(The best of this post and its reblogs, but with links that work)
Here is a website where you can scroll down to all the different levels of the ocean
Here is a website where you can see the future of the universe
Here is a website where you can press a ‘make everything okay’ button, over and over, until things really are okay
Here is a website that you can read if you feel like a burden
Here is a website where you can look at strobe illusions (TW strobe/flashing)
Here is a website where you can cut stuff up (TW blood/sh)
Here and here are websites where you can play with sand
Here is a website where you can draw with macaroni and other fun foods
Here is a website where you can paint someone’s nails
Here is a website where you can grow a garden with emojis
Here is a website with hundreds of videos of people hugging you (rightfully dubbed ‘the nicest place on the internet’ because it really is, y’all, it made me cry)
Here is a website that will take you to other useless websites
Here is a website where you can make a tiny cat play bongo drums (and other instruments!)
Here is a website to help give you gentle reminders <3
Here is a website where you can grow a tiny farm
Here is a website where you can take a bunch of scientific personality tests
The timing of this post is actually insane. Spent the day watching years of family issues explode in real time, getting a surprise front-row seat to a confrontation, and generally feeling like my brain got put in a blender. Add in questionable math scores too, an emergency 7/11 trip, and the kind of day that makes you want to stare at a wall and probably cry for a bit. Well i did cry, fuck my life
Not to vaguepost, but if you had told me this morning that I’d end the day exhausted from both family drama and math, then find a post full of cat links, virtual hugs, funny videos, and little things to do when life gets too loud, I would’ve believed you immediately.
Seeing this right now feels oddly comforting. Thanks, Tumblr.
summary: an op goes haywire and you're confronted with a near-death experience and, without much time to breathe, a bitter reality. you're then forced to assist both the CIA and SAS, otherwise the consequences could be dire. joining a new team wouldn't be as daunting as it is if they weren't such jerks.
warnings: canon-typical violence (15+); blood & gore; gun violence; some british swearing; military slang; author has not rewatched the gameplays in a while so canon details are probably not perfect (i read so many wiki pages though, trust me); talk of death & grief; corruption; takes place directly after the events of MW (2019).
a/n: between you and me, i started this with simon in mind. but then i started writing some extra dialogue with kyle (not included in this) and got conflicted. so for now it's just platonic 141 x fem!reader. we'll see how the romance goes depending on which character i feel has the most chemistry (probably simon or kyle... maybe price). but anyway, this definitely has potential to be a series and was super fun to write! i hope you enjoy <33
You’ve barely had any time to breathe. Between high-pitched whistles—followed by staggering booms—and the wailing, you just can’t breathe. You try inhaling through the thin bandana you’ve wrangled into a mouth covering, but the air is thin—like too much of it has been caught by the fabric. When you exhale, the air is too hot, trapped between your lips and your nose.
But there is no time to think about that.
Blood covers your hands as you shove thin coils of scratchy gauze into a soldier’s open wound. He wriggles on the ground like a dying insect, choked screams stuck in his throat. Like most of the men in your unit, his face is covered by a balaclava and sunglasses. The black plastic shielding his eyes glints ferally beneath the sun, but you don’t dare take them off.
“Hey, listen to me—” your level voice is drowned out by the loud whine of gunfire as it sprays downward from a soaring helicopter. You duck your head on instinct, but it is pure luck that the bullets embed themselves into the other side of the compound. Cement bursts violently, and you can hear the other men shouting into the humid air that sucks up their words like a vacuum.
You continue, hands pushing down. “You’re gonna be OK, Martin!”
It’s part of the usual procedure, though it’s never written down in any manuscript. Lie to them. Tell them it’s going to be OK—even though you might be dead in the next second. You suppose that’s to be expected. Anyone who looks death in the face over and over starts to talk back to it, and no one has to tell them to. They just do it.
“C’mon, I know it hurts, but it’s all right. We’re gonna get you out,” your voice shakes with the ground.
Martin thrashes beneath you, the tendons in his neck protruding like iron bars beneath his skin. You can see the faint outline of his clenched teeth through the balaclava. With a grunt, you shove your hands underneath his arms and start to drag him out from the open. Streaks of blood follow you as a line of evidence. You don’t think to breathe properly, but you do think, there won’t be any evidence to find once this place is decimated.
Another helicopter roars overhead, and you automatically shrink your shoulders—as if the bullets won’t find you if you hide. Your lieutenant screams, “TAKE COVER!”
You want to laugh bitterly, because there really isn’t any cover. There’s military vehicles and two concrete villas, all surrounded by concrete walls. Everything is the colour of the sun, bright and blindingly white. Bullets and shells are raining down on you because that’s war.
Even the silent ones.
But your boots scuff against the ground as you hurry backwards towards one of the vehicles. The metal is dented with bullets, little black holes like seeds in a passionfruit. A soldier leans against a tire, feet kicked out and limp. You beg that he’s only unconscious.
“There you go,” you groan as you press Martin’s spine to another tire, keeping his form hidden behind the rubber as much as possible. You crouch in front of him, hands leaving behind crimson prints on the truck where you lean against it. There is a jagged pain in your shoulder, but you don’t look down and you don’t focus on it. You simply can’t.
A whistle cuts through the air, clean and sharp, and you look up stupidly, as if you might see the bomb before it hits you. The ground bursts open, and it’s close enough to send you off balance. Your side hits the ground, and your hands reach for your ears as they ring. Your unit is screaming, orders being flung out and warnings coming too late.
You slur out a curse, dazed as you crawl towards the other soldier. His chin is pressed to his collarbone, and blood blots out his name tag. You reach forward to pull down his face covering, and you recognise Ramirez. He’s not much older than you, all snark and silver-tongue, coffee and caramel candy. He’s going to propose to his girlfriend in three weeks.
“No, no, no, no—” you press two fingers to his pulse. It’s weak. Fluttering like butterfly wings.
Butterfly. Fluttershy.
Martin’s daughter loves Fluttershy from My Little Pony.
They don’t tell you this in the manuscripts or presentations either: when you look death in the face over and over, it often wears the faces of people you know or know of in passing. You’ve never met Martin’s daughter or Ramirez’s girlfriend. But you see their faces now when the front door opens to find a military officer dressed in his blues. You see their faces tear apart with grief.
“Oh, for the love of everything bloody good—” you wail.
And you wail.
Your hand cradles the side of Ramirez’s face as you plead with him, and you watch as Martin falls still beside you. You scramble to him, just as another shell hits its mark somewhere nearby. Your teeth shake inside your jaw with the impact.
“MEDIC!”
“I NEED A MEDIC!”
“DOC!”
You hear your title, your name, being called out across the gunfire and rubble, but your eyes are burning. You can’t see anyone past the vehicle you’re cowering behind. Your finger presses against your earpiece, but your radio is broken, bits of plastic embedded into your combat vest.
You start screaming, too.
A third helicopter cuts through the sky like a bird. You squint at its black body as it circles, your hand stuck between the truck and Martin’s skull. You know that you won’t duck your head or shrink your shoulders this time. You will embrace the hot sting of metal entering your body— or will it be cold? Maybe you’ll be dead before your brain can even register the pain. Or maybe you’ll be blown up, and the pieces of you will be a second evidence trail—which no one will find.
Exhaustion knocks against your skull, behind your eyes. Your bones are rattling inside of you and the ground is splitting open. Neither Ramirez or Martin move, though Ramirez watches you behind delicate, blood-crusted eyelashes.
You’re all so tired.
Slumping forward, your body thuds to the floor and you can’t breathe. Sand clogs each breath you take, and the air is too thin and hot. Pain is bursting beneath your neck, and your ears are still ringing. But everything is getting quieter. Quiet enough that you don’t hear but rather see the third helicopter land in the center of the compound.
The blades look like big black wings.
Through dense clouds of hot dust, four figures file out of the helicopter. You recognise their steady military gait, the posture of holding up a rifle. One of the soldiers wears a bucket hat that looks too floppy to be in regs—a thought you seem to care about more than breathing. A second has spiky hair, sort of, like the singers in the rock band your lieutenant talks about (he’s probably dead now). Another wears a cap with the Union flag on his head, and it makes you want to laugh at the patriotism—even though that’s part of the job. Even though there’s a Union flag stuck to your shoulder.
The fourth and last is just a black figure against the burning compound. A mark against the otherwise white world. You realise, with your cheek pressing into a stone, that he’s getting closer. The yelling hasn’t stopped, but there’s a change in the atmosphere. Like the weights on a scale have been swapped around.
Two fingers are pressed to your neck, and you try to blink your eyes open wider. What greets you is a skull with empty eyes. You’re too tired to scream. The smell of copper burns your nose when he pulls his hand away, grunting something into his radio. You hardly recognise that it’s your blood that stains his gloves.
It’s too difficult to keep your eyes open. Too much effort. As your eyes close, you breathe tinily through the fabric over your mouth and think: for once, I’m looking death in the face, and that’s all it is. Death.
The last thing you hear is a gravel-laced voice. “We’ve got you.”
── .✦
A taskforce rescued your unit.
This is what you’re told when you wake up in the medical ward. They also tell you that a bullet shattered your collarbone. From your shoulders to your fingers, you’re numb. When the nurses touch you, only a faraway pressure is registered. Like when you’re held after falling asleep at a party. You know it’s happening, that you’re being carried and tender hands are putting you in the car, but you don’t quite feel it.
It’s not permanent, which soothed your initial loopy and terrified thought that it was, but it’s just a side-effect of the pain-killers they’ve given you.
They don’t tell you about Ramirez or Martin, even when it was one of the very first things you asked when you came to. The nurses simply shushed you, shaking their heads while fixing the IV that you’d managed to disrupt. All of it feels secretive, which isn’t unfamiliar to you, but you don’t like it. Not this time. There were too many bad things happening that you feel like you deserve to know everything.
Amidst the constant worry over two of your men—all of your men, really—you’re stuck staring out the window in your teeth-achingly clean room, and thinking about what happened. There are small gaps in your memory, like parts of a tape that are fast-forwarded, then slowed to normal. Those sped-up parts are blurry, fractured.
But there’s one thing you’re sure of: the last thing you saw in that compound was a dream. An image of the grim reaper you’ve seen in illustrated fables. A stark white skull pressed against a black, shapeless form, something you had seen in a movie when you were a child. It’s a bit cruel that your mind would decide to settle on that while you’re bleeding out, but it’s the only reasonable explanation.
But you know that there was a voice. You can remember the deep rasp and the scrape of rough phonics, almost as if it were being whispered into your ear. You don’t think you can dream up something as vivid as that, and you feel a hardened, almost spiteful, sense of resolution about that fact.
The next time you ask about it, the nurse glances at you briefly with professional, detached eyes. He readjusts the cast over your left arm, making sure the strap goes over your opposite shoulder neatly.
“Maybe you should ask your superiors when you’re better,” he says mildly.
It angers you—so much so that you slam your free fist into the side of the bed once the nurse leaves, not caring about the ache it leaves behind. You decide then and there that you’re going to do something about all of these secrets.
── .✦
The answers fall into your lap during the second week of your stay in the hospital wing.
Sort of. Not really.
An agent fetches you, eyes just as professional and detached as the nurses’. He doesn’t introduce himself, but his accent is American, so you guess that he’s probably with the CIA. You’ve heard that there’s been an increase of joint-operations between the US military and the UK’s, particularly after what happened last winter.
You refuse a wheelchair when a nurse offers you one while helping you stand upright, responding a little too harshly.
“My collarbone is broken. Not my legs.”
You’re not always this prickly, and as you walk beside the agent down several hallways, left arm held tight to your chest, you imagine thin bristles sprouting from all over your body, even your face.
The agent leads you through the base, past boring tan walls, linoleum floors, partially empty offices and rec-rooms. Your head swoops inside your skull each time you take a turn, but you keep quiet. Finally, he stops at a grey door with white blocky letters painted on the front.
LIMITED ACCESS.
He swipes a key-card over a reader, and a buzz vibrates in the air, followed by a resolute click. You swallow thickly, feeling your jaw ache with tension.
“They're waiting,” the agent states, pulling the handle down for you to open the door a crack. He doesn't let you ask ‘who?’ before he's walking away, shoulders so straight that he makes you think of a moving mannequin.
You try to breathe deeply, but all it does is send pain flaring sharper across your shoulder and chest. So you breathe out instead, fingers flexing before pushing the door open.
The room is small and perfectly square, the walls an off-white. There's a small kitchenette to your right, and the rich smell of burnt coffee tingles your nose. At the back of the room is a row of plastic chairs, and a TV. Your chest tightens at the sight of four men sitting in the chairs, and one woman standing beside the black screen. All of them look at you as you enter.
“Glad you could join us,” the woman greets. Her voice is firm and strong and her blue eyes stare at you from beneath pale bangs. You get the overwhelming feeling that she’s not one to waste time.
“Evening,” you mumble in response, fingers coming up to scratch uselessly at your elbow.
“Have a seat,” the woman says, gesturing to the empty chairs available before turning her back to you again. There are still four other pairs of eyes on you, and they follow you as you slide into a chair, your body coiled tightly like a cat ready to spring. You spare them a swift, awkward glance with a half-smile, and feel your blood go cold.
They’re the men from your dream.
A man with a floppy bucket hat and a beard, one with a spiky mohawk (and the brightest blue eyes you’ve ever seen), another wearing a ballcap with the Union flag, and lastly… Death himself. It’s the same white skull set against black mass, except the black mass is just a man. A man wearing a worn balaclava with half a skull taped to the front. His hoodie is a dark grey, and he sits with his arms crossed, forearms tensed. There are eyes behind what you thought were empty sockets: deeply brown, almost black.
For a moment, you feel as if he’s pinned you in place; a cruel being here to take you away because you didn’t die the first time. Then the woman snaps you out of your daze, her voice toneless.
“You’re wondering why you’re here. I’m CIA Agent Laswell, and this is Taskforce 141.”
“Laswell? You’re the supervisor for—”
“The Special Activities Division, yes.” Laswell cuts you off, “and this is the taskforce that saved you and your unit.”
You feel your throat tighten, snippets of memories resurfacing like floodwaters. You stifle the urge to stare at the men whose presence feels heavy, almost humiliating. You know they are looking at you—there’s a burn on the side of your face.
“Well—um. Thank you,” you manage to push out, feeling like a fish out of water. You give them all quick glances and a brief, awkward smile.
The man with the mohawk and blue eyes finally shatters the group’s resounding silence, and his Scottish drawl fills the room.
“MacTavish. It’s a pleasure to meet ya, I just go by ‘Soap’.” He reaches across the man with the ballcap to offer his gloved hand, the last two joints on all of his fingers exposed. You grasp it with your free hand, eyes sweeping over his pale face and strong brows. His shoulders, though straight, seem loose with confidence.
“Nice to meet you… Soap.”
The man with the ballcap offers his hand too, once Soap leans back in his seat.
“I’m Kyle Garrick.”
His smile, though brief, leaves behind faint dents in his dark cheeks, tiny commas that you notice before they’re gone completely. You tell him your name in return.
Laswell gestures to the man with the bucket hat, “this is Captain Price.”
He’s a beast of a man, with a chest broad enough to fill a doorway. His beard is brown, trimmed into fuzzy but neat mutton-chops. The rim of his bucket hat casts a subtle shadow across his eyes, but you can tell they are sharp and blue. There’s a ruggedness to his face, and he nods his head firmly in greeting.
Then lastly, Ghost. Laswell doesn’t say a real name. Just Ghost. He doesn’t move an inch when he’s introduced or when you murmur a small ‘hello’, but you can tell he’s watching. You can feel that uncomfortable nakedness of being analysed by eyes that hold no light or emotion.
Yeah, you can see why your mind decided to mark him as Death.
With your hands in your lap and your chest tightening with nervousness, your mind starts to race. Are these the people that will tell you what happened? Why your unit was overrun? Why there were so many hostiles surrounding that compound?
And will they tell you if all of your men are alive?
“Are—”
“Doc, I’m going to ask you some questions,” Laswell starts, a tablet in her hand. Her tone is devoid of any specific emotion other than cold efficiency—the same as the doctors and the nurses. You’re starting to get sick of it.
“OK,” you answer, fidgeting your thumbs. “About what ex—”
“Your team,” Soap interjects. His square, stubble-coated jaw clenches as he speaks. “Specifically your lieutenant.”
“Best to be honest, Doc,” Kyle adds.
It feels as if you’ve been trapped in a jar before being violently rattled, body banging against the glass like a ragdoll. A dull ache starts to form at the base of your skull and you inhale sharply.
“I wasn’t planning on lying about any—hang on, is my lieutenant OK? No one’s told me anything about him and the other's, what’s going—”
“They’re fine,” Laswell assures, though not with warmth, “they’re all fine.”
It’s as if all the stress and concern had been cinching your ribs tighter around your heart, and Laswell’s words just snapped the cords. For the first time in two weeks, you feel like you can breathe again.
But Laswell doesn’t let you revel in the moment; her question cuts through the silence. “Your lieutenant was part of a corrupt ring of officers. Did you know this?”
You nearly choke, breath stuttering on the way out. “I’m sorry—what?”
“He carried out orders for Graves, and Graves carried out orders for Shepherd. Simple,” Soap says, a bitter edge to his accent.
You look between Soap and Laswell, a sharp coldness settling in your stomach.
“I—no, I didn’t know this…” you flounder. Your hands are trembling in your lap, and the fluorescent lights above you are too bright.
Laswell sighs, though she seems perfectly composed. As the clock ticks behind her, you wonder if there’s a hidden camera pointed at you and agents waiting outside, ready to arrest you at a moment's notice.
I’m innocent. I’ve done nothing wrong. What’s happened to my team?
“Not only was your lieutenant involved, but several other men in your unit as well,” Laswell continues. “We have reason to suspect that you have a part in this, too.”
You should be shouting—screaming—in defense. Standing from your chair and demanding what all of this means—why they’d lull you into a false sense of security just to pick you apart ruthlessly. But all you can do is spiral.
Several other men in your unit… the thought of it being Martin and Ramirez has bile crawling up your throat.
Your voice comes out small. “I don’t. I promise you, I don’t.”
Kyle shifts impatiently in his chair, his nose twitching. “That’s what they all say.”
“I’m not lying! I don’t know anything about this.” Indignation starts to take root in your tone, a mechanism kicked into gear to keep everything else at bay. “My lieutenant never said anything—neither did any of the others.”
Ghost’s voice fills the space like water crashing on stones. Powerful and heavy, sending your skin crawling with goosebumps like someone had run a finger down your neck.
“Why wouldn’t they?” he asks harshly.
You stammer, brows furrowed tightly. “I—I don’t know. I can’t read his mind now, can I? As far as I’m aware, he never came off as suspicious. Never told me anything ‘suspicious’.”
“Were you also aware that your lieutenant used a field training exercise to hide the locations of multiple weapons caches?” Laswell asks.
This can’t be real. This isn’t real.
“That’s ridiculous—he did not use a field training exercise, we would have noticed—”
“No, you wouldn’t have,” Kyle cuts in, “because the other men involved would have made it seem as ordinary as possible.”
“Why should I even trust what you’re telling me right now?” you accuse, eyes narrowing at Kyle.
Price finally speaks, and the room goes quiet. The gravel in his throat is nowhere near as thick as Ghost’s, but it’s enough to have your ears pricking, spine straightening unconsciously.
“It’s on camera, if you’d like to have a watch,” he says smoothly. “Whole interrogation was taped, and your lieutenant told us about the training exercise—how he used it as cover.”
“If he’s told you everything, then why am I here?”
Price lifts his hands. “Because he hasn't told us everything. He’s refusing to tell us where that training exercise took place.”
“And you’re badgering me about it instead of inflicting psychological torture on him?”
You’re getting heated, and the captain’s eyes bore into you, challenging you to keep going. You reign yourself in, feeling like your head’s gone fuzzy.
“Fine,” you sigh. “I see. You want me to tell you where it is because you think I know.”
“Bingo,” Kyle mutters.
You glare at him, jaw tight as you speak. “Last training exercise was in Papua New Guinea. And the exercise was real—we trained beside the PNG defence force.”
“We don’t doubt that,” Laswell says. “But now we need to know exactly where in PNG this took place. It’s safe to assume that these locations were hidden somewhere—a house, maybe.”
You deflate into your chair. “There weren’t any houses. We were doing recon and surveillance—using the jungle along the coast to strengthen drone tactics in forested terrain. We avoided suburban areas.”
“C’mon. Must have noticed somethin’ unusual,” Soap says.
“Your buddy just said that I wouldn’t have noticed anything,” you point out stonily.
Price lets go of a heavy sigh, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. “What about a shelter of sorts? Anything with a roof over it?”
His question makes you pause. You hate that it does, because it means that you’re seriously considering that your lieutenant has done something. You could ask to see the footage of that interrogation, but there’s a voice in the back of your head that says you don’t need it.
You tilt your head back marginally, eyes trained on the floor as you think. It’s been several months, you don’t often remember the smaller details like stopping at a hooch and taking a break. You don’t even remember what you had for breakfast yesterday, and your lieutenant was so unpredictable that a change in direction would have gone unnoticed—wait.
“Of course," you huff dryly, almost to yourself. "Of course... there was a hooch, Captain,” you state, eyes snapping to Price, then Laswell. “There was this small hut, we—we—passed it through the forest. My lieutenant called it a hooch and I remember taking note of that—”
Price flicks his hand like a dismissal, eyes digging into you. “Just like that? Conveniently, you remember a hut because he called it a ‘hooch’?”
You bite the inside of your cheek, glancing at the other three men. Each of their faces carry suspicion, eyes burning into your visage like they might peel everything back to find other words—better answers. Well, they’re not going to find any. This is what you’ve got.
“I remember it because it's World War Two and Vietnam War slang—like I said, it’s old. And we’re not American—how many people you know around base that call huts ‘hooches’?”
You lean forward, adding tetchily, “did you not want me to give you an answer or…?”
Price stands, the plastic chair scraping back behind him. Laswell’s eyes flick to him in warning, and the air stills. The buzz of the lights sound louder than before, merging with your pounding pulse.
“It’s a brilliant answer, Doc,” Price says dryly, voice gritty like sandpaper. His eyes don’t leave you as he speaks. “And it means you’ll be coming with us to PNG.”
The air in your lungs dissipates. This isn’t what you wanted—you wanted answers, not a trap.
No, no, no, no!
“And if I choose not to?” you challenge, forcing your voice to remain steady. The headache is worsening, pulsing like club lights behind your eyes.
“Then we’ll have a different—less civilised—interogation. Stake surveillance on you—overall, give you a hard time,” Kyle states, his tone sarcastically light-hearted.
“And you won’t be able to communicate with your former teammates,” Laswell chimes in.
A bitter taste spreads inside your mouth like cotton. “I’m sorry, former?”
“Your team’s been disbanded, with nearly everyone court-martialed.”
Whatever you thought previously about being able to breathe, you can straight up rebuke it. The emotional ache builds behind your eyes and you try to shove it away because there’s no room for that sort of vulnerability here. This isn’t kindergarten where you can cry after being shoved to the ground.
“So that’s it?” you ask, “I comply and I keep my job and I’m able to communicate with my teammates—who I won’t be working with anymore—and if I don’t… I’m essentially court-martialed, stalked, and entirely alone?”
“Sounds about right, add a little bow on top too,” Price says, raising his brows as his eyes crinkle, a sardonic smile puffing out his beard.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 |
TW: Physical assault, blood and injury, home invasion, panic.
_____________________________________________
The night settled in quietly, the way it did when something ugly is going to happened.
Gear was checked again. Weapons slung. Radios tested. The room dimmed to low and long shadows. Whatever ease had crept in during the afternoon peeled away, replaced with that familiar discipline focus.
Price pulled on his vest and looked towards the couch. Y/n was sprawled there. "We're stepping out." He said. "Quick sweep. Damage assessment from earlier."
Ghost nodded once, already masked and ready.
Price's gaze settled fully on Y/n. "You stay... This time."
Ghost added. "Here. Inside. Don't unlock anything. Don't open the door for anyone."
Y/n lifted their head. "...Okay." They said softly.
Gaz whipped his head around so fast. "THEY TALKED."
Price adjusting his gloves. "They're half human. Of course they can."
Gaz: "SIR, THAT IS NEW INFORMATION!"
"Not really." Price replied, already opening the door. "You just weren't paying attention."
Ghost paused long enough to glance back at Y/n. Then he followed Price out.
Soap lingered half a second, crouching just enough to meet Y/n's eyes. "…Don't go unlocking doors."
Y/n's ears flicked. Innocent. Noncommittal.
Soap sighed. "Yeah. Thought so."
The door shut. Locked. The vehicle engine kicked on outside...
-- Y/n's Pov --
The voices where muffled through the door.
"Did you HEAR that-"
"Gaz, shut up."
"I am NOT shutting up-"
"Get in the car."
"Price, they talked-"
"Gaz."
"...Sir."
"Gaz."
Doors slammed. The engine revved. Gravel crunched.
Y/n sat still on the couch, listening to the sound until it was gone. For a while Y/n stayed curled tight into the cushions, tail wrapped around themselves, ears tracking every distant sound. The 'safe' house hummed softly with leftover human presence, coffee, oil, fabric, cigar scent, musk, gunmetal. They didn't move not because the lock would stop them, because staying was a choice now.
And because sometimes... being trusted mattered more than following. Unfortunately, the lock didn't stop them either.
The couch grew uncomfortable after a very long time, even the sun has dipped and left.
Y/n slid off the couch and padded down the short hallway.
Price's room smelled the strongest. Smoke and musk. Y/n crouched by the footlocker first. Unlocked. Of course it was. They smiled to themselves and lifted the lid.
Inside: neatly folded clothes, spare gloves, stuff that held his scent. Y/n pressed it to their face without realizing they'd done it, ears flicking contentedly. They draped it over their shoulders like it belonged there.
Next came the desk. Y/n climbed onto the chair, tail swaying lazily as they sifted through human things dog tags, a lighter, a watch they definitely shouldn't touch but did anyway. They slid one of his shirts over their hoodie.
A soft giggle slipped out of them.
Human. Distracted. Absorbed. They didn't hear the lock disengage. Didn't hear the door open with practiced slowness. Didn't hear the first pair of boots cross the threshold. Or the second. Or the third.
Low voices murmured. Hand signals flickered in the dark. Shadows gathered just beyond the hallway, weapons raised, movements clean and silent.
They stopped outside Price's door...
White faded to noise. (flash grenade)
Y/n scrambled, half-blind, ears ringing so hard it felt like the world was shaking itself apart. They scrambled blindly, half-crawling, half-running, diving for the space beneath the bed as boots thundered into the room. Dark. Tight. Familiar smell, Price. Safety. Y/n pressed flat, breath shallow, claws digging into carpet as they tried to disappear.
Then rough fingers closed around Y/n ankle and yanked.
Panic exploded.
The apex instinct snapped its leash.
Y/n shrieked feral, sharp and twisted violently, claws ripping free as teeth sank into flesh. Hard. Deep. They tasted blood immediately, metallic and hot.
The man screamed.
Y/n went for everything they could reach face, hands, forearm, biting, clawing, kicking. Small body thrashing with impossible strength, rage and terror fused into one violent burst. Nails raked skin. Teeth tore.
Someone shouted in another language.
CRACK.
A blow crashed into the side of Y/n's head. Pain flared white-hot, but they didn't let go.
Another strike. Harder.
CRACK.
They didn't stop. Another bite. Another claw. A snarl that tore their throat raw.
CRACK.
Something cracked in their mouth. Teeth shattered. Warm blood flooded their tongue, theirs this time.
Y/n screamed, the sound breaking halfway through.
The butt of the gun came down again.
And again.
And again.
CRACK. CRACK. CRACK.
Blows rained down head, ribs, shoulder each one stealing more light, more sound. The world tilted, spun, broke apart into flashes and ringing emptiness.
Their grip weakened.
Claws slipped.
The taste of blood filled their mouth.
Each impact drove the world further away, sound muffling, light dimming, limbs going numb. Their grip loosened despite their will. Claws scraped uselessly against fabric. Teeth slipped free. The last thing they felt was the floor rushing up as they were thrown aside. Price's shirt half tangled around their body, blood pooling quietly into the carpet.
_________________________________________________
Part 12....
______________
Your usual letters sent out to the few soldier penpals you have go out on Monday mornings without fail. It all goes without a hitch, nothing unusual, nothing in the routine on your end changing - until you get a letter back with handwriting you don’t recognize and you realize that your letter to Lieutenant Riley was delivered. Just not to the right one.
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
~~~*~~~*~~~*~~~
Dear “Wrong” Riley,
Your letter arrived today, and I’m equal parts relieved and horrified. Relieved that you weren’t offended by my rambling apple commentary; horrified that you now know entirely too much about my grocery store grievances.
I admit I had to read your letter twice — once to absorb what you said, and a second time to absorb the fact that you are very much not the Riley I meant to write to. I suppose that’s what I get for trusting the mail gremlins with anything. That description of the mailroom made me laugh. I can picture it too easily — envelopes drifting around with no regard for order or sanity. Lucky me that mine ended up in your hands.
But you have no idea how relieved I am that you weren’t annoyed by the mix-up. Thank you for replying instead of throwing my letter away. I would’ve been sad if it had ended up lost or destroyed again, but being read by a complete stranger is… well, a new experience. And hopefully not a regrettable one.
I appreciate your official stance on Honeycrisps. I’ll inform my coworker that she has been overruled by someone with actual authority. She won’t really care, but I’ll still feel victorious and sometimes that’s all that matters at the end of my day.
As for my neighbor: if she really has Special Forces stealth, then my tomato plant and I never stood a chance. I’ll start waving at random bushes just in case she’s hiding in them.
I hope whatever hydration battle that other lieutenant is fighting, he loses gracefully. Or at least quietly. I’m sure quietly would be nice.
Your friend sounds entertaining in a slightly concerning way. The story about the coffee made me laugh — I almost feel bad for doing so, but not quite enough to stop. Heating coffee with a lighter? That’s either dedication or desperation. Possibly both? I hope he didn’t burn his fingers.
The image of you watching your friend roast coffee over a lighter without intervening is oddly comforting. I suppose everyone needs a hobby — even ill-advised ones.
I’ll send a fresh letter to C. Riley, but if you’d like to keep… whatever this is… going, I’d be glad to. It’s oddly comforting, knowing there’s another Riley out there willing to humor me.
Mail chaos has led to stranger friendships, I’m sure.
Stay safe — both from yelling lieutenants and ill-advised coffee experiments,~ M.
P.S. How much sand can a soul hold before it becomes a desert? Asking for scientific reasons.
—
Like you expect, you end up being unable to wait until Monday to post Riley’s letter like you usually would. And everyday after you find yourself almost obsessively checking your mailbox as if by some miracle you would have a reply within a week instead of the one-two months it usually takes.
But still you go about your life like usual. Going to work, walking your dog, getting coffee with your best friend when your schedules line up, and writing more letters. You find one of those mini polaroid cameras that were popular a few years back at the thrift store and decide to buy some film for it and take cute pictures of your dog in the garden. A few even turn out with your neighbor watching with her binoculars in the background.
(You absolutely do not save one of those to send in S. Riley's next letter thinking about how amusing he’ll find it.)
The thing that becomes the most distracting though is finding a mouse in your kitchen. And thus the hunt for finding its nest and what possible foods it’s gotten into. So far your pantry looks untouched, thankfully you had the foresight to organize everything onto higher shelves when you first moved in. But you find evidence of it under your kitchen sink and in some of the drawers lowest to the ground.
You find it having decided to use the insulation in your oven as the optimal place to make a nest. Now what do you do? You try the non-lethal traps first - but after having the little fucker waltz his way across the kitchen floor while you were there doing dishes like he owned the damn place has you second guessing yourself.
But when he shows up on your stovetop, stealing some of your dinner out of the goddamn pan and absconding back into the oven from where he came out of the space between the burners? That’s when you buy the normal mouse traps. You worked hard on that stir fry dammit.
And then, just when you're beginning to think that maybe the mail gremlins have struck again and lost now the second letter to one of your Rileys - a letter with the same handwriting as before shows up nearly at the month three mark. And it’s no one's business but your own when you excitedly hop up the sidewalk as you rush back inside to read it. Only your neighbor's cat is witness to your excited hopping, thankfully.
—
Dear M.,
Look at that — the wrong Riley gets a second letter. I’m honored. Truly. I’ll try not to let it get to my head, but there are no guarantees.
You can stop being horrified. I’ve seen much worse than passionate apple commentary. We once had a four-man argument about whether pickles count as a vegetable serving.
(They don’t. Our Captain checked. No one cared.)
So I promise you: apple debates are far from the strangest thing I’ve heard this month.
Your coworker can consider herself officially overruled. I’ll even write up a certificate if you'd like proof of expertise. My signature adds at least three percent authority according to my Sergeant - still not sure what he meant. Your coworker sounds like she deserves the Honeycrisp verdict delivered with ceremony, regardless.
As for your neighbor — waving at random bushes is a solid strategy. If she’s anything like the grans back home, she’ll appreciate the acknowledgment of her covert surveillance skills. Some people fish, some knit, some watch their neighbors water tomato plants with military precision. We all have hobbies.
But if your neighbor pops out wearing camouflage paint, please write back immediately — I need to know how the ambush ends.
You’ll be pleased to know the lieutenant did, in fact, lose the hydration battle yesterday. He went hoarse - then completely silent. The silence was so beautiful. It lasted forty minutes. Best forty minutes of my week.
Johnny did not burn his fingers, by the way. He claims he “knew what he was doing.” This is a lie, but I respect the confidence. And I maintain that I did the right thing by observing the natural development of a poor decision. Intervention only encourages repeat behavior.
Wrong address or not, your letter made my day a hell of a lot better than it was before it showed up. So if the mail gremlins decide to keep sending you my way, I won’t complain.
Take care, — S. Riley
P.S. I regret to inform you: my soul has been a desert since week two of deployment. Please send moisture.
—
You're grinning by the time you finish reading Riley’s letter. Settled into your couch to read comfortably, you let your dog sniff at the paper while reading though the dry humor of S. Riley. By dinner time you’ve already written most of a reply, even taking the polaroid you took of your dog (and neighbor) and making sure to tape it to the bottom of the page for Riley to enjoy.
—
Dear Riley,
I’m not sure how to send moisture? Can I send a humidifier? A spray bottle? Something so you can mist your soul on the hour. Or have Johnny do it, if you trust him enough with a spray bottle that is. Or switch to photosynthesis.
A certificate of Honeycrisp Authority would genuinely make my coworker furious, which makes me want it even more. Please sign it with at least three loops in your name so it looks extra official. I’ll frame it and everything. I’ll even wear a cape to present it. No one can stop me.
You’ll be pleased to know the neighbor has shifted positions. Literally. She relocated two feet to the left behind the fence and brought binoculars. I waved again. She waved back this time. I think we’re in a cold-war-style détente. She’s certainly committed to the role. So far no ambushes.
Also I feel like the “ambush” comment was intentionally punny. Don’t think I didn’t notice that.
Your friend with the lighter-coffee… I don’t have advice. Or words. Only concern. Deep concern. You can have this sticker as compensation - it made me think of him when I saw it the other day.
I will say - your letter didn’t just improve my day — it fixed a week that had been going steadily downhill. So thank you, I’m starting to think the mailroom mix-up might have been fate or luck or just very persuasive gremlins.
In addition to the cold-war with my neighbor, I am now waging battle with a mouse I have recently found living in my oven. Don’t ask me why it decided this was the best place to make a nest. I'll never have a good answer other than it’s apparently warm. A warm oven, who’d have thought?? But I’ve also since discovered that it’s too smart for mousetraps - won’t even go near the peanut butter I put on them so now I need to change tactics.
Any ideas?
Stay hydrated,
— M.
P.S. enjoy this picture of my dog admiring our tomatoes - and of course Tactical Grandma observing the whole affair.
—
a/n: aaanndd 5 pages later....i wasn't sure how to finish this part but i did it 🙌
if anybody else would like to be added to the tag list pls let me know, i'll do my best to add your name below~
genshin boys reach for the same item as you (part 2)
premise. fate doesn’t always strike like lightning; sometimes, it brushes your fingers against someone else’s. when you and a certain someone meet by reaching for the same thing at the same time, you both realize you might’ve found something you didn’t know you were looking for.
part 1. read here [cyno, kaeya, albedo, kazuha, heizou, wanderer, xiao]
itto
The prize is ridiculous—nearly the size of a small child and shaped like a giant, sparkly Onikabuto with a smug little face. You spot it at a summer festival in Inazuma City, sitting on the highest shelf of a street vendor’s prize rack. It’s the sort of thing no reasonable person actually needs…which means you want it instantly.
You step up to the counter and reach for it just as a much larger hand—warm, calloused, and tanned from the sun—knocks against yours.
“Whoa-ho-ho. Hey there, festival rookie,” a voice says, full of cocky amusement. “That there’s my Onikabro. Been keepin’ my eye on him all evening, bonding from afar. You can’t just swoop in and steal a man’s destiny like that.”
You turn your head and find yourself looking up—way up—into the grinning face of a horned man with wild white hair and an energy that practically vibrates in the air.
“Your destiny is a plush beetle?” you ask dryly.
He gasps like you’ve insulted his entire bloodline. “Not just a plush beetle! That’s the Shiny Supreme Super Onikabro. And he’s been calling to me—‘Itto, my dude, win me, take me home, we’ll eat sweet sakura mochi together.’ You know, stuff like that.”
You raise a brow in challenge. “Funny, he’s been whispering the same thing to me. How about we see who actually wins him?”
His grin widens. “Ooh, I like you. You’ve got guts. Alright, lil’ challenger, we’ll make it a ring toss showdown. First to five rings takes Onikabro home. Loser…” He leans closer, his voice dropping to a playful drawl. “…has to buy the winner dango milk.”
The match draws a small crowd, mostly thanks to his running commentary about how you’re “surprisingly scrappy” and “not bad for a newbie,” which makes you throw even harder just to make him eat his words.
When you land your fifth ring before he can get his fourth, he goes completely still. “No way... No. Way.”
You take the beetle from the vendor and hug it to your chest. “Looks like you’re buying the dango milk.”
He recovers quickly, flashing a grin. “Alright, alright, you win this time, lil’ beetle champ. But next festival? I’m winning you—uh, I mean, winning against you. Yeah.”
You smirk and walk away with your prize, feeling his eyes on your back. Something tells you this won’t be the last time you cross paths…or the last time he tries to rope you into another “totally fair” competition.
diluc
You had never been to Angel’s Share before. The tavern’s glow was always something you passed by from the street—too loud, too crowded, too full of people who seem to belong. But today had been unbearable, and against your better judgment, you push open the door and step inside.
The noise of conversation presses in, the air thick with alcohol and laughter. You slump onto a stool at the bar, keeping your head low, and order the first drink that comes to mind. The glass sits mostly untouched in front of you as you stare down into it, hoping the warmth of the tavern will dull the day. It doesn’t. Instead, your vision blurs, and you realize with horror that tears threaten to spill over. You try to blink them away, pressing your lips tight. You are a stranger here. No one will care, but no one should see.
Out of the corner of your eye, you spot a plain wooden box of tissues sitting at the far edge of the counter, the kind kept there for careless wine spills. You reach for it quickly, desperate to hide the crack in your composure. At the same moment, a gloved hand slides it toward you.
You freeze, your fingers brushing the edge of the box just as his do, warm fabric against your skin for the briefest instant.
The bartender clears his throat quietly and lets go first. “Here,” he says, low-voiced, as if speaking too loudly might draw more attention than you want.
You mutter a thank you, pressing a tissue to your eyes. The silence that follows isn’t the oppressive kind anymore but something gentler. Still, it unsettles you how steady his gaze feels even when you refuse to meet it.
“Rough day?” he asks finally.
You give a watery laugh. “Something like that.”
He nods once, as if that answer is enough. Then, in his hesitant way, he reaches behind the counter. A moment later, a small plate of pastries appears in front of you. “On the house. It…helps sometimes.”
You look up, startled. There is no trace of teasing in his expression, only a quiet sincerity that somehow makes your throat ache more than before. And for the first time all day, you feel a little less alone.
tighnari
It’s the last packet of flowering true indigo seeds in the Grand Bazaar’s apothecary stall, destined to unfurl into delicate, spindly stems crowned with clusters of dusky pink blossoms that thrive in dappled forest shade and enrich the soil. You’ve been hunting for them for weeks. Your fingers brush the paper just as another hand reaches in.
“Ah, pardon me,” a man says, voice even but polite. “I’ve been looking for these for a specific restoration plot in Avidya Forest.”
You look up and immediately recognize his uniform, the Forest Watcher insignia at his shoulder, the green scent of rain-damp foliage that clings to him. “You’re a Forest Watcher.”
His ears twitch, and he inclines his head. “Tighnari. And yes.”
You hesitate only a second before sliding your hand back. “Then you should have them. You’re out there taking care of the forest every day, making sure it even has plants like these. I can wait.”
His hazel eyes soften in clear surprise. “That’s…rare. Most people would argue their case. Especially if they’ve been looking as long as you have, judging from the way you lit up when you saw them.”
You laugh faintly. “I just figure you’ll make better use of them. I care about nature, but you’re actually protecting it.”
He takes the packet, then sets it back on the stall counter. “Then I’ll propose something better. There’s a small grove near Gandharva Ville where these seeds will do the most good, but I can spare a section for cultivation training. If you want to help plant them, you’ll get more than you would from a garden plot here in the city.”
Your eyebrows rise. “You’d let me help?”
“Only if you listen to instructions,” he says, but the edge of his mouth tilts upward. “And if you can handle the trek. It’s humid, there are fungi everywhere, and I might quiz you on leaf identification along the way.”
You smile. “Sounds fair.”
He pays for the seeds, tucking them into a pouch at his waist. “Meet me at the eastern bridge to Gandharva Ville tomorrow morning. We’ll see if you still think so then.”
You walk away feeling oddly light, already wondering what other rare plants might grow in that grove and what it might be like to see the forest through his eyes.
childe
You’re killing time in a small tea house on the quieter side of Liyue Harbor, savoring a cup of jasmine tea and watching the harbor cranes swing against the setting sun. At the next table, a man in civilian clothes lounges with an easy posture, idly tapping his fingers against his porcelain cup. His reddish hair catches the light, and though he is dressed simply, there is a strange sharpness to the way his gaze tracks people coming and going.
You don’t have long to wonder about him before the front doors bang open. Four Treasure Hoarders storm in, weapons drawn.
“Empty your tills and hand over the lockbox,” one snarls at the shop owner. “Now.”
The room tenses. You scan the room for something—anything—you can use to defend yourself and maybe help the poor owner. Your eyes fall on a sturdy wooden serving tray leaning against the counter.
You lunge for it at the exact same moment the redhead does. Your fingers collide, the wood trapped between you. He looks at you with a flash of surprise that quickly melts into a crooked grin.
“Oh? Didn’t think anyone else here was about to join the fun.” Before you can answer, he pushes the tray into your hands. “You take this. I’m better up close.”
The Hoarders are already moving. You swing the tray at the nearest one, smacking his weapon clean from his grip. The redhead—who clearly hadn’t been bluffing—is suddenly a blur of motion, driving an elbow into another’s stomach and sweeping his legs out from under him. One lunges at you from the side, but the redhead intercepts, twisting the attacker’s arm until he drops his blade. The last one tries to make a break for it, but a well-aimed kick from your newfound battle companion sends him sprawling.
When the dust settles, the four groan on the floor. The tea house owner peeks out from behind the counter, wide-eyed. The redhead saunters up to you, brushing a fleck of dust off his sleeve.
“You fight well. Not bad for a first-time tag team.” His tone is light, but there’s appraisal in his eyes.
You smile faintly. “Thanks for the assist. Though I’m starting to think you didn’t actually need me.”
He chuckles. “Maybe. But it was more fun this way.”
He reaches into his coat and pulls out a small calling card, sliding it across the table to you. The name reads simply: Tartaglia.
“Next time you see trouble,” he says with a wink, “save me a seat at your table.”
ayato
The garden lanterns glow warm against the evening, casting shifting shadows over the polished stones of the Inazuman noble’s estate. Guests stand in neat clusters, voices low and careful. Every laugh is measured, every smile calculated. You aren’t here for the wine or the polite conversation; you are here to listen. Rumors say negotiations between several noble houses have soured, and something is about to give.
The sharp chime of porcelain breaking cuts through the air. Several guests turn in time to see the host’s wife gasp, one hand rising to her elaborate coiffure. A delicate hairpin—a slim, antique piece inlaid with mother-of-pearl cranes—has tumbled loose, glinting as it spins across the stone. You step forward instinctively, only to realize someone else has moved at the exact same moment. Your hands reach the hairpin together. His touch is cool and precise, withdrawing just enough to let you grasp it first.
But the instant your fingers close around it, you feel something wrong: a sliver of metal beneath the decorative head, sharper than it should be. It is a narrow blade, spring-loaded into place, with the faintest trace of an oily sheen along its edge. Not a hairpin—a weapon.
Your eyes flick to the man beside you. His expression is unreadable, but the faintest quirk at the corner of his mouth suggests amusement, or perhaps warning. Without a word, he extends his hand. You hesitate before placing the hairpin into his palm. His fingers close over it smoothly, concealing the dangerous edge from view.
“I’ll see it returned to the lady,” he says in a voice pitched but carrying the weight of one accustomed to obedience. Then, with a polite bow, he slips back toward the host’s wife.
You expect him to hand it over immediately. Instead, you notice, just barely, that he palms the hairpin into the wide sleeve of his kimono before producing a different, harmless ornament from somewhere else and presenting that to her instead. Her relieved smile suggests she has no idea.
The rest of the evening passes in a haze of cautious conversation, but when you glance toward him again, he is gone. It isn’t until you are leaving that you find him waiting at the outer gate, hands folded loosely behind his back.
“I suspect,” he says lightly, “that someone as observant as you won’t be able to resist wondering why the host’s wife was wearing an assassin’s blade in her hair.”
You open your mouth, but he steps closer, lowering his voice until only you can hear.
“If you’d like an answer,” he says, “come to the Kamisato estate tomorrow at noon. If not…” He steps back, the faintest ghost of a smile crossing his face. “Then I’ll assume our paths will simply cross again…in less favorable circumstances.”
And with that, he turns and vanishes into the night, leaving you with a choice and the unsettling certainty that you’ve already made it.
alhaitham
You slip quietly through the towering shelves of the House of Daena, hand trailing a row of paper spines with a purpose not entirely scholarly; today, you weren’t hunting knowledge but a book thick enough to press a handful of blossoms you’d collected earlier on your morning walk. Nothing fancy—just a practical volume you could carry back to your desk without attracting attention. At last, you spot it. A slender, unassuming book, tucked neatly among tomes of far heavier consequence. Your fingers graze the spine just as another hand closes over it from the other side. You glance sideways.
Tall. Sharp eyes. Slate-green hair catching the light from the library’s stained-glass windows. His Akademiya uniform is immaculate, and something about his composed presence makes him stand out even here.
For one fleeting moment, your brain rehearses the polite, academic response: Oh, you can have it. You hadn’t needed this book specifically, after all. But then the stranger tilts his head, assessing you with the faintly dismissive air of a scribe cataloguing a particularly unremarkable footnote, and states, “I’ll be needing that.”
Any civilized instinct you had vanishes. You tighten your grip on the spine. “I got here first.”
A flicker of surprise crosses his face, almost imperceptible. The silence stretches, charged, his eyes locking with yours in a quiet battle of wills until, at last, you relent with a huff.
“Fine, take it. See if I care.”
He slips the book free with disarming ease. “Wise choice,” he murmurs, not smug so much as matter-of-fact.
You’d just managed to convince yourself to brush it off and search for another suitable book when his gaze snags on the flowers peeking from your satchel. One blossom slips loose, tumbling soundlessly to the floor. His brow creases.
“Botanical specimens. You intended to compare them against the taxonomy in this volume?”
You stoop quickly, plucking the flower back into your palm. “Not exactly.” Then, because honesty had always been your downfall: “I was going to press them with it.”
The effect of your admission is immediate. His composure cracks for a single, glorious second, eyes widening, mouth parting as though you had announced an intent to burn the Akademiya’s archives for kindling. Shock, disbelief, and something that might even be personal offense wage battle across his face.
“You…were going to use an Akademiya manuscript as a botanical press?” His voice, usually so steady, pitches upward. “Do you even realize—” He cuts himself off, drawing in a slow breath as though the act of restraint costs him dearly.
The corner of your mouth twitches. “What? It’s heavy. Flat. Reliable.”
He blinks at you like he’s visibly recalibrating his entire worldview. For someone so famously composed, the disbelief written across his features is nothing short of priceless, and for reasons he probably doesn’t care to examine, he’s just a little intrigued.
neuvillette
It rains the way only Fontaine can: fine mist one moment, sudden downpour the next, the whole city glistening as if it has been dipped in glass. You are not sure why the weather turns so suddenly; the sky was clear just an hour ago.
You duck into a small, book-lined shop, shaking water from your coat. The place smells faintly of ink and salt air, and at the very back, tucked high on a shelf, is exactly what you are looking for: a rare, illustrated compilation of Fontaine’s aquatic folklore. You reach up just as another hand—graceful, long-fingered, and gloved—extends from beside you. Your eyes follow the sleeve of his dark coat up to a tall man with silver hair that catches the lamplight like rainwater. His gaze lowers to you, unreadable but courteous.
“Ah,” he says softly, as if the word is an exhale. “It seems we have similar tastes.”
“Looks like it,” you reply, fingers still touching the book’s spine. “First come, first served?”
His lips curve in the faintest ghost of a smile. “Ordinarily, perhaps. But this particular volume is not for casual reading.”
You tilt your head. “You think I’m a casual reader?”
“Only that most people,” he says with deliberate slowness, “don’t seek out myths of the sea unless they’re…invested.” His eyes flick toward the rain-smeared window. “Or, unless they understand the weight of what’s in them.”
Without thinking, you remark, “Sometimes the rain feels like it’s crying for you.” It isn’t something you mean to speak aloud—just a passing thought you’ve had on days like this, when the downpour seemed almost sentient.
His gaze widens, the faintest ripple of surprise breaking through his composure.
You let go of the book, curiosity outweighing your claim. “Did I get it wrong?”
“...No,” he says at last, his voice quieter now. “It’s not often I hear someone phrase it that way.”
When you step back, he takes the volume, but after a moment’s thought, opens it to a page adorned with a watercolor of a great dragon weeping over an endless ocean.
“This one,” he says quietly, as if speaking of something personal, “tells of a guardian who watched over the waters for centuries, unseen and unthanked. The people forgot his name. They say when he mourned, the skies mourned with him, and the rain fell until his sorrow eased.”
A soft, almost imperceptible note of sadness lingers in his voice. Outside, the rain continues, steady and unrelenting.
He glances at you. “If you’re willing to walk with me to the Court when the weather calms, we can read the rest together. I believe the discussion will be enlightening.”
Something tells you this won’t be a quick exchange of trivia over tea. It will be the kind of conversation that stays with you, the kind that might explain, one day, why the rain sometimes feels like it is falling for someone.
heizou (bonus version)
The busy chatter of Ritou’s morning market fades beneath the thud of something hitting the cobblestones. A cream paper envelope sealed in red wax skids to a halt between your boots. You bend at the same time as a stranger on your right, nearly knocking foreheads. He catches himself with a grin, quick as a fox.
“After you,” he says, though his gaze is already dissecting the envelope.
You pick it up, turning it in your hands. Thick paper, expensive; no address, no name, just an embossed Windwheel emblem in one corner.
“Not Inazuman,” you murmur.
“Foreign import,” he agrees instantly. “Probably Mondstadt. But see the faint smudge of salt on the wax? It’s been carried by sea recently.”
You nod. “And the faint citrus scent means it spent some time in a crate with fruit, probably to mask whatever else was in the shipment. Which suggests…”
“The sender wanted it to pass customs without inspection,” he finishes, his brows rising slightly.
The merchant who had dropped it is now halfway down the pier, walking with a subtle limp.
“Right shoe sole is worn more than the left,” you note aloud, “and the knees of his trousers are dusty. Either he kneels a lot, or—”
“—he’s been prying open crates,” your new associate supplies. “The ink on his fingers wasn’t from bookkeeping, then.”
You hand him the envelope, but instead of pocketing it, he tilts his head at you. “You’re good at this.”
“And you’re wasting time,” you return, already stepping toward the pier.
His grin widens as he follows. “What’s your name, partner?”
You don't answer—partly because you aren’t sure why you're getting involved, and partly because you enjoy the spark of curiosity that flickers in his eyes when you keep him guessing.
summary: with nowhere else to turn, you find yourself paired up for a potions assignment with none other than sebek zigvolt. you're bad at alchemy, he's bad at feelings. stupidity ensues.
word count: 8.1k
warnings: sebek is stupid, hurt/comfort-ish; mildly steamy at times maybe. reader is yuu. too lazy to properly replace em dashes btw
a/n: can we as an internet collective start writing cringe songfics again bc those were my life. anyways this fic came to me in a prophetic vision when listening to my yuu playlist. don't ask how sebek won the bidding war for this bc i couldn't tell you. enjoy! (be nice this is my first fic and i gave up toward the end </3)
You're pretty sure Professor Crewel is out to get you.
Which would be a shame, really, because somewhere in between the unruly sparks and explosions that would leave you with half an eyebrow if you weren't too careful, you had actually come to like his class. History had been too much of a struggle to pick up---because, let's be honest, you're way overdue for a 'twisted wonderland history for dummies' crash course---and flying? Forget it.
Except maybe the class didn't seem to like you nearly as much.
Because with one casual flick of the wrist from your stupidly well-dressed professor, you were faced with the ONE thing that could dash your fragile, naively misplaced dreams of surviving until the weekend could take you into its loving arms.
Partner. Project.
Your forehead meets the cool surface of your desk just as the first collective shouts of protests echo through the classroom. Maybe it'll work out, you think, until you finally find the courage to pick your head up and scope out a potential partner and find that your choices are woefully limited.
Ace, the smug bastard, is halfway out of his chair and already linking his arm around Epel's with the lack of shame only someone like him could flaunt. You almost feel bad for the poor Pomefiore student, but you couldn't blame Ace for finding what looks to be the easy way out. Potions were kind of their thing.
And Deuce.. well, at least he has the decency to meet your gaze and shoot you an apologetic look while he's on his way out the door with Jack. Traitor.
Fine. That's cool, really. You need to branch out, anyway. It could be a good bonding opportunity, right? A chance for you to meet some new people, learn some new faces. Even if you really like the old ones. It's whatever.
The problem, you're starting to realize, is that everyone else seems to have already made their choice.
And you, squinting in barely concealed desperation through the sea of moving students, land on what looks like the one person you can see that isn't already paired up.
Oh, no.
There, sitting ram-rod straight with what looks to be like all of his muscles fully tensed in a way that cannot be natural, is Sebek Zigvolt.
Briefly, you consider just marching up to Professor Crewel and lying straight through your teeth. No, Professor, I really couldn't find a partner. Would your grade like it? Not in the slightest---you like the class, but that doesn't mean you're particularly good at it---BUT, your grade for your sanity? That alone might make it a worthy trade-off.
But all it takes is one second.
You glance back for one second while you're in the middle of shoving your textbook back into your bag to walk up to Crewel and do just that, when you catch the almost imperceptible flicker of his eye. And with a sudden lurch of pity you realize Sebek's waiting, with his hands clenched tight against his lap and a small frown tugging at the corner of his lips, for a partner.
Sebek Zigvolt is loud. He's boisterous, and critical, and always has something to say about the way you hold yourself, or dress, or speak, or even exist. In fact, you're pretty sure your eardrums are still ringing from the start of class, when Ace had unfortunately bumped into his shoulder on the way inside, and you don't think you've even heard Sebek refer to you as anything besides 'human'.
But the Sebek you're looking at now, silently nestled between the rows of people chattering excitedly, looks vaguely resigned. Like he knows the outcome already, and you know---oh, you know. It sounds stupid. It probably is, and if you ever voice the thought out loud you're pretty sure your friends would march you straight into the nurse's infirmary to check for potential head injuries, but you can't help but think he looks meek.
Apparently, it also only takes you one second to change your mind and march straight across the classroom with a vengeance, slamming your palms down flat on Sebek's desk with a little too much force than was necessary.
"Let's be partners," you insist, scrounging up as much willpower as you can to fix him with a glare so determined that you dare him to refuse. Because you know that if you don't, you'll crack with even the first hint of a refusal and resign yourself to twice the work just like that.
The quiet look of surprise that paints his face morphs into confusion, then, with a furrow of his brow, into offense. It looks a little too practiced to be natural, you think. Especially with the way he doesn't seem to even have a retort to back it up, mouth opening and closing and entirely uncooperative with the alarms you assume are going off inside his head at the thought of a mere, magic-less human making demands of him.
Then, after a few seconds, he sits up even straighter with resolve, and the smug, competitive smirk that spreads across his face is kind of maybe starting to make you regret this entire thing.
"Very well."
His response is surprisingly... cordial for what you were expecting. Maybe you'd just caught him off guard with the whole super loud proclamation in front of basically half the class thing. Or maybe this won't be so bad.
"Of course you would want to partner with someone as skilled with alchemy as I. But do not expect me to pull your weight for you, human."
Internally, you sigh and curse yourself and your stupid, bleeding heart.
"Are you stupid?" Is the first thing out of Ace's mouth when you see him the next day in the cafeteria. "Dude, he's gonna eat you alive. Do any of us look like we have premature funeral money?"
"Shut. Up." You hiss through gritted teeth, about two seconds from sinking as low as you could into your blazer in embarrassment. "I didn't have a choice, obviously!"
Deuce, looking like he'd much rather be anywhere but here, pats your shoulder in the most useless reassuring gesture you've ever seen.
"Well, at least he usually gets pretty high marks, right? Maybe it'll help your grade. That's a plus, right?"
"Oh, sure," Ace rolls his eyes, pointing his fork in your direction. "Is that before or after our oh-so-genius prefect gets roped into shining Malleus's boots--GAH!"
Thank god for Deuce and his inability to pull his punches.
With some time to finally think for yourself (you've long since learned to tune out the sounds of your friends' fighting), you couldn't deny they were kind of right. Sure, every encounter you've had thus-far with the fae first year had been civil at best, but at some point he had evolved into a tentative inclusion to your little group of ragtag mages. It wouldn't be that hard to get on his good side and snag a few extra points for yourself on the way, would it?
A loud slam against the table reverberates to your right, jolting you out of your thoughts with all the grace of a rather angry elephant. The thin blanket of surprise that falls over the table is enough to pause the two still-squabbling Heartslabyul students, and you swear there's an audible creak coming from your neck when you slowly turn to glance in the direction of the noise.
Ah. It's no surprise really, only one person could be responsible, but that doesn't mean it's not a shock to the three of you to see Sebek stiffly sliding into the chair next to you as if he was forced (the truth might've been closer than you expected, if that familiar snicker around the corner were anything to go off of). It wasn't the first time he'd hung around the edges of your lively bunch, but he was usually more of an exasperated observer than any real participant in your shenanigans.
He clears his throat, stiffly nodding in your direction in greeting before turning his focus back to his plate. Was that steak and yogurt? On second thought, maybe you didn't want to know. At least he doesn't notice the scathing glare you send across the table to Ace, who's not doing the best job at stifling a cackle behind his glove. Does he want to ruin your chances of finishing this project alive?
"Heyyyy, Sebek," is your awful attempt at making conversation, but the awkwardness that hangs in the air and the drawn out confusion that tinges your words isn't lost on you. Thank the seven that Grim is off pestering who-knows-who for their extra food, or he'd be writing checks that you couldn't cash and causing damages that you couldn't socially afford.
You practically rush out an invitation to Ramshackle in the poor man's direction, barely stopping for breath throughout and drooping closer and closer toward the table as your lungs deflated. Just bite the bullet and get it done.
He pauses, hunched over his plate with his fork half-way raised to his lips. It's all you can do to hope that he heard you the first time, because you really didn't have the dignity to repeat your blunder a second time in front of the prying eyes across from you.
"Hm."
Only a grunt of affirmation in response. But hey, that's all you needed, right? Bite the bullet. Survive.
Then, his lips parted as if he were busy mulling over something to add, you realize Ace's earlier words might have actually been a warning with some merit. He has fangs. How hadn't you noticed them before?
Bite the bullet? More like bite the human if you were unlucky. You'd never realized just how primed Sebek was built to rip you to shreds if he wanted, and now you were experiencing everything up close as if for the first time. Just sitting down next to you, he practically towered over the table, and even all of the regality the Diasomnia dorm uniform had---and buckles, why so many buckles?---seemed to stretch against the just-barely visible strain of corded muscle where his sleeve ended.
And then he leans closer.
This is it. You're going to die, right in front of your sad, half-eaten poor excuse of a sandwich. His mouth closes, then opens again, and it's like staring down the maw of a monster ready to swallow you whole. You've half a mind to just offer up your jugular and make things easy and quick when he finally speaks, entirely too loudly for being this close and looking like it's a physical pain not to say anything.
"Your uniform is buttoned up entirely wrong. It is utterly embarrassing."
This time, even Deuce can't contain his surprised bark of laughter.
Neither of them see it coming when you promptly throw your half-empty cup their way, either.
Sebek doesn't do group projects.
Why should he? It's much easier to handle things on his own, to glide through his courses without the added dead weight holding him down. He knows he's good, because he's worked to be good. Every moment that he'd studied until the brink of exhaustion, every hour spent ignoring the ever-increasing soreness spreading through his body like the plague as he leveraged swing against swing against the battered training dummy in the dorm that had seen much better centuries days.
So it's a surprise, even to him, when he finds himself staring down the magic-less prefect of Ramshackle on the opposite end of his desk, glaring at him with all the defiance of a baby fawn.
If things went his way, he was content to simply wait for his chance to be dismissed; Crewel had long-since given up on forcing him into assigned groups, especially after the last attempt had resulted in his largest cauldron cleanly broken in half in a scuffle that Sebek had not started but quickly put an end to. It would've been a much better usage of his time to take care of everything himself, without worrying about moving parts and lower intellect.
But pride is a traitorous, fickle thing.
He has to swallow down his own croak of surprise when he agrees, his tongue falling vice to his constant issue of speaking before he even has the chance to think. With two simple words of agreement, he's sealed his fate. Sebek was the source of many forms of irritation, he'd been informed of such, but he was never one to go back on his word. It would reflect oh-so-poorly on those that he aspired to rise to the height of.
He's not sure, even hours later when he's retreated back to the familiar stone walls of the dorm he called his home, why he said yes. Every possible explanation seems to float just out of reach in his mind no matter how desperately he reaches, like lily pads on water. He's self-aware enough to realize why it benefits him, of course, to show off the superior intellect of Briar Valley to the inferior. Ego boosts were something he coveted amidst the competitive sea of students around him regardless of whence it came.
For a fleeting moment, he considers that maybe it's because of your circumstances. That he'd taken pity on you. Clueless, confused, clumsy you and the benevolent knight who'd ignored your shortcomings and risen to the occasion to puff out his chest and prove himself.
It all begins to sound eerily like a fairytale he'd heard a few times in his youth.
The wood of the common-room table cracks under his clenched grip.
"---so nice that you're starting to make some friends, you know! Really, I'd been starting to worry about your reclusive habits. Constant stress isn't good for you."
Lilia's excited rambling brings him back to the situation at hand, and he can't help the exasperated sigh that pushes past his lips and the embarrassed fluster that begins to grow under his collar.
"It's just a project," Sebek mumbles, uncharacteristically quiet under the scrutiny of the older fae. Was it truly such a big deal?
"Oh, don't be so shy, young man!" He's not. "Have you thought about what you're going to bring? It's important to be a good guest, you know." He hasn't. "Don't worry, dear boy. I know the perfect treats to make." He's worrying. That's the worst idea he's ever heard.
It's a practical project in alchemy, yet it feels like he's about to be sent off as an ambassador with a peace offering to bridge the gap between two warring kingdoms.
Honestly, that would probably be less stressful than what he's doing now, which was desperately trying to thwart Lilia's assassination attempt in the form of scones.
Crewel would have a lot of questions for him if you died on him halfway through the project, that's all.
All things considered, you really thought things were going to be worse.
The first day was a little awkward, sure, but you hadn't quite expected to open the door and see Sebek dumping half of the contents of a picnic basket into your shrubbery (favors courtesy of Lilia, he'd explained, and added that he added some things that were actually edible.)
It turns out that for all of his bravado, Sebek was strangely palatable when you were alone.
He's still rigid in his own way, but he'd slowly been warming up to your presence the longer you'd worked. Like domesticating a wild animal, you'd noted to yourself one day in amusement. He didn't tense up anymore when you'd leaned over his shoulder to peer at his notes, and similarly, you'd stopped bracing for sudden death when he'd scoff and (rather gently) nudge you back with a firm finger to the forehead when you insisted on watching the portable cauldron up close.
At least, that's how it was most of the time.
The project called for two components: a demonstration, and a written portion explaining the historical evolution of the concoction you had chosen. You'd hoped to gain some brownie points with him when you'd suggested at the start that you cover something that involved a few ingredients from Briar Valley; to your credit, it had the intended effect, and you'd watched in a strangely endeared state as he rambled about your options for about fifteen minutes. It was a win-win situation for you, he'd probably end up doing most of the work in his eagerness and you'd get the chance to consult with some of the most seemingly-untouchable persons on campus when you finally convinced him to ask the heads of Diasomnia for their input.
But any progress you'd made with warming up to the half-fae seemed to backslide as soon as you'd end up anywhere near his dorm members. You distinctly remember waving to his housewarden, who you'd actually had quite a few pleasant conversations with around Ramshackle (unbeknownst to Sebek, of course, who would probably have burst more than a few blood vessels with the knowledge), and then being promptly picked up and moved so that Sebek could place himself in-between you two. Like you were someone to be wary of.
It kinda stung, if you were honest. You were no stranger, but you couldn't say that you didn't quite understand. The hierarchy in Diasomnia was much, much different than the rest of campus; even what they sought to emulate, the spirit of nobility, set a precedent even without the crown prince of Briar Valley's presence. He had expectations to meet, with or without you there, and it was a rough reminder of the fact that this whole thing, whatever you could even call it, was temporary.
He didn't seem to question it when you, voice strained, asked if you could work on the next few sessions at Ramshackle, instead.
"Wait, there's a difference between crushed and powdered? Seriously?"
Lord Malleus preserve him, you were even more hopeless than he thought.
Not that he truly minded in most cases. You were formidably skilled in the writing portion, he had to admit, and he wouldn't admit how he'd puff his chest out and basically preen when you'd look so impressed when he supplemented the most basic of arcane knowledge.
But when it came to the actual alchemical demonstration? It was all he could do to keep you from blowing up Ramshackle every time his back was turned.
"Yes," Sebek pinches the bridge of his nose and tries not to sound too exasperated---he still couldn't get that kicked puppy look you gave him the first time out of his head. "Powdered is more potent in smaller quantities. Refined. Crushed is what we nee-"
He barely has time to react before he looks over from where he'd been so dutifully preparing the proper protective gear and sees an entire. vial. of powdered mugwort tip into the cauldron; he's bounding over with a shout of your name---not 'human', not 'prefect'----before either of you can even properly process what's about to happen, hands landing on your shoulders to whirl you around and press you firmly into the broad groove of his chest.
Just a single moment later, a loud pop echoes through your living room.
You're almost afraid to look up and see the damage, eyes squeezed shut and nestled so securely into his taller frame that you're starting to wonder, in the midst of your adrenaline, how you've ever felt safe anywhere else. But you need to breathe eventually, and the booming slam of Sebek's heart against his ribcage echoes so concerningly in your ears that you're expecting to pull back and see something you're not prepared for.
And you're right, you weren't. In a way that's so entirely unexpected and raw that even years of preparation wouldn't have mattered.
Because when you start to pull back, eyes wide and frantic and the ghost of a loud and worried exclamation on your tongue, Sebek is already looking at you.
The fallout didn't look too bad, leaving just a light sheen of pink powder covering his face from where he'd taken the brunt of the damage. An easy enough fix, with a wet rag or two and a much-needed lecture on ingredient safety.
But the lecture never comes. It's like a fragile moment suspended in time, and he looks just as worried as you do. Hunched over, so unlike his rigid and proud posture he's seemed to have perfected, round pupils searching every inch of you for even the slightest bit of injury--
Wait, round?
You exhale, heart fluttering halfway up your throat.
Sebek's pupils, usually narrowed into perceptive, slightly intimidating slits, are dilated.
You're still forcing your brain to restart and swallowing down the lump in your throat when he finally deems you unharmed, and his exhale of relief blows a small puff of powder onto your own nose. His grip on your shoulders finally relents, but his hands don't move from their perch as he all but deflates, pressing his forehead against your shoulder as he attempts to match your stuttered breathing. That'll stain, you think, desperate to face anything but this moment, so intense that you think you'd much rather be choking on the powder than the uncertainty of it all.
"... Sebek, I'm sorr-"
"Don't."
That shuts you up real quickly.
It doesn't seem like he really knows what to say, either, because you wait and wait and yet.. nothing. Neither of you are really sure how to progress from here, so you find a moment in the silence to tilt your head and study him.
For the second time in his presence, you truly think you're dying.
But for some reason, dying feels much different this time around.
"Sebek," you whisper, and you realize that your fists are still clenched between you two, trembling. Was that from fear, or something else? You're not quite sure when the line started to blur this much. The huff he gives you in response isn't much help, either.
So you steel yourself, uncurling your shaky fingers and letting them find rest on the folded fabric of the front of his uniform, clutching him like a lifeline even after the imminent danger has come to pass.
"I think it really brings out your eyebrows."
A beat passes.
"What?"
And just like that, the moment eases, tension broken like a stone through the surface of a pond. He pulls back and rises, giving you an unobstructed view of the furrow between his brows and the utterly lost expression on his face. You don't offer him much in explanation, just that utterly infuriating grin that spreads across your face so easily that for once he doesn't object to his own wandering gaze down to your lips.
"The pink." You hum, and your eyes are flitting over his face like you're appraising him and sevens why is it so hot in here. All at once, all too quickly your hands are on him, gently brushing the excess powder off of his cheeks with a cupping motion that's entirely too intimate for his poor heart that's damn near bursting. "It goes well with green."
He tries, he really does, not to think about it. Not to think about how strangely affectionate your gaze is, not to think about the way you're the one cradling him so carefully as if he hadn't just proved to you just what he was capable of. If he doesn't think about that, then maybe he won't have to think about the way he's curled over you still, heaving adrenaline and labored breathing intermingling with yours in the pocket of space between your lips that's both too small and not small enough.
Sebek's one weakness is not thinking. It makes him rash, it rubs people the wrong way, it gets him into trouble. He knows that. He knows you've come to know that, along with the rest of him.
That's probably why neither of you are too surprised when he breathes your name out in a whisper, and in the next moment his lips are on yours.
He's wondering how he's lasted this long without it.
You're wondering if Malleus would smite you if he knew what you've made of his retainer.
Preparations for the project had continued, as life did, but there was something simmering under the surface. And it wasn't that cursed cauldron.
Sebek found himself tagging along with your group more, under the pretense of 'assessing your threat to Lord Malleus' (he'd dropped that excuse by the third time he'd fallen into step with you all in the hallway). Ace and Deuce were still sending you sympathetic looks when he wasn't looking, but even they could tell that apparently an unlikely partnership had blossomed there. Ace had even grumbled into your ear one day, a reddened welt in the shape of a palm barely visible under the painted heart on his face, asking how the hell your group was working out and his wasn't. He wasn't too satisfied when you laughed and rolled your eyes, flicking him in the forehead to earn your personal space back.
That truth was for you two alone.
But honestly? You weren't even sure what this 'truth' was.
The day of that little pink mishap had definitely opened some doors you didn't even know were there, but you never officially agreed to anything. And you certainly didn't let anything on in public.
Which is fine. You get it.
Sebek has his duties and expectations. In fact, it almost seems like he's doubled down on them since then, and you didn't miss the way his eyes seemed to silently search for yours in a room as if he couldn't rest until he'd found you. He wouldn't falter or move from his vigilant perch, but you could never miss the subtle upwards curve of his lip when your eyes would meet, one fang barely peeking through.
So yeah, you figured from the start that whatever you had would probably be better off if you didn't show it in public.
But did he really have to act like you couldn't even be friends?
If things looked awkward between the two of you in the beginning, they must look absolutely abhorrent now. At least you were both on equally floundering terms at the start; you had the excuse of time and unfamiliarity. Now, weeks later, he couldn't even sit next to you without seeming like he'd combust any second. It would be kind of endearing, if he had any shame about tracking you down in the hallway only thirty minutes later and dragging you into a hidden alcove behind a tapestry nearby.
You'd come to learn quite quickly that pretty much everything you'd thought about Sebek in the beginning was true, in a roundabout way. For one, you're worried he might actually swallow you whole one of these days.
That kiss you shared, all relief and trouble breathing and slightly tasting of herbs, was the first of many that night. And almost every day after. He was insatiable when it came to you, finding every opportunity to steal you away in the quiet moments and attack your lips with the same vigor he used in every inch of his training. It was a part of his training, he considered, to familiarize himself with every physical and emotional inch of you.
It wasn't the first time you'd found yourself in this specific situation, either, cornered up against the wall with smooth, cold stone on your back and the only-mildly-warmer press of Sebek's chest flat against yours to cage you in and shield you from view. Not that that had ever been a problem in the past; nobody quite seemed to know of this spot, and you're sure he probably had some elaborate fake argument ready to bark out at the slightest threat of discovery if someone found you two alone.
You didn't mind, you'd tell yourself. It was hard to, anyway, with how reverent he'd gaze down at you every time, pupils blown wide and a violent shudder jolting down his spine and arching him further into you when you'd so little as run your fingertips through his wildly styled hair.
You had him in the moments in-between, like the comfort of whistling air through the rickety window panes of your own dilapidated dorm. He would choose you each time he had a passing moment, and that was enough. You were sure of it.
Later, your hands accidentally brush together while you're all walking together to the school store. Sebek recoils like he's been burned, making a show of brushing off his gloves on the neatly ironed sleeves of his uniform. The heat that blooms through your face, this time, is from embarrassment.
"You want to.. set me up?" You squint, pointedly tilting your head from where you lay across the couch.
You'd been deep in thought, staring up at the ceiling beams, when you'd been interrupted by the very unceremonious entrance of Ace and Deuce; in itself this wasn't unusual, but you were pretty surprised to see that they'd even managed to drag Epel and Jack into whatever they were planning, too. Even Grim was there, although he didn't seem to be paying much attention to the situation at hand, busying himself with scooping out the last traces of tuna from the can he'd clearly been bribed with.
Deuce nods. Jack pretends he's not invested.
Ace and Epel practically yank you off the couch in their exasperation. You pretend not to notice the smidge of pink dust that flies into the air from the upholstery.
"Dude, it's getting embarrassing at this point," Ace groans, abruptly dropping your arm and sending you a none-too-sheepish grin when it thuds loudly against the floor. "It's clear you've got a thing for him, and it's making me super nauseous seeing it, so.."
"Waitwaitwait- What?" You don't even bother to move from the floor, flat on your back and glancing up at the group behind you. "For who?
Upside-down-Epel fixes you with a glare, leaning over you with such vigor it looks more like he's about to begrudgingly spill the secrets of the universe to you.
"Quit 'yer bellyachin', ain't it obvious? You're head over heels for the big croco-fuck, ain'tcha?"
You freeze, and although you must look like a limp, lifeless fish, you manage to flop yourself upright into a sitting position from the floor. They're going to help you confess... to Sebek? Awesome. Totally figured it out, way to go detective team.
"Guys," you start, an exasperated protest on the tip of your tongue, when Deuce crouches by your side, brows slotted together in concern.
"He looks at you a lot, you know. When you're not looking. I think he likes you too."
You're too wrapped up in wondering when the hell Deuce suddenly became a romance sap to dwell on the fact they think you're moping because of some silly, unspoken crush (even if it's technically partly true), and Deuce must see the absolute confusion on your face, because he awkwardly rubs the back of his head and nods towards the others.
"At least, that's what Jack says. I don't know."
The wolf beastman bristles at that, ignoring the embarrassed fluster of his face with a loud clear of his throat.
"There's a campus event coming up," he offers, clearly taking pity on you. "You probably wouldn't have heard of it yet, but it's an open festival that the school hosts. Very... popular with young couples."
Huh. That actually didn't sound like an awful idea.
"Plus, if it turns out your feelings are horribly misguided and he's absolutely repulsed by the thought of you liking him, you can just say you meant it in like a friend group way," Ace's words of support are anything but, and you throw your hands up in protest. "What? Just covering your bases, you know you were thinking it."
Running a hand down your face, you groan and lean back onto the couch. They had a point, as much as the risk of it buzzed through your nerves just thinking about it. It was a pretty solid plan; they could feel like they've put all the pieces of the puzzle together, and you could finally figure out what the hell was even going on between you two.
"Fine," you sigh, standing up for the first time since this impromptu meeting started.
Grim offers to help set the mood.
You make a deal with Ace the same night to keep Grim as far away as possible. He is not, as he claims, a 'true romance expert'.
In hindsight, you probably should have chosen a better time.
But you don't really do well under social pressure, and the four pairs of thumbs ups just barely hidden around the corner were enough to encourage you to just get this over with so you could go home and take a break for the first time in a week.
Morning classes had just let out for the day, which gave you about ten minutes of time to guarantee that you'd find him before he found you, and he'd pull you aside so desperately that you'd forget about this whole thing and just let him.
No. You wouldn't let that happen, not with how much energy you've spent worrying about the same thing over and over again. How you'd practically been brooding like a Victorian-era widow every night at the uncertainty of it all, pacing back and forth to the point you think you've worn down the floorboards in certain spots.
You've worked yourself up so much that as soon as you see that familiar envoy of black-and-green uniforms you don't even think before you spring into action. You march your way up, right up to the literal prince of the fae (Around the corner, Ace hesitantly has the headmage on speed dial, just in case) and tell him, very bluntly, that you need to borrow one of his retainers.
Malleus tilts his head in appraisal, eyes sparkling with amusement.
You wait one second. Three. You're not reduced to ash yet, so you guess that's permission enough. Sebek doesn't even have the time to blubber out the usual loud proclamation in the prince's defense before you've got his arm in a vice grip, dragging him a little ways away. Out of the corner of your eye, you can barely see Lilia ushering the two remaining students out of the area with a knowing grin.
"HUMAN! WHAT IS THE MEANING OF TH-" "WILLYOUGOTOTHEFESTIVALWITHME-"
You pause. Because now you're 'human', again. Of course you are. This isn't the privacy of your dorm, after all.
He pauses. Clearly, he hadn't expected that to be what was so urgently in need of attention. It looks like someone's frozen him in time, fist raised in indignation and only half-heartedly clenched in the air.
There's an awkward cough around the corner. You wince.
Just like that, it's like life is breathed into the air again, for better or worse.
"That silly festival," he starts off, slow and stilted, as if trying to regain his footing with the conversation, although it's hard to miss how he spits the word out with a venom that has you reeling back in shock. "Is nothing more than one of mankind's excuses to slack off."
Yet you push through, willing the ice currently forming in your veins to melt just enough that you didn't feel like you were actively decomposing. That's fine. With everything else that came with him, you understand---or maybe it's because you don't understand, that you try so hard to see his point of view. That lingering, festering feeling that even within your most personal of relationships you're still an outsider to this world who could never hope to understand something as silly as love.
"I just thought that if," you exhale, hoping he doesn't quite notice the shakiness of it, "if you end up going, that you might want to see some of it together."
You don't see the twitch of his gloved fingers itching to clasp yours. You don't notice the way his bottom lip pales with the pressure of his teeth, dangerously close to splitting skin with the pressure.
What you do end up seeing is the way his gaze falters, flickering behind you and back, where you know he knows that there's people waiting.
And ultimately, all he knows how to do is save face.
"As if I'd want anything to do with pointless human indulgence."
Anything to do with you. That's what you take away from this. That even now, he's posturing for an imaginary audience that may or may not be there.
Maybe it's the fact that it's in public. Or maybe you're done pretending that you understand. You don't know, but there's a lot of things these days that you're not quite sure of anymore.
Sebek, still standing rooted to the same spot he was when you'd silently turned heel and left mere minutes ago, is one of them.
"Honestly, Sebek. I really thought you were getting better at this friend thing." Lilia sighs, shaking his head as if this were as casual a disappointment as a vending machine getting stuck and stealing a favorite candy bar.
Somehow, that makes Sebek want to stand up even straighter, and he's already standing at precise attention in the middle of the Diasomnia common room. Although no one's quite looking directly at him---Malleus had wandered off not too shortly after their return, and Silver... well, Silver was asleep on the couch, like always---he still somehow feels like he's under extreme scrutiny. Perhaps it's the lingering sting of the hurt in your gaze earlier; it had settled into the backs of his eyelids like an insistent pain, as if his subconscious wasn't willing to let him forget.
"I am." He croaks, although his voice wavers even in his own defense. "The prefect and I are not friends." As if that admission makes it any better.
"You're not?" Lilia's response is oddly casual for the revelation, although the hum of consideration that soon follows reveals why---he'd assumed the opposite. "Did they not like the gifts you brought? I knew you'd need a little extra nudge, of course, but I didn't think I'd have to hold your hand the entire way!"
Sebek had grown used to the amused, vaguely condescending croon of Lilia's voice in moments like these, but that doesn't help the way it settles deep into his bones like poison eating away at him from the inside. How did he even begin to clear this up in a way that didn't make him sound like the worst person ever?
Sevens, what is he even thinking for? He knows he is, right now. He wouldn't allow himself the luxury of being vague, not when he'd been anything but in his very public rejection of you.
"You misunderstand," He pauses, his throat so dry that even swallowing seems to hurt in the moment. It's a struggle, to find a way to define it in a way that doesn't feel vile, to put a name to it so openly. He didn't have the right to do so, not now. "We are... courting?"
Sebek's defensive tone fizzles out.
The resounding SMACK that permeates the air brings it right back.
Sebek didn't even see him rise, but there in front of him stood Silver with a hand still raised, his long-time rival. The one person that he'd never been able to see eye-to-eye with. The fact that the very thing they're agreeing on right now is the fact that he's very much fucked things up scares him with the severity of it all.
He doesn't even find it in himself to retaliate, doesn't press the smooth coldness of his glove against his still-stinging cheek to soothe the pain. He just.. stares. For once, he's speechless.
"You should go fix that." Is all Silver loftily offers as explanation, and it's so oddly out of place and fitting for the situation at hand considering how much fire he'd met him with just a moment before that Sebek doesn't even have the words to argue, just turns and leaves the room in a daze to figure out how to do just that.
Silver's asleep on the couch again before Lilia can get a word in afterwards.
"Ah, young love is so fickle."
It's oddly peaceful at Ramshackle, if you don't count the endless stream of notifications blowing up your phone. Or the howling wind and rain outside. Or Grim's loud snoring drifting down the stairs.
You hadn't looked back when you'd given up and went home just a few hours earlier. Hadn't spared a word to your friends, the masterminds of it all, despite how desperately they had clamored over each other to ask you a million questions and assure you, probably, that they thought it would've gone so much better than it had.
You weren't mad. At least, not at them. You just couldn't find the energy to do much else except wrap yourself up on the couch and stare blankly into the fireplace, so you hadn't quite opened up any of their text messages yet. Maybe that's a tomorrow morning thing.
That is, if you've made sense of anything at all by then. You kind of expected to cry, or scream, or throw things, or lash out. Anything that manifested as physical proof of the aching hurt that spread throughout your rib cage and settled against your lungs with constricting fury. And yet? Nothing. You were exhausted, crushed by the weight of being proven right.
It'll probably hit you like a truck later, you're vaguely aware. But nothing quite feels real at the moment, something you're willing to take advantage of for the time being until you inevitably blow all your thaumarks on ice cream and chips tomorrow.
Then, barely audible through the sounds of the storm just past your door, you hear a knock. Unobtrusive and strangely patient for this weather at first, but quickly ramping up with a frantic intensity that has you sighing and getting up from your current love (the couch) to go begrudgingly answer the door, still wrapped up in the biggest and least-scratchiest blanket you have.
You don't really know who you're expecting to see when you open the door. Maybe Ace, who'd never met a social cue in his life that he couldn't ignore, or Jack, who'd given you the idea of the festival in the first place and probably felt responsible for how sideways it went.
Certainly not a very disheveled, soaked down to the bone Sebek Zigvolt, fist still raised in the air and somehow looking very, very surprised and relieved to see that you are, in fact, still here at Ramshackle. That you hadn't magically found a way to return home out of sheer retaliation against his utter stupidity.
You don't even have the time to retreat further into the blanket still wrapped around you before he's practically launching himself at your feet. It's nothing like what you're used to, nothing like the usual selfish sprawl of his fingers against the warmth of your skin. He's firm, unrelenting in his grip as if to prove you're actually in front of him, you're real, even as you squirm in his hold.
"Sebek, you're freezing!" And it really wasn't an exaggeration. He's dripping water all over your floor, all over you, yet he seems to be preoccupied with little more than smushing his face as far into the side of your neck as he can go before he's able to merge with you entirely. You start to backtrack, leading him with you and closer to the fire little by little. Still, he does little to help you out in the transport, and it's a struggle to all but drag the man.
"I'm sorry." He hisses through clenched teeth, eyes screwed shut, but you know the exact moment he opens them; you can feel the damp flutter of his eyelashes against your neck before he pulls away and looks at you with the most pleading look you've ever seen on him. Like he's waiting for you to tell him to leave, to never return, and he'd do it in a heartbeat if it made you happy. Even if he had to claw his own fingers raw through the dirt to follow through with what his mind couldn't bear to.
This is not the look of the rigid knight with something to prove. This, it hits you like a stake to the heart, is the face of a desperate man with something, finally, in his life that he risks losing before he's even had it.
Once again, it's his eyes that clue you in to a very important realization.
Sebek, you realize, the man who just marched his way over to your dorm in the middle of a thunderstorm without so much as thinking of casting a wind-blocking spell, the one currently sapping all your warmth from you in his insistence to be close to you, the one that stood outside your door in the rain for who knows how long,
is a crocodilic fae.
At the time, you'd been vaguely aware of the similarities. Taken by the novelty of the little things, like the way the only accessible stripe of skin peeking out from his glove was always just-barely cooler in temperature when you'd wrap your fingers around his wrist. Laughter bubbling up through your chest when he'd seem to nuzzle his cheek against yours like he hadn't realized he'd been leaning into your warmth, or the coy smile pulled taut against your lips with each gentle scrape of his fangs over your skin.
Now, it takes all you have not to succumb to your weak knees when you realize just how cold the rain had left him, and how he hadn't spared it so much as a thought in his effort to get to you. Even now, when it looks like it's taking all of his willpower just to keep his arms wrapped firmly around you, he powers through it in silence like there's no question of it being any other way.
There's a soft mutter of protest from him when you finally managed to wrestle him in front of the fire, but he doesn't fight you on the way you wrap your now-slightly-damp blanket around the two of you and guide him to his knees next to you.
"You hurt me," you whisper, smoothing a hand over his forehead to properly see him through the wet strands plastered flush against his skin. With his hair like this, he looked younger. Boyish and walking into this just as blind as you were.
"I know." Sebek croaks, leaning into your touch like it could give him all the answers, like it was the only thing that could help him think clearly.
"I don't expect to be first," and maybe the bitter cold seeping into your bones is finally starting to get to you, mixing with the deep pit of dread in your stomach that had been crashing over you in waves all night, because when you speak you can't even begin to slow the quiet sobs that trickle out after. "I just wanted to be an option."
Somehow, something inside of him is still barely held together enough to break at the tremor in your voice.
"You," he gasps for air, cradling the back of your head with icy fingertips that shake just enough to match how you sound, "are the only option."
You're not quite sure where the sobs racking your chest end and his begin, and you're definitely not sure of just when you'd somehow fallen asleep leaning against each other on a heap in the floor, all tangled limbs and fabric and desperate hearts.
When you wake in the morning, you've somehow made it onto the couch; you're pressed between him and the cushions, Sebek's back turned toward the direction of the door as if he had taken it upon himself to be your only line of defense while you slept.
The next day, you're deep in a heated discussion with your friends about the ethics of bribing ancient spirits to write essays for you when two powerful hands land firm against your shoulders. You don't even need to crane your head up to see who it is, posture relaxing with ease and leaning readily back into the touch.
There's a brief flash of light green on the edge of your vision, and a slightly stiff, but lingering kiss pressed just underneath your ear.
Ace shrieks. You're pretty sure you hear glass shattering.
Yeah, you'd definitely have to thank Professor Crewel later.
- dec 20: team z finishes first selection (thursday)
- dec 30: start of second selection (sunday)
- jan 6: isagi + red team completes second selection (sunday)
- jan 30: end of the second selection (wednesday)
- feb 27: u20 japan match (wednesday)
- mar 10: start of nel (sunday)
- mar 20: 1st and 2nd nel matches (barcha vs bm, pxg vs ubers) (wednesday)
- march 30: 3rd and 4th nel matches (manshine vs bm, barcha vs ubers) (saturday)
- april 9: 5th and 6th nel matches (ubers vs bm, pxg vs manshine) (tuesday)
- april 19: 7th and 8th nel matches (pxg vs barcha, manshine vs ubers) (friday)
- april 29: 9th and 10th nel matches (pxg vs bm, barcha vs manshine) (nagi elimination date) (last day of the nel) (monday)
- april 30: current day in chapter 301, blue lock parade (tuesday)
nov 20 - dec 20: first selection
dec 21 - dec 30: ten day training in preparation for the second selection
dec 30 - jan 30: second selection
jan 30 - feb 26: third selection, preparations for the u20 japan match
feb 28 - mar 9: blue lock break in celebration of the successful u20 match
mar 10 - april 29: neo egoist league
*nel match days are ten days apart, with two matches every ten days.
———————————————
may 23 - june 15: irl 2019 (bllk takes place in 2018-2019) u20 world cup time frame. this isn’t confirmed, and likely won’t be the actual days for the u20 world cup in bllk. in chapter 301, which takes place on april 30 from the math, it is stated that there are 50 days until the u20 world cup. 50 days from april 30 is june 19, so the bllk date for the u20 wc probably won’t add up to the official 2019 wc date irl.
everyone says you can always restart. that your future isn't forgotten, just sort of misplaced. they name actors and singers and authors who started at 46, 59. they cite chappell roan's 10 years. they tell you to push and push, that some day you'll open a door and the truth will be behind it.
but what if you aren't a celebrity in sheep's clothing. what if you're just a normal person. most people aren't exceptionally talented or else talent wouldn't be exceptional - right? what if you're just another median person; not ever startlingly bad nor terrifyingly good.
you put the shopping carts back and you walk your dog and you write poems on the internet. you have grown a plant or two; killed a few others. you did okay, overall, and you've been okay most of your life. not valedictorian, but you were a smart kid. you had some hard knocks, but you got up again. your life is just - average. you probably will never sing onstage at coachella. most of the time you are at peace with that - someone needs to drive the speed limit. life isn't about extraordinary circumstances, it's just about building a life you love and figuring out how to live in it.
but you would like to feel as if you'd found "the answer." everyone else seems to have some kind of talent they are born nesting in - and meanwhile you just exist. is that why you cycle through crafts and hobbies and activities like a roulette wheel? are you waiting for the moment where it turns out - all this time, you've been a visionary. a genius. all this time, you were special. someone who has-never-been.
crawling up your throat: something bitter and savage. not quite a feeling of wasted potential. after all, you need to first have potential in order to waste it.
Summary: MC finally shuts down from all of her acts of helping with overblots and the countless favors/demands that are asked of her. When the Prefect of Ramshackle is the one who needs help, who steps forward?
WARNINGS
I am not the best at labeling warnings or triggers but I can say that this story is laden with neglect, self-neglect, anxiety, possible depression and attempts to justify the above. There could be more labels that I can add but i’m unsure how to word them - so please exercise caution.
Quick Note: The reader in this story is largely based upon Cinderella, for multiple reasons (#1 being that I want to and #2 being that I absolutely love Cinderella and think she’s amazingヾ(•ω•`)o ) . If that type of character behavior annoys or offends you, I recommend skipping this!
For the ladies: need help picking a scenario for a woman to be in the Blue Lock facility without making them a stereotypical (Y/n)? I gotchu bbg.
SCENARIOS
note: all of the ocs/(yn)s here are all 15-19 (high school to first year of college age) depending on your preference.
1. A manager who does the same jobs as Anri but is much more involved personally with the players
- One way this could play out is someone who is a manager from another club or U20 team (ex; Bastard München) and is transferred to Blue Lock, whether it’s out of personal interest or a request from Ego. Either way, with her experience, she helps the players with ease and professional advice and also acts as a PR manager of sorts for them, and might even begin a romance with one of them.
- Another way is perhaps someone who is in desperate need of money and is willing to do anything for money. One day, she checks a sketchy website for new job offers with lots of money, and the new Blue Lock program hiring managers catches her eye. She instantly applies and gets in almost immediately, and helps out the players and Anri. She also might get into a love story with one of the players.
- Another way is someone who is an intern at the JFU (Japanese Football Union) and is assigned to work on Blue Lock with Anri, as the intern is only a teenager and Anri is a new hire and only 22 and fresh out of college. While Anri is helping out Ego more, the intern is helping out the players more while also learning more about herself, soccer, relationships, and love.
2. A nurse who checks the medical data of players and nurses them back to health during injuries or sickness.
- One way this scenario could play out is perhaps someone who is an aspiring doctor, and one way to train herself is to sign up for Blue Lock. She has enough medical knowledge to know what to do with common sicknesses like colds or fevers, and she knows how to deal with broken or fractured bones and more. She’s mostly learning how to truly have patients trust her, and she herself learns to fall in love.
- A daughter of a doctor who is called to Blue Lock, but her parent instead gives her the opportunity to help out at Blue Lock. Any plausible reason would be fine, but to not be too repetitive, I think that maybe something similar to being able to have a backup plan if she ever can’t go to college or doesn’t know what profession to chase could be a good reason for why she’s at Blue Lock.
3. A chef at the facility who is supposed to work in secret but is seen one night by a participant
- Okaaaaaaay so major Rin vibes here, but anyways she’s desperate for money so drops out of high school begins working at some random restaurant as a chef and just earns enough to barely get by. But one day, Ego visits the restaurant and hires her to cook for Blue Lock. She agrees, and she’s the one who cooks all the food at BLLK. One night, when all the players are supposed to be asleep, she sneaks out of her room to eat something, but doesn’t realize that a player from one of the wings had just finished extra training and was eating away. Let’s just say that their love story started from there.
4. An aspiring psychologist who wants to see what will happen to the mentalities and personalities of the players before and after Blue Lock
- HEAVY HEAVY HEAVY Isagi main love interest vibes here, but she’s kind of a weird person. She’s always analyzing the personalities of people because she’s so lonely and just wants to feel loved by someone. She then goes to Blue Lock out of pure interest just to see the results of the project. She accidentally sees one of the results of the elimination tag game for one of the teams, and she basically falls in love with the final eliminator then and there. She then kind of just hangs around them to see their personality, but she unknowingly becomes more and more in love with the person who she finds most psychologically interesting.
5. A former athlete who receives a career ending injury but becomes a regular spectator/mentor in Blue Lock
- So basically, she is a young athlete and is in love with whatever sport she’s playing and what’s to be the world’s best (I personally think ice skating would be perfect for this prompt…but anyways). But then one day at a competition or performance or match, she receives a career ending injury that will never heal, especially not if she keeps playing. Forced to quit and bitter about her injury, she goes to Blue Lock as a former athlete to watch a group of teenage boys try to achieve the dream that she once had, and she becomes a mentor and PR manager of sorts, giving them advice and encouragement.
Characters: Ghost!Baji, Reader(Y/N), Bonten, Toman | 1257 words
Warnings: manga spoilers, mentions of death, spirits, supernatural stuff, violence, grammar mistakes, idk mediocre writing. There is not a pairing yet… there won’t be… :P idk… ta-da? Trick or treat?
“Could you please go home? Heaven? Hell! For all I care,” he noticed that you could see him, so he had followed after you.
“Nop.” the long-haired boy with pointy canines paid you no mind.
“Look, not because I am the only person who can see you-“ you began to say
“Yes, actually, that’s the only reason.” he contradicted your unfinished statement.
“Okay, okay. Then what’s your name?” you finally gave up.
“Baji,” he answered.
“Okay, Baji. How did you die?” You inquired as you lifted an eyebrow.
“It’s a long story…” he sighed, looking at the black uniform he’s wearing.
“I have time.” you saw a flash of sadness pass through his eyes, so you decided to lend an ear.
-
The capability of seeing dead people has always been part of you. Now with more than 20 years on your shoulders, a thing that is horrifying for some became common to you. With time you learned that ignoring those spirits was for the best. Except for that demon child of a ghost you met once upon a time on a Halloween eve.
Oh, how you didn’t suspect that this Baji Keisuke character would give your life a new meaning.
You’ve met this… almost friendly ghost of a 14-year-old boy. You say almost because he tends to be kind of aggressive, most of the time. It was October 31st, 2017, when you first met Baji. He seemed somewhat... lost? Maybe that's why he followed you.
Baji, he said his name was, told you about his life when he was alive. You listened to the fights he won and the very unusual adventures he shared with his friends. You also heard his regrets and, finally, how he died by his own hand. ‘A very tragic ending for such a colorful life,’ you thought.
You took pity for the boy and suggested what most souls sought. Closure. You offered to write letters for those he wished to communicate something or say goodbye appropriately. You said a letter because talking to people wasn't your forte. After a while, he accepted.
-
“You look like a demon today and every day,” you grumbled. Baji, the ghost, you might add, pulled your covers for the fifth time this morning.
“And you like a crazy woman, now hurry up! We have a lot of places to go.” this is the most excited you’ve seen the ghost boy.
“Yah! Okay! Go and wait in the kitchen; I need to change.” sushing Baji out, you heard him murmur about you being a grumpy old lady. Rolling your eyes, you walked towards your closet.
It's been a month since you've met Baji, and he was a handful. It took you a month to write the seven letters he needed. And that leads you to today, the big day of deliveries. Seeing that most letters had a name and address, you could easily mail them, except for one, but Baji insisted on delivering them with you.
As you walked towards your first delivery, you remembered a conversation with your ghost friends. It happened a couple of days after meeting him.
Baji asked how you had so much time in your hands to help a dead boy. He kept questioning you about family, friends, and even pets. But your answer didn’t seem to be of his liking. You explained how everyone in your family thought you were sick in the head and how because of your ghost-seeing tendencies, you never had friends. Baji apologized for asking, but you really didn’t mind. It was your reality.
A hand waving in front of your face woke you up from your memories. “Y/N, let's check one more time. I'm kind of anxious,” confessed Baji.
“Okay,” you said as you pulled the letters from your bag. “But be fast, please. This is not a good place, gang territory and all that,” you huffed.
You read the names out loud so Baji could see that every letter was there. “Pah-chin, Mitsuya, Draken, Chifuyu, Kazutora, Takemichi, and Manjiro,” you finished.
A sudden commotion made both of you turn towards the sound of people murmuring and flashes of cameras. At first, you couldn't focus. The waves of a feeling of demise hit your body, and as you blinked, the image in front of you cleared up.
A sea of the dead.
“Y/N! That's Mikey,” you gave Baji a weird look, “I mean Manjiro! The one with the tattoo on his nape and short white hair.” he pointed towards the men in suits that were leaving a club called FNN.
The mass of spirits seemed to follow after this Mikey or Manjiro and his men.
“Are you sure? That doesn't look like a Manjiro to me,” you said, scared of the energy that surrounded those men. You saw countless spirits following the group, and that was never a good sign in your book.
“How would you know?” He threw you a confused side glance, “Let's go now! Just give it to him, and we continue on our way,” Baji was excited since you never found Sano Manjiro’s address or any information about him, and he thought he would have to make you ask Draken or anyone and then wait last to see him. “Go!”
“Okay! I’m going!” you walked towards the group. Were you afraid? Yes. Did you know what you were doing? Hell no.
Trying to avoid eye contact with the souls surrounding the group of men, you made it to the man in flip flops that, according to Baji, was Sano Manjiro. You don't know how none noticed you, yet you slid your way between tall and big bodies towards him.
“Hi! Sano Manjiro, right? This is for you!” you squicked at the intimidating flip-flop-wearing man as you bowed and extended your hands with the letter in between them. “Baji Keisuke ordered me to!” and then, as soon as you felt he touched the envelope, you ran for your life.
You ran and ran, hoping that Baji saw you bolt out of there and had decided to follow you. Something in you told you to go; it screamed danger, and with your experience, that voice was never wrong.
“Y/N?!? Are you okay? What happened?” Baji appeared, “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” you abruptly stopped at his poor attempt of lightening the mood.
“Very funny,” you sarcastically responded, “Baji, your friend must be crazy! Didn't you see the amount of death that surrounds him?” just remembering the feeling sent shivers down your spine.
“So we continue?” he blatantly ignored your concerns. How does a ghost ignore other ghosts?
You gave a no for an answer, explaining that the more contact you had with spirits, the more exhausted you felt. And today, you ran twice through an army of lost souls. Now it makes sense to him why you always nap so much. He understood your situation. Pah-chin, Mitsuya, Draken, Chifuyu, Kazutora, and Takemichi can wait.
Still, there was something else bothering you. Like... The alarms in your head didn't turn off. On the contrary, they screamed even louder.
-
“Boss, we have her address and a background chek.” a man with scars in the corners of his lips spoke. “No history or contact with Baji Keisuke,”
“How should we proceed?” A man with a single red eye and a scar in the corner of the other asked.
“Bring her here,” Mikey said before munching on a heart-shaped Manju.
you would be his personal cook that mikey assigned
you really worked hard at making the best dishes for sanzu (1. 50/50 chance of getting killed because you might never know with his pill popping ass and 2. you don't want to purposely mess up good ingredients)
sanzu though, really loves your dishes
he would say horrendous compliments like how he was about to have an orgasm biting into the steak minutes ago (rindou looks up at him from his laptop in disgust while ran scoffs in amusement)
ran suggested to maybe gift you something or pay a visit to whoever is cooking his meals and damn well sanzu was thrilled to hear that idea and was ready to work on it
(the haitani brothers thought the same, that you were probably going to shit your pants if bonten's number 2 suddenly appeared right beside you out of nowhere)
the very next day, his preffered time of lunch was much more later than the others so it's pretty normal for the others to not see him at the table and knowing that he's doing his own business
but this is completely different than what he usually does, he's looking for you! and there you were, in the flesh and busy preparing his meal
you look rather panicked, oh how many guesses he had. it was near his lunch time, you cooked the wrong meal, you're panicking about the slighest things or you thought you were doing it wrong
turns out you just wanted to cut the right size of tomatoes because you cut one ridiculously large chunk so you huffed and picked another tomato and nearly laughed at your stupidity
well sanzu was correct in some ways but you were just minutes away in finishing so he watched
with every second he stepped closer and the closer he got which was just right over your shoulder, you squeled because 1) creepy and 2) his breath was tickling your neck that you just had to make noise
you grabbed your wrist and your finger bled, in the state of suprise you accidently cut your thumb, luckily it was only a little so you rushed to the sink to wash it off
sanzu had a smile on his face, oh woops accidently shocked a poor person by breathing on them so the best he could do was offering a bandaid that was in his pocket
you glanced at his arm and saw the bonten tattoo inked on it so your eyes lit up in fear in why a bonten member is up infront of you
you gulped and he couldn't help but giggle to how terrified you looked and he twirled the plate that his food on it
"you're almost finished with my food, huh? quickly, you have a few seconds" you looked at him again but with genuine curiousity and suprise that said "sanzu haruchiyo? what is he doing here?"
your thoughts swirled in your head in chaos, finishing up his food and the waiter that were to take his food entered the kitchen
he froze in the doorway, recognizing the feared bonten 2 and sanzu asked him to go away by simply motioning it with his hand as well as adding in a "if you don't go, i'll kill you" by doing a slashing motion across his neck, you did not know how fast the waiter walked out of there
sanzu carried his plate towards the table your partners and you ate at and sat there, tilting his head when you stayed at the same spot
"sit here, i wanna talk" shitting your pants is a understatement, dying should be the right term
but no worries when you sat down, he smiled again with his eyes closed (though you're not sure what kind of smile was this, his rare ones? because if it is then you can make it out of here without being out in a grave)
let's just say he was interested in you and he said quite some nice words to you, this won't be the first time he'll crash into your life and have moments of talking to you after all, you're his cook right?
you're just lucky enough when he decides that you're one of the few pieces he'll cherish in his life, one he wouldn't kill but respect deeply and stick around with
kokonoi
you were his respectable assistant that deals with errands, well a more better term is a spy
you listened to conversations about bonten in the dark and sneak off to inform the others, first of all koko of course
your relationship between him was proffesional and all, reporting about what bonten enemies have said, nod and leave
but there was a time where he finally got to know you a bit better
you were a bit later than the time he asked for you to come to his office after your work, about 10 minutes atleast and he raised his eyebrow at you when you slipped into his office out of breath but quickly regain it as to not piss him off any further
"sorry sir, i got attacked" attacked you say? he got up from his seat, slowly approacing you and you sweat
overall his demeanor was cocky and all but you've never seen a scary side so supposingly it's okay for you to not feel threatened but would he really be angry at you for getting attacked?
"i don't see any bruises on you, did you really get attacked?" that sly grin showcased itself, he felt the taste of a lie coming but it didn't when you spoke up again
"i fought back sir, with this." you pulled out the staff, pressing the button to open it and twirled it over for him to see
it was the staff he gave, well actually showed off when he opened the weapons room, telling you to atleast get a weapon to defend yourself, if you can even though (he halfly joked at the end with his tongue out)
you told him that it was the gang that was still gaining these "leaks and secrets" or so to speak, are the ones rindou falsely put out in the open and the gang planned to go to one of the secret bases that bonten usually went to
besides what you say is necessary information but he circled around you in silence and decided to try to hit your head but you smack his hand away with the staff
he went for your neck but you swiftly wack the staff into his waist and he groaned, impressed
he was about to say something but sanzu interrupted by opening the door without knocking and almost bumped koko with the door
"heheh sorry, can i borrow your assistant, come come~" sanzu sung out but koko shooed him away, wanting some time to talk to you but pink crazed bastard wanted to talk to you so he shut the door on him and yelled at him to go away for a moment
after that day, more people seem to recognize and fought with you
it would pretty ironic if koko were to be the one ordering them to attack you
" i wanna see you fight more" whatever he says, you just hope it actually isn't him sending mofos to attack you because that would be a d!ck move
but he didn't, one of the bonten members revealed that a little spy is watching them from above like the idiots they were that they bumbled out their secrets for the spy to hear (guess who)
so he rewards you, after the hell you went through, you better be gifted
extra!!:
"may i measure you?" you looked back at the person in shock as they smiled warmly at you and you suspiciously glared at them, reaching slowly for your staff.
"sir kokonoi has asked to measure you." they went to stretch out the measuring tape and held it around your waist, you hesitated on holding up your shirt because of how ticklish and feathery their fingers were. this was all too sudden but you go along with it.
while you twist your shirt up, they placed a note in your back pocket and you questioned on why did they do that, you reached it while they're measuring your legs.
"i'll send someone in to measure your size for your clothing, do you also want lingerie to be part of your gift too?~" the note said and you nearly stumbled into the tailor when you tried rereading it all over again.
"what colour do you want? do you want a matching set?" "no!!"
(koko's probably pissing himself right now, trying to imagine your panicky expression, laughing like a maniac in his office)
ran
you worked as his personal maid and he admired how careful you were
you were pretty noticeable since you took your time on one thing at a time like dusting off shelves and cupboards for a long moment or scrubbing away at the dirt in the plate that stuck too long there (i mean it's reasonable but you stressed over it for a few minutes)
he approached at some times to check on you and he would smile sadistically at times when you look at him like a deer in headlights, wondering what you did wrong to make him approach you himself
he just wanted to praise and point out some of your habits which you rubbed your neck to and nodded to do better next time
it also gave him a chance to see your stretched arm and your hands, especially your knuckles more better than afar (not in a creepy way)
your knuckles were deep red and would have cuts over it and he would leave at that but it got too much for him whenever he came to you and it kept getting worse
he popped the question when you moved his flowers into a pot to sit in the sun when your hands were all bandaged up
"why has the condition of your hands worsen everytime i come to you?" so he did notice, you sighed and told him the truth while you rubbed your bandaged knuckles
"people are picking on me so hitting their faces makes my knuckles hurt and become ugly each time i return back here" he was suprised that you even used your fists and he held your hands and spoke softly
"you didn't use the baton i gave you?" you feel yourself burn, you had to pull away from him and you wanted to jog off into the sun but you akwardly shrugged instead
"i'm a lot more used to using fists to fight plus i.. might have hit my face with the baton once" his laugh was sugary sweet, the rarest you've ever heard but he was laughing at your mistake so you bit your tongue and fumed, going back to arranging his flowers (that he's probably allergic to but keeps them around cause they're pretty💀)
he patted your shoulder, casually correcting himself that it was cute that atleast you did try to use the baton that he lended to you
"i'll teach you, every evening at around 4, i'll train you to use the baton so it's less work for your fists and more for your baton." you responded that mikey had his meal around that time and you had to clean the table cloth after he eats, shyly you admit that he tends to be a little messy when eating
ran smiled, stuffing his hands into his pockets and going off after insulting you one last time
"i'm impressed that you're more careful with the table cloth than your own hands" and that ends the evening with you screaming into your hands because of how frustating, ran haitani bonten executive was
extra!!:
"now i really need you to be honest with me, how do you even fight with your fists?" "your brother teaches me how to break their limbs but i accidently graze the floor sometimes because of how tough the enemy is"
well that was pretty shocking, he looks at you with suprise in his eyes, you also looked at him suprised, you just didn't know how expressive he was and you're finding out about them because of these 4pm sessions.
"doesn't he have a maid that helps him out?" "he says i make great coffee" ran grumbled that you shouldn't even serve a fucker who drinks coffee in the first place and you couldn't help laughing. in exchange for the love of coffee, rindou might as well train you. he's not blind, he sees the bruises on your hands when you return back to the headquarters.
(and to maybe trigger ran a little since he was the one mainly teaching reader his fighting style and not ran and his lame ass baton and he just stole his maid for a few seconds, might as well train them as a reward)
"show me a better compliment and i might stop serving him" "you're good with your hands" you smirked and got up and tapped his shoulders with the baton, teasing him into giving you more compliments
"shut it now before i use my hands to shut you up" "you may at anytime" and he did, now you can imagine what he did lol
cw: panic attack, slight angst?, family tension, emotional distress, abandonment and estrangement, slight ooc sanzu at the end maybe?, takeomi
Years had passed since you and Haruchiyo left behind the chaotic household of your childhood. The small apartment you now shared had become your sanctuary, a place where you could both finally breathe. Life was quieter now, simpler—though the past still lingered like a shadow you couldn’t fully shake.
It was a sunny afternoon when you decided to head out for some grocery shopping, a routine task that had become a comforting ritual in your new life. After gathering the essentials, you found yourself wandering into a nearby shopping mall, tempted by the thought of treating yourself to a new set of clothes.
As you browsed through the shops, your mind was blissfully blank—until a voice, soft and hesitant, called out from behind you.
“Name-nee?”
You froze, the familiar nickname sending a jolt of panic through your body.
Slowly, you turned around, and there she was.
Senju.
Your younger sister, the one you’d never been close to, stood before you, looking uncertain but determined.
At the same time, the unmistakable scent of cigarettes reached your nose, a scent you knew all too well. It was Takeomi’s favourite brand, the one that clung to his clothes and permeated the air during those endless scoldings.
The memories hit you like a freight train—Takeomi’s angry voice, the way he loomed over you and Haruchiyo, how Senju would hide away, leaving the two of you to bear the brunt of his frustration alone.
Your chest tightened, vision blurred, and before you knew it, the groceries slipped from your hands, scattering across the floor.
Senju’s eyes widened, and she stepped forward to help, her expression worried. But before she could reach you, a tall figure intervened, blocking her path.
Haruchiyo.
He wore a black facemask, but his eyes were unmistakable, narrowed and filled with barely restrained anger.
“Haru-nii,” Senju whispered, but he didn’t let her finish.
“Back off,” Haruchiyo snapped, his voice low and dangerous.
“We don’t want to see you.”
His words were a cold slap, and Senju flinched, taking a step back. Haruchiyo didn’t spare her another glance as he crouched down to gather the fallen groceries, his movements sharp and efficient. Gently, he helped you to your feet, keeping a protective arm around you as he steered you away from the scene as quickly as possible.
Senju stood frozen, watching as the two of you disappeared into the crowd. A moment later, Takeomi appeared beside her, his familiar, heavy presence almost making her shrink back.
“What’s wrong?” Takeomi asked, his voice gruff but tinged with concern.
Senju hesitated, her eyes still on the spot where you and Haruchiyo had vanished. “Nothing,” she finally said, her voice barely above a whisper. “Just… thought I saw someone I knew.”
Takeomi raised an eyebrow but didn’t press further. As the two of them walked away, Senju kept her thoughts to herself, a deep, unresolved sadness settling in her chest.
The ride back to your apartment was silent, Haruchiyo’s hand never leaving yours. When you arrived, he guided you to the sofa, carefully helping you sit down before heading to the kitchen to make you a cup of tea.
You watched him work, the familiar motions calming you somewhat, though your heart was still pounding in your chest. After a few moments, he returned with the tea, handing it to you before sitting down beside you.
“Are you okay?” he asked quietly.
You nodded, your voice a little shaky as you replied, “Yes.”
The two of you sat in silence, the warmth of the tea seeping into your hands, the weight of Haruchiyo’s arm around you grounding you. The memories were still there, but they didn’t seem as overwhelming now, not with Haruchiyo by your side.
As the minutes passed, the quiet between you became a comfort, a shared understanding that words couldn’t fully express. Whatever the world outside held, whatever ghosts from your past might haunt you, you knew you wouldn’t face them alone.
And for now, that was enough.
‧₊˚✧ Bonus Scene ✧˚₊‧
You were still feeling a bit shaken, but the warmth of the tea Haruchiyo made for you and the familiar comfort of being home helped soothe your nerves.
As the two of you sat together on the couch, Haruchiyo suddenly let out a small chuckle, catching you off guard.
“What’s so funny?” you asked, glancing up at him curiously.
He grinned, the kind of grin that told you he was about to say something ridiculous. “I just remembered how you dropped all the groceries when you freaked out back there. It’s kind of impressive how far that bag of rice flew.”
You blinked at him, momentarily stunned by the unexpected comment. Then, to your surprise, a small laugh bubbled up from your chest. “Oh my god, Haru! That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”
He shrugged, trying and failing to keep a straight face. “Hey, I’m just saying, it was pretty impressive. I didn’t know you had that kind of strength in you.”
You rolled your eyes, a smile tugging at your lips despite yourself. “Well, maybe if someone had warned me we might run into someone I didn't want to see after all these years, I wouldn’t have had a panic attack and sent our groceries flying.”
Haruchiyo winced, rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Yeah… sorry about that.”
You sighed, leaning into him. “It’s okay, Haru. But seriously, next time, you’re carrying the rice.”
He chuckled, wrapping an arm around you. “Deal. But if we run into anyone else, you’re in charge of the escape plan.”
You snorted, giving him a playful nudge. “Only if you promise not to laugh at me when I inevitably trip over something.”
“Promise,” he said with a grin, squeezing you a little tighter. “And if you do trip, I’ll make sure to pick up the groceries before they hit the ground.”
“Now that’s a plan I can get behind,” you replied, feeling a little lighter as the two of you settled back into the comforting rhythm of your shared life.
Kawata Twins (with a younger sibling!) [platonic!]
"gah! stop it nahoya! souya help me!!"
cw: smiley being smiley
✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.
General Hcs:
If you think the Haitani’s were protective
Think again
The twins will need to know your whereabouts, locations, or heck even escort to wherever you wanna go
As the youngest sibling, you’re the precious baby sibling of the Kawata twins, and they take their role seriously
always on high alert when it comes to your safety
calls you “Squirt” because you’re the youngest and smallest
The twins will play harmless pranks on you like switching places to see if you can tell them apart
You’ve gotten so good at recognizing the subtle differences that you can always tell who’s who, much to their frustration and to your delight
ofc there’s always some sibling rivalry between the three of you
video games, racing bikes, or even who can eat the most ramen
You name it, you’ve done it
movie nights! the three of you have a tradition of watching movies together on weekends
Smiley always picks action movies, Angry prefers emotional dramas, and you’re stuck in the middle, trying to find a compromise
In the end, you usually end up watching a mix, with lots of popcorn and commentary from Smiley and loud yips from your pet dog pomeranian (check smiley’s official character book about the dog)
Matching accessories!!!
The three of you have matching bracelets that Smiley insisted on getting.
it’s a silent reminder that your brothers are always with you, even when they’re not physically around
✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.
Nahoya/ Smiley 😆
teasing galore from this a-hole
loves to tease you endlessly, especially about your height or how you look up to him (literally and figuratively)
despite his constant teasing, you know it’s all in good fun
if someone else tries to tease you, he’s the first to step in
definitely has a soft spot for his siblings
shows it through his protective actions, like checking in on you more often than needed
probably forces you to learn how to ride a motorcycle “in case of emergency!” he says :D
laughs at you when you stall the bike
also probably teaches you how to fight
“for fun!” :D
✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.
Souya/ Angry 😡
the one to patch you up! surprisingly good at it too!
when nahoya is teasing you, souya tries to defend you
but ends up getting teased as well
like nahoya, souya is protective of you too
he may not be most talkative compare to his brother
angry quietly leaves snacks or small gifts in your room when you’re feeling down
or he will silently sit with until you feel better
souya’s has a knack for fooling people too!
especially you
“who ate my ramen? :c ”
“probably ‘hoya, saw him going through the pantry >:c ”
with his serious expression, you always fall for it
until you notice his minor gesture he does when he lies
asshole
don’t be mad though! he buys back more snacks for you to replace the ‘missing’ food
✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.✧˖°.
Bonus scene:
Movie nights at the Kawata household were always...lively.
The three (more like two) are in full-on bickering mode as you all scramble to prepare snacks and argue over what to watch. In the middle of it all, PomPom, your family's Pomeranian sits on the couch, tilting its head in curiosity at the chaos unfolding around it.
Nahoya grins widely, holding up two action DVD's.
“C’mon, let’s just watch something exciting! This one’s got explosions!” He waves the DVDs at you and Souya, clearly excited.
“I mean, who doesn’t like a good explosion?”
You roll your eyes while searching through the pantry for snacks.
“Yeah, 'hoya, but we’ve seen that one, like, five times already! Besides, it’s my turn to choose, and I want to watch something funny.”
Nahoya groaned at your response.
Souya softly mutters while carefully pouring popcorn into a bowl.
“Anything but horror, please. I won’t be able to sleep for a week…”
Nahoya laughs and ruffles his twin's hair. “Afraid of ghosts, huh? Fine, no horror.”
He pauses, looking at you with a mischievous grin. “But we’re still watching something action-packed. No arguments!”
Grabbing a bag of chips, you narrow your eyes at Nahoya.
“Who made you the boss of movie night?! I’m picking comedy! PomPom agrees with me, right?”
You glance at the small Pomeranian, who simply yips energetically from the couch, clearly excited but having no idea what’s going on.
With a rare smile, Souya offered PomPom a piece of popcorn. "PomPom’s vote doesn’t count. Besides, I’d rather watch something calm, not too loud.”
Nahoya snatches the remote with his trademark grin. “Too bad! Action it is—majority rules!”
He gestures dramatically toward PomPom. “Me and PomPom, we’re a team!”
You chased after him. “Not fair! PomPom just wants snacks!”
Souya sat on the couch with PomPom by his side, his expression serious but soft.
“How 'bout this? Action-comedy. No explosions, just funny fights.”
The peach-haired boy pouts slightly but shrugs. “Fine, fine, I’ll allow it. As long as there’s a little action.”
You grinned and tossed a chip at Nahoya.
“Deal! Let’s finally settle on something before PomPom falls asleep waiting.” With a truce in place, the three of you settle on the couch with snacks in hand.
The movie starts rolling and for once, the chaos subsides as you all enjoy the night, occasionally laughing or teasing each other during the best scenes. PomPom snuggles into a blanket, letting out a content sigh, clearly the happiest with the arrangement.
‧₊˚✧[this is why i don't bring anyone home!]✧˚₊‧
Sano Siblings + Izana (with a younger sibling!) ft Grandpa Sano [platonic!]
cw: -
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General Hcs:
living with this family is…chaotic lively
Grandpa Sano usually sits at the table, reading his papers as the chaos unfold
there’s always a mix of teasing, laughter
and occasional bickering
scratch that - a shit ton of bickering
and mostly it comes from mikey vs izana
emma pops in now and then
shinichiro tries to butt in but gets targetted instead
you’re the baby of the family
usually you get coddled by your older siblings
not that you mind
they sure have their own ways to show their love to you tho
⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺
Shinichiro
the classic doting oldest brother
takes you for rides on his bike
at safe speeds unlike mikey
teaches you all the basics of bike maintenance
even though youre not interested
if you are, then it’s a bonus for him
he’s the one you go to when you need advice
or when you’ve had a rough day
his shop is your safe haven, where you can hang out and watch him work on bikes
occasionally you meet his friends from his previous gang
speaking of which, you always get to listen to stories about his younger days (which he subtly hints the life lessons learned)
and of course you know his embarrassing stories thanks to waka-nii san
of course shinichiro denies it
he might not be the strongest, but he’s got a heart of gold and always puts you first
⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺
Manjiro/ Mikey
the overprotective brother!
mikey’s protective instincts kick in full force when it comes to you
anyone who tries to mess with you quickly regrets it
mikey ends them with a roundhouse kick to their head
he has a soft spot for you that most people dont see
surprisingly shares his food with you
when hes not leading toman or fighting in general, he spends time with you usually by napping with you during the afternoon
that or he takes you on rides that are a little too fast for your liking
secretly happy when you express interest in bikes, just like him and shinichiro
⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺
Emma
the caring, nurturing older sister
she’s the one who helps you with schoolwork, does your hair, and gives you advice on friendships
although you really can’t trust her with relationship advice because of that incident with a certain blond
forgive me emma
loves loves loves going shopping or visiting new cafes with you
loves treating you sweet treats and sharing gossip
emma is your go-to for any girl talk or when you need a listening ear
likes to show you off to her friends because
youre the cutest and smartest thing ever!
⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺
Izana
the distant protective brother
while izana is more distant, he has a soft spot for you
that he doesnt show
he’s protective of you in his own way
keeps tabs on you from afar to make sure you’re safe
probably makes the tenjiku members to keep an eye on you too
when hes around tho, he often acts like he’s not interested
but you catch him watching over you or giving you advice in his own cryptic way
izana might take you to places that are meaningful to him
will snowball fight with you ONLY if you start first
lets you care for his pet fish and plants when hes not around
quietly plays some songs for you on his guitar when you’re napping
⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺
Grandpa Sano
makes sure you all don't fight to the extreme
pretty sure he teaches you karate basics for self defense ofc
or he makes mikey to do it
tells you old stories of your siblings
especially embarrassing ones
nags your older brothers to look out for you since they’re involved in gangs
incredibly proud of all his grandchildren
⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺⁺˚⋆｡°✩₊✩°｡⋆˚⁺
Bonus scene:
The Sano household was anything but quiet on this sunny morning.
The smell of freshly cooked eggs and toast filled the air as you hurriedly set the table, trying to dodge the occasional flying object—usually something small that Mikey and Izana had tossed at each other in their ongoing spat.
"Shin, tell Mikey to stop being a brat!" Izana growled, his eyes narrowing as Mikey smirked across the table, arms crossed proudly.
"Mikey, stop riling him up!" Shinichiro pleaded, stepping between them and waving his arms in a desperate attempt to keep the peace.
"We’re supposed to be having a nice breakfast!"
"Tell him to quit being so sensitive!" Mikey shot back, sticking out his tongue.
"Both of you, knock it off!" Shinichiro’s voice had that exasperated tone you knew all too well. He looked at you for backup, but you were too busy trying to keep the plates from tipping over in the chaos.
Meanwhile, Emma was at the stove, completely unfazed by the ruckus.
"You guys better sit down and eat before the food gets cold," she called over her shoulder.
You finished setting the table, carefully placing Grandpa Sano’s favorite tea cup in front of him. The old man sat at the head of the table, newspaper in hand, seemingly oblivious to the turmoil unfolding around him. He hummed contentedly as he read, occasionally sipping his tea.
As you took your seat, Mikey and Izana finally settled down—more due to the smell of Emma’s cooking than Shinichiro’s pleas. Mikey grabbed a pancake from the stack before it even hit the table, while Izana rolled his eyes but followed suit.
"Calm down, there’s plenty for everyone," Emma said, placing the platter in the center of the table. She then took her seat next to you, reaching over to serve herself some eggs.
Shinichiro sighed in relief, finally sitting down as well. "Can we please just have one peaceful meal?"
"Maybe next time, Shin," you teased, nudging him with a grin.
Grandpa Sano lowered his newspaper, peering over the top with a twinkle in his eye. "Ah, nothing like a good, lively breakfast to start the day," he said, completely unbothered by the earlier commotion.
Despite the chaos, the room was filled with laughter, chatter, and the clinking of utensils as everyone finally started eating. It might have been a mess, but it was your family’s mess, and you wouldn’t have it any other way.
