The woman who held him close after nightmares and kissed his scraped knees and snuck chocolate into his bentos when his dad wasn't looking. he was always searching for his father's approval but his mom's was always right there, right there in his arms-
endeavor overpowered his childhood and overpowered her-- both in real life and in his memories. he doesn't know her birthday, her favorite color, the things she holds dear.
but he knows she used to love him and sometimes that's enough to keephim warm
the last days of his life, he's silent. the life support has been turned off, leaving only his jagged breathing to fill the moments.
endeavor comes and talks to him, with tones he never used before. Rei pushes his wheelchair, the dutiful wife as always.
but she lingers longer than her husband. she hangs there, in the stillness, unsure her son even knows she's there.
"You were my first baby," she says. "My baby."
Touya draws in a long, hissing breath, no different than any other he's taken today. She doesn't have anything else to say-- or maybe she has too much she needs to, so she steps away, back into the hall where Enji is waiting.
"Mom."
The voice is high, rotten and sour with pain, but it's there, she knows it. She waits and waits at the precipice of the room, hoping for more, but nothings comes.
grumpy tenured professor Naoya x new, sunshine-y associate professor reader !!
lessons in intimacy, naoya zenin ;
pairing naoya zenin x f!reader
word count 4.5k
synopsis naoya zenin, phd, still has a lot to learn, and you are a surprisingly good teacher
content contains fluff!!!, academia au, and they were office roomies!, naoya-centric, he bashes the arts </3
Learning Objective One: Notice Things About Your Partner
Naoya Zenin stares at the heart-shaped cake you left on his desk and refrains from going absolutely batshit.
He can feel the pinpricks of irritation poking his insides, making him curl his hands in annoyance. Two weeks prior, there was a staff meeting informing the business school that they would be sharing their classrooms and offices with the English professors since apparently, due to poor plumbing and a lack of funding, their shack of a school building got flooded and was therefore deemed “unsafe” and “unusable.”
Naoya distinctly remembers making a snide comment about how majoring in something as worthless as English or literature should be deemed a safety hazard and that the degree is basically unusable. Maybe this is the universe’s way of telling everyone in the school to get a grip and let the entire English department just float away into a nearby swamp.
The business professors all agreed and considering that all of their students end up becoming wealthy alumni who donate money to ensure that their buildings don’t go under, Naoya doesn’t care about the enraged comments from the English department.
All his rude remarks seem to ensure that he’ll be left alone, which is exactly how he likes to be. It seems that he’s the most hated business school professor and no one is willing to share a space with him.
Because you are the youngest and newest member of the faculty, you end up being the unfortunate soul paired up with Naoya Zenin, PhD. When you first step into the office, big box filled with your printed lesson plans and desk supplies, he refuses to lend you a hand.
Instead, he sits back in his seat, staring at you with such an intense look in his eyes that you decide to look at anything but him, and he watches you struggle to maneuver around the tight space. Because of the funding, the business school offices are spacious, but to maintain some semblance of privacy, minor renovations were made. Crammed in a corner is a new desk meant for you. If he keeps staring daggers into your very soul, you’re going to make a request to have a room divider put in place so you can cower behind them and avoid his glare.
While your side of the office is small, you make it as unique to yourself as possible. There’s a Cinnamoroll plushie sitting on your desk, a cup holding glittery gel pens, and inside your desk drawers are scratch-‘n-sniff sticker sheets with colorful words of encouragement because the world has already beaten down your students enough — you might as well give them back some of their childhood enjoyment.
Naoya’s desk is vintage mahogany and rarely has anything sitting atop it unless he’s inside the office and on his laptop. Hanging on the wall behind him is his doctoral degree that is forever put on display in a massive, ostentatious frame. Naoya Zenin, PhD from Keio University. Economics, you recall him telling one of his colleagues. Because finance is the poor man’s idea of a prestigious field.
It doesn’t take a degree to know how Dr. Zenin feels about a degree in the arts.
Upon your first awkward meeting with Naoya (where he let you nearly trip and spill all your meager belongings onto his pristine office’s floors), you immediately head home and look at your new office buddy’s RateMyProf reviews.
⅕ OVERALL QUALITY BASED ON 986 RATINGS | 0% WOULD TAKE AGAIN | 5.0 LEVEL OF DIFFICULTY
Professor Zenin’s Top Tags
#lotsofhomework
#getreadytoread
#lectureheavy
#skipclass?youwon’tpass
Review 1: i dropped my econ major because of him. this wasn’t even supposed to be a weeder class
Review 2: DR ZENIN IS THE WORST PROFESSOR FOR ECONOMICS. HE MIGHT BE THE WORST PROFESSOR IN THE BUSINESS SCHOOL. HE MIGHT EVEN BE THE WORST PROFESSOR IN THIS WHOLE DAMN UNIVERSITY!!!!!! DO NOT TAKE HIM! I regret not taking everyone else’s advice and going with Dr. Gojo instead
Review 3: only redeeming quality is being hot, but he’s still an asshole
Review 4: Misogynist, doesn’t believe women can be leaders in the business world, has God awful takes that literally no one sane would agree with, teaches what HE thinks is right and refuses to acknowledge any opposing viewpoints, talks down on students, and that’s all i can say about him from the TWO DAYS i attended his class. i immediately dropped his course LOL
Review 5: Dr. Zenin’s rigorous coursework and unforgiving grading has prepared me for graduate school, and I still believe all the courses I had with him provided me with a better foundation than my other peers in my doctoral program. However, he did make my undergrad experience a miserable one. His lectures are hard to follow at times, and he creates his exams with the intent of making it unpassable. He’s the professor that you wonder why he hasn’t been fired yet.
You search for any positive comments about him, but it appears that the students hate everything about him, to his tests, his teaching style, and his personality.
In all honesty, it’s kind of sad. What must it be like, you wonder, to be so hated by the very students you’re meant to teach and inspire? You’re willing to give Naoya the benefit of the doubt — you know how one student’s misconception against a professor can paint a bad picture overall. Maybe Naoya is just a difficult person to understand! An undercover softie, if you will.
There’s no harm in trying to be friendly with him. After all, the two of you are going to be partners for the foreseeable future. You don’t have the energy to remain constantly on your guard around him.
You start off with little things, like burning candles in the office to fill it with sweet, welcoming scents. You offer to let him borrow your extension cord so his charger doesn’t have to bend all awkwardly when he plugs in his laptop. You make an effort to ensure that the classroom is clean before his class enters because that’s a courteous thing to do. You notice that when he eats his lunch on campus, he’s always unwrapping a sweet treat afterwards.
You can’t be a truly bad person if you have a sweet tooth, you rationalize.
So, you bake him little goods and leave them on his desk. When a week goes by and he doesn’t acknowledge your actions but the goods are always gone by the time lunchtime is over, you think you’re making progress. You notice that he seems stressed and annoyed every time he storms into the office, and so you start adding tiny notes of motivation alongside the goods, too.
Written on a pink sticky note that’s in the shape of a heart (probably to match the fucking miniature cake you baked), Naoya’s eye almost starts to twitch as he examines every loop and curve of the letters you personally handwritten for him.
I hope you have a great day today! Look on the bright side, you’re done with all your lectures for the week!
Naoya angrily takes a bite out of the cake as he waits for his laptop to turn on. The sugary sweetness does very little to alleviate his annoyance, but he can begrudgingly admit that the cake is good. Delicious, even.
This makes his scowl deepen.
How annoying, he thinks, tossing your note in the trash bin (not having the heart to crumple it up like he used to do with your previous notes). What are you, some kind of a stalker? How is it any of your business to know that Thursdays are his last days for teaching since business schools don’t believe in having class on Friday? And why do you always do that? Saying I hope?
“I’m not going to tell you what to do, Momo,” he remembers you telling your blonde-haired student. “But I hope you consider sticking with your creative writing major. We’ll lose a very talented student if you choose to go, you know.”
Naoya had let out a little snort of amusement at this. Who the fuck cares about whether or not students drop out? If they can’t handle the coursework, clearly they’re not cut out for the real world. He finds it annoying that you practically hold their hands, coddling them, always tacking on an I hope because you don’t want to demand people to do things. So much damn consideration, he wonders how you even survive in this big city. You’re probably the type of person who apologizes when someone else gets in your way at a busy store. You probably let yourself get cut in line. You definitely give money to panhandlers who are only posing as the homeless and needy.
Naoya wants to take joy in the fact that you are the type of person who could easily be taken advantage of, but as he finishes the cake you made for him, the idea of people purposely giving you a hard time just because you’ll take it lying down makes him feel even more irritated than before.
He takes out his frustration on his students. A first-year student emailed him asking for an extension, so Naoya tells them either they get it done by the original deadline, or he is more than willing to just give them the zero right now. In the real world, your boss and your clients will not give a single shit that you are hospitalized after being hit by a truck. Perhaps, if you used the brain inside your head and the eyes on your face, you would know better than to cross the road when a speeding truck is heading your way.
Then, he thinks that you would probably gladly give your students an extension if they asked. You’d probably even visit them in the fucking hospital, like the saint you think you are.
You’re so helpful to the point of your kindness being detrimental to your own wellbeing. You extend deadlines, and then have to beg and plead with the dean and bust your ass to get final grades in by the required date. All that struggle could have been avoided if you just gave the zero. You hear out your students, letting them speak their minds, and it cuts into your lecture time. Nobody is paying tuition to hear another student’s ramblings. And how long does it take you to bake him these desserts? It’s something different every day, always fresh, always seemingly made with care.
He doesn’t even know how you know he likes sweets. Lucky guess, he tells himself.
You see, Naoya knows that he is respected (somewhat) and feared (most definitely). He knows that he is not loved, not by his colleagues (who are all intimidated by him), not by his family (who thinks becoming a professor at a prestigious research university is dogshit when he should have been a global economist), not by his students (the university-mandated end-of-the-term class surveys are always sent to him). So to him, despite the ego he presents to the public, he cannot fathom the idea of someone noticing little things about himself. He definitely can’t imagine someone noticing and caring — it would honestly make more sense if they used private information against him.
He doesn’t think about you noticing him, and he refuses to think about all the things he subconsciously notices about you. He can recognize you by your perfume alone; someone had passed him by in the hall, and his eyes searched for your figure, only to be greeted by a student who just happened to favor the same fragrance as you. (He had snapped at the poor girl, telling her to walk faster or get out of the way.) He’s certain he knows the fucking HTML color code for the specific shade of lipgloss you’re always constantly applying in the office. One time, against his better judgment, he saves the place you’re at in your book. You had fallen asleep at your desk, your finger pressed on the page you were struggling to read, and then your head banged on the desk, hand slipping away. He doesn’t know why he didn’t leave you alone in the office; he had no business staying that late since none of his students were brave enough to turn in any assignments to be graded. There was an on-campus police alert the day before, though. Naoya rationalizes that he just didn’t want any criminals or deviants breaking into his office and destroying it. That’s all.
He actively avoids any thought of you, not realizing the irony of how, in his vehement attempts to ignore your existence, he is very much acknowledging you.
Learning Objective Two: Have Meaningful Conversations With Your Partner
“Why do you do that?” Naoya snaps, breaking the silence in the office.
Naoya is the type of person who does not simply say things — he snaps, he sneers, he smirks. And he has the exact tonation, voice, manner of speaking, of someone who grew up and was never told to shut the fuck up. With his current position in life, it seems like no one ever will.
“Do what?” You look up from the papers you’re grading, staring at him all doe-eyed and genuinely confused that Naoya discovers the unfortunate fact that he does, actually, possess a heart. An annoying one that gets all tight in his chest and starts beating against his rib cage every time you look at him. He’d charge you with a hospital bill from a top of the line cardiologist, but he knows you get paid like shit in comparison to him. Also, because he doesn’t like the idea of women spending money on his behalf.
“Give out pity grades.”
It’s like you’ll do anything in your power to not fail a student. You’re just pulling out participation points straight from your ass! And the comments — don’t get him started on the amount of comments you waste time leaving on your students’ papers. There’s a reason why his grades always get entered before deadlines. He’s efficient.
“And ruthless.” You tell him, after hearing him tell you all about his “efficiency.” “We’re here to help cultivate their minds. Get them to think. College shouldn’t be about getting grades based on your professor’s mood.”
Was that somehow an attack on him? He should be annoyed. Instead, he finds this side of you less annoying.
“I’m always in the same mood every time I grade.”
“Oh, yeah? And what’s that, vindictive?” You’re teasing him, and he wouldn’t let just anyone get away with such a comment. He’s bored, he tells himself. That’s why he’s entertaining this. Unlike someone, he doesn’t have anything left to grade.
“Nah. Irritated. They’re all idiots.”
You frown. “No student is an idiot.”
He gives you a look. “You teach English.”
“Intro to Classic Lit.” You correct him.
“Right.” He says this slowly. “Idiots.”
“Maybe yours, but definitely not mine.”
“Let's compare our students’ majors and potential earnings after graduation.”
Now it’s your turn to give him a look. “There’s nothing wrong with pursuing your passions.”
“Great. Do you tell them that when the cashier tells them their card declined? Or, does the passion end up paying the total? Are grocery stores accepting passion as a form of payment now?”
“Don’t be as mean as people say you are.”
His signature smug air of superiority momentarily dissipates at this statement. It’s not often that someone can get Naoya to shut up. To be bested by someone who grades using pink gel pens is so humbling, the only thing keeping him on his pedestal is the fact that he knows he’s the youngest tenured professor in this whole entire university and an acclaimed researcher (he always makes the list for top five most cited economic researchers). You’re fresh out of a doctoral program, and even being tenure-track would be a pipe dream for you.
“There’s nothing mean about being honest.”
“You can be honest without being mean.”
“It’s the truth. Students are idiots.” He shrugs, because what the fuck is he supposed to do about it?
“Then why become a professor?”
“Sweetheart, professors that work here are researchers first, teachers… no, not second. Maybe third? If they’re that dedicated to shaping young minds, or whatever fantasy you’ve got going on.”
“Well, I believe that the students are here to learn. And before you call them stupid again, that’s the great part about learning. You don’t have to be smart to do it.”
Growing up, Naoya had to be a lot of things, smart being one of them. No one in his household was ever capable of producing an ounce of empathy, and considering all the people he’s been surrounded by since his prep school, university, and internship days have all been raised in similar environments. The world is unforgiving. Naoya lives by the ever-so-poetic motto of “sucks to suck.”
He will go home and lay in bed and stare at the crown molding on his ceiling, and he will recall your sunny disposition. He wants to shame and berate you for being so damn optimistic, for believing in those words, and he will think to himself wouldn’t it be nice for it to be true?
Instead, right now, all he does is huff. The truth is, Naoya is well aware that his students aren’t stupid, even if he tells them that they are every time they’re in class and every time they dare to come to his office hours to debate their grades. They aren’t stupid in the booksmart sense, but they are very dumb when it comes to the real world, and Naoya considers it a ruthless kind of mercy that he exacts on them. They’re idiots because they have all the potential in the world and would rather waste their time on stupid shit and procrastinate on their assignments instead of putting forth any real effort.
If they tried, he would give them an A.
Learning Objective Three: Be Specific and Sincere With Your Praise
You’re crying.
In his head, Naoya tries to force himself to roll his eyes but finds his body unwilling to comply with the demands of his mind. He’s annoyed, but the irritation isn’t directed at you.
It’s at the man sitting across from you. Dr. Kimura got his PhD from Cambridge and thinks he’s hot shit, but out of pure curiosity, Naoya found his dissertation online and still uses it as free melatonin. Two paragraphs in knocks him out faster than a whole bottle of sleeping pills.
Dr. Kimura asks him to leave, into which Naoya reminds him that this is technically his office, and that Dr. Kimura is an intruder. Too much time spent with you in such a confined space has some of your little lessons rubbing off on him. Words are so important to you. Naoya decides that visitor and guest are too kind, too euphemistic, for Dr. Kimura. Call it like it is.
Kimura’s business for being here is to give you your first ever teaching evaluation. It’s actually just a poorly disguised attempt at trying to lowball professors’ salaries, but this is the type of schtick that only works on pushovers like you. Naoya leans back in his desk chair, arms crossed, and it’s obvious that he is going to be listening in on the whole entire ordeal. You’re embarrassed to be put on display like this, not knowing that he isn’t here to scrutinize you (for once), but rather he’s your backup.
Before things take a turn for the worse, you’re actually all smiles and sunshines and rainbows.
Stop smiling at him, Naoya thinks. He hates your smile. Hates it the most when it’s directed towards anyone but him.
Kimura begins with a compliment. That’s how all the professors in the arts are taught. Compliment sandwich! Praise, constructive criticism, more praise! What a fucking joke. Naoya thinks his way of handling things is much more efficient. Talk about all the stuff they need improvement on, and whatever isn’t corrected clearly is okay. Don’t you people know how to read in between the lines? Context clues ring any bells? Fuck, what did you all go to school for?
Disaster strikes, just as Naoya predicts.
“Listen, we know that this is your first year of teaching, and you’re still getting settled into your role of professor and not student, but clearly there’s some leniency when it comes to your grading…”
Kimura’s listing all sorts of shit. Grade inflation is what he claims one second, next he’s claiming you have subjective grading criteria. No other Intro to Classic Literature course has a similar class average to yours.
Kimura shakes his head, like he’s disappointed in you. Another tactic that would only work on someone as sweet as you.
“If this continues to be an issue, we may have to reconsider renewing your contract.”
And there are those waterworks Naoya is expecting.
The thing is, Naoya knows a bully when he sees one. Naoya knows all about being cruel just for the sake of being cruel. As cold, shriveled up, and worthless as it seems, Naoya does have a heart.
“That’s bullshit.” He inserts himself into the conversation. You’re staring down at your lap, twiddling with your fingers. Kimura turns to look at him.
“This is a private matter—”
“If it was private, you would have done it in your own office instead of mine.”
“This is a matter that concerns the English department, not yours, Dr. Zenin.”
He’s right. And yet—
“Have you even read any of her students’ papers?”
—Naoya is your backup.
“How is this relevant?”
“Read their papers. Read their first one versus their most recent one. Hell, read every single essay a student has turned in over the course. I guarantee you they deserve the marks she’s given them.”
“Their papers are filled with corrections and questions, and yet, she gives them an A.” Kimura knows all about Naoya’s reputation. He’s infamous. He’s the reason why everyone’s scared of majoring in economics. Naoya Zenin is the toughest grader there is.
“I’ve seen the mental state of your department’s students. She’s doing them a favor by not crushing them.”
“You’re saying they deserve those grades?”
“She lets them redo all their papers within a reasonable period of time and grades based on the overall improvement.” Naoya shrugs, like it’s just that simple. “I don’t see an issue.”
“She’s manipulating grades.”
“She’s giving them a second chance. I personally find that to be admirable.” Naoya is not lying. This is what makes you look up. “And she cares. I think she’s the only one of your faculty who gives a damn about whether her students are learning or not.”
Naoya doesn’t hate a lot of things because he doesn’t like giving certain things so much special attention, but he does dislike insincere people. People like Kimura are the worst because they hide behind fake niceties and table manners, but if you peel off their skin, they’re secretly lizards in disguise. At least in Naoya’s case, no one ever has the luxury of being shocked when he says something very mean and unpleasant because he will never filter himself or put on a mask that gives off the vibe that he practices civility.
As a matter of fact, Naoya has a nasty, serpent-like grin on his face as he locks in on Kimura, caging him in.
“After all, isn't that the point of becoming a professor, Dr. Kimura?”
Gotcha, you slimy bastard.
Learning Objective Four: Be Vulnerable, Put Yourself Out There
“Would you say I’m an asshole?” Naoya brings this up as he helps you pack up your belongings. He claims that it’s because he can’t wait to have his office all to himself again, but really, he’s starting to realize that lending a helping hand every once in a while can’t hurt. He hisses when a sharp edge from one of the many stacks of paper you possess cuts his finger.
That’s the last time he’ll ever help someone, he thinks bitterly.
“Not to your face.” You reply back, giving him a grin. He wants to take your smile and store it in a moving box and then keep that box underneath his desk and have it be one of his most prized possessions.
“Hm.” Then he tells you, “A student called me that.”
“To your face?” You look equal parts shocked, amused, and delighted. It’s a good look.
“No. RateMyProfessor.”
“Oh, I think I saw that one. They called you hot, right?” You’re busy packing up your sticker sheets and binders. Naoya wonders if he’s reading too hard into what you’re telling him.
“You’ve seen my reviews?”
“Of course I did. I looked you up on the Internet the day we became office roomies.” You throw this information out so nonchalantly that Naoya almost feels like he’s the weird one to have a reaction from it.
“You looked me up on the Internet?”
“Duh. Naoya, we live in a world where AI is writing essays for students. Of course, I would look you up online.”
“But why?” He presses you, latches on to the idea that there is a world where someone wants to look him up online and it’s not to find his home address so they can get revenge on him failing them.
“Because I wanted to know more about you, silly.”
It would be nice to be known. It’s already nice to have someone who wants to get to know you. Naoya Zenin does not settle in life, but he thinks he could settle for this and be content for the rest of his days.
Of course you would. He would say this, all snarky and egotistical, but he knows better. He won’t have an excuse to see your four times a week, won’t be cooped up in this office with you late in the night, won’t get to smell the remnants of your perfume when he’s up at the podium, lecturing his class. But there’s a chance that he could see you in different settings, too. Getting coffee together in between classes. Sitting next to each other during university-wide faculty meetings. Taking you out to dinner, because he’s reviewed your contract, and he’s not sure how you’re surviving financially.
“I would like that.” The words come out rushed, all jumbled and smushed together. He’s a grown man. He doesn’t blush. This is what he tells himself when he feels heat rise to his cheeks. “I would like for you to get to know me. And to learn more about you, too.” He swallows. Hard. “I sound stupid, I meant to—”
“It’s okay, Dr. Zenin.” You have the prettiest smile in the world. His dissertation should have been on that. “The fun part about learning is that you can still do it, even when you’re being stupid.”
you nod sharply, the latter half of your moan petering out into the silence of your dark bedroom. and you decide that maybe getting fucked facedown with your mouth muffled against your pillow was in fact, as kuroo had warned, not the full proof idea you had argued it to be.
("your brother's literally sleeping on the other side of this wall."
"i can be quiet like this."
"you're never quiet.")
to be fair, kuroo's the one that followed you upstairs when he was supposed to be sleeping on the couch.
(it's neither here nor there that you decided to not-so-quietly make your way into the kitchen in a tank top and panties.)
kuroo's hand strokes your waist, a soft caress, fingertips pressing reassuringly into your hipbone before his thick cock sinks into your sticky, swollen folds.
you want to argue that the slick, sloppy sound of his dick plunging inside of you is loud enough as it is, that the wet slap of his balls against the back of your thighs could probably wake the fucking dead.
but it's a battle in and of itself not to scream when he bottoms out inside of you, pressing an open-mouthed kiss to the nape of your neck as his palm claps over your parted lips.
gojo “warps into your rooms unannounced just to say hi so that he nearly scares you to death and now you’re chewing him out but it’s fine because he has your undivided attention and if you really hated him dropping by you’d put up wards but you haven’t and this is the third time this week so that must mean you love him and he will continue to keep doing it” satoru
The time when you almost decide to hit him over the head with something heavy is when he shows up in your rooms, clad in only a bath towel around his hips, and throwing open your bedroom door with all the enthusiasm of a wet dog, saying, “You called?”
And it startles you so bad your book falls from your hands when you yelp. Because you hadn’t called, you hadn’t texted, you hadn’t even shouted for him.
“I didn’t—!” you start, wresting the comforter off your legs. “I didn’t call for you! Get out, Satoru!”
“Really?” he asks, watching you storm toward him. “Could’ve sworn I heard you say ‘I miss Satoru, I wish he was here.’”
You hadn’t, and at this point he’s making things up as he goes, dripping water onto your wood floors and cocking his head as he pitches his voice to mock your own.
You grab his arm, pulling him after you roughly to get him out of your bedroom.
He makes a wounded sound. “Easy with those claws, they hurt.”
Ignoring him, you drag him to the door, grumbling about his habits and bad manners while he pads behind you. In all reality, he lets you take him to the door; he lets you tug him around and fuss angrily at him. He knows there’s no real malice behind it.
He just…hasn’t seen you in a while. You’ve been gone more often, busy with field work and dealing with the school’s interrelationships.
You pause in the middle of your sentence, now facing him. On his bare stomach is a moderately long and freshly healed scar—it’s pink and irritated.
Your face twists in an unreadable expression as you throw your hand out. “When did that happen? Is that recent?” you ask, your tone sharp.
And thank God you do, because Satoru nearly preens.
Truth be told, he was hoping you’d notice.
“It happened on my last assignment,” he says. “It wasn’t as bad as you’re probably thinking.”
You’re still staring at the scar but he wishes you’d look up, at him.
“Shoko says that kisses will make it heal faster.”
That gets your attention, your face burning when you catch his eye and find that he’s already watching you.
Like an owner dealing with a bad dog, you open the door and point. “Out.”
I LOVE GAANG SMM!! And yes, Suki is part of gaang. I can’t stand the suki under representation. I love my queen sm. ALL CREDITS TO THE ARTIST!! @schwesterchiz in Insta
It’s a calm morning when you unknowingly decide to ruin Iwa’s sense of reality.
He’s standing beside the counter in a pair of gray sweats, still half asleep, broad shoulders relaxed as he pours you both coffee.
You’re leaning against the counter, reminiscing on your old high school days out loud when you casually say, “God I was so in love with you in high school, it’s actually embarrassing”
The comment stops him dead in his tracks. He slowly turns to you, eyebrows pinches tight, “…Huh?”
You just laugh, the sound way too light and airy for the absolute bomb you just dropped on him.
He’s staring hard now, eyes glued to your face as if the answer might suddenly change if he looks hard enough.
“You liked me?”, he asks slowly.
You blink at him, “Yeah, wasn’t it obvious?”
The room goes silent for a second, both of you trying to process the new information.
“I thought you liked Issei”, he suddenly blurts with a frown.
“…Why would I like Issei?” you ask, eyebrow raised.
His jaw drops, “You two literally acted like a couple!”
That makes you snort, “Oh, that was his idea. We were trying to make you jealous”, you laugh a little, waving him off, “I just figured it didn’t work because you didn’t want me!”
The silence that follows is deafening.
Iwa just stares at you like his entire high school experience is replaying behind his eyes in horrible, painful detail.
Every hangout where Matsukawa draped himself all over you, the teasing little comments and shy giggles.. Every single time you laughed at his dumb comments while Iwa sat there trying to force himself to be happy for you two.
“We could’ve been together so much sooner!” He barks, incredulous look on his face.
Now, it’s your turn to be stunned. You blink, “Wait…. What?”
“I was obsessed with you!”, he groans loudly, dramatically dragging his hands down his face, “Oikawa used to make fun of me because I’d bitch about you and Issei all the time!”
Your eyes widen, mouth falling open dramatically, “Shut up, no way!”
“All those years…” he groans, “All because that dumbass wanted to play mind games”
The laugh that escapes you cools him down a little. His shoulders loosen, huffing out his own little laugh as he shakes his head.
“Hey,” you say softly after a moment, smiling at him real sweet, “we got here eventually, didn’t we?”
And just like that, his irritation melts clean away.
Because you’re right here.
Messy morning hair.
One of his oversized shirts slipping off your shoulder.
Mismatched socks sliding against the kitchen floor.
Standing in your shared apartment making breakfast together like this was always where you were meant to end up.
His entire expression softens instantly, “…C’mere,” he mutters, already reaching for you.
You grin immediately, shuffling into his arms with a giggle as he wraps himself around you completely, pulling you flush against his chest and rocking you gently side to side.
“I can’t believe it” he mumbles into your hair.
You smile up at him, crinkling your nose, “Sorry, I really th-“
“No,” he cuts in immediately, pulling back just enough to look at you with pure disbelief, “I can’t believe Oikawa was right about it being fake”
You burst out laughing so hard you nearly choke.
Iwaizumi follows a second later, loud and bright, the sound filling the apartment and melting away the last sleepy traces of the morning completely.
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A/N: Iwa makes u swear to never tell Oikawa bc he knows he’ll never hear the end of it
