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This was life changing

genius. [akaashi keiji x f!reader] chapter three.

>>You struggle to pay rent on your limited graduate student salary, and your worst enemy agrees to help you out.

or

You realize you need to find a partner for your faceless porn account, and Akaashi Keiji is the only man who meets all your requirements.<<

series status: [ongoing]

previous. || masterlist. || next.

a/n: so much to say and so little time to say it

[feel free to buy me a cup of coffee!]

When you come to, you’re completely slumped over Akaashi, your head buried in the crook of his neck and his arms hanging loosely around you. He’s breathing hard, jostling you where you lie flat on top of him.

“Shit,” he breathes, lifting one hand to his hair and curling his fingers into the locks. You make a small noise, one that’s neither awake nor asleep, and he taps his other hand on your back lightly. “You good?”

You nod groggily and try to lift onto your hands. Your arms shake, so you adjust, but the motion has you both flinching, because Akaashi’s still inside of you. “Fuck,” you whisper to yourself, oversensitive, and he drops both hands to your hips, breathing out shakily while he lifts you off of him. You start to fall sideways onto the bed, but he catches you, throwing his body toward yours and catching you so that you don’t hit the mattress too hard.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” he says, a furrow in his brow when you glance up at him. “I put you through a lot.”

“Yeah, you tend to,” you joke weakly, your head lolling to the side as he sits up. You both sigh hard, Akaashi barely managing to crawl to the end of the bed for your phone and both sets of underwear before he returns to his spot. “Thanks,” you mumble when he hands everything to you, and, as you’re sliding your panties on (and ditching the bra, because you can’t be bothered right now), you look down at the sheets. “The bed’s dirty.”

“Don’t care. Need a nap.” He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, groaning. You curl up on your side next to him, your eyes heavy and your muscles aching. A nap sounds glorious.

Before you can drift off, however, his words are ringing through your head.

‘You know me better than that.’

Your eyes crack open, and you stare at the side of his face. His head is bobbing slightly as he starts to fall asleep, eyes flickering open and shut, and you feel distantly bad for interrupting.

“You’re really not doing it on purpose? Any of it?” you whisper, half-hoping it doesn’t wake him at all.

His eyelids flutter, and he turns his head groggily to meet your gaze. When he sees you looking, he turns onto his side, achingly slow, until he’s facing you, too. And then he shakes his head, the exhaustion clear in his every move.

“Not at all,” he whispers back, surprisingly open with you in his tired state. “Are you?”

You frown slightly, confused. “What could I be doing on purpose?”

His eyes slide shut for a moment. “Everything.” 

You get the feeling that what he’s just admitted is bigger than what you have the space to process right now. So you just shake your head, too, and echo his words back. “Not at all.” 

“Okay,” he breathes, after a pause that’s so long that you’d wondered if he’d fallen asleep. “That’s settled, then.”

“I don’t think anything’s settled.” You could probably stop whispering, but the world outside is starting to grow dark, taking this room with it, and the only light in the house comes from the kitchen, so far away from the space between you and Akaashi. And his pinky is brushing up against yours, twitching as he falls asleep, but he’s reaching sleepily for it anyway, hooking your fingers together just before his breath evens out. You’re not sure that he realizes he’s done it.

You want to let him sleep – you want to sleep. But you need his answer. So you squeeze your pinky against his once, and his brows twitch as he wakes again. He hums softly, marking his attention.

“What do we do?” you ask, your words as vague and unclear as your head feels. He swallows, unknowingly shifting marginally closer to you. 

“Told you,” he breathes, a little slurred. “Not doing it on purpose. Jus’ happens.” He lets out a tired sigh and shifts again. “Everything jus’ happens…” 

“So, what d’we do?” you say again, eyes flitting all over his face for an answer.

“Nothin’,” he says, shaking his head slightly. “Nothin’ to do but let it happen.”

You stare at him so long that he falls asleep again, his head tilted toward yours. You wonder if you can do that – just let it happen. Whatever that means – whatever it is. You wonder if you can just give in to Akaashi Keiji like that.

‘You know me better than that.’

You suppose that’s alright. Because he’s giving in, too.

When you finally drift off to sleep, it’s with your forehead pressed against his and his finger curled around yours.

–

Keiji flies up in a tangle of limbs and a gasp that wakes you. 

“Shit-” His eyes fly to the window, seeing that dawn’s well past come. You groan, still curled up on your side, and his head whips around to the bedside table, his phone snatched up in an instant. 

It’s almost 7am.

“Fucking shit-” He rolls out of bed, missing his footing and tumbling right off of it. He hits the floor in a pile of his own body, groaning and shaking it off as best as he can, and you sit up quickly, caught off guard by his crash landing.

“Akaashi-”

“Shit, fuck-” He trips over his own feet, still half-asleep, and tries to locate his clothes. “It’s almost 7. I have to get home and shower and get my shit. I have to teach at 9.” He snatches his shirt off the floor and pulls it on, letting out a frustrated groan when he realizes it’s on backwards.

“Take an Uber. I’ll pay for it,” you try, but he just shakes his head, rushing to twist the shirt around.

“Need my bike later–wait.” He looks at you, in his boxers and his half-on shirt and his crooked glasses. You stare back, in your underwear and your bedhead and a pillow pressed to your chest in order to hide your body from him in this new daylight. “We only filmed one thing.”

Your eyes go wide, and you’re breathing ‘fuck’ as you stare up at him. He looks around the room, blinking hard. “What do we do?” he asks, still standing there like an idiot.

“I’m free tonight if you want to come back,” you offer. He nods – he thinks he’s free, too.

“Yeah, that works.”

“Okay, then take an Uber home, since you’re just coming back,” you push again. “And leave your shit here.”

“Okay,” he sighs, searching for his jeans. “That’s fine.”

He finds them on the other side of the bed, entirely unsure how they’d gotten there, and starts to hop into them. There’s a moment of silence, one where he goes through the mental list of his things – wallet, keys, phone – before you’re speaking.

“Akaashi.”

“Hm?” he hums, taking one last hop to get his jeans up to where they need to be before he’s wrestling with the zipper.

“You said last night that there’s nothing we can do except let things happen.” Keiji pauses with his fingers on his zipper, back turned to you and eyes flicking down at nothing while he thinks. Had he said that? “Did you mean that?” you ask quietly.

He tugs his zipper up and does the button, blinking rapidly. His ears start to warm with some unknown embarrassment. “I suppose I did.”

“So… are we just gonna…” You don’t finish the question, but he hears it, anyway, and his heart flips in his chest. 

Are we just gonna keep doing this? Whatever we want?

He glances over his shoulder at you, turning slightly while he tightens his belt around his hips. “What is it, huh?” he asks, a soft smirk lifting on his lips. “You attracted to me, Freak?”

You scowl, but he sees the interest in your eyes. It’s the same interest that plucks at his nerves now, as he’s doing up his belt and staring down at you where you sit, naked in the bed that he’s fucked you in twice this week.

“I think you know the answer to that,” you bite, but it’s lacking its usual edge. You’re nervous. 

He doesn’t have it in him right now to fuck with you, because he’s nervous, too. “Yeah. I do.” He scoops up his phone and runs his fingers through his hair. “Okay, I have all my shit, I think.”

You tap quickly on your phone with an uncertain nod. “Okay,” you say after a moment. “Uber will be here in two minutes.”

He nods, rushing to the door. “Thanks,” he breathes, and then he stops himself with a hand on the door frame. He shouldn’t leave like this. 

Backing slowly into the room again and eyeing you where you sit, he sighs. “Freak.”

You look up from your phone, frowning. “Is that just gonna be your new name for me-”

“I’m attracted to you, too.”

Your mouth drops open, and his splits in a smug grin that hides how terrifying it had been to admit that. 

“But you probably figured that out, didn’t you?” he asks quietly. When you just swallow and nod shallowly, he nods back. “So, yes. We’re ‘just gonna’.” He quotes your unfinished question and offers no ending. The rest of it sits between you, the silence empty and full at the same time.

You let out a long breath after a moment. “Okay,” you whisper. 

The sound of it – of your agreement to the unsaid proposal he’d just made – makes his fingertips go numb.

“Okay,” he breathes back. “I’m gonna go.”

“Okay.”

As he sits in the back of the Uber, Keiji tries to remember what he’s in such a rush for.

–

The time between October 25th and November 11th passes in a blur.

You and Akaashi find a flow, one that’s surprisingly easy. He comes over twice a week, as planned, and the world around you – outside of you – reduces to nothing but the things that happen inside the walls of your apartment. You both leave everything behind and enter into the suspended disbelief that carries you through this arrangement. 

He bends you over every surface in the spare bedroom and forces you to forget who you are, not that that’s hard with the way he handles you. You talk back as often as you can, because the way his eyes light up when you do tells you he likes the challenge. That no one challenges him quite like you. You bump heads throughout the day, over and over again, only to fall into each other at night in a way that’s wonderfully in sync – two pieces of different puzzles that fit together as though they’d been made that way. 

You start to think after a while that every argument you find yourself in with Akaashi Keiji only serves to make this thing between you stronger when you’re alone. Because on the days that your tension is particularly bad, you find it that much easier to give in to him. On the days when you’re particularly combative, he’s that much more eager to mold you into what he wants. Easy, like putty under his fingertips, you give for him – and he gives right back, just like he’d promised.

He still won’t let you touch him, not in the way that you want. After two weeks, he still won’t let you show him how to get out of his own head. He spanks you, ties you up, bends you in ways no one ever has before and makes you do things that would be completely humiliating if not for the fact that it’s him making you do them. You know that – you’re aware enough to know that it’s because it’s him.

That it’s always been because it’s him.

So even if he won’t let you do the one thing you keep asking for – tears in your eyes, a pout on your lips, anything that might make him give in to you – you can’t find it in you to be too upset. Because a deal is a deal, and Akaashi Keiji’s good for his word. And in return for giving him what he wants, he fucks you in your favorite position, once and then twice more in the same night, because you’re just that good at listening.

You listen to him, no matter the request, and he makes it worth your while without fail.

It bleeds into your everyday life without either of you realizing it. 

Not the sex – never the sex. But things are different now. That suspended disbelief reaches, aching and stretching, into the corners of your days, touching the tension between you and then slipping away before you have a chance to recognize that things are changing.

Akaashi sits in the back of the LEM meetings now, where no one can see him. He lets other people take the round table, slipping in at the last second and taking a seat against the wall instead of coming five minutes early like he always does. He does it on purpose – you know he does, because he makes two choices. 

The first is that – on days when you don’t present – he sits right behind you and taps his foot ever so lightly on one of your chair legs, just to remind you he’s there. And when you inevitably inch forward, he’s quick to adjust, because the universe had cursed him with long legs and he’s more than willing to use them. If you grow annoyed enough to turn and glare at him, you’re always unlucky enough to catch the smirk tugging at his lips and the heated look in his eye, because he gets off on you snapping at him. 

You both know that now, and he’s not ashamed to admit it, anymore. Not to you.

The second – much, much worse – comes on the days that you do present. Because you’re forced to speak to a group of your peers and advisor for twenty minutes straight. Twenty minutes where Akaashi Keiji sits in the back of the room and undresses you with his eyes. His long, dark eyelashes flutter as his gaze travels across your body, and his bottom lip gets trapped between his teeth without hesitation. His head tilts this way and that, giving him the angles he needs to ogle you. 

A few seconds on the hem of your skirt, giving way to thighs that, when pressed together like that, hide the marks he’d left only the night before. A few seconds on your throat, because, if he strains his eyes enough, he can see the traces of himself there, purple and slathered in concealer. A few seconds on the buttons of your blouse, the same buttons you’d had to sew back into your shirt because he’d accidentally ripped them off in his rush to undress you last week. 

But maybe that’s your fault for wearing one of your roleplay blouses to campus that day. Maybe you’d done it on purpose. Maybe, over the last two weeks, you’d come to anticipate the shiver of nerves that would run down your spine when your day to present would come back around. Maybe you’d started to look forward to the way he would inevitably grill you with questions after spending twenty minutes flustering you, because – as you’d come to learn – Akaashi Keiji’s preferred form of foreplay had always been psychological.

Maybe that’s what you get for choosing him.

Maybe that’s why you’d choose him again in a heartbeat.

It takes too long to notice that other people are starting to see it, too. That, when Bokuto digs through your fridge and holds up a container of kung pao chicken in confusion, your stuttered excuse of having Akaashi over to grade exams together hadn’t passed over with Kuroo as well as you’d hoped. That, when Akaashi beckons you away from lunch to go to Syntax lecture together, Tsukishima’s eyes follow you out of the dining hall, watching you two walk closer together than usual. That, at Bokuto’s parties, Yachi had started to realize that Akaashi was careful with her personal space on that couch, but not yours.

It takes too long to notice those things, for both of you. Because you’re both too busy noticing each other.

At night, Akaashi doesn’t text you anymore. He just logs on to xxxvids .com and pings you, no matter how many times you tell him to stop being weird. He pings you there and takes up most of the time you could be spending responding to other messages, talking about absurdly normal things like grading and dissertation progress. It adds to the suspended disbelief, and you think that maybe you both know it. He always drops a five-star review at the end, and, after a week of it, he starts gifting you the in-chat badges and stickers that cost money. He sends them without hesitation, the money adding up so quickly that you start to threaten to block him. 

‘You won’t block me,’ he always messages back. ‘You like my attention too much.’

You hate how well he knows you.

So you start to text him your solo videos before you post them. Because you know him, too. Because you know that all you have to do is attach a cheeky message – ‘since you liked it so much the first time ;)’ – before he comes running, your phone ringing angrily every time.

‘You better cut it out,’ he always says. 

‘What’re you gonna do, punish me?’, you say. Because you know that he will.

You know that Akaashi will always give you what you want, no matter how far you push his limits outside of the bedroom. Because as long as you give him what he needs when it matters, he’ll do just the same.

That understanding becomes real in ways you hadn’t predicted, much too soon.

–

Keiji tugs on the collar of his turtleneck in annoyance, the fabric rubbing against his skin in a way that irritates him. He passes through the mass of people in the dining hall, grimacing when his shirt sticks to his skin, the heat a bit unbearable.

It’s still too warm out to be wearing something so clearly meant for winter, but he’d been in a rush this morning, and he hadn’t had time to cover up the hickies you’d left on him two nights ago. He’d cursed you and your family line when he’d spotted the marks in the mirror, because he certainly did not have time to cover them up with the concealer you’d bought him. He’d picked out the first high-neck item he could find in his closet, which just so happened to be this awful wool sweater that’s heavenly in the cold and absolute hell any other time.

You’re already at the table with Bokuto when he finds you, and he sees your eyes drop to his neck. Your eyebrows go up with interest, and you’re hiding a smirk, because you know exactly why he would ever have chosen such a bad outfit for today’s weather. He sits with a sigh, his loudly clattering tray one of the many micro-decisions he’s making to let out his irritation today.

“Hi, Bokuto,” he says quietly, only acknowledging you with a nod of his head. You nod back, seeing when he rolls his eyes subtly at you. It makes you smile, so you turn it on Bokuto, because that’s more natural than smiling at Keiji.

“Kou, have you heard back from the Expo?” you ask, giving the larger man all your attention. Keiji’s eye twitches slightly, and he digs into his lunch, trying not to let you see. But he knows you have, because you always do. 

Sometime in the last two weeks, you’d picked up on the way his shoulders tense when you talk to Bokuto, on the way his jaw clenches and unclenches when you touch him. On the way he’s just that much meaner in bed afterward.

He’s not stupid enough to believe he’s not a little bit possessive. He’d felt it enough times over the last few days. 

It always starts with an annoyance that strums in his veins when his best friend hugs you – because there’s a heat map on your body that only Keiji can see, one that shows him all the places he’d put his hands the last time he’d fucked you. And he has to sit there and watch Bokuto’s hands cover it all up. 

It’s worse when Bokuto lingers, friendly and unassuming, in your personal space, because Keiji knows you won’t smell like you afterward. He always tenses when it’s not your perfume in his nose when you pass him by. His mind goes blank when it’s Bokuto’s cologne instead, stronger than his own and not at all suited to your skin.

It always leaves him feeling like a fucking dog, overcome with some strange urge to pull you close – in public or otherwise – and drown you in things that smell like him. His cologne, his shirts, his coat, he doesn’t fucking care. It irritates him. And you’d noticed.

Of course you’d noticed – because you’re annoying like that. You’re annoying enough to feed into it, giving Bokuto extra smiles and extra sweetness when Keiji’s around, because you know that, the next time you’re alone with him, Keiji will make you cry and beg for forgiveness.

And it doesn’t matter how many times he reminds himself that it’s not his business to be jealous. It’s not his business to be possessive, because there’s nothing for him to be possessive about. You’re not his. 

But you lean into it. So he does, too.

You lean into it now, touching your fingers down on Bokuto’s arm when you ask him about the conference. It starts on Friday, and the results still aren’t out yet. It’s concerning, enough that it’s made everyone more high-strung than usual – conference results coming out with less than a week for speakers to prepare is unheard of.

But Keiji’s not thinking about that. He’s thinking about the fingers you have on Bokuto’s wrist, wondering if you remember that, two nights ago, you had those fingers wrapped around his-

“No, I haven’t!” Bokuto exclaims, snapping Keiji out of his growing frustration. “It’s so weird and annoying! Have you?”

You shake your head, pouting slightly, and Keiji’s rice spoon shakes in his clenched fist. He’s really not in the space to do this today.

“We haven’t, no. Our advisor’s starting to get a little pissed,” you say in faux contemplation. You press one fingertip to your bottom lip and tap thoughtfully a few times. Keiji wonders if it’d be okay for him to throw himself across this table and tackle you.

When your eyes slide to his, catty and challenging, he loses his mind.

Dropping his spoon in the metal bowl with a jarring clang, he leans back, sighing performatively. “God, I think I chose the wrong outfit for today.”

Bokuto looks him over, nodding enthusiastically, but Keiji keeps his eyes locked on yours. You know to be wary of him, at least – your eyes narrow, and his even out, your challenge accepted.

“Yeah, dude, you really did. It’s way too hot to-” Bokuto goes quiet, staring. His eyes are locked on the place where Keiji has a finger hooked into his collar and is tugging it down, presumably to air out his warm neck.

His warm neck, where there are some rather you-shaped love bites marking his skin.

Your face drops, mouth hanging open and eyes wide as you stare at him. Keiji doesn’t react, because Bokuto’s looking at him, not you, but he does turn his gaze on his friend and tug on the collar a few more times with a relieved sigh.

“So hot in here. I made a mistake.”

“Dude.” Bokuto stares, open-mouthed, and then reaches for him, yanking the collar all the way down and exposing Keiji’s hickies completely. “Have you been sleeping with someone?!”

Keiji stares you dead in the eyes when he says–

“Just someone from my department.” He watches your gaze turn deadly, and he smiles politely at the glare you shoot him, turning back to his friend. “I don’t think you’d know her. It’s really casual.”

Bokuto immediately turns to you, and you fix your expression with impressive speed.

“Do you know who it is?” he asks excitedly, practically vibrating in his seat. “Y/n, please tell me you know who it is. Please, please, please-”

“Uh-” you stutter, laughing nervously and shaking your head. “Our department’s pretty big, Kou. And I’m not really in the habit of getting in Akaashi’s business.” 

It’s a solid save, Keiji will give you that. But he can’t help but smirk, because he can tell you’re not going to be letting this one go any time soon.

“Um, but-” He plasters an embarrassed grin on his face, nudging Bokuto in a way that’s meant to be sheepish. “We’re keeping it kinda quiet, okay? So don’t tell anyone?”

The man’s eyes go wide, and he’s nodding very solemnly. “Yeah, I totally get it. I won’t say anything!”

Your chair screeches when you push it back, standing to full height. Keiji watches you with disinterest.

“I just remembered,” you say through gritted teeth. “We were supposed to go over that handout before lecture. Should we go?”

Keiji just lifts his brows and looks down at his lunch. “I’m still eating.”

Your nostrils flare, and a rush of excitement flies down his spine. Picking up your bag, you smile sweetly down at Bokuto. “Sorry, Kou. Let’s get dinner tonight?”

Keiji can’t wait to get you alone.

He and Bokuto watch you go, Bokuto waving and yelling ‘see you tonight!’ across the crowded room. Keiji eats his meal silently, watching when Kuroo, Tsukishima, and Yachi break through the mass of bodies and make their way over to the table. The two men are stealing glances at each other as they walk, but Keiji’s learned that if he minds his own business, then Tsukishima tends to do the same.

And it’s important to him that Tsukishima does the same.

“Was that Y/n we just saw?” Kuroo asks as he sets his tray down. Bokuto nods bouncily.

“She said something about a handout that she and Akaashi need to go over.” He looks down at Keiji, who’s stuffing his mouth full of food at record speed. “Shouldn’t you go with her?”

Keiji nods, cheeks stretched to their limits as he tries to swallow it all. “Mhm,” he says, grimacing as the food goes down and then shoveling more in. He picks up his bag as he’s still eating, swinging it over his shoulder and snatching his tray up. “Gotta go-” He chokes a bit, barely recovering as he’s waving goodbye over his shoulder. He feels Tsukishima’s eyes on him for only a moment before the sensation passes, and he’s grateful he and the blond have come to a silent agreement.

He makes a beeline for the door, all but bursting out in a run as soon as he hits the sidewalk. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he yanks it out, heart pounding at the thought that it’s you.

[2:38PM]

Bokuto: DONT WORRY AKAAAASHI!!! 

Bokuto: I WONT TELL ANYONE ABOUT YOUR SECRET SITUATIONSHIP!!!

Keiji laughs to himself, pocketing the phone again as he heads straight for the Linguistics building. 

He only makes it to the corner before he’s being dragged around the side of the dining hall and slammed against the brick wall.

“You asshole-”

He closes his eyes and laughs, your voice washing over him in a giddy wave. “This doesn’t look much like a Syntax handout-” 

“You told him.” You lean in close, and he meets your eyes with ease, the grin tugging at his lips satisfied.

“No, I didn’t,” he says. “I told him I’m fucking a girl in my department. It could be anyone.”

“He’s gonna figure out it’s me-”

Keiji takes your face in his hand, squeezing tight and pulling you close, not unlike the way he’d done it in the stairwell two weeks ago. There’s something about the way you’d said it – like you really don’t want Bokuto Koutarou to find out you’re hooking up with him – that makes him angry. Irrationally so, because it’s not his place to be angry at all. But still, he grabs you. He grabs you, and then he turns you around, pushing you up against the wall with his body.

“You wanna play with me, Freak?” he mumbles, his voice cold as he stares down at you. “You wanna flirt and touch and smile at him like that when I’m around?” Your eyes are heated, so different from his own, and he wonders if you realize that it turns him on when you look at him like this. He leans down, close enough that he watches your eyes drop to his lips in a slight panic, because every breath you let out passes through his lungs next. 

He hopes you feel it in yours when he whispers, “Then I’m gonna play with you, too.”

Your gaze hardens on his, but he’d felt the shiver of anticipation that had just wracked your body. It eggs him on, makes him want to do worse.

“If you wanted to fuck Bokuto, you should have asked him instead,” he says, his voice hard. “But you asked me. Not him.”

Your eyes flick between his, and then your gaze clears of its anger. Keiji’s brow furrows.

“You’re jealous,” you whisper, amazement coating your words and sticking to him like honey. He scoffs, shaking his head. 

“I’m not fucking jealous-”

“You’re so fucking jealous, Akaashi-”

“Y/n,” he growls, pushing you up harder against the wall, but you just stare up at him, a wild look in your eye that makes him completely and utterly nervous. “I’m not jealous.”

“Well, you’re something,” you breathe, the smile on your face unable to be stopped, even with the way he’s squeezing your cheeks together. “What’s wrong, huh? Worried I might not just be yours to play with?”

His veins run cold, and there’s a terrifyingly significant part of him that wants to take you right here, just to prove a point. To make you scream right here, in public, so close to the dining hall where anyone – maybe even someone in particular – might pass by and discover you. It makes him crazy.

You make him crazy.

“If you fuck anyone else–” he whispers, cold and hard and laced with a threat. “–then this is over. You hear me, Y/n?”

He thinks you’re going to be angry. He’s saying something completely irrational. He’s being possessive and gross and terrible, and you should be angry with him. It’s not his place – none of this is his place. You can fuck whoever you want to. It was unspoken that there would be no one else, but it was never part of the rules. You should be kicking and screaming and fighting him with everything you’ve got.

But you don’t. 

“I hear you, Akaashi,” you just breathe, staring up at him with wide, twinkling eyes. You look excited, like you’d been waiting to bring this out of him. Like you’d wanted this from him, because there wouldn’t be any other reason that you would–

Keiji blinks, realization filling him. “You… aren’t attracted to Bokuto, are you?”

You grin wide, evil and wicked as you search his eyes. “God, you’re possessive.”

He wants to crawl into a hole and die.

–

You don’t see Akaashi again until Tuesday morning. He’d sat through Syntax lecture the day before with his head in his hand, ears burning and phone buzzing uselessly in his pocket with the teasing texts that you were sending him. He hadn’t checked his phone once, because he could see you typing and, based on the shit-eating grin on your face, they weren’t texts that he was safe to check in public. He’d booked it from the lecture hall the moment your advisor had stepped away from the podium, and he hadn’t answered any of your calls. At some point he’d just turned his phone off, but you couldn’t bring yourself to be worried about it, because, like clockwork, he’d pinged you online.

[9:07 PM]

tokyohandsome: i hate you.

tokyohandsome: youre the worst thing thats ever happened to me.

You’d just sent him another text to his phone, a voice note of you laughing and asking if he would still give you five stars even if you don’t message him back. He does exactly that, and then he texts you back –  a middle finger emoji.

You look forward to seeing him on Tuesday, but every thought of Akaashi Keiji leaves you when you check your email in the morning.

[06:22 AM] Notification of Conference Acceptance – Poster Presentation

You stare at the email, a mix of excitement and dread swirling in your gut. You’d gotten in. You’d gotten into the conference. A poster presentation isn’t as much of an achievement as a full talk – you’d have to stand around in the poster session for an hour just talking to whoever would be willing to drop by and listen for a few minutes, instead of having the attention of a dedicated audience for twenty minutes plus a Q&A session – but an acceptance is an acceptance. It’s an accomplishment and a point of pride to be accepted to conferences, especially to one like Ling Expo.

Ling Expo, which starts in three days.

Three days to make a poster, with teaching responsibilities, pilot data to analyze, and a dissertation chapter due to your advisor tomorrow afternoon.

Right. Okay, then. Time to get to it.

–

You don’t think you’ve ever had a day quite this bad before. It’s barely 11am, the LEM meeting something that you’d consider a break right now, and you feel like you’ve been put through hell. You’d spent the morning analyzing data and trying not to cry when your code for the analysis had returned an error message for the sixteenth time. You’d gone through your advisor’s comments on your last chapter draft, trying not to cry again when you’d seen the major revisions he’d left in the margins for the section you haven’t done yet. And then you’d taught your Semantics class, trying not to cry again when someone had asked a question that you’d just answered four minutes prior.

By the time you flop down at the round table in the lab room, your head is screaming and you’re about one minor inconvenience from sobbing in front of everyone. 

When Akaashi silently sets a steaming hot latte down in front of you, you think you might start sobbing anyway.

You look up at him, eyes wide and bloodshot. You don’t see that everyone else is looking at him too, the whole room falling silent as they watch him act out of character. “Why?”

He doesn’t look much better than you. “Poster or talk?”

You blink. You hadn’t told him you’d been accepted. “Poster.”

He smiles, not like he’s proud of you but like he’s satisfied that he’d been right. “I got a talk.”

The room relaxes – he’s just gloating. Your advisor laughs low next to you, almost like he’s relieved that the universe isn’t turning on an odd new axis. But you keep your eyes on Akaashi’s, because you can see he’d meant it for what it really is.

He’s checking on you.

He takes the seat on the other side of your advisor, and you hear him breathe a sigh of relief when he sips from his coffee. You try yours, feeling your life come back to you just a little bit. 

Your advisor casts a look around the room, clearing his throat as he surveys you all.

“Based on the varying states of despair I’m seeing, we got a few acceptances to Ling Expo.”

The group of you laugh, and you feel that interesting wave of camaraderie fall over you that always comes around the time of this conference. That reminder that, even if you’re all different people working on different research, you’re just a group of twenty-somethings who landed in the same school, in the same department, working for the same advisor at the same time.

At the finish line, you’ll be vying for the same jobs – the same research positions, the same professorships, the same industry careers. But for now – for one weekend a year – the ten of you in this room represent the man at the head of the table, and, as brutal and unrelenting as he can be, there’s a reason it’s his lab group that gets invited to the biggest conference in Japan every year.

There’s a piece of you that’s glad that things between you and Akaashi had smoothed out this year – that, even if you still wage an academic war with him every chance you get, things between you will be different this weekend. Because, of the ten of you, there are exactly two PhD candidates in the room. Only two who will be watched above the rest, because only two are on the job market at this very moment, their competence on display in front of the brightest linguists in the country.

Two, who sit on either side of the head of the table at this very moment.

The stress comes down on your chest harder than before.

“I know it’s really short-notice,” your advisor says, shaking his head and staring down over his bifocals at his laptop screen. “The organizers have been a little scattered this year, but I guess it happens to the best of us.” And then he claps loudly, you and Akaashi flinching at the noise. “That said, they didn’t book enough rooms for everyone, so we’ll have to do some sharing.”

You nod emptily, too caught up in your mental to-do list for the rest of the day to really register what he’s said. It’s happened before, anyway – the larger, interdisciplinary conference always ends up drawing massive attendance records across all departments. You’d had to share a room two years ago, with a girl who works for one of the top three translation companies in the world now.

If you manage not to fuck up this weekend from the sheer lack of preparation, you might impress someone long enough to land a similar job.

Your mind lingers on that for the next few minutes, the pressure to represent your advisor well weighing down heavy on your shoulders. You should start your poster after this meeting – if you skip lunch, you might be able to finish it before the Syntax lecture. And – if you aren’t stopped for questions by students on the way out – you might be able to troubleshoot the data code for the rest of the day. You could probably afford to order takeout for dinner. That way you don’t have to waste time cooking, and you can even take a break afterward by hauling your stuff down to the coffee shop by your apartment and working there on the dissertation draft until morning. Oh, but there’s grading that needs to get done by Thursday night, and you won’t have time tomorrow-

“-eiji and Y/n. And I think that’s it.”

You blink, turning to your advisor. He’s already looking back at you, eyebrows raised.

“That is fine, right?” he says, smiling innocently. You hear the scattered snickers of your lab-mates, and you can only look over the man’s head at Akaashi. He’s staring back, eyes guarded and ears tinted pink.

Sharing a hotel room with Akaashi?

“What?” you say dumbly. “Sorry. I was doing damage control in my head for my workload.”

It eases Akaashi’s tension, his shoulders relaxing as he laughs with the rest of the room. Your advisor nudges you good-naturedly. 

“You and Keiji are together for room placements,” he repeats. “I know it’s not ideal, but we’ve got an odd number of guys and girls, so we need one co-ed room.” He looks between you lazily, as though his logic had been obvious. “And you two know each other best, so…”

Somehow, Akaashi looks more guarded now.

You’re not sure you’re in a place mentally to unpack everything this man’s just said. So you just nod along, ignoring the look of surprise Akaashi gives you when you only mumble ‘yeah, that makes sense’. 

“Great!” you advisor beams at you, returning to the rest of the group. “Now, about the presentation schedule-”

You tune out for the rest of the meeting, certain you must have fallen asleep with your eyes open, because Akaashi’s nudging your shoulder as he passes behind you on the way out. You blink, seeing that it’s already noon.

You rush to your office, barely hearing when there’s a knock at your door two hours later. A dark head pokes past, but you just keep your eyes locked on your double monitor setup, your fingers flying across the keyboard of your laptop as you fill in the text boxes of your poster.

“Y/n.” You just hum at the call of your name, watching the screen fill up with the literature review you’d boiled down to just a few bullet points. The dark head becomes a whole body, tall in the doorway of your office. “Y/n, it’s time for lunch.”

You blink, only pulling your eyes away from the screen because you’d filled in the whole section and could afford the break in your concentration. Akaashi’s at the door, staring down at you expectantly. When you don’t move to join him for lunch, his eyebrows go up.

“You have to eat.”

“Oh,” you say, shaking your head and going back to your screens. “I’m good. Too busy.”

“To eat?”

“To eat.”

He sighs hard. “Are you going to lecture after?”

You nod absentmindedly. “Have to. ‘s my job.”

“And you’re not going to eat?”

“Akaashi,” you say with a distressed laugh, turning to him again. “Please. You’re killing my concentration.” You gesture generally to the door. “If you don’t go eat soon, you’ll be late to lecture.”

He only steps further into the room, glancing out into the hall before shutting the door behind him. When he rounds your desk, it’s to examine what you’re working on. You recognize that, only weeks ago, you would never have let Akaashi Keiji see the state of your workspace.

But now, you just let his eyes fly across your laptop and monitor, too tired to do much more than lean back in your chair with a sigh. You’ve got the poster template up on your big monitor, zoomed in to the 300% mark so you can fill out the boxes. Your laptop screen is split in two, one side filled with a previous version of your talk slides and the other taken up by your dissertation chapter, the glaring red strikethroughs and lengthy comments left by your advisor popping out against the text.

He doesn’t comment on the state of your draft — on the mistakes and lack of understanding, on your flaws as a researcher, your places of improvement. He doesn’t comment on all the ways you don’t match up to him, even though the difference between your poster presentation and his talk presentation speak loud enough for both of you.

He doesn’t comment on your shortcomings or the state of your stress, loud and angry and visible in everything about you. He just sighs and crosses his arms and says —

“Do you want to cancel tonight?”

Your blood runs cold. 

You forgot he’s supposed to come over tonight. You didn’t count him in your schedule.

Still, the idea of not seeing him makes you feel weird.

You don’t look up from your screen. “Only if you’ve got too much going on.”

You leave it up to him. You want him to say he’s free, that he doesn’t want to cancel. You don’t want to cancel, even though the extra five hours would probably save you from drowning just a little bit. But you don’t want to tell him that — you don’t want to tell him that the thought of him cancelling makes your stomach hurt and your chest twinge with disappointment. You don’t want to show him that you’d rather throw yourself into worse stress tomorrow rather than giving yourself more time tonight.

 You don’t want him to see how badly you want to see him tonight.

“I’ve got time tonight,” he says quietly, and you don’t turn to look at him, even though you really want to. Even though you can hear that there’s more in his voice than the words he’d said. Because you know he doesn’t have time, either.

“Okay,” you say, nodding once and then sitting up to return to your poster. “If you don’t go eat now, you’ll be late to Syntax.” 

He leaves without another word.

When you join him in lecture, he drops a banana and a protein shake in your lap. You eat silently, swallowing over the lump in your throat.

–

Something’s not right.

By all counts, everything is fine. Everything’s as it should be. Akaashi has one hand planted firmly on your bare waist, the other locked tight around both your wrists as he keeps them pressed to your stomach. It feels good, the way he’s pushing his hips into yours – it always feels good. Never once has sex with Akaashi not felt good.

But now – even as your back is arching against the mattress and your legs are spreading further to let him in, the silence filled with the sound of your breathless pants mixing with his – something’s not right. 

It’s not him that’s not right. 

But it is. 

It’s the way he’s staring down at you, cyan eyes cold and detached. It’s not new, and normally it works wonders for you. Normally, it plucks at a strand of pleasurable desperation in your soul, one that wants to please him and give him anything he wants, even when he doesn’t tell you what it is. 

Tonight, that strand is plucked over and over, harder and faster until it’s wound tight. Tight enough to snap, because the way Akaashi Keiji’s disinterest is pulling at you is starting to hurt.

“What’s with you, huh?” he mumbles, half-distracted as his eyes roam your body and linger on how your breasts bounce when he thrusts hard into you. “You’re not so bratty tonight. You losing interest?” 

You shake your head, the string pulling at your spine. “No, it’s not-”

“If you’re losing interest-” he starts, cyan eyes snapping to yours. Filling with looming disappointment, like you’re not doing enough for him tonight. Like you’re not doing enough to keep him here. “-then I’ll lose interest, too.”

You’re not enough.

You feel your face twist before you can stop it, brows pinching together hard and eyes squeezing shut. Your mouth drags down in a deep frown, and your chest stutters as you try to keep a sob in, your eyes burning with tears all at once.

“‘m sorry,” you gasp, wanting to hide behind your hands but finding them trapped in Akaashi’s grasp. “I’ll try harder, I promise-” You cut off, body jerking as you sob, tears hot and angry as they fall down your cheeks. Your nerves are frayed, shocking and sparking at your skin and forcing every new sob to the surface. Your breath comes short, and you can’t find more no matter how hard you look for it.

You notice too late that Akaashi’s stopped moving.

You want to play it off, want to feed into his dacryphilia, if only to save face. “I can do better, baby-” you try, but it comes out weak and pathetic. Covered in the kind of tears that couldn’t possibly do much for him. “Just tell me what to do-”

“Y/n.”

You gasp, not expecting the hard edge of his voice or the sound of your name. Your eyes fly open, vision blurry and eyes stinging. He’s staring down at you, his own gaze full of alarm. “What’s your color right now?”

Your chest caves in.

“Yellow,” you cry, shaking your head and tugging at the restraint on your wrists. He lets you go, and you slap your hands down over your face, crying hard. “Yellow, it’s yellow-”

It’s red.

But you don’t want him to think it’s because of him – it’s not because of him, and you know that. You know, even in your anguish, that it’s because of how stressed you are. You can feel it in the cruel voice that taunts you, whispering that you’re not enough. Not enough for this program, not enough for your advisor, not enough for your dissertation or the field or anything else that you absolutely need to be enough for.

You’re not enough for Akaashi, either, but that’s not his fault. He hasn’t done a single thing wrong.

So you tell him your color is yellow.

But he hears it for what it is. 

Hears you for what you mean, even when you don’t say it.

You sob when he pulls out of you, because you don’t feel like you’re enough to keep him here, but you don’t try to convince him to stay. You just cry into your hands, your frayed edges made more jagged by the wail of your own voice, viciously loud and echoing off the walls as you curl up in place and let the sobs wrack your body.

You hear him moving around the room, hear him swear under his breath, hear your phone hit the bedside table. And then the mattress moves, shifting with his weight as he clambers back over you.

“Hey.” His hands find your biceps, palms steady and warm on you. He pulls you up, and you let him move your body however he wants. You just cry, embarrassed and hurting and wanting so desperately for this whole thing to be over. “Come here-” He lifts you into his lap, maneuvering you until you’re sitting chest to chest with him, legs wrapped around his waist. 

You throw your arms around his neck and press your body to his, crying loudly into the crook of his neck. His chest is warm against yours, and you can feel the fabric of his boxers sliding against your thighs. And his arms are strong and anchoring, belting around your waist and pulling you as close to him as you can physically be.

Akaashi Keiji feels safe, and you so very badly want him to stay.

“I’m sorry,” you sob, face hidden in his neck. “I’m so sorry - you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“It’s okay,” he says, and you feel him speak more than anything else, his voice low and vibrating in his chest and in yours. He’s pulling the comforter around you both, and you’re safer still, wrapped up in this little bubble with him. “It’s okay. I was too mean tonight-”

“No, you weren’t!” you argue, angry with yourself for making him doubt this. “You weren’t too mean – everything was fine-”

“Y/n, you’re crying in my arms right now,” he jokes, but his hold on you never falters. He only pulls you closer. 

“But it wasn’t you,” you say, shaking your head against him. His throat is warm, and you can feel his heartbeat on your cheek. It pulses hard with anxiety, and you hate that you’ve done that to him. “It was everything else, I’m just-” Your tears are still flowing, but your chest doesn’t hurt so much. Your breath is easier to find. “I’m just not in a good place tonight.”

“I know,” he mutters. You feel his lips pass over your shoulder. “I know you’re not, but I still wasn’t nice enough. I should have been nicer.” His mouth is warm as it pushes gently against your skin. “I should have read you better,” he whispers.

“That’s not your responsibility,” you protest weakly. But his fingers are drawing warm shapes in your back, and you’re coming down from your peak of stress-crying, and all you feel now is extreme exhaustion.

“Yes, it is,” he breathes with finality. His lips are against your ear now, and his breath is sending waves of shivers down your spine – it usually sets you on edge, but in this moment it calms you, the feeling of him pressed against you completely as he whispers in your ear. “I have to know how to read you – how to know what you need from me.”

Your brain, worn and frayed, likes the sound of that.

“Okay.”

He stays quiet for a moment – mere seconds where he sits completely still with you in his arms. Where your chest presses firmly against his, your heartbeat slowing to match his, and then both of them slowing together, back to normal. Where your face presses to his skin, and his face presses to yours, the two of you breathing in time.

The thing that had slid into place and locked tight all those weeks ago – when you looked into Akaashi Keiji’s eyes the first time you’d slept together, the first time you’d gone over the edge with cyan in your mind – rattles now, chains jangling against your spine and pushing hard behind your ribcage. In the spot where your soul sits.

“Okay,” he says.

And then he stands, taking you with him. He wraps you up in the comforter and takes you, completely naked and wrapped around him like that’s all you know how to do, out of the room and into the living room. He pads through the room with you obstructing him in every way, and he does it with ease, pushing his way into your pantry and snatching the box of pop-tarts off the middle shelf.

He drops the box haphazardly on the coffee table and takes a seat on the couch, careful not to hurt you but still rough – certain and final – about the way he turns you in his lap. You sit with your back against his chest, swaddled and a little confused but otherwise allowing him to do as he pleases in any way he pleases. Your mind is too hazy to make any decisions, too cloudy to question his. Your brain is too hot, the jagged edges of your judgment too muddled and eroded away for you to do anything except trust him.

You leave your life and your body in Akaashi Keiji’s hands, because it’s Akaashi Keiji who knows what to do with them.

When he turns on the nature channel silently and comments ‘series about whales today’ with a half-interested hum, you start to cry in your hands again. He lets you, his thumb rubbing circles into your skin the only indication that he’s got his attention wholly on you.

He takes one hand off of you after a moment, only to hand you a pack of strawberry pop-tarts. And then to pick up his phone, previously discarded on the cushion. You watch through strawberry pop-tart and blurry vision as he orders Chinese food – wonton soup and two orders of dumplings.

Comfort food.

You cry harder, one hand clasped over your mouth as you listen to the narrator talk about whale migration. When Akaashi’s done ordering, he tosses his phone down and pulls you close again, letting you turn halfway so you can bury your face in his neck.

“Ready to talk?” he mumbles, soft and coaxing. You’ve never heard him speak to you like that before.

“Just stressed,” you whisper weakly, unable to give him more. Too tired to say more. 

His thumb pushes warmly against your hip on its path around the circle. “Ling Expo?”

You nod. “Dissertation, too.”

“Yeah,” he says, nodding once. “I saw his comments on your draft. Er–” He laughs lamely. “The size of the comments, rather.”

You don’t respond. You know he’s further along in his dissertation than you are – he’s probably past the point of major foundational issues. It feels like you’ll never get there.

“Just feels like nothing I do is good enough.”

You don’t question why you tell him that. You just recognize that you’re comfortable enough to.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, just nodding and keeping his eyes on the TV while he runs his thumb across your skin.

“I didn’t mean what I said earlier,” he finally says. You keep quiet, curled up against him and wondering where this is going. “I feel like you know that,” he adds. “But I just… thought I should make it clear.” His fingers find your hair, tangling tight and pulling you away with a firm hand so he can look at you. His nose brushes yours while he flicks his eyes between yours, searching you. Reading you. And then he shakes his head.

“I didn’t mean what I said. About losing interest.”

You’re enough for me.

Your throat tightens and your eyes well up, and his mouth is tugging into the ghost of a smile. “Don’t cry again,” he whispers.

“I’m gonna cry again,” is all you say.

He’s kind enough to let you hide your face from him again before you do.

When he has to go downstairs to get the food, there’s a hole gnawing at the center of your chest. 

That’s new.

You sit in silence, wrapped up in blankets and staring emptily at the TV. Thinking about the anxious knot in your stomach – about the angry tug of emotion in your throat, threatening to force tears into your eyes again.

When Akaashi slips back through your front door, the knot eases and the emotion mellows out.

That’s definitely new.

You eat in silence while staring at the TV – you in your swaddle and Akaashi in the jeans and hoodie he’d been wearing earlier – and then you stare at the TV some more, your mind turning over and over on itself as you try to figure out where this feeling had come from. The one that needs him.

After an hour, he says something quietly about getting home. You just apologize for cutting the filming short, and he offers to come over tomorrow. Your chest pulses with unplaced emotion. 

He leaves. 

You sit on your couch and stare at nothing, the TV off now. 

The knot is tight and making you nauseous. The emotion is rolling up into a painful lump in your throat. Your eyes burn with tears that won’t fall.

–

Keiji sighs and pulls his fingers through his hair, tugging tight and searching the shelves of the convenience store. 

He doesn’t know why he’s here. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. There’s nothing in this store that will make you feel better. He keeps picking random shit up – cookies, chips, snacks that he thinks you might like – and putting them back, uselessly trying to find something to ease your stress just a little bit. The clerk at the front is starting to stare at him, a bored teenager with judgmental eyes watching him be indecisive in the middle of the store.

He feels like throwing up. His head is hot and there’s an irritated pull in his gut, like he’s forgotten something. He keeps closing his eyes, willing it to go away, but every stupid snack he picks up and puts back down – a claw-machine stuck on repeat – makes the feeling worse. 

He picks up a can of coffee. Stares down at the label. Puts it back.

You only drink almond milk.

He needs to get home and shower, to use the rest of the night to work on the slide deck for his Ling Expo talk.

He walks one aisle over and surveys the sweets again. Picks up a package of cookies. Stares down at the label. Puts it back.

You like oatmeal, not oatmeal raisin.

He needs to grade and work on his dissertation chapter. 

Over to the far wall, the last shelf before the freezers. Picks up a bag of chips. Stares down at the label. Puts it back.

You don’t like this brand of shrimp chips.

There are a million things he needs to do.

His eyes drift slightly to the right, to the pints of ice cream lined up behind the lightly frosted freezer door.

You do like cookies and cream.

He stares at it, at the label that stares back at him, and the tug in his gut yanks hard at his nausea. 

He’s not going to get anything done like this.

Reaching over with an irritated sigh, he rips the door open and plucks the offending pint of ice cream off the shelf. He takes it to the clerk, too embarrassed to make eye contact.

“Girlfriend upset about somethin’?” the teenager asks.

Keiji doesn’t answer him, glaring down at the counter while he pays.

–

There’s a knock at your door thirty minutes after Akaashi leaves.

You’re curled up in the middle of your bed in oversized clothes when it comes, stomach turning as you try to sleep. Disappointment seeping through your skin, because you feel like something’s missing.

When the knock sounds, you turn in bed, surprised. You climb out slowly, padding through the apartment to the front door and peeking through the peephole.

Your heart sends a pulse of electricity through your whole body. You pull the door open, eyes wide.

“Akaashi?”

He stares down at you, lips pursed with frustration and ears tinted pink. He thrusts a hand out, a plastic bag dangling from his fingers.

“Here.” 

You take it, peering inside. “Ice cream?”

“Yeah.”

You blink up at him. “Thank you?”

He just nods. You wait for him to say more, but he doesn’t. He just lingers, staring down at nothing.

And then he takes a step toward you, and his eyes meet yours.

Your breath catches in your throat.

You let him in wordlessly. He sets his shoes neatly in your foyer before moving to his spot at the couch and dropping his bag right where it was half an hour ago. He turns to look at you, scratching awkwardly at the side of his head.

You almost miss the way his eyes flick toward your bedroom curiously and then down at your pajamas.

Your bedroom. Not the spare room.

Your eyes well up when you realize that he means to stay the night. 

He exhales in disbelief, but you just cross the room in three strides and throw your body against his, arms wound around his neck and face lost in the collar of his hoodie.

He scoffs, even as his arms snake around your waist. “You’re such a crybaby,” he mutters, but any mockery he makes of you is overshadowed by the way he lifts you off your feet, pulling you closer. The bag falls from your hand, hitting the ground, and you wrap your thighs around him and lock your ankles behind his back.

He takes it as permission and carries you to your room without another word.

When he drops you to your mattress, it’s followed up by the shedding of his jeans and hoodie and the press of his body to yours, warm and safe and terribly confusing – because your body is used to this in a different room, in a different context. Not in your own bed, and not for any purpose that allows you to keep your clothes on.

But Akaashi just clambers toward you, hands rough on your body as he pulls you toward him. You hug him close, heartrate picking up when he throws himself between your thighs and wraps his arms tight around you, his face burning when he presses it to the crook of your neck.

You hold him like that, crying into his hair and feeling shivers race down your spine when he presses one kiss to your throat, and then another.

“Just go to sleep,” he whispers. “Everything’s fine. Just go to sleep.”

It takes you almost an hour to drift off, because your heart won’t calm down, but neither will his. It’s loud against your torso, and you can only imagine how annoying your own must be in his ears. You can only imagine how embarrassing your body’s being right now, because every brush of his lips against your skin makes your pulse beat just a little bit harder, and you know he can feel it.

You know he can feel it, but he keeps kissing you, anyway. 

His heart skips against your body, too. But he keeps kissing you, anyway.

You’re asleep before you can piece together that the aching nausea and the disappointment under your skin have faded away.

–

You wake up on Wednesday morning without an alarm.

It’s weird, because you always need an alarm. You always set an alarm.

But there’s a shift in the mattress beside you, so you don’t need one today.

You turn, peeling one eye open and staring up at the man leaning against your headboard. 

He hasn’t noticed you yet, because there’s a paper in his hand. A paper covered in sticky notes and highlighter and handwritten comments.

Your handwritten comments.

You watch him for a moment, watching the way he squints down at your comments and turns the pages this way and that so he can read the sideways ones better. His glasses sit on the end of his nose, and his hair is askew from sleep, pillow creases on his face and neck. The sunlight filters in through your sheer curtains in a way that makes his skin glow, but he sits in an otherwise dim room, not a single light in sight as he reads your thoughts on his work.

You blink groggily, and a thought crosses your mind – distant and strange – that it might be nice just to stay here like this. You, curled up in your comforter, watching Akaashi Keiji read quietly in the early morning light in your bed, shirtless and disheveled and entirely at peace with you.

You wonder if it would be too much to ask.

Akaashi sighs quietly and shakes his head at something you’d commented, and you can’t help but alert him that you’re awake.

“Somethin’ you don’t like?” you ask, watching him blink and turn to look down at you. 

He sighs again, shaking the paper in his hand with slight frustration. “Why don’t you say any of this shit in LEM?” When you don’t answer, he shuffles through some previous sheets, searching the margins and then pointing. “Like this. Why didn’t you tell me that these counter-examples exist? This is important data.”

You smile to yourself, too sleepy to argue with him. “I was worried that you’d thought of it already and just hadn’t written it there. I didn’t want to look stupid bringing it up to you.”

He cuts you a glance. “I’ve never thought you looked stupid.”

“No?” you say, smiling when he rolls his eyes. “You talk to me like you think I might be.”

“I don’t,” he sighs. And then he gestures to something you’d scratched into the edges with massive red question marks. “I think you’re the only one in that room who could think of this.”

“You really think I’m smart?” 

It’s a remnant of last night, that insecurity. You tell yourself that it has to be, that you wouldn’t be asking him something so vulnerable otherwise. It’s too personal, asking him to evaluate your intelligence when it’s the one thing you’re measured most critically on.

“Yeah,” he says plainly. Answering you plainly, like he’d never thought twice about it. “I do. And it pisses me off when you don’t.” He sighs again and then shuffles to the edge of the bed, waving the paper at you again. “I’m keeping this. I need it.”

The thought that he could ever need something from you makes your heart lodge uncomfortably in your throat. “Okay.”

“It’s 6:30,” he adds, standing and stretching his arms high above his head. You watch him, eyes lingering on his chest and the way his boxers slip under his hip bones when he lengthens his body like that. You tamper down the urge to put your mouth on those two spots, to press kisses there that taste like comfort and early morning. “Just so you know.”

“Okay,” you say again simply, wishing so dearly that you could just stay here. Knowing you could never ask him to stay here with you. “What time do you teach?”

“Nine.” He eyes you a moment, long enough for you to wonder if he’d seen you watching him wistfully. “I don’t have clothes here.”

“Oh.” The thought of him leaving makes your chest hurt. You recognize the feeling from last night. “Do you need to go back to your place?”

“Yeah.”

Oh.

You swallow, pushing away the odd, aching panic that’s rising in your chest. You don’t want him to leave. 

Akaashi chews on his lip. You reach for your phone slowly, like you want him to stop you. “Do you want me to call you an Uber?” you ask.

“Sure.” He swallows, watching you a moment. “Do you-” You lift your eyes. He looks away. “Do you want to go with me?”

Your nerves sizzle and snap, but the anxiety is washed away instantly.

You don’t know what to do with these feelings.

“Okay,” you whisper, staring up at him with wide eyes. His eyes flick to yours nervously, and then his lashes flutter as he looks away.

“Okay. Get dressed.”

You listen, that strand of desperation plucking away at you in ways that it really shouldn’t. 

Neither of you says anything about the pint of melted ice cream in your living room.

–

When Keiji shoulders his door open, it’s with a panicked glance around his apartment. He’s normally tidy, but this week has been especially difficult, and he doesn’t need you seeing the extent of his stress in the way he stops taking care of his space.

You stand awkwardly in the foyer, glancing around and then back at him. He’d noticed on the ride here that your face is more flushed than usual, that your eyes linger on him more than usual. He wonders if you feel the same strange need to be near him, or if there’s something else going on.

Because his eyes keep lingering on you, too.

He feels an itch under his skin, one that prickles and irritates him until he’s with you. He’d felt it this morning, when the threat of leaving your apartment without you had been on the edge of your conversation.

It had started last night, in that stupid convenience store.

Even now, as he ushers you into the room and gestures for you to sit on the couch, he feels weird about leaving the room. He’s only going to shower, for fuck’s sake. He needs to shower, because it’s already 7:15 and he still needs to prep for his class. But he lingers, rushing into the kitchen to make coffee in order to buy more time.

“You can raid my pantry if you want,” he calls from the coffee machine, hurriedly scooping coffee grounds into the basket. “You can eat whatever you want – it won’t take me long to get ready.”

“Okay,” you say, much closer than he’d expected. He turns, surprised, and finds you lingering at the entryway. Glancing at him and then away, flushing with embarrassment as you hover for no reason.

The thought that you hadn’t even wanted to be a room away from him makes Keiji’s skin burn with desire.

Something’s off. Something’s new, and he doesn’t know how to handle it.

You drift past him into the room, opening cabinets at random and peering inside with blank curiosity. Peering inside this little piece of his life, not necessarily searching for anything in particular but curious all the same. Keiji’s chest swells with emotion – a need to be nearer to you, closer to you than this.

He feels insane.

He shouldn’t need you the way he does.

You open the pantry door, leaning halfway inside as you poke around. “‘s really neat in here. Only you would be this neat.”

He’s got his hands on your waist before he can process that he’d crossed the room.

You gasp, eyes wide as he spins you around. “What-”

He shuts the door to the pantry by pinning you against it. Your breathing picks up when he presses flush to you, but your fingers are in his hair regardless. Your body opens up for him regardless, welcoming and familiar and trusting.

He wants to ruin you for anyone who’s not him.

Keiji drops his mouth to your throat, pushing his lips hard to the pulse point and breathing you in. You shiver, your head dropping back against the door. He tugs your hips against his to make a point – a point he probably shouldn’t make.

“‘Kaashi-” you gasp, and his entire body lights up with dangerously frayed nerves, the knot in his chest sparking and hissing with the threat of worse.

He doesn’t feel close enough to you. He wants more. 

Your fingers tug through his hair hard, and he groans quietly against your neck. He feels when your skin warms, feels when your fingers start to tremble. He’s making you nervous, nervous enough to shake in his arms. 

It’s a dangerous realization, the fact that he can make you feel this way. 

He knows that once you figure him out, too – because you will – he’ll be done for.

“Akaashi, we can’t,” you whisper.

He hadn’t considered fucking you in his apartment, but the fact that you had makes him want to cancel his class and keep you here all day.

“I know,” he breathes, his head spinning and his face radiating heat against your skin. “I know, I just-” He sighs hard. “Fuck.” 

There’s a low noise that climbs up your throat, one that he feels more than hears, and a part of him – the irrational part that wants to fuck you against this pantry door right now – wants to ask if you want to shower with him.

God, he doesn’t want to be apart from you, not even for that.

“You have to shower,” you mumble quietly, like you’re reading his mind and coaxing him gently away from the thought. He hopes that you’re coaxing yourself away, too.

“Okay,” he says, swallowing hard. He doesn’t want to let go – especially since you’re not letting go, either. “Okay. I should go.”

“You should go.”

He’s not convinced.

“I should go,” he says again, a little stronger. Stronger, because his hands are slipping under the hem of your shirt and pulling you closer instead of pushing you away.

“You should go, Akaashi,” you say, too, but it’s weaker this time. You’re weak to him – weak for him.

He’s so fucked. 

“Y/n,” he breathes, a warning inlaid and his pleas embarrassingly audible. Begging you to be strong with him, because he can’t do it on his own.

Your fingers slip out of his hair and clamp down on his shoulders, and you manage to peel him off of you. “Akaashi,” you say, your tone wavering but sharper than before. You’re trying. “You have to shower. We’re gonna be late.”

He meets your eyes and regrets it instantly, that swimming feeling filling his head and his face burning that uncomfortable, sticky hot again. 

“Yeah,” he whispers shakily, swallowing hard. “You’re right. I have to go.”

Your eyes drop to his lips, filling with a yearning that’s painfully clear for him to see.

Fuck.

He pushes off of you, backing away quickly and scrubbing at his brow. “Yeah. You’re right,” he repeats, louder this time. It doesn’t help, the thought of kissing you slamming into him hard enough to make him dizzy. “You’re right.” He turns away, padding quickly out of the kitchen and leaving you in the kitchen. “I’ll be back.”

The time away from you doesn’t help clear his head.

He just spends it thinking about kissing you.

–

Akaashi’s acting as weird as you feel.

The walk to campus happens in silence. When you walk into your usual coffee shop together and immediately run straight into Yachi, he flushes hard and mutters something about ordering first before making a beeline for the counter. You know there’s nothing you could say to save that moment – not with Hitoka staring knowingly into your soul – so all you’re able to do is smile weakly and chat with her in line, three customers behind Akaashi. She doesn’t pry, and you wonder briefly if all of your friends can see what you and Akaashi are trying so hard to hide.

He keeps it up throughout the day. But so do you.

So do you, because the way he’d acted in his apartment – taking up your space like it’s his own, like he’s unable to do otherwise despite trying – makes you think it’s okay to feel this way. To feel like you need more, even if you’ve already taken too much.

In your office, finalizing your dissertation draft and sending it off to your advisor, your mind is muddled, drifting often to the office just across the hall and the man sitting just inside. Your head is staticky, fuzzy, and you have to fight not to go over there. You have to fight, because half of you feels like you’ll be able to concentrate better on your work if he’s around, but the other half of you knows there’s no chance in hell of getting anything done if he’s in the same room.

It turns out there’s no need to fight, because he makes a decision for you.

A knock comes to your door an hour before lunch, the silhouette on the other side of the frosted glass all too familiar. 

The way he drags his eyes over your form when he walks in and then glances back into the hall with his bottom lip caught between his teeth makes you shiver visibly. He sees it – you know he does, because his eyes fly right back to you, heated and examining. Like he’s looking for something. 

When he mumbles ‘change of scenery’ under his breath and then crosses the room to fold into the chair on the other side of your desk with his laptop, you know he’s found it. The two of you don’t speak, but you can feel him watching you while you work, and you’re moving with a slight wobble in your step by the time you head to the dining hall.

At lunch, he sits right across from you, in Bokuto’s usual spot. You don’t say anything about it, not wanting to draw attention. Not wanting him to know how much you notice him.

You don’t say anything about the way he presses his knee between your legs, either. It shakes you to your core, that gentle nudge of his knee against the inside of yours. Your body sparks with nerves, but you don’t say anything, because he’s still talking to Tsukishima about jobs as if he hasn’t just rattled you of your ability to act normal at lunch. 

You say nothing, just letting his body heat nestle between your knees and trying your best not to burn at the feeling. His eyes flick to yours just briefly enough to mean nothing to everyone else – but it means everything to you, because he drops his gaze to your mouth before he looks away, and suddenly you’re back in his apartment, pushed against his pantry door with his mouth less than a breath’s distance from yours.

He swallows hard and returns to the discussion Tsukishima’s having with Yachi, Bokuto and Kuroo caught in their own conversation about the conference this weekend. You breathe deep and try to respond to Kuroo’s comment about the group meeting up at the hotel bar in everyone’s free time, but then Akaashi’s shifting across from you. He stretches his leg out under the table and takes up your personal space with purpose, and your words are lost in your throat.

It’s a reminder that Akaashi Keiji is possessive.

You wonder if he realizes how much you like when he’s like this.

You make it through lunch, somehow, and then walk in silence beside him to the Syntax lecture. You make uncomfortable eye contact with your advisor when you enter the lecture hall – uncomfortable, because he’s flicking his eyes between you and Akaashi and then smiling to himself as he turns away. 

You promise yourself that you’ll make it through lecture without incident, but that goes out the window the second Akaashi shifts and bumps his thigh against yours, halfway through the class.

Your breath catches in your throat sharply. He bumps your leg again and then leaves it there, thigh pressed firmly to yours. Only a moment passes – a moment where you trick yourself into thinking it means nothing, for your own sake – before his hand is sliding across your thigh, heat searing through your jeans.

You stiffen, scanning the room nervously. But you always sit in the very back of the hall, so no one’s able to see what’s happening. No one’s going to catch anything Akaashi does, which you’re confident he’s already calculated. Still, you don’t want to risk anyone glancing back, so you don’t speak to him.

You just wrap your fingers around his wrist, squeezing tight in warning.

He just slips his hand between your clenched thighs, curling warmly around the curve of your thigh and digging his fingertips into the plush give of your body. Your skin erupts in goosebumps, and you become needy almost instantly. The way he rubs circles into your jeans with his thumb makes you needy. The way he handles your body with ownership – the way you’d let him handle you last night, like you belong to him – makes you want him much more than you should. Makes you want him physically, but also in ways that you never had before. Not before last night.

You glance at him out of the corner of your eye. And then you shiver, because you realize that he’s hard in his slacks.

Oh.

He meets your eyes when your body reacts to him, and that gnawing, yearning feeling in your chest worsens.

His eyes are glazed over, distracted and hot. Distracted by the same terrible neediness that’s plaguing you.

Oh.

He looks away, squeezing your thigh again before moving his hand away and tugging his cardigan down over his tented pants subtly. Your chest swims with disappointment for the moment it takes him to extract his phone from his pocket, and then it fills with hope. 

Your own phone buzzes in your bag a second later.

[3:44 PM]

Akaashi: am i still coming over tonight?

Oh, dear god.

–

“That’s it, princess.”

Your mind fogs over with the feeling of him – of Akaashi’s voice in your ear, of every whisper that heats your brain that much more. Of the tingles that had started plaguing your every nerve the moment he’d started this – this praise – and simply don’t seem to be anywhere near easing up.

You rock your hips back where you sit in his lap on the couch of your spare room, arching your chest forward into his and breathing roughly when his arm curls tighter around your waist. You’ve got both hands on his shoulders, anchoring yourself to him like it’s your only link to sanity, and he’s using the hand he doesn’t have wrapped around you to push and pull at your hips, guiding you against him whenever you’re unable to do it yourself.

You feel full of him, warm and safe and muddling every thought that crosses through your mind while he fucks you. He fucks you slow, slow enough to trick you into thinking that it’s you who’s leading here. He fucks you slow and whispers that cursed praise in your ear and against your throat, knowing without ever having asked that it’s what you need from him tonight.

“Just like that, baby,” he breathes, his cock twitching against your walls when you moan to yourself, genuine and quiet and just for him. “You’re doing so good, fucking me so good.” You whimper into his hair, struggling to remember that there’s a camera and that you have a job to do. That your sounds can’t just be for him. That your pleasure can’t only be his.

But you want it to be, even just this once. You want to be his, just this once.

“‘m close,” you whisper, feeling that familiar, welcome tug under your navel.

“Come for me,” he breathes back, his lips brushing against your cheek. “Give it to me. You can do it.” 

You can’t help it. It’s entirely out of your control, spurred on by this entire week and the way he’s treated you. The way he’s handled you, in ways only he can. By the need you’ve been feeling, acknowledged and echoed tenfold in him, too. You really can’t help it.

And, looking back later, you can’t bring yourself to regret it.

“‘Kaashi,” you whisper against his temple, your pleasure washing over you in waves that are so close to what you need.

Akaashi stops moving his hips before you can get there.

Your heart stops at the same time.

He lifts his head, leaning back just enough to look you in the eye. Your breath cuts short, and you let him search your face – eyes flicking between yours before they fly across your other features. You let him search you, because you can’t bring yourself to hide anything.

“What did you say?” he whispers, alarm in his expression but not in the way you’d expected. Alarm that checks you, alarm that betrays a lingering anticipation in eyes that you can only see because you’ve spent so long learning him.

You purse your lips together, too scared to say it again.

He doesn’t need you to.

He just drops his gaze to your mouth, shoving you right back into that moment in his apartment, and all you can do is part your lips in surprise. All he needs to do is lift his head, just a few more centimeters.

He tastes like quiet desperation, the kind that’s been building for far too long.

He curls his fingers into your hair and swallows audibly, his lips still on yours even as he tugs you closer. You’re more than happy to follow his lead, breath stuttering nervously against his mouth. 

Each push of his lips against yours is more heated than the last. Until his grip on the back of your head stings a little, until the pass of his tongue over the seam of your lips makes your stomach flip and your limbs go a little more numb. Until he’s angling his head against yours and pulling you close, his grip tightening and his body shifting under you.

You don’t realize he’s putting you on your back until your skin meets the soft sheet on the couch, until he’s hooking a hand under your knee and keeping your legs spread while he pushes his hips against yours, his lips warm and urgent. 

You flush nervously, your head going hotter than before and your thoughts scrambling without warning. You can’t take it – the feeling of his mouth on yours while he fucks you, the feeling of his moans traveling down your throat whenever your walls clamp down around him, the most turned on you’ve ever been.

That familiar tug comes back stronger than before, rushing you to the edge with each push of his lips and each pass of his tongue against yours.

And when he murmurs your name into your own mouth, quiet and soft and tinged with warning, your fingers and toes go numb.

“Say my name again,” he breathes, angling his hips in a way that has you seeing stars. “Please. I’m really close.”

You pull your lips from his and wrap your arms around his neck, pushing your mouth close to his ear and moaning quietly when his thrust has your head bumping gently against the arm of the couch.

“Come for me, baby,” you whisper, your own orgasm following close behind when you hear how he moans in your ear, quiet and just for you. “Please, ‘Kaashi – I need it. I need you.” 

He groans into your skin, and you bask in the warmth that he fills you with, his hips stuttering and your name pressed into your throat. You fall quietly over the edge with him, different from before. It washes over you this time instead of hitting you hard, in waves that feel like comfort and sun on your skin. In waves that make you all the more aware of his hands on your body and his breath fanning over the crook of your neck, of the way he whispers your name on the last push of his hips against yours. Of the way you whisper ‘thank you, thank you, thank you’ against his shoulder absentmindedly when you come.

It’s hazy, the way you fall with him. And you realize, with your heart pounding and your head swarming sleepily with gratitude, that it’s just what you needed to put all your broken pieces back together.

That Akaashi Keiji puts all the pieces back together.

this makes me sob every time i read it

Emergency Contact

Jason Todd x Gender Neutral Reader

Leave me something - or let me out. I'm starving. Push me, pull me. Waiting for the start of:

Things that I want, this happily ever after. You choke on your words, but you swallow them faster. Just want you to be my Emergency Contact.

Summary:

After Jason miraculously comes home from his brush with Deathstroke, you're both feeling it in very different ways. You have an unexpected physical wound from the battle, and he has many (very expected) emotional wounds. You help each other heal. Even if it's very stubborn on both your parts.

Jason Todd x GN!Powered!Reader. Enemies/FWB to Lovers. Angst and Hurt/Comfort. (Slight Smut). Set during Season 2, Episode 5.

Word Count: 10,400

Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link

If you want to be notified whenever I post a new fic, make sure to follow my library blog @sundropslibrary and turn on notifications there.

List of detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: general emotional angst, Jason has a self deprecating inner dialogue, (kind of) enemies to lovers - more like annoyances to fuck buddies to lovers, friends with benefits to lovers, the reader and Jason have a bantering/argumentative nature to their relationship, the reader is meant to be 100% gender neutral (the reader is never referred to in the third person, so there is no need to use they/them pronouns, but the reader is not called she/her or he/him), Jason calls the reader ‘babe’ (imo, a completely gender neutral term and he would call anybody that), mentions of alcohol (Jason drinking a beer), the reader character has ice powers (not entirely relevant to the plot but I couldn’t help myself lmao).

sexual themes throughout, mentions of sexting (no detailed descriptions), mentions of sexting in public, mentions of the reader character sending nudes to Jason (no detailed descriptions of the photos), one scene with detailed smut (but it is not the primary focus of the fic), the reader’s genitals are not described in any specific way, some dirty talk, Jason is more dominant and the reader is more submissive, penetrative sex, Jason is annoying even during sex, Jason has a pain kink (even when he’s a dom, he’s a painslut, I don’t make the rules), scratching/marking (Jason receiving), slight humiliation kink.

mentions of canon level violence, mentions of kidnapping (in alignment with canon), mentions of Jason being beaten by Deathstroke, mentions of Jason’s near-death experience (being dropped off the building), gun violence, the reader is injured - has a bullet wound/bullet fragment in their stomach, mentions of blood, descriptions of first-aid, mentions of puss from an infected wound (theoretically, not something that happens in the fic). That should be everything.

A/N: The title for the fic comes from a song by Pierce the Veil of the same name. It's a newer song, and it's one that I absolutely went to when looking for a title for this fic. The concept of becoming someone's emergency contact is about upgrading the relationship from casual to much more serious, and just the whole song, and specific lyrics in it suit this fic so well. I highly recommend listening to it paired with this fic.

This was based on a request from my old blog, but obvi I don't have that ask anymore - the request was about Jason getting shot and having his wound attended to by the reader, but I changed it to the reader getting shot cause I thought that was more interesting and less common. If the person who made that request sees this and finds my new blog, I hope you enjoy it! And in general, I hope everyone who reads this enjoys it.

...

If asked, you would be hard pressed to explain your relationship with Jason Todd. 

The best way you could describe it would probably be - friends with benefits? 

But most of the time, the two of you weren’t even friends. You weren’t the type to hang out casually, or spend time alone together if it didn’t involve ripping each other’s clothes off. 

If you ever exchanged secrets or those precious bits of your most raw selves, it was by mistake. It was through sarcasm, or coming off the tired lips of someone who had just been exhausted by a few orgasms. The two of you knew each other well, quite literally inside and out. But you always made a deep, concerted effort to hold each other at arm’s length. And maybe that’s part of what all the snark and harsh words were for. 

It wasn’t all arguing. You were friendly. You could be civil, at the very least. 

Right from the moment you had first met Jason, you had found him to be so damn annoying, a shitstain on the earth - yet, someone you couldn’t stay away from. The line between flirtatious banter and a truly grinding argument was always so thin with the two of you. 

… 

You hadn’t expected that your life would be truly changed when you walked into that safehouse in Chicago that day. You truly thought nothing of him when his eyes landed on you - in those moments, a completely anonymous stranger, raking his eyes over you like you were a piece of meat. It was a gaze that immediately made you feel naked, something that made you want to smack him. You told yourself it was because he was being a pervert, not because of the heat that curled in your gut at feeling so intensely desired by him. 

He had been sitting on the couch sipping a beer like he owned the place, his thighs spread wide in a way you immediately decided was arrogant and annoying rather than hot - showing off his muscle tone as if it was trying to break through his jeans. Definitely annoying. Definitely the stance of a fuckboy trying to look bigger and badder than he was. He definitely was not attractive. 

When Dick led you, Rachel, Gar, and Kory further into the condo that seemed far too conspicuous to be a safehouse, the stranger you would later come to know as Jason quickly spoke up. 

“Who are your friends?” He asked. 

As he rose from the couch, his eyes lingered on you. Though his words seemed more out of curiosity, you couldn’t help but feel that bite of something more salacious lingering in his voice. 

It caused you to scoff and roll your eyes. 

“Not important.” Dick declared, his voice snippy. He was clearly annoyed with this new guy, and you could tell that your perceptions of him were definitely not ill-informed. 

“Who’s he?” Kory asked, going for the obvious question. 

“Not important.” Dick parroted out the words again, sounding much shorter with his patience. 

“Anybody want a brew?” Jason asked, motioning with the beer bottle in his hand. 

“Brew?” You twisted your eyebrows with disgust, staring him down as you commented on his odd choice of slang. 

He didn’t get to reply, as you were trampled over by Gar’s enthusiastic voice in your ear. 

“I do!” He said, raising his hand with excitement. 

“No, you don’t.” You quickly told him, reaching out to grab his hand and put it back down. “It’s disgusting.” 

You had a grand suspicion that Gar had never drank beer before, and he had no idea what he was truly asking for. Rather, he was simply taking advantage of trying new things because Dick and Kory were incredibly slack parental figures and he was away from home for the first time. 

“No, no one wants a brew.” Dick sighed, shaking his head. He threw Jason a small glare and you resisted the urge to laugh. 

“That can’t be Adamson.” Kory said, motioning toward Jason. 

This left you confused. But you didn’t question it. 

“He’s not Adamson. Adamson’s in the bathroom. Unconscious.” Dick explained. 

“Hi, I’m Rachel.” Rachel told Jason, offering him a sweet smile - being her usual sweet self. 

“Jason.” He introduced himself, in that moment, finally giving you a name to that obnoxious face. 

“I’m Gar!” Gar said with a grin, to which Jason nodded. 

Jason caught you glaring at him, and looked you up and down again, as if trying to willfully tear off your clothes with his eyes. It made your skin itch with heat and you would forever deny that it was a feeling you liked. 

“What can I call you, babe?” He asked, his voice entirely slimy, the kind of tone he would have used to recite cheesy lines to Tinder dates, you were entirely sure of. 

Before you could come up with some clever reply, Dick sighed in frustration and started balking again. 

“Okay, who we all are doesn’t matter right now.” He pressed, his neck so entirely tense that veins began to pop from the skin. “Can we just chill out, relax, sit on the couch and watch TV or something?” 

It seemed that he wouldn’t get his wish. 

Gar quickly charged around the table, finding something else to get strung up about. 

“Yo, when did you get another one?” He asked, putting his hands on both of the expensive cases on the long dining table - a copy identical to the one you knew to be containing Dick’s Robin outfit. 

It made you curious, and the answer that followed certainly surprised you. 

“That one’s mine.” Jason said, his chest literally puffing out with pride as he stated the fact. 

“No way.” You scoffed. 

“Yes way.” He quickly argued back, the whole exchange sounding entirely juvenile.

“This one’s yours? Wait, you’re Robin too?” Gar quickly put the pieces together. 

“I thought you were Robin?” Rachel commented, tilting her head toward Dick with curiosity. 

“I am.” Dick said firmly. 

“He was.” Jason corrected, a cocky smirk forming across his lips. 

“Batman really lowered the height requirement, huh.” You said. 

The words flew from your mouth before you could stop them, seeing as it was likely the only thing you could nitpick about Jason’s appearance. Between his stunning sharp jaw, his piercing blue eyes, his oddly appealing wild hair, his muscle tone being somehow visible beneath his baggy clothing - all of it made you equally frustrated and annoyed with him, and your baser urges couldn’t resist the low-hanging fruit. 

You felt victory and a slight pang of guilt when Jason deflated because of your comment, shrinking back into himself at your words. 

He didn’t have anything to say in return, he simply sipped his beer. 

“Wait, how many Robins are there?” Gar said, beginning to excitedly ramble at the thought. “Are there a lot? Cause I would love to-” 

“Okay, quiet.” Kory cut him off, clearly becoming annoyed with all of this dancing around the point as much as Dick was. “Sit.” 

Her words were firm, and you couldn’t help but to listen. You found yourself collapsing to sit on the couch while Rachel and Gar took seats at the dining table. Jason continued to linger in the middle of the room, staring at Kory and Dick as their frustration filled the air. 

“Bathroom.” Kory told Dick, and then they left to deal with whoever - or whatever - Adamson was. 

Jason sighed and took a seat beside you. When his eyes fell on you, you set your jaw and glared at him. You didn’t give away a single ounce of the heat you were feeling as his eyes locked with yours. 

“Even if I am the shorter Robin, I can assure you that everything else about me is… very long.” He lowered his voice and whispered those last words, crowding into your personal space as he did so. 

It sent shivers down your spine, his silken voice making the words sound too tempting. Even if you twisted your face and said ‘gross!’ causing him to dissolve into laughter, you didn’t make an effort to move away from him or put any space between your two bodies on the very large couch. You told yourself it was because you were tired from a very long day of travel, not because you were enjoying the smell of his strangely expensive cologne from this close by. 

His grin was still entirely smug, and you couldn’t stand it. 

When he raised the beer bottle up to his mouth again, you reached over and put a hand on his forearm, forcefully dragging his arm down as you made a snide comment. 

“That shit is disgusting, why the hell do you drink it?” You asked. 

You found your face drifting toward his again and if asked, you would say it was a form of intimidation - not that you were being drawn in by an unconscious attraction to him. 

“Because I can.” He replied, just as snide as he slipped your grip and sipped on the drink. 

You mocked his words in an entirely childish voice, and then you raised a single finger up to it and skimmed along the neck of the bottle. It took only a single moment of concentration with your skilled powers to freeze the beer inside solid. He thought he felt an extra chill coming off his hand, but convinced himself that he imagined it. But when he kept it tilted and nothing came out to meet his lips, he shook it and then stuck an inquiring eye inside the bottle. 

When he saw that it was completely frozen, he looked over and saw you grinning, and little did you know - that was the moment he became completely taken with you. You were one of the most annoying people he had ever met, and he found himself so intensely attracted to you. 

Even if it was getting under your skin by arguing with you or fucking your brains out, he knew in that moment - he had to get inside you and drive you insane the same way that he knew you would for him. 

… 

When Dick left to go check on his old circus friend Clay, Jason winked at you and said ‘don’t miss me too much’. You made a show of putting a finger near your mouth and audibly gagging. 

Later that night, when Jason didn’t return, you hated the curl of disappointment that panged in your stomach. You wanted to hit yourself for staring at the door, waiting for the second Robin to come in behind Dick. 

You hated yourself even more for replying to Jason’s texts. 

Apparently he had taken your phone out of your jacket pocket when you went to the bathroom (not to see Adamson - a different bathroom, to pee). And he had put himself in your contacts as ‘Hot Guy’. He had also sent himself a text from your phone that read ‘omg Jason you’re so hot, will you fuck me?’. And then replied to it from his own phone with a picture of his cock. 

Unfortunately, the only thing you could mock about the picture was poor lighting. 

When you told him as much, he quickly remedied that with several more pictures - ones with better lighting. He sent a video with very distinct audio. You would deny that you rushed to put your headphones in to listen to it while you sat on the train with Kory and Gar. You would deny that it drove a hard, hot pain between your thighs. 

You dug through a folder and sent some pictures of your own. You told yourself it was to prove to him that you were too good for him - to show off something he could never actually have. To tease him. 

You would deny that you loved the compliments he gave you, that you ate up the affection like a plant lovingly soaking up the sun. 

When you were sexting him, you had no clue that you were ever going to see him again. It was almost mindless, something for a dopamine hit to distract yourself from all the chaos going on around you. You weren’t doing it because you actually liked Jason. You didn’t have any real attractions toward him, or any real plans to carry out all of the bold things you said in those messages. 

You had no clue that you’d end up living together. 

When you did find out that Dick would be taking Jason into the newly reopened Titans Tower along with you, Gar, and Rachel, you didn’t make a big deal of it in your mind. When Jason made flirtatious remarks toward you in person, you brushed him off. You put up a wall. 

You told yourself that he was nothing more than a cocky, shallow guy who would use you for sex and then throw you away - something you could never actually build a proper relationship with. And if you were supposed to live together, be some kind of team like Dick expected you to be, then you couldn’t be messy. You couldn’t get emotional. 

You had no clue that on one of those first nights living together, your self assured discipline not to give into your lust for him would break like a wafer cookie, and you would be in his bed faster than a sea turtle running into ocean. 

… 

“Fuck, babe, you feel so good on my cock.” Jason grunted, his face buried in your neck as he thrusted deep inside of you. The loud squelch of artificial wetness coming from between your thighs as he worked his hips, working you open with a needy, demanding pace. “Bet you love this cock, huh? Tell me how fuckin’ much you love it.” 

“Shut up.” 

The words came from your throat as a weak whimper, much less powerful than you had intended. 

You didn’t want to give him any more power than he already held over you - he had you weak and willing on his cock, something you would have never admitted could be true until it was happening in these moments. 

Though you would never admit it aloud, you loved the way he handled you. Having you pinned against the bed with his fingers digging into the flesh of your hips, having you breathless and moaning as he fucked into you with fast, obviously skilled strokes. Your nails cut into the flesh of his back, and he let out a low rumble from his gut as the sharp sting sent a wave of pleasure through him. 

You hated the twinge of lustful embarrassment that curled in your gut when he chuckled at your words. 

“Oh, you want me to shut up?” He asked, slightly breathless from the act himself, moving one hand beside your head to raise himself up slightly to look in your eyes. 

He was sweaty, disheveled, his hair a mess, his muscles taught with the effort as he continued to pound into you. You hated that you had imagined him much like this before, and that this outlived all of your fantasies. 

“Yes.” You fired back. “Just shut up and fuck me.” 

He bit his lip - something you didn’t know was him trying to hold back his orgasm, so utterly turned on by your bratty defiance, the twinge of a whimper in your voice as you said those words. 

“You weren’t tellin’ me to shut up when I was texting you.” 

He said, all hot breath fanning across your chin, his hips spearing forward in sharp, hard hits that made your skin smack loudly together. It made you work hard to suppress moans deep in your chest in a way that was painful, like venom inside your lungs. You wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of your sounds, of knowing just how good he was fucking you - even if he could see it written all over your pleasure twisted face. 

“You only begged for more when I was tellin’ you how I was gonna lay you on my bed. Take you apart… make you scream my name.” 

He reached his other hand from your hip to the point where you were joined. He began touching that tender place, making sharp, vicious strokes that were almost vengeful. Tears easily gathered in your eyes and he let out another chuckle when you choked on a deep, pleasurable wail. 

“Tell me, how many times did you touch yourself reading what I wrote?” 

He asked, leaning down to whisper the words right in your ear. 

“How many times did you cum thinking about me?” 

“I didn’t.” You choked out, digging your nails deeper into the skin of his back, causing him to grunt as the pain mixed with the pleasure flowing through him. 

“Sure, babe.” He smirked down at you, turning that look into something absolutely pavlovian that would forever make you feel his cock deep inside of you when you saw it, rather than feeling annoyed. 

Maybe from that point on, it was a bit of both. 

In an effort to shut him up, you reached up and claimed his lips. It was supposed to be a kiss, but it was mostly teeth. When you bit down on his bottom lip, snarling, he tasted blood and the way he moaned at the pain was absolutely unmistakable. It was something you remembered and used against him many times after that. 

… 

You wouldn’t allow yourself any room for self hatred when it came to that break in your self control. When it became an ongoing thing, you spun it as positive in your mind. 

It was just sexual release. You and Jason both needed it. It paired well with intense training and the heavy studying that Dick made you do. It lowered your stress levels a lot, and it helped you get through the day. 

The more time you spent around Jason, the more you got to know him, and the more you came to realize that he was nowhere near shallow. You easily saw that he was caring, deep, complex, troubled. The more time passed, you found yourself falling for him and the more you deeply denied it. Because it was just sex. 

Things were good between the two of you, and you knew that if you added anything else to the mix - any complicated, mushy feelings - you would fuck it up. 

You were especially reminded of this - how important it was not to fuck things up - just a day or so before every other force aside from you railed Titans Tower and began royally fucking things up. 

… 

It was a morning just like any other at Titans Tower. It was delightfully quiet - even though Dick demanded that everyone get up at ungodly early hours to begin training, you had somehow managed to wake up before everyone else and you were enjoying the peace it brought you. 

When you got up to see that Jason was already in the kitchen, standing at the counter as he munched on a bowl of cereal, you wanted to scorn the idea that your peace would be interrupted. But instead, you found yourself willfully suppressing a smile. 

You yawned and walked over to the counter, grabbing a bowl from one of the cupboards, thinking that cereal was just the right idea on his part. A deep frown cut through your face when you poured out the rest of the cereal box he had left on the counter, and a very measly amount fell into your bowl. 

“What kind of asshole only leaves three fucking cornflakes in the bottom of the box?” You scoffed, causing him to chuckle. 

“Learn to count, babe.” He told you, speaking with his mouth half-full. “That’s more than three.” 

You rolled your eyes. You were likely exaggerating - but still, it seemed rude to you to leave such a small portion, barely a handful, in the bottom of the box. 

“Or did I make you cum so hard last night that I knocked the common sense out of your head?” He added on, throwing you that signature smirk that made heat bloom between your thighs. 

You let out a sarcastic snort, giving him a purposefully disgusted grimace as you lifted the bowl up and dumped the remaining cereal into his portion instead. 

“You might as well take these.” You told him. “And don’t flatter yourself, you’re not that good.” 

You moved behind them, distracting yourself from the conversation by making a cup of coffee. 

“Oh really?” He perked up, rising to his full height, pure mischief in his voice. “It didn’t sound like it last night.” 

Much to your horror, he then began imitating your moans. 

“‘Oh, Jason! Oh, fuck me! More!’” 

It was a cartoonish, pornographic imitation, something he likely wouldn’t have done if the others were anywhere within earshot. Oddly enough, even though your relationship was casual, you still kept it guarded and private, as though it were some precious secret that needed to be kept from the others. 

“‘Jason, please, your dick is the best! Oh, make me cum!’” 

But that was the farthest thing from your mind as embarrassment curled in your stomach, the reaction he likely wanted to draw out of you. You hated that you didn’t truly know if it was accurate or not, because sometimes - yes, he did fuck your brains out and make you completely mindless on his cock. 

But you would never admit that he was right. 

“Shut up.” You sighed, causing him to dissolve into laughter, feeling as though he had won. 

But you wouldn’t simply leave it at that. 

Instead, as you pushed the button on the machine and your coffee began to drip, you turned around and gently placed your fingers on the side of his cereal bowl. You froze all the milk inside of it solid, making it into one large frozen chunk with the spoon stuck inside when he wasn’t looking - distracted, staring at your face, looking for any trace of the reaction that he had drawn out of you. 

You just glared, and he smirked once more. 

When he picked up the spoon again and went to take another bite, the entire bowl came with it. He sighed in defeat when he realized what you had done. 

“You know, it’s so damn annoying when you do that.” He sighed. 

“I know.” You grinned at him. 

He couldn’t help the butterflies that fluttered in his stomach at this. He resisted the urge to grab you by the sides of your head and steal the grin of your mouth with his own. He told you that it was out of annoyance, and not affection. He told himself those lines were most definitely not blurred when it came to you. 

… 

Confessing your feelings to Jason would not have been your choice. 

Given the choice, you would have let your feelings quietly live and die inside of you. You would have just kept Jason as a friend. You would have even dropped the amazing sex if it meant staying on good terms with him. 

But the stakes rose pretty quickly, and things were taken out of your hands. The choice was stolen from you and Jason entirely against your will. 

When you found out he was missing, supposedly kidnapped by Doctor Light on the heels of some misguided plan - something inside of you shattered. Up until that moment, if you thought it was just a stupid crush, or an infatuation inside of you that would easily fade with time - you quickly found out that you were wrong. 

You went through the stages of grief like a rocket. 

Denial. Staring at the door, waiting for him to walk inside at any moment. Just like you had back at the safehouse.

Anger. Being so pissed at Dick at the other older Titans that you could barely breathe. How had they let this happen to him? How could they make him feel so inadequate that he felt the need to go out on his own, half-cocked, clearly doing something in the name of looking for their approval? 

Bargaining. You would have traded places with him. You would have been the one, alone and scared and stranded if it meant that he got to be at home safe. You would have gone with him to carry out the stupid plan if he had only asked. Why hadn’t he asked you? 

Depression. You wept in your room, hands clasped over your face, letting out chest-shaking sobs as you thought of the possibility of him never returning home again. You realized the possibility of him dying was very real and it made your lungs burn. 

And then finally - Acceptance. You finally accepted that your feelings for him were something bigger, and if it meant that you were the only person in the Tower who truly cared about him (probably aside from Gar) - the only person who didn’t just see him as a pawn to be used against Deathstroke - then you had to do something about it. 

So you laid out your love for Jason. You put it all on the line for him. You accidentally confessed to him, showed your feelings in a gesture so quiet it screamed. 

You knew that for someone who stepped up to become Robin, someone who scorned cops for pummeling down on the innocent when they were supposed to be protectors - stepping up to try and save his life meant a love bigger than anything else you could have done. 

And he was terrified of it. There was a big justice in your love for him. And to him, there was an even bigger justice in giving you an out to escape it - to escape loving him.  

… 

Hectic. 

That was easily how you would describe the last few days at Titans Tower. 

Between the unexpected arrival of Rose - Dick taking on another stray because, like Rachel said, he couldn’t resist a bird with a broken wing. Finding out that she was related to one of the deadliest men on earth that the Titans apparently had previous history with. And then Jason going off on his own without telling you, some botched hostage trade, and the group picking up yet another stray - a strange boy who had saved Jason’s life. It was all a blur of hectic chaos that had you snapping your neck to keep up. 

Sleep was scarce and you couldn’t remember the last time you’d had a proper meal. 

But you weren’t truly worried about any of that. 

Dust had been kicked up around your life, and you couldn’t wait for it to settle before you made your next important decision. 

Even though the wounds were still tender, you knew that things were safe for now, and your number one concern was Jason. 

The minute he had gotten in the door, even though he was slightly hobbled and clearly sore from whatever Deathstroke had done to him, he rushed out of your sight. He was clearly eager to get away from everyone like a wounded animal sulking away to lick his wounds in peace. And when you had chased him, ignoring a nagging pain in your own side from the fight, he had slammed his bedroom door in your face, entirely uncaring of the fact that you called out his name, concerned for him. 

The rest of the group was distracted with Conner - not knowing what he had been shot with or how to fix it. You hated it, but in the eyes of the group, yet again, Jason and any of his problems fell to the back burner. 

After you had taken a short shower and changed your clothes, you found yourself here. Standing in front of Jason’s closed bedroom door, hoping not to face another cold rejection. 

You wondered if he would be sleeping, wondered if you should interrupt his peace. But you knew that sleep was unlikely after everything that had happened. 

So you took the leap. 

You raised a fist, once again pushing down that stinging pain coming from the right side of your stomach. You reasoned that it was probably nothing more than a bruise forming there. And you knocked on the door. 

A few moments later, the door was jerked open, and Jason glared at you. 

His eyes were dull and tired, and there was a large bruise forming on the side of his mouth. Probably one of many others that you couldn’t see, from the way he had been walking earlier. He likely hadn’t been sleeping, but you had disturbed him. 

“What the hell do you want?” He grumbled out, his voice dull, lacking any true fight. 

“I wanted to check on you.” You told him, entirely honest. “I know it might seem stupid, but I wanna see how you’re doing.” 

Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes. 

He wanted to agree that - yes, it was stupid. It should have been obvious how he was doing after being kidnapped, beaten, and dropped off a building. But he was an idiot who had gotten himself thrown headfirst into that mess, thinking he could handle it. And he didn’t need to go crying to you about how badly he had fucked up. He had made a poor choice and he deserved all of the consequences. It was a simple fact of life. 

“I’m doing just fine, thanks.” Jason said, entirely snide and sarcastic. “Look, I don’t need your help, okay? So fuck off.” 

It was a set of harsh, cutting words. But he thought getting distance from you would be best. This whole thing had woken him up from the sweet little fantasy the two of you had been participating in. He was a natural born fuck-up. And sure, he could have you for a while, play around a bit - but he could never truly make you happy. Eventually, he would fuck you up too. He was a harsh poison and it would be better if he got out of your life before you felt the full effects. 

He moved to shove the door closed and upon instinct, you reached up and fought him on it. Unconsciously, you winced as a sharp pain came from the injury in your stomach, reaching for it with your free hand as you held the door open with the other. It should have been no big deal. With your meta abilities, you usually healed quicker. You weren’t even used to feeling it when you got hurt. You were probably just feeling it worse because you were tired. 

You tried to ignore the pain. But in a moment, Jason’s eyes went wide with worry as his gaze darted from your face, knit with pain, to where your hand was nursing the injury. Any sense of smarmy discontent dropped from his features, immediately being replaced with a softness and worry for you. 

“You’re hurt.” He said quietly. 

He let the door fall open again, reaching for your hand to inspect the injury himself. 

“I’m fine.” You played the card this time, exchanging his lie for your own. 

It was an odd play. He had lied about not being so torn up inside, emotionally devastated as he was, and now you were lying about not being physically injured from the fight. The two of you made an odd, but perfectly matched pair. 

Jason barreled right past your words, and you were easily pliant to his touch as he removed your hand from the injury. You certainly were not expecting for him to find anything incriminating under your hand. But he glared at you when he found bright red spread across your palm, a glossy wetness leaking through your shirt. 

“You’re bleeding.” He grunted at you. 

Clearly, he was disappointed in the fact that you had neglected to bring this injury to the group’s attention. Pissed off at the fact that you weren’t in the medbay with Conner receiving some treatment right now. 

Maybe you could blame it on the chaos. Maybe you could blame it on the fact that with everyone so emotionally distraught, you didn’t want to be just another problem for everyone to fuss over. 

“Whoops.” You breathed out sarcastically. “I didn’t even notice.” 

That last part was honest. In all the adrenaline, all your worrying over whether or not Jason was going to live as you watched him dangle so high off the ground - you truly hadn’t paid any mind to the injury. 

“You didn’t-?” Jason huffed out in anger, but didn’t bother finishing the sentence. 

Perhaps he partially understood himself, knowing how the adrenaline from a fight could stamp out pain. Or perhaps he knew how truly stubborn you were and he didn’t want to waste his energy arguing with you. 

“You need this treated.” He added on. 

No matter how fucked in the head he was, he never wanted to see you hurt. That was something he would definitely waste his energy on - wearing down your stubbornness until you let him or someone else in the house take care of the injury properly. 

“Conner is worse off than I am.” You shrugged. “He needs the attention more.” 

“Then let me help you.” He said, an impatient nagging rising up in his throat. “Bruce gave me some first aid training. One thing that means I’m not totally useless.” 

The words made your chest ache for him, a pain that easily competed with the bleeding wound. 

“Jason-” 

You wanted to argue with him. You wanted to tell him he had infinite worth to you. 

But of course, he cut you off. 

“Just go sit on the bed.” He told you, quiet, but a firm command that you couldn’t ignore. 

He gently pushed past you, on a quest for some supplies to patch you up with. You then found yourself drifting into his room almost mindlessly, your hand clutching the wound again upon instinct. It was a place that you felt oddly at home. The nights you had spent in that bed since coming to Titans Tower, your head delightfully empty as he had fucked you hard and fast - they were by far your favourites. 

You would say it was because of the sex, and not just because you got to be wrapped up in Jason’s arms. Maybe everything had changed. Maybe your answers were different now. Maybe you were raw and tender and Jason wasn’t prepared to chase you in that devotion. 

But that was just the thing. With you and Jason, there was never any sense of devotion. You and Jason were always hard and fast. Teasing each other, verging on the edge of vengeful. It was a flame that burned intensely hot - but it was never anything soft. It was never anything that prompted you to knock on his door so late, wanting to check on his well being. It was nothing that prompted you to make chase to put your life on the line for him. 

Even just knowing that he had the intent to attend to your injury, called himself useful because of it - the thought cradled you like a warm blanket. It had you balancing on the edge of a dam holding back a barrage of feelings that you had been quelling down since the moment you had first put your lips on his.

“I told you to sit.” Jason’s voice came from behind you. 

He had raided the infirmary and now had a handful of supplies - luckily without anyone seeing him or questioning why. When you turned to him, he was closing the bedroom door behind him, sealing you both in with this newfound soft intensity, the tired lull of two people unwilling to hold back that softness anymore. It was entirely dangerous, and entirely life-saving at the same time; and neither of you realized it. 

“Since when do you get to boss me around?” You told him, your voice low and lacking any true spirit or sarcasm. 

It was in the same vein as the banter the two of you usually threw around - bickering about who was a bigger asshole, who was more stubborn, who was better in bed. 

You expected some kind of sexual comment in return. You could almost hear it now - he was the boss of you because he made you melt on his cock, made you mindless and dumb with it. 

But, no dice. 

The longer you stared at him, catching bits of the fresh pain swimming through those gorgeous blue eyes, you wished so badly for the mischief and sarcasm and light to come back and bite you the way that it used to. 

It only made your stomach churn harder at the whole situation. Things had officially changed between you and Jason. You had yet to find out if it was for the better, or for the painstakingly worse. 

Jason sighed through his nose. 

“You can be such an asshole sometimes.” He told you. Coming from him, and given the nature of your relationship, you knew it was almost a compliment. “Will you just sit down and let me help you?” 

Even though you were utterly terrified of the swelling of emotions you felt, bound to come to a head - you did. 

You sat on the edge of the bed and he placed the supplies beside you. 

When he mumbled out a quiet ‘lay back’, and you did, his cool fingertips at the hem of your shirt pulling it upward felt strangely more intimate than any other time you had been in this same position. It wasn’t heady, you weren’t granted the distraction of his mouth on yours and his tongue shoved between your lips while a harsh throbbing nagged between your legs.

This was quiet, and calm, and gentle. 

When you caught his eye above you as he wiped away the blood with some clean gauze, you saw nothing but pity and worry and sparkling affection for you. You almost dared to call it something as epic and dangerous as love, buried deep in his eyes. He worked with the most delicate touch, almost as if he was afraid to break you, before he glanced down and inspected the wound. 

His brow furrowed with even more intense worry, guilt nipping at his insides when he got a good look at it. 

“I think I see a bullet in here.” He told you, and then he moved around the bed and grabbed his phone, turning on the flashlight to have a better light to inspect it. You felt intensely naked, intensely caught when he began shining the light on your stomach with a harshly inquisitive look across his face. “Definitely something shiny. You got shot and you didn’t fucking tell anyone?” 

It was only then that you realized when you had gotten the wound - the exact moment clicking into place in your mind. 

“It was only a ricochet.” You argued quietly. “It’s not that bad.” 

Jason scoffed and rolled his eyes, and began sorting out his supplies, preparing to pull out whatever was lodged inside of you. 

… 

Dick explicitly told you to stay put. 

They only wanted the more experienced Titans, the Varsity squad on the case when dealing with Deathstroke. He blamed young naive incompetence as the reason Jason had gotten captured in the first place. You blamed him and Bruce pushing Jason out, making him feel like he needed so desperately to prove himself. But it was something Dick wasn’t ready to hear - an argument you weren’t going to have with the very stubborn team leader. 

Instead, you went for the silent route. You trailed the rest of them out of Tower, and when Dick strayed away from the rest of the group, his head on a swivel as he glanced back and forth, seemingly wanting to assure that none of the others were following him - you followed your gut instincts and went after him. 

You hid in the shadows and the moment that Deathstroke hit the button and those panels scrolled up, revealing Jason stranded on that scaffolding - you couldn’t help yourself. 

“Jason!” 

You screamed out his name, you leapt forward. 

Dick didn’t have time to scold you, not before the gunfire started. 

Kory came out of nowhere - seemingly, she had the same idea as you. Putting her life on the line for an emotionally repressed man that she hadn’t admitted her feelings for. But she was there because she was in love with the other Robin. (Or rather, a man who claimed over and over again that he wasn’t Robin.) 

Things quickly became a blur - flashes of flame as Kory fought, battling with the muzzle flashes from Deathstroke’s guns, limbs flying as they fought each other. You didn’t see it, but Deathstroke raised and aimed at you as you rushed toward the window, blindly going after Jason. In response, Dick charged forward, redirecting the gun as he pulled the trigger. You heard the sharp ‘ping’ sound of metal on metal - what you couldn’t see was the bullet hitting one of the metal beams in the ceiling. But you certainly felt it when it sliced into your side. 

At the time, it was nothing compared to the fear you felt for Jason. 

His eyes were wide with terror, and you could only focus on getting him to safety. You had no idea that a large part of his panic came from seeing you in the building. He had hoped that Dick would keep you away from all of this. But there you were, standing a few feet away from a man with a gun who was shooting around wildly. Jason would have delighted in being dropped off the building to his death if he had to see you get fatally shot when he could do nothing but squirm on the other side of the glass. 

You put two hands on the glass, banging on it - of course, it was no use. It was inches thick, meant to keep people from going through it at this height. Working entirely on instinct, you put your palms flat across it and began forming ice crystals over it, hoping to make it rigid and breakable if it was frozen. 

Once there was enough ice, you quickly looked around and spotted a metal pipe there for the in-progress construction of the building, so you grabbed it and rushed to smash the glass with it. You felt victorious as it shattered, and Jason flinched away from the shards, putting you one step closer to freeing him. 

Though the moment the glass was cleared, leaving the wind whipping around you, his first words of greeting to you were not celebratory. 

“What the hell are you doing here?” He barked at you, clearly angry with you. 

You felt a dull ache in your chest at this. You thought he might be relieved, happy, pleased. At the time, you couldn’t interpret his harsh reaction as worry for you possibly getting hurt. 

Nonetheless, you ignored his harshness. You would save him, whether he wanted to be saved or not. You draped your body through the window, reaching out to him. You made an effort to keep most of your weight planted on the floor of the building, in case the scaffolding wasn’t stable enough to hold two people at once. 

“What do you think?” You replied, pure sarcasm dripping through your voice as you reached behind Jason and began fiddling with the rope around his wrists. 

The position put the two of you in intensely close proximity. Jason caught a whiff of your unique scent, the shower gel you used that mingled with your body’s natural oils; and he felt so painfully at home. For the first time that night, he held back tears. He couldn’t help but to lean his forehead on your shoulder, taking comfort in having you so near after being on edge and terrified for so many hours. You resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair, to cradle him and give him further comfort. You forced yourself to focus on the task at hand - getting him to safety. 

Behind you, at the very back of the room, Dick and Deathstroke wrestled with the remote for the explosives attached to the scaffolding. 

Just as you managed to get Jason’s wrists freed, Deathstroke hit the switch, and the bombs went off. 

… 

You winced loudly as Jason dabbed at the wound with disinfectant. 

“I would say sorry… but, you’ll thank me later when this isn’t swollen and leaking puss.” He told you, throwing you a small smirk. 

It was smug. It was the usual kind of humor that he gave you. 

It was comforting to know that every trace of the Jason you knew hadn’t been stolen by Deathstroke. 

You held your breath as he pressed down with the medicine-covered gauze again, drawing much less of a reaction out of you this time. 

“Great mental image, Jay.” You replied, your voice dull. It lacked any of the true bite you wanted to deliver in response to him. “I’m sure it’s such a turn-on thinking about my puss.” 

It was meant to be a joke. But even unconsciously, it was an acknowledgement of that dangerous line - the line between truly caring and just using someone for sex. The line between having someone in your life as a body to get off with, and being so… homely with them. 

You and Jason were towing that line dangerously. It was a thread that you were balancing on, and it would either break, or you would cross to the other side and be forever bonded to him. 

Jason shrugged. “Maybe I don’t have to be turned on by you all the time.” 

There was more stuck in his throat. Another dangerous acknowledgement of that line. 

‘Maybe I just have to care.’ 

Both of you lulled into silence because neither of you dared to say it. 

After a few moments, Jason put down the gauze and hesitated to reach for the tweezers. He knew that pulling the bullet out would be painful, but inevitable. It was a lot like the state of your relationship with him. Break it off, and find happiness elsewhere, or acknowledge this big thing swelling to fruition between the two of you. Have Jason fuck it up eventually. Painful, but inevitable. 

“You shouldn’t have to be hurt like this.” Jason said quietly. “You shouldn’t have gotten hurt for my sake.” 

There it was again - words with a dangerous double meaning. 

You looked up at him, pure pain knit across his face, and for a moment he looked from the tweezers to you and he could hardly stand holding your gaze. 

‘It’s worth it.’ You wanted to say. ‘For you, I’d bear any pain.’ 

The words lived and died behind your eyes, and your tongue decided on something else entirely. 

“It’s nothing.” You told him. 

You downplayed the pain, pretending that the injury was only a minor inconvenience for you. And in the grand scheme of life, it was. With time, it would heal. Losing Jason would be something you’d never heal from. 

Jason shook his head at this statement. 

He forced himself to reach for the tweezers then. He handed you his phone, a silent agreement that you would hold the light as steady as you could. He knew you well, too well, and he knew that you needed something else to focus on to push away the pain. He put his free hand on the plush of your stomach, pulling back slightly to hold the wound open while you held the light on it. 

When the sharp metal of the tweezers breached your wound, you wanted to swear. You wanted to call him an asshole as the pain shot through you. You wanted to scold him for leaving the Tower and being kidnapped in the first place. But you knew that even if it was playful or sarcastic, fueled by the bite of your pain, it was not what he needed to hear right now. So instead, you held your breath, and gripped his phone hard, keeping the light steady as you bared the sharp shocks of pain. 

After a moment of digging around that felt like an eternity, he pulled out the fragment and held it up to show you as you collapsed back against the bed, panting with tears stinging the edges of your eyes. 

“It’s not nothing.” He declared sharply. 

You couldn’t conjure a response. You knew he was right. And you didn’t want to be forced to admit it. 

Instead, you turned off the light from his phone and relaxed into the bed, closing your eyes as he walked around to the trashcan and threw out the bullet fragment. It fell into the bottom of the plastic wastebasket with a very small ‘ping’ - making you wonder how something so small could cause so much trouble. 

Jason quickly returned to you, dabbing more disinfectant into the wound in a way that made you groan and flex away from the touch. Once again, he did not apologize. 

There were a few moments of muddy silence with nothing but your slightly labored breathing, trying to contain your sounds of pain so as to not make him feel any further guilt about the whole incident. 

Your mind churned, and you couldn’t help the next words that came from your mouth. 

“I meant what I said.” You told him. 

At the sound of this, his hands immediately stilled. You felt his eyes on you, and you forced yourself to open your own and look up at him once again. He stared you down with intense examination. He looked for any ounce of falsity, any sign that you were lying, even posturing to make him feel better after everything that had happened. 

He didn’t find any. 

You thought he might acknowledge you, that he might say something back to return your mighty words. Instead, he simply reached for more gauze, and began putting a final bandage on your wound. 

… 

The explosion caused a sharp rattle through your ears. It shocked you and made you dizzy and put the whole world off-kilter. The only thing you could perceive past the mind-numbing hum in your brain was the feeling of Jason’s rough glove gripping tightly onto your wrist, so you gripped back as hard as you could. 

When you blinked open your eyes, you were half-hanging out of the open window, the edge of the floor cutting into your waist as you held onto Jason by nothing but his wrist. His whole body weight created a harsh burn, straining on the muscles in your shoulder as you watched him dangle hundreds of feet above the street. 

Panic flooded you. 

You scrambled to reach out with your other hand, and the moment you moved, your shirt slipped against the sleek, polished material of the floor and you began sliding out the window. You gasped and Jason stilled his panicked flailing immediately. 

“Don’t move!” He shouted. 

“Give me your other hand so I can pull you up!” You shouted back. 

Beyond the unpleasant hum of your eardrums rattling, you still heard chaos behind you. Gunshots, the grunts of fighting, Kory and Dick’s voices yelling. They were busy with Deathstroke, they couldn’t help you or Jason. 

Jason looked up at you with glassy eyes. 

He knew that with all his gear weighing him down, even with the training you had been doing, you wouldn’t be able to pull him up. Not by yourself. And if you weren’t careful, his body weight would just pull you out of the window and cause you to go tumbling down to your death along with him. 

When you saw that frown etch across his lips, that filthy look of dawning - you glared at him. 

“Give me your other hand!” You screamed, your voice raking across your throat like hot coals. A hot boiling rage at the fact that he seemed almost determined to die. 

There was one thing he was determined about. If he was going to die, he wasn’t going to take you down with him. 

His gloved wrist started to slip from your nervous, sweaty palm, and you tried hard to hold on tight. You formed large shards of ice, hoping you could create some kind of bond there by freezing your hand to his. But it would only be temporary with gravity trying to tear the two of you apart. 

“You have to drop me, Y/N.” He said, nothing but pure mourning on his lips. “I’m dead weight.” 

You both knew it was a horrendous double meaning. 

He thought he was a dead weight to your life. 

“No!” You immediately defied this thought, that feral rage ripping at your throat once again. “I’m gonna pull you up. I’m gonna pull you up!” 

You reached your other hand down and tightly wrapped both of your hands around his wrist, yanking upward. The harsh movement caused you to slide even further out the window. You were now dangling dangerously over San Francisco with only the thickness of your thighs giving you any real stability on the intensely high up floor. It made you dizzy, and the only thing you had to focus on were the wet wells of Jason’s eyes staring up at you. 

“It’s no use!” Jason said tearfully. 

You ignored him. 

You cast your chin over your shoulder, and began shouting. 

“Help me!” You screamed, trying desperately to get the attention of Dick or Kory. “Help me! Fuck!” 

“You have to let go.”

Jason’s words immediately shifted your focus back to him. 

But of course, you refused. 

“I’m not letting go of you!” You declared sharply. “Not that easily.” 

As he stared up at your tearful eyes, he knew that you meant it as more. 

Unfortunately, it was the one thing he was terrified of. 

He thought that you saw him as some shiny perfect thing, something good and worth having in your life. He thought that you were incapable of seeing the poison, the true fuck-up that he was. If you didn’t let go of him, sooner or later, just like everyone else in his life, you were going to get burned. 

So Jason did what he had to do. 

He began prying your fingers off his wrist, trying his best to keep you stable while he forced himself from your grip. 

“No!” You shrieked. “No, no, no-” 

You didn’t have much room to fight him about it without falling out of the window yourself. 

You made a move to readjust, to get a tighter grip on him - and it was the one deadly move that caused him to slip out of your touch completely. 

You were forced to watch on in chest clenching horror, blinking through heavy tears as he began hurtling toward the ground. 

… 

If not for Conner - a literal miracle - swooping in and saving Jason at the last second, then you would have spent the rest of your life regretting those moments, wondering what you could have done differently to save him. 

When Jason finished taping down the bandages, making sure the wound was clean and secure, he laid his palm flat on top of it. It was a kind of ‘kissing it better’ that instantly spread warmth curling through your gut. It was a touch so incredibly tender - especially compared to the heated, aggressive groping you were used to from him - that it caused a whimper from the back of your throat. 

You knew it was unlikely, but you hoped that he hadn’t heard it. 

“All done.” He said quietly. 

You instantly felt regret when he took his hand away and began tidying up the medical supplies. But you forced yourself to sit upright, now feeling only muscle soreness and a much duller pain coming from the area. You felt intensely thankful for his care as you pulled your shirt back down, righting your clothes back into place. 

“You’re free to go now.” Jason told you, his voice still low, as though a single decibel would shatter the delicate peace between the two of you. 

You felt your heart sink. 

In an instant, you understood what it was - he was concerned about your physical wellbeing, but he didn’t actually want to have you around. Just like his reaction to you showing up at the hostage exchange - he didn’t want your presence there. 

You heaved a sigh and got off the bed as Jason busied himself with gathering up the used gauze to throw it away. As you put your hand on the doorknob, you couldn’t quite bring yourself to leave. 

It was something else. 

It had to be something else. 

Jason hadn’t let himself drop off a building in some desperate ploy just to get away from you. He had been trying to save you. 

He was so utterly willing to give his life for yours. 

And now he was trying to back down from that. 

You turned and faced him, leaving the door closed. When he turned from ditching things in the wastebasket, he froze. He was entirely surprised that you were still there.

The two of you locked eyes, both staying still - like a predator and prey locked in a stalemate, wondering who would run first. 

In this situation, you weren’t sure who was the prey. 

You were both so vulnerable. 

Jason thought it would be selfish to get caught up in all of this, to finally admit those dangerous feelings he had for you. When he cared for things, he usually ended up breaking them. Of course, it was never on purpose - he was an idiot. Everything he touched, he fucked up. He had made that more than evident with his last braindead plan, the outing to prove that he was worthy of being Robin. Something that had gotten you shot, probably could have gotten you killed. 

If you stuck with him any longer, you probably would end up being killed. And he would never forgive himself for that. 

He would be better off ripping himself from your hold, as much as it hurt. Giving you a dose of that heartbreak now so that you could get over him and go after better things. 

As you stared at Jason, you could see all the pain boiling underneath his surface. You wondered what he was thinking, what the hell he was churning over in that intense brain of his - but you didn’t dare to ask. 

You knew that he needed to be held right now - in every sense of the word. You knew that he needed to be cared for the way he had cared for your wound, pushing past the pain in order to heal. You wondered if he would lay down and bear it or if he would continue to fight you. 

You were the one to bravely step forward. Though Jason was tempted to ask you to leave, that thing inside of him yearning to marinate in his isolation because he deserved it, he pushed it down. He let his hands naturally come to sit on the plush comfort of your waist as you put a gentle touch on both his shoulders, leaning into his body ever so slightly. 

You laid your forehead on his cheek, right next to that ugly bruise that had been left on him, and he let out a contented sigh as he felt your warmth envelope him. For the first time since his feet had touched the ground, he felt calm. He felt safe. 

You smoothed a hand across his shoulder, and raised your head, using your touch to gently tip his face toward yours. He quickly realized that your intention was to kiss him. And something ached in his heart - something painful and longing. He knew that it would not be needy and haste with the intention of pile-driving toward sex like your other kisses had been. He knew that it would be the metamorphosis of your relationship that he was not prepared to go through. 

He nuzzled along your forehead, gently stopping you. 

“Please don’t do this.” He murmured quietly into your skin. 

He knew that it would break him. 

He knew that this was the moment - like Gatsby reaching up toward the stars - this would be the moment that he was tied to you forever, damned by his love for you. Only, much different than Gatsby, he wasn’t destined for some grant fate if he didn’t have you. He was on a one way path to a messy death, and he was determined not to take you down with him. 

Tears pricked the edges of his eyes at the thought. 

You pulled back, just enough to properly look him in the eyes, and your own tears formed when you saw that pathetic puppy dog looking back at you. 

“Why not?” You demanded, much sharper than you intended. You knew he was fragile and you didn’t want to upset him any further than he already was. 

“You know why.” He replied, his voice barely scraping above a whisper as the emotion clutched at his throat. 

Jason wanted to hold onto you forever, but he was also a realistic person. He expected that any minute now, you would rip away from his arms and charge out the door, entirely angry with him, and this would finally be over. You would finally be safe from him - safe from any nasty fate his life could conjure up for you. 

You hated what he was asking of you - asking you not to care for him anymore. As if you could somehow switch it off. Impossible. 

“I meant what I said.” You repeated yourself, still entirely firm in this conviction. “I’m not gonna let you go that easily.” 

You leaned in, planting your lips on his in a light kiss. A pained sigh ripped through you when he didn’t make any moves to kiss you back. 

“Jason, please.” You whimpered out desperately. “If you get to bandage my bullet wound, then I get to do this.” 

Jason wanted to spell it all out for you, plain and dirty. He wanted to get angry, he wanted to scream. He wanted to rush along the inevitable. He wanted to tell you what a poison he was to the world, that he deserved to die and you deserved better things. But he had the utmost feeling that you wouldn’t listen. 

“Please, stop pushing me away.” You whispered against his lips. 

Instead, he listened to your plea. He let himself indulge in this selfish softness for once. 

He reached up and grabbed your jaw, pulling you into a firmer kiss, declaring every ounce of passion and terror that he was feeling in those moments. You answered it all right back - digging your fingers into the shoulders of his shirt, letting out a hot huff against his cheek as you leaned into his body. 

He would never be perfect - but he was yours.

...

Final note: yes, I used to be @/pinkchubbiebunnie. That is still my username on AO3, so if you saw this fic posted on there, it is my fic. Please do not accusing me of plagiarising fics if you see this, because this is my own fic. This is my new blog. Feel free to follow me if you’re interested in my fanfiction and thoughtful discussions of the media that I enjoy.

these are the tropes that i think fit some of the batboys, damian: enemies to lovers ofc, jason: exes to lovers🤭 and friends with benefits to lovers, dick, friends to lovers

sunflowers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Okay. Sorry, sensei. I’ll try.” 

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

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

You blow him a kiss.

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

The sensei straightens. You smile ingratiatingly, turning away.

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

The boy in question doesn’t, though.

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

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

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

“No, and my answer is no.”

His scowl deepens. “So you are scared.” 

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

“Nah. You’re just an extra.” 

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

The sensei walks in. 

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m always nice.” 

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

The name sounds rather familiar. The voice, too. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He hisses up at her. She hisses right back. 

You love her, you think.

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

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

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

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

“No the fuck I’m not.” 

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

“WE’RE NOT FRIENDS!” 

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

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

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

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

“HAH? WHAT⏤” 

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

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

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

Your mother’s grip tightens around his arm. 

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

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Your relationship does not change in the slightest after that.

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

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

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

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

By one point, but still. 

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

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

He sneers back. “Did too.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

( You start training right after. )

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You droop. “Onwards, steed.” 

“I will literally drop you.” 

“I just healed you. I’m tired.” 

“No one fucking asked you to.” 

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

“What.” 

“Nothing.” 

“What, dumbass.” 

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

“Yeah. Why?” 

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

“You will.” His certainty surprises you. 

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

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

You shift to blink up at him in surprise. 

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

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

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

He jerks away, the look on his face disgusted.

“Then I’ll teach you to fight.” 

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Before your hands, the door slams open. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You don’t tell me what to do.” 

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

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

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

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

You do not hear his next words.

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

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

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

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

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

The door slams behind you.

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And then you call him stupid. And blind.

And the rest is history. 

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your mother is watching you carefully. 

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

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

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

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

She is watching you carefully. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

You eye him a little strangely. 

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

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

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

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

“Y-yes?” 

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

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

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

Mutely, he sets his tray down, and sits. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your spoon stops halfway to your mouth.

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

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

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

He flinches.

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

You do not turn, and you do not ask.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your heart only squeezes, a little tight, but. 

You think you will be fine.

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You nod cheerily. “Sir, yes, sir!” 

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

Sueko, Midoriya, and of course, him. 

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

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

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

“You’ll have to go to Recovery Girl.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You shrug.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You blink up at him, a little confused. 

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

“I am a healer. It’s what I do.” 

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

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

You bite your tongue, and think: heal. 

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

“Yes, sensei.” You dip your head. 

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

There is murmured assent from the class. 

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

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

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

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

“That was not a compliment.” 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I will communicate that to him, then.” 

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

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

“Trespassing,” You hear someone clarify. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You choose none of the above. 

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

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

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

You lunge. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

Your throat tightens, and you make your decision. )

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

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

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

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

You are wrong.

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

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

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

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

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

You sigh, before dutifully acquiescing. 

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

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

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

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

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

You didn’t, but he only continues. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But he does. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

And finally, you find your voice. 

“He does what he likes.” 

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

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

You turn to level her with a cool stare. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You raise one eyebrow. “Anything else?” 

Silence is your only answer, and you shrug.

“See you around, I guess.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You have always disliked crowds, but so has he. 

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

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

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

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

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

He does. Of course he does. 

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But you do not.

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

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

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

You should not be here. 

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

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

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

And then, his eyes flicker up.

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

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

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

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

You aren’t, though.

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

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

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

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

“Shut the fuck up,” He tells you.

You ignore him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

His chest warms like the sun, ethereal and glorious. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You lash out. “Stay away from me!” 

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

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

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

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

And then, you crumple. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He thinks he has loved you since forever. )

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

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

bc i need to rant about this fic: afterword

forced my bf to watch cm w me, forgot i was watching it w my bf and started screaming and shaking him when mgg came out… LMAOOO

the curls are trying their best to prove they exist, but shut up, they do.

zach justice is so fine man

i need to suck tsukki’s cock so bad. i know that shit is so beautiful and long and his head gets the prettiest flush and his pre-cum beads at the top and he lets out the most insane groan when you lap it up and —

i fear i have stuff i cannot say due to digital footprint

obsessed w haikyuu smaus also sorry i havent written im moving houses and have no wifi and shitty data😁😁😁