a defining moment where floyd determines his personal nickname for you
details: fluff ┊ gn!reader ┊ 650 words ┊ dedicated to @mikiruie my beloved
Floyd Leech isn't quite sure what to do with his feelings sometimes. Most people are put off by his sudden changes in mood and behavior—with the exception of his twin brother, of course.
But the thing is, Floyd just can't help it, especially now that you've wormed your way into his life.
You're a fascinating one, you see, for you make him feel so many things all at once.
Sometimes, he feels the urge to chase you down or give you a little spook, but he wants to be the one you run to for safety. He'll blurt out the most random things to get a reaction out of you, but he'll come after anyone who dares to make you uncomfortable.
Your company makes him feel at peace, but you also make him want to break out in song and dance. And while he's very much used to just doing whatever he wants, he finds himself thinking twice around you…most of the time.
It was only when he talked to Jade that he realized what his feelings were. Walking on land as a human gives Floyd an unbearable itch; he misses his true form and the fluid nature of water. But when you're around? He feels like he's swimming in a sea of delight.
Floyd's heart follows wherever your tide takes him.
The sentiment rings true in this moment, where you both sit cross-legged on the couch. It's been a few minutes since he started cooing at you out of nowhere.
You tilt his head at him, wondering what caused the sudden shift in his demeanor.
"Did I do something?"
"Noooo…" He giggles to himself.
"Huh. I swear, you were silent just a moment ago. What piqued your interest this time, huh?"
"Hyeeeheheheeh!"
"Floyd?"
He gives you his signature grin (the one you called adorable when you didn't think he was listening).
"Your little pout…"
"Hm?" At that, you purse your lips and point to yourself.
"That! Hehehehe. Like that!"
Leaning forward, he inches closer into your personal space.
"Okay, what about my pout?" You await his answer. "…Floyd?"
"You're so cute! I want to squeeze you." He reaches out one hand to tilt your chin upwards.
"A gentle squeeze, I hope?"
"No promises, hehehe!"
He squishes your cheeks with his hand, causing your lips to protrude in a far more exaggerated manner. You don't move a muscle, even when he decides to use both of his hands to squash your face.
The eel is absolutely delighted that you're letting him indulge in his whims again (and honestly, maybe he understands why you started aggressively petting that random cat you both saw on campus).
"Floyd? You sound like you're squealing, screeching, laughing, and crying at the same time."
At your observation, he grins. He's amused that he can understand what you're saying, despite the state your endearing little face is in.
"Eh? Is that so? But you're so adorable…I can't help it!"
You exhale and sigh, letting Floyd continue for as long as he wishes. After all, you both know you're enjoying this as much as he is. Even better, his cute aggression has him hugging you close to his chest.
"Oh no. You're going to squeeze me for real," you say in a playful tone.
"Aw…" He ruffles your hair and presses a kiss on the top of your head. "I suppose I will reconsider. I like you too much. I wanna keep you around."
"Good. I'd like to be around you for a lot longer, too."
"Heeheehee."
Floyd frees you from his grasp, but it's not long before he captures your cheeks with both his hands and forces another pout to appear.
"Also, I've decided…"
You raise an eyebrow. "Oh? Decided what?"
"I'm calling you my duckling."
He gives you a quick peck on the lips before giggling to himself again. This will certainly be an exciting afternoon.
hiiii, for ur newest event, can u pls do bachira with i, u, and k?
ɞ ⊹ ࣪ a/n : lil bachibee 🥺 ofc i can
[ i ] : intensity - how intense is the sex? what’s his pace like?
bachira’s intensity is actually kinda insane, but in the funnest way possible. he’s not intense in a dark and brooding way; he’s intense like an excited puppy that suddenly turns into a full-on wild animal. one minute he’s giggling and tickling you, the next he’s inside you and he’s fucking you like he’s trying to climb inside your soul. he gets lost in it.. super passionate, super vocal, lots of moaning and whining.
[ u ] : underwear - what type of lingerie is his favorite?
he favors lingerie that feels flirty and a little teasing, like it’s inviting him to come play with it. think lace with little bows, sheer babydolls that barely cover anything, and those strappy sets with way too many ties because he loves unraveling them with his teeth.
[ k ] : kinks - what’s a kink or two of his?
god. he’s such a freak because why is the first one that popped into my head a chasing kink. it’s not even a normal little game to him, it’s full feral monster mode. he’ll give you a head start, practically vibrating with excitement, and then come after you with everything he's got. the second he catches you? "found you~" and then you're pinned against the nearest surface as he grinds his hips against yours, hands groping and squeezing palmfuls of soft flesh hard enough to make you squeal into his mouth.
ᓚᘏᗢ SILVER DRABBLE
ᓚᘏᗢ TAGS: Fem reader, cunnilingus, hair pulling (giving). Requested. MDNI; ageless and blank blogs don't interact.
ᓚᘏᗢ A/N: world cold and hard silver soft and warm ( ⸝⸝´꒳`⸝⸝) | ᓚ₍ ^. .^₎ . . . TWST MASTERLIST
Another day of you trying to figure out what was going on with Silver. He had been gazing at you with such longing, that anyone outside of the relationship would think you weren’t pampering your darling boyfriend enough. Which would not be true. There wasn’t a single day you wouldn’t greet him with a kiss, or depart without one, or demonstrate every ounce of your love to him by spending quality time with him…the list could go on and on.
To further disgruntle you, Silver was the type to guard, way too well, if something bothered him. You’ve been engaging in a conversation for the past days to try and get him to speak, but it had been futile.
Until today.
Finally. You’re strenuous effort of constantly boarding him to confess had given you results. The reason wasn’t quite what you were expecting though. You’d been biting your nails thinking that maybe he didn’t love you anymore, or that you had done something to hurt him—only to find out that the reason for his unusual behavior was that he wanted you to be rougher with him during sex.
Yes. With that handsome face of his and that noble visage that could very well belong to a fairytale prince, unabashedly, had fessed up. Silver had always been so attentive with you, cradling your cheeks with gentleness and looked at you with the gentlest gaze when you got intimate, that the confession had made you speechless.
As shocked as you were at the moment, however, why would you not try to indulge in his fantasy?
Despite your initial nervousness, Silver assured you that he could take whatever you would dish out for him. The instance you and him were bare in his room and got on top of him with your legs on either side of his face, there was some sense of hesitation in you. If not for Silver nuzzling into your thigh and kissing it, you would’ve thought about it for longer than necessary. At last, you allowed your hips to descend until your pussy met the softness of his lips.
His tongue traced circles around your clit, kindling the heat in your body. Lovingly—that was the Silver you have known. Unhurried and just tasting you before opening his mouth to welcome your aching core into his mouth. His drool mixed with your arousal, dripping more by the minute and he swallowed it without a thought. Meanwhile, you can’t help but buck your hips into him, a hand gripping the bedding and the other one sliding into his hair. Holding without tugging yet. In between your pleasured sighs and mind growing into an eager haze, you wondered if you’d been going too far if you did. Sometimes, the pleasure would become too much, and you’d try to put some space between your dripping cunt and his hungry devouring; only to be met with resistance from him, as he would feather his hands up your legs to settle on your hips. At first, strong enough to let you know that he wanted you to stay there, yet the more you trembled away from him, the stronger he held you.
He released your clit with a wet sound. “Why are you trying to pull away? Do you not like it?”
“It’s the complete contrary, but Silver…am I not suffocating you?”
“I’m enjoying it.”
Silver wanted you to have no mercy at all. He wanted you to smother him with your pussy, that all he could take in was your tight walls and inhale your intimate scent just him could be familiar with. He had spoken his mind with such earnest, that despite it causing your cheeks to flare up with blood, your cunt squeezed eagerly to sit down again.
You gave him just that.
Silver’s breath quivered when you took your rightful seat on his face, once again parting his lips to suck and lap at you. With renewed keenness, Silver drew your clit into his mouth, without faltering. The inside of your thighs were a mess, with the clear fluids sticking to them thanks to his zeal and growing desire to unravel you. His eyes were as glassy as yours, peering at your sultry expressions, which in turn, sent immediate arousal to his cock. That was the least of his worries, though—right now, there was nothing that he wanted more than to get you to that climax point.
Silver’s groan was muffled when you dared to tug at his hair, closing your hand near to the roots. Silver, who usually was quiet and spoke level-headed, had rewarded your ears with a deep, airy groan against your lower lips. You had lost yourself in the pleasure, you didn’t notice you were canting your hips forward and backwards, riding his tongue. The movement, although simple, was the one you needed to receive that orgasm Silver had been giving his all to yield.
After relishing in the dwindling rush of ecstasy, which Silver relished too with his lips, you climbed off from him. Silver’s chest rose and fell rapidly, cheeks redder than ever you’ve seen him before. He was beyond tousled, with locks of hair clinging to his forehead and lips coated with your slick.
Besides Grim by your side, you always had the ghost camera.
You took pictures, sometimes when they least suspected it.
You took them as if time was running out.
Or as if something to hold onto.
When they would question why so many pictures, you would tell them, “I’m taking pictures of what’s important.”
The would continue to tease.
It was only when you left, did they truly understand what you meant.
You left behind an album; the ghosts of ramshackle told them.
You had made two copies.
One you took with you when you returned, and one for them.
They flipped through the album, taking in the fond memories spent with you.
That’s when they noticed.
None of them had it.
There weren’t any pictures of you.
“Want to know what someone fears losing? Watch what they photograph.”
My friend told me the quote a couple days ago and then I remembered the Yuu angst that was trending a few months back, where they take pictures of everyone but themselves so I thought to combine it. 🤭💞
I mean, if it helps, the twst characters probably have pictures of you that they can add to the album. But then they’ll always wonder if you have those photos too with you in them (if they ever shared them)…but hey, at least they’ll know how important they were to you 😄😁
➜ This Drabble Contains the Following: hybrid au, knotting, unprotected sex, cotton back on her bs lol
➜ WC: 142
➜ Note: hi i'm bored so have this ol' thing sitting in my drafts. college tests are finally done so i may or may not finally get to my enjin fic among other stuff. you trust me, right? *bats eyes innocently*
www.twst › IS THIS THE GREATEST 3-1 COMEBACK IN RSA'S LEGACY?
💭: arriving in a whole new world sucks, but finding a job there? thats crazy. thankfully, you stumble upon a website called cupid's hotline—a romance forum dedicated to everyone's love life!
you've been enjoying the financial benefits of it until one day, your recent client asks for advices on how to get close to his crush, who, unbeknownst to both of you, ends up being... you?!
pairing. rielle corallia x gn! reader
wc. 10.8k (holy yap)
warnings. fluff, rsa! reader who is also from another world, potentially ooc rielle (written before full release), rielle YEARNING for like 9k words, nct is canon in twst here, oblivious(?) reader for the sake of the plot, mutual pining, not proofread
a/n. lord ok there was supposed to be a part for minajael too but i lowk got carried away making rielle's... so now im planning another seperate fic for him 🥹 wow first twst fic and its abt rsa
You’re convinced this entire Royal Sword Academy experience in a world called Twisted Wonderland is nothing more than a humiliation ritual that is specially curated for you.
First of all, (and for the record, you would like to say that none of the circumstances mentioned hereafter is your idea) you are magicless—utterly, thoroughly, embarrassingly magicless, in an academy where magic is the fulcrum of all its ideals. To put this in an analogy, it would be like entering a swimming competition without knowing what water is.
Despite your initial reserves and protests, your gracious headmage—Ambrose LXIII—decided to enroll you anyway, regardless of your lacking prowess in all possible magical areas. Though your mental fortitude is on the brink of crumbling at the thought of having to suffer through academic hell, it’s the most favorable outcome considering the freaky, all-knowing mirror apparently said your world is basically non-existent.
Not to mention, without a valid identity or credentials recognized anywhere in this world, you are—legally speaking—either a student or a trespasser, and only one of those options comes with a viable meal plan. If you’re going to suffer with a curriculum pulled from the devil’s asscrack, you might as well enjoy seared salmon steak with mushroom gravy every single day while you’re at it.
With that said, being a magicless student in RSA means that you sit through explanations of magical theory and practical evaluations like you’re trying to understand a mana power-scaling system in some historical fantasy manhwa—which isn’t really that good of a comparison now that you think about it, granted that you are living through it real-time—and history lectures just feel like you’re playing Akinator with blindfolds. Good sweet lord, you literally have every single line in the textbook colour-coded in vivid, eye-straining highlighters, so you wouldn't play guess who this is every other day.
You don’t even want to talk about magical mathematics.
Now, academic stress is one thing—being pocketless is another. You don’t think you’ve ever felt that degree of mortification and dread when you study calculus as you did the moment you patted your pockets and found absolutely nothing.
Naturally, at first, you planned to sort this predicament out with Ambrose, but something about being more indebted to that old grandpa genuinely gives you the slight shiver me timbers, so you decided to deal with it yourself and get some sort of job… somehow, with no prior experience, qualifications, or any academic certificates.
Thankfully, however, you have found a goldmine of a Reddit-equivalent website on the school-issued phone that Ambrose gave you, and verbatim, “to stay updated on school announcements,” which you have used exactly zero times for school announcements.
That heavenly gift leads to your discovery of cupid’s hotline—a romance forum where the lovelorn, the hopeless, and the genuinely delusional all congregate to dissect their situationships, spiral about their crushes as if the forum is just one big confessional booth—one that also offers services such as providing love advices, and occasionally commissions other users on the platform to write their confession letters for them.
You found the website entirely by accident, and ever since then, you have never left it, considering the financial benefits. By week two as an active member of the forum, the mailman is probably tired of seeing your face nearly every single day to deliver sealed envelopes that contain the fruits of your hard labor (read: writing a shit ton of love letters instead of doing your history essay)—sweet piles of Thaumarks.
Now, you wouldn’t exactly call yourself an expert or professional in this whole love business, per se, it just happens that you have consumed an irresponsible amount of romance media over the course of your entire life and have been the designated third wheel often enough to have developed opinions, which are, arguably, tantamount to having a lifelong familiarity with love, no matter how theoretical it is.
A person pleading on the platform for a love letter to be written, and that the service will be paid for on top of that? Consider it done an hour after you slipped in their DMs. Advice on how to confess to your childhood friend? There’s already a clean numbered list in their inbox.
You’re acquainted with the duke of the north and engaged to the 4th prince, who is openly flaunting his affair? You have a very solid idea of what they should do.
The point is, after spending a month on the forum, you think you have seen every romantic trope, cliche, and complex relationship this website has to offer. You would argue that you have seen too much, read the posts like your bedtime stories, and delivered enough advices to know exactly how all of these stories will likely go.
In short, you are a growing expert on something that will never happen to you—or so you thought.
Rielle has always noticed you.
That phrase alone could not encompass the gossamer tangle of wonder and want that has rooted itself deep somewhere in one passing heartbeat and the next.
The prince has met humans aplenty during his stay on land—some eyes are sharp and turbulent, while some are gentle and mirthful. It never fails to fascinate him, the way humans carry the weight of nameless worlds within them.
The prince has met humans aplenty during his stay on land—yet you, he thinks, are something else entirely. Whenever you’re in sight, he can’t help but let his eyes drift back to you, as though it is the most natural thing in the world.
Whether you’re hunched over the library table, clicking your pen absentmindedly in that rhythmic way you do when something isn’t clicking, or simply passing by him in the corridor, heading toward your next class with your peers without a second glance at him, his eyes always instinctively try to seek out your familiar figure, regardless of where he is.
He’s not exactly sure what it is about you that captivates him so deeply, only that every time he tries to untangle the threads, the fragile thing shifts like light on water—like something just beyond articulation.
You unravel him—dangerously so, in a way that he is rendered completely and utterly helpless without recourse. He doubts you know you’ve rewritten the word love to him in the shape of your name. Rielle has always thought love at first sight would induce a symphonic, earth-shattering revelation—something with more fanfare and rapidly thundering heartbeats, similar to that of the Mermaid Princess’ tale.
He never thought it would be something so full of warmth like the afternoon sun against the tides—delicate like the brush of spun sugar and woven along the moment like flowing silk.
Still—for all that it settles into him like something inevitable and right—Rielle finds, almost confoundedly, that he cannot seem to do anything about it.
He is not, by nature, someone who struggles with people. In fact, it’s the contrary—the distance between stranger and someone he knows has never felt particularly vast to him; he never has to think too much when it comes to it.
That is, until you came into the frame.
The moment you so much as glance at him, something burrowed deep in his chest seizes up like a wave caught mid-pull, and whatever he had been meaning to say evaporates cleanly from the tip of his tongue like seafoam against the morning sun. He has replayed the scenarios enough times in the quiet enclosure of his room to know that what he feels extends beyond casual admiration—beyond anything he has ever felt before.
It’s frankly near embarrassing how he finds himself completely speechless by just a mere glance. So instead, he does what he knows.
He watches from afar as your eyes catch the light from the stained glass windows of the library when it all clicks together after a long study session. He learns the way you unconsciously straighten your uniform blazer when you get too nervous for an upcoming test or quiz that day, or how you prefer to pair heavily savory meals with a more refreshing and refined beverage like warm oolong tea.
As infatuation continues to be nurtured every day, Rielle begins to find things that remind him of you in the small, unguarded parts of his daily life—a smooth stone by the campus pond, a pressed flower bookmark from Mrs. T’s stationary corner, a music box from the market that carries a soft melody that you might like—and he anonymously leaves them somewhere you’ll find them, because at least this way he can give you something without his voice betraying him entirely in the process.
It is not, he is aware, a particularly brave approach.
“You’re doing it again, Your Highness.”
Rielle snaps out from his dazed stupor, turning his head to meet face-to-face with Bastien—his closes companion, confidant, and the most reliable witness to every embarrasing moments he has gone through—who is staring right at him with knowing eyes, and a faint smug smirk of a person who has heard all of his friend’s rambles about his little crush and is now watching the evidence present itself in real time.
The young prince merely blinks at him, “Huh, doing what?”
“You’ve been standing in the same spot for the past 5 minutes.”
“I just like this spot, and the birds make a lovely sight.” Now he’s partly lying from his ass—sure, the courtyard does have pleasing birds to gaze at, but he’s got a different subject in mind.
Sitting tucked away in the quietest corner of the courtyard, you tap your pen against the thick pages of your book, seemingly too immersed in your studies for someone who’s not aware that a stray robin has perched itself on your head.
You don’t notice the robin until it sharply pecks you square on the crown of your head—at which point your other hand flies up with an indignant yeowch!, just in time to feel the brief, departing ruffle of wings as it immediately departs as though it has somewhere more important to be.
The expression that crosses your face is one of such pure, wordless indignation that Rielle has to press his lips together very firmly, lest he accidentally laughs.
“...I just think they’re wonderful, Bastien.”
Bastien exhales slowly through his nose, in the manner of someone quietly adding this to a very long mental list.
“I know, Your Highness,” he responds, muttering underneath his breath along the lines of he’s a lost cause. “You might want to tell them that someday.”
“I know! It’s just—” the prince starts, ears uncharacteristically dusted red that it seamlessly blends in with his hair, “I don’t know what it is—I can speak to anyone, I’ve never had any problem with it! But the moment they… look at me I just—”
He gestures vaguely, almost sheepishly.
“You just,” Bastien repeats, with the careful neutrality of a man who knows exactly where this goes.
“Yes!” He nods vigorously, with a helplessness so genuine it was almost endearing. “Everything I mean to say just instantly goes like it was never there—and I’ve tried, Bastien, I’ve really tried! But every single time they’re in front of me, my brain just completely—”
He gestures again, the blush on the apple of his cheeks growing increasingly bolder by the second.
“Goes.” Again, Bastien finishes for him, without wasting a beat—which is a sad indicator of how many times they’ve had this exact conversation.
“Goes…” Rielle agrees, once again nodding miserably before the humbling truth.
A long beat of silence veils itself over them, during which Bastien appears to be doing some internal contemplations and calculations.
“Well, there is this one forum,” he begins, bringing his thumb and index finger to cup his chin in thoughtful suspense, “that has been making its rounds lately—cupid’s hotline, and apparently, people go there to sort out precisely this kind of…”
He waves a hand, “Catastrophe—sorry, situation.”
“A romance forum, if you will. They have a lot of other users who help you figure out what to say or do.” He pauses for a second. “Users who are, presumably, better at this than you currently are, Your Highness.”
Considering what his tone implies, apparently, the bar is not high.
Rielle has the grace to look slightly bashful, “...You think it will help?”
Bastien thinks back about all the late-night rambles of you, the obvious stares that the prince has been shooting at you, the smile he usually sports on when he’s too distracted daydreaming about you—yeah, no, he may as well will lose what little remains of his sanity if this keeps on going.
“Your Highness,” Bastien starts, his lips easing into a polite smile that is more exasperated than anything. “At this point I would try anything—so, yes, I think you should try the forum, for both our sakes.”
“A hand mirror today, huh?” You turn the gold-leafed hand mirror that was previously situated by your front door, closely inspecting the intricate carvings.
It’s been a good few weeks—possibly a month or more—since the daily gifts dropped by your “secret admirer” have come rolling in. You use the term loosely, considering you are no closer to figuring out who they are than you were on day one—no leads, no suspects, and no idea what you did to deserve this level of dedicated, anonymous attention.
Which, at this point, is either a testament to their discretion or your own obliviousness.
You set aside the hand mirror with the rest of the collection before sitting down on your bed, pulling out your school-issued phone to log back into cupid’s hotline with the same energy as clocking in your shift.
It is, by all accounts, a normal day on the forum—someone is spiraling, someone needs a letter written, and a bunch of r/AITA posts that are enough to be your personal bedtime stories for tonight.
Though there is one specific post that makes you pause.
I need help and my friend told me to try this forum
Hi! I was told this is the place to go for this sort of thing, and I’ve been—well, my friend has been telling me for a while that I need to do something about my situation, and I think he’s right, so here I am!
There’s someone that I really like a lot, more than a lot actually, if I’m being completely honest. The thing is, every single time they’re in front of me, I’m not sure what to say or do…
I’ve been leaving them gifts anonymously in the meantime, which I honestly don’t know if that’s been helpful or just confusing them.
I just want to tell them how I feel properly. Can anyone help me figure out how? I would really appreciate it!
The post is straightforward enough—earnest, genuine, and nothing a few simple advices can’t fix.
Someone who knows exactly what they feel and simply doesn’t know how to deal with it? All they need is a nudge in the right direction, and let romance sweep them off their feet.
Leaving them things, though?
Your eyes involuntarily drift to the collection of small trinkets that has been scattered across all your other belongings—the hand mirror on your desk, the musicbox perched on your bookshelf, the pressed flower bookmark you had tucked between the pages of your history textbook.
You glance back at your screen.
…Hm.
There is a brief moment when a thought, half-formed and flickering, begins to assemble itself somewhere at the back of your mind—it tries to draw about speculations, yet you forcefully dissolve the thought.
It’s a very common practice; there are a lot of people like that in the world.
“It’s probably just a coincidence.” You casually shrug it off, fingers already reaching to the reply window, and start typing at record speed about your thoughts.
u/letmegohome: hi OP ! personally, here’s what u can do:
01. START SMALL, FIND EXCUSES TO TALK TO THEM !
As it turns out, Twisted Wonderland is incredibly generous with excuses when you’re looking for one.
Rielle is on his way back from his afterschool activities, phone in hand as his screen displays u/letmegohome’s post, when a splashing sound cuts through the quietude of the campus grounds and makes him perk up—the sound seems to come from somewhere in the direction of the lake nearby.
He finds you sitting in the shallow lake at the edge of campus—your uniform soaked through to a degree that it clings uncomfortably to your body enough to make you grimace, hair plastered to your face as water droplets trickled down your chin, all the while you stare at the sky, unblinking.
For a split second, his heart lodges itself in his throat, heart blaring against his ribcage at the realization that it’s you—but concern outweighs all the nervous jitters, and his body makes the decision his brain is too flustered to, already inching closer in your direction.
You had just gotten out of the lake after a good couple of seconds of marinating in the embarrassment, having gathered enough presence of mind to drag your sopping self for a change of clothes, when he worriedly runs up to you.
“Hey, are you okay?!”
You look ahead of you, and the first thought that breaches your mind is fuck, someone saw it all go down.
The second, however, is the mortifying awareness that you are absolutely drenched in front of someone who looks like that, which somehow worsens the entire predicament you are in.
Rich rosy hair that glimmers like sunlight refracted through coral beds, round blue eyes that many surely liken them to the open sky over yonder (free, boundless, brimming with a curiosity of a fledgling barely out of the nest), and the slight mingling scent of seafoam that has tethered itself to his presence—you had to remind yourself to blink, lest you make it worse by being caught red-handed oogling at him.
Holy shit, this dude looks like Ariel.
“Yeah, don’t worry about it. I uh–I just tripped,” you try to assure him, yet the words tumble out so awkwardly at the pretty boy before you, that somewhere between the line of composure and the lack thereof, you have the urge to bang your head straight on the next hardest surface you could find.
He moves closer regardless, as if your casual dismissals aren’t enough to sway him. “Are you sure? You’re completely soaked! Here, I’ll walk you to the infirmary—it’s not that far from here, and they’ll have spares of dry clothes too!”
You open your mouth to decline, which is an immediate instinct more than ever. The words are already bubbling on the tip of your tongue, something along the lines of really it’s fine or no need to trouble yourself—but all those pre-saved phrases shrivel into nothingness the moment a particularly vicious breeze hisses through your soaked uniform, and your body betrays you with a shiver that you feel deep in the crevice of your soul.
The boy looks at you with an expression that practically screams in your face that he saw that.
“...Sure.”
His face instantly beams up the moment you agree, his lips curling into a warm and immediate smile that prompts you to mirror his, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world.
He talks the whole way there.
It doesn’t feel like those conversations where one completely overwhelms the other—there’s something in the way he speaks that makes it feel as though it feels less like being talked over, and more like being let in.
The boy—who you came to know as Rielle Corallia, the seventh prince of the Coral Sea, when introductions were due between you two—points out several shortcuts that he’d discovered over the course of his stay in the Academy, of the birds perched on trees that he loves to gaze at after he wraps up his afterschool activities, of the passionate hobby he has for collecting trinkets that intrigue him—huh, maybe someday, you should ask him about all the interesting gifts you’ve received lately.
You both arrive at the infirmary before the conversation runs out, which isn’t that much of a surprise, considering how he was intensely rambling about the unique craftsmanship of human artifacts, the history behind each one of them, and his collection back in his dorm—you get the gist of it.
The attending healer of the infirmary takes one look at your drenched form and exhales an entire 10 years of their life through their nose, before disappearing to the back of the room to fetch a brand-new uniform fresh from the laundry (probably).
You station yourself cautiously near the corner, unwilling to commit to any surface while still dripping wet. Across you, your unofficial escort settles himself on a nearby chair, swinging his legs idly as his gaze drifts across the empty infirmary with open curiosity before it finds its way back to you, to which you return his stare with a short huff that might barely count as a laugh.
“Wow, something about the healer’s reaction gives me the impression I’m not the first person to walk in like this.”
Rielle blinks at you for a moment before bursting out in an easy laugh—mirthful and unguarded.
“Well, there was a third-year last semester who walked in with an entire bird’s nest in his hair—the healers are basically used to it at this point.” He pauses, tilting his head to the side as the corners of his smile twitch into something softer around the edges.
“Though I do think that you might be the first person I’ve ever seen make falling into a lake so… memorable.”
You’re not sure if you’re supposed to be offended or graciously accept the compliment, so you choose to settle it with an incredulous chuckle in lieu, “Oh, for sure—I think I’ll remember this humiliating day until I reach my deathbed.”
Something glints beyond the azure shine of his eyes—perhaps amusement, and something that teeters dangerously close to fondness. Rielle leans slightly forward from his chair, the idle swing of his legs coming to a stop in place of directing all his focus to you.
“I don’t think I’ll forget it either!” He holds your gaze as he says it, his tone laced with a quiet finality that can neither be deflected nor perturbed, “because it led me to you, didn’t it?”
He hears it the moment it leaves his mouth.
That was not planned—in fact, that was the opposite of planned, and the rational part of his brain that has been carefully, painstakingly keeping that particular sentiment under wraps for weeks on end collectively loses its mind.
Holy Sevens, just strike him now.
You look at him, and he looks right back at you with that same carefree smile that he always seems to wear (that is also trying to tuck his discomfiture deep in the clefts of his mind), as if he didn’t just utter a sentence so damning that it lodges itself somewhere in your sternum without so much as a warning.
He is, for the record, not as unbothered as it looks.
The healer chooses this precise, strategic moment to reappear from the back of the room with their arms piled with neatly folded clothes, and you have never felt more grateful for an interruption.
“Here,” The healer places the uniform and a warm, gentle-scented towel into your arms with the practiced ease and efficiency of someone who might have done this a hundred times—that, or they’ve dealt worse. “You can change in the back, just try not to drip on the floor if you can.”
Rielle remains seated in his chair and watches you disappear into the back room, perhaps a little faster than strictly necessary, and thinks, well, that’s a start.
He picks his phone up and opens his DM’s.
u/underthesea: Hi letmegohome, I talked to them!!
It isn’t until that night that u/letmegohome responds to his message.
u/letmegohome: hey sorry for the late reply! and???? what happened
u/underthesea: I think it went well…
u/underthesea: I also may have said something I didn’t entirely plan to say…
u/letmegohome: WHAT
u/underthesea: It went well though!! I think
u/letmegohome: U THINK? nvm its ok, onto the next one
02. SHOW UP CONSISTENTLY, LET THEM REALIZE YOUR PRESENCE !
Of all things RSA’s curriculum has thrown at your face, Aquatic Civilization and Maritime History is perhaps the most miserable you’ve been in your studies—not because it’s inherently complicated, but because you lack the foundational knowledge to build on, and the textbook is written as though the reader already knew everything and was simply reading for the fun of it.
Now, at the very least, the human segments are manageable—wars, petty politics, territorial disputes—the broad strokes of it aren’t so different from the world you come from, and you can follow the thread well enough to understand—but merfolks?
Shit, dude, a two-month-old infant might have a better understanding than you.
You stare at a two-page spread on the Coral Sea with a hollow expression of someone who has reread the same paragraph 6-7 times and retained absolutely nothing, your highlighter poised uselessly over a sentence you have not processed in three minutes.
Reading walls of text for what feels like hours on end definitely fries your brain in some way or another. It is evident in the way you don’t even register a particular warmth that hovers over you, and the shadow that falls over your page.
“Oh! Are you studying the Coral Sea?”
You jolt in your seat, eyes frantically looking up to meet the summer sea that rests in the eyes you’ve come to be familiar with.
Rielle stands behind your chair with a library book tucked under one arm, looking at your open textbook with a twinkle of genuine interest—oh right, he is the seventh prince of the Coral Sea, isn’t he?
“Yeah,” you sigh in defeat, “I’ve been stuck on it for a while.”
Something lights up in his expression—that particular quality of attention that is uniquely his, the kind that doesn’t feel practiced or fabricated; rather, it feels like a hearth crackling into life—warm and steady as it crawls its way to the fore of your heart, gently soothing it.
“What part of it?”
Your gaze flickers to your scattered notes, and the bold highlights galore, “...All of it.”
He laughs—a tune so effortlessly bright and airy that the heavy weight simmering in your chest feels, just for a moment, considerably lighter—and moves to pull out a chair across from you.
“Are you sure?” you ask, nodding at the book in his hand, “You look like you were in the middle of something.”
He glances back down at the book before looking right back, “Oh, this? Don’t worry, it can wait!”
“I’m serious, Rielle, I don’t want to pull you away from your own studies—”
“Nonsense! Don’t worry about it.” There is something in the easy certainty of it that makes the protest dissolve before you can finish structuring it. He sets the book down on the table, unhurried in his ministration, before leaning forward on his elbows and tilting his head slightly.
“Think about it,” he begins, and something glints in his expression—a deliberate mischief that is found when he has a plan brewing up in his mind. “You’re studying the Coral Sea.”
“And I happen to know someone well familiar with it.”
You stare at him, utterly unamused.
Rielle looks back at you with an expectant yet barely concealed eager look of someone who has just pulled out an excellent card and is simply waiting for you to catch on.
“...You.”
“Me,” He confirms confidently, nodding his head proudly and all. What a silly guy, you think.
“You’re the seventh prince of the Coral Sea.” You quip back, deciding to humour him a little longer.
“I am.”
“And you’re offering to tutor me on your own kingdom.”
“I am,” he continues to nod along, the grin that breaks across his countenance so guileless and unrestrained that you feel your own lips betray you with the faintest twitch of a smile in response. “So, shall we?”
You glance back down at the two-page spread, the long paragraphs of text and terminologies you barely comprehend, and the highlighters that do nothing but strain your eyes—honestly, at this point, you’re completely hopeless.
“...Yeah, alright.” Finally caving in, you push the textbook across the table toward him, “Where should we start?”
Rielle, bless his soul, probably took pity on all the scribbles of a poor annotation and the vibrant mix and match colours of your highlighters. “From the beginning, I think. It would be better for you to know the general context first.”
Just like that, you find yourself being tutored on the Coral Sea by its seventh prince, who explains it the way someone explains a place they so dearly love—less like reciting from the dry tone of the textbook and more like letting you in on something personal and kept.
He weaves through the explanations with details that make the whole thing feel suddenly, startlingly real—as if you could just reach and touch. The tidal currents along the eastern shelf and their importance for navigation, the Coral Sea’s extensive musical traditions, the coral formations that predate the kingdom itself, some of which are said to have been shaped not by human nature but by the earliest merfolk who settled the deep.
You’d be plain dead lying if you tell yourself you are listening for the sake of your notes.
It starts innocuously enough—your pen moves across the page, keeping up with the flow of his explanations. Yet somewhere between trade routes and coral formations, there is an imperceptible shift that happens, and you stop writing without quite noticing you have, and you stop noticing because you are watching him instead.
You watch the way his eyes crinkle in delight when the topic reaches the recorded instances of merfolk coming to land throughout history, you watch something luminous and unbridled stir within the azure of his irises—the deep fondness of someone revisiting a memory, turning it over their hands like a smooth river stone.
His hands move as he speaks, tracing the invisible geography of a world you cannot physically see but find yourself yearning for—the southern coast, the border reefs, the stretch of coastlines where two worlds have always quietly, tentatively reached for each other in their embrace.
He talks about old tales last.
The famous Mermaid Princess’ tale, he says, who has always been drawn to the surface—to the human world and all its curious, ephemeral warmth.
“It’s considered either a cautionary tale or a love story,” Rielle mentions, momentarily snapping you out from your (hopefully not) blatant gawking at him and his damn pretty eyes, “depending on who’s telling it.”
“Which do you think it is?” you ask, the question tumbling out of your mouth before you can catch yourself.
“A love story,” he replies without missing a beat, with the certainty of someone who has never once entertained the alternative. “I think it has always been a love story.”
You hold his gaze a beat longer than necessary before tearing your eyes away to look back down at your blank notes—pristine white and untouched for the past 10 minutes. Clicking your pen, you begin to recite what you’ve remembered from Rielle’s recitation in an effort to distract yourself from the warmth that currently takes residence somewhere between your ribs.
No, the inexplicable thumps of your increasing heartbeat are simply the product of a well-done study session, and so are the twitch of your lips when you recall the smile that softened the sharp edges of the afternoon and all its weight.
Oh, you realize, this is dangerous.
Later that night, your phone lights up.
u/underthesea: UPDATE
u/underthesea: I’ve been showing up a lot more, and I even helped them study today!
u/letmegohome: woah study session? ur on a really good progress streak
u/underthesea: They even took notes about what I was saying… I feel like I’ve achieved everything in life
u/underthesea: 🐚
u/letmegohome: what does that mean
u/underthesea: It’s a shell. I thought it was fitting
u/letmegohome: boy…
03. DO SOMETHING THOUGHTFUL, CREATE A MOMENT THAT BELONGS JUST TO THE TWO OF YOU !
“What a pretty pocket watch.”
It sits unassumingly near the end of Rielle’s shelf—unapologetically opulent and resplendent in its aged splendour. The gold of its casing catches the evening light and pools it into the illusion of molten metal, so brilliant against the lacquer that you might’ve postulated it was Midas’ Touch itself, had you not known better.
Despite having been possibly underwater for decades, it still retains its immaculate lustre—unmarred and unbothered before the erosion of time.
You pick it up carefully, turning it over in your hands, and the weight of it is satisfying to speak. The casing is engraved along the edges with details that resemble flower petals, or vines—hard to tell underneath the golden light, the pattern shifting depending on the angle you hold it at.
Now, truthfully, it had started as nothing more than a passing comment on the walk back to your last class—you’d mentioned his collection in offhanded intrigue, and Rielle had lit up with the kind of enthusiasm that you have found, consistently and against your better judgment, very difficult to walk away from.
So it’s no surprise to you that the moment he extended an invitation to his dorm to see the collection yourself, you find yourself standing in his dorm room after school, moving slowly along a shelf that is considerably more impressive than you have been anticipating, while he sits perched on the edge of his desk behind you.
“Isn’t it?! I found it in an old shipwreck—the whole ship has probably been down there for ages, but the watch is still completely intact!” Rielle pipes in keenly, a permanent smile seemingly etched onto his visage every time your fingers dance to trace the various thingamabobs stored in a shelf, or each moment your eyes twinkled in interest and fascination.
“Does it still work?” You ask, twirling the golden chains attached to it in your other hand.
“Sadly, no. The mechanism stopped working a long time ago.” Well, a pocket watch that can survive underwater for that long would be too crazy impressive, you reckon.
You fiddle with the clasp, and it opens smoothly, the hinges surprisingly precise and well-maintained despite its age. Inside, the face of the watch is cream-coloured and regal, giving off a sophisticated air around it—well, you argue, I think that’s the main aesthetic it’s going for.
The same couldn’t be said for its components, however—the numerals have faded to near-illegibility, and the hands are forever frozen at a quarter past three.
“Still, the owner must’ve taken good care of it.” You hum, setting the pocket watch carefully, exactly where it had been, and continue along the shelf—a brass compass with a crack on its face, small amphora jars, candelabras, fine bone china tea cups—and somewhere between one item and another, something snags at the back of your mind.
“Oh, wait,” you begin, neatly arranging the pile of books you’ve taken out before, “this reminds me of something.”
From behind you, Rielle tilts his head. “Hm? What is it?”
“Someone’s been leaving me stuff—for quite some time now, actually.” You turn to look at him, leaning back against the empty wall next to the shelf with your arms loosely crossed.
“Anonymously, though, so I don’t know exactly who’s doing it. All the gifts they’ve given to me are really nice, actually—something similar to your collection, if I have to describe it? A hand mirror, bookmarks, cutlery sets, a music box, and pearl necklaces, to name a few.”
As you continue to ramble on about your mysterious “gift mailperson”, you fail to notice how Rielle has gone still, very still.
“...Oh!” He manages to squeeze out, despite how fast his mind and heart are racing—hell, he is probably seconds away from cold sweat dripping down his forehead.
Play it cool, play it cool, play it cool—
“That’s—wow.” He nods fervently, the word wow serving an extraordinary weight for how little it actually communicates his feelings, “Someone’s been doing that every day?”
“Every day,” You confirm, frowning slightly, “Thing is, I have no idea who it could be, so I thought I’d ask you if you know anyone who might, you know, have a similar hobby or taste like yours, since you know a lot when it comes to this.”
While you look at him expectantly, Rielle is in the seconds from jumping out the window, and swimming into the deepest trench in Sage Island. The only thing stopping him from doing so is the distant, exhausted voice of Bastien in the back of his mind saying please don’t
He prays, with every single fibre of his being, that Bastien were here—and also that Bastien were not here, because he would not live this down.
“...Aha, someone with the same hobby, you say?” he says, seemingly thoughtful on the outside and certainly on the inside as well, where his brain attempts to locate an exit from this conversation.
Uhh, oh no—should he just tell them? He could just tell them, in fact, it would only be a very simple ”Actually, that’s me! I’ve been leaving you things because I think about you constantly, and I’m in love with you!”
No, no, this isn’t it—this is not how he imagined it to go down.
“I’m—I’m not sure about that, but that’s quite something, haha! The gifts sound lovely!” Son, who are you trying to fool. Rielle nearly physically cringes at his too cheery tone—it’s a specific scene of someone who has never been a particularly good liar and is finding it out in real time.
You look at him for a beat longer than comfortable before mercifully turning back to the shelf.
“Anyway,” you continue, fingers drifting idly to the rest of the trinkets, “I just thought I’d ask you, but don’t worry about it too much—I’m not losing sleep over it, anyway.”
“Right,” he says, exhaling very quietly as though one wrong move, and he’s going to have his entire head shaved. “Right, of course! Uh, don’t worry, I’ll try to dig around for you!”
You chuckle at his words, and Rielle swears he might seriously melt into a puddle one of these days. “It’s actually kind of nice, whatever their reason is.”
“Makes this place a little less… I don’t know, far from everything—more welcoming.” Twisted Wonderland still isn’t anything close to home—there are moments when the chandeliers dim, and the hushed murmur of the night lingers more than the warmth of your hearth, where the realization pools unfathomably heavily in your chest.
Yet it passes, as all things do, and when it does, it leaves something in its wake—something quieter and warmer that you haven’t quite named yet but have stopped trying to explain away.
There remains a bleeding gap in your chest that is on the lines of home, but as the small kindnesses from a person you cannot put a face to, accumulate slowly, it gradually becomes something more bearable than it was.
“So, I’m thankful for that.” The tone of your voice seeps into something more gentle and sincerely bare, your gaze dropping back to a compass you’ve unconsciously picked up in your hands, turning it over as though the admission didn’t land directly at him.
The words settle into the room, and Rielle finds, unexpectedly, that they stir a familiar sentiment.
He knows the feeling—not in the same way, and certainly not with the same weight, but he knows the feeling all too well. The Coral Sea is not far from here, as in the way your world is far from here, yet on nights when the stars lack their usual luminosity, the absence of saltwater in the air sits strangely in his lungs, the silence of his room feels like a held breath more than anything—it is on nights like those does he find himself listening for the sounds of tides that aren’t there.
Rielle loves it here on land, don’t get him wrong—he loves it tenderly and wholly, in the way he has loved everything about the human world since before he took his first step on the grainy sands and found it waiting for him. The vibrant flush of flowers, the towering trees, the croons of forest birds—he does not regret a single moment of it.
Still, there are times—quieter times that are unlike grief or longing in the way it aches terribly so in his chest—when something wordlessly pulls at him. It’s more so a gentle and persistent reminder that the tides of the ocean are still there, a reminder that no matter how far he walks from the shoreline, or how long he’s last reveled in the ocean breeze, the sea will always be there waiting for him.
“I’m glad.” He says with a smile that is softer than his usual ones—less bright, more settled, and relieved at its edges.
You glance back at him over your shoulder.
“Glad about what?”
“That whoever they are,” he says, looking at you in that distinct way of his that you have not yet found a name for, “is making it feel that way.”
You hold his gaze for a moment, and his breath hitched imperceptibly—infinitesimally, at the sight of your eyes that settle on his, carrying a weight that reaches somewhere he hadn’t thought to guard, something that makes the distance between you feel considerably smaller than it is.
It is the light, Rielle thinks—the last of the evening, threading itself through your eyes like it has found somewhere worthy of its final, gilded reverence. It catches there, refracts, and sinks at the very depths of your gaze in a way that glimmers with the trembling brilliance of something precious—something that makes the breath stall between his lungs and lips.
You hum—soft and considering—before a delighted smile graces your lips.
“Yeah,” you say, quietly. “Me too.”
Oh, he thinks.
Your eyes twinkle like the marmoris of home.
u/underthesea: OK.
u/underthesea: letmegohome I’m going to write a letter to them. Tomorrow night. This is the moment!!
u/letmegohome: finally
u/letmegohome: idk what happened for u to suddenly get that amount of determination but god bless omg
u/underthesea: 🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚
u/letmegohome: boy stop sending me those shells and get to WORK
u/underthesea: drafting it as we speak!!
04. IF YOUR WORDS FAIL YOU, WRITE THEM DOWN !
[💌] HOW TO WRITE A LOVE LETTER 101: a humble guide by u/letmegohome
I. START WITH SOMETHING SPECIFIC, LIKE A SHARED MEMORY
“Like that time you nearly blurted out you were the one sending them gifts?”
Rielle lightly groans at Bastien’s chaff, dropping his pen onto the desk with a clatter that communicates his feelings rather well.
“I thought we agreed not to speak about that again!” The prince huffs out, shooting him a look that is intended to be withering and lands considerably short of that—it is not-so intimidating to speak, which further amuses Bastien if anything.
In return, his closest friend merely snickers—Lord, he’s having a field day, watching everything unfold as though it is all one big, theatrical soap opera. “Well, Your Highness, you agreed; I made no such commitment.”
“That’s—” Rielle starts, and then closes his mouth the next second, because he cannot, in good conscience, argue with that. To be fair, he had simply stated that they would not be speaking about it again, and Bastien said mm—and he had taken that as a binding contract, which, in retrospect, was perhaps optimistic for him.
He picks his pen back up, ignoring the knowing stare that drills at the back of his head, “Never mind that! I’m writing the letter.”
“Alright.”
“I’m not thinking about it!” He argues in his fluster, the scratching of a pen on paper seemingly emphasising his words.
“That’s good.”
“It was one moment, and it will never happen again!”
“Mhm.”
“I handled it very well, actually!” Now, maybe he needs to slow down a bit, considering the way his hand moves almost industriously against the letter.
Bastien looks down at the letter, eyes raking over the handwriting that has started as careful penmanship into something progressively what one might generously describe as abstract.
“Your Highness, perhaps the recipient would want a declaration of love, rather than a hexing script.”
Rielle buries his face briefly in his hands.
II. SAY THE THINGS YOU’VE BEEN AVOIDING SAYING
“Is this the part where you finally confess your secret identity?”
“Or is it the part where you write the heart-pounding…” Bastien playfully bats his eyelashes, his hands clasping together in a dramatic flair, “I love you?”
Rielle sputters out a sound that is not a word—something caught between indignation and an old whistling kettle that’s about to blow its lid entirely, pen nearly slipping from his fingers. The tips of his ears have gone the telling shade of pink that emerges exclusively in moments of complete and utter defeat—a colour that is doing a lot of confessing on his behalf.
Why do you need enemies when you have friends like this?
Well, cut that poor guy some slack, he had to deal with a few months of Rielle barging into his room—giggling and kicking his feet, recounting the entire day with you, debriefing every single second, while poor Bastien was just trying to mourn over the news of Mark Lee leaving NCT.
“I am not writing ‘I love you’.” Rielle manages to say between his sputters, with the dignity of someone who absolutely will be writing ‘I love you’ by the end of the conversation.
“Why not,” Bastien says, which is not quite a question.
“Because!—” The prince stops, his eyebrows furrowed in the same way every time he’s deeply tense about something. “...What if it’s too much?”
He loves you truly, in a way that it feels almost too large to fit inside something as small as a letter—and the thought of handing that to you all at once, unmediated, three words on a page, feels like setting something enormous down at your feet and hoping you don’t step back from it.
Bastien stares at him for a moment. “Your Highness, you have been leaving them gifts for months. You have memorized their tea order, their habits, and other small details about them—I think they can handle three words.”
This time, his voice takes on the tone he reserves exclusively for moments when the situation has moved past the point of gentle ribbing into something that quietly reminds Rielle that Bastien has always been in his corner.
“Rielle,” he says. “You left the ocean despite your family’s displeasure, because something up here called to you and you couldn’t ignore it. You have never once decided something was too much and turned back.”
His eyes cut briefly to the letter and back. “Don’t start now, and certainly not over three words.”
Rielle’s eyes look back at the letter before dragging the pen’s nub over the paper again.
III. DON’T OVERTHINK THE ENDING, JUST MEAN IT
“...I beg your pardon?”
u/letmegohome: huh?
Bastien turns to look at the prince—who was just on his phone, his screen displaying the familiar UI of the forum’s chat he talked about—with the air of someone who has just watched nearly four months of racked-up patience arrive at a crossroad he did not entirely anticipate.
“The letter,” Rielle smiles, with the sudden, convinced energy of someone who has just figured something out, “I know you said it’s good, but I don’t think I want to use it! I want to tell them in person—I want to see their face when I say it.”
u/letmegohome: ur not going to use it???
u/letmegohome: didn’t u spend a long time on it tho?
Bastien stares at him.
“Your Highness,” he says, very carefully, “I have sat here for the better part of two hours, watching you cross out seventeen sentences, listening to you describe your feelings in seventeen different ways that all meant the same thing. I read the letter—I told you it was good.”
“And you are now telling me you are not going to use it.”
“Yes!” says the prince, who has been stripping years of his life, “And I was thinking of how it could be done in a dramatic backdrop, like—like while we’re both out on a rowboat at sunset, with a lot of willow trees and fireflies!”
Something appropriately cinematic, something that would do justice to the enormity of what he feels.
u/undethesea: I have a plan to confess, maybe like in a dramatic setting!!
u/letmegohome: hmm
u/letmegohome: well that is nice
“Your best bet would be the shallow lake by the edge of campus, considering how I doubt you could last until our summer break.” Bastien points out, as though he had seen it coming long before Rielle uttered it.
“And, Your Highness, how are you going to acquire a rowboat and willow trees?”
Bastien regards him for a moment with the expression of someone who has watched this specific thought process play out in real time and has made peace with it a long time ago.
“The rowboat, the willow trees, and fireflies,” He begins, ticking them off one by one with a patience that is perhaps borderline admirable. “None of it is what they’re going to completely remember.”
u/letmegohome: i wouldnt exactly fuss abt the place first thing
u/letmegohome: its a nice detail but im sure they will remember you first and foremost, not the setting
“What they’re going to remember,” He continues, and Rielle wonders distantly if Bastien is an active user on cupid’s hotline like letmegohome, “is you. Standing in front of them as you say it.”
Or maybe he’s truly a shifu in romance, unbeknownst to him.
“That’s merely the backdrop, Your Highness. What matters isn’t where you say it—it’s that you say it at all.”
Rielle looks at him and thinks of all the messages letmegohome sent as well—the carefully imagined cinematic sequence he has been building in his head, all of it, gently dissolves, leaving something much simpler and truer in its place.
Oh, he thinks—and then he’s standing up.
The night air greets him the moment he steps on campus, carrying with it the particular atmosphere of an evening that has settled into itself, the day’s warmth still clinging to the stone paths like a departing guest reluctant to leave entirely.
The campus breathes differently at this hour.
The lampposts that wind through the cobblestone paths have come on, their warm aureate glow pooling across the stone, gilding the edges of leaves and casting long shadows against the grass—and the hushed murmur of the night unravels itself against the ground, undemanding as though the world itself has exhaled.
Rielle finds you before he has walked very far at all.
You are sitting on the edge of the campus fountain, legs dangling idly over the side, face tilting upward toward the darkening sky—looking for all the world like someone who has nowhere to be and is enjoying the freedom thoroughly. There is a half-eaten snack in your hand, and your school bag sits slumped on the ground beside you like a faithful, exhausted companion.
The lamplight finds your figure the way its rays embrace everything it touches with a thin veil of golden sheen—it nestles against your hair, traces the line of your shoulder, and settles at the corner of your expression.
You look up at the sound of approaching footsteps, and your face evidently brightens at the sight of him.
“Oh, hey,” You greet him with a smile, “Perfect timing, Rielle, I was about to start talking to myself.”
“Looks like I came at the right time, then!” He laughs and comes to sit beside you on the fountain, close enough that what remains of the warmth of the night rests between you like something shared.
It is then that you begin, unceremoniously, telling him about your eventful day—and he attentively listens to every single comment you make.
He has always listened to you—it is something that never requires effort, it has never felt like something he had to remind himself to do. Your voice carries the unadulterated, unperformative lull that inexplicably draws him in the way the arches of tides are perpetually drawn to the shore.
You somberly talk about the mathematics quiz that had gone either very well or catastrophically—it truly depends on the professor’s goodwill—and then, without breaking the flow, pivot to the upcoming alchemy examination that has half of the student body sweating buckets (because the professor is lowkenuinely out for blood, you have noted—to which he can only be perplexed on what lowkenuinely means).
“Man, but alchemy sure has a lot of surprises—I just saw a third-year coming in the cafeteria with his hair up and vividly orange this morning… like those orange highlighters.”
“He just sat down and started eating,” you added, with a tone that more or less indicates you’ve been seeing things. “Like… full orange wall on his head and bro just sat down.”
“Maybe he liked it?” Rielle offers.
“He was crying a little.”
“Oh!”
You continue your rambles—you chime in about the cafeteria’s ridiculous decision to remove your favorite seared salmon from the daily menu, which you take as a personal slight against you. Then, your conversation shifts to the first-year student who had accidentally turned his entire dorm room into a swamp when he got his Unique Magic—a feat that his roommate had described as impressive in the worst possible way.
Rielle listens, and listens, and listens—sometimes throwing in his own comments, a little ooo and ahh on the more shocking details, perhaps a boisterous laugh and barely contained grin here and there when your stories reach their climax on something particularly incredulous that he can’t help but let them spill out.
Truly, Rielle listens, and listens, and listens—until he’s not, until he realizes, all too belatedly, that now, he’s too focused on looking at you.
He’s not sure when it started; maybe it’s the way the threads of light catch the edges of your hair, the way your hands move when you’re mid-story (regardless of your snack), animated and completely too absorbed in your deliverance, the way your eyes widen a fraction when you reach a segment of a story that excites you, or maybe it is when you pause halfway to think of a right word, your brow slightly furrowing the same way it does when you’re stuck on difficult problems—and something in his chest wedges up in that familiar, helpless way that he has long since stopped trying to brace for.
He looks at you and thinks of how you have absolutely no idea that he has a letter perched on his desk, and nearly four months of burgeoning feelings pressing against the inside of his ribs.
Before he can think better of it, his mouth opens.
“It was me,” he says.
You stop mid-sentence.
“...Sorry?”
“The gifts,” he finally admits, and there is something within his voice that is steadier than he feels, which is a surprise even to him, as though the words, having waited this long, have decided to come out properly, or not at all. “I was the one who gave you the gifts.”
The rushing water of the fountain murmurs softly behind you both.
“It was never really about the gifts, it was just the only way I knew how to—” he mutters out, exhaling a short, rueful sound that isn’t quite a laugh, and to his credit, he holds it well, considering the rapid thumps his heart is deafening against his eardrums. “—reach you without my brain… malfunctioning on the spot.”
You still haven’t said anything—He’s not sure if that’s good or bad, and not knowing is doing something genuinely awful for his composure.
“Every time I tried to just—talk to you, the way I meant to, it would just… go. Everything I’d gone over in my head a hundred times—it would be gone the second you look at me.”
“And I kept thinking, okay—tomorrow, I’ll just say it tomorrow.” His voice is quieter now, stripped of the careful management he’d been keeping over it. “And then tomorrow comes, and you’d be right there and I’d just—”
He briefly looks at his hands, “I didn’t know what to do with how much I meant it.”
“So I left you things instead,” he finishes, simply. “Because at least that I could do.”
He glances up at you, just enough for you to see that there is something in his expression that is neither the easy smile nor the lightness he usually wears without thinking—just Rielle, unmediated and a little undone, sitting with everything he’s just handed over and waiting to find out if you’ll hold it delicately.
“And I don’t know what to do except to tell you.” The last of his steadiness vanishes here, landing somewhere bare and true underneath it all. “I’ve tried gifts, a letter, and I had this whole plan, and—”
He lets a short, breathy laugh, rubbing the back of his neck as though he couldn’t quite believe his own lack of restraint. “—you were just sitting here, and I—I just couldn’t wait anymore.”
The laugh fades into an amber of weighted silence—it is dense and thick, in a way that it trembles with the sudden gravity of a confession that has been months in the making.
“I left them because I’m in love with you.”
Rielle doesn’t look away this time—his eyes stay locked on yours, even as his pulse thunders a frantic rhythm against the quiet of the night, watching as the slow realization ripples across your face.
“I don’t know exactly when it started,” he continues, the golden lamplight catching the hues of his eyes that are bathed in sudden, raw honesty. “Only that somewhere along the way, it became the most obvious thing about me.”
A fuzzy feeling presses warmly and insistently against the inside of your sternum as if your own heart is trying to lean into his words.
“Rielle,” you breathe out after god knows how long, your voice barely a notch above the water’s whispers.
He winces slightly, a reflexive bracing for impact, his fingers slightly digging into the smooth stone of the fountain’s edge. “I know it’s a lot. You don’t have to say anything back! I just—I just needed you to know, haha! I’m sorry, I probably ruined the flow of a perfectly good retelling of the drama between the astrology professor and a first-year student—”
“Rielle,” you say.
“...Yeah?” He replies quietly.
You look at him for a moment that stretches long and soft at its edges before you reach out, your fingers brushing hesitantly against his, where they are still gripping the fountain’s edge. His skin is warm, you note, a sharp contrast to the coolness of the stone, and you feel the slight tremor in his hands the moment you make contact.
He stills completely, his breath hitching as if he’s afraid that moving might break the spell of your touch.
“The music box,” you begin.
Rielle blinks. Of all the things he’s anticipated to come, apparently, this wasn’t it. “...Huh?”
“The one you left me.” You look down at your hands that are in his briefly, then back up at him. “I play it every night before I sleep.”
The confusion in his eyes ebbs into something wide and vulnerable, a small oh escaping his lips as he absorbs the weight of your admission.
“It’s the only thing that makes the room feel less empty—it makes me feel less… lonely. It lulls me to sleep every single time.” You offer him a small, sheepish smile, your voice dropping to a hum that barely carries over the splashing water. “For a few minutes, while the music is playing—it feels like home.”
The silence that follows isn’t heavy anymore; it is expansive and vast in a way his surprise finally gives way to a profound, simmering sort of relief.
“You didn’t ruin anything.” You say, your voice finally finding its footing, soft but steady against the night. “And you definitely don’t need to apologize for being… this.”
Your gesture vaguely toward the space between the two of you—a shared place that feels charged with a new air.
“All those gifts,” you continue with a knowing smile, “The little things that made me feel like someone was looking out for me when I wasn’t even looking at myself… I spend quite some time wondering who could possibly be that thoughtful.”
You squeeze his hand, leaning in just enough that the salt-swept scent of the sea fills your senses.
“I’m glad it was you, Rielle. I think, deep down, a part of me already knew—or maybe I just wanted it to be you.”
“...Yeah?” He says, and the word barely makes out—barely above the breath, carrying the enormous, trembling weight of everything he isn’t saying around it.
“Yeah.” You quip, a fond smile plastered on your lips.
The bracing tension in his shoulders collapses all at once, and he lets out a long, shuddering exhale, his head bowing for a second as the sheer force of his anxiety finally hits the ground. When he looks back up, there is a flicker of something bright and hopeful, dancing in the reflection of his eyes.
“You really wanted it to be me?” He repeats, his voice cracking just the slightest bit, a boyish disbelief lacing his tone.
“Every single time.” You say, the playfulness in your voice softening into something more sincere.
Rielle lets out a breathy, melodic laugh—the kind that finally reaches his eyes and makes that incessant fuzzy feeling in your chest expand until you feel like you might as well float right off the fountain. He doesn’t let go of your hand; instead, he turns his palm upward, lacing his fingers through yours with a permanence that feels like a promise.
“You have no idea how many times I almost tripped over my own feet just trying to say ‘hello’ to you.” He admits, a sudden energy sparking in his eyes as the heavy tension finally breaks.
You can’t help the laugh that bubbles up, watching him as he continues his frantic, adorable confessions. The frantic buzz in your chest quietens, smoothing out into a deep, steady warmth—a quiet frequency that feels less like a discovery and more like an old truth unearthed.
“I love you too, Rielle.”
You collapse onto your bed, the weight of the day finally catching up to you, and unconsciously reach out for your phone. The screen lights up with a notification from the one person whose entire life feels like a chaotic fanfiction plot.
u/underthesea: LETMEGOHOME
u/underthesea: I told them
u/underthesea: I told them EVERYTHING
u/letmegohome: AND????
u/letmegohome: WHAT HAPPENED NEXT OMG
u/underthesea: THEY SAID THEY LOVED ME TOO
u/underthesea: 🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚🐚
u/letmegohome: HOLY SHIT
u/letmegohome: CONGRATS IM SO HAPPY FOR U!!!
u/underthesea: On another note, I think I'm gonna give them the letter someday
u/underthesea: I'm a little proud of the letter actually
u/underthesea: Here u should read it
u/underthesea: [digitalscan.pdf]
You tap the attached file—a digital scan of a handwritten letter.
As the image loads, you stop dead in your tracks because—you recognize this graceful, slightly slanted script of a handwriting.
???
Your thumb freezes over the screen of your phone, the cool light reflecting in your wide eyes. You blink once, twice, thrice, certain that the fatigue from the math quizzes is finally causing hallucinations—but the pixels don’t shift.
Your eyes snag on the very first sentence, and the air leaves your lungs in one sharp, silent rush.
“I know I’ve been a bit of a mess. I spent months leaving those trinkets on your front door because I was afraid that my words wouldn’t be enough, or that I’d say too much. I thought that if I could just give you something small to make your day better, it would be enough for me—and it was, until the moment we walked to the infirmary after you soaked your uniform in that lake; it was the first time I realized that being near you was better than any secret.”
The realization hits you like a splash of cold water—your fingers frantically typing across the keyboard before you could even fully register it.
❤︎ jin doesn't do well without you.
❤︎ jin kamurai x gn! mc! reader
❤︎ wc: 2k
❤︎ content warning(s): depression/depressive behavior, mentions of death, angst with happy ending
❤︎ author's note: this was my submission for @tkdbcafe's spring trade! thank you so much for having me!
Jin Kamurai is cold.
Both literally and figuratively, the bone-chilling sensation of plummeting temperatures and the unsettlingly all-too-familiar prickle of goosebumps across his skin has become second-nature to him.
The cold stalks him everywhere. As if destined for it, his own family name engraves him with the touch of ice. His dorm is kissed by frost in its name. His hair and eyes are smudged with glacial colors, polar white and wintry blue respectively.
He should be used to it by now. The cold is what he’s known since he was born, and the cold serves as the frigid airs he puts on to cast the illusion of distance. The cold has remained as the undercurrent of his childhood and adolescence, taking root as if it’s spreading frostbite over his conscience as he lurches past the threshold of adulthood. The cold is his father turning away from a heartwarming hug. The cold is the temperature of his mother’s hands in her coffin.
“It’ll be a difficult mission. Surely, you understand, Mr. Kamurai.”
His bed is chilly when he wakes and when he slips into it at night. His hands are empty, tips numbed with nothing to hold onto. The air, whether stepping out onto his balcony for a quick smoke or a stray gust that creeps into his bedroom when Tohma opens the door, swirls around him in a mockery of an embrace.
It’s a painful reminder of your absence, that you aren’t by his side to snuggle together to share heat, to fill his large palms with your own, to banish away the empty cold that lingers by his side with your warm presence. Jin has never been social or outwardly altruistic to begin with, but at the very least, when you were here, your encouragement was enough to get him to show his face around.
“While I acknowledge that you are particularly fond of the honor student and she appears to return that sentiment, her enrollment at Darkwick Academy is dictated by certain responsibilities. Therefore, it is imperative to the success of the other dorms’ missions that she is present when required.”
Now, it’s as if he’s lost all incentive to even try. The way he feels about how others view him is complicated. It’s not that he doesn’t care, but it’s more like he cares just enough for it to hurt but not enough for him to find the drive to do anything about it on his own. He doesn’t expect you or Tohma or even the chaotic second-year duo to fix anything on his behalf, but the moral support of simply knowing he had you to fall back on must have been more monumental than he gave it any credit for.
“Like all missions are, this one will be kept top-secret from anyone not directly involved. This means you will lose all communications with the honor student until the mission is either completed or called off. This will be a difficult mission, so you may expect to be unable to hear from her or speak to her for a long duration of time.”
The first few days were more transitory than anything else. It was learning to live without you at his beck and call, and like an addict coming down from a high, the withdrawal of it all didn’t hit immediately. It was as if he had lost a limb, the familiar comfort and utility of your being simply vanished. The immediate loss was what he had to grapple with first, but that did little to keep the inevitable dread at bay. It crept in, tiptoeing and breathing down his back, until it no longer kept up the pretense of being gradual in any measure and plunged him headfirst back in the abysmal mire of his own thoughts.
The next weeks dragged by, and Jin crawled back to his bad habits. He swapped the occasional visit to his classes for long hours hiding under the fraudulent security of his covers, his normally sharp eyes turning dull and sunken with dark half-moons underneath. He only dragged himself out of his bed when necessary, unable to bear the roaring silence that engulfed him without your chatter or footsteps or even your clutter in his room to keep his own loneliness at bay.
“Let me repeat myself. Mr. Kamurai, do you understand?”
You’re not a ghoul. You’re a helpless little thing at best, plucked off of the streets and thrust into a world where demons and inhuman beings run amok all the same, all lurking underneath the surface for a chance to pounce. His body shivers unconsciously at the gruesome scenes his imagination keeps conjuring up, one after another, no end in sight. You’re hurt. You’re scared. You’re calling out for help. You need him, and he isn’t able to do anything about it.
It’s the not-knowing that hurts him the worst. If he could just see your face for a little while, feel the circulation of your blood thrumming underneath your skin at the tips of his chilled fingers, let your heartbeat revive him back to a semblance of life, Jin thinks he might have been able to cope with the distance. If he could hear your voice, let your touch linger, the lingering nips and bites of his own insecurity might not have run as rampant as they are right now.
Jin tells himself that he’s used to it. Because in a way, he isn’t wrong. The cold is who he is, waiting for a perpetual winter to come to a close, the boy curled up in the shadows all alone as the cruel realization dawns on him that no one will be there to usher in the first temperate exhales of spring to thaw out the tender heart buried away deep. Closing himself off keeps the hurt away for just a little bit longer, numbs him to the pain before it swallows him whole mercilessly and leaves him as no more than a mummified shell.
Jin Kamurai is cold.
…
…
…
“I’m sorry! I-I came as soon as I could… Which was basically as soon as I got back to school—”
The world threatens to spin on its axis. Jin wraps a hand around the chilled, firm material of his doorway. Normally he’d admonish himself for such a blatant display of weakness, but in his complete defense, nothing about his life or the situation at hand could ever be described using the word “normal.”
“—So I probably stink and look gross and- and- all the stuff you really don’t like—”
He thinks he might be hallucinating. None of his dreams are pleasant enough for him to misconstrue this as some kind of merciful play from his mind. This has to be a vision created specifically to torture him. Perhaps he’s used up enough of the patience and goodwill of those around him, and this is the universe’s unique way of punishing him: a glimpse of what he yearns for most as he wastes away, huddled and shivering under a thin blanket in a solitary corner in something more akin to a prisoner’s room than a wealthy heir’s dorm.
“—But I couldn’t bear being away for any longer. I missed you! I had to come see you as soon as I could.”
Incoherent, messy rambling fills his ears. It’s not that he purposefully intends on tuning so much of it out, it’s just that his scrambled and dulled senses are struggling to play catch up after weeks of murky isolation. Jin takes the hand that isn’t supporting him against the mouth of his room, and like a moth drawn to a flame, he reaches forward.
His fingertips brush against your soft face. He almost jerks away. He half-expected his hand to phase through, that you were a ghost that he made up after his inability to cope with your absence, and instead, his frozen knuckles wrap tenderly around the warm skin of your cheeks. He stays still for a split second, brain still whirring to process the feeling of him actually touching another person for the first time in forever, and then all the emotions hit him like an avalanche closing its mammoth maw in around him.
It’s you.
You, in the flesh. You’re so radiant, so vibrant, undoubtedly a mess with your uniform torn and askew, a visible layer of grime and whatever else you had to wallow through to complete your mission, and yet Jin thinks this is the most beautiful way he’s ever seen you in his entire life. His thumb brushes over the apple of your cheek, and when your voice hitches into a nervous laugh, it’s like some of the frost coating his heart has started to crack.
Nothing has gotten him to feel like this before. No level of money, honor, prestige, title, the whole nine yards that he was born into has made him feel as if he’s been scrubbed down and left out to warm up in the balmy sunshine. A lifetime of closing off his emotions and constantly hiding his true motives goes flying out the window as he leans forward and more or less collapses into your arms, wrapping himself around you so tightly as if you’ll disappear if his grip on you loosens in the slightest.
“Woah!” You let out a light-hearted gasp, adjusting to bear his added weight the best you can. Your arms grasp him tightly, returning his vice-like grip with an affectionate squeeze of your own. “Careful now… If I go down while you’re holding me, we’ll both fall!”
“I don’t mind.” His answer is so immediate, you almost don’t realize that he had started speaking to you. As long as he’s entangled with you, limb with limb, heart to heart, it doesn’t matter where he is or what he’s doing. “...It’s been so cold without you.”
A sticky silence settles between the two of you, and your heart clenches like a breath held for too long in between your ribs. You’re more than aware of how lonely each passing night was. Unable to speak to him, unable to feel him, only your distant memories to keep you company without the guarantee of another day to your name, simply labeling the emptiness as torture would be too neat. There’s no real way to describe the bruising in your psyche, the yawning chasm in your everyday life where you had grown accustomed to another person’s presence.
You slide one of your hands into his white hair, loose strands cascading over your knuckles. You want to press your hands and mouth all over his pallid body, rub life back into his listless arms and legs, breathe in and out to the same rhythm of his heart beating shallow inside his broad chest. You sigh out, “I know. I’ve been gone for too long. But… I’m here now, aren’t I?”
“Make it up to me now.” His grip on you tightens for a split second. It’s like he’s affirming the flesh in between his palms is really yours. You don’t need to read too far in between the lines to understand what he’s trying to say. He’s not the kind of person to wear his misery this openly, but you’re someone who he knows he can show his true heart to. He knows you’ll treat him gently, the sweet puffs of your exhales enough to dispel the shards of ice sinking their claws into the corners of his eyes.
You’ll spend eternity next to him. As many days and nights as it takes to bring him back to life, you’ll wait for him. If there’s any power left within your capabilities, you’ll use every ounce of it so that you aren’t ripped from his side again. The road ahead of you may be slick and unpredictable, but that just means you have to believe that the end will be that much brighter—doubly so, especially if it’s for Jin’s sake.
With you nestled in his arms, feeling long overdue, Jin Kamurai melts.
The first time Deuce realizes he's in trouble is when you laugh with blood on your teeth.
Some guy twice your size had shoved you outside the convenience store, and you'd shoved back harder, and now there's a split in your lip that's going to bruise ugly by morning. You're grinning anyway. Deuce can feel his heart doing backflips in his chest and it has nothing to do with the adrenaline still singing through his veins from the fight.
"That was so dumb," he says, breathless, and you're still smiling at him.
"He started it."
"You finished it."
"Someone had to." You wipe your mouth with the back of your hand, smearing red across your knuckles, and Deuce has to look away before he does something irreversible. There's a hum under his skin that won't settle. He wants to grab your face and check the damage properly. He wants to follow you into every stupid dangerous thing you do for the rest of his life.
He does none of those things. Instead he shoves your shoulder and says, "C'mon, let's get out of here before someone calls the cops," and you follow him down the street, still laughing, and he tells himself that this is enough.
The blastcycle is older than both of you combined and sounds like it's going to explode every time Deuce kicks it into gear, but it goes, and that's all that matters.
You're pressed against his back, arms locked around his waist, shouting something he can't hear over the wind and the engine. He takes a turn too fast on purpose just to feel you tighten your grip, and when you smack his shoulder in retaliation he can't stop grinning.
There's nowhere to go. That's the thing about nights like this—there's no destination, no point, just the road and the speed and the way the city blurs into streaks of neon when he pushes the bike past any reasonable limit.
You never complain. You just hold on and trust him to keep you both alive, and that trust is a weight he carries everywhere.
He pulls off onto some empty overlook, kills the engine, and the silence that follows is so sudden it makes his ears ring.
"Again," you say immediately, breathless and electric, and Deuce laughs because of course you want to go again. Of course you do.
"We're gonna run out of gas."
"So? We'll figure it out."
You always say that. Deuce doesn't know how to tell you that he's already figured it out. That he's been trying to figure it out for months. That the answer to every question he has starts and ends with you, and he still doesn't know what to do with that.
So he just kicks the bike back to life and says, "Hold on tight," and you do.
There's a house party in some warehouse on the edge of town, the kind of place that's half-abandoned and smells like rust and spilled beer. Someone's rigged up a speaker system that's blasting music so loud Deuce can feel it vibrating in his bones, and there are too many people crammed into too little space, and it's perfect.
You drag him into the center of it all, pulling him by the wrist, and Deuce goes because he'd follow you anywhere. The music is all bright synth and thumping bass, and you're moving to it like you don't care who's watching. You probably don't.
Deuce isn't much of a dancer, but he tries anyway because you're laughing at him and the sound cuts through the noise. You grab his hands and spin yourself under his arm, stumbling a little, and he catches you before you can trip over your own feet.
"You're terrible at this," you shout over the music, and he can see the grin splitting your face wide.
"Yeah, well, you're not much better!"
"I'm way better!"
You're not. You're both disasters. But you're disasters together, and that's all Deuce has ever wanted.
Someone jostles him from behind and he nearly loses his balance, but you steady him with a hand on his chest, and suddenly you're close enough that he can smell the faint trace of your shampoo under the warehouse stink. His heart kicks up in a way that has nothing to do with the music. He wonders if you can feel it under your palm.
You don't move your hand.
He doesn't move either.
The moment stretches and Deuce thinks maybe this is it, maybe he should just say it, just tell you that he's been carrying this feeling around for so long he doesn't remember what it's like to not want you. But then someone cranks the music up even louder and you step back, laughing again, and the moment snaps.
"Come on," you say, tugging him toward the makeshift bar in the corner. "I need a drink."
Deuce follows.
The diner is open twenty-four hours and serves the greasiest food Deuce has ever tasted, which means it's perfect for nights like this when it's 3am and neither of you can sleep.
You're sitting across from him in the booth, stealing fries off his plate even though you ordered your own. There's a bruise blooming across your cheekbone from earlier—some fight Deuce can't even remember the details of anymore, just the way you'd grinned at him afterward.
"You're staring," you say without looking up, and Deuce blinks.
"No I'm not."
"You definitely are."
He was. He knows he was. He can't help it. You've got ketchup on your thumb and your hair's a mess and you look like you've been through a war, and he's never seen anything better in his life.
"Just thinking," he says, which isn't a lie.
"About?"
You. Always you.
"Nothing important."
You hum, unconvinced, and steal another fry. The fluorescent lights overhead are buzzing faintly, casting everything in a sickly yellow glow, and there's a couple arguing in the booth behind you, and the whole place smells like burnt coffee and fryer oil. It's objectively miserable.
Deuce has never been happier.
"Hey," you say suddenly, looking up at him with those eyes that make his chest feel too small. "Thanks for tonight."
"I didn't do anything."
"Yeah, you did." You're smiling at him, soft and sincere, and Deuce feels something crack open inside him. "You always do."
He doesn't know what to say to that. He doesn't trust himself to say anything at all. So he just kicks your foot under the table and says, "Shut up and eat your fries," and you laugh and do exactly that.
The roof of the parking garage is technically off-limits, but the lock was broken months ago and no one's bothered to fix it, so it's become your spot by default.
You're lying on the hood of someone's car—not yours, not Deuce's, just some random sedan that's been parked here for days—staring up at the sky. Deuce is beside you, close enough that your shoulders are almost touching, and he's trying very hard not to think about how easy it would be to close that gap.
"Do you ever think about leaving?" you ask, and your voice is quiet in the dark.
Deuce turns his head to look at you. "Leaving where?"
"Here. This town. All of it." You gesture vaguely at the sky, the buildings, the world in general. "Just getting on the bike and going until we run out of road."
"Sometimes," Deuce admits. He thinks about it more than he should. Thinks about the two of you disappearing into the horizon, no plans, no responsibilities, just the wind and the endless sprawl of highway. "You wanna go?"
"I don't know." You're still looking at the sky. "Maybe. Would you come with me?"
The question shouldn't hurt, but it does. Because of course he would. He'd follow you to the end of the world if you asked. He'd follow you into hell. He'd follow you anywhere.
But he doesn't think that's what you're really asking.
"Yeah," he says, and his voice comes out rougher than he meant. "I'd come with you."
You turn your head then, just enough to look at him, and there's something in your expression he can't read. The streetlights below cast long shadows across your face, turning everything into sharp angles and soft curves, and Deuce is staring again. He knows he's staring. He can't stop.
"Deuce," you start, and his heart is pounding so hard he's sure you can hear it.
And then you kiss him.
You lean over and press your mouth to his like it's the easiest thing in the world, like you've been thinking about it as long as he has, and Deuce's brain stops completely. His hand comes up to cup your jaw on instinct and he can feel you smiling against his lips.
When you pull back, you're grinning.
"Catch me if you can," you say, and then you're sliding off the hood and running, your laughter echoing off the concrete walls of the parking garage.
Deuce sits there for half a second, stunned, and then his body catches up to what just happened and he's moving. He vaults off the car and takes off after you, his blood pumping hot and wild through his veins, and he can hear you laughing ahead of him, can see the shape of you disappearing around the corner.
He's going to catch you.
He's going to catch you and kiss you again and tell you everything he's been too scared to say.
He's going to catch you and never let you go.
Deuce runs, and the sound of your laughter pulls him forward like a lifeline, and for the first time in months he feels like he can breathe.
Masterlist
he's been on my mind for days and i had to get it out of my system to move on with my life
synopsis: a snapshot of domestic life with ennoshita where a personal admission leads to physical intimacy and a little chaos.
details: fluff, sorta crack towards the end ┊ slice-of-life ┊ romantic/established relationship ┊ 627 words ┊ gn! reader ┊ timeskip!ennoshita ┊ part of @d1strict99's GLTA event ┊ based on "human" by dodie clark and tom walker
"I have a confession to make."
Ennoshita's eyes widen. "What?"
"Nothing scary. Don't worry. No bad news…"
He relaxes back into the soft mattress of your shared bed. "Okay…but, what is it?"
"Might sound weird, though."
"Eh, I've probably heard worse. Shoot."
You turn your body to face him, and he does the same. He patiently waits for you to share your thoughts.
"Sometimes I want to reach into your soul."
Suddenly, the hum of the air conditioner in your room sounds so much louder.
"Wh-What?" Ennoshita blinks at you as he attempts to process what you've just told him, but you don't see a hint of judgment on his face.
"Don't you ever just…wanna dig into the essence of a person? Know all their secrets, in and out?"
He continues staring at you, almost like he's entranced by something. He hums before speaking. "Oh, that's…"
And almost like he's proving your point, seeing Ennoshita lost in thought activates this unexplainable yearning in your chest.
Sometimes, I want to know everything that goes on in his head.
What does he think about me?
When he says he loves me, what does it feel like?
Are there things he wants to tell me but would never say out loud?
"Hey," he says, tapping a finger on your nose. "Don't overthink my reaction. You didn't say anything weird."
"I- huh. Surprisingly, I wasn't thinking about that."
Ennoshita chuckles. "So, were you thinking about digging into my soul?"
"Maybe I was," you admit, unable to fight the smile on your face.
"Then, I'm not any better than you."
"What do you mean?"
He moves forward until your faces are inches apart. "Sometimes, I wonder what it's like to merge my soul with yours."
That leaves you breathless.
"Not just figuring you out, but really being one with you, you know?"
"Oh…"
Heat rushes to your face. What the hell.
"C'mere," he whispers, gesturing for you to come closer.
You expect an embrace, but when he pulls you in, you find yourself lying under him.
Ennoshita's weight on top of you is…overwhelming yet comforting. An odd sensation that satisfies your cravings—and his cravings, you assume, if the relaxed sigh into your neck is anything to go by.
"I'm not crushing you, am I?"
"No."
"Good." He snuggles further into you before continuing to mutter into your ear. "It's times like these that I wish we could go beyond physical boundaries."
"I don't know. Maybe a certain Viktor Frankenstein might be able to help us merge for real."
You feel the deep rumble of Ennoshita's laugh in your own chest.
"That's gonna be one hell of a movie; lovers seek a mad scientist to help them with their intimacy needs."
"And would that end in horror?"
"Oh…probably."
A giggle escapes your mouth, and you wrap your arms around Ennoshita even tighter.
"Okay, for real. Can you breathe?"
"Yes."
"See, I would like to do this forever, but I don't wanna hurt you through my soul-merging endeavors."
You burst into laughter. "Soul-merging endeavors?"
"Yes- Okay, wait, I'm worried," Ennoshita starts to peel his body away. "All this soul talk, and I might actually see yours."
"Nooooo, come back!" You grip his shoulders, which start shaking as he joins in on the laughter.
"You need air to laugh!"
"Okay, okay, just return to being my personal hydraulic presser!"
"Hydraulic presser?"
Man, your stomach hurts.
"Oh, love, what would I do without you?" he chokes out in between giggles.
It takes a few more minutes for the two of you to settle down and catch your breath.
"Aren't we humans just fascinating?" you muse, staring at the ceiling.
"However fascinating they are," Ennoshita pokes your cheek, "you're my favorite human."
after i finish up sprint i have another mini series im thinking of doing for twst :) the fics will be much shorter and probably be divided by the houses but i hope youll enjoy it !!
❤︎ fem!reader. angst/fluff — sfw. first love. reader is prefect. deuce is trying:c reader rlly only comes in at the very end sorry word count 1417 .𖥔 ݁ ˖ sprint! series masterlist
a/n: my second fic in my sprint for your love! mini series! writing this made me cry:c give deuce a hug!!!
Deuce Spade knows that skipping classes is not the most respectable thing to do when one is aiming to become a straight A’s honors student— but once in a while though, he allows himself a little slip up on his journey to become someone his mother can be proud of.
Besides, no one is perfect.
Deuce has no idea when he started feeling that something was off when he came to NRC. After all, this was his dream, right? To enter the most prestigious arcane academy in the land and become a great, respectable mage, so that his mother didn’t have to fret over his future any longer. But somewhere along the line, his original plan faltered little by little.
The second round of exams hit Deuce hard, harder than the first round ever did as he watched students file in line to check their placements amongst their own rankings. Even though he was determined to make it into the top hundred spots on his own this time (lest another sea anemone incident occur), his eyes followed a long list of names down the board until it reached the very bottom— where his own name laid bare in black ink.
Frustrated, he storms off just as Ace was bragging to him about placing higher this time around.
It’s no surprise to anyone that Deuce is not a very good actor, he can’t keep a straight lie up unlike his roommate to save his life. And despite the serious, determined face he puts up, to his core he is still just a kid. A first year duckling in a pond full of mages far more skilled than he was (and could ever hope to become).
It’s funny to think about in hindsight, how a former delinquent who once knocked guys bigger than him out cold for fun could be so soft hearted, so angered over something as simple as a test score.
But when Deuce remembers the teary-eyed face of his mother as she cried on call with his grandma, asking her kaa-san if she had raised him wrong for him to turn out this way; bleached blond hair, blastcycle always roaring down the slopes of steep mountains, he falters.
He runs.
Deuce Spade, like a coward, runs away from his problems.
A habit he’s retained even after moving past his former delinquent years is taking walks alone when his head is too full. It’s usually how he ended up in shifty alley brawls anyway, usually starting with him wanting to clear his mind and accidentally stumbling upon a couple of drunk bastards.
Still, on days like this, Deuce takes what he calls a ‘rest day’ (called so he feels less guilty about not becoming the picture perfect image of a good student). He skips class, usually Professor Crewel’s, and he walks.
He makes sure to miss all the areas he knows staff regularly patrol, doing tens of dozens of rounds around the school grounds knowing that this time, he can’t run away from his issues.
What would his mother say if he showed up at her door, halfway through the school year? Meek little voice caught in his throat as he confessed to her pitifully;
“I’m sorry . . . I can’t do it . . .”
He shakes his head frantically. Don’t think about that!
Hours pass by in what seems like the blink of an eye, it’s just what happens when you basically abandon your daily schedule in exchange for total freedom. Lying in a secluded clearing just out back of the Heartslabyul gardens, Deuce sits in the soft grass, plucking at the green blades bit by bit and keeping count of them all.
He’s up to eight hundred and ten for now. He’s had to restart a few times, though.
The tall rose bush hedges of the gardens shelter him peacefully from the rest of the world, providing a makeshift sanctuary for him to sit and ponder. Preferring to not look the roses in the eye out of shame for not upholding his house’s values, he rips out another chunkful of grass and uncaringly tosses it aside.
Life could be so simple for him if this were all he had to do, becoming a live-in lawn mower for anyone willing to take pity on him. Housewarden Rosehearts should be thankful he’s willingly weeding the gardens this time around.
It’s been quiet for ages now, so it’s no surprise when Deuce’s shoulders go rigid when out of nowhere he quietly hears from a few ways away, “Deuce?”
His head perks up, spine snapping straight.
“Deuce!” The voice calls out, louder this time. Footsteps patter in his general direction, echoing his name like a mantra as the wind carries your call to his ears.
“Deuce, where are you!”
Without a moment’s hesitation, Deuce bolts up off the ground, not even caring for the dirt stains on his usually pristine white uniform, or the grass stuck underneath his trimmed fingernails.
“Deuce!”
He gets up, and he sprints. His sneakers make it unbelievably hard to run on soft grass, yet he still books it with all his might. Towards the owner of the voice, worriedly calling out for him.
Towards you.
Almost like they have a mind of their own, the labyrinth of rose bushes magically move out of the way for Deuce as he makes his way out, reassembling themselves into a straight and narrow path for him to race through as your voice grows louder with each call of his name.
Salty tears prickle at the corners of his eyes, his heart beating wildly in his chest— the long distance endurance training he received from track club paying off as he bursts through the last wall of bushes in his way.
He halts to a stop on the main stone pathway of Heartslabyul, doubling over in pain and inhaling desperately for air. There’s definitely leaves, twigs and probably even a few rose petals stuck in his hair and suit; but when he musters the strength to lift his head up, all he can see is your worried face staring back down at him with such guilt in your eyes, concern tugging your pretty face into the saddest frown he’s ever seen.
“Oh, Deuce . . . what happened to you?”
You whisper, fingers hovering just above a stray stick poking out of his blazer, hesitating to pull it out— treating him as if were but a scared little animal you might frighten if you dared to make contact. “Where did you go?”
Instead of an answer, he falls forward, collapsing into your arms from exhaustion.
(Running through several layers of rose bushes will do that to a person).
You panic, as expected, freezing up like you just accidentally killed your boyfriend.
He hears yelling again. It’s probably from you.
His ears are ringing, and he can hear your voice keep questioning him if he’s alright, but your hold is gentle and caring, cradling him like he was the most precious treasure in the world right now.
He sniffs, red rimmed eyes on full display when he meets your gaze. His spade motif makeup is smudged messily all over your prefect uniform, the navy eyeliner an ugly stain on the fabric, but you don’t even give it a second thought when you notice the state he’s in.
“Goodness, Deuce . . . your hands, your eyes . . .!”
Tired yet relieved, he chuckles, a pang of hurt shooting up throughout his chest when he does so. “Don’t worry about it,” he whispers, fists clenching tighter into the fabric of your clothing, ruining it further.
Deuce smiles up at you, cheeks flushed from crying but also from the warmth of your body heat radiating against his own— for even when your face is scrunched up with worry and dread, your eyes are the kindest and softest they’ve ever been.
And it’s all for him.
No one is perfect, but Deuce thinks that you might be the exception to that fact.
“I’m fine now,” he assures you, dirt-stained hand clutching onto your own. “Now that you’re here.”
Deuce Spade knows he can’t run away from his problems forever. He knows that eventually, he will have to grow up and face those troubles head on. He’s ready to face that fact, he’s been ready ever since he accepted his invitation to NRC.
But when there are days that are harder than others, can he at least run into your arms instead, if not for a temporary moment of solace?
❤︎ fem!reader. fluff — sfw. first love. reader is prefect. canon accurate annoying shit ace. deuce is in like half of this fic i love him word count 1257 .𖥔 ݁ ˖ sprint! series masterlist
a/n: thank you to @stellar-twisted for beta reading <3 this is the first fic in my sprint for your love! mini series!
Maybe it just comes with being the youngest in your family, but Ace Trappola is a notorious instigator— and purely for the fun of it. Mischievous, cheeky, and a dash of smugness all rolled into one is how most attending NRC would describe the first year.
It’s because of all these traits combined that it shocks the troublemaking Heartslabyul student’s friends when he begins to date you of all people, someone who was believed to be (in Deuce’s own words), “too good for him”; the prefect who came into this world solely due to a mistake from the cosmos, a momentary lapse in judgement from the Dark Mirror that summoned you to NRC on the whims of the universe.
Despite all that you had been through, the first years recognize that you have a strong head on your shoulders. Bravery in the face of danger, in a world where magic is almost akin to a necessity for survival, you’re able to face these hardships head on without a magestone or potions, or any other sort of blessings from the Seven.
Maybe, the first years reason, that is why you are able to handle someone like Ace Trappola, who is in every way a striking parallel to the very essence of all that you are.
Whereas you try to lay low and not cause trouble, mischief and chaos follow in Ace’s every waking step. A snide remark or two towards an upperclassman that almost results in a book thrown at his face, an oblivious eyeroll whenever Professor Trein calls him out in class for being empty headed that nearly slams him into detention.
The bright eyed first year has quite the nasty habit of not keeping his mouth shut at the right times, forcing you to intervene on numerous occasions in order to spare him the Heartslabyul housewarden’s wrath.
In the front row seat to this wonderlandian show is Ace’s roommate, Deuce Spade, who really begins to question if you had accidentally hit your head upon exiting the coffin that brought you to Twisted Wonderland.
For every instance of Ace who starts a commotion for fun, there is you trailing right behind, always saving the day with hasty apologies, promises of reparations and a few slaps upside the back of your boyfriend’s head.
Deuce reminisces on the tale of the Queen of Hearts and her lowly husband who wagered behind her meekly as she ruled over her subjects with a scathing fist of iron, only he finds that the roles seem to flip whenever it comes time to apologize for whatever troubles Ace has somehow landed himself in.
He can almost see the red head’s imaginary puppy ears drooping with a whimper and a pout tugging deeply at his lips as you physically yank the boy up by the collar of his uniform, forcing him into a deep bow while housewarden Rosehearts chews the both of you out (despite protests of you not being the main culprit, “your partner is a reflection of your manner of behaviour, prefect!”).
It’s not until on a random spring day as lunch time rolls around that Deuce realizes what your seeming thirst for self sabotage at the hands of your boyfriend really is— and he discovers it entirely by accident, too. All while standing in line for the caféteria, yawning as warm rays of sun peek through NRC’s windows when his eyes drift to the grassland outside and onto a familiar glimpse of fluffy auburn hair bouncing around in the grass.
His gaze follows and then lands on you, opposite of his roommate, seemingly arguing with Ace, who in Trappola fashion is completely keen on messing with you every second of the day. The two of you exchange a few words each, though Ace’s are more jests and quips.
His roommate wears a grin and eyes that twinkle with cheekiness, whereas he finds your face to appear more somber, more downtrodden in its tone.
Too far away to make out either of your words (and reading lips has never been a strong suit of his, too), Deuce faintly catches the crease of your brow, your frown deepening, and the rigid shift in your posture as your shoulders slump in tired defeat.
Your mouth opens; a few words tumble out hastily, and the triumphantly smug look on Ace’s face plummets within mere seconds.
The next thing Deuce makes out in a blur is you spinning on your heel, stomping off with balled fists and an expression he can only describe as apprehensive, maybe even regretful, while his friend’s feet are planted to the ground in shock. Too scared to move, yet with each step you take has you growing further away from him.
Tempted to jump out of the lunch line, crash through the window and scold Ace for hurting your feelings (and maybe give the guy a few good right hooks to the jaw to emphasize his point further), Deuce instead watches as in a flash, Ace begins to sprints off after you.
Not a light jog or a leisurely stroll, Ace full on bolts.
A messy mop of ginger-red hair, swaying crazily in the otherwise calm spring breeze, Ace runs like he’s never run before. Not for basketball, not when the headmaster was chasing him down after he had accidentally set one of the Seven’s statues on fire.
His heart swells with remorse, pounding as the sensation of pumping blood rushes to his ears, reverberating within his head. Once close enough to the fading view of your back, his hands reach out, tugging you into his chest and stopping your escape dead in its tracks.
You struggle in his hold momentarily, squirming around like a drenched cat who just got unexpectedly hosed by its owner. If the windows weren’t blocking out all of the sound from outside, Deuce is sure he’d catch a few mean spirited jabs thrown his friend’s way by you too.
But when Ace buries into the crook of your neck with all the sincerity in the world, your anger dissipates softly and sweetly as you both sway in place under spring’s warmth.
Although hidden by his hair, Deuce knows that underneath, the tips of Ace’s ears are as vibrant as the roses in Heartslabyul’s gardens as he mumbles out an apology— a genuine one— into the soft skin of your neck, his eye makeup smeared along your collarbone in a messily scandalous smudge of crimson.
He even manages to look away politely when out of the corner of his eyes he sees you plant a kiss on Ace’s cheek, assuming that his friend’s apology was accepted graciously.
Deuce smiles to himself, shoulders relaxing once he finally realizes; it was never about whether or not you and Ace matched each other one to one, or were always on the same page together. It was never deliberate self sabotage on your end (though he won’t ever mention that joke to either of your faces).
You have a lot of patience for Ace Trappola, even for as much of a troublemaker he is— and Ace has a tremendous amount of love in his heart for you, love that encourages change in ways that Deuce never thought he’d see his friend accomplish.
Old habits die hard, but when Ace Trappola remembers the sight of your back disappearing further away from him, a sight he’d much rather not have to see again for as long as he lives, at least he’ll know you’re only a sprint away.
｡ﾟﾟ･｡･ﾟﾟ｡ ﾟ。 ꪆ୧. 𝓼𝓹𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓽 𝓯𝓸𝓻 𝔂𝓸𝓾𝓻 𝓵𝓸𝓿𝓮! ﾟ･｡･ NRC first years ♥︎
❤︎ fem!reader. sfw — fluff. shoujo manga inspired mini-series. reader is prefect (no ‘yuu’). light angst in deuce + sebek’s. first love. total word count TBA .𖥔 ݁ ˖ masterlist
a/n: a small homage to the shoujo of all time ohshc + its ed <3 chapters come out every few days (hopefully!)
SPRINT, ACE TRAPPOLA!
premise. ace’s roommate wonders just how far your patience with ace can stretch . . .
SPRINT, DEUCE SPADE!
premise. deuce can’t run back home and away from his problems when the going gets tough . . .
SPRINT, EPEL FELMIER!
premise. epel is terrible at following orders, what he is good at is staking claims.
SPRINT, JACK HOWL!
premise. jack is thrilled to learn that his siblings adore you, but he wants to spend time with you as well . . .
SPRINT, SEBEK ZIGVOLT!
premise. how can sebek become a knight if he can’t overcome the first hurdle; courtesy for a lady?
