Moonlight Sonata.

moonlight sonata.

★ pairing: toji x reader

☽ summary: you’re not one of toji’s regrets.

★ genre: pure fucking fluff

☽ warnings: some curse words but thats it

★ a/n: another blurb until i finally finish the geto fic i’m writing. this is like totally self indulgent but i’m sharing anyway hehe. as always, ur likes, comments, and reblogs are greatly appreciated. enjoy.

“can you tell me a secret?” you ask, your hand smoothing back and forth across his chest as you lay alongside him.

the night is thick and you can’t see anything around you, but you can feel the steady rise and fall of his chest beneath your cheek. you know it’s definitely ridiculous just how much you bug him, knowing that he’s an old man with a rotting conscience, but you can’t help it. especially when he gives you a look that says: “i’m too fucking old for this.” it’s your favorite past-time now and you don’t feel guilty about it. not even a little bit.

“secret?” he groans, nudging his chin against the top of your head. “what kinda secret?”

“any kind, toji, i don’t care.”

“i don’t have any secrets, y/n,” he states. “unless we’re talkin’ about you.”

you laugh, slapping his torso. “don’t humor me, toji. you’re an open book when it comes to me.”

“you’re actually a pain in my fuckin’ ass.”

“yeah well,” you smile, patting him. “you should’ve killed me when you had the chance. now you’re stuck with an uppity bitch that fixes you oatmeal for breakfast. cinnamon oatmeal.”

he makes a gruff sound. “dear god, don’t remind me of that shit again. you tried to poison me.”

“i sure did. and now you’re stuck with me.”

“i have regrets,” he sighs a minute later but his arms squeeze you closer to him, nevertheless. “seriously. i got no secrets, baby. just regrets and mistakes.”

“and i’m one of them?” you joke, even though your heart clenches.

he presses a fleeting kiss to your forehead before he’s tilting your chin up towards him. he can’t see you but he doesn’t need to to know that your eyes are still looking up at him like they always are.

“never,” he whispers, lips hovering above yours. “you could never be one of ‘em.”

© cacophonies 2022

I literally ignored all my responsibilities to make this today. I regret nothing.

i am not okay wtf

LITTLE DARK AGE

haitani ran x fem!reader x haitani rindou

summary: eight years later, you finally return to tokyo and find yourself caught in the middle of a violent gang war between the two most ruthless criminal organizations of tokyo’s underworld, forced to choose between blood and love.

genre: bonten timeskip, angst, forbidden romance, childhood friends -> strangers -> lovers, 18+ MDNI

warnings: fem!reader, gang violence, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, explicit smut, polyamory, profanity, MCD, unedited, MTBA

previous chapter -> masterlist -> next chapter

CHAPTER Ⅹ. OH, HOME, LET ME COME HOME...

TWELVE YEARS EARLIER. 

Rindou felt anxious. Rindou felt anxious and he hated it--he did not ordinarily feel anxious, it was an uncommon and unwelcome feeling, and no matter how hard he tried, he could not push it away. His throat was tight and his eyes flickered back and forth between the elevator that led into the penthouse and Ran, who was sitting next to Rindou, stiff and unamused as he glared at the elevator. 

There was something wrong with you. Okay, that sounded bad, he acknowledged. There wasn’t something wrong, wrong with you, but you were acting different and Rindou didn’t like it, Ran even less so even though he was trying to hide how much it was bothering him.

You asked them to stop picking you up from school two weeks ago. And they had tried to convince you otherwise but you had gotten angry at them--genuinely angry at them for the first time since they met you five years earlier. Rindou had never heard you yell before until you were shouting at them for being overbearing and smothering and ‘never giving you a fucking break.’

It had hurt. It had really fucking hurt. Ran had lost his temper right back at you, and the whole situation had only spiraled from there. Miss Yua offered to talk to you on their behalf, mentioning that it was probably just a phase, ‘girls get quite difficult in high school,’ she claimed, but evidently she had not gotten through to you. 

You had not spoken to them since the argument. 

And Rindou tried, he really, really did. He pushed away the hurtful words you had spat at them to try to make amends--even though he really had no reason to be apologizing. You ignored him. You ignored him every single time, brushing him off and walking to your room without a word, locking the door behind you.

Rindou was tired. You were acting like Ran did whenever Ran got all in his head about something and Rindou hated it when Ran did it and he hated it even more when you did it. He wasn’t sure what had even caused the change and it made him sick to his stomach.

Maybe you didn’t want them around at all anymore, the thought that had been eating at him for the past week rang loudly in his head. No, he tried to convince himself, that couldn’t be true because you would never think something like that. 

But he couldn’t help but remember the genuine anger in your eyes when you yelled at the two of them that day, how you refused to even look at them for nearly two weeks now. 

He bit down on his bottom lip, trying to stop it from trembling, and he let his gaze flick back up the elevator, anxiety growing as the numbers began rising higher and higher, closer and closer to the floor of the penthouse.

“Ran,” Rindou began, worry seeping into his tone.

Ran clicked his tongue as the elevator stopped on the floor, “Relax, I’ll handle it,” he said, but that only made his nerves grow worse because that was exactly what Rindou was fucking worried about.

The doors to the elevator slid open, Ran rose to his feet, Rindou briefly shut his eyes, throwing up a short prayer to whatever god would listen to him as you stepped into the penthouse, a frown on your lips and brows furrowed.

You were already irritated about something. This would not go over well. 

Rindou wanted to cry. 

Ran called your name. 

You ignored him. 

Ran called your name again, sharper this time. Rindou could see the way Ran’s fists tightened at his sides, and he could see the way his nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply, trying to contain his temper. 

“I’m talking to you,” Ran said sharply, “Look at me.”

You ignored him. 

“Hey!” Ran said loudly. You jumped at how he raised his voice, the only sign of acknowledgment of the two of them that they had received from you in nearly two weeks. “Stop acting like a fuckin’ child.”

“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” you spat out so viciously that Rindou physically drew back at your words. His lips parted to speak, to say something, but he didn’t even know what to say, and any word he thought up died on his tongue before he could force it out.

They were losing you. 

No, he told himself immediately, trying to convince himself of the matter. There was no way. Something else had to be going on. 

“Leave you alone?” Ran hissed, “We’ve left you alone for two weeks, what the fuck is going on? Why won’t you talk to us?”

“‘Cause it’s none of your business,” you shouted, shoving at Ran’s chest when he got too close to you. Ran didn’t budge, of course, it would take a lot more than a shove from you to push him off-balance. You went to push him again, brows furrowed, tears pooling in your eyes, and Rindou’s chest felt like it was caving in, “Leave me alone, leave me alone! Why won’t you just leave me the fuck alone?”

His lips parted in shock as he stared at you, as he watched your lips tremble and your hands shake from where they were slamming against Ran’s chest over and over again. 

Okay, he thought to himself, this is more than just them pissing you off somehow. Something else is definitely going on. 

Ran seemed to realize it too from how his anger seemed to wash away and his lips turned down. And Rindou truly did feel ill because he had never seen you this distressed before and it really didn’t sit well with him. 

Ran murmured your name quietly, grabbing your wrists, stopping you from hitting him again and Rindou’s breath caught in his throat, one of his hands reached out toward you, eyes narrowing in on your arms, or more specifically, the discolored purple bruises lining up your arms--fingerprints embedded deep into your skin. 

“What happened?” Rindou asked, his voice was low, steadier than he expected and you looked thrown off, following his gaze down to your arms. He watched the panic shoot across your face. You looked at your shoulders, as if you were looking for something… oh. The jacket you started wearing nonstop a few weeks ago.

Have you been…

“Nothing,” you snapped, “It’s none of your business.”

“None of our-” Rindou hissed, eyes ablaze but he cut himself out, desperately trying to calm himself down--the sight of the bruises marring your skin awakening a sort of primal rage that he didn’t know he had in him. “Don’t try to brush this off, tell us what happened.”

“You and Ran come home with bruises all the time,” you said loudly, your voice was shrill, your eyes were wild. You were panicking and Rindou was getting angrier because he didn’t know what you were hiding from them, and he didn’t know why you were hiding it from them. 

“We come home with bruises so you don’t fucking have to!” Ran shouted, stepping closer to you, but you only stepped back, breath quick as your eyes darted around like a cornered animal. “Tell us what the fuck’s going on.”

He should have expected it but Rindou did not react fast enough when you darted between them, taking off down the hall. Rindou moved to chase after you but Ran grabbed his arm, stopping him. 

“Ran, what-” he began angrily but Rindou faltered when he caught the distressed look on Ran’s face. “Ran-”

“Don’t chase after her, you’ll only push her further away,” he said quietly. “She’s not gonna say anything now. We’re gonna have to figure this out ourselves.”

---

“The fuck is your guys’ deal?” Shion complained, wiping the blood off of his cheek as he looked over his shoulder at Rindou and Ran. Rindou rolled his eyes, lips turned down as he looked away, “You guys aren’t usually this boring.”

“Fuck off, Shion,” Ran said sharply, exhaling a puff of smoke as he shot a withering glare at the younger boy, “Not in the mood today.”

Honestly, they hadn’t been in the mood for a while now. Rindou and Ran both have had severely shortened tempers ever since you started with your bullshit a few weeks ago, and he was sure that they had noticed it from the way they started holding Rindou and Ran at arm’s length 

“You haven’t been in the mood for two weeks now,” Shion countered, voicing Rindou’s thoughts, turning around and leaning back on his heels, “What crawled up your ass, huh?”

“I said fuck off,” Ran said and Rindou did not like the tone that edged at his brother’s voice--it was dark, threatening, and from Shion’s narrowed eyes, he caught the implications of it too. Ran, Rindou wanted to plead, let’s not do this right now. 

Rindou had no issue fighting if it came down to it--he had thrown hands with Shion before and would do it again--but right now… His eyes darted to Mochi and Mucho lingering by Shion, gaze shifting between them, and then to Izana, who was lounging on a nearby box watching the scene with interest.

“Somethin’ up with your girl?” Mucho, ever the calm one of the group of them, asked curiously, blue eyes flicking between him and Ran, waiting for a response. 

Ran bristled but Rindou spoke up before Ran could snap something at Mucho, which would undoubtedly go over poorly. Shrugging, he said, “She won’t tell us shit. Asked us to stop pickin’ her up from school ‘n we figured she’s talkin’ to some guy and doesn’t was us to scare him off. Now she’s comin’ home with fuckin bruises all over her arms.”

And Rindou genuinely would have preferred that you were talking to some rich boy that spent his weekends on yachts over this--no matter how much the thought of you getting close with another guy made his stomach turn and his head hurt. Because at least then you weren’t getting hurt for whatever reason, and at least then they weren’t worried sick over what was going on.

“Bruises?” Mucho’s brow furrowed and Rindou noticed that Ran’s rising temper seemed to dim a bit at the genuine concern in Mucho’s voice. “What you mean bruises?”

Rindou motioned helplessly to his arm, “Fingerprints ‘n stuff, up ‘n down her arms, we tried to ask her but she started yelling, getting defensive, then she ran off,” he said.

“You couldn’t chase her down? Let the girl juke you out like that?” Mochi snorted, mocking them and Rindou scowled. 

“It’s not that simple,” Rindou snapped, talking down on him as if he wouldn’t have made that very mistake had Ran not stopped him, “You would know if you ever spoke to a girl before. They get all riled up and angry and then they get silent. We wouldn’t’ve gotten anything outta her.”

Mochi scowled at the dig, opening his mouth to retort, but Mucho was speaking again, “And she’s coming home from school with it?” Mucho asked.

“Yeah, think so. Doubt she’d be getting jumped on the way home from school, we own those streets. No one would dare, not to her,” Rindou muttered.

Shion stretched, fastening his brass knuckles back onto his fist, “Let’s go check it out then, we already fucked up these guys anyway. They’re no fun anymore. I’d like to get my hands on one of those prissy little trust fund babies. Bet they’ll squeal just like their pig parents,” Shion jeered, snickering to himself before looking back at Izana, “What’dya say?”

Rindou followed Shion’s gaze to where Izana was still sitting on the box, watching them all curiously.

Izana’s eyes focused on Ran, seemingly uninterested with the topic, “She goes to that prep school by the National Art Center?” Izana asked, and Rindou and Ran shared a look, unsure of how he knew that because they were pretty sure they had never mentioned it.

“Yeah,” Ran agreed.

Izana’s eyes lit up oddly, a sort of interest swimming in them that had Rindou on edge because he had never seen Izana look so… excited for something before.

“Let’s go then.”

—-

“This is completely unnecessary,” you repeated for what seemed like the millionth time as your eyes darted around the side alley right next to your school, trying to figure out what the fuck you were supposed to do. “Please just get out of my way.”

It was your own fault, really, for prioritizing time over safety. You had thought cutting through the side streets to get home faster would be better than taking the long route and risking them catching up to you but you hadn’t even considered the fact that they’d have set up around the side streets to corner you there. 

It was your own fault, and you were sure you were going to pay for it. 

“Shut the fuck up,” a sharp voice snapped back immediately and you felt ill, breath shaky and trembling fingers shoved in your pocket to try to hide your growing anxiety.

It wasn’t your fault, you tried to convince yourself, it was your fucking uncle’s. 

And it was--anger brewed in you as you remembered how quickly your already shitty social life had fallen apart after your uncle had started his relentless pursuit of Izanagi’s expansion a few weeks back, tearing down some of the other major businesses run by the parents of the kids in your school just so Izanagi could get a few steps ahead. It had been ruthless, and it had annihilated the wealth of even some of the objectively powerful, old money families of Tokyo, including some of whom had kids that went to your school.

And there was no way for them to get back at your uncle. Their parents were stuck trying to manage the fallout of what he had done and the kids were suffering the repercussions--the attention of the tabloids and all of the mocking articles, the shame of having lost the majority of their wealth, paparazzi and reporters had been outside the school for days now--and the only way to ‘get back’ at your uncle, in the eyes of the other kids, was through you.

Two weeks of nonstop harassment and you had no one but your uncle to blame. He had to have known what targeting the parents of kids that went to your school would do to you but he had gone through with it anyway.

Selfish. So fucking selfish, you felt tears prick your eyes as you took another step back and Sato stepped forward, closer to you. His parents had been the most affected by your uncle and he, in turn, has been the most aggressive with you. 

And it wasn’t fair, it wasn’t like you told your uncle to do this, and it wasn’t like you supported it. You barely even fucking spoke to him. And now you were the one getting punished?

“Sato, this isn’t going to do anything,” you pleaded, giving it one more shot, “I’m not-I didn’t-Just let me get home-”

“Fuck you,” Sato spat, “Fuck you and fuck your douchebag uncle too.”

You grimaced, swallowing thickly as you tried to figure out what you should do. Maybe you should have told Ran and Rindou what was going on, you thought weakly as your eyes darted around the group of kids whose families had been ruined by your uncle. But you dismissed the thought immediately. 

If you had told them what was going on, even before this started getting physical…

They would fucking kill them. You knew that. Ran and Rindou were protective over you, Ran had already killed someone for threatening you before. Knowing you were getting harassed at a place that was supposed to be safe--the one place they couldn’t make safe for you… They would lose their minds and they’d be sent to juvie again, except this time they would have a target on their backs because even though these kids’ parents lost the majority of their wealth and power, they still had powerful friends and those powerful friends had a lot of influence and they could spell trouble for Ran and Rindou, both in juvie and out of juvie. 

And it wasn’t fair for you to rely on them for everything--and yeah, you knew they didn’t care, if anything they preferred it but… you didn’t like it. All your life you had been relying on other people for help--your parents, your uncle, Miss Yua and Mister Ayato, and now them--you wanted to handle one thing on your own and you wanted to cry because you knew you failed.

You always fucking fail unless someone else steps in. 

Your eyes blurred, you pressed your lips together tight to try to hide the way they wobbled. 

“Sato,” your voice came out weaker than you would have hoped, pleading, and you were embarrassed because the older boy immediately mocked you, taking another step closer. You matched him with a step back, and in your panic, you didn’t notice how Sato had paused in his movements toward you, and you didn’t notice the way some of the other kids started going wide-eyed.

You stiffened when you felt someone’s chest pressed against your back, fear taking over just for a moment until their right arm wrapped around your waist and you caught sight of the tattoos decorating it.

Rindou.

You were relieved. 

For a second. 

Then realization dawned on you and the fear returned for another reason. 

Rindou.

You looked up at him, eyes wide, but his eyes were narrowed and trained ahead, jaw clenched tight.

“Rin,” you said quietly, and he finally looked down at you, lavender eyes sharp and searching yours just for a moment before he shook his head and shifted you behind him, taking a step forward. 

Your heart sank, “Rin!” you called louder, but he ignored you as he took a step forward, body tense. You tried to take a step after him to grab his arm but a hand curled around your shoulder before you could. You froze, gaze darting to the side and your mouth went dry when your eyes met vacant purple ones, bright in contrast to tanned skin.

“Who are…”

Your voice trailed off when you noticed that Rindou had not come alone. Ran, the boy who grabbed you, and three other vaguely familiar boys had all entered the side street you had gotten cornered in with him. Your brows furrowed as you tried to remember where you had seen them before until your mind was drawn back to the day at the car shop when you had found Rindou and Ran hanging with that group of boys.

The white-haired boy watched you curiously, “Kurokawa Izana, you must be y/n.”

You didn’t get the chance to respond as Ran was moving forward in an instant, face twisted in a sort of fury that you’d never seen on him before. “Ran!” you called after him, voice pleading but Izana’s grip on your shoulder tightened, holding you in place as Ran swung forward hard with his baton before Sato could react.

You flinched at the sickening crack that rang through the air as Ran’s baton connected with his jaw and your breath caught when Sato crumpled immediately.

No, nononono, “Ran, stop!” you cried out but Ran ignored you, reeling his arm back before driving the baton right against the back of his head, “Ran!”

“Fuckin’ piece of shit,” one of the other older boys from your high school spat, moving forward quickly, leaning down to swipe a scrapped pipe on the side street, aiming right for Ran, who was still preoccupied with Sato, who was trying to push himself off the ground.

“Stop it” you shouted, eyes wide, “Ran, look out!”

Rindou was on the other boy in a second, grabbing the pipe mid-swing with one hand and driving his fist into his face with the other. 

Your heart felt like it was in your throat as the rest of them moved forward once Rindou got involved too. 

“Ahh, this gonna be fun,” a boy with a tattoo on the side of his head crooned, “Wonder if blue blood tastes any different from ours.”

Madarame Shion--you recognized that one from Rindou, other than Ran, he was the one that Rindou was closest to in that little group, he was also the one that Rindou bitched about the most. The grin on his face was half-feral as he played with the brass knuckles adorning his left hand. 

Fuck, you thought, eyes wild as you tried to figure out what to do. If it escalated, it wouldn’t be good for them. They’d run home and tell their parents, their parents would get the cops on the case and-

“Guys, stop,” you called louder but you knew it was futile, Ran was too far gone and Rindou wouldn’t listen while Ran was in danger and there was no way their friends would listen to you. You knew enough from Ran and Rindou that all they cared about was violence and bloodshed. 

“They’re not gonna stop,” Kurokawa Izana confirmed your fears, “Let them do their thing.”

“If they kill them, they’ll-” your voice was panicked, your breath was quick.

“They won’t,” a new voice said firmly and your eyes caught sight of a tall boy with blonde hair and an even taller, broader boy with black hair. “We’ll stop ‘em before it gets that far.”

They didn’t wait for you to respond, only following after the three brasher members of their group--the Haitanis and Madarame Shion. Your jaw was slack as you watched the blonde haul one of the boys on Shion off like a garbage bag, flinging him hard into the brick wall on the side street. There was another disgusting crack as his head hit the wall and he fell limp to the ground. 

What the…

Izana did not join them and your hands shook as you watched the fight continue to escalate. Ran was still beating the shit out of Sato while Rindou took care of anyone that tried to approach the two of them.

Your lips parted to call out to them again, they were outnumbered but… 

But you knew the boys from your high school didn’t stand a chance. You physically flinched as you watched blood splatter against the ground when Shion’s brass knuckles drove into one of the boy’s faces and he dropped limp against the concrete.

You glanced up at Izana and you swallowed thickly at the thin smile that tugged at his lips and the cold look in his eyes as he watched Ran and Sato. 

“Stop him,” you said, and you thanked god that your voice was firm and steady. Izana’s eyes flickered down to you, surprise visible in them for a split second before the cold, calculating look returned. He was evaluating you, for something, you just didn’t know what.

Finally, he let out a quiet hum of agreement, “Ran,” he called, voice sharp and demanding. Instantly, Rindou and the three others drew off who they were fighting.

Ran did not.

Izana’s lips twisted down, an unpleasant expression on his face as he let go of your arm to move to Ran.

Rindou was in front of you, taking his place in an instant. His hands curled around your forearms, lavender eyes meeting yours—he was angry, you could tell, but his lips twitched down in concern as he looked over you.

“Why-“ his voice was loud, heated. He took in a shaky breath, forcing himself to calm down. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Can’t we talk about this later?” you said, “I don’t-“

Your voice faltered as you caught sight of Shion licking at the blood on his brass knuckles, a bored sigh escaping his lips as he stretched, “No different.”

“I don’t want to do this here,” your voice was quieter, so only he could overhear, “And I don’t wanna say it more than once.”

Rindou’s lips parted to respond but he was interrupted.

“Oi, you,” Shion called and your gaze drifted to the side, frowning when you noticed he was staring directly at you. “I wanna see the fancy place where Rindou ‘n Ran are always staying at.”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Rindou said, turning his attention to Shion. 

“I’m not asking you, shuddup,” Shion said, keeping his attention on you. “C’mon, we just came all the way out here to beat the shit outta your pathetic bullies. Least you can do is offer us some food.”

“I didn’t ask for your help,” you said pointedly, but frowned when Shion only raised his eyebrows. Your shoulders slumped, and you glanced at Rindou, catching the warning glare he directed at you. At least you’d be able to delay the inevitable argument for a little while longer, “Fine,” you said.

Rindou scoffed in frustration, Shion looked absolutely delighted, tossing an arm around your shoulders and tugging you toward him, “Knew you were better then them fuckin’ lame asses,” he grinned.

Rindou called your name sharply, you looked at him from the corner of your eye, “You’re not getting out of this conversation,” he said.

“Yeah,” you said quietly, “I know.”

—-

PRESENT. 

“Can’t you drive any faster?” you demanded, voice panicked, breath quick as you looked up at the front of the van. Mina glared back at you through the rearview mirror and you glared right back, although you were pretty sure that the glare came off as rather pathetic considering your vision was blurry with tears.

“If I drive any faster, we’re gonna fuckin’ get pulled over, and I’d like to see you try to talk your way out of that one. How you gonna explain to them why we’ve gotta Bonten executive in the back of our van? Not to mention it’s fuckin’ pouring.”

His words didn’t even register as Ran let out another low groan, shifting in your lap. Your attention was drawn back to him, heart in your throat as you brought your hand to his face, cupping his cheek. He instinctually leaned into your touch and a whimper built in your throat as his long lashes fluttered back open, unfocused lavender eyes searching your face.

His bloody lips parted, as if to say something, but before he could try to push out whatever words were on his tongue, his head lolled back again, passing back out. A cry of frustration bubbled at your lips as you cradled Ran’s head to your chest, arms tightening around him. 

He’d been like this since you broke him out of there, fading in and out of consciousness, skin getting paler and breath getting shallower. 

“Mina, drive fucking faster,” you shouted, voice cracking as your words split into a sob, “Fuck, fuck, drive faster!” 

“Y/n, I can’t fuckin’ drive any faster,” Mina boomed, “Getting pulled over by the cops is as good a death warrant for him.”

The cops…? But-

“The fuck you mean?” you asked, “The cops? Wha-How would they even know-”

“Bonten got outed,” Takuya said quietly from the passenger seat, “All of its executives, some time between right after the explosion and now. I saw it on one of the headlines before we got him out of there.”

The world stilled around you, breath catching as you stared down at Ran, slowly processing Takuya’s words. “What?” you breathed out, “Outed? But how?”

“Don’t know,” Takuya admitted, “It’s not looking too good though. Yamagishi still keeps tabs on what goes on regarding this stuff. He says Bonten’s being forced underground. Half of their warehouses have been raided by the PSIA and TMPD.”

Fuck, you wanted to scream, fuck, fuckfuckfuckfuck why were you just receiving bad news after bad news? Why couldn’t you get a break?

Why couldn’t you get a fucking break?

You were having trouble breathing. Control yourself, you pleaded with yourself desperately, Ran’s labored breaths and the sound of the rain beating against the top of the van was causing you to spiral, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out.

But it was hard. God, it was so fucking hard with Ran slowly dying in your arms and Rindou out there alone, hunted by the cops and feds and… reckless, Rindou was always so fucking reckless when it came to Ran and-

You couldn’t even finish the thought. You felt sick and exhausted and guilty, so fucking guilty. Every time you looked down at Ran you swore that your chest was tearing apart, that the anchor on your ankle dragged you down even deeper into the murky depths of the sea. This was all your fault.

All your fucking fault.

Your regrets were endless. You’d been recounting every single moment you went wrong in your life since you woke up from the explosion--every little lie, every time you distanced yourself from them, every time you snapped. You regretted leaving. You regretted losing contact with them. You regretted coming back to Tokyo and you regretted not staying with them the night you had met them at the club. You regretted driving them away at the auction. You regretted everything.

Everything. 

No. Not everything. You did not regret stopping to help them that night all those years ago. You didn’t regret meeting them, you never would. You were sure of that. 

Weren’t you?

Tears of frustration built in your eyes as Ran’s body shuddered in your arms, his breath was ragged and his body was limp and shaky, his weight heavy on your lap. You buried your face into his hair, rocking him back and forth as you tried to muffle the sob that fell from your lips against the top of his head. 

I’m sorry, you wanted to scream, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry.

“We’re almost there,” Takuya said quietly--his words didn’t register but the streets around you did. You felt ill as you caught sight of the old playground that you and Rindou used to visit all the time, the streets that the two of you had chased Ran down when he had dumped a bucket of water on you and Rindou’s head while the two of you were plotting a prank on him, the alley that you had met them in.

You felt sick and dizzy.

You could see the building the penthouse was located in the distance, vision blurry, breath coming out as near wheezes as you tried to calm yourself down. And you were grateful for Takuya and Mina because neither of them acknowledged your ongoing breakdown, you knew if they did, it would only get worse.

“You should let one of us go in with you,” Mina’s voice was as tense as his hands were around the steering wheel, “You won’t be able to get him in on your own.”

“No,” you forced out, “No, you have to get Takuya to a safehouse, they’ll be coming after us as soon as they realize what’s happened. Staying in Tokyo right now is too risky, this is too risky but I have nowhere else and no one else that can help him. I’ll get in contact with you after. I promise.”

“Y/n,” Mina began but you shook your head.

“No, Mina,” you snapped, “I said no. Get yourself and Takuya out of here. If one of us doesn’t…” your voice broke and you squeezed your eyes shut. Calm down. Breathe in, breathe out. “If one of us doesn’t make it out of here, we lose. I’m not losing anyone, not again. You guys are-you’re my family.”

“You shouldn’t be alone,” Mina insisted, “If any of Sugawara’s guys catch up to you, how the fuck are you going to defend both of you and get out of there at the same time?”

“I won’t be alone,” you said firmly, “I-”

“You don’t know if he’ll show up,” Takuya said quietly, “Bonten’s gonna need all hands on deck, they’re-”

“He’ll come,” you said firmly and Takuya quieted down immediately. “I know he will.”

He had to.

You shut your eyes again as Mina began to pull up to the building, letting out another shaky breath as you pressed your lips to the top of Ran’s head, “I’ve got you,” you whispered for the millionth time that night even though you knew he couldn’t hear you, “You’re gonna be okay.”

Pulling back, you tapped his cheeks several times, watching as his eyes fluttered open, dazed and confused, “Ran, you gotta work with me for the next few minutes, okay?”

He wasn’t registering what you were saying. You could see it from how his eyes didn’t acknowledge your words, from how his brows just barely furrowed. Your throat tightened, “Ran,” you repeated, “We gotta get inside, okay, we’re gonna stand you up.”

After a few moments, he nodded, and you let out a relieved exhale, shifting on the seat to help him to his feet, kicking open the back doors of the van, helping him down off the back as best as you could, grimacing when you steadied him as he swayed on his feet, gasping in pain. 

Takuya climbed over the console into the back of the van, crouching at the edge. He called your name and you turned back to look at him. Concern was etched on his face and guilt ate at you when you noticed the heavy bags beneath his eyes--realizing that he probably hasn’t slept in almost a week now.

“Be careful,” he murmured, “please.”

“I will,” you promised, “I’ll see you guys soon.”

Takuya let out a short breath as he nodded, shutting the van doors. You wrapped an arm around Ran’s waist, letting him lean his weight onto you as you helped him to the main entrance of the building. 

You winced as the rain beat against your skin, angled under the overhang, pricking your skin, “I’ve got you,” you repeated again, vision blurring with tears and because of the rain as Ran let out a low groan, nearly crumpling under the pain, “I’ve got you.”

“L/n-san! Where have you-oh god,” a familiar voice called. Mister Botan’s name was on the tip of your tongue, and it hurt having to bite it back. The new doorman’s face was ashen as he caught sight of Ran’s state. 

“Call up to Miss Yua and tell her we need her assistance,” you said sharply, grateful that your shakiness didn’t show in your tone. The doorman only stared at the two of you and anger hit you so hard and so suddenly that you couldn’t even control it, “Now!” you roared and that started him out of his shocked state as he nodded, bowing hastily.

“Of course, l/n-san, I’ll call up immediately.”

And your heart hurt, you barely were able to stop the sob that was rising to your lips as your mind drew you back to the first night you met them. Rushing ahead to the elevator as Ran carried Rindou, Ran’s aggression and defensiveness, everything had been simpler then, even if at the time it felt like the world was ending. 

“I’ve got you,” you told Ran again, and you weren’t sure if you were trying to reassure him or yourself as you pressed your face into the side of his shoulder as you waited for the elevator, “I’ve got you.”

The elevator dinged and you helped him in, pressing the button to the top floor, and it took all you had in you from losing control as Ran leaned onto you, face pressed against the top of your head, breath weak and unsteady, one arm draped around you. The arm you had around his waist tightened, and you grabbed his hand with the other, holding it in yours, trying to breathe in and out slowly to keep yourself calm.

“I’ve got you, I promise,” you said again, desperately trying to blink away the tears, “I promise.”

“I know,” his voice was hoarse, barely audible and this time you couldn’t hold back the sob and Ran’s hand tightened around yours, if only barely--just enough to show he was still with you. 

“I’m sorry,” the words spilled from your lips before you could stop them, “Ran, I’m so sorry.”

And you weren’t even sure what you were apologizing for at the moment--maybe everything, you realized dully. 

You swore it felt like eternity until the elevator binged again, signaling that you had reached the top floor--you were at the penthouse. You couldn’t tear your eyes from Ran’s lidded, barely conscious expression as you half-dragged him forward.

“Miss Yua!” you called, voice shrill and panicked, “Miss Yua!”

“Relax, child,” Miss Yua said sharply, her face was tight as her eyes landed on Ran, gaze worried, “Bring him to my office and then go get changed out of that mess. Understood?”

You opened your lips to protest--there was no way in hell you were leaving Ran’s side yet--but Miss Yua’s gaze narrowed and you swallowed thickly nodding as you helped Ran to the backroom. 

Miss Yua grabbed your arm, eyes softening, “He’ll be okay,” she said firmly, “I’ll make sure of it.”

---

Sixty-five. Eighty. Ninety-five. One fifteen. One thirty.

The speedometer kept ticking up. Rindou’s grip was tight on the handlebars of his bike as he tore down the empty streets of Tokyo. How he hadn’t gotten pulled over yet was a mystery that baffled him--or well, maybe it didn’t. He supposed the cops were too busy raiding all of Bonten’s warehouses to care for someone speeding down the streets.

One forty. One fifty-five. One seventy.

The rain started falling faster and Rindou knew he should slow down, that it was dangerous for him to keep up at this speed in this type of weather but instead, he leaned forward on the bike, speeding up. His breath was shaky and his arms were tense as he turned down another street, closer and closer to the building he had considered home for years, and as he drew closer, the anxiety he had felt upon receiving your message only amplified. 

“If it’s a fuckin’ trap, we’re not getting you outta there, you or your brother. We can’t spare the resources right now. Be fuckin’ smart, Rindou.”

His chest tightened, his lips pressed together tight as Sanzu’s words rang through his ears. And he knew that he was right--he was being dumb, rushing head first into what could be his death because of a shady message from you that he didn’t even know was legit or not. 

02:34 Penthouse. Ran. 

No explanation, no telling him if Ran was okay or not, no anything. Just those two words and when he had tried to respond, the message hadn’t gone through. That was all you had sent. 

Or, well, he assumed it was from you. 

It was from an unknown number that he assumed was you.

That he had no reason to think was you. 

He could be driving to his fucking death. It could so easily be a trap set up by their enemies--it was more likely a trap set up by their enemies than it was you fucking coming through for them. You had given them zero reason to believe in you, zero reason to trust you so then why the fuck was he-

He cut his own thoughts off, pushing away the doubt and steeling himself as the building of the penthouse came into sight, he slowed down the motorcycle, stopping at the front entrance hastily, not even bothering to turn off the motorcycle as he ripped off his helmet and sprinted inside of the building, hand curled around the grip of his gun, safety off, finger ready on the trigger.

He went right for the elevator, grateful that it didn’t take as long as it usually did to get to the bottom floor. He tossed Miss Sara a silent apology when he heard her call out after him in surprise, pressing the doors closed and the button for the top floor.

It was slow. Just as it always had been. And Rindou wanted to punch the fucking wall as doubt began to creep in again. Bonten was falling apart. All of their warehouses had been fucking searched and raided, their faces were all over the news. Sanzu and Kakucho were scrambling trying to protect what little resources they had left and Rindou was here, risking himself for something he had no reason to trust.

He let out a heavy breath, leaning forward as his eyes darted back up to where the floors were binging upward. His clothes were drenched, his hair wet and hanging in his face. His body burned with stress and nerves. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to push it away. 

What if it’s a trap?

His grip tightened around the gun, finger locked on the trigger. 

He knew the answer to that question. 

A sick feeling stirred in his stomach, his throat felt tight, his eyes felt wet.

Please don’t be a fucking trap. 

He readied the gun in front of him as the elevator doors slid open to an empty room. The lights were on and the television was running in the background on the news station. Rindou grimaced as Sanzu’s face flashed on the screen, as live footage from one of their warehouses played in the background. 

Fuck.

“Rin.”

Rindou’s gaze snapped to the side, eyes wild as he shifted on his feet, gun raised in the direction of where your voice had come from--at the entrance of the hall where your bedroom was located, and where theirs used to be. You didn’t flinch, even as his arms trembled and his finger twitched on the trigger.

A part of him told himself to pull it. Bile rose to his throat as soon as the thought crossed his mind.

“Where’s Ran?” he forced out, and he hated how his voice cracked, how he choked over his own words. He pointed the gun at you more insistently, “Where the fuck is he, y/n?” 

“Miss Yua is patching him up,” you said, and he hated how steady your voice was compared to his, even with a gun aimed at your head. “You know how she gets when we interrupt her, I-”

“I don’t care,” Rindou hissed, stepping closer, he pressed the barrel of the gun to your forehead. You didn’t flinch. Your eyes met his. “Turn the fuck around and bring me to him or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off. For all I know this is a fuckin’ trap, just like the fuckin’ auction.”

“Rindou, look at me,” your voice was tight, “Does it look like I am dressed to fucking set you up for a trap right now?”

Rindou’s eyes dropped at your words, lips tightening when he realized you were dressed in a simple cotton tank-top and loose shorts. Pajamas, you would always wear something like that to sleep. And for a moment, just a moment, he could picture you standing in front of him as you argued for a horror movie over one of his ‘dumb action movies.’ Except instead of a gun pressed to your forehead, it was his hand as he forcibly shoved you back down onto the couch before you could change the channel. 

What the fuck was he doing?

He felt sick.

“Boy, put that gun down before I shove it up your ass,” a familiar, rough voice demanded and Rindou’s eyes widened, gaze flicking up to where Mister Ayato was standing at the other end of the hall, eyes cold, lips twisted down. 

Rindou’s hand dropped limp to his side. 

You turned your head to the side, “You shouldn’t be out of bed,” you told Mister Ayato, “You’re still ill. Go lay back down.”

Mister Ayato looked disgruntled, shooting a suspicious look between you and Rindou, and Rindou felt guilt eat at him as Mister Ayato’s eyes narrowed back in on the gun at his side. Rindou’s fingers were shaky as he holstered the gun back at his side, turning the safety back on. 

Satisfied, Mister Ayato turned back into his room, but not before tossing Rindou one last dark look. 

Your name left his lips, little more than a whisper, and he hated how weak he sounded.

“It’s okay,” you said, and he was grateful for the fact that he didn’t need to verbally apologize for you to understand what he was trying to say. “I get it.”

Rindou’s lips tightened and he looked away, “Is he okay?” he finally asked after a few moments. 

“Miss Yua said he would be fine,” you responded and Rindou’s tense shoulders slumped, relief hitting him like a truck because…

“She never says anything she doesn’t mean,” he murmured, and a soft, amused puff of air escaped your lips.

“No,” you agreed, “She doesn’t.”

There was another pause where neither of you spoke. Rindou grit his teeth as he braced himself to speak again, “I want to know the truth,” he said, and next to him, you tense. “The whole truth. From the beginning. You’re not fucking running away this time.”

You didn’t respond, Rindou looked back over at you, catching the way your lips were just barely wobbling, the sheen on your eyes. 

“Promise me,” he insisted. “I want you to-”

“I promise,” you said. Your voice cracked, and Rindou’s eyes darted down, noticing how your fingers were trembling like a leaf in the wind. He let out a long breath, anxiety pooling in his stomach as he wondered what could possibly have you this fucking spooked to tell them. Without thinking, he reached out, taking one of your hands into his, fingers curling around your shaky ones. You tensed for a moment and Rindou’s jaw clenched, waiting for you to pull away, but instead your grip on his hand tightened, and a warm feeling passed over him that he hadn’t felt in a long, long time. “I promise, can we just… I don’t want to say it twice, Rin.”

His eyes met yours again, a pleading expression on your face that he had never quite seen you wear before, and he relented, shutting his eyes briefly as he looked away. 

“Fine,” he said quietly. “We’ll wait for Ran.”

—-

wordcount: 8k

REBLOGS N FEEDBACK GREATLY APPRECIATED

thighs clenched 💦

strange what desire will make foolish people do

word count: 12.8 k

pairing: aizawa shouta x reader

description: your dad dies suddenly and you've never gotten along with your mother. when she announces that she's marrying shouta aizawa, you come up with a plan to ruin their marriage and fall for him in the process.

content warnings: stepdad!aizawa, adult stepdaughter!reader, cheating/infidelity, age gap, jealousy, emotional manipulation, parental loss, grief, descriptions of anxiety attack, mentions of vomit/bile (non-sexual), unprotected sex, spit, oral sex (f!receiving), use of petnames (baby girl), alcohol consumption, recreational drug use, "pranks" that a health department definitely wouldn't approve of, nobody in this is a morally good person. dark content. 18+ mdni (and no blank blogs) or you will get blocked.

authors note: i ended up going balls to the wall and this was 30 pages in google docs :) anyways this is like a series of stepdad!aizawa and angst and it's not the best but it's my favorite thing that i've posted so far

title is from wicked game by chris isaak

songs important for the plot/vibes: wicked game by chris isaak, i don't wanna be an asshole anymore by the menzingers, derailed by the menzingers, karma police by radiohead, you've got to hide your love away by eddie vedder (this is a beatles anti account no i will not be engaging in discourse about it at this time)

You had never experienced a fall from grace. You had always been the pretty little girl-smart, sweet, happy-go-lucky, and the apple of her daddy’s eye. You were convinced you were an angel right here on earth. To your dear dad, there was nothing wrong that you could ever do. Any time you broke one of his loosely defined rules like “no staying out past nine” or “no bickering with your mother while I'm gone on this work trip,” all it took was batting your eyelashes and a noncommittal apology before you were back in his good graces. You were your daddy’s girl, through and through. It didn’t matter to either of you that you were spoiled rotten.

It was probably why your own mother never liked you much.

It started like any other growing pains-your mother and you would squabble over little things, like not wanting to hold her hand when she took you grocery shopping or preferring your dad giving you piggyback rides over her. Then, as you grew up, it morphed into crying in fitting rooms while your mom found new things about you to criticize which eventually led you to shutting her out as much as you could both physically and emotionally.

It was, and you entertained this thought quite frequently, why your darling father died. For three days straight, he complained of chest pains that wouldn’t let up and all your mother would offer to him was over-the-counter painkillers and only cursory words of comfort. She was too busy, or spiteful, to encourage him to go to the hospital. On the fourth morning of that fateful week, you woke up to your mother screaming and your dad not waking up no matter how you shook him. You barely remembered that day-it passed in a blur of paramedics and flowers and tears.

You could remember feeling anger. Anger that would probably last the rest of your life. Anger that would be known across the centuries. There was nothing else quite like it.

You losing your father so suddenly was the beginning of you having to learn how to fall from grace and clip your wings back. You had to learn how to be alone. You had done your research on the grieving process and no matter how long it had been, there came a point where you were bitter and angry and just stagnated there. In a moment of pure hopelessness, you rejected your offer of admission from the university your father had dreamed of you attending since you were a baby. Your mother blanched when you told her, no doubt angered by the fact that you’d be hanging around the house like a black cloud full time now instead of halfway across the country and out of her hair. So she gave you an ultimatum. Either attend classes at the local college or get a job. If you were going to stay at home, the least you could do was be productive. It was how she reasoned with you. You had half expected her to kick you out when she called you into the kitchen to talk but then you remembered-she had an image to uphold. How would it look to the other executives of her firm if she kicked her only daughter out onto the streets so soon after her father died?

Begrudgingly, you enrolled in classes at the local college. You only took just enough credit hours to be considered a full-time student and even then, you never put much effort into your work. It was a rarity if you ever turned any assignments in on time and even rarer still was your actually showing up to your classes. It was a joke to you when you would proudly display your essays with failing grades on the refrigerator. What was the point in trying anymore? Your hero-your real hero was dead and buried. There was no one around to appreciate your efforts anymore.

Halfway into your first semester of your laughable college career, your mother met Mr. Aizawa. Part-time teacher and hero. You didn’t really know how they had met and you didn’t care to know. You had scrunched up your nose in disgust when your mom waltzed into the living room on a Friday afternoon and announced that he would be coming over for dinner that same night. The thought of some man intruding in your father’s house and sitting where he had sat made your blood boil with rage but you kept a calm demeanor for the time being if only for your own sake.

It was a short time later that night that the doorbell rang and you resentfully went to answer it. For some reason, you expected the spitting image of your father to be standing there. Instead, you found a tall, slight man with black hair and a scar underneath his eye. From the way your mother described him, you expected someone more exceptional. You huffed and leaned against the front door, not moving to let him in. You both stood and appraised each other like two gunfighters getting ready for a duel. He broke first and shifted slightly and that was when you noticed the flowers in his hand.

“If you’re at the point where you’re coming over for dinner, you should know that my mom hates that type of flower.” You were nonchalant as you crossed your arms over your chest.

“They’re for you, actually.” Mr. Aizawa extended his arm out towards you and you regarded the small bouquet of daisies with disinterest. You didn’t want him to know that they were your favorite. Still, you took it. There was something strangely endearing about him already-but he didn’t have to know that.

“Wasting money on flowers for me isn’t gonna make me forget that you’re fucking my mom.” You were just trying to get a rise out of him. All you succeeded in making him do was quirk an eyebrow up at you and shove his hands deep in the pockets of his slacks. Mr. Aizawa was so…un-heroic. It almost made you laugh.

Your mother’s voice calling you from the kitchen interrupted your appraisal of the man before you. You opened the door wider and silently invited him in. You led him to the dining room where your mother was making up three plates for dinner. Something about seeing three plates at the table again made bile rise in your throat. You watched as your mother greeted Mr. Aizawa with a kiss on the cheek and a light hug. “Shouta,” she had called him warmly. The bile still swam in your throat.

You barely made it through dinner and the small talk without vomiting. You pushed your food around your plate without committing to eating a single bite. There was anxious energy in the air and you couldn’t quite put your finger on why until both your mother and Shouta stopped eating and kept glancing back and forth at each other. You tried to gauge what was going on from the corner of your eye, but it was your mother calling your name that finally pulled you into the fray.

“We have some news to share with you,” Your mother and Shouta were holding hands lightly across the table and you could tell that whatever was next to come out of your mother’s mouth would be far from good. “We’re getting married!” 

The world fell out from underneath you. You had the edge of the chair that you sat on in a vice grip. Surely you hadn’t heard her correctly.

“What did you just say?” You couldn’t recognize your own voice and Shouta simply watched the scene unfold from his place at the table. He toyed with the handle of his fork.

“I said that we’re getting married! Isn’t that great news, angel?” Your mother was using the voice that she reserved for when strangers were around but she really wanted to scream at you. You grit your back molars together so hard that you could practically hear them squeaking.

“Don’t you ever, ever, call me that again. You know that dad was the only one that could use that name with me. Speaking of dad, couldn’t you wait until he was dead and buried for at least a few months longer before bringing another man into his house?” Shouta held his composure like a statue as you growled across the table at your mother. Something in you was satisfied that he wasn’t running to her aid. Still, static churned loudly in your ears as you waited for her response.

“Don’t I deserve to be happy?” She was embarrassed by the way you were acting.

“No.” The admission damned you.

You got up from where you sat and your mother followed suit. Shouta was the last to rise. You looked between the two of them and barked out a laugh to hide the sweltering tears that wanted to fall. 

“You’re pathetic,” You whispered coolly into your mother’s ear as you pushed your way in between the couple on your way to the front door. You had to get out before the walls closed in on you, and they were closing in fast. 

You were in such a rush to escape the scene that it wasn’t until you were outside stumbling down the sidewalk and sucking in air that you didn’t know you had been deprived of that you realized you weren’t wearing any shoes. You stopped and rubbed the bare skin of your feet against the cement and shivered at the way it tickled. At least it was something to focus on other than the betrayal. You weren’t really surprised that your mom pulled something like this, but it still stung. You didn’t buy into the whole “your dad would want your mom to be happy” sentiment that family friends poured into your ears in the weeks after your father’s death. What your father deserved was happiness. Not your mother and the stray cat she probably found at the train station. You chuckled out loud as you thought of Mr. Aizawa like that. 

In all honesty, he didn’t look like he belonged anywhere and it was hard for you to believe that he split his time between being a teacher and a hero. Still, throughout dinner, there was something about his eyes that kept entrancing you. Maybe your mother was onto something with him.

“You’re gonna get a splinter in your foot if you keep it up.” The monotone voice came from behind you and you slowly turned to see your mother’s suitor situated against the darkness of the night. You glared at him.

“What do you care?” You had to remember that while Shouta wasn’t the enemy, he was still on the opposing team.

“I don’t care, but it seems kind of silly to go and get hurt just for the hell of it.” You lifted an eyebrow at his statement.

“That’s funny coming from a hero,” You stop to look him up and down. “Especially one with as many scars as you have.”

“With my work, at least there’s usually some kind of outcome at the end.” He steps over to perch on a bench underneath a short tree. You cross your arms over your chest and try not to shiver in the cool night air.

“Who’s to say I wasn’t headed towards my own outcome?” Shouta just stares at you. You can tell he’s willing to let you talk yourself in circles and you take the bait. “What outcome do you think you’re gonna have with my mother?”

“I think I’m gonna marry your mom and get a stepdaughter with a horrible attitude problem out of the deal.” Shouta smirks over at you after a second and it’s the first time in a while that you feel yourself crack a genuine smile. 

“You think you’re funny.” You say, trying to fight the edges of your lips back down into a frown.

“Not funny, just observant.” His smile is wider now and it’s almost enough to make the weight on your heart not so heavy.

“Why did you ask my mom to marry you in the first place?”

“I didn’t ask her.” His eyes shift down to the ground and then back up to you.

“What do you mean?”

“She asked me on one of our dates. I thought it was respectable. I think your mother would be good to settle down with before I get too old.” You snort at his answer.

“You think it’s respectable to marry a widow whose husband has been dead less than a year with a maladjusted daughter thrown in the mix?”

“I could do without the maladjusted daughter.” There’s that mischievous grin again and you can feel something inside of you start to crack that you hadn’t felt at all since your father died. It makes you woozy.

“I could do without her too.”

The wedding is planned relatively quickly. It’s a small enough affair to be held in a backyard garden and the day is sunny despite the turmoil you feel raging inside of you. You had been awake since the early hours of the morning, switching between fuming that your mother was actually going through with getting married to someone you both hardly knew and twirling around in front of your bathroom mirror in the dress that you had picked out for the ceremony. 

With your hair and makeup done for the first time in an eternity, you felt quite stunning. It was your vanity that led you to being more cruel than usual to your mom.

It wasn’t like she didn’t deserve it, but even the words slipping off of your tongue felt like they sliced right through the muscle. Your mother called your name harshly as you held her gaze in the big mirror in her bathroom but still, Shouta failed to truly come to her defense. You were satisfied with that. You thought momentarily that maybe he might have agreed with your statement that, “Oh mom, you look beautiful. It’s just a shame that you’re a cunt on the inside.”

You left your mother’s room to the sound of Shouta offering warm words of consolation, could have sworn you heard him offer, “It makes sense that she’s still angry.” You bit your tongue to hide your grin when you heard him fail to refute what you had said. 

You made your way out into the garden covered in lavender and honeysuckle to mingle among the few guests who had shown up. You kept a crystal champagne glass in your hand as you greeted your cousins and extended family. You relished in introducing yourself as “Shouta’s stepdaughter” to the few of his work colleagues that were in attendance. The fleeting appreciative glances that they gave weren’t lost on you and slowly, the cogs of your mind started to mingle with the champagne you drank and as the ceremony started, you started to formulate a plan to ruin your mother’s new marriage. Set it on fire and watch it burn to ash. All it would take was breaking Shouta down and stealing him from her and if there was one thing you knew how to do, it was how to get your way.

After the ceremony came the reception and chairs were cleared away and tables were moved around to allow guests to dance and mingle with each other. You sat by yourself with a sour feeling hanging over your heart. Your mother had actually been cruel enough to get remarried. Their vows and the kiss they shared played over and over again as you sipped on your champagne. The anger was exhausting. Nothing would have been better in that moment than being able to run into the arms of your father and cry to him about everything that was going wrong.

There came a light tap on your shoulder. Slowly, you angled your head to see who was intruding on your bubble of misery. Shouta. He was well put-together, all slicked back hair and an uncharacteristic happy grin. You remembered your own vow from earlier and painted a matching toothy grin on your face. Your eyes flicked down to the hand that he held out towards you.

“Would you like to dance?” You looked at him in confusion.

“What, you know how to dance?”

“There are lots of things you don’t know about me.” Oh, you hoped there were. Still, he smiled pleasantly at you.

“Okay, one dance and you can list off all the things I don’t know about you. For vetting purposes.” Being sweet to him was all part of the plan.

“I think it’s a little too late for vetting now.” He replied as you placed your hand in his and stood up. His hand was large and warm compared to your own. You toyed with the urge to fully lace your fingers through his as he led you to the impromptu dance floor. The song playing was nice and mid-tempo and the lyrics were saying something schmaltzy about love. Shouta held you at a respectable arms distance as the two of you swayed to the music. You could hear little coos of adoration from the couples dancing around the two of you. It fuelled you as you looked up, wide-eyed, at Shouta. He opened his mouth for a second too long before closing it quickly and you cocked your head to the side before running a hand up his bicep. His forehead creased almost imperceptibly.

“What were you gonna say?” You used your most innocent voice, the one that always worked on your dad.

“I know you don’t like when it gets brought up, but uh, I feel really fortunate that your mom came into my life and I’m gonna try my best to be a good role model for you.” The soft smile on your face stuttered as you thought of him trying to replace your father. You managed to stay strong and fight through the feeling. You weren’t mad at Shouta, not really. Just cautious. You needed him on your side to get back at your mom. However, there was something saccharine and sugary and enthralling about the man that stood in front of you. He seemed like someone who could take all of your troubles away if you would let him. As Shouta spun you around to hide his own bashfulness, you decided that he was something you had to have regardless of the ruination of your mother’s relationship.

It was okay if you had a little crush on him as you went about your plan.

You had seven days to yourself; one hundred and sixty-eight hours to be exact. Time seemed to eke by as you split your time between decaying on the couch and finding inconsequential things around the house to make your mom’s life just a bit harder when she returned from her honeymoon. Hair removal cream found its way into her shampoo. Gently used mouthwash found its way back into the bottle. Files in her home office subtly found their way to new homes. All of your pranks were plausibly deniable, of course, and something told you that Shouta would come to your defense.

You were angry after all and you planned to play into that as much as you could with him. He wouldn’t want to rock the boat and get on your bad side so soon after getting married, would he? He didn’t seem like the type of person to want to stick his nose somewhere that it didn’t belong.

As you milled about the empty house on your vacation from your mother, you did more research on your new stepfather. Eraserhead. There wasn’t much to be found on him aside from some news clips with him in the background, long hair floating wildly around his head. At first, you couldn’t believe that the same man holding off hordes of villains was the same man who asked you to dance and vowed to be a good man only days prior. He didn’t seem all that remarkable in his everyday life, but perhaps that was how he wanted it. You kept thinking back to the way he bashfully smiled at you and even though you were alone, you felt blood rush to your cheeks.

Last night as you laid in bed, your mind drifted to what it might be like if he laid on top of you, in between your legs-taking care of you in a different way than what he had meant when you danced together. Your mind had raced as you imagined what his kisses must be like, what it might be like for him to hold you down and make you squirm. It was enough for you to get off, lips parted in a delicious whine as your own fingers pushed in and out of you. You didn’t feel any kind of shame. Shouta deserved better than your mother and even if he might not ever fully grasp that, the least that you could do was sow the seeds of discontent in his mind.

Your musings were interrupted by the sound of the front door unlocking and suitcases scraping past the threshold. You finished gathering a spoonful of peanut butter from the jar and turned to lean against the counter. So, your time alone has finally come to a close. Your mother would ascertain that there would be no more walking around half-naked in front of her new husband, but there was time for one last performance at least.

You brushed one edge of your oversized sweater off of your shoulder, leaving you clad in only your underwear and the cardigan that hung from your frame. You patiently listened to the scuffle of luggage being moved around as you popped the spoon of peanut butter into your mouth. Shouta appeared around the corner and threw his jacket over one of the dining room chairs. He took notice of you immediately.

“We made it back safely!” His words sounded incredibly lame and he never broke his gaze from your eyes. You batted your eyelashes prettily at him as you pulled the spoon from your mouth.

“I can see that.” You were amused at him attempting to make small talk as you deadpanned back at him.

“Our trip was actually really neat. I think your mom took some pictures if you wanna look at them sometime.” Shouta had barely gotten the sentence out of his mouth before your mother was entering the kitchen and her eyes had gone just about the size of Pluto. Your full name sprung from her lips in a shriek.

“You know better than that! Go put some clothes on!” Her words echoed in the now abject silence of the kitchen before you broke out in spiteful laughter and put your dirty spoon in the sink. As you went to leave, still laughing ruefully, you could see an embarrassed blush rising up Shouta’s neck and that had made it all worth it. Your laughter wound down to breathless chuckles as you made it to the hallway and as you paused for a minute to catch your breath, you listened as Shouta once again came to your defense to the tune of, “Honey, it’s okay. She just has to get used to a man being in the house again.”

It’s a relatively easy decision for you to start working out to have more in common with Shouta, even though you’re not very good at it. It made sense that he’d work out. He was a hero and surely the job would be made all the harder if he didn’t have the physique to back it up. At the very least, Shouta seemed like he worked out just enough to be strong for the job. 

His morning schedule is still a mystery to you, so you start to wake up early religiously each morning to work out in the living room within full view of the kitchen. It just so happens that you’re there on your little yoga mat in your sports bra and athletic shorts struggling your way through your second set of squats, when you hear someone moving around in the kitchen. You move your head to the side just enough to see Aizawa appraising you from the counter. You keep up with your routine and try to fight the smirk on your face. You really give an earnest effort to your workout now but you stop when you hear his gruff morning voice. 

“Your form is wrong.” You look over to where he stands, shirtless, pouring a cup of coffee. You’re out of breath and the sight doesn’t help. You stand up to your full height and face him.

“How is it wrong?” You try to hide your breathlessness and the way your tongue wants to stick to the roof of your mouth. He sets his mug on the edge of the counter and crosses over to you. His fingertips airily trace over your spine first. You almost jolt forward at the unexpected touch.

“Your back is too curved. Keep your shoulders back like this,” He tugs your shoulders back until you can feel your spine straighten out. “and your feet are too far apart.” He nudges your feet closer together by a few inches. You let him move you around like a ragdoll for a few moments more. Finally, he steps in front of you and considers your new form. 

“Try it now and see how it feels.” He instructs and you feel incredibly goofy as you go through the motions, his measured gaze never leaving you. You have to admit, the squats feel better now and less like you’re fighting your own body. When you rise to your full height again, you stand with your legs together and cross your arms across your chest.

“That was better.” You confirm, trying to catch your breath. Shouta smiles gently at you and you want to scratch at your skin for the way it makes you feel.

“I’m going on a run in a little bit, you should come with me.” He invites and all you want to do is glug down a gallon of water and collapse onto the floor, but then you remember your solemn vow to yourself and you accept his invitation. It’s all in the name of ruining your mother’s happiness after all.

There wasn’t a lot you knew about heroes. When you were younger, you had a passionate interest in All Might, but so did every other kid in the country. There wasn’t anything special about that.

You were content enough to leave the life-saving to the specially trained heroes. You knew you didn’t have the resolve or compassion to make it as a hero yourself. Still, it was an occupation that you respected from afar. Now, it was something that you got to observe up close every time Shouta came wandering home. Most of his shifts were at night, after everyone was in bed. It was when the real villains could play. Regardless of everything, you admired his ability to train a new generation of heroes during the day and still go out to patrol the streets and rooftops most nights.

You wouldn’t admit it cognizantly to yourself, but you found yourself adapting to wake up whenever you would hear the front door click shut in the small hours of the morning. You would peel yourself out of bed and wrap a blanket around your shoulders as you crept to the end of your hallway to watch Shouta. His goggles would always be pushed up around his forehead. His stubble would always be more prominent than usual. The dim light from the stove in the kitchen always made his eyes look more exhausted than they probably were. From your hiding spot, you would watch him pour a glass of water and sip on it at the kitchen table until his head got too heavy for him to hold up. You would wait until you could hear his gentle snores wafting over to your ears and then you would tiptoe over like you were in church and wrap your blanket around his shoulders. You would work his goggles off of the crown of his head and sit them gently on the table next to him before running your fingers through his silky hair. Your stomach always tingled. You always wanted to duck your head down and place warm kisses on his hairline.

You never noticed his eyes, very much awake, on you as you retreated back to your room.

The thing with time is that it was supposed to heal wounds. Except for you it didn’t. You kept hoping every day that you would wake up and find that you would care a little bit less about the loss of your dad. Maybe even be able to compartmentalize it and get on with your life, get your grades up and transfer schools and move out on your own. Still, you woke up every morning with a deep seated hole in your chest. It was assuaged in little pieces by the family portraits hung around the house. A family picture of your first birthday here. A picture of you and your dad at an awards ceremony there. The little remnants of your dad around the house helped to serve as a reminder that you were still human, as hard as it was some days.

Until one day the pictures weren’t there anymore.

You tore into a blind rage, your mom and Shouta watching from the kitchen as you threw the television remote at the wall. A novel was flung all the way against the refrigerator in the kitchen. You screamed like your head was being torn off. It went on and on until you tired yourself out and sat on the couch to sob embarrassedly, face hidden in your hands. 

You tuned into the whispers emanating from the kitchen. You caught onto your mother telling Shouta that it was time for you to move on, that you were an adult and needed to stop relying on your emotions to guide you. Your hands balled into fists. What did she know? Your head cleared only by a fraction when you heard Shouta answer that maybe taking down the pictures wasn’t the right way to go about things.

You sat on the couch crying for so long that you didn’t realize when the two of them left. You stood, as if on autopilot, and gathered your materials for the classes that you had that day and departed, not caring how you looked, but just needing to get out of the house. 

When you returned that afternoon, the pictures of you and your dad sat in brand new frames on your bed.

It was no secret that you had more friends in high school. You were near the top of your class and always managed to stay on top of gossip and the happenings around school. You missed hanging out with your girlfriends when you were happy, before they all went off to the schools they had been dreaming of for years. You were jealous of them and felt spiteful anytime they would post pictures of the great times they were having on their social media. It didn’t matter that you self-imposed your own exile to wallow in your bitterness. You were envious that your friends were able to fool around with frat boys when all you seemed to attract were the bottom-of-the-barrell burnouts from your college. Not that you were much better than them these days. 

You spent too many weekends holed up in the apartments of your new friends, smoking weed and watching them play video games just for something interesting to do. It almost made you want to turn your life back around and get back on track. Almost, but not quite.

So when you heard of a party happening one weekend, you jumped at the chance to go and rallied your friend group to go with you so you wouldn’t look like so much of a loser.

When you are ready to leave, Shouta and your mother are having an intimate date night in the dimly lit kitchen, sharing wine and giggling at each other over things you can’t make sense of. You wonder what they have in common. Your mother makes you sick to your stomach but a green claw of unbridled jealousy seizes at your chest when you hear the subtle bedroom lilt to Shouta’s voice and when you see how his hand reaches up to push a lock of hair off your mother’s shoulder. You shake off the feeling and enter the kitchen in earnest, dressed in a skimpy outfit that makes your mother’s eyes pop out of her head. You can tell without even looking at her from years of professionally annoying her. You completely ignore Shouta-don’t even give him a spare glance as you walk by the two on your way to the front door.

“Where are you going?” You hear your mother call as you reach for the door handle.

“Out with my friends,” Is all you offer up before you’re gone.

And the party isn’t bad, the music is loud and there’s enough alcohol to placate you for the evening. Even your friends seem like they’re having a good time as they mill about in the crowd. There are just enough people that you don’t know there for you to get comfortably drunk. It’s a good way for you to finally unwind, you think, as you step unsteadily into the messy kitchen. You’re trying to pour yourself another drink when a spindly hand comes out of nowhere and takes your cup from you and finishes preparing your drink.

“I was doing just fine pouring my own drink.” You pout at your friend that you arrived with from the opposite side of the counter and he circles around to stand next to you, too close for what you were comfortable with.

“Nice girls shouldn’t be pouring their own drinks.” He drawls and it was smooth, but you clench your teeth and take the cup from his hand.

“‘m not a nice girl.”

“Sure you are. You just spend a lot of time pretending that you aren’t.” His cool breath is ghosting next to your ear and you’re just the perfect amount out of your right mind to let your eyes close and let your head lean into the feeling. Your mind is a television screen and it’s flickering through what it would feel like to have Aizawa in the same position, doing the exact same thing. 

“If I was such a nice girl, I wouldn’t be hanging out with you, huh?” You lower your voice just enough for only him to hear and then he’s laughing in your ear and his slight torso is pressing against your back and it’s all too easy for you to envision Shouta in his place. Your heart is thumping in your chest, probably so heavily that he can feel it clear through to his chest. Then his nose is pressing against the smooth skin of your neck and his lips are ghosting against you and you can’t help but grip the edge of the counter with your hand that isn’t holding your drink. “Fuck, do that again,” you whisper and press more into his hold, grinding back against the man as his tongue licks a stripe up your neck, hand cradling the opposite side of your head to give him more room. His teeth bite against your skin roughly and you can’t stop the sound that escapes your mouth. It only serves to egg him on, encouraging him to bite and suck at your neck more fervently. Your eyes are shut tight with images of Shouta absolutely ruining you running through your head. It’s not fair to your friend, not in the least, but you warned him that you weren’t a nice girl in the first place. You can feel him hard against your back and that’s enough to startle you out of your reverie. You push him off of you and you can’t turn to look him in the eye. 

“I gotta go…find something else to do,” You parse out and walk on unsteady legs out of the kitchen and back into the music-filled living room. The dancing and drinking is still going heavy but your mood is somber now. You want to be home and you don’t care what it takes to get there as you finish your final drink in only a few sips and set it on the porch steps as you leave the house. 

You weren’t very far from home and despite your level of intoxication, you knew you could get home without forgetting the way. You pulled off the heels that you wore and dangled them from your fingers as you trekked home in the dark. It was hard to keep your mind from your stepfather-the gentle way he cradled your mother’s face in his large palm while he smiled at her and the way he poured more wine for her without her having to ask. You clenched your jaw. That should have been you. Your mother didn’t deserve such a good thing-such a handsome thing. If you had any say in the matter, and by heaven, you would weasel your way in any way you could, Aizawa would be yours and her heart would be broken. It was only fair, he seemed to be the only thing capable of mending the shattered and torn pieces of your angry little heart. You were so fucked.

You were so fucked and lovesick thinking about him as you walked back into your house that you didn’t even register all the noise you were making as you bumped from wall to wall trying to get back to your bedroom. Maybe you were more drunk than you originally thought. You heard Shouta’s voice calling your name from just outside of your cracked bedroom door what felt like seconds after you entered. All you could do was stand there and sway as he watched you from the doorway.

He was clad in flannel pajama pants and nothing else and his hair was messier than usual and you frowned at the sight. It was obvious. He was too relaxed. He had fucked your mother at some point after you left and that made dread settle into your stomach. You wanted to vomit. Shouta was your territory, didn’t she know? Still, you grinned at him like a child trying to get out of trouble. He appraised you, looking you up and down, and you wanted there to be more to his gaze than there was.

“You’re drunk.” It was a statement of fact and it rolled off his tongue weightlessly. You weren’t in trouble.

“I don’t think I am,” You licked your lips and over pronounced every syllable. Your tongue was liquid in your mouth. He barked out an amiable laugh and stepped into your room proper. You were glued to the spot as your heart started to race not for the first time that night.

“Sit down, I’ll get your pajamas.” Aizawa’s warm hand was on your upper arm and guided you to sit down on the edge of your bed. Your skin prickled in his grasp as you let him guide you. Your entire body felt like you were a past-done spaghetti noodle.

“They’re in the top drawer,” You offered up as he looked, a little lost, around your room. You bit the tip of your tongue in between your front teeth to stop from grinning too hard. You liked him taking care of you.

You watched as he dug through your dresser and grabbed a big t-shirt and pair of shorts. He folded the articles neatly in his hands and crossed the room back to your bedside where he placed the pajamas in your lap. You were about to open your mouth to thank him when he took your chin into two of his fingers and pulled your head to the side gently. Your skin buzzed underneath his touch as he ran the tip of his rough pointer finger over the bruise on your neck that you had pretended Shouta had left there in the first place. 

“You’ve been lettin’ boys kiss on you?” He questions teasingly and your stomach clenches so hard you almost can’t reply. 

“Uh, not here,” you swipe your thumb across your bottom lip, “just there.” The reply made sense in your head. You nod your head against the finger on your neck. 

“Well, at least you’re having fun.” Aizawa laughs in earnest, if a little awkwardly, and then his touch is gone from your skin. 

“Not really,” You admit and start to take note of how the room is spinning but you take pains to keep from slurring your words. Shouta raises up an eyebrow at you. 

“Would rather be kissing boys properly, y’know?” There’s a nervous titter between the two of you. 

“Okay,” he chuckles out, hand rubbing awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Just don’t let your mom see.” You feel compelled by some force of nature to keep talking despite the voice in the back of your head screaming at you to just shut up and go to sleep. 

“Would you kiss me?” The words slither out of your mouth as if they were lava and the room isn’t spinning anymore, but upending itself over and over again in the corner of your vision as you watch a stricken look cross over Aizawa’s face. 

“I’m your stepdad and I think you need to remember that, baby girl.” He instructs and you hate the way that he sounds like he’s talking to a wounded animal that’s been stuck in a trap. 

“But if you weren’t? What if I was just…somebody that you knew?” 

“I think you need to put on your pajamas and go to sleep before you talk yourself into hurting your own feelings.” Your eyes felt watery and weak. You felt bile rising in your throat and started to panic.

“Fuck, you’re gonna throw up, aren’t you?” Aizawa registered the seasick look on your face and was hoisting you up by your arms and hauling you into the bathroom before you could even nod your head in confirmation. It was a good thing, at least, that he was in his right mind, because you unleashed the contents of your stomach into the toilet not even a second after your knees connected sharply with the tile of the floor. For once, you were thankful for throwing up, because then you could blame the tears welling out of the corners of your eyes on that.

The shit-faced debacle passed blessedly without much mention. You and Shouta went about your daily lives without bringing up how he held your hair back for you and sat next to you while you cried about missing your dad into the toilet seat. Somehow, even through you blubbering mindlessly about how much your dead dad meant to you, you didn’t let anything slip about your plan to ruin your mother’s marriage or your stupid infatuation with the man himself. 

For the past week, you had regarded each other cordially from opposite sides of whatever room you were in together. You would nod in acknowledgement of each other when you poured coffee at the same time in the morning or when you were coming back from studying and he was headed out on some hero’s errand that you really didn’t care about enough to understand. But now, it was the weekend and you were holed up in your room with a joint and a half-done essay to prevent a repeat of last Friday night. 

Loud music and smoke filled your room as you sat on the floor with your laptop and tried to make sense of the argument you were making on paper. For the first time in your college career, you were trying to apply yourself. Secretly, you enjoyed the warm smile that Shouta had given you earlier in the week when you had hung a paper with a passing grade scribbled at the top on the refrigerator. You wanted a repeat performance.

The steady clacking of your nails against laptop keys was interrupted by a knock at your door. You turned your music down slightly and tapped the ash off of your joint as you called for whoever was knocking to come in. Your door swung open quickly and Shouta propped himself against the door frame. You turned your music down lower.

“What are you doing at home on a Saturday night listening to “Karma Police” all by yourself?” He questioned and you rubbed your dry eyes.

“I have a dead dad. I’m entitled to my sadness.” You deadpanned and laughed after a second. The melodrama hadn’t started to get old yet.

“I mean…that’ll do it.” You raised your eyebrows up at him, wondering why he had come to your room in the first place. Shouta cleared his throat and stepped into your room before sitting down on the floor like you were. “You sure you don’t wanna go out and hang out with people your own age?” He crosses his legs as you take one last pull off of your joint before squishing it out on the ashtray next to your knee.

“I was trying to finish this paper, actually.”

“Oh yeah? What’s it on?” You half expected Shouta to say something about the smoke.

“Heroes and ethics or something like that.”

“And you didn’t want my opinion?”

“I like doing things on my own.”

“So you don’t wanna watch a movie with me, then?” There’s that mischievous smile on his face again that makes your heart feel like a galloping horse.

“You could ask my mom.”

“She’s out at a dinner.” You type up one last sentence and hum in acknowledgement of his statement.

“What kind of old man movie do you want me to watch with you?”

“Terminator.”

“Properly retro.” You affirm, closing the lid of your laptop and standing up. “Let’s go, then.” You hold out your hand to Shouta and help him up from the floor. You half expect to hear his knees pop in their sockets as he stands. You lead the way into the living room and sit down on the couch while he pulls up the movie with the television remote. He settles on the couch opposite from you. You’re startled by the overwhelming want to lean your head against his t-shirt clad chest.

“Have you ever thought about getting a cat?” He asks casually as the opening credits roll, remote clinking down onto the coffee table.

“Mom’s not a big cat person.” There’s a quick pause. “I used to have one a long time ago. Dad and I found it behind a trash can. I named it All Might.” Shouta snorted a laugh at your admission. 

“Why’d you name that poor cat All Might?” He pulled a throw blanket down from the back of the couch and fluffed it over his legs. You stared at the simple action. Shouta clocks you from the corner of his eye but you don’t realize.

“I had a crush on All Might when I was little.” You were very serious.

“That’s horrific.”

“Hey, there are lots of things you don’t know about me.” You recalled the conversation the two of you had while you danced at the wedding.

“I know a little bit more about you after peeling you off the bathroom floor last weekend.” Your gaze breaks from his in embarrassment. “You know you can talk to me about missing your dad, right? I can try my best to understand even though I’m not really too good at this whole bonding thing.” He wiggles his eyebrows at you in an attempt to lighten the mood back up. “I want to be a good person for you.” You give him an appreciative glance but can’t figure out how to reply due to the raw emotion seizing your chest. “One good thing did come out of the whole ordeal though.” Shouta continued on and you focused on the deep timbre of his voice to ground yourself.

“What’s that?” It came out in a whisper.

“I don’t have to worry about you getting kidnapped because when you don’t want to move, you don’t. I had the worst time trying to get you into bed.” As you felt your face heat up, you wondered if he caught onto the double meaning as well.

“I’m sorry about all of that.”

“It’s okay, baby girl. It’s not the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.” He lifted up the corner of the throw blanket that was closest to you and motioned you over with a tilt of his head. Surely, he just saw you shivering. He had no ulterior motives. You were the only one with those.

You scooted over apprehensively against the material of the couch until your side rested gently against Shouta’s and he let the blanket float down over the two of you. “It’s cold in here, isn’t it?” You could only nod your head in agreement as the right side of your body felt like it was being engulfed in blue flames. 

Your favorite times lately were spent getting to know Shouta better. Getting to know the person he was away from the house, when he was Aizawa-sensei or Eraserhead. You were realizing that he had many different faces, but at the heart of it all, Shouta was really just a person who tried hard to do the right thing. If you were a person that tried to do the right thing like he did, you wouldn’t still be trying to ruin your mother’s marriage. If you were smart, you would have realized that your plan would hurt Shouta as well.

But you weren’t really a common sense girl. Or a nice girl. You just wanted revenge for your devastated heart.

And certainly, Shouta falling in love with you the way you were starting to fall for him wouldn’t hurt either.

He offered to take you to dinner and show you some of his patrol routes since you had been peppering your interest about his job into conversation more fervently lately. He called it important bonding. Your mother was out on work business again and you thought Shouta might have just been lonely. 

You had a fantastic time walking through the brightly lit streets with him. He was still dressed in all black and his back was hunched forward like he was unimpressed, but something told you Shouta was having a good time. Every now and then, he would point out an alleyway or a building where he apprehended a villain. It filled you with a weird sort of pride to know that he did his job so well. He seemed so fucking…morally upstanding that it made you want to scream.

“You gettin’ hungry?” His measured tone broke you out of your thoughts. You nodded up at him and hoped that the smile you gave him was pretty enough, better than your mother’s at least. “I’ll show you this cool place I eat at sometimes.” Shouta grins. You dig your fingernails into your palm.

You follow him to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It’s run by an older couple that seem to know him well. You end up ordering the same thing he does and you watch as Shouta plays with his wedding ring absent-mindedly while he takes in his surroundings. You can’t figure out how to start a conversation. You tap the bottoms of your shoes against the linoleum floor and he looks at you like he’s about to say something but is interrupted by the little old lady bringing over your food. 

“Is this your new wife, Eraser?” The lady asks as she places his plate in front of him. Her question is innocent but you choke on your spit and watch as vermillion creeps up Shouta’s neck.

“This is my stepdaughter,” he corrects, recovering easily enough and you smile politely at the lady. She smiles back warmly, ducking her head a little bit in consolation for her mistake.

“Forgive me. She’s absolutely beautiful though.”

“Thank you, I know.” It’s your turn for blood to rush to your head. You have to tell yourself over and over again not to read anything into it as the old lady walks away. There’s a charged silence over the table as the two of you focus too hard on your food. You’re the first to break the awkward air.

“I’m thinking about moving out.” It’s abrupt and you don’t realize at first what you’ve really said. Shouta’s eyes widened.

“What do you mean?” He takes a bite of his food.

“I mean, if I keep my grades up, I can still transfer into the university I was originally supposed to go to. I’m planning on summer classes too.” You watch him chew his food as you move your own around the plate.

“I think that’s a great goal to have if you can keep your grades up. I can help you study for your exams if you’d like.” He smiles warmly at you and you feel okay again.

“I’d really like that, Shouta.” You feel the urge to stuff your mouth with food so you aren’t encumbered by the emotions that you’re feeling. Silence settles again over the table. You’re taking a sip of water as you notice his mouth open and close a few times, like he can’t figure out what it is that he wants to say.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, it’s just…adult stuff.” He fiddles with his wedding ring again.

“I’m an adult.”

“I know but I…I shouldn’t talk to you about it.” Shouta looks down at his plate. You nudge his foot with your own underneath the table.

“Come on…we’re bonding, right?” You’re being too sweet, too calculated, but you really do want to know what’s bothering him.

“Your mom is just really difficult sometimes.” He blurts out and you almost laugh out loud but keep up your supportive front for his sake.

“She can definitely be a handful. I was just lucky to have my dad around to help soften the edges for a while.” Your food stands all but forgotten now. You watch as Shouta’s fingers drum on the table just centimeters away from your own. Gently, you slide your hand closer so that your fingertips are touching but you play it off like you don’t notice.

“I think maybe I’m just not used to relationships like this one. Or maybe I just need to finish adjusting. I don’t know.”

“Do you still love my mom?” Your senses are heightened as you speak, but you’re interrupted by the old woman bringing over the bill. Shouta hands over his card and pretends like he never heard your question. He puts his card back in his wallet and slides out of the booth. You still look at him expectantly but he maintains his innocence.

“C’mon, there’s an old record store on this side of town that I want to show you.” He smiles, tight-lipped, and you scoot out of the booth. You wonder why he ignores the question. You want a solid answer why he always runs to your defense (aside from the answer you’ve deluded yourself into thinking is the truth) but you don’t think you’ll be privy to that information tonight. You follow him out onto the sidewalk. You like how you and Shouta are absorbed into the nighttime crowd like any other couple. You don’t talk to each other for fear that your conversation will be lost among the bustle of the people.

Shouta walks with purpose, but never so quickly that you can’t keep up with him. In any case, it would be hard for you to lose him due to his stature. Sometimes you forget how tall he is with the way he hunches over and the way he carries himself. You like the way the neon of the street signs illuminates the sharp edge of his nose. You find yourself staring at the wisps of long, inky hair that frame his face. He was so, so beautiful in a meek way and it’s extremely easy for you to get lost in it. It’s what leads you to almost bumping into his shoulder as he comes to a stop. A giggle, a real giggle bubbles out of his mouth and you feel the final nail being driven into your coffin. You needed him. Like air, like water. He was more necessary to you than he was to your mother. All it would take was a single move. A single move. You could persuade him easily enough that you were a better answer to his question.

“You ready to check it out?” He nods toward the door and starts to push inside without truly waiting for your answer. You try to shake off the millions of emotions that are running through your body.

Inside the record store is warm and smells like old books. You break away from Shouta for the moment and start to paw through the racks of records by yourself. You pick up some of the titles and flip them around to the back, trying to read the writing on the back. It’s hard to concentrate. Your mind keeps stagnating on Shouta’s words and his proximity to you. He’s flipping through the old records the same as you are and you wonder if he can feel your eyes flicking over to him every so often.

He holds one record in his hand but you can’t quite make out what it is. You watch as he looks through one more rack of records before going to the cashier and making his purchase. It gets slid into a brown paper bag with the name of the store stamped on the front. You make your way over to Shouta.

“I’m ready if you are,” He smiles warmly at you and you nod your head, in so very deep. You follow him back out onto the street. He turns to face you quickly. “Here. It’s something to keep you entitled to your sadness.” There’s a barely concealed twinkle in his eye. You take what he holds out with a grin. You pull the record out of the bag.

“You’re so corny.” You laugh, but are touched that he remembered that you listen to Radiohead as he places OK Computer in your hands.

“It comes with the territory.” He speaks easily but nothing gets said on the walk back home. 

Your heart is in danger of pounding out of your chest by the time that you reach the front door. You want to kiss him, to make a move so badly that it’s the only thing that you can think about. Everything that he’s done has to mean something, right? Desperately, you hoped that it did as your fingers fiddled anxiously in front of you. You follow Shouta inside and he walks you to your room like a gentleman.

“Don’t forget this.” Shouta places the record he bought for you into your hands as you moved to open the door to your bedroom. There’s harsh electricity running through your veins that’s bordering on catastrophic. You smile at him as gratefully as you can, nodding your head in thanks as you turn back towards your door. This time, you’re able to get the door completely open and take a few steps before you hear him call your name and apologize in a stage whisper. You fight the desperate feeling in your chest as you feel him tug on your arm roughly and pull you into his hard chest. OK Computer clatters to the floor. It doesn’t matter.

Calloused hands are on the side of your face and then his lips are melting against yours needily. Shouta pulls back just as quickly as he leaned forward but his palms are still on your cheeks. He’s looking at you levelly, letting you make the next decision like it’s a game of chess. Your head feels like it’s full of helium. You watch your hands move from outside of your body as they come to tangle around his neck. You make your play and kiss him back on your tiptoes. The surprise he feels is tangible. The new kiss holds the same probing energy but then expands into something wetter and needier-yet still remains sickeningly sweet. You suck his lower lip into your mouth and sigh in the back of your throat when his hands wander down the curves of your torso to your hips. Shouta breaks the kiss, a string of saliva briefly connecting you for a moment longer and he exhales hard as he lays his forehead against yours. You can’t help but get lost in his permanently bloodshot eyes.

“I-i crossed a line. I’m going to cross a line.” Despite his words, he tugs you closer to him until your bodies are flush with each other. Shame clouds his features and you can’t stand that. Not when you created the perfect storm for this to happen. You play with the shorter hairs at the base of his neck.

“You’re not alone, okay? We’ll cross the line together.” You whisper so reverently that at first you think Shouta might not have heard you, but then you hear a strangled groan come out of his mouth and he’s pushing you backwards until you’re sitting on your bed, surrounded by soft blankets and engulfed in the scent of his mellow cologne. He starts to lean over you and you crane your neck to look over his shoulder dubiously at the door that’s standing almost wide open. It’s the only thing stopping your room from being a sanctuary. He follows your line of sight and turns back around with fiery eyes as if to say, “just be quiet.” You swallow thickly and lean back on your elbows. Shouta crawls up your body, blanketing you nimbly, and then he’s kissing you breathlessly again. You do your best to keep up with him but there isn’t a sense of yours that he isn’t absolutely steamrolling right over. His overwhelmingly hot hands travel up between your soft thighs and push your skirt up around your hips. You can’t stop the pleased sound that escapes from your mouth.

“Fuck, you sound even prettier than I imagined.” He starts kissing down your jaw and sucking at your neck. You hold his head against you and bite on your tongue to stop the salacious moans that are fighting hard to make their way into the heavy air.

“You imagined me?” You whispered, shocked, into his ear. He grins up at you devilishly.

“What the hell did you think I was gonna do, baby girl?” He’s quiet, oh so quiet, but you want to scream so loud that it breaks glass. He kisses you again and you rub your thighs together. His kisses feel better than anything you’ve ever had before. You’re drunk on it. Shouta’s long index finger pulls your bottom lip down. You follow his lead and your mouth hangs open. You watch through hazy eyes as his face hovers over yours and his lips purse. A thick glob of spit falls from between his lips and lands on yours. You feel slick gathering between your legs. His spit is licked off of your lips slowly and you open your mouth again. More. You’ve never seen his eyes so dark as he repeats the action and grinds his rock-hard cock against you.

Your legs wrap around his waist and with your free hand, you guide one of his hands down between your legs. His fingers run over the cotton that covers your slit and you can feel it starting to stick to you uncomfortably. At this point, you don’t care that this is something that neither of you should be encouraging. You’ve already got the feeling that you’ve won, you’re finally getting the vengeance you seek against your mother.

Shouta starts to pull your panties down and doesn’t stop until you’re completely free of them. He kneels on the floor and pulls you closer to his face by your thighs. His fingers knead into the skin there and you can feel his breath against your wet core. An obscene moan gets lost in the air and Shouta shoots a stern glance at you. Sorry, you mouth from where you watch perched on your elbows but you don’t really mean it.

He rubs two of his fingers against your core and you keen against the touch, not expecting it to feel as good as it did. Your mouth lolls open and you try not to squirm underneath the intensity of Shouta’s gaze. He focuses against your clit, slowly rubbing circles around it. You grind your hips down into the feeling and he bites gently into the soft skin of your thighs as you fall apart too quickly on his fingers. Your arms turn to jelly and you slide down until your back is against the comforter. Eyes flutter shut as you get lost in ecstasy.

You jolt back up again when you feel Shouta’s fingers get replaced with his mouth. He laps at your wet cunt like he’s not good for anything else and you feel him pull away just long enough to let another glob of spit fall onto your already soaked entrance. Heat rises through your body when you feel him push a finger inside of you with ease because of how worked up he has you. He curls his finger and watches with a silent chuckle how you have to slap your hand over your mouth to keep your sounds inside.

“Cute,” he mumbles against your thigh and then you’re tugging at the roots of his hair, beckoning him on top of you again. You’re so blindsided by pleasure that you don’t care how you look as you paw his shirt off and rake your fingers through the dark hair on his chest. You babble mindlessly against his ear. It makes no matter to you how you sound.

You start trying to undo the button of his pants.

“So fuckin’ needy for me, huh? My needy girl.” He whispers hotly against the side of your neck and all you can do is nod your head at him and kiss him timidly. The tip of his cock rubbed through your folds and there really was no chance of ever going back. 

“Please,” the request rolls off of your tongue and knocks against Shouta’s lips. He covers your lips with his own again and slowly presses into you. You squeeze your eyes shut at the uncomfortable feeling to begin with. He’s so big and all-encompassing that it’s almost hard to breathe. Shouta pants into the saliva-soaked kiss and bites at your bottom lip as his hips rock slowly against yours. Your fingernails dig into his shoulders at the sensation and you tighten your legs around his waist. 

He grinds his hips against yours until he’s fully seated inside of you. He breaks away from the kiss momentarily to look at you, the tiny little tears pooling at the corners of your eyes from the overwhelming emotion. He runs his thumb through the tears and you bury your nose into the crook of his neck.

“Please,” you mutter again, embarrassed, into the fine sheen of sweat that coats his neck. Shouta rocks into you again and again slowly and deeply and you swear you can see galaxies forming in your field of vision. The heavy feeling of his cock inside of you is enough to have you arching your back into his chest and he fucks your harder and rougher until your grip on him is just at the point of leaving marks. You feel the muscles in your stomach turn to jelly and Shouta focuses his thrusts upward, right into your tummy. You whine against his neck. Your pussy clenches hard around him. He pulls your head away from his neck and you flop back against the mattress.

“Are you gonna cum for me?” He whispers lowly and through hazy eyes, you see a look in his eyes that you’ve seen mirrored in your own. It tips you closer to the edge. You nod your head. “Look at me, baby girl.” He requests and then he’s slapping his hand quickly over your mouth to stop you from being too loud as you reach ecstasy. You don’t know how many more times he rocks his hips into yours before he’s spilling inside of you and you can’t stop your eyes from rolling back into your head. His forehead slumps against your own and there’s a drunken grin on both of your faces as he pulls his softening cock out of you.

He maneuvers the both of you around until you’re both laying on your sides, his chest pressed against your back. You drift off to sleep with Shouta’s fingers running through your hair and feeling like you have just won a long battle.

It had been two weeks since you slept with Shouta. The next morning, in the wee hours, you had woken up in your bed alone but snuck around to give him a quick kiss before he left. He had held you by the waist and cradled your head against his when you kissed him by the front door. He had smiled at you and kissed your forehead, too.

It had been a full week since when he pushed you away in the kitchen and had hissed about how what the two of you had done was wrong. Your mother came in the kitchen while you were speechless and attempting to wipe the stricken look off of your face. You glared at Shouta from across the room while she announced a long work trip that she would be taking at the end of the week.

The night before her trip came and your mother organized an elaborate “family” dinner. You invited the boy that had left hickies on your neck over and after dinner, fucked him loud enough in your bedroom for Shouta and your mother to hear on their end of the house. Being a nuisance and vengeance were what you were good at.

The morning after, your mother left wordlessly on her week-and-a-half work trip. When you did leave your room, you and Shouta avoided each other like two black clouds caught up in a windstorm. You couldn’t focus on anything. Not homework, not shows, not the music coming through your headphones. Silently, you had resolved to curl up in a ball on your bed and let tears run from your eyes freely over the predicament you were in. At this point, even if your dad were still alive, you weren’t sure if he would have good enough advice to help you through this.

It hurt.

It hurt listening through the thin walls to Shouta cluttering around the house like nothing was wrong. It hurt how he only looked at you in passing as he put the leftovers from dinner away as you walked your hookup to the door the previous night. Didn’t he know that he was the reason you were tearing yourself apart? No, that wasn’t exactly fair. 

A violent sob leapt out of your throat and you slapped your hand over your mouth to cover up your residual noises. You were the reason things had gotten so out of hand. You were almost completely blinded by your need to ruin your mother’s relationship that you hadn’t realized that you were sliding down a slippery slope for Shouta. Maybe you were as bad as your mother thought you were.

Your head was clogging up with the frequency of your tears now and it was hard for you to breathe. You couldn’t slow your mind down enough to regulate your breathing and your breaths kept coming out in ragged little pants. You sat up in a frenzy, unable to catch your breath. The disappointed look on Shouta’s face the previous night kept flashing though your head. You were lightheaded as you stood and stumbled on wobbly knees through your bedroom door and out into the living room. Tears coated your eyelashes together but through the blurriness, you could see Shouta sitting on the couch. He sat up slowly, on guard, unsure of where the line was anymore.

“What’s wrong?” His tone was neutral and that was enough to send you into a fresh wave of sobs and panic as your nose was so stuffy now that you couldn’t get a proper breath. You wanted to yell but it came out strangled. You wiped brashly at your face with the sleeve of your shirt and started to wring your hands together anxiously.

“C’mon, what’s wrong?” Shouta had stood and was standing a polite distance away from you now. There was no arm held out to you in consolation but his voice had taken on a tone that was more suited for talking to a dying animal. You felt like one just then.

“I’m-I’m sorry,” You managed to get out through hiccups. Pitifully, you watched the way that Shouta’s shoulders slumped. Still, you sobbed as he stayed quiet. Your knees wobbled perilously and before you could unceremoniously fall to the ground, you lowered yourself to the hardwood in a heap of limbs with your face buried in your hands. For a fleeting second, you wondered if you could die from crying too hard. 

You felt a warm hand on your shoulder. Shouta’s hand. You couldn’t bring yourself to look at him.

“You’re gonna make yourself throw up if you keep crying this hard.” It was nothing but the obvious. His hand squeezed down soothingly on your skin.

“Don’t care,” You muttered stuffily against your palms and curled tighter against yourself. “‘I think I’m gonna die.” Shouta’s fingers worked their way under your chin and yanked your head up more roughly than he had intended and through your puffy eyes, you saw the face of a man wracking his brain to try and remember if there was ever a time in his thirty-odd years where he had successfully used his Erasure to stop a panic-induced crying fit.

“You’re not gonna die.” There’s an annoyed edge to his voice. It makes you cry harder. He heaves out a world-weary sigh and pulls you into his chest. You don’t want his scent to be comforting but it’s exactly what you need at that moment.

“‘m sorry. ‘m just so sorry, Shouta. I didn’t wan-wanna fuck him. Just wanted to make you mad.” Getting the words out feels like running a marathon.

“I know, baby girl. I know.” There’s a pause before he speaks and he warms a little, melting into the sad jumble of your body. You close your eyes and try to focus on that, as if there was any way to repair this.

“Do you know how miserable it is being in love with you?” You look at him with puffy eyes. If your words affect him, he gives nothing away. But your words are the truth. There was only one thing in your life that hurt more than his rejection. His arms around you tighten and then fall away. You wipe your eyes again but it still does no good.

“It doesn’t make sense for you to be in love with me.” He picks at his nails.

“I don’t care. I am.”

“I treated you badly.”

“If everyone stopped loving the people that mistreated them, then the world would be an awfully loveless place.” It’s almost comical how your voice sounds with your nose stopped up.

“That’s not a logical…that’s a childish way of looking at things.” 

“Tell me you don’t love me back.” Your fingers drum on the floor and Shouta’s eyes narrow at you.

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Why can’t you do that?”

“Because you know I fell for the wrong woman. You know I married the wrong one.” Your heart stops.

“I don’t know that,” there’s a pause. “You’re saying that you love me too.”

“I’m saying that I married your mom and fell for you and it’s the most illogical thing I’ve ever done.”

“Tell me that you love me and that I’m better than her and I’ll be okay.” You know you’re pushing him and you should just be grateful that he’s speaking to you again. He sighs deeply, guiltily.

“I love you too. More than your mother. I’ll have a talk with her when she gets back from her trip.”

You grin pitifully at him. You always, always, got what you wanted.

20 YEARS of NARUTO

Chaing your wallpaper to an ugly pic of them and not telling <3

𝐉𝐔𝐉𝐔𝐓𝐒𝐔 𝐊𝐀𝐈𝐒𝐄𝐍 + 𝐒𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐑 𝐖𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐏𝐀𝐏𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐒 𝐀𝐍 𝐔𝐆𝐋𝐘 𝐏𝐇𝐎𝐓𝐎 𝐎𝐅 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌

☰ CHARACTERS ⋮ gojo satoru, geto suguru, fushiguro toji, itadori yuji, fushiguro megumi

— contents ⋮ fluff + sfw, slightly suggestive at toji’s — minors do not follow me though i’m an 18+ blog

— notes ⋮ THIS IS SUCH A CUTE IDEA

𖧷 𝐆𝐎𝐉𝐎 

gojo has never seen a bad picture of himself before—not until now, at least. he stares at the picture on your lock screen in pure shock, grimacing slightly at how his lips are parted and his cheek is smooshed against your chest. he even thinks that’s a tiny bit of drool on his lips, and he stares at you with narrowed eyes and a pout. 

“sweetheart, you have to change this picture,” he whines, “if megumi sees this he’ll be so mean—you have no idea how mean kids his age can be, it’s ridiculous!”

“what’s ridiculous is you getting hurt over a kid in the first place,” you snort, smiling fondly at the image on your phone. gojo looks relaxed for once, nestled comfortably against your chest as his body drapes over yours—you’d snapped the picture as blackmail at first, but the soft flush of his cheeks and the slight crinkle on his nose makes you rethink if it was ever ugly to be blackmail in the first place. 

“hey! you’re just as rude,” he huffs, “are you hanging out with him more? he’ll be mean to you too, just watch. and then i’ll—”

“you look cute, toru,” you hum, smiling gently as you stare at the photo. he blinks at the way your eyes soften as they fix on him through the screen, and he thinks for a moment that maybe there’s not one bad photo of him after all. 

“yeah, you’re right. only i could make drooling adorable,” he grins smugly, plopping himself to lay on your chest, sighing quietly when your fingers thread through his hair. 

“besides, megumi already has the photo.”

𖧷 𝐆𝐄𝐓𝐎

“what is this?” geto demands, showing you your lock screen. he’d only went to check the time, but the sight waiting for him was almost a jumpscare if he’s ever seen one—and of his own face, no less. giggling, you take the phone from him, admiring your handy work. 

“it’s a picture,” you grin cheekily, making him roll his eyes as he glares at you. it’s a horrendous picture, and he wants you to change it. immediately. his hair is a mess—and geto suguru takes his hair rather seriously. 

“i can see that, genius,” he says flatly, “but why is it your lock screen? change it,” he demands, crossing his arms and pulling away when you try to wrap your arms around his neck. whining, you tug at his bicep, pouting at him to let you cling against his body, but he only pulls away as he narrows his eyes at you.

“but suguru, it’s so cute!”

“it’s hideous,” he grunts, lips curling in disgust.

“yeah and oddly cute,” you argue, poking his cheek. you giggle once more, grinning in victory when he caves and wraps his arms around your waist. he gives your ass a slight squeeze, chuckling when you gasp and swat at his shoulder. 

“wait till i get a bad picture of you,” he grumbles, “see if you think it’s cute then.”

𖧷 𝐓𝐎𝐉𝐈

“the fuck is this?” toji demands gruffly, eyebrow raised as he waits for your answer. turning your face away from him with a hmph, you promptly ignore him, which makes his eyes narrow. 

every time you and toji have a slight disagreement, it becomes your mission to become the bane of his existence—like right now, for example. last night’s argument has been your excuse to slowly drive him insane, and this picture is your new attempt. 

and so is the silent treatment. 

“think i asked a question, doll,” he scowls, “what is up with this photo? it’s hideous. ”

“would you rather i use another man’s photo for my lock screen then?” you raise a brow, crossing your arms as you finally turn to look at him. he glares at you, as though even just the idea is an insult. “you’re lucky the picture’s still you after last night,” you say flatly. 

toji is as stubborn as you, however, so he blinks for a moment before a lopsided smirk tugs at his scarred lips, a casual shrug falling off his shoulders as he hums. 

“alright,” he says smoothly, “i’ll just have to use a picture from the other night to settle the score,” he grins, watching as your eyes widen when you register his words. scowling, you poke a finger at his chest as you glare at him. 

“you’d better not! don’t you dare even think about using such obscene—”

“then i think you should start bein’ a bit nicer to me, doll,” he says, voice husky as his lips hover over your mouth, “cause i got plenty of pictures i’m dyin’ to use,” he grins before pressing his lips to yours as your breath hitches in your throat. 

𖧷 𝐈𝐓𝐀𝐃𝐎𝐑𝐈

itadori glances at your phone screen as you unlock it, flinching a little to himself when he sees that it’s been changed to such an unflattering photo. pouting, he nudges his head onto your chest as your hand buries into his hair immediately, threading through the soft locks. 

“baby, why’d you have to use that picture?” he whines, huffing into your shirt. you chuckle, pressing a kiss to his forehead as you lock your phone to admire the lock screen you’ve set. 

“what do you mean? it’s so cute, yuji! you look adorable,” you insist, turning the screen to him so he can get a better look. he shields his eyes dramatically, making your head fall back against the pillow as you giggle. 

“i look like i need a trigger warning,” he groans, but you only hum, turning the phone back to yourself and staring at the picture in awe—he doesn’t quite remember when you snapped it, or how for that matter, but you stare at the picture like it’s special. a small part of his heart races at how your gaze softens when it falls on him through the screen.

“that’s so rude, i’m a good photographer,” you insist, “and plus you always look cute.”

“well, if you say so,” he mumbles, blush dusting across his cheeks as you lean and kiss them sweetly. 

𖧷 𝐌𝐄𝐆𝐔𝐌𝐈

megumi raises a brow when you set your phone down, staring at the picture you’ve set of him—it’s not the best picture, but he watches as you smile slightly and stare at the photo for a moment before turning to him. 

“i uh…didn’t realize i was your lock screen,” he mumbles, blushing as you giggle and cup his cheeks. he leans into your palms, relaxing slightly while your thumb traces over the warm skin. 

“i had to, that picture is so cute,” you beam, “you’re so cute, gumi,” you hum before planting a scatter of soft pecks along his cheeks, pressing one last one over the tip of his nose. he grunts, blushing deeper as he rolls his eyes. 

“of course, you’d pick the worst picture ever,” he grumbles, but his hands grip your waist tightly, bringing you flush against his chest as you gasp. 

“i picked the best one! you’re just a hater,” you pout, “and you’re actually smiling for once, too! try being less of a grump, sometimes,” you poke at his cheek, making him throw you a glare—but it’s soft, doesn’t quite match the soft gaze in his eyes. 

“i picked a better picture of you for mine,” he raises a brow. you wriggle yours, pinching his cheek as you giggle. 

“aw, i’m your wallpaper too? how romantic of you,” you tease, laughing when his blush rises to the tip of his ears before he scowls and pulls away, only for you to bring him into a sweet kiss. 

© hanmas do not plagiarize, repost, translate to other sites, or recommend on platforms outside tumblr such as tik tok