Urgh Yes Pls

urgh yes pls 🤰

Me: I could take him

Soap: in a fight right?

Me:

Soap: right???

Ctto!!! @/vhenan_virabelasan on instagram!

You Are Made of Stardust

Though the billions of people on Earth may come from different areas, we share a common heritage: we are all made of stardust! From the carbon in our DNA to the calcium in our bones, nearly all of the elements in our bodies were forged in the fiery hearts and death throes of stars.

The building blocks for humans, and even our planet, wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for stars. If we could rewind the universe back almost to the very beginning, we would just see a sea of hydrogen, helium, and a tiny bit of lithium.

The first generation of stars formed from this material. There’s so much heat and pressure in a star’s core that they can fuse atoms together, forming new elements. Our DNA is made up of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. All those elements (except hydrogen, which has existed since shortly after the big bang) are made by stars and released into the cosmos when the stars die.

Each star comes with a limited fuel supply. When a medium-mass star runs out of fuel, it will swell up and shrug off its outer layers. Only a small, hot core called a white dwarf is left behind. The star’s cast-off debris includes elements like carbon and nitrogen. It expands out into the cosmos, possibly destined to be recycled into later generations of stars and planets. New life may be born from the ashes of stars.

Massive stars are doomed to a more violent fate. For most of their lives, stars are balanced between the outward pressure created by nuclear fusion and the inward pull of gravity. When a massive star runs out of fuel and its nuclear processes die down, it completely throws the star out of balance. The result? An explosion!

Supernova explosions create such intense conditions that even more elements can form. The oxygen we breathe and essential minerals like magnesium and potassium are flung into space by these supernovas.

Supernovas can also occur another way in binary, or double-star, systems. When a white dwarf steals material from its companion, it can throw everything off balance too and lead to another kind of cataclysmic supernova. Our Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope will study these stellar explosions to figure out what’s speeding up the universe’s expansion. 

This kind of explosion creates calcium – the mineral we need most in our bodies – and trace minerals that we only need a little of, like zinc and manganese. It also produces iron, which is found in our blood and also makes up the bulk of our planet’s mass!

A supernova will either leave behind a black hole or a neutron star – the superdense core of an exploded star. When two neutron stars collide, it showers the cosmos in elements like silver, gold, iodine, uranium, and plutonium.

Some elements only come from stars indirectly. Cosmic rays are nuclei (the central parts of atoms) that have been boosted to high speed by the most energetic events in the universe. When they collide with atoms, the impact can break them apart, forming simpler elements. That’s how we get boron and beryllium – from breaking star-made atoms into smaller ones.

Half a dozen other elements are created by radioactive decay. Some elements are radioactive, which means their nuclei are unstable. They naturally break down to form simpler elements by emitting radiation and particles. That’s how we get elements like radium. The rest are made by humans in labs by slamming atoms of lighter elements together at super high speeds to form heavier ones. We can fuse together elements made by stars to create exotic, short-lived elements like seaborgium and einsteinium.

From some of the most cataclysmic events in the cosmos comes all of the beauty we see here on Earth. Life, and even our planet, wouldn’t have formed without them! But we still have lots of questions about these stellar factories. 

In 2006, our Stardust spacecraft returned to Earth containing tiny particles of interstellar dust that originated in distant stars, light-years away – the first star dust to ever be collected from space and returned for study. You can help us identify and study the composition of these tiny, elusive particles through our Stardust@Home Citizen Science project.

Our upcoming Roman Space Telescope will help us learn more about how elements were created and distributed throughout galaxies, all while exploring many other cosmic questions. Learn more about the exciting science this mission will investigate on Twitter and Facebook.

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

20 YEARS of NARUTO

i cant believe i missed this

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

taglist closed — but if ur someone who actively reblogs n leaves feedback i might just find a spot for u

previous chapter -> masterlist -> next chapter

CHAPTER Ⅷ. CAUSE I KNOW YOU GET DEJA VU

FOURTEEN YEARS EARLIER. 

“Ran is acting distant again,” you murmured to Rindou as the two of you sat at a park near the penthouse, your feet kicked in the air lazily, swaying you back and forth on the swing, Rindou leaned on the pole next to the swing, pulling his gaze from the sky to look down at you, hair falling loose on either side of his face, “and why’d you get blue streaks in your hair? I swear you and Ran try to piss off Miss Yua with these weird dye jobs.”

Rindou grinned down at you, “Yeah, that’s cause we are,” he said and you rolled your eyes.

“She’s gonna kill you guys,” you nodded, “She nearly had a heart attack when she saw your half-dyed mop heads last time.”

Rindou’s mouth dropped, “Mop heads?!” he asked offended, “You said you didn’t think they were dumb!” 

“They weren’t dumb, they just weren’t stylish,” you said and Rindou gaped.

“Yes they were!” he argued, “They definitely were.”

“Were not,” you said.

“Were to!” he responded, reaching forward to yank at the chain of your swing hard. You shrieked as you started swinging side to side toward the opposite pole.

“Rindou, I’m gonna hit the pole!” you cried out as the metal pole drew closer but before you could either slam into it or jump off the swing, Rindou’s grip tightened on the chain, tugging you back in his direction. He pulled you off of the swing as flailed back and forth and you scowled, stumbling into his chest.

You steadied yourself, glaring up at him, but he only grinned down at you, looking entirely too pleased with himself.

“You didn’t acknowledge my first statement,” you pointed out and Rindou’s grin fell momentarily, he sighed and looked away.

“Cause I don’t know what’s going on with him,” he shrugged, his hands dropped from your waist, “He gets like this sometimes, I guess. It happened a couple times while we were on our own. And then again after… y’know, when Shimada’s guys stabbed me and after we left the penthouse, he got real distant with me. He felt guilty that time, and it didn’t matter what I said to him.”

Your brows furrowed as you leaned on the pole next to Rindou, watching the swing thrash from side to side, slowly settling down, your arm brushed his and you tilted your head back up toward the sky, “You think he feels guilty over something?” you frowned deeply. 

“I dunno what he’d be feeling guilty about,” Rindou said and you could hear the genuine confusion in his voice. Rindou finally shook his head, “Let’s just go back, Miss Yua wanted us back early tonight.”

---

You did not go back to the penthouse with Rindou. You had managed to lose him in the crowds on the main street of Roppongi, intent on taking some time for yourself. And you knew he was going to flip out on you when he inevitably found you but it wasn’t like he could yell at you for putting yourself in danger like Ran had in Shibuya--they prided themselves on how safe Roppongi had become under their rule and all of the delinquents left in this part of the city were absolutely loyal to them and there were always some lurking about that would recognize you if you got into trouble. 

Ran and Rindou had made sure of it. 

And it warmed your heart, really, knowing how hard they worked to make Roppongi safe for you--because they wanted to know you’d be safe if neither of them happened to be around, because they wanted you to feel comfortable walking around the streets on your own. 

You sighed as you kicked at a pebble on the ground, walking up and down a side street a few blocks away from the penthouse. You knew it was only a matter of time before one of Rindou’s little lackeys reported back to him and told him where you had run off to but you needed some time to think without Miss Yua chiding you for leaving school early to hang out with Rindou.

Because you needed to figure out what you had done to upset Ran.

Because you knew it was you. It had to have been. Ever since the night you brought them to the event at the Sugawara estate, he had been acting weird. First, it had just been with you--he had stopped meeting with you to walk you back home from school. And it had been weird but you hadn’t thought twice about it until he had stopped showing up to breakfast and dinner too. He only ever came back home after you had fallen asleep and you had tried to wait up for him on the couch in the main room but it was like he knew every time and he came home extra late because of it and you’d wake up curled up in bed tucked under the covers the next morning.

And Miss Yua must’ve known what was up with him too because usually she would get upset when he and Rindou skipped out on meals but instead she would just put some food away for him and scold you whenever you tried to question her about it.

You must have done something wrong but you didn’t know what. And you were mad at Miss Yua for siding with him when you didn’t even know what you had done wrong. You would have hoped that she would have at least talked to you about it so you could apologize to him so things could go back to normal. 

And now he was even avoiding Rindou and you knew Rindou was genuinely upset about it if the number of times you found him sullenly lurking around your room had anything to say about it. He couldn’t stand being in the room he shared with Ran because you knew it must be big and empty and lonely without Ran around. 

And you felt anxious. Because if you really had upset Ran somehow and he was so angry that he wouldn’t even talk to you or Rindou, then you didn’t know what to do because the last thing you wanted was to put strain on their relationship.

You let out another deep sigh, turning around the corner and finally starting to make your way back toward the penthouse, bracing yourself for Rindou’s wrath. Your hands swung at your sides as you looked at the large building in the distance, hesitating, a foreboding feeling sweeping over you--you swore you could feel Rindou’s anger from where you were. 

Promptly, you turned and started to make your way down another side street rather than back to the penthouse, intent on taking more time for yourself before facing the guillotine. 

You paused instantly, catching sight of a familiar figure hunched over in the middle of the alley, “Ran?” you called, alarmed, and you watched as he looked up, typically neat braids half pulled out and messy around his face, blood staining his skin. “Ran!” 

Panic flew through you as you took off in the direction of the older Haitani. You ignored how he seemed to roll his eyes when he caught sight of you, pushing away the way it stung to focus on him.

“Ran, what happened? You’re hurt,” you said, standing in front of him hesitantly, unsure of whether or not to get closer or not because you knew he was mad at you for some reason or another and you didn’t want to make him even more mad at you by pushing boundaries. 

“Go away,” he muttered, and your temper flared momentarily as you glared at him before forcing yourself to calm down.

“Ran, is this what you’ve been doing?” you were angry, and it took all of your self-control to not raise your voice. “Been going out and fighting people to try to stay away from home?” 

“It’s none of your business,” Ran said, voice low and your fists clenched tight at your side, “It’s something I have to do.”

“You have to do?” you asked incredulously, “and why is that?” 

Ran pointedly looked away, lips twisted down, jaw clenched and your brows furrowed. You hated this. You hated how he always would disappear and take things on himself so he didn’t have to bother anybody. He’d been doing it more and more often and you knew it was bothering Rindou--the two of them had always done everything together but now Ran was going off on his own and handling their gang business without even talking to Rindou first. Rindou was getting frustrated and feeling left out and you hated it, and you hated that you might have a part in Ran distancing himself from Rindou.

“‘nother gang has been tryna move into our territory, had to push ‘em back,” he finally said when you made no move to go away.

“Without Rindou?” you questioned and Ran grit his teeth together, refusing to look at you again. 

“Isn’t it better this way?” he said, and your brows furrowed.

“I don’t know what you mean,” you said quietly, “but no, I don’t think it’s better that you’re taking this all upon yourself.”

You sighed when he didn’t respond, moving to kneel next to him, trying to force him to look at you and failing when he just looked in the opposite direction.

“Hey,” you said quietly. He didn’t make any sign of acknowledgement and you sighed as you tugged your sleeve over your hand and brought it up to his face. You cupped his cheek with one hand, turning his face so that he was looking at you. You wiped away at the blood dribbling from his nose and split lip.

“You mean the world to me ‘n Rin, y’know? And we really hate when you do this ‘cause we know you’re hurting ‘n we just wanna help, Ran, and I know you don’t want to involve me but you shouldn’t shut Rin out, it’s not fair to him. I love you a lot, y’know? ‘n ‘m sorry if I did something to upset you at the event. It wasn’t my intention if I did.” you told him softly. 

Ran stiffened, his gaze finally shifted toward you on his own, looking up at you through long lashes and your breath caught as his dark lavender eyes met yours, “Don’t say that,” he said, voice hoarse, and your eyes narrowed onto him.

“What’dya mean don’t say that?” you asked heatedly, “It’s the truth, you try to take all the burdens on yourself and it’s not fair. Let us help you.”

“‘s not what I meant,” he murmured but he didn’t elaborate on what he actually meant. You frowned, lips parting to speak but he only shook his head, making you pause. “Go back home, y/n.”

“‘m not leaving without you,” you murmured, fingers lingering on his face as you looked down, catching sight of bruises peeking out from underneath his ridden-up shirt. You reached out immediately, brows furrowed as you tugged his shirt up even more, mouth dropping at the sight of the large, nearly black bruises lining up his abdomen. “Ran, wh-”

“There were more there than I expected,” he didn’t let you finish the question and your eyes narrowed in suspicion as he shot you a charming grin and a wink, “You should see the other guys.”

And you were angry because he was doing it again, brushing off how hurt he was because he didn’t want you to know the extent of it. 

“Ran,” your voice was quiet, your hand dropped from his cheek to his abdomen and you listened as he hissed as your fingers brushed his skin, as his abdomen tensed beneath your touch. Your lips trembled as you let your fingers run up his skin, tracing the dark marks marring his skin.

“It looks worse than it really is,” he lied but you knew from the way he wouldn’t meet your eyes that he knew you weren’t going to fall for it. “Y/n-”

“Miss Yua will be the judge of that,” you said firmly, trying to hide how your voice shook at the sight of Ran so injured, “and after Miss Yua looks over you, you must promise me and Rin that you’ll stop this, okay?”

“Y/n,” he tried to protest but you grabbed one of his hands with both of yours, his eyes darted up to meet yours and you watched as the argument dissolved on his face, as his eyes searched yours and his expression dropped. 

“Ran, please,” you said quietly, “Rin has been really upset too. He can barely even stay in your guys’ room.” 

Ran let out a long breath, shoulders slumping, and you knew you had won--Ran was always weak to Rindou. He hated seeing his younger brother upset, he hated being the cause of it even more. He nodded and you swallowed thickly as you rose to your feet in front of him, holding a hand out.

After a split second of hesitation, he took your hand and you helped pull him to his feet, watching as he winced and hissed with every movement, you were careful of the bruises as you wrapped an arm around his waist, letting him lean heavily on you.

“I’d do anything for you guys,” you said quietly, looking ahead even as you felt Ran turn his gaze down onto you, “You’re my best friends. And I know you don’t want to involve me with the gang stuff, and I won’t push you to, I just wish you guys would rely on me more than you do.”

Ran didn’t speak for a moment and just as you went to toss him a questioning look, your entire body felt hot as he leaned his head down to kiss the top of your head, eyes wide as you stared ahead. 

“We rely on you a lot more than your tiny brain could ever comprehend, more than words can describe, really.”

And your brows furrowed as you considered his words, trying to figure out what he meant until…

“Tiny?!” you demanded, offended, and next to you, Ran burst into laughter before wincing in pain, clutching his abdomen, “Serves you right! My brain is not tiny! It’s bigger than yours and Rindou’s combined, actually.”

“Yes, of course,” he agreed but you didn’t like his tone.

“I don’t like the way you said that,” you complained, “but I guess I can let it slide because you got the shit beat out of you.”

“I did not!” Ran was now the offended one as he gaped down at you, “They got a few hits in but they’re in way worse shape than me.”

“So what I’m hearing is that you got the shit beat out of you,” you nodded, ignoring him.

“I did not!”

And you only giggled as he continued his protests as the two of you walked back toward the penthouse, regaling you with the tale of the ten versus one fight he had to deal with an hour earlier and how he totally kicked their asses even though he was outnumbered. 

Your arm around his waist shifted as he leaned into you, far more relaxed, and a warm feeling spread throughout you as you looked up at him, catching sight of the genuine smile tugging at his lips despite the split lip and remnants of the blood you hadn’t quite been able to wipe off.

And as he glanced down at you, eyes turned up and bright, the happiest he’s looked since the week before the dance, you couldn’t help but let any anger you might have had toward him dissolve. 

“I love you a lot, y’know?” you murmured, accidentally interrupting his tale, “You ‘n Rin, more than anything.”

And there was a strange tone to his voice as he responded, one that seemed to be caught between longing and dejection but you didn’t know why, “Yeah,” he said quietly, “I love you too.”

PRESENT. 

Ran.

Sugawara was talking, you could hear him in the background but none of his words registered--it was like television static as your eyes met Ran’s lavender ones, his right eye bruised dark, blood dribbling from his nose and split lips. The neat clothes he had been wearing earlier in the night were ripped and bloodied.

Your fingers twitched at your side, it took all of your self-control not to rush toward him. You felt ill, your stomach was twisting and turning uncomfortably and your head felt light. Ran, Ran is here, Ran got caught but-

How?

How?

If they got Ran, and got him back to the base so quickly, then they had to have been ready to capture an executive--prepared, expecting it.

So quickly? your head ached, you didn’t even know how long you had been unconscious. No, you reminded yourself, Hanma was still getting stitched up when you woke up. It couldn’t have been too long. They must have known.

You turned your head to the side, gaze cold as you looked at Sugawara from the corner of your eye, “How much of a part did we play in the explosions at the auction hall?” Sugawara paused mid-sentence, looking at you. “You got him from the building and back this quick, you must have been prepared.”

There was a calculating look in his eyes as he considered you, one that made your skin crawl. Finally, he spoke, “The small explosion was ours,” he finally said and your eyes narrowed, he held up two fingers, “We had two reasons for it. One was to incite enough chaos to give us the chance to swoop in and capture one of the Bonten executives.”

But how did he know that Ran was one of them? His tattoo was covered, you-

Your eyes turned to Hanma, as you remembered him outside and on the phone for a decent amount of time. His eyes met yours steadily before he looked away. Anger flared, he-

Two reasons, you forced your mind back to the more important subject, what was the second? Your lips tilted down and your mind raced despite the pain that was shooting through it. Two reasons, one was getting his hands on Bonten and the other…

Kawaragi. 

“Sugawara asked her to check the storerooms.”

The storerooms, where the explosions seemed to have come from. She could have been sent to set it off, a part of you argued but your lips twisted down as you remembered how he greeted you and Hanma, no acknowledgment of Kawaragi being missing.

“Kawaragi,” you said, and Sugawara’s eyes lit up.

“You’re a sharp one,” he cooed, and you forced yourself not to shift uncomfortably under his intent stare. “Yes, Kawaragi had to be dealt with, she could no longer be trusted. Though, I had ensured that the phosphorus munitions were being held in a warehouse away from the actual event which means there was outside interference. I don’t like that.”

Why Kawaragi? was on the tip of your tongue but you caught your uncle’s look of warning from behind Sugawara and stopped yourself. Stop pressing, it looks suspicious.

“I see,” you said. But why did he admit it? You didn’t dare look back at where Ran was kneeling, knowing that as soon as you did you’d be unable to focus. Why, why wh-

A warning, you realized, eyes drawing up to meet Sugawara’s empty ones, a sharp contrast from the excitement that had previously been painted in them. Your throat felt dry but you couldn’t bring yourself to tear your gaze away from his blank ones, void of any type of emotion--apathetic, vacant like those of a doll. It was unnerving, it had dread pooling in your gut. Not a warning, you corrected, a threat. 

“Y/n,” Sugawara approached you, resting a hand on your bicep and it took all of your self-control not to step away, “I want us to be friends, and friends are truthful with each other, yeah?” 

A cold feeling settled in your chest as you nodded in agreement.

“Do you recognize him?”

Him, he was referring to Ran. Your throat felt tight. What do you say? Do you tell the truth? Lie? You didn’t know, you didn’t fucking know.

“Yes,” you said, deciding not to elaborate. But Sugawara only stared at you, waiting for you to explain, you kept your mouth shut—you wouldn’t tell him more than he asked.

“I recognized him too, you know?” Sugawara finally said, and the cold look in his eyes was gone, replaced with that fake friendly expression as he smiled at you and looked between you and Ran. “All those years ago, he and his brother used to attend my father’s events with you, didn’t he?”

Your lips pressed together tight. He remembered that? He never even talked to you or the Haitanis, he was always lurking around with his mother. 

“Yes,” you finally said, voice short.

Sugawara stared at you, you stared right back, “He was your friend,” he said, brow quirking up, the bright smile shifting into a cooler smirk, “Is?” he questioned.

You paused, watching him for a moment, “Was,” you said confirmed, the word was bitter on your tongue, you felt sick just saying it.

“Was?” Sugawara questioned before he clicked his tongue, pacing away from you. You could feel your heart beating heavy in your chest. “I want us to be friends,” he sighed again, “I’d like to make you a proposition, y/n.”

You watched as he paused a few steps away, looking out the window.

“We can make an arrangement about Haitani Ran,” Sugawara offered, and you stilled, gaze drawing toward where Ran was slumped over, eyes lidded as he looked up at you. 

An arrangement? 

Your throat was tight, could you get him out of here? At least make sure that he wasn’t harmed? Your mind spun with questions trying to figure out the best course of action. Was this a trap? Is he testing you?

You didn’t know. You felt sick, you hated not knowing. 

He sounded convincing. You watched as Ran’s eyes widened as he looked between the two of you but something wasn’t sitting right. He sounded convincing, you were almost convinced.

Almost. 

Your eyes flickered above Ran to the glass behind him and you caught your uncle’s wide-eyed glance in the reflection, noting how he discreetly shook his head. A test, you swallowed thickly, eyes drawing back down toward Ran and you forced yourself not to let the confliction show on your face. 

I’m sorry, you wanted to tell him, I promise I’ll figure something out. I won’t be able to do anything if Sugawara doesn’t trust me. 

“I said ‘was’, didn’t I?” you said and your voice was cruel even to your own ears, you didn’t even recognize yourself, you felt sick. You watched as Ran’s face twisted in confusion as he slowly comprehended your words.

“You mean the world to me ‘n Rin, y’know? And we really hate when you do this ‘cause we know you’re hurting ‘n we just wanna help, Ran, and I know you don’t want to involve me but you shouldn’t shut Rin out, it’s not fair to him. I love you a lot, y’know?”

“There’s no need for any arrangement to be made. It’s been years, they don’t mean anything to me anymore. I want to be done with this shit so I can go back to handling business overseas.”

The room was quiet for a moment, you could feel Sugawara’s gaze trained on you, studying you carefully and you forced yourself not to let your face shift as Ran’s dropped once he finally understood what you were saying. The air around you felt cold and chilly as the confusion in his eyes shifted into realization. You were freezing but your blood was running hot and your heartbeat was erratic.

"I'd do anything for you guys."

Don’t be dumb, you wanted to scream at him, shake him, beg him to trust you one last time, you know I don’t mean it. 

But did he?

You hated that you couldn’t answer the question. And you hated that you slowly realized that the answer wasn’t going to be what you wanted it to be. He was searching your face, desperately, for any sort of message because he wasn’t sure--he wanted to believe you didn’t mean it, he was begging you for a sign, and you couldn’t fucking give it to him because everybody was watching you. And you couldn’t even blame him for not seeing through your act, remembering how you had acted with him and Rindou, what you had said to them, knowing that you had really given them little reason to trust you.

Please, you begged him to understand you, you know I’d never-

Hanma Shuji whistled lowly, “Man, that was cold even for me,” he said and your heart sunk in your chest as Ran scoffed loudly. His teeth ground together--so hard that you knew it must hurt, a habit that he had adopted in his late teens as gang stress began to wear him down--and he was trying to hide how his eyes were glossing over with tears, blinking discreetly to try to force them away.

You couldn’t stay. Your hands were shoved in your pants pocket in an attempt to hide the way they trembled, in an attempt to stop yourself from reaching out toward him to hold him, wipe away the blood and tell him that you were sorry, that you would fix this, that everything would be okay. 

But you weren’t even sure that you could fix this, you weren’t sure everything would be okay, all you knew for sure was that you were sorry, and that you would give anything to go back--to when? You didn’t even know. 

To the auction? So you could tell them the truth. To the night you finally saw them again? So you could stay with Ran instead of fleeing, run after Rindou to apologize. Back to before the Munich incident? So you could stop yourself from asking for help from your uncle, so you could have them meet you like you had promised. Or maybe even back to before you had originally left? So you could stay with them when they had asked you over and over again to change your mind.

Your regrets were endless and they weighed heavy on your shoulders, shackled your ankles, clogged your lungs like sand; you weren’t even sure how you were moving forward at this point. You supposed the only thing you could safely say you didn’t regret was stopping that night in the alley--or did you? another voice questioned, look at where you got him. You could barely even function as you looked down at Ran, watching how he couldn’t even meet your eyes, how he was clenching and unclenching his jaw as a last-ditch attempt to try to retain some control over his emotions.

“You should go,” Sugawara finally said and you forced yourself to tear your gaze from Ran to look at him, catching his eyes, “Whether you’re currently friends or not, I’m not cruel enough to force you to watch this.”

Your lips parted at his words, your ears rung and you prayed desperately that your distress wasn’t visible on your face. Bullshit, you wanted to scream, you are cruel enough, you made me choose, you made me choose knowing that there was only one answer but you made him think there was another option.

"I love you a lot, y'know? You 'n Rin, more than anything."

You made him think that I don’t care what happens to him, you made him think I don’t-

“Go,” Sugawara said, and it wasn’t a suggestion anymore, it was a demand. 

Numbly, you turned on your heel, brushing past Hanma. Your thoughts were racing, you felt ill.

“Y/n,” Ran called after you. You kept walking. “Y/n, don’t ignore me!” he called louder, his voice edged on pleading and you wanted to throw up. “Y/n, c’mon!”

You kept walking.

“Hey, y/n,” Hanma said as you reached the door, you paused, not looking back because you knew if you looked back at Ran one last time, you would do something stupid--something that would blow your thin cover for good. “After we finish up here, wanna go grab something to eat?”

What?

His question threw you off, you visibly faltered as you gave him a strange look.

“Whatever,” you agreed halfheartedly, pulling your wrist from his grasp as you continued out of the door, lungs burning, mind splitting as you tried to figure out what you were supposed to do. 

How could you even get him out of here? There were bound to be tons of guards watching over him and the cameras- No, the cameras could be dealt with if you got in touch with Takuya but-

Takuya, okay. Takuya is the first step. He needs to be able to loop the playback so nothing looks out of the ordinary.

It was risky, your chest felt tight as the door shut behind you and you leaned against the wall once you realized that nobody else was in the hall, trying to calm your heart rate. You breathed in and out steadily, pacing your breath, counting to five with each inhale, and five with each exhale. You doubled over, resting your elbows on your knees and pressing your face into your hands.

Ran, you wanted to sob--your throat was burning, your eyes were blurring, you couldn’t breathe and you could barely think. Your head hurt, it felt like a thousand knives were being driven through your skull. Calm down, you tried to tell yourself. Calm down, you were shaking, trembling violently, you feared that if you tried to move, your legs would give out, calm down. 

Get in contact with Takuya, you reminded yourself, that’s the first step. You need him to-

“Fuck you,” you heard Ran spit loudly, interrupting your train of thoughts, “Fuck you, I’ll fucking kill every single o-”

There was a sickening crack and a thud, your blood felt cold, the world tunneled around you as your gaze remained focused on the floor, everything muted except for what was going on behind the closed door. Another thud, and another, over and over and over again, bile rose to your throat, you sunk down the wall until you were sitting on the floor, hand pressed against your mouth, eyes wide and glassy.

Over and over and over again.

You could hear him cursing, the gasps of pain. The walls were thin--too thin, you could hear it all, the impact of every kick, the torrent of questions being thrown at him so quickly that you were sure he barely had time to think of an answer before he received another painful kick.

You were going to throw up.

The door opened but you couldn’t even bring yourself to try to cover your distress--it would’ve been useless anyway, there was no hiding it at this point, you wouldn’t be able to hide your distress quick enough. 

Your eyes darted up and you caught sight of your uncle, face ashen and eyes trained ahead, his hands were tense at his sides, fingers barely trembling. He didn’t even notice you sitting there, letting out a heavy breath, bringing one hand up to rub the bridge of his nose. He looked exhausted, disturbed, you wondered if he felt uncomfortable with what was going on in there. He had never been particularly close with either of the brothers but he had looked out for them all this time and…

“Y/n,” his voice was rough, you stiffened at the sound of it. You hadn’t even realized that he had noticed you. Your eyes met his, “Get up.”

“I can’t,” you said, physically flinching as another sharp cry of pain hit your ears. This is your fault, you felt so sick. So fucking sick, you couldn’t even move. Your uncle leaned down, grabbing you by the bicep and hauling you to your feet. You nearly dry heaved as he pulled you down the hall away from the interrogation room but it didn’t matter how far away he dragged you, you couldn’t fucking get Ran’s gasps and cries of pains to stop ringing in your ears.

He brought you into another room halfway down the hall and immediately you crumbled again, dropping onto a couch, hands hiding your face, elbows resting on your knees. 

“I need to get him out,” you gasped, “They’re torturing him, I can’t leave him, I-“

“Y/n,” your uncle’s void was low, sympathetic, you already knew what he was going to say. Your uncle was never sympathetic.

“You can’t stop me,” you shook your head frantically, “You can’t-“

“I know,” you uncle murmured, cutting you off, “I won’t stop you, but there will be consequences. Kenji will know it was you.”

“Fuck the consequences,” you said, eyes wild as you finally looked up at him, catching sight of the grim expression on his face. A chill hit you and you shivered as your eyes darted around, catching sight of the open window. You looked around quickly, not catching sight of any camera in the room. You should have checked for that first, you needed to get some control over yourself. You were going to fuck up, “They’re torturing him, Uncle Ichirou, they’re torturing him and I gave the okay.”

Your uncle clicked his tongue sharply, “If you had given him anything but the okay, he would have killed him. You kept him alive.”

Your throat dried, the words in your tongue died as you stared up at him. Killed? and then you wanted to hit yourself for being surprised, of course, he would have, you wanted to spit out, of fucking course he would have. He had just finished explaining what happened to Kawaragi because he didn’t trust her, he wouldn’t have risked you pulling something if you still considered Ran your friend.

Fool, you wanted to scream, you would have fallen for it, gotten him killed had your uncle not warned you.

You needed to get yourself together. You would never be able to function in this state. You had to control yourself. 

“I need to get him out,” you repeated, still trying to slow your breath and heart rate, “Uncle Ichirou, I need to get him out, I-I can’t, if he, I won’t, I-”

“I know,” he said quietly when you cut yourself off. But you weren’t even sure what he was saying ‘I know’ too because you weren’t even sure what you were trying to say. Though, there was a knowing look in his eyes that had you confused and on edge. “I don’t know how much help I’ll be able to be,” your uncle admitted quietly, “I’m walking on a thin rope already.”

Your brows furrowed in confusion as you looked at your uncle but he only shook his head, “Nothing for you to worry about,” he said and you opened your mouth to argue but your uncle only spoke again before you could say anything, “Tell me about what happened--at the auction.”

You hesitated--your head hurt, you could barely think back to the auction hall without it feeling like spears were being driven through your head, without feeling heavy, without smelling that putrid smoke or the heat of the fire. “It happened right after the auction started, a small explosion, then the big one,” you said quietly, “Hanma threw himself over me-”

“Hanma?” your uncle’s tone was laced with disbelief, you could see his mind running a million miles a minute behind his eyes, “How curious.”

“What does that mean?” you asked, unnerved by the look on his face and how he wouldn’t elaborate on what he had meant. “Uncl-”

“Hanma Shuji has never really been interested in anything,” your uncle murmured, “He’s just been… there. In the six or so years I’ve known him, nothing has particularly intrigued him, so to speak. A state of perpetual boredness, almost.”

Your brows furrowed, his perception of Hanma being entirely different from yours, but you didn’t even have to speak because your uncle was eyeing you again.

“Until you came along, that is,” he said quietly and you felt distinctly uncomfortable. Why? you wondered to yourself, but you must have voiced your thoughts aloud because your uncle looked dismayed, “I don’t know. I don’t like it.”

Something wasn’t sitting right with you. You had to get your mind off of it, focus back on Ran, getting Ran out. “Who’s supposed to be watching over Ran tonight? I need-”

“What else happened at the auction?” your uncle interrupted you, not answering your question you stared at him.

“We can do this later, right now w-”

“We are not getting Ran out of there when the room is occupied with the other higher-ups,” your uncle said sharply, “There was outside interference, we need to figure out who it was and how-”

“There were a ton of gangs there,” you said angrily, voice rising in pitch as you flung your hands out, “from all over the east, how the fuck am I-”

Krüger rising to his feet, a concerned look on his face. 

Your head hurt as you tried to recall the moments before the explosion--you had been panicking looking for Rindou and Ran but… it was more than just concern, wasn’t it? The expression on his face, it was as if he had known something was supposed to happen, but not at that moment. 

Had he…? But how? Who was he working with? 

“Krüger,” you said quietly, “I think it was Gunter Krüger.”

Your uncle didn’t respond, and you forced yourself to look back up at him and you hated the genuine concern and disbelief that had swept across his face. “Y/n…”

“He was there, at the auction. He knew it was going to happen, I saw his face before the second expl-” you cut yourself off, noticing his expression, “you don’t believe me.”

“Gunter Krüger is dead,” your uncle said carefully, you shook your head, “Y/n, we searched for loose ends for weeks after the incident. He never would have slipped through. I sent two of my most trusted to confirm the body. You saw the body.”

“It was closed casket, I did not,” you said immediately, “I know what I saw-”

“You hit your head hard,” your uncle said and your mouth dropped open, watching him incredulously, “and it was a stressful situation that I’m sure brought back unwelco-”

“Are you kidding me?” you demanded, “You think I was hallucinating him? I know what I saw, Hanma and Kawaragi saw him too. And you have some nerve bringing up the unwelcome memories that you caused.”

“You asked for help, I gave you it,” the same thing he always said, the same thing that always made your blood pressure rise and never failed to make your temper peak.

“You know that wasn’t what I meant,” you spit out, rising to your feet, “You know-”

“You didn’t specify what you wanted,” your uncle said calmly and your blood roared in your ears as you rose to your feet, hands clenched tight at your side. 

“You-” you began, but you swayed on your feet as a wave of pain swept over you, up through your arm and neck and into your head. You stumbled and your uncle reached out to steady you, sitting you back down.

The look of concern on his face deepened and you felt ill. You hated it.

“You shouldn’t be walking around yet,” he said, “I’ll bring you back to the infi-”

“I’ve got her,” you froze, your uncle paused. You turned your head to the side, catching sight of Hanma standing at the door. You hadn’t even heard him approach, or the door open.

Get some self-control, you reminded yourself, you were going to end up fucking up beyond repair.

“Hanma,” your uncle’s voice was strained as he spoke, “There’s no ne-”

Hanma blatantly ignored your uncle and you almost gaped, but you didn’t really have time to consider his actions as he reached down and scooped you off of the couch, wrapping an arm around your waist and leading you out of the room, “I’m heading that way anyway! And Sugawara wanted to talk to you, Ichirou.”

The door shut behind him after he finished his sentence, leaving the two of you alone in the cold, silent hallway.

“Maybe we should just order takeout,” Hanma said easily, “Doesn’t look like you’re up to moving around yet.”

You stared ahead, not even sure if you were hearing him correctly. What the fuck is wrong with this guy?

“Ah, safehouse, forgot, guess takeout isn’t the best idea. I’ll just send one of my men into the city to grab us food, they’re not doing much tonight except for watching over your boy,” Hanma said easily, your eyes darted toward him and he caught your gaze--amber eyes sharp in comparison to the playful smile on his face, as if he hadn’t just divulged sensitive information to you.

Did he even realize?

Of course, he realized, you understood immediately, his eyes were too sharp and calculating for him not to. He knew exactly what he was telling you and how you could use it. He was doing it on purpose, “Doubt I’ll keep ‘em there the whole night,” he shrugged, “Fuck Sugawara for giving us this shit job, boring as fuck, ‘pposed to be Alyona’s little lackeys but they’re not around tonight. Should be taking over tomorrow.”

Why? you wanted to ask him. Is this a test or an opportunity? Why?

You felt cold, anxious. You didn’t know what to do, you hated not knowing what to do. Rain pattered against the roof of the house quickly, harshly, it was loud, deafening but it couldn’t drown out the memory of Ran’s gasps of pain. You wished it would. 

Your fault. This was your fault. 

You were ill again.

“What do you want from me?” and you hated how fucking weak your voice sounded. You were exhausted, your body ached, and guilt weighed so heavily on your mind and soul that you felt as if you were going to collapse in on yourself. You couldn’t get Ran off of your mind, and your phone was buzzing in your pocket over and over again and you were too scared to look because you had a feeling you knew exactly who was calling you.

He paused in front of the door to the makeshift infirmary, “Here, you should go lay down, I need to go check up on my guys real quick.”

He started walking away, you stared after him, “I asked you a question,” you called.

Hanma looked at you over his shoulder, a smile on his lips, “Nothing in particular, not yet, at least. You’re interesting,” his smile faded, he turned away and continued walking as he finished his sentence, not giving you the chance to question him, “in some ways, you remind me of someone I used to know.”

--

wordcount: 7.2k 

REBLOGS AND FEEDBACK HIGHLY 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.

yes yess this is so good! (⁠ʃ⁠ƪ⁠＾⁠3⁠＾⁠）

Long live the Emperor …

synopsis — he was a very jealous man and he would do anything to send his message. you were his and he would make sure everyone knew who you belonged to.

warning - nsfw, dubcon, arranged marriage, public sex, throne sex, cock warming

shameful. it’s a shameful display of power and greed and no one dares to say a word. the court has been in session for what felt like hours with many people passing through with important requests for the emperor.

their voices are low and some even stutter, scared to look away but even more afraid to anger their emperor if they dare look at his royal consort.

“you may speak” he says, his voice as steady as any other day only that he has his beautiful wife on his lap in a thin sheer robe that leaves little to the imagination despite how long it is. it’s a beautiful shade of green, see-through and no doubt only appropriate for your private quarters.

you’re beautiful with the finest jewellery fit for the royal consort and despite your obvious discomfort and embarrassment, you know you can’t move. his cock is buried deep inside you and if you were to move, it sends a shiver up your spine that you want to hate. your husband has no respect for you privacy at all, wanting to make a point to all the men who stare at you. you belonged to him and he didn’t care if you were young and new to this side of the world.

you had just turned 18 and your father had promised you to him and no matter how much you begged and pleaded with him, he forced you to marry the emperor and now you were being shown off like some prize in front of everyone.

“m-my king” the man below speaks, but his unable to look at the king in the eye so he keeps his eyes downcast, his cheeks are red and so are his ears. you want to feel sorry for the poor old man but you saw the way he looked at you when he first entered and he was no different than anyone else in the court.

“speak up!” ran shouts, “if you’re here to waste my time, then my guards can see you out”

“i’ve come to ask for h-help” the man clears his throat, “my people, we have been struggling with-”

the man can barely get his words out and it’s so obvious that the king is bored. he helps his people and his not a selfish man but he’s very different with you and it’s clear that the people have angered him enough to push him this far. he circles his hips and grips your waist.

you can’t hide the shame that fills you the moment you moan, your mouth falling open in surprise as he thrusts up into you. his cock is big and even though you had become well acquainted on your wedding night, it was still difficult to get used to something so thick.

there are whispers throughout the court and you don’t have to see the king’s face to know he’s smirking. the smug bastard knew exactly what he was doing and he would do it again to send the message across.

you belonged to him.