey, Eds. I’m going to go see if my parents are still here. I’ll be right back. I left something for you on the bed.”

*

Eddie peaked his head of the bathroom, towel in his hair as he dried it. He looked at the bed and smiled softly. The options wouldn’t be too far out of his wheelhouse as far as clothing choices went. He tried on all three pairs but chose the acid-washed ones. He pulled on the sweater and held the collar up to his nose.

Steve cleared his throat from the doorway. Eddie looked up, blushing at having been caught out sniffing Steve’s clothes.

“I like seeing you in my things,” Steve admitted, walking into his room.

Eddie shoved hair in front of his face to hide the further embarrassment. “Are your parents home?”

Steve shook his head. “I saw a note on the counter from my mom telling me they were on their way to South Korea. But that she would call on their layover in France.”

Eddie came over and gave him a hug. “That was so intense, baby. I didn’t know if I should interrupt or not.”

“If things had gone on longer, I think you would have,” Steve said. “But finding out that Tommy was hanging out with actual degenerate instead of whatever he thinks of poor people, meant he had had lost and he knew it. You live in the trailer park, so does Max. Does that makes either of bad people? Not even fucking close, man.”

“You’re sweet, baby.”

Steve blushed, tucking his head into the space between Eddie’s shoulder and neck.  

“Let’s get to school before Mrs Hall throws another fit about us,” Eddie said, gently pulling away.

Steve nodded.

Part 15  Part 16  Part 17 Part 18  Part 19  Part 20  Part 21

Tag List: @shrimply-a-menace @strangersteddierthings @throwbackthrowaway @novelnovella @cursedfoxteeth @babyblender @lifeisnotsobadonceyoustopcaring @swimmingbirdrunningrock @steve-the-hairrington @winterbuckwild @spectrum-spectre @matchingbatbites @garden-of-gay @anaibis @thing-a-ling @fandemonium-takes-its-toll @artiststarme @sundead  @nelotegreitic @gregre369 @butterflysandpeppermint @thedragonsaunt @kodaik97 @messrs-weasley @scarletzgo @deadlydodos @renaissan-vvitch @evix-syne666 @emly03 @justforthedead89 @ashwinmeird @huniibee @phantypurple @stevesbipanic @shucks-yuckyuck @awkwardgravity1 @bookbinderbitch @reportinglivefromsoda @chasinggeese @be-the-spark-bitch @jinxjinn @kohlraedirectioner @cr0w-culture @xjessicafaithx @whimsicalwitchm @jaywhohasthegay @dangdirtydemons @lovelyscot  @howincrediblysapphicofyou @the-redthread estrellami-1

#My writing #stranger things #steddie #canon divergence #the boy with the bat #ladykailtiha writes

[morrak]

Untitled Wednesday Library Series, Part 122

Last week was a doozy, but thanks to the magic of Antibiotics™ we’re nearly back up to speed. I can therefore and finally bring you four subheadings worth of musings about that book I keep mentioning.

Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy, written by Wayne R. Moore and published in-house by the Moore Special Tool Company (named Moore after his father and its founder, respectively, who were, of course, the same person) in 1970. MIT press did a version in ‘71, which connection presumably came from George R. Harrison — then MIT School of Science Dean Emeritus — who had a strong research connection with Moore Tool and wrote the original edition’s introduction.

The How

From [sounds of drumroll] the library. Not mine, you understand, but rather a real one.

If you’re interested in following along, most library systems probably have hookups for similar copies; the company practically handed these things out. You could also just find a free scan online (like this one).

The Text

By the late 19th century, precision in industrial metalworking meant tolerances on the order of thousandths of inches. By the middle of the 20th, tenths of thousandths were common, but special applications (e.g., manufacturing diffraction gratings for lab instruments; standards work in national bureaus) fell in the regime of tens of millionths. In the U.S., Moore Tool was the top of the heap in machine building and a big name in metrology.

Their cash cows were jig borers and jig grinders — you can still find several models of each floating around eBay most days of the week — plus some of the best rotary tables ever made, all of which allowed a ton of custom tooling work that culminated in a design for what they called a Universal Measuring Machine. This book is (approximately) about the construction of those starting from absolute base principles, which Moore says are (1) creating flat surfaces, (2) defining lengths, (3) dividing circles, and (4) measuring roundness.

This is 85% textbook, 10% showing off, and 5% company history. It is very successful at each. This is perhaps unsurprising: Moore Tool was stuffed to bursting with money, connections, and expertise, including at the top. That it could produce a yet-uncontested classic in machining, machine building, and engineering practically without lifting the pen seems obvious in retrospect.

The book is also, and for exactly the same reasons, an intensely political read for exactly 100% of its runtime. The bleeding edge of 1960s American industry was bleeding for (let's say) several reasons, all of which are on some kind of display in these words and photographs. Such a company does not exist except at the confluence of a certain set of circumstances. I think that's important.

The Object

Neither an expense spared nor an opportunity missed. This volume is 53 years old and still shockingly pretty. From the endpapers to the typesetting to the overall size and shape, this is a thoughtful thing.

F. R. Gruger, Jr.'s engineering drawings are a masterclass, and together with William Vandivert's photographs lend the book even more flair and character than it already has. Genuinely some of the most effective illustration I've ever encountered.

The Why, Though?

Like I said, a classic. Everyone I know who knows anything about machine tools says they either started learning here or might as well have. I get that completely, and I'm passing the recommendation on to you, dear reader.

Do you want a whole lobe of your brain rewritten? Do you want to dream of the subtle crunch of cast iron under a carbide hand scraper? Do you find yourself wondering how to best design a room to minimize temperature stratification to within a tenth of a degree from floor to ceiling so as to more accurately grind a spindle taper? If you said yes to all these questions — and I know you did — then boy, have I got the book for you.

Also see Moore's Precision Hole Location (which, ha) and Stefan Gotteswinter's Shop Talk #28, in which he leafs through a German ~counterpart text from Deckel.

#images #untitled wednesday library series

[symbioticsimplicity]

I’m gonna have to name this little AU if I keep going, but I have no idea what I’d call it. Suggestions? Part three of these posts. AO3 link!

Part 4

                                                                 *

“Okayokayokayokay,” Steve said, half way through their second shared bottle of vodka, “I gotta know, if this’d happened, like, two years ago, would this have happened?”

Billy squinted at him, the cogs in his head almost visible as he tried to make Steve’s question make sense. Eddie and Tommy however seemed to latch right onto the meaning behind his slightly slurred words. 

“Noooooo.” Eddie declared with a shake of his head and a wave of his hands, “Nope. Woulda ended bloody ten minutes in. Tops.”

“The hell are we talking about?” Billy asked, rather than continuing to try to puzzle it out.

“This,” Tommy gestured to the group at large, “Us. Could we have all hung out in the same space like this.”

“That is not what he asked.” Billy muttered.

“It’s what he meant.” Tommy shrugged, laying back against the floor.

“Yeah!” Steve agreed, “What’dya think Bills?”

“First, don’t call me that.” Billy’s glare wasn’t half as intimidating with his cheeks all rosy like that, “Second, no way. I couldn’t stand any of you back then. Munson gets a pass, cause he had the hook up.”

Eddie pumped his fist in the air and Tommy made a wounded little noise of derision. 

“What? Why didn’t you like us!” He rolled so he was facing the group again, though still laying as comfortably as he could.

“Is that a real question?” Billy cocked a brow.

“Yes!”

“Because you were assholes.” Billy said as if it were obvious.

Tommy threw his hands into the air in exasperation and turned to Steve, gesturing emphatically, the pinching of his eyebrows saying everything his mouth wasn’t. 

“Uh, Billy, you were also kind of an asshole.” Steve replied for Tommy since he was too worked up to get the words out without his voice cracking like a middle schooler’s. 

“I had a reason to be.” Billy shot back, his expression crumbling into irritated resignation almost the moment the words left his lips. 

Tommy scoffed, and Steve knew the next words out of his mouth would be the kind that started fights and that was the last thing they needed at the moment. He moved without thinking, slapping a hand over Tommy’s mouth to both their surprise. 

But in for a penny, in for a pound.

“You haven’t gotten the time to develop a ‘don’t be a bitch’ filter yet, so I’m going to do it for you, just this once.” Steve said, leaning in so he didn’t have to speak at full volume, “Before you say anything I want you to think about if it’s going to get you punched in the nose or not. If the answer is ‘yes’ pick something else.”

Tommy glared at him, and licked the inside of his palm. The sensation had Steve pulling his hand back only to wipe it off on Tommy’s already ruined polo. 

“You’re so gross! Have you seen the shit I’ve killed today? You’re gonna catch turbo-AIDS.”

Eddie snorted, earning himself a shove from Steve. 

“Thanks, Steve.” Tommy pointedly flicked his attention back to Billy who was watching the whole thing while sipping a can of coke he’d pulled from the six pack nearby, “What makes you think we didn’t also have reasons to be assholes?”

Billy scoffed, glancing at Steve for a moment before he seemed to reconsider whatever he was thinking.

“Guess I don’t know, Tommy. What was your reasoning?” He pulled his legs up so he was hugging his arms around his shins, still holding the coke by his fingertips, “Can’t think of much a rich kid with two functional parents and plenty of friends could really be that upset about.”

Eddie made a noise somewhere between agreement and comradery, but otherwise kept surprisingly quiet.

Steve squeezed Tommy’s arm from where he’d left it after wiping his hand on him. Tommy’s self control was usually dubious at best, but his self control in regards to saying some genuinely hurtful shit was virtually non-existent. Or at least it had been the last time Steve had spent any meaningful time with him.

So he was surprised when Tommy took a breath and seemed to follow Steve’s advice about thinking before he spoke.

“Probably isn’t as good as your’s, whatever the fuck that is.” Tommy shrugged, “But that’s why. Growing up that way, that’s what people think you’re supposed to be like. You’ve got everything, you’re supposed to flaunt it. Everyone likes you, you’re supposed to act like it. You’ve got people who care, then you’re supposed to be happy.”

Tommy’s face was carefully blank, the same that he used when he was being more of an asshole than he had to be and didn’t want to feel it. The one that Steve had seen every time someone told him how much of a dick he was somewhere someone else might overhear it if he ever said ‘I’m sorry.’ 

“Just how it is. Fighting it gets you thrown out with the losers, and the losers hate you because you were an asshole. Steve here knows all about that. Sucked, didn’t it?”

Steve met Tommy’s stare, pursing his lips as he nodded.

“Yeah. Got better eventually. But yeah.”

“See, I’m not like Steve. I’m not a good person deep down, and I’d much rather be comfortable than do the right thing or whatever. Especially if doing the right thing still lands you here.”

He gestured to the room at large, illustrating how they were all more or less trapped together.

For a moment they were all quiet, Tommy’s words seeming heavier and heavier with each passing moment. Steve was about to change the subject, just to dispel some of the awkwardness that had coagulated around them but Billy beat him to it.

“I’m not either.” His voice was hushed, which was just as weird as hearing Tommy being quiet, “A good person. I’m not. Could have done a million other things, didn’t. It’s easier to just….let it all happen.”

Steve was sure he’d never heard Billy volunteer information like that. Despite having fallen into frequent proximity months ago, he still felt like he barely knew the guy. He knew more about Eddie who he’d known for far less time. 

“Well if anyone’s asking me, I think you’re all assholes.” Eddie’s easy quip slid in, easing some of the tension almost effortlessly, “But the thing about assholes? If you stretch ‘em, they can grow.”

“Munson, what the fuck?” Billy leaned away from him.

“It’s true!”

“It’s fucking gross!” Tommy threw the end of a Vienna sausage at him, “Do you just say shit like that on purpose or are you actually queer?”

“If I were, you, Tommy Hagan, would be the very last person I would tell.” Eddie lobbed the corner of a poptart back at him. “Last thing this minefield of a quartet needs is homophobia.”

Tommy squinted at Eddie, “Okay now, that one pisses me off. People just assume I hate the gays just because I’m an asshole about everything else.”

“Tommy, think about what you just said for a second.”

“It’s different! Being a dick to, like, regular people is one thing. The gays have enough shit going on, with the bible thumpers. And the whole bible thing is stupid anyway! I’ve read that thing front to back like three times and the whole Sodom and Gamorah thing was about child abuse so that’s a whole lot of people admitting they can’t fucking read. Which just makes Christians look stupid so it makes me even more pissed off cause if I’m gonna look stupid I want it to at least be for a problem I do have. I can’t do trig but I can at least fucking read--”

“Tommy,” Steve pushed him gently to jar him out of the rabbit hole he’d just gone down.

Eddie was staring at him like he was the single most baffling puzzle he’d ever seen, a growing sense of amazement lighting up a smile like the sun cresting the horizon. If there was anything Eddie Munson was, it was uncomfortably perceptive. Steve knew that well enough by now, but Tommy was just about to find out.

“Well, then, in that case, yeah, I’m kinda queer.” Eddie said, casual as anything, despite Billy choking on his soda beside him.

His shrewd eyes locked onto Tommy, and Steve knew he’d be picking apart each little individual bit of his reaction and running it through whatever process in his head equated to judgement. Tommy, to his credit, while looking absolutely floored Eddie had just dropped that like it was nothing, didn’t react much more.

“Okay.” He said once he’d gotten his voice back.

“Okay?” Eddie raised both eyebrows.

“Well what do you want me to do, a backflip?” He wiggled his injured leg, “Not really on the menu right now.”

Eddie grinned and shook his head, looking absolutely delighted, “Man, meeting you two is starting to fuck with me. Cool jocks. Who would have thought?”

“Crazy what can happen when you get to actually know someone.” Steve let out the breath he’d been holding that entire conversation through. 

“Yeah, crazy.” Eddie agreed.

                                                            *

By the time they finished the second bottle of vodka it was just after nine. Reasonably they should turn in for the night but Steve was still wired from the day’s action and he was pretty sure he wasn’t the only one. 

Eddie couldn’t settle at the best of times, while Billy and Tommy were tossing an orange back and forth. If Steve ignored the bloodstained rag wrapped around Tommy’s leg, and the distant sound of demobats, he could almost pretend they were having a sleep over. 

A sleepover with his ex-best friend, his rival-turned-ally, and his other rival-turned-friend.

Sure, totally normal.

“We should go to bed.” Steve suggested, mostly just so he could say he’d tried to be responsible.

“Unless you mean that in a sexy way, no. There’s no way I’m sleeping tonight.” Eddie replied without looking away from the window.

If Steve could hear the demobats, he was sure Eddie could too. His leg was bouncing and every line of his body screamed ‘tension’. Normally, Steve would have sat him down beside him, pet through his hair and got him talking about something until he chilled out a bit. But given present company…

Given present company? Would they really mind? Yeah, of course they would, they’d both give Steve a metric ton of shit. But would that be it? It wasn’t like they’d beat his ass over it, Eddie had just come out like three hours ago. Maybe Steve was just too far in his own head.

“Eddie?” He called, getting the other’s attention, although not in full, “C’mere for a sec.”

Eddie turned all the way back to him, biting his bottom lip like he was trying to tear the skin off it with just his incisors. So, even more freaked out than Steve had thought. There was no way he was going to prioritize being a coward over Eddie who clearly needed his help.

He sat down beside him, just a little too close as always. Steve scooted even closer, sliding his hand into Eddie’s hair and scratching just the way he knew he liked. Almost immediately his shoulders lost some of their tension.

“So, if you’re not going to sleep, and I’m not fucking you, what should we do instead?” Steve asked, earning himself a laugh.

“How about we play something.” Tommy suggested, despite the question not being addressed to him in the least.

“Like a sleepover?” Billy huffed what almost could have been called a laugh, “What’re we, sixteen year old girls?”

“I could braid your hair too, Sunshine~” Eddie winked at him.

“Stop calling me that.”

“Like you don’t love it.” Eddie grinned right back.

Steve was surprised to see a blush rise on Billy’s cheeks, though he didn’t get to see it long before he was turning his head away.

“If you two wanna stop flirting, I was gonna say two truths and a lie. That one’s always fun.”

“Sounds great, Billy you should go first.” Eddie couldn’t help but tease.

Steve pulled on the baby hairs at the base of his neck a little, getting a hiss out of him and a poke to the side for his trouble.

“Fine.” Billy turned back to the group and held up three fingers, “I have killed a man, I will kill again, and it burns when I pee.”

Tommy looked stricken and Steve could relate. He knew at least one of those was true, although he felt obligated to argue that while Billy’s body had certainly killed someone, he himself hadn’t. Though, he supposed from Billy’s perspective that line probably didn’t feel as clear. 

“Second one’s a lie.” Eddie answered, his voice deceptively calm.

“Munson wins.” Billy laid back down and tossed the orange to himself.

“Wait, no, hold on, back it up.” Tommy mimed pumping the breaks, looking just as goofy as his dad did when he did that, “Can we talk about that first one?”

“The game was two truths and a lie, not two truths a lie and an investigation. Mind your own business Hagan.”

“Nah, man you made that my business.” 

“He didn’t kill anyone.” Steve said firmly, staring Billy down even though he wasn’t looking in his direction as though daring him to argue, “He was possessed.”

“Possessed? Like Linda Blair possessed?”

“Worse.” Billy answered shortly. 

“First monsters, now demons? How in the hell has all this shit been happening without anyone knowing until the town literally split in half?” Tommy blinked, his head reeling back as he tried to make that make sense, “You’re good now though, right? Not possessed anymore?”

“Mostly.” Billy answered cryptically.

“I’m trying really hard not to flip a shit here, and you’re really not fucking helping Hargrove.”

“I don’t know how else to put it. It’s not in me anymore, but I can still feel where it was. I can still hear it, if it’s close. I can still do some of the things it could. Still don’t feel hum--” Billy cut himself off abruptly.

Eddie and Steve locked eyes across the circle. Later, they’d deal with that later.

“How about we play something else?” Steve suggested.

                                                          *

“This one is easy.” Steve explained, “We go in a circle, we say things we haven’t done and if you’ve done the thing someone is saying, you put a finger down. Last one to put all their fingers down, wins.”

“This is stupid.” Billy grumbled for the third time.

“But you’re still playing~” Eddie leaned over to bump his shoulder to Billy’s. 

The blonde didn’t reply.

“I’ll go first this time.” Tommy all but decided, “Hmmm, never have I ever gone skydiving.”

None of them put a finger down, if anything Billy just stared at Tommy as though he could make him pick up his disapproval like radio waves.

“Right,” Steve thought for a moment, “Never have I ever dyed my hair.”

Eddie and Billy both put a finger down while he and Tommy kept their ten.

“Oooh what color?” Eddie eagerly asked.

Billy hesitated a long moment before answering, “Pink.”

Eddie’s head tilted as his smile stretched wider, “You’d look good in pink, sunshine.” 

Billy rolled his eyes, “Never have I ever voluntarily worn a polo shirt.”

“Targeted!” Tommy whined, putting a finger down as Steve shook his head and did the same.

“I’m trying to win, Hangman. Skydiving? Seriously?”

Tommy paused at the use of his old nickname. Steve hadn’t thought Billy knew that one, given that Tommy had gotten it years before he’d come to town. Hangman Hagan, they’d called him for years, because fucking with him was tantamount to a social death sentence. Tommy had never been one to simply get even, no, when he set about to ruin someone, he ruined them. As inescapable as the hangman.

It seemed to have flipped a switch in him, Steve could see the moment his competitive nature lit up in his eyes.

“Alright, Sunshine, let’s go then.”

“It’s Munson’s turn.” Billy smirked back, nodding his head over at him.

God help them, Eddie was wearing the same damn smile. As much as Steve cared about them each individually (and wasn’t that a thought), he hoped they never hung out like this again. It was too much chaos per square inch, if this kept up something would end up on fire, he just knew it. 

“Okay, never have I ever played basketball.”

Steve, Tommy, and Billy all put a finger down. 

“Low blow Munson.”

“Really, not even once?”

“No wonder you can’t run for more than three minutes!”

“Your turn, Van Hagan.” Eddie said around his shit eating grin.

“Fine, you wanna throw cheap shots? Never have I ever kissed a guy.”

Eddie made a face and put down a finger. But so did Steve, and so too did Billy.

“All of--”

“Put a finger down, Tommy.” And God help him now Steve was smiling too, couldn’t help it.

Now it was Eddie’s turn to toss his hands in the air and shout a the top of his lungs.

“I knew it!” He barked as Tommy put a finger down, “Birds of a feather, every fuckin’ time!”

“I’ve got to admit I’m surprised that all of us have.” Steve said, much more calmly than he felt, because all of them had kissed a guy before. If he thought about that for more than a few seconds at a time, he might actually implode.

Eddie’s head whipped over to Billy who was looking anywhere other than the group. He hadn’t tried to take back his answer, however, so that was encouraging.

“I’ve gotta know, who?” Eddie asked the room at large.

“Tommy, duh.” Steve replied as though it were obvious, “How else would I have caught that?”

Eddie nodded, still smiling like an idiot, “Right, yeah, good point.”

“Steve.” Tommy answered, “And, uh,” His eyes flicked over to Billy and Steve almost choked on his tongue.

“Seriously?! When?!” He managed to get out, though his voice sounded like he was being strangled.

Eddie laughed so hard he ended up wiggling around on the floor, pure joy erupting from him. 

“Like, right after he got here? We met at a party before we met at school.”

“Crystal’s party? The one I was sick for? The one with that hot blonde that you wouldn’t stop talking about for a week? The hot blonde you met was Billy?”

“Uh huh.” 

“You talked about me?” Billy’s smile rode the line between the genuine one Steve had seen glimpses of recently and the trashy smirk he’d worn all through high school.

Tommy’s face was beet red, “Might’ve.” He muttered.

“Sounds like you had a torch burning. What changed?”

“You talked.”

Eddie had been half way to sitting up but immediately lost the battle.

#stranger things #tommy hagan #billy hargrove #steve harrington #eddie munson #steddie #mungrove #harringrove #harringroveson #stommy #the four idiots of the apocalypse #billy being that friend that casually drops really horrible facts about their life #eddie and impulse control have never met each other and they live in separate countries #steve is just here for the ride mostly but he's also trying to make sure nothing catches on fire #tommy is a bastard yes but he's OUR bastard now #ha³son

[charmsandtealeaves]

I had a big reading week this week trying to clear some of my email inbox because the sheer volume was stressing me the fuck out every time I opened it 😅 Posting this a day early as I'm honestly a little worried Tumblr is gonna be funny about all the links.

Read this week:

Reset by @ncoincidences

WIP, Jily micro-oops, Temporary amnesia, Rated G

A mishap with a drunken dark wizard leaves Lily an amnesiac. The last ten months of her life has been completely wiped, which includes her breakup with James eight months before. To aid in her speedy recovery, James has to keep Lily under the pretence that her life has been the same as it was.

When It Counted by @cascader

Complete (6.9k), Order!jily, Rated T

She didn’t tell him when it counted. She’s daydreaming of a redo.

Something Foolish by @merlinsbudgiesmugglers

Complete (1.9k), Tedromeda, canon compliant, Rated E

Struggling against the expectations of her family, and her forced separation from Ted. Andromeda is pleased to discover a note left in her room.

Sunrise, Sunset by @practicecourts

Complete (2.9k) Blackevans BFF Week, Rated G

One time Sirius Black finds Lily Evans, just as she’s about to do something she might regret. One time Lily Potter finds Sirius Black after he’s received some upsetting news.

A Different Kind of Love Story by @mppmaraudergirl

Complete (5.8k), Blackevans BFF Week, Rated G

The best of friendships sometimes grow in the most unlikely of places.

The Vow by @missgryffin

Complete (9.6k), Hogwarts! Jily , Rated E

When he was thirteen-going-on-fourteen, James Potter did something truly, unbelievably stupid. Now that he’s seventeen-going-on-eighteen, he has to deal with the consequences.

Quest for Camelot by @petalsinwoodvale (Ch. 1-2)

WIP, jily Quest For Camelot AU, Rated T

All Lily has ever wanted is to be a knight, like her father, Sir Lionel. After Camelot is attacked and the magical sword Excalibur is stolen, she finds herself teaming up with James, a young blind hermit, as they embark on a quest to find the lost sword. Together, they face the threat of the evil Ruber, navigate challenges with a two-headed dragon and an ogre, and discover that they're more alike than they initially thought. Will they manage to return the sword to Arthur in time, or will they lose not only each other but also their dreams and the precious Excalibur?

Grounded by @frustratedpoetwrites

WIP, Jily Modern (Magic) AU, Winter Olympics, Not Rated

When James Potter's successful Quidditch career comes to an abrupt end he struggles to find a new direction. Coaching seems to be an answer and a pair of green eyes.

Vindicated by missgryffin

Complete (20k), Order!Jily AU, Rated E

Five years ago, Lily Evans did the hardest thing she’d ever done, and broke up with James Potter so she could stay alive by secretly going undercover in America. Now, she’s been tasked with something even harder: doing a transatlantic mission with him.

Captivated by missgryffin

Complete (6.7k), Hogwarts!Jily, Rated E

"I think we should sweep the library. Make sure it's empty." "And why's that?" "Because I need to be alone with you."

Silent Night by practicecourts (ch.1-4)

WIP, Hope Lupin, Remus Lupin, Rated T

Moments in the life of Hope Lupin.

10 Things I Hate About You by @wearingaberetinparis (Ch1.)

WIP, Jily Romcom, Rated M

Petunia Evans cannot start dating the man she considers to have true love potential – a certain Vernon Dursley – until her anti-social younger sister, Lily, finds herself a partner too, which leads Petunia to take drastic measures. For surely, Head Boy James Potter – suffering from a knee injury he does not want anyone but himself and his physiotherapist to know about – should be able to charm her younger sibling, shouldn’t he? If the only thing standing between her perfect love match is blackmail, who is she not to resort to it? Are not, after all, all means justified when the end she has in mind is so very sweet?

Would you run away with me? By @ncoincidences

Complete (1.3k), jily, Rated G

In which Lily barges in on a white veil occasion.

Happy Place by Wearingaberetinparis (Ch.1-6)

WIP, jily modern AU, Rated M

James and Lily have always been the perfect couple that everyone aspires to be: from Head Boy and Girl at Hogwarts School to university students in a loving long distance relationship to – eventually – a happily engaged duo, destined to go the distance. They go together like cream and tea, pride and prejudice, fish and chips. That is, until – for reasons they refuse to discuss for fear of making everything so much worse – they really, truly don’t. For one week, however, they have to act as if all is well for they have yet to tell their friends that what had always seemed perfect, is now very much broken.

You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do that by @jamesunderwater

Complete (1k), prongsfoot in a nightclub, Rated E

prongsfoot + a locked door public bathroom on my knees trying to make you scream vibe

Truth is I’m so damn in love with you I don’t know what to do with myself by jamesunderwater

Complete (800), Prongsfoot, Rated T

prongsfoot + near death experiences + trapped with only one bed + gay pining

Over Spilt Coffee by @annabtg

Complete (1k), Tonks first person POV, Rated T

Tonks's musings on the night she picked up smoking... the night Remus Lupin broke her heart.

Breaking by annabtg

Complete (1.4k), Remus Lupin, Missing Moments, Rated T

Remus has his reasons for staying away from Tonks. Even if it breaks his heart as much as it breaks hers.

From the very first day by @kay-elle-cee

Complete (500), Muggle AU Jily, Rated T

An unexpected night leaves two coworkers trying to sort out their feelings.

Loved you three summers by Kay-Elle-Cee

Complete (600), Pregnant Jily, Rated G

A pregnant Lily has a not-so-sudden realization.

Don’t say yes by Kay-Elle-Cee

Complete (800), no Voldemort AU Jily, Rated G

Two old flames reconnect, wondering if the other is happy.

This is me swallowing my pride by Kay-Elle-Cece

Complete (466), Harry’s God parents, Rated G

The appointment of Harry's Godfather was never up for discussion, but his Godmother? That took some convincing.

Keeping secrets just to keep you by Kay-Elle-Cee

Complete (453), Secret Relationship Jily, Rated T

James and Lily's friends have a bet, and the two of them are determined to win.

Silence and patience, pining in anticipation by Kay-Elle-Cee

Complete (1.2k), Post-Hogwarts Jily, Rated T

Lily’s been hung up on James for years; a tipsy conversation might be the push she needs to do something about it.

You kiss me in a way that’s gonna screw me up forever by Kay-Elle-Cee

Complete (1k), Pregnant Order!Jily, Rated T

When Lily and James got pregnant, they made a plan for how they'd participate in the Order going forward. Plans change.

Back to the Pavilion by @abihastastybeans

Complete (1.3k), Minerva McGonagall, Rated G

A day in the life of Minerva McGonagall. Written for the Ladies of HP Fest's Monthly Minis: 1st December 2023 - Minerva McGonagall!

The Naughty List by abihastastybeans

Complete (690), jily secret Santa, Rated T

Written for the December Jily Advent Calendar 2023!Prompt: A & B are colleagues and for the secret santa one of them gives the other something inappropriate as a gag gift

Added to the ever expanding TBR:

The Next Step by merlinsbudgiesmugglers

Complete (1.5k), post-canon Andromeda Tonks, Rated G

After the war Andromeda has been wholly focused on raising her grandson. But when he goes to Hogwarts, she finds she might need something more. Kingsley and Harry have an idea for what that could be.

Speak Now by @firefeufuego Complete (1.4k), Jily love declarations, Rated T

The fuse has been lit. Lily can almost hear the crackling hiss of it, feel the building burn of it in the air as Sirius takes the reins of the conversation, as drinks are bought and poured down newly dry throats, and eventually as last orders are called and the four of them are standing outside and saying farewell with kisses on cheeks. Sam and Sirius apparate away. Lily and James do not. They stand, eyes fixed firmly on each other, ready to ignite. ‘Not forever, you said?’ James asks, his voice deep and quiet in a way that’s never been hers to hear before now. Follow-up to the lovely kay-elle-cee's 'silence and patience, pining in anticipation'.

#charms read round up #week 4 #fic rec

[neuralnetsprettypatterns]

I'm going to start posting online content for the first time in a couple of days, and im scared.. do you have any advice? So I'm going to be doing politics, and I know that comes with a lot of harassment. I'm just really asking if there's anything you wish someone told you before you started putting your stuff out there 😅

I appreciate the ask, so I mulled it for a while. Making content has been a wild ride for me. I’m an aging teacher and I’m surely not a natural to any of this.

I boiled it down to five things. There are more, but I’d have had an easier time of it had I known these.

1. You paint for the back row.

Common expression in drag. It means this.

You never know your whole audience. (Especially on the internet.) Attention is scarce. (Especially on the internet.). You always say it louder and more obvious. Louder. Bigger. Clearer. As a creator, you inevitably get in your own head. That has value! You love the intricacies and the subtleties and the joys of this one effect or this one line. That’ll give you life - but your audience isn’t looking for subtlety. You earn that careful attention, and you’d best get used to yelling for it.

With big bold letters.

2. Good is good enough.

The attention economy thrives on volume. My queue is set to ten things a day. Minimum.

Maybe they miss. Maybe they land. There’s no time to meditate on each missed joke or script or image. You just keep tossing up shots.

It’s wonderful to have the time and space to make the most elevated stuff you can. You have to work hard for that time.

3. LNX is our hero.

I’ve always loved Lil Nas X. I deified him when that Kent State gun girl came at him, and he said he was gonna fuck her dad. He went from appreciated to god level that day.

You can’t appease your critics. They’ll never appreciate your kindness. You can’t convert them. You can troll them back if it gives you life. That’s it. You can block or you can have a laugh. The trolls out here give no quarter; they should expect none from you.

4. Real critique is private.

Maybe some people will have real concerns about your content! Their opinions might well be valid.

On the other hand, they might be nasty little clout chasers looking to get eyes on their own stuff by launching attack campaigns. They’re out of ideas, they’re mediocre, and Big Dramatic Callout is an easy script. It’s been done a million times before, after all.

Easy tell. If they care for real, they’ll say it where no one else can hear. That’s real. Big public callout? Be skeptical. Frustrated people do the Big Callout, but it’s chapter one of the Clout Chaser Handbook as well.

5. Real praise is public

That equation - “real critique is private” - reverses when people wanna tell you they love your stuff.

Many people are nice and they are shy! It is also natural for people to communicate privately. Enjoy the support and praise.

That said, some people may also want things from you. Attention. Resources. Collabs. Bragging rights. Parasocial attachment.

Is this praise real or not? Well, if it’s all in your DMs, best to be skeptical. Your best supporters will say it out loud, in front of everyone. That’s where it counts.

***

I hope that helps. Best of luck on your content creation!

#content creation #neuralnetsandprettypatterns #text post

[pilferingapples]

Hello! I'm having a hard time finding GOOD adaptations of Les Mis (apart from the musical of course) because so far I have only managed to run into the bad ones (BBC 2018, the Liam Neeson one, the whole nightmaris works). Anyway, I figured this would be a good place to ask for recs of adaptations that aren't just a complete butchering of the source material! (Oh and I HAVE seen Shoujo Cosette). Thank you :)

Ooh! I have some favorites!

Just good all around:

1925 , French(silent film! there's a fan copy going around with subtitles but honestly , it's a silent film; you'll be fine if you already know the story)

1934, French (ABSOLUTELY not 1935) - this one's a Criterion release so it's not too hard to find it subbed!

1964 Italian miniseries -ten parts, fantastic all the way through, actually paces itself well enough to spend real time on the politics in the second half! Good in Certain Specific Ways 1972, French: lots of focus on the Amis and Gavroche and Paris! Not so much on Valjean, Cosette, and Fantine. But what it does do well is SO good even if they keep stealing Bahorel's lines for other characters, do NOT talk to me about how he's a Minor Character when apparently he has enough scenes to feed an army , and not something easy to find in adaptations, that I think it's worth watching.

1967 BBC, English: a tv miniseries that is half about the best English adaptation I've ever seen, and half ...very not that. The original writer genuinely died halfway through the making of this and whoo boy you can tell, but those first few episodes are really good and in particular have some of the best work with Javert's character that I've ever seen. 1995, French: set in the first few decades of the 20th century, not a direct adaptation but rather a study of how the themes in Les Miserables repeat across multiple eras and lives. One of the most intense and painful Les Mis films I've seen but also one that really digs into its meaning , and the importance of how a story can affect people. VERY worth seeking out.

Not a Filmed Adaptation But Genuinely One of the Best:

The manga by Takahiro Arai, available in Japanese, French, and English ! the last of the 4 volume English omnibus editions is coming out this winter. Arai is a clear fan of the novel and there's so much care put into this, it's a great adaptation and a great manga in its own right.

As to where to find all these--well the English manga omnibus is being released by Seven Seas, but the others, it's going to kind of depend? There's so many Issues with various videos being available only in some locations, but I bet if you ask other fans here who are watching or have watched versions you're interested in, they can help you!

I hope you find some new favorites here!:D

#...don't ask me though because I'm currently transferring my libraries between computers >< #or I'd have offered